Corporate Corruption News Articles

Corporate Corruption News Articles
Excerpts of Key Corporate Corruption News Articles in Media

Below are highly revealing excerpts of important corporate corruption news articles from
the major media suggesting a cover-up. Links are provided to the full news articles for
verification. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These corporate corruption news
articles are listed by order of importance. You can also explore the articles listed by order of the
date of the news article or by the date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread
the word, we can and will build a brighter future.
Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of
engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever
published.
Inside the secretive Bilderberg Group

2005-09-29, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4290944.stm
How much influence do private networks of the rich and powerful have on government policies and
international relations? One group, the Bilderberg, has often attracted speculation that it
forms a shadowy global government. Every year since 1954 [they have brought] together about
120 leading business people and politicians. At this year's meeting in Germany, the audience
included the heads of the World Bank and European Central Bank, Chairmen or Chief Executives
from Nokia, BP, Unilever, DaimlerChrysler and Pepsi ... editors from five major newspapers,
members of parliament, ministers, European commissioners ... and the queen of the Netherlands.
The chairman ... is 73-year-old Viscount Etienne Davignon. In an extremely rare interview, he
played down the importance of Bilderberg. "I don't think (we are) a global ruling class because I
don't think a global ruling class exists." Will Hutton ... who attended a Bilderberg meeting in 1997,
says people take part in these networks in order to influence the way the world works, to create
what he calls "the international common sense". And that "common sense" is one which supports
the interests of Bilderberg's main participants. For Bilderberg's critics the fact that there is almost
no publicity about the annual meetings is proof that they are up to no good. Bilderberg meetings
often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household names. Bill
Clinton went in 1991 while still governor of Arkansas, Tony Blair was there two years later
while still an opposition MP. All the recent presidents of the European Commission attended
Bilderberg meetings before they were appointed. Informal and private networks like Bilderberg
have helped to oil the wheels of global politics and globalisation for the past half a century.
Note: Why is this meeting of top world leaders kept so secret? Why, until a few years ago, was
there virtually no reporting on this influential group in the major media? Thankfully, the alternative
media has had some good articles. And a Google search can be highly informative. Explore many
other revealing major media news articles on powerful secret societies. And for those interested,
check out reliable, eye-opening information covering the big picture of how and why these secret
societies are using government-sponsored mind control programs to achieve their agenda.
How can it be that you pay more to the IRS than General Electric?
2010-04-01, Forbes magazine
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corpora...
Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do-that is, if they pay taxes at all. The most egregious example is General Electric. Last year the
conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam.
In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion. How did this happen? It's complicated. GE in effect
consists of two divisions: General Electric Capital and everything else. The everything else--maker
of engines, power plants, TV shows and the like--would have paid a 22% tax rate if it was a
standalone company. It's GE Capital that keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years,
GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S. (posting a $6.5
billion loss in 2009), and make lots of money overseas (a $4.3 billion gain). Not only do the
U.S. losses balance out the overseas gains, but GE can defer taxes on that overseas
income indefinitely. It's the tax benefit of overseas operations that is the biggest reason why
multinationals end up with lower tax rates than the rest of us.
Note: Can you believe that GE not only pays no taxes, they actually get credit from the US
government? They ship US jobs overseas and then reap huge tax benefits as a result. What's
wrong with this picture? For a wealth of media news articles on the hidden manipulations of major
financial corporations, click here.
A New Way to Fight Cancer?

2007-01-23, Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/2007/02/22/a-new-way-to-fight-cancer.html
There are no magic bullets in the fight against cancer: that's the first thing every responsible
scientist mentions when discussing a possible new treatment, no matter how promising. If there
were a magic bullet, though, it might be something like dichloroacetate, or DCA, a drug that kills
cancer cells by exploiting a fundamental weakness found in a wide range of solid tumors. So far,
though, it kills them just in test tubes and in rats infected with human cancer cells; it has never
been tested against cancer in living human beings. DCA ... is an existing drug whose side effects
are well-studied and relatively tolerable. Also, it's a small molecule that might be able to cross the
blood-brain barrier to reach otherwise intractable brain tumors. Within days after a technical paper
on DCA appeared in the journal Cancer Cell last week, the lead author, Dr. Evangelos Michelakis
of the University of Alberta, was deluged with calls and e-mails from prospective patientsto
whom he can say only, Hang in there. DCA is a remarkably simple molecule. It acts in the body to
promote the activity of the mitochondria. Researchers have assumed that the mitochondria in
cancer cells were irreparably damaged. But Michelakis wondered if that was really true. With his
colleagues he used DCA to turn back on the mitochondria in cancer cellswhich promptly died.
One of the great things about DCA is that it's a simple compound, in the public domain, and
could be produced for pennies a dose. But that's also a problem, because big drug
companies are unlikely to spend a billion dollars or so on large-scale clinical trials for a
compound they can't patent.
Note: For a 2010 follow-up by Dr. Michelakis with promising results, click here and watch a 10minute video at this link. For the DCA website, click here. Thank you Newsweek for this important
article. Why haven't any other mass media reported this major story? Why aren't many millions of
dollars being poured into research? Notice even Newsweek acknowledges the drug
companies are not interested in finding a cure for cancer if they can't make a profit from it.
Some suspect the drug companies have even suppressed cancer cures found in the past. For one
amazing example of this, click here. More on DCA available here.
Merck Created Hit List to 'Destroy,' 'Neutralize' or 'Discredit' Dissenting

Doctors
2009-05-06, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/merck-created-hit-list-to-destroy-neutralize-or-d...
Merck made a "hit list" of doctors who criticized Vioxx, according to testimony in a Vioxx class
action case in Australia. According to The Australian, Merck emails from 1999 showed company
execs complaining about doctors who disliked using Vioxx. The list, emailed between Merck
employees, contained doctors' names with the labels "neutralise," "neutralised" or
"discredit" next to them. One email said: We may need to seek them out and destroy them
where they live. The plaintiffs' lawyer gave this assessment: "It gives you the dark side of the use
of key opinion leaders and thought leaders. If (they) say things you don't like to hear, you have to
neutralise them." The court was told that James Fries, professor of medicine at Stanford
University, wrote to the then Merck head Ray Gilmartin in October 2000 to complain about the
treatment of some of his researchers who had criticised the drug. "Even worse were allegations
of Merck damage control by intimidation," he wrote. "This has happened to at least eight
(clinical) investigators. I was mildly threatened myself, but I never have spoken or written on these
issues." The allegations come on the heels of revelations that Merck created a fake medical
journal -- the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine -- in which to publish studies about
Vioxx; had pop songs commissioned about Vioxx to inspire its staff, and paid ghostwriters to draft
articles about the drug.
Note: FDA analysts estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks, 30 to
40 percent of which were probably fatal, in the five years the drug was on the market. For more
along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health corruption news articles from
reliable major media sources.
Where'd the Bailout Money Go? Shhhh, It's a Secret

2008-12-22, Fox News/Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,470824,00.html
It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money
going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they
can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it. "We've lent
some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing
it,"' said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in
emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to." The
Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money
and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is
being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest? None of the banks provided specific
answers. "We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for
Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars. The answers
highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which earmarked $700
billionabout the size of the Netherlands' economyto help rescue the financial industry. There
has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. "It is entirely appropriate for the
American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry," said
Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout. But, at least for
now, there's no way for taxpayers to find that out.
Note: For more key information that the bankers don't want you to know, click here. For many
revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders?

2008-07-25, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/25/cbsnews_investigates/main4296175.shtml
They're some of the most trusted voices in the defense of vaccine safety: the American Academy
of Pediatrics, Every Child By Two, and pediatrician Dr. Paul Offit. But CBS News has found these
three have something more in common - strong financial ties to the industry whose products they
promote and defend. The vaccine industry gives millions to the Academy of Pediatrics for
conferences, grants, medical education classes and even helped build their headquarters. The
totals are kept secret, but public documents reveal bits and pieces. A $342,000 payment from
Wyeth, maker of the pneumococcal vaccine - which makes $2 billion a year in sales. A $433,000
contribution from Merck, the same year the academy endorsed Merck's HPV vaccine - which
made $1.5 billion a year in sales. Every Child By Two, a group that promotes early immunization
for all children, admits the group takes money from the vaccine industry, too - but wouldn't tell us
how much. Then there's Paul Offit, perhaps the most widely-quoted defender of vaccine
safety. He's gone so far as to say babies can tolerate "10,000 vaccines at once." In fact, he's
a vaccine industry insider. Offit holds in a $1.5 million dollar research chair at Children's
Hospital, funded by Merck. He holds the patent on an anti-diarrhea vaccine he developed
with Merck. And future royalties for the vaccine were just sold for $182 million cash.
Note: For an excellent report endorsed by dozens of respected doctors and nurses on the serious
risks and dangers of vaccines, click here. And read an excellent list of questions related to the
usefulness of vaccines that are almost never raised by the major media. This US government
webpage states, "Since the first National Vaccine Injury Compensation (VICP) claims were filed in
1989, 3,981 compensation awards have been made. More than $2.8 billion in compensation
awards has been paid to petitioners."
Patents Over Patients

2007-04-01, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01moss.html
We could make faster progress against cancer by changing the way drugs are developed. In the
current system, if a promising compound cant be patented, it is highly unlikely ever to make
it to market no matter how well it performs in the laboratory. The development of new
cancer drugs is crippled as a result. The reason for this problem is that bringing a new drug to
market is extremely expensive. In 2001, the estimated cost was $802 million; today it is
approximately $1 billion. To ensure a healthy return on such staggering investments, drug
companies seek to formulate new drugs in a way that guarantees watertight patents. In the
meantime, cancer patients miss out on treatments that may be highly effective and less expensive
to boot. In 2004, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered that an off-the-shelf compound called 3bromopyruvate could arrest the growth of liver cancer in rats. The results were dramatic; moreover,
the investigators estimated that the cost to treat patients would be around 70 cents per day. Yet,
three years later, no major drug company has shown interest in developing this drug. The hormone
melatonin, sold as an inexpensive food supplement in the United States, has repeatedly been
shown to slow the growth of various cancers when used in conjunction with conventional
treatments. Early this year, another readily available industrial chemical, dichloroacetate, was
found by researchers at the University of Alberta to shrink tumors in laboratory animals by up to 75
percent. However ... dichloroacetate is not patentable, and the lead researcher is concerned that it
may be difficult to find funding from private investors to test the chemical. Potential anticancer
drugs should be judged on their scientific merit, not on their patentability.
Note: To explore several cancer cures which have shown dramatic potential, yet are not being
studied for lack of funds due to inability to patent the process, click here. Why are these very
promising treatments not being fast-tracked as the expensive AIDS drugs were? For a top MD's
revealing comments on this, click here. And for why the media won't feature these promising
cancer treatments in headlines, click here.
Lockheed and the Future of Warfare

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/business/yourmoney/28lock.html?ex=125938440...
Lockheed Martin doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it.
Lockheed ... has built a formidable information-technology empire that now stretches from the
Pentagon to the post office. It sorts your mail and totals your taxes. It cuts Social Security checks
and counts the United States census. It runs space flights and monitors air traffic. Lockheed ... is
best known for its weapons. But in the post-9/11 world, Lockheed has become more than just the
biggest corporate cog in what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. It is
increasingly putting its stamp on the nation's military policies. Former Lockheed executives,
lobbyists and lawyers hold crucial posts at the White House and the Pentagon, picking weapons
and setting policies. War and crisis have been good for business. The company's stock has tripled
in the last four years. Lockheed is creating robot soldiers and neural software - "intelligent agents"
- to do their work. Israel spends much of the $1.8 billion in annual military aid from the United
States to buy F-16 warplanes from Lockheed. Its own executives say the concentration of power
among military contractors is more intense than in any other sector of business outside banking.
AND, after 9/11 ... cost is essentially irrelevant. Former Lockheed executives serve on the
Defense Policy Board ... and the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which help make
military and intelligence policy and pick weapons for future battles. Lockheed's board
includes E. C. Aldridge Jr. ... the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. To say that "war and crisis have been good for business" is
quite an understatement. To read what one of the most highly decorated generals had to say about
this, click here.
A dangerous dose
2004-09-05, Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2004/09/05/a_dangerous_dose
Marcia Angell [is] a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School [and one of the] former editors
of The New England Journal of Medicine. Her new book, "The Truth About the Drug Companies,"
is a sober, clear-eyed attack on the excesses of drug company power. How does the drug industry
deceive us? It plies attending physicians with expense-paid junkets to St. Croix and Key West,
Fla., where they are given honoraria and consulting fees to listen to promotional presentations. It
promotes new or little-known diseases such as "social anxiety disorder" and "premenstrual
dysphoric disorder" as a way of selling the drugs that treat them. It sets up phony front groups
disguised as "patient advocacy organizations." It hires ghostwriters to produce misleading scientific
articles and then pays academic physicians to sign on as authors. It sends paid lackeys and shills
out onto the academic lecture circuit to ''educate" doctors about a drug's unapproved uses. It hires
multinational PR firms to trumpet dubious studies as scientific breakthroughs while burying the
studies that are likely to harm sales. It buys up the results of publicly funded research. It maintains
a political chokehold on the American public by donating more money to political campaigns than
any other industry in the country. For many years the drug industry has reaped the highest profit
margins of any industry in America. In 2002, the top 10 American drug companies had profit
margins of 17 percent; Pfizer, the largest, had profit margins of 26 percent. So staggeringly
profitable is the drug industry that in 2002 the combined profits for the top 10 drug
companies in the Fortune 500 were greater than those of all the other 490 companies
combined.
Note: For an excellent 10-page summary of this revealing book written by the esteemed author,
click here. For additional reliable information on the health cover-up, click here.
Connections And Then Some

2003-03-14, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A25...
The Carlyle Group [is] an investment house famous as one of the most well-connected companies
anywhere. Former president George H.W. Bush is a Carlyle adviser. Former British prime minister
John Major heads its European arm. Former secretary of state James Baker is senior counselor,
former White House budget chief Richard Darman is a partner, former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt
is senior adviser -- the list goes on. Those associations have brought Carlyle enormous success.
The Washington-based merchant bank controls nearly $14 billion in investments, making it the
largest private equity manager in the world. It buys and sells whole companies the way some firms
trade shares of stock. But the connections also have cost Carlyle. It has developed a reputation as
the CIA of the business world -- omnipresent, powerful, a little sinister. Media outlets from the
Village Voice to BusinessWeek have depicted Carlyle as manipulating the levers of government
from shadowy back rooms. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) even suggested that
Carlyle's and Bush's ties to the Middle East made them somehow complicitous in the Sept. 11
terror attacks. It didn't help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the
news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a
brother of Osama bin Laden. Former president Bush, a fellow investor, had been with him at
the conference the previous day. Bush['s] primary function is to give speeches for Carlyle that
attract wealthy foreigners in places where the former president is especially revered, such as Asia.
The company has rewarded its faithful with a 36 percent average annual rate of return.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. To understand the amazingly powerful role of this lowprofile, yet extremely wealthy and influential group, click here to view free a 48-minute
documentary shown on Dutch national TV which clearly depicts the depths of corruption and deceit
at the highest levels of government. You will be thankful that you watched this highly educational
film.
Pipeline politics taint U.S. war

2002-03-18, Chicago Tribune
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-03-18/news/0203180046_1_caspian-talib...
Outside this country, there is a widespread belief that U.S. military deployments in Central Asia
mostly are about oil. An article in the Guardian of London headlined, A pro-western regime in
Kabul should give the U.S. an Afghan route for Caspian oil, foreshadowed the kind of skeptical
coverage the U.S. war now receives in many countries. Author George Monbiot ... wrote that the
U.S. oil company Unocal Corp. had been negotiating with the Taliban since 1995 to build "oil and
gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian
sea." Unocal pulled out of the deal after the 1998 terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania were linked to terrorists based in Afghanistan. The terrorist acts of Sept. 11, though
tragic, provided the Bush administration a [pretext] to invade Afghanistan, oust the recalcitrant
Taliban and, coincidentally, smooth the way for the pipeline. To make things even smoother, the
U.S. engineered the rise to power of two former Unocal employees: Hamid Karzai, the new
interim president of Afghanistan, and Zalmay Khalizad, the Bush administrations
Afghanistan envoy. [Uri] Averny, a former member of the Israeli Knesset ... argues that the war
on terrorism provides a perfect pretext for Americas imperial interests. If one looks at the map
of the big American bases created for the war, one is struck by the fact that they are
completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean. No
wonder the rest of the world is a bit skeptical about our war on evildoers.
Note: Why do so few people know that these two top officials of Afghanistan were once paid by an
American oil company? For important reports from major media sources on the realities of the "war
on terror," click here.
Five big banks agree to pay more than $5 billion to settle regulatory
charges
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/five-big-banks-agree-to-pay-more-than-...
Five of the worlds largest banks have agreed to pay more than $5 billion in fines to settle charges
made by regulatory agencies and the Justice Department that the banks had acted in concert to
manipulate international interest and foreign currency exchange rates. Attorney General Loretta
E. Lynch said the banks had engaged in brazenly illegal behavior on a near-daily basis.
The scale of the price-fixing scandal is hard to grasp. It touched ... almost every company and
individual in the financial markets. By tweaking global benchmarks used to set foreign exchange
and interest rates for a staggering number of transactions a day, the banks over several years
bilked billions of dollars of extra profits by altering rates in their favor. Critics complained that the
Justice Department had failed to prosecute any additional individuals. Wall Street watchdog group
Better Markets called it a slap on the wrist, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in an email: Thats not accountability for Wall Street. Its business as usual, and it stinks. Barclays,
along with JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Citigroup, will plead guilty
to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. currency and euros, authorities said. JPMorgan
Chase said it had agreed to plead guilty to a single antitrust violation and pay a fine of $550
million. Under the resolution with the Fed, the firm will pay a fine of $342 million. The bank said it
had previously set aside reserves for these settlements.
Note: When it comes to international banking, it appears that almost everything is rigged. For
more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the
systemically corrupt financial industry.
Gold price rigging fears put investors on alert

2014-02-23, Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d5e00172-9b14-11e3-946b-00144feab7de.html
Global gold prices may have been manipulated on 50 per cent of occasions between January
2010 and December 2013, according to analysis by Fideres, a consultancy. The findings come
amid a probe by German and UK regulators into alleged manipulation of the gold price, which is
set twice a day by Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Barclays, Bank of Nova Scotia and Socit Gnrale in
a process known as the London gold fixing. Fideres research found the gold price frequently
climbs (or falls) once a twice-daily conference call between the five banks begins, peaks (or
troughs) almost exactly as the call ends and then experiences a sharp reversal, a pattern it alleged
may be evidence of collusive behaviour. [This] is indicative of panel banks pushing the gold
price upwards on the basis of a strategy that was likely predetermined before the start of
the call in order to benefit their existing positions or pending orders, Fideres concluded.
The behaviour of the gold price is very suspicious in 50 per cent of cases. This is not
something you would expect to see if you take into account normal market factors, said
Alberto Thomas, a partner at Fideres. Alasdair Macleod, head of research at GoldMoney, a dealer
in physical gold, added: When the banks fix the price, the advantage they have is that they know
what orders they have in the pocket. BaFin, the German regulator, has launched an investigation
into gold-price manipulation and demanded documents from Deutsche Bank. The UKs Financial
Conduct Authority is also examining how the price of gold and other precious metals is set as part
of a wider probe into benchmark manipulation following findings of wrongdoing with respect to
Libor and similar allegations with respect to the foreign exchange market.
Important Note: The above article was removed from the Financial Times website just two days
after it was posted. How strange. To read the full article on another website, click here. And for a
BBC article which shows how the Rothschilds fixed gold prices in the past, click here. For more on
financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available
here.
IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers

2012-10-21, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9623863/IMFs-epic-plan-to-conjure-...
One could slash private debt by 100pc of GDP, boost growth, stabilize prices, and dethrone
bankers all at the same time. It could be done cleanly and painlessly, by legislative command, far
more quickly than anybody imagined. The conjuring trick is to replace our system of private bankcreated money -- roughly 97pc of the money supply -- with state-created money. Specifically, it
means an assault on "fractional reserve banking". If lenders are forced to put up 100pc
reserve backing for deposits, they lose the exorbitant privilege of creating money out of
thin air. The nation regains sovereign control over the money supply. There are no more
bank runs, and fewer boom-bust credit cycles. That at least is the argument [in] the IMF study,
by Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof, which came out in August and has begun to acquire a cult
following around the world. Entitled "The Chicago Plan Revisited", it revives the scheme first put
forward by professors Henry Simons and Irving Fisher in 1936 during the ferment of creative
thinking in the late Depression. Benes and Kumhof argue that credit-cycle trauma - caused by
private money creation - dates deep into history. The original authors of the Chicago Plan were
responding to the Great Depression. They believed it was possible to prevent the social havoc
caused by wild swings from boom to bust, and to do so without crimping economic dynamism. The
benign side-effect of their proposals would be a switch from national debt to national surplus.
Note: This article is an incredible breakthrough in real reporting on the banking sector. It is most
highly recommended to read the entire article and then explore our powerful Banking Corruption
Information Center.
A Doctor's Dilemma: When Crucial New-Drug Data Is Hidden

2012-09-24, Time Magazine
http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/24/a-doctors-dilemma-when-crucial-new-drug...
Dr. Ben Goldacre is no slouch when it comes to rooting out the flaws in scientific studies, analyzing
clinical trial data and recognizing when it's been manipulated or fudged. But even Goldacre has
been fooled by bad science. In ... his forthcoming book, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies
Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients, ... Goldacre describes how he ended up prescribing the
antidepressant reboxetine to his patients based on insufficient data. The research
overwhelmingly finds the drug to be ineffective, but it was still approved in the U.K. In order
to get approval of the drug in Europe, the manufacturer had simply not published its
negative data. Seven trials had been conducted comparing reboxetine against a placebo. Only
one, conducted in 254 patients, had a neat, positive result, and that one was published in an
academic journal, for doctors and researchers to read. But six more trials were conducted, in
almost 10 times as many patients. All of them showed that reboxetine was no better than a dummy
sugar pill. None of these trials was published. I had no idea they existed. It got worse. The trials
comparing reboxetine against other drugs showed exactly the same picture: three small studies,
507 patients in total, showed that reboxetine was just as good as any other drug. They were all
published. But 1,657 patients' worth of data was left unpublished, and this unpublished data
showed that patients on reboxetine did worse than those on other drugs.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on pharmaceutical
corruption, click here.
Study finds tumors in rats fed on Monsanto's GM corn

2012-09-19, MSNBC/Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49086360/ns/health-health_care
French scientists said on [September 19] that rats fed on Monsanto's genetically modified
corn or exposed to its top-selling weedkiller suffered tumors and multiple organ damage.
Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen and colleagues said rats fed on a diet containing
NK603 - a seed variety made tolerant to dousings of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller - or given
water with Roundup at levels permitted in the United States, died earlier than those on a standard
diet. The animals on the GM diet suffered mammary tumors, as well as severe liver and kidney
damage. The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology and
presented at a news conference in London. The researchers said 50 percent of males and 70
percent of females died prematurely, compared with only 30 percent and 20 percent in the
control group. GMOs are deeply unpopular in Europe and many other countries, but dominate
key crops in the United States after Monsanto in 1996 introduced a soybean genetically altered to
tolerate Monsanto's Roundup weed killer. Seralini was part of a team that has voiced previous
safety concerns based on a shorter rat study in a scientific paper published in 2009. This new
study takes things a step further by tracking the animals throughout their two-year lifespan. Seralini
believes his latest lifetime rat tests give a more realistic and authoritative view of risks than the 90day feeding trials that form the basis of GM crop approvals, since three months is only the
equivalent of early adulthood in rats.
Note: For alarming photos and more from the above long-term study on the dangers of GM food,
click here. For an incisive, powerful 13-minute video revealing the disturbing results of this first
long-term scientific study on GMOs, click here. For an excellent article and a great two-minute
video clearly explaining the major dangers of GM food, click here. For a powerful summary of the
health risks from GM foods, click here.
Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/23/why-almost-everything-you-hear-about-medic...
If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash. First garlic lowers bad cholesterol,
thenafter more studyit doesnt. Hormone replacement reduces the risk of heart disease in
postmenopausal women, until a huge study finds that it doesnt. But what if wrong answers arent
the exception but the rule? More and more scholars who scrutinize health research are now
making that claim. It isnt just an individual study here and there thats flawed, they charge.
Instead, the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter, leading time and
again to findings that are at best unproved and at worst dangerously wrong. The result is a
system that leads patients and physicians astrayspurring often costly regimens that wont help
and may even harm you. Even a cursory glance at medical journals shows that once heralded
studies keep falling by the wayside. A major study concluded theres no good evidence that statins
(drugs like Lipitor and Crestor) help people with no history of heart disease. The study ... was
based on an evaluation of 14 individual trials with 34,272 patients. Cost of statins: more than $20
billion per year. Positive drug trials, which find that a treatment is effective, and negative trials,
in which a drug fails, take the same amount of time to conduct. But negative trials took an extra
two to four years to be published. With billions of dollars on the line, companies are loath to
declare a new drug ineffective. As a result of the lag in publishing negative studies, patients
receive a treatment that is actually ineffective. From clinical trials of new drugs to cutting-edge
genetics, biomedical research is riddled with incorrect findings.
Note: For the good of your health, the entire article at the link above is well worth reading. For lots
more on how the profit-oriented health profession puts public health at risk, click here and here.
A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/business/12advantage.html
On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in
Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in
the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable and controversial fields in
finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their
identities, have been strictly confidential. Drawn from giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman
Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the bankers form a powerful committee that helps oversee trading in
derivatives, instruments which, like insurance, are used to hedge risk. In theory, this group exists
to safeguard the integrity of the multitrillion-dollar market. In practice, it also defends the
dominance of the big banks. The banks in this group ... have fought to block other banks from
entering the market, and they are also trying to thwart efforts to make full information on prices and
fees freely available. Banks influence over this market, and over clearinghouses like the one this
select group advises, has costly implications for businesses large and small. The size and reach of
this market has grown rapidly over the past two decades. Pension funds today use derivatives to
hedge investments. States and cities use them to try to hold down borrowing costs. Airlines use
them to secure steady fuel prices. Food companies use them to lock in prices of commodities like
wheat or beef.
Note: To explore highly revealing news articles on the powerful secret societies which without
doubt back these top bankers, click here. For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources
detailing the amazing control of major banks over government and society, click here.
The rich get richer, then buy elections

2010-10-24, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/24/IN7R1FV3LE.DTL
It's a perfect storm. I'm talking about the dangers facing our democracy. First, income in America is
now more concentrated in fewer hands than it has been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total
income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans. The top onetenth of 1 percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us. Who are
these people? They're top executives of big corporations and Wall Street, hedge-fund managers
and private equity managers. Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into advertisements for
and against candidates - without a trace of where the dollars are coming from. They're laundered
through a handful of groups. Most Americans are in trouble. Their jobs, incomes, savings and even
homes are on the line. They need a government that's working for them, not for the privileged and
the powerful. Yet their state and local taxes are rising. And their services are being cut. There's no
jobs bill to speak of. Washington says nothing can be done. There's no money left. No money?
The marginal income tax rate on the very rich is the lowest it has been in more than 80
years. Under President Dwight Eisenhower ... it was 91 percent. Now it's 36 percent. We're
losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy.
Note: Whether you are on the left or right of the political spectrum, this incisive article by former
US Sect. of Labor Robert Reich is well worth reading in its entirety. For more in income inequality,
click here.
Tamiflu Developer: Swine Flu Could Have Come From Bio-Experiment

Lab
2009-05-14, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/SwineFlu/story?id=7584420
An Australian researcher claims the swine flu, which has killed at least 64 people so far,
might not be a mutation that occurred naturally but a man-made product of genetic
experiments accidently leaked from a laboratory -- a theory the World Health Organization
is taking very seriously. Adrian Gibbs, a scientist on the team that was behind the development
of Tamiflu, says in a report he is submitting today that swine flu might have been created using
eggs to grow viruses and make new vaccines, and could have been accidently leaked to the
general public. "It might be some sort of simple error that's not being recognized," Gibbs said on
ABC's "Good Morning America." In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Gibbs admitted there
are other ways to explain swine flu's origin. "One of the simplest explanations if that it's a
laboratory escape, but there are lots of others," he said. Regardless of the validity of Gibb's claims,
he and several experts say that just bringing the idea of laboratory security to the public's attention
is important. "There are lives at risk," Gibbs said. "The sooner this idea gets out, the better."
Note: What would cause one of the developers of Tamiflu to make such a statement? If you read
between the lines, there is much more here than meets the eye. For lots more on this intriguing
development, click here.
New Merck Allegations: A Fake Journal; Ghostwritten Studies; Vioxx

Pop Songs; PR Execs Harass Reporters
2009-04-23, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-merck-allegations-a-fake-journal-ghostwritten...
Federal prosecutors in the U.S. will be reading with amusement the Australian press's coverage of
a class action trial down under for patients who took Merck's now-withdrawn painkiller Vioxx.
Details emerging in Oz make some of the antics that Merck's American counterparts got up to look
tame by comparison. For example, in Australia, Merck allegedly: Had a doctor sign his name to
an entirely ghostwritten journal article even though a Merck staffer had complained that the
data within it was based on "wishful thinking;" created a fake "peer-reviewed" journal, the
"Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine," in which to publicize pro-Vioxx articles;
created a Ricky Martin-style pop song to get Merck sales reps all jazzed up about Vioxx;
[and] hatched a Blackadder-style "cunning plan" to seed seminars with speakers who were
sympathetic to Vioxx. Here's The Australian's description of the Merck PR team's over-the-top
"handling" of reporters at ... a class action trial down under for patients who took Merck's nowwithdrawn painkiller Vioxx: A hired crisis management team sits in court every day, under the
guidance of Merck & Co's media spokeswoman flown out from the US, watching what journalists
write, who they talk to and where they go in the court breaks. The team ... follow journalists out of
court, ask them what they are writing, hand out daily press releases and send "background" emails
they say should not be attributed to the company but which detail what they think are the "salient
points" from the evidence presented in court. The team rings reporters first thing in the morning,
accuses them of "cherry-picking" the evidence and bombards newspapers with letters to the editor
arguing their case in detail based on the day's evidence - five were sent to The Australian in just
seven days.
Note: FDA analysts estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks, 30 to
40 percent of which were probably fatal, in the five years the drug was on the market. Read
another CBS News article which shows how Merck literally created a hit list for doctors who
opposed use of Vioxx. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing
health corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
The $700 trillion elephant

2009-03-06, MarketWatch (Wall Street Journal Digital Network)
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/The-700-trillion-elephant-room/story.as...
There's a $700 trillion elephant in the room and it's time we found out how much it really weighs on
the economy. Derivative contracts total about three-quarters of a quadrillion dollars in "notional"
amounts, according to the Bank for International Settlements. These contracts are tallied in
notional values because no one really can say how much they are worth. But valuing them
correctly is exactly what we should be doing because these comprise the viral disease that has
infected the financial markets and the economies of the world. Try as we might to salvage the
residential real estate market, it's at best worth $23 trillion in the U.S. We're struggling to save the
stock market, but that's valued at less than $15 trillion. And we hope to keep the entire U.S.
economy from collapsing, yet gross domestic product stands at $14.2 trillion. Compare any of
these to the derivatives market and you can easily see that we are just closing the windows as a
tsunami crashes to shore. The total value of all the stock markets in the world amounts to less than
$50 trillion, according to the World Federation of Exchanges. To be sure, the derivatives market is
international. But much of the trouble we're in began with contracts "derived" from the
values associated with U.S. residential real estate market. These contracts were engineered
based on the various assumptions tied to those values. Few know what derivatives are
worth. I spoke with one derivatives trader who manages billions of dollars and she said she
couldn't even value her portfolio because "no one knows anymore who is on the other side of the
trade."
Note: Banks and financial firms deemed "too big to fail" were bailed out worldwide at taxpayers'
expense. But what will happen if losses in the derivatives market skyrocket? No government in the
world has the resources to save financial corporations from a collapse in their derivatives trading.
For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources detailing the amazing control of major banks
over government and society, click here.
Under The Influence

2007-04-02, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/29/60minutes/main2625305.shtml
If you have ever wondered why the cost of prescription drugs in the United States are the highest
in the world or why it's illegal to import cheaper drugs from Canada or Mexico, you need look no
further than the pharmaceutical lobby and its influence in Washington, D.C. Congressmen are
outnumbered two to one by lobbyists for an industry that spends roughly a $100 million a
year in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to protect its profits. One reason
[drug company] profits have exceeded Wall Street expectations is the Medicare prescription drug
bill ... passed three-and-a-half years ago. The unorthodox roll call on one of the most expensive
bills ever placed before the House of Representatives began in the middle of the night. The only
witnesses were congressional staffers, hundreds of lobbyists, and U.S. Representatives like Dan
Burton, R-Ind., and Walter Jones, R-N.C. "The pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill," says
Jones. Why did the vote finally take place at 3 a.m.? "They didn't want on national television in
primetime," according to Burton. "I've been in politics for 22 years," says Jones, "and it was the
ugliest night I have ever seen." Jones says the arm-twisting was horrible. It certainly wasn't ugly for
the drug lobby which ... has been a source of lucrative employment opportunities for congressmen
when they leave office. In all, at least 15 congressional staffers, congressmen and federal officials
left to go to work for the pharmaceutical industry, whose profits were increased by several billion
dollars. "They have unlimited resources," Burton says. "And when they push real hard to get
something accomplished in the Congress of the United States, they can get it done."
Note: This article also states that the Medicare prescription bill "was the largest entitlement
program in more than 40 years, and the debate broke down along party lines." Usually
Republicans are against entitlement programs while Democrats support them. Why was it the
opposite in this case? Could it be that big industry made huge profits from the passage of this bill?
For lots more, click here.
Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug

2006-03-12, Independent (one of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-rumsfeld-makes-5m-kil...
The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares
in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive
amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease. More than 60
countries have so far ordered large stocks of the antiviral medication - the only oral medicine
believed to be effective against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease - to try to protect their
people. The United Nations estimates that a pandemic could kill 150 million people worldwide. The
drug was developed by a Californian biotech company, Gilead Sciences. Mr Rumsfeld was
on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and was its chairman from 1997. He then left to join
the Bush administration, but retained a huge shareholding. The 2005 report showed that, in all, he
owned shares worth up to $95.9m, from which he got an income of up to $13m. The firm made a
loss in 2003, the year before concern about bird flu started. Then revenues from Tamiflu almost
quadrupled, to $44.6m, helping put the company well into the black. Sales almost quadrupled
again, to $161.6m last year.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. With both the avian flu and swine flu, top drug companies
raked in billions of dollars from sales of medications and vaccines, most of which went unused and
have now expired. For many more strange coincidences and facts around the avian and swine flu
scares, take a look at our summary of eye-opening news articles available here.
Deadly Immunity - by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

2005-06-16, Common Dreams/Boston Globe
https://web.archive.org/web/20050618020050/http://www.commondreams.org/views0...
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at
the isolated Simpsonwood conference center ... to ensure complete secrecy. The federal officials
and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming
questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and
young children. A mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be
responsible for a dramatic increase in autism. But instead of taking immediate steps to alert
the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at
Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging
data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting
were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine
industry's bottom line. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash
the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical
industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have
been filed by the parents of injured children. More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism.
The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among 11 children
born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931. Internal documents
reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could
cause damage -- and even death -- in both animals and humans.
Note: A good, though somewhat watered down version of the above article was published in the
Boston Globe on July 1, 2005. To see this article on the Globe website, click here. For an excellent
report endorsed by dozens of respected doctors and nurses on the serious risks and dangers of
vaccines, click here.
Enron Schemes Caught On Tape

2005-02-03, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/03/eveningnews/main671618.shtml
During the West Coast Power crisis homes went dark and streetlights were out ... causing injuries
and accidents. But the danger didn't stop Enron's energy traders from having a good laugh. CBS
... reports on the Enron scheme, as caught on new audio tape. The traders and plant operator
laugh and plot in a display that seems to prove the theory that years before the energy crisis,
Enron manipulated markets. "They had to do a rolling blackout through the town and there was a
red light there he didn't see," one Enron trader says on tape. "That's beautiful," a second voice
responds. Enron secretly shut power plants down so they could cause, and then cash in on,
the crisis. Enron also pulled power out of states like California, causing emergency
conditions to worsen. "Sorry California," an Enron trader says. "I'm bringing all our power
out of state today." Plant operators were coached on how to lie to officials. "We want you guys to
get a little creative..." one voice says on the tape, "and come up with a reason to go down. Just call
'em, Hey guyswe're coming down." The plant operator replies, "OK, so we're just comin' down
for some maintenance?" "Right," the trader says. "And that's cool?" the plant operator asks.
"Hopefully," the trader responds, to which the men are heard laughing. Enron also pulled power
out of states like California, causing emergency conditions to worsen. The "shut downs" and "pull
outs" triggered sky high power prices. "We're just making money hand over fist!" one voice is
heard saying on the tape. And when states complained, the guys at Enron seemed to have a
response. "Get a f****** clue," one says. "Yeah," another chimes in. "Leave us alone. Let us make
a little bit of money."
Note: For an eye-opening two-minute video clip on CBS, watch "Enron Schemers on Tape" at this
link. MSNBC also published a revealing article on this. And a New York Times article states
"Company officials had long denied that they illegally shut down plants to create artificial
shortages. Two months after the recording showed how the Nevada plant was shut down, [Enron
CEO Kenneth] Lay called any claims of market manipulation 'conspiracy theories.'" For lots more
reliable information on the energy cover-up, click here.
Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/business/25FOOD.html?pagewanted=all
In late 1986, four executives of the Monsanto Company, the leader in agricultural biotechnology,
paid a visit to Vice President George Bush at the White House. In the weeks and months that
followed, the White House complied, working behind the scenes, to help Monsanto long a
political power with deep connections in Washington get the regulations that it wanted. It was an
outcome that would be repeated, again and again, through three administrations. What Monsanto
wished for from Washington, Monsanto and, by extension, the biotechnology industry got.
Even longtime Washington hands said that the control this nascent industry exerted over its own
regulatory destiny through the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agriculture Department
and ultimately the Food and Drug Administration was astonishing. Dr. Louis J. Pribyl, one of 17
government scientists working on a policy for genetically engineered food, ... knew from studies
that toxins could be unintentionally created when new genes were introduced into a plant's cells.
The government was dismissing that risk and any other possible risk as no different from those of
conventionally derived food. That meant biotechnology companies would not need government
approval to sell the foods they were developing. "This is the industry's pet idea, namely that
there are no unintended effects that will raise the F.D.A.'s level of concern," Dr. Pribyl wrote
in a fiery memo to the F.D.A. scientist overseeing the policy's development. "But time and
time again, there is no data to back up their contention."
Note: For a powerful essay showing the grave risks and dangers of GMOs, click here. For deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources on genetically modified foods, click here.
Western Europe: New Elan in an Old Clan

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,938990,00.html
For seven generations, one European family has dominated an incredible part of all that money
can buy. From its London and Paris banks, the family's millions have been sent forth to ... business
enterprises on six continents. Some of its stately dwellings are the kind of mansions that mere San
Simeons hoped to imitate. This ancient and unusual banking dynasty shields itself from the
curious eye of the public, but the map and history of Europe have been changed by its
action and etched with its name: the House of Rothschild. Seldom unimaginative in the use of
their money, Rothschild gold has powered the ambitions of prime ministers, princes and popes. It
has financed wars and reparations treaties, changed the course of politics and bailed out armies
and nations. The Rothschilds strung railroads across the Continent, gained control of the Suez
Canal [and] carved diamond mines in the African veld. The British Rothschilds [are still] the world's
most important bullion dealers. No modern family ... has been so important for so long in European
business. Newer dynasties such as the Rockefellers and the Fords have made more millions, but
... ledgers cannot reflect the Rothschild lands, their possessions and influence accumulated over
the generations, their priceless collections of art. Today, the legend is very much aliveand being
added to. The Rothschilds are striking out in many new directions behind a silver curtain of
discretion. Rather than run companies by themselves, the Rothschilds often prefer to start or join
syndicates, placing their men on boards to exert maximum influence with minimum investment
risk. [They rely on] a far spreading network of agents, who seldom even admit that they are
employed by the Rothschilds.
Note: To read the full, fascinating article, click here. The major media have very rarely exposed the
power and wealth of the Rothschilds as in this article. Note that the article was written less than a
month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Could it be because of some anger at the elite
who killed Kennedy that this highly revealing article was actually published? For more on secret
societies which command huge hidden power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
media sources available here.
What Ever Happened to Antitrust?

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Antitrust-laws-have-lost-all-effe...
The May 20 settlement between the Justice Department and five giant banks reveals the appalling
weakness of modern antitrust. The banks had engaged in the biggest price-fixing conspiracy
in modern history. It was a "brazen display of collusion" that went on for years, said
Attorney General Loretta Lynch. But there will be no trial [and] no executive will go to jail.
The fines ... will be treated by the banks as costs of doing business. America used to have
antitrust laws that permanently stopped corporations from monopolizing markets. No longer. The
result has been higher prices for the many, and higher profits for the few. It's a hidden upward
redistribution from the majority of Americans to corporate executives and wealthy shareholders.
Similar upward distributions are occurring elsewhere in the economy. The four largest food
companies control 82 percent of beef packing, 85 percent of soybean processing, 63 percent of
pork packing, and 53 percent of chicken processing. Monsanto alone owns the key genetic traits to
more than 90 percent of the soybeans planted by farmers in the United States, and 80 percent of
the corn. Big Agribusiness wants to keep it this way. The list goes on, industry after industry,
across the economy. Antitrust has been ambushed by the giant companies it was designed to
contain. The market is rigged. And unless government unrigs it through bold antitrust action to
restore competition, the upward distributions hidden inside the "free market" will become even
larger.
Note: The above article was written by former US Secretary of Labor and current professor of
public policy at UC Berkeley Robert Reich. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of
deeply revealing news articles about the systemically corrupt financial industry and the income
inequality that this contributes to.
Red Cross 'Diverted Assets' During Storms' Aftermath To Focus On

Image
2014-10-29, National Public Radio
http://www.npr.org/2014/10/29/359365276/on-superstorm-sandy-anniversary-red-c...
Within hours of Superstorm Sandy slamming the East Coast two years ago, Americans opened
their wallets to help donating millions to the first charity that came to mind: the American Red
Cross. In the months after the disaster, the Red Cross touted its success in delivering food, clothes
and shelter to tens of thousands of people left homeless by the storm. The venerable charity's
track record in dealing with the megastorm is now being challenged. Multiple internal documents
obtained by NPR and ProPublica along with interviews with top Red Cross officials ...
depict an organization so consumed with public relations that it hindered the charity's
ability to provide disaster services. Among NPR and ProPublica's findings: The Red Cross
national headquarters in Washington "diverted assets for public relations purposes." A
former Red Cross official managing the Sandy effort says 40 percent of available trucks were
assigned to serve as backdrops for news conferences. Distribution of relief was "politically driven
instead of [Red Cross] planned." Relief organizers were ordered to produce 200,000 additional
meals one day to drive up numbers. They did it at extraordinary cost, even though there was no
one to deliver them to and most went to waste. It wasn't just Sandy. When Isaac hit Mississippi and
Louisiana earlier in 2012 ... one Red Cross official had 80 trucks drive around empty or largely
empty "just to be seen," as one of the drivers recalls.
Note: The above story follows up on this Salon/ProPublica article, where the Red Cross called its
spending habits a "trade secret". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply
revealing stories about corporate corruption from reliable sources.
Did Merck Unfairly Monopolize the Market for a Mumps Vaccine?

2014-09-10, Wall Street Journal blog
http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2014/09/10/did-merck-unfairly-monopolize-the-m...
Did Merck use false pretenses to monopolize the market for mumps vaccines? A pair of lawsuits
one of which is filed by former employees and the other by doctors make this allegation and a
federal judge is allowing both claims to proceed. The former employees virologists who filed
a whistleblower lawsuit four years ago charge Merck knew its vaccine was less effective
than the purported 95% efficacy level. And they alleged that senior management was aware,
complicit and in charge of testing that concealed the actual effectiveness. They claim to
have witnessed fIrsthand what they describe as improper testing and data falsification in which
Merck engaged in order to conceal what the drug maker knew about the vaccines diminished
efficacy. In fact, their Merck superiors and senior management pressured them to participate in the
fraud and subsequent cover up when they objected to and tried to stop it, according to their
lawsuit. The feds declined to join the lawsuit, which was unsealed two years ago. Shortly
afterwards, the physicians subsequently filed the other lawsuit charge the vaccine was mislabeled
and was not the product for which the government or other purchasers paid, which meant that
Merck violated the False Claims Act. Both lawsuits note that Merck held an exclusive license to
sell a mumps vaccine and its actions discouraged competition. The ultimate victims here are the
millions of children who, every year, are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing
them with an adequate level of protection, the lawsuit filed by the virologists states. Meanwhile,
the mumps vaccine was ringing the register at Merck, which reported that sales reached $621
million last year.
Note: Read a CBS News article which shows how Merck literally created a hit list for doctors who
opposed use of the deadly drug Vioxx, which was responsible for thousands of deaths. A second
CBS article shows how Merck created a fake medical journal to support Vioxx and harassed
reporters revealing the truth. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply
revealing health corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/us/before-shooting-in-iraq-warning-on-black...
Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdads Nisour Square in 2007,
the State Department began investigating the security contractors operations in Iraq. But the
inquiry was abandoned after Blackwaters top manager there issued a threat: that he could
kill the governments chief investigator and no one could or would do anything about it
as we were in Iraq. American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than
the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the
previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted
the embassys relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country.
After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department
officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the
company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had
created an environment full of liability and negligence. The management structures in place to
manage and monitor our contracts in Iraq have become subservient to the contractors
themselves, the investigator, Jean C. Richter, wrote in an Aug. 31, 2007, memo to State
Department officials. Blackwater contractors saw themselves as above the law, he said,
adding that the hands off management resulted in a situation in which the contractors,
instead of Department officials, are in command and in control.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war crimes news articles from
Health conspiracy theories are widely believed
2014-03-19, USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/19/health-conspiracy-theori...
Nearly half of American adults believe the federal government, corporations or both are involved in
at least one conspiracy to cover up health information, a new survey finds. Conspiracy theories on
everything from cancer cures to cellphones to vaccines are well known and accepted by sizable
segments of the population, according to a research letter published this week in JAMA Internal
Medicine. The findings reflect "a very low level of trust" in government and business,
especially in pharmaceutical companies, says study co-author Eric Oliver, a professor of
political science at the University of Chicago. The online survey of 1,351 adults found: 37%
agree the Food and Drug Administration is keeping "natural cures for cancer and other
diseases" away from the public because of "pressure from drug companies." 20% believe
health officials are hiding evidence that cellphones cause cancer. 20% believe doctors and health
officials push child vaccines even though they "know these vaccines cause autism and other
psychological disorders." Smaller numbers endorse theories involving fluoride, genetically
modified foods and the deliberate infection of African Americans with HIV. 49% believe at least
one of the theories and 18% believe at least three. The beliefs also go along with certain health
behaviors, the survey found. Those who believe at least three health conspiracy theories are less
likely to use sunscreen, get flu shots or get check-ups and are more likely to use herbal remedies
and eat organic foods.
Note: For an intriguing list of 10 major health cover-ups with evidence to back it up, click here.
Fake-food scandal revealed as tests show third of products mislabelled

2014-02-07, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/07/fake-food-scandal-revealed-tests...
Consumers are being sold food including mozzarella that is less than half real cheese, ham on
pizzas that is either poultry or "meat emulsion", and frozen prawns that are 50% water, according
to tests by a public laboratory. The checks on hundreds of food samples, which were taken in West
Yorkshire, revealed that more than a third were not what they claimed to be, or were mislabelled in
some way. Testers also discovered beef mince adulterated with pork or poultry, and even a herbal
slimming tea that was neither herb nor tea but glucose powder laced with a withdrawn prescription
drug for obesity at 13 times the normal dose. A third of fruit juices sampled were not what they
claimed or had labelling errors. Two contained additives that are not permitted in the EU, including
brominated vegetable oil, which is designed for use in flame retardants and linked to behavioural
problems in rats at high doses. Experts said they fear the alarming findings from 38% of 900
sample tests by West Yorkshire councils were representative of the picture nationally, with
the public at increasing risk as budgets to detect fake or mislabelled foods plummet. In one
case, tests revealed that the "vodka" had been made not from alcohol derived from agricultural
produce, as required, but from isopropanol, used in antifreeze and as an industrial solvent. Many
of the samples were collected from fast-food restaurants, independent retailers and wholesalers;
some were from larger stores and manufacturers.
Note: For more on corporate corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
100 Years Later, The Federal Reserve Has Failed At Everything It's Tried
2013-12-20, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendrickson/2013/12/20/100-years-later-the-fe...
On Dec. 23, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Owen Glass Act, creating the Federal
Reserve. As we note its centennial, what has the Fed accomplished during the last 100 years?
The stated original purposes were to protect the soundness of the dollar and banks and also to
lessen the jarring ups and downs of the business cycle. Oops. Under the Feds supervision, boom
and bust cycles have continued. Three of them have been severe: the Great Depression, the
stagflationary period of 1974-82, and the current Great Recession. Bank failures have occurred
in alarmingly high numbers. Depending on what measurements are used, the dollar has lost
between 95 and 98 percent of its purchasing power. (Amazingly, the Feds official position today is
that inflation is not high enough, so the erosion of the dollar continues as a matter of policy.)
Having failed to achieve its original goals, the Fed also has had a miserable record in
accomplishing later goals. The 1970 amendments to the Federal Reserve Act stipulated that the
Fed should promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate
long-term interest rates. In baseball parlance, the Fed has been 0-for-three. So, what has the
Fed accomplished during its century of existence? Well, it has become adept at bailing out
mismanaged banks. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed orchestrated the
big bailout of Wall Street. Politically, the Fed is repugnant. Its chairman is commonly referred to
as the second most powerful person in the country. In a democratic republic, should the second
most powerful policymaker be unelected?
Note: How remarkable for Forbes to publish an article chastising the Fed! The times are a
changin'! For an essay by noted financial researcher Ellen Brown on this occasion, click here. For
more on the collusion between government and the biggest banks, see the deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Here's why Wall Street has a hard time being ethical

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/25/wall-street-hard-time-ethical
My first year on Wall Street, 1993, I was paid 14 times more than I earned the prior year and three
times more than my father's best year. For that money, I helped my company create financial
products that were disguised to look simple, but which required complex math to properly
understand. That first year I was roundly applauded by my bosses, who told me I was clever, and
to my surprise they gave me $20,000 bonus beyond my salary. When I did ask, rather naively, if
this was all kosher, I would be assured multiple times that multiple lawyers and multiple managers
had approved the sales. One senior trader, consoling me late at night, reminded me, You are
playing in the big leagues now. If a customer wants a red suit, you sell them a red suit. If that
customer is Japanese, you charge him twice what it costs. Being paid very well also helped ease
any of my concerns. Feeling guilty, kid? Here take a big check. I was, for the first time in my life,
feeling valued for my math skills. Ego and money are nice salves for any potential feeling of guilt.
After a few years on Wall Street it was clear to me: you could make money by gaming
anyone and everything. The more clever you were, the more ingenious your ability to
exploit a flaw in a law or regulation, the more lauded and celebrated you became. Nobody
seemed to be getting called out. No move was too audacious. Traders got more and more
audacious, and corruption became more and more diffused through the system. By 2006 you
could open up almost any major business, look at its inside workings, and find some wrongdoing.
Note: For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
sources available here.
New Leaks Into Pacific at Japan Nuclear Plant

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/world/asia/leaks-into-pacific-persist-at-ja...
Tons of contaminated groundwater from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant have
overwhelmed an underground barrier and are emptying daily into the Pacific, creating what
a top regulator has called a crisis. The water contains strontium and cesium, as well as
tritium. The plant was already struggling to store hundreds of thousands of tons of contaminated
water that flowed through the buildings housing three reactors where [three] meltdowns occurred
in 2011. But the contamination in this new groundwater problem is from different sources, Tepco
said. The company has admitted that it failed to respond quickly enough to the latest groundwater
contamination, saying it was preoccupied with more pressing issues like cooling the damaged
reactors. Tepco appears overwhelmed in dealing with what is a very serious problem, said Akio
Yamamoto, a professor of nuclear engineering at Nagoya University, who serves as outside expert
for the Nuclear Regulation Authority, Japans nuclear watchdog. Critics contend that the plant has
emitted far more radioactive materials than it is saying, based in part on levels of contaminants
discovered in the harbor, which are well above safe levels in some places. The contamination
appears to be spreading, with tests last month by Tepco showing high levels of tritium and other
radioactive elements like strontium starting at other locations near the two other crippled reactors.
Note: Declaring the situation an "emergency", the Japanese government has stepped in to take
over control of the response from Tepco. For more on this, click here. For a National Geographic
article on what you need to know about the radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean by the
Fukushima disaster, click here. It reports that scientists have estimated that contaminated
seawater could reach the West Coast of the United States in five years or less. For more on the
environmental devastation of nuclear power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
Is Big Pharma Addicted To Fraud?

2013-07-29, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikakelton/2013/07/29/is-big-pharma-addicted-to-...
Recent news out of China raises the question once again of whether any aspect of the
pharmaceutical business can be trusted. First, Chinese authorities announced they were
investigating GlaxoSmithKline and other pharma companies for bribing doctors, hospitals and
government officials to buy and prescribe their drugs. Glaxo is accused of using a Shanghai travel
agency to funnel at least $489 million in bribes. Then the New York Times revealed last week the
alarming news that an internal Glaxo audit found serious problems with the way research was
conducted at the companys Shanghai research and development center. Last year Glaxo paid $3
billion to resolve civil and criminal allegations of, among other things, marketing widely used
prescription drugs for unapproved treatments and using kickbacks to promote sales. Glaxo is a
leader in pharma fraud and wrongdoing, with other industry heavyweights close behind. Over the
past decade, whistleblowers and government investigations in the US have exposed a neverending series of problems by numerous pharma companies in all facets of the industry, starting
with fraudulent research papers used to bolster marketing and continuing through to the
manufacture of contaminated and defective products, the marketing of drugs for unapproved and
life-threatening uses and the mispricing of prescription drugs. Pharma ... has paid more than
$30.2 billion in civil and criminal penalties to the US and state governments and continues
to face more allegations of wrongdoing. The industry despite huge penalties and a long
string of public mea culpas has a fraud habit that is just too profitable to kick. Finding a
cure should be a top priority of regulators worldwide.
Note: For more on pharmaceutical industry corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from
reliable major media sources available here.
The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis

2013-06-19, Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-c...
It's long been suspected that ratings agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's helped trigger
the meltdown. A new trove of embarrassing documents shows how they did it. Everybody else got
plenty of blame: the greed-fattened banks, the sleeping regulators, the unscrupulous mortgage
hucksters. But what about the ratings agencies? Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a
pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, ... we
now know that the nation's two top ratings companies, Moody's and S&P, have for many
years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating
in exchange for cash. In incriminating e-mail after incriminating e-mail, executives and analysts
from these companies are caught admitting their entire business model is crooked. Ratings
agencies are the glue that ostensibly holds the entire financial industry together. Their primary
function is to help define what's safe to buy, and what isn't. But the financial crisis happened
because AAA ratings stopped being something that had to be earned and turned into
something that could be paid for. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission published a case
study in 2011 of Moody's in particular and discovered that between 2000 and 2007, the agency
gave nearly 45,000 mortgage-backed securities AAA ratings. One year Moody's doled out AAA
ratings to 30 mortgage-backed securities every day, 83 percent of which were ultimately
downgraded. "This crisis could not have happened without the rating agencies," the commission
concluded.
Note: This is another great, well researched article by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. Why isn't the
major media coming up with anything near the quality of this man's work? For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.
Cypriot Bailout Sends Shivers Throughout the Euro Zone

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/business/global/facing-bailout-tax-cypriots...
Europes decision to force depositors in Cypriot banks to share in the cost of the latest
euro zone bailout has sparked outrage in Cyprus and fears that a run on deposits over the
weekend might spread to larger countries at risk like Spain and Italy. Under an emergency deal
reached early Saturday in Brussels, a one-time tax of 9.9 percent is to be levied on Cypriot bank
deposits of more than 100,000 euros, or $130,000, effective [March 19]. That will hit wealthy
depositors mostly Russians who have put vast sums into Cypruss banks in recent years. But
smaller deposits will also be taxed, at 6.75 percent, meaning that the banks will be confiscating
money directly from retirees and ordinary workers to help pay the tab for the 10 billion euro
bailout or $13 billion. Most of the 10 billion euros will go to bail out Cypriot banks, which took a
blow when their substantial holdings of Greek government bonds were written down as part of that
countrys second bailout. The islands banks are also laden with loans made to Greek companies
and individuals, which have turned sour as Greece endures its fourth year of economic and
financial crisis. The "deposit tax", which is expected to raise 5.8 billion euros, was part of a bailout
agreement ... among finance ministers from euro countries and representatives of the International
Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. The Cypriot bailout follows those for Greece,
Portugal, Ireland and the Spanish banking sector and is the first where bank depositors will be
touched.
Note: What gives anyone the right to seize the deposits of ordinary bank account holders? Is this
the first step towards establishing a precedent for governments to seize anything they want from
ordinary citizens? For a report indicating that the Cypriot people may not take this attack lying
down, click here.
Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown...
New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporatestate repression of dissent. It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents
show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall so mystifying at the time was not just
coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The
crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to
the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in
bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves was coordinated with the big banks
themselves. The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once
more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America
left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document reproduced here in an
easily searchable format shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police,
regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another
that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the
Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally
planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working
for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.
Note: For analysis of these amazing documents revealing the use of joint government and
corporate counterterrorism structures against peaceful protestors of financial corruption, click here
and here. For a Democracy Now! video segment on this, click here.
HSBC, too big to jail, is the new poster child for US two-tiered justice
system
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/12/hsbc-prosecution-fine-mon...
The US is the world's largest prison state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any nation
on earth, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. It imprisons people for longer periods of
time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west. This
sprawling penal state has been constructed over decades, by both political parties, and it punishes
the poor and racial minorities at overwhelmingly disproportionate rates. But not everyone is
subjected to that system of penal harshness. It all changes radically when the nation's most
powerful actors are caught breaking the law. With few exceptions, they are gifted not
merely with leniency, but full-scale immunity from criminal punishment. Thus have the most
egregious crimes of the last decade been fully shielded from prosecution when committed by those
with the greatest political and economic power: the construction of a worldwide torture regime,
spying on Americans' communications without the warrants required by criminal law by
government agencies and the telecom industry, an aggressive war launched on false pretenses,
and massive, systemic financial fraud in the banking and credit industry that triggered the 2008
financial crisis. This two-tiered justice system was the subject of [the] book, With Liberty and
Justice for Some. On Tuesday, not only did the US Justice Department announce that HSBC
would not be criminally prosecuted, but outright claimed that the reason is that they are too
important, too instrumental to subject them to such disruptions.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption,
click here.
Goldman Sachs' Global Coup D'etat

2012-11-27, Truthout
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12996-goldman-sachs-global-coup-de-tat.html
When the people of Greece saw their democratically elected Prime Minister George Papandreou
forced out of office in November of 2011 and replaced by an unelected Conservative technocrat,
Lucas Papademos, most were unaware of the bigger picture of what was happening. Most of us in
the United States were [equally] ignorant when, in 2008, [Congress] voted yes at the behest of
Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen and jammed through the biggest bailout of Wall Street in
our nations history. But now, as the Bank of England ... announces that former investment banker
Mark Carney will be its new chief, we cant afford to ignore whats happening around the world.
Steadily and stealthily Goldman Sachs is carrying out a global coup detat. Theres one
tie that binds Lucas Papademos in Greece, Henry Paulsen [and Timothy Geithner] in the
United States, and Mark Carney in the U.K., and thats Goldman Sachs. All were former
bankers and executives at the Wall Street giant, all assumed prominent positions of power, and
all played a hand after the global financial meltdown of 2007-08, thus making sure Goldman Sachs
weathered the storm and made significant profits in the process. As Europe descends [into]
economic crisis, Goldman Sachs's people are managing the demise of the continent. As the British
newspaper The Independent reported earlier this year, the Conservative technocrats currently
steering or who have steered post-crash fiscal policy in Greece, Germany, Italy, Belgium, France,
and now the UK, all hail from Goldman Sachs. In fact, the head of the European Central Bank
itself, Mario Draghi, was the former managing director of Goldman Sachs International.
Note: Once again truth-out.org carries this important article and vital information which no major
media has covered. Strangely, the entire website went down for a while not long after the article
was published. If the article cannot be found at the link above, click here. For deeply revealing
Is this the year that the food movement finally enters politics?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/magazine/why-californias-proposition-37-sho...
Californias Proposition 37, which would require that genetically modified (G.M.) foods carry a
label, has the potential ... to change the politics of food not just in California but nationally too.
Genetically modified foods dont offer the eater any benefits whatsoever only a potential, as yet
undetermined risk. Monsanto and its allies have fought the labeling of genetically modified
food ... vigorously since 1992, when the industry managed to persuade the [F.D.A.] over
the objection of its own scientists that the new crops were substantially equivalent to
the old and so did not need to be labeled, much less regulated. The F.D.A. policy was cowritten by a lawyer whose former firm worked for Monsanto. More than 60 other countries have
seen fit to label genetically modified food, including those in the European Union, Japan, Russia
and China. Monsanto and DuPont, the two leading merchants of genetically modified seed, have
invested more than $12 million to defeat Prop 37. Americans have been eating genetically
engineered food for 18 years, and as supporters of the technology are quick to point out, we dont
seem to be dropping like flies. But they miss the point. The fight over labeling G.M. food is not
foremost about food safety or environmental harm, legitimate though these questions are. The
fight is about the power of Big Food. Monsanto has become the symbol of everything people
dislike about industrial agriculture: corporate control of the regulatory process; lack of transparency
(for consumers) and lack of choice (for farmers); an intensifying rain of pesticides; and the
monopolization of seeds, which is to say, of the genetic resources on which all of humanity
depends.
Note: To learn more about the revolving door between Monsanto and the FDA, click here. To read
about many suppressed scientific studies which showed the GM foods were often harmful and
sometimes even lethal to a variety of lab animals, click here. To watch a powerful video showing
clearly how Monsanto has attacked those who will not use their GM seeds, click here.
Libor: They all knew and no one acted

2012-07-14, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/libor-they-all-knew--and-no-o...
Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic failed to act on clear warnings that the Libor interest rate
was being falsely reported by banks during the financial crisis, it emerged last night. A cache of
documents released yesterday by the New York Federal Reserve showed that US officials had
evidence from April 2008 that Barclays was knowingly posting false reports about the rate
at which it could borrow in order to assuage market concerns about its solvency. An
unnamed Barclays employee told a New York Fed analyst, Fabiola Ravazzolo, on 11 April 2008:
"So we know that we're not posting, um, an honest Libor." He said Barclays started underreporting Libor because graphs showing the relatively high rates at which the bank had to borrow
attracted "unwanted attention" and the "share price went down". The verbatim note of the call
released by the Fed represents the starkest evidence yet that Libor-fiddling was discussed in high
regulatory circles years before Barclays' recent 290m fine. The New York Fed said that,
immediately after the call, Ms Ravazzolo informed her superiors of the information, who then
passed on her concerns to Tim Geithner, who was head of the New York Fed at the time. Mr
Geithner investigated and drew up a six-point proposal for ensuring the integrity of Libor which he
presented to the British Bankers Association, which is responsible for producing the Libor rate
daily. Mr Geithner, who is now US Treasury Secretary, also forwarded the six-point plan to the
Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on regulatory and financial
corruption and criminality, click here. For our highly revealing Banking Corruption Information
Center, click here.
Was the petrol price rigged too?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fuel/9401934/Libor-scandal-Was-the-pe...
Motorists may have been paying too much for their petrol because banks and other traders are
likely to have tried to manipulate oil prices in the same way they rigged interest rates, an official
report has warned. Concerns are growing about the reliability of oil prices, after a report for the
G20 found the market is wide open to manipulation or distortion. Traders from banks, oil
companies or hedge funds have an incentive to distort the market and are likely to try to report
false prices, it said. Petrol retailers use oil price benchmarks to decide how much to pay for future
supplies. The rate is calculated by data companies based on submissions from firms which
trade oil on a daily basis such as banks, hedge funds and energy companies. However,
like Libor ... the market is unregulated and relies on the honesty of the firms to submit
accurate data about all their trades. This is one of the major concerns raised in the G20 report,
published last month by the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). In the
study for global finance ministers, including George Osborne, the regulator warns that traders have
opportunities to influence oil prices for their own profit. It points out that the whole market is
voluntary, meaning banks and energy companies can choose which trades to make public.
IOSCO says this creates opportunity for a trader to submit a partial picture in order to influence
the [price] to the traders advantage.
corruption and criminality, click here.
Bank rate rigging scandal widens; Diamond fights on

2012-06-29, Chicago Tribune/Reuters
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-libor-banksbre85s0p4-2012062...
A scandal over the rigging of key interest rates could plunge the global banking industry into a
legal morass for years, analysts said. The head of the Bank of England said there needed to be
"real change" in the industry's culture. Referring to what he called the "deceitful manipulation" of
rates, Mervyn King told a news conference [that] the London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) should
be reformed to reflect actual market transactions. U.S. and British authorities fined Barclays
$453 million on Wednesday for manipulating LIBOR, which underpins some $360 trillion of
loans and financial contracts around the world - and analysts forecast more banks would
soon be named for collusion. Others predicted Barclays and other banks could face billions in
costs from litigation, especially in the United States, in much the same way that oil major BP ran
into drawn-out legal rows over its oil spill. Barclays was the first bank to settle in an investigation
which is looking at other large financial institutions in Europe, Japan and North America.
Note: This article states that LIBOR underpins some $360 trillion of loans and financial contracts
around the world. That's $50,000 for every man, woman, and child on this planet. And it is being
hugely manipulated. For more vitally important information on this, learn about the huge amounts
of derivatives being manipulated at this link and explore the excellent, reliable information in our
Banking Corruption Information Center available here.
Prisons, Privatization, Patronage

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/opinion/krugman-prisons-privatization-patro...
The New York Times has published several terrifying reports about New Jerseys system of
halfway houses privately run adjuncts to the regular system of prisons. The horrors described
are part of a broader pattern in which essential functions of government are being both privatized
and degraded. So whats really behind the drive to privatize prisons? One answer is that
privatization can serve as a stealth form of government borrowing, in which governments avoid
recording upfront expenses (or even raise money by selling existing facilities) while raising their
long-run costs in ways taxpayers cant see. Another answer is that privatization is a way of getting
rid of public employees. But the main answer, surely, is to follow the money. As more and more
government functions get privatized, states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both
political contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for
getting government business. Are the corporations capturing the politicians, or the
politicians capturing the corporations? One thing the companies that make up the prisonindustrial complex companies like Community Education or the private-prison giant Corrections
Corporation of America are definitely not doing is competing in a free market. They are, instead,
living off government contracts. And ... despite many promises that prison privatization will lead to
big cost savings, such savings as a comprehensive study by the Bureau of Justice Assistance,
part of the U.S. Department of Justice, concluded have simply not materialized. A corrupt
nexus of privatization and patronage [is] undermining government across much of our nation.
Note: Have you noticed that crime rates are at the lowest in many years, yet prison spending
continues to skyrocket? Is something wrong with this picture? For key major media new articles
exposing more on corruption within the "prison-industrial complex," click here.
Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html
Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of
advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet [and] five of the largest asset managers in
the United States. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. After almost 12
years at the firm ... I believe I have worked here long enough to understand ... its culture, its
people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive
as I have ever seen it. To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue
to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Today, if you make
enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a
position of influence. What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm's
"axes," which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other
products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential
profit. b) "Hunt Elephants." In English: get your clients -- some of whom are sophisticated, and
some of whom aren't -- to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. c) Find yourself
sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym. I
attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions
about how we can help clients. It's purely about how we can make the most possible money
off of them.
Note: The author of this article, Greg Smith, was a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of
the firms United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. For an
excellent compilation of news articles and government documents showing the huge risk of the
derivatives bubble being manipulate by Goldman Sachs and others, click here.
No magic bullet on the flu

2012-01-15, Los Angeles Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/15/opinion/la-oe-finkelstein-tamiflu-201...
In 2006 ... the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the World Health
Organization in Geneva warned of the imminent onset of an avian flu "pandemic" of lethal
proportions. The pandemic never occurred. After reviewing studies of Tamiflu during the avian flu
scare, Dr. Tom Jefferson ... had concluded in a 2006 report that the drug was effective. "But," said
the article, "several years later, another physician challenged that conclusion because 8 of 10
studies in a meta-analysis a review of studies that Jefferson relied on had never been
published." That prompted Jefferson to seek the raw data. "He was stymied when several authors
and the manufacturer gave one excuse after another for why it couldn't supply the actual data.
Jefferson's concern turned to outrage when two employees of a communications company
[revealed] they had been paid to ghostwrite some of the Tamiflu studies [and] had been
given explicit instructions to ensure that a key message was embedded in the articles: Flu
is a threat, and Tamiflu is the answer. "After reanalyzing the raw data finally made available
(they still don't have it all), Jefferson and his colleagues published their review [in December 2009],
saying that once the unpublished studies were excluded, there was no proof that Tamiflu reduced
serious flu complications like pneumonia or death." In short, it appears the pharmaceutical
companies had been as cunning in conning the public on matters of health as Wall Street had
been on matters of wealth.
Note: For powerful media reports suggesting that both the Avian Flu and Swine Flu were
incredibly manipulated to promote fear and boost pharmaceutical sales, click here. For lots more
from reliable sources on pharmaceutical corruption, click here.
Money's stranglehold on government is key issue

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/23/INL31ME08J.DTL
Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution
against government. But the surge of cynicism engulfing America isn't about how big government
has become. It's a growing perception that our government is no longer working for average
people. It's for big business, Wall Street and the very rich. The richest Americans are taking home
a bigger share of total income than at any other time since the 1920s. Their tax payments are
down because the Bush tax cuts reduced their top rates to the lowest level in more than half a
century, and cut capital gains taxes to 15 percent. Congress hasn't even closed a loophole that
allows mutual-fund and private-equity managers to treat their incomes as capital gains. So the 400
richest Americans, whose total wealth exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 150
million Americans put together, pay an average of 17 percent of their income in taxes.
That's lower than the tax rates of most day laborers. And the share of revenues coming
from corporations has been dropping. The biggest, like GE, find ways to pay no federal taxes at
all. Many shelter their income abroad, and every few years Congress grants them a tax amnesty to
bring the money home. Get it? "Big government" isn't the problem. The problem is the big money
that's taking over government. Government is doing less of the things most of us want it to do ...
and more of the things big corporations, Wall Street and the wealthy want it to do.
Note: The author of this analysis, Robert Reich, is a former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of
public policy at UC Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's
Future. He blogs at www.robertreich.org.
OCCs Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities:

Third Quarter 2011
2011-12-00, OCC (U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Administrator of
National Banks)
http://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/trading/derivativ...
The OCCs quarterly report on trading revenues and bank derivatives activities is based on Call
Report information provided by all insured U.S. commercial banks and trust companies, reports
filed by U.S. financial holding companies, and other published data. The notional amount of
derivatives held by insured U.S. commercial banks decreased $1.4 trillion, or 0.6%, from the
second quarter of 2011 to $248 trillion. Notional derivatives are 5.7% higher than at the same time
last year. Derivatives activity in the U.S. banking system continues to be dominated by a small
group of large financial institutions. The five banks with the most derivatives activity hold 96%
of all derivatives. Insured commercial banks have more limited legal authorities than do their
holding companies.
Note: Graphs in this OCC report (pg. 25 & 26) show that five U.S. banks, JPMorgan Chase,
Citibank, BofA, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, hold $235 of the $248 trillion above, while
their holding companies control an additional $311 of the $326 trillion in derivatives held by holding
companies. So these five banks and their holding companies combined hold $546 trillion in
derivatives, 95% of the U.S. derivatives market, nearly 80% of the global market, and equivalent
to over $75,000 for every person on the planet. If the above link fails, click here. For quarterly
derivative reports by the OCC going back to 1995, click here.
Lobbying firm's memo spells out plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street
2011-11-19, MSNBC
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/19/8884405-lobbying-firms-memo...
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an
$850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the
protests, according to a memo obtained by [MSNBC]. The proposal was written on the letterhead
of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGCs clients, the
American Bankers Association. CLGCs memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to
conduct opposition research on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct negative
narratives about the protests and allied politicians. Two of the memos authors, partners
Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, ROhio. The memo outlines a 60-day plan to conduct surveys and research on OWS and its
supporters so that Wall Street companies will be prepared to conduct a media campaign in
response to OWS. Wall Street companies likely will not be the best spokespeople for their own
cause, according to the memo. A big challenge is to demonstrate that these companies still have
political strength and that making them a political target will carry a severe political cost.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the reasons why people nationwide are occupying
their city centers in protest against the collusion between powerful corporate and government
elites, click here.
Abramoff: Lobbying reforms haven't fixed 'flawed' system

2011-11-06, CNN
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-06/politics/politics_abramoff-ethics_1_neil-v...
Ethics reforms put in place since the influence-peddling scandal surrounding high-rolling lobbyist
Jack Abramoff haven't cleaned up the system "at all," a now-free Abramoff says. Abramoff served
three and a half years in prison for conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion before his release last
December. In an interview ... on CBS News' "60 Minutes," he said the reforms imposed after his
guilty plea have little effect while campaign finance remains untouched. "You can't take a
congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak or something like that," he
said. "But you can take him to a fund-raising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him
$25,000 extra and call it a fund-raiser -- and have all the same access and all the same
interactions with that congressman." Abramoff's interview with "60 Minutes" aired the night before
a memoir, Capitol Punishment, is scheduled to hit shelves. Abramoff describes some of the
techniques he employed as a lobbyist as "evil," "terrible" and, at the same time, "effective" for his
firm, his clients and Republican politicians he usually worked with. Abramoff said the best way to
get what he wanted to was to offer high-ranking congressional aides a job when they left
public office. Once that was done, he told CBS, "We owned them." "Everything that we
want, they're going to do. Not only that, they're going to think of things we can't think of to do,"
Abramoff said, estimating his office had "very strong influence" on 100 of the 535 congressional
offices.
Note: For a powerful, six-minute analysis of legalized corruption based on Abramoff's comments
on CBS 60 Minutes, click here. A petty thief steals three times for a total value of a few thousand
dollars and by the "three strikes" law ends up in jail for life. Abramoff, along with his assistants,
successfully corrupt U.S. Senators and Congress members and serve less than four years in jail.
Some of his assistants got off with no jail time. Is the US justice system biased towards the rich?
Jack Abramoff: The lobbyist's playbook

2011-11-06, CBS News 60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57319075/jack-abramoff-the-lobbyists-pl...
Jack Abramoff may be the most notorious and crooked lobbyist of our time. He became a master
at showering gifts on lawmakers in return for their votes on legislation. Five years ago ... Jack
Abramoff pled guilty ... and served three and a half years in prison. Abramoff: I think most
congressmen don't feel they're being bought. [They] can in their own mind justify the
system. The "best way" to get a congressional office ... was to offer a staffer a job that could triple
his salary. The moment I [offered] that to them ... we owned them. Most of the people ... on Capitol
Hill wanted ... to be lobbyists. Republican Congressman Bob Ney was ambitious and looked at
Abramoff as a way to build alliances with the White House and the majority leader. Neil Volz, his
former chief of staff, by then a lobbyist for Abramoff .. asked Ney to insert some language into a
reform bill that would give a backdoor license to an Indian casino. Abramoff: We crafted language
that was so obscure ... but so precise to change the U.S. code. "Public law 100-89 is amended
by striking section 207 101 stat. 668, 672." Members don't read the bills. Ney: It was a great big
shell game. Ney would eventually serve 17 months in federal prison, the only congressman who
was ever charged. But Abramoff says that there were many other members that did his bidding
that could have been charged. Abramoff: I'm talking about giving a gift to somebody who makes a
decision on behalf of the public. That's really what bribery is. But it is done everyday. There
were very few members who ... didn't at some level participate in that. Our system is flawed and
has to be fixed. He says the most important thing that needs to be done is to prohibit members of
Congress and their staff from ever becoming lobbyists in Washington.
Note: To watch this incredibly revealing interview, click here. For a powerful, six-minute analysis of
legalized corruption based on Abramoff's comments, click here. A petty thief steals three times for
a total value of a few thousand dollars and by the "three strikes" law ends up in jail for life.
Abramoff, along with his assistants, successfully corrupt U.S. Senators and Congress members
and serve less than four years in jail. Many get off with no jail time. Is the US justice system biased
towards the rich?
The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-m...
It's the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally
unaccountable. But I doubt that one in 10 British people has any idea of what the Corporation of
the City of London is and how it works. As Nicholas Shaxson explains in his fascinating book
Treasure Islands, the Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls which
govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over
which parliament has no authority. This is ... an official old boys' network. In one respect at least
the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called
the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker's chair and ensures that,
whatever our elected representatives might think, the City's rights and privileges are protected.
The mayor of London's mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. The City has
exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy
jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK's crown
dependencies and overseas territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a
position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons.
It has also made the effective regulation of global finance almost impossible.
Note: To understand how democracy is easily circumvented, read this full article. For lots more
from reliable sources on the hidden background to the control over governments held by financial
powers, click here.
Citigroup to Pay $285 Million to Settle Fraud Charges

