sets the standards for financial institutions in identifying their customers...,

Source: Dirty Little Secrets

Source: Dirty Little Secrets

Source: Dirty Little Secrets

Trump explains how you pay for a border wall - and - stop the 1% from sheltering trillions offshore...,

WaPo |  Starting on “day 1,” Trump writes, he would issue a warning to Mexico that unless it pays his desired amount, he will promulgate a new federal provision that would lead to a sweeping confiscation of funds sent by Mexicans in the United States who lack documentation of their “lawful presence.”

On “day 2,” Trump continued, “Mexico would immediately protest.” But he would declare that Mexico must choose between the enforcement of his provision or acquiescing.

To explain how he would have the standing to pursue his aggressive strategy, Trump begins by citing a provision in the Code of Federal Regulations that sets the standards for financial institutions in identifying their customers.

That provision, Trump says, makes it possible for the executive branch to “issue detailed regulations on the subject.” He predicted that Mexico would react by initially balking, then doing what he wants.

Trump writes that “if the Mexican government will contribute $__ billion to the United States to pay for the wall, the Trump Administration will not promulgate the final rule, and the regulation will not go into effect.”

Many academics and economists have said that Trump’s notion of impounding remittances could have devastating consequences, harming poor communities and families who rely on funds from abroad to provide food and shelter.

Other aspects of Trump’s plan include“trade tariffs, or enforcement of existing trade rules,” “cancelling visas” and “visa fees.” Trump leaves open the option of using those methods to coerce Mexico.

“Our approvals of hundreds of thousands of visas every year is one of our greatest leverage points,” Trump writes. “We also have leverage through business and tourist visas for important people in the Mexican economy.”

Trump ends with a scathing critique of Mexico, claiming that it has “taken advantage” of the United States for years through “gangs, drug traffickers and cartels” responsible for “the extraordinary daily cost of this criminal activity.”

“We have the moral high ground here, and all the leverage,” Trump concludes.

how Valodya the star of the panama papers when he ain't even in it?

RT |  The smear campaign against Putin comes a week after his press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the Western media intended to launch a new slander attack against the Russian president, while he also expressed regret that reporters’ professionalism is often “sacrificed to political demands.”

“Another piece of spin, which is claimed to be sensational and objective, will happen in the nearest days. We have received some excessively-rich requests that, however, in their form were more like questions at an interrogation,” Peskov said.

He explained that the letters contained some personal questions about Putin, as well as questions about the Russian president’s family, his childhood friends and some businessmen.

“They are repeating themselves. ‘Is it true that the amount of your personal accumulated wealth is about US$40 billion?’ ‘Is it true that you possess gigantic residences, mega-yachts and other assets?’

On Sunday, Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) released the biggest leak in journalistic history, posting 11.5 million documents from a Panama law firm online and providing “rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows.”

SZ said it received the law firm’s documents a year ago from an anonymous source who “wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return.” 

The German paper obtained further documents in an investigation that followed, involving “400 journalists from more than 100 media organizations in over 80 countries.”

Mossack Fonseca Has 441 U.S. Clients: Who Are They?

zerohedge |  It also does not explain why according to primary data compiled in Fusion's interactive universe, one can find an abundance of US-based nodes in the client/company/shareholder and beneficiary map (highlighted in blue).

Indicatively with 441 clients, the US is among the countries with the most clients served by Mossack Fonseca. 

So who are these 441 clients, and why has the ICIJ decided not to reveal any of them?

Or perhaps it will all be revealed in due course. 

According to a tweet by a tech editor at Germany's Suddeutsche Zeiting - the outlet that received the original leak - there will be more disclosures forthcoming.

seriously, not even a single solitary 1% perp from israel or the u.s. in this spectre leak?!?!?!

winteractionables |  Curiously, in the initial illustration when you click by country, not a single individual from the United States or Israel is listed.

