tagged w/ Inappropriate Monetization
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Two former Blackwater operatives were arrested by US federal agents on murder charges, stemming from their alleged involvement in the shooting deaths of two Afghan civilians in Kabul in May. They have been identified as Justin Cannon, 27, of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Christopher Drotleff, 29, of Virginia Beach, Va. They have been charged with “crimes including second-degree murder, attempted murder and firearms offenses while working as contractors for the U.S. Department of Defense in Afghanistan,” according to the Justice Department. The 13-count indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 6 and unsealed today.
It alleges that on May 5, 2009, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Cannon and Drotleff shot and killed two Afghanistan nationals and wounded a third. In a press release, the Justice Department said:
The indictment alleges that at the time of the shootings, Cannon and Drotleff were Department of Defense contractors employed by Paravant LLC, which is a subsidiary of Xe (formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide). According to the indictment, as contractors, Cannon and Drotleff provided training to the Afghan National Army for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in the use and maintenance of weapons and weapons systems.
In May, reports emerged that four Blackwater/Xe operatives working for Paravant LLC were alleged to have fired on a civilian car they say they saw as a threat, killing at least one Afghan civilian. According to The Wall Street Journal’s August Cole, “At least some of the men, who were former military personnel, had been allegedly drinking alcohol that evening, according to a person familiar with the incident. Off-duty contractors aren’t supposed to carry weapons or drink alcohol.”
The US military said the incident took place in Kabul on May 5. “While stopped for the vehicle accident, the contractors were approached by a vehicle in a manner the contractors felt threatening,” according to the military.Two former Blackwater operatives were arrested by US federal agents on murder charges,... more
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Sad, sad, sad! Mercenaries training American 'Faith based organizations'? Something is wrong with this picture. What is he training them for? To fight in the name of God? Something is definitely wrong with this picture.
Do they think they are going to take back their country? Sorry, but it's OUR country too.
I think President Obama is the one who should worry about Blackwater showing up at his door. They aren't training for an invasion by another country. We have a standing Army for that. It's time to keep an eye on Blackwater. President Obama better work to start holding Blackwater accountable for their actions before it's too late.
Note: I used the wrong terminology when I used the word mercenaries, they are a 'Private Army'. My bad. I humbly apologize for the poor choice of words. But, 'Private Army' is actually what mercenaries are.Sad, sad, sad! Mercenaries training American 'Faith based organizations'?... more
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Iraq's government says it won't give Blackwater a license to operate in the country. So does that mean the firm's cadre of tattooed gunslingers will be gone from Iraq, forever? Not exactly.
Sure, Blackwater as a corporate entity probably won't be roaming the streets of Baghdad or Mosul for much longer. But the individual mercenaries who've been working for years in Iraq, serving as a Praetorian Guard for the State Department's diplomats — those guys likely will be able to stay.
The State Department has a contract for "worldwide personal protective services" with three firms: Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy. If Blackwater is no longer allowed to operate in Iraq, a lawyer steeped in the field tells Danger Room, there's no legal reason why the other two firms can't scoop up Blackwater's employees. "State simply issues a new task order to DynCorp or Triple Canopy, who turn around and hire some or all of Blackwater's employees," he says.Iraq's government says it won't give Blackwater a license to operate in the... more
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The State Department is preparing to slap a multi-million dollar fine on private military contractor Blackwater USA for shipping hundreds of automatic weapons to Iraq without the necessary permits.
Some of the weapons are believed to have ended up on the country's black market, department officials told McClatchy, but no criminal charges have been filed in the case.
"Bush and Cheney created this monster because niether of them had the sack to institute a draft. If there had been a draft, there would have been a much more dedicated public dialogue about 'why' we were invading the wrong country. So, they farmed the job out to a bunch of heavily-armed Jesus-freaks. Now, we have a brand spanking, shiney new Gestopo, just like Adolf. That's right. I said it! Blackwater is the 'Secret State Police' just like the Nazis." - BansheewailThe State Department is preparing to slap a multi-million dollar fine on private... more
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A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.
For the complete article click on the linkA world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in... more
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Corporations want to turn the internet into something like TV. This is more reason why I hate corporations.Corporations want to turn the internet into something like TV. This is more reason... more
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Army officials and executives of the three companies are planning to meet in the next few weeks to start the complex process of breaking up KBR’s sprawling operations in Iraq.
KBR, previously a subsidiary of Halliburton, once headed by Mr. Cheney, has collected more than $24 billion since the war began. It has 40,000 employees in Iraq and 28,000 more in Afghanistan and Kuwait.
But KBR has come under fire from Congress and Pentagon auditors for complaints ranging from making more than $200 million in excessive charges, including meals never served to soldiers, to delivering unsafe water to American troops to doing little to prevent sexual assaults of its female employees, often by their KBR co-workers.
Army officials acknowledge that they were under intense pressure from Capitol Hill to give KBR some competition, yet leading Democratic lawmakers and other critics say the new contract will merely paper over the fundamental problems that stem from the Pentagon’s heavy dependence on outside contractors in Iraq.
