Telecom Whistleblower Discovers Circuit that Allows Access to All Systems on Wireless Carrier—Phone Calls, Text Messages, Emails and More

Babak Pasdar is a computer security expert who was hired in 2003 to help restructure the tech infrastructure at a major wireless telecommunications company. What he found shocked him. The company had set up a system that gave a third party, presumably a governmental entity, access to every communication coming through that company’s infrastructure. This means every email, internet use, document transmission, video, text message, as well as the ability to listen to and record any phone call.

Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, NRA hired 'black ops' company that targeted environmental groups

Dumpster-diving firm collected Social Security numbers of activists

A private security firm managed by former Secret Service officers spied on myriad environmental organizations throughout the 1990s and the year 2000, thieving documents, trying to plant undercover operations and collecting phone records of members, according to a new report.

Documents obtained by James Ridgeway, a Mother Jones correspondent formerly with the Village Voice, reveals the contractor collected confidential internal records -- donor lists, financial statements -- even Social Security numbers, for public relations outfits and "corporations involved in environmental controversies."

Paul Krugman: Health Care Horror Stories

Not long ago, a young Ohio woman named Trina Bachtel, who was having health problems while pregnant, tried to get help at a local clinic.

Unfortunately, she had previously sought care at the same clinic while uninsured and had a large unpaid balance. The clinic wouldn’t see her again unless she paid $100 per visit — which she didn’t have.

Eventually, she sought care at a hospital 30 miles away. By then, however, it was too late. Both she and the baby died.

Discredited and Unpopular, Bush Still Gets His Way on Judicial Nominations

In response to today's Senate vote to confirm Catharina Haynes to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, People For the American Way president Kathryn Kolbert released the following statement:

“George W. Bush is in the twilight of his presidency and his approval ratings are scraping bottom, yet the Senate confirmed another controversial Bush nominee to a lifetime seat on the federal bench. Bush wants to remake the judiciary as part of his legacy, and the Senate must not continue to aid and abet his efforts.”

Going Behind Closed Doors in Christian Right Households

By Jeremy Adam Smith, Public Eye
Posted on April 11, 2008, Printed on April 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82000/

"Models of idealized family structure lie metaphorically at the heart of our politics," writes linguist George Lakoff in his 2002 book Moral Politics. "Our beliefs about the family exert a powerful influence over our beliefs about what kind of society we should build."

Certainly, many Christian Right leaders would agree with him.

People who make it their business to track and fight the Right tend, with good reason, to focus on public, political activity, but the Christian Right sees the private home as a major arena of political struggle and a showcase for the world they want to live in. "These homes are the source of ordered liberty, the fountain of real democracy, the seedbed of virtue," write long-time activists Allan C. Carlson and Paul T. Mero in their new book, The Natural Family: A Manifesto.

An Unfamiliar (Economic) Game

Wall Street has become addicted to taking enormous risks and sticking taxpayers with the bill. As a result, financial panics are causing real recessions and returning us to the 19th century.

Howard Gleckman | April 3, 2008

When a young Jack Nicklaus won the 1965 Master's Tournament, golf legend Bobby Jones said Nicklaus was "playing a game with which I am not familiar." I have the same feeling about today's financial markets.

This is not capitalism as I learned it. Rather, for the past three decades financial engineers have been playing a game with unlimited upside reward and, thanks to the Federal Reserve and the White House, limited downside risk.

Iceland Has Power To Burn

The tiny island nation can teach the United States valuable lessons about energy policy.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2008, at 2:57 PM ET

The Blue Lagoon, Iceland's largest tourist destination, is a 100-degree melting pot. On a cold March day, as driving rain blows wisps of vapor from the nearby geothermal power plant, a group of Brazilian twentysomethings, a Japanese couple, and teens from St. Paul's, a New Hampshire prep school, wade through the milky water and coat themselves in silica mud.

