Tag: ek Politics

The Crunchy Center

Sheer Accumulation of Breathless Wrongness

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NYPD Undercover Spying Unit Revealed As Extensive, Far-Reaching

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Democracy Now: With CIA Help, New York Police Secretly Monitored Mosques, Muslim Communities Post-9/11

8/25/11

Democracy Now: Spying on Campus: New York Police Caught Monitoring Muslim Student Groups Throughout Northeast

2/21/12

Democracy Now: From Mosques to Soccer Leagues: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spy Unit Targeting Muslims, Activists

9/17/13

Monsanto Wins Case Of Seed Patents; Planting Your Own Legally Purchased & Grown Seeds Can Be Infringing

by Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt

Mon, May 13th 2013 12:49pm

(T)he key things here. Bowman did not break any license agreement over seeds that he bought. He also legally purchased other seeds that had been legally provided to grain elevators to be sold. All he did was plant those legally purchased seeds, for which he was not violating any license agreement, and then harvest and replant the seeds that came from them. And this, apparently, is illegal under our patent system.

Given the fire power that came out in support of Monsanto — including the federal government — it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that the Supreme Court just gave a complete and total victory to Monsanto. The key issue was whether or not this was a case of “patent exhaustion.” There was a key case a few years ago that mostly said that once a patent holder sells a product, the patent is “exhausted” so that the patent holder can’t demand licensing fees up and down the supply chain. However, they distinguish this case by saying that this is different because it’s a “copy” of the legally purchased seed. I could see how that would make sense if we were talking about someone building a copy of a machine in a garage or something, but this is a seed. Copying itself is what seeds do. That’s kind of their entire purpose.

Yet, throughout the decision, the court (with a decision written by Justice Kagan) acts as if Bowman just built a replica. But that ignores the fact that this is nature we’re talking about seeds that replicate themselves naturally, because that’s what seeds do. The court has no problem with this, but it seems somewhat ridiculous that someone can legally buy something, have it do what it naturally does (and has done for nearly all of history) and then be told that violates a patent. When addressing Bowman’s point concerning the fact that seeds by nature, replicate themselves, they basically brush that aside by noting that Bowman then harvested them. As if he’s supposed to ignore what’s happening?

Another thing to note is that the bio-engineering in question is the so-called “Roundup Ready” gene that renders plants immune to one of Monsanto’s main products, the herbicide “Roundup”.  You can decide for yourself how much you like poison saturated produce.

Monsanto Wins Case Of Seed Patents; Planting Your Own Legally Purchased & Grown Seeds Can Be Infringing

by Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt

Mon, May 13th 2013 12:49pm

(T)he key things here. Bowman did not break any license agreement over seeds that he bought. He also legally purchased other seeds that had been legally provided to grain elevators to be sold. All he did was plant those legally purchased seeds, for which he was not violating any license agreement, and then harvest and replant the seeds that came from them. And this, apparently, is illegal under our patent system.

Given the fire power that came out in support of Monsanto — including the federal government — it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that the Supreme Court just gave a complete and total victory to Monsanto. The key issue was whether or not this was a case of “patent exhaustion.” There was a key case a few years ago that mostly said that once a patent holder sells a product, the patent is “exhausted” so that the patent holder can’t demand licensing fees up and down the supply chain. However, they distinguish this case by saying that this is different because it’s a “copy” of the legally purchased seed. I could see how that would make sense if we were talking about someone building a copy of a machine in a garage or something, but this is a seed. Copying itself is what seeds do. That’s kind of their entire purpose.

Yet, throughout the decision, the court (with a decision written by Justice Kagan) acts as if Bowman just built a replica. But that ignores the fact that this is nature we’re talking about seeds that replicate themselves naturally, because that’s what seeds do. The court has no problem with this, but it seems somewhat ridiculous that someone can legally buy something, have it do what it naturally does (and has done for nearly all of history) and then be told that violates a patent. When addressing Bowman’s point concerning the fact that seeds by nature, replicate themselves, they basically brush that aside by noting that Bowman then harvested them. As if he’s supposed to ignore what’s happening?

