Category: Corruption

Dell Computer is Going Down. Sooner Rather than Later

No Comments

Dell is done. It is on its way down, and will never be a top tier computer manufacturer again. It will end up where Gateway is today.

First, it started selling its computers through WalMart (Google walmart vlasic), and now it has repeatedly delayed its filings.

The death spiral started when they decided to go cheap with their tech support, and people jumped to HP.

Dell delays filing fiscal reports…again
By Kelly Fiveash
Published Friday 6th July 2007 10:36 GMT

Dell will once again hold back filing its 2007 financial statements to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) because it is yet to complete an internal investigation into its accounting practices.

The direct computer giant, which earlier this week confirmed that the SEC had set a mid-July deadline for it to file its fiscal reports, has been looking into accounting errors as well as evidence of misconduct at the firm.

The SEC warned Dell that failure to file reports by 16 July could lead to a delisting on the Nasdaq exchange.

I think that a delisting is unlikely, for now, but things are going to get very bad, very fast.

Note: I do not own Dell stock directly, though they may be a tiny part of my index funds (Vanguard’s S&P 500 fund, etc.)

Would Someone Pleas Throw Him In Jail for the Next 8-12 Years

No Comments

Let me get this straight. This snake oil salesman gets fired over his financial shenanigans, and Fannie Mae is told NEVER to hire him again, and they are still giving him stock options?

Would someone please throw this corrupt jerk in gaol?

Raines Sues OFHEO Over Stock
By David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 6, 2007; D01

Former Fannie Mae chairman Franklin D. Raines has mounted a new challenge to the government’s power over the federally chartered mortgage funding company, arguing that regulators have no authority to delay his receipt of a $3.9 million stock award.

Raines sued regulators this week to get the shares released, and yesterday a federal judge scheduled a hearing on the question for July 16.

The fresh challenge comes as legislative efforts to give federal regulators more power over the company have stalled.

Raines is one of many current and former Fannie Mae executives who have been waiting to receive payouts pegged to the company’s performance from 2003 through 2006, including periods when Fannie Mae’s earnings were misstated and, regulators allege, the company was mismanaged.

Raines left the company after the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered it in 2004 to correct years of financial reports that overstated profit by billions of dollars. In reaching a $400 million settlement with regulators last year, Fannie Mae agreed never to employ Raines again.

As the company worked on straightening out its books, it delayed deciding how much stock its executives should receive under certain incentive plans. Last month, Fannie Mae’s board proposed releasing millions of dollars of awards — subject to approval by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

The agency has since sought more information from Fannie Mae about how it arrived at the amount of the awards and told the company to keep the payments on hold until it completes its review.

The agency has warned Fannie Mae that any stock awards it released “could prove irretrievable” and could leave the company liable if later found to be excessive, according to a document filed in court yesterday.

….

What Charlie Said

No Comments

In this case, Charles Pierce, in a letter to Eric Alterman.

Damn, that dude can write.

…..
I don’t know if it counts if you only said it in a bar and never wrote it down anywhere, but back in 1988, when it became plain that absolutely nobody was going to pay a price — criminal, civil, or in the case of the senior Bush, political — for the staggering mess that was Iran-Contra, I was in the late, lamented Eliot Lounge in Boston, chewing it over with a friend who’d reported extensively on the scandal. I told him that the country was going to pay a fearsome price one day for having let these crimes go unpunished. That the whole business lodged something malignant deep in the government that needed to be roughly, and bloodily, excised.
…..

Dems are Finally Telling Lieberman to Go Cheney Himself

No Comments

Let me be the first to say:


Don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out, loser.

Altitude Drop For Lieberman the Hawk
by Steve Kornacki
Early last week, a distressing, if not entirely unsurprising, Newsweek poll found that fully 40 percent of American adults continue to believe that Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.

It must, then, have been this exasperating chunk of the electorate that Joe Lieberman had in mind when he declared Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that Democrats are doomed in the 2008 presidential race unless they re-embrace the Iraq War.