2011-10-20, Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204618704576640873051858568.html
Wall Street's total price tag on settlements with U.S. securities regulators for allegedly misleading
investors about mortgage bonds churned out ahead of the financial crisis surged past $1 billion
with a deal by Citigroup Inc. to pay $285 million ... to end civil-fraud charges by the Securities and
Exchange Commission. The SEC claimed Citigroup sold slices of the $1 billion mortgagebond deal without disclosing to investors that the bank was shorting $500 million of the
deal, or betting its assets would lose value. Several Wall Street firms have settled similar
claims by the SEC, which has generally stuck to the strategy used by the agency to get a $550
million settlement last year with Goldman Sachs Group Inc.. And the SEC's investigation of the
Wall Street mortgage machine isn't over yet. Lorin Reisner, deputy enforcement director at the
SEC, said civil mortgage-related cases against Goldman, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Countrywide
Financial Corp., New Century Financial Corp. and other companies "read like an index to unlawful
conduct in connection with the financial crisis." The SEC has collected a total of $1.03 billion
through mortgage-bond-deal settlements. In addition to Citigroup, the total includes Goldman, J.P.
Morgan, Royal Bank of Canada, Wells Fargo & Co. and Credit Suisse Group AG.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the illegal profiteering of major financial
corporations, click here.
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Loans

2011-08-22, Businessweek/Bloomberg News
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-08-22/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-t...
Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home
prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with
$104 billion of profits. By 2008, the housing markets collapse forced those companies to take
more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The
loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now
the full amounts have remained secret. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernankes [actions] included
lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same
amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The
largest borrower, Morgan Stanley, got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion
and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained
through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. It wasnt
just American finance. Almost half of the Feds top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances,
were European firms. Data gleaned [under the Freedom of Information Act] make clear for
the first time how deeply the worlds largest banks depended on the U.S. central bank to
stave off cash shortfalls. Even as the firms asserted in news releases or earnings calls that
they had ample cash, they drew Fed funding in secret.
Note: For a treasure trove of information from reliable sources on the government transfer of
public assets to private banks and financial corporations, click here.
The Fed Audit

2011-07-21, Official Government Website of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how
the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign
banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Among
the [Government Accountability Office] investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally
provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from
South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. The [report] also determined that the Fed
lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for
abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees
and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and
corporations that were given emergency loans. For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served
on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390
billion in financial assistance from the Fed. The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced
most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients
of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.
Note: We don't normally use the website of a member of the U.S. Senate as a source, but as
amazingly none of the media covered this vitally important story other than one blog on Forbes, we
are publishing this here. The GAO report to back up these claims is available for all to see at this
link. For how the media is so controlled, don't miss the powerful two-page summary with reports by
many award-winning journalists at this link. For another good article on the Fed's manipulations,
click here.
Top lobbying banks got biggest bailouts: study

2011-05-26, MSNBC/Reuters News
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=OBR&date=20110526&id=136...
The more aggressively a bank lobbied before the financial crisis, the worse its loans
performed during the economic downturn -- and the more bailout dollars it received,
according to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research this week. The
report, titled "A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis," said that banks' lobbying
efforts may be motivated by short-term profit gains, which can have devastating effects on the
economy. "Overall, our findings suggest that the political influence of the financial industry
played a role in the accumulation of risks, and hence, contributed to the financial crisis,"
said the report, written by three economists from the International Monetary Fund. Data collected
by the three authors -- Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra and Thierry Tressel -- show that the most
aggressive lobbiers in the financial industry from 2000 to 2007 also made the most toxic mortgage
loans. They securitized a greater portion of debt to pass the home loans onto investors and their
stock prices correlated more closely to the downturn and ensuing bailout. The banks' loans also
suffered from higher delinquencies during the downturn.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on corruption in the
government bailouts of the biggest banks, click here.
Food speculation: 'People die from hunger while banks make a killing
on food'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jan/23/food-speculation-ban...
Just under three years ago, people in the village of Gumbi in western Malawi went unexpectedly
hungry. Not like Europeans do if they miss a meal or two, but that deep, gnawing hunger that
prevents sleep and dulls the senses when there has been no food for weeks. Oddly, there had
been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa, and there was
plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason the price of staple foods such as maize and
rice nearly doubled in a few months. Unusually, too, there was no evidence that the local
merchants were hoarding food. It was the same story in 100 other developing countries. There
were food riots in more than 20 countries and governments had to ban food exports and subsidise
staples heavily. A new theory is emerging among traders and economists. The same banks,
hedge funds and financiers whose speculation on the global money markets caused the
sub-prime mortgage crisis are ... taking advantage of the deregulation of global commodity
markets [to make] billions from speculating on food and causing misery around the world.
As food prices soar again to beyond 2008 levels, it becomes clear that everyone is now being
affected. Food prices are now rising by up to 10% a year in Britain and Europe. What is more, says
the UN, prices can be expected to rise at least 40% in the next decade.
Note: Remember that speculation is behind almost all of the economic bubbles and busts. The
price of oil spiked a couple years ago almost purely because of speculators, while the oil
companies raked in record profits. It looks like the speculators are now driving food prices as high
as they can. For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources investigating the many different
strategies used by financial corporations to enrich themselves at the expense of common people,
click here.
WikiLeaks: US targets EU over GM crops

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/03/wikileaks-us-eu-gm-crops
The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any
European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released
WikiLeaks cables show. In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in
late 2007, the ambassador, Craig Stapleton, a friend and business partner of former US president
George Bush, asked Washington to penalise the EU and particularly countries which did not
support the use of GM crops. "Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real
costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices," said Stapleton, who
with Bush co-owned the St Louis-based Texas Rangers baseball team in the 1990s [and is married
to Dorothy Walker, a first cousin of former U.S. president George H.W. Bush]. In other newly
released cables, US diplomats around the world are found to have pushed GM crops as a strategic
government and commercial imperative. In addition, the cables show US diplomats working
directly for GM companies such as Monsanto. It also emerges that Spain and the US have
worked closely together to persuade the EU not to strengthen biotechnology laws. In one cable,
the embassy in Madrid writes: "If Spain falls, the rest of Europe will follow." The cables show that
not only did the Spanish government ask the US to keep pressure on Brussels but that the US
knew in advance how Spain would vote, even before the Spanish biotech commission had
reported.
Note: For a powerful 13-minute video revealing the disturbing results of the first long-term
scientific study on GMOs and showing how they greatly increased cancer incidence in rats, click
here. For more revealing information on this from Dr. Mercola, click here. For an excellent
overview of scientific studies on the risks from genetically-modified foods, click here.
Reports accuse WHO of exaggerating H1N1 threat, possible ties to drug

makers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR20100604030...
European criticism of the World Health Organization's handling of the H1N1 pandemic intensified
... with the release of two reports that accused the agency of exaggerating the threat posed by the
virus and failing to disclose possible influence by the pharmaceutical industry on its
recommendations for how countries should respond. The WHO's response caused widespread,
unnecessary fear and prompted countries around the world to waste millions of dollars. At
the same time, the Geneva-based arm of the United Nations relied on advice from experts
with ties to drug makers in developing the guidelines it used to encourage countries to stockpile
millions of doses of antiviral medications. The first report ... came from the Social, Health and
Family Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which launched
an investigation in response to allegations that the WHO's response to the pandemic was
influenced by drug companies that make antiviral drugs and vaccines. The second report, a joint
investigation by the [British Medical Journal] and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism ...
criticized 2004 guidelines the WHO developed based in part on the advice of three experts who
received consulting fees from the two leading manufacturers of antiviral drugs used against the
virus, Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.
Note: For wide coverage from reliable sourcesof the swine and avian flu "fake pandemics"
designed for corporate profit, click here.
Speedy New Traders Make Waves Far From Wall Street

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/speedy-new-traders-make-waves-fa...
Inside the humdrum offices of a tiny trading firm called Tradeworx, workers ... tend high-speed
computers that typically buy and sell 80 million shares a day. But on the afternoon of May 6, as the
stock market began to plunge in the flash crash, someone here walked up to one of those
computers and typed the command HF STOP: sell everything and shutdown. Across the country,
several of Tradeworxs counterparts did the same. In a blink, some of the most powerful players in
the stock market high-frequency traders went dark. The result sent chills through the
financial world. After the brief 1,000-point plunge in the stock market that day, the growing role of
high-frequency traders in the nations financial markets is drawing new scrutiny. Over the last
decade, these high-tech operators have become sort of a shadow Wall Street from New Jersey
to Kansas City, from Texas to Chicago. Depending on whose estimates you believe, highfrequency traders account for 40 to 70 percent of all trading on every stock market in the
country. Some of the biggest players trade more than a billion shares a day. These are shortterm bets. Very short. The founder of Tradebot, in Kansas City, Mo., told students in 2008 that
his firm typically held stocks for 11 seconds. Tradebot, one of the biggest high-frequency
traders around, had not had a losing day in four years, he said.
Note: For key reports on the dubious practices which underlay the financial crisis and the
impoverishment of the public treasury, click here.
Use of potentially harmful chemicals kept secret under law

Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States -- from flame retardants in
furniture to household cleaners -- nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental
Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all
public officials under a little-known federal provision. Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control
Act, manufacturers must report to the federal government new chemicals they intend to market.
But the law exempts from public disclosure any information that could harm their bottom
line. Government officials, scientists and environmental groups say that manufacturers have
exploited weaknesses in the law to claim secrecy for an ever-increasing number of chemicals. In
the past several years, 95 percent of the notices for new chemicals sent to the government
requested some secrecy, according to the Government Accountability Office. About 700
chemicals are introduced annually. Some companies have successfully argued that the federal
government should not only keep the names of their chemicals secret but also hide from public
view the identities and addresses of the manufacturers.
Note: So according to this law, the bottom line (profits) trumps public health. For lots more on
corporate and government secrecy, click here.
US aid tied to purchase of arms

2010-01-02, Sydney Mountain Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-aid-tied-to-purchase-of-arms-20100101-llsb.html
Just before Christmas, the US President, Barack Obama, signed into law one of his country's
biggest aid pledges of the year. It was bound not for Africa or any of the many struggling countries
on the World Bank's list. It was a deal for $US2.77 billion ($3 billion) to go to Israel in 2010 and
a total of $US30 billion over the next decade. Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75 per
cent of the aid to buy military hardware made in the US. For the first time the US is also
providing $US500 million to the Palestinian Authority, including $US100 million to train security
forces, under the strict proviso that the authority's leadership recognises Israel. For many years
Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid, followed by Egypt ($US1.75 billion), which
also receives most of its assistance in tied military aid. The Congressional Research Service says
that the US spent 17 per cent of its total aid budget - or $US5.1 billion - on military aid in 2008, of
which $US4.7 billion was grants to enable governments to receive equipment from the US.
Note: Israel's population is 7.5 million. If you do the math, the US is providing the equivalent of
$4,000 in aid to every man, woman and child in Israel over the next decade, with $3,000 of
that to buy US military hardware. For lots more on government-facilitated profiteering in the arms
industry, click here and here.
Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/business/24trading.html
Pension funds and insurance companies lost billions of dollars on securities that they believed
were solid investments, according to former Goldman employees with direct knowledge of the
deals who asked not to be identified because they have confidentiality agreements with the firm.
Goldman was not the only firm that peddled these complex securities ... and then made
financial bets against them, called selling short in Wall Street parlance. Others that created
similar securities and then bet they would fail ... include Deutsche Bank and Morgan
Stanley, as well as smaller firms like Tricadia Inc., an investment company whose parent firm was
overseen by Lewis A. Sachs, who this year became a special counselor to Treasury Secretary
Timothy F. Geithner. How these disastrously performing securities were devised is now the subject
of scrutiny by investigators in Congress, at the Securities and Exchange Commission and at the
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. While the investigations are in the early phases,
authorities appear to be looking at whether securities laws or rules of fair dealing were violated by
firms that created and sold these mortgage-linked debt instruments and then bet against the
clients who purchased them, people briefed on the matter say.
Note: So the banks were betting that their own customers would lose money on their products.
Hmmmm. For lots of reliable, eye-opening reports on banking secrecy and corruption, click here.
How Goldman secretly bet on the housing crash

2009-11-01, Kansas City Star/McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.kansascity.com/437/story/1542453.html
In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at
least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp
drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. Goldman's
sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown,
enabled one of the nation's premier investment banks to pass most of its potential losses
to others before a flood of mortgage loan defaults staggered the U.S. and global
economies. Only later did investors discover that what Goldman promoted as triple-A investments
were closer to junk. Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial
institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month
McClatchy Newspapers investigation has found that Goldman's failure to disclose that it made
secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws. "The
Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that
secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product
or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion," said
Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who's proposed a massive overhaul
of the nation's big banks. "This is fraud and should be prosecuted."
Note: For an eye-opening, powerful PBS video which reveals how the economic crisis was
conscously allowed to happen, click here. It reveals that Fed chairman Alan Greenspan was
against investigating any fraud. For many reports from reliable sources on corruption at the core of
the Wall Street collapse and bailout, click here.
Affordable Health Care on the Critical List

2009-07-10, PBS Bill Moyers Journal
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch3.html
Quality, affordable health care is on the critical list in America. And so is the newspaper business.
So maybe it's not surprising that one of the most powerful papers in the country attempted an
unholy alliance, trying to turn a profit from its newsroom's coverage of the fight for health care
reform. You may have missed the story because it broke on the eve of the July 4th weekend. The
publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Weymouth one of the most powerful people
in the nation's capital invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and
Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform
with some of her reporters and editors covering the story. But she then invited CEOs and
lobbyists from the health care industry to come, too providing they fork over $25,000 a
head, or a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy little gettogethers. And what is the inducement she offers them? Nothing less than and I'm quoting the
invitation verbatim "An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health care reform debate
among the select few who will actually get it done." The invitation promises this private, intimate,
and off-the-record dinner is an extension "of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into
the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard." Let that sink in. The
"stakeholders" in health care reform in this case do not include the rabble the folks across the
country who actually need quality health care but can't afford it. If any of them showed up at the
kitchen door on the night of this little soiree, a bouncer would drop kick them beyond the beltway.
Note: To read the complete text, click on the link above and scroll below the video box at the top of
the page. For an excellent article on the Washington Post's ties to the CIA and manipulative
politics, click here.
'Bailout psychology' destroying the economy

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/04/INR316Q4F5.DTL
President Obama must stop the bailouts and start the prosecutions. It's time to focus on antipoverty programs to protect the growing unemployed from hunger and homelessness. Stealth
payments to billionaire bondholders must cease immediately. Since the mid-1970s, average
Americans' wages have stayed flat when adjusted for inflation. Productivity rose, profits
rose, but not wages. To compensate for stagnant wages and the desire to consume more
each year, Americans worked more, retired later, spouses went to work, and many burned
savings. Then they started borrowing. Debt became America's growth industry. The scheme
collapsed because Americans' wages weren't sufficient to pay the interest on existing debts. The
administration and the banks keep talking about a credit crisis, but there isn't one. Banks are
lending. If you want a mortgage and can afford to pay it back, you can borrow at low rates today.
But most Americans don't want more debt because it is a debilitating path to poverty. The average
American family already pays 14 percent of annual income in interest to banks. To fix this fake
crisis, there are fake discussions about what the government must do. The endlessly recycled plan
to buy "troubled" assets isn't to get banks lending again, because they haven't stopped lending.
The plan seeks for taxpayers to buy worthless assets at high prices to absorb rich investors'
losses. That's it. It keeps coming back as a different plan, but with that same goal. There is no goal
beyond that one goal: keep rich people from taking losses.
Note: For an extensive archive of key reports on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout,
click here.
The Madoff Economy

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&...
The revelation that Bernard Madoff brilliant investor (or so almost everyone thought),
philanthropist, pillar of the community was a phony has shocked the world, and understandably
so. The scale of his alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme is hard to comprehend. Yet ... how different,
really, is Mr. Madoffs tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole? The financial
services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of the nations income over the past
generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet, at this point, it looks as if
much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it. And its not just a matter of
money: the vast riches achieved by those who managed other peoples money have had a
corrupting effect on our society as a whole. Last year, the average salary of employees in
securities, commodity contracts, and investments was more than four times the average salary in
the rest of the economy. Earning a million dollars was nothing special, and even incomes of $20
million or more were fairly common. The incomes of the richest Americans have exploded over the
past generation, even as wages of ordinary workers have stagnated. High pay on Wall Street was
a major cause of that divergence. Wall Streets ill-gotten gains corrupted and continue to
corrupt politics, in a nicely bipartisan way. From Bush administration officials ... who looked the
other way as evidence of financial fraud mounted, to Democrats who still havent closed the
outrageous tax loophole that benefits executives at hedge funds and private equity firms ...
politicians have walked when money talked. The pay system on Wall Street lavishly rewards
the appearance of profit, even if that appearance later turns out to have been an illusion.
Note: This entire, penetrating article is well worth a read at the link above. For many revealing
reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
US diluted loan rules before crash

2008-12-01, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/business&id=6532267
The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interestonly mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of
the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold
the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch
wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a
job. Bowing to aggressive lobbying - along with assurances from banks that the troubled
mortgages were OK - regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were
released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was
under way. The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing
philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in
the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since
the 1930s. Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now
either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they
insisted would never come. In 2005, faced with ominous signs the housing market was in jeopardy,
bank regulators proposed new guidelines for banks writing risky loans. Those proposals all were
stripped from the final rules.
Note: For many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from reliable sources, click here.
All Fall Down

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26friedman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...
I spent Sunday afternoon brooding over a [New York Times] front-page article, entitled ["Citigroup
Saw No Red Flags Even as It Made Bolder Bets]. In searing detail it exposed ... how some of our
countrys best-paid bankers were overrated dopes who had no idea what they were selling, or
greedy cynics who did know and turned a blind eye. But it wasnt only the bankers. This
financial meltdown involved a broad national breakdown in personal responsibility,
government regulation and financial ethics. So many people were in on it: People who had
no business buying a home, with nothing down and nothing to pay for two years; people who had
no business pushing such mortgages, but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business
bundling those loans into securities and selling them to third parties, as if they were AAA bonds,
but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business rating those loans as AAA, but made
fortunes doing so; and people who had no business buying those bonds and putting them on their
balance sheets so they could earn a little better yield, but made fortunes doing so. Citigroup was
involved in, and made money from, almost every link in that chain. And the banks executives,
including ...the former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, were ... so ensnared by the cronyism
between the banks risk managers and risk takers (and so bought off by their bonuses) that they
had no interest in stopping it. These are the people whom taxpayers bailed out on Monday to the
tune of what could be more than $300 billion.
Note: For many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from major media sources, click here.
Treasury gives banks multi-billion tax break windfall

2008-11-11, San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/11/BUTP141OVI.DTL
Some of the nation's biggest banks are in for a windfall on top of the $700 billion
government bailout thanks to a new tax policy quietly issued by the Treasury Department.
The notice gives big tax breaks to companies that acquire struggling banks hit hard by the
mortgage crisis. In some cases, the tax breaks could exceed the cost of acquiring the banks,
according to analyses by private tax experts. The change could cost the Treasury as much as
$140 billion by enabling firms that acquire struggling banks to use more losses incurred by those
banks to offset their own taxable profits. San Francisco's Wells Fargo & Co., which made a bid to
acquire Wachovia Corp. just days after the notice was issued, stands to reap about $20 billion in
additional tax savings because of the change, according to the analyses. Wells Fargo paid $14.8
billion in a stock deal to buy Wachovia. The notice was issued Sept. 30 as Congress debated the
$700 billion bailout plan. Some members of Congress are upset that such a sweeping tax change
was issued with no public hearings or congressional input. "I am concerned that the notice, which
was never debated by Congress, could end up costing taxpayers tens of billions of more dollars on
top of the hundreds of billions of dollars already approved by Congress in the financial rescue
plan," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a letter last week to Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson. Some tax lawyers questioned the legality of the notice. Before the notice was issued, the
merged bank could write off only a limited amount of the losses. The notice removed those
restrictions, enabling the acquiring banks to make huge reductions in their tax liabilities.
Note: With no limitations placed on the nine biggest banks receiving many billions of dollars in
bailout money, they are free to buy up smaller banks. And they will likely receive huge tax breaks,
sometimes even greater than the purchase price, for doing so! For many revealing, reliable reports
on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
New Terrain for Panel on Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/business/economy/04bailout.html?partner=rss...
Having been handed vast authority and almost no restrictions in the bailout law that
Congress passed ... a committee of five little-known government officials, aided by a barebones staff of 40, is picking winners and losers among thousands of banks, savings and
loans, insurers and other institutions. It is new and unfamiliar terrain for the officials, who are
making monumental decisions a form of industrial policy, some critics say that contradict the
free market philosophy they usually espouse. Predictably, the process is stirring alarm from Capitol
Hill to Wall Street. Among the problems, critics say, is that despite earlier promises of
transparency, the process is shrouded in secrecy, its precise goals opaque. Treasury
officials have refused to disclose their criteria for deciding which banks ... get money. And officials
have yet to say they even have a broader strategy, though banking executives are convinced the
government wants to encourage acquisitions. Already, critics from Capitol Hill to Wall Street are
lashing out at the program, saying the banks are misusing the capital infusions by hoarding the
money rather than lending it. The government, the critics say, is wrongly steering funds to banks to
take over weaker rivals. All this comes after Mr. Paulson abruptly shifted the focus of the program
to injecting capital rather than buying distressed mortgage-related assets from the banks. This
meant that Congress had never debated the details of how the government ought to carry out a
recapitalization.
Note: With the intense secrecy and all of the lobbyist and big guns for banking fighting for
hundreds of billions of dollars given practically free by the government, do you really think these
"five little-known government officials" will be impartial in their decisions? For many revealing,
reliable reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
So When Will Banks Give Loans?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/business/25nocera.html?partner=rssuserland&...
Chase recently received $25 billion in federal funding. What effect will that have on the business
side and will it change our strategic lending policy? It was Oct. 17, just four days after JPMorgan
Chases chief executive, Jamie Dimon, agreed to take a $25 billion capital injection courtesy of the
United States government, when a JPMorgan employee asked that question [during] an employeeonly conference call. The JPMorgan executive who was moderating the employee conference call
didnt hesitate to answer. What we ... think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on
the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. I think there are
going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an
opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way. Read that answer as many times as you want
you are not going to find a single word in there about making loans to help the American economy.
On the contrary: It is starting to appear as if one of Treasurys key rationales for the
recapitalization program namely, that it will cause banks to start lending again is a fig
leaf, Treasurys version of the weapons of mass destruction. In fact, Treasury wants banks
to acquire each other and is using its power to inject capital to force a new and wrenching round
of bank consolidation. Treasury would even funnel some of the bailout money to help banks buy
other banks. And, in an almost unnoticed move, it recently put in place a new tax break, worth
billions to the banking industry, that has only one purpose: to encourage bank mergers. As a tax
expert, Robert Willens, put it: It couldnt be clearer if they had taken out an ad.
Note: Was the real purpose of the "bailout" to strengthen the biggest banks by enabling them to
gobble up the smaller ones at the public's expense? No wonder the legislation was rushed through
without discussion! For lots more highly revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
When Doctors, and Even Santa, Endorsed Tobacco

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/business/media/07adco.html
People who remember when tobacco advertising was a prominent part of the media landscape ...
probably recollect that actors like Barbara Stanwyck and athletes like Mickey Mantle routinely
endorsed cigarettes. But how about doctors and other medical professionals, proclaiming the
merits of various cigarette brands? Or politicians? Or children? Even Santa Claus? Those images
some flabbergasting, even disturbing were also used by Madison Avenue to peddle tobacco
products. An exhibit ... in New York presents cigarette ads from the 1920s through the early 1950s
in an effort to demonstrate what has changed since then and what may not have. The exhibit is
the brainchild of Dr. Robert K. Jackler of the Stanford School of Medicine. The very best artists
and copywriters that money could buy would work on cigarette accounts, said Dr. Jackler. This
era of over-the-top hucksterism went on for decades, he added, and it was all blatantly
false. The genesis of the exhibit was an ad from around 1930 for Lucky Strike cigarettes, which
shows a doctor above a headline proclaiming that 20,679 physicians say Luckies are less
irritating. The Luckies doctor was joined in Dr. Jacklers collection of about 5,000 ads by
scores of scientists and medical professionals doctors, dentists, nurses making
statements that are now known to be patently untrue. Some of the claims being made in the
ads, you did not have to be a scientist in a laboratory to dispute ... ads that smoking certain brands
does not cause bad breath or can never stain your teeth.
Note: The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) promoted cigarette ads for 20
years "after careful consideration of the extent to which cigarettes were used by physicians in
practice." Will people, even highly respected members of society, bend the truth and even lie when
paid enough? This article seems to answer that with a resounding yes. Is that still true today? For
excerpts from many highly revealing articles showing it's as true now as ever, click here and here.
Many Firms Didn't Pay Taxes

About two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay taxes annually
from 1998 to 2005, according to a [report] from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. In
2005, after collectively making $2.5 trillion in sales, corporations gave a variety of reasons
on their tax returns to account for the absence of taxable revenue. The most frequently listed
included the cost of producing their goods, salary expenses and interest payments on their debt,
the report said. Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) called the findings "a shocking indictment of the
current tax system." "It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to
support our country," he said. "The tax system that allows this wholesale tax avoidance is an
embarrassment and unfair to hardworking Americans who pay their fair share of taxes. We need to
plug these tax loopholes and put these corporations back on the tax rolls." In 2005, about 28
percent of large corporations paid no taxes. Of the 1.3 million corporations included in the study,
998 were categorized as "large." Dorgan and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) requested the report
out of concern that some corporations were using "transfer pricing" to reduce their tax bills. The
practice allows multi-national companies to transfer goods and assets between internal divisions
so they can record income in a jurisdiction with low tax rates. Levin said: "This report makes clear
that too many corporations are using tax trickery to send their profits overseas and avoid paying
their fair share in the United States."
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption, click here.
Most companies in US avoid federal income taxes

2008-08-12, Business Week/Associated Press
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D92GQ1982.htm
Unlike the rest of us, most U.S. corporations and foreign companies doing business in the United
States pay no federal income tax, according to a new report from Congress. The study by the
Government Accountability Office ... said two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal
income taxes between 1998 and 2005, and about 68 percent of foreign companies doing
business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period. Collectively, the
companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate. "It's shameful
that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen.
Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study. The GAO study did not investigate why
corporations weren't paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any
corporations by name. More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2
million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5
trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were
considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in
receipts. The GAO said it analyzed data from the Internal Revenue Service, examining samples of
corporate returns for the years 1998 through 2005. For 2005, for example, it reviewed 110,003 tax
returns from among more than 1.2 million corporations doing business in the U.S. "It's time for the
big corporations to pay their fair share," Dorgan said.
Note: For many revealing reports on corporate corruption from reliable, verifiable sources, click
here.
Global Derivatives Market Expands to $516 Trillion

2007-11-22, Bloomberg News
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a58EF32GpHeg
The market for derivatives grew at the fastest pace in at least nine years to $516 trillion in
the first half of 2007, the Bank for International Settlements said. Credit-default swaps,
contracts designed to protect investors against default and used to speculate on credit
quality, led the increase, expanding 49 percent to cover a notional $43 trillion of debt in the
six months ended June 30, the BIS said in a report published late yesterday. Derivatives of debt,
currencies, commodities, stocks and interest rates rose 25 percent from the previous six months,
the biggest jump since the Basel, Switzerland-based bank began compiling the data. Investors
have been turning to credit derivatives as a way to speculate on a growing risk of defaults amid
record U.S. mortgage foreclosures. The money at risk through credit-default swaps increased 145
percent from last year to $721 billion, the report said. The amount at stake in the entire derivatives
market is $11.1 trillion, according to the BIS, which was formed in 1930 to monitor financial
markets and regulate banks. Derivatives are financial instruments derived from stocks, bonds,
loans, currencies and commodities, or linked to specific events like changes in interest rates or the
weather. The report is based on contracts traded outside of exchanges in over-thecounter
market.
Note: Like most reporting in the major media, this article trivializes the massive size of the
derivatives market. $516 trillion is equivalent to $75,000 for every man, woman, and child in the
world! Do you think the financial industry is out of control? For lots more powerful, reliable
information on major banking manipulations, click here. For a powerful analysis describing just
how crazy things have gotten and giving some rays of hope by researcher David Wilcock, click
here.
Chip implants linked to animal tumors

2007-09-09, Washington Post/Associated Press
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the
manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients'
medical records almost instantly. The FDA found "reasonable assurance" the device was safe, and
a sub-agency even called it one of 2005's top "innovative technologies." But neither the company
nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating
to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab
mice and rats. "The transponders were the cause of the tumors," said Keith Johnson, a
retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining ... the findings of a 1996 study he led at the Dow
Chemical Co. Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and ...
said the findings troubled them. Some said they would not allow family members to receive
implants, and all urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely
implanted in people. To date, about 2,000 of the so-called radio frequency identification, or RFID,
devices have been implanted in humans worldwide. Did the agency know of the tumor findings
before approving the chip implants? The FDA declined repeated AP requests to specify what
studies it reviewed. The FDA is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services,
which, at the time of VeriChip's approval, was headed by Tommy Thompson. Two weeks after the
device's approval took effect on Jan. 10, 2005, Thompson left his Cabinet post, and within five
months was a board member of VeriChip Corp. and Applied Digital Solutions. He was
compensated in cash and stock options.
Note: For more reliable information about the use and dangers of microchips, click here.
The White House Coup

2007-07-23, BBC Radio
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml
[BBC Radio] uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American
businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of
half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most
famous families in America (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell [House] and
George Bushs grandfather, Prescott [Bush]) believed that their country should adopt the
policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Why [is] so little ... known about
this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy?
Note: The highly decorated General Smedley Butler, author of the landmark book War is a Racket,
was approached by the plotters for assistance in carrying out this coup. He at first played along,
but then eventually exposed the coup plot in Congressional testimony. Yet news of this huge plot
was squelched by both the government and media. To understand why, read a two-page summary
of General Butler's book by clicking here and listen to the gripping, 30-minute BBC broadcast at
the link above.
UCSF study questions drug trial results

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/05/DRUGS.TMP
Money talks -- and very loudly -- when a drug company is funding a clinical trial involving one of its
products. UCSF researchers looked at nearly 200 head-to-head studies of widely prescribed
cholesterol-lowering medications, or statins, and found that results were 20 times more likely to
favor the drug made by the company that sponsored the trial. "We have to be really, really
skeptical of these drug-company-sponsored studies," said Lisa Bero, the study's author and
professor of clinical pharmacy and health policy studies. The trials typically involved comparing the
effectiveness of a drug to one or two other statins. UCSF researchers also found that a study's
conclusions -- not the actual research results but the trial investigators' impressions -- are
more than 35 times more likely to favor the test drug when that trial is sponsored by the
drug's maker. Bero said drug companies fund up to 90 percent of drug-to-drug clinical trials for
certain classes of medication. The researchers found other factors that could affect trial results.
For example, pharmaceutical companies could choose not to publish results of studies that fail to
favor their drugs, or they could be designed in ways to skew results. The study found the most
important weakness of trials was lack of true clinical outcome measures. In the case of statins,
some trials focused on less-direct results such as lipid levels but failed to connect the results with
key outcomes such as heart attacks or mortality. "None of us really care what our cholesterol level
is. We care about having a heart attack," Gibson said. "For the drug to be worthwhile taking, it has
to be directly related to prevent a heart attack."
Note: For lots more reliable information about corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.
Doctors Reap Millions for Anemia Drugs

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/business/09anemia.html?ex=1336363200&en=b68...
Two of the worlds largest drug companies are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to doctors
every year in return for giving their patients anemia medicines, which regulators now say may be
unsafe at commonly used doses. The payments are legal, but very few people outside of the
doctors who receive them are aware of their size. The payments give physicians an incentive to
prescribe the medicines at levels that might increase patients risks of heart attacks or strokes. At
just one practice in the Pacific Northwest, a group of six cancer doctors received $2.7
million from Amgen for prescribing $9 million worth of its drugs last year. [A] report
prepared by F.D.A. staff scientists said no evidence indicated that the medicines either
improved quality of life in patients or extended their survival. Several studies suggested that
the drugs can shorten patients lives when used at high doses. The medicines ... are among the
worlds top-selling drugs. They represent the single biggest drug expense for Medicare. Since
1991 ... the average dose given to dialysis patients in this country has nearly tripled. About 50
percent of dialysis patients now receive enough of the drugs to raise their red blood cell counts
above the level considered risky by the F.D.A. Unlike most drugs, the anemia medicines do not
come in fixed doses. Therefore, doctors have great flexibility to increase dosing and profits. The
companies have [failed] to test whether lower doses of the medicines might work better than
higher doses. There is little evidence that the drugs make much difference for patients with
moderate anemia, and federal statistics show that the increased use of the drugs has not improved
survival in dialysis patients.
Note: For lots more on major corruption in health care, click here.
Phone cancer report buried

2007-04-15, The Times (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article1655012.ece
T-MOBILE, the mobile phone giant, has been accused of burying a scientific report it
commissioned that concluded handsets and masts contribute to cancer and genetic damage. The
report argued that officially recommended limits on radiation exposure should be cut to 1/1000th of
those in force. The suggestion has not been taken up by the company or by regulators.
Campaigners claimed T-Mobiles handling of the report was part of a wider pattern of behaviour by
the industry in its efforts to keep discussion of the health risks off the agenda. The Ecolog
Institute, which has been researching mobile phone technology since 1992, was paid by TMobile to evaluate evidence on its potential dangers. But Dr Peter Neitzke, one of the
authors of the report, has accused T-Mobile ... of diluting the findings by commissioning other
studies from which it knew no critical results or recommendations were to be expected. Ecologs
report, which analysed dozens of peer-reviewed studies, stated: Given the results of the present
epidemiological studies, it can be concluded that electromagnetic fields with frequencies in the
mobile telecommunications range do play a role in the development of cancer. This is
particularly notable for tumours of the central nervous system.
Note: For many highly important articles from reliable sources on major health issues, click here.
Bribes offered to scientists

2007-02-03, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia's leading newspaper)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/bribes-offered-to-scientists/2007/02/0...
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one
of the world's largest oil companies to undermine the UN climate change report. Letters sent
by the American Enterprise Institute, an ExxonMobil-funded think tank with close links to the Bush
Administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of the report.
Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered. The institute has received more than
$1.6 million from ExxonMobil - which yesterday announced a $50 billion annual profit, the biggest
ever by a US company - and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush
Administration. A former head of ExxonMobil, Lee Raymond, is the vice-chairman of the institute's
board of trustees.
Note: Why wasn't this important story covered by any major media in the U.S.? For an
answer, click here.
It's still about oil in Iraq

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-juhasz8dec08,0,4717508.story
While the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the
war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such
reticence. Page 1, Chapter 1 ... lays out Iraq's importance: "It has the world's second-largest
known oil reserves." The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we
are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. Recommendation No. 63 ... calls on the U.S. to
"assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise." This is an
echo of calls made [by] the U.S. State Department's Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting
between December 2002 and April 2003. Iraq "should be opened to international oil companies as
quickly as possible after the war." Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract
called a production-sharing agreement. These agreements are ... rejected by all the top oil
producers in the Middle East because they grant greater control and more profits to the companies
than the governments. For any degree of oil privatization to take place ... Iraq has to amend its
constitution. Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of the constitution
to be "pursued on an urgent basis." Petroleum Economist magazine later reported that U.S. oil
companies considered passage of the new oil law more important than increased security. Further,
the Iraq Study Group would commit U.S. troops to Iraq for several more years to ... provide
security for Iraq's oil infrastructure. We can thank the Iraq Study Group for making its case publicly.
It is now our turn to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil.
Note: For more on corporate complicity in fomenting war exposed by a top U.S. general, click
here.
Class Struggle
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009246
The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's
steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th
century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years.
Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our
wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the
economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national
income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate
America, through a vast system of loopholes. Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve
compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic's range. As this
newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million
a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been
raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20
times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much. Trickle-down
economics didn't happen. Wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the
national wealth. This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries.
A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris.
Note: For some reason the Wall Street Journal has removed this article. You can read it on the
website of the article's author at this link.
Out of Control: AIDS and the corruption of medical science

2006-03-01, Harper's Magazine
http://harpers.org/archive/2006/03/0080961
HIV tests detect footprints, never the animal itself. These footprints, antibodies ... were limited to
two in 1984 ... but over the years expanded to include many proteins previously not associated
with HIV. A majority of HIV-positive tests, when retested, come back indeterminate or negative. In
many cases, different results emerge from the same blood tested in different labs. There are
currently at least eleven different criteria for how many and what proteins at which band density
signal positive. The most stringent criteria (four bands) are upheld in Australia and France; the
least stringent (two bands), in Africa, where an HIV test is not even required as part of an AIDS
diagnosis. Africa ... has become ground zero of the AIDS epidemic. The clinical definition of AIDS
in Africa, however, is stunningly broad and generic, and was seemingly designed to be little other
than a signal for funding. The Bangui definition of AIDS ... requires neither a positive HIV test nor
a low T-cell count, as in the West, but only the presence of chronic diarrhea, fever, significant
weight loss, and asthenia. These happen to be the symptoms of chronic malnutrition, malaria,
parasitic infections, and other common African illnesses. The statistical picture of AIDS in Africa,
consequently, is a communal projection based on very rough estimates ... extrapolated across the
continent using computer models and highly questionable assumptions. More than 2,300 people,
mostly scientists and doctors, including Nobelists in chemistry and medicine, have signed
the petition of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis, which
calls for a more independent and skeptical approach to the question of AIDS causality.
Note: If you want to be educated about the details of how rampant corruption has become in the
medical research industry, read this well researched article. For a concise description of unbridled
corruption in the health care industry by one of the most respected doctors in the world, click here.
Kids Build Soybean-Fueled Car

2006-02-17, CBS News
The star at last week's Philadelphia Auto Show wasn't a sports car or an economy car. It was a
sports-economy car one that combines performance and practicality under one hood. But as
CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports in this week's Assignment America, the car that
buyers have been waiting decades [for] comes from an unexpected source and runs on soybean
bio-diesel fuel to boot. A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50
miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any driver's interest. So who do we have to
thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No just Victor, David, Cheeseborough, Bruce, and Kosi,
five kids from the auto shop program at West Philadelphia High School. The five kids ... built
the soybean-fueled car as an after-school project. It took them more than a year rummaging for
parts, configuring wires and learning as they went. As teacher Simon Hauger notes, these kids
weren't exactly the cream of the academic crop. "If you give kids that have been stereotyped as
not being able to do anything an opportunity to do something great, they'll step up," he says.
Stepping up is something the big automakers have yet to do. They're still in the early stages of
marketing hybrid cars while playing catch-up to the Bad News Bears of auto shop. "We made this
work," says Hauger. "We're not geniuses. So why aren't they doing it?" Kosi thinks he knows why.
The answer, he says, is the big oil companies.
Note: So why isn't this remarkable engine design breakthrough making front page headlines in all
major media? Why aren't the many other major energy breakthroughs that have been reported
given the headlines they deserve? Could it be that those who are reaping huge profits from oil
sales have much more political and media influence than you might imagine? For lots more
reliable information on this, click here.
Doctor says bird flu drug is useless

2005-12-04, London Times
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article208383.ece
A Vietnamese doctor who has treated dozens of victims of avian flu claims the drug being
stockpiled around the world to combat a pandemic is 'useless' against the virus. Dr Nguyen Tuong
Van runs the intensive care unit at the Centre for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi and has treated 41
victims of H5N1. Van followed World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines and gave her
patients Tamiflu, but concluded it had no effect. 'We place no importance on using this drug on
our patients,' she said. 'Tamiflu is really only meant for treating ordinary type A flu. It was not
designed to combat H5N1 . . . (Tamiflu) is useless.' Roche, the company that makes Tamiflu, has
sold stockpiles of the drug to 40 countries and insists there is clear evidence it will protect against
a future flu virus. However, it stresses the drug must be given within 48 hours to be effective. The
WHO admitted Tamiflu had not been widely successful in humans. 'However, we believe in many
Asian countries it hasn't been used until late in the illness,' a spokesman said.
Note: Yet hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to stockpile this drug. It's quite
interesting that the former chairman of the board of directors of the company that made Tamiflu is
current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Rumsfeld has had over $5 million in stock
gains from the sales of this drug. To read about this and lots more:
http://www.WantToKnow.info/avianflu
Refiners Maintain a Firm but Legal Grip on Supplies

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-calgas18jun18,0,7589520.story
California refiners are simply cashing in on a system that allows a handful of players to keep prices
high by carefully controlling supplies. The result is a kind of miracle market in which profits abound,
outsiders can't compete and a dwindling cadre of gas station operators has little choice but go
along. Refiners "not only control how much supply is in the marketplace, they control who gets it
and at what price," said Dennis DeCota, executive director of the California Service Station and
Automotive Repair Assn. The recent history of California's fuel industry is a textbook case of
how a once-competitive business can become skewed to the advantage of a few, all with
the federal government's blessing. Refiners acknowledge their California businesses have
become the most profitable in the nation. The rest of the country isn't far behind. Characteristics
once unique to California specialty fuels, a refinery shortage, the growing dominance of a few
companies have begun to plague other gasoline markets.
Big Pharma snared by net

2004-09-26, The Observer (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1312765,00.html
No one foresaw ... the shocking extent to which the internet would change the terms of trade
between corporations and society. One of the world's largest drug companies [was] the first victim.
Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second-largest pharma, denied any wrongdoing, but agreed
to pay $2.5m ... for concealing evidence of its antidepressant Seroxat's potential for harming
children, while doing them no measurable good. Infinitely more frightening ... this pharma had the
backing of institutions that we, the public, rely on to protect us from poisoning by prescription. The
Royal College of Psychiatrists had insisted only a year earlier that 'there is no evidence that
antidepressant drugs can cause dependence syndromes'. It was really the internet that allowed
public health activists to do an end run around GSK's and the medical authorities' denials
of the drug's risks. An explosion of websites dedicated to vivid accounts of antidepressant
reactions told these campaigners about hundreds of thousands affected by a problem that
officially did not exist. Health activists in Britain and America have uncovered the core of pharma
might. In both countries, clinical drug tests are paid for by the pharmas, who tweak the trials'
design for the best possible results. Until recently, only the most favourable findings got published
in the 20,000-odd biomedical journals, many of them dependent on pharmas for funding. The
drugs are approved for marketing by regulators, whose salaries are mostly financed by the
subjects of their evaluations. The medicines are then prescribed by doctors routinely courted with
pharma gifts ... meant to persuade them to change their prescribing habits.
Note: For a two-page summary with lots more reliable information on major health cover-ups by a
doctor who was editor-in-chief of one of the most pretigious medical journals in the world, click
here.
Bilderberg: The ultimate conspiracy theory

2004-06-03, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3773019.stm
The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been
accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th
anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever. On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th
anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting. For four days some of the West's chief political
movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a fivestar hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues. What sets Bilderberg apart from other highpowered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique. Not a
word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are
invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted. A
former journalist, Mr Gosling runs a campaign against the group from his home in Bristol, UK."
One of the first places I heard about the determination of US forces to attack Iraq was from leaks
that came out of the 2002 Bilderberg meeting," says Mr Gosling.
Steve Wilson Exposes Huge Prescription Drug Price Markups

2004-02-05, WXYZ-TV (Detroit ABC affiliate)
http://web.archive.org/web/20050316092358/http://www.wxyz.com/wxyz/ys_investi...
Generic drugs are just as safe and effective as their brand-name counterparts but they cost only a
fraction as much. That is because companies that produce the generic versions simply copy the
formula developed by the drugs inventor years before. While your drugstore charges you less for
a generic drug than a brand name version, that price difference is nothing compared to the markup
most druggists place on the generics. Your pharmacy most likely paid a wholesale price of only
pennies for that generic medicine. They then charge you a markup of 3,000%, 4,000%, even
5,000% or more, pocketing most of your savings. Whos paying sky-high prices? People who can
least afford to get ripped offthe elderly, the unemployed, and everybody who has to pay for their
prescription medicine out of their own pocket. At CVS the cost of generic Prozac is marked up
at least 56 times what the drug cost wholesale. It is a 5,594% markup. And in our survey of
more than a dozen popular generic drugs, CVS leads the pack with average markups of
1,436% Walgreens is not far behind at 1,341% and Rite Aid markups on generics average
1,183%. [WXYZ reporter] Steve Wilson took the issue to Kurt Proctor, Vice President of the
Association of Chain Drug Stores. "Explain to me why its necessary to take an 82 cent product
and mark it up to $46.69? You have to mark it up 5,500% to meet your costs to make a profit? This
is really about greed, isnt it?" asked Wilson. "Its not about greed," responded Proctor. "Thats not
accurate at all. Thats a misleading statement. What I hope you will focus on is making sure people
use their medications correctly."
Note: This important exposure of price-gouging by pharmacies is still available at Web Archive
(click on the link above for the complete article, which is well worth reading in its entirety), but for
some reason has been taken down at WXYZ's website. Could it be someone doesn't want us to
know about this?
Sex Crimes Cover-Up By Vatican?

2003-08-06, CBS News
For decades, priests in this country abused children in parish after parish while their superiors
covered it all up. Now it turns out the orders for this cover up were written in Rome at the highest
levels of the Vatican. [A] confidential Vatican document, obtained by CBS News, lays out a
church policy that calls for absolute secrecy when it comes to sexual abuse by priests
anyone who speaks out could be thrown out of the church. The policy was written in 1962 by
Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani. The document, once "stored in the secret archives" of the Vatican,
focuses on crimes initiated as part of the confessional relationship. Bishops are instructed to
pursue these cases "in the most secretive way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and
everyone (including the alleged victim) ... is to observe the strictest secret, which is commonly
regarded as a secret of the Holy Office ... under the penalty of excommunication." Larry Drivon, a
lawyer who represents alleged victims, said, This document is significant because it's a blueprint
for deception. It's an instruction manual on how to deceive and how to protect pedophiles ... and
exactly how to avoid the truth coming out." Richard Sipe, a former priest who has written about sex
abuse and secrecy in the church, said the document sends a chilling message. You keep it secret
at all costs, Sipe said. It's happened in every diocese in this country. According to church
records, the document was a bedrock of Catholic sex abuse policy until America's bishops met last
summer and drafted new policies to address the crisis in the church.
The people who control the world

2003-01-30, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/01/30/ronson.them
The Middle Ages had the Knights Templar. The 18th century had the Masons and the Illuminati.
Our modern age has golf-playing businessmen. [Jon] Ronson, a 35-year-old British writer,
humorist and documentarian, kept reading and hearing about the "tiny elite [that] rules the world
from inside a secret room" -- so he decided to go in search of it. He met with extremists of many
stripes: Ku Klux Klansmen with a PR bent, Muslim rabble-rousers ... and others convinced that a
New World Order meant the end of the world. He sought out the industrialists of groups such as
the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove. He wrote about his experiences in "Them." Ronson's
extremists seem rather normal. Some are very much aware of how their views marginalize them.
The people of "Them" are people who are all too human -- even if they would deny others their
humanity. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to
get you. Ronson doesn't deny that many of the extremists in "Them" are, well, extreme. Many have
put together half-baked theories that blame the troubles of the world on wealthy businessmen,
usually a code word for Jews. Ronson, who's Jewish himself, sometimes found it awkward to listen
to their views. Conspiracy theorists tend to be fearful, less educated, less tied in to the power
structure. Meanwhile, the leaders of corporations and countries do meet as part of conferences
sponsored by organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. While
researching a Bilderberg Group meeting, [Ronson] was chased through parts of Portugal
by shadowy security men. He found out just how thin the membrane between "us" and
"them" may be.
Note: Them is by far the most balanced, entertaining book you are likely to find on conspiracy
theorists. It pokes a lot of fun both at the conspiracy theorists and at the powerful secret groups
which he finds to be deluded almost as much as the conspiracy theorists themselves.
The Man Behind The Vaccine Mystery

2002-12-12, CBS News
It's been a mystery in Washington for weeks. Just before President Bush signed the homeland
security bill into law an unknown member of Congress inserted a provision into the
legislation that blocks lawsuits against the maker of a controversial vaccine preservative
called "thimerosal," used in vaccines that are given to children. Drug giant Eli Lilly and
Company makes thimerosal. It's the mercury in the preservative that many parents say causes
autism in thousands of children. But nobody in Congress would admit to adding the provision,
reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Acosta until now. House Majority Leader Dick Armey tells
CBS News he did it to keep vaccine-makers from going out of business under the weight of
mounting lawsuits. "I did it and I'm proud of it," says Armey, R-Texas. "It's a matter of national
security," Armey says. Because Armey is retiring at the end of the year, some say the outgoing
majority leader is the perfect fall guy to take the heat and shield the White House from
embarrassment.
Note: A Reuters article reports that the former head of the US's CDC was later named president of
Merck's vaccine division with accompanying high salary. Could this be payoff for her support in
suppressing studies that cast doubt on vaccines?
Toyota smashes fuel economy record

2002-10-20, London Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,588-451038,00.html
Tucked away on the Toyota stand you will find a cheeky little coup that looks sporty but whose
raison dtre is fuel economy, the lowest exhaust emissions and ease of recycling. The ES3 the
initials stand for Eco Spirit achieves 104mpg in the official European fuel consumption
tests, a record for a four-seat car. Some months ago I drove this prototype and not only is it
even more economical than the special 3 litre (three litres of fuel for every 100km travelled, or
94mpg) versions of the Audi A2 and VW Lupo that sell in Germany, but the Toyota is more lively
and responsive and would be very acceptable as an everyday car. The ES3 has a 1.4 litre
turbocharged diesel engine and CVT (continuously variable transmission).
Note: So what happened to this amazing car? Why haven't we heard anything about it since the
article was published in 2002? Read the revealing WantToKnow.info article at this link to learn how
this amazing car, which was the talk of the fuel economy car industry in 2002, eventually
disappeared. And for an excellent essay which provides key information on this topic, including a
detailed list of suppressed inventions which greatly improve gasoline mileage reported over the
years in respected magazines, click here.
German Firm Probes Final World Trade Center Deals

2001-12-17, Fox News/Reuters
German computer experts are working round the clock to unlock the truth behind an
unexplained surge in financial transactions made just before two hijacked planes crashed
into New York's World Trade Center Sept. 11. Were criminals responsible for the sharp rise in
credit card transactions that moved through some computer systems at the WTC shortly before the
planes hit the twin towers? Or was it coincidence that unusually large sums of money,
perhaps more than $100 million, were rushed through the computers as the disaster
unfolded? A world leader in retrieving data, German-based firm Convar is trying to answer those
questions. Using a pioneering laser scanning technology to find data on damaged computer hard
drives and main frames found in the rubble of the World Trade Center and other nearby collapsed
buildings, Convar has recovered information from 32 computers that support assumptions of dirty
doomsday dealings. "The suspicion is that inside information about the attack was used to send
financial transaction commands and authorizations in the belief that amid all the chaos the
criminals would have, at the very least, a good head start,'' said Convar director Peter Henschel.
"Not only the volume but the size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that.
There is a suspicion that these were possibly planned to take advantage of the chaos.''
Note: For a CNN article on this most bizarre news, click here. A German news broadcast from
March 11, 2002 at this link reveals that the results are being kept secret. But why? And why hasn't
there been any follow-up news on this astounding information? Could it be that key government
insiders knew there was going to be an attack? For lots more reliable, verifiable information on
9/11 raising serious questions, click here.
IMF's four steps to damnation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2001/apr/29/business.mbas
Joseph Stiglitz, ex-chief economist of the World Bank, ... was in Washington for the big confab of
the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. From sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we
obtained a cache of documents marked, 'confidential' and 'restricted'. Stiglitz helped translate one,
a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed,
says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the
Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It
concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring
agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature. The Bank hands every minister the same
four-step programme. Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the selloffs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics happily flogged their electricity and water companies. After privatisation, Step Two is capital market
liberalisation. Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate
and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days. And
when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF
demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%. Step Three: market-based
pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. Step Four: free trade. This
is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens
to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said.
Note: For an essay by John Perkins, an insider who was directly involved in these severe
manipulations, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on
government collusion in financial corruption, click here.
Many Medicines Are Potent Years Past Expiration Dates

Do drugs really stop working after the date stamped on the bottle? Fifteen years ago, the U.S.
military decided to find out. Sitting on a $1 billion stockpile of drugs and facing the daunting
process of destroying and replacing its supply every two to three years, the military began a testing
program to see if it could extend the life of its inventory. The testing, conducted by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration, ultimately covered more than 100 drugs, prescription and over-thecounter. The results ... show that about 90% of them were safe and effective far past their original
expiration date, at least one for 15 years past it. The program's returns have been huge. The
military from 1993 through 1998 spent about $3.9 million on testing and saved $263.4 million on
drug expense. In light of these results, a former director of the testing program, Francis Flaherty,
says he has concluded that expiration dates put on by manufacturers typically have no
bearing on whether a drug is usable for longer. "Manufacturers put expiration dates on for
marketing, rather than scientific, reasons," says Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his
retirement last year. "They want turnover." Joel Davis, a former FDA expiration-date compliance
chief, says that with a handful of exceptions - notably nitroglycerin, insulin and some liquid
antibiotics - most drugs are probably as durable as those the agency has tested for the military.
"Most drugs degrade very slowly," he says. "In all likelihood, you can take a product you have at
home and keep it for many years." Drug-industry officials ... acknowledge that expiration dates
have a commercial dimension.
Note: As the Wall Street Journal charges to view this article at the above link, you can view it free
here. For lots more on how the pharmaceutical industry cares more about profits than your health,
click here.
Ford Sees Wealth in Muscle Shoals: Edison Backs Him Up

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=3&res=9C04E0D7103EEE3ABC4E53...
Henry Ford [is] convinced that if Congress will complete and lease to him the water-power
developments [at Muscle Shoals], he can make this whole section of the South more prosperous.
Thomas A. Edison indorsed Mr. Fords views. He is very earnest in his support of Fords [proposal]
to finance Muscle Shoals by an issue of currency ... directly by the Government. "If our nation can
issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill," said Mr. Edison. "[When Congress authorizes] an
issue of bonds, it must go out to the money brokers. We then must pay interest to the money
brokers for the use of our own money. In all our great bond issues, the interest is always greater
than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost on that
account. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money
brokers collect twice the amount of the bond ... whereas the currency pays nobody but
those who directly contribute. Both are promises to pay: but one promise fattens the
usurer, and the other helps the people. It is the money broker, the money profiteer, the private
banker, that I oppose. It is a terrible situation when the Government ... must go into debt and
submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the [issuance of currency]. The
people must pay any way: why should they be compelled to pay twice as the bond system
compels them? [If] Government will adopt this policy of increasing its national wealth without
contributing to the interest collector ... you will see an era of progress and prosperity in this country
such as could never have come otherwise. Mr. Edison reiterated his belief [that if] the currency
method is tried in raising money for public improvements, the country will never go back to the
borrow method.
Note: If the above link fails, you can read the a copy of the full, fascinating article at this link or this
one. The entire article contains lots of amazing revelations of how big bankers keep us in debt.
How fascinating that Ford and Edison, both ultra-wealthy businessmen, here are arguing strongly
against the privately owned Federal Reserve system through which private bankers print US
money and charge interest on it, and for the US government printing its own money. This would
avoid US citizens having to pay the big bankers all of the interest on much of the national debt. For
lots of evidence to support this way of thinking, click here.
Stop Making Us Guinea Pigs

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/opinion/stop-making-us-guinea-pigs.html?_r=0
The issues surrounding G.M.O.s - genetically modified organisms - became more complicated last
week when the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that glyphosate, the
active ingredient in the widely used herbicide Roundup, probably causes cancer in
humans. Two insecticides, malathion and diazinon, were also classified as "probable" carcinogens
by the agency, a respected arm of the World Health Organization. Roundup, made by Monsanto
for both home and commercial use, is crucial in the production of genetically engineered corn and
soybean crops, so it was notable that the verdict on its dangers came nearly simultaneously with
an announcement by the Food and Drug Administration that new breeds of genetically engineered
potato and apple are safe to eat. Few people are surprised that an herbicide in widespread use is
probably toxic at high doses or with prolonged exposure, circumstances that may be common
among farmers and farmworkers. Nor is it surprising that it took so long - Roundup has been used
since the 1970s - to discover its likely carcinogenic properties. There is a sad history of us acting
as guinea pigs for the novel chemicals that industry develops. To date, G.M.O.s and other forms of
biotech have done nothing but enrich their manufacturers and promote a system of agriculture
that's neither sustainable nor for the most part beneficial. We don't need better, smarter
chemicals along with crops that can tolerate them; we need fewer chemicals. There's no
reason to put the general population, and particularly the farming population, at risk for the sake of
industry profits.
Note: Monsanto's Roundup and the GMO crops that support its use are well-known by scientists
to be a threat to public health. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles
on GMO risks and how these are covered up.
U.S. probes banks over metals markets

2015-02-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/02/24/us-probes-metals-market-manipu...
U.S. authorities are investigating major banks over potential manipulation of the precious metals
market, the latest development in a series of probes related to major financial benchmarks. HSBC
is among at least 10 major banks being investigated by U.S. authorities for possible rigging
of the price-setting process for gold, silver, platinum and palladium, The Wall Street Journal
reported late Monday. The report said other banks being scrutinized include: Goldman Sachs;
JPMorgan Chase; Britain-based Barclays; Swiss banking giants UBS and Credit Suisse; Bank of
Nova Scotia; Germany-based Deutsche Bank; France-based Socit Gnrale; and South Africabased Standard Bank Group. U.S. authorities declined to comment. Goldman Sachs, HSBC,
Deutsche Bank and Barclays, HSBC, UBS and Bank of Nova Scotia have been named as
defendants in various putative class-action lawsuits in U.S. federal courts over suspected
manipulation of precious metals pricing. The complaints contend that bank traders conspired
to manipulate the price of metal derivatives in a bid to reap profits on proprietary trades.
The new U.S. investigations follow separate bank probes launched earlier over suspected
manipulation of the $5.3-billion-a-day foreign exchange currency trading market, along with rigging
of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), which is used to set rates on billions of dollars in
loans, credit cards and mortgages.
Note: When it comes to international banking, it appears that almost everything is rigged. For
more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the
systemically corrupt financial industry.
A Whistleblower's Horror Story

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/a-whistleblowers-horror-story-20150218
One man's story in particular highlights just about everything that can go wrong when you give
evidence against your bosses in America: former Countrywide/Bank of America whistleblower
Michael Winston. Two years ago this month, Winston was being celebrated in the news as a hero.
He'd blown the whistle on Countrywide Financial, the bent mortgage lender that ... nearly blew up
the global economy. Today, Winston [has] spent over a million dollars fighting Countrywide (and
the firm that acquired it, Bank of America) in court. At first, that fight proved a good gamble, as a
jury granted him a multi-million-dollar award for retaliation and wrongful termination. But
after Winston won that case, an appellate judge not only wiped out that jury verdict, but
allowed Bank of America to counterattack him. The bank eventually beat him for nearly
$98,000 in court costs. That single transaction means a good guy in the crisis drama, Winston,
had by the end of 2014 paid a larger individual penalty than virtually every wrongdoer connected
with the financial collapse of 2008. When Winston protested his preposterous punishment on the
grounds that a trillion-dollar company recouping legal fees from an unemployed whistleblower was
unreasonable and unnecessary, a California Superior Court judge denied his argument get this
on the grounds that Winston failed to prove a disparity in resources between himself and Bank
of America! Four years later, we're still waiting for the first criminal conviction against any individual
for crisis-era corruption. There's been no significant reform. What we've seen instead is a series of
cash deals with the most corrupt companies.
Note: Countrywide bought political influence to more effectively defraud institutional investors and
taxpayers. Thanks to Winston, they were caught and proven guilty. But Bank of America
purchased Countrywide, and has been paying off officials in secret deals to continue skirting the
law without admitting wrongdoing. And Michael Winston now has to pay Bank of America for their
trouble.
Don't Trade Away Our Health

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/opinion/dont-trade-away-our-health.html?_r=0
A secretive group met behind closed doors in New York this week. What they decided may lead to
higher drug prices for you and hundreds of millions around the world. Representatives from the
United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries convened to decide the future of their
trade relations in the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (T.P.P.). Powerful companies
appear to have been given influence over the proceedings, even as full access is withheld
from many government officials from the partnership countries. Among the topics negotiators
have considered are some of the most contentious T.P.P. provisions those relating to intellectual
property rights. These rules could help big pharmaceutical companies maintain or increase their
monopoly profits on brand-name drugs [and] block cheaper generic drugs from the market. Big
Pharmas profits would rise, at the expense of the health of patients and the budgets of consumers
and governments. Of course, pharmaceutical companies claim they need to charge high prices to
fund their research and development. This just isnt so. For one thing, drug companies spend more
on marketing and advertising than on new ideas. Overly restrictive intellectual property rights
actually slow new discoveries. As it is, most of the important innovations come out of our
universities and research centers, like the National Institutes of Health, funded by government and
foundations.
Note: Read what a former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Health has to say about
the egregious profiteering of Big Pharma. Watch an excellent, two-minute video by former U.S.
Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on the TPP titled "The Worst Trade Deal You've Never Heard of,"
or read leaked draft texts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership for yourself.
At Americas court of last resort, a handful of lawyers now dominates

the docket
2014-12-08, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/scotus/
The U.S. Supreme Court building proclaims a high ideal: Equal Justice Under Law. But inside, an
elite cadre of lawyers has emerged [to give] their clients a disproportionate chance to influence the
law. A Reuters examination of nine years of cases shows that 66 of the 17,000 lawyers who
petitioned the Supreme Court ... were at least six times more likely to be accepted by the court
than were all others. About half [of these 66 lawyers] worked for justices past or present, and some
socialize with them. Although they account for far less than 1 percent of lawyers who filed appeals
to the Supreme Court, these attorneys were involved in 43 percent of the cases the high court
chose to decide from 2004 through 2012. The Reuters examination of the Supreme Courts
docket, the most comprehensive ever, suggests ... a decided advantage for corporate
America. Some legal experts contend that the reliance on a small cluster of specialists, most
working on behalf of businesses, has turned the Supreme Court into an echo chamber a place
where an elite group of jurists embraces an elite group of lawyers who reinforce narrow views of
how the law should be construed. Of the 66 most successful lawyers, 51 worked for law firms
that primarily represented corporate interests. In cases pitting the interests of customers,
employees or other individuals against those of companies, a leading attorney was three times
more likely to launch an appeal for business than for an individual, Reuters found.
Note: How interesting that no major media seem to have picked up this revealing story. For more
along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about government
corruption from reliable major media sources.
Doctor Transparency: Why Leana Wen Received Threats After

Launching
2014-11-19, International Business Times
http://www.ibtimes.com/doctor-transparency-why-leana-wen-received-threats-aft...
Leana Wen created the Whos My Doctor campaign last year. The effort ... goes a step
further than the federal governments mandate requiring physicians to disclose all money they
receive from drug companies. Last month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released
data that outlined the $3.5 billion that companies paid to the nations doctors. The Open Payments
database ... was heavily opposed by physician groups and pharmaceutical companies.
Incentives matter, said Wen in a recent TED talk, If you go to your doctor because of
back pain, you might want to know hes getting paid $5,000 to perform spine surgery versus
$25 to refer you to see a physical therapist. As part of the Whos My Doctor effort, each
physician voluntarily publishes a Total Transparency Manifesto, which ... flows into a searchable
database that prospective patients can use. One year after starting the project, only 34
transparent doctors are listed on the website. There are many more who were less than pleased.
I thought some doctors would sign on and others wouldnt, but I had no idea of the backlash that
would ensue, she said in her TED talk. The criticism quickly went beyond online comments. Soon,
people were asking Wens employer to fire her, and sending mail to her home address with
threats.
Note: Don't miss the inspiring TED talk of Dr. Wen. And check out her website "Who's My Doctor"
at http://www.whosmydoctor.com.
The Artful Dodgers

http://time.com/3326573/the-artful-dodgers/
Corporations in the U.S. today are hoarding about $2 trillion in profits overseas, arguing that the
U.S. corporate tax rate of 35% makes it too difficult to bring this cash home and invest it here
better to keep the money abroad and pay lower taxes in other countries. Yet the truth is that
legions of tax lawyers make sure that most big American corporations never pay anywhere close
to that rate. FORTUNE 500 companies on average pay more like 19.4%, and a third pay less than
10%, chiefly because of all the generous loopholes Congress has afforded corporations over the
years. Partly as a result, U.S. firms are enjoying record profit margins, making more money
than ever before yet paying a lower share of the overall U.S. tax pie than they have in
decades. They want the benefits of U.S. talent and markets but not the responsibilities.
Taxpayer-funded, early-stage investments in areas like the Internet, transportation and health care
research are the reason many of the largest U.S. companies got so big and successful to begin
with. As the academic Mariana Mazzucato argues in her excellent book The Entrepreneurial State:
Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, many of the most lauded corporate innovations,
including the parts of smartphones that make them smart (Internet, GPS, touchscreen display and
voice recognition), came out of state-funded research. Ditto any number of pharmaceutical,
biotech and cybersecurity innovations. In so many cases, public investments have become
business giveaways, making individuals and their companies rich but providing little return
to the economy or the state, says Mazzucato. Tax [dodges] that expatriate the gains of
American corporations to enrich a tiny managerial caste symbolize a whole new genre of selfish
capitalism.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news
articles from reliable major media sources.
Citigroup to pay $7 billion for egregious misconduct leading up to

financial crisis
2014-07-14, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/citigroup-pay-7-billion-egregious-misconduct-l...
JUDY WOODRUFF: We should start praying. I wouldnt be surprised if half of these loans went
down thats what a trader at Citigroup wrote in an e-mail in 2007, after reviewing thousands of
mortgages bought and sold by the bank. Today, the Justice Department cited those very words as
it announced a $7 billion settlement with the bank. The government said Citi committed
egregious misconduct in the lead-up to the financial crisis. Of the $7 billion, Citigroup will
pay $4 billion to the Justice Department. More than $2.5 billion is set aside for whats
described as consumer relief. Tony West is associate attorney general. And he was the
governments lead negotiator in this case. Lay out for us, what was this egregious conduct and
how many people at Citigroup were engaged in it? TONY WEST: Citibank packaged securities,
packaged loans, mortgage loans into these securities, which they sold to investors. What they
didnt tell investors was what the actual quality of those loans were. And so you had these
mortgage bond deals that had quality that was far less than what Citi was representing to investors
that they were. JUDY WOODRUFF: And how many people knew about this, and did the
knowledge go all the way to the top? TONY WEST: We know from the evidence that bankers were
warned that the quality of the loans that they were packaging into these securities wasnt what they
were telling investors they were, but they ignored those warning signs. They ignored that due
diligence. Certainly enough ... bankers knew that we felt that we could demand a very high, in fact,
an historically high, penalty from Citibank.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing financial corruption news
Elizabeth Warrens A Fighting Chance: An exclusive excerpt on the

foreclosure crisis
http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/04/26/elizabeth-warren-new-memoir-ex...
In fall 2009, Secretary Timothy Geithner invited people working on TARP oversight to a meeting.
After we had listened to the secretary go on and on about his departments cheery projections for
recovery, I finally interrupted with a question about a new topic. Why, I asked, had Treasurys
response to the flood of foreclosures been so small? The Congressional Oversight Panel had been
sharply critical of Treasurys foreclosure plan. We thought that the program was poorly designed
and poorly managed and provided little permanent help, and we worried that it would reach too few
people to make any real difference. The secretary ... quickly launched into a general discussion of
his approach to dealing with foreclosures, rehashing the plan that the Congressional Oversight
Panel had already reviewed. Next, he explained why Treasurys efforts were perfectly adequate.
Then he hit his key point: The banks could manage only so many foreclosures at a time, and
Treasury wanted to slow down the pace so the banks wouldnt be overwhelmed. And this was
where the new foreclosure program came in: It was just big enough to foam the runway for them.
There it was: The Treasury foreclosure program was intended to foam the runway to protect
against a crash landing by the banks. Millions of people were getting tossed out on the
street, but the secretary of the Treasury believed the governments most important job was
to provide a soft landing for the tender fannies of the banks.
Note: Adapted from A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren. For more on the government's
collusion with the big banks before, during and after the 2008 financial crisis brought about by
fraudulent mortgage sales, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
Tamiflu: drugs given for swine flu 'were waste of 500m'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/10756200/Tamiflu-drugs-given-for-...
The drug Tamiflu, given to tens of thousands of people during the swine flu pandemic, does
nothing to halt the spread of influenza and the [UK] Government wasted nearly 500 million
stockpiling it, a major study has found. The review, authored by Oxford University, claims that
Roche, the drugs Swiss manufacturer, gave a false impression of its effectiveness and
accuses the company of sloppy science. The study found that Tamiflu, which was given to
240,000 people in the UK at a rate of 1,000 a week, has been linked to suicides of children in
Japan and suggested that, far from easing flu symptoms, it could actually worsen them.
Roche claimed at the time of the 2009 swine flu outbreak that trials had shown that it would reduce
hospital admissions and complications such as pneumonia, bronchitis or sinusitis. Based on [these
claims], the Department of Health bought around 40 million doses of Tamiflu at a cost of 424
million and prescribed it to around 240,000 people. In 2009, 0.5 per cent of the entire NHS budget
was spent on the drug. However, researchers from The Cochrane Collaboration, a not-for-profit
organisation which carries out reviews of health data, found that Tamiflu only cut flu-like symptoms
from seven days to 6.3 days and there was no evidence of a reduction in hospital admissions.
Eight children who took the drug in Japan ended up committing suicide after suffering psychotic
episodes. Other side effects included kidney problems, nausea, vomiting and headaches. Many
people reported feeling anxious or depressed when taking the drug.
Note: We sent out numerous messages at the time of all the fear-mongering around the avian and
swine flu scares that this was wasting huge amounts of money. Of course the money wasn't just
wasted, much of it went into the pockets of Donald Rumsfeld and others, as reported in this
newspaper article. For the revealing news articles we compiled showing the blatant greed and
corruption involved, click here.
Canadian Brad Katsuyama in spotlight over 'rigged' markets allegation

2014-04-01, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-brad-katsuyama-in-spotlight-over-rig...
A Canadian who works on Wall Street is emerging in some quarters as a hero for revealing the
inner workings of high frequency traders who critics have accused of rigging the stock market and
taking investors for billions. Brad Katsuyama now runs IEX the Investors Exchange a new Wall
Street trading platform he founded. But it was in his former capacity as the head trader in New
York for RBC Capital Markets that he caught the attention of popular financial writer Michael Lewis.
Katsuyama gets star billing in Lewiss new book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. Katsuyama told
Lewis that he had uncovered the methods high frequency traders use to get what he considers to
be an unfair advantage over other investors. Katsuyama noticed that when he would send a large
stock order to the market, it would only be partially filled, and then he would have to pay a higher
price for the rest of the order. When he investigated, he found that his orders travelled along fibreoptic lines and hit the closest exchange first, where high frequency traders would use their speed
advantage to buy the shares he wanted and then sell them to him at a slightly higher price all in
milliseconds. "They are able to identify your desire to buy shares in Microsoft and buy them in front
of you and sell them back to you at a higher price," Lewis told 60 Minutes. The United States
stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism, is rigged. The main thrust of
Lewiss new book is that high-frequency traders use their speed advantage in predatory
ways that end up cheating market participants small and large.
Is the U.S. stock market rigged?
2014-03-30, CBS News

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-us-stock-market-rigged/
In the last two weeks, the New York attorney general and the Commodities Futures Trading
Commission in Washington have both launched investigations into high-frequency computerized
stock trading that now controls more than half the market. The probes were announced just ahead
of a much anticipated book on the subject by best-selling author Michael Lewis called Flash Boys.
In it, Lewis argues that the stock market is now rigged to benefit a group of insiders that have
made tens of billions of dollars exploiting computerized trading. The story is told through an
unlikely cast of characters who figured out what was going on and have devised a plan to correct
it. It could have a huge impact on Wall Street. Tonight, Michael Lewis talks about it for the first
time. Steve Kroft: What's the headline here? Michael Lewis: Stock market's rigged. The United
States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism is rigged. Steve Kroft: By
whom? Michael Lewis: By a combination of these stock exchanges, the big Wall Street
banks and high-frequency traders. Steve Kroft: Who are the victims? Michael Lewis:
Everybody who has an investment in the stock market. If it wasn't complicated, it wouldn't be
allowed to happen. The complexity disguises what is happening. If it's so complicated you can't
understand it, then you can't question it. Steve Kroft: And this is all being done by computers?
Michael Lewis: All being done by computers. It's too fast to be done by humans. Humans have
been completely removed from the marketplace. The insiders are able to move faster than you.
Note: For an amazing story of greed and manipulation exposed on Wall Street, see the New York
Times article on Flash Boys at this link.
FBI Investigates Prison Company

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/apnewsbreak-fbi-investigates-prison-compan...
The FBI has launched an investigation of the Corrections Corporation of America over the
company's running of an Idaho prison with a reputation so violent that inmates dubbed it "Gladiator
School." CCA has operated Idaho's largest prison for more than a decade, but last year, CCA
officials acknowledged it had understaffed the Idaho Correctional Center by thousands of hours in
violation of the state contract. CCA also said employees falsified reports to cover up the vacancies.
The announcement came after an Associated Press investigation showed CCA sometimes listed
guards as working 48 hours straight to meet minimum staffing requirements. The understaffing has
been the subject of federal lawsuits and a contempt of court action against CCA. The ACLU sued
on behalf of inmates at the Idaho Correctional Center in 2010, saying the facility was so violent
that inmates called it "Gladiator School" and that understaffing contributed to the high levels of
violence there. In 2012, a Boise law firm sued on behalf of inmates contending that CCA had
ceded control to prison gangs so that they could understaff the prison and save money on
employee wages, and that the understaffing led to an attack by one prison gang on another
group of inmates that left some of them badly injured.
Note: For more on corruption in the prison-industrial complex, see the deeply revealing reports
from reliable major media sources available here.
Genetically Modified Babies

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/opinion/genetically-modified-babies.html
An advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration is set to begin two days of meetings
tomorrow to consider radical biological procedures that, if successful, would produce genetically
modified human beings. This is a dangerous step. These techniques would change every cell in
the bodies of children born as a result of their use, and these alterations would be passed down to
future generations. The F.D.A. calls them mitochondrial manipulation technologies. The
procedures involve removing the nuclear material either from the egg or embryo of a woman with
inheritable mitochondrial disease and inserting it into a healthy egg or embryo of a donor whose
own nuclear material has been discarded. Any offspring would carry genetic material from three
people the nuclear DNA of the mother and father, and the mitochondrial DNA of the donor.
Developers of these modification techniques say they are a way for women with mitochondrial
disease to give birth to healthy children to whom they are related genetically. Some are also
promoting their use for age-related infertility. These procedures are deeply problematic in
terms of their medical risks and societal implications. Will the child be born healthy, or will
the cellular disruptions created by this eggs-as-Lego-pieces approach lead to problems
later on? What about subsequent generations? And how far will we go in our efforts to
engineer humans? Unfortunately, there are now worrisome signs that opposition to inheritable
genetic modifications, written into law by dozens of countries, according to our count, may be
weakening. British regulators are also considering mitochondrial manipulations, and proponents
there, like their counterparts in the United States, want to move quickly to clinical trials.
Note: For more on the dangers to society of genetic engineering, see the deeply revealing reports
The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam
Yet
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-again-the...
It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. Most observers on the Hill thought the Financial
Services Modernization Act of 1999 also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was just the
latest and boldest in a long line of deregulatory handouts to Wall Street that had begun in the
Reagan years. Wall Street had spent much of that era arguing that America's banks needed to
become bigger and badder, in order to compete globally with the German and Japanese-style
financial giants. Bank lobbyists were pushing a new law designed to wipe out 60-plus years of
bedrock financial regulation. The key was repealing or "modifying," as bill proponents put it the
famed Glass-Steagall Act separating bankers and broker. Now, commercial banks would be
allowed to merge with investment banks and insurance companies, creating financial megafirms
potentially far more powerful than had ever existed in America. The [bill] additionally legalized
new forms of monopoly, allowing banks to merge with heavy industry. A tiny provision in
the bill also permitted commercial banks to delve into any activity that is "complementary
to a financial activity and does not pose a substantial risk to the safety or soundness of
depository institutions or the financial system generally." Today, banks like Morgan Stanley,
JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs own oil tankers, run airports and control huge quantities of
coal, natural gas, heating oil, electric power and precious metals. They likewise can now be found
exerting direct control over the supply of a whole galaxy of raw materials crucial to world industry
and to society in general, including everything from food products to metals like zinc, copper, tin,
nickel and ... aluminum.
Note: For more on government collusion with the biggest banks, see the deeply revealing reports
Snowden: NSA conducts industrial espionage too