Another thing to note is that the bio-engineering in question is the so-called “Roundup Ready” gene that renders plants immune to one of Monsanto’s main products, the herbicide “Roundup”.  You can decide for yourself how much you like poison saturated produce.

Rania Masri and Chris Hedges On Obama’s Syria Address

Transcript

Chris Hedges and Rania Masri On What the Future May Hold For Syria

Transcript

Exclusive: Interview with Congressman Grayson on Syria

Transcript

Kerry And McCain’s Source For Moderate Syrian Rebel Claim Fired For Fraud

By: DSWright, Firedog Lake

Wednesday September 11, 2013 10:39 am

The parallels to the run up to the Iraq War just keep coming. A key source for both Secretary of State John Kerry and Senator John McCain on the “moderate” rebels in Syria, Elizabeth O’Bagy, has been fired for fraud. Somewhere Curveball is smiling.

…

But not just lying on her resume about her qualifications but also about her connections to said “moderate” rebels. Her WSJ piece failed to make the disclosure that she worked and was essentially lobbying for the Syrian rebels.

…

If you needed yet another reason to back off this aggressive war here it is – the opposition is heavily influenced by Al Qaeda and those telling you different have been caught lying. Although it could be reasonably argued the lack of a coherent justification for American military involvement should also be considered.

The more we learn about the claims being made to justify this war the more unconvincing it is.

WSJ op-ed writer Elizabeth O’Bagy fired for resume lie

By MACKENZIE WEINGER and KATE BRANNEN, Politico

9/11/13 12:49 PM EDT

The Syria researcher whose Wall Street Journal op-ed piece was cited by Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain during congressional hearings about the use of force has been fired from the Institute for the Study of War for lying about having a Ph.D., the group announced on Wednesday.

“The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O’Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University,” the institute said in a statement. “ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O’Bagy’s employment, effective immediately.”

…

O’Bagy’s op-ed piece for the Journal, “On the Front Lines of Syria’s Civil War,” was cited by both Kerry and McCain last week. McCain read from the piece last Tuesday to Kerry, calling it “an important op-ed by Dr. Elizabeth O’Bagy.” The next day, Kerry also brought up the piece before a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing and described it as a “very interesting article” and recommended that members read it.

But the piece had also come under fire for misrepresenting her affiliations. Originally the op-ed only listed O’Bagy, 26, as only “a senior analyst” at the ISW, later adding a clarification that disclosed her connection to a Syrian rebel advocacy group.

“In addition to her role at the Institute for the Study of War, Ms. O’Bagy is affiliated with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a nonprofit operating as a 501(c)(3) pending IRS approval that subcontracts with the U.S. and British governments to provide aid to the Syrian opposition,” the WSJ added in its clarification.

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O’Bagy, who has traveled widely with rebel forces in Syria, had been a senior research analyst with ISW. Her biography on the site before she was fired, according to a Google cache from Sept. 4, stated that “Dr. Elizabeth O’Bagy is a Senior Research Analyst and the Syria Team Lead at the Institute for the Study of War, where she focuses on Syrian politics and security. Her major reports on the Syrian opposition include: The Free Syrian Army, Jihad in Syria, and Syria’s Political Opposition.” Her online bio was also updated last Friday in response to the online furor – spurred in part by a report in The Daily Caller about her affiliation with the SETF – over the WSJ piece to read: “I work with the Syrian Emergency Task Force in an advisory capacity on a number of humanitarian aid and governance building contracts.”

…

On Monday, O’Bagy responded to critics of her work on Syria.

“I’m not a war monger,” she told POLITICO. “I’m not advocating the United Staets start a war or get in the middle of one. At heart, I’m just a researcher. I love being in the field. I love doing the interviews and collecting the data.”

NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans’ data with Israel

Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian

Wednesday 11 September 2013 10.40 EDT

The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

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The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet.

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The memorandum says: “Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content.”

According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. “NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection”, it says.

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The memorandum of understanding, which the Guardian is publishing in full, allows Israel to retain “any files containing the identities of US persons” for up to a year. The agreement requests only that the Israelis should consult the NSA’s special liaison adviser when such data is found.

