the/diseased/republik

Legal insider trading in three easy steps, brought to you by JP Morgan and the SEC KEVIN WILSON , MARIA CHRISTINA PADRO , JULIAN ASSANGE & staff March 16, 2009 A confidential memo obtained by Wikileaks shows that not only has the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission created an insider trading loophole big enough to drive a truck through, but that Wall Street is taking full advantage of it, establishing 'how-to' programs and even client service divisions to help well-heeled clients circumvent insider trading regulations. Most of us think of insider trading as illegal. It allows those with inside knowledge to tilt the playing field, with the small investors invariably losing to the privileged few. Unfortunately for the small investor, the big boys get to play by different rules, and it has all been made legal, thanks to the SEC. In 2000 the SEC promulgated Rule 10b5-1. The new Rule was designed to address the confusion caused by a series of court decisions that ...

In spite of a history of positive salmonella tests, the chief FatCat @ Peanut Corporation of America (AKA King Nut ) last month sent an e-mail to company executives claiming that previous lab testing had "never found any salmonella at all" in the firm's products. Classic denial. In a January 12 e-mail, a copy of which you'll find below, Stewart Parnell, PCA's chief executive, denied that the discovery of salmonella in the kitchen of a Minnesota nursing home was connected to the Virginia-based company, which is now at the center of a national salmonella outbreak that has resulted in nine deaths and the sickening of at least 600 consumers. "We suspect the salmonella could have been introduced by cross-contamination after the tub was opened," Parnell claimed. The e-mail, which was obtained by congressional investigators probing PCA, was sent by Parnell to prepare company managers for press inquiries. "Media have the power to turn this open container...

The FBI raided the Peanut Corporation of America's Blakely, Ga., facility Monday as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the peanut recall. The company's subsidiary in Plainview, Texas, today announced it, too, would temporarily close its doors after lab tests detected the possible presence of salmonella. developments unfolded this week in a chain of events that has resulted in the removal of 1,845 peanut products from store shelves, following more than 600 illnesses and an estimated eight deaths linked to bad peanuts.

any time you get to quote a Rock_God- Do It!  to wit: Tad Doyle ( TAD ) “Independent record stores are where I find the new music that in many cases is the most vital and cutting edge music out there. As a guy who has had experience trying to get his music heard; these places are so valuable to artists and music fans alike. The synergy is incredible because it is where lives are changed and where artist meets listener. As a kid, the independent record store was so important because I was able to find things that I really cared about and discovered music that mattered to me on a personal level: records and music that set my imagination and spirit soaring. It is that important. It is life!”

01/06/2009: "If they all knew..." § 371. Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States this is treason...? If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor. why the hell didn't they do something?! Now that we have intelligence experts, the military community, present and former administration, a Senator, and the media saying that they all knew the evidence was bullshit. Durbin's excuse is that he was sworn to secrecy. I don't know about Dick, I was...

the guy i love most to hate- former vice president Dick Chinstrap Cheney tells Politico that there is a “high probability” of a terrorist attack involving “a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” and that the current administration is “more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States. ...” Of course the last time Cheney warned us about a likely WMD attack he turned out to be a goofball with a $3 trillion quagmire to sell. Politico : “When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said. Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.” We all know Ol' Dick is cutesy with the wordp...

we all found out that mr peanut rides dirty. now they deliberately shipped some tainted product: Federal health officials say the Georgia peanut plant at the center of the salmonella outbreak knowingly shipped tainted products. Friday, the FDA said the company sent out peanut butter, chopped peanuts and peanut meal that had tested positive even before it got back any negative findings. Peanut Corp. denies any wrongdoing. The government has opened a criminal investigation. maybe the time has come to hold corparations accountable for the actions of its various organs...hmmmmm indeed. UPDATE: Sat morn -" further investigation showed that the company shipped some of the lots before the second tests were completed. Other lots were shipped without testing, and in some cases, no second test was performed even after the first was positive. "  - source/video -

In this day of sacrificed liberty and governmental intrusion of our lives, keeping the politicians and their Corporate Overlords honest should be foremost in the individaul citizens' mind.

Set in the year 2022, Soylent Green depicts a dystopia , a Malthusian catastrophe that occurs because humanity has failed to pursue sustainable development and has not halted uncontrolled population growth ; New York City 's population is 40,000,000, with more than half of it unemployed. Global warming , air and water pollution have produced a year-round heatwave and a thin, yellow, daytime smog . Food and fuel are scarce resources, because of animal and plant decimation, housing is dilapidated and overcrowded, and widespread government-sponsored euthanasia is encouraged to control and reduce overpopulation. Meat, bread, cheese, fruit, vegetables, and even alcoholic beverages are scarce and extremely expensive; for example, a six- ounce jar of strawberry jam is 150 "Ds" ( US Dollars ). Like the soylent food factories, the farms producing foodstuffs are heavily guarded and off-limits to civilians. For most of the populace, natural foods are a rarely, if ever, enjoy...

Internal memos show that four security contractors who were ambushed and killed in Iraq three years ago were told to go through the dangerous city of Fallujah when a safer route was available, a newspaper reported Sunday. The memos said a Blackwater USA supervisor also plucked two members of each six-man team for other work, reducing the teams' numbers and making them more vulnerable to attack, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. Memos from the second team _ whose leader decided to go around Fallujah on March 31, 2004, and which wasn't attacked _ said the teams also were sent without maps, although other memos suggest maps were available, the newspaper said. "These reports were written by people who were not there," Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell told The Associated Press. "The answer to what really happened in Fallujah is a tragedy in which four brave men were killed." Tyrrell said she couldn't comment on specifics because of pending liti...

