[BBC] A retired four-star US Navy admiral has been arrested on allegations that he agreed to award a government contract to a company in exchange for a future job with the firm.
Adm Robert Burke, who served as vice-chief of naval operations until 2022, could face up to 30 years in jail if convicted on bribery charges, prosecutors say.
The 62-year-old did not enter a formal plea during his initial court appearance in Miami, Florida, on Friday.
Two business executives of the firm - identified only as Company A - were also arrested. They each could be tossed in the calaboose
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for up to 20 years.
"As alleged in the indictment, Admiral Burke used his public office and his four-star status for his private gain," US Attorney Matthew M Graves said in a statement on Friday.
"The law does not make exceptions for admirals or CEOs. Those who pay and receive bribes must be held accountable. The urgency is at its greatest when, as here, senior government officials and senior executives are allegedly involved in the corruption," he added.
Adm Burke - who oversaw naval operations in Europe, Russia and Africa from 2020-22 - is charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, and also with performing acts affecting a personal financial interest and concealing material facts from the US.
At the time of his retirement, Adm Burke was the second-highest ranking officer in the US Navy.
His lawyer was quoted by News Agency that Dare Not be Named as saying his client would plead not guilty during his trial.
The two company executives - Yongchul "Charlie" Kim, 50, and Meghan Messenger, 47 - are charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery.
The prosecutors alleged that they took part in a plan in which the company agreed to hire Adm Burke after his retirement in 2022 with an annual salary of $500,000 (£393,000) and a grant of 100,000 stock options.
They alleged that in return Adm Burke awarded a $355,000 contract to the company to train Navy personnel in 2021 - just two years after the company lost a previous naval training contract.
Prosecutors said Adm Burke awarded the contract after meeting with Mr Kim and Ms Messenger in Washington DC, despite the fact that they had been ordered by naval officials not to contact him.
Officers from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), and the FBI’s Washington Field Office are continuing to investigate the case, officials added.
Now, in the radiance of the full Woke gloat, we await Judge Merchan’s sentence, to be announced a mere few days before the Republican Convention in Milwaukee in early July. Jail time at Rikers? Home confinement (with ankle bracelet)? Severe travel restrictions? Reporting to a parole officer? Drug tests? Hey, No one is above the law! It is hard to imagine that the judge will demur from inflicting maximum humiliation on this wanton repeat violator (thirty-four times!) of book-keeping errors. It would tend to interfere with the presidential candidate’s campaign schedule, but so what? Where does it say in the Constitution that an election must be fair?
Or Judge Merchan could suspend all that pending appeal and just allow Mr. Trump to go about his election business free on bail. But why would he? After all the trouble he went to. And all the glory he’s reaping for it. “Joe Biden’s” party has Mr. Trump exactly where they want him, they think: pinned down like a moth in a shadow-box, inert and pathetic. (But, in reality, more like King Kong, chained in the rank basement below the stage of a Broadway theater before busting loose in midtown and upending subway cars so as to devour the little humans tumbling out like so many tic-tacs.)
Expect Mr. Trump’s lawyers to file writs to the SCOTUS requesting expedited attention to the denial of due process issues and the election interference question. The situation is comparable to the year 2000 presidential race, where the SCOTUS stepped in on probable cause that the lower court (in Florida that time) had violated the Equal Protection clause of the constitution.
In the meantime, through the luminescent fog of gloat, perhaps you did not notice that “Joe Biden” took a giant step yesterday toward commencing World War Three. The move was framed as the US gives Ukraine permission to use American missiles to strike deep within Russia. That was a bit disingenuous, you see, because Ukraine’s military lacks the know-how to actually launch the missiles, so American military “advisors” will have to be on hand to do it, meaning US military personnel will commit an act of aggression upon Russia.
Posted by: NoMoreBS ||
06/01/2024 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[135 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
Ukraine’s military lacks the know-how to actually launch the missiles, so American military “advisors” will have to be on hand to do it, meaning US military personnel will commit an act of aggression upon Russia.
#2
...I recall back in the late 80s a Army Research Institute study that said the education level of the enlisted personnel manning the multiple rocket launcher was insufficient to operate the system. Troops disproved that in Gulf War I.
#3
/\ Men of the ranks possess an uncanny ability to both break things, and make things work. Never underestimate them, you could easily be made the fool.
#7
Our political "rulers" are of the WW11 variety: They think they can save the world. The world's politicans are using the "squirrel" technique to distract people. Unfortunately it appears to be working. The best that can happen now would be to Nuke Iran.
Posted by: Old Salty ||
06/01/2024 11:18 Comments ||
Top||
#8
will also create a functional field expedient replacement
[BBC] South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa is under growing pressure after leading the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to its worst election result in 30 years, forcing it to share power.
With almost all the votes in, the ANC is on 40% - down from 58% at the previous election. This is lower than the party's feared worse-case scenario of 45%, analysts say.
The ANC has always polled above 50% since the country's first democratic elections in 1994, which saw Nelson Mandela become president. But support for the party has been dropping significantly due to anger over high levels of corruption, unemployment and crime.
