Massive Bank and High Profile Resignations Across the World

[KiwiElf]

French ministers face first-ever assets declaration
AFP Updated April 15, 2013, 8:23 pm

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/1...s-declaration/

PARIS (AFP) - French ministers will for the first time on Monday disclose their assets, in a move President Francois Hollande's Socialist government hopes will restore public confidence after a tax fraud scandal.

There was apprehension, however, that the move could backfire by revealing significant riches to a country struggling with a lengthy economic downturn.

With growth stagnant, unemployment on the rise and the government slashing spending, senior officials admit the move is risky, but hope it will help turn the page on the scandal over a secret Swiss bank account that belonged to ex-budget minister Jerome Cahuzac.

The assets of 37 ministers and of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault will be published at 1500 GMT Monday on the government website.

The move has sparked widespread debate in France, where personal finances are rarely discussed and -- unlike in the United States where politicians often publish their tax returns -- the wealth of public officials has long been considered private.

Lawmakers on both the right and left have decried the move and the government expects a tough battle when it attempts to have the disclosure rule extended to parliamentarians in a law to be presented on April 24.

Former prime minister Francois Fillon of the right-wing UMP denounced the measure on Sunday as "useless" and aimed at "discrediting politicians".

"This would have in no way prevented the Cahuzac scandal," which saw the former minister charged with tax fraud after admitting to having the undeclared Swiss bank account, Fillon said.

The head of the Socialists' faction in the lower house National Assembly, Claude Bartolone, has also raised concerns about the measure, saying it is not the right solution and amounts to "voyeurism".

Close scrutiny is expected to fall on several ministers suspected of having significant wealth, including Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, a well-known art-lover whose father was an antiques dealer.

One member of the government, Health and Social Affairs Minister Marisol Touraine, has already said her declaration will show about 1.4 million euros ($1.8 million) in assets, based primarily on several properties in Paris.

The junior minister for the disabled, Marie-Arlette Carlotti, has declared owning two apartments and a house in southern France, worth a total of 565,000 euros ($740,000).

Others have made more modest declarations, including Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti who said she owns a 70-square-metre (750-square-foot) flat in Paris where she lives and, jokingly, a David Beckham T-shirt.

Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg declared owning a designer lounge chair worth about 4,000 euros ($5,200), while Housing Minister Cecile Duflot, of the Greens, declared two vehicles, raising questions about her environmental footprint.

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has meanwhile mocked the exercise, releasing a long declaration providing his height and weight, his shirt, trouser and shoe sizes, and the assertion that his hair is its natural colour.

An IFOP poll released on Saturday showed 63 percent of respondents supporting the asset disclosures and 70 percent saying they would not be surprised to see ministers with high levels of wealth.

The declarations are part of a package of reforms put forward by President Francois Hollande in a bid to tackle the Cahuzac scandal, which has further damaged the image of an administration already languishing in public-opinion polls.

Other measures include efforts to crack down on foreign tax havens and a new independent authority to monitor the assets and potential conflicts of interests of ministers, parliamentarians and other senior elected officials.

A special prosecutors' office will also be set up to target tax fraud and corruption.

Cahuzac, once the minister responsible for fighting tax evasion, was charged with tax fraud earlier this month when he admitted -- after repeated denials -- to having the undeclared foreign bank account containing some 600,000 euros ($770,000).

[KiwiElf]

Global finance leaders to discuss IMF voting power reforms
Reuters April 18, 2013, 3:06 pm

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/1...power-reforms/

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global finance leaders will do a stocktaking of IMF voting power changes when they meet in Washington this week amid concerns that a key IMF reform package is being held up in the U.S. Congress, a tough sell in a tight budget year.

Without mentioning the United States, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Wednesday repeated a call to member countries to approve the 2010 package, which would boost the voting power of emerging countries like China and India that have long called for more say in the IMF to reflect their growing economic might.

The voting power issue will be discussed by the Group of 20 developed and emerging countries and by the IMF's steering panel, the International Monetary and Finance Committee, starting on Friday.

"There isn't really much new in terms of issues on the table," a senior International Monetary Fund official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters.

"As soon as the U.S. approves it, it will come into effect. Certainly the view of the membership is that it should happen as soon as possible, and that is certainly our view, and the U.S. is also committed to getting it done," the official said.

While approval of the package is being delayed by the United States, there has been little progress since January among countries on agreeing a new formula for calculating members' voting shares.

The official acknowledged that further discussions hinged on updated economic data due in June.

The 2010 deal was meant to have been fully authorized by countries in October last year. But the Obama administration put off asking Congress to fund it last year to avoid controversy before the November presidential elections.

Some countries believe that delays in the voting reform package and in compiling a new formula will set back the next phase of major vote changes due in January 2014.

The United States has repeatedly said it is committed to the 2010 agreement, a thorny issue for some lawmakers who argue that the U.S. money for the IMF should go toward safeguarding domestic programs that are being cut.

Last week President Barack Obama asked Congress to shift $63 billion of U.S. money from an IMF crisis fund to permanently boost U.S. funding to the IMF.

The request, which would further enhance America's clout within the IMF, will be considered as the appropriations committees start their work in deciding fiscal 2014 funding levels for government agencies and discretionary programs.

Some congressional aides have said U.S. approval of IMF money is unlikely before October.

New Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, testifying recently at a hearing on the president's 2014 budget proposal, argued it was in the interest of the United States to maintain its leadership in the IMF and a veto power over policy decision.

"We have a veto in the IMF, we have a controlling voice when we need to, we have leverage so that the United States can influence the economic decisions around the world, and it is something that our international leadership depends on," Lew told the hearing.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Xavier Briand)

[Sabrina]

http://nsnbc.me/2013/04/18/federal-r...-u-s-vaults-2/

18 April

Federal Reserve Refuses to Submit to an Audit of Germany’s Gold Held in U.S. Vaults

Dr. Long Xinming (4M),- The German government has been storing about half of its gold supply with the US FED, apparently in the NYC FED vaults. Germany decided to bring home all its gold, but the FED has said that isn’t possible to do, and it would need until 2020 to be able to accomplish the transfer.


The German government then asked to visit the FED vaults to inventory the gold and determine its actual existence, but the FED refused to permit Germany to examine its own gold. The reasons given were “security” and “no room for visitors”. And nothing else.

Germany did finally send some staff to the FED, and they were permitted only into the vault’s anteroom where they were shown 5 or 6 gold bars as representative of their holdings, and were permitted nothing else.

They apparently came a second time, and the FED did open only one of 9 rooms and let the Germans look at the stack of gold, but were not permitted to either enter or touch. And they returned home.

There has been speculation for a long time, that the FED doesn’t actually have much gold, that it has either sold it off, lent it out, or used it as collateral for borrowings. Either case, there are many claims that the gold that is being stored on behalf of many nations, doesn’t actually exist.

And nobody, other than FED staff, have actually been permitted inside the vaults to see or inventory any of the gold. There is no evidence that the gold actually exists, other than the word of the FED.

