Minister for Finance Michael Noonan with EU competition commissioner Margrethe
Vestager at a European Union finance ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg
EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has refused to rule out further state-aid investigations into Ireland’s tax arrangements with multinationals, as the Government intensifies discussions with Brussels about the tax it must reclaim from computer giant Apple.
In an interview with The Irish Times, the Danish commissioner said her staff were assessing about 1,000 tax rulings from across Europe, up to 300 of which are understood to be from Irish tax authorities.
Ms Vestager defended her record Apple ruling, saying it was “fact-based”. She said the commission was well aware of the forthcoming appeal by the Government and was “very prepared” for the case.
The Attorney General is preparing an appeal to the European Court of Justice of the EU Commission’s finding that Apple benefited from up to €13 billion in illegal state aid. It is expected to be filed within the next three weeks. (more...)
The Dutch government is unlikely to take measures against the thousands of resident letterbox companies that shift profits through the Netherlands before next year’s parliamentary elections, despite lawmakers’ calls for tougher restrictions.
More stringent rules would make it harder for shell letterbox companies to qualify as Dutch tax residents, limiting their access to double taxation agreements and other tax benefits offered under Dutch law.
This style of tax planning has come under scrutiny from the European Commission, which is targeting the arrangements through legislative moves to prevent companies from using letter-box subsidiaries in countries solely to qualify for a softer tax regime and cut their bill.
However, ahead of parliamentary elections in March 2017, Dutch lawmakers have shown little appetite to make current requirements stricter, tax justice officials and academics in favor of the changes told Bloomberg BNA. (more...)
Donald Trump’s campaign manager on Sunday forcefully disavowed a supporter as “deplorable” for chanting “Jew-S-A!” at a weekend rally, the latest incident of anti-Semitic rhetoric used by some of the GOP nominee’s backers.
“[The man’s] conduct is completely unacceptable and does not reflect our campaign or our candidate. Wow,” Kellyanne Conway said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “That man’s conduct was deplorable. And had I been there, I would have asked security to remove him immediately.”
The Saturday afternoon incident in Phoenix, which was captured on video, revived long-standing anxieties about xenophobic and white supremacist rhetoric used by a fringe faction within the GOP nominee’s base. An unidentified man confronted reporters at the rally with shouts and a three-fingered hand gesture that resembled hate symbols flagged by the Anti-Defamation League.
“You’re going down! You’re the enemy!” the man yelled. As the rest of the crowd broke into a chant of “USA! USA!,” the man repeatedly chanted, “Jew-S-A! Jew-S-A!” (more...)
Mark Crispin Miller who is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University talks about US government propaganda, the corporate media, the CIA and the Russian "Putin" threat. Miller also discusses how the corporate media tried to get him fired using a NYU graduate student working for VICE owned by Rupert Murdock. He also looks at the role of the CIA and the US government in their organized effort to demonize Putin and Russia and create a US population hysteria similar to the 1950s.
Is the left-right dialectic still working for you? Are you sure about who the enemy is?
This is well worth watching: journalist and author of Author of ‘Fragile Empire‘ and ‘This Is London‘ and Ben Judah presents his report at the Hudson Institute on how kleptocrats and what he calls the ‘global wealth defence industry’ (or the secrecy and tax avoidance/evasion industry) is wreaking havoc on the global economy and represents a serious threat to international peace and security. He draws on our research on quantifying offshore funds and our Financial Secrecy Index.
He kicks off by saying,
“Not only can you not understand the world economy without placing corruption (and kleptocracy) right at the heart of it, you can’t understand contemporary authoritarians without placing corruption right at the heart of it, and you can’t understand the contemporary foreign and domestic threats to the United States and the West without addressing corruption.”
And he continues,
“…as we are more observed and more trapped than ever before, money is less observed and less trapped than it’s been at any point over the last 70, 80, 90 years. One of the core features of the world economy now is that billions are travelling the world, circling the world, clicking through cyberspace completely incognito.”
It's a bit comical how the panelists try to paint Putin without splashing western leaders. Why would western oligarchs be any different from their eastern counterparts?
RCMP-CSIS analysts made some pretty bold claims in their 1997 Sidewinder report. The statement that Chinese Triads are manipulating real estate is one of the boldest. Back then, it seemed absurd that organized crime would focus on Canadian real estate. 20 years later, we wanted to take a look at just how crazy that seems now.
