Barr the Gate

Regular readers will be well aware of Cyclops' disdain and weariness with Mueller's Patrician Stchick

https://kingcyclops.blogspot.com/2019/04/to-impeach-or-not-to-impeach.html

"One thing the Mueller report did prove:

 NEVER,NEVER rely on someone who all observers claim is a saint,above reproach,morally superior and totally dedicated to the public good. NEVER.

                                              ALL such have Feet of Clay"

This last was written over a month ago.

Mueller continues his determination to float "above the fray".

He gave a short public oral statement and refused to take questions from the lowly press.

He instructed us--all 300+ million- in his 1930's head masterly tone to do our homework and read HIS report.

He sees no reason to appear before congress.He has WRITTEN from Olympus.

So it must be.

Double negatives and patrician disdain may go down well at the Princeton club but

speaking for at least one member of the great unwashed hoi polloi :

                                                            HUMBUG

• Mueller has spent his career as a federal prosecutor and 
• ten full years as head of the FBI.
• He has used to the full might of the state and its resources to pursue the bad guys/gals.
•  Interrogating across the table from individual accused with often 
• only the benefit of simply a state appointed defence lawyer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Fine.

Now when faced with the prospect of speaking directly to a committee of elected officials in search of the truth

• He quakes.
• Clearly discomforted by the prospect of being interrogated by Trumpian Republican Congresswo/men.
• He can expect no forelock touching there.
• Perhaps Hilary Clinton can give him some tips on facing these people 
• Hour,after hour,after hour.
• If they get tired no doubt Trey Gowdy will ask a few questions about Benghazi.

Bob---you owe us the truth and your judgement.

Up front,unvarnished and  in person.

 Today's News:  

Barr says Mueller "could've reached a decision" on whether Trump obstructed justice regardless of long-standing Justice Department policy that prohibits the indictment of a sitting president.   cbsnews                                                                                                  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/william-barr-interview-attorney-general-says-mueller-couldve-decided-whether-trump-obstructed-justice-exclusive/

He also disagreed with Mueller's legal analysis.

One can speculate on why Barr is taking this new approach and dissing Mueller a month after he praised the report and made his own "summary".

• He may be panicked over Trumpfski's increasingly frequent meltdowns
• Or over the increasingly negative public reaction to his own behaviour.
• Or is getting significant private pushback from his friends at the Federalist Society who see him twisting the constitution,
• Or from Opus Dei or the Illuminati  

The federalist society et al  may be a bit odd to the secular mind                                                          but they all believe in telling the truth-ish.

Mueller owes it to Truth,Wisdom and the American Way to testify IN PUBLIC.

Followed by BARR.

                                      The Truth will set us Free--including you Mr.Mueller.

Deutsche Redux

Several of CYCLOPS most conscientious collaborators sent me the following|:     https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/business/deutsche-bank-trump-kushner.html

                                                     https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/19/business/deutsche-bank-trump-kushner/index.html

Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity  in Trump and Kushner Accounts  NY TIMES  19MAY2019

Let CYCLOPS summarise:

• Financial transactions by Trump and Jared Kushner entities set off alerts in  Deutsche Bank computer system 
• Red flagged by computer algorithms designed to detect illicit activity.
• Compliance staff reviewed the transactions and prepared  "suspicious activity" reports 
• They recommended these should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that policies financial-crimes .
• Executives at Deutsche Bank,which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. 
• The reports were never filed with the government.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
• Several other former Deutsche Bank employees said the decision not to report the transactions reflected a lax approach to money laundering laws.
• Part of a pattern of the bank’s executives rejecting valid reports to protect relationships with these lucrative clients

• Tammy McFadden is a former Deutsche Bank anti-money laundering specialist who reviewed some of the transactions.
• She found money had moved from Kushner Companies to Russian individuals. 
• She concluded that the transactions should be reported to the government
• In part because regulators had already  ordered Deutsche Bank to toughen its scrutiny of potentially illegal transactions. 
• Deutsche had previously been caught laundering billions of dollars for Russians,
• Ms. McFadden drafted a suspicious activity report and compiled a small bundle of documents to back up her decision.                                                                                                                                   
• Ms. McFadden informed her superiors that Mr. Trump and members of his family, were not receiving appropriate attention. 
• She raised concerns about the  bank’s practices.
• Her superiors told her to stop raising questions.
• This has been confirmed by two former managers 

                                                    

She took her complaint to the human resources department,

 She was transferred to another division. 

She was terminated in April 2018. 

