Probe of the members of the Royal Order of Jesters' carousing goes national

Case against 3 men from area wraps up.

To hear the leadership of the Royal Order of Jesters tell it, the illegal activities that ensnared three Buffalo-area members in a federal investigation are isolated events not in keeping with Jesters traditions.

But sources close to the investigation and former Jesters from other parts of the country tell a different story, one of bizarre activities — including routinely hiring prostitutes for gatherings, sex competitions and degrading initiation rites for new members — at many Jesters outings, with off-duty police hired to keep nonmembers away.

“I quit the Jesters more than 20 years ago, and this kind of thing has been going on at least 40 or 50 years,” said Malcolm “Mutt” Herring, 90, of Montgomery, Ala. “I quit because I don’t drink, and I don’t mess around with other women, other than my wife. Going to one of their events was like going to a whorehouse.”

Royal Order of Jesters "The Actor"

While the case against the three Buffalo-area Jesters is wrapping up, with sentencings expected soon, federal agents have expanded their investigation and are looking into allegations that illegal activities occurred at outings sponsored by more of the Jesters’ 191 chapters. The local men who pleaded guilty in the Buffalo case, and others, have cooperated with the feds, providing information about Jesters events in other cities.

Gary N. Martin, president of the 22,000-member Jesters, says he is disturbed about the allegations. But Martin said that, to his knowledge, such conduct is extremely isolated and never condoned by the organization.

“We believe that this is isolated, inappropriate, indeed illegal conduct by only an extremely small fraction of our membership,” said Martin, a Houston car dealer. “We have, however, taken a number of significant steps to make it abundantly clear to [members] that such behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

The Jesters, a 98-year-old, nationwide fraternal group whose past members have included movie stars, judges, prominent businessmen and two presidents, is a tax-exempt organization that admits it is dedicated to one thing: the pursuit of mirth and merriment. Last year, the group put its Buffalo chapter on probation, after investigators from a human trafficking task force learned that Buffalo members took prostitutes—some of them illegal aliens — to Jesters weekend gatherings, known as “books.”

A Jesters spokesman said a chapter in Big Sandy, Ky., also was put on probation because of incidents uncovered in the same federal probe.

Code of secrecy
Retired State Supreme Court Justice Ronald Tills; his former law clerk, Michael R. Stebick of Orchard Park; and retired Lockport police Capt. John Trowbridge all pleaded guilty to transporting prostitutes across state lines. Trowbridge is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in Buffalo’s federal court, and Tills is scheduled for a pre-sentencing conference Thursday.

With rare exceptions, the Jesters’ 22,000 members operate under a strict code of secrecy.

“When I joined, they told me their motto was, ‘What you hear here, what you see here, stays here when you leave here,’ ” said J. L. Edwards, a former member from South Carolina. “Everybody’s told to keep the secret.”

Edwards, a farmer in his 60s, said he belonged to the Jesters for seven years, ending in 1998. Edwards said he quit because he felt guilty about things he saw at the Jesters’ gatherings.

Edwards told The Buffalo News the incidents he witnessed included:

• Prostitutes walking around parties, wearing only panties, soliciting Jesters to meet them later in their hotel rooms.

• “Sex contests” involving prostitutes and Jesters members, performing in front of large groups of Jesters.

• Off-duty cops in uniform, making sure that no non-Jesters entered the rooms where activities were going on.

“You had prominent people at these books — ministers, police chiefs. It’s an elite group, people like Judge Tills,” Edwards said. “A lot of these guys were prominent men in their 60s and 70s. They have beautiful young women with them, and it makes them feel like they’re a young buck again.”

A national Jesters spokesman, Robert Leonard, said the organization is unaware of any such activities. And if they ever did occur, he said, they were not part of the official functions.

The case involving Tills, 74, of Hamburg, sent shock waves through the national Jesters organization.

A former assemblyman and State Supreme Court justice, Tills hastily retired in March 2008 from his $300-a-day job as a hearing officer for the court. His resignation from the part-time post occurred shortly after he became aware that members of the Western New York Human Trafficking Task Force were investigating him and other Jesters.

Tills case a shocker
Last September, Tills pleaded guilty in federal court to a felony violation of the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting people across state lines for prostitution.

Between 2001 and 2007, Tills admitted, he arranged for prostitutes to perform at Jesters events in Dunkirk; Brantford, Ont.; Niagara Falls, Ont.; and unspecified cities in Florida, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

As the former director of the Buffalo Jesters, Tills has cooperated extensively with federal agents who are investigating other chapters, sources close to the case said.

And court papers filed by Assistant U. S. Attorney Robert C. Moscati make clear that investigators do not believe Tills was the only Jester involved in procuring prostitutes.

“This organization maintained chapters throughout the United States. [It] was the custom of these chapters to host periodic meetings, usually on weekends,” Moscati said of the Jesters.

“At most of these meetings, some members of the organization would be tasked to arrange for the presence of women at the meeting, for the specific purpose of utilizing the women to engage in sexual intercourse and other sexual activity with the organization’s members in exchange for money,” Moscati said.

Martin, the group’s president, is working to distance himself from what happened with the Buffalo chapter.

Last August Martin sent a directive to all 191 local chapters, forbidding the following conduct during initiation ceremonies:

• “Any type of physical brutality, such as whipping, beating, striking, branding, electronic shocking [or] placing of a harmful substance on the body.”

• Sleep deprivation, exposure to the elements, confinement to small spaces, or other activity that subjects Jesters to “an unreasonable risk of harm.”

• Any activity involving consumption of food, liquor, drugs or other substances that would expose a Jester to “an unreasonable risk of harm.”

“The warning was sent out in an abundance of caution,” Leonard said. “It was based on some prominent lawsuits filed about hazing at college campuses. It had nothing to do with any specific incident involving Jesters.”

Many Masons upset
The Jesters are a division of the Freemasons, one of the world’s largest and oldest fraternal organizations. Many Masons are upset and angry about what has happened with this subgroup.

Some feel it may be time to disband the Jesters, said Christopher L. Hodapp of Indianapolis, co-author of the book “Freemasons for Dummies.”

“They’ve got no business being Masons,” Hodapp said of the Jesters who cavort with prostitutes. “It’s completely opposed to the obligations we take in joining a Masonic lodge. The Masons are about family, community and faith-oriented activities that make good men better.”

According to Leonard, five former Buffalo Jesters — Tills, Trowbridge, Stebick and two other men he declined to name — resigned from the Jesters because of the federal probe.

He added that, as far as national leaders know, the only Jesters events featuring prostitutes were those identified in the federal case in Buffalo.

But some investigators doubt that.

“I don’t believe that,” said Elizabeth Fildes, an Erie County sheriff’s deputy and program director of the Human Trafficking Task Force. “It seems like it went on for a very long time.”

