Jeffrey Epstein: The genie behind the 2008 crash?

Steve Brown
The Duran

So far, Jeffrey Epstein's case has largely been limited to allegations of sex trafficking, but when we consider persons of great financial power and influence possibly linked to Epstein, the scope is broadened. But what if that scope can be broadened to further encompass corruption of the global financial system itself...? 

Now there are two patterns to emerge so far with regard to Epstein's philanthropic activities, one relating to philanthropic donations to Israeli causes, and the other regarding scientific experiments for genetic research. Even so, why would such philanthropy be the basis for Epstein's obsessive secrecy? There must be a third track.

Epstein was recently revealed to be the director of Leon Black's Family Foundation until 2007, a very significant date. Black is the multi-billionaire chairman of Apollo Global Management, a private equity leveraged buyout financial firm. Black writes: "On a few occasions I donated money to certain charitable organizations with which Mr. Epstein was affiliated, and he made contributions to certain charitable organizations that are meaningful to me." 

The foregoing glosses over the fact that as director, Jeffrey Epstein donated millions on behalf of Leon Black to Charles Bronfman's Taglit-Birthright Israel charity which promotes Zionism and opposes Palestinian rights. Then, subsequent to Epstein's conviction in 2008, Black donated $10M USD to Epstein's charity 'Gratitude America' in 2015, via BV70 LLC, which is controlled by Leon Black. So why would Black donate such an amount to a convicted felon and registered sex offender? 

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Arkancide? Murder of Arkansas Senator Linda Collins-Smith linked to Epstein pedophilia and sex trafficking scandal

Intellihub 

By NewsTarget 

 

New information is surfacing to suggest that the unsolved murder of Arkansas Senator Linda Collins-Smith may be connected to the public unveiling of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his child sex trafficking ring. 

 

While the details are still forthcoming, CD Media is reporting that a “confidential source that has been accurate consistently” recently came forward with proof tying Collins-Smith’s mysterious death to her involvement with blowing the lid off an alleged child sex trafficking ring in Arkansas. 

 

Collins-Smith, a Republican, had also been working to expose “massive corruption in the local and state government” in Arkansas, which suggests that she may have been “Arkancided” for getting a little bit too close to the truth. 

 

According to CD Media‘s “confidential source,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is currently investigating this alleged link, which potentially also implicates Bill and Hillary Clinton, after which the term “Arkancide” was first coined. 

 

Is it possible that Collins-Smith is simply the latest casualty of the “Clinton Body Count” phenomenon, in which individuals who are on the verge of blowing the lid on some Clinton crime suddenly end up “suicided?” It certainly is, and this would seem to be where the FBI probe could be headed. 

 

As it turns out, Collins-Smith had been in the process of investigating corruption within her state’s Department of Human Services, or Child Protective Services, just prior to her death, which only adds to its suspicious circumstances.

 

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‘Sad sight’, ‘disgrace’ to see French minister caught throwing lavish parties on taxpayer money

Comment: Hardly shocking. This happens across the length and breadth of the European Union elite. It's merely business as usual. No wonder Britain wants to separate. Lying about it is also par for the (main) course.

----------------------------

RT

A senior official in France finds himself embroiled in controversy after claims he used public funds to throw lavish parties with vintage wine and exquisite meals. His attitude leaves a stain on French politics, analysts told RT. 

Ecology Minister Francois de Rugy often campaigns for government transparency and has criticized other politicians involved in financial scandals. He got a taste of his own medicine earlier this week when investigative website Mediapart alleged that he hosted more than 10 luxurious dinner parties in which the guests enjoyed lobster, as well as fine wine and champagne – all paid for with taxpayer money. This reportedly took place when de Rugy was the head of the lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly.

The scandal prompted calls for de Rugy to resign, which he refused to do. He dismissed the story as a “grotesque” smear, claiming he does not eat lobster due to a “shellfish allergy” and avoids champagne because it gives him “a headache.”

