Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has failed in his appeal against extradition from the UK to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Two judges at the High Court in London said that a ruling in favor of extradition must be upheld.

Swedish authorities want him to answer accusations of raping one woman and sexually molesting another in Stockholm last year.

Mr. Assange has staunchly denied the allegations and says they are politically motivated.

Once in Sweden, Assange could be extradited to the United States where he would likely face charges that he published classified documents. If convicted, he would likely face the death penalty.

The Guardian reports:

"The decision means Assange could be removed to Sweden within 10 days, though it is more likely that the earliest time he would find himself on Swedish soil would be around 26 November."

"Assange has 14 days to seek leave to appeal to the supreme court if he believes there is a wider issue of "public importance" at stake in the decision. If he is successful in persuading the high court of that, he is likely to remain on conditional bail until a hearing, which is unlikely to take place until next year."

"If he is denied the right to appeal then British law enforcement officers will be responsible for arranging his removal to Sweden within 10 days."

Last month, Assange, an Australian citizen, said WikiLeaks would stop publishing secret cables and devote itself instead to fund-raising because of a financial blockade on payments to the site by U.S. firms Bank of America. Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union.

The blockade began within ten days of the launch of publication of classified diplomatic cables that has been blamed on a "concerted US-based, political attack that included vitriol by senior right wing politicians, including assassination calls against WikiLeaks staff."

In a public statement, Wikileaks said that “The blockade is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency.”

Assange was nominated this year for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian parliamentarian who entered the nomination said that "His publication of thousands of secret government documents has helped to promote human rights, democracy and freedom of speech."

"Wikileaks have contributed to the struggle for those very values globally, by exposing (among many other things) corruption, war crimes and torture -- sometimes even conducted by allies of Norway," he said.

Read the court's full judgement here.

This is sort of like Christmas, isn't it? This is the subversive beauty of whistleblowing: Even the mighty can be laid low when they least expect it. Get the popcorn!

The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland.

British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians".

Elmer, who after his press conference will return to Switzerland from exile in Mauritius to face trial, is a former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands and employee of the powerful Julius Baer bank, which accuses him of stealing the information.

He is also – at a time when the activities of banks are a matter of public concern – one of a small band of employees and executives seeking to blow the whistle on what they see as unprofessional, immoral and even potentially criminal activity by powerful international financial institutions.

Along with the City of London and Wall Street, Switzerland is a fortress of banking and financial services, but famously secretive and expert in the concealment of wealth from all over the world for tax evasion and other extra-legal purposes.

Elmer says he is releasing the information "in order to educate society". The list includes "high net worth individuals", multinational conglomerates and financial institutions – hedge funds". They are said to be "using secrecy as a screen to hide behind in order to avoid paying tax". They come from the US, Britain, Germany, Austria and Asia – "from all over".

Clients include "business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates – from both sides of the Atlantic". Elmer says: "Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on."

"What I am objecting to is not one particular bank, but a system of structures," he told the Observer. "I have worked for major banks other than Julius Baer, and the one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know, and the big boys know, that money is being secreted away for tax-evasion purposes, and other things such as money-laundering – although these cases involve tax evasion."

[...] Elmer says: "I agree with privacy in banking for the person in the street, and legitimate activity, but in these instances privacy is being abused so that big people can get big banking organisations to service them. The normal, hard-working taxpayer is being abused also."

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The other day FOX Host Megyn Kelly got into a heated argument with Kirsten Powers because Powers had the audacity to understand that the New Black Panther story Kelly was promoting was nothing more than FOX's attempt at race baiting. The post has spread through the blogosphere quickly and many are discussing this example of inflammatory "journalism" specifically. Last night, she went on The Factor to let off some steam and continue her assault against African-Americans. Unfortunately for Kelly, O'Reilly starts off by highlighting how ridiculous this NBPP story is by stating the fact that there is only EIGHT members in the whole party.

But Kelly has a much more sinister story to tell. One that connects the Obama administration to racist behavior.

O'Reilly: ...but why do you so passionately about the Panther story when there's only eight Panthers? There...er...it's a very minuscule organization.

