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For example the Nordic countries (and Germany until recently) don't have a minimum wage. This allows the unions and employers and the market to set rates. This leads to very low unemployment. The Southern European countries all have high minimum wages which causes high unemployment.

Unemployment is not the single most important issue here. Germany introduced the minimum wage because the number of working poors creeped up to more than 3 million - and that's 2013 numbers . But they are not counted as unemployed.

In UK, they introduced the zero-hour job. Which means that employees can have zero hours of work in their month and thus, do not get paid. But they are not counted as unemployed.

If you are unemployed, in most EU countries you get benefits that will allow you to keep a decent life - for a while. As a working poor, not so much. Thus the nordic countries are actually hiding the issue under the carpet.

[sarcasm] Maybe one day (ultra)liberalists will start to use actual data and not wishful thinking to support their theories, but I very much doubt it will ever be the case.

It is about 0.03% the total cost of the Iraq invasion if you want to convert this into U.S. political dollars.

(I know, I shouldn't feed such stupid trolling...)

Well, this certainly isn't the whole story.

The reason why the women went to the police is extremely well-attested in multiple reliable sources, and their stories remain unchanged on this point from the beginning: they wanted Assange to submit to a STD test.

It is well documented that Malaysia uses legal homophobia and fictional events to jail the opponents of the government, who are likely to challenge the entrenched regime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.c...

push to start/keyless ignition. It seems like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. It seems like it causes more problems than it solves.

That doesn't mean they aren't bubbles, or even fully legal. Heck, he operated "Trump University" without a licence. Gee, wonder what business practices where taught there...

This just goes to show that you don't know what you're talking about.

He doesn't run Trump University, he licencees his name and receives royalty payments for its use. I'm sure his name is listed as someone important there, but I'd be shocked if he has given it more than a day or two of his attention.

http://www.reuters.com/article... - Donald Trump is personally liable for operating a for-profit investment school without the required license, a New York judge ruled in a lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General against the real estate entrepreneur.

Sucks to be you, Donny Boy impersonator.

http://www.reuters.com/article...

A moment of silence for our fallen innocence of citizen's trust. Da da daaaa... da da daaaaaaa.... *puts hat back on* So yea, you can do encryption with a pencil and paper, do we need to think about backdoors when we're doing that?

Yes, if you use an algorithm based on some of the intentionally-weakened numerical tables or algorithms, courtesy of No Such Agency.

thanks for the tip. Didn't think of Harmon Kardon as being the vendor for this, uh, app. NTSA seems to call them out explicitly in their complaint.

Will Bitcoin be used by Cubans and Americans to sell goods and services without the knowledge of their governments? Cuban offshore developers might be the first to use Bitcoin.

Three guesses and the second two don't count.

"Which foreign currency is in common use throughout the Caribbean and frequently adopted or accepted as legal tender? "

Currency substitution: Anchor currencies: US Dollar

Now a harder one:

"If prosecuted for an economic crime with $100 million in assets at stake, would you prefer to be tried and sentenced in Cuba or the United States?"

Cuba sentences Canadian CEO to fifteen years on financial charges

Oil is a metaphor for winning the lottery

I see people saying this a lot but I've never seen any solid evidence that it's still true. In 2014 and so far in 2015 China has actually reduced its coal use by a significant amount. China coal use continues to fall precipitously. Maybe they're replacing older inefficient plants with newer ones or maybe they're not using so much for home heating, etc. but any drop in coal use by them is a good thing.

http://instituteforenergyresea...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

http://www.climatecentral.org/...

Increased access to Maghreb natural gas is considered an important factor in the EU plans for future energy development in Italy and France.

You are just not going to outdo the Americans. And resign? Please! Here you get promoted, might even become president of the country, and the job will be waiting for you when you finish your term/sentence..

Perfection in such systems cannot be obtained, so a certain amount of loss must be tolerated.

Yeah really! I mean, like, what's the big deal, right?

If you can't regulate theft and murder our of existence you sure can't regulate technological shortcutting out of existence.

Hint: when regulators determine that someone violated existing regulations and charge them billions of dollars in fines, "what can we do to make sure the same thing doesn't happen again" becomes a matter of weighing whether the fines are truly punitive versus something which might be written off as a cost of doing business. $4300/barrel of oil is still pretty punitive.

So are you ok with someone shooting you in the head, and then just paying a fine of ~100x the cost of the bullet*? Because I know people who will be glad to pay that hunting license fee who haven't even read your comment history...

* 100x the cost of each bullet FOUND at that.