The lagoon was created entirely by accident. In the 1970s, the Svartsengi geothermal plant began to discharge water rich in salt, algae, and silica, which turned into a kind of caulk. A pool formed in the featureless lava fields in western Iceland, and when locals jumped in, they found that it cleared up symptoms of skin ailments like psoriasis. Today, the Blue Lagoon sports a 15-room clinic and a spa that attracts 407,000 tourists annually. With revenue of $21 million and 200 workers, the Blue Lagoon is an Icelandic blue chip. "We are one of the 300 largest enterprises in Iceland," says Anna Sverrisdottir, managing director of the Blue Lagoon.

Sara Robinson: Two Kinds of Americans: Us Versus Them

Two Kinds of Americans: Us Versus Them (Part I)

The old joke goes that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who think there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don't.

Funny thing is: it's not a joke. In fact, it turns out that this one oddly recursive fact can tell us a whole lot about any country's prospects for social order, political stability, and propensity for violence.

Two Kinds of Americans, Part II: From "Us versus Them" to "We the People"

In last week's essay, I noted that our ability to function effectively as a nation has been deeply compromised by the conservative movement's reflexive reliance on Us-versus-Them politics. Allowing a winners-and-losers worldview to dominate our country is a dangerous self-indulgence, I argued. History is littered with the corpses of great empires and economies that were toppled when their people got distracted from their shared identity and goals, and gave in to internal culture wars that weakened their countries to the point of eventual collapse or conquest. And it's all too clear now, looking back on what 40 years of wanton right-wing civil war has wrought, that America cannot hope to be history's first exception.

For Many, a Boom That Wasn’t

By DAVID LEONHARDT

How has the United States economy gotten to this point?

It’s not just the apparent recession. Recessions happen. If you tried to build an economy immune to the human emotions that produce boom and bust, you would end up with something that looked like East Germany.

The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.

The Keating Five Legacy

By William K. Black

Submitted by OurFuture.org Staff

April 9th, 2008

William K. Black is Associate Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He was counsel to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and was a whistleblower in the Keating Five scandal. His book on the crisis is "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One."

---

Twenty-one years ago today five U.S. senators met with federal savings and loan regulators at the request of Charles Keating, who controlled Lincoln Savings and Loan. They became known as the "Keating Five"—Alan Cranston, D-Calif., Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., John Glenn, D-Ohio, John McCain, R-Ariz., and Donald Riegle, D-Mich. The Keating Five meeting was the event that transformed the S&L debacle from a story buried in the business section to one of the worst financial and political scandals in U.S. history (though the current financial crises have proven even worse).

The Keating Five, including McCain, were perfectly situated to take action to protect their constituents. They could have held oversight hearings. They could have warned the widows. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," an anonymous commenter one said (in a statement generally, but inaccurately, attributed to Edmund Burke). These men did nothing.

U.S. Has Launched a Cyber Security 'Manhattan Project,' Homeland Security Chief Claims

By Ryan Singel

SAN FRANCISCO -- The federal government has launched a cyber security "Manhattan Project," U.S. homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday, because online attacks can be a form of "devastating warfare", and equivalent in damage to "physical destruction of the worst kind."

Speaking to hundreds of security professionals at the RSA security conference, Chertoff cited last year's denial-of-service attacks against Estonia, and hypothetical hack attacks on financial networks and air traffic control systems, as proof that a federal strategy was needed.

The Mythology of Boomers Bankrupting Our Healthcare System

By Maggie Mahar, Health Beat
Posted on April 10, 2008, Printed on April 10, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81142/

Berlin, March 13, 2008 -- By bringing 600 government and industry leaders together from more than 50 countries, the "World Health Care Congress Europe" (WHCCE) last month offered a splendid window on the wide variety of solutions that countries around the world are using as they struggle toward healthcare reform. One constant theme of the conference: "No One Thing Works."

When the three-day conference ended, it also was apparent that developed countries share many of the same problems. One that stands out is the fact that our populations are aging. Each country faces the same question: How will a shrinking work force possibly pay for the medicine their nations' retirees will need?

Oil roars to record over $112 on US inventory drop

Matthew Robinson
Reuters North American News Service

Apr 09, 2008 13:29 EST

NEW YORK, April 9 (Reuters) - Oil surged to a record high over $112 a barrel on Wednesday after a government report showed a sharp drop in U.S. inventories ahead of the summer driving season.

