"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
U.S. Senators • Richard Shelby – R, AL; Jerry Moran – R, KS • John Kennedy – R, LA • Steve Daines – R, MT • John Hoven – R, ND • John Thune – R, SD • Ron Johnson – R, WI -and- U.S. Representative • Kay Granger – R, TX-12 all met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the Kremlin in Moscow, July 4, 2018.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says a visit by Republican members of the U.S. Congress should improve ties between the two countries’ legislatures.
The U.S. lawmakers are in Russia this week on what they say is a mission to try to help revive relations, which are severely strained, and observe how Russia’s economy is doing after four years of Western sanctions.
At a meeting on July 3, Lavrov said he hoped the visit will “symbolize the renewal of relations between the parliaments” of the United States and Russia, something he said was “very timely” ahead of the summit in Helsinki — the first full-fledged meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
“We come here realizing that we have a strained relationship, but we could have a better relationship between the U.S. and Russia, because we have some common interests around the world that we could hopefully work together on,” Senator Richard Shelby (Republican-Alabama) told Lavrov at the start of their meeting. “We could be competitors — we are competitors — but we don’t necessarily need to be adversaries.”
The U.S. lawmakers were also meeting with State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of Putin, and Konstantin Kosachyov, the chairman of the Federation Council’s International Relations Committee.
The Duma is the lower house of Russia’s parliament, and the Federation Council is the upper chamber. Both are dominated by parties loyal to the Kremlin, and virtually all legislation passed by the parliament has the blessing of the Kremlin.
Before arriving in Moscow late on July 2, the U.S. legislators met in St. Petersburg with the city’s governor, Georgy Poltavchenko, and expressed hopes for improving relations. Poltavchenko told them he was “ready for cooperation on all fronts.”
The legislators were invited to Russia by U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman and are considered to be sympathetic to or allied with U.S. President Donald Trump, who plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 16 in an effort to revive Russia-U.S. ties after years of deterioration.
“We will have to wait and see, and go from there, but we recognize that the world is better off, I believe, if Russia and the U.S. have fewer tensions,” Shelby said.
Senator John Kennedy (Republican-Louisiana) told CNN he hoped the group would be able to meet with Putin, though Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov there were no plans for Putin meet with the legislators.
“I want to be able to meet with government officials, try to establish some rapport, talk about common interest, talk about common problems,” Kennedy said, emphasizing that his goal was to “establish rapport between the United States Congress and the Putin administration.”
All members of the delegation voted to pass the legislation last year that tightened and expanded sanctions on Russia, originally imposed over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The legislation, which Trump opposed, also makes it extremely difficult for Trump to lift the sanctions without congressional approval.
Kennedy said he wanted to see how Russia’s economy is doing.
“Some say it’s in shambles,” he told CNN. “Others say with the increase in the price of oil, it’s doing much better. Others say [Russia is] spending all their money on Syria and weaponry and the people are starving to death. Others say that’s not true. So I don’t know.”
Asked if he would bring up the topic of alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections, Kennedy said, “Now, I don’t want to do anything to start an international incident, but I believe in talking frankly about these things.”
Kennedy told CNN that there had been a lot of “serious allegations that Russia has interfered with not just our elections,” but with elections in France and Germany as well as with Britain’s vote in 2016 to exit the European Union.
The congressional delegation arrived in Russia on June 30 and plans to stay until July 5. Also included in the group are Senators John Hoeven (Republican-North Dakota), John Thune (Republican-South Dakota), Jerry Moran (Republican-Kansas), Steve Daines (Republican-Montana), and one House of Representatives member, Kay Granger (Republican-Texas).
With reporting by Reuters, AP, CNN, and TASS
RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) journalists report the news in 27 languages in 23 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established. We provide what many people cannot get locally: uncensored news, responsible discussion, and open debate.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, July 27, 2021
“It was an attempted coup that happened that day.”
— Aquilino Gonell, U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant partial testimony before the January 6th Select Committee, about the 2021 domestic terrorist attacks upon our nation’s government at the U.S. Capitol.
In their testimony today, Tuesday, 27 July 2021, the U.S. Capitol police have made NO MISTAKE describing what the Trump supporters are who attacked our U.S. Congress at the Capitol Building that day —
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
Banana Republicans in the United States Senate do NOT, and will NOT need, “smoking gun evidence” to convict Donald Trump of Insurrection, because in their warped imaginations, he did nothing wrong.
