Category: Government

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Mini-Me: Wall Street is Untouchable — No One Goes to Jail

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement
Who? Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Phi Beta Iota:  Only Iceland has demonstrated the combination of intelligence and integrity to actually serve the public interest.

See Also:

Matt Taibbi: GRIFTOPIA – RECAP

THE LATEST

January 23, 2013, 6:04 pm ET · by Sarah Childress.  Lanny Breuer is leaving his position as head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. As assistant attorney … Continue reading →

Did Wall St. Get Away With It? Live Chat Wed. 2 pm ET
January 22, 2013, 10:52 pm ET · by Nathan Tobey.  Join us for a live chat on “The Untouchables” with producer Martin Smith and New York Times DealBook reporter Peter Eavis at 2pm ET on Wednesday, January 23rd. You can leave a question now.

Blowing the Whistle on the Mortgage Bubble
January 22, 2013, 9:44 pm ET · by Azmat Khan.  Well before the 2008 financial meltdown, mortgage industry insiders discovered a ticking time-bomb that they say went up to the very top of Wall Street. What did they find? Who did they warn? And what happened to their warnings?

Too Big To Jail? The Top 10 Civil Cases Against the Banks
January 22, 2013, 9:44 pm ET · by Jason M. Breslow.  In nearly every major legal case to emerge from the crisis, government prosecutors have won multi-million dollar settlements, but companies and officials have not been required to admit wrongdoing.

Were Bankers Jailed In Past Financial Crises?
January 22, 2013, 9:43 pm ET · by Jason M. Breslow.  Not one Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for fraud related to the subprime crisis. How does that compare to past downturns?

Phil Angelides: Enforcement of Wall St. is “Woefully Broken”
January 22, 2013, 9:42 pm ET.  The current system of enforcement in the financial services industry has done little to deter pervasive fraud, says the former chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Lanny Breuer: Financial Fraud Has Not Gone Unpunished
January 22, 2013, 9:42 pm ET.  Prosecutors are holding Wall Street to account for the financial crisis, but success should not be measured solely by the number of convictions to date, says the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.

Ted Kaufman: Wall Street Prosecutions Never Made a Priority
January 22, 2013, 9:41 pm ET.  The lack of high-level prosecutions from the financial crisis can be traced to the Obama administration’s ambivalence to upset the banks, the former U.S. senator told FRONTLINE.

As Deadlines Loom for Financial Crisis Cases, Prosecutors Weigh Their Options
January 22, 2013, 9:40 pm ET · For more than four years, regulators have struggled to successfully prosecute a Wall Street bank or its executives for alleged misconduct during the financial crisis. Now, time may be running out.


“Fraud Was … the F-Bomb”
January 22, 2013, 10:29 am ET · by Jason M. Breslow.  Well before the housing bubble burst, alarm bells were beginning to sound among key players in the mortgage industry: due diligence underwriters.

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Penguin: Open-Ended Global War on “Terrorism”

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude, Military, Officers Call
Who, Me?
Who, Me?

Cannot help but remember the graphic on terrorism as a boil.

Haven't We Seen This Movie Before?

The Open-Ended Global War on Terrorism

PEPE ESCOBAR

Asia Times, 23 January 2013

And the winner of the Oscar for Best Sequel of 2013 goes to… The Global War on Terror (GWOT), a Pentagon production. Abandon all hope those who thought the whole thing was over with the cinematographic snuffing out of “Geronimo”, aka Osama bin Laden, further reduced to a fleeting cameo in the torture-enabling flick Zero Dark Thirty.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

It’s now official – coming from the mouth of the lion, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, and duly posted at theAFRICOM site, the Pentagon’s weaponized African branch.

Exit “historical” al-Qaeda, holed up somewhere in the Waziristans, in the Pakistani tribal areas; enter al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). In Dempsey’s words, AQIM “is a threat not only to the country of Mali, but the region, and if… left unaddressed, could in fact become a global threat.”

With Mali now elevated to the status of a “threat” to the whole  world, GWOT is proven to be really open-ended. The Pentagon doesn’t do irony; when, in the early 2000s, armchair warriors coined the expression “The Long War”, they really meant it.