Clearly, this kind of leak is subject to tremendous abuse in the hands of a Crime Syndicate controlled media. ICIJ Mansu Shrestha who “leaked” the files, is directly funded by the Open Society Foundations of George Soros.

Recent ICIJ funders include: Adessium Foundation, Open Society Foundations, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Omidyar, Oak Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts and Waterloo Foundation,  Atlantic Philanthropies of New York, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation, David B. Gold Foundation, Goldman-Sonnenfeldt Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund,
Rockefeller Family Fund, The Stanley Foundation, Law Office of Steven Birnbaum, Isadore Sadie Dorin Foundation, The Grodzins Fund, Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, Michael and Ina Korek Foundation Trust, The Harman Rasnow and Eleanor Rasnow Trust, Rotberg Comens Bray Foundation, Skeist Family Charitable Trust

if mossack fonseca is only one of the five biggest purveyors of offshore secrecy, who are the other four?

irishtimes |  Mossack Fonseca & Co. had a problem in Vegas.

Legal papers filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas claimed that the Panama-based law firm had created 123 companies in Nevada that had been used by a crony of Argentina’s former president to steal millions of dollars from government contracts. A subpoena demanded that Mossack Fonsecaturn over details about any money that had flowed through the Nevada companies.

Mossack Fonesca didn’t want to provide this information. For a firm that specializes in setting up hard-to-trace offshore companies for clients around the world, confidentiality is a must.

The law firm tried to block the subpoena by denying that its Las Vegas operations, run by a company called M.F. Corporate Services (Nevada) Limited, were part of the Mossack Fonseca group.

The firm’s Panama-based co-founder, Jürgen Mossack, testified under oath that “MF Nevada and Mossack Fonseca do not have a parent-subsidiary relationship nor does Mossack Fonseca control the internal affairs or daily operations of MF Nevada’s business.”

But secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other media partners raise new doubts over that sworn testimony.

Not only do they show that the Nevada subsidiary was wholly owned by Mossack Fonseca but that, behind the scenes, the firm took steps to wipe potentially damaging records from phones and computers to keep details of their clients from the United States justice system.

One email from 2014, for instance, instructs that any link between Mossack Fonseca’s central computing system in Panama and the Nevada office “has to be obscure to the investigators.” Other emails report that IT operatives working via remote control from Panama “tried to clean the logs of the PC’s in the Nevada office” and planned to run a “remote session to eliminate the traces of direct access to our CIS” - the firm’s computer information system.

The documents even show that a firm employee traveled from Panama to Vegas to whisk paper documents out of the country. “When Andrés came to Nevada he cleaned up everything and brought all documents to Panama,” a Sept. 24, 2014 email said.

In comments to ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca “categorically” denied hiding or destroying documents that might be used in an ongoing investigation or litigation.

The more than 11 million documents obtained by ICIJ - emails, bank accounts and client records - represent the inner workings of Mossack Fonseca for nearly forty years, from 1977 to December 2015 . They reveal the offshore holdings of individuals and companies from more than 200 countries and territories .

They recount example after example of ethical and legal wrongdoing by some clients and provide evidence of a firm happy to act as a gatekeeper to the secrets of its clients, even those who turn out to be crooks, members of the Mafia, drug dealers, corrupt politicians and tax evaders.

The files show that business has been good.

Today, Mossack Fonseca is considered one of the world’s five biggest wholesalers of offshore secrecy. It has more than more than 500 employees and collaborators in more than 40 offices around the world, including three inSwitzerland and eight in China.

what are the panama papers?

theatlantic |  News organizations from around the world have published investigations based on a massive trove of leaked documents they say reveal corruption and questionable business dealings of world leaders, politicians, sports stars, and others.

The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung said Sunday it received encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based company that sells offshore shell companies around the world, from an anonymous source more than a year ago. The leak amounts to approximately 11.5 million documents—or 2.6 terabytes’ worth of data—on 214,000 shell companies spanning a period between the 1970s and 2016.

