The Deepening Mystery of Raymond Davis and Two Slain Pakistani Motorcyclists
February 9th, 2011Update: It’s Official: Raymond Davis Is a CIA Contractor
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Pakistani and U.S. authorities say U.S. Embassy worker Raymond Davis, who killed two alleged robbers in Lahore, works for the CIA.
—End Update—
Wow. You have to check out hyperion-protective.com. No really. Must see. But be warned: Your sides will hurt from laughing.
My personal favorite: The “professional” throwing stars on page 3 of the catalog.
Ok, so, Raymond A. Davis, some variety of spook or mercenary, working out of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, killed two people, and was carrying business cards for Hyperion Protective Consultants?
I looked up the whois on hyperion-protective.com and it lists the address as:
2150 Brengle Ave. in Orlando, Florida. This address isn’t mentioned in the piece below.
Google shows two businesses at 2150 Brengle Ave.: Transpo Electronics and Transworld Holdings. It’s a large warehouse type building (See: Google Maps).
Anyway, my roosters are awake, which means that I should be asleep. Let me know if you find anything interesting.
Via: Counterpunch:
The mystery of American Raymond A. Davis, currently imprisoned in the custody of local police in Lahore, Pakistan and charged with the Jan. 27 murder of two young men, whom he allegedly shot eight times with pinpoint accuracy through his car windshield, is growing increasingly murky. Also growing is the anger among Pakistanis that the US is trying to spring him from a Punjab jail by claiming diplomatic immunity. On Feb. 4, there were massive demonstrations, especially in Lahore, demanding that Davis be held for trial, an indication of the level of public anger at talk of granting him immunity.
Davis (whose identity was first denied and later confirmed by the US Embassy in Islamabad), and the embassy have claimed that he was hired as an employee of a US security company called Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC, which was said to be located at 5100 North Lane in Orlando, Florida. Business cards for Hyperion were found on Davis by arresting officers.
However CounterPunch has investigated and discovered the following information:
First, there is not and never has been any such company located at the 5100 North Lane address. It is only an empty storefront, with empty shelves along one wall and an empty counter on the opposite wall, with just a lone used Coke cup sitting on it. A leasing agency sign is on the window. A receptionist at the IB Green & Associates rental agency located in Leesburg, Florida, said that her agency, which handles the property, part of a desolate-looking strip mall of mostly empty storefronts, has never leased to a Hyperion Protective Consultants. She added, “In fact, until recently, we had for several years occupied that address ourselves.”
The Florida Secretary of State’s office, meanwhile, which requires all Florida companies, including LLSs (limited liability partnerships), to register, has no record, current or lapsed, of a Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC, and there is only one company with the name Hyperion registered at all in the state. It is Hyperion Communications, a company based in W. Palm Beach, that has no connection with Davis or with security-related activities.
The non-existent Hyperion Protective Consultants does have a website (www.hyperion-protective.com), but one of the phone numbers listed doesn’t work, an 800 number produces a recorded answer offering information about how to deal with or fend off bank foreclosures, and a third number with an Orlando exchange goes to a recording giving Hyperion’s corporate name and asking the caller to leave a message. Efforts to contact anyone on that line were unsuccessful. The local phone company says there is no public listing for Hyperion Protective Consultants–a rather unusual situation for a legitimate business operation.
Pakistani journalists have been speculating that Davis is either a CIA agent or is working as a contractor for some private mercenary firm–possibly Xe, the reincarnation of Blackwater. They are not alone in their suspicions. Jeff Stein, writing in the Washington Post on January 27, suggested after interviewing Fred Burton, a veteran of the State Department’s counter-terrorism Security Service, that Davis may have been involved in intelligence activity, either as a CIA employee under embassy cover or as a contract worker at the time of the shootings. Burton, who currently works with Stratfor, an Austin, TX-based “global intelligence” firm, even speculates that the shootings may have been a “spy meeting gone awry,” and not, as US Embassy and State Department officials are claiming, a case of an attempted robbery or car-jacking.
U.S. Corn Reserves Hit Lowest Level in 15 Years
February 9th, 2011Via: AP:
U.S. reserves of corn have hit their lowest level in over 15 years in part because of higher demand from the ethanol industry, hinting at tighter supplies and higher food prices in 2011.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported Wednesday that the ethanol industry demand for corn is up 50 million bushels after record-high production in December and January.
That means the United States will have about 675 million bushels of corn left over at the end of year. That’s roughly 5 percent of all corn that will be consumed, the lowest surplus level since 1996.
WikiLeaks Cables: Saudi Arabia Oil Reserves Overstated by 40%
February 9th, 2011Via: AFP:
THE US fears Saudi Arabia may not have enough oil reserves to prevent prices rising sharply, according to leaked cables.
The cables from the US embassy in Riyadh, obtained by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take heed of a warning from a former Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom’s crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 40 per cent.
US diplomats reported that Sadad al-Husseini, the ex-head of exploration at Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, “disagreed” with Aramco’s analysis that it had reserves of 716 billion barrels and that would rise to 900 billion barrels in 20 years.
The claims about the world’s largest crude oil exporter, published in The Guardian newspaper, come as the price of oil has soared in recent weeks to more than $US100 a barrel amid tensions in the Middle East and global demand.
