Spanish king’s brother-in-law, a privileged criminal

Posted on June 18, 2018 by petrel41

This video says about itself:

Corruption scandal looms over Spanish royal family

19 February 2013

Inaki Urdangarin, son-in law of Spain’s King Juan Carlos will be questioned in court over the extent to which the monarch and other members of the Royal Household were involved in shady business dealings in a scandal that is threatening the Spanish royal family.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

Brother-in-law of Spanish king to prison cell because of corruption

The brother-in-law of the Spanish king Felipe has started his prison sentence of almost six years for corruption. Iñaki Urdangarin reported to the prison that he had chosen.

Iñaki Urdangarin, being a royal, though only a royal-in-law, has apparently the right to decide to what prison he will go. Some unemployed Spanish worker, persecuted for ‘benefit fraud’ does not have the right to decide to what prison she or he will go. The Catalan political prisoners, persecuted by the Rajoy government for organising a referendum, do not have the right to decide to what prison they will go. Rapper Valtónyc, persecuted by the Rajoy government for rapping criticism of the Spanish royal family, does not have the right to decide to what prison he will go. Basque young people Jokin, Adur and Oihan of Alsasua town threatened by the government with years of prison for ‘terrorism‘ for being drunk in a café, do not have the right to decide to what prison they will go.

The 50-year-old Urdangarin was convicted in appeal last week for fraud and tax evasion. Over the years, the former Olympic handball player stole some 6 million euros from a sports foundation to put them in his own pocket.

Urdangarin’s wife Cristina, the sister of the king, was also prosecuted, but she was acquitted of fraud. However, she has to pay a fine of almost 150,000 euros because she profited from the scam.

Princess Cristina, being the king’s sister, is ‘too big to jail‘. Urdangarin, born a commoner, who only became Duke of Palma de Mallorca and The Most Exellent (Excelentísimo Señor), by his marriage, is not too big to jail. Though he is ‘big’ enough to decide to what jail he wants to go.

Women’s prison

Early this morning Urdangarin reported to the prison in Ávila, 100 kilometers north of Madrid. He had opted for that facility because his wife and four children could then easily visit him from their home town of Geneva.

The Brieva prison mainly houses female prisoners; according to Spanish media, Urdangarin will become the sole occupant of the small men’s department. “They have searched for a long time for the best place for Urdangarin”, explains correspondent Rop Zoutberg. “As a royal family member, one also had to take into account his privacy and security.”

Apparently, the privacy and security of unemployed Spanish workers, persecuted for ‘benefit fraud’ do not count. The privacy and security of the Catalan political prisoners do not count. The privacy and security of rapper Valtónyc does not count. The privacy and security of Basque young people Jokin, Adur and Oihan do not count.

One law for for royals-in-law like Urdangarin. Quite another, far more lenient, law for the king’s sister Cristina, born with ‘blue blood’. And quite another, far more harsh, yet law for commoners.

King Felipe is currently visiting the USA and has not yet responded to the scandal.

Massive German political, economic espionage in Austria

Posted on June 17, 2018 by petrel41

This video says about itself:

5 May 2015

Austria lodges legal complaint over German-US spy scandal

A German spy scandal deepens with the news that Austria has filed a legal complaint over suspicions that Germany’s intelligence services helped US National Security Agency(NSA) spy on European officials and firms. The allegations have created tensions within the ranks of Angela Merkel’s coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD). It appears the affair is unlikely to fizzle out and could prove dangerous for the Chancellor.

Read more here.

That was three years ago. And now …

Translated from Dutch NOS TV, 16 June 2017:

German intelligence service spied on thousands of targets in Austria

The German intelligence service BND kept a spy list between 1999 and 2006 with almost 2000 targets in Austria, according to revelations in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. The list includes ministries, corporations, charity foundations, Islamic associations and arms producers.

The BND, one of the three German intelligence services, kept telephone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses of the targets and ranked the institutions and companies in categories such as “involved in money laundering” and “terrorist financing”. According to Der Standard, the information was exchanged with the American secret service NSA.

It is not clear whether the contact details, for example, were only used to register who had contact with whom, how often and for how long, or that telephone conversations and e-mails of the targets were examined in terms of content.

The Austrian government reacts with dismay at the news. “Spying on friendly states should not happen”, says Chancellor Kurz. “We want to know who has been spied on and when that stopped, and of course we want to be certain that it has stopped.”

Ministries

The list includes all banks and big corporations in Austria, as well as a number of smaller companies. That, according to Der Standard, raises the question whether this is industrial espionage. Among the Austrian government targets the Ministries of Finance and Home Affairs and the office of the Chancellor are on the list. The BND did not want to respond to questions from Der Standard.