The documents, which have been dubbed the “Panama Papers,” contain mostly emails, PDF files, and photo files belonging to Mossack Fonseca, one of the largest providers of offshore financial services. They may represent the world’s biggest-ever leak of classified information.

“The data provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows,”Süddeutsche Zeitung said in its report. “It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous.”

Süddeutsche Zeitung shared the information with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 news outlets in nearly 80 countries. Almost 400 journalists have combed through the documents over the past year.

Some of the products of that research were published Sunday. The BBC reportedthe leak reveals information about 72 current or former heads of state, including Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak, and Libya’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi. 

It reported Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson stored millions of dollars of investments in Iceland’s major banks in an offshore company. The Guardian reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s associates secretly moved as much as $2 billion through offshore accounts. Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Juan Pedro Damiani, the Uruguayan lawyer who is president of the country’s most popular soccer team and a FIFA ethics expert, managed companies through which FIFA members may have received bribes.

Wikileaks Reveals IMF Plan To "Cause A Credit Event In Greece And Destabilize Europe"

zerohedge |  One of the recurring concerns involving Europe's seemingly perpetual economic, financial and social crises, is that these have been largely predetermined, "scripted" and deliberate acts. 

This is something the former head of the Bank of England admitted one month ago when Mervyn King said that Europe's economic depression "is the result of "deliberate" policy choices made by EU elites.  It is also what AIG Banque strategist Bernard Connolly said back in 2008 when laying out "What Europe Wants"

To use global issues as excuses to extend its power:

• environmental issues: increase control over member countries; advance idea of global governance
• terrorism: use excuse for greater control over police and judicial issues; increase extent of surveillance
• global financial crisis: kill two birds (free market; Anglo-Saxon economies) with one stone (Europe-wide regulator; attempts at global financial governance)
• EMU: create a crisis to force introduction of “European economic government”

This morning we got another confirmation of how supernational organizations "plan" European crises in advance to further their goals, when Wikileaks published the transcript of a teleconference that took place on March 19, 2016 between the top two IMF officials in charge of managing the Greek debt crisis - Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF's European Department, and Delia Velkouleskou, the IMF Mission Chief for Greece.

using rapgenius to expose the pro-israel bias of the nytimes...,

mondoweiss |   “Awful + NYT forgoes context,” lamented Jewish Voice for Peace on Twitter this morning, linking to Isabel Kershner’s dreadful wallow into Israel’s “polarized” psyche, following Cpl. Elor Azarya’s videotaped Mar. 24 street murder of wounded Palestinian Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif.

Like much Times coverage of Israel and Palestine, Kershner’s story entirely erases Palestinian history and views. The report treats as commonplace the growing incitement by Israel’s top politicians to kill suspects on site. It describes a “surge” in Palestinian violence with not a word about the 68 years of repression and 49 years of occupation that led to it. It reports the divided views of a Jewish society said to be torn about punishing its own war criminals, with no mention of how the Palestinian population feels about the incident–or the decades of ethnic tyranny that preceded it.

Kershner’s piece is exactly the kind of Israel-centric bias that media activists like James North and sites such as TimesWarp and The Intercept do a heroic job of deconstructing. More than once these critics have managed to get the Times itself (or at least its public editor) to acknowledge deep flaws in the paper of record’s Middle East reporting.

But what if everyone could fix these awful Times mistakes and omissions, reaching readers right on its page? Newly expanded Genius.com (which began in 2009 as Rap Genius, a site for marking up hip-hop lyrics) now “lets you add line-by-line annotations to any page on the Internet.” It’s controversial; not every publisher likes having its site marked up by potentially hostile readers–like me, in this case. I decided to give it a try.

how DO you respond to someone taking over your country and ruining it?

lewrockwell |  The Shire had changed dramatically for the worse when Frodo, Sam, and their companions returned from Mordor.

