Teacher guilty of sexually-assaulting student

High emotions broke out in Superior Court Friday as teacher Shawn Oakes was pronounced guilty of sexually assaulting a then-15-year-old student in 2015.

With the words barely out of Justice Catrina Braid’s mouth, Oakes’s mother began sobbing loudly and another family member shouted that the verdict was a “joke.”

Both Braid and Oakes’s victim – now 18 – and his parents quickly left the court temporarily as the room, packed with more than 40 Oakes supporters, dissolved into weeping and disbelief.

The judge said she fully believed the testimony of the victim who said Oakes, 38, was his favourite teacher and invited him out for coffee. The two stopped by Oakes’s home and the teen was given a tour of the house. In the basement, Oakes’s flirting turned to sexual advances and he performed fellatio on the boy who declined to reciprocate and eventually asked him to stop.

The teen described the acts as consensual to police and was concerned about getting the teacher into trouble.

In her verdict, Braid systematically dismissed almost every defence argument that had been put forward and expressed particular concerns about the testimony of Oakes’s brother, who said the assault couldn’t have happened because he was at the house at that time and met the student.

“When Derrick (Oakes) testified he wasn’t surprised to see Shawn alone in the presence of a male student in the house and ... it didn’t trouble him, I found it a shocking response,” said Braid.

“Common sense tells me Derrick should have been concerned or at the least surprised.”  (more...)

Teacher guilty of sexually-assaulting student

Background:

Trial date set for teacher facing sex charges

After a Billionaire and His Wife Are Found Dead, Their Children Try to Crack the Case

Toronto police suspected a murder-suicide after finding the strangled bodies of drug magnate Barry Sherman and his wife, Honey. Their adult children hired a team of investigators to prove them wrong.  (more...)

After a Billionaire and His Wife Are Found Dead, Their Children Try to Crack the Case

The belts, Sherlock, the belts:

Of Asphyxiation, Belts, and Pharaonic Rituals

Himmler's daughter worked for Germany's foreign intelligence agency in 1960s, officials admit

Heinrich Himmler’s daughter worked for Germany’s postwar foreign intelligence agency, it has been revealed.

Gudrun Burwitz, the daughter of the architect of the Holocaust and a fervent Nazi until her death last month, was employed by West Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) – the Federal Intelligence Service – from 1961 to 1963, the agency has confirmed.

She worked as a secretary at the BND’s headquarters in Pullach, near Munich, but used a different name.

Her work for the German intelligence service has been revealed by the German newspaper Bild, at the same time that it reported that Ms Burwitz had died aged 88.

Despite her father having been head of Hitler’s SS and therefore heavily responsible for the murder of six million Jews, as well as the deaths of gypsies and gay people, Ms Burwitz remained a committed Holocaust-denier to the very end.

As an ageing grandmother, she took a leading role in an organisation called Stille Hilfe (Silent Help), which supported former SS members when they were arrested for crimes against humanity, and gave succour to others seeking to evade justice.

The group is thought to have been first created in 1951 by a group of SS officers and rightwing German clergy.

Ms Burwitz's later involvement in the organisation helped ensure that in some quarters she was referred to as the “Princess of Nazism”  (more...)

Himmler's daughter worked for Germany's foreign intelligence agency in 1960s, officials admit

Far-Right Italian Senate Candidate Made Big Donation to Doug Ford’s Leadership Campaign

Doug Ford’s Ontario PC leadership campaign accepted over $10,000 from a candidate for Italy’s far-right, anti-immigration party and his family.

Campaign finance records published by Elections Ontario reveal nearly a dozen members of the wealthy Cortellucci family donated close to the maximum amount allowable under Ontario law in February to the Premier of Ontario’s leadership campaign – the family’s combined contributions add up to $11,100.

Mario Cortellucci, the family patriarch and a Toronto real estate mogul, recently stood as a failed candidate for the Italian Senate during the European country’s most recent elections in March, a position reserved for Italian citizens living abroad.

Cortellucci ran under the banner of Italy’s far-right, anti-immigrant coalition party led by Silvio Berlusconi, Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini. The party campaigned on promises of mass-deportations and shutting down hundreds of mosques.  (more...)

Far-Right Italian Senate Candidate Made Big Donation to Doug Ford’s Leadership Campaign

This guy's connected: Silvio Berlusconi → Licio Gelli → P2 Lodge → Operation Gladio. We've made the big time, kids:

Propaganda Due: A Strange and Terrible Journey Into the Heart of the Deep State

A final reflection:

The Deeper Meaning of Melania’s Jacket Messaging

Canada Revenue Agency is Losing $25 Billion Per Year to Corporate Tax Dodgers and Offshore Tax Havens

Corporate tax dodgers and wealthy elites stashing money in offshore tax havens cost Canada as much as $25 billion per year, according to Canada Revenue Agency.

