Category: Crimes

Obama Wants More Dead Aaron Swartzes

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At the State of the Union address, Obama will announce plans to increase penalties and increase the penalties and broaden the scope of the already over-broad Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFPA):

The Obama administration, currently engaged in a war of words with North Korea over the recent hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is calling on Congress to increase prison sentences for hackers and to expand the definition of hacking.

During next week’s State of the Union address, the president is set to publicly urge increased prison time and other changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—the statute that was used to prosecute Internet activist Aaron Swartz before he committed suicide in 2013.

The Obama administration, currently engaged in a war of words with North Korea over the recent hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is calling on Congress to increase prison sentences for hackers and to expand the definition of hacking.

During next week’s State of the Union address, the president is set to publicly urge increased prison time and other changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—the statute that was used to prosecute Internet activist Aaron Swartz before he committed suicide in 2013.

………

Among other things, penalties under Obama’s plan would increase from a maximum five-year penalty to 10 years for pure hacking acts, like circumventing a technological barrier. What’s more, the law would expand the definition of what “exceeds authorized access” means. A hacker would exceed authorization when accessing information “for a purpose that the accesser knows is not authorized by the computer owner.”

So, under Obama’s proposal, if you browse Facebook on a work computer, that’s 10 years in the slam.

Note that Aaron Swartz was driven to suicide by an abusive prosecution using the current (far less broad and far less punitive) version of the CFPA.

The CFPA is already a petri dish for overzealous prosecution, and Obama wants to make it worse.

Seriously, has there been a single case where Obama has not chosen the most authoritarian option?

This Psychopath is Going to Commit a 2nd Murder Before he Gets Put Away

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I am speaking, of course of George Zimmerman, who, this time around,  is accused of domestic aggravated assault:

George Zimmerman, the man who was acquitted in 2013 of murdering an unarmed black Florida teenager, was arrested Friday night in a domestic violence case, according to news reports.

Police said the 31-year-old was arrested around 10 p.m. in Lake Mary, just outside Orlando, on a charge of domestic aggravated assault, according to the Associated Press.

On Saturday morning, Zimmerman appeared in court and was given a $5,000 bond and ordered to stay out of Volusia County, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Judge John Galluzzo told Zimmerman that he has until Tuesday to surrender firearms in his possession, according to the Sentinel.

This is Zimmerman’s 6th arrest, 3 were before he shot Trayvon Martin, and somehow or other, the kid with no arrests on his record was the “thug”.

Welcome to race blind America

I Don’t Expect Major Changes in Doctrine Under Pope Francis

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It’s clear, however, that, in addition to making changes in tone, he is making very serious efforts to reform the Vatican as an institution.

Case in point, Ex-Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski has been arrested by Papal authorities on pedophilia charges:

The Vatican on Tuesday arrested a former archbishop accused of paying for sex with children while he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic, the first-ever arrest inside the city state on charges of paedophilia. Jozef Wesolowski, a Pole who was defrocked by a Vatican tribunal in June, has been placed under house arrest awaiting a criminal trial, the Vatican said in a statement.

The 66-year-old Wesolowski is the most prominent church figure to be arrested since Paolo Gabriele, a former papal butler convicted in 2012 of stealing and leaking private papers of former Pope Benedict XVI. Unlike Gabriele, Wesolowski has not been detained in the Vatican prison, a couple of rooms attached to a courthouse, but was granted house arrest in a Vatican apartment for medical reasons.

Wesolowski was recalled to Rome by the Vatican last year when he was still a diplomat in Santo Domingo and relieved of his duties after Dominican media accused him of paedophilia.

He had been living freely in Rome, and victims of sexual abuse had called for his arrest, expressing concern he might flee. The former archbishop could face up to 12 years in jail in what will be the first trial for sexual abuse to be held inside the Vatican City.

Cleaning out corruption at the Vatican is a Herculean task (see Stables, Augean), but this is a good start.

More Weirdness in the Anthrax Mailings

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It’s been a while since I’ve written about the issues with the FBI’s investigation of the Anthrax mailings, and now it appears that the GAO report on this matter has attracted the interest of The New York Times:

A congressional inquiry into the F.B.I.’s scientific work on the anthrax mailings of 2001 has identified major gaps in genetic evidence that purportedly links the germs to Bruce E. Ivins, the Army microbiologist blamed for attacks that killed five people, sickened 17 others and shook the nation.

