Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Saturday, 4 June 2016

The European Union Times


Posted: 04 Jun 2016 03:22 AM PDT

American spies and the UK’s listening post GCHQ regularly intercept the emails of British MPs and peers, including privileged correspondence between parliamentarians and their constituents.
The US National Security Agency (NSA) reportedly has access to intercepted emails sent and received by all MPs and peers through Parliament’s Microsoft computer system, Office 365.
Intelligence agency GCHQ on the other hand, allegedly accesses the data when it leaves UK’s borders on its way to Microsoft’s data centers in Dublin and the Netherlands.
The revelations have been made public through an investigation by Computer Weekly, based on leaked documents by the now-exiled former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
GCHQ has harvested details of all parliamentary emails, including sender, recipient and subject matter, for at least three years using its Tempora bulk interception system, according to Computer Weekly.
The magazine reports documents released by Snowden reveal how GCHQ is also able to scan the content of parliamentary emails for keywords through a cyber defense network connected to spam-filtering software.
US spy agency the NSA allegedly uses Microsoft’s cloud system, Office 365, to access parliamentary emails and documents.
The Prism system is able to intercept the communications after secret directives were given to Microsoft under controversial surveillance laws, passed by Congress in 2008.
The directives came into force at the same time Microsoft sold its cloud data system to Parliament.
“The House of Commons administration has serious questions to answer,” Tory MP David Davis told Computer Weekly.
“On whose authority was ‘consent’ granted to view members’ emails? How did they manage to obtain that consent from every one of the 650 members whose constituents’ confidentiality is affected?” the former Home Office minister asked.
“The government should also make it clear to parliament the extent to which scanning of all mail by a US-controlled company has made Parliamentary communications vulnerable to agencies of a foreign power, namely the American NSA,” he added.
Labour Party Deputy Leader Tom Watson described the revelations as a “shock.”
He said it is essential for Home Secretary Theresa May to include protections for MPs, lawyers and journalists in the Investigatory Powers (IP) Bill, which is currently going through Parliament in its draft form.
The controversial legislation was recently described as “inherently incompatible” with privacy rights by Parliament’s Human Rights Committee.
“Protection for MP communications from unjustified interference is vital, as it is for confidential communications between lawyers and clients, and for journalists’ sources, the bill must provide tougher safeguards to ensure that the government cannot abuse its powers to undermine Parliament’s ability to hold the government to account,” committee chairwoman Harriet Harman wrote.
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Posted: 04 Jun 2016 03:18 AM PDT

