Mexico Gunmen Assassinate Second Mayor in Two Weeks
August 30th, 2010Via: Bloomberg:
Mexican gunmen assassinated the second mayor in less than two weeks in the violent northeast region of the country as a fight against drug traffickers intensifies.
Marco Antonio Leal Garcia, the mayor of Hidalgo in Tamaulipas state, was killed when his truck was ambushed by the gunmen. His daughter was also injured in the attack.
A U.S. Man May Face 16 Years in Prison for Posting a Video of His Arrest on YouTube
August 30th, 2010Via: Al Jazeera:
When police arrested Anthony Graber for speeding on his motorbike, the 25-year-old probably did not see himself as an advocate for police accountability in the age of new media.
But Graber, a sergeant with the Maryland Air National Guard, is now facing 16 years in prison, not for dangerous driving, but for a Youtube video he posted after receiving a speeding ticket.
The video, filmed with a camera mounted on Graber’s motorcycle helmet designed to record biking stunts rather than police abuse, shows a plain clothes officer jumping out of an unmarked car and pointing a pistol at the motorcyclist.
It does not portray the policeman in a positive light.
After he posted the video on Youtube, police raided Graber’s home, seized computers and put him in jail.
“The case is critical to the protection of democracy because I don’t think you can have a free country in which public officials are able to criminally prosecute people who film what they are doing,” David Rocah, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in Maryland who is representing Graber, said.
Research Credit: Uncle Remus
NY Legislators Want Chickens Vaccinated
August 30th, 2010Via: AP:
Two New York State legislators want to require farmers in the state to vaccinate hens against salmonella, which sickened thousands of Americans and triggered the largest egg recall in U.S. history.
Research Credit: Swamp Fox
U.S. Wasted Billions in Rebuilding Iraq
August 30th, 2010This AP piece is maddening. It states, “More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted,” and then, “That amount is likely an underestimate.”
Likely an underestimate? HAHA.
I like Call the Politburo, We’re in Trouble:
Or what about the US Embassy in Baghdad, that 104-acre (42 hectares), almost three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar, 21-building homage to the American-mall-as-fortified-citadel? It costs more than $1.5 billion a year to run, and bears about as much relationship to an “embassy” as McDonald’s does to a neighborhood hamburger joint. According to a recent audit, millions of dollars in “federal property” assigned to what is essentially a vast command center for the region, including 159 of the embassy’s 1,168 vehicles, are missing or unaccounted for.
And, in other news:
Afghanistan: U.S. Spends $20 Billion Per Year for Air Conditioning in Tents
Cost of Keeping One U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan Per Year: One Million Dollars
U.S. Spends $400 Per Gallon of Gas in Afghanistan
Fitting context on this one would take me the rest of the day. Feel free to post the most ridiculous Iraq/Afghanistan contracts and boondoggles in comments.
Related: War is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler
Via: AP:
A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.
As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds has been wasted on these projects — more than 10 percent of the $53.7 billion the US has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.
That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.
Updated: The Swedish Twins on the M6
August 30th, 2010Mexican Massacre Investigator Found Dead
August 28th, 2010Via: Guardian:
The body of an official investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants killed in a ranch in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas was found today dumped beside a nearby road alongside another unidentified victim, according to local media.
Earlier, two cars exploded outside the studios of the national TV network Televisa in the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. There were no casualties, but the blasts added to a growing sense of fear in the aftermath of the worst single act of violence in the country’s raging drug wars.
Meanwhile, investigators under armed guard continued the process of identifying the victims, with 20 named by midday on Friday, local officials said.
The migrants, 14 of them women, came from at least four countries, including Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil and Ecuador. They were found bound and blindfolded by the wall of a barn after navy personnel stormed the ranch on Tuesday.
The massacre was discovered after an Ecuadorian migrant, who had been left for dead with a neck wound, escaped. Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla, 18, found his way to a navy road checkpoint.
He said the migrants had been kidnapped by armed men who identified themselves as belonging to the Zetas, one of the cartels fighting for supremacy in the state. He said the killing began after they refused offers to work for the cartel.
The Kochtopus
August 28th, 2010Polemical essays can be worth reading, as long as one understands that the author’s goal is to push his or her rat poison, by showing you how bad that rat poison is over there. With this caveat in mind, you’re all set to feast on the tidy reality offered by a strongly polemical piece.
I learned more about the Koch syndicate from The New Yorker article below than I had gathered previously, in bits and pieces.
