When You Establish Who Cannot Be Criticized, You Have Established Who Is Your Ruler

Counterpunch |   We may not know all the details yet, but it seems fairly obvious from the amount of leaks from the Trump White House that classified information is being routinely gathered by operatives within the government itself and deliberately leaked to the media in order to inflict maximum damage on the administration. In other words, there are elements operating within the intelligence community that are using their power to incriminate a sitting president and remove him from office. Simply put, the intel agencies have ‘gone rogue’ and now pose a real and present danger to the republic itself.  And while no one really knows how much Obama knew about this massive domestic spying operation that was going on right beneath his nose, we DO know that the collection of information on private citizens greatly accelerated on his watch.  (“Circa has reported that there was a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person’s identities in intelligence reports after Obama loosened the privacy rules in 2011.”) It’s worth noting, that the ultimate goal of these massive domestic-surveillance programs is to create a lock-down society where the behavior of every citizen can be completely monitored and controlled.

Trump may be a rotten president but, in the big scheme of things, he’s just small potatoes. What we need to know is whether a shadow government –staffed by the intel agents and political meatpuppets– now controls the levers of state power, a hidden government that might be planning to oust the president or –god help us–launch a war on Russia.

The only way to get to the bottom of this is by investigating the man who appears to be at the very center of the action, John Brennan. If anyone knows how the system really works, it’s Brennan.

Left Behinds Bet Not EVER Affront the Holy Person of a Law Enforcer!!!

ericpetersautos |  Naturally, the solution to the problem of police abusing their authority is to hold them less accountable when they do exactly that.

Leave it to “law and order” Republicans such as Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Ted Poe to evolve such logic. They have put forth the Black and Blue – whoops, Back the Blue – act (see here) which would make it harder to sue run-amok law enforcers in civil court to recover damages resulting from actions undeniably illegal – while at the same time imposing more severe penalties on Mundanes who affront the holy person of a law enforcer than those imposed on Mundanes who do exactly the same thing.

As regards the first:

So long as the victim – er, perp – was “engaged in felonies or crimes of violence” (how this it to be determined in the heat of the moment remains unclear) the law enforcer administering the wood shampoo or “directory assistance” (beating administered with a phone book in between the flesh and he nightstick, to keep the bruising down) or some other such informal technique, will be immunized from subsequent civil suit by his victim, provided the abuse suffered occurred while the enforcer was acting in a “judicial capacity.”

Breathtaking.

It is obvious – or should be – that this only encourage more lawless “street justice” by the enforcers of the law. It will also encourage more generous application of the law – i.e., of bogus/trumped-up charges (such as felony “resisting”) in the immediate aftermath of an otherwise legally unjustifiable beatdown, to immunize the beaters from the legal consequences of said beatdown.

This GOP act of cop suckage is even better than a throw-away stiletto  – which dirty cops used to keep on hand to leave adjacent to the bloodied corpse of their victim, so as to justify his aeration.

That was at least illegal.

Now they won't have to bother.

What these Republican brownshirts – and that term isn’t too strong; if anything, it is too soft – propose to do is legalize objectively criminal conduct, the conduct to be justified by eructing that the victim was a “law breaker” and so – presumably – deserved to have more than the legally prescribed justice meted out to him and – critically – before he has been duly convicted of anything at all. 

Making Enemies Faster Than You Can Kill Them...,

themarshallproject |  When police officers return to work after a military deployment, they cannot be automatically required to sit for a mental health evaluation — the federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act prohibits it. Because of the Americans With Disabilities Act, police departments can’t reject a job candidate for simply having a PTSD diagnosis.

The only time most of America’s law enforcement officers, military veterans or not, are required to sit for a mental health analysis is when they first apply to join a police force, and the rigor of the screening varies widely. Fewer than half of the nation’s smallest police departments conduct pre-employment psychological testing at all, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

Many other departments offer “screenings” in name only — in some cases simply a computerized test with no face-to-face interview — says Stephen Curran, a Maryland police psychologist who has researched the transition from the military to policing.

