Professor Enigma's Official Site

Then there was the tractor factory Iran built in Ciudad Bolivar. In January, the Associated Press reported that Turkish authorities had seized 22 containers going to Venezuela from Iran labeled "tractor parts." What they contained, according to one Turkish official, "was enough to set up an explosives lab." But perhaps the most interesting Iranian venture is a supposed gold mine not far from Angel Falls, in a remote area known as the Roraima Basin. The basin straddles Venezuela's border with neighboring Guyana, where a Canadian company, U308, thinks it has found the "geological look-alike" to Canada's Athabasca Basin. The Athabasca, the company's Web site adds, "is the world's largest resource of uranium"...

The official basis for this cooperation seems to be a Nov. 14, 2008 memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries' ministers of science and technology and given to me by a credible foreign intelligence source. "The two parties agreed to cooperate in the field of nuclear technology," reads the Spanish version of the document, which also makes mention of the "peaceful use of alternative energies." Days later, the Venezuelan government submitted a paper to the International Atomic Energy Agency on the "Introduction of a Nuclear Power Programme." (Online readers can see the memoranda for themselves in their Farsi and Spanish versions. One mystery: The Farsi version makes no mention of nuclear cooperation.)

Iran would certainly require large and reliable supplies of uranium if it is going to enrich the nuclear fuel in 10 separate plants—an ambition Ahmadinejad spelled out last month. It would also require an extensive financial and logistical infrastructure network in Venezuela, not to mention unusually good political connections. All this it has in spades. Consider financing. In January 2008, the Bank of International Development opened its doors for business in Caracas. At the top of its list of its directors, all of whom are Iranian, is one Tahmasb Mazaheri, former governor of the central bank of Iran. As it turns out, the bank is a subsidiary of the Export Development Bank of Iran, which in October 2008 was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for providing "financial services to Iran's Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics."

Or consider logistics. For nearly three years, Venezuelan airline ConViasa has been flying an Airbus 340 to Damascus and Tehran. Neither city is a typical Venezuelan tourist destination, to say the least. What goes into the cargo hold of that big plane is an interesting question. Also interesting is that in October 2008 the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, also sanctioned by Treasury, announced it had established a direct shipping route to Venezuela.

In 1998 Bill Clinton nominated Aponte, who was a member of his transition team, to be U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic but she was forced to withdraw after news broke about her tight relationship with an agent of Communist Cuba’s spy agency. The island nation has appeared on the State Department’s terrorism list since the early 1980s for supporting designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations—from South America and Europe—and for harboring fugitives from U.S. justice, including domestic terrorists. Cuba’s government also maintains close relationships with other state sponsors of terrorism such as Iran and Syria. On the heels of Aponte’s latest nomination, a popular news syndicate is rehashing the long forgotten story of her ignominious past. According to an intelligence memo obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Aponte cohabitated with an agent of the Cuban intelligence service, known as DGI. The crucial intelligence memo questioned the lack of a thorough security check into Aponte’s background and alleged that Aponte was recruited as a spy for Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro.

Police hoping to rummage through a suspect’s cell phone after an arrest must apply for a warrant, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled. That apparently makes it the first court to address a question I first wrote about two years ago, after Adam Gershowitz broached it in a law review article. Normally, when police arrest someone—and recall that even trivial offenses may provide formal grounds for arrest—they’re entitled to conduct an incidental search of the person and their immediate vicinity, nominally for the purpose of uncovering any weapons and preventing the destruction of contraband. The new wrinkle as Gershowitz noted, is that we’ve begun routinely carrying vast stores of personal data around with us in our pockets: photos, correspondence, music and movies, Internet browsing histories, even whole libraries of books. What’s more, these little archives are typically connected, sometimes automatically, to still more personal information held remotely: mailboxes, calendars, bank accounts, purchasing histories, or in principle just about anything accessible online.

Suddenly a narrow, reasonable-sounding exception to the ordinary Fourth Amendment warrant requirement starts looking like a pretty huge loophole. The quantity of personal "papers and effects" that can be stored in an ordinary phone would have filled a house just a few decades ago... This case involved more conventionally phone-like information: calling records. But the Court nevertheless saw the danger inherent in treating portable data storage devices as mere "containers," holding that searches of phones were reasonable only to the extent they could be linked to the twin justifications of safety and preventing destruction of evidence.

