Your last show about the bush fam­i­ly was very inter­est­ing. Par­tic­u­lar­ly if its true that H.W.Bush can not recall where he was when the Pres­i­dent Kennedy was assas­si­nat­ed. ( I was read­ing about Sirhan Sirhan and was stunned to find out that the judge in his case went by the name of Her­bert V. Walk­er,) I was won­der­ing can there be any con­nec­tion between this judge and this famous Bush crime fam­i­ly.
Allen

Russ Bak­er is the kind of jour­nal­ist work­ing in the field of polit­i­cal con­spir­a­cies (Deep Social-Polit­i­cal Net­work­ing) who reminds of Peter Dale Scott, the late Gary Webb, and Kevin Phillips, all of whom use sub­stan­tive doc­u­men­ta­tion to sup­port the grotesque diag­no­sis that all is not well in Amer­i­can polit­i­cal cul­ture and has not been for a long time. That plu­to­crats are deeply con­nect­ed, and that they use ambi­tious pla­toons of mer­i­to­crats (Chom­sky’s New Man­darins) and the plain naive to car­ry out their vio­lent strate­gies appears all too true.

Thank you so much for all of your work, Dave Emory, and for the pod­casts, which is about the only way I can catch up with your work. Is there any chance you could post #‘s 711–716? I am read­ing Russ Bak­er’s Fam­i­ly of Secrets, just lis­tened to #730, and would real­ly like to hear the rest of the inter­views with Bak­er. His sen­ti­ments at the end of #730, about how learn­ing who is real­ly run­ning things helps us to live hap­pi­er lives (I would say it releas­es us from the matrix), is a sen­ti­ment I have tried to com­mu­ni­cate to oth­ers, and have giv­en up on. Most peo­ple want to stay in the matrix, sad­ly.

Sul­li­van & Cromwell: the go-to New York law firm for banks fac­ing reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny. Classy:

Exclu­sive: Reg­u­la­tors irate at NY action against Stan­Chart

By Car­rick Mol­lenkamp and Emi­ly Flit­ter and Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK/LONDON | Wed Aug 8, 2012 12:41am EDT

(Reuters) — The Trea­sury Depart­ment and Fed­er­al Reserve were blind­sided and angered by New York’s bank­ing reg­u­la­tor’s deci­sion to launch an explo­sive attack on Stan­dard Char­tered Plc over $250 bil­lion in alleged mon­ey laun­der­ing trans­ac­tions tied to Iran, sources famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion said.

By going it alone through the order he issued on Mon­day, Ben­jamin Lawsky, head of the recent­ly cre­at­ed New York State Depart­ment of Finan­cial Ser­vices, also com­pli­cates talks between the Trea­sury and Lon­don-based Stan­dard Char­tered to set­tle claims over the trans­ac­tions, sev­er­al of the sources said.

Lawsky’s stun­ning move, which includ­ed releas­ing embar­rass­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and details of the bank’s alleged defi­ance of U.S. sanc­tions against Iran, is rewrit­ing the play­book on how for­eign banks set­tle cas­es involv­ing the pro­cess­ing of shad­owy funds tied to sanc­tioned coun­tries. In the past, such cas­es have usu­al­ly been set­tled through nego­ti­a­tion — with pub­lic sham­ing kept to a min­i­mum.

In his order, Lawsky said Stan­dard Char­tered’s deal­ings exposed the U.S. bank­ing sys­tem to ter­ror­ists, drug traf­fick­ers and cor­rupt states.

But the upset expressed by some fed­er­al offi­cials, who were giv­en vir­tu­al­ly no notice of the New York move, may pro­vide ammu­ni­tion for Stan­dard Char­tered to por­tray the alle­ga­tions as com­ing from a rel­a­tive­ly new and over-zeal­ous reg­u­la­tor.

But, giv­en the con­tent of the order — which described Stan­dard Char­tered as a “rogue insti­tu­tion” that “schemed” with the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment and hid from law enforce­ment offi­cials some 60,000 secret trans­ac­tions over near­ly 10 years — the bank may need to come up with a strong defense.

...

NO QUIET DEAL

Stan­dard Char­tered, which sought the advice of one of New York’s top law firms, had hoped that com­ing clean and turn­ing over inter­nal records to fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors would yield a set­tle­ment, sources said.

Those records also were turned over to New York’s bank reg­u­la­tor, which last year was com­bined with an insur­ance agency to cre­ate the new finan­cial watch­dog head­ed by Lawsky, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor and aide to New York Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuo­mo.

Lawsky’s aim, accord­ing to the sources, was to cast more light on a bank’s alleged trans­gres­sions. His agency, these peo­ple said, was­n’t inter­est­ed in a qui­et pact of the sort reached by fed­er­al author­i­ties in recent years.

In 2010, for exam­ple, Bar­clays Plc paid $298 mil­lion in a set­tle­ment with reg­u­la­tors includ­ing the Trea­sury Depart­men­t’s sanc­tions reg­u­la­tor and the Man­hat­tan dis­trict attor­ney’s office. The bank, in set­tle­ment doc­u­ments, said it coop­er­at­ed in the probe.

Bar­clays, like Stan­dard Char­tered, was advised by Sul­li­van & Cromwell, known as the go-to New York law firm for banks fac­ing reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny. The Bar­clays set­tle­ment, while receiv­ing news cov­er­age, was a fair­ly bland doc­u­ment that list­ed the bank’s trans­ac­tions but few insid­er details, such as emails. Oth­er banks, includ­ing Cred­it Suisse and ING, have set­tled in much the same way with U.S. reg­u­la­tors.

...