A #Priest, A #Banker And A #Spook Walk Into The #Vatican's Money-Laundering Rabbit Hole...

A priest, a banker and a spook… not the start of a joke or a John LeCarre spy novel, but merely the latest addition to a long list of financial scandals involving the Vatican Bank. 

Yet despite its quasi comedian if convoluted plotline, the latest attempt to defraud the Catholic church will likely pale in comparison to the most infamous incident involving the Institute of Religious Works (or IOR) as the Vatican Bank is also known. That one involves one Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, who in 1982 was found hanging from London’s Blackfriars bridge, a short distance away from JPMorgan’s gold vault, his pockets stuffed will cash and bricks in what at the time was a presumed hit by the mafia taking revenge for funds lost through the collapse of Calvi’s bank – a bank in which the Vatican was a significant shareholder.

That particular murder will likely remain unsolved, and the question whether the Vatican uses the mob as its tool of “retribution and righteous punishment” will remain unanswered, as the man who stonewalled the Vatican’s response at the time on the grounds of sovereign immunity: the US archbishop Paul Marcinkus who was then-head of the Vatican Bank, took his secrets to the grave with him in 2006.

This time, however, with plenty of living loose ends, we may finally get a glimpse into how deep the rabbit hole involving the legal, and more importantly illegal, (ab)use of Catholic funds really goes.

Fast forward to today when we learn courtesy of the FT that the priest involved in the developing financial scandal is one Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, 61, a banker-turned priest, who was ordained at the age of 35 after working for many years at the Banca d’America e d’Italia, a Naples-based lender which was acquired in the late 1980’s by Deutsche Bank. His Vatican career began in the financial wing of the Holy See, or Apsa, where he worked his way up to a senior post in the organization’s analytical accounting division. He had been recently suspended once the Vatican learned he was under investigation for alleged money laundering.

Scarano is said to have had two bank accounts in the Vatican Bank: a personal one and another one under the name of a charity for the elderly. He is also the owner of a luxury flat in the city center and has a majority stake in a construction company set up in 2012.

According to court documents Scarano’s money-launder network started in 2009, comprising of 60 local businessmen, and that his nickname in assorted circles, was “Monsignor 500” in reference to the large euro notes he carried with him.

In short, Scarano is the “priest” of abovementioned spy novel trio. Scarano collaborated with Giovanni Mario Zito, a former agent who is now a Carabinieri police officer  and on loan to the Italian secret services aka, “the spook”, and Giovani Carenzo, a financial broker with offices in Switzerland and the Canary Islands, or the “banker”, to hatch a plot to bring some $52 million from a Swiss bank account for a family of shipbuilders in Scarano’s home town of Salerno, [located in Cosa Nostra’s favorite Sicily].

According to magistrate Nello Rossi, in July 2012 Scarano engaged the “spook” to help him get the money, held in a Swiss bank, into Italy without tax and customs controls. The “banker” was acting as a fiduciary for the owners of the money. Money, which at least for now, is unclear how it got into Switzerland in the first place. 

As Reuters reports, “The three originally planned to bring back 40 million euros in cash but later reduced it to 20 million euros. A private plane went to Locarno from Rome and waited several days before returning to Rome without the money.  The cash never left Switzerland because of disagreements and nervousness among the three, Rossi said, adding that cell phones that were used were later destroyed by being burned. Zito had promised to use his position in the secret services to avoid customs controls. The plane was to have been met on the runway of a Rome airport and the cash taken under armed escort to Scarano's home in Rome, Rossi said, calling the plot "intricately planned".”

It gets better: “Even though the money never left the Swiss bank, Zito, who is now in a military prison, demanded the payment he had been promised for his services.

Scarano gave Zito two checks, one for 400,000 euros and another for 200,000 euros. Zito cashed the first check but Scarano blocked the second before Zito could cash it by filing a false report that it had been lost.”

This is not the priest’s first transgression. In fact, He was suspended from his duties several weeks ago when he was placed under investigation by magistrates in Salerno. “In that investigation, his lawyer Silverio Sica said wealthy friends had donated money to Scarano in order for him to build a home for the terminally ill. According to Sica, his client wanted to use that money to pay off his mortgage so he could sell a property in Salerno and use the proceeds to build the care home.  

Apparently to cover his tracks, Scarano has been accused of taking 560,000 euros in cash out of his account in the Vatican bank and giving various amounts to friends who gave him checks in exchange. He then deposited the checks into an Italian bank account to pay off the mortgage.”

So a current priest an former banker stealing money which was at least on paper supposed to go to a home for the terminally ill… Sounds about right for the New Normal.

In conclusion: “Rossi said his office would seek permission from the Vatican, which is a sovereign state, to question officials. "This is just a piece in a much larger mosaic," he said.

Of course, the question now is just how honest the new pope Francis was when he vowed to simplify and reform any shady dealings in the Vatican: because not even he likely has any idea just how deep this particular rabbit hole goes… or what will be revealed when the latest criminal thriller involving a priest, a banker and a spook reaches its climax.

Source: Zero Hedge

#MarkOfTheBeast Motorola pushes human #tattoo to replace digital '#smartphone' passwords

Desperate to make a comeback in the mobile phone market, technology giant Motorola, which is now owned by Big Brother spying shill Google, has developed a few solutions to a problem that does not actually even exist: the "chore" of having to type in a short pass code to access your locked cell phone. Yes, Motorola thinks this split-second step is somehow too laborious for the average consumer, and has thus come up with two potential new methods of accessing "smart phones" that involve either tattooing yourself with an electronic bar code or swallowing a pill that contains a small microchip.