The Government Accountability Office study, requested in 2010 and made public on Friday, echoes earlier criticism from the National Academy of Sciences. In 2011, its expert panel found that the bureau’s analysis of the genetic evidence “did not definitively demonstrate” a firm link between the mailed anthrax spores and a sample taken from Dr. Ivins’s laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland, and more generally was “not as conclusive” as the bureau had asserted.

The G.A.O. had better access to F.B.I. records and deepened the genetic critique, finding that the bureau’s investigation “lacked several important characteristics” that could have strengthened its case. “A key scientific gap,” the 77-page report said, was the bureau’s failure to investigate whether samples of anthrax spores could naturally mutate enough to obscure their putative links to Dr. Ivins.

I think that it is more than likely that Dr. Ivins was involved in the anthrax mailing.

I know that the FBI was flailing wildly, and was looking for anyone that they could finger as the perp, and Ivins was the 2nd person that the FBI aggressively harassed, the first being Steven Hatfill, and it appears that in both cases, the FBI was hoping for a suicide to end their search.

NLRB Brings Charges Against McDonald’s “Co-Employer” with its Franchisees

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This is a very big deal.

It was a big deal when the NLRB found the fast food chain shared some responsibility as to the treatment of their employees with their franchisees, and now its general counsel has Basically, the National Labor Relations Board has charged the company with violation of labor laws:

The National Labor Relations Board announced on Friday that its general counsel had brought 78 charges against McDonald’s and some of its franchise operators, accusing them of violating federal labor law in response to workers’ protests for higher wages around the country.

The general counsel’s move immediately drew outrage from a variety of national business groups because the labor action deemed McDonald’s a joint employer, a status that would make the fast-food titan equally responsible for actions taken at its franchised restaurants.

The labor board’s complaint asserts that McDonald’s and numerous franchise operators in more than a dozen cities illegally retaliated and made threats against workers who had joined national protests pushing for a base wage of $15 an hour in the nation’s fast-food restaurants.

………

The N.L.R.B.’s general counsel, Richard F. Griffin Jr., said that McDonald’s was a joint employer because it set numerous requirements for how food was prepared, how stores were run and how employees were managed. About 90 percent of the company’s restaurants in the United States are franchise operations.

Mary Joyce Carlson, a lawyer for the Fight for 15 movement seeking higher wages for the workers, said, “Today’s news makes it clear that the N.L.R.B.’s general counsel finds merit in the claim that McDonald’s — a $5.6 billion global company — is a joint employer because it exerts substantial power over the working conditions of employees at McDonald’s franchise stores and is therefore responsible for compliance with employment and labor laws.”

As I have noted before, McDonald’s franchising program places much tighter controls over the behavior of their franchise holders than most other similar restaurant chains, physically owning the property, directing personnel policy and, it appears, directing retaliation against legal unionization activities.

The general counsel issued the charges through 13 regional offices, including Manhattan, Chicago and Los Angeles. The first trials are scheduled to begin in March. The charges said that McDonald’s and its franchisees illegally disciplined employees who had protested, reduced their hours, spied on them and restricted their ability to communicate with union representatives.

For a company the size of McDonald’s, I don’t think that any penalties will meaningfully impact on their bottom line, they are a big company, but if this holds, it could form a foundation for criminal prosecutions against management, because it could form the basis of a criminal conspiracy.

Of course, we would need a DoJ that didn’t ignore law breaking by CEOs **cough** Eric “Place” Holder **cough**, but I can dream about this.

Ho ……… Ho ……… Ho ………

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Red and white as camouflage

You may have heard about the SantaCon, a costumed pubcrawl that has, since its founding in (where else?) San Francisco.

Increasingly, it has been the accompanied by drunkenness, violence, public urination, and general mischief.

Well, a criminal mastermind, in what is certain to be a movie or a cable release in the next 18 months, robbed a bank disguised as Santa and then vanished in the crimson clad crowd:

Roughly after 1 p.m. on Saturday, at the peak of SantaCon debauchery, a 40-something white man in a Santa suit walked into a San Francisco bank and handed the teller a note demanding money. The teller handed him an undisclosed amount of cash, and then—like in the St. Patrick’s Day scene from “The Fugitive”—the man walked outside and disappeared into the crowd of Santas.

So far, the police have made no arrests, and it seems very likely the man might actually get away. It was a perfect heist—a festive, vomit-soaked “Ocean’s 11.”

