By Dunstan Prial, Fox Business

So much for transparency.

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from “surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities.” Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.

That argument comes despite the President saying that one of the cornerstones of the sweeping new legislation was more transparent financial markets. Indeed, in touting the new law, Obama specifically said it would “increase transparency in financial dealings.”

The SEC cited the new law Tuesday in a FOIA action brought by FOX Business Network. Steven Mintz, founding partner of law firm Mintz & Gold LLC in New York, lamented what he described as “the backroom deal that was cut between Congress and the SEC to keep the  SEC’s failures secret. The only losers here are the American public.”

If the SEC’s interpretation stands, Mintz, who represents FOX Business Network, predicted “the next time there is a Bernie Madoff failure the American public will not be able to obtain the SEC documents that describe the failure,” referring to the shamed broker whose Ponzi scheme cost investors billions.

The SEC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Criticism of the provision has been swift. “It allows the SEC to block the public’s access to virtually all SEC records,” said Gary Aguirre, a former SEC staff attorney-turned-whistleblower who had accused the agency of thwarting an investigation into hedge fund Pequot Asset Management in 2005. “It permits the SEC to promulgate its own rules and regulations regarding the disclosure of records without getting the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, which typically applies to all federal agencies.”

Aguirre used FOIA requests in his own lawsuit against the SEC, which the SEC settled this year by paying him $755,000. Aguirre, who was fired in September 2005, argued that supervisors at the SEC stymied an investigation of Pequot – a charge that prompted an investigation by the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees.

The SEC closed the case in 2006, but would re-open it three years later. This year, Pequot and its founder, Arthur Samberg, were forced to pay $28 million to settle insider-trading charges related to shares of Microsoft (MSFT: 25.95 ,-0.21 ,-0.80%). The settlement with Aguirre came shortly later.

“From November 2008 through January 2009, I relied heavily on records obtained from the SEC through FOIA in communications to the FBI, Senate investigators, and the SEC in arguing the SEC had botched its initial investigation of Pequot’s trading in Microsoft securities and thus the SEC should reopen it, which it did,” Aguirre said. “The new legislation closes access to such records, even when the investigation is closed.

“It is hard to imagine how the bill could be more counterproductive,” Aguirre added.

FOX Business Network sued the SEC in March 2009 over its failure to produce documents related to its failed investigations into alleged investment frauds being perpetrated by Madoff and R. Allen Stanford. Following the Madoff and Stanford arrests it, was revealed that the SEC conducted investigations into both men prior to their arrests but failed to uncover their alleged frauds.

FOX Business made its initial request to the SEC in February 2009 seeking any information related to the agency’s response to complaints, tips and inquiries or any potential violations of the securities law or wrongdoing by Stanford.

FOX Business has also filed lawsuits against the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve over their failure to respond to FOIA requests regarding use of the bailout funds and the Fed’s extended loan facilities. In February, the Federal Court in New York sided with FOX Business and ordered the Treasury to comply with its requests.

Last year, the network won a legal victory to force the release of documents related to New York University’s lawsuit against Madoff feeder Ezra Merkin.

FOX Business’ FOIA requests have so far led the SEC to release several important and damaging documents:

•FOX Business used the FOIA to obtain a 2005 survey that the SEC in Fort Worth was sending to Stanford investors. The survey showed that the SEC had suspicions about Stanford several years prior to the collapse of his $7 billion empire.

•FOX Business used the FOIA to obtain copies of emails between Federal Reserve lawyers, AIG and staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in which it was revealed the Fed staffers knew that bailing out AIG would result in bonuses being paid.

Recently, TARP Congressional Oversight Panel chair Elizabeth Warren told FOX Business that the network’s Freedom of Information Act efforts played a “very important part” of the panel’s investigation into AIG.

Warren told the network the government “crossed a line” with the AIG bailout.

“FOX News and the congressional oversight panel has pushed, pushed, pushed, for transparency, give us the documents, let us look at everything. Your Freedom of Information Act suit, which ultimately produced 250,000 pages of documentation, was a very important part of our report. We were able to rely on the documents that you pried out for a significant part of our being able to put this report together,” Warren said.

The SEC first made its intention to block further FOIA requests known on Tuesday. FOX Business was preparing for another round of “skirmishes” with the SEC, according to Mintz, when the agency called and said it intended to use Section 929I of the 2000-page legislation to refuse FBN’s ongoing requests for information.

Mintz said the network will challenge the SEC’s interpretation of the law.

“I believe this is subject to challenge,” he said. “The contours will have to be figured out by a court.”