Motorola unveiled the new technology at the recent AllThingsD conference, which showcases all the latest digital advancements in the development pipeline. As reported by DailyTech.com, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside unveiled a small rubber stamp tattoo at the conference that the company hopes will one day replace having to type in a smart phone password. According to reports, the small stamp, which contains flexible electronic circuits, can be scanned by a smart phone to gain instant access.

"Motorola's tattoos have already been developed by MC10, a Massachusetts-based engineering firm," explains DailyTech.com. "Instead of punching in passwords, users just place their smart phones close to their tattoos for verification."

Motorola also wants you to swallow microchip drugs to access your smartphone

But why stop at tattoos when you can also incorporate drugs into the mix? You read that right. Motorola is also in the process of developing a once-daily drug pill that people can take to access their smart phones without having to type in a password. The pill, known officially as Proteus Digital Health, transmits signals from your digestive tract to your smart phone for instant access without a password.

"Users would take a pill by mouth, and the pill would create an individual signal that would be picked up by their smart phone," adds DailyTech.com, noting that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already approved the drug for use. "The computer chip within the pill would be powered by a battery using the user's stomach acid."

Ironically, the amount of time it takes to pop the pill, not to mention the effort required to remember to take it every day, is far more arduous than simply tapping a few spots on your phone screen prior to use. But why let reason get in the way of technological "progress," especially when such "progress" stands to generate billions of dollars in new revenues for completely useless technologies?

"Authentication is irritating," says Regina Dugan, Senior Vice President of Advanced Research at Motorola, about the "hassle" of having to unlock a smart phone. "Having the boldness to think differently about problems that everybody has every day is really important for Motorola now."

Nice try, Ms. Dugan. But the fact of the matter is that typing in a security code on a smart phone is not actually a "problem," at least not for the tens of millions of normal Americans who do it every day without issue. But go ahead, be our guest. Get that nice little tattoo and swallow those pills and pretend that you are solving the world's problems one privacy-invading step at a time.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.dailytech.com

http://www.forbes.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

The Criminal #NSA

THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.

It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.

This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.

The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let’s examine them in turn.

Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contract employee and whistle-blower, has provided evidence that the government has phone record metadata on all Verizon customers, and probably on every American, going back seven years. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious affiliations and political activities are, and so on.

The law under which the government collected this data, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allows the F.B.I. to obtain court orders demanding that a person or company produce “tangible things,” upon showing reasonable grounds that the things sought are “relevant” to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation. The F.B.I. does not need to demonstrate probable cause that a crime has been committed, or any connection to terrorism.

Even in the fearful time when the Patriot Act was enacted, in October 2001, lawmakers never contemplated that Section 215 would be used for phone metadata, or for mass surveillance of any sort. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and one of the architects of the Patriot Act, and a man not known as a civil libertarian, has said that “Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations.” The N.S.A.’s demand for information about every American’s phone calls isn’t “targeted” at all — it’s a dragnet. “How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?” Mr. Sensenbrenner has asked. The answer is simple: It’s not.

The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our phone call information now because it might conceivably be relevant to an investigation at some later date, even if there is no particular reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected might possibly be suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument — any data might be “relevant” to an investigation eventually, if by “eventually” you mean “sometime before the end of time.” If all data is “relevant,” it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance.

Let’s turn to Prism: the streamlined, electronic seizure of communications from Internet companies. In combination with what we have already learned about the N.S.A.’s access to telecommunications and Internet infrastructure, Prism is further proof that the agency is collecting vast amounts of e-mails and other messages — including communications to, from and between Americans.

The government justifies Prism under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Section 1881a of the act gave the president broad authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance. If the attorney general and the director of national intelligence certify that the purpose of the monitoring is to collect foreign intelligence information about any non­American individual or entity not known to be in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can require companies to provide access to Americans’ international communications. The court does not approve the target or the facilities to be monitored, nor does it assess whether the government is doing enough to minimize the intrusion, correct for collection mistakes and protect privacy. Once the court issues a surveillance order, the government can issue top-secret directives to Internet companies like Google and Facebook to turn over calls, e-mails, video and voice chats, photos, voice­over IP calls (like Skype) and social networking information.

Like the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act gives the government very broad surveillance authority. And yet the Prism program appears to outstrip that authority. In particular, the government “may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States.”

The government knows that it regularly obtains Americans’ protected communications. The Washington Post reported that Prism is designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness” — as John Oliver of “The Daily Show” put it, “a coin flip plus 1 percent.” By turning a blind eye to the fact that 49-plus percent of the communications might be purely among Americans, the N.S.A. has intentionally acquired information it is not allowed to have, even under the terrifyingly broad auspices of the FISA Amendments Act.

How could vacuuming up Americans’ communications conform with this legal limitation? Well, as James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Andrea Mitchell of NBC, the N.S.A. uses the word “acquire” only when it pulls information out of its gigantic database of communications and not when it first intercepts and stores the information.

If there’s a law against torturing the English language, James Clapper is in real trouble.