My only question is whether this was a run of the mill criminal who had a bright idea, or a really smart guy.

If it’s the former, he’ll do something stupid now that he has the money.

If it’s the latter, this guy will be calling a literary agent when the statute of limitations runs out.

Crap! I Guess that I’m Actually Watch this Damn Film Now

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For the 2nd time in my life,* threats of terrorism have pulled a major motion picture from release.

I guess that I

This time it’s for the James Franco and Seth Rogen farce The Interview that has been pulled from screens:

Sony Pictures Entertainment on Wednesday dropped plans for its Christmas Day release of “The Interview,” a movie that depicts the assassination of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, after receiving a terror threat against theaters.

 Before that, the four largest theater chains in the United States said they would not show the movie, which has been at the center of a devastating hacking attack on Sony over the last several weeks. In a statement, Sony said: “We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theatergoers.”

 Sony Pictures Entertainment on Wednesday dropped plans for its Christmas Day release of “The Interview,” a movie that depicts the assassination of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, after receiving a terror threat against theaters.

 Before that, the four largest theater chains in the United States said they would not show the movie, which has been at the center of a devastating hacking attack on Sony over the last several weeks. In a statement, Sony said: “We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theatergoers.”

Hollywood executives never miss a chance to choose the craven path, I guess.

In a development that should surprise no one, “Senior Administration Officials” have confirmed that the hack originated in the DPRK.

BTW, James Franco had the best tweet about the cancellation:

#Emmastone kills it in @cabaret!!!! #alancumming is so good I started smoking and slapped his ass. 🌲🌲❤️Bye NYC!❤️🌲🌲
— James Franco (@JamesFrancoTV) December 17, 2014

That is so cool.

For the irony impaired, he tweeted this after the film was puled, and he says nothing at all about this.

Epically cool!

*The first time was when the film Mohammad, Messenger of God was pulled as a result of the 1977 Hanafi Siege, where hostages were taken in Washington, DC.

Sydney? Seriously?

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I have to say that if terrorists were going to make an attack, Sydney, Australia would be the last place that I would expect:

At least one gunman is holding staff and customers hostage at a cafe in the Australian city of Sydney.

Hundreds of armed police have sealed off the normally busy Martin Place in the central business district.

Earlier, at least three people were seen inside the Lindt cafe with their hands up against a window, and holding up a black flag with Arabic writing.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described the “terrifying” incident as “deeply concerning”.

It is not yet confirmed as a terrorist attack, though the fact that the hostage takers appeared to have displayed the black Jihadi flag would imply that this is likely.

It’s just plain weird.

Not Enough Bullets

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As former federal regulator Bill Black notes, the second circuit court decision effectively legalizes insider trading:

We know that insider trading is an activity in which cheaters prosper. We know that Wall Street and the City of London are dominated by a fraudulent culture and we know that firm culture is set by the officers that control the firm. We know that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has allowed that to occur by refusing to prosecute any of the thousands of senior bank officers who became wealthy by leading the three most destructive financial fraud epidemics (appraisals, “liar’s” loans, and fraudulent sales of these fraudulently originated mortgages to the secondary market) in history. No one is surprised that Wall Street’s elites have also engaged in widespread efforts to rig the stock markets so that they can shoot fish in the barrel through insider trading. Unlike the three fraud epidemics, one DOJ office, the Southern District of New York, has brought a series of criminal prosecutions against these officers.

 Wall Street’s court of appeals (the Second Circuit) has just issued an opinion not simply overturning guilty verdicts but making it impossible to retry the elite Wall Street defendants that grew wealthy through trading on insider information. Indeed, the opinion reads like a roadmap (or a script) that every corrupt Wall Street elite can follow to create a cynical system of cutouts (ala SAC) that will allow the most senior elites to profit by trading on insider information as a matter of routine with total impunity. The Second Circuit decision makes any moderately sophisticated insider trading scheme that uses cutouts to protect the elite traders a perfect crime. It is a perfect crime because (1) it is guaranteed to make the elite traders who trades on the basis of what he knows is secret, insider information wealthy absent successful prosecutions and (2) using the Second Circuit’s decision as a fraud roadmap, an elite trader can arrange the scheme with total impunity from the criminal laws. The Second Circuit ruling appears to make the financial version of “don’t ask; don’t tell” a complete defense to insider trading prosecutions. The Second Circuit does not simply make it harder to prosecute – they make it impossible to prosecute sophisticated insider fraud schemes in which the elites use junior cutouts to create (totally implausible) deniability.