Even under President Obama 2.0′s “leading from behind” doctrine, the Pentagon is unmistakably gunning for war in Mali – and not only of the shadow variety. [1] General Carter Ham, AFRICOM’s commander, already operates under the assumption Islamists in Mali will “attack American interests”.

Thus, the first 100 US military “advisers” are being sent to Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Ghana – the six member-nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that will compose an African army tasked (by the United Nations) to reconquer (invade?) the parts of Mali under the Islamist sway of AQIM, its splinter group MUJAO and the Ansar ed-Dine militia. This African mini-army, of course, is paid for by the West.

Students of the Vietnam War will be the first to note that sending “advisers” was the first step of the subsequent quagmire. And on a definitely un-Pentagonese ironic aside, the US over these past few years did train Malian troops. A lot of them duly deserted. As for the lavishly, Fort Benning-trained Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, not only did he lead a military coup against an elected Mali government but also created the conditions for the rise of the Islamists.

Continue reading “Penguin: Open-Ended Global War on “Terrorism””

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US Jewish Leaders Apologize for USS Liberty, Promise Not to Meddle in US Foreign Policy Anymore (UPDATED with New LBJ Cover Story That Exonerates Zionists?)

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Offbeat Fun, Officers Call
Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

UPDATED 30 Jan 2013: Mini-Me: LBJ Behind USS Liberty? Re-Evaluating What Can Be Known

Jewish Leaders Meet Obama, Apologize for USS Liberty

BNN Senior Producer Karl Reich, 23 January 2013

Washington (BNN) – Leaders of several major American Jewish organizations met today with President Barack Obama and his national security team, offering abject apologies for the Israeli covert attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 Killed in Action (KIA), and 171 Wounded in Action (WIA).

For over 30 years the US Government has been a co-conspirator with Israel and its Zionist supporters in the US, whose campaign contributions to US Senators and Representatives were always accompanied by a note, “Forget about the USS Liberty — it was just business.”

The participants refused to discuss the specifics of the meeting. The groups at the hour-long session included the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Jewish Committee.

Continue reading “US Jewish Leaders Apologize for USS Liberty, Promise Not to Meddle in US Foreign Policy Anymore (UPDATED with New LBJ Cover Story That Exonerates Zionists?)”

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Hillary Clinton: Covering Up Benghazi

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton

Phi Beta Iota: Our interpretation of today's live broadcast of testimony by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

01 She was not consulted about Ambassador Rice being the point person for publicly presenting the talking points butchered by the White House.   She was allegedly in town and monitoring demonstrations in Egypt rather than the security situation in Libya.  She may actually have been in Iran.

02  She dissembless on when and how Washington knew the Benghazi attack was a full scale attack rather than a protest.

03  She dissembles on the lack of military response, drawing on Admiral Mike Mullen's nonsense about no military assets being available.  Everyone is covering up for Leon Panetta, including John McCain.

04  She dances very elegantly around the fact that Benghazi was a CIA base for which the Department of State was in no way responsible for security.

05  The precise circumstances of how a US Ambassador got into Benghaze and was left to die in a room with no ventilation have not been addressed.

Continue reading “Hillary Clinton: Covering Up Benghazi”

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Winslow Wheeler: The China Pivot and Air-Sea Battle — Institutionalized Idiocy and the Moral-Intellectual Death of Andy Marshall

Corruption, Government, Military
Winslow Wheeler
Winslow Wheeler

The Asia Pivot–with “Air-Sea Battle” deeply embedded into it–has become the accepted wisdom in Washington for America's post-Afghanistan national security strategy.  Is it affordable?  Is it competent? Is it even a strategy?

It also presents a useful test for SecDef-designate Hagel's ability to separate the wheat from the chaff regarding defense issues.  While Hagel has already shredded–to a large extent–his own reputation as someone willing to stand up to Pavlovian conventional wisdom, he will have another chance in his confirmation hearings next week to show he is not just another political hack.

