Banksters, Geopolitics/War

All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars

Washington’s Blog: April 18, 2014

Former managing director of Goldman Sachs – and head of the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London (Nomi Prins) –  notes:

Throughout the century that I examined, which began with the Panic of 1907 … what I found by accessing the archives of each president is that through many events and periods, particular bankers were in constant communication [with the White House] — not just about financial and economic policy, and by extension trade policy, but also about aspects of World War I, or World War II, or the Cold War, in terms of the expansion that America was undergoing as a superpower in the world, politically, buoyed by the financial expansion of the banking community.

***

In the beginning of World War I, Woodrow Wilson had adopted initially a policy of neutrality. But the Morgan Bank, which was the most powerful bank at the time, and which wound up funding over 75 percent of the financing for the allied forces during World War I … pushed Wilson out of neutrality sooner than he might have done, because of their desire to be involved on one side of the war.

Now, on the other side of that war, for example, was the National City Bank, which, though they worked with Morgan in financing the French and the British, they also didn’t have a problem working with financing some things on the German side, as did Chase …

When Eisenhower became president … the U.S. was undergoing this expansion by providing, under his doctrine, military aid and support to countries [under] the so-called threat of being taken over by communism … What bankers did was they opened up hubs, in areas such as Cuba, in areas such as Beirut and Lebanon, where the U.S. also wanted to gain a stronghold in their Cold War fight against the Soviet Union. And so the juxtaposition of finance and foreign policy were very much aligned.

So in the ‘70s, it became less aligned, because though America was pursuing foreign policy initiatives in terms of expansion, the bankers found oil, and they made an extreme effort to activate relationships in the Middle East, that then the U.S. government followed. For example, in Saudi Arabia and so forth, they get access to oil money, and then recycle it into Latin American debt and other forms of lending throughout the globe. So that situation led the U.S. government.

Indeed, JP Morgan also purchased control over America’s leading 25 newspapers in order to propagandize US public opinion in favor of US entry into World War 1.

And many big banks did, in fact, fund the Nazis.

The BBC reported in 1998:

Barclays Bank has agreed to pay $3.6m to Jews whose assets were seized from French branches of the British-based bank during World War II.

***

Chase Manhattan Bank, which has acknowledged seizing about 100 accounts held by Jews in its Paris branch during World War II ….”Recently unclassified reports from the US Treasury about the activities of Chase in Paris in the 1940s indicate that the local branch worked “in close collaboration with the German authorities” in freezing Jewish assets.

The New York Daily News noted the same year:

The relationship between Chase and the Nazis apparently was so cozy that Carlos Niedermann, the Chase branch chief in Paris, wrote his supervisor in Manhattan that the bank enjoyed “very special esteem” with top German officials and “a rapid expansion of deposits,” according to Newsweek.

Niedermann’s letter was written in May 1942 five months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. also went to war with Germany.

The BBC reported in 1999:

A French government commission, investigating the seizure of Jewish bank accounts during the Second World War, says five American banks Chase Manhattan, J.P Morgan, Guaranty Trust Co. of New York, Bank of the City of New York and American Express had taken part.

It says their Paris branches handed over to the Nazi occupiers about one-hundred such accounts.

One of Britain’s main newspapers – the Guardian – reported in 2004:

George Bush’s grandfather [and George H.W. Bush’s father], the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings … continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act

***

The documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen’s US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

***

Bush was a founding member of the bank [UBC] … The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush’s father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany’s most powerful industrial family.

***

By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world’s largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler’s build-up to war.

Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.

***

UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler’s rise to power.

Indeed, banks often finance both sides of wars:


[…]

The Federal Reserve and other central banks also help to start wars by financing them .

The most decorated American military man in history said that war is a racket, and noted:

Let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers.

The big banks have also been laundering money for terrorists. The big bank employee who blew the whistle on the banks’ money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels says that the giant bank is still aiding terrorists, saying:

The public needs to know that money is still being funneled through HSBC to directly buy guns and bullets to kill our soldiers …. Banks financing … terrorists affects every single American.

He also said:

It is disgusting that our banks are STILL financing terror on 9/11 2013.

And see this.

According to the BBC and other sources, Prescott Bush, JP Morgan and other leading financiers also funded a coup against President Franklin Roosevelt in an attempt – basically – to implement fascism in the U.S. See this, this, this and this.

