http://plus4chan.org/boards/n Live RSS feed for http://plus4chan.org/boards/n en /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251762.html#251764>2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
>5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
>10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

These ideas all existed before Communism, just because they adopted it doesn't make it communist.

]]>09/06/10(Mon)16:5716:571283817468 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251762.html#251763>blog

]]>09/06/10(Mon)16:5516:551283817319 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251762.htmlhttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/thumb/128381729110c.jpghttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/src/128381729110.jpg
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

The ten planks were supposed to be the means of ushering in the classless society of Communism. The next sentence after plank #10 revealed the utopianism of Marxism.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.

Classes did not go away in the Communist paradises. There were the haves and the have-nots. The basis of access into the minority class of the haves was through membership in the Communist Party.

The state never went away. It got stronger and more demanding. It became more pervasive.

Today, the Communist paradises are gone, except for Cuba and North Korea. They have all officially abandoned Communism as an ideology. Yet they all maintain their commitment to the three planks. Why? Because these three planks constitute the Promised Land of the entire world. There is no nation in which these three planks are not operative, at least on paper.

There is no nation that funds itself exclusively by some version of a flat tax: the same tax rate for all taxpayers. Every nation has a graduated income tax. Some are more graduated ("progressive") than others. The Scandinavian nations are at the high end. The United States is at the low end. But the top rates are all at least 40%. This, by the way, is twice the rate of the 20% flat tax that the Pharaoh imposed on Egypt (Genesis 47:24). Egypt, let us not forget, was the archetype of tyranny for the Israelites. God told them that 10% is tyrannical (I Sam. 8:14, 17). To get back to Israel's tyranny, tax rates would have to be cut by at least 75%. But Americans think of themselves as living in the land of the free.

Central banks are all officially state banks. There may be some degree of private ownership, but officially the final jurisdiction is in the hands of the national governments. This may be a contrived illusion for the sake of the voters, but these institutions do derive their power from special legislation from the national governments, or, in the case of the European Central Bank, the European Union. No central bank can survive apart from a grant of monopoly privilege by the supreme civil government.

Tax-funded educational systems are universal. The vast majority of all students are taught in these schools. In most European nations, attendance is compulsory. Only in the last 25 years have home schooling families in the United States gained a semblance of liberty from the local school boards. Some states remain tyrannical. The Home School Legal Defense Association still has lots of families to defend.

So, in these three areas of life, the vast majority of those voters who think of themselves as conservatives still cling to the tenets of Communism. They think nothing of this. They are 30% down the path to Communism, and they don't know it, or just don't care.

The ex-Communist paradises are 30% Communist and have no intention of becoming less Communist.

So, Marx and Engels got 30% of their program accepted by the bourgeoisie world.

Then there was this plank:

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

Because of a peculiarity of the tax code, the inheritance tax has been suspended in the United States for 2010. But next year, the old system returns: up to 55%. So, to impose taxes on the rich, the voters have adopted another of the planks, at least in principle.

So, where are we today? Maybe at 32% of the Communist program. Let's round it up to one-third. That's close enough for government work.

ONE-THIRD COMMUNIST

How is it that virtually the whole world has adopted one-third of a program that was so revolutionary in early 1848 that Marx and Engels did not put their names on the original German edition of their famous manifesto? One word: power.

People want to get other people to think the way they do. They want them to do what they instruct them to do. The love of power is universal.

The voters think they can control what is taught in the public schools. Voters think that the textbooks will reflect their values. They think that the teachers will be recruited from their group. They will hold the hammer.

They also think, "Those lower sorts will not pay for their children's educations. Their children have a right to become more like us. This means that they should stop being like their parents. The schools will force those parents to comply."

It's all about "those sorts of people." It's also about "our sort of people." C. S. Lewis put these words into the mouth of a ruthless character in his 1945 novel, That Hideous Strength.

"Man has got to take charge of Man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of all the rest – which is another reason for cashing in on it as soon as one can. You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones taken charge of. Quite."

A decade before Marx and Engels penned their anonymous little book, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had begun its experiment in tax-funded compulsory education. It abolished tax funding of Congregational churches in 1832. Before the decade was over, it had begun financing a new priesthood. No one saw the irony of this at the time. Few have seen it since then.

Opposition to this or that aspect of the public schools is a waste of time. The reforms come and go, but the system remains intact.

By 1900, the system was universal in the United States. It had spread to much of the West. After World War I, it was universal in the West.

The same was true of the graduated income tax. It was passed in England in 1911. It was said to have passed – technically, it didn't – in the United States in 1913. In that year, the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law in late December. The Federal Reserve System went into operation in 1914.

The ruling class saw that Marx was correct on these three points. The very rich used tax-exempt foundations to escape the inheritance tax. They did this in advance of the inheritance tax. Rockefeller and Carnegie set up foundations before 1913. They set aside their fortunes to achieve goals they chose. Anyway, they thought they did.