The hobbit-folk had previously enjoyed a society largely free of the affliction called “government.” Frodo and his friends were mortified to encounter a regimented dystopia in which the shire-riffs –who had been peripheral under the old order – were enforcing an ever-growing list of rules handed down by an unseen “Chief.” The shire-riffs themselves weren’t intimidating, but behind them lurked a band of “Ruffians” who looked upon the inhabitants of the Shire with disdain and were prepared to inflict mortal harm on anybody who resisted the Chief’s decrees.

Farms and homes, once self-sufficient, had been ravaged by officials called “Gatherers” and “Sharers,” although the bounty that was gathered in the Chief’s name was never shared with the populace. The verdant countryside, which once thrived under the husbandry of private landowners, had been despoiled by those acting on the “authority” of the new government. Any residents of the Shire who resisted that “authority” were hauled away to “lock holes.”

Furious over what had been done to their home and steeled by their experience in battle, Frodo and his companions sounded the tocsin and organized the Hobbit-folk to “scour the Shire.” This meant driving the Ruffians and their adherents from the land, including any shire-riffs who remained loyal to the usurpers. Frodo gave strict instructions to avoid bloodshed where possible. The Chief – as it happens, Saruman in disguise – would not relinquish power without extracting a price in blood.

The “scouring,” as portrayed by Tolkien in “Return of the King,” is distant kindred to Homer’s account of Odysseus dealing with the interlopers who had plundered his home and sought to seize control of Ithaca during his lengthy absence. “I will not stay my hand till I have paid all of you in full,” Odysseus told the men who had sought to steal everything he cherished, including Penelope. “You must fight, or flee for your lives.”

In dealing with the shire-riffs – or, to use the more familiar term, sheriffs – who had become oppressors, Frodo, and his friends were more merciful than Odysseus and Telemachus had been. As Sauron had expected, many of those who had been public servants found it intoxicating to exercise power over the “little folk.” Others, disgusted by what they had become, threw away their badges of authority and were welcomed into the righteous rebellion against the Chief and his enforcers.

comprehensive example of coherent coalitional killing and kin-selection...,

WaPo |  The Justice Department has announced that it is resuming a controversial practice that allows local police departments to funnel a large portion of assets seized from citizens into their own coffers under federal law.

The "Equitable Sharing Program" gives police the option of prosecuting some asset forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law, particularly in instances where local law enforcement officers have a relationship with federal authorities as part of a joint task force. Federal forfeiture policies are more permissive than many state policies, allowing police to keep up to 80 percent of assets they seize.

The Justice Department had suspended payments under this program in December, due to budget cuts included in last year's spending bill.

"In the months since we made the difficult decision to defer equitable sharing payments because of the $1.2 billion rescinded from the Asset Forfeiture Fund, the financial solvency of the fund has improved to the point where it is no longer necessary to continue deferring equitable sharing payments," spokesman Peter J. Carr said in an email Monday.

While he didn't specify exactly where the new funding came from, Carr noted that the program is partly funded by the cash and other property seized under the program.

"The Asset Forfeiture Fund acts in many ways like a revolving fund," he explained in a follow-up email. "Forfeited proceeds are being deposited throughout the year to replenish the funds that are simultaneously flowing out of the Asset Forfeiture Fund to pay for approved agency expenses." He noted that when the Justice Department announced the suspension  in December, it remained "very eager to resume payments as soon as it is fiscally feasible to do so."

concise example of coalitional killing and kin-selection...,

vice |  The truth is street violence isn't determined by the police chief when you have a city with a high black and brown unemployment rate, according to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder of the RainbowPUSH Coalition, which is headquartered on the city's South Side. In 2015, the jobless rate in Illinois was 12 percent for African Americans and 7.2 percent for Hispanics.

"You can't police poverty, you have to eliminate it," Jackson tells VICE. "We have vacant lots, closed schools, recycled poverty. There's a growing sense of recycled desperation."

