Category: Ethics

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Berto Jongman: Summary Book Review, National Security Investigations & Prosecutions

Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Book Review: National Security Investigations & Prosecutions, 2nd ed. (Vols. 1 & 2) by David S. Kris and J. Douglas Wilson

Published by Thomson West (2012)

Reviewed by Sara Aronchick Solow

Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 1:21 PM

David S. Kris and J. Douglas Wilson’s second edition of National Security Investigations & Prosecutions is a necessary read, or at least necessary to have in your library, for just about anyone who practices, teaches, or writes about national security law. Kris and Wilson offer what appears to be the country’s sole comprehensive treatise on the law and procedures governing national security investigations. There are at least three audiences who benefit from this work: (1) practicing attorneys in the DOJ and elsewhere in government, who can use the treatise as an operating manual of sorts; (2) law professors, who can use the treatise as a course textbook or to design curricula in national security law courses; and (3) policymakers and legislators, who can use the treatise to explore contemporary issues such as whether the government overreaches in national security investigations and prosecutions, or whether the statutory guidance provided by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and Classified Information Protection Act (CIPA) is sufficient to protect civil liberties and criminal defendants’ rights. It is a testament to Kris and Wilson’s expertise and knowledge that they have assembled a work that will simultaneously appeal and provide significant value to all three audiences.

The treatise consists of thirty three chapters that are organized in two volumes.

Read detailed review.

Phi Beta Iota:  This book has been previously published in 2007, this appears to be a substantially enlarged and updated replacement.  It is not yet listed on Amazon.

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Berto Jongman: How ICIJ’s Project Team Analyzed the Offshore Files

Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics, Media
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

How ICIJ’s Project Team Analyzed the Offshore Files

Key Findings

  • Government officials and their families and associates in Azerbaijan, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries have embraced the use of covert companies and bank accounts.
  • The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.
  • Click on Image to Enlarge
    Click on Image to Enlarge

    Many of the world’s top’s banks – including UBS, Clariden and Deutsche Bank – have aggressively worked to provide their customers with secrecy-cloaked companies in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore hideaways.

  • A well-paid industry of accountants, middlemen and other operatives has helped offshore patrons shroud their identities and business interests, providing shelter in many cases to money laundering or other misconduct.
  • Ponzi schemers and other large-scale fraudsters routinely use offshore havens to pull off their shell games and move their ill-gotten gains.

EXTRACT

The major software tools used for the Offshore Project were NUIX of Sydney, Australia, and dtSearch of Bethesda, Md.  NUIX Pty Ltd provided ICIJ with a limited number of licenses to use its fully featured high-end e-discovery software, free of charge. The listed cost for the NUIX software was higher than a non-profit organization like the ICIJ could afford, if the software had not been donated.

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John Maguire: UFO Movie Screens on 22 April — Both Controversial and Eye Opening

05 Energy, Civil Society, Ethics, Extraterrestial Intelligence
John Maguire
John Maguire

Doctor Steven Greer has been on the front-lines of the UFO-Disclosure and Free-Energy Movement for over a decade. Greer is the founder of the vaunted Disclosure Project that interviewed/documented over 200 former military personnel about their experiences with UFOs, ETs, and Exotic Technologies under oath/signed affidavit.

Later this month Greer and his team will be releasing Sirius, a crowd-funded documentary that may very well eclipse the impact of Disclosure Project. Only time will tell.

UFO documentary reveals “humanoid of unknown classification” (OpenMinds, 3 April 2013)

Sirius Theatrical Trailer – Dr. Steven Greer, UFO's, Extraterrestrials, Alternative Energy (YouTube, 2:20)

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Rickard Falkvinge: Icelandic Píratar On Final Approach To Election Victory + Pirate RECAP

Civil Society, Ethics, Government
Rickard Falkvinge
Rickard Falkvinge

Pirate Parties:  A new poll today places the Icelandic Pirate Party in parliament, with their election three weeks out. This follows a continuous and rapid ascent for the Icelandic Pirate Party. The poll will probably have the additional effect of putting the media spotlights on the party, further accelerating its growth.

The poll gives the Icelandic Píratar 5.6% of the votes, translating to four seats in the Icelandic Parliament. This growth is nothing short of phenomenal, even within the Pirate Party movement, and it would seem that the Icelandic pirates will be the first to put people in a regular, proportional, national-level parliament. (Sweden was first with the European Parliament, Germany was first with state-level parliament, and the Czech pirates were first with a senator.)

