"...If we assume that the $17 billion went missing at HUD during 1998 on an even basis — that is, $1.4 billion a month, $63.6 million per week day, $7.9 million per working hour — by the summer of 1998, approximately $14 billion would have been missing from HUD alone, not counting other agencies. Where did it go? Was it financed with securities fraud using Ginnie Mae or other mortgage securities fraud or fraudulently issued U.S. Treasury securities? These are important questions. Interestingly, this was also a period in which some of the most powerful firms in Washington, D.C. or with Washington ties were having remarkably good luck raising capital. Indeed, the period of missing money coincided, not surprisingly with a “pump and dump” of the U.S. stock market and a significant flow of money into private investors hands..." ...Read on...
Friday, October 12, 2007
UK: concern over data collection from children
"...Britain is already the most snooped-on society in the world.
It has more than a fifth of the world's CCTV cameras.
One day all our NHS records may be on a national computer accessible by thousands of health workers.
Ministers have suggested that every British subject should have their DNA placed on a national database.
And already, the State has the DNA records of nearly a million children, some as young as five.
Now the Government is actively encouraging cash-strapped schools - short of teachers, sports facilities and even books - to spend £20,000 or more on fingerprinting systems.
In the short time since the practice began unannounced in 2001, nearly 6,000 pupils have had their 'dabs' taken throughout the country.
Every week another 20 schools join the list..." Read full article >>
Dear George,
From Salon's Open Letters to George W. Bush
It’s easy running an outlaw presidency when you have enablers like the congressional democrats. Thanks to them, your crimes are not crimes; they are simply policies awaiting congressional approval.
Once again we hear a flapping sound, as democrats fold their tents because they are afraid of being criticized.
When they voted in August to grant you a “temporary” extension of your illegal wiretapping in the Protect America Act, they swore they would kill the bill when it came up for renewal in six months.
That was then; this is now, and it suddenly dawned on the democrats that if they tried to kill the Protect America Act, people might think they were (gasp!) soft on terrorism. They haven’t figured out that their failure to stand for anything is what makes them appear soft.
Nor do they realize that the only people in the country who give a shit about terrorism are their fellow ostriches with their heads buried in the Beltway sand and those for whom antiterrorism is a revenue stream.
They say they are simply dealing with reality, i.e. the reality manufactured by your administration. Instead of fighting this reality tooth and nail and possibly creating a new reality, they bend over and spread their cheeks.
Their behavior is so craven, one wonders if surface appearances might be misleading. Could it be that the democrats have come to realize that they, too, can garner votes by waging fear? Did they tote up the dollars pouring into their districts via National Security contracts and decide that maybe losing some civil liberties might not be that bad after all? If contracts and contributions keep pouring in, maybe it’s not even that important to be the party in power.
Nossir! The democrats know that you don’t make hamburger out of a cash cow.
There is another dynamic that works to your advantage. The line seperating right from wrong is not a line but a thick fog bank in to which most of us wander from time to time (some more than others). The normal person has a functioning moral gyroscope that pulls them back towards the light when he wanders too far into the darkness. There once was a time, long ago, when you would find the occasional politician with a working gyroscope. I’m thinking of Sam Erwin and Barbara Jordon who provided moral ballast for the Watergate hearings. Thank goodness, people like that are relics of the past.
The politicians pouring into Washington now have gyroscopes that are broken or missing because they have learned that when they lack both a backbone and ethics their coffers swell. Should a politician show up with a working gyroscope, Gucci Alley puppeteers surround him and attach strings of campaign contributions to his arms and legs. By they time they are done, he is clogging across the stage like Pinocchio singing, “I’ve Got No Strings,” while the puppetmeisters pull them hither and yond in a herky-jerky dance.
Yes George, the democrats understand the system well. Keep putting out no-bid contracts and they will follow you anywhere.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
- Link -
The DoD's generous play: 'The carrot'
The Army is offering cash bonuses of up to $35,000 to retain young officers serving in key specialties -- including military intelligence, infantry and aviation -- in an unprecedented bid to forestall a critical shortage of officer ranks that have been hit hard by frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Army officials said that lengthy and repeated war-zone tours -- the top reason younger officers leave the service -- plus the need for thousands of new officers as the Army moves forward with expansion plans have contributed to a projected shortfall of about 3,000 captains and majors for every year through 2013.