2014-01-26, CBS News/Reuters
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/snowden-nsa-conducts-industrial-espionage-too/
The U.S. National Security Agency is involved in industrial espionage and will grab any intelligence
it can get its hands on regardless of its value to national security, former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden told a German TV network. ARD TV quoted Snowden saying the NSA does not limit its
espionage to issues of national security and he cited German engineering firm, Siemens as
one target. "If there's information at Siemens that's beneficial to U.S. national interests even if it doesn't have anything to do with national security - then they'll take that
information nevertheless," Snowden said. Snowden's claim the NSA is engaged in industrial
espionage follows a New York Times report earlier this month that the NSA put software in almost
100,000 computers around the world, allowing it to carry out surveillance on those devices and
could provide a digital highway for cyberattacks. The NSA planted most of the software after
gaining access to computer networks, but has also used a secret technology that allows it entry
even to computers not connected to the Internet, the newspaper said, citing U.S. officials,
computer experts and documents leaked by Snowden. Frequent targets of the programme, codenamed Quantum, included units of the Chinese military and industrial targets.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency operations, see the deeply revealing reports
Corporate Espionage Undermines Democracy

2013-11-26, MSN/Reuters
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=OBR&Date=20131127&ID=171...
Its not just the NSA that has been caught spying on Americans. Some of our nations largest
corporations have been conducting espionage as well, against civic groups. Thats the lesson of a
new report on corporate espionage against nonprofit organizations by ... Essential Information.
The title of the report is Spooky Business, and it is apt. Spooky Business is like a Canterbury
Tales of corporate snoopery: Hiring investigators to pose as volunteers and journalists.
Hacking. Wiretapping. Information warfare. Physical intrusion. Investigating the private
lives of nonprofit leaders. Dumpster diving using an active duty police officer to gain
access to trash receptacles. Electronic surveillance. Many different types of nonprofit civic
organizations have been targeted by corporate spies: environmental, public interest, consumer,
food safety, animal rights, pesticide reform, nursing home reform, gun control and social justice. A
diverse constellation of corporations has planned or executed corporate espionage against these
nonprofit civic organizations. Food companies like Kraft, Coca-Cola, Burger King, McDonalds and
Monsanto. Oil companies like Shell, BP and Chevron. Chemical companies like Dow and Sasol.
Also involved are the retailers (Wal-Mart), banks (Bank of America), and, of course, the nations
most powerful trade association: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Plenty of mercenary spooks
have joined up to abet them, including former officials at the FBI, CIA, NSA, Secret Service and
U.S. military. Sometimes even government contractors are part of the snooping.
Rigging currency markets

2013-10-12, The Economist
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21587824-are-foreign-exch...
[Banks] have rigged LIBOR, an interest rate used to peg contracts worth trillions. Its equivalent in
the world of derivatives, ISDAfix, has also come under question. Commodities prices from crude oil
to platinum have been the subject of allegations and inquiries. Now prices in global currency
markets, where turnover is $5 trillion a day, are being scrutinised by authorities, who suspect
bankers have tampered with those too. Switzerlands financial watchdog announced on October
4th that it was investigating a slew of banks it thinks have manipulated currencies. Britain and the
European Union also have probes under way. Concerns reportedly centre around abnormal
movements ahead of a widely-used daily snapshot of exchange rates, known as the 4pm London
fix. It represents the average of prices agreed during 60 seconds trading, and is used as a
reference rate to execute a much larger set of currency deals. Bankers, who are big participants in
the market, have huge incentives to nudge the price of a given currency pairing ahead of the fix.
With billions of dollars changing hands, a difference of a fraction of a cent can add a tidy sum to
the bonus pool. If proven, the charge would amount to banks fleecing their clients. Banks
know the big trades they are about to execute on others behalf, and are often themselves
the counterparty. By moving the markets ahead of the fix, they could alter the rate to their
profit and their clients loss. One suspected method is banging the close: submitting a quick
succession of orders just as the benchmark is set, to distort its value.
Masses of food wasted - 'use by' dates mislead

2013-09-19, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Masses-of-food-wasted-use-by-dates-misl...
Americans throw away 40 percent of the food they buy, often because of misleading
expiration dates that have nothing to do with safety, said a study released [on September 18]
by Harvard University Law School and the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental
group. The report said 90 percent of Americans toss good food into the garbage because
they mistakenly think that "sell by," "best before," "use by" or "packed on" dates on food
containers indicate safety. One-fifth of consumers, the report said, "always" throw away food
based on package dates. In fact, "sell by" dates are used by retailers for inventory control. "Best
before" or "use by" dates usually reflect manufacturer estimates of peak quality. While some labels
are intended to indicate freshness, none of them reflects edibility or safety, said Ted Labuza, a
food science professor at the University of Minnesota who collaborated with the authors. "If food
looks rotten and smells bad, throw it away, but just because it reaches a certain date does not
mean the food is unsafe," Labuza said. "I don't know of any food poisoning outbreak that came
from people eating food that was past its shelf-life date." The report estimated the value of food
tossed away at $165 billion a year. Food waste is a big source of greenhouse gases. Wasting food
also squanders vast quantities of water, land, fertilizers, petroleum, packaging and other resources
that go into producing it. About a quarter of all fresh water used in the United States goes into
the making of food that is thrown away, the report said.
What the Government Pays to Snoop on You

2013-07-10, CNBC/Associated Press
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100876701
In the era of intense government surveillance and secret court orders, a murky multimillion-dollar
market has emerged. Paid for by U.S. tax dollars, but with little public scrutiny, surveillance fees
charged in secret by technology and phone companies can vary wildly. AT&T, for example,
imposes a $325 "activation fee" for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. Smaller
carriers Cricket and U.S. Cellular charge only about $250 per wiretap. But snoop on a Verizon
customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that.
Regardless of price, the surveillance business is growing. The U.S. government long has enjoyed
access to phone networks and high-speed Internet traffic under the U.S. Communications
Assistance for Law Enforcement Act to catch suspected criminals and terrorists. More recently, the
FBI has pushed technology companies like Google and Skype to guarantee access to real-time
communications on their services. As the number of law enforcement requests for data grew and
carriers upgraded their technology, the cost of accommodating government surveillance requests
increased. AT&T, for example, said it devotes roughly 100 employees to review each request
and hand over data. Likewise, Verizon said its team of 70 employees works around the
clock, seven days a week to handle the quarter-million requests it gets each year.
Note: For more on government and corporate attacks on privacy, see the deeply revealing reports
Breaking the Seal on Drug Research

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/business/breaking-the-seal-on-drug-research...
Peter Doshi ... is one of the most influential voices in medical research today. Dr. Doshis renown
comes not from solving the puzzles of cancer or discovering the next blockbuster drug, but from
pushing the worlds biggest pharmaceutical companies to open their records to outsiders. Together
with a band of far-flung researchers and activists, he is trying to unearth data from clinical trials
complex studies that last for years and often involve thousands of patients across many countries
and make it public. The current system, the activists say, is one in which the meager details of
clinical trials published in medical journals, often by authors with financial ties to the companies
whose drugs they are writing about, is insufficient to the point of being misleading. For years,
researchers have talked about the problem of publication bias, or selectively publishing
results of trials. Concern about such bias gathered force in the 1990s and early 2000s,
when researchers documented how, time and again, positive results were published while
negative ones were not. Taken together, studies have shown that results of only about half of
clinical trials make their way into medical journals. In 2009, Dr. Doshi and his colleagues set out to
answer a simple question about the anti-flu drug Tamiflu: Does it work? Resolving that question
has been far harder than they ever envisioned, and, four years later, there is still no definitive
answer.
Note: If the public is going to be taking these drugs, shouldn't all safety studies be publicly
available? What are the drug companies hiding? For more on corruption in the pharmaceutical
industry, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
How Barrett Brown shone light on the murky world of security

contractors [and is now jailed]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/24/surveillance-us-national-...
[Barrett] Brown is not a household name like Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning. But after
helping expose a dirty tricks plot, he faces jail. Brown made a splash in February 2011 by helping
to uncover "Team Themis", a project by intelligence contractors retained by Bank of America to
demolish the hacker society known as Anonymous. The Team Themis story began in late 2010,
when Julian Assange warned WikiLeaks would release documents outlining an "ecosystem of
corruption [that] could take down a bank or two." Bank of America went into damage-control mode
and, as the New York Times reported, assembled "a team of 15 to 20 top Bank of America officials
scouring thousands of documents in the event that they become public." Days later, Bank of
America retained the well-connected law firm of Hunton & Williams [which] "proposed various
schemes to attack" WikiLeaks. Its partners suggested creating false documents and fake personas
to damage progressive organizations. The tech companies' emails which Anonymous
hacked and Barrett Brown helped publicize listed planned tactics: "Feed[ing] the fuel
between the feuding groups. Disinformation. Create messages around actions to sabotage
or discredit the opposing organization. Submit fake documents and then call out the error."
Brown [has] been cooling his heels in a jail outside Dallas ... awaiting two separate trials that could
put him on ice for more than 100 years. In contrast to the FBI's aggressive pursuit of Brown, no
probe of the Team Themis project was launched despite a call from 17 US House
representatives to investigate a possible conspiracy to violate federal laws.
Note: With the wide focus on the privatized national security state by the leaks from Edward
Snowden, there is renewed interest in Brown's plight and the campaign for justice in his case. For
more on this and to support Barret Brown, click here. For more on intelligence agency corruption,
see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Former Bank of America workers allege lies to homeowners

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/sns-bank-of-america-workers-a...
Six former Bank of America Corp. employees have alleged that the bank deliberately denied
eligible home owners loan modifications and lied to them about the status of their mortgage
payments and documents. The bank allegedly used these tactics to shepherd homeowners into
foreclosure, as well as in-house loan modifications. Both yielded the bank more profits than the
government-sponsored Home Affordable Modification Program, according to documents recently
filed as part of a lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court. The former employees, who worked at
Bank of America centers throughout the United States, said the bank rewarded customer
service representatives who foreclosed on homes with cash bonuses and gift cards to retail
stores such as Target Corp and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. At the same time, the bank punished
those who did not make the numbers or objected to its tactics with discipline, including firing. About
twice a month, the bank cleaned out its HAMP backlog in an operation called "blitz," where it
declined thousands of loan modification requests just because the documents were more than 60
months old, the court documents say. The testimony from the former employees also alleges the
bank falsified information it gave the government, saying it had given out HAMP loan modifications
when it had not. Borrowers filed the civil case against Bank of America in 2010 and are now
seeking class certification.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click
here.
America's private prison system is a national disgrace

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/13/aclu-lawsuit-east-mississ...
Privatization [of government functions] often comes with a lack of oversight and a series of abuses.
One particularly stunning example is the American prison system, the realities of which should be
a national disgrace. Some of those realities are highlighted in a recent lawsuit filed by the
American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility
(EMCF). EMCF houses severely mentally ill prisoners, with the supposed intent of providing both
incarceration and treatment. Instead, the ACLU contends, the facility, which is operated by private
contractors, is rife with horrific abuses. The complaint lists a litany of such horrors, [including]:
Rampant rapes. Placing prisoners in solitary confinement for weeks, months or even years at a
time. Rat infestations so bad that vermin crawl over prisoners. Many suicide attempts, some
successful. Denying or delaying treatment for infections and even cancer. Stabbings, beatings and
other acts of violence. Malnourishment and chronic hunger. Officers who deal with prisoners by
using physical violence. The [US] prison system is increasingly built and run by for-profit
corporations, who have a financial interest in increasing the number of people in prison
while decreasing the amount of money it costs to house them. Since 1980, the US prison
population has grown by 790%. We have the largest prison population of any nation in the
history of the world.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption and human
rights abuses in prisons, click here.
What Goldman Sachs should admit: it drives up the cost of food

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/23/goldman-sachs-agm-drive-f...
[In 2012,] financial speculator Goldman Sachs, the archetypal villain of the global economic
meltdown, bailed out by US taxpayers to the tune of $5.5bn ... made an estimated $400m from
speculating on food. The World Bank estimated in 2010 that 44 million people were pushed into
poverty because of high food prices, and that speculation is one of the main causes. Since
Goldman led the drive to deregulate commodity markets in the 1990s ... they've been at the
vanguard of creating and promoting complex commodity instruments, from which they've raked in
huge profits. Wallace Turbeville, a former vice president and the inventor of commodity index
funds, has been outing the company's methods. He says that in his time at Goldman, investment
increased from $3bn in 2003 to $260bn in 2008, and commodity prices rose dramatically
during the same period, increasing from 2006 to 2008 by an average of 71%. In 1996,
speculators held 12% of the positions on the Chicago wheat market, with most of the market being
made up of the legitimate users of food from farmers to producers. But the legitimate hedging
element of commodity markets has virtually disappeared in the intervening years. By 2011, pure
speculators made up a staggering 61% of the market. Of course, Goldman Sachs isn't the
only player, but it is certainly the largest. For several years, it was hotly debated whether
speculation in food commodities drives up prices. But the evidence now firmly says it does, and
that there's little correlation between rising prices and actual supply and demand. There are now
well over 100 studies which agree.
here.
U.S. tax dollars promote Monsanto's GMO crops overseas: report

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-usa-gmo-reportbre94d0il-2013...
U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill for overseas lobbying that promotes controversial biotech crops
developed by U.S.-based Monsanto Co and other seed makers, a report issued on [May 14] said.
A review of 926 diplomatic cables of correspondence to and from the U.S. State Department and
embassies in more than 100 countries found that State Department officials actively promoted the
commercialization of specific biotech seeds, according to the report issued by Food & Water
Watch, a nonprofit consumer protection group. The officials tried to quash public criticism of
particular companies and facilitated negotiations between foreign governments and seed
companies such as Monsanto over issues like patents and intellectual property, the report said.
The cables show U.S. diplomats supporting Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, in
foreign countries even after it paid $1.5 million in fines after being charged with bribing an
Indonesian official and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 2005. One 2009 cable
shows the embassy in Spain seeking "high-level U.S. government intervention" at the "urgent
request" of Monsanto to combat biotech crop opponents there. The report covered cables from
2005-2009 that were released by Wikileaks in 2010. "It really goes beyond promoting the U.S.'s
biotech industry and agriculture," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch.
"It really gets down to twisting the arms of countries and working to undermine local democratic
movements that may be opposed to biotech crops."
click here.
Ex-Regulator Says Reactors Are Flawed

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/us/ex-regulator-says-nuclear-reactors-in-un...
All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem
that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology, the former
chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on [April 8]. Shutting them all down at
once is not practical, he said, but he supports phasing them out rather than trying to extend their
lives. The position of the former chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, is not unusual in that various antinuclear groups take the same stance. But it is highly unusual for a former head of the nuclear
commission to so bluntly criticize an industry whose safety he was previously in charge of

ensuring. Dr. Jaczko made his remarks at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in
Washington in a session about the Fukushima accident. Dr. Jaczko said that many American
reactors that had received permission from the nuclear commission to operate for 20 years beyond
their initial 40-year licenses probably would not last that long. He also rejected as unfeasible
changes proposed by the commission that would allow reactor owners to apply for a second 20year extension, meaning that some reactors would run for a total of 80 years. Dr. Jaczko resigned
as chairman last summer after months of conflict with his four colleagues on the commission. He
often voted in the minority on various safety questions, advocated more vigorous safety
improvements, and was regarded with deep suspicion by the nuclear industry.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on grave risks caused by
corruption in the nuclear power industry, click here.
Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killi...
The Texas Medical Center [is] a nearly 1,300-acre, 280-building complex of hospitals and related
medical facilities, of which MD Anderson is the lead brand name. Medicine had obviously become
a huge business. In fact, of Houstons top 10 employers, five are hospitals, including MD Anderson
with 19,000 employees. How did that happen? Wheres all that money coming from? And where is
it going? I have spent the past seven months trying to find out by analyzing a variety of bills from
hospitals like MD Anderson, doctors, drug companies and every other player in the American
health care ecosystem. When you look behind the bills that ... patients receive, you see nothing
rational no rhyme or reason about the costs they faced in a marketplace they enter through
no choice of their own. The only constant is the sticker shock for the patients who are asked to
pay. Yet those who work in the health care industry and those who argue over health care policy
seem inured to the shock. Why exactly are the bills so high? What are the reasons ... that
cancer means a half-million- or million-dollar tab? Why should a trip to the emergency room
for chest pains that turn out to be indigestion bring a bill that can exceed the cost of a
semester of college? What makes a single dose of even the most wonderful wonder drug
cost thousands of dollars? Why does simple lab work done during a few days in a hospital cost
more than a car? And what is so different about the medical ecosystem that causes technology
advances to drive bills up instead of down?
Note: For the amazing answers to all these questions, read this detailed investigative report in its
entirety at the link above. For more on corruption in the medical industry, click here.
Wild hospital cost disparities revealed

2013-02-11, San Francisco Chronicle/New York Times
ttp://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Wild-hospital-cost-disparities-revealed-4...
Jaime Rosenthal, a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, called more than 100 hospitals in
every state last summer, seeking prices for a hip replacement for a 62-year-old grandmother who
was uninsured but had the means to pay herself. Only about half of the hospitals, including topranked orthopedic centers and community hospitals, could provide any sort of price estimate,
despite repeated calls. Those that could gave quotes that varied by a factor of more than 10, from
$11,100 to $125,798. Rosenthal's grandmother was fictitious, created for a summer research
project on health care costs. But the findings, which form the basis of a paper released Monday by
JAMA Internal Medicine, [highlight] the unsustainable growth of U.S. health care costs and an
opaque medical system in which prices are often hidden from consumers. Although many experts
have said that Americans must become more discerning consumers to help rein in health care
costs, the study illustrates how hard that can be. Researchers emphasized that studies have
found little consistent correlation between higher prices and better quality in U.S. health
care. Cram said there was no data that "Mercedes" hip implants were better than cheaper options,
for example. Jamie Court, the president of Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica, said: "If one
hospital can put in a hip for $12,000, then every hospital should be able to do it." With such
immense variation in prices, he said, "There is no real price. It's about profit."
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption in the health
care industry, click here.
The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street

from prosecutions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/23/untouchables-wall-street-...
PBS' Frontline program on [January 22] broadcast a new one-hour report on one of the greatest
and most shameful failings of the Obama administration: the lack of even a single arrest or
prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the
2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering.
What this program particularly demonstrated was that the Obama justice department, in
particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the highlevel criminals accountable. What Obama justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in
the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to
protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious
criminality. Worst of all, Obama justice officials both shielded and feted these Wall Street oligarchs
... as they simultaneously prosecuted and imprisoned powerless Americans for far more trivial
transgressions. As Harvard law professor Larry Lessig put it two weeks ago when expressing
anger over the DOJ's persecution of Aaron Swartz: "we live in a world where the architects of the
financial crisis regularly dine at the White House." As [documented in the] 2011 book on America's
two-tiered justice system, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy
Equality and Protect the Powerful, the evidence that felonies were committed by Wall Street is
overwhelming.
Note: To watch this highly revealing PBS documentary, click here or here. For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on the collusion between government 'regulators' and
the financial powers they 'regulate', click here.
Too Big to Indict

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/hsbc-too-big-to-indict.html
It is a dark day for the rule of law. Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC,
the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal
prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system. They also
have not charged any top HSBC banker in the case, though it boggles the mind that a bank could
launder money as HSBC did without anyone in a position of authority making culpable decisions.
Clearly, the government has bought into the notion that too big to fail is too big to jail. When
prosecutors choose not to prosecute to the full extent of the law in a case as egregious as this, the
law itself is diminished. The deterrence that comes from the threat of criminal prosecution is
weakened, if not lost. In the HSBC case, prosecutors may want the public to focus on the $1.92
billion settlement. But even large financial settlements are small compared with the size of
international major banks. More important, once criminal sanctions are considered off limits,
penalties and forfeitures become just another cost of doing business, a risk factor to consider on
the road to profits. If banks operating at the center of the global economy cannot be held
fully accountable, the solution is to reduce their size by breaking them up and restricting
their activities not shield them and their leaders from prosecution for illegal activities.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government collusion
with financial corruption, click here.
German man locked up over HVB bank allegations may have been
telling truth
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/28/gustl-mollath-hsv-claims-fraud
A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating
a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence
has emerged proving the validity of his claims. Gustl Mollath, 56, was submitted to the secure
unit of a psychiatric hospital seven years ago after court experts diagnosed him with
paranoid personality disorder following his claims that staff at the Hypo Vereinsbank (HVB)
including his wife, then an assets consultant at HVB had been illegally smuggling large
sums of money into Switzerland. Mollath was tried in 2006 after his ex-wife accused him of
causing her physical harm. He denied the charges, claiming she was trying to sully his name in the
light of the evidence he allegedly had against her. He was admitted to the clinic, where he has
remained against his will ever since. But recent evidence brought to the attention of state
prosecutors shows that money-laundering activities were indeed practiced over several years by
members of staff at the Munich-based bank, the sixth-largest private financial institute in Germany.
A number of employees, including Mollath's wife, were subsequently sacked following the bank's
investigation. The "Mollath affair", as it has been dubbed by the German media, has taken on such
political dimensions that it now threatens to bring down the government of Bavaria.
here.
HSBC Investigation: clients of Britain's biggest bank exposed

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9665741/HSBC-...
Britains biggest bank is at the centre of a major ... investigation after it opened offshore accounts
in Jersey for serious criminals living in this country. Tax authorities have obtained details of every
British client of HSBC in Jersey after a whistleblower secretly provided a detailed list of names,
addresses and account balances earlier this week. Among those identified on the list are Daniel
Bayes, a drug dealer who is now in Venezuela; Michael Lee, who was convicted of possessing
more than 300 weapons at his house in Devon; three bankers facing major fraud allegations and a
man once dubbed Londons number two computer crook. The disclosures raise serious
questions about HSBCs procedures in Jersey, with the bank already preparing to pay fines of
around $1.5 billion in America for breaking money laundering rules. The bank is legally obliged to
report to the authorities any suspicions about the source of money deposited in its accounts. The
list identifies 4,388 people holding 699 million in offshore current accounts and they are also likely
to have billions of pounds more in investment schemes. Several celebrities and other well-known
figures are understood to be identified in the client data. The HSBC Jersey client list is
understood to be heavily dominated by senior figures in the City. Dozens of bankers are
understood to have deposited six-figure sums offshore with some institutions said to have
clusters of employees taking advantage of the accounts. Doctors, mining and oil executives
and oil workers are also heavily represented in the list.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption and
criminality, click here.
A Simple Fix for Farming

2012-10-19, New York Times blog
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/a-simple-fix-for-food
It's becoming clear that we can grow all the food we need, and profitably, with far fewer chemicals.
Conventional agriculture can shed much of its chemical use - if it wants to. What may be the most
important agricultural study this year ... was done on land owned by Iowa State University called
the Marsden Farm. On 22 acres of it, beginning in 2003, researchers set up three plots: one
replicated the typical Midwestern cycle of planting corn one year and then soybeans the next,
along with its routine mix of chemicals. On another, they planted a three-year cycle that included
oats; the third plot added a four-year cycle and alfalfa. The longer rotations also integrated the
raising of livestock, whose manure was used as fertilizer. The results were stunning: The longer
rotations produced better yields of both corn and soy, reduced the need for nitrogen
fertilizer and herbicides by up to 88 percent, reduced the amounts of toxins in groundwater
200-fold and didn't reduce profits by a single cent. In short, there was only upside - and no
downside at all - associated with the longer rotations. There was an increase in labor costs,
but remember that profits were stable. So this is a matter of paying people for their knowledge and
smart work instead of paying chemical companies for poisons. And it's a high-stakes game;
according to the Environmental Protection Agency, about five billion pounds of pesticides are used
each year in the United States.
Pesticide use ramping up as GMO crop technology backfires: study

2012-10-01, NBC News/Reuters
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/02/14178036-study-us-farmers-using-mo...
U.S. farmers are using more hazardous pesticides to fight weeds and insects due largely to heavy
adoption of genetically modified crop technologies that are sparking a rise of "superweeds" and
hard-to-kill insects, according to a newly released study. Genetically engineered crops have led to
an increase in overall pesticide use, by 404 million pounds from the time they were introduced in
1996 through 2011, according to the report by Charles Benbrook, a research professor at the
Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University. Of that
total, herbicide use increased over the 16-year period by 527 million pounds while insecticide use
decreased by 123 million pounds. Herbicide-tolerant crops were the first genetically modified crops
introduced to world, rolled out by Monsanto Co. in 1996, first in "Roundup Ready" soybeans and
then in corn, cotton and other crops. Roundup Ready crops are engineered through transgenic
modification to tolerate dousings of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. In recent years, more than
two dozen weed species have become resistant to Roundup's chief ingredient glyphosate,
causing farmers to use increasing amounts both of glyphosate and other weedkilling
chemicals to try to control the so-called "superweeds." Resistant weeds have become a
major problem for many farmers reliant on GE crops, and are now driving up the volume of
herbicide needed each year by about 25 percent.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the environmental and
health risks posed by GMO foods, click here.
Fighting Recession the Icelandic Way

2012-09-26, Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-26/is-remedy-for-next-crisis-buried-in-...
Few countries blew up more spectacularly than Iceland in the 2008 financial crisis. The local stock
market plunged 90 percent; unemployment rose ninefold; inflation shot to more than 18 percent;
the countrys biggest banks all failed. Since then, Iceland has turned in a pretty impressive
performance. It has repaid International Monetary Fund rescue loans ahead of schedule. Growth
this year will be about 2.5 percent, better than most developed economies. Unemployment has
fallen by half. Icelands approach was the polar opposite of the U.S. and Europe, which
rescued their banks and did little to aid indebted homeowners. Nothing distinguishes
Iceland as much as its aid to consumers. To homeowners with negative equity, the country
offered write-offs that would wipe out debt above 110 percent of the property value. The
government also provided means-tested subsidies to reduce mortgage-interest expenses: Those
with lower earnings, less home equity and children were granted the most generous support. In
June 2010, the nations Supreme Court gave debtors another break: Bank loans that were indexed
to foreign currencies were declared illegal. Because the Icelandic krona plunged 80 percent during
the crisis, the cost of repaying foreign debt more than doubled. The ruling let consumers repay the
banks as if the loans were in krona. These policies helped consumers erase debt equal to 13
percent of Icelands $14 billion economy. Now, consumers have money to spend on other things.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the collusion of most
major governments with the financial sector whose profiteering contributed to the global economic
crisis, click here.
The drugs don't work: a modern medical scandal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/21/drugs-industry-scandal-ben-gol...
The doctors prescribing ... drugs don't know they don't do what they're meant to. Nor do their
patients. The manufacturers know full well, but they're not telling. Negative data goes missing, for
all treatments, in all areas of science. The regulators and professional bodies we would reasonably
expect to stamp out such practices have failed us. Drugs are tested by the people who
manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird,
unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques that are flawed by design, in
such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend
to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies
don't like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a
distorted picture of any drug's true effects. This distorted evidence is then communicated and
applied in a distorted fashion. In their 40 years of practice after leaving medical school, doctors
hear about what works ad hoc, from sales reps, colleagues and journals. But those colleagues can
be in the pay of drug companies often undisclosed and the journals are, too. And so are
the patient groups. And finally, academic papers, which everyone thinks of as objective, are often
covertly planned and written by people who work directly for the companies, without disclosure.
Sometimes whole academic journals are owned outright by one drug company.
Note: This is an edited extract from Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and
Harm Patients, by Ben Goldacre, published next week by Fourth Estate. For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on pharmaceutical corruption, click here.
Drug giants fined $11bn for criminal wrongdoing

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/drug-...
The global pharmaceutical industry has racked up fines of more than $11bn in the past
three years for criminal wrongdoing, including withholding safety data and promoting
drugs for use beyond their licensed conditions. In all, 26 companies, including eight of the 10
top players in the global industry, have been found to be acting dishonestly. The scale of the
wrongdoing, revealed for the first time, has undermined public and professional trust in the industry
and is holding back clinical progress, according to two papers published in today's New England
Journal of Medicine. Leading lawyers have warned that the multibillion-dollar fines are not enough
to change the industry's behaviour. The 26 firms are under "corporate integrity agreements", which
are imposed in the US when healthcare wrongdoing is detected, and place the companies on
notice for good behaviour for up to five years. The largest fine of $3bn, imposed on the UK-based
company GlaxoSmith-Kline in July after it admitted three counts of criminal behaviour in the US
courts, was the largest ever. But GSK is not alone nine other companies have had fines
imposed, ranging from $420m on Novartis to $2.3bn on Pfizer since 2009, totalling over $11bn.
Kevin Outterson, a lawyer at Boston University, says that despite the eye watering size of
the fines they amount to a small proportion of the companies' total revenues and may be
regarded as a "cost of doing business".
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on pharmaceutical
Report: About 30 cents of every health care dollar wasted; US can cut
costs without rationing
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/report-about-30-cents-of-every-health-...
The U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year roughly 30 cents of every medical
dollar through unneeded care, byzantine paperwork, fraud and other waste, the influential
Institute of Medicine [said] in a report. President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are
accusing each other of trying to slash Medicare and put seniors at risk. But the counter-intuitive
finding from the report is that deep cuts are possible without rationing, and a leaner system may
even produce better quality. More than 18 months in the making, the report identified six major
areas of waste: unnecessary services ($210 billion annually); inefficient delivery of care
($130 billion); excess administrative costs ($190 billion); inflated prices ($105 billion);
prevention failures ($55 billion), and fraud ($75 billion). Adjusting for some overlap among
the categories, the panel settled on an estimate of $750 billion. The report makes ten
recommendations, including payment reforms to reward quality results instead of reimbursing for
each procedure, improving coordination among different kinds of service providers, leveraging
technology to reinforce sound clinical decisions and educating patients to become more savvy
consumers. The reports main message for government is to accelerate payment reforms, said
panel chair Dr. Mark Smith, president of the California HealthCare Foundation, a research group.
For employers, its to move beyond cost shifts to workers and start demanding accountability from
hospitals and major medical groups. For doctors, it means getting beyond the bubble of solo
practice and collaborating with peers and other clinicians.
Note: The US spends far more on health care than most other developed countries which provide
health care to all of their citizens. The US system is driven by profits. For more on this, click here.
Big Banks: No Crime, No Punishment

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/no-crime-no-punishment.html
When the Justice Department recently closed its criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs,
it became all but certain that no major American banks or their top executives would ever
face criminal charges for their role in the financial crisis. Justice officials and even
President Obama have defended the lack of prosecutions, saying that even though greed and
other moral lapses were evident in the run-up to the crisis, the conduct was not necessarily illegal.
But that characterization of the financial industry's actions has always defied common sense - and
all the more so now that a fuller picture is emerging of the range of banks' reckless and lawless
activities, including interest-rate rigging, money laundering, securities fraud and excessive
speculation. The financial crisis, fomented over years by big banks and presided over by
executives, involved reckless lending, heedless securitizations, exorbitant paydays and illusory
profits, all of which led to government bailouts and economic calamity. Is it plausible that none of
that broke the law and that none of the people in positions of power and authority knew what was
going on? The statute of limitations, generally five years for securities fraud and most other federal
offenses, is running out, precluding the possibility of bringing many new suits dating from the
bubble years. The result is a public perception that the big banks and their leaders will never have
to answer fully for the crisis. The shameless pursuit of Wall Street campaign donations by both
political parties strengthens this perception, and further undermines confidence in the rule of law.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the collusion between
government and the big banks, click here.
Bank scandals: Somebody must go to jail

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Bank-scandals-Somebody-must-go-to-jail-...
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing
armies." - Thomas Jefferson, 1816. When Thomas Jefferson spoke those words, banks were
local and very small compared with the financial behemoths of today. Banks are more dangerous
now than in Jefferson's time, and they are totally out of control. During the Depression of
the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt referred to banks as the "money changers in the
temple of our civilization," and little has been done since. It is well past the time that people on
Wall Street live by the rule of law - not just pay fines - and some executives go to jail for their
conduct. In 2008, the much-publicized Troubled Assets Relief Program bailed out banks and Wall
Street to the tune of $700 billion with taxpayer money. While the banks were bailed out of the
trouble they caused, they continued to pay out enormous executive bonuses with taxpayers'
money in multimillion-dollar year-end gifts. JPMorgan received $25 billion from the government in
2008 and gave out nearly $9 billion in bonus money that year. When the derivative-driven housing
market collapsed in 2008, Citigroup and Bank of America, the major banks in that market, and
eight other top Wall Street firms got $1.2 trillion in then-secret loans of taxpayer money from the
Federal Reserve. The Fed even went to court in an attempt to hide the identities of those banks
from the public. Regulating the banks and bringing the rule of law to Wall Street banks is
necessary now. Sending a few Wall Street banksters to jail would stop some of the abuse as well.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the corrupt relationship
between government and the financial sector, click here.
The unrepentant and unreformed bankers

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/The-unrepentant-and-unreformed-bankers-...
Money laundering. Price fixing. Bid rigging. Securities fraud. Talking about the mob? No,
unfortunately. Wall Street. These days, the business sections of newspapers read like rap sheets.
GE Capital, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Wells Fargo and Bank of America tied to a bid-rigging
scheme to bilk cities and towns out of interest earnings. ING Direct, HSBC and Standard
Chartered Bank facing charges of money laundering. Barclays caught manipulating a key interest
rate, costing savers and investors dearly, with a raft of other big banks also under investigation.
Not to speak of the unprecedented wrongdoing that precipitated the financial crisis of 2008. Yet, it's
clear that the unrepentant and the unreformed are still all too present within our banking system. A
June survey of 500 senior financial services executives in the United States and Britain turned up
stunning results. Some 24 percent said that they believed that financial services
professionals may need to engage in illegal or unethical conduct to succeed, 26 percent
said that they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace,
and 16 percent said they would engage in insider trading if they could get away with it. That
too much of Wall Street remains unchanged is not surprising. Simply stated, the banks and their
leaders have paid no real economic, legal or political price for their wrongdoing and thus have not
felt compelled to change.
Note: The author of this article, Phil Angelides, is a former state treasurer of California and the
chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. For deeply revealing reports from reliable
major media sources on the corrupt relationship between government and the financial sector,
click here.
'Severe abnormalities' found in Fukushima butterflies

2012-08-13, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19245818
Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment has caused mutations in butterflies
found in Japan, a study suggests. Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape
mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident. By comparing
mutations found on the butterflies collected from the different sites, the team found that areas with
greater amounts of radiation in the environment were home to butterflies with much smaller wings
and irregularly developed eyes. Six months later, they again collected adults from the 10 sites and
found that butterflies from the Fukushima area showed a mutation rate more than double that of
those found sooner after the accident. The team concluded that this higher rate of mutation came
from eating contaminated food, but also from mutations of the parents' genetic material that was
passed on to the next generation, even though these mutations were not evident in the previous
generations' adult butterflies. The findings from their new research show that the radionuclides
released from the accident had led to novel, severely abnormal development, and that the
mutations to the butterflies' genetic material [were] still affecting the insects, even after the
residual radiation in the environment had decayed away. "This study is important and
overwhelming in its implications for both the human and biological communities living in
Fukushima," explained University of South Carolina biologist Tim Mousseau, who studies the
impacts of radiation on animals and plants.
Note: Read the complete report, with numerous color photos, here. For deeply revealing reports
from reliable major media sources on corruption in the nuclear power industry, click here.
Democracy falling prey to big money

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Democracy-falling-prey-to-big-mon...
Who's buying our democracy? Wall Street financiers, the Koch brothers, and casino
magnates Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn, among others. And they're doing much of it in
secret. It's a perfect storm - the combination of three waves that are about to drown
government as we know it. The first is the greatest concentration of wealth in America in more
than a century. The 400 richest Americans are richer than the bottom 150 million Americans put
together. The trend started 30 years ago, and it's related to globalization and technological
changes that have stymied wage growth for most people, "trickle-down economics," ... tax cuts
and the steady decline in the bargaining power of organized labor. The second is the wave of
unlimited political contributions, courtesy of ... one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history,
Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 ruling that held that corporations are
people under the First Amendment, [meaning] that virtually any billionaire can contribute as much
to a political campaign as he wants. The third is complete secrecy about who's contributing how
much to whom. Political fronts posing as charitable, nonprofit "social welfare" organizations ...
don't have to disclose their donors. As a result, outfits like the Chamber of Commerce and Karl
Rove's Crossroads GPS are taking in hundreds of millions from corporations that don't even tell
their own shareholders what political payments they're making. Separately, any one of these three
would be bad enough. Put the three together, and our democracy is being sold down the drain.
Note: The author of this article, Robert Reich, is a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and
former U.S. secretary of labor, and author of the newly released Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone
Wrong With Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It.
Wall Street Legend Sandy Weill: Break Up the Big Banks

2012-07-25, CNBC
Former Citigroup Chairman & CEO Sanford I. Weill, the man who invented the financial
supermarket, called for the breakup of big banks in an interview on CNBC Wednesday. What
we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit
takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something thats
not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, thats not too big to fail, Weill told CNBCs Squawk Box. He
added: If they want to hedge what theyre doing with their investments, let them do it in a way
thats going to be mark-to-market so theyre never going to be hit. He essentially called for the
return of the GlassSteagall Act, which imposed banking reforms that split banks from
other financial institutions such as insurance companies. He said banks should be split off
entirely from investment banks, and they should operate with a leverage ratio of 12 times to 15
times of what they have on their balance sheets. Banks should also be completely transparent,
Weill said, with everything on balance sheet. There should be no such thing as off balance sheet,
he said.
Note: For deeply revealing and reliable major media reports on corruption and criminality in the
operations and regulation of the financial sector, click here.
Wealth doesn't trickle down it just floods offshore, research reveals

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/offshore-wealth-global-economy...
The world's super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21
trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad a
sum larger than the entire American economy. James Henry, a former chief economist at
consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has conducted groundbreaking new research
for the Tax Justice Network campaign group sifting through data from the Bank for International
Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private sector analysts to construct
an alarming picture that shows capital flooding out of countries across the world and disappearing
into the cracks in the financial system. "This offshore economy is large enough to have a major
impact on estimates of inequality of wealth and income; on estimates of national income and debt
ratios; and most importantly to have very significant negative impacts on the domestic tax
bases of 'source' countries," Henry says. John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network
[commented] "Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still
relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people. This new data shows the exact
opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the
offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich." In total, 10 million individuals around the world
hold assets offshore, according to Henry's analysis; but almost half of the minimum estimate of
$21tn $9.8tn is owned by just 92,000 people.
Note: Henry's report, entitled The Price of Offshore Revisited, is available here. For more on this,
click here.
Regulators and HSBC Faulted in Report on Money Laundering

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/scathing-report-details-money-launderi...
The global bank HSBC has been used by Mexican drug cartels looking to get cash back into
the United States, by Saudi Arabian banks that needed access to dollars despite their
terrorist ties and by Iranians who wanted to circumvent United States sanctions, a Senate
report says. The 335-page report released [on July 16] also says that executives at HSBC and
regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ignored warning signs and failed to stop
the illegal behavior at many points between 2001 and 2010. The problems at HSBC, Europe's
largest financial institution, [are] indicators of a broader problem of illegal money flowing through
international financial institutions into the United States. The report on HSBC is the latest of
several scandals that have recently rocked global banks and highlighted the inability of regulators
to catch what is claimed to be widespread wrongdoing in the financial industry. The British bank
Barclays recently admitted that its traders tried to manipulate a crucial global interest rate, and
multiple major banks are under investigation. JPMorgan Chase disclosed last week that its
employees may have tried to hide trades that are likely to cost the bank billions of dollars. The
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has come under particularly harsh criticism for showing
too much deference to the banks it regulates.
corruption and criminality, click here. For our highly revealing Banking Corruption Information
Center, click here.
Time for Banksters to be prosecuted

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-time-for-bankste...
Once more the big banks are exposed in systematic fraudulent activity. When Barclays agreed to a
$450 million fine for trying to rig the Libor, its CEO offered the classic excuse: Everyone does it.
Once more the question remains: Will CEOs and CFOs, as well as traders, be prosecuted? Or
will they depart with their multimillion dollar rewards intact, leaving shareholders to pay the
tab for the hundreds of millions in fines? The Barclays settlement exposed that traders
colluded to try to fix the Libor rate. This is the rate used as the basis for exotic derivatives as well
as mortgages, credit card and personal loan rates. Almost everyone is affected. Fixing the rate
even a few hundredths of a percentage point could make Barclays millions on any single day
money taken out of the pockets of consumers and investors. Once more the banks were rigging
the rules; once more their customers were their mark. The collusion was systematic and routine.
Investigations are underway not only in the United Kingdom but also in the United States, Canada
and the European Union. Those named in the probes are all the usual suspects: JPMorgan Chase,
Citibank, UBS, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, UBS and others. This wasnt rogue trading, ... it was
more like a cartel. The Economist writes that what has been revealed here is the rotten heart of
finance, a culture of casual dishonesty.
Note: For key investigative reports on the criminality and corruption in the financial industry and
biggest banks, click here.
Guilty bankers should clean toilets

2012-07-05, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/05/opinion/quest-libor-analysis/index.html
The Libor scandal has confirmed what many of us have known for some time: There is something
smelly in the London financial world and the stench is now overwhelming. The Financial Services
Authority report [made it] clear just how widespread, how blatant was the fixing of the benchmark
interest rate Libor and Euribor by Barclays. Brazen is the only word for it. The emails and phone
calls reveal that on dozens of occasions those who stood to gain by the decisions asked
for favors (and got them) from those who helped set the interest rates. And all the time the
world believed Libor was somehow a barometer of what banks were lending to each other. It
wasn't. It was the rate at which a bank was prepared to corrupt the money markets for its own
narrow, venal gain. It is the way the traders, the rate submitters -- everyone involved in this cesspit
-- [were] running to do wrong which makes it so egregious. With one or two feeble exceptions, no
one ever seemed to stop and say "this is against the rules." Or, heaven forbid, "this is wrong." I
have no doubt that Barclays wasn't the only one up to this. The FSA report makes it clear that
other traders were putting pressure on their rate setters too. Libor and its cousin Euribor are the
rates used to determine hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of highly specialized financial
contracts called derivatives. Businesses and household loans are set by this benchmark. It is the
backbone of the financial world and now it has been proven to be bent and crooked.
Note: For an incredibly incisive interview between Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi, and a top banking
expert on how the LIBOR scandal undermines the integrity of all banking, click here. For
astounding news on the $700 trillion derivatives bubble, click here. For a treasure trove of reliable
reports on the criminality and corruption within the financial and banking industries, click here.
Inquiry Declares Fukushima Crisis a Man-Made Disaster

2012-07-05, CNBC/New York Times
The nuclear accident at Fukushima was a preventable disaster rooted in government-industry
collusion and the worst conformist conventions of Japanese culture, a parliamentary inquiry [has]
concluded. The report, released by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation
Commission, challenged some of the main story lines that the government and the operator of the
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant have put forward. Most notably, the report said the plants
crucial cooling systems might have been damaged in the earthquake on March 11, 2011, not only
in the ensuing tsunami. That possibility raises doubts about the safety of all the quake-prone
countrys nuclear plants just as they begin to restart after a pause ordered in the wake of the
Fukushima crisis. It was a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have
been foreseen and prevented, said Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the commissions chairman, in the
reports introduction. And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human
response. The 641-page report criticized Tepco as being too quick to dismiss earthquake
damage as a cause of the fuel meltdowns at three of the plants six reactors, which overheated
when the site lost power. Tepco has contended that the plant withstood the earthquake that rocked
eastern Japan, instead placing blame for the disaster on what some experts have called a once in
a millennium tsunami that followed.
Note: For lots more from reliable major media articles on corruption in the nuclear power industry,
click here.
Drug Trials and Data-Based Medicine: An Interview with David Healy

2012-07-04, Psychology Today
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201207/drug-trials-and-data-...
Dr. David Healy is an internationally renowned psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist, and
author. He was responsible for submitting the key document that led to New York State's
successful fraud action against GlaxoSmithKline. [Q.] Youve written at your blog that evidencebased medicine and RCTs [random controlled trials] are ... simply not the answer to determining
cause and effect, [because] theyre quite likely to hide rather than reveal a problem like
antidepressant induced suicidality. How in fact do RCTs hide such information? [Dr. Healy:] There
are ... specific problems like miscoding, where suicidality becomes nausea or emotional lability
or even treatment non-responsiveness. There is also the problem of mislocation patients
on placebo end up being given problems they never had and of nonexistent patients, who
dont of course have adverse events. Beyond that, there are more sophisticated tricks that
companies can and do play such as claiming that increased rates of a problem on a drug
are not really evidence of an increase in rates if the data are not statistically significant. In this
way, companies have hidden many more heart attacks on Vioxx and Avandia or suicidal acts on
SSRIs than have been hidden by miscoding or mislocation. When it comes to adverse events,
trials almost never get the right answer. The deeper problem ... is the combination of product
patents, prescription-only status, and the use of clinical trials as a means of determining efficacy
in particular, when the data from those trials are not made available. This creates a perfect product
... which industry can manipulate to mean whatever they want them to mean.
Note: Dr. Healy is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and 20 books. For an
excellent article going further into Dr. Healy's amazing work, click here. For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on health corruption and manipulations, click here.
Joseph Stiglitz: Man who ran World Bank calls for bankers to face the
music
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/joseph-stigl...
The Barclays Libor scandal may have shocked the British public, but Joseph Stiglitz saw it
coming decades ago. And he's convinced that jailing bankers is the best way to curb
market abuses. [Former World Bank Chief Economist] Stiglitz wrote a series of papers in the
1970s and 1980s explaining how when some individuals have access to privileged knowledge that
others don't, free markets yield bad outcomes for wider society. That insight (known as the theory
of "asymmetric information") won Stiglitz the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001. And he has
leveraged those credentials relentlessly ever since to batter at the walls of "free market
fundamentalism". It is a crusade that [includes] his new book The Price of Inequality. When traders
working for Barclays rigged the Libor interest rate and flogged toxic financial derivatives using
their privileged position in the financial system to make profits at the expense of their customers
they were unwittingly proving Stiglitz right. "It's a textbook illustration," Stiglitz said. "Where there
are these asymmetries a lot of these activities are directed at rent seeking [appropriating resources
from someone else rather than creating new wealth]. That was one of my original points. It wasn't
about productivity, it was taking advantage." He argues that breaking the economic and political
power that has been amassed by the financial sector in recent decades, especially in the US and
the UK, is essential if we are to build a more just and prosperous society. The first step, he says, is
sending some bankers to jail.
Libor scandal: How I manipulated the bank borrowing rate

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9368430/Libor...
An anonymous insider from one of Britain's biggest lenders ... explains how he and his colleagues
helped manipulate the UK's bank borrowing rate. Neither the insider nor the bank can be identified
for legal reasons. It was during a weekly economic briefing at the bank in early 2008 that I first
heard the phrase. A sterling swaps trader told the assembled economists and managers that
"Libor was dislocated with itself". What the trader told us was that the bank could not be seen to
be borrowing at high rates, so we were putting in low Libor submissions, the same as
everyone. How could we do that? Easy. The British Bankers' Association, which compiled
Libor, asked for a rate submission but there were no checks. The trader said there was a
general acceptance that you lowered the price a few basis points each day. According to the
trader, "everyone knew" and "everyone was doing it". There was no implication of illegality. After
all, there were 20 to 30 people in the room from management to economists, structuring teams
to salespeople and more on the teleconference dial-in from across the country. The discussion
was so open the behaviour seemed above board. In no sense was this a clandestine gathering.
Libor had dislocated with itself for a very good reason to hide the true issues within the bank.
Note: For an incredibly incisive interview between Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi, and a top banking
expert on how the LIBOR scandal undermines the integrity of all banking, click here. For a treasure
trove of reliable reports on the criminality and corruption within the financial and banking industries,
click here.
Heist of the century: Wall Street's role in the financial crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/may/20/wall-street-role-financial-crisis
Wall Street bankers could have averted the global financial crisis, so why didn't they? In this
exclusive extract from his book Inside Job: The Financiers Who Pulled Off the Heist of the
Century, Charles Ferguson argues that they should be prosecuted: The Securities and Exchanges
Commission has been deservedly criticised for not following up on years of complaints about
[Bernard L.] Madoff. But not a single bank that had suspicions about Madoff made such a call.
Instead, they assumed he was probably a crook, but either just left him alone or were happy to
make money from him. It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global
financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even
encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial
crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind
of economic accident. This behaviour is criminal. We are talking about deliberate concealment
of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and large-scale tax
evasion; assisting in major financial frauds and in concealment of criminal assets; and committing
frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression.
And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corruption and criminality in the finance industry, click
here.
Genetically modified crops' results raise concern

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/29/MN1O1O5SS0.DTL
Biotechnology's promise to feed the world did not anticipate "Trojan corn," "super weeds"
and the disappearance of monarch butterflies. In the Midwest and South - blanketed by more
than 170 million acres of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton - an experiment begun
in 1996 with approval of the first commercial genetically modified organisms is producing
questionable results. Those results include vast increases in herbicide use that have created
impervious weeds now infesting millions of acres of cropland, while decimating other plants, such
as milkweeds that sustain the monarch butterflies. More than a million people have signed a
petition to the Food and Drug Administration to require labeling of genetically engineered food. The
stakes on labeling such foods are huge. The crops are so widespread that an estimated 70
percent of U.S. processed foods contain engineered genes. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture has approved more than 80 genetically engineered crops while denying none.
Genetically engineered crops ... have spawned an infestation of "super weeds" now covering at
least 13 million acres in 26 states. The crops led to a 400-million-pound net increase in herbicide
applications. Dave Mortensen, a weed ecologist at Pennsylvania State University, said the number
of "super weed" species grew from one in 1996 ... to 22 today. Last month, scientists definitively
tied heavy use of glyphosate to an 81 percent decline in the monarch butterfly population. It turns
out that the herbicide has obliterated the milkweeds on Midwest corn farms where the monarchs
lay their eggs after migrating from Mexico. Iowa State University ecologist John Pleasants, one of
the study's authors, said the catastrophic decline in monarchs is a consequence of the genetically
engineered crops that no one foresaw.
Note: Multiple reliable sources have shown that you may be eating genetically modified food daily
which scientific experiments have repeatedly demonstrated can cause sickness and even death in
lab animals. For key reports from major media sources on hidden facts on the dangers of
genetically modified food, click here.
Swine flu vaccine 'linked to' sleeping disorder

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9171414/Swine-flu-vaccine-linked...
A study in Finland has found that children vaccinated against the H1N1 swine flu virus with
Pandemrix were more likely to develop the sleep disorder narcolepsy. The condition causes
excessive daytime sleepiness and sufferers can fall asleep suddenly and unintentionally. The
researchers found that between 2002 and 2009, before the swine flu pandemic struck, the
rate of narcolepsy in children under the age of 17 was 0.31 per 100,000. In 2010 this was
about 17 times higher at 5.3 per 100,000 while the narcolepsy rate remained the same in adults.
Markku Partinen of the Helsinki Sleep Clinic and Hanna Nohynek of the National Institute for
Health and Welfare in Finland, also collected vaccination and childhood narcolepsy data for
children born between January 1991 and December 2005. They found that in those who were
vaccinated the rate of narcolepsy was nine per 100,000 compared to 0.7 per 100,000
unvaccinated children, or 13 times lower. Pandemrix was the main vaccine used in Britain against
the swine flu epidemic in which six million people were vaccinated. It was formulated specifically
for the swine flu pandemic virus and is no longer in use.
Note: The WHO stated "more than 12 countries reported cases of narcolepsy in children and
adolescents using GlaxoSmithKline's swine flu vaccine." For powerful media reports suggesting
that both the Avian Flu and Swine Flu were incredibly manipulated to promote fear and boost
pharmaceutical sales, click here. For many news articles showing that vaccines are not tested
adequately for safety and are at times politically and financially motivated, click here. For lots more
from reliable sources on pharmaceutical corruption, click here.
Corporations pay less in taxes than Buffett, Romney

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/11/EDG91NILV9.DTL
Corporations pay a lower effective tax rate than Warren Buffett and Mitt Romney, but you wouldn't
know it from all the complaints that our corporate tax rate puts our country at a competitive
disadvantage. Despite an official corporate tax rate 35 percent, last year, U.S. corporations paid
just 12.1 percent of their earnings in federal corporate income taxes. Buffett's tax rate is 17.4
percent; Romney's reported 2010 tax rate was 13.9 percent. Our broken tax system blesses U.S.
multinational corporations with lots of loopholes that enable them to pay less in taxes than Main
Street businesses. It has starved our government of revenue. Contrary to common perception,
U.S. corporations pay far less toward the cost of public services and infrastructure than they did in
decades past, and less than foreign competitors pay in their countries today. In the 1950s,
corporate federal income taxes accounted for nearly one-third of federal government
revenue; in 2011, corporate taxes accounted for less than 8 percent. U.S. corporate profits
account for more than 10 percent of GDP, a 50-year high. Federal corporate income taxes
collected as a percent of GDP are at a 50-year low. The challenge of corporate taxes and
competitiveness is not that rates are too high, but that loopholes, preferences and subsidies make
corporate tax collections far too low.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click here
and here.
The extra dollars you're paying at the pump are going to Wall Street
speculators

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-201202280930--tms--amvoicesctnav-a20120228f...
The current surge in gas prices has almost nothing to do with energy policy. It doesn't even have
much to do with global supply and demand. It has most to do with America's continuing failure to
adequately regulate Wall Street. Oil supplies aren't being squeezed. Over 80 percent of America's
energy needs are now being satisfied by domestic supplies. In fact, we're starting to become an
energy exporter. Demand for oil isn't rising. Oil demand in the U.S. is down compared to last year
at this time. The American economy is showing only the faintest signs of recovery. Meanwhile,
global demand is still moderate. Europe's debt crisis hasn't gone away. China's growth continues
to slow. But Wall Street is betting on higher oil prices. Hedge-fund managers and traders assume
that mounting tensions in the Middle East will hobble supplies later this year. Wall Street
speculators also assume global demand for oil will rise in the coming year. These are just
expectations, not today's realities. But they're pushing up oil prices just the same, because Wall
Street firms and other big financial players now dominate oil trading. Where there's money to be
made, Wall Street will find a way of making it. And when it comes to oil, so much money is at
stake that gigantic sums can be made if the bets pay off. Speculators figure they can hedge
against bad bets. Financial speculators historically accounted for about 30 percent of oil
contracts, producers and end users for about 70 percent. But today speculators account for
64 percent of all contracts.
Note: This article was written by Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, professor of public
policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy
and America's Future. He blogs at www.robertreich.org. For lots more reliable information from the
major media on energy manipulations, click here.
Foreclosure abuse rampant across U.S., experts say

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46424973/ns/business/t/foreclosure-abuse-rampant-...
A report this week showing rampant foreclosure abuse in San Francisco reflects similar levels of
lender fraud and faulty documentation across the United States, say experts and officials who
have done studies in other parts of the country. The audit of almost 400 foreclosures in San
Francisco found that 84 percent of them appeared to be illegal, according to the study
released by the California city. "The audit in San Francisco is the most detailed and
comprehensive that has been done - but it's likely those numbers are comparable nationally,"
Diane Thompson, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, told Reuters. Across the
country from California, Jeff Thingpen, register of deeds in Guildford County, North Carolina,
examined 6,100 mortgage documents last year, from loan notes to foreclosure paperwork. Of
those documents, created between January 2008 and December 2010, 4,500 showed signature
irregularities, a telltale sign of the illegal practice of "robosigning" documents. Robosigning
involves the use of bogus documents to force foreclosures without lenders having to
scrutinize all the paperwork involved with mortgages. The practice was at the heart of the
foreclosure scandal that led to a $25 billion settlement between the U.S. government and five
major banks last week.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the illegal foreclosures made by the biggest
banks and financial firms, the collusion of government agencies, and more, see our "Banking
Bailout" news articles.
Wall Street shenanigans fuel public distrust

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/17/IN5N1MBT60.DTL
Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It's busily shredding new regulations and making the public
more distrustful than ever. The Street's biggest lobbying groups have just filed a lawsuit against
the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, seeking to overturn its new rule limiting speculative
trading in food, oil and other commodities. The Street makes bundles from these bets, but they
have raised costs for consumers. In other words, a small portion of what you and I pay for
food and energy has been going into the pockets of Wall Street. Just another redistribution
from the middle class and the poor to the top. The Street argues that the commission's costbenefit analysis wasn't adequate. Putting the question into the laps of federal judges gives the
Street a huge tactical advantage because the Street has almost an infinite amount of money to
hire so-called "experts" who will say benefits have been exaggerated and costs underestimated.
But when it comes to regulating Wall Street, one big cost doesn't make it into any individual
weighing: the public's mounting distrust of the entire economic system, generated by the Street's
repeated abuse of the public's trust. Wall Street's shenanigans have convinced a large portion of
America that the economic game is rigged. Wall Street has blanketed America in a miasma of
cynicism.
Note: The author of this analysis, Robert Reich, is a former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of
public policy at UC Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's
Future. He blogs at www.robertreich.org.
Derivatives industry eyes UK Lehman appeal ruling

2011-12-14, Reuters News Agency
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/14/britain-derivatives-idUSL6E7NE1YQ20...
Regulators and the world's $700 trillion derivatives industry are closely watching a legal
battle that began in Britain ... and which will fuel a sea change in swaps payouts. Four
cases, including one involving a unit of collapsed U.S. bank Lehman Brothers, are being presented
in a five-day hearing at the UK Court of Appeal. All revolve around payouts under the derivatives
industry's "master agreement", a framework contract. A bank that trades swaps with another bank
typically has one master agreement which sets the terms for millions of transactions between
them. The master agreement ... covers around 90 percent of off-exchange derivatives
transactions. Under the agreement, Lehman's bankruptcy is considered a default. However, in the
four cases before the court this week, the other party in the contracts elected not to terminate them
because they would have had to pay out to the defunct bank.
Note: Like most reporting in the major media, this article trivializes the massive size of the
derivatives market. $700 trillion is equivalent to $100,000 for every man, woman, and child in
the world! Do you think the financial industry is out of control? For lots more powerful, reliable
information on major banking manipulations, click here. For a powerful analysis of just how crazy
things have gotten and with some rays of hope by researcher David Wilcock, click here.
What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/what-price-t...
The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than
it is possible to count. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, [Italy] has suspended the normal
rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman
Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an
investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic. The European
Central Bank ... is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank's alumni hold sway
in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout
the financial crisis. Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living
down its nickname as "the Vampire Squid", and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the
eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. Simon Johnson, the former
International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the
Next Financial Meltdown, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so
close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At
least European politicians aren't "bought and paid for" by corporations, as in the US, he says.
"Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the
bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions." This is The Goldman
Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close.
Note: For revealing major media articles on key secret societies which manipulate global politics,
click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption,
click here.
Congress: Trading stock on inside information?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57323527/congress-trading-stock-on-insi...
Washington, D.C. is a town that runs on inside information - but should our elected officials be able
to use that information to pad their own pockets? Members of Congress and their aides have
regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock
market trades in the very industries they regulate. For now, the practice is perfectly legal,
but some say it's time for the law to change. Few of them are doing it for the salary and all of
them will say they are doing it to serve the public. But there are other benefits: Power, prestige,
and the opportunity to become a Washington insider with access to information and connections
that no one else has, in an environment of privilege where rules that govern the rest of the country,
don't always apply to them. Most former congressmen and senators manage to leave Washington
- if they ever leave Washington - with more money in their pockets than they had when they
arrived. Congressional lawmakers have no corporate responsibilities and have long been
considered exempt from insider trading laws, even though they have daily access to non-public
information and plenty of opportunities to trade on it.
Note: According to a New York Times article, U.S. "Senators' stocks beat the market by 12
percent," while "the average household's portfolio underperformed the market by 1.44 per cent a
year." To watch this revealing 15-minute piece on CBS 60 Minutes, click here. For key reports from
reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Contracts

2011-10-18, Bloomberg/Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-18/bofa-said-to-split-regulators-ove...
Bank of America Corp., hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its
Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits. Derivatives are financial instruments
used to hedge risks or for speculation. Theyre derived from stocks, bonds, loans, currencies and
commodities, or linked to specific events such as changes in the weather or interest rates. Keeping
such deals separate from FDIC-insured savings has been a cornerstone of U.S. regulation for
decades, including last years Dodd-Frank overhaul of Wall Street regulation. Three years after
taxpayers rescued some of the biggest U.S. lenders, regulators are grappling with how to protect
FDIC-insured bank accounts from risks generated by investment-banking operations. The
concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured
institution, said William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of MissouriKansas City and a former bank regulator. We should have fairly tight restrictions on that. Bank of
Americas holding company -- the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch
securities unit -- held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June. That compares
with JPMorgans deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99
percent of the New York-based firms $79 trillion of notional derivatives.
Note: Remember that the GDP of the entire world is estimated at around $60 trillion, less
than JPMorgan or BofA own in derivatives. For an excellent article laying out the incredible risk
this creates of a major economic collapse, click here. For more on the high risk and cost to
taxpayers of BofA moving its massive amount of derivatives to its subsidiary, click here. For lots
more from major media sources on the illegal profiteering of major financial corporations enabled
by lax government regulation, click here.
Report: Pentagon doesn't know where the money is going

2011-10-13, MSNBC
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/13/8294595-report-pentagon-doe...
The Defense Department, which has promised to publish a reliable account of how it
spends its money by 2017, has discovered that its financial ledgers are in worse shape than
expected and that it will have to spend billions of dollars in the coming years to make its
financial accounting credible, the Center for Public Integrity reported [on October 13]. The U.S.
military has spent more than $6 billion to develop and deploy new financial systems, but the effort
has been plagued by significant added overruns and delays, defense officials told the CPI, a
nonprofit investigative news organization. The Government Accountability Office said in a report
last month that although the services can now fully track incoming appropriations, they still can't
demonstrate that their funds are being spent as they should be. The Pentagons bookkeeping has
come under increased scrutiny as Congress and the Obama administration have vowed to reduce
the federal deficit. The department could face substantial cutbacks if a special bipartisan
"supercommittee" cant agree on a formula for reducing the deficit.
Note: For an essay by a top U.S. general revealing how wars are used to bring huge profits to the
powerful elite of our world, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on government
Megabanks growing even more dominant

2011-09-08, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44426180/ns/business-local_business/t/megabanks-g...
The American banking sector apparently is going to be vastly different when it finally emerges from
the financial crisis that took hold more than three years ago. It is going to be significantly smaller,
and the domination of a relative handful of behemoth institutions is going to increase. At the end of
June, there were 7,522 commercial banks, down from 8,542 on Dec. 31, 2007. That is a decline of
nearly 12 percent in just three and a half years. Of the more than 1,000 banks that disappeared,
about 370 failed. But the rest of the decrease came through mergers and acquisitions as a
decades-long pattern of consolidation continued. Most banks in the United States still are fairly
small. The median size of a bank at the end of June, according to an analysis of statistics from the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was about $155 million in assets. Thats about an 18 percent
increase since the end of 2007. But those numbers seriously skew the nature of the industry. Of
the more than $13.6 trillion in assets held by banks at the end of June, nearly $9.4 trillion is in
the hands of just 37 institutions, each with more than $50 billion in assets. And of that, $5.5
trillion is held by just four banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank and Wells
Fargo. Each of those have more than $1 trillion in assets. In other words, the U.S. banking
industry resembles a tall cake, with a very thick layer of icing on top.
Note: To learn how these same four banks and their holding companies hold over 90% of the $700
trillion derivatives market, click here. For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the
concentration and centralization of financial power by a few megabanks, click here.
Study: Top CEOs earned more than companies paid in tax

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0901-ceo-pay-20110901,0,261944....
Twenty-five of the 100 highest-paid U.S. CEOs earned more last year than their companies
paid in federal income tax, a pay study by a Washington think tank said [on August 31]. The
Institute for Policy Studies said it also found many of the companies spent more on
lobbying than they did on taxes. The institute compared CEO pay with current U.S. taxes paid,
excluding foreign, state and local taxes that may have been paid, as well as deferred taxes, which
can often be far larger than current taxes paid. The group's rationale was that U.S. taxes paid are
the closest approximation in public documents to what companies may have actually written a
check for last year. It said deferred taxes may or may not be paid. Among the companies topping
the IPS list: EBay, whose CEO John Donahoe made $12.4 million, but which reported a $131
million refund on its 2010 current U.S. taxes. Boeing, which paid CEO Jim McNerney $13.8
million, sent in $13 million in federal income taxes and spent $20.8 million on lobbying and
campaign spending. General Electric, where CEO Jeff Immelt earned $15.2 million in 2010, while
the company got a $3.3 billion federal refund and invested $41.8 million in its own lobbying and
political campaigns.
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from major media sources, click here.
SEC accused of dumping records

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sec-accused-of-dumping-records...
The SEC has violated federal law by destroying the records of thousands of enforcement cases
in which it decided not to file charges against or conduct full-blown investigations of Wall Street
firms and others initially suspected of wrongdoing, a former agency official has alleged. The
purged records involve major firms such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America,
Morgan Stanley and hedge-fund manager SAC Capital. At issue were suspicions of actions
such as insider trading, financial fraud and market manipulation. A file closed in 2002
involved Lehman Brothers, the investment bank whose collapse fueled the financial meltdown of
2008, according to the former official. A file closed in 2009 involved suspected insider trading in
securities related to American International Group, the insurance giant bailed out by the
government at the height of the financial crisis. The allegations were leveled in a July letter to Sen.
Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) from Gary J. Aguirre, a former SEC enforcement lawyer now
representing a current SEC enforcement lawyer, Darcy Flynn. Flynn last year began managing
SEC enforcement records and became concerned that records that were supposed to be
preserved under federal law were being purged as a matter of SEC policy, Aguirre wrote.
Note: For more on this important news by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, click here. For lots more
from reliable sources on the criminal practices of Wall Street corporations which led to global
economic recession and massive government bailouts, click here.
Revealed: British government's plan to play down Fukushima

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/30/british-government-plan-pla...
British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public
relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake
and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known. Internal emails seen
by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind
the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to
ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the
UK. "This has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally," wrote one official at the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), whose name has been redacted. "We need
to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy
the territory and hold it. We really need to show the safety of nuclear." Officials stressed the
importance of preventing the incident from undermining public support for nuclear power. Louise
Hutchins, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, said the emails looked like "scandalous collusion".
"This highlights the government's blind obsession with nuclear power and shows neither they, nor
the industry, can be trusted when it comes to nuclear," she said.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government and corporate corruption, click here and
here.
U.S. nuke regulators weaken safety rules

2011-06-20, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/20/national/main20072497.shtml
Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's
aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or
simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. Time after
time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations
were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril. The result? Rising fears
that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety and inching the
reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public. Examples abound. When valves leaked,
more leakage was allowed up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking
caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was
devised, so plants could meet standards. Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged
screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes all
of these and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered. Not a single official
body in government or industry has studied the overall frequency and potential impact on safety of
such breakdowns in recent years, even as the NRC has extended the licenses of dozens of
reactors.
Note: Read this detailed report in its entirety to see the amazing range of serious problems in the
US nuclear industry which have systematically been covered up by the NRC. For lots more from
reliable sources on government and corporate corruption, click here and here.
Goldman Sachs faces contentious AGM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/06/goldman-sachs-set-contentious-agm
Goldman Sachs is bracing itself for what may be the most contentious annual meeting in the
embattled investment bank's 142-year history. Angry shareholders, including a coalition of religious
groups, are planning to call on Goldman's executives to justify the combined $69.6m (42.4m)
payday its top five executives received in 2010 and to answer questions about allegations that the
bank misled clients and lied to Congress. The meeting comes amid mounting pressure on the
bank. Earlier this week Eric Holder, the US attorney-general, confirmed that the justice department
was investigating Goldman's role in the financial crisis following a withering report on the bank's
role led by senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn. The 650-page report "Wall Street and the
Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse," gave Goldman its own section titled "Failing to
Manage Conflicts of Interest: A Case Study of Goldman Sachs." In July the bank paid $500m to
settle charges brought by financial regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that
it misled customers over complex sub-prime mortgage products it sold in 2007. The spotlight on
executive pay could not come at a more sensitive moment for the bank. The bank's top five
executives received cash and stock last year that was 13 times greater than the year before.
Goldman's 2010 net revenues fell 13% and profits fell 37%. Goldman paid Blankfein close to
$19m in compensation for 2010, almost double his award for the previous year.
Note: For lots more on the financial chicanery of Goldman Sachs and other major financial
corporations that led to the global economic crisis and massive taxpayer bailouts of the firms, click
here.
Report: Market share drove faulty credit ratings decisions

2011-04-13, Kansas City Star/McClatchy News
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/04/13/2798570/report-market-share-drove-faulty...
Analysts who reviewed complex mortgage bonds that ultimately collapsed and ruined the U.S.
housing market were threatened with firing if they lost lucrative business, prompting faulty ratings
on trillions of dollars worth of junk mortgage bonds, a Senate report said [on April 13]. The 639page report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations confirms much of what
McClatchy Newspapers first reported about mismanagement by credit ratings agencies in 2009.
Credit rating agencies are supposed to provide independent assessments on the quality of debt
being issued by companies or governments. Traditionally, investments rated AAA had a probability
of failure of less than 1 percent. But in collusion with Wall Street investment banks, the Senate
report concludes, the top two ratings agencies - Moody's Investors Service and Standard &
Poor's - effectively cashed in on the housing boom by ignoring mounting evidence of
problems in the housing market. Profits at both companies soared, with revenues at market
leader Moody's more than tripling in five years. Then the bottom fell out of the housing market, and
Moody's stock lost 70 percent of its value; it has yet to fully recover. More than 90 percent of
AAA ratings given in 2006 and 2007 to pools of mortgage-backed securities were
downgraded to junk status.
Note: For many key reports from major media sources illuminating how major financial
corporations knowingly brought about the global financial crisis and profited from it, click here.
Unfair investment practices by wives of business bigs

2011-04-12, New York Daily News
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-04-12/gossip/29426543_1_matt-taibbi-stud...
Christy Mack, the wife of Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack, and Susan Karches, the widow of
the company's former investment-banking division president, Peter Karches, are among the chief
investors in a company that received $220 million in low-interest loans. The funds came from a
federal bailout program that "virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income," according to
the article ... "The Real Housewives of Wall Street," which appears in [Rolling Stone]. In 2009,
Christy Mack and Susan Karches launched Waterfall TALF Opportunity, a company with a Cayman
Islands address, although the two women did not seem "to have any experience whatsoever in
finance." TALF stands for "Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility." The federal aid they
received "falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives designed" by Federal Reserve chief
Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. With an initial upfront investment of
$15 million, Waterfall TALF received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which it
used to purchase "student loans and commercial mortgages." The loans were set up so
that the investors "would keep 100% of any gains on the deal while the Fed and the
Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90% of the losses."
Note: We don't usually quote the New York Daily News, but as they were the only major media to
report this important story, we've included it here. Why are the major media silent on this powerful
information uncovered by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders? For the full story on this, click here. For
lots more from reliable sources on corruption in the government bailouts of the biggest banks, click
here.
Mortgage mess: Who really owns your mortgage?