U.S. crude rose $3.03 to $111.53 a barrel by 1819 GMT after peaking at $112.21, and eclipsing the previous record of $111.80 hit March 17.

A Hundred Years' War?

Manchester, NH

John McCain—who, solely because of the grievous blow to Romney, seems to have been almost as big a winner last night as Huckabee or Obama—flew here yesterday for an early evening “town meeting.” He was accompanied by his own personal Chuck Norris, Joseph I. Lieberman.

The setting was the nearby town of Derry, which looks like a Lionel Train layout, in a building called the Adams Memorial Opera House, which is not an opera house. It's a cozy little auditorium with a curvy balcony that embraced the packed room like a pair of comforting arms. The stage was reserved for an overflow of supporters; McCain and his improbably blonde wife, Cindy (whom Lieberman Yiddishly referred to as “Sidney”), mounted a platform in the middle of the orchestra. It was political theatre in the round.

Fed plan would shrink states' powers

By Pauline Vu, Stateline.org Staff Writer

Some state officials see the federal government’s plan to overhaul the country’s financial regulatory systems as an intrusion on their powers to enforce state laws, and state regulators warn that it could carry grave consequences for consumers.

Insurance rates could climb, efforts to fix the mortgage industry mess could be stalled and a grassroots banking system that paved the way for innovations such as interest-paying checking accounts would be threatened, they predict.

No Exit

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, April 9, 2008; 1:06 PM

Well, it's official. Getting out of Iraq is now exclusively the next president's problem.

That's the only serious conclusion that can be drawn from yesterday's Senate testimony by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. The two standard-bearers for President Bush's war engaged in an absurd tap-dance that nevertheless made it clear that U.S. troops aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

GOP blocks surveillance extension

By J. Taylor Rushing
Posted: 04/07/08 11:54 PM [ET]

Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic attempt to revive a controversial wiretapping law for 30 days on Monday night, leading to a mini-squabble on the chamber floor over the Bush administration’s program.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had asked for unanimous consent for the month-long extension to allow more time for House-Senate negotiations.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) objected, saying the temporary fix was inadequate. The objection essentially blocks Reid’s extension request.

IMF slashes world growth forecast

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that the world economy will grow much more slowly in the next two years as a result of the credit crunch.

In its latest economic forecast, the IMF says that world economic growth will slow to 3.7% in 2008 and 2009, 1.25% lower than growth in 2007.

The downturn will be led by the US, which the IMF believes will go into a "mild recession" this year.

Dems Miss Opportunity to Challenge Surge

By David Corn, Mother Jones
Posted on April 9, 2008, Printed on April 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81792/

As General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday and pitched a story of success in Iraq, a news update flashed on the television screen: Sadr threatens to end cease-fire. Meaning that civil war between the Shiite-dominated government of Baghdad and the Shiite movement led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr could erupt. But Senator John McCain, the senior Republican member at the hearing, seemed unaware of this development. He asked Petraeus, "What do you make of Sadr's declaration of a cease-fire?"

This brief moment underscored a point that war supporters and war critics on the committee kept making throughout the hearing: The ground reality in Iraq is starkly different from how the war is depicted in the United States. Senator Joe Lieberman scoffed at war skeptics for embracing what he called a see-no-progress, hear-no-progress, speak-no-progress view of the war. On the other side, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) remarked that the testimony from Petraeus and Crocker -- who each claimed there has been significant though fragile progress in Iraq -- "describes one Iraq while we see another."

The Foreclosure Prevention Act (a k a the Bank and Builder Bailout Act)

By Dean Baker

t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 07 April 2008

Conservatives used to complain liberals always wanted to throw money at problems. While there may have been some truth at times to this charge, Congress decided to literally take this path in its approach to the housing bubble last week.

There are many villains in the story of the housing bubble, but the homebuilders and the mortgage industry would go on almost everyone's list. The homebuilders rushed ahead with new developments under the delusion the bubble would last forever. The result is an unprecedented glut in housing.

