Note the location of “Planet 9” and the inbound path for Nibiru provided by the Zetas in 1997. Nibiru arrived, right on schedule in 2003, and right where predicted a full 7 years earlier. Where the Zetas provided the location of the gravity draw represented by the Sun’s dark unlit binary and the inbound Nibiru in 1983, when the IRAS team lofted its infra-red balloon in search of the inbound Nibiru, this location was not provided to the public. All articles in print at that time only referring to the location as the “western edge of the constellation Orion”, quite vague, and the “western edge” is vast. Yet the Zetas pinpointed the location as being just outside the lower bow of Orion. Such is the accuracy of ZetaTalk. How would the public eventually become “aware of the history and accuracy of ZetaTalk predictions” as predicted by the Zetas on April 16, 2016? ? It would seem this is already in process.
SOZT March 19, 2016
So what happened to the announcement? Obama lacked the courage. As a result of this colossal failure, having to disband the Jade Helm structure, the US military reacted. Obama is no longer running the country. Chief of Staff General Dunford is. Ben Fulford has for months been referring to Obama as the US “spokesperson”. Is this true, and how does this work? In that the Middle East, under the direction and press from Israel, Turkey, the Jewish bankers of the Federal Reserve, and the Saudis were supporting ISIS and this threatened to create a force that would not only invade Europe but also create an endless terrorism threat to the US, the military did indeed effect a silent coup. Russia needed to enter the fray, and Dunford, but not Obama, agreed. This will never be admitted, publicly, nor do the parties want this.
EOZT
SOZT October 1, 2015
The three major social media outlets in use around the globe all had significant, and simultaneous outages between September 20-24, 2015. Skype had complaints from the UK, Australia, and Japan. Twitter received reports from the US, Australia, and Singapore. FaceBook had the loudest howls, primarily from the US and Europe. Notably these downtimes, some lasting for hours or even days, got no attention in the major media, and there was no real explanation for the outages. Every Skype user has an account and a password, as do their contacts. Every Skype user can broadcast messages to their contacts, even if these contacts are not presently online. Every twitter use likewise has an account and a password, and by sending a tweet passes information along to subscribers, who can retweet the info in the future. FaceBook users likewise have an account and a password, with many friends who pick up info from each other and pass it along on their FaceBook accounts. In all of this, the networks themselves are AWARE of the accounts and passwords, and could do a broadcast to all in the event of an announcement. Check your user agreements. This is legal!
EOZT
SOZT April 25, 2015
When we announced that the Council of Worlds would be going to war with the elite over their blockage of the announcement, the tools available to the Council were not immediately apparent. Early in the campaign the Sony hack showed one such mechanism, whereby an anonymous hacker revealed embarrassing information about Sony executives. Similarly exposing pedophile activities by Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton and blatant lies by self-promoting media talking heads such as Brian Williams and Bill O’Reilly required nothing more than encouraging contactees to step forward. In many, many cases a financial loss sufficient to trigger a clash among the elite is a result of an electronic delay during trades.
EOZT
SOZT July 4, 2015
What is the message here? As with other failed launches, this most recent failure is a definitive message from the Council of Worlds. Space X has had success in resupplying the ISS, though has flounded on landing on a floating ocean platform. Resupply of the ISS is OK, reuse of their launch equipment so as to help the elite escape, not OK. The message now is that the elite should not expect to get into space at all. No escape. The message here is to take all hope away from such plans among the elite. They are to remain on Earth with the common man. We expect the battle to shift from attempts to block the announcement, or deny its meaning, to attempts to enslave the common man in some way. That is another fight, on another day.
EOZT
SOZT November 1, 2014
The elite – the wealthy and politically powerful in the world – have continued in their attempts to thwart the announcement by Obama and his partners admitting that Nibiru, aka Planet X exists. We have long stated that the announcement date was set by Obama and Xi at their June 7-8, 2013 meeting in Santa Monica. The flustered slip given by the French Foreign Minister on May 13, 2014 re “500 days
http://www.zetatalk.com/ning/17ma2014.htm
until climate chaos” was in reference to this, as the date set was to be 500 days from the 2013 meeting, ie October 20, 2014.
EOZT
SOZT November 8, 2014
Relying solely on Russia or China to proceed would get the truth out BUT since the block had always been on the US end, via Reagan’s national security directive, without a confirmation from Obama this is awkward and subject to being countered. If true, where is the confirmation from Obama? It would be packaged as some odd communist attack against Obama going into the elections, to make him seem weak, almost comical. So where is this going now? For us to comment would be to empower the enemy, which of course we will not do. Your curiosity is not as important as having the announcement succeed.
