Category Archives: Corporate Welfare

Banksters, Corporate Welfare, Original, Tyranny

Whistleblower exposes US Government’s cover up of fraud by bank

AlternativeFreePress.com

Alayne Fleischmann is a Securities Lawyer and former employee of JP Morgan Chase who has recently disclosed the US government’s involvement with covering up the “biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history.”

Fleischmann provided these details in an interview with Rolling Stone in which she describes working for JP Morgan Chase as a deal manager between 2006 and 2008. She witnessed crimes relating to compliance and diligence sabotage including intimidation, abuse, “toxic loans”, and policies such as banning email to avoid paper trails.

Apparently, that was just the tip of the iceburg:

“Everything that I thought was bad at the time turned out to be a million times worse” Alayne Fleischmann

According to Rolling Stone, Fleischmann sent a letter to William Buell, a managing director at JP Morgan Chase. The letter “warned Buell of the consequences of reselling bad loans as securities and gave detailed descriptions of breakdowns in Chase’s diligence process.”

Amazingly, instead of prosecuting JP Morgan Chase, the government “decided to help Chase bury the evidence” and charges against the bank, were “suddenly canceled, and no complaint was filed.”

Fleischmann serves as an extraordinary role model, unafraid to stand up against the corrupt powers that be:
“I could be sued into bankruptcy. I could lose my license to practice law. I could lose everything, but if we don’t start speaking up, then this really is all we’re going to get: the biggest financial cover-up in history.” – Alayne Fleischmann

(Read the Rolling Stone article here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-9-billion-witness-20141106)

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Whistleblower exposes US Government’s cover up of fraud by bank by AlternativeFreePress.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Corporate Welfare, Geopolitics/War, Tyranny

7 Things Harper Doesn’t Want You To Know About The China Trade Treaty (And A Few He Does)

Daniel Tencer
Huffington Post: September 17, 2014

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Chinese investors will have the right to challenge our laws with no recourse to Canadian courts

Supreme Court of Canada (Getty)
The Canada-China FIPA isn’t a complete trade deal. It’s more like one chapter of a trade deal — the chapter that deals with protecting investors’ rights.

Under these agreements, foreign companies gain the right to sue the host country in an international tribunal that doesn’t answer to national courts. Critics say this essentially gives foreign companies the ability to trump Canadian laws.

True, but under the Canada-China FIPA, a Chinese investor or business will have to prove they were subjected to different rules than would apply to a local investor or business. That strongly limits the extent to which Canadian laws can be challenged at the tribunals, and Canada’s ability to pass environmental and other laws likely won’t be as constrained as critics say. Canada will still be able to reject major investments from Chinese companies.

Supporters of the Canada-China FIPA say Canada needs a deal like this with China because we are running a $30-billion-a year trade deficit with the country. To get our money back, we need Chinese investment, and the FIPA gives investors the confidence they need to put their money here.

  • The government can keep lawsuits secret

    Getty
    In the treaty, the government retained the right to hide documents filed in a lawsuit against Canada under the Canada-China FIPA. This is despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that these rulings can go against Canadian government policy.
  • There was no public consultation, no debate, no legislation

    Getty
    This trade treaty, meant to last a generation, got an hour of debate in front of the House of Commons’ trade committee, and that’s it.
  • Canada will be bound by the treaty for 31 years

    Getty
    NAFTA can be terminated in six months, but the Canada-China FIPA runs a minimum of 15 years, has a one-year notice of termination period, and extends rights to Chinese companies already operating in Canada by 15 years after the deal is cancelled.

    Supporters of the deal say the at minimum 31-year timeline makes sense for protecting long-term investments and projects.

  • Some say it’s a better deal for China than for Canada

    Shanghai (Getty)
    So far, FIPAs have been advantageous to Canadian business because they have largely protected Canadian investments in other countries. (“Canadian mining companies are using FIPAs with developing countries to claim damages from community opposition to unwanted mega-projects,” the Council of Canadians reports.)

    But with China, Canada is on the other side of that equation — it’s largely the destination country for investment. “Canada will be much more exposed to claims and corresponding constraints” than China under the deal, Osgoode law prof Gus Van Harten writes.

    Though the deal sets up the same protections for Canadians investing in China as for Chinese investors in Canada, it creates “de facto non-reciprocity,” Van Harten argues, because of the imbalance in the trade relationship.

