» U.S. Helicopters, Colombian Money Laundering

Colombia Reports:

To get a sense of just how interconnected the formal and illicit dimensions of international political economy are, take a peek at this brief cable from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota published by WikiLeaks Sunday.

The cable details then-Ambassador William Woods’ hunt for two missing helicopters that had originally been sold to the Israeli military by the United States government, but had somehow ended up in the hands of multimillionaire Enilse Lopez, a businesswoman who was suspected of close ties to Colombian paramilitaries.

Research Credit: ottilie

Source

» U.S. and Allies Weigh a Libya No-Fly Zone

New York Times:

Obama administration officials held talks on Sunday with European and other allied governments as they readied plans for the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent further killings of civilians by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Source

» Jury Nullification Advocate Faces Indictment

New York Times:

There was, in fact, nothing wrong with Mr. Heicklen, 78, who eventually opened his eyes and told the judge,“I’m exercising my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.”

Indeed, it was not his silence that landed Mr. Heicklen, a retired Penn State University chemistry professor, in court; it was what he had been doing outside the federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street.

Since 2009, Mr. Heicklen has stood there and at courthouse entrances elsewhere and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience.

That concept, called jury nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance violates the law against jury tampering. He is to appear in court on Friday for a conference in his case.

Mr. Heicklen insists that he never tries to influence specific jurors or cases, and instead gives his brochures to passers-by, hoping that jurors are among them.

But he feels his message must be getting out, or the government would not have brought charges against him.

“If I weren’t having any effect, would they do this?” said Mr. Heicklen, whose former colleagues recall him as a talented and unconventional educator. “You don’t have to be a genius to figure this thing out.”

Research Credit: JM

Source

» New Pathogen Found in Roundup Ready GM Crops Causes Spontaneous Abortions and Infertility in Livestock?

Institute of Science in Society:

An open letter appeared on the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance founded and run by Judith McGeary to save family farms in the US {1, 2}. The letter, written by Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University, to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, warns of a pathogen“new to science” discovered by “a team of senior plant and animal scientists”. Huber says it should be treated as an “emergency’’, as it could result in “a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies.”

The letter appeared to have been written before Vilsack announced his decision to authorize unrestricted commercial planting of GM alfalfa on 1 February, in the hope of convincing the Secretary of Agriculture to impose a moratorium instead on deregulation of Roundup Ready (RR) crops.

The new pathogen appears associated with serious pervasive diseases in plants– sudden death syndrome in soybean and Goss’ wilt in corn– but its suspected effects on livestock is alarming. Huber refers to “recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.”

This could be the worst nightmare of genetic engineering that some scientists including me have been warning for years {3} (see Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare, ISIS publication): the unintended creation of new pathogens through assisted horizontal gene transfer and recombination.

Huber writes in closing:“I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.”

The complete letter is reproduced below.

Dear Secretary Vilsack:

A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn-suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science!

This is highly sensitive information that could result in a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies. On the other hand, this new organism may already be responsible for significant harm (see below). My colleagues and I are therefore moving our investigation forward with speed and discretion, and seek assistance from the USDA and other entities to identify the pathogen’s source, prevalence, implications, and remedies.

We are informing the USDA of our findings at this early stage, specifically due to your pending decision regarding approval of RR alfalfa. Naturally, if either the RR gene or Roundup itself is a promoter or co-factor of this pathogen, then such approval could be a calamity. Based on the current evidence, the only reasonable action at this time would be to delay deregulation at least until sufficient data has exonerated the RR system, if it does.

For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks. Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.

A diverse set of researchers working on this problem have contributed various pieces of the puzzle, which together presents the following disturbing scenario:

Unique Physical Properties
This previously unknown organism is only visible under an electron microscope (36,000X), with an approximate size range equal to a medium size virus. It is able to reproduce and appears to be a micro-fungal-like organism. If so, it would be the first such micro-fungus ever identified. There is strong evidence that this infectious agent promotes diseases of both plants and mammals, which is very rare.