Five companies submitted bids (primarily covering work in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan), and the Army initially awarded contracts to KBR, Fluor and DynCorp last June. But the two losing companies protested, and the Government Accountability Office upheld their protests in October, ruling that the Army had given preferential treatment to the winning companies. The Army then made some adjustments in the contract and announced in April that the same three companies had won again.
Like KBR, DynCorp, based in Falls Church, Va., has had serious problems in past contracting work, including allegations that its employees engaged in sex trafficking in Bosnia while working on a police training contract there in the late 1990s. In addition, government auditors concluded last year that the State Department’s $1.2 billion contract with DynCorp for police training in Iraq was so badly managed that they could not determine exactly what was done for the money.Army officials and executives of the three companies are planning to meet in the next... more
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"A University of Leicester space scientist has worked out that sending texts via mobile phones works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr Nigel Bannister’s calculations were used for the Channel 4 Dispatches programme “The Mobile Phone Rip-Off”.
He worked out the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble – and compared that with the 5p cost of sending a text.
He said: “The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.
“The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that's 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that's £374.49 per MB - or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.”
Dr Bannister said it had been difficult to work out exactly how much Hubble data transmission costs. So he contacted NASA who gave him a firm figure of £8.85 per megabyte (MB) for the transmission of data from HST to the Earth.
“This doesn't include the cost of the ground stations and the time of the personnel along the way, but it is an unambiguous number for that part of the process. So that's £8.85 to get each MB from Hubble, to the first point of contact on the ground, but no further. Hence we need to go a little bit further to estimate exactly how much it costs to transmit data from Hubble to the end user - i.e. to the data archive which scientists can access. This is difficult, so I had to make some conservative assumptions.”
Dr Bannister estimated the cost of the data from Hubble could vary between £8.85 and £85 per MB- much cheaper than the £374.49 per MB cost of transmitting one MB of text.
He concludes: “Hubble is by no means a cheap mission – but the mobile phone text costs were pretty astronomical!” "
Credit: PhysOrg.com
...ba-da-dum..! well, it just makes me dislike the phone companies even more."A University of Leicester space scientist has worked out that sending texts via... more
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lwhi
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1 year ago
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Bruce Falconer writes in Mother Jones:
Theft, hookers, melting down Iraqi gold to make cowboy spurs—all in a day's work for private military contractors in Iraq?
Allegations of widespread mismanagement and corruption among private contractors in Iraq are nothing new; if anything, tales of cronyism, over-billing, and embezzlement have become so frequent that our national tolerance for them seems only to have increased as the Iraq War has drawn on. Even so, the testimony earlier this week of three whistleblowers before the Senate's Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) stands out for the sheer outrageousness of their accusations—namely that U.S. private contractors looted Iraqi palaces and ministries, stole military equipment, fenced supplies destined for U.S. troops, and even operated a prostitution ring that may have contributed to the death of fellow contractor. Yet despite its focus on such salacious matters as sex and corruption, the session earned little media attention.
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By Bruce Falconer
May 2, 2008
motherjones.com
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/05/contractor-fraud-and-theft-in-iraq.html
Photo by flickr user James Gordon
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
Bruce Falconer writes in Mother Jones:
Theft, hookers, melting down Iraqi gold to... more
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After only being on the job a month, the new Virgin Media CEO lashes out at Net Neutrality. He's confirming that Virgin will be charging websites (like current.com) a premium for the type of access that their viewers have to the site... the fast lane, or the slow lane.After only being on the job a month, the new Virgin Media CEO lashes out at Net... more
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With the concentration of military might in private hands growing, I wonder what happens to the soldiers and equipment if the Democrats are elected? Personally, the best thing I can come up with is to enlist all of them. They're trained soldiers and we apparently need them in the ARMY. What do you think?
How dangerous is it to have private military operating in US (or any) territory?
What is the "right" or conservative point of view? And the liberal POV? Shouldn't they be close?
STORY from DemocracyNow.org
Southern California Residents Gear Up for New Fight to Stop Secretive Expansion by Military Firm Blackwater
Just two months after local opposition thwarted its effort to build a massive outdoor training facility near San Diego, the private military company Blackwater USA is being accused of secretly trying to build a new one just blocks from the US-Mexico border. Blackwater received approval for the 61,000 square-foot indoor facility in Otay Mesa, California, by filing for permits using the names of two subsidiaries.
Follow link for extended coverage and interviews...Full text, audio and video of Amy Goodman's on DemocracyNow with interview with Raymond Lutz, l(Local resident who has fought Blackwater’s expansion into the San Diego region), and Rep. Bob Filner, Democratic Congress member representing California’s 51st congressional district.With the concentration of military might in private hands growing, I wonder what... more
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jimmyp
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1 year ago
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They have a homeland Security contract to control us in case of emergency and a contract to patrol the boarder. Be afraid, be very afraid.They have a homeland Security contract to control us in case of emergency and a... more
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It used to be that Europeans came to the United States to study its prison systems. They came away impressed. Now, the USA prison system is looked upon as a horrific system.