The New York Times article on the decision was entitled “Two Insider Trading Convictions Are Overturned in Blow to Prosecutors.” The title is partially correct. The real blows, however, were to investors, the already crippled integrity of Wall Street, and every honest trader on Wall Street who cannot possibly compete with his rivals who cheat through the “sure thing” of insider trading now that the Second Circuit has written an opinion explaining how to corrupt the entire system with impunity from the criminal laws.

………

The Second Circuit decision admits that the prosecutors presented evidence established a massive conspiracy designed to allow Wall Street elites to profit by engaging in insider trading, a conspiracy that greatly enriched the defendants that were convicted in the case under appeal.

“At trial, the Government presented evidence that a group of financial analysts exchanged information they obtained from company insiders, both directly and more often indirectly. Specifically, the Government alleged that these analysts received information from insiders at Dell and NVIDIA disclosing those companies’ earnings numbers before they were publicly released in Dell’s May 2008 and August 2008 earnings announcements and NVIDIA’s May 2008 earnings announcement. These analysts then passed the inside information to their portfolio managers, including Newman and Chiasson, who, in turn, executed trades in Dell and NVIDIA stock, earning approximately $4 million and $68 million, respectively, in profits for their respective funds.”

The Second Circuit was not distressed that senior Wall Street officials received information that was clearly insider information that they knew they should not have access to. The insider information they were provided was the crown jewels – two major corporations’ soon to be announced “numbers” – at least one of which was sure to be a major surprise to the markets. A senior trader that knows “the number” in advance, particularly when he knows that the number will be a surprise, can shoot fish in a small barrel with a large shotgun. The insider information allows the senior trader to reduce the risk of loss to trivial levels while increasing the probability of gain to near certainty. The trader makes a fortune by cheating, not through any unusual skill. The senior trader knows that no employee of any publicly traded corporation is permitted to release such secret and proprietary insider information to investors.

The Second Circuit was not distressed that the senior Wall Street officials did not react to being provided what was clearly insider information by demanding to know how their analysts got the information and instructing them that their actions violated the firms’ ethical standards and would lead to their termination if it were ever repeated. The firm’s ethics manuals banned the senior traders from trading on the basis of insider information. Instead, of serving as ethical leaders in training the analysts not to engage in such behavior and instead of following their firm’s ban on trading on the basis of insider information, the senior officers engaged in a cynical financial version of “don’t ask; don’t tell.” The analysts and the senior officials that traded on the inside information understood the wisdom of the old line “ask me no questions and I’ll tell you know lies.” The senior officers proceeded to profit by exploiting this advantage over honest investors while minimizing the risk of a successful prosecution not by being ethical, but by consciously maintaining (not remotely) “plausible deniability.”

………

But worse will soon come. The Second Circuit’s decision is a “how to” manual on how elites Wall Streeters can become wealthy through insider trading with impunity from the criminal laws. The Second Circuit opinion shows that using a “cutout” is the key to achieve the “sure thing” of enormous wealth through insider trading without financial or legal risk. The Second Circuit lays out the game plan. The little folks in the organization develop the contacts with insiders in publicly traded firms. The analysts function initially like any good intelligence agent recruiting an asset. These assets have insider information of their employers, the publicly traded corporations. The analyst develops a rapport with the employee or exploits an existing tie. The analyst shows the employee a very good time – a taste of how good his life can be if he plays ball. But the analyst doesn’t make any explicit promises or deals. (In the case decided by the Second Circuit others cutouts earlier in the insider trading chain made the corrupt payments to the employees.) The Wall Street senior officers who grow wealthy by trading the insider information will make sure that the analysts are well cared for – discretely and at a later date.

The analyst then has to do one thing and avoid doing a second. Both are simple. The analyst needs to signal to his superior that the information is reliable. The government complaint against SAC show one the innumerable means of sending that signal. The government’s appellate brief contains the text of an email in which an analyst explicitly conveyed the reliable track record of the leakers of the inside information to the senior traders so that they could be sure they had a “sure thing” by investing on the basis of the inside information.