Kelly: Yea, it's not about the Panthers. Ah, I got involved in this more seriously or more extensively as the DOJ whistleblower came...

Bill: Came on your show.

Kelly: And gave us his first television interview. And the reason that I'm passionate about this case and this story, Bill, is I believe in fidelity to the law. And I believe your viewers know that about me. It doesn't matter whether it's left or right, conservative or liberal. I try to follow the law.

That's the crux of her argument that O'Reilly dutifully is ready to distribute. Kelly is not being honest with the false narrative that she doesn't care which ideology is to blame for not upholding the law because her outrage was nowhere to be found during the Bush years.

It's all a smoke screen. J.Christian Adams is a fraud and everyone who has a smidgen of integrity knows it. Digby easily dispatches him here. The rest of the clip goes on to attack Newsweek's David Graham for rightly calling out this story in his piece: The New Black Panther Party Is the New ACORN

And make no mistake about it. This nothing of a case is all about whipping up the racist elements of the GOP/Tea Party Clans and the conservative movements, which they have seized upon and exploited for political gain for decades.

Kevin Drum has been writing about this story as well and he sees what I see. It's all about using The Scary Black Man Thing to appeal to the angry, disaffected white men and point his anger away from the real cause.

James Joyner, the right-leaning blogger takes a level-headed view as well.

Moreover, as others have pointed out, the district at which these two members of the NBPP were filmed was a majority black district that had gone overwhelmingly for John Kerry in 2004. If these two guys were really interested in intimidating white voters in the Philadelphia metro area rather than engaging in street theater, they would’ve shown up at a polling place in King of Prussia or Bensalem, not one in the inner-city at which, conveniently a guy with a video camera had shown up.

As I noted in an earlier post, there’s no evidence that any actual voters were intimidated by these two men, or even that their “protest” lasted longer than the amount of time that the camera crew was there filming them. In fact, judging from this video, it seems clear to me that these two guys were playing for the cameras.

The way FOX is amplifying the narrative of "The Angry Black Man" to their audience is disgusting. That's what Kelly has latched onto even if she deludes herself into thinking that she's on a righteous path. I might actually go on her FOX show and debate her. I've never gone on FOX before and although I've refused up to now, who knows? I doubt she'd have me anyway because I may know a little too much. Powers is hired by FOX and does a good job at times, but she is also a very conservative, pro-life Democrat and doesn't represent progressive thinking.

Drum later asks a good sort of a good question here.

(T)hey might be playing a dangerous game here. As Chait says, the Fox/Megyn Kelly crusade against the NBPP is taking this to a whole new level, one that's far more overt and far more incendiary than in the past. And there's no telling how that's going to turn out. As a friend puts it, "I think the reason why conservatives have so assiduously censored themselves from playing fast and loose with Atwater-esque racial overtones is that it can be a very difficult genie to put back in the bottle once released on a national stage." The press will start paying attention, tea partiers might feel freer to spout off, and the whole thing could turn ugly very quickly.

Or not. Who knows? But for reasons of both principle and self-interest, some of the conservative movement's big guns might want to think about weighing in on this before it gets out of hand. It can't hurt.

As a man studying the history of the conservative movement, I can make the observation that while conservatives hate and try to reject being painted with the racism brush, they do nothing whatsoever to stop those in their party from spreading this garbage. Like it was done before, the Atwateresque racial overtones still brings in the right wing engagement...and votes. That's the bottom line. No votes, no racism.

(h/t Heather)

Video Clip Special!

FBI Interviews Halliburton Whistleblower

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - FBI agents recently spent a day interviewing the Army contracting officer who raised concerns that the Pentagon improperly awarded contracts without competition to Halliburton Co., Vice President Dick Cheney 's former company.The Army Corps of Engineers contract officer, Bunnatine Greenhouse, was interviewed last week and now is gathering documents requested by the FBI and Army criminal investigators, her lawyer said Wednesday.

Video Clip of Chris Matthews interviewing Bunnatine Greenhouse on 10/29

Video

How can the blowout device be considered fail-safe? Because the free market is powerful enough to do anything!

A senior House Democrat said that the blowout preventer that failed to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a "useless" test version of one of the devices that was supposed to close the flow of oil and a cutting tool that wasn't strong enough to shear through joints that made up 10 percent of the drill pipe.

