Category: Politics

Your Election is being Bought by 47 Billionaires (and they are Buying War, Climate Change)

Your Election is being Bought by 47 Billionaires (and they are Buying War, Climate Change)

Posted on 08/14/2012 by Juan

The Public Interest Group Education Fund and the NGO Demos released a study in early August on the financing of the presidential campaign.

They found that nearly 60% of the almost quarter of a billion dollars raised by Super PACs from individuals derived from just 47 people, who gave at least $1 million each (obviously some gave much more).

47 people. That’s democracy?

Of these 47, the most generous (or greedy) are Sheldon Adelson and his wife, who gave $36 million themselves. Since the total known amount from individuals is $240 million, some 15 percent of the individual contributions, or one-sixth, are coming from one family.

 

Your Election is being Bought by 47 Billionaires (and they are Buying War, Climate Change)

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WikiLeaks Has Been Down For Nine Days Following Massive DDoS Attack

WikiLeaks is no stranger to being brought down by DDoS attacks. The Web site has been attacked multiple times, usually after a major leak. This past week has been a little difference because the Web site and all its mirrors have been down for nine days. What did they leak this time that caused such an uproar and who’s behind such a massive attack?

WikiLeaks says that they’ve been under attack since revealing TrapWire. According to a leak from Stratfor, TrapWire is a massive surveillance system operated by a private security company called Abraxas. Its goal is to collect information from security cameras around the nation and feed them into a central database. For more on TrapWire, check out this lengthy and comprehensive post that cuts through all the conspiracy theories that have popped up since its unveiling.

WikiLeaks claims that their servers are being attacked by 10 Gbps of bogus traffic per second. If true, this is one of the largest DDoS attacks on record. Having lasted for nine days, it might also be the longest sustained DDoS attack on record.

WikiLeaks Has Been Down For Nine Days Following Massive DDoS Attack

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Fed Now Largest Owner of U.S. Gov’t Debt—Surpassing China


Ben Bernanke

At the close of business on Tuesday, the debt of the federal government exceeded $15 trillion for the first time--with the largest single owner of the publicly held portion of that debt being the Federal Reserve.

Over the past year, as the Federal Reserve massively increased its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities and entities in China marginally decreased theirs, the Fed surpassed the Chinese as the top owner of publicly held U.S. government debt.

In its latest monthly report, the Federal Reserve said that as of Sept. 28, it owned $1.665 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. That was more than double the $812 billion in U.S. Treasury securities the Fed said it owned as of Sept. 29, 2010.

Fed Now Largest Owner of U.S. Gov’t Debt—Surpassing China

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