Majorityrights News > Category: Economics & Finance

​

“The first time I saw ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, I had tremendous respect for George Bailey, who was the main character.”

READ MORE...

New Observer, “Jewish Extremist Hate Group SPLC’s Secret Cayman Island Accounts Exposed; Do the Donors Know?”, 31 Aug 2017:

One of America’s most notorious Jewish extremist hate groups, the SPLC, has been exposed as stashing millions of dollars in cash—presumably from donors—in secret Cayman Island bank accounts, according to a new report in the Washington Free Beacon (WFB)  news service.

The SPLC, which poses as an “anti-racist” organization, is merely another Jewish extremist pressure group—like its sister organization, the ADL.

According to the WFB, the SPLC, which is registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization, has pushed “millions of dollars to offshore entities.”

Additionally, the Free Beacon said, the SPLC “pays lucrative six-figure salaries to its top directors and key employees while spending little on legal services despite its stated intent of ‘fighting hate and bigotry’ using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy.”

Quoting the SPLC’s own tax return records, the WFB said that the SPLC has

“ . . . ‘financial interests’ in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda. No information is available beyond the acknowledgment of the interests at the bottom of the form.

However, the Washington Free Beacon discovered forms from 2014 that shed light on some of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s transfers to foreign entities.

The SPLC’s Form 8865, a Return of U.S. Persons With Respect to Certain Foreign Partnerships, from 2014 shows that the nonprofit transferred hundreds of thousands to an account located in the Cayman Islands.

SPLC lists Tiger Global Management LLC, a New York-based private equity financial firm, as an agent on its form. The form shows a foreign partnership between the SPLC and Tiger Global Private Investment Partners IX, L.P., a pooled investment fund in the Cayman Islands. SPLC transferred $960,000 in cash on Nov. 24, 2014 to Tiger Global Private Investment Partners IX, L.P, its records show.

The SPLC’s Form 926, a Return by a U.S. Transferor of Property to a Foreign Corporation, from 2014 shows additional cash transactions that the nonprofit had sent to offshore funds.

The SPLC reported a $102,007 cash transfer on Dec. 24, 2014 to BPV-III Cayman X Limited, a foreign entity located in the Cayman Islands. The group then sent $157,574 in cash to BPV-III Cayman XI Limited on Dec. 31, 2014, an entity that lists the same PO Box address in Grand Cayman as the previous transfer.

The nonprofit pushed millions more into offshore funds at the beginning of 2015.

On March 1, 2015, SPLC sent $2,200,000 to an entity incorporated in Canana Bay, Cayman Islands, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) records and run by a firm firm based in Greenwich, Ct. Another $2,200,000 cash transfer was made on the same day to another fund whose business is located at the same address as the previous fund in the Cayman Islands, according to SEC records.

No information is contained on its interests in Bermuda on the 2014 forms. SPLC’s financial stakes in the British Virgin Islands were not acknowledged until its 2015 tax form.

Lucinda Chappelle, a principal at Jackson Thornton, the public accounting firm in Montgomery, Ala., that prepared the SPLC’s tax forms, said she does not discuss client matters and hung up the phone when the Free Beacon contacted her in an attempt to get the most updated forms from the group in relation to its foreign business dealings.

Tax experts expressed confusion when being told of the transfer.

“I’ve never known a US-based nonprofit dealing in human rights or social services to have any foreign bank accounts,” said Amy Sterling Casil, CEO of Pacific Human Capital, a California-based nonprofit consulting firm. “My impression based on prior interactions is that they have a small, modestly paid staff, and were regarded by most in the industry as frugal and reliable. I am stunned to learn of transfers of millions to offshore bank accounts. It is a huge red flag and would have been completely unacceptable to any wealthy, responsible, experienced board member who was committed to a charitable mission who I ever worked with.”

