THE ‘dirty dozen’ scams
1) Phone scams: Thieves call pretending to be IRS agents, sometimes threatening police arrest, deportation, license revocation or other things in an attempt to get you to divulge your personal information.
In the 1976 film “Network,” a news anchor, played by the late actor Peter Finch, urges his television audience to open their windows and shout the infamous phrase, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
According to people I’ve talked to on the ground in Oregon, that may be something close to what many residents there are feeling right now. But instead of shouting out the window, Oregonians are petitioning and phoning their senator, Ron Wyden, to ask him to oppose granting so-called fast track authority to President Obama.
Granting that authority would allow the president to speed two dangerous international trade pacts through Congress, and Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, is a critically important figure whose support will be necessary for the passage of the agreements—known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP.
NEW YORK – President Obama’s attorney-general nominee, Loretta Lynch, admitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that her investigators in the money-laundering probe of HSBC were aware of evidence compiled by whistleblower John Cruz but she chose, nevertheless, not to bring criminal charges.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/lynch-admits-she-had-whistleblowers-evidence-on-banksters/#U3sBwoJttTPQE2f7.99
STATE DEPARTMENT—
The United States is closely watching signs of possible major anti-corruption moves in Ukraine involving the forced resignation of a billionaire governor and the arrest of two top state emergency officials.
China’s government has provided a list to the United States of Chinese officials suspected of corruption who are believed to have fled there, according to a state-run newspaper.
Xu Jinhui, the head of the anti-graft bureau at the state prosecutor, told theChina Daily that a priority list of alleged Chinese corrupt officials believed to be at large in the United States has been provided to US authorities.
Chinese officials said last year more than 150 economic fugitives, many of them described as corrupt government officials, were in the US.
Israel has spied on the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran as part of a campaign to convince members of Congress to oppose an agreement, according to a published report.
The Wall Street Journal says that Israel’s lobbying effort has angered Obama administration officials, one of whom told the paper that “something serious has shifted here.”
“It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” the paper quoted a senior U.S. official as saying.
A judge has found that Spain’s ruling party ran a secret slush fund for 18 years, reviving a corruption scandal that has embarrassed the government ahead of a general election.
Investigating judge Pablo Ruz of the national court cleared the way for the trial of the lead suspect in the case: the People’s party’s (PP) ex-treasurer Luis Barcenas, a former ally of conservative prime minister Mariano Rajoy.
Why have so many Muslim states become hotbeds of organized crime? Neil Thompson’s answer looks beyond depressed economies, faltering dictatorships and human rights abuses. Indeed, he sees too many individuals that have become corrupted by the countless opportunities that conflict provides.
By Neil Thompson for ISN
Whenever a state collapses into civil war or economic anarchy, its organized crime groups find plenty of opportunities to grow in influence. This was the case in Albania in 1996-1997 when a series of pyramid schemes collapsed the economy. In the ensuing riots the government collapsed, the army and police disbanded and the mounting unrest allowed protesters to storm government arms depots. One crowd looted up to 500,000 rifles and other pieces of military equipment from the southern city of Lushnje. The stolen arms were promptly sold on the black market and the availability of plentiful supplies of cheap weapons and ammunition was a major spark for the start of war in neighboring Kosovo the following year. By 1999 transnational organized criminal gangs had helped change the supposedly sacrosanct lines of European borders. It was a seminal moment for a still under-appreciated non-state actor – globalized transnational criminal networks. The next might be provided by the Islamic world.
For a candidate who ran on a promise to have the most transparent administration ever, Barack Obama is unusually fond of opacity.
On Monday, USA Today reported:
The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for records to that office.
With almost unbelievable irony, the president’s lengthening of the shadow of secrecy over the Office of Administration happened on National Freedom of Information Day, a day set aside by activists to call for greater transparency in government.
With its adoption of a robust resolution on Montenegro earlier this month, the European parliament has become the latest EU institution to voice its serious concern over the Balkan country’s complacency on its eventual accession.
Parliament’s resolution is a damning indictment of the Montenegrin government’s sclerotic pace of reform, clear recalcitrance and utter irresponsibility.
MEPs are rightly worried to see how little progress Montenegro has made in addressing fundamental issues around the protection of foreign investors in the country.