The $300 Million Cable That Will Save Traders Milliseconds
September 13th, 2011Now with more Flashcrash!
Via: Telegraph:
In the high-speed world of automated financial trading, milliseconds matter. So much so, in fact, that a saving of just six milliseconds in transmission time is all that is required to justify the laying of the first transatlantic communications cable for 10 years at a cost of more than $300m.
Bankruptcy Among College Grads Grows
September 13th, 2011I love the language! It’s not a depression or an economic collapse. What we’re seeing is a, “Sophisticated evolution of the profile of the American debtor that now extends to disparate age, income and ethnic groups.”
Via: CNN:
Bankruptcy has gotten more educated over the past five years, as financial distress spread to more of the population with college degrees, according to study results released Tuesday.
“The Great Recession has had a dramatic impact on the bankruptcy filings of American consumers across the economic spectrum — including college-educated, high-income earners,” said Leslie Linfield, executive director and founder of the Institute for Financial Literacy, which conducted the study.
While those who didn’t graduate from college make up 70% of debtors, the study found that the rate of college graduates filing for bankruptcy increased by 20%.
“While less educated, low-income individuals continue to represent the typical bankruptcy filer, this report underscores a sophisticated evolution of the profile of the American debtor that now extends to disparate age, income and ethnic groups,” Linfield said.
Ghosts with Shit Jobs
September 13th, 2011I wish it wasn’t just a trailer.
Via: ghostswithshitjobs.com:
Conspiracy of Silence
September 13th, 2011Via: YouTube:
Related: The Franklin Cover-up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska by John W. DeCamp
CIA Wants Court to Invoke Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) in Case Involving Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla
September 13th, 2011Via: Narco News:
The fingerprints of the CIA have surfaced in a controversial federal criminal case pending in Chicago against Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, an alleged kingpin in the Sinaloa “drug cartel.”
US government prosecutors filed pleadings in the case late last week seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a measure designed to assure national security information does not surface in public court proceedings.
“The government hereby requests that the Court conduct a pretrial conference … pursuant to CIPA … at which time, the government will be prepared to report to the Court and defendant [Zambada Niebla] regarding the approximate size of the universe of classified material that may possibly be implicated in the discovery and trial of this case,” states a motion filed on Friday, Sept. 9, by US prosecutors in the Zambada Niebla case.
CIPA, enacted some 30 years ago, is designed to keep a lid on the public disclosure in criminal cases of classified materials, such as those associated with CIA operations. The rule requires that notice be given to the judge in advance of any move to introduce classified evidence in a case so that the judge can determine if it is admissible, or if another suitable substitution can be arranged that preserves the defendants right to a fair trial.
“That is a very reasonable conclusion [that the CIA is likely involved in this case in some way],” says a former federal agent familiar with national security procedures. “Seeking CIPA protection, yup, there is hot stuff to hide.”
Zambada Niebla, extradited to the US in February 2010 and now facing narco-trafficking charges in federal court in Chicago, claims in pleadings in his case that the US government entered into a pact with the leadership of the Mexican Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization that supposedly provide its chief narcos with immunity in exchange for them providing US authorities with information that could be used to target other narco-trafficking organizations.
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Interestingly, there also is a Guantanamo Bay connection in the Zambada Niebla case that might lead to some classified information surfacing in his case.
Zambada Niebla, as the US government-described “logistics coordinator” for the Sinaloa organization, is linked to alleged Sinaloa organization money-launderer Pedro Alfonso Alatorre Damy via a Gulfstream II jet (tail number N987SA) that crashed in Mexico in late 2007 with some four tons of cocaine onboard.
That aircraft was allegedly purchased with Sinaloa organization drug money laundered through Alatorre Damy’s casa de cambio business and a U.S. bank. And that same aircraft was reportedly suspected of being used previously as part of the CIA’s “terrorist” rendition program and allegedly made a number of trips to Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2005, according to media reports and an investigation spearheaded by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
In addition, the Gulfstream II was purchased less than two weeks before it crashed in Mexico by a duo that included a U.S. government operative who allegedly had done past contract work for a variety of US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, according to a known CIA asset (Baruch Vega) who is identified as such in public court records. The four tons of cocaine onboard of the Gulfstream II at the time of its crash landing, according Vega, was purchased in Colombia via a syndicate that included a Colombian narco-trafficker named Nelson Urrego, who, according to Panamanian press reports and Vega, is a U.S. government (CIA) asset.
‘Person of Interest’ TV Show
September 13th, 2011Just in case you didn’t know the state was doing this to you all day long…
Via: Wall Street Journal:
To promote its new fall drama “Person of Interest,” CBS Corp. is turning its eye on viewers.