The task force includes investigators from the FBI, U. S. Border Patrol, U. S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, and the Erie and Niagara sheriffs’ offices.

“From my conversations with the government, it seems they believe a lot of the other Jesters chapters were doing the same things as the Buffalo guys,” said Joel L. Daniels, Stebick’s attorney.

Critics of the Jesters — including Sandy Frost, an online journalist from Tacoma, Wash. — said it is outrageous the group gets tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service since, as stated in its own literature, its sole purpose is to have fun.

Source: buffalonews.com

Alan Keyes Arrested Protesting Abortion at Notre Dame

The South Bend Tribune reports that political activist, author, former diplomat and presidential candidate Alan Keyes has been arrested on the campus of Notre Dame. Keyes was involved in an anti-abortion protest at the time of his arrest.

Keyes was involved in an anti-abortion protest at the time of his arrest.

On May 6, 2009, Keyes announced he would be present at the University of Notre Dame on May 17 and planned to be arrested protesting President Obama’s invitation to speak and receive an honorary degree at the ceremony, the Catholic News Agency reported.

In a statement released earlier this week, Keyes said he “will go to South Bend. I will step foot on the Notre Dame campus to lift up the standard that protects the life of the innocent children of this and every generation. I will do it all day and every day from now until the Master comes if need be, though it mean I shall be housed every day in the prison house of lies and injustice that Obama, Jenkins and their minions now mean to construct for those who will never be still and silent in the face of their mockery of God and justice, their celebration of evil.”

Randall Terry, founder of the the pro-life organization Operation Rescue, appeared this afternoon on the Alex Jones Show with Jason Bermas, Terry said Keyes was arrested with other protesters as they pushed baby carriages with dolls covered in fake blood across the campus of the Catholic university. Terry said the protests will continue.

In 2008, Keyes lost a bid to become the Constitution Party presidential candidate. During the convention, the party’s founder, Howard Phillips, gave a controversial speech in which he referred to Keyes as “the neocon candidate.” Keyes formed a new third party, America’s Independent Party, for his presidential candidacy. In the federal election held on November 4, 2008, Keyes received 47,694 votes nationally to finish seventh.

Leaked 1955 Bilderberg Docs Outline Plan For Single European Currency

Friday, May 8, 2009

Leaked documents from the 1955 Bilderberg Group conference held in Germany discuss the agenda to create a European Union and a single EU currency, decades before they were introduced, disproving once again debunkers who claim that Bilderberg has no influence over world events.

	The full document can be read by clicking the above image (the password is ‘dynbase’).

Leaked papers from the meeting which took place from September 23-25 1955 at the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, were released by the Wikileaks website yesterday.

As we first reported in 2003, a BBC investigative team were allowed to access Bilderberg files which confirmed that the EU and the Euro were the brainchild of Bilderberg. They were probably reading from the same documents that were released by Wikileaks.

It was only last month that Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon bragged that Bilderberg helped create the Euro by first introducing the policy agenda for a single currency in the early 1990’s.

However, the documents show that the agenda to create a European common market and a single currency go back decades earlier.

The summary report of the 1955 meeting talks of the “Pressing need to bring the German people, together with the other peoples of Europe, into a common market.”

The document also outlines the plan, “To arrive in the shortest possible time at the highest degree of integration, beginning with a common European market.”

Just two years later, in 1957, the first incarnation of the European Economic Community (EEC) was born, which comprised of a single market between Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The EEC gradually enlarged over the next few decades until it became the European Community, one of the three pillars of the European Union, which was officially created in 1993.

The 1955 Bilderberg summary outlines a consensus that, “It might be better to proceed through the development of a common market by treaty rather than by the creation of new high authorities.” The EEC was duly created via the Treaty of Rome, which was signed on 25 March 1957.

The same process is still being followed to this day with the Lisbon Treaty, which hands over vast swathes of national sovereignty to the EU by means of the consent of Presidents and Prime Ministers of European countries, rather than by the arbitrary creation of new authorities, a method that would more obviously lay bare the fact that the creation of a federal EU superstate is totalitarian by its very nature.

Even so, debunkers will probably still try and claim that the idea of a common European market was floating around in the early 1950’s and that Bilderberg were merely debating contemporary political ideas.

However, the same cannot be said for the single European currency, which wasn’t even introduced in the form of notes and coins until January 2002, having been first codified in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The documents prove that Bilderberg members were pushing for its introduction nearly 40 years earlier.

“A European speaker expressed concern about the need to achieve a common currency, and indicated that in his view this necessarily implied the creation of a central political authority,” states the summary document.

True to form, the single European currency, the Euro, was not introduced until after the creation of a central political authority - the EU itself.

The document also stresses, “The necessity to bring the German people into a common European market as quickly as possible,” adding that the future was in danger without a “United Europe”.

We also learn that, “A United States participant confirmed that the United States had not weakened in its enthusiastic support for the idea of integration, although there was considerable diffidence in America as to how this enthusiasm should be manifested. Another United States participant urged his European friends to go ahead with the unification of Europe with less emphasis on ideological considerations and, above all, to be practical and work fast.”

Despite the plethora of manifestly provable examples of where Bilderberg’s agenda has later played out in actual policies and geopolitical developments on the world stage, establishment media debunkers still scoff and sneer at independent researchers who dare claim that 150 of the world’s most influential powerbrokers meeting in secret to discuss the future of the planet might equate to something more than an informal talking shop, calling such assertions “conspiracy theories”.

Indeed, the sheer stupidity of debunkers to suggest that an event that attracts the titans of government, industry, banking, business and academia, at which the most pressing global issues of the day are vigorously discussed under the cloak of a mutually agreed media blackout, has no bearing on future world events, is the most laughable “conspiracy theory” ever uttered.

Bilderberg’s 2009 agenda has already been leaked before their May 14-17 meeting in Vouliagmeni, Greece. According to investigative journalist Daniel Estulin, one of Bilderberg’s aims is to smear anti-Lisbon Treaty activists and politicians by planting derogatory stories in the media, enabling them to silence opposition to an EU federal superstate that Bilderberg has been carefully cultivating since their very first meetings in the 1950’s - a fact, not a conspiracy theory, proven by Bilderberg’s own internal documents.

Culture of Unpunished Sexual Assault in U.S. Military

Marfa, Texas — Sexual assault of women serving in the U.S. military, while brought to light in recent reports, has a long tradition in that institution.

Women in America were first allowed into the military during the Revolutionary War in 1775, and their travails are as old.

Maricela Guzman served in the Navy from 1998 to 2002 as a computer technician on the island of Diego Garcia, and later in Naples, Italy. She was raped while in boot camp, but was too scared to talk about the assault for the rest of her time in the military.