Kevin Zeese writes:

Americans are recognizing the link between the military-industrial complex and the Wall Street oligarchs—a connection that goes back to the beginning of the modern U.S. empire. Banks have always profited from war because the debt created by banks results in ongoing war profit for big finance; and because wars have been used to open countries to U.S. corporate and banking interests. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan wrote: “the large banking interests were deeply interested in the world war because of the wide opportunities for large profits.”

Many historians now recognize that a hidden history for U.S. entry into World War I was to protect U.S. investors. U.S. commercial interests had invested heavily in European allies before the war: “By 1915, American neutrality was being criticized as bankers and merchants began to loan money and offer credits to the warring parties, although the Central Powers received far less. Between 1915 and April 1917, the Allies received 85 times the amount loaned to Germany.” The total dollars loaned to all Allied borrowers during this period was $2,581,300,000. The bankers saw that if Germany won, their loans to European allies would not be repaid. The leading U.S. banker of the era, J.P. Morgan and his associates did everything they could to push the United States into the war on the side of England and France. Morgan said: “We agreed that we should do all that was lawfully in our power to help the Allies win the war as soon as possible.” President Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned saying he would keep the United States out of war, seems to have entered the war to protect U.S. banks’ investments in Europe.

The most decorated Marine in history, Smedley Butler, described fighting for U.S. banks in many of the wars he fought in. He said: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins describes how World Bank and IMF loans are used to generate profits for U.S. business and saddle countries with huge debts that allow the United States to control them. It is not surprising that former civilian military leaders like Robert McNamara and Paul Wolfowitz went on to head the World Bank. These nations’ debt to international banks ensures they are controlled by the United States, which pressures them into joining the “coalition of the willing” that helped invade Iraq or allowing U.S. military bases on their land. If countries refuse to “honor” their debts, the CIA or Department of Defense enforces U.S. political will through coups or military action.

***

More and more people are indeed seeing the connection between corporate banksterism and militarism ….

Indeed, all wars are bankers’ wars.

(Read the full article at Washington’s Blog)

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Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Corporate Welfare, Tyranny

Canadians Face Lower Wages & Job Loses Due To Foreign “Slaves”

Both Canadian workers and temporarily imported workers say Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers program is not working. Canadians are out of work and struggling to make ends meet, while their replacements are being misled and forced to pay over-priced rent to their employer.

McDonald’s foreign workers call it ‘slavery’

By Kathy Tomlinson
CBC: April 17, 2014

Foreign workers recruited from Belize are accusing McDonald’s Canada of treating them like “slaves,” by effectively forcing them to share an expensive apartment – then deducting almost half their take-home pay as rent.

“When we arrived at the airport, they said, ‘We already have an apartment for you,’ so at that point we already know we don’t have a choice of where to live,” said Jaime Montero, who came to Edmonton with four others in September to work at McDonald’s.

“We had to live there. We were told this is what we are doing,” said another worker who didn’t want to be named because he still works for McDonald’s.

The Belizeans said their dream of making good money in Canada to send to their families quickly shattered. Instead, they pocketed less than $800 per month – which they said was barely enough to live on.

The Belizians worked at McDonald’s locations in south Edmonton and said it took them more than an hour to get to work by public transit.

“You work for us now, so we are your owners. It’s like that, you know,” said Montero. “We felt like slaves. They just brought us and threw us on the side.”

Records from three employees show they made $11 an hour working at various McDonald’s locations and the company took $280 from their pay for rent, bi-weekly. Their remaining take-home pay for the same pay periods was roughly $350.

“[The apartment lease] contracts are signed by McDonald’s. All of our bills – utility bills – were billed [to us] under the name of McDonald’s,” said Montero.

“They brought us here and they are this big huge corporation. We felt that we didn’t have a chance to even voice our opinion to them because they had brought us here so they could ship us back whenever they wanted to,” said Montero. “It was like modern day slavery.”

McDonald’s housed them in a penthouse apartment in downtown Edmonton, even though they worked on the southern outskirts of the city. The corporation signed a six-month lease, which the workers said they were expected to honour as tenants.

“It was too far from work and it was very expensive,” said Montero, who said it took him an hour and a half to get to work by public transit.

“They actually said even if we leave the apartment and go rent another apartment, that McDonald’s would still deduct the rent from our salary,” said the other worker.

Since recent Go Public reports about McDonald’s practices with foreign workers, they said the corporation required all staff to sign an agreement, stipulating they would not speak to the media.

