Via DN
"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music"
Thursday, March 15, 2012
"Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has agreed to pay $500 million in penalties for the scandal surrounding the computerized payroll system called CityTime. In what prosecutors call "the single biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the city of New York," SAIC employees and other consultants used shell companies and overseas bank accounts to funnel kickbacks and inflated billings, defrauding taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars as the budget for the project ballooned from $73 million to $700 million" (Video)
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
NH city's new military muscle raises some hackles...
NH city's new military muscle raises some hackles
By Kari Huus, msnbc.com
The city of Keene, N.H., population 23,000, nestled in a valley in the state's southwest corner, may not be the first place that comes to mind as a terrorism target, but this summer it will take delivery on a $286,000 armored vehicle, compliments of the Department of Homeland Security.
The Lenco "BearCat," fitted with thermal imaging, radiation and explosive gas detection systems, gun mounts and rotating hatch is but one example of the kind of quasi-military equipment that has been acquired by local and state law enforcement agencies through billions of dollars worth of federal grant money in the last decade.
"The specialized-mission CBRNE/WMD rescue vehicle will help to guard against a terrorist or (chemical, biological, nuclear, and enhanced conventional weapons/weapons of mass destruction) incident," said the successful federal grant application filed by the city.
The application noted that Keene hosts several events that draw large crowds each year -- such as the annual Pumpkin Festival and Clarence DeMar Marathon -- lies on major corridor used by trucks carrying hazardous materials and is a designated evacuation area if there is a nuclear accident at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Vernon, Vt. It also pointed out that the city is situated on two flood prone rivers, and Bearcats have proven useful for rescues and patrols during natural disasters.
The Keene City Council voted on Dec. 15 to accept the Homeland Security grant for the equipment as requested by the police. Approval was unsurprising, said City Manager John MacLean.
"The council saw it like I did," said MacLean, "as a legitimate request ... to make safe our department and our community by the use of a too. … It didn’t occur to everybody how big an issue it would be for other reasons."
MacLean was referring to swift and furious opposition that surfaced soon after the vote, from the liberal wing of the college town, from Libertarian and Tea Party members and from activists from as far away as New Mexico, according to local politicians.
"Almost the next day, the calls started to come into the radio station, the newspaper was inundated with letters to the editor for the next several weeks, extraordinary because the deal was supposed to be done," said Terry Clark, a councilman who had voted against using the grant. "There was so much about this issue not to like."
Clark opposed the use of the grant because he thought it wrong to for the U.S. government to lavish money on military grade equipment at the same time it is making deep cuts in funding for education and other mandated programs — costs that he says are now falling on local property taxpayers.
"I thought it was just unconscionable," he said. "The city of Keene doesn’t have to enable these people. We can tell them 'no, we don’t think this is a good way to spend money."
Clark lobbied for the City Council to hold public discussion and then take a new vote. It did so this month, then again voted to approve the Bearcat purchase, though by fewer votes this time.
Across the country — in major cities, but also in relatively rural settings — police have added armored vehicles, hazmat protection, body armor, riot gear, drones and other military grade gear to their toolboxes in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
According to a recent report by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the federal government has doled out some $34 billion in grants like the one approved for the Keene police force.
When some of that gear was visibly employed for crowd control during the recent Occupy protests, it fueled controversy about how the equipment was to be used.
But some law enforcers say the equipment provides a sense of security.
In Bossier Parish, La., the sheriff’s department acquired a Ballistic Armored Tactical Transport -- a heavily armored vehicle that has gun ports and a turret -- in 2009 with federal grant money. The vehicle was a tool for the SWAT team to use in the event of a high-threat situation, according to public information officer Bill Davis.
"If you’ve got an active shooter and he has some heavy weaponry we need to be one step ahead," said Davis.
The BATT has been used only for training so far, he said, comparing it tp the handguns officers carry.
"People want to know if the cavalry needs to be called out, we’re coming. ... We are no longer Mayberry," he added, referring to the northwest Louisiana parish. "This is the fastest growing parish in Louisiana and with that growth is the potential of more crime in the area, and we want to be prepared."
In Keene, MacLean, the city manager, said the debate over the BearCat purchase opened some eyes on both sides of the debate.