On Thursday, Canada’s tax collection agency published its first ever estimate of the international tax gap, revealing wealthy Canadians are evading up to $3 billion in tax every year through offshore tax havens.

The CRA estimates the amount of money wealthy Canadians are stashing offshore could range between $75.9 billion and $240.5 billion.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, CBC News obtained internal CRA documents that suggests Canada is losing more than $22 billion per year to corporate tax dodgers.

Together, corporate tax dodgers and wealthy elites are now costing Canada at least $25 billion every year – that alone would cover the costs of a national pharmacare plan, introduce a national child care program and cut poverty in Canada in half.  (more...)

Canada Revenue Agency is Losing $25 Billion Per Year to Corporate Tax Dodgers and Offshore Tax Havens

Related:

Canadians with offshore holdings evade up to $3 billion in tax per year

Court document lists $15 million in quiet sex-abuse settlements by London diocese

A decade-long court battle between the Roman Catholic Diocese of London and its insurance company has disclosed $15 million in largely secret settlements to people who sued priests for sexual abuse.

The payments — listed in a document filed with London’s Superior Court — went to 50 people accusing 12 priests in the diocese of sexual abuse.

The single-page document provides a rare glimpse into how a Canadian diocese dealt with a string of accusers by charting the millions quietly paid to them.

Settlements like these are usually kept secret by non-disclosure agreements. This court document lifts the veil on that process with a detailed financial portrait of a troubled diocese handling sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic church for years. When legal fees, mediation costs and the price of special reports are included, the total costs of the settlements for alleged abuses that occurred during an eight-year period jumps to $17.7 million.

The abuses that resulted in the settlements — committed against boys and girls as young as 6 — took place between 1963 and 1971, a period when the diocese’s insurance coverage is being disputed in court. The settlements were struck during the last 18 years.  (more...)

Court document lists $15 million in quiet sex-abuse settlements by London diocese

The details:

Accused priests. Millions in quiet payouts. And it was all kept on a list

And, not very far from the Cathedral:

Canada's Nazi Mansion: Martin Weiche kept Hitler's memory alive by styling his London estate after the Fuehrer's Bavarian retreat

There you have the diocese I grew up in. I have a visceral aversion to ever returning there. Despite this, I somehow met my spouse, got married in the Church, and formed a family. You may understand that my door is tightly closed against the Gomorran rabble. We are a very tight-knit family.

How accountants broke capitalism

We’ve had leak after leak, whistleblower after whistleblower. But no matter what the scandal is, when it comes to financial secrecy and tax dodging, the so-called big four accountancy firms are key players. We interview investigative journalist and former tax inspector Richard Brooks of the Private Eye on his new book: Bean Counters: the triumph of the accountants and how they broke capitalism.

Plus: will President Trump be prosecuted for foundation fraud? And can a leopard change its spots? How come the secrecy jurisdiction of Delaware came out in support of a financial transparency bill?  (more...)

How accountants broke capitalism

Canadians with offshore holdings evade up to $3 billion in tax per year

Wealthy Canadians with hidden offshore accounts are evading up to $3 billion in tax every year, according to the first ever estimate of the international tax gap by the Canada Revenue Agency, obtained by the Star.

In a report to be made public Thursday, the government estimates Canadian individuals are hiding between $75.9 billion and $240.5 billion in offshore tax havens and elsewhere, and not paying tax on it.

The analysis “gives a sense of the potential magnitude of forgone tax revenues associated with the unreported offshore investment income earned by Canadians,” states the report. “Understanding how and why taxpayers are non-compliant is critical to help preserve the integrity of the tax system and to protect Canada’s revenue base, which supports programs and benefits delivered to Canadians.”

Allison Christians, a tax professor at McGill University, said the fact that so much wealth is being hidden offshore reveals a dangerous attitude among the wealthy.  (more...)

Canadians with offshore holdings evade up to $3 billion in tax per year

Related:

New trust fund rules meant to crack down on tax evasion

Offshore tax havens set to overtake Canada in corporate transparency

Are the Canada Revenue Agency tax evasion raids a public relations exercise?

The real cost of tax avoidance

Pitching a lowball?

The mayor of tiny North Dakota town shaken by neo-Nazi wants to dissolve city government

For the few ranchers and farmers who call it home, the town of Leith, N.D., is a quiet, friendly place. With a population of about 20 people, it is a prairie town of unpaved roads, wheat fields and big sky. Its main landmark was once a railroad, which no longer passes through the town. Its nearest major city — Bismarck — is more than 70 miles away.

But about five years ago, Leith made national headlines, its residents terrorized by a white supremacist intent on taking over the town. The bearded new neighbor, Craig Cobb, moved into town discreetly, having fled Canada facing charges of promoting hate. But he had a plan — to turn Leith into an enclave of white supremacy.