The administration hides the extent of its “incidental” surveillance of Americans behind fuzzy language. When Congress reauthorized the law at the end of 2012, legislators said Americans had nothing to worry about because the surveillance could not “target” American citizens or permanent residents. Mr. Clapper offered the same assurances. Based on these statements, an ordinary citizen might think the N.S.A. cannot read Americans’ e-mails or online chats under the F.A.A. But that is a government ­fed misunderstanding.

A “target” under the act is a person or entity the government wants information on — not the people the government is trying to listen to. It’s actually O.K. under the act to grab Americans’ messages so long as they are communicating with the target, or anyone who is not in the United States.

Leave aside the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act for a moment, and turn to the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no precedent under the Constitution for the government’s seizing such vast amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans’ communications.

The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties.

This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v. Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans’ sensitive nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking activity.

We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of the government’s professed concern with protecting Americans’ privacy. It’s time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal.

Jennifer Stisa Granick is the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Christopher Jon Sprigman is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Secret trade agreements threaten #FoodSafety, subvert democracy

If you think the U.S. government is doing a sub-par job of keeping your food safe, brace yourself. You could soon be eating imported seafood, beef or chicken products that don't meet even basic U.S. food safety standards. Under two new trade agreements, currently in negotiation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could be powerless to shut down imports of unsafe food or food ingredients. And if it tries, multinational corporations will be able to sue the U.S. government for the loss of anticipated future profits.

More frightening? Negotiations for both agreements are taking place behind closed doors, with input allowed almost exclusively from the corporations and industry trade groups that stand to benefit the most. And the Obama Administration intends to push the agreements through Congress without so much as giving lawmakers access to draft texts, much less the opportunity for debate.

Designed to grease the wheels of world commerce, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would force the U.S. and other participating countries to "harmonize" food safety standards. That means all countries that sign on to the agreement would be required to abide by the lowest common denominator standards of all participating governments. So for instance, say Vietnam allows higher residues of veterinary antibiotics in seafood than the U.S. allows, and Vietnam and the U.S. both sign on to the TPP. As a trade partner, the U.S. could be forced to lower its standards to allow for imports of seafood from Vietnam - or face a lawsuit by the seafood exporter for depriving the company of future sales of its products in the U.S.

The U.S. has already had a taste of this type of policy under the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA). In 2005, the Canadian Cattlemen for Fair Trade sued http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2002187576_nafta23.html the U.S. the U.S. government for banning imports of beef and live Canadian cattle after a case of mad cow disease was discovered in Canada. In the end, the U.S. prevailed, but not until it had spent millions to defend itself in court. Mexico wasn't so fortunate when three companies (Corn Products International, ADM/Tate & Lyle and Cargill) sued the Mexican government for preventing imports of high fructose corn syrup. Mexico lost all three cases, and was forced to pay out a total of $169.18 million to the three firms.

Among the many gifts to Big Ag contained in the TTIP and TPP? Back-door entry http://corporateeurope.org for their genetically modified seeds and crops. Countries, including those in the European Union, could find it increasingly difficult to ban, or even require the labeling of, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), if biotech companies determine that those countries' strict policies restrict fair trade and infringe on the companies' "rights" to profit.

The TTIP and the TPP are, individually and combined, two of the largest free trade agreements in world history. According to the Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC) http://www.citizenstrade.org the TPP alone covers 40 percent of the global economy. That percentage will likely grow, because the agreement allows for other countries, besides the 12 currently involved, to "dock on" after the agreement is in place.

Both the TTIP and TPP could have dangerous consequences for food safety in the U.S., and around the world. But they're not limited to food or agriculture policy. Both also contain sweeping policies that could affect everything from the environment and sustainability, to healthcare, Internet freedom and the financial markets. Given the potential of these agreements to shape global policy on so many fronts, it's reasonable to assume that negotiators would actively solicit, and take into careful consideration, input from the affected parties, including consumers, farmers and governments. Instead they've taken the opposite approach. From day one, negotiations for the TTIP and TPP have been shrouded in secrecy. The public and participating governments, including the U.S. Congress, have been shut out of the negotiating process, denied access to everything from early proposals to final draft texts.

Why the secrecy? The Obama Administration wants as little public debate as possible, so it can ram the agreements through Congress using something called "Fast
Track." http://www.citizenstrade.org Fast Track, a product of the Nixon presidency, strips Congress of its authority to control the content of a trade deal and hands that authority over to the executive branch. Congress gets a vote, but only after the negotiations have been completed, and the agreements have been signed. No debate. No amendments. Just a fast, forced vote, too late for Congress to have any influence. According to the CTC, http://www.citizenstrade.org two-thirds of Democratic freshmen in the U.S. House of Representatives have expressed serious reservations about the TPP negotiations and the prospect of giving Fast Track authority to the President. And more than 400 organizations representing 15 million Americans have already petitioned http://www.citizenstrade.org Congress to do away with Fast Track in favor of a more democratic approach to trade agreement negotiations. So far those pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

If the public is shut out, and Congress gets no say, who gets a seat at the table? Corporations. That's right. The Obama Administration is trusting corporations like Dow AgroSciences, Cargill and DuPont, and trade groups like the Pork Producers Council and Tobacco Associates, Inc., to write food safety policies. In all, more than 600 corporationshttp://sojo.net/blogs/2012/06/29/insider-list have been given access to drafts of various chapters of the TPP. Requests for the same level of access, from members of Congress and from the public, have been denied.