The bank told her that she was not processing enough transactions 

She had worked in Deutsche Bank 's compliance unit for 10 years                                                                                                                                                                                                  She has now filed complaints with the Securities and Exchange   Commission                                                                                                   Amanda Miller, of the  Trump Organization said:                                                                             “We have no knowledge of any flagged transactions with Deutsche Bank.”    adding Trump Organization currently has                                                                                                      “no operating accounts with Deutsche Bank.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Please note the very careful lawyerly wording. "Operating accouts are NOT the same as loans.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

• Congressional and state authorities  have demanded thebank's records  
•  Trump and his family sued Deutsche Bank in April, 
• Trying to block compliance                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

  The transactions occurred between 2016 and 2017
 Trumpfski was elected in November 2016                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Cyclops has reviewed the NYTimes and his past blog posts.                

Providing below a set of "co incidences" --with the dates of such

The reader should be aware that before a Major Money Centre Bank is fined for money laundering or other felonies the investigating authorities would have spent 18-24 months 

• gathering evidence,
• interviewing executives
• analysing data, 
• negotiating with very highly paid law firms
• often based in multiple jurisdictions.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     US,German and UK punished Deutsche Bank                                                                                                       
• For money laundering
• Helping  wealthy Russian clients launder funds  
• For moving money into countries like Iran in violation of American sanctions. 
• The bank has paid  billions of dollars in penalties and
•  Is operating under a Federal Reserve order that requires it to do more to stop illicit activities.

Deutsche Bank has spent more than $18 billion over the past decade in fines and to settle legal disputes

• November 2018                                                                                                               Danske Bank whistle-blower estimated that more than half of some $230 billion in suspect funds handled by the bank was funneled through Deutsche Bank’s U.S. unit.
• November  2018                                                                                           German authorities descended on the lender’s offices in a coordinated raid related to a money-laundering investigation. 
• June 2018:                                                                                                                    Agreed to pay $205 million to settle a long-running investigation of its foreign exchange trading by New York’s banking superintendent.
• January 2017:                                                                                                          Fined $629 million by U.K. and U.S. authorities for  helping wealthy Russians move about $10 billion out of the country.                                                                                                                                              etc,etc                                                                                                      

AND NOW THIS

The Deutche Chief Executive during this period of largess to the Trumpski family was Josef Ackerman.                                        

• He was forced out of the bank  following a series of scandals
• It is believed Merkel wanted him indicted             but 
• The German Banking Establishment wanted the matter swept under the carpet
• Since his departure Deutsche has paid fines and penalties of over $10 billion 

       In late 2013 

•   He also stepped down as Chairman of Zurich Insurance Group 
•  "Resigned from the boards of Siemens AG and Royal Dutch Shell          
• Three of the largest corporations in the world
• He gave up a million dollars in fees and stock options.

          

 Having been dumped by the European Business Establishment he  next showed up as the chairman of the Bank of Cyprus.

     By coincidence a bank intimately involved in Russian Money Laundering  and now owned by a group of oligarchs close to Putin and controlled by one Wilbur Ross.

    Yes it is HE  

FOOTBALL

To those interested in the football posts--considerably more than those for Saudi,Trumpfski, Brexit or Corbyn---I forward part of the  email chain instigated by CYCLOPS yesterday.

To those who think Cyclops more "verbose" than his interlocutors--- its the passion mates,the passion---I prefer the words "articulate" "erudite" or "encyclopedic".

 

Anyway

Please note: Liverpool and Spurs play for the games most prestigious trophy on Saturday June 1st in Madrid-- the city of current title holders Real. The legendary  club of Argentines  De Stefano & Redondo;Hungarian Puskas; Brazilians Roberto Carlos & Gento ;Spaniards Casillas,Sergio Ramos & Raul ;Frenchmen Zidane and Kopa; Portuguese Ronaldo and on and on.

The television audience will exceed 100 million world wide.

A bigger audience than that envisaged for the Rapture and the Second Coming.

Arsenal will be playing on the Wednesday before in Baku.Home of ....?

An expected TV audience ----somewhat fewer

Cyclops is reliably informed that BOTH teams cannot win.

This means that one of the best five teams in the world will NOT win a trophy this season.

Oh the  Humanity !!?!!

Irving Kuczynski 

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael O'Farrell <ofarrellmc@aol.com>

No, Eugene, in the world. Moneywise.

Michael.

Sent from my iPhone

On May 19, 2019, at 5:44 PM, Eugene McCarthy <emcc8940@aol.com> wrote:

Brilliant, Irving, especially your observation on the stops on the Piccadilly line. Man City have a great team but the Champions league remains elusive for them- and is still the biggest prize in Europe. 