"I think we have two sets of conversations going, both of which are legitimate," he said. "The (police) chief said it could save lives… If this has potential to save lives, and the lives of the people they work with, why wouldn’t they (acquire it)? But it’s been brought into a separate conversation about militarization of the police."
By Kari Huus, msnbc.com
The city of Keene, N.H., population 23,000, nestled in a valley in the state's southwest corner, may not be the first place that comes to mind as a terrorism target, but this summer it will take delivery on a $286,000 armored vehicle, compliments of the Department of Homeland Security.
The Lenco "BearCat," fitted with thermal imaging, radiation and explosive gas detection systems, gun mounts and rotating hatch is but one example of the kind of quasi-military equipment that has been acquired by local and state law enforcement agencies through billions of dollars worth of federal grant money in the last decade.
"The specialized-mission CBRNE/WMD rescue vehicle will help to guard against a terrorist or (chemical, biological, nuclear, and enhanced conventional weapons/weapons of mass destruction) incident," said the successful federal grant application filed by the city.
The application noted that Keene hosts several events that draw large crowds each year -- such as the annual Pumpkin Festival and Clarence DeMar Marathon -- lies on major corridor used by trucks carrying hazardous materials and is a designated evacuation area if there is a nuclear accident at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Vernon, Vt. It also pointed out that the city is situated on two flood prone rivers, and Bearcats have proven useful for rescues and patrols during natural disasters.
The Keene City Council voted on Dec. 15 to accept the Homeland Security grant for the equipment as requested by the police. Approval was unsurprising, said City Manager John MacLean.
"The council saw it like I did," said MacLean, "as a legitimate request ... to make safe our department and our community by the use of a too. … It didn’t occur to everybody how big an issue it would be for other reasons."
MacLean was referring to swift and furious opposition that surfaced soon after the vote, from the liberal wing of the college town, from Libertarian and Tea Party members and from activists from as far away as New Mexico, according to local politicians.
"Almost the next day, the calls started to come into the radio station, the newspaper was inundated with letters to the editor for the next several weeks, extraordinary because the deal was supposed to be done," said Terry Clark, a councilman who had voted against using the grant. "There was so much about this issue not to like."
Clark opposed the use of the grant because he thought it wrong to for the U.S. government to lavish money on military grade equipment at the same time it is making deep cuts in funding for education and other mandated programs — costs that he says are now falling on local property taxpayers.
"I thought it was just unconscionable," he said. "The city of Keene doesn’t have to enable these people. We can tell them 'no, we don’t think this is a good way to spend money."
Clark lobbied for the City Council to hold public discussion and then take a new vote. It did so this month, then again voted to approve the Bearcat purchase, though by fewer votes this time.
Across the country — in major cities, but also in relatively rural settings — police have added armored vehicles, hazmat protection, body armor, riot gear, drones and other military grade gear to their toolboxes in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
According to a recent report by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the federal government has doled out some $34 billion in grants like the one approved for the Keene police force.
When some of that gear was visibly employed for crowd control during the recent Occupy protests, it fueled controversy about how the equipment was to be used.
But some law enforcers say the equipment provides a sense of security.
In Bossier Parish, La., the sheriff’s department acquired a Ballistic Armored Tactical Transport -- a heavily armored vehicle that has gun ports and a turret -- in 2009 with federal grant money. The vehicle was a tool for the SWAT team to use in the event of a high-threat situation, according to public information officer Bill Davis.
"If you’ve got an active shooter and he has some heavy weaponry we need to be one step ahead," said Davis.
The BATT has been used only for training so far, he said, comparing it tp the handguns officers carry.
"People want to know if the cavalry needs to be called out, we’re coming. ... We are no longer Mayberry," he added, referring to the northwest Louisiana parish. "This is the fastest growing parish in Louisiana and with that growth is the potential of more crime in the area, and we want to be prepared."
In Keene, MacLean, the city manager, said the debate over the BearCat purchase opened some eyes on both sides of the debate.
"I think we have two sets of conversations going, both of which are legitimate," he said. "The (police) chief said it could save lives… If this has potential to save lives, and the lives of the people they work with, why wouldn’t they (acquire it)? But it’s been brought into a separate conversation about militarization of the police."