THE BUREAUCRATS INHERIT

A strange thing happened on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The bureaucrats began to take over the pools of wealth and power. In the United States, beginning in the 1880s, Civil Service reform began being extended. The Republicans feared the threat of a clean sweep politically, now that the Democrats were beginning to have a shot at local political offices. So, they pushed for the creation of tenured jobs that would be available only to people who passed exams. This immunized them from changes in politics.

In every Western nation, this system spread. Bureaucrats thwarted democracy. That was why the systems were set up: to guarantee that "our sort of people" maintained control over the implementation of rules. They write the rules. In the United States, "The Federal Register" publishes 77,000 pages of fine print rules every year. It adds up!

This has led to a new system of law: administrative law. Civil servants in the executive decide what rulers will implement which laws. They decide the rules of the game. They write the rules to serve the desires of the bureaucrats.

So, Marx turned out to be closer to the truth than his critics. Politics has faded in influence. Politics is like the surface of an ocean. From time to time, there are great storms and great waves. Ships go down. But beneath the waves are growing numbers of sharks, gliding silently far below the turmoil on the surface. They consume anything they can. Marx thought the proletariat would win. Instead, the bourgeoisie did – on a scale that seems irreversible.

Men of similar outlook run the large foundations, the universities, the K–12 schools, thousands of Federal agencies, and the fading mainstream media. Only one thing can remove them from power: budget cuts. This is the lesson of the past century. No reform sticks that is not in the interest of senior bureaucrats. No funds are cut, so no reform changes anything significant.

When a bureaucracy fails spectacularly and in full public view, the political appointee who officially runs it is replaced. Then the agency asks Congress for more money, so that a similar mistake does not take place. Congress forks over the money.

FEMA is still operating. Brownie is long gone. Such is the iron law of bureaucracy.

The bureaucrats need only two things to persevere: (1) guaranteed income; (2) a stream of replacements educated by bureaucrats. In short, they need only planks 5 and 10 of the Communist Manifesto.

RUML'S 1945 SPEECH

Beardsley Ruml in 1945 was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He was also the head of Macy's Department store. In 1942, he had pushed the creation of the Federal withholding tax. That quadrupled tax revenues in one year.

He had gotten his start at the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund.

He had a Ph.D. in psychology.

In 1945, he gave a speech to the American Bar Association. It was on taxation. It remains the most important speech on the nature of modern taxation ever delivered in the United States. Here are excerpts. I strongly recommend that you read them. They will clear up a lot of loose ends.

A government which depends on loans and on the refunding of its loans to get the money it requires for its operations is necessarily dependent on the sources from which the money can be obtained. In the past, if a government persisted in borrowing heavily to cover its expenditures, interest rates would get higher and higher, and greater and greater inducements would have to be offered by the government to the lenders. These governments finally found that the only way they could maintain both their sovereign independence and their solvency was to tax heavily enough to meet a substantial part of their financial needs, and to be prepared – if placed under undue pressure – to tax to meet them all.

The necessity for a government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments, but it is not true for a national government. Two changes of the greatest consequence have occurred in the last twenty-five years which have substantially altered the position of the national state with respect to the financing of its current requirements.

The first of these changes is the gaining of vast new experience in the management of central banks.

The second change is the elimination, for domestic purposes, of the convertibility of the currency into gold.

He laid it out as well as anyone ever has. The function of the central bank is to make sure that the government is not dependent on buyers of its debt. This has been the rationale of central banking ever since the Bank of England was created in 1694.

Of course, its real purpose is to keep the largest banks solvent. But he was talking about the official explanation.

Roosevelt's abolition of the gold standard in 1933 was the key. Had Ruml looked forward to August 15, 1971, when Nixon ended the last trace of the international gold exchange standard by closing our gold window, he would have understood its implications: eliminating the final restraint on the independence of the Federal government from outside control.

He went on.

Federal taxes can be made to serve four principal purposes of a social and economic character. These purposes are:

1. As an instrument of fiscal policy to help stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar;

2. To express public policy in the distribution of wealth and of income, as in the case of the progressive income and estate taxes;

3. To express public policy in subsidizing or in penalizing various industries and economic groups;

4. To isolate and assess directly the costs of certain national benefits, such as highways and social security.

This is a good summary of politics and taxes today, just as it was in 1945.

Taxes are about funding the debt, distributing wealth, subsidizing and penalizing groups or industries, and funding popular programs.

This Rockefeller agent, capitalist, and supreme central banker told the lawyers how the modern welfare-warfare state had implemented one-third of the Communist Manifesto.

The system runs on central banking, progressive taxation, control over education, and the abolition of the gold coin standard. Ruml covered three of the four. But he was speaking to lawyers. They are part of the education hierarchy.

CONCLUSION

When the Tea Party breaks publicly with points 2, 5, and 10 of the Communist Manifesto, I will be impressed. Until then, I remain an amused bystander.