Those feckless individuals have not merely bowed the knee to Trump, or fallen prostate at his feet to lick his boots and the ground he walks upon, but by so doing, they have unambiguously signaled that they are not merely corrupted, but are traitorously and treasonously aligned, as well.
Allan Lichtman
Their fealty, their loyalty, their oath, though it may have appeared so, is NOT to the Constitution, but to some other nation, some other government, one that is NOT the United States of America – The Cult of Trump.
The benighted Moscow Mitch McConnell and his equally benighted Kooky Kentucky Klown pal Rand Paul are still up to no good.
Here Is The Smoking Gun Evidence To Back Impeachment Of Donald Trump
By Dr. Allan Lichtman, PhD, opinion contributor
02/08/21 10:00 AM EST
While the House impeachment managers have focused on events leading up to the Capitol breach, it was the real time response from Donald Trump to the rioters which yields smoking gun evidence of his intent to incite the insurrection. Trump failed to promptly call off his followers or to summon timely assistance for the police, despite pleas from his fellow Republicans caught up in the mayhem. His final words that day connect his incendiary statements about a “stolen election” to the storming of the Capitol.
As he watched the insurrection unfold on television, with some delight according to witnesses, Trump made no immediate demand that the rioters leave the Capitol. He failed to heed the pleas of Republicans in Congress, who desperately tried to call him with no response. “We are begging essentially, and he was nowhere to be found,” Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said. We know Trump did call Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama after mistakenly dialing Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Trump called Tuberville not to ask about his safety or to offer assistance, but to discuss a strategy for objecting to the count of electoral votes.
When rioters breached the Capitol in full view of cameras, Trump did not appear on television to denounce them or tell his followers to cease and desist. Instead, he stoked the incitement with a tweet to attack his vice president and double down on claims about a stolen election. He wrote, “Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones.”
Trump later sent a tweet in the passive voice, “Stay peaceful!” He sent a similar message more than half an hour later. He still had not appeared in person on any medium at this point. Trump eventually released a video that told his supporters, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, January 9, 2021
NOTE TO THE READER: What you’re about to read is substantiated, corroborated, and well-documented fact. As far back as late 2019, into June, and later August 2020, there was significantly strong reason to believe/suspect that, if he were not re-elected, President Trump would misuse and abuse the power of the Office of the President to stay in power – to instigate a political coup – by some means. A full and complete bipartisan report was written to that effect, about the possible and likely scenarios, with full sources cited, by a diverse group which included Pentagon experts, analysts, and others renown in their fields. Where opinion was offered, it was reasoned, thoughtful, and expert. Their disturbing findings were wholly accurate, though largely ignored. As well, there remains ongoing and substantiated evidence that the insurrection on American soil against a Constitutional governmental process was planned months in advance -and- that President Trump was setting the tone for events that would later transpire, and culminate on January 6, 2021 in the attack upon the Congress as they met to certify the Electoral College vote of Joe Biden as President-elect. NONE of the events throughout were haphazard, happenstance, or accidental – EVERY ACTIVITY WAS PLANNED, ORCHESTRATED, AND COORDINATED.
The domestic terror events of January 6, 2021 – an attack upon the United States Congress – were not accidental.
They were not happenstance.
They did not pop up overnight like mushrooms after a rain shower.
They were planned, orchestrated, an coordinated in full view of the public.
More disturbingly, there is substantial evidence demonstrating that the President was not merely complicit as an oblique by-stander egging on seemingly random activity, but that he was actively – albeit covertly – engaged in establishing and creating the circumstances in which he would later inject himself to provide guidance, and offer direct encouragement that very day to the ultimate participants in a political coup undertaken by private citizens at his behest.
For those, and for other reasons, he should be arrested, held without bond, and then tried. The punishment for such criminal activities are not mere slaps upon the wrist. They include a mandatory death penalty.
And that is by NO MEANS the only violation of Federal law with which they can, and should, be charged.
United States Attorneys and other Federal agents who are soft-pedaling their crimes by merely charging them with the Federal equivalent of “trespass” are not doing our nation any favors or service, whatsoever.
Conspiracy is another crime with which they could ALL be charged, even after they’re convicted of any other crime. Furthermore, they could EVERY ONE be charged under one case. Conceivably, this event has the potential to be the single largest Federal prosecution, EVER.