Buried in the House financial reform is a provision that would muscle up the FTC and radically expand its mission. Pushed by liberal barons Henry Waxman and Barney Frank, the language would empower the FTC to impose civil penalties on companies that are first-time offenders and make it easier for the agency to concoct new rules. The law, supported by FTC Chairman Jon Liebowitz, would also invest the agency with the power to independently litigate civil penalty cases rather than going through the Department of Justice. The idea is to create a more activist regulatory model a la the Securities and Exchange Commission. That's not necessary: Repeat offenders can already be hit with civil penalties, and in fraud cases the FTC can get an order from a judge tying up assets, thereby making civil penalties superfluous. The FTC also has the power to pass rules for which civil penalties are the standard remedy for violation. In still other instances, Congress can specify civil penalties...

Other agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission or the SEC, have narrow targets. The FTC's authority covers multiple industries. That gives the agency less knowledge and insight into particular industries from which to operate its enforcement regime. Combining that broad mandate with independent litigating authority and other powers would open the gates to ill-considered rules. As former FTC Chairman Tim Muris told the Senate Commerce Committee in July, "rather than enhancing consumer welfare, overly burdensome rules can harm the very market processes that serve consumers' interests."

The city of Cleveland has aggravated its vexing foreclosure problems and has lost millions in tax dollars by helping people buy homes they could not afford, a Plain Dealer investigation has found. The city provided mostly low-income buyers with down payment loans of up to $20,000 through the federally funded Afford-A-Home program, but did little to determine whether the people could actually afford to keep their homes...

For example, nearly half of 584 homes sold by the top three for-profit companies that tapped into the program over the eight years have gone into foreclosure. More than one-third of those homes have sold at sheriff's sale or sit abandoned because banks did not take them back... The loss in Afford-A-Home dollars from failed purchases from Cresthaven Development Corp., Rysar Properties Inc. and Pebblebrook Properties Inc. thus far totals more than $2.3 million... A Plain Dealer review of more than 50 Afford-A-Home files found borrowers who, according to their applications, earned as little as $15,000 a year when the city -- and mortgage lenders -- gave them loans.

One woman, according to a letter in her file, was homeless and living in a car with her children when she got $10,000 from the city. Another couple received food stamps and were jobless when they got an Afford-A-Home loan. Through 2004, the first-lien mortgages for Afford-A-Home buyers typically came from local banks fulfilling federal requirements to lend money in poorer neighborhoods. The loans carried low interest rates... The final bolded sentence in the excerpt shows that the CRA was a key element in Cleveland's catastrophe. CRA mandated that banks originating first-lien mortgages extend them to undeserving borrowers, or face brutal challenges to their ability to continue in business during regulators' audits and to other business moves such as mergers and acquisitions. As would be expected, short-term survival instincts overcame sound underwriting. Now, according to leftists, it's the banks' fault for doing what they were intimidated into doing.

In 2008 some 37 percent of government workers were unionized, nearly five times the share in the private sector, and the same share that was unionized 25 years earlier. Over that period, the share of unionized private-sector jobs collapsed from 17 percent to 8 percent. In 2009, for the first time, public workers comprised more than half of America's union members... Government employees earn 21 percent more than private ones and are 24 percent more likely to have access to health care. Only 21 percent of private workers enjoy a defined-benefit (DB) pension, which guarantees retirement income based on years of service and final salary, but 84 percent of state and local workers still receive DB plans. All this might be grand if states and cities could afford it, but they cannot and frustration is beginning to boil over...

Last year Vallejo, in California's San Francisco Bay Area, sank into bankruptcy under the weight of its labor costs. In California itself, the unfunded liabilities of retirement programs are expected to exceed $100 billion through 2015. One local blog tracks coddled public-sector pensioners: a former police chief in Newport Beach scrapes by on $221,554.56 a year.

Health officials are recalling hundreds of thousands of doses of swine flu vaccine after tests indicated they may not be potent enough to protect against the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified doctors about the recall Tuesday. The recall involves about 800,000 doses made by Sanofi Pasteur. The doses are pre-filled syringes intended for young children, ages 6 months to almost three years... Health officials say it’s not clear how many doses have already been given, but they don’t think children need to be re-vaccinated. The lots passed potency tests when they were first shipped, but tests indicate the potency waned after.

