After years of following the paper trail of $51 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars provided to rebuild a broken Iraq, the U.S. government can say with certainty that too much was wasted. But it can't say how much.
In what it called its final audit report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds on Friday spelled out a range of accounting weaknesses that put "billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation" in the largest reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history.
Auditors say billions likely wasted in Iraq work
By Way of Deception: 9/11 and the Mossad
Mossad, the Israeli intelligence force, has an Old Testament motto that is described two ways. Politely as, “For by wise guidance you can wage your war.” Or, from a former agent critical of the agency, “By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War.”
I didn’t know a thing about Mossad until I had to research them for what comes next. Did you know that the Israeli military attacked a U.S. ship (the Liberty) off the coast of Egypt in 1967? Injured 171 Americans, killed 34 and said it was an accident? They said they mistook it for some other country’s large military vessel. But all U.S. soldiers who were interviewed said, “No freaking way. They saw us, they shot us and they killed a lot of us.”
Facebook Monitors Your Chats For “Criminal Activity”
Facebook and other social platforms are watching users’ chats for criminal activity and notifying police if any suspicious behavior is detected, according to a report.
The screening process begins with scanning software that monitors chats for words or phrases that signal something might be amiss, such as an exchange of personal information or vulgar language.
Congress Now Trying To Outlaw Reporting On Government Corruption
Lawmakers are pushing legislation through Congress that will criminalize reporting on illegal activities and corruption in the US government.
Just when you thought the United States government couldn’t sink any lower our beloved politicians in Washington have introduced legislation that will criminalize reporting on US government secrets.
Alex Baer: Airless, Chairless Musical Chairs
There's a stand-up party game out, the traditional standby of social interaction in groups. Details have leaked: The game is from the Guild of Lazing Rich Old Buggerers (GLORB) -- the leisure service unit of Global Adherents of Special Persons' Protections (GASPP), itself a subsidiary of parent corporation HAVOCC, the House of Avaricious, Villainous, Oafish, Charlatan Capitalists.
It'll be a blast, as this is the same bunch behind Enron, the Exxon Valdez, fracking, GMOs, the BP oil volcano in the Gulf, mortgage crises, the credit crunch, bets on derivatives' bets, the hapless need for red-alert bank bailouts, inter-linked LIBOR manipulations, with even more in the pipeline, so to say, for the really lean years ahead.
Thanks to North Dakota, US waste of natural gas grows rapidly
The United States is flaring so much natural gas into the atmosphere - burning it as oil-field waste rather than extracting energy from it in power plants - that it now leads the world in the growth rate at which it is trashing that energy source.
Evidence of the trend can be seen flickering in the night across western North Dakota, where new oil drilling in the Bakken shale formation there has helped propel a surge in US flaring since 2007. As is often the case, many companies find it cheaper to burn off gas that emerges in new oil fields, rather than build pipelines and facilities to collect it.
Georgia set to execute mentally disabled inmate despite court ruling
A death row prisoner in Georgia who has been officially deemed by the courts to be "mentally retarded" is scheduled to be executed next week despite a supreme court ruling that bans the death sentence for people with learning difficulties.
The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles was due to hear a clemency appeal on behalf of the prisoner, Warren Hill, on Friday and has the power to commute his death penalty to life without parole.
Prairie2: You know it's bad when a rigged casino fails
It seems we've only seen the tip of the iceberg with the Barclays Bank prosecution for rigging the LIBOR (London Interbank Offer Rate). It seems that they are cooperating to avoid jail time. Bob Diamond who headed the bank until recently said "he was sickened when he saw the emails."
What he means is that he was sickened that his underlings were stupid enough to leave a paper trail. His nausea will be somewhat soothed by the $3.5 million he gets as a golden parachute. This, however, is about a tenth of what he expected to get. How will he make the payments on his Rolls?
Tara Devlin: "Occupy 'Vision Statement' a Gift to the Elites."
Frankly, the statement pissed me off because it sounded to me, not like a beautiful vision for the world in stark contrast to the CON vision of greed, hierarchy and intellectual incuriosity - but the death knell of a once promising movement.
"Our process is our message?!" WHAT? Really? I know that was probably meant to be a radical, bold, daring attempt at a fundamental shift in consciousness about how we organize our society, but it sounded more like a gift to the elites who are giggling with delight by the way Occupy just solidified itself as a fringe movement.
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