The analyst needs not to explicitly tell the senior officer conducting the trade that the insider information was the product of a deal in which the employee who leaks the insider information was explicitly promised a quid pro quo to the leaker. Again, the government complaint against SAC and the government appellate brief in the case reversed by the Second Circuit show in detail how simple it is to design systems of not making these matters explicit. That is why the Second Circuit ruling imperils prosecutions in every case in which the insider trading scheme was done with even modest cleverness.

………

The Second Circuit’s reasoning has the perverse effect that the more corrupt individuals engaged in the insider trading scheme the more likely the scheme is to be declared lawful as long as the traders use their corrupt colleagues as cutouts. Note that the Second Circuit reasoning does not simply make it harder to prosecute sophisticated insider trading schemes – it holds that the actions of the elite traders who know that they are achieving the “sure thing” of immense insider trading profits on the basis of deliberate leaks of that information are not unlawful and cannot be prosecuted. The Second Circuit has created the perfect crime and publicized how to shape the scheme to insure wealth and impunity through creating widespread chains designed to corrupt the markets, employees of the publicly traded corporations, and the Wall Street firms.

The tone of the opinion is particularly galling. The Second Circuit is not even mildly distressed by the result. It expresses disdain for the idea that Wall Street elites should not be able to enrich themselves with complete impunity from the laws through corrupt arrangements such as those proven at the trial. The opinion consciously deliberately creates a straw man argument designed to hide the fact that insider trading schemes of this make it impossible for honest competitors to prevail through skill and hard work.

I’m hoping that someone manages to take them down before the banksters destroy us all.

Today in Responsible Gun Ownership

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Veronica Dunnachie, the “Open Carry” activist, who has just been arrest for shooting her ex-husband and step daughter to death:

A woman charged with shooting and killing her ex-husband and stepdaughter has strong connections to groups advocating for expanding open carry gun laws in Texas.

Local news outlets on Wednesday reported that Veronica Dunnachie was arrested and charged with shooting and killing her ex-husband and step daughter.

Buried in some of the initial reporting on the arrest of Dunnachie seems to have been an active participant in open carry groups in Texas. The local ABC affiliate, WFAA, noted that Dunnachie’s Facebook page is photos of her engaged in open carry firearm advocacy activities. WFAA also noted that one of her profile pictures included the text “Sometimes removing some people out of your life makes room for better people.”

Veronica and Russell Dunnachie were going through a divorce, according to court records.

They say that the gun most likely to kill you is your own.

It appears that the 2nd most likely gun to kill you belongs to your ex.

I Have Mixed Emotions About This………

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It appears that a guy in Oklahoma drove his car into the 10 Commandments sculpture on the State House Lawn:

A man was taken into custody on Friday on suspicion of knocking over a Ten Commandments monument with a car on the grounds of the Oklahoma statehouse and then fleeing the scene, law enforcement officials said on Friday.

The U.S. Secret Service detained the man, who has not been identified, after he was alleged to have made threatening statements at a federal building in Oklahoma City. The man told agents he urinated on the monument and ran it over with a car, said David Allison, the assistant special agent in charge.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said they believe a single person was responsible for the act on Thursday night that left the 6-foot (1.8-meter) monument broken in several large pieces not far from where it was mounted. The man will be turned over to Oklahoma police.

In some ways, this is a good thing.

Additionally, the monument was clearly intended to enfranchise a religion, specifically Protestant Christian, as their mistranslation is the one used on the sculpture.

On the other hand, I do not approve of someone taking the law into their own hands and knocking it down.

That’s just wrong.

Justice Delayed………

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The 4 Blackwater mercenaries whose shooting spree killed 14 people in Baghdad’s Nisour Square have been found guilty of murder and other charges:

A federal jury in Washington convicted four Blackwater Worldwide guards Wednesday in the fatal shooting of 14 unarmed Iraqis, seven years after the American security contractors fired machine guns and grenades into a Baghdad traffic circle in one of the most ignominious chapters of the Iraq war.

The guilty verdicts on murder, manslaughter and gun charges marked a sweeping victory for prosecutors, who argued in an 11-week trial that the defendants fired recklessly and out of control in a botched security operation after one of them falsely claimed to believe the driver of an approaching vehicle was a car bomber. Jurors rejected the guards’ claims that they were acting in self-defense and were the target of incoming AK-47 gunfire.

Overall, defendants were charged with the deaths of 14 Iraqis and the wounding of 17 others at Baghdad’s Nisour Square shortly after noon Sept. 16, 2007. None of the victims was an insurgent.

