"A police officer slams a special needs student to the ground and puts him in a life threatening hold for not having his shirt tucked in. This is a perfect example of why we should never put police officers in our schools as suggested by the NRA." Continue reading →
"The use of the C.I.A. cash for payoffs has prompted criticism from many Afghans and some American and European officials, who complain that the agency, in its quest to maintain access and influence at the presidential palace, financed what is essentially a presidential slush fund. The practice, the officials say, effectively undercut a pillar of the American war strategy: the building of a clean and credible Afghan government to wean popular support from the Taliban. Instead, corruption at the highest levels seems to have only worsened." Continue reading →
"Investigators calculate that she and other family members accumulated about $24 million, mostly from shady land deals during Spain’s boom years. Searching her property, the police had to borrow a bill-counting machine from a local bank to help total up all the cash: $485,000. At a time when Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal are imposing deficit-cutting austerity plans on their hard-pressed citizens, these revelations of widespread political corruption are stoking bitter resentment, destabilizing governments and undermining the credibility of the political class as a whole." Continue reading →
"European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said policy makers are ready to cut interest rates again if needed after reducing them to a record low last week. The euro fell half a cent on the comment to $1.3057 and European stocks pared losses. The Frankfurt-based ECB on May 2 cut its benchmark rate by a quarter point to 0.5 percent, and Draghi said then that officials have an 'open mind' about taking the deposit rate, currently at zero, into negative territory." Continue reading →
"China's Caixin Magazine reports that there is a growing 'sense of crisis' not felt since the depths of the global banking crash in 2008-2009. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has assembled a team to 'protect economic growth' and pressure state companies to boost jobs at all costs. SASAC is the bastion of vested interests and controller of 115 state behemoths with assets above $6 trillion and lock on much of the economy. The move comes amid further signs that growth is faltering across all fronts. HSBC's gauge of Chinese services fell three points to 51.1 in April, the lowest in almost two years." Continue reading →
"As I prepare for an upcoming trip to Beijing, both expat and Chinese friends have been sending me suggestions of the best gas mask to buy. An item considered rare or unnecessary as of late 2012 is now highly recommended for outdoor commutes during Beijing’s smoggiest days. But which mask should I use? In addition to buying face masks, people in China who can afford them are also picking up indoor air filters. Most office workers spend 80 percent of their time indoors, but Beijing’s poorly insulated buildings can’t fully keep the smog outside." Continue reading →
"A newly declassified CIA document suggests members of the US agency did help to shape the narrative of Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s recent film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It has now emerged that the CIA did successfully pressure Boal to remove certain scenes from the Zero Dark Thirty script, some of which might have cast the agency in a negative light. Details emerged in a memo released under a US Freedom of Information Act request. It summarises five conference calls held in late 2011 for staff in the agency’s Office of Public Affairs 'to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the agency and the Bin Laden operation'." Continue reading →
"From President Roosevelt's 1933 seizure of personal gold to the Nazi confiscation of Jewish wealth to the recent deposit theft at Cyprus banks, asset plundering by governments has a long and colorful tradition. Protecting wealth from oppressive regimes continues to this day. Even as the money-laundering laws are said to exist for the fight against terrorism or drugs or gambling, the cashless utopia is simultaneously being thrust upon us as the monetary architecture of the future. Expect ever more increasing thoughtcrime enforcement as the international money flow tightens." Continue reading →
"In a major game-changer, Senator Rand Paul (Republican of Kentucky) today introduced a bill to repeal mandates of the 'Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act' (FATCA) on financial institutions and individual American citizens as a 'violation of sovereign nations’ laws and privacy matters.' In a letter to his Senate colleagues, Dr. Paul pulled no punches about the destructive effects of the FATCA law and the unsupportable claims that FATCA is a legitimate tool to combat tax evasion." Continue reading →
"The Southeast Asian city-state has grown into the world's fourth-biggest offshore financial center but, with U.S. and European regulators on the hunt for tax cheats, the government is clamping down to forestall the kind of onslaught from foreign authorities that is now hitting Switzerland's banks. Before July 1, all financial institutions in Singapore must identify accounts they strongly suspect hold proceeds of fraudulent or wilful tax evasion and, where necessary, close them. After that, handling the proceeds of tax crimes will be a criminal offence under changes to the city-state's anti-money laundering law." Continue reading →