 Where there is systematic testing of would-be police, military veterans are more likely to show signs of trauma. 

Matthew Guller, a police psychologist, is managing partner of a New Jersey firm, The Institute for Forensic Psychology, that works with about 470 law enforcement agencies across the Northeast, screening for impairment. 

Of nearly 4,000 police applicants evaluated by Guller’s firm from 2014 through October of 2016, those with military experience were failed at a rate higher than applicants who had no military history — 8.5 percent compared to 4.8 percent. 

The higher rates of trauma are exacerbated by the fact that service members suffering PTSD often aren’t diagnosed and keep quiet about their suffering. Although up to 20 percent of those deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD, only half get treated, according to a 2012 National Academy of Sciences study. Veterans are 21 percent more likely to kill themselves than adults who never enlisted, according to an August report by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 

PTSD and traumatic brain injuries have been called the “signature injuries” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts say trauma is cumulative, so the transition from one potentially violent profession, the military, into another, policing, can compound the risk. 

Officers with a history of mental health problems — even those who have been treated and are now healthy — can pose a two-fold problem for departments who hire them. First, their history can become a liability if the department is sued. Second, it can be used to attack their credibility on the stand if they’re called to testify.

Microsoft Whines About an "Urgent Collective Need" to Fix Its Stinking Isht...,

Microsoft |  This attack demonstrates the degree to which cybersecurity has become a shared responsibility between tech companies and customers. The fact that so many computers remained vulnerable two months after the release of a patch illustrates this aspect. As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, there is simply no way for customers to protect themselves against threats unless they update their systems. Otherwise they’re literally fighting the problems of the present with tools from the past. This attack is a powerful reminder that information technology basics like keeping computers current and patched are a high responsibility for everyone, and it’s something every top executive should support.

At the same time, we have a clear understanding of the complexity and diversity of today’s IT infrastructure, and how updates can be a formidable practical challenge for many customers. Today, we use robust testing and analytics to enable rapid updates into IT infrastructure, and we are dedicated to developing further steps to help ensure security updates are applied immediately to all IT environments.

Finally, this attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem. This is an emerging pattern in 2017. We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage. An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen. And this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today – nation-state action and organized criminal action.

The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up call. They need to take a different approach and adhere in cyberspace to the same rules applied to weapons in the physical world. We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits. This is one reason we called in February for a new “Digital Geneva Convention” to govern these issues, including a new requirement for governments to report vulnerabilities to vendors, rather than stockpile, sell, or exploit them. And it’s why we’ve pledged our support for defending every customer everywhere in the face of cyberattacks, regardless of their nationality. This weekend, whether it’s in London, New York, Moscow, Delhi, Sao Paulo, or Beijing, we’re putting this principle into action and working with customers around the world.

Ransomware "Attack" a Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

washingtonsblog |  What should we make of the global ransomware attacks which happened today?

We’ve documented that the intelligence services intentionally create digital vulnerabilities, then intentionally leave them open … leaving us exposed and insecure.

Washington’s Blog asked the highest level NSA whistleblower ever* – Bill Binney – what he thinks of the attacks.

Binney told us:

This is what I called short sighted finite thinking on the part of the Intelligence Community managers.
This is also what I called (for some years now) a swindle of the tax payers. First, they find or create weaknesses then they don’t fix these weaknesses so we are all vulnerable to attack.
Then, when attacks occur, they say they need more money for cyber security — a total swindle!!! [Indeed.]
This is only the second swindle of the public. The first was terror efforts by saying we need to collect everything to stop terror — another lie. They said that because to collect everything takes lots and lots of money.
Then, when the terror attack occurs, they say they need more money, people and data to stop terror. Another swindle from the start. [The war on terror is a “self-licking ice cream cone”, because it creates many more terrorists than it stops.]
And, finally, the latest swindle “THE RUSSIANS DID IT.” This is an effort to start a new cold war which means another bigger swindle of US tax payers.