No wonder then that, according to leaked drafts obtained by groups like the CTC, Public Citizen and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), the TPP contains proposals designed to give transnational corporations "special rights" that go far beyond those possessed by domestic businesses and American citizens, says http://www.citizenstrade.org Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the CTC. Experts who have reviewed the leaked texts say that TPP negotiators propose allowing transnational corporations to challenge countries' laws, regulations and court decisions, including environmental and food safety laws. Corporations will be allowed to resolve trade disputes in special international tribunals. In other words, they get to do an end run around the countries' domestic judicial systems, effectively wiping out hundreds, if not more, domestic and international food sovereignty laws.

U.S. consumers aren't the only ones who should be up in arms about these trade agreements, the secrecy around their negotiations, and the Obama Administration's intent to fast-track them. Under the TTIP and TPP, consumers in countries that have stricter food safety regulations than those in the U.S. will see their standards lowered, too. For instance, Japan prohibits the use of peracetic acid to sterilize vegetables, fruits and meat, while the U.S., Canada and Australia allow it. Japan's health ministry, in anticipation of the TPP, has said http://www.japan-press.co.jp/modules/news/index.php?id=5626 the country will add the acid to its approved list. In all, Japan has approved only about 800 food additives, to the more than 3,000 approved in the U.S. Japan's consumers could soon see a sudden reversal of laws enacted to protect their health.

European consumers will also suffer. Europe has long used the precautionary principle to ban ractopamine in meat, http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20366.cfm chlorine rinses of poultry http://news.inventhelp.com and the use of rBGH growth hormone http://www.organicconsumers.org/rBGH/milkismilk20405.cfm in
milk production. Under the TTIP, Europe could be forced to allow all three in order to meet the lowest common denominator rule. The precautionary principle removes the burden of proof from policymakers, allowing them to make discretionary decisions in situations where there is the possibility of harm, given the lack of scientific proof to the contrary. But that principle flies out the window under TTIP rules.

The Organic Consumers Association is urging consumers to petition http://salsa3.salsalabs.com President Obama and Interim U.S. Trade Representative Miriam Sapiro to release the draft texts of the TTIP and TPP, and encourage full and open debate on the policies contained in both agreements. The petition also asks President Obama to end the Fast Track option, and grant Congress the ability to debate and amend the agreements, before voting on them.

With the world's food supply, and consumers' health, already endangered by chemical-intensive industrial agriculture and climate change, the U.S. and other governments should be looking for ways to promote sustainable food and agriculture policies, not restrict governments' abilities to do so. Instead, the Obama Administration is subverting the principles of democracy in favor of handing a few transnational corporations unprecedented power to put profits above the health and well being of consumers.

The biotechnology industry has pulled a fast one regarding legitimacy of genetically-modified organisms #GMO

Straddling both sides of the fence, multinational corporations like Monsanto continually claim that their GM monstrosities are "substantially equivalent" to natural crops when it comes to their safety. And yet at the very same time, this ilk also insists that its products are uniquely different from natural crops when it comes to enforcing its patents, a clearly hypocritical and duplicitous stance that proves the illegitimacy of the entire GMO business model.

On its corporate website, Monsanto clearly expresses its opinion that GMOs are no different from natural crops, and thus do not need to be independently safety tested. This a highly convenient position for the company to take, as it facilitates the unlimited propagation of untested GMOs under the guise that they are indistinguishable from any other crop in the natural world. And this is Monsanto's official position on GMOs, mind you, and the one that the company stands by in defending its refusal to conduct long-term GMO safety tests on humans.

But if GMOs are "substantially equivalent" to non-GMOs, then how can Monsanto hold enforceable patents on any of its products? After all, GMOs and non-GMOs are exactly the same, right? Not exactly. When it comes to enforcing patents on its "Frankencrops," Monsanto holds a much different position on the substantial equivalence of its products and natural products. For purposes of generating tens of billions of dollars annually from patent royalties, Monsanto adamantly insists that GMOs are uniquely different from non-GMOs.

GMOs are both the same as and different than natural crops, in the twisted world of Monsanto

So which is it? Are GMOs the same as non-GMOs or are they different? There is no single answer to this question in the eyes of Monsanto, which shifts its answer to accommodate its own corporate interests. But in reality, there can only be one true answer to this question, and science answers it for us quite clearly: GMOs are metabolized by the body differently than natural crops, and almost always carry with them harmful side effects.

It is probably not all that surprising that this glaring disparity has yet to be addressed by the mainstream media. But it just goes to show how deeply corrupted the regulatory bodies of our country and the media outlets that openly abet them have become, allowing Monsanto to play logical gymnastics on the GMO substantial equivalency issue without question. This insanely obvious conspiracy needs to be brought to the world's attention, but will any other news source besides NaturalNews have the integrity and courage to bring it to light?

"Substantial equivalence is a pseudo-scientific concept because it is a commercial and political judgment masquerading as if it were scientific," explains a 1999 study on the fraud of substantial equivalence that was published in the journal Nature. "It is, moreover, inherently anti-scientific because it was created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests."

