Well, it has been the $64,000 question for a couple of decades: Can NSA break something like PGP?
While there might be other black world technologies that could be up to the task (there’s no way to know), what we do know is that a practical quantum computing capability would be, for all intents and purposes, the master key.
I’m pretty confident that NSA has this capability and here’s why: IBM Breakthrough May Make Practical Quantum Computer 15 Years Away Instead of 50. There is no hard constant that one can point to when considering how much more advanced black world technologies are than what we think of as state of the art, but if IBM is 15 years away from building a useful quantum computer, it’s not a stretch to assume NSA has that capability already, or is close to having it.
Bamford lays out a narrative below about the “enormous breakthrough,” but, at the end of the day, it’s conventional computers. There’s no mention quantum computers, or even the far less “out there” photonic systems.
Is Bamford’s piece a limited hangout?
Maybe, but it makes for interesting reading in any event.
Note: For some reason, Bamford refers to Mark Klein as, “A whistle-blower,” without naming him. Because of Mark Klein, we know, for sure, that the mass intercepts are happening, how NSA is doing it, the equipment involved, etc. So, thanks, Mark Klein. Heroes have names on Cryptogon.
—
Update: Former Senior U.S. Intelligence Official and Current Booz Allen Hamilton Senior Vice President Joan A. Dempsey: ‘We’re a Few Years Away from Realizing Real Quantum Processing and Quantum Computing’
One of the first measures of tradecraft, as any good spy will tell you, is being able to tell when something just doesn’t add up. So when Joan Dempsey said she had some 49 years of experience in various roles in the military and intelligence communities, one has to wonder. She hardly looks it, but after spending some 25 years in the U.S. Navy, seven more at the CIA, and another 17 at the Pentagon in a variety of intelligence leadership positions, Dempsey swears it’s true, which means she is one of the few women in the intelligence community with nearly half a century of government experience, which has included, over the years, a number of “firsts.”
…
“I think that’s a huge growth area in intelligence, the big data analysis kinds of things, quantum computing which, I mean, we’re a few years away from realizing real quantum processing and quantum computing. And I mean these are areas that are going to have profound effect on every aspect of our lives, but certainly on the intelligence.
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
…
In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.
…
The data stored in Bluffdale will naturally go far beyond the world’s billions of public web pages. The NSA is more interested in the so-called invisible web, also known as the deep web or deepnet—data beyond the reach of the public. This includes password-protected data, US and foreign government communications, and noncommercial file-sharing between trusted peers. “The deep web contains government reports, databases, and other sources of information of high value to DOD and the intelligence community,” according to a 2010 Defense Science Board report. “Alternative tools are needed to find and index data in the deep web … Stealing the classified secrets of a potential adversary is where the [intelligence] community is most comfortable.” With its new Utah Data Center, the NSA will at last have the technical capability to store, and rummage through, all those stolen secrets. The question, of course, is how the agency defines who is, and who is not, “a potential adversary.”
…
According to Binney—who has maintained close contact with agency employees until a few years ago—the taps in the secret rooms dotting the country are actually powered by highly sophisticated software programs that conduct “deep packet inspection,” examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light.
The software, created by a company called Narus that’s now part of Boeing, is controlled remotely from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland and searches US sources for target addresses, locations, countries, and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email. Any communication that arouses suspicion, especially those to or from the million or so people on agency watch lists, are automatically copied or recorded and then transmitted to the NSA.
The scope of surveillance expands from there, Binney says. Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA’s recorders. “Anybody you want, route to a recorder,” Binney says. “If your number’s in there? Routed and gets recorded.” He adds, “The Narus device allows you to take it all.” And when Bluffdale is completed, whatever is collected will be routed there for storage and analysis.
According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program—again, never confirmed until now—was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T’s vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.
Verizon was also part of the program, Binney says, and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency’s domestic eavesdropping. “That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five,” he says. “So you’re over a billion and a half calls a day.” (Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security.)
After he left the NSA, Binney suggested a system for monitoring people’s communications according to how closely they are connected to an initial target. The further away from the target—say you’re just an acquaintance of a friend of the target—the less the surveillance. But the agency rejected the idea, and, given the massive new storage facility in Utah, Binney suspects that it now simply collects everything. “The whole idea was, how do you manage 20 terabytes of intercept a minute?” he says. “The way we proposed was to distinguish between things you want and things you don’t want.” Instead, he adds, “they’re storing everything they gather.” And the agency is gathering as much as it can.
Once the communications are intercepted and stored, the data-mining begins. “You can watch everybody all the time with data- mining,” Binney says. Everything a person does becomes charted on a graph, “financial transactions or travel or anything,” he says. Thus, as data like bookstore receipts, bank statements, and commuter toll records flow in, the NSA is able to paint a more and more detailed picture of someone’s life.
The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks “basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans.” Even journalists calling home from overseas were included. “A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families,” she says, “incredibly intimate, personal conversations.” Kinne found the act of eavesdropping on innocent fellow citizens personally distressing. “It’s almost like going through and finding somebody’s diary,” she says.
…
Sitting in a restaurant not far from NSA headquarters, the place where he spent nearly 40 years of his life, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” he says.
…
Meanwhile, over in Building 5300, the NSA succeeded in building an even faster supercomputer. “They made a big breakthrough,” says another former senior intelligence official, who helped oversee the program. The NSA’s machine was likely similar to the unclassified Jaguar, but it was much faster out of the gate, modified specifically for cryptanalysis and targeted against one or more specific algorithms, like the AES. In other words, they were moving from the research and development phase to actually attacking extremely difficult encryption systems. The code-breaking effort was up and running.
The breakthrough was enormous, says the former official, and soon afterward the agency pulled the shade down tight on the project, even within the intelligence community and Congress. “Only the chairman and vice chairman and the two staff directors of each intelligence committee were told about it,” he says. The reason? “They were thinking that this computing breakthrough was going to give them the ability to crack current public encryption.”
This is an old clip showing admittance of the CIA that they use the mainstream media to manipulate the thoughts and ideas of American citizens in the USA. This has not changed obviously and is good to know happened in the past due to our reality today.
The April 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine includes “The Warrior Class,” a feature by Charles Glass on the rise of private-security contractors since 9/11. The conclusion to the piece describes a series of videos shown to Glass by a source who had worked for the private-security company Blackwater (now Academi, formerly also Xe Services) in Iraq. Clips and photos from the videos are shown below, introduced by Glass’s descriptions:
The first , identified as “Baghdad, Iraq, May–September 2005,” showed Blackwater convoys racing through town. Suddenly, the door of a Blackwater SUV opened and a rifle fired at passing traffic. “They opened the door,” my companion said. “You should never break the seal.”
A still photo showed some graffiti scrawled on a metal beam: THIS IS FOR THE AMERICANS OF BLACKWATER THAT WERE MURDERED HERE IN 2004 SEMPER FIDELIS 3/5 PS FUCK YOU.
The next tape had been taken by a camera in the turret of an armored vehicle. An [M4A1]11. Corrected text. The gun was initially misidentified as an AK47.
fired from the turret at cars that had stopped to let the convoy pass. Whoever was firing the [gun] did so enthusiastically and often, sending rounds into parked cars and an overhead bridge. Another sequence showed a contractor vehicle rear-ending a car, shattering its back windshield.
The footage continued. A Humvee smashed into a car to move it out of the way. Guards swore at passersby. More armored vehicles smashed into civilian cars.
But what about the tape dated April 1, 2006, which was shot from the front seat of the fourth car in an armored convoy? Driving along a wide boulevard in Baghdad, the lead vehicle swerved close to the curb of a traffic island. A woman in a black full-length burka began to cross the street. The vehicle struck the woman and knocked her unconscious body into the gutter. The cars slowed for a moment, but did not stop, nor did they even determine whether the victim was dead or alive. A voice in the car taking the video said, “Oh, my God!” Yet no one was heard on the radio requesting help for her. Most sickeningly, the sequence had been set to an AC/DC song, whose pounding, metallic chorus declared: “You’ve been… thunderstruck!”
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is quickly becoming the Internet’s new most-hated piece of legislation. But is it really “the new SOPA,” as critics are calling it? Here, a comprehensive rundown of what CISPA is, what it does, and why people think it’s dangerous.
The Internet has a new enemy. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), also known as H.R. 3523, is a “cybersecurity” bill in the House of Representatives. CISPA is quickly gaining traction as “the new SOPA,” the infamous anti-piracy bill that was forced to crawl back into its hole after thousands of websites and millions of Web users protested with a massive, high-profile “blackout.” While CISPA does not focus primarily on intellectual property (though that’s in there, too), critics say the problems with the bill run just as deep. But what is CISPA, really, and will its presence on Congress’ agenda cause the same type of online revolt that SOPA and PIPA did?
What is CISPA?
Unveiled to the House by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) late last year, CISPA is described as a “cybersecurity” bill. It proposes to amend the National Security Act of 1947 to allow for greater sharing of “cyber threat intelligence” between the U.S. government and the private sector, or between private companies. The bill defines “cyber threat intelligence” as any information pertaining to vulnerabilities of, or threats to, networks or systems owned and operated by the U.S. government, or U.S. companies; or efforts to “degrade, disrupt, or destroy” such systems or networks; or the theft or “misappropriation” of any private or government information, including intellectual property.
CISPA also removes any liability from private companies who collect and share qualified information with the federal government, or with each other. Finally, it directs the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to conduct annual reviews of the sharing and use of the collected information by the U.S. government.
Read the full text of CISPA here, or the full official summary at the bottom of this page.
Who supports CISPA?
The bill currently has a whopping 106 co-sponsors in the House — more than twice the number SOPA ever had. Also unlike SOPA, CISPA has explicit support from some of the technology industry’s biggest players, including Internet service providers like AT&T and Verizon, Web companies like Facebook, and hardware companies like IBM and Intel.
See the full list of CISPA co-sponsors here. See a complete list of companies and groups that support CISPA here.
What CISPA supporters say it will do
According to Rep. Rogers, CISPA will help U.S. companies defend themselves “from advanced cyber threats, without imposing any new federal regulations or unfunded private sector mandate.” It will also create “new private sector jobs for cybersecurity professionals,” and protect “the thousands of jobs created by the American intellectual property that Chinese hackers are trying to steal every day.”
In a statement, Rep. Ruppersberger pushed his reasons for proposing the legislation, saying, “Without important, immediate changes to American cybersecurity policy, I believe our country will continue to be at risk for a catastrophic attack to our nation’s vital networks — networks that power our homes, provide our clean water or maintain the other critical services we use every day. This small but important piece of legislation is a decisive first step to tackle the cyber threats we face.”
Private companies like the bill because it removes some of the regulations that prevent them from sharing cyber threat information, or make it harder to do so. In short, they believe the bill will do exactly what its supporters in the House say it will do — help better protect them from cyber attacks.
What CISPA opponents are worried about
As with SOPA and PIPA, the first main concern about CISPA is its “broad language,” which critics fear allows the legislation to be interpreted in ways that could infringe on our civil liberties. The Center for Democracy and Technology sums up the problems with CISPA this way:
• The bill has a very broad, almost unlimited definition of the information that can be shared with government agencies notwithstanding privacy and other laws;
• The bill is likely to lead to expansion of the government’s role in the monitoring of private communications as a result of this sharing;
• It is likely to shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the military;
• Once the information is shared with the government, it wouldn’t have to be used for cybesecurity, but could instead be used for any purpose that is not specifically prohibited.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) adds that CISPA’s definition of “cybersecurity” is so broad that “it leaves the door open to censor any speech that a company believes would ‘degrade the network.’” Moreover, the inclusion of “intellectual property” means that companies and the government would have “new powers to monitor and censor communications for copyright infringement.”
Furthermore, critics warn that CISPA gives private companies the ability to collect and share information about their customers or users with immunity — meaning we cannot sue them for doing so, and they cannot be charged with any crimes.
According to the EFF, CISPA “effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity’ exemption to all existing laws.”
“There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes,’” the EFF continues. “That means a company like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or AT&T could intercept your emails and text messages, send copies to one another and to the government, and modify those communications or prevent them from reaching their destination if it fits into their plan to stop cybersecurity threats.”
Is the Internet freaking out like it did over SOPA/PIPA?
Not yet — but it’s starting to. After TechDirt’s Mike Masnick — a widely followed and trusted source on matters of laws regarding technology, intellectual property, and how they might affect our civil rights — posted an article telling readers to “forget SOPA, you should be worried about this cybersecurity bill” earlier this week, concerned Web users have started to take notice. On Reddit, a community that is largely responsible for the push-back against SOPA/PIPA, an increasing number of posts (some accurate, some not) have popped up regarding the potential dangers of CISPA. Anonymous has also started to get in on the action, having released a “dox” on Rep. Rogers, and a video condemning the bill, earlier this week.
Will CISPA pass?
Nobody can say for sure, but at the moment, its passage looks likely. CISPA breezed through the House Intelligence Committee on December 1, 2011, with a bipartisan vote of 17-1. Also, as mentioned, the bill has broad support in the House, with 106 co-sponsors, 10 of whom are committee chairmen.
As with any piece of legislation, however, nothing is certain until the president signs the bill. And if the Internet community rises up in the same way it did against SOPA and PIPA, then you will certainly see support for CISPA crumble in Congress (it is an election year, after all). That said, whether or not the Internet will react with such force remains a big “if.”
Conclusion
Regardless of the value of CISPA, cyber threats are a real and serious problem, one that the U.S. government will address through legislative means. Civil liberty watchdogs are always going to be wary of any bill that could possibly threaten our privacy, or put us at the mercy of corporations and the federal government. However, CISPA does have all the problems critics claim it has, and Web users should be paying critical attention to the bill.
Remember: opposing this particular bill, or others with similar problems, is not the same as a disregard for our cybersecurity, or national security — which is precisely how CISPA supporters in Congress will attempt to frame the opposition, if or when it gathers steam.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is quickly becoming the Internet’s new most-hated piece of legislation. But is it really “the new SOPA,” as critics are calling it? Here, a comprehensive rundown of what CISPA is, what it does, and why people think it’s dangerous.
The Internet has a new enemy. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), also known as H.R. 3523, is a “cybersecurity” bill in the House of Representatives. CISPA is quickly gaining traction as “the new SOPA,” the infamous anti-piracy bill that was forced to crawl back into its hole after thousands of websites and millions of Web users protested with a massive, high-profile “blackout.” While CISPA does not focus primarily on intellectual property (though that’s in there, too), critics say the problems with the bill run just as deep. But what is CISPA, really, and will its presence on Congress’ agenda cause the same type of online revolt that SOPA and PIPA did?
What is CISPA?
Unveiled to the House by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) late last year, CISPA is described as a “cybersecurity” bill. It proposes to amend the National Security Act of 1947 to allow for greater sharing of “cyber threat intelligence” between the U.S. government and the private sector, or between private companies. The bill defines “cyber threat intelligence” as any information pertaining to vulnerabilities of, or threats to, networks or systems owned and operated by the U.S. government, or U.S. companies; or efforts to “degrade, disrupt, or destroy” such systems or networks; or the theft or “misappropriation” of any private or government information, including intellectual property.
CISPA also removes any liability from private companies who collect and share qualified information with the federal government, or with each other. Finally, it directs the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to conduct annual reviews of the sharing and use of the collected information by the U.S. government.
Read the full text of CISPA here, or the full official summary at the bottom of this page.
Who supports CISPA?
The bill currently has a whopping 106 co-sponsors in the House — more than twice the number SOPA ever had. Also unlike SOPA, CISPA has explicit support from some of the technology industry’s biggest players, including Internet service providers like AT&T and Verizon, Web companies like Facebook, and hardware companies like IBM and Intel.
See the full list of CISPA co-sponsors here. See a complete list of companies and groups that support CISPA here.
What CISPA supporters say it will do
According to Rep. Rogers, CISPA will help U.S. companies defend themselves “from advanced cyber threats, without imposing any new federal regulations or unfunded private sector mandate.” It will also create “new private sector jobs for cybersecurity professionals,” and protect “the thousands of jobs created by the American intellectual property that Chinese hackers are trying to steal every day.”
In a statement, Rep. Ruppersberger pushed his reasons for proposing the legislation, saying, “Without important, immediate changes to American cybersecurity policy, I believe our country will continue to be at risk for a catastrophic attack to our nation’s vital networks — networks that power our homes, provide our clean water or maintain the other critical services we use every day. This small but important piece of legislation is a decisive first step to tackle the cyber threats we face.”
Private companies like the bill because it removes some of the regulations that prevent them from sharing cyber threat information, or make it harder to do so. In short, they believe the bill will do exactly what its supporters in the House say it will do — help better protect them from cyber attacks.
What CISPA opponents are worried about
As with SOPA and PIPA, the first main concern about CISPA is its “broad language,” which critics fear allows the legislation to be interpreted in ways that could infringe on our civil liberties. The Center for Democracy and Technology sums up the problems with CISPA this way:
• The bill has a very broad, almost unlimited definition of the information that can be shared with government agencies notwithstanding privacy and other laws;
• The bill is likely to lead to expansion of the government’s role in the monitoring of private communications as a result of this sharing;
• It is likely to shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the military;
• Once the information is shared with the government, it wouldn’t have to be used for cybesecurity, but could instead be used for any purpose that is not specifically prohibited.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) adds that CISPA’s definition of “cybersecurity” is so broad that “it leaves the door open to censor any speech that a company believes would ‘degrade the network.’” Moreover, the inclusion of “intellectual property” means that companies and the government would have “new powers to monitor and censor communications for copyright infringement.”
Furthermore, critics warn that CISPA gives private companies the ability to collect and share information about their customers or users with immunity — meaning we cannot sue them for doing so, and they cannot be charged with any crimes.
According to the EFF, CISPA “effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity’ exemption to all existing laws.”
“There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes,’” the EFF continues. “That means a company like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or AT&T could intercept your emails and text messages, send copies to one another and to the government, and modify those communications or prevent them from reaching their destination if it fits into their plan to stop cybersecurity threats.”
Is the Internet freaking out like it did over SOPA/PIPA?
Not yet — but it’s starting to. After TechDirt’s Mike Masnick — a widely followed and trusted source on matters of laws regarding technology, intellectual property, and how they might affect our civil rights — posted an article telling readers to “forget SOPA, you should be worried about this cybersecurity bill” earlier this week, concerned Web users have started to take notice. On Reddit, a community that is largely responsible for the push-back against SOPA/PIPA, an increasing number of posts (some accurate, some not) have popped up regarding the potential dangers of CISPA. Anonymous has also started to get in on the action, having released a “dox” on Rep. Rogers, and a video condemning the bill, earlier this week.
Will CISPA pass?
Nobody can say for sure, but at the moment, its passage looks likely. CISPA breezed through the House Intelligence Committee on December 1, 2011, with a bipartisan vote of 17-1. Also, as mentioned, the bill has broad support in the House, with 106 co-sponsors, 10 of whom are committee chairmen.
As with any piece of legislation, however, nothing is certain until the president signs the bill. And if the Internet community rises up in the same way it did against SOPA and PIPA, then you will certainly see support for CISPA crumble in Congress (it is an election year, after all). That said, whether or not the Internet will react with such force remains a big “if.”
Conclusion
Regardless of the value of CISPA, cyber threats are a real and serious problem, one that the U.S. government will address through legislative means. Civil liberty watchdogs are always going to be wary of any bill that could possibly threaten our privacy, or put us at the mercy of corporations and the federal government. However, CISPA does have all the problems critics claim it has, and Web users should be paying critical attention to the bill.
Remember: opposing this particular bill, or others with similar problems, is not the same as a disregard for our cybersecurity, or national security — which is precisely how CISPA supporters in Congress will attempt to frame the opposition, if or when it gathers steam.
HSI is a new directorate within the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service. Formed in September, its agents are responsible for investigating large-scale international crime, such as narcotics or arms smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering and any form of terrorism. They also defend against the illegal appropriation and exporting of technology that is crucial to U.S. security.
“In other words we’re looking for illegal activity that is crossing the border into the country or crossing the border out of the country,” Pino says.
The HSI Special Response Team serves warrants and apprehends international criminals considered too dangerous for other law enforcement to go up against.
“A lot of these criminal organizations are very well-armed, very well-funded and some of them may come from military backgrounds in their home countries,” Pino says.
While its name is new, the response team can be traced to the 1980s, before the Department of Homeland Security existed.
“It started here in Miami, in the old cocaine cowboy days,” HSI Special Agent in Charge Mike Shea says. “This is the oldest and best tactical entry team in the country. High-risk entry is the core mission.”
HSI consists of more than 10,000 employees, including 6,700 special agents, who are assigned to more than 200 U.S. cities and 47 countries .
A relatively monstrous SWAT style truck leads us to a whole new blob of police state developments, busy hands with little to do and a lot of hardware to do it. It’s yet another plateau of mad new security bureaucracy, something in this case I was loosely aware of tectonic plates moving, but a little digging revealed quite a nasty new nucleus. Let’s plow in and see what was beta-tested through the willingness of politicians to throw money at repressing immigrants. The results begin with big, black scary trucks. And the biggest intelligence group inside the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and more. Surprise!
What in the hell is the Special Response Team, why do they have eight of these things? etc. What turns up is an entirely new nasty agency gestating with Immigration & Customs Enforcement, from the burbling mass of confused federal police… a new team emerges. With exciting competitions and lurid ways of guarding the Super Bowl from Terrorist Attack – a National Special Security Event. The wikipedia page outlines the bizarre weave of this particular bureaucratic nucleus. And the List of special response units on the ol Wiki shows a spreading motif — but this Homeland Security super-swat is perhaps the swattiest of all.
HSI SRT Training to jump off shiny new helicopters to save the Super Bowl in Miami – yayyyy!!
(this is why your schools/bridges are crumbling, America, the purposeless authoritarian spectacle at its finest ;)
This recently reorganized, months-old ICE Homeland Security Investigations (formerly known as ICE Office of Investigations) should really be on the radar of anyone because this year they are apparently ‘filling in the gaps for the Secret Service’ at NSSEs like G20, NATO summits and the Republican and Democratic national conventions. (unfortunately the Secret Service is now a part of DHS, not Treasury.) The Federal Protective Service, which likes to take photos around the Twin Cities (see my 2010 Fort Snelling Undercover Fail video, classic times) is now part of some weird directorate but briefly passed through ICE after being removed from the General Services Administration.
The HSI Special Response Teams are seemingly the top layer of a lot of things, from the war on terror / war on drugs motif, to the Super Bowl, to whatever the hell they are planning to do to immigrants on the I-5 near LA, which was where this pic was taken according to Copblock. ICE has a large number of staff on the Joint Terrorism Task Forces that do statistic-generating police state busywork around the country, and interestingly this HSI group is now officially becoming publicly distinguished from the rest of ICE — and the theory of course is HSI would be spun out of ICE to become a freestanding ‘directorate’, a more modern and insane paramilitary FBI or whatever.
I wonder if the Secure Communities biometric collection program which was forced upon all counties in Minnesota, regardless of state & local wishes, would feed citizens’ data into HSI…. just like the monstrous truck above, now moving more into the “non immigrant” category of freeform federal police activity. Perhaps they shall do some serious black ops against occupier groups angling to get to the conventions? Nevar!
Wikipedia:
The Special Agents of HSI use their broad legal authority to investigate and combat a range of issues that threaten the national security of the United Statessuch as strategic crimes, human rights violations, human smuggling, art theft,human trafficking, drug smuggling, arms trafficking and other types of smuggling(including weapons of mass destruction), immigration crimes, gang investigations; financial crimes including money laundering, bulk cash smuggling, financial fraud, and trade based money laundering; terrorism, computer crimes including the international trafficking of child pornography over the Internet, intellectual property rights crimes (trafficking of counterfeit trademark protected merchandise), cultural property crimes (theft and smuggling of antiquities and art), and import/export enforcement issues. HSI special agents conduct investigations aimed at protecting critical infrastructure industries that are vulnerable to sabotage, attack or exploitation.[8] HSI special agents also provide security details for VIPs, witness protection, and support the U.S. Secret Service’s mission during overtaxed times such as special-security events and protecting candidates running for U.S. president.
HSI was formerly known as the ICE Office of Investigations (OI). HSI Special Agents have legal authority to enforce the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act (Title 8), U.S. Customs Laws (Title 19), along with Titles 5, 6, 12, 18 (Federal Criminal Code and Rules), 21 (drugs), 22, 26, 28, 31 (exclusive jurisdiction over Money and Finance investigations), 46, 49, and 50 (War and National Defense) statutes; giving them the broadest federal law enforcement jurisdiction of any agency. HSI has more than 8,500 Special Agents, making it the second largest federal law enforcement and criminal investigative agency within the United States government next to the FBI.