Documents prove FBI has national eavesdropping program that tracks IMs, emails and cell phones

FBI also spies on home soil for military, documents show; Much information acquired without court order

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been routinely monitoring the e-mails, instant messages and cell phone calls of suspects across the United States -- and has done so, in many cases, without the approval of a court.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and given to the Washington Post -- which stuck the story on page three -- show that the FBI's massive dragnet, connected to the backends of telecommunications carriers, "allows authorized FBI agents and analysts, with point-and-click ease, to receive e-mails, instant messages, cellphone calls and other communications that tell them not only what a suspect is saying, but where he is and where he has been, depending on the wording of a court order or a government directive," the Post says.

CO2 map zooms in on emissions

Scientists have high hopes for a new system of mapping carbon dioxide emissions in the United States

April 8, 2008 11:39 AM

US scientists have unveiled a new, high-resolution interactive map which tracks patterns of CO2 emissions coming from fossil fuels burned daily across the country.

The maps and system, called Vulcan, show CO2 emissions in more than 100 times greater detail than was previously available. Until now, scientists say, data on carbon dioxide emissions was reported monthly at a statewide level.

A New WPA?

An Introduction to the Employer of Last Resort Proposal

Ryan A. Dodd

Dark clouds are now looming over America's economic future. As first the stock market boom and then the housing boom have come to an end, along with the fountains of cheap credit that were their mainspring, the perennial gale of unemployment is blowing in. The president and Congress have addressed the downturn with tax rebates and talk of "debt relief." Meanwhile, public infrastructure is crumbling. Workers' wages are stagnating while their work hours are rising. Health insurance is becoming less and less affordable for the typical family. And as U.S. military spending escalates, government spending on essential services is drastically reduced.

The Ridenhour Courage Prize

Bill Moyers acceptance speech

NOTE: INTERESTED PARTIES SHOULD FEEL FREE TO QUOTE THE FOLLOWING TEXTS IN PART OR IN FULL. ANY SUCH USE MUST INCLUDE ATTRIBUTION TO THE RIDENHOUR PRIZES, AND TO THEIR SPONSORS "THE NATION INSTITUTE" AND THE "FERTEL FOUNDATION."

BILL MOYERS: Thank you very much, Sissy Farenthold, for those very generous words, spoken like one Texan to another - extravagantly. Thank you for the spirit of kinship. I could swear that I sensed our good Molly Ivins standing there beside you.

I am as surprised to be here as I am grateful. I never thought of myself as courageous, and still don't. Ron Ridenhour was courageous. To get the story out, he had to defy the whole might and power of the United States government, including its war machine. I was then publisher of Newsday, having left the White House some two years earlier. Our editor Bill McIlwain played the My Lai story big, as he should, much to the chagrin of the owner who couldn't believe Americans were capable of such atrocities. Our readers couldn't believe it either. Some of them picketed outside my office for days, their signs accusing the paper of being anti-American for publishing repugnant news about our troops. Some things never change.

Kevin Phillips: If America Declines, Don't Expect Anyone to Talk About It

Posted on April 8, 2008, Printed on April 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81652/

The following is an excerpt from Kevin Phillips' newly-released book, "Bad Money" (Viking, 2008).

Rarely in U.S. history has a president, especially a two-term president, been so unpopular at a time when the Congress, captured in the midterm elections by the opposition, is held in no greater regard. In such a case, the norm is for the two to fight, with one side gaining the edge. But that has not been true of George W. Bush and the Democratic Congress elected by running against him in 2006.

The two sides have gone after each other in a fashion, but more often they have simply talked past each other to their separate party constituencies, repeating familiar commitments to keep the true believers on each side somewhat more contented than the unimpressed independents -- those who bulk so large in the 60 to 70 percent of voters convinced that the country is on the wrong track. Most office holders on both sides seem to rest easier if everyone stays away from uncomfortable themes, even ones in the headlines, like costly U.S. overreach in the Middle East; the reckless expansion of private debt, as well as the federal budget deficit variety; the new economic (and political) dominance of the financial sector; and the mounting probability that the nation will have to choose between desirable energy supplies and global warming measures. After all, what you can sidestep today might go away tomorrow.