I have seen conservative political movements come and go: the Goldwater movement, the Reagan revolution, the Contract With America. None of them has publicly repudiated planks 2, 5, and 10.

The Tea Party seems ready to repudiate #5. That's a move in the right direction. It has caught my attention.

When a conservative movement is 20% Communist, it has a way to go.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north882.html

]]>Communism for Conservatives09/06/10(Mon)16:5416:541283817291 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251759.html#251761
]]>09/06/10(Mon)16:4416:441283816646 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251671.html#251760>>251751
>Linux

Full Retard Order

]]>09/06/10(Mon)16:4116:411283816488 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251759.htmlhttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/thumb/128381641427c.jpghttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/src/128381641427.jpgJeremy Stoppel told 7NEWS he got a ticket at Northglenn High School last Thursday for squealing his tires. He said he deserved that ticket and deserved having his parking lot pass suspended for two weeks.
But he's upset that campus security then told him he can't fly his 3 feet by 5 feet flags in the bed of his pickup truck anymore.

"She said I should take my flags down. She said this is a school that focuses on diversity and she doesn't want anyone to feel uncomfortable," Stoppel said. "How do you suppose anyone would feel uncomfortable in America with an American flag? That's where I'm confused."
He said he started flying his flags around school last week.
"Now that I finally get to drive to school, I have a truck, that's what I want to do. I want to fly my flags. September 11th is coming up so I wanted to fly them in honor of that," said Stoppel, who said his cousin is serving in the Navy.
Stoppel and his father want an apology from that security supervisor.
"To me, she's just threatening him, hoping that she can just bully him so he'll just take 'em down and just put his tail between his legs and say, 'I'm done. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.' And that's just not gonna happen," said Dan Stoppel, Jeremy's father.
7NEWS checked and the school has no policy against flying the American flag. In fact, Northglenn High School has a U.S. flag on the flag pole in front of the school.
"I am unaware of that situation. So I need to talk to that person, see why they did that, if they did that," said Northglenn High School principal Dr. Mary Lindimore. "We have 'em in the hallways upstairs. So we promote flying of American flags."
There is a policy that bans anything that creates a safety problem or which disrupts the educational environment.
When 7NEWS asked Lindimore if she could imagine any scenario in which the American flag would disrupt the educational environment, Lindimore said no.
Lindimore promised to talk to the security supervisor next week.


http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/24874897/detail.html

]]>Security Told Me To Remove U.S. Flags09/06/10(Mon)16:4016:401283816415 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251758.htmlhttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/thumb/128381634317c.gifhttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/src/128381634317.gif
Navy Chaplain Terry Moran is steeped in the Bible and believes all of it. His assistant, Religious Programs Specialist 2nd Class Philip Chute, is steeped in the Bible and having none of it.

Together they roam this town in Taliban country, comforting the grunts while crossing swords with each other over everything from the power of angels to the wisdom of standing in clear view of enemy snipers. Lt. Moran, 48 years old, preaches about divine protection while 25-year-old RP2 Chute covers the chaplain's back and wishes he were more attentive to the dangers of the here and now.

It's a match made in, well, the Pentagon.

"He trusts God to keep him safe," says RP2 Chute. "And I'm here just in case that doesn't work out."

The 460 Army, Navy and Air Force chaplains deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are prohibited from carrying weapons, counting on their assistants and the troops around them for protection. It can be a perilous calling. On Monday, Chaplain Dale Goetz, 43, of White, S.D., and four other soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb near Kandahar. Capt. Goetz is the first Army chaplain killed in action since the Vietnam War.

Army chaplains represent 130 religions and denominations, including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. The military says it's common for assistants to be of different faiths from the chaplains they support, or of no faith at all.

"They don't have to be religious," says retired Navy Capt. Randy Cash, who served 30 years in the Chaplain Corps and now is its historian. "They have to be able to shoot straight."

In the case of Chaplain Moran and RP2 Chute, their theological paths diverged long before their career paths joined. Terry Moran grew up in Spokane, Wash., a Seventh-Day Adventist, a denomination that believes the Sabbath should be on Saturday, not Sunday.

Though he admits to some youthful indiscretions and flirted briefly with the lure of dentistry, by the age of 15 he was feeling the pull of the ministry. A minister spoke at his high school and read a passage from the Book of Revelation: "Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with Me."

In the audience, Lt. Moran "felt the spiritual become real." Two years later, in 1978, the same minister was back urging students to join the clergy. This time Lt. Moran took him up on it, becoming a student missionary in Indonesia, then studying theology at Walla Walla College. He preached at churches and counseled in hospitals. At the age of 39, just prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, he heard there was a shortage of Navy chaplains and signed up.


After several noncombat jobs, he volunteered to minister to the Marine infantry, knowing that such an assignment would likely mean he'd end up in Iraq or Afghanistan. "I needed another deployment in order to stay competitive with my peers," he says.

