Corruption – Page 618 – Public Intelligence Blog

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

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Matt Taibbi: GRIFTOPIA – RECAP

THE LATEST

Report: DOJ Criminal Chief Lanny Breuer Stepping Down

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 · by Jason M. BreslowFor 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.

2013/01/252013/01/25

Penguin: Open-Ended Global War on “Terrorism”

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

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.

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””

2013/01/24

Rickard Falkvinge: Scream Out for Integrity Lost

Communities of Practice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Abandon Integrity, All Ye that Gain Power?

Activism – Andrew “K`Tetch” Norton: If we had any doubt of the reason we need to be extra vigilant in our work, this month has provided them in spades. But there is one thing that ties everything together, and that is the matter of integrity, and accountability. Through all the issues, those that take the lead are never held to account. Often, ironically, they do these acts while trying to hold others to account, in some sort of twisted egotistical irony powertrip.

I could have posted this Friday, but I didn’t. Saturday was an option too, but I wanted to wait. Above all I felt a need to slowly think about things, before acting, or saying. Many have let their emotions speak, but while they’re good for the short-term, we need a long term look.

The past week or two has been a turbulent one for many like me. The success of the one-year anniversary since SOPA/PIPA was overshadowed by the tragic (and preventable) suicide of Aaron Swartz, and the launch of Mega on the one-year anniversary of the raid (pretty much to the minute)

Then, through it all the irony of the Martin Luther King speech about freedom, being locked down. To cap it, the one man going to be imprisoned for the waterboarding, is the one who alerted the public, and not one who conducted it.

It’s a conflicting and emotional time in many ways, as many of the issues we pirates are passionate about are hitting landmark points all in a week. And overshadowing it all is Aaron, and his tragic final decision.

I was invited on a Huffington Post Live panel Friday night to discuss some of these issues. With me was Tim Lee (ArsTechnica), Trevor Timm (EFF), and Holmes Wilson (Fight for the Future). I don’t think I did that well, but judge for yourself.

It was actually quite an interesting spread too, you had the tech press, legal, activist, and me with the political aspects. I doubt they could have got a better spread if they’d wanted.

But from the talk there, and the pre-show banter, I took away one thing. We all care about this, and we all want the situation to improve. Sure we’re all young men, but we’ve looked at the situation out there, and see massive problems. We’re all intelligent and hardworking (well, those three are, I wouldn’t say that about myself, because I know it’s not true) and could easily making a shedload of money in any private concern of our choosing. Instead we choose to do this.

Continue reading “Rickard Falkvinge: Scream Out for Integrity Lost”

2013/01/242013/01/24

Koko: Idiot Humans – Creating Mutant Viruses? Eugenics Play?

02 Infectious Disease, 07 Health, Commerce, Corruption

Deadly GM flu research that could ‘wipe out significant portion of humanity' set to restart

Flu experts overturn self-imposed ban on creating mutant firms of the H5N1 bird flu virus
They claim the risky research is needed to prepare in case it naturally mutates to human transmissible form
But leading experts condemn decision to restart research into genetically modified versions of the virus
Humans can only currently catch H5N1 from infected birds, but when they do it is usually fatal

By Damien Gayle

MailOnline, 24 January 2013

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: “Who benefits?” The “precautionary principle” is well established, and anyone who violates it generally has come combination of moral disengagement and financial corruption attendant to their decision. The “good guys club” that includes Bill Gates and Warren Buffet is known to have a eugenics agenda. Could it be that these researchers have been offered a financial incentive of such proportions as to overcome their intellectual appreciation for the risks? As with nuclear proliferation, and small arms proliferation, the weakness of human ethics is the weak link — once created, such viruses will inevitably be “leaked.” This is a good time for the public to ask: what is government doing on this issue that is or is not in the public interest?

2013/01/24

SchwartzReport: Catholic Leaders Morally Disengaged and Complicit in Sex Abuse Cover-Ups for Decades

06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption

Another Catholic Sex Abuse Cover-up
MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, Staff Writer – Salon

This story just never stops, and finally one is forced to conclude that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy (as distinct from the living community of believers) is simply degenerate and corrupt. So many thousands upon thousands of children have been molested worldwide by this organization's priesthood that I, for one, can no longer keep track of an accurate number, except that it is very large, and the damage very great. I don't understand! how a Catholic family can be comfortable leaving their child with a priest and, I guess, because Catholic families are leaving the church in droves, the families can't either.

. . . . . . . . .

What’s astonishing now, in light of a continuing deluge of new information, isn’t that the local Catholic Church administration would put protecting its own ahead of considering the nightmare it was perpetuating for the victims – that’s pretty much a given. It isn’t even the lack of reporting to authorities – after all, churches weren’t legally required to do so then as they are now. It’s the apparent total lack of empathy that had to exist to describe a relationship between a priest and a 12-year-old child in terms of ‘surrogate father but also sex partner.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a triple information pathology. The Catholic Church is enabling, concealing, and perpetuating atrocities against children. The government at multiple levels is willfully refraining from law enforcement against the Church. And finally, the media is failing to do investigative journalism.

2013/01/232013/01/23

Hillary Clinton: Covering Up Benghazi

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

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”

2013/01/232013/02/13

Stuart Umpleby: Deliberate Mis-Information is Anti-Cybernetic

Communities of Practice, Corruption, IO Impotency

Of possible interest consistent with the information pathologies threat, not my views but worthy of reflection.

Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing

A successful democracy requires well-informed citizens, but what if the information at their disposal is not accurate? Examples of misinformation are widespread and range from inflated advertising claims and political accusations to flawed scientific findings and assertions over health and medical issues. The scholar Cass Sunstein has written of the effects of “biased assimilation,” and how the echo-chamber of polarized groups is more susceptible to rumor- or conspiracy-based “information cascades.”

So how does misinformation start, how does it spread, and what can be done to counteract its effects? A 2012 metastudy from the University of Western Australia, University of Michigan, and University of Queensland published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, “Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing,” focuses on how misinformation originates and spreads, why it is difficult to correct, and how best to counteract it.

Key study findings include:

Read seven findings and see other links.

Continue reading “Stuart Umpleby: Deliberate Mis-Information is Anti-Cybernetic”

Category: Corruption

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