“I think that’s the best tradition of our party, and if we don’t recapture it … the Democratic candidate is going to have a hard time winning that election next year,” Mr. Lieberman said, likening his own hawkish Iraq posture to Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Henry “Scoop” Jackson – all of them much too deceased to protest such a questionable comparison.

Ouch!!!!!

…

Given the Senate’s partisan balance – 49 Republicans, 49 Democrats (one still recuperating from a December cerebral hemorrhage), and two tie-breaking independents who caucus with the Democrats – Democrats are still technically at Mr. Lieberman’s mercy, their fragile control of the chamber dependent on his continued willingness to live up to his campaign pledge to side with his old party for organizational purposes.

But it’s now apparent that they need nothing more than that from him. Republicans have labored to portray Mr. Lieberman’s defeat in last year’s Senate primary as evidence that the Democratic Party has been over-run by weak-willed McGoverniks, a contention that Mr. Lieberman, in making reference to Democrats’ past vulnerabilities on foreign policy and national security issues, sought to reinforce on Sunday.

That game, however, has ceased to work. In years past – 2004 and 2002, say – a public association with Mr. Lieberman was helpful to Democrats, a reassurance to a more hawkish electorate that they were as “tough” as the G.O.P. But in 2007, embracing Mr. Lieberman’s intransigence is a decided political liability – evidenced most startlingly by a recent poll that found that even 58 percent of Republicans in Iowa want a troop withdrawal in the next six months. When, as he did on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman uses a national television interview to dust off old attacks on the Democratic Party’s foreign policy credentials while at the same time actually declaring that “the surge is working,” it only benefits his former party’s standing with the war-wary public. There are few, if any Democrats, quaking at his threat to endorse a Republican in ’08.

…

Those politicians are on the run to catch up with the public before November 2008. Mr. Lieberman should probably consider himself lucky that his seat was up last year – and not next year.

“DC Madame” Phone Records Available.

No Comments

The big lesson, of course, is about how asset forfeiture is used in coercive ways in the United States.

The fact that it is this totalitarian regime is going to reveal all the law and order types who want to be made to dress up in French maid uniforms and be urinated upon, is really just an ironic side effect of this policy.

Judge lifts injunction on ‘DC madam’ phone records

A judge in the US district court in Washington, D.C. has lifted the temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the so-called ‘DC madam,’ Deborah Jeane Palfrey, from selling or distributing the list of phone records from her escort business.

“The List in question is the Defendant’s personal property,” wrote judge Gladys Kessler, “and contains only a log of telephone numbers. It was neither seized by the Government when it searched the Defendant’s residence in California, nor listed in the Indictment putting the Defendant on notice as to which items of her property were subject to forfeiture.”

Kessler concluded that the government had not satisfied the requirements of the forfeiture statute that would enable them to make the “extraordinary step of freezing the property of an individual, not yet convicted of any crime, and barring her from giving away that property.”

….

Bush To Seek New Powers to Spy on Political Opponents

No Comments

There is credible evidence that Bush’s illegal wireless surveillance activity targeted CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour in 2004.

Her husband is James Rubin, who served as Wesley Clark’s chief foreign policy spokesman, and then as a senior foreign policy adviser for John Kerry, so he would be included in any such surveillance. It’s unavoidable.

Does anyone believe that these intercepts did not get passed off to Karl Rove?

VOA News – Bush Seeks Changes in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

By Deborah Tate
Capitol Hill
05 July 2007

The Bush administration is seeking to update a law governing U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance. But members of the Democratic majority in Congress are signaling they may be reluctant to approve the proposed changes because they have concerns about a controversial administration wiretapping program. VOA’s Deborah Tate reports from Capitol Hill.

The Bush administration is asking Congress to approve changes to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The proposed modifications would give the government more power to gather foreign intelligence information. Supporters say the changes would bring the law up to date with changes in new technology, including e-mail and wireless communications.

….

US Mega Embassy in Baghdad Uninhabitable

No Comments

Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.

Seriously. I’ve yet to see anything wiser yet, and I’m using the loose definition of the 21st century which includes the year 2000.