2011-04-03, CBS News 60 Minutes Overtime
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20049744-10391709.html
Do you know who really owns your mortgage? That question has become a nightmare for many
homeowners since the invention of mortgage-backed securities. Yes, those were the exotic
investments that sparked the financial collapse in this country. And they're still causing problems.
As it turns out, Wall Street cut corners when it bundled homeowners' mortgages into securities that
were traded from investor to investor. Now that banks are foreclosing on people, they're
finding that the legal documents behind many mortgages are missing. So, what do the
banks do? Some companies appear to be resorting to forgery and phony paperwork in what
looks like a nationwide epidemic. Even if you're not at risk of foreclosure, there could be legal
ramifications for a homeowner if the chain of title has been lost.
Note: Don't miss at the link above the most excellent, six-minute CBS video explaining more on
this blatant deception and manipulation by many banks. You have to put up with a one-minute
commercial shortly after the video starts. For lots more from reliable sources on the criminal
practices of mortgage lenders, click here.
Genetically modified cows produce 'human' milk

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/geneticmodification/8423536/Gene...
Scientists have created genetically modified cattle that produce "human" milk in a bid to make
cows' milk more nutritious. The scientists have ... introduced human genes into 300 dairy cows to
produce milk with [some of] the same properties as human breast milk. The scientists behind the
research ... hope genetically modified dairy products from herds of similar cows could be sold in
supermarkets. The research has the backing of a major biotechnology company. Genetically
modified food has become a highly controversial subject and currently they can only be sold in the
UK and Europe if they have passed extensive safety testing. The consumer response to GM food
has also been highly negative, resulting in many supermarkets seeking to source products that are
GM free. Helen Wallace, director of biotechnology monitoring group GeneWatch UK, said: "We
have major concerns about this research to genetically modify cows with human genes. There are
major welfare issues with genetically modified animals as you get high numbers of still births.
There is a question about whether milk from these cows is going to be safe for humans and
it is really hard to tell that unless you do large clinical trials like you would a drug, so there
will be uncertainty about whether it could be harmful to some people. Ethically there are
issues about mass producing animals in this way."
Note: For a powerful summary of the dangers of genetically modified foods, click here. And for
other major media news articles exposing the serious risks and dangers of genetically modified
foods, click here.
Organic farmers sue, seek protection from Monsanto

2011-03-29, Reuters News
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/29/monsanto-lawsuit-idUKN2929224220110329
A consortium of U.S. organic farmers and seed dealers filed suit against global seed giant
Monsanto Co. on [March 29], in a move to protect themselves from what they see as a growing
threat in the company's arsenal of genetically modified crops. The Public Patent Foundation filed
the suit on behalf of more than 50 organizations challenging the chemical giant's patents on its
genetically modified seeds. The group is seeking a ruling that would prohibit Monsanto from
suing the farmers or dealers if their organic seed becomes contaminated with Monsanto's
patented biotech seed germplasm. Monsanto has filed scores of lawsuits and won
judgments against farmers they claimed made use of their seed without paying required
royalties. Many farmers have claimed that their fields were inadvertently contaminated without
their knowledge, and the issue has been a topic of concern for not only farmers, but also
companies that clean and handle seed. "This case asks whether Monsanto has the right to sue
organic farmers for patent infringement if Monsanto's genetically modified seed should land on
their property," said Dan Ravicher, executive director of PUBPAT. The suit also alleges that
Monsanto's GMO seeds do more harm than good and claims the patents on genetically modified
seed are invalid because they don't meet the "usefulness" requirement of patent law.
Note: For a powerful, quality documentary revealing the gross abuses of Monsanto which
endanger public health, click here.
G.E.s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html
General Electric, the nations largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company
reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its
operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of
$3.2 billion. That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and
households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company
has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for
years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies. Its extraordinary
success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and
innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.s giant tax
department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often
referred to as the worlds best tax law firm. Indeed, the companys slogan Imagination at Work
fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also
from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress. While General Electric is
one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at
this as well.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click
here and here.
Indiana prosecutor resigns for encouraging fake attack on Wisconsin

governor
2011-03-25, CBS News
Carlos Lam, a Republican activist and Indiana deputy prosecutor, has resigned amid revelations
that he sent an email calling for a fake attack on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker designed to
discredit union protesters. Walker, a Republican, was the target of protests for his efforts to roll
back many union collective bargaining rights in his state. In a Feb. 19 email uncovered by the
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Lam apparently told Walker he had a "good
opportunity" to win public sympathy with a "'false flag' operation." "If you could employ an
associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or
even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions," read the email. Lam initially
denied having sent the email. He [claimed] he had been shopping for a minivan with his family
when it was sent, and suggested his email account had been infiltrated by his political enemies.
Lam resigned as deputy prosecutor on Thursday morning, however, reportedly telling his boss he
had indeed sent the email. Last month, another Indiana official -- Deputy Attorney General Jeff
Cox - lost his job for calling on law enforcement to "use live ammunition" on Wisconsin protesters.
Also in February, Walker was the victim of a prank call by a liberal journalist pretending to be
billionaire conservative activist David Koch. When the journalist suggested planting people among
the protesters to stir up trouble, Walker responded that "we thought about that" but added that he
had decided against it.
Note: To learn more about the prevalence of "false flag" operations in politics with links to reliable,
verifiable sources, click here. For more on this official's call for a false-flag attack, click here.
Why those from 'Inside Job' aren't inside a prison

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/28/BURF1HV7AV.DTL
"Forgive me," said Berkeley filmmaker Charles Ferguson upon receiving an Academy Award on
Sunday night for his documentary "Inside Job." "I must start by pointing out that three years after a
horrific financial crisis caused by fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail - and that's
wrong." A number of people would agree, including a majority of Americans, according to opinion
polls, who blame U.S. banks and other private institutions for the 2007-08 financial meltdown
documented in Ferguson's film. "He raised exactly the right question," said William Black, a senior
regulator at the former Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp., which helped clean up the far
less costly S&L crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. More than 1,800 S&L officials were
convicted of felonies in its aftermath, with more than 1,000 jailed. But the difference between then
and now - and with the 1929 crash, which saw a number of bankers go to jail - is open to much
debate. "We had well over 10,000 criminal referrals from regulators in the S&L crisis," said
Black, now an associate professor of economics and law at the University of MissouriKansas City School of Law. "This time, zero."
Note: For other major media articles revealing the vast extent of unmitigated corruption related to
the banking bailouts, click here. For reliable, eye-opening information on how the public is
continually deceived about banking, click here. And for an excellent study guide on the facts
presented in this revealing film, click here.
Parents Lose High Court Appeal in Vaccine Case

2011-02-22, U.S. News & World Report/Associated Press
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/02/22/parents-lose-high-court-appeal...
The Supreme Court closed the courthouse door ... to parents who want to sue drug makers over
claims their children developed autism and other serious health problems from vaccines. The
ruling was a stinging defeat for families dissatisfied with how they fared before a special no-fault
vaccine court. The court voted 6-2 against the parents of a child who sued the drug maker Wyeth
in Pennsylvania state court for the health problems they say their daughter, now 19, suffered from
a vaccine she received in infancy. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said Congress
set up a special vaccine court in 1986 to ... create a system that spares the drug companies
the costs of defending against parents' lawsuits. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia
Sotomayor dissented. Nothing in the 1986 law ''remotely suggests that Congress intended such
a result,'' Sotomayor wrote, taking issue with Scalia. Scalia's opinion was the latest legal setback
for parents who felt they got too little from the vaccine court or failed to collect at all. Such was the
case for Robalee and Russell Bruesewitz of Pittsburgh, who filed their lawsuit after the vaccine
court rejected their claims for compensation. According to the lawsuit, their daughter, Hannah, was
a healthy infant until she received the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine in April 1992.
Within hours of getting the DPT shot, the third in a series of five, the baby suffered a series of
debilitating seizures.
Note: Vaccines have been strongly promoted for decades, yet the research supporting many
vaccines is amazingly weak. For more powerful information questioning the efficacy of vaccines,
click here.
Trustee: J.P. Morgan Abetted Madoff

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. ignored or dismissed warning signs about the Madoff fraud even as it
earned hundreds of millions of dollars from its relationship with his firm, according to a lawsuit
unsealed [on February 3]. The $6.4 billion lawsuit ... claims that bankers at J.P. Morgan
discussed the possibility that Bernard Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme, worried that a
firm of such size was audited by a storefront accountant and called his returns "too good to
be true." "While numerous financial institutions enabled Madoff's fraud, JPMC was at the
very center of that fraud, and thoroughly complicit in it," according to the 115-page lawsuit, filed
under seal in December by Irving Picard, the trustee seeking to recover money for Mr. Madoff's
victims. The complaint seeks the return of nearly $1 billion in J.P. Morgan's profits and fees, and
$5.4 billion in damages. It goes into great detail about the bank's alleged efforts, starting in about
2006, to make money by offering products tied to Mr. Madoff through investment funds that fed
money to him. The lawsuit offers a detailed account of the more than two decade relationship
between J.P. Morgan and Mr. Madoff. The lawsuit claims that the bank didn't pay attention to
billions of dollars passing through the Madoff firm's main J.P. Morgan account, much of it by handwritten check, or to discrepancies in the account balance and unreported obligations.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the criminal practices of the biggest financial
institutions, click here.
Deregulation of derivatives set stage for collapse

http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-01-30/business/27091349_1_otc-derivatives-otc...
"We certainly applaud the efforts of the commission," said White House press secretary Robert
Gibbs, referring to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report. "Frankly, I'm not sure much has changed,"
said one of commissioners, Byron Georgiou. "The concentration of assets in the nation's 10
biggest banks is bigger now than it was five years ago, from 58 percent in 2006 to 63
percent now." Referring to executives who remain at the head of those banks that almost ran
aground, Georgiou said ... "Either they knew and didn't want to tell us, or they really didn't know.
Either way, they put their institutions at risk." And have yet to be held accountable. Commissioner
Brooksley Born can enjoy a certain sense of vindication. Not only had "over-the-counter
derivatives contributed significantly to this crisis," ... but the enactment of legislation in 2000 to ban
their regulation "was a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis." As head of the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the 1990s, Born was aware of the damage the largely
unregulated instruments had already caused. Born suggested some more regulation. [She] was
squashed like a bug by Clinton administration heavyweights, including Lawrence Summers and
Robert Rubin, [and] Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. One of the results: The
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 eliminated government oversight of the OTC
market. As the report documents, the use of such derivatives ... helped bring the entire
financial system to its knees. Born hasn't seen much change in terms of accountability. One
thing the report makes clear ... is just how preposterous were the "Who knew?" and "Who could
have predicted?" statements offered up by chief executives and top government officials.
Note: So the 10 biggest banks now control 63% of total U.S. bank assets. The total for these
banking assets as of the second quarter of 2010 were calculated at $13.22 trillion. Yet four of
these megabanks also control an astounding 95% of the $574 trillion derivatives market, a sum
over 40 times the amount of bank assets! Do you think there might be a problem with a derivatives
bubble?
FDA panel urges new look at "silver" teeth fillings

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40604587/ns/health
Enough uncertainty surrounds silver-colored metal dental fillings with mercury that U.S. regulators
should add more cautions for dentists and patients, a U.S. advisory panel [has] said. The fillings
should be accompanied by warnings about unknown risks for vulnerable people such as children
and pregnant women. "There really is no place for mercury in children," Suresh Kotagal, a panelist
and neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said of the toxic metal. Mercury has
been linked to neurological damage at high exposure levels and makes up about half of a metal
filling. While the panel stopped short of urging a ban, it wants the FDA to look at the latest data and
reassess its guidance after the agency last year declared the fillings safe. Some European nations
have banned amalgam use. Critics told the advisers there was a clear link between mercury
fillings and side effects, especially in more vulnerable patients. They should be banned or
not implanted unless patients give consent, they said.
Note: Why is mercury still used in most dental fillings, when there is a known risk and other
materials are available? Our teeth are not a good place for mercury. Studies have proven that
small amounts of mercury are released by these fillings in gases into the mouth, only the toxicity is
debated. For more, click here.
Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry, foreign
firms
2010-12-02, The Washington Post
New disclosures show the Federal Reserve rushed trillions of dollars in emergency aid not just to
Wall Street but also to ... foreign-owned banks in 2008 and 2009. The central bank's aid programs
also supported U.S. subsidiaries of banks based in East Asia, Europe and Canada. The biggest
users of the Fed lending programs were some of the world's largest banks, including Citigroup,
Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Swiss-based UBS and Britain's Barclays, according to more
than 21,000 loan records released [December 1] under new financial regulatory legislation. The
data reveal banks turning to the Fed for help almost daily in the fall of 2008 as the central bank
lowered lending standards and extended relief to all kinds of institutions it had never assisted
before. The extent of the lending to major banks - and the generous terms of some of those deals heighten the political peril for a central bank that is already under the gun for a wide range of
actions, including a recent decision to try to stimulate the economy by buying $600 billion in U.S.
bonds. "The American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of
the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America," said Sen. Bernard
Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime Fed critic whose provision in the Wall Street regulatory overhaul
required the new disclosures. "Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out
foreign private banks and corporations." The Fed launched emergency programs totaling $3.3
trillion in aid, a figure reached by adding up the peak amount of lending in each program.
Note: The figure of $3.3 trillion cited in this article was simply the peak amount lent at one moment
in time; the total amount lent by the Fed over the years covered by the data exceeded $20 trillion.
For analysis of this data release, click here.
McDonald's and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/12/mcdonalds-pepsico-help-health-...
The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed
food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart
of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease. In an overhaul of public
health, said by [critics] to be the equivalent of handing smoking policy over to the tobacco industry,
health secretary Andrew Lansley has set up five "responsibility deal" networks with business, cochaired by ministers, to come up with policies. The groups are dominated by food and alcohol
industry members, who have been invited to suggest measures to tackle public health crises. The
alcohol responsibility deal network is chaired by the head of the lobby group the Wine and Spirit
Trade Association. The food network to tackle diet and health problems includes processed food
manufacturers, fast food companies, and Compass, the catering company. The food deal's subgroup on calories is chaired by PepsiCo, owner of Walkers crisps. The leading supermarkets are
an equally strong presence. In early meetings, these commercial partners have been invited
to draft priorities and identify barriers, such as EU legislation, that they would like removed.
They have been assured by Lansley that he wants to explore voluntary not regulatory
approaches, and to support them in removing obstacles.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and
here.
"Inside Job" rigorously shows how financial crisis happened

2010-10-29, Denver Post (Denver's leading newspaper)
http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_16451155
Somebody owes us $20 trillion. "Inside Job," a riveting, eye-opening, infuriating documentary
about the financial collapse of 2008, coolly presents a prosecutor's brief against the culprits who
engineered the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. They occupy both sides of
the legislative aisle, corporate boardrooms, Ivy League faculty lounges and bank headquarters.
They made money sometimes obscene amounts of it while rigging a monetary
meltdown that left middle-class taxpayers holding the bag, and thousands of less-fortunate
former homeowners holding cardboard signs beside freeway on-ramps. This is no dry
economics lesson; it is a vital wakeup call. The presentation is articulate and rigorously factual,
presented in six chapters, from "How We Got There" to "Accountability." The financial earthquake
was not only entirely avoidable, but was utterly predictable given the steady erosion of scrutiny of
financial markets here and abroad. Reducing state monitoring under the Reagan administration set
the stage for the savings-and-loan crisis and the collapse of the junk-bond market. But that was a
luau compared with what lay ahead. Successive administrations, Democratic and Republican
alike, heeded advisers pushing for further deregulation, leading to WorldCom, Enron, the dot-com
bubble and the 2008 panic. Many of those laissez-faire advocates were prominent academics
receiving sizable consulting fees to testify in antitrust cases and in Congress on Wall Street's
behalf.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the long history of criminal and corrupt practices of
major financial powers and regulatory bodies, click here.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission judge says colleague biased

against complainants
As George H. Painter was preparing to retire recently as one of two administrative law judges
presiding over investor complaints at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, he issued an
extraordinary request: Please don't assign my pending cases to the other judge. [The CFTC
oversees trading of the nation's most important commodities, including oil, gold and cotton.]
Painter said Judge Bruce Levine ... had a secret agreement with a former Republican chairwoman
of the agency to stand in the way of investors filing complaints with the agency. "On Judge
Levine's first week on the job, nearly twenty years ago, he came into my office and stated
that he had promised Wendy Gramm, then Chairwoman of the Commission, that we would
never rule in a complainant's favor," Painter wrote. "A review of his rulings will confirm that
he fulfilled his vow. Judge Levine ... forces pro se complainants to run a hostile procedural
gauntlet until they lose hope, and either withdraw their complaint or settle for a pittance, regardless
of the merits of the case." Levine was the subject of a story 10 years ago in the Wall Street
Journal, which said that except in a handful of cases in which defunct firms failed to defend
themselves, Levine had never ruled in favor of an investor. Gramm [wife of former senator Phil
Gramm (R-Tex.)], was head of the CFTC just before president Bill Clinton took office. She has
been criticized by Democrats for helping firms such as Goldman Sachs and Enron gain influence
over the commodity markets. After leaving the CFTC, she joined Enron's board.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
How to brand a disease -- and sell a cure
2010-10-11, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/10/11/elliott.branding.disease/
If you want to understand the way prescription drugs are marketed today, have a look at the 1928
book, Propaganda, by Edward Bernays, the father of public relations in America. For Bernays, the
public relations business was less about selling things than about creating the conditions for things
to sell themselves. When Bernays was working as a salesman for Mozart pianos, for example, he
did not simply place advertisements for pianos in newspapers. That would have been too obvious.
Instead, Bernays persuaded reporters to write about a new trend: Sophisticated people were
putting aside a special room in the home for playing music. Once a person had a music room,
Bernays believed, he would naturally think of buying a piano. As Bernays wrote, "It will come to
him as his own idea." Just as Bernays sold pianos by selling the music room, pharmaceutical
marketers now sell drugs by selling the diseases that they treat. The buzzword is "disease
branding." To brand a disease is to shape its public perception in order to make it more
palatable to potential patients. Once a branded disease has achieved a degree of cultural
legitimacy, there is no need to convince anyone that a drug to treat it is necessary. It will
come to him as his own idea. It is hard to brand a disease without the help of physicians, of
course. So drug companies typically recruit academic "thought leaders" to write and speak about
any new conditions they are trying to introduce.
Note: This key topic is discussed in great depth in the BBC's documentary "Century of the Self"
available here. And for a top doctor's analysis that the cholesterol scare was largely manufactured
for profit, click here.
Poor healthcare may shorten American lives

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39548799
Americans die sooner than citizens of a dozen other developed nations and the usual suspects -obesity, traffic accidents and a high murder rate -- are not to blame. Instead, poor healthcare may
be to blame, the team at Columbia University in New York reported. They found that 15-year
survival rates for men and women aged 45 to 65 have fallen in the United States relative to the
other 12 countries over the past 30 years. In June, the Commonwealth Fund, which advocates on
and does research focusing on healthcare reform, reported that Americans spend twice as much
on healthcare as residents of other developed countries -- $7,290 per person -- but get lower
quality and less efficiency. Between 1975 and 2005, medical costs went up in all the countries, as
did life expectancy. But costs went up far more in the United States and life expectancy increased
to a far lower degree. "In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized
nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway,
Australia, and the Netherlands," [the report authors] wrote. At last count, the United States
was 46th in female life expectancy; 49th for both sexes.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on important health issues, click here.
Horrific medical tests of past raise concerns for today

2010-10-01, MSNBC
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39463624/ns/today-today_health
The astounding revelation that U.S. medical researchers intentionally gave Guatemalans
gonorrhea and syphilis more than 60 years ago is so horrifying that we want to believe that what
happened then could never happen today. A report from the United States Department of Health
and Human Services noted that roughly 80 percent of drug approvals in 2008 were based in part
on data from outside the U.S. Susan Reverby, a distinguished historian at Wellesley College in
Massachusetts, has ... long researched the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the experiment
where poor, black men in rural Alabama were deliberately left untreated for syphilis by government
researchers. The study, somehow, was allowed to run from 1932 to 1972. More recently, Reverby
came across documents that showed that Dr. John C. Cutler, a physician who would later be one
of the researchers involved in the Tuskegee study, was involved in a completely unethical research
study much earlier in Guatemala. Cutler, who went to his grave defending the Tuskegee
experiment, directly inoculated unknowing prisoners in Guatemala with syphilis and also
encouraged them to have sex with diseased prostitutes for his research from 1946-48. His
work was sponsored by lauded organizations such as the United States Public Health Service, the
National Institutes of Health with collaboration of the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau (now
the Pan American Health Organization), and the Guatemalan government.
Note: The author of this commentary is Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the
University of Pennsylvania. For many other examples of government-sponsored experimentation
on human guinea pigs, click here.
BP accused of 'buying academic silence'

2010-07-22, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10731408
The head of the American Association of University Professors has accused BP of trying to "buy"
the best scientists and academics to help it contest litigation after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. "This
is really one huge corporation trying to buy faculty silence in a comprehensive way," said
Cary Nelson. BP faces more than 300 lawsuits so far. In a statement, BP says it has hired more
than a dozen national and local scientists "with expertise in the resources of the Gulf of Mexico".
The BBC has obtained a copy of a contract offered to scientists by BP. It says that scientists
cannot publish the research they do for BP or speak about the data for at least three years, or until
the government gives the final approval to the company's restoration plan for the whole of the Gulf.
And it adds that scientists must take instructions from lawyers offering the contracts and other inhouse counsel at BP. What Mr Nelson is concerned about is BP's control over scientific research.
"Our ability to evaluate the disaster and write public policy and make decisions about it as a
country can be impacted by the silence of the research scientists who are looking at conditions,"
he said. "It's hugely destructive. I mean at some level, this is really BP versus the people of
the United States."
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Diabetes Drug Maker Hid Test Data, Files Indicate

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/policy/13avandia.html
In the fall of 1999, the drug giant SmithKline Beecham secretly began a study to find out if its
diabetes medicine, Avandia, was safer for the heart than a competing pill, Actos, made by Takeda.
Avandias success was crucial to SmithKline, whose labs were otherwise all but barren of new
products. But the studys results, completed that same year, were disastrous. Not only was
Avandia no better than Actos, but the study also provided clear signs that it was riskier to the
heart. But instead of publishing the results, the company spent the next 11 years trying to cover
them up, according to documents recently obtained by The New York Times. The company did not
post the results on its Web site or submit them to federal drug regulators, as is required in most
cases by law. The heart risks from Avandia first became public in May 2007, with a study from a
cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who used data the company was forced by a lawsuit to post on
its own Web site. In the ensuing months, GlaxoSmithKline officials conceded that they had known
of the drugs potential heart attack risks since at least 2005. But the latest documents
demonstrate that the company had data hinting at Avandias extensive heart problems
almost as soon as the drug was introduced in 1999, and sought intensively to keep those
risks from becoming public.
How Goldman gambled on starvation

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how...
This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the
traders at Merrill Lynch, and more have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in
the world. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and
stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per
cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people mostly children couldn't
afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than
30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices
just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on
the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions." Through
the 1990s, Goldman Sachs and others lobbied hard and the regulations [controlling
agricultural futures contracts] were abolished. Suddenly, these contracts were turned into
"derivatives" that could be bought and sold among traders who had nothing to do with
agriculture. A market in "food speculation" was born. The speculators drove the price through
the roof.
Note: Some researchers speculate that the global elite are aware that alternative energies will
eventually replace oil, which has been a prime means of control and underlying cause of many
wars in recent decades. So as a replacement for oil, the elite and their secret societies are
increasingly targeting control of the world's food supply through terminator crops which produce no
seed, and through the patenting of seeds.
Report details oil company gifts to regulators

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/26/MN1I1DKGSU.DTL
Employees of the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling accepted lunches, football tickets,
hunting trips and other gifts from the oil and gas companies they were in charge of policing,
according to a report [on May 25] by the Interior Department's inspector general. The investigation,
which zeroed in on the Lake Charles, La., office of the embattled Minerals Management Service,
also found that at least one agency inspector also was actively negotiating employment with an oil
and gas production company while simultaneously inspecting its platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
The oil spill in the gulf has focused intense scrutiny on the agency's oversight of offshore drilling
and raised questions about whether it was lax in setting requirements for key safety devices and
practices. But even before the spill, the agency had been singled out for ethical lapses and
mismanagement. In 2008, the Interior Department's inspector general rapped workers in
MMS' Lakewood, Colo., office for having sexual relationships with and accepting gifts from
energy company representatives. Over a decade, there have been ten inspector general reports
and nine from the Government Accountability Office that documented "failures within MMS," [Rep.
Darrell Issa] said, "and yet it still took a massive catastrophe to get anyone to ... agree on the need
for a massive bureaucratic overhaul."
Note: For an abundance of revealing articles from major media sources on government and
corporate collusion and corruption, click here and here.
Stock market time bomb?

2010-05-10, Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/10/stock-market-time-bomb/?page=all
Even the worlds most savvy stock-market giants (e.g., Warren E. Buffett) have warned over the
past decade that derivatives are the fiscal equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. And the
consequences of such an explosion would make the recent global financial and economic crisis
seem like penny ante. But generously lubricated lobbyists for the unrestricted, unsupervised
derivatives markets tell congressional committees and government regulators to butt out.
While banks all over the world were imploding and some $50 trillion vanished in global
stock markets, the derivatives market grew by an estimated 65 percent, according the Bank
for International Settlements. BIS convenes the worlds 57 most powerful central bankers in Basel,
Switzerland, for periodic secret meetings. Occasionally, they issue a cry of alarm. This time,
derivatives had soared from $414.8 trillion at the end of 2006 to $683.7 trillion in mid-2008 - 18
months time. The derivatives market is now estimated at $700 trillion. Whats so difficult to
understand about derivatives? Essentially, they are bets for or against the house - red or black at
the roulette wheel. Or betting for or against the weather in situations in which the weather is critical
(e.g., vineyards). Forwards, futures, options and swaps form the panoply of derivatives. Credit
derivatives are based on loans, bonds or other forms of credit. Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives
are contracts that are traded and privately negotiated directly between two parties, outside of a
regular exchange. All of this is unregulated.
Note: Though not from one of the top U.S. newspapers, this incisive article lays bare severe
market manipulations that greatly endanger our world. The entire article is highly recommended.
$700 trillion is equivalent to $100,000 for every man, woman, and child in the world! Do you think
the financial industry is out of control? For lots more powerful, reliable information on major
banking manipulations, click here. For a powerful analysis describing just how crazy things have
gotten and giving some rays of hope by researcher David Wilcock, click here.
The Problem with Factory Farms

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1983981,00.html
If you eat meat, the odds are high that you've enjoyed a meal made from an animal raised on a
factory farm. The government designation is CAFO, which stands for Concentrated Animal
Feeding Operation. Basically, it's any farm that has 1,000 animal units or more. A beef cow is an
animal unit. These animals are kept in pens their entire lives. They're never outside. They
never breathe fresh air. They never see the sun. According to the USDA, 2% of U.S.
livestock facilities raise an estimated 40% of all farm animals. This means that pigs, chickens
and cows are concentrated in a small number of very large farms. There are simply too many
animals in too small of a place. CAFO cows eat a diet of milled grains, corn and soybeans, when
they are supposed to eat grass. The food isn't natural because they very often put growth
hormones and antibiotics in it. When you have 2,000 cows per acre instead of two, you have a
problem. You can't fit them in a pasture you fit them in a building. You don't have enough land to
absorb their waste. The manure is liquefied. It gets flushed out into an open lagoon [and] sprayed
into waterways and creeks. This stuff is untreated, by the way.
Note: For two excellent and fun short videos showing both the problem and solutions for cruel
factory farming, click here and here. For lots more little-known, excellent information to promote
your health, click here.
Swine flu was as elusive as WMD. The real threat is mad scientist
syndrome
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/14/swine-flu-elusive-as-wmd
Remember the warnings of 65,000 dead? Health chiefs should admit they were wrong yet again
about a global pandemic. Let me recap. Six months ago [the] BBC was intoning nightly statistics
on what "could" happen as "the deadly virus" took hold. The happy-go-lucky virologist, John
Oxford, said half the population could be infected, and that his lowest estimate was 6,000 dead.
The chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, bandied about any figure that came into his head,
settling on "65,000 could die", peaking at 350 corpses a day. The media went berserk. The World
Health Organisation declared a "six-level alert" so as to "prepare the world for an imminent attack".
If anyone dared question this drivel, they were dismissed by Donaldson as "extremists".
When people started reporting swine flu to be even milder than ordinary flu, he accused them of
complacency and told them to "wait for next winter". He was already buying 32m masks and
spending more than 1bn on Tamiflu and vaccines. It was pure, systematic governmentinduced panic in which I accept that the media played its joyful part.
Note: For lots more on the gross profiteering and fear mongering of swine flu scare, click here.
Former CDC head lands vaccine job at Merck

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2124506920091221
Dr. Julie Gerberding, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was
named president of Merck & Co Inc's vaccine division. Gerberding, who led the CDC from 2002 to
2009 and stepped down when President Barack Obama took office, will head up the company's $5
billion global vaccine business that includes shots to prevent chickenpox, cervical cancer and
pneumonia. She had led CDC from one crisis to another, including the investigation into the
anthrax attacks that killed five people in 2001, the H5N1 avian influenza, the global outbreak
of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and various outbreaks of food poisoning. She
may be charged with reigniting flagging sales of Merck's Gardasil vaccine to prevent cervical
cancer by protecting against human papillomavirus or HPV. After an encouraging launch Gardasil
sales have been falling and were down 22 percent in the third quarter at $311 million.
Note: So the head of the CDC now is in charge of vaccines at one of the biggest pharmaceutical
companies in the world. Could this be considered conflict of interest? Could this possibly be
payback for supporting the vaccine agenda so strongly for years? For more on the risks and
dangers of vaccines, click here.
Lending Declines as Bank Jitters Persist

U.S. lenders saw loans fall by the largest amount since the government began tracking
such data, suggesting that nervousness among banks continues to hamper economic recovery.
Total loan balances fell by $210.4 billion, or 3%, in the third quarter, the biggest decline since data
collection began in 1984, according to a report released ... by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The FDIC also said its fund to backstop deposits fell into negative territory for just the second time
in its history, pushed down by a wave of bank failures. The decline in total loans showed how
banks remain reluctant to lend, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars the government has
spent to prop up ailing banks and jump-start lending. The issue has taken on greater urgency with
the U.S. unemployment rate hitting 10.2% in October. "There is no question that credit availability
is an important issue for the economic recovery," FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair told reporters
Tuesday. "We need to see banks making more loans to their business customers." She said large
banks -- which account for 56% of industry assets and received a large share of the
government's bailout funds -- accounted for 75% of the decline.
Note: The big banks were given trillions in bailout funds with a mandate to increase loans and
stimulate the economy. Why are they still giving out so few loans? Where did the huge amounts of
our taxpayer money go? Why isn't the government demanding accountability with such huge sums
of taxpayer money? For lots more on major manipulations by the big bankers, click here.
Skull and Bones members include some of America's most powerful

2009-11-12, CNN
http://www.edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0911/12/ec.01.html
What really happens behind the padlocked doors of this windowless building, [the home] of Skull
and Bones, Yale's oldest secret society? Its members include some of America's most powerful
and privileged elite all sworn to secrecy. [CAMPBELL] BROWN: Alexandra Robbins broke through
the wall of silence to write Secrets of the Tomb based on clandestine interviews with dozens of
bonesmen. Only 15 [Yale students] get picked each year. The society includes at least three
U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, and too many senators and CEOs to name. In
2004, Bush versus Kerry was the first all-bonesmen presidential election. ALEXANDRA
ROBBINS: Skull and Bones' only purpose is to get its members into positions of
prominence around the world so that they can elevate other members to similar positions.
One of the first activities they participate in is called connubial bliss, where ... each member must
spend an evening standing in front of the other 14 bonesmen and recount his or her entire sexual
and romantic history. BROWN: According to one ... story, Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's
grandfather, was part of a group that broke into the Oklahoma burial place of the Apache chief
Geronimo and made off with his skull. Geronimo's grave was disturbed back in 1918, there are
photos of skulls inside the "Skull and Bones" tomb. They have their own private retreat. Deer
Island off the coast of New York. And a world of ready investors and political contacts in the
highest echelons of American society. What has kept the secret society alive for all these years?
Good old fashioned networking for the super elite.
Note: To watch the CNN video clip on this Yale secret society, click here. For lots more powerful
information on Skull and Bones and other secret societies reported in major media articles, click
here.
Inquiry Stokes Unease Over Trading Firms That Shape Markets

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/business/global/04optiver.html
Its superfast, supersecret oil trading software was called the Hammer. And if the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission is right, the name fit well with an intricate scheme that allowed
commodity traders in Chicago working for Optiver, a little-known company based in Amsterdam, to
put their orders first in line and subtly manipulate the price of oil to the companys advantage.
Transcripts and taped conversations of actions that took place in 2007 ... reveal the secretive
workings of high-frequency trading, a fast-growing Wall Street business. Critics say this highspeed form of computerized trading, which is used in a wide range of financial markets, enables its
practitioners to profit at other investors expense. Traders in the Chicago office of Optiver
openly talked among themselves of whacking and bullying up the price of oil. But when
called to account by officials of the New York Mercantile Exchange, they described their
actions as just providing liquidity. In July 2008, the commission charged Optiver with
manipulating the price of oil; negotiations over a settlement continue. The Securities and
Exchange Commission has opened up an investigation into high-speed-trading practices, in
particular the ability of some of the most powerful computers to jump to the head of the trading
queue and in a fraction of a millisecond capture the evanescent trading spread before the
rest of the market does.
Note: This and other reports likely show only the tip of the iceberg of how prices of key stocks and
commodities are manipulated. For a great collection of reports from major media sources on the
schemes and tricks used by financial corporations, click here.
Health Insurance Insider: 'They Dump the Sick'

2009-06-24, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Health/story?id=7911195
Frustrated Americans have long complained that their insurance companies valued the all-mighty
buck over their health care. Today, a retired insurance executive confirmed their suspicions,
arguing that the industry that once employed him regularly rips off its policyholders. "[T]hey
confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street
investors," former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter said during a hearing on health
insurance today before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Potter,
who has more than 20 years of experience working in public relations for insurance companies
Cigna and Humana, said companies routinely drop seriously ill policyholders so they can
meet "Wall Street's relentless profit expectations." "They look carefully to see if a sick
policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for
coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never
missed a premium payment," Potter said. Small businesses, in particular, he said, have had
trouble maintaining their employee health insurance coverage, he said. "All it takes is one illness
or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the
next year's premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or
stop offering coverage altogether," he said. More and more people, he said, are falling victim to
"deceptive marketing practices" that encourage them to buy "what essentially is fake insurance,"
policies with high costs but surprisingly limited benefits.
Note: For lots more on corruption in the health industry, click here.
The danger of drugs and data

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/09/bad-science-medical-journ...
A fascinating court case in Australia has been playing out around some people who had heart
attacks after taking the Merck drug, Vioxx. This medication turned out to increase the risk of heart
attacks in people taking it, although that finding was arguably buried in their research, and Merck
has paid out more than 2bn to 44,000 people in America. The first ... thing to emerge in the
Australian case is email documentation showing staff at Merck made a "hit list" of doctors who
were critical of the company, or of the drug. This list contained words such as "neutralise",
"neutralised" and "discredit" next to the names of various doctors. "We may need to seek
them out and destroy them where they live," said one email, from a Merck employee. Staff
are also alleged to have used other tactics, such as trying to interfere with academic appointments,
and dropping hints about how funding to institutions might dry up. Worse still, is the revelation that
Merck paid the publisher Elsevier to produce a publication. This time Elsevier Australia went the
whole hog, giving Merck an entire publication which resembled an academic journal, although in
fact it only contained reprinted articles, or summaries, of other articles.
Note: For a superb overview of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry by a leading MD and
former medical journal editor, click here.
JPMorgan's Dangerous Derivatives

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_20/b4131069034013.htm
Gillian Tett [is the author of] Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was
Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe. Tett is a respected business
journalist at the Financial Times. Tett successfully pieces together the colorful backstory of
the bank's work to win acceptance in the market for its brainchild, turning credit derivatives
"from a cottage industry into a mass-production business." With the benefit of hindsight, we
know that while these inventions were intended to control risk, they amplified it instead. This novel
idea turned noxious when applied broadly to residential mortgages, a game that the rest of Wall
Street later entered into with gusto. We learn in deep detail about not only how collateralized debt
obligations are assembled but also their many iterations. Perhaps it's noteworthy that Tett's book
begins when JPMorgan had the face-value equivalent of $1.7 trillion in derivatives on its
books. Today that number has jumped to a mind-boggling $87 trillion. Part of that portfolio
includes almost $8.4 trillion in credit derivatives, more than Bank of America's (BAC), Citi's, and
Goldman Sachs' (GS) holdings combined.
Note: So JP Morgan has $87 trillion in derivatives, a mass market it helped to create. That is
greater than the GDP for the entire world! To verify this, click here. For a New York Times
review of this revealing book, click here.
Fed Shrouding $2 Trillion in Bank Loans in Secrecy, Suit Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aS89AaGjOplw
U.S. taxpayers need to know the risks behind the Federal Reserves $2 trillion in lending to
financial institutions because the public is now an involuntary investor in the nations banks,
according to a court filing by Bloomberg LP. The Fed refuses to name the borrowers, the amounts
of loans or assets banks put up as collateral under 11 programs, arguing that doing so might set
off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders. The largest U.S. banks have tapped more than
$125 billion in government aid under the Troubled Asset Relief Program in the past seven months.
Assets, including loans and securities, on the Fed balance sheet totaled $2.09 trillion as of April 9.
Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal weakness and spur shortselling or a run by depositors, the Fed argued in its March 4 response. The release of the
information can fuel market speculation and rumors, including a drop in stock price and a run on
the bank, the Fed said. Bloomberg replied yesterday that these speculative injuries relate only to
the reactions of customers, shareholders and other members of the public, not to competitors use
of the borrowers proprietary information to their advantage, the exception to disclosure under the
FOIA law. Government loans, spending or guarantees to rescue the U.S. financial system
total more than $12.8 trillion since the international credit crisis began in August 2007,
according to data compiled by Bloomberg as of March 31. The total includes about $2
trillion on the Feds balance sheet.
click here.
Investments Can Yield More on K Street, Study Indicates

In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week
found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they spent on the
issue -- a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investment. The study by researchers at the
University of Kansas underscores the central reason that lobbying has become a $3 billion-a-year
industry in Washington: It pays. The paper by three Kansas professors examined the impact of a
one-time tax break approved by Congress in 2004 that allowed multinational corporations to
"repatriate" profits earned overseas, effectively reducing their tax rate on the money from 35
percent to 5.25 percent. More than 800 companies took advantage of the legislation, saving an
estimated $100 billion in the process, according to the study. The largest recipients of tax
breaks were concentrated in the pharmaceutical and technology fields, including Pfizer,
Merck, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson and IBM. Pfizer alone repatriated $37 billion,
representing 70 percent of its revenue in 2004, the study found. The now-beleaguered
financial industry also benefited from the provision, including Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase,
Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, all of which have since received tens of billions of dollars in
federal bailout money. The researchers calculated an average rate of return of 22,000 percent for
those companies that helped lobby for the tax break.
Swiss hold '$150m Nigeria bribes'

2009-04-09, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7991447.stm
US investigators have traced $150m in bribes given to Nigerian officials to Swiss banks, Nigeria's
justice minister has said. Michael Kase Aondoakaa said the money was part of $180m in bribes
given by US construction company Halliburton to Nigerian officials. The Nigerian government says
it has asked the US to release the names of officials who negotiated the bribes. Halliburton
admitted paying the bribes to top officials between 1994 and 2004. "We have discovered that $150
million of the bribe money is in Zurich. That is the first shocking discovery. The entire money is
$180 million. $150 million is already trapped in Zurich," Mr Aondoakaa said. Halliburton and its
engineering subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root negotiated bribes with "three successive
holders of a top-level office in the executive branch of the government of Nigeria" during
that time, according to the plea agreement the company made with the US Department of Justice.
The Nigerian government has come under pressure from the media to follow up the findings of the
US court and prosecute the Nigerian bribe-takers. Mr Aondoakaa said they had requested the
court unseal the judgement and pass on the names of the officials. Albert "Jack" Stanley, the
former chief executive of KBR who pleaded guilty to making the bribes in order to secure $6bn in
contracts, is to be sentenced on 6 May. KBR has agreed to pay more than $402m in fines, of
which Halliburton, as the former parent company, agreed to pay $302m.
Note: Why doesn't the public know that Halliburton bribed top government officials, and why aren't
those officials being prosecuted? For major reports from reliable sources on corporate corruption,
click here.
No-Risk Insurance at F.D.I.C.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/business/07sorkin.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&...
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was set up 76 years ago with the important but simple
job of insuring bank deposits. Now, because of what could politely be called mission creep, its
elbowing its way into the middle of the financial mess as an enabler of enormous leverage. In the
fine print of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithners plan to lend as much as $1 trillion to
private investors to help them buy toxic assets from our nations banks, youll find some
details of how the F.D.I.C is trying to stabilize the system by adding more risk, not less, to
the system. Its going to be insuring 85 percent of the debt, provided by the Treasury, that private
investors will use to subsidize their acquisitions of toxic assets. These loans, while controversial,
were given a warm welcome by the market when they were first announced. And why not? The
terms are hard to beat. They are, for example, nonrecourse, which means that if an investor
loses money, he owes taxpayers nothing. Its the closest thing to risk-free investing with
leverage! around. But, as weve learned the hard way these last couple of years, risk-free
investing is an oxymoron. So where did the risk go this time? To the F.D.I.C., and ultimately, to us
taxpayers. A close reading of the F.D.I.C.s statute suggests the agency is using a unique some
might call it plain wrong reading of its own rule book to accomplish this high-wire act. Somehow,
in the name of solving the financial crisis, the F.D.I.C. has seemingly been given a blank check,
with virtually no oversight by Congress.
Note: For a powerfully revealing archive of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of
the financial bailout, click here.
Vioxx maker Merck and Co drew up doctor hit list

2009-04-01, The Australian (One of Australia's leading newspapers)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25272600-2702,00.html
An international drug company made a hit list of doctors who had to be "neutralised" or
discredited because they criticised the anti-arthritis drug the pharmaceutical giant
produced. Staff at US company Merck &Co emailed each other about the list of doctors - mainly
researchers and academics - who had been negative about the drug Vioxx or Merck and a
recommended course of action. The email, which came out in the Federal Court in Melbourne
yesterday as part of a class action against the drug company, included the words "neutralise",
"neutralised" or "discredit" against some of the doctors' names. It is also alleged the company used
intimidation tactics against critical researchers, including dropping hints it would stop funding to
institutions and claims it interfered with academic appointments. "We may need to seek them out
and destroy them where they live," a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt
read to the court by Julian Burnside QC, acting for the plaintiff. Merck & Co and its Australian
subsidiary, Merck, Sharpe and Dohme, are being sued for compensation by more than 1000
Australians, who claim they suffered heart attacks or strokes as a result of Vioxx. The drug was
launched in 1999 and at its height of popularity was used by 80 million people worldwide because
it did not cause stomach problems as did traditional anti-inflammatory drugs. It was voluntarily
withdrawn from sale in 2004 after concerns were raised that it caused heart attacks and strokes
and a clinical trial testing these potential side affects was aborted for safety reasons. Merck last
year settled thousands of lawsuits in the US over the effects of Vioxx for $US 4.85 billion, but
made no admission of guilt.
Vaccine Makers Enjoy Immunity

http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB123535050056344903
A special "vaccines court" hears cases brought by parents who claim their children have
been harmed by routine vaccinations. The court buffers Wyeth and other makers of
childhood-disease vaccines from ... litigation risk. The legal shield, known as the National
Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, was put into place in 1986. Vaccines ... are
poised to generate $21.5 billion in annual sales for their makers by 2012, according to France's
Sanofi-Aventis SA, a leading producer of inoculations. Vaccines' transformation into a lucrative
business has some observers questioning whether the shield law is still appropriate. Critics ...
underscored the limited recourse families have in claiming injury from vaccines. "When
you've got a monopoly and can dictate price in a way that you couldn't before, I'm not sure you
need the liability protection," said Lars Noah, a specialist in medical technology. Kevin Conway, an
attorney at Boston law firm Conway, Homer & Chin-Caplan PC, which specializes in vaccine cases
and brought one of the recent autism suits, says the lack of liability for the pharmaceutical industry
compromises safety. Even if they had won their cases, the families of autistic children wouldn't
have been paid by the companies that make the vaccines. Instead, the government would have
footed the bill, using the funds from a tax levied on inoculations.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on
vaccines from reliable major media sources showing huge corruption and deception.
Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=apx7XNLnZZlc
The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more
than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is
accepting as collateral. Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act
requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest
financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying its allowed to
withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information.
If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government
may take and thats what they dont want us to know, said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing
director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC. The Fed stepped into a rescue role that was the
original purpose of the Treasurys $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The central bank
loans dont have the oversight safeguards that Congress imposed upon the TARP. Total Fed
lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time Nov. 6. It rose by 138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the
12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept
securities that werent rated AAA. There has to be something they can tell the public because we
have a right to know what they are doing, said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington,
Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Financial Bailout Balloons to the Trillions

2008-11-25, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=6332892
The government's financial bailout will be the most expensive single expenditure in American
history, potentially costing around $7.5 trillion -- or half the value of all the goods and services
produced in the United States last year. In comparison, the total U.S. cost of World War II adjusted
for inflation was $3.6 trillion. The bailout will cost more than the total combined costs in
today's dollars of the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the Korean War, the Vietnam
War and the entire historical budget of NASA, including the moon landing, according to data
compiled by Bianco Research. It remains to be seen whether the government's multipronged
approach to bail out banks, stimulate spending and buy up mortgages will revive the economy, but
as the tab continues to grow so does concern over where the government will find the money.
Monday the government guaranteed an additional $306 billion to bail out Citigroup, and today
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pledged $800 billion to make credit more available to
consumers and small businesses, and to buy up mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Congress last month allocated $700 billion for an emergency bailout of some of Wall Street's most
storied firms by purchasing their troubled assets. The funds allocated through the Troubled Assets
Relief Program are but a small part of the government's overall bailout spending. Bailout programs
also include a Federal Reserve plan to buy as much as $2.4 trillion in short-term notes called
commercial paper that began Oct. 27, and an FDIC plan to spend $1.4 trillion to guarantee bankto-bank loans that commenced Oct. 14, according to Bloomberg News, which first compiled the
total cost of the bailout.
Note: $7.5 trillion amounts to about $25,000 for every person in the U.S. What's going on here?
For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Paulson makes it clear: He's in charge

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/13/BUUK1439IF.DTL
Henry Paulson's speech Wednesday made it pretty clear: The Treasury secretary has seized
control of the financial system. "He is absolutely the most powerful person in the country.
Maybe the world," says Wall Street accounting expert Robert Willens. The most telling line in
his speech came when Paulson was explaining why he did a 180-degree turn with money
approved by Congress under the $700 billion bailout bill. Instead of using it to buy troubled
mortgage assets from banks, as clearly envisioned, he scrapped that idea and used it to make
equity investments in banks. "In consultation with the Federal Reserve, I determined that the most
timely, effective step to improve credit market conditions was to strengthen bank balance sheets
quickly through direct purchases of equity in banks," he said. If Paulson bothered consulting with
President Bush, he didn't mention it. In fact, he didn't even mention the president until the tail end
of his speech, when he talked about the global summit Bush is hosting this weekend. I can
understand why Paulson wants to distance himself from an unpopular president, especially one
who has little facility for complex financial matters. But Bush is [the] president and even Presidentelect Barack Obama knows there can be only one president at a time. And his last name is not
Paulson. In September, when Paulson asked for a $700 billion blank check from Congress to fix
the financial markets, he got a lot of blowback. By the time Congress was done with his
proposal, it had grown from 2 1/2 pages to more than 450. Yet it now appears that Paulson
got the blank check he wanted.
Note: Why doesn't Congress have some say in what is done with this $700 billion? That's over
$3,000 for every taxpayer in the U.S. which is being spent with practically no accountability. Is this
what democracy looks like? For many key articles revealing the hidden realities of the bailout, click
here.
Warning: King Henry's bailout like Rummy's Iraq

2008-11-10, MarketWatch (A Wall Street Journal Digital Network Website)
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/reagonomics-hides-sleeper-cells-harbori...
So you thought Barack Obama's victory signaled the death of Reaganomics? Wrong, wrong:
Reaganomics is very much alive. In a subtle, bloodless coup, the Reaganomics ideology magically
pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat in the meltdown. The magic happened fast and quietly, in
the shadows, while you were in a trance, distracted by the election drama. Recently Naomi Klein,
author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, framed the issue perfectly: "Has
the Treasury partially nationalized the private banks, as we have been told? Or is it the
other way around?" The question was rhetorical, the answer painfully clear. In a few weeks
Wall Street did the old bait and switch, emerging from an economic and market disaster
with new powers, in total control of America. And thanks to Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson's brilliant bailout coup, Reaganomics is now the new "sleeper cell" quietly hidden inside
the Obama White House and America's Treasury, where it will be for a long time to come. Listen
closely folks: You and your government are and will continue being conned out of trillions. Klein
further exposed this insanity in a recent Rolling Stone article, "The New Trough: The Wall Street
bailout looks a lot like Iraq, a 'free-fraud zone' where private contractors cash in on the mess they
helped create." Paulson's privatization, outsourcing and management of the $700 billion bailout
has the exact same Reaganomics ideological, strategic and deceptive footprints that President
George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to privatize, outsource and
mismanage the costly Iraq War blunder.
Note: For the powerfully revealing article by Naomi Klein mentioned in the article above, click
here. Speaking on Tulsa Oklahomas 1170 KFAQ, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma
(Republican) has revealed that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was the source of the threat of
martial law in the US if the $700 billion bailout bill was not passed that was exposed on the House
floor by Rep. Brad Sherman. For many key articles revealing the hidden realities of the bailout,
click here.
White House defends money for banks

Under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike, the White House ... defended giving billions of
bailout dollars to banks that plan to reward shareholders and executives -- or even buy other
banks. Allowing banks to engage in such normal business activities actually could help loosen
lending and revive the sagging economy, said Ed Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisers. He said the administration would not impose any conditions on banks beyond those
required when Congress created the bailout program, which authorized the government to buy
stock in financial institutions. Lazear was put before the cameras in the White House briefing room
amid a rising chorus of complaints from lawmakers about the latitude that banks will have when
they receive bailout money from Washington. That bailout was originally sold by the administration
as a plan for the government to purchase toxic mortgage-based assets from financial institutions,
to get them off their books and inspire the resumption of normal lending. After passage, though,
the administration decided the better course would be to devote $250 billion into buying ownership
stakes in banks. With taxpayers' money flowing into their vaults, banks are going ahead with
paying dividends to shareholders, giving bonuses to top executives and acquiring
competitors. Lawmakers are asking why banks with the money to do those things need
taxpayer-funded help. The rescue legislation included some limits on executive compensation,
considered weak by many. And while it does not allow institutions receiving the money to increase
dividends, it does not prevent them from paying those dividends.
Note: For extensive coverage of continuing revelations about the Wall Street bailout, click here.
A Few Speculators Dominate Vast Market for Oil Trading

Regulators had long classified a private Swiss energy conglomerate called Vitol as a trader that
primarily helped industrial firms that needed oil to run their businesses. But when the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission examined Vitol's books last month, it found that the firm was in fact
more of a speculator, holding oil contracts as a profit-making investment rather than a means of
lining up the actual delivery of fuel. Even more surprising to the commodities markets was the
massive size of Vitol's portfolio -- at one point in July, the firm held 11 percent of all the oil
contracts on the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange. The discovery revealed how an
individual financial player had gained enormous sway over the oil market without the knowledge of
regulators. Other CFTC data showed that a significant amount of trading activity was concentrated
in the hands of just a few speculators. The CFTC ... now reports that financial firms
speculating for their clients or for themselves account for about 81 percent of the oil
contracts on NYMEX, a far bigger share than had previously been stated by the agency.
That figure may rise in coming weeks as the CFTC checks the status of other big traders. Some
lawmakers have blamed these firms for the volatility of oil prices, including the tremendous run-up
that peaked earlier in the summer. "It is now evident that speculators in the energy futures markets
play a much larger role than previously thought, and it is now even harder to accept the agency's
laughable assertion that excessive speculation has not contributed to rising energy prices," said
Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.).
Are Our Leading Pediatricians Drug Industry Shills?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/12/IN7G11L6TL.DTL
Most parents have never heard of him, but Joseph Biederman of Harvard may be the United
States' most influential doctor when it comes to determining whether their children are normal or
mentally ill. In 1996, for example, Biederman suggested that drugs like Ritalin might serve 10
percent of American kids for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. By 2004, one in nine 11-yearold boys was taking the drug. Biederman and his team also are more responsible than anyone for
a child bipolar epidemic sweeping America (and no other country) that has 2-year-olds on three or
four psychiatric drugs. The science of children's psychiatric medications is so primitive and
Biederman's influence so great that when he merely mentions a drug during a presentation, tens of
thousands of children within a year or two will end up taking that drug, or combination of drugs.
This happens in the absence of a drug trial of any kind - instead, the decision is based upon word
of mouth among the 7,000 child psychiatrists in America. That's why [the] recent revelation that
Biederman did not declare $1.6 million in drug company consulting fees is so important, scary and
tragic. American medicine, with psychiatry the most culpable, has fallen back to a time more than
100 years ago. Now once again, drug company money is corrupting medical practice and
the maintenance of our country's health. Virtually all doctors who receive drug company
money say they are not influenced, but every independent study examining the effects of
such money says they are.
Note: For lots more on health issues from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.
The Global Ruling Class: Billion-dollar Babies

2008-04-24, The Economist magazine
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11081878
Who rules the world? The rise of nation states produced national ruling classes. It would be odd if
the current integration of the world economy did not produce new global elites business people
and financiers who run global companies and global politicians who steer supra-national
organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund. David
Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that these
elites constitute nothing less than a new global superclass. They have all the clubby
characteristics of the old national ruling classes, but with the vital difference that they
operate on the global stage, far from mere national electorates. They attend the same
universities. They are groomed in a handful of world-spanning institutions such as Goldman
Sachs. They belong to the same clubs the Council on Foreign Relations in New York is a
particular favourite and sit on each other's boards of directors. Many of them shuttle between
the public and private sectors. They meet at global events such as the World Economic Forum at
Davos and the Trilateral Commission or for the crme de la crme the Bilderberg meetings or
the Bohemian Grove seminars that take place every July in California. Mr Rothkopf is anything but
a crank, and he is right when he says that, these days, the most influential people around the
world are also the most global people. He is also admirably ambivalent about his subject. He
worries about surging inequality the richest 1% of humans own 40% of the planet's wealth
and about the rumbling backlash against so much unaccountable power.
Note: For reliable, verifiable information the secret societies of which the global elite are a part,
click here. Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making by David Rothkopf
is available here.
Derivatives the new 'ticking bomb'

2008-03-10, MarketWatch (Part of the Wall Street Journal's digital network)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/derivatives-are-the-new-ticking-time-bomb
"In our view, however, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers
that, while now latent, are potentially lethal." That warning was in [Warren] Buffett's 2002 letter to
Berkshire shareholders. He saw a future that many others chose to ignore. Wall Street didn't listen
to Buffett. Derivatives grew into a massive bubble, from about $100 trillion to $516 trillion by 2007.
Despite Buffett's clear warnings, a massive new derivatives bubble is driving the domestic and
global economies, a bubble that continues growing today parallel with the subprime-credit
meltdown triggering a bear-recession. Data on the five-fold growth of derivatives to $516 trillion in
five years comes from the most recent survey by the Bank of International Settlements, the world's
clearinghouse for central banks in Basel, Switzerland. Keep in mind that while the $516 trillion
"notional" value (maximum in case of a meltdown) of the deals is a good measure of the market's
size, the 2007 BIS study notes that the $11 trillion "gross market values provides a more accurate
measure of the scale of financial risk transfer taking place in derivatives markets." The fact is,
derivatives have become the world's biggest "black market," exceeding the illicit traffic in
stuff like arms, drugs, alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, stolen art and pirated movies. Why?
Because like all black markets, derivatives are a perfect way of getting rich while avoiding
taxes and government regulations. And in today's slowdown, plus a volatile global market, Wall
Street knows derivatives remain a lucrative business.
Note: $516 trillion is equivalent to $75,000 for every man, woman, and child in the world! Do you
think the financial industry is out of control? For lots more powerful, reliable information on major
banking manipulations, click here. For a powerful analysis describing just how crazy things have
gotten and giving some rays of hope by researcher David Wilcock, click here.
Bill Moyers talks with [NY Times reporter] David Cay Johnston about
Free Lunch
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01182008/transcript1.html
BILL MOYERS: Why do some of the most powerful and privileged people in the country get a free
lunch you pay for? You'll find some of the answers [in]: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans
Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill). The theme of the book
as I read it is that not that the rich are getting richer but that they've got the government rigging the
rules to help them do it. DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: That's exactly right. And they're doing it in a way
that I think is very crucial for people to understand. They're doing it by taking from those with
less to give to those with more. We gave $100 million dollars to Warren Buffett's company
last year, a gift from the taxpayers. We make gifts all over the place to rich people. Donald
Trump benefits from a tax specifically levied by the State of New Jersey for the poor. Part of
the casino winnings tax in New Jersey is dedicated to help the poor. But $89 million of it is being
diverted to subsidize Donald Trump's casino's building retail space. George Steinbrenner, like
almost every owner of a major sports franchise, gets enormous public subsidies. The major sports
franchises [make] 100 percent of their profits from subsidies. In fact, if it weren't for these
subsidies, the baseball, football, hockey, and basketball enterprises as a whole would be losing
hundreds of millions of dollars a year. George Bush owes almost his entire fortune to a tax
increase that was funneled into his pocket and into the use of eminent domain laws to essentially
legally cheat other people out of their land for less than it was worth to enrich him and his fellow
investors.
Note: Watch part of this amazingly revealing interview online at this link. Johnston is a prolific
writer with the NY Times; to see a list of his many articles there, click here. For deeply revealing
Iraq corruption whistleblowers face penalties

2007-08-25, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20430153/
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the
massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted. Or worse. For daring to report
illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in
a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods. He had
thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and
the land mines and the rocket-launchers all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary,
he said. The buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi
embassy and ministry employees. The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he
worked for, Shield Group Security Co. It was a Wal-Mart for guns, he says. It was all illegal and
everyone knew it. So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other
intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didnt know whom to trust in
Iraq. For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison
outside Baghdad. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it
has disappeared. If you do it, you will be destroyed, said William Weaver, professor of
political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security
Whistleblowers Coalition. Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask
me, Should I do this? And my answer is no. If theyre married, theyll lose their family.
They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything, Weaver said.
U.S. health care is bad for your health

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/03/EDGHQP1J6K1.DTL
[A new] study ... finds that not only is the U.S. health care system the most expensive in the
world (double that of the next most costly comparator country, Canada) but comes in dead
last in almost any measure of performance. Although U.S. political leaders are fond of stating
that we have the best health-care system in the world, they fail to acknowledge an important
caveat: It is the best only for the very rich. For the rest of the population, its deficits far outweigh its
advantages. [The] study compared the United States with Australia, Canada, Germany, New
Zealand and the United Kingdom. Although the most notable way in which the United States differs
from the other countries is in the absence of universal coverage, the United States is also last on
dimensions of access, patient safety, efficiency and equity. The other five countries considered
spend considerably less on health care, both per capita and as a percent of gross domestic
product, than the United States. The United States spends $7,000 per person per year on health
care, almost double that of Australia, Canada and Germany, each of which achieve better results
on health status indicators than the United States. The United States also lags behind all
industrialized nations in terms of health coverage. 46.6 million Americans (about 15.9 percent of
the population) had no health insurance coverage during 2005. It is no wonder, then, that medical
bills are overwhelmingly the most common reason for personal bankruptcy in the United States.
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable information on health, click here.
Cars that make hybrids look like gas guzzlers

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/04/ING44OD4AS1.DTL
Toyota Prius owners tend to be a proud lot since they drive the fuel-efficient hybrid gas-electric car
that's ... one of the hottest-selling vehicles in America. A few, however, felt that good was not good
enough. They've made "improvements" even though the modifications voided parts of their
warranties. Why? Five words: one hundred miles per gallon. "We took the hybrid car to its logical
conclusion," [Felix] Kramer says, by adding more batteries and the ability to recharge by plugging
into a regular electrical socket at night. Compared with the Prius' fuel efficiency of 50 mpg, plug-in
hybrids use half as much gasoline by running more on cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity.
These trendsetters monkeyed with the car ... to make a point: If they could make a plug-in
hybrid, the major car companies could, too. Kramer ... and a cadre of volunteers formed the
California Cars Initiative (online at calcars.org). They added inexpensive lead-acid batteries ...
giving the car over 100 mpg in local driving and 50 to 80 mpg on the highway. The cost of
conversion is about $5,000 for a do-it-yourselfer. Several small companies like EnergyCS ...
started doing small numbers of conversions for fleets and government agencies using longerlasting, more energy-dense lithium-ion batteries. Kramer hired EnergyCS to convert his Prius and
reported on a typical day of driving. Compared with driving his Prius before the conversion, he ...
spewed out two-thirds less greenhouse gases at a total cost of $1.76 for electricity and gasoline,
instead of the $3.17 it would have required on gasoline alone. People want plug-in hybrids but
can't get them. Dealers don't sell them yet, and the few conversion services cater to fleets.
Note: For a video and educational package to guide those who want to build a 100 mpg car, see
www.eaa-phev.org. For why the car companies with their massive budgets haven't developed cars
like this, click here.
Nazis rode to war on GM wheels

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/07/INGPHNCLHH1.DTL
In the late spring of 1933, concentration camps such as Dachau were generating headlines
reporting great brutality. Nonetheless, GM and Germany began a strategic business relationship.
General Motors World, the company house organ, covered [a 1934] May Day event glowingly in a
several-page cover story, stressing Hitler's boundless affinity for children. The next day, May 2,
1934, after practicing his sieg heil in front of a mirror, [President of GM Overseas Corp. James]
Mooney ... went to meet Hitler. As Mooney traversed the long approach to Hitler's desk, he began
to pump his arm in a stern-faced sieg heil. This was ... one of many contacts between the Nazis
and GM officials that are spotlighted in thousands of pages of little-known and restricted Nazi-era
and New Deal-era documents. The biggest automotive manufacturer in Germany -- indeed in all of
Europe -- was General Motors, which since 1929 had owned and operated the longtime German
company Opel. A few weeks after the [Hitler meeting], General Motors World effusively recounted
... "Hitler is a strong man, well fitted to lead the German people. He is leading them, not by force or
fear, but by intelligent planning." In 1937, almost 17 percent of Opel's Blitz trucks were sold directly
to the Nazi military. That military sales figure was increased to 29 percent in 1938. In 1938, just
months after the Nazi annexation of Austria, Mooney, head of GM's overseas operations,
received the German Eagle with Cross, the highest medal Hitler awarded to foreign
commercial collaborators and supporters.
Eli Lilly Said to Play Down Risk of Top Pill

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/business/17drug.html
The drug maker Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of
Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly
documents and e-mail messages among top company managers. The documents ... show that
Lilly executives kept important information from doctors about Zyprexas links to obesity and its
tendency to raise blood sugar both known risk factors for diabetes. Lillys own published data,
which it told its sales representatives to play down in conversations with doctors, has
shown that 30 percent of patients taking Zyprexa gain 22 pounds or more after a year on
the drug, and some patients have reported gaining 100 pounds or more. But Lilly was
concerned that Zyprexas sales would be hurt if the company was more forthright about the fact
that the drug might cause unmanageable weight gain or diabetes, according to the documents,
which cover the period 1995 to 2004. Zyprexa has become by far Lillys best-selling product, with
sales of $4.2 billion last year, when about two million people worldwide took the drug. Critics,
including the American Diabetes Association, have argued that Zyprexa, introduced in 1996, is
more likely to cause diabetes than other widely used schizophrenia drugs. As early as 1999, the
documents show that Lilly worried that side effects from Zyprexa, whose chemical name is
olanzapine, would hurt sales. Olanzapine-associated weight gain and possible hyperglycemia is a
major threat to the long-term success of this critically important molecule, Dr. Alan Breier wrote in
a November 1999 e-mail message to two-dozen Lilly employees.
Blowing the Whistle on Big Oil

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/business/yourmoney/03whistle.html?ex=132280...
During a 22-year career, Bobby L. Maxwell routinely won accolades and awards as one of the
Interior Departments best auditors in the nations oil patch. Mr. Maxwells career has been
characterized by exceptional performance and significant contributions, wrote Gale A. Norton,
then the secretary of the interior, in a 2003 citation. Less than two years later, the Interior
Department eliminated his job. That came exactly one week after a federal judge in Denver
unsealed a lawsuit in which Mr. Maxwell contended that a major oil company had spent years
cheating on royalty payments. Invoking a law that rewards private citizens who expose fraud
against the government, Mr. Maxwell has filed a suit [which] contends that the Interior Department
ignored audits indicating that Kerr-McGee was cheating. Maxwell says his first serious doubts
about the Interior Department originated in 1998, when the agency reluctantly began to investigate
accusations of systematic cheating on royalties for oil. Several of the nations biggest oil
companies eventually settled that investigation by paying nearly $440 million. Mr. Maxwell said,
There have always been people who dont want to pursue things. But now its grown into a major
illness. Broader investigations by Congress and the Interior Departments own inspector general
[are investigating] whether the agency properly collects the money for oil and gas pumped from
public land. The Interior Departments inspector general told a House subcommittee in September
that senior officials at the agency had repeatedly glossed over ethical lapses. Short of crime,
anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior, declared Earl E.
Devaney, the inspector general.
Note: If you want to understand how corruption can grow and fester in large government agencies,
this entire article is highly educational and revealing.
Experts Concerned as Ballot Problems Persist

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/us/politics/26vote.html?ex=1322197200&en=0d...
After six years of technological research, more than $4 billion spent by Washington on new
machinery and a widespread overhaul of the nations voting system, this months midterm election
revealed that the country is still far from able to ensure that every vote counts. Tens of thousands
of voters, scattered across more than 25 states, encountered serious problems at the polls. The
difficulties led to shortages of substitute paper ballots and long lines that caused many voters to
leave without casting ballots. Voting experts say it is impossible to say how many votes were not
counted that should have been. In Florida alone, the discrepancies ... amount to more than 60,000
votes. In Colorado, as many as 20,000 people gave up trying to vote ... as new online
systems for verifying voter registrations crashed repeatedly. In Arkansas, election officials
tallied votes three times in one county, and each time the number of ballots cast changed
by more than 30,000. Election experts say that with electronic voting machines, the potential
consequences of misdeeds or errors are of a [great] magnitude. A single software error can affect
thousands of votes, especially with machines that keep no paper record. In Ohio, thousands of
voters were turned away or forced to file provisional ballots by poll workers puzzled by voteridentification rules. In Pennsylvania, the machines crashed or refused to start, producing many
reports of vote-flipping [where] voters press the button for one candidate but a different candidates
name appears on the screen. In Ohio, even a congressman, Steve Chabot, a Republican, was
turned away from his polling place because the address listed on his drivers license was different
than his home address.
Drug Industry Is on Defensive as Power Shifts

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/washington/24drug.html?ex=1322024400&en=55e...
Hoping to prevent Congress from letting the government negotiate lower drug prices for millions of
older Americans on Medicare, the pharmaceutical companies have been recruiting Democratic
lobbyists [and] lining up allies in the Bush administration and Congress. Many drug company
lobbyists concede that the House is likely to pass a bill intended to drive down drug prices, but
they are determined to block such legislation in the Senate. If that strategy fails, they are counting
on President Bush to veto any bill that passes. With 49 Republicans in the Senate next year, the
industry is confident that it can round up the 34 votes normally needed to uphold a veto. They
began developing strategy last week at a meeting of the board of the Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America. Billy Tauzin, president of that group [and] a former
congressman...met with Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat who has been trying
for six years to allow drug imports from Canada. The industry vehemently opposes such
legislation. The 2003 Medicare law prohibits the federal government from negotiating drug prices
or establishing a list of preferred drugs. Drug makers have not set a budget for their campaign.
They and their trade groups already spend some $100 million a year on lobbying in
Washington. Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey [said] The 2003
Medicare law was essentially written by the drug industry. Drug companies may be open to some
changes in the Medicare drug benefit, but they say they cannot accept any form of price
negotiation.
Note: For lots of verifiable information on the power of the drug industry to corrupt Congress, click
here.
Getting closer to Uncle Sam

2006-09-20, Toronto Star (One of Canada's top newspapers)
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Articl...
Public kept in dark as business leads talks about North American integration. Away from the
spotlight, from Sept. 12 to 14, in Banff Springs, Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day and
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor met with U.S. and Mexican government officials and business
leaders to discuss North American integration at the second North American Forum. The guest list
included such prominent figures as U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Mexican Secretary
of Public Security Eduardo Medina Mora and Canadian Forces chief General Rick Hillier. The
event was chaired by former U.S. secretary of state George Schultz, former Alberta premier, Peter
Lougheed and former Mexican finance minister Pedro Aspe. Organizers did not alert the media
about the event. Our government ... refuses to release any information about the content of
the discussions or the actors involved. The event was organized by the Canadian Council
of Chief Executives. The media have paid little attention to this far-reaching agreement, so
Canadians are unaware that a dozen working groups are currently "harmonizing" Canadian
and U.S. regulations on everything from food to drugs to the environment and even more
contentious issues like foreign policy. This process ... is about priming North America for better
business by weakening the impacts of such perceived obstacles as environmental standards and
labour rights. This is why the public has been kept in the dark while the business elite has played a
leading role in designing the blueprint for this more integrated North America.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Why has the U.S. media not covered this key topic? For a
second article discussing this secret meeting on a top Canadian TV website, click here. To learn
about other secret meetings of the power elite, click here
Protesters challenge the powerful at exclusive California retreat

2006-07-22, San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/07/22/state/n163157D01.DTL
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside an exclusive California retreat for government and
business leaders Saturday to challenge the right of a "ruling elite" to make policy decisions without
public scrutiny. The annual Bohemian Grove retreat has attracted powerful men such as
Ronald Reagan, George Bush, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, philanthropist
David Rockefeller, former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich. It's also become a magnet for all types of activists who increasingly use
the event to network and organize their campaigns. The men who attend the Bohemian Grove
retreat spend two weeks performing plays, eating gourmet camp grub, listening to speakers and
power-bonding at the 2,700-acre compound near the Russian River in Sonoma County. The
retreat is organized by the exclusive San Francisco-based Bohemian Club. The club and event are
shrouded in mystery, much like Yale University's most-famous secret society, Skull and Bones,
whose members include President George W. Bush and his presidential rival Sen. John Kerry.
Note: This article strangely has been removed from the San Francisco Chronicle website. To see it
in the Internet Archive, click here. For an informative five-minute ABC news clip on the power elite
gathering Bohemian Grove reported in 1981, click here. And for reliable information on the most
secretive meeting of the world's elite reported by the major media, see our Bilderberg Group
compilation available here.
Fans of GM Electric Car Fight the Crusher

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21991-2005Mar9.html
What's at stake, they say, is no less than the future of automotive technology, a practical solution
for driving fast and fun with no direct pollution whatsoever. GM agrees that the car in question,
called the EV1, was a rousing feat of engineering that could go from zero to 60 miles per
hour in under eight seconds with no harmful emissions. The market just wasn't big enough,
the company says, for a car that traveled 140 miles or less on a charge before you had to plug it in
like a toaster. Some 800 drivers once leased EV1s, mostly in California. After the last lease ran out
in August, GM reclaimed every one of the cars, donating a few to universities and car museums
but crushing many of the rest. Enthusiasts discovered a stash of about 77 surviving EV1s behind a
GM training center in Burbank and last month decided to take a stand. Mobilized through Internet
sites and word of mouth, nearly 100 people pledged $24,000 each for a chance to buy the cars
from GM. On Feb. 16 the group set up a street-side outpost of folding chairs that they have staffed
ever since in rotating shifts, through long nights and torrential rains, trying to draw attention to their
cause. GM refuses to budge. Toyota is aware of a growing fad among do-it-yourselfers who put a
new battery in their Prius so it can be plugged in at home and then travel about 20 miles on electric
power alone.
Note: Why would GM simply crush cars for which people are willing to pay $24,000? For a
possible answer to this important question, click here. To learn how to convert a Toyota Prius to get
100 mpg, click here.
Indicting the Drug Industry's Practices

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/books/06masl.html?ex=1252209600&en=1accf3fe...
Dr. Marcia Angell is a former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and
spent two decades on the staff of that publication. Her new book is a scorching indictment
of drug companies and their research and business practices. "Despite all its excesses, this is
an important industry that should be saved - mainly from itself," she writes. Dr. Angell's case is
tough, persuasive and troubling. "The Truth About the Drug Companies" ... is devoted to
assertions of shady, misleading corporate behavior. In the past, drug discoveries made through
government research remained in the public domain. Beginning in 1980 those breakthroughs could
be patented, even if their research was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. As a
consequence, Dr. Angell says, patent shenanigans have reshaped the drug business, as have the
recent government regulations that expedite direct-to-consumer drug advertising. "Once upon a
time, drug companies promoted drugs to treat diseases," Dr. Angell writes. "Now it is often the
opposite. They promote diseases to fit their drugs." Why all the advertising? "If prescription drugs
are so good, why do they need to be pushed so hard?" she asks. Dr. Angell is now a senior
lecturer at Harvard Medical School.
Note: For an excellent 10-page summary of this revealing book written by the esteemed author,
click here. For more reliable information on the health cover-up, click here.
Skull And Bones

2004-06-13, CBS News
As opposite as George Bush and John Kerry may seem to be, they do share a common secret one they've shared for decades. The secret: details of their membership in Skull and Bones, the
elite Yale University society whose members include some of the most powerful men of the 20th
century. Bonesmen, as they're called, are forbidden to reveal what goes on in their inner sanctum.
Bones has included presidents, cabinet officers, spies, Supreme Court justices, [and] captains of
industry. They'd responded to questions with utter silence until an enterprising Yale graduate,
Alexandra Robbins, managed to penetrate the wall of silence in her book, Secrets of the Tomb. "I
spoke with about 100 members of Skull and Bones. They were members who were tired of the
secrecy, says Robbins. But probably twice that number hung up on me, harassed me, or
threatened me. Skull and Bones, with all its ritual and macabre relics, was founded in 1832. Since
then, it has chosen or "tapped" only 15 senior students a year who become ... lifetime members of
the ultimate old boys' club. A lot of Bonesmen have gone on to positions of great power. President
Bush ... tapped five fellow Bonesmen to join his administration. Bonesmen have [included]
William Howard Taft, the 27th President; Henry Luce, the founder of Time Magazine; and W.
Averell Harriman, the diplomat and confidant of U.S. presidents. Mr. Bush, like his father
and grandfather before him, has refused to talk openly about Skull and Bones. But as a
Bonesman, he was required to reveal his innermost secrets to his fellow Bones initiates. They're
supposed to recount their entire sexual histories in ... a dimly-lit cozy room.
Note: For a highly revealing, four-minute CNN News clip on Skull and Bones, click here. For other
major media news clips reporting on this powerful secret society, click here. And for lots more
reliable information from major media sources on powerful, secret groups like this, click here.
Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-11-09/opinion/17517477_1_eugenics-ethnic-clea...
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a
so-called Master Race. But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race
didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California,
decades before Hitler came to power. Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk
had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the
Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They
were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious
universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race
theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims. Stanford
President David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle
"Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions
such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood. The Rockefeller Foundation helped
found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in
before he went to Auschwitz.
Note: Josef Mengele's US-funded eugenics research laid the foundation for his experimentation
on human subjects before and during World War II. He went on to participate in CIA-funded mindcontrol experimentation after that war. For more on Mengele, click here.
The Opium War's Secret History

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-secret-history.html
In 1823 a 24-year-old Yankee, Warren Delano, sailed to Canton. Within seven years he was a
senior partner in Russell & Company. Delano's problem, as with all traders, European and
American, was that China had much to sell but declined to buy. The British struck upon an
ingenious way to reduce a huge trade deficit. Their merchants bribed Chinese officials to
allow entry of chests of opium from British-ruled India, though its importation had long
been banned by imperial decree. Nearly every American company followed suit. As addiction
became epidemic, and as the Chinese began paying with precious silver for the drug, their
Emperor finally in 1839 named an Imperial Commissioner to end the trade. Commissioner Lin Tsehsu proceeded to Canton, seized vast stocks of opium and dumped the chests in the sea. This ...
furnished the spark for the Opium War, initiated by Lord Palmerston, the British Prime Minister, and
waged with determination to obtain full compensation for the opium. The Celestial Empire was
humbled, forced to open five ports to foreign traders and to permit a British colony at Hong Kong.
Warren Delano returned to America rich. He eventually gave his daughter Sara in marriage to ...
the father of Franklin Roosevelt. The old China trader was close-mouthed about opium, as were
his partners in Russell & Company. It is not clear how much F.D.R. knew about this source of his
grandfather's wealth.
Note: So FDR's grandfather struck it rich by dealing opium in China. Note that Samuel Russell,
who founded Russell & Company, the most powerful opium trader of the time, was the cousin of
William Russell, who founded Yale's Skull and Bones society, which counted among its members
Presidents William Howard Taft, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
Moore Asks Inquiry Into Charges on Preparedness Campaign

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9504E7DA1538EE32A25757C1A9649C...
A demand for an investigation of charges printed in the Congressional Record by Representative
Oscar Callaway of Texas, a pacifist Democrat, that the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel
shipbuilding, and powder interests had purchased control of twenty-five great newspapers to
further the preparedness campaign, was made in the House today by Representative J. Hampton
Moore, a Pennsylvania Republican. Mr. Callaways speech, as inserted in The Record charged: In
March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding and powder interests, and
their subsidiary organizations got together twelve men high up in the newspaper world and
employed them to select from the most influential papers in the United States in sufficient
numbers of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States. They
found it was only necessary to purchase the control of twenty-five of the greatest newspapers. [An]
editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the
questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies and other things of national and
international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers. The policy also included the
suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served."
Note: For more showing how the media is controlled by carefully selected people placed by big
money and the power elite, click here and here. For a short video of Congressional testimony from
the 1970s proving CIA media manipulation, click here. The full text of this revealing article is
available free at this link.
Billion dollar lawsuit filed over study on sexually transmitted diseases

2015-04-02, CBS/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/billion-dollar-lawsuit-filed-study-on-sexually-tr...
More than 750 plaintiffs are suing the Johns Hopkins Hospital System Corp. over its role in a
series of medical experiments in Guatemala in the 1940s and 1950s during which subjects were
infected with venereal diseases. The lawsuit in Baltimore seeks $1 billion in damages for
individuals, spouses and children of people infected with syphilis, gonorrhea and other
sexually transmitted diseases through a U.S. government program between 1945 and 1956.
The suit claims Johns Hopkins officials had "substantial influence" over the studies, controlling
some advisory panels, and were involved in planning and authorizing the experiments. A Hopkins
spokesperson ... confirmed that faculty members took part in reviewing funding applications, but
said this did not warrant a lawsuit against the medical center. The statement expressed "profound
sympathy for individuals and families impacted by the deplorable 1940s syphilis study conducted
by the U.S. Government in Guatemala," and noted that the ethical standards for conducting
medical research have changed significantly in the decades since then. It's the latest in a series of
lawsuits over the studies. A federal judge in 2012 dismissed a lawsuit against the U.S. government
involving the same study.
Note: Explore an excellent list of dozens of studies over the years in which humans were used
unknowingly as guinea pigs in clear breach of ethical standards. Links are provided for verification
of each study. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news
articles about corruption in the medical industry and in government.
Recruitment a big benefit for B Corps

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Recruitment-a-big-benefit-for-B-Corps-...
Change.org is a B Corporation a for-profit company committed to social or environmental goals

in addition to its financial obligations. Because the San Francisco firm tries to benefit not just its
shareholders, but also society, Change.org is an especially appealing place to work for civicminded job-seekers, said David Hanrahan, head of global human resources. Hanrahan has an eye
toward recruiting Millennials. B (for beneficial) Corporations are the creation of B Lab, a
Pennsylvania nonprofit that awards the certification to companies that meet its standards
of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. A 2014
Brookings Institution report, How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America,
found that the desire on the part of Millennials for their daily work to reflect and be a part of their
societal concerns will make it impossible for corporate chieftains to motivate Millennial employees
simply by extolling profits. In 2012 ... California [became] the 28th state to provide a legal
structure allowing companies to become certified B Corps. Since then, such firms have
flocked to the Bay Area. The region is home to the highest concentration of certified B Corps on
the planet. The certification process is a way to tell the difference between good companies and
good marketing, [consultant Ryan] Honeyman wrote in his book, "The B Corp Handbook: How to
Use Business as a Force for Good." Many companies want to do good, but they dont know how to
do it, said Honeyman. The B Corp certification process gives them the tools to do so.
Note: For more along these lines, see this article about B Corps and "stakeholder capitalism" as a
solution to the problem of growing income inequality.
Upset by Warren, US banks debate halting some campaign donations

2015-03-27, CNBC/Reuters
Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for
them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate
Democrats in symbolic protest. Representatives from Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and
Bank of America, have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio
Senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party's tone toward Wall Street. Citigroup has decided to
withhold donations for now to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee over concerns that
Senate Democrats could give Warren and lawmakers who share her views more power, sources
inside the bank told Reuters. The Massachusetts senator's economic populism and take-noprisoners approach has won her a strong following. Warren, a former Harvard Law professor who
joined the Senate Banking Committee after taking office in 2013, has accused big banks and other
financial firms of unfair dealings that harm the middle class and help the rich grow richer. In a Dec.
12 speech, she mentioned Citi several times as an example of a bank that had grown too large,
saying it should have been broken apart by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. In January,
Warren angered Wall Street when she successfully blocked the nomination of a banker Antonio
Weiss to a top post at the Treasury Department. She argued that as a regulator he would likely be
too deferential to his former Wall Street colleagues.
Note: Read Sen. Warren's response in this Boston Globe article. For more along these lines, see
concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the systemically corrupt banking
industry.
'God's Bankers,' by Gerald Posner

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/books/review/gods-bankers-by-gerald-posner....
"God's Bankers" provides an exhaustive history of financial machinations at the center of the
church in Rome. The final unification of Italy in 1870 ... deprived the church of its lands and feudal
income, leading to several decades of acute financial insecurity. Popes of this period ... publicly
denounced lending money at interest (usury) while at the same time accepting massive loans from
the Rothschilds and making their own interest-bearing loans to Italian Catholics. Beginning with
Bernardino Nogara, appointed by Pius XI in 1929, the church also empowered a series of often
shady financial advisers to engage in financial wheeling and dealing around the globe. "So long as
the balance sheets showed surpluses," [author of God's Bankers Gerald] Posner writes, "Pius and
his chief advisers were pleased." That pattern would continue through the rest of the 20th century.
The American archbishop Paul Marcinkus, [who] ran the Vatican Bank from 1971 to 1989 ...
ended up implicated in several sensational scandals. The biggest by far was the collapse of
Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano, in 1982 - an event preceded by mob hits on
a string of investigators looking into corruption in the Italian banking industry. Marcinkus ...
also served as a spy for the State Department, providing the American government with
"personal details" about John Paul II, and even encouraging the pope "at the behest of embassy
officials" to publicly endorse American positions on a broad range of political issues.
Note: The Vatican Bank was implicated in a scheme to smuggle tens of millions of euros out of
Switzerland in 2013, and was used to launder money for the mafia as recently as 2012. For more
along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing financial industry corruption news
Utilities wage campaign against rooftop solar

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/utilities-sensing-threa...
Three years ago, the nations top utility executives gathered at a Colorado resort to hear
warnings about ... rooftop solar panels. According to a presentation prepared for the group,
Industry must prepare an action plan to address the challenges. Three years later, the industry
and its fossil-fuel supporters are waging a determined campaign to stop a home-solar
insurgency that is rattling the boardrooms of the countrys government-regulated electric
monopolies. Recently, the battle has shifted to public utility commissions, where industry backers
have mounted a ... successful push for fee hikes that could put solar panels out of reach for many
potential customers. In a closely watched case last month, an Arizona utility voted to impose a
monthly surcharge of about $50 for net metering, a common practice that allows solar customers
to earn credit for the surplus electricity they provide to the electric grid. Net metering makes home
solar affordable by sharply lowering electric bills to offset the $10,000 to $30,000 cost of rooftop
panels. A Wisconsin utilities commission approved a similar surcharge for solar users last year,
and a New Mexico regulator also is considering raising fees. In some states, industry officials [are
now] arguing that solar panels hurt the poor. Its really about utilities fear that solar customers are
taking away demand, said Angela Navarro, an energy expert with the Southern Environmental
Law Center.
Note: In Arizona, traditional utility companies are brazenly manipulating the law to attack solar
power installation companies. Meanwhile, the Rockefellers have stopped investing in fossil fuels.
Does this mean that the renewable energy revolution is now in full swing?
Health costs of hormone disrupting chemicals over 150bn a year in

Europe, says study
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/06/health-costs-hormone-disru...
Lower IQ, adult obesity and 5% of autism cases are all linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors
found in food containers, plastics, furniture, toys, carpeting and cosmetics, says new expert study.
Europe is experiencing an explosion in health costs caused by endocrine-disrupting
chemicals (EDCs) that is comparable to the cost of lead and mercury poisoning, according
to the most comprehensive study of the subject yet published. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals
that interfere with the human hormone system, and can be found in food containers, plastics,
furniture, toys, carpeting and cosmetics. The new series of reports by 18 of the worlds foremost
experts on endocrine science pegs the health costs of exposure to them at between 157bn270bn (113bn-195bn), or at least 1.23% of the continents GDP. The shocking thing is that
the major component of that cost is related to the loss of brain function in the next
generation, one of the reports authors, Professor Philippe Grandjean of Harvard
University, told the Guardian. After IQ loss, adult obesity linked to exposure to phthalates, a group
of chemicals used in plastics, was the second largest part of the overall cost, with an estimated
price tag of 15.6bn a year. The study attributes at least 5% of European autism cases to EDC
exposure. These studies tell a frightening and expensive story equivalent to a 7,500 cost for
every man, woman and child in the EU every year, said Genon Jensen, the director of the Health
and Environment Alliance.
Note: Recently, a major report showing the dangers of many common pesticides was suppressed
by EU officials. Federal regulators in the US claim to have no data on over 62,000 industrial
chemicals that US consumers are exposed to.
Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-chang...
For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their
arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gasses
pose little risk to humanity. One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as
Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He has often appeared on
conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at
conferences of people who deny the risks of global warming. But newly released documents show
the extent to which Dr. Soons work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.
He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade
while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers
he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he
appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work. The documents
show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his
scientific papers as deliverables that he completed in exchange for their money. He used
the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress. Dr. Soon has found a warm
welcome among politicians in Washington and state capitals who try to block climate action. United
States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a
global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soons work over the years.
Note: One of Dr Soon's primary funding sources is Donors Trust, a secretive organization found to
have orchestrated a vast climate denial conspiracy. For more along these lines, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing science corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Senior London Telegraph Writer Peter Oborne Quits Over HSBC

Allegations
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/peter-oborne-resignation-senior...
A senior writer at the Daily Telegraph has dramatically quit the newspaper after accusing its
owners, the Barclay Brothers, of suppressing reports about the HSBC scandal out of fear of
losing advertising revenue. Peter Oborne, the papers chief political commentator and an awardwinning author, announced his resignation [and] accused the Telegraph of committing a fraud on
readers. Mr Oborne detailed a series of investigations about HSBC, and other financial scandals,
which he said executives at the newspaper had closed down. Mr Oborne wrote: From the start of
2013 onwards stories critical of HSBC were discouraged [because] HSBC [had] suspended its
advertising with the Telegraph. Its account ... was extremely valuable. HSBC, as one former
Telegraph executive told me, is the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend. Winning back
the HSBC advertising account became an urgent priority. It was eventually restored after
approximately 12 months. Executives say that Murdoch MacLennan [chief executive of Telegraph
Media Group] was determined not to allow any criticism of the international bank. As a result of a
2012 investigation into accounts held by HSBC in Jersey, he claimed: Reporters were ordered
to destroy all emails, reports and documents related to the HSBC investigation. I [resigned]
as a matter of conscience. The past few years have seen the rise of shadowy executives who
determine what truths can and what truths cant be conveyed across the mainstream media."
Note: Oborne's online resignation provides a unique window into some of the ways that big money
is used to manipulate the media. Read lots more on HSBC's empire of corruption in a Rolling
Stone article by Matt Taibbi. HSBC was founded to service the international drug trade in the 19th
century, and launders money for mobsters and terrorists on a massive scale.
HSBC files show how Swiss bank helped clients dodge taxes and hide
millions
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/08/hsbc-files-expose-swiss-bank-...
HSBCs Swiss banking arm helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars
of assets, doling out bundles of untraceable cash and advising clients on how to circumvent
domestic tax authorities, according to a huge cache of leaked secret bank account files. HSBC
was headed during the period covered in the files by Stephen Green now Lord Green who
served as the global banks chief executive, then group chairman until 2010 when he left to
become a trade minister in the House of Lords for David Camerons new government. The files
show how HSBC in Switzerland keenly marketed tax avoidance strategies to its wealthy
clients. The bank proactively contacted clients in 2005 to suggest ways to avoid a new tax
levied on the Swiss savings accounts of EU citizens, a measure brought in through a treaty
between Switzerland and the EU to tackle secret offshore accounts. The documents also show
HSBCs Swiss subsidiary providing banking services to relatives of dictators, people implicated in
African corruption scandals, arms industry figures and others. HSBC is already facing criminal
investigations and charges in France, Belgium, the US and Argentina as a result of the leak of the
files, but no legal action has been taken against it in Britain.
Note: Read lots more excellent information in a Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi. US Senator
Elizabeth Warren is working hard to bring justice in this case. HSBC was founded to service the
international drug trade following the 19th century opium war, and continues to launder money for
drug cartels and terrorists on a massive scale. Now we learn that HSBC also provides financial
services related to conflict diamonds, weapons trafficking, political corruption, and other organized
criminal activities. Perhaps these criminal bankers are tolerated because the global economy
might collapse without their cash.
Why does Obama keep trade deal details secret?