Sat, May 18, 2019 5:35 pm

Never mind Brexit and Bonking Boris' rise in Conservative popularity.

Today the important stuff.

Those not interested in football [non US] or Baku can skip this posting

Cyclops spent his morning watching Manchester City destroy Watford 6-0 in the FA Cup.

Not possible to cavil at the result.

City amongst the best five teams in the world : Man.City

                                                                            Liverpool 

                                                                            Barcelona

                                                                            Ajax

                                                            and         Tottenham Hotspurs

City's Kevin De Bruyner the best play maker in the Universe

• Three of the top five play in the Premiership.
• Despite the quality and depth of the English game,Man.City has won every domestic trophy this season.
• Making them arguably the Best Team in the World.

The only competition in which they failed was the most prestigious.The highest quality Champions League.

They lost in a dramatic semi final match.

To whom did they lose?

Ah yes--Tottenham Hotspurs

ED:      On the day City make history how do you manage to get Spurs into the act ? 👨

CYCLOPS:    Easy Mate😉   

The final of the Champions League will be between Liverpool and Spurs on Saturday June 1st.

Anyway, next  on the schedule is Chelsea's victory over Arsenal in the EUROPA CUP final .

• This will be played in Baku,Azerbaijan on Wednesday 29 May, kickoff 11 pm local time
• That's 8 pm  London time.
• The kick off time should be equally convenient for both teams and their supporters.
• No problems are foreseen for supporters returning to their hotels after the cup presentation at 1 am or so on Thursday morning.
• There are no train or buses from the Baku hotels downtown.
• The game will be shown live on pay for view in London.
• Cyclops will watch on TNT in the USA--for free.

Baku is the furthest possible "European"destination from London.

Also the furthest from Madrid,Barcelona,Rome,Milan Paris,Amsterdam or Munich.

It also has the smallest airport of any capital in Europe.

• Cyclops understands that Arsenal & Chelsea petitioned EUEFA to move the game to Wembley as Baku was not on the Piccadilly Line.
• The head of  EUEFA consulted the depth of his Swiss bank account before declining.
• The clubs then suggested that the game be switched to the Orient.
• EUEFA replied that Baku was in the Orient.

As a gift for my nephew and brother in law [Arsenal supporters from a mixed marriage]I tried to book a suite at the Baku Trump Hotel and Towers for next weekend.

Imagine my disappointment to find that the owners had changed its name AND a major fire destroyed 20 floors last month.

The hotel has fire insurance in the name of its silent partner Qassem Suleimani head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. 

My family is debating whether the best way to fly into Baku is via Moscow or Beijing.

The stadium has a capacity for 42,000.

If that many spectators show up it will be the largest influx of foreigners since the Tsarist invasion of 1864 .

The Azeri president has pledged not to begin the next round of war with Armenia over 

Nagorno-Karabakh until at least the week end after the game or until a random Arsenal supporter can spell Karabakh. 

No fatalities in the dispute have been announced since the winter of 2018.

Hobson's Choice?

Labour Party "leader" draws criticism for lauding work containing ‘pure and unequivocal racism’  

   

 “Jewish groups hit out at Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday after it emerged that the Labour party leader had written a FOREWORD for a century-old book [JA Hobson's 1902 book, Imperialism: A Study] containing several anti-Semitic tropes. "                               Financial Times May 1^st                                                                     https://www.ft.com/content/ac5670ec-6c2f-11e9-80c7-60ee53e6681d    

               

Corbyn’s first sentence describes the book as  a “great tome”   “very powerful,” “brilliant”, as well as “correct and prescient”.

A Guardian columnist, Jonathanl Friedlander, noted that Hobson was not just an accomplished analyst of international politics – for the Manchester Guardian, as it happens – but an egregious anti-Jewish racist.                                                                                           https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/jeremy-corbyn-blind-antisemitism-hobson

• Now Jezza is renowned as an erudite,well read and thoughtful Marxist. 
• He would be well aware of Hobson’s work and its influence on Lenin, the German Sparticus movement,on Hitler’s writings on lebensraum in Mein Kamp:
•  and his view of the Jewish forces behind British and French Imperialism before and after the defeat of Germany in WW I.

CYCLOPS: No ED I am NOT saying that CORBYN is a Nazi 🙈                             

1. Just pointing out Hobson’s influence on early 20^th Century political thought .
2. His view that malign Jewish influence was a major driver of European Imperialism. 
3. One may think that Jezza is totally oblivious to Hobson's thesis even as he wrote a foreword to his seminal work.  
4.  That is quite plausible.   
5. Cyclops would find it hard to argue that it was NOT one of the lacunae in his intellectual journey.

