Where do you think most of the AIG bailout money has gone?
Posted by: ed ||
03/16/2009 19:34 Comments ||
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#2
I closed up a b of a account last week over the third customer service problem in 4 months. Been a customer for years, but they have gone incompetant.
NSA has identified Skype as the main communication tool used by terrorists.
European prosecutors are eager to abolish the legal and technical hurdles to wiretapping Internet telephone calls to better fight organized crime. As early as next week, the European Union's judicial-cooperation agency Eurojust will receive an official request by Italian judicial authorities, who want to listen in on computer-to-computer phone calls between criminals who are increasingly turning to Voice over Internet Protocol programs such as Skype.
"The possibility of intercepting Internet telephony will be an essential tool in the fight against international organized crime within Europe and beyond," Carmen Manfredda, an Italian Eurojust official, said in a statement. "Our aim is not to stop users from taking advantage of Internet telephony but to prevent criminals from using VoIP systems to plan and organize their unlawful actions."
When requested, The Hague, Netherlands-based Eurojust would facilitate meetings between judicial representatives from the 27 EU member states. These representatives would then meet to identify ways for prosecutors to deal with VoIP calls. They would have to take into account the various data-protection rules and civil rights, not to mention the 30 different legal systems in Europe.
Such proceedings can take "between a few months and several years," depending on the complexity of the issue, Eurojust spokesman Joannes Thuy told United Press International in a telephone interview Thursday. He underlined that any wiretapping would not target regular users and would have to be carried out "only as part of a criminal investigation."
Authorities claim more and more criminals use Skype because they want to avoid being wiretapped. While prosecutors and intelligence agencies are easily able to listen in on landline phone calls and now even on cell phone conversations, Skype remains secure because of its complex encryption system.
This increasingly frustrates prosecutors in Italy, where organized crime is abundant. In an earlier news release, Eurojust said Italian prosecutors had recently overheard a suspected drug dealer telling his accomplice to use Skype instead of his regular telephone to learn more details about a major cocaine delivery. Programs like Skype are a "huge problem in the fight against organized crime," Thuy told UPI.
A Swedish-Danish co-production, Skype is one of the world's most successful communication tools. Created in 2003 by Niklas Zennstroem and Janus Friis, it was sold to eBay in 2005 and today has more than 405 million registered users.
#1
Someone should introduce Stephen to paragraph breaks.
How hard would it be to put good pgp encryption on each end of the pipe? SIP, for example, is simply a protocol for routing encoded call data. How hard to encrypt the underlying codec?
The VoIP client is based on the open-source Shtoom VoIP phone client. Zimmermann said he added cryptography to it.
This is not the first time that Zimmermann has worked on putting protections on Internet telephony. Almost 10 years ago, he launched PGPfone, a little ahead of its time. "The Internet was not ready then," he said.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/16/2009 6:58 Comments ||
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#3
I'm surprised real terrorists don't have chats over the voice comms in the game counter-strike?
Long-winded (what else would you expect from an avowed socialist?) introduction, to the meat of the matter:
The first clear indication that Obama is not, in fact, a socialist, is the way his administration is avoiding structural changes to the financial system. Nationalization is simply not in the playbook of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his team. They favor costly, temporary measures that can easily be dismantled should the economy stabilize. Socialists support nationalization and see it as a means of creating a banking system that acts like a highly regulated public utility. The banks would then cease to be sinkholes for public funds or financial versions of casinos and would become essential to reenergizing productive sectors of the economy. Ya know, that don't sound too bad...
The same holds true for health care. A national health insurance system as embodied in the single-payer health plan reintroduced in legislation this year by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), makes perfect sense to us. That bill would provide comprehensive coverage, offer a full range of choice of doctors and services and eliminate the primary cause of personal bankruptcy - health-care bills. Obama's plan would do the opposite. By mandating that every person be insured, ObamaCare would give private health insurance companies license to systematically underinsure policyholders while cashing in on the moral currency of universal coverage. If Obama is a socialist, then on health care, he's doing a fairly good job of concealing it.
Issues of war and peace further weaken the commander in chief's socialist credentials. Obama announced that all U.S. combat brigades will be removed from Iraq by August 2010, but he still intends to leave as many as 50,000 troops in Iraq and wishes to expand the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A socialist foreign policy would call for the immediate removal of all troops. It would seek to follow the proposal made recently by an Afghan parliamentarian, which called for the United States to send 30,000 scholars or engineers instead of more fighting forces.
Yet the president remains "the world's best salesman of socialism," according to Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. DeMint encouraged supporters "to take to the streets to stop America's slide into socialism." Despite the fact that billions of dollars of public wealth are being transferred to private corporations, Huckabee still felt confident in proposing that "Lenin and Stalin would love" Obama's bank bailout plan.