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Israeli intelligence is allowed “to disseminate foreign intelligence information concerning US persons derived from raw Sigint by NSA” on condition that it does so “in a manner that does not identify the US person”. The agreement also allows Israel to release US person identities to “outside parties, including all INSU customers” with the NSA’s written permission.

…

The Guardian asked the Obama administration how many times US data had been found in the raw intelligence, either by the Israelis or when the NSA reviewed a sample of the files, but officials declined to provide this information. Nor would they disclose how many other countries the NSA shared raw data with, or whether the Fisa court, which is meant to oversee NSA surveillance programs and the procedures to handle US information, had signed off the agreement with Israel.

Secret Deal Between NSA, Israel Likely Involves Sharing of Data from Americans’ Communications

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Wednesday September 11, 2013 12:15 pm

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) or agreement between the NSA and the Israeli-Sigint National Unit (ISNU) “pertaining to the protection of US persons” supposedly was drafted to ensure that the provision of intelligence data, including “raw” intelligence data “not reviewed for foreign intelligence purposes or minimized” was “consistent with the requirements placed upon the NSA by US law and Executive Order to establish safeguards protecting the rights of US persons under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” But, if raw and unreviewed data is being handed over, how could the NSA know whether it is abiding by any requirements?

The agreement indicates that the “NSA has agreements with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom that require it to protect information associated with UK persons, Australian persons, Canadian person and New Zealand persons using procedures and safeguards similar to those applied for US persons.” This suggests the possibility that raw and unreviewed data on the citizens of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom may have wound up in the possession of Israeli intelligence as well.

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This is alarming because it appears this makes it possible for Israel to share what a US citizen might be saying about a US government policy or activity or the views of a US official. Such an understanding would clearly enable the targeting of political activists while giving the NSA the cover to claim it did not think it was intercepting such communications because it never reviewed those communications because they were provided to Israel.

The section on US government officials also is alarming. It suggests the NSA intercepts data on US government officials. There is no information on whether the data is collected or stored, but, certainly, if the NSA is establishing parameters of use for such information if found in raw intelligence, that means interception of US government officials’ communication is taking place.

In 2009, it became known that the NSA had obtained FISA court authorization to wiretap Representative Jane Harman. She was caught allegedly exchanging favors with a suspected Israeli agent, but, instead of allowing the FBI to open up an investigation, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales used the opportunity to maintain Harman’s support for the warrantless wiretapping program.

…

In some way, shape or form, the information being provided to Israel is probably being abused, as Israel uses the intelligence to twist the arms of US government officials to maintain policies toward Israel and the Middle East that it desires.

American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer reacted, “On what authority is NSA monitoring the phone calls of US judges, legislators?” Also, “On what authority is the NSA sharing Americans’ information with Israel?” And, “Did the [FISA Court] sign off on this, and, if so, where’s that opinion?”

Imagine the Informants You Can Coerce When You Can Spy on Every Single American

By: emptywheel

Wednesday September 11, 2013 9:01 am

Two years ago, I noted a chilling exchange from a 2002 FISA suit argued by Ted Olson. Laurence Silberman was trying to come up with a scenario in which some criminal information might not have any relevance to terrorism. When he suggested rape, Olson suggested we might use evidence of a rape to get someone to inform for us.

…

In the 7 years since this program (now allegedly scaled back significantly, but still very very broad) has existed, the dragnet has only helped, however indirectly, to capture 12 terrorists in the US (and by terrorist, they also include people sending money to protect their country against US-backed invasion).

Which means the real utility of this program has been about something else.

The ability to track the relationships of every single American. And they were using it to find informants.

Even while the number of terrorists this program discovered has been minimal, the number of FBI informants has ballooned, to 15,000. And those informants are trumping up increasingly ridiculous plots in the name of fighting terrorism.

The ability to track the relationships of every single American (or now, a huge subset of Americans, focusing largely on Muslims and those with international ties). And they were (and presumably still are) using it to find informants.

