EBRD fraudulently helping Latvia to enter the Euro currency, see video – “Lettonia”‏

The EBRD is helping Latvia to enter the Euro currency by fraud, take a look at this video “Lettonia”, ‏by Italian journalist Mauro Caterina.

During the global financial crisis, which erupted in 2008, Latvia was on the verge of bankruptcy. In 2009, the country’s second largest bank, Parex banka, was nationalized and Latvia asks the Troika (IMF, World Bank and Eu) a loan of 7.5 billion euro. Even the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) participates in the rescue of Parex banka. Indeed, in 2009 the EBRD decide to buy 136 million euro in shares. This is the story of a fraud which has as protagonists the EBRD, the Latvian government and Parex banka. All this has been publicly denounced by the whistleblower John Christmas, American banker who worked for Parex banka and now accuses the EBRD to have used the money of European taxpayers for financial fraud.

It is a huge Russian Mafia crime in Europe involving the “EBRD” (“BERS” in Italian). The victims include all people of Malta and Italy, because the EBRD is helping Latvia to enter the Euro currency by fraud. This fraud is so large (billions of euros affecting millions of people) that it should be in the “Wall Street Journal” and “Financial Times.” The main challenge in bringing this to public attention is that 99% of journalists cannot understand the fraud.

The fraud is very similar to Enron, except it is in Europe and the victims are taxpayers. Journalists almost never understand the technical details of the Enron fraud, but it got huge media exposure anyway.

Background: EBRD helping Latvia and Lithuania to falsify financial statements

John Christmas is the whistleblower from Parex Bank of Latvia. Parex was a specialist in offshore deposit services for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Central Asia. Parex employees discussed links to the KGB and Parex was intermediary in major corruption cases throughout the region. John Christmas has been threatened and exiled since 2005.

The threats and most of the whistleblowing have never been investigated except for a limited investigation by the FBI in 2007. The United States Department of Justice collected a record-breaking settlement from Daimler in 2010, and one of the frauds from my whistleblowing tied in with the case. That fraud is explained on the website www.LawlessLatvia.com and can be confirmed, however Latvian officials did nothing until 2013 when they announced nobody would be prosecuted because the “statute of limitations” expired.

Meanwhile, the Latvian government has worked in cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to cover-up the truth about Parex. Parex collapsed in late 2008 and got bailed out in 2008 and 2009 by the Latvian government (funded by the IMF and European Union) and EBRD. Evidence indicates that the EBRD transaction was fraudulent – an announced stock “sale” that was reversible with an undisclosed “put option” thus making it effectively a “loan.” Because of this, the financial statements of Latvia are currently fraudulent.

The fraud is explained on three videos on the “LatviavEBRD” Youtube channel. The videos have over a quarter-million views. Also, an independent journalist Mauro Caterina produced the video cited at the top of this blog entry, about the fraud. The EBRD refuses to respond.

John Christmas has a background in banking. He has been employed by commercial banks in the United States and Europe in a variety of functions ranging from commercial lending to capital markets and investment banking. As a self-employed property developer, he initiated the Riga International Business Park project in Latvia. He is a citizen of Latvia, and has been a resident of Malta since 2009. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics at Dartmouth College and a Master of Business Administration degree in Finance at Cornell University. He currently holds positions in Malta and the Cayman Islands. He is a member of the UK CFA Society with an Investment Management Certificate.

John Christmas believes EBRD employees refuse to respond because they want to pretend that they don’t know about the whistleblowing. It is a strategy of maintaining “plausible deniability” for when their actions inevitably blow up in the future. While the EBRD remained silent, it was interesting for John Christmas to receive information about a new similar fraud in Lithuania.

A journalist interviewed him about Parex and the EBRD a few months ago and claimed that senior people told him during interviews that the EBRD’s 2013 bailout of Ukio Bank in Lithuania was similarly fraudulent. He never published the interviews, and he made it clear that he was afraid for his personal safety. A pattern has emerged.

EBRD officials are conspiring with bureaucrats in Eastern Europe to help them to temporarily cover-up frauds so that these countries can sneak into the Eurozone and issue bonds without cracking down on the corruption that
is burning up their tax revenue.

Can the European Central Bank and Eurostat please contact the EBRD and the finance ministries of Latvia and Lithuania to ask them to explain the EBRD bailouts of Parex and Ukio? Are the allegations true that in both situations, the EBRD conducted false/reversible “investments” in worthless assets using money from unknowing taxpayers to protect local oligarchs and falsify national financial statements?

The integrity of the Eurozone is at risk if this problem is ignored. John Christmas fears a repeat of the situation in 2001 when Goldman Sachs helped Greece to hide part of it’s debt so it could enter the Eurozone. The result was disaster for all Europeans including Greeks. This information needs to be distributed to hundreds of relevant people and John Christmas asks all of them to write to the EBRD.

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Facebook Self-Censorship: Posts You Write But Don’t Publish Tracked | TIME.com

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The social network monitors what you say — and what you don’t say.