Even more, the situation is the same with the supposed gold depository at Fort Knox. Nobody has seen the gold there for a very long time.

The last audit, and the last public visit, was in 1953, just after U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower took office. No outside experts were allowed during that audit, and the audit team tested only about 5% of gold there. So, there hasn’t been a comprehensive audit of Fort Knox in over 60 years.

In 1974 six Congressmen, one Senator and the press were allowed to enter Fort Knox to see for themselves if the gold was there or not. The tour showed that there was gold in Fort Knox but, all the same, it sparked even more controversies.

Only a small fraction of the gold reserves were made available for viewing, and one Congressman published a report saying that the gold bars held in the fort may have been less heavy than would have been expected.

During the past two years, several US politicians have claimed that there is a high chance that neither Fort Knox nor the FED have any gold, or perhaps only a very small amount, and have demanded a full and public inventory and testing, but the FED have resolutely refused.

I have no idea what to make of this. There was another incident last year when Goldman Sachs were proven to have been selling gold certificates to the public, ostensibly backed by real gold in their vaults, but the story leaked out that they in fact held no gold at all, and were doing “fractional reserve” gold banking, on the basis that few people would want to claim their gold at any one time.

Even worse, Goldman were charging customers storage fees for the gold that didn’t exist. Also, do you recall the information I circulated around the middle of last year, documenting the immense gold theft the FED pulled on much of the world during WW II?

The FED came to all countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa and told them their gold holdings might not be safe because of the war, and they should permit the FED to take all of it to the US for safekeeping. Many countries obliged, receiving FED gold certificates in exchange, but when they later tried to cash in those certificates and reclaim their gold, they were told the certificates were fake, that they contained spelling and other mistakes which the FED would never have made, and that the serial numbers were wrong. And the FED still has all that gold.

They even did that to Chiang Kai-Shek, taking all of Taiwan’s gold – that had been looted from China – and never returning it. The last I heard, Chiang’s wife was still trying to recover her gold from the FED.

Apparently a few people have been successful in presenting their certificates to the FED, with documentation that was irrefutable, but even in those cases the owners were forced to settle for only 1% or 2% of the actual value. And most other people or nations who attempt to redeem these certificates are arrested by the FBI for fraud – at the request of the FED.

Late last year, a Canadian businessman had some of these certificates and tried to use them as collateral for a loan, and the FED had him arrested, extradited to the US, and charged him with fraud. Insiders claim this is common practice to frighten every one away.

I’ve inserted here a graph that shows the increase in the FED’s gold supply during the war. It also shows the amount decreasing heavily later, so perhaps some of the gold was returned, but it appears there was a great deal that never was.

For many years after the war, the FED denied these transactions and even denied the existence of these certificates. But a crashed US military plane was found in the Philppine jungle with heavy wooden boxes full of metal containers, all with FED markings, and all containing hundreds of billions of dollars of these same certificates. That was when the entire story finally became public, but the Western media have never cared to report on it.

I have many photos of the content of that aircraft, of the boxes and the cans and the certificates, if anybody cares to see.

Some people claimed this was a CIA counterfeiting operation supported by the US government, as an attempt to just steal the gold from many poor nations.

Via The 4th Media

Dr. Long Xinming is the founder and senior editor of bearcanada.com. He is a frequent contributor to nsnbc international and our partner media The 4th Media in Beijig.

[Sabrina]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22195913

19 April UK

Rich Ricci, Barclays investment bank boss, resigns


The head of Barclays' investment banking business, Rich Ricci, has resigned, the bank has announced.

The move follows the arrival of Barclays's new chief executive, Antony Jenkins.

The boss of the bank's wealth management business, Tom Kalaris, has also quit.

Both men played key roles under Bob Diamond, the former Barclays chief executive who left after last year's Libor rate-rigging scandal.

Mr Ricci gets a year's salary after departing, unless he lands another new job in the meantime.

Barclays declined to reveal his basic salary and pension package.

Mr Ricci, who has been with Barclays for 19 years, has often attracted controversy over his pay.

Despite waiving his bonus last year, he landed £18m from selling 5.7 million shares he gained as part of annual bonuses and incentives schemes in previous years.

He will be replaced by Eric Bommensath and Tom King, who will share the job as co-heads.

Barclays' Mr Jenkins said: "Today's changes will ensure we have the right senior team in place to deliver strategy and commitments we made on 12 February and build the 'go-to' bank."

[Sabrina]

More on the UK Operation Yewtree child abuse investigations and arrest of Rolf Harris.

http://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2...t-please-read/

19 April UK

Very Important Please Read

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke

The BBC have announced that Rolf Harris has been arrested. I am aware that whenever there is any news about the allegations of sexual offences against Rolf Harris, The Needle receives a steep increase in traffic. Without wishing in anyway to seem unsupportive of the victims in this particular case, I’d like to take this opportunity to write about something far more widespread.

Over the last 40 years or more, the care home system in the UK has been targeted by paedophiles, producers of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) material (child pornogaphy) , the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation, and on occasion the murder of victims, either because their deaths become sick entertainment , or because they knew too much.

Some of this has been extremely well organised and is not restricted to one or two local authorities. This is a problem that is widespread.

When I first became aware of this I felt ashamed of myself. I felt ashamed because I had assumed that the most vulnerable in our society, children in need of care of the state, were safe. To find out that that was not the case and that because, in part, of my ignorance, the sexual abuse of children was being exploited and perpetuated was very difficult.

But now I am no longer ignorant, now I know what has been going on. Ignorance is not a crime but to turn away once all ignorance has been dispelled is morally reprehensible.

There has been a systemic cover up of the truth. One reason for this is due to the fact that many child abusers hold great power, a second reason for this is because CSA is an underworld industry which makes a great deal of money and therefore corruption is rife, a third reason for this is because some people mistakenly thought that moving a problem elsewhere solved it, and finally because with so many powerful people implicated for the three previous reasons, it has become an issue of national security.

I’d like to appeal to every parent and grandparent who reads this. This is not just historic this is a very real child safeguarding issue today.

Please take the time to read the articles here on The Needle and on Spotlight. Don’t look at the individual stories in isolation. Look at the broader picture.

Now I’ve told you, now you know, remember the words of Edmund Burke, and do not turn away.

and

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...se-arrest.html

and

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/ap...yewtree-police

[Michelle Marie]

Posted by Sabrina (here)
More on the UK Operation Yewtree child abuse investigations and arrest of Rolf Harris.

http://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2...t-please-read/

19 April UK

Very Important Please Read

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke

The BBC have announced that Rolf Harris has been arrested. I am aware that whenever there is any news about the allegations of sexual offences against Rolf Harris, The Needle receives a steep increase in traffic. Without wishing in anyway to seem unsupportive of the victims in this particular case, I’d like to take this opportunity to write about something far more widespread.

Over the last 40 years or more, the care home system in the UK has been targeted by paedophiles, producers of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) material (child pornogaphy) , the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation, and on occasion the murder of victims, either because their deaths become sick entertainment , or because they knew too much.

