Up to nine in 10 
Those ratings that castigate Afghanistan and some other poor countries as hopelessly “corrupt” always imply that the United States is not corrupt.
While it is true that you don’t typically have to bribe your postman to deliver the mail in the US, in many key ways America’s political and financial practices make it in absolute terms far more corrupt than the usual global South suspects. After all, the US economy is worth over $16 trillion a year, so in our corruption a lot more money changes hands.
1. The rich are well placed to bribe our politicians to reduce taxes on the rich. A nonentity like Donald Trump got filthy rich via tax loopholes, and is now trying to buy the presidency. The way the Supreme Court got rid of campaign finance reform and allowed open, unlimited buying of elections is the height of corruption. Note that despite his supposed “populism,” Trump never talks about the unfairness of our current tax system, instead dividing and ruling working and middle class Americans by stirring racial and religious hatreds. As it stands,
NSA computers
To this day it remains one of the most sophisticated and mysterious offensive operations ever launched: Stuxnet, the computer virus specifically engineered to attack Iran’s nuclear reactors. Discovered in 2010 and now widely believed to be a collaboration between the U.S. and Israel, its existence raised an urgent question: Just what is the U.S. government doing to attack its opponents in the cyber-realm?
Stuxnet’s origins have never been officially acknowledged, and the extent of American meddling in malware is still unknown. But for the past few years there’s been something new developing within the U.S. military that has taken “cyber” from a theoretical idea to a deliberate—if secretive—part of U.S. policy. The first ripple came in January 2013, when the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon was significantly expanding its cybersecurity forces across all the service branches. By that October, the U.S. Army had launched two teams of technical experts dedicated purely to the cyber realm. Just a year later, the number was up to 10.
The growth has been snowballing. Last […]
A Dow chemical refinery in Oyster Creek, Texas. DuPont and Dow Chemical, with more than three centuries of history between them, said they had agreed to merge, in one of the biggest deals of the year. The combined company would be known as DowDuPont. Once combined, they plan to split into three separate companies, consisting of agricultural chemicals, specialty products and materials, like plastics.
Credit: Michael Stravato / The New York Times
Late last week, Dow and DuPont announced plans for a $130 billion mega merger. The merger is expected to take place in the second half of 2016, after which the parent company will […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