Residents tend to agree Chicago has to look at the systemic factors behind people killing one another, such as community disinvestment. Moore points to the work of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, where researchers are concerned with the access and flow of illegal guns.

"It's probably more important to look at overall trends and what works and what isn't working," she tells me. "It's easy to get caught up in the number, and sometimes the solutions become more military- than investment-based."

A recent University of Illinois at Chicago report on youth joblessness highlights a source of desperation: 88 percent of black youths ages 16 to 19 were jobless in 2014, and 85 percent of Latino youths were unemployed, compared with 29 percent of young people nationally.

Killing the Host

unz |  CHRIS HEDGES: We’re going to be discussing a great Ponzi scheme that not only defines not only the U.S. but the global economy, how we got there and where we’re going. And with me to discuss this issue is the economist Michael Hudson, author ofKilling the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy. A professor of economics who worked for many years on Wall Street, where you don’t succeed if you don’t grasp Marx’s dictum that capitalism is about exploitation. And he is also, I should mention, the godson of Leon Trotsky.

I want to open this discussion by reading a passage from your book, which I admire very much, which I think gets to the core of what you discuss. You write,

“Adam Smith long ago remarked that profits often are highest in nations going fastest to ruin. There are many ways to create economic suicide on a national level. The major way through history has been through indebting the economy. Debt always expands to reach a point where it cannot be paid by a large swathe of the economy. This is the point where austerity is imposed and ownership of wealth polarizes between the One Percent and the 99 Percent. Today is not the first time this has occurred in history. But it is the first time that running into debt has occurred deliberately.” Applauded. “As if most debtors can get rich by borrowing, not reduced to a condition of debt peonage.”

So let’s start with the classical economists, who certainly understood this. They were reacting of course to feudalism. And what happened to the study of economics so that it became gamed by ideologues?

HUDSON: The essence of classical economics was to reform industrial capitalism, to streamline it, and to free the European economies from the legacy of feudalism. The legacy of feudalism was landlords extracting land-rent, and living as a class that took income without producing anything. Also, banks that were not funding industry. The leading industrialists from James Watt, with his steam engine, to the railroads …

HEDGES: From your book you make the point that banks almost never funded industry.

HUDSON: That’s the point: They never have. By the time you got to Marx later in the 19th century, you had a discussion, largely in Germany, over how to make banks do something they did not do under feudalism. Right now we’re having the economic surplus being drained not by the landlords but also by banks and bondholders.

Adam Smith was very much against colonialism because that lead to wars, and wars led to public debt. He said the solution to prevent this financial class of bondholders burdening the economy by imposing more and more taxes on consumer goods every time they went to war was to finance wars on a pay-as-you-go basis. Instead of borrowing, you’d tax the people. Then, he thought, if everybody felt the burden of war in the form of paying taxes, they’d be against it. Well, it took all of the 19th century to fight for democracy and to extend the vote so that instead of landlords controlling Parliament and its law-making and tax system through the House of Lords, you’d extend the vote to labor, to women and everybody. The theory was that society as a whole would vote in its self-interest. It would vote for the 99 Percent, not for the One Percent.

By the time Marx wrote in the 1870s, he could see what was happening in Germany. German banks were trying to make money in conjunction with the government, by lending to heavy industry, largely to the military-industrial complex.

HEDGES: This was Bismarck’s kind of social – I don’t know what we’d call it. It was a form of capitalist socialism…

HUDSON: They called it State Capitalism. There was a long discussion by Engels, saying, wait a minute. We’re for Socialism. State Capitalism isn’t what we mean by socialism. There are two kinds of state-oriented–.

HEDGES: I’m going to interject that there was a kind of brilliance behind Bismarck’s policy because he created state pensions, he provided health benefits, and he directed banking toward industry, toward the industrialization of Germany which, as you point out, was very different in Britain and the United States.