Some of this has been extremely well organised and is not restricted to one or two local authorities. This is a problem that is widespread.

When I first became aware of this I felt ashamed of myself. I felt ashamed because I had assumed that the most vulnerable in our society, children in need of care of the state, were safe. To find out that that was not the case and that because, in part, of my ignorance, the sexual abuse of children was being exploited and perpetuated was very difficult.

But now I am no longer ignorant, now I know what has been going on. Ignorance is not a crime but to turn away once all ignorance has been dispelled is morally reprehensible.

There has been a systemic cover up of the truth. One reason for this is due to the fact that many child abusers hold great power, a second reason for this is because CSA is an underworld industry which makes a great deal of money and therefore corruption is rife, a third reason for this is because some people mistakenly thought that moving a problem elsewhere solved it, and finally because with so many powerful people implicated for the three previous reasons, it has become an issue of national security.

I’d like to appeal to every parent and grandparent who reads this. This is not just historic this is a very real child safeguarding issue today.

Please take the time to read the articles here on The Needle and on Spotlight. Don’t look at the individual stories in isolation. Look at the broader picture.

Now I’ve told you, now you know, remember the words of Edmund Burke, and do not turn away.

and

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...se-arrest.html

and

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/ap...yewtree-police

Yes. The big picture.

Awareness. Receive the information regarding the truth of what's been going on. Discern truth, facts, etc.

Action: Spread it (you are/we are)

Pray: then follow guidance for any additional personal actions to take

Dream/vision/work toward a better world: our institutions are corrupt and crumbling. The storm is still blowing, but the new ways are also emerging. I'm working on a new kind of "Follow Your Heart" education for the new paradigm. It gives people their power back. It will free the youth from corrupt institutions. My experience was in public school and a residential children's home. Too much profit motive and not enough proper care for children. AWARENESS from the inside is what I was given.

I'm not going to sit around and do nothing with this awareness. I can assure you that.

Thank you (and I'm really sorry about all those whose lives have been so negatively affected.) We must STOP it.

Love and compassion,
Michelle Marie

[Sabrina]

Release of Offshore Records Draws Worldwide Response

By Emily Menkes, Kimberley Porteous and Michael Hudson, ICIJ – April 20, 2013

http://www.icij.org/blog/2013/04/rel...dwide-response

ICIJ’s investigative series on offshore secrecy – which draws from a cache of 2.5 million secret records – has ignited reactions around the globe.

Since the initial release of stories by the ICIJ and its media partners across the world, public officials have issued statements, governments have launched investigations, and politicians and journalists have been debating the implications of the records and the reporting.

Among the latest reactions and responses:
• Finance ministers and central bankers at the G20 meeting in Washington said in a communiqué that automatic exchange of tax-relevant bank information should be adopted as the global standard to overcome international tax evasion. Skeptical European leaders reportedly “became more enthusiastic” after the public outcry over ICIJ’s offshore leaks revelations.

Bayartsogt Sangajav: resigned his post after offshore account revelation.
• Bayartsogt Sangajav, deputy speaker of the Mongolian Parliament, has reportedly resigned from his post following ICIJ’s revelations about his undeclared offshore company and bank account. In a parliamentary session he was asked to explain his actions. Several MPs called for further disciplinary action, including expelling him from Parliament entirely.

• Santosh Kumar Agarwal (Kedia), a member of the board of directors for the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, has resigned from the organization after his offshore dealings were revealed. “In the interest of the integrity of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre as [an] organization and the industry as a whole, Kedia has taken the initiative to withdraw from the AWDC’s board of directors, awaiting the outcome of a potential investigation,” said a statement released by the company.”

• French president Francois Hollande has published the personal financial details of government ministers on the official government website, following the Jerome Cahuzac and Jean-Jacques Augier offshore assets scandals. The list of assets includes details of bank accounts, life insurance, property and other expensive items such as cars, art works and antiques. Various properties in Paris and the south of France have already been itemized by ministers, as well as designer lounge chair (Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg) and a David Beckham t-shirt (Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti).

• European Council president Herman Van Rompuy announced that tax evasion will be discussed at the next European Council in May, saying “we must seize the increased political momentum to address this crucial problem.”

• BVI government officials have announced they are opening a new business headquarters in Hong Kong, with Orlando Smith, BVI Premier and Finance Minister, confirmed to officiate the opening. Executive director of BVI International Finance Centre, Elise Donovan, said the data obtained by the ICIJ was “a small fraction” of the total number of BVI firms. She later added, “We want to reassure clients in Hong Kong and the region that this is an isolated incident. We remain committed to clients’ privacy and confidentiality.”

• The Swiss and U.S. governments are investigating a possible solution to the dispute over wealthy Americans using Swiss banks to hide their money. These talks come at time when Switzerland’s banking sector is under increased pressure to surrender personal information about suspected tax evaders. Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said all countries should be treated equally in the drive for bank transparency. “We consider it very important that rules must apply to all and are engaging ourselves for a level playing field in multilateral forums,” Widmer-Schlumpf said.

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged UK’s PM David Cameron to crack down on tax havens during talks in Berlin, following a public outcry in Germany over the “offshore leaks.” Sources “close to Cameron” claim he was actually the first to raise the issue, spelling out how his government was cracking down on tax avoidance in places such as Jersey and Guernsey.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.
• Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov is moving his offshore assets back to Russia after ICIJ’s revelations that Shuvalov’s wife Olga Shuvalova was either a shareholder or owner of several secretive offshore entities. The Shuvalovs had a declared income of $12.7 million in 2011, most of which was earned by Olga.

• Spanish political party Unión Progreso y Democracia submitted written questions to the Spanish Congress today in the wake of French president François Hollande’s announcement that French banks had to declare their tax haven subsidiaries. The questions read: Is the government going to present in the European institutions any initiative to eradicate the tax havens within the Member States? and Is the government going to force banks to disclose the subsidiaries they have in tax havens and what are their activities?

•Francois Hollande: called for tax havens to be “eradicated.”French president François Hollande called for “eradication” of the world’s tax havens and told French banks they must declare all of their subsidiaries. He also announced the creation of a special prosecutor to pursue cases of corruption and tax fraud. French government ministers have been ordered to declare their assets publicly within days.

Francois Hollande: called for tax havens to be “eradicated.”

• Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker announced his country plans to lift bank secrecy rules for European Union citizens who have savings based in the country, ending decades of bank secrecy in Luxembourg. “We are following a global movement,” Juncker told parliament in a state-of-the-nation address. The new transparency regime would begin in January 2015. Austria is now the only EU country not sharing data about bank depositors. In a recent interview, Austrian Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Spindelegger Fekter said: “How much money someone has in the bank is a matter between the bank and the customer and is no one else’s business.”

• Algirdas Semeta, European Union Tax Commissioner stated in a recent interview that it is time to move “quicker and harder” against tax evasion. He said the “growing willingness to act” increases the likelihood of a more coordinated EU stance against tax havens.

• Europe’s five biggest economic powers — Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — announced they would begin regularly exchanging banking and tax information as a way of identifying tax dodgers and other financial wrongdoers.

