Congressman Paul speaks on the floor about assassinations of Americans by their own government.
Thursday, February 25. 2010
Ron Paul on Tyranny in AmericaWednesday, February 24. 2010
Treasury Secretary Geithner and IRS Commissioner Shulman hold controlled press conference at the Joe Stack crash site in Austin
Aaron Dykes
Prison Planet | Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner made an appearance alongside IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman at the Joe Stack crash site in Austin, Texas. Their purpose was straightforward– to grandstand over an attack on a government agency and to set the scene for demonizing “anti-government beliefs.”
The event was tightly controlled. Despite Geithner’s being a public figure, and setting the location along a public roadway, real media outlets were kept away on the premise that is was a private event by “invitation” only. This meant that only trusted network news stations were welcomed through. The Treasury Department, who ran the event, placed further restrictions on media access by setting a registration deadline:
Due to security concerns surrounding the site, media wishing to attend must RSVP to Clay Sanford at 214-914-2037 by 12:00 p.m. CST.
This message was sent only to major stations. The first wave of the Infowars team showed up more than two hours early to the press conference only to be denied access and told to move to a “public viewing area” more than 100 yards away from the scene of the action. Other Infowars reporters avoided detection and found entrance. However, Geithner’s appearance was destined to be little more than a glorified photo-op. Treasury Dept. handlers prepared the press crowd for the fact that only two questions would be allowed. What’s more, the fix was already in. Event gatekeepers appeared to have selected two reporters (seen in the video) to field the only questions. Phony TV reporters can be relied on to ask only softball questions.
The reason for such control is obvious– Tim Geithner knows that everything he represents is hated by the general public, and that the less light shed on the bailout operation or his personal activities, the better. Though the public was told the bailout cost only $700 Billion, the real cost has now surpassed $23.7 Trillion (and beyond). Even Congress has been refused information about where that money has gone. Questions abound about what really happened on Wall Street during the financial crisis, and Secretary Geithner has been at the heart of it.
After the press waited for hours and the press time was moved back once, then again, the Treasury Secretary finally arrived. Geithner, Shulman and their entourage pulled up in motorcade and spent perhaps five minutes looking at the damage to the Echelon building where one IRS employee was killed. Geithner nodded as parts of the burned out building were shown to him. Finally, he approached the press for a conference that would also last only minutes.
Despite a careful attempt to plan the event and maximize its political impact, Infowarriors and real journalists everywhere cannot be stopped. Geithner and Shulman had a surprise when I blurted out a real question. “The real bailout cost is $23 Trillion…,” I started, before Geithner cut me off. “Just a minute,” he said, restarting on his canned statement of sympathy for deceased.
While Geithner spoke, Shulman showed his annoyance. Only a few feet away, the IRS Commissioner stared hatefully into my eyes. Everything was supposed to be controlled. Were there other rogue journalists? Shulman began scanning the press corp with his eyes, looking for other deviant behavior. It was like a scene in ‘They Live‘ where they realize they have ‘one that can see.’
As soon as Geithner’s brief statements were concluded, they cut quickly to the pre-arranged reporter, ignoring my repeated attempt to ask a question. The softball question put them safely back on script. A simple answer, then one more question (and a quick follow-up) to the second pre-arranged reporter. Others in the crowd started asking about the real bailout numbers as well. Someone else asked about whether holds had been placed on the banks. There were dozens of other important and intriguing questions to raise, but they would fall on deaf ears this time.
The Treasury Dept. handler whisked away Geithner and Shulman while questions were still being put forward. As quickly as they appeared, two top money men were gone back into the shadows where questions are hardly ever raised about the real looting of the country. Tim Geithner hardly ever makes press appearances, and he did little to expose himself here either.
Tim Geithner Tours Damage to Echelon Bldg. in Austin After Joe Stack’s Airplane Attack (Video by David Barrow)
Monday, February 22. 2010
California City to Charge Fee for 911 Calls
CBS13 | Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 9-1-1 for a medical emergency.But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year which allows them to call 9-1-1 as many times as necessary.
Or, there's the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead, they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.
"A $300 fee and you don't even want to be thinking about that when somebody is in need of assistance," said Tracy resident Greg Bidlack.
Residents will soon receive the form in the mail where they'll be able to make their selection. No date has been set for when the charges will go into effect.
Tuesday, February 2. 2010
CIA moonlights in corporate world
This article is adapted from the author’s forthcoming book, ‘Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage.’
By Eamons Javers
Politico | In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side – a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.
In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.
The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.
But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.
A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get permission from higher-ups within the agency.
“If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety,” CIA spokesman George Little told POLITICO.
There is much about the policy that is unclear, including how many officers have availed themselves of it, how long it has been in place and what types of outside employment have been allowed. The CIA declined to provide additional details.
Generally, federal employees across the vast government work force are allowed to moonlight in the private sector, but under tight guidelines, that can vary from agency to agency, according to the federal Office of Government Ethics.
“In general, for most nonpolitical employees, they may engage in outside employment, but there are some restrictions,” said Elaine Newton, an attorney at the Office of Government Ethics. She explained that agencies throughout the federal government set their own policies on outside employment, and that they all typically require that the employment not represent a conflict of interest with the employee’s federal job and that the employee have written approval before taking on the work.
But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.
The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.
BIA has employed active-duty CIA officers in the past, although BIA president Cheryl Cook said that has “not been the case with BIA for some time.”
But the ties between BIA and the intelligence world run deep. The name itself was chosen as a play off CIA. And the presence of so many former CIA personnel on the payroll at BIA causes confusion as to whether the intelligence firm is actually an extension of the agency itself. As a result, BIA places a disclaimer in some of its corporate materials to clarify that it is not, in fact, controlled by Langley.
BIA’s clients can put the company on a retainer for as much as $400,000 to $800,000 a year. And in return, they receive access to a variety of services, from deception detection to other programs that feature the CIA intelligence techniques.
In one presentation in 2006, BIA personnel promised to teach managers at a leading hedge fund some of the CIA’s own foolproof techniques.
The presenters that day at SAC Capital Advisors in Stamford, Conn., included two women with backgrounds in intelligence. One spent 20 years with the CIA, specializing in polygraph, interviewing, and deception detection. The other had more than 25 years of interrogation experience.
In their intensity, they reminded one person in the room of Clarice Starling, the no-nonsense FBI agent played by Jodie Foster in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs”: “You could tell they knew exactly what they were doing.”
The tactics that BIA officials such as these teach hedge fund clients are based in a program it calls “Tactical Behavior Assessment.”.
Unlike polygraph machines, the TBA technique allows examiners to work without hooking up their subject to a series of wires. The subject never knows he’s being scrutinized.
Polygraph machines work by measuring a person’s physical responses, such as heart rate, that indicate stress. Analysts using the machine need to sit with their subject for a long time. They have to establish a person’s physiological baseline, so they begin with a “control” conversation about neutral topics, before they can begin grilling the subject. Conducting an interview and doing a thorough analysis of polygraph results can take hours.
TBA focuses on the verbal and nonverbal cues that people convey when they aren’t telling the truth. Psychologists familiar with the method say it works because human beings just aren’t hard-wired to lie well. Holding two opposing ideas in your brain at the same time – as you have to do in order to tell a lie – causes a phenomenon they term “cognitive dissonance,” which creates actual physical discomfort. And when people are uncomfortable, they squirm. They fidget ever so slightly, they pick lint off their clothes, they shift their bodily positions.
Agents look for the physical indicators of lying. They watch for a person shifting anchor points. If the person is leaning forward on one elbow, does he switch to the other one? Interrogators watch for grooming gestures such as adjusting clothes, hair or eyeglasses. They look to see if the person picks at his fingernails or scratches himself. They watch for the person to clean his surroundings – does he straighten the paper clips on the table or line up the pens? If he does, he could be lying.