In a devastating review of the blowout preventer that BP said was supposed to be "fail-safe," Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said in a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday that the device was anything but fail-safe.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) pressed BP on why it had assured regulators in its exploration plan that it could deal with a spill 50 times larger than the current one when the current one seems to have defied control technology. "The American people expect you to have a response comparable to the Apollo project, not 'Project Runway,' " Markey said.

Stupak said that the committee investigators had also uncovered a document prepared in 2001 by the drilling rig operator Transocean that said there were 260 "failure modes" that could require removal of the blowout preventer.

"How can a device that has 260 failure modes be considered fail-safe?" Stupak said.

Perhaps this is the answer:

In addition, an oil industry whistleblower told Huffington Post that BP had been aware for years that tests of the device were being falsified in Alaska.

Mike Mason, who worked on oil rigs in Alaska for 18 years, says that he observed cheating on blowout preventer tests at least 100 times, including on many wells owned by BP.

As he describes it, the test involves a chart that shows whether the device will hold a certain amount of pressure for five minutes on each valve. (The test involves increasing the pressure from 250 pounds per square-inch (psi) to 5,000 psi.) "Sometimes, they would put their finger on the chart and slide it ahead -- so that it only recorded the pressure for 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes," he tells HuffPost.

Mason claims that a BP representative was usually present while subcontractors performed the tests.

The 48-year-old veteran oil worker claims that in the oil industry, particularly at BP, "the culture is basically safety procedures are shoved down your throat and then they look the other way when it's convenient for them." He claims that oil operators often wouldn't report spills and that when he spilled chemical fluid in 2003, he was told by his superiors not to report it. Mason, who now runs a small operation hauling freight in the Alaskan bush and owns guest cabins, says he was fired by a drilling company in 2006 after he wrote a letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News to condemn the firm for incorporating overseas and thereby avoiding taxes.

Jason Leopold has the story over at Truthout. Another day, another story of a huge corporate behemoth running amok and roughshod over the most basic safety regulations and protocols.

In 2008, an employee of BP hired to oversee and maintain required document databases relating to regulatory safety requirements raised concerns about a related BP Gulf project, Atlantis.

The whistleblower, whose name has been withheld at the person's request because the whistleblower still works in the oil industry and fears retaliation, first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world's largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008. Atlantis, which began production in October 2007, has the capacity to produce about 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

It was then that the whistleblower, who was hired to oversee the company's databases housing documents related to its Atlantis project, discovered that the drilling platform had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely, leaving the platform vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster that would far surpass the massive oil spill that began last week following a deadly explosion on a BP-operated drilling rig.

The specifics are pretty chilling. Regulations require extensive preparation and analysis of potential hazards with signoffs by qualified engineers at each step. Part of the analysis is a detailed drawing of the project's piping and process flows. BP's were incomplete, which prompted a member of the BP team to alert BP officials to the risk that they could be assumed to be complete, leading to a complete failure of the system. According to the Truthout article, 85 percent of the drawings did not receive engineer approval.

Eighty-five percent. Stunning. And there's more.

Even worse, 95 percent of Atlantis' subsea welding records did not receive final approval, calling into question the integrity of thousands of crucial welds on subsea components that, if they were to rupture, could result in an oil spill 30 times worse than the one that occurred after the explosion on Deepwater Horizon last week.

The rest of the story is at Truthout. Go read it. It's chilling all on its own, but when read in the larger context of the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch disaster, Goldman Sachs revelations, Wall Street meltdowns and SEC shenanigans, the abject failure of conservative "small government, no regulation" philosophy is truly on parade for everyone to see.

Late-night editorial comment:

The Masseys, Halliburtons, BPs, and Wall Streeters do it because they expect to do it and get away with it. They do it because for 30 years we've listened to the drumbeat of a cadence: Profits over all. As the cadence quickened, the media joined the parade, morphing from objective observer to drum major. The beat grew louder. With each decibel increase, their arrogance and power grew stronger. In 30 years, the John Birch society has transformed from pariah to mainstream. How far will we let them go before we get out in the streets and "take our country back"?

