Egypt's Military Wont Go Quietly

The military regime that replaced ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak has fallen into the same routine of suppressing protesters who question the authority of the regime. The military is again violently and brutally attacking protesters on the streets of Cairo.

The contradiction in the military-led government’s statements and actions appeared to represent a shift in strategy by the military council. After trying for months to preserve some credibility and collaboration with the Egyptian political elite, the ruling generals on Saturday scarcely acknowledged the demands of their newly appointed civilian advisory council that that the military cease its violence and apologize to demonstrators.

Instead, as the crackdown on the protest entered its second day, the military council appeared to be playing to those Egyptians impatient with the continuing protests and eager for a return stability. Crowds of supporters turned out downtown on Saturday morning to cheer on the military police, hand them drinks of water, and help them close off Tahrir Square from demonstrators massing to get in.

The prime minister, Kamel Ganzouri, issued his denial that the military had or would use force in a news conference on Saturday morning after more than 24 hours of street fighting in front of the military-occupied Parliament building that left nine dead from bullet wounds and hundreds wounded. For more than twelve hours on Friday, men in plain clothes, accompanied by a few in uniform, stood on top of the “people’s assembly” and hurled chunks of concrete and stone taken from inside the building down at the crowd of demonstrators several stories below.

On Saturday morning, another parliamentary building adjacent to Tahrir Square burst into flames, although it was unclear who started the blaze. Firefighters guarded by rows of military police officers struggled for hours to put it out.

The military-led cabinet said in a statement that protesters had deliberately set fire to the building, which housed an archive of historical books and documents, while protesters said it had caught fire while under military control. The protesters had made heavy use of Molotov cocktails and set fire to a Transportation Ministry building the night before, although men atop the military-controlled office buildings were also seen hurling gasoline bombs.

Around the same time the fire broke out, several witnesses said, hundreds of military police officers in riot gear had finally chased the demonstrators from in front of the Parliament building into Tahrir Square and then cleared the square of a small tent city of demonstrators. They burned the tents, leaving Tahrir Square in flames and sending a thick plume of black smoke curling over downtown.

Many witnesses said that the charging soldiers had used clubs to beat anyone they could catch, including passers-by. A young woman getting off a bus and trying to catch a taxi to work was grabbed by soldiers and thrown to the ground, before a group of passers-by rescued her and tucked into her a passing vehicle.

As the military police grabbed a man by the arms near the Egyptian Museum, he shouted, “I don’t have anything to do with that, I was just going to work!”

Over the next several hours, phalanxes of military police officers repeatedly assaulted the square, temporarily retreating and then charging back in.

The sirens of ambulances squealed from inside the square. “Take care! They will beat anyone,” a man in a suit shouted as he fled the square toward a Nile bridge before an advancing line of military police.

Video shown on a private Egyptian television network in the morning showed several military police officers using batons to beat civilians as they lay on the ground of Tahrir Square, and one appeared to be unconscious.

The military regime is utilizing the same tactics as the ancien regime; lying about its tactics and brutalizations and trying to play one faction off another so as to remain in power and maintain legitimacy in the eyes of elites who they think are growing impatient with the protests.

Cornell University's Bid To Develop Tech Campus On Roosevelt Island Just Improved

Earlier this year, New York City promoted an effort to redevelop a portion of Roosevelt Island as a tech campus/incubator for tech firms. Several major universities submitted bids, including Cornell University and Stanford. The Cornell bid was a joint effort between Cornell and Israel's Technion University.

Stanford has dropped out of the running.

The university and its Board of Trustees "have determined that it would not be in the best interests of the university to continue to pursue the opportunity," according to a press release from Stanford that just landed in the Curbed inbox. Stanford had submitted a 600-page proposal for a $2.5 billion, 10-acre campus (rendered at right) housing 200 faculty and 2,000 students that would open in 2016 and take 30 years to develop. But apparently "the university could not be certain that it could proceed in a way that ensured the success of the campus" and so decided to withdraw.

This decidedly improves the chances that the Cornell bid wins. I don't give Columbia University's bid much of a chance, since the university has been busy trying to expand its campus in Washington Heights and needs to devote its resources there; a Roosevelt Island campus would be a distraction to the efforts already underway.

Latest Developments in LI Serial Killer Case Highlights Dispute Over How Many Killers Involved

I've long suspected that there were two or more serial killers involved in the grisly killing field uncovered by law enforcement along a stretch of highway near Jones Beach. The recovery of 10 sets of remains was due to a search was initiated in order find a missing New Jersey woman, Shannan Gilbert. Her body was recovered earlier this week.

The Suffolk County police chief now says that the killings were the work of a single killer. The Suffolk County District Attorney questions that, considering all the evidence pointing towards at least two killers.

The district attorney and Mr. Dormer were in agreement in May when they appeared at a news conference to say that the authorities believed multiple killers were most likely responsible for the deaths.

The remains of eight women, a man and a toddler were found in the thick underbrush along the highway between last December and April.

Mr. Dormer said in an interview this month that he had revised his theory and thought that one killer was most likely responsible. He discounted the fact that some victims had been dismembered while some had not, arguing that serial killers often evolve and change their tactics. And Mr. Dormer pointed to the likelihood that all the victims were linked to the sex trade as another indicator that one killer was responsible.