Mainstream press outlets are mounting a new brand of coverage on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. They’re questioning her ability to win the nomination and/or the general election. All of a sudden, the done deal is not done.
What’s behind this switch?
Aside from fear of The Donald, there is the boiling Hillary email scandal. There is also the specter of further revelations about the syndicate known as the Clinton Foundation. That’s a big one. A very big one.
As I’ve previously reported, the sale of 20% of the uranium in the US to Putin—that’s right—involved donors to the Foundation—unreported donors—as well as the participation of Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. Detailed by the NY Times, the scandal has lain there for several months like a poisoned meal, with the press afraid to touch it further.
Now, enter a financial analyst named Charles Ortel. Ortel made a name for himself by publishing his analysis of serious problems in General Electric’s financial reports (2008). On his website, he has begun taking apart the entire Clinton Foundation, brick by brick. Here is an explosive excerpt from his overview:
“In financial terms, the size of criminal activities directly involving the Clinton Foundation exceeds $2 billion—counting affiliated and indirect criminal activities, the size exceeds $50 billion. The geographic scope of these unprosecuted criminal activities touches all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and more than 100 foreign countries where Clinton Foundation entities operate or solicit donations.”
“Beginning late in 2008, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and others expanded efforts to cover up illegal operating and fundraising activities of the Clinton Foundation since inception. Working ultimately with individuals inside the I.R.S. and elsewhere, these persons led efforts to ‘restructure’ the Clinton Foundation to make it appear that it had been legally constituted and validly operated in compliance with applicable laws, when this was certainly not the case.”
“Trustees and other persons have been engaged in an unprosecuted criminal conspiracy to operate the Clinton Foundation in the guise of a public charity, when it is, instead, an illegal money-laundering and influence peddling scheme.”
“In fact, the Clinton Foundation has engaged in widespread unauthorized activities, including illegal operations internationally and in the U.S., and illegal fundraising across state and national boundaries, using telephones, mail, and the internet.”
“Moreover, the Clinton Foundation has never validly been authorized by the I.R.S. to pursue tax-exempt purposes other than serving as an archival records repository and research facility in Little Rock, Arkansas.”
“Instead of concentrating upon its specifically-authorized tax-exempt purposes, trustees performed lax oversight and installed ineffective controls, creating conditions where Bill Clinton, Ira Magaziner, and others deliberately and illegally diverted substantial sums from the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates.”
In light of Ortel’s analysis, to say the Clintons have wandered off the reservation would be a vast understatement.
So…how have they remained free of this tsunami of a scandal? Who has been protecting them?
Let us return to the period when Bill Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas—and a 1995 book titled Compromised, by Terry Reed (former CIA asset) and John Cummings (former Newsday reporter).
Buckle up.
According to the authors, Bill Clinton was involved with the CIA in some very dirty dealings in Arkansas—and I’m not just talking about the cocaine flights landing at the Mena airport.
It seems Bill had agreed to set up secret CIA weapons-making factories in his home state, under the radar. But because Arkansas, when it comes to money, is all cronies all the time, everybody and his brother found out about the operation and wanted in. Also, Bill was looking for a bigger cut of the action.
This security breach infuriated the CIA, and a meeting was held to dress down Bill and make him see the error of his ways. His CIA handlers told him they were going to shut down the whole weapons operation, because Bill had screwed up royally. A screaming match ensued—but the CIA people backed off a bit and told Bill he was still “their man” for the upcoming 1992 run for the Presidency.
Of course, there are people who think Reed and Cumming’s book contains fiction, but John Cummings was a top-notch reporter for Newsday. He co-authored the 1990 book, Goombata, about the rise and fall of John Gotti. He exposed US operations to destroy Cuban agriculture with bio-weapons. It’s highly doubtful he would have put his name on Compromised without a deep conviction he was correctly adding up the facts.
Here, from Compromised, is an account of the extraordinary meeting, in Arkansas, between Bill Clinton and his CIA handlers, in March of 1986, six years before Clinton would run for the Presidency. Author Terry Reed, himself a CIA asset at the time, was there. According to the authors, so was Oliver North, and a man named “Robert Johnson,” who was representing CIA head Bill Casey.
Johnson said to Bill Clinton:
“Calm down and listen….We are all in this together…I’m not here to threaten you [Bill]. But there have been mistakes. Bill, you are Mr. Casey’s fair-haired boy. But you do have competition for the job you seek [the US Presidency]. We would never put all eggs in one basket. You and your state have been our greatest asset…Mr. Casey wanted me to pass on to you that unless you fuck up and do something stupid, you’re No. 1 on the short list for a shot at the job you’ve always wanted.
“That’s pretty heady stuff, Bill. So why don’t you help us keep a lid on this [CIA weapons-manufacturing] and we’ll all be promoted together. You and guys like us are the fathers of the new government. Hell, we are the new covenant.”
By this account, Bill Clinton was the CIA’s boy back in 1986, long before he launched himself into his first Presidential campaign.
He was their boy, and they protected him, despite the fact that he had wandered off the reservation.
But now, it’s happening again. It appears Bill and his wife have taken their massive Foundation to new heights of careless, reckless, devil-may-care criminality.
Well, the Clintons are that way, aren’t they? They don’t just push the boundaries of what is legal and moral, they drive a huge tank through the boundaries and shout WHO CARES as they hurtle off to commit new and slimier deeds.
The question is, will the CIA still give this duo cover? Or will Agency insiders throw in the towel and leave them out in the cold?
Has that decision to abandon them already been made? Is that why the CIA Mockingbird press is starting to turn on Hillary?
Have she and Bill gone too far?
Is John Kerry lurching into his polished loafers and getting ready to step into the breach as the Democratic nominee for President?
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Posted: 04 Jun 2016 03:11 AM PDT

Democrats and their allies in media have been obsessing on Trump University for weeks now while completely ignoring a major scandal involving Hillary and Bill Clinton’s relationship to a for-profit college.
Breitbart reports:
Hillary University: Bill Clinton Bagged $16.46 Million from For-Profit College as State Dept. Funneled $55 Million Back
With her campaign sinking in the polls, Hillary Clinton has launched a desperate attack against Trump University to deflect attention away from her deep involvement with a controversial for-profit college that made the Clintons millions, even as the school faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations.
In April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. The reason for Clinton’s immediate departure: Clinton Cash revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton $16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation. Progressive billionaire George Soros is also a Laureate financial backer.
As the Washington Post reports, “Laureate has stirred controversy throughout Latin America, where it derives two-thirds of its revenue.” During Bill Clinton’s tenure as Laureate’s chancellor, the school spent over $200 million a year on aggressive telemarketing, flashy Internet banner ads, and billboards designed to lure often unprepared students from impoverished countries to enroll in its for-profit classes. The goal: get as many students, regardless of skill level, signed up and paying tuition.
The Clintons are corrupt to the core.
They used her government position of power to enrich themselves.
Keep that in mind the next time she attacks Trump.
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Posted: 04 Jun 2016 02:46 AM PDT