See Entire Article Here

American taxpayers are donating billions to Pakistan, who are in turn supporting the Taliban to kill our troops.  Congressman Dennis Kucinich calls on Americans to wake up.  91,000 documents leaked by WikiLeaks.com, and 91,000 reasons to get out of the war in Afghanistan

Alex Jones & Aaron Dykes
Infowars.com
July 8, 2010

Alex Jones gives the inside scoop on basketball MVP LeBron James’ pivotal trade decision… err, I mean, rather breaks down how society has become obsessed with celebrity culture and taken its eye off of important world events, allowing corruption and global domination to take root.

Here are people by the tens of thousands begging LeBron James to stay on their team, yet these same people won’t go out and protest the looting of the Federal government, the banker-bailout or even the BP oil spill.

Yes, modern bread and circuses– endless ballgames, television and gossip about celeb birthday parties– has driven our culture to embrace the meaningless, while reducing our consciousness to mindless drivel. America– once the greatest cradle of imagination and wealth has fallen to a land of virtual morons who look up to decadent system-icons instead of leaders who could drive our future to greatness once again.

Just because a few of them do their job & some put their lives on the line, doesn’t necessarily mean they can steam roll your civil liberties.

My prediction is that American’s will one day soon become fed up with the militarization of our police force & start fighting back.

Dear Mr. Poh-Lice…just remember…you’re kinda outnumbered.

Los Angeles, CA – US Marines will train with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).  The publicly stated purpose of the mission is to provide training to Afghanistan police, but “awakened” citizens know better.  It’s obvious that the U.S. Government has launched as massive public relations campaign in order to secretly deploy military troops in every city in America; right under the noses of the citizens of the United States.  Don’t be fooled;  the US military does not need to work with the LAPD in order to learn law enforcement — the US Marines have some of the best trained Military Police in the entire world.

The U.S. government has been trying to condition the civilian population to accept military personnel working along side law enforcement on US soil as part of a massive military mobilization. This is in preparation for the high likelihood of the US Government declaring martial law when citizens finally realize their civilization has been intentionally demolished & their retirements looted.  The question is not whether that day will come, but how will the civilians react to their tax-funded troops turning on them.

Social networking service Twitter has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information, marking the agency’s first such case against a social networking service.

The FTC’s complaint against Twitter charges that serious lapses in the company’s data security allowed hackers to obtain unauthorized administrative control of Twitter, including access to non-public user information, tweets that consumers had designated private, and the ability to send out phony tweets from any account including those belonging to then-President-elect Barack Obama and Fox News, among others.

“When a company promises consumers that their personal information is secure, it must live up to that promise,” said David Vladeck, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Likewise, a company that allows consumers to designate their information as private must use reasonable security to uphold such designations. Consumers who use social networking sites may choose to share some information with others, but they still have a right to expect that their personal information will be kept private and secure.”

According to the FTC complaint, Twitter allows users to send “tweets” – brief messages of 140 characters or fewer – to “followers” who sign up to receive such messages via e-mail or phone text. Twitter offers privacy settings through which a user may choose to designate tweets as nonpublic. For instance, users can send “direct messages” to a specified follower so that only the specific author and recipient can view the message. Twitter users can also click a button labeled “Protect my tweets,” which makes that user’s tweets private so that only approved followers can view them.

The privacy policy posted on Twitter’s website stated that “Twitter is very concerned about safeguarding the confidentiality of your personally identifiable information. We employ administrative, physical, and electronic measures designed to protect your information from unauthorized access.”

The FTC’s complaint alleged that between January and May of 2009, hackers were able to gain administrative control of Twitter on two occasions. In January 2009, a hacker used an automated password-guessing tool to gain administrative control of Twitter, after submitting thousands of guesses into Twitter’s login webpage. The administrative password was a weak, lowercase, common dictionary word. Using the password, the hacker reset several passwords, and posted some of them on a website, where other people could access them. Using these fraudulently reset passwords, other intruders sent phony tweets from approximately nine user accounts. One tweet was sent from the account of then-President-elect Barack Obama, offering his more than 150,000 followers a chance to win $500 in free gasoline. At least one phony tweet was sent from the account of Fox News.

During a second security breach, in April 2009, a hacker was able to guess the administrative password of a Twitter empoyee after compromising the employee’s personal email account where two similar passwords were stored in plain text. The hacker reset at least one Twitter user’s password, and could access nonpublic user information and tweets for any Twitter users.