Some readers may not know how GRAVE this entire matter of the Presidentially-instigated Trump2020 insurrection is.
If you’ll continue reading the increasing volume of news reports, you’ll see the mounting evidence of OPEN conspiracy… that was, and is, a crime against our nation, our Constitution, our people, our way of life… of Liberty itself – the likes of which we have NOT SEEN since the era of the Civil War.
Those folks are not just a mere haphazard collection of conspiracy theorists, whackos, and the lunatic fringe.
THEY ARE BRAZEN CRIMINAL CONSPIRATORS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES.
Trump, and Trump, Jr., and his ENTIRE MAGA crowd – at least EVERY SINGLE PERSON PRESENT THERE THAT DAY – can, and should, be charged with violation of serious Federal crimes, not the least of which are under Title 18 United States Code, Chapter 115, TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES
-but-
ALL OF THEM – including the President himself – can, and should, be charged with CONSPIRACY, for there is SUBSTANTIAL and MOUNTING EVIDENCE that there REMAINS a conspiracy to overthrow the United States government.
Not only did they sell merchandise online and conspire about it OPENLY for well over 2 months, but they had a website for it, as well!
In fact, as far back as September 7, 2020, Sasha Abramsky wrote in The Nation that, “Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État? Many observers — including Republicans — worry that he is.” In it, he wrote in part that, “Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, has come to share Fried’s* conviction that Trump is a threat to the Republic, although Steele believes the Trump cult is more about naked political opportunism than any grand fascist ideology.” [*Charles Fried, Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General, Republican, Harvard Law School professor, board member of groups like the Campaign Legal Center, Checks and Balances, and Republicans for the Rule of Law.]
“Steele in recent months concluded that Trump, aided and abetted by the GOP’s congressional leaders, is willing to “open up a Pandora’s box of mischief” to remain ensconced in the White House, Steele says.
“He’s laying down the predicate
— taking shots at vote by mail and saying he already knows there’s fraud —
and therefore it’s likely he won’t accept the results of the election.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, November 12, 2020
👈This is a screenshot of a now-deleted Tweet from an actual White Republican Mississippi State Representative – Price Wallace – who was elected to represent MS State House District 77, Mendenhall.
Sadly, the mofo doesn’t even know the difference in SECEDE and SUCCEED. Maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t confuzalate it with suck seed.😳😂
And apparently, he’s either forgotten history, or skipped school during Civil War history week.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery
– the greatest material interest of the world.”
Spoiler warning: They tried that once; it was phenomenally unsuccessful.
But let’s play along, and briefly think about the “bigger picture” of his bad idea.
When compared to the other 49 states, Mississippi’s economy is:
Ranked between Guam and Puerto Rico in Per Capita GDP.
48th overall in the U.S. in Quality of Life.
49th in High School Graduation Rates.
50th in Healthcare Access & Quality.
48th in Public Health.
48th in Economy.
46th in Education.
45th in Infrastructure.
44th in Fiscal Stability.
Now, close your eyes and imagine if it “succeeded” from the Union… and lost all the Federal money it now gets.
In actuality, what we have here, is a duly-elected Public Official advocating treason against the United States. Isn’t there a law against that kind of crap?
Casting the shadowy pall of slavery over the city since 1905 after being gifted to the city by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, it has increasingly become a touchstone representing man’s inhumanity to man through the wicked institution in Alabama especially, which was the Capitol of the Confederacy.
And then, there’s an interestingly disturbing corollary to the monument in the park.
Linn Park was not always named “Linn Park.”
First named “Central Park” in 1883 by the the Elyton Land Company’s original plans for Birmingham, as drafted by William Barker, its name was changed to “Capitol Park” in 1886 after it was deeded to the city. Its name was again changed to “Woodrow Wilson Park” in 1918 to honor Wilson as President and for being the spokesman of the terms of peace which concluded World War I.
It was nearly three-quarters of a century later in October 1988 that the name was changed from Woodrow Wilson Park to Linn Park to honor Charles Linn, a Captain in the Confederate States Navy, who later became an industrialist/banker/mercantilist and city founder.
Additional details of the park’s location are enumerated in description of the 1907 historical image of the commemorative obelisk shown below.