He drew Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment, a unit headed for Afghanistan's violent Helmand Province. The Marine Corps is a Naval service, and Navy chaplains minister to Marines.

Lt. Moran takes the Bible at its word, rejects the evolution of species and believes the Earth to be 6,000 years old. He carries a large Bible with him into the combat zone, while RP2 Chute totes writings of Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and fierce critic of the notion that God designed the universe.

Philip Chute was raised a devout Baptist in Nova Scotia and moved to Greenville, S.C., as a teen. His avid reading of the Bible, however, weakened his belief that fact lay behind faith. Soon he was a "full-blown atheist," he says.

He "wasted" a few years after graduating from high school, then joined the Navy. As a Canadian citizen at that time, he found the interesting career fields were closed to him, including his top choice of nuclear-submarine technician. (He became a U.S. citizen in 2009.)

Religious programs specialist sounded better than cook. He rose to the rank of RP2, the equivalent of an Army sergeant, and worked with three other chaplains before he was paired with Lt. Moran late last year.

Soon after they were assigned to work together, they had the inevitable discussion about RP2 Chute's beliefs.

At first the chaplain got the sense RP2 Chute was agnostic. "I can work with that," Lt. Moran recalls thinking.

But a few days later RP2 Chute dropped the A bomb: He was an atheist.

Appalled, Lt. Moran contacted his fellow chaplains. He says he was simply seeking counsel about whether atheists can really be chaplain's assistants. RP2 Chute is convinced Lt. Moran was trying to trade him in for a believer.

RP2 Chute was senior among Lt. Moran's possible assistants. More importantly, he already had two combat tours under his belt, while Lt. Moran hadn't yet seen a bullet fly. In the end, Lt. Moran says, he chose experience over faith.

"We're here for security," says RP2 Chute. "We're not junior chaplains."

The theological differences between Messrs. Moran and Chute have practical ramifications, though, visible during a recent foot patrol in Sangin, a farm town of 20,000 where the Musa Qala and Helmand rivers meet in the heart of Taliban country. The chaplain's aim was to link up with a platoon from Lima Co. that had been fighting for days and provide the Marines spiritual resupply.

Sangin is crisscrossed with irrigation ditches. At one wide canal, Marine engineers had erected a metal bridge to allow the troops to penetrate towards the Helmand River and slice through Taliban strongholds. The Taliban figured that out, though, and an insurgent sniper had recently wounded two Marines at the bridge.

It was a spot that made the Marines nervous.

"Hey, sir, don't get out of the vehicle until I lay down a sniper screen," Gunnery Sgt. Mark Shawhan, an agnostic with a suspicion of organized religion, instructed Chaplain Moran before the patrol. "That's where he's been getting us, and when you cross the bridge—RUN."

Lt. Moran wasn't troubled. "I believe the Lord is going to protect us," he said. But he wondered aloud whether to finish his Meal, Ready-to-Eat packaged lunch before heading to the armored vehicle.

Gunny Shawhan shook his head in disbelief.

When their turn came, the chaplain and his assistant bolted across the bridge and pivoted into a cornfield, where the minister stood upright. RP2 Chute shouted at Lt. Moran to get down. "Take a knee," he yelled.

The patrol zigzagged through fields and waded through ditches, the only sounds the rustling of corn leaves, the muted crackle of a radio and the distant thup-thup of a helicopter flying sentry above.

During a pause to allow the minesweepers to check for booby-traps on the path ahead, the chaplain, wearing his prescription eyeglasses instead of anti-shrapnel goggles, sat down on the bank of an irrigation ditch, dropped his backpack on the ground and snapped a few pictures. RP2 Chute grimaced when he noticed. Insurgents have seeded the entire town with powerful explosives, and Marines step in the exact footprints of the man ahead to minimize the risk.

Lt. Moran says he follows the Marines' safety instruction and wears a helmet, despite his confidence in the divine. But the way he glides blithely through battle is a constant source of worry for his assistant.

"All my training and experience doesn't always help when the man I'm protecting isn't afraid of being hurt," says RP2 Chute.

The patrol stopped at a bombed-out house, where the men from 2nd Platoon were camped out, their fingers black with dirt and faces etched with exhaustion. One Marine asked the chaplain if he'd offer a quick service.

Lt. Moran happily agreed and laid out napkin-sized squares of fabric decorated with the small red-and-blue handprints of children—"prayer squares" sent by a church in Louisa, Va. The children prayed over the fabric, the chaplain told the Marines. "You can put them on your head, and you'll know you've been prayed over," he said, flopping one onto his own head like a newspaper in the rain.

He laid out a selection of religious books: The New International Version of the Bible in desert camouflage. A book called Freedom from Fear. Two books promoted the protective powers of the 91st Psalm.

"Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday," the psalm tells believers. "A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee."

Lt. Moran told Bible stories about angels, but met with silence when he asked the Marines to relate their favorite angel stories. "Even now, where we are, I believe there are angels present," he said.