But you'd think that regulators would at least ask a few questions, llike "what happened" and "what can we do to make sure the same thing doesn't happen again".

You write as if they didn't do that several years ago.

The solution to oil spills is not: "another regulation that requires the regulated to follow the existing regulation." You develop new regulations when new processes or technology begin to fall outside existing regulations. Otherwise you enforce existing regulations, rebalance penalties, and recognize that no matter how many regulations you have, something will happen again. If you can't regulate theft and murder our of existence you sure can't regulate technological shortcutting out of existence.

Hint: when regulators determine that someone violated existing regulations and charge them billions of dollars in fines, "what can we do to make sure the same thing doesn't happen again" becomes a matter of weighing whether the fines are truly punitive versus something which might be written off as a cost of doing business. $4300/barrel of oil is still pretty punitive.

You are unaware by choice. Perfectly normal for 98% of us. Feel free to dismiss out of hand anything I put forth as not 'credible'. I usually do myself. It's all lies. The biggest liar wins, always. And pointing that out will be the crime, always.

I dunno if AC will check back or not - but in no particular order:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.reuters.com/
http://rt.com/
http://www.cbc.ca/
http://www.news.com.au/
http://www.dailytelegraph.com....
http://news.sky.com/
http://kurdishdailynews.org/
http://rt.com/
http://www.jpost.com/
http://www.aljazeera.com/
http://www.china.org.cn/
http://www.scientificamerican....
http://timesofindia.indiatimes...
http://english.pravda.ru/
http://www.projectcensored.org...
http://www.arabtimesonline.com...

I think I've covered the best - be aware, some national sites are heavy into propaganda. Pravda very much so, RT somewhat less so.

Depending on your own interests - you might type in some country in a Google search, and add "times" or "post" or "news". From time to time, I do something like that - the earthquake in Tibet for instance. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=pale... That search offered up a number of sites, but I didn't add any of them to my feeds. Note that many of the hits are very politicized, but you can still find Tibetan news sources among them.

Have fun!

$7.2B indeed.
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
They've valued nokia below their total worth estimated at acquisition time.

And it looks like MS shareholders had already devalued MS for it.

(Tue Sep 3, 2013 7:16pm EDT)
Shares in Microsoft slid as much as 6 percent in the afternoon, lopping more than $15 billion off the company's market value, as investors protested the acquisition of an underperforming and marginalized corporation that lost more than $4 billion in 2012.

$7.2B indeed.
http://www.reuters.com/article...

They've valued nokia below their total worth estimated at acquisition time. And remember they still have all the buildings and patents.

One thing all stock market crashes have in common is debt. Stock declines force margin calls, which forces selling, leading to more declines, a vicious cycle.

Margin trading for individual investors is a recent development. Previously, individual investors were not allowed to open margin accounts. As this old article explains, China brokerages became nervous of the margin debt at the peak. As soon as brokerages tightened margin requirements, the selloff began. This article from December 2014 goes into a little more detail on the recent history of margin in the China markets.

There is also Shadow debt in the market, off-balance-sheet debt invested in the market, sometimes at a leverage of 3 to 1. Normal margin accounts are much more restrictive, about 9%. This shadow debt has been around for a few years now, but the latest boom is much more recent.

It should be noted that the China market has had huge booms and busts in the past, without the more recent leverage.

If you find a story of fundamental homosexuals beating up christian because he looked too square, I'd love to hear it.

Does pressuring somebody to abandon the company he co-founded count as "beating up"?

there are also those screaming "racist" at everything even when it isnt and it seems to have been this way for the past 10 years now here.

I can't imagine why anyone would see racism in today's USA.

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/3...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/...

https://www.breitbartunmasked....

Prove it.

Given the number of times they've been caught lying in the past — including very recent past — the burden of proof is on Iran — and its apologists. The same apologists, who have no problems protesting Iran's innocence, while at the same time arguing for their right to have nuclear weapons...

Oh, and TFA itself is proof — the argument, that Iran are doing it "for energy" is defeated by the simple Math presented here.

It is admirable, that you wish to apply the "innocent until proven guilty" principle even to foreign regimes, but it is also naïve. Even in the legal system and offender on probation has to continuously prove innocence...

But realize that the propaganda machine is using the WMD line to trance you into gearing up for war, just like they did for Iraq.

So, your argument for Iran's innocence is our attack on Iraq? I fail to see a connection... The above-enumerated lies are totally independent of whether or not I am unduly influenced by some ominous propagandists — whom you would not even cite.