On Thursday, Mr. Spota countered that because 5 of the 10 victims had yet to be identified, Mr. Dormer was not able to confirm that all had a link to the sex trade.

The toddler is thought to be a child of one of the unidentified women, believed to be a prostitute, Mr. Dormer has said. The man was found wearing women’s clothing, which Mr. Dormer said indicated that he might have been a prostitute. Mr. Spota said that men can be cross-dressers without being prostitutes.

The district attorney said that not only did he disagree with Mr. Dormer, but that many of the detectives investigating the case also did not share Mr. Dormer’s opinion. Mr. Dormer has conceded that others may not agree with him and has left open the possibility that he could change the theory.

Mr. Dormer, who is leaving office at the end of this month, testified before Mr. Spota’s appearance on Thursday but left before the district attorney’s testimony. A spokeswoman said later that Mr. Dormer had no comment on what Mr. Spota had said.

Dormer also claimed that Gilbert was not murdered, and most likely drowned in the marshy area from which her body was recovered. That was before the medical examiners could determine a cause of death, and it doesn't explain why her body was found a quarter mile from her clothes and purse and other items she apparently was carrying at the time of her disappearance. Dormer's theory of how Gilbert's last minutes played out doesn't quite pass Occam's Razor either:

“You know, that’s explainable because she’s hysterical,” said Dormer. “We know that and she’s discarding her possessions as she moves along. Her jeans could have come off moving in that environment. We’ve looked at this very carefully and that is a possibility, that the jeans came off and she kept running, kept running towards the lights. Obviously, she was disturbed that night.”

Gilbert was last seen running and screaming for help in Oak Beach in May 2010.

Why would she remove her jeans as she's running through thick thorny brush? Why would she drop her cell phone and other items and continue running for a quarter mile before her untimely end?

We might get a very different picture from Dormer's successor - and more leads on who was involved in these killings.

The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 151

The Freedom Tower (1WTC) is now fast approaching 100 stories, and should top out at over 1,300 feet in the first quarter of next year.

The problems are elsewhere on the site - the WTC National 9/11 museum construction work has come to a standstill over money.

The Port Authority says the memorial and museum foundation owes it millions.

The foundation sees it exactly the other way around.

“You know, it’s hard to see us getting to a courtroom, but if it has to go there, it has to go there,” said Bloomberg on Thursday.

The mayor, who is also foundation chairman, added we have an obligation to make sure that the people who contributed something like $425 million have the memorial and museum built the way they thought it would get done.

Once again, we see the Port Authority fighting with those who are trying to get work done around the site. It's a fight over some $300 million in work that has to be completed before the museum can be opened to the public. Mayor Bloomberg claims that the Port Authority has cut off payments to workers, halting construction, and it would appear that the number of workers on site have declined sharply.

“Construction has come basically to a halt,” the mayor told reporters at an unrelated press conference in The Bronx, disputing the Port Authority's math.

“We don’t think we owe anything," he said. "In fact, we think that the Port Authority actually owes us something like $140 million."

Coleman refuted the mayor’s stop-work claim.

“We are in active negotiations with the city, but construction is ongoing at the Memorial,” he said.

An official familiar with the construction who spoke on the condition of anonymity said there is some work continuing on the site, but that the ranks of workers have dwindled from hundreds to several dozen.

The dispute has become so heated that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who revealed the cost hike during a radio interview Thursday, said the two sides could wind up in court.

It “is so bad they’re on the verge of litigation, believe it or not,” he said.

So, who owes who the money involved at the heart of the dispute? I can't really tell.

However, there's a looming mess over how the operating budget for the museum will be conducted and whether the museum will have to charge patrons for viewing the museum. It's my longstanding position that the museum should be free to all, and that costs should be recouped from tour bus and parking fees (as done at other venues such as Mount Rushmore).

Dutch Church Commission Reveals Systematic Sexual Abuse Going On For 60+ Years

This is just mind-boggling, but no longer surprising; a report commissioned by the Dutch Roman Catholic church details sexual abuse within its purview for 65 years, and there tens of thousands of minors affected by more than 800 alleged perpetrators:

Thousands and thousands of children suffered from sexual abuse in the Dutch Roman Catholic Church over more than six decades, and about 800 "possible perpetrators" have been identified, an independent Commission of Inquiry said Friday.

"Several tens of thousands of minors have experienced mild, serious and very serious forms of inappropriate sexual behavior. Victims have often suffered for decades from the effects of abuse and have received acknowledgment of the fact," the panel says in its report. "This has caused problems for them, their immediate family and their friends, who require attention and sometimes professional counseling."

The report, which covers a period from 1945 to 2010, says "the scale" of the abuse "is relatively small in percentage terms, but is a serious problem in absolute numbers." The victims were under the responsibility of the range of people working in the church -- priests, brothers, pastoral workers and lay persons, it says.

At least 105 of the 800 are still alive.

For those who have been abused recently, there has been recourse through the courts, but many of the abusers in older cases will go unpunished.

However, an admission of this size and scope should cause the Church to reconsider its approach to sexual abuse by its members and leaders beyond what has already been done. It needs to do more to make those subject to abuse whole.