In her own words she, “survived by becoming a workaholic. Fortunately or unfortunately the military took advantage of this, and I was much awarded as a soldier for my work ethic.”

Guzman decided to dissociate from the military on witnessing the way it treated the native population in Diego Garcia. Post discharge, her life became unmanageable. The effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from her rape had taken a heavy toll.

After undergoing a divorce, a failed suicide attempt and homelessness, she moved in with her parents. A chance encounter with a female veteran at a political event in Los Angeles prompted her to contact the veteran’s administration (VA) for help. She began seeing a therapist there who diagnosed her with PTSD from her rape.

She told IPS that the VA denied her claim nevertheless, “Because they said I couldn’t prove it … since I had not brought it up when it happened and also because I had not shown any deviant behaviour while in the service. I was outraged and felt compelled to talk about what happened.”

Like countless others, Guzman learned early that the culture of the military promoted silence about sexual assault. Her experience over the years has convinced her that sexual violence is a systemic problem in the military.

“It has been happening since women were allowed into the service and will continue to happen after Iraq and Afghanistan,” Guzman told IPS, “Through the gossip mill we would hear of women who had reported being raped. No confidentiality was maintained nor any protection given to them making them susceptible to fresh attacks.”

“The boys’ club culture is strong and the competition exclusive,” Guzman added, “To get ahead women have to be better than men. That forces many not to report rape, because it is a blemish and can ruin your career.”

She is not hopeful of any radical change in policy anytime soon, but, “One good thing that has come out of this war is that people want to talk about this now.”

More than 190,000 female soldiers have served thus far in Iraq and Afghanistan on the front lines, often having to confront sexual assault and harassment from their own comrades in arms.

The VA’s PTSD centre claims that the incidence of rape, assault, and harassment were higher in wartime during the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq than during peacetime. Thus far, the numbers from Iraq show a continuance, and increase, of this disturbing trend.

The military is notorious for its sexist and misogynistic culture. Drill instructors indoctrinate new recruits by routinely calling them “girl,” “pussy,” “bitch,” and “dyke.” Pornography is prevalent, and misogynistic rhymes have existed for decades.

Understandably, Department of Defense (DoD) numbers for sexual assaults in the military are far lower than numbers provided by other sources, primarily because the Pentagon only counts rapes that soldiers have officially reported. Even according to the Pentagon, 80 percent of assaults go unreported.

Pentagon spokesperson Cynthia Smith told IPS, “We understand this is very important for everyone to get involved in preventing sexual assault, and are calling on everyone to get involved, step in, and watch each others’ backs.”

According to the DoD Report on Sexual Assault in the Military for Fiscal Year 2007, “There were 2,688 total reports of sexual assault involving Military Service Members,” of which “The Military Services completed a total of 1,955 criminal investigations on reports made during or prior to FY07.”

The criminal investigations yielded the shockingly low number of only 181 courts martial. “We understand that one sex assault is too many in the DoD,” Smith told IPS, “We have an office working on prevention and response.”

A 1995 study published in the Archives of Family Medicine found that 90 percent of female veterans from the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq and earlier wars had been sexually harassed. A 2003 survey of women veterans from the period encompassing Vietnam and the 1991 Iraq attack, published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, found that 30 percent of the women soldiers said they were raped.

In 2004, a study of veterans from Vietnam and all wars since, published in the journal of Military Medicine, found that 71 percent of the women were sexually assaulted or raped while serving.

At the 2006 National Convention of Veterans for Peace in Seattle, April Fitzsimmons, who early in her career was raped by a soldier, met with 45 other female vets, and began compiling information.

“I asked for a show of hands of women veterans who had been assaulted while on duty, and half the women raised their hands,” Fitzsimmons told IPS, “So I knew we had to do something.”

She, along with other women veterans like Guzman, founded the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) to help military women who have been victims of sexual violence.

It is an uphill battle for women in the U.S. military to take on the system that clearly represses attempts to change it.

“When victims come forward, they are ostracised, doubted, and isolated from their communities,” Fitzsimmons told IPS, “Many of the perpetrators are officers who use their ranks to coerce women to sleep with them. It’s a closely interwoven community, so the perpetrators are safe within the system and can fearlessly move free amongst their victims.”

Fitzsimmons shared with IPS a view that underscores the gravity of the problem.

“The crisis is so severe that I’m telling women to simply not join the military because it’s completely unsafe and puts them at risk. Until something changes at the top, no woman should join the military.”

****************************************************************************************

Sidebar: Two Testimonies

April Fitzsimmons served in the Air Force from 1985 to 1989, as an intelligence analyst and intelligence briefer for a two-star general. Early in her military career, another solider sexually assaulted her.

Nineteen years old at the time of her rape, Fitzsimmons reported the assault, and named her perpetrator, who was removed from the base. However, she declined the offer of counselling “because there was a stigma attached to it,” she told IPS.

“Those who seek counselling are perceived to be at risk, as being too weak and vulnerable and it would have meant forfeiting my top-secret clearance to keep military intelligence classified,” she explained.

Another reason for maintaining silence on the matter was that Fitzsimmons was declared “airman (sic) of the year,” in the European command.

“I didn’t want to lose that,” she says, “I wanted the whole thing to go away.”

Fitzsimmons created a one-woman play, Need to Know, which has been running for six years. In the play, she addresses her own sexual assault in the military. When news of rapes and sexual assaults by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, against both other soldiers and Iraqis began to surface, Fitzsimmons became more active.

“After reading about the 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza, who was raped by several soldiers, and about Suzanne Swift, a soldier who after being raped by another U.S. soldier went AWOL (absent without leave) rather than redeploy with the command that was responsible for allowing the rape to occur, I was convinced that there was a cycle of sexual violence in the military that was neither being seen nor addressed,” she says.

--------------------

It is not difficult to ascertain the reason for so few sexual assaults being reported in the military. Jen Hogg of the New York Army National Guard told IPS, “I helped a woman report a sexual assault while she was in basic training. She was grabbed between the legs from behind while going up stairs. She was not able to pinpoint the person who did it.”

Hogg explained that her friend was afraid to report the incident to her drill sergeant, and went on to explain why, which also sheds light on why so many women opt not to report being sexually assaulted.

“During training, the position of authority the drill sergeant holds makes any and all reporting a daunting task, and most people are scared to even approach him or her,” Hogg told IPS, “In this case, the drill sergeant’s response was swift but caused resentment towards the female that made the report, because her identity was not hidden from males who were punished as a whole for the one.”

The incident displays another tactic used in the military to suppress women’s reportage of being sexually assaulted - that of not respecting their anonymity, which opens them up to further assaults.