Also, be sure to check out the comprehensive Earth Open Source report GMO Myths and Truths: An evidence-based examination of the claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified crops for more information:
http://earthopensource.org

Sources for this article include:

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/food-safety.aspx

http://earthopensource.org

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/gmo-dangers

#KevinTrudeau is ordered not to leave the #UnitedStates and surrender his #Passport

Kevin Trudeau, the founder of the highly controversial Global Information Network (GIN), has been ordered by a federal court to surrender all his passports in order to ensure he does not leave the country. Trudeau currently has both a U.S. passport and an Italian passport.

The following document is from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. It is dated June 25, 2013, and reads:

Defendant [Kevin Trudeau] is ordered not to leave the United States until further order of court. Defendant is ordered to surrender immediately all of his passports and any other documents that would permit international travel, to the Clerk of this Court.

Here is the source document
http://www.naturalnews.com/files/Court-orders-the-end-of-Trudeau-81.p...

A second document provides even more detail, beginning with this heading:

WRIT NE EXEAT, ORDER TO SURRENDER PASSPORTS, AND ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE WHY DEFENDANT SHOULD NOT BE PRELIMINARILY ENJOINED FROM LEAVING THE UNITED STATES

This second document claims the FTC believes it will prevail in the final decision against Trudeau, finding him in contempt and possibly seeking to jail him until he pays $37.6 million:
http://www.naturalnews.com/files/Court-orders-the-end-of-Trudeau-80.p...

Apparently the FTC doesn't want Kevin Trudeau to pull an Edward Snowden. The FTC has spent untold millions of dollars going after Trudeau over his involvement with GIN, and they want him to pay back $37 million they claim he defrauded from 800,000 GIN members. Trudeau says he's broke, but this seems difficult to believe given his lavish international lifestyle which has been covered elsewhere in the press. There is also a long trail of emails where Trudeau appears to be instructing his lawyer to hide money in offshore accounts, among other interesting details.

Trudeau attacked for "selling dreams?"

Trudeau has been under intense fire by a growing list of people for not delivering what he promised with GIN, a sort of multi-level information network where people paid huge sums of money to learn "deep secrets" like taking vitamin D to prevent cancer.

But every time I look at the criticism of Trudeau -- ABC News says he's a "dream seller" who "sells hope" -- I can't help but think that Obama is engaged in all the same schemes on a far larger scale. Who sells the most B.S. under the label of "hope?" It's not Trudeau; it's Obama, the President who broke his promises on GMO labeling, shutting down secret military prisons, making government more transparent, lowering health care costs, raising the minimum wage, holding government accountable (ROFL!) and respecting the Second Amendment.

Both Trudeau and Obama are masterful salesmen. They can both make you buy into wonderful-sounding dreams that may or may not ever materialize. Trudeau has ripped off U.S. consumers to the tune of $37.6 million, says the FTC. But last time I checked, Obama has ripped us all off for about $8 trillion added to the national debt during his presidency. And consider this: The people Trudeau ripped off, according to the FTC, at least voluntarily handed over their money. But Obama just has money taken from everyone whether you like it or not. If you refuse to buy his Obamacare health insurance, for example, the IRS has an actual army of 16,000 armed agents -- now being trained with AR-15 rifles -- to come after you and make you pay at gunpoint, if necessary.

I'm not excusing Trudeau's activities by any means, but when there's so much high-level criminality going on in Washington, with criminal government surveillance of the American people now admitted, with the President openly admitting his administration assassinates American citizens completely outside of law, and with the Department of Justice using its power to spy on journalists and prosecute whistleblowers who are trying to expose corruption and injustice, I really have to scratch my head and wonder this: Why is the government spending millions of dollars to go after Kevin Trudeau?

I don't doubt that Trudeau, via GIN, has taken a lot of money from a lot of people while failing to deliver what he promised. If you want more details on all that, check out the "GIN scam" channel on YouTube, where a former GIN member exposes all the ways that he says members of GIN have been defrauded, scammed, lied to or financially exploited by Trudeau.

If you search the internet for complaints about Trudeau and GIN, you'll find a shockingly large number of people saying they were ripped off or deceived. Some even describe Trudeau's organization as a "cult" where people are brainwashed into believing anything Trudeau tells them.

But we see the very same thing with Obama supporters who exhibit highly irrational beliefs in a man who is doing the very same things they once criticized Bush for doing. When Bush ran secret prisons, democrats screamed about human rights. When Obama expands those same secret prisons (and drone strikes, NSA spying, etc.), suddenly he's given a free pass by those same democrats who now inexplicably say "we all need to be spied on for our own safety." Huh?

Why doesn't the FTC go after Obamacare? After all, one of the main functions of the FTC is to break up unfair market monopolies. That's practically a word-for-word description of the Obamacare health insurance mandate, where all Americans are forced to buy an insurance product whether they want it or not.

And the scale of that ripoff will make Trudeau's $37 million look like flecks of microscopic dust compared to a mountain. Again, I'm not excusing anything Trudeau has done, but if the FTC is going to go after "con artists" who are ripping people off and taking their money, they need look no further than the White House, where the biggest con artist in American history is busy dreaming up "hope and change" schemes to defraud ALL Americans.

Precious investigative resources being wasted on small-time operators

I think it's also suspicious how the feds have deeply investigated Trudeau's past but have never investigate Obama's past. I can tell you as a simple matter of fact that the birth certificate document released by the White House was a juvenile attempt at document forgery. It had multiple layers in Adobe Acrobat, and each layer was obviously cut-and-pasted into place in order toforge a fraudulent birth certificate.