Cobb began buying up cheap properties in the town and posting messages on neo-Nazi online forums, inviting fellow white supremacists to move to the town. In 2013, he had given lots to a former grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and another to the founder of a white supremacist website, the Bismarck Tribune reported. Nazi flags began appearing in Leith, and Cobb slowly plotted to take control of the city council.

News reporters began catching up with his plans, and the local residents began trying to thwart them. In September 2013, hundreds of people from the surrounding states descended on the town to protest a visit from Jeff Schoep, the leader of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement.

Two months later, after Cobb found his house vandalized, he and a fellow Nazi-supporter set out on an armed patrol through Leith, threatening residents.  (more...)

The mayor of tiny North Dakota town shaken by neo-Nazi wants to dissolve city government

Related:

This Tiny Town Is Trying To Stop Neo-Nazis From Taking Over

Welcome to Leith

Canada's Nazi Mansion: Martin Weiche kept Hitler's memory alive by styling his London estate after the Fuehrer's Bavarian retreat

The stately home west of London, guarded by two Third Reich-style eagle statues, was once the sanctuary for one of Canada’s most radical and reviled Nazis.

It’s a place where a giant swastika was cut into the field out back, a place where Ku Klux Klansmen were allowed to burn their crosses.

Inside, lived a man who not only modelled the spread after Adolf Hitler’s Bavarian mountain home, but who also fought for Germany and spouted some of the Nazi regime’s most disturbing beliefs after finding new life in Canada following the Second World War.

“I am a Nazi, I am not a lunatic,” the late Martin Weiche once told a London divorce judge.

Now, Weiche’s sprawling property is in the middle of another controversy — a nasty family squabble, being played out in court, over his estate.

His widow, Jeannet, lives in the house on Gainsborough Rd., west of Hyde Park, a property the old Nazi designed and called “The Berghof” after Hitler’s own home in the Alps.  (more...)

Martin Weiche kept Hitler's memory alive by styling his London estate after the Fuehrer's Bavarian retreat

Legacy of a Nazi money-man:

Martin K. Weiche

Who might be a beneficiary of Weich's largess?

St. Mike's College Swish n Spit: The two faces of Paul Fromm

Transfiguration of Our Lord Parish,
Serra Club (Toronto, West),
St. Michael's College, (U of Toronto)
defiled with Nazi ideology? How did the Archdiocese turn a blind eye to this? How much damage has been done to our community?
Paul Fromm: Traveling Manhttps://t.co/ES3AN6Lxbg

— Jonah in Nineveh (@jlaws) June 27, 2018

Here it gets interesting, in a beancounter kind of way:

The provinces don’t care about ending corporate secrecy, federal finance ministry source says

The kind of corporate sleight-of-hand worked by Weich to hide his financial and real assets from his progeny has also served untold sociopathic and criminal organizations. By the use of shell corporations, lobbyists and political parties can hide who is really paying the piper. Without effective accountability and transparency, Ontario has been subverted by secret societies and mafias. If Doug Ford is really interested in making government accountable to the people, he should tear the mask from Ontario's corporate shadow-world. Or, is he too close to some of the unsavory players pulling the strings of  the political puppet show?

Thousands of infants in Spain were abducted and given away. Now, a doctor will stand trial

Inés Madrigal was born premature in 1969 at Madrid’s San Ramon clinic, after which, she alleges, she was abducted by an obstetrician and given away without the consent of her birth mother. Madrigal suspects that she is one of Spain’s ninos robados — stolen babies who were taken from “unsuitable” mothers in the 20th century and given to parents deemed more loyal or more appropriate by the regime of dictator Francisco Franco.

This practice, which came to light in 2011, lasted more than seven decades and may have involved 30,000 children or more, experts say. During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, this system of abduction was designed to weaken Marxist forces by depriving them of their offspring. Parents were often told that their babies had died at the operating table when, in fact, they had been given away. In the 1950s, this practice evolved to target low-income families and unmarried couples seen as inappropriate guardians of young children.

The abductions ended in the late 1980s, but thousands are seeking justice today. More than 2,000 cases of stolen children have been filed with Spanish prosecutors, CNN reported. Madrigal is one of them, and she took her obstetrician, Eduardo Vela, to court on Tuesday.  (more...)

Thousands of infants in Spain were abducted and given away. Now, a doctor will stand trial

Related:

Stolen Children -- Forgotten Victims

US, Canada Condemn Deadly Attack on Roma Camp in Ukraine

The United States and Canada said on Monday they were horrified by an attack on a Roma camp in Western Ukraine in which one man was killed and several wounded, including a ten-year-old boy.

Police have detained ten teenagers suspected of involvement in the violence, which saw a 24-year-old Roma man stabbed to death and four others wounded at a camp on the outskirts of the city of Lviv late on Saturday.

The incident is the deadliest in a spate of recent attacks by nationalist radical groups, which human rights groups say are on the rise due to inaction from the Ukrainian authorities.