• Meanwhile, the British Virgin Islands (BVI) authorities are not fans of the ICIJ investigation. The BVI premier and Finance Minister Orlando Smith told the South China Morning Post that “BVI authorities are actively investigating how this private information has been illicitly obtained and used to attack the BVI financial services industry, which operates compliantly within international guidelines and the law.”

• Athens’ district attorney Panayota Fakou has started a preliminary probe to find out if Greeks who own offshore companies unearthed by the ICIJ investigation have evaded taxes or laundered money. According to the Greek newspaper Ta Nea, prosecutors will send information requests to British Virgin Islands’ financial authorities asking them to turn over records of 107 entities connected to Greek citizens.

• An investigation by Finnish State Televisionand ICIJ exposing the offshore connections of state-owned postal company Itella has been received with surprise by the Finnish Finance Minister, Jutta Urpilainen. The minister said that “state owned companies should be an example for other companies. That is why it is especially unacceptable that Itella owns a company in a tax haven.” Urpilainen said the Finnish government should adopt clear rules on the use of offshore jurisdictions by state-owned corporations and called tax havens “one of the biggest threats to the Finnish welfare state.”

• Canada’s national revenue minister Gail Shea says the government may pursue the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in court to force it to share the offshore leaks records.

• Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has declared that neither she, nor any other elected officials in her government have dealings in the offshore world. Marois also supported the handover of internal documents to Canadian authorities, stating the Quebec government would not hesitate to use “all legal means” to ensure this.

• French budget minister Bernard Cazeneuve joins the clamor from governments around the globe in urging ICIJ and its media partners to release the offshore tax haven files to them, to “aid justice and help them do their job.” Le Monde’s response: “It is up to the justice system to establish responsibilities at a time when the law might have been broken … It is up to the press to enlighten the reader…”

• Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann says he is ready to make concessions on banking secrecy, to bring the nation in step with Switzerland and Luxembourg. “Austria should participate in talks on banking secrecy,” Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann declared to Die Presse.

• The European Commissioner for Taxation, Algirdas Šemeta, called for an automatic exchange of information between countries and a “tough common stance.” “Recent developments, fuelled by the outcome of the Offshore Leaks, confirms the urgency for more and better action against tax evasion …. Now it is time to put words into action.” He said he was “very pleased” to see many of the Member States reviewing where they stand on the issues and “intensifying their political will to act.”

• The Swiss government has distinguised itself from other world governments by publicly stating it does not want access to the offshore leaks records. Finance minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said Switzerland has worked hard in recent years to curb fraud and tax evasion and that much of the activity pointed to in the leaked documents can be perfectly legal. She says the Swiss government does not want access to the data as “it was acquired illegally and Bern wants no part of that”.

• The Philippine Presidential Commission on Good Government probe into the disclosure that Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, the eldest daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was a beneficiary of a secret offshore trust in the British Virgin Islands, will release its report within two weeks. “We are duty bound to investigate and, depending upon informed preliminary findings, decide whether to pursue the matter,” said Andres Bautista, the chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, tasked with recovering the Marcos family’s alleged ill-gotten wealth.

• The president of the Association of German Banks denied that his group’s members had helped customers engage in tax evasion. “First in line are the individuals and the organizations that invest their money in tax oases,” Andreas Schmitz said.”

• The Berne internal revenue service authorities announced they will re-open the Gunter Sachs case after ICIJ’s revelations about the former Mr. Brigitte Bardot’s intricate offshore scheme.

• In Canada, a Liberal senator urged his caucus colleague, Senator Pana Merchant, to answer questions in the wake of CBC News and ICIJ reports that she has been listed as beneficiary of an offshore trust created by her husband, a well-known class-action attorney. “We’re all innocent until proven guilty in this country, but I want to hear her explanation,” Senator Percy Downe told CBC News in an interview.

• In the Philippines, two lawmakers dismissed a report by an ICIJ media partner, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), that they had offshore holdings. Senator Manuel Villar said his offshore entity was a “1-dollar shell company” that he wasn’t required to report, because he hadn’t made any real investment in it. Villar said that he hadn’t conducted business with the British Virgin Islands company “because I decided to concentrate in the Philippines.” Congressman Joseph Victor ‘JV’ G. Ejercito suggested the story about him was politically motivated. “To the best of my knowledge, I have truthfully and accurately declared all my assets, liabilities, and net worth” on required disclosures forms for public officials, he said in a statement.

• Germany’s Economics Minister Philipp Rösler urged the media to pass the data on to the government, stressing that tax evasion was a “criminal act.”

• Luxembourg’s Finance Minister Luc Frieden says he is open to greater transparency of its banks in order to cooperate further with foreign tax authorities.

• The Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said an inquiry had been initiated by the authorities against individuals whose names figured in the global media report. “Yes. We have taken note of the names and inquiries have been put in motion in respect of the names that have been exposed,” he told a press conference.

• The Mongolian Deputy Speaker, Bayartsogt Sangajav, admitted to an “ethics failure” over his undeclared million-dollar Swiss bank account. He told a press conference: “It is true that there is 1,658 Euros or 2.9 million MNT in a Swiss bank account. I opened the account to trade in international stocks with three other acquaintances in 2008. My failure of responsibility is that I did not include the company in my declaration of income. I have admitted my ethic failure and I am ready to take responsibility.”

• Philippine government officials said they will investigate evidence that Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, a provincial governor and daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was the beneficiary of a secret BVI offshore trust.

• George Mavraganis, the Deputy Finance Minister of Greece announced that the Greek government is moving to address offshore-driven tax dodging. Greek members of parliament asked Mavraganis what he planned to do about the 103 offshore companies that ICIJ found hadn’t been registered with Greece’s tax authorities.

• George Sourlas from Greece’s Ministry of Justice said the revenue loss caused by offshore was huge. “By the actions of offshore companies in Greece, the revenue loss to the Greek government is in the order of 40% or more of the debt of our country,” Sourlas said. “The offshore companies cast a shadow at this time of great crisis, when some get rich and many get poor.”

• In France, President Francois Hollande denied knowledge of the offshore accounts held by his 2012 campaign manager, Jean-Jacques Augier, asserting that it’s up to the tax administration to monitor Augier’s private activities. Reports about Augier’s offshore dealings by Le Monde, the BBC and other ICIJ partners came in the wake of news about tax fraud charges against Hollande’s ex-budget Minister, Jerome Cahuzac.

• The office of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev asserted there was nothing unusual about the information in the leak – which showed that his two daughters were shareholders of three offshore companies. The statement said the President’s daughters “are grown up and have the right to do business.” A spokesperson for Azersun – a holding company controlled by Hasan Gozal, a corporate mogul who was listed as the director of the daughters’ companies – said the report was biased and based on inaccurate information. “I regret that authority of Press Council doesn’t go beyond Azerbaijan and there is no such institution worldwide to fight racketeer journalists,” the spokesman said.