Citing the cost-of-living crisis and frequent power-cuts, a woman told the BBC she ended a 30 year voting streak for the ANC in favour of the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) this time.
"This result is not good. I wanted it out of government. We need to give someone else a chance," she said
The final results will be announced at 18:00 local time (17:00 BST) on Sunday, the BBC understands.
The ANC leadership has begun to consult internally to prepare for complex coalition talks. Its options are the DA, which is in second place on 22%, the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party led by former President Jacob Zuma, on 15%, or the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) with 9%. Both the EFF and MK advocate seizing white-owned land and nationalising the country's mines.
The MK has said it would be prepared to work with the ANC, but not while it was led by Mr Ramaphosa. He replaced Mr Zuma as both president and ANC leader following a bitter power struggle in 2018. MK supporters have been celebrating overnight in Durban, the biggest city in the party's heartland of KwaZulu-Natal province. The party was only formed in December.
ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe said his party was unlikely to form an alliance with the DA. He said there would have to be "policy alignment" between parties to form a coalition agreement.
For the ANC, its black empowerment policies - aimed at giving black people a stake in the economy following their exclusion during the racist apartheid era - were "non-negotiable". He added that any coalition partner would have to agree to the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill, which promises universal health care for all, signed into law earlier this month.
The DA opposes both the NHI and the ANC's black empowerment policies. Despite the ANC's reluctance to align with the DA, its leader John Steenhuisen hasn't ruled out the idea. But if an alliance with the ANC was reached there would be a few non-negotiables, he said.
"Respect for the rule of law and the constitution, a social market economy that treats the private sector as partners in the growth agenda.
"Zero tolerance for corruption and cadre deployment, and an absolute laser-like focus on economic policies that grow jobs."
A record 70 parties and 11 independents were running, with South Africans voting for a new parliament and nine provincial legislatures. The DA has signed a pact with 10 of them, agreeing to form a coalition government if they get enough votes to dislodge the ANC from power. But this does not include the EFF or MK, who would be needed to form a majority.
*its worst election result in 30 years
*the ANC is on 40% - down from 58% at the previous election.
*support for the party has been dropping significantly due to anger over high levels of corruption, unemployment and crime.
*Citing the cost-of-living crisis and frequent power-cuts
*We need to give someone else a chance
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Gevorg Mirzayan
[REGNUM] A number of Western countries, including Germany, Great Britain and France, have officially allowed the Kyiv regime to use the long-range weapons they supplied to strike deep into Russian territory. A similar decision, according to media reports, was made by US President Joe Biden, but he has not yet announced this publicly.
Moreover, just a few weeks ago, Western states were sharply against this - only Great Britain and the Baltic countries were in favor.
The West's position has changed due to the situation on the battlefield, according to the French publication Le Monde. As Ukrainian forces, the authors write, came under increasing pressure, the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, asked “Western allies to provide them with more weapons, as well as more freedom of action to deploy what they have already supplied.”
It is important that the position of the entire West did not change at once. At first, European leaders announced permission to attack Russia. The American newspaper The Wall Street Journal writes that this was a coordinated plan for pan-European pressure on the Biden administration.
Indeed, Europe now takes a much more aggressive position towards Moscow than Washington. And it constantly pushes the US towards escalation.
“One of the reasons for this was the monstrous degradation of the European elites over the past few decades. The concepts of “strategic culture” and “strategic responsibility” have disappeared there. They are playing with fire and don’t even understand it,” explains Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, to Regnum news agency.
The second reason, he said, is the much more sensitive attitude of the current European elites to the conflict with Russia than that of the Americans.
“ The Europeans fear the consequences of a Russian victory. That is, the withdrawal of the United States from Europe, the reorientation of Washington towards Asia and, as a consequence, the fact that Europe will be left alone with Russia. The European elites cannot confront Russia on their own without the support of the United States, and they do not want to start taking into account the interests of Moscow and building a partnership with it,” Suslov said.
Advisers to US President Joseph Biden, according to the American television and radio company CBS, also advocated allowing the Kiev regime to strike Russian territory. The American president initially refused to authorize the strikes, but then finally agreed.
And doubting Europeans also agreed with him - in particular, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“Berlin is waiting for Washington to be the first to begin providing military assistance to Ukraine, and then will immediately follow,” Politico recalled the logic of the behavior of the German authorities in the conflict.
The Germans acted within the same scheme, for example, in the story of supplying tanks to Kyiv. Scholz does not want to be a warmonger, but he also does not want to remain strategically isolated on the Russian issue. Especially in conditions when you need to be as radical as possible in your attitude towards Russia.
The only question is: what will this radicalism lead to? According to the Voice of America (recognized as a foreign agent media in the Russian Federation) and a number of other media outlets, Biden’s decision to allow the use of American weapons in strikes deep into Russia in the Kharkov region “is a serious change to the current policy.”
