Saudi Arabia Sentences 3 Lawyers to Jail for Tweets

Screen Shot 2014-10-27 at 6.06.00 PMSaudi Arabia’s fear of the viral free-speech platform Twitter has been well documented as of late. I first highlighted it last year in the post, Saudi Religious Police Chief Goes on the Attack…Against Twitter, in which I noted:

You know something isn’t right in your country when you have a “religious police force.”  You know something is really, really not right in your country when the head of that religious police force starts condemning twitter and saying its users will go to hell as a consequence.  Talk about pathetic.  Just more strange and panicked behavior from the Saudi government.  From the BBC:

The head of Saudi Arabia’s religious police has warned citizens against using Twitter, which is rising in popularity among Saudis.

Sheikh Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said anyone using social media sites – and especially Twitter – “has lost this world and his afterlife”.

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FBI Raids Federal Contractor’s Home – Has the Government Identified the “Second Leaker”?

Anyone who has been following Edward Snowden’s heroic whistleblowing, and the reporting of Glenn Greenwald on the classified documents that prove egregious violations of the United States Constitution by the NSA, will also be aware of speculation that a “second leaker” had emerged earlier this year. It appears this person may have been identified by the FBI.

Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff reports that:

The FBI has identified an employee of a federal contracting firm suspected of being the so-called “second leaker” who turned over sensitive documents about the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources who have been briefed on the case.

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Former CBS Reporter Accuses Government of Secretly Planting Classified Docs on Her Computer

Screen Shot 2014-10-27 at 2.12.13 PMAttkisson speculated on how the Nixon controversy would have been handled in a world filled with today’s television and social media obsessions.

“Nixon would basically refuse to turn over tapes to Congress, his aides would refuse to testify to Congress or would take the Fifth or would lie to Congress with fair amount of impunity,” she said. “Woodward and Bernstein would be controversialized on social media by special and political interests. … Then at the end Nixon would go on a popular late-night comedy show, during which time he would humorously refer to his attackers as people who were political witch-hunters who believed in Area 51-type conspiracy theories.”

– From the Huffington Post article: Sharyl Attkisson Says Journalists Have ‘Gone Backwards’ Since Watergate Scandal

In case you forgot, Sharyl Attkisson is the former CBS News reporter who resigned from the network in March after expressing frustration that her stories covering the Obama Administration’s role in the Benghazi and Fast and Furious scandals were being spiked due to a desire to protect the President.

In 2013, Attkisson also expressed her belief that her computer had been hacked, which CBS News subsequently confirmed. CBS reported at the time:

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To Protect and Perve – California Cops Share Nude Photos Stolen from Citizens’ Cellphones

Screen Shot 2014-10-27 at 11.40.06 AMThe new court documents describe a second incident involving a 19-year-old woman who was in a DUI crash in Livermore on Aug. 7. On Harrington’s phone, Holcombe located two photos of that DUI suspect in a bikini accompanied by a text message from the day of the arrest from Harrington to Hazelwood: “Taken from the phone of my 10-15x while she’s in X-rays. Enjoy buddy!!!”

A “10-15x” is CHP code for a woman in custody. The woman may have been at a hospital to have X-rays taken after the crash.

Hazelwood replies: “No f—— nudes?”

– From the San Jose Mercury News article: CHP officer says stealing nude photos from female arrestees ‘game’ for cops

The worst thing about the government’s reckless response to the financial crisis of 2008, even worse than the trillions in taxpayer bailouts and backstops granted to the financial criminals that created the disaster, is the primary lesson that it sent to American society as a whole. Some people like to call it “moral hazard,” but in more pedestrian terms it really just boils down to: The Bad Guys Got Away with It.

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Pensions and Private Equity – A Letter to the New York Times Editor

Screen Shot 2014-10-26 at 5.23.56 PMThe ongoing racket between private equity firms and public pension funds in which they work together to earn billions of dollars in excessive fees at the expense of retirees across the country has been a key theme at Liberty Blitzkrieg this year. My most recent piece on the topic was published last week and titled, Another Pension Scandal – The Crony Love Affair Between North Carolina, Credit Suisse and Erskine Bowles.

Here’s an excerpt:

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Goldman and Blackstone Enter Spanish Real Estate – Pain and Suffering for Poor People Immediately Ensues

Screen Shot 2014-10-24 at 11.47.54 AMLast year Madrid’s city and regional governments sold almost 5,000 rent-controlled flats to private equity investors including Goldman Sachs and Blackstone. At the time, the tenants were told their rental conditions would remain the same.