Indeed, said Vivien Stern in this NY Times article, a research fellow at the prison studies center in London, the American incarceration rate has made the United States “a rogue state, a country that has made a decision not to follow what is a normal Western approach.”
It's no secret the USA locks up more people per capita than any other country in the world, and that includes China.
Why?
My opinion is:
1. Too many lawyers making too many laws
2. Legal Slavery, i.e., inmates make the furniture that serves the system itself
3. It's a Business! The Feds give the states x amount of money for various laws enforced, for each inmate, states collect extra taxes, states make money!
4. It Actually Helps the Economy! It takes people out of the job market and at the same time creates jobs to hold them in custody. A double benefit of locking people up for every little thing!
Whats your opinion?It used to be that Europeans came to the United States to study its prison systems.... more
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I hadn't realized that the pentagon labeled the civilian killings a criminal event.
We are pretty stuck over in Iraq. We have built a huge reliance on civilian contractors to compensate for our breaking army and to sharply reduce numbers of armed people on "our" side would most likely cause the country to implode. What do you do? Furthermore, the right-wing has made a pretty good situation for themselves as we have now built these "super-bases" in Iraq costing billions of dollars. Now that they are built, it is highly unlikely that any president will abandon them due to their massive investment and strategic location. Crafty little buggers those warmongers are.I hadn't realized that the pentagon labeled the civilian killings a criminal... more
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The privatization of the United States Military continued with the renewal of Blackwater's contract. In September Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi women and children. "Under a provision instituted in the early days of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, security contractors have immunity from Iraqi law". Witnesses said Blackwater guards started shooting unprovoked. The FBI is investigating.
Critics are also concerned because Blackwater guards earn significantly more money than US troops. Leaving some to wonder why we are willing to pay private citizens more than the men and women who volunteered their lives to protect this country?
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell declined to comment.The privatization of the United States Military continued with the renewal of... more
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This is weak sauce, man. Comcast filled the seats at the hearing to support them against net neutrality. Comcast=little devil cartoonsThis is weak sauce, man. Comcast filled the seats at the hearing to support them... more
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Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, has opted to sit out tomorrow's Federal Communications Commission hearing on broadband network management practices at Stanford, Portfolio.com has learned.
As a result, the company will not face one of its most prominent critics, Lawrence Lessig, the iconoclastic Stanford law professor and "free culture" advocate who is set to give introductory remarks.
Although invited by the F.C.C. to discuss yesterday's announcement that it is developing a file-sharing "Bill of Rights" with peer-to-peer company Pando, Comcast has declined to attend the hearing.Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, has opted to sit out tomorrow's... more
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When government and business collide, private contractors win big!
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From MobLogic.tv with Lindsay CampbellWhen government and business collide, private contractors win big!
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From... more
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Seeking to make money from mistyped website names, some of the United States' largest ISPs are instead creating gaping security holes in the web's largest websites, including eBay, PayPal, Google and Yahoo.
The ISPs are making it possible for hackers to turn any website into a source of viruses, phishing attacks and other malware.
The massive vulnerability introduced by Earthlink and Comcast was quietly and quickly patched on Friday, after IOActive security researcher Dan Kaminsky reported the vulnerability to Earthlink and its technology partner, a British ad company called Barefruit.
"The entire security of the internet is now dependent on some random-ass server run by some British company," Kaminsky said.
Starting in August 2006, Earthlink changed how it handled the process of turning requests for a domain name such as Youtube.com into the numeric IP address of the site's server, hiring Barefruit to help it make money from this system.
The news of the massive security breach created by ISPs subverting internet protocol for profit comes just two days after the Federal Communication Commission held a hand-wringing public forum at Stanford University over whether it should punish Comcast its violation of a standard internet practices by sending fake packets to its users in order to reduce the amount of bandwidth peer-to-peer applications use.
Kaminsky is demoing the hole publicly on Saturday at the Toorcon security conference in Seattle.
Kaminsky, a well-respected security expert, is perhaps best known for cleverly proving that a spyware rootkit Sony included on music CDs infected computers in more than half a million computer networks in 2005.
The hole was made possible by ISPs subverting the Domain Name System or DNS, which translates website names into numeric addresses.
When users visit a website like Wired.com, the DNS system translates the domain name into an IP address such as http://72.246.49.48. But if a particular site does not exist, the DNS server tells the browser that there's no such listing and a simple error message should be displayed.
But using Barefruit's technology, Earthlink instead intercepts that Non-Existent Domain (NXDOMAIN) response and sends the IP address of Barefruit's ad server as the answer. When the browser visits that page, the user sees a list of suggestions for what site the user might have actually wanted, along with a search box and Yahoo ads.
The rub comes when a user is asking for a nonexistent subdomain of a real website, such as http://webmale.google.com, where the subdomain webmale doesn't exist (unlike, say, mail in mail.google.com). In this case, the Earthlink/Barefruit ads appear in the browser and the title bar indicates that it's the official Google site.Seeking to make money from mistyped website names, some of the United States'... more
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