McDonald’s fired Montero in November, after he said managers accused him of complaining online about the company and intimidating other workers, which he and the other Belizeans insisted is not true.

“It was very unfair the way they did it…this was such a blow to me,” said Montero. He was also evicted from the apartment. He still has a work permit, but hasn’t been able to find another job.

“I even slept once outside in the cold. Then I found out about homeless shelters and I stayed out at the homeless shelters,” he said.

“Instead of making money here in Canada my family have had to send money.”

The rental contracts show McDonald’s paid $2,359 per month to rent the suite in the Boardwalk building. The corporation didn’t pay utilities or other extra costs.

Five workers paying $280 bi-weekly works out to $3,030 per month. That suggests McDonald’s charged them $600 more for rent than what it paid. Go Public pointed out that discrepancy to McDonald’s, but received no explanation.

The lease expired at the end of February and the Belizeans have since found a more affordable apartment.

“It’s not easy and it’s not cheap to be here,” said Montero.

(read the full article at CBC)

McDonald’s foreign worker practices face growing investigation

By Kathy Tomlinson
CBC: April 14, 2014

The federal investigation into McDonald’s use of temporary foreign workers has widened to several other locations, as more local workers speak out about feeling sidelined and shortchanged.

“I feel it’s definitely discrimination against Canadians,” said Chris Eldridge, from Lethbridge, Alta.

Eldridge just quit his managerial job for six McDonald’s locations in Alberta, because he said he could no longer stomach denying local employees much-needed shifts to accommodate temporary foreign workers.

“Honestly, some days I wonder, is this still Canada? Everyone is supposed to have equal rights.”

Eldridge was a manager who did the worker scheduling for McDonald’s franchisee Dan Brown. He’s also upset about differences in pay. Many foreign workers started at $10.80 an hour, he said, while local employees doing the same job made less.

Federal rules stipulate that foreign workers coming in to Lethbridge as food service attendants must make at least the “prevailing wage” of $10.41. However, immigration lawyers told Go Public local employees doing the same job are not supposed to be paid less or lose hours as a result.

“I was instructed to ensure, based on the contracts the foreign workers had signed, that they would be guaranteed full-time hours, no questions asked,” said Eldridge, who said that meant he had to shortchange Canadian employees.

[…]

Eldridge said the foreign workers were recruited from Belize, the Philippines and Jamaica by Actyl Group, an international recruiter used by McDonald’s Canada. It charges employers up to $2,000 per worker it recruits.

Actyl’s job website is designed to attract foreign workers. It lists numerous ads for full-time jobs at McDonald’s.

Canadians can apply, but many of the open jobs currently on the Actyl site are not advertised on popular Canadian jobs sites like Kijiji. Linda West of Actyl said that is because those McDonald’s locations already have government approvals to hire foreign workers.

“We never give up on trying to recruit Canadians,” West said. “We have had adverts up for over a year without Canadians applying.”

Eldridge said Brown houses the foreign workers in an apartment building with six to eight employees per unit, and deducts approximately $400 a month from each worker’s pay for rent.

“It’s a big apartment complex, but everyone calls it ‘the compound.’ It’s so enclosed and overpacked in a lot of ways,” said Eldridge.

Go Public asked Brown if he is also the foreign workers’ landlord, but he didn’t answer.

Emily Bryce, who still works at one of his outlets, said she believes the foreigners are exploited because many are professionals by trade and leave their children behind for a chance to live in Canada.

“My Canada isn’t one where you force people to choose between their job and their family. They should be taking full families in and giving them citizenship,” said Bryce.

The whole [foreign worker] program is unjust and it has too many loopholes in it for franchisee owners to exploit them.”
Locals feel marginalized nationwide

Go Public received complaints from McDonald’s workers in other B.C. and Alberta locations, too, as well as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

“The whole time I have worked at the local McDonald’s there has been nothing but favouritism towards the Filipinos,” said a worker in New Brunswick. “Any Canadian that works here feels that if they were to complain it would be viewed racist, but it is a serious problem.”

“I’ve seen countless [local] people turned down [for] the chance to even submit resumes, or have the chance of their resumes to be looked at, before they enter the trash,” said an employee from a B.C. location.

An insider from Edmonton wrote, “Being a former general manager for McDonald’s, I can tell you on the franchisee side of the business this is the preferred hiring method…There are numerous other franchisees in the system that will exclude hiring Canadians first.”

