Geopolitics/War, Health/Environment, Tyranny

Head of the FBI’s Anthrax Investigation Says the Whole Thing Was a Sham

Washington’s Blog: April 17, 2015

Agent In Charge of Amerithrax Investigation Blows the Whistle

The FBI head agent in charge of the anthrax investigation – Richard Lambert – has just filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit calling the entire FBI investigation bullshit:

In the fall of 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, a series of anthrax mailings occurred which killed five Americans and sickened 17 others. Four anthrax-laden envelopes were recovered which were addressed to two news media outlets in New York City (the New York Post and Tom Brokaw at NBC) and two senators in Washington D.C. (Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle). The anthrax letters addressed to New York were mailed on September 18, 2001, just seven days after the 9/11 attacks. The letters addressed to the senators were mailed 21 days later on October 9, 2001. A fifth mailing of anthrax is believed to have been directed to American Media, Inc. (AMI) in Boca Raton, Florida based upon the death of one AMI employee from anthrax poisoning and heavy spore contamination in the building.

Executive management at FBI Headquarters assigned responsibility for the anthrax investigation (code named “AMERITHRAX”) to the Washington Field Office (WFO), dubbing it the single most important case in the FBI at that time. In October 2002, in the wake of surging media criticism, White House impatience with a seeming lack of investigative progress by WFO, and a concerned Congress that was considering revoking the FBI’s charter to investigate terrorism cases, Defendant FBI Director Mueller reassigned Plaintiff from the FBI’s San Diego Field Office to the Inspection Division at FBI Headquarters and placed Plaintiff in charge of the AMERITHRAX case as an “Inspector.” While leading the investigation for the next four years, Plaintiff’s efforts to advance the case met with intransigence from WFO’s executive management, apathy and error from the FBI Laboratory, politically motivated communication embargos from FBI Headquarters, and yet another preceding and equally erroneous legal opinion from Defendant Kelley – all of which greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation.

On July 6, 2006, Plaintiff provided a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303. Reports of mismanagement conveyed in writing and orally included: (a) WFO’s persistent understaffing of the AMERITHRAX investigation; (b) the threat of WFO’s Agent in charge to retaliate if Plaintiff disclosed the understaffing to FBI Headquarters; (c) WFO’s insistence on staffing the AMERITHRAX investigation principally with new Agents recently graduated from the FBI Academy resulting in an average investigative tenure of 18 months with 12 of 20 Agents assigned to the case having no prior investigative experience at all; (d) WFO’s eviction of the AMERITHRAX Task Force from the WFO building in downtown Washington and its relegation to Tysons Corner, Virginia to free up space for Attorney General Ashcroft’s new pornography squads; (e) FBI Director’s Mueller’s mandate to Plaintiff to “compartmentalize” the AMERITHRAX investigation by stove piping the flow of case information and walling off task force members from those aspects of the case not specifically assigned to them – a move intended to stem the tide of anonymous media leaks by government officials regarding details of the investigation. [Lambert complained about compartmentalizing and stovepiping of the investigation in a 2006 declaration.  See this, this and this]

This sequestration edict decimated morale and proved unnecessary in light of subsequent civil litigation which established that the media leaks were attributable to the United States Attorney for the District of the District of Columbia and to a Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI’s National Press Office, not to investigators on the AMERITHRAX Task Force; (f) WFO’s diversion and transfer of two Ph.D. Microbiologist Special Agents from their key roles in the investigation to fill billets for an 18 month Arabic language training program in Israel; (g) the FBI Laboratory’s deliberate concealment from the Task Force of its discovery of human DNA on the anthrax-laden envelope addressed to Senator Leahy and the Lab’s initial refusal to perform comparison testing; (h) the FBI Laboratory’s refusal to provide timely and adequate scientific analyses and forensic examinations in support of the investigation; (i) Defendant Kelley’s erroneous and subsequently quashed legal opinion that regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) precluded the Task Force’s collection of evidence in overseas venues; (j) the FBI’s fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.

Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions. Plaintiff further objected to the FBI’s ordering of Plaintiff not to speak with the staff of the CBS television news magazine 60 Minutes or investigative journalist David Willman, after both requested authorization to interview Plaintiff.