Continue reading »

So an SEC whistleblower contacts the agency, and is assured by the enforcement attorney working on JP Morgan that it's a "confidential" investigation. The attorney then turns around and dimes the guy out to his employers.

Where do the Republicans find these candidates? Do they vet them carefully for moral and ethical problems, and then recruit the ones who don't pass?

More importantly: Why didn't the SEC stand up for whistleblowers by throwing the book at this sleazebag? Maybe the answer lies in the description of Demos as a "politically wired" Republican attorney:

George Demos is a Republican Congressional candidate from Eastern Long Island whose Web site bears the slogan "Fighting for Freedom," and touts his service as an enforcement lawyer in the New York office of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A bio says that he "handled some of the SEC's most significant investigations," including that of Ponzi scheme artist Bernard Madoff, and "worked tirelessly on the cases that never made the headlines."

But one case that never made headlines was his own: Demos' campaign Web site and public statements omit any reference to a report last March of the SEC's Inspector General (IG), which found he had improperly disclosed protected, nonpublic information about a whistleblower to the counsel for that whistleblower's employer, a major Wall Street bank, JPMorgan Chase. The IG's charges of misconduct grew out of an SEC probe that began in 2003 of JPMorgan and other big financial institutions suspected of illegal market practices.

Demos has denied he did anything improper, and his campaign declined to comment on the matter. But documents obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) -- a non-partisan non-profit based in Washington -- confirm that Demos was the staff attorney who was cited in the IG report for violating SEC rules. The IG referred the case to the agency's management for possible disciplinary action, but the SEC took no action. Soon after that, Demos quietly resigned from his job and launched his bid for a seat in the House of Representatives.

But the confidential information that Demos disclosed was used by a JPMorgan lawyer against one of the bank's own employees, a whistleblower who had alerted the SEC to possible wrongdoing by his employer, according to the report and other documents, some released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Smear a doctor for reporting that veterans are being badly treated for PTSD? Unbelievable:

Internal documents and e-mails show that Navy officials unfavorably doctored a psychiatrist’s performance record after he blew the whistle on what he said was dangerously inept management of care for Marines suffering combat stress at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The internal correspondence, obtained by Salon, also includes an order to delete earlier records praising the work of the psychiatrist, Dr. Kernan Manion, who was fired last September after lodging his complaints.

Now top Navy officials are tangled up in the blackball campaign. Soon after Manion was fired, Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., asked the Pentagon about Manion’s concerns about healthcare at Camp Lejeune. In a Dec. 17 letter to Jones, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus panned Manion’s ethics and professionalism, presumably based on information Mabus received about Manion from Camp Lejeune.

But Salon has obtained internal Navy documents and correspondence that suggest officials at Camp Lejeune altered Manion’s favorable personnel records after he went public with his concerns, adding new, derogatory remarks similar to some of the information in Mabus’ letter to Jones.

[...] O'Byrne, head of mental health at the Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital, of "immediate concerns of physical safety" due to mistreated Marines teetering on the edge of violence. “There was -- and continues to be -- no means of discussion of high-intensity/dangerous cases,” he wrote. Later that month, Manion quoted to O’Byrne some Marine superiors who were calling troubled Marines “worthless pieces of shit” if they sought help.

Lost in Tarnation: Talking to your children about Scott Brown winning in Massachusetts. Now, how do we talk to WATB Dems?

Advice Unasked: Hillary Clinton's primary voters went for Brown?

First Draft: What a dick

Rumproast: Good for Cindy McCain

MediaBloodhound: My interview with Health Insurance whistleblower, Wendell Potter

The Sardonic Sideshow: The MSM doesn't exist...not anymore

The Brad Blog: American Law Institute, the 'only intellectually respectable support' for capital punishment in the U.S., abandons support for it

The Hunting of the Snark: Let's clear out the deadwood

Capital Eye: Stakeholders in the health insurance debate gave big to congress critters

Pruning Shears: The OLC does not have a head. Does it need a body?

Democracy Now!: Why is the whistleblower who exposed the massive UBS tax evasion scheme the only one heading to prison?

VetVoice: Bob Barr to Republicans: STFU