National Security

Powering the Pacific “Pivot” With Leon and Chuck

By Jan. 23, 2013

It's old, and likely thoroughly forgotten now, but last summer the Washington Post ran an excellent article on the U.S. military‘s “pivot” toward Asia, its origins, and its budget implications. It presented some meaningful background on where the pivot came from, and how it so quickly became dogma in Washington as the decade-long ground wars receded in the national rear-view mirror.

Beyond that, Greg Jaffe's article last August offers a good explanation for Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta‘s hysteria about defense budget cuts, and a useful criterion to assess Panetta's nominated replacement, former Senator Chuck Hagel.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: The China Pivot and Air-Sea Battle — Institutionalized Idiocy and the Moral-Intellectual Death of Andy Marshall”

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Marcus Aurelius: Brookings 2013 Briefing Books for the President — Leans Left, Lacks Substance

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military, Non-Governmental
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

There is no “out of the box” thinking here, just dabbling on the margins.

Phi Beta Iota:  We agree with Brother Marcus.  This was a very disappointing document and not at all presidential in utility.  There is no executive summary, no bullet points, no explicatory graphics, and no budgetary perspective (means to ways to ends).  The individual memorandums are too long, too bland, and not imaginative in the least.  Especially disappointing were the two pieces directly oriented on defense, the first by Peter Singer on drones, the second by Michael O'Hanlon on achieving defense budget efficiencies on the margins.  The individual authors are first rate across the board, but the editorial function and the leadership function are both absent from this work.  Singer plays it safe and calls for the establishment of protocols on drone use, avoiding the moral disengagement and extrajudicial assassination concepts that make the CIA drone program a crime against humanity; O Hanlon simply loses his excellent mind completely, and babbles about changes on the margin.  Below the line is the complete Table of Contents for the Brookings document, and relevant alternative perspectives by Robert Steele.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Brookings 2013 Briefing Books for the President — Leans Left, Lacks Substance”

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SchwartzReport: Seven Sins of GMO Lobby — Toxicity & Infertility — True Cost of Commercialization and Corruption of Basic Science

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War

schwartz reportHere is a very sound paper on the activities of the pro-GMO lobby, and their assault on the integrity of science.

The pro-GM lobby's seven sins against science

Peter Melchett

Soil Association, 17 December 2012

The role that genetically modified (GM) food should play in our food chain is a highly contested political issues. One interesting facet of the debate in the past year has been the pro-GM lobby's interest in staking the ‘scientific high-ground'; simultaneously positioning itself as the voice of reason and progress, while painting its opponents as unsophisticated ‘anti-science' luddites, whose arguments are full of dogma and emotion, but lack scientific rigour. In this essay Peter Melchett explores how such crude characterisations are themselves based on logic that is itself profoundly damaging to the concept and representation of ‘science' in our national culture.

Powerful forces in Western society have been promoting genetic engineering (now usually genetic modification – GM) in agricultural crops since the mid-1990s. They have included many governments, in particular those of the USA and UK, powerful individual politicians like George Bush and Tony Blair, scientific bodies like the UK's Royal Society, research councils, successive UK Government chief scientists, many individual scientists, and companies selling GM products. They have ignored the views of citizens, and most sales of GM food have relied on secrecy – denying consumers information on what they are buying (20 US States are currently embroiled in fierce battles over GM labelling, strenuously opposed by Monsanto). Worse, they have consistently promoted GM in ways which are not only unscientific, but which have been positively damaging to the integrity of science.

. . . . . . . . . .

Indeed, the basic science concerning the complexities of gene organisation and function suggests that natural breeding, often augmented with the non-GM biotechnology tool of MAS, is a far more powerful and productive way forward for crop improvement. Natural breeding and MAS not only preserve gene order and function, but allow the multiple gene systems that confer desirable properties such as higher yield,1 2 3 4 5 pest-6 7 8 9 10 and blight-resistance,11 12 13 and tolerance to drought,4 14 15 16 17 salinity,4 18 and flood,4 19 20 21 to be rapidly and relatively inexpensively22 bred into crops – something which is still only a distant dream for GM crop technologists.

. . . . . . . . . .

Seven Sins (List Only Below, or Read Full Article)

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Seven Sins of GMO Lobby — Toxicity & Infertility — True Cost of Commercialization and Corruption of Basic Science”

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