Airports have spent $3.5 billion in federal money since 1998 on projects the Federal Aviation Administration rated as low priority because they do little to improve the most pressing needs in the nation’s aviation system…The money comes from a program that is supposed to improve aviation safety…But the program also has funded terminals at little-used airports, hangars to store private jets, and parking areas that are free to customers.For example, Frank reports on Pellston Regional Airport in Michigan, which "used $7.5 million in federal funds to build a terminal with stone fireplaces and cathedral ceilings. The airport averages three departures a day"...

Lake Cumberland Regional Airport in Kentucky got $3.5 million to build a glass-fronted terminal in 2004 that was largely unused until the first passenger flights began this June. The airport now has six flights a week. Montgomery Regional Airport in Alabama got $22 million to build a $35 million terminal with a sloping glass facade and a rotunda topped with a domed ceiling that reflects the historical architecture of the state Capitol. Halliburton Field Airport in Duncan, Okla., got $700,000 for a terminal with a pilot room and a reception room. The airport, open only to private planes, has 24 landings and takeoffs a day, mostly local pilots in piston-engine planes.

Earlier this year, for example, President Obama proposed cutting one type of farm subsidy ("direct payments") for farmers earning over $500,000 a year. I suspect that about 95 percent of Americans would support that tiny nod toward fiscal sanity and deficit reduction. But not Senator Conrad, who helped shoot the proposal down.

Calling the global Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) "an idea whose time has come," [Max] Lawson [Oxfam] says in his memorandum that "politically the time is now" to pass such a tax. "It will take some great campaigning but I think we can do this," he says in a message introducing the memo. Lawson explains, "The global anger against the bankers; the huge pressure on rich country budgets; the need for money in 2010 to rescue the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] and from failure; to protect poor countries from the economic crisis; and the need to come up with money for climate change to unlock a global deal. All combine to make a very strong political backdrop."

The MDGs were established by the United Nations to make sure that the U.S. and other Western nations devote 0.7 percent of Gross National Product to official development assistance or foreign aid. As a Senator, Obama had introduced a bill, the Global Poverty Act, to mandate U.S. compliance with the MDGs at an estimated cost of $845 billion... such a tax would affect IRAs, Mutual Funds and pensions by taxing the exchange of financial transactions. It would hand over great sums of money to politicians in the name of bashing the big banks but ordinary Americans and their life savings would be hurt [don’t worry this is where the gov’t steps in and "saves" us].At the same time, the U.S. Congress is moving ahead with the "Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2009" (HR 4191), a financial transactions tax introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), a leading member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Lawson's document cites support for the tax from Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who endorsed the DeFazio measure during a December 7 news conference and, according to a CNS News report, announced that the bill would have to be made "global" to keep U.S. investors from taking their business overseas and out of taxable reach. Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is introducing a similar bill, which has the backing of the AFL-CIO, in the Senate... Oxfam, which is spearheading the campaign to get a global tax implemented, is one member of an international coalition of organizations working "to fight poverty and injustice." Its American affiliate receives funding from such entities as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The "Nothing Butters" are rampant in the world of atheism. Philosopher Daniel Dennett presupposes that "the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon." Dawkins assures us that the universe is "nothing but blind pitiless indifference." Crick tops it off with we’re "nothing but a pack of neurons." If we are all "nothing butters," why is it wrong for white "nothing butters" to own and sell black "nothing butters"?

Dawkins blames religion for the world’s evils. He said as much in 1997: "I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the small pox virus but harder to eradicate." Adolf Hitler said something similar: "The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light, and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

Forget the public option. Even without it, the health care bill presented in the Senate by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) would make some middle-class American families pay what amounts to a $15,200 annual federally-mandated insurance fee, according to facts revealed in analyses published by the Congressional Budget Office. The fee would result from the facts that the bill requires individuals—but not employers—to purchase health insurance plans and that families that earn up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level would be given government subsidies to purchase insurance in government-regulated insurance exchanges while families earning more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level would be denied government subsidies.

A family of four—two parents and two children—earning $88,200 would be at 400 percent of the poverty level this year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A family of four earning $88,201, therefore, would not be eligible for a federal subsidy to buy insurance under the Senate health-care bill. If the mother and father in such a family could not get employer-based health insurance—because their employers decided not to buy their workers insurance—the family would be required by law to purchase a policy with its own money that would cost an estimated $15,200 per year, according to the CBO.

Power companies say the meters will allow utilities to vary the price charged to their customers by the hour to correspond to what those utilities a re paying for energy in the wholesale market. This can help consumers save money, they say.

