Let’s spend just a moment thinking about what this means. We’ve known since December, 2005, that Bush officials, including at the NSA, committed felonies by eavesdropping on Americans without the warrants required by law — crimes punishable by a five-year prison term and$10,000 fine for each offense. All three federal judges to rule on the question have found those [...]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYyViHExL1c[/youtube] The FBI yesterday raided a home said to be inhabited by members of the Michigan Militia in Washenaw County, near Ann Arbor, MI, and at several other area locations. ADRIAN, Mich. — The FBI confirmed to Local 4 that there were several law enforcement activities in the Lenawee/Washtenaw County area late Saturday night. “The [...]
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Expulsions of Israeli diplomats from Britain are few and far between. The last one took place in 1988 and only after serial provocations – when a Mossad agent left an envelope containing eight forged passports in a German telephone box, and when, a year later, a Palestinian working as a Mossad double agent was found [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Assassinations, Conspiracy, David Miliband, Diplomats, Dubai, Expulsions, Forged Passports, Forgeries, Israel, Law, Mossad, SOCA, Terrorism, UAE, UK
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
“There’s glass everywhere,” said Lyndsay Stauble, executive director of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party. “A brick took out the whole floor-to-ceiling window and put a gouge in my desk.” Stauble said the brick, hurled through the window between Friday night and Saturday morning, had “some anti-Obama rhetoric” written on it. Vandals also smashed the front [...]
Hassan Nemazee, 60, who once ran a private equity firm, admitted in Manhattan federal court to defrauding Bank of America Corp of more than $142 million, Citigroup Inc of $74.9 million and HSBC Holdings Plc of $74.9 million to pay his debt to Citigroup. [...] Nemazee was listed as one of the top “bundlers” of [...]
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Also tagged Bank of America, Barack Obama, Bundlers, Campaign Finance, Citigroup, Courts, Democrats, Fraud, Hassan Nemazee, Hillary Clinton, HSBC Holdings
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The Federal Bureau of Investigations may use fake identities on social networks to investigate criminal activities, according to a redacted FBI document (.pdf) acquired by digital rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. Specifically, the 33-page confidential presentation says undercover operations are helpful for communicating with suspects and targets of crime, gaining access to private information, and [...]
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Also tagged EFF, Espionage, Evidence, Facebook, FBI, Intelligence, LinkedIn, MySpace, Privacy, Social Networks, Surveillance, Twitter
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(Xinhua) Updated: 2010-03-12 16:52 BEIJING – China’s Information Office of the State Council published a report titled “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009” here Friday. Following is the full text: The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010, posing [...]
Filed in Documents, News Blurbs, Notable
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Also tagged AIDs, Arms Trafficking, BATF, Censorship, Child Labor, China, CIA, Civil Rights, Cuba, Cuban Embargo, Detainees, Discrimination, DOJ, ECHELON, Education, Environment, Equal Pay, Espionage, FBI, FISA, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Speech, Hate Crimes, Healthcare, Hegemony, Homeless, Homelessness, Human Rights, Hunger, Hypocrisy, Imperialism, Internet, Labor, Military, Minorities, Murder, NSA, Oppression, Overseas Military Installations, Patriot Act, Poverty, Prisoners, Prisons, Racism, Rape, Rendition, Surveillance, Torture, Unemployment, US Human Rights Record 2009, Veterans, Walmart, Wiretapping, Women
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These torture guidelines were contained in a ream of internal government documents made public over the past year, including a legal review of Bush-era CIA interrogations by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility released late last month. Though public, the hundreds of pages of documents authorizing or later reviewing the agency’s “enhanced interrogation program” [...]
Perhaps it is time for the agencies to pool their resources and create a single entity that is responsible for all jurisdictions of the country and has the mandate to protect all critical infrastructures for all levels of government, private sector and its citizens. DHS and the FBI need to refocus on their other duties [...]
Filed in News Blurbs, Technology
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Also tagged BATF, CIA, Counterterrorism, Cyber Attacks, Cybersecurity, DARPA, DHS, DOD, FBI, FEMA, Hackers, Hacking, Intelligence, National Security, Networks, NSA, Pentagon, Robert Mueller, RSA Conference, STRATCOM, TSA
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We’ve all seen a television show or a movie about an undercover narcotics cop who become crooked. He loses the trust of his colleagues, then his family. Soon, the only contacts he has are with the world of drug dealers that he originally set out to destroy. Now picture this scenario of the criminal cop [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan, CIA, Cocaine, Colombia, Corruption, DEA, Douglas Valentine, Drug Policy, Drug Trafficking, FBI, Heroin, Informers, Intelligence, Law, Narcs, Pakistan, Phoenix Program, Terrorism, Vietnam War, War on Drugs
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
(Michael) Frisch eviscerated both the OPR report and the David Margolis memo. The key ethics inquiry, he argued, was under Rule 1.2(d)—whether Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury were actually counseling a crime. In this case, the evidence that their advice was designed to facilitate torture is clear-cut, torture is a felony, and multiple players putting a [...]
