Icelandic court rules that payment processor broke contract laws by blocking credit card donations to whistleblowing site

WikiLeaks has claimed a "significant victory" in its struggle with the US government to allow people to make donations to it through the Visa payment scheme, after an Icelandic court ruled that a payment processor there had broken contract laws by blocking credit card donations to Julian Assange's whistleblowing site.

But Visa International said that the ruling, against a Reykjavik-based company called Valitor - formerly Visa Iceland - might not have any broader application and may not change the current position, in which payments cannot be made to WikiLeaks using Visa cards and other US-owned credit cards. That has choked off the vast majority of donations to WikiLeaks, which said it had lost about $20m in funding as a result.

US financial institutions including Visa, Bank of America, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union, stopped accepting or handling payments intended for WikiLeaks in December 2010, after the site began leaking US diplomatic cables from a cache of nearly 250,000 it had acquired.

Last fall, I argued that the violent reaction to Occupy and other protests around the world had to do with the 1%ers' fear of the rank and file exposing massive fraud if they ever managed get their hands on the books. At that time, I had no evidence of this motivation beyond the fact that financial system reform and increased transparency were at the top of many protesters' list of demands.

But this week presents a sick-making trove of new data that abundantly fills in this hypothesis and confirms this picture. The notion that the entire global financial system is riddled with systemic fraud - and that key players in the gatekeeper roles, both in finance and in government, including regulatory bodies, know it and choose to quietly sustain this reality - is one that would have only recently seemed like the frenzied hypothesis of tinhat-wearers, but this week's headlines make such a conclusion, sadly, inevitable.

The New York Times business section on 12 July shows multiple exposes of systemic fraud throughout banks: banks colluding with other banks in manipulation of interest rates, regulators aware of systemic fraud, and key government officials (at least one banker who became the most key government official) aware of it and colluding as well. Fraud in banks has been understood conventionally and, I would say, messaged as a glitch. As in London Mayor Boris Johnson's full-throated defense of Barclay's leadership last week, bank fraud is portrayed as a case, when it surfaces, of a few "bad apples" gone astray.

In the New York Times business section, we read that the HSBC banking group is being fined up to $1bn, for not preventing money-laundering (a highly profitable activity not to prevent) between 2004 and 2010 - a six years' long "oops". In another article that day, Republican Senator Charles Grassley says of the financial group Peregrine capital: "This is a company that is on top of things." The article goes onto explain that at Peregrine Financial, "regulators discovered about $215m in customer money was missing." Its founder now faces criminal charges. Later, the article mentions that this revelation comes a few months after MF Global "lost" more than $1bn in clients' money.

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican has registered one of its worst budget deficits in years, plunging back into the red with a €15 million ($19 million) deficit in 2011 after a brief respite of profit.

The Vatican on Thursday blamed the poor outcome on high personnel and communications costs and adverse market conditions, particularly for its real estate holdings.

Not even a €50 million gift to the pope from the Vatican bank and increased donations from dioceses and religious orders could offset the expenses and poor investment returns, the Vatican said in its annual financial report.

The Vatican said it ran a €14.9 million deficit in 2011 after posting a surplus of €9.85 million in 2010. The 2010 surplus, however, was something of an anomaly. In 2009 the Vatican ran a deficit of €4.01 million, in 2008 the deficit was €0.9 million and in 2007 it was nearly €9.1 million.

The Vatican city state, which mainly manages the Vatican Museums and is a separate and autonomous administration, managed a budget surplus of €21.8 million. That's largely due to a spike in revenue from the museums: More than five million people visited the Sistine Chapel and other works of art in the Vatican museums last year, bringing in €91.3 million in 2011 compared to €82.4 million a year earlier.

And the Vatican could also cheer that donations from the faithful were also up last year despite the global economic crisis: Donations from Peter's Pence, which are donations from the faithful to support the pope's charity works, rose from $67.7 million in 2010 to $69.7 million last year. That money, however, doesn't figure into the Vatican's operating budget, though contributions from dioceses, religious orders and the Vatican bank do.

NSA whistleblower William Binney was interviewed by internet journalist Geoff Shively at the HOPE Number 9 hackers conference in New York on Friday.

Binney, who resigned from the NSA in 2001 over its domestic surveillance program, had just delivered a keynote speech in which he revealed what Shively called "evidence which we have not seen until this point."

"They're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country ... and assembling that information," Binney explained. "So government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very dangerous process." He estimated that something like 1.6 billion logs have been processed since 2001.

Tightening security screws in the US serves the ultimate goal - to implant the atmosphere of fear in the American society. It serves to raise sales of security equipment, independent journalist Charlie McGrath told RT.

­The latest initiative of the US Department of Homeland Security is to develop laser-based security scanners capable of identifying any chemical substance in human body. Independent journalist Charlie McGrath sees it as a further erosion of the basic human rights in favor of Military-Industrial Complex profits.

Officials insist the scanners will be used to detect explosives at airports and border crossings. They say that if a person has nothing to hide he won't mind subjecting to the procedure.

But some experts are prompting concern for civil liberties in America.

"There is no threat of terror, that is a canard," states categorically the founder of Wide Awake News Charlie McGrath. He explained that as an American he has a 662,000:1 chance of winning an Olympic medal. While taking a bath he has a 685,000:1 chance of drowning in that bath. Walking outside he has a 2.3 million:1 chance of being struck dead by lightning. But the chance of being killed by a terrorist amounts to 3.2 million:1 for an average person on our planet.

