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Old City, occupied East Jerusalem – In the Christian Quarter, it doesn’t look a lot like Christmas this year.

There are almost no lights, no decorations and no Christmas trees.

During a normal December, the aged limestone streets and alleys are brightly lit and bustling with pilgrims and locals alike, accompanied by Christmas carols from nearby shops.

On these silent nights and days, the streets are mostly empty.

“It doesn’t even feel like Christmas,” said Christo, a soft-spoken Palestinian shopkeeper from inside his Christian souvenir shop stocked with beautiful religious garments while angelic music plays in the background.

Even COVID-19’s economic devastation and the second Intifada’s blood-curdling violence did not affect Christmas celebrations in Jerusalem to such a degree. Many Palestinian Christians say this Christmas in Jerusalem is unprecedented for how devoid it is of Christmas joy.

However, the sheriff's office was informed by members of the tribe that they were not authorized to conduct the raid on their land. In turn, members of the sheriff's office said the tribal members "didn't know what they were talking about," the lawsuit said.Much of McCormick's property and cannabis plants were destroyed during the raid and officers confiscated $300,000 from the tribe's safe.

Additionally, the lawsuit said that on January 8, 2023, McCormick's "family home 'mysteriously' caught fire, after the sheriff's office ordered power and water to his property to be turned off, resulting in the home "being completely burned down," along with much of his personal belongings.

fuck the police

Feels great. The bill gives the govt. power to set encryption standards to messaging services like whatsapp, signal, facebook, instagram, etc as per what they deem to be a public threat (Yes, this means they hold power over seeing private messages and acting appropriately). Also this bill was passed in the absence of more than a 100 MP's, who were suspended. its not like Hinduvta dickriders will be effected, this applies to queers, women, lower-castes, Muslims, and any whistleblower/journalist who speaks for them. India is indeed a fascist dictatorship of the comprador-bourgeoisie, it has never been democratic, but now the government is feeling more and more free to let all of the reactionary elements of it out in the open. The education system is also riddled with propaganda, which is visible with comments under news posts understanding it in an entirely wrong way ("We are skipping China and directly heading to North Korea"- they both are more democratic than you will ever be; "Everyone should read 1984"- read revolutionary science, not bullshit anti-communist fiction, which was not even applied to a state like India. In fact Orwell would be jacking off to this if he was alive).

I feel doomerist from time to time, but obviously that won't help me. The only way to go is raising class consciousness and mobilizing people to organize. I can't do that when I'm not even there. It sucks but I'll have to keep fighting.

This is the 3rd time the flag was taken and vandelized. That is why the camera was put there. Elderly man violently breaks the flag pole first. Thinks about it off screen for a minute. Comes back to stuff the flag under his coat.

I mean if he wanted a flag that badly.....

Lmao. Shit, really?!

At the time, Scholz was the mayor of Hamburg and Olearius (banker) had met him to plead for tax forgiveness, according to an indictment against the banker seen by the Financial Times.

The 371-page indictment against Olearius mentions the chancellor 28 times. Prosecutors also point out that the 81-year-old banker made a €13,000 donation to Scholz’s party during his lobbying campaign. Weeks after two meetings between Olearius and Scholz in late 2016, Hamburg’s tax authority abruptly changed its view and dropped a €47mn claim Warburg was supposed to pay.

Scholz has repeatedly said he cannot remember what he discussed with Olearius. He is adamant that he did not interfere at all with the city tax authority’s decision in favour of the bank. A spokesperson for the German chancellor's office declined to comment.

Yet a number of red flags that include the sequence of events, missing documents and an inaccurate public statement by Hamburg authorities have cast doubts over what really happened behind the scenes.

When Olearius made his case to Scholz in person, the politician “listened attentively and asked smart questions”, the banker wrote in his diary. He also noted that Scholz “did not promise anything” and “did not indicate if and how he may act”. However, Scholz told him he “expected” the banker to remain in touch over the tax issue, assuring him his door was always open.

During a second meeting, Olearius handed Scholz a draft document outlining the bank’s arguments, according to the diary. A few days later, Scholz called him and suggested sending the document to Hamburg’s finance senator, without adding any additional personal comments.

Olearius did so, and the finance senator subsequently forwarded the document to the officials working on the case. In a handwritten note, which was uncovered by prosecutors, the finance senator requested an update on the “state of affairs”.

Days later, the tax office changed its view in favour of Warburg, dropping its claim for €47mn in what it had previously described as illicit tax refunds received by the bank. The finance senator Scholz suggested getting in touch with was briefed about the decision, according to the indictment.

What makes the scandal particularly toxic is the fact that the tax refunds Hamburg had changed its mind about were linked to controversial share-swapping deals dubbed cum-ex. Named after the Latin term for “with” and “without”, these transactions exploited a design flaw in the German tax code. Participants, including Warburg, tricked tax authorities into refunding dividend tax that was never paid in the first place.

His apparent lobbying campaign did not pay off in the end. He and Warburg lost a series of lawsuits, including at the Federal Court of Justice, which ruled that cum-ex was a tax fraud scheme. Since early 2020, Warburg has paid back a total of €250mn to the tax authorities. In a statement on its website, the bank conceded that “the tax assessments of cum-ex transactions by Warburg group has turned out to be wrong”.

Cum-ex has become a full-blown political scandal since 2021, when it emerged that Hamburg authorities had failed to disclose the meetings between Scholz and Olearius. Asked in 2019 by the hard-left Die Linke party in the city state’s parliament if there were any discussions between the senate and the bank over the tax issue, and if Scholz may have been involved, the local government responded: “No”.

By then, Scholz had moved on to serve as minister of finance in the past government led by Angela Merkel. He was elected chancellor in 2021.

The banker’s diaries outline that even the tax official who was in charge of the matter recommended the bank'“seek political support” in the summer of 2016. Olearius also describes how a former senior Hamburg politician and Social Democrat, who had become paid adviser for Warburg, reached out to Scholz ahead of the banker’s meetings with the mayor.

According to the diaries, the adviser then told Olearius that “[Scholz] is looking into the matter”. After the tax decision in 2016, the adviser told Olearius that he was partly responsible for the positive turn.

In 2017, Hamburg indicated it was willing to waive another €57mn tax claim against Warburg. That was prevented, at the last minute, by a rare intervention by the finance ministry in Berlin. The federal government later also shot down a deal between Hamburg’s tax authority and Warburg that would have reduced its total tax bill by €124mn.

Over several years, Hamburg’s tax authority was “suspiciously willing to factor in MM Warburg’s interests in its decision making”, Cologne criminal prosecutors alleged in separate documents seen by the FT. They also point out that Olearius listed several individuals in handwritten notes who needed to be thanked after the decision. That list included Scholz, plus a tick behind his name.

After raiding Hamburg’s tax authority, prosecutors were surprised to discover a suspicious shortage of email communication about the Warburg case between officials. They also noticed other apparent inconsistencies: while few emails about cum-ex and Warburg existed, a number of meetings about the topic took place, as diary entries showed. All this, and other circumstantial evidence could point to a “selective deletion” of data before the raid, the prosecutors argue.

Good ol' olaf

TL;DR the bank tried to get money from taxes it didn't even paid, the head of bank visited olaf, mysteriously the issue resolved itself, the banker had a diary about it, olaf says "never met the guy, didn't do nothin'"