The change of names from ICE OI to HSI was announced in June 2010. Part of the reasoning behind the name change was to better describe the general activities of the agency, and to avoid the uninformed stigma that this agency only investigates immigration-related issues (ex. OI/HSI special agents duties were often mistaken by the public, other LE agencies and the media to mirror ERO agents/officers). HSI does have a public relations problem. Its the second largest investigatory agency, but the general public has never heard of it. ICE held it close to the belt and until recently, didn’t publicly make the distinction as TSA does with Federal Air Marshals and CBP does with Border Patrol. In 2012, ICE and HSI have mandated a public distinction be made between both organizations. Most often news reports bury HSI’s efforts as “immigrations agents” or as ICE efforts, and frequently Department of Justice and US Attorney’s Office press releases of HSI-led investigations get spun up to sound like DOJ or FBI investigations that received assistance from local partners and ICE.
The name change to HSI better reflects that it is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s primary investigative body, and as a result, its thought that someday it will be pulled out from under the ICE umbrella and stand independent under the DHS. An obscure fact is the original planned name before settling on ICE was the Bureau of Investigations and Criminal Enforcement, but the brothers at the FBI didn’t approve and made their complaints heard.
Intelligence
Intelligence is a subcomponent of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The Office of Intelligence uses its Intelligence Research Specialists for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of strategic and tactical intelligence data for use by the operational elements of ICE and DHS. Consequently, the Office of Intelligence works closely with the Central Intelligence Agency, IRS the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
International Affairs
IA is a subcomponent of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The Office of International Affairs, with agents in over 60 locations around the world, represents DHS’ broadest footprint beyond US borders. ICE Attaché offices work with foreign counterparts to identify and combat transnational criminal organizations before they threaten the United States. IA also facilitates domestic HSI investigations.
Oh good, the CIA and FBI together at last… (and let’s not forget the ICE/DHS network of detention facilities: Detention Facilities official front page- what is the HSI role for something like that applied to – somehow – non-immigrants?)
The ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) directorate is a critical asset in the ICE mission, responsible for investigating a wide range of domestic and international activities arising from the illegal movement of people and goods into, within and out of the United States.
HSI investigates immigration crime, human rights violations and human smuggling, smuggling of narcotics, weapons and other types of contraband, financial crimes, cybercrime and export enforcement issues. ICE special agents conduct investigations aimed at protecting critical infrastructure industries that are vulnerable to sabotage, attack or exploitation.
In addition to ICE criminal investigations, HSI oversees the agency’s international affairs operations and intelligence functions. HSI consists of more than 10,000 employees, consisting of 6,700 special agents, who are assigned to more than 200 cities throughout the U.S. and 47 countries around the world.
Report suspicious activity. Complete our tip form…..
HSI conducts criminal investigations against terrorist and other criminal organizations who threaten national security. HSI combats worldwide criminal enterprises who seek to exploit America’s legitimate trade, travel and financial systems and enforces America’s customs and immigration laws at and beyond our nation’s borders.
HSI comprises six key divisions:
-Domestic Operations
-Intelligence
-International Affairs
-Investigative Programs
-Mission Support
-National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Coordination Center
The official page for the HSI Special Agent in Charge Field Offices of which there are 26:
Homeland Security Investigations has 26 Special Agent in Charge (SAC) principal field offices throughout the United States. The SAC offices are responsible for the administration and management of all investigative and enforcement activities within the geographic boundaries of the office. The SACs develop, coordinate, and implement enforcement strategies to ensure conformance with national policies and procedures and to support national intelligence programs. SACs coordinate law enforcement activities with the highest level of Federal, state, and local governments, as well as intelligence organizations and international law enforcement entities. In addition, SACs supervise all administrative responsibilities assigned to the office and ensure a responsive Internal Controls Program is developed.
To efficiently manage their designated geographic regions, SAC offices maintain various subordinate field offices throughout their areas of responsibility, which support the enforcement mission. These subordinate field offices, Deputy Special Agents in Charge (DSAC), Assistant Special Agents in Charge (ASAC), Resident Agents in Charge (RAC) and Resident Agents (RA), are responsible for managing enforcement activities within the geographic boundaries of the office.
SAC Minneapolis/St. Paul
2901 Metro Drive, Suite 100
Bloomington, MN 55425
Main (952) 853-2940
Fax (612) 313-9045
If you search for 2901 Metro Drive Suite 100 that is the same office for other immigration, ICE & Homeland Security sub-offices.
These guys also have the completely insane National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, a hearty reminder that the kafkaesque nature of what they call “intellectual property” combined with bureaucratic bloatware budget and an aggressively fascist private industry-friendly design, can truly combine to make one of the most awful, yet admittedly bold, authoritarian government logos of all time. Our Partner Agencies — National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center
It’s almost enough to make you believe that swat teams could control all the memes they want, and even maybe the copy and paste commands too!
These are like a new branch of goons yet to be accounted for: HSI-Intel.
The ICE Homeland Security Investigations Intelligence Office (HSI-Intel) is a robust intelligence force that supports the enforcement needs of ICE’s executive leadership and operational field units.
Cutting edge technology, complex intelligence gathering tools, multifaceted investigative techniques and a high level of professionalism have enabled HSI-Intel to set the standard for federal law enforcement/intelligence agencies.
HSI-Intel also serves as home to the National Incident Response Unit (NIRU). This unit ensures that ICE is prepared to respond to national emergencies or critical events, including natural disasters, disease pandemics and terrorist attacks. NIRU plans for ICE’s continuity of operations before, during and after catastrophic incidents. During these incidents, NIRU serves as the agency’s central communications “nerve center,” coordinating the sharing of information between ICE components and other federal, state and local agencies. …..
HSI-Intel collects, analyzes and shares strategic and tactical data for use by DHS and ICE leadership and operational units. It also supports federal, state, local, tribal and international law enforcement partners.
HSI-Intel’s analysis and targeting information plays a vital role in supporting investigations related to illegal immigration, terrorism, weapons proliferation, war crimes, financial crimes, trade fraud, drug smuggling, human smuggling and trafficking, child sex tourism and other criminal activities.
I am sure they will figure out how all that drug money gets through the Federal Reserve Bank computer systems one of these days.
As far as I can tell, the following picture is not some satirical fan-boy art piece come to life. And those fonts…. christ! It looks like you can clearly see the ‘investigations’ part on there.
What about the Office of Investigations Special Response Team? Looks like we’ve found #8 and #10 so far. Both manilla and black color schemas.
Alright lets move this along & get these links out there.I found #9 for the Los Angeles set in Flickr user DFP2746 (plz forgive remixing a part of the images, you intellectual property fusion center types) Source: Homeland Security MRAP / DHS/ICE Special Response Team | Flickr – DFP2746
This is getting to be like Pokemon… my SRT trucks. Let me show you them…
A ICE Special Response Team (S.R.T.), an elite tactical unit attached to the Department of Homeland Security, deployed to New Orleans equipped with Zensah (http://www.zensah.com/tactical.html) tactical gear. By wearing Zensah moisture wicking tactical clothing, ICE special response team members receive a first line of defense against hazardous conditions found in the Gulf Coast areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.
ICE special response team members are in the affected areas to save lives, to protect lives, and to provide security to the recovery effort. ICEÂs primary objectives are to support authorities in securing New Orleans and other affected communities and to provide security to federal rescue and recovery efforts.
….The ICE Special Response Team is an elite tactical team for the office of investigations under the Department of Homeland Security in Miami, Florida. Duties and responsibilities include search and arrests warrants, maritime interdiction, customs and immigration enforcement. For more information pleas visit http://www.ice.gov
MOAR GUNS:Tactical-Life.com » THE U.S. ICE MEN: The ICE Special Responders cometh bringing high-speed efficiency and low-drag force as required! “ICE also maintains five additional certified SRT units that are managed by ICE Detention and Operations.” … not sure if they mean 5 or 6 SRTs total. “the U.S. Customs Service evolved into a very progressive and highly successful interdiction and investigative agency. Due to the number of high-risk enforcement actions being executed on a regular basis, the U.S. Customs Service decided to establish a tactical unit called the WETT (Warrant Entry Tactical Team). In time, the U.S. Customs Service changed the name of its tactical team to the Special Response Team.”
Gunfire a regular occurrence for ICE employees | California Watch. This has the following govt-produced pic, look how big that damn truck is. We can’t see the apparent city-like (SAC?) insignia on the side or which number it has. It was at this Fort Benning GA training they blather about.
Another benefit of filling up society with needless paramilitary organizations is random accidental gunfire. Nice. “Roughly 80 ICE-involved shootings were unintentional and often involved agents dropping, cleaning or reaching for their guns, records show. The guns, in many cases, discharged in offices, government vehicles or during target practice. ”
[ OKC Tangent. One other note — In the Oklahoma City case I think Terry Nichols tried to tip off these Homeland Security types to a stash of explosives he’d obtained from FBI-friendly weapons dealer and Contra player Roger Moore. I don’t have that info on hand here but it’s around (notes on that ). It failed because some mafia guy snitched to the FBI — the FBI has a pretty careful info cage around Nichols because of the informant-saturated nature of OKC he likes to talk about. This went down in like 2005. (Source of FBI Delay on Terry Nichols Explosives etc) So the idea is if the DOJ/FBI had a specific scheme such as OKC you could get around them through HSI. There’s more to all of this, don’t have the notes here, but there have been developments in recent weeks, search ‘Jesse Trentadue’.. ]
Conclusions? In any case it’s good to know who the ‘filler goons’ are for NSSE campaigns of state-sponsored violence and insanity, of which 3.5 are scheduled for Chicago/Camp David, RNC & DNC this year, (along with the all important national sporting events), and ICE’s new spawn HSI and the HSI SRT giant trucks will soon be a fixture at high profile gigs. There were weird Border Patrol Swat types at the 2009 G20 – See TC Indymedia Exclusive: Secret ‘Trigger’ & blueprint for emergency domestic military crackdown plan revealed – BORTAC is that team. And who knows what they might do with good ol’ FEMA.
What to expect: HSI’s avid effort to become a domestic Swiss army knife of police activity between IRS, CIA and FBI; another layer on the Joint Terrorism Task Force cake and a free-wheeling institution in its own right, combined with a few new flashy PR initiatives (a high profile bust of a little fish or 2 perhaps, etc) in order to carry out the planned ‘branding’ of HSI.
Perhaps we can just shut it down and use the borrowed debt ‘money’ we save to be less permanently indebted to the banker police state… borrowed money to build out echelons of mass suppression is always a grim spectacle. Imagine what we could have done with the wasted resources instead. Now we know which new goonsquad will get the biometrics data from Secure Communities.
And of course, who better to ‘manage’ the war on drugs than the organizational descendant of the ‘cocaine cowboys’ and the 1980s task forces which helped pass through planeload after planeload of cocaine? That era’s keywords, Barry Seal, aviation fronts like Vortex, Southern Air Transport, Evergreen, Polar Air Cross and Air America (some still thriving), operations like AMADEUS, PEGASUS and WATCHTOWER, the quasi-privatized intelligence operations authorized under proclamations like Executive Order 12333 to facilitate the drugs-for-weapons smuggling… those were a few critical points of that era.
What awaits us next? How will HSI deal with the vast scale of financial corruption? What will they do? Who are they going to point the weapons at, and where are the trucks going? Chicago, Charlotte & Tampa… but first, LA, of course. For the immigrants.
Note: This article is an add-on to our ongoing series, in conjunction with Dr. Richard Sauder, on the existence of a vast network of underground bases throughout the country.
Read part 1 of the series: “Nazi Engineers, Secret U.S. Military Bases, and Elevators To The Subterranean and Submarine Depths.”
The Very High Speed Transit System (VHST) was a Rand Corporation concept that was presented to the military industrial complex in the 1970′s.
The concept was way ahead of it’s time, exactly what the secret sinister government needed to connect their vast expansions of underground bases throughout the United States and in various regions worldwide.
This could offer an explanation for some of the recent strange sounds and booms across the country.
The late (and presumably murdered) Phil Schneider spoke about what he called an Electro Magneto Leviton Train System that traveled at speeds in excess of Mach 2.
The VHST and its proposed routes, (vast advanced tunnel systems) at the time of it’s conception in the early 1970′s, fit and follow other underground base researchers findings as well as some of my own.
An interesting aspect within the Rand Corp. document is the fact that the tunnels are way to expansive to pump all of the air out at once to create the frictionless environment needed travel at speeds in excess of 10,000+ MPH.
The air has to be evacuated from the tunnel system in segments with large crucially timed mechanized door systems as the train passes through each vapor locked section.
Electrical and mechanical noises would ensue from such operation of massive airlock doors throughout the tunnel system once the underground bases or VHST were fully operational.
During this process strange air like sounds, hums, and mechanized sounds would persist especially if the tunnels were at a depth of 400 – 800 feet (semi shallow in underground base terms). Energy is also returned into the system as the trains decelerate.
The recent Clintonville booms might also be explained as underground sonic booms.
As the trains reach the speed of sound a sonic boom would be heard and felt, multiple booms could persist in one area as the train reaches the speed of sound at the same point in the tunnel system every trip.
The following article entitled ‘L.A. to N.Y. in Half an Hour? 10,000 – M.P.H. Tunnel Train Plan Developed’, was first published in the year 1972 by the LA Times;
LA Times
June 11, 1972
A Rand corporation physicist has devised a rapid transit system to get you from Los Angeles to NY in half an hour for a $50 fair. He said existing technology made such a system feasible and so does a cost analysis. The essence of the idea is to dig a tunnel more or less along the present routes of U.S. highways 66 and thirty. The tunnel would contain several large tubes for East West travel of trains that float on magnetic fields, moving at top speeds of 10,000 mph. Passengers would faced forwarded during acceleration, backward during deceleration.
According to R. M. Salter Jr. head of the physical sciences department at Rand, the idea of high-speed train travel using electromagnetic suspension was first put forward in 1905 and actually patented in 1912. The trains he suggested now would be single cars rather than actual trains, and would be big enough to carry both passengers and freight, including large containers and automobiles.
The cars, or gondolas, would leave the New York and Los Angeles terminals at one minute or even 30 second intervals. On the main line their would be intermediate stops at Amarillo and Chicago. Feeder lines would meet the main lines at both locations.
Their would also be subsidiary lines coming into the two main terminals from such cities as San Francisco, Boston and Washington. The main idea of VHST, or Very High Speed Transit, developed originally in thinking about the satellite program and hyper sonic aircraft speeds.” Salter said in an interview at Rand.
“The underground tubes were for suggested as alternatives, perhaps not quite seriously, but it was soon apparent that the idea of a tunnel containing such tubes had a lot of real advantages.” he said.
In the first place, he explained there is the extremely important matter of the use and conservation of immense amounts of energy needed to move the vehicles at such great speed. “An airplane that travels faster than sound uses up a large part of its available energy supply just in climbing to an altitude where the speeds for which it is designed are possible.” Salter said. “That’s true of rockets to. Much of their energy is spent and lost forever and getting above the atmosphere.”
This would not be true for the VHST gondolas traveling on their electromagnetic rail beds, according to Salter. The tubes would be emptied of air, almost to the point of vacuum, so the trains would not need much power to overcome air resistance. They would not even have to be streamlined. In addition to an electromagnetic roadbeds, the opposing electromagnetic loops of wires in the floors of the gondolas would be super cooled with liquid Helium to further eliminate electrical resistance.
Just as important, the gondolas would, like old-fashioned trolley cars, generate power as they break to a stop. “Since the trains would be leaving New York and Los Angeles simultaneously every minute, the power generated by cars breaking coming into the terminal would be transferred to the power lines propelling the cars going the other way.”
“For example, there will be halfway points between each stop. Trains would use power and getting to that halfway point, and generate power going the other half of the way to the stop. Each would use power generated by trains going in the other direction.” That is the way trolley cars have operated for eighty years – taking power from the overhead lines while accelerating or running along at a steady speed, and putting power back into the lines while breaking or coasting.
The big drawback to the Salter scheme is the cost of tunneling across the nation. He admitted that it would be expensive but it does not daunt him. “After the tunneling was finished, everything else would be practically free.” He said. Even at the low fair he proposes, the enormous debt created by the tunneling would be amortized within a reasonable period if the number of passengers and the amount of freight came up to Salter’s expectations.
He figures the tunnel’s would carry seven or 8 million tons of freight a day and that passengers would take to traveling back and forth between the Eastern West Coast has readily as they now fly between San Francisco and Los Angeles. “The technology of this is much easier than was developed for the space program.”Salter said. And tunnels, he added, need not be so expensive to dig is people think.
The most expensive thing about surface routes is the acquiring right-of-way and removing buildings that stand on the chosen route. The tunnel would not incur this expense. The tunnel, besides carrying tubes for passenger and freight gondolas, would carry many of the utilities now strung across the countryside on high wires. Salter said these underground power “lines” could be super-cooled with helium, like the electromagnetic loops in the floors of the gondolas. He said this would so reduce resistance that power could be transferred from one end of the country to the other without appreciable loss.
At the present time long distance transportation of power is difficult because of the amount of energy wasted. He said laser beams could be carried in the tunnel for the instantaneous transmission of messages. Even the mail could go cross-country in pneumatic tubes carried in the tunnel. All this would save money and speed amortization, thus cutting the overall cost of tunneling. Salter said approximately 8000 miles of tunnel were dug in America and Western Europe in the 1960s.
That includes mine shafts. But he said existing tunneling technology could be vastly improved. Salter said many tunnels are dug nowadays almost as they would have been in the dark ages. Drilling holes in tunnel faces, and using machines with rotary bits are methods of tunneling that can be improved, according to him. He said the tunnel could be worked on from a great many “faces,” for instance. Salter suggested, too, that electronic beams or even water be used to drill holes for blasting. The high-powered electrons would drill blasting holes almost instantaneously.
Projections of future airplane and automobile travels in the United States, and the future train and truck transfer of freight, show that Salter’s tunnel idea is not a science fiction fantasy.
There will be more room in the tunnels for all the necessary transport than there will be over any feasible number of Airways and freeways and tracks. Salter’s suggestion, according to the experts who have had a look at it, is an eminently practical one for handling all the necessary traffic cleanly and without clogging up the air and surface pathways. But it will such a system ever be developed? Salter himself is not optimistic.
“Perhaps” is how he puts it. “I am not nearly so optimistic about the political aspects of the problem as I am about our technical capability of doing the job.” He said. “History shows that some obviously feasible and practical projects, such as the tunnel proposed over and over again for connecting England and France under the English channel, can be put off for centuries because of political pressure.
On the other hand, societies with relatively primitive technology can perform such engineering feats as the erection of impairments.” Is the VHS T too far out? Salter suggested that to get the right perspective we should look back 100 years.
By comparing transportation a century ago and transportation today, one gets a better feel for just how practical VHST is. It appears to be a logical next step, and much more practical than its alternatives of filling the highways and Airways with more and more individually guided vehicles. “This alone is a compelling reason for the high-speed system.” Salter said.
There are others, according to him. “We can’t afford any longer to continue indefinitely to pollute the skies with heat, chemicals, not to mention noise, or to carve up the land with pavement.” He said. “We also need to get the trucks and many of the cars off the highway to make the roads available to drivers who drive the family car for fun and convenience.”
As the former official host of The Intel Hub Radio Show, I have to admit I have interviewed some interesting people. However, one interview stands out in particular to me.
The interview was with the owner of a private underground base construction company with military ties. During the interview it was stated that for some reason the people in the know are indeed gearing up at a rapid rate for some event that is to occur in the not so distant future.
What might this event be?
Why are the bases activating?
This technology is 100% real and fully functional in the present day.
Shepard Ambellas & Avalon The Intel Hub
April 13, 2012
One way to neutralize a potential activist is to get them to be in a group that does all the wrong things. Why?
1) The message doesn’t get out. 2) A lot of time is wasted 3) The activist is frustrated and discouraged 4) Nothing good is accomplished.
FBI and Police Informers and Infiltrators will infest any group and they have phoney activist organizations established.
Their purpose is to prevent any real movement for justice or eco-peace from developing in this country.
Agents come in small, medium or large. They can be of any ethnic background. They can be male or female.
The actual size of the group or movement being infiltrated is irrelevant. It is the potential the movement has for becoming large which brings on the spies and saboteurs.
This booklet lists tactics agents use to slow things down, foul things up, destroy the movement and keep tabs on activists.
It is the agent’s job to keep the activist from quitting such a group, thus keeping him/her under control.
In some situations, to get control, the agent will tell the activist:
“You’re dividing the movement.”
[Here, I have added the psychological reasons as to WHY this maneuver works to control people]
This invites guilty feelings. Many people can be controlled by guilt. The agents begin relationships with activists behind a well-developed mask of “dedication to the cause.” Because of their often declared dedication, (and actions designed to prove this), when they criticize the activist, he or she – being truly dedicated to the movement – becomes convinced that somehow, any issues are THEIR fault. This is because a truly dedicated person tends to believe that everyone has a conscience and that nobody would dissimulate and lie like that “on purpose.” It’s amazing how far agents can go in manipulating an activist because the activist will constantly make excuses for the agent who regularly declares their dedication to the cause. Even if they do, occasionally, suspect the agent, they will pull the wool over their own eyes by rationalizing: “they did that unconsciously… they didn’t really mean it… I can help them by being forgiving and accepting ” and so on and so forth.
The agent will tell the activist:
“You’re a leader!”
This is designed to enhance the activist’s self-esteem. His or her narcissistic admiration of his/her own activist/altruistic intentions increase as he or she identifies with and consciously admires the altruistic declarations of the agent which are deliberately set up to mirror those of the activist.
This is “malignant pseudoidentification.” It is the process by which the agent consciously imitates or simulates a certain behavior to foster the activist’s identification with him/her, thus increasing the activist’s vulnerability to exploitation. The agent will simulate the more subtle self-concepts of the activist.
Activists and those who have altruistic self-concepts are most vulnerable to malignant pseudoidentification especially during work with the agent when the interaction includes matter relating to their competency, autonomy, or knowledge.
The goal of the agent is to increase the activist’s general empathy for the agent through pseudo-identification with the activist’s self-concepts.
The most common example of this is the agent who will compliment the activist for his competency or knowledge or value to the movement. On a more subtle level, the agent will simulate affects and mannerisms of the activist which promotes identification via mirroring and feelings of “twinship”. It is not unheard of for activists, enamored by the perceived helpfulness and competence of a good agent, to find themselves considering ethical violations and perhaps, even illegal behavior, in the service of their agent/handler.
The activist’s “felt quality of perfection” [self-concept] is enhanced, and a strong empathic bond is developed with the agent through his/her imitation and simulation of the victim’s own narcissistic investments. [self-concepts] That is, if the activist knows, deep inside, their own dedication to the cause, they will project that onto the agent who is “mirroring” them.
The activist will be deluded into thinking that the agent shares this feeling of identification and bonding. In an activist/social movement setting, the adversarial roles that activists naturally play vis a vis the establishment/government, fosters ongoing processes of intrapsychic splitting so that “twinship alliances” between activist and agent may render whole sectors or reality testing unavailable to the activist. They literally “lose touch with reality.”
Activists who deny their own narcissistic investments [do not have a good idea of their own self-concepts and that they ARE concepts] and consciously perceive themselves (accurately, as it were) to be “helpers” endowed with a special amount of altruism are exceedingly vulnerable to the affective (emotional) simulation of the accomplished agent.
Empathy is fostered in the activist through the expression of quite visible affects. The presentation of tearfulness, sadness, longing, fear, remorse, and guilt, may induce in the helper-oriented activist a strong sense of compassion, while unconsciously enhancing the activist’s narcissistic investment in self as the embodiment of goodness.
The agent’s expresssion of such simulated affects may be quite compelling to the observer and difficult to distinguish from deep emotion.
It can usually be identified by two events, however:
First, the activist who has analyzed his/her own narcissistic roots and is aware of his/her own potential for being “emotionally hooked,” will be able to remain cool and unaffected by such emotional outpourings by the agent.
As a result of this unaffected, cool, attitude, the Second event will occur: The agent will recompensate much too quickly following such an affective expression leaving the activist with the impression that “the play has ended, the curtain has fallen,” and the imposture, for the moment, has finished. The agent will then move quickly to another activist/victim.
The fact is, the movement doesn’t need leaders, it needs MOVERS. “Follow the leader” is a waste of time.