SEC Bringing Civil Charges Against Former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Officials

The Securities and Exchange Commission has brought a civil fraud suit against six top officials at the lending giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae alleging that the officials misled the government and taxpayers about risky subprime mortgages the mortgage giants held during the housing bust.

Those charged include the agencies' two former CEOs, Fannie's Daniel Mudd and Freddie's Richard Syron. They led the companies when the housing bubble burst in late 2006 and 2007. The four other top executives also worked for the companies during that time.

The case was filed in federal court in New York City.

The SEC has entered into agreements with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the scope of the suits and what may be accomplished. It's severing liability from the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and seeking to place liability on the individuals in key decision-making positions:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each entered into a Non-Prosecution Agreement with the Commission in which each company agreed to accept responsibility for its conduct and not dispute, contest, or contradict the contents of an agreed-upon Statement of Facts without admitting nor denying liability. Each also agreed to cooperate with the Commission's litigation against the former executives. In entering into these Agreements, the Commission considered the unique circumstances presented by the companies' current status, including the financial support provided to the companies by the U.S. Treasury, the role of the Federal Housing Finance Agency as conservator of each company, and the costs that may be imposed on U.S. taxpayers.

Three former Fannie Mae executives - former Chief Executive Officer Daniel H. Mudd, former Chief Risk Officer Enrico Dallavecchia, and former Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae's Single Family Mortgage business, Thomas A. Lund - were named in the SEC's complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The SEC also charged three former Freddie Mac executives — former Chairman of the Board and CEO Richard F. Syron, former Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer Patricia L. Cook, and former Executive Vice President for the Single Family Guarantee business Donald J. Bisenius — in a separate complaint filed in the same court.

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives told the world that their subprime exposure was substantially smaller than it really was," said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "These material misstatements occurred during a time of acute investor interest in financial institutions' exposure to subprime loans, and misled the market about the amount of risk on the company's books. All individuals, regardless of their rank or position, will be held accountable for perpetuating half-truths or misrepresentations about matters materially important to the interest of our country's investors."

The SEC is seeking financial penalties, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with interest, permanent injunctive relief and officer and director bars against Mudd, Dallavecchia, Lund, Syron, Cook, and Bisenius. Both lawsuits allege that the former executives caused the federal mortgage firms to materially misstate their holdings of subprime mortgage loans in periodic and other filings with the Commission, public statements, investor calls, and media interviews. The suit involving the Fannie Mae executives also includes similar allegations regarding Alt-A mortgage loans. The suit against the former Fannie Mae executives alleges they made misleading statements — or aided and abetted others — between December 2006 and August 2008. The former Freddie Mac executives are alleged to have made misleading statements — or aided and abetted others - between March 2007 and August 2008.

The key fact that will be at issue is how these officials misled the public by claiming that their respective companies' exposure to the subprime mortgage mess was far smaller than it actually was.

It was the implosion of the subprime mortgage market that sent a shaky economy into a recession of unprecedented levels.

RIP: Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens passed away after a battle with cancer. Hitchens was 62.

As an equal opportunity offender, he will be sorely missed for his wit, sarcasm, and incendiary takes on life and events.

Corzine Continues Getting Grilled on Capitol Hill

Disgraced former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine continues to avoid making the big gaffe that might land him in a perjury trap over testimony given on the MF Global debacle, but he's not out of the woods just yet.

Corzine thought he could turn MF Global in to a new and improved Goldman Sachs. He brought in the same kind of attitude and risk-taking that he brought at Sachs. But because MF Global didn't have the size and track record, once those risks (namely the sovereign debt in Europe) became monetized, the company didn't stand a chance and everyone wants to make sure they got their money covered. Forced to pony up additional collateral the company was left scrambling to find someone to buy them out, and it was in that process that the potential buyers found all kinds of discrepancies - most notably the fact that client funds were being used for corporate purposes.

That was the first of many red flags that sent the company into bankruptcy.

And it was Corzine who was pushing to get MF Global more heavily invested in the European sovereign debt, because he thought he could make a bunch more money there than on other less risky propositions. He and his board ignored and side stepped risk managers who pointed out the problems with the strategy.

Yet, CME Chairman Terrance Duffy contradicts Corzine's testimony:


Corzine denies knowing about the transfers of client funds, even as evidence is emerging to the contrary.

CME Group Inc. Executive Chairman Terrence Duffy told a Senate panel Tuesday that Corzine might have known about a transfer of $175 million from customer accounts earlier than that. CME Group operates exchanges on which MF Global traded. It also was responsible for auditing some of MF Global's books.

According to Duffy, an MF Global employee told a CME auditor that "Mr. Corzine was aware" of the transfer. Duffy said he referred the matter to the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Both are investigating MF Global's failure and the disappearance of the customer money.

If true, Duffy's accusation would raise the possibility that Corzine misled Congress about when he learned that client money was missing.

The transaction Duffy described wasn't necessarily illegal. Brokers such as MF Global are allowed to borrow from customer accounts temporarily in some circumstances -- to reduce their own risk, for example.

But such cases are a narrow exception. A firm couldn't use customer money to pay trading partners if its speculative trades lost value. Even in cases where borrowing clients' money was legal, the firm would have to replace it with a safe, cash-like investment such as a U.S. Treasury security.