To obtain verbal clues, agents listen for several kinds of statements. They’ll listen for qualifying answers, phrases that begin with words like “honestly,” “frankly” or “basically.” The agents will be listening for detour phrases like “as I said before …” They’ll want to hear if the person invokes religion – “I swear to God” – or attacks the questioner: “How dare you ask me something like that?”
Other red flags: Complaints -”How long is this going to take?” Selective memory -”To the best of my knowledge.” Overly courteous responses -”Yes, sir.”
BIA doesn’t just offer training, though. For a fee, its officers do the analysis themselves.
Often, BIA deploys its CIA-trained operatives to analyze quarterly corporate-earnings calls. Those conference calls are an important Wall Street ritual that serves as a direct line from the corporate boardroom to the trading floor.
Companies use the calls to put the best spin on the events of the quarter and give investors a sense of the way ahead. Analysts for top-of-the-line investment houses use them to ask probing questions of senior management.
And BIA uses them to figure out if the company may not be disclosing the truth – all with the help of the CIA-trained analysts.
In one particular instance in August 2005, Hong Liang Lu, the chairman and CEO of a company called UTStarcom, walked through the numbers with a telephone audience of Wall Street investment bankers. With his slicked-back hair, rimless glasses and wide smile, Lu projected an image of intelligence and competence.
And as he began the call, Lu couldn’t know that it also was being patched into a room thousands of miles away where interrogators trained in CIA-style techniques would analyze each inflection in Lu’s voice. The analysts were human lie detectors, working for BIA. They were trying to find out whether Lu was telling the whole truth about UTStarcom’s financial health.
When they came to their conclusion, they’d report it to BIA’s client, an enormous hedge fund. The secret intelligence they produced would help the hedge fund decide whether to buy or sell UTStarcom stock. If the intelligence analysts did their jobs, the hedge fund would be far ahead of the rest of the market.
The information they gleaned from this phone call could be worth millions of dollars.
The company Hong Liang Lu ran sells broadband, wireless and hand-held Internet equipment and technology around the world. It had generated more than $700 million in revenue that quarter, and although it was still losing money, that performance was good enough to bring it close to profitability. The company thought the results were positive, and the CEO seemed optimistic.
Investment analysts from Bank of America, Smith Barney, Deutsche Bank and other Wall Street powerhouses were the official participants in UTStarcom’s call. The analysts prepared their best questions to help them figure out the answer to one big question: Would UTStarcom emerge as a hot stock in the third quarter?
After some opening remarks, Lu threw open the session to questions from the Wall Streeters. One of them, Mike Ounjian, a keen-eyed analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston, asked about potential problems he’d spotted with how the company’s income was being counted in the books, a process known as revenue recognition.
There seemed to be a backlog in the recording, and Ounjian wanted to know why. If the problems were serious, they could affect the company’s financial results in the next quarter and might cause the stock price to dip.
“Are there any issues related to recognizing revenues on these?” Ounjian asked.
The voice of Michael Sophie, then the company’s interim chief financial officer, came over the phone line: “Yes, with the backlog, the vast majority of the wireless backlog is clearly PAS [an acronym for one of the company's products, Personal Access System]. I think you saw the announcement at the end of June where we announced on the PAS infrastructure orders in China. And again, it’s just the timing of deployment and achieving final acceptance, we’ve also got some CDMA [an acronym for a type of mobile phone standard] to a lesser extent in the backlog. … But Q3 is clearly a little more handset-oriented than we would typically run.”
After analyzing the call, BIA’s employees supplied a 27-page confidential report to their client, and they singled out Sophie’s response to the question about revenue recognition for particular attention. They noted that Sophie qualified his response and referred back to another announcement from the end of June.
BIA called that kind of conversational reference a “detour statement,” and its analysts were convinced that Sophie was trying to minimize the delays. “Mr. Sophie avoids commenting on any issues related to revenue recognition, and his overall behavior indicates that revenue recognition problems cannot be ruled out.”
Overall, BIA’s team rated the second-quarter conference call as a “medium high level of concern”- the same rating they’d given UTStarcom’s call the quarter before. This time, though, the BIA team found more problems, which they listed in a box on the first page of their report: “Lacks Confidence,” “Underlying Concern,” “Avoids Providing Information.”
In their conclusion, the BIA team said they’d found that the executives were worried about the timing of the company’s profitability date and the issue of revenue recognition. The report says: “Management’s behavior indicates that they will post poor third-quarter results, and it is also highly unlikely they will achieve profitability in the fourth quarter.”
It might not seem like much, one take on whether the company will do well in the next six months. But to hedge-fund investors – who are looking for ways to make money off of falling stocks by selling short – that is valuable information indeed.
BIA’s client had no way of telling whether the deception analysis report was accurate or not. It was the client’s job to take the report, combine it with other information known about UTStarcom and make a bet for or against the company. And there’s no evidence that UTStarcom officials weren’t being truthful during the call.
With the benefit of hindsight, though, it’s possible to go back and check the record to find out what did happen to UTStarcom stock in the weeks after the call.
It turns out that any investor who shorted UTStarcom at the time BIA submitted its report would have been in a position to reap substantial gains.
Over the next month or so after the call of Aug. 2, UTStarcom’s stock price lost about $1 per share, a nice win for any short seller. But on Oct. 6, 2005, the company released its third-quarter results, shocking Nasdaq traders with numbers that were below the guidance executives had offered during the conference call. In October, UTStarcom said it expected total revenues of between $620 million and $640 million, compared with its previous target of $660 million to $680 million. The next morning, investors frantically sold their shares: more than 23 million transactions took place on Oct. 7, 2005.
A day after the third-quarter results were released, the stock was down roughly an additional $2, closing at $5.64. It had been at $8.54 when the BIA team listened in on the conference call in August and flagged the potential problems with revenue recognition.
And what reason did UTStarcom give for its poor third-quarter performance? It disclosed difficulties with revenue recognition.
By Eamons Javers
Politico | In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side – a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.
The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.
But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.
A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get permission from higher-ups within the agency.
“If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety,” CIA spokesman George Little told POLITICO.
There is much about the policy that is unclear, including how many officers have availed themselves of it, how long it has been in place and what types of outside employment have been allowed. The CIA declined to provide additional details.
Generally, federal employees across the vast government work force are allowed to moonlight in the private sector, but under tight guidelines, that can vary from agency to agency, according to the federal Office of Government Ethics.
“In general, for most nonpolitical employees, they may engage in outside employment, but there are some restrictions,” said Elaine Newton, an attorney at the Office of Government Ethics. She explained that agencies throughout the federal government set their own policies on outside employment, and that they all typically require that the employment not represent a conflict of interest with the employee’s federal job and that the employee have written approval before taking on the work.
But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.
The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.
BIA has employed active-duty CIA officers in the past, although BIA president Cheryl Cook said that has “not been the case with BIA for some time.”
But the ties between BIA and the intelligence world run deep. The name itself was chosen as a play off CIA. And the presence of so many former CIA personnel on the payroll at BIA causes confusion as to whether the intelligence firm is actually an extension of the agency itself. As a result, BIA places a disclaimer in some of its corporate materials to clarify that it is not, in fact, controlled by Langley.
BIA’s clients can put the company on a retainer for as much as $400,000 to $800,000 a year. And in return, they receive access to a variety of services, from deception detection to other programs that feature the CIA intelligence techniques.
In one presentation in 2006, BIA personnel promised to teach managers at a leading hedge fund some of the CIA’s own foolproof techniques.
The presenters that day at SAC Capital Advisors in Stamford, Conn., included two women with backgrounds in intelligence. One spent 20 years with the CIA, specializing in polygraph, interviewing, and deception detection. The other had more than 25 years of interrogation experience.
