Michigan Police Copying Smartphone Data During Routine Traffic Stops?
April 20th, 2011Via: Popular Mechanics:
In Michigan, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a complaint alleging that Michigan State Police officers used forensic cellphone analyzers to snoop in drivers’ cellphones during routine traffic stops. PM talked to a Fourth Amendment expert to sort through whether that amendment’s protections against illegal search and seizure should stop an officer from scanning your phone.
Gold Futures Top $1,500 on Outlook for Escalating U.S. Debt, Dollar Slump
April 20th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Gold futures rose to a record $1,500.50 an ounce as U.S. debt concerns weighed on the dollar, boosting demand for the precious metal as an alternative investment. Silver surged to a 1980 high.
The greenback dropped against the euro on speculation that the European Central Bank will continue to raise borrowing costs as some nations struggle to contain sovereign debt. Standard & Poor’s yesterday revised its long-term outlook on U.S. debt to negative from stable. Gold has climbed 32 percent in the past year, and silver prices have more than doubled.
Florida: State Investigates Campaign to Provide Superhero Capes to Jobless People
April 19th, 2011Via: Orlando Sentinel:
State labor officials asked their inspector general Monday to investigate why a Central Florida agency wants to spend public money to furnish the unemployed with capes.
Dubbed the “Cape-A-Bility Challenge,” a $73,000 public-relations campaign by Workforce Central Florida features a cartoon character named “Dr. Evil Unemployment” and includes handing out about 6,000 red superhero capes to jobless Central Floridians.
The campaign, revealed Saturday in a report in the Orlando Sentinel, was met with derision by many unemployed who questioned spending more than $14,200 on capes and $2,300 on foam cutouts of “Dr. Evil Unemployment.” They said the campaign’s tone risked minimizing the severity of the region’s labor problems.
Research Credit: eo
JFK Directives Regarding Sensitive UFO Information Ten Days Before Assassination
April 19th, 2011Even as complex as the JFK assassination milieu is, over about 25 years of personal interest and investigation into the event, I never thought it would go there.
Click through for the source documents.
Via: AOL News:
Do you like a good UFO detective story? Well, here’s one for you. And it’s ongoing, so we don’t yet know the ending. It involves President John F. Kennedy’s interest in UFOs shortly before his death and an allegation that he may have angered officials in his administration when he asked for information on the subject.
Britain: Secret Memos Expose Link Between Oil Firms and Invasion of Iraq
April 19th, 2011Via: Independent:
Plans to exploit Iraq’s oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world’s largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.
The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain’s involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair’s cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.
The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as “highly inaccurate”. BP denied that it had any “strategic interest” in Iraq, while Tony Blair described “the oil conspiracy theory” as “the most absurd”.
But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.
Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq’s enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair’s military commitment to US plans for regime change.
The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP’s behalf because the oil giant feared it was being “locked out” of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: “Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis.”
The minister then promised to “report back to the companies before Christmas” on her lobbying efforts.
The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq “post regime change”. Its minutes state: “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity.”
After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office’s Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: “Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future… We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq.”
Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had “no strategic interest” in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was “more important than anything we’ve seen for a long time”.
U.S. Government Printing Office Needs 350,934 National Detainee Handbooks Printed by 29 April 2011
April 19th, 2011Update: U.S. Government Printing Office Deletes Solicitation Page and “Jacket Number” Specification Document
I thought that might happen, but not after just a few minutes.
So:
Here’s a screenshot of www.gpo.gov/gpo/bidopps/bidopps.action?region=chicago before it was taken down:
GPO Solicitation for Hundreds of Thousands of National Detainee Handbooks Needed by 29 April
It’s also still visible in Google cache as of this writing.
And here’s a Cryptogon mirror of the Jacket Number: 735-412/413 document.
—End Update—
Ok, probably nothing, maybe something.
The U.S. Government needs 350,934 National Detainee Handbooks printed by 29 April 2011. Here’s a 2007 English version of the National Detainee Handbook. I don’t know if that’s the same document as what has been ordered below.
The GPO solicitation went out on 18 April and the handbooks must be delivered by 29 April. Is eleven days a short time for something like this? I have no idea, but clicking on “Jacket Number: 735-412/413” brings up a specification document, which states the following:
TIME CRITICAL:
Notify Ron Boyum at 312-353-3916 x 17 or at rboyum@gpo.gov of the delivery status in the morning 2 days prior to the first shipment to meet the at destination delivery date. [sic]This is a time-critical order. For the purpose of this contract, the provision in GPO Contract Terms Pub. 310.2 (Rev. 6-01) for schedule extensions does not apply. No automatic extensions of schedules will be made. All interested contractors must commit to the original schedule. Shipments must be made by a carrier that will guarantee delivery at destination within the specified schedule. Carrier’s “targets” in lieu of “guaranteed” deliveries will not be acceptable.
