Saturday, August 31, 2013

Paladin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paladin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"The paladins, sometimes known as the Twelve Peers, were the foremost warriors of Charlemagne's court, according to the literary cycle known as the Matter of France.[1] They first appear in the early chansons de geste such as The Song of Roland, where they represent Christian valor against the Saracen hordes. The paladins and their associated exploits are largely later fictional inventions, with some basis on historical Frankish retainers of the 8th century and events such as the Battle of Roncevaux Pass and the confrontation of the Frankish Empire with Umayyad Al-Andalus in the Marca Hispanica."

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Saturday, August 24, 2013

In Paper War, Flood of Liens Is the Weapon

Ben Garvin for The New York Times
John J. Choi, left, the county attorney for Ramsey County, Minn., and John Ristad with files in their case against Thomas and Lisa Eilertson.
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MINNEAPOLIS — One of the first inklings Sheriff Richard Stanek had that something was wrong came with a call from the mortgage company handling his refinancing.
Hennepin County Sherrif's Dept
A message at the couple’s foreclosed home.

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“It must be a mistake,” he said, when the loan officer told him that someone had placed liens totaling more than $25 million on his house and on other properties he owned.
But as Sheriff Stanek soon learned, the liens, legal claims on property to secure the payment of a debt, were just the earliest salvos in a war of paper, waged by a couple who had lost their home to foreclosure in 2009 — a tactic that, with the spread of an anti-government ideology known as the “sovereign citizen” movement, is being employed more frequently as a way to retaliate against perceived injustices.
Over the next three years, the couple, Thomas and Lisa Eilertson, filed more than $250 billion in liens, demands for compensatory damages and other claims against more than a dozen people, including the sheriff, county attorneys, the Hennepin County registrar of titles and other court officials.
“It affects your credit rating, it affected my wife, it affected my children,” Sheriff Stanek said of the liens. “We spent countless hours trying to undo it.”
Cases involving sovereign citizens are surfacing increasingly here in Minnesota and in other states, posing a challenge to law enforcement officers and court officials, who often become aware of the movement — a loose network of groups and individuals who do not recognize the authority of federal, state or municipal government — only when they become targets. Although the filing of liens for outrageous sums or other seemingly frivolous claims might appear laughable, dealing with them can be nightmarish, so much so that the F.B.I. has labeled the strategy “paper terrorism.” A lien can be filed by anyone under the Uniform Commercial Code.
Occasionally, people who identify with the movement have erupted into violence. In Las Vegas this week, the police said that an undercover sting operation stopped a plot to torture and kill police officers in order to bring attention to the movement. Two people were arrested. In 2010, two police officers in Arkansas were killed while conducting a traffic stop with a father and son involved in the movement.
Mostly, though, sovereign citizens choose paper as their weapon. In Gadsden, Ala., three people were arrested in July for filing liens against victims including the local district attorney and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew. And in Illinois this month, a woman who, like most sovereign citizens, chose to represent herself in court, confounded a federal judgeby asking him to rule on a flurry of unintelligible motions.
“I hesitate to rank your statements in order of just how bizarre they are,” the judge told the woman, who was facing charges of filing billions of dollars in false liens.
“The convergence of the evidence strongly suggests a movement that is flourishing,” said Mark Pitcavage, the director of investigative research for the Anti-Defamation League. “It is present in every single state in the country.”
The sovereign citizen movement traces its roots to white extremist groups like the Posse Comitatus of the 1970s, and the militia movement. Terry L. Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombing conspirator, counted himself a sovereign citizen. But in recent years it has drawn from a much wider demographic, including blacks, members of Moorish sects and young Occupy protesters, said Detective Moe Greenberg of the Baltimore County Police Department, who has written about the movement.
The ideology seems to attract con artists, the financially desperate and people who are fed up with bureaucracy, Mr. Pitcavage said, adding, “But we’ve seen airline pilots, we’ve seen federal law enforcement officers, we’ve seen city councilmen and millionaires get involved with this movement.”