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Flashback: Billionaire Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein Sent Bill Clinton $3.5 Million From Secret Swiss Bank Account

Radar Online Archive

 

Billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein sent $3.5 million to Bill and Hillary Clinton‘s foundation after an underage sex slave probe began, according to secret Swiss bank records leaked by a whistleblower.

As RadarOnline.com has previously reported, Hillary Clinton is reconsidering her 2016 presidential bid because of fears of the embarrassing revelations that could emerge in the coming months about Bill Clinton’s dealings with Epstein.

Sworn statements from Virginia Roberts — the woman who claims she was a teen sex slave forced to have sex with Prince Andrew — also includes the allegation that she saw the former president on Epstein’s “orgy island.”

“I remember asking Jeffrey, ‘What’s Bill Clinton doing here?’ kind-of-thing and he laughed it off and said, ‘Well, he owes me a favor’ … he never told me what favors they were,'” Roberts told lawyers.

The details of the shocking money transfer are contained in internal bank data that a computer expert took with him when he left HBSC bank in 2007 — and recently provided to several news agencies, including London’s Guardian newspaper. 

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See also: Epstein's frmr Wall Street mentor suspects billionaire's fortune amassed through fraud with 'tainted money' borrowed from Deutsche bank

Israel: Netanyahu’s wife convicted of fraud

Middle East Monitor 

 

An Israeli court on Sunday convicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, of fraudulently using public funds to pay for expensive restaurant meals, according to local media, Anadolu Agency reports.

 

Sarah Netanyahu was ordered to pay 55,000 shekels ($15,277), Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

The conviction came on the basis of a deal between the Israeli public prosecutor and Sara Netanyahu’s lawyer under which she pleaded guilty to the charges in return for payment of the amount mentioned.

On Sunday, Netanyahu arrived at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court and admitted to buying meals from luxury restaurants, despite the constant presence of a chef at the prime minister’s government residence.

Sara Netanyahu will pay a fine of 10,000 shekels (some $2,777), and reimbursement of 45,000 shekels (some $12,500) to the state coffers in exchange for a lesser charge of “deliberately exploiting the mistake of others"

Vatican Whistleblower Says ‘Gay Mafia’ Is Blocking Needed Reforms

Briebart News

The former Vatican ambassador to the United States told the Washington Post a gay mafia among Church leadership is blocking attempts to seriously address clerical sexual abuse.
In an extensive interview, snippets of which were published Monday, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said that the sexual abuse crisis would be "far less severe" if the "problem of homosexuality in the priesthood were honestly acknowledged and properly addressed."

"Given the overwhelming evidence, it is mind-boggling that the word 'homosexuality' has not appeared once, in any of the recent official documents of the Holy See" dealing with clerical sexual abuse, Viganò told the Post.

Instead, a "gay mafia" among the bishops, seeking to protect themselves, was "sabotaging all efforts at reform," he said.

Late last August, Archbishop Viganò released a shocking 11-page report declaring that in 2013 he had personally informed Pope Francis of the serial homosexual abuse of then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, but that the pope had ignored the information, elevating McCarrick to a position of influence in the Vatican.

In that report, Viganò linked the clerical sex abuse crisis as well as coverups by bishops to an extensive "homosexual network" in the Church. 

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When the Journalists Ganged Up on Assange They Ganged Up on Themselves

Paul Craig Roberts

Journalists did not appreciate the implications for themselves of the contrived and false indictment of Julian Assange by a corrupt US government.  It was obvious to a few of us that the indictment by the US government, a government constrained by the First Amendment, of a foreign national for publishing leaked material, an action never before regarded as espionage or a crime, was the beginning of the end of any Western government ever again being held accountable by a free press.

Not that the Western World has a free press.  It has a collection of presstitutes that serve as a Ministry of Propaganda for the ruling oligarchies.

Still, in principle it was possible that governments could be held accountable.  But that possibility ended with Assange’s false indictment.

