North Korea Warns Diplomats It Can’t Guarantee Their Safety in War, Missiles Moved East, Missile Defenses to Guam, People of Seoul Still Largely Unconcerned

North Korea has told the foreign ministries of
both Russia and the United Kingdom that it can
no longer guarantee the safety of diplomats stationed in
Pyongyang, part of a battery of war rhetoric coming from the
totalitarian country in the last several weeks.
Nevertheless, neither Russia nor the UK have any immediate plans to
evacuate their embassies, although David Cameron, the British prime
minister, said yesterday he was
“very concerned” by North Korean missiles, which he suggested
could make it to the United States or Europe, based apparently on
what the North Korean government says.  

South Korea says the North is moving medium-range missiles

to the Pacific shore of the country, and the United States

announced plans to send a missile defense system to Guam. The
White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said today it would

not be a surprise if North Korea were to conduct new missile
tests. The Obama Administration may even be
looking at a strengthening of U.S.-China relations because of
the mutual hassle North Korea presents. The BBC, meanwhile,

reports that in Seoul, the South Korean capital, residents
remain unimpressed by the North Korean threat, citing “security
fatigue” and a prevailing opinion that North Korean saber rattling
is intended to shore up bargaining chips in future negotiations for
food or fuel.

While the West’s response has so far been cautiously muted, the
non-state actor Anonymous says
it’s been hacking the North Korean government’s social networks
(it has several), and in fact
posted the picture to the right to the government’s official
flickr account. No response as yet from the regime to those
actions.

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Roger Ebert Taught People How to Argue About Movies

In the
pantheon of movie critics, there are few who can claim as much
influence as Roger Ebert. You could reasonably argue that Pauline
Kael was more important, that her influence on the form was deeper
and more lasting, that she, unlike Ebert changed the way that
movies were made.

Yet there’s a crucial distinction between the two: Despite
Kael's love of glorious trash, she was, at heart, an elite
moviegoer writing for other elite moviegoers. Ebert, on the other
hand, was far more concerned with mass appeal, and his
straightforward prose was accessible and to the point in ways that
Kael never really attempted.

That's no small thing for a pop culture critic, whose ultimate
job is to educate the wider public about the form. And his
insistence on accessibility not only helped Ebert reach a bigger,
broader audience than Kael, it made him a more popular cinematic
guide for the general public. Kael may have changed movie making,
but Ebert changed movie watching.

And a big part of the way he did that was by making debate about
film accessible. Siskel & Ebert, the TV show he
co-hosted with rival Chicago movie critic Gene Siskel, was billed
as a movie review show, and that’s true enough. But as much as it
was a show about reviewing films, it was even more a show about
arguing about movies.

The cantankerous duo showed viewers what it meant to enjoy
movies in the company of another, offering a feisty, competitive
model of film-fan friendship. Their unscripted on-screen dialogues,
meanwhile, helped a generation of moviegoers understand that it was
not enough to merely have an opinion about a film; you also had to
defend it. Indeed, a round of opinionated post-film jousting could
be an essential part of the moviegoing experience.

That sensibility helped put movie watching in a social context.
The show recognized that movie viewing and criticism was not a
strictly solitary affair, but a community project; it operated on
the assumption that a critic’s views are shaped as much by the
people he argues with as the movies he watches.  That, in
turn, allowed the program to transform the lonely work of critical
assessment and argument into a popular and engaging spectator
sport, and inspired legions of film nuts and amateur film critics
to engage in their own friendly duels with each other.

That probably explains a lot about why Ebert took so well to new
media late in life: It wasn’t just that he had always written in
the conversational style that became the norm on the web. It was
also that he relished the sport of debate, the ruckus of
freewheeling conversation about the things he loved and hated in
the world, with movies at the top of the list.

At times Ebert was a hater; more often he was prone to
celebration (a little too much, in my opinion). But a subtext of
virtually all of his life and work was that if you loved movies,
you would argue about them — and also for them.

The same, I think, should go for those of us who also love movie
criticism. I disagreed with many of Ebert’s critical judgments, and
I wasn’t particularly drawn to his plainspoken style of reviewing,
which often seemed hasty and, at least when reviewing new releases,
could be overly focused on character and story basics at the
expense of cinematic craftsmanship.

Yet I’ve always appreciated Ebert for the simple fact that he
did more than anyone else to make film criticism—and film
arguments—available and accessible to the world at large. In the
end, I’m glad he was there to argue with, to offer and defend
opinions, and, most of all, to show so many readers and viewers
that the arguments were not only worth having; at their best those
arguments could be as much or more fun than the movies
themselves.

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9 Fabulously Wealthy People That Reportedly Keep Money Offshore

One thing's for sure — no one knows where all the world's money is.

It can be tucked away in investment vehicles, funneled through holdings companies, sheltered in tax havens... we've heard the stories. It's a huge problem for governments.

To better understand the gravity of this situation, journalists from The Guardian, Huffington Post, The BBC joined the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in sifting through thousands of documents about tax shelters, who owns them, and how they work. You can see the full result over at Huffington Post.

The investigators found staggering names and numbers. There are politicians, wanted fraudsters, royals, and heads of dynasties on the list. 