For cyber security, I would suggest the president order NSA, CIA and any others to fix the cyber problems they know about; then, maybe we will start to have some cyber security.

The bottom line is that our intelligence services should start concentrating on actually defending us, rather than focusing their resources on offensive mischief.

Who is to Blame for Compromising Computers with Obsolete Operating Systems?

theduran |  A widespread computer virus attack known as ‘WannaCry’ has been compromising computers with obsolete operating systems across the world. This should be the opening sentence of just about every article on this subject, but unfortunately it is not.

The virus does not attack modern computer operating systems, it is designed to attack the Windows XP operating system that is so old, it was likely used in offices in the World Trade Center prior to September 11 2001, when the buildings collapsed. Windows XP was first released on 25 August, 2001.

Furthermore, early vulnerabilities in modern Windows systems were almost instantly patched up by Microsoft as per the fact that such operating systems are constantly updated.

The obsolete XP system is simply out of the loop.

A child born on the release date of Windows XP is now on the verge of his or her 17th birthday. Feeling old yet?

The fact of the matter is that governments and businesses around the world should not only feel old, they should feel humiliated and disgraced.

With the amount of money governments tax individuals and private entities, it is beyond belief that government organisations ranging from some computers in the Russian Interior Ministry to virtually all computers in Britain’s National Health Service, should be using an operating system so obsolete that its manufacturer, Microsoft, no longer supports it and hasn’t done for some time.

The Stigma of Systemic Racism Handed Over to "Machine Intelligence"...,

NYTimes |  When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. visited Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute last month, he was asked a startling question, one with overtones of science fiction.

“Can you foresee a day,” asked Shirley Ann Jackson, president of the college in upstate New York, “when smart machines, driven with artificial intelligences, will assist with courtroom fact-finding or, more controversially even, judicial decision-making?”

The chief justice’s answer was more surprising than the question. “It’s a day that’s here,” he said, “and it’s putting a significant strain on how the judiciary goes about doing things.”

He may have been thinking about the case of a Wisconsin man, Eric L. Loomis, who was sentenced to six years in prison based in part on a private company’s proprietary software. Mr. Loomis says his right to due process was violated by a judge’s consideration of a report generated by the software’s secret algorithm, one Mr. Loomis was unable to inspect or challenge.

In March, in a signal that the justices were intrigued by Mr. Loomis’s case, they asked the federal government to file a friend-of-the-court brief offering its views on whether the court should hear his appeal.

The report in Mr. Loomis’s case was produced by a product called Compas, sold by Northpointe Inc. It included a series of bar charts that assessed the risk that Mr. Loomis would commit more crimes.

The Compas report, a prosecutor told the trial judge, showed “a high risk of violence, high risk of recidivism, high pretrial risk.” The judge agreed, telling Mr. Loomis that “you’re identified, through the Compas assessment, as an individual who is a high risk to the community.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against Mr. Loomis. The report added valuable information, it said, and Mr. Loomis would have gotten the same sentence based solely on the usual factors, including his crime — fleeing the police in a car — and his criminal history.

At the same time, the court seemed uneasy with using a secret algorithm to send a man to prison. Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, writing for the court, discussed, for instance, a report from ProPublica about Compas that concluded that black defendants in Broward County, Fla., “were far more likely than white defendants to be incorrectly judged to be at a higher rate of recidivism.”

Did the NSA Clown and Depants the CIA?

libertyblitzkrieg |  By now, most of you have heard about the largest ever release of confidential CIA documents published by Wikileaks, known as Vault7. Many of you have also read various summaries of what was released, but reading the take of others is not the same as analyzing it yourself. As such, I strongly suggest you check out the original Wikileaks summary. It’s mostly written for the layperson without much technical expertise (like myself), and I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

In this post, I’m going to republish the entire press release, as well as provide key excerpts from the larger summary along with some personal observations. Let’s get started…

From Wikileaks:

Press Release
Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.
The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.
Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

Lovely. Just lovely.