“It is unethical for any US-based charity to invest large sums of money overseas,” said Casil. “I know of no legitimate reason for any US-based nonprofit to put money in overseas, unregulated bank accounts.”

“It seems extremely unusual for a ‘501(c)(3)’ concentrating upon reducing poverty in the American South to have multiple bank accounts in tax haven nations,” Charles Ortel, a former Wall Street analyst and financial advisor who helped uncover a 2009 financial scandal at General Electric, told the Free Beacon.

In addition, the WFB said, the SPLC “pays lucrative salaries to its top leadership,” using as an example its president and chief executive officer, Richard Cohen, who got $346,218 in base compensation in 2015, and $20,000 more in other reportable compensation and non-taxable benefits.

The minimum amount paid to an officer, director, trustee, or key employee in 2015 was $140,000 in base salary, not including other compensation.  The SPLC spent $20 million on salaries throughout the year, but reported spending only $61,000 on legal services in 2015.

The Fetch, “O’Mei Chinese Restaurant Closure – Anatomy of Political Suppression”, 5 Sept 2017:

Recent circumstances surrounding the closure of the O’Mei Chinese Restaurant in Santa Cruz, CA, and Club Jäger in Minneapolis, MN, showed them to be the target of an assault as publicly available federal campaign donation records were accessed to David Duke’s Louisiana 2016 federal senatorial bid.  In each case, the owner of O’Mei Restaurant, Roger Grigsby, and the owner of Club Jäger, Julius Jaeger De Roma, were referenced in a hit list put out by Lynda Carson, an Antifa sympathizer “journalist” working for Indybay Media in San Francisco.

In the case of Roger Grigsby, the original hit piece article was followed-up with an article in the local Santa Cruz digital edition of Indymedia headline oozing with gloating contempt for the honesty and decency of people daring to support political efforts not approved by Jewish/Antifa political and media affiliations.

Taken in total, we appear to be witnessing a coordinated effort by Jewish/Antifa forces to smear and destroy businesses of those supporting political efforts that are diametrically opposed to Jewish political interests.

Herein is an anatomy of how Jewish power operates.

Innuendo and Smear Campaign

The first inkling that a person is in the process of being targeted can be seen by the sudden change in innuendo and smears appearing in traditionally sympathetic editorial venues. For businesses, the smear campaign begins by unknown and unseen writers commenting on sites for which the targeted company may be found. In the case of restaurants, this will be seen in an increasing number of negative reviews for the restaurant.

In the case of O’Mei Restaurant, the theme of those working on the smear campaign was “updating the menu” as can be seen by this post, admitted by the “reviewer” as being 2 months subsequent to the last visit but chiming in after the Jewish/Fake News/MSM rolled out the smear the campaign nationwide.

For its part, Yelp understands this and takes a proactive approach to clean the comments of often slanderous innuendo by removing negative posts that they believe to be brought about by the “significant news event”. However, it should be factored in that smear campaigns are not necessarily motivated independently after slanderous stories hit, but rather occur before these stories break as part of the softening up process.

In the case of O’Mei Restaurant, negative reviews began as early as February 16, with some reviews so long that the reviewer seemed to be trying to hide the fact that he was making a negative review by posting quite a lot of “blowhard puffery” before concluding with the “menu needs an update” zinger.

Targeting Front Line Staff

In the case of both O’Mei Restaurant and Club Jäger, each establishment saw front line staff targeted with the intent to have them “quit in protest” against “the racist owners”.  Unfortunately, in today’s world, far too many people will sacrifice themselves, their families, and their employers onto the altar of Jewish Marxism and its repugnant ideologies and practices such as “political correctness”.

By getting the front line staff to “resign”, the business by default is forced to close as there remains no staff trained to work with the public.  This results in a forced closure of the establishment by the owner as there are no direct resources available to effectively run the business.

Hostile media stands at the ready to pounce on the new dynamics by reporting essentially a barrage of fake news, selling the false story that “employees and customers” are boycotting the establishment.