First of all, no honest government would have spent years trying to invent a way to indict a journalist for practicing journalism.

Second, no intelligent grand jurors with an ounce of integrity would have been putty in the hands of a corrupt US prosecutor and enable a prosecution that ensures the destruction of accountable government.

Third, it was obvious that once America led the way in shutting down the principle of a free press, governments of other “Western democracies” would follow as soon as they could.

And follow they did.  Assange’s indictment led to raids by the “Australian Gestapo” on the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst and on the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. See this.

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Direct Democracy Is the Future of Human Governance – Part 1

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means.

– Lord Acton

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

– Buckminster Fuller

If you’ve read anything I’ve written over the past several years, you’ll be acutely aware of my belief that human civilization is currently in a major transition period between two great paradigms of world history. The old world we all grew up in no longer works for most people, yet is being relentlessly propped up by the powerful and their minions who benefit from its parasitic and destructive nature. Despite their best efforts, a system so poisonous, decrepit and corrupt cannot and will not last. At this stage, it’s little more than a Potemkin village fraud barely kept standing courtesy of increasingly intense deception, manipulation and the sheer will of those who profit handsomely from it.

By stating we’re in the transition period, I want to make it clear I believe things are very much already being disrupted and altered beneath the hood of a world which appears indistinguishable from what it was a decade ago on a superficial level. Specifically, I think there are two core aspects of human existence that will be completely transformed in the years to come. First, within the monetary and financial systems that define how commerce, savings and entrepreneurship function. The emergence and continued momentum of Bitcoin offers evidence that disruption in this realm is already very much underway, albeit still in its infancy. The second realm I expect will experience massive transformational change relates to forms of human governance. We’ve barely scratched the surface on this one, but nascent signs have started to appear, and I suspect a push towards political systems more defined by direct democracy will become increasingly common in the years ahead. I’ve spent many hours writing about the financial and monetary system, so today’s piece will focus on what appears to be coming with regard to human political evolution.

Direct democracy is something that’s been tried before, so there’s some history to it. Once you start exploring the concept you’ll be immediately confronted with a plethora of terms such as eDemocracy, liquid democracy, referendum, initiative, and recall to name just a few. The purpose of this post isn’t to dig into all of that, although it’s certainly a useful exercise and I’ll provide some helpful links at the end. The purpose of this post is to distinguish direct democracy from the most common form of democratic government functioning on earth today, representative democracy.

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Netanyahu corruption case files leaked

Middle Eastern Monitor

Evidence pertaining to one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption cases has been leaked to the media, appearing to show his quid pro quo deal with a newspaper tycoon in return for favourable media coverage.

Published by Israel’s Channel 12 last night, the leak included a transcript of a conversation between Netanyahu and the publisher of popular Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, which lies at the centre of what has become known as Case 2000. In the case, Netanyahu allegedly offered to pass legislation that would impede the activities of Mozes’ rival newspaper, Israel Hayom, in return for more favourable media coverage of the prime minister and his policies.

Israel Police also suspect that, in return for curbing Israel Hayom, Mozes offered to hire journalists recommended by Netanyahu to undermine his rival politicians.

In the leaked conversation, “Mozes can reportedly be heard admitting [to] slanting coverage against Netanyahu’s election rivals and ‘hiding’ negative articles about the premier’s wife [Sara], while urging the prime minister to file a libel lawsuit and figuratively ‘kill’ a Yedioth writer who is a fierce Netanyahu critic,” the Times of Israel (ToI) reported, citing the Channel 12 broadcast.

The TV channel said that in a recording from December 2014 — ahead of Israel’s 2015 election — “Netanyahu can be heard complaining to Mozes that [election rivals Yair] Lapid and [Naftali] Bennett were being handled with kids’ gloves in Yedioth and [its associated online publication] Ynet”.