• Ex-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez publicly defended his sons’ involvement in offshore business. Uribe stated that his sons Tomás and Jerónimo are entrepreneurs and “have participated in business dealings since they were children” and “they are not tax evaders.”

• In the UK, David Cameron is facing renewed pressure to take action over Britain’s entanglements within the offshore world. Lord Oakeshott, a senior Liberal Democrat said that the secrecy haven of the British Virgin Islands “stains the face of Britain.” Oakeshott and others are questioning whether Cameron will raise the issue in June of at the G8 summit of wealth nations. “How can David Cameron keep a straight face calling for the G8 to make big business pay tax when we let the BVI use British law and British protection to suck in billions in dirty money?” Oakeshott asked.

• German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble stated on public radio that he was “pleased” with the ICIJ reports. He went on to say, “I think that such things as have been made known will increase the pressure internationally, and we will be able to increase the cooperation with those who have been more reticent”, a sentiment reflected in Germany’s previous lobbying to stamp out tax avoidance.

• Canadian Federal Revenue Minister Gail Shea called the released of offshore banking information as “good news” for Canadians and bad news for tax evaders. Ms. Shea urged ICIJ or anyone else with information on tax cheats to come forward.

• Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, said: “Secrecy is no longer acceptable. We need to get rid of it. If the rules make it possible, then we’ll change the rules.”
For further articles in the ICIJ invetsigations head to www.icij.org

[Sabrina]

http://davidhencke.wordpress.com/201...abuse-scandal/

23 April UK

Investigators under investigation: Met Police inquiry into IPCC over Richmond abuse scandal


Operation Fernbridge – the criminal investigation into a paedophile ring centred round the London borough of Richmond and the shady Elm Guest House – is now turning to the role of Independent Police Complaints Commission over the whole affair.

As reported by my excellent colleague for Exaro News, Mark Conrad,(see http://www.exaronews.com/articles/49...ond-paedo-ring) in an amazing turn of events the Met Police is now investigating the role of the police investigators.

The turn of events is extraordinary. A former local government employee at Richmond and GMB trade unionist put a complaint into the police some 20 years after the police raid on the Elm Guest House. The police while taking down the details did not appear to investigate.

So he complained to the IPCC who also appear to have dismissed the inquiry.He then used the appeal process to complain about the IPCC who again dismissed it.

To be fair most of the complaint concentrated on yet another hushed up Richmond scandal – the physical abuse of elderly people at another care home – but there is a clear mention of child abuse in the first complaint to the police.

Now 30 years later ( and one has to be careful not to prejudice a future trial) there is enough evidence to justify the arrest of two people in connection with the child sexual abuse inquiry, it logically follows that the police certainly did not do their job and the IPCC appear to have been cavalier about doing theirs.

What is emerging is that the Conservative and Liberal run leafy borough of Richmond – which made the careers of three Liberal Democrat peers, Lord Razzall, Baroness Tonge and Baroness Hamwee – was behind the net curtains not a very savoury place. And it is clear that the authorities and the complaints procedure were found wanting. Watch out for more damaging revelations to come on Richmond once Exaro has fully investigated them.

[Sabrina]

http://preventdisease.com/news/13/04...to-Maize.shtml

Poland Becomes The 8th EU Nation To Ban Monsanto Maize

Poland has become the eighth EU member state to ban the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops. Seven other EU member states have already imposed bans on the cultivation of GM crops approved by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as safe: Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece and Bulgaria.

The Polish Agriculture Ministry expressed concerns that GM crops may cross-pollinate with non-GM crops and Monsanto’s MON810 maize pollen may find its way into honey. The ministry also pointed to that there exists no scientific assessments confirming that GM crops are safe for the environment and people.

In a statement, Greenpeace Poland’s ‘Stop GMO’ campaign coordinator Joanna Mis said, “The government has delivered on its promise,” and, “We are happy that Poland has joined the club of countries that ban the cultivation of GM crops. However, this is not the end of our campaign. We have to make sure that the European Commission does not manage to lift the ban [...]. We also have to make sure that crops will be effectively controlled and the ban on cultivation observed.”

A panel of experts appointed by a Supreme Court has recently recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all genetically modified (GM) food and termination of all ongoing trials of transgenic crops in India.

See: http://www.examiner.com/article/a-10...me-court-panel

The United States, Canada, China, UK, Australia, Mexico, and most of South America, Asia and Africa have no formal GMO-free platforms and their use is typically unrestricted and widespread.
22 April

[Sabrina]

http://rt.com/news/wikileaks-visa-iceland-valitor-346/

24 April

WikiLeaks wins case against Visa contractor ordered to pay '$204k per month if blockade not lifted'

Iceland's Supreme Court has ruled that Valitor (formerly Visa Iceland) must pay WikiLeaks $204,900 per month or $2,494,604 per year in fines if it continues to blockade the whistle-blowing site.

The court upheld the decision that Valitor had unlawfully terminated its contract with WikiLeaks' donation processor, DataCell.

"Today's decision marked the most important victory to date against the unlawful and arbitrary economic blockade erected by US companies against WikiLeaks," the organization's press release stated.

[Sabrina]

The Boston story is obviously covered elsewhere on Avalon, but as with the many corruption stories, it's encouraging to see some of the 'official' stories being fed to us are unravelling and press agencies and main stream newspapers are covering the discrepancies and picking holes in some of their colleagues stories...
There's an eclipse today - good for getting stuff to the surface they say ...


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2RS7jqEfk

Now officials claim Boston bombing suspect was NOT armed in boat showdown - despite police account of firefight and him 'shooting himself'

Officials now claim that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was unarmed as he hid in boat in Watertown

Contradicts Boston Police Commissioner's account of hour-long firefight with Tsarnaev

New York Times said M4 rifle had been found on boat

Police sources suggested Tsarnaev shot himself onboard


Two unnamed U.S. officials have told the Associated Press that the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings was unarmed when police captured him hiding inside a boat in a neighborhood back yard.

The report contradicts the Boston police department's own account of Dzhokar Tsarnaev's capture on Friday - after commissioner Ed Davies described a firefight between him and officers before the terror suspect was captured.

The New York Times also said an M4 rifle had been found on the boat - another claim contradicted by the latest revelations.

Officers had originally said they had exchanged gunfire with Tsarnaev for more than one hour Friday evening before they were able to subdue him.

But on Wednesday, the law enforcement officials told the AP that no gun was found aboard the vessel.


full story at link

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILY MAIL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 02:53, 25 April 2013 | UPDATED: 09:23, 25 April 2013

[Sabrina]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2...713444188.html

26 April Pakistan

Musharraf due in court over Bhutto murder

Pakistan's ex-military ruler expected in court in connection with murder of Benazir Bhutto day after his arrest.


Former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf has been formally arrested in connection with the murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, said on Thursday that Musharraf will remain at his Chak Shahzad farmhouse residence in the capital but will be produced at the anti-terrorist court in Rawalpindi on Friday.

“The Musharraf case has many implications given the fact that the country is less than two weeks away from election,” he said.

“It will be the responsibility of the new elected government to deal with this important issue.