The policy, which, as The New York Post recalls, consisted of understanding a simple formula: “killing Russians in Russia with American weapons will lead to an escalation of the war.”
In turn, Fox News writers think differently. With reference to a senior official from the Biden administration, the publication writes that we are talking only about “a limited change in strategy related to the situation around Kharkov.” That is, with the fact that the Russian army can break through the front in the Kharkov region and/or destroy a significant number of militants and equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces there.
“Ukraine notes that the failure to use Western weapons to strike Russia allows Moscow to calmly gather forces for attacks in the territory north of Kharkov. And the ban on shooting down planes over Russian territory makes it easier for Moscow to carry out bombing attacks, like those that blew up a Kharkov hypermarket, killing a dozen people,” Politico reports.
At the same time, the publication, of course, does not mention that the Kharkov hypermarket was used as an ammunition warehouse.
But whether this change is limited or not is not that important. The Americans still set a precedent. The New York Times recalls that for the first time the US president allows “the limited use of American weapons for strikes on the territory of a nuclear rival.”
After all, if earlier in conflicts Russians were killed in Afghanistan, Angola and other countries with weapons officially supplied by America, now we are talking about an attack on the territory of Russia itself. And in the near future, the military may also go after the missiles, and openly.
The Washington Post writes that Macron will announce plans to send “instructors” to Ukraine during Zelensky’s visit to France on the anniversary of the Normandy landings.
The main thing is that no one in the West explains that the attack on Russia will be carried out with the help of Western military specialists, advisers and intelligence officers - those who maintain and deploy these weapons, except perhaps allowing the Ukrainians to press the “Start” button.
No one analyzes the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin that Moscow will consider this not Ukrainian, but Western attacks on the territory of our country. They don’t analyze it - and it’s a waste of time.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Malek Dudakov
[REGNUM] The judicial clowning in New York has come to an end. A Manhattan jury unanimously found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 charges. He now faces up to 130 years in prison. Democrats in New York have been causing problems for Trump for a long time. But the current court verdict poses his strongest legal challenge ahead of the upcoming US elections. Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg has come to the fore in the legal wars with Trump. He does not even hide his bias towards the 45th president. Bragg was elected prosecutor in 2021 with one promise: to prosecute Trump. And this is what he has been doing for the past three years. Bragg received donations for his election campaign from Soros foundations, which promote their “progressive” prosecutors in many liberal US cities.
BLUF:
[Motley Fool] In March, Nvidia announced its most advanced AI product so far -- Blackwell. This isn't a new chip; it's a new architecture for GPUs. Nvidia says that it's "the engine of the new industrial revolution" that will "power a new era of computing."
Blackwell supports large language models (LLMs) with 1 trillion parameters. To put that into perspective, GPT-4 reportedly uses eight LLMs with 220 billion parameters each. Nvidia's new platform enables training of generative AI models up to four times faster and inference of up to 30 times faster than its H100 GPU. Blackwell also has a total cost of ownership and energy consumption that's up to 25 times less than the company's Hopper GPU architecture.
All the top-tier cloud service providers will use Blackwell: Amazon Web Services, Alphabet's Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud. So will Facebook parent Meta Platforms, ChatGPT creator OpenAI, Tesla, and Elon Musk's new AI company, xAI.
Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said in the company's Q1 earnings call that the demand for Blackwell is "well ahead of supply." CEO Jensen Huang revealed that production shipments will begin in the second quarter of 2024 and accelerate in Q3. He stated, "We will see a lot of Blackwell revenue this year."
THE BIGGER IMPLICATION
I think there's a bigger implication with the forthcoming launch of Blackwell that shouldn't be overlooked: Nvidia is proving that it can continue to out-innovate everyone.
Just when it seemed that Nvidia might have some competition in the GPU market, the company raised the bar. Rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices introduced new AI chips that might give Nvidia's H100 GPUs a run for their money, but they don't come close to stacking up against the Blackwell platform.
TD Cowen analyst Matt Ramsay hit the nail on the head with his comments in Nvidia's Q1 call. Ramsay said to Huang, "Jensen, I've been in the data center industry my whole career. I've never seen the velocity that you guys are introducing new platforms at the same combination of the performance jumps that you're getting."
It seems that no other chipmaker or wannabe chipmaker on the planet can keep up with Nvidia. Blackwell is proof. The new architecture isn't the end of the story, though. In Huang's response to Ramsay, he revealed, "[W]e have other Blackwells coming."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[REGNUM] The judicial clowning in New York has come to an end. A Manhattan jury unanimously found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 charges. He now faces up to 130 years in prison. Democrats in New York have been causing problems for Trump for a long time. But the current court verdict poses his strongest legal challenge ahead of the upcoming US elections. Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg has come to the fore in the legal wars with Trump. He does not even hide his bias towards the 45th president. Bragg was elected prosecutor in 2021 with one promise: to prosecute Trump. And this is what he has been doing for the past three years. Bragg received donations for his election campaign from Soros foundations, which promote their “progressive” prosecutors in many liberal US cities.