While we don’t have the ability to tap people’s phones, and open emails (thanks Harper!), we do have a metric s**t-ton of data. Sifting through this, there’s a pretty interesting correlation between the crackdown on the triads, Macau casino revenues, Canadian real estate, and Canada’s banking loopholes.
RCMP-CSIS analysts made some pretty bold claims in their 1997 Sidewinder report. The statement that Chinese Triads are manipulating real estate is one of the boldest. Back then, it seemed absurd that organized crime would focus on Canadian real estate. 20 years later, we wanted to take a look at just how crazy that seems now.
While we don’t have the ability to tap people’s phones, and open emails (thanks Harper!), we do have a metric s**t-ton of data. Sifting through this, there’s a pretty interesting correlation between the crackdown on the triads, Macau casino revenues, Canadian real estate, and Canada’s banking loopholes. (more...)
A jury convicted longtime hockey billet and retired Kingston school teacher Neil Joynt on Thursday on two of three historic sex-related assault charges.
The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for more than 10 hours — nine hours on Wednesday and one hour on Thursday morning — before convicting Joynt, 75, of two counts of indecent assault. The first assault took place at his parents’ Battersea home in 1962 and the other while camping on Big Rideau Lake north of Kingston in 1973 or 1974.
Joynt was acquitted of a third charge involving an alleged incident in the early 1980s.
A publication ban has been imposed on the names of his victims.
When the guilty verdicts were read, one of the victims hugged his partner while other relatives held onto him. (more...)
A former Port Coquitlam teacher is on trial this week for an alleged sexual assault more than 15 years ago in Vancouver.
Russell Lance Read was originally charged in early 2014 with two counts of sexual assault and one count each of sexual exploitation, sexual interference of a person under 14 and touching a young person for a sexual purpose. Three of the charges had been linked to a PoCo file.
Read recently served time for other sex crimes involving young people.
In the spring of 2013, he was sentenced to two and a half years in jail; 18 months for offences that occurred from July 1998 to February 2000 in Coquitlam, Victoria, Ladner and Vancouver, followed by 12 months for crimes involving a second victim and dating back to January 2001 to June 2003 in Coquitlam.
Another 12-month sentence was to be served concurrently for administering an overpowering drug with intent to commit sexual exploitation.
Read's last teaching position was from 1996 to 2004 at Citadel middle school in PoCo, where he taught computers and coached rugby and volleyball. He also worked with the choir. (more...)
OWEN SOUND - A former Grey Highlands football coach and teacher was found guilty of one count of sexual exploitation after a nearly two-week jury trial in the Superior Court of Justice in Cobourg, Ont.
Matthew Dale Palmer, 49, of the Owen Sound area was found guilty on Oct. 21 of sexual exploitation of a teenaged girl between Sept. 1, 1996 and July 4, 1999 in the Cobourg area. Sentencing is to be carried out Jan. 27.
The Criminal Code considers sexual exploitation the sexual touching of a youth by a person in a position of trust or authority. The one-year mandatory minimum sentence for this offence doesn't apply because the offence dates predate the minimum sentence's introduction.
Another sexual exploitation charge, with the same dates and location, remains outstanding. Court staff had no further information about it. (more...)
Amid the quips about “Doogie Howser, MPP,” a 19-year-old Progressive Conservative candidate is being taken very seriously at Queen’s Park.
Sam Oosterhoff, a first-year student at Brock University, jolted the Progressive Conservatives over the weekend by defeating PC Party president Rick Dykstra for the Niagara West-Glanbrook nomination.
He will carry the Conservative banner in the Nov. 17 byelection triggered by the retirement of former PC leader Tim Hudak, who was first elected two years before Oosterhoff was born.
Both the Liberals and the New Democrats privately admit it will be difficult to beat the teen Tory.
While they insist Liberal lawyer Vicky Ringuette and NDP retired police officer Mike Thomas are strong candidates, they concede Niagara West-Glanbrook is a PC stronghold.
Oosterhoff — who has ignored requests for media interviews since telling the Star on Sunday he was “really busy” and promised to be in touch on Monday — left it to PC Leader Patrick Brown to speak for him on Tuesday. (more...)
In an era of child soldiers and boy prime ministers, Catholics are reminded of the youthful popes of the past. It wasn't a good reflection on the age. Perhaps a knowledge of history and ability to identify John Birchers and closet Nazis doesn't work too well for today's social conservatives. Folks like to believe their leaders are one of their own... and share common values.
Many arms companies use the Netherlands for tax evasion constructions, writes Stop Wapenhandel in a research report published today. Seven out of the ten biggest global arms companies have tax constructions in the Netherlands.
