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Yearly Archives: 2011

Profits For Chinese Manufacturing Fall on Slower Growth

“Chinese industrial companies’ profits growth cooled, adding to evidence the government may need to ease policy to protect the nation’s economic expansion.

Net income increased 24.4 percent in the first 11 months of 2011 from a year earlier to 4.66 trillion yuan ($737 billion), the National Bureau of Statistics said on its website today. The pace compared with 25.3 percent gain in the first 10 months and a 27 percent rise in the first three quarters.”

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Bank of Japan Warns of Further Economic Risks

“…..Economic uncertainty is deepening around the world, which is showing up in some Japanese statistics on exports and production,” said Hitoshi Asaoka, a Tokyo-based senior strategist at Mizuho Trust & Banking Co. “Investors find it hard to move near year-end…..”

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Stores See Busy, but Not Bang-Up Christmas Eve

NEW YORK/LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Retailers saw a steady flow of last-minute shoppers on Saturday, the day before Christmas, putting a moderate cap on a pre-holiday season that started with a bang and has since waned.

Industry watchers are forecasting a stronger holiday shopping season than expected, fueled by deep discounts at the start of the season, unusually warm and dry weather, a late Hanukkah, and an extra shopping day.

On the last shopping day before Christmas, the scene at several malls in different parts of the country was busy, but neither shoppers nor retailers seemed overwhelmed.

“The last-minute Charlies have come out,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at the NPD Group. “Stores are busy, but not bustling.”

The fact that Christmas Eve falls on a Saturday is good for retailers like Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy and Gap Inc. So is the fact that the day after Christmas is a Monday, instead of a Sunday like last year, when many people stayed home and watched American football, said Ramesh Swamy, an analyst in Deloitte’s retail practice.

“The calendar is working in our favor,” Swamy said.

So is the fact that there was no blizzard this year, like there was last year.

Read the rest here.

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Anonymous Hacks Stratfor

Associated Press

LONDON—Members of the loose-knit movement “Anonymous” claimed on Sunday to have stolen a raft of emails and credit-card data from U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor, promising it was just the start of a weeklong, Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.

One alleged Anonymous affiliate said the goal was to use the credit data to take a million dollars—including, apparently, from individuals’ accounts—and give the money away as Christmas donations. Images posted online claimed to show the receipts.

A Twitter account tied to Anonymous posted a link to what they said was Stratfor’s tightly guarded, confidential client list. Among those on the list: The U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force and the Miami Police Department.

The rest of the list, which the hacking movement said was a small slice of its 200 gigabytes of plunder, included banks, law-enforcement agencies, defense contractors and technology firms.

“Not so private and secret anymore?” the group taunted in a message on the microblogging site.

Austin, Texas-based Stratfor provides political, economic and military analysis to help clients reduce risk, according to a description on its YouTube page. It charges subscribers for its reports and analysis, delivered through the web, emails and videos.

Stratfor said in an email to members that it had suspended its servers and email after learning that its website had been hacked.

Read the rest here.

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What Time Is It?

By

Published: December 23, 2011

A HALF-CENTURY ago, a guy given a watch for the holidays would have torn off the wrapping paper to find a modest box containing a timepiece about the size of a quarter. This season that same package is more likely the size of a hamper, with inside it a hunk of bristling, steel-studded hardware and gears.

Watches have bulked up steadily since the “Mad Men” era, incrementally becoming brawnier, thicker and wide enough across to invite comparison to sundials. Particularly over the last decade, high-end watchmakers like Breitling, Franck Muller, IWC, Lange & Söhne, Omega and Panerai and even traditionally conservative companies like Cartier led the way with models offering ample quantities of what the industry refers to as “wrist presence.”

It was an odd development, given that the rest of the culture was headed in the opposite direction, favoring smaller cars, reduced carbon footprints and leaner six-pack bodies over pumped-up bloat and monster guns.