If that can be confirmed, then Corzine's got bigger problems considering he's testified that he didn't know about any transfers and that may lead to obstruction of justice and perjury charges.

And to think that Corzine thought he might get tapped by President Obama to be Treasury Secretary. Obama's probably thanking his lucky stars he didn't make that move.

Syrian Defectors Claim They Were Ordered To Kill Protesters

A group of Syrian defectors claim that they were ordered to murder protesters as a means to quell the ongoing protests against Syrian thug-in-charge Bashar al Assad's regime.

"About 1,500 protesters came.....They requested the release of an injured protester who was inside the hospital. They held olive branches. They had no arms. There were 35 army soldiers and about 50 mukhabarat personnel at the checkpoint. We also had a jeep with a mounted machine-gun. When the protesters were less than 100 meters away, we opened fire."

These statements are part of the testimony of two Syrian soldiers who say they deserted after being ordered by officers to fire on unarmed protesters.

They are among 63 who have fled to neighboring countries and told Human Rights Watch of their experiences. The organization has documented incidents where soldiers say they were ordered to kill or torture protestors, went on looting rampages or witnessed other soldiers being shot or tortured for disobeying orders or desertion.

The report, released Thursday, is titled, "By All Means Necessary," borrows the language allegedly used by officers as they issued orders to soldiers to put down protests. It identifies 74 commanders and officials accused of ordering attacks on unarmed protesters.

Human Rights Watch has compiled the accounts and it shows that this isn't merely some undertaking by rogue agents within the Syrian security apparatus, but a concerted effort to silence the protesters by any means necessary. These are actions ordered from the regime's highest levels and again exposes the lies that Assad makes on a near daily basis about the ongoing violence in his country.

The violence is being perpetrated by Assad against the Syrian people, and the Syrians' only crime is that they've raised their voices against a corrupt and unjust regime. In fact, the regime's actions constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes under the applicable international law and treaties.

That China and Russia continue protecting Assad by thwarting action at the UN that might force Assad into stopping the crackdown is also quite troublesome and shows the limits on protecting human rights.

Port Authority Ignored Utility Undercharges For Years

The subject matter of this particular mess at the Port Authority is part of a lawsuit by the Port Authority against a now defunct company.

The company, Genergy, a utilities-management company hired by the agency to analyze energy usage, claims that it found that the Port Authority undercharged its tenants at area airports to the tune of millions of dollars every year because it didn't have working utility meters and couldn't account for all of its utility meters. Genergy conducted a partial audit of JFK airport and found that the Port Authority underbilled tenants to the tune of some $17 million in one year alone, and that the difference between energy received from Con Ed and what the Port Authority distributed to tenants was massive.

The massive discrepancies were uncovered after the Port Authority hired Genergy, a private, New York City-based utilities-management company, to perform an analysis on its electricity usage at its New York facilities in 2006.

The Port Authority buys energy from Con Ed, then resells at a profit to its hundreds of tenants.
Genergy quickly found that the PA consumed some 420 million kilowatt-hours but billed for only 250 million during fiscal year 2007, according to an April 2008 report obtained by The Post.

In hopes of finding where the missing energy was going, the Port Authority gave Genergy the go-ahead to audit meters attached to various tenants’ facilities at Kennedy.

Genergy began the painstaking process of examining and testing hundreds of meters — and found the source of the underbilling mystery.

Dozens of the meters in the preliminary audit were faulty, incorrectly calibrating the amount of electricity being used by individual tenants.

Companies with incorrect meters included British Airways, Delta Air Lines and Terminal 4, the company that manages the international facility, a source familiar with the audit told The Post.
The audit was never entirely completed, because Genergy and the PA had a falling out over billing in 2010.

But from that preliminary audit, the company concluded that the PA lost some $16.9 million a year at Kennedy because of the meter problems.

Genergy declared bankruptcy when it didn't get paid $2 million on the contract done with the Port Authority.

However, it's how Port Authority officials reacted to the news that makes a bad situation even worse for them (and for us).

When the agency was asked why it didn’t fix billing errors that led it to undercharge airlines at JFK Airport nearly $17 million a year, its reaction was no problem, we just overcharge for other stuff, the head of the company that uncovered the screw-up told The Post.

The shocking shrug-off came in a July 2009 meeting between PA brass and executives of Genergy, a utilities-management company hired by the agency to analyze energy usage at Kennedy, its president said.

Dario Gristina said he advised Christine Weydig — the PA’s deputy director of energy and environment programs — to quickly fix dozens of meters that were incorrectly calibrating energy usage at the airport, resulting in huge undercharges for tenants including Delta Air Lines and British Airways.

“Her reply was she checked with various departments and that was not a big concern because any shortfall they encountered in revenue they would make up in landing fees,” said an astounded Gristina.

Former Genergy executive Mark Williams said he was present at that meeting and backed up Gristina’s claims.

“We looked around like, ‘this is money you’re leaving on the table,’ ” he said.

The Port Authority denies those claims, and sued Genergy over failing to adhere to the contract terms.

What's lost in all of this is that if Genergy is right that the Port Authority undercharged its tenants by $17 million a year, that it should find a way to fix the problem so that the utility charges are properly imposed and can lead to reduced costs elsewhere (say for the landing fees or for consideration of a partial roll back of the recently imposed PATH fare hike or bridge and tunnel toll hike).