Have you considered the possibility, that it just might be you, who are a propaganda-victim? A "deal" with Iran (and Cuba) is the only good legacy Obama can have: despite all the Statist interventions (like the "Cash for Clunkers" flop) the economy is contracting, the Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia should've been Georgia-related and tightened instead of abolished in 2010, Obamacare is increasingly unpopular.

Bringing "peace for our time" with the mullahs would be — he foolishly thinks — something he could point a finger at. The way Clinton can point to his — equally foolish deal with North Korea. This is why they push for the "deal" — the same inept morons, who tried to befriend Putin with a plastic button...

Who are these judges appointed to the FISA court? Is a prerequisite a hatred for America, or is this something they develop once on the bench?

They are ordinary judges that serve on a rotating basis on that court. They are selected by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The judges who preside over America's secret court

Hatred for America? How do you think that plays out between findings for gay marriage versus findings that allow continued surveillance against terrorism?

What is happening in Greece now will inevitably happen to every country who allow the central banks to provide their currency.

The basic concept of central banking is that a country borrows it's currency from the central banks - and is required to pay back the principal + interest. However, it is mathematically impossible to pay back the principal + interest from a pool of money containing only the principal. As a result, the banks will eventually own all real property and assets (collateral) of every country that they "do business" in.

This is where income tax comes in. Contrary to popular belief, income tax dollars do not go toward roads, schools and hospitals. Income tax (YOUR hard earned money) goes to pay the interest on the money the government borrowed from the banksters (instead of the government printing their currency debt-free) in an effort to keep the banksters from taking real-world commodities. For example, Canada lost its national railroad - Canadian National Railway - to the banksters in the 1970's. CNR is now a private corporation, and of all people, Bill Gates is a large shareholder.

The CRA/IRS are little more than glorified collection agencies for the banksters, supported by the federal government.

The practice of "fractional reserve banking" - that is, creating money (out of thin air) and lending it out at interest - is one of the biggest ponzi schemes ever developed; and is practiced by every commercial bank in the modern world.

Nearly every country on the planet has been swept into this scam. The few exceptions, interestingly enough, are (alleged terrorist/axis of evil) countries such as Iran and North Korea.

The only country that I am aware of that has rejected the central banksters and taken control of their own banking system is Iceland. Instead of getting a 'bailout' or 'stimulus package' (borrowing more money to pay the interest and delay the inevitable collapse), Iceland threw the crooked banksters in jail and disconnected from the central banking system. The rest of world really needs to follow suit.

For further information on the central banking ponzi scheme, I strongly encourage everyone to watch Money as Debt and read The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin.

They did.

Bringing water to thirsty people is only good if you value people.

And if you value thirsty fracking operations.

http://www.reuters.com/article...

But what if we value the next generation and the one after that?

Just try to do better than these guys.

The article does not say that he did that.

Paulson did in fact do that. The Abacus deal was considered fairly controversial.

Are you kidding?

Gunshot victim's family ordered to pay the legal feeds of ammo dealers.

American lawmakers, especially at the state level, are getting their marching orders from the gun lobby.

Even in "liberal" states like California and New York, gun control laws are getting laxer and laxer.

When Putin charges someone with corruption, it's usually because they control government expenditures and are unwilling to give him his usual kickback. So, it looks like he's going to create a new space agency and install an ally to take advantage of the inherent business opportunities provided by access to a budget of over $5 billion.

Read more about Putin's kleptocracy here:

http://www.reuters.com/investi...

Surely Time Warner has learned the lesson of not being bought for funny money stock?

Time Warner Cable is not the same company as Time Warner Inc. They have been separate enterprises since 2009.

Because when AOL bought them with trumped up stock, somehow AOL was worth more than an entity with cable, programming,network infrastructure, move studios.

The two transactions couldn't be more different. In addition the buying entity here is Charter Communications, not TWC.

(a) there's a difference between exercising civil rights and rioting,...

Agreed, there is.

...but the law enforcement agencies in the St. Louis area apparently can't tell what it is

That doesn't seem to be true.

More than 400 arrested as Ferguson protests spread to other U.S. cities

Ferguson, a predominately black city, has been hit by two nights of rioting, looting and arson with some businesses burned to the ground, but authorities say an increased security presence on Tuesday night helped quell the violence.

Same goes for Baltimore.

200 arrested in Baltimore rioting; 144 cars destroyed

Looting, arson, and mob violence are pretty good indicators that the line has been crossed.

The solution is to let the fucking "too big to fail" banks fail. But if they threaten to take down the whole system, bankrupt them the way you would any other essential service: By nationalising them,

The majority of the loans were made by "banks" owned by the German government already:

http://www.reuters.com/article...

