Echelon

* "Anti-terror officers from Scotland Yard are investigating how one of the 7 July bombers, who worked part-time in a fish and chip shop, left more than £120,000 after his death." (link)
i wonder if he left a will. there's was a lot of speculation at the time that these 4 gentlemen were drug patsies who thoughts they were delivering bombs when they exploded. i didnt give the idea much credence at the time...

* "Abramoff was more than just a corrupt influence-peddler. He had close connections to the underworld of extreme right and fascist elements, both within the United States and internationally. In the early 1980s, Abramoff headed Citizens for America, a group founded by drugstore multimillionaire Lewis Lehrman. In that capacity he organized a meeting of anticommunist guerrillas from Laos, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Angola, under the auspices of Jonas Savimbi, leader of the South African and US-backed UNITA guerrillas. Savimbi was one of the most notorious mass murderers in Africa." (link)

* from the VF FItz article: "White then made Fitzgerald co-head of the organized crime and terrorism unit in her office, the nation's first. For the next two years, he immersed himself even more deeply in the shadowy world of Middle Eastern terrorism and the culture of al-Quaeda, poring over intelligence reports and translated documents, studying Islam -- including bin Laden's twisted version of it -- interviewing witnesses and defectors, and traveling throughout the Middle East, Europe and Asia." (link)
i wonder what he thinks of sibel's case - surely he is aware of it.

* jane notes: " But this is a big problem in doing a story on Fitzgerald; nobody wants to speak ill of the man and that's probably not because nobody has anything bad to say. He's put far too many people in jail for that. More likely a network of very powerful friends in all aspects of law enforcement make people who would otherwise blast him (like opposing defense attorneys) quite reluctant to do so at the moment."

* echidne: "It's stupid to write about what Pat Robertson says. I would never comment on him if we lived in a reality-based world." (link)
so true. so sad.

* "One of the principle reasons that Abramoff was able to put his scam together was the reluctance of just about any member of Congress to speak out against the underlying scam: the genetic monopoly of gambling rights granted to (some) Indian tribes. Instead of confronting this for what it is — the creation of wealthy and politically powerful elites– Republicans and Democrats alike indulge in the fiction that tribal casinos have something to do with civil rights and racial justice." (link)

* "Because Echelon can easily spy on Americans without any oversight or detection, and because Echelon covers such a wide spectrum of communication, many current and former NSA officials said that it's likely the agency used its satellites to target Americans" (link)

* i love the spin coming out about lobby-gate from the norquists of the world, and peggy noonan, that the existence of criminal politicians is proof that there are too many of them, and therefore we need a small government.