MSM: The image Microsoft doesn’t want you to see – Too tired to stay awake, the Chinese workers earning just 34p an hour

(DailyMail) – Showing Chinese sweatshop workers slumped over their desks with exhaustion, it is an image that Microsoft won’t want the world to see.

Employed for gruelling 15-hour shifts, in appalling conditions and 86f heat, many fall asleep on their stations during their meagre ten-minute breaks.

Microsoft exec pitches Internet usage tax to pay for cybersecurity programs

(TheHill) – A top Microsoft executive on Tuesday suggested a broad Internet tax to help defray the costs associated with computer security breaches and vast Internet attacks, according to reports.

Video: Cryptome’s John Young on Alex Jones TV – The Internet is a Police State Surveillance Grid

Alex talks with John Young, webmaster of Cryptome, a website that covers news on freedom of speech, cryptography, spying, and surveillance. The ISP Network Solutions shuttered Young’s site earlier in the week after he posted a document summarizing Microsoft’s dealings with law enforcement agencies.

Whistleblower site Cryptome.org shut down by Microsoft over leaked surveillance doc (Updated)

(BoingBoing) – John Young and Deborah Natsios’ whistleblower archive Cryptome has long been a thorn in the flesh of US government agencies. But if my memory serves correctly, none of them ever managed to do what Microsoft did today: shut the site down.

Why Google Has Become Microsoft’s Evil Twin

(PCWorld) – Late yesterday afternoon, Google introduced some changes it was making to Buzz via its Official Google Blog. They didn’t really change much — they just made some of the privacy features more visible, made it easier to block people from following you, and made it easier to manage which followers show up on your public Google Profile.

The Rising Tide of Internet Censorship

Will recent successes in fighting internet controls be enough to stave off tyranny?

The focus is back on Internet censorship this week as a pair of articles from Time Magazine and The New York Times came out almost simultaneously advocating for licences to operate web sites. These articles were skillfully skewered by Paul Joseph Watson as lame attempts to shore up a disintegrating establishment media in the face of a blogosphere that is increasingly replacing them.

Obama names former Bush adviser as cybersecurity chief

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced the appointment of Howard Schmidt, a former adviser to George W. Bush and executive at Microsoft, as the new White House cybersecurity coordinator.

Video: Alex Jones Tv – The Globalist Final Push to End America

“The credit belongs to those people who are actually in the arena…who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions to a worthy cause; who at best, know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, fail while daring greatly…so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four

How Amazon’s remote deletion of e-books from the Kindle paves the way for book-banning’s digital future.

US job cuts, foreclosures mount

This week brought new indications that any economic “recovery” in the US will not be shared by the working class. Telecommunications giant Verizon announced that it would eliminate 8,000 jobs by the end of the year, new data showed that the foreclosure crisis is continuing to mount, and weekly initial jobless benefit claims rose.

MSM: Obama Tells American Businesses to Drop Dead: Kevin Hassett

(Bloomberg) – I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.

Homeland Security Names New Cybersecurity Officials

Philip Reitinger, who worked in cybersecurity for Microsoft and fought cybercrime for the Department of Justice, will help to coordinate cybersecurity efforts across the government.

MSM: Infomation Warfare – Instant Hacker In A Box

Expanding on a hacker analysis tool (COFEE, or Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor)  Microsoft developed for the police and military two years ago, there’s now a similar tool that enables a non-hacker to analyze wireless network activity, and determine which targets can be attacked with a variety of hacker tools and weapons. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has several teams (including one from the navy and another from the air force) developing versions of this cyberattack system.

MSM: Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation

America’s richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a ‘disastrous’ environmental, social and industrial threat.

Wall Street rallies as unemployment rate soars – US shed another half-million jobs in April

The official US unemployment rate jumped by 0.4 percentage points to reach 8.9 percent last month, according to figures released Friday by the Labor Department. The economy lost another 539,000 jobs in April, as total job losses reached 5.7 million since the start of the recession in December 2007.

MSM: Obama Proposes $190 Billion Tax Increase on Companies (Update4)

(Bloomberg) – President Barack Obama proposed raising about $190 billion over the next decade by outlawing three offshore tax-avoidance techniques used by U.S. companies such as Caterpillar Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co. He also would make it riskier for Americans to stash money in tax-haven banks.

The United States Is In Deep Doodoo! – Flashback

The following article was first written in 1998. I am relinking it here not so much as to say “I told you so”, but to point out that the long term economic future of the United States was obvious, or should have been obvious, to the people who are awarded lofty degrees and paid huge salaries to comprehend such things. Instead, the economists persisted in explaining away the visible signs of gathering troubles and earned their salaries by justifying why the policies that robbed the poor to give to the rich should continue unabated.

British scientists condemn using children in GM food trials as unacceptable

Children have been used as ‘lab rats’ in GM rice trials that were carried out in breach of ethics rules drawn up in response to the medical crimes of Nazi Germany, it is claimed.

IBM Notebook: Chinese factory like slavery, report says

The Axis of Logic reader who sent this to us writes:

“We have a local columnist who is following up on the bad doings at IBM. This recent column shows that IBM outsourcing is bad for the people of both China and the US. Only the “Fat Cats” of both countries are benefiting.”

By Christine Young, Times Herald Record

Chinese factory workers making keyboards for IBM and other American companies are treated little better than slaves, according to a 60-page report released Thursday by The National Labor Committee.

MSM: Microsoft Cuts 5,000 Jobs as Recession Curbs Growth (Update4)

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp. will cut as many as 5,000 jobs, the first companywide firings in its 34-year history, and said sales and profit will probably drop as the recession eats into software demand. The stock fell the most in 33 months.

MSM: Microsoft poised to announce job losses

Microsoft is preparing to announce the first widescale layoffs in its 32-year history, with up to 15,000 jobs at risk, according to some predictions.

Speculation about job cuts was triggered by a report from Fudzilla, the technology blog site, which said that employees had been told that the software group was “readying major layoffs to its worldwide operations” on January 15.

MSM: Signs of slowdown spiral around the world

$16.3 trillion in stock value lost since Sept. 1; some brokers fear more drops

Pessimism about the global economy deepened yesterday as fresh evidence of a worldwide slowdown showed up in feeble corporate profit reports from Asia, sinking commodities prices, and a scramble by emerging economies to prop up their sagging currencies and avert credit defaults.