20120507
20120505
Terrorist Plots, Helped Along by the F.B.I. - NYTimes.com
THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts. But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested. When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-helped-along...
Google Australia: ~$1bn in revenue, $74k in tax | Delimiter
Search giant Google has revealed it expects to pay just $74,000 in corporate income tax for the 2011 calendar year in Australia, off claimed local revenues of $201 million, despite the fact that industry estimates have continually pegged the search giant’s Australian income at closer to $1 billion. In its latest set of financial accounts filed this week with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Google stated that it received some $201.1 million in revenue in the 2011 calender year in Australia. Expenses largely associated with its significant Australian headcount of 568 staff ($143.5 million) and advertising costs ($18.9 million) meant the company made a loss on paper of $3.9 million in that period. Both Google’s revenues and losses were up over calendar year 2010. In the statements, Google accounted for just $74,176 in taxation for that year, compared with $1.1 million for the year previously. It had $46 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand as at the end of December last year... http://delimiter.com.au/2012/05/03/google-australia-1bn-in-revenue-74k-in-tax/
20120502
Lockheed Martin strike to make F-35 even more expensive — RT
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Lightning II (AFP Photo / Keith Simmons)When all is said and done, the cost of the United States' F-35 jet fighter program is expected to exceed the entire gross domestic product of Spain. But will it be worth the decades of research and $1.5 trillion price tag?
Even with the Pentagon expecting to take another seven years to complete a working fleet of the fighter jets, the status of the program has already spawned reviews that include words like “calamity” and “huge disappointment.” Now things come very soon be getting even costlier as the thousands of workers responsible for the aircraft have walked off the job...
British spy in bag was poisoned or suffocated, coroner rules - CNN.com
London (CNN) -- A British spy found dead at his home in 2010 -- his naked body padlocked inside a large red carrying bag stowed in the bathtub -- was either suffocated or poisoned, but it is unlikely his death will ever be satisfactorily explained, coroner Fiona Wilcox said Wednesday. Gareth Williams' death was "unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated," she ruled. He probably entered the bag alive, Wilcox said, reading her ruling to a court around the corner from the home of the world's most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes.... http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/02/world/europe/uk-spy-mystery-death/index.htm...
CISPA, “National Security,” and the NSA’s Ability to Read Your Emails | Electronic Frontier Foundation ((tags; EFF, NSA, privacy, SIGINT))
This week the House of Representatives is debating CISPA, the dangerous ‘cybersecurity’ bill that threatens to decimate Internet users’ privacy in the name of security. EFF and a wide variety of other groups have been protesting the law’s provisions giving companies the power to read users’ emails and other communications and hand them to the government without any judicial oversight whatsoever—essentially a giant ‘cybersecurity’ exception to all existing privacy laws. We’ve already shown how the bill’s definition of ‘cyber threat information’ can lead the companies and government to surveil citizens for a host of reasons beyond critical cybersecurity threats. But we want to focus on one vital portion of the bill that is not getting enough attention: what the government can do with your private information once companies hand it over. Even though CISPA is styled as a ‘cybersecurity’ bill, it explicitly allows the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) to use your information for ‘national security’ purposes—expanding the bill far beyond its purported goal. Bill sponser Mike Rogers introduced a package of amendments yesterday, but did not remove “national security” as one of the purposes for which information can be used... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/cispa-national-security-and-nsa-ability...
Land Destroyer: The Next US President Will Be.... ((tags. politics, corporatism))
....the Fortune 500. Why no matter who you vote for, nothing will ever change.
by Tony Cartalucci April 26, 2012 - President George Bush, President Barack Obama, and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney all work for the exact same handful of corporate-financier interests. While they vary in how they dress up their methods of carrying out what is essentially a singular agenda, there is glaring continuity from one administration to the next in a process analogous to a corporate spokesman presenting the agenda of the board of directors. Changing spokesmen doesn't change the agenda of the board of directors.While the corporate media focuses on non-issues, and political pundits accentuate petty political rivalries between the "left" and the "right," a look deeper into presidential cabinets and the authors of domestic and foreign policy reveals just how accurate this analogy is and who sits on the "board of directors."...
by Tony Cartalucci April 26, 2012 - President George Bush, President Barack Obama, and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney all work for the exact same handful of corporate-financier interests. While they vary in how they dress up their methods of carrying out what is essentially a singular agenda, there is glaring continuity from one administration to the next in a process analogous to a corporate spokesman presenting the agenda of the board of directors. Changing spokesmen doesn't change the agenda of the board of directors.While the corporate media focuses on non-issues, and political pundits accentuate petty political rivalries between the "left" and the "right," a look deeper into presidential cabinets and the authors of domestic and foreign policy reveals just how accurate this analogy is and who sits on the "board of directors."...
RFK assassination witness tells CNN: There was a second shooter - CNN.com
Los Angeles (CNN) -- As a federal court prepares to rule on a challenge to Sirhan Sirhan's conviction in the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, a long overlooked witness to the murder is telling her story: She heard two guns firing during the 1968 shooting and authorities altered her account of the crime. Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel. "What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes said in an exclusive interview with CNN. "The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups."... http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/28/justice/california-rfk-second-gun/index.html
Context of 'October 4, 2001: Bush Authorizes NSA Domestic Spying'
This is a scalable context timeline. It contains events related to the event October 4, 2001: Bush Authorizes NSA Domestic Spying. You can narrow or broaden the context of this timeline by adjusting the zoom level. The lower the scale, the more relevant the items on average will be, while the higher the scale, the less relevant the items, on average, will be... http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=civilliberties_1267#civilliber...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)