A good agent will want to meet as often as possible. He or she will talk a lot and say little. One can expect an onslaught of long, unresolved discussions.
Some agents take on a pushy, arrogant, or defensive manner:
1) To disrupt the agenda
2) To side-track the discussion
3) To interrupt repeatedly
4) To feign ignorance
5) To make an unfounded accusation against a person.
Calling someone a racist, for example. This tactic is used to discredit a person in the eyes of all other group members.
Saboteurs
Some saboteurs pretend to be activists. She or he will ….
1) Write encyclopedic flyers (in the present day, websites)
2) Print flyers in English only.
3) Have demonstrations in places where no one cares.
4) Solicit funding from rich people instead of grass roots support
5) Display banners with too many words that are confusing.
6) Confuse issues.
7) Make the wrong demands.
Cool Compromise the goal.
9) Have endless discussions that waste everyone’s time. The agent may accompany the endless discussions with drinking, pot smoking or other amusement to slow down the activist’s work.
Provocateurs
1) Want to establish “leaders” to set them up for a fall in order to stop the movement.
2) Suggest doing foolish, illegal things to get the activists in trouble.
3) Encourage militancy.
4) Want to taunt the authorities.
5) Attempt to make the activist compromise their values.
6) Attempt to instigate violence. Activisim ought to always be non-violent.
7) Attempt to provoke revolt among people who are ill-prepared to deal with the reaction of the authorities to such violence.
Informants
1) Want everyone to sign up and sing in and sign everything.
2) Ask a lot of questions (gathering data).
3) Want to know what events the activist is planning to attend.
4) Attempt to make the activist defend him or herself to identify his or her beliefs, goals, and level of committment.
Recruiting
Legitimate activists do not subject people to hours of persuasive dialog. Their actions, beliefs, and goals speak for themselves.
Groups that DO recruit are missionaries, military, and fake political parties or movements set up by agents.
Surveillance
ALWAYS assume that you are under surveillance.
At this point, if you are NOT under surveillance, you are not a very good activist!
Scare Tactics
They use them.
Such tactics include slander, defamation, threats, getting close to disaffected or minimally committed fellow activists to persuade them (via psychological tactics described above) to turn against the movement and give false testimony against their former compatriots. They will plant illegal substances on the activist and set up an arrest; they will plant false information and set up “exposure,” they will send incriminating letters [emails] in the name of the activist; and more; they will do whatever society will allow.
This booklet in no way covers all the ways agents use to sabotage the lives of sincere an dedicated activists.
If an agent is “exposed,” he or she will be transferred or replaced.
COINTELPRO is still in operation today under a different code name. It is no longer placed on paper where it can be discovered through the freedom of information act.
The FBI counterintelligence program’s stated purpose: To expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize individuals who the FBI categorize as opposed to the National Interests. “National Security” means the FBI’s security from the people ever finding out the vicious things it does in violation of people’s civil liberties.
Endgame Systems (founded 2008) has been of interest to this investigation due to the firm’s close association with corrupt HBGary CEO Aaron Barr, their stated intent to avoid public attention towards its work with the federal government, its longtime collaboration with Palantir employee Matthew Steckman (whom Palantir fired in the wake of the Team Themis affair, quite improbably claiming that Steckman had acted on his own), and its creation of a report on Wikileaks and Anonymous which was provided to Team Themis for use in its campaign against both entities. In July of 2011, an investigation by Business Week revealed the probable reasons for the firm’s secrecy:
People who have seen the company pitch its technology—and who asked not to be named because the presentations were private—say Endgame executives will bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems. Endgame weaponry comes customized by region—the Middle East, Russia, Latin America, and China—with manuals, testing software, and “demo instructions.” There are even target packs for democratic countries in Europe and other U.S. allies. Maui (product names tend toward alluring warm-weather locales) is a package of 25 zero-day exploits that runs clients $2.5 million a year. The Cayman botnet-analytics package gets you access to a database of Internet addresses, organization names, and worm types for hundreds of millions of infected computers, and costs $1.5 million. A government or other entity could launch sophisticated attacks against just about any adversary anywhere in the world for a grand total of $6 million…
Endgame’s price list may be the most important document in the collection. If the company were offering those products only to American military and intelligence agencies, such a list would be classified and would never have shown up in the HBGary e-mails, according to security experts. The fact that a nonclassified list exists at all—as well as an Endgame statement in the uncovered e-mails that it will not provide vulnerability maps of the U.S.—suggests that the company is pitching governments or other entities outside the U.S. Endgame declined to discuss the specifics of any part of the e-mails, including who its clients might be. Richard A. Clarke, former Assistant Secretary of State and special adviser to President George W. Bush on network security, calls the price list “disturbing” and says Endgame would be “insane” to sell to enemies of the U.S.
Endgame bills itself thusly:
Endgame Systems provides innovative software solutions to meet customers security needs in cyberspace. Our products include real-time IP reputation data, protection of customers’ critical information, proactive data analysis, and cutting edge vulnerability research. Endgame’s highly skilled workforce provides a full range of engineering services and solutions that raise awareness of emerging threats, and help prevent and respond to those threats globally. The company was founded by a proven leadership team with a record of success in the information security industry and is headquartered in Atlanta, GA.
Endgame works directly for a number of U.S. intelligence agencies and has a subsidiary called ipTrust. Beyond a presence at Shmoocon 2012, little has been heard from the company publicly since they deleted their website in summer 2011 following the release of this text.
Endgame is intent on remaining under the radar and otherwise seeks to avoid public attention, as show by the e-mail excerpts below:
Aaron Barr to Brian Masterson of Xetron: “But they are awfully cagey about their data. They keep telling me that if their name gets out in the press they are done. Why?”
CEO Chris Rouland to employee John Farrell: “Please let HBgary know we don’t ever want to see our name in a press release.”
John Farrell to Aaron Barr: “Chris wanted me to pass this along. We’ve been very careful NOT to have public face on our company. Please ensure Palantir and your other partners understand we’re purposefully trying to maintain a very low profile. Chris is very cautious based on feedback we’ve received from our government clients. If you want to reconsider working with us based on this, we fully understand.”
Aaron Barr to John Farrell: “I will make sure your [sic] a ‘silent’ partner and will ensure we are careful about such sensitivities going forward.”
Note: The following was written before Business Week’s July article, which provides additional context and is linked and excerpted above.
Although little info has been obtained regarding the specifics of Endgame’s operations, e-mails taken from the small firm Unveillance indicate similarities in at least one capacity to another firm called LookingGlass. In one e-mail, the CEO of Unveillance is told, “One thing I could have said is that your data is the main feeder for LookingGlass and Endgame.” Earlier in the same exchange, more clues appear when the following statement by a “friend/contractor in the pentagon [sic]” is presented: “They [Unveillance] were discussed yesterday at a meeting about the CSFI project on Syria. Frankly, I wasn’t all that blown away. Not sure what makes them better than LookingGlass or Endgame.”
Other clues are available in the same e-mail set, there being discussion of a potential purchase by Endgame of a troubled firm called Defintel, from which the CEO of Unveillance proposes to “‘cherry pick’ the talent” in order “to run the sinkhole/data creation component of our firm.”
From another e-mail exchange:
14 Apr 2011 16:53:54 -0400
From: Wayne Teeple <[email protected]>
To:"[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Hi again Karim,
I was able to meet with Keith today, not much to say other than business as
usual. He was very reserved, but open enough, but not enough if you know what I
mean. He did confirm that Chris Davis has sold himself to Endgame along with his
datafeed, and that Morrigan Research Inc is dissolved - see attached. Hence, I
believe he sold his "IP" directly as an individual because Morrigan is
dissolved as oppose to shares acquired by Endgame.
Keith had nothing real to contribute other he is staying out of everything and
just focusing on Defintel biz, he did state that he does not require the
datafeed at all to execute the Nemesis cloud service, and that he has a
"non-compete" with you, Endgame, and Morrigan. Also, he is in touch with
Davis, and I get the impression that Davis may recommend Endgame acquiring
Defintel for Nemesis code - although that could be Davis blowing smoke up
Keith's you know what!! Keith did state that he is light on technical support.
Finally, we both agreed that Ginley is a lone wolf and a gun for hire by anyone.
All and all, I am very concerned about presenting this solution any further to
my clients, nor did I get a complete warm and fuzzy that he was completely on
the up and up.
Cheers
wayne
Compare the above statements on Morrigan and DefIntel to this tweet from Chris Davis.
Brian Masterson of Xetron worked with Endgame for quite a while and made a number of references to the firm to Barr:
“They told me that they did 10M last year. Said they were working for NSA, Navy, and USAF. Also mentioned another customer who we do work with. While I was at their place getting briefed by Chris, Gen. Patraeus’ exec called three times to set a follow-up meeting.”
“EndGame did offer up a cut of their US data.”
“Doing the botnet is not that difficult but doing it to the degree that EndGame says that they have is what is impressive.”
Barr himself had long sought to include Endgame in his proposed “consortium” of firms, which itself would provide intelligence capabilities to clients (and which eventually came about in the person of Team Themis, made up of HBGary, Palantir and Berico, with Endgame having provided the team an unusually accurate report on Wikileaks and Anonymous. E-mail excerpts from Barr:
“I know we are going to talk to some senior folks in Maryland in a few weeks and would very much like to take a combined Endgame/Palantir/HBGary product.”
“I think I had mentioned the idea of a cyber consortium to you when we had lunch. That idea is coming together. We will start with cyber intelligence then when we have the capabilities fused build in the hooks for cybersecurity. Need the information before you can act.
here are the companies on board and their area of expertise. Application – HBGary Host – Splunk Network – Netwitness External – EndGame Systems Social/Link – Palantir”
John Farrell of Endgame Systems to Aaron Barr, 2/8/10:
“for now, let’s focus on:
1. OSI RFP response – dan ingevaldson and I will work with you on this
2. EGS/Palantir integration – we talked to Matt Steckman last week and we’re looking into next steps on this
3. customer briefings and new business opportunities like ARSTRAT, etc.”
A June 2010 e-mail sent from Ted Vera to fellow HBGary employees after a phone meeting with Endgame provides additional data:
I tried to keep notes during the call — my chicken scratch follows: EndGames is tracking 60-65 botnets at this time. They have a ton of conflicker data, they’re plugged in and pull millions of related IPs daily. Their data is generally described in their tech docs. They are pulling in data from IDS sensors, rolling in geolocation information, and anonymous proxies / surfing next Quarter. EndGames does not do any active scanning — all passive. They intercept botnet messages and collect / log to their database. The “SPAM” category is a generic filter that indicates the IP has been used to pass SPAM. Higher chance for false positives with SPAM filter. They try to correlate SPAM activities to known botnets, if they cannot correlate, then the event gets a generic SPAM label. Confidence %: Documented in technical docs. Primarily time-based. Looking at the overall length of infection for a given IP. Looking at half-life / decay of infections on specific IPs. The algorithm is currently very simple and time is the highest weighted factor, although the nature of the event is also weighted, ie conficker has higher weight than SPAM event. Plan to start discriminating between end-user nodes with dynamic IPs vs Enterprise / static IPs. Static IPs would decay slower than dynamic. EndGames gets malware data from various sources and REs it to pull out C2 and other traits that can be used for signature / correlation. They have Sinkholes for Conficker A and B which collect IPs of infected hosts.Cannot provide samples because they do not collect samples from specific IPs. They are ID’ing based on their observations of IPs, taking advantage of their hooks into various botnets. That said, they could probably gest us some samples and or manual tests for Conficker A and B which we could use to verify / eliminate false positives or negatives.
April 5, 2010 – John Farrell tells Aaron Barr he will no longer be accessible @ Endgame
October 2010 – Raised 29 million USD from Bessemer Ventures, Columbia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), and TechOperators, for web-based malware detection services: iPTrust.
October 28, 2010 – Endgame announces the launch of ipTrust, “the industry’s first cloud-based botnet and malware detection service … that collects and distills security data into a reputation engine.”
February 2011 – Endgame announces partnerships with HP and IBM to use their IP Reputation Intelligence service within HP’s TippingPoint Digital Vaccine service and IBM’s managed services offerings.
Mr. Christopher Rouland, CEO and Co-Founder of Endgame Systems has over 20 years of experience in the field of information security. Mr. Rouland previously held the position of CTO and Distinguished Engineer of IBM Internet Security Systems after IBM purchased Internet Security Systems, Inc. in 2006. Prior to the IBM acquisition of ISS, Chris held the position of CTO of ISS where he was responsible for the overall technical direction of the ISS product and services portfolio. Prior to his executive roles at IBM and ISS, Chris was the original Director of the famed X-Force vulnerability research team which was responsible for the discovery of hundreds of security vulnerabilities.
Mr. Daniel Ingevaldson, SVP of Product Management and Co-Founder of Endgame Systems was previously the Director of Technology Strategy with IBM Internet Security Systems. Prior to the acquisition of ISS by IBM in 2006, Mr. Ingevaldson held various positions within the ISS Professional Services organization where he lead the X-Force Penetration Testing consulting practice, and as Director of X-Force R&D where he helped expand the research capacity of the X-Force zero-day vulnerability identification and disclosure program.
Mr. Raymond Gazaway, Senior Vice President and Co-Founder of Endgame Systems was previously the Vice President of Worldwide Professional Security Services with IBM Internet Security Systems. Ray joins Endgame Systems with over 30 years of government and commercial services experience and executive management positions with IBM, Internet Security Systems and Dun and Bradstreet.
Mr. David Miles, Vice President of Research & Development and Co-Founder of Endgame Systems, brings nearly 10 years of experience in information security and was previously the Director of R&D within ISS Professional Security Services managing strategic security research engagements, designing and delivering custom cyber security products and solutions, as well as assisting in emergency response services and forensic investigations. Prior to that, in X-Force, he designed and implemented processes and procedures for delivery of hundreds of security content updates for the entire ISS product portfolio.
Mr. Mark Snell, Chief Financial Officer of Endgame Systems, oversees all aspects of Finance and Administration including financial planning, reporting and analysis, investor relations, human resources, information technology and office management. Prior to Endgame Systems, he was Corporate Controller at Suniva, a solar cell manufacturer based in Atlanta, Georgia. At Suniva, he helped to develop the financial infrastructure and systems to manage a business that would quickly become recognized as one of the fastest growing private companies in the Southeast. Earlier in his career, Mark served as Corporate Controller of Servigistics, a software developer in the service lifecycle space and in various positions of financial management for IBM and Internet Security Systems. Mark holds an MBA from Georgia State University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia. Mark is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Georgia.
Rick Wescott, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, brings over 20 years of technology sales and management experience to Endgame Systems. Before joining Endgame Systems, Rick served as Vice President & General Manager of Federal Operations for ArcSight (acquired by HP for $1.5 billion in late 2010), which he joined pre-revenue in 2002 and was instrumental in identifying and closing key foundational sales. Rick helped to manage and grow the company’s revenues to $170 million and saw the company through its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 2008 and $1.5 billion acquisition by HP in 2010. Prior to his tenure with ArcSight, Rick lead sales efforts at several leading industry firms including VeriSign, Entrust, Sybase and IBM.
Tom Noonan is the former chairman, president and chief executive officer of Internet Security Systems , Inc. , which was recently acquired by IBM for $1.3B, at which time Noonan became GM of IBM Internet Security Systems. Noonan is responsible for the strategic direction, growth and integration of ISS products, services and research into IBM’s overall security offering. Tom Noonan and Chris Klaus launched ISS in 1994 to commercialize and develop a premier network security management company. Under Noonan’s leadership, ISS revenue soared from startup in 1994 to nearly $300 million dollars in its first decade. The company has grown to more than 1,200 employees today, with operations in more than 26 countries
You can take a person out of X-Force, but you can’t take X-Force out of the person. A group of former ISS X-Force veterans at Endgame Systems has been very busy doing security research of consequence for the federal space since 2008. Via a new division called ipTrust, it plans to take some of its botnet and IP reputation capabilities to drive value into the commercial space. Similar to Umbra Data, ipTrust is delivering this value with a ‘zero touch’ modality – requiring no on-premises or capex appliance. However, rather than licensing an intelligence feed like Umbra Data, ipTrust has opted to share its research via an API, which may make it more accessible for new use cases. As we were writing up this report, news broke that parent company Endgame Systems closed a series A round of $29m. With no appliances or heavy back-end capex requirements, this stands out as an oddly large round, and has, therefore, piqued our curiosity.
As we recently noted with Umbra Data, there is high concern over botnets, but the demand for solutions is greater than the appetites for buying a dedicated appliance to augment the blind spots in traditional AV and other legacy tools. Well beyond script kiddies, attacks like Stuxnet, Zeus, BredoLab and Vecebot have people concerned – and those are all publically known ones. Adaptive persistent adversaries employ a number of techniques to avoid detection by mainstream adopted countermeasures. Several CISOs have told us they want the capabilities of anti-botnet and command-and-control identification to be delivered via their existing security investments or in other opex-consumption models. Perhaps both Umbra Data and ipTrust are hearing the same. By delivering intelligence via an API, ipTrust may find itself called out to by all sorts of Web applications to inform how trustworthy an endpoint is and adjust the interactions accordingly. We see this as an interesting delivery model, and are encouraged by the embrace of modern Web-scale technologies. Given that, the large series A funding is a bit odd. We will have to watch carefully how that is leveraged – with our first thought being: Which acquisition target would fit within that budget?
IpTrust is a new division of Atlanta-based Endgame Systems. While the 32-person Endgame Systems was more focused on federal and cyber security clientele, ipTrust aims to leverage its experience, research and platforms for commercial consumption. Endgame Systems was founded in 2008 by several Internet Security Systems (ISS) X-Force Alumni with the research chops to tackle emerging threats. Cofounders include former ISS CTO Christopher Rouland as CEO, Daniel Ingevaldson as COO, Raymond Gazaway as SVP, and David Miles as VP of engineering. Former ISS CEO Tom Noonan serves as chairman. Coinciding with the reveal of ipTrust, Endgame Systems just closed a series A round for $29m, involving Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Noonan’s own TechOperators. The round adds two new board seats for Bessemer Venture’s David Cowan and Columbia Capital’s Arun Gupta.
IpTrust is a new commercial division of Endgame Systems; it leverages a lot of the back-end technology and methods that have fueled Endgame’s federal offerings since 2008. The enabling technology has three basic pieces: a collection method for identifying botnet-compromised end nodes, a scoring system to generate a confidence rating for the implicated IP address and the exposition of the results of the analysis to clients via an API.
Since the bulk of botnets use DNS to find their command and control servers, ipTrust’s primary collection method for identifying compromised systems is to preregister or work with registrars to create sinkholes to redirect network traffic. From the vantage point of its many sinkholes, ipTrust can find new infected systems ‘phoning home’ for the first time or other reasons. The sinkholes tracked by ipTrust are a combination of its own and those from third parties. It is important to note that not all botnets communicate through DNS command and controls. Some use peer-to-peer, some use covert channels and some have one or more alternative command-and-control channels in case some are blocked or detected. We fear that this sinkhole method may miss existing infected systems that phoned home initially, but are participating on more dynamically assigned servers. While this is true, ipTrust pointed out that many samples are pretty chatty and do end up talking back to default phone-home targets in the current samples. Beyond the sinkhole method of harvesting compromised IPs, ipTrust studies the malware and spam data for clues, as well as employing honeypots and honeynets. Although attribution is nearly impossible, ipTrust also captures Geolocation information as well as proxy and satellite link details when available.
IpTrust claims its collection methods net massive amounts of data – so it needed modern, cloud-based Web-scale technologies to analyze it all. Some of the vital stats it claimed included scoring 255 million IP addresses for risk. The company claims to have 75TB of stored security events – adding more than 1TB of malicious events per week. To scale all of this data, it leverages (and contributes to) Hypertable, an open source clone (GPLv2) implementation of Google’s BigTable leveraging the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). Through high-performance map reduction in the colocation hosted infrastructure, ipTrust is able to apply its reputation engine’s scoring algorithms in a continuous fashion. A floating-point integer confidence rating is assigned per IP, along with myriad other data, such as domain, company, country code, and security events involving known botnets and variants. Given the fleeting and transient nature of the Internet, this confidence score continually degrades unless preservation is merited by the analysis. As such, consumers of the IP reputation score can make graduated nonbinary decisions on how to contextually handle trust associated with that IP.
Finally, the reputation confidence score can be exposed via an XML-RPC/REST-based API. IpTrust touts a sub 100ms response time and more than 3,000 queries per second. Supported output formats include XML, JSON and CSV. As an API, developers of applications could make Web ‘look-aside’ calls to determine how risky a transaction may be with a specific endpoint and either terminate or place limits on the interaction. For example, a questionable reputation may lead a banking application to deny funds – or perhaps to cap the maximum transaction amount via some predetermined policy.
IpTrust offers three levels of product: ipTrust Web, ipTrust Web Premium and ipTrust Professional. IpTrust Web Premium is not yet released. IpTrust Web is free service, capped at up to 1024 IP addresses for 24/7 monitoring. When available, ipTrust Web Premium will allow for unlimited IPs and will tentatively be priced by IP per month, we’re told.
IpTrust Professional allows full access to the reputation engine via the aforementioned API, with bulk IP submission for current and historical scoring as well as the supported output formats. At the moment, the API currently shares the compromised IP, but not the details about the command-and-control channel. IpTrust claims it is planning to add more actionable information in the future, such as port information and user-agent strings in HTML, which may assist other security tools in spotting or stopping command and control. Pricing for ipTrust Professional has plans starting at $1,000 per year – or less than $0.01 per query. IpTrust claims it is already working with a hosting provider and a financial services firm – with betas getting underway in healthcare, large enterprise, managed security services providers (MSSPs) and early stage security OEMs.
IpTrust plans to go to market with a mix of direct sales and a series of strategic partners. Primary targets to consume its ipTrust intelligence include hosting providers, MSSPs, VARs, and specific technology partnerships. The 451 Group has covered such power alliances, with Fidelis Security Systems XPS leveraging Cyveillance intelligence feeds.
As an API, ipTrust may also be able to tap into systems integrators and application-development communities. Within the context of a specific application, contextual risk decisions can be made in the natural flow of the transaction. This may be of value to SaaS and PaaS players trying to differentiate themselves.
IpTrust may not be apples-to-apples competition with anyone; it will likely compete for limited budget within a few pockets. Most users seeking anti-botnet capabilities are currently looking at Atlanta-based Damballa or FireEye. FireEye uses virtualization to spot new unknown malware with botnet participation. Umbra Data is fresh out of stealth, offering an XML intelligence feed alternative to appliance purchases. Service providers, MSSPs, and security OEMs may choose more than one intelligence feed or API.
Traditional antivirus players continue to leverage their incumbency (and sometimes stall with it), so people may simply deal with Symantec, McAfee (soon to be a division of Intel) Trend Micro, Sophos, Kaspersky Lab and others. Commtouch touts being well plugged-in to the internet backbones to give its Web and mail security offerings visibility into botnets and compromised systems. Most Web and mail security gateways, like Cisco (both ScanSafe and IronPort), M86 Security, Websense, Blue Coat Systems, Barracuda Networks (and Purewire), Zscaler’s hosted Web proxy, etc., leverage one or more reputation and open source intelligence feeds to operate. This fact make them both more likely to take limited wallet share, but also more likely to benefit from ipTrust’s APIs. The same could be true for enriching the value of other security appliances and products. The classic example we shared was with data loss prevention. We see sensitive content leaving the network – should we block it? Imagine now adding knowledge about whether the source or destination is a known compromised system.
Strengths
The former ISS/X-Force heavy hitters are no strangers to advanced threats, and have been cutting their teeth with federal clients since 2008. It is also aggressively embracing disruptive, cloud-scale IT innovations – while many others have been resistant.
Weaknesses
While there is value in anti-botnet and IP reputation, the spending climate is unfriendly to noncheckbox-compliance products and services. We’re also surprised by the size of the recent series A round without a stated use for it.
Opportunities
In addition to ipTrust’s stated strategy, we believe the API could find ESIM uptake. It would take effort, but it could gain traction with SIs, and SaaS and PaaS players.
Threats
The market may perceive that it is already receiving similar capabilities from incumbents. Customers may also simply resist adding new vendor relationships to manage.
Dr. Richard Holmes , age 48. Weapons expert. Dr. Holmes is believed to have worked on the production of chemical protection suits for troops. In 1991, he was the joint author of a scientific paper about an RAF chemical and biological protection system. Suicide riddle of weapons expert who worked with David Kelly: Scientist tells wife he is going for a walk, then takes his life in a field, just like his friend.