But as old contracts expire, dozens of people have received demands for higher rent, been told their rents will increase dramatically, been threatened with eviction or moved out to escape the insecurity. Thousands of Spain’s poor now depend for their homes on the generosity of private equity.

– From today’s Reuters article: Why Madrid’s Poor Fear Goldman Sachs and Blackstone

Less than a month ago, I warned the people of Spain that U.S. financial oligarchs had their sights set on the nation. The post was titled, Your Wall Street Slumlord Arrives in Europe – Goldman and Other Financial Firms Launch “Buy to Rent” in Spain, and in it I wrote:

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“War on Terror” Targets Underwear – Department of Homeland Security Raids Maker of Unlicensed World Series Panties

Screen Shot 2014-10-23 at 12.06.05 PM“They came in and there were two guys” Honig said. “I asked one of them what size he needed and he showed me a badge and took me outside. They told me they were from Homeland Security and we were violating copyright laws.”

They placed the underwear in an official Homeland Security bag and had Honig sign a statement saying she wouldn’t use the logo. 

– From the Kansas City Star article: Homeland Security Confiscates Royals Underwear in Kansas City 

It was just yesterday that I highlighted the dangers of granting government excessive powers under the guise of fighting terrorism in the piece: The BBC is Using Anti-Terror Surveillance to Find Tax Dodgers. Here’ an excerpt:

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The BBC is Using Anti-Terror Surveillance to Find Tax Dodgers

Screen Shot 2014-10-22 at 3.12.10 PMMany commentators, including myself, have been sounding the alarm for many years that only a short-sighted society filled with fearful imbeciles would ever grant government tyrannical powers in the name of fighting an overhyped, outside enemy. As has happened countless times in world history, once these powers are granted they are always eventually used against the domestic population. Sometimes it is used to crackdown on dissent, but sometimes it’s used just to earn money and shake down the domestic plebs. It appears the British Broadcasting Corportation (BBC) in Great Britain is now using it simply to collect tax.

The Daily Mail reports that:

The BBC is using laws designed to catch terrorists and organized crime networks to track down people who dodge the license fee, it emerged yesterday.

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Another Pension Scandal – The Crony Love Affair Between North Carolina, Credit Suisse and Erskine Bowles

Screen Shot 2014-10-22 at 11.38.33 AMIn North Carolina, managing the retirement savings of teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public employees is big business. As the sole fiduciary of the state’s $90 billion pension fund, Treasurer Cowell, a Democrat, was recently named the world’s 18th most important institutional investor by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. The State Employees Association of North Carolina (Seanc) estimates that North Carolina is on track to spend a billion dollars a year of retirees’ pension money on fees to private financial firms. Roughly half of all North Carolina pension deals involve placement agents, and Seanc estimates that has generated roughly $180 million in placement agent fees — costs that are effectively paid by the pension fund, according to critics.

Credit Suisse’s own internal regulations say the company aims to “establish a management organization that avoids the creation or appearance of conflicts of interests.” But the North Carolina agreement (the provisions of which were secret until Seanc’s open records request earlier this year) explicitly allows Credit Suisse to engage in “actual and potential conflicts of interest.” The agreement noted Credit Suisse could receive “placement fees” from the firms in which it invests North Carolina pension money.

– From David Sirota’s excellent piece in Investors Business DailyPension Deal Spotlights ‘Placement Agent’ Business, Raises Conflict-Of-Interest Questions

When it comes to how the U.S. economy of fraud functions in 2014, the following article has it all. A government official, a global investment bank and a businessman/politician, all working together to enrich themselves at the public’s expense. It demonstrates how big bucks are really earned by insiders in the new American Dream, characterized by extreme cronyism and corruption.

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Tennessee Woman Sentenced to Jail for Not Mowing Her Lawn

Screen Shot 2014-10-21 at 4.16.59 PMThe trend of average U.S. citizens being incarcerated by overzealous judges and prosecutors within the police state formerly known as America continues with reckless abandon. In fact, these sorts of cases are becoming so commonplace I simply cannot keep up with all of them. The following story is a perfect followup to my piece earlier today, which shows how American public school students are being arrested or harassed by police for the most minor of infractions, such as wearing too much perfume, sharing a classmates’ chicken nuggets, throwing an eraser or chewing gum.

If you are an adult American slave, you can add not mowing your lawn to the list of prison-worthy crimes in the police state.

From Yahoo News:

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