They use companies like Singapore-based Portcullis TrustNet and BVI-based Commonwealth Trust Limited (CTL) to help them set up offshore investment vehicles.

What it all drives home is that this is something that is done. James R. Mellon (of the Mellon banking dynasty) put it this way:

“I just heard of a presidential candidate who had a lot of money in the Cayman Islands,” Mellon, now a British national, said alluding to former U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “Not everyone who owns off shores is a crook.”

There's a thought.

Imee Marcos, a Philippino Provincial Governor

Imee Marcos is the daughter of late dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, and is a provincial governor in the country.

According to the ICIJ she's the beneficiary of a $5 billion British Virgin Islands (BVI) trust amassed while her father was in power. 

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov's wife, Olga

The ICIJ reports that Shuvalov's wife, Olga has BVI accounts in her name as do two executives at Russian state energy company, Gazprom.

That's significant because Shuvalov has come under fire for his dealings with Gazprom (and putting the cash from those dealings in Olga's name) before.

Here's what Bloomberg reported about Shuvalov a year ago:

 ....when the international media last week reported such dealings by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, one might have expected a public outcry.

In Russia, however, things are much more complicated. Plenty of commentators, including President-elect Vladimir Putin's spokesman, have defended Shuvalov, and it appears that he truly has not broken any Russian laws, such as they are.

The facts, denied by no one, are as follows. In 2004, a Bahamas company called Sevenkey Ltd. entered into two stock market trades. It invested $17.7 million in the Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom with the help of billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, and another $49.5 million in European steelmaker Corus via another billionaire, Alisher Usmanov. In 2007 and 2008, Sevenkey exited the trades with a profit of almost $200 million. Shuvalov's wife, Olga, is listed as Sevenkey's beneficiary. Both deals were consummated when Shuvalov was an economic aide to Putin. 

Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza

The Baroness is an art dealer and socialite from Spain. She became a royal when she married Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza in 1985.

ICIJ found that she used a company on Cook Island to purchase art from Sotheby's and Christie's, including Van Gogh’s Water Mill at Gennep.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Meet the Only Pundit on Earth Who Thinks the GOP Can Win Voters by Ramping up the Drug War

"Republicans once again should take a
strong stand against drug use and legalization," writes former Bush
41 staffer Peter Wehner in the Washington Post. "Virtually
no lawmaker in either party is doing so."

If you're like me, you probably want the next paragraph to
explain why no one in Washington, D.C. is railing
against legalization. But Wehner doesn't even take a crack at the
question. Instead, he
shuffles through a list of talking points that held sway during
his tenure in the Bush 41 White House, but which were pretty much
dead by the time "Got the Life" was retired after 65 days
on Total Request Live. (That was a joke about the
90s.)

And yet Wehner would have you believe that legalization can be
stopped in its tracks using these arguments; they "simply need to
be deployed." So let's deploy them:

1.) "The vast majority of people who are addicted to
harder drugs started by using marijuana."

This is a reverse version of the old gateway claim, which Wehner
likely didn't use in its original form because we now know that

alcohol is more of a gateway drug than marijuana. So instead of
saying that the vast majority of marijuana users go on to use
harder drugs, Wehner says that most people who use hard drugs
started with marijuana. That's like saying the vast majority of
mass shooters started by playing Duck Hunter; or, that the
vast majority of sex workers started by playing with Barbies. The
claim is only meaningful if there's a verifiable causal
relationship between the two activities. In this case, there's not:
There were 18.1 million regular marijuana users in the U.S. in 2011
(which means they used it in the 30 days prior to being surveyed)
1.4 million regular cocaine users, and 281,000 regular heroin
users. The causal relationship between marijuana and hard drugs is
very, very weak. 

2.) "Drug legalization will lead to more cases of
addiction, which shatters lives."

Even under prohibition we can't stop people from developing
chemical dependence on drugs. What we do have control over is how
we treat the small number of people whose chemical dependence leads
them to commit crimes. Currently, we consign the bulk of these
addicts to prisons or homeless shelters, where drugs are plentiful.
One of the best arguments for drug reform--as
evidenced by Portugal's decriminalization strategy--is that
there are more holistic and humane ways to help these people.

It's also worth mentioning that the addiction rate for most
illicit drugs is lower
than people realize: 23 percent for heroin, 17 percent for
cocaine, and 9 percent for marijuana. Alcohol, with a prevalence
for dependence rate of 17 percent, is more like cocaine; and
tobacco, with an addiction rate of 32 percent, is worse than pretty
much everything.

3.) "One of the main deterrents to drug use is because
it is illegal. If drugs become legal, their price will go down and
use will go up."

In 2011, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and
Health, 18.1 million people reportedly used marijuana,
but according to the FBI, only 658,000 people were arrested
that year for marijuana possession. The same disparity exists for
harder drugs: Roughly 2 million people reportedly used heroin or
cocaine in 2011, but only 260,000 people were arrested for
possessing heroin, cocaine, or one of their derivatives. This tells
us not only that illegality is a weak deterrent, but that making it
an effective one would require arresting millions more people than
we currently do. Millions. 