“After this incident many of the males said harassing things to her as they passed her during training, so much so that she regretted having addressed the issue,” Hogg continued, “You can be ostracised as the woman who had dared to speak up. Women willing to speak up are trained to shut up, which results in an atmosphere of silence. After my experiences in basic and advanced individual training I never reported an incident again.”

Hogg herself faced verbal sexual harassment.

“When I removed my protective top in the heat I would often hear comments such as ‘where you been hiding them puppies’ in reference to my breasts.”

Based on her friends’ experience, Hogg did not even consider reporting.

To make matters worse, according to Department of Defense statistics, 84-85 percent of soldiers convicted of rape or sexual assault leave the military with honourable discharges. Not only are they not penalised, they are honoured.

Dahr Jamail is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Dahr Jamail

Top Senate Democrat: bankers "own" the U.S. Congress

Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place." The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis "own" the U.S. Congress -- according to one of that institution's most powerful members -- demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is.

The ownership of the federal government by banks and other large corporations is effectuated in literally countless ways, none more effective than the endless and increasingly sleazy overlap between government and corporate officials. Here is just one random item this week announcing a couple of standard personnel moves:

Former Barney Frank staffer now top Goldman Sachs lobbyist

Goldman Sachs' new top lobbyist was recently the top staffer to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Frank. Michael Paese, a registered lobbyist for the Securities Industries and Financial Markets Association since he left Frank's committee in September, will join Goldman as director of government affairs, a role held last year by former Tom Daschle intimate, Mark Patterson, now the chief of staff at the Treasury Department. This is not Paese's first swing through the Wall Street-Congress revolving door: he previously worked at JP Morgan and Mercantile Bankshares, and in between served as senior minority counsel at the Financial Services Committee.

So: Paese went from Chairman Frank's office to be the top lobbyist at Goldman, and shortly before that, Goldman dispatched Paese's predecessor, close Tom Daschle associate Mark Patterson, to be Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, himself a protege of former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin and a virtually wholly owned subsidiary of the banking industry. That's all part of what Desmond Lachman -- American Enterprise Institute fellow, former chief emerging market strategist at Salomon Smith Barney and top IMF official (no socialist he) -- recently described as "Goldman Sachs's seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs."

Meanwhile, the above-linked Huffington Post article which reported on Durbin's comments also notes Sen. Evan Bayh's previously-reported central role on behalf of the bankers in blocking legislation, hated by the banking industry, to allow bankruptcy judges to alter the terms of mortgages so that families can stay in their homes. Bayh is up for re-election in 2010, and here -- according to the indispensable Open Secrets site -- is Bayh's top donor: Goldman Sachs.

Goldman is also the top donor to Bayh over the course of his Congressional career, during which Bayh has received more than $4 million from the finance, insurance and real estate sectors.

In a totally unrelated coincidence -- after the Government, as Matt Taibbi put it, enacted "a bailout program that has now figured three ways to funnel money to Goldman, Sachs"-- this is what happened earlier this month:

Goldman reports $1.8 billion profit

Goldman Sachs reported a much stronger-than-expected first-quarter profit Monday, bouncing back from its worst quarter as a public company. . . .

In reporting its results a day earlier than expected, New York-based Goldman said it earned $1.81 billion, or $3.39 a share, for the quarter ended March 31. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were looking for a profit of $1.64 a share.

Goldman shares, which have surged more than 70% during the past month, continued rising late Monday, gaining about 4.7% for the day.

Nobody even tries to hide this any longer. The only way they could make it more blatant is if they hung a huge Goldman Sachs logo on the Capitol dome and then branded it onto the foreheads of leading members of Congress and executive branch officials.

Of course, ownership of the government is not confined to Goldman or even to bankers generally; legislation in virtually every area is written by the lobbyists dispatched by the corporations that demand it, and its passage then ensured by "representatives" whose pockets are stuffed with money from those same corporations. Just as one example, as Jane Hamsher reported about Bayh:

Bayh's little "lobbyist problem" is considered by many to be what tanked his Vice Presidential aspirations. His wife Susan earns about $837,000 a year serving on seven corporate boards, among them Wellpoint, a health insurance company for which Bayh helped secure a $24.7 million dollar grant. She's on the board of ETrade, even as Bayh is on the Senate Finance Committee.

Bayh wants people to believe he's a "moderate" who sits in the "center."

Center of K Street, maybe.

Meanwhile, the only citizen protests relating to this mass robbery are driven by anger at the government for treating bankers too harshly and unfairly -- one of the most classic manifestations of what Taibbi, in a separate piece, so aptly calls the "peasant mentality":

After all, the reason the winger crowd can’t find a way to be coherently angry right now is because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage. It never has. The setup always goes the other way: when the excesses of business interests and their political proteges in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other. That’s why even people like [Glenn] Beck’s audience, who I’d wager are mostly lower-income people, can’t imagine themselves protesting against the Wall Street barons who in actuality are the ones who fucked them over. . . .

Actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish . . . can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs. The real villains have to be the anti-AIG protesters! After all, those people earned those bonuses! If ever there was a textbook case of peasant thinking, it’s struggling middle-class Americans burned up in defense of taxpayer-funded bonuses to millionaires. It’s really weird stuff.

One might think it would be a big news story for the second most-powerful member of the U.S. Senate to baldly state that the Congress is "owned" by the bankers who spawned the financial crisis and continue to dictate the government's actions. But it won't be. The leading members of the media work for the very corporations that benefit most from this process. Establishment journalists are integral and well-rewarded members of the same system and thus cannot and will not see it as inherently corrupt (instead, as Newsweek's Evan Thomas said, their role, as "members of the ruling class," is to "prop up the existing order," "protect traditional institutions" and "safeguard the status quo").

That Congress is fully owned and controlled by a tiny sliver of narrow, oligarchical, deeply corrupted interests is simultaneously so obvious yet so demonized (only Unserious Shrill Fringe radicals, such as the IMF's former chief economist, use that sort of language) that even Durbin's explicit admission will be largely ignored. Even that extreme of a confession (Durbin elaborated on it with Ed Schultz last night) hardly causes a ripple.

Global Research Articles by Glenn Greenwald

Madoff secretary claims fraudster was over-controlling and sexist

Employee casts new light on the character of the multi-billion fraudster.

By James Quinn Wall Street Correspondent
Last Updated: 6:48AM BST 07 May 2009

Buttoned up: Bernard Madoff's former secretary has gone into print to cast aspersions on his character Photo: EPA

Convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff was a short-tempered, overly controlling boss who frequented massage parlours and had a deeply sexist side to his personality, his secretary of more than 20 years has alleged.

Eleanor Squillari claimed he often made nasty comments about her appearance and had a forthright relationship with his wife Ruth.