They seem pretty serious about needing the handbooks by 29 April.
Via: U.S. Government Printing Office:
Jacket Number: 735-412/413
Bid Opening Date: 10:00 AM, PREVAILING CHICAGO, IL TIME, ON April 18, 2011.
Product: Paste-on-fold (self cover) Pamphlets (Spanish and English Versions).
Title: 735-412: National Detainee Handbook: Spanish 735-413: National Detainee Handbook: English
Quantity: 735-412: 221,367 (includes 2 GPO Chicago inspection samples) 735-413: 129,567 (includes 2 GPO Chicago inspection samples)
Ship/Deliver Date: MUST deliver complete on or before April 29 D, 2011.
Research Credit: WS
British Ministry of Defense on Killer Robots: ‘Incremental and Involuntary Journey Towards a Terminator-Like Reality’
April 18th, 2011Via: Guardian:
The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues, and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to an internal study by the Ministry of Defence.
The report warns of the dangers of an “incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality”, referring to James Cameron’s 1984 movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute “acceptable machine behaviour”.
“It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) … we ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance, we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely,” warns the report, titled The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems. MoD officials have never before grappled so frankly with the ethics of the use of drones. The report was ordered by Britain’s defence chiefs, and coincides with continuing controversy about drones’ use in Afghanistan, and growing Pakistani anger at CIA drone attacks against suspected insurgents on the Afghan borders.
It states that “the recent extensive use of unmanned aircraft over Pakistan and Yemen may already herald a new era”. Referring to descriptions of “killer drones” in Afghanistan, it notes that “feelings are likely to run high as armed systems acquire more autonomy”.
Related: X-47B Killer Drone: Navy Wants Autonomous, Carrier Take Offs and Landings
S&P Lowers U.S. Credit Rating Outlook to Negative
April 18th, 2011Thanks, Captain Obvious:
| National Debt Clock |
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Via: CNN:
Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook for the nation’s long-term debt Monday, even as it reaffirmed the agency’s top-tier rating for the U.S. economy.
S&P maintained its ‘AAA/A-1+’ credit rating on U.S. sovereign debt, saying the nation’s “highly diversified” economy and “effective monetary policies” have helped support growth.
U.S. Secretly Backed Syrian Opposition
April 18th, 2011Via: Reuters:
The State Department has secretly funded Syrian opposition groups, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, The Washington Post reported on Monday.
The cables show that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million since 2006 to a group of Syrian exiles to operate a London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, and finance activities inside Syria, the Post said.
Barada TV began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria that began last month as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad the Post said.
The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush after political ties with Damascus were frozen in 2005, the newspaper said.
The financial backing has continued under President Barack Obama, even as his administration sought to rebuild relations with Assad, the Post said. In January, the White House posted an ambassador to Damascus for the first time in six years.
The article said it is unclear whether the United States was still funding Syrian opposition groups, but the cables indicate money was set aside at least through September 2010.
An uprising against Assad’s authoritarian rule have spread across large parts of the country. Rights groups put the death toll at more than 200 people. Syrian authorities blame the violence on armed gangs.
The True Finns: Finnish Anti-Euro Party Sees Large Gains in Recent Election
April 18th, 2011Via: Reuters:
The True Finns, the anti-euro party voted into a powerful role in the Helsinki parliament at the weekend, expect the European Union to change plans for a bailout of Portugal, its leader said on Monday.
“Of course there will have to be changes,” Timo Soini told reporters a day after his party more than quadrupled its share of the vote to turn Finland’s traditionally pro-EU politics on their head by finishing a close third in the election.
Soini said he expected to hear this week about joining talks on forming a coalition. The center-right National Coalition, which came top with 20.4 percent, should launch negotiations under its leader, the outgoing finance minister Jyrki Katainen.
It remains unclear how far a new coalition, which may take weeks to form, will incorporate True Finns ministers or their views on EU help for heavily indebted member states. But the rise of the True Finns seems likely to shift the debate.
“This is a big, big bang in Finnish politics. This is a big, big change. This will change the content of Finnish politics,” Jan Sundberg, professor at the University of Helsinki, said.
Finland’s parliament, unlike others in the euro zone, has the right to vote on EU requests for bailout funds, meaning it could hold up costly plans to shore up Portugal and bring stability to debt markets.
The strong showing for the populist True Finns reflects growing public frustration in some EU states about footing the bill for weaker economies such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
The party got 19.0 percent, according to compared to 4.1 percent in 2007, which means it is likely to be involved in talks on forming a government. The opposition Social Democrats, who support the EU but dislike current plans to aid Portugal, won 19.1 percent and are also likely to join government talks.
