The UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has spent the last 6 years chasing BAE systems over allegations that bribes were paid to secure foreign deals in a number of countries. Bribes are the least of the allegations involved in some international defense deals, and contract wins without inducements would be far more surprising in countries like Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, and South Africa. Nevertheless, the UK does have laws to prevent British firms from paying them, and the US Department of Justice chose to pursue the matter as well.
BAE Systems has settled with both governments, pleading guilty to technical violations but not criminal offenses, and paying about $400 million to the US DoJ, and GBP 30 million in the UK. I have the full history and details over at DID.
It will be interesting to see how future Saudi arms deals get done, given that bribes are a requirement.
Very smart approach. Swim in shallow flats where fast-moving fish live. Begin by circling around them, beating your flukes into the seabed to raise sand clouds. When the circle closes, the fish try to jump out. And hey! Those tricks from Sea World have a real world counterpart after all.
I've written before that I'm pretty tired of this, and less than amused by the few who keep trying to keep the "Is President Obama Really a US Citizen" meme alive. Over at Breitbart's "Big Journalism", Kurt Schlichter has also had it, and gives the whole thing both barrels.
"Birthers" are very much a fringe thing, but there are times when fringe things are dishonest about something serious enough that they deserve to be targeted in the public arena. And the responsibility for doing so should fall, as it does here, to their allies/ co-belligerents on the political spectrum. Responsibility is something that has taken a huge holiday in modern culture, on way too many levels. Politics is no exception, for reasons of technology and policy. Centralized party systems have become weak in America, and we can talk sometime about whether that has really been a good thing. But no matter the reasons, the result is a shift to generalized responsibility within political movements to balance accountability with coalition building.
That's why I'm cautiously pleased to see conservative spokespeople who continue to take on this particular issue, and hope the more general lesson spreads. The years ahead may well be filled with very angry politics, across the spectrum. Political centers of gravity that take more responsibility are something we're going to need, as a nation, in order to pull through.
Well, this was interesting. Just a couple weeks ago, another IPCC scandal revealed that Himalayan glaciers wouldn't be melting away by 2035, as claimed. More like, uh, 2305. Maybe. The whole controversy, and process by which this grossly unsubstantiated claim became very financially beneficial to the people making it, was aptly described as "nice work if you can invent it." So, why was the material in the IPCC report? Well, this pretty much sums up the IPCC as politics, not science:
"In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report's chapter on Asia, said: 'It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.'It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.' "
Just let that statement sink in for a bit.
Now, the real expert whose contrary (and correct) glacier work IPCC chair R.K. Pachauri blackballed as "voodoo"science wants an apology. And the Indian government has decided that science is too important to be left to the IPCC. Environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh, who notes that while some glaciers are shrinking, others are advancing, had an announcement:
Prof. Sam Liles of Purdue focuses on cyber-security and low intensity conflict. Which makes his take on the recent China hacks, and the larger implications of what Google is creating, timely.
In a riff on Google's "Don't be Evil" motto, he titles it "Evil Google: What you don't know just might hurt you." Very thought provoking, even if you know a fair bit about this stuff already.
So, COIN still reigns supreme, albeit with trimmed sails?
No.