EOZT
SOZT December 10, 2014
We have stated that the public will see only the flash and parry of swords from a distance during the Council of Worlds war with the cover-up crowd. Meanwhile, periodic tests of the Emergency Broadcast System in the US are done, to see if the channels are open. As of this writing, they are not yet open. The war is still on, full press. Meanwhile, during the flash and parry of swords, one can see resistance, pleading, panic, and capitulation.
EOZT
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https://topalertnews.com/former-hillary-clinton-employee-arrested-o...
July 23 2018
Candace Marie Claiborne has become the first Clinton-era State Department employee indicted on treason charges, after a federal grand jury indicted her for conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, concealing contact with foreign spies, obstructing an official proceeding, and making false statements to the FBI.
Claiborne, a veteran State Department employee who possessed a Top Secret security clearance, concealed her extensive contacts with Chinese intelligence agents, who for years lavished her with thousands of dollars in gifts as part of a pay-for-play scheme, according to a Department of Justice press release.
In addition to cash payments, Chinese spies provided Claiborne with vacations, an apartment, Apple electronics, and tuition to a Chinese fashion school, according to the indictment. Suggesting she learned tricks from Hillary Clinton, her former boss, Claiborne allegedly told co-conspirators to delete all emails and evidence after getting caught.
The bill of charges contains numerous felonies and Claiborne, 60, is facing spending the rest of her life behind bars, as prosecutors warn she is “the first of many” corrupt Clinton-era State Department employees that will be bought to justice by a reinvigorated DOJ.
“Candace Marie Claiborne is a U.S. State Department employee who possesses a Top Secret security clearance and allegedly failed to report her contacts with Chinese foreign intelligence agents who provided her with thousands of dollars of gifts and benefits,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General McCord.
“Claiborne used her position and her access to sensitive diplomatic data for personal profit. Pursuing those who imperil our national security for personal gain will remain a key priority of the National Security Division.”
He added: “This case demonstrates that U.S. government employees will be held accountable for failing to honor the trust placed in them when they take on such sensitive assignments.”
“Candace Claiborne is accused of violating her oath of office as a State Department employee, who was entrusted with Top Secret information when she purposefully mislead federal investigators about her significant and repeated interactions with foreign contacts,” said Assistant Director in Charge Vale.
“The FBI will continue to investigate individuals who, though required by law, fail to report foreign contacts, which is a key indicator of potential insider threats posed by those in positions of public trust.”
The grand jury found Claiborne’s Washington, D.C. home and her savings account are subject to forfeiture, if she’s convicted.
She wrote in a journal that she could “generate 20k in 1 year” through one of her Chinese agents, according to an affidavit. She was allegedly wired nearly $2,500 shortly after and was asked to provide the U.S. government’s analyses of its 2011 economic talks with China.
According to the Department of Justice’s press release, Claiborne is facing decades behind bars for her crimes:
“The maximum penalty for a person convicted of obstructing an official proceeding is 20 years in prison. The maximum penalty for making false statements to the FBI is five years in prison. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes. If convicted of any offense, the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors"
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/20/trump-poised-to-take-control-of-the...
6:26 PM ET Fri, 20 July 2018
President Donald Trump has multiple reasons as to why he should take control of the Federal Reserve. He will do so both because he can and because his broader policies argue that he should do so. The president is anti-overregulating American industry. The Fed is a leader in pushing stringent regulation on the nation. By raising interest rates and stopping the growth in the money supply it stands in the way of further growth in the American economy.
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve is required to have seven members. It has three. Two of the current governors were put into their position by President Trump. Two more have been nominated by the president and are awaiting confirmation by the Senate. After these two are put on the Fed’s board, the president will then nominate two more to follow them. In essence, it is possible that six of the seven Board members will be put in place by Trump.
The Federal Open Market Committee has 12 members and sets the nation’s monetary policy. Seven of the 12 are the members of the Board of Governors. Five additional are Federal Reserve district bank presidents. Other than the head of the Fed bank in New York, who was nominated by the president, the other four can only take their positions as district bank presidents if the board in Washington agrees to their hiring. One of these, the Fed Bank president in Minneapolis, Neel Kashkari, is already arguing for no further rate increases.
Following the passage of the Dodd Frank Act in July 2010, the Fed was given enormous power to regulate the banking industry. It moved quickly to implement a number of new rules. The Fed set up a system that would penalize banks that failed to obey its new rules. These rules included setting limits as to how big an individual bank could be; how much money the banks had to invest in fed funds and Treasurys as a percent of their assets; which loans were desirable and which were not; where the banks had to obtain their funding and many, many, more up to and including how much a bank could pay its investors in dividends.
These rules have meaningfully slowed bank investments in the economy (the Volcker Rule) and they have had a crippling effect on bank lending in the housing markets (other agencies have had an impact here also).