“This verdict is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law, even in times of war,” said Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. attorney for the District, whose office prosecuted the case. “I pray that this verdict will bring some sense of comfort to the survivors of that massacre.”

Fundamentally, the most depressing thing is the counterpoint at the end of the article, which notes that the Haditha Massacre, which involved US troops, was covered up by the military chain of command.

As the old saying goes, “Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.”

Silly Rabbit, Stand Your Ground is for White Men!

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I’m, not a fan of “Stand Your Ground”, or as I like to call them, “Make My Day” laws, but the determination of prosecutors to ensure that it only applies to white males is unseemly:

Whitlee Jones screamed for help as her boyfriend pulled her down the street by her hair. Her weave fell from her head and onto the pavement.

A neighbor heard Jones’ cries and dialed 911 on that night in November 2012.

But the scuffle ended before a North Charleston policeman arrived and asked Jones’ boyfriend what happened. Eric Lee, 29, said their argument over a cellphone had never turned physical. The officer left.

A short time later, Jones went back to the home where she lived with Lee. She planned to pack up and leave for good.

But after Jones gathered her things, Lee stepped in front of her. Though authorities later contended that Lee didn’t attack her, Jones said he shook her and blocked her way out, so she pulled a knife and stabbed him once. Lee died, and Jones was arrested for murder.

Nearly two years later, a judge found earlier this month that Jones, now 25, had a right to kill Lee under the S.C. Protection of Persons and Property Act, which allows people in certain situations to use force when faced with serious injury. But to the 9th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, Jones is not the kind of person legislators had in mind when they passed the “stand your ground” law in 2006. It does not apply to housemates in episodes of domestic violence, the prosecutors argued.

Because, of course, a woman cannot be in fear for her life from an abusive partner.

I’m thinking that the prosecutors would need to worry about getting whacked by their wives if they stopped beating them.

Kind of Like Your Mother in Law Driving off a Cliff in Your Brand New Car

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The huge cyberattack on JPMorgan Chase that touched more than 83 million households and businesses was one of the most serious computer intrusions into an American corporation. But it could have been much worse.

Questions over who the hackers are and the approach of their attack concern government and industry officials. Also troubling is that about nine other financial institutions — a number that has not been previously reported — were also infiltrated by the same group of overseas hackers, according to people briefed on the matter. The hackers are thought to be operating from Russia and appear to have at least loose connections with officials of the Russian government, the people briefed on the matter said.

I have a real hard time choosing sides between Russian Hackers and Wall Street.

Another Day, Another Shooting

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This one was at a UPS complex in Birmingham, Alabama:

A recently-fired UPS employee on Tuesday shot dead two supervisors at the company facility where he had worked in Birmingham, Alabama before turning the gun on himself, police said.

The gunman, who was wearing a brown UPS uniform, had been terminated earlier this month and had learned a day earlier that he had lost his appeal to get his job back, police said, adding that his motive was not immediately clear. Police had earlier said that the man was fired yesterday.

The shooting occurred shortly before 9:30 a.m. at a large, brick UPS service center atop a hill in the Inglenook section of Birmingham, close to the airport, police said.

Yep, the American gun fetish is such a good thing.

I get that, barring a nigh apocalyptic change in American body politic, we will not see any meaningful change in our gun control regimes.

The gun nuts own our country, the rest of us just live in it.

To quote Tom Tomorrow, “The occasional horrific civilian massacre is just the price the rest of us have to pay ……… Over and over again, apparently.

The Most Transparent Coverup Ever

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So, the Ferguson police department, aka the gang that cannot shoot straight, but will do so with fully automatic weapons mounted on top of an MRAP, decided to both release the shooting officer’s name and begin a policy of character assassination against Michael Brown:

Police on Friday said that Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown last weekend, confronted Brown after the teenager was identified as the main suspect in a convenience store robbery that occurred Saturday morning.

 However, hours later, authorities said that the robbery was not the reason for the encounter that ended with Brown shot to death on a suburban St. Louis street, suggesting that it was unrelated to the confrontation.

As Ezra Klein notes, “The police are the issue in Ferguson, not Michael Brown’s character.”

I am tempted to go all Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp fiction, and asking if Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson thinks that we look like a bitch, because he is certainly trying to f%$# us like one.

If there are not multiple of indictments of the police involved in this, both for the town of Ferguson and for St. Louis county, I will be suggest that it will be because of collusion between the police and the prosecutors.