Furthermore the smaller amount of private lending was likely largely in response to governmental political pressure or explicit or implicit loan guarantees by the German government and the EU ("the EU isn't going to let Greece default").

We've weakened our governments so much that banks and corporations interfere with politics (telling governments what to do) and they are using that ability not for the benefit of society, but for their own economic beenfit and the profit interests of their shareholders and investors.

It's bloody fools like you who are responsible for this nonsense: even in light of the fact that most of the bad loans were made by state-owned banks, you still call for more nationalization and call for enabling even more abuse of power by politicians.

You can have risk-free investment or you can have profit through interest. The banks decided they want both.

You're missing another piece of the puzzle here. In fact, most of the Greek debt to German "banks" is to state owned banks (e.g., KfW), and the remaining banks are likely pressured by governments to make those risky loans (with the implicit or explicit promise of government loan guarantees).

Governments want these loans because they are tied to Greek orders from German companies. That means jobs and the appearance of economic growth (since the risk is never accounted for). Politicians, unions, and corporations all look like they are doing good.

all of that is the direct result of banks deciding to game the system, and the blame is entirely theirs

Blaming banks for this suggests that more bank regulation and supervision is the solution, when bank regulation and supervision by governments is actually the cause of this problem. If you give governments and politicians the ability to interfere in the market (tell banks and corporations what to do), they are going to use that ability not for the benefit of society, but for their own political benefit and the financial benefit of their political and financial backers.

More specifically, it demonstrated that Sony Pictures (which is only part of the larger Sony enterprise, and from what I understand, the only part that got pwned) had management that failed spectacularly at security - not that building more secure devices/operating systems/networks/etc is not possible.

It's also patently stupid to suggest that anything is "more vulnerable" now than it used to be. Things may be more interconnected, and are more likely to be attacked in the past, but they are not getting "more vulnerable" unless your management is A) not willing to spend the reasonable cost for appropriate security controls, or B) doesn't listen to their IT security staff when those systems start raising warning flags, or C) fails to hire competent security personnel in the first place.

Target's breach was an example of this - apparently one of the security services they used raised a red flag on the activity, but Target failed to take any action:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/13/us-target-breach-idUSBREA2C14F20140313

Saddam had no Nuclear weapons, and the whole story about yellow cake was fabricated by various intelligence agencies to fit an agenda.

There was lot more to it than just the yellowcake story.

Why do some people that believe politicians are stupid, do things from complete ignorance, and do things without understanding all of the possible outcomes?

Because there is tons of evidence. For example, the fact essentially nobody read the patriot act before voting on it. Or all of the non-oversight by the senate intelligence oversight committee.

These guys spend 5+ hours of their workday begging for re-election money. Of course they don't have time to pay attention to their jobs.

What is batshit crazy is believing that politicians have much of a grasp on anything- peripheral understanding sure, maybe some (one-sided) depth if a lobbyists informs them on a specific topic. But an educated opinion on anything else is rare as hen's teeth.

Way back when swine flu was rampant, the only pig in Afghanistan was quarantined. Evidently, the Afghans kept one as a curiosity in a zoo.
http://www.reuters.com/article...

Thinking that the Saudis deliberately lowering oil prices to hurt US based production is a delusional fantasy. It's just that OPEC cannot currently dictate worldwide oil prices.

This outcome set the stage for a battle for market share between OPEC and non-OPEC countries, as a boom in U.S. shale oil production and weaker economic growth in China and Europe have already sent crude prices down by about a third since June.

"It was a great decision," Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said as he emerged smiling after around five hours of talks.

OPEC said in a statement that members had agreed to roll over the ceiling of 30 million barrels per day, at least 1 million above OPEC's own estimates of demand for its oil next year.

"It is a new world for OPEC because they simply cannot manage the market anymore. It is now the market’s turn to dictate prices and they will certainly go lower," said Dr. Gary Ross, chief executive of PIRA Energy Group.

The wealthy Gulf states have made clear they are ready to ride out the weak prices that have hurt the likes of Venezuela and Iran - OPEC members which face big budget pressures, but cannot afford to make cuts themselves. Venezuela and Algeria had calling for output cuts of as much as 2 million bpd.

So Iran and Venezuela are hurting far more then US oil interests, and they are not exactly our friends.

There are plenty of reasons to question the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the West, but so far you have not cited even one of them.

Do you understand what 'rich fuckers' do now?

Yes I do! They avoid paying taxes using the following strategies:

-Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich
-Foreign Holdings
-Inversion
-Stock Options
-Living Trusts
-Blind Trusts
-Public Welfare
-Many, Many, More

These strategies do not even account for the many ways that they screw their workforce.