Construction Woes Add to Fears at Embassy in Iraq
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 5, 2007; A01

U.S. diplomats in Iraq, increasingly fearful over their personal safety after recent mortar attacks inside the Green Zone, are pointing to new delays and mistakes in the U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad as signs that their vulnerability could grow in the months ahead.

A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards’ base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world.

The main builder of the sprawling, 21-building embassy is First Kuwaiti General Trade and Contracting Co., a Middle Eastern firm that is already under Justice Department scrutiny over alleged labor abuses. First Kuwaiti also erected the guard base, prompting some State Department officials in Washington and Baghdad to worry that the problems exposed in the camp suggest trouble lurking ahead for the rest of the embassy complex.

The first signs of trouble, according to the cable, emerged when the kitchen staff tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base on May 15. Some appliances did not work. Workers began to get electric shocks. Then a burning smell enveloped the kitchen as the wiring began to melt.

All the food from the old guard camp — a collection of tents — had been carted to the new facility, in the expectation that the 1,200 guards would begin moving in the next day. But according to the cable, the electrical meltdown was just the first problem in a series of construction mistakes that soon left the base uninhabitable, including wiring problems, fuel leaks and noxious fumes in the sleeping trailers.

“Poor quality construction . . . life safety issues . . . left [the embassy] with no recourse but to shut the camp down, in spite of the blistering heat in Baghdad,” the May 29 cable informed Washington.

Such challenges with construction contracts inside the fortified enclave known as the Green Zone reflect the broader problems that have thwarted reconstruction efforts throughout war-torn Iraq.

The “fairly serious problems” noted in the cable indicate that First Kuwaiti’s work fails to meet basic safety standards, said an administration official who was not authorized to speak to the news media. But the State Department’s Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), which oversees construction of the new embassy, has kept a “close hold” on the project, making it difficult for anyone else in the government to gauge progress. “We are suspecting we will find the same issues in the new embassy,” resulting in months of delays, the official said.

The embassy cable prompted a stinging response from James L. Golden, OBO’s managing director for the embassy project. In a cable dated June 8, he berated personnel in Baghdad for sending their message over an open embassy system, rather than keeping the complaints in-house. He defended First Kuwaiti and accused the embassy and KBR — a Texas-based company that runs many facilities in Iraq and discovered the wiring problems — of making false claims to deflect attention from their own errors.

…..

Hmmm….is James L. Golden a political appointee? I quick google can’t confirm one way or the other.

Obstruction of Public Access: UK Edition

No Comments

This is really about covering up pork, and outrageous uses of expense accounts by MPs.

UK gov fights public spending website
By Kablenet
Published Tuesday 3rd July 2007 09:27 GMT

The government is obstructing a bill aimed at establishing a new website for information on public sector spending.

The bill, which originated in the House of Lords, is now being led by Conservative MP David Gauke. It would require the Treasury to create a government expenditure website, as well as giving the government the power to extend it to other public sector bodies, but the government believes it would cost too much.

…

Nefarious WIPO Plot Defeated

No Comments

Basically, the question is about rebroadcast of over the air and cable signals on the Internet across international boundaries.

The broadcasters were trying to use this as a way to generate additional, and undeserved, profits, by creating a new “right”.

WIPO broadcast treaty defeated by web activists
By OUT-LAW.COM
Published Monday 2nd July 2007 09:57 GMT

A controversial new intellectual property right due to be created by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has been successfully opposed by a coalition of web activists and the technology industry.

WIPO has spent nearly 10 years gathering international agreement over a new deal for broadcasters which would give them intellectual property rights over broadcasts which would exist in addition to existing copyright laws.

….

At the end of the meeting, though, there was not enough agreement between member nations about the proposal and the committee recommended that the proposal not be forwarded to a diplomatic conference for adoption.

Gwen Hinze is the international affairs director for the EFF. She told weekly technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio about the opposition to the plans.

“If you create a new layer of rights that sit on top of copyright from a consumer’s point of view that raises questions about access to information, so information that might otherwise be in the public domain as a matter of copyright law, the exceptions and limitations wouldn’t apply and that raises some concerns about access to knowledge,” said Hinze.

Podcasters were worried that the new right would affect material they produced and their ability to disseminate it on their own terms. One and a half thousand of them signed an EFF open letter to WIPO protesting against the move.