"U.S. Special Operation Forces reportedly have been in Syria since December training groups to conduct guerrilla attacks and assassinations to bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a leaked Stratfor memo published by WikiLeaks...Last year, a U.S. Army two-star general said that special operators have been in the Middle East since the “Arab Spring” started, but their mission was to keep volatile situations from getting worse. “We also keep a close eye on and can’t ignore the other unstable regions in the world, and you’ve seen them in the mix here recently, too -- Egypt, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan,” Maj. Gen. Kurt Fuller, deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, said during a breakfast meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army’s Land Warfare Institute.“So I can tell you that just about any place you see things happening on the news we’ve got Army Special Operations forces there, and they’re doing a variety of different things to hopefully prevent and deter these things from getting worse"
Leaked Memo Says US SOF in Syria
March 09, 2012
Military.com|by Bryant Jordan
U.S. Special Operation Forces reportedly have been in Syria since December training groups to conduct guerrilla attacks and assassinations to bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a leaked Stratfor memo published by WikiLeaks.
But Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Gregory suggested the memo warranted being read skeptically.
"I would say that the [Stratfor] email -- and I cannot comment on its authenticity due to the method in which [it was received] -- seems to be pure conjecture," Gregory said.
The claim of American Spec Ops Forces operating in Syria is made in an internal email dated Dec. 7, 2011, from an official at Stratfor, a Texas-based private intelligence-gathering company.
The writer -- whose email reportedly belongs to the company’s director of analysis, Reva Bhalla -- recounts a Pentagon meeting where officials “said without saying that SOF teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce [reconnaissance] missions and training opposition forces.”
An Air Force intelligence officer told him that there isn’t a viable “Free Syrian Army” to actually train right now, but that steps are being taken out of “prudence.”
“They have been told to prepare contingencies and be ready to act within 2-3 months, but they still stress that this is all being done as contingency planning, not as a move toward escalation,” the writer states. “I kept pressing on the question of what these SOF teams would be working toward, and whether this would lead to an eventual air camapign [sic] to give a Syrian rebel group cover. They pretty quickly distanced themselves from that idea, saying that the idea 'hypothetically' is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within. There wouldn't be a need for air cover, and they wouldn't expect these Syrian rebels to be marching in columns anyway.” (Alawite is a minority branch of Islam to which the Assad family belongs.)
Last year, a U.S. Army two-star general said that special operators have been in the Middle East since the “Arab Spring” started, but their mission was to keep volatile situations from getting worse. “We also keep a close eye on and can’t ignore the other unstable regions in the world, and you’ve seen them in the mix here recently, too -- Egypt, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan,” Maj. Gen. Kurt Fuller, deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, said during a breakfast meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army’s Land Warfare Institute. “And if we don’t address those now, we’ll have to deal with it later and probably have to commit a larger effort to that.
“So I can tell you that just about any place you see things happening on the news we’ve got Army Special Operations forces there, and they’re doing a variety of different things to hopefully prevent and deter these things from getting worse.”
Fuller declined to provide copies of the briefing slides he showed the group at the breakfast or further elaborate on the missions when questioned by Military.com.
“I’m not going to tell you exactly where our people are or aren’t,” he said. “I’ll say that if it’s important to this nation we’ve probably got guys there. They may not be there now but they’ve been there or they’re going.”
Lt. Col. Gregory told Military.com that he could not respond to Fuller's remarks because he does not have the full context surrounding them. He also said that DoD does not provide information on Special Operations deployments.
The leaked Stratfor memo comes at a time when the Obama administration and the Pentagon are trying to resist pressure from members of Congress to intervene militarily in Syria, where Assad’s forces have so far killed at least 7,500 people, according to the U.N., including innocent civilians.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta came under fire by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Wednesday for the administration’s cautious approach on Syria.
"How many more people have to die?" McCain asked. "Ten thousand?"
The U.S. must lead the world toward an end to the crisis, he said.
During the same Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon has begun early work drawing up "options" for a military campaign against Syria, but insisted that force should be the last option for ending the bloodshed and that the U.S. must not act alone.
"We can do anything," Dempsey said. "It's not about ‘can we do it,’ It’s the question of ‘should we do it,' and what are the opportunity costs elsewhere."