Chances are, Facebook doesn’t really care what you almost chose to post on your ex-boyfriend’s wall one drunken night before deciding you really didn’t want him to read it. Unless, of course, your ex-boyfriend works at Facebook.

Read more: Facebook Self-Censorship: Posts You Write But Don’t Publish Tracked | TIME.com

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/16/facebook-is-keeping-track-of-every-post-you-write-and-dont-publish/

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Malta in the media’s cross hairs on its sale of citizenship

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The sale of Maltese citizenship has stirred lots of international media interest, most of it taking a bad and dim view of the whole scheme.

It may have been a bit hasty, but it remains amazing how some larger states get away with worse shit, whilst smaller states are badgered and bullied!

European citizenship for sale
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/business/2013/12/16/dnt-soares-malta-mulitpassport-europe.cnn.html

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🙂

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Internet: Bots Responsible for More than 60% of All Web Traffic | TIME.com

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If you are visiting this page, the chances are that you are not a human, at least according to research.

A study by Incapsula suggests 61.5% of all website traffic is now generated by bots. The security firm said that was a 21% rise on last year’s figure of 51%.

Some of these automated software tools are malicious – stealing data or posting ads for scams in comment sections.

Online traffic from bots in 2013  — automated softwarethat include everything from hacking tools to spammers to search engine catalogers — is up 21 percent from 2012, when 51 percent of website visits already came from bots. Thirty-one percent of bots are malicious, according to the study, but spam bots decreased from two percent of traffic last year to half-a-percent in 2013.

Read more:
Internet: Bots Responsible for More than 60% of All Web Traffic | TIME.com

http://techland.time.com/2013/12/13/robots-have-taken-over-the-internet/

And in more detail at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25346235

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Obama’s Orwellian Image Control

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Obama’s Orwellian Image Control
By SANTIAGO LYON
Published: December 11, 2013 in The New York Times

THE Internet has been abuzz over the spectacle of President Obama and the prime ministers of Britain and Denmark snapping a photo of themselves — a “selfie,” to use the mot du jour — with a smartphone at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela in South Africa on Tuesday.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/opinion/obamas-orwellian-image-control.html?ref=opinion&_r=3&

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Facebook Admits Organic Reach Is Falling Short, Urges Marketers to Buy Ads

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Facebook is being more blunt about the fact that marketers are going to have to pay for reach.

By Cotton Delo (cdelo@adage.com)
originally published on Thu, 05 Dec 2013 07:00:00 -0500

If they haven’t already, many marketers will soon see the organic reach of their posts on the social network drop off, and this time Facebook is acknowledging it. In a sales deck obtained by Ad Age that was sent out to partners last month, the company states plainly: “We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site.”

It’s a big shift from the stance Facebook took a year ago, when agencies including GroupM called out the fact that posts published by clients were being seen by fewer of their fans.

At the time, Facebook contended that algorithmic changes had been made to weed out spammy, non-engaging content, but that the median reach of pages hadn’t budged. It particularly objected to the inference that the changes had been made to spur marketers to spend more on ads to make up for lost reach.

But now Facebook is making the case for marketers to do just that. In the document, titled “Generating business results on Facebook,” the paragraph in which the impending drop-off in organic reach is revealed concludes with an ad pitch; marketers are told they should consider paid distribution “to maximize delivery of your message in news feed.”

The three-page document also contains a section that repositions how marketers should think about fan acquisition: as a tool for making paid advertising more effective. While free distribution of content is mentioned, it’s the third business benefit listed after “improve advertising effectiveness” (through ads with social context, which is enabled by a substantial fan base) and “lower cost for paid distribution” (since Facebook makes it cheaper to deliver ads with social context.)

In other words, the main reason to acquire fans isn’t to build a free distribution channel for content; it’s to make future Facebook ads work better.

“Your brand can fully benefit from having fans when most of your ads show social context, which increases advertising effectiveness and efficiency,” the document states.

The fact that less and less of brands’ content will surface is described as a result of increased competition for limited space, since “content that is eligible to be shown in news feed is increasing at a faster rate than people’s ability to consume it.” Publishers are one factor in the heightened competition, since Facebook announced earlier this week that links to news articles will be given more prominence , especially on mobile devices, via an algorithm change.

A Facebook spokesman confirmed that the overall organic reach of Facebook posts from brands is in slow decline.

“We’re getting to a place where because more people are sharing more things, the best way to get your stuff seen if you’re a business is to pay for it,” he said.

The drop-off in organic reach continues to be a touchy subject for brands — especially those who invested in growing their fan bases. And it’s going to oblige them to up their content creation game in order to emerge organically from the morass of stories eligible to enter users’ news feeds, according to Digitas VP-Social Marketing Alex Jacobs. But having paid distribution on Facebook is also a given if they want to maintain the reach they may have once had when Facebook was a younger network and users had fewer connections to bombard them with content.