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Why-does-Obama-keep-trade-deal-details-...
The trade rules of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership ... would cover nearly 40 percent of the
world economy. Access to the text of the proposed deal is highly restricted. At last months World
Economic Forum in Switzerland, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman defended the ...
refusal to release the full text of the proposed trade pact. It is incomprehensible to me that
leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from
this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP, while at the same time, the
elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no
knowledge of whats in it, wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt., in a letter to Froman last
month. Congressional lawmakers are permitted to view the text of the agreement only in the U.S.
trade representatives office, without their own staff members or experts present. They are not
allowed to take copies of the agreement back to Capitol Hill for deeper, independent evaluation.
Despite those restrictions, specific details of the agreements text have surfaced from unauthorized
leaks. One of the leaks showed the U.S. proposing to empower corporations to attempt to overturn
domestic regulations, while ... another leaked provision would help the pharmaceutical industry
inflate the price of medicines.
Note: For more, watch an excellent, two-minute video by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert
Reich on the TPP titled "The Worst Trade Deal You've Never Heard of," or read leaked draft texts
of the Trans-Pacific Partnership for yourself.
Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months for 'merely linking to hacked

material'
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/22/barrett-brown-trial-warns-d...
Journalist and former Anonymous member ... Barrett Brown was sentenced to 63 months in
prison by a federal judge in Dallas on Thursday. The judge also ordered him to pay more
than $890,000 in restitution and fines. An investigative journalist, essayist and satirist who has
written for the Onion, Vanity Fair and the Huffington Post, as well as for the Guardian, Brown
claims to have split with Anonymous in 2011. Brown also founded Project PM, a crowdsourced
investigative thinktank dedicated to looking into abuses by companies in the area of surveillance.
In September 2012, Brown was arrested by the FBI. In October 2012, after being held for two
weeks without charge, he was indicted on charges of making an online threat, retaliating against a
federal officer and conspiring to release personal information about a government employee. Two
months later, he was indicted on 12 further charges related to the hacking of private intelligence
contractor Stratfor in 2011. Jeremy Hammond, the hacker who actually carried out the Stratfor
breach, was sentenced to the maximum possible 10 years. Brown, who was accused of sharing a
link to the data Hammond obtained from the breach ... at one point faced a possible sentence of
105 years. He will reportedly be eligible for supervised release after one year, and once released
will have his computer equipment monitored. The $890,250 in restitution payments will go to
Stratfor and other companies targeted by Anonymous.
Note: Even after being targeted by a high level conspiracy, jailed on spurious charges, and forced
to pay nearly a million dollars to Stratfor for merely writing about the hack of their private spy
agency, Brown states that he remains committed to exposing corruption as a journalist from within
the US prison system.
Defense contractor pleads guilty in massive bribery case

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/navy-captain-enters-gui...
Malaysian defense contractor [Leonard Glenn Francis] pleaded guilty [to bribing] scores of
U.S. Navy officials [while] presiding over a decade-long corruption scheme. His Singapore-based
firm, Glenn Defense Marine Asia ... bilked the service out of tens of millions of dollars. Five current
and former Navy officials have pleaded guilty so far. Francis, 50, agreed to forfeit $35 million in illgotten proceeds and could face up to 25 years in prison. [He also] provided evidence against two
more Navy officials who have yet to be charged: a lieutenant commander and a ... civilian official
[that] worked as a mole for Glenn Defense Marine. The Navy says that [Frances] was repeatedly
able to thwart criminal investigators by bribing a senior agent with the Naval Criminal
Investigative Service, who fed him sensitive files and helped to cover his tracks. A Navy captain,
Daniel Dusek, admitted to disclosing military secrets to Francis and his firm in exchange
for prostitutes, cash and visits to luxury hotels. Dusek provided classified information about
Navy ship schedules dozens of times. According to court records, in October 2010, Dusek [as
deputy director of operations for the 7th Fleet] persuaded the Navy to send an aircraft carrier, the
USS Abraham Lincoln, and its strike group to visit a port in Malaysia that was largely controlled by
Glenn Defense Marine. As a result, the company was able to easily inflate invoices and
overcharge the Navy.
Note: Frances bribed Naval officials to redirect an aircraft carrier, and avoided prosecution for
years by also bribing military investigators. If he could do this, and if Brent R. Wilkes could
persuade the #3 Official at the CIA to award him millions in suspicious agency contracts, what else
have corrupt government officials been bribed to do?
The Government Problem

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/sns-201412230900--tms--amvoices...
Consider the new spending bill Congress and the president agreed to a few weeks ago. Under the
$1.1 trillion measure, government spending doesn't rise as a percent of the total economy. If the
economy grows as expected, government spending will actually shrink over the next year. The
problem with the legislation is who gets the goodies and who's stuck with the tab. Only about 12
percent of federal spending goes to individuals and families. An increasing portion goes to
corporate welfare. In addition to the provisions in the recent spending bill that reward Wall Street,
health insurers, the travel industry, food companies and defense contractors, other corporate
goodies have long been baked into the federal budget. Big agribusiness gets price supports.
Hedge-fund and private-equity managers get their own special "carried-interest" tax loophole. The
oil and gas industry gets its special tax subsidies. Big Pharma gets a particularly big benefit: a
prohibition on government using its vast bargaining power under Medicare and Medicaid to
negotiate low drug prices. The new spending legislation, just enacted, makes it easier for wealthy
individuals to write big checks to political parties. Much of government is no longer working for the
vast majority it's intended to serve. Unless or until we can reverse the vicious cycle of big
money getting political favors that makes big money even bigger, we can't get the
government we want and deserve.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government
corruption and income inequality news articles from reliable major media sources.
The Red Cross CEO Has Been Misleading About Where Donors' Dollars
Are Going
2014-12-04, MSN News
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-red-cross-ceo-has-been-misleading-about-...
The American Red Cross regularly touts how responsible it is with donors' money. "We're
very proud of the fact that 91 cents of every dollar that's donated goes to our services,"
Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern said in a speech in Baltimore last year. The problem with
that number: It isn't true. After inquiries by ProPublica and NPR, the Red Cross removed the
statement from its website. In recent years, the Red Cross' fundraising expenses alone have been
as high as 26 cents of every donated dollar. But even that understates matters. The charity spends
additional money on "management and general" expenses. That means the portion of donated
dollars going to overhead is even higher. After being contacted by ProPublica and NPR, the charity
changed the wording on its website to another formulation it frequently uses: that 91 cents of every
dollar the charity "spends" goes to humanitarian services. But that too is misleading to donors. The
charity spent $467 million, or 14 percent of total spending, on its famous domestic disaster
response programs, including the expensive Sandy relief effort. The Red Cross doesn't break
down its spending on overhead and declined ProPublica and NPR's request to do so. Other
figures the Red Cross frequently cites also appear to be unreliable.
Note: This ongoing NPR/ProPublica investigation has also found that the Red Cross used courts
to hide its spending habits, and diverted funds from disaster relief to manipulate the media. For
more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing articles about corporate
corruption from reliable sources.
Hard-Nosed Advice From Veteran Lobbyist: Win Ugly or Lose Pretty

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/us/politics/pr-executives-western-energy-al...
The oil and gas industry ... must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits
about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a
room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded. The blunt advice from
Richard Berman, the founder and chief executive of the Washington-based Berman & Company
consulting firm, came as Mr. Berman solicited up to $3 million from oil and gas industry executives
to finance an advertising and public relations campaign called Big Green Radicals. Executives ...
must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the
environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should
not worry about offending the general public. Think of this as an endless war, Mr. Berman
told the crowd ... whose members include Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum,
which specialize in extracting oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. I
get up every morning and I try to figure out how to screw with the labor unions, Mr. Berman said in
his speech. People always ask: "How do I know that I wont be found out as a supporter of what
youre doing?" Mr. Berman told the crowd, We run all of this stuff through nonprofit organizations
that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People dont know
who supports us.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing stories about
manipulation of mass media and corporate corruption from reliable sources.
Too Big to Tax: Settlements Are Tax Write-Offs for Banks

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/07/giant-penalties-are-giant-tax-write-offs-w...
At the Justice Department, senior officials like to congratulate themselves on the headlinemaking, big bucks settlements they have imposed upon banks and lenders. Those
settlement figures are not quite what they seem, because settlements can be deducted from
tax liabilities. For nearly every dollar a bank or lender has pledged to pay ... up to 35 cents will
find its way back into bank coffers. Under Attorney General Eric Holder, whose agency has not
prosecuted a single major bank or executive in the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown, the Justice
Department has [allowed] windfall tax deductions [to be] set against the civil settlements imposed.
[These may] total more than $44 billion. Astonishingly, for an economic crisis estimated to have
cost the U.S. economy anywhere from $6 trillion to $14 trillion in lost output and value if not
twice that, according to a September 2013 study by the Dallas Federal Reserve bank tracking
the settlements and the deductions against taxes via government websites is almost impossible.
Theres [a] self-serving reason for the Justice Department to hike civil settlement payments while
allowing for most of the sum to be tax-deductible. The agency receives a cut of up to 3 percent of
its share of the total settlements for its Working Capital Fund, a slush fund common across major
government agencies. The Justice Departments slush fund ... signals an institutional interest in
getting big numbers.
Note: For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing articles about
widespread corruption in government and banking and finance.
The Cost of Campaigns

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/us/the-cost-of-campaigns.html
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010 tossed aside decades of legislative
restrictions, freeing corporations and unions to spend as much as they wished. Six months ago,
the Supreme Court took its Citizens United decision further. In McCutcheon v. Federal Election
Commission, it struck down long standing caps on what an individual may contribute to all federal
candidates, collectively, in any two-year election cycle. With conservative justices dominant, the
court expanded the concept that money is equivalent to speech, protected by the First
Amendment. Corporations, it said, enjoy the same political rights as individuals. A study by
the Sunlight Foundation, an advocate for government transparency, found that 31,385 people
that is 1 percent of 1 percent of the United States population accounted for 28 percent of
all disclosed contributions in the 2012 elections. This year, an analysis by The New York
Times shows, more than half of broadcast advertising in the midterm elections has been paid for
by groups that reveal little or nothing about their donors. Overwhelmingly, the main beneficiaries
have been conservative organizations.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing election news
articles from reliable major media sources. For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable
resources provided in our Elections Information Center.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Fined $488.8 Million for 'Massive Bribery

Network' in China
2014-09-19, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/International/glaxosmithkline-gsk-fined-4888-million-ma...
China has fined the British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) $488.8 million (3 billion
Yuan) for a "massive bribery network" to get doctors and hospitals to use its products. Five former
employees were sentenced to two to four years in jail, but ordered deported instead of imprisoned,
according to state news agency Xinhua today. The fine was the biggest ever imposed by a
Chinese court. The court gave Mark Reilly, former head of GSK Chinese operations, a three-year
prison sentence with a four-year reprieve, which meant he is set to be deported instead of serving
his time in a Chinese jail. Reilly was accused of operating a massive bribery network in May. The
police said it is believed Reilly authorized his salespeople to pay doctors, hospital officials and
health institutions to use GSKs products since 2009. Throughout 2012 a stream of anonymous
emails alleging bribery authorized by senior staff at GSK were sent to Chinese regulators. At the
beginning of 2013, the anonymous emails began to arrive at GSK headquarter in London, along
with a sex tape of Mark Reilly and his Chinese girlfriend. The charges claim that GSK hired
Shanghai-based investigator Peter Humphrey and his American wife, Yu Yingzeng, to locate the
whistleblower. The Humphreys were detained and charged with illegally obtaining phone logs,
travel records and other data which then they put in a report to GSK. GSK released a statement
of apologies to the Chinese government and people on its website. "GSK Plc has reflected
deeply and learned from its mistakes, has taken steps to comprehensively rectify the
issues identified at the operations of GSKCI, and must work hard to regain the trust of the
Chinese people," the statement said.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from
Whos Paying the Pro-War Pundits?

2014-09-16, The Nation Magazine
http://www.thenation.com/article/181601/whos-paying-pro-war-pundits#
Retired General Anthony Zinni [has demanded] up to 10,000 American boots on the ground to
battle ISIS. Retired General Jack [Keane has made] more vague demands, such as for offensive
air strikes and the deployment of more military advisers to the region. Many of these former
Pentagon officials [have a vested interest] as paid directors and advisers to some of the largest
military contractors in the world. Ramping up Americas military presence in Iraq and directly
entering the war in Syria, along with greater military spending more broadly, is a debatable solution
to a complex political and sectarian conflict. But those goals do unquestionably benefit one player
in this saga: Americas defense industry. Keane is a great example of this phenomenon. His think
tank, the Institute for the Study of War, ... has provided the data on ISIS used for multiple stories
by The New York Times, the BBC and other leading outlets. Keane has appeared on Fox News at
least nine times over the last two months to promote the idea that the best way to stop ISIS is
through military actionin particular, through air strikes deep into ISIS-held territory. Left unsaid
during his media appearances ... are Keanes other gigs: as special adviser to Academi, the
contractor formerly known as Blackwater; as a board member to tank and aircraft
manufacturer General Dynamics; a venture partner to SCP Partners, an investment firm
that partners with defense contractors, including XVionics, an operations management
decision support system company used in Air Force drone training; and as president of
his own consulting firm, GSI LLC. Retired General Anthony Zinni, perhaps the loudest advocate
of a large deployment of American soldiers into the region to fight IS, is a board member to BAE
Systems US subsidiary, and also works for several military-focused private equity firms.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable
major media sources.
The U.S. Governments Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations

2014-09-05, The Intercept
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use-econom...
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 Chinas
infiltrations of Google, Nortel, and other corporate targets. [But] 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. But a secret 2009 report issued by [Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper's] office explicitly contemplates doing exactly that. The
document, the 2009 Quadrennial Intelligence Community Reviewprovided by NSA whistleblower
Edward Snowdenis a fascinating window into the mindset of Americas spies. 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. 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.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency operations
news articles from reliable major media sources.
Billionaire Found in Middle of Bribery Case Avoids U.S. Probe

2014-08-14, Bloomberg Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-08-14/billionaire-found-in-middle-of-br...
In January, a unit of Alcoa Inc., the biggest U.S. aluminum producer, pleaded guilty to foreign
bribery charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department. Alcoa also settled claims by the
Securities and Exchange Commission and agreed to pay a $384 million fine -- the fifth-largest
such penalty ever. The Alcoa subsidiary admitted to paying bribes to government officials in
Bahrain for more than a decade to win contracts to sell alumina, a compound essential in making
aluminum, to the Persian Gulf states processing plant. Not named and not charged in the case
was the person who made those payments, whom the Justice Department identified in court only
as Consultant A. In the thriving business of global bribery -- which the World Bank says
amounts to $1 trillion in illicit payments annually -- guilty pleas like the one by Alcoas unit
are rare. Rarer still are convictions against the people who actually arrange and deliver the
payments. Most of the time, these brokers arent even named. The Alcoa guilty plea -together with related cases in the U.K. and Norway -- provides an unusual window into the modus
operandi of the middlemen who shuttle between companies and governments striking deals.
Before the U.S. announced the fine against Alcoa, U.K. prosecutors in October 2011 charged
Victor Dahdaleh, a London-based businessman, with laundering money and making improper
payments to officials in Bahrain related to Alcoa contracts. Dahdaleh was acquitted in December
after the prosecution dropped its case. While the U.S. plea agreement doesnt identify Dahdaleh
as Consultant A, it does show that a company owned by Dahdaleh played a role in the Alcoa unit
payments to Alba.
An expanding Koch network aims to spend $300 million to shape Senate

fight and 2016
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/an-expanding-koch-network-aims-to-spen...
The political network backed by the Koch brothers, already spending tens of millions of dollars this
year to boost Republicans chances of retaking the Senate, is expanding its national playbook as
part of a long-term strategy designed to strengthen conservatives heading into the 2016
presidential campaign. The effort, part of an overall budget that organizers expect to total nearly
$300 million this year, includes broadening outreach to veterans, viewed as an energized
constituency in the wake of the recent Veterans Affairs scandal, and messages tailored for Latinos
and young people, long considered core Democratic constituencies. The strategy for 2014
includes a new super PAC that can pour all its money into overt election activity. The plan
underscores the huge reach of the Koch-backed operation, a singular force in American
politics that has functioned outside the traditional campaign finance system. The Kochbacked network, a coalition of nonprofit organizations not required to disclose their donors, raised
$407 million in the 2012 cycle, a presidential election year in which outside spending increased
greatly on both sides of the aisle. This year, the network is likely to outstrip other organizations on
both the left and the right with spending on television ads and on-the-ground organizing. Its main
political organ, the free-market advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, has 240 full-time
employees in 32 states, more than double the size of its 2012 staff.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing elections news articles from
Inside the Koch Brothers Secret Billionaire Summit

2014-06-17, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/article/180267/exclusive-behind-koch-brothers-secret...
Charles and David Koch wrapped up their annual summer seminar on June 16. [Their] combined
net worth is more than $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The highly
secretive mega-donor conference, called American Courage: Our Commitment to a Free Society,
featured a whos who of Republican political elites. 300 individualsworth at least a billion each
were present. The explicit goal was to raise $500 million to take the Senate in the 2014 midterms
and another $500 million to make sure Hillary Clinton is never president. The Koch network
raised an estimated $407 million in the 2012 presidential election, according to an analysis by The
Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics. Intriguing in its ambiguity was the
Energy: Changing the Narrative session, presumably meant to change the narrative of climate
change to one of energy independence. The Kochs are investing large sums in a new energy
initiative with what looks like a deregulatory, pro-consumer spin to combat President Obamas
new regulations on carbon dioxide emissions and liberal billionaire Tom Steyers $100 million
commitment to fight climate change. It is not hard to see why the Kochs, as the owners of a
large carbon-based energy conglomerate with interests in oil, natural gas and coal, are
some of the most vocal climate deniers. In 2013, Forbes listed Koch Industries as the
second largest privately held company in the country. This conclave of billionaires is
determined to roll back Obamacare and carbon restrictions. In an America where money equals
speech, Koch is king.
Study asserts startling numbers of insider trading rogues

2014-06-17, CNBC
There is often a tip. Before many big mergers and acquisitions, word leaks out to select investors
who seek to covertly trade on the information. Stocks and options move in unusual ways that
aren't immediately clear. Then news of the deals crosses the ticker, surprising everyone except for
those already in the know. Sometimes the investor is found out and is prosecuted, sometimes not.
That's what everyone suspects, though until now the evidence has been largely anecdotal. Now, a
groundbreaking new study finally puts what we've instinctively thought into hard numbers and
the truth is worse than we imagined. A quarter of all public company deals may involve some
kind of insider trading, according to the study by two professors at the Stern School of Business
at New York University and one professor from McGill University. The study, perhaps the most
detailed and exhaustive of its kind, examined hundreds of transactions from 1996 through the end
of 2012. The professors examined stock option movements when an investor buys an option to
acquire a stock in the future at a set price as a way of determining whether unusual activity took
place in the 30 days before a deal's announcement. The professors are so confident in their
findings of pervasive insider trading that they determined statistically that the odds of the
trading "arising out of chance" were "about three in a trillion." But, the professors conclude,
the Securities and Exchange Commission litigated only "about 4.7 percent of the 1,859 ... deals
included in our sample."
Guys, Your Smartphone Is Hurting Your Sperm

http://time.com/2850594/guys-your-smartphone-is-hurting-your-sperm/
Even while the debate over whether cell phones cause cancer rages on, researchers are starting
to explore other potentially harmful effects that the ubiquitous devices may have on our health.
Because they emit low-level electromagnetic radiation (EMR), its possible that they can disturb
normal cell functions and even sleep. And with male infertility on the rise, Fiona Mathews at the
University of Exeter, in England, and her colleagues decided to investigate what role cell phones
might play in that trend. In their new research, they analyzed 10 previous studies, seven of
which involved the study of sperm motility, concentration and viability in the lab, and three
that included male patients at fertility clinics. Overall, among the 1,492 samples, exposureto-cell-phone EMR lowered sperm motility by 8%, and viability by 9%. Exactly how much the
cell phones are contributing to lower-quality sperm isnt clear yet the researchers note that how
long the phones are kept in pockets, as well as how much EMR the phones emit (most are legally
required to stay below 2.0 W/kg) are also important things to consider when figuring out an
individuals risk. But the lab-dish studies do show that sperm are affected by the exposure, and
that provides enough reason to investigate the possibility that cell phones may be contributing to
lower-quality sperm and potentially some cases of infertility.
Note: Remember how for decades the tobacco industry claimed cigarettes caused no harm even
while they were hiding studies which proved the opposite. For more on this, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.
IMF chief says banks haven't changed since financial crisis

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/27/imf-chief-lagarde-bankers-eth...
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, told an audience in London that
six years on from the deep financial crisis that engulfed the global economy, banks were resisting
reform and still too focused on excessive risk taking to secure their bonuses at the expense of
public trust. She said: "The behaviour of the financial sector has not changed fundamentally
in a number of dimensions since the crisis. The industry still prizes short-term profit over
long-term prudence, today's bonus over tomorrow's relationship. Some prominent firms
have even been mired in scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms - Libor and
foreign exchange rigging, money laundering, illegal foreclosure." Lagarde warned the toobig-to-fail problem among some of the world's largest financial institutions was still unresolved and
remained a major source of systematic risk, with implicit subsidies of $70bn (42bn) in the US, and
up to $300bn in the eurozone. Lagarde said international progress to reform the financial system
was too slow. Lagarde told [the] conference that rising inequality was also a barrier to growth, and
could undermine democracy and human rights. The issue has risen up the agenda in recent
months with the publication of the French economist Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the TwentyFirst Century. "One of the leading economic stories of our time is rising income inequality, and the
dark shadow it casts across the global economy," Lagarde said.
Europe's Secret Success

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/26/opinion/krugman-europes-secret-success.html
European economies, France in particular, get very bad press in America. Our political discourse is
dominated by reverse Robin-Hoodism the belief that economic success depends on being nice
to the rich, who wont create jobs if they are heavily taxed, and nasty to ordinary workers, who
wont accept jobs unless they have no alternative. And according to this ideology, Europe with
its high taxes and generous welfare states does everything wrong. So Europes economic
system must be collapsing, and a lot of reporting simply states the postulated collapse as a fact.
The reality, however, is very different. Yes, Southern Europe is experiencing an economic crisis
thanks to [a money muddle caused by Europe's premature adoption of a single currency]. But
Northern European nations, France included, have done far better [than America]. French adults
in their prime working years (25 to 54) are substantially more likely to have jobs than their
U.S. counterparts. Frances prime-age employment rate overtook Americas early in the
Bush administration. Other European nations with big welfare states, like Sweden and the
Netherlands, do even better. On the core issue of providing jobs for people who really should be
working, at this point old Europe is beating us hands down despite social benefits and regulations
that, according to free-market ideologues, should be hugely job-destroying.
Note: For more on the collusion of the US government with financial corporations to maintain their
profitability, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Scientists' hidden links to the GM food giants

2014-03-14, Daily Mail (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2581387/Scientists-hidden-links-GM-fo...
The authors of a study calling for GM crops to be fast-tracked into Britains farms and
kitchens all have links to the industry. The report was presented as the work of
independent scientists and was published on [March 13] by a government advisory body.
It was used to support a bid to speed up the development of the controversial crops in the UK, but
it has emerged that all five authors have a vested interest in promoting GM crops and food and
some are part-funded by the industry. Critics of GM [have] described the report as biased and
downright dangerous, and accused the biotech giants and the Government of mounting a crude
propaganda campaign to overturn public opposition. The academics behind the study were chosen
by the Council for Science and Technology, the body that advises the Prime Minister on science
policy issues. They include Professor Sir David Baulcombe, from Cambridge University, who works
as a consultant for GM firm Syngenta, which gives his department research funding. Syngenta is
behind a genetically modified maize or corn, called GA21, which could go into UK farms as early
as next spring, making it Britains first commercially grown GM crop. Also on the list is Professor
Jonathan Jones, of the Sainsbury Laboratory, which is at the centre of Britains GM research. It is
part-funded by former Labour science minister, Lord Sainsbury, who is one of the countrys biggest
supporters of the technology. Another co-author was Professor Jim Dunwell, of the University of
Reading. He was a founder member of CropGen, which describes its mission as to make the case
for GM crops and foods
Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
media sources available here. For an excellent summary of the risks and dangers from GMO
foods, click here.
U.S. Nuclear Agency Hid Concerns, Hailed Safety Record as Fukushima

Melted
2014-03-10, NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/fukushima-anniversary/u-s-nuclear-agency-hid...
In the tense days after a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi power
plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission made a
concerted effort to play down the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis to Americas aging nuclear
plants, according to thousands of internal emails reviewed by NBC News. The emails, obtained via
the Freedom of Information Act, show that the campaign to reassure the public about Americas
nuclear industry came as the agencys own experts were questioning U.S. safety standards and
scrambling to determine whether new rules were needed to ensure that the meltdown occurring at
the Japanese plant could not occur here. At the end of that long first weekend of the crisis three
years ago, NRC Public Affairs Director Eliot Brenner thanked his staff for sticking to the talking
points that the team had been distributing to senior officials and the public. "While we know more
than these say," Brenner wrote, "we're sticking to this story for now." There are numerous
examples in the emails of apparent misdirection or concealment in the initial weeks after the
Japanese plant was devastated: When asked to help reporters explain what would happen during
the worst-case scenario -- a nuclear meltdown -- the agency declined to address the questions.
The emails pull back the curtain on the agencys efforts to protect the industry it is
supposed to regulate. The NRC officials didn't lie, but they didn't always tell the whole truth
either. When someone asked about a topic that might reflect negatively on the industry,
they changed the subject.
Note: For more on corruption in the nuclear power industry, see the deeply revealing reports from
Brain-Damaged UK Victims of Swine Flu Vaccine to Get 60 Million

Compensation
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/brain-damaged-uk-victims-swine-flu-vaccine-get-60-mi...
Patients who suffered brain damage as a result of taking a swine flu vaccine are to receive multimillion-pound payouts from the UK government. Following the swine flu outbreak of 2009, about
60 million people, most of them children, received the vaccine. It was subsequently revealed that
the vaccine, Pandemrix, can cause narcolepsy and cataplexy in about one in 16,000 people, and
many more are expected to come forward with the symptoms. Across Europe, more than 800
children are so far known to have been made ill by the vaccine. The Pandemrix vaccine was
manufactured by pharmaceuticals giant Glaxo Smith Kline, which refused to supply
governments unless it was indemnified against any claim for damage caused. "There's no
doubt in my mind whatsoever that Pandemrix increased the occurrence of narcolepsy onset in
children," Emmanuelle Mignot, a specialist in sleep disorder at Stanford University in the United
States told Reuters. Among those affected are NHS medical staff, many of whom are now unable
to do their jobs because of the symptoms brought on by the vaccine. They will be suing the
government for millions in lost earnings. However, the vast majority of patients affected - around
80% - are children. Despite a 2011 warning from the European Medicines Agency against using
the vaccine on those under 20 and a study indicating a 13-fold heightened risk of narcolepsy in
vaccinated children, GSK has refused to acknowledge a link.
Note: Read about people in other countries who were damaged by the vaccine on this webpage.
See powerful media reports suggesting that both the avian flu and swine flu were manipulated to
promote fear and boost pharmaceutical sales. And watch a powerful CBS video describing how
4,000 Americans in 1976 sued for neurological damages caused by a swine flu vaccine that they
agreed to take after falling for fear mongering about the flu by the government. 300 people
allegedly died from the vaccine. For more, see the excellent resources in our Health Information
Center.
Fed knew about Libor rigging in 2008

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/libor-scandal/10654977/Fed-knew-about-Libo...
The US Federal Reserve knew about Libor rigging three years before the financial scandal
exploded but did not take any firm action, documents have revealed. According to newly published
transcripts of the central banks meetings in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the collapse
of Lehman Brothers, a senior Fed official first flagged the issue at a policy meeting in April 2008.
William Dudley expressed fears that banks were being dishonest in the way they were
calculating the London interbank offered rate a global benchmark interest rate used as the
basis for trillions of pounds of loans and financial contracts. Three years after his remarks, it
emerged that traders at more than a dozen banks, including Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and
Barclays, had routinely been trying to fix the official Libor rate in order to boost their own bonuses
and profits. The transcript of the Feds April 2008 meeting raises questions about why the
central bank did not move to properly tackle the scandal. There was no official regulator for
Libor at the time, and officials at the US Federal Reserve tried to blame British authorities for
allowing the benchmark interest rate to get out of control in the first place. The Fed declined to
comment on the transcripts or why it had not taken firm action..
Let Banks Fail Is Iceland Mantra as 2% Joblessness in Sight

2014-01-27, Washington Post/Bloomberg News
http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-MZURR66S973B01-76OMQ0EAA8SI8FK...
Iceland let its banks fail in 2008 because they proved too big to save. Now, the island is finding
crisis-management decisions made half a decade ago have put it on a trajectory thats turned 2
percent unemployment into a realistic goal. While the euro area grapples with record joblessness,
led by more than 25 percent in Greece and Spain, only about 4 percent of Icelands labor force is
without work. Prime Minister Sigmundur D. Gunnlaugsson says even thats too high. The islands
sudden economic meltdown in October 2008 made international headlines as a debt-fueled
banking boom ended in a matter of weeks when funding markets froze. Policy makers
overseeing the $14 billion economy refused to back the banks, which subsequently
defaulted on $85 billion. The governments decision to protect state finances left it with the
means to continue social support programs that shielded Icelanders from penury during
the worst financial crisis in six decades. Of creditor claims against the banks, Gunnlaugsson
says this is not public debt and never will be. Successive Icelandic governments have forced
banks to write off mortgage debts to help households. The governments 2014 budget sets aside
about 43 percent of its spending for the Welfare Ministry, a level that is largely unchanged since
before the crisis. Inflation, which peaked at 19 percent in January 2009, ... was 4.2 percent in
December. To support households, Gunnlaugsson in November unveiled a plan to provide as
much as 7 percent of gross domestic product in mortgage debt relief. The government intends to
finance the plan, which the OECD has criticized as being too blunt, partly by raising taxes on
banks.
Note: Why is Iceland's major success in letting banks fail getting so little press coverage? For a
possible answer, click here. For more on government responses to the banking crisis and their
impacts on people, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available
here.
China's princelings storing riches in Caribbean offshore haven

http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/jan/21/china-british-vir...
More than a dozen family members of China's top political and military leaders are making
use of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, leaked financial documents
reveal. The brother-in-law of China's current president, Xi Jinping, as well as the son and son-inlaw of former premier Wen Jiabao are among the political relations making use of the offshore
havens, financial records show. The documents also disclose the central role of major
Western banks and accountancy firms ... in the offshore world, acting as middlemen in the
establishing of companies. The Hong Kong office of Credit Suisse, for example, established the
BVI company Trend Gold Consultants for Wen Yunsong, the son of Wen Jiabao, during his father's
premiership while PwC and UBS performed similar services for hundreds of other wealthy
Chinese individuals. The disclosure of China's use of secretive financial structures is the latest
revelation from "Offshore Secrets", a two-year reporting effort led by the International Consortium
of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which obtained more than 200 gigabytes of leaked financial data
from two companies in the British Virgin Islands, and shared the information with the Guardian and
other international news outlets. In all, the ICIJ data reveals more than 21,000 clients from
mainland China and Hong Kong have made use of offshore havens in the Caribbean. Between
$1tn and $4tn in untraced assets have left China since 2000, according to estimates.
Note: Read the ICIJ's full report of the latest offshore links. For more on financial corruption, see
the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used
computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with
RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry. Documents leaked by
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed
formula for generating random numbers to create a "back door" in encryption products, the New
York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important
distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance
security in personal computers and many other products. Undisclosed until now was that RSA
received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for
number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract.
Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue that the
relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year. The RSA deal shows one
way the NSA carried out what Snowden's documents describe as a key strategy for
enhancing surveillance: the systematic erosion of security tools. NSA documents released
in recent months called for using "commercial relationships" to advance that goal, but did
not name any security companies as collaborators.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency activities, see the deeply revealing reports
EU fines banks record $2.3B over Libor

2013-12-04, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/04/news/companies/libor-europe-fines
The European Union has levied a record antitrust fine of 1.71 billion ($2.3 billion) on six European
and U.S. banks and brokers for rigging benchmark interest rates. Deutsche Bank was hit with the
single biggest penalty of 725.4 million for participating in illegal cartels to manipulate the Euro
Interbank Offered Rate, or Euribor, and London interbank offered rate, or Libor. "What is
shocking about the Libor and Euribor scandals is ... the collusion between banks who are
supposed to be competing with each other," said Joaquin Almunia, Europe's top antitrust
official. Other banks fined [were] Societe Generale (446 million), Royal Bank of Scotland (391
million), JP Morgan (79.9 million) and Citigroup (70 million). U.K.-based broker RP Martin was
fined 247,000 for facilitating one infringement. EU investigators said the Euribor cartel operated
for nearly three years between 2005 and 2008, as traders discussed submissions used to
calculate the benchmark rate, and compared trading and pricing strategies. They also discovered
illegal collusion in the setting of Libor in Japanese yen between 2007 and 2010. UBS and
Barclays, [which] have already been fined by regulators in the U.K. and U.S. for Libor rigging, were
spared further punishment because they cooperated with the European Commission investigation.
They dodged new fines of 2.5 billion and 690 million respectively. The scandal broke in the
middle of 2012 when Barclays admitted trying to manipulate Libor, which together with related
rates is used to price trillions of dollars of financial products around the world.
Note: Notice that no one is going to jail and no one is being personally fined for these incredibly
outrageous manipulations. For an analysis that argues the "record fines" are really just a "slap on
the wrist" for the big banks, click here. For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing
As Hospital Prices Soar, a Stitch Tops $500

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/health/as-hospital-costs-soar-single-stitch...
In a medical system notorious for opaque finances and inflated bills, nothing is more convoluted
than hospital pricing, economists say. Hospital charges represent about a third of the $2.7 trillion
annual United States health care bill, the biggest single segment, according to government
statistics, and are the largest driver of medical inflation, a new study in The Journal of the
American Medical Association found. A day spent as an inpatient at an American hospital costs on
average more than $4,000, five times the charge in many other developed countries, according to
the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurance industries. The
most expensive hospitals charge more than $12,500 a day. And at many of them ...
emergency rooms are profit centers. That is why one of the simplest and oldest medical
procedures closing a wound with a needle and thread typically leads to bills of at least
$1,500 and often much more. At Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, Daniel Diaz, 29, a public
relations executive, was billed $3,355.96 for five stitches on his finger after cutting himself while
peeling an avocado. At a hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., Arch Roberts Jr., 56, a former government
employee, was charged more than $2,000 for three stitches after being bitten by a dog. Insurers
and patients negotiated lower prices, but those charges were a starting point. The main reason
for high hospital costs in the United States, economists say, is fiscal, not medical:
Hospitals are the most powerful players in a health care system that has little or no price
regulation in the private market.
Note: For more on corruption in the health industry, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable
major media sources available here.
The lies behind this transatlantic trade deal

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/02/transatlantic-free-trade...
[The European Commission's] plans to create a single market incorporating Europe and the United
States, progressing so nicely when hardly anyone knew, have been blown wide open. All over
Europe people are asking why this is happening; why we were not consulted; for whom it is being
done. The Commission insists that its Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership should
include a toxic mechanism called investor-state dispute settlement. Where this has been forced
into other trade agreements, it has allowed big corporations to sue governments before secretive
arbitration panels composed of corporate lawyers, which bypass domestic courts and override the
will of parliaments. This mechanism could threaten almost any means by which governments
might seek to defend their citizens or protect the natural world. Already it is being used by
mining companies to sue governments trying to keep them out of protected areas; by
banks fighting financial regulation; by a nuclear company contesting Germany's decision to
switch off atomic power. No longer able to keep this process quiet, the European commission
has instead devised a strategy for lying to us. The message is that the trade deal is about
"delivering growth and jobs" and will not "undermine regulation and existing levels of protection in
areas like health, safety and the environment". Just one problem: it's not true. From the outset, the
transatlantic partnership has been driven by corporations and their lobby groups, who boast of
being able to "co-write" it.
JPMorgan settlement is a payout to victims

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/editorials/article/JPMorgan-settlement-is-a-pay...
When the fires from the 2007-08 financial crisis were still being fought, JPMorgan Chase looked
like a winner. Not only was JPMorgan Chase able to scoop up former rivals Washington Mutual
and Bear Stearns for bargain basement prices, but its stock value shot up by nearly 31 percent
over the past 4 1/2 years. But this year has been a little less kind to JPMorgan Chase. On
[November 20) JPMorgan Chase agreed to a $13 billion settlement with the federal government
over selling toxic mortgage investments. It also admitted to wrongdoing in knowingly peddling the
instruments. Both settlements are for the "incomplete information" JPMorgan Chase gave to the
pension funds for their purchases of toxic securities during the years 2004 to 2008. Even for a
colossus such as JPMorgan Chase, $13 billion is a lot of money - about half of its annual profit.
Forcing JPMorgan to admit wrongdoing - a rare concession - may open the door to more
headaches for the company, especially because the government is continuing a criminal probe into
its mortgage prices. The scale of the devastation is still so enormous that the only question left
for the Justice Department to answer is why no one from any of the big banks has yet to go
to jail. Wall Street's wrongdoing was about more than a dollar cost - it was about the
widespread human suffering that remains with us today. Jail time would be more than
appropriate, but so far the banks have been able to pay their way out of it.
Note: Because JP Morgan Chase can write off $11 billion of the fine as tax deductible, the real fine
is actually reduced by $4 billion to about $7 billion, just one-third of Chase's $21 billion profit in the
year 2012. For more on financial fraud, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
The Biggest, Baddest Prison Profiteer of Them All

2013-11-05, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-lava/the-biggest-baddest-priso_b_4219372....
"CCA" has become a dirty word. Kanye West cited it when rapping about America's class of "New
Slaves." Anonymous invoked it to describe a bad financial investment that undermines justice. And
for state after state, the word represents a failed approach to public safety. Profiting off mass
incarceration is a dirty business. Private prison company Corrections Corporation of America
[CCA] squanders taxpayer money and runs facilities rife with human rights abuses. All private
prison companies have corrupting incentives. One is to save money by cutting corners.
Another is to promote their bottom line. Although CCA isn't the only company with these
incentives, it has done more than any other corporation to [make] the private prison
industry into a behemoth plagued by abuse and neglect and profiting off our nation's overreliance on incarceration. CCA routinely shirks its responsibility to comply with basic standards.
In Idaho, CCA employees falsified nearly 4,800 hours of staffing records. In Ohio, auditors found
outrageous violations like prison without running water for toilets, in which prisoners had no choice
but to use plastic bags for defecation and cups for urination. And yet, CCA made $1.7 billion in just
the last year -- more than any other private prison company. The company pours money into both
lobbying and campaign contributions. From 2002 to 2012, CCA devoted more than $19 million to
lobbying Congress, and its PAC shelled out over $1.4 million to candidates for federal office during
the same time period.
Note: CCA is just one of the many powerful entities getting rich off mass incarceration. Meet the
other Prison Profiteers and take action to fight their abuses at PrisonProfiteers.org. For a video
exposing this craziness, click here. For more on corruption in the government-prison-industrial
complex, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
How economic growth has become anti-life

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/01/how-economic-growth-has-...
Limitless growth is the fantasy of economists, businesses and politicians. It is seen as a measure
of progress. As a result, gross domestic product (GDP), which is supposed to measure the wealth
of nations, has emerged as both the most powerful number and dominant concept in our times.
However, economic growth hides the poverty it creates through the destruction of nature, which in
turn leads to communities lacking the capacity to provide for themselves. In effect, growth
measures the conversion of nature into cash, and commons into commodities. Today, economics
is separated from and opposed to both ecological processes and basic needs. While the
destruction of nature has been justified on grounds of creating growth, poverty and dispossession
[have] increased. While being non-sustainable, it is also economically unjust. The dominant model
of economic development has in fact become anti-life. Nobel-prize winning economists Joseph
Stiglitz and Amartya Sen have admitted that GDP does not capture the human condition
and urged the creation of different tools to gauge the wellbeing of nations. This is why
countries like Bhutan have adopted the gross national happiness in place of gross domestic
product to calculate progress. We need to create measures beyond GDP, and economies
beyond the global supermarket, to rejuvenate real wealth. We need to remember that the real
currency of life is life itself.
Curbing antibiotics on farms taking too long: Our view

2013-10-27, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/10/27/antibiotics-farms-drug-resis...
Want to ensure that miracle drugs can no longer perform miracles? Then do what some physicians
and industrial livestock farmers have done for years: Overprescribe antibiotics to people, and use
them cavalierly in farm animals to promote growth or prevent infections before they even occur.
Last month, federal officials quantified that danger: At least 23,000 people die from antibioticresistant bacteria each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
which said that's a conservative figure. For more than four decades, scientists and
government health agencies have warned about the danger this poses for development of
drug-resistant bugs. Yet last week, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future reported
that little progress has been made on limiting the use of antibiotics on farms. The agriculture
industry maintains that the connection is murky between antibiotic use in animals and drug
resistance in people. On the other side of the debate is a long list of scientists, public health
officials and veterinarians whose views carry more sense and less self-interest. In 2011 alone, 1.9
million pounds of penicillins and 12.3 million pounds of tetracyclines were sold for use in food
animals. It's hard to believe that wouldn't have an effect. According to the CDC, humans can pick
up drug-resistant bugs through contact with animals or by eating contaminated food. But neither
Congress nor the FDA has acted to curtail the broad dangers. The well-financed agriculture
industry has won most rounds. And regulators have dragged their feet.
Note: For more on important health issues, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
Privacy Fears Grow as Cities Increase Surveillance

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/technology/privacy-fears-as-surveillance-gr...
Federal grants of $7 million, initially intended to help thwart terror attacks at the port in Oakland,
Calif., are instead going to a police initiative that will collect and analyze reams of surveillance
data. The new system ... is the latest example of how cities are compiling and processing large
amounts of information, known as big data, for routine law enforcement. And the system
underscores how technology has enabled the tracking of people in many aspects of life. Like the
Oakland effort, other pushes to use new surveillance tools in law enforcement are supported with
federal dollars. The New York Police Department, aided by federal financing, has a big data
system that links 3,000 surveillance cameras with license plate readers, radiation sensors, criminal
databases and terror suspect lists. Police in Massachusetts have used federal money to buy
automated license plate scanners. And police in Texas have bought a drone with homeland
security money. [Critics] of the Oakland initiative, formally known as the Domain Awareness
Center, [say] the program, which will create a central repository of surveillance information,
will also gather data about the everyday movements and habits of law-abiding residents.
Oakland has a contract with the Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, to
build its system. That company has earned the bulk of its $12 billion in annual revenue from
military contracts.
Note: For more on government privacy invasions, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable
Tax the rich? IMF sparks a mini revolution

2013-10-11, Yahoo!/Agence France Presse
http://news.yahoo.com/tax-rich-imf-sparks-mini-revolution-020128173.html;_ylt...
Tax the rich and better target the multinationals: The IMF has set off shockwaves this week in
Washington by suggesting countries fight budget deficits by raising taxes. Guardian of financial
orthodoxy, the International Monetary Fund, which is holding its annual meetings with the World
Bank this week in the US capital, typically calls for nations in difficulty to slash public spending to
reduce their deficits. But in its Fiscal Monitor report, subtitled "Taxing Times", the Fund advanced
the idea of taxing the highest-income people and their assets to reinforce the legitimacy of
spending cuts and fight against growing income inequalities. "Scope seems to exist in
many advanced economies to raise more revenue from the top of the income distribution,"
the IMF wrote, noting "steep cuts" in top rates since the early 1980s. According to IMF
estimates, taxing the rich even at the same rates during the 1980s would reap fiscal revenues
equal to 0.25 percent of economic output in the developed countries. "The gain could in some
cases, such as that of the United States, be more significant," around 1.5 percent of gross
domestic product, said the IMF report, which also singled out deficient taxation of multinational
companies. In the US alone, legal loopholes deprive the Treasury of roughly $60 billion in receipts,
the global lender said. The IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, kept up the sales pitch for a
more just fiscal policy. "It's clearly something finance ministers are interested in, it's something that
is necessary for the right balance of public finances," said Lagarde, a former French finance
minister.
Note: Yahoo! was the only major media in the US to pick up this eye-opening news, with the
possible exception of a Forbes article which shows how afraid they are of this development. For
more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
Meet the Medical Company Making $1.4 Billion a Year Off Sick Prisoners
http://www.thenation.com/blog/176533/meet-medical-company-making-14-billion-y...
The healthcare provider Corizon makes an estimated $1.4 billion off sick prisoners every
year. With profits like those, you would think it was actually treating prisoners. But in states
that are using Corizon to provide healthcare in their prisonsand right now twenty-nine are
medical neglect and abuse run rampant. Corizons attitude toward the debilitating virus
Hepatitis C is especially alarming: They just dont treat it. Last year alone, no fewer than seven
sick prisoners died at Metro Corrections, a jail in Louisville, Kentucky, while on Corizons watch.
The company made headlines when six employees quit their jobs, according to local press, amid
an investigation by the jail that found that the workers may have contributed to two of the deaths.
This summer, it was announced that the contract between Corizon and the city would not be
renewed. The Nations Liliana Segura gives an overview of the massive scope of the crisis of
companies profiting off mass incarceration: With 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United
States, she writes, prisons are big business.
Note: For a video exposing this craziness, click here. Corizon is just one of the many powerful
entities getting rich off mass incarceration. Meet the other Prison Profiteers and take action to fight
their abuses at PrisonProfiteers.org. For more on corruption in the government-prison-industrial
Greg Palast: Potential Fed Chair Summers at Heart of Global Economic
Crisis
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18555-revealed-potential-fed-chair-summers...
Investigative journalist Greg Palast has obtained a secret memo authored by then deputy Treasury
secretary Larry Summers and his protg Timothy Geithner detailing their plans to roll back
financial regulation. In the piece, titled "The Confidential Memo at the Heart of the Global Financial
Crisis", [Palast] writes: "The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak's fantasy: that in the late
1990s, the top U.S. Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to
rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3 percent unemployment in
Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to
this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears." [Palast:] This is really important right
now because Larry Summers is President Obama's top choice to become head of a Federal
Reserve Board. He would take Ben Bernanke's place. And what this memo is--they call it the "end
game memo". Geithner calls it the "end game". And what's the game being played? The memo
asks Summers to get back to the five biggest, most powerful bankers in the United States to act on
and determine what our policy should be for world governance of the banking system. Basically,
there were secret calls going between Larry Summers and the head of Bank of America, the
head of Goldman Sachs, the head of Citibank and Merrill, the five big boys, to find out what
should happen to the world financial policing order. And the answer was: smash it.
Summers was holding secret meetings with the big bankers to come up with a scheme to
eliminate financial regulation across the planet.
Note: Greg Palast is a New York Times-bestselling author and a freelance journalist for the British
Broadcasting Corporation as well as the British newspaper The Observer. He is one of the few
journalists uncovering the deepest layers of secrecy in our world. For a key past report of his on
elections corruption, click here.
How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/health/exploring-salines-secret-costs.html?...
It is one of the most common components of emergency medicine: an intravenous bag of sterile
saltwater. Luckily for anyone who has ever needed an IV bag to replenish lost fluids or to receive
medication, it is also one of the least expensive. The average manufacturers price, according to
government data, has fluctuated in recent years from 44 cents to $1. Yet there is nothing either
cheap or simple about its ultimate cost, as [revealed by] the commercial path of IV bags from the
factory to the veins of more than 100 patients struck by a May 2012 outbreak of food poisoning in
upstate New York. Some of the patients bills would later include markups of 100 to 200 times the
manufacturers price, not counting separate charges for IV administration. And on other bills, a
bundled charge for IV therapy was almost 1,000 times the official cost of the solution. At
every step from manufacturer to patient, there are confidential deals among the major
players, including drug companies, purchasing organizations and distributors, and
insurers. These deals so obscure prices and profits that even participants cannot say what the
simplest component of care actually costs, let alone what it should cost. And that leaves taxpayers
and patients alike with an inflated bottom line and little or no way to challenge it. The real cost of a
bag of normal saline, like the true cost of medical supplies from gauze to heart implants,
disappears into an opaque realm of byzantine contracts, confidential rebates and fees that would
be considered illegal kickbacks in many other industries.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing medical corruption news
California duped on energy buys again

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/California-duped-on-ene...
JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay federal regulators $410 million to settle allegations that
the giant bank manipulated energy markets in California and Michigan. About $285 million of the
settlement will go to the U.S. Treasury for civil penalties, and about $124 million will be refunded to
California ratepayers. The remainder will be refunded to Michigan ratepayers. If this story sounds
familiar, that's because it is. Californians who remember the Enron energy debacle of 2000-01
won't be surprised to learn that JPMorgan's traders have been accused of fraudulent
behavior. Once again, the fraud was performed by manipulating the auction system that was
developed by a quasi-state agency, the California Independent System Operator, to handle
California's electricity needs. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found that JPMorgan
engaged in 12 manipulative bidding strategies, which wound up forcing ratepayers to pay
higher amounts than they should have - all because the bank wanted to find a cheap way to
profit off of aging power plants in Southern California. JPMorgan used a variety of bait-andswitch strategies - duping Cal-ISO into paying exorbitant fees for running the plants at a low level,
for instance, or manipulating the bidding system so that Cal-ISO was forced to pay rates that were
many times higher than market rate. The fact that this kind of manipulation is still happening is
upsetting. And while $410 million is a record settlement for the FERC, it's a drop in the bucket to
JPMorgan, which reported $6.5 billion in quarterly profits this month.
Note: Remember Enron, which scammed millions and then went bankrupt, wiping out pensions of
its many employees? To read CBS reports on how Enron purposely shut down power plants so
they could cause and then cash in on the energy crisis, click here.
The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-31/the-public-private-surveillance-part...
Computers and networks inherently produce data, and our constant interactions with them allow
corporations to collect an enormous amount of intensely personal data about us as we go about
our daily lives. Sometimes we produce this data inadvertently simply by using our phones, credit
cards, computers and other devices. Sometimes we give corporations this data directly on Google,
Facebook, [or] Apples iCloud ... in exchange for whatever free or cheap service we receive from
the Internet in return. The NSA is also in the business of spying on everyone, and it has realized
its far easier to collect all the data from these corporations rather than from us directly. The result
is a corporate-government surveillance partnership, one that allows both the government
and corporations to get away with things they couldnt otherwise. There are two types of laws
in the U.S., each designed to constrain a different type of power: constitutional law, which places
limitations on government, and regulatory law, which constrains corporations. Historically, these
two areas have largely remained separate, but today each group has learned how to use the
others laws to bypass their own restrictions. The government uses corporations to get around
its limits, and corporations use the government to get around their limits. This partnership
manifests itself in various ways. The government uses corporations to circumvent its prohibitions
against eavesdropping domestically on its citizens. Corporations rely on the government to ensure
that they have unfettered use of the data they collect.
Note: For more on government and corporate privacy invasions, see the deeply revealing reports
Sen. Warren Leads Charge to Break Up Big Banks

2013-07-07, CNBC
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?play=1&video=3000182337
CNBCs BRIAN SULLIVAN: Is there anyone else in the Senate that is a professor? ELIZABETH
WARREN: I don't think so. ... We had the big crash in 2008. What does everyone say about it?
They say too much concentration in financial services creates too big to fail. It puts us at bigger
risk. And what's happened since 2008? The four biggest financial institutions are now 30%
bigger than they were in 2008. The central premise behind a 21st century Glass-Steagall is
to say if you want to get out there and take risks, go ahead and do it. But ... you can't get
access to FDIC insured deposits when you do. That way ... at least one portion of our
banking sector stays safe. From 1797 to 1933, the American banking system crashed about
every 15 years. In 1933, we put good reforms in place, for which Glass-Steagall was the
centerpiece, and from 1933 to the early 1980s, thats a 50 year period, we didnt have any of that
none. We kept the system steady and secure. And it was only as we started deregulating, [you hit]
the S&L crisis, and what did we do? We deregulated some more. And then you hit long-term
capital management at the end of the 90s, and what did we do as a country? This country
continued to deregulate more. And then we hit the big crash in 2008. You are not going to defend
the proposition that regulation can never work, it did work. SULLIVAN: I didnt say regulation never
worked, Senator. By far and away, and I agree, there were fewer bank failures in that time after
Glass-Steagall. ELIZABETH WARREN: Fewer, as in, of the big ones, zero.
Note: Sen. Warren is one of the few bright lights in Congress. Watch this interview to see why. To
read about later censorship of this interview by NBC, click here.
Rigged-Benchmark Probes Proliferate From Singapore to UK

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-16/rigged-benchmark-probes-prolifera...
The probe of Libor manipulation is proving to be the tip of the iceberg as inquiries into assets from
derivatives to foreign exchange show that if theres a chance to rig benchmark rates in world
markets, someone is usually willing to try. Singapores monetary authority last week censured 20
banks for attempting to fix interest rate levels in the island state and ordered them to set aside as
much as $9.6 billion. Britains markets regulator is looking into the $4.7 trillion-a-day currency
market after Bloomberg News reported that traders have manipulated key rates for more than a
decade, citing five dealers. Its happened time and again: all of these markets have been
influenced by major market-makers, which is a polite way of saying theyve been rigged,
Charles Geisst, a finance professor at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York, said. While the
indexes under scrutiny are little known to the public, their influence extends to trillions of
dollars in securities and derivatives. Barclays, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland have been
fined about $2.5 billion in the past year for distorting the London interbank offered rate, which is
tied to $300 trillion worth of securities. Regulators are also probing ISDAfix, a measure used in the
$370 trillion interest-rate swaps market, as well as how some oil products prices are set. Inquiries
are broadening into the transparency of benchmarks whose levels can be determined by the same
people whose income they affect. In the case of Libor, traders who stood to profit worked with bank
employees responsible for submissions for the benchmark to rig the price.
Note: To read highly revealing major media articles showing just how crazy and unregulated the
derivatives market is, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on
financial corruption, click here.
America's 50 worst charities rake in nearly $1 billion for corporate

fundraisers
2013-06-06, Tampa Bay Times (one of Florida's largest newspapers)
http://www.tampabay.com/topics/specials/worst-charities1.page
You've given them more than $1 billion. They've given almost nothing to the needy. The 50 worst
charities in America devote less than 4 percent of donations raised to direct cash aid. Some
charities give even less. Over a decade, one diabetes charity raised nearly $14 million and gave
about $10,000 to patients. The worst charity in America operates from a metal warehouse behind
a gas station. Every year, Kids Wish Network raises millions of dollars in donations in the
name of dying children and their families. Every year, it spends less than 3 cents on the
dollar helping kids. Most of the rest gets diverted to enrich the charity's operators and the
for-profit companies Kids Wish hires to drum up donations. In the past decade alone, Kids
Wish has channeled nearly $110 million donated for sick children to its corporate solicitors. An
additional $4.8 million has gone to pay the charity's founder and his own consulting firms. But Kids
Wish is not an isolated case, a yearlong investigation by the Tampa Bay Times and The Center for
Investigative Reporting has found. These nonprofits adopt popular causes or mimic well-known
charity names that fool donors. Then they rake in cash, year after year. Even as they plead for
financial support, operators at many of the 50 worst charities have lied to donors about where their
money goes, taken multiple salaries, secretly paid themselves consulting fees or arranged
fundraising contracts with friends. One cancer charity paid a company owned by the president's
son nearly $18 million over eight years to solicit funds.
Note: For lots more excellent reporting on this important subject, click here. For a webpage which
shows that many of those who call asking you for donations (including Firefighters Charitable
Foundation, International Union of Police Associations, and National Veterans Service Fund) are
not using your money for the causes they claim to represent, click here.
The week ahead: Bilderberg 2013 comes to the Grove hotel, Watford
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/02/week-ahead-bilderberg-2013-watford
On [June 6], a heady mix of politicians, bank bosses, billionaires, chief executives and European
royalty will swoop up the elegant drive of the Grove hotel, north of Watford, to begin the annual
Bilderberg conference. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell will hop from his limo, delighted to be
spending three solid days in policy talks with the head of HSBC, the president of Dow Chemical,
his favourite European finance ministers and US intelligence chiefs. The conference is the
highlight of every plutocrat's year and has been since 1954. The only time Bilderberg skipped a
year was 1976, after the group's founding chairman, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was
caught taking bribes from Lockheed Martin. It may seem odd, as our own lobbying scandal
unfolds, amid calls for a statutory register of lobbyists, that a bunch of our senior politicians will be
holed up for three days in luxurious privacy with the chairmen and CEOs of hedge funds, tech
corporations and vast multinational holding companies, with zero press oversight. Michael
Meacher, MP ... describes the conference as "an anti-democratic cabal of the leaders of western
market capitalism meeting in private to maintain their own power and influence outside the reach
of public scrutiny". The Bilderberg conference is paid for, in the UK, by an officially registered
charity: the Bilderberg Association (charity number 272706). The charity receives regular fivefigure sums from two kindly supporters of its benevolent aims: Goldman Sachs and BP.
The most recent documentary proof of this is from 2008, since when the charity has omitted
its donors' names from its accounts.
Note: For a list of this year's Bilderberg participants, which include 90-year-old Henry Kissinger,
click here. For lots more on secret societies from reliable sources, click here.
The giants of the green world that profit from the planet's destruction

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/03/giants-green-world-profit...
The movement demanding that public interest institutions divest their holdings from fossil
fuels is on a serious roll. Chapters have opened up in more than 100 US cities and states as
well as on more than 300 campuses, where students are holding protests, debates and sit-ins to
pressure their [universities] to rid their endowments of oil, gas and coal holdings. Some schools [in
the UK], including University College London, ... already have active divestment campaigns. Four
US colleges have announced their intention to divest their endowments from fossil fuel
stocks and bonds and, in late April, 10 US cities made similar commitments, including San
Francisco [and Seattle]. To quote the mission statement of the Fossil Free movement: "If it is
wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage. We believe that
educational and religious institutions, city and state governments, and other institutions that serve
the public good should divest from fossil fuels." An important target is missing from the list: the
environmental organisations themselves. Some of the most powerful and wealthiest environmental
organisations have long behaved as if they had a stake in the oil and gas industry. They led the
climate movement down various dead ends: carbon trading, carbon offsets, natural gas as a
"bridge fuel" what these policies all held in common is that they created the illusion of progress
while allowing the fossil fuel companies to keep mining, drilling and fracking with abandon.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on global warming, click
here.
Top economist Jeffrey Sachs says Wall Street is full of 'crooks' and
hasn't changed since the financial crash
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/top-economist-jeffrey-sachs-...
One of the world's most respected economists has said Wall St is full of "crooks" and hasn't
reformed its "pathological" culture since the financial crash. Professor Jeffrey Sachs told a highpowered audience at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve earlier this month that the lack of reform
was down to a docile president, a docile White House and a docile regulatory system that
absolutely cant find its voice. Sachs, from Columbia University, has twice been named one of
Time magazines 100 Most Influential People in the World, and is an adviser to the World
Bank and IMF. What has been revealed, in my view, is prima facie criminal behavior, he
said. Its financial fraud on a very large extent. Theres also a tremendous amount of
insider trading. We have a corrupt politics to the core, I am afraid to say, and . . . both parties
are up to their neck in this. This has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans." Sachs
described an environment of Wall Street influencing politicians with growing campaign
contributions. In the 2012 election cycle, political contributions by the securities and investment
sector hit $271.5 million, compared with $176 million in 2008, according to the Center for
Responsive Politics. I am going to put it very bluntly: I regard the moral environment as
pathological. They have no responsibility to pay taxes; they have no responsibility to their clients;
they have no responsibility to people, to counterparties in transactions, he said. They are tough,
greedy, aggressive and feel absolutely out of control in a quite literal sense, and they have gamed
the system to a remarkable extent.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on criminal practices of Wall
Street corporations, click here.
Billionaires Flee Havens as Trillions Pursued Offshore

2013-04-29, Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-04-29/billionaires-flee-as-tax-district...
Billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, Russias 14th-richest person, and his wife, Elena Rybolovleva, have
been brawling for almost five years in at least seven countries over his $9.5 billion fortune. In a
divorce complaint originated in Geneva in 2008, Rybolovleva accused her husband of using a
multitude of third parties to create a network of offshore holding companies and trusts to place
assets -- including about $500 million in art, $36 million in jewelry and an $80 million yacht -beyond her reach. She has brought legal action against the 48-year-old Rybolovlev in the British
Virgin Islands, England, Wales, the U.S., Cyprus, Singapore and Switzerland, and is seeking $6
billion. The suits provide a window into the offshore structures and secrecy jurisdictions the worlds
richest people use to manage, preserve and conceal their assets. According to Tax Justice
Network, a U.K.-based organization that campaigns for transparency in the financial system,
wealthy individuals were hiding as much as $32 trillion offshore at the end of 2010. Fewer
than 100,000 people own $9.8 trillion of offshore assets. More than 30 percent of the worlds
200 richest people, who have a $2.8 trillion collective net worth ...control part of their
personal fortune through an offshore holding company or other domestic entity where the
assets are held indirectly. These structures often hide assets from tax authorities or provide legal
protection from government seizure and lawsuits.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on failure of governments to
regulate great accumulations of wealth, click here.
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-fi...
Conspiracy theorists of the world, ... we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The world is
a rigged game. The world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.
You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which ... perhaps as many as 16 ... banks have been
manipulating global interest rates, in the process [manipulating] the prices of upward of $500
trillion ... worth of financial instruments. Now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out
that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being
investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess.
Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have
worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark
number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps. Interest-rate
swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage
their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. [It's] a $379 trillion market,
meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the
United States federal budget. It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this
scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks including Barclays,
UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland that serve on the Libor
panel that sets global interest rates.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the criminal practices of
the financial industry, click here.
Big banks 'more dangerous than ever', IMF's Christine Lagarde says
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9985280/Big-b...
Europe needs to recapitalise, restructure or shut down its banks as part of a vital clean-up of the
industry, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde said as she warned
that the threat from worlds biggest lenders was more dangerous than ever. Speaking in New
York ahead of next weeks IMF Spring meeting, Ms Lagarde launched a broadside against the
financial services industry for resisting urgent reform. In too many cases from the United States
in 2008 to Cyprus today we have seen what happens when a banking sector chooses the quick
buck ..., backing a business model that ultimately destabilizes the economy. We simply cannot
have pre-crisis banking in a post-crisis world. We need reform, even in the face of intense
pushback from an industry sometimes reluctant to abandon lucrative lines of business.
Almost five years since Lehman Brothers collapsed, she claimed: The 'oversize banking
model of too-big-to-fail is more dangerous than ever. We must get to the root of the problem
with comprehensive and clear regulation. Regulators have forced banks to increase significantly
their loss-absorbing capital buffers since the crisis, but are still working on "resolution"
mechanisms that will allow giant lenders to fail without hitting the taxpayer and threatening
financial stability. Regulators must also work together, she added, amid evidence that some
countries are caving into pressure from the banking lobby.
here.
The extraordinary range of people using offshore hideaways

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/04/secrets-offshore-hideaways-laid-bare
The secret records obtained by ICIJ [International Consortium of Investigative Journalists] lay bare
an extraordinary range of people using offshore hideaways. They include ... families of despots,
Wall Street swindlers, eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian executives, [and]
international arms dealers. The leaks illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has aggressively
spread around the globe. The records detail offshore holdings in more than 170 territories; this
represents the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a
media organisation. Eighty-six journalists from 46 countries used both hi-tech data crunching and
traditional reporting to sift through emails and account ledgers covering nearly 30 years.
"Everything is much more geared toward business," David Marchant, publisher of OffshoreAlert,
an online journal, said. "If you're dishonest, you can take advantage of that in a bad way." ICIJ's
15-month investigation found that ... the secrecy and lax oversight offered by the offshore
world appears to allow fraud, tax-dodging and political corruption to thrive. A study by
James S Henry, former chief economist at McKinsey & Company [and a board member of the Tax
Justice Network], estimates that wealthy individuals have $21-$32tn tucked away in offshore
havens roughly equivalent to the size of the US and Japanese economies combined.
Note: To learn more about how all of this incredibly revealing data was obtained and processed,
click here. For a powerfully revealing documentary showing how huge corporations park profits
offshore to avoid taxes, click here.
Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/03/offshore-secrets-offshore-tax-haven
Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the
first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from
presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of
concealing assets from his ex-wife. The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the
offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands, has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide
to the booming offshore trade. The naming project may be extremely damaging for confidence
among the world's wealthiest people, no longer certain that the size of their fortunes
remains hidden from governments and from their neighbours. As well as Britons hiding
wealth offshore, an extraordinary array of government officials and rich families across the world
are identified, from Canada, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, China, Thailand and former
communist states. The Caribbean micro-state has incorporated more than a million such offshore
entities since it began marketing itself worldwide in the 1980s. Owners' true identities are never
revealed. Even the island's official financial regulators normally have no idea who is behind them.
The British Foreign Office depends on the BVI's company licensing revenue to subsidise this
residual outpost of empire, while lawyers and accountants in the City of London benefit from a
lucrative trade as intermediaries.
Note: For profiles of a few leading secret account holders, click here. For a powerfully revealing
documentary showing how huge corporations park profits offshore to avoid taxes, click here.
Overseas stashes complicate tax reform

http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/bottomline/article/Overseas-stashes-compl...
According to a new report, most of the 30 companies listed on the Dow Jones industrial
average are paying a far lower proportion of their profits in federal taxes - at a time when
the Dow is reaching new highs - than they have in past decades. The main reason: not so
much those yawning tax loopholes, but the multinationals' ability to stash more of their money
overseas, where it's taxed at a lower rate and the feds can't touch it. Hewlett-Packard, according to
the analysis, experienced the steepest percentage reduction in federal taxes - 47 percent since
1969. Intel's share of income paid in taxes has fallen by 29.6 percent since 1973, and Cisco
Systems by 24.7 percent since 1989. U.S. multinationals ... often pay far less than the standard 35
percent corporate tax rate - a rate many of these companies are pushing to have significantly
lowered. In its year-end report, Intel recorded $13 billion in profit - a record - and said its tax rate
was approximately 29 percent. In 2010 HP paid $1.75 billion in income taxes on $9.4 billion of
pretax income, a tax rate of 18.6 percent. As a share of the nation's GDP, U.S. corporate income
tax has fallen by more than half, from 5.5 percent in 1946 to 2.6 percent in 2011.
Note: The statement about corporate income tax falling from 5.5 percent of GDP in 1946 to 2.6
percent in 2011 is quite misleading, making it appear that corporate taxes are a small percentage
of total income. It is much more accurate to compare the total annual amount of corporate taxes to
individuals' taxes. As this historical tax chart clearly shows, in 1946 corporate income tax
receipts were 74% of the amount received from individual income taxes. By 2011, corporate
taxes dropped to less than 17% of the amount paid in individual income taxes. That is a huge
percentage drop in corporate taxes.
Court Docs Reveal Blackwaters Secret CIA Past

2013-03-14, The Daily Beast/Newsweek
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/14/exclusive-erik-prince-on-bla...
Last month a three-year-long federal prosecution of Blackwater collapsed. The governments 15felony indictmenton such charges as conspiring to hide purchases of automatic rifles and other
weapons from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosivescould have led to years
of jail time for Blackwater personnel. In the end, however, the government got only misdemeanor
guilty pleas by two former executives, each of whom were sentenced to four months of house
arrest, three years probation, and a fine of $5,000. Prosecutors dropped charges against three
other executives named in the suit and abandoned the felony charges altogether. But the most
noteworthy thing about the largely failed prosecution wasnt the outcome. It was the tens of
thousands of pages of documentssome declassifiedthat the litigation left in its wake. These
documents illuminate Blackwaters defense strategy: to defeat the charges it was facing,
Blackwater built a case not only that it worked with the CIAwhich was already widely knownbut
that it was in many ways an extension of the agency itself. [CEO Erik] Prince [said] recently,
Blackwaters work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and
facilities that the Agency lacked. In the years that followed, the company became a virtual
extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous
missions, which the Agency either could not or would not do in-house.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the growing privatization
of intelligence agency functions, click here.
Sugar industry's secret documents echo tobacco tactics