In their intensity, they reminded one person in the room of Clarice Starling, the no-nonsense FBI agent played by Jodie Foster in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs”: “You could tell they knew exactly what they were doing.”
The tactics that BIA officials such as these teach hedge fund clients are based in a program it calls “Tactical Behavior Assessment.”.
Unlike polygraph machines, the TBA technique allows examiners to work without hooking up their subject to a series of wires. The subject never knows he’s being scrutinized.
Polygraph machines work by measuring a person’s physical responses, such as heart rate, that indicate stress. Analysts using the machine need to sit with their subject for a long time. They have to establish a person’s physiological baseline, so they begin with a “control” conversation about neutral topics, before they can begin grilling the subject. Conducting an interview and doing a thorough analysis of polygraph results can take hours.
TBA focuses on the verbal and nonverbal cues that people convey when they aren’t telling the truth. Psychologists familiar with the method say it works because human beings just aren’t hard-wired to lie well. Holding two opposing ideas in your brain at the same time – as you have to do in order to tell a lie – causes a phenomenon they term “cognitive dissonance,” which creates actual physical discomfort. And when people are uncomfortable, they squirm. They fidget ever so slightly, they pick lint off their clothes, they shift their bodily positions.
Agents look for the physical indicators of lying. They watch for a person shifting anchor points. If the person is leaning forward on one elbow, does he switch to the other one? Interrogators watch for grooming gestures such as adjusting clothes, hair or eyeglasses. They look to see if the person picks at his fingernails or scratches himself. They watch for the person to clean his surroundings – does he straighten the paper clips on the table or line up the pens? If he does, he could be lying.
To obtain verbal clues, agents listen for several kinds of statements. They’ll listen for qualifying answers, phrases that begin with words like “honestly,” “frankly” or “basically.” The agents will be listening for detour phrases like “as I said before …” They’ll want to hear if the person invokes religion – “I swear to God” – or attacks the questioner: “How dare you ask me something like that?”
Other red flags: Complaints -”How long is this going to take?” Selective memory -”To the best of my knowledge.” Overly courteous responses -”Yes, sir.”
BIA doesn’t just offer training, though. For a fee, its officers do the analysis themselves.
Often, BIA deploys its CIA-trained operatives to analyze quarterly corporate-earnings calls. Those conference calls are an important Wall Street ritual that serves as a direct line from the corporate boardroom to the trading floor.
Companies use the calls to put the best spin on the events of the quarter and give investors a sense of the way ahead. Analysts for top-of-the-line investment houses use them to ask probing questions of senior management.
And BIA uses them to figure out if the company may not be disclosing the truth – all with the help of the CIA-trained analysts.
In one particular instance in August 2005, Hong Liang Lu, the chairman and CEO of a company called UTStarcom, walked through the numbers with a telephone audience of Wall Street investment bankers. With his slicked-back hair, rimless glasses and wide smile, Lu projected an image of intelligence and competence.
And as he began the call, Lu couldn’t know that it also was being patched into a room thousands of miles away where interrogators trained in CIA-style techniques would analyze each inflection in Lu’s voice. The analysts were human lie detectors, working for BIA. They were trying to find out whether Lu was telling the whole truth about UTStarcom’s financial health.
When they came to their conclusion, they’d report it to BIA’s client, an enormous hedge fund. The secret intelligence they produced would help the hedge fund decide whether to buy or sell UTStarcom stock. If the intelligence analysts did their jobs, the hedge fund would be far ahead of the rest of the market.
The information they gleaned from this phone call could be worth millions of dollars.
The company Hong Liang Lu ran sells broadband, wireless and hand-held Internet equipment and technology around the world. It had generated more than $700 million in revenue that quarter, and although it was still losing money, that performance was good enough to bring it close to profitability. The company thought the results were positive, and the CEO seemed optimistic.
Investment analysts from Bank of America, Smith Barney, Deutsche Bank and other Wall Street powerhouses were the official participants in UTStarcom’s call. The analysts prepared their best questions to help them figure out the answer to one big question: Would UTStarcom emerge as a hot stock in the third quarter?
After some opening remarks, Lu threw open the session to questions from the Wall Streeters. One of them, Mike Ounjian, a keen-eyed analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston, asked about potential problems he’d spotted with how the company’s income was being counted in the books, a process known as revenue recognition.
There seemed to be a backlog in the recording, and Ounjian wanted to know why. If the problems were serious, they could affect the company’s financial results in the next quarter and might cause the stock price to dip.
“Are there any issues related to recognizing revenues on these?” Ounjian asked.
The voice of Michael Sophie, then the company’s interim chief financial officer, came over the phone line: “Yes, with the backlog, the vast majority of the wireless backlog is clearly PAS [an acronym for one of the company's products, Personal Access System]. I think you saw the announcement at the end of June where we announced on the PAS infrastructure orders in China. And again, it’s just the timing of deployment and achieving final acceptance, we’ve also got some CDMA [an acronym for a type of mobile phone standard] to a lesser extent in the backlog. … But Q3 is clearly a little more handset-oriented than we would typically run.”
After analyzing the call, BIA’s employees supplied a 27-page confidential report to their client, and they singled out Sophie’s response to the question about revenue recognition for particular attention. They noted that Sophie qualified his response and referred back to another announcement from the end of June.
BIA called that kind of conversational reference a “detour statement,” and its analysts were convinced that Sophie was trying to minimize the delays. “Mr. Sophie avoids commenting on any issues related to revenue recognition, and his overall behavior indicates that revenue recognition problems cannot be ruled out.”
Overall, BIA’s team rated the second-quarter conference call as a “medium high level of concern”- the same rating they’d given UTStarcom’s call the quarter before. This time, though, the BIA team found more problems, which they listed in a box on the first page of their report: “Lacks Confidence,” “Underlying Concern,” “Avoids Providing Information.”
In their conclusion, the BIA team said they’d found that the executives were worried about the timing of the company’s profitability date and the issue of revenue recognition. The report says: “Management’s behavior indicates that they will post poor third-quarter results, and it is also highly unlikely they will achieve profitability in the fourth quarter.”
It might not seem like much, one take on whether the company will do well in the next six months. But to hedge-fund investors – who are looking for ways to make money off of falling stocks by selling short – that is valuable information indeed.
BIA’s client had no way of telling whether the deception analysis report was accurate or not. It was the client’s job to take the report, combine it with other information known about UTStarcom and make a bet for or against the company. And there’s no evidence that UTStarcom officials weren’t being truthful during the call.
With the benefit of hindsight, though, it’s possible to go back and check the record to find out what did happen to UTStarcom stock in the weeks after the call.
It turns out that any investor who shorted UTStarcom at the time BIA submitted its report would have been in a position to reap substantial gains.
Over the next month or so after the call of Aug. 2, UTStarcom’s stock price lost about $1 per share, a nice win for any short seller. But on Oct. 6, 2005, the company released its third-quarter results, shocking Nasdaq traders with numbers that were below the guidance executives had offered during the conference call. In October, UTStarcom said it expected total revenues of between $620 million and $640 million, compared with its previous target of $660 million to $680 million. The next morning, investors frantically sold their shares: more than 23 million transactions took place on Oct. 7, 2005.
A day after the third-quarter results were released, the stock was down roughly an additional $2, closing at $5.64. It had been at $8.54 when the BIA team listened in on the conference call in August and flagged the potential problems with revenue recognition.
And what reason did UTStarcom give for its poor third-quarter performance? It disclosed difficulties with revenue recognition.