As for the price of legal pot: The news coming out of Washington
state and Colorado suggests that excise taxes will be high, which
means the price of legal pot will be close to black market rates.
If I thought Wehner's biggest concern is that legalization would
result in a free-for-all, I'd tell him not to worry one bit.

As Mark Kleiman (who is consulting Washington state on their
regulations) put it: "[A] legal cannabis market should be run
to protect public health and safety, not to maximize revenues."
That's likely what we'll see in every state that taxes and
regulates pot.

But it appears that Wehner actually sees drugs as a front in the
culture war. Bad simply because they're bad, regardless of what the
science says. That's the only explanation I can come up with for
why he spends roughly half of his alotted op-ed space arguing
that

Drug legalization...would send an unmistakable signal to
everyone, including the young: Drug use is not a big deal. We’re
giving up. Have at it.

[D]rug use is wrong because it is morally problematic, because
of what it can do to mind and soul. Indeed, in some liberal and
libertarian circles, the “language of morality” is ridiculed. It is
considered unenlightened, benighted and simplistic. The role of the
state is to maximize individual liberty and be indifferent to human
character.

I don't know if Wehner thinks parents in Colorado and Washington
who voted to legalize marijuana want their children to "have at
it," but that's essentially what he's saying. He's also saying that
it doesn't matter if legalization and decriminalization are
successful. I don't suggest the GOP follow his lead. 

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CHART OF THE DAY: Turns Out People Aren't Actually Getting Bored With Facebook (FB)

There is, and probably always will be, a story floating the ether that Facebook is getting smoked by up and coming rivals like SnapChat, Whatsapp, or Twitter.

While those services are certainly popular, they're not hurting Facebook, according to comScore data analyzed by J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth. Anmuth notes that Facebook's share of total mobile minutes continues to rise, while share of time spent on those other sites remains relatively flat.

Though, as Peter Kafka at All Things D notes, Anmuth isn't looking at demographic data. Most of the concern about Facebook is that it's lost its edge with teens. If that's true, it will show up in the data soon enough.

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What do Movie People Say When Asked to Remove Guns from Films?

 

The new video from Project
Veritas - James O'Keefe's merry band of guerilla
filmmakers who have scored major hits on ACORN, NPR, and voter
fraud - is a compelling watch. From the YouTube writeup:

@Project_Veritas investigators urge Piers Morgan, Oprah
Winfrey's production company (Harpo), and Robert DeNiro's
production company (Tribeca) to help ban all guns from past and
future movies. With some disturbed murderers citing violent movies
as the impetus for their crimes, would Hollywood elites agree to
remove guns from their flicks #ForTheChildren? Or would money and
fame supersede their malleable ideology?

To that end, Project Veritas asks a bunch of
people involved in media and film if they would sign a petition to
delete guns from old and new movies. The answers...will surprise
you.

I'm less interested in the rank hypocrisy that surrounds debates
on the effects of popular culture on behavior and more interested
in the way that this video shows that by framing the debate
differently you might actually have a really interesting
conversation.

But wherever you stand on the issue of guns, violence, and
movies, if you've ever watched a Merchant Ivory movie, you will
enjoy this video.

And if Project Veritas's plan to delete guns from new and old
movies sounds implausible, recall the big push to airbrush smoking
out of movies and other forms of entertainment. (My favorite
contribution to that effort was Joe Esterhas's heartfelt but stupid
bit). Some years back, the U.S. government went full Orwell on
the stamp honoring bluesman Robert Johnson.
Click here for more egregious airbrushing of famous cigarettes
from photos.

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The Largest Bitcoin Exchange Just Went Out For A Lot Of People

Mt. Gox, the world's first and largest Bitcoin exchange, appears to be down.

Below is a screenshot of what it looks like for us when we try to access the site.

We are seeing a lot of others tweeting about the same problem.

aaand Mt Gox goes down mtgox.com

— felix salmon (@felixsalmon) April 3, 2013

Earlier today, Bitcoin service Instawallet said it had been hacked and was shutting down until further notice.

These outages highlight the fundamental problem with the virtual currency that has seen its price surge in 2013 – confidence.

More to come...

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Bus Falls 30 Feet From Viaduct In Rio De Janeiro, Killing At Least 7 (VIDEO)

RIO DE JANEIRO -- A passenger bus plunged from a 30-foot high (10 meter) viaduct in central Rio de Janeiro, killing at least seven people and closing the major thoroughfare where it landed.

At least six more people were injured in Tuesday's accident, said Sergio Simoes, who heads Rio state's Civil Defense department, adding that number of injured was likely to rise. Simoes said the dead were five men and two women.

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More on Video

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21 Photos Of People Carrying Way Too Much Stuff

In most western nations, goods are transported on trains, ships, and trucks.

But in areas where those vehicles are less available, people who need to move a lot of stuff from place to place get much more creative.

These photos reveal how people from all over the world use bikes, carts, boats, and animals in amazing ways to get themselves and their stuff where they need to go.

This man in India is biking around with a huge number of plastic balls.

For transporting a lot of ducks, a motorcycle works.

A riverboat in Amazonas, Brazil is overloaded with empty boxes.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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