How Hedge Funds are Blood-Funneling the Life Out of Argentina

NYTimes |  PERHAPS the most complex trial in history between a sovereign nation, Argentina, and its bondholders — including a group of United States-based hedge funds — officially came to an end yesterday when the Argentine Senate ratified a settlement.

The resolution was excellent news for a small group of well-connected investors, and terrible news for the rest of the world, especially countries that face their own debt crises in the future.

In late 2001, Argentina defaulted on $132 billion in loans during its disastrous depression. Gross domestic product dropped by 28 percent, 57.5 percent of Argentines were living in poverty, and the unemployment rate skyrocketed to above 20 percent, leading to riots and clashes that resulted in 39 deaths.

Unable to pay its creditors, Argentina restructured its debt in two rounds of negotiations. The package discounted the bonds by two-thirds but provided a mechanism for more payments when the country’s economy recovered, which it did. A vast majority of the bondholders — 93 percent — accepted the deal.

Among the small minority who refused the deal were investors who had bought many of their bonds at a huge discount, well after the country defaulted and even after the first round of restructuring. These kinds of investors have earned the name vulture funds by buying up distressed debt, then, often aided by lawyers and lobbyists, trying to force a settlement.

The companies involved included some of the best-known vulture funds, including NML Capital, a subsidiary of Elliott Management, a hedge fund co-led by Paul Singer, a major contributor to the Republican Party, as well as Aurelius Capital and Dart Management. NML, which had the largest claim in the Argentina case, was the lead litigant of a group of bondholders in New York federal courts.

For a long time, Argentina refused to pay the holdouts. The funds tried all sorts of ways to change the country’s position, including, at one point, having an iconic Argentine ship seized in Ghana.

Then a 2012 ruling by Judge Thomas Griesa of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York threw the game in the vulture funds’ favor, ruling that Argentina had to pay them back at full value, a cost to Argentina of $4.65 billion. NML, for example, would get a total return of 1,500 percent on its initial investment, according to our calculations, because of the cheap prices it paid for the debt and because of a “compensatory” interest rate of 9 percent under New York law.

The ruling, which became effective in 2014, did something else: Judge Griesa issued an injunction blocking Argentina from paying anything to the creditors who had accepted the deal until it had paid the vultures in full.

The judge gave the vultures the weapon they needed: Argentina had to either pay them off or renege on the default they had negotiated, ruining the country’s credit in the future and threatening its recovery.

F-35 The Jet that Ate the Pentagon

BI |  America's most expensive weapons system ever has hit several snags on its march to combat readiness.

$391 billion (and counting) F-35 Lightning II still faces delays in software development and a complex computer-based logistics system, photos released by Lockheed Martin show a helmet that more than matches the stealth fighter jet's reputation for sophistication.

According to Lockheed Martin, every F-35 pilot wears the Generation III helmet for each training exercise and operational mission.

The F-35's Distributed Aperture System (DAS), gives pilots the ability "look through" the airframe of the jet thanks to six infrared cameras mounted around the aircraft.

Pilots can also read their airspeed, altitude, targeting information, and threat warnings on the helmet's visor, giving them "unprecedented situational awareness," according to Lockheed Martin. What's more, the helmet also gives pilots night vision via an integrated camera.

SEE ALSO: The F-35 relies on a $400,000 helmet that's had its own share of problems

the bribe factory

theage |  A massive leak of confidential documents has for the first time exposed the true extent of corruption within the oil industry, implicating dozens of leading companies, bureaucrats and politicians in a sophisticated global web of bribery and graft.

After a six-month investigation across two continents, Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post can reveal that billions of dollars of government contracts were awarded as the direct result of bribes paid on behalf of firms including British icon Rolls-Royce, US giant Halliburton, Australia’s Leighton Holdings and Korean heavyweights Samsung and Hyundai.

The investigation centres on a Monaco company called Unaoil, run by the jet-setting Ahsani clan. Following a coded ad in a French newspaper, a series of clandestine meetings and midnight phone calls led to our reporters obtaining hundreds of thousands of the Ahsanis’ leaked emails and documents. 