This whole episode shows the lengths to which the Port Authority ignored basic financial controls and fiscal management - figuring that it can simply generate more revenues by imposing higher fees or charges elsewhere to make up what it might be losing in other aspects of the Authority's operation.

The Port Authority has to clean up its books in a serious way, and needs to address the problems uncovered by Genergy; it's fiscally irresponsible to allow the situation to continue and the Authority can't assume that it will make up for such undercharges with fees taken elsewhere. The fees and charges should be related to the services rendered - and that hasn't been the case.

Satellite Gets Glimpse of New Chinese Aircraft Carrier At Sea Trials

The Chinese government purchased a former Soviet aircraft carrier that had never been completed (Varyag) and spent several years wondering what to do with it before deciding to refit it and prepare it to become the country's first aircraft carrier.

It's now undergoing sea trials and a DigitalGlobe satellite found it through the cloud cover.

Experts have been hoping for months to get a glimpse of the aircraft carrier at sea. The former Soviet Union started building the ship, originally known as the Varyag, but never finished it. After the Soviet breakup, the Varyag ended up in the hands of the Ukrainian government. The ship was auctioned off to the Chinese in 1998. Since then, the Varyag, which has reportedly been rechristened the Shi Lang, has been under refurbishment for sea service.

The ship is slightly shorter than a typical US fleet carrier (Nimitz or improved Nimitz class) (1,000 feet as opposed to 1,092), has a significantly smaller displacement (30,000 tons versus 100,000+ tons, and it is conventionally powered as opposed to the nuclear powered US carriers; the conventionally powered ship required more frequent refueling and reduces its operational tempo). However, this gives the Chinese government the ability to learn how to utilize such ships going forward and may pave the way for additional carriers to be built in the future.

The carrier itself wouldn't pose much of a threat to the US Navy, but the Chinese buildup of submarines and long range cruise missiles does pose a threat to the US Navy should a confrontation arise.

However, the Chinese carrier does pose a more immediate threat to countries like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, or India, each of which has regional interests that overlap China.

Mobile Phone Robo-Call Bill Killed After Outcry

Score one for consumers. The proposed legislation that would enable robo-callers to make unsolicited phone calls to cell phones was killed when its sponsors informed Congressional leaders not to advance the bill out of committee.

The bill sponsored by Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., (H.R. 3035) would have allowed “robo-calls” to your cell phone — even if you didn’t give a company permission to contact you at that number.

Consumer groups made a lot of noise in the hope that Congress would kill the bill. They call it a dangerous proposal that could lead to more nuisance calls.

Supporters of the “Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011” include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Air Transport Association, as well as groups that represent bankers, mortgage lenders, college loan programs and debt collectors.

On Wednesday, Terry and bill co-sponsor Rep. Ed Towns, D-N.Y., sent a letter to the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee asking that the legislation not be advanced.

Last week, attorneys general in 48 of the 50 states sent their own letter to Congress opposing the legislation.

This bill would have been costly to consumers as they would have incurred additional charges as a result of the unsolicited calls, and the proffered rationale for allowing such calls - to inform individuals of flight changes, drug and product recalls, etc., made little sense since consumers can already opt-in to allow the manufacturers or companies with whom they already do business to contact them via phone, email or text messages.

Good riddance to bad legislation.

About the Proposed NTSB Ban On Cell Phones/Texting While Driving

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has proposed a nationwide ban on cell phone usage while driving, including a ban on calling, texting, or emailing while driving in an effort to reduce fatalities and injuries resulting from distracted drivers. The proposal would include a ban on hands-free devices.

It's the latter bit that caught some folks by surprise.

The NTSB recommendation is unlikely to cause states to immediately ban driver cell phone use, nor should they necessarily. Currently, no state has taken that hard a line, and only nine prohibit talking on a handheld cellphone while driving. A majority prohibit texting while driving. And many have restrictions on cellphone use for certain drivers — those with restricted (novice) licenses and school bus operators chief among them.


Maryland is already among the most restrictive of states in this arena. It's against the law to talk on a phone while driving, and this year the General Assembly expanded its ban on texting to include reading them and not just writing them.

The next logical step for Annapolis is not to ban cellphone use by drivers entirely but to make the existing prohibitions a primary offense rather than a secondary one. Currently, police can ticket someone for breaking the state's cellphone restrictions only if the driver has been pulled over for some other violation.

The arguments against primary enforcement — just like those against restricting cellphone use by drivers in general — are familiar but unconvincing. Most drivers, they will argue, can talk and drive responsibly just fine. And if the state must ban distractions, what about eating, smoking, changing radio stations, applying makeup, lecturing the kids or the dozens of other behaviors drivers might engage in that the law could never even anticipate?

All reasonable points, but they don't negate the growing evidence that cellphone use while driving is increasingly a contributing factor in accidents. The consequences of that behavior, while less severe than drinking and driving, are alarming: More than 3,000 people lose their lives each year in distraction-related crashes.

This is a list of the current statutory provisions across the country that limit cell phone and other devices while driving. California is the only state that prohibits all cell phone use, including hands free devices, but that's only for drivers under the age of 18. No state has restrictions as severe as what the NTSB recommends.