“Horrified by attack on Roma camp in Lviv. Perpetrators must be brought to justice. Racist violence has no place in Europe, including in Ukraine,” the U.S. embassy in Ukraine said on Twitter.

Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk suggested an inadequate response to vigilante far-right violence was partly to blame for the attack.

“Impunity for self-anointed extremist ‘enforcers’ has played a role in this tragedy. Ukraine is obliged to secure the dignity and lives of all its citizens,” he said on Twitter.  (more...)

US, Canada Condemn Deadly Attack on Roma Camp in Ukraine

Related:

Anti-Roma Pogroms in Ukraine: C14 and Tolerating Terror

Key EuroMaidan Coup Player Had Insider Information on DNC “Hack” Before Senior Democratic Officials

Blowback?

The Cambridge Five

Aaaaaaaaand, who spied for the Nazis? .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... crickets.

UK: The dark truth about child sex abuse

A devastating report will this week expose the scale and impact of child sexual abuse across the UK.

Researchers have found that abuse is widespread across all communities and social classes – and believe it has been perpetrated in schools and other institutions much more widely than previously thought.

The report – obtained by The Mail on Sunday – is based on the biggest archive of evidence by abuse victims and survivors ever assembled in this country.

It presents detailed accounts from 50 of the 1,400 people who have so far given evidence to the Truth Project, part of the huge Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) set up by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary.

Some have waited decades to tell their stories. The oldest victim who has spoken to the project is 95 and many are in their 70s and 80s.

About a third have described abuse perpetrated at least 50 years ago.  (more...)

The dark truth about child sex abuse: Devastating 'Truth Project' report reveals paedophile attacks by doctors, teachers and social workers are far more widespread than feared

truthproject.org.uk

Migrant children sent to shelters with histories of abuse allegations

Taxpayers have paid more than $1.5 billion in the past four years to private companies operating immigrant youth shelters accused of serious lapses in care, including neglect and sexual and physical abuse, a Reveal investigation has found.

In nearly all cases, the federal government has continued to place migrant children with the companies even after serious allegations were raised and after state inspectors cited shelters with serious deficiencies, government and other records show.

Since 2003, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department has awarded nearly $5 billion in grants through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, mostly to religious and nonprofit organizations in 18 states, to house children who arrive in the country unaccompanied. The program grew quickly in 2014, when around 70,000 children crossed the southern border alone.

Now this web of private facilities, cobbled together to support children with nowhere else to go, is beginning to hold a new population: the more than 2,000 children who arrived with their parents but were separated from them because of a Trump administration policy.

In Texas, where the resettlement agency awarded the majority of the grants, state inspectors have cited homes with more than 400 deficiencies, about one-third of them serious.  (more...)

Migrant children sent to shelters with histories of abuse allegations

Related:

What we know about Texas-regulated facilities holding migrant children

Surprise! First lady stops by migrant youth center cited for deficiencies by Texas

Some historical and cultural perspective on Drumpf's attitudes:

At 13, she survived the Holocaust with the help of a Polish family. Decades later, an unlikely reunion

Brian Gerrish speaks to police child abuse whistleblower John Wedge

Background:

The Child Abuse Cover Up - A Police Whistleblower Speaks

In a courageous and explosive audio interview with UK Column "Despatches from the Front", a Metropolitan Police Detective Constable child protection specialist, takes the lid off the scale of child abuse, trafficking and prostitution in London and UK.

He exposes the lies, threats and intimidation used by the police, Local Authorities, Social Services, Politicians, Charities and others to protect Establishment figures and Westminster.

This criminal conspiracy seeks to deceive the public and stop the truth emerging in every possible way.

Young children taken from care, stolen, picked up on the street, groomed for sex, drugged, sickened with serious disease, or dying in the gutter are shown to be the worthless play things of powerful people - the same people who run Britain, and the very authorities supposedly protecting families, society and the weak and vulnerable.

John's courage deserves that everyone listening to his testimony circulates it and demands action.

A Britain run by those who protect child abusers and murders is shown to be the sickening reality, but a far more dangerous future lurks beneath the surface as this criminal British State, unchecked, grabs yet more power over families and children by the day.

Wawa teachers abused pair: Lawsuit

Two former male students of a Wawa public school allege they were sexually abused by two teachers in separate incidents several decades ago.

They have launched a civil lawsuit against Algoma District School Board.

The pair, who are not identified in a release from the London, Ont., law firm representing them, allege separate incidents involving Jack Bunting and Kenneth Sutherland happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s when they attended Sir James Dunn Public School. None of the allegations have been proven in court.

One former student alleges he was sexually assaulted by both teachers in separate incidents in 1969.

The other male accused Sutherland of abusing him in 1967 followed by Bunting abusing him in a shower in 1973 during a school trip to a pool.

Abuse included masturbation, oral sex and fondling genitalia.

Other incidents happened at the school, in vehicles and Sutherland's home, said lawyer Aaron Lealess.  (more...)