ToI adds that the pair “also discussed Netanyahu’s desire to ensure that Bennett win ‘under 15’ seats in the election,” adding that his Jewish Home party “eventually won eight [seats], but was projected at the time for as much as 17,” suggesting the policy was successful.

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Lawsuit by 44 States Accuses Pharma Giants of 'Multi-Year Conspiracy' to Hike Drug Prices by Over 1,000%

"Teva and its co-conspirators embarked on one of the most egregious and damaging price-fixing conspiracies in the history of the United States." —Lawsuit

Jake Johnson
Common Dreams

A far-reaching lawsuit filed Friday by the attorneys general of more than 40 states accused some of the nation's largest generic drug manufacturers of conspiring to inflate prices, in some cases by over 1,000 percent.

"We have hard evidence that shows the generic drug industry perpetrated a multi-billion dollar fraud on the American people," Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, whose state led the probe into the companies' practices, said in a statement.

"We have emails, text messages, telephone records, and former company insiders that we believe will prove a multi-year conspiracy to fix prices and divide market share for huge numbers of generic drugs," said Tong.

The suit names 20 major drug manufacturers—including Pfizer, Teva, Novartis, and Mylan—as well as more than a dozen senior executives, who the complaint accuses of deleting evidence after the states began their investigation in 2014.

"The industrywide scheme affected the prices of more than 100 generic drugs," the New York Times reported Saturday, "including lamivudine-zidovudine, which treats H.I.V.; budesonide, an asthma medication; fenofibrate, which treats high cholesterol; amphetamine-dextroamphetamine for ADHD.; oral antibiotics; blood thinners; cancer drugs; contraceptives; and antidepressants."

Americans pay far more for prescription drugs than the people of any other industrialized nation. 

Alluding to this fact, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser—who joined the multi-state lawsuit—tweeted on Saturday: "If you are angry about rising drug prices, you should be. Particularly because a major cause of price increases is illegal collusion by generic drug companies."

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Money laundering - Why the UK does not prosecute it

"Despite the UK’s rhetoric about wanting a “world-leading reputation for integrity” as a financial centre, it has never prosecuted a single company or bank for money laundering."

True Publica

A study by the CCP Research Foundation – which analyses banks’ so-called ‘conduct costs’ – revealed that the biggest 20 banks worldwide, including the biggest four in Britain, had paid or set aside £264 billion for fines in the five years to 2017. Britain’s biggest banks have paid out £71 billion for misconduct in the decade since the financial crisis. Much of these fines have related to money laundering but they were not prosecuted in the UK.

Lloyds is the bank that has suffered the heaviest penalties with at least £23.4 billion in conduct-related costs and write-offs since 2008.  RBS is second on the list. Its conduct and litigation costs since 2008, including amounts it has earmarked but not yet used, add up to £20.6 billion. The bailed-out bank also agreed to pay £3.6 billion to settle an investigation by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for misselling mortgage-backed securities – the bonds at the heart of the 2008 crisis in America.

RBS and Lloyds were bailed out when the financial crisis broke out to the tune of £45.5 billion and £20.3 billion respectively.

Barclays avoided a UK state bailout – but only by taking £12 billion what looks like illegal emergency funding from the state of Qatar. The Serious Fraud Office is involved.

HSBC has forked out nearly £10 billion in fines and other costs for its conduct since 2008.
In the last few weeks – Standard Chartered, the British bank has been ordered to pay $1.1bn (£842m) by US and UK authorities to settle allegations for breaching sanctions against countries including Iran.

But it doesn’t end there does it – it just keeps on going.

In 2019 alone, leaving aside Standard Chartered, the Financial Conduct Authority has dished out fines to the financial services sector at the rate of more than one a month. In total, to the 9th April, they have fined the industry or people in it collectively to the tune of £272,487,887.

What is interesting here is the missing link. British banks are world leaders in shovelling trillions into tax havens, most of it to evade taxation but a very good chunk of it is pure money laundering. 