According to the FTC’s complaint, Twitter was vulnerable to these attacks because it failed to prevent unauthorized administrative control of its system, including reasonable steps to:

• require employees to use hard-to-guess administrative passwords that they did not use for other programs, websites, or networks;
• prohibit employees from storing administrative passwords in plain text within their personal e-mail accounts;
• suspend or disable administrative passwords after a reasonable number of unsuccessful login attempts;
• provide an administrative login webpage that is made known only to authorized persons and is separate from the login page for users;
• enforce periodic changes of administrative passwords, for example, by setting them to expire every 90 days;
• restrict access to administrative controls to employees whose jobs required it; and
• impose other reasonable restrictions on administrative access, such as by restricting access to specified IP addresses.

Under the terms of the settlement, Twitter will be barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about the extent to which it protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information, including the measures it takes to prevent unauthorized access to nonpublic information and honor the privacy choices made by consumers. The company also must establish and maintain a comprehensive information security program, which will be assessed by an independent auditor every other year for 10 years.

The Commission vote approving the complaint and settlement was 5-0. The FTC will publish an announcement regarding the consent agreement in the Federal Register shortly. The agreement will be subject to public comment for 30 days, until July 26, 2010, after which the Commission will decide whether to make it final. To file a public comment, please click on the following hyperlink https://public.commentworks.com/ftc/twitter and follow the instructions at that site.

Reuters

June 24, 2010

Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler, just back from a 10-day research expedition near the BP Plc oil spill in the gulf, says methane gas levels in some areas are “astonishingly high.”

Kessler’s crew took measurements of both surface and deep water within a 5-mile (8 kilometer) radius of BP’s broken wellhead.

“There is an incredible amount of methane in there,” Kessler told reporters in a telephone briefing.

In some areas, the crew of 12 scientists found concentrations that were 100,000 times higher than normal.

“We saw them approach a million times above background concentrations” in some areas, Kessler said.

The scientists were looking for signs that the methane gas had depleted levels of oxygen dissolved in the water needed to sustain marine life.

“At some locations, we saw depletions of up to 30 percent of oxygen based on its natural concentration in the waters. At other places, we saw no depletion of oxygen in the waters. We need to determine why that is,” he told the briefing.

Methane occurs naturally in sea water, but high concentrations can encourage the growth of microbes that gobble up oxygen needed by marine life.

Kessler said oxygen depletions have not reached a critical level yet, but the oil is still spilling into the Gulf, now at a rate of as much as 60,000 barrels a day, according to U.S. government estimates.

“What is it going to look like two months down the road, six months down the road, two years down the road?” he asked.

Methane, a natural gas, dissolves in seawater and some scientists think measuring methane could give a more accurate picture of the extent of the oil spill.

Kessler said his team has taken those measurements, and is hoping to have an estimate soon.

“Give us about a week and we should have some preliminary numbers on that,” he said.

Read Article Courtesy of InfoWars.com

READ MORE REGARDING TOXIC & VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS FOUND IN THE GULF HERE

We all know that almost every act committed by the current President since he was “elected” has been less than honorable.

He flat out lied to lure the voters.  Essentially stole a democratic election without any opposition.  No accountability for his dishonest actions ; dumbed-down American’s merely shrug their shoulders & say, “oh well, he won’t be re-elected”  “Anyways….Where’s LaBron James gonna end up?”.

Obama promised to end wars & war spending.  He actually doubled both.  In Afghanistan, its a fact that troops are guarding the $80 billion per year crop of opium used to manufacture  heroin.  Through his silence, he advocates drug trafficking, as well as theft of Afghanstan’s natural resources through military occupation.

Barack Obama has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution & the United States from all enemies; foreign and domestic.  He has failed miserably for more reasons than can be described in this post, but for one; trillions given to Bankster’s.

General McChrystal, however, has also sworn an oath to the United States that I believe he should uphold.  In fact, McChrystal should do the most honorable, patriotic deeds by removing Obama from office.  In my opinion, regime change now will revitalize our democracy more peaceably & smoothly than if Obama were allowed to continue on his destructive path to dismantling the U.S. Constitution and selling the sovereignty of the US to foreign Banskter’s.

McChrystal is suppose to disobey unlawful orders, and must stand courageously as a warrior in the face of enemies opposed to our democracy.

I challenge each and every military warrior, especially my fellow Marines, to defend our freedom.

Remember your oath to our country.  Obama & the elite’s who placed him in the position to effect the New World Order & destroy our country need to be eliminated sooner or later — make it sooner, for the sake of peace and prosperity in our country.

Do what is right for your people.  Unjust war, senseless foreign occupation, seizing natural resources via military occupation, drug trafficking, and ignoring our own boarders (Mexico) is something your Commander in Chief is ordering you to do.  Grow some “round courage between your legs” & refuse those unlawful orders.

General McChrystal, don’t let this opportunity pass.  As the Obama administration says, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” [Rahm Emanuel]

On behalf of all Americans I challenge you to either be with freedom and democracy, or against us.  Do the right thing & tell Obama that it’s time for regime change.  Fire him.

