Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Atlantic has put together some proper facts and statistics about “gun violence” in America. I think you will be surprised, particularly those of you like the dick Piers Morgan who call for assault rifle bans just how few deaths are caused byt people armed with assault rifles:

How much gun violence is there in the U.S.?

There were 8,583 homicides by firearms in 2011, out of 12,664 homicides total, according to the FBI. This means that more than two-thirds of homicides involve a firearm. 6,220 of those homicides by firearm (72%) are known to have involved a handgun.

It’s worth noting that violent crime rates of all types have been steadily decreasing since the early 1990s. No one is quite sure what is causing this decrease, though there are many theories, ranging from tighter gun control laws to more innovative policing and changes in the drug market. Whatever the cause of this decline, America still has a homicide rate of 4.7 murders per 100,000 people, which is one of the highest of all developed countries (see: international comparison).

Gun violence also affects more than its victims. In areas where it is prevalent, just the threat of violence makes neighborhoods poorer. It’s very difficult to quantify the total harm caused by gun violence, but by asking many people how much they would pay to avoid this threat — a technique called contingent valuation – researchers have estimated a cost to American society of $100 billion dollars.

Guns are also involved in suicides and accidents. 19,392 of 38,264 suicides in 2010 involved a gun (50%), according to the CDC. There were 606 firearm-related accidents in the same year — about 5% of the number of intentional gun deaths.

Read more »

Saturday started with a Face of the Day photo that was a bit hard to look at before breakfast.  Cam finds a Frenchman worthy of respect, and is pleased to find they aren’t all cheese eating surrender monkeys. Count Jacques le Bel de Penguilly does have a poofy name though.  Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche is a play that Whale suggests David Farrar should review for his Womans Weekly blog.  Australia charges its second Catholic Priest for child sex crimes, and this blog continues to ask:  Why is New Zealand immune?  We’re either better than the rest of the world or we’re still covering it up.  Which is it, and why?   Sadly, another Cry Baby post where we highlight those who aren’t taking personal responsibility.  This time, people who booked on Jetstar had their flights cancelled are in the paper bleating they’ll never fly Jetstar again.  If only they knew this could happen, eh?  Sharing a public space is tough when the others are eating, playing music and talking on their phones.  Cam Slater throws in a joke about an ERO school inspector and Hekia Parata, and follows it up with a post where he reveals that politicians lie.  Yeah.  Why do women wear high heels?  It can get to the point of ridiculousness for sure. An interesting post showing that a Connecticut newspaper is still advertising guns right next to Sandy Hook School news.  That was followed by a post of dash cam footage from 1927 as well as dash cam footage of a plane crash last week.  Next a top drawer post about glow in the dark toilet paper and poop hand soap.  Only on WOBH.   An interesting BBC2 short about Gordon Buchanan turning himself potential into Polar Bear lunch leads a post about Iron Maiden showing Steve Harris wearing a Whale Oil Beef Hooked T-Shirt.  Perhaps we should avoid NZ Herald Stock tips:  Australian shares are hot apparently?  Especially those APN stocks.  Oh, and Fairfax stocks are doing just great as well.  And as we wind down towards the end of the Saturday, we have a post about a CK Stead letter in which he slams the Binnie report as having clear bias.   Read more »

Ernst & Young and the FBI have realsed their list of top ten words and phrases used in email conversations that commonly indicate fraudulent behaviour:

Software developed by the FBI and Ernst & Young has revealed the most common words used in email conversations among employees engaged in corporate fraud.

The software, which was developed using the knowledge gained from real life corporate fraud investigations, pinpoints and tracks common fraud phrases like “cover up”, “write off”, “failed investment”, “off the books”, “nobody will find out” and “grey area”.

Expressions such as “special fees” and “friendly payments” are most common in bribery cases, while fears of getting caught are shown in phrases such as “no inspection” and “do not volunteer information”.

In total more than 3,000 terms are logged by the technology, which monitors for conversations within the “fraud triangle”, where pressure, rationalisation, and opportunity meet, said the FBI and Ernst & Young.

…  Read more »

ᔥ Christian Science Monitor

The Occupy movement went down with a whimper, despite passionate MSM support.   But some of them tried to go out with a bang.

Five Occupy Cleveland mutts thought that Occupy should bomb the rest of the world into agreement with their ideals.   Now one of them (the smartest of the five) has turned snitch on the rest.   Nice people, the 99%.

Naturally, they have been labelled the Cleveland 5 and the demonstrators are already gathering outside the Courthouse.

One of five men charged with plotting to bomb an Ohio highway bridge made a surprise guilty plea Wednesday and agreed to testify against his co-defendants.

Anthony Hayne, 35, pleaded to all three counts against him in US District Court. His attorney, Michael O’Shea, said Hayne hopes to get leniency in return for his testimony.

Authorities have called the men anarchists. Investigators say the group planted what turned out to be a fake bomb provided by an FBI undercover informant on a bridge south of Cleveland and repeatedly tried to detonate it using text messages from cellphones.’

The defendants could face life in prison if convicted.

Under the terms of the plea deal, Hayne will have the chance to avoid a life prison term. He could face 15 years to nearly 20 years in prison.