Tyrants, despots, mass murderers, terrorists, traffickers – they are just as good a customer as any as far as the banks are concerned. Here, the British government and its toothless Financial Conduct Authority fail in every sense of the word. Money laundering through British tax haven islands and crown dependencies is something the state approves of – hence the lack of fines or punishment dished out for it.

Donald Toon, director at the National Crime Agency, admitted that money laundering in the UK was “a very big problem” and estimated that the amount of money laundered here each year has now risen to a staggering £150 billion. I would think that is on the light side.

Susan Hawley is Policy Director of Corruption Watch. She worked for six years at the Corner House on corruption issues, having previously worked in the policy team at Christian Aid on ethics and corruption issues. Here is her take, (originally published a year ago), on money laundering by British banks.

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New batch of Strzok-Page texts discussed recruiting White House sources to spy for FBI

Sara Carter
saraacarter.com

Senior Republican chairmen submitted a letter Thursday to Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr revealing new texts from former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok to his paramour FBI Attorney Lisa Page showing the pair had discussed attempts to recruit sources within the White House to allegedly spy on the Trump administration.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson revealed the information in a three page letter. The texts had been obtained by SaraACarter.com Tuesday and information regarding the possible attempt to recruit White House sources had been divulged by several sources to this news site last week.

The texts and sources reveal that Strzok had one significant contact within the White House - Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff Joshua Pitcock, whose wife was working as an analyst for Strzok on the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private server. A senior White House official told this news site that Pitcock's wife recused herself from the Clinton investigation as soon as Pence and Trump became the Republican nominees in July 2016. A senior law enforcement official also told SaraACarter.com that Pitcock's wife no longer worked under Strzok after she recused herself from the Clinton investigation. However, the text messages uncovered from November, 2016 and have left questions lingering about the relationship between Strzok, Pitcock and his wife among congressional investigators and lawmakers.

"The course of our oversight work we have reviewed certain text messages that may show potential attempts by the FBI to conduct surveillance of President-elect Trump's transition team," the letter states. 

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Research Study on Ongoing Crime Spree by Wall Street Mega Banks Gets News Blackout: Here’s Why

Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall St. On Parade
 
One day before Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee held an historic grilling of the CEOs of the mega banks on Wall Street, the nonprofit watchdog, Better Markets, released an in-depth research report on “Wall Street’s Six Biggest Bailed-Out Banks: Their RAP Sheets & Their Ongoing Crime Spree.” The report detailed facts, figures and this inescapable conclusion:

“[Six Wall Street mega banks] have engaged in—and continue to engage in—a crime spree that spans the violation of almost every law and rule imaginable. Taking the breadth and depth of their illegal conduct as a whole, the six biggest banks in the country look like criminal enterprises with RAP sheets that would make most career criminals green with envy. That was the case not just before the 2008 crash, but also during and after the crash and their lifesaving bailouts…In fact, the number of cases against the banks has actually increased relative to the pre-crash era.”

The six mega banks profiled in the report are: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.

A reliable source tells us that all major business media received the report on Tuesday, April 9. We know that Politico had the report by 8:00 a.m. because its “Morning Money” column provided a small news nugget at that time announcing that the report was out. Politico did not follow up, however, with any detailed coverage of the shocking revelations in the report.

Wall Street On Parade, after carefully reading and digesting the report, published an article on its contents the next morning, April 10. Then we began to hear from our outraged readers, who wanted to know why they weren’t reading about this report at major business media outlets. We checked the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, Reuters, CNBC, and CNN. We could find no mention of the Better Markets report. (We checked again this morning. There is still a news blackout.)

We know that the Wall Street Journal was aware of the report because Lalita Clozel, a banking regulation reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Tweeted on April 10 that Democrats in the House Financial Services Committee room were handing out the report to journalists while the Chair of the Committee, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, was introducing the bank CEOs.

