Puppet MastersS


USA

Corruption and Cronyism: Obama donors take over top embassy jobs

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People who donated to Obama's campaign get plush appointments on taxpayers' dime.
Former ambassador likens practice to 'selling of public office' as figures show average amount of cash raised is $1.8m per post

Barack Obama has rewarded some of his most active campaign donors with plum jobs in foreign embassies, with the average amount raised by recent or imminent appointees soaring to $1.8m per post, according to a Guardian analysis.

The practice is hardly a new feature of US politics, but career diplomats in Washington are increasingly alarmed at how it has grown. One former ambassador described it as the selling of public office.

On Tuesday, Obama's chief money-raiser Matthew Barzun became the latest major donor to be nominated as an ambassador, when the White House put him forward as the next representative to the Court of St James's [British ambassador], a sought-after posting whose plush residence comes with a garden second only in size to that of Buckingham Palace.

As campaign finance chairman, Barzun helped raise $700m to fund President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. More than $2.3m of this was raised personally by Barzun, pictured, according to party records leaked to the New York Times, even though he had only just finished a posting as ambassador to Sweden after contributing to Obama's first campaign.

Attention

The world is getting more corrupt, and these are the 5 worst offenders

Bribery and Corruption
© Getty/AnthonyMarslandThe world is getting more corrupt, and you won't believe who are the worst offenders.
On Tuesday, Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International released its Global Corruption Barometer 2013, a worldwide survey of 114,000 people that analyzes bribery and corruption in 107 countries.

The report found that corruption and bribery are prevalent across both developed and underdeveloped nations: More than 50 percent of respondents in the world said corruption had worsened in recent years, and 27 percent admitted to paying bribes in order to access public services and institutions.

Few respondents see an easy way out of this growing problem. The majority of people don't believe in their government's capabilities to fight corruption.

Nearly 88 percent think that their leaders are doing a poor job at it, and most blame public institutions as the main corruption sources.

Here are five of the world's most corrupt institutions, according to the survey:

Bad Guys

American police state: Murderous militarized police use SWAT teams to raid citizens homes for trivial crimes

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© Public Affairs Books/Jenna Pope
Excerpted from "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces"

Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game - but it wasn't a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit.

Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. "To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends," a friend of Culosi's told me shortly after his death. "None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the Virginia - Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation." Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And that's when they brought in the SWAT team.

Eye 1

Obama administration urges federal employees to spy on each other to avoid leaks

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© Reuters / Eduardo Munoz
President Barack Obama has asked that federal agencies launch an unprecedented campaign requiring government workers to monitor the behavior of their colleagues and report potential leakers under the threat of prosecution.

McClatchy reporters Jonathan Landay and Marisa Taylor wrote Tuesday that the "Insider Threat" program mandated by Pres. Obama utilizes methods that, while meant to identify security threats from within, actually provoke co-workers to spy on one another.

The program is unprecedented in scope and hopes to prevent future instances where government secrets are spilled. According to a new report, however, the Insider Threat initiative and the techniques utilized by the agencies involved are not proven to work.

Insider Threat was authorized in October 2011 after Army Private first class Bradley Manning sent classified intelligence to the website WikiLeaks, an action that government prosecutors argued in court this week aided al-Qaeda by indirectly providing them with secret documents.

Through the program, employees are asked to monitor the behavior of their peers, and could face hefty penalties if they fail to alert higher-ups of a potential breach.

Question

Best of the Web: Matrix: Who is Edward Snowden?

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This article is a compilation of a number of pieces I've written about Ed Snowden and the NSA. It doesn't replace them, but it hits the high points...

Let's begin here: If you absolutely must have a hero, watch Superman movies.

If your need for a hero is so great, so cloying, so heavy, so juicy that it swamps your curiosity, don't read this.

If you can't separate Snowden's minor revelations from the question of who he is, if you can't entertain the notion that covert ops and intelligence-agency games are reeking with cover stories, false trails, and limited hangouts, you need more fun in your life.

NSA? CIA? These guys live for high-level bullshit. They get down on their knees and worship it. They fall into a suicidal funk if they aren't lying on at least three or four levels at once.

Okay. Let's look at Snowden's brief history as reported by The Guardian. Are there any holes?

Is the Pope Catholic?

Eye 1

Playing the victim: BP complains of 'injustices' in oil spill claims process

BP sought the intervention of federal judges in New Orleans yesterday in the way a court-appointed administrator is assessing and approving claims for payments from a partial settlement over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, calling on them correct what it termed "irreparable injustices".

Billions of dollars of settlement payments are at stake for the oil giant, which initially estimated that it would have to pay just under $8bn (£5.4bn) to resolve claims by affected residents and business in the Gulf coast. Concerned that the final figure could far exceed its estimate, BP's lawyer attacked the process being followed by Patrick Juneau, the court-appointed administrator. "Irreparable injustices are taking place and money is being dispensed to parties from whom it may not be recoverable," Ted Olson, a former US solicitor general, said in his opening argument before a panel of three federal judges.

But a lawyer representing local businesses and residents, Samuel Issacharoff, said that BP was well aware of the terms of the settlement. "There is no order of the lower court that is capable of being reviewed by this court," he said, questioning the appeals panel's authority to amend the settlement deal.

Stormtrooper

Lawmakers call for removal of guards at mining site

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© Rob Ganson
Visitors uneasy about new security measures

Madison, Wisconsin -Two lawmakers are asking a mining company to remove armed security guards at a proposed mining site in northern Wisconsin.