Birmingham, Alabama area comedian Jermaine “FunnyMaine” Johnson has for many years helped lead efforts to eradicate the city’s Monument to Maleficence which honors treason against the United States and slavery in the guise of Civil War Confederates, replete with a quote from the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, upon the obelisk’s north face: “THE MANNER OF THEIR DEATH, WAS THE CROWNING GLORY OF THEIR LIVES. JEFFERSON DAVIS.”
Alabama Governess Kay Ivey (R)
Johnson’s and numerous others’ opposition to the city’s durable demonic device is unwavering, and has faced opposition from the state’s mostly White Republican legislators, and White Republican Governor Kay Ivey who signed into law a bill protecting that and other such monuments honoring slavery throughout the state.
The city’s mayor, Randall Woodfin, also a Black gentleman, is similarly unwavering in his opposition to the monument’s presence and all that it represents, and has sought on numerous occasions to have it removed, but has been thwarted by the White-dominated Republican legislature and governor. Numerous court battles have raged, and even wound up in the state’s Supreme Court which found that the greatest penalty the city could face for violation of the law forbidding its removal was a $25,000 fine.
Image circa 1907, of the Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument obelisk along with a bronze statue of Dr. William Elias B. Davis, MD an early Birmingham area physician, circa 1887, to the RIGHT. Charles Linn Park (formerly Central Park, Capitol Park, and Woodrow Wilson Park) forms the municipal center of downtown Birmingham, and is and is and is bordered on the north by 8th Avenue North, Boutwell Auditorium and the Birmingham Museum of Art, on the south by Park Place, on the east by Linn-Henley Research Library and the Jefferson County Courthouse, and by 20th Street North and the Birmingham City Hall on the west.
Carol Robinson of the website AL dot com interviewed Jermaine Johnson following a tumultuous night in the Magic City Sunday May 31 in which several unsuccessful attempts to topple the obelisk were made, and in which its inscriptions were marred, chipped, chiseled at and defaced by numerous crowd participants. Most in the city – Black and White – are willing to see it go.
They’re not for Birmingham, they’re not from Birmingham. We know, we were on the ground.
We talked with some of these people. When you have a lot of people from Birmingham, including the police and the mayor, everybody’s out here peaceful because we recognize each other. Everybody’s walking up, ‘Oh we went to Ramsay together, we went to JO together, and here comes a group of people nobody knows and we’re like, ‘Hey what’s up man’ and they’re like ‘We’re not here to talk.’ They were just rude to everybody. They were rude to reporters. They were rude to us.
If you think I incited violence, you don’t think monuments like this and the policies behind it haven’t incited violence for decades, you just need to think again.
I hate it. I hate it. I love my city. I don’t stand for that.
Y’all won’t be able to find not one video where I’m encouraging people to tear down our city. As a matter of fact, you’ll find just the opposite. I literally encouraged people to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, October 6, 2019
The Current White House Occupant – Donald J. Trump – is blatant.
He acts as if he tells something openly and very publicly, that it can’t be wrong, unethical, immoral, or illegal. Thus, he has a habit of “doubling down” when any allegation of wrong-doing is made against him. We saw that when allegations of him paying hush money through his now-Federally-convicted lawyer/”fixer” Michael Cohen to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, aka “Stormy Daniels,” and former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal to conceal the fact that he had sex with them, when he and his campaign became concerned that public knowledge of his affairs with them would harm his public approval ratings.
Put simply, his tactic is deny, deny, deny, deny… and then, when denial doesn’t seem to work, embrace the wrong, then unashamedly publicly state the wrong behavior as if it’s A-Okay to do the act, and justify it using faulty rationale… like “everybody does it,” or falsely claiming some absurdity that “it’s a common practice.”
And that is why, in response to the question by a reporter among the gaggle outside the White House on October 3, 2019, “What exactly did you hope Zelensky would do about the Bidens after your phone call?”, Trump publicly stated that,
“Well I would think if they were honest about it, they’d start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens. Because how does a company newly formed and all these companies — by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens. Because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine. So I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens. Because nobody has any doubt that they weren’t crooked. That was a crooked deal, 100%. He had no knowledge about energy, didn’t know the first thing about it, all of a sudden he’s getting $50,000 a month, plus a lot of other things. Nobody has any doubt. And they got rid of a very tough prosecutor. Now they’re trying to make it the opposite way, but they got rid of him. So if I were the president of Ukraine I would certainly recommend that.”