“He has admirers no doubt. Many of the powerful political parties were all on board with the former military ruler.”

Musharraf is already under a two-week house arrest over his decision to sack judges when he imposed emergency rule in November 2007.

The Bhutto case is the second of three cases dating back to his 1999-2008 rule for which Musharraf has been arrested.

The latest arrest came a day after a court in Rawalpindi refused to extend his bail.

Since his return to Pakistan in a bid to contest the 2013 general election, Musharraf has been dealing with a number of legal cases against him, including the detention of judges and treason.

Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated in a gun-and-bomb attack outside Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh on December 27, 2007, while Musharraf was president.

She was killed after addressing an election campaign rally in the city.

The ATC (Anti-Terrorism Court) had indicted Musharraf in the case in February 2011, and in August the same year he was declared a proclaimed offender and his property was attached because of his absence.

Musharraf's government blamed Bhutto's killing on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who denied any involvement. Mahsud was killed in a US drone attack in August 2009.

[Sabrina]

Kerry Cassidy recently mentioned the level of 'mental constraint' we find ourselves boxed into - for instance the continual impressions that it is hard and expensive and dangerous and lengthy to do space travel etc. so people don't think outside of the box on this. Same is happening with the manufactured financial crises in the Euro zone and the continual use of the word 'austerity' and 'austerity cuts'. Say it long enough and many imagine they are boxed into a life of unemployment, fear of losing jobs, rising costs etc. and can't rock the boat. However, many have been demonstrating in Spain, France, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia etc. with limited amounts of coverage in the main stream media. The Brits seem to be pretty slow to wake up on this - are we the most mind controlled country as has been claimed by Cathi Morgan who has talked to the Ammach Project ( https://youtube.com/watch?v=IkjJb...feature=relmfu )


http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe...248675415.html

26 April Spain and France

Spain protesters clash with police

Protesters hurl bottles at police in latest demonstrations triggered by anger at country's economic crisis.

Twenty-nine people have been injured in clashes between police and protesters in the latest street demonstrations sparked by anger at Spain's economic crisis, emergency services said.

Around 1,000 protesters massed in front of a police barrier protecting parliament in Madrid on Thursday, calling for the government and lawmakers to quit.

The demonstration coincided with the release of Spain's latest official unemployment figures which showed the jobless rate had surged past 27 percent, with 6.2 million people out of work.

A group of protesters hurled bottles at the police line and let off firecrackers, prompting riot police with shields and helmets to chase them along nearby avenues, beating some with batons.

Thirteen of those injured in the clashes were police officers, officials said.

Before the demonstration started police arrested four members of anarchist groups suspected of plotting to set fire to a bank and 11 people who blocked access to a university.

Austerity cuts

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government was due on Friday to unveil a further package of economic reforms which he wants to have implemented by 2015. Government officials say the plan will tread a fine line between growth and austerity.


Hundreds of protesters reponded to the call for demonstrators to "Besiege Congress" [AFP]

But, with millions people unemployed in the country, protesters on Thursday said the increasing austerity cuts were causing unfair suffering to the poor and complain that the political system is stacked against them.

As well as overseeing a bailout for Spain's banking sector, Rajoy has brought in spending cuts and labour reforms, since his conservative government took office in December 2011.

He says the steps are needed to fix the public finances and strengthen the economy and will help Spain save $196bn by 2014.

Rising unemployment in Spain has caused evictions to soar and forced tens of thousands of people to leave in search of work abroad.

The number of households in which all eligible members are unemployed reached 1.91 million in the first quarter, the statistics office said.

In neighbouring France, also hit by the financial crisis, unemployment reached its highest rate since 1997, according to data announced on Thursday.

Around 3.2 million people were out of work in the country, an 11.5 percent annual increase, the French labour ministry said.

and

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...rance-eurozone

Austerity blamed as unemployment soars in Spain and France

More than 6 million without jobs in Mariano Rajoy's Spain while figure in François Hollande's France is 3.2 million

Unemployment has soared to records in both France and Spain as the impact of government spending cuts and a collapse in consumer confidence forced employers to shed thousands of workers.

Spain's persistent rise in unemployment reached new heights over the first three month of this year, leaving a record 27% of the workforce jobless.

Spain now has 6.2 million unemployed after a 23-month run of falling employment figures, with the young and those living in the south of the country particularly hard hit as the economy continues to shrink.

Almost six out of every 10 people under the age of 25 who are not studying are now jobless, with the rate at 57%.

In France, the number of people out of work reached a record 3.2 million in March in a blow to socialist president François Hollande, who has struggled to stabilise the economy in the face of declining exports and a fall in domestic demand.

The figures triggered a heated debate about Europe's austerity drive with leading IMF and European Central Bank officials sharply at odds.

Some eurozone officials believe now is the time to ease back on debt-cutting drives because calmer financial markets are less easily panicked.

The IMF is also calling for a relaxation in austerity drives – for both the eurozone and Britain – but Germany and the ECB are opposed. (interesting split here)

"There is … a risk that Europe could fall into stagnation, which would have very serious implications for households, companies [and] banks," IMF first deputy managing director David Lipton told a conference in London.

"To decisively avoid that dangerous downside, policymakers must act now to strengthen the prospects for growth," he said.

But ECB executive board member Jörg Asmussen urged governments to push on with budget consolidation and reforms.

"Delaying fiscal consolidation is not an easy way out. If it were, we would have taken it," Asmussen said.

"Delaying fiscal consolidation is no free lunch. It means higher debt levels. And this has real costs in the euro area where public debts are already very high."

The ECB is expected by many to cut interest rates next week, although a quarter-point reduction is unlikely to lift the eurozone economy out of recession.

"It will probably require additional unconventional measures from the ECB," Lipton said, while Asmussen said monetary policy was not an "all-purpose weapon".

But German chancellor Angela Merkel intervened in the debate yesterday saying the ECB was "in a difficult position,"

"For Germany it would actually have to raise rates slightly at the moment, but for other countries it would have to do even more for more liquidity to be made available."

Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy plans to announce measures on Friday designed to promote growth while keeping public spending cuts in place.

The economy shrank 1.9% over the last year and is not expected to return to growth until the end of this year or 2014.

Analysts agree new jobs will not be created until growth rises above 1%, which seems unlikely until well into next year – by which time 2 million people are likely to have been unemployed for more than three years.

Spain posted Europe's worst budget deficit last year and, although part of that was a one-off €41bn (£35bn) payment to rescue the country's banks, it will still struggle to meet the deficit targets set by Brussels without pushing even more people into unemployment.

This year's deficit target is currently 4.5% of GDP, though that looks likely to be relaxed amid the Europe-wide recession.

Household spending power has fallen to 2001 levels, thanks to a combination of unemployment, falling salaries and increased income and sales taxes, with almost one in three Spanish households now struggling to pay monthly bills.

"This has grown brutally in recent years," said Carlos Susías of the Network against Poverty and Social Exclusion.

In France, a wave of industrial layoffs sent unemployment soaring further over the 3 million level hit last August and the previous all-time record of 3,195,500 set in January 1997.