Sovereign citizens believe that in the 1800s, the federal government was gradually subverted and replaced by an illegitimate government. They create their own driver’s licenses and include their thumbprints on documents to distinguish their flesh and blood person from a “straw man” persona that they say has been created by the false government. When writing their names, they often add punctuation marks like colons or hyphens.
Adherents to the movement have been involved in a host of debt evasion schemes and mortgage and tax frauds. Two were convicted in Cleveland recently for collecting $8 million in fraudulent tax refunds from the I.R.S. And in March, Tim Turner, the leader of one large group, the Republic for the united States of America, was sentenced in Alabama to 18 years in federal prison. (His group does not capitalize the first letter in united.)
Sovereign citizens who file creditor claims are helped by the fact that in most states, the secretary of state must accept any lien that is filed without judging its validity.
The National Association of Secretaries of State released a report in April on sovereign citizens, urging state officials to find ways to expedite the removal of liens and increase penalties for fraudulent filings. More than a dozen states have enacted laws giving state filing offices more discretion in accepting liens, and an increasing number of states have passed or are considering legislation to toughen the penalties for bogus filings.
The Eilertsons, who were charged with 47 counts of fraudulent filing and sentenced in June to 23 months in prison, were prosecuted under a Minnesota law that makes it a felony to file fraudulent documents to retaliate against officials. John Ristad, an assistant Ramsey County attorney who handled the case, said he believed the Eilertsons were the first offenders to be prosecuted under the law. “It got me angry,” he said, “because at the end of the day, these two are bullies who think they can get their way by filing paper.”
The liens were filed against houses, vehicles and even mineral rights. In an affidavit, the Hennepin County examiner of titles said that in a conversation with the Eilertsons about their foreclosure, one of them told her, “We’re gonna have to lien ya.” The examiner later found that a lien for more than $5.1 million had been placed on her property.
If the purpose was to instill trepidation, it worked. Several county and state officials said in interviews that they worried that they might once again find themselves in the crosshairs. One state employee said it was scarier to engage with offenders who used sovereign citizen tactics than with murderers, given the prospect of facing lawsuits or fouled credit ratings.
Like many who identify with the ideology, the Eilertsons learned the techniques of document filing online from one of many sovereign citizen “gurus” who offer instruction or seminars around the country.
In hours of recorded conversation found by the authorities on their computer, the Eilertsons consulted with a man identified on the recordings as Paul Kappel, learning what he called “death by a thousand paper cuts.”
Mr. Eilertson, interviewed at the state prison in Bayport, Minn., denied being anti-government or belonging to any movement. But he was familiar with the names of some figures associated with sovereign citizen teachings, including an activist named David Wynn Miller, who Mr. Eilertson said was “ahead of his time.” (Mr. Miller writes his name as David-Wynn: Miller.)
Mr. Eilertson, who had no previous criminal record, said his actions were an effort to fight back against corrupt banks that had handed off the couple’s mortgage time after time and whose top executives never faced consequences for their actions.
“It seemed like we were being attacked every day,” he said. “We needed some way to stop the foreclosure.
“We tried to do our part with as much information as we had available,” he said, though he conceded that “it kind of got out of control eventually.”

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours | World news | The Guardian

Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours | World news | The Guardian:

 "The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro."

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Britain Detains the Partner of a Reporter Tied to Leaks - NYTimes.com

Britain Detains the Partner of a Reporter Tied to Leaks - NYTimes.com:

WASHINGTON — The partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist for The Guardian who has been publishing information leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, was detained for nine hours by the British authorities under a counterterrorism law while on a stop in London’s Heathrow Airport during a trip from Germany to Brazil, Mr. Greenwald said Sunday.

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Monday, August 12, 2013

Mexican President Invites Foreign Investment in Energy - NYTimes.com

Mexican President Invites Foreign Investment in Energy - NYTimes.com:

"MEXICO CITY — President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico on Monday, pushing one of the most sweeping economic overhauls in Mexico in the past two decades, proposed opening his country’s historically closed energy industry to foreign investment."