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Also tagged ABA, David Margolis, DOJ, Ethics, Felonies, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Law, Michael Frisch, OPR, Torture
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Monday, February 15, 2010
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8DSnVlGnbo[/youtube] KARL: … waterboarding, clearly, what was your… CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques that… KARL: And you opposed the administration’s actions of doing away with waterboarding? CHENEY: Yes. He just admitted being an accomplice. To date approximately 100 detainees (at minimum), including [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Caught on Tape, CIA, Detainees, Dick Cheney, Evidence, Guantanamo, Iraq War, JSOC, Military, Torture, War Crimes, Waterboarding
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Monday, February 15, 2010
There are times when governments fight to keep documents secret to protect sensitive intelligence or other vital national security interests. And there are times when they are just trying to cover up incompetence, misbehavior or lawbreaking. Last week, when a British court released secret intelligence material relating to the torture allegations of a former Guantánamo [...]
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Also tagged Barack Obama, Binyam Mohamed, CIA, Courts, Detainees, Dick Cheney, George W Bush, Guantanamo, Hillary Clinton, Intelligence, Law, MI5, Rendition, Torture, War Crimes
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Sunday, February 14, 2010
You can have any opinion you want about waterboarding, but it is a fact that it is defined as “torture” under the relevant international treaties and federal law. That is a fact. In short, it is not “torture” to critics, it is “torture” under the law. And there is no dispute that the Bush Administration [...]
Is there any hope at all that the larger players in the Bush-era criminal activities – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz most prominently – will be brought to justice when those two lesser lights (Yoo and Bybee) are allowed to return to a law school classroom and a seat on the federal [...]
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Also tagged Accountability, Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Corporatism, Corruption, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, George W Bush, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Karl Rove, Law, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Rule of Law, War Crimes, William Rivers Pitt
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDd64suDz1A[/youtube] Assassinating non-Americans is just as illegal as assassinating Americans. The leap here is not to victims of a different citizenship, but to the legalization of murder. The director of U.S. national intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee the government has the right to kill Americans abroad. Here are 10 problems with this: 1. Acts [...]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnnMgMBTp8[/youtube] You’ve heard plenty about the big banks’ role in the Great Recession, but their headaches are about to get worse. At a packed hearing today, the Senate investigations subcommittee led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) shed new light on banks’ negligence and wrongdoing—and this time it’s not credit-default swaps or derivatives but money laundering and arms [...]
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Also tagged Angola, Bailouts, Bank of America, Banking, Carl Levin, Citibank, Corporatism, Corruption, Financial Sector, Great Recession, HSBC, Lobbyists, Money Laundering, Senate, Shell Corporations
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In sum, there is clearly a bipartisan and institutional craving for a revival (more accurately: ongoing preservation) of the core premise of Bush/Cheney radicalism: that because we’re “at war” with Terrorists, our standard precepts of justice and due process do not apply and, indeed, must be violated. To relieve ourselves of guilt and of the bad [...]
In February 2004, David J. Evans, a marine biologist and photographer, was engaged as part of a team working on the Pentagon’s Legacy Program, which documents the cultural and environmental aspects of Defense Department operations. His assignment was to survey and photograph the rich array of wildlife and vegetation at Guantánamo Naval Base. After publication [...]
Thursday, January 28, 2010
After Ali’s death, some of Mohammed’s friends came to him and asked him if the death had changed his attitude toward the Americans. It hadn’t, he told them. “I honestly separate distinctly between Blackwater and the American people and the American government,” he says. “I honestly love America and the American people. What happened to [...]
Extended interview with top TARP cop, Harvard Professor, Elizabeth Warren. Shes sassy and real and tells it like it is… [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2kfAr2h5NE[/youtube]
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The FBI and telecom companies collaborated to routinely violate federal wiretapping laws for four years, as agents got access to reporters’ and citizens’ phone records using fake emergency declarations or simply asking for them. The Justice Department Inspector General’s internal audit, released Wednesday, harshly criticized how the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Communications Analysis Unit — a [...]
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Also tagged DOJ, Electronic Communications Protection Act, Espionage, FBI, Inspector General, Intelligence, Law, Phone Records, Spying, Surveillance, Telecoms, Wiretapping
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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Commission member Douglas Holtz-Eakin put his finger on another problem with these impressive sounding numbers: “While mortgage fraud was important, it is the magnitude of the financial crisis that is central,” he said. Mortgage brokers did not have the capacity to collapse the global economy. It took major banks and securities firms with the ability [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Accountability, AIG, Bailouts, Bankers, Banking, DOJ, Economy, Financial Sector, Joseph Cassano, Prosecution, Wall Street
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Still, the government has failed to hold armed contractors accountable. When its formal occupation of Iraq ended in 2004, the Bush administration demanded that Baghdad grant legal immunity to private contractors. Congress has tried to cover such crimes with American law. The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act extends civilian law to contractors supporting military operations overseas, [...]
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Also tagged Abu Ghraib, Accountability, Blackwater, Congress, Contractors, ICC, Iraq War, Law, MEJA, Mercenaries, PMCs, Privatization, UCMJ, War Crimes
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Sunday, December 13, 2009
Apart from WMD there was no other conceivable foundation for an invasion. Using force to produce regime change on humanitarian grounds is not permissible under international law, and the attorney general told Blair as much in July 2002. Nor is there any way that the security council would have authorised it later on that year [...]
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Also tagged Alberto Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, David Addington, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George W Bush, Invasion, Iraq War, John Yoo, Law, Sovereignty, War Crimes
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