The trove reveals how they rub shoulders with royalty, party in style, mock anti-corruption agencies and operate a secret network of fixers and middlemen throughout the world’s oil producing nations.

Corruption in oil production - one of the world's richest industries and one that touches us all through our reliance on petrol - fuels inequality, robs people of their basic needs and causes social unrest in some of the world's poorest countries. It was among the factors that prompted the Arab Spring.

Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post today reveal how Unaoil carved up portions of the Middle East oil industry for the benefit of western companies between 2002 and 2012.

In part two we will turn to the impoverished former Russian states to reveal the extent of misbehaviour by multinational companies including Halliburton. We will conclude the three-part investigation by showing how corrupt practices have extended deep into Asia and Africa.

watching worms turn for Granny Goodness like a scene out of a horror movie...,

counterpunch |  Obama was never antiwar. On the contrary, like all American presidents, he was pro-war. He had voted for George W. Bush’s funding of the slaughter in Iraq and he was planning to escalate the invasion of Afghanistan. In the weeks before he took the presidential oath, he secretly approved an Israeli assault on Gaza, the massacre known as Operation Cast Lead. He promised to close the concentration camp at Guantanamo and did not. He pledged to help make the world “free from nuclear weapons” and did the opposite.

As a new kind of marketing manager for the status quo, the unctuous Obama was an inspired choice. Even at the end of his blood-spattered presidency, with his signature drones spreading infinitely more terror and death around the world than that ignited by jihadists in Paris and Brussels, Obama is fawned on as “cool” (the Guardian).

On March 23, CounterPunch published my article, “A World War has Begun: Break the Silence”.  As has been my practice for years, I then syndicated the piece across an international network, including Truthout.com, the liberal American website.  Truthout publishes some important journalism, not least Dahr Jamail’s outstanding corporate exposes.

Truthout rejected the piece because, said an editor, it had appeared on CounterPunch and had broken “guidelines”.  I replied that this had never been a problem over many years and I knew of no guidelines.

My recalcitrance was then given another meaning. The article was reprieved provided I submitted to a “review” and agreed to changes and deletions made by Truthout’s “editorial committee”. The result was the softening and censoring of my criticism of Hillary Clinton, and the distancing of her from Trump. The following was cut:

Trump is a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism. Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama … The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system … As presidential election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies– just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about “hope”.

The “editorial committee” clearly wanted me to water down my argument that Clinton represented a proven extreme danger to the world.  Like all censorship, this was unacceptable. Maya Schenwar, who runs Truthout, wrote to me that my unwillingness to submit my work to a “process of revision” meant she had to take it off her “publication docket”.  Such is the gatekeeper’s way with words.

Granny Goodness less to women than the Hon.Bro.Preznit been to black folks...,

counterpunch |  I immediately reacted to Anthony’s ingenuity in recognizing Ms. Clinton’s embodiment of the power and authority of a patriarchal empire. I responded to his stark criticism of Ms. Clinton’s self proclamation as a “feminist,” a claim she makes while subjecting countless people, including women, across the globe to her violent foreign policy as a Secretary of State. Her actions have cost millions of deaths, many more injuries, far more people being dislocated and yet more of them experiencing broken up families, communities and countries.

If you are not familiar with Ms. Clinton’s record on corporatism, colonialism and militarism, this is a good place to start.

I saw the image as a clear statement of protest against patriarchy and Ms. Clinton’s disingenuous position as a feminist.  However, I had quite a few people complaining that the image is misogynistic, basically saying that it degrades women seeking power and implies hatred against them by depicting her as a man, a fat ugly man.

This view of the image is a stark reminder that Ms. Clinton has successfully presented herself as a successful female in a world dominated by men.  To her supporters, she symbolizes the power of women just as President Obama has represented the power of Black people to his.

