Russia Today: Wikileaks Chief Julian Assange Talks to RT

This 12-minute interview with Wikileaks founder and director Julian Assange answers questions about the Wikileaks process, the organization's decision to release the trove of documents related to the Afghan War, and his response to criticism that has emerged from the disclosure. Assange challenges the notion that the documents have endangered American soldiers or Afghan civilians' lives.

Another 50-minute interview with Assange can be found here (Democracy Now)

The New York Times: U.N. Appoints New Director of Troubled Watchdog Group

The United Nations has named a replacement director for its Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the internal agency charged with rooting out corruption at the international organization. The previous head stepped down earlier this month, but not before issuing a 50 page memo lambasting U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's leadership and apparent lack of caring about organizational accountability.

The United Nations has come under much criticism over the past several years for its less-than-thorough approach to rooting out internal corruption. The U.N. Procurement Task Force, which used to investigate allegations of fraud, wrongdoing and corruption within U.N. projects, was disbanded in 2008 when it was folded into OIOS. In its two years of existence, the Task Force completed more than 300 investigations, leading to "millions of dollars in restitution, misconduct findings against nearly 20 U.N. officials and a ban against about 50 U.N. contractors." Meanwhile, since 2008, 175 leftover cases have been left uninvestigated by the permanent investigations division (within OIOS), which has also not had a leader for more than two years.

Today's Washington Post reports that the Obama Administration is seeking further expansion of the FBI's power to issue National Security Letters (NSLs) and spinning the expansion as a "technical fix":

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. . . . But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters.

The Obama administration's "look forward" mentality apparently also means ignoring the FBI's dismal track record when it comes to NSLs.

Our thanks to Ramalinga Raju, founder of Satyam and perpetrator of the biggest financial fraud in Indian corporate history. He is turning what seemed like a typically tortuous legal process into true theater.

According to the Times of India, Raju is retracting the now-infamous confession he wrote in January 2009 admitting to what became the Satyam scandal and ensuing financial crisis.

Huh?

According to documents filed with the courts, Raju's letter -- which descriptively characterized his experiences as CEO of India's 4th largest IT outsourcer as "riding on the back of a tiger" -- was merely a resignation letter. His lawyers go on further to state that Raju's actions were mischaracterized by the authorities and the press.

The Huffington Post: Is there Discrimination at the World Bank?

This blog post looks into the evidence that there is racial discrimination occurring against World Bank employees by superiors. GAP released a report about this very issue late last year (which found multiple examples of racial discrimination), not to mention our reporting last year of a racial slur against African-Americans being written inside the walls of the institution in June 2009. The article mentions GAP.

Key Quote: A report by the Government Accountability Project refers to [a newspaper] column and makes this statement concerning World Bank discrimination and exclusion:

… black employees were underrepresented in the higher levels of the Bank … Most recently, interviews conducted by the Government Accountability Project (GAP) with well-informed sources revealed that, in 2008, only four black Americans held professional positions among a headquarters staff of over 3,500 professionals (more than 1,000 of whom are US nationals). This figure represents a significant proportional decline even from the abysmal levels reported … thirty years ago.

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Washington Post: Arlington Cemetery Problems were documented in 2005 but Never Fixed

Documents show that officials at Arlington National Cemetery knew as early as 2005 that there were serious problems with burial mapping, but chose to ignore them.

An interesting week in India unfolded as the justice and financial oversight processes continued their ponderous attempts to untangle Ramalinga Raju’s Satyam scam. It has been a year and a half since the founder of India’s fourth largest IT outsourcer and anointed poster child for 21st Century “India Inc.” announced to the world that he had been cooking Satyam’s books for over 10 years of business. Taking the high road, he declared that he had “inflated profits” rather than embezzling the money.

This week, Governancenow.com’s Gitanjali Minhas reports on Satyam’s use of its financial and accounting systems to “paper over” fraudulent accounts payable in the range of $580 million (US), in addition to the $2.1 billion (US) accounting fraud admitted to by Raju in January 2009.

It appears Satyam recruited its own programming teams to assist in the fraud -- going so far as to implement changes to its SAP-supplied ERP to pay false invoices from fictitious companies -- that Raju also created to back-up the authenticity of those invoices -- “out of workflow” (as it is referred to among SAP programmers). More importantly, this effort was not directed towards hiding losses (a common motive among more garden variety crooks like at AIG), it was directed towards hiding profits.

By the way, did we mention that Satyam is really good at implementing SAP financial and accounting systems for its clients? It is so good at it that it has secured a great deal of outsourcing business from Fortune 500 companies world-wide to do just that. For its trouble, Satyam has received recognition from SAP itself. In fact, Satyam’s relationship with the World Bank and former CIO Mohammed Muhsin was based on Satyam’s SAP skills. Just saying.


The writer is an expert in this field whose identity must remain confidential.

BBC News: Pentagon Hunts Wikileaks Source

The Pentagon is trying to figure out the identity of the individual, or individuals, who provided Wikileaks with the 92,000 classified documents and reports that have been making headlines across the globe. This article contains a transcript of a press conference with a State Department spokesman, which references the “ongoing investigation” into the matter.

It would appear the spokesman, when qualifying the investigation as "ongoing," is alluding to the case of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst, who is accused of leaking some material to Wikileaks surrounding the now infamous Collateral Murder video. The Pentagon is now studying Manning’s computers to see if he was the source for Sunday’s release on Wikileaks regarding the Afghanistan War.

In other news related to the Wikileaks release, House leaders are now rushing to schedule a vote on a war-financing bill, “fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure.” But Senator John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has stated that the new documents may indicate a shift in Afghanistan policy is in order: “Those policies are at a critical stage, and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent.”

On that note, this NYT masthead editorial focuses on the new evidence suggesting Pakistan’s collusion with the Taliban, and the need for something to be done.