In the case of O’Mei Restaurant, front line staff, the servers and waiters, were met at a bar and pressured to leave the company, which they did.  In the case of Club Jäger, the front line staff were also approached and “encouraged” to resign in protest.  That all of this points to an open conspiracy to harm the business owners goes without saying.  To believe that an obscure story on a non-descript website would have such a reach is absurd.

Frankly, nobody would actually care without some direct face to face intervention to ensure that the front line staff is compliant and agrees to “boycott” the establishment.

Once front line staff have been compromised (and most are too limp necked to understand there is a targeted campaign in effect and stupid enough to sacrifice their own interests to support Jewish interests), the next phase of the operation may begin.

Local Media Assaults

The next step in the targeted harassment campaign is simply to release the story in the local media. The media, being mostly filled with liberal morons who have never met a Jewish cause they could not “fully get behind”, runs the story in the most dishonest and FAKE way possible, often dressing up the article with even larger swaths of yellow journalism for the intended purpose of smearing the target AND firing up the hordes of brain dead morons who stand ready to fill the comments sections of the article or video with endless streams of virtue signaling idiocy that could only make a proud card carrying member of the ADL or SPLC proud.

It is within the comments sections of these articles that “velocity” of the story is reached, a “force multiplier” brought about by comment sections of digital publications being stacked with liberal “trolls” all too eager and willing to pile on to the targeted victim without a care for decency, honesty, or integrity.

Very few, if any, of those writing in comments sections actually know the target, let alone the real circumstances of the story: what they do know is that Jewish media has told them to bark, and like dogs, they bark. Incessantly. Worse, a percentage of these people are Jewish and they know PRECISELY the anti-White/European venom they are spewing, while delighting in watching unsuspecting or idiotic “goy” join them in their venom spew fest.

It is a witch hunt, initiated by unethical and dishonest reporting, backed by a small contingent of organized trolls who stir up hatred in the “comments”, and then watch the “pile on” begin.

Without necessary resources to counter such a planned character assassination agenda narrative, the political suppression becomes complete and effective – at least for a month or more, while people sort out what really might or did happen to their community.

A National and International Roll-Out

The reality that we are witnessing a planned suppression of political expression becomes all too obvious once the story gets picked up by national, and even international, media. In the case of O’Mei Restaurant, shortly after the story broke, it was picked up by CBS News Channel 5 in San Francisco.

Within a week of the story “breaking locally”, the Fake News (Jewish) media had rolled the story out across the globe. Utilizing Google, a collaborator in Jewish political suppression efforts, showed 21,600 listings for the closure of O’Mei restaurant, with the story even making its way into such “prominent” platforms as The Washington Post (here), WBRZ.com (here), and ABC News (here).

One has to ask: why would WBRZ or ABC need to run with what is really a local story run by an unethical, malicious Antifa “reporter” in some small town in California, unless there was not a clear agenda behind it?  The message Jewish media seems to be sending is very clear: if you DARE support ANY candidate that even breathes a whiff of an agenda that runs counter to America’s hostile Jewish agenda, you can expect the force and might of Jewish political pressure to be brought to bear.

Imagine. Small American businessmen are being smashed and forced to shut down their businesses under the open scorn of Jewish media companies because of a mere US$500 donation to a candidate Jewish power constantly vilifies. Meanwhile, Americans hardly know that the top 5 donors to the Clinton run for the Presidency were Jews.

And they raised $BILLIONS.

The suffocating nature of Jewish suppression of political expression is in the open and for all to see. Combine the O’Mei Restaurant story with the never ending purges of Nationalist accounts on social media, and increasingly, the Internet itself, and it becomes clear that Houston has a problem, and it has everything to do with a flood of sorts. America’s political well being is being drowned and suffocated under the weight of Jewish suppression of political expression.