Thus, of all of the government agencies the Fed has been possibly the most restrictive. The president has already moved to correct these excesses by putting in place a new Fed Governor (Randal Quarles) to regulate the banking industry.
In the second quarter of 2018, the growth in non-seasonally adjusted money supply (M2) has been zero. That’s right, the money supply did not grow at all. This is because the Fed is shrinking its balance sheet ultimately by $50 billion per month. In addition, the Fed has raised interest rates seven times since Q4 2015. Supposedly there are five more rate increases coming.
This is the tightest monetary policy since Paul Volcker headed the institution in the mid-1980s. It will be recalled his policies led to back-to-back recessions. Current Fed monetary policy is directly in conflict with the president’s economic goals.
Moreover, the Treasury is estimating it will pay $415 billion in interest on the federal debt in this fiscal year. A better estimate might be $450 billion if rates keep going up. There are a lot of bridges and tunnels and jobs that could be created with this money.
Then there is inflation. It is likely to rise if the Fed eases its policies. If that happens paying down the federal debt becomes easier. On a less desirable note, higher interest rates lower real estate values. Lower rates that stimulate inflation increase real estate values.
The president can and will take control of the Fed. It may be recalled when the law was written creating the Federal Reserve the secretary of the Treasury was designated as the head of the Federal Reserve. We are going to return to that era. Like it or not the Fed is about to be politicized.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/17/the-ugly-scandal-that-...
Sweden’s literary elite has been thrown into disarray by allegations of sexual harassment and corruption.
In the eyes of its members, there is no more important cultural institution in the world than the Swedish Academy. The members, who call themselves The Eighteen (always in capitals), are elected for life by their peers, and meet for a ritual dinner every Thursday evening at a restaurant they own in the heart of the old town in Stockholm. And once a year, at a ceremony brilliant with jewels and formality, the permanent secretary of the academy hands out the Nobel prize in literature and all the world applauds.
But this year there will be no prize and no ceremony. In November 2017, it was revealed in the Swedish press that the husband of one of the academy members had been accused of serial sexual abuse, in assaults alleged to have taken place over more than 20 years. Jean-Claude Arnault, a French photographer and cultural entrepreneur, is married to the poet and academician Katarina Frostenson. In addition to assault accusations against him, the pair are accused of misusing academy funding. Arnault has denied all accusations, and Frostenson has refused to comment.
The academy is paralysed by the scandal, which was followed by a slew of resignations and expulsions. Six of The Eighteen have withdrawn from any part in its deliberations; another two were compelled to do so. The statutes say that 12 members must be present to elect any new ones, so with only 10, no important decisions can be taken and no new members elected. The vacuum has been filled with invective.
According to one senior academy member, the man responsible for the moral decay of the institution – through his “rotten macho values and arrogant high-handedness” – is the critic and historian Horace Engdahl, a former secretary of the academy. Engdahl, a close friend of Arnault, has in turn called the current secretary the worst the academy has ever had.
The scandal broke when the Stockholm daily paper Dagens Nyheter published the testimonies of 18 women who said that they had been assaulted or exploited by Arnault. Even if many were anonymous, the cumulative effect was impossible to ignore. In two cases the allegations amounted to rape.
What made the matter a wider global scandal is that it seemed to reveal something rotten at the heart of the Swedish Academy: many of the attacks were said to have taken place in luxurious apartments owned by the academy, in Stockholm and in Paris. Arnault and Frostenson also profited for years from academy subsidies to an arts club they owned and ran together. In addition, Frostenson has been accused of leaking the names of literature prize winners to Arnault, with the result that large bets were placed with bookies in Paris. Arnault’s lawyer, Björn Hurtig, told Expressen that his client was “disturbed and resigned … He says this is totally wrong and he is innocent of the allegations.”
Soon after the scandal broke, the secretary of the academy, Sara Danius, announced that she had herself been sexually harassed by Arnault. She called in lawyers and attempted to expel Frostenson from the academy. Arnault, meanwhile, has powerful defenders. His great friend Engdahl campaigned to have Danius expelled in turn. In an article for the national tabloid Expressen, Engdahl deprecated the vulgarity of his opponents in the academy, and called them “a clique of bad losers … who plotted to wound and humiliate Katarina Frostenson”
In the event, both women stepped down. Enough members resigned in support of Danius that the academy was left inquorate, with Engdahl in control of the rump. It seems possible that the king of Sweden, who has ultimate responsibility for the academy, will simply close the whole thing down this summer, with potentially disastrous consequences for the Nobel prize in literature. The Nobel Foundation, which funds the prize, is refusing to keep doing so until the academy is cleaned up.