Brazil-based US journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, said Brazilian media is owned by a few families that have a clear political interest in pushing President Rousseff out by “inciting street protests.”
“What makes Brazil so different in terms of its media is that the largest media organizations are almost entirely owned by a very small number of families. It was for a long time. Three, four, now it is five,” Greenwald told RT’s agency Ruptly during an event in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday.
“They all have the same interests, they have very close ties to the political class, they have clear political interests that are not the interest of the overall population. There is very little inhibition about using the media outlets for political activism.”
Thus, he said, it is not surprising that the majority of Brazil’s media coverage was one-sided and supported President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment from the start. In fact, the media has been “inciting street protests” against Rousseff, he said.
“There was a recording released just last week from the senior senator on the opposition and a new minister in which he said that the media was insisting on Dilma’s removal and her exit so I don’t think there is any question that the media has been almost entirely on one side of the debate at the expense of actual journalism here in Brazil.”
When it came to US involvement, Greenwald could not confirm anything specific, but referenced the alleged role in the Brazil’s coup in 1964. He pointed out that the US has a record of staging coups and not taking responsibility for them for years, adding that apparently, American politicians are benefiting from the current situation in Brazil.
“There is certainly a much closer relationship between Washington and the new government than it was between Washington and the elected government. And there is a lot closer of ideological affection that the US government has for the new government and the old government. So certainly they are happy with the result, even if they weren’t a direct participant of what had happened,” Greenwald said.
The journalist spoke on the day he published an article doubting the interim President Michel Temer’s credibility after a new eight-year ban from running for office.
A regional election court in Sao Paulo published a formal decree, making Temer “ineligible” to run for any political office after he was found guilty of spending more of his own funds than is allowed by the law.
“And now, he has been formally convicted of violating election laws and, as punishment, is banned from running for any political office for eight years,” Greenwald wrote.
The journalist added that the whole impeachment quest was a power grab. “It has been obvious from the start that a core objective of the impeachment of Brazil’s elected president, Dilma Rousseff, was to empower the actual thieves in Brasilia and enable them to impede, obstruct, and ultimately kill the ongoing Car Wash investigation (as well as to impose a neoliberal agenda of privatization and radical austerity),” Greenwald wrote.
Temer’s presidency has already been marred with scandal and protests.
Transparency minister Fabiano Silveira resigned on Monday, after a leaked tape suggested he tried to derail corruption investigations into Petrobras. Temer’s secretary is also accused of taking bribes.
On Thursday, clashes erupted in Sao Paolo, with police deploying tear gas and rubber bullets on protesters voicing their opposition to Temer.
The protesters spoke out against the May suspension of Rousseff. The move has been dubbed a coup and many claim Temer planned for Rousseff’s downfall to stifle a corruption investigation into Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil enterprise.
Currently, Rousseff awaits an impeachment trial in the Senate on charges of administrative misconduct, disregarding the federal budget, and corruption. Speaking RT last month, Rousseff called the impeachment a “coup” organized by the old Brazilian oligarchy. She vowed to fight the process using all available means.
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Posted: 04 Jun 2016 02:20 AM PDT


The White House doesn’t get “too disappointed” over the number of unemployed and underemployed Americans.
“I’ve been reacting to jobs numbers here at the White House for more than seven years, and what is true today has been true in the past, which is, we don’t get too excited when jobs numbers are better than expected and we don’t get too disappointed when jobs numbers one-month are lower than expected,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told CNBC.
Of course the White House doesn’t get “too excited” or “too disappointed;” Obama once claimed anyone who said the economy was collapsing was “peddling fiction.”
“The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world,” he claimed during his last State of the Union address. “We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history.”
But since then, nearly 95,000,000 Americans are no longer in the labor force, which is almost a 38-year low.
“When President Obama took office in Jan. 2009, 80,529,000 Americans were not participating in the labor force; since then, 14,179,000 Americans have left the workforce — some of them retiring and some just quitting because they can’t find work,” CNS reported.
Last month alone nearly a half-million Americans dropped out of the labor force, and U.S. companies are now hiring at their slowest pace in over five years.
“Non-farm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 38,000 in May, the weakest performance since September 2010, the Labor Department said Friday, missing the estimate of economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal by over 100,000,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Revisions showed employers added a combined 59,000 fewer jobs in April and March than previously estimated. Together, May’s weak job growth and the revisions bring the average monthly job gains in the past three months to 116,000, a sharp slowdown from the average 219,000 growth over the prior 12 months.”
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 21:36