ᔥ NZ Herald

If I was the crown solicitor I would be immediately seeking to move the Dotcom case from Judge David Harvey…it seems he has been injudicious with his comments recently. While agree with him on the issue of copyright and the TPP the fact remains that he is a Judge and is sitting on a case that involves copyright and extradition…making comments like that could easily be seen as prejudicial.

The judge due to hear Kim Dotcom’s extradition case has referred to the United States as “the enemy” in a discussion about copyright law.

District Court Judge David Harvey has heard parts of the case against the Megaupload founder, who was arrested with three colleagues in January after a request from the United States. The FBI has accused Dotcom and others working at Megaupload website of the world’s biggest case of criminal copyright violation.

Judge Harvey is not due to hear the internet mogul’s extradition case until next year but made his views on copyright known during the launch of the “Fair Deal” campaign last week.

…

It is legal in New Zealand to use methods to get around these regional codes and make the DVDs watchable but Judge Harvey said the TPP would change this.

“Under TPP and the American Digital Millennium copyright provisions you will not be able to do that, that will be prohibited… if you do you will be a criminal – that’s what will happen. Even before the 2008 amendments it wasn’t criminalised. There are all sorts of ways this whole thing is being ramped up and if I could use Russell [Brown's] tweet from earlier on: we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S.”

Judge Harvey’s remark is a play on the line “we have met the enemy and he is us” by American cartoonist Walt Kelly.

ᔥ TorrentFreak

Kim Dotcom is justified in feeling aggrieved by actions of the US Government and the NZ Police in shutting down and killing off his business. I imagine that there may well be a lengthy civil action against both governments for their roles in this debacle in shutting down a business at the behest of American corporate interests.

A US judge has put a bomb under the Megaupload case by informing the FBI that a trial in the United States may never happen. The cyberlocker was never formally served with the appropriate paperwork by the US authorities, as it is impossible to serve a foreign company with criminal charges.

The US Government accuses Kim Dotcom and the rest of the “Mega Conspiracy” of running a criminal operation.

Charges in the indictment include engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.

While the prosecution is hoping to have Megaupload tried in the US, breaking news suggests that this may never happen.

It turns out that the US judge handling the case has serious doubts whether it will ever go to trial due to a procedural error.

“I frankly don’t know that we are ever going to have a trial in this matter,” Judge O’Grady said as reported by the NZ Herald.

Judge O’Grady informed the FBI that Megaupload was never served with criminal charges, which is a requirement to start the trial. The origin of this problem is not merely a matter of oversight. Megaupload’s lawyer Ira Rothken says that unlike people, companies can’t be served outside US jurisdiction.

“My understanding as to why they haven’t done that is because they can’t. We don’t believe Megaupload can be served in a criminal matter because it is not located within the jurisdiction of the United States,” Rothken says.

What makes sources leak to me or to anyone else in the media?

A new book by veteran journalist Max Holland called Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat (University Press of Kansas) looks into the Watergate scandal from a different perspective.

Leak overturns once and for all the romantic, popular interpretation of the Watergate saga of one inside source risking it all to save democracy. “Nixon’s downfall was an entirely unanticipated result of Felt’s true and only aim,” Holland writes. Although Holland never disparages the enterprise of Woodward and Bernstein, acknowledging the impact their reports had on Judge John J. Sirica and the senators who formed an investigative committee, neither does he bow to them. “Contrary to the widely held perception that the Washington Post ‘uncovered’ Watergate, the newspaper essentially tracked the progress of the FBI’s investigation, with a time delay ranging from weeks to days, and published elements of the prosecutors’ case well in advance of the trial.”

So Woodward and Bernstein were in fact fast followers of the investigation, but with a heads up from the leaker:

Leak, to be published Mar. 6, vindicates journalist Edward Jay Epstein, one of the earliest critics of Woodsteinmania. In a Commentary piece published in July 1974, about a month after the Woodstein book came out, Epstein eviscerates what he calls the “sustaining myth of journalism.” Naïve readers believe that intrepid reporters expose government scandals by doggedly working their confidential sources. Of course such scoops do occur, but the more conventional route to a prize-winning series is well-placed leaks from well-oiled government investigations, which Holland maintains was the case with Watergate.

I like the description “sustaining the myth of journalism”. But what of the leaker? What motivates them?

 Every source leaks for a reason, and it’s usually not about preserving the Constitution and the American way. As Stephen Hess writes, sources have many reasons to leak. They leak to boost their own egos. They leak to make a goodwill deposit with a reporter that they hope to withdraw in the future. They leak to advance their policy initiative. They leak to launch trial balloons and sometimes even to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. But until contesting evidence arrives, it’s usually a safe bet that a leak is what Hess calls an “Animus Leak,” designed to inflict damage on another party.

Heh “Animus Leak”…yep I like that description.

WOBH has discovered previously secret photos of David Farrar from SIS cameras that were left in place at the change of government.

Warning the image is disturbing.

Now how does that ditty go? Oh that’s right….

Spider Pig!
Spider Pig!
Does whatever a spider pig does!
can he swing from a web?
No he can’t
He’s a pig!
Lookout!
Here comes the spider pig!

hattip Dodgeblogium