There are four words in this outstanding report from Better Markets that rendered it unpalatable to corporate business media: “rap sheets” and “criminal enterprise.” We searched Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times back to 2004 to see if at any time they had used the words “rap sheet” to describe the unprecedented serial crime sprees of these Wall Street mega banks. They had not. 

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With Mueller Report issued, WSJ pushes for investigation into the 'real scandal'

Zero Hedge

Just hours after reports that Rep. Devin Nunes will refer criminal charges against Clinton operatives & high-level FBI & DOJ officials for perpetuating the Russiagate hoax for over three years, The Wall Street Journal's outspoken voice of reason, Kimberley Strassel, stresses that Americans deserve a full accounting of the missteps of Comey and the FBI.

Attorney General William Barr has reported to Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller has cleared President Trump and his campaign team of claims of conspiring with Russia during the 2016 election. This is more than an exoneration. It's a searing indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a reminder of the need to know the story behind the bureau's corrosive investigation.

Mr. Mueller's report likely doesn't put it that way, but it's the logical conclusion of his no-collusion finding. The FBI unleashed its powers on a candidate for the office of the U.S. presidency, an astonishing first. It did so on the incredible grounds that the campaign had conspired to aid a foreign government. And it used the most aggressive tools in its arsenal-surveillance of U.S. citizens, secret subpoenas of phone records and documents, even human informants. 

The wreckage is everywhere. The nation has been engulfed in conspiracy theories for years. A presidency was hemmed in by the threat of a special counsel. Citizens have gone to jail not for conspiracy, but for after-the-fact interactions with Mr. Mueller's team. Dozens more have spent enormous amounts of money and time defending their reputations.

None of this should ever have happened absent highly compelling evidence-from the start-of wrongdoing. Yet from what we know, the FBI operated on the basis of an overheard conversation of third-tier campaign aide George Papadopoulos, as well as a wild "dossier" financed by the rival presidential campaign. Mr. Mueller's no-collusion finding amounts to a judgment that there never was any evidence. The Papadopoulos claim was thin, the dossier a fabrication.
Which is all the more reason Americans now deserve a full accounting of the missteps of former FBI Director James Comey and his team-in part so that this never happens again.

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Washington told Ukraine to end probe into George Soros-funded group during 2016 US election – report

RT

 

An NGO co-funded by George Soros was spared prosecution in 2016 after the US urged Ukraine to drop a corruption probe targeting the group, the Hill reported, pointing to potential shenanigans during the US presidential election.

 

Bankrolled by the Obama administration and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) was under investigation as part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into the misallocation of $4.4 million in US funds to fight corruption in the eastern European country.

As the 2016 presidential race heated up back in the United States, the US Embassy in Kiev gave Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko “a list of people whom we should not prosecute” as part of the probe, the Hill reported. Ultimately, no action was taken against AntAC.

Lutsenko told the paper that he believes the embassy wanted the probe nixed because it could have exposed the Democrats to a potential scandal during the 2016 election.

A State Department official who spoke with the Hill said that while the request to nix the probe was unusual, Washington feared that AntAC was being targeted as retribution for the group’s advocacy for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine.

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8 Historic Cases That Show the FBI and CIA Were Out of Control Long Before Russiagate

John Miltimore and Carey Wedler
Activist Post

Conservatives tend to have two bad habits. First, they’re prone to viewing the past through a nostalgic lens. Second, they tend to instinctively give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt.
These tendencies help explain why conservatives for decades have been able to overlook the many abuses—constitutional, legal, and moral—of US intelligence agencies.

Unlike some more seasoned media, conservatives have appeared genuinely shocked by revelations of the Trump-Russia saga: abuse of FISA warrants, classified leaks from top FBI brass, corruption, campaign moles, and an apparent plot to remove an elected president through undemocratic (and likely extra-constitutional) means.

These revelations are unique in that they have become highly public and involve a sitting president. However, an examination of the history of US intelligence agencies reveals government bureaucrats were out of control long before the 2016 presidential election.