Why doesn't ABC News examine this fraud? Why is Kevin Trudeau singled out for such scrutiny when there are far larger crimes and monopolies taking place right now such as Big Pharma's monopoly on med schools, science journals and the entire health care system?

See, as members of a society where we want cons and scams to be eliminated, we are all forced to ask the question that if the FTC has limited investigative resources, then the fact that they have spent all this time and money investigating Kevin Trudeau means they haven't been investigating someone else who's probably a far greater threat to society. I'm willing to bet there's a Big Pharma company somewhere that has been running false advertising or fabricating medical studies to sell a toxic product that's killing American patients. I bet there are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent right now to bribe doctors and influence medical journals. And I bet that top news outlets which push a pro-war agenda just happened to be owned by weapons manufacturers... and yet they escape any market monopoly scrutiny by the FTC, too.

While Wall Street banks are "too big to fail," drug companies and weapons manufacturers are "too big to investigate" as far as the FTC is concerned. And so we get all this regulatory power of the federal government aimed at relatively small-time operators like Trudeau.

Granted, Trudeau probably is guilty of wildly exaggerating the claims of whatever he was selling, but isn't that what drug companies do every day on television? They sell a statin drug that causes rapid muscle deterioration, but the ad depicts healthy, athletic people jogging in the park (or whatever). Is that not Big Pharma "selling dreams" that are complete fiction?

Obama got elected on the sales pitch that he was going to have GMOs labeled while providing "free health care!" Do you see GMOs labeled anywhere? Do you see health care being made free? Nope. It was all hype. So why isn't Obama being investigated by the FTC?

How about the monopolistic actions of Monsanto and their GMOs? Why isn't the FTC looking into that market monopoly?

Or what about the vaccine monopoly and the outrageously unjust "vaccine court" in America that has been granted higher power than the U.S. Supreme Court? Isn't that judicial monopoly worthy of a trade investigation?

I could name a hundred other things the FTC should be investigating right now, but all of them are routinely ignored. Instead, we get the FTC going after people like Kevin Trudeau.

Is the entire system of justice so distorted that it can't even recognize justice anymore?

He may very well deserve whatever charges or fines the FTC is bringing against him, but then again, in an age of runaway government criminality and selective justice against the targeted few, we have to question whether the entire system is itself unjust and irrational. I'm not defending Trudeau and his actions, whatever they may have been, but I am wondering whether this obvious witch hunt effort against him actually serves the best interests of society when there are so many larger -- and far more dangerous -- criminals on the loose in the highest levels of government and corporate America.

Ultimately, Kevin Trudeau will probably go to jail while people like Eric Holder, who masterminded the running of illegal guns into Mexico under Operation Fast & Furious, will face zero consequences for their crimes.

Whatever the outcome, you can bet that the people of America will continue to be royally screwed by whoever is running the White House, Wall Street, Big Pharma and the media. Compared to those criminal operations, everything else is small-time.

How to conceal ALL your Electronic gadgets and Communications from #NSA

In the wake of recent revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government snoops are monitoring the electronic communications of U.S. citizens, millions of us wanted to know what, if anything, we could do to protect our email, cell phone conversations, chat sessions from Big Brother in the future.

Now, granted, the technological capabilities of the NSA are massive. And, as was revealed in subsequent news reports following the initial revelations about the NSA, tech companies and Internet Service Providers are in cahoots with the government, so they're not going to protect you. Further, the Fourth Amendment appears to mean nothing to the Obama Aadministration.

What's a poor, hapless citizen to do? First off, take a deep breath and read on. There are things you can do.

'Pretty Good Privacy'

Per Slate:

Not every communication can be tracked and eavesdropped on by the government, however, and there are ways to reduce the chances of being snooped on. First, instead of browsing the Internet in a way that reveals your IP address, you can mask your identity by using an anonymizing tool like Tor (https://www.torproject.org) or by connecting to the Web using a Virtual Private Network (https://www.torproject.org). Additionally, you can avoid Google search by using an alternative like Ixquick (https://ixquick.com/eng/), which has solid privacy credentials and says it does not log any IP addresses or search terms or share information with third parties.

Want to send protected email? You can do that as well. If you happen to be using a commercial email provider like Google, Yahoo! or another service identified as having been co-opted by PRISM, the NSA's snoop program, you can certainly slow down the agency by sending and receiving emails encrypted with PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), which has been around for years, or a free alternative, GPG (http://www.gnupg.org/). Both of these products can be used to encrypt and decrypt email messages - unless, however, you have Trojan spyware installed on your machine.

"Novice computer users learning how to use PGP or GPG may find it a daunting prospect at first, but there are plenty of tutorials online for both Mac and Windows users that can help guide you through the process," says Slate

If you happen to be a journalist and you are working with confidential sources or an attorney seeking to protect attorney-client conversations - or if you just require security communications - learning how to use either of these protective programs will be a must in the near- and long-term.

Organizations or firms could go even further and stop using a third-party service and instead set up their own email server, "helping ensure no secret court orders can be filed to gain covert access to confidential files," Slate reports. Private documents can be stored online, if necessary, and kept shielded using Cloudfogger (http://www.cloudfogger.com/en/) in conjunction withDropbox.