I predict that this will have the exact same effect as happened when the Swedish Pirate Party was first polling at parliamentary levels a month ahead of the European elections in 2009, and when the Berlin Pirate Party was first polling at parliamentary levels ahead of the Berlin state elections in 2011. Tons of media spotlights turn to focus on the newcomer darling, at which point support surges further. The Icelandic elections are on April 27.

Continue reading “Rickard Falkvinge: Icelandic Píratar On Final Approach To Election Victory + Pirate RECAP”

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Berto Jongman: “Little People” Give Up 130,000 Tax Cheats – Kudos to International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Media
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Offshore Leaks: Vast Web of Tax Evasion Exposed

An international network of journalists has obtained some 2.5 million records from tax havens detailing shell companies, offshore accounts and dubious financial deals. The unprecedented leaks include the names of 130,000 people who at one time or other moved their money offshore.

Oligarchs and dictators' daughters apparently have a penchant for bunkering their assets on the British Virgin Islands. Barons and composers, on the other hand, seem to prefer the Cook Islands. To cheat on taxes, they create bogus firms with imaginative names like Tantris, Moon Crystal or Sequoia.

Those are just a few details published this week on a major global system of tax evasion, which sheds new light on the methods used to deceive fiscal authorities and hide money. In what is believed to be the largest data leak in history, anonymous informants have provided an international consortium of journalists with around 2.5 million documents detailing activities in tax havens around the world.

The virtual Everest of data exposes some 120,000 letterbox entities, offshore accounts and other dubious deals in more than 170 countries, in addition to the names of 140,000 individuals alleged to have placed their money in known tax havens. The list includes politicians, celebrities, weapons dealers, oligarchs, financiers and a very diverse cast of characters. It also includes hundreds of Germans. Reporters at the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper noted that the most famous German featured on the list is society playboy Gunter Sachs, best known abroad as Brigitte Bardot's husband for a brief period in the 1960s, who committed suicide in 2011 at the age of 78.

A 15-Month Reporting Project

Read full report with examples.

ICIJ Offshore Page with MANY Stories Rooted in This Investigation

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: “Little People” Give Up 130,000 Tax Cheats – Kudos to International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”

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NIGHTWATCH: US is Escalating NK Crisis — NK Positioned to Hit Guam + RECAP

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, Ethics, Government, Military
Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

North Korea-US: Warning. Today's General Staff statement and the detection of an intermediate-range ballistic missile at an east coast site indicate the North Koreans are ready to launch a missile without additional warning. Miscalculation and misperception could lead to a missile firing.

The statement contains language in the official English translation that announces North Korea will take actual (also translated, practical) military measures to counter a list of US military deployments. It lacks the conditional language characteristic of prior statements. It also says North Korea has sent a strong message to the South Korean authorities, apparently a warning.

The detection of a single Musudan intermediate range ballistic missile at an east coast launch site, as reported by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, adds support to the statement about taking actual military countermeasures. The location of the missile on the east coast and the repeated mention of bombers from Guam provide some basis for concern that Guam could be a target. Guam is the closest US territory in range.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: US is Escalating NK Crisis — NK Positioned to Hit Guam + RECAP”

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Nick Eftimiades: New Course Intellience & National Security in the Undiscovered County

Academia, Ethics, Government
Professor Nick Eftimiades
Professor Nick Eftimiades

New King’s College Course on Intelligence and National Security

Posted by neftimiades on March 31, 2013

This is a new graduate course I will be teaching for King’s College War Studies Department beginning autumn, 2013.  The course is called Intelligence & National Security in the Undiscovered Country .  It will be a 20 credit Master’s Degree course on the future of intelligence and national security.  The course description is DRAFT.

Module Description:

Consider for a moment the words of William Shakespeare who characterized our fear of the future in Hamlet. “The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of” Hamlet tells us that it is better to suffer the ills of the day than to travel to the Undiscovered Country.  What will the future bring for intelligence and national security and are we prepared for it?

The concept of a nation state is changing.  Globalization, regional alliances, global and regional environmental and economic issues, telecommunications, changing demographics, and integrating social value systems are altering the nation state.  The idea of what it means to “defend ourselves” decades from now will be dramatically different from what it is today.  New constructs for national security necessitate new intelligence and military capabilities.  Defending a nation may become an exercise in cyber warfare, global policing functions, nation building and support, small unit combat operations, and exerting diplomatic, political, and economic influence.  As the emphasis in national security capabilities changes so too will the intelligence functions supporting them.

Continue reading “Nick Eftimiades: New Course Intellience & National Security in the Undiscovered County”