[…]

A former assistant manager from a McDonald’s in Parksville, B.C., who was there for 24 years, said she was effectively pushed out the door in favour of workers from the Philippines.

“All those of us who have left, you know, for sure have all felt pushed out,” said 52-year-old Christina Morrow. “It was reverse discrimination.”

Her former boss, Jamie Johannesen, owns four area franchises. Morrow said he brought in 20 foreign workers when he bought the Parksville location three years ago.

“He said they were better workers…so I would have to cut [local employee] hours to give these people 40 hours.”

Morrow said her work was criticized for the first time in two decades and her pay was cut from $18 to $11 an hour.

“It felt like a knife in my heart, she said. I’d been there 24 years…a lifetime to devote your flesh and blood to a position like that but obviously I wasn’t wanted anymore.”

She quit a year ago, because she says she couldn’t handle the pay cut.

“I would say the foreign workers were definitely favoured in almost every aspect,” said 19-year-old Brayden Chamberlain, who worked at the same McDonald’s for three years.

He quit last spring, because he said his hours had been cut so much it wasn’t worth working there anymore. He said some of the Filipinos had management roles, which made local workers feel marginalized.

“They treat you a lot differently. You’re the minority of the company and you almost end up
feeling exiled, which is why I ended up quitting,” he said. “If you are not Filipino, you have no place there.”

The owner, Johannesen, did not respond to requests for comment.

Go Public asked McDonald’s Canada for comment on this story, but the company said it needed more time to investigate.

[…]

The company said earlier it has 3,400 temporary foreign workers in its 1,400 locations and it abides by all the rules of the federal program.

NDP employment critic Jinny Sims is calling for an emergency debate in Parliament and said the government should now suspend all temporary foreign worker permits for fast-food outlets.

“I believe this is an emergency,” said Sims. “This is creating unnecessary tension and the minister cannot wash his hands of this…his government is allowing this program to be abused.”

(read the full article at CBC)

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Alternative Free Press-fair use-

Health/Environment

Measles Outbreak Traced to Fully Vaccinated Patient

Science: April 11, 2014

Get the measles vaccine, and you won’t get the measles—or give it to anyone else. Right? Well, not always. A person fully vaccinated against measles has contracted the disease and passed it on to others. The startling case study contradicts received wisdom about the vaccine and suggests that a recent swell of measles outbreaks in developed nations could mean more illnesses even among the vaccinated.

[…] a fully vaccinated 22-year-old theater employee in New York City who developed the measles in 2011 was released without hospitalization or quarantine. But like Typhoid Mary, this patient turned out to be unwittingly contagious. Ultimately, she transmitted the measles to four other people, according to a recent report in Clinical Infectious Diseases that tracked symptoms in the 88 people with whom “Measles Mary” interacted while she was sick. Surprisingly, two of the secondary patients had been fully vaccinated. And although the other two had no record of receiving the vaccine, they both showed signs of previous measles exposure that should have conferred immunity.

A closer look at the blood samples taken during her treatment revealed how the immune defenses of Measles Mary broke down. As a first line of defense against the measles and other microbes, humans rely on a natural buttress of IgM antibodies. Like a wooden shield, they offer some protection from microbial assaults but aren’t impenetrable. The vaccine (or a case of the measles) prompts the body to supplement this primary buffer with a stronger armor of IgG antibodies, some of which are able to neutralize the measles virus so it can’t invade cells or spread to other patients. This secondary immune response was presumed to last for decades.

By analyzing her blood, the researchers found that Measles Mary mounted an IgM defense, as if she had never been vaccinated. Her blood also contained a potent arsenal of IgG antibodies, but a closer look revealed that none of these IgG antibodies were actually capable of neutralizing the measles virus. It seemed that her vaccine-given immunity had waned.

Although public health officials have assumed that measles immunity lasts forever, the case of Measles Mary highlights the reality that “the actual duration [of immunity] following infection or vaccination is unclear,” says Jennifer Rosen, who led the investigation as director of epidemiology and surveillance at the New York City Bureau of Immunization. The possibility of waning immunity is particularly worrisome as the virus surfaces in major U.S. hubs like Boston, Seattle, New York, and the Los Angeles area. Rosen doesn’t believe this single case merits a change in vaccination strategy—for example, giving adults booster shots—but she says that more regular surveillance to assess the strength of people’s measles immunity is warranted.