Instant messaging and phone or video chats can be better protected if you avoid using Microsoft and Google-based services such as Skype and Gchat and instead adopt more secure forms of communication. Those include Jitsi (https://jitsi.org/), which can be utilized for peer-to-peer calls video calls that are encrypted.

Set-up takes some time but it'll be worth it

For encrypted instant message chats you could try an "off the record" plugin like Pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im/) for Windows users and Adium (http://adium.im/) for Mac machines.

For instant messaging and online phone or video chats, you can avoid Microsoft and Google services like Skype and Gchat by adopting more secure alternatives. Jitsi can be used for peer-to-peer encrypted video calls, and for encrypted instant message chats you can try using an "off the record" plugin with Pidgin for Windows users or Adium for Mac.

"Like using PGP encryption, both Pidgin and Adium can take a little bit of work to set up - but there are tutorials to help ease the pain, like this (www.encrypteverything.ca) for setting up Adium and this (https://securityinabox.org/en/pidgin_securechat) tutorial for Pidgin," Slate notes.

Technology advances have made it nearly effortless for governments to spy on citizens. While this practice is common in other countries, the U.S. Constitution, under the Fourth Amendment, absolutely prohibits the kind of blanket surveillance being conducted by the NSA. That the agency received permission to do so from the FISA court - which conducts its business in secret - is not the same thing as having the authority to do so. If that were the case federal courts could grant any number of federal agencies permission to violate every single provision of the Constitution.

That said, it is highly unlikely those responsible for ordering the NSA to spy on American citizens are going to be reprimanded, so the best thing you can do in the meantime is protect your electronic communications as best as you can.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.slate.com

https://www.torproject.org

https://ixquick.com/eng/

On his #DeathBed, this psychiatrist and autism pioneer admitted that #ADHD is a fictitious disease

If you or someone you know has a child that has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), chances are the child is actually just fine. At least this is what the "father" of ADHD, Leon Eisenberg, would presumably say if he were still alive. On his death bed, this psychiatrist and autism pioneer admitted that ADHD is essentially a "fictitious disease," which means that millions of young children today are being needlessly prescribed severe mind-altering drugs that will set them up for a life of drug addiction and failure.

As explained by The Sons of Liberty host Bradlee Dean, who also writes for The D.C. Clothesline, ADHD was merely a theory developed by Eisenberg. It was never actually proven to exist as a verifiable disease, despite the fact that Eisenberg and many others profited handsomely from its widespread diagnosis. And modern psychiatry continues to profit as well, helping also to fill the coffers of the pharmaceutical industry by getting children addicted early to dangerous psychostimulant drugs like Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (amphetamine, dextroamphetamine mixed salts).

"ADHD is fraud intended to justify starting children on a life of drug addiction," said Dr. Edward C. Hamlyn, a founding member of the Royal College of General Practitioners, back in 1998 about the phony condition. Adding to this sentiment, psychiatrists Peter Breggin and Sami Timimi, both of whom oppose pathologizing the symptoms of ADHD, say that ADHD is more of a social construct than it is an objective "disorder."

Psychiatric profession all about generating obscene profits for Big Pharma

The purpose all along for pathologizing ADHD symptoms, of course, was to generate more profits for the drug industry. According to the citizen watchdog group Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI), roughly 20 million American children today are taking dangerous, but expensive, psychiatric drugs for made-up behavioral conditions like ADHD. And another one million or so children have been blatantly and admittedly misdiagnosed with phony behavioral conditions for which psychiatric medications are being prescribed.

"Remember, there are two ways drug companies can make money: Invent new drugs, and invent new diseases already invented drugs can treat," writes Dr. Jay Parkinson, M.D., M.P.H., about the fake disease-creation industry. "In the past decade or so, Big Pharma has created no less than 10 new novel drugs per year," he adds, noting that many of the people who have been told they suffer from ADHD actually suffer from "the consequence of bad design," meaning a conventional social and educational system that is unable and unwilling to recognize unique individuality.

This is definitely true for Jacob Barnett, the 14-year-old autistic genius whose mother was told that her son would probably never read or write. Today, Jacob is already working on his Master's Degree in quantum physics while most of his peers are still in junior high. He is also currently developing his own original theory in astrophysics, according to recent reports.

"The psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars a year to convince the public, legislators and the press that psychiatric disorders such as Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, etc. are medical diseases on par with verifiable medical conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease," explains CCHRI. "Yet unlike real medical disease, there are no scientific tests to verify the medical existence of any psychiatric disorder."

Sources for this article include:

http://dcclothesline.com

http://blog.jayparkinsonmd.com

http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/382293/

http://www.currentconcerns.ch/index.php?id=1608

http://www.naturalnews.com/040552_autism_children_genius_IQ.html

http://www.cchrint.org

Brazil rage spills onto the streets

Demonstrators face riot police during one of the many protests around Brazil's major cities in Belo Horizonte June 17, 2013.(Reuters / Pedro Vilela

Share on tumblrBrazil is the scene of record breaking rallies with over 1mn people across 100 cities demonstrating their discontent with the government. Two people have been killed in the protests and dozens injured, despite reforms promised by the country’s presiden12:30 GMT: Over a quarter of a million people took to the streets across Brazil to protest government corruption. A new poll shows that 75 per cent of Brazilians support the demonstrations.In the cities of Belo Horizonte and Salvador the protests turned violent as activists clashed with police.