But the NTSB recommendations raise a far more troubling issue. The fact is that it's all too easy to get distracted while driving. Cell phones that aren't hands free are a distraction that can and should get limited. I'm much less convinced about hands free, although restrictions on novice drivers should be encouraged.

The NTSB doesn't take a position on the ergonomics of key components in cars - like incomprehensible and minuscule buttons for AC/radios and the touch/lcd screens. In some instances, they may be just as, or more, distracting than cell phones. That's something that the manufacturers need to look at, but the NTSB doesn't address this in their recommendations.

I would support a nationwide cell phone ban that requires hands free phone capabilities, but it seems a bit of a stretch to say that hands free should also be banned.

You get to a point of diminishing returns on enforcement - limited money that can be spent elsewhere (like making it safer for pedestrians to cross streets at crosswalks).

Hizbullah's Money Laundering Operations Include Beirut Bank, Drug Trade

The Islamic terror group Hizbullah, which gets support from Syria and Iran and operates with impunity through much of Lebanon has the means to sustain itself with the drug trade and money laundering courtesy of a Beirut bank.

Now, in the wake of the bank’s exposure and arranged sale, its ledgers have been opened to reveal deeper secrets: a glimpse at the clandestine methods that Hezbollah — a terrorist organization in American eyes that has evolved into Lebanon’s pre-eminent military and political power — uses to finance its operations. The books offer evidence of an intricate global money-laundering apparatus that, with the bank as its hub, appeared to let Hezbollah move huge sums of money into the legitimate financial system, despite sanctions aimed at cutting off its economic lifeblood.

At the same time, the investigation that led the United States to the bank, the Lebanese Canadian Bank, provides new insights into the murky sources of Hezbollah’s money. While law enforcement agencies around the world have long believed that Hezbollah is a passive beneficiary of contributions from loyalists abroad involved in drug trafficking and a grab bag of other criminal enterprises, intelligence from several countries points to the direct involvement of high-level Hezbollah officials in the South American cocaine trade.

One agent involved in the investigation compared Hezbollah to the Mafia, saying, “They operate like the Gambinos on steroids.”

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Virginia announced the indictment of the man at the center of the Lebanese Canadian Bank case, charging that he had trafficked drugs and laundered money not only for Colombian cartels, but also for the murderous Mexican gang Los Zetas.

The revelations about Hezbollah and the Lebanese Canadian Bank reflect the changing political and military dynamics of Lebanon and the Middle East. American intelligence analysts believe that for years Hezbollah received as much as $200 million annually from its primary patron, Iran, along with additional aid from Syria. But that support has diminished, the analysts say, as Iran’s economy buckles under international sanctions over its nuclear program and Syria’s government battles rising popular unrest.

Yet, if anything, Hezbollah’s financial needs have grown alongside its increasing legitimacy here, as it seeks to rebuild after its 2006 war with Israel and expand its portfolio of political and social service activities. The result, analysts believe, has been a deeper reliance on criminal enterprises — especially the South American cocaine trade — and on a mechanism to move its ill-gotten cash around the world.

“The ability of terror groups like Hezbollah to tap into the worldwide criminal funding streams is the new post-9/11 challenge,” said Derek Maltz, the Drug Enforcement Administration official who oversaw the agency’s investigation into the Lebanese Canadian Bank.

In that inquiry, American Treasury officials said senior bank managers had assisted a handful of account holders in running a scheme to wash drug money by mixing it with the proceeds of used cars bought in the United States and sold in Africa. A cut of the profits, officials said, went to Hezbollah, a link the organization disputes.

Despite efforts to crack down and track such money laundering and trafficking operations, Hizbullah has thrived and expanded its drug and money laundering business. It is less dependent on Iran than in previous years, and that makes the group even more dangerous. While it still relies on Syria and Iran for arms shipments, the ability to raise money through its own channels allows it to expand its tentacles into other areas of Lebanese politics and it remains an existential threat to Israel.

The money laundering allows Hizbullah to make significant land purchases in Lebanon that it would not be otherwise capable of doing. Much of those land purchases are in militarily strategic areas and can fortify Hizbullah's position within the fragmented Lebanese society. That further destabilizes the Lebanese political situation, which remains in flux.

Hizbullah operates with impunity in Southern Lebanon, despite UN SCR 1701 that calls for all militia groups to be disarmed. Neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese military has the ability to disarm the terror group, and Hizbullah forced itself into the Lebanese government and has therefore thwarted further efforts to stop the group's ongoing militarization in Southern Lebanon.

WTC Dons Holiday Colors

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New Remains Discovered On Long Island Beach May Belong To Missing Shannan Gilbert

Investigators have discovered the remains of what appears to be a woman near where 10 other sets of remains were discovered along the Suffolk/Nassau county border on Long Island. The remains may be Shannan Gilbert, a prostitute who went missing and whose disappearance sparked the search that uncovered the killing field of at least one serial killer.

After a yearlong search, police on New York's Long Island announced Tuesday that they believe they have discovered the skeletal remains of a New Jersey prostitute whose disappearance sparked an investigation into a possible serial killing spree.

Crime Scene investigators use metal detectors to search a marsh for the remains of Shannan Gilbert on Monday in Oak Beach, New York.