The chaplain tried to lead the men in a rousing rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, but forgot the words after "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," and had to resort to "lala-lala" to fill in the blanks.

But the men sang Amazing Grace enthusiastically and thanked the chaplain warmly for providing a few minutes of relief.

"Everybody made their deal with God before they came," said Lance Cpl. Justin Blaschke, a 21-year-old non-denominational Christian from Woodsboro, Texas.

RP2 Chute looked on, his impassiveness masking his disdain for talk of angels. "It's frustrating to listen to him tell people things I know not to be true, but I know it's not my place to get involved when people come to him for help," he said later.

There are times, however, when RP2 Chute feels he has to intervene and looses his own ample arsenal of biblical references, dredged up from his Baptist boyhood and doubting teenage years.

In August, the pair visited India Co. in dug-in positions on a ridge line overlooking the Helmand River. The company commander asked the chaplain to visit every foxhole. Lt. Moran did so, spending four hours in the mortar pit, fielding the Marines' questions about the End Times.

The chaplain was struck both by RP2 Chute's command of the Book of Revelation, and his refusal to take it seriously. "He's familiar with the Christian doctrine, but he chooses not to believe it," says the chaplain, a slender-faced, soft-spoken man with a fringe of gray in his black hair. "That's what I find puzzling."

On a visit to Kilo Co., a Marine asked for a biblical ruling on tattoos. Lt. Moran said the Book of Leviticus bans them. RP2 Chute disagreed. Leviticus, he said, says people shouldn't get tattoos to mourn the dead.

"I don't believe as Chaplain Moran believes," RP2 Chute often tells the Marines during these visits.

At the end of the foot patrol in Sangin, the Marines sprinted back over the metal bridge and jumped into the armored vehicles that waited on the far side. Lt. Moran crossed and then stood for many long seconds in the open, clearly visible from the compounds where the Marines suspected the insurgent sniper had his nest.

On the near side of the bridge, Gunny Shawhan got out of his own vehicle to yell at the chaplain to take cover, but Lt. Moran didn't seem to hear over the noise of the engines. "Tell the [expletive] chaplain to get behind the goddamn vehicle," Gunny Shawhan yelled into the radio.

"Like bullets aren't going to kill the goddamn chaplain," he muttered to the men near him.

RP2 Chute hustled Lt. Moran to safety behind the armor plating.

Later, Lt. Moran explained that he had been unsure which vehicle he was supposed to ride in. But his serenity had a deeper explanation.

"No matter what situation you find yourself in on planet Earth, God will protect you," he said after the patrol returned safely to base. "All He asks is that you trust and believe what He says. So, if I find myself in a combat situation, His promise of protection is still valid."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467004575463833265055248.html?KEYWORDS=chaplain

]]>A Chaplain and an Atheist Go to War09/06/10(Mon)16:3916:391283816344 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251757.htmlhttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/thumb/128381628842c.jpghttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/src/128381628842.jpgThe cases turned up during a 2006 ICE inquiry, called Project Flicker, which targeted overseas processing of child-porn payments. As part of the probe, ICE investigators gained access to the names and credit card information of more than 5,000 Americans who had subscribed to websites offering images of child pornography. Many of those individuals provided military email addresses or physical addresses with Army or fleet ZIP codes when they purchased the subscriptions.
In a related inquiry, the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) cross-checked the ICE list against military databases to come up with a list of Defense employees and contractors who appeared to be guilty of purchasing child pornography. The names included staffers for the secretary of defense, contractors for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency, and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the DCIS opened investigations into only 20 percent of the individuals identified, and succeeded in prosecuting just a handful.
The Boston Globe first reported the Pentagon's role in Project Flicker in July, citing DCIS investigative reports (PDF) showing that at least 30 Defense Department employees were investigated.
But new Project Flicker investigative reports obtained by The Upshot through the Freedom of Information Act, which you can read here, show that DCIS investigators identified 264 Defense employees or contractors who had purchased child pornography online. Astonishingly, nine of those had "Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information" security clearances, meaning they had access to the nation's most sensitive secrets. All told, 76 of the individuals had Secret or higher clearances. But DCIS investigated only 52 of the suspects, and just 10 were ever charged with viewing or purchasing child pornography. Without greater public disclosure of how these cases wound down, it's impossible to know how or whether any of the names listed in the Project Flicker papers came in for additional scrutiny. It's conceivable that some of them were picked up by local law enforcement, but it seems likely that most of the people flagged by the investigation did not have their military careers disrupted in the context of the DCIS inquiry.