Pathogen Location and Concentration
It is found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distillers meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.

Linked with Outbreaks of Plant Disease
The organism is prolific in plants infected with two pervasive diseases that are driving down yields and farmer income-sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soy, and Goss’ wilt in corn. The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).

Implicated in Animal Reproductive Failure
Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of this organism in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility. Preliminary results from ongoing research have also been able to reproduce abortions in a clinical setting.

The pathogen may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.

For example, 450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlege experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlege, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.

Recommendations
In summary, because of the high titer of this new animal pathogen in Roundup Ready crops, and its association with plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions, we request USDA’s participation in a multi-agency investigation, and an immediate moratorium on the deregulation of RR crops until the causal/predisposing relationship with glyphosate and/or RR plants can be ruled out as a threat to crop and animal production and human health.

It is urgent to examine whether the side-effects of glyphosate use may have facilitated the growth of this pathogen, or allowed it to cause greater harm to weakened plant and animal hosts. It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders. To properly evaluate these factors, we request access to the relevant USDA data.

I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.

Sincerely,

COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber
Emeritus Professor, Purdue University
APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS)

References

1.“Researcher: Glyphosate (Roundup) or Roundup Ready Crops May Cause Animal Miscarriages”, Jill Richardson, La Vida Locavore, 18 February 2011

http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/4523

2.“Researcher: Glyphosate (Roundup) or Roundup Ready Crops May Cause Animal Miscarriages”, 18 February 2011, http://farmandranchfreedom.org/gmo-miscarriages

3. Ho MW. Genetic Engineering Dream of Nightmare? The Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business, Third World Network, Gateway Books, MacMillan, Continuum, Penang, Malaysia, Bath, UK, Dublin, Ireland, New York, USA, 1998, 1999, 2007 (reprint with extended Introduction). http://www.i-sis.org.uk/genet.php

Research Credit: RJF

Source

» Libya: Crimes Against Humanity

Al Jazeera:

Protesters say security forces using warplanes and live fire‘massacred’ them, as UN warns of possible‘war crimes’.

Libyan forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are waging a bloody operation to keep him in power, with residents reporting gunfire in parts of the capital Tripoli and other cities, while other citizens, including the country’s former ambassador to India, are saying that warplanes were used to“bomb” protesters.

Nearly 300 people are reported to have been killed in continuing violence in the capital and across the North African country as demonstrations enter their second week.

Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has warned that the widespread attacks against civilians“amount to crimes against humanity”, and called for an international investigation in possible human rights violations.
LIVE BLOG

Witnesses in Tripoli told Al Jazeera that fighter jets had bombed portions of the city in fresh attacks on Monday night. The bombing focused on ammunition depots and control centres around the capital.

Helicopter gunships were also used, they said, to fire on the streets in order to scare demonstrators away.

Several witnesses said that“mercenaries” were firing on civilians in the city, while pro-Gaddafi forces warned people not to leave their homes via loudspeakers mounted on cars.

Residents of the Tajura neighbourhood, east of Tripoli, said that dead bodies are still lying on the streets from earlier violence. At least 61 people were killed in the capital on Monday, witnesses told Al Jazeeera.

‘Indiscriminate bombing’

Protests in the oil-rich African country, which Gaddafi has ruled for 41 years, began on February 14, but picked up momentum after a brutal government crackdown following a“Day of Rage” on February 17. Demonstrators say they have now taken control of several important towns, including the city of Benghazi, which saw days of bloody clashes between protesters and government forces.

There has been a heavy government crackdown on protests, however, and demonstrators at a huge anti-government march in the capital on Monday afternoon said they came under attack from fighter jets and security forces using live ammunition.

“What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead,” Adel Mohamed Saleh said in a live broadcast.

“Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car, they will hit you.”

Ali al-Essawi, who resigned as Libyan ambassador to India, also told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that fighter jets had been used by the government to bomb civilians.

He said live fire was being used against protesters, and that foreigners had been hired to fight on behalf of the government. The former ambassador called the violence“a massacre”, and called on the UN to block Libyan airspace in order to“protect the people”.

Source

» Does the Air Force Already Have a Secret Stealth Bomber?

Wired:

The Air Force“consistently refers to its new bomber as based on ‘proven technology,’ but there is no known basis of proof for its most important single feature: a degree of stealth high enough to assure survival in a heavily defended area, combined with affordability in manufacture and support.”

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an unknown — in other words, classified — program that spawned the “mature” stealth technologies for the new bomber. After all, the Air Force’s roughly $30-billion-a-year black budget is more than adequate to fund a wide range of cutting-edge weapon systems. At least one secret plane, the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 drone, recently emerged from the shadows.

In fact, Sweetman believes he has identified the bomber prototype’s manufacturer: Northrop Grumman, builder of the 1990s-vintage B-2 stealth bomber. In mid-2008, Northrop’s financial documents listed a $2-billion “restricted programs” contract that Sweetman claims paid for a bomber prototype.

Source

» China: Activists Arrested; Regime Fears Protests Like Those in Middle East

Channel News Asia:

Several top Chinese rights activists have disappeared into police custody as a web campaign urged angry citizens to mark the Middle East’s“Jasmine Revolution” with protests, campaigners said Sunday.

Up to 15 leading Chinese rights lawyers and activists have disappeared since Saturday amid a nationwide police mobilisation, according to activists, while the government appeared to censor Internet postings calling for the demonstrations.

“We welcome… laid off workers and victims of forced evictions to participate in demonstrations, shout slogans and seek freedom, democracy and political reform to end‘one party rule’,” one Internet posting said.

The postings, many of which appeared to have originated on overseas websites run by exiled Chinese political activists, called for protests in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and 10 other major Chinese cities.

Protesters were urged to shout slogans including“We want food to eat”,“We want work”,“We want housing”,“We want justice”,“Long live freedom”, and“Long live democracy”.

At Beijing’s central Wangfujing shopping district where protesters were told to gather, a massive police presence was in place but no demonstrations were seen as thousands of shoppers milled about on what is normally a busy shopping day.

At least two people were seen being taken away by police, one for cursing at the authorities and another person who was shouting:“I want food to eat.”

According to Internet postings, only a few demonstrators appeared in other cities, although large police contingents were seen at designated protest spots in Shanghai, Harbin, Guangzhou and Chengdu.

“I don’t think the call to protest was serious, no one really intended to protest because there are too many police,” leading rights lawyer Li Jinsong told AFP.

“By taking this so seriously, police are showing how concerned they are that the Jasmine Revolution could influence China’s social stability.”

As the word spread on the demonstrations, numerous political dissidents and rights lawyers were placed in police custody, activists said.

Source

» Washington: State Legislation Would Require Collection of Personal Data for Gold Purchases Over $100

ZeroHedge:

A bill proposed in the State of Washington (House Bill 1716), by representatives Asay, Hurst, Klippert, Pearson, and Miloscia, whose alleged purpose is to regulate secondhand gold dealers, seeks to capture“the name, date of birth, sex, height, weight, race, and address and telephone number of the person with whom the transaction is made” or said otherwise, of every purchaser of gold in the state of Washington. Furthermore, if passed, Bill 1716 will record“a complete description of the property pledged, bought, or consigned, including the brand name, serial number, model number or name, any initials or engraving, size, pattern, and color or stone or stones” and of course price. But the kicker: if a transaction is mode for an amount over $100, which means one tenth of an ounce of golds, also required will be a“signature, photo, and fingerprint of the person with whom the transaction is made.”

Source

» Air Force Wants Troll Persona Management Software

Federal Business Opportunities:

Online Persona Management Service. 50 User Licenses, 10 Personas per user.

Software will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background , history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly consistent. Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user’s situational awareness by displaying real-time local information.

Source

» Rising Food Prices Push Millions Around the World Into Extreme Poverty

New York Times:

A sharp rise in food prices since June has pushed 44 million people in developing countries into extreme poverty— having to live on less than $1.25 a day — according to a new study by the World Bank.

The bank’s price index soared 29 percent from January 2010 to January 2011 (15 percent just from October to January). Wheat, maize, sugar and edible oils have seen the sharpest price increases in the last six months, with a relatively smaller increase in rice. The rising prices have increased the vulnerability of economies, particularly those that import a high share of their food and have limited capacity for government borrowing and spending.

Source

» Austin Considers $50 a Year, Unlimited Electric Car Charging Service

Austin Business Journal:

Austin City Council members this week will consider charging Austin electric car drivers $50 a year to boot up their batteries from any Austin Energy plug-in.

The proposed rate would apply to Austin Energy’s“Plug-in Everywhere” program— a network of public charging stations for electric vehicles. The city would offer a $25 six-month subscription for unlimited service, including sales tax. Without the subscription, it would cost about $2 per hour of charging.

Source

» The Afghan Bank Heist

The New Yorker:

A secret investigation may implicate dozens of high-ranking government officials.

…

The Threat Finance Cell also has almost single-handedly demonstrated the degree to which the American-led war in Afghanistan is compromised by connections among the Taliban, drug traffickers, and Afghan officials. The group was set up, in 2008, to sever the links between Taliban insurgents and their financing, much of which was believed to come from the drug trade.Instead, the investigators found that the lines connecting the Taliban and the drug smugglers often ran through the Afghan government. They also uncovered one of the darker truths of the war: the vast armies of private gunmen paid to protect American supply convoys frequently use American money to bribe Taliban fighters to stand back. These bribes are believed by officials in Kabul and in Washington to be one of the main sources of the Taliban’s income. The Americans, it turns out, are funding both sides of the war.

Source

» Egyptian Military Dissolves Parliament, Suspends Constitution

BBC:

Egypt’s new military authorities say they are dissolving parliament and suspending the constitution.

In a statement on state TV, the higher military council said it would stay in power six months, or until elections.

Egypt’s current parliament is dominated by supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted on Friday after 18 days of mass protests.

Source

» America’s Legacy of Mutagenic War

Berkeley Daily Planet:

A series of disturbing reports from Iraq and Vietnam (backed up by a horrific collection of videos) have exposed a hidden legacy of war— weapons that continue to create victims years after the conflict has ended.

Thanks to the US military’s embrace of Mutagenic Weapons — technologies that can poison cell tissue and ransack the human DNA far into the future — babies and children have become the latest form of“collateral damage.” Today, in Vietnam and in Iraq (and in Kosovo and Afghanistan), children are being born with deadly cancers, grotesque tumors, twisted or missing limbs, freakishly enlarged heads, and a range of horrific mutations.

Source

» COUP: MUBARAK RESIGNS AS EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT; MILITARY TAKES CONTROL

Bloomberg:

Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president of Egypt and handed power to the military, bowing to the demands of protesters who have occupied central Cairo for the past three weeks demanding an end to his 30-year rule.

“Mubarak has decided to relinquish the office of the presidency,” said Vice President Omar Suleiman in a statement on state television today. “He has instructed the Supreme Council of the armed forces to take over the affairs of the country.”

Source

» Robotic Lettuce Production

Singularity Hub:

The steady march of industrial automation continues to envelop the world. Many of us have a quaint early 20th century vision of agriculture, but the truth is that the farmer of the 21st century is a machine. Case in point: lettuce. With new hydroponic techniques, companies are able to grow lettuce in large indoor fields where crops are sorted, planted, and grown automatically. Robots are instrumental to all steps of the process.

