Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Credit Suisse $US885m bill for mortgages

Image
Swiss bank Credit Suisse agreed Friday to pay $885 million to settle claims that it misled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the sale of mortgage-backed securities.

Credit Suisse will pay about $651 million to Fannie and $234 million to Freddie, the sibling institutions that the US government seized amid the 2008 financial crisis to prevent their collapse

Stock Down

Some debt defaults healthy for China

China's central bank has hinted it is willing to accept some debt defaults in the $1.8 trillion wealth management market, as the world's second-largest economy struggles to curb bad debts that pose a risk to the financial system.

"Under the premise of preventing systematic risks, allowing some default cases to happen naturally in compliance with market forces will... help rectify behaviours of product issuers and investors and benefit the healthy development of the wealth management market," People's Bank of China deputy governor Pan Gongsheng said at a forum in Shanghai.

Sherlock

NSA spies on China telcoms giant Huawei

Huawei 17
© GettyThe US National Security Agency secretly tapped into Huawei's network, accessing its email archive and top company officials' communications, reports claim.
The US National Security Agency has secretly tapped into the networks of Chinese telecom and internet giant Huawei, the New York Times and Der Spiegel have reported on their websites.

The NSA accessed Huawei's email archive, communication between top company officials internal documents, and even the secret source code of individual Huawei products, read the reports, based on documents provided by fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

"We currently have good access and so much data that we don't know what to do with it," states one internal document cited by Der Spiegel on Saturday.

Huawei -- founded in 1987 by former People's Liberation Army engineer Ren Zhengfei -- has long been seen by Washington as a potential security Trojan Horse due to perceived close links to the Chinese government, which it denies.

Airplane

What Malaysia Airlines MH370 hijacking theories can't explain

Image
© Wikimedia CommonsDawson's Field in 1970
With so few clues in the case of Malaysia Airlines MH370, the theories surrounding the missing plane are taking on a life of their own. One widespread idea is that the plane may have flown to Central Asia somewhere, flying low to avoid the radar of multiple states (or simply exposing their radar systems' weakness). This theory, explained very well by Jeff Wise over at Slate, uses satellite data that appears to indicate that the plane was heading north at 8:10 a.m. Malaysia time March 8, and could probably have ended up in Western China or somewhere nearby.

There's one very obvious reason this idea is enticing: It allows the possibility that the 239 passengers and crew on board the plane could be alive. Few other theories, such as a terrorist attack, a pilot suicide or some kind of mechanical failure with the plane offer much hope there. It also seems to assume that that the plane was hijacked by crew or passengers.

It doesn't explain, however, the one thing that most high-profile hijackings, from the 1970s to the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, have in common: Everyone knew what happened to the plane.

Extinguisher

Ukraine base "stormed" by pro-Russians, wedding still goes on

Pro-Russian Forces Storm Ukrainian Air Force Base

A Ukrainian air force commander is being held after his base in Crimea was stormed by pro-Russian forces, and the acting president called for his release Sunday.

Col. Yuliy Mamchur is the commander of the Belbek Air Force base near Sevastopol, which was taken over Saturday by forces who sent armored personnel carriers smashing through the base's walls and fired shots and stun grenades. One Ukrainian serviceman was reported wounded in the clash.

It was unclear if the forces, who didn't bear insignia, were Russian military or local pro-Russia militia.

Ukraine President Oleksandr Turchynov, in a statement, said Mamchur was "abducted" by the forces. He didn't specify where Mamchur is believed to be held.


Comment: He probably asked to be "arrested" to save face for his troops failing to obey his commands to resist.


However, prominent politician Vitali Klitschko said Sunday that Mamchur is being held by the Russian military in a jail in Sevastopol, the Crimean city that is the base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Klitschko was one of the leaders of the three months of protests in Ukraine that culminated in late February with President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country and interim authorities taking power before a May 25 presidential election. The protests were triggered by Yanukovych's decision to reject a deal for closer ties with the European Union and turn to Moscow instead.

Vader

Bill Gates' psychopathic solution to unemployment: tax the workers more, reduce taxes on employers

Image
© Reddit
Billionaire software mogul Bill Gates has joined the growing chorus of tech experts who predict that low-skill Americans will face greater unemployment because more jobs are being done by software and robots.

The Microsoft founder, whose net worth is $76 billion, suggested the problem could be fixed by reducing taxes on employers and raising taxes on employees, via the reduction of payroll taxes and the addition of new federal consumption taxes.

The widening recognition of greater low-skill unemployment is also creating a problem for the many executives - including Gates - and lobbyists and legislators pushing for increased immigration. They back the Senate's immigration bill, which would dramatically increase the supply of foreign labor, despite Americans' high unemployment rates.

"Software substitution, you know, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses or even, you know, whatever it is you do ... is progressing," Gates told university-trained Washington professionals gathered at a March 13 talk hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.

Bullseye

Ron Paul: Crimea secedes. So what? What's the big deal?

Image
© Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Residents of Crimea voted over the weekend on whether they would remain an autonomous region of Ukraine or join the Russian Federation. In so doing, they joined a number of countries and regions - including recently Scotland, Catalonia and Venice - that are seeking to secede from what they view as unresponsive or oppressive governments.

These latter three are proceeding without much notice, while the overwhelming Crimea vote to secede from Ukraine has incensed U.S. and European Union officials, and has led NATO closer to conflict with Russia than since the height of the Cold War.

What's the big deal? Opponents of the Crimea vote like to point to the illegality of the referendum. But self-determination is a centerpiece of international law. Article I of the United Nations Charter points out clearly that the purpose of the U.N. is to "develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples."

Why does the U.S. care which flag will be hoisted on a small piece of land thousands of miles away?

Hotdog

Israel's defense chief says U.S. is a weenie

Weenie
© Unknown
Israel's defense minister has accused the United States of projecting weakness internationally and said Israel could not rely on its main ally to take the lead in confronting Iran over its nuclear program.

Moshe Yaalon, whose remarks were reported in the Haaretz daily on Tuesday, caused friction with the United States only two months ago when he described Secretary of State John Kerry's quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace as messianic and obsessive.

His latest comments, confirmed by an Israeli official who was present at lecture Yaalon delivered at Tel Aviv University on Monday, displayed deep disappointment with U.S. President Barack Obama's handling of burning world issues.

"We had thought it would be the United States that would lead the campaign against Iran," said Yaalon, who pointed to the Ukraine crisis as an example of Washington "showing weakness".

Telephone

The Share Everything Plan: NSA surveillance program reaches 'into the past' to retrieve, replay phone calls

Image
© Occupy.comFeeling safe yet?
The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording "100 percent" of a foreign country's telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden.

A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine - one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance.

The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for "retrospective retrieval," and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.

In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording "every single" conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary.

The call buffer opens a door "into the past," the summary says, enabling users to "retrieve audio of interest that was not tasked at the time of the original call." Analysts listen to only a fraction of 1 percent of the calls, but the absolute numbers are high. Each month, they send millions of voice clippings, or "cuts," for processing and long-term storage.

Bullseye

Putin says U.S. guided by 'the rule of the gun' not international law in foreign policy

Image
© Gerasa News
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Monday of being guided in its foreign policy not by international law but by the "rule of the gun."

"Our Western partners headed by the United States prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun," he told a joint session of parliament.

"They have come to believe in their exceptionalism and their sense of being the chosen ones. That they can decide the destinies of the world, that it is only them who can be right."