The O’Mei Story

What happened to O’Mei Restaurant, Club Jager, and numerous Internet sites and social media accounts, is but an expanding effort by a hostile Jewish elite working in tandem with their vast resources to stifle political expression in America.  They are telling Americans and the world that Jews dominate the political spectrum, and you voice opinions or support efforts counter to these Jewish interests at your own peril.

We are witnessing the unveiling of a pending totalitarianism for the United States the likes of which have not been seen since Jewish hordes over ran White Russia and murdered tens upon tens of millions. People ignore these perils at their own risk, but in the very process, risk the very well being the United States, and Western civilization at large.

In the case of O’Mei Restaurant, it was staffed by an owner married twice, each to a Chinese woman, 2 Chinese, 1 Sephardic Jew, 2 Mexican-Americans, a Greek-Mexican mix, and a Scandinavian.  Hardly your open and avowed “racist” – but truth is always the first casualty in war, and there is clearly a “war on Whites” by an extremely hostile Jewish elite.

Note:  The owner of O’Mei Restaurant has been a financial contributor to and supporter of Inside the Eye – Live! for years. The owner of O’Mei Restaurant was contacted as part of this article.  Emails to the Antifa supporting “journalist”, Lynda Carlson, were not returned.

READ MORE...

Free Thought Project, “Rothschild Just Dumped Massive Amounts of US Assets, Sending an Ominous Signal”, 30 Aug 2017:

In an ominous move, Lord Jacob Rothschild has aggressively moved to limit his exposure to “risky” U.S. capital markets.

In what is a sure signal to oligarchs across the globe, Lord Jacob Rothschild, founder and chairman of RIT Capital Partners, has substantially minimized his exposure to what he views as a risky and unstable U.S. capital market. In the half-yearly financial report for RIT Capital Partners, Rothschild explained the company’s aggressive moves to significantly reduce exposure to U.S. assets.

“We do not believe this is an appropriate time to add to risk. Share prices have in many cases risen to unprecedented levels at a time when economic growth is by no means assured,” Rothschild said in his semi-annual report.

Additionally, Rothschild stated that he believes quantitative easing (QE) programs employed by central banks, such as the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. will “come to an end.”

Rothschild was quoted in the report as saying, “The period of monetary accommodation may well be coming to an end.”

Signaling a potential disaster in the making in the United States financial markets, Rothschild reduced the investments RIT Capital Partners has in the U.S. dollar by nearly fifty percent. On December 31, 2016, RIT Capital Partners reported a 62 percent net value asset investment in U.S. dollars. In the latest report released by RIT Capital Partners on June 30, 2017, the company has a 37 percent net value asset investment in U.S. dollars.

Over that same period of time, Rothschild increased RIT’s investment in Sterling and the Euro.

Just last year, the bond manager of what was once the world’s largest bond fund had a dire prediction about how “all of this” will all end. And by “all of this,” he means the propping up of financial markets by central banks.

Janus Henderson U.S. @JHIAdvisorsUS

Gross: Global yields lowest in 500 years of recorded history. $10 trillion of neg. rate bonds. This is a supernova that will explode one

When the U.S. stock market is trading at all-time highs, but Lord Rothschild is divesting RIT from those same markets, the central bank manipulation of market valuations becomes apparent.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that Rothschild’s RIT investment portfolio has returned roughly 2,000% since its formation – so he obviously understands how to position his assets to get big returns on investments, thus these recent moves should be a red flag to every American.

In explaining his recent investment moves, Rothschild, the RIT chairman stated:

“We have a particular interest in investments which will benefit from the impact of new technologies, and Far Eastern markets, influenced by the growing demand from Asian consumers.”

The report also noted that RIT had invested in Social Capital, a tech investment firm based in Silicon Valley, and that Francesco Goedhuis, Chief Executive of J. Rothschild Capital Management, will serve on the company’s advisory board. Social Capital provides seed funding for companies in the education, finance, and health care business sectors.