Wawa teachers abused pair: Lawsuit

This reads like an advertisement. Perhaps a massive class action could drain the teachers' unions -- to the betterment of Ontario.

And, around the province:

Former Toronto hockey referee charged with series of sexual assaults in 1970s

Niagara teacher accused of allegedly sharing sexually-explicit material with students

More child porn, sex charges laid against former teacher

Toronto's Nazi Thing: Ernst Zundel : “Gift to the World”

It beggars belief how ubiquitous Nazi subculture is in Toronto and other Canadian urban centres. My very first venture away from home landed me in a milieu of junior Arrow Cross, Iron Guard, and flat out Nazi zealots, eventually growing to include Banderists and Ustacha. My Eastern European background may have been a magnet for these types. As a young reservist proud of his unit's war record, it was inconceivable to me that the enemy was within the gates. Our regimental colours were nothing short of illustrious, and one of my Warrant Officers had fought in the famous Battle of Ortona. Although I had many Jewish friends, they tended to be creeped out by this odd collection. It took me a while to catch on, but eventually I had to acknowledge something was amiss, especially when the holocaust denial began to manifest. There seemed to be a cross-campus network including ratline kids, John Birchers and Zundel admirers. Many of these same people were recruited into Freemasonry, connecting them to like-minded Hirams across the city. And, the "Left" was very much in bed with this supposed "Right" end of the political spectrum. They included English Monarchists, feminists and gender-bending Cultural Marxists. The one thing I never encountered was a fellow Polish Catholic. We make crappy Bolsheviks, I guess. All of those "friends" were jettisoned, in time.

At 13, she survived the Holocaust with the help of a Polish family. Decades later, an unlikely reunion

Three quarters of a century ago in Poland, Nazi soldiers forcibly separated a Jewish woman from her husband. She and her children, two young sons and a daughter, were forced toward a train station, bound for certain death at Sobibor extermination camp.

For the time and place, the mother was unusually educated and politically aware. She knew what was happening. She held back a bit, took her 13-year-old daughter’s belongings, tossed them into a ditch, then looked her square in the face.

“I don’t believe the whole world’s gone mad. There’s got to be someone who will help you,” she said. “If you survive, I will, through you.”

Then she pushed her daughter off the road and told her to run.

For Janina Zak-Krasucki, 62, a supervisor of special education for the New Jersey Department of Education, the Jewish girl her Polish Catholic grandparents saved from the Holocaust always existed on the edges of her memory.

It was a story that was retold in the summers when Zak-Krasucki would spend holidays at their house outside Lublin, eastern Poland’s largest city. Sometimes she would see mysterious packages of Western clothes postmarked from America, as if in thanks for some long ago kindness.

“I grew up on these stories,” she said in an interview.  (more...)

At 13, she survived the Holocaust with the help of a Polish family. Decades later, an unlikely reunion

Related:

Majdanek Memorial and Museum

Lublin is the place of my father's childhood. He and his family fled to Canada a decade before the war. It is the ancestral place I most identify with. A tragic place.

Mad Russian General? Hitler Escaped, The Nazis Fled to Antarctica

In this video a retired Russian Army General Leonid Ivashov is talking about his book "The World Upside Down" where he used the declassified USSR KGB archives (wartime intelligence reports) to present evidence about what really happened to Adolf Hitler after the war, how the Nazi's used extraterrestrial technology and established a breakaway colony in Antarctica.

Related:

Top General Reveals Russian Intelligence Documents: Secret Technology, Antarctica & the “Escape” of Hitler

Are the Russians nuts? The Nazis? Both?

CSIS stopped monitoring right-wing extremism months before mosque shooting, watchdog says

OTTAWA–Canada’s spy agency halted a running investigation into right-wing extremism just months before 2017’s mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) saw right-wing extremism not as a national security threat, but a “public order threat” to be dealt with by police, according to a new report from the agency’s watchdog.

“(CSIS) found that the majority of right-wing extremism activities consisted of, or were ‘near to,’ lawful protest, advocacy, and dissent,” the report from the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), released Wednesday, reads.

“CSIS ended its investigation of right-wing extremism in March 2016.”

The agency reversed its decision and re-opened its investigation 10 months later, after Alexandre Bissonnette opened fire at the Grande Mosquée de Québec in January 2017, killing six worshippers.  (more...)

CSIS stopped monitoring right-wing extremism months before mosque shooting, watchdog says

Background:

CSIS, RCMP accused of neglecting far-right threat

After Charlottesville, Canada's spy agency expresses 'concern' about far-right

No scrutiny for the "brothers"?