In April 2008, some of Plaintiff’s foregoing whistleblower reports were profiled on the CBS television show 60 Minutes. This 60 Minutes segment was critical of FBI executive management’s handling of the AMERITHRAX investigation, resulting in the agency’s embarrassment and the introduction of legislative bills calling for the establishment of congressional inquiries and special commissions to examine these issues – a level of scrutiny the FBI’s Ivins attribution could not withstand.

After leaving the AMERITHRAX investigation in 2006, Plaintiff continued to publicly opine that the quantum of circumstantial evidence against Bruce Ivins was not adequate to satisfy the proof-beyond-a-reasonable doubt threshold required to secure a criminal conviction in federal court. Plaintiff continued to advocate that while Bruce Ivins may have been the anthrax mailer, there is a wealth of exculpatory evidence to the contrary which the FBI continues to conceal from Congress and the American people.

Exonerating Evidence for Ivins

Agent Lambert won’t publicly disclose the exculpatory evidence against Ivins. As the New York Times reports:

[Lambert] declined to be specific, saying that most of the information was protected by the Privacy Act and was unlikely to become public unless Congress carried out its own inquiry.

But there is already plenty of exculpatory evidence in the public record.

For example:

  • Handwriting analysis failed to link the anthrax letters to known writing samples from Ivins
  • No textile fibers were found in Ivins’ office, residence or vehicles matching fibers found on the scotch tape used to seal the envelopes
  • No pens were found matching the ink used to address the envelopes
  • Samples of his hair failed to match hair follicles found inside the Princeton, N.J., mailbox used to mail the letters
  • No souvenirs of the crime, such as newspaper clippings, were found in his possession as commonly seen in serial murder cases
  • The FBI could not place Ivins at the crime scene with evidence, such as gas station or other receipts, at the time the letters were mailed in September and October 2001
  • Lab records show the number of late nights Ivins put in at the lab first spiked in August 2001, weeks before the 9/11 attacks

As noted above, the FBI didn’t want to test the DNA sample found on the anthrax letter to Senator Leahy.  In addition, McClatchy points out:

After locking in on Ivins in 2007, the bureau stopped searching for a match to a unique genetic bacterial strain scientists had found in the anthrax that was mailed to the Post and to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, although a senior bureau official had characterized it as the hottest clue to date.

Anthrax vaccine expert Meryl Nass. M.D., notes:

The FBI’s alleged motive is bogus. In 2001, Bioport’s anthrax vaccine could not be (legally) relicensed due to potency failures, and its impending demise provided room for Ivins’ newer anthrax vaccines to fill the gap. Ivins had nothing to do with developing Bioport’s vaccine, although in addition to his duties working on newer vaccines, he was charged with assisting Bioport to get through licensure.

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The FBI report claims the anthrax letters envelopes were sold in Frederick, Md. Later it admits that millions of indistinguishable envelopes were made, with sales in Maryland and Virginia.

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FBI emphasizes Ivins’ access to a photocopy machine, but fails to mention it was not the machine from which the notes that accompanied the spores were printed.

FBI Fudged the Science

16 government labs had access to the same strain of anthrax as used in the anthrax letters.

The FBI admitted that up to 400 people had access to flask of anthrax in Dr. Ivins’ lab.  In other words, even if the killer anthrax came from there, 399 other people might have done it.

Moreover, even the FBI’s claim that the killer anthrax came from Ivins’ flask has completely fallen apart. Specifically, both the National Academy of Science and the Government Accountability Office – both extremely prestigious, nonpartisan agencies – found that FBI’s methodology and procedures for purportedly linking the anthrax flask maintained by Dr. Ivins with the anthrax letters was sloppy, inconclusive and full of holes.  They found that the alleged link wasn’t very strong … and that there was no firm link.  Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences found that the anthrax mailed to Congressmen and the media could have come from a different source altogether than the flask maintained by Ivins.

Additionally, the Ft. Detrick facility – where Ivins worked – only handled liquid anthrax.  But the killer anthrax was a hard-to-make dry powder form of anthrax.  Ft. Detrick doesn’t produce dry anthrax; but other government labs – for example Dugway (in Utah) and Batelle (in Ohio) – do.

The anthrax in the letters was also incredibly finely ground; and the FBI’s explanation for how the anthrax became so finely ground doesn’t even pass the smell test.