They then take the enormous pile money that they have and use it to buy politicians and
manipulate the system.

They also use the system to privatize anything that can have money squeezed out of it, such as schools, healthcare, and roads. Finally, they use the money to distort the reality of what they have done so people consider them to be "Heros", "Pillars of the Community", and such. The Nobel prize, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, etc. That is what those "Rich Fuckers" do.

http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.salon.com/2011/04/1...

Yeah no one freaked out and made death threats or anything.

Contrary to popular belief, the president has no power at all to deal with the national debt.

Technically true but not in practice. The President does propose a budget to Congress each year, which the House and Senate are free to embroider upon as they wish. Others have mentioned the fact that the President can veto the budget approved by Congress until they have the 2/3 majority for an override.

But most importantly, the President can commit the US to unwarranted, falsely justified conflicts overseas that eat up $2 trillion in budget over 10 years and duly expect a rubber stamping from Congress. (Because who is going to vote to not pay for the US soldiers you have already committed there to buy the bullets they now require?) So, yeah, in practice they can have a lot of impact, usually for the worse when neocons get involved in any way.

It's also time to hit the fools with some hard facts:

The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct | Motherboard

Acid Test: Rising CO2 Levels Killing Ocean Life | Conservation Climate

Air Pollution Linked to 1.2 Million Deaths in China - NYTimes.com

Full Cost of Coal $500 Billion/Year in U.S., Harvard Study Finds | CleanTechnica

Coal's hidden costs top $345 billion in U.S.-study | Reuters

I don't care if people believe in global warming or climate change, fossil fuels are still killing us and this planet regardless.

The World Meteorological Organisation seems to disagree with your non-backed claim. http://uk.reuters.com/article/...

Chile's Calbuco volcano erupted on April 22, "at around 1800 local time". The second picture in this article shows the eruption at sunset. From that picture, you can see that the ash and smoke from the eruption have begun to spread. According to this web page, sunset in Chile these days is about 7:10 pm. So about an hour after the eruption, the clouds of dust and smoke had already started to spread.

Does anyone know if the smoke and ash particles are magnetic? If so, then maybe we can cut down on their spread through the atmosphere, by putting billions of magnetically-charged balloons into the atmosphere above Yellowstone, just before the eruption. Hopefully they would attract some of the smoke and ash particles, and eventually fall back to the earth.

(Of course, this assumes that we'll have a few hours warning before the eruption, and that the balloons are all ready to go.)

Let's suppose Wal-mart started a floor at something reasonable, say 20$ an hour.

Walmart has decided to try it. To $9, not $20, but that's their minimum for 2015. 500,000 employees will make more money, costing Walmart $1 billion more than it would otherwise have spent on salaries this year. All of it going to the people in the very lowest income bracket, who are practically required to spend every dime they earn, because they're at or below the poverty line.

We'll see how it works, both for the economy and for Walmart. (Personally I think Walmart damn well knows that some large fraction of that billion dollars will be returned right back to them in increased spending at Walmart by poverty-stricken people.)

because every area facing cuts is always "critical".

Like this one?

http://blogs.reuters.com/great...

Over three-quarters of a TRILLION dollars on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that,

In 2008, two analysts at the RAND Corporation, a California think-tank that works closely with the military, programmed a computer simulation to test out the F-35s fighting ability in a hypothetical air war with China. The results were startling.

“The F-35 is double-inferior,” John Stillion and Harold Scott Perdue concluded in their written summary of the war game, later leaked to the press. The new plane “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run,” they warned.

$59.2B for development, $261B for procurement, $590B for operations & sustainment in 2012

For something that no one in the military actually wants.

The real irony is it was supposed to be the cheap one to put up in numbers to support the F-22. The same way the F-16 is the cheap numerous one to support the F-15. Ended up costing probably more money than all the recent fighters combined.

because every area facing cuts is always "critical".

Like this one?

http://blogs.reuters.com/great...

Over three-quarters of a TRILLION dollars on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that,

In 2008, two analysts at the RAND Corporation, a California think-tank that works closely with the military, programmed a computer simulation to test out the F-35s fighting ability in a hypothetical air war with China. The results were startling.

“The F-35 is double-inferior,” John Stillion and Harold Scott Perdue concluded in their written summary of the war game, later leaked to the press. The new plane “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run,” they warned.

$59.2B for development, $261B for procurement, $590B for operations & sustainment in 2012

For something that no one in the military actually wants.