Lawmakers and U.S. automakers are peeved with Japan, which has launched a cash-for-clunkers program that doesn’t accept American-made cars. Under Japan’s program, consumers who trade in a car at least 13 years old can get a tax cut of up to $2,800 toward the purchase of a new car. But the program excludes imported vehicles from companies that have low sales in Japan. That covers General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, according to the American Automotive Policy Council, which has pressed the Obama administration for action. U.S. producers are particularly irked since Japanese companies did well under the cash-for-clunkers program Congress adopted. Just fewer than half the 677,000 vehicles sold were made by Japanese companies, though Japan notes that 80 percent of Japanese-brand autos sold in the U.S. are American-built.

Mr. Bloomberg owns a helicopter and two jets, both Falcon 900s. He flies everywhere on private jets, by far the least efficient form of transportation on or above the earth. He takes his jet to Bermuda many weekends. He has flown around the globe on it. He uses it to go to Washington. He is planning to get to Copenhagen for the climate conference by private jet, too.

The carbon math works out like this: by taking his Falcon 900 to Denmark, Mr. Bloomberg will be responsible for the release of 37 times the carbon dioxide than if he and his entourage flew on a scheduled commercial flight. The calculations were done at my request by Dimitri Simos, the developer of software used by the airline industry to assess aircraft emission and performance. Mr. Simos said that a Falcon 900 carrying eight people from Newark to Copenhagen would produce 21.6 tons of carbon dioxide. By adding eight people to the scheduled Scandinavian Airlines flight, the aircraft, usually an Airbus A330-300, would produce an additional 0.58 tons of carbon dioxide.

Mr. Bloomberg’s routine trips to Bermuda are even more carbon costly: the private jet produces 130 times more emissions than going commercial. On those jaunts, Mr. Simos said, the Falcon produces 4.3 tons of carbon dioxide; putting another two people on an American Airlines Boeing 757-200 that flies to Bermuda would produce only 66 more pounds.

The actual ROEs are said to be classified U.S. and NATO secrets, but based on individual soldier accounts, those restrictions include the following: No night or surprise searches. Villagers are to be warned prior to searches. Afghan National Army, or ANA, or Afghan National Police, or ANP, must accompany U.S. units on searches. U.S. soldiers may not fire at insurgents unless they are preparing to fire first. U.S. forces cannot engage insurgents if civilians are present. Only women can search women.

Troops can fire on insurgents if they catch them placing an IED but not if insurgents walk away from where the explosives are. Often, rules of engagement require varying levels of approvals before action can be taken. In one case, villagers had tipped off U.S. forces of the presence of a Taliban commander who was threatening village elders. To get permission to go after him, U.S. troops had to get 11 separate Afghan, U.S. and international forces' approval to the plan. The approval, however, did not come until well into the next day. By then, the Taliban commander had moved on, to the consternation of the villagers who had provided the tip. Observers have claimed that it can take some 96 hours to acquire all the permissions to act...

ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] troops cannot engage insurgents if they are leaving an area where an IED has been planted. In one case, insurgents planting an IED had detected the presence of U.S. forces and immediately began leaving the area, tossing evidence of their preparations along the way. U.S. forces could not fire on them. The ROEs in some cases have gone beyond limiting ISAF troops in their operations. In one case, ROE restrictions were in effect when four U.S. Marines twice pleaded by radio for artillery support in combat action in Kunar Province in Afghanistan – and twice they were refused, before they were killed.

Eight people were in custody Saturday after a crowd of angry protesters broke windows and threw burning torches at UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s campus residence in protest of fee hikes and budget cuts, authorities said. As many as 75 people – some of them carrying torches – surrounded the mansion, known as University House, on the north side of campus off Hearst Avenue at about 11:15 p.m. Friday, police said.

The crowd, including a man taken into custody in a university protest a day earlier, chanted, "No justice, no peace," and began smashing planters, windows and lights. Several hurled their torches at the building, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof... Between 40 and 75 people marched to Birgeneau’s home near the northwest corner of campus at about 11 p.m. Friday night. Some wielded torches that were allegedly thrown at police, while others broke the outside lighting to the house, overturned planters, damaged "impact resistant" windows on the house and scattered garbage brought from a nearby student housing cooperative, police said.

Beginning January 1, ordinary Czechs can grow up to five marijuana plants or have several marijuana cigarettes in their pockets without fear of criminal prosecution. Previously what constituted a small amount was not specified and the police and courts loosely interpreted the penal code case by case, often resulting in incarceration of home growers.