The scandal has elements of a tragedy, in which people who set out to serve literature and culture discovered they were only pandering to writers and the people who hang around with them. The pursuit of excellence in art was entangled with the pursuit of social prestige. The academy behaved as if the meals in its clubhouse were as much an accomplishment as the work that got people elected there.
The academy had thought it stood for the culture of TS Eliot: somewhat masculine and unashamedly elitist, in which power is channelled in the service of tradition. It turns out to be much more like the culture of an ageing rock star: smug, macho, with its cool self-importance armoured by money and fame. The destruction of the academy’s reputation is not just damaging to an old, odd, Swedish institution, but also to the ideals it upheld, and to the dream of a global high culture that the Nobel prize represents
Swedish academy member Katarina Frostenson and her husband, Jean-Claude Arnault, who has been accused of multiple sexual assaults. Photograph: IBL/REX/Shutterstock
The Academy was, from its inception in 1786, an elitist institution. It was to contain the best writers and scholars in Sweden, and to guard and nourish the language. It puts out an official list of all the recognised words in Swedish and is still working, after more than a century, on the definitive dictionary of the language. Members are elected for life, and inducted at a banquet with a fanfare of trumpets. It is rich, with investments worth an estimated £110m. Membership brings considerable financial advantages: there are a great many perks in the way of apartments in the loveliest parts of Stockholm, dinners, and the use of delightful offices. The members’ compensation is not published, but according to an investigation of their tax returns by one Stockholm paper, they receive around £40,000 a year when they are active participants. To be the secretary is a full-time post, and while the salary is unknown, the pension increases by £10,000 for every year served.
It’s harder to discover what the academy’s use to contemporary Sweden is. The kind of literature it exists to nourish is kept alive largely by subsidy. With a few exceptions, its members could not make a living from writing. This is, of course, true of writers everywhere today, but in a world dominated by a few global languages, the chief of them English, a language like Swedish – with only 9 million speakers – can’t sustain many writers economically. The books that sell in Sweden are almost always those that can be profitably translated, which means crime novels, with the occasional quirky literary breakout such as the novel Popular Music from Vittula.
In the 1970s, the idea that the academy was the pinnacle of Swedish culture came under attack, at the same time as the wider belief that European – and particularly Swedish – culture represented the peak of human achievement was looking rather unconvincing. To the academy, this was a slowly growing but existential threat. The extraordinary ambition of the academy’s judges was not just to read foreign literature in the original language but, beyond that, to judge their originality and importance within their own traditions. However, as the world of literature expanded to include Latin America, Africa, India, Japan and China, this aspiration began to look unrealistic.
The academy had been established to embody and to strengthen the claim that Swedish was one of the great languages of European civilisation, as worthy of respect as any other. In 1974 the academy put this belief to the test by choosing two of its own members, the poets Harry Martinson and Eyvind Johnson, for the prize – a choice that was greeted with a storm of derision. (Four years later, Martinson killed himself.) This criticism seems unduly harsh: Martinson is a much better poet than, for example, Bob Dylan, who was awarded the prize in 2016. But the dismissive reaction was a warning of things to come
Very long article continues...........
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-12/cftc-approves-record-30-m...
The CFTC has finally approved what is expected to be the largest award in the history of its whistle-blower-awards program: According to Bloomberg, the commission has authorized a $30 million award for information about JP Morgan neglecting to inform its wealthy asset-management clients about conflicts of interest involving the bank's investment recommendations.
The award represents 30% of the $100 million in penalties and surrendered profits that the CFTC received in a December 2015 settlement with the bank.
The CFTC made the award public on Thursday without naming individuals or the bank. According to the attorney, Edward Siedle, it was the culmination of a December 2015 settlement in which JPMorgan agreed to pay regulators a total of $367 million for failing to disclose that it was steering asset-management clients into investments that would be especially profitable to the bank.
That included $100 million that went to the CFTC -- $40 million in penalties and $60 million in disgorgement. The bank agreed to pay an additional $267 million at the time to the Securities and Exchange Commission, where a pair of preliminary whistle-blower awards totaling $61 million were authorized a year ago but still await final approval.
It's also the fifth award in the history of the CFTC program, which was created along with a separate whistle-blower program at the SEC as part of the Dodd-Frank act. As the claimant's attorney, Edward Siedle, said, many bank whistle-blowers aren't aware that there's "a commodities element" to many cases of investment fraud, which opens the door to the CFTC's involvement, and the possibility of more settlement money.
"We hope that an award of this magnitude will incentivize whistle-blowers to come forward with valuable information and provide notice to market participants that individuals are reporting quality information about violations" of commodities-trading law, said CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo.
Siedle acknowledged earlier Thursday that an unnamed client of his acted as a whistle-blower in obtaining the CFTC award. Siedle said he had also obtained a preliminary award from the SEC on behalf of the same client.
"Most would-be whistle-blowers overlook the fact that there’s a commodities element in most investment fraud," Siedle said. "This award demonstrates that the CFTC is willing to act quickly on those complaints if contacted."
In a separate award granted last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission handed two whistle-blowers a combined $61 million bounty, equivalent to roughly 23% of its $267 million settlement with JPM.
Under Dodd-Frank, the SEC and CFTC run two separate whistle -blower award programs. Each allows whistle-blowers to receive between 10% and 30% of total recoveries, depending on the value of the information they provide. Those settlements are often worth tens - if not hundreds - of millions of dollars.
So far, no comments from fortress-balance-sheet CEO Jamie Dimon on the award or the underlying fraud as he likely sees this a just another 'storm in a teacup'... although he knows a fraud when he sees one.
RESIGNATIONS: #PedoGate #PizzaGate #DeepState
Demos Parneros, Chief Executive Officer, Barnes and Noble, FIRED
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-03/barnes-noble-fir...
Diane Bryant, COO, Google Cloud
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/passing-front-diane-bryant-google-clo...
Lu Yimin, President and Executive Director, China Unicom (Hong Kong)
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news.php
Zhang Zhenhui, Sales Executive, ZTE
https://www.topnewsjournal.com/2018/07/07/departing-zte-executive-d...
Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary, UK
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/09/boris-johnson-resi...
David Davis, Brexit Secretary, UK
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2018/jul/09/david-davis-r...
Steve Baker, Deputy to Brexit Secretary David Davis, UK
https://www.fxstreet.com/news/3rd-brexit-minister-resigns-amid-hard...
Suella Braverman, Jr. Brexit Minister, UK
https://www.fxstreet.com/news/3rd-brexit-minister-resigns-amid-hard...
Howard Bamsey, Executive Director, Green Climate Fund – United Nations
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-04/un-s-green-clima...
Brian Roche, VP/General Manager, JEA Water & Wastewater Systems, Jacksonville, FL
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/20180629/top-jea-executive-retires...
Paul McElroy, CEO, JEA
http://news.wjct.org/post/jea-board-member-resigns-seeks-jacksonvil...
Susan Thornton, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
https://indianexpress.com/article/world/senior-us-diplomat-for-asia...
Marni Walden, Executive Vice-President of Verizon Global Media
AND
John Stratton, Executive Vice-President of Verizon Global Media
https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/verizon-john-stratton-exit-ceo-ha...
Lowell McAdam, CEO, Verizon
https://deadline.com/2018/06/verizon-lowell-mcadam-retire-ceo-hans-...
Lowell McAdam, Board of Directors, General Electric
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/verizon-ceo-steps-down-from-gener...
James D. Melville, US Ambassador to Estonia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-01/donald-trump-comments-lead-us...
Hoorst Seehofer, German Interior Minister & Chairman of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, “has offered to resign as both minister and as chairman of Bavaria's Christian Social Union”
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-07-01/german-interi...
Pervez Musharraf, Chairman of All Pakistan Muslim League (APML)
https://nation.com.pk/22-Jun-2018/musharraf-resigns-as-chairman-apml
David Carey, President, Hearst Magazines
https://nypost.com/2018/06/25/hearst-magazine-boss-david-carey-step...
Anthony M. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice, resigning end of July
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/us/politics/anthony-kennedy-reti...
Amancio Ortega, Zoro Founder
https://fashionunited.in/news/people/amancio-ortega-retires-the-fou...
Jonathan Friedland, Communciations Chief, Netflix
https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/netflix-cco-out-1202855305/
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/07/10/israeli-police-again-qu...
Jul 10th 2018 5:47AM
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces three investigations over alleged corruption, was questioned again by police over a case involving Israel's largest telecoms firm on Tuesday, Army Radio said.
The authorities allege Netanyahu awarded regulatory favors to Bezeq Telecom Israel in return for favorable coverage of him and his wife on a news site owned by the company. Netanyahu, Bezeq and its owner have all denied wrongdoing.
A Reuters cameraman saw a police car pulling into the driveway of the prime minister's official residence in Jerusalem. Netanyahu has been questioned over the case before and police have yet to make a recommendation about charges.
A police spokesman declined comment, and a spokesman for Netanyahu had no immediate comment.
In the two other cases in which police have already recommended that Netanyahu be charged with bribery, the final decision about whether to prosecute rests with the Israeli attorney general -- that could be months away.
So far, partners in Netanyahu’s governing coalition have stood by him, saying they are awaiting the attorney general’s next moves. However, political pressure could mount on Netanyahu to step down if he is charged.
Netanyahu could also call a snap election to try to stall legal proceedings during the campaign and rally his right-wing power base behind him. Polls show Netanyahu’s Likud party gaining seats and positioned far ahead of all other factions.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-21-trillion-in-u-s-tax-money-disa...
