The “Journalists” at the FEMA “Press” Conference
October 27th, 2007A FEMA press conference on the California fires didn’t actually involve the press at all. There were no reporters. The entire thing was staged. The people asking the questions were FEMA employees who were pretending to be reporters. (Of course, would be little difference between the reporters working government beats and these shills at the fake press conference.)
So, we have a FEMA press conference (with no reporters actually in attendance), the body of Russell Lane Daves, an arson suspect shot dead by police, and a bunch of federal guidelines that grounded the firefighting aircraft as California burned:
As wildfires were charging across Southern California, nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes sat idly by, grounded by government rules and bureaucracy.
How much the aircraft would have helped will never be known, but their inability to provide quick assistance raises troubling questions about California’s preparations for a fire season that was widely expected to be among the worst on record.
It took as long as a day for Navy, Marine and California National Guard helicopters to get clearance early this week, in part because state rules require all firefighting choppers to be accompanied by state forestry “fire spotters” who coordinate water or retardant drops. By the time those spotters arrived, the powerful Santa Ana winds stoking the fires had made it too dangerous to fly.
And what do you think the real story is with William Brock? Why would a guy, who’s on probation in Los Angeles County for narcotics violations, want to impersonate a firefighter and drive around in the fire zone? Just another lone nut, I guess:
A 44-year-old man dressed in full fire gear was arrested Wednesday afternoon after deputies found him in an evacuated area of Fallbrook.
William Brock was laying a fully-charged hose attached to a hydrant across Live Oak Park Road near Gumtree Lane around 4 p.m. in an area where fires were still smouldering, sheriff’s officials said. There were no other firefighters in the area.
Brock told deputies that he was a firefighter who had been sent to help extinguish hot spots and that he was allowed to pass through the check points .
According to the Sheriff’s Department, he was driving a pickup truck with a personalized firefighter plate loaded with fire hoses and other fire gear. He was wearing a blue shirt that had the word “firefighter” on it. In his truck, officials found a blue shirt with a Morongo Valley Fire Department patch on it, a firefighter badge and a name tag with his name on it.
Deputies checked and found that Brock did not work for the Morongo Valley Fire Department or any other. They also found that he is on probation in Los Angeles County for narcotics violations.
Brock was taken into custody. He will face charges of impersonating a firefighter, entering a closed area and obstructing officers in the performance of their duties, sheriff’s officials said.
Blah, blah, blah. Just more things to forget about for those of us who were dumb enough to look in the first place.
Via: Washington Post:
FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.
Reporters were given only 15 minutes’ notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA’s Southwest D.C. offices.
They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a “listen only” line, the notice said — no questions. Parts of the briefing were carried live on Fox News (see the Fox News video of the news conference carried on the Think Progress Web site), MSNBC and other outlets.
Johnson stood behind a lectern and began with an overview before saying he would take a few questions. The first questions were about the “commodities” being shipped to Southern California and how officials are dealing with people who refuse to evacuate. He responded eloquently.
He was apparently quite familiar with the reporters — in one case, he appears to say “Mike” and points to a reporter — and was asked an oddly in-house question about “what it means to have an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration” signed by the president. He once again explained smoothly.
FEMA press secretary Aaron Walker interrupted at one point to caution he’d allow just “two more questions.” Later, he called for a “last question.”
“Are you happy with FEMA’s response so far?” a reporter asked. Another asked about “lessons learned from Katrina.”
“I’m very happy with FEMA’s response so far,” Johnson said, hailing “a very smoothly, very efficiently performing team.”
“And so I think what you’re really seeing here is the benefit of experience, the benefit of good leadership and the benefit of good partnership,” Johnson said, “none of which were present in Katrina.” (Wasn’t Michael Chertoff DHS chief then?) Very smooth, very professional. But something didn’t seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA’s greatness.
Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We’re told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of external affairs, and by “Mike” Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John “Pat” Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin.
Asked about this, Widomski said: “We had been getting mobbed with phone calls from reporters, and this was thrown together at the last minute.”
But the staff did not make up the questions, he said, and Johnson did not know what was going to be asked. “We pulled questions from those we had been getting from reporters earlier in the day.” Despite the very short notice, “we were expecting the press to come,” he said, but they didn’t. So the staff played reporters for what on TV looked just like the real thing.