2013-03-08, CBC News (Canada's public broadcasting company)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2013/03/08/f-vp-crowe-big-sugar.html
When Cristin Couzens went on the hunt for evidence that Big Sugar had manipulated public
opinion, she had no idea what she was doing. She was a dentist, not an investigative reporter. But
she couldn't let go of the nagging suspicion that something was amiss. Her obsession started in an
unlikely place, at a dental conference in Seattle in 2007 about diabetes and gum disease. When
one speaker listed foods to avoid, there was no mention of sugar. "I thought this was very strange,"
Couzens said. She quit her job, exhausted her savings and spent 15 months scouring library
archives. Then one day she found what she was looking for, in a cardboard box at the Colorado
State University archives. What Couzens found was something food industry critics have been
seeking for years documents suggesting that the sugar industry used Big Tobacco tactics to
deflect growing concern over the health effects of sugar. "So I had lists of their board reports,
their financial statements, I had names of their scientific consultants, I had a list of research
projects they funded, and I had these memos where they were describing how their PR men
should handle conflict of interest questions from the press," she said. As Couzens sorted through
the documents, the full extent of that campaign to forge public opinion emerged. The
documents describe industry lobby efforts to sponsor scientific research, silence media
reports critical of sugar, and block dietary guidelines to limit sugar consumption.
Note: Cristin Couzens publicized secret sugar industry documents in a magazine article titled "Big
Sugar's Sweet Little Lies." For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on
corporate corruption, click here.
Elizabeth Warren Wants HSBC Bankers Jailed for Money Laundering

2013-03-07, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/elizabeth-warren-wants-hsbc-bank...
Elizabeth Warren has a question: How much money does a bank have to launder before people go
to jail? Warren ... posed that question numerous times to financial regulators at a Senate Banking
Committee hearing [on] banks and money laundering. In December, U.S. Justice Department
officials announced that HSBC, Europes largest bank, would pay a $1.92 billion fine after
laundering $881 million for drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia. The two regulators, Under
Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen and Federal Reserve Governor
Jerome H. Powell, deflected Warrens questions, saying that criminal prosecutions are for the
Justice Department to decide. An exasperated Warren said, as she wrapped up her questioning,
If youre caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good youre going to jail. If it
happens repeatedly, you may go to jail for the rest of your life. But evidently, if you launder
nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your
company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night every single
individual associated with this and I just think thats fundamentally wrong.
government and finance, click here.
Why Americans are dying earlier than their international peers

2013-01-09, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/09/health/international-health-report/index.html
Despite spending more per person on health care than any other country, Americans are getting
sicker and dying younger than our international peers -- a problem persisting across all ages and
both genders. [The National Research Council and Institute Of Medicine] panel released its report,
titled "U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health," on [January 9]. "Our
panel was unprepared for the gravity of the finding we uncovered," chair Steven Woolf wrote in the
report's preface. Data from 2007 show Americans' life expectancy is 3.7 years shorter for men and
5.2 years shorter for women than in the leading nations -- Switzerland for men and Japan for
women. As of 2011, 27 countries had higher life expectancies at birth than the United States. "The
tragedy is not that the United States is losing a contest with other countries," the report
states, "but that Americans are dying and suffering from illness and injury at rates that are
demonstrably unnecessary." The report outlines nine health areas where the United States lags
behind other rich nations, including infant mortality, homicides, teen pregnancy, drug-related
deaths, obesity and disabilities. And our children are less likely than children in peer countries to
reach their fifth birthday. "Many of these conditions have a particularly profound effect on young
people, reducing the odds that Americans will live to age 50," the report states.
Note: For a much deeper analysis of the reasons behind this, see Dr. Mercola's insightful
comments at this link.
The coming drone attack on America

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/21/coming-drone-attack-america
With the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and
by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in
surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization which is due to begin in earnest at
the start of the new year it means that the police state is now officially here. In February of
this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of
drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that
this followed a major lobbying effort, "a huge push by the defense sector" to promote the use of
drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as
hummingbirds. Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their
planned abundant use by corporations: police in Seattle have already deployed them. An
unclassified US Air Force document reported by CBS News expands on this unprecedented and
unconstitutional step one that formally brings the military into the role of controlling domestic
populations on US soil. This document accompanies a major federal push for drone deployment
this year in the United States, accompanied by federal policies to encourage law enforcement
agencies to obtain and use them locally, as well as by federal support for their commercial
deployment. That is to say: now HSBC, Chase, Halliburton etc can have their very own fleets of
domestic surveillance drones.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on civil liberties, click here.
The Bribery Aisle: How Wal-Mart Got Its Way in Mexico

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/business/walmart-bribes-teotihuacan.html?pa...
After years of study, [San Juan Teotihuacn]s elected leaders had just approved a new zoning
map. The leaders wanted to limit growth near the pyramids, and they considered the towns main
entrance too congested already. As a result, the 2003 zoning map prohibited commercial
development [there]. But 30 miles away in Mexico City, at the headquarters of Wal-Mart de Mexico,
executives were not about to be thwarted by an unfavorable zoning decision. Instead, records and
interviews show, they decided to undo the damage with one well-placed $52,000 bribe. The plan
was simple. The zoning map would not become law until it was published in a government
newspaper. So Wal-Mart de Mexico arranged to bribe an official to change the map before it was
sent to the newspaper. Sure enough, when the map was published, the zoning ... was redrawn to
allow Wal-Marts store. Problem solved. Wal-Mart de Mexico broke ground months later, provoking
fierce opposition. The Timess examination reveals that ... Wal-Mart de Mexico was an
aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise
prohibited. It used bribes to subvert democratic governance public votes, open debates,
transparent procedures. It used bribes to circumvent regulatory safeguards that protect
Mexican citizens from unsafe construction. It used bribes to outflank rivals. Through
confidential Wal-Mart documents, The Times identified 19 store sites across Mexico that were the
target of Wal-Mart de Mexicos bribes.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption,
click here.
Push to step up domestic use of drones

2012-11-27, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspapers)
http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Push-to-step-up-domestic-use-of-drones-4...
Are unmanned aircraft, known to have difficulty avoiding collisions, safe to use in America's
crowded airspace? And would their widespread use for surveillance result in unconstitutional
invasions of privacy? Experts say neither question has been answered satisfactorily. Yet the
federal government is rushing to open America's skies to tens of thousands of the drones - pushed
to do so by a law championed by manufacturers of the unmanned aircraft. The 60-member House
of Representatives' "drone caucus" - officially, the House Unmanned Systems Caucus - has
helped push that agenda. And over the last four years, caucus members have drawn nearly
$8 million in drone-related campaign contributions. Domestic use of drones began with limited
aerial patrols of the nation's borders by Customs and Border Patrol authorities. But the industry
and its allies pushed for more, leading to provisions in the FAA Modernization and Reform Act,
signed into law on Feb. 14 of this year. The law requires the FAA to fully integrate the unmanned
aerial vehicles into national airspace by September 2015. The FAA has predicted that 30,000
drones could be flying in the United States in less than 20 years. House members from
California, Texas, Virginia and New York on the bipartisan "drone caucus" received the lion's share
of the funds channeled to lawmakers from dozens of firms that are members of the Association for
Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on drone killings and other
war crimes committed by the US in its wars of aggression in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, click
here.
Once-jailed banker gets $104 million whistleblower payout

2012-09-11, NBC News
http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/11/13804631-once-jailed-banker-ge...
Attorneys for jailed former Swiss banker Bradley Birkenfeld announced [on September 11] that the
IRS will pay him $104 million as a whistleblower reward for information he turned over to the US
government. The information Birkenfeld revealed detailed the inner workings of the secretive
private wealth management division of the Swiss bank UBS, where the American-born Birkenfeld
helped his US clients evade taxes by hiding wealth overseas. Tuesday's announcement
represents an astonishing turn of fortune for Birkenfeld, who was released from federal prison in
August after serving 31 months on charges relating to his efforts to help a wealthy client avoid
taxes. Birkenfeld attorney Stephen Kohn said the information the former Swiss banker turned over
to the IRS led directly to the $780 million fine paid to the US by his former employer, UBS, as well
as leading over 35,000 taxpayers to participate in amnesty programs to voluntarily repatriate their
illegal offshore accounts. That resulted in the collection of over $5 billion dollars in back
taxes, fines and penalties that otherwise would have remained outside the reach of the
government. Birkenfeld's disclosures also led to the first cracks in the legendarily secretive
Swiss banking system, and ultimately the Swiss government changed its tax treaty with the
United States. UBS turned over the names of more than than 4,900 U.S. taxpayers who held
illegal offshore accounts. Investigations into those accounts are ongoing.
financial corporations and government regulators, click here.
Freedom of Choice Includes the Right to Know

2012-08-26, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (One of Seattle's leading newspapers)
http://blog.seattlepi.com/timigustafsonrd/2012/08/26/freedom-of-choice-includ...
In California ... voters will decide in the November election whether consumers should have the
right to know what goes in their food. Proposition 37, if it passes, will require food manufacturers to
disclose whether their products contain genetically modified organisms (GMO). It is estimated
that 40 to 70 percent of foods currently sold in grocery stores in California contain some
genetically altered ingredients. The [FDA] does not require safety studies, and no long-term
research on potential health effects has been conducted yet, although there are reports of
preliminary studies that have linked GMOs to allergies and other health risks. Proposition 37
does not intend to impose any bans. Its simply saying: Lets give consumers information so we
can choose for ourselves whether or not we want to eat genetically engineered foods. Consumers
in 50 other countries including all of Europe, Japan, China and Russia all have this right,
argued Grant Lundberg, the CEO of Lundberg Family Farms, and Kathryn Phillips, Director of the
Sierra Club California. Having started as a grassroots movement, Proposition 37 has a good
chance of succeeding. A whopping 65 percent of registered voters in California say they support
the measure. But so far, less than 3 million dollars have been raised by the organizers. Opponents,
mainly chemical and food-processing companies, including Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, Dow, Nestle,
Coca Cola and Pepsico, have raised more than nine times as much. Ignoring facts and keeping
information secret is not a sustainable strategy in the long run. Californias Right-to-Know
movement could morph into something like that with the potential of spreading across the whole
country.
Note: This article neglects to mention scientific studies which have shown that lab animals got
very sick and some even died after being fed GM food. For a well researched and footnoted paper
on this, click here. For a great collection of past major media articles revealing the serious risks
and dangers of genetically modified foods, click here.
USDA panel gets altered-crops pay plan

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/USDA-panel-gets-altered-crops-pay-plan-...
California voters this fall will decide a ballot measure that would require labeling of foods
containing genetically engineered material. But the Department of Agriculture is already tied in
knots over how to deal with the contamination of organic and conventional foods by biotech crops.
On [August 27], a USDA advisory panel will consider a draft plan to compensate farmers whose
crops have been contaminated by pollen, seeds or other stray genetically engineered material.
The meeting is expected to be contentious, pitting the biotechnology and organic industries against
each other. The draft report acknowledged the difficulty of preventing such material from
accidentally entering the food supply and concerns that the purity of traditional seeds may be
threatened. It also cited fears on both sides that official action to address contamination could send
a signal to U.S. consumers and export markets in Europe, Japan and elsewhere that the purity and
even safety of U.S. crops are suspect. Bioengineered crops dominate U.S. commodities,
including 90 percent of U.S. corn. In some states, penetration is all but complete, including
99 percent of the Arkansas cotton crop. Most processed foods contain genetically
engineered material. The organic industry said biotech companies should be responsible for
containing their own genes and that contamination threatens the right of farmers to choose how to
farm.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the dangers of
genetically-modified foods, click here. For more on the California ballot measure to require GM
labelling called the "right to know," click here.
Why Goldman Sachs, Other Wall Street Titans Are Not Being Prosecuted
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/14/why-goldman-sachs-other-wall...
On [August 9] the Department of Justice announced it will not prosecute Goldman Sachs or any of
its employees in a financial-fraud probe. Despite the Obama administrations promises to
clean up Wall Street in the wake of Americas worst financial crisis, there has not been a
single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite
financial institutions. Why is that? In a word: cronyism. Take Goldman Sachs, for example. In
2008, Goldman Sachs employees were among Barack Obamas top campaign contributors, giving
a combined $1,013,091. [Attorney General] Eric Holders former law firm, Covington & Burling,
also counts Goldman Sachs as one of its clients. Furthermore, in April 2011, when the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a scathing report detailing Goldmans
suspicious Abacus deal, several Goldman executives and their families began flooding Obama
campaign coffers with donations, some giving the maximum $35,800. The individuals the DOJs
Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force has placed in its prosecutorial crosshairs seem
shockingly small compared with the Wall Street titans the Obama administration promised to bring
to justice. To be sure, financial fraud of any kind is wrong and should be prosecuted. But locking up
pygmies is hardly the kind of financial-fraud crackdown Americans expected in the wake of the
largest financial crisis in U.S. history. Increasingly, there appear to be two sets of rules: one for the
average citizen, and another for the connected cronies who rule the inside game.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corporations'
control over government, see our Banking Bailout archive here.
Modified food will be on voters' menu

2012-08-10, Houston Chronicle (One of Houston's leading newspapers)
http://www.chron.com/business/article/Modified-food-will-be-on-voters-menu-37...
In November, voters will decide whether to make California the first state in the nation to
require labels on most genetically modified food products. At least 18 states, including
California, have tried to pass similar laws through their legislatures and failed. This time, however,
the measure made it to the statewide ballot with 1 million citizen signatures; recent polls
show Proposition 37 winning by a significant margin. Food activists across the country are
watching the California battle closely, with opponents of genetic modification hoping to make the
proposition a model for other states. Supporters of the law, including organic trade groups and
environmentalists, say consumers have a right to know if the food they're eating contains
genetically modified material - particularly when the long-term health effects are unclear. Seventy
percent to 80 percent of processed foods sold in the U.S. are made with genetically engineered
ingredients, including corn, soybeans, sugar beets and cotton oil. If the California measure passes,
processed genetically engineered food products would include the words "Partially produced with
genetic engineering" on the front or back label. For whole foods such as sweet corn or salmon,
grocers would be required to have a sign on the shelf. Alcohol, most meat, eggs and dairy
products would be exempt. Jeffrey Smith, the executive director of the Institute for Responsible
Technology based in Iowa, said "Based on the evidence - damage to virtually every organ
evaluated and immune and gastrointestinal problems - labels are needed."
Note: If you read this entire article, you will detect a clear bias against GMO labelling. It quotes a
UCLA professor stating, "There is not one credible scientist working on this that would call it
unsafe." Yet the article fails to mention the many scientists who have provided solid evidence that
GMOs are unsafe. For a powerful essay showing the grave risks and dangers of GMOs, click here.
For a New York Times article listing several scientists who raised serious questions about GMOs,
click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on genetically modified
foods, click here.
French Lawmakers Pass Trading Transaction Tax

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-31/french-lawmakers-pass-budget-bill...
Frances parliament passed President Francois Hollandes revised 2012 budget, including a 0.2
percent transaction tax on share purchases that takes effect today. The bills passage into law
marks the first step toward fiscal reform and a move toward justice, Finance Minister
Pierre Moscovici said in a statement. With the vote, France becomes the first European
country to impose a transaction tax on share purchases. The Hollande government is
doubling the levy to 0.2 percent from the 0.1 percent tax initially advocated by former President
Nicolas Sarkozy. Many institutional investors may escape the tax using so-called contracts for
difference, or CFDs, offered by prime brokers that let them bet on a stocks gain or loss with
owning the shares. The transaction tax, aimed at curbing market speculation, will be paid on the
purchase of 109 French stocks with market values of more than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion),
including Pernod Ricard SA and Vivendi SA. The new budget law will be applied to transactions
resulting in a transfer of property of companies trading in Paris, regardless of where the buyer or
seller is based, and may be expanded next year along with some European partners. France
estimated that the doubling of the tax will bring in an additional 170 million euros in 2012 and 500
million euros next year. The state will start collecting the tax in November, Budget Minister Jerome
Cahuzacs press office said. The government estimated that the doubling of the tax will cut the
volume of stock purchases to 800 billion euros from 1.05 trillion euros with a 0.1 percent levy and
1.3 trillion euros with no transaction tax.
Note: This exciting news is one of the most underreported events of the year. A universal FTT
would stop much of the craziness in the derivatives market. The EU is also seriously considering
implementing an FTT. Click here for more.
Court Papers Undercut Ratings Agencies' Defense

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/business/documents-seem-to-endanger-ratings...
For years, the ratings agencies have contended that the grades they assign debt securities are
independent opinions and therefore entitled to First Amendment protections, like those afforded
journalists. But newly released documents in a class-action case ... cast doubt on the
independence of the two largest agencies, Moodys Investors Service and Standard & Poors. The
case, filed in 2008 by a group of 15 institutional investors against Morgan Stanley and the two
agencies, involves a British-based debt issuer called Cheyne Finance. Cheyne collapsed in August
2007 under a load of troubled mortgage securities. Even though Cheynes portfolio was bulging
with residential mortgage securities, some of its debt received the agencies highest ratings, a
grade equal to that assigned to United States Treasury securities. When the primary analyst at
S.& P. notified Morgan Stanley that some of the Cheyne securities would most likely receive
a BBB rating, not the A grade that the firm had wanted, the agency received a blistering email from a Morgan Stanley executive. S.& P. subsequently raised the grade to A. After the
institutions that bought Cheynes debt sued Morgan Stanley and the ratings agencies, Moodys
and S.& P. immediately mounted a First Amendment defense. But Shira A. Scheindlin, the federal
judge overseeing the matter ... argued that the ratings were not opinions but were
misrepresentations that were possibly a result of fraud or negligence.
here.
Jamie Dimon, welfare recipient

2012-06-19, MSN
http://money.msn.com/investing/jamie-dimon-welfare-recipient-bloomberg.aspx
When JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified in the U.S. House today, he presented himself
as a champion of free-market capitalism in opposition to an overweening government. His position
would be more convincing if his bank weren't such a beneficiary of corporate welfare. JPMorgan
receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by
the International Monetary Fund. The money helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses. More
important, it distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the
sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy. In
recent decades, governments and central banks around the world have developed a consistent
pattern of behavior when trouble strikes banks that are large or interconnected enough to threaten
the broader economy: They step in to ensure that all the bank's creditors, not just depositors, are
paid in full. With each new banking crisis, the value of the implicit subsidy grows. JPMorgan's
share of the subsidy is $14 billion a year, or about 77% of its net income for the past four
quarters. In other words, U.S. taxpayers helped foot the bill for the multibillion-dollar
trading loss that is the focus of today's hearing. When Dimon pushes back against capital
requirements or the Volcker rule, it's worth remembering that he's pushing for a form of corporate
welfare that, left unchecked, could lead to a crisis too big for the government to contain.
Note: For more vitally important information on this, explore the excellent, reliable information in
our Banking Corruption Information Center available here. For other key major media articles
showing blatant financial corruption, click here.
Chevron-Ecuador Fight Comes to Canada

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-31/chevron-ecuador-fight-comes-t...
A peripatetic, two-decade-old pollution lawsuit against Chevron has bounced from New York to
Ecuador, back to New York, and now on to the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, Canada. There
is no end in sight for the highly mobile litigation. The case began in federal court in New York in
1993, when lawyers representing residents of the rainforest in eastern Ecuador filed suit against
Texaco, blaming the multinational oil company for contamination of the Amazon beginning in the
late 1960s. Texaco fought for nine years to get the case dismissed based on the argument that it
ought to have been brought in Ecuador. In 2001, near the end of Texacos ultimately successful
campaign to avoid a U.S. legal battle, Chevron acquired Texaco. Having promised the U.S.
judiciary it would abide by the dictates of the Ecuadorian courts, Chevron discovered itself
on a slippery slope toward legal disaster. In February 2011, a trial judge in Lago Agrio
[Ecuador] entered an $18 billion verdict against Chevron, the largest environmental judgment
ever. Chevron had declared that the Ecuadorian judicial proceedings were shot through with fraud
and that it would not pay a dime to the plaintiffs or their team of American and Ecuadorian lawyers.
Now the plaintiffs have launched a fresh suit in Toronto, asking a Canadian judge to enforce the
Ecuadorian verdict against Chevron in Canada, where the company has a subsidiary and ample
assets.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
Rothschild and Rockefeller families team up for some extra wealth

creation
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9300784/Roths...
The Rothschild and Rockefeller families have teamed up to buy assets from banks and other
distressed sellers in a union between two of the best-known names in financial history. RIT Capital
Partners, which is chaired by Lord Rothschild, has taken a 37pc stake in Rockefeller Financial
Services, the familys wealth advisory and asset management wing. It has snapped up the holding
from French bank Socit Gnrale for less than 100m. The transatlantic alliance cements a
five-decade acquaintance between the now ennobled Jacob Rothschild, 76, and David
Rockefeller, 96, the grandson of the ruthlessly acquisitive American oilman and
philanthropist John D Rockefeller. The two patricians now plan to capitalise on their family
names to buy other asset managers or their portfolios, using their networks of top-notch contacts
to ensure they get a seat at the table for any deal. The Rockefeller group goes back to 1882, set
up to invest the family money made by John D Rockefellers Standard Oil, the forerunner for
todays Exxon Corporation, which he built with a Darwinian aggression. Do you know the only
thing that gives me pleasure? Its to see my dividends coming in, he once said. The Rothschild
banking dynasty has its roots in the 18th century when Mayer Amschel Rothschild set up a
business in Frankfurt. That sprang to fame in 1815 when it bought government bonds in
anticipation of Napoleons defeat at Waterloo.
Note: Why is that these two hugely wealthy families get so little press coverage? Could it be that
their wealth and influence exerts control over the major media? For more on secret societies which
command huge hidden power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
615 dead dolphins found on Peru beaches; acoustic tests for oil to
blame?
2012-04-04, MSNBC News
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/04/11016438-615-dead-dolphins-fo...
Conservationists counted 615 dead dolphins along a 90-mile stretch of beaches in Peru ... and the
leading suspect is acoustic testing offshore by oil companies. "If you can count 615 dead dolphins,
you can be sure there are a great many more out at sea and the total will reach into the
thousands, Hardy Jones, head of the conservation group BlueVoice.org, said in a statement after
he and an expert with ORCA Peru walked the beaches. BlueVoice.org stated that "initial tests ...
show evidence of acoustical impact from sonic blasts used in exploration for oil." The
ORCA Peru expert, veterinarian Carlos Yaipen Llanos, said that while "we have no definitive
evidence," he suspects acoustic testing created ... a sonic blast that led to internal bleeding, loss
of equilibrium and disorientation. Another possibility is that the dolphins suffered from a disease
outbreak, Yaipen Llanos said. "It is a horrifying thought that these dolphins would die in
agony over a prolonged period if they were impacted by sonic blast," said Jones. Numerous
dolphins first started washing ashore in January, with the largest amount coming in early February.
Thousands of dead anchovies were also seen. BlueVoice.org noted that the U.S. has suspended
similar testing in the Gulf of Mexico due to recent sightings of dead and sick dolphins. The ban was
set to last through the dolphins' calving season, which ends in May.
Note: A San Francisco Chronicle article on this a few days later states, "All of the 20 or so animals
... examined showed middle-ear hemorrhage and fracture of the ear's periotic bone. ... Most of the
dolphins apparently were alive when they beached." Clearly sonic blasts of some sort are driving
these intelligent animals to beach themselves and commit suicide. For clear evidence this is the
result of oil exploration, click here. For many other excellent media articles on whales on dolphins,
click here.
Vatican Leaks Raise Questions Over Finances

2012-03-29, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149614995/vatican-leaks-raise-questions-over-fi...
The Vatican has launched a rare criminal investigation to uncover who is behind leaks of highly
sensitive documents that allege corruption and financial mismanagement in Vatican City. The
documents also shed light on purported infighting over the Vatican Bank's compliance with
international money-laundering regulations. A television show in late January on an independent
network first revealed letters addressed last year to Pope Benedict XVI from the then-deputy
governor of Vatican City, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. Vigano complained of corruption within
the church and protested orders to remove him from his post and send him to be the papal nuncio,
or ambassador, to Washington. Under Vigano's watch, the Holy See balance sheet went from $10
million in the red to almost $45 million in the black in just 12 months. By being kicked upstairs,
Vigano wrote, his efforts to clean up the Vatican would be stopped and would also tarnish the
pontiff's image by bringing into question his resolve to establish transparency inside the Vatican.
Italian authorities are investigating the origin of $33 million in Vatican funds deposited in
Italian banks. The Italian media have reported that JP Morgan Chase is closing the Vatican
Bank's account with its Milan branch because it felt the Holy See had failed to provide
sufficient data on money transfers.
Note: The fact that JP Morgan is closing it's Vatican accounts is a major sign of the intense
changes happening behind the scenes.
Pope's visit to Mexico refocuses attention on narco-church relations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/22/popes-visit-mexico-narco-church
Photographs of a plaque thanking [a drug cartel] kingpin for building [a] new modernist
church with a 20-metre high metal cross ... caused a scandal when they were published in a
national newspaper in October 2010. The scandal has faded but the plaque remains an
uncomfortable reminder of the influence of the drugs culture in the Mexican Catholic
church. Narco-church relations are nothing new. In 1993 the leaders of the Tijuana cartel held a
secret meeting with the papal nuncio in Mexico City as part of an effort to distance themselves
from a chaotic shootout that had killed a cardinal. The meeting was brokered by a Tijuana priest
who had received bountiful donations over the years. Pope Benedict [expressed] concern about
such relations at the start of his papacy. But while the bishops have since periodically stressed that
drug money can never be purified ... they have done little else. While the pope is expected to talk
about the violence battering Mexico during his three-day visit ... observers believe he is unlikely to
make more than a passing reference to corrosion of the church itself. In the meantime one cartel
has sought to take propagandistic advantage of the visit. Banners signed by the Knights Templar
cartel hung up around Guanajauto on Sunday welcomed the pope and promised to refrain from
"acts of war" during his visit. That same cartel was suspected to be responsible for the appearance
of 10 severed heads outside a slaughterhouse in another state on the same day.
Vatican bank image hurt as JP Morgan closes account

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46784687/Vatican_bank_image_hurt_as_JP_Morgan_closes_a...
JP Morgan Chase is closing the Vatican bank's account with an Italian branch of the U.S. banking
giant because of concerns about a lack of transparency at the Holy See's financial institution,
Italian newspapers reported. The move is a blow to the Vatican's drive to have its bank included in
Europe's "white list" of states that comply with international standards against tax fraud and
money-laundering. The bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), enacted
major reforms last year in an attempt to get Europe's seal of approval and put behind it scandals
that have included accusations of money laundering and fraud. The IOR, founded in 1942 by Pope
Pius XII, handles financial activities for the Vatican, for orders of priests and nuns, and for other
Roman Catholic religious institutions. The IOR was entangled in the collapse 30 years ago of
Banco Ambrosiano, with its lurid allegations about money-laundering, freemasons, mafiosi
and the mysterious death of Ambrosiano chairman Roberto Calvi - "God's banker". The IOR
then held a small stake in the Ambrosiano, at the time Italy's largest private bank and investigators
alleged that it was partly responsible for the Ambrosiano's fraudulent bankruptcy. Several
investigations have failed to determine whether Calvi, who was found hanging under Blackfriars
Bridge near London's financial district, killed himself or was murdered. The IOR denied any role in
the Ambrosiano collapse but paid $250 million to creditors in what it called a "goodwill gesture".
Note: The fact that JP Morgan is closing it's Vatican accounts is a major sign of the intense
changes happening behind the scenes.
MF Global Still Set to Pay Bonuses

Three top executives of MF Global Holdings Ltd. when it collapsed could get bonuses of as much
as several hundred thousand dollars each under a plan by a trustee overseeing the securities
firm's bankruptcy case. Louis Freeh, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director now in
charge of unwinding what is left of the New York company, is expected to ask a bankruptcy-court
judge as soon as this month to approve performance-related payouts for the chief operating officer,
finance chief and general counsel at MF Global. Under the expected pay plan, the three
executives and as many as 20 other MF Global employees working for Mr. Freeh would get the
bonuses only if they hit specified targets such as increasing the value of MF Global's estate for
creditors. The bonus plan could face fierce resistance. One reason: Criminal and civil
investigators are scrutinizing the role of top executives and others at MF Global in money
transfers that resulted in a $1.6 billion shortfall in customer accounts. So far, many hedge
funds, farmers and other investors who bought and sold through MF Global have gotten about 72
cents out of every $1 held by the firm when it collapsed. Hopes for additional recoveries have
dimmed as the probe grinds on. Neal Wolkoff, a former executive at the New York Mercantile
Exchange who now works as a consultant, said it "is shocking" that Messrs. Abelow and
Steenkamp still work at MF Global and could earn bonuses "because it represents a conflict of
interest."
Note: For an abundance of major media articles revealing major financial manipulations, click
here.
Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France

2012-03-03, Washington Post blog
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/why-an-mri-costs-1080-in-am...
There is a simple reason health care in the United States costs more than it does anywhere else:
The prices are higher. In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors
in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978. If we had the perperson costs of any of those countries, Americas deficits would vanish. There are many possible
explanations for why Americans pay so much more. It could be that were sicker. Or that we go to
the doctor more frequently. But health researchers have largely discarded these theories.
Americans dont see the doctor more often or stay longer in the hospital than residents of other
countries. Quite the opposite, actually. We spend less time in the hospital than Germans and see
the doctor less often than the Canadians. The International Federation of Health Plans ... surveyed
its members on the prices paid for 23 medical services and products in different countries, asking
after everything from a routine doctors visit to a dose of Lipitor to coronary bypass surgery. And in
22 of 23 cases, Americans are paying higher prices than residents of other developed
countries. Usually, were paying quite a bit more. In America, ... its a free-for-all. Providers
largely charge what they can get away with, often offering different prices to different
insurers, and an even higher price to the uninsured.
Note: And why are the prices higher in the U.S.? Could it be that the U.S. is the only developed
nation that doesn't have nationalized health care, so that profit is no longer a motive in caring for
people's health? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption in
the medical industry, click here.
Arrests made in Italy after discovery of $6 trillion in fake U.S. bonds

2012-02-17, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/17/world/europe/italy-counterfeit-bonds/index....
Italian authorities on [February 17] arrested eight people in possession of an estimated $6 trillion in
counterfeit U.S. Treasury bonds, according to Italian paramilitary police and an Italian news
agency. The discovery of the fake bonds -- made to look as if they were printed by the U.S.
Federal Reserve in 1934 -- came about as part of an investigation into a local mafia association.
The arrest order for the alleged criminals was issued by a preliminary investigative judge in
the southern Italian city of Potenza, police noted. Italian authorities, working with their
Swiss counterparts, learned about the counterfeit bonds by way of eavesdropping on
wiretapped phones, police said. The total of $6 trillion is more than twice the Italy's national debt.
The Italian news agency, ANSA, reported that the bonds were also discovered "alongside copies
of the Treaty of Versailles rolled inside lead cylinders."
Note: Who would be stupid enough to fake bonds in denominations of hundreds of billions of
dollars? This is highly unlikely, as no one would ever cash them, unless there is much more to this
than meets the eye. Could this be part of the arrests David Wilcock has been predicting in his
powerful essay at this link? Wilcock has lots of corroborated information on these very strange
bonds worth astronomical figures.
Butterball Workers Arrested on Animal Cruelty Charges

2012-02-16, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/butterball-workers-arrested-animal-cruelty-char...
Six workers at a Butterball turkey farm in North Carolina face criminal charges after an undercover
video revealed alleged animal abuse, and a state employee who tipped off Butterball before a
police raid on the farm has pled guilty to obstruction of justice. Butterball ... accounts for 20
percent of total turkey production in the U.S.. Mercy for Animals [is] the animal rights group that
shot the undercover video. "Unfortunately, every time we send an investigator they emerge with
shocking evidence of animal abuse," said MFA executive director Nathan Runkle. "Before ending
up in restaurants and grocery stores, turkeys killed for Butterball are routinely crowded into
filthy warehouses, neglected to die from infected, bloody wounds, and thrown, kicked, and
beaten by factory farm workers." In addition, Dr. Sarah Mason, a veterinarian at the North
Carolina Department of Agriculture, was suspended from her job ... and was sentenced to 45 days
in the Hoke County jail after pleading guilty to obstructing justice and obstructing a public officer.
Mason admitted calling a friend who worked at Butterball prior to the raid. Though she initially
denied talking to the Butterball employee, Dr. Mason later admitted telling him about the existence
of the Mercy for Animals video showing alleged abuse. In the video, workers can be seen kicking
and stomping on turkeys, as well as dragging them by their wings and necks. The video also
shows injured birds with open wounds and exposed flesh. Butterball ... has said it was "shocked"
by the undercover video, is taking the animal cruelty investigation seriously.
Note: For two excellent and fun short videos showing both the problem and solutions for cruel
factory farming, click here and here. For lots more little-known, excellent information to promote
your health, click here.
Rothschild loses libel case, and reveals secret world of money and
politics
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rothschild-loses-libel-case-an...
Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty and friend of seemingly everyone in the
spheres of finance, business and politics, ... has lost his libel case against the Daily Mail, which he
sued for "substantial damages" over its account of his and [Lord] Mandelson's extraordinary trip to
Russia in January 2005. Mr Rothschild claimed he was subjected to "sustained and unjustified"
attacks in the May 2010 article, which portrayed him as a "puppet master", dangling his friend Lord
Mandelson in front of the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to ease the passage of colossal
business deals. It began on Mr Rothschild's private jet from the World Economic Forum in Davos
to Moscow, where they met Mr Deripaska, the aluminium plant manager who became the richest
oligarch of them all, and continued on Mr Deripaska's private jet to his chalet in Siberia. The judge
rejected the notion that Mr Rothschild and Mr Mandelson had flown out as friends, not business
associates, and said Mr Rothschild's behaviour had in part been "inappropriate". "That conduct
foreseeably brought Lord Mandelson's public office and personal integrity into disrepute," the judge
said. That leading politicians, bankers and businessmen associate with each other in
fashions that blur the boundaries between work and pleasure is a secret too great to be
maintained with any success, but it doesn't make the details, on the rare occasions they
actually emerge, any more palatable.
and here.
Insurance profits soar after health care overhaul
2012-01-06, San Francisco Chronicle/Bloomberg News

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/05/BUUH1MLB31.DTL
Insurance companies spent millions of dollars trying to defeat the U.S. health care overhaul,
saying it would raise costs and disrupt coverage. Instead, profit margins at the companies widened
to levels not seen since before the recession, a Bloomberg Government study shows. Insurers led
by WellPoint ... recorded their highest combined quarterly net income of the past decade after the
law was signed in 2010, said Peter Gosselin, the study author. "The industry that was the
loudest, most persistent critic of this law, the industry whose analysts and executives
predicted it would suffer immensely because of the law, has thrived," Gosselin said. Health
insurers contributed $86.2 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to oppose the law after
Obama administration officials criticized the [corporations'] plans for enriching themselves by
raising customer premiums. Companies are changing their business focus to gain from provisions
in the law that will expand the size of Medicaid, the $401 billion government health plan for the
poor.
Note: Is it surprising that health insurance companies are raking in big profits from the new health
care legislation?
Japan releases ambitious 40-year roadmap to fully close crippled

Fukushima nuclear plant
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-releases-new-40-year-p...
Japans government [has said] that it could take 40 years to clean up and fully decommission [the
Fukushima reactors]. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. will start removing spent fuel rods
within two to three years from their pools. After that is completed, TEPCO will start removing the
melted fuel, most of which is believed to have fallen to the bottom of the core or even down to the
bottom of the larger, beaker-shaped containment vessel, a process that is expected to begin in
10 years and [be] completed 25 years from now. Completely decommissioning the plant
would require five to 10 more years after the fuel debris removal, making the entire process
up to 40 years. The process still requires the development of robots and technology that can do
much of the work remotely because of extremely high radiation levels inside the reactor buildings.
The operator and the government would also have to ensure a stable supply of workers and save
them from exceeding exposure limits while keeping the long process going. They also have to
figure out ways to access each containment vessel and assess the extent of damage, as well as
locate holes and cracks through which cooling water is leaking and flooding the area. Another
problem is huge volume of radioactive waste and debris that will come out of the plant during its
dismantling process. Officials said they have not decided what to do with them and that part is not
covered by the 40-year roadmap.
Note: For lots more on corporate and government corruption from reliable sources, click here and
here.
Medical Journal Article: 14,000 U.S. Deaths Tied to Fukushima Reactor

Disaster Fallout
2011-12-19, Sacramento Bee (the leading newspaper of California's capitol)
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/19/4132989/medical-journal-article-14000.html
An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from
the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the
December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peerreviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.
Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S.
deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess
deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths
after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for
infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the
preceding 14 weeks. The IJHS article [is] available online ... at http://www.radiation.org. Internist
and toxicologist Janette Sherman, MD, said: "Based on our continuing research, the actual death
count [in the US] may be as high as 18,000, with influenza and pneumonia, which were up five-fold
in the period in question as a cause of death. Deaths are seen across all ages, but we continue to
find that infants are hardest hit because their tissues are rapidly multiplying, they have
undeveloped immune systems, and the doses of radioisotopes are proportionally greater than for
adults."
Note: To read the report (in pdf format) on excess mortality in the US already caused by the
Fukushima meltdowns, click here.
Reactor Core Melted Fully, Japan Says

Japan's tsunami-stricken nuclear-power complex came closer to a catastrophic meltdown than
previously indicated by its operator [which on November 30] described how one reactor's molten
nuclear core likely burned through its primary containment chamber and then ate as far as threequarters of the way through the concrete in a secondary vessel. The [new] assessmentoffered
by Japan's government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., ... marked Japan's most sobering reckoning
to date of the nuclear disaster sparked by the country's March 11 earthquake and tsunami. But it
came nearly six months after U.S. and international nuclear experts and regulators had reached
similar conclusions. For the first time, Tokyo Electric ... said that nuclear-fuel rods in the
complex's No. 1 reactor had likely melted completely, burning through their so-called
pressure vessel and then boring through concrete at the bottom of a second containment
vessel. That brought the fuel closer than previously believed to breaching the containment
vessel and foundation and continuing to burn through the ground below a scenario
sometimes described as the "China Syndrome." The findings are the latest reminder of how
much remains unknown about the extent of the mid-March Fukushima Daiichi accident.
Note: For further information on the developing understanding of the severity of the meltdowns at
Fukushima, see these reports at The Guardian and The New York Times. For key reports from
major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
Retired Supreme Court Judge shoved up against a wall and threatened

by NYPD at Occupy Wall Street clashes
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063716/You-want-arrested-lady-The-re...
A retired New York Supreme Court judge has claimed she was manhandled by a policeman after
watching him beat a woman at the Zuccotti Park raids. Karen Smith was working as a legal
observer when she saw a distressed woman pushed to the ground and beaten by an officer,
she said. When she demanded he [stop], the unidentified cop pushed her against a wall and
threatened her with arrest. Ms Smith had attended the raids ... to note down the names of people
arrested as the Occupy Wall Street camp was cleared. She was wearing a fluorescent green
baseball cap bearing the words 'National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer' to show she was not
taking part in the protests. Ms Smith, who was also carrying a pad and pen, said the incident
happened at around 1.30am on Tuesday at Dey Street and Broadway Street in New York City.
Speaking to Democracy Now, she described the scene as a paramilitary operation if there ever
was one. It was what we call a stealth eviction, she added. Ms Smith explained her son had
participated in Occupy Wall Street and she had been very concerned about his safety.
Note: We don't normally use the UK's Daily Mail as a reliable source, but as no other major media
are reporting this story, we felt it warranted inclusion. The judge gives her own testimony in a video
near the bottom of the article.
Activists Call for End to 'Cruel' Battery Cages for Chickens

2011-11-19, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/activists-call-end-cruel-battery-cages-chickens...
In the wake of an ABC News investigation into alleged unsanitary and inhumane practices at one
of the nation's largest egg farms, animal rights activists are calling for an end to the egg industry's
widespread use of so-called "battery cages," in which birds live six to a cage in long stacks of wire
cages. "The battery cage system is inherently cruel," said Nathan Runkle of Mercy for Animals,
who estimated that 95 percent of the hens used in egg production are kept in battery cages. He
urged the industry to adopt more humane methods of egg production, and urged McDonald's, the
nation's largest egg buyer, to stop buying eggs from battery cage farms. Undercover video shot by
a Mercy for Animals activist who worked at one of the nation's largest egg producers, Sparboe
Farms, shows the battery cages in use. "Scott," the activist who made the tape, said that the five
to seven birds were kept in each cage, with their beaks cut at an early cage so they
wouldn't peck each other, and that each bird lived its life in an area smaller than a standard
sheet of paper. He said the birds "can't fully spread their wings, they can't walk around.
There were [dead] birds that were left in the cages that were decomposing for weeks or months at
a time," claimed Scott. Until the ABC News investigation and the FDA's warning, McDonald's drew
all its eggs for restaurants west of the Mississippi River from Sparboe. Just before the ABC News
report aired, McDonald's announced that it would no longer get its eggs from Sparboe Farms.
Activists, however, are now asking why McDonald's won't stop buying eggs from any producer that
uses battery cages.
Note: To watch a video of this sad scene, click here. To learn how this report resulted in both
McDonald's and Target canceling their contracts with Sparboe Farms, click here.
OTC derivatives market activity in the first half of 2011

2011-11-16, Bank for International Settlements (Intergovernmental organization of
central banks)
http://www.bis.org/press/p111116a.htm
After an increase of only 3% in the second half of 2010, total notional amounts outstanding of
over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives rose by 18% in the first half of 2011, reaching $708
trillion by the end of June 2011.
Note: The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an intergovernmental organization of central
banks which "fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for
central banks." It is not accountable to any national government. Their accounting shows a total
global derivatives market controlled by the banks of over $700 trillion. That's $100,000 for every
man, woman, and child on the planet. As reported in Reuters, the derivatives market is largely
unregulated. Do you think there is any manipulation going on here? BIS helps the bankers to work
together to keep their hidden power.
Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-smallpox-20111113,0,4293...
Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy
an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior
officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies
Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest
men. Siga ... was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga
to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile. The price of
approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government's specialists had earlier
said was reasonable. Once feared for its grotesque pustules and 30% death rate, smallpox was
eradicated worldwide as of 1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian
scientific institute and the U.S. government. There is no credible evidence that any other country or
a terrorist group possesses smallpox. If there were an attack, the government could draw on $1
billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire U.S. population and quickly
treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can
reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure.
Note: This is pure and blatant corruption to pad the pockers of Siga and those involved. For key
reports from reliable sources on government corruption, click here. For more on corrupt drug
companies, click here.
Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/friedman-did-you-hear-the-on...
Citigroup had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank
sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers
securities that it knew were likely to go bust and, with the other hand, shorted the same
securities that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust. It doesnt get any more
immoral than this. James Stewart, a business columnist for The [New York] Times, noted that
Citigroups flimflam made Goldman Sachs mortgage traders look like Boy Scouts. This gets to
the core of why all the anti-Wall Street groups around the globe are resonating. Our financial
industry has grown so large and rich it has corrupted our real institutions through political
donations. Our Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. One consumer group using
information from Opensecrets.org calculates that the financial services industry, including real
estate, spent $2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to 2010, which was more
than the health care, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Why are
there 61 members on the House Committee on Financial Services? So many congressmen want
to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the collusion between financial interests and
government, click here.
Ex-Abramoff associate Ring sentenced to 20 months in 1 of scandals

harshest punishments
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-abramoff-associate-faces-possib...
A former lobbyist who was a rising star under Jack Abramoffs tutelage was sentenced ... to nearly
two years in prison for giving public officials meals and event tickets. Kevin Ring argued up until
his emotional sentencing hearing that he was operating in a corrupt Washington environment
controlled by people with money and that he did not break the law. U.S. District [Judge] Ellen
Segal Huvelle said Rings conduct was not nearly as egregious as ringleader Abramoff or some of
the others involved in a scandal that resulted in stricter lobbying rules in Washington. But the judge
gave Ring a sentence of 20 months, one of the stiffest terms among the 21 defendants in the
investigation. Most others involved cooperated with prosecutors and got plea deals that
avoided prison. Huvelle said she did not consider Rings conduct [nearly as] bad as that of
Abramoff and his business partner, Michael Scanlon, who bilked their American Indian tribal clients
out of $20 million in fees, or former Rep. Bob Ney, who accepted golf and gambling trips, tickets to
sporting events, free meals and campaign donations. But Abramoff, Scanlon and Ney all
reached plea agreements with prosecutors that helped cut their sentences while Ring
fought at trial. His sentence ranks with theirs Abramoff got 48 months, Ney 30 months
and Scanlon also was sentenced to 20 months.
Note: A petty thief steals three times for a total value of a few thousand dollars and by the "three
strikes" law ends up in jail for life. Abramoff, along with his assistants, successfully corrupt U.S.
Senators and Congress members and serve less than four years in jail. Many get off with no jail
time. Is the US justice system biased towards the rich?
'Occupy Wall Street' -- It's Not What They're for, But What They're
Against
2011-10-14, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/14/understanding-occupy-wall-street/
Critics of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement complain that the protesters dont have a
policy agenda and, therefore, dont stand for anything. They're wrong. The key isnt what
protesters are for but rather what theyre against -- the gaping inequality that has poisoned our
economy, our politics and our nation. In America today, 400 people have more wealth than the
bottom 150 million combined. Thats not because 150 million Americans are pathetically
lazy or even unlucky. In fact, Americans have been working harder than ever -- productivity
has risen in the last several decades. Big business profits and CEO bonuses have also
gone up. Worker salaries, however, have declined. Most of the Occupy Wall Street protesters
[want] an end to the crony capitalist system now in place, that makes it easier for the rich and
powerful to get even more rich and powerful while making it increasingly hard for the rest of us to
get by. The question is not how Occupy Wall Street protesters can find that gross discrepancy
immoral. The question is why every one of us isnt protesting with them. According to polls, most
Americans support the 99% movement, even if theyre not taking to the streets.
Note: For lots more on the reasons why people all over the world are occupying their city centers,
check out our "Banking Bailout" news articles.
Can Liberals and Libertarians Find Common Ground?
2011-10-12, Forbes.com
http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2011/10/12/can-liberals-and-libe...
The Occupy Wall Street movement has the potential to turn into a political firestorm. We have
become so divided as a nation that it is very difficult to prognosticate if anything good will come out
of these protests from a political perspective. Lets examine a number of issues that have been
raised by Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party and liberals and libertarians and see where
there is agreement. Get Corporate Money Out Of Politics This is the issue that really kick
started Occupy Wall Street. Americans are sick and tired of mega-corporations and Wall Street
banks being in bed with our politicians in Washington D.C. End the Federal Reserve The
Federal Reserve is directly responsible for the Too Big To Fail banking cartel, the U.S. debt, the
perpetual deficits, and ... the Fed has also robbed the poor and working class blind as a result of
their inflationary policies. End The Wars The American people are fed up with these conflicts,
and even large percentages of the military believe that the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan were
not worth fighting in the first place. It is time for our troops to come home. End The Drug War The drug war is an absolute failed policy. The U.S. incarcerates a higher percentage of its
population than any country on Earth, yet we call ourselves The Home of the Free. Repeal The
Patriot Act The assault on our civil liberties in the wake of 9/11 has been swift and draconian.
These are the types of things that go on in totalitarian states, and now, apparently the United
States as well.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the reasons why people worldwide are
occupying the financial centers of their cities, check out our "Banking Bailout" news articles.
Goldman Sachs let off paying 10m interest on failed tax avoidance
scheme
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/11/goldman-sachs-interest-tax-avo...
Britain's tax authorities have given Goldman Sachs an unusual and generous Christmas present,
leaked documents reveal. In a secret London meeting last December with the head of Revenue,
the wealthy Wall Street banking firm was forgiven 10m interest on a failed tax avoidance scheme.
HM Revenue and Customs sources admit privately that the interest-free deal is "a cock-up" by
officials, but refuse to say who was responsible. Documents leaked to Private Eye magazine
and published in full by the Guardian record that Britain's top tax official, HMRC's
permanent secretary Dave Hartnett, personally shook hands on a secret settlement last
December. Hartnett also refused to give the facts about Goldman Sachs to MP Jesse Norman on
the Treasury committee last month, claiming disclosure would be illegal. He also refuses to brief
ministers on the details. The 10m Christmas gift for Goldman was the culmination of a prolonged
attempt by the US firm to avoid paying national insurance on huge bonuses for its bankers working
in London. The sum was pocket change to Goldman, whose employees received $15.3bn (9.5bn)
in pay and bonuses last year.
here.
World facing worst financial crisis in history, Bank of England Governor

says
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8812260/World-facing-worst...
The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s if not ever, the Governor of
the Bank of England said last night. Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Banks
Monetary Policy Committee to put 75billion of newly created money into the economy in a
desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession. Economists said the Banks
decision to resume its quantitative easing [QE] showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy,
and predicted more such moves ahead. Sir Mervyn said the Bank had been driven by growing
signs of a global economic disaster. This is the most serious financial crisis weve seen, at least
since the 1930s, if not ever. Were having to deal with very unusual circumstances, but to act
calmly to this and to do the right thing. Announcing its decision, the Bank said that the
eurozone debt crisis was creating severe strains in bank funding markets and financial
markets. Financial experts said the committees actions would be a Titanic disaster for
pensioners, savers and workers approaching retirement. Under QE, the Bank electronically
creates new money which it then uses to buy assets such as government bonds, or gilts, from
banks. By increasing the demand for gilts, QE pushes down the interest rate yields paid to holders
of these and other bonds. Critics of the policy say it pushes up inflation and drives down sterling.
Note: For lots more on the global financial crisis from reliable sources, click here.
Tony Blair 'visited Libya to lobby for JP Morgan'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8772418/Tony-Blair-visite...
Tony Blair used visits to Libya after he left office to lobby for business for the American investment
bank JP Morgan. New questions over Tony Blair's ties to Col Muammar Gaddafi and his role in the
release of the Lockerbie bomber have emerged from documents discovered in Tripoli. A senior
executive with the Libyan Investment Authority, the $70 billion fund used to invest the country's oil
money abroad, said Mr Blair was one of three prominent western businessmen who regularly dealt
with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the former leader. Saif al-Islam and his close aides oversaw the
activities of the fund, and often directed its officials on where they should make its investments, he
said. The executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials were told the "ideas" they
were ordered to pursue came from Mr Blair as well as one other British businessman and a former
American diplomat. "Tony Blair's visits were purely lobby visits for banking deals with JP
Morgan," he said. Documents found by The Sunday Telegraph published this weekend
showed Mr Blair had made at least three visits to Tripoli, twice in the lead-up to the release
of the alleged Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Megrahi in 2008 and 2009 and once last year.
On the first two occasions he was flown to the country on planes arranged by Col Gaddafi.
Note: For a two-page summary of US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler's explanation of the
profiteering behind modern wars, click here. For key reports on corporate and government
corruption from major media sources, click here and here.
Why the Fukushima disaster is worse than Chernobyl

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/why-the-fukushima-disaster-is-wo...
The triple meltdown and its aftermath at the Fukushima nuclear power plant [have] elevated Japan
into unknown, and unknowable, terrain. Across the northeast, millions of people are living with its
consequences and searching for a consensus on a safe radiation level that does not exist. Experts
give bewilderingly different assessments of its dangers. Some scientists say Fukushima is worse
than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with which it shares a maximum level-7 rating on the sliding
scale of nuclear disasters. Chris Busby, a professor at the University of Ulster ... said the
disaster would result in more than 1 million deaths. "Fukushima is still boiling its
radionuclides all over Japan," he said. "Chernobyl went up in one go. So Fukushima is
worse." Slowly, steadily, and often well behind the curve, the government has worsened its
prognosis of the disaster. Last Friday, scientists affiliated with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety
Agency said the plant had released 15,000 terabecquerels of cancer-causing Cesium, equivalent
to about 168 times the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the event that ushered in the nuclear
age. [But] Professor Busby says the release is at least 72,000 times worse than Hiroshima.
Note: For key reports on corporate and government corruption from major media sources, click
here and here.
The explosive truth behind Fukushima's meltdown

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-explosive-truth-behind-fukus...
It is one of the mysteries of Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the 11 March
earthquake inflict on the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit? The stakes are high: if
the earthquake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every
similar reactor in Japan may have to be shut down. Throughout the months of lies and
misinformation, one story has stuck: it was the earthquake that knocked out the plant's electric
power, halting cooling to its six reactors. The tsunami then washed out the plant's back-up
generators 40 minutes later, shutting down all cooling and starting the chain of events that would
cause the world's first triple meltdown. But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes burst
after the earthquake before the tidal wave reached the facilities; before the electricity went
out? This would surprise few people familiar with the 40-year-old reactor one, the
grandfather of the nuclear reactors still operating in Japan. Problems with the fractured,
deteriorating, poorly repaired pipes and the cooling system had been pointed out for years. In
September 2002, Tepco admitted covering up data about cracks in critical circulation pipes.
Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on corporate and government corruption,
click here and here.
New leukemia treatment exceeds 'wildest expectations'

2011-08-10, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44090512/ns/health-cancer/t/new-leukemia-treatmen...
Doctors have treated only three leukemia patients, but the sensational results from a single shot
could be one of the most significant advances in cancer research in decades. Doctors at the
University of Pennsylvania say the treatment made the most common type of leukemia
completely disappear in two of the patients and reduced it by 70 percent in the third. In each
of the patients as much as five pounds of cancerous tissue completely melted away in a few
weeks, and a year later it is still gone. The results of the preliminary test exceeded our wildest
expectations, says immunologist Dr. Carl June a member of the Abramson Cancer Center's
research team. Chemotherapy and radiation can hold this form of leukemia at bay for years, but
until now the only cure has been a bone marrow transplant. A bone marrow transplant requires a
suitable match, works only about half the time, and often brings on severe, life-threatening side
effects such as pain and infection. So why has this remarkable treatment been tried so far on
only three patients? Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical
companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders discuss the reasons
an application is turned down.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on hopeful new cancer treatments, click here.
How Paul Stephenson and PM fell out over hacking scandal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/18/david-cameron-paul-stephenson-hac...
David Cameron flew abroad last night for a long-arranged trip to Africa leaving behind the carnage
inside Britain's most important police force, tumult inside the news organisation with which he has
closest links, and open disdain from his deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, over his appointment of
Andy Coulson to No 10. The "firestorm" he himself described is still raging, and as the body count
rises in the form of arrests or resignations, he looks increasingly exposed. Every day as the crisis
continues, his judgment, and that of the chancellor, George Osborne, in appointing the former
editor of the News of the World Andy Coulson as his director of communications looks increasingly
inexplicable. The problems Cameron faces come from all directions. There is no evidence that the
Conservative party either in the Home Office or in the London mayoralty of Boris Johnson took
seriously the suggestion, repeatedly raised by Labour, that the connections between News
International and the Met were unhealthy. Thirdly, the record of meetings between Cameron
and News International executives released on Friday does not reveal a modernising prime
minister governing in the national interest, but a victim of a vested interest. His meetings
with News International executives in a year exceed those with all other news organisations
put together. Not a single figure from the BBC was granted an audience.
here and here.
Scotland Yard Chief Quits Over Hacking in Britain

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/world/europe/18hacking.html
Britains top police official resigned on [July 17], the latest casualty of the phone-hacking
scandal engulfing British public life, just hours after Rebekah Brooks, the former chief
executive of Rupert Murdochs News International, was arrested on suspicion of illegally
intercepting phone calls and bribing the police. The official, Sir Paul Stephenson,
commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly known as the Met or Scotland Yard,
said that he had decided to step down [but] that he had done nothing wrong and that he would not
lose sleep over my personal integrity. The commissioners resignation came as the London
political establishment was still digesting the stunning news about the arrest of Ms. Brooks who
apparently was surprised herself. A consummate networker who has always been assiduously
courted by politicians and whose friends include Prime Minister David Cameron, Ms. Brooks, 43, is
the 10th and by far the most powerful person to be arrested so far in the phone-hacking scandal.
The arrest was a shock to the News Corporation, the parent company of News International, and
the other properties in Mr. Murdochs media empire, which is reeling from the traumas of last week:
the forced withdrawal of its cherished $12 billion takeover bid for British Sky Broadcasting and the
resignations not only of Ms. Brooks but also of Les Hinton, a longtime Murdoch ally and friend who
was the chairman of Dow Jones and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Note: For lots more on media and government corruption click here and here.
Phone hacking: Police probe suspected deletion of emails by NI

executive
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/08/phone-hacking-emails-news-interna...
Police are investigating evidence that a News International executive may have deleted millions of
emails from an internal archive in an apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yard's inquiry into the
phone-hacking scandal. The archive is believed to have reached back to January 2005, revealing
daily contact between News of the World editors, reporters and outsiders, including private
investigators. A senior executive is believed to have deleted "massive quantities" of the archive on
two separate occasions, leaving only a fraction to be disclosed. The allegation directly contradicts
NI claims that it is co-operating fully with police in order to expose its history of illegal
newsgathering. Rupert Murdoch is planning to fly into London on [July 9] to confront the crisis. The
scandal brought a number of arrests on [July 8], with the prime minister's former PR chief
Andy Coulson held under suspicion of involvement in phone hacking. As he was released
on bail, he told reporters: "There is an awful lot I would like to say, but I can't at this time."
Clive Goodman, the NoW's former royal reporter, was also arrested in relation to the alleged
payment of bribes to police, and subsequently bailed.
How two shell companies duped the Pentagon

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-usa-shell-companies-pentagon-idU...
Two companies incorporated at a little house in Cheyenne, Wyoming, won Pentagon contracts
after their owner took advantage of the state's liberal incorporation laws to create the firms using
an alias, and then represented them as minority-owned to win favorable treatment as a military
supplier. The firms and their owner were later banned from doing business with the Pentagon for
providing knock-off parts. A Reuters investigation has found that more than 2,000 companies are
registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue in Cheyenne, the headquarters for Wyoming Corporate
Services, a business incorporation company that specializes in corporate anonymity. A Reuters
review of federal contracting databases found nine firms registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue
have been awarded 93 contracts worth more than $1.6 million by a half dozen government
agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Treasury's Internal Revenue
Service, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. More than
90 percent of the contracts were awarded by the Department of Defense. The companies were
created by Atilla C. Kan, an employee of another Pentagon supplier called New York Machinery.
Kan formed the companies in Wyoming under the name John Ryan. He later used the alias, and a
description of the companies as "minority-owned," "woman-owned" and "Hispanic-owned," when
applying to supply military parts, the documents show.
Note: For more on this showing a vast level of corruption, click here and watch the Reuters video
available here. For a powerful and deep analysis by David Wilcock on this important topic, which
he calls the ultimate ponzi scheme, click here.
A little house of secrets on the Great Plains

2011-06-28, MSN/Reuters News
The secretive business havens of Cyprus and the Cayman Islands face a potent rival: Cheyenne,
Wyoming. At a single address in this sleepy city of 60,000 people, more than 2,000 companies are
registered. The building, 2710 Thomes Avenue, isn't a shimmering skyscraper filled with A-list
corporations. It's a 1,700-square-foot brick house with a manicured lawn, a few blocks from the
State Capitol. A Reuters investigation has found the house at 2710 Thomes Avenue serves as a
little Cayman Island on the Great Plains. It is the headquarters for Wyoming Corporate Services, a
business-incorporation specialist that establishes firms which can be used as "shell" companies,
paper entities able to hide assets. Wyoming Corporate Services will help clients create a company,
and more: set up a bank account for it; add a lawyer as a corporate director to invoke attorneyclient privilege; even appoint stand-in directors and officers as high as CEO. Among its offerings
is a variety of shell known as a "shelf" company, which comes with years of regulatory
filings behind it, lending a greater feeling of solidity. All the activity at 2710 Thomes is part
of a little-noticed industry in the U.S.: the mass production of paper businesses. Scores of
mass incorporators like Wyoming Corporate Services have set up shop.
Nuke plant averts shutdown from swelled Missouri

The bloated Missouri River rose to within 18 inches of forcing the shutdown of a nuclear power
plant in southeast Nebraska but stopped and ebbed slightly [on June 20], after several levees in
northern Missouri failed to hold back the surging waterway. The river has to hit 902 feet above sea
level at Brownville before officials will shut down the Cooper Nuclear Plant, which sits at 903 feet,
Nebraska Public Power District spokesman Mark Becker said. Becker said the river rose to 900.56
feet at Brownville on Sunday, then dropped to 900.4 feet later in the day and remained at that level
Monday morning. The Cooper Nuclear Plant is operating at full capacity Monday, Becker
said. The Columbus-based utility sent a "notification of unusual event" to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission when the river rose to 899 feet early Sunday morning. The
declaration is the least serious of four emergency notifications established by the federal
commission. The Cooper Nuclear Station is one of two plants along the Missouri River in eastern
Nebraska. The Fort Calhoun Station, operated by the Omaha Public Power District, is about 20
miles north of Omaha. It issued a similar alert to the regulatory commission June 6.
Note: This same plant narrowly avoided a shutdown just a couple weeks prior due to an electrical
fire. For the AP article on this, click here. On Monday, June 27, floodwaters collapsed a berm
protecting the plant and flooded a building onsite. Authorities, however, still claim there are no
dangers.
Nuclear fuel has melted through base of Fukushima plant

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8565020/Nuclear-fuel-has-melted-through-base-...
The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has melted
through the base of the pressure vessels and is pooling in the outer containment vessels,
according to a report by the Japanese government. The findings of the report, which has been
given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper,
which described a "melt-through" as being "far worse than a core meltdown" and "the
worst possibility in a nuclear accident." Water that was pumped into the pressure vessels to
cool the fuel rods, becoming highly radioactive in the process, has been confirmed to have leaked
out of the containment vessels and outside the buildings that house the reactors. Elevated levels
of radiation have been confirmed in the ocean off the plant. The radiation will also have
contaminated the soil and plant and animal life around the facility, making the task of cleaning up
more difficult and expensive, as well as taking longer. The pressure vessel of the No. 1 reactor is
now believed to have suffered damage just five hours after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Melt-downs of the fuel in the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors followed over the following days with the
molten fuel collecting at the bottom of the pressure vessels before burning through and into the
external steel containment vessels.
Note: The UK Telegraph has been consistently reporting the bad news about the Fukushima
catastrophe, but many other major media outlets have not kept the spotlight on this vital issue.
Could that be because they are protecting the nuclear industry and its plans for expansion from the
fallout of public opinion?
Tepco confirms meltdowns at 2 more Fukushima reactors

2011-05-24, MSNBC/Reuters News
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43145372/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/
The operator of the nuclear power plant at the center of a radiation scare after being disabled by
Japan's earthquake and tsunami confirmed ... that there had been meltdowns of fuel rods at three
of its reactors. Tokyo Electric Power Co said meltdowns of fuel rods at three reactors at the
Fukushima Daiichi plant occurred early in the crisis triggered by the March 11 disaster. The
government and outside experts had said previously that fuel rods at three of the plant's six
reactors had likely melted early in the crisis, but the utility, also known as Tepco, had only
confirmed a meltdown at the No.1 reactor. Tepco officials said a review since early May of data
from the plant concluded the same happened to reactors No.2 and 3. Some analysts said the
delay in confirming the meltdowns at Fukushima suggested the utility feared touching off a
panic by disclosing the severity of the accident earlier. "Now people are used to the
situation. Nothing is resolved, but normal business has resumed in places like Tokyo," said
Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Tokyo's Sophia University. Nakano said that by
confirming the meltdowns now, Tepco may be hoping the news will have less impact.
Note: Very few major media have given TEPCO's confirmation of the world's worst fears about the
severity of the Fukushima nuclear disaster the attention it deserves. Are the major media burying
this story because of the potential harm it will do to plans for the expansion of the nuclear power
industry?
Nuclear meltdown at Fukushima plant

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8509502/Nuclear-meltdown...
One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did suffer a nuclear meltdown,
Japanese officials admitted for the first time today, describing a pool of molten fuel at the bottom of
the reactor's containment vessel. Engineers from the Tokyo Electric Power company (Tepco)
entered the No.1 reactor at the end of last week for the first time and saw the top five feet or
so of the core's 13ft-long fuel rods had been exposed to the air and melted down. Now the
company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole
through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak. Tepco has not clarified
what other barriers there are to stop radioactive fuel leaking if the steel containment vessel has
been breached. Greenpeace said the situation could escalate rapidly if "the lava melts through the
vessel". However, an initial plan to flood the entire reactor core with water to keep its temperature
from rising has now been abandoned because it might exacerbate the leak. Tepco said ... that it
had sealed a leak of radioactive water from the No.3 reactor after water was reportedly discovered
to be flowing into the ocean. A similar leak had discharged radioactive water into the sea in April
from the No.2 reactor. Greenpeace said significant amounts of radioactive material had been
released into the sea and that samples of seaweed taken from as far as 40 miles of the Fukushima
plant had been found to contain radiation well above legal limits.
Note: Why hasn't the Japanese government's admission of the meltdown of nuclear reactors at
Fukushima been more widely reported in the press? Are the major media burying this story
because of the potential harm it will do to plans for the expansion of the nuclear power industry?
Exxon Leads Defense of Oil Tax Breaks Democrats Want to Repeal

2011-05-11, San Francisco Chronicle/Bloomberg
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/11/bloomberg1376-LL1...
Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex W. Tillerson and four counterparts defended $21
billion in U.S. tax breaks that Democrats are seeking to recapture to reduce the federal deficit.
Senate Democrats are proposing to raise oil and gas taxes by about $2 billion a year for 10 years,
arguing that widening deficits are a threat to the economy and sacrifice is required. College
students are giving up federal help, and so should the companies, said Senator Charles
Schumer, a New York Democrat. "We have to choose priorities and right now we have a huge
budget deficit," Schumer said to ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva. "Do you think that your
subsidy is more important than the financial aid that we give to students to go to college?" To build
their case, Democrats have cited rising gasoline prices and quarterly earnings reports that
put the five companies on pace to generate more than $125 billion in profits this year, which
would be a record. The Democrats' proposal would raise about $13 billion by blocking the five
largest oil and gas companies from receiving a domestic-manufacturing deduction for exploration
and extraction in the U.S. The Senate Democrats' proposal would generate $6.5 billion by
curtailing the oil companies' ability to claim tax credits for royalty payments made to foreign
governments.
Note: We are paying near-record prices for gas, while the oil companines are making record
profits, just as they did when gas prices spiked several years ago. So why are oil companies still
getting tax breaks?
Senate panel concludes Goldman Sachs profited from financial crisis

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-crisis-probe-20110414,0,6709903.story
A Senate panel has concluded that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. profited from the financial
crisis by betting billions against the subprime mortgage market, then deceived investors
and Congress about the firm's conduct. Some of the findings in the report by the Senate's
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will be referred to the Justice Department and the
Securities and Exchange Commission for possible criminal or civil action, said Sen. Carl Levin (DMich.), the panel's chairman. The giant investment bank was just one focus of the subcommittee's
probe into Wall Street's role in the financial crisis. The 639-page report based on internal
memos, emails and interviews with employees of financial firms and regulators casts broad
blame, saying the crisis was caused by "conflicts of interest, heedless risk-taking and failures of
federal oversight." Among the culprits cited by the panel are Washington Mutual, a major mortgage
lender that failed in 2008, as well as the Office of Thrift Supervision, a federal bank regulator, and
credit rating firms. Asked if he was disappointed that no Wall Street figures had gone to jail in
connection with the crisis, Levin responded, "There's still time."
Note: For many key reports from major media sources illuminating how major financial
corporations knowingly brought about the global financial crisis and profited from it, click here.
How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug

gangs
2011-04-03, The Observer (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs
During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the
Internal Revenue Service and others [beginning in 2006], it emerged [that drug cartels had
laundered huge sums of money] through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia,
now part of the giant Wells Fargo. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought
under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's
"deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. The bank was sanctioned for
failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn a sum equivalent
to one-third of Mexico's gross national product into dollar accounts from ... currency exchange
houses with which the bank did business. [The case demonstrates] the role of the "legal" banking
sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars the blood money from the murderous drug trade
in Mexico and other places in the world around their global operations, now bailed out by the
taxpayer. At the height of the 2008 banking crisis, Antonio Maria Costa, then head of the United
Nations office on drugs and crime, said he had evidence to suggest the proceeds from drugs
and crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to banks on the brink of
collapse. "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade," he
said. "There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the illegal activities routinely engaged in by the
largest banks and financial corporations, click here.
Transocean Execs Get Bonuses after Best Year in Safety, Despite Gulf
Oil Disaster
2011-04-02, Forbes blog
http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/2011/04/02/transocean-bonuses-deepwater-h...
Transocean Ltd., owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, awarded millions of dollars in bonuses to
its executives after the best year in safety performance in our companys history, according to an
annual report and proxy statement released yesterday. Eleven people were killed, including nine
Transocean employees, in the April 20 explosion and collapse of the rig, which gushed crude oil
into the Gulf of Mexico for 86 days. Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of
Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total
recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate, Transocean states in the filing.
Transocean President and Chief Executive Officer Steven L. Newman received about $4.3 million
in cash bonuses and stock and option awards. With other compensationsuch as pension
increases and cost of living, housing, and automobile allowancesNewman earned $6.6 million in
2010, almost $1 million more than in 2009. His base salary, $900,000 in 2010, will increase 22
percent to $1.1 million in 2011. Transocean built and staffed the Deepwater Horizon. It was leased
by BP, which denied most executives bonuses in 2010. In justifying the bonuses, Transocean cites
the increased burden on executives of responding to the spill.
Mortgage paperwork mess: Next housing shock?