Body of Dr Richard Holmes discovered in a field four miles from the Porton Down defence establishment
Police said there were no suspicious circumstances in latest case but revealed scientist was ‘under a great deal of stress’
He resigned from Porton Down last month, but it is unclear why
A weapons expert who worked with Dr. David Kelly at the Government’s secret chemical warfare laboratory has been found dead in an apparent suicide. In circumstances strongly reminiscent of Dr. Kelly’s own mysterious death nine years ago, the body of Dr. Richard Holmes was discovered in a field four miles from the Porton Down defence establishment in Wiltshire. It is not yet known how he died.
The purpose of Project PM’s wiki is to provide a centralized, actionable data set regarding the intelligence contracting industry, the PR industry’s interface with totalitarian regimes, the mushrooming infosec/”cybersecurity” industry, and other issues constituting threats to human rights, civic transparency, individual privacy, and the health of democratic institutions.
This is a crowdsourced investigation focused on research and analysis. If you care that the surveillance state is expanding in capabilities and intent without being effectively opposed by the population of the West, you can assist in making this an actionable resource for journalists, activists, and other interested parties. Consider doing a bit of research on the companies and government agencies listed on this wiki, or even adding new topic for investigation by our participants. The best place to start is the Community Portal. We also need help adding much more to Media Reports.
Do not editorialize when contributing; simply add pertinent facts and link to source material. Employ the same writing style one finds at Wikipedia. If you’d like to contribute information to our data set without editing the wiki yourself, you may do so by sending the info to us at [email protected] (more secure means of communication can be arranged if you care to send an anonymous e-mail to that account). If you have personal knowledge about this topic for any reason, please consider letting us know via that e-mail address. Better yet, you can download an IRC client and join us at ircs://project-pm.org:6697 (If you’re not familiar with IRC, you can use this Mibbit, weblink to connect to our IRC chat server) Those interested in starting groups similar to Project PM should see our Guide to Pursuants.
Editing the Wiki
Public editing has returned to the wiki, feel free to contribute research to this project. Only registered accounts may edit, and you may need to recreate your account if you had one previously.
To browse through the complete list of pages on this site, click here. Some important pages are listed below. For a list of terms used in these articles, you can check the Glossary and Acronyms
Update January 2009: It seems that Svali is alive and safe. Please click here for more details.
In these unusual circumstances, however, we have decided to retain her tribute here, as her story is so extremely important and she has demonstrated such exceptional courage in speaing out as she did in previous years. Update February 2010: The archive of extremely important articles by Svali about Illuminati ritual abuse and other subjects, written in 2000-2002, is now back online here.
Of all the courageous warriors for truth to whom we pay tribute on these pages, Svali is an exception. Her name is a pseudonym, and it is not known whether she is dead or in hiding. But her testimony is so shocking, and of such critical importance, that in our view it is utterly clear that we must honor her here.
Svali is, or was, an American woman born into an Illuminati bloodline. When she was twelve years old, she was taken to the Vatican for a ceremony she was told would be very important. What she witnessed – an actual child sacrifice (the child was 3 or 4 years old, and appeared to be compliant) on an obsidian slab over a large pentagram in a basement catacomb – is told in her extraordinary interview with Greg Szymanski. Everyone visiting our site must hear this:
All Illuminati children are heavily conditioned to be obedient, patient, self-controlled, and totally loyal to the “family”. Some are groomed for the military or politics; others are prepared for business – or even ‘businesses’ such as prostitution. Marriages are arranged, one reason being to strengthen ties between different bloodlines. All the members of the families have respectable fronts as “normal” people to the degree that no-one who is not in the group would ever suspect the duality of their character and of their life. Meetings often occur at night. In these meetings children are “trained” using drugs, hypnosis, and shock-reward conditioning. They can, in Svali’s words, all handle and fire a weapon with deadly accuracy by the age of 8.
Higher levels of politics are heavily Illuminati occupied and controlled, in all western countries. In the United States, the population is about 1% Illuminati or Illuminati assets. Do the math: that’s about 3 million people. You may even know some of them, and have never suspected.
Svali is also an exception in that very few Illuminati members ever leave. The conditioning is just too great… and to leave means abandoning spouse, parents, children, house, money, everything. Very few people make the break. Svali reports that she was only able to leave after it dawned on her that, because she was telling lies to the Illuminati children as an Illuminati “trainer” (her role or job in the “family”), she must have been lied to herself when she was young. She converted to Christianity (‘real’ Christianity: she described various Christian churches as heavily Illuminati controlled) and this gave her the strength to leave. She gave one major radio interview, and had a website (suite101.com) which has now been taken down. She wrote prolifically for a while, but has not been heard from since 2006.
There is a lot of information on her on the internet: Google ‘Svali’ and start reading. Click here for one of the most important interviews you will ever hear, mentioned above.
Click here for the transcript, which was prepared by our friend David Wilcock, who corresponded with Svali before she disappeared, and appears briefly on Greg Szymanski’s interview.
The simplest summary of the entire Illuminati agenda and net of control is probably Henry Makow’s 2002 article here. It is reproduced below.
Illuminati Defector Details Pervasive Conspiracy
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
October 14, 2002
reprint
If you detect the devil’s hand in current events, you may be closer to the truth than you think.
A woman who was raised in the Illuminati cult describes a powerful secret organization comprising one per cent of the U.S. population that has infiltrated all social institutions and is covertly preparing a military takeover. Her revelations cast the “war on terror” and “homeland security” in their true light.
“Svali” is the pseudonym of the woman, age 45, who was a mind “programmer” for the cult until 1996. She was the sixth head trainer in the San Diego branch and had 30 trainers reporting to her. She has risked her life to warn humanity of the Illuminati’s covert power and agenda.
She describes a sadistic Satanic cult led by the richest and most powerful people in the world. It is largely homosexual and pedophile, practises animal sacrifice and ritual murder. It works “hand in glove” with the CIA and Freemasonry. It is Aryan supremacist (German is spoken at the top) but welcomes Jewish apostates. It controls the world traffic in drugs, guns, pornography and prostitution. It may be the hand behind political assassination, and “terrorism”, including Sept. 11, the Maryland sniper and the Bali bomb blast.
It has infiltrated government on a local, state and national level; education and financial institutions; religion and the media. Based in Europe, it plans a “world order” that will make its earlier attempts, Nazism and Communism, look like picnics. One other detail: these people are not happy.
Svali’s courageous testimony explains why our children are no longer taught civic values, why they are being habituated to homosexuality and violence, and why our “culture” is descending into nihilism and sexual depravity. It raises the possibility that George W. Bush and his Administration are Illuminists and much of the world “elite” is engaged in a mind-boggling criminal conspiracy.
In March 2000, Svali began writing a monthly column for survivors of Illuminati ritual abuse at Suite101.com. In December 2000, H.J. Springer, the editor of CentrExNews.com contacted Svali and conducted an extended 18-part interview with her by email, which is reproduced on line and is copyrighted.
[Project Camelot note: the suite101.com articles are here. 13 of the 18 parts of Springer’s interview are reproduced here.]
“I am convinced she is the real McCoy,” Springer wrote to me. “I have personally relayed numerous email messages to her from other members — ritually abused, brainwashed, raped, sexually abused people & you name it — some of them confirming to me her story. So I have absolutely no doubt that Svali has been part of the Illuminati since childhood.”
I also trust Svali’s testimony because it confirms my intuition and intensive research. Everything fits: from the dead hand that seems to suppress humanity to why Clinton gave secret technology to the Chinese, to persistent reports of concentration camps in the US. It explains why people I know behave in a conspiratorial way. I thank Svali for giving me a frightening but incredible key to understanding the world.
A friend urged me to beware of a hoax and offered to help confirm Svali’s personal story. I accepted. I invite you to read her entire testimony and make up your own mind. Read “Part 1” to “Part 18” first, starting at the middle of the list and working up.
With their permission, here are some highlights of Svali’s correspondence with CentrExnews.com’s H.J. Springer. I have also included material from her article Are the Illuminati Taking Over the World?
Pervasive Presence
Svali:
“The Illuminati are present in every major metropolitan center in the United States. The Illuminati believe in controlling an area through its: banks and financial institutions (guess how many sit on banking boards? You’d be surprised) Local government: guess how many get elected to local city councils? Law: children are encouraged to go to law school and medical school. Media: others are encouraged to go to journalism school, and members help fund local papers.
Beliefs
Svali:
“The Illuminati is a group that practices a form of faith known as “enlightenment”. It is Luciferian, and they teach their followers that their roots go back to the ancient mystery religions of Babylon, Egypt, and Celtic druidism. They have taken what they consider the “best” of each, the foundational practices, and joined them together into a strongly occult discipline. Many groups at the local level worship ancient deities such as “El”, “Baal”, and “Ashtarte”, as well as “Isis and Osiris” and “Set”…. I do know that these people teach and practice evil.”
Weishaupt
Svali:
“Weishaupt did not create the Illuminati, they chose him as a figurehead and told him what to write about. The financiers, dating back to the bankers during the times of the Templar Knights who financed the early kings in Europe, created the Illuminati. Weishaupt was their “go fer”, who did their bidding.”
Military Takeover
Svali:
“Briefly, each region of the United States has “nerve centres” or power bases for regional activity. The United States has been divided up into seven major geographical regions. Each region has localities within it that contain military compounds and bases that are hidden in remote, isolated areas or on large private estates.
These bases are used intermittently to teach and train generational Illuminati in military techniques, hand- to- hand combat, crowd control, use of arms, and all aspects of military warfare. Why? Because the Illuminists believe that our government, as we know it, as well as the governments of most nations around the world, are destined to collapse. These will be planned collapses, and they will occur in the following ways:
The Illuminati has planned first for a financial collapse that will make the great depression look like a picnic. This will occur through the manoeuvring of the great banks and financial institutions of the world, through stock manipulation, and interest rate changes. Most people will be indebted to the federal government through bank and credit card debt, etc. The governments will recall all debts immediately, but most people will be unable to pay and will be bankrupted. This will cause generalized financial panic, which will occur simultaneously worldwide, as the Illuminists firmly believe in controlling people through finances.
Doesn’t sound pleasant, does it? I don’t know the exact time frame for all of this, and wouldn’t want to even guess. The good news is that if a person is debt-free, owes nothing to the government or credit debt, and can live self sufficiently, they may do better than others. I would invest in gold, not stocks, if I had the income. Gold will once again be the world standard, and dollars will be pretty useless (remember after the Civil War? Our money will be worth about what confederate money was after the collapse).
Next there will be a military takeover, region by region, as the government declares a state of emergency and martial law. People will have panicked, there will be an anarchical state in most localities, and the government will justify its move as being necessary to control panicked citizens. The cult trained military leaders and people under their direction will use arms as well as crowd control techniques to implement this new state of affairs. …Military bases will be set up, in each locality (actually, they are already here, but are covert). In the next few years, they will go above ground and be revealed. Each locality will have regional bases and leaders to which they are accountable. The hierarchy will closely reflect the current covert hierarchy.
About five years ago, when I left the Illuminati, approximately 1% of the US population was either part of the Illuminati, sympathetic to it, or a victim of Mind Control (and therefore considered useable). While this may not sound like many, imagine 1% of the population highly trained in the use of armaments, crowd control, psychological and behavioral techniques, armed with weapons and linked to paramilitary groups.”
Leadership
Svali:
“The national council [consists of] influential bankers with OLD money such as: The Rockefellers, the Mellon family, the Carnegie family, the Rothschild family etc. I know I shouldn’t name names, but I will.
The “Supreme World Council” is already set up as a prototype of the one that will rule when the NWO comes into being. It meets on a regular basis to discuss finances, direction, policy, etc. and to problem-solve difficulties that come up. Once again, these leaders are heads in the financial world, OLD banking money. The Rothschild family in England, and in France, have ruling seats. A descendant of the Hapsburg dynasty has a generational seat. A descendant of the ruling families of England and France have a generational seat. The Rockefeller family in the US holds a seat.
This is one reason that the Illuminati have been pretty “untouchable” over the years. The ruling members are very, very, very wealthy and powerful. I hope this information is helpful. How do I know this? I was on a local leadership council (a head trainer), but I talked to those on regional. Also, every Illuminati child is taught who their “leaders” are, and told to take an oath of allegiance to them and the “New Order to come”.”
Royalty
Svali:
“The Illuminati leadership state that they are descended from royal bloodlines, as well as unbroken occult heritage.
See, there were two definitions of “royalty” used. Open royalty that is currently seen now, and “hidden royalty” of royal lineage and extreme occult power. Sometimes the two were concurrent, such as with the Prince of Wales.
I never thought of which country/line held the most power, since I was just a peon busily doing my job. But my understanding was: The Hanoverian / Hapsburg descendants rule in Germany over the Bruderheist. They are considered one of the strongest lines for occult as well. The British line is just under them, with the royal family. Definitely, they rule the UK branch under the Rothschilds in the occult realm, even though parliament rules the country openly.
In France, again, descendants of the royal families are also in power in the occult realm, but the French Rothschilds hold the reigns over all of them.”
Rank of the US
Svali:
“The U.S. is considered lower, and younger, than the European branches. …Germany, France, and the UK form a triumvirate that rules in the European cult. The USSR is considered important, and has the strongest military groups. The USSR has been promised fourth position in the New World Order, BEFORE the role the U.S. would have, because the USSR has been more helpful and cooperative over the years with furthering the agenda.
The descendants of the former ruling families there are also involved in the occult leadership, along with the newer ones. There is no Marxism in the cult. China will be ranked after the USSR, then the U.S. But a lot of the current U.S. leadership will be in Europe when the change occurs, and many have homes there. They will be “changing nationalities” overnight, as it were. This is the little that I do remember. Wish I had been a better student of this stuff, but I was too busy trying to stay alive when I was in it.
Russia will be the military base and powerhouse of the group, since their military commanders (Illuminist) are considered the best in the world, and very, very disciplined. China, because of its roots in oriental occultism, and its large population, will also be considered a higher power than the US. But again, the real power will reside in Europe, according to what I was taught when part of the group.
The United Nations
Svali:
“The UN was created early in this century in order to help overcome one of the biggest barriers to a one-world government …That barrier is the one of nationalism, or pride in one’s country. This is why it was NOT a popular concept when first introduced, it took years of country bashing in the media and the destruction of any sense of national pride by a (not so subtle) media campaign over the years.
The UN is a preparation, but it is not the real power in the world, and will be relatively unimportant when the NWO comes into being. The real councils will then step forward. But as a means of getting the general public to accept the idea of a “global community” and the “one world community” the UN is a stepping stone in their working towards the NWO.”
Israel
Svali:
“The conflict in the Middle East is only to the advantage of the Illuminists. They HATE Israel, and hope one day to see it destroyed, and are biding their time. One of the olive branches offered by the UN when it takes over is that they will prevent war in the Middle East, and this will be greeted with joy by many.
At the same time, the Illuminati covertly supply guns and funds to BOTH sides to keep the conflict fuelled. They are very duplicitous people. They used to funnel guns through the USSR to Palestine, for example, in the name of promoting “friendliness” between the USSR and this state and other Arab nations. Then, the US Illuminists would help funnel guns to Israel, for the same reason.
These people love the game of chess, and see warfare between nations as creating an order out of chaos. The USSR is going to get stronger again. It has too strong a military both openly, and covertly (ALL Illuminati military trainers have visited Russia to learn from them) to sit quietly and quiesciently to the side. In the NWO, they will be stronger than us.”
Is the Illuminati a Jewish conspiracy?
Svali:
“Absolutely not. In fact, Hitler and his people (especially Himmler and Goebbels) were top Illuminists. The Illuminati are racist in the extreme, and as a child, I was forced to play “concentration camp” both on my farm in Virginia, and also in Europe in isolated camps in Germany.
The Jews historically fought against the occult (see Deuteronomy and the Old Testament for how God through the Jewish people tried to cleanse the land of the occult groups that were operating there, such as those who worshipped Baal, Ashtarte, and other Canaanite and Babylonian gods.
[from an email to Henry Makow]
Yes, there are some very powerful Jewish people in this group. For instance, the Rothschild family literally runs the financial empire in Europe (and indirectly the States), and are a well-known Jewish family. I have also known people whose parents were Jewish diamond merchants in the group, and at every level. But to rise to power in the Illuminati, a Jewish person at night would be forced to renounce their faith, and to give their first allegiance to Lucifer and the beliefs of the Illuminati. In return for this betrayal, they believe that power (financial) and rewards come; and in one sense they do, but at too high a price (losing their eternal soul).
The Nazi/concentration camp mentality is very strong, though, and I was told that Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and others were high-ranking German members of the group (Himmler was higher than the other two), and Mengele their paid puppet as well, who later worked as a high trainer of the American branch between his periods of hiding in South America. They honestly believed that they were acting as agents of their ‘gods’ to exterminate the Jewish race, and I am so, so sorry that this group has enacted so many horrors on the earth (and so, so glad that I left it).
I hope this helps you. I have always wondered this, though, why some of the highest ranking financial families in the group (baron Rothschild of France is one of the 13 European lords, or “kings” that run the group in Europe, and sits on the World Council) are Jewish, yet the group espouses hatred of their own race.”
Are they racist?
Svali:
“Lots of Illuminists have Fourth Reich programming inside. The Illuminati are racist, and have a very “Aryan” outlook. They believe strongly in the rule of the “pure” and “intelligent” by their definitions, and in their ceremonies, there will occasionally be minorities killed in ceremonies.
They are trying to breed a “genetically superior” race to rule, with their children and descendants. They are also followers of Plato’s Republic, and believe that they will be the ones to usher in this “Utopian” rule with the NWO in their opinion. In their Utopia, the intelligentsia will rule, and the sheep like masses will follow their leaders (that is their view of the world; that the occult leaders are “enlightened’ and intelligent, while the average person is a “sheep” to be led by the nose).”
Freemasonry
Svali:
“The Freemasons and the Illuminati are hand in glove. I don’t care if this steps on any toes, it’s a fact. The Masonic temple at Alexandria, Virginia (the city itself was named after Alexandria, Egypt, and is a hotbed of Illuminati activity) is a centre in the Washington, DC area for Illuminati scholarship and teaching. I was taken there at intervals for testing, to step up a level, for scholarship, and high ceremonies. The leaders in this Masonic group were also Illuminists.
This has been true of every large city I have lived in. The top Freemasons were also top Illuminists. My maternal grandparents were both high ranking Masons in the city of Pittsburgh, Pa. (president of the Eastern Star and 33rd degree Mason) and they both were also leaders in the Illuminati in that area.
Are all Masons Illuminati? No, especially at the lower levels, I believe they know nothing of the practices that occur in the middle of the night in the larger temples. Many are probably fine businessmen and Christians. But I have never known a 32 degree or above who wasn’t Illuminati, and the group helped create Freemasonry as a “front” for their activities.”
CIA, FBI are all infiltrated. So are Mormons, etc.
Svali:
“Many of the administrators and directors at the FBI are also Illuminists. The CIA helped bring over German scientists after WWII. Many of these were also Illuminati leaders in their own country, and they were welcomed with open arms by the U.S. group. They also funnelled all information they were learning to the Illuminati.
The Mormons affiliated years ago in a meeting with Illuminati leadership in the 1950s. The same with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
The Cold War
Svali:
“Russia was never really a threat to us. Marxism was funded by the Illuminati, and espoused as a counterbalance to capitalism. The Illluminati believe strongly in balancing opposing forces, in the pull between opposites. They see history as a complex chess game, and they will fund one side, then another, while ultimately out of the chaos and division …, they are laughing because they are ultimately beyond political parties. A top western financier will secretly meet with an eastern or Russian “adversary” during those years, and have a good laugh at how the “sheep” were being deluded. I am sharing here what I was taught, and also observed.
They are truly an international group, and the group’s agenda supersedes any nationalistic feelings. There is also a lot of trading back and forth of members in these groups. A Russian trainer might come to the US for awhile, complete a job, then go back, or vice-versa.”
Assassin Training
Svali:
“Here is how it is done (how it was done to me):
[1] When the child is 2 years old, place them in a metal cage with electrodes attached. Shock the child severely.
[2] Take the child out, and place a kitten in its hands. Tell the child to wring the kitten’s neck. The child will cry and refuse.
[3] Put the child into the cage, and shock them until they are dazed and cannot scream any more.
[4] Take the child out, and tell them again to wring the kitten’s neck. This time the child will shake all over, cry, but do it, afraid of the torture. The child will then go into the corner and vomit afterwards, while the adult praises them for “doing such a good job”.
This is the first step. The animals get bigger over time, as the child gets older. They will be forced to kill an infant at some point, either a set up in VR (virtual reality), or in reality. They will be taught by age 9 to put together a gun, to aim, and fire on target and on command. They will then practice on realistic manikins. They will then practice on animals. They will then practice on “expendables” or in VR. They will be highly praised if they do well, and tortured if they don’t comply.
The older the child or teen, the more advanced the training. By age 15, most children will also be forced to do hand to hand combat in front of spectators (high people who come to watch the “games” much as the ancient gladiators performed). These matches are rarely done to the death, usually until one child goes down. They use every type of weapon imaginable, and learn to fight for their lives. If a child loses a fight, they are heavily punished by their trainer, who loses “face”. If they win, they are again praised for being “strong’ and adept with weapons. By the time they are 21, they are well trained combat/killing machines with command codes to kill and they have been tested over and over to prove that they WILL obey on command. This is how children in the German Illuminati are brought up, I went through it myself.”
Trust in Family
Svali:
“They tell their children as they are torturing them, “I am doing this because I love you.” To them, the greatest love is to make a child strong, and fit to lead or to move higher in the group, by whatever means it takes.
If a leader sees a child, and wants it as a prostitute, the loving parents will give it away, happy that their child will rise in status. Also, again, they view betrayal as the greatest good. They will do set up after set up to teach their children to never openly trust others.
I remember hundreds of agonizing set ups and betrayals, and hearing when I was betrayed or wounded, “And such is the heart of man.” Those doing this to me thought they were teaching me something of value, that would help me. And because of the vicious and political nature of the group, in one sense they were right; the naive get stepped on and wounded. I have known parents who tried to spare their children some of this out of love, but often they were overruled by other family members, who viewed these parents as “weak” and “unfit” to teach their child.”
Morale
Svali:
“Most of them are wounded, abused victims, who don’t realize that it is possible to leave the group. There is a lot of discontent in the ranks, and there would be a mass exodus if the members believed it were really possible to get out (and live). Many of the trainers I knew (I know, wicked, torturing pedophiles) were NOT happy with what they did. They would whisper quietly, or give a look, to show that they disagreed with what they had to do. They would resignedly do their jobs, in the hope of advancement.
Know what one of the biggest carrots offered to those who advance up in the group is? That you don’t have to hurt people anymore, and that you can’t be abused (it’s true: only those higher than you in the group can abuse you, so everyone wants to move up, where the pool of candidates becomes smaller). Of course, people can choose to abuse anyone beneath them, and that motivates.
The Illuminati are a very political and back stabbing group, a “dog eat dog” mentality; everyone wants to move up. These are NOT nice people and they use and manipulate others viciously. They cut their eyeteeth on status, power, and money.
They never openly disclose their agenda, or their cult activities, as often they are amnesic to them. These are well-respected, “Christian” appearing business leaders in the community. The image in the community is all-important to an Illuminist; they will do anything to maintain a normal, respected facade, and DESPISE exposure. ….
None of the Illuminists that I have known, had unkind, or evil appearing, persona in their daytime lives, although some were dysfunctional, such as being alcoholics. The dissociation that drives the Illuminists is their greatest cover … Many, if not most, of these people are completely unaware of the great evil that they are involved in, during the night.”
TV
Also, remember those studies that stated that “TV violence doesn’t affect children’s behaviour” years ago? Guess who funded them? They are a bunch of bullcrud. What a person watches DOES influence them, and this is well known by the behaviourists in the group. In fact, they know that TV is a tool that they purposely use to influence “the masses”. It cannot create a total personality change in the average citizen, but it can desensitize us increasingly to violence, pornography and the occult, and influence the perceptions of young children.
Rock Music
I believe that Britney Spears, Eminem, and others are being used by them to sing lyrics they like (ever notice that he wears a Neo-Nazi look and sings hate lyrics? This is NOT by chance). In fact, many of the top pop singers come from an internship with the “Mickey Mouse club” (yep, good old Walt the Illuminist’s Empire) and I believe they are offered stardom in exchange for allegiance or mind control.