Scandal After Scandal, Lie Upon Lie ... What's Going On?

Many bankers, regulators and politicians have been caught in lie after lie and scandal after scandal.

Why haven't they been shamed by all of the disclosures about their behavior, and chastised by the destruction their actions are causing?

Why do we keep falling for the same shenanigans over and over?

We'll answer each of these questions one at a time.

Many of the People Running Wall Street and D.C. Are - LITERALLY - Psycopaths

According to psychologists and sociologists - many on Wall Street and D.C. are not like you and me. They are literally psychopaths.

Reuters reported Tuesday:

In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.

Sixteen percent of respondents said they would commit insider trading if they could get away with it, according to Labaton Sucharow. And 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.

A number of commentators think the numbers are low, because of self-reporting. For example, Richard Eskow writes:

I discussed the survey with a few other people familiar with the banking industry, and they had the same reaction I did: If anything, those numbers sound low. That makes sense. Admitting your criminal inclinations to a total stranger isn't as easy as telling a them your favorite color or what kind of music you like.

As we've repeatedly noted, psychopaths caused the financial crisis ... and they will do it again and again unless they are removed from power.

A death row prisoner in Georgia who has been officially deemed by the courts to be "mentally retarded" is scheduled to be executed next week despite a supreme court ruling that bans the death sentence for people with learning difficulties.

The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles was due to hear a clemency appeal on behalf of the prisoner, Warren Hill, on Friday and has the power to commute his death penalty to life without parole.

But should the five-member board decide to dismiss his plea, Hill will be executed by lethal injection at 7pm on Wednesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson in a move that could pit Georgia against the clear will of the supreme court, the highest judicial panel in the nation.

"We are heading into a constitutional crisis," Hill's lawyer, Brian Kammer, said. "The supreme court banned executions of mentally retarded prisoners, but here we are in Georgia about to execute a man who is mentally retarded."

Hill, 52, was sentenced to death for killing a fellow prisoner, Joseph Handspike, in 1990. At the time he was already serving a life sentence for murdering his girlfriend, Myra Wright.

Neither of the juries at his two trials were told that Hill had an IQ of about 70, that he came from a violent home or that from a very young age had displayed signs of learning disabilities. In November 2002 a judge in a Georgia court found Hill to be "mentally retarded" - the label for learning disabilities that is still used widely in the US among official circles.

The judge's finding was made just a few months after the supreme court, in Atkins v Virginia, ruled that executions of individuals with learning disabilities violated the eight amendment of the US constitution that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Despite the supreme court ban, Hill has fallen into a legal trap that could send him to his death next Wednesday. Georgia is the only state in the country that requires prisoners seeking to avoid execution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are "mentally retarded".

Dubai, July 14, 2012 (Reuters) - Iran could prevent even "a single drop of oil" passing through the Strait of Hormuz if its security is threatened, a naval chief said on Saturday, as tensions simmer over Tehran's nuclear program.

Tehran will increase its military presence in international waters, said Ali Fadavi, naval commander in Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

"If they (the U.S.) do not obey international laws and the IRGC's warnings, it will have very bad consequences for them," Fadavi said, according to Iran's Fars News Agency.

"The IRGC's naval forces have had the ability since the (Iran-Iraq) war to completely control the Strait of Hormuz and not allow even a single drop of oil to pass through."

Fadavi added: "IRGC special naval forces are present on all of the Islamic Republic of Iran's ships in the Indian Ocean and to its east and west, to prevent any movement.

"This IRGC naval force presence in international waters will increase."

Meeting in Turkey focuses on basics of waging war against Assad

Abu Moayed, a commander in an armed Syrian opposition brigade, stood and waved his arms emphatically at the fellow rebel commanders who filled the sweltering room.

His fighters, he said, needed money and weapons. But they were not getting the support promised from the donors and opposition leaders outside Syria.

"We are borrowing money to feed our wounded!" Mr. Moayed shouted. "There is no distribution of the weapons," he added. "All of our weapons, we are paying for them ourselves."

The meeting of the rebel commanders, held after Friday Prayer in this Turkish city near Syria's northern border, said much about the priorities of the Syrian opposition fighting groups at this stage of the conflict, now 17 months old. There was limited discussion of the mass killings in the village of Tremseh the day before - even though the commanders had heard about it and at least one had lost relatives. There was no talk about United Nations cease-fire monitors, the peace envoy Kofi Annan, or endless Security Council debates to halt the conflict. These commanders were focused on the basics of waging war against President Bashar al-Assad.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney gave GOP hopeful Mitt Romney his seal of approval on Thursday, saying the presumptive nominee was the "only" candidate to trust on tough foreign policy decisions.

During a Wyoming fundraiser, the former vice president said that his experience in Washington taught him that every president would have to deal with an international crisis that could mean sending U.S. forces into harm's way.

"When I think about the kind of individual I want in the Oval Office in that moment of crisis, who has to make those key decisions, some of them life-and-death decisions, some of them decisions as commander-in-chief, who has the responsibility for sending some of our young men and women into harm's way, that man is Mitt Romney," Cheney said, according to The Associated Press.