In response, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates approved the unusual incentives last month as a temporary measure for this fiscal year, and over the past three weeks, more than 6,000 Army captains have accepted cash awards ranging from $25,000 to $35,000 in exchange for committing to serve three more years... Read on >>
Thursday, October 11, 2007
It is important for sellouts to be shameless
On the take and loving it
Academic recipients of the U.S. intelligence budget.
- By
- Julian Assange (ja@iq.org - Advisory Board)
- Date
- 2007-10-06 (Sunday)
Over the last decade, U.S intelligence funding of academic research has taken on cavalier, even brazen qualities. This article reveals over 3,000 National Security Agency and over 100 Defense Intelligence Agency funded papers and draws attention to recent unreported revelations of CIA funding for torture research.
Contents
[hide]
- 1 Covert CIA-funded torture research
- 2 The National Security Agency
- 3 Grant code 'MDA904' - National Security Agency
- 4 Grant code 'MDA908' - Defense Intelligence Agency
- 5 Conclusion
- 6 See also
Read on >>
"Going Republican"?
The recent run of outed Republican Sexual Hypocrites reminds me of the moment — and I remember this quite clearly — at which the phrase “going postal” entered the lexicon. You read about one postal worker going on a gun rampage, and then another, and then yet another — and then suddenly it seemed to click for everyone, that there was a distinct pattern emerging, that these weren’t simply troubling isolated incidents but rather a symptom of some larger problem (i.e. the soulless monotony of the job).
We’re clearly at that pattern recognition moment now, the moment at which it becomes obvious to everyone that there’s more going on here, that some not insignificant percentage of sanctimonious moralizers are in fact leading personal lives significantly at odds with their public pronouncements. To put it politely.
I’m just not sure what the phrase should be in this instance. “Going Republican”? ...
An inquiry into the reasons for cursing
"...The episode highlights one of the many paradoxes that surround swearing. When it comes to political speech, we are living in a free-speech utopia. Late-night comedians can say rude things about their nation's leaders that, in previous centuries, would have led to their tongues being cut out or worse. Yet, when it comes to certain words for copulation and excretion, we still allow the might of the government to bear down on what people can say in public. Swearing raises many other puzzles--linguistic, neurobiological, literary, political.
The first is the bone of contention in the Bono brouhaha: the syntactic classification of curse words. Ose's grammatically illiterate bill not only misspelled cocksucker, motherfucker, and asshole, and misidentified them as "phrases," it didn't even close the loophole that it had targeted. The Clean Airwaves Act assumed that fucking is a participial adjective. But this is not correct. With a true adjective like lazy, you can alternate between Drown the lazy cat and Drown the cat which is lazy. But Drown the f___g cat is certainly not interchangeable with Drown the cat which is f___g..." Full article >>
The 'F' word
When George Bush and other capitalists speak of bringing freedom to the world you must understand that they do not mean freedom in the sense that most of us understand it. We must realize that they are speaking from the perverted, oddly-skewed language of capitalism. By freedom they do not mean the spread of democracy or the liberation of oppressed peoples. They mean the unfettered access to markets through the use of coercive military and economic force. The majority of the world conceives of freedom in human terms. Capitalists conceive of freedom in terms of corporate personhood, access to markets by any necessary means and absolute dictatorial rule. This is the face of free markets and fair trade as it relates to human beings.
Not only did capitalism give birth to the idea of corporations, it endowed them, by very questionable means, with all of the rights of personhood and none of the social responsibility of real persons. The idea of corporate personhood has to be one of the most twisted and bizarre creations ever produced by the human imagination. Like Frankenstein’s fictional monster, it is sociopathic and evil, and it has wrecked havoc wherever its monstrous tread has touched the earth.
By freedom Bush and company mean corporate freedom. They are speaking about the freedom of corporations to operate with impunity in all parts of the world without regulation of any kind. Simply stated, they are talking about corporations ruling the world backed by the strong arm of the U.S. military. They are covertly advocating the oppression of the world’s people’s, the plunder of the earth, the destruction of culture and language, the exportation of jobs to the cheapest, least regulated and most exploitable pools of labor. That is what they mean by freedom—the freedom for Plutocrats to rule the world; Poppy Bush’s New World Order; the global domination of the working class by the ruling Plutocrats... Read on >>
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