Stolen Children -- Forgotten Victims

COLOGNE - Commemoration initiatives are calling for a memorial ceremony this Thursday, on the occasion of the anticipated verdict announcement in the damages lawsuit brought by one of the Nazi's forced Germanization victims. Nazi occupation forces kidnapped probably hundreds of thousands of children from the countries under occupation, because these children bore the physical characteristics corresponding to the Nazis' "Germanic" (blond, blue-eyed") racial concept. In the Nazi Reich, they had been placed in "assimilation camps" and assigned to foster families, robbed of their identites and "Germanized" - to reinforce the "Germanic" proportion of the population in a German-dominated Europe. Many of these victims still suffer under the psychological consequences of their abductions. The German government persists in refusing to pay compensations. The current President of Germany's Bundestag Wolfgang Schäuble once claimed that there is no "criteria of an offense under the reparations statutes" in the case of the children kidnapped by the Nazis. german-foreign-policy.com documents the "Association Stolen Children - Forgotten Victims" press statement concerning the memorial ceremony.  (more...)

Stolen Children -- Forgotten Victims

Related:

Struggle for Reparations

Forgotten victims: Polish children abducted during World War II still seeking truth

How tax havens turn economic statistics into nonsense

It’s no secret that tax havens help launder money, hide what powerful people own, and let giant corporations pay negligible taxes. One thing that’s not often mentioned is how they skew a lot of economic data.

A recent IMF article reveals a perfect example: “A stunning $12 trillion—almost 40% of all foreign direct investment positions globally—is completely artificial,” write economists Jannick Damgaard, Thomas Elkjaer, and Niels Johannesen. These are investments with no substance, where the money “invested” quickly moves on to another jurisdiction.

What’s really going on with that cash? The secretive nature of these transactions means it’s hard to say for sure. But Elkjaer, a senior IMF economist, says it’s likely that most of the payments have little purpose other than hiding the owner’s identity and avoiding tax or domestic regulation. That can mean a corporate giant moves money from shell companies in one country to another in order to shrink their tax bills. Or a plutocrat shifting cash around secretive islands to obscure the trail of what they actually own.

That leads to some pretty crazy statistics. In India, China, and Brazil, 50% to 90% of outward FDI “goes through a foreign entity with no economic substance,” the authors write. In the US and UK, that figure is 50% to 60%.  (more...)

How tax havens turn economic statistics into nonsense

Related:

Efficiencies: $12 trillion of ‘phantom investment’ disappears into corporate shells

Atomwaffen, an American Neo-Nazi Terror Group, Is In Canada

The Atomwaffen Division—a violent neo-Nazi terrorist organization linked to several hate crimes, an attempted bombing, and racially motivated killings in the US—has at least one prominent Canadian member.

The emergence of the group in Canada is a stark reminder that extremist groups, the likes of Atomwaffen—known for its underground organization, violent tactics, and near paramilitary features—have arrived in this country.

VICE is tracking other Canadians suspected to be members of Atomwaffen. To date, no member has been identified publicly as Canadian.

The shadowy figure known as “Dark Foreigner”—one of Atomwaffen’s chief propagandists, once described as its “graphic designer”—is a 21-year-old Canadian man based somewhere in Ontario, and his extensive online footprint shows he is supporting far-right groups within Canada and elsewhere.

Ryan Scrivens, one of Canada’s leading scholars on the far-right, told VICE that an influential member of Atomwaffen operating from Canada hints at a bigger movement.  (more...)

Atomwaffen, an American Neo-Nazi Terror Group, Is In Canada

Pesky Americans won't stop invading -- time for a wall

Of Asphyxiation, Belts, and Pharaonic Rituals

Related?

Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered, sources say

Sherman murders 'rapidly becoming a cold case': Donovan

Honey Sherman's college was saturated with Freemasonry. Did she maintain the contacts obtained there through her subsequent life? Did they lift any souls?

Shine a light on sexual abuse in schools

There’s an old adage that says you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

That’s why it’s hard to believe that no one has thought to tally the number of sexual assaults across the country perpetrated on students by employees of kindergarten to Grade 12 schools.

After all, we’re talking here about the safety and mental well-being of children.

But now a national inventory has been done for the first time by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. And its findings point to the urgent need for mandatory public reporting of disciplinary actions by the bodies that license teachers across the country as a first step to stopping predatory behaviour.

Right now, only three teacher licensing bodies — those in Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan — make disciplinary decisions public. In other provinces, researchers compiling the report had to rely on news stories and criminal cases as their only sources of information.

That’s serves the interest of no one but guilty teachers, who without public scrutiny can fly under the radar, unnoticed and often unpunished. It also means the public and politicians are blind to the dangers that lurk in schools.  (more...)

Shine a light on sexual abuse in schools

Related:

Letter: College must regulate all teachers

Greater transparency, accountability urged after researchers delve into sexual abuse by school employees

Granddaddy of the Alt-Right: The Order of the Solar Temple

Background:

The Knights of the Extreme Right

Laurentian apprehension: Boiled, err, baked frogs, eh?