Further, the killer anthrax in the letters had a very high-tech  anti-static coating so that the anthrax sample “floated off the glass slide and was lost” when scientists tried to examine it.  Specifically, the killer anthrax was coated with polyglass and each anthrax spore given an electrostatic charge, so that it would repel other spores and “float”.   This was very advanced bio-weapons technology to which even Ivins’ bosses said he didn’t have access.

Top anthrax experts like Richard Spertzel say that Ivins didn’t do it. Spertzel also says that only 4 or 5 people in the entire country knew how to make anthrax of the “quality” used in the letters, that Spertzel was one of them, and it would have taken him a year with a full lab and a staff of helpers to do it. As such, the FBI’s claim that Ivins did it alone working a few nights is ludicrous.

Moreover, the killer anthrax contained silicon … but the anthrax in Ivins’ flask did not.  The FBI claimed the silicon present in the anthrax letters was absorbed from its surroundings … but Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories completely debunked that theory. In other words, silicon was intentionally added to the killer anthrax to make it more potent.  Ivins and Ft. Detrick didn’t have that capability … but other government labs did.

Similarly, Sandia National Lab found the presence of iron and tin in the killer anthrax … but NOT in Ivins’ flask of anthrax.

Sandia also found that there was a strain of bacteria in one of the anthrax letters not present in Ivins’ flask. (The bacteria, iron, tin and silicon were all additives which made the anthrax in the letters more deadly.)

The Anthrax Frame Up

Ivins wasn’t the first person framed for the anthrax attacks …

Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country. And see this.

People don’t remember now, but the “war on terror” and Iraq war were largely based on the claim that Saddam and Muslim extremists were behind the anthrax attacks (and see this and this)

And the anthrax letters pushed a terrified Congress into approving the Patriot Act without even reading it. Coincidentally, the only Congressmen who received anthrax letters were the ones who were likely to oppose the Patriot Act.

And – between the bogus Al Qaeda/Iraq claims and the FBI’s fingering of Ivins as the killer – the FBI was convinced that another U.S. government scientist, Steven Hatfill, did it.  The government had to pay Hatfill $4.6 million to settle his lawsuit for being falsely accused.

Ivins’ Convenient Death

It is convenient for the FBI that Ivins died.

The Wall Street Journal points out:

No autopsy was performed [on Ivins], and there was no suicide note.

(read the full article at Washington’s Blog)

Tyranny, WTF

FBI admits it fudged forensic hair matches in nearly all criminal trials for decades

Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post: April 19, 2015

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favoured prosecutors in more than 95 per cent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

The FBI errors alone do not mean there was not other evidence of a convict’s guilt. Defendants and federal and state prosecutors in 46 states and the District of Columbia are being notified to determine whether there are grounds for appeals. Four defendants were previously exonerated.

The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the U.S. courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said. The question now, they said, is how state authorities and the courts will respond to findings that confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques — like hair and bite-mark comparisons — that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989.

In a statement, the FBI and Justice Department vowed to continue to devote resources to address all cases and said they “are committed to ensuring that affected defendants are notified of past errors and that justice is done in every instance. The Department and the FBI are also committed to ensuring the accuracy of future hair analysis, as well as the application of all disciplines of forensic science.”

Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, commended the FBI and department for the collaboration but said, “The FBI’s three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster.”

“We need an exhaustive investigation that looks at how the FBI, state governments that relied on examiners trained by the FBI and the courts allowed this to happen and why it wasn’t stopped much sooner,” Neufeld said.

Norman Reimer, the NACDL’s executive director, said, “Hopefully, this project establishes a precedent so that in future situations it will not take years to remediate the injustice.”

While unnamed federal officials previously acknowledged widespread problems, the FBI until now has withheld comment because findings might not be representative.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a former prosecutor, called on the FBI and Justice Department to notify defendants in all 2,500 targeted cases involving an FBI hair match about the problem even if their case has not been completed, and to redouble efforts in the three-year-old review to retrieve information on each case.

“These findings are appalling and chilling in their indictment of our criminal justice system, not only for potentially innocent defendants who have been wrongly imprisoned and even executed, but for prosecutors who have relied on fabricated and false evidence despite their intentions to faithfully enforce the law,” Blumenthal said.