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Sunday, August 11, 2013

Eydie Gorme, ‘Blame It on the Bossa Nova’ Singer, Dies at 84 - NYTimes.com

Eydie Gorme, ‘Blame It on the Bossa Nova’ Singer, Dies at 84 - NYTimes.com:

"LOS ANGELES — Eydie Gorme, a popular nightclub and television singer who had a huge solo hit in 1963 with “Blame It on the Bossa Nova,” died on Saturday. She was 84."

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Blame it on the Bossanova

If He Walked Into My Life

Oh! Carol

Neil Sedaka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neil Sedaka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

 "Neil Sedaka (born March 13, 1939) is an American pop/rock singer, pianist, and composer. His career has spanned nearly 55 years, during which time he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard Greenfield and Phil Cody."

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Eydie Gormé - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eydie Gormé - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Eydie Gorm̩ (also spelled as Eydie Gorme;[2] August 16, 1928 РAugust 10, 2013) was an American singer who performed solo as well as with her husband, Steve Lawrence, in popular ballads and swing. She earned numerous awards, including a Grammy and an Emmy. She retired in 2009 and is survived by Lawrence who continues to perform as a solo act."

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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

New U.S. Spying Revelations Coming From Snowden Leaks: Journalist

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BRASILIA — Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who published documents leaked by fugitive former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, plans to make new revelations "within the next 10 days or so" on secret U.S. surveillance of the Internet.
Reuters
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"The articles we have published so far are a very small part of the revelations that ought to be published," Greenwald on Tuesday told a Brazilian congressional hearing that is investigating the U.S. internet surveillance in Brazil.
"There will certainly be many more revelations on spying by the U.S. government and how they are invading the communications of Brasil and Latin America," he said in Portuguese.
The Rio de Janeiro-based columnist for Britain's Guardian newspaper said he has recruited the help of experts to understand some of the 15,000 to 20,000 classified documents from the National Security Agency that Snowden passed him, some of which are "very long and complex and take time to read."
Greenwald told Reuters he does not believe the pro-transparency website WikiLeaks had obtained a package of documents from Snowden, and that only he and filmmaker Laura Poitras have complete archives of the leaked material.
Greenwald said Snowden, who was in hiding in Hong Kong before flying to Russia in late June, was happy to leave a Moscow airport after being granted temporary asylum, and pleased that he had stirred up a worldwide debate on internet privacy and secret U.S. surveillance programs used to monitor emails.
"I speak with him a lot since he left the airport, almost every day. We use very strong encryption to communicate," Greenwald told the Brazilian legislators. "He is very well."
"He is very pleased with the debate that is arising in many countries around the world on internet privacy and U.S. spying. It is exactly the debate he wanted to inform," Greenwald said.
After a meeting in June with Snowden in Hong Kong, Greenwald published in The Guardian the first of many reports that rattled the U.S. intelligence community by disclosing the breadth and depth of alleged NSA surveillance of telephone and internet usage.
Last month, in an article co-authored by Greenwald, the Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that the NSA spied on Latin American countries with programs that can monitor billions of emails and phone calls for suspicious activity. Latin American countries fumed at what they considered a violation of their sovereignty and demanded explanations and an apology.
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In Brazil, the largest U.S. trading partner in South America, angry senators questioned President Dilma Rousseff's planned state visit to Washington in October and a billion-dollar purchase of U.S.-made fighter jets Brazil is considering.
Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee peppered Greenwald with questions on Tuesday, such as whether the NSA was capable of spying on Brazil's commercial secrets, including the discovery of promising offshore oil reserves, and the communications of the country's president and armed forces.
Greenwald had no details on specific targets and said the documents did not name telecommunications and internet companies in the United States and Brazil that might have collaborated with the NSA's collection of internet users' data.
The journalist said Snowden planned to stay in Moscow "as long as he needs to, until he can secure his situation." He said Snowden knew he ran the risk of spending the rest of his life in jail or being hunted by the most powerful nation in the world, but had no doubts about his decision to leak the documents on the U.S. surveillance programs.
Greenwald criticized governments around the world for failing to offer Snowden protection, even while they publicly denounced the U.S. surveillance of their citizens' internet usage.
Meanwhile, Washington is working through diplomatic channels to persuade governments to stop complaining about the surveillance programs, he said.
"The Brazilian government is showing much more anger in public than it is showing in private discussions with the U.S. government," Greenwald told reporters. "All governments are doing this, even in Europe."
In a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota called the interception of telecommunications and acts of espionage in Latin America "a serious issue, with a profound impact on the international order." But he did not mention the United States by name.
(Editing by Paul Simao)