Update: Note how in Keith Alexander’s description of the alert list, the standard to be on it is “the identifier is likely to produce information of foreign intelligence value” that are “associated with” one of the BR targets (Alexander 33). This is very similar to the language Olson used to justify getting data that didn’t directly relate to terrorism.

We know the NSA has blanket collected every single communication going into and coming out of Washington.  Maybe we also now know the reason Institutional Washington, including both government officials and “journalists”, are so eager for a war the United States people do not want.

I find it quite telling that after all the revelations about NSA and GCHQ (and for that matter the Bundesnachrichtendienst) eavesdropping, Kerry and the Obama Administration are left with mere assertions we’re supposed to accept on faith alone while the BND is providing actual intercepts that tell a quite different story.

Syrian forces may have used gas without Assad’s permission: paper

Reuters

Sun Sep 8, 2013 8:17am EDT

Syrian brigade and division commanders had been asking the Presidential Palace to allow them to use chemical weapons for the last four-and-a-half months, according to radio messages intercepted by German spies, but permission had always been denied, the paper said.

This could mean Assad may not have personally approved the attack close to Damascus on August 21 in which more than 1,400 are estimated to have been killed, intelligence officers suggested.

…

Bild said the radio traffic was intercepted by a German naval reconnaissance vessel, the Oker, sailing close to the Syrian coast.

Intercepts caught Assad rejecting requests to use chemical weapons, German paper says

By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy

Monday, September 9, 2013

Syrian President Bashar Assad has repeatedly rejected requests from his field commanders for approval to use chemical weapons, according to a report this weekend in a German newspaper.

The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential national Sunday newspaper, reported that the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a select group of German lawmakers that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence officials that Assad did not order or approve what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds of people in Damascus’ eastern suburbs.

…

The newspaper’s article said that on numerous occasions in recent months, the German intelligence ship named Oker, which is off the Syrian coast, has intercepted communications indicating that field officers have contacted the Syrian presidential palace seeking permission to use chemical weapons and have been turned down.

The article added that German intelligence does not believe Assad sanctioned the alleged attack on August 21.

…

European foreign ministers on Saturday issued a statement calling the Aug. 21 attack a “war crime,” but said nothing should be done without U.N. approval. New opinion polls over the weekend in France, Germany and Great Britain showed strong disapproval of military action in Syria. The British poll, done for The Sunday Telegraph, indicated only 19 percent of the population backs the idea of military action with the United States, while 63 percent oppose it. The polls in France and Germany showed similar margins of opposition.

Meanwhile, a new tabulation of the dead from the Aug. 21 incident raised more questions about Obama administration officials’ account of what took place.

The Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, an anti-Assad group, said that it had been able to document 678 dead from the attacks, including 106 children and 157 women. The report said 51 of the dead, or 7 percent, were fighters from the Free Syrian Army, the designation used to describe rebels that are affiliated with the Supreme Military Council, which the U.S. backs.

…

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said 1,429 people died Aug. 21, included 426 children, but has not said how the United States obtained the figures. Other estimates have ranged from a low of “at least 281” by the French government to 502, including “tens” of rebel fighters and about 100 children, by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based group that tracks violence in Syria.

Obama’s Case for Syria Didn’t Reflect Intel Consensus

Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service

Sep 9 2013

The evidence indicates that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper culled intelligence analyses from various agencies and by the White House itself, but that the White House itself had the final say in the contents of the document.

Leading members of Congress to believe that the document was an intelligence community assessment and thus represents a credible picture of the intelligence on the alleged chemical attack of Aug. 21 has been a central element in the Obama administration’s case for war in Syria.

That part of the strategy, at least, has been successful. Despite strong opposition in Congress to the proposed military strike in Syria, no one in either chamber has yet challenged the administration’s characterisation of the intelligence. But the administration is vulnerable to the charge that it has put out an intelligence document that does not fully and accurately reflect the views of intelligence analysts.

Former intelligence officials told IPS that that the paper does not represent a genuine intelligence community assessment but rather one reflecting a predominantly Obama administration influence.

In essence, the White House selected those elements of the intelligence community assessments that supported the administration’s policy of planning a strike against the Syrian government force and omitted those that didn’t.