Finally, a message to my fellow U.S. Marines, Obama has hi-hacked our Constitution; he advocates a police state; has given our checkbook to Bankster’s; and is now trying to control the heartbeat of our freedom — the internet.  In my opinion, if you don’t see this as a justifiable reason for immediate regime change, it’s no wonder you can’t find Osama Bin Laden.  He’s probably hiding in your barracks; right under your nose.

Dear Sasha & Malia

First & foremost, we’re not “political”, but our Dad discusses political issues, so we’d thought we’d chime in.  You see, we believe our Dad when he says he’s most concerned about the world his girl’s live in.  It’s obvious that your Dad cares more about other people’s worlds than yours, so we figured we’d try to get you two to influence him some way — for all of our sake.

Here’s a few things our Dad would NEVER do, and maybe you could have your Dad go by our Dad’s fatherly example:

1) Our Dad Peter Santilli would NEVER promise to end wars to win an election, and as soon he got in office, start listening to all the “advisors” to keep the war going even stronger.  First, it costs way too much money;  we can’t afford to spend 15 billion per month, and second, although our Dad is a US Marine, he’d never put others lives in jeopardy just for profit.

2) Our Dad is a man of principle, and always wants to do the right thing.  He’d never be a coward to Bankster’s like your Dad, especially after they ruined our country.  Our Dad would stand up for our people, and your Dad only talks about doing that —especially to the black people (to get their vote).  In fact, our Dad is more loyal to the inner city black’s than your Dad is. We’ve seen it first hand. You Dad is an Uncle Tom when it come to bowing to Bankster’s.  Our Dad is blacker than yours when it comes to fighting Bankster’s.  You should tell your Dad to man-up.

3) Our Dad would never be involved in using American boys to guard heroin, and allow the CIA to traffic drugs from Afghanistan to inner city youth.  Your Dad is obviously a coward to stand up to the CIA and the drug lords.  Our Dad would never be so deeply involved in the drug trade.

4) Our Dad would never let BP walk all over him, and then try to pretend he’s in charge by making a stupid, lame, weak speech on TV.  Our Dad wouldn’t have to go on TV to make people believe he was in charge, it would just happen….and our Dad wouldn’t wait a month top do something.  Although our Dad is a great delegator, he’s an even better manager to make sure that the people he delegates to actually get the job done.

5)  Our Dad would NEVER sell our country, our constitution; our civil rights up the river for any reason.  Our Dad also has bigger family jewels to stand up to the global banksters that want to suck our country dry.  Our Dad would also NEVER let our civil rights be compromised, including giving away the freedom of the flow of information over the internet.

In fact, OUR Dad would make a much better President than yours, and on this Father’s Day, we ask that you tell him that anyone can be your Dad, but it takes a really special person to be a good Father.  Maybe you can come over to our house — Our Dad will take really good care of you; your country; and your future than your Dad ever can.  He can also teach your Dad how not to be so Ghetto with his lack of integrity — your Dad lies like a street crack-dealer trying to get more money from his homies.

Our Dad’s more Patriotic than yours, cuz he would never drive our country off a cliff like your Dad is doing…and then throw parties, go golfing or attend baseball games like rich people — while the entire country suffers from economic depression.

Instead of getting your Dad a “jersey” for father’s day, you should buy him a plane ticket (we don’t think he should be blowing our taxpayer money) to visit our Dad so he can learn something about character & integrity.

Tell Your Dad We Said “Happy Father’s Day”

Sincerely,

Frankie & Sabrina Santilli

AP/Huffington Post First Posted: 06-15-10 10:52 AM

WASHINGTON – Gen. David Petraeus slumped over Tuesday morning during a Senate hearing, but revived after a few seconds and left the room under his own power. After about 20 minutes he returned to the hearing room.

Petraeus, 57, had finished telling Sen. John McCain that he believes the planned 2011 drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan remains on track, and McCain was responding when the room fell silent and aides began crowding around the four-star general.

Petraeus, who oversees the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as head of U.S. Central Command, briefly put his head on the table, then rose, appearing dazed. He stood under his own power and was escorted from the room.

Petraeus is the commander of U.S. Central Command. He was testifying on the war in Afghanistan.

As the most popular and widely known general of his generation, Petraeus is approaching a new juncture in a career that catapulted him to fame when President George W. Bush sent him to Baghdad in early 2007 to carry out a long-shot “surge” strategy that arguably rescued Iraq from collapse.

The general has had a high-profile career, and many believe he is the leading candidate to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He commanded all forces in Iraq under President George W. Bush.