Largest Ever Marine Corps Drill on U.S. East Coast
June 20th, 2011[???]
Via: CNN:
It’s mid-June, a perfect time to visit the beach to watch porpoises play in the surf or seagulls strut the sand — or you could watch a formation of Marine Corps warplanes darting over the shore at hundreds of miles per hour.
But don’t worry — the United States hasn’t declared war on your family’s beach house. It’s just part of a major Marine Corps exercise called Exercise Mailed Fist (translation: armored fist).
The exercise is designed to test the capability of every type of Marine Corps aircraft, including MV-22 Ospreys and F/A 18 Hornets, as well as some Navy ships and Air Force planes.
The drill will stretch from Quantico Marine Base in northern Virginia to the Navy’s Pinecastle Bombing Range in Florida.
With thousands of Marines and other service members involved, it’s the biggest such drill ever on the U.S. East Coast.
Bitcoin Flashcrash on Mt.Gox
June 19th, 2011Update: Mt.Gox User Database Stolen, Service Down
There’s ugly, there’s fugly and then there’s…
Via: Mt.Gox:
[Update – 2:06 GMT] What we know and what is being done.
It appears that someone who performs audits on our system and had read-only access to our database had their computer compromised. This allowed for someone to pull our database. The site was not compromised with a SQL injection as many are reporting, so in effect the site was not hacked.
Two months ago we migrated from MD5 hashing to freeBSD MD5 salted hashing. The unsalted user accounts in the wild are ones that haven’t been accessed in over 2 months and are considered idle. Once we are back up we will have implemented SHA-512 multi-iteration salted hashing and all users will be required to update to a new strong password.
We have been working with Google to ensure any gmail accounts associated with Mt.Gox user accounts have been locked and need to be reverified.
Mt.Gox will continue to be offline as we continue our investigation, at this time we are pushing it to 8:00am GMT.
When Mt.Gox comes back online, we will be putting all users through a new security measure to authenticate the users. This will be a mix of matching the last IP address that accessed the account, verifying their email address, account name and old password. Users will then be prompted to enter in a new strong password.
Once Mt.Gox is back online, trades 218869~222470 will be reverted.
—End Update—
Update: Compromised Account – Rollback Underway
Via: Mt.Gox:
Huge Bitcoin sell off due to a compromised account – rollback
Mark Karpeles
posted this on Jun-20 04:07
The bitcoin will be back to around 17.5$/BTC after we rollback all trades that have happened after the huge Bitcoin sale that happened on June 20th near 3:00am (JST).
Service should be back by June 20th 10:00am (JST, 01:00am GMT) with all the trades reversed and accounts available.
One account with a lot of coins was compromised and whoever stole it (using a HK based IP to login) first sold all the coins in there, to buy those again just after, and then tried to withdraw the coins. The $1000/day withdraw limit was active for this account and the hacker could only get out with $1000 worth of coins.
Apart from this no account was compromised, and nothing was lost. Due to the large impact this had on the Bitcoin market, we will rollback every trade which happened since the big sale, and ensure this account is secure before opening access again.
—End Update—
Bids were wiped out down to 0.01 on Mt.Gox just now.
Here’s a screen capture from BitcoinCharts. Look at the green arrow:
Bitcoin Flashcrash on Mt.Gox
I was trying to enter buy orders under 1 but I couldn’t get filled. Volume was definitely going off down there. It wasn’t bad prints. Traders with orders on the book far below the market definitely got filled low. People on the bitcoin subreddit are claiming to have been filled at various levels between 6 and 1.
The main reason I’m posting this is to let you know that, when the media write stories about this days from now, you don’t need to bother submitting them. Thanks! Been there, done that, didn’t get the T-shirt, or my buy orders filled.
Greece: Increasing Possibility of ‘Lehman-Style’ Event
June 19th, 2011Via: Telegraph:
UK banks have pulled billions of pounds of funding from the eurozone as fears grow about the impact of a “Lehman-style” event connected to a Greek default.
Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available to eurozone banks, raising the prospect of a new credit crunch for the European banking system.
Standard Chartered is understood to have withdrawn tens of billions of pounds from the eurozone inter-bank lending market in recent months and cut its overall exposure by two-thirds in the past few weeks as it has become increasingly worried about the finances of other European banks.
Barclays has also cut its exposure in recent months as senior managers have become increasingly concerned about developments among banks with large exposures to the troubled European countries Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
Related: Big Picture Gallery of Recent Riots
Federal Judge Dismisses Third Party Environmental Claims Against Transocean and BP
June 19th, 2011Via: Courthouse News Service:
Ruling in favor of Transocean and BP, a federal judge on Thursday dismissed third-party environmental claims in a giant pleading bundle in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation, saying the fact that the oil flow has stopped makes those lawsuits irrelevant.
“The injunction at this stage would be useless, as not only is there no ongoing release from the well, but there is also no viable offshore facility from which any release could possibly occur,” U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier wrote. “The Macondo well is dead, and what remains of the Deepwater Horizon vessel is on the ocean floor, where it capsized and sank in 5,000 feet of water.
“Moreover, BP and the agencies comprising the Unified Area Command have been and are cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico. An injury is not redressable by a citizen suit when the injury is already being addressed.”
Eisenhower’s Worst Fears Came True: We Invent Enemies to Buy the Bombs
June 19th, 2011Via: Guardian:
Why do we still go to war? We seem unable to stop. We find any excuse for this post-imperial fidget and yet we keep getting trapped. Germans do not do it, or Spanish or Swedes. Britain’s borders and British people have not been under serious threat for a generation. Yet time and again our leaders crave battle. Why?
Last week we got a glimpse of an answer and it was not nice. The outgoing US defence secretary, Robert Gates, berated Europe’s “failure of political will” in not maintaining defence spending. He said Nato had declined into a “two-tier alliance” between those willing to wage war and those “who specialise in ‘soft’ humanitarian, development, peacekeeping and talking tasks”. Peace, he implied, is for wimps. Real men buy bombs, and drop them.
…
It is not democracy that keeps western nations at war, but armies and the interests now massed behind them. The greatest speech about modern defence was made in 1961 by the US president Eisenhower. He was no leftwinger, but a former general and conservative Republican. Looking back over his time in office, his farewell message to America was a simple warning against the “disastrous rise of misplaced power” of a military-industrial complex with “unwarranted influence on government”. A burgeoning defence establishment, backed by large corporate interests, would one day employ so many people as to corrupt the political system. (His original draft even referred to a “military-industrial-congressional complex”.) This lobby, said Eisenhower, could become so huge as to “endanger our liberties and democratic processes”.
I wonder what Eisenhower would make of today’s US, with a military grown from 3.5 million people to 5 million. The western nations face less of a threat to their integrity and security than ever in history, yet their defence industries cry for ever more money and ever more things to do. The cold war strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented.”
Russia Orders Stalin-Era Leather Coats for Putin Guards
June 18th, 2011Via: AFP:
Russia’s federal guard service, in charge of protecting President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, may soon sport black leather overcoats harking back to the era of Stalin’s purges. The elite service known by its Russian acronym FSO has launched a tender to purchase 60 leather trenchcoats on the official site for government purchases, instantly drawing tongue-in-cheek criticism from Russian bloggers.
Long leather trenchcoats are infamously associated with uniforms of Soviet NKVD secret police, worn by its low-ranking officers at the height of Stalin’s pre-war purges in the late 1930s.
The coats ordered by the FSO appear to be nearly identical to the NKVD coats, according to the tender documentation and images uploaded on the website zakupki.gov.ru last week.
Research Credit: cptmarginal
An Idea for the Billionaires Who Claim to Love New Zealand: How About an Electric Water Kettle?