Italian Government: “Testing of Top Secret Weapons by an Unknown Power” May Have Caused Sicily Fires
October 27th, 2007I almost wanted to take a screenshot of this… Yes: This story is actually posted on the Telegraph.
And it’s not little green men, mind you! It was either, “Unnatural forces capable of creating a large amount of electromagnetic energy,” or, “The testing of top secret weapons by an unknown power which are also capable of producing an enormous amount of energy.”
Or…
Satan.
The Vatican’s chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, said, “I’ve seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods. Let’s not forget that Satan and his followers have immense powers.”
So, take your pick.
Cheney, however, isn’t mentioned in the article.
Via: Telegraph:
Aliens caused Sicily fires, say officials
By Nick Pisa in Rome
Last Updated: 7:31pm BST 26/10/2007
Aliens were responsible for a series of unexplained fires in fridges, TV’s and mobile phones in an Italian village, according to an Italian government report.
Canneto di Caronia, in northern Sicily, drew attention three years ago after residents reported everyday household objects bursting into flames.
TV news footage at the time showed electrical appliances as well as cookers, a pile of wedding presents and furniture smouldering.
Dozens of experts including scientists, electrical engineers and military boffins, arrived in the village 60 miles east of Palermo to investigate the phenomenon.
Arson was quickly ruled out and at one stage an amazed scientist was interviewed after he described how he saw an unplugged electrical cable burst into flames.
Locals were quick to blame supernatural forces and at the time the Vatican’s chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth backed up their fears and said: “I’ve seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods. Let’s not forget that Satan and his followers have immense powers.”
Now in an interim leaked report published by several Italian newspapers it has emerged that the Civil Protection Department has concluded the most likely cause was “aliens”.
The report was ordered by the Italian government and brought together dozens of experts including a NASA scientist. Their two year investigation has cost an estimated £1 million.
According to the report the fires were “caused by a high power electro magnetic emissions which were not man made and reached a power of between 12 and 15 gigawatts.”
The report also detailed a possible UFO landing close to the village, citing “burnt imprints which have not been explained were found in a field.”
Francesco Mantegna Venerando, Sicily’s Civil Protection chief who coordinated the report, said: “This is not the final report. We are still working on our conclusions and this has been leaked.
“We are not saying that little green men from Mars started the fires but that unnatural forces capable of creating a large amount of electromagnetic energy were responsible.
“This is just one possibility we are also looking at another one which involves the testing of top secret weapons by an unknown power which are also capable of producing an enormous amount of energy.”
European and American Rights Groups File Torture Complaint Against Rumsfeld
October 26th, 2007Via: The Canadian:
American and European rights groups filed a legal complaint in France accusing former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for torture in Iraq and at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, the groups said Friday.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and two Paris-based groups, the International Federation of Human Rights and the League of Human Rights, said they filed the complaint with the Paris prosecutor’s office as Rumsfeld arrived in France for a visit.
The groups say their complaint could go forward because people suspected of torture can be prosecuted in France if they are on French soil.
The complaint says Rumsfeld, in his former position as defense secretary, “authorized and ordered crimes of torture to be carried out … as well as other war crimes.”
Filed Thursday, the complaint cites various documents, including memos from Rumsfeld, internal reports and testimony from former U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski – the one-time commander of U.S. military prisons in Iraq – to bolster its claims.
It asks the prosecutor to open an inquiry and take Rumsfeld into custody.
“We know that we can’t get him into prison right now, but it would be great to make sure that he couldn’t safely leave the U.S. anymore,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
…
Ratner said his group had tried to take the case to European courts because “no one (in the United States), not even the Congress, is ready to investigate the torture program,” and because the case could not be brought with the International Criminal Court, as the United States is not a member.
SEC Sees “Rampant” Insider Trading on Wall Street
October 26th, 2007Via: Reuters:
A senior Securities and Exchange Commission official said on Thursday insider trading appeared to be “rampant” among Wall Street professionals and the agency has formed a working group to focus on it.
“I believe we’re going to see more insider trading cases,” Linda Chatman Thomsen, the SEC’s enforcement director, told reporters on the sidelines of a securities fraud conference.
“I am disappointed in the number of cases we are seeing by people who make an abundant livelihood in the market that they are sort of abusing by insider trading,” Thomsen said, referring to cases already brought against professionals this year.
