Frattinising

 European Commissioner Franco Frattini to Reuters:

“I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector… on how it may be possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism.”

Will he prevent himself?

How do people as stupid as this get into such positions of power?

(Via EDRI.) 

Billions over Baghdad

Read this article please. It’s long, but worth the read. Who needs oil?

Vanity Fair: Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam’s palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled.