Category: Corruption

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Banking with “Enemies”

Commerce, Corruption, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

According to court documents, from as early as the mid-1990s until September 2006, Barclays knowingly and willfully moved or permitted to be moved hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on behalf of banks from Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma, and persons listed as parties or jurisdictions sanctioned by OFAC in violation of U.S. economic sanctions.

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Barclays Bank PLC Agrees to Forfeit $298 Million in Connection with Violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act

WASHINGTON – Barclays Bank PLC, a United Kingdom corporation headquartered in London, has agreed to forfeit $298 million to the United States and to the New York County District Attorney’s Office in connection with violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., of the New York County District Attorney’s Office. The violations relate to transactions Barclays illegally conducted on behalf of customers from Cuba, Iran, Sudan and other countries sanctioned in programs administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
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Journal: Nuclear War Against Iran…Again

05 Iran, Corruption

UPDATED 17 August 2010 to add:

NIGHTWATCH Extract:

Iran: Ali Shadmani, head of the armed forces Department of Operations, outlined three plans that Iran could carry out in the event of an act of aggression from the United States, Iranian news website Tabnak reported 17 August.

First, Shadmani said Iran would take over complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Second, he said Iran is closely monitoring U.S. military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq and would “paralyze the forces in these bases” and “not let them make any moves.”

Third, the last plan Shadmani articulated is to “destroy the peace” in Israel.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: These are a sample of Iranian options for retaliation. All are within Iran's capabilities to at least attempt.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: The illustration above is from earlier plans to destroy US ground forces in Iraq if it appeared they were being successful.  The USA still has not learned that prolonged occupations where they are not wanted costs the US much more than those who oppose the US.  It has also not learned that the one thing that unites the Arabs on covert extremism is the US-Israel “axis of evil.”  Iran is winning on all fronts because the US political-policy apparatchiks suffer from “strategic decrepitude.”  Putting a carrier in the Gulf of Hormuz is right up there with putting a battalion of Marines in a single building accessible to a suicide truck bomber.  The US confuses enemy restraint in taking away the low-hanging fruit (usually long ground supply lines and undefended rear area C4I nodes) with effective strategy.  Not so.  The picture here depicts the ROOF of the building that came down on the Marines.

Continue reading “Journal: Nuclear War Against Iran…Again”

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Journal: Spinney Sends Sense on Sinners

Corruption

Chuck Spinney Recommends

Incompetence, Corruption or Both

How the Defense Industry is Hosing Obama and the Taxpayer … Again

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

Counterpunch

Monastir, Tunisa

On 3 March 2010, CounterPunch carried my critique of the Pentagon’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which was released in February.  QDRs have a long history of producing rubbish, and President Obama’s first attempt was no exception.  Indeed, notwithstanding the expenditure of tens of thousands of man hours and over a year of preparation, Mr. Obama’s QDR set a new low for ducking the hard decisions needed to fix the real problems afflicting the military, and by extension, the taxpayers who pay the bill.  Recent events, however, show why it would be a mistake to consign the 2010 QDR to the dustbin of history.  The QDR  serves a useful purpose for the gamesters inhabiting the hall of mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac.

The players in the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) regard hogwash like that produced in the QDR as essential weapons for waging their unremitting budget war to extract money from the American people.  Sun Tzu would have recognized the QDR for what it is: a Cheng (a dazzle) to set up a Ch’i (a stroke).  When I worked in the Pentagon, we had a more prosaic name for Master Sun’s timeless principle of using a distraction to set up a decisive maneuver: The QDR is part of a cape job to set up a phony debate over the need for ever rising defense budgets while putting the rest of the government on a diet (in a recession).

FULL STORY ONLINE

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Journal: Wikileaks, the US, the UN, & The Rule of Law

08 Wild Cards, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Ethics, IO Secrets

Role of the IG

WikiLeaks to shift base to friendly Sweden

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Aug. 15 (UPI) — The founder of WikiLeaks says he will seek a publishing license for his controversial operation in Sweden where whistleblower protections are strong.

Phi Beta Iota: The Nordic nations have consistently been “smarter” and more ethical than the US and all others.  Wikileaks has made many mistakes of judgment, as our esteemed colleague Steve Aftergood of Secrecy News has noted in “Wikileaks Fails Due Diligence Review,” but it can safely be said that the US, the UN, and all others are too easily found to be in violation of the “rule of law” they claim to represent.  In our own experience, US Ambassadors spend too much time sweeping dirt under the rug and lying for their government (not their country–America the Beautiful does not want liars as Ambassadors), and the UN is an incestuous bog of little fiefdoms that “live and let live” without the ability to police the integrity of its own professionals.  Wikipeaks exists–and is gaining traction–precisely because those who object to its leaks have failed to maintain their own integrity.

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CIA Deceives Supreme Court + Former Guantanamo Detainee Running For Office in Afghanistan

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Government, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

CIA hid terrorism prisoners from US Supreme Court

August 12, 2010 by JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

The Central Intelligence Agency purposefully concealed at least four terrorism detainees from the US legal system, including the Supreme Court, according to an exclusive report by the Associated Press. The news agency has revealed that the CIA secretly transported the four to Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp on Cuba in 2003, two years before it publicly admitted their capture. It then secretly transferred them again to other sites in its black site prison network in various countries around the world, just three months before their prolonged stay at Guantánamo would entitle them to legal representation. While at Guantánamo, the four prisoners, Abd al-Nashiri, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah, were kept at a facility known as ‘Strawberry Fields’, which is detached from the main prison site at the bay. By hiding the four, the Bush Administration managed to keep them under CIA custody while denying them legal representation for two years longer than allowed by US law.

Former Guantanamo Detainee Running For Office in Afghanistan

Quil Lawrence, August 10, 2010 | wgbh.org |

Izatullah Nusrat, 42, was held at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo for nearly five years. Now he is back in Afghanistan and running for election to Parliament in the Sept. 18 election. Nusrat has harsh words for Americans, but he favors working with the current government over the Taliban and says he wants the fighting to stop.

Related:
More Lies: CIA said recordings didn't exist..9/11 interrogation tapes found under desk (Aug 17, 2010)

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Poligraft: See the Corruption Behind the News

Corruption, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
GOOD magazine article about Poligraft.com

(From GOOD magazine)

Poligraft: See the Corruption Behind the News

Andrew Price on August 10, 2010

We all know politicians take money from companies and other interest groups, but it's sometimes hard to connect those contributions to what happens (or doesn't happen) in Congress. Now, thanks to a brilliant online tool called Poligraft, you can see the webs of influence behind the news.

Poligraft lets you paste in a URL to a news story or a chunk of text. Then it digs through the names in the text, finds politicians and organizations, and shows you who's given money to whom in a sidebar. The tool was developed by the Sunlight Labs, using information from the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute for Money in State Politics.

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Video: MAD AS HELL (by the late Aaron Russo) about a Republic of Corporations, Banking, and the Dying Breed of Individual Freedom

Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Government, Media, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

This is the first video part of eleven parts on YouTube. This video (1990's) by the late Aaron Russo earned him a visit from Nicholas Rockefeller around the time Russo was running for governor of Nevada as stated in this video interview before he died in 2007. Part two reveals Russo's commentary on “totalitarianism” disguised as anti-terrorism long before 9/11 with the passage of the Clinton anti-terrorism bill in the 90's.

Continue reading “Video: MAD AS HELL (by the late Aaron Russo) about a Republic of Corporations, Banking, and the Dying Breed of Individual Freedom”