12:30 GMT: Over a quarter of a million people took to the streets across Brazil to protest government corruption. A new poll shows that 75 per cent of Brazilians support the demonstrations. 
In the cities of Belo Horizonte and Salvador the protests turned violent as activists clashed with police. 
The vast majority of the demonstrations, however, have been peaceful.

00:50 GMT: Five people arrested in Belo Horizonte during the rally that blocked off streets in the city as rioters looted the center.  Several shops were vandalized and signposts and traffic lights damaged. Police moved in to stop the unrest.

00:25 GMT: So far protests have been held in 107 cities across the country with 286,600 people taking part in demonstrations, according to police estimates.

00:13 GMT: About 3,000 people are rallying in front the National Congress in Brasilia demanding the resignation of several MPs.

Sunday, June 23 

23:59 GMT: Salvador police have detained a suspect carrying several Molotov cocktails, a gas mask, rubber gloves and a note threatening to kill Governor Jaques Wagner. In another note there were statements about President Dilma and references to the “revolution.”

Photo from http://g1.globo.com/

23:16 GMT: A group of protesters peacefully rally in front of the governor’s house in Rio de Janeiro, demanding better public services. The area remains calm and protesters are even offering food to the policemen guarding the property.

Protesters camping, since last night, in front of the residence of Rio de Janeiro's governor Sergio Cabral, in Leblon, Rio de Janeiro, hold signs while blocking the street on June 22, 2013 (AFP Photo / Tasso Marcleo)

23:07 GMT: Police estimate that at least 35,000 people have taken part in a number of marches all across Sao Paolo on Saturday. 

22:46 GMT: Fifteen people have been injured in clashes in Belo Horizonte, police spokesman Colonel Márcio Santana said. Four of those injured were police officers. Authorities were not using excessive force, the spokesman stressed, explaining that there was a group of provocateurs among the crowd while the majority of protesters were rallying peacefully. He has called on protesters to reunite with their families and go home peacefully.

22:21 GMT: A major shopping mall Iguatemi has closed its doors in Salvador with clashes taking place right in front of it. Meanwhile at least six bus stops have been vandalized across Bahia state.

22:05 GMT: A video allegedly showing the moment police used tear gas against the crowd near the Pampulha Airport in Belo Horizonte after a group of protesters tried to breach police cordon.

22:01 GMT: Police in Belo Horizonte have used rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of violent protesters at the front of the march. After the rioters fled, a representative of the military police force reportedly addressed the remaining crowd of peaceful protesters.

A demonstrator throws a stone against anti riot policemen during a protest against corruption and price hikes near Mineirao stadium in Belo Horizonte, Brazil on June 22, 2013 (AFP Photo / Nelson Almeida)

21:40 GMT: Firefighters have been deployed to an area near the Pampulha Airport in Belo Horizonte, where protesters have set at least one vehicle on fire.

21:21 GMT: Mounted police deployed to the scene of clashes in Belo Horizonte are trying to disperse protesters, Globo reports.

21:16 GMT: A protester has fallen from the overpass over Abraão Caram avenue in Belo Horizonte reportedly suffering numerous fractures.

21:09 GMT: 

An injured demonstrator is helped during a protest against corruption and price hikes near Mineirao stadium in Belo Horizonte, Brazil on June 22, 2013 (AFP Photo / Nelson Almeida)

21:03 GMT: The situation is reportedly getting out of control in Belo Horizonte, Globo reporter says. Protesters are setting fires and clashing with police. At least three demonstrators and four protesters have been injured so far. The Risoleta Neves hospital confirmed receiving a young woman with a head injury.

Anti riot police members clash with demonstrators near the Mineirao stadium in Belo Horizonte, Brazill during a protest against corruption and price hikes on June 22, 2013 (AFP Photo / Nelson Almeida)

20:54 GMT: A march has been dispersed in Vale dos Barris avenue in Salvador. At least three people have been arrested for misbehavior, including public urination, confrontation with police and an attempt to break into a store, Globo reports.

20:29 GMT: At least 4,000 demonstrators are marching peacefully in the center of Sao Paulo, according to police estimates.

Image from twitter.com @Ignacio_RT

20:14 GMT: Military police have dispersed a group of violent rock throwing protesters near the Mineirinho Arena in Belo Horizonte. The situation seems under control as the vast majority of the 65,000 protesters rally peacefully, Globo reports.

There were no reports of injuries among the protesters, but one police officer has reportedly suffered an eye injury.

Photo from http://g1.globo.com/

19:42 GMT: Some 5000 protesters gathered 5 killomers away from the stadium in the northeastern city of Salvador, where the national football squad played Italy in a match for the Confederations Cup. The crowd demanded  better schools and transportation and criticized spending on next year's World Cup.

Photo shows peaceful protest in the city of Salvador on Saturday

19:14 GMT: Up to 20,000 protesters in Belo Horizonte are marching to the stadium where the game between Japan and Mexico is being hosted.

19:05 GMT: Some 30,000 people protested in the streets of the town of Santa Maria, in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

18:31 GMT: New rallies kick off in Sao Paulo and 60 other cities across Brazil, reports RT en Espanol.

16:26 GMT: The Brazilian Government has called in the military to help police monitor and ensure safety in tonight’s game with Italy in Salvador de Bahia as protests continue to spread. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff tried to calm the protests via a televised address, promising new plans for public transport, the health care system and pumping oil royalties into education.