(Read the full article at Science)

Related:
Ohio & New York 2014 Mumps Outbreaks Only Infect Vaccinated Population

40% of 2014 California Measles Outbreak Had Been Vaccinated

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Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Tyranny

Senior Mountie charged with sexual assault of 12-year-old girl

Senior Mountie charged with historical sexual assault of 12-year-old girl

By Shawn Knox
Global News: April 15, 2014

RCMP in Saskatchewan have arrested and charged a senior Mountie and one other person in connection with the sexual assault of a minor in the community of Carlyle in the summer of 1982.

In April of 2013 RCMP received information from an adult female relating to the assault, and then in December of 2013 the victim provided a detailed statement of the assault alleging that she had been assaulted by a male member of the RCMP.

The victim was 12-years-old at the time of the alleged assault.

“As soon as we became aware of the allegations we began a comprehensive criminal investigation which has resulted in charges against the two identified suspects,” said Supt. Alfredo Bangloy, Assistant Criminal Operations Officer In Charge of Provincial Policing.

54-year-old Inspector Ronald Patrick Makar was arrested on Tuesday, April 15 at his workplace – the Wood Buffalo RCMP detachment in Fort McMurray, AB. Makar was charged with one count of having sexual intercourse with a female person without her consent and one count of having sexual intercourse with a female person under the age of 14.

Makar has been an RCMP member for 34 years, and until Tuesday was serving as Operations Officer in Charge of the Wood Buffalo detachment. He has been suspended with pay pending further consideration.

Makar also served in Carlyle, Kyle, Fond du Lac, Regina, Milestone and ‘F’ Division Headquarters in Regina.

Additionally, on April 10, RCMP arrested 56-year-old Constance Haduik of Kyle, SK and charged her with one count of indecent assault of a female person.

(Read the full article at Global News)

Corporate Welfare, Drugs

Toronto’s Public EDM Ban Is A Giant Corporate Welfare Handout

Toronto Just Banned Electronic Dance Music Concerts on its Public Grounds

by: Ryan Krahn
Vice: April 14, 2014

Friday morning, Toronto (supposedly the world’s ‘most youthful city’) banned electronic dance music concerts from the Direct Energy and Better Living buildings on its public grounds, Exhibition Place. Exhibition Place, also known as The Ex, is a publicly owned space located by Toronto’s western waterfront, far away from any residential housing, which hosts an annual fair and often rents out their space for concerts of all genres. In the past, these events have included some of the biggest names to ever hit the sync button: Tiësto, Avicii and Laidback Luke.

The shutdown comes at the behest of Zlatko Starkovski, owner of suburbanite DUI destination, Muzik Nightclub. In the middle of January, Zlatko started worrying about the kids, particularly, the ones dancing across the street from his club. After all, there’s something less impressive about a 3000-person mega club with its own free beauty salon when the seats are empty because everyone’s watching Avicii DJ hands-free over at the 10,000-seater next door. So, Zlatko decided to write the city to tell on these kids. Well, first he donated a couple thousand dollars to mayor Rob Ford’s 2010 campaign. And he hired the powerful Sussex lobbying firm too. And then he wrote the letter.

The letter starts off with the outright admission that “competing events in the Better Living Centre and the Direct Energy Centre…has caused Muzik problems in booking the talent for our own shows,” before gears are switched and a moral argument is launched against these “problem rave events,” with their drugs and underage drinking.

While this complaint was sliding its way through the right channels, Zlatko, known to Ford simply by the nickname ‘Z,’ invited the mayor to check out his club and the mayor obliged. And eventually the letter slid right into the hands of Ford’s sidekick, Councillor Mammoliti, who introduced the motion to have electronic music banned from these venues.

Before the motion passed four to three, Z and his lobbyist wheeled out the usual rave bogeyman tropes I remember seeing on daytime television in the late ’90s: kids raiding their parents’ medicine cabinets for scripts to take at the show, pedophiles on the prowl, eight to nine year old ravers (as if Toronto was actually Gabber Holland)! Mammo asked the committee to think of the children “taking ecstasy on government lands owned by the taxpayers” and worried that it was “wrong to be sending that message.” (A refresher: moralist Mammo is the guy who proposed a Red Light District on the Toronto Island and was the very last man defending the mayor amidst his crack scandal). Of course, the irony of it all is that the reason Exhibition Place started hosting dance music events in the first place was due to a Toronto Public Health recommendation that suggested it was the safest, most regulated place to do so. (And by our count, more people have died at Muzik than at any rave at Exhibition Place). Councillor Gord Perks, who opposed the motion, remarked that such a move would mean the loss of a “safe, well-monitored venue for young people and all-ages events and drive them back to the underground where it is really dangerous.” Mammo replied by calling him ‘Councillor Perks-ocet.’

