(10 AM – promoted by TheMomCat)
(Cross-dressed from The Free Speech Zone)
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is wasting no time fighting back against a disgruntled executive who lit up the Internet Wednesday morning by tendering his resignation via the op-ed pages of the New York Times.
The executive, Greg Smith, blasted Goldman for betraying its historic culture and putting profits ahead of client interests. He said Goldman executives talk openly about ripping off their clients, who sometimes are referred to internally as “muppets.” His incendiary take on Goldman culture quickly became a flashpoint on Twitter and elsewhere. It doesn’t exactly jibe with doing “God’s work.”
A Goldman official confirmed that Mr. Smith, who worked for the Wall Street firm for nearly 12 years, most recently in London, resigned from Goldman this morning.
MOSCOW (AP) – A Russian court has sentenced an opposition leader to a 10-day jail term for disobeying police during an anti-Kremlin rally earlier this month.
Sergei Udaltsov of the Left Front movement said Thursday he would appeal the sentence by Moscow’s Presnensky district court and declared a hunger strike.
Udaltsov, 35, played a key role in organizing a series of opposition protests in Moscow that drew tens of thousands to protest Vladimir Putin’s rule.
He has been detained dozens of times in the past several years and has spent several months in jail. Udaltsov repeatedly went on hunger strikes, prompting supporters concerns about his health.
Also Thursday, another protest leader Alexei Navalny was fined 1,000 rubles ($33) for disobeying police orders at the rally Udaltsov helped organize.
Thousands of emails reportedly leaked from the private accounts of Bashar Assad and his wife, Asma, show the Syrian president took advice from Iran on how to handle the uprising against his rule and bypassed US sanctions to shop on iTunes, the UK Guardian newspaper has reported.
The London-based newspaper reported on Wednesday that it received 3,000 emails from “a source in the Syrian opposition” who intercepted them between last June and February.
[snip]
According to the Guardian, the emails show that Assad has received advice from Iran. Ahead of a speech in December, Assad’s media consultant said his advice to the president was based on “consultations with a good number of people in addition to the media and political adviser for the Iranian ambassador.”
The memo advised Assad to use “powerful and violent” language and encouraged the regime to “leak more information related to our military capability” to convince the public that it could withstand a military challenge.
According to the purported emails from Assad, the president also was briefed in detail about the presence of Western journalists in the rebel-held Baba Amr district of Homs, and he was urged to “tighten the security grip” there in November, the report said. Several foreign journalists were among the hundreds of people killed in Homs over the past year.
PARIS (AP) – French police fired tear gas Thursday at steelworkers worried about job losses, as they tried to force their way toward the headquarters of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s re-election campaign.
About 200 workers from an ArcelorMittal plant in Florange in northeast France came to Paris in buses as part of a protest movement that started last month to try to save jobs at the factory.
After disembarking, they tried to walk toward Sarkozy’s campaign office, shouting “Thank you, Sarko!” The workers blame Sarkozy’s conservative government for not doing enough to save the plant, which workers fear is going to be shut down.
They were met by riot police and gendarmes who tried to push the protesters back with shields. After several minutes of fighting, the police fired tear gas to break up the crowd.
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