ATF Promotes Operation Fast and Furious Supervisors
August 16th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.
All three have been heavily criticized for pushing the program forward even as it became apparent that it was out of control. At least 2,000 guns were lost and many turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and two at the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.
The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency’s Phoenix office.
McMahon and Newell have acknowledged making serious mistakes in the program, which was dubbed Operation Fast and Furious.
“I share responsibility for mistakes that were made,” McMahon testified to a House committee three weeks ago. “The advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently.”
Three Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesmen did not return phone calls Monday asking about the promotions. But several agents said they found the timing of the promotions surprising, given the turmoil at the agency over the failed program.
Britain: Police Could Get New Curfew Powers
August 16th, 2011Via: Guardian:
New powers allowing police to clear the streets and create “no-go” areas for the public are being considered, the home secretary, Theresa May, has said.
May said it was time to consider whether the police needed a power “to impose a general curfew in a particular area” in the aftermath of last week’s riots.
The home secretary said the government was also contemplating tougher powers to impose curfews on individual teenagers under the age of 16.
In a speech in London, she said the power to declare a general curfew was needed because existing dispersal powers only allowed the police to declare a “no go” area with advance notification.
Swiss Ponder Unthinkable as World’s Chaos Turns Franc Economy Upside Down
August 16th, 2011Infinite dollars. Finite world.
Via: Bloomberg:
Switzerland, the nation that hasn’t gone to war with a foreign power since Napoleon, is reluctantly debating a generational taboo: ceding monetary independence to win a battle over its runaway currency.
Swiss National Bank Vice President Thomas Jordan said the central bank is assessing “a whole range of options” to prevent the franc, which reached a record against the euro this month, from making Swiss goods prohibitively expensive. Even a cup of coffee at Café St. Gotthard in Zurich costs $8.30, with one Swiss franc buying $1.2750 at today’s exchange rate.
Billionaire entrepreneur Christoph Blocher, one of the politicians who called on SNB President Philipp Hildebrand to resign after the bank lost $21 billion last year in a vain attempt to restrain the currency, now supports a franc target.
“The franc is catastrophically overvalued,” said Blocher, a former justice minister for the People’s Party, Switzerland’s largest. “It’s almost like economic warfare — to wage a war, you must use all measures at your disposal, and you must win.”
Switzerland’s currency is 41 percent overvalued against the euro, based on purchasing power parity as calculated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That’s “a headache,” according to ABB Ltd., the world’s largest maker of power-transmission gear, which responded by buying more parts from euro-region suppliers to feed its Swiss factories. Workers at Lonza AG, a Basel-based chemicals maker, are working longer hours without extra pay, while VonRoll Infratec AG, the Zug- based maker of piping systems and castings, is paying some salaries in euros.
As Economy Tanks, “New Normal” Police State Takes Shape
August 15th, 2011Via: Dissident Voice:
Forget your rights.
As corporate overlords position themselves to seize what little remains of a tattered social net (adieu Medicare and Medicaid! Social Security? Au revoir!), the Obama administration is moving at break-neck speed to expand police state programs first stood-up by the Bush government.
After all, with world share prices gyrating wildly, employment and wages in a death spiral, and retirement funds and publicly-owned assets swallowed whole by speculators and rentier scum, the state better dust-off contingency plans lest the Greek, Spanish or British “contagion” spread beyond the fabled shores of “old Europe” and infect God-fearin’ folk here in the heimat.
Fear not, they have and the lyrically-titled Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources, otherwise known as Army Regulation 500-50, spells out the “responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department of the Army in planning and operations involving the use of Army resources in the control of actual or anticipated civil disturbances.” (emphasis added)
With British politicians demanding a clampdown on social media in the wake of London riots, and with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San Francisco, switching off underground cell phone service to help squelch a protest against police violence, authoritarian control tactics, aping those deployed in Egypt and Tunisia (that worked out well!) are becoming the norm in so-called “Western democracies.”
A Short Meditation on America’s Loss of Manufacturing
August 15th, 2011Via: Dissident Voice:
By now most people are aware that the United States produces very little of its own furniture, carpeting, toys, textiles, shoes, electronics and appliances. Those once flourishing industries are a thing of the past. Indeed, hard as it may be to believe, a sizeable number of American flags are now made in China.