To highlight the show’s theme of citizen-surveillance, CBS is tapping into the trend of interactive billboards, installing one each in New York City and Los Angeles. The window display looks like a mirror, and when passersby stop and turn toward it, sensors zero in on their faces with the notification, “Person of Interest Identified,” followed by “Taking Photo.”
Post-September 11, NSA ‘Enemies’ Include Americans
September 13th, 2011Bamford mentions the new NSA facility in Utah, but he doesn’t mention the other new one in Texas. Ironically, he’s quoted in this piece about the new facility in San Antonio:
Surrounded by barbwire fencing, the anonymous yet massive building on West Military Drive near San Antonio’s Loop 410 freeway looms mysteriously with no identifying signs of any kind. Surveillance is tight, with security cameras surrounding the under-construction building. Readers are advised not to take any photos unless you care to be detained for at least a 45-minute interrogation by the National Security Agency, as this reporter was.
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America’s top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters — oddly positioned directly across the street from a 24-hour Walmart — where billions of electronic communications will be sifted in the agency’s mission to identify terrorist threats.
Via: Politico:
Somewhere between Sept. 11 and today, the enemy morphed from a handful of terrorists to the American population at large, leaving us nowhere to run and no place to hide.
Within weeks of the attacks, the giant ears of the National Security Agency, always pointed outward toward potential enemies, turned inward on the American public itself. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established 23 years before to ensure that only suspected foreign agents and terrorists were targeted by the NSA, would be bypassed. Telecom companies, required by law to keep the computerized phone records of their customers confidential unless presented with a warrant, would secretly turn them over in bulk to the NSA without ever asking for a warrant.
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Despite his hollow campaign protests, President Barack Obama has greatly expanded what President George W. Bush began. And through amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Congress largely ratified the secret Bush program.
Research Credit: noncompliant
More Evidence of Economic Recovery: Bank of America Will Eliminate 30,000 Jobs, Largest Cut by a U.S. Company This Year
September 13th, 2011Via: AP:
Bank of America is slashing 30,000 jobs as part of an effort to reverse a crisis of confidence among investors. It’s the largest single job reduction by a U.S. company this year.
What CEO Brian Moynihan is trying to do is nothing less than save the nation’s largest bank. Investors have cut the bank’s market value by half this year. The bank is facing huge liabilities over soured mortgage investments and concerns over whether it has enough capital to withstand more financial shocks.
The cuts, which affect Bank of America’s consumer businesses, represent 10 percent of the Charlotte, N.C. bank’s work force. The bank said it hopes the cuts and other measures will result in $5 billion in annual savings by 2014. The bank has already cut 6,000 jobs this year. The bank also said it would look for cost savings at its other businesses in a six-month review that will begin next month.
“It’s as if someone has hit the panic button,” said Bert Ely, president of banking consultant Ely & Co.
Court Approves Lawsuit Against Toyota Over Cyberstalking Ad Stunt
September 13th, 2011This is definitely one for your Not The Onion file folder.
Via: Wired:
A woman who was targeted by Toyota in a creepy, stalker-themed online advertising stunt will be allowed to sue the company, despite the carmaker’s argument that she unknowingly agreed to the whole thing.
Amanda Duick sued Toyota in 2009 over its intrusive “Your Other You” campaign, after she began receiving frightening e-mails over a number of days from a strange man. The man, who had her home address, told her he was on the lam from the law and needed to crash at her place for a bit to hide out with his pit bull, Trigger.
According to a court document (.pdf), “Sebastian Bowler,” who appeared to be a 25-year-old Englishman and soccer fanatic with a drinking problem (based on the MySpace page he sent Duick), told the plaintiff that he was on a cross-country road trip and would be at her house in a few days. After Bowler wrote that he’d run into some trouble at a motel, Duick received an e-mail from someone purporting to be manager of the motel, who included a bill to Duick saying she was responsible for a TV Bowler had smashed.
Duick freaked out over the e-mails before she received a message directing her to a video explaining she’d been punked by Toyota. The video explained that Bowler was a fictional character, and the whole thing had been an elaborate prank — part of an ad campaign for Toyota’s Matrix car.
Unknown to Duick, someone had signed her up for the campaign at YourOtherYou.com, a web site set up for the prank. The campaign was aimed at 20-something males because the company’s advertising firm, Saatchi & Saatchi LA, determined that the demographic loves to punk their friends.
Research Credit: ApexNadir
Fast and Furious: ‘Keep Selling, They Told Him’
September 12th, 2011Via Los Angeles Times:
In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard’s Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.
For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.
When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out of the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.