With about a half-dozen news helicopters whirring overhead, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said searchers found the bones at around 9:15 a.m. in a dense wetland thicket, about a half mile from where 24-year-old Shannan Gilbert disappeared after meeting a client for an early-morning sexual encounter.

Dormer said the medical examiner's office would confirm whether the remains were Gilbert's, but the commissioner left little doubt that officers had found their intended target.

"It's certainly a sad day for the Gilbert family," he said. "And our condolences to that family on the death of their daughter."

The remains were found by homicide detectives about a quarter mile from where authorities found Gilbert's pants, shoes, pocketbook with ID and other personal items last week. On Tuesday, they were searching on an aluminum amphibious vehicle equipped with pontoons that can maneuver over land and water when they came upon the remains.

The search dragged on for more than a year because of the difficult terrain involved and the thick foliage that usually fills in the area during other than the winter.

Gilbert's remains were found several miles east of the grouping of 10 remains that were discovered in the past year.

Police don't think that she was a victim of the serial killer, and may have accidentally drowned trying to navigate the area to a lit causeway and became hopelessly entangled in the brush.

That theory still doesn't explain how and why she fled from a client's home and feared for her life.

We'll have to wait for the forensic reports to determine a cause of death that may shed more light on her unfortunate end.

Kill The Mobile Phone Robo-Call Bill (H.R. 3035)

Legislation was introduced in Congress that would allow businesses to robo-call cell phones with unsolicited advertising. Proponents claim that this is an important upgrade to phone technology and existing law:

If you like getting those automated messages on your home phone, then you’re just going to love a proposal in Congress. The bill (H.R. 3035) would allow these “robo-calls” to your cell phone — even if you didn’t give a company permission to contact you at that number.

Supporters of the “Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011” include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Air Transport Association, as well as groups that represent bankers, mortgage lenders, college loan programs and debt collectors.

In a letter to Congress, they claim H.R. 3035 is needed to “modernize” existing law by enacting “limited common-sense revisions to facilitate the delivery of time-sensitive consumer information to mobile devices, while continuing to protect wireless consumers from unwanted telemarketing calls.”

They say robo-calls to cell phones would be used to alert you to food and drug recalls, data breaches, flight delays and appointment cancellations.

Howard Waltzman, an attorney representing the business groups supporting H.R. 3035, says this “non-marketing commercial information” is important to people. He tells me the ability to make contact via a mobile phone is “critical” because so many people now use a wireless device as their primary or only means of phone communication.

That's quite a bit of misinformation packed into a few paragraphs. Right now, as a Delta customer, I can get notifications of flight delays or issues to my phone - and I can give them that information.

There's no reason that a company with whom I do no business should be able to call my cell phone unsolicited. Fact is that most people pay for airtime - both in minutes outgoing and incoming. If these businesses are able to make these unsolicited calls, people are going to see their minutes used up that much quicker because these robo-calls will quickly fill up the airtime and are a direct cost imposed on the cell phone owner. It would also adversely affect those who use prepaid wireless plans (the majority of which are lower income users).

That's absolutely inexcusable.

People can opt in to receive all kinds of product updates and warnings, including food and drug recalls. There's no reason to give companies the right to make unsolicited calls. However, some of these businesses are seeing their revenues drop as an increasing number of people and businesses eliminate their land-line service and switch to cell-phone carriers.

That's the real financial impetus for the change.

UPDATE:
Added a link to the MSNBC story. Also, here's a direct link to the text of the legislation.

Corzine; MF Global Executives Testify Before Congress Again Today

It's another day of testimony before Congress for disgraced former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and several top MF Global executives. They'll again have to state that they have no idea where nearly $1.2 billion in customer money went. They'll claim that they aren't responsible for the accounting of the monies, despite being in a position to not only be responsible for the company policies, but are fiduciaries for their clients and made the decisions that sank MF Global in the first place.

Bradley Abelow, MF Global's president and chief operating officer, and Henri Steenkamp, the chief financial officer, are also scheduled to testify to the Senate Agriculture Committee.

All three say they don't know where the money is, according to prepared remarks and Corzine's previous testimony to a House panel last week. Nor do they take responsibility for authorizing the movement of money out of customer accounts.

Depending on the circumstances, transferring money from customers' accounts could violate securities laws and, in some cases, could amount to a crime. Federal authorities have begun criminal investigations. And regulators are looking into whether the firm broke securities rules.

MF Global collapsed into the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Oct. 31 after a disastrous bet on European debt. Corzine stepped down as CEO on Nov. 4.

Corzine told the House Agriculture Committee last week that he didn't know what happened to the money. He said he didn't become aware of the shortfall until Oct. 30, one day before the firm filed for bankruptcy protection.

In his prepared testimony, Steenkamp says he had no direct involvement in the transfer of funds.

"Direct involvement with operational matters such as bank accounts or fund transfers has never been part of my duties," Steenkamp says.

Abelow says he cannot explain what happened to the money without having access to MF Global documents, which a trustee now controls.

They'll try to distance themselves from the scandal, but that's frankly impossible to do. They are going to do their best to avoid falling into a perjury trap, so the amount of information that they can shed on the inner workings at MF Global in the runup to the collapse will be at a minimum.