Is the Kochtopus insidious? Sure. But in this huge piece, here is the sum total of material related to the corporate fascists backing the Obama regime:
Of course, Democrats give money, too. Their most prominent donor, the financier George Soros, runs a foundation, the Open Society Institute, that has spent as much as a hundred million dollars a year in America. Soros has also made generous private contributions to various Democratic campaigns, including Obama’s. But Michael Vachon, his spokesman, argued that Soros’s giving is transparent, and that “none of his contributions are in the service of his own economic interests.”
The Soros spokesman is a great source to go to for anything approaching an objective perspective. Pfft. Ok.
The number of times Goldman Sachs is mentioned? Zero.
The number of times Monsanto is mentioned? Zero.
The number of times the Obama regime’s revolving door is mentioned? Zero.
The number of times Obama’s continuation and expansion of diabolical Bush policies into a fascist “new normal” in America is mentioned? Zero.
The number of times the fact that America continues to implode with a Democratic President and with Democrats in control of Congress? Zero.
How many other lies by omission does the piece contain? I got tired of counting after the ones I’ve listed above.
If the Democrats are the solution to the Kochtopus, the U.S. is far more screwed than even I believed possible. The Tea Party is the 2010, 180 degrees out of phase version of Hope and Change. Whether your cabin is on the port or the starboard side of the Ship of Fools, the destination is the same; oblivion. I don’t know what it will take to get the shit for brains Left and the shit for brains Right to understand that billionaires, and the governments that serve them, don’t have their best interests in mind. But, until that basic law of the universe is understood, there’s always the next election… *sigh* Good luck with that.
Via: The New Yorker:
“The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”
Research Credit: ottilie
Karzai Aide in Corruption Inquiry Is Tied to CIA
August 27th, 2010Shocking. Shocking. Are you shocked? I’m shocked.
Via: New York Times:
The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.
Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.
Banks Back Switch to Renminbi for Trade
August 27th, 2010Via: Financial Times:
A number of the world’s biggest banks have launched international roadshows promoting the use of the renminbi to corporate customers instead of the dollar for trade deals with China.
HSBC, which recently moved its chief executive from London to Hong Kong, and Standard Chartered, are offering discounted transaction fees and other financial incentives to companies that choose to settle trade in the Chinese currency.
“We’re now capable of doing renminbi settlement in many parts of the world,” said Chris Lewis, HSBC’s head of trade for greater China. “All the other major international banks are frantically trying to do the same thing.”
HSBC and StanChart are among a slew of global banks – including Citigroup and JPMorgan – holding roadshows across Asia, Europe and the US to promote the renminbi to companies.
The move aligns the banks favourably with Beijing’s policy priorities and positions them to profit from what is expected to be a rapidly growing line of business in the future.
The phenomenon will accelerate Beijing’s drive to transform the renminbi from a domestic currency into a global medium of exchange like the dollar and euro.
Chinese central bank officials accompanied StanChart bankers on a roadshow to Korea and Japan in June. The bank held similar events in London, Frankfurt and Paris.
Lisa Robins, JPMorgan’s head of treasury and securities services for China, said there had been a “spike in interest” from international clients.
An increasing number of Chinese companies have been asking foreign trading partners to accept renminbi as payment, said Carmen Ling, Hong Kong head of global transaction services at Citi.
Related: McDonald’s Sells Yuan Bonds in Hong Kong, First by Foreign Firm
Fed Seeks Delay of Bank Data Release While Considering Appeal
August 26th, 2010Via: Bloomberg:
The Federal Reserve Board sought to delay the court-ordered release of documents identifying banks that might have failed without the U.S. government bailout while it considers an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Fed asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York yesterday to delay implementation of a ruling that compels the central bank to release the documents.
“The stay is necessary to permit the board to consult with the Department of Justice regarding an appeal to the Supreme Court,” Fed spokesman David Skidmore said.
The appeals court on Aug. 20 denied the Fed’s request to reconsider its decision requiring it to release records of the $2 trillion U.S. loan program.
If the stay is granted, the central bank and the Clearing House Association LLC, an organization of 20 commercial banks that joined the Fed in defense of the lawsuit, will have 90 days to petition the Supreme Court to consider an appeal. The Clearing House has said already it will ask the high court to rule on the case.
At issue are 231 “term sheets” documenting Fed loans to financial firms during 2008. The records, which include the banks’ names and the amounts borrowed, were originally requested by late Bloomberg News reporter Mark Pittman through the Freedom of Information Act, which allows citizens access to government papers.
The appeals court upheld a decision of a lower-court judge who in August 2009 ordered that the information be released.