In a letter to the president of the Gogebic Taconite, State Sen. Bob Jauch and state Rep. Janet Bewley call the images of the armed guards "horrifying" and say the decision to hire the security firm is appalling.

"While no one can argue that your company does not have the right to protect your private property, these armed guards serve no purpose other than to intimidate local citizens and increase local tensions,"

Photos taken by visitors to the site in the Penokee Hills show guards dressed in camouflage uniforms with masks covering most of their faces. They are also armed with rifles, and some appear to have multiple weapons.

A Gogebic Taconite spokesperson said they are employing the armed guards for the safety of their employees after drilling opponents allegedly attacked the drill site a few weeks ago.

The lawmakers question why the guards are carrying assault weapons because they don't have the legal right to use them to protect property. The letter also states that the property is open to the public and not owned by the mining company.

"Not only does this decision reflect bad judgment, it is unfortunate that you don't understand how damaging an image it creates of Northern Wisconsin. Those who live here and work here hardly want to spend their time explaining that our forests are not filled with mercenaries from third world countries."

Gogebic Taconite officials said they will keep the armed guards on duty for the foreseeable future.

USA

No military coups for America? What about November 1963?

US Flag
© Wikimedia Commons
An interesting aspect of the military coup in Egypt has been the attitude of American mainstream commentators who suggest that unlike Egypt and other countries, the chances of a military coup in the United States are virtually nil. See, for example, "America the Coupless" by Rosa Brooks and "Could a Military Coup Happen in America?" by Paul Greenberg.

Really? What about November 22, 1963?

"Oh, Jacob, don't be silly. President Kennedy's assassination couldn't have been orchestrated by the U.S. national-security state, notwithstanding the overwhelming amount of evidence pointing in that direction, because it's just inconceivable that such a thing could happen here in our country. That's just a conspiracy theory. Such things only happen in places like Egypt ... or Chile ... or Iran ... or Guatemala ... or South Vietnam and, yes, oftentimes with the support and participation of the U.S. military and the CIA, but such a thing could never happen here in our country."

Oh, really? So, what you're saying, Mr. Statist, is that if the democratically elected president of the United States is engaged in policies and actions that are leading to the nation's destruction, the U.S. national-security state apparatus - i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA - will simply stand aside and let it happen - despite the fact that the U.S. military and the CIA have supported and even participated in military coups that purportedly save foreign countries from their rulers.

Consider Chile. The Chilean people elect a communist, Salvador Allende, in a democratic election at the height of the Cold War. U.S. officials say that this cannot stand. So, President Nixon orders the CIA to foment a massive economic crisis within the country, much like the economic crisis leading up to the military coup in Egypt. "Make the economy scream" are Nixon's exact words. The CIA faithfully obeys his orders notwithstanding the fact that the Constitution does not authorize any such action. The Chilean military, with the support of the U.S. national-security state, ousts Allende in a coup and imposes brutal military rule under Army General Augusto Pinochet.

Comment: Also read Laura Knight-Jadczyk's JFK: The Debris of History series.


Bomb

Hariri blames Israel for Beirut suburb bombing

Saad Hariri
© The Daily Star/Mohammad AzakirFormer Prime Minister Saad Hariri speaks during a ceremony in Beirut, Thursday, March 31, 2011.
Beirut: Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri blamed Israel Tuesday for the "terrorist explosion" that rocked Beirut's southern suburbs and accused the country of trying to provoke Sunni-Shiite strife in Lebanon.

"[The blast] requires the highest level of awareness and vigilance in the face of dangers that surround the country and the entire region, especially while facing attempts by the Israeli enemy to push [Lebanon] to strife by organizing terrorist attacks, as happened today," Hariri said in a statement.

"After of terrible criminal scene that Beirut's southern suburbs witnessed, the Lebanese can only express indignation and condemnation of the crime that targeted one of the most populated neighborhoods," the statement said.

A car bomb explosion ripped through the Beirut's southern suburb neighborhood of Bir al-Abed, a pro-Hezbollah area, wounded dozens of people.

"As I strongly condemn the terrorist bombing that harmed innocent civilians, I ask God Almighty to bless the wounded with safety and health," Hariri said.

Hariri said that the blast should shock Lebanese "to go back to the national consensus on keeping Lebanon away from external conflicts and to avoid slipping into wars that will only inflict further divisions in the country, place national stability at risk and expose Lebanon to the conspiracies of the Israeli enemy."

Monkey Wrench

Contamination report: Unapproved GM rice found in U.S. exports to over 30 countries

GM rice
© AFP Photo
A new report has revealed that the rice supply in at least 30 countries may have already been contaminated with genetically modified strains from US exports, thereby threatening worldwide contamination.

A new report by the GM Contamination Register has disclosed US Department of Agriculture findings from 2006 and 2007, which show that the department detected traces of unapproved GM rice in over 30 countries. At the time, all of the Bayer CropScience varieties discovered had not been approved for cultivation or consumption abroad, and only one of the three types had been approved for domestic cultivation.

The USDA believes that the source of the contamination is field trials which occurred between the mid 1990s and early 2000s.The genetically modified LLRICE62, LLRice601 and LLRICE604 varieties are herbicide resistant. The trials were terminated in 2002 and none of these varieties ever made it onto the US market. But years later, traces of these strands were found worldwide.

The USDA report said the agency was unable to conclude whether pollen from the trials escaped and contaminated other fields or mechanical mixing was to blame.