Anything they say can and will be used against them in what is likely to be a series of criminal and civil suits, but so too is the fact that they simply claim ignorance, being outside the loop of those responsible for the transactions that led to the missing $1.2 billion.

Corzine, despite his attempts to fall on his sword, continues to claim that he isn't a responsible party in the missing money. Is it possible that some underling undertook the illegal actions that led to the missing money? Absolutely. However, it was a policy initiated by Corzine to expand trading on sovereign debt that pushed MF Global to the brink. Corzine took the risks, removed those involved in managing risks and were warning about the downside, and pushed ahead despite the sovereign debt risks increasing MF Global's exposure.

The Buck Stops Where?

Yesterday morning, a New York City police officer, Peter Figoski, was killed in the line of duty as he responded to a burglary in Queens. The alleged cop-killer, Lamont Pride, is in custody after Figoski's partner ran down Pride as he tried to escape. Pride's accomplice in the burglary has been captured, and several others are now under arrest in connection with the murder:

The accomplice who fled from cops after his low-life pal shot and killed Officer Peter Figoski has been caught, police said Tuesday.

Three other suspects were also taken into custody overnight — two neighbors who live across the street and the alleged getaway driver.

The accomplice was arrested at 2 a.m. and will be charged with murder in the slaying of Figoski, a decorated 22-year NYPD veteran and father of four daughters, officials said.

Police were responding to a robbery in progress in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn at 2:15 a.m. Monday when one of the bandits shot Figoski.

The accomplice, who had been grappling with Figoski’s partner, Officer Glenn Estrada, ran off when Estrada made the split-second decision to chase the man who had just killed his partner. Estrada pursued and captured the alleged gunman, Lamont Pride, 27, several blocks away.

Police said they were initially looking for just the escaped accomplice but quickly realized more people were involved.

Sources said cops became suspicious of the story told by two “concerned neighbors” living across the street.

The pair were very quick to describe the guns used in the robbery at the Pine St. home.

"We were suspicious of them. We kept them and questioned them," a source told the Daily News.

The two neighbors are expected to be charged with murder. It is unclear what charges the getaway driver will face.

The real question though is why Pride was ever on the street to be in a position to carry out a burglary, let alone be in a position to murder a New York cop.

Pride has been arrested numerous times in connection with various criminal acts, including an attempted murder charge in North Carolina, and several crimes in New York City.

Did his case fall through the cracks? That's what various people connected with the New York and North Carolina justice systems want to believe, but someone has to be held responsible for the failure to incarcerate Pride.

Pride has been arrested twice since September in New York, and that's after being wanted on attempted murder charges in North Carolina. Each time, Pride was able to avoid incarceration and extradition to North Carolina.

“We ran him and found he was wanted in [North Carolina\] on weapon assault charges, but the warrant specified ‘extradite within the State of North Carolina only,’ ” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

The NYPD contacted North Carolina authorities twice to press them to change the warrant, but they refused, sources said.

At Pride’s Nov. 4 arraignment, prosecutor Evan Degrees asked bail be set at $2,500. But Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Evelyn LaPorte released him on his own recognizance, records show.

The warrant for the North Carolina crimes didn't contain the extradition orders and North Carolina prosecutors didn't want to go ahead and change the warrant to allow for extradition, and a New York judge was far too lenient considering his lengthy rap sheet. Pride was a one-man crime spree, and yet a New York judge allowed him to be released on his own recognizance. Prosecutors had called for a $2,500 bail.

In the end, Pride is fully responsible for the death of Officer Figoski, but the justice system in both North Carolina and New York failed Figoski, the NYPD, and the public by turning a blind eye to a career criminal and his lengthy felonious rap sheet.

Will anyone hold Evelyn LaPorte responsible for such an egregious miscarriage of justice? Will anyone hold the North Carolina prosecutors? Each had the ability to see to it that Pride remained off the streets while awaiting trial on the attempted murder charges in North Carolina, but now he'll be off the streets indefinitely as a result of the murder charges pending in the death of Officer Figoski.

Trailer Released For Men In Black3

The original was great. The sequel was adequate.

Here's hoping the third movie harkens back to the original.

The Truth Emerges About Iconic World War II Photo

An iconic photo that has been published countless times in relation to the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks may not be all that it's cracked up to be. MSNBC has apparently gotten to the bottom of a photo depicted a group of women firefighters at Pearl Harbor.

It turns out that while there were indeed women firefighters who were tasked with that arduous duty, according to one of the women, the photograph was not taken during the day of the attacks.

Lowe said the wartime photo was certainly not taken on Dec. 7, 1941, the day the Imperial Japanese Navy shocked the United States into joining World War II. On that Sunday morning she was headed to church when the bombing started, and she went ahead anyway because she wasn't sure what else to do. But she and her friends from the Dole pineapple factory did soon go to work as civilian workers at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, and one of their duties was to fight fires. She said the photo was probably taken at a training exercise during the war. She said she had no idea that her photo was in history books.

So the bottom line: These women were female firefighters at Pearl Harbor, the place. To that extent the photo is authentic. But they weren't fighting a fire when this photograph was taken, and they weren't fighting any fires on Dec. 7, the day we remember every year on Pearl Harbor Day. In addition to Lowe's account, there is strong documentary evidence that this is a Navy publicity photo taken to showcase the roles of women during the war.