Consumer electronics companies also protested because the plan contained technological protection measures which they feared could give broadcasters control over television recording equipment, such as TiVO boxes.

…

Opponents agree that television signal piracy is a problem that must be solved, but say that it can be solved with a ‘signals based approach’ rather than by creating an entire new intellectual property right.

….

As always, I do not agree to the term intellectual property. It does not exists. There is simply a limited exclusive license in order to promote the useful arts and sciences.

What Atrios Said

No Comments

Here:

Inevitably, the subject of Marc Rich comes up every time presidential pardons come up. Without going into all of the issues, can we just remind the world that… Marc Rich’s lawyer was Scooter Libby.

As I’ve said before, and will say again, this is why Duncan Black is an A-list blogger, and I am a Z-list blogger.

28301-016

No Comments


That’s Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby.

Libby, Libby who can I turn to
You give me something I can hold on to
I know you’ll think I’m like the others before
Who saw your name and number on the wall
Libby I’ve got your number
I need to make you mine
Libby don’t change your number
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)
Libby, Libby you’re the bitch for me
You don’t know me but you make me so happy
I tried to call you before
But I lost my nerve
I tried my imagination
But I was disturbed
Libby I’ve got your number
I need to make you mine
Libby don’t change your number
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)
I got it (I got it), I got it
I got your number on the wall
I got it (I got it), I got it
For a good time call
Libby don’t change your number
I need to make you mine
Libby I’ve got your number
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)

Solo

Libby don’t change your number
I need to make you mine
Libby I call your number
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)
Next two lines sung over
background refrain of “28301-016”
Libby, Libby who can I turn to
For the price of a dime
I can always turn to you
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)
2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6 (2 8 3 0 1-0 1 6)
Fade out repeating “1016”

Criminals in Journalism

No Comments

This guy moved to a competitor, and stole proprietary data. He thought he could get away with it because of who his father is (see last paragraph).

I’ve always thought that the large corporate media chains were pond scum, and now it is confirmed.

Ridder says he shared Pioneer Press data
Publisher denies breaking noncompete pact
BY JENNIFER BJORHUS
Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 06/25/2007 09:46:57 PM CDT

Star Tribune Publisher Par Ridder acknowledged taking confidential financial information from his former employer, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, to his new job at the Minneapolis paper; separately, he insisted his noncompete agreement with the Pioneer Press had been waived, making him free to go.

Ridder’s videotaped testimony, played Monday in Ramsey County District Court, started a three-day hearing for a temporary injunction against Ridder’s employment at the Star Tribune. The Pioneer Press has sued the Star Tribune over Ridder’s departure in March and is seeking to hold Ridder and two other former Pioneer Press employees to their noncompete agreements, barring them from working at the rival paper for one year.

In addition to determining whether the noncompete agreements are valid, Ramsey County District Court Judge David Higgs must decide whether the spreadsheets Ridder allegedly purloined constitute trade secrets. The judge also must decide whether the Pioneer Press will be irreparably harmed by the Star Tribune’s having them.

In a brief filed last week, the Star Tribune argued that the noncompete contracts aren’t binding. It also argued that the electronic data Ridder and the other employees took may have been sensitive but weren’t all that important. The Star Tribune said it didn’t use the data and it didn’t hurt the Pioneer Press.

…

Ridder said it was “inappropriate” for him to have taken Pioneer Press personnel paperwork – the disputed noncompete agreements – from the Pioneer Press building. He also said he told his new bosses at the Star Tribune “that I would do this differently,” referring to loading up his laptop with confidential Pioneer Press financial information and then distributing it via e-mail to top executives at the Star Tribune.

…

Ridder testified that after speaking with Cartalucca about how to handle the paperwork, he called his father for advice. Ridder’s father is Tony Ridder, former CEO of the dismantled Knight Ridder newspaper chain.

…

Yes, Virginia, There are Scummier People than Realtors

No Comments

The changes in ground rent law were a result of a very good Baltimore Sun Expose (Part 1, Part 2, and part 3) about how a relatively small number of ground rent holders are regularly using this to screw people.

These people should be hung by their tongues and their genitals.

Ground rent suit is filed
Action challenges new laws reforming a system that had cost hundreds their homes

By June Arney
sun reporter

June 26, 2007

A trustee for a ground rent owner has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of new laws intended to reform a system that had cost hundreds of people their homes.

In the suit filed in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, Charles Muskin seeks a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block measures that end ejectment – the seizure of a property for nonpayment of ground rents – and require a registry of ground rents.

The laws, which would take effect July 1, were part of a reform package enacted in the last session of the General Assembly in the wake of an investigative series published by The Sun . The articles reported that ground rent holders had sued to get possession of homes nearly 4,000 times over six years – sometimes over unpaid sums of as little as $24. Baltimore judges awarded houses to ground rent holders at least 521 times between 2000 and the end of March 2006.

In many cases, ground rent holders used their power under state law to oust homeowners, then sold the properties, sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars in profit. Some homeowners were able to reach settlements to regain their houses by paying legal and other fees many times the amount of ground rent owed.

In addition to stopping ejectments and creating the registry, the package of reform laws also banned the creation of new ground rents and made it easier for homeowners to redeem – buy out – ground rents.

Muskin, a trustee for two trusts from his grandfather’s estate that include about 300 ground rents in Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County, testified against some of the bills before the General Assembly last session.

…

Rick Abbruzzese, spokesman for Gov. Martin O’Malley, said yesterday the state will stand by the new laws.

“We will defend, and we are confident the court will uphold this important legislation,” he said. O’Malley supported the reform package and signed it into law.

Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said the suit had been received and was being reviewed, but declined further comment.

Brian E. Frosh, chairman of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, which considered the bills, said lawmakers “got advice from the attorney general that the legislation was constitutional, particularly with respect to the claims made” in the suit.

The laws changed “not a property right, but a remedy,” said Frosh, a Montgomery County Democrat. “It used to be you could toss somebody out of their house for a $20 payment. Now you can get the 20 bucks, but you have to follow a different procedure.”

Under the new laws, if all else fails and a house is sold, Frosh said, the ground rent holder collects only what he is owed, and the homeowner gets the balance.

….

Abramoff Snares Doolittle

No Comments

Someone here is going to talk. Either Doolittle will roll to protect his wife, or she’ll talk when she finds out that Doolittle has thrown her under a bus.

I would bet on his wife rolling on him though, as he has already fingered her to the press about this entire thing.

Feds contact ex-Doolittle aide
By ERICA WERNER Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — California GOP Rep. John Doolittle’s former chief of staff is providing documents to federal prosecutors investigating Doolittle and his wife in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, the aide’s attorney told The Associated Press on Monday.

The aide, David Lopez, who was Doolittle’s longtime chief of staff until 2005 and continued to work for him as a campaign consultant for about a year after that, has turned over several hundred pages of campaign finance records to the Justice Department under subpoena, said his attorney, Bill Portanova.

A different former Doolittle staffer, Kevin Ring, who went on to work as a lobbyist with Abramoff, was already known to be under investigation in the wide-ranging probe. Portanova’s comments marked the first public confirmation that prosecutors have sought to interview other former Doolittle aides.

…

Iraqi Ally Takes Money and Runs

No Comments

Courtesy of Abu Aardvark.

Abu Aardvark: Anbar Salvation Council head skips town?

This story from al-Malaf is currently the talk of the forums: Sitar Abu Risha, head of the Anbar Salvation Council, has allegedly fled Iraq with $75 million that the Americans had given him to fight al-Qaeda.

The article is in Arabic, which I cannot read, but it matches my cynicism.

We can’t even f&^%ing bribe people competently.

What a mess.

The Voice of the Corrupt, Stupid Washington Elite Calls for Cheney to Go

No Comments

Sally Quinn is everything that is awful about the inside the beltway set, and she speaks for them.

Atrios describes her as, “Sally Quinn, the permanent hostess of the floating Washington cocktail party.”

Once again, he shows me why he’s an A-list Blogger, and I’m a Z-list blogger.