Furthermore, it is striking that a number of embassies were also tapped. In addition to the more or less predictable goals such as the embassies of Iran, North Korea and Russia, there are also a number of embassies of European Union and NATO countries, such as France, Greece and the United States.

No spying on friends

It was only in 2013 that Chancellor Angela Merkel was informed about the espionage targets, writes Der Standard on the basis of sources at the intelligence service. That happened after it became known that the German government had been tapped by the American intelligence services. “You should not spy on friends”, Merkel said.

Thereafter, Der Spiegel revealed that the BND itself had also spied on targets in friendly nations to serve the US NSA. Merkel said last year that she was only informed about the BND’s practices in 2015. But sources at the BND say to Der Standard that she knew about it from 2013 onwards.

After fraudulent cars, fraudulent cigarettes

Posted on June 14, 2018 by petrel41

This 2017 video says about itself:

How Smoking 1 pack Wrecks Your Lungs ● You Must See This !

I decided to do my own small test with cotton balls to determine the real effects of smoking a pack a day and what it does to your mouth, throat and lungs not to mention how it compromises every system in your body in order to try to tell you to stop smoking and stop slowly killing yourself. The effects of smoking on your body are no secret and if you don’t know by now, here is another reason why you need to quit smoking. It’s never to late to quit and once you see what a pack a day does to your lungs it will give you the fuel you need to fire up the will power and quit! Good luck on your journey to quit smoking. Remember, waiting another day could be too late.

HOW THE TEST WAS DONE

The machine was set to smoke each cigarette at the same pace each time. Each cigarette that was smoked, was drawn through and past the cotton balls into the pump and exhausted into the air. The smoke was not held. None of the cigarettes were smoked into the cigarette filter. I used Du Maurier cigarettes. The filters on Du Maurier cigarettes are hollowed out and come like that. The smoke was filtered through the cotton, catching some, not all, of the junk. (evident by the accumulation in the hoses) Actual smoking is twice as bad since you also blow the smoke out past all of the same organs twice. Whether the machine smoked the cigarette all at once, or bit by bit, it’s close to the same since the smoke was not blown back through the cotton again which would have made the cotton look even worse.

Remember the posts on this blog on fraudulent software in cars of Volkswagen and many other car corporations? Fraud, with connivance of national and European Union authorities? With as results killing of bees, killing of humans, etc.?

Well, it is not just cars. There is the European Union project REACH. Its original intention was to replace the 2000 most dangerous substances in the chemical industry wherever possible. However, then the chemical corporations lobbied at the EU.

They won: only 15 substances were registered. The other cancer causing or otherwise dangerous substances were left alone.

And now, after the cars which seemed to be not so polluting at tests, but proved to be very polluting during driving, cigarettes which claim to cause not that much cancer on their packages, but which in practice …

Translated from Dutch Trouw daily, 12 June 2018:

Forget the marketing stories: there is a lot more tar and nicotine in cigarettes

Joop Bouma

The RIVM [Dutch public health and environment watchdog] analyzed 100 brands of cigarettes that are on the market in the Netherlands, according to a strict Canadian method. The tar and nicotine values are much higher than shown by the EU measurement method.

Forget the marketing stories about low tar and nicotine levels. Every cigarette is about as bad in terms of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide. And some cigarettes are extra bad. This applies especially to cigarettes whose makers suggest that they contain less tar and nicotine. Exactly those brands are chock full of the carcinogenic substances.

The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) put a hundred Dutch cigarette brands in a smoke machine and measured them, according to a measuring method used in Canada. In this Canadian Intense (CI) method, the tiny ventilation holes that the manufacturers have made in the filters and sleeves of their cigarettes are completely covered. The results are remarkable: in one case up to 26 times as much tar was measured as specified [on the package]. With nicotine it was not much better: up to 17 times as much and carbon monoxide up to 20 times as much.

Diluted

In the European measurement method prescribed in the EU directive for tobacco products, the ventilation holes are open. As a result, clean air is sucked in during machine smoking. The measured tobacco smoke is therefore strongly diluted during the measurement. For example, the cigarettes stay within the limits of the Tobacco Act (maximum 10 mg tar, 1 mg nicotine and 10 mg carbon monoxide). But in practice smokers cover the holes with their fingers, so they get much higher doses.

Of the 100 cigarettes examined, there is only one brand that remains under the legal limits for the Canadian smoking method. That is the originally Greek product Karelia I. But even with this extremely thin cigarette with little tobacco, the tar content is ten times higher than specified.