Hollande reaffirmed his goal to reverse the rising trend, calling on his government to combine with industry and other players to use all means possible to create jobs.

"Everything the government does, in every ministry, must be to continue to strengthen the battle for jobs," he said. "I want all the French people to unite behind this one national priority."

Carmakers headed a list of businesses laying off workers. PSA Peugeot Citroen is scrapping more than 10,000 domestic jobs and rival Renault aims to cut 7,500 posts in France by 2016.

[Sabrina]

Benjy Fulford's recent take on it all with what seems to be more meat on it than usual. Plus Cobra's latest and where Bush, Obama and the other presidents met yesterday on the day of the Eclipse.


http://briankellysblog.blogspot.co.u...s-against.html

Benjamin Fulford -- Making Moves Against the Corrupt Political Establishment

April 22, 2013




A member of the Japanese Yakuza was contacted by members of the cabal last week and told to inform the White Dragon Society that “after Kennedy and Bush would come Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and one other.” Since the Boston terror psy-ops included a bombing of the Kennedy Library and the missile attack in Texas took place close to the Bush ranch, the warning seems to be a hint that some major attacks linked to these two other presidents and “one other,” were planned for the near future.

Somebody has also placed a $1 billion bet on a major US stock market plunge this week in what may be a sign of foreknowledge of further major terrorist events, according to an MI5 source.

There is also evidence of a huge information war between two major factions in the US over the bombing attacks in Texas and Boston. The Department of Homeland Security (SS) Sabbatean mafia faction staged the Boston attack in an attempt to create a psychological atmosphere favourable to martial law, while the opposition inside the agencies clearly tried to sabotage this attack and make it clear to all this was government staged.

In contrast to this increasing infighting and negative news in the US, there has been very good news coming out of Asia last week. A White Dragon Society representative returned from Beijing where talks with Chinese military leaders made it clear China was not going to be fooled into war by any Sabbatean (Israeli) false flag attack in the area. In addition, on the subject of North Korea ...

More at: Three more major terrorist incidents threatened after Boston and Texas (benjaminfulford.net).

[ Mod-edit: We received a request not to post Benjamin Fulford's full copyright message, but just samples with a link, so I edited down the above and added a link to his site. - Paul. ]

and Cobra says this:

http://2012portal.blogspot.co.uk/201...-has-come.html

24 April

In early 2013, the Resistance Movement has cleared all underground facilities of the Cabal through Operation Underlord. Now they have nowhere to hide and they are concerned.

Tomorrow, on the day of the lunar eclipse, the top members of the military-industrial complex will meet in a secret location close to Bush ranch in Texas to discuss the situation. They will find no solution.

Victory of the Light is near! (full story at link)

and note

http://news.yahoo.com/george-w-bush-...055506893.html

25 April (eclipse day)

Obama, former presidents rally around George W. Bush as library opens

DALLAS (Reuters) - George W. Bush basked in warm praise from President Barack Obama and three fellow former U.S. presidents on Thursday as Bush's library was dedicated in a ceremony that emphasized his resolute response to terrorism while skirting controversies such as his decision to invade Iraq.

Obama and fellow Democrats Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, along with Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, came together on the campus of Southern Methodist University to honor one of their own. At the end of the hour-long ceremony, Bush - who has largely avoided public life since leaving Washington in January 2009 - choked back tears as he concluded his remarks.

Obama captured the feeling of the day when he indicated that Bush's political friends and foes both view the former president as genuine.

"To know the man is to like the man, because he's comfortable in his own skin," Obama said. "He takes his job seriously, but he doesn't take himself too seriously. He's a good man."

full story at link




Interesting times eh - depending on what resonates with you personally.

[Sabrina]

More on the UK child abuse investigations. Needleblog is doing a good job of covering these investigations and also looking at the horrifying levels of abuse that has gone on in children's homes across the UK over the years and the refusal of local authorities and government officials (such as former child minister Patricia Hodge) to investigate these properly. Plus the intimidation of local staff concerned about these. This can of course be mirrored across the world. There's a continual battle for the truth to come out on all of this now, and it is not going to go away quietly.

http://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2...rr-rearrested/

25 April UK

Yewtree: Freddie Starr Rearrested

Once again it looks like publicly naming someone arrested for an historical sexual offence, in this case Freddie Starr, has encouraged other alleged victims to come forward and speak to the police, thus potentially strengthening the case. This comes at a time when it looks like there is a new official policy of not releasing the names of those arrested for fear that their reputations will be irreparably harmed.

How many potential victims might come forward if the first person arrested yesterday by the Operation Pallial team were known ?

Comedian Freddie Starr has been arrested for a second time by detectives investigating the Jimmy Savile sex scandal.

The entertainer, 70, answered bail yesterday and was rearrested over further allegations of sexual offences.

His detention came after he was first arrested in November last year over claims he tried to grope a woman when she was 14.

Scotland Yard said that a man had been ‘further arrested on suspicion of sexual offences in connection with further allegations made to Operation Yewtree’.

The investigation is the national inquiry sparked after allegations of abuse were made against Jimmy Savile.

Daily Mail - story here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-offences.html

[Sabrina]

A suspension rather than a resignation here in the UK. But there's a concerted effort to discredit the so called conspiracy sites and followers at the moment (wonder why..)... Look at the allegations that the Boston so called bombers where influenced by these... Nigel Farage seems to have lost his campaigning zeal and seeking for the truth motivation here. Daily Mail has forgot that they've recently even done some good stuff on the suppression of the UK abuse allegations. So easy to whip it all up into a frenzy if certain things are mentioned.. (and think the Secrets of the Fed Facebook site has been spammed recently)...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2RXp05ysr

UKIP rocked by Holocaust row and BNP members, as leader Nigel Farage admits the party cannot vet all of its candidates

Anna-Marie Crampton, a UKIP candidate in East Sussex, suspended over reports she posted extreme views on a conspiracy theorist website

Crampton, 57, is allegedly quoted as saying: 'The Second World War was engineered by the Zionist jews and financed by the bankers...'

UKIP leader Nigel Farage admits the party had not properly checked all 1,700 candidates it is fielding in next week’s council elections

The UK Independence Party today suffered a string of damaging revelations about its election candidates, including one who reportedly claimed Jews murdered each other in the Holocaust.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage was forced to admit the party had not properly checked all 1,700 candidates it is fielding in next week’s council elections, raising the prospect of more embarrassments to come.

The row threatens to undermine the party’s hopes of making a major breakthrough in May 2’s elections.
Anna-Marie Crampton, a UKIP candidate in East Sussex, was suspended by the party over reports she posted extreme views on a conspiracy theorist website called 'Secrets of The Fed'.

Crampton, 57, is allegedly quoted as saying: ’Holocaust means a sacrifice by fire. Only the Zionists could sacrifice their own in the gas chambers.

’The Second World Wide War was engineered by the Zionist jews and financed by the bankers to make the general public all over the world to feel so guilty and outraged by the Holocaust that a treaty would be signed to create the State of Israel as we know it today.’