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The allegations – in the June edition of Vanity Fair magazine – paint a picture of a man who, in spite of his negative traits, was popular with his employees, and appeared to plan his eventual demise with fine aplomb.

Ms Squilllari, who spent two months co-operating with the FBI after Madoff's arrest for a $65bn (£43bn) fraud last December, even recounts a bizarrely prophetic conversation she held with Madoff – who faces up to 150 years in prison at sentencing on June 16 – in which he discussed a fraud carried out by a client's secretary.

"You know, [he] has to take some responsibility for this," Madoff allegedly told Squillari. "He should have been keeping an eye on his personal finances. That's why I've always had Ruth watching the books.

"Well, you know what happens is, it starts out with you taking a little bit, maybe a few hundred, a few thousand," he said. "You get comfortable, and before you know it, it snowballs into something big."

Although "Bernie was irresistible to women," Ms Squillari once caught him looking through escort adverts in the back of a magazine, and frequently visited massage parlours: "Once, I looked in his address book and found, under M, about a dozen phone numbers for his masseuses."

Leading up to his confession of his crimes to his sons in December, Madoff appeared detached from his empire, checking his blood pressure every 15 minutes and refusing to look at his post.

Meanwhile, court papers claim Madoff used his investment firm as his and his families own “personal piggy bank”, siphoning investor’s money to fund their own lavish lifestyle.

The allegations are contained within papers filed by Irving Picard, the man liquidating Madoff’s securities business, who suggests he used tens of millions of dollars of clients funds to cover day-to-day costs for family and employees.

High on the list of erroneous payments from Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS) included $11.5m for two yachts, a $9m loan to Madoff’s brother Peter, and a $5.5m loan to Madoff Technologies which family members owned a majority stake in.

But payments were also made, the papers allege, to cover salaries for staff who did not apparently work for BLMIS, such as the captain of a boat owned by Frank DiPascali, Madoff’s chief investment aide. Relatives and servants were also on the payroll, while others, including Peter’s wife, were given company credit cards even though they had no formal connection to the firm.

Mr Picard detailed the lavish spending as part of his attempt to consolidate the bankruptcy proceedings of Madoff’s business with his personal estate.

“BLMIS was Bernie Madoff and Bernie Madoff was BLMIS, each the alter ego of the other,” said Mr Picard in the court filing.

California Students' Call for Condi War Crimes Probe

During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq War.

Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements, science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for aging activists.

On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students, Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University President’s office door. The petition, circulated by Stanford Say No to War, reads:

“We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities.”

I stated, “By nailing this petition to the door of the President’s office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq War. Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges.”

After the petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice’s responsibility for war crimes - including torture - and for selling the illegal Iraq War:

TO VIEW VIDEO CLICK HERE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC0Tgdqa36A

As National Security Advisor, Rice authorized waterboarding in July 2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Less than two months later, she hyped the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq , saying, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Her ominous warning was part of the Bush administration’s campaign to sell the Iraq war, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s assurances that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.

A week before the nailing of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner designed to burnish Rice’s image on campus.

In October 1968, Stanford anti-war activists had nailed a document to the door of the trustees’ office which demanded that Stanford “halt all military and economic projects concerned with Southeast Asia .”

AIG bonuses four times higher

AFP/File – The American International Group (AIG) offices in New York, 2008. Troubled US insurance giant American …

The 2008 AIG bonus pool just keeps getting larger and larger.

In a response to detailed questions from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the company has offered a third assessment of exactly how much it paid out in bonuses last year.

And the new number, offered in a document submitted to Cummings on May 1, is the highest figure the company has disclosed to date.

AIG now says it paid out more than $454 million in bonuses to its employees for work performed in 2008.

That is nearly four times more than the company revealed in late March when asked by POLITICO to detail its total bonus payments. At that time, AIG spokesman Nick Ashooh said the firm paid about $120 million in 2008 bonuses to a pool of more than 6,000 employees.

The figure Ashooh offered was, in turn, substantially higher than company CEO Edward Liddy claimed days earlier in testimony before a House Financial Services Subcommittee. Asked how much AIG had paid in 2008 bonuses, Liddy responded: “I think it might have been in the range of $9 million.”

“I was shocked to see that the number has nearly quadrupled this time,” said Cummings. “I simply cannot fathom why this company continues to erode the trust of the public and the U.S. Congress, rather than being forthcoming about these issues from the start.”

AIG spokesman Ashooh said the company’s revised accounting is the result of different wording of the questions asked by Cummings and POLITICO.

The new figure of $454 million, Ashooh said, “reflects all types of variable compensation across all of our businesses,” while the $120 million figure he provided earlier reflected only bonuses paid to corporate headquarters executives and high-ranking officers at its major businesses around the world. Ashooh said the $454 million figure includes the $120 million he had previously disclosed.

All of the numbers provided are on top of the controversial $165 million in retention bonuses offered to employees of a division of the company known as AIG Financial Products. It was the disclosure of those payments that set off a political firestorm earlier this year. Washington was stunned that employees of the very unit that had brought AIG to its financial knees were being so richly rewarded — especially after the company received $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money.

The controversial payments were described by the company as “retention agreements” paid to keep employees from leaving.

But the disclosure of the bonus payments to one division of the company prompted confusion about how big the companywide bonus pool was for 2008. That’s the question that has prompted three different answers from AIG officials.

AIG’s Ashooh says the account AIG is now offering includes a larger group of employees than had been counted to tabulate the earlier disclosures.

“I think we’ve been pretty forthcoming,” Ashooh said. “AIG is not a simple organization. We’re answering the question that we think we’re being asked.”

The questions from POLITICO and from Cummings were both submitted in writing.

On March 19th, POLITICO asked AIG in an e-mail, “What was AIG’s total bonus pool (outside the retention agreements) for 2008?” To that, after some back and forth, AIG offered the $120 million figure.

Later in March, Congressman Cummings submitted written questions to AIG, asking: “Please specify the exact amount in bonuses — not retention payments or any other form of compensation — paid by AIG to employees of any division of AIG in 2008 or paid in 2009 for work performed in 2008.”

To that question, AIG disclosed a division by division breakdown of payments totaling $454 million.

The company said it maintains “approximately 374” plans that pay variable amounts of compensation based on performance. Citing the large number of recipients and concerns over the safety of AIG employees, the company declined to provide a list of the names of bonus recipients.

It broke down its results by division, including:

Domestic Life and Foreign Life Operations: 23,851 employees received an average of $5,050 each.

Property Casualty Group: 3,943 employees received an average of $5,403 each.

Foreign General Insurance Operations: 8,669 employees received an average of $5,074 each.

Retirement Services Operations: 1,168 employees received an average of $11,889 each.

Financial Services: 5,357 employees received an average of $4,994 each.

