Since the 2008 financial crisis, which is considered the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, many have not been able to go back to sleep after such a lucid nightmare. Some have chosen the path of stocking up on cans of beans, distilling their urine into water and binge watching survivalists such as Bear Grylls hoping to absorb his skills through television osmosis.

The 2008 crisis put in the spotlight the psychopathic level of greed, vice, apathy and short-sightedness from those who wanted to play into the City of London and Wall Street casino houses. Get rich quick and don’t care who you screw in the process, after all, at the end of the day you’re either a winner or a loser.

Since the general public tends to consist of decent people, there is a widespread difficulty in comprehending how entire economies of countries have been hijacked by these piranhas. That we have hit such a level of crime that even people’s hard earned pensions, education, health-care, housing etc. are all being gambled away… LEGALLY.

Looking upon investment bankers today, one is reminded of those sad addicts in the casino who are ruined and lose everything, except the difference is, they are given the option to sell their neighbour’s family into slavery to pay off their debt.

It is no secret that much of the “finance” that goes through the City of London and Wall Street is dirty and yet despite this recognition, there appears to be an inability to address it and that at this point we are told that if we tried to address it by breaking up and regulating the “Too Big to Fail” banks, then the whole economy would come tumbling down.

That is, the world is so evidently run by criminal activity that at this point we have become dependent on its dirty money to keep afloat the world economy.

Faced with the onrushing collapse of the financial system, the greatest Ivy League trained minds of the world have run into a dead end: the bailouts into the banking system that began this past September have prevented a chain reaction meltdown for a few months, but as the liquidity runs out so too will the ideas on where the money justifying bank bailouts will come from.

With these dead ends, we have seen the lightbulb go off in the minds of a large strata of economists who have been making the case in recent years that valuable revenue can yet be generated from one more untapped stream: the decriminalisation and legalisation of vice.

Hell, the major banks have already been doing this covertly as a matter of practice for generations… so why not just come out of the closet and make it official? This is where the money is at. This is where the job market is at. So let us not “bite the hand that feeds us”!

But is this truly the case? Is there really no qualitative difference how the money is generated and how it is spent as long as there is an adequate money flow?

Well it is never a good sign when beside the richest you can also find the poorest just a stone’s throw away. And right beside the largest financial center in the world, the City of London, there lies the poorest borough in all of London: Tower Hamlets with a 39% poverty rate and an average family income amounting to less than £ 13, 000/year.

A City within a City

“Hell is a city much like London”

– Percy Bysshe Shelley

Although Wall Street has contributed greatly to this sad situation, this banking hub of America is best understood as the spawn of the City of London.

The City of London is over 800 years old, it is arguably older than England herself, and for over 400 years it has been the financial center of the world.

During the medieval period the City of London, otherwise known as the Square Mile or simply the City, was divided into 25 ancient wards headed each by an alderman. This continues today. In addition, there existed the ominously titled City of London Corporation, or simply the Corporation, which is the municipal governing body of the City. This also still continues today.

Though the Corporation’s origins cannot be specifically dated, since there was never a “surviving” charter found establishing its “legal” basis, it has kept its functions to this day based on the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta is a charter of rights agreed to by King John in 1215, which states that “the City of London shall have/enjoy its ancient liberties”. In other words, the legal function of the Corporation has never been questioned, reviewed, re-evaluated EVER but rather it has been left to legally function as in accordance with their “ancient liberties”, which is a very grey description of function if you ask me. In other words, they are free to do as they deem fit.

And it gets worst. The Corporation is not actually under the jurisdiction of the British government. That is, the British government presently does not have the authority to undermine how the Corporation of the City chooses to govern the largest financial center in the world. The City has a separate voting system that allows for, well, corporations to vote in how their separate “government” should run. It also has its own private police force and system of private courts.

The Corporation is not just limited to functioning within the City. The City Remembrancer, which sounds more like a warped version of the ghost of Christmas past, has the role of acting as a channel of communication between the Corporation and the Sovereign (the Queen), the Royal Household and Parliament. The Remembrancer thus acts as a “reminder”, some would even say “enforcer”, of the will of the Corporation. This position has been held by Paul Double since 2003, it is not clear who bestows this non-elected position.

Mr. Double has the right to act as an official lobbyist in the House of Commons, and sits to the right of the Speaker’s chair, with the purpose of scrutinising and influencing any legislation he deems affects the interests of the Corporation. He also appears to have the right to review any piece of legislation as it is being drafted and can even comment on it affecting its final outcome. He is the only non-elected person allowed into the House of Commons.

According to the official City of London website, the reason why the City has a separate voting system is because:

“The City is the only area in the country in which the number of workers significantly outnumbers the residents and therefore, to be truly representative of its population, offers a vote to City organisations so they can have their say on the way the City is run.”

However, the workers have absolutely no say. The City’s organisations they work for have a certain size vote based on the number of workers they employ, but they do not consult these workers, and many of them are not even aware that such elections take place.

If you feel like you have just walked through Alice’s Looking Glass, you’re not alone, but what appears to be an absurd level of madness is what has been running the largest financial center in the world since the 1600s, under the machinations of the British Empire.

Therefore the question is, if the City of London has kept its “ancient liberties” and has upheld its global financial power, is the British Empire truly gone?

Offshore Banking: Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand?

Contrary to popular naïve belief, the empire on which the sun never sets (some say “because God wouldn’t trust them in the dark”) never went away.

After WWII, colonisation was meant to be done away with, and many thought, so too with the British Empire. Countries were reclaiming their sovereignty, governments were being set up by the people, the system of looting and pillaging had come to an end.

It is a nice story, but could not be further from the truth.