Jet Loaded with Millions in Gold and Cash Seized by Congolese Authorities Linked to Texas Philanthropist
February 9th, 2011Via: Dallas News:
A Gulfstream jet seized by Congolese authorities suspected of being used to smuggle gold from rebel-controlled strongholds is apparently owned by a North Texas aviation firm owned by Southlake philanthropist David Disiere, records show.
Dow Jones reported today that the tail number on the jet is N886DT, which FAA records shows to be owned by Southlake Aviation LLC. Disiere is that company’s director and president.
Disiere did not return phone calls to his house in Southlake today. It’s unclear whether he was leasing the plane to someone else or had any knowledge of the African incident.
Forgive Me iPhone, For I Have Sinned
February 9th, 2011Via: CBS:
A new app for devices like the iPhone and iPad aims to take the intimidation factor out of Confession for Catholics — and the Church is giving it the thumbs-up.
Forgive Me iPhone, For I Have SinnedYou’ll still have to tell a priest your sins in person, but “Confession: A Roman Catholic App” holds your hand through the process via your hand-held.
Katie, a Temple University sophomore, likes how the app takes you step-by-step, preparing you for the sacrament by asking questions that might point out a sin or two you’ll want to divulge.
“I like how you have the ‘in the name of the Father’ — like what they should say,” Katie said.
CIA Officers Make Grave Mistakes, Get Promoted
February 9th, 2011Via: AP:
In December 2003, security forces boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri. For the next five months, el-Masri was a ghost. Only a select group of CIA officers knew he had been whisked to a secret prison for interrogation in Afghanistan.
But he was the wrong guy.
A hard-charging CIA analyst had pushed the agency into one of the biggest diplomatic embarrassments of the U.S. war on terrorism. Yet despite recommendations by an internal review, the analyst was never punished. In fact, she has risen to one of the premier jobs in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, helping lead President Barack Obama’s efforts to disrupt al-Qaida.
In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, officers who committed serious mistakes that left people wrongly imprisoned or even dead have received only minor admonishments or no punishment at all, an Associated Press investigation has revealed. The botched el-Masri case is but one example of a CIA accountability process that even some within the agency say is unpredictable and inconsistent.
Pentagon’s New Ground Robot Can Hear You Breathing… Through a Wall
February 9th, 2011Via: Wired:
America’s robots make deadly weapons. But there are countermeasures to even the most fearsome bot now in service. To avoid detection by aerial drones, Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have begun traveling in smaller groups. In his excellent book War, Sebastian Junger even describes Afghan fighters covering themselves with blankets on sun-warmed rocks to erase their infrared signatures, confounding the drones’ IR sensors.
But hiding from the Pentagon’s unmanned army could get a lot harder, thanks to new ground robot that can actually hear you breathing, even through a wall. The bot’s originator calls it “enhanced situational awareness.” We call it terrifying. Still, the robot does have potentially serious limitations.
Beginning late last year, California firm TiaLinx began rolling out a suite of hardware designed to detect the most minuscule signs of human presence. The Eagle5-N, which debuted late last year, is a low-power, wide-bandwidth radar mounted on a tripod. “In addition to breath detection, it can monitor a heartbeat and, by extension, the stress level of a person,” National Defense reported. “While the device was designed to detect humans behind walls, it also makes sense for rescue missions or monitoring human trafficking at the border — above and underground.”
Suez Canal Still Operating as Service Workers Strike
February 9th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Shipping on Egypt’s Suez Canal, used to carry about 8 percent of global seaborne trade, is transiting on schedule after service workers linked to the waterway began striking, the Suez Canal Authority said.
Workers from Suez Canal Co. began a sit-in today, Al-Ahram newspaper reported earlier today in its online edition, without saying where it got the information. The 6,000 workers are from Suez, Port Said and Ismailia, Al-Ahram said.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Suez Canal traffic and the canal is operating normally,” Mohamed Motair, director of companies at the Suez Canal Authority, said by phone. The striking employees belong to seven service companies linked to the waterway and are not involved in operations, he said.
China Creates Rare Earth Strategic Reserves
February 9th, 2011Via: AFP:
China is building up strategic reserves of rare earth metals in a move that could give it better control over the resource so indispensable to high tech products, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Storage facilities have been built in recent months in the northern region of Inner Mongolia with the capacity to hold more than the 39,813 tonnes of the metals China exported last year, the paper said.
But details of the strategic reserves have not been made public, it added on Monday.
FCC: Presidential Emergency Alerts to be Tested
February 8th, 2011Via: Federal News Radio:
Everybody has heard the national Emergency Alert System (EAS). Those familiar “duck calls” that reassure listeners “THIS is a test…this is ONLY a test…”
The FCC is planning an upgrade to the tests by including presidential announcements in the system.
Lisa Fowlkes, deputy chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau of the FCC, explained to the Federal Drive the Presidential Alert isn’t new.
“The primary goal is to provide the President with a mechanism to communicate with the American public during times of national emergency,” said Fowlkes. The change, she said, is that prior to last week’s order there was no rule in place to call for or allow a test from top to bottom.
Fowlkes said, “There’s never been a test from top to bottom where it’s issued by FEMA and it goes straight down to all the different levels of EAS to the American public. So this is a way for us to glean, okay, if there were an actual emergency and the federal government needed to activate the Presidential EAS, making sure that it actually works the way it’s designed to.”
Now that there’s a rule in place, the next challenges are going to be working with all the stakeholders on timing of the test and to reach out to the public so they understand it’s a test and not a real emergency, Fowlkes said.