This is part of our series on the unaccounted for $21 Trillion in taxpayer money. As unbelievable and absurd as that sounds, the actual total of unaccounted for money at the Pentagon is most likely significantly more than $21 trillion. The First ever “full-scope audit” of the Pentagon is presently underway. Read the first report from this series here.
According to the Department of Defense Inspector General and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, $21 Trillion in Taxpayer Funding Is Unaccounted For.
To help people comprehend the scale of this, $1 Trillion is $1000 Billion. This means that $21,000 Billion in taxpayer money has gone missing.
How can this be possible?
We outlined the “Unaccountable System of Global War Profiteers” in detail here.
For further understanding, we are featuring another mind-blowing Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) report.
The following are highlights from the DOD IG “Summary of DOD Office of the Inspector General Audits of Financial Management”:
- The financial management systems DOD has put in place to control and monitor the money flow don’t facilitate but actually “prevent DOD from collecting and reporting financial information… that is accurate, reliable, and timely.” (p. 4)
- DOD frequently enters “unsupported” (i.e. imaginary) amounts in its books (p. 13) and uses those figures to make the books balance. (p. 14)
- Inventory records are not reviewed and adjusted; unreliable and inaccurate data are used to report inventories, and purchases are made based on those distorted inventory reports. (p. 7)
- DOD managers do not know how much money is in their accounts at the Treasury, or when they spend more than Congress appropriates to them. (p. 5)18
- Nor does DOD “record, report, collect, and reconcile” funds received from other agencies or the public (p. 6),
- DOD tracks neither buyer nor seller amounts when conducting transactions with other agencies. (p. 12)
- “The cost and depreciation of the DOD general property, plant, and equipment are not reliably reported….” (p. 8);
- “… the value of DOD property and material in the possession of contractors is not reliably reported.” (p. 9)
- DOD does not know who owes it money, nor how much. (p. 10.)
It is as if the accountability and appropriations clauses of the U.S. Constitution were just window dressing, behind which this mind-numbing malfeasance thrives.
Technically, this is a violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act, a statute carrying felony sanctions of fines and imprisonment.
Congress and the Pentagon annually report and hold hearings on DOD’s lack of financial accountability and sometimes enact new laws, but many of the new laws simply permit the Pentagon to ignore the previous ones; others are eyewash.
If you have a system that does not accurately know what its spending history is, and does not know what it is now (and does not care to redress the matter), how can you expect it to make a competent, honest estimate of future costs?
It is self-evident that an operation that tolerates inaccurate, unverifiable data cannot be soundly managed; it exempts itself from any reasonable standard of efficiency.
Recall, also that the errors in cost, schedule and performance that result are not random: actual costs always turn out to be much higher than, sometimes even multiples of, early estimates; the schedule is always optimistic, and the performance is always inflated.
The Pentagon, defense industry and their congressional operatives want – need – to increase the money flow into the system to pretend to improve it.
Supported by a psychology of excessive secrecy, generated fear and the ideological belief that there is no alternative to high cost, high complexity weapons, higher budgets are easier to justify, especially if no one can sort out how the Pentagon actually spends its money.
The key to the DOD spending problem is to initiate financial accountability. No failed system can be understood or fixed if it cannot be accurately measured.
And yet, there is no sense of urgency in the Pentagon to do anything about it.
Indeed, in the 1990s, we were promised the accountability problem would be solved by 1997. In the early 2000s, we were promised it would be solved by 2007; then by 2016; then by 2017….
The question must be asked: if nothing has been done by the Pentagon to end the accountability problem after more than 20 years of promises, is top management simply incompetent, or is this the intended result of obfuscation to avert accountability?
A spending system that effectively audits its weapon programs and offices would also be one that systemically uncovers incompetent and crooked managers, false promises and those who made them.
It would also necessarily reveal reasons to dramatically alter, if not cease, funding for some programs, which of course would make lots of people in industry, Congress, and the executive branch unhappy.
The current system and its out of control finances mortally harm our defenses, defraud taxpayers, and bloat the Pentagon and federal budgets.
Any reform that fails to address this most fundamental problem is merely another doomed attempt that will only serve to perpetuate a system that thrives on falsehoods and deception.
William Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, summed up the accountability crisis at the Pentagon by saying:
“Call it irony or call it symptomatic of the department’s way of life, but an analysis by the Project on Government Oversight notes the Pentagon has so far spent roughly $6 billion on ‘fixing’ the audit problem — with no solution in sight.
If anything, the Defense Department’s accounting practices have been getting worse.”
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/07/01/exit-polls-show-mexicos...