More than half of the top 100 biggest arms companies have a holding or establishment in the Netherlands. Which means that of every two dollars earned with weapon production, one is having the Netherlands backing up its financial structures.
Stop Wapenhandel checked the top-100 of global arms companies against Chamber of Commerce information and found large number of arms producing companies with shell companies established in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is notorious for its tax evasion possibilities.
Tax evasion by arms companies is double cynical. All companies use infrastructure paid for by taxes, but defence companies also have their products paid for by taxes, as the lion share of their production is bought by governments. Moreover, much of their research and development is subsidized by governments or done in cooperation with publicly funded universities and/or research institutes. Arms companies profit in all possible ways from public money but contribute as little as possible. (more...)
The fate of a former Kingston hockey billet and retired school teacher will soon be in the hands of a jury.
Neil Joynt, 75, was charged in 2013 and 2014 with two counts of indecent assault against a male and one count of sexual assault.
Justice Robert Scott heard final submissions on Tuesday afternoon from Joynt's lawyer, Michael Woogh, and Crown attorney Robert Corbella.
The accusations of sexually touching boys date back to 1962, as well as the early 1970s and 1980s.
The names of the three complainants, one almost 70 years old and two others in their late 40s and 50s, are protected by a publication ban.
Woogh said in his submission to the jury of seven men and five women at the Lennox and Addington County Court House in Napanee that two of the three complainants in the case may have a financial motive. (more...)
A former Toronto teacher and hockey coach has been arrested in connection with a sexual assault investigation dating back to the 1970s.
Police allege that a now 76-year-old man was employed as an elementary school teacher in Toronto between 1970 and 1990 where he, at some point, sexually assaulted one of his young male students.
They say the suspect was also a hockey coach during that time.
Though it is not clear when police began investigating the alleged offences, police said a suspect was arrested by officers with the Ontario Provincial Police on Oct. 21 and transported to Toronto.
James David Hicks, now of Sudbury, has been charged with one count of sexual assault on a person under 16 years old. (more...)
A Tax Justice Network podcast produced and presented by @Naomi_Fowler Featuring Stefanie Ostfeld of Global Witness, UN Arms Trade investigator Kathy Lynne Austin and arms trade researcher Daniel Mackenzie.
Remember when the RCMP and CSIS accused the Chinese government of purchasing real estate in Canadian urban centers as a method of threatening Canada? No? That’s because the recommendations from a former classified program called Sidewinder was abandoned. All documents were ordered destroyed, and buried in 1997 by the Liberal government. Turns out we were as anxious to build ties with China then as we are now. Despite our national spy services advising the government that, well…this would happen to real estate.
In a report titled Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada, an RCMP-CSIS joint task force allege that the Chinese government is using legal and legitimate businesses to gain control over the economic levers of Canada. They also warn that the “Canadian economy is concentrated in three or four large urban centres.” Consequently, “[Canada] is more vulnerable [than other countries] because of the many legislative loopholes governing finance and the concentration of financial power in the hands of few”.
20 years ago, when people thought Barbie Girl was great music, this seemed like our top spies were spinning a far-fetched conspiracy theory. Analysts even referenced how far fetched it seemed in the actual document. They preface the report with “this document does not present theories but indicators of a multifaceted threat to Canada’s national security based on concrete facts drawn from the databanks of the two agencies involved [the RCMP and CSIS].” (more...)
Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven, and with him the Swedish banker Marcus Wallenberg (CEO of Investor, the main holding company of the Wallenbergs), are travelling to Saudi Arabia for an official visit. The meetings with the Saudis, as announced by the Swedish Radio, shall aim to “increase the exchange” between the two countries. Wallenberg’s Investor owns Saab Group, the main Swedish defence and aerospace company manufacturing a variety of weapons. At the same time, the Chairman of the Defense Committee in the Swedish Parliament, Mr Allan Widman, is now demanding that Sweden should send arms to US-backed Pershmerga, integrating the US & Saudi-led coalition in Iraq.
