Great lecture by a great speaker, Tom Woods:
Daily Archives: 23 March 2012
Iran’s banks to be blocked from global banking system
The economic war is now in full swing. I fear the kinetic war will begin soon.
Swift, the body that handles global banking transactions, says it will cut Iran’s banks out of the system on Saturday to enforce sanctions.
The move will isolate Iran financially by making it almost impossible for money to flow in and out of the country via official banking channels.
It will hit its oil industry, but may also have a heavy impact on Iranians who live abroad and send money home.
The move follows EU sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.
(Read more)
Statement from SWIFT: Following an EU Council decision, SWIFT is today announcing it has been instructed to discontinue its communications services to Iranian financial institutions that are subject to European sanctions.
The new European Council decision, as confirmed by the Belgian Treasury, prohibits companies such as SWIFT to continue to provide specialised financial messaging services to EU-sanctioned Iranian banks. SWIFT is incorporated under Belgian law and has to comply with this decision as confirmed by its home country government.
WikiLeaks Emails: Judge Imprisoned because of Ruling Against Halliburton
A March 2009 email from a top director at Stratfor (released as part of WikiLeaks’ Global Intelligence Files) shows that former US District Court judge Sam Kent, who has been in prison from May 2009 through November 2011 on an obstruction of justice charge, believed the charges against him were a result of him ruling against Halliburton.
The Kent case saw him accused of “aggravated sexual abuse” and he was later sentenced for lying during the investigation. According to the email, Kent was having lunch of Stratfor director Lauren Goodrich, and said that the Bush Administration’s Justice Department had begun “sniffing around for dirt to throw at me just weeks after I ruled a heavy case against Halliburton.”
The Stratfor analyst “told him he was nuts to rule anything against Halliburton.” (Read more)