FOIA

On Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear a petition from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that sought to force the Department of Homeland Security to release details of a secret “killswitch” protocol to shut down cellphone and internet service during emergencies.

For imprisonments, the US really does have no close second: it’s the unquestionable global market-leader, for prisons and prisoners. And this gets us to the market-leader for prisons within America itself, and to the stunning corruption that stands behind it. So, here’s that extraordinary example, and the story behind its corruption, which will provide a close-up view of America’s general corruption, from the top (including the government itself) on down.

Thanks to the deep digging from Judicial Watch, we now know that President Obama's Christmas 2013 vacation to Hawaii cost taxpayers a handy $8.1 million. The itinerary, we are sure, was very similar to this year's golfing (and shave ice) extravaganza, which explains why, the known total expense to the American taxpayers thus far for all Obama travel is now $70,880,035.78. Well, it's only fair right?

If you missed the third democratic debate, don't worry, you are not alone: the President himself had much more important pursuits to attend to when the potential successor from his party was laying out her (or his) ideological vision for the future of America.

As part of a global investigation into how much physical gold central banks have stored at what location and how much is leased out, we submitted the local equivalent of a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request at the central bank of Belgium (NBB) to obtain information about the amount of Belgian official gold reserves, the exact location of all gold bars, the type of gold accounts NBB holds at the Bank Of England (BOE) and how much is leased out and to whom. The outcome of this research was not what we had expected...

Did Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott just lose his job because of fears that a probe and audit of the "data" and "statistics" behind global warming could threaten to destroy Goldman Sachs' best laid cap-and-trade, emissions trading scheme and carbon tax plans?

While it is already common knowledge that China has thrown virtually everything at the market in order to halt the ongoing market crash, including arresting "malicious sellers", journalists, and suspicious hedge fund managers, blaming HFTs for daring to sell in addition to buy, and even making trading index futures practically impossible, perhaps the most interesting revelation showcasing China's desperation came from CNBC today which reported that the government recently invited none other than Mr. ETF himself, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to "discuss the market situation there", or said otherwise: how to manipulate the market better.

There is no such thing as objective science when a researcher receives tens of thousands of dollars from the GM producers themselves, then goes on to promote their financiers’ products. Corporate collusion between government bureaucracies and educational institutions has become a serious issue in the U.S. that has corrupted objectivity in nearly every sector of American life.

"...Given that “transparency” has such positive connotations, it is hard to imagine a reversal of these measures. But the public interest would not be served if the internal deliberations of the US Federal Reserve or the Supreme Court were put on CSPAN, as some have demanded."

Eventually it was bound to happen. The ever increasing ambiguous laws that allow the government to prosecute, or worse, simply negate all Constitutional protections of its citizens would come back to hang them.

According to China Daily, the "recent overweighting to stem A-share plunge has made China Securities Finance Corp (CSF), central bank-backed refinancing institution, among top 10 shareholders of many listed-firms, reported Securities Times on Wednesday."

For every loser there is a winner, and in the case of Greece and its tragedy, just as millions are about to lose everything, a few not only made billions but quietly, under the guise of "sovereign bailouts" transferred their entire risk onto the taxpaying public.

In today's consequence-less world - where only the poor are punished - news that a top official at a controversial U.S. export finance agency deleted text messages sent within days of the 2014 midterm elections after a watchdog group filed an open records request for the messages, will come as no surprise whatsoever. The 'excuse' given by Ex-Im Bank's chief of staff Scott Schloegel  - because as we saw yesterday, there is no accountability - he "deleted, by mistake, the messages on my phone for the period in question." Most transparent administration ever...

Perhaps just to make sure that the fear level spread by the Department of "Developed Market" Fear hits panic level promptly, overnight the UK's Sunday Times reported via Reuters, "citing unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Home Office (interior ministry) and security services" that Britain has pulled out agents from live operations in "hostile countries" after Russia and China cracked top-secret information contained in files leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

in a follow up piece to his stunning original investigative report, Nafeez Ahmed reveals that according to leading American and British intelligence experts, the previously declassified Pentagon report confirms that the West accelerated support to extremist rebels in Syria, despite knowing full well the strategy would pave the way for the emergence of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS). The experts who have spoken out include renowned government whistleblowers such as the Pentagon’s Daniel Ellsberg, the NSA’s Thomas Drake, and the FBI’s Coleen Rowley, among others. Their remarks demonstrate the fraudulent nature of claims by two other former officials, the CIA’s Michael Morell and the NSA’s John Schindler, both of whom attempt to absolve the Obama administration of responsibility for the policy failures exposed by the DIA documents.