Stunning, infuriating: ‘The Tax Free Tour’

From Dutch public television, another stunning VPRO Backlight documentary [previously featured shows], this one exploring the dirty little corporate tricks used to avoid  paying taxes:

The program notes:

“Where do multinationals pay taxes and how much?” Gaining insight from international tax experts, Backlight director Marije Meerman (‘Quants’ & ‘Money & Speed’), takes a look at tax havens, the people who live there and the routes along which tax is avoided globally.

Those routes go by resounding names like ‘Cayman Special’, ‘Double Irish’, and ‘Dutch Sandwich’. A financial world operates in the shadows surrounded by a high level of secrecy. A place where sizeable capital streams travel the world at the speed of light and avoid paying tax. The Tax Free Tour is an economic thriller mapping the systemic risk for governments and citizens alike. Is this the price we have to pay for globalised capitalism?

At the same time, the free online game “Taxodus” by Femke Herregraven is launched. In the game, the player can select the profile of a multinational and look for the global route to pay as little tax as possible.

research: William de Bruijn
camera: Jean Counet
montage: Bart van den Broek
geluid: Tim van Peppen, Benny Jansen, Joris van Ballegoijen
productie: Marie Schutgens
animaties: Bitcaves & Motoko

What becomes clear is that borders are only meaningful for the flesh-and-blood person, while they are utterly permeable for the disembodied corporate person so beloved of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Godfather Chronicles: A much-belated confession

One of the most infamous paragraphs in the history of modern investigative journalism was written by a member of the UC Berkeley journalism faculty, repudiating his own reporting about on of America’s most prominent gangsters.

Here’s what Lowell Bergman and his colleague wrote to ease themselves out of a multi-million-dollar lawsuit filed by, among others, Morris Barney Dalitz, the syndicate thug who ran the mob’s skimming operation in Las Vegas back in the days esnl was working his first daily newspaper job in Sin City:

“We feel it right to acknowledge the positive information received about you [Dalitz] in recent years and, accordingly, to express any regret for negative implication or unwarranted harm that you believe may have befallen you as a result of the Penthouse article.”

The article, “La Costa: The Hundred-Million-Dollar Resort with Criminal Clientele,” appeared in the March 1975 issue of Penthouse, and focused on the mob’s involvement in a posh golfing resort in North San Diego County, a few miles from Oceanside, where we joined the staff of the late Blade-Tribune in 1967, shortly after leaving the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Our job had us covering Carlsbad, the adjacent town and closet to La Costa [the town’s city manager would soon take a posh job at the mob watering hole]. When a story took us to the resort, we found ourselves amazed when we looked at the membership board: Familiar names included Moe Dalitz [previously, and here], Frank Sinatra, Carl Cohen [the Sands casino manager who famously knocked out some of Sinatra’s teeth after the drunken crooner drove a golf cart through one of the hotel’s plate glass windows], and Don W. Reynolds, the publisher of the Review-Journal. For a fresh Vegas emigre, it felt like coming home.

We remember telling our managing editor the next day, “That La Costa looks like quite a place.”

We learned about the Penthouse story when a spotted an ad for it on the side of a bus in Los Angeles, where we had just started work for the Southern California Visitors Council — a gig we worked for a year before returning the ink-stained wretch trade at the late and much-lamented Santa Monica Evening Outlook.

We found the story of the resort’s financing by the mob-controlled Teamsters Central States Pension Fund fascinating, making sense of that membership board we’d seen seven years before.

But resort owners Merv Adelson, Irwin Molasky, Dalitz, and Allard Roen filed that $522 million lawsuit, and when push came to shove, the journalists folded, followed by Penthouse, with apologies accepted in exchange for each side bearing its own legal costs.

From the magazine’s 1985 skinback [a journalism term for what Kansas folks used to call “eating crow”], a declaration that Penthouse

did not mean to imply nor did it intend for its readers to believe that Messrs. Adelson and Molasky are or were members of organized crime or criminals. In addition, Penthouse acknowledges that all of the individual plaintiffs, including Messrs. Dalitz and Roen, have been extremely active in commendable civic and philanthropic activities which have earned them recognition from many estimable people. Furthermore Penthouse acknowledges that among plaintiffs’ successful business activities is the La Costa resort itself, one of the outstanding resort complexes of the world.

But now, 28 years after the settlement, comes conclusive proof that the journalists were right.

Here’s a telling quote from “Remembrance of Wings Past,” a remarkable profile of Merv Adelson by  Bryan Burrough in the March edition of Vanity Fair:

The Rancho La Costa resort opened its doors to the public in 1965. From the outset Adelson could tell his dreams of escaping the Mafia had been dashed. “The first guests, they were all Teamsters!” he exclaims. And then Detroit and Chicago Mob bosses, all the way up to Meyer Lansky himself. “There were hundreds of them!” Adelson adds. “I couldn’t get rid of them! The Teamsters treated it like their country club. It got a real reputation. I didn’t like it at all. But I couldn’t stop it. We owed them money! What could I do?” His children were soon being teased with the same taunts they had heard in Las Vegas. He was trapped. A very rich trap, but a trap nevertheless.

Lansky was the mob’s money wizard, portrayed as “Hyman Roth” by Lee Strassberg in The Godfather, Part II, a man who got his start partnering with Bugsy Siegel [“Moe Green”] and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano:

Adelson is rather disingenuous in his interviews, claiming he had no idea who he’d gotten in bed with — hard to believe of anyone circulating in his circles in the Sin City of the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, he claims, only with the publication of The Green Felt Jungle, a 1963 bestseller by Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris did he realize just who he’d partnered with in his Sin City business dealings.

The profile paints a picture of a down on his luck octogenarian, living in a Santa Monica apartment no larger than the walk-in closets of his salad days dwellings.

So Bergman’s skinback was a farce, and the Penthouse article he disavowed was right. It didn’t hurt Bergman’s career, since he went on to produce for 60 Minutes, then found himself a nice nest at UC Berkeley’s journalism school.

Somewhere in hell, Moe Dalitz must be laughing his boney ass off.

NAFTA & GATT: Demolition of peoples, nations

A brilliant and prescient dissection of GATT and NAFTA from 1994 by then-UT Austin Professor of Economics and Latin American Studies Michael Conroy, including impacts on U.S. labor, Mexican corn farmers, and so much more.

Note also that he compares the loss of sovereign state powers created by NAFTA to those implemented by the creation of the European Economic Community.

Note too that he predicts the rise of the Mexican drug cartels, enabled by NAFTA’s facilitation of fast movement of goods across borders.

We were warned.

Part 1:

Part 2:

From the late, lamented, and utterly wonderful Austin public access show, Alternative Views. Lots more on their website, including this previously featured and utterly fascinating conversation with a brilliant journalist on the role played by the Central Intelligence Agency in the Reagan-era collapse of the U.S. savings and loan industry.

EuroWatch: Fake reform, Merkel woes, Greece

And much, much more.

That much-heralded “banking reform” that’s a central plank in Angela Merkel’s More Europe campaign is much less than meets the eye, at least when it comes to real reform. But it does consolidate power.

More challenges are confronting Merkel on her own turf, in the form of political and legal challenges and a bad election showing — but that hasn’t stopped a leading German corporate alliance from taking a shot at the PIIGS.

From Spain, socialists want to tax the rich [as does the French president], Bankia is getting another Brussels bailout, a conservative leaders calls for legislators to give up their paychecks, and the strings on the Spailout are revealed.

Ireland’s the target of more austerity demands from the IMF and the number two at the central bank says high unemployment will last for years. In England, the Tory-led government is cutting health and safety inspections.

Italian news is mainly bleak, with more bad economic numbers, a demand any bailout comes with no strings attached, a story about corruption, a protest by downsized workers, and a promise from the prime minister not to run again.

From Greece, the austerity-forced closing of a special needs program for children, a worse-tan-expected economic contraction, a big rebuff for Golden Dawn, and a major wave of strikes and protests.

Euro bank reform fails to kill the beast

The beast being the same mixing of banking activities that triggered the global financial collapse.

From John O’Donnell of Reuters:

The European Union will insist on higher reserves from banks and impose stricter oversight to protect taxpayers and savers from further bailouts caused by risk-taking, but will not break them up to separate investment banking from retail activities.

While there may be public backing for such a move, EU officials and banking experts said the splitting up of banks to lessen risks to the general public across the European Union would be too complex to achieve in the short term.

European banks, such as Barclays, Germany’s Deutsche Bank or France’s BNP Paribas, combine high street banking alongside that of riskier trading of stocks, debt and other securities. Royal Bank of Scotland’s rush to extend its investment arm resulted in it seeking the largest state bail-out of the crisis in Europe.

>snip<

The European Union will use tighter capital rules and closer European Central Bank oversight to stop banks taking risks that imperil the financial system, the financial experts said.

Read the rest.

So basically the eurocrats are refusing to get to the root of the problem.

It was, after all, banks trading on all those derivatives [and other “black” investments [collateralized debt obligations and suchlike] that triggered the crisis.

But we can trust the central banksters, right?

Doubts linger over Merkel’s More Europe agenda

In addition to the latest stumbling blocks in Greece [covered here] there’s that German court challenge to the European Stability Mechanism and the accompanying fund.

While a ruling by Germany’s Constitutional Court had been expected this week on the legality of the measure, not it appears there’s going to be a delay.