Yanis Varoufakis: Ireland a tax haven ‘free-riding’ on Europe

Ireland is a tax haven “free-riding” on the rest of Europe, and remains deeply divided since the crash, former Greek finance minister and author Yanis Varoufakis has claimed.

Speaking at an event in Munich hosted by the Ifo institute for economic research, Mr Varoufakis said the euro zone was unsustainable and would impoverish peripheral countries such as Greece. He said the latest political and economic turbulence in Italy highlighted as much.

Asked if Ireland’s recent economic turnaround did not run counter to his narrative of euro zone disintegration, he said: “Ireland is a divided society. There are two Irelands. There is the real Ireland which remains depressed.

“If you look at those who are not connected to the offshore economy… to the Facebooks and the Apples and so on… the Irish who remain in old Ireland they remain just as badly off as they were 10 years ago,” he said. “And the discontent is massive.  (more...)

Yanis Varoufakis: Ireland a tax haven ‘free-riding’ on Europe

Background:

Tax Avoidance and the Irish Balance of Payments

Why Nestle is one of the most hated companies in the world

Child labor, unethical promotion, manipulating uneducated mothers, pollution, price fixing and mislabeling – those are not words you want to see associated with your company. Nestle is the world’s largest foodstuff company, and it has a history that would make even hardcore industrialists shiver. We’re gonna look at why Nestle has such a bad reputation and whether or not it deserves it.

People love to hate, and they really love to hate on big companies – whether or not they have a reason to. I especially dislike it when the latter happens. Companies (big companies included) are the very backbone of our economy, and they often get a bad rep for little or no reason. But sometimes there is a reason, or as in this case, several solid reasons, as we’ll see below. Which brings me to the next point: why are we writing this article? ZME Science is a science website (crazy, right?), and this is not strictly science, at least not in the way our regular articles are. But we also write about environmental issues, especially when they affect many of us, and especially when we can make a difference.

Nestle is a Swiss multinational food and beverage company. According to Wikipedia, their products include baby food, bottled water, breakfast cereals, coffee and tea, confectionery, dairy products, ice cream, frozen food, pet foods, and snacks. Twenty-nine of their brands have sales of over $1 billion a year and have over 8,000 brands. They have 447 factories across 194 countries and employ around 333,000 people. They truly are what you would call a giant. They’re also considered to be one of the best employers in Europe with six LEED certifications and sponsor numerous activities and sustainable projects. Looking at only these stats, it would seem that Nestle is one of the “good guys”… but then why are they so hated? Let’s take it step by step.  (more...)

Why Nestle is one of the most hated companies in the world

One of the mysteries of my youth is the career trajectory of my American college don. After being thrown out of seminary, he graduated from Columbia University as an English major. He was a Peace Corps volunteer and was thrown out of a Central American country for suspicion of being a CIA agent. At my college, he schmoozed among a milieu of fascists, Freemasons, and Salon Marxists. I had a conversation with the dean about what seemed to me very inappropriate behavior for a don at a Canadian university. Soon afterward, his academic career terminated and he re-emerged as an executive-level manager at Nestle Canada. What kind of connections did he have to land a job like that, straight out of academia? How do all these data points connect? Does any of this connect to the college's most famous dead socialite, Honey Sherman?

Greater transparency, accountability urged after researchers delve into sexual abuse by school employees

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection is calling for more transparency after a new report found school employees were responsible for hundreds of alleged sexual offences involving students.

“This causes a lot of damage to children when this misuse of a relationship occurs, and it can be profound,” Noni Classen, the centre’s director of education said Thursday.

“This can ruin children’s lives.”

Researchers found 750 cases of sexual offences involving at least 1,272 children were perpetrated by employees or former employees. The vast majority — 86 per cent — were certified teachers, but other staff such as educational assistants and custodians were also charged.

Most of the victims were in middle school and high school. They were primarily girls while the alleged offenders were largely men.

“It really was something where you needed to sit back and take a moment and say, ‘OK we really need to look at this. We need to question what’s being done. This is something where there can be harm to children’,” Classen said.

Researchers at the centre started to collect and analyze data following Project Spade, an international police investigation into child pornography which led to more than 400 arrests around the world. Of the 100 people arrested in Canada, Classen said 40 were teachers.

Researchers wanted to understand the scope of the problem so that they could see how to prevent future abuse.

However, they quickly ran into roadblocks. Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan are the only provinces where the organizations responsible for certifying teachers make disciplinary decisions public.  (more...)

Greater transparency, accountability urged after researchers delve into sexual abuse by school employees

The Star original story:

First of its kind report outlines sexual abuse against nearly 1,300 students in Canadian schools over past two decades

More coverage:

Nearly 1,300 students victims of sexual offences by school staff over last 2 decades, Canadian study says

Nearly 1,300 children sexually abused by school staff over past 20 years: report

750 cases of sexual abuse in schools, says Canadian Centre for Child Protection

Study on child sex abuse by school employees recommends public disclosure of disciplinary decisions

Another day, another Nazi: This Is the Man Who Ran Canada’s Biggest Neo-Nazi Podcast

Before he was a neo-Nazi, Clayton Sanford was a cosplayer.