Among those charged were Gary Douglass Grant, a captain in the Army Reserves and a judge advocate general, or military prosecutor. After investigators executing a search warrant found child pornography on his computer, he pleaded guilty last year to state charges of possession of obscene matter of a minor in a sexual act in California. Others included contractors for the NSA with Top Secret clearances; one of them -- a former contractor -- fled the country after being indicted and is believed to be in Libya.
But the vast majority of those investigated, including an active-duty lieutenant colonel in the Army and an official in the office of the secretary of defense, were never charged. On top of that, 212 people on ICE's list were never investigated at all.
According to the records, DCIS prioritized the investigations by focusing on people who had security clearances -- since those who have a taste for child pornography can be vulnerable to blackmail and espionage. The documents show that the probe then concentrated on people who had been previously suspected of or convicted of sex crimes, or had access to children as part of their Defense Department duties. But at least some of the people on the Project Flicker list with security clearances were never pursued and could possibly remain on the job: DCIS only investigated 52 people, and 76 of those on the Project Flicker list had clearances.
A DCIS spokesman didn't return phone calls. But the agency's own documents obtained via The Upshot's FOIA request indicate that the decision to press investigations forward hinged largely on questions of the resources available to the investigators. "Due to DCIS headquarters' direction and other DCIS investigative priorities, this investigation is cancelled" is a common summation in the files.
A source familiar with the Project Flicker investigations -- who requested anonymity because public disclosure could jeopardize this person's job -- confirmed that departmental resources, and priorities, were decisive factors in letting inquiries lapse.
DCIS is primarily tasked with rooting out contractor fraud and investigating security breaches; its 400 staffers were already plenty busy before Project Flicker dropped 264 more names onto their caseloads. And child pornography investigations are difficult to prosecute. Many judges wouldn't issue search warrants based on years-old evidence saying the targets subscribed to a kiddie porn website once.
"We were stuck in a situation where we had some great information, but didn't have the resources to run with it," the source told The Upshot. Many of the investigative reports obtained by The Upshot end with a similar citation of scarce resources:
Of course, other federal agencies, including ICE and the FBI, may have prosecuted some of the Project Flicker names the DCIS ignored. But that's unlikely, given that some of the DCIS investigations were closed due to lack of cooperation from ICE.
In one case, involving an Army Reserve corporal in the Pittsburgh area, a DCIS agent expressed exasperation after repeatedly trying to get ICE to collaborate with him on the investigation: "Based upon the complete non-responsiveness of ICE ... it is recommended that [the] matter be closed."
As for the 212 Project Flicker names that DCIS didn't investigate, the source familiar with the investigation said there was no systematic effort to inform their superiors or commanding officers of their suspected purchases of child pornography.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100903/us_yblog_upshot/pentagon-declined-to-investigate-hundreds-of-purchases-of-child-pornography

]]>Pentagon declined to investigate hundreds of purchases of child pornography09/06/10(Mon)16:3816:381283816289 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251756.htmlhttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/thumb/128381625420c.jpghttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/src/128381625420.jpgA plush residential building known as the Camelot just off Times Square is a favorite address for Internet con artists who rip off gullible vacationing Europeans for thousands of dollars.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” moaned Niati Mavungu, 31, a fashion designer from France who turned up Friday morning with friend Emmanuelle Guad, 29, a social worker from Switzerland for what they thought was a two week vacation in a luxury rental.
Instead, they found sympathetic doormen who explained they were victims of a chronic Craiglist scammer.

HELAYNE SEIDMAN
Niati Mavungu, 31, from Switzerland, and Emma Gaud, 29, from France, paid $1,500 for an apartment in the Camelot -- except it was an Internet scam.

ANGEL CHEVRESTT
They aren't the first -- "We’ve turned away as many as 50 visitors so far this summer,” says super Darwin Cepeda.

“We’ve turned away as many as 50 visitors so far this summer,” said Darwin Cepeda, 39, the super of 301 West 45th Street for 20 years.
Tourists continually arrive at the residential building carrying fake contracts like the one Mavungu and Guad had. They believe they’ve rented a two-bedroom in a building with a pool, gym and other amenities – only to weep and wail in disbelief when Cepeda breaks the grim news to them.
One man traveled from India with his family and paid $950 to “rent” an apartment at 301 45th Street from July 13th to the 17th — and was gobsmacked when he learned he’d been tricked, said Cepeda.
His contract was with Ryan & Dalia Rental, an apparently mythical real estate company that claims to be located at “301 45th Street, 8th Avenue.”
“If you are an honest person, you would never think of doing this, so I didn’t imagine for a minute it wasn’t true,” said a devastated Guad, who is on her first trip to the Big Apple and wired the scammer a $1,500 deposit. “I saved all year for this, I dreamed of it forever. This is the only vacation time I have for the whole year. I’m heartbroken.”
Robert Hammer, who manages Camelot, received a letter at his property in July that was addressed to Ryan & Dalia Rentals. It was a cashier’s check from someone in Benin, a tiny African nation, for $5,500 Euros ($7,039), sent from an HSBC bank in London.
“I just want someone to take this check and get it back to the right person,” said Hammer. “I don’t want it, the police apparently don’t want it, but I’m sure the owner of that money wants it.”
Hammer wrote two letters to the head of the Midtown North police precinct to alert cops to the ongoing scam involving his building and the HSBC check. But the NYPD doesn’t have jurisdiction over the crimes, according to Midtown North, because the money transfers originate outside the city.
Mavungu and Guad scrambled to find an affordable hotel on the busy Labor Day weekend. Late Friday afternoon they got a promising offer from someone who claimed to run a B&B – only to discover that person was trying to scam them too.
A call to 311 for information on emergency assistance yielded no help for Mavungu and Guad.
“They could try to go to a homeless shelter,” a city 311 operator suggested.


