Month: February 2013

Committee to Protect Journalists Report on 232 Journalists Jailed Worldwide in 2012

The Committee to Protect Journalists recently reported that as of December 1, 2012, there were 232 journalists imprisoned around the world -the most since the CPJ began reporting on imprisoned journalists in 1990.

Turkey led the dishonor role with 49 jailed journalists. According to the CPJ,

…[Turkish] authorities held dozens of Kurdish reporters and editors on terror-related charges and a number of other journalists on charges of involvement in anti-government plots. In 2012, CPJ conducted an extensive review of imprisonments in Turkey, confirming journalism-related reasons in numerous cases previously unlisted on the organization’s annual surveys and raising the country’s total significantly. CPJ found that broadly worded anti-terror and penal code statutes have allowed Turkish authorities to conflate the coverage of banned groups and the investigation of sensitive topics with outright terrorism or other anti-state activity.

Iran, with 45 journalists in jail, and China, with 32, followed Turkey’s lead closely.

According to the CPJ, the following 27 countries jailed at least one journalist in 2012:

  • Azerbaijan: 9
  • Bahrain: 1
  • Burkina Faso: 1
  • Burundi: 1
  • Cambodia: 1
  • China: 32
  • Cuba: 1
  • Democratic Republic of Congo: 3
  • Eritrea: 28
  • Ethiopia: 6
  • Gambia: 1
  • India: 3
  • Iran: 45
  • Iraq: 1
  • Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: 3
  • Italy: 1
  • Kyrgyzstan: 1
  • Morocco: 2
  • Rwanda: 3
  • Saudi Arabia: 4
  • Somalia: 1
  • Syria: 15
  • Thailand: 1
  • Turkey: 49
  • Uzbekistan: 4
  • Vietnam: 14
  • Yemen: 1

Hot Wheels Retro Entertainment Die-Cast Vehicles … Battlestar Galactica?

Hot Wheels has a series of Retro Entertainment die-cast cars out, including vehicles like the A-Team van, Magnum P.I.’s Ferrari, and the Knight Rider K.A.R.R. I picked up this nice Ecto-1.

 

Hot Wheels Ecto-1

 

 

However, there is one oddity here. The press materials on this says that the line will include classic vehicles driven in TV shows and movies, including classic Battlestar Galactica. Now maybe they’re going to do a classic Viper, but I’m hoping they go a different route.
Battlestar Galactica 1980 Motorcycles

 

(What the world really needs is fanfic depicting what happened when Captain Troy and Lieutenant Dillon tangled with the Sons of Anarchy.)

 

Cashing in on Pyramid Schemes?

A pyramid scheme is a scam in which

… requires an endless stream of recruits for success. Recruits (a) give money to recruiters and (b) enlist fresh recruits to give them money. These schemes are characterized by the promise of sky-high returns in a short period of time for doing nothing other than handing over your money and getting others to do the same.

Most pyramid schemes try to hide the fact that they are, in fact, pyramid schemes in order to deceive participants. But given that pyramid schemes are still relatively common, especially in their quasi-legal mutation as multi-level marketing schemes, is there a way to leverage a pyramid scheme to make money off of it?

In March 2012 the BBC reported on research suggesting that some investors were intentionally putting money into pyramid schemes that they knew were fraudulent as a short term investing strategy. These investors supposedly used websites to datamine information about specific pyramid schemes to determine the optimal time to invest and withdraw money.

Dr [Richard] Clayton said the study uncovered aggregator or “tracker” sites that monitored the Ponzi schemes, some of which lasted for months. The trackers detail the returns the different schemes were paying out.

The first Ponzi schemes were set up by Boston fraudster Charles Ponzi in the 1920s.

Using these sites investors spot when they start to crumble and make efforts to recover their initial investment.

“Their only purpose is to help people choose where they can put their money,” said Dr Clayton, though he was cautious of drawing any strong conclusions given the lack of corroborating evidence.

“If we believe that what we see on the net is true, then some people get money back and some get more back than they invested,” he said.

Of course, if I were running a Ponzi scheme, I might want to set up such an aggregator specifically to deceive someone thinking of using such a strategy.
The full text of the paper by Clayton and his co-authors Tyler Moore and Jie Han is available as a PDF file: The Postmodern Ponzi Scheme: Empirical Analysis of High-Yield Investment Programs.