In the 1950s, to “adapt” to the changing global financial climate, the City of London set up what are called “secrecy jurisdictions”. These were to operate within the last remnants of Britain’s small territories/colonies. Of Britain’s 14 oversea territories, 7 are bona fide tax havens or “secrecy jurisdictions”. A separate international financial market was also created to facilitate the flow of this offshore money, the Eurodollar market. Since this market has its banks outside of the UK and U.S., they are not under the jurisdiction of either country.

By 1997, nearly 90% of all international loans were made through this market.

What is often misunderstood is that the City of London’s offshore finances are not contained in a system of banking secrecy but rather of trusts. The difference being that a trust ultimately plays with the concept of ownership. The idea is that you hand over your assets to a trustee and at that point, legally those assets are no longer yours anymore and you are not responsible for accounting for them. Your connection to said assets is completely hidden.

In addition, within Britain’s offshore jurisdictions, there is no qualification required for who can become a trustee: anyone can set up a trust and anyone can become a trustee. There is also no registry of trusts in these territories. Thus, the only ones who know about this arrangement are the trustee and the settler.

John Christensen, an investigative economist, estimates that this capital that legally belongs to nobody could amount to as high as $50 trillion within these British territories. Not only is this not being taxed, but a significant portion of it has been stolen from sectors of the real economy.

So how does this affect “formerly” colonised countries?

There lies the rub for most developing nations. According to John Christensen, the combined external debts of Sub-Saharan African countries was $177 billion in 2008. However, the wealth that these countries’ elites moved offshore, between 1970-2008, is estimated at $944 billion, 5X their foreign debt. This is not only dirty money, this is also STOLEN money from the resources and productivity of these economies. Thus, as Christensen states, “Far from being a net debtor to the world, Sub-Saharan Africa is a net creditor” to offshore finance.

Put in this context, the so-called “backwardness” of Africa is not due to its incapability to produce, but rather that it has been experiencing uninterrupted looting since these regions were first colonised.

These African countries then need to borrow money, which is happily given to them at high interest rates, and accrues a level of debt that could never be repaid. These countries are thus looted twice over, leaving no money left to invest in their future, let alone to put food on the table.

Offshore havens are what make this sort of activity “legal” and rampant.

And it doesn’t stop there. Worldwide, it is estimated that developing countries lose $1 trillion every year in capital flight and tax evasion. Most of this wealth goes back into the UK and U.S. through these offshore havens, and allows their currencies to stay strong whilst developing nations’ currencies are kept weak.

However, developing nations are not the only ones to have suffered from this system of looting. The very economies of the UK and U.S. have also been gutted. In the 1960s and onward, the UK and U.S., to compensate for the increase in money flow out of their countries decided that it was a good idea to open their domestic markets to the trillions of dollars passing through its offshore havens.

However, such banks are not interested in putting their money into industry and manufacturing, they put their money into real estate speculation, financial speculation and foreign currency trade. And thus the financialization of British and American economies resulted, and the real jobs coming from the real economy decreased or disappeared.

Although many economists try to claim differently, the desperation has boiled over and movements like the yellow vests are reflections of the true consequences of these economic policies.

We have reached a point now where every western first world country is struggling with a much higher unemployment rate and a lower standard of living than 40 years ago. Along with increased poverty has followed increased drug use, increased suicide and increased crime.

A Stable Economy based on Freedom or Slavery?

According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) report in 2017, the UK has by far the highest rate of drug overdose in all of Europe at 31% followed by Germany at 15%. That is, the UK consists of 1/3 drug overdoses that occur in all of Europe.

The average family income in the UK is presently £28, 400. The poverty rate within the UK is ~20%.

The average family income of what was once the epicentre of world industrialisation, Detroit, has an average family income of $26, 249. The poverty rate of Detroit is ~34.5%.

What is the solution?

Reverse Margaret Thatcher’s 1986 Big Bang deregulation of the banking system that destroyed the separation of commercial banking, investment banking, trusts and insurance for starters. A similar restoration of Glass-Steagall in the USA should follow suit, not only to break up the “Too Big to Fail” banking system but to restore the authority of nation states over private finance once more. IF these emergency measures were done before the markets collapse (and they will collapse), then the industrial-infrastructure revival throughout trans-Atlantic nations can still occur.

Let us end here by hearkening to the words of Clement Attlee, UK Prime Minister from 1945-1951:

“Over and over again we have seen that there is another power than that which has its seat at Westminster. The City of London, a convenient term for a collection of financial interests, is able to assert itself against the government of the country. Those who control money can pursue a policy at home and abroad contrary to that which is being decided by the people.”

It remains to be seen whether the EU will use its power to try to scupper their plans although all around the world, those who work for greater social justice and human rights fear that the City of London, with the active support of its allies in the UK government, will move hastily to transform itself into an even more pernicious facilitator of abusive international tax practices, thereby accelerating the race to the bottom among nations on tax, secrecy and regulations.

As the world’s economic elite met in Davos recently to discuss the future of the global economy, a gaggle of international journalists was touring the City of London to find out what Brexit might mean for ordinary people. The Brexit Tax Haven Tour was organised by the Tax Justice Network and the Global Alliance for Tax Justice together with Tax Justice UK, Women’s Budget Group and Womankind Worldwide, taking international press on a walking tour of key sites in the City of London where they heard about the real and imminent threat posed to poorer/plundered and industrialised countries alike by the UK government’s ‘Singapore on the Thames’ strategy.

Speaking at the Bank of England, the Tax Justice Network’s John Christensen explained the peculiar history of this curious institution, which acts as both a central bank and also as a banking regulator, but has done little to counter London’s role as a global money-laundering centre, resolutely ignoring the global risks posed by Britain’s global tax haven network. When considered as a whole, Britain’s network of tax havens and financial secrecy jurisdictions represents the largest and most deleterious tax haven in the world, denying poorer/plundered countries billions of dollars in revenue every year and siphoning away resources urgently needed in all nations for climate change adaptation, economic and social progress and the fulfillment of basic human rights.

Following the Bank of England, the walking tour took journalists to the Maternité statue, Aimé-Jules’ 1878 depiction of a French peasant woman breastfeeding, which is nestled discreetly, and without any deliberate irony, behind the rather more imposing Bank and the Royal Exchange. At this stop, Womankind Worldwide’s Roosje Saalbrink explained the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work imposed on women by unjust tax policies, and the danger of this trend being further exacerbated by increased regulatory ‘competition’ among states.

Countries that are unable to raise enough revenue from businesses through corporate income taxes often have to resort to implementing higher taxes on working people through more regressive forms of taxation such as VAT

Feminist economist Susan Himmelweit of the Women’s Budget Group then elucidated the role the City of London plays in pillaging resources from poorer countries, and thereby preventing them from providing the basic social services that are fundamental to confronting inequality for women and girls. As she explained, countries that are unable to raise enough revenue from businesses through corporate income taxes often have to resort to implementing higher taxes on working people through more regressive forms of taxation such as VAT, or through myriad fees and special charges paid only by local residents. Women living in poverty, who generally have lower incomes than men, are doubly disadvantaged by such revenue generation measures.

The City of London, in pursuing its ‘Singapore on the Thames’ ambitions, will become “the capital of financial secrecy”.

The final stop of the Brexit Tax Haven Tour took us to Guildhall Square, site of the City of London Corporation building, which is the administrative hub of this “city within a city”. At this stop Dereje Alemayehu, Executive Coordinator of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, explained the machinery of international tax abuse that is managed from the site and the serious threat that the City of London poses, in pursuing its ‘Singapore on the Thames’ ambitions, to become “the capital of financial secrecy”.

As things already stand, countries in the Global South lose one trillion dollars every year because of capital flight and tax dodging. In Africa alone, between US$ 30 and 60 billion per year is transferred illicitly which is equivalent to 40 years of the development funding the continent currently receives every year. These figures are likely to rise post-Brexit.

As the afternoon’s activities drew to a close,  a protest illumination bearing the words ‘Tax Haven Britain: A threat to us all,’ appeared first on the City of London Corporation building and then on the Bank of England. It remains to be seen whether the world’s elite will see fit to hear this crucial message. Davos organisers notably opted not to invite economist Rutger Bregman back to this year’s event after he argued, at the previous 2019 meeting, that tax justice was the only way to confront the multiple crises now afflicting the world. Here’s a reminder of his comments which resonated strongly across the world:

truepublica.org.uk

The EU is London’s biggest customer when it comes to financial services with exports worth £26 billion in profits. As the EU and Britain failed to agree a deal, the industry’s hopes of largely unfettered access to the bloc, banks began moving around a trillion pounds of assets from London to new EU hubs, while trading worth around €240bn a day in eurozone government bonds has moved to Milan and Amsterdam.

The EU’s markets watchdog has ruled that under a no-deal Brexit, euro shares must be traded inside the bloc, a signal that Brussels may want to deepen its own capital markets union by being tougher in granting equivalence (whereby the EU deems Britain’s financial markets rules to be aligned closely enough to its own).  The result – three UK-based pan-European platforms in London, Aquis, Turquoise and Cboe have already opened hubs in Amsterdam and Paris for EU customers to trade shares listed on other exchanges.

A report by a London based think tank that focuses on capital markets has published the most comprehensive analysis yet of the impact of Brexit on the banking and finance industry in London. It has determined that more than 250 firms in banking and finance have moved or are moving business, staff, assets or legal entities away from the UK to the EU – and these numbers are likely to increase significantly in the near future. In total, it also agrees that approximately £1 trillion of assets have already been relocated – with more expected.

The list below is not exhaustive by any means and probably only represents about a quarter of 2018 and early 2019 reports of financial services businesses moving their operations out of the UK ahead of Brexit. Banks, insurers, brokers, gold traders, investors, advisors and asset managers have lost faith and made their move as a no-deal Brexit could cause chaos for trading conditions or client defections.

• London Stock Exchange is moving its European government bond trading platform (MTS Cash) from London to Italy, effective 1 March 2019. 20% of its 13.4 billion euros worth of daily trade will shift to Milan. (source – Reuters)
• Aviva, the huge insurance company, is moving £9 billion in client assets from the UK to Ireland. It gained legal approval for the transfer on 19 February and expects it to be effective on 29 March 2019 (source)
• M&G Investments is transferring a number of its investment funds totalling over £30 billion in assets from the UK to Luxembourg, including its £19.4 billion M&G Optimal Income fund (formerly the largest fund in the UK) (source)
• Marshall Wace, one of the biggest hedge funds in the UK, has obtained a license to run management companies in Ireland & plans to grow its Dublin presence as a protective measure against Brexit. (source – CityAM)
• Legal and General Investment Management has received regulatory approval for a new Dublin-based business unit in readiness for Brexit to manage euro-clients (source)
• XL Insurance Company SE (a company writing over £2 billion/year in insurance premiums) is moved from the UK to Ireland in January 2019 due to Brexit (source – companies house)
• A major financial firm, CME Group’s BrokerTec, is leaving London for Amsterdam because of Brexit, taking its $240 billion/day repo market with it. (source – Bloomberg)
• Nomura is moving about 100 staff to a new Frankfurt office to use as a new trading hub servicing EU clients post-Brexit. They expect the move to be completed in early 2019 (source)
• GoldCore opened Ireland’s first institutional-grade gold storage vault in October 2018, anticipating investors will want to move gold bars from London to Dublin. $300 billion of gold bars held in London (source – IrishTimes)
• Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group has obtained approval from the ECB to establish a banking subsidiary in Frankfurt as part of its preparations for a no-deal Brexit. It intends the subsidiary to commence operations in 2019 (source)
• Prior to 2016, fewer than 50 solicitors from England and Wales were also registered in the Republic of Ireland. Since the Brexit referendum, the number registered in Ireland has risen to over 2,000 (11% of named solicitors) (source)
• Independent insurance firm Robus Group opened a new office in San Gwann in Malta to be able to offer British clients access to the EU27 after Brexit (source)
• A.M. Best, the specialist insurance sector rating agency, established a new office in Amsterdam to be able to continue to provide ratings to be used for regulatory purposes post-Brexit (source)
• TP ICAP, the world’s biggest interdealer broker, said its full-year earnings would be hurt by additional costs of about £10 million related to Brexit. It has chosen Paris as its EU headquarters post-Brexit (source)
• Ferrovial (largest shareholder in Heathrow, owns Aberdeen, Glasgow & Southampton airports) is moving HQ from Oxford to Amsterdam due to Brexit (source – BBC)
• Steris PLC, a company with $2.6 billion in annual revenue, has redomiciled its HQ from the UK to Ireland due to Brexit (source)
• France’s top banks move 500 jobs out of London due to Brexit. (source – financemagnates)
• Liberty Specialty Markets is moves its insurance company from the UK to Luxembourg (source – libertymarkets)
• STM Life moves part of its business from Gibraltar to Malta to guard against the effects of Brexit (source – international investment)
• AIG operates in Europe through a single legal entity established in the UK (with branches across Europe). They are restructuring their business because of Brexit, and moving all non-UK business to a Luxembourg entity (source)
• Credit Suisse is moving 250 jobs to Germany, Madrid and elsewhere in the EU27, including Luxembourg (source)
• JPMorgan has secured additional office space in Paris to accommodate up to 200 staff from London due to no-deal Brexit (source – Reuters)
• Barclays has moved €190bn (£166bn) of assets to Dublin because it “cannot wait any longer” to implement its Brexit contingency plan (source BBC)
• Columbia Threadneedle has transferred the assets of European clients currently in its range of UK domiciled funds into the equivalent Sicav products domiciled in Luxembourg (source –FT)
• Lloyd’s, the insurance and reinsurance market, officially opened Lloyd’s Brussels, its post-Brexit headquarters in the European Union (source – Insurancejournal)
• Swissquote abandons plans to buy a bank in London and moves to Luxembourg due to Brexit (Source – Reuters)
• Bank of America spends £400 million setting up Paris and Dublin units ahead of Brexit (source – RTE -Ireland)
• HSBC has – has shifted ownership of its Polish and Irish subsidiaries from its London-based entity to its French unit, and will do so for seven more European branches (source – Reuters)
• Deutsche Bank moved about half its new euro swaps business away from LCH (UK-based clearing house) and onto Eurex (based in Germany) (source – risk.net)
• Daiwa Capital Markets established a new subsidiary in Frankfurt on 3rd September 2018 “so that Daiwa can continue to provide a full service to its EU-based clients post-Brexit. (source – UKDaiwa)
• Tokio Marine Group is using a “Part VII transfer” to redomicile business from two UK-based subsidiaries (Tokio Marine Kiln Insurance Limited, and HCC International Insurance Company Plc) to a Luxembourg entity (source)

truepublica.org.uk

Two of the most perilous military operations are crossing rivers while under enemy fire, and retreat while engaged with enemy forces.

Britain’s embattled Prime Minister, Theresa May, must accomplish both maneuvers if she is to extract her very confused nation from the horrid Brexit mess and save her job. We wish her lots of luck.

On December 11th, British members of parliament must vote to accept some sort of Brexit deal; a negotiated withdrawal and/or trade association. But there is bitter opposition within May’s Conservative Party and rival Labour Party to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. The rump Northern Irish Unionist Party, which shores up May’s Tories in parliament, is making everyone crazy.

Increasing numbers of British voters now think that the original referendum to withdraw Britain from the European Union after four decades of grudging membership was a catastrophic mistake. Britain was one of Europe’s big three members; without with EU, Britain will be marooned somewhere off the coast of northern Europe and forced to become totally responsive to US demands and policies.

Equally vexing, the proud Brits, who a century ago ruled a quarter of the globe’s surface, will be forced to see old rivals Germany and France become the undisputed kingpins of Europe while no one pays attention to the toothless old British lion.

British supporters of Brexit don’t care. They tend to dislike foreigners…aka ‘bloody wogs’…, chafe at regulations imposed by faceless bureaucrats in remote Brussels, fret over a rising tide of EU immigrants, fulminate over the steep costs imposed by the EU, and deeply resent being compelled to accept working in the EU collective instead of trumpeting imperial demands.

But times and economic realities have changed. Britain is no longer the manufacturing powerhouse it was before World War II. Its industries are rusting, the quality of its manufactured products questioned (Dyson excepted) and the once mighty financial power of the City of London diminished.

Europe’s money lenders and their ilk are slinking off to Frankfurt and Paris; the City of London is no longer the wild, anything goes casino where all sorts of financial chicanery was quietly tolerated. London is slowly losing its charmed existence as a tax refuge – or to quote Somerset Maugham’s great quip about Monaco, ‘a sunny place for shady people’.

As Britain’s economy deflates under Brexit, its working class will have refuge against the snobs and toffs who sneered at them for generations and perpetuated the class system. But ditching the EU will be like Britain shooting itself in the foot. All economic signs show that Britain will be impoverished if Brexit happens. Everything – the stock markets, industry, trade, housing – are pointed downhill. Divorcing Britain from the EU will be nightmarishly complex and fraught. The Bank of England warns that Brexit will plunge the country into a serious recession.

All this for the sake of national ego and a chance to stick it to the ‘bloody foreigners’. Certainly not worth the expense or national anguish, say many sensible Brits and the Labour Party. The Tories are split over the issue and locked in bitter infighting. The leading Conservative MP’s remind one of all the things we didn’t like about snobby, imperial Britain.

The way out of this nasty mess is for Parliament to do its job and mandate another referendum. Many pro-Brexit voters misunderstood the real issues and regret their hastiness. Divorce is always ugly and painful. After all the shouting and name-calling, Britain will be left with a cup of cold flat tea, not the golden chalice it hoped for.

ericmargolis.com

In this article, we have attempted to identify the most censored stories of modern times in Britain. We have asked the opinions of one of the most famous and celebrated journalists and documentary film-makers of our time, a high-profile former Mi5 intelligence officer, an investigative journalist with one of the most well-known climate-change organisations, a veteran journalist of the Iraq war, an ex-army officer, along with the head of one of the worlds largest charities working against injustice.

One comment from our eclectic group of experts said; “the UK has the most legally protected and least accountable intelligence agencies in the western world so even in just that field competition is fierce, let alone all the other cover-ups.”

So true have we found this statement to be that we’ve had to split this article into two categories – military and non-military, with a view that we may well categorise surveillance and privacy on its own another time.

Without further ado – here are the most non-military censored stories in Britain since the 1980s, in no particular order. Do bear in mind that for those with inquisitive minds, some of these stories you will have read something about somewhere – but to the majority of citizens, these stories will read like conspiracy theories.

Consequences of American corporate influence over British welfare reforms

The demolition of the welfare state was first suggested in 1982 by the Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Using neoliberal politics, every UK government since 1982 has covertly worked towards that goal. It is also the political thinking used as justification for the welfare reforms of the New Labour government, which introduced the use of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) for all out-of-work disability benefit claimants. Neoliberal politics also justified additional austerity measures introduced by the Coalition government since 2010, and the Conservative government(s) since 2015, which were destined to cause preventable harm when disregarding the human consequences. Much of this is known and in the public domain.

However, what is less known is a story the government have tried very hard to gag. The American healthcare insurance system of disability denial was adopted, as was the involvement of a US healthcare company to distance the government from the preventable harm created by its use.  The private sector was introduced on a wide scale in many areas of welfare and social policy as New Labour adopted American social and labour market policies – and the gravity of its effects cannot be understated.

The result? In one 11 month study 10,600 deaths were attributed to the government disability denial system of screening, with 2,200 people dying before the ESA assessment was even completed. Between May 2010 and February 2014, an astonishing total of 40,680 people died within 12 months of going through a government Work Capability Assessment. The government department responsible has since refused to publish updated mortality totals.

This political and social scandal has been censored, with the author of THIS truly damning report in trouble with the government for publishing it.

Climate Change, what a British oil giant knew all along

For decades, tobacco companies buried evidence that smoking was deadly, the same goes for the fossil fuel industry. As early as 1981, big oil company Shell was aware of the causes and catastrophic dangers of climate change. In the 1980s it was acknowledging with its own research that anthropogenic global warming was a fact. Then, as the scientific consensus became more and more clear, it started introducing doubt and giving weight to a “significant minority” of “alternative viewpoints” as the full implications for the company’s business model became clear.

By the mid-90s, the company started talking about “distinguished scientists” that cast aspersions of the seriousness of climate change. THIS REPORT provides proof of Shell’s documentation including emails of what they knew and what they were hiding from the public domain. One document in 1988 confirms that: “By the time the global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even stabilise the situation.”

It was not until 2007 that scientific research eventually took a grip of the problem and proved what was known all along. However, as Shell did say – it’s probably too late to take effective countermeasures now anyway. There is still persistent quoting of climate science deniers by the fossil fuel industries.

Government Surveillance

In 2016, the UK was identified as the most extreme surveillance state in the Western world. However, legislation really only came about to legalise its use because of the Edward Snowden revelations in 2013. Prior to that, the British government had created a secret 360-degree mass surveillance architecture that no-one, including most members of parliament, knew anything about. And much of it has since been deemed illegal by the highest courts in both Britain and the European Union.

From operation Optic Nerve which took millions of sexually explicit images of an unknowing public through their devices to a hacking operation called Gemalto – where GCHQ stole the keys to a global encryption system with 700 million subscribers. The unaccountable spymasters of the UK have undertaken breathtaking operations of illegality with absolute impunity.

Some other programmes included; Three Smurfs – an operation to turn on any mobile device so it could listen to or activate the camera covertly on mobile phones. XKeyScore was basically a Google search engine for spies to find any data about anyone. Upstream and Tempora hacked into the worlds main cable highway, intercepting everything and anything globally with a leaked presentation slide from GCHQ on this programme expressly stating they were intent on “Mastering the Internet”. Royal Concierge identified diplomatic hotel reservations so GCHQ could organise a surveillance operation against dignitaries either domestic or foreign, in advance.

In truth, Britain is classed as an endemic surveillance state and right now, we only know what has been uncovered by whistleblowers. This is why people like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and others are nothing less than political prisoners of Western governments. They don’t want you to know what they know about you. They also don’t want you to know about them, which is why the architecture is there in the first place. It is not for catching terrorists because if it was the courts would not deem these surveillance systems as illegal.

Evidence-Based Medical Studies

Over the last few years, medical professionals have come forward to share a truth that, for many people, proves difficult to swallow. One such authority is Dr. Richard Horton, the current editor-in-chief of the Lancet – considered to be one of the most well respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world.

Dr. Horton recently released a statement declaring that a lot of published medical research is in fact unreliable at best, if not completely false.

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”

Across the pond,  Dr Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), which is also considered another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain:

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines.  I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine”.

Many newspapers in Britain take the opportunity to indulge in some shameless click baiting and report completely false stories simply to gain visitor numbers onto their website – as in this example by the Mail Online HERE  or  HERE.

The Skripal poisoning and Pablo Millar

D-notice’s (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) are used by the British state to censor the publication of potentially damaging news stories. They are issued to the mainstream media to withhold publication of damaging information. One such case was the widespread use of D-notices regarding the British ex-spy deeply involved in the Skripal/Novichok poisoning case in Salisbury.

(Here are the official D-Notices to the Skripal Affair)

Mainstream journalists, the press and broadcast media were issued with D-notices in respect of a former British intelligence officer called Pablo Miller. Miller was an associate of Christopher Steele, first in espionage operations in Russia and more recently in the activities of Steele’s private intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.

Steele was responsible for compiling the Trump–Russia dossier, comprising 17 memos written in 2016 alleging misconduct and conspiracy between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Putin administration. The dossier paid for by the Democratic Party, claimed that Trump was compromised by evidence of his sexual proclivities (golden shower anyone?) in Russia’s possession. Steele was the subject of an earlier D-notice, which unsuccessfully attempted to keep his identity as the author of the dossier a secret.

Millar is reported to be Skripal’s handler in Salisbury and if Miller and by extension, Skripal himself were involved in Orbis’ work on the highly-suspect Steele-Trump dossier, which is thought to be the case (for all sorts of reasons – including these D-notices) alongside representatives of British and possibly US intelligence, then the motivations for the attempted assassination on the ex-Russian double agent was very wide at best. As it turned out, blame could not be pinned on Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, no matter how hard the government tried. This particular part of the Skripal poisoning story remains buried by the mainstream media.

The City of London – A global crime scene

For over a hundred years the Labour party tried in vain to abolish the City of London and its accompanying financial corruption. In 1917, Labour’s new rising star Herbert Morrison, the grandfather of Peter Mandelson made a stand and failed, calling it the “devilry of modern finance.” And although attempt after attempt was made throughout the following decades, it was Margaret Thatcher who succeeded by abolishing its opponent, the Greater London Council in 1986.

Tony Blair went about it another way and offered to reform the City of London in what turned out to be a gift from God. He effectively gave the vote to corporations which swayed the balance of democratic power away from residents and workers. It was received by its opponents as the greatest retrograde step since the peace treaty of 1215, Magna Carta. The City won its rights through debt financing in 1067, when William the Conqueror acceded to it and ever since governments have allowed the continuation of its ancient rights above all others.

The consequence? It now stands as money launderer of the world, the capital of global crime scene with Britain referred to by the global criminal fraternity to be the most corrupt country in the world.

A ‘watchman’ sits at the high table of parliament and is its official lobbyist sitting in the seat of power right next to the Speaker of the House who is “charged with ensuring that its established rights are safeguarded.” The job is to seek out political dissent that might arise against the City.

The City of London has its own private funding and will ‘buy-off’ any attempt to erode its powers – any scrutiny of its financial affairs are put beyond external inspection or audit. It has it’s own police force – and laws. Its dark and shadowy client list includes; terrorists, drug barons, arms dealers, despots, dictators, shady politicians, corporations, millionaires and billionaires  – most with something to hide. The shocking Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Lux Leaks barely scratching the surface even with their almost unbelievable revelations of criminality.

Keith Bristow Director-General of the UK’s National Crime Agency said in June 2015 that the sheer scale of crime and its subsequent money laundering operations was “a serious strategic threat to Britain.” And whilst much of this activity is indeed published – the scale of it is not. It is now believed by many investigative journalists that the City of London is managing “trillions in ill-gotten gains” – not billions as we have all been told.

State propaganda – manipulating minds, controlling the internet

Reading this you would think this was the stuff of a conspiracy theory – sadly, it’s not. The government, through its spying agent GCHQ developed its own set of software tools to infiltrate the internet to shape what people see, hear and read, with the ability to rig online polls and psychologically manipulate people on social media. This was what Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept confirmed through the Snowden files in 2014. It was not about surveillance but about manipulating public opinion in ever more Orwellian ways.

These ‘tools’ now constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda delivery systems and internet deception programmes known to mankind. What the Snowden files show are that the government can change the outcome of online polls (codenamed Underpass), send mass delivery of emails or SMS messages (Warpath) at will, disrupt video-based websites (Silverlord) and have tools to permanently disable PC accounts. They can amplify a given message to push a chosen narrative (GESTATOR), increase traffic to any given website” (GATEWAY) and have the ability to inflate page views on websites (SLIPSTREAM). They can crash any website (PREDATORS FACE), reduce page views and distort public responses, spoof any email account and telephone calls they like. Visitors to WikiLeaks are tracked and monitored as if an inquiring mind is now against the law.

Don’t forget, the government has asked no-one for permission to do any of this and none of this has been debated in parliament where representative democracy is supposed to be taking place. There is no protective legislation for the general public and no-one is talking about or debating these illegal programmes that taxpayers have been given no choice to fund – costing billions. This is government sponsored fake news and public manipulation programmes on a monumental scale.

Chris Huhne, a former cabinet minister and member of the national security council until 2012 said – “when it comes to the secret world of GCHQ, the depth of my ‘privileged information’ has been dwarfed by the information provided by Edward Snowden to The Guardian.”

The Guardian’s offices were then visited by MI5 and the Snowden files were ordered to be destroyed under threats that if they didn’t, it would be closed down – a sign of British heavy-handedness reminiscent of the East-German Stasi.

Censorship – Spycatcher

‘Spycatcher’ was a truly candid autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer published in 1987. Written by Peter Wright, a former MI5 officer, it was published first in Australia after being banned by the British government in 1985. Its allegations proved too much for the authorities to allow it to be in the public domain.

In an interesting twist of irony, the UK government attempted to halt the book’s Australian publication. Malcolm Turnbull, current Prime Minister of Australia, was a lawyer at the time and represented the publisher that defeated the British government’s suppression orders against Spycatcher in Australia in September 1987, and again on appeal in June 1988. This is the same man that refuses to assist Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, from his hellhole existence in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The book details plans of the MI6 plot to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser during the Suez Crisis; of joint MI5-CIA plotting against British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and of MI5’s eavesdropping on high-level Commonwealth conferences. Wright also highlights the methods and ethics of the spying business.

Newspapers printed in England, attempting proper reportage of Spycatcher’s principal allegations were served gag orders. If they continued, they were tried for contempt of court. However, the book proved so popular many copies were smuggled into England. In 1987, the Law Lords again barred reportage of Wright’s allegations or sale of books.

The ruling was then overturned, but Wright was barred from receiving royalties from the sale of the book in the United Kingdom. In November 1991, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British government had breached the European Convention of Human Rights in gagging its own newspapers. The book has sold more than two million copies. In 1995, Wright died a millionaire from proceeds of his book.

Censorship – The Internet

To the inquisitive and knowledgeable, censorship of the internet by the British government is not news. In addition, there have been many reports, especially from independent outlets complaining about search engines and social media platforms censoring oppositional and dissenting voices.

Already described earlier in this article is the involvement of the authorities in strategies to manipulate public opinion and disseminate false narratives in their aims for control of the internet itself.

A few months ago, the government changed the law to block online content deemed as either pornographic or of an extremist nature to protect those under 16 years of age. It was anticipated that approximately 50 websites would be banned altogether. What subsequently happened was that thousands of websites disappeared from the internet with no court orders, injunctions, notices or justification. Even finding out which websites are on that list is a secret.

Over time, like many pieces of legislation that has been abused by the state, websites and online content that the government of the day does not like will have the perfect tool to simply press the ‘delete’ button, pretty much as they have already started doing.

On another, but related matter, just last week, The Independent had the headline: “Today’s vote will change the face of the internet forever, from an open platform to a place where anything can be removed without warning.” The articles first line reads; “The idea of instituting a regime of petty everyday censorship, that randomly and unfairly damages campaigns, artists and the denizens of the Internet, ought to fill you with rage.” This is how the state slowly takes control of what you read, see and hear.

In the meantime, Britain’s current Prime Minister has refused to rule out censoring the internet like China in future.

Dark Money Taking Power

Soon after the Second World War, some of America’s richest people began setting up a network of thinktanks to promote their interests. These purport to offer dispassionate opinions on public affairs. But they are more like corporate lobbyists, working on behalf of those who founded and fund them. These are the organisations now running much of the Trump administration. These same groups are now running much of Britain. Liam Fox and what was the Atlantic Bridge and the Adam Smith Institute are good examples.

They have control of the Conservative party and are largely responsible for years of work that steered Britain through the EU referendum that ended with Brexit. Tens of £millions have been spent, mostly undisclosed on making this dream to exploit Britain and its people a reality. In fact, almost everything in this article is about such organisations. Those hugely powerful individuals that own search engines and social media platforms along with the banking industry, the pharmaceutical and medical business, the fossil fuel and arms industries – they have reached a pinnacle of unprecedented corporate power.

Some of those fully censored stories pushed below the radar by these corporations include; how over 100,000 EU citizens die every year because of lobbying against workplace carcinogens, how corporate profits and taxes are hidden, the Tory-Trump plan to kill food safety with Brexit – to name but a few. And don’t forget the corporate media who are complicit. There are a handful of offshore billionaires that have the ability to decide what millions should read or see.

The Adam Smith Institute referred to earlier is a good example. It is a mouthpiece for right-wing extreme neoliberal capitalists. With a turnover of over £130 million and an operating profit of nearly £17 million, it has received millions of pounds in UK government funding. That is taxpayers money being used against taxpayers because the ASI does not believe in the likes of the NHS or civil society in general.

Talking of Dark Money – Brexit and the climate deniers

We recently reported about a transatlantic network of lobbyists pushing against action on climate change and (latterly) for Brexit? This group are all based out of one building around the corner from the Palace of Westminster.

The network is funded by shadowy elites in the UK and US and lobbies for rampant market deregulation while pushing the myth that climate change is a hoax.

Another $5 billion will be paid in the near future… To these statistics can be added data from a Morgan Stanley report released in August 2015: the five largest banks in the US, plus 20 European banks, have paid $260 billion in fines and compensation for various types of deception and fraud since the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Bank of America owes the most legal fees – $65.6 billion, while JPMorgan is out $42.4 billion, and the British bank Lloyds – 26.6 billion pounds.

Con artist bankers

The years immediately following that global crisis saw a fierce debate in the West over how to prevent a recurrence of that disaster. There were proposals to increase the supervision over banks, toughen their capital requirements, break up the banking giants, stiffen the penalties for violations, make transactions in financial derivatives markets more transparent, and launch investigations to identify and punish those responsible for the crisis.

There were also attempts to take action. In the US, for example, the Dodd-Frank banking reform act was passed in 2010. But by 2011 the economic and financial picture in the US and other Western countries had stabilized, and many of the ideas espoused in 2009-2010 were happily forgotten. 

Perhaps the only example of admirable industry on the part of Western financial regulators was their investigation into the unseemly conduct of large and leading banks. These inquiries were most far-reaching in the US. The series of investigations began by identifying the role of specific banks in the creation of the housing bubble. Then the government began a probe into banking shenanigans in the markets for various types of swaps, which are financial instruments that banks and companies use to ostensibly hedge the risks of defaults and sharp market fluctuations. The circle of the investigations began to widen. US regulators increasingly began to cast their gaze on City of London banks, as well as other European giants.

And financial regulators in Europe launched their own inquiries. Most of the duplicity originated in secret deals between the largest banks. Clues emerged pointing to the existence of international banking cartels and gross violations of antitrust laws, not to mention violations of laws designed to combat the financing of terrorism, drug trafficking, corruption, shady transactions, and tax evasion.

Almost every month the media reports that one or another bank of global significance has agreed to pay millions or even billions of dollars for their transgressions. Increasingly, these payments are not ordered by the courts, but are made as part of an settlement between the offending bank and supervisory agencies. The banks prefer to settle out of court. Bad publicity is worse than a fine. According to media reports, the penalties are either paid to the government or go into special funds to compensate the victims of the deception and fraud.

Bank of America is a top-ranking con artist

In 2013, the US government ordered JP Morgan to pay $13 billion to resolve claims related to the sales of mortgage-backed securities. In late 2013, as part of a similar investigation, Deutsche Bank accepted a settlement deal with US authorities and paid $1.4 billion. Citigroup agreed to pay the US government $7 billion in July 2014 to end an investigation into substandard mortgage-backed securities.

But Bank of America holds the record. In August 2014 that giant negotiated an agreement with the US Justice Department to pay a fine of $17 billion as recompense for its misdeeds involving securities prior to the financial crisis. Sharks from Bank of America had traded various types of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO), all based on toxic home loans. As a result, Bank of America has committed to hand over $10 billion to the US Justice Dept., plus another $7 billion to provide a variety of financial assistance to US homeowners struggling with mortgage payments.

Last year the US and British governments ordered several banks to pay fines totaling $5.8 billion for manipulating the currency markets. That list included America’s Citicorp and JP Morgan, the UK banks Barclays and RBS, and Switzerland-based UBS. The largest fine was paid by the British bank Barclays, which was penalized for $2.4 billion.

The Financial Times estimates that from 2007 to 2013 big banks paid US financial regulators a total of 200 fines amounting to approximately $100 billion, while $15 billion was shelled out by foreign banks. Assuming that the fines paid in 2014 and 2015 remained at the 2013 level, that would work out to at least $200 billion that US and foreign banks were forced to pay the US government between 2007 and 2015. Our guess is not far off from the numbers cited in that Morgan Stanley report.

The figures given are stunning. However, Wall Street and City of London banks have adapted to the new scenario fairly quickly. The bankers themselves admit that they see such payments as simply a new line-item expenditure. The profits that the banks receive from their secret cartel agreements and various games and misdeeds more than make up for these «expenditures». Even in 2014 when the crusade for fining banks was at a fever pitch, US banks were raking in record profits. For example, Citicorp, one of the principal defendants in many banking scandals in the first half of 2015, saw its net profits increase 130% compared with the same period in 2014.

Iceland has begun to put bankers behind bars

There are many indications that the battle to instill order in the US banking sector is just for show. For example, the Dodd-Frank Act merely represents a regulatory framework and is itself difficult or even impossible to apply directly. And banking lobbyists have blocked the drafting of a package of more specific legislation, which would have helped inaugurate serious reforms within the banking sector of the US economy. Under pressure from Wall Street banks, US financial regulators have decided that the new international capital requirements known as Basel III will not yet be mandatory within the American banking system.

In addition, although fines are being meted out to banks and the banks are paying them, the bank managers and employees who green-lighted the misconduct have until quite recently gone unpunished. That situation has only begun to change in the last few months.

In October 2015, courts in Iceland handed down sentences against five bankers who helped usher in the country’s 2008 financial crisis. Among those convicted were three senior managers from Landsbanki Íslands and two senior managers from Kaupthing Bank. Then suddenly, without any particular hoopla, sentences were pronounced against even more bankers working in Iceland. A total of 26 have been convicted. This is the world’s first ruling against the bankers responsible for the financial crisis of 2007-2009.

Is the jig up yet?

On Jan. 11 eleven former employees of Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and Société Générale appeared in a London court, charged with manipulating the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor), which sets interest rates on many financial products, including mortgages.

The Libor and Euribor interbank rates, which determine the cost at which banks lend to one another, are used to price more than $450 trillion of financial products. More than three years since the British bank Barclays admitted in 2012 that its traders had tried to manipulate the Libor and Euribor rates between 2005 and 2009, legal proceedings have begun. For many bankers the start of the trial in London was a genuine shock.

In the world of banking, where the London lawsuit is currently a hot topic, there are those who point out that only the managers of European banks are in the dock. And they hope that Wall Street banks are not next. Others claim that the trial in London is just the beginning. And finally, a third group is suggesting that it’s not that hard to figure out which bank managers and employees are responsible for the misbehavior.

The long silence on the part of the banks and regulators can only be explained by well-established bonds of corruption. Financial regulators are always guided by two unwritten rules in their work. One rule applies to the banks as legal entities: Too big to fail. The other applies to the managers of large banks: Too big to jail.

The lawsuits in Iceland and London are the first exceptions to the second rule. The government’s frantic reaction to the impending second wave of the financial crisis is a sure sign that the jig is up.