Asset Management Group: 2,095 employees received an average of $51,026 each.

Corporate wide variable plan: 6,410 employees received an average of $18,954 each.

The company also disclosed that it is developing a new bonus plan for 2009 in consultation with the Federal Reserve and Treasury.

40 Top Micro-Biologists Killed In Less Than 4 Yrs

If you sell crack, join a gang, or rob the mob you can expect to die a violent death, but if you listen to your mother, eat all the right foods, and study hard in college to become a microbiologist, you should expect to live to a ripe old age and die peacefully.

That being the case, a few eyebrows were raised when five microbiologists either disappeared or died mysteriously violent deaths in 2001. A short time later the number rose to 19, and then 29.

They were found stabbed to death in the trunks of cars, thrown off bridges, or they wrapped their cars around trees after their brake fluid disappeared. Once again, this is the stuff of Hollywood spy stories, and not the way you would expect a microbiologist to give up the ghost.

By 2005, we lost 40 micro-biologists in less than 4 years, all under suspicious circumstances, and during this time someone discovered that they were all working for the government, or government contractors, on projects related to bio-terrorism, flu pandemics, or anthrax. Obviously they weren’t trying to find a cure for anything, or there would be no need to silence them.

Then it was discovered that our government was involved in strange experiments that involve exhuming bodies of people that were killed by the 1918 Spanish flu, and genetically engineered flu viruses, all the while the media is preparing the public with stories of bird flu wiping out thousands of chickens (acid test?) and even a few people here and there.

People who are becoming accustomed to the practices and motives of our criminal government tried to warn you of an impending flu pandemic, but your TV training taught you to dismiss them all as "crazy conspiracy theorists," and you naturally associated all their warnings with stories of Bigfoot and UFO abductions, just as you were trained to do.

The good folks of FEMA predicted a need for a few million plastic coffins, which are now spread out across the country, but despite this revelation, most of America still thinks their biggest concern is a toss up between the Super Bowl and American Idol.

Well it seems as if the crazy conspiracy theorists were right again, because the world-wide flu pandemic they were warning you about has been unleashed, and it will dominate the headlines until millions, if not billions of people are dead. It won’t be stopped because no one with the means to stop it wants to stop it.

Wash your hands often, pull your kids out of school, avoid crowds, if not people altogether, avoid alcohol or drugs that will weaken your resistance, and stay well-nourished.

Two of the goals here are to cull the population, and to encourage general mayhem and misery that only a World Government can save you from. You’ll be so worn out and tired of death and depression that you’ll offer little resistance to the new order. The economic collapse and World War three are part of the same plan, and it’s all been tried before. It’s the same crew behind this latest attempt, and it’s not difficult to see who’s behind it all, once again.

This flu pandemic that will soon cause people to drop like flies is no mutated bird flu. It’s a genetically engineered virus designed to kill as many people as possible. And after people do start dropping like flies, political dissidents will be accused of being flu carriers and no one will object to them being hauled away. Good luck. -- Jolly Roger


Here’s an interesting link:
http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities_shortnews.html
if you start at the bottom of the page and work your way up you’ll see a nice collection of news articles that document the entire process of creating and testing a flu bug that will wipe out millions of people.
(or at least that part of the process that's revealed to the public)

Thanks to Lori Price of legitgov.org for compiling these articles

GlaxoSmithKline leads pharmaceutical shares higher on swine flu outbreak

Pharmaceutical shares rose and airline stocks fell on Monday morning on fears an outbreak of swine flu that has claimed up to 80 lives in Mexico will spread.

By Rowena Mason
Last Updated: 6:39PM BST 27 Apr 2009

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GlaxoSmithKline led drugmakers higher while British Airways was the hardest hit in a general sell-off of airline stocks in London. In Europe, shares in Swiss drugmaker Roche jumped.

Vaccines from Roche, which sells Tamiflu, and GSK, maker of Relenza, have been shown to work against viral samples of the new disease. The drugs were also used to help protect against outbreaks of bird flu in Asia, providing windfall profits for the companies.

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Worries over swine flu pushed the FTSE 100 index of leading shares down 67 points - or 1.6pc - to 4088.67 in early trading. Shares in Germany and France also fell by between 1.7pc and 1.9pc. Earlier, Asian stock markets had retreated on fears that the global recession would deepen if the swine flu outbreak became a pandemic.

Glaxo and AstraZeneca shares both rose 2pc in the first hour after the market opened in London. British Airways fell 8pc, with cruise company Carnival falling 6.5pc and travel group Thomas Cook sliding 6.4pc.

Roche confirmed it already has a stockpile of 3m packs of Tamiflu ready for use by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

During the panic about Asian bird flu in 2005 and 2006, airline, hotel groups, insurers and oil companies stocks fell heavily, while shares in drug, healthcare and cleaning product businesses soared.

"I think there will be little bit of a lift for pharmaceuticals, but this may not follow through unless the situation gets out of hand," said Paul Kavanagh of stockbroker Killik & Co . "Governments will be looking at vaccines, but it's come at a bad time for the world economy and could be very expensive."

UK companies from HSBC to BT have made Britain among the top ten foreign investors in Mexico in recent years.

On Sunday night, these companies were advising their employees to take precautionary measures, restrict travel to Mexico and monitor Government advice closely. It is understood that several companies, including oil company Shell, have had meetings of contingency planning committees to look at the possibility that the outbreak could worsen.

Other UK companies with offices in Mexico include AstraZeneca, BAT, Diageo, Glaxo Smith Kline, GKN, Shell, BSI and Unilever.

Feds Plan Vaccines for All Americans by Fall

AP

April 30: Custodian Laura Gautreaux wipes down surfaces at Cathedral Carmel Catholic School in Lafayette, La. after 5 students became ill.

April 30: Custodian Laura Gautreaux wipes down surfaces at Cathedral Carmel Catholic School in Lafayette, La. after 5 students became ill.

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• 

It has been a week since news of an international outbreak of the so-called swine flu raised fears of a pandemic with an unknown potential for countless deaths.

But so far, the flu's oink has been worse than its bite.

New York City officials reported Friday that the swine flu still has not spread beyond a few schools, and in Mexico, the suspected origin of the outbreak, very few relatives of flu victims seem to have caught the virus.

As further evidence that this strain of the H1N1 influenza virus is looking a little less ominous, a U.S. health official says it lacks the genes that made the 1918 pandemic strain so deadly.

And a flu expert in New York says there's no reason to believe the new virus is a more serious strain than seasonal flu.

Even so, we aren't in the clear yet. New flu cases are still popping up, from Hong Kong to Pennsylvania. And there is concern in the United States that some states haven't stockpiled enough anti-flu drugs.