The above-mentioned issues are not only connected in their timing, but are also produced against the backdrop of the US and Saudi instigated Syria war aimed to depose the legitimate government of Assad, and the confrontation pursued by NATO and its political front EU against Russia. Accusations put forward in the US, among other by Senator Richard Black, indicate that Saudi Arabia has been financing/arming ISIS jihadists. The Senator revealed also that “Saudi Arabia and Turkey formed the Army of Conquer and coordinated ISIS and Al-Qaida”. To the best of my knowledge the Senator has not been refuted on these allegations. Further, emails published by WikiLeaks’ Podesta series revealed that Hillary Clinton has been fully aware – already since 2014 – of the fact that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar were financing ISIS. On the other hand, the US government has claimed the responsibility for financing, training and arming so-called “moderate rebels” – the “moderate terrorists” – which together with ISIS maintain a common war against the government of Syria.
The human rights impact of the above has meant a tragedy of huge proportions for the Syrian population in the occupied territories. This occupation has been conducted by a variety of foreign troops, i.e. ISIS forces financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, “moderate terrorists”, US military ‘advisors” or Turkish-trained forces. One example of these human rights atrocities committed by the coalition-supported rebels was the shutting off water supply in (West) Aleppo to over a million civilian residents in that area.
As voices of protest in the US against the arming of the aboshut-off-water-aleppofve mentioned “rebels” has increased (to the point that they were halted during a brief period) the US government expects that its client states in the EU will replace US in shipping supplies to the “rebels”. The utilization of Sweden in this regard is convenient in two ways: Despite the subservient stance towards NATO in particular during the past Carl Bildt era, the Swedish authorities play still the “non-alignment” card, giving hence the impression of a “neutral country”; and on the other hand, Sweden has a history of secret deals regarding weapons-export with the Saudis. (more...)
A Fergus man has been sentenced to 21 months in jail for possessing child pornography.
With credit for time already served, Paul Curry will complete his sentence next June.
Curry was arrested in January, in connection with an ongoing OPP investigation into child pornography.
According to his lawyer, David Quayat, electronic devices seized from Curry’s home contained “about 5,000” images.
He was sentenced Monday. Quayat says the 21-month sentence was what he had recommended to the judge.
Following his release, he will be on probation for three years.
He will also spend the rest of his life on Canada’s sex offender registry, meaning he will be banned from public places like parks and swimming pools.
Hours after Curry was arrested, a fire broke out at the retired high school teacher’s home on Union Street in Fergus.
His wife was charged with arson in connection with that fire. As of Tuesday, the house remained boarded up and uninhabited. (more...)
A former police superintendent has been found guilty of sexually abusing boys in the 1980s at a Home Office attendance centre for young offenders and at a children’s home.
Gordon Anglesea, 79, becomes the highest-profile offender brought to justice through the National Crime Agency’s Operation Pallial, which has been investigating allegations of widespread and organised child abuse in north Wales.
Judge Geraint Walters gave Anglesea bail but made it clear he would be jailed when he is sentenced next month. Before leaving court, the judge said the defendant, a father of five, would have to sign the sex offenders’ register.
A man in the public gallery overlooking the court shouted: “This is a great day for British justice! Thirty years we’ve waited for this.” (more...)
Thirty-five additional charges have been laid against a former teacher and basketball coach after seven more victims came forward to police with complaints stemming from incidents that took place over 35 years ago.
Donald Greenham, 73, has been charged with an additional 17 counts of indecent assault, 17 counts of gross indecency and one count of intimidation, the Ottawa police said in a statement Tuesday.
In August, he was charged with sexually molesting four students some three decades ago.
Police said the charges stem from incidents that occurred between 1971 and 1981, while the accused was working as a teacher and coach with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
The victims range in age from 13-18 years of age. (more...)
While there are plenty of school boards across Canada that practise good governance, there are too many examples of trustees displaying "amateur hour behaviour," Ontario's former deputy minister of education says.
Misspent money, poorly conceived contracts, directors getting paid more than they're allowed — these are just some of the examples of mismanagement that result from bad board governance, Charles Pascal says.
In fact, he says it may be time to take a closer look at how we choose trustees.
"Are there other ways of ensuring better governance by how trustees are selected?" Pascal said.
The role of trustees came under scrutiny this past week following the decision by B.C.'s education minister to fire all nine of the Vancouver School Board's elected members after they refused to balance the board's budget. (more...)
Bohdan Matsiv (ed.), Ukrains’ka dyviziia ‘Halychyna:’ Istoriia u svitlynakh vid zasnuvannia u 1943 r. do zvil’nennia z polonu 1949 r. Lviv, ZUKTs, 2009.
