Anglo Irish Bank’s Ex-CEO Arrested for Fraud
July 24th, 2012Released on bail of €1,000? Really?
Via: USA Today:
Fraud detectives arrested the former chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank and charged him Tuesday over a conspiracy to hide colossal losses at the bank that brought the nation to the brink of bankruptcy.
Officers of the Bureau of Fraud Investigation arrested Sean FitzPatrick, 64, at Dublin Airport as he returned from a holiday around 5:30 a.m.
FitzPatrick was arraigned hours later in Dublin’s Central Criminal Court on 16 counts related to Anglo’s doomed 2008 effort to prop up its collapsing share price. Forensic accountants found that Anglo provided secret loans to 16 insiders on condition they used the €1.1 billion ($1.35 billion) to buy Anglo stock.
Those shares rapidly turned worthless despite the subterfuge, helping to bankrupt Ireland’s richest man and top Anglo investor, Sean Quinn. His family on its own bought €650 million in Anglo shares using the bank’s own borrowed money. The other 10 investors received loans of €45 million each.
Two other former senior Anglo executives, Willie McAteer and Patrick Whelan, were arrested in Dublin and charged with the same 16 fraud counts Monday as Ireland’s three-year probe into Anglo — described by the Justice Department as the most complex criminal case in Irish history — finally produced charges.
If convicted, all three men could face a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
FitzPatrick was released on bail of €1,000 ($1,200), which he paid himself, and an additional surety of €10,000. His next court appearance was set for Oct. 8.
VA Must Disclose Documents to MK-ULTRA Victims
July 24th, 2012Via: Courthouse News Service:
Veterans won another court order requiring the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to hand over more documents about its Cold War-era drug experiments on thousands of Vietnam veterans.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in Oakland, Calif., said the documents requested were “squarely relevant” to the claim that the government failed to adequately notify veterans of the chemicals they were exposed to and what that exposure might do to their health.
The Army and the CIA, with the help of Nazi scientists, used at least 7,800 veterans as human guinea pigs for testing the effects of up to 400 types of drugs and chemicals, including mescaline, LSD, amphetamines, barbituates, mustard gas and nerve agents, the Vietnam Veterans of America and individual soldiers claim in a 2009 class action.
The government covered up the true nature of its experiments, which began in the 1950s under code names such as “Bluebird,” “Artichoke” and “MKUltra.”
In “Project Paperclip,” the Army and CIA allegedly recruited Nazi scientists to help test various psychochemicals and develop a new truth serum using its own veterans as test subjects.
“Over half of these Nazi recruits had been members of the SS or Nazi Party,” according to the class action. “The ‘Paperclip’ name was chosen because so many of the employment applications were clipped to immigration papers.”
Veterans say the government was trying to develop and test substances that could trigger mind control, confusion, euphoria, altered personality, unconsciousness, physical paralysis, illogical thinking and mania, among other effects.
The experiments in Army compounds at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Md., left many veterans with debilitating health problems for decades. Veterans say the government has since refused to provide proper medical care.
DNI Admits FISA Surveillance Violated the 4th Amendment
July 23rd, 2012Shocker.
Via: Wired:
The head of the U.S. government’s vast spying apparatus has conceded that recent surveillance efforts on at least one occasion violated the Constitutional prohibitions on unlawful search and seizure.
The admission comes in a letter from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassifying statements that a top U.S. Senator wished to make public in order to call attention to the government’s 2008 expansion of its key surveillance law.
“On at least one occasion,” the intelligence shop has approved Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to say, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found that “minimization procedures” used by the government while it was collecting intelligence were “unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Minimization refers to how long the government may retain the surveillance data it collects. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is supposed to guarantee our rights against unreasonable searches.
Wyden does not specify how extensive this “unreasonable” surveillance was; when it occurred; or how many Americans were affected by it.