Source

» Jet Loaded with Millions in Gold and Cash Seized by Congolese Authorities Linked to Texas Philanthropist

Dallas News:

A Gulfstream jet seized by Congolese authorities suspected of being used to smuggle gold from rebel-controlled strongholds is apparently owned by a North Texas aviation firm owned by Southlake philanthropist David Disiere, records show.

Dow Jones reported today that the tail number on the jet is N886DT, which FAA records shows to be owned by Southlake Aviation LLC. Disiere is that company’s director and president.

Disiere did not return phone calls to his house in Southlake today. It’s unclear whether he was leasing the plane to someone else or had any knowledge of the African incident.

Source

» Mafia Holds Compromising Silvio Berlusconi Photos

Telegraph:

A leading Italian photographer has alleged that mafia gangsters claim to possess compromising photos of Silvio Berlusconi at wild“bunga bunga” sex parties.

Fabrizio Corona, who runs a celebrity photography agency, claimed that members of the Camorra mafia in Naples are trying to sell the alleged images to gossip magazines.

“Representatives from a big weekly magazine went to Naples to buy photos of Berlusconi from the underworld,” he told an Italian television programme.

He said there were nude pictures of the Italian prime minister, but later appeared to backtrack, saying none of the images were“obscene”.

Mr Corona, who is known as the“king of the paparazzi,” also claimed that there had been a mysterious break-in at his photo agency, with thieves stealing several computer discs from his extensive picture archives, although he denied that he had any photos of Mr Berlusconi.

Prosecutors are expected to request as early as today that the prime minister, 74, be sent for trial on allegations of paying for sex with an underage prostitute, an erotic dancer known as Ruby the Heart Stealer, and of abusing his office by having her released on theft charges.

Investigators have compiled hundreds of pages of evidence which they claim prove that“several” women prostituted themselves at Mr Berlusconi’s parties at his villa outside Milan. He has denied all the claims.

Mr Corona has had legal troubles of his own and is appealing against a conviction for blackmailing celebrities with compromising photos.

But his allegations widened the investigation from Milan to Naples, with prosecutors now seeking to interview him.

Source

» U.S. Has Secret Tools to Force Internet on Dictators

Wired:

The U.S. military has no shortage of devices— many of them classified — that could restore connectivity to a restive populace cut off from the outside world by its rulers. It’s an attractive option for policymakers who want an option for future Egypts, between doing nothing and sending in the Marines. And it might give teeth tothe Obama administration’s demand that foreign governments consider internet access an inviolable human right.

Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, spent years urging the military to logic-bomb adversary websites, disrupt hostile online presences, and even cause communications blackouts to separate warring factions before they go nuclear. What the military can turn off, he says, it can also turn on— or at least fill dead airspace.

Consider the Commando Solo, the Air Force’s airborne broadcasting center. A revamped cargo plane, the Commando Solo beams out psychological operations in AM and FM for radio, and UHF and VHF for TV. Arquilla doesn’t want to go into detail how the classified plane could get a denied internet up and running again, but if it flies over a bandwidth-denied area, suddenly your Wi-Fi bars will go back up to full strength.

“We have both satellite- and nonsatellite-based assets that can come in and provide access points to get people back online,” Arquilla says. “Some of it is done from ships. You could have a cyber version of pirate radio.”

Source

» Farm Insurance Swindling

Los Angeles Times:

Perpetrators falsely claim weather or insects destroyed their crops and cash in on a government-backed insurance program. Some don’t bother planting at all. Others sell their harvests in secret.

The federal investigator took the witness stand and described the crime scene: a sprawling field clogged with boulders, native grasses and knee-high sagebrush.

The defendant, a California farmer, had said the site was a 200-acre wheat field. But the investigator found no tilled soil, no tractors, no plows. In fact, she testified, she found no wheat.

The field was just a field— and a prime example, federal prosecutors allege, of a wave of agricultural insurance scams sprouting across the nation.

Get the monthly that has L.A. talking. Subscribe to Los Angeles Times Magazine at a special introductory rate.