After all of this conflation between drugs, death, and dance music, Mammo finally got to the real point: “If the private industry wants to have [EDM concerts] in a private location then so be it.” And these were the stakes, because the big twist is that Muzik plays (albeit currently to fewer people) the same mainstream EDM that they sold to the committee as dangerous. So, the city sold off its ostensibly bad investment right back to Muzik. As Z’s letter admits,

“Muzik, currently operates with a liquor license that has a capacity of 8,755. This encompasses 5,674 people outside in addition to the 3,081-person capacity inside our venue. However, our current lease has an exclusive use clause for events up to 2,999 people. By increasing this to reflect our actual capacity that we are licensed for, it would provide the necessary protection for these type of one off situations, and will give Muzik Clubs the protection it requires to ensure that our business remains successful.”

The TL;DR is that Muzik wanted to start a moral panic around dance music to shut down concerts at Exhibition Place, so that it could start hosting its own 9000-person EDM concerts on the same premises. That means their competitors, Live Nation or INK, will have to find other places, but this isn’t as much the issue as the fact that approximately one million dollars of lost revenue per year will be moving from the public purse into private hands, and at the cost of further vilifying the name of dance music.

Councillor Perks told THUMP that “Muzik, which is very politically connected, simply wants to get exclusive control of music events on Exhibition Place grounds. So they pretended to be for the welfare of young people, but instead, all they’re interested in is their own bottom line. They want to expand to have exclusive rights.” The councillor emphasized that the board that made the final decision “only exists because the city established it, so I need to figure out what tools city council has to bring the board back into a more sound harm reduction approach… Several of us on the council are just not going to let this go. We’ll figure out a way.”

(Read the full article at Vice)

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Alternative Free Press

Privacy, Tyranny

FBI Abruptly Walks Out On Senate Briefing After Being Asked How ‘Insider Threat’ Program Avoids Whistleblowers

Mike Masnick
Tech Dirt: April 14, 2014

While we’ve been disappointed that Senator Chuck Grassley appears to have a bit of a double standard with his staunch support for whistleblowers when it comes to Ed Snowden, it is true that he has fought for real whistleblower protections for quite some time. Lately, he’s been quite concerned that the White House’s “Insider Threat Program” (ITP) is really just a cover to crack down on whistleblowers. As we’ve noted, despite early promises from the Obama administration to support and protect whistleblowers, the administration has led the largest crackdown against whistleblowers, and the ITP suggests that the attack on whistleblowers is a calculated response. The program documentation argues that any leak can be seen as “aiding the enemy” and encourages government employees to snitch on each other if they appear too concerned about government wrong-doing. Despite all his high minded talk of supporting whistleblowers, President Obama has used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers twice as many times as all other Presidents combined. Also, he has never — not once — praised someone for blowing the whistle in the federal government.

Given all of that, Senator Grassley expressed some concern about this Insider Threat Program and how it distinguished whistleblowers from actual threats. He asked the FBI for copies of its training manual on the program, which it refused to give him. Instead, it said it could better answer any questions at a hearing. However, as Grassley explains, when questioned about this just 10 minutes into the hearing, the FBI abruptly got up and left:

Meanwhile, the FBI fiercely resists any efforts at Congressional oversight, especially on whistleblower matters. For example, four months ago I sent a letter to the FBI requesting its training materials on the Insider Threat Program. This program was announced by the Obama Administration in October 2011. It was intended to train federal employees to watch out for insider threats among their colleagues. Public news reports indicated that this program might not do enough to distinguish between true insider threats and legitimate whistleblowers. I relayed these concerns in my letter. I also asked for copies of the training materials. I said I wanted to examine whether they adequately distinguished between insider threats and whistleblowers.