(read the full article at National Post)

Health/Environment

Fukushima Fallout? Emergency closure of fishery along entire West Coast – “Catastrophic crash… Population decimated”

Emergency closure of fishery along entire West Coast — Almost no babies surviving since 2011 — “Catastrophic crash… Population decimated… Crisis… Collapse so severe” — “Latest in series of alarming die-offs… mass reproductive failures… strange diseases” — Official: “A lot of weird things out there”

ENENews: April 16th, 2015

NY Times, Apr 15, 2015 (emphasis added): [Regulators] approved an emergency closure of commercial sardine fishing off Oregon, Washington and California… Earlier this week, the council shut down the next sardine season… [R]evised estimates of sardine populations… found the fish were declining in numbers faster than earlier believed… [Stocks are] much lower than estimated last year… The reasons are not well-understood.

Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting, April 13, 2015: Ben Enticknap, Oceana senior scientist (1:08:00 in) — “We’ve seen a significant change in recruitment [Recruitment: The number of new young fish that enter a population]. There’s been practically no recruitment in recent years, and this was not expected.”

Undercurrent News, Apr 14, 2015: [A]ccording to the report on the emergency action from the PFMC… “the total stock biomass of Pacific sardine is declining as a result of poor recruitment“… [A California Wetfish Producers Association official said] “little recruitment was observed in 2011-2014.”

Oregonian, Apr 13, 2015: Pacific coast sardines are facing a population collapse so severe [fishing] will be shut down… [The] downward spiral in spite of favorable water conditions has ocean-watchers worried there’s more to this collapse than cyclical population trends. “There are a lot of weird things happening out there, and we’re not quite sure why they aren’t responding the way they should,” said Kevin Hill, a NOAA Fisheries biologist… Fishery managers are adding it to a list of baffling circumstances off the West Coast… NOAA surveys indicate very few juvenile fish made it through their first year. “The population isn’t replacing itself,” Hill said.

SFist, Apr 14, 2015: [T]he population appears decimated… As the Council writes, “temperatures in the Southern California Bight have risen in the past two years, but we haven’t seen an increase in young sardines”… Sardines typically spawn in warmer waters, with cold water decreasing their numbers.

SF Chronicle, Apr 14, 2015: Sardine population collapses… [There’s] evidence stocks are going through the same kind of collapse [seen in the 1950s]… The sardine population along the West Coast has collapsed… Causes of crisis — A lack of spawning… was blamed for the decline… Severe downturn… things recently took a turn for the worse… because of a lack of spawning due to poor ocean conditions in 2014… The collapse this year is the latest in a series of alarming die-offs, sicknesses and population declines in the ocean ecosystem along the West Coast. Anchovies… have also declined [due to] a lack of zooplankton… Record numbers of starving sea lions… Brown pelicans, too, have suffered from mass reproductive failures and are turning up sick and dead… Strange diseases have also been proliferating in the sea…

Monterey Herald, Apr 13, 2015: For the first time in 30 years [sardine fishing] will be banned.

KPCC, Apr 1, 2015: The first time that sardine fishing has been banned since federal management of the fishery began… Many are worried a… catastrophic crash is happening.

Drugs, WTF

Mainstream Media Censors Critical Parts Of Obama Verbal Exchange With Rastafarian

Barack Obama stuttered for 20 seconds when a Rasta in Jamaica asked him about marijuana (VIDEO)

WTF News: April 12, 2015

The curious legal structure of state and federal laws in America has left many around the world with questions about why marijuana is treated with such a wide disparity in different regions.

A set of intriguing questions on the issue was posed to United States President Barack Obama during a recent trip to Jamaica by a geniune Rastafarian in the town hall crowd named Miguel Williams.

The exchange was originally reported as a funny outtake by Yahoo from an ABC News video but the full version of the video reveals the likely reason that Yahoo declined share the entire clip. The Yahoo article made a joke of a very serious set of questions and left out the most critical parts of the man’s logic, even disrespecting his stated nickname by not capitalizing the first letter.

US President Barack Obama had been on the verdant Caribbean island of Jamaica less than 24 hours — and had already visited Bob Marley’s former home — before he was asked by a dreadlocked Rastafarian about legalizing marijuana.

In a Kingston town hall event, participant Miguel Williams, sporting a “Rasta4life” wrist band, asked the US commander-in-chief if he would become ganja’s champion.