Not My Choice, but It’s a Start

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This post was corrected on 26 January, 2016.  

Dr. Dirk Markus has no connection to Aurelius Capital Management LP, the vulture fund in question.  

He is  the CEO of Aurelius Equity Opportunities, which is a completely unrelated financial firm, and is not involved with the attempted looting of Argentina in any way.

My apologies. 

Argentina is going to the International Court of Justic in the Hague:

Argentina has asked the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague to take action against the United States over an alleged breach of its sovereignty as it defaulted on its debt.

Argentina defaulted last week after losing a long legal battle with hedge funds that rejected the terms of debt restructurings in 2005 and 2010.

A statement issued by the ICJ, the United Nation’s highest court for disputes between nations, said Argentina’s request had been sent to the US government. It added that no action will be taken in the proceedings “unless and until” Washington accepts the court’s jurisdiction.

The US has recognised the court’s jurisdiction in the past, but it was not immediately clear if it would do so in Argentina’s case.

I guess that this is one avenue to take, though I think that the Argentinean investigation into possible violation of their laws by the vulture funds would likely be a better course of action:

Argentina’s markets watchdog on Monday launched an investigation into what it believes may have been unlawful speculation by holdout creditors whose litigation against the country for repayment of their defaulted bonds pushed it into a new default last week.

………

The head of Argentina’s Securities Commission Alejandro Vanoli said it had asked its U.S. counterpart for information on trade of Argentina’s sovereign debt and credit default swaps (CDS), derivatives used to insure against default.

The watchdog wanted to check if holdouts who rejected Argentina’s restructuring in the wake of its 2002 default held or traded CDS while they took part in negotiations with Argentina which could trigger a default.

“The use of insider information, which would be the case here, and market manipulation are crimes in Argentina, they are crimes in the United States, and they imply economic sanctions and eventually criminal sanctions,” Vanoli told a news conference.

While they might prevail at the ICJ, it is by no means a certainty, and it is also an open question as to whether or not the US government will obey that foreign court.

On the other hand, a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, and once they have file for extradition of the vulture funds senior staff.

Additionally, they could put a bounty on their heads, and if they were to promise a few million dollars for the apprehension and rendering of these people back to Argentina, you could be guaranteed that the pucker factor would skyrocket.

Additionally, it would be legal under US law, which grants extraordinary powers to bounty hunters.

If Argentina can win this, we deter from vulture fund f%$#ery, particularly if Mark Brodsky is delivered to Buenos Aires in chains with hoods over their heads.

It Took You Long Enough!

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The New York Times has finally agreed to stop using euphemisms, and actually call the CIA’s torture program, well, torture :

Over the past few months, reporters and editors of The Times have debated a subject that has come up regularly ever since the world learned of the C.I.A.’s brutal questioning of terrorism suspects: whether to call the practices torture.

When the first revelations emerged a decade ago, the situation was murky. The details about what the Central Intelligence Agency did in its interrogation rooms were vague. The word “torture” had a specialized legal meaning as well as a plain-English one. While the methods set off a national debate, the Justice Department insisted that the techniques did not rise to the legal definition of “torture.” The Times described what we knew of the program but avoided a label that was still in dispute, instead using terms like harsh or brutal interrogation methods.

………

Meanwhile, the Justice Department, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, has made clear that it will not prosecute in connection with the interrogation program. The result is that today, the debate is focused less on whether the methods violated a statute or treaty provision and more on whether they worked – that is, whether they generated useful information that the government could not otherwise have obtained from prisoners. In that context, the disputed legal meaning of the word “torture” is secondary to the common meaning: the intentional infliction of pain to make someone talk.

Given those changes, reporters urged that The Times recalibrate its language. I agreed. So from now on, The Times will use the word “torture” to describe incidents in which we know for sure that interrogators inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information.

About f%$#ing time.

The Times has had absolutely no problem with calling other nations’ various brutalities, “torture,” but it’s taken 10 years, and a flat out admission from the President, for the New York Times to finally dip its toes in this water as it applies to the US state security apparatus.

It’s why I tend to look overseas, typically the Beeb and the Guardian, for accurate stories on these matters.

This is the Typical Result of Libertarian Bullsh%$ Like Bitcoin

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You remember the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange?