But the Mark McGwire look, otherwise so out of style now, persists in the world of the steroidal sports watch. And that helps account for the fact that timepieces in stores this season seem to have reached epic proportions.

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‘This Means Escalation, Pushing Us One Step Closer to a Revolution’

Watch out, 1%; the kids will be back

The tents may have moved on, but Occupy Wall Street will be back with specific demands and a new strategy, in time for the 2012 elections. It’s the voice of America’s youth fearing a future that doesn’t add up.

Warning to America’s superrich: Think Occupy Wall Street disappeared in winter’s cold? Wrong: The 99% just declared a new aggressive, covert special-ops war strategy to take back our democracy in 2012.

No more peaceful tent encampments in parks. No more Mahatma Gandhi nice-guy stuff. Not enough. Escalation time. Wall Street, the superrich and their Washington lobbyists are tone deaf, blinded by greed, trapped in their post-2008 business-as-usual bubble.

Warning; OWS tells us America’s going to be shocked by not one but hundreds of wake-up calls in 2012.

How? In a recent Washington Post column, OWS leaders say they are accelerating their battle strategy in 2012. In what amounts to a new declaration of war that promises to electrify the 2012 elections, OWS will be using new asymmetrical warfare strategies, write two of the men who have been the driving force behind the movement since early this year: Kalle Lasn, the editor-in-chief of Adbusters magazine, and senior editor Micah White.

OWS protesters march on Broadway

Listen to some of the specific guerrilla tactics they warn will be used in their 2012 “American Spring” assault: A “marked escalation of surprise, playful, precision disruptions, rush-hour flash mobs, bank occupations, ‘occupy squads’ and edgy theatrics.” And in a New Yorker magazine interview shortly after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “military-style operation,” Lasn warned: “this means escalation, pushing us one step closer to a revolution.”

Read the rest here.

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Twitter Breaking U.S. Law, Supporting Online Jihad

Twitter Continues To Evade Explaining Its Breaking of U.S. Law and Its Indirect Support For Online Jihad: The Case of Hizbullah and Al-Manar TV

By: Steven Stalinsky

Introduction

As part of its research, the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor follows the multiple ways in which jihadi groups are using Twitter – “tweeting” news flashes, reporting attacks, battles, and other operational activities, and sharing videos, and more.

Jihadi groups’ use of Twitter is part of their online media strategy of taking advantage of Western websites and technologies,[1] uploading videos to YouTube[2] and to the Internet Archive,[3] creating official Facebook pages,[4] and other methods. Jihadis have come to depend on free web hosting, where content can be uploaded anonymously, reliably, and at no cost.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California and with servers in San Antonio, Texas, Boston, Massachusetts, and New York, Twitter is increasingly being used by terrorist organizations and their media outlets. Their online followers are growing in number.

Twitter’s Terms of Services Supposedly Ban Users “Barred From Receiving Services Under the Laws of the United States” – Yet Growing Number of Designated Terrorist Organizations Are Tweeting

The latest designated terrorist organization active on twitter is Hizbullah (http://twitter.com/#1/almanarnews). Other jihadi organizations include the Somali Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahedeen,[5] the Taliban,[6] Jihad Al-Ansar Media,[7] Nukhbat Al-I’lam Al-Jihadi,[8] Ribat Media Center,[9] and many more, on which MEMRI will be reporting soon.

According to Twitter’s Terms of Service, account holders may use the Services only if “you [the user] can form a binding contract with Twitter and are not a person barred from receiving services under the laws of the United States or other applicable jurisdiction.” [10] Its “Restrictions on Content” states “We reserve the right at all times (but will not have an obligation) to remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services and to terminate users or reclaim usernames… We also reserve the right to… enforce the Terms, including investigation of potential violations hereof.”[11]

Read the rest here.

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Obama Wants You to Play Texas Hold’em, Online

By Jim Wolf and Nicola Leske

WASHINGTON | Sun Dec 25, 2011 5:36pm EST

(Reuters) – The Obama administration cleared the way for states to legalize Internet poker and certain other online betting in a switch that may help them reap billions in tax revenue and spur web-based gambling.