“Give thanks! Yes greetings Mr President,” said Williams, “life and blessings on you and your family.”

“My name is Miguel Williams but you can call I and I ‘[S]teppa’… That is quite sufficient, ya man.”

Unperturbed by giggles from the audience, Williams set forth his case for legalization and decriminalization of the hemp industry and marijuana.

The Rastafari faith includes the spiritual use of cannabis.

“How did I anticipate this question?” was Obama’s joking response. “Well,” he said adding a comic sigh.

“There is the issue of legalization of marijuana and then there is the issue of decriminalizing or dealing with the incarceration in some cases devastation of communities as a consequence of non-violent drug offenses,” Obama said.

“I am a very strong believer that the path that we have taken in the United States in the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has been so heavy in emphasizing incarceration that it has been counterproductive,” he said to some cheers.

But on the question of whether the United States should, in the words of reggae musician Peter Tosh “legalize it” Obama was more circumspect.

“I do not foresee, any time soon, Congress changing the law at a national basis.”

What was skipped by Yahoo is one of the principal questions at the heart of the drug war and an issue of personal liberty for billions around the world.

(Miguel “Steppa” Williams on the island nation’s economic issues relating to the International Monetary Fund)
“It really comes on the foreground of, um… we face economic issues with the [ (IMF)] et cetera, and we find realistically that the hemp industry, the marijuana industry provides a highly feasible alternative to rise up out of poverty, so I am wanting to overstand and to understand how US is envisioning, how would you see Jamaica on a decriminalization, legalization emphasis on the hemp industry… Your thoughts… (to crowd applause)

The virtually global prohibition on marijuana is not new and has failed to hide the knowledge that cannabis and hemp can be used for thousands of commercial products and industrial services, not to mention personal use at home.

The question stumped President Obama for about 20 seconds as he formulated his response. Obama started with a nervous explanation of the laws in Washington and Colorado and the distinction between decriminalization, which is focused on ending the prison problem leaving millions with drug convictions that prevent them from getting a job, versus the legalization aspect which enables the legal sale and taxation of the plant. He went on to bend his response towards a cynical message of “reducing demand” for cannabis, as in lowering the amount consumed by the populace, and then trended into talking about problems of addiction and a public health crisis.

Obama largely ignored the issue of economics and poverty, the critical part of the series of questions asked, giving it very little response time in comparison to the long-winded explanation of the simpler concepts. Well played Mr. President, can’t bash the IMF of course, it is counterproductive to the organization’s goals of “government reform” enforced by debt slavery. Obama simply stated that even if cannabis and hemp were legal, multinational corporations would soon dominate the market and freeze out “small and medium” competitors as he framed it.

(full article at WTF News)

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Geopolitics/War, Privacy, Tyranny

Undercover Mounties pushed pressure-cooker bomb plan on accused terror couple, court hears

Ian Mulgrew
Postmedia News: April 9, 2015

The Surrey couple accused of plotting to bomb the B.C. Legislature was taken on a three-day holiday in the Okanagan by the RCMP so they could relax while working on their terrorist plan.

But surveillance recordings of the impoverished addicts relishing the police-provided corner hotel suite and personal bathrobes don’t buttress the prosecution case against the pair. They broadsided it.

Organized after RCMP undercover officers had spent more than four months in a futile attempt to have John Nuttall articulate a real plan, the police used the Kelowna getaway to persuade him to abandon a harebrained scheme involving rockets armed with explosives made from cow manure and use pressure-cooker bombs filled with C-4.

“The reason I like the pressure-cooker idea is because we know it works, and it’s doable,” said an undercover officer acting as an Islamic extremist in the sophisticated police sting.

Later during the meeting, the officer, who like his colleagues cannot be named or identified by court order, enthusiastically reiterated the message: “I like that idea (using pressure-cooker bombs) … if you had a bunch of those and you decided you actually wanted to use that … if you wanted to put C-4 in that, like holy shit, how much damage would that (cause)…”

If Nuttall didn’t get the message, it was repeated a third time by the cop: “I like the pressure cooker thing a lot. I think it is feasible. It’s exciting. You know you can do it.”

It was a banner day for the defence, which has called on the jury to scrutinize police conduct.