Huckabee is clearly no socialist scholar, and I doubt that any of Obama's policies will someday appear in the annals of socialist history. The president has, however, been assigned the unenviable task of salvaging a capitalist system intent on devouring itself. The question is whether he can do so without addressing the deep inequalities that have become fundamental features of American society. So, President Obama, what I want to know is this: Can you lend legitimacy to a society in which 5 percent of the population controls 85 percent of the wealth? Can you sell a health-care reform package that will only end up enriching a private health insurance industry? Will you continue to favor military spending over infrastructure development and social services?
My guess is that the president will avoid these questions, further confirming that he is not a socialist except, perhaps, in the imaginations of an odd assortment of conservatives. Yet as the unemployment lines grow longer, the food pantries emptier and health care scarcer, socialism may be poised for a comeback in America. The doors of our "socialist cubby-hole" are open to anyone, including Obama. I encourage him to stop by for one of our monthly membership meetings. Be sure to arrive early to get a seat -- we're more popular than ever lately.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/16/2009 07:14 ||
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#1
A duck might sound like a duck, but it is actually a Thomson's Gazelle. WAPO logic, amazing.
#2
Socialists such as this writer assume there is such a thing as a coherent system called socialism. There isn't. There are only greater and lesser degrees of parasitism on capitalism. Socialism is only a system in the sense that it's systematic looting.
#3
I would agree he is a true socialist since a true socialist would make everyone equally poor. In Obama's case he is making 49% pay for the other 51%. There will be a short peiod of time in the future when all is equal but it will be very shorted lived since it is the bottom of the cycle when everyone has nothing (the point where the 49% have nothing to give and what was given is worthless).
#4
If a bloated and out-of-control OSHA can tell you how run any aspect of your business pertaining to employees work conditions, is that not de facto control of the means of production?
If there is a giant regulatory burden by OSHA and another by thuggish labor unions which are overtly redistributionist, both of which businesses must satisfy or be shut down, do the businesses or the government/union axis control the business?
If a regulatory environment exists where a business owner must essentially run things exactly as the regulatory burden dictates, who actually controls the business?
If it costs a great deal of money to comply with these regulations, are they not a de facto tax, and if added to income tax this burden is over 50% of total revenue of the business, is the government not the true owner?
If an endangered species is seen once on your property, and the government can tell you what to do with your property from that point forward, is this not de facto confiscation of private property?
If the government mandates health insurance for everyone, and have regulations backed up with the pain of jail sentence for noncompliance, do they not control that industry?
Control of the "means of production" and private property does not have to be abrupt and overt. It can be the death of a thousand cuts.
The author of this piece knows these things full well. To write an article like this is the height of dishonesty.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
03/16/2009 9:05 Comments ||
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#5
Most of people is not aware of "New Socialists":
They now think that nationalizing and ruling firms is too risky, brings too much troubles with workers an important part of electoral base and worse than that they need to bring on results. That is against the new creeds of a sofa ideology. So they go upstairs to "regulating" and "taxing", if things don't go well the fault is always blamed to others that suppposedly are in field. It is easy to put blame in group X or Y depending on circunstances, launching people against each other. When someone fires from supposedly outside they can rule confortably even extorquing much money for their pet projects and collecting a clientele.
Posted by: Large Snerong7311 ||
03/16/2009 9:36 Comments ||
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#7
Socialism works until you run out of other people's money...Margaret Thacher
Posted by: James Carville ||
03/16/2009 10:46 Comments ||
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#8
Where is the dividing line between socialism and fascism when it comes to the control of "private" business. The One seems more of a fascist to me where business becomes completely regulated / corporatist.
#10
The funniest thing is that malregulation caused the credit boom.
That's the liberal governance model in a nutshell. Fight for "reasonable" regulations on the free market. When the market chokes on your new regs, declare that the free market has failed and take over completely.
Here's my favorite part -- what I call malpractice insurance. Years later when people recognize what a cocked up, corrupt and thoroughly failed job you've done running the industries which you "saved" from the free market, just tell them how much worse it would have been if you had done nothing!
U.S. Representative Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said on Sunday the government needs to determine if millions in employee bonuses at American International Group Inc can be recovered.
Preferably into his campaign fund.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/16/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
I wonder if Frank's pay, bonuses, perks, and bribes are recoverable.
#2
I assume you agree with the AIG bonus mney? %165 million... partly mine? Granted these are contractually bound but still.... it damn stinks and shines in the moonlight.
Maybe the recepeiants will return the dough as an expression of national solidarity in a time of trouble. And maybe Fred is get the hairz and that Foxbabe.