  • Minority shareholders will be able to sue

    Investors look at stock prices at a securities exchange in Shanghai on August 22, 2014. (Getty)
    Even if a Chinese citizen owns a small portion of a Canadian company, they will be able to use the tribunals set up under the FIPA, Van Harten says.
  • There’s a legal challenge to the deal in the courts right now

    Hupacasath First Nations welcoming figures, Port Alberni, B.C. (Getty)
    British Columbia’s Hupacasath First Nation launched a court challenge on the constitutionality of the deal in January, 2013, arguing the government had violated its responsibility to consult with first nations on constitutional and treaty issues. The B.C. Supreme Court rejected that argument in October, 2013, but the first nation is now appealing that ruling before the Federal Court of Appeal.

    (read the full article at Huffington Post)

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    • Corporate Welfare, Health/Environment

    Transcanada has third catastrophic pipeline leak in 9 months.

    Mark Calzavara
    The Council Of Canadians : September 16, 2014

    Early this morning a natural gas pipeline owned by TransCanada ruptured in Benton Harbor, Michigan causing the evacuation of over 500 people. This is the third catastrophic failure for TransCanada since January of this year.

    The Berrien County Sheriff’s Office issued this release around 6 a.m.:

    “At approximately 2am on Tuesday, September 16, 2014 a natural gas line affiliated with TransCanada, leaked at/near the 100 block of North Blue Creek Rd, in Benton Twp. Cause of the leak is currently unknown. Emergency responders, consisting of local police (Benton Twp), County Deputies and Benton Twp Fire Personnel assisted with evacuating residents within one (1) mile radius of the gas line leak. Vehicular traffic was also re-routed away from this area. No known injuries have been reported at the time of this release and authorities are conducting air monitoring. TransCanada pipeline representatives were working on shutting off and/or re-routing the natural gas flow from this leaking gas line.”

    TransCanada’s other two catastrophic failures were in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta in February and in Otterburne, Manitoba in January. TransCanada is seeking permission to convert parts of the same pipeline that failed in Otterburne to carry diluted bitumen as part of their Energy East pipeline project from Alberta to New Brunswick where up to 90% of its 1.1 million barrel per day capacity will be exported unrefined.

    Source: The Council Of Canadians
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    Corporate Welfare, Geopolitics/War, Privacy

    The U.S. Government’s Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations

    Glenn Greenwald
    The Intercept : September 5, 2014

    Throughout the last year, the U.S. government has repeatedly insisted that it does not engage in economic and industrial espionage, in an effort to distinguish its own spying from China’s infiltrations of Google, Nortel, and other corporate targets. So critical is this denial to the U.S. government that last August, an NSA spokesperson emailed The Washington Post to say (emphasis in original): “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.”

    After that categorical statement to the Post, the NSA was caught spying on plainly financial targets such as the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras; economic summits; international credit card and banking systems; the EU antitrust commissioner investigating Google, Microsoft, and Intel; and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In response, the U.S. modified its denial to acknowledge that it does engage in economic spying, but unlike China, the spying is never done to benefit American corporations.

    Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for instance, responded to the Petrobras revelations by claiming: “It is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters…. What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of—or give intelligence we collect to—U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.”

    But a secret 2009 report issued by Clapper’s own office explicitly contemplates doing exactly that. The document, the 2009 Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review—provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden—is a fascinating window into the mindset of America’s spies as they identify future threats to the U.S. and lay out the actions the U.S. intelligence community should take in response. It anticipates a series of potential scenarios the U.S. may face in 2025, from a “China/Russia/India/Iran centered bloc [that] challenges U.S. supremacy” to a world in which “identity-based groups supplant nation-states,” and games out how the U.S. intelligence community should operate in those alternative futures—the idea being to assess “the most challenging issues [the U.S.] could face beyond the standard planning cycle.”

    One of the principal threats raised in the report is a scenario “in which the United States’ technological and innovative edge slips”— in particular, “that the technological capacity of foreign multinational corporations could outstrip that of U.S. corporations.” Such a development, the report says “could put the United States at a growing—and potentially permanent—disadvantage in crucial areas such as energy, nanotechnology, medicine, and information technology.”

    How could U.S. intelligence agencies solve that problem? The report recommends “a multi-pronged, systematic effort to gather open source and proprietary information through overt means, clandestine penetration (through physical and cyber means), and counterintelligence” (emphasis added). In particular, the DNI’s report envisions “cyber operations” to penetrate “covert centers of innovation” such as R&D facilities.