Nuttall, 40, and Amanda Korody, 31, have pleaded not guilty to four charges in connection to the supposed plan to detonate explosive devices in Victoria during July 1, 2013 Canada Day celebrations.

But their B.C. Supreme Court trial has heard that by mid-June Nuttall, who was on methadone, didn’t know what day of the week it was and often confused the federal and provincial governments, Parliament and the Legislature, Ottawa and Victoria.

His lawyer Marilyn Sandford suggested the holiday was organized because the Mounties were concerned their 240-officer investigation was off the rails because Nuttall was unbalanced and unfocused.

Much of what he said was culled from Rambo movies, conspiracy plots and extremist Islamic literature.

He was wearing mirrored-rock-star sunglasses and eye-makeup, known as kohl, as the RCMP officer pretending to be an extremist Arab businessman drove them to Kelowna on June 16.

Nuttall intended to launch rockets at the “Parliament Buildings” and if he had any left over he would launch them at Seattle — which he believed was 32 km from Vancouver rather its true distance, 230 km.

“It’s going to take a lot of planning … a year to plan this and build this,” he said.

“A year, holy, that’s…” the corporal said, staggered.

“Starting today, oh yeah,” Nuttall continued. “By this time next year I want to be doing this … maybe sooner, the sooner the better.”

“I thought you wanted to make the pressure cookers?” the officer asked.

“I did, but as a distraction,” Nuttall replied.

Nuttall had told the undercover officer earlier he wanted to arm the rockets with homemade explosive made in part from cow manure.

But on the way to the Okanagan, the officer told him: “Don’t worry about explosives. Know what we are going to use? We are going to use C-4.”

“C-4 for the test?”

“For the pressure cooker,” the officer said.

(read the full article at National Post)

RELATED:
Did FBI “Set Up” Capitol Bombing Suspect? They’ve Done It 49 Times Since 9/11!

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Geopolitics/War

Day One of Mike Duffy trial is bad news for Harper

Karl Nerenberg
rabble: April 8, 2015

On the first day of the Mike Duffy trial, both the prosecution and the defence made arguments that were damaging to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his inner circle.

Crown Prosecutor Mark Holmes said, “Sen. Duffy was probably ineligible to sit in the Senate as a representative of Prince Edward Island.”

Holmes added that this trial will not decide that thorny constitutional question.

But folks in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) must have collectively winced when they heard that assertion from a non-partisan public official.

The PMO had, it seems, made great efforts to establish that Duffy could be a Prince Edward Island resident for the purpose of representing that province in the Senate, but not for the Senate expense rules.

Duffy and his various lawyers make the opposite claim.

They argue that once Duffy was appointed Senator from Prince Edward Island, the former journalist automatically became a PEI resident in every sense of the word.

On Tuesday, Duffy’s criminal lawyer, Donald Bayne, intimated that the Prime Minister and his office, and the Conservative Senate leadership, saw things that way until Duffy’s PEI residency became a political embarrassment.

Then they turned on Duffy and decided to — in Bayne’s version — compel the PEI Senator to publicly “admit” he had made a mistake in claiming expenses for his Ottawa-area home.

In Duffy’s now famous words in the Senate chamber itself, the Prime Minister ordered him to: “Pay the money back!”

During his opening statement at the trial, Bayne even produced part of a police interview with Harper’s former Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright, in which the Bay Street multi-millionaire and one-time political wunderkind said: “We are basically forcing … somebody to repay money that they probably didn’t owe, and I wanted the prime minister to know that and be comfortable with that.”

Both sides make Harper look bad

So take your pick.

If the prosecution is right, the Prime Minister knowingly made an unconstitutional appointment to the Upper House.

If the defence is right, the Prime Minister’s Office and other senior Conservatives engaged in a scheme to whitewash a Senator’s politically embarrassing expense claims — claims which the Party leadership quite likely encouraged the Senator to make in the first place.

(read the full article at rabble)

Banksters, Corporate Welfare

Why Canada’s economy is headed off the cliff

Vikram Mansharamani
PBS : March 27, 2015

Canada is in the midst of a unprecedented housing boom that seems likely to bust. I was recently in Canada and noticed a schizophrenic oscillation between housing exuberance and oil-price despair. What did it mean for the Canadian economy’s outlook? Upon returning to the US, I did some research. What I found leads me to the conclusion that Canada is now among the most vulnerable large economies in the world. Here’s why.