How many lyrics advocate suicide, violence, despair, or New Age spirituality in pop/rock today? Or just get a copy of the words and read (but be aware that many are possibly triggering to survivors of mind control).
Illuminati Weaknesses
Svali:
“1. Their arrogance (I think I mentioned this before) is their weakness. These people think they are untouchable, and this could make them careless.
2. If by a miracle, enough people took this SERIOUSLY and started organizing in some way to stop the Illuminati take over, with prayer and God’s guidance, perhaps they could be stopped. I hope so, with all of my heart.
3. Stopping pornography and child prostitution and drug smuggling and gun running would take out a huge chunk of their profits. Maybe they would slow down. But honestly, stopping the above would be as difficult as stopping the group.”
Public’s Denial Mechanism
Svali:
“The evidence is there, but in my opinion, the average person does NOT want to know, and even when confronted with it, will look the other way.
The Franklin case is a point. How much evidence has come out? Or the MK-Ultra documents that have been declassified, shown as real, and people ignore it.
Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox. But I believe that the media that downplays ritual abuse is feeding into a deep need in the average person to NOT know the reality. In fact, how can a person face the fact of great evil in mankind, unless they have either a strong faith in God, or are faced with insurmountable evidence? We as human beings want to believe the BEST of our race, not the worst, IMHO.
I really don’t believe people will do anything about the Illuminati even if they know. Sorry for the cynicism, but it is based on a lifetime of experience.
The Illuminists don’t care who prints this stuff, or if they are “exposed” because they are counting on the majority not believing it, having done a pretty good job with a media blitz campaign (seen any articles in Newsweek or Time lately that addresses this other than as a laughable conspiracy theory? Guess who owns Time-Warner?).
I have heard them laughing about this very thing in leadership meetings five years ago, and I doubt their attitude has changed much since then. If people DID believe this, if action could be taken, then I would be very surprised and quite happy.”
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This video, An Open Message to Police & Military puts it succinctly:
When the extreme measures have run their course there will be nothing to fall back on and nothing can save the president of a collapsing empire from the revolt of its citizens and soldiers.
The March 11 Massacre of the 17 Afghan citizens, including at least nine children and four women, raises many fundamental issues about the nature of a colonial war, the practices of a colonial army engaged in a prolonged (eleven-year) occupation and the character of an imperial state as it commits war crimes and increasingly relies on arbitrary dictatorial measures to secure public compliance and suppress dissent.
After the cold-blooded murder of the 17 Afghan villagers in Kandahar Province the US military and the ever-complicit Obama regime constructed an elaborate cover-up, exposing the Administration up to charges of conspiracy to suppress the essential facts, falsify data and obstruct justice: All are grounds for criminal prosecution and impeachment.
This massacre is just one of several hundred committed by US armed forces according to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. It could ruin the Obama presidency, by putting him on trial for conspiracy to obstruct justice and arguably send him to jail for war crimes.
Obama’s deliberate lies about the events surrounding the massacre and the fundamental responsibility of the high military command for the crimes committed by its troops underscores the breakdown of the occupation of Afghanistan, the very centerpiece of Obama’s war policy. The President of the United States has personally played a major role in the cover-up. From a political vantage point, the executive conspiracy charge has wider and deeper implications than the massacre itself, as horrible as it is.
The Massacre, the ‘Official’ Story (1st version) and the Cover-Up
According to the US military command in Afghanistan and the Obama regime, at 3am on March 11, 2012 a deranged soldier walked off a Special Forces Base in rural Kandahar Province and without command authority entered two villages (two miles apart), shot and killed 17 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children and wounded an unspecified number of villagers; then he doused their bodies with gasoline, set them on fire and hiked back to base to surrender himself to his commanders.
This ‘surrender’, the Pentagon claims, was recorded on video and no less than the President of the United States, Barack Obama, vouched for its authenticity as conclusive proof for the story of a lone, unbalanced mass murderer.
The military command quickly whisked the initially unnamed murderer out of the Afghanistan to the maximum security federal prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and only then identified the madman as a 38-year old, multi-decorated, 11-year army veteran, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.
The US has rejected all attempts by the Afghan President, the Afghan Army Chief and members of the Afghan Parliament to interview Sgt Bales, gather testimony and bring the suspect to trial in Afghanistan.
According to an independent Afghan parliamentary investigation led by Sayed Ishaq Gillami, and initial investigations by General Sher Mohammed Karimi of the Afghan Army, who interviewed residents of the two villages, there are significant contradictions in the US military’s and President Obama’s “official story”. Eye witnesses have testified that up to 20 soldiers were involved, aided by a helicopter. What they described was typical of a US Special Forces’ night time raid, which involved the systematic breaking down of doors, rousing the sleeping families and shooting Afghan victims.
A US Special Forces night raid in an Afghan family home in September, 2011. “Study: US Night Raids Aimed at Afghan Civilians (Obama Death Squads)”
Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today, finds the villagers version of events quite plausible for the following reasons: The villages, where the murders occurred, were two miles apart, making it highly unlikely that a lone, fully armed solder could haul a multi-gallon jerry can of gasoline from his base to the first sleeping village, break down the doors of one or more homes, commit the murders, douse and burn his victims and then proceed on foot two miles further on to the second village, shoot, kill and burn the next set of unarmed villagers and then walk back to his base and surrender.
Shekiba Hashimi, a Member of Parliament who was reading the report of their investigations mentioned that the Governor of Kandahar and the NATO forces’ Chief Commander in Kandahar both lied to Afghan people. There was not only one soldier killing all those civilians. Our investigations shows that a team of U.S. soldiers were involved in that massacre, Mrs. Hashimi added. Mrs. Hashimi mentioned that two helicopters were supporting this operation and at least 15 U.S. soldiers were involved in this barbaric action. All female victims were naked, Mrs. Hashimi added.
Shekiba Hashimi, a Member of Parliament who was reading the report of their investigations mentioned that the Governor of Kandahar and the NATO forces’ Chief Commander in Kandahar both lied to Afghan people. There was not only one soldier killing all those civilians. Our investigations shows that a team of U.S. soldiers were involved in that massacre, Mrs. Hashimi added. Mrs. Hashimi mentioned that two helicopters were supporting this operation and at least 15 U.S. soldiers were involved in this barbaric action. All female victims were naked, Mrs. Hashimi added.
It makes far more sense that a heavily armed group of Special Forces troops, engaged in village ‘pacification’ operations, left their base in military vehicles, passed through the gate in the wee hours of the morning, on a routine official operation, authorized by the bases military command and something went wrong. What was supposed to have been a typical midnight assault on a “pacified” village in search of Taliban supporters, turned into the mass murder of children and their mothers in bed with virtually no adult males (husbands, fathers, uncles or brothers) present to protect them.
Typically, all Afghan farmers keep weapons in their homes, but these villages had been disarmed by the Special Forces and the adult men had either been detained in earlier sweeps or were in hiding from just such brutal operations in the expectation that their wives and children would not be attacked.
Whatever triggered the mass murder of mothers and children in their nightclothes in those villages in Kandahar, one thing is clear: the President of the United States conspired with the US military command to obstruct justice in the cover-up of a heinous war crime, a felony punishable with impeachment.
When the implausibility first ‘official’ story became embarrassingly evident to the most superficial observer, the Obama ‘cover-up’ crew released a new version on March 26: According to the revised version of events, the lone, deranged Sgt. Bales committed the first massacre in the early morning hours of March 11, walked back to base for breakfast and lunch and then walked out again to a second village for another round of mass murder – before returning and turning himself in to his commander posing for the video.
Why the Obama Cover-Up: Military Demoralization and the Iran War
Why would President Obama engage in such a clumsy cover-up further eroding US relations with the Afghan President Karzai, the Afghan military and especially the Afghan people? Why would he risk charges of conspiracy to protect war criminals by insisting on an easily refutable cover-up?
The story of the alleged assassin, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, provides some leads about the larger crisis facing the imperial military. Bales is a ‘decorated’ soldier rewarded for his three tours of combat duty in Iraq and his more recent Afghan assignment where he would have participated in similar types of Special Pacification Operations among civilians in the countryside in Afghanistan. In the days after news of the massacre leaked out, a furious Afghan President Karzai claimed that “hundreds” of similar massacres had been perpetrated by US and NATO forces and had gone unreported in the Western media and unpunished. Karzai has repeatedly called for an end to US Special Forces’ night raids on sleeping villages. But, until now, there had been no need for a US Presidential cover-up up. With the approaching US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the growing expressions of militant Afghan nationalism, the Obama regime must hide the true nature of the occupation. Washington’s Afghan clients can no longer ignore US war crimes against innocent children and women and other non-combatants. This is especially true in the so-called ‘pacified’ villages where the adult Afghani men have already been arrested in sweeps or driven into hiding and with the few remaining, disarmed and ‘under the control’ of the US Special Forces.
Considering even the US official story, why would the Special Forces commanders in charge of the Sgt. Bales base ignore the loud bursts of gunfire and screams of women and children in a village within 100 meters of its perimeter at 3 am? According to their official version, the base command only became aware of the massacres when Sgt. Bales walked back to base, raised his hands high for a video-op and confessed to killing and desecrating the bodies of 17, mostly children and women.
Obama has tried to sell the ‘confession’ video as proof of the ‘official version’ of events to a skeptical Afghan President Karzai who contemptuously demanded the ‘alleged’ video be turned over for a detailed examination for authenticity. Obama’s refusal to release the video tends to confirm his role in the cover-up. Obama’s contention that a ‘lone unbalanced gunman’ committed the crime is completely self-serving and exposes serious and deep structural problems with the war in Afghanistan.
US combat troops in Afghanistan are demoralized and angry because their military commanders have marched them into a cul de sac – a dead end. They are engaged in a long, losing war where every dead US soldier is accompanied by scores who are maimed, blinded and mentally traumatized.
In Obama’s war, the wounded are patched up and recycled back into the same meat grinder in an increasingly hostile environment, where rape, torture, maiming and murder become their only ‘recreation’. Sgt. Bales was coerced into multiple tours of duty in Iraq and then shipped off to Afghanistan, contrary to his expectations of a promotion and an end to overseas combat assignments.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales (L), one of the soldiers accused of involvement in the recent massacre of Afghan civilians, at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, August 23, 2011
There is a huge gap between the world of the political warlords in Washington and their accomplices among the warmongering ‘lobbies’ and that of the soldiers who risk their lives in imperial wars of occupation.
These dispensable soldiers are repeatedly deployed to brutal colonial wars thousands of miles from their homes to confront an ‘enemy’ they cannot possibly understand. They end up brutalizing the families, friends, neighbors and compatriots of the elusive Afghan anti-colonial fighters – who are everywhere.
Back in the Washington none of the political war-mongers ever experience the pain and suffering of a prolonged war, which for any soldier on the battlefield, is ever present, everywhere. Soldiers, like Sgt. Bales, operate in a very hostile environment where, a roadside bomb or a grenade thrown from a motorcycle, or even a ‘trusted’ Afghan ally, who might turn his gun on his US ‘mentors,’ are omnipresent threats to their ever returning home in one piece.
Speaking January 5 alongside his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the president announced a shift in strategy for the American military, one that emphasizes aerial campaigns and proxy wars as opposed to “long-term nation-building with large military footprints.”
Obama has to conspire with the Pentagon in covering up this mass murder, defending the officers in charge of these ‘pacified’ villages, because there are no alternatives, no back-ups, no new recruits eager to engage in the 12th year of war in Afghanistan. There are only the re-cycled killers, willing to pursue their career in ‘Special Forces’ involving ‘kill and destroy’ operations. Furthermore, Obama cannot rely on the international allies who are rushing to withdraw their own troops from this quagmire. And Obama has a problem with his allied Afghan warlords and kleptocrats, who managed to run off with over $4.5 billion dollars in 2011 (half of the entire state budget) (Financial Times, 3/19/12, p. 1). President Obama cannot allow an entire garrison, including their commanding officer to be put on trial for the war crimes in this massacre.
Holding anyone, besides the hapless Sgt. Bales, accountable for the massacre would incite a general rebellion within the armed forces, or, at a minimum, further demoralize the elite Special Forces who are expected to man these long-term engagements after the regulars withdraw, which in the case of Afghanistan could last until 2024.
This issue has implications far beyond Afghanistan: Obama has developed his entire new counter-insurgency strategy centered on the easy entry and bloody exits of US Special Forces targeting over seventy-five countries. The Special Forces figure prominently in Obama’s military preparations for Syria and Iran, which have been developed at the behest of his Zionist overlords.
In the final analysis, the entire imperial military apparatus of the Obama regime, while formidable on paper, depends on the ‘Special Operations’ formations. As such, they are the centerpiece of the new imperial warfare, developed as a response to the demands for reduced ground forces, budgetary constraints and growing domestic discontent. Their ‘actions’ are designed to leave no witnesses and no embarrassments. They may be the butchers of children, women and unarmed civilians but they are the White House’s butchers.
Despite all their crimes and cover-ups, the Obama regime’s priority is to defend the empire with whatever personnel is available at his disposal. So while Sgt. Bales is in Leavenworth, the Afghan elite cry injustice, the families in Kandahar mourn their dead and the Taliban plan their revenge.
On the domestic front, Obama faces strong popular opposition to the costly unending wars, which have destroyed the US economy, and growing anger and demoralization in the armed forces. As a result of the massive popular discontent among the American people with politicians of both parties who have recklessly sent troops into anachronistic colonial wars, which serve the interest of foreign powers, the President has issued an executive decree, allowing him to assume dictatorial powers in order to militarize the entire economy, its resources and its work force. On March 16, 2012 Barak Obama issued an Executive Order-National Defense Resource Preparedness in order to sustain the global empire.
Clearly prolonged colonial wars cannot be sustained through the consent of the citizens and such wars cannot be prosecuted according to military manuals and the Geneva Conventions. At this point, only Presidential ‘rule by decree’ can secure compliance of the citizens at home and only massacres and cover-ups can sustain the colonial occupations abroad. But these are desperate and temporary: When the extreme measures have run their course there will be nothing to fall back on and nothing can save the president of a collapsing empire from the revolt of its citizens and soldiers.
The Department of Homeland security has just executed an order for enough rounds of 40 caliber ammunition to kill every man, woman and child in the United States.
The Intel Hub alerts us to a shocking new defense contract entered by the Department of Homeland Security to secure a massive amount of ammunition, with the option for infinite supply, infinite delivery.
ATK Awarded Contract to Supply 450 Million Rounds of .40 Caliber Ammunition to the Department of Homeland Security
ATK has secured a major Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity deal to supply up to 450 million rounds of .40 caliber ammunition to the Department of Homeland Security.
The 1 year contract with four option years comes at a time when many Americans believe that DHS, along with certain aspects of the military, will soon turn their sights on the American people during some sort of martial law scenario.
“We are proud to extend our track record as the prime supplier of .40 caliber duty ammunition for DHS, ICE,” said Ron Johnson, the president of ATK’s Security and Sporting group,” reported a PR Newswire release.
The Department of Homeland Security has been extremely busy in the last few months.
Whether it be mastering their surveillance of social media, planning to buildlevel 4 bio weapons labs in the middle of the country, defending Globalism,lying to Congress about their big brother policies, labeling people who believe in conspiracy theories as potential terrorists, or taking over cyber security, DHS seems to be actively working against the American people on every front.
Considering this, the fact that they are openly ordering millions more rounds of ammunition should at the very least give the American people pause.
As 2012 continues to move forward and the awakening of the sleeping giant that is the American people kicks into high gear, federal agencies seem hell bent to continue to gear up for a possible confrontation with the people of this once great country.
ATK ATK +0.25% announced that it is being awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) agreement from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS, ICE) for .40 caliber ammunition. This contract features a base of 12 months, includes four option years, and will have a maximum volume of 450 million rounds.
ATK was the incumbent and won the contract with its HST bullet, which has proven itself in the field. The special hollow point effectively passes through a variety of barriers and holds its jacket in the toughest conditions. HST is engineered for 100-percent weight retention, limits collateral damage, and avoids over-penetration.
“We are proud to extend our track record as the prime supplier of .40 caliber duty ammunition for DHS, ICE,” said Ron Johnson, President of ATK’s Security and Sporting group. “The HST is a proven design that will continue to serve those who keep our borders safe.”
ATK will produce the ammunition at the Federal Cartridge Company facility in Anoka, Minn. Deliveries are expected to begin in June.
While just a “standard disclosure” the press release goes on to warn this is forward looking contract which may change based on a variety of factors, including economic conditions.
Among those factors are: changes in governmental spending, budgetary policies and product sourcing strategies; the company’s competitive environment; the terms and timing of awards and contracts; economic conditions; the supply, availability and costs of raw materials and components; or reliance on a key supplier.
Question: Who Needs .40 Caliber?
A newbie I know got a sudden hard-on for 40 cal. “It’s what the cops use,” he said. “It’s not as cheap as 9mm,” I pointed out, knowing that my ballistic buddy was going to be doing a LOT of shooting. “It’s also harder to manage the recoil, so you’ll probably going to be less accurate. And it doesn’t make as big a hole as a .45.” I didn’t get into the .40′s history: the whole post-1986 FBI shooting“we need a bigger caliber so how about we neck-down this 10mm cartridge” deal. I think I convinced him with this: “This isn’t Goldilocks and the Three Bears. There is no ‘just right’ caliber. Big holes (.45) or more filling (9mm); pick one.” Am I wrong?
The entire concept of a “Terrorism expert” is invalid, as it is an honorific title typically assigned due to ideology and interests served rather than actual expertise.
In U.S. political and media discourse, Terrorism means little more than: that which America’s Enemies du Jour (generally Muslim Enemies) do to it, but not what America and its allies do to anyone.
Terrorism is not a real concept in which one develops “expertise”; it is, and from its introduction into world affairs always has been, a term of propaganda designed to legitimize violence by some actors while de-legitimizing very similar violence by others.
US Military Drones targeting Rescue Workers and Funerals in Pakistan
The CIA’s drone campaign targeting suspected militants in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or were attending funerals. So concludes a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It found that since President Obama took office three years ago, as many as 535 civilians have been killed, including more than 60 children. The investigation also revealed that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. We speak to Chris Woods, award-winning reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “We noted that there were repeated reports at the time, contemporaneous reports in publications like New York Times, news agencies like Reuters, by CNN, that there were these strikes on rescuers, that there were reports that there had been an initial strike and then, some minutes later, as people had come forward to help and pull out the dead and injured, that drones had returned to the scene and had attacked rescuers,” Woods says. “We’ve been able to name just over 50 civilians that we understand have been killed in those attacks. In total, we think that more than 75 civilians have been killed, specifically in these attacks on rescuers and on mourners, on funeral-goers.”
Two major investigations have provided fresh evidence that civilians are continuing to be killed in Pakistan’s tribal areas by CIA drones – despite aggressive Agency denials.
In a study of ten major drone strikes in Pakistan since 2010, global news agency Associated Press deployed a field reporter to Waziristan and questioned more than 80 local people about ten CIA attacks. The results generally confirm the accuracy of original credible media reports – and in two cases identify previously unrecorded civilian deaths.
In a further case, in which an anonymous US official had previously attacked the Bureau’s findings of six civilian deaths in a 2011 strike, AP’s report has confirmed the Bureau’s work.
Anglo-American legal charity Reprieve has also filed a case with the United Nations Human Rights Council, based on sworn affidavits by 18 family members of civilians killed in CIA attacks – many of them children. Reprieve is calling on the UNHRC ‘to condemn the attacks as illegal human rights violations.’
Alex talks with a young woman going by the moniker of “Syrian Girl” who recently posted a video breaking down the role of the U.S. and Israel in provoking unrest in Syria. She also eloquently dismantles the myth of al-Qaeda, the CIA created terror group.
Since the drug war has become so unpopular with the electorate, instead of politicians actually changing the drug laws, the Department of Defense seeks to reduce and conceal the real costs by transferring the “dirty work” to private contractors to do what “U.S. military forces are not allowed or not encouraged to do.”
The BBC (in Spanish) is reporting that the U.S. Department of Defense is delegating the war on drugs to private mercenary companies. Of those companies, the increasingly infamous organization previously known as Blackwater is said to have received several multimillion-dollar government contracts for “providing advice, training and conducting operations in drug producing countries and those with links to so-called “narco-terrorism” including Latin America.”
The “no bid”contracts, issued under the Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office’s $15 billion dollar budget, are described as “non-specific” and are said to be “juicy” for the private contractors. The Pentagon says “the details of each cost in very general contracts do not go through bidding processes.”
An unnamed analyst says “the responsibility of the public and national security changing from a state’s duty to be a private business…has become the trend of the future.”
Although parts of the drug war have been privatized for years, the BBC reports this “transfer” of responsibilities is an attempt to placate those looking for Pentagon budget cuts in an election year.
According to Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), “the drug war is unpopular and has no political weight except in an election year like this, so the Department of Defense wants to remove that spending from their accounts.”
“They surreptitiously want to reduce anti-drug budget by transferring it to private agencies,” said Birns.
Bruce Bagley, head of International Studies at the University of Miami, agrees with Birns that the main reason for privatizing the drug war is to sidestep “the high political cost.”
But this move is not without risk, as private mercenaries have known to operate outside of national and international laws. ”Here we go into a vague area where the rules of engagement are not clear and there is almost zero accountability to the public or the electorate,” said Bagley.
The Pentagon maintains that it’s perfectly legal, and mercenaries must follow strict parameters. However, Bagley points out that “few members of the Oversight Committees of the Senate and the House are aware, but they are required to keep secret, so all this flies under the radar.”
There are concerns that contractors acting independently will threaten the sovereignty of the “key countries” in which they will operate. The Pentagon says the largest efforts will occur in Latin America including Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, Columbia and other Andean countries.
Professor Bagley says these private armies could “generate a nationalist backlash if the public came to realize the situation” of operations in their countries.
Once again, the war on drugs creates the opportunity to place troops in countries where having American soldiers would be politically disadvantageous, or simply impossible.
Ultimately, the Pentagon claims they will save money because private contractors don’t have the bureaucracy and hierarchy involved in operations and because “if any of its employees dies, they are responsible.”
Apparently, humanity is the last concern for the Pentagon budget, which always seems to have plenty of money for advanced weapons systems (also privatized), but is consistently lacking in benefits for its veterans. By privatizing the drug war, they no longer have to concern themselves with paying for benefits for warriors who pledge allegiance to the United States and take an oath to defend its Constitution.
As the war on drugs is increasingly viewed as a money-draining failure, it’s unlikely that this move to privatize it will succeed in anything but creating demand for more profit, thus fueling its continuance through corporate lobbying to prevent a political end to such lunacy.
Quotes are translated from Google translator, and Eric Blair speaks adequate Spanish as a second language.
Excerpts from the Arab League observers’ report on Syria make it clear that the establishment media is only telling part of the story and exaggerating violence by the al-Assad government and its police and military.
The report mentions an “armed entity’ that is killing civilians and police and conducting terrorist attacks targeting innocent civilians. Casualties from these attacks are attributed to the al-Assad government and used to build a case against Syria in the United Nations.
Rebels in Idlib, Syria. Evidence reveals they are supported by the CIA, MI6, and Mossad.
According to the Arab League report, the “Free Syria Army” and “armed opposition groups” are responsible for many of the killings.
The report lends credence to reports filed in November of last year by journalist Webster Tarpley, who visited the Middle Eastern nation.
“What average Syrians of all ethnic groups say about this is that they are being shot at by snipers. People complained that there are terrorist snipers who are shooting at civilians, blind terrorism simply for the purpose of destabilizing the country. I would not call this civil war – it is a very misleading term. What you are dealing with here are death squads, you are dealing with terror commandos; this is a typical CIA method. In this case it’s a joint production of CIA, MI6, Mossad, it’s got money coming from Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates and Qatar,” Tarpley told RT.
Tarpley said the United States is pushing a “bankrupt model of the color revolution, backed up by terrorist troops – people from Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood” and the objective is “to smash the Middle East according to ethnic lines.”
Excerpts from the Arab League observers’ report make it clear “that there is widespread violence on both sides, but that the opposition and the Western media have exaggerated the violence and casualties inflicted by government forces,” writes Nicolas Davies for War Is A Crime blog, formerly After Downing Street.
“The UN has stopped accepting casualty figures claimed by the opposition, and has frozen its “official” estimate of civilian deaths at 5,400, without acknowledging that this may already be highly exaggerated,” Davies explains. “This is not yet a bloodbath on the scale of Libya, where even the new government admits that at least 25,000 people died in the NATO-led war. Syria could follow the Libya model though, if NATO and the GCC keep providing weapons and military training to the Free Syrian Army and are prepared to beef it up with special forces on the ground, and as long as the UN approves a no-fly zone to provide cover for another 9,700 air strikes.”