In response, an FBI legislative affairs official told my staff that a briefing might be the best way to answer my questions. It was scheduled for last week. Staff for both Chairman Leahy and I attended, and the FBI brought the head of their Insider Threat Program. Yet the FBI didn’t bring the Insider Threat training materials as we had requested. However, the head of the Insider Threat Program told the staff that there was no need to worry about whistleblower communications. He said whistleblowers had to register in order to be protected, and the Insider Threat Program would know to just avoid those people.

Now I have never heard of whistleblowers being required to “register” in order to be protected. The idea of such a requirement should be pretty alarming to all Americans. Sometimes confidentiality is the best protection a whistleblower has. Unfortunately, neither my staff nor Chairman Leahy’s staff was able to learn more, because only about ten minutes into the briefing, the FBI abruptly walked out. FBI officials simply refused to discuss any whistleblower implications in its Insider Threat Program and left the room. These are clearly not the actions of an agency that is genuinely open to whistleblowers or whistleblower protection.

And yes, it’s equally troubling that the FBI insists that as long as someone “registers” as a whistleblower, the FBI will suddenly, magically agree to stop investigating them as a “threat.” We already know that’s almost certainly bullshit. The stories of Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou are both clear examples of whistleblowers, who then had the DOJ search through basically everything they’d ever done to try to concoct some sort of Espionage Act case against them. In both cases, the eventual charges were totally ridiculous and unrelated to the whistleblowing they had done, but clearly the only reason they had been investigated was because of their status as whistleblowers. Drake was charged with having a classified document, which was just a meeting agenda and was both improperly classified and then declassified soon after. Kiriakou was charged with revealing the name of a CIA operative to a reporter, where the person in question was already widely known to journalists as working for the CIA.

(Read the full article at Tech Dirt)

Privacy

Glass without the glasses: Google patents smart contact lens system with a CAMERA built in

By Mark Prigg
Daily Mail: April 14, 2014

Google has patented a smart contact lens that could see its Glass wearable computer fit inside a smart lens.

The firm has already developed a contact lens for diabetics analyses their tears, warning them if their glucose levels are low.

Now it has revealed plans for a lens with a camera built in – opening the possibility of its Glass system being shrunk down significantly, offering features such as ‘superzoom’ to wearers and even helping the blind see.

According to PatentBolt, the system could even be used to help the blind see.

‘For example, a blind person wearing Google’s contact lens with a built-in camera may be walking on a sidewalk and approaching an intersection,’ it says.

‘The analysis component of the contact lens can process the raw image data of the camera to determine processed image data indicating that the blind person is approaching intersection with a crosswalk and establish that there is a car approaching the intersection.’

The lens also has wireless capabilities allowing it to link to a smartphone, which can be used to process data and give the user audio commands.

Google also says the system will be able to detect faces, potentially allowing the blind to recognise people.

The firm has already developed a smart lens capable of measuring the glucose level of diabetics.

(Read the full article at Daily Mail)

Banksters

Yes, the SEC was colluding with banks on CDO prosecutions

By Felix Salmon
Reuters: April 9, 2014

Back in 2011, I asked whether the SEC was colluding with banks on CDO prosecutions. And now, thanks to an American Lawyer Freedom of Information Request, we have the answer: yes, they were.

This comes as little surprise: it beggared belief, after all, that every bank would end up being prosecuted for one and only one CDO. But now we have chapter and verse: the key precedent, it seems, was the first one, Goldman Sachs.

The SEC filed its case against Goldman and Tourre on April 16, 2010. Three days later Goldman reached out with a $500 million settlement offer, according to an email that Reisner sent Khuzami. Although that proposal was close to the final payment, it took another three months to announce a settlement. As Khuzami described to Kotz, Goldman wanted a global settlement that resolved not just the Abacus investigation but the SEC’s probes into roughly a dozen other Goldman CDOs.

Khuzami didn’t want to give Goldman that public victory. When the SEC and Goldman announced on July 16, 2010, that the investment bank would settle the Abac­us case for $550 million, the SEC said in a press release that the settlement “does not settle any other past, current or future SEC investigations against the firm.”

Khuzami was determined that Goldman’s payment only be linked to ABACUS. “This was not a $550 million settlement for 11 cases,” Khuzami told Kotz. “We may tell Goldman that we are concluding our investigations in these other matters without recommending charges, but that doesn’t mean we’re settling them. And that was an important point for us, because we didn’t want them out there saying, you know, they settled 12 CDO investigations for an average of $30 million each, and, you know, didn’t [Goldman] get a great deal.”