It's bizarre but, it turns out, Wall Street cut corners when it created those mortgage-backed
investments that triggered the financial collapse. Now that banks want to evict people, they're
unwinding these exotic investments to find, that often, the legal documents behind the
mortgages aren't there. Caught in a jam of their own making, some companies appear to be
resorting to forgery and phony paperwork to throw people - down on their luck - out of their
homes. This past January in Los Angeles, 37,000 homeowners facing foreclosure showed up to
an event to beg their bank for lower payments on their mortgage. In February in Miami, 12,000
people showed up to a similar event. For many that's when the real surprise comes in: these same
banks have fouled up all of their own paperwork to a historic degree. There were a million
foreclosures last year. And there will be another million this year - those lawsuits are forcing open
those bundled, mortgage-backed securities that Wall Street cooked up in the mid 2000s, and
exposing a lack of ownership documents all across the country. Banks are defensive because all
50 state attorneys general want to punish them: the states are seeking about $20 billion in
damages for what they say is the irresponsible, perhaps criminal way, that some mortgage
companies handled what is, for most folks, the most important investment of their lives.
Note: To watch the amazing 14-minute video of this article, click here. Learn how banks paid a
company which hired people off the streets to pretend they were bank vice presidents and sign
thousands of documents fraudulently. For lots more from reliable sources on the criminal practices
of mortgage lenders, click here.
Ultrasound at $59,490 Is Outrage in Aetna Claim Against Doctors

2011-03-24, Bloomberg/BusinessWeek
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-24/ultrasound-at-59-490-is-outrage-i...
Aetna Inc. is suing six New Jersey doctors over medical bills it calls unconscionable,
including $56,980 for a bedside consultation and $59,490 for an ultrasound that typically
costs $74. The lawsuits could help determine what pricing limits insurers can impose on out-ofnetwork physicians who dont have contracts with health plans that spell out how much a service
or procedure can cost. One defendant billed $30,000 for a Caesarean birth, and another raised his
fee for seeing a critically ill patient in a hospital to $9,000 in 2008 from $500 the year before, the
insurer alleges in the suits. Aetna tried in 2007 to impose caps on some out-of-network payments,
prompting doctor complaints to the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance. The
agency sided with the doctors, fined the company $2.5 million, and ordered it to pay out-of-network
practitioners enough so that patients wouldnt be asked to pay balances other than co-pays. In
2009, Aetna, UnitedHealth Group Inc., Cigna Corp. and WellPoint Inc. were accused by the New
York attorney general of underpaying out-of-network physicians by manipulating a database used
to calculate payments. They paid a total of $90 million in settlements without admitting
wrongdoing. UnitedHealthcare agreed that year to pay $350 million to settle a lawsuit by the
American Medical Association over the same issues. Similar AMA lawsuits against Aetna, Cigna
and Wellpoint are pending.
Note: Is the American health care system out of control? For lots more from reliable sources on
U.S. Declines to Give Details on Radiation

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704608504576208840531837916-sea...
U.S. government officials, in private sessions on Capitol Hill [on Friday, March 18], repeatedly
declined to give details of radiation measurements at the stricken Japanese nuclear complex,
saying the situation is shrouded in a "fog of war." Separately, the Obama administration said ...
"miniscule quantities" of radiation from the Japanese nuclear accident were detected Friday at a
monitoring station in Sacramento, Calif., a day after similar traces of radiation were detected in
Washington state. The administration said the levels of the radioactive isotope xenon 133 were
approximately equivalent to one-millionth the dose received from the sun, rocks or other natural
sources. The Obama administration's reluctance to detail in public what it is learning from
radiation-detection operations around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi complex in Japan ...
comes after statements Wednesday by the head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission that painted a grimmer picture of the nuclear crisis than Japanese officials
had offered, and suggested that the U.S. didn't trust the information coming from the Japanese
government.
Note: Shouldn't the title be something more like "U.S. Refuses to Give Radiation Details for Fear
of Industry Repercussions"? How sad that money often continues to trump public health in matters
like this.
The Michigan Monarchy Legislates Financial Martial Law -- Nation

Yawns
http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/03/18/the-michigan-monarchy-legislates...
This week, the Michigan legislature passed and the governor signed into law a bill that would
permit Governor Rick Snyder to push aside elected city officials and replace them with emergency
financial managers in any municipality or school district facing financial difficulties. The law would
include virtually every town and city in the state as those cities that arent bankrupt already soon
will be once the governors proposed budget which cuts billions in aid to municipalities and
school districts is approved by the legislature. One of the most shocking, Draconian, democracydestroying measures in the history of this country has became law and the nation has seemingly
slept through it. The new law, described by one of the GOP legislators sponsoring the bill as
financial martial law, empowers the governors appointees [referred to as Emergency
Financial Managers] to fire duly elected local officials, cancel labor contracts and even
dissolve entire communities and school districts. This is about so much more than collective
bargaining agreements and unions. This law gives an appointee of the governor which, by the
way, may be a corporation the authority to dismiss any or all of a municipalitys elected
government officials.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports by major media sources on the collusion between
government and financial powers against the public interest, click here.
Bungling, cover-ups define Japanese nuclear industry

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42129558/ns/business-world_business
Behind Japan's escalating nuclear crisis sits a scandal-ridden energy industry in a comfy
relationship with government regulators often willing to overlook safety lapses. Leaks of radioactive
steam and workers contaminated with radiation are just part of the disturbing catalog of accidents
that have occurred over the years and been belatedly reported to the public, if at all. In one case,
workers hand-mixed uranium in stainless steel buckets, instead of processing by machine,
so the fuel could be reused, exposing hundreds of workers to radiation. Two later died.
"Everything is a secret," said Kei Sugaoka, a former nuclear power plant engineer in Japan who
now lives in California. "There's not enough transparency in the industry." In 1989 Sugaoka
received an order that horrified him: edit out footage showing cracks in plant steam pipes in video
being submitted to regulators. Sugaoka alerted his superiors in the Tokyo Electric Power Co., but
nothing happened for years. He decided to go public in 2000. Three Tepco executives lost their
jobs. The legacy of scandals and cover-ups over Japan's half-century reliance on nuclear power
has strained its credibility with the public. That mistrust has been renewed this past week with the
crisis at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. The vagueness and scarcity of details offered by the
government and Tepco and news that seems to grow worse each day are fueling public
anger and frustration.
here.
Fukushima: Mark 1 Nuclear Reactor Design Caused GE Scientist To Quit

In Protest
2011-03-15, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fukushima-mark-nuclear-reactor-design-caused-ge...
Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh and two of his colleagues at General Electric
resigned from their jobs after becoming increasingly convinced that the nuclear reactor
design they were reviewing -- the Mark 1 -- was so flawed it could lead to a devastating
accident. Five of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been wracked since
Friday's earthquake with explosions and radiation leaks, are Mark 1s. "The problems we identified
in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they did not take into account the
dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant," Bridenbaugh [said]. "The impact
loads the containment would receive by this very rapid release of energy could tear the
containment apart and create an uncontrolled release." Questions persisted for decades about the
ability of the Mark 1 to handle the immense pressures that would result if the reactor lost cooling
power. In 1986, for instance, Harold Denton, then the director of NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor
Regulation, spoke critically about the design during an industry conference. Today that design is
being put to the ultimate test in Japan.
here.
America's favorite bankers have outdone themselves yet again

2011-01-30, CNN
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/30/money-for-nothing-at-goldman/
How might you compensate management for a year in which profits plunged, you spent
$550 million of shareholder money to settle a fraud investigation and your stock ended up more or
less exactly where it started? You might be tempted to nix raises or withhold bonuses to send a
responsible message about linking pay to performance. But if so, you wouldn't be Goldman Sachs.
It just had the year described above and responded by tripling everyone's base salary while
boosting bonuses by 40%. Is this a great country or what? Goldman said in a filing [on January 28]
that CEO Lloyd Blankfein will make $2 million this year, and his top lieutenants will each make
$1.85 million. Top Goldman brass had been making $600,000 annually in salary since the firm's
1999 initial public offering. All 470 of Goldman's partners will get higher salaries. The top five
officers will also get $12.6 million each in bonuses. That's up from $9 million each last year.
That may seem like a high price to pay for a pretty lousy year and one that ended with a Fedinspired reminder that Goldman, just in case anyone forgot, took billions upon billions of dollars in
bailout loans in 2008 and 2009.
Note: For key articles from reliable sources detailing the outrageous compensation awarded to the
highest officers of Wall Street financial corporations after they were bailed out by the government,
click here.
The state's pedlars of fear must be brought to account

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/11/police-reform-mark-stone-...
[Mark] Kennedy moved from undercover agent to agent provocateur. He worked for a murky
organisation called the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). With a budget of 5m this
operates as a branch of the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) which, in turn, works
alongside the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU). Ask where this stands,
and you will be told it reports to the Association of Chief Police Officers' Terrorism and Allied
Matters Committee, codenamed Acpo(TAM). Kennedy's bosses in the NPOIU work for Acpo, but
this is not what it seems. It is not, as its name suggests, the police officers' staff club, nor is it a
public body of any sort. [ACPO] is a private company, incorporated in 1997. It is subcontracted by Whitehall to operate the police end of the government's counterterrorism and
"anti-extremism" strategies. It is thus alongside MI5, but even less accountable. It now runs
its own police forces under a police chief boss, Sir Hugh Orde, like a British FBI. It trades on
its own account, generating revenue by selling data from the police national computer for 70 an
item (cost of retrieval, 60p). It owns an estate of 80 flats in central London. As a private company,
Acpo need not accede to Freedom of Information requests and presumably could distribute its
profit to its own board. The whole operation is reminiscent of the deals set up by the Pentagon with
private firms to run the Iraq and Afghan wars, free of publicity or accountability.
Note: For further information on the amazing undercover career of UK agent provocateur Mark
Kennedy, click here and here and here.
When Insurers Put Profits Between Doctor and Patient

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/health/views/06chen.html
In articles, interviews, op-eds and testimony on Capitol Hill, Wendell Potter has described the dark
underbelly of the health care insurance industry unkept promises of care, canceled coverage of
those who get sick and fearmongering campaigns designed to quash any change that might
adversely affect profits. He should know what he is talking about. For 20 years, Mr. Potter was
the head of corporate communications at two major insurers, first at Humana and then at
Cigna. Now Mr. Potter has written a fascinating book that details the methods he and his
colleagues used to manipulate public opinion and describes his transformation from the
idealistic son of working-class parents in eastern Tennessee to top insurance company executive,
to vocal critic and industry watchdog. Using little of the fiery rhetoric or lurid prose that usually
marks corporate exposs or memoirs of redemption, the book, Deadly Spin ... is an evenhanded
yet riveting account of the inner workings of the health care insurance industry, a cautionary tale
that doctors and patients would be wise not to miss. Mr. Potter [describes] the myth-making he did,
interspersing descriptions of front groups, paid spies and jiggered studies with a deft retelling of
the convoluted (and usually eye-glazing) history of health care insurance policies.
Note: Mr. Potter has written a powerful condemnation of health care industry practices at this link.
For other major media articles on this courageous whistleblower, click here. And for other highly
informative reports on important health issues, click here.
Glaxo Whistle-Blower Lawsuit: Bad Medicine

Of all the things that you trust every day, you want to believe your prescription medicine is safe
and effective. The pharmaceutical industry says that it follows the highest standards for quality. But
in November, we found out just how much could go wrong at one of the world's largest drug
makers. A subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline pleaded guilty to distributing adulterated drugs.
Some of the medications were contaminated with bacteria, others were mislabeled, and
some were too strong or not strong enough. It's likely Glaxo would have gotten away with it
had it not been for a company insider: a tip from Cheryl Eckard set off a major federal
investigation. Eckard worked in Glaxo quality control and over ten years she had risen to become
a manager of global quality assurance. In 2002, Eckard was assigned to help lead a quality
assurance team to evaluate one of Glaxo's most important plants, in Cidra, Puerto Rico. Nine
hundred people worked there, making 20 drugs for patients in the U.S. But Eckard says that when
she saw what was happening to some of the company's most popular drugs, she couldn't believe
it. "All the systems were broken, the facility was broken, the equipment was broken, the processes
were broken. It was the worst thing I had run across in my career," she [said]. As her team
continued its evaluation of the plant, Eckard says ... that powerful medications were getting mixed
up.
Note: For lots more on how this major pharmaceutical is endangering lives, watch the 60 Minutes
video segment at the above link.
So Young and So Many Pills

These days, the medicine cabinet is truly a family affair. More than a quarter of U.S. kids and
teens are taking a medication on a [longterm] basis. Nearly 7% are on two or more such
drugs. Doctors and parents warn that prescribing medications to children can be
problematic. There is limited research available about many drugs' effects in kids. And
health-care providers and families need to be vigilant to assess the medicines' impact, both
intended and not. Although the effects of some medications, like cholesterol-lowering statins, have
been extensively researched in adults, the consequences of using such drugs for the bulk of a
patient's lifespan are little understood. Many medications kids take on a regular basis are well
known, including treatments for asthma and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But children
and teens are also taking a wide variety of other medications once considered only to be for
adults, from statins to diabetes pills and sleep drugs, according to figures provided to The Wall
Street Journal by IMS Health, a research firm. Prescriptions for antihypertensives in people age 19
and younger could hit 5.5 million this year.
Note: For a powerful article by Dr. Mercola showing how the drug companies get away with killing
literally tens of thousands of people, click here.
Senate panel ban seen as double standard

Gordon R. England's appointment to a top Pentagon post in 2006 came at a high price. The
Senate committee overseeing his confirmation demanded that he give up lucrative stocks and
options he held in companies that do business with the military. England said he took a big hit
on his taxes and lost out on more than $1 million in potential profits that year when he
divested himself of interests in companies that included General Dynamics. If he had been
a senator, he would not have had to sell anything. The Senate Armed Services Committee
prohibits its staff and presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation from owning stocks or
bonds in 48,096 companies that have Defense Department contracts. But the senators who sit on
the influential panel are allowed to own any assets they want. And they have owned millions in
interests in these firms. The committee's prohibition is designed to prevent high-ranking Pentagon
officials from using inside information to enrich themselves or members of their immediate family.
But panel members have access to much of the same inside information, because they receive
classified briefings from high-ranking defense officials about policy, contracts and plans for combat
strategies and weapons systems. "I think Congress should live by the rules they impose on other
people," said England, who served as deputy defense secretary under George W. Bush until 2009.
Note: Congress is amost always exempt from it's own rules, as further described in this powerful
Time magazine article. This is one major source of rampant corruption in US government. For
more on government corruption, click here.
Brooksley Born foresaw disaster but was silenced

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/05/BUHC1GLHFA.DTL
There's a brief scene in "Inside Job," the locally produced documentary on the Great Financial
Meltdown, in which a colleague of the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in
1997 describes how "blood drained from her face" after receiving a phoned-in tongue-lashing from
deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. The target of Summers' wrath was Brooksley Born, ...
the first female president of the Stanford Law Review and a recognized legal expert in the area of
complex financial instruments. Her crime: Born had the temerity to push for regulation of the
increasingly wild trading in derivatives, which, as we learned a decade later, helped bring
the U.S. economy, and much of the world's, to its knees. Summers, with 13 bankers in his
office, told Born to get off it "in a very grueling fashion," said the colleague. The story is told
in much more detail in All the Devils are Here, the latest, but eminently worthwhile, book on the
roots of the crisis, by Bethany McLean and ... Joe Nocera. It makes for dispiriting, even appalling,
reading. Responding to growing evidence of manipulation and fraud in unregulated derivatives
trading - "the hippopotamus under the rug," as Born and others referred to it - Born suggested the
commission should perhaps be given some sort of oversight. She had a 33-page policy paper
drawn up, full of questions and suggestions, like, for example, whether establishing a public
exchange for derivatives might not be a bad idea. Responding to the policy paper, Summers,
"screaming at her," according to the book, told Born the bankers sitting in his office "threatened to
move their derivatives business to London," if she didn't stop.
Note: For key reports on financial fraud from reliable sources, click here.
Senator Bernie Sanders on the War Between the Shrinking Middle Class
and the Wealthy
2010-11-30, U.S. Senate Testimony
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=c8f26b05-01e7-429f-a5e0-a9a6bd1a0f40
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, there is a war going on in this country, and I am not referring to the
wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I am talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and
most powerful people in this country against the working families of the United States of America,
against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The reality is, many of the
Nation's billionaires are on the warpath. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end,
and apparently there is very little concern for our country or for the people of this country if it gets
in the way of the accumulation of more and more wealth and more and more power. The
percentage of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled since the 1970s. In the mid1970s, the top 1 percent earned about 8 percent of all income. In the 1980s, that figure jumped to
14 percent. In the late 1990s, that 1 percent earned about 19 percent. And today, as the middle
class collapses, the top 1 percent earns 23 1/2 percent of all income--more than the bottom
50 percent. Today, if you can believe it, the top one-tenth of 1 percent earns about 12 cents
of every dollar earned in America.
Note: To see a video of this amazing speech by courageous Senator Bernie Sanders
(Independent), click here.
Winning the Class War

2010-11-27, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/opinion/27herbert.html
The class war that no one wants to talk about continues unabated. Even as millions of out-of-work
and otherwise struggling Americans are tightening their belts for the holidays, the nations elite are
lacing up their dancing shoes and partying like royalty as the millions and billions keep rolling in.
Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street
who are at the heart of the American aristocracy. They have waged economic warfare
against everybody else and are winning big time. The ranks of the poor may be swelling and
families forced out of their foreclosed homes may be enduring a nightmarish holiday season, but
American companies have just experienced their most profitable quarter ever. The corporate fat
cats are becoming alarmingly rotund. Their profits have surged over the past seven quarters at a
pace that is among the fastest ever seen, and they can barely contain their glee. On the same day
that The Times ran its article about [record corporate] profits, it ran a piece on the front page that
carried the headline: With a Swagger, Wallets Out, Wall Street Dares to Celebrate. Anyone who
thinks there is something beneficial in this vast disconnect between the fortunes of the American
elite and those of the struggling masses is just silly. Its not even good for the elite. The rich may
think that the public wont ever turn against them. But to hold that belief, you have to ignore the
turbulent history of the 1930s.
Note: For many reports from reliable souces on corporate profiteering, click here.
Look out, your medicine is watching you

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/11/09/smart-pill-embedded-microchip
Novartis AG plans to seek regulatory approval within 18 months for a pioneering tablet containing
an embedded microchip, bringing the concept of "smart-pill" technology a step closer. The initial
program will use one of the Swiss firm's established drugs taken by transplant patients to avoid
organ rejection. But Trevor Mundel, global head of development, believes the concept can be
applied to many other pills. Novartis agreed in January to spend $24 million to secure access to
chip-in-a-pill technology developed by privately owned Proteus Biomedical of Redwood City,
California, putting it ahead of rivals. The biotech start-up's ingestible chips are activated by
stomach acid and send information to a small patch worn on the patient's skin, which can
transmit data to a smartphone or send it over the Internet to a doctor. Because the tiny chips
are added to existing drugs, Novartis does not expect to have to conduct full-scale clinical trials to
prove the new products work. Instead, it aims to do so-called bioequivalence tests to show they
are the same as the original. A bigger issue may be what checks should be put in place to
protect patients' personal medical data as it is transmitted from inside their bodies by
wireless and Bluetooth.
Note: It's interesting that Fox News was the only major media to pick up this revealing Reuters
story. This article seriously underplays the privacy concerns raised by this new corporate strategy.
For more on this, click here. For many key reports on corporate and governmental threats to
privacy, click here. For more on the dangers of microchips from reliable sources, click here.
17,000 doctors cash in drug company money, report finds

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39742328/ns/health-health_care/
More than 17,000 doctors and other health care providers have taken money from seven major
drug companies to talk to other doctors about their products, a joint investigation by news
organizations and non-profit groups found. More than 380 of the doctors, nurses, pharmacists
and other professionals took in more than $100,000 in 2009 and 2010, according to the
investigation. The report said far more doctors are likely to have taken such payments, but it
documented these based on information from seven drugmakers. The investigation by journalism
group ProPublica, Consumer Reports magazine, NPR radio and [other] publications showed
doctors were sometimes urged to recommend "off-label" prescriptions of drugs, meaning using
them for conditions they are not approved for. "Tens of thousands of U.S. physicians are paid
to spread the word about pharma's favored pills and to advise the companies about research
and marketing," the group says in its report. "This investigation begins to pull back the shroud on
these activities," Dr. John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center, said in
a statement. "The amount of money involved is astounding, and the ProPublica report's account of
the background of some of the physicians is disturbing."
Note: This important report is available here. For more on corporate corruption, click here.
Wall Street Pay: A Record $144 Billion

Compensation on Wall Street is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive
year, as more than three dozen top banks and securities firms will pay $144 billion in salary
and benefits ... a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009. Compensation was
expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms. Overall, Wall Street is expected to pay 32.1% of its
revenue to employees, the same as last year, but below the 36% in 2007. Profits, which were
depressed by losses in the past two years, have bounced back from the 2008 crisis. But the
estimated 2010 profit of $61.3 billion for the firms surveyed still falls about 20% short from the
record $82 billion in 2006. Over that same period, compensation across the firms in the survey
increased 23%. "Until focus of these institutions changes from revenue generation to long-term
shareholder value, we will see these outrageous pay packages and compensation levels," said
Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance.
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on Wall Street's profiteering, click here.
Congressional Staffers Gain From Trading in Stocks

Chris Miller nearly doubled his $3,500 stock investment in a renewable-energy firm in 2008. It was
a perfectly legal bet, but he's no ordinary investor. Mr. Miller is the top energy-policy adviser to
Nevada Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who helped pass legislation that wound
up benefiting the firm. Mr. Miller isn't the only Congressional staffer making such stock bets. At
least 72 aides on both sides of the aisle traded shares of companies that their bosses help
oversee, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of more than 3,000 disclosure forms covering
trading activity by Capitol Hill staffers for 2008 and 2009. The Journal analysis showed that an aide
to a Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee bought Bank of America Corp. stock
before results of last year's government stress tests eased investor concerns about the health of
the banking industry. A top aide to the House Speaker profited by trading shares of Freddie Mac
and Fannie Mae in a brokerage account with her husband two days before the government
authorized emergency funding for the companies. The aides identified by the Journal say they
didn't profit by making trades based on any information gathered in the halls of Congress. Even if
they had done so, it would be legal, because insider-trading laws don't apply to Congress.
Unlike many Executive Branch employees, lawmakers and aides don't have restrictions on
their stock holdings and ownership interests in companies they oversee.
Note: Why is Congress exempt from so many of its own laws? Who is willing to start a movement
to stop this? For lots more on government corruption from major media sources, click here.
CIA hired Karzai brother before 9/11, Woodward says

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/09/cia_hired_karzai_brother_befo...
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghanistans president and boss of the strategically
important Kandahar province, has been on the CIA payroll for over a decade, Bob Woodward
writes in his new book, Obamas Wars. By the fall of 2008, Woodward says, Ahmed Wali Karzai
had been on the CIA payroll for years, beginning before 9/11. He had belonged to the CIA's
small network of paid agents and informants inside Afghanistan. In addition, the CIA paid
him money through his half-brother, the president. Hamid Karzai was plucked from obscurity
and installed as president after U.S.-backed Afghan forces chased the Taliban from power
following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. There have been many accounts of his brothers relationship
with the CIA over the years, leaving the impression that he is a CIA agent, i.e., a controlled asset
of the spy agency. But Woodwards account of the CIAs relationship with Karzai, who has also
been accused repeatedly -- but not charged with -- protecting the illicit opium trade, is more
nuanced. He was not in any sense a controlled agent who always responded to U.S. and CIA
requests and pressure, Woodward writes. He was his own man, playing all sides against the
others -- the United States, the drug dealers, the Taliban and even his brother if necessary.
Note: What this article fails to mention is that President Karzai was also an employee of the major
oil company Unocal, as reported in this Chicago Tribune article.
Botox Maker to Pay $600M to Resolve Investigation

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Cosmetic/wireStory?id=11532864
Allergan Inc., the maker of wrinkle-smoothing Botox, has agreed to pay $600 million to settle a
yearslong federal investigation into its marketing of the top-selling, botulin-based drug. The Justice
Department and the company said Wednesday in a statement it will plead guilty to one
misdemeanor charge of "misbranding," in which the company's marketing led physicians to use
Botox for unapproved uses. Those included the treatment of headache, pain, spasticity and
cerebral palsy in children. Companies are prohibited from promoting drugs for unapproved, or "offlabel," uses. Allergan said it will pay $375 million in connection with the plea, which includes the
forfeiture of $25 million in assets. Additionally, the company will pay $225 million in civil fines
$210 million to the federal governments and the rest to several states related to the
investigation, although the company denies liability for the civil claims. Allergan "paid kickbacks
to induce [physicians] to inject Botox for off-label uses and Allergan also taught doctors
how to bill for off-label uses, including coaching doctors how to miscode Botox claims
leading to millions of dollars of false claims being to submitted to federal and state
programs," Assistant Attorney General Tony West said.
Note: $600 million is nothing to sneeze at, yet this kind of find is becoming almost commonplace in
the pharmaceutical industry. Could it be that industry chieftains are more interested in profit that
public health? For more powerful information along these lines, see our two-page health summary.
U.S. regulators lack data on health risks of most chemicals

This summer, when Kellogg recalled 28 million boxes of Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops and
Honey Smacks, the company blamed elevated levels of a chemical in the packaging. Dozens of
consumers reported a strange taste and odor, and some complained of nausea and diarrhea.
Federal regulators, who are charged with ensuring the safety of food and consumer products, are
in the dark about the suspected chemical, 2-methylnaphthalene. The [FDA and EPA have] no
scientific data on its impact on human health. The cereal recall hints at a larger issue: huge
gaps in the government's knowledge about chemicals in everyday consumer products,
from furniture to clothing to children's products. Under current laws, the government has
little or no information about the health risks posed by most of the 80,000 chemicals on the
U.S. market today. The information gap is hardly new. When the Toxic Substances Control Act
was passed in 1976, it exempted from regulation about 62,000 chemicals that were in commercial
use -- including 2-methylnaphthalene. In addition, chemicals developed since the law's passage do
not have to be tested for safety. Instead, companies are asked to volunteer information on the
health effects of their compounds.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on government corruption, click here.
27,000 Abandoned Gulf Oil Wells May Be Leaking

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an
environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one - not industry, not government
- is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows. The oldest of
these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing
jobs are already failing. The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the
neglected wells - those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."

More than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About
three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year,
and many since the 1950s and 1960s - even though sealing procedures for temporary
abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures. As a forceful reminder of the
potential harm, the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement
for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst
environmental disasters in the nation's history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in
the Gulf, according to government data.
Note: For lots more on government and corporate corruption, click here and here.
Insider Trading Inside the Beltway

2010-07-02, UCLA School of Law
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1633123
A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that
Senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on
average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat
the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some
Senators had access to and were using material nonpublic information about the
companies in whose stock they trade. Under current law, it is unlikely that Members of
Congress can be held liable for insider trading. The proposed Stop Trading on Congressional
Knowledge Act addresses that problem by instructing the Securities and Exchange Commission to
adopt rules intended to prohibit such trading. This article analyzes present law to determine
whether Members of Congress, Congressional employees, and other federal government
employees can be held liable for trading on the basis of material nonpublic information. It argues
that there is no public policy rationale for permitting such trading and that doing so creates
perverse legislative incentives and opens the door to corruption. The article explains that the
Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution is no barrier to legislative and regulatory
restrictions on Congressional insider trading.
Note: Do you think that these highly successful investors in the US Senate might have a vested
interest in protecting the existing financial and legal structure that makes their profits possible and
protects them from criminal charges?
U.S. banks' role in Mexican drug trade

2010-06-30, San Francisco Chronicle/Bloomberg News
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/29/BU2L1E6LV2.DTL
Wachovia [Bank] ... made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. San
Francisco's Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit
failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers - including the
cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine. The admission ... sheds
light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that
has convulsed Mexico for the past four years. Wachovia admitted it didn't do enough to spot
illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican currency exchange houses from 2004 to
2007. That's the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S.
history - a sum equal to one-third of Mexico's current gross domestic product. "Wachovia's
blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte
blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled
the case. "It's the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy," said Martin
Woods, director of Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods
says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were
funneling money through Wachovia's branch network. "If you don't see the correlation between the
money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you're missing the point," he
said.
Note: For abundant reports from reliable sources on the many dubious ways in which major
financial firms make their profits, click here.
Efforts to Limit the Flow of Spill News

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/10access.html
When the operators of Southern Seaplane in Belle Chasse, La., called the local Coast GuardFederal Aviation Administration command center for permission to fly over restricted airspace in
[the] Gulf of Mexico, they made what they thought was a simple and routine request. A pilot
wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of
the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone
late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied. We were
questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for? recalled Rhonda
Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. The minute we mentioned
media, the answer was: Not allowed. Journalists struggling to document the impact
of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas
affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement,
the Coast Guard and government officials. Scientists, too, have complained about the trickle of
information that has emerged from BP and government sources. Three weeks passed, for
instance, from the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and the first images of
oil gushing from an underwater pipe were released by BP.
Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on government and corporate corruption
and collusion, click here and here.
Report condemns swine flu experts' ties to big pharma

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/04/swine-flu-experts-big-pharmace...
Scientists who drew up the key World Health Organisation guidelines advising governments to
stockpile drugs in the event of a flu pandemic had previously been paid by drug companies which
stood to profit. An investigation by the British Medical Journal and the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism, the not-for-profit reporting unit, shows that WHO guidance issued in 2004 was
authored by three scientists who had previously received payment for other work from
Roche, which makes Tamiflu, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), manufacturer of Relenza.
Pharmaceutical companies banked more than $7bn (4.8bn) as governments stockpiled
drugs. "The tentacles of drug company influence are in all levels in the decision-making process,"
said Paul Flynn, the Labour MP who sits on the council's health committee. Although the experts
consulted made no secret of industry ties in other settings, declaring them in research papers and
at universities, the WHO itself did not publicly disclose any of these in its seminal 2004 guidance.
Note: For wide coverage from reliable sourcesof the swine and avian flu "fake pandemics"
designed for corporate profit, click here.
Former Fed chief Volcker backs change in system

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/19/BU101DHAMC.DTL
The United States must curb consumption and credit and boost production and savings, but its
citizens and leaders so far lack the will to change, economist Paul Volcker said. Volcker, 82, an
adviser to the Obama administration, ... said the United States spiraled toward the Great
Recession through an excess of debt that subsidized an appetite for consumer goods, many of
them imported. The chief bugaboo, in Volcker's view, was a runaway financial sector that ...
became a factory to make money by manipulating money. He said under-regulated
financiers made big profits and bonuses by swapping derivatives and other exotic
instruments that produced few of the widespread benefits - like better jobs and wages - that
normally flow from investment. Now that this financial house of cards has collapsed, Volcker said,
U.S. and world leaders must figure out how to stop powerful mega-banks and hedge funds from
engaging in the same shenanigans that forced taxpayers to bail them out to prevent further
catastrophe. "The central issue with which we have been grappling is the doctrine of 'too big to
fail,' " Volcker said, alluding to how the United States bailed out institutions like insurer AIG to
prevent their collapse from further damaging the economy.
Note: For a great collection of reports from major media sources on the hidden realities of the Wall
Street crisis and the government bailout of big finance, click here.
Four Big Banks Score Perfect 61-Day Run

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/business/12bank.html
It is the Wall Street equivalent of a perfect game of baseball 27 up, 27 down, the final score
measured in millions of dollars a day. Despite the running unease in world markets, four giants of
American finance managed to make money from trading every single day during the first three
months of the year. Their remarkable 61-day streak is one for the record books. Perfect trading
quarters on Wall Street are about as rare as perfect games in Major League Baseball. But
Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Company produced
the equivalent of four perfect games during the first quarter. Each one finished the period
without losing money for even one day. Their showing ... underscored the outsize and
controversial role that trading has assumed at major financial institutions. It also drives home
the widening lead that a handful of big banks are enjoying over lesser rivals on post-bailout Wall
Street. The four banks ... reaped big rewards without necessarily placing big bets that stocks or
bonds would go up or down. This is not about hitting home runs, said Jaidev Iyer, who runs his
own risk management consulting firm, J-Risk Advisors. This is just, as we call it, milking the
market and your captive client base.
Note: For an astounding list on the Forbes website of the richest companies in the world by
assets, click here. All of the top 10 companies are banks, with collective assets of over $22 trillion!
Yet we as taxpayers continue to pay to bail them out when they have problems. Is something
wrong with this picture? For a graphic representation of this, click here. And for an abundance of
deep reporting in major media articles on the hidden realities of Wall Street's shadowy operations,
click here.
Regulator Deferred to Oil Industry on Rig Safety

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/us/08agency.html
Federal regulators warned offshore rig operators more than a decade ago that they needed to
install backup systems to control the giant undersea valves known as blowout preventers, used to
cut off the flow of oil from a well in an emergency. The warnings were repeated in 2004 and 2009.
Yet the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency charged both with
regulating the oil industry and collecting royalties from it, never took steps to address the issue
comprehensively, relying instead on industry assurances that it was on top of the problem, a
review of documents shows. In the intervening years, numerous blowout preventers and their
control systems have failed, though none as catastrophically as those on the well the Deepwater
Horizon drilling rig was preparing when it blew up on April 20, leaving tens of thousands of gallons
of oil a day spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. Agency records show that from 2001 to 2007,
there were 1,443 serious drilling accidents in offshore operations, leading to 41 deaths, 302
injuries and 356 oil spills. Yet the federal agency continues to allow the industry largely to
police itself. Critics say that, then and now, the minerals service has been crippled by this
dependence on industry and by a climate of regulatory indulgence.
Note: For lots more from reliable souces on government corruption and collusion with industries it
is supposed to be regulating, click here.
Sempra agrees to major refund for energy crisis

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/28/BUQ41D6D34.DTL
Sempra Energy has agreed to pay about $410 million to settle claims that it played Enron-style
games with California's electricity market during the 2000-01 energy crisis, state officials said.
Houston's Enron, as well as other companies, used a variety of tactics to create the
appearance of congested power lines in some instances and energy shortages in others.
Electricity prices soared, and rolling blackouts rippled across the state. Enron traders were
caught on audio tape bragging about how much their trading schemes were costing "Grandma
Millie," their derisive term for the California utility customer. The crisis forced the state to buy
expensive long-term power contracts that Californians are still paying off, month by month, on their
utility bills. Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the state's largest utility, tumbled into bankruptcy as a
result of soaring wholesale power prices. And Gov. Gray Davis lost his job in a recall election
fueled by public anger over his handling of the crisis. Since then, the state government has
reached 39 settlement agreements with energy companies for a total of $3.2 billion.
Note: To see how blatant the corruption is, watch the tapes of Enron traders laughing at causing
traffic accidents at this link. For many more examples of corporate corruption reported by reliable,
verifiable sources, click here.
How did Big Finance grow so powerful that its hijinks nearly brought
down the global economy?
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/watch.html
Why is it so hard to hold Wall Street accountable? Even as we speak the banking industry and
corporate America are fighting against financial reform with all the money and influence at their
disposal. Their effort is to preserve a system that would enable them to ransack the country once
again. What can ordinary Americans do? That's the question I want to put to my guests, Simon
Johnson and James Kwak. They have written this new book, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street
Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. It's a must read - already a best seller -- and it couldn't
have come at a better time. This book could change the debate over financial reform by tipping it in
favor of the public. Together James Kwak and Simon Johnson run the indispensable economic
website BaselineScenario.com. [Moyers:] Let me get to the blunt conclusion you reach in your
book. You say that two years after the devastating financial crisis of '08 our country is still
at the mercy of an oligarchy that is bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation
than ever. Correct? SIMON JOHNSON: Absolutely correct, Bill. The big banks became
stronger as a result of the bailout. That may seem extraordinary, but it's really true. They're
turning that increased economic clout into more political power. And they're using that political
power to go out and take the same sort of risks that got us into disaster in September 2008.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the hidden methods used by
financial corporations to manipulate the world economy and gain huge profits at the expense of
taxpayers, click here.
Millions of H1N1 vaccine doses may be tossed

Despite months of dire warnings and millions in taxpayer dollars, less than half of the 229 million
doses of H1N1 vaccine the government bought to fight the pandemic have been administered -leaving an estimated 71.5 million doses that must be discarded if they are not used before they
expire. Between 81 million and 91 million doses of swine flu vaccine were injected into peoples'
arms or squirted up their noses through the end of February, according to federal officials, leaving
about 138 million doses unused. An estimated 60 million of those will be donated to poor countries
or saved for possible future use. But doses already in vials and syringes will be thrown away if not
used before their expiration dates pass. The prospect of millions of doses of the onceprecious vaccine being discarded is the latest twist in the $1.6 billion program -- the most
ambitious immunization campaign in U.S. history. The government-led effort produced a
vaccine in record time, but unexpected production problems delayed delivery of the bulk of
supplies until after the second wave of infections had peaked.
Note: Yet the pharmaceutical companies get to keep the huge profits from the vaccines, paid for
by the taxpayers. For key reports from major media sources on the government and
pharmaceutical corporation corruption involving bird and swine flu vaccines, click here.
Amid Nanotech's Dazzling Promise, Health Risks Grow

2010-03-24, AOL News
http://www.aolnews.com/nanotech/article/amid-nanotechs-dazzling-promise-healt...
For almost two years, molecular biologist Bndicte Trouiller doused the drinking water of scores
of lab mice with nano-titanium dioxide, the most common nanomaterial used in consumer products
today. Halfway through, Trouiller became alarmed: Consuming the nano-titanium dioxide was
damaging or destroying the animals' DNA and chromosomes. The biological havoc continued
as she repeated the studies again and again. It was a significant finding: The degrees of DNA
damage and genetic instability that [she] documented can be "linked to all the big killers of man,
namely cancer, heart disease, neurological disease and aging," says Professor Robert Schiestl, a
genetic toxicologist who ran the lab at UCLA's School of Public Health where Trouiller did her
research. Nano-titanium dioxide is so pervasive that the Environmental Working Group says it has
calculated that close to 10,000 over-the-counter products use it in one form or another. Other
public health specialists put the number even higher. It's "in everything from medicine capsules
and nutritional supplements, to food icing and additives, to skin creams, oils and
toothpaste," Schiestl says.
Note: For a treasure trove of key reports on health issues, click here.
Swine flu taskforce's links to vaccine giant: More than half the experts
fighting the 'pandemic' have ties to drug firms
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1243034/Swine-flu-taskforces-links-va...
More than half the scientists on the swine flu taskforce advising the [UK] Government have ties to
drug companies. Eleven of the 20 members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies
(SAGE) have done work for the pharmaceutical industry or are linked to it through their
universities. Many have declared interests in GlaxoSmithKline, the vaccine maker expected to be
the biggest beneficiary of the pandemic. The disclosure of the register of interests comes just days
after a health expert branded the swine flu outbreak a 'false pandemic' driven by the drug
companies which stood to profit. The Government is now trying to offload up to 1billion worth of
unwanted swine flu vaccine. Last July, the Department of Health warned of up 65,000 deaths,
with 350 a day at the pandemic's peak. But the death toll now stands at just 251. SAGE was
created to give Ministers recommendations on how to control and treat the virus. Official
documents show some members are linked to vaccine manufacturer Baxter and to Roche, which
makes Tamiflu. GSK, Baxter and Roche stand to make up to 1.5billion between them from
Government contracts related to swine flu.
Note: For lots more on the Swine Flu "false pandemic," click here.
WHO to Study H1N1 Response Amid False Pandemic Debate

2010-01-13, BusinessWeek/Bloomberg News
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-12/who-to-review-swine-flu-response-...
The World Health Organization said it plans to conduct a review of its response to swine flu as
policymakers in Europe prepare for an urgent debate on the influenza pandemic. Yesterday, the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said false pandemics, a threat to health will be
a major theme of its next plenary session. Health authorities worldwide are assessing whether
their response to swine flu is justified by its threat as cases retreat in the U.S. and Western
Europe. The new H1N1 virus, which has targeted children and younger adults, has so far resulted
in fewer deaths than attributed to seasonal strains, which kills mostly the frail elderly. Council of
Europe parliamentarian Wolfgang Wodarg said last week he and several colleagues had
called for a commission of inquiry into a false pandemic and the way it was handled at
national and European levels, claiming pressure from pharmaceutical firms. The WHO
moved to the top level of its six-step pandemic alert in June after the discovery of swine flu in
Mexico and the U.S. in April.
Note: BusinessWeek deleted this article days after posting it. Could someone have pressured
them to do this? If you click the above link, the article is gone, though you can still see a promo
here and read it on BusinessWeek in the Google cache available here. For a link to the article on
the Bloomberg website, click here. For revealing reports of the corruption surrounding the swine flu
and previous health scares, click here.
Advisers on Vaccines Often Have Conflicts

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/health/policy/18cdc.html
A new report finds that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a poor job of screening
medical experts for financial conflicts when it hired them to advise the agency on vaccine safety.
Most of the experts who served on advisory panels in 2007 to evaluate vaccines for flu and
cervical cancer had potential conflicts that were never resolved, the report said. Some were
legally barred from considering the issues but did so anyway. In the report ... Daniel R.
Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, found that the
centers failed nearly every time to ensure that the experts adequately filled out forms confirming
they were not being paid by companies with an interest in their decisions. The report found that 64
percent of the advisers had potential conflicts of interest that were never identified or were left
unresolved by the centers. Thirteen percent failed to have an appropriate conflicts form on file at
the agency at all, which should have barred their participation in the meetings entirely, Mr.
Levinson found. And 3 percent voted on matters that ethics officers had already barred them from
considering.
here.
Goldman Holders Miffed at Bonuses

Some of the largest shareholders in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have urged the Wall Street firm to
reduce the size of its bonus pool, arguing that it should pass along more of its blockbuster
earnings to investors, according to people familiar with the situation. Their complaints in private
conversations with the company and at analyst meetings show how anger over its big-money
culture is spilling into the ranks of investors who typically shy away from debates over Wall Street
pay. Despite record net income and compensation at Goldman as markets rebound and the firm
outmuscles weakened rivals for business, analysts expect its 2009 earnings per share to be 22%
lower than in 2007 and roughly equal to its 2006 earnings, according to Thomson Financial. The
decline is caused by issuing more than 100 million shares in the past year to bolster Goldman's
financial position and capital. Some major Goldman shareholders also are concerned about a littlenoticed change in the company's financial statements that increased the firm's total head count by
adding temporary employees and consultants. The change reduced per-employee
compensation, making it look like Goldman employees earn less than they actually do. The
figure is a lightning rod for criticism of Goldman because its staff is on pace to earn about
$717,000 apiece for 2009. Excluding temporary employees and consultants would increase
compensation per employee to about $775,000.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the Wall Street
bailout, click here.
Drug Makers Raise Prices in Face of Health Care Reform

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/business/16drugprices.html
Even as drug makers promise to support Washingtons health care overhaul by shaving $8
billion a year off the nations drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been
raising its prices at the fastest rate in years. In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale
prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That
will add more than $10 billion to the nations drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion
this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since
1992. The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which
has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year. Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher
price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming
years. When we have major legislation anticipated, we see a run-up in price increases,
says Stephen W. Schondelmeyer, a professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of
Minnesota. A Harvard health economist, Joseph P. Newhouse, said he found a similar pattern of
unusual price increases after Congress added drug benefits to Medicare a few years ago, giving
tens of millions of older Americans federally subsidized drug insurance. Just as the program was
taking effect in 2006, the drug industry raised prices by the widest margin in a half-dozen years.
They try to maximize their profits, Mr. Newhouse said.
In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/us/politics/15health.html
In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of
many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident. Statements by more than a
dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working
for Genentech, one of the worlds largest biotechnology companies. E-mail messages
obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and
another for Republicans. The lobbyists ... were remarkably successful in getting the statements
printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.
Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked
up some of its talking points 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for
lobbyists. In an interview, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said: I
regret that the language was the same. I did not know it was. He said he got his statement from
his staff and did not know where they got the information from. In recent years, Genentech
s political action committee and lobbyists for Roche and Genentech have made campaign
contributions to many House members. And company employees have been among the hosts at
fund-raisers for some of those lawmakers.
Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on government corruption, click here.
Swine flu skepticism demands deft response

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-SwineFlu/idUSTRE5A52FU20091112
European scientists and health authorities are facing angry questions about why H1N1 flu has not
caused death and destruction on the scale first feared, and they need to respond deftly to ensure
public support. Accusations are flying in British and French media that the pandemic has
been "hyped" by medical researchers to further their own cause, boost research grants and
line the pockets of drug companies. Britain's Independent newspaper this week asked
"Pandemic? What Pandemic?." France's Le Parisien newspaper ran the headline: "Swine flu:
why the French distrust the vaccine" and noted a gap between the predicted impact of H1N1 and
the less dramatic reality. "Dangerous liaisons between certain experts, the labs and the
government, the obscurity of the contracts between the state and the pharma firms have added to
the doubt." In Britain, health authorities' original worst-case scenario -- which said as many as
65,000 could die from H1N1 -- has twice been revised down and the prediction is now for around
1,000 deaths, way below the average annual toll of 4,000 to 8,000 deaths from seasonal winter flu.
Note: It's quite interesting and telling that a thorough Internet seach showed that no major media
picked up this article from Reuters News Agency
TARP on steroids
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/30/EDTG1ACEDE.DTL
It was 9/29/08 - a moment when a rare blast of populist democracy briefly singed the economic
terrorists who hold the Capitol hostage. It had been a dark and stormy month of financial collapse,
culminating in an attempted power grab. Pushed by his fellow Wall Street Ponzi schemers,
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - a former Goldman Sachs CEO - was threatening
Armageddon unless Congress ratified his ... decree for a no-strings-attached bank bailout. Today,
the episode seems merely to have set minimum standards for chicanery. As evidenced by two
little-noticed sections of the Obama administration's Wall Street "reform" bill, presidents and their
bank benefactors are back to thinking they can pilfer whatever they want by burying their demands
in the esoterica of lengthier bills. Finding this latest giveaway means digging all the way down to
sections 1109 and 1604 of the White House's mammoth proposal. At a recent hearing, Rep. Brad
Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks (Los Angeles County), called the language "TARP on steroids,"
noting the provisions would deliberately let the executive branch enact even bigger, more
unregulated bailouts than ever - and by unilateral fiat. TARP on Steroids includes no specific
oversight or executive pay constraints. TARP on Steroids allows taxpayer cash to go only to the
behemoths (which, not coincidentally, tend to make the biggest campaign contributions). TARP on
Steroids would let [the Treasury Secretary] spend as much as he wants.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the continuing Wall Street bailout, click
here.
Gulf-trotting Tony Blair cashes in on his war contacts

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6879436.ece
Tony Blair has been cashing in on his contacts from the Iraq conflict and his role as Middle East
peace envoy for a private business venture expected to earn him more than 5m a year. The
former prime minister has sold his political and economic expertise to two countries, Kuwait and
the United Arab Emirates, via his fledgling private consultancy. He also represents the investment
bank JP Morgan in the region. Blair has been ... amassing a fortune from the American lecture
circuit. By offering himself to the Arab states as a statesman for hire, he could comfortably double
his annual earnings. His consultancy, the London-based Tony Blair Associates (TBA), emulates
the New York partnership Kissinger Associates, which was founded by Henry Kissinger, the former
national security adviser to President Nixon. Peter Brierley, 59, of Batley, West Yorkshire, whose
28-year-old son Shaun was killed near the Kuwait-Iraq border in 2003 and who refused to shake
Blairs hand at a memorial service this month, said: This beggars belief. Its absolutely
scandalous that hes now trying to make money from his contacts in the region. Its money
from the blood and lives of the soldiers who died in Iraq. His fees for talks, along with
contracts with JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services, are estimated to put his earnings
excluding [a big] book deal well in excess of 5m a year.
Drugmakers, Doctors Rake in Billions Battling H1N1 Flu

2009-10-14, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/big-business-swine-flu/story?id=8820642
Americans are still debating whether to roll up their sleeves for a swine flu shot, but companies
have already figured it out: vaccines are good for business. Drug companies have sold $1.5
billion worth of swine flu shots, in addition to the $1 billion for seasonal flu they booked
earlier this year. These inoculations are part of a much wider and rapidly growing $20
billion global vaccine market. "The vaccine market is booming," says Bruce Carlson,
spokesperson at market research firm Kalorama, which publishes an annual survey of the vaccine
industry. "It's an enormous growth area for pharmaceuticals at a time when other areas are not
doing so well," he says. As always with pandemic flus, taxpayers are footing the $1.5 billion check
for the 250 million swine flu vaccines that the government has ordered so far and will be
distributing free to doctors, pharmacies and schools. In addition, Congress has set aside more
than $10 billion this year to research flu viruses, monitor H1N1's progress and educate the public
about prevention. Drugmakers pocket most of the revenues from flu sales. But some say it's not
just drugmakers who stand to benefit. Doctors collect copayments for special office visits to inject
shots, and there have been assertions that these doctors actually profit handsomely from these
vaccinations. Pharmacies also charge co-payments or full price of about $25 to those without
insurance.
Note: For a revealing article questioning the efficacy of vaccines, click here. And for a powerful
CBS '60 Minutes' news clip clearly showing how the profit motive in vaccines endangers public
health, click here.
In Harsh Reports on S.E.C.s Fraud Failures, a Watchdog Urges

Sweeping Changes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/30sec.html
The Securities and Exchange Commissions independent watchdog called for a sweeping
overhaul of the agencys investigation and enforcement practices on Tuesday, after a
blistering report on the S.E.C.s failure to detect Bernard L. Madoffs extensive Ponzi
scheme. Two reports, released by the S.E.C.s inspector general, H. David Kotz, recommended
dozens of changes in the way the agency evaluates tips, trains investigators and documents
examinations of securities firms. The first report, which covers the S.E.C.s inspections and
examinations office, outlines 37 improvements that would revamp nearly every aspect of the
divisions operations, including how investigators follow up on tips and creating step-by-step
procedures in identifying potential violations of securities laws. Mr. Kotz also issued 21
recommendations to the S.E.C.s division of enforcement, including the start of a formal process
for handling complaints and improving working relationships within the division. One measure
would mandate that tips and complaints be reviewed by at least two individuals experienced in the
subject before taking further action. The proposed changes come after Mr. Kotzs office completed
an exhaustive investigation this month of the S.E.C.s failure to detect the Madoff fraud despite
many warnings and a flood of complaints from credible sources. At nearly every turn, the
investigation found, the agency had failed to properly examine Mr. Madoffs firm and had not
adequately followed up on tips from as far back as 1992 that could have unearthed the estimated
$65 billion scheme.
Note: For a treasure trove of key revelations on the realities behind the Wall Street crash and
bailout, click here. Contact your political representatives urging them to support these
recommendations.
A Whole Industry Is Waiting For A Pandemic

2009-07-21, Der Spiegel (Germany's leading news magazine)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,637119,00.html
In an interview with SPIEGEL, epidemiologist Tom Jefferson speaks about dangerous fearmongering, misguided, money-driven research and why we should all be washing our hands a lot
more often. SPIEGEL: Do you consider the swine flu to be particularly worrisome? Jefferson:
There are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse.
None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions.
Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to
occur. SPIEGEL: Who do you mean? Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists
and the pharmaceutical companies. They've built this machine around the impending pandemic.
And there's a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it
took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding. SPIEGEL: Do you
think the WHO declared a pandemic prematurely? Jefferson: Don't you think there's something
noteworthy about the fact that the WHO has changed its definition of pandemic? The old
definition was a new virus, which went around quickly, for which you didn't have immunity,
and which created a high morbidity and mortality rate. Now the last two have been dropped,
and that's how swine flu has been categorized as a pandemic.
Note: For lots more on the Swine Flu "false pandemic," click here.
Swine flu vaccine rushed through safety checks

2009-07-13, Times of London (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6694046.ece
A swine flu vaccine will be fast-tracked for use in Britain within five days once it is developed, and
130 million doses are on order. The Department of Health expects to have enough vaccine this
year to give it to half the population. Further supplies will be available if needed. Each person will
need two doses of the vaccine, unless one single jab is found to provide high rates of immunity.
The first doses specific to the H1N1 swine flu virus are set to arrive in September and could be
given regulatory approval in less than a week. The move came after the first British patient without
underlying health problems died from swine flu, taking the number of swine flu-linked deaths in
Britain to 15. Peter Holden, the British Medical Associations lead negotiator on swine flu, said that
... although swine flu was not generally causing serious illness in patients, health officials
were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, starting first on groups that were
susceptible to infection or prone to complications. It is likely that the elderly would be given a
seasonal flu jab to guard against other circulating flu strains as happens every year as well
as the swine flu vaccination. The high-risk groups will be done at GPs surgeries. People are still
making decisions over this, but we want to get cracking before we get a second wave, which is
traditionally far more virulent, Dr Holden said. It takes several weeks or months to make flu
vaccines, which are cultured using chicken eggs. The European Medicines Agency said the fasttracked approval procedure has involved trials of a mock-up vaccine and that the speed would
not compromise patient safety. The vaccines are authorised with a detailed risk management
plan, the agency said.
Important Note: Don't be fooled by this media propaganda. The same rushed attitude is what led
to hundreds of deaths from the swine flu vaccine in 1976. Click here for a powerful CBS 60
Minutes video showing how a huge vaccine propaganda campaign by the government led to these
deaths. And a recent article in The Scotsman quotes a spokesperson for the Scottish government
saying "We have said that a vaccine is being worked on and the plan is to vaccinate everybody."
Remember that the media is beholden to pharmaceutical companies for billions of dollars in
advertising income. For lots more powerful information on this vital topic, click here.
Ignore the health scare professionals: you won't die of swine flu
2009-07-12, The Telegraph blogs (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100002999/ignore-the-health-sc...
Swine flu is a nasty disease, but no nastier than other strains of influenza. True, it has killed
hundreds of people in Mexico; but even there, other variants of flu virus have been far more lethal.
Why, then, the urgent need to inoculate the entire British population? Perhaps Im being overly
cynical, but I cant help wondering whether were being pushed into a wrong-headed course of
action by the health scare industry. Were told that Tamiflu needs to be taken at once, without a
moments delay meaning that anyone with a sniffle is likely to start glugging the stuff. Were also
told that the virus may mutate, meaning conveniently that well soon need a new variety of
medicine. In any case, these flu vaccines have short shelf lives. Good news for the drug
manufacturers and their lobbyists; bad news for the taxpayer. Ministers must suspect that
the danger is being exaggerated. Yet they would rather spend gazillions than run the
slightest risk of being accused of not having done enough. And, needless to say, there isnt a
medical advisory body in the world that will say: Actually, minister, considering everything in the
round, the danger posed by this virus is minor, and we recommend the disbandment of this panel.
You may think I am being unconscionably flippant. But back in April, when newspapers were filling
their pages with science fiction scenarios of a deadly epidemic, I suggested that, taking everything
together, we werent going to die of swine flu. Who has the better track record so far: the Big
Pharma doom mongers, or this blog?
Pay-for-Chat Plan Falls Flat at Washington Post

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/business/media/03post.html
For generations, The Washington Post has been a scrupulous watchdog over the capitals cozy
world of power networking. For a short time, it almost became the networks host. The Post
decided Thursday to cancel plans to charge lobbyists and trade groups $25,000 or more to
sponsor private, off-the-record dinner parties at the home of its publisher, Katharine Weymouth,
events that would have brought together lobbyists, business leaders, Post journalists and officials
from the Obama administration and Congress. The revelation of the parties early Thursday
morning by Politico.com appalled members of The Post newsroom and put the paper squarely in
the cross hairs of journalism ethicists. In response, Ms. Weymouth canceled the first dinner,
scheduled for July 21. A flier describing the events promised corporate sponsors conversation
(Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No.) at the Washington home of Ms. Weymouth. Sponsors
were asked to pay $25,000 to attend an event, or underwrite a series of 11 for $250,000. The
July 21 event, focusing on health care reform, guaranteed a collegial evening with
health industry advocates, Post journalists covering the field and administration officials
involved with its policies. The Politico article prompted an immediate newsroom reaction. The
Posts ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, wrote on his blog that this comes pretty close to a public
relations disaster. With the print business in tough straits, many news organizations have turned
to conferences and other events to raise revenue and their profiles. But the planned Post events
seem particularly audacious, not only acting essentially as a paid conduit between lobbyists and
government officials, but also providing sponsors the opportunity to make their case to Post
journalists.
Note: This article shows the blatant manipulations going on behind the scenes in our major media.
To learn just how compromised the media have been for a long time, click here to read about
former Post owner Katharine Graham's connections with the CIA. And to understand how major
news is suppressed, click here.
A Battle to Preserve a Visionarys Bold Failure

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/science/05tesla.html
In 1901, Nikola Tesla began work on a global system of giant towers meant to relay through the air
not only news, stock reports and even pictures but also, unbeknown to investors such as J.
Pierpont Morgan, free electricity for one and all. It was the inventors biggest project, and his most
audacious. The first tower rose on rural Long Island and, by 1903, stood more than 18 stories tall.
Tesla, who lived from 1856 to 1943, made bitter enemies who dismissed some of his claims as
exaggerated, helping tarnish his reputation in his lifetime. Today, his work tends to be poorly
known among scientists, though some call him an intuitive genius far ahead of his peers. He was
widely celebrated for his inventions of motors and power distribution systems that used the form of
electricity known as alternating current, which beat out direct current (and Thomas Edison) to
electrify the world. Around 1900 ... inventors around the world were racing for what was
considered the next big thing wireless communication. [Tesla's] own plan was to turn
alternating current into electromagnetic waves that flashed from antennas to distant
receivers. The scale of his vision was gargantuan. Investors, given Teslas electrical
achievements, paid heed. The biggest was J. Pierpont Morgan, a top financier. He sank
$150,000 (today more than $3 million) into Teslas global wireless venture. But Morgan was
[eventually] disenchanted. Margaret Cheney, a Tesla biographer, observed that Tesla had seriously
misjudged his wealthy patron, a man deeply committed to the profit motive. The prospect of
beaming electricity to penniless Zulus or Pygmies, she wrote, must have left the financier less
than enthusiastic.
Note: This article underplays a number of things about Tesla. Morgan stopped funding him
primarily because he eventually realized that there would be no way to charge for the electricity
Tesla was generating. If successful, electricity would be available virtually for free to those supplied
by his tower. Tesla was then shunned by the power elite and his rightful claim as inventor of the
radio (not Marconi) was erased in the history books. As stated on the PBS website, "It wasn't until
1943 a few months after Tesla's death that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's radio
patent number 645,576." For more on this amazing man, click here and here.
Why Creditors Should Suffer, Too

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/business/economy/05view.html?partner=rss&em...
The Obama administrations proposals to reform financial regulation sound ambitious enough as
they aim to bring companies like A.I.G. under a broader umbrella of government rule-making and
scrutiny. But there is a big hole in these proposals, as there has already been in the governments
approach to bailing out failing financial companies. Even as they focus on firms deemed too big to
fail, the new proposals immunize the creditors and counterparties of such firms by
protecting them from their own lending and trading mistakes. This pattern has been evident
for months, with the government aiding creditors and counterparties every step of the way.
Yet this has not been explained openly to the American public. In truth, its not the shareholders of
the American International Group who benefited most from its bailout; they were mostly wiped out.
The great beneficiaries have been the creditors and counterparties at the other end of A.I.G.s
derivatives deals firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Socit Gnrale,
Barclays and UBS. These firms engaged in deals that A.I.G. could not make good on. The bailout,
and the regulatory regime outlined by Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, would give firms
like these every incentive to make similar deals down the road. In both the bailouts and in the new
proposals, the government is effectively neutralizing creditors as a force for financial safety. This
suggests a scary possibility that the next regulatory regime could end up even worse than the
last.
Big Bonuses at Fannie and Freddie Draw Fire

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/business/04bonus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two troubled companies at the heart of the nations mortgage
market, are set to pay their employees retention bonuses totaling $210 million, despite calls from
lawmakers to cancel the payments. The bonuses, which were made public on Friday, were
defended by the companies federal regulator, James B. Lockhart, who said he intended to let
them proceed. In a letter sent last week to Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, Mr.
Lockhart disclosed that 7,600 Fannie and Freddie workers were scheduled to receive payouts
aimed at retaining those employees most critical to keep and difficult to replace. Under the plan,
213 employees will receive retention bonuses worth more than $100,000 this year, and one
Freddie Mac executive will receive $1.3 million. Those figures drew sharp rebukes from Mr.
Grassley and other lawmakers, who noted that Fannie and Freddie had received pledges of $400
billion from taxpayers to offset huge losses since they were seized by the government in
September. Similar bonuses paid by the American International Group, which was also bailed out
by taxpayers, incited fiery attacks from the White House and legislators when they were revealed
last month. Its hard to see any common sense in management decisions that award
hundreds of millions in bonuses when their organizations lost more than $100 billion in a
year, Mr. Grassley said in a statement. Its an insult that the bonuses were made with an
infusion of cash from taxpayers.
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities behind the Wall Street bailouts, click here.
Obamas Ersatz Capitalism

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...
The Obama administrations $500 billion or more proposal to deal with Americas ailing banks has
been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a winwin-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win and taxpayers lose. Treasury hopes to get us
out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world
crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive
complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency. In theory, the administrations plan is based
on letting the market determine the prices of the banks toxic assets including outstanding
house loans and securities based on those loans. The reality, though, is that the market will not be
pricing the toxic assets themselves, but options on those assets. The two have little to do with
each other. The government plan in effect involves insuring almost all losses. Since the private
investors are spared most losses, then they primarily value their potential gains. This is exactly
the same as being given an option. Under the plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner,
the government would provide about 92 percent of the money to buy the asset but would
stand to receive only 50 percent of any gains, and would absorb almost all of the losses.
Some partnership! What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is
ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a partnership in which
one partner robs the other.
Note: The author of this analysis, Joseph E. Stiglitz, is a professor of economics at Columbia
University. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1997, and was
awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2001. For many revealing reports on the realities behind
the Wall Street bailouts, click here.
Powerful proponent of psychiatric drugs for children primed for a fall

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/27/EDAF16N963.DTL
Dr. Joseph Biederman, chief of the Massachusetts General Pediatric Psychopharmacology Clinic,
is already under investigation by Harvard University and the National Institutes of Health for failing
to report income received from drug companies. Biederman has strongly pushed treating children's
mental illnesses with powerful antipsychotic medicines. Diagnoses like ADHD and pediatric bipolar
disorder, along with psychiatric drug use in American children, have soared in the last 15 years. No
other country medicates children as frequently. Now, in newly released court documents,
Biederman appears to be promising drugmaker Johnson & Johnson in advance that his studies on
the antipsychotic drug risperidone will prove the drug to be effective when used on preschool age
children. Biederman's status at Harvard and his research have arguably made him, until recently,
America's most powerful doctor in child psychiatry. Reports from court actions, along with an
ongoing investigation of conflict of interest charges led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, threaten
to topple Biederman from his heretofore untouchable Olympian heights. Biederman's conflict of
interest problems have exposed his strong pro-drug views to the public for scrutiny. Until now,
fear of the Biederman team has operated quietly on the small club of child psychiatric
researchers. Only when 2-year-olds started taking three psychiatric drugs simultaneously
under a Biederman protocol for bipolar disorder did the emperor's clothes become so
invisible as to begin the naming of names. Biederman's personal travails tragically inform us
about a crisis in academic medicine that must be resolved.
Note: For a powerful overview of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.
A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...
The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer
bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in
bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to
the brink of collapse last year. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the firm they were
unacceptable and demanded they be renegotiated, a senior administration official said. But the
bonuses will go forward because lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them.
The payments to A.I.G.s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously
scheduled bonuses for the companys senior executives and 6,400 employees across the
sprawling corporation. The payment of so much money at a company at the heart of the financial
collapse that sent the broader economy into a tailspin almost certainly will fuel a popular backlash
against the governments efforts to prop up Wall Street. A.I.G., nearly 80 percent of which is now
owned by the government, defended its bonuses, arguing that they were promised last year before
the crisis and cannot be legally canceled. Of all the financial institutions that have been propped up
by taxpayer dollars, none has received more money than A.I.G.. The bonuses will be paid to
executives at A.I.G.s financial products division, the unit that wrote trillions of dollars worth of
credit-default swaps that protected investors from defaults on bonds backed in many cases by
subprime mortgages. Seven executives at the financial products unit were entitled to receive more
than $3 million in bonuses.
Note: For many revelations of the amazing realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Some Banks, Feeling Chained, Want to Return Bailout Money

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/business/economy/11bailout.html?partner=rss...
Financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions
and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They must let shareholders vote on executive
pay packages. They must slash dividends, cancel employee training and morale-building
exercises, and withdraw job offers to foreign citizens. As public outrage swells over the rapidly
growing cost of bailing out financial institutions, the Obama administration and lawmakers are
attaching more and more strings to rescue funds. The conditions are necessary to prevent Wall
Street executives from paying lavish bonuses and buying corporate jets, some experts say.
Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to return the
bailout money. The list includes small banks ... as well as giants like Goldman Sachs and
Wells Fargo. They say they plan to return the money as quickly as possible or as soon as
regulators set up a process to accept the refunds. A senior Treasury official involved in the bailout
effort said the administration was carefully trying not to do anything that could harm the banks and
was giving financial incentives to modify mortgages. But by keeping weak banks operating, the
markets continue to sink and taxpayer costs are mounting, outside experts said. The current
policy is likely to result in weaker banks, Mr. Seidman said. And keeping insolvent banks in
operation does not benefit the system.
Note: Could it be that that the main reason top bank executives are now talking about giving
money back is that don't want to give up their lavish bonuses and corporate jets? What about all
the talk about how the whole world would go to pot if they didn't get this bailout money? Somehow
this is not surprising.
A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff

2009-02-16, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-fraud-bigger-than-madoff-1...
In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to
investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn ... in a US -directed
effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be
clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it
may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.
"I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and
not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since
2003. Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government
money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption.
American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers
involved in the programme to rebuild Iraq. In the expanded inquiry by federal agencies, the
evidence of a ... US businessman called Dale C Stoffel who was murdered after leaving the US
base at Taiji north of Baghdad in 2004 is being re-examined. Before he was killed, Mr Stoffel, an
arms dealer and contractor, was granted limited immunity from prosecution after he had provided
information that a network of bribery linking companies and US officials awarding contracts
existed within the US-run Green Zone in Baghdad. He said bribes of tens of thousands of dollars
were regularly delivered in pizza boxes sent to US contracting officers.
Note: To read a former Marine Corps general's exposure of the high-level criminality and
profiteering that is the real purpose behind war, click here. For many powerful revelations from
reliable sources of government corruption, click here.
New Bank Bailout Could Cost $2 Trillion

Government officials seeking to revamp the U.S. financial bailout have discussed spending
another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to help restore banks to health, according to people familiar with the
matter. President Barack Obama's new administration is wrestling with how to stem the continuing
loss of confidence in the financial system, as it divides up the remaining $350 billion from the $700
billion Troubled Asset Relief Program launched last fall. The potential size of rescue efforts being
discussed suggests the administration may need to ask Congress for more funds. The
administration is expected to take a series of steps, including relieving banks of bad loans and
distressed securities. The so-called "bad bank" that would buy these assets could be seeded
with $100 billion to $200 billion from the TARP funds, with the rest of the money -- as much
as $1 trillion to $2 trillion -- raised by selling government-backed debt or borrowing from
the Federal Reserve. The administration is also seeking more effective ways to pump money into
banks, and is considering buying common shares in the banks. Government purchases so far
have been of preferred shares, in an effort to both protect taxpayers and avoid diluting existing
shareholders' stakes. Given the weakened state of the banking industry, with bank share prices
low and their capital needs high, economists say the government probably can't avoid owning at
least some banks for a temporary period.
Note: Note that the U.S. government has to borrow from the Federal Reserve, which most people
don't realize is privately owned by the richest banks. For more on this, click here. The $2 trillion of
taxpayer money for Wall Street's toxic assets revealed here is in addition to over $7 trillion already
committed according to CNN and others. Wouldn't government debt of this magnitude threaten a
broad range of government services and risk seriously weakening the dollar? For many other
revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Execs of bailed-out banks got $1.6B last year, AP finds

2008-12-21, USA Today/Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2008-12-21-bank-execs-bail...
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in
salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals. The
rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent
them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to
lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages. Benefits
included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home
security, country club memberships and professional money management. The total amount
given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that
have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines. The AP compiled total
compensation based on annual reports that the banks file with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. The 116 banks have so far received $188 billion in taxpayer help. Among the
findings: Lloyd Blankfein, president and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, took home
nearly $54 million in compensation last year. The company's top five executives received a total of
$242 million. The New York-based company on Dec. 16 reported its first quarterly loss since it
went public in 1999. It received $10 billion in taxpayer money on Oct. 28. John A. Thain, chief
executive officer of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses with $83 million in earnings last
year. Like Goldman, Merrill got $10 billion from taxpayers on Oct. 28.
Note: For many reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout from reliable sources, click here.
House Arrest for Madoff in $7 Million Apartment
2008-12-17, abcnews.com
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WallStreet/story?id=6480363
Bernard Madoff, accused of the largest fraud in U.S. history, will be allowed to remain in his $7
million Park Avenue apartment instead of being sent to jail, under terms of an agreement
announced today by federal prosecutors. Madoff was unable to meet the bond conditions set last
week by a federal magistrate which required him to get four people to sign his personal
recognizance bond. According to the U.S. Attorney's office, only Madoff's wife and brothers were
willing to sign the document. But instead of ordering him held in jail, prosecutors agreed to
home detention with electronic monitoring. Madoff and his luxury apartment on
Manhattan's upper east side will be fitted with an electronic monitoring device by the
court's pre-trial services and Madoff will be under a curfew of between 7 p.m. through 9
a.m. Madoff's wife agreed to post the mansions in her name in Palm Beach, Florida and in
Montauk on New York's Long Island. The Securities and Exchange Commission chairman said
today the agency has found "no evidence of wrongdoing by any SEC personnel" in connection with
Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme and that the SEC intends to get to the bottom of where
it may have gone wrong. "I was very concerned to learn this week that credible allegations about
Mr. Madoff had been made over nearly a decade and yet never referred to the commission for
action," Commissioner Christopher Cox said at a press conference. Yesterday, Cox acknowledged
what amounted to a generational failure on the part of the SEC to discover any hint of Madoff's
scheme, despite allegations dating back to 1999.
Note: Why is the criminal responsible for the largest single banking scandal in history given house
arrest rather than jail before his trial? Isn't it remarkable that the hands-off treatment Madoff
received over the years from the SEC seems to be continuing from the Federal prosecutors? For
more on Wall Street corruption, click here.
Why AIG Gets Billions, GM Gets Scorn

2008-12-12, U.S. News & World Report blog
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/flowchart/2008/12/12/why-aig-gets-billions-gm-get...
AIG, the huge insurance company, has so far gotten $173 billion worth of federal aid, because
traders at one small division made bets on exotic securities that were so calamitous they
threatened to bring down the whole company. So far, the amount of money the feds have pledged
to this one firm equals nearly one-third of the nations defense budget. General Motors,
Americas biggest automaker, has asked for a $10 billion federal loan, equal to oneseventeenth of what AIG has gotten and Congress has said no. There were no rogue
traders at GM, and the companys problems have intensified in plain view, over several months,
instead of coming from out of nowhere in a single, cataclysmic episode. Make sense? Doesnt to
me. So maybe if we look at each company a bit more closely, it will be clearer why the government
favors companies like AIG over ones like GM. Does have AIG have friends in high places? You
could say that. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke
both support the AIG bailout, and theyve steered money to the company without Congressional
approval. GMs most important friends in Washington have been the Michigan Congressional
delegation, which obviously doesnt have the clout it used to. Paulson has actually argued against
using part of the huge $700 billion financial bailout fund to help the automakers, because they
cant pass a viability test proving theyll stay in business long enough to pay back the loans. But
AIG hasnt passed a viability test either, and without federal help theres little doubt it would be in
bankruptcy.
Note: At least someone is asking the right questions! For many highly revealing reports from
reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Wall Street legend Bernard Madoff arrested over '$50 billion Ponzi
scheme'
2008-12-12, Times of London
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5331997.ece
Shock and panic spread through the country clubs of Palm Beach and Long Island after Bernard L
Madoff, a trading powerbroker for over four decades, allegedly confessed to a massive fraud that
will cost his wealthy investors at least $50 billion, perhaps the largest swindle in Wall Street history.
Mr Madoff, 70, a former Nasdaq stock chairman, was apparently turned in by his two sons and
arrested on Thursday morning at his Manhattan apartment by the FBI. The FBI claims that three
senior employees of Mr Madoff's investment firm - once a towering presence on Wall Street turned up at his apartment on Wednesday to ask questions about the company's solvency. Two of
them are believed to be his sons, Andrew and Mark, who have worked for their father for two
decades. Mr Madoff told them that he was "finished", that he had "absolutely nothing", and
that "it's all just one big lie". He said the investment arm of his firm was "basically a giant
Ponzi scheme," and that it had been insolvent for years. A Ponzi scheme, named after the
swindler Charles Ponzi, is a fraudulent investment operation that pays abnormally high returns to
investors paid from money put into the scheme by subsequent investors, rather from real profits
generated by share trading. The FBI complaint states that Mr Madoff told his sons he believed the
losses from his scheme could exceed $50 billion. If that is the case, his fraud would be far greater
than past Ponzi schemes and easily the greatest swindle perpetrated by one man.
Note: If a former Nasdaq chairman was committing this kind of blatant fraud while still the
chairman of Nasdaq, what does it say about the level of corruption on Wall Street? For a treasure
trove of reports from reliable sources exposing the realities of the Wall Street corruption, click here.
Legislators taking hard look at oil trading

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/26/BU70149LTD.DTL
For a few months this summer, the oil market speculator ... helped push oil prices steadily higher,
shattering records that had lasted for decades. As oil topped $145 per barrel, Congress started
looking for ways to rein the speculators in. Then oil prices plunged, and interest in the issue
fizzled. But that may soon change. "This will remain an issue," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.,
who introduced oil market legislation this year. "Because when the price of oil has gone from
$50 to $147 and back, it's clear to me and everyone else that this has nothing to do with
supply and demand. It has to do with speculation." Among possible changes, Congress may
try to assert more authority over unregulated oil swaps that don't take place on any formal market.
Many factors helped shove prices higher, including the growth of China's economy and the decline
of the American dollar. But oil kept rising even as gasoline sales fell in the United States, the
world's largest oil consumer. That wouldn't have happened if supply and demand really were
driving the market, many analysts say. "The entire move from $70 (per barrel) to $147 was people
fleeing the dollar and looking at oil as an asset class," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy research
fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute. "It was speculators, so when they exited the market,
we went right back to $70." Speculators are investors who trade in oil or other commodities
strictly as a financial investment. They include hedge funds and investment banks as well as
retirement funds.
Note: For lots more reports on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
15 corporate chieftains each top $100 million in 5 years

2008-11-20, Denver Post/Wall Street Journal
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_11036514
The credit bubble has burst. The economy is tanking. Investors in the U.S. stock market have lost
more than $9 trillion since its peak a year ago. But in industries at the center of the crisis, plenty of
top officials managed to emerge with substantial fortunes. Fifteen corporate chieftains of large
home-building and financial-services firms each reaped more than $100 million in cash
compensation and proceeds from stock sales during the past five years, according to a Wall Street
Journal analysis. Four of those executives, including the heads of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
and Bear Stearns Cos., ran companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection or seen their share
prices fall more than 90% from their peak. The study ... showed that top executives and
directors of the firms cashed out a total of more than $21 billion during the period. The issue
of compensation and other rewards for corporate executives is front-and-center in the wake of the
financial meltdown. In the tech bubble of the late 1990s, more than 50 individuals each made
more than $100 million from selling shares just prior to the crash. Many had just founded
companies that had never turned a profit. "The system tends to reward people for participating in
bubbles," says Roy C. Smith, a finance professor at New York University's business school.
Was There a Loan It Didnt Like?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/business/02gret.html?partner=rssuserland&em...
As a senior mortgage underwriter, Keysha Cooper was proud of her ability to spot fraud and other
problems in a loan application. But as a senior mortgage underwriter at Washington Mutual during
the late, great mortgage boom, Ms. Cooper says she found herself in a vise. Brokers squeezed her
from one side, her superiors from the other, she says, and both pressured her to approve loans, no
matter what. At WaMu it wasnt about the quality of the loans; it was about the numbers, Ms.
Cooper says. They didnt care if we were giving loans to people that didnt qualify. Instead,
it was how many loans did you guys close and fund? When underwriters refused to approve
dubious loans, they were punished, she says. In February 2007 ... the pressure became intense.
WaMu executives told employees they were not making enough loans and had to get their
numbers up, she says. They started giving loan officers free trips if they closed so many loans, fly
them to Hawaii for a month, Ms. Cooper recalls. One of my account reps went to Jamaica for a
month because he closed $3.5 million in loans that month. If a loan came from a top loan officer,
they didnt care what the situation was, you had to make that loan work, she says. One loan file
was filled with so many discrepancies that she felt certain it involved mortgage fraud. She
turned the loan down, she says, only to be scolded by her supervisor. Ms. Cooper says that
her bosses placed her on probation for 30 days for refusing to approve the loan and that her team
manager signed off on the loan.
Panel grills credit raters over inflated ratings

Executives and employees at the major credit ratings agencies were often aware of problems in
the AAA grades awarded to thousands of mortgage-related securities whose downgrades helped
plunge the nation into a financial meltdown. The companies Standard & Poor, Moodys and
Fitch, Inc. made enormous profits as they evaluated a ballooning number of mortgage-backed
bonds, many of which were given top marks as long as housing prices went up. The story of the
credit rating agencies is a story of colossal failure, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The California Democrat said, Millions of
investors rely on them for independent, objective assessments. The rating agencies broke
this bond of trust, and federal regulators ignored the warning signs and did nothing to
protect the public. The result is that our entire financial system is now at risk. The
companies are important because their high assessments assured investors that their money
should be safe. The inflated ratings awarded to securities backed up by subprime loans led
investors to buy them in enormous numbers. But now, most of these securities have been
downgraded and the market for them has largely evaporated, contributing to the current crisis. The
panel also heard former ratings agency executives say theres an inherent conflict of interest in the
industry because theyre paid by bond issuers instead of investors who trust their ratings to make
smart investments.
Note: For many reports on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
This Bailout Doesnt Pay Dividends

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/opinion/21stein.html?partner=rssuserland&em...
Secretary Paulson [has been] described as playing the role of the Godfather, making the banks [a
bailout] offer they could not refuse. But in one important respect, he was more Santa Claus than
Vito Corleone: the agreement allowed the banks to continue paying dividends to common
shareholders. These dividends, if they are paid at current levels, will redirect more than $25 billion
of the $125 billion to shareholders in the next year alone. A significant fraction of [the bailout]
money will wind up in shareholders pockets and thus be unavailable to plug the large
capital hole on the banks balance sheets. The officers and directors of the nine banks will
be among the leading beneficiaries of the dividend payout. Their personal take of the
dividends will amount to approximately $250 million in the first year. Why would the banks
want to maintain large dividend payouts when theyve had such a hard time borrowing, are starved
of cash, and the credit markets believe that they run a significant risk of defaulting? Shouldnt
these distressed banks be marshalling all of the financial resources available to them to ensure
their viability? Heres why: Each dollar paid out as a dividend today is a dollar that cannot be
seized by creditors in the event of bankruptcy. For a distressed company, dividends are not in the
interest of the enterprise as a whole (shareholders and lenders taken together), but only in the
interest of shareholders. They are an attempt by shareholders to beat creditors out the door. The
government should close the door by putting an immediate stop to the dividend payouts of any
banks receiving direct federal support.
Note: Is the fox guarding the hen house? For many revealing, reliable reports on the banking
Wall Street's 'Disaster Capitalism for Dummies'

2008-10-21, MarketWatch.com (owned by Dow Jones)
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/14-reasons-main-street-loses/story.aspx...
Sorry to pop your bubble folks, but it no longer matters who's president. Why? The real "game
changer" already happened. Democracy has been replaced by Wall Street's new "disaster
capitalism." That's the big game-changer historians will remember about 2008, masterminded by
Wall Street's ultimate "Trojan Horse," Hank Paulson. Congress simply handed over voting power
and the keys to trillions in the Treasury to Wall Street's new "Disaster Capitalists" who now control
"democracy." We let it happen. In one generation America has been transformed from a
democracy into a strange new form of government, "Disaster Capitalism." Three decades of
influence peddling in Washington ... accelerated under Reaganomics and went into hyperspeed
under Bushonomics, both totally committed to a new disaster capitalism run privately by Wall
Street and Corporate America. No-bid contracts in wars and hurricanes. A housing-credit bubble -while secretly planning for a meltdown. Finally, the coup de grace: Along came the housing-credit
crisis, as planned. Press and public saw a negative, a crisis. Disaster capitalists saw a huge
opportunity. Yes, opportunity for big bucks and control of America. This end game was
planned for years in secret war rooms on Wall Street, in Corporate America, in Washington
and the Forbes 400. Naomi Klein summarizes the game in Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster
Capitalism. This "new economy" generates enormous profits feeding off other peoples' misery:
Wars, terror attacks, natural catastrophes, poverty, trade sanctions, subprime housing meltdowns
and all kinds of economic, financial and political disasters.
Note: The author of this highly critical commentary, Paul B. Farrell, is a well-known writer on
finance and investment and a long-time columnist at The Wall Street Journal's sister-site
MarketWatch.
Pentagon Auditors Pressured To Favor Contractors, GAO Says

Auditors at a Pentagon oversight agency were pressured by supervisors to skew their reports on
major defense contractors to make them look more favorable instead of exposing wrongdoing and
charges of overbilling, according to an 80-page report released yesterday by the Government
Accountability Office. The Defense Contract Audit Agency, which oversees contractors for the
Defense Department, "improperly influenced the audit scope, conclusions and opinions" of reviews
of contractor performance, the GAO said, creating a "serious independence issue." The report
does not name the projects or the contractors involved, but staff members on the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee who were briefed on the findings cited
seven contractors, some of whom are among the biggest in the defense industry: Boeing, Northrop
Grumman, Fluor, Parker Hannifin, Sparta, SRS Technologies and a subsidiary of L3
Communications. Supervisors at DCAA attempted to intimidate auditors, prevented them
from speaking with GAO investigators and created a "generally abusive work environment,"
the report said. It cited incidents of "verbal admonishments, reassignments and threats of
disciplinary action" against workers who "raised questions about management guidance." The
GAO said it launched the two-year inquiry after complaints on a fraud hotline. Its investigators
conducted more than 100 interviews of 50 people involved in audits between 2003 and 2007.
Note: For eye-opening reports on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Army Overseer Tells of Ouster Over KBR Stir

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17contractor.html?partner=rssuse...
The Army official who managed the Pentagons largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted
from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable
charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other
services to American troops. The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing
the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the
first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that
the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi
operations. Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than
$1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. They had
a gigantic amount of costs they couldnt justify, he said in an interview. But he was suddenly
replaced, he said, and his successors after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside
contractor to consider KBRs claims approved most of the payments he had tried to block. Mr.
Smiths account fills in important gaps about the Pentagons handling of the KBR contract, which
has cost more than $20 billion so far and has come under fierce criticism from lawmakers. Mr.
Smith ... is giving his account just as the Pentagon has recently awarded KBR part of a 10-year,
$150 billion contract in Iraq.
Note: For a summary of US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler's book on war profiteering,
click here.
Was Press a War Enabler? 2 Offer a Nod From Inside