People nearly ½ a billion dollars in Bitcoin, and now we discover that the head of the exchange was convicted of fraud in France, and had been sentenced to jail:

While Mt. Gox owner Mark Karpeles was growing what would become the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, he should have been serving time in his home country of France. He was sentenced to a year in custody in 2010 on fraud accusations.

A newly obtained French court document shows that Karpeles has a civil and non-civil judgment pending where, in addition to custody, he also owes €45,000 ($60,000). The document is being published jointly for the first time by Ars Technica and the French publication Le Monde. (Read the French original here and an English translation here.)

The case was brought by a former employer who accused Karpeles of stealing customer user names, customer passwords, and a domain name, among other grievances. Under French law, Karpeles is not considered a criminal but rather “un délinquant,” a delinquent offender. It’s a lesser label than “criminal,” because that word is reserved only for very serious crimes within the country.

The 2010 decision shows that Karpeles lost by default, and he was found liable of “fraudulent access to an automated data processing system” and “fraudulent changes to data contained in an automated data processing system.” The document also states that Karpeles admitted to French authorities that he had “pirated” a server.

At the time, Karpeles was living in Japan. But a year after the judgment, he’d taken over Mt. Gox, well before the exchange and digital currency had become a household name. The French court documents acknowledge that he was never notified of the case and did not defend himself—hence, he lost by default. Karpeles’ own blog states he moved to Japan in 2009, and it appears he hasn’t returned to France since.

“To be honest, I was not even aware of this,” he told Ars in May regarding the sentence. “I’ll investigate and see what has to be done.” Karpeles has not responded to numerous attempts for further comment since then.

Yeah. He, “Wasn’t aware of this.”

He was questioned by police, admitted wrongdoing, got out France when the getting was good, but he “Wasn’t aware of this.”

When you take a supporting role in a libertarian wet dream, you are painting a target on your back.

Well, This is Prize

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It turns out that the NRA’s chief counsel, and close confident of NRA chief Wayne LaPierre, is a murderer:

Shortly before dark on the evening of April 17, 1963, Robert J. Dowlut went looking for a gun inside the city cemetery in South Bend, Indiana. Making his way through the headstones, he stopped in front of the abandoned Studebaker family mausoleum. He knelt by the front right corner of the blocky gray monument and lifted a stone from the damp ground. Then, as one of the two police detectives accompanying him later testified, the 17-year-old “used his hands and did some digging.” He unearthed a revolver and ammunition. As Dowlut would later tell a judge, the detectives then took the gun, “jammed it in my hand,” and photographed him. “They were real happy.”

Two days earlier, a woman named Anna Marie Yocum had been murdered in her South Bend home. An autopsy determined she had been shot three times, once through the chest and twice in the back, likely at close range as she’d either fled or fallen down the stairs from her apartment. Two .45-caliber bullets had pierced her heart.

………

The following morning, Dowlut was charged with first-degree murder. A year and a half later, a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder. Before the judge handed down a life sentence, he asked the defendant if there was any reason why he shouldn’t be put away. Dowlut replied, “I am not guilty.” A day later, the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City registered Dowlut, now 19, as prisoner number 33848.

Less than six years later, Robert Dowlut would be a free man—his murder conviction thrown out by the Indiana Supreme Court because of a flawed police investigation. The court ordered a new trial, but one never took place. Dowlut would return to the Army and go on to earn college and law degrees. Then he would embark on a career that put him at the epicenter of the movement to transform America’s gun laws.

Today, the 68-year-old Dowlut is the general counsel of the National Rifle Association. As the NRA’s top lawyer, he has been a key architect of the gun lobby’s campaign to define the legal interpretation of the Second Amendment. He helped oversee the NRA’s effort to strike down Chicago’s handgun ban in the 2010 Supreme Court case McDonald v. Chicago, and he is the longtime secretary of the organization’s Civil Rights Defense Fund, which has spent millions assisting gun owners in court and sponsoring gun rights researchers. Dowlut’s journal articles have been cited by federal judges and are quoted by pro-gun activists. Chris W. Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s lobbying operation, has praised him as “a longtime distinguished Second Amendment scholar.” Dowlut’s behind-the-scenes legal work may have done as much to tighten the NRA’s grip on gun policy as its blustery talking heads and provocative PR campaigns.

BTW, it’s not just this guy, but also Harlon Carter, installed after the Cincinnati Coup at the NRA as Executive VP, who also murdered someone.

It really is remarkable just how much the intersection between groups “NRA leadership” and “law abiding citizens” is a null set.