#3
as I commented yesterday, "contractually bound" doesn't seem to bother the Donks and Obama when it comes to Judge-ordered mortgage rewrites
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/16/2009 8:33 Comments ||
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#4
This is all part of the Dems PSYOPS campaign of deflection, a standard communist tactic. By turning up the heat of perceieved evil-doers, big business, "W", Cheney, etc, they believe they can appear righteous and gain the favour of the little people in the upcoming congressional. They don't have a great deal of time, so the PSYOP program and effort will intensify.
#5
Be careful of what you wish for folks. Sales Execs and bonus pay is akin to Waiters and Tips. If they fulfilled their contracts legally and ethically they should get whats due. Think long and hard what it really means when Rep. Maxine Waters says It will no longer be business as usual.
#6
#3 as I commented yesterday, "contractually bound" doesn't seem to bother the Donks and Obama when it comes to Judge-ordered mortgage rewrites Posted by Frank
The same judge will be available to assist the gummit controlled banks in elevating adjusting the rates upward as the economy eventually improves and interest rates skyrocket.
#8
"what it really means when Rep. Maxine Waters says 'It There will no longer be business as usual"
There, fixed it for ya.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
03/16/2009 9:08 Comments ||
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#9
There is a bigger question here. The government [i.e. the taxpayer] owns 80% of AIG. The congress has made the investment via the Treasury and therefore has an obligation to monitor its investment. If this is the degree of oversight and competence they exhibit in this single investment, how good is the oversight going to be with the rest of the "stimulus" money which is going off in all directions with minimal oversight. Biden made the comment last week how they were going to make sure the money isn't wasted or misused.
If AIG is any example the outlook is grim. And it isn't possible to blame Bush because it was a Democrat controlled congress and Geithner was Governor of the New York Fed. Pretty hard to spin this. But there will be recriminations and the MSM will just attack AIG management and look no further. But it will put pressure on for no further funding to a lot of companies which of itself is not necessarily desirable where systemic risk is involved.
But the silliest [saddest] aspect is to look at the amount of money which went into AIG and then straight out to the likes of Goldman, Barclays etc. They were paid out at face value. The golden rule is he who has the gold makes the rules. And if the injections were predicated on those recipients taking a haircut of some degree, they would have achieved it. Just total incompetence all around.
#10
Congress gets their panties in a wad about what others do, I wish they would be as concerned about what they do or don't do. Congress passed raises for itself--there is no real oversight on this.
#11
This is total BS. As taxpayers we are majority holders of this POS. The AIG Board should be compelled to fire all employees affiliated w/ the toxic mortgage/credit default swap scheme "for cause."
The fired employees' bonuses should be recinded and used to pay for a small team that we'd retain to run out the toxic assets.
What, we can't recind their bonuses? Then as shareholders we should sue AIG and the Board to recoup them.
These bastards are no different than Madoff and should be treated accordingly.
Posted by: regular joe ||
03/16/2009 12:04 Comments ||
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#12
As taxpayers we are majority holders of this POS. The AIG Board should be compelled to fire all employees affiliated w/ the toxic mortgage/credit default swap scheme "for cause.
Or we could all march over with torches and ropes...
#13
Or we could all march over with torches and ropes
I thought that was congress was for. Or, maybe not... let's take peek at the list of the largest beneficiaries of AIG's lobbying funds. Why it's my Senator Honest Chris Dodd (D-Countrywide). Who's number 2? Hint: he's called The One.
Posted by: regular joe ||
03/16/2009 12:55 Comments ||
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#14
All Congress has a vested interest in AIG--their pensions are invested with the company!
#15
Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) −− The market storm that brought down Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., American International Group Inc. and other pillars of U.S. finance may have also blown holes in the portfolios of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator John Kerry and more than 50 other members of Congress. Pelosi, in her most recent financial disclosure form, reported that her husband owned between $250,000 and $500,000 of stock in AIG, which ceded majority control to the U.S. government this week in exchange for $85 billion of loans.
#16
The taxpayers bought the company so they bought the liabilities. Another lesson that we're better off using the time tested solution already in place: bankruptcy.
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Huckabee is clearly no socialist scholar, and I doubt that any of Obama's policies will someday appear in the annals of socialist history. The president has, however, been assigned the unenviable task of salvaging a capitalist system intent on devouring itself. The question is whether he can do so without addressing the deep inequalities that have become fundamental features of American society. So, President Obama, what I want to know is this: Can you lend legitimacy to a society in which 5 percent of the population controls 85 percent of the wealth? Can you sell a health-care reform package that will only end up enriching a private health insurance industry? Will you continue to favor military spending over infrastructure development and social services? 