On a less urgent note, we’ve also lost our “novelty” manufacturing base. It’s true. Our plastic, artificial vomit and artificial dog poop are now being produced in Asia. While some people might greet this news with apathy, I see it differently. If we’ve already lost our fake vomit and dog poop to foreign manufacturers, how soon before we lose our truck nuts?
Related: 10 of Today’s Hottest Jobs: Proof That America Is Doomed
Paul Krugman on CNN: “If We Discovered That Space Aliens Were Planning to Attack… This Slump Would Be Over in 18 Months”
August 15th, 2011The Al Qaeda swindle isn’t working, so why not double down and shoot for the stars?
Via: CNN Clip on YouTube:
Paul Krugman wants to create a Keynesian-infused Space Alien Economic Bubble to revive the depressed one we have right now.
Japanese Burning Radioactive Materials Causing ‘Rainouts’ Around Japan and Elsewhere in Northern Hemisphere
August 15th, 2011Via: Washington’s Blog:
Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen says in a new interview that the Japanese are burning radioactive waste from Fukushima. This ends up not only in neighboring prefectures, but in Hawaii, British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California.
Radioactive rain-outs were documented recently in British Columbia and Oklahoma with geiger counters.
Gundersen is working with scientists who will publish a paper soon definitively debunking the Canadian and American health officials claims that only harmless levels of radiation are being released.
Gundersen has a high-level contact in the State Department who says that the U.S. government has decided – in the State Department, FDA, etc. to downplay Fukushima. Because of this policy decision, the governments are not really testing for radiation.
So we’ll see another year of radioactive rain-outs, as the Japanese continue to burn radioactive materials.
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Research Credit: lagavulin
Pakistan Let China See Crashed U.S. “Stealth” Copter
August 15th, 2011Via: Financial Times:
Pakistan allowed Chinese military engineers to photograph and take samples from the top-secret stealth helicopter that US special forces left behind when they killed Osama bin Laden, the Financial Times has learnt.
The action is the latest incident to underscore the increasingly complicated relationship and lack of trust between Islamabad and Washington following the raid.
“The US now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI, gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad,” said one person in intelligence circles, referring to the Pakistani spy agency. The Chinese engineers were allowed to survey the wreckage and take photographs of it, as well as take samples of the special “stealth” skin that allowed the American team to enter Pakistan undetected by radar, he said.
President Barack Obama’s national security council had been discussing this incident and trying to decide how to respond. A senior official said the situation “doesn’t make us happy”, but that the administration had little recourse.
As Navy Seals raided Bin Laden’s compound in the military city of Abbottabad, just outside Islamabad, in May, one of their modified Black Hawk helicopters crashed into the wall of the compound, rendering it inoperable.
Author Claims Pentagon Can’t Account for $10 Trillion Since 1991
August 15th, 2011Via: Daily Ticker:
You think Enron’s accounting was troubled? The Pentagon has very little accountability when it comes to its books. Since first submitting financial accounts in 1991, the Pentagon “has been unable to account for trillions of dollars, well over almost $10 trillion by my own account,” says Glain. Conspiracy theorists suggest this is CIA money being laundered through the Pentagon, a claim Glain has some sympathy for.
ooShirts for Custom T-Shirts
August 15th, 2011One of the cool aspects of running Cryptogon is that people occasionally want to give me stuff in exchange for promoting their businesses or products. When Colleen from ooShirts offered me a $100 coupon for custom t-shirts, I was delighted because I had actually just been looking to replace a bunch of VERY old and tattered rags that I’d been wearing around. I also wanted matching pterodactylus t-shirts for me and my son, Owen. (I’m not sure what’s more disturbing; that I wanted matching pterodactylus t-shirts, or that Owen, who’s three-years-old, can say pterodactylus…)
ooShirts only ships to U.S. addresses, so my dad kindly mailed the shirts to me in New Zealand.
WOH! They came out really nice!
I took a close-up shot of one of the shirts to show you the level of detail. This is great screen printing. These shirts are top quality.
Close-Up of Screen Printed T-Shirt by ooShirts
If you’re looking for high quality custom t-shirts, I’d definitely recommend ooShirts.