1. That Time the CIA Considered Bombing Miami and Blaming It on Castro

 

It’s no secret that the US government sought to assassinate Fidel Castro for years. Less well known, however, was that part of their regime-change plot included a plan to blow up Miami and sinking a boat-full of innocent Cubans.

The plan, which was revealed in 2017 when the National Archives declassified 2,800 documents from the JFK era, was a collaborative effort that included the CIA, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies that sought to brainstorm strategies to topple Castro and sow unrest within Cuba. One of those plans included Operation Northwoods, submitted to the CIA by General Lyman Lemnitzer on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It summarized nine “pretexts” the CIA and US government could employ to justify military intervention in Cuba. One of the official CIA documents shows officials musing about staging a terror campaign (“real or simulated”) and blaming it on Cuban refugees.

“We could develop a Cuban Communist terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” the Operation Mongoose document says.

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Media Blackout as Israel’s Largest Banks Pay Over $1 Billion in Fines for US Tax Evasion Schemes

Mint Press News 

WASHINGTON — Israel’s three largest banks — Hapoalim Bank, Leumi Bank and Mizrahi Tefahot Bank — have all been ordered to pay record fines, which collectively are set to total over $1 billion, to the U.S. government after the banks were found to have actively colluded with thousands of wealthy Americans in massive tax-evasion schemes.

The scandal, though it has been reported on in Israeli media, has garnered little attention in the United States. The media black-out has been so surprising it was even directly mentioned by the Times of Israel, given that similar revelations about other banks and offshore tax-evasion schemes — such as those contained within the Panama Papers — led to global protests and even the resignations of some world leaders.

The settlements are the end result of a series of Department of Justice (DOJ) probes that were related to the DOJ’s 2007 investigation targeting UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank. The focus of the probe turned to Israel a few years later in 2011, when it was determined that the Swiss subsidiaries of several of Israel’s largest banks had actively aided Americans seeking to launder their money.

As the probes advanced, the DOJ found that the three banks — Israel’s largest when ranked by net income and total assets — had a history of collaborating with wealthy Americans in tax evasion schemes, not just in their Swiss subsidiaries but in Israel as well. Most of those wealthy Americans were Jewish Americans or dual U.S.-Israeli citizens who hid their U.S. citizenship from the Israeli banks.

A year after the probes into Leumi, Hapoalim and Mizrahi Tefahot were made public, the U.S. State Department notably listed Israel as a “major money laundering country… whose financial institutions engage in currency transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from international narcotics trafficking … or other serious crime.”

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Fukushima at Eight: Ongoing Cover-Up of the Nuclear Hazards in Japan and Abroad

Michael Welch, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and Arnie Gundersen
Global Research

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

– Albert Einstein

The eight year old Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster marks a critical turning point in human history. 

As of November 2018, 18,434 people are known to have died from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and the follow-up tsunami which struck the nuclear facility leading to the inundation of electric generators powering the circulation of coolant in the reactors. When the generators failed, three units experienced catastrophic meltdowns. [1]

Radioactive water has for years now been draining into the Pacific Ocean. Toxic debris spewed into the Earth’s atmosphere. More than 73,000 people remain evacuated, and fully 3,600 dies of illness from causes like illness and suicide linked to the aftermath of the event. [2]



The group Simplyinfo.org has been undertaking extensive ongoing research and analysis of the Fukushima disaster and its aftereffects. In its recently released annual report, Simplyinfo presented a number of astonishing and grim revelations.