From Louise Armitstead of the London Telegraph:

A delay to the highly anticipated German court decision on bail-out funding and a rebellion in the Greek government over austerity doused hopes that the European Central Bank will be able to stem the crisis after all.

Germany’s federal constitutional court said it might be forced to delay its ruling on the legality of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) because of an eleventh hour objection by an MP. Peter Gauweiler, a member of Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition, argued that the court ruling, due on Wednesday, should take time to assess the impact of the ECB’s “outright monetary transactions”, announced last week.

The German Chancellor’s spokesman insisted that the ECB’s plan to buy unlimited sovereign bonds from countries being supported by the bail-out funds – dubbed the Draghi Plan – should not impact the court ruling. However, the court said it would consider the request and announce its decision on Tuesday. A delay could push ratification of the fund back until next year, when countries including Spain are expected to require help imminently.

Read the rest.

More from Spiegel’s Philipp Wittrock:

The fact of the matter is that the Constitutional Court is taking the current pending complaints about the euro bailout very seriously. The main case being heard is backed by 37,000 German people, making it the biggest constitutional complaint in German history. Even though the current decision is being conducted in expedited proceedings, the court’s justices have still allowed themselves more time than they normally would. They also took other unusual steps for expedited proceedings, including hearing oral arguments.

The question for the court now is this: If it wants to stick to the position it has held until now, will the court not also have to take the appropriate amount of time to consider Gauweiler’s complaint? Does it not need a few more days or weeks? Or has the court already taken into account in its ruling that the ECB might move ahead with a bond-buying program that would include a role for the ESM?

Read the rest.

More on the legal issues from Daphne Grathwohl of Deutsche Welle, who notes that at least 37,000 citizens have filed complaints spearheaded by a Nürnberg attorney charging that stripping the nation of financial autonomy breaches the German constitution:

And he’s not the only one. Together with former Justice Minister Herta Däubler Gmelin from the opposition party SPD, Degenhart has filed a constitutional complaint against both euro rescue mechanisms. According to him, the mechanisms risk whittling away the democratic principles at work in Europe and Germany.

All in all, 37,000 citizens have filed constitutional complaints against the ESM and the fiscal compact. Twenty five thousand of those have done so by supporting the complaints filed by Degenhart and former Justice Minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin.

The plaintiffs also criticize that there is no cancelation clause and no limitation of liability in the rescue mechanisms. If the ESM goes through, the Governors’ Board – the eurozone finance ministers – could in theory top up the capital stock whenever deemed necessary.

That would mean the German Parliament would lose its budgetary sovereignty. In addition, the authors of the complaint claim that the ESM stands in stark contrast to the no-bail-out clause written down in the European treaties which stipulates that no state can be liable for other countries’ debts.

Read the rest.

For the latest filing, see this Deutsche Welle story.

Merkel loses support in regional election

While Merkel’s party wasn’t expected to win the regional vote in a West German state, the margin of loss was greater than political experts predicted.

One has to wonder what role Merkel’s push for More Europe played in the defeat.

From Jean-Baptiste Piggin of Deutsche Presse-Agentur:

Support for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats plunged below 26 per cent in a regional German election Sunday in North Rhine Westphalia state, vote count projections for public television showed.

The state-assembly ballot has been dubbed a German mini general election, as one fifth of Germans live in the western state. Merkel, who is personally popular but heads a fractious cabinet, faces a federal election in 2013.

Merkel had been expecting a setback, but the loss was even bigger than forecast by pollsters, who had tipped a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) result of 30-31 per cent after a gaffe-prone campaign.

The chancellor insisted days ago the poll was a regional event, not a verdict on her federal government. “The election on Sunday is an important state assembly election for North Rhine Westphalia, no more and no less,” Merkel said in a newspaper interview Thursday. She is not expected to comment publicly on the poll setback until late Monday.

Merkel‘s main rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD), won 38.8 per cent of votes, securing joint control, with the Green Party, of the state government, according to the normally reliable projections for ARD and ZDF public television. The data placed CDU support at 25.8 and 25.9 per cent, ZDF and ARD said respectively.

Read the rest.

Another German shot at the PIIGS

This time the austerian lash comes from the Bundesverband Großhandel, Außenhandel, Dienstleistungen [Federation of German Wholesale, Foreign Trade, and Services], the largest organization of its kind and representing industries ranging from agriculture and chemicals to publishing and jewelry.

From The Economic Times [India]:

The euro zone could break up if people living in crisis-stricken southern European countries do not accept structural reforms in the coming years, the head of Germany’s BGA trade association said on Monday.

Anton Boerner also dismissed concerns that Germany, Europe’s largest economy, could sink into recession in 2012 and said he expected German exports to increase both this year and next.

“If people do not say yes (to structural reforms), then the euro will not be able to exist in its current form,” Boerner told Reuters in an interview.

“If the southern European states say yes, we accept the challenges … then the euro will be stronger than ever before,” he added.

Read the rest.

And on to Spain. . .

Tax the rich, say Spanish socialists

What a concept!

With the economy trashed, unemployment setting records, and banks failing yet again, the Spanish socialists are actually taxing the have-mores.

From Vera G. Calvo of El País:

The Socialist Party is proposing higher taxes for Spain’s wealthiest individuals and corporations as an alternative to more spending cuts that affect Spaniards as a whole. Opposition leaders are also talking about a “social sustainability law” that would preserve some public

GreeceWatch: Cuts stall & a stunning development

Much to report, starting with news that the coalition government still can’t agree on all those misery-inflicting, Troika-demanded cuts.

But the real shocker is the Troika’s latest demand, new rules that abolish the five-day work week and gut the power of organized labor — measures certain to add fuel to the fires of dissent.

We’ve got new polling numbers for Greece’s political parties, with all of them down except for the big winner, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn and by a far small amount, the Communists.

The head of a major German firm is calling for a Grexit, while the Austrian foreign minister is demanding no mercy, a sentiment favored by most Austrians.

Meanwhile, drastic price cuts have failed to draw Greeks to stores, while the government is putting the former royal palace up for sale and Turkish buyers covet those Greek islands their country once lost in a war.

Doctors and prosecutors are launching job actions while Greeks, seeking relief, turn to TV sitcoms from the 1950s. We close with a story about another austerity victim.

Cuts package held off another week

The coalition headed by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras didn’t approve those Troika-demanded cuts Friday, despite stories that a rubber stamp vote was expected.

Now they’re saying they need another week to determine just which of their constituents will suffer most under the latest round of the austerian regime.

From Athens News:

The new, 11.5bn euro austerity will be finalised “no later than early next week”, the government spokesman said on Monday.

In an interview with Radio Alpha 98.9, Simos Kedikoglou claimed that the government was trying to “find the fairest possible solution at a very difficult time for decisions that no one would like to take but which were necessary and the last” that the country will have to take.

Kedikoglou also said that the austerity package would be accompanied by development policies.

“11.5bn euros is the amount that must be saved for us to begin to regain our economic independence,” the minister told the station.

More from Deutsche Presse-Agentur:

Time was quickly running out Monday for Greece to finalise billions of euros worth of spending cuts ahead of a visit later this week by the country’s international creditors.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who is struggling to get his coalition partners to back 11.5 billion euros (14.4 billion dollars) in austerity cuts for 2013-2014, must have the package ready by Friday under its commitments to the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), collectively known as the troika.

The troika, which has been keeping the country solvent with rescue loans since 2010, will then decide whether to release the next bailout payment, totaling 31.5 billion euros. Without the money, Greece will be forced to default on its debt.

After weeks of negotiations, Samaras will once again meet with coalition partners – the socialist PASOK and Democratic Left – on Wednesday in an attempt to fine-tune the list of cutbacks.

Read the rest.

Some members of the socialist-in-name-only PASOK are up in arms over the scope of the disaster, as well as a few members of the Democratic Left, while opposition is unanimous on the part of the two major authentically left parties, Syriza and the Communists, as well as among memb ers of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.

More of the growing opposition within the Democratic Left ranks from Ekathemerini:

The new austerity package that Prime Minister Antonis Samaras aims to nail down next week is not only threatened by vehement objections from the main leftist opposition SYRIZA but could be jeopardized by serious concerns from the moderate Democratic Left, the smallest party in the shaky coalition government.

In an interview with Kathimerini, Democratic Left leader Fotis Kouvelis said his party would only approve the 11.5-billion-euro package of measures if he is convinced that no more sacrifices will be demanded of austerity-weary Greeks.

“Whether we vote in favor of the measures or not will depend on what those measures are and on the growth-oriented initiatives that will accompany them,” Kouvelis said, adding that he supported the government but would not back it unconditionally. He said he did not intend to punish MPs who vote against the measures by ejecting them from the party — a tactic followed by socialist PASOK and conservative New Democracy in February when several of their lawmakers voted against a raft of cuts then.

Kouvelis stressed that his priorities were to secure the country’s position in the euro and its “political stability” on the domestic level. He said former Socialist Premier George Papandreou, who sought Greece’s first bailout in April 2010, bore “massive responsibility” for the country’s “unprecedented tribulations” as one austerity package followed another.

Read the rest.

But that’s not the real shocker. . .

Troika demands Greeks work six days and longer hours

If the Troika wanted to impose any single measure designed to enrage the suffering people of Greece, it would be to make Greeks add a sixth day to their work week.

Bear in mind that such a move would reduce the already minimal demand for new workers in a country whose people already more hours than any other eurozone country, while reducing those who already work to a state of sheer exhaustion. But maybe that’s the goal?

