Black hole in Sunshine List

There’s a giant black hole in the Sunshine List this year, say opposition politicians, who are outraged the sell-off of Hydro One means it’s no longer subject to legislation requiring the salaries of all public servants making more than $100,000 be made public.

The list released Friday does not include senior employees of the giant utility. Tory and NDP critics are furious Hydro One is exempt.

“This is the glaring reality that despite the fact that taxpayers own 85% of Hydro One, we don’t have any access to all of the salaries of all of the staff, and that’s a gaping hole in this year’s release,” said Nipissing Conservative Vic Fedeli.

Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation salaries traditionally top the list of high earners on the public dime.

The lack of information about Hydro One is a “big hole,” said NDP leader Andrea Horwath.

“That information is no longer available to Ontarians.”  (more...)

Black hole in Sunshine List

Take advantage of our collective buying power and cushion yourself from Ontario's public/private boondogle:

Energy Overview for Homeowners by John Laws

Learn more and select a plan that's right for you:

Blood Money and Neo-Catholics: America’s Top Rogue Mercenary – Blackwater’s Erik Prince is Under Federal Investigation

Erik Prince, founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.

What began as an investigation into Prince’s attempts to sell defense services in Libya and other countries in Africa has widened to a probe of allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, is also seeking to uncover the precise nature of Prince’s relationship with Chinese intelligence.

The Intercept interviewed more than a half dozen of Prince’s associates, including current and former business partners; four former U.S. intelligence officers; and other sources familiar with the Justice Department investigation. All of them requested anonymity to discuss these matters because there is an ongoing investigation. The Intercept also reviewed several secret proposals drafted by Prince and his closest advisers and partners offering paramilitary services to foreign entities.  (more...)

America’s Top Rogue Mercenary – Blackwater’s Erik Prince is Under Federal Investigation

OK, now that you know who Erik is, looky where he spends his money:

Blackwater Founder and West Michigan Native Funds Right-wing through Foundation

Sweet little racket, wouldn't you say?

‘I’m going to pervert you’: Surprise witness emerges at trial of author accused of seducing young fan

MONTREAL — A Quebec Court judge will decide on Tuesday whether to accept evidence from a surprise witness in the trial of a popular author of books for young teenagers who is accused of sexually assaulting a minor who was a fan.

Maxime Roussy, 40, faces 11 sex-related charges involving a minor including luring a child through the Internet, sexual assault, sexual interference and inviting a minor to touch him in a sexual manner. He entered a not-guilty plea to all of the charges when his trial began on March 7.

At the time of his arrest, in April 2011, he was the author of books published in French such as Le Blogue de Namasté and Pakkal, which were very popular in Quebec with young teenagers and preteens. He was also married with three children with his wife and had had another child through a previous relationship.

The alleged victim in the case has testified she first had sex with Roussy when she was 14 and that he convinced her to play a submissive role while he practised sado-masochistic sex acts with her on 11 occasions between 2008 and 2010. She testified she decided to end the relationship when she realized Roussy likely wouldn’t leave his wife for her.  (more...)

‘I’m going to pervert you’: Surprise witness emerges at trial of author accused of seducing young fan

Scientology, Cults, Freemasonry and the CIA

Mark Hackard returns to the show to discuss "Scientology & the CIA" and "Malta, Masonry & the CIA", two articles he translated. We talk about the use of Christian missionaries and cults by the CIA and the connections between Freemasonry and the intelligence community. We also discuss how conceptions like "democracy", "religious freedom" and "human rights" are exploited by the United States and other western governments to destabilize countries outside the Anglo-American orbit.

Background:

Scientology & The CIA

Malta, Masonry & The CIA

"Exile" in Malta?

The Sun Vault: The Death Star of British Journalism

At a trial in Kingston two years ago of several senior Sun journalists over allegations of payments to public officials, the former deputy editor of the country's best selling newspaper, Ben O'Driscoll, made an interesting admission on oath:

"At the time I was there, there was an enormous safe, about 7ft high, like something out of a Wild West film, with big metal handles", O'Driscoll explained to  the court in Kingston. "It was full of 30 years of stories that are confidential and did not pass the public interest test. They remained there in that safe, and what's in there is quite eye-popping, I have to say."

O'Driscoll claimed  MPs and celebrities featured in the material, and added: "If you were to publish everything in that safe, I think The Sun's circulation figures would go upwards."

But if this material is not held for publication, what is it kept for?  (more...)

The Sun Vault: The Death Star of British Journalism

Was Rupert Murdoch's buddy a paedophile?

NOTW editor 'spiked paedophilia scoop on Arthur C Clarke for fear of Murdoch'

If It's All Just a Scam: Legalize It All

In 1994, John Ehrlichman, the Watergate co-conspirator, unlocked for me one of the great mysteries of modern American history: How did the United States entangle itself in a policy of drug prohibition that has yielded so much misery and so few good results? Americans have been criminalizing psychoactive substances since San Francisco’s anti-opium law of 1875, but it was Ehrlichman’s boss, Richard Nixon, who declared the first “war on drugs” and set the country on the wildly punitive and counterproductive path it still pursues. I’d tracked Ehrlichman, who had been Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser, to an engineering firm in Atlanta, where he was working on minority recruitment. I barely recognized him. He was much heavier than he’d been at the time of the Watergate scandal two decades earlier, and he wore a mountain-man beard that extended to the middle of his chest.

At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”  (more...)

 Legalize It All

Is this what the war on drugs is about?

Police officers facing perjury charges due back in court May 9

Time for an inquiry into the narcs and spooks who have lured millions into drug dependency and criminality.

Goddard Inquiry: Children were abused 'on industrial scale' at Lambeth Council-run homes

"Physical and sexual abuse on an industrial scale" went "unchecked for decades" at children's homes in a south London borough, a victims' report says.

The report detailing claims by 600 people will go before the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

At a preliminary hearing earlier, the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association was given "core participant status".

Its leader Raymond Stevenson said child abuse in the Lambeth Council-run homes had been a "reversal to the dark ages".

The abuse had resulted in the "shedding of thousands of tears", he said, and called it a "shame on the establishment" and "institutionalised evil".

The Shirley Oaks survivors accused the police of failing to deal with the allegations adequately, resulting in a cover up.

It is alleged two convicted children's homes abusers were volunteer police officers.  (more...)

Goddard Inquiry: Children were abused 'on industrial scale' at Lambeth Council-run homes

(1) Are the police trying to cover their tracks? Met officers from Trinity are now proclaiming to have a list of historical paedophiles...

— ShirleyOaksSurvivors (@ShirleyOaksSA) March 24, 2016

(2) from Lambeth who they are now investigating. They also claim to be taking disciplinary actions against people… um….

— ShirleyOaksSurvivors (@ShirleyOaksSA) March 24, 2016

(3) Does this means Goddard cannot examine these cases? Why has it taken 30 years to investigate and arrest these people?...

— ShirleyOaksSurvivors (@ShirleyOaksSA) March 24, 2016

(4) Timing is key to everything. Will SOSA abide by any restrictions on who they will expose as paedophiles...

— ShirleyOaksSurvivors (@ShirleyOaksSA) March 24, 2016

(5) and who out there can read between the lines? Are any of the recent arrests ex Met police officers? #AwaitPressStatement

— ShirleyOaksSurvivors (@ShirleyOaksSA) March 24, 2016