Friday, January 22. 2010
US prepares Gitmo for 1000s of Haitians
U.S. Marines Staff Sgt. Clausele Barthold of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, instructs a crowd on the distribution of food and water in Leogane, Haiti, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010. Marines arrived in Leogane and in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday to supplement ongoing aid to the severely earthquake damaged country. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
About 100 tents, each capable of holding 10 people, have been erected and authorities have more than 1,000 more on hand in case waves of Haitians leave their homeland and are captured at sea, said Navy Rear Adm. Thomas Copeman.
Authorities have also has tested the latrine facilities and gathered cots and other supplies, said Copeman, the commander of the task force that runs the detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo, where the U.S. holds nearly 200 men.
The Haitian migrants would be held on the opposite side of the base as the detention center, separated by some 2 1/2 miles of water across Guantanamo Bay, and would have no contact with the prisoners.
U.S. immigration officials have said they will fast-track applications for a federal designation that will allow illegal Haitian immigrants to live and work temporarily in this country, but only if they were in the U.S. on the day of the Jan. 12 earthquake.
The U.S. base in southeastern Cuba is also being used to transport supplies and personnel to the aid effort in Haiti, about 200 miles away.
In the early 1990s, it housed tens of thousands of Haitian boat people were held at Guantanamo until they could be sent home.
Saturday, January 16. 2010
Obama’s Favorite For Supreme Court Justice Sunstein Wants To Ban Guns, Free Speech
Steve Watson
Prison Planet | Cass Sunstein, president Obama’s appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and the man who outlined a plan for the government to infiltrate “conspiracy groups” in order to undermine them, is in direct line for a promotion to Supreme Court Justice.
Sunstein, already in an advanced position of power in the White House as Regulatory czar, has already called for strict restrictions on gun ownership, an internet “Fairness Doctrine”, and an effective ban on free speech where dissenting opinions to those of the government are expressed.
Suntein’s name was on various shortlists to replace Justice David Souter last year following his retirement, and prior to the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor. Sunstein’s name was also touted for the Supreme Court before Obama even took office in November 2008.
His close personal relationship with Obama should set alarm bells ringing for anyone who values the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, particularly as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now aged 75, is likely to take retirement soon following illness, and with Justice John Paul Stevens now aged 90.
Sunstein and Obama go way back from their faculty days at the University of Chicago law school and are firm friends. Sunstein worked as an advisor to Obama during his presidential campaign and was drafted into the White House soon after Obama won the election.
As Obama’s “Information Czar”, Sunstein effectively interprets the law for the Executive. Sunstein operates in a similar, but much more elevated, role to that of former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who infamously re-interpreted the law to legally sanction torture under the Bush Administration.
As we highlighted in our article yesterday, Sunstein has outlined plans for the government to infiltrate “conspiracy groups”, including the 9/11 Truth Movement, in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as real meetings.
Sunstein has effectively penned the blueprint for a Cointelpro “provocateur” style program to silence what have become the government’s most vociferous and influential critics.
The specifics of the plans must be read in full in order to gauge their extreme nature and the threat Sunstein poses to the freedom in America.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” he proposed that “under imaginable conditions” the government “might ban conspiracy theorizing” and could “impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.”
In effect, Obama’s information czar wants to tax or ban outright, as in make illegal, opinions and ideas that the government doesn’t approve of.
Sunstein’s definition of a “conspiracy theorist” encompasses those who question manmade global warming and, most bizarrely, anyone who believes that sunlight is healthy for their bodies.
Presumably if Sunstein had been in power in the latter middle ages he would have attempted to tax and then ban the work of Galileo Galilei for subscribing to the theory that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and that it actually revolved around the Sun.
When he’s not going after those evil sunlight lovers, Sunstein advocates Internet censorship via enforced and regulated links in news pieces to opposing opinions.
Sunstein himself later retracted that proposal, explaining that it would be “too difficult to regulate [the Internet] in a way that would respond to those concerns”, and admitting that it was “almost certainly unconstitutional.”
Sunstein has also called for the re-writing of the First Amendment, and has even proposed a mandatory celebration of tax day in America.
His views on the Second Amendment have also raised serious concerns. In his book “Radicals in Robes,” he wrote: “[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine.”
Sunstein is on record attacking the Second Amendment. Watch in the following clip as he says “The Supreme Court has never suggested that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to have guns.”
Given his extreme actions and stated intentions, Cass Sunstein should be forced out of office and barred from practicing law with immediate effect. If president Obama has his way, however, we may very soon see his good buddy Sunstein elevated to the highest judicial position in the country.
Prison Planet | Cass Sunstein, president Obama’s appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and the man who outlined a plan for the government to infiltrate “conspiracy groups” in order to undermine them, is in direct line for a promotion to Supreme Court Justice.Sunstein, already in an advanced position of power in the White House as Regulatory czar, has already called for strict restrictions on gun ownership, an internet “Fairness Doctrine”, and an effective ban on free speech where dissenting opinions to those of the government are expressed.
Suntein’s name was on various shortlists to replace Justice David Souter last year following his retirement, and prior to the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor. Sunstein’s name was also touted for the Supreme Court before Obama even took office in November 2008.
His close personal relationship with Obama should set alarm bells ringing for anyone who values the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, particularly as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now aged 75, is likely to take retirement soon following illness, and with Justice John Paul Stevens now aged 90.
Sunstein and Obama go way back from their faculty days at the University of Chicago law school and are firm friends. Sunstein worked as an advisor to Obama during his presidential campaign and was drafted into the White House soon after Obama won the election.
As Obama’s “Information Czar”, Sunstein effectively interprets the law for the Executive. Sunstein operates in a similar, but much more elevated, role to that of former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who infamously re-interpreted the law to legally sanction torture under the Bush Administration.
As we highlighted in our article yesterday, Sunstein has outlined plans for the government to infiltrate “conspiracy groups”, including the 9/11 Truth Movement, in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as real meetings.
Sunstein has effectively penned the blueprint for a Cointelpro “provocateur” style program to silence what have become the government’s most vociferous and influential critics.
The specifics of the plans must be read in full in order to gauge their extreme nature and the threat Sunstein poses to the freedom in America.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” he proposed that “under imaginable conditions” the government “might ban conspiracy theorizing” and could “impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.”
In effect, Obama’s information czar wants to tax or ban outright, as in make illegal, opinions and ideas that the government doesn’t approve of.
Sunstein’s definition of a “conspiracy theorist” encompasses those who question manmade global warming and, most bizarrely, anyone who believes that sunlight is healthy for their bodies.
Presumably if Sunstein had been in power in the latter middle ages he would have attempted to tax and then ban the work of Galileo Galilei for subscribing to the theory that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and that it actually revolved around the Sun.
When he’s not going after those evil sunlight lovers, Sunstein advocates Internet censorship via enforced and regulated links in news pieces to opposing opinions.
Sunstein himself later retracted that proposal, explaining that it would be “too difficult to regulate [the Internet] in a way that would respond to those concerns”, and admitting that it was “almost certainly unconstitutional.”
Sunstein has also called for the re-writing of the First Amendment, and has even proposed a mandatory celebration of tax day in America.
His views on the Second Amendment have also raised serious concerns. In his book “Radicals in Robes,” he wrote: “[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine.”
Sunstein is on record attacking the Second Amendment. Watch in the following clip as he says “The Supreme Court has never suggested that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to have guns.”
Given his extreme actions and stated intentions, Cass Sunstein should be forced out of office and barred from practicing law with immediate effect. If president Obama has his way, however, we may very soon see his good buddy Sunstein elevated to the highest judicial position in the country.
Thursday, January 14. 2010
Obama staffer wants ‘cognitive infiltration’ of 9/11 conspiracy groups
By Daniel Tencer
Raw Story | In a 2008 academic paper, President Barack Obama's appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated "cognitive infiltration" of groups that advocate "conspiracy theories" like the ones surrounding 9/11.
Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, co-wrote an academic article entitled "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures," in which he argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine" those groups.
As head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is in charge of "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs," according to the White House Web site.
Sunstein's article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that "our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a 'crippled epistemology,' in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources."
By "crippled epistemology" Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a limited number of sources of information that they trust. Therefore, Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the conspiracy theories in public -- the very sources that conspiracy theorists believe would have to be infiltrated.
Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government "enlist nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories. It might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts."
Download a PDF of the article here.
Sunstein argued that "government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories." He suggested that "government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."
"We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI," Estrin writes at the Rag Blog, expressing surprise that "a high-level presidential advisor" would support such a strategy.
Estrin notes that Sunstein advocates in his article for the infiltration of "extremist" groups so that it undermines the groups' confidence to the extent that "new recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides."
Sunstein has been the target of numerous "conspiracy theories" himself, mostly from the right wing political echo chamber, with conservative talking heads claiming he favors enacting "a second Bill of Rights" that would do away with the Second Amendment. Sunstein's recent book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, was criticized by some on the right as "a blueprint for online censorship."
Sunstein "wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading 'rumors,'" wrote Ed Lasky at American Thinker.
Raw Story | In a 2008 academic paper, President Barack Obama's appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated "cognitive infiltration" of groups that advocate "conspiracy theories" like the ones surrounding 9/11.Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, co-wrote an academic article entitled "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures," in which he argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine" those groups.
As head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is in charge of "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs," according to the White House Web site.
Sunstein's article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that "our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a 'crippled epistemology,' in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources."
By "crippled epistemology" Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a limited number of sources of information that they trust. Therefore, Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the conspiracy theories in public -- the very sources that conspiracy theorists believe would have to be infiltrated.
Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government "enlist nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories. It might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts."
Download a PDF of the article here.
Sunstein argued that "government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories." He suggested that "government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."
"We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI," Estrin writes at the Rag Blog, expressing surprise that "a high-level presidential advisor" would support such a strategy.
Estrin notes that Sunstein advocates in his article for the infiltration of "extremist" groups so that it undermines the groups' confidence to the extent that "new recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides."
Sunstein has been the target of numerous "conspiracy theories" himself, mostly from the right wing political echo chamber, with conservative talking heads claiming he favors enacting "a second Bill of Rights" that would do away with the Second Amendment. Sunstein's recent book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, was criticized by some on the right as "a blueprint for online censorship."
Sunstein "wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading 'rumors,'" wrote Ed Lasky at American Thinker.
Wednesday, December 23. 2009
Former Bush adviser named Obama 'cyber czar'
AFP | Nearly a year after taking office, US President Barack Obama named Howard Schmidt, a former Bush administration adviser and Microsoft executive, as his cybsersecurity coordinator on Tuesday."Howard will have the important responsibility of orchestrating the many important cybersecurity activities across the government," said John Brennan, Obama's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism.
Obama's appointment of a White House "cyber czar" came 11 months after he was sworn in as president and seven months after he vowed to defend the United States against mounting espionage and hacker attacks to US government and private computer networks.
No single US agency is currently charged with ensuring government cybersecurity efforts and lawmakers had been calling for the creation of a powerful cybersecurity adviser reporting directly to the president.
Cybersecurity was subject to fierce turf battles under the previous administration between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the super-secret electronic surveillance National Security Agency (NSA).
Brennan said Schmidt "will have regular access to the president and serve as a key member of his National Security Staff.
"He will also work closely with his economic team to ensure that our cybersecurity efforts keep the nation secure and prosperous," he added in a statement.
Schmidt, a cyber adviser to former president George W. Bush, currently heads the non-profit Information Security Forum.
In his new capacity, he will report to the National Security Council at the White House, coordinating the federal government's cybsersecurity policy for both military and civilian agencies.
An Air Force and FBI veteran, Schmidt also previously served as chief security officer at software titan Microsoft and online retail giant eBay.
Citing his four decades of experience in government, business and law enforcement, Brennan called Schmidt "one of the world's leading authorities on computer security."
"Protecting the Internet is critical to our national security, public safety and our personal privacy and civil liberties," he said.
The nomination comes as the Pentagon launches a new cyber command unit and the Department of Homeland Security seeks to boost the protection of civilian networks.
In October, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced her department had received the green light to hire up to 1,000 cybersecurity experts over the next three years.
In a video message on the White House blog, Schmidt said Obama had charged him with "developing a new comprehensive strategy to secure American networks" and "ensuring an organized unified response to future cyber incidents."
In October, Obama declared the country's digital infrastructure to be a "strategic national asset" and said "protecting this infrastructure is a national security priority."
Schmidt's appointment comes as gangs of cybercriminals, foreign intelligence services -- reportedly including China and Russia -- industrial spies and hackers increasingly prey on US networks, according to various studies.
A US congressional panel warned in November 2008 that China had developed a sophisticated cyber warfare program and stepped up its capacity to penetrate US computer networks to extract sensitive information.
Mike Adams
Natural News | You've heard it before, how the pharmaceutical industry has a giant "revolving door" through which corporations and government agencies frequently exchange key employees. That reality was driven home in a huge way today when news broke that Dr. Julie Gerberding, who headed the CDC from 2002 through 2009, landed a top job with Merck, one of the largest drug companies in the world. Her job there? She's the new president of the vaccine division.
How convenient. That means the former head of the CDC was very likely cultivating a relationship with Merck all these years, and now comes the big payoff: Heading up a $5 billion division that sells cervical cancer vaccines (like Gardasil), chickenpox vaccines and of course H1N1 swine flu vaccines, too.
So what's the problem with all this? The problem is that private industry and government health offices such as the CDC or FDA should never be so cozy. When they are, it creates an environment of collusion between Big Government and Big Pharma. We've already seen this with the government-led push for swine flu vaccines that are manufactured (and sold) by drug companies like Merck.
You might even say that the CDC already functions as the marketing division of the pharmaceutical industry. It was the CDC that pushed so hard for swine flu vaccines, even amid the obvious realization that swine flu was no more dangerous than seasonal flu. To this day, the CDC still hasn't bothered to recommend vitamin D for the prevention of either seasonal flu or swine flu. It remains heavily invested in the lucrative vaccine approach -- an approach that just happens to financially benefit the very corporations that are hiring ex-CDC employees like Dr. Gerberding.
How to triple your salary by selling out to industry
Getting a job offer from Big Pharma, by the way, is one of the most-desired career paths for many CDC employees (and FDA workers, for that matter). It's easy to accomplish it, too: Just operate in your government position as if you were a Big Pharma lackey. If you produce enough good business for the drug industry, sooner or later they'll offer you a lucrative position that doubles or triples your government salary (or even better).
Read full article
Natural News | You've heard it before, how the pharmaceutical industry has a giant "revolving door" through which corporations and government agencies frequently exchange key employees. That reality was driven home in a huge way today when news broke that Dr. Julie Gerberding, who headed the CDC from 2002 through 2009, landed a top job with Merck, one of the largest drug companies in the world. Her job there? She's the new president of the vaccine division.How convenient. That means the former head of the CDC was very likely cultivating a relationship with Merck all these years, and now comes the big payoff: Heading up a $5 billion division that sells cervical cancer vaccines (like Gardasil), chickenpox vaccines and of course H1N1 swine flu vaccines, too.
So what's the problem with all this? The problem is that private industry and government health offices such as the CDC or FDA should never be so cozy. When they are, it creates an environment of collusion between Big Government and Big Pharma. We've already seen this with the government-led push for swine flu vaccines that are manufactured (and sold) by drug companies like Merck.