“If brands were to continue reaching the same amount of people as a percentage of their fan base, [Facebook would] be giving preferential treatment to them over a user,” he said. “It’s just the fact of the matter in terms of platform growth and the amount of content that’s getting posted.”

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A man has been arrested for making a Mandela joke: Welcome to Police State Britain!

ABOVE: Ex miner, (left) Tom Christopher and Neil Phillips, from Rugeley, who have been question by police for posting jokes on Facebook

This is absolutely ridiculous!!!! Read on….

A joke which compared Nelson Mandela’s long time in passing to a slow-to-shut-down computer resulted in a Staffordshire man being arrested by police, finger-printed, DNA-swabbed and detained for eight hours—growing evidence of the police state into which modern Britain is turning!

Neil Phillips, who runs the Crumbs sandwich shop in Rugeley, also had his computer seized for three weeks after making the joke on a forum!

Mr Phillips was arrested at his home on September 10 and was taken to a police station where he was quizzed about the postings on the Rugeley Soap Box website.

He said: “It was an awful experience. I was fingerprinted, they took DNA and my computer. It was a couple of jokes, Bernard Manning type. There was no hatred.”

“You can question the taste, but they’re not hateful. I told the police they got plenty of ‘likes’. What happened to freedom of speech?”

“I think they over-reacted massively. Those jokes are ‘out there’, anyway.”

“When they took my computer, I thought, ‘what the hell are they looking for?’ To be questioned would have been over the top, never mind arrested.”

“They are jokes that I cut-and-pasted,” insisted Mr Phillips.

“I didn’t make them up and I didn’t put them on a public site. You have to sign-up and join. It’s turning into the thought police – you can’t do this, you can’t do that.”

After being BAILED Mr Phillips was finally informed by police that there “would be no further action based on CPS decision of there being insufficient evidence to support a prosecution.”

The arrest was the result of a complaint made by a local Liberal Democrat councillor, Tim Jones.

Apparently he was so “incensed” by these jokes that he called in the police!

Great Britain is fast becoming a sick society, choked by fascist political correctness where ordinary folk are persecuted and suffer in silence because no one out there is geared up to help them!

The low-life cretins behind this move should be absolutely
ashamed of their actions.

Read a fuller and more detailed report:
Two men from Rugeley questioned by police for posting jokes on Facebook

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The “Miniatur Wunderland” model railway attraction in Hamburg, Germany

Miniatur Wunderland (German for miniature wonderland) is a model railway attraction in Hamburg, Germany and the largest of its kind in the world, built by the twins Gerrit and Frederik Braun. As of January 2011, the railway consists of 12,000 metres (39,370 ft) of track in HO scale, divided into seven sections: Harz, the fictitious city of Knuffingen, the Alps and Austria, Hamburg, America, Scandinavia, and Switzerland. Of the 6,400 square metres (68,889 sq ft) of floorspace, the model takes 1,150 m2 (12,378 sq ft).

By 2020, the exhibit is expected to have reached its final construction phase, including at least a total of ten new sections in a model area of over 2,300 m2 (24,757 sq ft). The next section covering an airport opened in May 2011. The exhibit includes 890 trains made up of over 11,000 carriages, 300,000 lights, 215,000 trees, and 200,000 human figurines. The creators will work on models of Italy and France now that the airport section is completed. The airport is named Knuffingen International Airport and is modeled after Hamburg International Airport. Possible future additions include Africa, England, or a futuristic landscape.

Watch “Miniatur Wunderland *** official video 2012 *** largest model railway / railroad of the world” on YouTube

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NORDIC-DRIVEN E.U. IGNORES SOUTHERN SMALLER STATES PLIGHTS


The Nordic-driven EU leadership persists in ignoring the plights of its southern member states in the Mediterranean on issues related to migration flows from North Africa and Asia.

 

Cannot avoid commenting on this, and it might be hard not being political about it either, in one sense or another. Again, some might add me to the ever growing disgruntled “mob” who are repeatedly disillusioned by the EU, and what it’s meant to stand for or do for ALL (!!) its citizens. Two news items (links below) in a local Maltese online newspaper came up back to back that simply couldn’t be simply dismissed or ignored with a shrug of indifference.

For the umpteenth time, those leading in the EU have decided to sideline and cast again to the back burner (if not right off the damn darned cooker hob), the issues to tackle adequetely the flows of illegal (I make a repeated emphasis on “illegal”, not the recommended politically correct buzz-term “irregular”!!) migration on the South and East Mediterreanean high seas.

Migration: Malta’s plea ignored in EP committee

MEPs ignore Malta’s position on Frontex

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An Artist Counted Every Atomic Explosion On Earth And Shows Them All In A Matter Of Seconds

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto decided to visualize all the nuclear detonations in the history of time, and has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

This doesn’t start to get terrifying until it just. Doesn’t. Stop.
(Which is around 1956 at the 1:47 mark for those playing the terrifying home game.)

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