    In a graphic describing an “illustrative example,” the report heralds “technology acquisition by all means.” Some of the planning relates to foreign superiority in surveillance technology, but other parts are explicitly concerned with using cyber-espionage to bolster the competitive advantage of U.S. corporations. The report thus envisions a scenario in which companies from India and Russia work together to develop technological innovation, and the U.S. intelligence community then “conducts cyber operations” against “research facilities” in those countries, acquires their proprietary data, and then “assesses whether and how its findings would be useful to U.S. industry”

    (read the full article including source documents at The Intercept)

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    Corporate Welfare, WTF

    Pull Your Hair Out As You Learn the Common Core Way of Doing 6 + 9

    Robby Soave
    Reason: September 3, 2014

    Parents in New York are having trouble helping their kids with math homework now that the curriculum is aligned to the national Common Core standards, so a local news channel has released some videos explaining the new lessons.

    Ready to pull your hair out? […] 9 + 6.

    Instead of just, well, adding 9 and 6, students must run a gauntlet of extra addition, “decomposing” 6 into 1 and 5, “anchoring” 9 to 1 to make 10, and then adding the leftover 5. The new way requires a lot more time, a higher vocabulary, and more work. But it’s somehow supposed to be “more comfortable” for young learners, in the estimation of standards peddlers.

    How parents must long for the good old days of rote memorization! (Incidentally, a recent Stanford University study found that rote memorization is important for developing brains.)

    The videos also illustrate why adapting to Core-aligned curriculum is a difficult—and expensive—process for schools. New instructional materials must be purchased, teachers retrained, tests rewritten, etc.

    (Read the article at Reason including source links)

    Read more from Reason on Common Core here.

    Corporate Welfare, Geopolitics/War, Original, Tyranny

    Obama Pursuing Global Corporate Welfare Climate Accord

    AlternativeFreePress.com

    The Obama administration is pushing for an international climate change agreement to funnel more tax dollars into the hands of large corporations. The New York Times reports that despite the fact that the Constitution requires a president obtain approval from a two-thirds majority of the Senate, Obama plans on sidestepping his oath with “some legal and political magic”.

    The climate accord would legally require countries to enact domestic climate change policies as well as make voluntarily pledges to specific levels of emissions cuts and to channel money “to poor countries to help them adapt to climate change”.

    That may sound nice, but there are several reasons why this is a problem…

    1. Foreign Aid is Corporate Welfare.

    In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins describes how he would convince the government leaders of underdeveloped countries to accept huge loans they could never pay off. He explains how those countries were then pressured politically so much that they were effectively neutralized and their economies crippled. Perkins describes the role of an Economic Hit Man as “a highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.”

    Let’s look at an example of how nice sounding green initiatives are often just corporate welfare…

    The BC’s Pacific Carbon Trust takes about $14 million dollars from taxpayers per year and transfers it to large corporations.

    Jordan Bateman with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation explains that “taxpayer money flowed exclusively into the pockets of corporations, including some of the largest companies in the province. Lafarge, a $20 billion company, was paid by the Trust for 22,998 carbon credits. Encana, an $8.8 billion company, sold 84,276 credits. Canfor, a $2.5 billion company, sold 41,573 credits. Other sellers included TimberWest and Interfor.”

    2. Binding Agreements & Loss Of Sovereignty.

    While this climate agreement may not yet legally bind countries into the corporate welfare scheme, that is the endgame.

    The New York Times reports that officials fear this type of agreement which will not will not bind countries to spend billions of dollars. They desperately want a binding agreement. Richard Muyungi, a climate negotiator for Tanzania is quoted “Without an international agreement that binds us, it’s impossible for us to address the threats of climate change… We are not as capable as the U.S. of facing this problem, and historically we don’t have as much responsibility. What we need is just one thing: Let the U.S. ratify the agreement. If they ratify the agreement, it will trigger action across the world.”

    These international agreements seek to destroy nations sovereignty, they attempt to override laws of local, regional and national governments… and this has been planned for a long time.

    The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 by David Rockefeller, it’s members include business leaders, Heads of State, UN bureaucrats, diplomats, politicians and government officials from all over the world.

    In 1990 The Club of Rome published The First Global Revolution, where they outlined how they would create or exaggerate environmental threats with the intention of manipulating the public into giving up their sovereignty to one world government:

    “The common enemy of humanity is man.
    In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
    with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
    water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
    dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”

    3. Debt.

    This climate agreement is being presented under the guise of rich countries helping countries in need, but really it is countries already in debt, getting into more debt, in order to get other countries into debt.

    The “rich” countries are not really rich when you consider their debt, every dollar of aid given is borrowed with interest owing and compounding. Increasing debt and devaluing the dollar.

    The “developing” countries can certainly use help, but the strings attached to this type of help will leave them with more debt than they can handle. This will leave them vulnerable to exploitation and allow corporations to pillage resources.