June 18th, 2011The economy in Northland is in a state of collapse:
The recession in Northland has had most impact on young people, with 29 per cent of the region’s 18- to 24-year-olds now on welfare, and on Maori, with an extraordinary 48 per cent of Maori aged 18 to 64 on benefits.
Now, in New Zealand, what’s the one appliance that people have the most (apparent) choice with regard to which one to buy? I was in our local Farmer’s department store and, even here in Kaitaia, at the tail end of the supply chain of the developed world, there were dozens of electric water kettles on the shelves. I went through and turned every one upside down to see if I could find one that wasn’t made in China. Nope, they were all made in China, dozens of them. The closest thing I could find to one not made in China was, “Designed in Australia.”
Ok, so:
* Most people in New Zealand use electric water kettles.
* How many types of electric water kettles are made in New Zealand? None. (I found a 1930s newspaper reference to hot water kettles that were made in New Zealand.)
* There’s an unemployment crisis in Northland.
Now, most of the electric kettles for sale here are total garbage and will only last weeks or months before breaking. I see them going into the landfill all the time. We’re using a higher end stainless steel model that has lasted for two years, but it’s starting to fail. The retail price was NZ$139 for this one, but we bought it during a half off sale. So, the nicer kettles, which are still garbage, cost over NZ$100.
I was thinking: How about a premium quality, stainless steel, Made in New Zealand electric water kettle? Yes, there are higher labour costs in New Zealand than in China. However, dear billionaire, you could eliminate parasitic middlemen (wholesalers) and sell directly to customers through a website (in the same manner that Dell sells computers to people). Word would soon spread and people around the world, noting a similar lack of not-made-in-China hot water kettles in their countries, would be placing orders for this premium, Made in New Zealand kettle. I bought kettle.co.nz, which I will be happy hand over to any Buy New Zealand Made member company that agrees to manufacture a stainless steel, electric water kettle in New Zealand.
Design the thing to last and give it an industry leading warranty period. Get New Zealanders off the dole by building a high quality appliance that would be in high demand at home and abroad. I can’t imagine a New Zealander doing this, since people here are (wrongly) convinced that very little can be manufactured here. But, I’d love to be proven wrong about this.
If this guy can park an almost 3 million dollar automobile in a bunker, there should be a way to make an electric water kettle in New Zealand. And if not, well, I’ll let you do the math on where that leaves us.
Puerto Rico: Banker Shot Dead, Professional Hit
June 17th, 2011Via: Business Insider:
A banker was gunned down in Puerto Rico on Wednesday and at least one Puetro Rican news agency suspects that it might have had something to do with an audit he had recently launched.
The banker, 56-year old Maurice J. Spagnoletti, was Doral Financial corporation’s executive vice president of Mortgage and Banking Operations. He had only been working at Doral for 6 moths when he was killed.
Lawsuit Alleges Whole Foods Sold Frozen Vegetables from China Grown in a Polluted Region by Prisoners and Certified as Organic
June 17th, 2011Ahh, imagine my shock.
Rant mode: On.
We buy some organic foods in bulk from wholesale distributors here in New Zealand. Increasingly, if we want to buy these ‘certified organic’ bulk foods, the country of origin is China.
We refuse to buy any food from China, regardless of which organic certification it has. We’ve indicated this to the distributors (Ceres and Chantal) and they said that they hear it all the time, but, according to them, they are just buying what’s available, and apparently, that means the only option is China for an increasing number of foods. (Becky orders thousands of dollars worth of products from these places for a co-op we’re in with other families.)
Now, that’s the organic stuff, where we can at least find out where the food originates. What happens with the supermarket duopoly here?
Part of New Zealand’s take over by Chinese interests is related to country of origin information on food labels. In New Zealand, there’s no requirement to indicate where food is from on the packaging. All kinds of nonsense reasons are given for this, but the main one (now) is that seeing “China” on so many food labels would cause difficulties for the politicians who exist to sell New Zealand down the river. People would really start to wonder, “WTF is happening here?” Why is a country like New Zealand, so easily capable of producing an abundance of food locally, importing F*@^!%$ beans from CHINA!? Nobody in polite circles will discuss this.
The short answer is that New Zealand is a company town, and that company is Fonterra. New Zealanders use a Fonterra Milk Buck as a national currency. You may know it as the New Zealand Dollar. The largest component of the agricultural sector involves maximum output of dairy products for export. Why grow food for consumption here when you can make more money by milking cows for Fonterra… As a result of this, we get the ubiquitous, “Packaged in Auckland,” on a lot of things, which just means “Made in China” almost all of the time. That food is cheap, cheap, cheap. High quality dairy products go out, and garbage from China comes in. The change is paid to foreign creditors, which is never enough, and the deficit grows by the day. The End.
Almost all fertilizer used commercially in New Zealand has to be imported. This is a company town, forget it. Water pollution? Never mind. Soil erosion? What’s that? Deficit getting worse all the time? More milk solids! MOOOOOORRRRRRE! “Packaged in Auckland”? Look away, and be a happy Kiwi.
In other news: Fonterra Selling Yuan Denominated Bonds in Hong Kong:
Fonterra Co-Operative Group Ltd. is poised to become the first company from New Zealand to raise funds in the offshore yuan bond market with a 300 million yuan (US$46 million) bond it aims to price later Friday.
The dairy giant’s treasury manager, Stephan Deschamps, said the company hopes to sell more so-called “dim sum” bonds in the future. The decision to raise funds in Hong Kong, the center of the rapidly growing international yuan bond market, reflects the growing importance of China to Fonterra’s business operations, he said.
Look at the Hell on Earth that the Chinese regime has created in their own country. Now, they want us to eat it, in, “Clean green New Zealand,” and everywhere else.
Not me. Not my family. No way.
Via: Bloomberg:
A Florida judge allowed a lawsuit to proceed that claims Whole Foods Market Inc. (WFMI) violated the state’s deceptive trade-practices law by selling frozen vegetables from China grown in a polluted region by prisoners and certified as organic.
Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Amy Steele Donner yesterday denied the grocery chain’s motion to dismiss the suit filed on behalf of the Southeast Consumer Alliance Inc., a non-profit organization based in Boca Raton, Florida.
The suit claims that Whole Foods knew that its Silver River supplier, based in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, was actually a front company for a network of farms where Chinese prisoners are forced to work and that the farms are irrigated from a highly polluted river.
The suit also claims that Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods knew that the company providing the initial organic certification is owned by the Chinese government, which also owns the farms, creating a conflict of interest.
“They’re doing everything they can to conceal this bogus or shaky certification,” Bruce Baldwin, the group’s attorney, said. “Whole Foods brags about its social accountability audits of all of its foreign suppliers. So either they knew about these forced labor camps, or they didn’t actually check.”
A spokeswoman for the grocery store chain didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Whole Foods attorney Christopher Wayne Wadsworth said he wasn’t authorized to comment on the case.
Research Credit: JH
NSA Allies with Internet Carriers to Thwart Cyber Attacks Against Defense Firms
June 17th, 2011Oh sure.
Via: Washington Post:
The National Security Agency is working with Internet providers to deploy a new generation of tools to scan e-mail and other digital traffic with the goal of thwarting cyberattacks against defense firms by foreign adversaries, senior defense and industry officials say.
The novel program, which began last month on a voluntary, trial basis, relies on sophisticated NSA data sets to identify malicious programs slipped into the vast stream of Internet data flowing to the nation’s largest defense firms. Such attacks, including one last month against Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, are nearly constant as rival nations and terrorist groups seek access to U.S. military secrets.
Related: NSA, AT&T and the NarusInsight Intercept Suite