You might even say that the CDC already functions as the marketing division of the pharmaceutical industry. It was the CDC that pushed so hard for swine flu vaccines, even amid the obvious realization that swine flu was no more dangerous than seasonal flu. To this day, the CDC still hasn't bothered to recommend vitamin D for the prevention of either seasonal flu or swine flu. It remains heavily invested in the lucrative vaccine approach -- an approach that just happens to financially benefit the very corporations that are hiring ex-CDC employees like Dr. Gerberding.
How to triple your salary by selling out to industry
Getting a job offer from Big Pharma, by the way, is one of the most-desired career paths for many CDC employees (and FDA workers, for that matter). It's easy to accomplish it, too: Just operate in your government position as if you were a Big Pharma lackey. If you produce enough good business for the drug industry, sooner or later they'll offer you a lucrative position that doubles or triples your government salary (or even better).
Read full article
Tuesday, December 15. 2009
Prince William to share Queen's duties: Treasury document reveals secret plan to make him the 'Shadow King'
By Glen Owen
Daily Mail | The Queen is to hand over a substantial part of her public duties to Prince William to help him prepare for the day when he becomes King, according to a confidential document obtained by The Mail on Sunday.
Secret papers reveal that plans to ease the strain on the 83-year-old monarch and her 88-year-old husband, Prince Philip, are at an advanced stage.
The disclosures come despite months of denials from the Palace that the Queen was planning to step back from her official work in favour of her 27-year-old grandson.
The information is contained in a briefing note written by Chancellor Alistair Darling’s Treasury officials about new financial arrangements for Prince Charles and his sons.
Key paragraphs, disclosing the reason for the changes, are blacked out. But this newspaper has obtained an uncensored version of the document which confirms that the Queen is grooming William as a ‘Shadow King’.
One blacked-out line states that ‘the Princes [William and Harry] will increasingly incur expenditure when undertaking engagements on behalf of The Queen’.
Another censored section, stressing the key role for William, says that ‘from next year, it is expected that HRH The Prince William will spend a significant part of his time on official engagements . . . we need to put the necessary provisions in place in anticipation of that’.
The leak will add to speculation that the Queen believes William, rather than Charles, represents the best long-term interests of the monarchy, and will raise new questions about the timing of William’s long-anticipated engagement to his girlfriend Kate Middleton.
The breach of secrecy caused alarm at the Palace last night, with a senior Royal source expressing concern that the private details had been leaked in ‘unredacted’ - the official term for uncensored - form.
The reaction reflects the extreme sensitivity over the issue of the Queen’s future in public life - and how to promote Prince William without undermining the monarch or Prince Charles.
It is bound to lead to new speculation that when the Queen dies, the monarchy could skip a generation, with the Crown bypassing Charles and being handed straight to William, although Royal sources strongly discount this option.
The Treasury document was prepared for Mr Darling in the run-up to April’s Budget.
The announcement that he was granting Charles tax relief worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, by allowing him to deduct his sons’ official expenses from his tax return, was slipped out on Budget Day in a separate ministerial note and was picked up by newspapers only several days later.
The tax perk funds an office at St James’s Palace, with six members of staff, which for the past few months has been organising the affairs of Princes William and Harry. Previously, the Princes had been represented by Charles’s staff.
The briefing note, released following a Freedom of Information request, contained a third blacked-out section which showed that the entire operation to transfer duties to William was orchestrated by the Queen and Prince Charles.
It shows that the approach to the Government was made by Sir Michael Peat, Charles’s private secretary, who is also a confidant of the Queen.
Between 1996 and 2002, when he took up his position with Charles, Sir Michael was Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer to the Queen.
The redacted section states: ‘Sir Michael Peat, The Prince of Wales’ Principal Private Secretary, has written to Dave Hartnett [Permanent Secretary at HM Revenue & Customs] asking HMRC to consider amending the MoU [ Memorandum of Understanding] to recognise this expenditure [on the Princes’ office].’
The previous MoU on Royal Taxation had been agreed in 1993.
Charles currently receives £16million a year from the Duchy of Cornwall estate, which was established in 1337 to provide an income for the heir to the throne.
The disclosure comes amid growing speculation about the Queen and Prince Philip’s continued ability to carry out their punishing schedule.
Last year, she performed 400 official engagements, including two overseas tours.
Onlookers said she appeared more frail than usual during last month’s State Opening of Parliament and at the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad a week later, the couple’s only foreign trip this year.
In February, she cancelled a State visit to the Middle East because she and the Duke ‘had too much on their plate’ - the first time an overseas visit had been abandoned on workload grounds.
Significantly, William will undertake his first official overseas tour in January when he represents the Queen in New Zealand and Australia. He is also expected to attend the World Cup in South Africa.
Publicly, the Palace has denied any plans for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to scale down their responsibilities, always insisting that the pair are in ‘robust’ health - although Royal sources have let it be known that theQueen would like other family members to bear much of the burden of her duties during the Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
Enquiries direct to the Duke about his fitness have been met with a curt: ‘Do I look bloody ill?’
Last night a spokesman for Republic, which campaigns for an elected Head of State, accused Buckingham Palace and the Government of mounting a cover-up.
‘We have been misled,’ the spokesman said. ‘This shows that planning is well under way to prepare for the next succession.
'Here we have proof that the Palace is preparing William to take over the Queen’s duties.
‘The Palace operates in secrecy, doing deals behind the back of the British people to ensure a smooth transition to the next King.
‘In addition, we discover that at a time of recession, Charles is secretly lobbying for an exclusive tax break worth hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.
'The fact the Treasury attempted to cover up this lobbying shows they knew it would be scandalous if made public.’
Sidelined? The move will fuel rumours that the Queen believes William, rather than her son Charles, represents the best long-term interests of the monarchy.
Secret papers reveal that plans to ease the strain on the 83-year-old monarch and her 88-year-old husband, Prince Philip, are at an advanced stage.
The disclosures come despite months of denials from the Palace that the Queen was planning to step back from her official work in favour of her 27-year-old grandson.
The information is contained in a briefing note written by Chancellor Alistair Darling’s Treasury officials about new financial arrangements for Prince Charles and his sons.
Key paragraphs, disclosing the reason for the changes, are blacked out. But this newspaper has obtained an uncensored version of the document which confirms that the Queen is grooming William as a ‘Shadow King’.
One blacked-out line states that ‘the Princes [William and Harry] will increasingly incur expenditure when undertaking engagements on behalf of The Queen’.
Another censored section, stressing the key role for William, says that ‘from next year, it is expected that HRH The Prince William will spend a significant part of his time on official engagements . . . we need to put the necessary provisions in place in anticipation of that’.
The leak will add to speculation that the Queen believes William, rather than Charles, represents the best long-term interests of the monarchy, and will raise new questions about the timing of William’s long-anticipated engagement to his girlfriend Kate Middleton.
The breach of secrecy caused alarm at the Palace last night, with a senior Royal source expressing concern that the private details had been leaked in ‘unredacted’ - the official term for uncensored - form.
The reaction reflects the extreme sensitivity over the issue of the Queen’s future in public life - and how to promote Prince William without undermining the monarch or Prince Charles.
It is bound to lead to new speculation that when the Queen dies, the monarchy could skip a generation, with the Crown bypassing Charles and being handed straight to William, although Royal sources strongly discount this option.
The Treasury document was prepared for Mr Darling in the run-up to April’s Budget.
The announcement that he was granting Charles tax relief worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, by allowing him to deduct his sons’ official expenses from his tax return, was slipped out on Budget Day in a separate ministerial note and was picked up by newspapers only several days later.
The tax perk funds an office at St James’s Palace, with six members of staff, which for the past few months has been organising the affairs of Princes William and Harry. Previously, the Princes had been represented by Charles’s staff.
Censored: The blacked-out words in the Treasury note say 'But as Sir Michael¿s letter sets out, the Princes will increasingly incur expenditure when undertaking engagements on behalf of The Queen'.