“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.
Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency’s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA’s hacking capacities.

This leak might very well be from a competing government agency concerned about the unaccountable power and sloppiness of the CIA, or it could simply be a turf war.

Status Quo Token "Latino" Tops DNC Bowl With A Cluster of Democrat Floaters....,

freebeacon |  Labor Secretary Tom Perez, one of Hillary Clinton’s top choices for vice president, misrepresented his grandfather’s relationship to a Dominican dictator, according to a report.

Perez has lauded his grandfather, Rafael Brache, for “standing on the right side of history” against the brutal regime of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. He said that Brache was expelled for speaking out against the regime, but a new Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that Brache exited the country after years of support for the regime.

“In his comments, Mr. Perez rarely, if ever, mentions that Mr. Brache was one of the dictator’s champions during at least the first five years of his repressive three-decade regime, a fact documented in dozens of cables, letters and memos in public archives in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic,” the article states.

“In addition, Mr. Perez testified in 2013 at his Senate confirmation hearing that his grandfather ‘was declared ‘non grata’ for speaking out against the dictator following the brutal massacre of thousands of Haitians’ in 1937. But in fact, Mr. Brache had left the Dominican Republic about two years earlier, according to State Department memos and media accounts at the time.”

Memos from the State Department reveal that Trujillo was angry at Brache for his inability to get a loan. A friend of Trujillo referred to Brache as a leech.

bloomberg |  Holder’s law firm, Covington & Burling, advises Uber on safety issues, according to the company. Margaret Richardson, Holder’s former chief of staff and a Covington employee, has sat on Uber’s safety advisory board since it was formed last fall.

A spokesman for Covington said Uber “is a client of the firm” and declined to make Holder available for an interview.

There’s also another link between Holder and the ride-hailing giant: Former Obama strategist David Plouffe is now a senior adviser to the company and a member of its board. Several former White House staff members have decamped to the company since Plouffe was hired.

Holder’s letters on background checks went out to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale and Paul Sarlo, the deputy majority leader of the New Jersey Senate.  Fist tap Vic.

Ain't No "Intelligence Community" - Just a Taxpayer-Funded Intelligence Mafia

medium |  The US intelligence infrastructure is not just huge, it is colossal, a parallel societyliving among us (yes, us, wherever you live). That has been amply illustrated by the investigative journalism project Top Secret America. According to their research, there are 1200 government agencies, more than 3,666 private companies, 17,000 locations, and 854,000 people in the US that have Top Secret security clearance. Top Secret. None of the cables released by Wikileaks this week are Top Secret. Can you even imagine the amount of data here? This is what the US calls “information dominance” and a “global surveillance system”. Almost all IT and communication companies in the US are a part of the network, and they reach across the globe.

In 2007, 70% of all intelligence budgets were spent on private contractors. That was 3 years ago, and we don’t know how that has changed because all intelligence budgets are classified, but the trend since then has been a definite shift towards more private contractors. Obama likes to use the terms “american intelligence” and “american military” to play games with the truth (see “american troops pull out of Iraq”). If they are private contractors, they aren’t american intelligence, right? And there are other much more important reasons for private contractors, they are allowed to make huge donations to political parties from their billion tax dollar contracts.

Like the military contractors, the private companies also are not bound by government procedure, their contracts are classified so most of the government has no idea what they are doing, and they are private companies who do not have to disclose information to the public. They also have a classified bid system that makes corruption between private companies and politicians particularly easy. Again, like military contractors, they are not being used in secondary roles, they are used in training and in developing and operating all the high tech industries. They are paid with huge amounts of tax money, and in turn, are in a position to drastically influence governmental policies.