…

The issuance of the document by the White House rather than by Clapper, as had been apparently planned, points to a refusal by Clapper to put his name on the document as revised by the White House.

Clapper’s refusal to endorse it – presumably because it was too obviously an exercise in “cherry picking” intelligence to support a decision for war – would explain why the document had to be issued by the White House.

…

A clear indication that the White House, rather than Clapper, had the final say on the content of the document is that it includes a statement that a “preliminary U.S. government assessment determined that 1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at least 426 children.”

That figure, for which no source was indicated, was several times larger than the estimates given by British and French intelligence.

The document issued by the White House cites intelligence that is either obviously ambiguous at best or is of doubtful authenticity, or both, as firm evidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack.

It claims that Syrian chemical weapons specialists were preparing for such an attack merely on the basis of signals intelligence indicating the presence of one or more individuals in a particular location. The same intelligence had been regarded prior to Aug. 21 as indicating nothing out of the ordinary, as was reported by CBS news Aug. 23.

The paper also cites a purported intercept by U.S intelligence of conversations between Syrian officials in which a “senior official” supposedly “confirmed” that the government had carried out the chemical weapons attack.

But the evidence appears to indicate that the alleged intercept was actually passed on to the United States by Israeli intelligence. U.S. intelligence officials have long been doubtful about intelligence from Israeli sources that is clearly in line with Israeli interests.

You know, it’s not like Assad isn’t aware we’re spying on him so who are we protecting the “sources and methods” from?  Congress?  The United States people?

Inside the End of the U.S. Bid to Punish Lehman Executives

By BEN PROTESS and SUSANNE CRAIG, The New York Times

September 8, 2013, 8:57 pm

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s eight-member Lehman Brothers team, having hit one dead end after another over the previous two years, concluded that suing the bank’s executives would be legally unjustified. The group, noting that prosecutors and F.B.I. agents had already walked away from a parallel criminal case, reached unanimous agreement to close its most prominent investigation stemming from the financial crisis, according to officials who attended the meeting, which has not been reported previously.

But Mary L. Schapiro, the S.E.C. chairwoman, disagreed. She pushed George S. Canellos, who supervised the Lehman investigation as head of the S.E.C.’s New York office, to explain how executives who presided over the biggest bankruptcy in United States history could escape without a single civil charge.

“I don’t get it,” she said during a tense exchange with Mr. Canellos in her private conference room in Washington, according to the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly. “Why is there no case?” she continued, staring at Mr. Canellos, instructing him to continue investigating whether Lehman misled investors. “The world won’t understand.”

She was right. Five years after Lehman’s collapse hastened a worldwide economic panic, the government faces lingering questions about the decision to spare executives like Richard S. Fuld Jr., who ran Lehman for 14 years until its demise. Not a single senior executive from any Wall Street bank faced criminal charges from the crisis, either. And the government’s deadline for filing most charges will expire this month, the anniversary of Lehman’s collapse, providing a reminder of the case and its unpopular outcome.

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The S.E.C. quietly reached the decision in 2012 after officials sparred for months over whether Lehman omitted “material” information in disclosures to investors, an important legal standard. Mr. Canellos argued that the omissions were not material. And those who questioned that reasoning – like Ms. Schapiro, as well as some accountants and enforcement officials – acquiesced to Mr. Canellos’s team, which was closest to the evidence.

The S.E.C. also debated the culpability of top Lehman executives. But Mr. Canellos’s team argued that Mr. Fuld did not know that Lehman was using questionable accounting practices despite testimony from another Lehman executive that suggested otherwise. Ms. Schapiro did not override his judgment after S.E.C. officials cautioned her that it could be unethical for a political appointee like herself to do so. Mr. Canellos also had the backing of Robert S. Khuzami, who ran the S.E.C.’s enforcement unit at the time.

…

The S.E.C.’s decision came in stark contrast to a report by Lehman’s bankruptcy-court examiner, who accused executives of using an accounting gimmick to “manipulate” the balance sheet.