Rothschild also mentioned the advent of a fourth industrial revolution in the RIT Capital Partners report, noting, “As the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ develops, it becomes increasingly important for your Company to be able to assess investment opportunities in the innovation driven changes which are affecting almost every business sector.”

The fourth industrial revolution will be driven by new technologies that work to integrate the digital, biological, and physical worlds. Rothschild indicated in the report that the fourth industrial revolution was a driving factor in his investment in Social Capital.

Video presentation.

Background Briefing recently interviewed Johathan Taplin about his book, Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermine Democracy, and his op-ed at The New York Times, Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks.

Some highlights: The New America Foundation funded a group called The Open Markets Group, which was headed by a guy named Barry Lynn; and they were the most important group of scholars looking at monopoly in America. When the EU sanctioned Google with a 2.7 billion dollar fine, The Open Markets Group put out a statement applauding the EU and saying American anti-trust regulators should follow their example. Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google, who provides most of the financing for the New American Foundation, was incredibly angry about this and essentially told the leader of New America, Ann Marie Slaughter, that she had to get rid of the Open Markets Group. She then wrote Barry Lynn an email saying that they had to leave by September 1, and essentially fired them. This is exactly the kind of political pressure that Google plies all over the world in terms of not just academic institutions, but think tanks and others in order to keep the political narrative in their favor and not have people who oppose them.

They pay off academics and think tanks, getting them to write favorable articles (totaling a hundred from each) about Google and denying their monopoly. This is how Google curries influence by dominating the communications channels of Washington D.C.

Eric Schmidt, who is the biggest funder of the New American Foundation and who is one of the top executives at Google, was the number one visitor during the Obama administration. He was logged in more times visiting the White House than any other single person in the entire eight years of the administration.

Google’s regulatory capture: not only was Schmidt the most frequent White House visitor, more than any other CEO, by a long shot. But then Schmidt was able to put people from Google into the various agencies in the Obama administration. So, the person who ran the Patent Office was formerly the person who ran Google’s patent practice; the person who was the Assistant Attorney General for anti-trust in the Obama administration was the person who had been Google’s anti-trust attorney. Google had people high-up in The Federal Communications Agency. It was pernicious, it was everywhere…

One could say “Eric Schmidt is a liberal” and “he’s helping Hillary Clinton”, but literally the day after Clinton lost he was out there communicating with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the hopes of getting in bed with Trump. Not only did he extend invitations to them to come to his conference in Italy; but he also went to the White House and railed on about how Trump was going to be a great help to the economy with his new initiatives; so, its very clear that he has very little political conscience what-so-ever; he’s just going to go where the money is.

People from all sides are recognizing the Google has too much money and power to frame narratives, to shape and influence culture; its platforms such as Facebook and Youtube are not only the way 3/4 of Americans get real news, but also conduits of propaganda: e.g., Steve Bannon and the Mercers used market targeting in their campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton, used social media very skillfully with fake news, used Russian bots to amplify their effect. An interesting note along with that, the intelligence community observes that Eric Schmidt’s daughter worked for SCL, the company that controlled Cambridge Analytica - the company that Mercer owns and that Steve Bannon’s on the board of.

They couldn’t have done what they did if there hadn’t been these two open platforms, Facebook and Youtube, which you could totally manipulate; there was nobody at the control of these platforms to block fake news in favor of Trump. However, there is no pornography on Youtube, which means that Youtube has very sophisticated technology which could filter out fake news, propaganda, etc., if desired.

Google’s market capture is profound, its users provide content and profiles (which marketers value, of course) which competitors cannot match. Google is not just a virtual monopoly, not just one of the most wealthy companies, it is the richest company and perhaps the most powerful monopoly ever. More:

New York Times, “Is It Time to Break Up Google?”, 22 Aug 2017:

By Johathan Taplin

In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.

They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.