From Greek Reporter’s Andy Dabilis:

A confidential email to the Greek Ministries of  Finance and Labor from international lenders putting up $325 billion in two bailouts to keep the economy from failing states that Greeks should work six days a week and longer hours.

The Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB,) already pushing the uneasy coalition government led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to make another $14.16  billion in cuts, is insisting on even harsher measures for workers.

The financial newspaper Imerisia reported that the Troika’s email was sent on Aug. 31, ahead of meetings Samaras had with his coalition partners, the PASOK Socialists of  Evangelos Venizelos and the Democratic Left of Fotis Kouvelis, as the government prepared for the return of Troika envoys on Sept. 5.

The Troika wants greater flexibility in work hours, although Greeks already are near the top in Europe, and wants to let private companies set work rules for hiring and firing and other conditions, according to their needs.

Read the rest.

More details via From the Greek Streets:

According to daily “Imerisia”, the Troika demands:

“Reducing the high cost of entry and exit of workers from the labor market” (ie employees’ compensations due to lay-off or retirement) and “increasing the flexibility of work programs (ie disconnection of working hours of employees from the opening hours of businesses, arrangements between employers and employees on daily basis).

In simple language “greater flexibility in working hours of employees” translates into:

• 5-Days Week to turn into a 6-Days Week. The minimum resting hours should be decreased into 11 per day. Which means, an employee could be called to work 13 hours per day. Also existing restrictions on switching between morning and afternoon shifts should be abolished.
• Employers could hire, fire and have employees working according to the business needs.
• Shortening of time to announce employees’ lay-off. The Troika considers the time of 4 up to 6 months as too long.
• Further reduce the compensation for lay-off by 50%.
• Reduction of contributions to social insurance.

Read the rest.

More from Athens News:

The troika suggested that employers should be able to fire employees more easily. Specifically, they proposed cutting by half the amount of notice that employees receive before being fired, from 4-6 months to 2-3 months. Similarly, they asked that the compensation workers receive upon retiring be reduced by at least 50 percent, if they receive another pension, and that compensation for workers who are fired be reduced by up to 50 percent.

In terms of worker flexibility, the troika called for looser regulations governing working hours, so that employees might work for six days a week, with a minimum rest between shifts of only 11 hours. They also proposed to lift restrictions on switching workers between morning and evening shifts.

The troika’s demands are expected to cause increased conflict in the already tense relations between the General Confederation of Greek Labour (GSEE) and the government.

Read the rest.

Are they effin’ nuts?

Nothing more clearly reveals the rotten core of neoliberalism at the heart of the

Globe on the brink, banksters behaving badly

There’s no doubt that the current financial debacle originated in that housing bubble-fueled host of derivative speculation that consumed Wall Street before the crash.

Despite all the media hype, there’s been no recovery since, and things look worse by the day.

Banksters brought the crisis on, enabled by a spectacular collapse of the regulatory regime built up after the last great crash in 1929.

So how are banksters behaving today?

Read on, and you’ll find some of their latest shenanigans.

But first, a prognostication from a Nobel Laureate.

2013, the year of the American fiscal cliff

So says Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University economist and chair of the University of Manchester’s Brooks World Poverty Institute, among many other titles.

From Richard Blackden of the London Telegraph:

The US economy is likely to fall over a “fiscal cliff” at the start of next year because Washington will be too divided to stop it, Joseph Stiglitz, one of the world’s leading economists, has warned

America faces a combination of tax increases and spending cuts in January which risk plunging the world’s biggest economy back into recession if they are all allowed to happen, he said.

“There are so many political battles ahead that the likelihood we avoid all of these elements that will then avoid the fiscal cliff is very problematic,” Mr Stiglitz told The Sunday Telegraph. “It’s a real danger.”

The warning comes as concerns grow that the US will embark on a fiscal squeeze that economists estimate will be between 3.5pc and 4pc of the country’s gross domestic product. By contrast, the International Monetary Fund has said that Britain’s fiscal contraction amounted to 1.7pc of GDP last year and a further 1.6pc is due this year.

“It’s unambiguously the case that these measures will slow down growth,” said Mr Stiglitz. “If there is European turmoil, there is a significant probability of going into a recession.”

Read the rest.

We’ll cite another Stiglitz observation, relevant for what is to follow.

From Vanity Fair, May 2011:

Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.

Read the rest.

And now for the banksters, that perfect fusion of wealth and power.

Banksters fulfilling the name

Bankster entered the lexicon in 1933, coined in the rhetoric of Senate Committee on Banking and Currency hearings looking into the role of bank conduct before and during the onset of the Great Depression. Out of their work emerged the Glass-Steagall regulations abolished by Bill Clinton — setting the stage for our current crisis.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt embraced the term, combining banker and gangster, as a rallying cry for the regulatory regime.

It wasn’t long after Clinton put his signature on the deregulatory act that the bankster reemerged, freed of the binding chains of law.

And with huge bonuses at stake, deregulated banksters weren’t averse to stepping over what few lines remained.

From “The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia; How America’s biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy – until they were caught on tape,”a provocative piece by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone describing United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, a criminal case that lead to the convictions of three colleagues at GE Capital:

The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from “virtually every state, district and territory in the United States,” according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being -cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime.

In fact, stripped of all the camouflaging financial verbiage, the crimes the defendants and their co-conspirators committed were virtually indistinguishable from the kind of thuggery practiced for decades by the Mafia, which has long made manipulation of public bids for things like garbage collection and construction contracts a cornerstone of its business. What’s more, in the manner of old mob trials, Wall Street’s secret machinations were revealed during the Carollo trial through crackling wiretap recordings and the lurid testimony of cooperating witnesses, who came into court with bowed heads, pointing fingers at their accomplices. The new-age gangsters even invented an elaborate code to hide their crimes. Like Elizabethan highway robbers who spoke in thieves’ cant, or Italian mobsters who talked about “getting a button man to clip the capo,” on tape after tape these Wall Street crooks coughed up phrases like “pull a nickel out” or “get to the right level” or “you’re hanging out there” – all code words used to manipulate the interest rates on municipal bonds. The only thing that made this trial different from a typical mob trial was the scale of the crime.

USA v. Carollo involved classic cartel activity: not just one corrupt bank, but many, all acting in careful concert against the public interest.

Read the rest.

Here’s a video from Moyers & Company about bankster and regulatory foibles and felonies featuring Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism [an esnl favorite]. Taibbi expands on the banks qua crime syndicates, and Smith offers an incisive perception of the power of the bankster oligopoly.

And catch that bit about those toxic, community destroying credit default swaps, since you’ll be hearing about another kind of swap as you read on.

The profitable JPMorgan Chase revolving door

Public service is supposed to be its own reward, that and a decent pension.

But that most powerful of Wall Street banksters offers other rewards, and its finding lot of former public servants eager to take them. All they’ve got to do is sell their former colleagues into acting at the bank’s behest.

They, and their similarly employed fellows at other Wall Street dens of inequity are the cognoscenti who have spectacularly succeeded in doing so much to bring about the disaster currently surrounding those of us not reaping eight-, nine-, and ten-figure rewards for spreading global devastation.

From Michael Smallberg of the Project On Government Oversight:

Amid a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulation, JPMorgan Chase, the banking powerhouse, has often deployed former government officials to represent it in Washington.

In a November discussion with Treasury officials, its team included a former assistant secretary of the Treasury, according to government

‘Banking with Hitler,’ a highly disturbing reminder

A superb 1998 documentary by Paul Elston for BBC’s Timewatch narrated by Arthur Kent, Banking with Hitler offers a timely reminder of the essential amorality of banks.

More than 370 Swiss banks opened their vaults to the Nazis during World War II, and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau was outraged, and launched an investigation that revealed the cooperation of many Wall Street and London banks as well.

Even more shocking was the role of a Swiss-based institution, the Bank of International Settlements [BIS], created by London and Berlin and headed by an American, was the critical funding mechanism for Hitler’s regime — with the cooperation between the banksters’ financial Axis and the Nazi-dominated war-making Axis continued with the full knowledge of the British and American governments.

BIS president Thomas McKittrick, whose ostensible loyalties lay with Washington, was in fact a close friend of Nazi financial wizards, and regularly partied them at the height of the war. The BIS laundered the Nazis’ wealth, looted from conquered nations and the seized assets of European Jews.

Bank of England head Montague Norman fiercely resisted any efforts to rein in the BIS because the bank was making tidy profits off the Nazi’s looted riches

The Norwegian government in exile demanded that the BIS be shut down, but the move was fiercely and successfully resisted by Britain at the famous Bretton Woods conference, despite Morgenthau’s opposition. But British economist John Maynard Keynes led the resistance to a shutdown, saying the bank would be needed to rebuild Europe after the war.

Another center of resistance was Chase bank, the ancestor of JP Morgan Chase, drawing the attention of Morgenthau’s investigators, who discovered the bank had cooperated closely with the Nazi regime through its Paris branch, which remained open throughout the war. Chase also cooperated with the Nazis in seizing the assets of Jewish clients on behalf of the Nazi occupation regime.

British banks also remained open in occupied Paris, cooperating with the Nazis.

Morgenthau’s investigators found evidence of pro-Nazi sympathizers in many of America’s biggest banks, but his investigations were shut down after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he left office in bitter disappointment. McKittrick, the BIS boss, went on to work for Chase, as did one of the leading Nazi bankers.

As for Morgenthau’s staff, many were targeted by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee [HUAC], their lives, reputations, and careers destroyed.