Publicly, the White House has tried to keep American military personnel as far from the various Arab Spring uprisings as possible.
President Obama insisted that the U.S. assume only a supporting role in Libya last year after the initial cruise missile and bombing assaults were conducted to keep Moammar Gadhafi’s troops away from besieged rebel areas.
The only known instance of American combat troops on the ground in Libya was a mission to rescue a downed pilot last March 21. Marines belonging to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, N.C., rushed inland from the USS Kearsarge aboard two MV-22 Ospreys after an Air Force pilot was forced to punch out of his F-15 Strike Eagle.
March 09, 2012
Military.com|by Bryant Jordan
U.S. Special Operation Forces reportedly have been in Syria since December training groups to conduct guerrilla attacks and assassinations to bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a leaked Stratfor memo published by WikiLeaks.
But Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Gregory suggested the memo warranted being read skeptically.
"I would say that the [Stratfor] email -- and I cannot comment on its authenticity due to the method in which [it was received] -- seems to be pure conjecture," Gregory said.
The claim of American Spec Ops Forces operating in Syria is made in an internal email dated Dec. 7, 2011, from an official at Stratfor, a Texas-based private intelligence-gathering company.
The writer -- whose email reportedly belongs to the company’s director of analysis, Reva Bhalla -- recounts a Pentagon meeting where officials “said without saying that SOF teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce [reconnaissance] missions and training opposition forces.”
An Air Force intelligence officer told him that there isn’t a viable “Free Syrian Army” to actually train right now, but that steps are being taken out of “prudence.”
“They have been told to prepare contingencies and be ready to act within 2-3 months, but they still stress that this is all being done as contingency planning, not as a move toward escalation,” the writer states. “I kept pressing on the question of what these SOF teams would be working toward, and whether this would lead to an eventual air camapign [sic] to give a Syrian rebel group cover. They pretty quickly distanced themselves from that idea, saying that the idea 'hypothetically' is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within. There wouldn't be a need for air cover, and they wouldn't expect these Syrian rebels to be marching in columns anyway.” (Alawite is a minority branch of Islam to which the Assad family belongs.)
Last year, a U.S. Army two-star general said that special operators have been in the Middle East since the “Arab Spring” started, but their mission was to keep volatile situations from getting worse. “We also keep a close eye on and can’t ignore the other unstable regions in the world, and you’ve seen them in the mix here recently, too -- Egypt, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan,” Maj. Gen. Kurt Fuller, deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, said during a breakfast meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army’s Land Warfare Institute. “And if we don’t address those now, we’ll have to deal with it later and probably have to commit a larger effort to that.
“So I can tell you that just about any place you see things happening on the news we’ve got Army Special Operations forces there, and they’re doing a variety of different things to hopefully prevent and deter these things from getting worse.”
Fuller declined to provide copies of the briefing slides he showed the group at the breakfast or further elaborate on the missions when questioned by Military.com.
“I’m not going to tell you exactly where our people are or aren’t,” he said. “I’ll say that if it’s important to this nation we’ve probably got guys there. They may not be there now but they’ve been there or they’re going.”
Lt. Col. Gregory told Military.com that he could not respond to Fuller's remarks because he does not have the full context surrounding them. He also said that DoD does not provide information on Special Operations deployments.
The leaked Stratfor memo comes at a time when the Obama administration and the Pentagon are trying to resist pressure from members of Congress to intervene militarily in Syria, where Assad’s forces have so far killed at least 7,500 people, according to the U.N., including innocent civilians.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta came under fire by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Wednesday for the administration’s cautious approach on Syria.
"How many more people have to die?" McCain asked. "Ten thousand?"
The U.S. must lead the world toward an end to the crisis, he said.
During the same Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon has begun early work drawing up "options" for a military campaign against Syria, but insisted that force should be the last option for ending the bloodshed and that the U.S. must not act alone.
"We can do anything," Dempsey said. "It's not about ‘can we do it,’ It’s the question of ‘should we do it,' and what are the opportunity costs elsewhere."
Publicly, the White House has tried to keep American military personnel as far from the various Arab Spring uprisings as possible.
