Executive Order Grants Authority to Seize Private Communications Facilities
July 10th, 2012Via: Electronic Privacy Information Center:
The White House has released a new Executive Order seeking to ensure the continuity of government communications during a national emergency. The Executive Order grants new powers to the Department of Homeland Security, including the ability to collect certain public communications information. Under the Executive Order the White House has also granted the Department the authority to seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications.
Rules of American Justice
July 10th, 2012Via: Salon:
The next time an American political official is tempted to torture people or spy on Americans in violation of the law or destroy court-ordered evidence of wrongdoing — or the next time Wall Street executives are tempted to commit institutional fraud for personal enrichment — what incentives does anyone think will exist for them to refrain?
Bring Back the 40 Hour Work Week
July 10th, 2012Via: Tech Republic:
This infographic examines some of the lesser-known statistics regarding overtime work and its effects…
PFGBest Founder Attempts Suicide as $200m Goes Missing from Accounts
July 10th, 2012Via: Guardian:
The founder of the US broker PFGBest is said to have attempted suicide as it emerged that more than $200m (£130m) appeared to be missing from clients’ accounts.
Russell Wasendorf Sr, a 40-year veteran of futures markets, was found in his car near the company’s Iowa headquarters and is in a critical condition at the University of Iowa Hospitals, according to local news reports.
The apparent suicide attempt came hours before the National Futures Association (NFA), an industry group that also plays a regulatory role, said it had issued an emergency order to in effect freeze PFGBest’s operations after finding that a US bank account the broker said contained $225m in customer funds actually held only $5m. “It appears that PFG does not have sufficient assets to meet its obligations to its customers,” the NFA said.
One PFGBest broker told Reuters that Wasendorf’s son, Russ Wasendorf Jr, had informed employees about the events earlier in the day, saying a suicide note had been found alluding to financial troubles with the company. The younger Wasendorf “sounded like he was in another world”, he said.
Research Credit: Jb
14 Incredibly Creepy Surveillance Technologies
July 10th, 2012Via: Blacklisted News:
Most of us don’t think much about it, but the truth is that people are being watched, tracked and monitored more today than at any other time in human history. The explosive growth of technology in recent years has given governments, spy agencies and big corporations monitoring tools that the despots and dictators of the past could only dream of.
LIBOR Rate Fixing: ‘The Most Egregious Crime in a Generation’
July 9th, 2012Now with no 9/11!
Via: Time:
The 21st has been a banner century for financial and accounting scandals. Enron, the dotcom bust, the subprime-mortgage crisis and the bank bailouts have all contributed to the very low esteem in which the American public holds Corporate America in general, and high finance in particular. So it is no small feat that the latest interest-rate-fixing LIBOR scandal is being heralded as the most egregious in a generation or, as Robert Scheer put it in the Nation, “the crime of the century.”
Florida: Worst TB Outbreak in 20 Years Kept Secret
July 9th, 2012Via: Palm Beach Post:
The CDC officer had a serious warning for Florida health officials in April: A tuberculosis outbreak in Jacksonville was one of the worst his group had investigated in 20 years. Linked to 13 deaths and 99 illnesses, including six children, it would require concerted action to stop.
That report had been penned on April 5, exactly nine days after Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill that shrank the Department of Health and required the closure of the A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana, where tough tuberculosis cases have been treated for more than 60 years.
As health officials in Tallahassee turned their focus to restructuring, Dr. Robert Luo’s 25-page report describing Jacksonville’s outbreak — and the measures needed to contain it – went unseen by key decision makers around the state. At the health agency, an order went out that the TB hospital must be closed six months ahead of schedule.
Had they seen the letter, decision makers would have learned that 3,000 people in the past two years may have had close contact with contagious people at Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, an outpatient mental health clinic and area jails. Yet only 253 people had been found and evaluated for TB infection, meaning Florida’s outbreak was, and is, far from contained.
The public was not to learn anything until early June, even though the same strain was appearing in other parts of the state, including Miami.
NYPD Brands Couple as Professional Agitators for Posting Videos of Outrageous ‘Stop and Frisks’
July 9th, 2012Via: New York Post:
A pair of Occupy Wall Street lovebirds has been branded “professional agitators” by the NYPD, who have plastered their mugs on flyers the couple says look like wanted posters.
Christina Gonzalez, 25, and Matthew Swaye, 34, of Harlem say they’ve been singled out for simply posting dozens of videos on YouTube of cops conducting stop-and-frisks.
“What we do is not a crime,” said Swaye, adding that the NYPD flyer looks more like a “wanted poster” than a police department advisory.
…
The couple said they first learned they were featured in an NYPD be-on-the-watch poster when they attended a precinct council meeting at the 30th Precinct stationhouse in Harlem on Thursday.
The poster with their mug shots from previous arrests for civil disobedience was taped to a precinct podium.
“Be aware that above subjects are known professional agitators,” read the flyer, warning cops that the “subjects’ MO” is to videotape officers “performing routine stops and post on YouTube.”
“Subjects’ purpose is to portray officers in a negative way,” the poster reads.
Pentagon Contractor Caught Illegally Selling Military Technology to China
July 9th, 20122002:
U.S. satellite maker Loral Space & Communications Ltd. has agreed to pay a $14 million fine for passing missile technology to China.
The satellite and communications company will pay the fine over seven years to the U.S. State Department, through its Space Systems/Loral Inc. subsidiary.
The subsidiary neither admitted nor denied the charges but has agreed to pay the fine. It contends the information was “mistakenly sent to the Chinese.”
The investigation started as a criminal case, after the U.S. government adjudged Space Systems/Loral might have broken export laws when it gave technical help to China, on its rockets.
Loral helped China investigate the February 1996 crash of a Chinese Long March missile that was carrying a Loral satellite.
Such a move requires government clearance. But in June that year, Loral disclosed that it had not received it.
Via: The Atlantic:
The Canadian arm of the aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney closed a six-year U.S. government probe last week by admitting that it helped China produce its first modern attack helicopter, a serious violation of U.S. export laws that drew a multimillion dollar fine.
At the same time it was helping China, the company was separately earning huge fees from contracts with the Pentagon, including some in which it was building weapons meant to ensure that America can maintain decisive military superiority over China’s rising military might.
Related: The Best Enemy Money Can Buy by Antony C. Sutton
Research Credit: alvinroasting
Air Force Trains Drone Pilots by Tracking Civilian Cars in U.S.
July 8th, 2012Via: New York Times:
Today many of the pilots at Holloman never get off the ground. The base has been converted into the U.S. Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a pilot flies his plane from a padded chair, using a joystick and throttle, as his partner, the “sensor operator,” focuses on the grainy images moving across a video screen, directing missiles to their targets with a laser.
Holloman sits on almost 60,000 acres of desert badlands, near jagged hills that are frosted with snow for several months of the year — a perfect training ground for pilots who will fly Predators and Reapers over the similarly hostile terrain of Afghanistan. When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.
“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.