The moral: Banks don’t have morals, and they’re quite willing to work with mass murderers as long as there’s a buck to be made.

NATO-Chicago, police state proving ground

When the two-day summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization gets underway in Chicago on the 20th, we’ll be treated to a showcase of newly strengthened police powers in the form of Operation Red Zone.

The chilling expansion of the Obama administration’s vastly expanded police powers will meld with draconian measures implemented in January by Chicago Mayor — and former Obama Chief of Staff — Rahm Emanuel.

In addition to the new laws, plans are already in place for a mass evacuation of the city and the resurrection of a closed prison to house the anticipated massive arrests.

The goal: Reducing dissent to an irrelevancy by first containing it, then swooping in for mass arrests.

And beneath the obvious measures, we’re sure the National Security Agency and other agencies are busy intercepting communications and preparing target lists for arrests by the FBI, Secret Service, and the Chicago Police Department.

The NATO summit is certainly a legitimate protest target, given NATO’s increasing belligerence in the Islamic world and in that missile defense system the Obama administration has pushed on Europe — much to Russia’s outrage.

The meeting will also focus on NATO strategy in Afghanistan and, presumably, contingency plans for assaults on Iran and Syria.

Here’s an excerpt from the latest NATO propaganda piece:

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stressed the importance of this month’s Chicago Summit to the future of the Alliance and its mission in Afghanistan, in talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on 4 May 2012.

Mr. Fogh Rasmussen praised Germany’s steadfast support for the Alliance and its missions, notably in Afghanistan, Kosovo and off the coast of Somalia.

>snip<

The Secretary General discussed the 20-21 May Chicago Summit agenda in his meeting with the Chancellor. He said that the Chicago Summit will be a crucial one for the Alliance. The Summit will have three main goals: Afghanistan, capabilities and partnerships.

“This will be a vital moment, as we set out how to keep NATO of the future as strong and successful as the NATO of the past,” said Mr. Fogh Rasmussen.

Read the rest.

Add in the presence of a stellar cast of Western presidents, prime ministers, admirals, generals, and sundry other stars of the power elite, and you’ve got a very legitimate target of protest.

In a Thursday story, the Associated Press listed some of the movements expected at the protest. They include anti-war groups, organized labor, Occupy activists, civil rights advocates, environmentalists, immigrant and refugee advocates, and others we would loosely group together as social justice movements.

Go here for the full list.

And now it starts to get interesting.

Chicago evacuation planned for NATO summit?

First, a clip from CBS News 2 in Chicago:

From the CBS news story:

Are there plans in place for a mass evacuation of downtown in the event of riots on May 20-21? A Red Cross memo out of Milwaukee indicates that there is.

>snip<

As for the Red Cross plan, CBS 2 News has obtained a copy of an e-mail sent to volunteers in the Milwaukee area.

It said the NATO summit “may create unrest or another national security incident. The American Red Cross in southeastern Wisconsin has been asked to place a number of shelters on standby in the event of evacuation of Chicago.”

According to a chapter spokesperson, the evacuation plan is not theirs alone.

“Our direction has come from the City of Chicago and the Secret Service,” she said.

Officials at Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication said the directive did not come from them.

The U.S. Secret Service did not return calls for comment.

Read the rest.

Fox News in Chicago has posted a memo [PDF] sent to residents of the Liberty Tower Condominium Association on State Street urging them to find accommodations outside the city during the protest and warning that the Secret Service won’t announce train and bus service cancellations until right before the summit.

Black helicopters cruise the Chicago skies

Really, Black helicopters. Filled with guys with guns.

A video from Fox News aired last month shows a strange “routine military training exercise” over Chicago last month, featuring machine gun-armed troops flying in black Blackhawk helicopters below rooftop level through the city’s streets:

Throwing in the Fear Factor

The history of the 20th Century reveals countless examples of governments inciting fear of terrorism and alien invasion as justifications for massive repression.

The most notable example remains the Enabling Act, passed after the Reichstag Fire in Germany in 1933. By depicting the blaze as the act of a Soviet/Jewish conspiracy, Hitler got the folks who used to meet in the burned building to pass legislation granting him dictatorial powers. The next day, in an orgy of violence, Left parties and labor unions were smashed and their property confiscated, effectively destroying the two major bases of opposition. We all know the rest of the story.

By whipping up anti-Communist fears, starting in 1948 Republicans and their allies in the Southern Democrats were able to deny civil rights to American communists and cooperate with the media world in purging journalists, directors, actors, writers, and others from their jobs — including many whose sole crimes were refusing to turn snitch or invoking their constitutional rights. The law was used to purge labor unions and force even liberal Democrats to sign on to the purge.

What began in 1948 was vastly expanded in the wake of 9/11, following the same recipe Hitler followed. The only difference was in the choice of targets. The Jews, targets of those earlier purges in both countries, were now the good guys, while another Semitic people was selected for black hat role.

In that light, consider this from the New York Post, headlined “Chicago hospitals perform dirty bomb response drills ahead of NATO summit”:

Chicago’s suburban hospitals are preparing for a worst-case scenario during next month’s NATO summit.

At least 10 Chicago hospitals performed drills this week, including Evanston Hospital, simulating a radioactive dirty bomb explosion.

“We want to make sure that, as we’re getting close to the NATO Summit, that our staff are ready and trained and able to take care of our community,” NorthShore University HealthSystem’s Brigham Temple said.

The “victims” were volunteers from the US Navy’s Great Lakes training center.

>snip<

They were posing as victims of a so-called “dirty bomb” that had exploded, leaving them with deadly radioactive cesium on their skin. Doctors and nurses would risk their own lives if they began treating the wounded before they are cleansed of radiation.

Temple said Wednesday’s dirty bomb scenario had been worked out in conjunction with the Secret Service and the federal Department of Homeland Security.

Read the rest.

Operation Red Zone

That “Red Zone” phrase will be familiar to anyone who watched the documentary about police containment strategies for the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto that we posted on May Day.

Red Zone was the term used then by Canadian authorities to define areas where protests were excluded.

To enforce their police actions, the Canadian police relied on a dormant piece of legislation passed in 1939 as Canada entered World War II: The Public Works Protection Act, which hadn’t been enforced since the end of the war.

While Canadians already had a law enabling them to enforce draconian restrictions on citizens, the Obama administration lacked a comparable law.

Until this year, when Barack Obama signed the Federal Restricted Buildings and

Court: Berlusconi did the wiseguy Bunga Bunga

Wiseguys, for folks who don’t follow such things, are members of the Honored Society, La Cosa Nosta, the Mob, the Bent Nose Boys, or, more commonly, the Mafia.

And evidence before an Italian court reveals that media mogul and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi paid hefty sums of protection money to the underworld.

From Xinhua:

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi paid large sums of money to the Sicilian mafia in order to protect him and his family in the 1970s through a close associate, the country’s highest court said on Tuesday.

The Court of Cassation said Senator Marcello Dell’Utri, a former aide of Berlusconi, was the “go-between” for Berlusconi who paid the Cosa Nostra “substantial sums” of money to guarantee his safety.

“Berlusconi handed over conspicuous sums of money to the mafia,” the court said in a 146-page document outlining the reasons for its decision last month to quash a trial against Dell’Utri, a Sicilian who worked for Berlusconi at that time.

In its judgement on Tuesday, the court noted there was an agreement to “guarantee the freedom of movement and activities” of Berlusconi while noting he was the “victim” of extortion.

Although the former prime minister is mentioned in the court ruling, he was not involved in the case.

Read the rest.

Berlusconi’s prostitution trial continues

Gangsters, of course, aren’t the only folk Berlusconi is accused of paying.

He’s currently on trial for feloniously paying an underage woman for sex at his infamous Bunga Bunga parties where, among other things, other young women dressed as nuns entertained the media baron’s buddies with a sacrilegious striptease.

The latest on the trial from Erik West of The Australian Eye:

Showgirls who allegedly performed stripteases for Silvio Berlusconi at his “bunga bunga” parties did so in exchange for apartments, cash and help with their Showbusiness careers, according to court documents revealed on Wednesday.

The aspiring actresses and models were apparently anxious to squeeze as much money and as many favours as possible out of the then prime minister, amid fears that sex scandals could topple him from power.

They were also angling for “raccomandazioni” – favourable references from the prime minister, who could make or break Showbusiness careers through the television channels run by Mediaset, his media empire.

Telephone conversations between Mr Berlusconi, 75, and the more than 30 women alleged to have attended the parties were intercepted and recorded by prosecutors in Milan.

They form the core evidence against the former premier in an ongoing trial in which he is accused of abuse of office and of paying for sex with a 17-year-old nightclub dancer whom prosecutors believe was working as an under-age prostitute. He denies the charges.

Read the rest.

And then there’s this from Rupert Murdoch’s beloved tabloid, The Sun:

Sleazy Silvio Berlusconi was dubbed the “boss of bosses” by a woman who allegedly recruited girls for his bunga bunga parties, it emerged yesterday.

Local councillor Nicole Minetti, 27, made the remark about the ex-Italian PM in a call to a pal.

She said there would be a party that night and added: “There are certain types there — the whore, the South American from the favelas, the one who is a bit more serious.”

In another call she said: “When I strip off I’ll be just in sexy underwear.”

Read the rest.

Gee, wonder if Dominique Strauss-Kahn was ever in attendance.