President Obama insisted that the U.S. assume only a supporting role in Libya last year after the initial cruise missile and bombing assaults were conducted to keep Moammar Gadhafi’s troops away from besieged rebel areas.
The only known instance of American combat troops on the ground in Libya was a mission to rescue a downed pilot last March 21. Marines belonging to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, N.C., rushed inland from the USS Kearsarge aboard two MV-22 Ospreys after an Air Force pilot was forced to punch out of his F-15 Strike Eagle.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Unreported rapes: Britain's silent shame
Unreported rapes: the silent shame
Posted by: Dreier
Via
The devastating scale of sexual violence against women in Britain is exposed today by new research which indicates that the vast majority of victims do not report perpetrators to the police.
One in 10 women has been raped, and more than a third subjected to sexual assault, according to a major survey, which also highlights just how frightened women are of not being believed. More than 80 per cent of the 1,600 respondents said they did not report their assault to the police, while 29 per cent said they told nobody – not even a friend or family member – of their ordeal.
Negative social attitudes to rape and sexual assault victims play a big part in the reluctance of women to come forward, the survey by Mumsnet suggests. Nearly three-quarters (70 per cent) of respondents feel the media is unsympathetic to women who report rape, while more than half say the same is true of the legal system and society in general.
The findings come as the social networking site launches a campaign to dispel the myths surrounding sexual violence, which it says stop victims from accessing support and justice. The week-long “We Believe You” campaign is backed by Rape Crisis, Barnardo’s and the End Violence Against Women coalition.
Fear of being blamed, because of their clothes or alcohol intake or for staying with an abusive partner, means more than half of the women surveyed in February and March 2012 said they would be too embarrassed or ashamed to report the crime. The stubbornly low conviction rates still put off 68 per cent of victims from going to the police, but perhaps even more surprising is the fact 29 per cent said they did not tell anyone, not even friends or family, about the rape, while 53 per cent said they would be reluctant to do so because of shame or embarrassment. Mumsnet wants to convey that every rape is as serious as the next, despite the contrary and controversial assertion by Justice Minister Ken Clarke last year.
Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet, said: “It is shocking and unacceptable that this number of women have been raped and sexually assaulted. But the stand-out fact is that so few would report it to officials or even to loved ones, because of the general perception society is unsympathetic. If our campaign can dispel the myths and help women realise how commonplace it is, then some may feel more emboldened to get help.”
Posted by: Dreier
Via
The devastating scale of sexual violence against women in Britain is exposed today by new research which indicates that the vast majority of victims do not report perpetrators to the police.
One in 10 women has been raped, and more than a third subjected to sexual assault, according to a major survey, which also highlights just how frightened women are of not being believed. More than 80 per cent of the 1,600 respondents said they did not report their assault to the police, while 29 per cent said they told nobody – not even a friend or family member – of their ordeal.
Negative social attitudes to rape and sexual assault victims play a big part in the reluctance of women to come forward, the survey by Mumsnet suggests. Nearly three-quarters (70 per cent) of respondents feel the media is unsympathetic to women who report rape, while more than half say the same is true of the legal system and society in general.
The findings come as the social networking site launches a campaign to dispel the myths surrounding sexual violence, which it says stop victims from accessing support and justice. The week-long “We Believe You” campaign is backed by Rape Crisis, Barnardo’s and the End Violence Against Women coalition.
Fear of being blamed, because of their clothes or alcohol intake or for staying with an abusive partner, means more than half of the women surveyed in February and March 2012 said they would be too embarrassed or ashamed to report the crime. The stubbornly low conviction rates still put off 68 per cent of victims from going to the police, but perhaps even more surprising is the fact 29 per cent said they did not tell anyone, not even friends or family, about the rape, while 53 per cent said they would be reluctant to do so because of shame or embarrassment. Mumsnet wants to convey that every rape is as serious as the next, despite the contrary and controversial assertion by Justice Minister Ken Clarke last year.
Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet, said: “It is shocking and unacceptable that this number of women have been raped and sexually assaulted. But the stand-out fact is that so few would report it to officials or even to loved ones, because of the general perception society is unsympathetic. If our campaign can dispel the myths and help women realise how commonplace it is, then some may feel more emboldened to get help.”
Sunday, March 11, 2012
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