The establishment media put the number of dead between 1,000 and 5,000. The International Criminal Court, Hisham Abu Hajer (of the Libyan “rebels,” in other words al-Qaeda), Pravda and other sources put the number at between 50,000 and 100,000. Tarpley estimated the number at 150,000, a staggering number for a population of just under six and half million people.
“The Mission determined that there is an armed entity that is not mentioned in the protocol. This development on the ground can undoubtedly be attributed to the excessive use of force by Syrian Government forces in response to protests that occurred before the deployment of the Mission demanding the fall of the regime. In some zones, this armed entity reacted by attacking Syrian security forces and citizens, causing the Government to respond with further violence. In the end, innocent citizens pay the price for those actions with life and limb.
In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the Observer Mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against Government forces and civilians that resulted in several deaths and injuries. Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed.
28. The Mission noted that many parties falsely reported that explosions or violence had occurred in several locations. When the observers went to those locations, they found that those reports were unfounded.
29. The Mission also noted that, according to its teams in the field, the media exaggerated the nature of the incidents and the number of persons killed in incidents and protests in certain towns.
According to their latest reports and their briefings to the Head of the Mission on 17 January 2012 in preparation for this report, group team leaders witnessed peaceful demonstrations by both Government supporters and the opposition in several places. None of those demonstrations were disrupted, except for some minor clashes with the Mission and between loyalists and opposition. These have not resulted in fatalities since the last presentation before the Arab Ministerial Committee on the Situation in Syria at its meeting of 8 January 2012.
Some observers reneged on their duties and broke the oath they had taken. They made contact with officials from their countries and gave them exaggerated accounts of events. Those officials consequently developed a bleak and unfounded picture of the situation.
Arab and foreign audiences of certain media organizations have questioned the Mission’s credibility because those organizations use the media to distort the facts. It will be difficult to overcome this problem unless there is political and media support for the Mission and its mandate. It is only natural that some negative incidents should occur as it conducts its activities because such incidents occur as a matter of course in similar missions.
75. Recently, there have been incidents that could widen the gap and increase bitterness between the parties. These incidents can have grave consequences and lead to the loss of life and property. Such incidents include the bombing of buildings, trains carrying fuel, vehicles carrying diesel oil and explosions targeting the police, members of the media and fuel pipelines. Some of those attacks have been carried out by the Free Syrian Army and some by other armed opposition groups.
Since its establishment, attitudes towards the Mission have been characterized by insincerity or, more broadly speaking, a lack of seriousness. Before it began carrying out its mandate and even before its members had arrived, the Mission was the target of a vicious campaign directed against the League of Arab States and the Head of the Mission, a campaign that increased in intensity after the observers’ deployment. The Mission still lack the political and media support it needs in order to fulfill its mandate. Should its mandate be extended, the goals set out in the Protocol will not be achieved unless such support is provided and the Mission receives the backing it needs to ensure the success of the Arab solution.”
Exclusive: Personal Statement from Kurt Haskell, Delta 253 Passenger
Every victim of a crime in Michigan is entitled to make a statement in open court regarding the impact of the crime on their life. The statement is limited to the victim’s physical, emotional and financial well being as it relates to the crime. Keep that in mind as you read my statement. Below is a copy of the victim impact statement I gave today at the Underwear Bomber sentencing hearing. When reading my statement, keep in mind that I am a practicing attorney in the State of Michigan. In addition, I regularly practice in the Court the hearings are taking place at and therefore, I am somewhat limited as to what I can say. We were limited to 5 minutes each.
I wish to thank the Court for allowing me these 5 minutes to make my statement. My references to the government in this statement refer to the Federal Government excluding this Court and the prosecution. On Christmas Day 2009, my wife and I were returning from an African safari and had a connecting flight through Amsterdam. As we waited for our flight, we sat on the floor next to the boarding gate. What I witnessed while sitting there and subsequent events have changed my life forever. While I sat there, I witnessed Umar dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt, being escorted around security by a man in a tan suit who spoke perfect American English and who aided Umar in boarding without a passport. The airline gate worker initially refused Umar boarding until the man in the tan suit intervened. The event meant nothing to me at the time. Little did I know that Umar would try to kill me a few hours later as our flight approached Detroit. The final 10 minutes of our flight after the attack were the worst minutes of my life. During those 10 minutes I sat paralyzed in fear. Unfortunately, what happened next has had an even greater impact on my life and has saddened me further.
When we landed, I was shocked that our plane taxied up to the gate. I was further shocked that we were forced to sit on the plane for 20 minutes with powder from the so called bomb all over the cabin. The officers that boarded the plane did nothing to ensure our safety and did not check for accomplices or other explosive devices. Several passengers trampled through parts of the bomb as they exited the plane. We were then taken into the terminal with our unchecked carry on bags. Again, there was no concern for our safety even though Umar told the officers that there was another bomb on board as he exited the plane. I wondered why nobody was concerned about our safety, accomplices or other bombs and the lack of concern worried me greatly. I immediately told the FBI my story in order to help catch the accomplice I had seen in Amsterdam. It soon became obvious that the FBI wasn’t interested in what I had to say, which upset me further. For one month the government refused to admit the existence of the man in the tan suit before changing course and admitting his existence in an ABC News article on January 22, 2010. That was the last time the government talked about this man. The video that would prove the truth of my account has never been released. I continue to be emotionally upset that the video has not been released. The Dutch police, meanwhile, in this article (show article), also confirmed that Umar did not show his passport in Amsterdam which also meant that he didn’t go through security as both are in the same line in Amsterdam. It upsets me that the government refuses to admit this fact.
I became further saddened from this case, when Patrick Kennedy of the State Department during Congressional hearings, admitted that Umar was a known terrorist, was being followed, and the U.S. allowed him into the U.S. so that it could catch Umar’s accomplices. I was once again shocked and saddened when Michael Leiter of the National Counter terrorism Center admitted during these same hearings that intentionally letting terrorists into the U.S. was a frequent practice of the U.S. Government. I cannot fully explain my sadness, disappointment and fear when I realized that my government allowed an attack on me intentionally.
During this time, I questioned if my country intentionally put a known terrorist onto my flight with a live bomb. I had many sleepless nights over this issue. My answer came shortly thereafter. In late 2010, the FBI admitted to giving out intentionally defective bombs to the Portland Christmas Tree Bomber,the Wrigley Field Bomber and several others. Further, Mr. Chambers was quoted in the Free Press on January 11, 2011 when he indicated that the government’s own explosives experts had indicated that Umar’s bomb was impossibly defective. I wondered how that could be. Certainly, I thought, Al Qaeda wouldn’t go through all of the trouble to plan such an attack only to provide the terrorist with an impossibly defective bomb.
I attended nearly all of the pretrial hearings. At the hearing on January 28, 2011, I was greatly disappointed by the prosecution’s request to block evidence from Mr. Chambers “as it could then be able to be obtained by third parties, who could use it in a civil suit against the government”. It really bothered me that the government apparently was admitting to wrongdoing of some kind as it admitted that it was concerned it would be sued. It further upset me to know that the government was putting its own interests ahead of those of the passengers.
When I attended the jury selection hearings, I questioned why versions of the same two questions kept coming up, those being:
1. Do you think you’ll be able to tell whether something is actually a bomb? and
2. Do you realize that sometimes the media doesn’t always tell the truth?
I continued to be greatly saddened at this point as I felt the truth continued to be hidden.
When Umar listed me as his only witness, I was happy to testify, not on his behalf, but on behalf of the truth. I never expected to testify, as my eyewitness account would have been too damaging to the myth that the government and media are putting forward. A mere 5 days after I was announced as a witness, there was an inexplicable guilty plea which exasperated me as I no longer would be testifying.
In closing I will just say that regardless of how the media and government try to shape the public perception of this case, I am convinced that Umar was given an intentionally defective bomb by a U.S. Government agent and placed on our flight without showing a passport or going through security, to stage a false terrorist attack to be used to implement various government policies.
The effect this matter has had on my life has been astounding and due to this case, I will never trust the government in any matter, ever.
In regards to sentencing, nothing I’ve said excuses the fact that Umar tried to kill me. He has waived his valid claim to the entrapment defense. Umar, you are not a great Muslim martyr, you are merely a “Patsy”. I ask the court to impose the mandatory sentence.
When you buy Microsoft products, you are now promoting the pharmaceutical industry and its global vaccine agenda. That’s the new reality in which we live, where the world’s largest software company is “in bed” with the world’s largest vaccine pusher.
How so? In 2009, Microsoft purchased a key piece of technology from the drug company Merck, the world’s largest maker of vaccines (which Bill Gates says can help “reduce the global population” by 10 to 15 percent). That technology, as you’ll see below, can conceivably be used to develop eugenics vaccines that target specific races and nationalities with infertility-inducing pharmaceuticals — something that is entirely consistent with Bill Gates’ openly-admitted goal of reducing world population through the use of vaccines (see link to video below).
This gene-targeting vaccine research technology purchased by Microsoft was developed by the company known as Rosetta Biosciences, formerly owned by Merck. Their software is described as a way to “figure out how genes interact with each other, analyze peptides and metabolites, and determine how they relate to gene expression.” (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2009288622_rosetta020…)
An announcement on the Rosetta Biosoftware web site explains, “The deal allows Microsoft to incorporate genetic, genomic, metabolomic and proteomics data management software into the Microsoft Amalga Life Sciences platform for enhanced translational research capabilities.” (http://www.rosettabio.com/company/news/rosetta_microsoft)
This same announcement goes on to say that vaccine maker Merck will “provide strategic input to Microsoft” as a part of the deal. Merck’s strategy, of course, is to make money by pimping vaccines and pharmaceuticals, including the now-infamous Gardasil vaccine.
Rupert Vessey, the vice president of Merck Research Laboratories, openly admits this deal puts Microsoft in the role of being a drug developer. He says, “We look forward to collaborating with Microsoft to develop new bioinformatic solutions to enable and expedite drug discovery and development…”
This is a key statement to understand, because the term “bioinformatic” can only mean one thing. What stores information in biology? These is only one digital storage system in human biology, and that system is, of course, DNA. Therefore, the idea of developing “bioinformatic solutions” really means to develop “gene-targeting drugs and vaccines.”
This is fully consistent with Bill Gates’ admitted agenda of reducing world population with the help of drug company technologies. At a TED conference, he announced in front of a live audience:“…if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [global population] by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”(http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_vaccines_Bill_Gates.html)
What’s clear from all this is that Bill Gates is pursuing an agenda of human depopulation. This is a similar agenda of those who pursueeugenicsefforts around the globe, including Adolf Hitler and a long list of former FDA Commissioners in the United States. One of the most common ambitions of those in the highest positions of power, it seems, is to cull the human population and eliminate “the little people,” leaving only a “master race” of supreme beings.
Even major universities around the globe are now teaching students that human beings are evil for merely being alive and exhaling carbon dioxide, and that killing off humans is “green” for the planet.
In order to kill off large swaths of human beings, the most efficient mechanism to use is a self-replicating, gene-targeted bioweapon. Microsoft’s Amalga Life Sciences technology, purchased from vaccine developer March, theoretically provides a viable platform to develop precisely such bioweapons. It is interesting that no announcements from the company appear to have been made since being acquired by Microsoft in 2009, indicating that their work is now being conducted in total secrecy, behind closed doors.
U.S. government admits developing weaponized, deadly flu strains
Recent headlines reveal that the United States government has also secretly funded bioweapons research that resulted in the development of super-deadly flu strains that could wipe out far more than just 15 percent of the human population. As revealed in recent news headlines:
“Scientists agreed Friday to a 60-day moratorium on research into a modified avian flu virus that has been demonstrated to be more transmissible among mammals. Although the investigators believe their research has a public health benefit, they acknowledge the fear of some governments and others that the genetically altered virus could escape from labs and infect people.”(http://www.philly.com/philly/health/news/HealthDay660965_20120120_Res…)
That may be precisely the point, it turns out. There is no better way to promote the vaccine profits of the pharmaceutical industry than to actually release an engineered bioweapon virus into the wild. And there is no faster way to reduce the world population than to engineer either a vaccine or a weaponized flu virus that burns through the human population, targeting those of an “undesirable” genetic profile who need to be “cleansed” from the human gene pool.
This about this the next time you think about purchasing Microsoft Office, Windows or some other Microsoft product. By doing so, you are funding what could very well be a global eugenics agenda with the ultimate goal of wiping out a significant proportion of the human race.
Mike Adams Natural News
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Loose Change documents the true purpose of the “False Flag” 9-11 attack on America, perhaps the greatest treasonous crime in modern history. Turns out is was also likely the biggest gold heist in history… crimes which are all quite familiar to the Bush Crime/CIA Family. Including bank & S&L bailout scams…
A federal investigation of an Iranian dissident group that has targeted a number of former government officials seems to have bypassed K Street.
Lobby firms and clients who have been working to remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) — otherwise known as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran — from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations told The Hill they have not been subpoenaed by federal authorities.
Former government officials such as Ed Rendell, the Democratic ex-governor of Pennsylvania, and Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have come under scrutiny from federal investigators over the speaking fees they were paid to deliver speeches supporting MEK, according to press reports.
Subpoenas have reportedly been issued for Rendell, Shelton and others.
But lobby firms that have worked to legitimize MEK in the United States said the investigation hasn’t reached them.
Victoria Toensing, a founding partner of diGenova & Toensing, said her firm has not received a subpoena and doesn’t expect to.
“Why would I receive a subpoena?” Toensing said. “I was paid by individuals who are Americans and live in Texas. They are not on the terrorist list.”
Toensing’s firm was paid $110,000 by the Iranian-American Community of North Texas before the lobbying registration was terminated last year, according to lobbying disclosure records.
Toensing said she was “furious” about the reports that former government officials who have spoken in favor of MEK have been subpoenaed.
“They have used government authority to subvert the First Amendment,” Toensing said. “When a government violates a court order, are we not allowed to speak out against them?”
Toensing was referring to a federal court ruling from July of 2010 that required the State Department to review its designation of the MEK as a terrorist group.
Supporters argue MEK was placed on the list in 1997 by the Clinton administration to help improve relations between the United States and Iran.
Homeira Hesami, president of the Iranian-American Community of North Texas, also said her group has not been subpoenaed. She called the investigation “a smokescreen” by the State Department, which she believes is stalling on reviewing the group’s designation as a terrorist organization.
“I am reminded of an adage: ‘If you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger.’ This is a smokescreen and an obvious attempt by the State Department to sidestep the principal issue,” Hesami said. “This is a clear case of abuse of power.”
According to the State Department, MEK was founded in the 1960s by college-educated Iranian Marxists who opposed the shah of Iran. In 1981, the group attempted to overthrow the new Islamic regime. State says the group was also behind several terrorist attacks in the 1970s that killed Americans in Iran.
MEK supporters say the organization today is pursing freedom and democracy and is not engaged in terrorism. They also deny it was ever Marxist or had a role in the attacks that killed Americans. U.S. backers of MEK say the group’s opposition to the Iranian regime could help the United States as tensions grow over Iran’s nuclear program.
Over the past year, the push to remove MEK from the terrorist list has become an attention-grabbing public campaign, involving legal action, lobbying, TV ads and speeches by big names in politics.
It has also reportedly triggered a federal investigation due to suspicion over who is paying for the ex-officials’ speeches. Receiving payments from a terrorist group, or providing services to one, can be against the law.
On March 9, the Washington Times reported that Rendell had received a subpoena for MEK payment records from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. This past Friday, MSNBC reported that speaking agencies representing former FBI Director Louis Freeh and Shelton had also been subpoenaed.
Others have lobbied to remove MEK from the terrorist-group list.
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld earned $290,000 in lobbying fees in 2011 from the Iranian-American Community of Northern California, according to lobbying disclosure records. Last quarter, former Reps. Vic Fazio (D-Calif.) and Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.) were among the lobbyists working to remove MEK from the list.
An Akin Gump spokesman said the firm has not received a subpoena from Treasury regarding its work on behalf of the client.
Ahmad Moein, executive director of the Iranian-American Community of Northern California, said his group has not received a subpoena.
Others have worked to draw attention to Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where more than 3,000 MEK members live. The Iraqi military has attacked the camp in the past, leaving several MEK members dead.
PR firm Brown Lloyd James signed a $40,000, two-month contract last year to bring attention to the camp. Ali Taslimi, an individual living in Germany, paid for the contract, which included distributing press releases, hosting a dinner for reporters and inviting media to a Paris conference on Camp Ashraf, according to Justice records.
In a statement, the firm said it had not been subpoenaed regarding its work on behalf of Taslimi, which has since ended.
“We understood that ‘delisting’ was one of the many issues tied to the broader humanitarian situation. We have not been contacted by any authorities concerning this work, which was brief, duly reported and ended nearly one year ago,” said Brown Lloyd James.
John Sullivan, a Treasury spokesman, declined to say whether any of the firms were under federal investigation.
“The Department of the Treasury does not comment on potential investigations,” Sullivan said. He also said that the MEK is a terrorist group and enforcement of sanctions are taken “seriously.”
“The MEK is a designated terrorist group; therefore, U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with or providing services to this group. The Treasury Department takes sanctions enforcement seriously and routinely investigates potential violations of sanctions laws,” Sullivan said.
On March 6, 2012, I wrote an article entitled “Mass Banking Resignations Signal A Purging Has Begun?” where I included a list of banking directors, CEOs, and board members of both national and international financial institutions standing who have resigned from their post since September 2011. The data was collected and compiled by independent blog American Kabuki and posted online complete with a description of the individual, location, and link to the resignation announcement where it was covered in the mainstream media.
At the time my article was posted, the list had already topped 122. This prompted many, including myself, to question whether or not 122 was actually such a large number, given that there are many national and international institutions across the globe, as well as the fact that these resignations took place within a span of a period of about five months.
Certainly, the number seemed enormous.
Apparently American Kabuki had the same questions. Only a few weeks after the initial posting, the blogger posted a chart that included the number of resignations filed with the SEC, as required by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, going back to 2008 and in to the fourth quarter of 2011. Tracing the resignations back to 2008 would, obviously, provide something close to a representative sample of the normal rate of resignation over a period of three years.
What these statistics revealed was a staggering increase in the number of resignations announced around the second and third quarters of 2011.
However, chart or no chart, the recently revised number regarding resignations from financial firms, banks, etc. seems to put many of the questions to rest.
Indeed, a recent post by American Kabuki now shows that the number of resignations stand at 358, almost triple the number originally posted.
The revised list of resignations will be included at the end of this article along with the links to the announcements.
With all of this in mind, and, if the research provided by American Kabuki is correct, then the only question really left for us to ask is “Why?”
Why are so many bankers, CEOs, fund managers, and investors resigning all at once? Why now?
One might be tempted to ask whether or not there is a coming investigation that these individuals are trying to avoid but, given the track record of the regulatory system, this is not our most likely option. Considering the current state of the economy, it might seem more logical to ask if these individuals are not trying to abandon ship before the collapse of the world financial system finally takes place.
Or it could be something entirely different. At this point, we simply do not know. Regardless, something big is obviously happening in the financial world and the forces behind it are acting on information that the general public is unaware of.