Artificial in-Siemens-ation: Bribes and hypocrisy

A drama worthy of Kafka has been playing out between Germany and Greece, and it involves all the classic stuff of political scandal: Huge bribes, government and corporate corruption, debt, corrupt defense and construction contracts, and those nasty national stereotypes.

The bottom line: Germany, which has been delivering high-toned morality lectures to Greece about profligate spending and reckless indebtedness, has been the source of big fat bribes directly responsible for much of that debt and spending, a lot of it bankrolled by loans from German banks.

One of the major players has been Siemens AG, a fine old German company based in Munich with a record for bribing foreign governments that goes back at least a century.

But the IMF’s boss says it’s just a question of lazy Southern Europeans resenting those thrifty Nordic types [really, read on to the end].

The latest casualty, a high-flying socialist

Today was a bad day for former Defense Minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos, who was arrested at his Athenian mansion on charges of money laundering, allegedly stemming from dry-cleaning bribes from German corporateers.

The mordida was given in exchange for contracts for the Greek purchase of, among other things, submarines and Patriot missiles.

Some background from Greek Reporter:

Tsohatzopulos has been linked in numerous bribing, money laundering and tax evasion scandals. In early 2011, following an investigation by a specialized committee of the Hellenic Parliament, evidence emerged that Tsochatzopoulos was also involved in the Siemens scandal. Among others, the committee statement included: “Mr. Tsochatzopoulos is being checked in regards to his activities in the capacity of Minister for National Defence between 1996 and 2001. The Committee combines the orders for defence systems that occurred under his leadership with the confessions of the people managing the ‘black’ money given by Siemens as bribe for the MIM-104 Patriot systems”.

In April 2011 new evidence emerged that tied Tsochatzopoulos to yet another scandal in addition to the previous two, this time with the German company Ferrostaal in relation to the purchase of German submarines. According to the newspaper Real News, Tsochatzopoulos had received thanks from the German representatives for having been chosen for the purchase before a deal had been signed. Tsochatzopoulos threatened to go to courts over the newspaper’s front page, which he considered to be “insulting”. In mid April the parliamentary group of PASOK decided on the creation of committee to investigate the submarine scandal. Tsochatzopoulos accused the parliamentary group of acting in line with the opposition and of making wrong moves against him. A few days later he made a request to the Areios Pagos, Greece’s supreme court, to move faster with the procedure of investigating his assets. On 11 April 2011 the George Papandreou government decided to expel him from the party.

Read the rest.

More from Athens News:

Television showed images of plainclothes police officers leading the 72-year-old away from his luxurious neoclassical mansion on Dionysiou Aeropagitou St, opposite the Acropolis.

His purchase of the mansion prompted the investigation.

Tsochatzopoulos, who has held a total of seven portfolios including defence between 1981 and 2004, faces felony charges in relation to property deals and possible tax violations, a court official said on condition of anonymity.

Read the rest.

And then there’s the ex-Minister of Transportation

Tasos Mantelis, another capitalist in socialist party [PASOK] garb, admitted two years ago that he’d taken a hefty chunk of change from Siemens, as Chania reported [and, yeah, their translation is atrocious]:

Mantelis acknowledged in his testimony to the Selection Committee for Siemens, the German group that gave him 200 thousand euros for the election campaign. “All and all the light, as we said from the beginning, without any discrimination and exclusion,” commented cycles Maximos Mansion.

Preceding the filing of the entrepreneur and the best man, George rakes, who said the former minister said that the amount deposited to an account in Geneva from sponsorship of the German company.

George Tsougrani admitted that he Tasos Mantelis had asked him in 1998 to open an account in his name so that in him to be deposited donations of friends of the former minister for his own campaign. Indeed, on 2 November 1998 and February 8, 2000 filed by an unknown source 200. 000 250 000 marks respectively.

But according to witnesses, no money went to campaign Tassos Mantelis, but given the children, while a section of 163 800 was transferred a few months when they have broke the Siemens scandal on behalf of Alpha Bank in Greece.

Read the rest.

More from a Google translation of an article in Ta Nea Online:

As members of the examining Mr. T. Mantelis argued that the money was never used by Siemens for his campaign expenses and had already gathered the required amount for his campaign. And when asked how he approached the people of the German company, said that one of the stranger who called in English said he was from the German company and they want to deposit the amount for an election expense. And when he asked him about what money was, the stranger replied that what is customary in these cases … Speaking to parliamentarians and the Inquiry argued that there is nothing more than an office and a home and prompted them to open all accounts!

Read the rest.

Ta Nea also reports that the former minister has managed to accumulate, in addition to his home, at least 26 pieces of real estate totaling at least a million square meters, most of it in Megara.

That’s some kind of socialist!

Siemens gets off with a swat on the wrist

So what happened to Siemens, the drug dealer to the Greek “socialist” bribe junkies?

Here’s the latest from RT, posted Monday:

German electronics company Siemens has agreed to pay about 270 million euro to the Greek state in order to settle a legal action over bribing Greek officials.

Siemens promised to pay 80 million euros for debt repayments, 90 million will be spent on compensation of losses.  Siemens will also invest about 100 million euro in academic and research programs.

Siemens has officially apologized to Greek people for corrupt practices used by the firm in the past.

In response, the Greek Government promised not to file any further claims against the company and allow it to bid for new orders.

The investigation by the Greek authorities in 2007-2011 revealed Siemens bribed officials during 1997-2002 to get telecoms as well security contracts for the 2004 Athens Olympics. The former Transport Minister, Tassos Mantelis admitted receiving the equivalent of 100,000 euros from Siemens in 1998.

Read the rest.

But the company is already on the way to recouping some of their losses, as A. Papapostolo notes at Greek Reporter:

German engineering giant Siemens, which recently settled a bribery dispute with the Greek government, said Wednesday it has won a 41-million-euro contract for the Athens metro.

Siemens said in a statement it will supply signalling technology and

Barack Obama, the first official Casino President

That Hope™ may result in less Change™ in our pockets, at least for those of us who are wont to feed the insatiable hunger of the one-armed bandit.

As regular readers know, our first daily newspaper job was in America’s gambling capital, Sin City itself, Las Vegas U.S.A.

We’re very skeptical about casinos. For one thing, as we all know by now, the house always wins.

But casinos are the perfect model for our Brave New Economy, where we’re all encouraged to see ourselves one throw of the dice away for realizing our Inner Millionaire, while all our cash winds up in the pockets of folks who’re already rich.

And while we skeptical of gambling in general, we’re even more dubious about Native American gambling casinos.

The tribal Trojan horse

Back when we started reporting, gambling — except for horse and greyhound tracks — was illegal everywhere except Nevada. Needless to say, folks still gambled, and the folks who made all the profits from illegal gambling were wiseguys, the same folks who made all that loot off Nevada’s casinos back where were reporting for the Las Vegas Review-Journal way back in 1966.

It took the FBI to bust the mob’s stranglehold on casinos, a massive effort that involved wiretaps, bugs, informants, and some brilliant legal strategies on the part of the Department of Justice.

Legal gambling spread from Nevada to Atlantic City, where a voter referendum enabled Las Vegas casinos to set up shop on the Atlantic Coast. While the mob initially made some inroads in New Jersey, a decent state regulatory system and the work of state police and the FBI forced out the goombahs.

And then the Supreme Court opened the door to the nation’s Native Americans in a case that legalized a California tribe’s bingo parlor.

Soon casinos started sprouting up around the country, and some states opened the doors to gambling, so long as it took place on “river boats,” most of which never turned a paddle and stayed firmly lashed to their docks or beached on Gulf Coast sand.

But unlike the river boats and landlocked casinos old and new, tribal casinos don’t have to sweat either state regulators and face only minimal oversight by the Federal Bureau of Investigation [which, after the Pine Ridge killings, is no doubt not entirely a bad thing].

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 paved the way for the tribal gambling bonanza, and the tribes now generate more annual gross — that is, the totals lost by gamblers over the tables in hotel suites, gift shops, and restaurants — than folks dropped on the tables and in the slots of Sin City and the Boardwalk City combined.

Casinos sprouted up even in the heart of the Bible Belt, in part because even a lot of Fundamentalist white America feels a much-deserved guilt about the way our ancestors broke treaty after treaty, guns blazing.

For a time, tribal casinos were confined to reservations

For a time. . .

Then town and cities, eager for funds as federal appropriations dropped, agreed to accept off-reservation casinos on land that would fall under tribal jurisdiction only after the project received federal approval and recognition. Gambling, as it’s always done, had metastasized.

Then George W. Bush tightened up the regs on off-reservation grind and carpet joints, one of the few actions he took that esnl can wholeheartedly endorse. Under the Bush doctrine, tribes could only locate casinos within commuting

WikiCables: Operation ‘Just Cause’ indeed

Back in December, 1989, the first President George Bush decided to prove his bellicose bona fides and lack of wimpishness by invading Panama to depose Manuel Noriega, an otherwise reliable American ally and a willing participant in the Reagan administration’s illegal arms-for-hostages schemes.

The ostensible reason for Noriega’s ouster in Operation Just Cause was his involvement in deals with South American drug cartels that allowed them to use his country as a transit point.

Two SECRET/NOFORN cables from Obama administration Ambassador Barbara J. Stephenson reveal that little has changed since the world’s greatest military power ignominiously triumphed over one of the world’s weakest powers.

WikiCable I: Drugs along the borders

A 17 August dispatch titled “The Gang Threat on Panama’s Costa Rican Border” offers a picture of deep official corruption, with little changed since Noriega’s day.