“Not only were private contractors involved in the extreme interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, they have taken over the training of military interrogators at the U.S. Army’s Intelligence Center in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. And in hotspots around the world, private contractors are taking the place of government operatives. In Pakistan, for example, three-quarters of the officers posted at the Islamabad CIA station since 9/11 have been private contractors. In the Baghdad CIA station, contractors have sometimes outnumbered government employees and have taken supervisory positions overseeing what CIA agents do every day.”

Best Believe: Personnel IS Policy

reddit |  Now, the transition is getting an assist from Heritage Foundation officials including Becky Norton Dunlop, a distinguished fellow at the foundation; former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, a distinguished fellow emeritus at Heritage; Heritage national security expert James Carafano; and Ed Feulner, who helped found Heritage. Rebekah Mercer, a Heritage board member and major pro-Trump donor, is on the transition team’s 16-member executive committee, and a transition team source said she is working with Heritage to recruit appointees for positions at the undersecretary level and below (though she has struggled to find people interested in taking lower-level jobs, according to a New York Times report).

The transition team also includes other prominent activists and thinkers with close ties to Heritage, such as former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the activist involved with several conservative groups who is running Trump’s domestic transition team. He has written for Heritage and has personal relationships with many at the organization.  Fist tap Dale.

Breakdown

Mike Pence, self-described "evangelical Catholic"

Chris Christie, Roman Catholic

Newt Gingrich, Roman Catholic, Council on Foreign Relations

Michael T. Flynn, Roman Catholic

Rudy Giuliani, Roman Catholic, 9/11 coadjutor, alleged Knight of Malta

Jared Kushner, fan of the Count of Monte Cristo ("Count of the Mount of Christ;" story about the Jesuit General getting revenge on all of the Order's enemies during its suppression)

Steve Bannon, chief strategist and Senior Counselor for the Presidency of Donald Trump, former executive chair of Breitbart News, Jesuit-trained from Georgetown

Lou Barletta, Roman Catholic

Chris Collins, Roman Catholic

Tom Marino, Roman Catholic

Devin Nunes, Roman Catholic

Anthony Scaramucci, Roman Catholic, Council on Foreign Relations

Eric Trump, Jesuit-trained from Georgetown and serves as board member of Georgetown's Business, Society, and Public Policy Initiative

Ivanka Trump, attended Jesuit Georgetown for two years

David Malpass, Jesuit-trained from Georgetown, Vice President of the Council for National Policy, leading appointment selections for positions involving economic issues

Keith Kellogg, trained by Jesuit at Santa Clara University, leading appointment selections for positions involving national defense issues

Michael Catanzaro, trained by Jesuits at Fordham University and St. Ignatius High School, leading the policy implementation team for energy independence

Andrew Bremberg, graduate of Catholic University of America Executive Legal Action Lead

James Carafano, Jesuit-trained from Georgetown University , reported to be the primary aide to the State Department of Trump administration transition team

Ed Feulner, Roman Catholic former President and founder of Heritage Foundation; Jesuit-trained from Regis and Georgetown Universities

Ken Blackwell, Jesuit-trained from Xavier University, leading appointment selections for positions involving domestic issues.

Boris Epshteyn, Trump's foremost spokesman; Jesuit-trained from Georgetown.

nah, just go straight to the purge...,

abcnews |  Two men are still on the loose in Chicago today after robbing and shooting a senior citizen in broad daylight as the man was watering his front lawn.

A recording of the incident caught by a neighbor's security camera shows two men riding bicycles past 71-year-old Federico LaGuardia as he watered the lawn of his Marquette Park neighborhood home police said. 

Shortly after the men pass, one of them turns around, wrestles LaGuardia to the ground and shoots him once in the abdomen after he fell to the ground. The man then rifles through LaGuardia’s pockets and takes his wallet before fleeing on his bike. 

Despite his injuries, LaGuardia was able to stagger to his neighbor’s door and call for help. He was taken to Holy Cross Hospital and then transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital where he underwent surgery. Police said he is in fair condition but remains in intensive care. 