It shows that the approach to the Government was made by Sir Michael Peat, Charles’s private secretary, who is also a confidant of the Queen.
Between 1996 and 2002, when he took up his position with Charles, Sir Michael was Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer to the Queen.
The redacted section states: ‘Sir Michael Peat, The Prince of Wales’ Principal Private Secretary, has written to Dave Hartnett [Permanent Secretary at HM Revenue & Customs] asking HMRC to consider amending the MoU [ Memorandum of Understanding] to recognise this expenditure [on the Princes’ office].’
The previous MoU on Royal Taxation had been agreed in 1993.
Charles currently receives £16million a year from the Duchy of Cornwall estate, which was established in 1337 to provide an income for the heir to the throne.
The disclosure comes amid growing speculation about the Queen and Prince Philip’s continued ability to carry out their punishing schedule.
Last year, she performed 400 official engagements, including two overseas tours.
Onlookers said she appeared more frail than usual during last month’s State Opening of Parliament and at the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad a week later, the couple’s only foreign trip this year.
In February, she cancelled a State visit to the Middle East because she and the Duke ‘had too much on their plate’ - the first time an overseas visit had been abandoned on workload grounds.
Significantly, William will undertake his first official overseas tour in January when he represents the Queen in New Zealand and Australia. He is also expected to attend the World Cup in South Africa.
Publicly, the Palace has denied any plans for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to scale down their responsibilities, always insisting that the pair are in ‘robust’ health - although Royal sources have let it be known that theQueen would like other family members to bear much of the burden of her duties during the Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
Enquiries direct to the Duke about his fitness have been met with a curt: ‘Do I look bloody ill?’
Last night a spokesman for Republic, which campaigns for an elected Head of State, accused Buckingham Palace and the Government of mounting a cover-up.
‘We have been misled,’ the spokesman said. ‘This shows that planning is well under way to prepare for the next succession.
'Here we have proof that the Palace is preparing William to take over the Queen’s duties.
‘The Palace operates in secrecy, doing deals behind the back of the British people to ensure a smooth transition to the next King.
‘In addition, we discover that at a time of recession, Charles is secretly lobbying for an exclusive tax break worth hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.
'The fact the Treasury attempted to cover up this lobbying shows they knew it would be scandalous if made public.’
By David Kravets
Wired | The United States’ quest for a national identification database associated with driver’s licenses won’t be finished by year’s end.
The deadline was Dec. 31 for the states to create what would be the largest identification database of its kind under the auspices of the Real ID program. The law also mandates uniform anti-counterfeiting standards for state driver’s licenses.
None of the states are in full compliance with the law, first adopted in 2005, requiring state motor vehicle bureaus to obtain and internally scan and store personal information like Social Security cards and birth certificates for a national database, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. About half the states oppose the mandate, or have said they would never comply.
Beginning Jan.1, the law was supposed to have blocked anybody from boarding a plane using their driver’s license as ID if their resident state did not comport with the Real ID program. But the Department of Homeland Security is set to extend, for at least a year, the deadline of the Real ID program that has raised the ire of privacy advocates.
Homeland Security officials point to the 9/11 hijackers’ ability to get driver’s licenses in Virginia using false information as justification for the proposed $24 billion program.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggest the plan is misguided, and might pave the way for requiring such IDs to vote or purchase prescription drugs.
“Our biggest concern is that it is a national ID card. It changes the relationship between the citizen and the state,” Chris Calabrese, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, said in a telephone interview. “We see it as a potential mission creep, and an individual’s rights can be curtailed because of this.”
Richard Esguerra, the EFF’s residence activist, said in a telephone interview Monday and in a recent blog post that the giant database, if it ever comes to fruition, “threatens citizens’ personal privacy without actually justifying its impact or improving security.”
Wired | The United States’ quest for a national identification database associated with driver’s licenses won’t be finished by year’s end.The deadline was Dec. 31 for the states to create what would be the largest identification database of its kind under the auspices of the Real ID program. The law also mandates uniform anti-counterfeiting standards for state driver’s licenses.
None of the states are in full compliance with the law, first adopted in 2005, requiring state motor vehicle bureaus to obtain and internally scan and store personal information like Social Security cards and birth certificates for a national database, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. About half the states oppose the mandate, or have said they would never comply.
Beginning Jan.1, the law was supposed to have blocked anybody from boarding a plane using their driver’s license as ID if their resident state did not comport with the Real ID program. But the Department of Homeland Security is set to extend, for at least a year, the deadline of the Real ID program that has raised the ire of privacy advocates.
Homeland Security officials point to the 9/11 hijackers’ ability to get driver’s licenses in Virginia using false information as justification for the proposed $24 billion program.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggest the plan is misguided, and might pave the way for requiring such IDs to vote or purchase prescription drugs.
“Our biggest concern is that it is a national ID card. It changes the relationship between the citizen and the state,” Chris Calabrese, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, said in a telephone interview. “We see it as a potential mission creep, and an individual’s rights can be curtailed because of this.”
Richard Esguerra, the EFF’s residence activist, said in a telephone interview Monday and in a recent blog post that the giant database, if it ever comes to fruition, “threatens citizens’ personal privacy without actually justifying its impact or improving security.”
By Kim Zetter
Wired | White House computer technicians have found 22 million e-mails that were believed to have been lost during President George W. Bush’s administration, according to the Associated Press.
The discovery was announced Monday by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, which filed lawsuits against the Executive Office of the President, or EOP, over the e-mails in 2007.
The two groups had initially filed a Freedom of Information Act request for e-mails in the wake of a scandal involving the Justice Department, which had fired U.S. attorneys around the country in an apparent political bid to rid the department of prosecutors who didn’t adhere to the White House’s conservative agenda. The missing e-mails were also potentially crucial to the investigation into the Valerie Plame–CIA leak scandal.
The groups eventually filed lawsuits after the EOP revealed that it had lost about 5 million e-mails from its servers between January 2003 and July 2005, because the e-mails had not been archived properly per the Presidential Records Act. Among other things, CREW sought records about the EOP’s e-mail management system, about retained and missing e-mails, and about any audit reports that might have revealed potential problems with the e-mail system.
The newly discovered e-mails were apparently mislabeled and were recently uncovered by contractors hired by the White House. The e-mails will eventually be made available to the public, after they are archived through the National Archives and Records Administration.
Wired | White House computer technicians have found 22 million e-mails that were believed to have been lost during President George W. Bush’s administration, according to the Associated Press.The discovery was announced Monday by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, which filed lawsuits against the Executive Office of the President, or EOP, over the e-mails in 2007.
The two groups had initially filed a Freedom of Information Act request for e-mails in the wake of a scandal involving the Justice Department, which had fired U.S. attorneys around the country in an apparent political bid to rid the department of prosecutors who didn’t adhere to the White House’s conservative agenda. The missing e-mails were also potentially crucial to the investigation into the Valerie Plame–CIA leak scandal.
The groups eventually filed lawsuits after the EOP revealed that it had lost about 5 million e-mails from its servers between January 2003 and July 2005, because the e-mails had not been archived properly per the Presidential Records Act. Among other things, CREW sought records about the EOP’s e-mail management system, about retained and missing e-mails, and about any audit reports that might have revealed potential problems with the e-mail system.
The newly discovered e-mails were apparently mislabeled and were recently uncovered by contractors hired by the White House. The e-mails will eventually be made available to the public, after they are archived through the National Archives and Records Administration.
Friday, December 11. 2009
Unredacted TSA Manual Posted on WikiLeaks
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars | Apparently the legal staff at the Transportation Security Administration are as clueless and inept as the guys who search you at the airport. The TSA released a manual for flight and other screening procedures and thought they had done a knock-up job on redacting certain sensitive areas.