Insider trading “appears to be rampant” among Wall Street securities professionals, she added.
Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s criminal division, echoed Thomsen’s sentiment and said: “The number of insider trading cases don’t seem to be going away.”
In the past year, SEC enforcement lawyers have brought increasing numbers of insider trading lawsuits and settlements. Recent high-profile cases include charges against a husband and wife in Hong Kong for trades in Dow Jones & Co Inc shares ahead of News Corp’s $5 billion takeover bid, and guilty pleas from three former Countrywide Financial Corp executives for trading company shares ahead of a disappointing profit report.
Also, in March U.S. prosecutors charged 13 people, including employees at top Wall Street banks UBS, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns Cos Inc in what they called one of the most pervasive trading rings since the 1980s. The SEC also brought civil charges against 11 people, as well as against three hedge funds.
It’s the Oil
October 26th, 2007Via: London Review of Books:
Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.
Who will get Iraq’s oil? One of the Bush administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years. ‘The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy,’ the analyst Antonia Juhasz wrote in the New York Times in March, after the draft law was leaked. ‘They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability†by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country.’ As negotiations over the oil law stalled in September, the provincial government in Kurdistan simply signed a separate deal with the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, headed by a close political ally of President Bush.
How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq. Five self-sufficient ‘super-bases’ are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred. There has been precious little reporting on these bases in the American press, whose dwindling corps of correspondents in Iraq cannot move around freely because of the dangerous conditions. (It takes a brave reporter to leave the Green Zone without a military escort.) In February last year, the Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks described one such facility, the Balad Air Base, forty miles north of Baghdad. A piece of (well-fortified) American suburbia in the middle of the Iraqi desert, Balad has fast-food joints, a miniature golf course, a football field, a cinema and distinct neighbourhoods – among them, ‘KBR-land’, named after the Halliburton subsidiary that has done most of the construction work at the base. Although few of the 20,000 American troops stationed there have ever had any contact with an Iraqi, the runway at the base is one of the world’s busiest. ‘We are behind only Heathrow right now,’ an air force commander told Ricks.
The Defense Department was initially coy about these bases. In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld said: ‘I have never, that I can recall, heard the subject of a permanent base in Iraq discussed in any meeting.’ But this summer the Bush administration began to talk openly about stationing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades, to come. Several visitors to the White House have told the New York Times that the president himself has become fond of referring to the ‘Korea model’. When the House of Representatives voted to bar funding for ‘permanent bases’ in Iraq, the new term of choice became ‘enduring bases’, as if three or four decades wasn’t effectively an eternity.
Research Credit: GH
Dollar Falls as Orders for U.S. Manufactured Goods Decline
October 26th, 2007Via: AP/IHT:
The dollar fell against a basket of six other major currencies Thursday following a report that showed orders for manufactured goods in the United States fell unexpectedly in September.
Investors sold dollars in a climate of market nervousness ahead of a Federal Reserve meeting on interest rates next week.
The dollar hit a new 33-year low against the Canadian currency. The “loonie” rose to $1.0400, or 96.15 Canadian cents per U.S. dollar, this morning after the release of Thursday’s durable goods report, according to Interbank foreign-exchange rates from Dow Jones.
The dollar climbed to 96.65 Canadian cents in late New York trading, still down from the 97.06 Canadian cents it bought Wednesday. Thursday’s low circles the bottom of the modern era of floating exchange rates, 96.04 Canadian cents, hit on May 24, 1974.
The Canadian dollar, a commodity-backed currency, first achieved modern-era one-to-one parity with the U.S. dollar on Sept. 20 and has been climbing steadily since then. Canada is a major exporter of oil, benefiting when those prices rise.
OIL $91, GOLD NEARLY $780
October 26th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Congratulations to all Cryptogon BullionVault clients who have stood so hard on the bid lately. I hope you are diversified and managing your risk well.
Gentle reminder, after looking at the weekly gold chart, stochastics and RSI: Nobody ever went broke by taking profit.
Best of luck to all of you.
Via: Bloomberg:
Crude oil rose to a record above $91 a barrel in New York on an unexpected drop in U.S. stockpiles and concern that supply from the Middle East may be disrupted.