An excerpt:

Adding to the difficulties of controlling the Costa Rican border, Post has credible information that the Panamanian National Police (PNP) commander for the Chiriqui province, Sub-Commissioner Bartolome Aguero, is himself working with criminal networks in Panama. Aguero is reportedly a member of a network of corrupt officers at the sub-commissioner rank in the PNP. PNP Director Gustavo Perez told POLOFF and NAS July 23 that the PNP had a corruption problem at “very high levels” in Chiriqui, and that he was examining how to deal with it. Even if Aguero is relieved of his command, the PNP upper ranks in the province are probably also tainted, and cleaning up the police force in the region will take time, and probably lead to a period of lower operational efficiency.

The document is posted online here.

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RUCNFB/FBI WASHINGTON DC
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S E C R E T PANAMA 000625
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E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/21/2019
TAGS: PGOV PREL SNAR PM

SUBJECT: THE GANG THREAT ON PANAMA’S COSTA RICAN BORDER

REF: PANAMA 00470

Classified By: AMBASSADOR BARBARA J. STEPHENSON FOR REASONS 1.4 (b) AND (d)

——-
Summary
——-

1. (S//NF) The border between Panama and Costa Rica has been described as a “no mans’ land”, where drugs flow across into Costa Rica and guns and money flow back into Panama. With parallel roads along either side of the border, over 200 possible crossing points, a free trade zone town sitting on the border itself, and chaotic and corrupt security agencies on the Panamanian side, it is virtually impossible to control the border itself. This wide open border has led to the growth of an important gun market on the Costa Rican side of the border which supplies the FARC, DTOs and local gangs with weapons, while large amounts of drugs and cash flow across the border. It has also created an “undergoverned space” that Central American and Mexican gangs may be exploiting to lay low and build a new base of operations. Panama’s National Frontier Service (SENAFRONT) reports an increase in assassinations in the area, which has traditionally been largely free of violent crime. The National Aero-Naval Service (SENAN) believes that recent maritime interdiction efforts may be forcing traffickers to move loads to land and take them through Panama on the Pan-American Highway, and across the border into Costa Rica. Post is concerned that an increase in overland drug and arms trafficking may further destabilize Panama and the other Central American nations. This is the exact opposite result than was intended when the strategy to increase

WikiCable: Pushing Berlusconi on Vladimir Putin

Today’s offering: A CONFIDENTIAL 10 February 2009 dispatch from Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge’ d’Affaires Elizabeth Dibble at the U.S. embassy in Rome to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before her visit to Italy, which commenced three days later.

It’s a fascinating document, both for its portrayal of Italian Prime Minister Silvio “Bunga Bunga” Berlusconi as a zealous pro-American, and for its frank acknowledgment of the pressure placed on foreign governments to toe the Washington line.

The most interesting sections deal with organized crime and with Washington’s ire over Berlusconi’s refusal to stay in step on Russia.

An excerpt [PM = Prime Minister, FM = Foreign Minister, MFA = Ministry of Foreign Affairs]:

Our cooperation with Berlusconi does not extend to all issues. Energy dependence, close personal relations between Berlusconi and Putin, and a lack of institutional influence on Berlusconi’s crafting of Italy’s Russia policy (the MFA’s entire Russia Department consists of one person and there is no one devoted exclusively to Russia in the PM’s office) have made Italy one of Russia’s most reliable partners in the EU in pressing the Kremlin’s political agenda. Italy’s foreign policy with regard to Russia is now driven almost entirely by Berlusconi’s desire to appease Putin and guarantee stable supplies of energy. Contrary to the GOI’s general positive actions on the ground, Berlusconi personally has been unhelpful, making zinger pronouncements undermining our efforts to bring stability to the Balkans, build closer ties between NATO and Georgia and Ukraine, and hold Russia accountable for its invasion of Georgia last summer. He has publicly announced his intention to try to broker the relationship between President Obama and President Medvedev. You could usefully underline to PM Berlusconi, FM Frattini and Chamber President Fini that Italy’s high-profile efforts to champion Putin’s initiatives, especially when they appear to support archaic notions of a Russian “sphere-of-influence” over sovereign countries, will find no support in Washington, and indeed, may only damage Italy’s credibility.

The cable is posted online here.

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TAGS: PGOV PREL IT

SUBJECT: SCENESETTER FOR SPEAKER PELOSI’S FEBRUARY 13-22 VISIT TO ITALY

ROME 00000159 001.2 OF 004

Classified By: Charge d’Affaires a.i. Elizabeth Dibble for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

1. (C) Madame Speaker, I would like to extend a warm welcome from Team Italy in anticipation of your upcoming visit. Your trip comes at a critical moment as the Berlusconi government seeks to understand how it fits into the new Administration’s reengagement with Europe. Berlusconi’s close personal ties to President Bush and his position on the right hand side of the political spectrum are leading some here to fear that U.S.-Italian relations have already become cooler. Your visit will serve to reassure the GOI that Italy still remains within the inner circle of Allies that we rely on in the most difficult of moments. But it is also an opportunity to challenge them to do more in Afghanistan, moderate their behavior as a proxy for Russian policies in Europe, be a reliable partner on Iran and work closely with us to address the global financial crisis which is rapidly undermining Italy’s already sclerotic economy.

Domestic Politics: Berlusconi in Control, but Challenges Emerging
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

2. (C) After two years of a divided and ineffectual center-left government, Italy saw Silvio Berlusconi return to power last year. Berlusconi enjoys a broad base of power that has allowed us to make good progress in continuing to advance our agenda. He used his first months back in office to deliver results on election promises, though long-term solutions to most problems are still needed. The trash problem in Naples is not yet permanently solved, but the streets are cleared and troops are keeping dumps and incinerators open. Public worries about street crime have been addressed by a sweeping new security law. A public finance law has overhauled the annual budget process, which traditionally has eaten up months of Parliament’s time, but Italy’s faltering economy casts doubt on whether budget targets will be met. Berlusconi’s government drafted and passed these laws mostly without consulting the center-left opposition, which has grown more fragmented and less effective. Most foreign policy initiatives are directed by Berlusconi personally without the need of any legislation.

3. (C) Berlusconi’s honeymoon period now appears to be over as some key initiatives have stalled and intra-coalition squabbling has begun to erupt. Education reform was significantly scaled back after large protests in October, justice reform is stalled, and fiscal federalism is the subject of infighting between the Northern League (LN) and Berlusconi’s People of Liberty (PdL) party. In the run-up to the June 2009 European parliament elections, tensions between PdL and LN are sure to grow as LN seeks to differentiate itself from its larger partner. The center left remains deeply divided, and the European elections will be a critical moment for it to evaluate whether it needs new leadership.

Organized Crime:

Slowing Growth and Fraying the Social Fabric
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

4. (C) Organized crime remains a serious and pervasive problem throughout the country, particularly in the South. By some estimates, organized crime accounts for nine percent of Italy’s GDP. Crime syndicates are engaged in trafficking in drugs, arms and persons; extortion; the production and distribution of pirated and counterfeit

Censored: Bush I, the CIA, the Mob and the S&Ls

UPDATED: The old video links are gone, but we’ve found and inserted new ones.

One of the most important stories you’ve never heard was told by Houston Post reporter Pete Brewton: How the deregulation of the savings and loan industry was used to enrich mobsters, cronies of George H.W. Bush, and the CIA operatives who waged an illegal war in Latin America.

His 1992 book, The Mafia, CIA, & George Bush: The Untold Story of America’s Greatest Financial Debacle, is a indispensable guide to one of the darkest moments in modern American history, and explores the story we tried to follow at the Sacramento Bee, until we were exiled to the night police beat.

In a remarkable pair of interviews, presented here in 12 You Tube segments, Brewton exposes the dark underbelly of deep politics that played out across the country during the high-flying financial industry before a collapse that echoes our current crisis.

While a few reporters worked to expose the hidden forces behind the S&L debacle by following the money, we’ve seen little similar work in the latest collapse, which is not surprising given the massive newsroom layoffs in the intervening years and the takeover of much of the press by the same financial forces responsible for the collapse.

His stories withheld and stymied, Brewton left the Post before its1995 demise and today teaches journalism at the Texas Tech College of Mass Communications.

The interviews were conducted 21 November 1992 by University of Texas, Austin, philosopher Douglas Kellner [now the holder of an endowed chair at UCLA] and Frank Morrow for the late, much-lamented series Alternative Views [for a detailed history see this PDF].

There are plenty of big names, including the late director CIA William Casey, New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello [who famously vowed to kill John F. Kennedy], Florida mob boss Santo Trafficante, George W., Jeb, and Neil Bush, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, arms-for-Contras figure Adnan Khashoggi, arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, former Texas Governor and Treasury Secretary John Connally, Oliver North, Lloyd Bentsen,

The second one-hour interview continues the banking tale, then focuses on how Brewton got the story and its impact on his own career. He begins by talking about something that should strike a familiar chord in light of our current financial crisis: That the S&L crashes of the 1980 were started by an artificial real estate bubble funded by the banks’ loose loan policies.

Sound familiar?

Brewton’s experience paralleled our own at the Sacramento Bee. Our approaches differed because we were looking at more than $100 million in foreclosures by one bank, the property sold off to a seven-step, daisy-chained, limited partnership pyramid for between twenty and fifty cents per dollar loaned.