Problem is they attempted to do this with a PDF editor and blew it big time. Instead of printing the document and marking out the areas by hand, they merely placed black boxes over the text in the editor. Call it laziness or stupidity. Either way, the boxes were easily defeated because they are not part of the document. Even a sixth grader with rudimentary knowledge of Acrobat or other PDF editors knows this.
Obviously, the factotums at the TSA need to read one of those Dummy books. It is another example of the kind of help the government hires. And these guys want to run health care?
The areas outlined in red were formerly redacted (click on the image above to download the unredacted document). No telling how long this document will remain on the WikiLeak servers.
At any rate, the document reveals a few things the feds don’t want us to know. For instance, Section 2A-2 (C) (1) (b) (iv) addresses which twelve passports will instantly get you moved to secondary screening. Other juicy details include the procedure for CIA-escorted passengers to be processed and the calibration process of airport metal detectors.
All good stuff al-Qaeda would want to know – that is if they actually existed.
Click on the above image to download the PDF.
Problem is they attempted to do this with a PDF editor and blew it big time. Instead of printing the document and marking out the areas by hand, they merely placed black boxes over the text in the editor. Call it laziness or stupidity. Either way, the boxes were easily defeated because they are not part of the document. Even a sixth grader with rudimentary knowledge of Acrobat or other PDF editors knows this.
Obviously, the factotums at the TSA need to read one of those Dummy books. It is another example of the kind of help the government hires. And these guys want to run health care?
The areas outlined in red were formerly redacted (click on the image above to download the unredacted document). No telling how long this document will remain on the WikiLeak servers.
At any rate, the document reveals a few things the feds don’t want us to know. For instance, Section 2A-2 (C) (1) (b) (iv) addresses which twelve passports will instantly get you moved to secondary screening. Other juicy details include the procedure for CIA-escorted passengers to be processed and the calibration process of airport metal detectors.
All good stuff al-Qaeda would want to know – that is if they actually existed.
Wednesday, November 18. 2009
Former Sheriff Who Operated Pirate Radio Station 90.1 that Broadcasted The Alex Jones Show In Austin Was Taken Down By The FCCTuesday, October 27. 2009
US OKs Emergency Use Of Experimental Antiviral For H1N1 Flu
By Jennifer Corbett Dooren
Dow Jones Newswires | The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is allowing the use of an experimental antiviral drug to treat severe cases of H1N1 or swine flu.
The drug, peramivir, is currently being developed by BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (BCRX) and is undergoing testing required for regular FDA approval.
The FDA issued a so-called emergency use authorization late Friday that allows doctors to use peramivir, which is delivered intravenously, in certain hospitalized adult and pediatric patients with confirmed or suspected H1N1 influenza.
A handful of doctors have already treated patients with severe cases of H1N1 using peramivir obtained through the agency's expanded access rules that allow individual patients to obtain experimental drugs if certain conditions are met. The emergency-use authorization allows use of the drug without prior FDA approval.
The FDA said there's only limited clinical data about whether peramivir is safe and effective, but "based upon the totality of scientific evidence available, it is reasonable to believe that peramivir IV may be effective in certain patients."
The company said it is completing production of approximately 130,000 courses of peramivir and is prepared to make more, if required.
The FDA said peramivir should only be used in patients who have not responded to or can't take the oral antiviral drug Tamiflu, made by Roche (ROG.VX) or Relenza, which is an inhaled drug made by GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK, GSK.LN). Like Tamiflu and Relenza, Peramivir works by inhibiting neuraminidase, an enzyme that's involved with the spread of the influenza virus within the body.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the FDA to grant peramivir emergency use to help cope with the influenza pandemic which has killed more than 1,000 people in the U.S. since April and hospitalized thousands more. The CDC will control and track distribution of peramivir to hospitals.
As of Oct. 17, 46 states were reporting "widespread" influenza activity and many doctors offices have been swamped with swine-flu patients. The CDC said more than 7% of outpatients visits in the week that ended Oct. 17 were attributed to influenza-like illnesses--a rate higher than during the peak of the last few seasonal influenza seasons. The CDC said "many millions" of Americans have been sickened with H1N1 influenza since the virus was first discovered in April.
The U.S. government has ordered enough vaccine to make up to 251 million doses if needed, but production has been slower than originally anticipated.
A total of 11.3 million doses of vaccine had been shipped to U.S. doctors, hospitals, and clinics as of Wednesday, according to the CDC, out of a total of 14.1 million doses that manufacturers had shipped to warehouses by that time. By Friday, 16.1 million doses of vaccine had been shipped to warehouses, the CDC said.
The total is far below the government's most recent estimate that by the end of this month, about 28 million to 30 million doses would be shipped to warehouses for further distribution. That estimate itself is a revision, made last week, from a prior expectation of about 40 million doses by the end of the month. In July, the government had predicted that about 100 million doses would be ready in October.
Related: Hyped Flu Will Make Use of Expiring Tamiflu Stockpiles and Allow For Pre-Pandemic Priming of The Population
Dow Jones Newswires | The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is allowing the use of an experimental antiviral drug to treat severe cases of H1N1 or swine flu.The drug, peramivir, is currently being developed by BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (BCRX) and is undergoing testing required for regular FDA approval.
The FDA issued a so-called emergency use authorization late Friday that allows doctors to use peramivir, which is delivered intravenously, in certain hospitalized adult and pediatric patients with confirmed or suspected H1N1 influenza.
A handful of doctors have already treated patients with severe cases of H1N1 using peramivir obtained through the agency's expanded access rules that allow individual patients to obtain experimental drugs if certain conditions are met. The emergency-use authorization allows use of the drug without prior FDA approval.
The FDA said there's only limited clinical data about whether peramivir is safe and effective, but "based upon the totality of scientific evidence available, it is reasonable to believe that peramivir IV may be effective in certain patients."
The company said it is completing production of approximately 130,000 courses of peramivir and is prepared to make more, if required.
The FDA said peramivir should only be used in patients who have not responded to or can't take the oral antiviral drug Tamiflu, made by Roche (ROG.VX) or Relenza, which is an inhaled drug made by GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK, GSK.LN). Like Tamiflu and Relenza, Peramivir works by inhibiting neuraminidase, an enzyme that's involved with the spread of the influenza virus within the body.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the FDA to grant peramivir emergency use to help cope with the influenza pandemic which has killed more than 1,000 people in the U.S. since April and hospitalized thousands more. The CDC will control and track distribution of peramivir to hospitals.
As of Oct. 17, 46 states were reporting "widespread" influenza activity and many doctors offices have been swamped with swine-flu patients. The CDC said more than 7% of outpatients visits in the week that ended Oct. 17 were attributed to influenza-like illnesses--a rate higher than during the peak of the last few seasonal influenza seasons. The CDC said "many millions" of Americans have been sickened with H1N1 influenza since the virus was first discovered in April.
The U.S. government has ordered enough vaccine to make up to 251 million doses if needed, but production has been slower than originally anticipated.
A total of 11.3 million doses of vaccine had been shipped to U.S. doctors, hospitals, and clinics as of Wednesday, according to the CDC, out of a total of 14.1 million doses that manufacturers had shipped to warehouses by that time. By Friday, 16.1 million doses of vaccine had been shipped to warehouses, the CDC said.
The total is far below the government's most recent estimate that by the end of this month, about 28 million to 30 million doses would be shipped to warehouses for further distribution. That estimate itself is a revision, made last week, from a prior expectation of about 40 million doses by the end of the month. In July, the government had predicted that about 100 million doses would be ready in October.
Related: Hyped Flu Will Make Use of Expiring Tamiflu Stockpiles and Allow For Pre-Pandemic Priming of The Population
Recent Comments