“There were many instances where the S.E.C. had information and didn’t act,” the examiner, Anton R. Valukas, a former federal prosecutor who is now chairman of Jenner & Block, said in an interview.

…

In his report on Lehman’s failure, a rebuke that spanned more than 2,200 pages, Mr. Valukas, the bankruptcy-court examiner, outlined accounting maneuvers that he called “balance sheet manipulation.”

The practice allowed Lehman to transfer securities off its balance sheet, presenting them as collateral to an outside lender, which in turn offered Lehman a short-term loan. Lehman treated the transactions as sales rather than as debt, which meant the firm looked as if it had less debt than it actually did. “Unable to find a United States law firm” to approve the maneuver, Mr. Valukas said, Lehman hired a law firm in London to bless it.

…

Lehman highlighted the reduction in a public earnings call but never disclosed that it partly stemmed from Repo 105. As such, Mr. Valukas outlined possible civil claims against Mr. Fuld and his chief financial officers, including Erin Callan, who was the C.F.O. during much of the year in which Lehman collapsed. Mr. Fuld, he said, was “at least grossly negligent” for allowing Lehman to make “materially misleading” statements about the firm’s health.

The Valukas report, released in March 2010, appeared to provide a road map for the federal investigation into Lehman executives. But soon after its release, according to the officials involved in the inquiry, prosecutors and the F.B.I. lost interest in the case. They discovered that Repo 105 had nothing to do with Lehman’s failure and was technically allowed under an obscure accounting rule. Noting that London lawyers had approved Repo 105, prosecutors in Manhattan also worried they could not prove that executives intended to mislead investors.

…

Mr. Canellos, a former federal prosecutor who is now the co-head of the S.E.C.’s enforcement unit, did not budge. Despite the political pressure, he told colleagues at one of the meetings, they could not bring a case if the evidence was lacking.

“Our job is to seek justice,” he said.

Not with a Bang but a Whimper – the SEC Enforcement Team’s Propaganda Campaign

Bill Black, Naked Capitalism

Monday, September 9, 2013

The New York Times has one of those “inside” stories that unintentionally demonstrate the collapse of justice and financial reporting. This genre involves the media reporting gravely (and uncritically) the administration’s claims that its failure to prosecute any elite for the largest and most destructive financial frauds in history actually demonstrates the exceptional ethical rectitude of the non-prosecutors and non-enforcers. Journalists, unlike alchemists, can transmute dross into gold. In the NYT’s account a pathetic failure of competence, integrity, and courage at the SEC is reimagined as a fantastic triumph of vigor and ethics on the part of the SEC enforcement attorney who refused to seek to hold Lehman’s senior officers accountable for their violations but otherwise became the scourge of elite frauds. In the end, he is promoted for his dedication to “justice” and is now the anti-enforcement leader of the SEC’s enforcement group.

“Justice” became an oxymoron in the Bush and Obama administration. It now means that the elite frauds that became wealthy through their crimes that drove our financial crisis should enjoy de facto immunity from prosecution. The NYT, however, pictures the SEC as an ultra-aggressive enforcer that virtually never fails to take on the elite CEOs leading the control frauds. The entire piece is one extended leak by the SEC’s enforcement leadership which has been severely criticized for its failure to recover the fraudulent profits that elite Wall Street bankers obtained by running the control frauds.

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The pattern of SEC action with regard to elite banks and elite fraudulent bankers demonstrates that they are treated far differently than smaller, non-financial corporations. (Note that this ignores the most important differences – the elite banksters’ frauds are far less likely to be investigated or sued by the SEC and enjoy de facto immunity from prosecution.) The Stanford study does not include cases that the SEC failed to investigate or bring.)

The controlling officers of firms, not the corporation, make decisions. They are happy to trade off penalties that will be paid by the firm. Those penalties sound large but they merely represent the modest cost of doing fraudulent business to ensure that the controlling officers escape individual accountability. The SEC can only achieve deterrence and take the profit out of elite fraud by making the criminal referrals and conducting the investigations that convict senior officers of felonies for their frauds and by recovering all of the officers’ fraudulent proceeds.