The RIVM resigned early last month from a Dutch standards committee that advises on the international level on the measurement of carcinogens in tobacco. That committee is dominated by industry, eight of the ten members are from the tobacco business. …

Chock full of tar

The leader is the Marlboro Prime brand of Philip Morris. According to online tobacco vendor Rob Rijkers in Maassluis, this is a cigarette with ‘the softest taste of Marlboro, with less smell on and around the smoker’, but the product is actually full of tar. The cigarette falls in terms of marketing in the category ‘low tar and nicotine levels’. According to Philip Morris’s own specification, this Marlboro product only has 1 mg of tar, one tenth mg of nicotine and 2 mg of carbon monoxide. After masking all the holes that suck in misleading air, it appears that this cigarette delivers more than 26 mg of tar, 1.7 mg of nicotine and no less than 40 mg of carbon monoxide to the smoker.

And why are the European Union and the Dutch government not stopping this fraud at tests, and why are they not having the more realistic Canadian tests? One cause: the revolving door between government and Big Tobacco. CDA party politician Hillen used to be the Dutch minister of ~~war~~ ‘defence‘. Now, he is a Big Tobacco lobbyist. VVD party politician Schippers used to be the Dutch minister of health. Now, she is a Big Tobacco lobbyist.

Scandinavian whaling already before Viking Age

Posted on June 14, 2018 by petrel41

This video is called North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis).

From Uppsala University in Sweden:

Large-scale whaling in north Scandinavia may date back to 6th century

June 13, 2018

The intensive whaling that has pushed many species to the brink of extinction today may be several centuries older than previously assumed. This view is held by archaeologists from Uppsala and York whose findings are presented in the European Journal of Archaeology.

Museum collections in Sweden contain thousands of Iron Age board-game pieces. New studies of the raw material composing them show that most were made of whalebone from the mid-6th century CE. They were produced in large volumes and standardised forms. The researchers therefore believe that a regular supply of whalebone was needed. Since the producers would hardly have found the carcasses of beached whales a reliable source, the gaming pieces are interpreted as evidence for whaling.

Apart from an osteological survey, species origin has been determined for a small number of game pieces, using ZooMS (short for Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometer). The method shows that all the pieces analysed were derived from the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), a massive whale weighing 50-80 tonnes. It got the name because it was the right whale to hunt: it swam slowly, close to shore, and contained so much blubber as to float after being killed.

Whalebone gaming pieces appear at the same time as production features for blubber and large boathouses were multiplying in northern Norway. The gaming pieces were probably made in this region, from where they were transported south and ultimately used as burial gifts in Sweden.

The origins of large-scale whaling in northern Europe have long been shrouded in mystery. Written sources refer to whaling on a large scale during periods corresponding to the Viking Age in Scandinavia. Ninth-century sagas about the Norwegian merchant Ohthere/Ottar (a guest and informant at the court of King Alfred the Great) mention his extensive hunt for large whales, but these stories have long been controversial as factual sources.

The gaming pieces not only indicate early whaling. To the archaeologists, they are an important component in research on extensive early trading networks. These were well-functioning several centuries before the formation of towns in Viking times. The new study, along with several other archaeological studies over the past few years, shows increasingly substantial exploitation of marine resources, and also of inland resources in northern Scandinavia. In a supplementary in-depth study, the results will also be used to study human influence on the marine ecosystems in relation to whale population trends, since it is now realised that the inception of large-scale whaling took place further back in time than was previously known.

British Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners honoured in Paris, France

Posted on June 12, 2018 by petrel41

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Paris to commemorate Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners founder

PARIS is to honour Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) founder member Mark Ashton, who paved the way for gay rights to be adopted by Britain’s trade unions.

The council of the French capital’s fourth arrondissement, a sector which includes the gay village Le Marais, is set to commemorate Mr Ashton as “a role model for young people” after Communist Party councillors proposed a street or public place be named after him.

The former general secretary of Britain’s Young Communist League played a key role in building support for Britain’s striking miners among the gay community during the 1984-1985 dispute.

Deputy mayor Evelyne Zarka, who moved the motion, was inspired after seeing Mr Ashton’s story in the film Pride, which she said made her laugh and cry.

Ms Zarka said it was the action of Mr Ashton and his comrades that had advanced the cause of gay rights, leading to its adoption as policy by the British labour movement.

“His strength, his humanity and his courage make him a source of inspiration. The French Communist Party and especially this part of Paris value highly Mark Ashton and his fight”, she said.

French communists have pledged to preserve Mr Ashton’s memory and would link it to their fights against homophobia and HIV, stressing the importance of connecting struggles.

“I hope our generation will find a way to bring an end to homophobia and HIV in order to give our children a better world to live in”, said Ms Zarka.

Mr Ashton died due to an illness contracted while HIV positive in 1987. He was aged just 26.

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