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POPSOne of America's Wealthiest Men Charged With Insider Trading Raj Rajaratnam will appear in court later on today (Friday). Raj Rajaratnam will face both civil and criminal charges. He will face hefty fines and most likely jail time. Raj Rajaratnam Charged With Insider Trading Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/16/raj-rajaratnam-charged-wi_n_323879.html NEW YORK " One of America's wealthiest men was among six hedge fund managers and corporate executives arrested Friday in a hedge fund insider trading case that authorities say generated more than $25 million in illegal profits and was a wake-up call for Wall Street. Raj Rajaratnam, a portfolio manager for Galleon Group, a hedge fund with up to $7 billion in assets under management, was accused of conspiring with others to use insider information to trade securities in several publicly traded companies, including Google Inc. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/16/raj-rajaratnam-charged-wi_n_323879.html
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POPSObama: Less State Secrets In the Bush Era many bad policies (torture, secret prisons, wiretappings, etc.) were covered up by being declared "state secrets." In a few court cases in the new Obama Administration, this was still the case because that was still the way the law, administrative procedure was. Now it's changed. No more easy covering up of wrongdoing by declaring it is a "secret." The new procedures certainly require more justice and more review.
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POPSObama Embraces Patriot Act; As Senator He Was Skeptical I would like to hear the speech that explains this "embrace" of the Patriot Act. which collects and stores records on thousands of Americans; what the data includes is unclear; how many Americans are part of the database is unclear; the safeguards in place to prevent abuse is also unclear.
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POPSColombia more re wiretap scandal. Colombia ia a `special friend` of the US - who continues to train their army in terror tactics to use against the Colombian population. Journalists, unionists, human rights activists and horribly - peasant farmers who are killed and dressed up in FARC outfits as `terrorists`. And they criticise Chavez. It`s El Salvadore and Chile and the rest all over again. When will the US learn ?
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POPSBombshell (!) in Israeli-USA Spy Network Case
I'm glad this reporter summed up yesterday's revelations (see clip) -- and he did a good job -- because it would have stretched the limits of my own incredulousness to do so. 1. Serious Israeli spying on the USA. (Not accusation. Guy in jail for 12 years; previous cases, guys in jail) 2. These two Israeli lobbyist from AIPAC are facing trial for being involved but real heavy-duty machinations keep getting the trial postponed. 3. Jewish Congresswoman Jane Harmon tells the Jewish Lobby and Israeli agents she will help quash the trial of the two AIPAC lobbyist if they can use their influence to get her nominated to become head of the House Intelligence Committee. 4. This is caught on tap in a legal wiretap that was on the AIPAC accused Israeli spies. 5. AG Gonzales (this was a year ago,Bush president) stops any investigation of Congresswoman Harmon by the NSA in exchange for her supporting Bush era illegal warrantless wiretaping of US citizens. Wow! This can't go on.
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POPSSecret Bush Memo Authorizing Warrantless Seizure Of 'Terror Suspects' Released
Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure, for instance, did not apply in the United States as long as the president was combatting terrorism, the Justice Department said in an Oct. 23, 2001, memo. Story continues below "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically." On Sept. 25, 2001, Yoo discussed possible changes to the laws governing wiretaps for intelligence gathering. In that memo, he said the government's interest in keeping the nation safe following the terrorist attacks might justify warrantless searches. That memo did not specifically attempt to justify the government's warrantless wiretapping program, but it provided part of the foundation.
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POPSThe Chicago Way, On Tape This wiretap was golden If convicted, Mr. Blagojevich would be the second consecutive Illinois Governor to be found guilty of a felony, and the fourth in 35 years. We'd ask if it's something in the water, but that would be unfair to the Chicago River. It is certainly something in the Chicago political culture, where money and government power seem especially fungible. Among the remarkable facts of the recent Presidential election is that Barack Obama emerged from this political culture virtually untainted -- and with Chicago's political mores all but unexamined by the press. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said yesterday there is no evidence that Mr. Obama knew about the Governor's allegedly crooked ambitions. However, as a Chicago-area pol himself, Mr. Obama did help Mr. Blagojevich plot his first statehouse victory in 2002. wsj article continues below
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POPSIs Rahm Emanuel the Adviser on Blago Wiretap? Regarding the Blagojevich Senate seat scandal. Emanuel has hired himself a lawyer, and is being evasive, so what do you think? All this after Obama plainly stated that there was "no contact with Blagojevich" about the Senate seat. This is a hint of what to expect with the Obama administration. If it is Rahm, he may have to be dismissed for Obama to have any trustworthiness with the public.