We found mob involvement, both in loans made [one hefty loan bailed out a mob frontman’s Las Vegas casino] and as the main buyer of all those foreclosed officer towers, subdivisions, shopping centers, and family homes. Key players in our story included many Reaganites, including Attorney General William French Smith and Chicago [Capone] mob “associates.”

Just as Brewton had stories killed, so did we. And just as he pushed at the Post, we pushed at the Bee. Just as the mainstream media ignored Brewton’s stories, ours were ignored as well. In our own case, had the other media picked up on our work and folks in Washington had noticed, much of the S&L collapse could have been prevented, since our stories were written in 1983, and the major failures came some years later.

And now, on with the show:

Part 1

Part 2

On a personal note, the Bill Walters mentioned was a classmate of esnl’s at Fort Collins High School in Colorado, where Walters was the star quarterback and class president and esnl the briefcase-toting bespectacled nerd with the plastic pocket protector.

If you’ve stayed with us, you’ve just had a first-hand look at the way the world works, and what happens when reporters get too close.

And here’s a post with more on the CIA/S&L debacle, and another’s here. And here’s a story written about the closing of Brewton’s old paper on 17 April 1995 by owner Dean Singleton, the same media baron who engineered the takeover of most of the San Francisco Bay Area’s newspapers.

WikiCable: Sicilians fight back against the Mafia

In light of our yesterday’s post of a WikiLeaked cable detailing the dismal plight of Calabria and the pervasive corruption of that Italian region spawned by the organized crime faction known as the ‘Ndrangheta, here’s another cable from the same author, Naples-based Consul General J. Patick Truhn, reporting the considerable success of Sicilians in their fight against the most infamous of Italian crime syndicates, La Cosa Nostra, otherwise known as the Mafia.

The 15 June 2009 cable, classified CONFIDENTIAL, is posted online here.

VZCZCXRO8518
RR RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHNP #0069/01 1660739
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 150739Z JUN 09
FM AMCONSUL NAPLES
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 6417
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHMIL/AMCONSUL MILAN 0176
RUEHFL/AMCONSUL FLORENCE 0146
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC
RHMFISS/FBI WASHINGTON DC
RUEABND/DEA HQ WASHDC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC
RHMFISS/JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC
RHMFISS/COMSIXTHFLT
RUEHNO/USMISSION USNATO 0001
RHMFISS/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC
RHMFISS/COMUSNAVEUR NAPLES IT
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RUEHNP/AMCONSUL NAPLES 1168

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 05 NAPLES 000069

SIPDIS

TREASURY FOR OFAC

E.O. 12958: DECL: 6/15/2019
TAGS: PGOV PREL KCRM ECON SNAR MARR KCOR IT
SUBJECT: SICILY: REGIONAL GOVERNMENT IN TURMOIL WHILE THE MAFIA IS
DOWN, BUT NOT OUT

REF: A) 08 NAPLES 38, B) 08 NAPLES 9, C) ROME 600, D) NAPLES 64

NAPLES 00000069 001.2 OF 005

CLASSIFIED BY: J. Patick Truhn, Consul General, AmConGen Naples.

REASON: 1.4 (b), (d)
¶1. (C) Summary: As host to an important U.S. Navy base, location of recently discovered gas reserves, and home to 17,000 U.S. citizens, Sicily’s future is clearly of interest to the United States. For now, political feuding has replaced the war on organized crime in the headlines: Regional President Raffaele Lombardo dissolved the regional cabinet on May 25 after months of tensions with his coalition partner, Prime Minister Berlusconi’s party. The rocky relations between Palermo and Rome have resulted in Berlusconi’s blockage of four billion euros in EU structural funds for the region. Political grandstanding blocked an American gas drilling operation last year, and threatens to at least delay an important U.S. Navy satellite communications system. However, the major challenge to economic development remains the Mafia, which may well be the principal beneficiary if the bridge over the Strait of Messina, talked about for centuries, is eventually built. A variety of interlocutors in several Sicilian cities told us during recent visits that the grip of organized crime has loosened through a combination of law enforcement success and civil society rebellion against the Cosa Nostra. Anti-Mafia prosecutors are optimistic they can continue to make progress against the mob, but note that ongoing budgetary and personnel constraints (particularly the difficulty in filling magistrate positions) hamper their effectiveness. The one exception we have heard to the optimistic outlook is from a journalist under police protection from the mob, who believes that most anti-Mafia measures have been superficial and have not taken root in society. End summary.

Crossroads of the Mediterranean
————————————–

¶2. (SBU) Sicily — the largest island in the Mediterranean and

WikiCables: Scenes from the Mexican drug wars

A twofer today, both cables reporting on the tragedy unfolding in Mexico.

The first cable, sent by Political Minister Counselor Gustavo Delgado of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City 26 October 2009, reports on a meeting between U.S. National Intelligence Director [DNI] Dennis Blair and Mexican Defense Secretary General Guillermo Galvan Galvan seven days earlier.

The cable, classified SECRET/NO FORN, portrays a government riven by suspicion and officials contemplating using tactics of questionable legality as Mexican authorities wage what is characterized as a domestic war.

The cable is posted here.

VZCZCXRO0629
RR RUEHCD RUEHGD RUEHHO RUEHMC RUEHNG RUEHNL RUEHRD RUEHRS RUEHTM
DE RUEHME #3077/01 2992337
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
R 262337Z OCT 09
FM AMEMBASSY MEXICO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8758
INFO RUEHXC/ALL US CONSULATES IN MEXICO COLLECTIVE
RHMFISS/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC
RUEHC/DEPT OF LABOR WASHINGTON DC
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHINGTON DC
RHMFISS/CDR USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL
RHMFISS/HQS USNORTHCOM
RUEAHLA/DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
RUEABND/DEA HQS WASHINGTON DC
RHEHAAA/NSC WASHINGTON DC

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 MEXICO 003077

NOFORN
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/24/2019
TAGS: PREL PGOV PINR MX
SUBJECT: DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DENNIS BLAIR’S
MEETING WITH GENERAL GALVAN GALVAN, OCTOBER 19

Classified By: Political Minister Counselor Gustavo Delgado.
Reason: 1.4 (b),(d).

¶1. (S/NF) Summary.  DNI Dennis Blair met with Defense Secretary General Guillermo Galvan Galvan on October 19 on the heels of meetings with President Calderon and members of his national security team (ref a and b).  The discussion focused largely on the military’s role in the counternarcotics fight, with Galvan lamenting a likely lengthy domestic mandate, the need for improved translation of intelligence into operations, and his mistrust of other GOM security elements.  Galvan is clearly seeking cooperation from the USG to strengthen his institution’s capacity to fight drug trafficking organizations, but will try to keep military actions in its own channels rather than working more broadly with Mexico’s law enforcement community.  End summary.

¶2. (S/NF) To open the discussion with General Galvan Galvan and high-ranking members of his intel team, DNI Blair recognized the challenges a military confronts when it has to fight a war — in this case against drug trafficking organizations — within its own country.  In response to the DNI’s question on how the GOM can make the transition away from the armed forces to a strictly civilian counternarcotics domestic fight, Galvan said that he does not currently see a quick end to their internal deployment.  He indicated that the effort is difficult for the military, in part due to the perception that they lack the legal framework to back their deployment.  He noted that SEDENA is working with Congress to pass legislation that would address this matter. (Note: Calderon submitted to Congress last session a National Security Law that looks to codify the military’s role in the domestic CN fight. End note.)  He also mentioned that Article 29 of the constitution calling for a state of exception” in certain areas of the country might provide them with such legal authority (see septel for discussion on Article 29). SEDENA runs the risk of losing public prestige and being criticized on human rights issues as its mandate is extended, but he nevertheless expects the military to maintain its current role for the next 7 to 10 years.  Galvan did suggest that increased U.S. intelligence assistance could shorten that time frame, and also applauded USG efforts to prevent arms trafficking across the border into Mexico.

¶3. (S/NF) Galvan indicated that he is interested in establishing the highest levels of cooperation with the USG, particularly in light of its “new authorities” as the institution responsible for capturing high-value targets, including two members of the Zetas and Sinaloa cartel head Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera.  He further said that SEDENA was implementing a three stage operation to specifically target Chapo.  The first stage, which they have largely accomplished, is to establish a physical force in the area of his operation primarily intended to collect intelligence.  He noted that they have found 10 to 15 locations where he moves, but that Chapo commands the support of a large network of informers and has security circles of up to 300 men that make launching capture operations difficult.  The second stage is to deploy a circle of troops into the area of his movements, which Galvan hopes to do shortly.  The third stage is his capture.

¶4. (S/NF) The DNI suggested that improving the intelligence

Stuxnet: The end of the world as we know it?

While most folks who’ve used PCs for any length of time have had to fight with the aftermath of a computer virus infection — typically creations that either raid our address books or crash our hard drives — there’s a scarier new bug on the block.

Going by the handle stuxnet, this new breed of worm gets inside sophisticated industrial control systems, subtly operation the machines they control and stealing data like industrial drawings along the way.

And the cyberwarriors who battle such digital demons say this new kid on the block was most likely the creation of a nation’s intelligence service, the first shot fired in a cyberwar that threatens the whole computerized house of cards that is modern life.

A likely source of the attack is Israel, since that country has a sizeable computer warfare department and developed the equipment and software installed at America’s global Internet gateways through which almost all of the world’s online communications pass [the company responsible for all that tech is Ptech, created by folks who last worked for the Israeli version of America’s supersecret National Security Agency].

