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Bernard Madoff: Wall Street psychopath?


WTMA.com
Tue, 11 Feb 2014 00:36 UTC
Madoff
© Mario Tama/Getty Images
Madoff aide may have been duped by psychopath, lawyer says.
That's one of the questions expected to be asked this week in a Manhattan federal court when lawyers begin the defense of five former aides to the jailed Ponzi schemer, including Daniel Bonventre, former head of Madoff's back-office operations. One witness that the defense wants to call to the stand is Paul Babiak, Ph.D., described by Bonventre's attorney as a world authority on psychopaths in the workplace.

Bonventre and four other former Madoff colleagues stand accused by the government of having participated in Madoff's $17 billion swindle, for which Madoff is now serving a 150-year prison sentence in North Carolina. At issue is whether they were duped by Madoff or knew they were helping to perpetrate a crime.

Babiak, a licensed psychologist, is co-author with psychologist Robert Hare of Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.

Bonventre's attorney, Andrew Frisch, wrote in a court filing last week that Babiak has studied corporate psychopaths extensively. His expertise includes the ability of psychopaths to deceive and manipulate those around them, Frisch wrote in the filing. "If Dr. Babiak is called to testify, we expect him to say in substance that Mr. Madoff's conduct is consistent with that of a corporate psychopath," Frisch wrote.

According to Frisch, Babiak's research shows that the more time an employee spends with a psychopathic boss, the greater the employees' vulnerability to being duped and "the greater the likelihood [the employee] will buy into the con and accept the psychopath's legitimacy." So, was Bonventre conned? Did he believe in Madoff's legitimacy? Those are questions Babiak could address -- that is, if he were allowed to testify. The prosecution would just as soon that he did not.

Comment: See also:

Ponerology 101: The Psychopath's Mask of Sanity

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Alarm Clock

Saudi Arabia's "Stalingrad"

Sergey Israpilov
OrientalReview.org
Mon, 03 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
Image

The trolleybus bombed on 30 December, 2013
The problems of Islamic countries have long been high on the agenda of global politics and the international media. The crisis there continues to grow, drawing in new countries and regions. If it reaches Saudi Arabia - the most influential country in the Arab world - what then? Will the United States continue to support its regional ally?

Saudi Arabia has challenged the entire world

Recent information has come to light that terrorists from the Islamist group Ansar al-Sunna have taken responsibility for the attacks late last year in Volgograd. The text of the militants' statement was posted on several Islamist websites, and a video by the mujahideen from the insurgency group Ansar al-Sunna, led by Emir Umar, was published on YouTube. A video clip posted on the Internet on Jan.19 showed two young men who call themselves Suleiman and Abdurrahman and are holding submachine guns. It claims that these were the bombers.
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USA

French president Hollande goes to Washington to receive his orders

Dan Roberts
The Guardian
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 14:27 UTC
Image
© Jacquelyn Martin/AP
US, French and Washington DC flags fly across the street from the White House.
- Senior official: 'Alliance has grown by leaps and bounds'
- French attitude to Iran creates distrust on Capitol Hill

François Hollande and Barack Obama were seeking to put images of cheese-eating surrender monkeys and awkward marital situations behind them, as they began an unusually warm three-day state visit at the home of Thomas Jefferson on Monday.

The two presidents declared theirs to be the new special relationship, in a joint newspaper column that focused on improved military co-operation between the US and what Washington officials now rarely fail to call America's "oldest ally".

"A decade ago, few would have imagined our two countries working so closely together in so many ways," they wrote, pointing to French support for planned US-led strikes in Syria that Britain refused to back, leaving Obama looking keenly for a reliable foreign partner.
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Attention

Maryland legislators move to cut NSA headquarters from all state support

Michael Lofti
Benswann.com
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
Image

NSA Headquarters Ft. Meade, Md.
It's lights out for the National Security Agency (NSA). State lawmakers in Maryland have filed emergency status legislation that seeks to cut the NSA's Ft. Meade headquarters off from all material support stemming from the state.

"Maryland has almost become a political subdivision of the NSA," Tenth Amendment Center Executive Director Michael Boldin said in a statement. "The agency relies heavily on state and local help. This bill bans all of it."

House Bill 1074 (HB1074) would ban the NSA facility from all public state utilities, ban the use of NSA collected evidence in court, ban universities from partnering with the NSA and ban all political subdivisions from assisting the NSA from within the state.
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Cell Phone

NSA uses mobile phones to target death strikes

John Byrne
The Raw Story
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 08:28 UTC
Image
© AFP
Be careful when you answer the phone.

That's the message you might heed when considering National Security Operations and CIA operations in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan, according to a new report.

According to documents and an interview with an alleged former drone operator, the United States uses geolocation targeting that tracks the location of mobile phones to plot strikes on targets in countries where it believes militants are hiding out. Trouble is, they're not necessarily coupling it with information on the ground, meaning that strike targets can be determined by the locations of their phones alone.

What's more, the fact that the U.S. may rely solely on phone locations means that others can easily become victims of a strike. According the former drone operator quoted in the report, published Monday by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill in First Look, those who believe they might be targets have taken to sharing SIM cards, meaning the actual identities of those carrying phones are obscured.
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House

UK flood disaster: Time to demand an EU cashback and divert our foreign aid, sez Farage

Nigel Farage
Express, UK
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 20:06 UTC
Image
© Hotspot Media
The floods in Somerset are ruining people's lives.
When American satirist Robert Benchley arrived in Venice, he sent a telegram saying "streets flooded, please advise".