Petraeus's Ponzi Scheme

They came, they saw, they… deserted.

That, in short form, is the story of the recent Iraqi government "offensive" in Basra (and Baghdad). It took a few days, but the headlines on stories out of Iraq ("Can Iraq's Soldiers Fight?") now tell a grim tale and the information in them is worse yet. Stephen Farrell and James Glanz of the New York Times estimate that at least 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, or more than 4% of the force sent into Basra, "abandoned their posts" during the fighting, including "dozens of officers" and "at least two senior field commanders."

Time to Buy Gold Bars?

By Charles R. Morris
04/07/2008

If Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was hoping that the rescue of Bear Stearns would calm financial markets, he is likely to be disappointed. Last week’s Senate hearings on the details of the rescue brought more of the gory details into the light. Investors might be tempted to phone their neighborhood dealer in gold bars.

Bear Stearns, readers will recall, notified the Federal Reserve on Thursday, March 13, that it was on the point of declaring bankruptcy. The Fed provided a short-term loan, funneled through JP Morgan Chase, and over the following weekend engineered a shotgun marriage with Morgan. The Fed had to put up a $30 billion credit line, later changed to $29 billion, to induce Morgan to do the deal.

Paul Krugman: Grains Gone Wild

These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people.

I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.

Frank Rich: Tet Happened, and No One Cared

REALLY, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of themselves for libeling John McCain. As a growing chorus reiterates, their refrains that Mr. McCain is “willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq” (as Mr. Obama said) or “willing to keep this war going for 100 years” (per Mrs. Clinton) are flat-out wrong.

What Mr. McCain actually said in a New Hampshire town-hall meeting was that he could imagine a 100-year-long American role in Iraq like our long-term presence in South Korea and Japan, where “Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.” See for yourself on YouTube.

The Already Big Thing on the Internet: Spying on Users

By ADAM COHEN

In 1993, the dawn of the Internet age, the liberating anonymity of the online world was captured in a well-known New Yorker cartoon. One dog, sitting at a computer, tells another: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Fifteen years later, that anonymity is gone.

It’s not paranoia: they really are spying on you.

Technology companies have long used “cookies,” little bits of tracking software slipped onto your computer, and other means, to record the Web sites you visit, the ads you click on, even the words you enter in search engines — information that some hold onto forever. They’re not telling you they’re doing it, and they’re not asking permission. Internet service providers are now getting into the act. Because they control your connection, they can keep track of everything you do online, and there have been reports that I.S.P.’s may have started to sell the information they collect.

Over the Top Fed Actions Feed Conspiracy Thinking

By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on April 7, 2008, Printed on April 7, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/80501/

Given the fact that it is the target of more than a few conspiracy theories since it was created in 1913, the Federal Reserve System, more commonly known as the "Fed," in media and finance parlance, could be acting with a bit more prudence during these dark economic times. But no, it's gone ahead and damned the depression by doing what the New York Times described as the "unthinkable": bailing out Bear Stearns while giving away hundreds of billions to banks and other institutions whose labyrinthine securitization of our debt economy started this whole mess in the first place.

Penn out as Clinton senior strategist

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
Mon Apr 7, 10:26 AM ET

Hillary Rodham Clinton is turning to her communications chief and pollster to plan her presidential election strategy after giving the boot to a polarizing top aide because of his work on behalf of a trade agreement Clinton opposes.

Mark Penn, a lightning rod for controversy throughout Clinton's presidential campaign, left the campaign Sunday after it was disclosed he had met with representatives of the Colombian government in his capacity as chief executive of public relations giant Burson-Marsteller to help promote the trade agreement.

Communications director Howard Wolfson and pollster Geoff Garin will direct the campaign's message and strategic efforts for the campaign going forward, said campaign manager Maggie Williams. She said Penn will continue "to provide polling and advice to the campaign."