The SEC data demonstrate its epic failure in preventing the current crisis (the SEC was useless) and deterring future crises (the SEC leaves the fraudulent wealthy officers immensely wealthy). The SEC has tried to bring enforcement actions against the senior officers of only three of the elite financial institutions (banks). It has sued twelve senior officers of those three banks (or four if we depart from the SEC’s practice and call Fannie and Freddie different cases). It’s biggest “success” left the former CEO of Countrywide with virtually all of the vast wealth that the SEC claims to be the product of fraud. It obtained $80,000 (also almost certainly paid by an insurer) from the CEO of IndyMac, the largest fraudulent seller of fraudulent mortgage loans. That is it for the senior officers of the elite banks whose frauds the SEC says drove the financial crisis.

The SEC, as always, focuses its enforcement on non-elite corporations where it is far easier for its enforcers to rack up higher numbers of “successes.” The “66 senior” individual defendants were overwhelmingly employed by non-elite banks. The SEC’s own data demonstrate that it is a paper tiger when it comes to the elite banksters who grew wealthy by leading the frauds that caused the mortgage fraud crisis.

According to The New York Times exit polling de Blasio not only has a comfortable lead in the Democratic Mayoral Primary, but looks to have enough of a margin to avoid a run-off.

Unfortunately (or not, liberal identifying voters give him a strong margin) according to the same exit polling Scott Stringer seems poised to defeat Eliot Spitzer in the Comptroller race.

The victory for de Blasio is good news because it represents a strong rebuke to City Council Chair Christine Quinn who has nothing but identity politics and tribalism to distinguish herself from Bloomberg whom she has enabled for years.

Ex-FBI lawyer linked to surveillance abuses poised for federal judge post

Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

Friday 6 September 2013 10.08 EDT

A former senior FBI official implicated in surveillance abuses is poised to become a federal judge in one of the US’s most important courts for terrorism cases.

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Caproni has come under bipartisan criticism over the years for enabling widespread surveillance later found to be inappropriate or illegal. During her tenure as the FBI’s general counsel, she clashed with Congress and even the Fisa surveillance court over the proper scope of the FBI’s surveillance powers.

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A 2010 report by the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog found that the FBI misused a type of non-judicial subpoena known as an “exigent letter” to improperly obtain more than 5,500 phone numbers of Americans.

“The FBI broke the law on telephone records privacy and the general counsel’s office, headed by Valerie Caproni, sanctioned it and must face consequences,” said John Conyers, then the chairman of the House judiciary committee, in April 2010, who called for then-FBI director Robert Mueller to fire her.

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In an April 2008 House hearing, Caproni told lawmakers that if a phone number obtained from a telephone company using a nonjudicial subpoena ostensibly authorized by the Patriot Act was unrelated to a “currently open investigation, and there was no emergency at the time we received the records, the records are removed from our files and destroyed”.

In fact, the NSA, at the time of Caproni’s testimony and today, stores phone records such as phone numbers on practically all Americans for up to five years, whether or not they are connected to an “open investigation”.

Numerous intelligence, Justice Department and law enforcement officials have testified this summer that the NSA can pass phone records to the FBI that it has “reasonable articulable suspicion” are connected to terrorism, although NSA deputy director John C Inglis could not cite a single case where the phone records have clearly disrupted a domestic terror attack.

“Caproni knew that the Bush administration could use or was using the Section 215 provision in the Patriot Act to obtain Americans’ phone records on a broad scale, an issue that has recently been documented by the whistleblower material first printed in the Guardian,” said Graves, a former deputy assistant attorney general who dealt with Caproni extensively while working on national security issues for the ACLU.

…

A 2008 Justice Department inspector general’s report into surveillance under the Patriot Act found that Caproni clashed with the Fisa court, a secret court that oversees surveillance for the purposes of foreign intelligence, over the scope of the court’s authority.

The heavily redacted report found that in 2006, the Fisa court indicated it would not sign off on an FBI request for business records under section 215 of the Patriot Act – the section used to justify the bulk phone-records database – “because of first amendment concerns.” It is extremely rare for the Fisa court to deny the government a surveillance request.