– President Donald J. Trump, to reporters assembled on the White House lawn, October 3, 2019
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Hurricane Dorian will be the “perfect storm” to end President Donald Trump’s autocratic regime.
His administration has mishandled the events in Puerto Rico with Hurricane Maria. Those American citizens STILL haven’t recovered, and his anemic administration has kept the FEMA from doing their job.
Maybe it’s because they’re one of his so-called “shithole countries.”
Imagine that. Puerto Ricans are American. But again, his racism is also equally well known.
But he did toss them some paper towels. That’s been a BIGLY HUGE help. Maybe this time, he’ll airdrop a planeload of them from Air Force One to affected areas.
He has wasted the summer break by not campaigning, and all polls show his approval ratings are well under water. With the storm surge predicted from Hurricane Dorian, it’ll be the end of the USS Trumpanzee in Chief.
There’s great irony in the fact that hurricanes come from Africa. And Hurricane Dorian is Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, February 14, 2017
When I was a young boy, my father gave me his Hallicrafters brand shortwave radio. When the tubes warmed up in the metal chassis, I could tune in numerous worldwide broadcasts in myriad languages. I also found the music from other nations equally enthralling.
Stations from the Netherlands, Swaziland, Australia, Rhodesia (now South Africa), England, Spain, China, Japan, India, Germany, Poland, and all points in between opened my mind and expanded my intellectual horizons. Many broadcasts were in the nation’s native language, though some broadcasts were in English, including some from Russia.
As I listened to Russian Pravda shortwave news broadcasts (which were in perfect, accent-free English), my father warned me that what they told were lies.
Even though what the Pravda news broadcasters said sounded “reasonable” and even “true,” Pravda, which was then the Communist government-owned propaganda agency, would tell “little” lies, or twist and pervert the truth and facts of the story, so that it made the entire story false. They never bothered to tell a “whopper” of a lie, just a few little changes here, and there, which when compiled, changed the entire story into a lie. Interestingly, the word Pravda in Russian means “truth.”
That is a distinctly and uniquely Russian technique, which hasn’t changed. We recently were subjected to it on an unparalleled level in our recent General Election with the abundant proliferation of Internet-based “Fake News” from impoverished former Communist-bloc nations which our nation’s Intelligence and Security Agencies later reported was used specifically to sway the vote for Donald Trump. Never in the history of our nation has external national influence ever been used to elect a Presidential Candidate.
The Russians and their evil government have long been our sworn enemies. And yet, we now – or, more accurately, the GOP – act as if everything is hunky dory.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, January 12, 2017
Most would agree that Osama bin Laden is dead, that he was killed by a TOP SECRET CIA-led joint U.S. Military operation code-named Operation Neptune Spear, which was executed by the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group, aka DEVGRU, or commonly as SEAL Team Six.
DEVGRU and the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D), aka “Delta Force,” are the DOD’s elite counterterrorism task force units, both which operate under the Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC).
Also involved in Operation Neptune Spear was the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) “Nightstalkers,” (SOAR(A)) from Ft. Campbell, KY, and the CIA’s Special Activities Division (SAD), the most secretive of all clandestine agencies, whose members – if compromised – are denied by the United States Government.
But it was the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group’s DEVGRU that was Operation Neptune Spear’s fatal piercing point for Osama bin Laden.
The general public has not ever seen images of Osama bin Laden’s corpse. Nor are they likely ever to see them. At least not in this lifetime.
In addition to President of the United States Barack Obama, one of the less-than-fifty-people who ever saw them was Republican Senator James Inhofe, who described in part what he saw to CNN: “One of the shots went through the ear and out through an eye socket, or through the eye socket and out through the ear and exploded, that was the kind of ordinance it was. That caused the brains to be hanging out of the eye socket. Absolutely no question about it. A lot of people out there say: ‘I want to see the pictures,’ but I’ve already seen them. That was him. He’s gone. He’s history.”
President Obama, who ordered the mission, said in part to CBS News that, “Keep in mind that we are absolutely certain this was him. We’ve done DNA sampling and testing. And so there is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden. It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. As a propaganda tool.”
Following President Obama’s White House announcement May 2, 2011 that bin Laden had been killed, speculation quickly arose that the death was falsified, that it – like some imagine the Moon Landing – was somehow “faked.”