Ernest Renan noted that “‘having suffered together’ and, indeed, suffering in common unifies more than joy does. Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort.’ In Blood Sacrifice and the Nation, Carolyn Marvin argues ‘Blood sacrifice preserves the nation.’3She emphasizes that,
[T]he nation is the shared memory of blood sacrifice, periodically renewed. Those who share such memories often, but not always, share language, living space, or ethnicity. What they always share and cultivate is the memory of blood sacrifice. ... [T]he felt or sentimental nation is the memory of the last sacrifice that counts for living believers. ... At the behest of the group, the lifeblood of the community members must be shed. Group solidarity, or sentiment, flows from the value of this sacrifice.
Marvin maintains ‘The myth of the sacrificed Christ who dies for all men makes every sacrificed soldier a remodeled Christ dying to redeem his countrymen.’ This mythical narrative is rejuvenated through ritual, pledges, and ideological training. Part of the ideology is the development of nostalgia, admiration, and veneration. In the reproduction of nationalist mythology, Marvin asserts that ‘Photographers and reporters offer holy witness. Their presence is critical. Only through representation and commemoration do apostolic missions become group-unifying messianic sacrifice.
Over the past six decades, Die 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1), often reffered to as Waffen-SS Galizien, a Ukrainian collaborating formation, organized by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in 1943, has been the object of intense myth making. The unit was demonized in the Soviet Union, and glorified by circles in the Ukrainian diaspora. In Canada, where many of the division’s veterans came to settle, diaspora venues regularly commemorated the ‘exemplary patriotism’ and ‘self-sacrifice’ of the unit. This sort of narrative was particularly heavily emphasized on even anniversaries. (more...)
"... Canada's do-nothing policy about Nazis over the next 40 years was influenced by a persistent anti-Jewish bias within the federal bureaucracy. ... As war criminals were being let into Canada, their Jewish victims who barely survived the Nazi Holocaust were strenuously kept out. ..."
As the nation honoured its war dead this week, some who gave their lives for freedom were still left with an ironic injustice. Though Canada played an outstanding role in the Allies' success in World War II, a number of Nazis who committed war crimes against Canadians fighting overseas were allowed later to immigrate here and remain unpunished.
The Canadian Armed Forces held post-war trials in Germany. But further prosecutions were to be handled by the British military. They were soon stopped. And Canada failed to bring to justice any of those accused against the Canadian military even when some were later found living here.
Historian Alti Rodal says this is part of "Canada's complicity in crimes against humanity."
Strong charges, especially since Rodal was chief historian for the 1986 Deschenes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals. She wrote a 580-page report on how Nazis were virtually welcomed into Canada and how successive governments ignored allegations of war criminals among them.
A federal government consultant, Rodal is currently writing a book based on her findings and new research - Other Priorities, to be published by Malcolm Lester Books.
Though Justice Jules Deschenes called for wide distribution of her report, Ottawa first buried it, then released it heavily censored. Even the bureaucrats must have been ashamed of its evidence of authorities caving in to pressure, of racist political decisions, and of investigators' incompetence. Other historians have since pursued the story. (more...)
With this book Farrell takes a slight detour from his usual scientific detective work and moves into the realm of "conspiracy theory," or as he says, "conspiracy hypothesis." Using the same logical precision I have come to expect from his work, he analyzes the rumors and stories of Nazi escape at the end of World War 2.
Even in a work this size, over 400 pages, he can still only scratch the surface of the vast, powerful underground movement that the Nazi party created to facilitate their escape from their near-miss at world domination. As Jim Marrs has pointed out in his new book, and Farrell echoes here, the Nazi Party never surrendered - Germany, Japan and Italy did, but the Nazis did not. To drive the point home clearly, Farrell reproduces the "instruments of surrender" signed at the end of the war. Was it an incredible oversight to let the Nazis slip through the cracks like that, or was it just another part of their extraordinary plan?
The book is 12 chapters in 4 sections, and begins with a look at the surrender, the science fiction novels of Wilhelm Landig, Nazi UFO myths and Reinhold Schmidt, and part of the information Carol Rosin communicates from the late Werner Von Braun (a greater portion of which is available from Steven Greer's Disclosure Project, and well worth your attention). I was especially happy to see more information on Landig, as I was intrigued by his mention of Landig's novels in an earlier book.
He goes on to describe the financial processes by which Allied banking and other Big Money interests helped create both the Nazi party and the Bolshevik revolution. Again, he shows that the financial dealings and corporate underground created are so vast and powerful that even a book this size can only hit the high points. The legal wrangling of I.G. Farben's breakup took 52 years because the corporation was so vast and convoluted!
