Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, former governor of the Mexican state that holds Cancun and dozens of other Caribbean beach resorts, has been extradited to New York on charges of accepting bribes from a violent drug cartel that smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine into the U.S. and then laundering the bribe money through Lehman Brothers.
Puppet Masters
© Unknown
Last week, the U.S. stock market suffered the greatest sudden drop in its history, for reasons that nobody on Wall Street can seem to decipher. But of all the explanations being examined - a tech glitch, Greek debt worries and fraud have all been discussed--the most troubling is not being given sufficient attention.
Coming on the very day that Congress considered two key financial reforms, the timing of the "flash crash" raises concerns that Wall Street is resorting to extreme tactics in its efforts to intimidate politicians who want to rein in the capital markets casino. Thursday's market plunge could have been an act of financial terrorism. Wall Street has both the motive and the means: Goldman Sachs, which is currently under investigation for a very different kind of fraud, has the trading power to make just such a market crash occur, and has much to lose from financial reforms moving through Congress.
© John Ritter
In the months before the invasion of Sicily, British spies fooled German spies with a caper inspired by a detective novel.
In the months before the invasion of Sicily, British spies fooled German spies with a caper inspired by a detective novel.
On April 30, 1943, a fisherman came across a badly decomposed corpse floating in the water off the coast of Huelva, in southwestern Spain. The body was of an adult male dressed in a trenchcoat, a uniform, and boots, with a black attaché case chained to his waist. His wallet identified him as Major William Martin, of the Royal Marines. The Spanish authorities called in the local British vice-consul, Francis Haselden, and in his presence opened the attaché case, revealing an official-looking military envelope. The Spaniards offered the case and its contents to Haselden. But Haselden declined, requesting that the handover go through formal channels - an odd decision, in retrospect, since, in the days that followed, British authorities in London sent a series of increasingly frantic messages to Spain asking the whereabouts of Major Martin's briefcase.
© Uknown
Goldman and Wall Street reign. Congress appears helpless to discipline the big banks, just as the European Central Bank appears helpless to prevent the collapse of the European Union. . . . Or are they?
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont
Last-minute maneuvering in the Senate allowed the Federal Reserve to sidestep legislation that would have exposed its interest-rate decision-making to congressional auditors.
Pressure from the Obama administration led Senate lawmakers to alter a provision pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that was gaining momentum despite opposition from the Treasury and the Fed. It would have largely repealed a 32-year-old law that shields Fed monetary policy from congressional auditors.
The compromise, endorsed by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) and the Treasury, would require the Fed to disclose more details about its lending during the financial crisis. It would also require a one-time audit of those loans and a one-time review of Fed governance. A formal vote was pushed back until next week.
An inquest into the July 7 bombings should not investigate the role of MI5 because it would be impossible without handing over documents that would endanger national security, it has been claimed.
© SITE
Rita Katz, Executive Director of the SITE Intelligence Group. Rita's paranoid hobbies include hyping Islamofascism, making people hysterical, manipulating data and pretending to be Muslim so she can frame innocent Muslims for crimes that never took place.
Rita Katz, Executive Director of the SITE Intelligence Group. Rita's paranoid hobbies include hyping Islamofascism, making people hysterical, manipulating data and pretending to be Muslim so she can frame innocent Muslims for crimes that never took place.
Katz, who was born in Iraq and speaks fluent Arabic, spends hours each day monitoring the password-protected online chat rooms in which Islamic terrorists discuss politics and trade tips: how to disperse botulinum toxin or transfer funds, which suicide vests work best. Occasionally, a chat-room member will announce that he is turning in his user name and password and going to Iraq to become a martyr, a shaheed. Several weeks later, his friends will post a report of the young man blowing himself up. Katz usually logs on at six in the morning. When she has guests for dinner, she leaves a laptop open on the kitchen counter, so she can check for updates. "It is completely addicting," she says. "You wake up thinking, I've been offline for seven hours, but the terrorists have been making plans."
© Sebastian D'souza/AP
Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab has been convicted over the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 in India. But was he really the only surviving terrorist?
Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab has been convicted over the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 in India. But was he really the only surviving terrorist?
The sole surviving gunman from the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 was today convicted of murder and waging war against India.
Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, a Pakistani citizen, is due to be sentenced in the next couple of days. He is expected to receive the death penalty, which in India means hanging.
The court accepted the prosecution contention that the plot was hatched in Pakistan. Speaking before the verdict was announced, prosecutor Ujwal Nikam said there was irrefutable evidence that members of the Pakistani military were involved, describing it as a "classic case of state sponsored terrorism".
Once Kasab has been sentenced the case - which has been heard by a special court sitting in Mumbai's Arthur Road jail - must go to the high court for ratification. Kasab can then appeal to India's supreme court and if that is unsuccessful, he can appeal to the president for mercy.
MI5 HQ in London: It's "impossible" to access the files on 7/7 because they're behind these 20-foot concrete walls
The claim has been made at a hearing to decide the format of inquests into the deaths of those killed in 2005.
Lawyers for the families of those who died argue the hearing should also look at whether the intelligence services could have prevented the attacks.
Counsel for the home secretary and MI5 argued examining MI5's involvement was outside the scope of the inquests.
Four suicide bombers detonated their devices on three Tube trains and one bus killing 52 innocent people.
It emerged after the attacks that security agencies came across two of the bombers in 2004 while investigating other terrorist plots.
Market commentators are fond of talking about "free market capitalism," but according to Wall Street commentator Max Keiser, it is no more. It has morphed into what his TV co-host Stacy Herbert calls "rigged market capitalism": all markets today are subject to manipulation for private gain.
Keiser isn't just speculating about this. He claims to have invented one of the most widely used programs for doing the rigging. Not that that's what he meant to invent. His patented program was designed to take the manipulation out of markets. It would do this by matching buyers with sellers automatically, eliminating "front running" - brokers buying or selling ahead of large orders coming in from their clients. The computer program was intended to remove the conflict of interest that exists when brokers who match buyers with sellers are also selling from their own accounts. But the program fell into the wrong hands and became the prototype for automated trading programs that actually facilitate front running.
Comment: Mumbai attack was a joint IB-CIA-Mossad-RSS project
Mumbai terror suspect David Headley was 'rogue US secret agent'
India's 9/11: Who was Behind the Mumbai Attacks?