"The BBC is carrying a story on new tightened New York anti-piracy legislation : A man has been been arrested, after smuggling video recording equipment into a theatre showing the new Transformers movie. 'Kalidou Diallo, 48, has been charged with unauthorized use of a video camera in a cinema. Under upgraded legislation, he could face six months in jail and fines of up to $5,000 (£2,487) if found guilty,' the BBC reports." --source: slashdot --

In a move that has executives from movie studios and record labels grinning from ear to ear, AT&T has announced that it will develop and deploy technology that will attempt to keep pirated content off its network. The move is spurred in part by the company's decision to offer IPTV television service as part of its U-Verse package , AT&T senior VP James W. Cicconi told the Los Angeles Times . Despite the major technical problems inherent in such a program, AT&T is moving ahead. By making themselves into the arbiters of copyright law, the company risks being drawn into a costly "arms race" with programmers who don't like the idea of a massive corporation (and one which appears to have turned over information to the NSA ) peeking into their packets and deciding which ones go through. This is exactly the situation that Dr. Greg Jackson, CIO of the University of Chicago, warned Congress about last week . "The only successful, robust way to address probl...

looks like 'Spam King' Adam Vitale has finally plead guilty to violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 in federal court in New York City. 'The indictment said that in less than a week in August 2005, Vitale and Moeller sent e-mails on behalf of the informant to more than 1,277,000 addresses of subscribers at AOL, the online division of Time Warner Inc. Vitale will be sentenced on September 13 when he faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The defendant in a Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, has filed counterclaims accusing the RIAA record labels of conspiracy and extortion . The counterclaims (pdf) are for Trespass, Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030), Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201), Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523), and Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. 559.72 et seq."

The groups that fought against NAFTA particularly the citizens' coalitions formed by labor, environmental, consumer, family farm and other groups are proud that they took on practically the entire Fortune 500 and nearly won. (The vote was 234 to 200 in the House). At the same time, the experience was a chilling reminder of how things work in Washington. USA NAFTA representing more economic clout than many nation- states wrapped its self-serving lobbying campaign in an American flag. During the past two years, that flag has proved to have an exceptionally slick Teflon coating. The group has suffered neither negative publicity nor political disfavor, despite NAFTA's miserable results so far. Nor have USA NAFTA members drawn fire for the way they contributed to and benefited from the failure of NAFTA to fulfill its stated promises. Their star-spangled report, NAFTA: It's Working for America, opens with a quote from USA NAFTA Chair and AlliedSignal CEO Lawrence Bossidy. Today...

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them just pick themselves up and hurry off, as if nothing had ever happened" - Winston Churchill "If someone can make you believe absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities". - Voltaire And was Churchill and Voltaire absolutely on target. The first Bush action was to create a reason to get some of those pesky Constitutional laws out of the way. You know the ones - Rights of the citizen, Restraint of Abuse of Authority, Habeas Corpus - i.e. "The Rule of Law". Immediately after the Towers were down, even before the smoke cleared, the assault of our Rule of Law began. The Rationale presented was "It's necessary to fight off the enemies of America". Or "we'll fight them over there instead of over here." But why did this Administration bring their assault on the Constitution to full fury? The reason is clear for all but the Ignorant to understand and those inept people took...

Proof by assertion is a logical fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction. Sometimes this may be repeated until challenges dry up, at which point it is asserted as fact due to it not being contradicted (argumentum ad nauseam). In other cases its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies. This logical fallacy is sometimes used as a form of rhetoric by politicians. In its extreme form, it can also be a form of brainwashing. Modern politics contains many examples of proof by assertions. This practice can be observed in the use of political slogans, and the distribution of "talking points," which are collections of short phrases that are issued to members of modern political parties for recitation to achieve maximum message repetition. The technique is also sometimes used in advertising. The technique is described in a saying, often attributed to Lenin, as "A...

Halliburton Energy Services (NYSE: HAL) is a multinational corporation with operations in over 120 countries. It is based in Houston, Texas in the United States, but has announced that it will establish a new headquarters in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where Chairman and CEO David J. Lesar will work and reside. However, corporate offices will remain in Houston [2] and the company will remain incorporated in the United States. [3] Halliburton operates two major business segments: The Energy Services Group provides technical products and services for oil and gas exploration and production, and the KBR subsidiary is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants. KBR is in the last stages of being spun off from Halliburton. Halliburton is the only company mentioned by Osama bin Laden in an April 2004 tape in which he claims that "this is a war [in Iraq] that is benefiting major companies with billions of dollars." [13] Similar senti...

The strike had an immediate effect. By the end of February, all smelters in Colorado were either closed or running part-time. At the beginning of March, the Gold King and Granite mines gave in and resumed the eight-hour day.[ 5 ] Mine owners still holding out for the 10-hour day soon attempted to re-open their mines. On March 14, they obtained a court injunction ordering the miners not to interfere with the operation of their mines. A limited number of strikebreakers were brought in. The WFM initially attempted to persuade these men to join the union and strike. When they were unsuccessful, the WFM resorted to threats and violence. The strikebreakers were so intimidated that few of them reported for work.[ 6 ] An event on March 16 changed the nature of the strike. An armed group of miners ambushed and captured six sheriff's deputies en route to the Victor mine. Shots were fired, and the miners and deputies engaged in a fistfight. Two of the deputies received minor injuries. An Alt...