Yet in its statement on the Abacus settlement at the time, Goldman said that the SEC had concluded a review of other CDOs and did not anticipate recommending claims for now.

It’s quite impressive how quickly and accurately Goldman nailed the amount of money that it would have to pay the SEC to settle the case: when it took three months to come to the $550 million settlement, I for one assumed that Goldman had to be dragged kicking and screaming to that point. In fact, however, Goldman was happy to offer half a billion dollars right off the bat. The tough part of the negotiation was not over the Abacus fine — it was over the question of whether the SEC, with the Abacus prosecution successfully under its belt, would then go after Goldman for a dozen other deals which were functionally equivalent.

The answer was a clear no: Goldman might be equally culpable for 11 other deals, but the SEC quietly assured Goldman — but not the public at large — that none of those deals would result in any charges.

And with the Goldman deal now public knowledge, we can assume that the same nod-and-a-wink deal was struck with all the other one-and-only-one CDO bank prosecutions: Citigroup, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch (which evidently included Bank of America), Mizuho Securities, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, UBS. Add them all up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are 100 unprosecuted CDO deals out there, all of whom had victims just as deserving as the ones who got paid out on the prosecuted deals. Basically, there’s a CDO lottery, and, thanks to the way in which the SEC cozied up to the big banks, the average CDO investor has a very small chance of having won it.

As Khuzami says, if you look at them on a per-CDO basis, the big headline numbers suddenly become much more modest and affordable for Wall Street banks. So there’s a real scandal here: firstly, the SEC was not being fully honest with the public about the deals it was cutting. Secondly, the SEC failed to stand up for CDO investors it should have fought for. Thirdly, the SEC tried to make it look as though it was levying massive fines for single deals, when really the settlements were omnibus deals covering some unknown quantity of CDOs.

(read the full article at Reuters)

Health/Environment

Climate Change is Caused By Resource Plundering

Oil and gas sector now Canada’s biggest generator of greenhouse gases

By Will Campbell
The Canadian Press: April 12, 2014

TORONTO – An environmental analyst says the rise of oil and gas production as Canada’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions adds further weight to calls for the federal government to bring in long-promised regulations for the oil industry.

The Environment Canada report quietly released Friday reveals the energy sector has now surpassed transportation as the largest generator of the climate-change causing gases.

The report, covering the period from 1990 to 2012, states that oil and gas now account for one-quarter of Canada’s greenhouse emissions, narrowly edging out transportation.

Analyst P.J. Partington with eco think-tank the Pembina Institute said the oil industry becoming Canada’s biggest source of emissions underscores the need for the Harper government to make good on a longstanding pledge to bring in rules cutting the oil patch’s climate impact.

“We can’t hide from the challenge of regulating that sector. If Canada’s going to play its role in the global fight against climate change there’s no avoiding that we need to have strong regulations for our oil and gas sector,” he said Saturday.

The country’s overall emissions were down by less than one per cent between 2011 and 2012, the most recent year available, largely due to reductions in electricity and manufacturing.

Partington said the drop was something of a surprise, given Environment Canada had predicted an uptick. But he said it’s too soon to say what direction the figure will go in the coming years.

Energy sector emissions have seen the biggest jump since 1990 — roughly 70 per cent — due entirely to crude oil and oilsands expansion, the report says. That’s more than twice the growth rate of transportation-related greenhouse gases in the same period.

(Read the full article at Winnipeg Free Press)

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Geopolitics/War

CIA Director Held ‘Secret Consultations’ in Kiev

Russian Media Report CIA Director Held ‘Secret Consultations’ in Kiev

The Moscow Times: April, 13 2014

Russian news agencies reported Sunday that U.S. CIA director John Brennan had a secret meeting with Ukrainian officials in Kiev before they began operations against separatist forces that had taken over buildings in the country’s east.

Brennan landed in Ukraine on Saturday under an assumed name and held a “series of secret meetings” with the country’s “power bloc” Interfax reported, citing an unidentified official in the Ukrainian parliament. The unidentified official said that there were “unconfirmed reports” that the U.S. security official was behind the decision to use force in eastern Ukraine after pro-Russian separatist forces took control of the city of Slovyansk.

Ukrainian parliament Communist Party deputy Vladimir Golub told RIA Novosti that lawmakers were talking about the visit openly and opined that the Ukrainian Security Service had become a unit of the CIA.

(Read the full article at The Moscow Times)

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