First, household credit. The seemingly conservative Canadian population has been voraciously consuming debt at a breakneck pace. Total household debt (C$1.82 trillion) now exceeds GDP (C$1.6 trillion), approximately C$1.3 trillion of which was for residential mortgages (Click HERE). Further, household debt is now >160% of disposable income – meaning it would take ~20 months for a family to pay off its debt if interest rates were 0% and they spent 100% of their disposable income to do so. Uh oh! The consumer clearly seems stretched, so much so that McKinsey recently suggested Canadian financial instability driven by a rapid consumer slowdown was not unlikely (click HERE).

Second, housing prices. Home prices continue their basically uninterrupted rise that began in the mid-late 1990s. Unlike the United States real estate markets, which have corrected, Canadian prices continue to rise.   Detached single-family homes in Toronto now average more than C$1 million and Vancouver is now deemed the second least affordable city in the world (click HERE) – thanks to Chinese buyers (who are themselves facing a slower economy). Take a look at the following chart of US and Canadian housing prices in real terms since 1990.

Slide1

It’s interesting to note that the data in this chart is updated through the summer of 2014 (click HERE), and we know that prices have risen since then. In fact, the Bank of Canada even suggested in December that housing prices were overvalued by as much as 30% (click HERE). The IMF has also sounded warnings.

Third, crude oil. The impact of lower oil prices is rippling through the economy at breakneck speed. Since 2011, Alberta, the oil-rich home of the oil sands, was responsible for more than 50% of all jobs created in Canada. It has literally been the locomotive of job creation pulling Canada forward. It’s now in reverse. Employment growth has stopped in Alberta and is now shrinking. According to construction industry association BuildForce, Alberta is likely to see sustained job losses for the next three years at a minimum (click HERE). Further, because Alberta drew workers from all over the country, any provincial slowdown will have national ramifications on unemployment and consumer confidence (click HERE).

Finally, craziness. Yup, not sure how to better categorize what I’m about to say. Here’s the situation, as told to me by Seth Daniels of JKD Capital, one of the most astute Canada-watchers I know. Seth told me that there is now a booming private mortgage market in which ordinary citizens are borrowing from their home equity lines to lend money to desperate borrowers. Specifically, he noted “a homeowner acts as a subprime lender by drawing a HELOC at ~3% interest-only, and lends it to a subprime borrower at 8-12% for one year (interest only).” I honestly didn’t believe him when he first mentioned this to me, but I then confirmed it myself (click HERE).   In fact, if you’re a Canadian and interested, here’s a sales pitch from one vendor (click HERE). It’s only a matter of time before this shadow mortgage banking market slows, and the ramifications are likely to be enormous.

wile-e-coyote-falling-off-cliff

Net net, the ending of the Canadian credit binge, combined with an oil-driven economic slowdown, is likely to crush consumer sentiment.  In this Loonie tune, it seems our Crazy Canadian Coyote has run off the cliff, his feet are still moving, but he has yet to look down. He’s suspended in air, and it’s only a matter of time until gravity exerts its force.

Originally posted at:
http://www.mansharamani.com/navigating-uncertainty/crazy-canadian-credit-confronts-crude-eh/

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/why-canadas-economy-may-be-headed-off-the-cliff/

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Health/Environment

Mainstream media FINALLY covers ‘Unprecedented damage’ to ocean from Fukushima

Mainstream media have ignored the ongoing nuclear disaster in the pacific ocean for years, but reality is becoming harder for them to ignore.

CTV News: Radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear Kevin Kamps on how signs of radioactivity off B.C.’s coast should give us larger concern.

Alternative Free Press has been covering the Fukushima crisis ongoing since our inception. Here are just a few of the articles:

Fresh leak at Fukushima nuclear plant sees 70-fold radiation spike(February 2015)

Fukushima Didn’t Just Suffer 3 Meltdowns … It Also Suffered Melt-THROUGHS and Melt-OUTS(April 2014)

Fukushima boss admits radioactive water out of control(April 2014)

Fukushima Storage Crisis: Full Of Radioactive Water(March 2014)

Canadian Soil Tests Positive for Fukushima Radiation(March 2014)

Fukushima’s Radioactive Ocean Water Arrives At West Coast(February 2014)
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Alternative Free Press

Health/Environment

Scientist defends WHO report linking herbicide to cancer

Carey Gillam
Reuters: March 26, 2016

A World Health Organization group’s controversial finding that the world’s most popular herbicide “probably is carcinogenic to humans” was based on a thorough scientific review and is a key marker in ongoing evaluations of the product, the scientist who led the study said Thursday.