It was May 2008 and the occasion was Anime North, one of the largest annual anime gatherings in North America. Thousands of people descended on Toronto, dressed as Japanese cartoon and gaming characters. Sanford went as Roy, a character from Nintendo’s Fire Emblem series, complete with sky-blue armour, gold-handled sword, and a plume of striking red hair.

It was Sanford’s first cosplaying event. In photos he strikes various warrior poses, usually unsmiling and faux fierce-looking with a thick red wig and gold lamé flecking his costume. “I’m always serious. Because Roy is hardcore,” he wrote as a caption to one of these pictures.

A decade later, the now 31-year-old Sanford was deeply involved in another (decidedly less colourful) world, this one populated by proud racists who decry immigration, denigrate minorities, and espouse mass deportation and occasionally genocide in an effort to make Canada white again.

As “Axe In The Deep,” Sanford hosted This Hour Has 88 Minutes, one of the most popular and enduring white nationalist podcasts in the country. From September 2016 until mid-May 2018, when it went dark following inquiries from VICE, 88 Minutes was a gleefully profane, forever hateful take on the news of the week.  (more...)

This Is the Man Who Ran Canada’s Biggest Neo-Nazi Podcast

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The Racist Podcaster Who Started a Neo-Nazi Coffee Company to Fund White Nationalism

Neo-Nazis Can Be Deradicalized and Make Amends

Ugly Canadians active in Brazil

New revelations about Brazilian military violence offer an opportunity to reflect on Canadian support for that country’s 1964 coup and how Ottawa’s policy towards our South American neighbour is similar today.

A spate of international and Brazilian media have reported on a recently uncovered memo from CIA director William Colby to then US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, detailing a meeting between president Ernesto Geisel and three Brazilian generals. At the 1974 meeting the new Brazilian president is reported to have supported extending “summary executions” of enemies of the military dictatorship. An army officer, Geisel ordered National Information Service head João Baptista Figueiredo — who would replace him as president — to authorize the executions.

While it has long been accepted that the military dictatorship was responsible for hundreds of murders — a 2014 national truth commission blamed it for 191 killings and 210 disappearances — military backers have sought to put the blame on lower level officers. But the uncovered memo clearly reveals Geisel, who was considered more moderate than other top military leaders, was directly responsible for some deaths.

Ottawa passively supported the military coup against elected President João Goulart that instituted the 1964–85 military dictatorship. “The Canadian reaction to the military coup of 1964 was careful, polite and allied with American rhetoric,” notes Brazil and Canada in the Americas. Prime Minister Lester Pearson failed to publicly condemn the ouster of Goulart.  (more...)

Ugly Canadians active in Brazil

Did Canada give material assistance to the ratline Nazis who bolstered Brazil's fascist dictators?

Rosary for Lula Sparks Vatican Intrigue

Vatican News runs and retracts false information about Papal Assessor’s visit to Lula. After widely publicizing the former, Brazil’s biggest news companies ignore the retraction.

The Vatican is no stranger to intrigue and infighting. A recent scandal involving a Papal Assessor being barred by a Curitiba Judge from delivering a message and Blessed Rosary to ex-President Lula may not compare with Felix V’s election as Antipope by the Council of Basel, but it does illustrate the ongoing dispute between progressive and conservative factions within the Vatican. It also illustrates the relationship between progressive and conservative factions of Brazilian Catholics with Rome, as most of the social movements fighting on the streets to defend freedom for Lula were founded with support from the Catholic Pastorals and liberation theology priests and nuns, whereas conservative Catholics have historically supported the PSDB party, with reputed ties between some of its leaders and Opus Dei.

On Monday, June 11, Papal Assessor Juan Grabois attempted to visit ex-President Lula in the Federal Police headquarters building in Curitiba, where he is being held in solitary confinement after being condemned for undetermined acts with no material evidence. According to Grabois, the purpose of the visit was to pass a message from Pope Francis along with a Blessed Rosary and discuss spiritual matters. Although Monday’s are set aside for Lula to receive visits from religious leaders and clergy the police barred Grabois from entering. The official excuse was that he couldn’t visit because he is not a priest, but Leonardo Boff, who renounced the priesthood after being censured by Joseph Ratzinger during the 1990s, visited Lula last month. Afterwords, Grabois, an Argentinian lawyer who intermediates between the Pope and poor people’s social movements, told the press that his arbitrary denial of visitation rights demonstrates Brazil’s “enormous institutional, social and political deterioration”  (more...)

Rosary for Lula Sparks Vatican Intrigue

Poland was freed from the Communists. Can Brazil be freed from the Fascists?

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Latinamericanism