Lack of publicly available images and details on the TOP SECRET Operation Neptune Spear only fueled specious speculation which, like wildfire, spread throughout the tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy community.
Alabama is one of 20 states – and counting – where residents have petitioned the White House in the days after the Nov. 6 presidential election, seeking to withdraw from the United States and create their own governments.
The informal petitions are created by citizens on the White House web site under a “We the People” program created by the Obama administration.
The Alabama petition was filed Friday by Derrick B. (no last name given) of Mobile. It was the third petition filed overall, following an initial petition filed Wednesday, the day after the election, on behalf of Louisiana. The second petition was filed Friday on behalf of Texas.
“We petition the Obama Administration to peacefully grant the State of Alabama to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own new government,” the petition reads.
The Alabama petition had received 4,426 signatures as of Monday morning.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, April 22, 2012
Sam Walton spins in his grave.
It was only a matter of time, I suppose, before the eventual or inevitable happened.
Since the United States Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are persons, there should be no reasonable argument against arresting the corporation.
The problem is, how to do that?
The Chief Executives are not the corporation, so ostensibly, they couldn’t be arrested.
But then, could those Chief Executives be charged with criminal behavior for the actions of the corporation?
However, if we consider the The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA) (15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1, et seq.) which is part of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the elimination of some of the most important provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act, we might wonder if Republicans would have any problem eliminating the FCPA, since it addresses accounting transparency requirements under the and bribery of foreign officials.
It will definitely be interesting to see how Congress decides to handle this case.
MEXICO CITY — In September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an alarming e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico. In the e-mail and follow-up conversations, the former executive described how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance. In its rush to build stores, he said, the company had paid bribes to obtain permits in virtually every corner of the country.
The former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts. He knew so much, he explained, because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico.
Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.”
The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation.
Instead, an examination by The New York Times found, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut it down.
Neither American nor Mexican law enforcement officials were notified. None of Wal-Mart de Mexico’s leaders were disciplined. Indeed, its chief executive, Eduardo Castro-Wright, identified by the former executive as the driving force behind years of bribery, was promoted to vice chairman of Wal-Mart in 2008. Until this article, the allegations and Wal-Mart’s investigation had never been publicly disclosed. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, November 13, 2009
Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Islamofascist psychiatric Army physician accused of murdering 13, and wounding 29 other soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood, TX recently, was described by former colleagues and professors at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and Walter Reed Army Medical Center as lazy, mediocre and “psychotic.”
The Associated Press is reporting that the source spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the incident, and wrote that Dr. Hasan “had a reputation for being a mediocre student and lazy worker.” The AP is also reporting that Dr. Hasan “as a psychiatrist in training was belligerent, defensive and argumentative in his frequent discussions of his Muslim faith.”
NPR is reporting that because of a “cumbersome and lengthy process for expelling doctors, involving hearings and potential legal battles,” Walter Reed Army officials and others “decided it would be too difficult, if not unfeasible, to put Hasan on probation and possibly expel him from the program.”
Published reports from the AP, NPR and others indicated that Army officials and others were:
• concerned of potential fratricide
• concerned of treason potential if deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan
• from Spring 2008 to Spring 2009 fellow physicians questioned whether Hasan was “psychotic” and mentally fit to be an Army psychiatrist;
and reported that Dr. Hasan was:
• described as disconnected, aloof, paranoid, belligerent and “schizoid”
• “as a psychiatrist in training was belligerent, defensive and argumentative in his frequent discussions of his Muslim faith”
• repeatedly given poor evaluations and warned about substandard work
• “behavior… perceived as intense and combative”
Because Dr. Hasan’s actions are not presently linked to external terrorist networks, he will be tried in a Courts Martial, rather than a civilian court.
Doubtless, there will be changes to Army, governmental and civil procedures as a result of this man’s actions – as well they should.
* UPDATE * 11/15/09
At this juncture, I predict that Dr. Hasan’s defense will use the Insanity Defense – his colleagues attest to witnessing his behavior over a period of time that points to serious mental derangement – and am concerned of the possibility that he could very well be found “not guilty.” Concerning the mass murders, I think such actions were once called “Criminal Insanity.” Regardless of any trial or outcome, I sincerely doubt he’ll walk the streets as a free man again.
Warm Southern Breeze 