He discusses the escape theories surrounding Martin Bormann, Heinrich "Gestapo" Muller, and Adolf Hitler, having dealt with Hans Kammler and others in his previous books on Nazi scientific work.
He covers the migration of Nazis to South America and other places, and spends a large part of the book looking at the financial and political threads that indicate the heavy influence of the Nazis, even to this day. An interesting revelation is how important Nazis such as Otto Skorzeny were to the creation and training of our current nemesis, Arab terrorism.
He ends the book with information on the secret scientific work in Argentina and elsewhere, with a final chapter on Nazi influence in NASA. In the NASA chapter he quotes heavily from the research of Hoagland and Bara, which is also worth reading in depth. This is the only section where he gets back to the science we are so used to him writing about.
As always, Farrell dishes up a fantastic survey of the situation, paying great heed to detail and corroboration. He cites his sources, and provides actual copies of many documents, both in the main text and an appendix. He proves once again that he has the skills of a scientist with the intuition of a street wise detective. His procedure is logical and follows his usual structure of point by point elucidation backed up by evidence and lists of conclusions. Also, as always, he gives the reader lots of entry points to go deeper into the information.
While something of a departure from his more science oriented books, he proves that he can handle the topics of finance and politics as well as he does science. If you liked his other books, you'll like this one. If you are interested in just how much influence the Nazis still exert in this world and how they managed to get in that position, this is a good place to start.
Mr. Farrell’s new magnum opus , ‘The Third Way – The Nazi International, European Union And Corporate Fascism’, picks up where his previous work, ‘The Nazi International’ left off. In usual Farrell fashion, he interweaves a variety of different facts, documentation and theories to solidify the fact that Nazism 2.0 [modern day Nazis] are not an outgrowth of the preview generation, but a continuance of the Post-WW2 Nazi ideology that plagued humanity decades ago.
As a particular document that Mr. Farrell cites says, “For us” – The Nazi International “The war never stopped.” When taken in conjunction with the fact that no representatives from the Nazi party ever formally surrendered, you can catch a glimpse at the innerworkings of the mentality being showcased that would drive Nazism 2.0 to the 21st Century.
This particular books is extremely vital in understanding the current breath and latitude of some of the wider/dire issues that are affecting society today – mainly fascism/corporatism/Nazism – and how those have spawned the seeds of what is now the European Union, with Germany at the tip of the spear so to speak.
Trenchantly, Mr. Farrell covers how the Nazis were able to extend their sphere of influence throughout different countries/agencies/etc and how that not only lead to technological/currency cartels, with I.G. Farben’s ghost at the forefront and the BIS coupled along, but also to the creation of the cosmology cartel known as CERN.
Would love to expound more on the aforementioned subjects, but that would be doing a disservice to Dr. Farrell’s work.
If you have read any of his previous work, you will greatly enjoy this piece immensely. And if you haven’t, it’s not a bad place to start as this particular book, more so than any other, is vital to comprehending certain aspects of issues that are everpresent in our society today, and will continue to plague us until something is done about it.
For many years economists have noted how countries rich in natural resources often fail to benefit from their unearned wealth. Indeed, sometimes the discovery of oil and gas can seem more like a curse than a blessing.
The Finance Curse shows how countries with oversized financial sectors can suffer a similar fate. The easy money that comes from finance carries hidden costs, in form of steepening inequality, political and intellectual corruption, industrial stagnation and periodic crisis and collapse.
Nicholas Shaxson, the author of Treasure Islands, and John Christensen, the director of the Tax Justice Network, explore this new paradox of plenty, and show once and for all that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and that those who believe the stories told by bankers are liable to end up on the menu.
"This is a wonderful piece of work which, inter alia, critiques in great detail the various claims made about the significance of the financial services sector to the British economy and examines the negative effects for the rest of us of having what is essentially an unregulated global casino in our midst."
So now there's no doubt that Canada's social conservatives have been taken for a ride by the Bay Street crowd. Time to notice that they're plundering the economy, too.
A convicted pedophile is running for trustee with the Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools board.
Candidate Denis Hall pleaded guilty in July 1981 to two counts of having sexual intercourse with females aged 14 to 16 and two counts of indecent assault on females.
Hall is currently listed on the Saskatoon Catholic Schools’ website as a candidate for trustee.
Hall was a schoolteacher at the time of the offences, which took place between 1974 and 1980 in Regina, Swift Current and Melfort. All of the girls involved were members of a community basketball team Hall coached.