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/midtown_building_caught_in_internet_WG5htO7gBYXfsf18AsVGZK#ixzz0ynSKjBvc

]]>Midtown building caught in Internet scam of overseas tourists 09/06/10(Mon)16:3716:371283816254 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251748.html#251755
]]>09/06/10(Mon)16:3616:361283816198 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251754.htmlhttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/thumb/128381618942c.gifhttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/src/128381618942.gif
Some strategists are warning that some of the weaker economies could fail to raise the amount of money they need as eurozone governments attempt to issue double the amount of debt this month compared with August.

Eurozone governments will try to raise €80bn ($103bn) in September compared with new bond issuance of €43bn in August. Spain is expected to attempt to borrow €7bn in September compared with €3.5bn in August, according to ING Financial Markets.

Spain, Portugal and Ireland , so-called peripheral eurozone economies, are considered most in danger of being shunned by investors as worries persist over the health of their banks and economies. Greece is no longer a concern because it has emergency loans to cover its funding for the next two years.

Padhraic Garvey, head of rates strategy for developed markets at ING Financial Markets, said: “We are heading into a critical period as the chances rise that a government may fail to raise the money it needs.



“Spain, Portugal and Ireland are the obvious ones to worry about. Are investors willing to stay long, or buy the debt of these countries? I’m still not seeing investors willing to buy into the periphery.”

Some strategists say the return of most investors from holidays this week could increase volatility in these markets because many have put decisions on their portfolios on hold during the summer.

With most investors back at their desks, some could start selling peripheral debt in the coming weeks, particularly as the outlook for the global economy has deteriorated. In spite of some better than expected data out of the US last week, worries about a double-dip recession have increased.

But other strategists insist governments will have little difficulty in funding themselves, even if they have to pay higher premiums or yields to attract investors. They say countries such as Portugal and Ireland have already raised most of the money they need this year.

Government bond yields of the peripheral countries, however, may come under further selling pressure.

Yield spreads against Germany, the eurozone’s benchmark economy, could also widen. On Tuesday, Ireland saw the extra premium it has to pay over Germany jump to a record 356 basis points.

A double-dip recession would hit the economies of Spain, Portugal and Ireland particularly hard, although even core countries, such as France and Germany, could struggle to attract investors, say strategists.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/abe5bf60-b8dc-11df-99be-00144feabdc0.html#

]]>Fears rise as EU nations aim to raise borrowing09/06/10(Mon)16:3616:361283816189 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251749.html#251753>Nino shows off his dancing skills at a shop in Bogota,

Great, he fits in line with the tradition of super small people doing creepy dancing. Couldn't he be a chess grandmaster or something.

]]>09/06/10(Mon)16:3516:351283816145 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251752.htmlhttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/thumb/128381608885c.jpghttp://plus4chan.org/boards/n/src/128381608885.jpg
At the same time, a number of people whose phone messages may have been intercepted by The News of the World during Mr. Coulson’s tenure are accusing the Metropolitan Police of failing to fully examine all the evidence in its criminal investigation in 2006 and 2007.

Lord Prescott, a Labour politician who was the deputy prime minister under Tony Blair and who has been named as one of hundreds of people whose phones may have been hacked, said the police had never provided him with a sufficient explanation of what happened.

“I have been far from satisfied with the Metropolitan Police’s procedure in dealing with my requests to uncover the truth about this case,” Lord Prescott told The Observer newspaper. It was only after “repeated requests,” he said, that he learned that he might have been a victim of phone hacking. If the police continued to fail to be forthcoming, he said, he would seek a judicial inquiry into their handling of the matter.

Alan Johnson, a Labour member of Parliament and a former home secretary, announced that he would review the Home Office papers relating to the case to see whether the matter should be brought to the Inspectorate of Constabulary, which monitors the police. His recommendation would then go to the current home secretary, Theresa May.

Lord Prescott was responding to an article published by The New York Times Magazine online Wednesday and in print Sunday about the scandal. In 2007, The News of the World’s royal editor, Clive Goodman, and an investigator employed by The News of the World, Glenn Mulcaire, were jailed after pleading guilty to having illegally intercepted voice mail messages of Prince William and Prince Harry and their chief royal aides.