President Obama said the flu may have run its course "like ordinary flus," however, the government is preparing for worst-case scenarios, such as the virus' potential reappearance this fall in more sinister form.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday the strain of flu is "a very unusual" four-way combination of human genes and genes from swine viruses found in North America, Asia and Europe.

CDC flu chief Dr. Nancy Cox said the good news is "we do not see the markers for virulence that were seen in the 1918 virus."

Still, U.S. authorities are pledging to eventually produce enough swine flu vaccine for everyone, but the shots won't begin until fall, at the earliest.

Scientists are racing to prepare the key ingredient to make a vaccine against the never-before-seen flu strain — if it's ultimately needed.

10 Ways to Prevent Swine Flu

But it will take several months before the first pilot lots begin required human testing to ensure the vaccine is safe and effective.

"We think 600 million doses is achievable in a six-month time frame" from that fall start, Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Craig Vanderwagen said.

"I don't want anybody to have false expectations. The science is challenging here," Vanderwagen told reporters. "It's a question of can we get the science worked on the specifics of this vaccine."

Researchers will get a better idea of how dangerous this virus is over the next week to 10 days, said Peter Palese, a leading flu researcher with Mount Sinai Medical School in New York.

So far in the United States, he said, the virus appears to look and behave like the garden-variety flus that strike every winter. "There is no real reason to believe this is a more serious strain," he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported 141 cases of swine flu in 19 states. Some 430 of the nation's 130,000 public and private schools have closed, while high school, college and professional sporting events have been called off nationwide due to increasing fears.

On Friday, the World Health Organization, or WHO, raised its tally of confirmed human cases to 331, up from 257.

Cox, the CDC official, said the manufacture of a vaccine for the new virus would not interfere with the manufacture of a seasonal flu vaccine for the upcoming flu season. She said that, if it becomes necessary to make a supplemental swine flu vaccine, that vaccine would be prepared "in parallel" with the seasonal vaccine.

In a news conference Friday, the WHO said scientists believe the seasonal flu vaccine will not protect against swine flu. Although the seasonal vaccine has long-contained a version of the H1N1 flu virus, this is very different than the H1N1 swine flu virus researchers are now seeing, Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the WHO's initiative for vaccine research, told a news conference.

Because of this, world scientists are in agreement, for now, that the seasonal vaccine offers no protection, she said.

"We have no doubt making a successful vaccine is possible," Kieny said.

The reason why the vaccine will take so long to produce is because scientists must first isolate the virus and then adapt it to be made into a vaccine. It is believed that the adapted virus should be ready by the end of May. After this, the virus is injected into eggs where it will grow. From there, scientists will remove it, kill it and then formulate it into a vaccine.

After that, clinical trials in humans must be performed to ensure it's safety and effectiveness. Later, it will need to receive approval by national regulatory authorities, Kieny said.

The WHO is now reporting 11 countries have confirmed cases, including Germany, which confirmed Friday the first case of swine flu transmission within the country. This does not include Hong Kong and Denmark, which confirmed cases mid-morning Friday.

The Numbers

Although the CDC has tallied just 141 swine flu cases in the U.S., state health experts say the count is likely much higher. Among the U.S. cases confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are 51 in New York, 16 in Texas and 14 in California, as well as scattered cases in Kansas, Illinois, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Arizona, Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, Maine and South Carolina.

State officials also confirmed cases in Minnesota, Georgia, Delaware, Utah, New Jersey, Virginia and Colorado.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Friday schools will continue to take their cues from public health officials as to whether to remain open or closed. He said schools with 1 or more confirmed cases, or schools where family members of students have tested positive for the flu are advised to close for up to 14 days.

He encouraged teachers to rework their lesson plans so that students can continue their studies at home and to continue to communicate with students by e-mail, online or the phone. Duncan also encouraged parents to make sure their children continue to focus on their studies while at home and for students themselves to make sure they don't fall behind their peers across the country whose schools are still in session.

Dr. Manny Answers Your Questions on Swine Flu.

VIDEO: How you can prevent the spread of swine flu.

Even though scientists say the new virus is more pig than human, the WHO said it plans to no longer call it "swine flu" to avoid confusion over the risk from pigs and eating pork. Health officials have stressed repeatedly that the disease is being transmitted human to human and that there is no risk from eating pork.

WHO spokesman Dick Thompson says the name change comes after the agriculture industry and the U.N. food agency expressed concerns that the term "swine flu" was misleading consumers and needlessly causing countries to order the slaughter of pigs.

He told reporters in Geneva "we're going to stick with the technical scientific name H1N1 influenza A."

Several countries have put a ban a pork imports. Hog futures fell for the sixth time in seven sessions on Thursday because of continued speculation that people will stop eating pork.

On Wednesday, the WHO boosted its alert level to one level below a full-fledged pandemic. The Phase 5 alert, indicating a pandemic could be imminent.

The U.S., the European Union and other countries have discouraged nonessential travel to Mexico. Some countries have urged their citizens to avoid the United States and Canada as well. Health officials said such bans would do little to stop the virus.

Where Did Virus Originate?

Medical detectives have not pinpointed where the outbreak began. Scientists believe that somewhere in the world, months or even a year ago, a pig virus jumped to a human and mutated, and has been spreading between humans ever since.

California is now being eyed as the potential source of the virus.

China has gone on a rhetorical offensive to squash any suggestion it's the source of the swine flu after some Mexican officials were quoted in media reports in the past week saying the virus came from Asia and the governor of Mexico's Veracruz state was quoted as saying the virus specifically came from China.

Swine Flu Timeline | Swine Flu Info HQ.

One of the deaths in Mexico directly attributed to swine flu was that of a Bangladeshi immigrant, said Mexico's chief epidemiologist Miguel Angel Lezana.

Lezana said the unnamed Bangladeshi had lived in Mexico for six months and was recently visited by a brother who arrived from Bangladesh or Pakistan and was reportedly ill. The brother has left Mexico and his whereabouts are unknown, Lezana said. He suggested the brother could have brought the virus from Pakistan or Bangladesh.

By March 9, the first symptoms were showing up in the Mexican state of Veracruz, where pig farming is a key industry in mountain hamlets and where small clinics provide the only health care.

The earliest confirmed case was there: a 5-year-old boy who was one of hundreds of people in the town of La Gloria whose flu symptoms left them struggling to breathe.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Electronic tagging for tax exiles of 'high net worth' proposed

The tracking devices are usually built into ankle monitors

HUGH LINEHAN

ELECTRONIC TAGGING for “tax exiles” is being considered by the Department of Finance in advance of next week’s budget.

The measure is aimed at monitoring the presence in the State of individuals who claim to be non-resident for tax purposes.