Such crimes are being perpetrated by farmers who fraudulently claim that weather or insects destroyed their crops to cash in on a government-backed insurance program. Some cheats never bother planting at all. Others sell their harvests in secret and then file claims for losses, collecting twice for the same crop.

One North Carolina tomato grower, armed with a camera and a party-size bag of ice cubes, created a mock hailstorm in his fields and swindled the federal government out of $9.2 million.

Source

» Egypt: Gas Pipeline Attacked

Wall Street Journal:

An Egyptian gas pipeline in the Sinai peninsula was attacked Saturday, cutting off supplies to Jordan and Israel.

The pipeline was attacked by“subversive elements,” Egyptian state TV reported. There were no further details on those responsible, but the attack was the latest sign of deteriorating security in the key buffer between the Egyptian mainland and Israel.

Source

» Mubarak Family Fortune Could Reach $70 Billion

Guardian:

President Hosni Mubarak’s family fortune could be as much as $70bn (£43.5bn) according to analysis by Middle East experts, with much of his wealth in British and Swiss banks or tied up in real estate in London, New York, Los Angeles and along expensive tracts of the Red Sea coast.

After 30 years as president and many more as a senior military official, Mubarak has had access to investment deals that have generated hundreds of millions of pounds in profits. Most of those gains have been taken offshore and deposited in secret bank accounts or invested in upmarket homes and hotels.

According to a report last year in the Arabic newspaper Al Khabar, Mubarak has properties in Manhattan and exclusive Beverly Hills addresses on Rodeo Drive.

His sons, Gamal and Alaa, are also billionaires. A protest outside Gamal’s ostentatious home at 28 Wilton Place in Belgravia, central London, highlighted the family’s appetite for western trophy assets.

Amaney Jamal, a political science professor at Princeton University, said the estimate of $40bn-70bn was comparable with the vast wealth of leaders in other Gulf countries.

“The business ventures from his military and government service accumulated to his personal wealth,” she told ABC news.“There was a lot of corruption in this regime and stifling of public resources for personal gain.

Research Credit: ottilie

Source

» Vodafone Colluded with Egyptian Regime’s Information Warfare PSYOP

AP:

Egyptian authorities forced Vodafone to broadcast pro-government text messages during the protests that have rocked the country, the U.K.-based mobile company said Thursday.

Micro-blogging site Twitter has been buzzing with screen grabs from Vodafone’s Egyptian customers showing text messages sent over the course of the demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-old regime.

A text message received Sunday by an Associated Press reporter in Egypt appealed to the country’s“honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honor.” Another urged Egyptians to attend a pro-Mubarak rally in Cairo on Wednesday. The first was marked as coming from“Vodafone.” The other was signed:“Egypt Lovers.”

In a statement, Vodafone Group PLC said that the messages had been drafted by Egyptian authorities and that it had no power to change them.

“Vodafone Group has protested to the authorities that the current situation regarding these messages is unacceptable,” the statement said.“We have made clear that all messages should be transparent and clearly attributable to the originator.”

The company also said its competitors— including Egypt’s Mobinil and the United Arab Emirates’ Etisalat— were doing the same. Etisalat, known formally as Emirates Telecommunications Corp., declined comment.

Vodafone said the texts had been sent“since the start of the protests,” which kicked off more than a week ago.Vodafone did not immediately return an e-mail asking why the company waited nearly 10 days to complain publicly.Its statement was released only after repeated inquiries by the AP.

The company declined to reveal how many such messages it had sent, or whether it was still pumping them out.

Vodafone has already come under fire for its role in the Internet blackout that cut Egypt off from the online world for several days. The company said the order to pull the plug on its Egyptian customers could not be ignored as it was legal under local law.