We have been transported back to the early 20th century, when arguments about “the curse of bigness” were advanced by President Woodrow Wilson’s counselor, Louis Brandeis, before Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court. Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake news” business to know that Brandeis was right.

While Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator — and instead advocated breaking up “bigness,” he made an exception for “natural” monopolies, like telephone, water and power companies and railroads, where it made sense to have one or a few companies in control of an industry.

Could it be that these companies — and Google in particular — have become natural monopolies by supplying an entire market’s demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities?

Consider a historical analogy: the early days of telecommunications.

In 1895 a photograph of the business district of a large city might have shown 20 phone wires attached to most buildings. Each wire was owned by a different phone company, and none of them worked with the others. Without network effects, the networks themselves were almost useless.

The solution was for a single company, American Telephone and Telegraph, to consolidate the industry by buying up all the small operators and creating a single network — a natural monopoly. The government permitted it, but then regulated this monopoly through the Federal Communications Commission.

AT&T (also known as the Bell System) had its rates regulated, and was required to spend a fixed percentage of its profits on research and development. In 1925 AT&T set up Bell Labs as a separate subsidiary with the mandate to develop the next generation of communications technology, but also to do basic research in physics and other sciences. Over the next 50 years, the basics of the digital age — the transistor, the microchip, the solar cell, the microwave, the laser, cellular telephony — all came out of Bell Labs, along with eight Nobel Prizes.

In a 1956 consent decree in which the Justice Department allowed AT&T to maintain its phone monopoly, the government extracted a huge concession: All past patents were licensed (to any American company) royalty-free, and all future patents were to be licensed for a small fee. These licenses led to the creation of Texas Instruments, Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor and many other start-ups.

True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability. And Google’s route to dominance is different from the Bell System’s. Nevertheless it still has all of the characteristics of a public utility.

We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don’t inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.

It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. All content creators dependent on advertising must negotiate with Google or Facebook as aggregator, the sole lifeline between themselves and the vast internet cloud.

It’s not just newspapers that are hurting. In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in “supernormal returns on capital” at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. The M.I.T. economists Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman explained that in the presence of these giant firms, “it has become increasingly advantageous to be an incumbent, and less advantageous to be a new entrant.”

There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition — Google buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat.

The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and other key innovations.

The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows companies like Facebook and Google’s YouTube to free ride on the content produced by others. The reason there are 40,000 Islamic State videos on YouTube, many with ads that yield revenue for those who posted them, is that YouTube does not have to take responsibility for the content on its network. Facebook, Google and Twitter claim that policing their networks would be too onerous. But that’s preposterous: They already police their networks for pornography, and quite well.

Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900.

I’m under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump’s inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.

Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government.” We ignore his words at our peril.

Sun “KIM’S COMING FOR EUROPE Japan’s PM warns North Korea will soon target EUROPE with nuke missiles as he hails Theresa May’s ‘smooth Brexit”, 31 Aug 2017:

Mrs May said Japan’s investment in Britain was “a powerful vote of confidence in the strength of the UK’s long-term economy” - The comments hint that the two countries could move quickly to strike a free-trade deal as soon as we quit the EU in 2019.

Japan and the UK pledged to work together to face down Kim Jong Un.

JAPAN’S prime minister today warned that North Korea could soon send nuclear missiles to Europe as he hailed Theresa May’s plan for a “smooth Brexit”.

Shinzo Abe called for the UK and other European countries must play a part in the fight against Kim Jong Un, saying the danger would not be confined to Asia.

Speaking ahead of a state banquet in honour of the PM, the leaders of Britain and Japan said they had discussed the threat from North Korea, which this week launched a missile over Japan in a new show of strength.

They agreed the threat is “unprecedented” and pledged to hold joint military exercises in a bid to show dictator Kim Jong Un that his crimes cannot go unpunished.

Mr Abe said: “That threat is felt not only by our country or Asia alone, it has become a global threat including Europe.