Last year, 5,803 people claimed non-residency for tax. The Revenue believes that 440 of those are “high net worth” individuals. “These are the people who we’d be aiming this proposal at,” a spokesman for the department said.

Foreign-based Irish millionaires can avoid Irish tax if they spend fewer than 183 days in the State. Last November, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan abolished the so-called “Cinderella” rule, whereby an individual is not deemed to have spent a day in the country if they leave by midnight.

“We’re still concerned that there are a few fairy tales being told about where people are actually living,” said the spokesman.

Electronic tagging is a form of non-surreptitious surveillance consisting of an electronic device attached to a person, usually certain criminals, allowing their whereabouts to be monitored.

The devices locate themselves using GPS and report their position back to a control centre via a mobile phone network. The devices are usually built into ankle monitors, which are designed to be tamper-resistant and will alert the authorities to tampering attempts. According to the spokesman, certain technical issues remain to be resolved before the plan is implemented.

“For example, many of these people have ‘panic rooms’ in their homes to protect themselves against criminals,” he said. “We’re not absolutely sure of the technicalities, but if these rooms are lead-lined, they might block the signal from the electronic tag.

“In theory it might be possible for a high-net-worth individual to remain in a panic room for days or even weeks without us knowing.”

The Office of the Revenue Commissioners is in discussions with a US-based high-technology security company, FailProof, on providing the service.

Related »

• Why there’s no fool like an April Fool’s Day fool | 01/04/2009

In this section »

• S&P moves to clarify comments on state of Government
• FG urges judges to work extra month and save State millions

Setting the Stage for Obama’s Control Over the Internet: Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated by Spies

y SIOBHAN GORMAN

Associated Press

Robert Moran monitors an electric grid in Dallas. Such infrastructure grids across the country are vulnerable to cyberattacks.

WASHINGTON -- Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.

"The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," said a senior intelligence official. "So have the Russians."

The espionage appeared pervasive across the U.S. and doesn't target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. "There are intrusions, and they are growing," the former official said, referring to electrical systems. "There were a lot last year."

More

• Environment: Will a Smart Grid Repel Attacks?
• China Journal: China Denies Hacking U.S. Electricity Grid

Many of the intrusions were detected not by the companies in charge of the infrastructure but by U.S. intelligence agencies, officials said. Intelligence officials worry about cyber attackers taking control of electrical facilities, a nuclear power plant or financial networks via the Internet.

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."

Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

"Over the past several years, we have seen cyberattacks against critical infrastructures abroad, and many of our own infrastructures are as vulnerable as their foreign counterparts," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair recently told lawmakers. "A number of nations, including Russia and China, can disrupt elements of the U.S. information infrastructure."

Officials cautioned that the motivation of the cyberspies wasn't well understood, and they don't see an immediate danger. China, for example, has little incentive to disrupt the U.S. economy because it relies on American consumers and holds U.S. government debt.

But protecting the electrical grid and other infrastructure is a key part of the Obama administration's cybersecurity review, which is to be completed next week. Under the Bush administration, Congress approved $17 billion in secret funds to protect government networks, according to people familiar with the budget. The Obama administration is weighing whether to expand the program to address vulnerabilities in private computer networks, which would cost billions of dollars more. A senior Pentagon official said Tuesday the Pentagon has spent $100 million in the past six months repairing cyber damage.

U.S. Intelligence Detects Cyber Spies

1:54

WSJ's Intelligence Reporter Siobhan Gorman says that Intelligence officials have found cyber spies lurking in the U.S. electrical infrastructure.

Overseas examples show the potential havoc. In 2000, a disgruntled employee rigged a computerized control system at a water-treatment plant in Australia, releasing more than 200,000 gallons of sewage into parks, rivers and the grounds of a Hyatt hotel.

Last year, a senior Central Intelligence Agency official, Tom Donahue, told a meeting of utility company representatives in New Orleans that a cyberattack had taken out power equipment in multiple regions outside the U.S. The outage was followed with extortion demands, he said.

The U.S. electrical grid comprises three separate electric networks, covering the East, the West and Texas. Each includes many thousands of miles of transmission lines, power plants and substations. The flow of power is controlled by local utilities or regional transmission organizations. The growing reliance of utilities on Internet-based communication has increased the vulnerability of control systems to spies and hackers, according to government reports.

The sophistication of the U.S. intrusions -- which extend beyond electric to other key infrastructure systems -- suggests that China and Russia are mainly responsible, according to intelligence officials and cybersecurity specialists. While terrorist groups could develop the ability to penetrate U.S. infrastructure, they don't appear to have yet mounted attacks, these officials say.

It is nearly impossible to know whether or not an attack is government-sponsored because of the difficulty in tracking true identities in cyberspace. U.S. officials said investigators have followed electronic trails of stolen data to China and Russia.

Russian and Chinese officials have denied any wrongdoing. "These are pure speculations," said Yevgeniy Khorishko, a spokesman at the Russian Embassy. "Russia has nothing to do with the cyberattacks on the U.S. infrastructure, or on any infrastructure in any other country in the world."

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Wang Baodong, said the Chinese government "resolutely oppose[s] any crime, including hacking, that destroys the Internet or computer network" and has laws barring the practice. China was ready to cooperate with other countries to counter such attacks, he said, and added that "some people overseas with Cold War mentality are indulged in fabricating the sheer lies of the so-called cyberspies in China."

Utilities are reluctant to speak about the dangers. "Much of what we've done, we can't talk about," said Ray Dotter, a spokesman at PJM Interconnection LLC, which coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in 13 states and the District of Columbia. He said the organization has beefed up its security, in conformance with federal standards.

In January 2008, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved new protection measures that required improvements in the security of computer servers and better plans for handling attacks.

Last week, Senate Democrats introduced a proposal that would require all critical infrastructure companies to meet new cybersecurity standards and grant the president emergency powers over control of the grid systems and other infrastructure.

Specialists at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit research institute, said attack programs search for openings in a network, much as a thief tests locks on doors. Once inside, these programs and their human controllers can acquire the same access and powers as a systems administrator.

NERC Letter

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation on Tuesday warned its members that not all of them appear to be adhering to cybersecuirty requirements. Read the letter.

The White House review of cybersecurity programs is studying ways to shield the electrical grid from such attacks, said James Lewis, who directed a study for the Center for Strategic and International Studies and has met with White House reviewers.

The reliability of the grid is ultimately the responsibility of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., an independent standards-setting organization overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The NERC set standards last year requiring companies to designate "critical cyber assets." Companies, for example, must check the backgrounds of employees and install firewalls to separate administrative networks from those that control electricity flow. The group will begin auditing compliance in July.

—Rebecca Smith contributed to this article.

Corrections & Amplifications
Central Inteligence Agency official Tom Donahue's last name was misspelled in a previous version of this article.