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POPSPerceptions... At least at this point it looks like Obama was on the right side of the issue in Illinois ...
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POPSCouncil on American-Islamic Relations Staggered By Holy Land Verdict . . . . . one of its founding directors could get 20 years in the slammer . . . . In a major blow to the terror-support network in America, the nation's largest Muslim charity and five of its former organizers were found guilty of illegally funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinan terrorist group Hamas. For the first time, wiretap evidence heard in the Holy Land case put CAIR's executive director, Nihad Awad, at a Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and activists that was secretly recorded by the FBI. Participants hatched a plot to disguise payments to Hamas terrorists as charitable giving.
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POPSTelecom Amnesty Illegal "The EFF blasted the retroactive amnesty as a "blatant attempt to prevent this Court—and every other court, federal or state—from deciding whether the carrier defendants conducted dragnet, warrantless surveillance of millions of Americans' communications and communications records in violation of the Constitution and numerous statutes." The government and the telecoms argued in earlier briefs that Congress can tinker with ongoing legislation without violating the Constitution and that citizens should sue the government, not private companies, over the spying."
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POPSBill Gate's syndrome With Internet delusion, patients typically incorporate the Internet into paranoid thoughts, including a fear that the Web is somehow monitoring or controlling their lives, or being used to transmit photographs or other personal information. The delusions are fueling a chicken-and-egg debate in psychiatry: Are these merely modern examples of classic paranoia fed by the current cultural landscape, or is there something about media like reality television and the Internet that can push people over the sanity line? “There is the old saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there’s not somebody after you,” said Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman.
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POPSLook Closely, Doctor: See the Camera? Psychiatrists say that other movies whose characters are living in a unreal world or being watched by malevolent forces, including “The Matrix,” “Edtv” and even the film based on George Orwell’s “1984,” have come up in conversations with psychotic patients. But the premise of “The Truman Show” (“What if you were watched every moment of your life?” according to a promotional blurb) is strikingly similar to what patients describe as their own experiences. Reinforcing their beliefs is the fact that in the movie, Truman is right about being watched and recorded at all times. Every other character is part of the conspiracy.
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POPSSeven Paths To Sensible Privacy "I am not only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring within myself, and shall be able to view the solitary walk and tread the paths of private life with heartfelt satisfaction." —George Washington, letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, 1784 That is one view of privacy. Here is another: "We must all watch one another." —Rev. Robert Browne, guiding principles, 1582
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POPSWarrentless Wiretapping Comes to Canada First appeared in Zeropaid as: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9639/Warrentless+Wiretapping+Comes+to+Canada+-+Canadian+Media+Censored thanks to Zeropaid for covering this document. Copyright remains with Zeropaid.
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POPSThe Real-Life '24' "We are once again distracted and unprepared while the Taliban and bin Laden’s minions multiply in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This, no less than the defiling of the Constitution, is the legacy of an administration that not merely rationalized the immorality of torture but shackled our national security to the absurdity that torture could easily fix the terrorist threat. That’s why the Bush White House’s corruption in the end surpasses Nixon’s. We can no longer take cold comfort in the Watergate maxim that the cover-up was worse than the crime. This time the crime is worse than the cover-up, and the punishment could rain down on us all."
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POPSSenate Approves Telecom Immunity & Spy Bill Proof the democrats (e.g. Obama) are not safer than the neocon controlled republicans: 4th Amendment trampled, violators now immune. This is not "compromise", but capitulation. For more indepth interview with the Telecom (AT&T) technician and whistleblower who discovered Americans were being spied on, listen to the Democracy Now interview here.