MEXICO CITY, July 1 (Reuters) - Leftist outsider Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador won Mexico's presidential election handily on Sunday, exit polls showed, setting the stage for a government that will inherit tense relations with Washington and the scrutiny of nervous investors.
Jose Antonio Meade, the candidate of the ruling centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, conceded defeat to Lopez Obrador, a 64-year-old former Mexico City mayor, within minutes of the polls closing.
"For the good of Mexico, I wish him the very best of success," Meade said in a speech. Lopez Obrador's other rivals also conceded that the race was lost.
Lopez Obrador is expected to move Mexico in a more nationalist direction as he becomes the first leftist to rule the country in decades. He has pledged to reduce economic dependence on the United States.
Mexico's current government has sparred with U.S. President Donald Trump over trade and migration for months
One exit poll by Parametria showed Lopez Obrador with a lead of 20 percentage points, winning between 53 percent and 59 percent of the vote, far ahead of his two main rivals from Mexico's traditional parties.
An official "quick count" of results is expected at midnight EDT (0400 GMT), with a margin of error of 0.5 percent.
Consulta Mitofsky for broadcaster Televisa showed Lopez Obrador, who had maintained a healthy lead in polls ahead of the vote, winning between 43 percent and 49 percent of the vote. Mitofsky and others also showed him winning by at least 20 percentage points.
If confirmed, the results would represent a resounding defeat for outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto's PRI, which has ruled Mexico for all but 12 of the last 89 years.
The runner-up in the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections, Lopez Obrador pitched himself as the only one capable of cleaning up the government after years of poor economic growth and rampant gang violence eroded faith in the political class.
Seeking support from economic nationalists, leftist liberals and social conservatives, Lopez Obrador has been vague on policy details. But he vows to reduce inequality, improve pay and welfare spending and run a tight budget.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5890179/Anti-child-abuse-ad...
The head of a charity that campaigns against sexual violence has been arrested in New York for child pornography and allegedly trying to meet with children as young as two for sex.
Joel Davis, 22, is accused of trying to set up sexual encounters between himself and young children, as well as soliciting an undercover FBI agent to send sexually explicit videos of minors.
The New Yorker was arrested on Tuesday on child sex abuse and child pornography charges.
Davis is the chairman of the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict - an organization devoted to ending sexual violence.
Charges: Joel Davis, 22, is accused of trying to set up sexual encounters between himself and young children, as well as soliciting an undercover FBI agent to send sexually explicit videos of minors
Prosecutors say despite his involvement in the organization, Davis exchanged text messages with undercover agents over the course of several weeks earlier this month.
The 22-year-old allegedly arranged to meet the nine-year-old daughter of one of the undercover agents and with the purported two-year-old daughter of the officer's girlfriend.
He allegedly went into detail in the text messages about what sexual activities he intended to engage in with the children.
Prosecutors say Davis repeatedly asked the undercover agent to take naked and sexually explicit pictures and videos of the children and to send them to him.
Following his arrest, Davis allegedly admitted to officers that he had abused a 13-year-old boy in the past and that he kept child porn images on his phone.
Davis is the chairman of the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict - an organization devoted to ending sexual violence
'Having started an organization that pushed for the end of sexual violence, Davis displayed the highest degree of hypocrisy by his alleged attempts to sexually exploit multiple minors,' FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said.
'As if this wasn't repulsive enough, Davis allegedly possessed and distributed utterly explicit images of innocent infants and toddlers being sexually abused by adults.'
Davis faced Manhattan federal court on Tuesday charged with enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity, attempted sexual exploitation of a minor, possession of child pornography and receipt and distribution of child pornography.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Davis has attended Oxford University, Columbia University and The Juilliard School.
US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman described Davis' alleged actions as 'unfathomable' and 'sickening'.
'Davis started an organization devoted to stopping sexual violence, while allegedly engaged in the duplicitous behavior of sharing explicit images of infants engaged in sexual activity,' he said.
'Davis also allegedly solicited an undercover officer - whom he thought to be a willing participant – to send sexually explicit videos of his nine-year-old daughter, and even to set up a sexual encounter between himself and a two-year-old.
'The conduct alleged against Joel Davis is as unfathomable as it is sickening, and as this case demonstrates, law enforcement will keep its watchful eye on the darkest corners of the internet to bring predators to justice.'
https://www.wired.com/story/exactis-database-leak-340-million-records/
You've probably never heard of the marketing and data aggregation firm Exactis. But it may well have heard of you. And now there's also a good chance that whatever information the company has about you, it recently leaked onto the public internet, available to any hacker who simply knew where to look.
