Google execs convicted in Italy for Down syndrome video
MILAN (Reuters) – A Milan court convicted three Google Inc executives on Wednesday for violating the privacy of an Italian boy with Down's syndrome by letting a video of him being bullied be posted on the site in 2006.
Phi Beta Iota: The Italians made a mistake. Instead of using the video to aggressively convict the bullies of the Down's syndrome boy, they are shooting the messenger. This is just as ignorant and ill-advised as the police trying to criminalize Twitter texts and cell phone video of police brutality. The right of the people to bear witness cannot be undermined by the courts, IOHO.
Here are two excellent items on the greedy cultish institutional culture of Goldman Sachs, which has its own revolving door in and out of the Federal government.
Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm. When they have finished getting “filthy rich by 40”, as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don’t put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they “rule the world”. Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs.
Goldman and the other big Wall Street firms have already won big on this round. They will plow even more money into defeating political candidates who have opposed them – for example, on credit card legislation. The Republicans see this coming and are rubbing their hands with glee.
With their incentive structure intact – they get the upside and regular folk get the downside – and their closest friends on their way back to power, Big Finance is ready to roll into the next great global boom-bust cycle.
Phi Beta Iota: President Obama still does not get it–he was funded to keep Senator McCain out of the office, now he is going to be unfunded to put the original Republican sell-outs (Senator Phil Gamm R-TX et al) back in. What the President especially does not get is that the only way to put Goldman Sachs back in its box is to let We the People out of ours. Electoral Reform in time for November 2010 (first four elements) and then 2012 does three things: 1) assures him of a second term; 2) buries the two-party tyranny; and 3) restores honest civil reality-based give and take to our democracy.
Adequacy of Aid. Foreign Food Aid Trickles Into Haiti's Black Market (New York Times, 4 Feb 10). PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Blocks from where U.S. and U.N. soldiers distribute sacks of rice to Haitian women in earthquake-shattered Port-au-Prince, street vendors are openly selling rice by the cup from bags stamped with U.S. flags. . . . For two weeks, the World Food Program will give out only rice, deciding later whether to add other staples like beans, cooking oil and salt. Phi Beta Iota: This is nuts. We should be carpet bombing this place with ALL possible survival ratios to the point that no one has to buy anything for the next 90 days. Idiocy and lack of imagination.
Adequacy of Aid: Already Bad Health Situation in Haiti Has Gotten Worse – It’s Aftershock (Health Kut 29 Jan 10). For years Haiti has had to deal with inferior medical care and various health concerns. The earthquake that has recently impacted the country has made conditions worse for the country and is likely to end up causing a new series of medical concerns. These concerns are ones that could end up killing hundreds of thousands of people who didn’t die right after the earthquake. Phi Beta Iota: We agree with this, and forecast it within a week of the disaster that the US has now turned into a catastrophe.
Adequacy of Aid. Wickham: A short attention span won't save Haiti (Towntalk Canada, 2 Feb 10). To help Haiti recover, the U.S. has to help it rebuild Port-au-Prince, the capital city that was leveled by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake. The U.S. also has to help rebuild the country's shattered economy. “In 30 seconds Haiti lost 60 percent of its GDP,” Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said during the day-long meeting. It's estimated it will take at least 10 years and $3 billion to rebuild Haiti – and probably a lot more time and money to help shed its identity as the American hemisphere's poorest county. Phi Beta Iota: Haiti is already old news and back-burner, We’re simply not serious, if we were, USG would mandate a pooling of all donations, publish a day to day spending bill, and show planned spending for public comment 90 days out.
Director: NCTC has analyst shortage
The National Counterterrorism Center does not have enough analysts to comb through the thousands of pieces of terrorism-related information it receives every day, even though a plan to cut millions of dollars from its budget has been reversed, NCTC Director Michael Leiter told House lawmakers on Wednesday.
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Each day, the NCTC receives more than 5,000 pieces of terrorist-related information and reviews 5,000 names of suspected terrorists, Leiter said.
From Clerk to CT Boss (Bio)John Brennan Uncloaked
Phi Beta Iota: The guy in charge of NCTC is a lawyer–his greatest achievements have been as a clerk for a Justice and as a staffer for the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). Who are we kidding here? The NCTC is a monstrous travesty with 80 disconnected databases and too many contractors. NCTC needs four things: A DNI with proper authorities who can down-size any agency that does not join a SINGLE automated database ingesting at machine speed (which can have pointers to the others); a leader who actually knows something about intelligence, not a Friend of Whomevers (FoW as in Bow Wow); and the return of Paul Strassmann to unscrew what is clearly an information technology cesspool. As for John Brennan, who created this mess in the first place, he's holding forth at the White House, working for a President that has no idea that all these guys are really do not know what they are doing! So much for heads will roll–the only person being rolled is the Presiden–and the Republic he represents.
And by the way, we still think this is probably an Israeli false flag, with or without a wink and a nod from the secret side of the US Government. Where is the guy with the video camera? Remember how the Israeli's sent a video crew (well in advance) to cover 9-11? This matter has not been properly investigated, and giving a lawyer more clerks is NOT going to change the fact that US intelligence is in free-fall.
Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park.
A California school district has added a new book to the controversial list of literature that is considered unfit for young eyes. . . . It's the dictionary.
The Defense Department needs to get better at lying and fooling people about its intentions. That’s the conclusion from an influential Pentagon panel, the Defense Science Board (DSB), which recommends that the military and intelligence communities join in a new agency devoted to “strategic surprise/deception.”
The Homegrown Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland (ARI)
Lorenzo Vidino
ARI 171/2009 – 18/12/2009
EXTRACT 1: All these plots are very diverse in their origin, degree of sophistication and characteristics of the individuals involved. Yet they all contribute to paint the picture of the complex and rapidly changing reality of terrorism of Islamist inspiration in the US. Moreover, they smash or, at least, severely undermine an assumption that has been widely held by policymakers and analysts over the last 15 years. The common wisdom, in fact, has traditionally been that American Muslims, unlike their European counterparts, were virtually immune to radicalisation.
EXTRACT 2: The wave of arrests of the last months of 2009 has contributed to shedding light on a reality that is significantly more nuanced, showing that radicalisation affects some small segments of the American Muslim population exactly like it affects some fringe pockets of the Muslim population of each European country. Evidence supporting this view has been available for a long time, as the cases of American Muslims joining radical Islamist groups date back to the 1970s.[12] According to data collected by the NYU Center on Law and Security, for example, more than 500 individuals have been convicted by the American authorities for terrorism-related charges since 9/11.[13] Most of them are US citizens or long-time US residents who underwent radicalisation inside the US.
Phi Beta Iota: Recommended by Contributing Editor Berto Jongman.