"I heard the gunshot and I ran out here and he was, like, dazed in the street," said neighbor Lois Walker. 

This is the latest attack in Chicago's deadliest summer in two decades, and community activists and members of the public are outraged. 

"It's just absolutely ridiculous, you're not even safe in your own yard," said neighbor Teryeyah Griggs.

B'More-PD Conducts Secret, Privately-Funded, Military-Style Aerial Surveillance

bloomberg |  Since January, police have been testing an aerial surveillance system adapted from the surge in Iraq. And they neglected to tell the public. Since the beginning of the year, the Baltimore Police Department had been using the plane to investigate all sorts of crimes, from property thefts to shootings. The Cessna sometimes flew above the city for as many as 10 hours a day, and the public had no idea it was there.

A company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, based in Dayton, Ohio, provided the service to the police, and the funding came from a private donor. No public disclosure of the program had ever been made.

Outside the courthouse, several of the protesters began marching around the building, chanting for justice. The plane continued to circle overhead, unseen.

NYPD Muslim Surveillance Violated Civil Rights and Surveillance Laws

RT |  An independent police monitor found the New York Police Department violated surveillance laws, particularly when spying on Muslim groups. The report found NYPD’s intelligence division often continued surveillance after court permission for it expired. 

As far back as 2004, the NYPD failed to get permission to continue investigations of Muslims groups, the New York Inspector General said. For its investigation, the IG used a sample of all cases closed between 2010 and 2015, some of which go back to 2004.

In 25 percent of the cases, surveillance investigations continue for more than a month past the when the bureau should have obtained renewed authorization.

The report, released on Tuesday, found that more than 95 percent of the people under investigation in the cases were “associated with Muslims and/or engaged in political activity that those individuals associated with Islam.”

attacking wikileaks assange...,

thiscantbehappening |  While I periodically have written commentaries dissecting and pillorying news articles in the New York Times to expose their bias, hypocrisy half-truths and lies, I generally ignore their editorials since these are overtly opinions of the management, and one expects them to display the elitist and neo-liberal perspective of the paper’s publisher and senior editors.

That said, the August 17 editorial about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has spent four harrowing years trapped in the apartment-sized Ecuadoran embassy thanks to a trumped-up and thoroughly discredited political rape “investigation” by a politically driven Swedish prosecutor and a complicit right-wing British government, moves far beyond even the routine rampant bias and distortion of a Times editorial into misrepresentation and character assassination. As such it cries out for criticism. 

Headlined “A Break in the Assange Saga,” the editorial starts off with the flat-out lie that “Ecuador and Sweden finally agreed last week that Swedish prosecutors could question Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he has been holed up since 2012.”

The casual reader fed only corporate media stories about this case might logically assume from that lead that such an interview has been held up by a disagreement of some kind between Ecuador and Sweden. In fact, Ecuador and Assange and his attorneys have stated their willingness to allow Swedish prosecutors to come to London and interview Assange in the safety of their embassy for several years now. The prosecutor in Sweden, Marianne Nye, who has been pursuing Assange all that time like Ahab after his whale, has not only never taken up that offer, but by her refusal to go to London in all this time, demanding instead Assange’s enforced presence in Stockholm, has allowed any possible rape charges, if any were even appropriate, to pass the statute of limitations. The paper doesn’t mention this. Nor does the editorial mention that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Working Group on Arbitrary Detention last February found that Assange is effectively being held in arbitrary detention by the UK and Swedish governments, and called for his release, and for the lifting of British government threats to arrest him and extradite him if he leaves the safety of the embassy.

rise of ISIS WAS a willful Clintonian/Obamamandian imperative...,

ICH |  No one paying attention with even one eye and half an ear can be ignorant of the fact that when it comes to this year’s election the MSM are lying shills for Hillary. But now it seems they’re all suffering from amnesia too.

The latest “OMG, Trump said that!” moment is The Donald’s claim that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are, correspondingly, the “founder” and “cofounder” of ISIS. True to form, the media reaction has been to shriek in outrage that he would cast aspersions on such august personages.