    Banksters (central banks) create fiat currency and loan it to the government, it is then given to banksters (world bank / IMF) who loan it to developing countries. Debt on top of debt, interest plus more interest.

    Written by Alternative Free Press
    Creative Commons License
    Obama Pursuing Global Corporate Welfare Climate Accord by AlternativeFreePress.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

    Sources:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/us/politics/obama-pursuing-climate-accord-in-lieu-of-treaty.html

    http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jordan-bateman/carbon-bc_b_1723907.html
    http://www.green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man

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    Corporate Welfare, Drugs

    Pennsylvania Superior Court: Mandatory Minimum Sentences are Unconstitutional

    The Joint Blog: August 25, 2014

    The Pennsylvania Superior Court has ruled that mandatory minimum sentences – including those imposed on nonviolent drug crimes – are unconstitutional, a ruling which will have a large and immediate impact on the state’s legal system.

    The court made the ruling as part of a case against a Montgomery County man, James Newman, who received a mandatory 5-year sentence for possession of drugs (cocaine) and a gun. The court vacated the sentence, and called the current practice of mandatory minimum sentencing “unconstitutional”.

    (read the full article at The Joint Blog)

    The full opinion can be found at http://www.pacourts.us.

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    Corporate Welfare, Health/Environment

    Fraud at the CDC uncovered, 340% increased risk of autism hidden from public

    CNN iReport : August 24, 2014

    A top researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played a key role in helping uncover data manipulation by the CDC. This fraud obscured a higher incidence of autism in African-American boys. The whistleblower, Dr. William Thompson, came forward after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for original data on an autism study was filed and these highly sensitive documents were received with the assistance of U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The CDC documents and discussions with the whistleblower reveal widespread manipulation of scientific data and top-down pressure on CDC scientists to suppress a causal link between the MMR vaccine and later autism diagnosis, particularly in a subset of African-American males who received their immunization “on-time” in accordance with the recommended CDC schedule.


    The received documents from the CDC show that in 2003 a 340% increase in autism in African American boys related to the MMR vaccine was discovered and then hidden due to pressure from senior officials. The CDC researchers then recalculated their results by removing a population to get the results that were desired.


    William Thompson has worked for the government agency for over a decade and confirmed that “the CDC knew about the relationship between the age of first MMR vaccine and autism incidence in African-American boys as early as 2003, but chose to cover it up.” He remarked “we’ve missed ten years of research because the CDC is so paralyzed right now by anything related to autism. They’re not doing what they should be doing because they’re afraid to look for things that might be associated.” He alleges criminal wrongdoing by his supervisors, and he expressed deep regret about his role in helping the CDC hide data.

     

    Thompson’s revelations call into question the nine other studies cited by the CDC as evidence denying a link between vaccines and autism. They also have spurred a change.org petition to have the fraudulent study retracted from the Journal of Pediatrics, which published it in 2004.


    A recently released memo from 2004 of Dr. Thompson expressing concerns to Dr. Gerberding, the head of the CDC at the time, about this problematic study has citizens upset. Does this mean Dr. Gerberding could have committed perjury during a congressional hearing? More investigation will be needed to know.

    The letter obtained under FOIA : CDC-Gerberding-Warning-Vaccines-Autism

     

    […]

     

    The US Department of Health Resources and Services Administration has already recognized autism as a secondary cause of vaccine injury as documented in the Update to the Vaccine Injury Table following the 2011 IOM report. They did reject Autism as a direct adverse effect of the MMR specifically, but in view of these revelations that may be revisited.
    http://hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/iomreportupdate030812.pdf

     

    More on this story from Yahoo News!
    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/study-focus-autism-foundation-finds-133000584.html

     

    The peer reviewed analysis of the original CDC data showing a 340% increase in autism in African American boys due to the MMR vaccine can be found here
    http://www.translationalneurodegeneration.com/content/3/1/16

     

    CBS coverage can be found at

     

    http://www.cbs46.com/story/26316561/focus-autism-releases-findings-on-2003-cdc-autism-study-higher-autism-rate-among-african-american-boys-receiving-mmr-shot-earlier-than-36-months#.U_noAOE5EeE.twitter

     

    UPDATE: CDC responds to claims stating that they recognize this study showed an increased risk of autism from the MMR:

     

     

    “findings revealed that vaccination between 24 and 36 months was slightly more common among children with autism, and that association was strongest among children 3-5 years of age.”

     

    They dismissed this with an assumption that parents with children that have autism rushed to get vaccinated for school.

     

    “most likely a result of immunization requirements for preschool special education program attendance in children with autism.”

