Glenn Beck to GOP: Repent  "I have not yet heard people in the Republican Party admit they have a problem," Beck told a packed ballroom in Washington. "I have not seen a come-to-Jesus meeting. . . . 'Hello, my name is the Republican Party and I've got a problem. I'm addicted to spending and big government.' . . . They need that moment."
  

  U.S. Is a Top Villain in Pakistan’s Conspiracy TalkBy SABRINA TAVERNISE Conspiracies are a national sport, with the main players — the U.S., India and Israel — changing position with the times. Read Article     

 FBI ‘lost’ Times Square suspect Faisal Shahzad before flight

  Net neutrality is far from neutralAccess to the internet is not a right – it's a commercial business. Governments seem to have forgotten that factComments (22)guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 October 2009 Article historyWhen the internet first came into existence 40 years ago, it was a tool used by researchers who wanted to collaborate and share information with their colleagues, and commercial interests had nothing to do with it. Now, however, the internet is filled with behind-the-scenes, pay-per-ranking, prioritised content with premium services that are spooned out to the consumer in bite-sized pieces by powerful content-providing companies.

One person who has benefited from this exponential growth of commercialised online content is Julius Genachowski, the current chairman of the federal communications commission (FCC). What has been kept low key is that before taking this job, he spent over a decade in the tech industry, founding LaunchBox Digital and venture capital firm Rock Creek Ventures.One wonders if his background in the content industry plays into his recent announcement that the FCC should embrace "net neutrality" – a grand misnomer, for neutrality is hardly at the heart of the matter. What it will be is a boon to content companies like Google, Yahoo and eBay, who happen to be major backers of the net neutrality push. Given their clout and Genachowski's dedication to the web's "openness and freedom", it is no surprise that the FCC has obliged the content providers' wishes and voted to initiate the net neutrality rule-making process.At the heart of this debate is whether internet service providers (ISPs) should be allowed to manage their own networks. Content providers insist that ISPs, if unregulated, will create tiered services and pricing structures that would prevent some users from accessing content, services they themselves provide today to their customers. They argue that the "freedom of the internet" is endangered when ISPs begin prioritising the digital content flowing through their networks, and that in order to prioritise content, ISP's will delve significantly further into the privacy of our homes and what we do online. But let's be honest: Every day, Google, the biggest content provider of them all, discriminates content delivery according to ad dollars, and net neutrality's backers are really concerned about their bottom lines. At stake is who is going to dominate the market for consumer services like VoIP and digital broadcasts of video and sound.

Such services require large amounts of bandwidth. With media seers predicting that the future of journalism and television will be online, it's safe to say that the need for bandwidth will continue to increase. When you consider, too, the demands that online gamers place on networks, you begin to wonder how ISP's can make internet video, audio and telephony function as the public wants them to. ISPs need to be able to prioritise data to provide the level of service demanded by customers for these essential functions.Content providers also argue that if left alone, the…

 '24', a diplomatic row and a spy chief's lecture on tortureUS fury at ex-MI5 chief's claims that Jack Bauer inspired interrogation techniquesBy Kim Sengupta, Defence CorrespondentThursday, 11 March 2010 "In her speech, highly critical of the US's conduct during the war on terror, the former secret service chief implied that the leadership in Washington was inspired by watching the TV espionage thriller 24. She said: "Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld certainly watched 24". Dame Eliza said: "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing." She insisted that she had been unaware of what was going on until her retirement in 2007." Read Article