As of this writing, not one American media source of which this writer is aware has brought up in relation to Trump’s claims the August 2012 report (declassified and released in 2015 under a FOIA request from Judicial Watch) from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) stating that “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.” The “supporting powers” are identified as “western countries” (no doubt including and led by the United States), “the Gulf States” (presumably including and led by Saudi Arabia), and “Turkey” (just Turkey).

In August 2012 the Secretary of State at the time was one Hillary Rodham Clinton. The President was and still is one Barack Hussein Obama.

The DIA report said, in essence, that if we (the U.S. and our local cronies) keep aiding al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other such sterling democrats, something really nasty would arise in eastern Syria. Several months later, it did, when ISIS declared itself a state straddling the Syria-Iraq border.

the FDA is stockpiling military weapons?

openthebooks |   Special Agents at the IRS equipped with AR15 military rifles?

Health and Human Services ‘Special Office of Inspector General Agents’ being trained by Army’s Special Forces contractors?

The Department of Veterans Affairs arming 3,700 employees?

KEY FINDINGS (FY2006-FY2014) – THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICA
 

• Sixty-seven non-military federal agencies spent $1.48 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment.
• Of that total amount, ‘Traditional Law Enforcement’ Agencies spent 77 percent ($1.14 billion) while ‘Administrative’ or ‘General’ Agencies spent 23 percent ($335.1 million).
• Non-military federal spending on guns and ammunition jumped 104 percent from $55 million (FY2006) to $112 million (FY2011).
• Nearly 6 percent ($42 million) of all federal guns and ammunition purchase transactions were wrongly coded. Some purchases were actually for ping-pong balls, gym equipment, bread, copiers, cotton balls, or cable television including a line item from the Coast Guard entered as "Cable Dude".
• Administrative agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Small Business Administration (SBA), Smithsonian Institution, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, United States Mint, Department of Education, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and many other agencies purchased guns, ammo, and military-style equipment.
• Since 2004, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purchased 1.7 billion bullets including 453 million hollow-point bullets. As of 1/1/2014, DHS estimated its bullet inventory-reserve at 22-months, or 160 million rounds.
• Between 1998 and 2008 (the most recent comprehensive data available) the number of law enforcement officers employed by federal agencies increased nearly 50 percent from 83,000 (1998) to 120,000 (2008). However, Department of Justice officer count increased from 40,000 (2008) to 69,000 (2013) and Department of Homeland Security officer count increased from 55,000 (2008) to 70,000 (2013).
• The Internal Revenue Service, with its 2,316 special agents, spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spent $3.1 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment. The EPA has spent $715 million on its ‘Criminal Enforcement Division’ from FY2005 to present even as the agency has come under fire for failing to perform its basic functions.
• Federal agencies spent $313,958 on paintball equipment, along with $14.7 million on Tasers, $1.6 million on unmanned aircraft, $8.2 million on buckshot, $7.44 million on projectiles, and $4 million on grenades/launchers.
• The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) spent $11.66 million including more than $200,000 on ‘night vision equipment,’ $2.3 million on ‘armor – personal,’ more than $2 million on guns, and $3.6 million on ammunition. Veterans Affairs has 3,700 law enforcement officers guarding and securing VA medical centers.
• 12. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, .308 caliber rifles, night vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote controlled helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal infrared scopes, and more.

OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – The Militarization of America, click here to download a PDF copy of our report

um.., shouldn't there be some LOTS OF orange jump suits for fraud on this epic scale?

Fortune |  Theranos’ board of directors was assembled for its government connections, not for its understanding of the company or its technology.

“With three former cabinet secretaries, two former senators, and retired military brass, it’s a board like no other.”