Sunday, August 4, 2013

The Great Tortilla Crisis

Krugman-Wells-Grady

“Thousands in Mexico City protest rising food prices.” So read the headline in the New York Times on February 1, 2007. Specifically, the demonstrators were protesting a sharp rise in the price of tortillas, a staple food of Mexico’s poor, which had gone from 25 cents a pound to between 35 and 45 cents a pound in just a few months. Why were tortilla prices soaring? It was a classic example of what happens to equilibrium prices when supply falls. Tortillas are made from corn; much of Mexico’s corn is imported from the United States, with the price of corn in both countries basically set in the U.S. corn market. And U.S. corn prices were rising rapidly thanks to surging demand in a new market: the market for ethanol. Ethanol’s big break came with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which mandated the use of a large quantity of “renewable” fuels starting in 2006, and rising steadily thereafter. In practice, that meant increased use of ethanol. Ethanol producers rushed to build new production facilities and quickly began buying lots of corn. The result was a rightward shift of the demand curve for corn, leading to a sharp rise in the price of corn. And since corn is an input in the production of tortillas, a sharp rise in the price of corn led to a fall in the supply of tortillas and higher prices for tortilla consumers. The increase in the price of corn was good news in Iowa, where farmers began planting more corn than ever before. But it was bad news for Mexican consumers, who found themselves paying more for their tortillas. ▲

Navigational Cell Systems Located in Human Brains - NYTimes.com

Navigational Cell Systems Located in Human Brains - NYTimes.com:

"Scientists’ discovery that rodents, bats and nonhuman primates have a system in the brain for what amounts to dead reckoning navigation is one of the most important brain research developments of the past few decades."

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Is There Any Point To Economic Analysis? - NYTimes.com

Is There Any Point To Economic Analysis? - NYTimes.com:

 "A few further thoughts inspired by the sad revelation that Beltway conventional wisdom has settled on the proposition that high unemployment is structural, not cyclical, even though there is now a bipartisan consensus among economists that the opposite is true."

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Charles D. Varnadore, Whistle-Blower at Nuclear Lab, Dies at 71 - NYTimes.com

Charles D. Varnadore, Whistle-Blower at Nuclear Lab, Dies at 71 - NYTimes.com:

"After Charles D. Varnadore complained about safety at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where he worked as a technician, his bosses moved him to an office containing radioactive waste. When an industrial hygienist recommended that either he or the waste be moved, he was put in a room contaminated with mercury."

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Of Courage and Cantaloupes - NYTimes.com

Of Courage and Cantaloupes - NYTimes.com:

 "After the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration bill in June, hope for reform shifted to the House. That is where hope sits, on ice, getting freezer burn."

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The Hacking of Michael Pettis


Oh, wow. I mentioned a couple of weeks back that when I tried to get to Michael Pettis’s essential blog on Chinese economics, I ran into Viagra ads. At the time I found it funny; but I took another look today, and find Pettisreporting not just that he was hacked, but that it took place repeatedly, and that the blog is on hiatus while they rebuild.
Commenters over there are suspicious — this sounds awfully persistent for Viagra salesmen, and you have to wonder whether someone doesn’t like frank assessments of Chinese economic prospects. And it makes me grateful that this blog is protected by Times firewalls etc., given the stuff that has happened outside that protection — e.g., fake Google plus, Facebook, and Twitter accounts in my name, to cite just the stuff I know about.