“North Korea will launch an ICBM [inter-continental ballistic missile] and the range would include almost the entire region of Europe.”

Mrs May demanded Kim’s ally China do more to restrain him, saying: “We need to ensure it’s not just words of condemnation, but that action is taken.”

READ MORE...

Trump administration cornered by Mueller in a grand jury investigation.

Trump was not able to veto new sanctions against Russian as it would have been hapless against Capitol Hill’s unanimity on the measure, but betrayed his lack of innocence anyway by attaching a note of complaint (on behalf of his Russian friends?) to go along with his signing.

It would be a similar dead-ringer of guilt, revealing divided loyalties, if Trump tried to remove Mueller from the position of special investigation into Russian influence over his campaign, even if by the proxy of appointing someone who will do the dirty work where Sessions has recused himself - but now even that weasel-out of hiring someone to replace Sessions for the position to fire Meuller is being closed off; the Trump administration is being cornered, such that all administration personnel will be subject to appear before a grand jury and forced to present any documents, financial records, even emails that might have bearing - material evidence that they probably would not disclose voluntarily. 

Politico, “Could Trump Fire Mueller? It’s Complicated”, 3 August 2017:

But the real question is what Congress would do to stop him.

It turns out that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been calling ducks chickens all year long. In February, April and July, the Senate broke for 10 days or more. Each time, the Senate convened pro forma sessions. Subsequent reporting indicated that this was part of a plan hatched by the Senate GOP to prevent Trump from making any recess appointments at all. So it’s highly unlikely that Trump will be able to make a recess appointment during the upcoming break.

Does this mean Trump can’t ease out Sessions without sparking a messy confirmation process for his successor?

A Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing would inevitably rehash the firing of FBI Director James Comey, and even Republicans would be unlikely to confirm a nominee who didn’t pledge to protect Mueller’s investigation.

But Trump has other cards to play. He can appoint an acting attorney general and never get around to nominating a real one. By default, Rosenstein would take the helm. But Rosenstein is the one who hired Mueller, so if Trump’s goal is to get rid of the special counsel, he needs to pick someone else as acting attorney general.

But while a Grand Jury investigation is anything but good news for Trump and his administration, it is not news failing his incapacity to get rid of the Mueller and the investigation altogether - it is standard operating procedure for a special investigation of this kind:

Washington Post, “Why Mueller’s use of a grand jury confirms what we already knew”, 3 August 2017:

reathless tweets and breaking-news banners notwithstanding, reports that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has empaneled a grand jury in the ongoing investigation of the Trump campaign and potential Russian collusion are entirely unsurprising. This development isn’t a nothing-burger, but it doesn’t suggest anything we didn’t already know.

Grand juries are how federal prosecutors conduct their investigations. The grand jury has the subpoena power that prosecutors need to compel reluctant witnesses to testify under oath. Grand jury subpoenas are also how prosecutors gather documents such as bank records, emails and corporate papers from entities or people who might not produce them voluntarily.

If a preliminary inquiry suggests there is nothing to a case, prosecutors might never empanel a grand jury. They and the FBI might conduct voluntary interviews, examine readily available documents and determine that no more formal inquiry is warranted.

That quick-look, let’s-move-on scenario was never likely here. It’s been clear for months that the allegations are sufficiently serious to merit a full investigation. And in the world of federal prosecutors, that means using a grand jury.

In fact, prosecutors in this probe have been using a grand jury for some time. Grand jury proceedings take place in secret, so there is often not a lot of news about what is happening in the room.

But someone who receives a subpoena to testify or produce documents is not bound by those secrecy rules. They are free to disclose — to the media or to anyone else — that they received a grand jury subpoena or testified in the grand jury. It may be that someone who just received a subpoena contacted a reporter and that has resulted in the “breaking news” stories.