• All this was certainly discussed in Cyclops’ Marxist study classes over 50 years ago
•  Since then there have been multiple Marxist, and other, academic texts debunking Hobson’s thesis that Jewish Capital drove the spread of European Imperialism. 
•  No doubt written by the same Jews who wrote the Protocols and its various codecils.

Corbyn praised this “great tome”even though it was/is widely criticised as anti-Semitic 

inter alia:

1.  It claims Imperialism was driven “by men of a singular and peculiar race who have behind them many centuries of financial experience”.  
2. Hobson was not referring to Tibetans.
3. This “very powerful,” “brilliant”, “correct and prescient” book goes on to argue that 

European countries would not engage in a war "if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it".

Despite the claim of some Apologists

• This analysis is not incidental to but a major thrust and central thesis of the ”Study”. 
• Hobson was well known as virulently anti Semitic the time of the original books publication.
• His thesis was  that imperialism was the policy of great European finance houses controlled by Jews,
• Who invested abroad due to insufficient home demand.  

 In a previous book, Hobson’s bigotry was expressed in more florid terms.

•   Writing that the war between Britain and the Boers in South Africa was the work of            
•  “A small group of international financiers,   
•  German in origin and 
•   Jewish in race"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Going on to say that                                                                                                   
•  The stock exchange, the press and  
• even the liquor trade was “in the hands  of  Jews”.                                     This book was,and is,on the reading list of most ,if not all, University Curriculum in Marxist thought.                                                                                                                   The anti semitic diatribe typically disparaged as an aberration by those course lecturers sympathetic to Hobson.

In an article in the Times yesterday, the Conservative peer Daniel Finkelstein, asked:

1. "Did Mr. Corbyn not read the book before he praised it? 
2.  Did he read it but, as with the Mear One mural, not notice that it was anti-Semitic? 
3. Did he realise it but decide it didn't matter because there were other more important things about it?

ED: its Pesach, should there not be four questions?

A Labour spokesman : “Jeremy completely rejects the antisemitic elements of [Hobson’s] analysis.”

 Cyclops: Pointing this out at the time must have slipped his mind🙊

The spokesman added the book had been praised by other politicians but was                                         “clearly a text of its time and its era”

 Asked if Corbyn should apologise given the worries expressed by the Jewish Labour group and others,the spokesman said "some of the blame should be placed on the media".

ED:                                     YOU made that up 👀

CYCLOPS:                         NOPE   ✋

The spokesman conceded 

1. That there was “racially offensive language” in the book,
2.  Not only in relation to anti-Semitism,
3.  But added that it was a “book of its time”. 

The Labour Party said: 

1. "Similarly to other books of its era,               Hobson's work 
2. Contains outdated and offensive references and observations,              and 
3. Jeremy completely rejects the anti-Semitic elements of his analysis."

CYCLOPS seem to recall some recent controversies about some statues and memorial to 

• Cecil Rhodes,
• Robert E.Lee and 
• Winston Churchill .

1. Rhodes believed in the automatic superiority of the white race. A view “common in his time” .
2. Robert E Lee was a slave owner and racist .Also a”product of his time and place ”.
3. Churchill as colonial secretary in 1920s                                                                             a] unleashed Black and Tan thugs on Ireland’s Catholic civilians and                                            b] said of the Kurds and the Sudanese “ I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes...[It] would spread a lively terror.”                                                                                                                                                                      Just like Hobson, all men of their place and time, I suppose.

Can anyone remember the positions taken by Corbyn and McDonald over these recent controversies about removing statues to these chaps?

Look them up!!

Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey told the BBC

•  That he was not the first politician to have approved of Hobson [indeed!].
•  Mr. Corbyn was “not unlike other politicians who have quoted Hobson in particular speeches and
•  Indeed written pieces about them”,

OH DEAR OH DEAR- not so much “what about them” ism as “what about us” ism.

By the way

 In his foreword Corbyn wrote, 

• that NATO had been responsible  for a “military reoccupation” of Europe after the second world war 
• by contrast the Soviet Union had — despite its “huge” influence — allowed its allies to act in a more independent manner. 
• Cuba developed an independent foreign policy despite its reliance on Moscow, argued Mr. Corbyn.

A Labour spokesman said that the party’s policy was to support NATO membership

Well that’s OK then.  

Wonder why Labour lost over 100 council seats and six councils last night?

Nothing to do with the Leader I suppose?