Years ago, esnl’s computer caught a bad bug slipped into an email which arrived in our then-home in Napa from the UC Berkeley journalism school. That one had slipped through Cal’s own cyber safeguards and cost us several days of downtown.

But Stuxnet’s far more subtle, and had spread across the globe after initially infecting — computers at the Iranian nuclear facility at Bushehr, a place Israeli has said it may attack because they fear it’s being used to make nukes, a fear dismissed by a range of international nuclear proliferation experts.

One of the first and best reports on the worm came 21 September from Mark Clayton, staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor:

Stuxnet surfaced in June and, by July, was identified as a hypersophisticated piece of malware probably created by a team working for a nation state, say cyber security experts. Its name is derived from some of the filenames in the malware. It is the first malware known to target and infiltrate industrial supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software used to run chemical plants and factories as well as electric power plants and transmission systems worldwide. That much the experts discovered right away.

But what was the motive of the people who created it? Was Stuxnet intended to steal industrial secrets – pressure, temperature, valve, or other settings –and communicate that proprietary data over the Internet to cyber thieves?

By August, researchers had found something more disturbing: Stuxnet appeared to be able to take control of the automated factory control systems it had infected – and do whatever it was programmed to do with them. That was mischievous and dangerous.

But it gets worse. Since reverse engineering chunks of Stuxnet’s massive code, senior US cyber security experts confirm what Mr. Langner, the German researcher, told the Monitor: Stuxnet is essentially a precision, military-grade cyber missile deployed early last year to seek out and destroy one real-world target of high importance – a target still unknown.

“Stuxnet is a 100-percent-directed cyber attack aimed at destroying an industrial process in the physical world,” says Langner, who last week became the first to publicly detail Stuxnet’s destructive purpose and its authors’ malicious intent. “This is not about espionage, as some have said. This is a 100 percent sabotage attack.”

As the Associated Press reported four days later,

Experts from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran met this week to discuss how to remove the malicious computer code, or worm, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported Friday.

The computer worm, dubbed Stuxnet, can take over systems that control the inner workings of industrial plants. Experts in Germany discovered the worm in July, and it has since shown up in a number of attacks — primarily in Iran, Indonesia, India and the U.S.

The ISNA report said the malware had spread throughout Iran,

Barry O’s despicable assassination defense

The administration of Hope™ and Change™ hopes to rapidly march us all, sheeplike, down the road dead-ending in an unchallengeable police state in which the Great Leader can arbitrarily order any of us killed, then conceal his actions beneath the impenetrable shroud of state secrecy.

That’s not opinion, by the way. It’s unequivocal fact, as Glenn Greenwald writes at Salon:

At this point, I didn’t believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record.  In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki’s father  asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late [Friday] night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief  asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims.  That’s not surprising:  both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality.  But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”:  in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

>snip<

The same Post article quotes a DOJ spokesman as saying that Awlaki “should surrender to American authorities and return to the United States, where he will be held accountable for his actions.”  But he’s not been charged with any crimes, let alone indicted for any.  The President has been trying to kill him for the entire year without any of that due process.  And now the President refuses even to account to an American court for those efforts to kill this American citizen on the ground that the President’s unilateral imposition of the death penalty is a “state secret.”  And, indeed, American courts — at Obama’s urging — have been upholding that sort of a “state secrecy” claim even when it comes to war crimes such as torture and rendition.  Does that sound like a political system to which any sane, rational person would “surrender”?

Greenwald refers his reader to Marcy Wheeler’s expanded account of the government’s case at emptywheel, which bears this wonderful headline: “Obama Doesn’t Know Why the Fuck He’s Entitled to Kill Al-Awlaki, He Just Is, Damnit.” It’s well worth your attention, and is her latest post of the subject here.

Had to happen: Mafia goes long on Green

Having followed organized crime for several decades now, esnl’s learned that the wiseguys’ biggest problem is laundering all that cash they generate from peddling things people love but the law doesn’t allow: Gambling, drugs, prostitution, loans for the desperate, and such.

Money laundering is the fine art of taking dirty money and washing it through legitimate or semi-legitimate investments where investment activity runs hot and fewer inconvenient questions get asked.

The mobsters have always been bullish on real estate [previously] but now it seems they’re going green, reports Philip Pullella of Planet Ark:

Tuesday seized Mafia-linked assets worth $1.9 billion — the biggest mob haul ever — in an operation revealing that the crime group was trying to “go green” by laundering money through alternative energy companies.

Investigators said the assets included more than 40 companies, hundreds of parcels of land, buildings, factories, bank accounts, stocks, fast cars and luxury yachts.

Most of the seized assets were located in Sicily, home of the Cosa Nostra, and in southern Calabria, home of its sister crime organization, the ‘Ndrangheta.

At the center of the investigation was Sicilian businessman Vito Nicastri, 54, a man known as the “Lord of the Wind” because of his vast holdings in alternative energy concerns, mostly wind farms.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni called the operation “the largest seizure ever made” against the Mafia.

General Antonio Girone, head of the national anti-Mafia agency DIA, said Nicastri was linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, believed to be Mafia’s current “boss of bosses.”

Investigators said Nicastri’s companies ran numerous wind farms as well as factories that produced solar energy panels.

“It’s no surprise that the Sicilian Mafia was infiltrating profitable areas like wind and solar energy,” Palermo magistrate Francesco Messineo told a news conference.

Woes of media moguls Murdoch and Berlusconi

Rupert Murdoch , the man who mainstreamed tabloid sleaze on the American television screen, faces a parliamentary probe in Britain for the underhanded tactics his journalists use to get their dirt in Old Blighty.

The scandal reaches all the way 10 Downing Street, and it shows no sign of letting up.

Seems that the Rupester’s minions were illegally hacking into the voice mails of royals, sports stars, and others in search of slime for his super-tabloid, News of the World, and the editor who headed the paper while all that hacking was underway now serves as the mouthpiece for Prime Minister David Cameron.

Murdoch, the scion of an Australian media mogul, has become an anchor baby for the worst sort of journalism in the U.S., where his empire embraces everything from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal.

As the employer of Glenn Back, Bill O’Reilly, and a legion of other smear and fear merchants and de facto patron of the Tea Party, Murdoch has emerged as one of the nation’s leading power brokers, so his travails across the pond should be of more than marginal interest.

Doug Saunders, a writer who serves as European bureau chief for the Toronto Globe and Mail, blogs about the scandal:

It began with an eerily familiar pattern: Soccer stars and politicians and members of the Royal family would check their voice mail, and discover that unheard messages were marked as “saved.”

Then, days later, they would see their names in giant letters on the cover of Britain’s red-top tabloids, over stories that quoted intimate conversations and described personal crises with uncanny accuracy. The Deputy Prime Minister’s affair with his private secretary was unveiled. At least two well-known MPs were exposed as gay. And princes William and Harry had their love lives and family interactions dissected in microscopic detail.

Scandals were exposed. Relationships were destroyed. Lives were ruined. Hundreds of people had their private messages stolen and used for dark journalistic ends – a practice that evidently continues.

At the centre of all this high-tech, A-list eavesdropping was the editor of the large-circulation Sunday tabloid the News of the World – a man who now sits in the office of Prime Minister David Cameron and serves as his chief communications aide.

Though Andy Coulson has adamantly denied any knowledge of the practice, he was editor-in-chief over a five year period during which his reporters used tricks, scams and private investigators to steal voice-mail messages off hundreds of private phones. His Royal family reporter and the private investigator he used went to prison for their front-page intrusions, the only criminal charges to date. Mr. Coulson ended up resigning over the controversy in 2007.

Now the political world is closing in on him. In an extraordinary parliamentary event Thursday, the House of Commons’ most powerful body, the Standards and Privileges Committee, voted across party lines to hold a full investigation that would require testimony from dozens of people, including News of the World owner Rupert Murdoch – and from Mr. Coulson.

This puts Mr. Cameron, whose Conservative-Liberal coalition government was elected this year on a pledge to clean up government, in a difficult political position.

Mr. Coulson will have a difficult time serving in 10 Downing Street when parliament is investigating his actions as newspaper editor – and he will have an even harder time serving as the government’s chief media voice when the top story on front pages, as is the case these days, involves his career.

The woes of sleazoid Silvio Berlusconi

While Murdoch’s foreign birth bars him from the nation’s highest office, no such constitutional obstacles kept another slime merchant from the leadership of his country.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s grip on his country’s media must turn Murdoch green with envy. Controlling all but one of his country’s television stations, Berluscoini also owns a newspaper empire, insurance companies, bankers, and even a soccer team.

Thrice elevated to the leadership of his country, Berlusconi has successfully survived a series of sex scandals — some documented by x-rated photos and videos — in a deft manner that must have Bill Clinton gritting his teeth in frustration.

His rise to power was greased by the notorious Propaganda 2, the pseudo-Masonic lodge that united politicians, spies, and crooked bankers and paved the way for the looting of the Vatican’s Banco Ambrosiano.

But the aging Lothario is facing new difficulties, as Ingrid D. Rowland reports in the latest New York Review of Books.

One-time allies are starting to desert him, his television empire is losing viewers, and Italian politics are growing more heated to the point where Berlusconi himself has been physically attacked twice by irate constitutents, more recently in December when he lost teeth and sustained a broken nose.

And just how sleazy is Berlusconi? Consider his now-infamous encounter with a public servant [a police officer] in front of television cameras: