TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.
Level 5 : Terror has expanded to the whole population. The leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness
with which they pursue personal or ideological goals.
Level 4 : Civil and political rights violations have expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances, and torture are a common part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those who interest themselves
in politics or ideas.
Level 3 : There is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without a trial, for political views is accepted.
Level 2 : There is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent political activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beatings are exceptional. Political murder is rare.
Level 1 : Countries under a secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned for their views, and torture is rare or exceptional. Political murders are extremely rare.
About 300 of Rite-Aid’s 4700 drug stores are starting to direct customers to what they want – wellness without dependence upon problematic and over-priced prescription drugs. But that practice has obviously upset Big Pharma. These white-coated ambassadors are allegedly pretending they are pharmacists and directing patients to diet supplements – heaven’s to Betsy!
At least that is what two US Senators allege in their letter to Rite-Aid, which has GNC nutrition centers inside many of its stores. A letter from the senators to Rite-Aid says they are concerned these ambassadors “could be making false and misleading claims by marketing dietary supplements as treatments for health conditions.”
Wait a minute – I thought the Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) gave the right to market dietary supplements as long as they strictly support health, not as cures, treatments or prevention for any disease. Drugs do not promote wellness, and few are an appropriate cure for anything.
A grave problem (the word grave being used in its true meaning) is that that DSHEA didn’t go far enough. Dietary supplements do in fact prevent, treat and cure diseases, many of them. The Food & Drug Administration mandates censorship of the truth. Doesn’t vitamin D prevent rickets, vitamin C prevent scurvy, vitamin B1 prevent beri beri, etc?
There is an investigation that has shed light on the poor medical support being provided at Ft. Lewis…….this may, in fact, be the result of sheer incompetence by the Army Medical Corps and the resultant hiding of the fact that soldiers are being blamed for the incompetence…..
What we probably have here is systemic lack of integrity among the senior Pentagon/White House Staff. The issue of mental problems at Ft. Lewis has been widely known yet we continue to send troops from there to combat zones…..a replay of the casual treatment of Walter Reed and the abuse of the amputees? Has the Army lost its mind, literally?
The village is Balandi, outside Kandahar in Afghanistan. Thus far the dead are 16, shot in their homes, not just said to be “women and children” but actually infants murdered in their mother’s arms and set afire.
The US claims the perpetrator to be an unnamed “Army Staff Sergeant who has turned himself in.” There are inconsistencies.
This is the report from Reuter’s today:
Afghan officials also gave varying accounts of the number of shooters involved. Karzai’s office released a statement quoting a villager as saying “American soldiers woke my family up and shot them in the face.”
“They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them,” Samad told Reuters at the scene.
Neighbors said they had awoken to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, who they described as laughing and drunk.
“They were all drunk and shooting all over the place,” said neighbor Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where killings took place.
“Their (the victims’) bodies were riddled with bullets.”
The village is outside the gate of an American base. A single soldier without a vehicle would have had to evade security and tunnel under the wire and walls to reach the village or, much more likely, this was more than one man?
This is how CNN has it as for the morning of the 12th. Story embellishment, as you will note involves a “bed count” and a “search patrol.” I believe the next story will include rocket flares and bloodhounds. We will wait for this one. To impart credit to the Army, their belated response is much more creative but as full of holes as a sieve. A minor thing to add here, of course, is that a Staff Sergeant, as the perpetrator or suspect, whichever you choose, “patsy” if you will, is a Staff Sergeant, rank E 6. At 3:AM, those of such rank typically do not “stand watch” on towers or in bunkers.
Then, of course, we will return to the forgotten jerrycan, taken off the nonexistent vehicle to burn the bodies of the dead. I did, however, feel a need to get this response added in so that readers in the Western Hemisphere would be better informed. Another minor error in the report below, noted in our earlier evaluation and reiterated here, above that text, is the nature of the armed response team.
A dispute has broken out between the Cato Institute, a leading libertarian think tank, and two of its longtime backers – David and Charles Koch. The institute is not the usual form of nonprofit but actually a company with shares; the Koch brothers own two of the four shares and are arguing that they have the right to acquire additional shares and thus presumably exert more control. The institute and some of its senior staff are pushing back.
According to Edward H. Crane, the president and co-founder of Cato, “This is an effort by the Kochs to turn the Cato Institute into some sort of auxiliary for the G.O.P.” Bob Levy, chairman of the Cato board, told The Washington Post: “We would take closer marching orders. That’s totally contrary to what we perceive the function of Cato be.”
Far from being just an unseemly row between prominent personalities on the right, this showdown reflects a much deeper set of concerns for American politics and society. And it raises what I regard as the central question of an important book, “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty,” by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson that will be published on March 20.
As long ago as the Gerald Ford Administration, the National Security Agency was directed to help secure non-governmental communications networks against intrusion and interception by foreign — or domestic — entities, according to a recently declassified presidential directive.
“The President is concerned about possible damage to the national security and the economy from continuing Soviet intercept of critical non-government communications, including government defense contractors and certain other key institutions in the private sector,” wrote National Security Advisor Gen. Brent Scowcroft in National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 338 of September 1, 1976.
“The President further recognizes that U.S. citizens and institutions should have a reasonable expectation of privacy from foreign or domestic intercept when using the public telephone system. The President has therefore decided that communication security should be extended to government defense contractors dealing in classified or sensitive information at the earliest possible time. He has also directed that planning be undertaken to meet the longer-term need to protect other key institutions in the private sector, and, ultimately, to provide a reasonable expectation of privacy for all users of public telecommunications.”
The directive ordered that “in confirmed threat areas,” existing communications networks involving classified information should be transitioned from microwave circuits to secure cable “as soon as possible.” A broader plan to protect non-governmental communications was also to be prepared.
“The President further directs the Director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, with the participation and assistance of DOD and NSA, to prepare a detailed Action Plan setting forth the actions and schedule milestones necessary to achieve a wide degree of protection for private sector microwave communications. The Plan should identify needed policy and regulatory decisions, describe in detail the roles of industry and government, including management and funding considerations, and integrate the schedule for these actions with the technical development milestones.”
“The Action Plan should be based on the fundamental objective of protecting the privacy of all users of public telecommunications, as well as satisfying specific needs of the government,” the directive stated.
The 1976 directive was originally marked TOP SECRET / SENSITIVE (XGDS), where XGDS stood for “exempt from general declassification schedule.” It was declassified on September 13, 2011. The document had been requested through the mandatory declassification review process by Dr. John Laprise of Northwestern University.
The directive prefigures an ongoing controversy over the proper role, and the actual extent, of National Security Agency involvement in securing public communications.
In response to a FOIA lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the NSA said (and a court affirmed) that it could “neither confirm or deny” a relationship between the Agency and Google. NSA has also refused to release the 2008 National Security Presidential Directive 54, which reportedly tasks the Agency with certain cybersecurity functions.
Phi Beta Iota: This would be an excellent case study for the retrospective court martial, conviction, and demotion by two grades in retirement (affects pension) of every NSA director since then, with special attention to those serving after the alarm was sounded again in 1994. NSA today does not have the public interest in mind and could care less about presidential directives. It exists to create millionaires among NSA senior executives jumping to sweetheart “soft landings.” NSA and the Cyber-Command are an ideal candidate for the first joint GSA-OMB deep audit of secret spending since 2001.
Level 5 : Terror has expanded to the whole population. The leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness
Level 4 : Civil and political rights violations have expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances, and torture are a common part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those who interest themselves
Level 3 : There is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without a trial, for political views is accepted.
Level 2 : There is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent political activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beatings are exceptional. Political murder is rare.
Level 1 : Countries under a secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned for their views, and torture is rare or exceptional. Political murders are extremely rare.