These words must ring hollow in the ears of people living in the South West who have seen their streets turn into rivers as the flood waters continue to rise. But it is not like these floods were new or unexpected.

This is the same region that suffered so much in 2007 when the Labour government announced they would increase spending on flood defences. In 2004, a Government-commissioned report advised a massive increase in spending on flood defences.

What did our leaders do when presented with this evidence?

Well, in 2006, Gordon Brown cut the flood defence budget by £14million.

Since then we have seen flood defence budgets decline in real terms over the course of the spending review. Yet during all this time they have continued to allow the building of houses on flood plains in order to fulfil the immigration driven need for housing.
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USA

Obama administration mulling a targeted drone strike on (another) U.S. citizen abroad


Police State
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 19:59 UTC
Drone
© Google Images
Due process fired at 425 m/s.
An intelligence leak to the Associated Press has indicated that the Obama Administration is considering a targeted drone strike on a U.S. citizen living abroad. If this takes place, it would mark the 5th American targeted for summary execution by the U.S. government.

The U.S. official spoke on conditions of anonymity because of the weight of the allegations. While the AP was privy to details such as the name of the target and the country where he resides, they have agreed to withhold this information because revealing details "could interrupt ongoing counterterror operations."

The Justice Department has reportedly not built a case on the target, meaning that the CIA can't kill him just yet unless the President authorizes the death warrant.

The further dilemma is presented due to the fact that the unnamed country is one that maintains its sovereignty and does not welcome wanton drone attacks from foreign superpowers.

Apparently, Obama's great dilemma is whether to target the individual openly with a drone, clandestinely through the CIA assassin program, or call off the mission in lieu of potential political fallout, according to the whistleblower.
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Evil Rays

Putting Big Brother in the driver's seat: V2V Transmitters, black boxes & drones

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 19:51 UTC
"It's a future where you don't forget anything...In this new future you're never lost...We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time...Your car will drive itself, it's a bug that cars were invented before computers...you're never lonely...you're never bored...you're never out of ideas... We can suggest where you go next, who to meet, what to read...What's interesting about this future is that it's for the average person, not just the elites." - Google CEO Eric Schmidt on his vision of the future
Police State
© Puff Critique

Time to buckle up your seatbelts, folks. You're in for a bumpy ride.

We're hurtling down a one-way road toward the Police State at mind-boggling speeds, the terrain is getting more treacherous by the minute, and we've passed all the exit ramps. From this point forward, there is no turning back, and the signpost ahead reads "Danger."

Indeed, as I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we're about to enter a Twilight Zone of sorts, one marked by drones, smart phones, GPS devices, smart TVs, social media, smart meters, surveillance cameras, facial recognition software, online banking, license plate readers and driverless cars - all part of the interconnected technological spider's web that is life in the American police state, and every new gadget pulls us that much deeper into the sticky snare.

In this Brave New World awaiting us, there will be no communication not spied upon, no movement untracked, no thought unheard. In other words, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

We're on the losing end of a technological revolution that has already taken hostage our computers, our phones, our finances, our entertainment, our shopping, our appliances, and now, it's focused its sights on our cars. As if the government wasn't already able to track our movements on the nation's highways and byways by way of satellites, GPS devices, and real-time traffic cameras, government officials are now pushing to require that all new vehicles come installed with black box recorders and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, ostensibly to help prevent crashes.
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Stormtrooper

Pentagon wants to fit soldiers with a little black box brain implant

Matthew Humphries
Geek.com
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 19:46 UTC
Implant
© Geek.com
Black box recorders are a common feature in aircraft. They sit there keeping track of everything that is happening. Then, if something goes wrong the information can be reviewed to piece together exactly what happened and form a view of the events that may otherwise have been lost.

Now the Pentagon is attempting to develop a similar system for use in humans, and in particular soldiers who have suffered brain damage. If they could be fitted with a black box in their brain, then it may be possible to trigger memories surrounding a traumatic event and overcome memory loss quickly and easily.

As you'd expect, DARPA has been tasked with looking into this area through its Defense Sciences department. We still know very little about how our memory works, but progress is being made through brain stimulation devices such as that developed by Medtronic for helping people with Parkinson's disease.

The solution DARPA and the Pentagon wants developed takes the form of an implantable device that can both record and stimulate brain activity. Anyone submitting a proposal for such a device needs to detail every step of how it would work, including the surgical procedure to attach it, power requirements once fitted, and how much space it would take up and how much it would weigh.
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Vader

EU to consider intervention in Bosnia if tension escalates


novinite.com
Sun, 09 Feb 2014 19:19 UTC
Image
© bih-x.info
The international High Representative, Valentin Inzko warns of eventual EU forces intervention in Bosnia.
An eventual escalation of tension in Bosnia might result in intervention of EU forces, a high official warned Sunday.

Valentin Inzko, High Representative of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, told Austrian media that the situation in the country will be analyzed next Tuesday.

"Austria will increase its troops there, but if it comes to escalation we would have to consider theintervention of EU forces. Currently, we do not have such intention," Inzko said for the Austrian Kurier newspaper.

"For many years people did not protest because for them the peace after the war, with more than 100 000 killed, was very important," he explained.

"It all began in the town of Tuzla, where workers have not been paid for over a year. They have been protesting every Wednesday, but no one paid attention to them," Inzko said adding that the current situation is Bosnia is the worst since 1995.

Sunday is the fifth day of anti-government protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Locals are protesting against high unemployment, rampant corruption and the lack of economic and political progress.
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