A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney

By Sally Quinn
Tuesday, June 26, 2007; 12:00 AM

The big question right now among Republicans is how to remove Vice President Cheney from office. Even before this week’s blockbuster series in The Post, discontent in Republican ranks was rising.

As the reputed architect of the war in Iraq, Cheney is viewed as toxic, and as the administration’s leading proponent of an attack on Iran, he is seen as dangerous. As long as he remains vice president, according to this thinking, he has the potential to drag down every member of the party — including the presidential nominee — in next year’s elections.

Removing a sitting vice president is not easy, but this may be the moment. I remember Barry Goldwater sitting in my parents’ living room in 1973, in the last days of Watergate, debating whether to lead a group of senior Republicans to the White House to tell President Nixon he had to go. His hesitation was that he felt loyalty to the president and the party. But in the end he felt a greater loyalty to his country, and he went to the White House.

Today, another group of party elders, led by Sen. John Warner of Virginia, could well do the same. They could act out of concern for our country’s plummeting reputation throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East.

For such a plan to work, however, they would need a ready replacement. Until recently, there hasn’t been an acceptable alternative to Cheney — nor has there been a persuasive argument to convince President Bush to make a change. Now there is.

The idea is to install a vice president who could beat the Democratic nominee in 2008. It’s unlikely that any of the top three Republican candidates — former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Sen. John McCain of Arizona or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — would want the job, for fear that association with Bush’s war would be the kiss of death.

Nor would any of them be that attractive to the president. Giuliani is too New York, too liberal. His reputation as a leader, forged on 9/11 and the days after, carries him only so far. McCain, who has always had a rocky relationship with the president, lost much of his support from moderate Democrats and independents (and from a fair amount of Republicans) when the Straight Talk Express started veering off course. And no matter what anyone says about how Romney’s religion doesn’t matter, being a Mormon is simply not acceptable to Bush’s base. Several right-wing evangelicals have told me they don’t see Mormons as “true Christians.”

That leaves Fred Thompson. Everybody loves Fred. He has the healing qualities of Gerald Ford and the movie-star appeal of Ronald Reagan. He is relatively moderate on social issues. He has a reputation as a peacemaker and a compromiser. And he has a good sense of humor.

….

These Weapons are For Use on Americans, not Brown and Black People

No Comments

Maybe I’m paranoid, but I can’t see either this administration, or the military being so concerned about the non white or non Christian people that they bomb.
This is intended for use against US Citizens.

Pentagon Struggles To Define Nonlethal Weapons Roadmap(subscription required)

Aviation Week & Space Technology
06/25/2007, page 55

Michael Bruno
Washington

Nonlethal weapons beckon, but Pentagon struggles to ascertain the way forward

Printed headline: Stunned Progression

The U.S. Defense Dept. has a bevy of high-end nonlethal weapon technologies being developed, but whether it can better exploit the seemingly endless possibilities that nonlethal weapons promise, even by the next major war, is still uncertain.

It’s not for lack of trying. There are still dreams of unmanned aircraft raining electromagnetic pulses or corrosive agents on alleged overseas weapons-of-mass-destruction sites to obliterate their navigation, guidance and detonation circuits—as one Naval War College paper once outlined—or UAV fleets dropping polymer foam agents to render an enemy facility temporarily useless without the collateral damage of lethal bombs.


The Active Denial System, heavily promoted by the U.S. Defense Dept. and even formally sought by combat command officials in the Middle East, continues to see deployment slip into the future as researchers try to fine-tune the nonlethal weapon.Credit: U.S. DEFENSE DEPT.

Take the Active Denial System, the Defense Dept.’s first nonlethal directed-energy weapon and the most prominent new-technology effort trumpeted by the Defense Dept. The ADS uses a gyrotron to generate a focused millimeter-wave radio frequency beam that, when directed at targeted humans, creates a subcutaneous heating sensation that is often described as feeling like one is being cooked alive. Assuming enemies flee the targeted beam or the weapon is disengaged, effects do not linger
….

Of course, they tested this on people with no change in their pockets, contact lenses, eyeglasses, etc.
And that guy with the artificial hip? fugget about it