Related:Digital Darkness: U.S., U.K. Companies Help Egyptian Regime Shut Down Telecommunications and Identify Dissidents

Source

» Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

Wired:

As a trained statistician with degrees from MIT and Stanford University, Srivastava was intrigued by the technical problem posed by the lottery ticket. In fact, it reminded him a lot of his day job, which involves consulting for mining and oil companies. A typical assignment for Srivastava goes like this: A mining company has multiple samples from a potential gold mine. Each sample gives a different estimate of the amount of mineral underground.“My job is to make sense of those results,” he says. “The numbers might seem random, as if the gold has just been scattered, but they’re actually not random at all. There are fundamental geologic forces that created those numbers. If I know the forces, I can decipher the samples.I can figure out how much gold is underground.”

Srivastava realized that the same logic could be applied to the lottery. The apparent randomness of the scratch ticket was just a facade, a mathematical lie. And this meant that the lottery system might actually be solvable, just like those mining samples.“At the time, I had no intention of cracking the tickets,” he says. He was just curious about the algorithm that produced the numbers. Walking back from the gas station with the chips and coffee he’d bought with his winnings, he turned the problem over in his mind. By the time he reached the office, he was confident that he knew how the software might work, how it could precisely control the number of winners while still appearing random.

…

Furthermore, the Massachusetts lottery has a history of dispensing large payouts to suspected criminals, at least in one Mass Millions game. In 1991, James“Whitey” Bulger, a notorious South Boston mob boss currently on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list—he’s thought to be the inspiration for the Frank Costello character in The Departed—and three others cashed in a winning lottery ticket worth $14.3 million. He collected more than $350,000 before his indictment.

At the time, authorities thought Bulger was using the lottery to launder money: take illicit profits, buy a share in a winning lottery ticket, redeem it, and end up with clean cash.In this respect, the lottery system seems purpose-built for organized crime, says Michael Plichta, unit chief of the FBI’s organized crime section. “When I was working in Puerto Rico, I watched all these criminals use traditional lottery games to clean their money,” he remembers. “You’d bring these drug guys in, and you’d ask them where their income came from, how they could afford theirmansion even though they didn’t have a job, and they’d produce all these winning lottery tickets.That’s when I began to realize that they were using the games to launder cash.”

The problem for the criminals, of course, is that unless cracked, most lotteries return only about 53 cents on the dollar, which means that they’d be forfeiting a significant share of their earnings. But what if criminals aren’t playing the lottery straight? What if they have a method that, like Srivastava’s frequency-of-occurrence trick, can dramatically increase the odds of winning? As Srivastava notes, if organized crime had a system that could identify winning tickets more than 65 percent of the time, then the state-run lottery could be turned into a profitable form of money laundering. “You’ve got to realize that, for people in organized crime, making piles of money is one of their biggest problems,”says Charles Johnston, a supervisory special agent in the organized crime section of the FBI. “If they could find a way to safely launder money without taking too big a loss, then I can guarantee you they’d start doing it in a heartbeat.” There is no direct evidence that criminals are actually using these government-run gambling games to hide their crimes. But the circumstantial evidence, as noted by the FBI, is certainly troubling.

And then there’s Joan Ginther, who has won more than $1 million from the Texas Lottery on four different occasions. She bought two of the winners from the same store in Bishop, Texas. What’s strangest of all, perhaps, is that three of Ginther’s wins came from scratch tickets with baited hooks and not from Mega Millions or Powerball. Last June, Ginther won $10 million from a $50 ticket, which is the largest scratch prize ever awarded by the Texas Lottery.

Perhaps Ginther is simply the luckiest person on earth. (She has refused almost all requests from journalists for comment.) While the lotteries are extremely rigorous about various aspects of security, from the integrity of the latex to the cashing of tickets at stores, the industry appears to have not considered the possibility of plundering the games using the visible numbers on the ticket. For instance, when I contacted the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, their security experts couldn’t recall having heard of Mohan Srivastava or the broken Ontario games. This is one of the largest trade associations of lotteries in the world, and it had no recollection that at least a few of its games had been proven to be fatally flawed.

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