25 April - more at the link

[Sabrina]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22313286

26 April UK

Max Clifford charged with 11 indecent assaults

The PR guru was first arrested by police in December 2012

PR guru Max Clifford has been charged with 11 indecent assaults allegedly committed between 1966 and 1985.

The alleged offences relate to seven different women and girls ranging in age from 14 to 19 years old.

Mr Clifford, 70, from Surrey, who says the allegations are "completely false", will appear in court next month.

He was arrested in Operation Yewtree - set up after claims were made against Jimmy Savile - although his arrest was unrelated to the former BBC DJ.

Operation Yewtree has three strands. One concerns Savile's crimes exclusively, while another relates to allegations against Savile and others.

The third strand, under which Mr Clifford was arrested, concentrates on accusations unconnected to the Savile investigations but which emerged as a result of the publicity surrounding Savile.

Mr Clifford was not charged over three further allegations as there was "insufficient evidence to authorise charges", the Crown Prosecution Service said.

Mr Clifford denied the allegations against him.

He said: "The allegations in respect of which I have been charged are completely false and I have made this clear to the police during many, many hours of interviews.

"Nevertheless a decision has been taken to charge me with 11 offences involving seven women, the most recent of which is 28 years ago and the oldest 47 years ago.

"I have never indecently assaulted anyone in my life and this will become clear during the course of the proceedings."

Mr Clifford, who was first arrested on 6 December 2012, described the situation as "living a 24/7 nightmare".

Scotland Yard said he was charged after answering bail at a London police station following advice from the CPS.

Mr Clifford was later released on bail and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 28 May.

[Sabrina]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz2RZFarbME



Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix

By Matt Taibbi
April 25, 2013

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia

Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.

"It's a double conspiracy," says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. "It's the height of criminality."

The bad news didn't stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. "Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry," CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.

But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants' incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.

"A farce," was one antitrust lawyer's response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.

"Incredible," says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.

[Sabrina]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...s-all-time-low


JPMorgan's Eligible Gold Plummets 65% In 24 Hours To All Time Low

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/25/2013 17:30 -0400



We are confident that in the aftermath of our article from last night "Just What Is Going On With The Gold In JPMorgan's Vault?"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...pmorgans-vault

in which we showed the absolute devastation of "eligible" (aka commercial) gold warehoused in JPM's vault just over the Manhattan bedrock at 1 Chase Manhattan Place (and also in the entire Comex vault network in the past month), we were not the only ones checking every five minutes for the Comex gold depository update for April 25. Moments ago we finally got it, and it's a doozy. Because in just the past 24 hours, from April 24 to April 25, according to the Comex, JPM's eligible gold plunged from 402.4K ounces to just 141.6K ounces, a drop of 65% in 24 hours,and the lowest amount of eligible gold held at the vault on record, since its reopening in October 2010!

Everyone has seen what a run on the bank looks like. Below is perhaps the best chart of what a "run on the vault" is.



The absolute collapse in JPM's eligible gold inventory, means total Comex eligible gold has fallen to just 5.8 million ounces, half of what it was in early 2011, and back to levels last seen in March 2009.



So, once again, just like last night, we ask the same questions which are even more critical today than they were 24 hours ago:

What happened to the commercial gold vaulted with JPM, and what was the reason for the historic drawdown?

Gold, unlike fiat, is not created out of thin air, nor can it be shred or deleted. Where did the gold leaving the JPM warehouse end up (especially since registered JPM and total Comex gold has been relatively flat over the same period)?

Did any of this gold make its way across the street, and end up at the vault of the building located at 33 Liberty street?

What happens if and/or when the JPM vault is empty of commercial gold, and JPM receives a delivery notice?

Incidentally, JPM now has just under a paltry 5 tons of eligible gold left in storage. We hope this is also the maximum exposure it faces for imminent delivery requests, because if tomorrow it receives withdrawal requests for 141,581.5 ounces +1, then things get really interesting.

graphs at the link

and


JPMorgan Accounts For 99.3% Of The COMEX Gold Sales In The Last Three Months

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/26/2013 - 19:28


When just one firm accounts for 99.3% of the physical gold sales at the COMEX in the last three months it’s not what most of us on this side of the rainbow would consider “broad-based” selling. Of course discovering this kind of relevant information requires an internet connection, 2nd grade math and reading skills, and the desire to do a teeny-weeny bit of reporting. Sadly they’ve wandered so far down the rabbit hole that the concept of “physical demand” (i.e. people actually wanting to take possession of the stuff) is puzzling to them because the vast majority of the world’s so-called “gold-trading” takes place in the realm of make believe (which is their natural habitat). It’s all fun and games until somebody loses their metal and “somebody” has lost one hell of a lot of metal in the last 90 days... J P Morgan has fumbled ownership of 1,966,000 Troy ounces of gold since February 1. That’s 74% more gold than the US mint delivered through the US mint’s American Eagle program in all of 2012. I mention this because there’s little doubt in my mind that the US government is one of JPM’s gold “customers.” So (if I am correct) the same US government who just let the Morgue dump its gold on the COMEX floor will once again be suspending gold sales to peasants.

full story here:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...t-three-months

[Sabrina]

Things look as tho' they're moving! There's a thread on this, but David Wilcock's new blog is just published, and there's an encouraging snippet from it below.

http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/d...sclosure-storm

Divine Cosmos: The Storm of Disclosure is About to Hit...


Before LIBOR came out, we had insiders telling us that the Alliance's plan was to slowly, steadily defeat the Cabal -- not all at once.

That is exactly what has happened so far. Gradually, more and more, the noose has been tightening.

The Cabal can manipulate a major crisis with their control of the media. Many of these journalists seem to have rebelled against it, as we are now seeing with the ICIJ. (see post 2267 on this)

Instead of the Mass Arrests scenario I had originally heard would occur, a slower, more gradual and systematic approach has been going on.

Nonetheless, at some point it will not be gradual. It will strike as hard and fast as a massive lightning-storm -- just like my dream predicted.

Disclosure will be a major element of this process -- as many different dreams have indicated.

This event, once it occurs, will have such a huge effect on us that it will easily be considered the biggest event in recorded human history on earth.

I am not sure what it will be called once it happens -- that is probably something that will only be determined after it happens.

Nonetheless, I do believe that the reality of the extraterrestrial presence, and the technologies derived from it, will be a key element of this process.

and we've got this coming up:

http://www.citizenhearing.org

Citizen Hearing On Disclosure

April 29 To May 3, 2013 – Washington, DC

If the congress won't do it's job, the people will.

An event with historical implications will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC from April 29 to May 3, 2013. At that time as many as forty researchers and military/agency witnesses will testify for thirty hours over five days before former members of the United States Congress.

Note: the full Citizen Hearing will be Webcast live on the Internet.

The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race will attempt to accomplish what the Congress has failed to do for forty-five years - seek out the facts surrounding the most important issue of this or any other time.

For this reason the motto for the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure is "If the Congress won't do its job, the people will."