List of resignations as compiled by American Kabuki:
9/01/11 (USA NY) Bank of New York Mellon Chief Robert P. Kelly Resigns in a Shake-UP http://goo.gl/NdW7q
9/06/11 (BELGIUM) Dexia confirmed that its CEO Stefaan Decraene had left the company. Its exposures to sovereign debt in the PIIGS nations are larger than its core Tier 1 capital. http://goo.gl/vuhvd
9/09/11 (GERMANY) European Central Bank (ECB) governing board member Jürgen Stark, who has resigned http://goo.gl/t83S4
9/12/11 (HONG KONG) HSBC Group Hang Seng Bank Non-Executive Director Mark McCombe resigns http://goo.gl/mCTgi
9/14/11 (USA NJ) Columbia Bank CEO Raymond G. Hallock Announces Retirement http://goo.gl/UjUZY
9/14/11 (NEW ZELAND) AMP NZ Office Limited (ANZO), Mark Verbiest has resigned as a director. His resignation arises due to his desire to devote the necessary time and energy to his prospective new role as Chairman of Telecom, assuming the Telecom demerger is sanctioned by Telecom shareholders. http://goo.gl/LjSI0
9/15/11 (USA NY) Morgan Stanley, Chairman John Mack resigns http://goo.gl/jWWv7
9/18/11 (JORDAN) Central Bank governor Faris Sharaf resigns over policy http://goo.gl/8yU5N
9/20/11 (SCOTLAND) SCOTTISH WIDOWS (RETIREMENT INVESTMENT SAVINGS FUND) There could be no Scottish representative on the board of Lloyds Banking Group, owner of Bank of Scotland, in future after it announced the departure of Lord Sandy Leitch, the chairman of Scottish Widows and group deputy chairman. http://goo.gl/Dx8qs
9/21/11 (AUSTRALIA & NZ) JP Morgan Australia and New Zealand Worldwide Securities Services CEO Jane Perry resigned http://goo.gl/Qx0Va
9/25/11 (SWITZERLAND) UBS CEO Oswald Gruebel quits over £1.5bn rogue trader crisis http://goo.gl/WCeqB
9/25/11 (USA CA)Douglas E. Tow, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer, will retire from the Company http://goo.gl/24aAU
9/28/11 (SWITZERLAND) SNB Bank Council: Fritz Studer resigns as per end-April 2012 http://goo.gl/7dNiD
9/29/11 (UK) Barclays, Head of UK & European Retail Banking Deanna Oppenheimer resigned. http://goo.gl/o63jO
9/29/11 (USA NM) New Mexico Pension Fund Director Terry Slattery Resigns http://goo.gl/BzLn4
9/30/11 (SINGAPORE) AIMS AMP CAP INDUSTRIAL REIT, Ms Tang Buck Kiau resigned. http://goo.gl/VGxjv
10/01/11 (USA MO) Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas M. Hoenig retired on Oct. 1, 2011 http://goo.gl/B8WK7
10/03/11 (INDIA) The of Euram Bank Asia, president Arun Panchariya, has resigned after being implicated in a stock trading scandal in India. http://goo.gl/yh2bF
10/03/11 (GHANA) Intercontinental Bank Ghana Limited, Managing Director and CEO Albert Mmegwa resigned. http://goo.gl/Vc252
10/03/11 (USA FL) Quantek Opportunity Fund, portfolio manager Javier Guerra. Arbitration awarded $1 million damages to Aris Multi-Strategy Fund. Quantek Asset Management made false statements to Aris. http://goo.gl/udpBA
10/05/11 (UK) UBS co-chief François Gouws of global equities had resigned after last month’s revelation of a $2.3 billion loss from unauthorized trading. http://goo.gl/OuUjr
10/05/11 (UK) UBS co-chief Yassine Bouhara of global equities had resigned after last month’s revelation of a $2.3 billion loss from unauthorized trading. http://goo.gl/OuUjr
10/10/11 (BELGIUM) Dexia (Franco-Belgian bank) its chairman Jean-Luc Dehaene will give up his role on the board of Dexia’s Belgian division, which is being sold to the Belgian state as part of a rescue deal, the group said on Monday. http://goo.gl/vyldE
10/11/11 (UK) BlackRock, head of sterling portfolios and manager of the Corporate Bond fund, Paul Shuttleworth, has resigned after 11 years at the firm. http://goo.gl/FMBjw
10/11/11 (UK) Dynamic Funds, portfolio manager David Taylor has resigned. http://goo.gl/GZCt5
10/11/11 (CHINA) China Construction Bank Non-Executive Direct Sue Yang resigns for personal reasons. http://goo.gl/ip8Un
10/13/11 (UK) Cogent Partners co-head research department Katita Palamar resigned. http://goo.gl/TVLWO
10/13/11 (UK) Cogent Partners co-head research department Bill Farrell resigned. http://goo.gl/TVLWO
10/14/11 (USA TX) Deutsche Bank Investment Advisor Griffin Perry resigns, SEC regulations prevented him from campaigning for his father Rick Perry’s Presidential campaign. http://goo.gl/R0PgH
10/23/11 (USA) Fairholme Capital Management LLC, Director Charles Fernandez stepped down for personal reasons. Fairholme Fund has lost 26 percent of its net asset value due to bets that have backfired on AIG Inc, Bank of America Corp and Florida-based landowner and developer St Joe Co. http://goo.gl/vzTbY
10/24/11 (ICELAND) Icelandic State Financial Investments board members of Icelandic State Financial Investments have resigned following “outside interference” with their Sept. 30 decision to hire Pall Magnusson, the former political adviser to the island’s industry minister, as chief executive officer. [names and positions have been requested from the reporter on 3/9/12] http://goo.gl/lEpz2
10/24/11 (SINGAPORE) Keppel Corporation Limited, Teo Soon Hoe will resign from his role as group finance director Jan 1. http://goo.gl/l90be
10/26/11 (INDIA) Beed District Bank (Coop Bank) CEO B S Deshmukh arrested for embezzling Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd payment deposits. http://goo.gl/CXL7Z
10/26/11 (INDIA) Beed District Bank (Coop Bank) former CEO A N Kulkarni arrested for embezzling Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd payment deposits. http://goo.gl/CXL7Z
10/27/11 (USA NY) Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc (KBW) CEO John Duffy stepped aside. Duffy has prostate cancer. http://goo.gl/i1s3E
10/29/11 (CHINA) China Construction Bank Corp Chairman Guo Shuqing resigns http://goo.gl/fdd9v
10/29/11 (CHINA) Agricultural Bank of China Ltd Chairman Xiang Junbo resigns http://goo.gl/yWX9R
10/31/11 (EUROPEAN COMMUNITY) European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, resigns. http://goo.gl/ygG59
11/01/11 (INDIA) Beed District Bank (Coop Bank More directors resign [research still being conducted on the names] http://goo.gl/HD8BQ
11/02/11 (UK) Lloyds Banking Group chief executive, António Horta-Osório, is to take leave of absence on health grounds for six to eight weeks, the BBC has reported. (STILL OUT AS OF 2/24/12 – DEFACTO RESIGNATION) http://goo.gl/3L9gE
11/03/11 (POLAND) Nordea Bank Poland, Wlodzimierz Kicinski resigned from as President of the Management Board of Nordea Bank Poland as of the 10th of November. http://goo.gl/oKUVZ
11/04/11 (USA NY) MF Global, Jon Corzine, stepped down as chairman and CEO, hired criminal attorney to represent him. http://goo.gl/tUaVY
11/10/11 (EUROPEAN COMMUNITY) European Central Bank Lorenzo Bini Smaghi resigned from the European Central Bank’s Executive Board. http://goo.gl/Invjc
11/11/11 (HONG KONG) Goldman Sachs’ Asia Pacific co-head Yusuf Alireza is retiring from the investment bank after 19 years http://goo.gl/pejs3
11/10/11 (INDIA) UBS The head of India operations at UBS AG , Manisha Girotra, has resigned http://goo.gl/3aTh2
11/15/11 (USA NY) Icahn Enterprises LP, senior managing director of health-care investing, Alex Denner, has resigned. http://goo.gl/X1A4i
11/16/11 (EUROPEAN COMMUNITY) International Monetary Fund Europe, director Antonio Borges resigns for personal reasons. http://goo.gl/55CqZ
11/17/11 (NETHERLANDS) Syntrus Achmea (pensions manager), CIO Marjolein Sol is resigning. http://goo.gl/Xqxsr
11/18/11 (SCOTLAND) Scottish Widows Investment Partnership Limited (SWIP) Private Equity Fund, wish to announce the resignation of John Brett from the Board of Directors of the Company, for business reasons. http://goo.gl/MLsp8
11/21/11 (JAPAN) UBS’s Japan Investment Banking Chairman Matsui to Resign http://goo.gl/OiDiq
11/23/12 (USA SC & NC) Bank of the Carolinas, CFO Eric Rhodes resigns for personal reasons. Bank of the Carolinas was delisted from the NASDAQ on 3/9/12 http://goo.gl/oytcD
11/24/12 (IRELAND) AXA Rosenberg Management Ireland Limited, director Simon Vanstone resigns. http://goo.gl/x5Fl6
11/28/11 (LATVIA) Latvia’s chief banking regulator, Irena Krumane, said she resigned today, a week after the state took over Latvijas Krajbanka AS (LKB1R), the Baltic News Service reported. The bank regulator suspended operations at Krajbanka, a subsidiary of Lithuania’s Bankas Snoras AB, on Nov. 21 and said around 100 million lati ($191.8 million) was missing. The Lithuanian government seized Snoras on Nov. 16 saying assets reported on the lender’s balance sheet were missing. http://goo.gl/mUvLF
11/29/11 (USA)R. David Land Submits Resignation from the Boards of Directors of Peoples Bancorp. and Seneca National Bank http://goo.gl/XncOc
11/29/11 (NORWAY) Carnegie ASA’s co-head of investment banking in Norway, Cato Holmsen, has resigned http://goo.gl/utIfy
11/29/11 (FRANCE) AXA Real Estate Investment Managers, Global head of business development, strategy and research for Kiran Patel, has handed in his resignation. Patel was with the firm for 11 years. http://goo.gl/iGjB6
11/30/11 (LITHUANIA) Lithuania Central Bank, Governor Vitas Vasiliauskas fired Kazimieras Ramonas, head of the banking supervision department, after seizing Bankas Snoras AB, the country’s third-biggest deposit bank. http://goo.gl/EiqUC
12/01/11 (SRI LANKA) Sri Lanka’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) head Indrani Sugathadasa resigned. http://goo.gl/6qzny
12/02/11 (PAKISTAN) NIB Bank, Singapore forced resignation of CEO Khawaja Iqbal Hassan, for mismanagement http://goo.gl/ojDcu
12/03/11 (USA SC) South Carolina’s $25 billion pension fund chief investor Robert Borden resigned. Borden’s resignation comes as the SC Retirement System faces a $13 billion deficit, prompting state lawmakers to call for a massive overhaul of the system. http://goo.gl/ypK2G
12/05/11 (BERMUDA) HSBC Bermuda Ltd, chairman of the board and director John Campbell resigns http://goo.gl/peFGD
12/05/11 (BERMUDA) HSBC Bermuda Ltd, CEO Philip Butterfield retires http://goo.gl/peFGD
12/06/11 (USA ) Western Liberty Bancorp CFO George Rosenbaum has resigned. http://goo.gl/ozuwB
12/08/11 (USA) Fidelity Global Special Situations Fund, manager Jorma Korhonen resigned. http://goo.gl/a7Rhw
12/19/11 (CANADA) Holloway Lodging Real Estate Investment Trust (a REIT) CEO Glenn Squires has resigned http://goo.gl/8rAKb
12/19/11 (JAPAN) Citibank Japan CEO, Darren Buckley, resigns after Citibank was punished by regulators for the third time in seven years. http://goo.gl/ScT47
12/19/11 (DENMARK) Danske Bank Peter Straarup, who will retire February 15 http://goo.gl/06c2b
12/19/11 (DENMARK) Danske Bank Eivind Kolding has resigned as Chairman of the Board of Directors and from the three board committees on which he served, He continues as member of Danske Bank’s Board of Directors until he assumes the position of Chairman of the Executive Board on 15 February 2012. On the same day, at the latest, Eivind Kolding will resign from the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group. http://goo.gl/06c2b
12/20/11 (UK) Prudential (UK) Chairman Harvey McGrath has informed the Board of his intention to retire from the Board in 2012 once a successor has been found. http://goo.gl/IPOzf
12/20/11 (USA MA) Century Bancorp, Inc., Director Roger S. Berkowitz resigned. http://goo.gl/bbdeT
12/21/11 (USA MN) Voyager Bank, fired CEO trade accusations, New details have emerged in Voyager Bank’s firing of its CEO in a court filing that accuses him of defrauding the bank of $15 million. The former CEO, Timothy Owens, has sued the bank for wrongful termination and accused the bank of defaming him. http://goo.gl/3Q1Vg
12/23/11 (USA VA) Virginia National Bank (VNB) Chairman Mark Giles quits http://goo.gl/dFDpH
12/23/11 (USA VA) Virginia National Bank (VNB) Board Member Claire Gargalli quits http://goo.gl/kowkW
12/23/11 (USA VA) Virginia National Bank (VNB) Board Member Leslie Disharoon quits http://goo.gl/kstLp
12/23/11 (USA VA) Virginia National Bank (VNB) Board Member Neal Kassell quits http://goo.gl/NrrPZ
12/23/11 (USA) Third Avenue Value Fund, co-manager Marty Whitman is leaving. http://goo.gl/iMe99
1/01/12 (NIGERIA) United Bank for Africa Plc Victor Osadolor resigns http://goo.gl/b6AoA
1/01/12 (ISRAEL) Israel’s Bank Leumi CEO Galia Maor steps down after 16 years http://goo.gl/xwlFt
1/03/12 (GREECE) Marfin Popular Bank Public Co Ltd, Mr Eleftherios Hiliadakis has resigned from the Board of Directors. http://goo.gl/MuFa0
1/03/12 (USA VA) Suffolk Bancorp president and CEO J. Gordon Huszagh steps down http://goo.gl/joExI
1/03/12 (USA WI)Michael Falbo, president and CEO of Southport Bank, has resigned just six months after accepting the position. http://goo.gl/DP1uK
1/03/12 (UK) Arbuthnot Banking Group: Neil Kirton resigned from the Board http://goo.gl/SKE7j
1/03/12 (UK) Arbuthnot Banking Group: Atholl Turrell left the Board. http://goo.gl/bzZtQ
1/05/12 (UK) Saunderson House [Private Bank] CEO Nick Fletcher steps down http://goo.gl/zvo1L
1/05/12 (USA NY) Blackstone/GSO Senior Floating Rate Term Fund and Blackstone/GSO Long-Short Credit Income Fund announced that John R. O’Neill has resigned. http://goo.gl/ZiWGL
1/07/12 (UK) Arab Banking Corporation Intl. Bank (ABCIB) Manama, Bahrain: ABCIB announced retirement of CEO Nofal Barbar from its London office. http://goo.gl/yF0Mm
1/09/12 (SWITZERLAND) SNB Chairman Philipp Hildebrand resigns http://goo.gl/5qsUu
1/09/12 (USA WASHINGTON DC) Whitehouse former banker and Chief of Staff William M. Daley resigned http://goo.gl/34F0B
1/09/12 (USA NY) Morgan Stanley Chief Legal Officer Frank Barron retires. http://goo.gl/XYCwJ
1/09/12 (SWITZERLAND) Temenos Group AG, provider of core banking software announced the resignation of Mark Austen as a member of the Board of Directors. http://goo.gl/l6QzM
1/10/12 (USA IN) Security Bank of Springfield, president and CEO Steve Cour has announced plans to retire at the end of June. http://goo.gl/jFbYA
1/11/12 (KAZAKHSTAN) BTA Bank, CEO Marat Zairov resigns for health reasons. http://goo.gl/yAHgr
1/11/12 (SWITZERLAND)La Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild, CEO Claude Messulam resigns, replaced by Christophe de Backer, Claude Messulam to become a director of the bank holding company. http://goo.gl/vWr3i
1/12/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs, Co-Head Securities Trading Edward K. Eisler retires http://goo.gl/i2TVk
1/12/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs, Co-Head Securities Trading David B. Heller retires http://goo.gl/i2TVk
1/13/12 (IRELAND) National Asset Management Agency, head of lending Graham Emmett is resigning http://goo.gl/GN3h3
1/13/12 (USA DC) World Bank, Vice President for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili will retire from her position at the World Bank in May. http://goo.gl/fiUsU
1/17/12 (CANADA) Cumberland Private Wealth Management CIO John Wilson quit to join another money manager. http://goo.gl/3JuNJ
1/17/12 (HONG KONG) Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited (OCBC Bank) CEO David Conner retires. http://goo.gl/83Z1i
1/17/12 (UK) Morgan Stanley Intl, chairman Walid Chammah is retiring. An inside source speculated that it could mean that the company had suffered exposure to European sovereign debt woes under Chammah’s purview. http://goo.gl/e7vS7
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Ali Yousef Al Awwadhy resigned. http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Miss Anoud Fadhel Al Hathran resigned. http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Mr. Tarek Farid Al Othman resigned. http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Mr. Salem Ali Hassan Al Ali resigned. http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Mr. Majed Ali Oweid Awadh resigned. http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/17/12 (KUWAIT) Commercial Bank of Kuwait S.A.K. Board Member Mr. Badr Suliman Al Ahmed resigned. http://goo.gl/0PoIM
1/18/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs co-heads of Goldman’s securities business David Heller resigns. http://goo.gl/TMHvx
1/18/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs co-heads of Goldman’s securities business Edward Eisler resigns. http://goo.gl/TMHvx
1/18/12 (USA) Goldman Sachs co-head of its investment management division Ed Forst resigns. http://goo.gl/TMHvx
1/19/12 (UK) Santander, senior director Americas division Francisco Luzón is retiring with a pension pot of about €56m, a package whose generous size is expected to reignite controversy over bankers’ remuneration. http://goo.gl/XMRvP
1/19/12 (EGYPT) Beltone Financial Holding (BTFH) Alaa’ Sabaa resigned from board of directors. http://goo.gl/5Eze1
1/19/12 (EGYPT) Beltone Financial Holding (BTFH) Wael EL Mahgary resigned from board of directors. http://goo.gl/5Eze1
1/20/12 (USA NY) JPMorgan Chase, Mortgage Banking Default organization head Scott Powell has decided to leave the bank. http://goo.gl/TCYpT
1/20/12 (JAPAN) Normura’s head of wholesale banking Jasjit Bhattai quits http://goo.gl/6FuWe
1/20/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) First National Bank’s sharia banking division is in a state of flux after it was hit by a corporate governance scandal in which its chief executive, Ebi Patel, was put on “special leave” for almost a month while an internal probe was conducted. Patel has been reinstated, but is facing disciplinary action. Islamic finance forbids the payment and receipt of interest (riba), and investment in some industries. Sharia law states that interest-bearing transactions result in economic ills such as unemployment and high inflation. Trading in derivatives and speculative investment are also forbidden. Sharia law requires all transactions to be backed by tangible assets. http://goo.gl/NmGJP
1/20/12 (USA) TIAA-CREF executive vice president and president of Asset Management, Scott C. Evans resigned http://goo.gl/f6qLs
1/20/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) South African deputy economic development minister Enoch Godongwana quit his post this week in the face of growing outrage in government circles about his involvement in a company that allegedly defrauded clothing factory workers of R100-million of their pension fund money. http://goo.gl/ZADvn
1/21/12 (UK) Butterfield Private Bank head Danny Dixon Steps Down http://goo.gl/sdY1p
1/21/12 (SINGAPORE) ANZ Asia’s private banking head Nina Aguas resigns as managing director of Asia-Pacific private banking. http://goo.gl/hlHvG
1/21/12 (USA CA) Nara Bancorp (Now called BBCN) President and CEO Min Kim Resigns http://goo.gl/rcfJ3
1/22/12 (KENYA) National Bank of Kenya’s (NBK) managing director, Mr Reuben Marambii, will resign before year end. http://goo.gl/c2n7r
1/24/12 (IRELAND) Deutsche International Corporate Services Limited fund, Paul Shevlin resigned as a director http://goo.gl/OjZFF
1/24/12 (SWITZERLAND) Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, a French clinical immunologist and head of the $22.6 billion fund has abruptly resigned, since revelations about corruption and misspending severely rattled some of its biggest donors. The resignation came on the eve of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, which played a role in its creation a decade ago. A dinner for the public-private fund is planned Thursday with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and major backers Bill Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The shakeup resulted from an internal review to address problems highlighted in Associated Press stories last year about the loss of tens of millions of dollars in grant money because of mismanagement and alleged fraud. Its biggest private donor is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pledged $1.15 billion and provided it with $650 million so far. http://goo.gl/bqXs8
1/25/12 (UK) SOFIA PROPERTY FUND LIMITED, Gerry Williams has resigned as a Director, following his resignation from Ardel Holdings Limited (“Ardel”) where he was CEO. Ardel is the holding company of Ardel Fund Services Limited which provides administration services in Guernsey to the Company. http://goo.gl/kDfVv
1/25/12 (USA NY) Fortress Private Equity, CEO Daniel Madrid (aka Daniel Mudd) has resigned. Madrid was forced to leave in order to deal with SEC allegations. Prior to joining Fortress, Madrid served as Fannie Mae CEO and was forced to resign. SEC sued Madrid and former Freddie Mac CEO Richard West Long (aka Richard Syron) for hiding hundreds of billions of dollars in subprime loans. Madrid denied the SEC allegations saying the US govt. and investors were informed of Fannie Mae’s loan data. http://goo.gl/u9IdB and http://goo.gl/v94ik and http://goo.gl/tXQwP
1/27/12 (SINGAPORE) AIMS AMP CAP INDUSTRIAL REIT, Mr Graham Sugden resigned. http://goo.gl/VZYHY
1/27/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA Group COO Alfie Naidoo would be leaving to pursue personal interests http://goo.gl/cVWnA
1/27/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA Group chief marketing and communication officer Happy Ntshingila, will be taking up an “exciting position” outside banking http://goo.gl/cVWnA
1/27/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA Group CEO Daphne Motsepe retires at the end of April after a 10-year career at the bank. http://goo.gl/cVWnA
1/29/12 (PORTUGAL) Banco Santander Totta SA executive chairman Nuno Manuel da Silva Amado has resigned http://goo.gl/Glvdn
1/29/12 (NEW ZEALAND) New Zealand Reserve Bank Gov Alan Bollard to Step Down http://goo.gl/BwUgv
1/29/12 (UAE) NBD, Emirates ‘s investment banking division CEO Suresh Kumar is leaving the bank http://goo.gl/S1x0F
1/30/12 (UK) British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) COO Andrew Graham steps down http://goo.gl/4SDW8
1/31/12 (SCOTLAND) Royal Bank of Scotland former CEO Fred Goodwin Stripped of Knighthood http://goo.gl/CoLVS
2/01/12 (SYRIA) Arab Bank Syria Board member Basma Talal Zein resigns. http://goo.gl/WXxzw
2/01/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA [Barclay’s Bank] deputy CEO Louis von Zeuner resigns http://goo.gl/IP8nH
2/01/12 (UK) Lloyds Bankging Group head of wholesaleTruett Tate quits http://goo.gl/OqRVo
2/01/12 (UK) Llyods Banking Group Tim Tookey leaving end of February http://goo.gl/vjO5M
2/02/12 (VENEZUELA) Banking Crisis Arne Chacon arrested for Banking Corruption http://goo.gl/bb5sh
2/02/12 (USA) American Perspective Bank, President and CEO Thomas J. Beene resigned. http://goo.gl/K66eb
2/02/12 (USA) NIR Group hedge funds, Corey Ribotsky was forced out of NIR by Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, the court-appointed liquidator, following allegations of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In September, the SEC sued Ribotsky and NIR for taking more than $1 million of investors’ money to buy cars and watches.