The report estimated the threat of radioactive microparticles created by the meltdowns as possibly “the single largest ongoing risk to public health from the Fukushima disaster.” According to the research, these pieces of material from the nuclear fuel meltdowns are small enough to be inhaled or ingested and lodge in major organs of the human body where they continually irradiate cancer-causing levels of radiation, making them much more hazardous than the external sources of radiation being monitored by health authorities. [3]

The report also highlighted startling instances of negligence and cover-up. One notable example was the case of Dr. Shunichi Yamashita. He had downplayed the health risks in public meetings, but was discovered through an internal memo retrieved from an ‘off-site center’ set up as a central commend for the disaster to have warned of ‘a serious possibility of thyroid damage to children in the region.’ [4]

As the radioactive contamination continues to be a concern the Japanese government of Shinzō Abe is inviting the world to visit Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics. The authorities are maintaining that the situation has been contained. Officials have decided to have the city of Fukushima host baseball and softball games, and are even having the iconic torch run start in Fukushima. [5]

Efforts to normalize life in Fukushima 8 years after the meltdowns appear to be successful if trends in media consumption are any indication. Articles marking the anniversary were eclipsed by other breaking stories.[6]

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DOJ And Clinton Lawyers Struck Secret Deal To Block FBI Access To Clinton Foundation Emails: Strzok

Comment: The Clintons are sociopathic scum of the earth and represent everything that is wrong with our political, economic and law/justice systems today, not least the utterly ponerized intelligence agencies. 

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Zero Hedge

The Justice Department and Hillary Clinton's legal team "negotiated" an agreement that blocked the FBI from accessing emails on Clinton's homebrew server related to the Clinton Foundation, according to a transcript of recently released testimony from last summer by former FBI special agent Peter Strzok.

Under questioning from Judiciary Committee General Counsel Zachary Somers, Strzok acknowledged that Clinton's private personal email servers contained a mixture of emails related to the Clinton Foundation, her work as secretary of state and other matters.
"Were you given access to [Clinton Foundation-related] emails as part of the investigation?" Somers asked
"We were not. We did not have access," Strzok responded. "My recollection is that the access to those emails were based on consent that was negotiated between the Department of Justice attorneys and counsel for Clinton." -Fox News

Strzok added that "a significant filter team" was employed at the FBI to "work through the various terms of the various consent agreements."

"According to the attorneys, we lacked probable cause to get a search warrant for those servers and projected that either it would take a very long time and/or it would be impossible to get to the point where we could obtain probable cause to get a warrant," said Strzok.

The foundation has long been accused of "pay-to-play" transactions, fueled by a report in the IBTimes that the Clinton-led State Department authorized $151 billion in Pentagon-brokered deals to 16 countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation - a 145% increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. 

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Investigation begins into death of model who testified at Berlusconi trial

 Imane Fadil

 

The Irish Times

Italian magistrates said on Friday they had opened an investigation into possible murder after the mysterious death of a Moroccan model who was a regular guest at former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s “bunga bunga” parties.

Imane Fadil (33) died on March 1st a month after being admitted to a Milan hospital with severe stomach pains. At the time she told friends and her lawyer that she had been poisoned.

Her death was only reported on Friday.

“The doctors have not identified with any certainty any pathology which can explain the death,” Milan chief prosecutor Francesco Greco told Reuters, adding that there were “several anomalies” in Ms Fadil’s medical records.

Ms Fadil testified at the 2012 trial of Mr Berlusconi, who was accused of paying for sex with an underage prostitute.

She told the court one of the parties at the media magnate’s home involved young women, sometimes in pairs, wearing nuns’ costumes and stripping off while performing raunchy pole dances.

“They started to dance like the nuns of the film Sister Act, and then they took off their clothes,” she said. At another party, a woman in her underwear stripped for Mr Berlusconi wearing a mask with the face of footballer Ronaldinho, she said.

Mr Berlusconi was initially convicted in the case but ultimately acquitted after a judge ruled he could not have known the underage prostitute was in fact a minor.

However, magistrates subsequently laid new charges against Mr Berlusconi and other defendants, accusing them of bribing some of the women who attended the parties to keep them from telling the truth at the initial trial.

They have denied the accusations.

Ms Fadil was never accused of taking bribes. Italian newspapers reported that she was writing a book about her experiences and that the magistrates had obtained a copy of the manuscript following her death. – Reuters