Earlier this month, security researcher Vinny Troia discovered that Exactis, a data broker based in Palm Coast, Florida, had exposed a database that contained close to 340 million individual records on a publicly accessible server. The haul comprises close to 2 terabytes of data that appears to include personal information on hundreds of millions of American adults, as well as millions of businesses. While the precise number of individuals included in the data isn't clear—and the leak doesn't seem to contain credit card information or Social Security numbers—it does go into minute detail for each individual listed, including phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses, and other highly personal characteristics for every name. The categories range from interests and habits to the number, age, and gender of the person's children.
"It seems like this is a database with pretty much every US citizen in it," says Troia, who is the founder of his own New York-based security company, Night Lion Security. Troia notes that almost every person he's searched for in the database, he's found. And when WIRED asked him to find records for a list of 10 specific people in the database, he very quickly found six of them. "I don’t know where the data is coming from, but it’s one of the most comprehensive collections I’ve ever seen," he says.
While it's far from clear if any criminal or malicious hackers have accessed the database, Troia says it would have been easy enough for them to find. Troia himself spotted the database while using the search tool Shodan, which allows researchers to scan for all manner of internet-connected devices. He says he'd been curious about the security of ElasticSearch, a popular type of database that's designed to be easily queried over the internet using just the command line. So he simply used Shodan to search for all ElasticSearch databases visible on publicly accessible servers with American IP addresses. That returned about 7,000 results. As Troia combed through them, he quickly found the Exactis database, unprotected by any firewall.
"I’m not the first person to think of scraping ElasticSearch servers," he says. "I’d be surprised if someone else didn't already have this."
Troia contacted both Exactis and the FBI about his discovery last week, and he says the company has since protected the data so that it's no longer accessible. Exactis did not respond to multiple calls and emails from WIRED asking for comment on its data leak.
Aside from the sheer breadth of the Exactis leak, it may be even more remarkable for its depth: Each record contains entries that go far beyond contact information and public records to include more than 400 variables on a vast range of specific characteristics: whether the person smokes, their religion, whether they have dogs or cats, and interests as varied as scuba diving and plus-size apparel. WIRED independently analyzed a sample of the data Troia shared and confirmed its authenticity, though in some cases the information is outdated or inaccurate.
"I don’t know where the data is coming from, but it’s one of the most comprehensive collections I’ve ever seen."
Vinny Troia, Night Lion Security
While the lack of financial information or Social Security numbers means the database isn't a straightforward tool for identity theft, the depth of personal info nonetheless could help scammers with other forms of social engineering, says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. "The likelihood of financial fraud is not that great, but the possibility of impersonation or profiling is certainly there," Rotenberg says. He notes that while some of the data is available in public records, much of it appears to be the sort of nonpublic information that data brokers aggregate from sources like magazine subscriptions, credit card transaction data sold by banks, and credit reports. "A lot of this information is now routinely gathered on American consumers," Rotenberg adds.
Without confirmation from Exactis, the precise number of people affected by the data leak remains tough to count. Troia found two versions of Exactis' database, one of which appears to have been newly added during the period he was observing its server. Both contained roughly 340 million records, split into about 230 million records on consumers and 110 million on business contacts. On its website, Exactis boasts that it possesses data on 218 million individuals, including 110 million US households, as well a total of 3.5 billion "consumer, business, and digital records."
"Data is the fuel that powers Exactis," the site reads. "Layer on hundreds of selects including demographic, geographic, lifestyle, interests, and behavioral data to target highly specific audiences with laser-like precision."
Massive leaks of user databases that are accidentally left accessib... have nearly reached epidemic status, affecting everything from health information to password caches stored by software firms. One particularly prolific researcher, security firm UpGuard's Chris Vickery, has discovered those database leaks again and again, from 93 million Mexican citizens' voter registration records to a list of 2.2 million "high-risk" people suspected of crime or terrorism, known as the World Check Risk Screening database.
But if the Exactis leak does in fact include 230 million people's information, that would make it one of the largest in years, bigger even than 2017's Equifax breach of 145.5 million people's data, though smaller than the Yahoo hack that affected 3 billion accounts, revealed last October. (It's worth emphasizing in the case of the Exactis leak, unlike in those earlier data breaches, the data wasn't necessarily stolen by malicious hackers, only publicly exposed on the internet.) But like the Equifax breach, the vast majority of people included in the Exactis leak likely have no idea they're in the database.
EPIC's Marc Rotenberg argues that the timing of the breach, just after the implementation of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation, highlights the persistent lack of regulation around privacy and data collection in the US. A GDPR-like law in the US, he notes, might not have prevented Exactis from collecting the data it later leaked, but it might have required the company to at least disclose to individuals what sort of data it collects about them and allow them to limit how that data is stored or used.
"If you have a profile on someone, that person should be able to see their profile and limit its use," Rotenberg says. "It’s one thing to subscribe to a magazine. It’s another for a single company to have such a detailed profile of your entire life."
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