“There were several studies. There was sufficient evidence in animals, limited evidence in humans and strong supporting evidence showing DNA mutations … and damaged chromosomes,” Aaron Blair, a scientist emeritus at the National Cancer Institute, said in an interview.

Blair chaired the 17-member working group of the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which rocked the agricultural industry on March 20 by classifying glyphosate as “probably” cancer-causing.

[…] Monsanto spokesman William Brennan said. “Monsanto would like to understand how this conclusion could be reached and how the IARC process differs from other scientific reviews.”

But Blair said Thursday the classification is appropriate based on current science. There have been hundreds of studies on glyphosate, he said, with concerns about the chemical growing over time. The IARC group gave particular consideration to two major studies out of Sweden, one out of Canada and at least three in the United States, he said.

He stressed that the group did not classify glyphosate as definitely causing cancer.

“We looked at, ‘Is there evidence that glyphosate causes cancer?’ and the answer is ‘probably.’ That is different than yes,” said Blair.

He said the scientific understanding of glyphosate impacts is still evolving.

“It is different than smoking and lung cancer. We don’t say smoking probably causes cancer. We say it does cause cancer. At one point we weren’t sure, but now we are.”

Blair said the criticism of his group’s conclusion was not surprising given the widespread use of glyphosate.

“These sorts of things are going to go on as evidence is evaluated and scrutinized. That is what science is in democracy.”

(Read the full article at Reuters)

RELATED:
Study Confirms Popular Herbicide Is Brain-Damaging Neurotoxin
Study Shows Pesticides More Toxic to Human Cells Than Declared

Banksters, Corporate Welfare, Geopolitics/War, Tyranny

Quebec students are fighting for you

Jon Parsons
theindependent.ca : March 27, 2015

It seems like only yesterday the 2012 Quebec student movement rocked the streets of Montreal, and now they’re at it again.

The basis for the current strike is the same as its predecessor: opposition to austerity and neoliberalism. Over the last few years student groups in Quebec have consistently organized massive demonstrations in an impressive show of strength and commitment, and so it seems correct to understand the present student strike more as an intensification of a protracted struggle.

At the same time, there has been a proliferation of militant student protest throughout the global West. Occupations and demonstrations are continuing on a number of campuses, such as the London School of Economics, and University of Amsterdam, and University of Arts London, and University of Melbourne, to name a few. The grievances are strikingly similar to those expressed in Quebec – austerity, tuition fees, neoliberalism.

Outside the global West, significant and ongoing student movements are taking a stand in Honduras, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Myanmar, to name a few.

There has arguably not been such widespread student unrest since the famous student-led protests of 1968, and, at least in the West, Quebec students have been on the frontlines of the fight, enduring police brutality, subversion, and constant obfuscation in the mainstream press.

The student fight is your fight, too

The province of Newfoundland and Labrador has until recently weathered the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis, but with a significant deficit and growing debt, the provincial government has indicated that austerity measures will come into force in short order. Many things are “on the table,” including increased tuition at Memorial University, among other measures common to austerity economics.

At the same time, recent studies have shown that Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the least politically engaged provinces in Canada, in terms of both formal and informal politics. NL has one of the lowest overall voter turnouts (around 53 per cent) as well as the lowest youth voter turnout of any province (around 29 per cent).

The reasons for this are many and varied, and it is not my intention to assign blame. Nonetheless, there is an overwhelming sense of complacency, perhaps apathy, with regard to politics in the province, and especially so for youth.

In light of this, it is nothing of an exaggeration to say that Quebec students are fighting for us all, as they are the only significant force in the country opposing austerity and neoliberalism, and the only ones who seem to understand the importance of popular protest. Quebec students are showing us all how it’s done, both in terms of tenacity and in terms of organization, as Ethan Cox explains in Ricochet.

(read the full article at theindependent.ca)

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