Research Firm Correlates Spending on Lobbying with Stock Market Performance
July 23rd, 2012Via: Breakout:
While this financial connection, in and of itself, is hardly a great revelation, new analysis from Strategas Research Partners shows irrefutable evidence that companies are getting a real bang for their buck on the money they spend trying to influence lawmakers. By tracking the 50 companies that spend the most money — as a percentage of their total assets — on lobbying, the so-called Lobbying Index proves it’s a darn good investment.
How good? The Lobbying Index has now beaten the S&P 500 for 12 years in a row.
U.S. Poverty Rate to Hit Highest Level Since 1960s
July 23rd, 2012Via: AP:
The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.
The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks, and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor.
TEPCO Subcontractor Tried to Underreport Workers’ Radiation Exposure by Covering Dosimeters with Lead
July 23rd, 2012Via: Kyodo:
An executive of a Tokyo Electric Power Co. subcontractor forced its nine workers at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to cover their radiation monitoring meters with lead-made plates, the company said Saturday.
Jellyfish Made From Rat Cells
July 23rd, 2012Via: Wired:
Now Frankenstein can have a pet jellyfish. A team of scientists has taken the heart cells of a rat, arranged them on a piece of rubbery silicon, added a jolt of electricity, and created a “Franken-jelly.” Just like a real jellyfish, the artificial jelly swims around by pumping water in and out of its bell-shaped body. Researchers hope the advance can someday help engineers design better artificial hearts and other muscular organs.
Marine Corps Creates Law-Enforcement Battalions
July 23rd, 2012If you think that this is exclusively for deployment abroad, I’ve got a bridge to sell ya.
Via: AP:
The Marine Corps has created its first law-enforcement battalions — consolidated units of military police officers trained to investigate a variety of crimes. Combat in Iraq and Afghanistan has underscored the relevance of such a force, as Marines have increasingly found themselves playing street cop in addition to combat duties.
…
The battalions will be capable of helping control civil disturbances, handling detainees, carrying out forensic work, and using biometrics to identify suspects. Durham said they could assist local authorities in allied countries in securing crime scenes and building cases so criminals end up behind bars and not back out on the streets because of mistakes.
“Over the past 11 years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, some lessons learned painfully, there has been a growing appreciation and a demand for, on the part of the war-fighter, the unique skills and capabilities that MPs bring to the fight,” Durham said. “We do enforce traffic laws and we do write reports and tickets, and that’s good, but we do so much more than that.”
Durham said the Marine Corps plans to show off its new battalions in Miami later this month at a conference put on by the Southern Command that is expected to be attended by government officials from Central American countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize.
June Earnings
July 22nd, 2012Earnings in June totaled $1197.69. Thanks very much to the five readers (out of the 25,000+ in June) who sent funds. Thanks also go out to those of you who conducted your business via Cryptogon’s affiliate links. The U.S. Amazon affiliate commissions have become, by far, the largest component of earnings. Those thoughtful clickthroughs from Cryptogon to Amazon have been determining the fate of this site for a while now. Thanks, again, for making all of your purchases count toward keeping Cryptogon going.
JCPenney to Eliminate Check-Out Clerks
July 22nd, 2012Via: CBS:
But the store is getting a makeover – specialized boutiques within the store like a denim bar – and more.
The CEO of JCPenney is the former retail chief of Apple, and he wants to shake things up to restore the company to profitability.
But one of his ideas – replacing clerks with a self-check-out system – well, that doesn’t go over too well with some customers.
“I think it’s a bad idea all way around if you ask me,” says Jack Soffel of Robinson.
Soffel shops at Penney’s and worries that the change will result in poor customer service.
“I don’t want to walk into a place that’s so austere that it’s nothing but mechanics and automation,” he adds. “I like to talk to people, they help me, they ask me, they take me to find things.”
Penney’s CEO Ron Johnson says the store will switch the traditional bar codes on price tags to RFID’s – or radio frequency identification chips – and use self-service checkout machines found in many grocery stores.