Mr. Coulson, who was appointed editor of The News of the World in 2003, said that he had no knowledge of the hacking and that it was an isolated case, but resigned from the paper in January 2007 nonetheless.

Last year, The Guardian newspaper printed an article saying that hundreds of people might have been singled out by The News of the World and providing details about some of them, including Gordon Taylor, former chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, who reached a settlement of £700,000 with The News of the World over the hacking of his cellphone.

The Times Magazine article provided new details, quoting a former reporter, Sean Hoare, and a unnamed former editor at The News of the World as saying that Mr. Coulson was fully aware of the hacking. In an interview with BBC Radio 4 last week, Mr. Hoare called Mr. Coulson’s statement to a parliamentary committee denying that he knew about the phone hacking in his newsroom “a lie.”

More than a dozen reporters and editors formerly with The News of the World, interviewed for The Times article said their employer had fostered a culture of recklessness in which reporters were encouraged to use any means to get exclusive stories. The article also quoted senior Metropolitan Police officials saying that the police had failed to fully investigate The News of the World’s phone hacking in part because of Scotland Yard’s close ties to editors at the paper and executives at its parent company, News International.

Over the weekend, Tessa Jowell, a former Labour cabinet minister who is still a Parliament member, said that the police had told her that her phone messages had been intercepted at least 28 times while she was in the government. And The Independent on Sunday reported that Lord Mandelson, another senior Labour politician, also had his messages intercepted.

John Yates, the assistant commissioner of the Met, said in a statement Sunday that the police would consider reopening the criminal inquiry if fresh evidence of wrongdoing emerges and would consult prosecutors about whether further inquiry was appropriate. Mr. Yates said the police had asked The Times for material it collected during its reporting of the magazine story, including notes from its interviews with Mr. Hoare.

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said, “Scotland Yard has declined our repeated requests for interviews and refused to release information we requested months ago under the British freedom of information law. After our story was published, Scotland Yard expressed renewed interest in the case and asked us to provide interview materials and notes; we declined, as we would with any such request from police. Our story speaks for itself and makes clear that the police already have evidence that they have chosen not to pursue.”

Tom Watson, a Labour member of Parliament and a member of the parliamentary committee that investigated the phone hacking, wrote a letter to the Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, saying “the historic continued and mishandling of this affair is beginning to bring your force, and hence our democracy, into disrepute.”

For its part, the British government said it considers the matter closed and will not investigate Mr. Coulson, who was hired as the Conservative Party’s chief spokesman in May 2007 after his resignation from The News of the World. A spokesman at 10 Downing Street said last week that Mr. Coulson “totally and utterly” denied knowing about phone hacking while he served as editor. Alan Duncan, the international development minister, appeared on television on Saturday night on behalf of the government, accusing the Labour Party of acting for purely political reasons.

Speaking of senior Labour leaders who have called for a new investigation, Mr. Duncan said: “The Labour Party — in a concerted campaign through Ed Miliband, Lord Prescott and Alan Johnson — have piled in to attack Andy Coulson about something that happened years ago in order to try to attack the government.”

Meanwhile, The News of the World denied the Times’s allegations and accused it of publishing the magazine article in an effort to discredit a newspaper belonging to a “rival group” — that is, the media empire of Rupert Murdoch. Mr. Murdoch is the chairman of News Corporation, whose many media holdings include The News of the World, The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal.

Five people whose phones were hacked have filed lawsuits this summer against News of the World’s parent company and Mr. Mulcaire. And a growing number of public figures who believe their phone messages may have also been intercepted but who feel the police did not do enough to investigate say they intend to sue The News of the World. Others, including Brian Paddick, a former deputy assistant commissioner with the Metropolitan Police, say they intend to seek a judicial review of the police’s handling of the criminal investigation. An application for that review is expected to be filed later this week.

Senior Labour leaders also said they intended this week to seek a new inquiry by the standards and privileges committee in the House of Commons.

The publication of the Times Magazine article has starkly exposed the fault lines in the media and political landscape in Britain. Papers supporting the government — including The Times of London and The Sun, both Murdoch-owned — have devoted little space to the new accusations. But media outlets critical of the government, including The Guardian, The Independent and the BBC — which itself is in a bitter feud with Mr. Murdoch’s company, which has extensive television holdings in Britain — have covered The Times’s article, and the subsequent calls for new investigations, extensively.

In an editorial, The Financial Times said that there should be an independent review of The New York Times’s accusation that “the police may have dropped a valid investigation.”

The Financial Times also called on Prime Minister David Cameron to investigate the matter. “Was he not reckless to have employed Mr. Coulson, given the murkiness of the allegations surrounding The News of the World?” the paper asked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/world/europe/06britain.html

]]>In Britain, Labour Politicians Call for New Look at Scandal09/06/10(Mon)16:3416:341283816088 /n/ http://plus4chan.org/boards/n/res/251671.html#251751>>251737
Old World Order: Windows
Nazi World Order: Mac
New World Order Linux

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