So begins Fortune Editor-at-Large Roger Parloff’s 2014 piece on the board of directors at Theranos, the blood-testing company that was the subject of a deeply reported story in The Wall Street Journal this morning questioning the reliability of its drug tests. Theranos disputes the story, calling it “factually and scientifically erroneous and grounded in baseless assertions by inexperienced and disgruntled former employees and industry incumbents.”

Without taking a position one way or the other, I think it’s worth noting that this “board like no other” was assembled for its regulatory and governmental connections, not for its understanding of the company or its technology. That raises significant governance issues at a moment like this one, issues that may bedevil the company in the days and months to come.

Let’s take a look at Theranos’ 12-person board (which is an 11-man team if you don’t include CEO and Chairwoman Elizabeth Holmes—interesting given her stated commitment to women in STEM). We have former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Senators Sam Nunn and Bill Frist (who, it should be noted, is a surgeon), former Navy Admiral Gary Roughead, former Marine Corps General James Mattis, and former CEOs Dick Kovacevich of Wells Fargo and Riley Bechtel of Bechtel. There is also one former epidemiologist—William Foege, and, in addition to Holmes, one current executive, Sunny Balwani, who is Theranos’ president and CEO.

It’s quite an impressive group, isn’t it? But here’s what it’s not: an appropriate board of directors for a company that is valued at $9 billion. There are no sitting chief executives at other companies—a basic tenet of board best practices.

discoveriesinhealthpolicy | "Biotech Theranos Offers a Cautionary Tale for Silicon Valley."

NPR.  All Tech Considered.  By Laura Sydell.  Here.

"Here's What Warren Buffett Thinks of Theranos and its Star Studded Board."
Finance.Yahoo.com   By Daniel Roberts.  Here.

May 4, 2016

"Everything You Need to Know About the Theranos Saga So Far."
Wired.  By Nicholas Stockton.  Here.

"FDA Looks to Clamp Down on Laboratory-Developed Tests and Put an End to ‘Wild West of Medicine’: Might CLIA Problems at Theranos Support FDA’s Position?"
Dark Daily. By Andrea Downing Peck. Here.
[Answer to the title question: Yes.]

May 5, 2016
"The Fall of Theranos and the Future of Silicon Valley."
TIME.  By Lev Grossman.  Here. 


May 9, 2016
"Bleeding Out: Theranos Oozes with Corporate Governance Lessons."
Compliance Week.  By Jaclyn Jaeger.  Here.

May 11, 2016
"Theranos Executive Sunny Balwani to Depart Amid Regulatory Probes."
WSJ.  By John Carreyou.  Here.

______

Wikipedia. Company,  Here.  Elizabeth Holmes, Here.

why most people are idiots...,

costs of slipshod research in the $billions...,

npr |  Laboratory research seeking new medical treatments and cures is fraught with pitfalls: Researchers can inadvertently use bad ingredients, design the experiment poorly, or conduct inadequate data analysis. Scientists working on ways to reduce these sorts of problems have put a staggering price tag on research that isn't easy to reproduce: $28 billion a year.

"Better training for students, postdoctoral fellows, even principal investigators is in order here."

Leonard Freedman, molecular geneticist and president of Global Biological Standards Institute

That figure, published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Biology, represents about half of all the preclinical medical research that's conducted in labs (in contrast to research on human volunteers). And the finding comes with some important caveats.

The $28 billion doesn't just represent out-and-out waste, the team that did the research cautions. It also includes some studies that produced valid results — but that couldn't be repeated by others because of the confusing way the methods were described, or because of other shortcomings.

Leonard Freedman, who heads a nonprofit called the Global Biological Standards Institute, decided to undertake the study with two Boston University economists, Iain Cockburn and Timothy Simcoe. Their goal was to identify ways to make research more efficient.

"We initially were asking a very simple question," Freeman says. "We simply wanted to know how much money is being spent each year on basic preclinical research that is not reproducible."

That turned out to be a very difficult question; only a few studies have addressed the issue head-on, and they aren't directly comparable. The economists eventually homed in on a best estimate: $28 billion per year.