2/02/12 (IRELAND) AXA Rosenberg Management Ireland Limited, director Nathalie Savey resigned. http://goo.gl/cXB8u
2/03/12 (UK) VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity Fund Ltd, Non-Executive Director Horst Geicke has resigned. http://goo.gl/r955T
2/03/12 (UK) UBS London trader, Kweku M. Adoboli, was arrested and charged with fraud and false accounting, forcing UBS to announce a $2.3 billion trading loss. http://goo.gl/ClTaq
2/05/12 (USA – NY) Morgan Stanley investment banking Tarek Abdel-Meguid quit http://goo.gl/bRv9K
2/06/12 (INDIA) Dhanlaxmi Bank CEO Amitabh Chaturvedi quits: http://goo.gl/OhCEb
2/06/12 (USA NY) TD Ameritrade, head of retail distribution John Bunch resigns. Bunch is leaving to take the top job at a small investment advisory firmin Kansas City. http://goo.gl/kgS7M
2/07/12 (USA) Bank Of America’s Mortgage Business Chief Barbara Desoer Retires http://goo.gl/i7AUY
2/07/12 (IRAN) Iran denies central bank resignation rumor (don’t believe until its denied?) http://goo.gl/PiQSy
2/08/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Standard Bank Group Ltd – Resignation of Group Secretary Loren Wulfsohn http://goo.gl/K1pfn
2/08/12 (USA OH) Cleveland International Fund (CIF) private equity fund, A.Eddy Zai launched and led the Cleveland International Fund, an investment outfit that pairs wealthy foreign investors hoping for U.S. residency with job-creating projects. Zai resigned from his job this week, before being indicted in a bank-fraud scheme that, according to investigators, contributed to the collapse of a credit union in Eastlake. http://goo.gl/tgamf
2/08/12 (UAE) Emirates NBD makes top-level changes Bank’s deputy chief executive officer Abdul Wahed Al Fahim has resigned. http://goo.gl/JUdNd
2/09/12 (VATICAN) Institute for Religious Works (IOR aka “Vatican Bank”), 62 year old Monsignor Emilio Messina, the Archdiocese of Camerino-San Severino Marche investigated on money laundering by Italian officials. http://goo.gl/uztVU
2/09/12 (VATICAN) Institute for Religious Works (IOR aka “Vatican Bank”), 49 year old Father Don Salvatore Palumbo of the socially popular parish of San Gaetano http://goo.gl/uztVU
2/09/12 (VATICAN) Institute for Religious Works (IOR aka “Vatican Bank”), 37 year old Father Horace Bonaccorsi of Catania, already tried and acquitted in Sicily for money laundering offenses recycling money through accounts at IOR http://goo.gl/uztVU
2/09/12 (VATICAN) Institute for Religious Works (IOR aka “Vatican Bank”), 85 year old Father Don Evaldo Biasini of Rome. Father Don Evaldo Biasini is known as the “Don of Cash”. http://goo.gl/uztVU
2/09/12 (UKRAINE) National Bank of Ukraine deputy governor Volodymyr Krotiuk quits http://goo.gl/8BuXy
2/09/12 (UK) JP Morgan Chinese Investment Trust PLC, non-executive Director Madam Yujiang Zhao resigned http://goo.gl/CPO23
2/09/12 (UK) Alliance Trust Savings (ATS), Robert Burgess is stepping down as CEO. http://goo.gl/ohHG3
2/10/12 (KOREA) Korea Exchange Bank chief Larry Klane steps down http://goo.gl/DBKdc
2/10/12 (INDIA) Tamilnad Mercantile Bank CEO A K Jagannathan resigns http://goo.gl/wMl5g
2/13/12 (KUWAIT) Kuwait Central Bank CEO Sheikh Salem Abdulaziz Al Sabbah resigns http://goo.gl/GFvIy
2/13/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs confirmed on Monday that George N. Mattson, one of the firm’s top deal makers in the industrial sector, will retire. He was a senior relationship banker with a client list that included General Motors, General Electric and Caterpillar. http://goo.gl/vgnq2
2/13/12 (HONDURAS) Honduras finance minister William Chong Wong, resigned on Monday after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the country did not reach its deficit and monetary targets for 2011. http://goo.gl/drgHY
2/14/12 (NICARAQUA) Nicaraqua Central Bank President Antenor Rosales resigns http://goo.gl/iQ0n8
2/14/12 (UK) Social finance pioneer Malcolm Hayday quits Charity Bank http://goo.gl/uHp6C
2/14/12 (PAKISTAN) National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) chairman Syed Ali Raza resigned http://goo.gl/scexo
2/14/12 (USA NY) Goldman Sachs Jeffrey Moslow resigns, an investment banker to companies such as Tyco International Ltd, Nstar, the Boston-based utility, and defense contractor Dyncorp International Inc. http://goo.gl/7h4O7
2/15/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) HPA – Hospitality Property Fund Limited, chairman Frank Berkeley resigned. http://goo.gl/wJmpR
2/15/12 (USA) Boston Properties (REIT), Executive VP and COO E. Mitchell Norvilleto resigned http://goo.gl/AW7X7
2/15/12 (WORLD) World Bank CEO Zoellick resigns http://goo.gl/dHDSm
Did the White House tell the World Bank president that he’s out? http://goo.gl/wUOgb
2/15/12 (CHINA) Morgan non-executive chairman Stanley Stephen Roach will be retiring. http://goo.gl/MQeGW
2/15/12 (SLOVENIA) Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor CEO Andrej Plos resigns http://goo.gl/SNsVI
2/15/12 (SLOVENIA) Nova Ljubljanska Banka d.d. CEO Bozo Jasovic resigns http://goo.gl/TyYiJ
2/16/12 (USA IL) Deerfield Capital Management LLC, CEO Daniel Hattori and CEO of CIFC Corp resigned. http://goo.gl/LLNnD
2/16/12 (USA IL) Deerfield Capital Management LLC, COO Luke Knecht and CEO of CIFC Corp, resigned both positions. http://goo.gl/LLNnD
2/16/12 (UK) The Financial Services Authority Margaret Cole is to step down http://goo.gl/yT6rS
2/16/12 (GHANA) Databank Group Executive Chair Ken Ofori-Atta steps down http://goo.gl/c7PtU
2/16/12 (SAUDI ARABIA) Saudi Hollandi Banks Managing Director Geoffrey Calvert Quits http://goo.gl/CtmOU
2/16/12 (AUSTRALIA) ANZ Bank Australia CFO Peter Marriott resigns http://goo.gl/I7Alo
2/16/12 (UK) Royal Bank of Scotland Sr Equities Trader Jason Edinburgh Arrested http://goo.gl/WczHh
2/16/12 (UK) Royal Bank of Scotland director equities bus. Vincent Walsh director Arrested http://goo.gl/I7Alo
2/16/12 (UK) Marex Spectron senior trader Michael Elsom Arrested http://goo.gl/I7Alo
2/16/12 (AUSTRALIA) Royal Bank of Scotland Austraila CEO Stephen Williams resigns http://goo.gl/4r16D
2/17/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Coronation Fund Managers CEO Hugo Nelson is stepping down at age of 40. http://goo.gl/I3NY8
2/17/12 (PAKISTAN) PICIC Asset Management Company Limited CFO Ahmed Raza resigns http://goo.gl/K8A2I
2/17/12 (USA NY) Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein out as by summer http://goo.gl/UjpzD
2/17/12 (SWITZERLAND) SNB Council President Hansueli Raggenbass resigns http://goo.gl/1n1Nr
2/17/12 (UK) Insight Investment, asset manager Mike Pinggera has resigned.. http://goo.gl/uDplK
2/17/12 (USA NY) Harbinger Group Inc. CFO Francis T. McCarron has advised the Company of his resignation effective April 30 http://goo.gl/6il4F
2/17/12 (BULGARIA) Bulgaria National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), The managing director Neli Nesheva, resigned after a two-day row about end-of-year bonuses paid by NHIF to its employees. http://goo.gl/7UQxv
2/18/12 (PAKISTAN) The Bank of Azad Jammu and Kashmir executive Zulfiqar Abbasi resigns
http://goo.gl/G0woP
2/19/12 (MALTA) Bank of Valletta, director of the Multi-Manager Fund John C. Ripard, has resigned being reprimanded by the MFSA for disposing of his holdings in the Fund whilst in possession of sensitive information which was not available to the public. http://goo.gl/1li3r
2/20/12 (RUSSIA) Head of Russian Bank Regulator Gennady Melikyan Steps Down http://goo.gl/Unuez
2/20/12 (SWITZERLAND) Credit Suisse Chief Joseph Tan resigns http://goo.gl/F5twL
2/20/12 (ISRAEL) Bank Leumi le-Israel Ltd: Zvi Itskovitch resigns http://goo.gl/aA0RW
2/20/12 (USA WA) First Financial Northwest Director Spencer Schneider Quits http://goo.gl/6Dj0i
2/21/12 (ARGENTINA) Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) Gen Mgr Benigno Velez, resigns http://goo.gl/DuMrm
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) Nitol Insurance Co. Ltd director Abdul Matlub resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on unknown bank http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) Nitol Insurance Co. Ltd director Selima Ahmad resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on unknown bank http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) Nitol Insurance Co. Ltd director Abdul Musabbir Ahmad resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on unknown bank http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) City General Insurance Co. Ltd director Geasuddin Ahmad resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on unknown bank http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (BANGLADESH) Social Islami Bank Limited director Taslima Akter resigns
conflict of interest with director seat on Eastland Insurance Company Limited http://goo.gl/aEmwB
2/21/12 (JAPAN) CITIBANK JAPAN: Bakhshi is taking over duties from Brian Mccappin, who the bank said in December would resign after the unit was banned for two weeks from trading tied to the London and Tokyo interbank offered rates. http://goo.gl/Z1rnw
2/22/12 (HONG KONG) DZ BANK project finance head Tim Meaney quits http://goo.gl/ppKno
2/22/12 (SINGAPORE) Macquarie International Infrastructure Fund’s CEO John Stuart to resign http://goo.gl/ji7Q4
2/22/12 (USA NY) Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund Group Chief Howard Wietschner to Retire http://goo.gl/x4Zsr
2/22/12 (UK) UBS AG’s (UBSN) Doug McCutcheon, head of Healthcare Banking in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific region, has left Switzerland’s biggest bank after 25 years at the firm. http://goo.gl/Dnxqh
2/23/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs Nordic M&A banker Luca Ferrari has decided to retire from the firm, clients included the largest telecommunications operator in Spain the Spanish telecommunications. http://goo.gl/qmCh3
2/23/12 (SOUTH AFRICA)Richard Gush resigns from Standard Bank http://goo.gl/DTL5S
2/23/12 (SCOTLAND) Royal Bank of Scotland Group director John McFarlane resigns. http://goo.gl/KoEUI
2/24/12 (GUERNSEY) Spearpoint Limited (SPL) Investment Funds, director Mike Kirby resigns for business reasons. http://goo.gl/9stPB
2/24/12 (INDIA) Breaking: ICICI Bank GC Pramod Rao resigns http://goo.gl/5eUqU
2/24/12 (HONG KONG) Citigroup Pvt Bank Global Real Estate Kwang Meng Quek Resigns http://goo.gl/JIC9A
2/24/12 (NEW ZEALAND) FSF Executive Director Kirk Hope resigns http://goo.gl/6UJau
2/24/12 (USA NY) Evercore Partners Head Eduardo Mestre steps down http://goo.gl/n5RLY
2/25/12 (AUSTRALIA AND NZ) Goldman Sachs Chairman Stephen Fitzgerald quits http://goo.gl/nMTLW
2/25/12 (DENMARK) European Investment Bank (EIB), Mr Sigmund Lubanski, of the Kingdom of Denmark tendered his resignation. http://goo.gl/y4XXF
2/27/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank Americas chief Seth Waugh steps down http://goo.gl/8lxSw
2/27/12 (BAHRAIN) Khaleeji Commercial Bank CEO Ebrahim Ebrahim quits http://goo.gl/yKjzL
2/27/12 (BAHRAIN) – Mumtalakat Holding [Sovereign Wealth Fund] CEO Al Zain resigns http://goo.gl/hhHSm
2/27/12 (FRANCE) Societe Generale’s Investment Banking Chief Michel Péretié Steps Down http://goo.gl/IJ5Lw
2/27/12 (GERMANY) Equiduct chairman Artur Fischer steps down http://goo.gl/Q0dWR
2/27/12 (IRAN) Bank Melli CEO MahmoudReza Khaavari Resigns – Flees to Canada! http://goo.gl/DDEUk
2/27/12 (IRAN) Bank Saderat CEO Mohammad Jahromi resigns http://goo.gl/ZD0mc
2/27/12 (UK) Lloyds Banking Group Glen Moreno steps down http://goo.gl/dsXcE
2/27/12 (SINGAPORE) Standard Chartered Bank, global head of repo and collateralised financing Tanweer Khan resigned. http://goo.gl/hgbuc
2/28/12 (HONG KONG) Hang Seng Bank CEO Margaret Leung Ko May-yee quits http://goo.gl/Uo800
2/28/12 (CHINA) Bank of China International ECM global head Marshall Nicholson quits http://goo.gl/26MYq
2/28/12 (SINGAPORE) DBS security head Jim Pasqurell quits, cites health reasons http://goo.gl/NDJze
2/28/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America’s Asia-Pac. mrkts Brian Canniffe quits http://goo.gl/cRkCP
2/28/12 (BELGIUM) KBC’s CEO Jan Vanhevel is to retire after a career spanning 41 years. http://goo.gl/1rCWd
2/28/12 (CANADA) Ontario Securities Commission chairwoman Peggy-Anne Brown quits http://goo.gl/HIYXv
2/28/12 (AUSTRALIA) Bank manager Colin John Carleton jailed nine years for $3m theft http://goo.gl/ggPvq
2/28/12 (SRI LANKA) Sri Lanka Com Bank CEO Amitha Gooneratne retires http://goo.gl/YxvNA
2/28/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) REDEFINE INCOME FUND director Gerald Leissner resigns http://goo.gl/F0UgN
2/28/12 (ITALY) UNICREDIT: Chairman Dieter Rampl not available for a new mandate http://goo.gl/7aLRU
2/28/12 (UK) Bank of England Sir David Lees re-appointed Chair of Bank of England and gives notice of resignation at end of 2013 http://goo.gl/LkJhV
2/28/12 (IRELAND) State Street Global Advisors Cash Funds plc Director Keith Walsh resigns http://goo.gl/n6uoM
2/29/12 (AUSTRALIA) Perpetual portfolio manager Matt Williams steps down http://goo.gl/Jh9jd
2/29/12 (UK) Honister Capital CEO Richard Pearson steps down http://goo.gl/014or
2/29/12 (GUYANA) National Investment and Commercial Investments Ltd. (NICIL), Executive Director Winston Brassington resigns, “We feel that (Winston) Brassington knows everything…A to Z about all the transactions,” said Chairman of the Alliance for Change (AFC), Khemraj Ramjattan, as he sounded a warning that controversial figure could be subpoenaed to appear before the Parliamentary Economic Sector Committee. http:// goo.gl/L7I35
3/01/12 (MALAYSIA) RHB Bank Bhd deputy managing director Renzo Viegas quits http://goo.gl/wACrI
3/01/12 (ITALY) Italian Banking Association Chairman Giuseppe Mussari talks to reporters in Rome after he and seven other executives offered to resign in protest over new banking-fee rules included in the government’s legislation on boosting competition. http://goo.gl/3llyT
3/01/12 (USA FL) Florida Venture Forum [Venture Capital] Exec Dir Robin Lester quits http://goo.gl/nA8g9
3/01/12 (USA NY) PineBridge Investments said Win Neuger has resigned as chief executive. Neuger helped build AIG’s third party asset management business, PineBridge still manages AIG assets
http://goo.gl/SI7kT
3/01/12 (SINGAPORE) UBS Singapore – James Tulley is leaving Switzerland’s largest bank, it is not clear where he is going. http://goo.gl/BGugF
3/01/12 (USA NH) Piscataqua Savings Bank CEO Jay Gibson retires http://goo.gl/uEqDV
3/01/12 (ICELAND) Iceland’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) fired its director Gunnar Andersen http://goo.gl/VG9q5
3/01/12 (USA OR) Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund (OPERF) senior RE officer Brad Child will retire http://goo.gl/vcERz
3/02/12 (CHINA) China Construction Bank Corp, assistant general manager and head of corporate banking Mickey Mehta quits http://goo.gl/B9dR0
3/02/12 (USA NY) Deutsche Bank Student Loan CEOJohn Hupalo quits to start student loan counseling firm. http://goo.gl/8kZuc
3/02/12 (UK) Bank of England Sir Mervin King resigns in June, Lord Sassoon tipped as replacement. http://goo.gl/ZEUwf
3/02/12(BOTSWANA) Barclays Bank Botswana managing director Wilfred Mpai forced to resign http://goo.gl/npBe2
3/02/12 (HONG KONG) New Century Group Hong Kong Ltd [investment house and leisure group] Wilson Ng resigns http://goo.gl/wFSV8
3/02/12 (USA NY) Citigroup Richard Parsons to step down as chairman http://goo.gl/BhZ0F
3/03/12 (AUSTRIA) Volksbank AG (VBAG) The contract of CEO Gerald Wenzel will not be extended http://goo.gl/w99tD
3/03/12 (ETHIOPIA) Dashen Bank’s board dismisses president Leulseged Teferi http://goo.gl/Y801M
3/04/12 (KOREA) Hana Financial Group Inc, prominent figure in the history of South Korean finance Kim Seung-yu , resigns http://goo.gl/fmNxY
3/04/12 (USA NY) JP Morgan prop trading chief Mike Stewart quits http://goo.gl/gubPj
3/05/12 (SAUDI ARABIA) Al Rajhi Bank CEO Abdullah bin Sulaiman Al Rajhi has resigned http://goo.gl/pNx0l
3/5/12 (UK) Jupiter fund co-manager Tony Nutt steps down http://goo.gl/RPqOp
3/05/12 (UK) Jupiter fund co-manager John Hamilton steps down http://goo.gl/RPqOp
3/05/12 (NEW ZEALAND) Insured Group Bill Jeffries has resigned as chairman and director http://goo.gl/gX7wu
3/05/12 (USA) Reliance Bancshares chairman Patrick Gideon resigned http://goo.gl/u6BT4
3/05/12 (UK) Charterhouse partner Gordon Bonnyman is stepping down. http://goo.gl/iAEYB
3/05/12 (UK) HgCapital, partner Lindsay Dibden is leaving after 20 years. http://goo.gl/iAEYB
3/06/12 (FRANCE) Blackstone Group’s Paris office leader Jean-Michel Steg will step down http://goo.gl/w3Ca5
3/06/12 (JAMAICA) Jamaica Money Market Brokers Limited, Patricia Sutherland has resigned as Executive Director http://goo.gl/oMwv6
3/06/12 (JAMAICA) Jamaica’s Financial Services Commission (FSC), Executive director Rohan Barnett, has resigned the position, the Ministry of Finance, Planning and the Public Service announced this afternoon. http://goo.gl/FBwFo
3/06/12 USA CT) Wells Fargo & Co. said that Mackey McDonald, one of the last remaining directors from Wachovia is retiring. http://goo.gl/F1O4v
3/06/12 (USA PA) USA Technologies Inc Bradley M. Tirpak,a nominee of Shareholder Advocates for Value Enhancement,has resigned from its board subsequent to a settlement agreement with the investing group, according to an SEC filing. Provides a network of wireless non-cash transactions, associated financial/network services and energy management. It provides networked credit card and other non-cash systems in the vending, commercial laundry, hospitality and digital imaging industries. http://goo.gl/8oi7C
3/06/12 (UK) Sterling Green Group has announced that Philip Kanas, a non-executive director, has decided to resign
Sterling Green Group PLC became a cash shell following the disposal of their subsidiaries Taxdebts Ltd, Sterling Green (Mortgages) Ltd and the back books of the clients of Sterling Green Ltd. during December 2011. http://goo.gl/qc3jB
3/06/12 (UK) Aberdeen Asset Management, non-executive director Gerhard Fusenig has resigned from the board. http://goo.gl/ZIkvQ
3/07/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank AG’s (DB) Chief Risk Officer Hugo Baenzigeri to resign http://goo.gl/MWqsH
3/07/12 (GERMANY) Deutsche Bank AG’s (DB) Chief Operating Officer Hermann-Josef Lamberti to resign http://goo.gl/MWqsH
3/07/12 (UNITED ARAB EMIRATES) Dubai Mercantile Exchange announced Thomas Leaver will step down as CEO http://goo.gl/rfhWN
3/07/12 (SCOTLAND) Macfarlane Group Chairman Archie Hunter to step down after 8 years of service http://goo.gl/RHllr
3/07/12 (USA) BlackRock Emerging Markets Fund co-head Daniel Tubbs, has left the group to pursue other opportunities. http://goo.gl/CpEzZ
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) Christopher French resigns from board http://goo.gl/3yQDS
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) David Wildermuth resigns from board http://goo.gl/3yQDS
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) Matthew Westerman resigns from board http://goo.gl/3yQDS
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) co-head of global mergers and acquisitions Yoel Zaoui resigns http://goo.gl/3yQDS
3/07/12 (UK) Goldman Sachs (GSI) Phil Beatty resigned as head of European power and natural-gas trading http://goo.gl/jqbYY
3/07/12 (SINGAPORE) Nikko Asset Management Timothy McCarthy is retiring as chairman and CEO at the end of the month http://goo.gl/v8tcT
3/07/12 (HONG KONG) UBS Senior Asia Economist Jonathan Anderson Departs http://goo.gl/09VqT
3/07/12 (HAITI) FORMER DIRECTOR HAITI CENTRAL BANK SLAIN! ⑆44541444⑈ http://goo.gl/UtVz3
3/07/12 (FRANCE) Société Générale Private Banking, Daniel Truchi is to step down as head of Société Générale Private Banking http://goo.gl/XhgJ9
3/07/12 (AUSTRALIA) Customers Ltd, Tim Wildash has cashed himself out as chief executive of Australia’s largest ATM operator http://goo.gl/eZJMb
3/07/12 (USA CA) CALSTRS, Pascal Villiger, senior private equity portfolio manager at the $145 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System resigns http://goo.gl/ub0ke
3/07/12 (USA) Astaire quits Bank of America Merrill to dance to Barclays Capital’s tune http://goo.gl/Zv6Ny
3/08/12 (USA NY) Schroders, CIO Alan Brown is steps down http://goo.gl/ZTtYo
3/08/12 (USA IL) CBOE Executive Patrick Fay Put on Leave Amid SEC Probe http://goo.gl/x5snO
3/08/12 (USA NH & RI) Bristol County Savings Bank president E. Dennis Kelly retires after 35 years http://goo.gl/8KVKn
3/08/12 (GERMANY) Clearstream Banking AG – Katja Rosenkranz To Leave Deutsche Börse Group [stockmarket] http://goo.gl/RiVNi
3/08/12 (UK) B&CE CEO Brian Griffiths is to retire later this year http://goo.gl/AV7Sk
3/08/12 (UK) Invesco Trimark Ltd, portfolio manager Dana Love has resigned. http://goo.gl/MyQ90
3/08/12 (ISRAEL) Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer will hand in his shock resignation in the coming days and take up a new position as head of the Bank of Zambia. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz is believed to be furious with Fischer’s decision. Treasury officials said he even canceled his participation in the office’s annual Purim party in order to convince Fischer to reverse his decision. http://goo.gl/0DlSA
3/08/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Standard Bank Group Limited (SBK), board member Sir Paul Judge retires. http://goo.gl/SjSPg
3/08/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) Standard Bank Groupl Limited (SBK), board member Sir Sam Jonah retires. http://goo.gl/SjSPg
3/09/12 (MONGOLIA) Mongol Bank President Alag Batsukh submitted his resignation letter to Speaker of Parliament D. Demberel at the end of last month. He described his reason for resigning as a lack of support by Parliament. http://goo.gl/RDmNx
3/09/12 (MONGOLIA) Asia Pacific Securities, General Manager Narantuguldur Saijrakh recently resigned, to focus on his role as Director of Khan Investment Management, investment advisor to the Khan Mongolia Equity Fund – the first open-ended investment vehicle with monthly dealing that invests in Mongolia related equities listed both domestically and internationally. http://goo.gl/2T4R6
3/09/12 (Côte d’Ivoire) Banque Central des Etats d’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO) The Ivorian governor of the multi-billion dollar West Africa Francophone bank, Philippe-Henry Dacoury-Tabley, resigned his post. http://goo.gl/CevLn
3/09/12 (UK) Lazard , co-head of investment banking Alexis de Rosnay quits. De Rosnay specialises in the healthcare sector, he has advised Teva Pharmaceutical and Novartis. http://goo.gl/3gzbi
3/09/12 (UK) Deutsche Bank PWM, UK head of portfolio management Martyn Surguy resigned. http://goo.gl/5Ti2p
3/09/12 (UK) Deutsche Bank PWM, head of discretionary management, Kypros Charalambous, having also stepped down. http://goo.gl/5Ti2p
3/09/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America Merrill Lynch, K.J. Kim, responsible for Southeast Asia, resigned http://goo.gl/sE7xh
3/09/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Jimmy Choi, who was in charge of high-yield debt, resigned. http://goo.gl/sE7xh
3/09/12 (HONG KONG) Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Leonard Ng, a vice-president in Hong Kong resigned. http://goo.gl/sE7xh
3/09/12 (AUSTRALIA) Bank of Queensland CFO Ram Kangatharan plans to leave the bank. http://goo.gl/ieNea
3/09/12 (USA) Cerberus Capital Management LP, CEO Robert Nardelli resigns. http://goo.gl/9uKVx
3/10/12 (AUSTRALIA) WESTPAC, Rob Chapman opted to quit running its regional subsidiary St George Bank. http://goo.gl/G6MD
3/10/12 (TURKEY) Garanti Bank, The deputy CEO of Turkish lender Tolga Egemen, has decided to quit. http://goo.gl/vAMzV
3/10/12 (CHINA) Korea Development Bank, Shanghai unit senior manager Stella Wen resigned. http://goo.gl/55CqZ
3/10/12 (HONG KONG) Deutsche Bank, Johan Sudiman resigns as director. http://goo.gl/6CYGP
3/12/12 (USA) John Lewis Partnership Pension Trust, head of investments Andrew Chapman, resigns http://goo.gl/hevqh
3/12/12 (USA CA) California’s Department of Financial Institutions, commissioner William Haraf resigned. The DFI did not say why he is leaving. http://goo.gl/zquTc
3/12/12 (KUWAIT) Gulf Bank, Chairman Ali Rashaid Al Bader quits http://goo.gl/LDz9b
3/12/12 (UK and IRELAND) Allfunds Bank, head of UK and Ireland Alan Gadd is stepping down from his role at the end of April. http://goo.gl/4DF6i
3/12/12 (USA) ICAP, CEO of the electronic broking business David Rutter step down following a restructuring of the business. http://goo.gl/SUHqW
3/12/12 (UK) SVG Capital, chairman Nicholas Ferguson resigns. His departure left him well placed to succeed James Murdoch as chairman of BSkyB should the latter bow to investor pressure and step down. Other investors in the satellite broadcaster suggested Ferguson might be seen as too close to Murdoch to win the support of institutional shareholders. http://goo.gl/z19wH
3/12/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), CEO Paul Baloyi resigns. http://goo.gl/yX4xo
3/12/12 (USA) Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, CEO Bryan Marsal Resigns Title, Remains on as Adviser http://goo.gl/1K9zV
3/12/12 (USA IL) CME Group Inc, CEO Craig Donohues will step down at year end. http://goo.gl/lvzgC
3/13/12 (USA) Eaton Vance Corp, Treasurer and CFO Robert J. Whelan has stepped down. http://goo.gl/oxmbL
3/12/12 (USA IL) CBOE Holdings Inc. (CBOE), senior compliance executive Patrick Fay has resigned. The options exchange being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fay had been placed on leave after the SEC began investigating the options-market operator’s oversight of traders. http://goo.gl/gj4W6
3/13/12 (USA) Mithras Investment Trust, chairman Mike Wooderson will step down http://goo.gl/UjO2e
3/13/12 (USA) PHH Mortgage, President Luke Hayden resigned from to pursue what the company calls “other interests.” http://goo.gl/iaqQf
3/13/12 (USA) PHH Mortgage, Treasurer Mark Johnson.resigned http://goo.gl/iaqQf
3/13/12 (AUSTRALIA) WESTPAC, head of corporate affairs after David Bell decided to step down from the role. Bell is the latest top executive to leave the bank. http://goo.gl/FntUz
3/13/12 (UK) Capula’s Systemic Trading Head Qiang Dai to Leave Fund http://goo.gl/zkrN2
3/13/12 (UAE) National Bank of Abu Dhabi, CEO Michael Tomalin, will retire from the post in a few months. http://goo.gl/dzBW8
3/13/12 (ISRAEL) Osem Investments Ltd, CEO Gazi Kaplan has tendered his resignation, effective April 2, citing heath reasons. Nestlé SA owns 58.8% of Osem. http://goo.gl/t032l
3/13/12 (USA) Paulson & Co.’s, partner and head of the global bank team Robert Lacoursiere has quit to form his own hedge fund http://goo.gl/I8UNd
3/13/12 (AUSTRALIA) ASX Ltd, Chairman David Gonski will step down from his role at Australia’s main stock market operator after being appointed to oversee almost A$90 billion ($95 billion) in the nation’s sovereign-wealth funds. http://goo.gl/gJN33
3/13/12 (UK) JP Morgan, Asset Management European chief Jamie Broderick is to step down more than 20 years at the firm. http://goo.gl/MV65V
3/14/12 (SOUTH AFRICA) ABSA chairman Garth Griffin to retire http://goo.gl/Mhjb5
Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Mullins, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of three books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, and Five Sense Solutions. Turbeville has published over one hundred articles dealing with a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville is available for podcast, radio, and TV interviews. Please contact us at activistpost (at) gmail.com.
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The BBC (in Spanish)
Former government officials such as Ed Rendell, the Democratic ex-governor of Pennsylvania, and Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have come under scrutiny from federal investigators over the speaking fees they were paid to deliver speeches supporting MEK, according to press reports.
On March 6, 2012, I wrote an article entitled “