The reality is that any investigation serious enough to warrant the appointment of a special counsel was always likely to involve a grand jury. It was always going to drag on for months. In a case this complex, it takes a long time to investigate the various allegations, subpoena and review relevant documents, and put relevant witnesses before the grand jury. If there are grants of immunity or plea deals to be negotiated, that takes time as well.

Mueller has already hired more than a dozen prosecutors to staff his investigation. Anyone who thought this was going to be over quickly was kidding themselves. The “news” confirms what we already knew.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the existence of a grand jury investigation does not mean criminal charges will necessarily result. Especially in white-collar cases, it’s not unusual for grand jury investigations to close with no charges being filed. The grand jury is the investigative tool that prosecutors use to determine whether charges are warranted – and sometimes the answer is no.

In the past weeks, there have been a number of startling and significant developments in the Russia probe. News that the special counsel is using a grand jury is not one of them.

The New Republic, “Trump’s Russian Laundromat” July 2017:

How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.

In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself. Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58-story edifice with gold-plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.

A monument to celebrity and conspicuous consumption, the tower was home to the likes of Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg, and Sophia Loren. Its brash, 38-year-old developer was something of a tabloid celebrity himself. Donald Trump was just coming into his own as a serious player in Manhattan real estate, and Trump Tower was the crown jewel of his growing empire. From the day it opened, the building was a hit—all but a few dozen of its 263 units had sold in the first few months. But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.

If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises. “During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.

Semion Mogilevich.

In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. His family ties, in fact, led straight to the top: His brother ran a $150 million stock scam with none other than Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. At the time, Mogilevich—feared even by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world”—was expanding his multibillion-dollar international criminal syndicate into America.

In 1987, on his first trip to Russia, Trump visited the Winter Palace with Ivana. The Soviets flew him to Moscow—all expenses paid—to discuss building a luxury hotel across from the Kremlin. Maxim Blokhin/TASS

Full article at New Republic

        Rubrics:

- Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987, only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

- Throughout the 1990s, untold millions from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump’s luxury developments and Atlantic City casinos.

- Trump Taj Mahal paid the largest fine ever levied against a casino for having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering rules.

- The influx of Russian money did more than save Trump’s business from ruin—it set the stage for the next phase of his career. By 2004, to the outside world, it appeared that Trump was back on top after his failures in Atlantic City. That January, flush with the appearance of success, Trump launched his newly burnished brand…

- Russians spent at least $98 million on Trump’s properties in Florida—and another third of the units were bought by shadowy shell companies.

- In 2013, police burst into Unit 63A of Trump Tower and rounded up 29 suspects in a $100 million money-laundering scheme.

- In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings.

        Concluding paragraphs:

Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob’s “boss of bosses,” also declined to respond to questions from the New Republic. “My ideas are not important to anybody,” Mogilevich said in a statement provided by his attorney. “Whatever I know, I am a private person.” Mogilevich, the attorney added, “has nothing to do with President Trump. He doesn’t believe that anybody associated with him lives in Trump Tower. He has no ties to America or American citizens.”

Back in 1999, the year before Trump staged his first run for president, Mogilevich gave a rare interview to the BBC. Living up to his reputation for cleverness, the mafia boss mostly joked and double-spoke his way around his criminal activities. (Q: “Why did you set up companies in the Channel Islands?” A: “The problem was that I didn’t know any other islands. When they taught us geography at school, I was sick that day.”) But when the exasperated interviewer asked, “Do you believe there is any Russian organized crime?” the “brainy don” turned half-serious.

“How can you say that there is a Russian mafia in America?” he demanded. “The word mafia, as far as I understand the word, means a criminal group that is connected with the political organs, the police and the administration. I don’t know of a single Russian in the U.S. Senate, a single Russian in the U.S. Congress, a single Russian in the U.S. government. Where are the connections with the Russians? How can there be a Russian mafia in America? Where are their connections?”

Two decades later, we finally have an answer to Mogilevich’s question.

READ MORE...