According to a Regina Leader-Post story on July 11, 1981, Hall is a former teacher of Holy Rosary School and former coach of the Holy Rosary Raiders girls’ basketball team.
The article was based on facts read into the court record when Hall pleaded guilty, and on testimony given by the victims at Hall’s preliminary hearing in March 1981.
Hall was sentenced to an 18-month jail term and released in June 1982. Months after he pleaded guilty to the four sexual offences, Hall was subsequently sued by one of the teenagers, who became pregnant but gave the baby up for adoption. In November 1981, after several court hearings related to the civil suit, Hall settled out of court with the girl and her family. He paid $3,500 and she signed a release saying she would not take further legal action against him on the matter. Hall ran unsuccessfully for school board trustee in 2003. In a StarPhoenix story published that year, Hall denied he was responsible for the girl’s pregnancy.
In 1994, Hall applied for and received a full and absolute pardon for his convictions from the federal solicitor general.
In 2003, Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools said it had no legal recourse for barring Hall from the election. (more...)
Governments and societies have been subverted by the view that – as US President Bill Clinton once put it – a nation is "like a big corporation competing in the global marketplace." The political rhetoric of "competitiveness" has taken as unquestionable fact the notion that competition between nations is a valuable social and economic good, rendering policy-makers unable or unwilling to respond appropriately to domestic economic challenges such as setting up fair tax systems or implementing appropriate financial regulation. The logical outcome of this "competitiveness" drive will not be zero tax rates on capital but a spiraling race to below the bottom leading to negative tax rates, as countries bid against each other using direct and indirect subsidies to attract investment. Yet, the intellectual foundations of the whole "competitiveness" agenda rest on economic fallacies and confusions, which few people have thought to challenge. (more...)
On the same day Apple Inc. is set to announce its fourth quarter financial results , the GoodElectronics Network and SOMO are publishing a paper that is critical of the company’s business model and impact on society. The paper explains how Apple is short-changing societies by seeking to maximize financial returns on its enormous profits instead of reinvesting that value into the real economy.
The multinational shrewdly minimises its corporate costs through the relentless offshoring of production and related ‘activities’ to low-wage countries and tax havens. Its accumulated returns far exceed Apple’s capacity to reinvest its earnings productively. As a result, Apple increasingly operates like a large institutional investor, investing most of its mounting cash pile in financial markets. (more...)
VANCOUVER — Accusations of harassment in the workplace. Refusals to pass a balanced budget. The firing of entire boards.
School boards across the country have attracted attention over internal discord and for being at loggerheads with provincial governments. But some experts say what happens in school districts is just as common at other levels of government, albeit far less public.
“You see clashes between elected officials and bureaucrats all the time and at all levels,” said Gerald Galway, a professor of education at Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador who also spent 16 years as a senior bureaucrat involved in the province’s education system.
“But I would suggest (it’s) much more public at the school board level than behind the closed doors in the board rooms and offices in ministries of government.” (more...)
Germany is a safe haven for dictators’ loot, the assets of organised crime networks, and the proceeds of tax crimes and other illicit financial flows from around the globe. In his September 2015 book Tax Haven Germany, TJN researcher Markus Meinzer calculated that the amount of tax exempt interest-bearing assets held by non-residents in the German financial system ranged between €2.5 - 3 trillion as of August 2013.
Germany’s global scale weighting in the FSI is 6.0, meaning it has a six percent share of global offshore financial services – though not as large as the United States, United Kingdom or Luxembourg, whose shares are respectively around 20 percent, 17 percent and 12 percent. Germany’s secrecy score of 56 places it in the lower mid-range of the secrecy scale, roughly equivalent to those of Japan and (a much-improved) Luxembourg.
However, behind this moderate secrecy score lie areas of great concern.
While there has been some recent progress with Germany’s international treaty commitments and anti-money laundering framework, there are still major loopholes and many implementation deficits. Germany has shown negligent enforcement of anti-money laundering rules, and it offers a worrisome set of secrecy facilities and instruments, such as bearer shares, which were outlawed or severely restricted long ago in many ‘classic’ tax havens. Like many other OECD countries, Germany does not sufficiently exchange tax-related information, automatically or otherwise, with a multitude of other jurisdictions. Many foreign-owned assets in Germany are held secretly through elaborate structures spanning secrecy jurisdictions such as Cayman Islands and Switzerland. And Germany’s willingness to police its financial sector in these areas is woefully inadequate. Germany has flown under the radar for too long: it is one of the world’s bigger secrecy jurisdictions, and needs to be understood as such. (more...)