Inventories last week fell 5.29 million barrels to the lowest since January, the U.S. Energy Department said. New U.S. sanctions against Iran, warnings of a Turkish assault on Kurdish militants in Iraq and a falling dollar helped push prices higher. Brent futures in London reached a record.
“The market has been particularly surprised by that 5 million-barrel drop in crude, that was really one out of left- field,” said Mark Pervan, a commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Melbourne. “As much as we’re seeing concern about Middle East stability, it’s a dollar-driven story as well. It’s a bit of a perfect storm.”
Crude oil for December delivery rose as much as 64 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $91.10 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest since trading began in 1983. It traded at $91.02 at 12:20 p.m. Singapore time. Prices are 51 percent higher than a year ago.
Yesterday the contract jumped $3.36, or 3.9 percent, to $90.46 a barrel, a record close. It was the biggest one-day gain since April 23.
Record oil prices are raising concerns that inflation will rise and lower growth in the global economy. The Group of Seven industrial nations said in a statement last week that high crude levels will moderate growth going forward.
Pandemic Test Undertaken by Financial Services Paints Dire Scenario
October 26th, 2007Mmmm Hmmm.
Via: Computerworld:
If a pandemic strikes the U.S., it will kill about 1.7 million people, hospitalize 9 million, exhaust antiviral medications and reduce basic food supplies, according to a planning scenario developed by financial service firms preparing for such a catastrophe.
This particular disaster occurred only on paper. But those grim numbers are some of the pandemic planning assumptions used by nearly 3,000 banks, insurance companies and security firms in a just-concluded, three-week, paper-based exercise that may have been the largest pandemic test of its kind.
…
When asked “based on the lessons learned from the exercise, how effective are your organization’s business continuity plans for a pandemic,” 56% answered “moderately,” the next highest group was “minimally,” at 28%. Only 12% said their business continuity planning was very effective.
The three-week scenario compresses the 12-week period a pandemic wave would likely last. Among the other things that may happen in an actual pandemic are school closings, as well as blackouts or brownouts in major metro areas because of degraded service as a result of absenteeism. Internet service throughput could be reduced by 50% due to congestion, and Web browsing timeouts would become common. Airlines would cut schedules, and garbage would pile up on streets.
Many frustrations would arise. Working ATMs might be scarce, and call centers may not have enough staff to help. Health insurance claim volume would rise 20%. Auto claims are expected to fall 10%, since there would be less traffic on the road. But for those who are driving, gas prices would be high and fuel supplies reduced.
Related: Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation
Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard
October 26th, 2007From site statistics, I can see that about 15% of Cryptogon readers are Apple Mac users. If you happen to be planning on upgrading to Leopard, please consider using this handy Amazon link to make your purchase.
Links to Amazon global sites with Cryptogon affiliate goodness built in:
amazon.ca – amazon.co.uk – amazon.de – amazon.fr
Enjoy Leopard!
Related: In Depth: Apple’s Leopard
Putin Comments on Bush: “Running Around Like a Madman with a Razor Blade”
October 26th, 2007This comment might be a bit of a tipoff into strategic thinking inside Russia. Mainly, that Bush is nuts.
Stark raving, speaking in tongues, doolally nuts. (Los Angeles Times: Straitjacket Bush: The President’s Warmongering Remarks on the Iranian Threat Suggest He Is Psychotic)
Seriously. International Relations assumes “rational actors.” Putin’s comment could mean that the Russians see Bush as fully nuts and expect him to lash out in an irrational manner. That’s not rocket science, obviously, but considering the military implications is a chilling exercise.
Via: Yahoo:
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned strongly against new international sanctions on Iran, saying they would lead to a dead end.
Putin, in Portugal for a summit with leaders of the European Union, said the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program should be resolved through talks, pointing at North Korea as an example.
“Why worsen the situation and bring it to a dead end by threatening sanctions or military action,” Putin said in a veiled reference to the U.S. push for harsher international sanctions against Tehran.
“Running around like a madman with a razor blade, waving it around, is not the best way to resolve the situation,” the Russian leader said.
Putin spoke after the Bush administration imposed sweeping new sanctions against Iran, cutting off key Iranian military and banking institutions from the American financial system for Tehran’s alleged support for terrorism and nuclear weapons ambitions. Putin did not directly refer to the U.S. actions.