But what did president Obama do with his power?  The power he held as he was sworn in to the presidency with his hand on Martin Luther King Jr.’s bible?  Dr. King called the US government “the greatest purveyor of violence.”  He fought against it and he died for his cause.  Conversely, President Obama started seven new wars and greatly expanded the drone war, personally overseeing what has become the killing of thousands.  President Obama did not expand MLK’s dream for humanity.  He has deceptively herded people into imperial agendas serving the white patriarchy.

gail the actuary writes truth, jorge the labor-leader spouts nonsense...,

ourfiniteworld |  We are using renewable resources faster than they replenish and continue to use non-renewable resources. The workarounds to fix these problems take an increasing share of the total output of the economy, leaving less for what I have called “ordinary workers.” The problems we encounter include the following:

• Pollution control. Pollution sinks are already full. Continuing to use non-renewable resources (including burning fossil fuels) adds increased pollution. Workarounds have costs, and these take an increasing share of the output of the economy.
• Energy used in energy production. When we started extracting energy products, the cheapest, easiest-to-extract energy products were chosen first. The energy products that are left are higher-cost to extract, and thus require a larger share of the goods the economy produces for extraction.
• Water, metals, and soil workarounds. These suffer from deteriorating quantity and quality, leading to the need for workarounds such as desalination plants, deeper mines, and more irrigated land. All of these take an increasingly large share of the output of the economy.
• Interest and dividends. Capital goods tend to be purchased through debt or sales of stock. Either way, interest payments and dividends must be made, leaving less for workers.
• Increasing hierarchy. Companies need to be larger in size to purchase and manage all of the capital goods needed to work around shortages. High pay for supervisors reduces funds available to pay lower-ranking employees.
• Government funding and pensions. Government programs grow in size in good times, but are hard to cut back in hard times. Pensions, both government and private, are a particular problem because the number of elderly people tends to grow.

It should be no surprise that this type of continuing pattern of eroding wages for ordinary workers leads to great instability. If nothing else, workers become increasingly disillusioned and want to change or overthrow the government.

It might be noted that globalization also plays a role in this shift toward lower wages for ordinary workers. Part of the reason for globalization is simply to work around the problems listed above. For example, if pollution becomes more of a problem, globalization allows pollution to be shifted to countries that do not try to mitigate the problem. Globalization also allows businesses to work around rising the rising cost of oil production; production can be shifted to countries that instead emphasized coal in their energy mix, with much lower energy used in energy production. With increased globalization, people who are primarily selling the value of their own labor find that wages do not keep up with the rising cost of living.

paying criminals not to kill?

WaPo |  The odds were good that Lonnie Holmes, 21, would be the next person to kill or be killed in this working-class suburb north of San Francisco.

Four of his cousins had died in shootings. He was a passenger in a car involved in a drive-by shooting, police said. And he was arrested for carrying a loaded gun.

But when Holmes was released from prison last year, officials in this city offered something unusual to try to keep him alive: money. They began paying Holmes as much as $1,000 a month not to commit another gun crime.

Cities across the country, beginning with the District of Columbia, are moving to copy Richmond’s controversial approach because early indications show it has helped reduce homicide rates.

But the program requires governments to reject some basic tenets of law enforcement even as it challenges notions of appropriate ways to spend tax dollars.

In Richmond, the city has hired ex-convicts to mentor dozens of its most violent offenders and allows them to take unconventional steps if it means preventing the next homicide.

For example, the mentors have coaxed inebriated teenagers threatening violence into city cars, not for a ride to jail but home to sleep it off — sometimes with loaded firearms still in their waistbands. The mentors have funded trips to South Africa, London and Mexico City for rival gang members in the hope that shared experiences and time away from the city streets would ease tensions and forge new connections.

And when the elaborate efforts at engagement fail, the mentors still pay those who pledge to improve, even when, like Holmes, they are caught with a gun, or worse — suspected of murder.