On Friday, Poles flocked to theaters to watch Volyn, a new historical drama by director Wojciech Smarzowski which depicts the atrocities committed by Ukrainian nationalists during WWII. Even before it was released, Ukrainian commentators blasted the film. Some now fear that movie could help ruin Polish-Ukrainian relations.
During the Second World War, at the same time that millions of Ukrainians fought Nazi Germany in the ranks of the Red Army, several hundred thousand nationalists from groups including the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) collaborated with Nazi forces in their occupation of what had been Polish and Soviet Ukrainian territory. In addition to a series of murderous campaigns against Jews, Gypsies, Soviet POWs and anti-fascist Ukrainians, UPA nationalists conducted a mass campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting the Polish minority in western Ukraine.
According to historians, the campaign resulted in the deaths of between 80,000 and 120,000 people, predominantly women and children, between 1943 and 1945.
In February 2014, Ukraine's government was overthrown in a coup d'état. The new authorities have since actively sought to rebrand organizations like OUN and UPA as heroic movements fighting for Ukraine's independence. Kiev has sponsored monuments to UPA leader Stepan Bandera, renamed roads, funded textbooks and documentaries and supported a series of other projects to try and clean up the war-era nationalists' image. (more...)
Venice had not seen the like since the days of the Doge: cheering crowds lined the Accademia Bridge while a dozen vintage water taxis processed along the Grand Canal, carrying some of the most famous people in the world.
Aboard the lead vessel was screen idol George Clooney, whose marriage to British lawyer Amal Alamuddin was being attended that weekend by other members of Hollywood’s liberal elite.
Oscar-winner Matt Damon, supermodel Cindy Crawford and U2 singer Bono were all on the wedding convoy, along with veteran actor Bill Murray and American actress Ellen Barkin.
But who was the slightly owlish gentleman in the tuxedo? A character actor, perhaps? Or maybe Mr Clooney’s butler?
In fact, the mystery guest was a superstar in his own sphere: the Left-wing ‘goliath’ of global litigation, Benedict Emmerson QC.
Mr Emmerson had ‘invented the human rights industry virtually single-handed’, one admiring fellow QC told me this week. (more...)
Dame Lowell Goddard ruled her inquiry like a 'monstrous tyrant' and finally quit in a fit of petulance before going out for lunch, it was claimed yesterday.
Her doomed reign was allegedly peppered with expletive-ridden tantrums and racist diatribes that left horrified staff feeling 'totally paralysed'.
But last night, the New Zealand judge issued a stinging rebuttal of the claims against her, adding that the lunch on the day she resigned was 'simply sandwiches' with her husband on his birthday.
She rejected accusations that she flew into rages at junior staff, insisting relations were so warm she even greeted the cleaner by name every day.
In a 1,600-word personal statement, Dame Lowell described a series of allegations about her 18-month leadership of the beleaguered child abuse inquiry as 'completely untrue'.
Her denials came after The Times published a damning account by insiders who said her tantrums rendered Britain's biggest ever public inquiry completely dysfunctional. The newspaper said she once threatened to go home unless she got her own way, allegedly bawling: 'I'm going to pack my bags, go back to New Zealand and take this inquiry down with me.' (more...)
A teacher’s assistant at a Fort McMurray elementary school who committed sex crimes against young boys and had a huge child pornography collection has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Russell Hancock, who is originally from Newfoundland, pleaded guilty earlier this week to sexual interference, two counts of invitation to sexual touching, three counts of making child pornography, one count of distributing child pornography and six counts of possessing child pornography.
During an emotional sentencing, the 37-year-old tearfully apologized to his victims and their families after some family members angrily called him a “predator” and accused him of the “ultimate act of betrayal” while reading out their victim impact statements.
One victim’s mother told court the “horrible” event left her feeling “alone, hopeless and afraid” and suffering from anxiety and panic. (more...)
Campaigner Peter Tatchell explains why he believes the age of consent should be lowered.
Talking to LBC’s Lucy Beresford on the sex and relationships show, he said that he doesn’t believed children should have sex early, but that as so many of them do, it is wrong to criminalise them.
“I think it is best that young people wait. I do not think early sex is a good idea. But If young people do have consensual sex and they are below the age of sixteen I don’t think they should be treated as criminals.”
“Criminalisation is the wrong approach and the fact is whether we like it or not, half you young people have their first sexual experience around about the age of 13-14, who according to the law are all criminals and all liable to be put on the sex offenders register.” (more...)