Caproni, the FBI’s general counsel at the time, “told the OIG [office of inspector general] that the Fisa court does not have the authority to close an FBI investigation,” according to a footnote in the report.

Obama on the Verge of Being Handed a Major Defeat on Syria

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Other writers have covered in gory detail how the US insistence that it has proof that Assad was behind the chemical attacks looks like a not-sufficiently-improved version of the Iraq WMD playbook. Nothing from the Administration in the last 48 hours has dented these critics’ case. Indeed, one has to wonder as to why the US is trying to pre-empt UN evidence-gathering and analysis. Might it be that it would finger the rebels, as in the folks the US has been funding? Are we prepared to go after them if they were the ones who crossed Obama’s red line?

But what is relevant right now is not what actually happened in Syria (why should we trouble ourselves with pesky details?) but that, as Lambert put it, the imperial reality-creating machine is starting to break down before our eyes. Since I am trying to minimize time on the Web this week (I am still in theory on vacation), it would have been easy to have been snookered by the news stories of the day: Boehner agrees to support Obama on Syria! Senate Foreign Relations Committee passes resolution authorizing an American strike on Syria! Both houses are falling into line, so resign yourself to more Middle Eastern misadventures.

Reports from inside the Beltway give a very different picture. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the authorization resolution with weak support, a 10-7-1 vote. This sends a message to the Senate that even some hawks are loath to throw their weight behind it. By contrast, with the Amash amendment (the amendment attached to a Defense Department funding bill that would have curbed the NSA), the House leadership of both parties were resoundingly opposed, and current and former military and intelligence officials sounded dire warnings as to all the terrible things that would happen if the resolution passed.

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ThinkProgress’ House whip count as of the end of Wednesday broke down with 47 members of the House as firm or inclined to a yes vote, 187 firm or inclined to a no vote, and 220 unknown or undecided. Firedoglake comes up with a broadly similar picture: 55 firmly or inclined to a yes, 155 firmly or inclined to a negative vote. One of my Congressional sources says based on his conversations with Republicans he is pretty certain the Administration will be forced to withdraw the resolution or postpone a vote in the House.

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This vote is turning out to be another TARP-type watershed, with the public virtually unified in its opposition (calls to Congresscrittters are reportedly running well over 90% against intervention). And remember, it took a market swan dive, a second TARP vote, and the additional of lots of pork to reverse the initial vote. But also bear in mind that the reason TARP was initially voted down was the barrage of voter phone calls and e-mails against it, reportedly 99% opposed until financial services firms started getting employees to call in favor of the bill, which shifted the tally to a mere 80% or so of callers opposed. So if you have not called or written your Congresscritters, be sure to do so pronto.

France won’t attack Syria if U.S. doesn’t, prime minister tells his Senate

By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy Foreign Staff

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

French leaders warned Wednesday that failing to respond to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would send a dangerous signal to the dictators of the world.

But French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault also said that his country would not launch a retaliatory strike on Syria if the United States decides not to do so.

“France will not act without U.S. support,” he told his country’s Senate as France’s Parliament began to debate whether the country should take military action to punish the government of President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack that the U.S. and France claim his forces launched on Damascus suburbs Aug. 21.

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Just hours before the French discussion of a response began, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who’s consistently rejected the notion that Assad’s government used chemical weapons, seemed to open the door for possible Russian participation in a strike, telling a television interviewer that “if it is proven the government was behind the attacks, there will be a reaction.”

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“My question is what will be the U.S. reaction if the evidence shows that the rebels were behind the use of chemical weapons?” he asked. “Will the U.S. stop providing the rebellion with weapons in that case?”

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The leader of the primary opposition party in the French Senate warned, however, that any action without a United Nations mandate carried the risk of isolating France. Christian Jacob, the head of the center-right Union for Popular Movement, the party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, warned of “similarities with Iraq” in the run-up to any Syrian attack, saying there was no U.N. consensus and that the intelligence on which the U.S. and France have made their case is less than definitive.

“Where are our allies?” he asked. “Where is the United Nations Security Council resolution?”