A Justice Department opinion dated September and made public on Friday reversed decades of previous policy that included civil and criminal charges against operators of some of the most popular online poker sites.

Until now, the department held that online gambling in all forms was illegal under the Wire Act of 1961, which bars wagers via telecommunications that cross state lines or international borders.

The new interpretation, by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, said the Wire Act applies only to bets on a “sporting event or contest,” not to a state’s use of the Internet to sell lottery tickets to adults within its borders or abroad.

“The United States Department of Justice has given the online gaming community a big, big present,” said I. Nelson Rose, a gaming law expert at Whittier Law School who consults for governments and the industry.

The question at issue was whether proposals by Illinois and New York to use the Internet and out-of-state transaction processors to sell lottery tickets to in-state adults violated the Wire Act.

But the department’s conclusion would eliminate “almost every federal anti-gambling law that could apply to gaming that is legal under state laws,” Rose wrote on his blog at www.gamblingandthelaw.com.

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Pope Benedict Rails Against Commercialization of Christmas

Pope Benedict ushered in Christmas for the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics on Saturday, urging humanity to see through the superficial glitter and commercialism of the season and rediscover the real significance of the humble birth of Jesus.

The 84-year-old pope, celebrating the seventh Christmas season of his pontificate, also urged that those marking the holiday in poverty, suffering or far from home not be forgotten.

At the start of a Christmas Eve service, he was wheeled up the central aisle of St Peter’s Basilica standing on a mobile platform which he has been using since October.

The Vatican says it is to conserve his strength, allow more people to see him and guard against attacks such as one on Christmas Eve, 2009, when a woman lunged at him and knocked him to the ground. He is believed to suffer from arthritis in the legs.

But he seemed to be in good shape during the solemn service in Christendom’s largest church as choirs sang, cantors chanted and organ music filled the centuries-old basilica.

Benedict, wearing resplendent gold and white vestments, urged his listeners to find peace in the symbol of the powerless Christ child in a world continually threatened by violence.

“Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity,” he said in his homily to about 10,000 people in the basilica and millions more watching on television throughout the world.

“Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light.”

The Christmas story of how Jesus, who Christians believe is the son of God, was born powerless “in the poverty of the stable” should remind everyone of the need for humility.

“… let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart,” he said.

PEACEMAKERS

The pope, who earlier placed a “candle of peace” on the windowsill of his apartments as the life-size nativity scene in St Peter’s Square was inaugurated, called for an end to violence, for oppressors to put down their “rods” and for all to become peacemakers.

“God has appeared – as a child. It is in this guise that he pits himself against all violence and brings a message that is peace,” he said.

“At this hour, when the world is continually threatened by violence in so many places and in so many different ways, when over and over again there are oppressors’ rods and bloodstained cloaks, we cry out to the Lord…” he said.

“…we suffer from the continuing presence of violence in the world, and so we also ask you: manifest your power, O God. In this time of ours, in this world of ours, cause the oppressors’ rods, the cloaks rolled in blood and the footgear of battle to be burned, so that your peace may triumph in this world of ours.”

Those celebrating Christmas in comfortable circumstances should remember those less fortunate.

“And let us also pray especially at this hour for all who have to celebrate Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God’s kindness may shine upon them, that they – and we – may be touched by the kindness that God chose to bring into the world through the birth of his Son in a stable,” he said.

On Christmas Day, the pope will deliver his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message and blessing from the central loge of St Peter’s Basilica.

He continues his Christmas and New Year’s celebrations on Dec 31 with a year-end Mass of thanksgiving known by its Latin name Te Deum.

On January 1 he marks the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace, on January 6 he marks the Epiphany and on January 8 will baptise several newborns in the Sistine Chapel.

He is due to visit Mexico and Cuba in March.

SOURCE

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3 CNAM 18.52
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50 VVUS 5.88

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