     

    This raises questions as there are immunization requirements for all children attending public school and they already excluded children that had a vaccine exemption, so this should not have differed from the controls.

     

    The CDC also states that “Additional studies and a more recent rigorous review by the Institute of Medicine have found that MMR vaccine does not increase the risk of autism”. The Studies that the CDC uses to confirm no link between the MMR and autism are 4 that they list on their website at (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Vaccines/MMR/MMR.html ). A quick look at these 4 studies raises several questions.

     

    • One is the study talked about in this article showing a significant connection

    • A second was done by the infamous Dr. Thorsen who is awaiting extradition to the US on Fraud and is listed on the CDC’s most wanted list putting any of his work into question and this is outside of other potential problems with the study that have been brought up.

    • A third is an exploratory study of very small sample sizes, 28 children total, making this unreliable. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526159/

    • The last one also used a small control sample size of only 31 children and relied on parent interviews to provide medical and behavioral information. Beyond that they did find that oer half (50%) of children with autism did regress shortly after the MMR vaccine (<5 months) even though they then concluded there was no connection. http://www.bu.edu/autism/files/2010/03/2006-Richler-et-al-MMR-Vaccine1.pdf

     

    This begs the question as to why there are only these four studies used to support the claims that the MRR is safe and yet a quick search of PubMed finds A 2012 peer reviewed research paper studying over 500,000 children that found significant increase adverse effects after certain MMR vaccinations including a 22 Times increased risk of meningitis, 500% increase risk of febrile seizure, and other major side effects including a blood clotting disorder.

     

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22336803

     

    (read the full article at CNN)

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    Corporate Welfare, Geopolitics/War

    What Have We Accomplished in Iraq?

    Ron Paul: August 18, 2014

    We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait that year, the propaganda machine began agitating for a US attack on Iraq. We all remember the appearance before Congress of a young Kuwaiti woman claiming that the Iraqis were ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and the story was false, but it was enough to turn US opposition in favor of an attack.

    This month, yet another US president – the fifth in a row – began bombing Iraq. He is also placing in US troops on the ground despite promising not to do so.

    The second Iraq war in 2003 cost the US some two trillion dollars. According to estimates, more than one million deaths have occurred as a result of that war. Millions of tons of US bombs have fallen in Iraq almost steadily since 1991.

    What have we accomplished? Where are we now, 24 years later? We are back where we started, at war in Iraq!

    The US overthrew Saddam Hussein in the second Iraq war and put into place a puppet, Nouri al-Maliki. But after eight years, last week the US engineered a coup against Maliki to put in place yet another puppet. The US accused Maliki of misrule and divisiveness, but what really irritated the US government was his 2011 refusal to grant immunity to the thousands of US troops that Obama wanted to keep in the country.

    Early this year, a radical Islamist group, ISIS, began taking over territory in Iraq, starting with Fallujah. The organization had been operating in Syria, strengthened by US support for the overthrow of the Syrian government. ISIS obtained a broad array of sophisticated US weapons in Syria, very often capturing them from other US-approved opposition groups. Some claim that lax screening criteria allowed some ISIS fighters to even participate in secret CIA training camps in Jordan and Turkey.

    This month, ISIS became the target of a new US bombing campaign in Iraq. The pretext for the latest US attack was the plight of a religious minority in the Kurdish region currently under ISIS attack. The US government and media warned that up to 100,000 from this group, including some 40,000 stranded on a mountain, could be slaughtered if the US did not intervene at once. Americans unfortunately once again fell for this propaganda and US bombs began to fall. Last week, however, it was determined that only about 2,000 were on the mountain and many of them had been living there for years! They didn’t want to be rescued!

    This is not to say that the plight of many of these people is not tragic, but why is it that the US government did not say a word when three out of four Christians were forced out of Iraq during the ten year US occupation? Why has the US said nothing about the Christians slaughtered by its allies in Syria? What about all the Palestinians killed in Gaza or the ethnic Russians killed in east Ukraine?

    The humanitarian situation was cynically manipulated by the Obama administration — and echoed by the US media — to provide a reason for the president to attack Iraq again. This time it was about yet another regime change, breaking Kurdistan away from Iraq and protection of the rich oil reserves there, and acceptance of a new US military presence on the ground in the country.

    President Obama has started another war in Iraq and Congress is completely silent. No declaration, no authorization, not even a debate. After 24 years we are back where we started. Isn’t it about time to re-think this failed interventionist policy? Isn’t it time to stop trusting the government and its war propaganda? Isn’t it time to leave Iraq alone?