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/washington/30press.html?partner=rssuserland...
In his new memoir, What Happened, Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary,
said the national news media neglected their watchdog role in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq,
calling reporters complicit enablers of the Bush administrations push for war. Surprisingly, some
prominent journalists have agreed. Katie Couric, the anchor of CBS Evening News, said ... that
she had felt pressure from government officials and corporate executives to cast the war in a
positive light. Speaking on The Early Show on CBS, Ms. Couric said the lack of skepticism
shown by journalists about the Bush administrations case for war amounted to one of the most
embarrassing chapters in American journalism.She also said she sensed pressure from the
corporations who own where we work and from the government itself to really squash any
kind of dissent or any kind of questioning of it. At the time, Ms. Couric was a host of Today
on NBC. Another broadcast journalist also weighed in. Jessica Yellin, who worked for MSNBC in
2003 and now reports for CNN, said ... that journalists had been under enormous pressure
from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that
was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation. For five years, antiwar activists and
media critics have claimed that the national news media failed to keep the White House
accountable before the invasion. Greg Mitchell, the author of So Wrong for So Long, a book about
press and presidential failures on the war, argues that some media organizations have yet to come
to terms with their role.
Note: For a powerful overview of the media cover-up by top, award-winning journalists, click here.
Lou Dobbs Tonight: NAFTA Superhighway

2008-05-28, CNN News
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0805/28/ldt.01.html
[News anchor LOU DOBBS:] Open borders advocates are refusing to acknowledge rising
evidence of plans for a NAFTA superhighway. Many in the mainstream media absolutely
refuse to acknowledge the reality. The plans could be a major step toward that North
American Union of the United States, Canada and Mexico. BILL TUCKER, CNN
Correspondent: There is no NAFTA superhighway. Not officially. In Texas planning a development
is under way for what are officially called transportation corridors. The Trans Texas Corridor, I-69, a
combination of rail lines, utility lines, car and truck lanes, [is planned] to be as wide as three
football fields laid end to end. It will be financed by a private foreign company ... who will then own
the lease on the road and the revenue generated by the tolls. Texas may use eminent domain to
lay claim to some of the land needed to build it. For an imaginary road there's a lot of money and
effort involved [and] some very real opposition. TERRI HALL, TEXASTURF.ORG: There's just no
doubt that this is happening. We've been to the public hearings. We've seen the presentations.
We've seen the documents. We waded through them and there's a whole lot more groups besides
just ours. And we've got Farm Bureau, Sierra Club, a whole host of groups from the left and the
right. TUCKER: In Kansas a resolution opposing the superhighway overwhelmingly passed the
State House.
Note: To watch a video of this Lou Dobbs Tonight segment, click here.
They Rule the World

David Rothkopf's Superclass [can be viewed] as a map of how the world really works. Rothkopf, a
former managing director of Kissinger Associates and an international trade official in the Clinton
Administration, has identified roughly 6,000 individuals who have "the ability to regularly influence
the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide" ... with a growing allegiance ... to
each other rather than to any particular nation. Rothkopf [cites] the Pareto principle of distribution,
or the "80/20 rule," whereby 20 percent of the causes of anything are responsible for 80 percent of
the consequences. That means 20 percent of the money-makers make 80 percent of the
money and 20 percent of the politicians make 80 percent of the important decisions. That
20 percent belongs to the superclass. Superclass ... is as much about who is not part of the
superclass as who is. As I read Rothkopf's chronicles of elite gatherings -- Davos, Bilderberg, the
Bohemian Grove (all male), Fathers and Sons (all male) -- I was repeatedly struck by the near
absence of women. When Rothkopf summarizes "how to become a member of the superclass,"
his first rule is "be born a man." Only 6 percent of the superclass is female. Superclass is written in
part as a consciousness-raising exercise for members of the superclass themselves. Rothkopf
worries that "the world they are making" is deeply unequal and ultimately unstable. But it's likely to
take more than exhortation. In the words of former Navy Secretary John Lehman, "Power corrupts.
Absolute power is kind of neat." Why would the superclass want to give it up?
Note: The website www.theyrule.net allows visitors to trace the connections between individuals
who serve on the boards of top corporations, universities, think thanks, foundations and other elite
institutions. For lots more on secret societies, click here.
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?ex=1366344000&en...
In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over
Guantnamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded the gulag of our times by
Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights
experts and calls were mounting for its closure. The administrations communications experts
responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of
the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully
orchestrated tour of Guantnamo. To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity,
presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as military analysts whose long
service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing
issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a
Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate
favorable news coverage of the administrations wartime performance. The effort, which
began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological
and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to
military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Those
business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers. But collectively, the men on the
plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either
as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.
Note: This excellent article should be read in its entirety. For a related video presentation, click
here. For an analysis, click here.
The three trillion dollar war

2008-02-23, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/articl...
The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs
of the war. The president and his advisers [forecast] a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have
a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined. The cost of direct US military
operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already
exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean
War. And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the
cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of
the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when
16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars,
after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion. Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The
price in blood has been paid by our voluntary military and by hired contractors. The price in
treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised
to pay for it - in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen. Deficit spending gives the
illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter.
But of course the laws are not repealed. The costs of the war are real even if they have been
deferred, possibly to another generation. From the unhealthy brew of emergency funding, multiple
sets of books, and chronic underestimates of the resources required to prosecute the war, we have
attempted to identify how much we have been spending - and how much we will, in the end, likely
have to spend. The figure we arrive at is more than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on
conservative assumptions.
Note: For many reports from major media sources which reveal massive war profiteering, click
here.
Advertisers using 'directed sound' to get in your head

2008-02-19, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta's leading newspaper)
http://www.ajc.com/services/content/business/stories/2008/02/18/sound_0219.html
If you hear mysterious voices in your head the next time you stroll down the street, they may be
trying to sell you something. That was the case recently in New York when people walking beneath
a billboard for the A&E show "Paranormal State" suddenly heard a woman's disembodied voice
whisper: "Who's there? Who's there?" and "It's not your imagination." The creepy effect was
caused by technology called Audio Spotlight that projects sound in a focused beam so only
people in a certain spot can hear it. "The idea of directing sound was a real uphill battle
when we first started, but all of a sudden people are coming to us saying, 'We have to have
directional sound. We don't want all this noise in our store,' " said Woody Norris, founder of
American Technology Corp. in San Diego. Norris said he has sold many units for use with video
screens in checkout lines in ... grocery stores so audio can reach waiting customers without
constantly bombarding store workers. While some of the advertising applications are recent,
directed sound is often used in museums and other places where sound must be focused on
people standing in front of an exhibit or display without disturbing those around them. Smithsonian
museums in Washington have used [such] systems [as have] the New York Public Library, the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts and ... the observation deck of the Seattle Space Needle. Directedsound devices ... use narrow beams of ultrasound waves that can't be heard by human ears. The
beam distorts air as it passes through, generating sound people can hear along its length.
Note: It's not hard to imagine non-advertising uses for this invasive technology. Could it possibly
be used to influence people's thinking in ways other than advertising?
Stimulus Plan a Scam to Benefit the Rich

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/IN8LUO095.DTL
Congress is about to sell us the biggest fraud in American history. It's been highly touted as an
economic stimulus bill that will help millions of Americans. As part of the bill, Congress is set to
rush through an increase in the mortgage loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and
Federal Housing Administration insurance, too) - from $417,000 to $729,750 - the first step toward
a massive financial disaster in which taxpayers will end up paying through the nose. Now, thanks
to Congress, junk bond investors will be able to pawn off their bad debt to Fannie and
Freddie. This shift will certainly doom Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so don't be surprised if
we, the taxpayers, have to bail out poor Fannie and Freddie - to the tune of more than $1
trillion. The irony here is that the collapse in housing prices could make Fannie insolvent even
without raising the loan limit. Increasing Fannie's limit is like going on a spending spree with your
credit cards because you know you are going to file for bankruptcy in a few months. Only here the
taxpayer is left holding the bag. Our children will pay interest on this debt in perpetuity. It is our
debt. It is inescapable. In the coming months, Fannie and Freddie will buy up mortgages based on
old, fraudulent appraisals and on loans with bogus inflated incomes. Unfortunately, many of these
loans will still default. Expansion of Fannie and Freddie's reckless lending is exactly what
Congress wants because it's plausibly deniable. Teary-eyed lawmakers can take to the airwaves a
year from now and declare: "We had no idea Fannie could go under, but we can't cut and run now.
Those same lawmakers won't mention the fact that they get paid far more by real estate lobbyists
than they do from our Treasury.
Note: The author wrote this article seven months before the collapse of Fannie Mae and eight
months before the huge banking bailout. For more news articles suggestion major manipulations to
transfer public tax monies to the banking sector, click here.
Analysts See Merck Victory in Vioxx Settlement

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/business/10merck.html
Three years after withdrawing its pain medication Vioxx from the market, Merck has agreed
to pay $4.85 billion to settle 27,000 lawsuits by people who claim they or their family
members suffered injury or died after taking the drug. The settlement, one of the largest ever
in civil litigation, comes after nearly 20 Vioxx civil trials over the last two years from New Jersey to
California. After losing a $253 million verdict in the first case, Merck has won most of the rest of the
cases that reached juries, giving plaintiffs little choice but to settle. Based on the fact that the
27,000 suits cover about 47,000 sets of plaintiffs, the average plaintiff will receive just over
$100,000 before legal fees and expenses, which usually swallow between 30 and 50 percent of
payments to plaintiffs. Plaintiffs who do not want to accept the settlement can pursue their own
claims, but with so many of the top trial lawyers in the United States agreeing to the deal, they may
have difficulty doing so. The settlement does not end the government investigations that Merck
faces, which include both civil and criminal inquires from several states and the Justice
Department. But for Merck, which has already spent more than $1.2 billion on Vioxx-related legal
fees, the settlement will put to rest any fears that Vioxx lawsuits might bankrupt the company, or
even have a significant financial impact.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.
U.S. Medical Schools, Drug Makers Share Strong Ties

More than half of department chairs at U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals have financial
ties with the drug industry, a new study finds. "There is not a single aspect of medicine in which the
drug companies do not have substantial and deep relationships, [including] doctors-in-training,
resident physicians, researchers, physicians-in-practice, the people who review drugs for the
federal government and the people who review studies," said lead researcher Eric Campbell,
associate professor at the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and
Harvard Medical School in Boston. "Drug companies have relationships with everyone," he
continued. "They're involved in every aspect of medicine. Someone has to decide which of these is
OK." The study, the first to examine the extent of these institutional relationships, is published in
the Oct. 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "I think the paper is a very
valuable contribution, in that it provides what's probably the first comprehensive documentation of
the extent of relationships that involve department chairs, and department chairs are certainly the
key agents of overseeing and maintaining the day-to-day operations of a medical school or
teaching hospital," said Dr. David Korn ... at the Association of American Medical Colleges in
Washington, D.C. The issue of medicine's ties to industry has been a hot one of late. One study
found that third-year medical students get, on average, one gift or attend one activity sponsored by
a drug maker each week. "Now it's up to the policymakers and people who run medical
schools," said Campbell. "They need to come up with some rules and they need to be new
rules. I believe there's very little reasonable justification for why drug companies should be
involved in the education of medical students."
Note: For a powerful overview of medical corruption, click here.
Report Assails F.D.A. Oversight of Clinical Trials

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/health/policy/28fda.html?ex=1348632000&en=d...
The Food and Drug Administration does very little to ensure the safety of the millions of people
who participate in clinical trials, a federal investigator has found. The inspector general of the
Department of Health and Human Services, Daniel R. Levinson, said federal health officials did not
know how many clinical trials were being conducted, audited fewer than 1 percent of the testing
sites and, on the rare occasions when inspectors did appear, generally showed up long after the
tests had been completed. The F.D.A. has 200 inspectors, some of whom audit clinical trials part
time, to police an estimated 350,000 testing sites. Even when those inspectors found serious
problems in human trials, top drug officials in Washington downgraded their findings 68 percent of
the time, the report found. Among the remaining cases, the agency almost never followed up with
inspections to determine whether the corrective actions that the agency demanded had occurred.
In many ways, rats and mice get greater protection as research subjects in the United
States than do humans, said Arthur L. Caplan, chairman of the department of medical ethics at
the University of Pennsylvania. Animal research centers have to register with the federal
government, keep track of subject numbers, have unannounced spot inspections and
address problems speedily or risk closing, none of which is true in human research, Mr.
Caplan said. Because no one collects the data systematically, there is no way to tell how safe the
nations clinical research is or ever has been. The drug agency oversees just the safety of trials by
companies seeking approval to sell drugs or devices. Using an entirely different set of rules, the
Office for Human Research Protections oversees trials financed by the federal government.
Privately financed noncommercial trials have no federal oversight.
Note: For further information on corruption in the health care industry, click here.
Who Runs the CIA? Outsiders for Hire.

The most intriguing secrets of the "war on terror" have nothing to do with al-Qaeda and its fellow
travelers. They're about the mammoth private spying industry that all but runs U.S. intelligence
operations today. In April, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was poised to publicize
a year-long examination of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report was
inexplicably delayed -- and suddenly classified a national secret. What McConnell doesn't want
you to know is that the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It
has penetrated the CIA and is running the show. Over the past five years (some say almost a
decade), there has been a revolution in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing.
Private companies now perform key intelligence-agency functions, to the tune ... of more than $42
billion a year. Intelligence professionals [say] that more than 50 percent of the National
Clandestine Service (NCS) -- the heart, brains and soul of the CIA -- has been outsourced to
private firms such as Abraxas, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. These
firms recruit spies, create non-official cover identities and control the movements of CIA
case officers. They also provide case officers and watch officers at crisis centers and regional
desk officers who control clandestine operations worldwide. As The Los Angeles Times first
reported last October, more than half the workforce in two key CIA stations -- Baghdad and
Islamabad, Pakistan -- is made up of industrial contractors, or "green badgers," in CIA parlance.
Intelligence insiders say that entire branches of the NCS have been outsourced to private industry.
Anger at deadly Nigerian drug trials

2007-06-29, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6768799.stm
In school, Anas Mohammadu's mates call him "horror" and make fun of him. But Anas is lucky to
be alive. Other children who were used in the controversial 1996 drug trial by US pharmaceutical
giant Pfizer died. Anas, then only three years old, was the first child to be given the experimental
antibiotic Trovan at the Infectious Diseases Hospital, Kano, during the drug trial. Pfizer tested the
then unregistered drug in Nigeria's north-western Kano State during an outbreak of meningitis
which had affected thousands of children. Officials in Kano say more than 50 children died in the
experiment, while many others developed mental and physical deformities. But Pfizer says only 11
of the 200 children used in the drug trial died. Following pressure from rights groups and
families affected by the trial, the Nigerian government set up an expert medical panel to
review the drug trial. The experiment was "an illegal trial of an unregistered drug", the
Nigerian panel concluded, and a "clear case of exploitation of the ignorant". After more than
a decade of silence, the Nigerian government has decided to sue Pfizer, seeking $7bn (3.5bn) in
damages for the families of children who allegedly died or suffered side-effects in the experiment.
Kano State government has also filed separate charges against Pfizer.
Note: Pfizer settled the case out of court, as reported by BBC at this link.
Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/health/psychology/27doctors.html?ex=1340596...
As states begin to require that drug companies disclose their payments to doctors for lectures and
other services, a pattern has emerged: psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than
doctors in any other specialty. How this money may be influencing psychiatrists and other
doctors has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. For instance, the
more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of
powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially
risky and mostly unapproved. Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday that drug company payments to
psychiatrists in the state more than doubled last year, to an average of $45,692 each from $20,835
in 2005. Antipsychotic medicines are among the largest expenses for the states Medicaid
program. Over all last year, drug makers spent $2.25 million on marketing payments, fees and
travel expenses to Vermont doctors, hospitals and universities, a 2.3 percent increase over the
prior year, the state said. The number most likely represents a small fraction of drug makers total
marketing expenditures to doctors since it does not include the costs of free drug samples or the
salaries of sales representatives and their staff members. According to their income statements,
drug makers generally spend twice as much to market drugs as they do to research them.
Endocrinologists received the second largest amount, according to the Vermont analysis, earning
an average of $33,730. Since the state identified the specialties of only the top 100 earners, these
averages represent the money earned by only some of the states specialists. There were 11
psychiatrists and 5 endocrinologists in that top group of 100.
Note: For much more reliable, verifiable information on corruption in the pharmaceutical industry,
click here.
Doctors Ties to Drug Makers Are Put on Close View

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/us/21drug.html?ex=1332129600&en=8ab21926768...
Dr. Allan Collins ... is president of the National Kidney Foundation. In 2004 ... the pharmaceutical
company Amgen, which makes the most expensive drugs used in the treatment of kidney disease,
underwrote more than $1.9 million worth of research and education programs led by Dr. Collins. In
2005, Amgen paid Dr. Collins at least $25,800, mostly in consulting and speaking fees. The
payments to Dr. Collins and the research center ... come from Minnesota, the first of a handful of
states to pass a law requiring drug makers to disclose payments to doctors. The Minnesota
records are a window on the widespread financial ties between pharmaceutical companies and the
doctors who prescribe and recommend their products. From [1997] through 2005, drug makers
paid more than 5,500 doctors, nurses and other health care workers in the state at least $57
million. More than 100 people received more than $100,000. Research shows that doctors who
have close relationships with drug makers tend to prescribe more, newer and pricier drugs
whether or not they are in the best interests of patients. Drug companies want somebody who can
manipulate in a very subtle way, said Dr. Frederick R. Taylor. Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, a
former sales representative [said] it all comes down to ways to manipulate the doctors. Some of
the doctors receiving the most money sit on committees that prepare guidelines instructing
doctors nationwide about when to use medicines. It is critical that the experts who write
clinical guidelines be prohibited from having any conflicts of interest, said Dr. Marcia Angell, a
former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Note: This article only scratches the surface of legal and illegal corruption by the powerful
pharmaceutical industry. If you care about who really controls our health system, don't miss Dr.
Marcia Angell's incredibly revealing essay showing the unbelievable wealth and influence of the
drug companies available here.
Carlyle Changes Its Stripes
2007-02-12, BusinessWeek
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_07/b4021001.htm
In the two decades since private equity firms first stormed the business world, they've been called
a lot of things, from raiders to barbarians. But only [the Carlyle Group] has been tagged in the
popular imagination with warmongering, treason, and acting as cold-eyed architects of government
conspiracies. Carlyle, founded 20 years ago in the shadow of Washington's power centers, long
went about its business far from the public eye. Its ranks were larded with the politically
connected, including former Presidents, Cabinet members, even former British Prime
Minister John Major. It used its partners' collective relationships to build a lucrative business
buying, transforming, and selling companies -- particularly defense companies that did business
with governments. Carlyle's radical makeover has turned the firm into the biggest fund-raising
juggernaut the private equity world has ever seen. By the end of this year it expects to have an
unprecedented $85 billion in investor commitments under management, up sixfold from 2001 and
more than any other firm. [Founder David] Rubenstein sees the total swelling to as much as $300
billion by 2012. Make no mistake -- Carlyle is already massive. It owns nearly 200 companies that
generate a combined $68 billion in revenue and employ 200,000 people. Last year it bought a new
company approximately once every three days and sold one almost once a week -- all while
dabbling in increasingly esoteric investments. Since its founding in 1987 it has generated
annualized after-fee returns of 26%, compared with the industry average in the mid-teens.
Note: With former presidents including George H.W. Bush and many other top world politicians
helping to sway huge military contracts, could this be considered a form of insider trading? Those
26% yearly returns are placing our tax monies in the hands of individuals and companies that are
already among the wealthiest in the world. For lots more on manipulation of your tax money, click
here. And for a Washington Post article showing Osama Bin Laden's brother met with George
H.W. Bush at a Carlyle meeting one day before 9/11, click here.
Drug company 'hid' suicide link

2007-01-29, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6291773.stm
Secret emails reveal that the UK's biggest drug company distorted trial results of an antidepressant, covering up a link with suicide in teenagers. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) attempted to
show that Seroxat worked for depressed children despite failed clinical trials. And that GSKemployed ghostwriters influenced 'independent' academics. GSK faces action in the US where
bereaved families have joined together to sue the company. As a result, GSK has been forced to
open its confidential internal archive. Karen Barth Menzies is a partner in one of the firms
representing many of the families. She has examined thousands of the documents which are
stored, box upon box, in an apartment in Malibu, California. She said: "Even when they have
negative studies that show that this drug Seroxat is going to harm some kids they still spin that
study as remarkably effective and safe for children." An email from a public relations executive
working for GSK ... said: "Originally we had planned to do extensive media relations surrounding
this study until we actually viewed the results. Essentially the study did not really show it was
effective in treating adolescent depression, which is not something we want to publicise." Seroxat
was banned for under 18s in 2003 after the MHRA revealed that GSK's own studies showed
the drug actually trebles the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviour in depressed children.
Note: For more reliable information on how the drug companies put profits ahead of your health,
click here.
Molecule offers cancer hope

2007-01-17, Toronto Star (One of Canada's leading newspapers)
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/171898
In results that "astounded" scientists, an inexpensive molecule known as DCA was shown
to shrink lung, breast and brain tumours in both animal and human tissue experiments. The
study was published yesterday in the journal Cancer Cell. "I think DCA can be selective for cancer
because it attacks a fundamental process of cancer that is unique to cancer cells," said Dr.
Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the Edmonton university's medical school and one of the
study's key authors. The molecule appears to repair damaged mitochondria in cancer cells. "When
a cell is getting too old or doesn't function properly, the mitochondria are going to induce the cell
death," lead study author Sebastien Bonnet said yesterday. Bonnet says DCA or dichloroacetate
appears to reverse the mitochondrial changes in a wide range of cancers. "One of the really
exciting things about this compound is that it might be able to treat many different forms of cancer
because all forms of cancer suppress mitochondrial function," Michelakis said. Bonnet says DCA
may also provide an effective cancer treatment because its small size allows easy absorption into
the body, ensuring it can reach areas that other drugs cannot, such as brain tumours. Because it's
been used to combat other ailments ... DCA has been shown to have few toxic effects on the body.
Its previous use means it can be immediately tested on humans. Unlike other cancer drugs, DCA
did not appear to have any negative effect on normal cells. It could provide an extremely
inexpensive cancer therapy because it's not patented. But ... the lack of a patent could lead to
an unwillingness on the part of pharmaceutical companies to fund expensive clinical trials.
Note: Even these scientists realize that though this discovery could be a huge benefit to mankind,
because the drug companies will lose profits, they almost certainly will not fund studies. Expensive
AIDS drugs with promising results, on the other hand, are rushed through the studies to market.
For more reliable, verifiable information on how hugely beneficial health advances are shut down
to keep profits high, click here and here.
Industry 'paid top cancer expert'

2006-12-08, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6220440.stm
The scientist who first linked smoking to lung cancer was [later] paid by a chemicals firm while
investigating cancer risks in the industry. Professor Sir Richard Doll held a consultancy post with
US firm Monsanto for more than 20 years. The BBC has seen private letters which show that
Sir Richard ... received a US$1,500-a-day consultancy fee from Monsanto in the mid-1980s.
During that time he investigated the potential cancer causing properties of the powerful
herbicide Agent Orange, made by the company. Sir Richard [argued] that there was no
evidence that Agent Orange caused cancer. Professor Lennart Hardell, of the Oncology
Department at University Hospital Orebro, Sweden, has also studied the potential hazards posed
by Agent Orange. He was one of the scientists whose work was dismissed by Sir Richard. He said:
"It's quite OK to have contacts with industry, but you should be fair and say 'well, I'm [working] as a
consultant for Monsanto." Further documents obtained by The Guardian newspaper allegedly
show that Sir Richard was also paid a 15,000 fee by the Chemical Manufacturers Association,
and chemicals companies Dow Chemicals and ICI for a review of vinyl chloride, used in plastics,
which largely cleared the chemical of any link with cancers apart from liver cancer. Sir Richard's
views on the chemical were used by the manufacturers' trade association to defend it for more
than a decade.
Who Killed the Electric Car?

2006-07-10, Popular Science magazine
http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2006-07/who-killed-electric-car
Chris Paines documentary film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" argues convincingly that there was
indeed a market for the cars and a devoted one, ... but that GM [General Motors] squashed
the EV1 because, quite simply, it threatened the livelihood of the entire automotive industry.
The car used no gasoline, no oil and no mufflers, and it required only sporadic brake
maintenance. Each of these components represents billions of dollars in profits for the
industry. GM, the oil companies and various government agencies argued that the car wasnt
practical, didnt have enough range for consumers and was less promising than the apparently
imminent hydrogen technology. The reality was exactly the opposite, Paines film suggests the
viability of hydrogen as an automotive fuel source alone is in fact almost comically optimistic. The
whisper-quiet EV1 was designed by [an] aviation pioneer, Paul MacCready of AeroVironment. In
the 1970s, MacCready built the only successful human-powered aircraft, the Gossamer Condor
and the Gossamer Albatross. His solar-powered electric car Sunraycer, built for GM, won the 1987
World Solar Challenge Race in Australia. His corporate mantra is "do more with less" that is,
focus on creating vehicles that require less energy to operate, not on finding ways to pump more
power into inefficient systems. His teams battery-powered EV1 was a triumph of engineering and
a joy to operate.
Note: For lots more on key suppressed automotive and energy inventions, click here.
Ex-security officials rake it in
2006-06-18, Seattle Times/New York Times

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003068930_homeland18.html
Dozens of members of the Bush administration's domestic-security team...are collecting bigger
paychecks in different roles: working on behalf of companies that sell security products, many
directly to the federal agencies the officials once helped run. At least 90 officials at the Department
of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security...are executives,
consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domesticsecurity business. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge...stands to profit now that Savi
Technology, a maker of radio-frequency-identification equipment that the department pushed while
he was secretary, is being bought by Lockheed Martin. He was appointed to the Savi board three
months after resigning from the department. Former Homeland Security undersecretary Asa
Hutchinson...the biggest potential for profit among Hutchinson's ventures appears to come from
his role as an investor in Fortress America Acquisition. Hutchinson, before the [company's]
stock was sold publicly, bought 200,000 shares for $25,000. At Friday's trading price the
stock was worth more than $1.2 million. More than two-thirds of the department's most
senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door. Federal law
prohibits senior executive-branch officials from lobbying former government colleagues or
subordinates for at least a year after leaving public service. But by exploiting loopholes in the
law...it is often easy for former officials to do just that.
Experts Defining Mental Disorders Are Linked to Drug Firms

Every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as
depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for
those illnesses, a new analysis has found. Of the 170 experts in all who contributed to the manual
that defines disorders from personality problems to drug addiction, more than half had such ties,
including 100 percent of the experts who served on work groups on mood disorders and psychotic
disorders. "I don't think the public is aware of how egregious the financial ties are in the field of
psychiatry," said Lisa Cosgrove, a clinical psychologist at the University of Massachusetts in
Boston. The analysis comes at a time of growing debate over the rising use of medication as the
primary or sole treatment for many psychiatric disorders, a trend driven in part by definitions of
mental disorders in the psychiatric manual. Cosgrove said she began her research after
discovering that five of six panel members studying whether certain premenstrual
problems are a psychiatric disorder had ties to Eli Lilly & Co., which was seeking to market
its drug Prozac to treat those symptoms. The process of defining such disorders is far from
scientific, Cosgrove added: "You would be dismayed at how political the process can be."
Robbery, not reconstruction, in Iraq

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/18/r...
We have heard various individual cases of overcharging and fraud by American firms in the
reconstruction of Iraq. A year ago, an audit by the inspector general found no evidence of work
done or goods delivered on 154 of 198 contracts. Sixty cases of potential swindles are under
investigation. Halliburton and its hundreds of millions of dollars of overcharges or baseless costs
are well known. But millions more were taken by companies that promised to build or restore
libraries or police facilities, or deliver trucks and construction equipment. US government
investigators can account for only a third of the $1.5 billion given by the CPA to the interim
government and it appears that a substantial portion of the $8 billion given to Iraqi ministries went
to "ghost employees." Because of the way the United States set things up after the invasion,
contractors are immune from prosecution by Iraqis. This is robbery, not reconstruction. It has been
three years and all Iraq has become is a "free-fraud zone," according to one of the attorneys for
whistleblowers in Iraqi swindles. Recently, the Army found that Halliburton had $263 million of
exaggerated or unexplainable costs on a $2.4 billion no-bid contract, yet still paid
Halliburton $253 million of the $263 million.
No Boundaries
2005-06-09, CNN News
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0506/09/ldt.01.html
A panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations wants the United States to focus
not on the defense of our own borders, but rather create what effectively would be a
common border that includes Mexico and Canada. CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN
CORRESPONDENT: On Capitol Hill, testimony [is] calling for Americans to start thinking like
citizens of North America and treat the U.S., Mexico and Canada like one big country. That's the
view in a report called "Building a North American Community." It envisions a common border
around the U.S., Mexico and Canada in just five years, a border pass for residents of the three
countries, and a freer flow of goods and people. [Task force member Robert] PASTOR: What we
hope to accomplish by 2010 is a common external tariff which will mean that goods can move
easily across the border. We want a common security perimeter around all of North America.
ROMANS: Security experts say folding Mexico and Canada into the U.S. is a grave breach of that
sovereignty. [The report calls for] temporary migrant worker programs expanded with full mobility
of labor between the three countries in the next five years. The idea here is to make North America
more like the European Union. [CNN Anchor Lou] DOBBS: Americans must think that our political
and academic elites have gone utterly mad at a time when three-and-a-half years, approaching
four years after September 11, we still don't have border security. And this group of elites is talking
about not defending our borders, finally, but rather creating new ones. It's astonishing.
Note: This agenda is being promoted in key political forums with practically no media reporting.
For one of the few media articles reporting on this important topic, click here.
Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/national/class/HYPER-FINAL.html?ex=12756240...
It is no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has grown, but the extent to which the
richest are leaving everyone else behind is not widely known. The people at the top of America's
money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of
the population. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than
doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10
percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell. Under the Bush tax
cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the
last year for which the government will release such data - now pay ... taxes amounting to
virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000. From
1950 to 1970 ... for every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent, those in the top 0.01
percent earned an additional $162. From 1990 to 2002, for every extra dollar earned by those in
the bottom 90 percent, each taxpayer at the top brought in an extra $18,000. An Internal Revenue
Service study found that the only taxpayers whose share of taxes declined in 2001 and 2002 were
those in the top 0.1 percent. Some of the wealthiest Americans, including Warren E. Buffett,
George Soros and Ted Turner, have warned that such a concentration of wealth can turn a
meritocracy into an aristocracy and ultimately stifle economic growth.
Advanced vehicles demonstrate zero oil-consumption, reduced

emissions
http://www.boston.com/cars/news/2005/may/0518_tourdesol.html
Carmakers such as Toyota and Honda can't seem to make hybrid vehicles fast enough to keep up
with public interest. Interest in this new technology is growing, and one group is highlighting these
technical marvels in a yearly event called the Tour de Sol. Top prize for the Monte-Carlo Rally went
to a modified Honda Insight driven by Brian Hardegen, of Pepperell, who broke the 100-mile-pergallon barrier over a 150-mile range. The car actually got 107 miles-per gallon. St. Mark's High
School in Southboro, and North Haven Community School, North Haven, ME, demonstrated
true zero-oil consumption and true zero climate-change emissions with their modified
electric Ford pick-up and Volkswagen bus. More than 60 hybrid, electric and biofueled vehicles
from throughout the US and Canada demonstrated that we have the technology today to power
our transportation system with zero-oil consumption and zero climate-change emissions.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. If high school students can do it, why aren't the car
companies seriously developing these technologies? And why are car manufacturers not able to
keep up with demand on hybrid vehicles? For more, click here.
Merck's infant vaccine stirs new controversy

2005-03-08, Newsday/Los Angeles Times
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/health/ny-usglan084168623mar08,0,3713664.story
Merck & Co. continued to supply infant vaccine containing a mercury preservative for two years
after declaring that it had eliminated the chemical. Thimerosal, which is nearly 50 percent ethyl
mercury, has largely been eliminated from most routine childhood vaccines, although it is present
in most flu shots. More than 4,200 parents have filed claims in the federal Vaccine Injury
Compensation Program, alleging that their children suffered autism or other neurological
disorders from mercury in their shots.
Halliburton operates in Iran despite sanctions

in January, Halliburton won a contract to drill at a huge Iranian gas field called Pars, which an
Iranian government spokesman said "served the interests" of Iran. "I am baffled that any American
company would want to have employees operating in Iran," says Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "I
would think they'd be ashamed." Halliburton says the operation videotaped by NBC News is
entirely legal. It's run by a subsidiary called "Halliburton Products and Services Limited," based
outside the U.S. In fact, the law allows foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to do business in
Iran under strict conditions. Other U.S. oil services companies, like Weatherford and Baker
Hughes, also are in Iran. And foreign subsidiaries of NBC's parent company, General
Electric, have sold equipment to Iran. For Halliburton to have done this legally, the foreign
subsidiary operating in Iran must be independent of the main operation in Texas. Yet, when an
NBC producer approached managers in Iran, he was sent to company officials in Dubai. But they
said only Halliburton headquarters in Houston could talk about operations in Iran.
AIDS drug therapy connected to death

2004-12-15, Houston Chronicle/Associated Press
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/2949734.html
Joyce Ann Hafford died without ever holding the son she had tried to save from contracting AIDS
by taking an experimental drug regimen administered by government-funded researchers during
her pregnancy. But even before her stunned family could grieve, the 33-year-old's death was
reverberating among the government's top scientists in Washington. They quickly realized the
drugs the HIV-positive woman from Memphis, Tenn., was taking likely caused the liver failure that
killed her. Hafford's family members say they were never told NIH had concluded that the
experimental drug regimen likely caused her death until the Associated Press gave them
copies of NIH's internal case documents this month. They were left to believe Hafford had
died from AIDS complications. "They tried to make it sound like she was just sick. They never
connected it to the drug," said Rubbie King, Hafford's sister. NIH officials acknowledge that
experimental drugs, most likely nevirapine, caused her death. The study during which Hafford died
recently led researchers to conclude that nevirapine poses risks when taken over time by certain
pregnant women. The family says Hafford seemed unaware of the liver risks. They even kept the
bottle of nevirapine showing it had no safety warnings.
Note: If you want to understand just how corrupt and deceitful medical research doctors can be,
read the stunning article on this case at this link. This article mentions the little-known fact that "a
majority of HIV-positive tests, when retested, come back indeterminate or negative. In many cases,
different results emerge from the same blood tested in different labs."
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of
companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. Newly
discovered files in the US National Archives [confirm] that a firm of which Prescott Bush
was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business
dealings...continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the
Enemy Act. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it
inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year,
show that even after America had entered the war...he worked for and profited from companies
closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. Remarkably,
little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret
status of the documentation involving him. But now [a] multibillion dollar legal action for damages
by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books
on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue
for his grandson. Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily
available, thanks to the efficient US archive system. Like his son, George, and grandson, George
W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and
influential Skull and Bones student society.
The Truth About the Drug Companies (Book Review)

2004-07-15, New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244
The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than
the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion). Over the past two decades
the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of
discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell
drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution
that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers,
and the medical profession itself. The great majority of "new" drugs are not new at all but
merely variations of older drugs already on the market. Of the 78 drugs approved by the FDA in
2002, only 17 contained new active ingredients, and only seven of these were classified by the
FDA as improvements over older drugs. [The] market would collapse virtually overnight if the FDA
made approval of new drugs contingent on their being better in some important way than older
drugs already on the market. Many medical schools and teaching hospitals set up "technology
transfer" offices to ... capitalize on faculty discoveries. Medical school faculty entered into ...
lucrative financial arrangements with drug companies, as did their parent institutions. One of the
results has been a growing pro-industry bias in medical researchexactly where such bias doesn't
belong. The industry ... fought the state of Maine all the way to the US Supreme Court, which in
2003 upheld Maine's right to bargain with drug companies for lower prices. This industry is taking
us for a ride, and there will be no real reform without an aroused and determined public to make it
happen.
Note: The above book and book review was written by Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of
the prestigious The New England Journal of Medicine. For more reliable information on the health
cover-up, click here.
State take from corporate income falls

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/15/...
Individual Californians are shouldering an increasing percentage of the state's general fund, while
the share of revenue from corporate income taxes has declined, according to a new analysis by a
think tank in Sacramento. "Over time, the burden of paying for public services has, in a fairly
dramatic way, shifted from businesses to individuals,'' said Jean Ross, director of the nonprofit
California Budget Project in Sacramento. Ross went back more than 40 years to track how much
the state derived from its three main revenue sources: personal income tax, sales tax and
corporate income tax. Over time, income taxes paid by individuals have risen to fill half of the
state's coffers, while corporate income taxes have fallen to about 10 percent of the take. Dan
Bucks, executive director of the Multistate Tax Commission, said the decline in corporate taxes as
a share of state coffers is occurring in all 47 states that levy some form of business or corporate
tax. "Our data indicate that ... corporate income taxes were 9.7 percent of state revenues in 1980
and 4.9 percent in 2002,'' he said. Personal income taxes -- levied in more than 40 states -- have
also risen nationwide "in a virtually straight line,'' he said. Corporations have gotten better at
sheltering income from both federal and state taxes. For instance, the General Accounting
Office, watchdog agency of Congress, recently reported that more than 60 percent of U.S.
corporations paid no federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.
New documents show the monkey virus is present in more recent polio
vaccine

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/07/22/MN173141.DTL
A monkey virus linked to human cancers may have contaminated the oral polio vaccine for years
after the U.S. government ordered manufacturers to remove it. The Chronicle reported last week
that the simian virus SV40 had contaminated early polio vaccine given to millions of Americans.
When health officials discovered in 1961 that SV40 caused malignant tumors in lab animals, they
ordered the virus eliminated from all future vaccine. But internal memos from Lederle Laboratories,
the chief producer of polio vaccine in the United States, indicate SV40 may not have been
completely removed. According to one memo, SV40 was found in three of 15 lots of the oral
vaccine seven months after the federal directive was issued in March 1961. Lederle released the
contaminated vaccine to the public anyway, the memo shows. Scientists discovered SV40 in the
Salk polio vaccine in 1960. By then as many as 30 million Americans had been given
injections of the SV40-tainted polio vaccine, which was first licensed in 1955. In recent years
more than 60 scientific studies have found SV40 in rare human brain, bone and lung-related
cancers, the same kinds of tumors the virus caused in laboratory animals. Some scientists believe
SV40 may play a role in causing those cancers. The Lederle documents, which were obtained by
Philadelphia attorney Stanley Kops in litigation not related to SV40, raise the possibility the virus
might have been transmitted by contaminated oral vaccine, licensed for production in 1962.
Note: There are numerous major problems with how vaccines are monitored and developed, yet
the media largely fails to address this major issue. For many powerful reports from reliable sources
on the dangers of vaccines, click here. For lots more, click here and here.
Trade Secrets: A Moyers Report

2001-03-29, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/program/overview.html
Twenty-three years to the day after he went to work with vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals at
a plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Dan Ross died of a rare brain cancer. He was 46 years old,
convinced that his job had killed him. His wife, Elaine, sued her husband's former employer and,
over the next decade, the process of legal discovery led deeper and deeper into the inner
chambers of the chemical industry and its Washington trade association. Hundreds of thousands
of pages of documents were unearthed. In TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS REPORT, journalist Bill
Moyers and producer Sherry Jones investigated the Ross archive secrets the chemical industry
never intended the public to see and discovered a shocking story. The confidential papers reveal
the industry's early knowledge of vinyl chloride's dangerous effects, as well as the industry's long
silence on the subject. The program also reports a much larger story. Buried in the thousands of
pages of documents minutes from board meetings, reports from industry scientists, internal
memoranda is a never-before-told account of a campaign to limit the regulation of toxic
chemicals and any liability for their effects, at the same that the companies work to
withhold vital information about risks from workers, the government and the public. Over
the last five decades, more than 75,000 chemicals have been produced, turned into consumer
products or released into the environment. Today, every man, woman and child has synthetic
chemicals in their bodies. No child is born free of them. Are they safe? Does anyone know?
Note: This article also mentions that even though Moyers never lived near a chemical plant, tests
showed that his body contained a chemical soup of 84 industrial chemicals, including 31 different
types of PCBs, 13 different dioxins, and pesticides such as DDT. Why are these chemicals so
poorly studied and the dangerous effects hidden from us? For lots more from reliable sources on
Colorful Outsider Is Named No. 3 at the CIA

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16570-2001Mar16.html
A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, a ... former investment banker ... was named yesterday executive director
of the CIA, bringing a fast-paced management style to the agency's No. 3 job. Central Intelligence
Agency Director George J. Tenet announced the appointment, saying he treasures Krongard's
"wise counsel and 'no-nonsense' business-like views." Krongard, 64, former head of Alex. Brown &
Co., an investment bank based in Baltimore, joined the agency three years ago as a counselor to
Tenet. He switched careers shortly after helping engineer the $2.5 billion merger of Alex. Brown
and Bankers Trust New York Corp., gaining $71 million in Bankers Trust stock. Few of his former
colleagues were surprised by his decision to trade a $4 million salary and stock options for the far
less remunerative job of Tenet's consigliere. A graduate of Princeton and the University of
Maryland Law School, Krongard has a fondness for extreme military-style activities. Even as a
banking executive, he trained with police SWAT teams for recreation and worked out with a kung
fu master. He maintained a shooting range on the park-like grounds of his home on the northern
edge of Baltimore. In an interview yesterday, Krongard described his past duties as those of a
"minister without portfolio" whom senior managers felt comfortable talking to about "sticky
subjects." But Krongard exhibited the requisite secretiveness when asked to explain his
interest in intelligence and how he came to land a job in Tenet's inner circle. If you go back
to the CIA's origins during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, he explained,
"the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers."
Note: Buzzy Krongard was the executive director of the CIA on 9/11. His past ties to the
investment firm which placed most of the extraordinarily high volume of "put options" on United
and American Airlines stocks the week before the attacks is one of many strange "coincidences"
unexplained by the official story of what happened on that horrific day. For more on this, click here.
To read the entire article free of charge, click here.
Who pulls the strings?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/10/extract1
So this is how it works. A tiny, shoe-string central office in Holland decides each year which
country will host the next meeting. Each country has two steering committee members. They call
up Bilderberg-friendly global corporations, such as Xerox or Heinz or Fiat or Barclays or Nokia,
which donate the hundreds of thousands of pounds needed. They do not accept unsolicited
donations from non-Bilderberg corporations. Nobody can buy their way into a Bilderberg meeting,
although many corporations have tried. Then they decide who to invite - who seems to be a
"Bilderberg person". The notion of a Bilderberg person hasn't changed since the earliest days,
back in 1954. The guests are expressly asked not to give interviews to journalists. There are two
morning sessions and two afternoon sessions. While furiously denying that they secretly ruled the
world, my Bilderberg interviewees did admit to me that international affairs had, from time to time,
been influenced by these sessions. This is how Denis Healey described a Bilderberg person to
me: "To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly
unfair. Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers and
journalists. Politics should involve people who aren't politicians."
Note: For lots more on the highly secretive Bilderberg meeting from two later BBC News article,
click here. For many other revealing articles from major media reports on secret societies and
secret meetings of the most rich and powerful people in our world, click here.
When Its O.K. to Pay for a Story

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/opinion/when-its-ok-to-pay-for-a-story.html...
Last week, WikiLeaks disturbed many journalists with an initiative to crowd-source a
$100,000 bounty on the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. In traditional
newsrooms, the idea of offering a cash incentive for the leaking of confidential documents
is anathema. But WikiLeaks ... leaves us no choice but to reconsider this prohibition. The
TPP exceeds agreements like Nafta in scope and scale and involves far-reaching foreign policy
decisions. Its measures will touch the lives of every citizen in the 12 countries expected to sign the
pact. Chapters already leaked suggest that the deal restricts fair use of copyrighted material,
expands medical patents and weakens public policies that govern net neutrality. Members of
Congress can read the text in a secure room but cannot discuss its contents publicly.
Representatives from about 600 private corporations are said to have access to the document. Yet
the public is excluded. WikiLeaks has arrived at a flawed solution to a very real problem. We have
reached a point in the evolution of global democracy at which secrecy and transparency are
grotesquely imbalanced. Right now, the bounty may be the best shot we have at transforming the
TPP process from a back-room deal to an open debate. But we need a better system to
discourage unjustified secrecy, to protect sources and to encourage public-interest whistleblowing.
Note: The Trans-Pacific Partnership may be a pending disaster. But we do not know for sure,
because its contents remain secret. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply
revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the corporate world.
WikiLeaks releases documents related to controversial US trade pact

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jun/03/wikileaks-documents-trade-in-ser...
WikiLeaks on Wednesday released 17 different documents related to the Trade in Services
Agreement (Tisa), a controversial pact currently being hashed out between the US and 23
other countries most of them in Europe and South America. The document dump comes at a
tense moment in the negotiations over a series of trade deals. President Barack Obama has
clashed with his own party over the deals as critics have worried about the impact on jobs and civil
liberties. Unions, which fear heavy job losses once long-standing trade protections are dismantled,
reacted with dismay following publication of the previously hidden documents. Rosa Pavanelli,
general secretary of the Public Services International union, said: It is outrageous that our
democratically elected governments will not tell us the laws they are making. What has our
democracy come to when the community must rely on Wikileaks to find out what our governments
are doing on our behalf? Nick Dearden, director of the charity Global Justice Now ... said: These
leaks reinforce the concerns of campaigners about the threat that TISA poses to vital public
services. There is no mandate for such a far-reaching programme. Its a dark day for democracy
when we are dependent on leaks like this for the general public to be informed of the radical
restructuring of regulatory frameworks that our governments are proposing.
Note: According to an investigation by The Guardian, it cost about $1,148,971 to "fast-track" the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), another secret trade deal. How much are corrupt corporations
paying to corrupt politicians to purchase their favor for TISA?
Questions about arms deals for Clinton Foundation donors

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Questions-about-arms-deals-for-Cli...
Federal law designates the secretary of state as responsible for the continuous supervision and
general direction of sales of arms, military hardware and services to foreign countries. In practice,
that meant that [Hillary] Clinton was charged with rejecting or approving weapons deals
and when it came to Clinton Foundation donors, Hillary Clintons State Department did a
whole lot of approving. While Clinton was secretary of state, her department approved $165
billion worth of commercial arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors. That figure ... is almost
double the value of arms sales to those countries during the same period of President George W.
Bushs second term. The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate
Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that gave to the Clinton Foundation. That was a
143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the
Bush administration. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors
compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.
American military contractors and their affiliates that donated to the Clinton Foundation and in
some cases, helped finance speaking fees to Bill Clinton also got in on the action. Those firms
and their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of arms deals authorized by
the Clinton State Department.
Note: If you can not access this article at the link above, it is also available here. If you look at war
and global politics from the point of view of war profiteering, you can see why despite popular
opposition to war, it never stops. Read an excellent essay by a top US general exposing how war
is a racket.
Heres how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP

bill
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations-paid-us-senators...
The controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly
debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the
hopes of getting it passed. TPP passed another crucial vote ... to give Barack Obama the authority
to speed the bill through Congress. The presidents own supporters, senior economists and a host
of activists have lobbied against a pact they argue will favor big business but harm US jobs, fail to
secure better conditions for workers overseas and undermine free speech. Fast-tracking the TPP,
meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or
amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with
senators. This chart shows all donations that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for
TPP made to US Senate campaigns between January and March 2015, when fast-tracking the
TPP was being debated in the Senate. Out of the total $1,148,971 given, an average of
$17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 yea votes. The average Republican member received
$19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters. The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those
same donors. Almost 100% of the Republicans in the US Senate voted for fast-track.
Note: The above article shows how much it costs to purchase the favor of corrupt politicians in the
U.S.. For legislation like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it costs about $1,148,971.
Fossil fuels subsidised by $10m a minute, says IMF

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fuel-companies-gett...
Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (3.4tn) a year,
equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the
International Monetary Fund. The IMF ... says the figure is an extremely robust estimate of the
true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health
spending of all the worlds governments. The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying
the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. The biggest single
source of air pollution is coal-fired power stations and China, with its large population and heavy
reliance on coal power, provides $2.3tn of the annual subsidies. The next biggest fossil fuel
subsidies are in the US ($700bn), Russia ($335bn), India ($277bn) and Japan ($157bn), with the
European Union collectively allowing $330bn in subsidies to fossil fuels. Subsidy reforms are
beginning in dozens of countries including Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco and Thailand. In
India, subsidies for diesel ended in October 2014. Coal use has also begun to fall in China for the
first time this century. Shelagh Whitley, a subsidies expert at the Overseas Development Institute,
said: Our research shows that many of the energy subsidies highlighted by the IMF go toward
finding new reserves of oil, gas and coal, which we know must be left in the ground if we are to
avoid catastrophic, irreversible climate change.
Note: The additional cost of suppressing new energy technologies does not appear to have been
included in these IMF estimates.
US taxpayers subsidising world's biggest fossil fuel companies

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/12/us-taxpayers-subsidising-w...
The worlds biggest and most profitable fossil fuel companies are receiving huge and rising
subsidies from US taxpayers, a practice slammed as absurd by a presidential candidate given
the threat of climate change. A Guardian investigation of three specific projects, run by Shell,
ExxonMobil and Marathon Petroleum, has revealed that the subsidies were all granted by
politicians who received significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.
At a time when scientists tell us we need to reduce carbon pollution to prevent catastrophic
climate change, it is absurd to provide massive taxpayer subsidies that pad fossil-fuel companies
already enormous profits, said senator Bernie Sanders, who announced on 30 April he is running
for president. Sanders, with representative Keith Ellison, recently proposed an End Polluter
Welfare Act, which they say would cut $135bn of US subsidies for fossil fuel companies over the
next decade. Between 2010 and 2014, the oil, coal, gas, utility, and natural resource extraction
industries spent $1.8bn on lobbying, according to Sanders and Ellison. Globally in 2013, the most
recent figures available, the coal, oil and gas industries benefited from subsidies of $550bn, four
times those given to renewable energy. In 2009, President Barack Obama called on the G20 to
eliminate fossil fuel subsidies but since then US federal subsidies have risen by 45%. Every single
well, pipeline, refinery, coal and gas plant in the country is heavily subsidised.
Note: The purchase of corrupt government officials by corporate profiteers prevents renewable
energy solutions from reaching their potential.
Who is writing the TPP?

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/05/11/elizabeth-warren-and-rosa-delau...
Congress is in an intense debate over trade bills that will shape the course of the US economy for
decades. Modern trade agreements are often less about trade and more about giant
multinational corporations finding new ways to rig the economic system to benefit themselves. The
president argues that the TPP is about who will write the rules for 40 percent of the worlds
economy the United States or China. But who is writing the TPP? The text has been classified
and the public isnt permitted to see it, but 28 trade advisory committees have been intimately
involved in the negotiations. Of the 566 committee members, 480, or 85 percent, are senior
corporate executives or representatives from industry lobbying groups. Many of the
advisory committees are made up entirely of industry representatives. A rigged process
leads to a rigged outcome. By definition, massive trade deals like the TPP override domestic laws
written, debated, and passed by Congress. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has testified before
Congress that trade negotiations involve pressure to lower standards on financial regulations and
other public interest laws, and that President Obama has resisted that pressure. But Obama will
soon leave office, and he cannot bind a future president. This legislation risks giving a future
president a powerful tool to undermine public interest regulations under the guise of promoting
commerce.
Note: US senator Elizabeth Warren and US representative Rosa DeLauro wrote the above article,
which further clarifies why the Trans-Pacific Partnership may be a pending disaster. For more
along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in
government and in the corporate world.
A veil of secrecy shields hospitals where outbreaks occur

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hospital-outbreaks-secrecy-20150419-sto...
L.A. County health officials investigate and confirm an infection outbreak inside one of the
county's hospitals once or twice a month. The public rarely finds out which hospital is
involved, how many patients were stricken or whether any died. The secrecy surrounding
hospital outbreaks runs counter to the push toward more public disclosure in healthcare. In recent
years, consumers have benefited from data comparing some health outcomes by hospital, the fees
hospitals charge for various procedures and the payments doctors receive from drug and device
manufacturers. Keeping outbreaks confidential is a common practice of federal, state and local
health investigators across the country. The rationale: It encourages hospitals to be open and
quickly report suspected surges of infections. The secrecy can prevent hospitals from learning
from one another's mistakes. More than six years ago, a lethal bacteria struck two hospitals in
Florida, killing 15 patients. The case was nearly identical to the recent outbreaks at UCLA and
Cedars-Sinai medical centers. In each case, a hard-to-clean medical scope transferred the same
superbug from patient to patient. Since that 2008 Florida outbreak, investigators have tied the
same scopes to scores of patient infections in other states. Most of the outbreaks were not
disclosed until months or years later, often only when doctors wrote about them in medical
journals.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about
healthcare cover-ups from reliable major media sources.
Boxer: Regulators 'heads should roll over Diablo nuclear plant

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Boxer-Regulators-heads-should-roll-ove...
Weeks before Pacific Gas and Electric Co. released a long-awaited seismic report about the
Diablo Canyon nuclear plant last year, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials had already
drafted talking points declaring the plant safe from earthquakes, Sen. Barbara Boxer said
Wednesday. An internal commission memo showed that the agency was planning to tell the public
that the NRC had reviewed the report, and it had concluded Diablo Canyon was seismically safe
before even seeing the report. Boxer ... used it to illustrate what she called the commissions lax
attitude toward seismic safety, even in the wake of the 2011 meltdown of three reactors at Japans
Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Her comments shone new light on a controversy that has
simmered since the seismic safety reports release last fall. PG&E released the report on Sept. 10.
That same day, the commission the federal agency that regulates nuclear plants formally
rejected complaints from one of its own former inspectors at Diablo Canyon, who had argued that
the plant should be closed. Several newly discovered faults nearby, he said, could produce more
violent shaking than Diablo was designed to withstand. Environmental groups ... accused the
commission and PG&E of colluding to release both the report and the rejection of the inspectors
complaint on the same day, generating positive press about Diablos safety.
Note: Why would Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials ignore their responsibility to protect the
public from the potentially disastrous combination of earthquakes and nuclear power plants?
US Soldiers and Contractors Sexually Abused at Least 54 Children in

Colombia Between 2003 and 2007
http://www.thenation.com/blog/203617/us-soldiers-and-contractors-sexually-abu...
Last week, FAIR noticed that not one major media organization in the United States has covered
the charge, reported in Colombia, that US military soldiers and contractors had sexually
abused at least fifty-four children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007 and, in all cases, the
rapists were never punishedeither in Colombia or statesidedue to American military
personnel being immune from prosecution under diplomatic immunity agreements. One of the
rapes ... was allegedly committed by Army sergeant Michael J. Coen and an employee of a private
security contractor, Csar Ruiz. The victim was a 12-year-old girl. They abducted her, they
drugged her, they took her to the air base near the town of Melgar and raped her, they took videos
of her. Colombian prosecutors issued arrest warrants [that] were not executed because of the
immunity of Coen and Ruiz. Under a series of treaties ... members of the US military stationed in
Colombia are immune from prosecution. That immunity has since been extended to private
security firms. Another serious sexual assault that, like the rape described above, was covered by
the Colombian press, both in print and on TV, but ignored in the United States: in 2004, 53
underage girls were sexually abused by mercenaries, who filmed and sold the tapes as
pornographic material. The private security firm involved [was identified as] DynCorp, a Virginiabased contractor.
Note: Dyncorp is only slightly less infamous than Blackwater, having been involved in numerous
international outrages, including a child sex slavery ring in Bosnia in 1999. Explore powerful
evidence from a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse
scandals reach to the highest levels of government. For more along these lines, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing news articles about sexual abuse scandals from reliable major
media sources.
HSBC is 'cast-iron certain' to breach banking rules again, executive

admits
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/02/hsbc-cast-iron-certain-breach...
A senior HSBC executive has privately admitted that the bank is cast-iron certain to have
another major regulatory breach in the future. Global head of sanctions Lee Hale ... was
meeting with independent lawyers monitoring HSBC as part of a controversial 2012 deal
with the US Department of Justice, in which the bank avoided prosecution over sanctionsbusting and money-laundering in its Mexican branch in exchange for paying a $1.9bn fine and
receiving additional regulatory scrutiny for a period of five years. The deferred prosecution
agreement was signed by the then US attorney for the eastern district of New York, Loretta Lynch.
During a long exchange about HSBCs new policy on sanctions and internal breaches of company
rules, Hale told the regulator that given the size and scale of HSBC, in his view it is a cast-iron
certain[ty] this will happen, at some point in the future were going to have some big breach, some
regulatory breach. He added: I hope it doesnt happen, but it is likely. The recorded monitor
discussions also touched on problems in the banks US compliance team. Hale said: The internal
audit team have done a US review and its not great in terms of what theyve found. The findings,
according to Hale, prompted the bank to terminate the employment of one of the banks senior
compliance executives in New York, a former sanctions official at the US Treasury. In 2012, a US
Senate report noted that a high turnover of compliance staff at the banks US subsidiary had made
reforms difficult to implement.
Note: Read lots more on HSBC's sweetheart deal with U.S. officials in a Rolling Stone article by
Matt Taibbi. Is it even possible to root out corruption in a bank founded to service the international
drug trade? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles
about systemic corruption in government and the financial industry.
Former Blackwater gets rich as Afghan drug production hits record high
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/31/blackwater-gets-rich-afghanistan...
In a war full of failures, the US counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan stands out: opiate
production has climbed steadily over recent years to reach record-high levels last year. One clear
winner in the anti-drug effort is ... the infamous mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater.
Statistics released on Tuesday reveal that the rebranded private security firm, known since 2011
as Academi, reaped over a quarter billion dollars from the futile Defense Department push to
eradicate Afghan narcotics, some 21% of the $1.5 bn in contracting money the Pentagon has
devoted to the job since 2002. The company is the second biggest beneficiary of counternarcotics
largesse in Afghanistan. Only the defense giant Northrop Grumman edged it out, with $325m.
According to the US inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, the $309m
Academi got from US taxpayers paid for training, equipment, and logistical support to
Afghan forces conducting counternarcotics. Far from eradicating the deep-rooted opiate
trade, US counternarcotics efforts have ... contributed to the opium boom. In December, the
United Nations reported a 60% growth in Afghan land used for opium poppy cultivation since 2011,
up to 209,000 hectares. The estimated $3bn value of Afghan heroin and morphine represents
some 15% of Afghan GDP. Academi and its former Blackwater incarnation have an infamous
history in Afghanistan. It once set up shell companies to disguise its business practices, according
to a Senate report, so that its contracts would be unimpeded by company employees killings of
Iraqi and Afghan civilians.
Note: Blackwater, now called Academi, got caught systematically defrauding the US government,
while serving as a "virtual extension of the CIA". The CIA has been linked to the Afghan heroin
trade for decades. In 2000, the Taliban had all but eradicated Afghan opium production. Once
Afghanistan was under US control, opium production surged to record levels.
WHO: Long-cleared Roundup ingredient probably causes cancer

2015-03-29, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/roundup-ingredient-probably-carcinogenic-...
Earlier this month, the World Health Organizations International Agency for Research on
Cancer announced findings that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsantos RoundUp
line of pesticides, is probably carcinogenic to humans. The research, published in The
Lancet Oncology, relies on studies conducted on the chemical over the last few decades. Use of
glyphosate which the EPA has deemed safe has soared in the last two decades with the
introduction of crops genetically engineered to withstand the herbicide. Glyphosate is also a main
ingredient in a new product called Enlist Duo recently introduced by Dow Chemical. Widespread
use of the chemical has also come under fire because weeds are becoming increasingly resistant
to it. Dow has marketed its new product ... as a new tool for farmers battling herbicide-resistant
weeds. But agriculture experts say farmers should look at other ways to manage weeds, like
cover-cropping, increased rotation and mechanical removal. This week, environmental groups sent
a letter to the EPA renewing their calls for the agency to reconsider its decision to approve Enlist
Duo. The groups also called on the EPA to reexamine its findings that glyphosate is safe.
Monsanto has come out swinging. In a press release, Chief Technology Officer Dr. Robb Fraley
said the company is outraged. Monsanto has demanded a retraction of the report.
Note: The negative health impacts of Monsanto's RoundUp are well known, while the risks and
dangers of genetically engineering crops to tolerate such chemicals are becoming increasingly
clear.
Trans-Pacific Partnership Seen as Door for Foreign Suits Against U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/business/trans-pacific-partnership-seen-as-...
An ambitious 12-nation trade accord pushed by President Obama would allow foreign corporations
to sue the United States government for actions that undermine their investment "expectations"
and hurt their business, according to a classified document. The Trans-Pacific Partnership - a
cornerstone of Mr. Obama's remaining economic agenda - would grant broad powers to
multinational companies operating in North America, South America and Asia. Under the accord ...
companies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government
actions and court rulings ... before tribunals organized under the World Bank or the United
Nations. The chapter in the draft of the trade deal, dated Jan. 20, 2015, [was] obtained by The
New York Times in collaboration with the group WikiLeaks. [Its] cover mandates that the chapter
not be declassified until four years after the Trans-Pacific Partnership comes into force or trade
negotiations end, should the agreement fail. Under the terms of ... chapter, foreign investors could
demand cash compensation if member nations "expropriate or nationalize a covered investment
either directly or indirectly." Opponents fear "indirect expropriation" will be interpreted broadly,
especially by deep-pocketed multinational companies opposing regulatory or legal changes that
diminish the value of their investments. In 2013, Eli Lilly took advantage of a similar provision
under Nafta to sue Canada for $500 million, accusing Ottawa of violating its obligations to
foreign investors by allowing its courts to invalidate patents for two of its drugs.
Note: The above article further clarifies why the TPP is a pending disaster. For more, see this
article, or watch the two minute video Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich made to
educate the public about the dangers of the TPP.
GMO Science Deniers: Monsanto and the USDA

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kimbrell/gmo-science-deniers-monsanto-an...
For decades, Monsanto and its enablers inside the USDA have denied the central tenets of
evolutionary biology, namely natural selection and adaptation. Since the early 1980s, Monsanto
has endlessly hyped genetically engineered (GE) crops they claim could reduce hunger,
reduce pesticide use, and survive droughts. In reality, no such "miracle" crops exist. No
significantly greater yielding crops, no more effective drought resistance crops. And ... around 85
percent of all genetically engineered crops in the United States and around the world have been
engineered to withstand massive doses of herbicides, mostly Monsanto's Roundup. Each year
115 million more pounds of Roundup are spread on our farmlands because of these altered
crops. Wouldn't that massive increase in Roundup use over that huge a portion of our
cropland cause some weed populations to develop resistance? Of course. As a result, in less
than 20 years, more than half of all U.S. farms have some Roundup resistant "superweeds,"
weeds that now infest 70 million acres of U.S farmland. A science-based, and safer, way forward is
to ... use ecologically based weed control. There are proven organic and agroecological
approaches that emphasize weed management rather than weed eradication, soil building rather
than soil supplementing. Crop rotation and cover crops can return productive yields without ridding
the land of genetic biodiversity, and could reduce herbicide use by 90 percent. So it's long past
due that our government required real and rigorous science when regulating GE crops.
Note: Read more about how GMO technology has backfired, producing new "superweeds" and
"superbugs" that threaten crop production. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing
news articles on GMO risks and how these are covered up.
The untold story of how the sugar industry shaped key government
research about your teeth
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/11/the-sneaky-way-the...
The powerful U.S. sugar industry skewed the government's medical research on dental
care. Sugar industry leaders advocated for policies that did not recommend people eat less sugar.
The government listened, according to a new report published in the journal PLOS Medicine. In the
1960s, amid a national effort to boost cavity prevention, the U.S. government spearheaded a
research program, known as the National Caries Program (NCP), which aimed to eradicate tooth
decay. But instead of turning to an obvious solution having people eat less sugar the
government was swayed by industry interests that pushed alternative methods, such as [using]
vaccines for fighting tooth decay. [The] committee that was set up by the government to set
research priorities for the NCP included many doctors and scientists who were also ... part of
another group called the International Sugar Research Foundation, which was established by the
sugar industry. Rather than recommending that people reduce sugar intake, governmentfunded research focused on interventions that wouldn't advise Americans to lower their
sweets consumption. For instance, the research encouraged the wider use of fluoride. More
recently, the industry attempted to influence the ongoing debate about changes to the Food and
Drug Administration's nutrition facts label. One of the key changes currently being mulled is the
inclusion of an "added sugar" label, which is meant to communicate how much of any given food's
sugar content was added during processing. The industry is vehemently opposed.
Note: "When you take on Big Sugar, you take on a huge political money operation," Rep. Mark
Steven Kirk from Illinois said while fighting Big Sugar back in 2007. For more along these lines,
see concise summaries of deeply revealing health corruption news articles from reliable major
media sources.
U.S. firms stash $2.1T overseas to avoid taxes

2015-03-04, Salt Lake Tribune/Reuters
http://www.sltrib.com/home/2250632-155/us-firms-stash-21t-overseas-to?fullpage=1
Microsoft, Apple, Google and five other tech firms now account for more than a fifth of the
$2.10 trillion in profits that U.S. companies are holding overseas, according to a Bloomberg
News review of the securities filings of 304 corporations. The total amount held outside the U.S. by
the companies was up 8 percent from the previous year. General Electric topped the list for the
fifth straight year. The company now has $119 billion outside the U.S., an increase of 8 percent
from the end of 2013 and a 27 percent gain since 2010. Microsoft has more than tripled its
offshore holdings since 2010. Apple, which counts only part of its non- U.S. holdings as indefinitely
held offshore, increased that portion to $69.7 billion from $12.3 billion in 2010. Cisco now has
$52.7 billion outside the U.S., up 10 percent since 2013. John Chambers, Cisco's chief executive,
said on Bloomberg TV on Feb. 20 that "our tax policy is causing me to make decisions that I don't
think is in the interest of our country, or even in our shareholders, long term." The companies owe
taxes at the full U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent on profits they earn around the world.
They get tax credits for payments to foreign governments and don't have to pay the residual U.S.
tax until they bring the money home. Obama earlier this year proposed applying a 14 percent
mandatory tax on the stockpiled profits and a 19 percent minimum tax on foreign earnings going
forward.
Note: U.S. laws now protect corporations as if they are people, but require human people to pay
more income tax. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news
articles about corporate corruption.
McDonalds to use chicken without human antibiotics

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/03/04/mcdonalds/xkNOfhlMQAE65D7KgwYd...
McDonalds said on Wednesday that its 14,000 US restaurants will stop serving chicken
raised with antibiotics "important to human medicine," a significant change in food policy for
the worlds largest fast-food chain. McDonalds said the decision is an attempt to adapt to diners
desire for healthier food.Our customers want food that they feel great about eating all the way
from the farm to the restaurant and these moves take a step toward better delivering on those
expectations, McDonalds US president, Mike Andres, said in a statement. McDonalds said the
new policy will be implemented across its US supply chain within two years. Also, McDonalds
said that this year it will begin offering milk jugs in its Happy Meals that contain milk from
cows that have not been treated with the growth hormone rbST. Public health advocates
cheered the move, and some groups, including Keep Antibiotics Working, said they had been in
close dialogue with McDonalds about the policy change.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will
inspire you to make a difference.
Body-Camera Maker Has Financial Ties to Police Chiefs

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/body-camera-maker-financial-ties-police-ch...
Taser International, the stun-gun maker emerging as a leading supplier of body cameras for police,
has cultivated financial ties to police chiefs whose departments have bought the recording devices.
Taser is covering airfare and hotel stays for police chiefs who speak at promotional conferences. It
is also hiring recently retired chiefs as consultants, sometimes just months after their cities signed
contracts with Taser. The relationships raise questions of whether chiefs are acting in the best
interests of the taxpayers in their dealings with Scottsdale, Arizona-based Taser, whose contracts
for cameras and storage systems for the video can run into the millions of dollars. As the police
chief in Fort Worth, Texas, successfully pushed for the signing of a major contract with Taser
before a company quarterly sales deadline, he wrote a Taser representative in an email,
"Someone should give me a raise." City officials and rival companies are raising concerns about
police chiefs' ties to Taser. Charlie Luke, a Salt Lake City councilman ... said he was surprised
when he learned last year that the city's police department had purchased Taser cameras using
surplus money, bypassing the standard bidding process and City Council approval. The
department declined to say how much it has spent acquiring 295 body cameras. Taser's
competitors ... complain they have been shut out by cities awarding no-bid contracts to
Taser and are being put at a disadvantage by requests for proposals that appear tailored to
Taser's products.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about
government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Swiss prosecutors are shocked by HSBC's tax scandal

2015-02-18, Fortune
http://fortune.com/2015/02/18/swiss-prosecutors-are-shocked-shocked-by-hsbcs-...
A scandal implicating HSBC in alleged tax evasion widened further Wednesday, as Swiss
prosecutors raided the Geneva headquarters of its private bank in Switzerland. The raid, in
connection with an investigation into aggravated money-laundering, marks the latest twist in a
saga that dates back 10 years. Materials leaked to the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists ... indicated that HSBC aggressively marketed schemes suitable
for tax evasion to rich clients across the world. The materials come from a stash of files
stolen from HSBC by Herv Falciani, a former employee and whistleblower. Falciani was
indicted in Switzerland in December for industrial espionage and for breaking the law on banking
secrecy. Falcianis files have already led to criminal investigations in France, Belgium and
Argentina. The Swiss authorities action Wednesday, however, is the first to suggest that they
regard tax evasion itself as a bigger crime than exposing it. [HSBC has also recently] been found
guilty of manipulating benchmark interest and foreign exchange rates, [and] desperately needs to
be able to prove that it has not aided or abetted tax evasion or money-laundering since December
2012. That was when it signed a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. after admitting to
helping Iran get round sanctions and laundering the profits of Mexican drug trafficking gangs. Any
evidence that it has broken that DPA could lead to it losing its all-important license to bank in the
U.S., destroying its status as a global bank overnight.
Note: Read lots more on HSBC's sweetheart deal with U.S. officials in a Rolling Stone article by
Matt Taibbi. US Senator Elizabeth Warren is working hard to bring justice in this case. For more
along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about systemic
corruption in government and the financial industry.
APS authored Congressional letter to feds asking to crack down on

solar industry
2015-01-16, ABC's Arizona Affiliate
http://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/aps-authored-congressiona...
Arizonas largest utility company has been at odds with the solar panel industry for years. Now,
APS [Arizona Public Service, the states largest utility] is asking the Federal Trade Commission to
crack down on solar companies. But they didnt ask them directly. Six Arizona Congressmen sent
letters to federal regulators asking them to investigate solar leasing companies. Reporter Evan
Wyloge ... has the original letter and proves its actually APS spearheading the effort. Arizona
Public Service [is] one of the largest campaign donors for the group of lawmakers. The APSauthored, congressmen-signed letter comes as the latest in an ongoing effort to stymie
third-party solar panel companies, whose business has grown tenfold over the past halfdecade, presenting a challenge to the long-term business model of traditional utilities like
APS. The high-profile fight between the traditional utility and newer rooftop solar panel companies
is not unique to Arizona. Similar struggles have emerged in other states. On Nov. 19, Democratic
Reps. Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema asked [regulators] in a joint letter to ... look
into solar panel leasing practices. Then, on Dec. 12, Republican Reps. Trent Franks, Paul Gosar
and Matt Salmon sent a similar letter to the FTC. After both letters were sent, the Arizona
Corporation Commission voted late in 2014 to open a docket on consumer complaints about solar
companies. Initial hearings are expected to begin this spring.
corruption and energy news articles from reliable major media sources.
Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Is a Pending Disaster

2015-01-06, Baltimore Sun (Baltimore's leading newspaper)
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-why-the-transpacific-partnership...
Republicans who now run Congress say they want to cooperate with President Obama, and point
to the administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, as the model. The only problem is the
TPP would be a disaster. If you haven't heard much about the TPP, that's part of the problem. It
would be the largest trade deal in history ... representing 792 million people and accounting
for 40 percent of the world economy -- yet it's been devised in secret. Lobbyists from
America's biggest corporations and Wall Street's biggest banks have been involved but not
the American public. That's a recipe for fatter profits and bigger paychecks at the top, but not a
good deal for most of us, or even for most of the rest of the world. Big corporations and Wall Street
want ... more international protection when it comes to their intellectual property and other assets.
But they want less protection of consumers, workers, small investors, and the environment,
because these interfere with their profits. So they've been seeking trade rules that allow them to
override these protections. Not surprisingly for a deal that's been drafted mostly by corporate and
Wall Street lobbyists, the TPP provides exactly this mix. In other words, the TPP is a Trojan horse
in a global race to the bottom, giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any
and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits.
Note: The above article is written by former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. For more along
these lines, see this summary of an article that appeared in the Guardian newspaper in 2013. You
can also read the TPP's Intellectual property and environment language for yourself.
Heavyweight Response to Local Fracking Bans

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us/heavyweight-response-to-local-fracking-b...
Longmont [Colorado] has become a cautionary tale of what can happen when cities decide to
confront the oil and gas industry. In an aggressive response to a wave of citizen-led drilling bans,
state officials, energy companies and industry groups are taking Longmont and other
municipalities to court, forcing local governments into ... expensive, long-shot efforts to defend the
measures. Two years ago, [Longmont] residents voted to ban hydraulic fracturing from their
grassy open spaces and a snow-fed reservoir. In Colorado, the energy industry, which argues that
cities lack the authority to outlaw fracking, has already won rulings overturning three fracking
prohibitions. Longmont, which sits near the juncture of rolling plains and jagged mountains, has
spent about $136,000 fighting unsuccessfully so far to defend a 2012 measure that outlawed
fracking. In July, a district court judge tossed out the ban, and the city is appealing. A judge
also overturned a fracking ban last year in Fort Collins, Colo., and denied pleas from the city
to keep the ban in place while local officials went to court to defend a five-year fracking
moratorium. In Broadview Heights, Ohio, energy companies are suing the town and residents
are suing the energy companies in return over a bill of rights that outlawed fracking and the
disposal of its byproducts. While the Longmont City Council voted unanimously in August to
defend the fracking ban, other towns have decided it is just too costly a fight.
Note: Fracking can poison drinking water, negatively impact human health, and may cause
earthquakes.
Betting on Default
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/03/opinion/betting-on-default.html?_r=0
Imagine a lender demanding that you miss a payment. That is the situation described in a recent
article in The Wall Street Journal. In 2013, GSO Capital Partners ... refused to renew a $122.3
million loan to the Spanish gambling company Codere unless it delayed paying interest on other
existing debt. Why? It turns out that GSO had placed a bet that Coderes existing debt would not
be paid on time. When, lo and behold, the payment was late, GSO collected on its bet. The bet in
this scenario was a credit default swap. Credit default swaps, a type of derivative, can be used to
hedge against losses on bonds that investors own, or to speculate on how the underlying
companies will perform. The Dodd-Frank financial reform law was supposed to curb
speculation in swaps. But ... hedge funds are increasingly using swaps to wager on
whether weak firms will live or die. RadioShack ... is one of several prominent examples. In
December, RadioShacks total debt came to about $1.4 billion, but swaps outstanding on the
performance of the debt totaled $23.5 billion. Similarly, J.C. Penney ... had total debt of some $8.7
billion, but swaps outstanding on the debt totaled $19.3 billion. Last month, Congress repealed an
anti-speculation provision of Dodd-Frank that would have prevented federally insured banks from
conducting several types of swap transactions. In addition, the Federal Reserve recently gave the
banks two extra years to meet [another important] Dodd-Frank provision. Sooner or later, poorly
regulated credit derivatives will again play a role in damaging the economy.
Note: Derivatives trading in the shadow banking system has produced a speculative bubble,
valued at nearly a quadrillion dollars, that has been described as a financial time bomb.
Full scale of plastic in the world's oceans revealed for first time
2014-12-10, The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/10/full-scale-plastic-worlds-...
More than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are
floating in the worlds oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain, new research has
found. Data collected by scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand
suggests a minimum of 5.25tn plastic particles in the oceans, most of them micro plastics
measuring less than 5mm. The volume of plastic pieces, largely deriving from products such as
food and drink packaging and clothing, was calculated from data taken from 24 expeditions over a
six-year period to 2013. The research, published in the journal PLOS One, is the first study to look
at plastics of all sizes in the worlds oceans. We saw turtles that ate plastic bags and fish that
ingested fishing lines, said Julia Reisser, a researcher based at the University of Western
Australia. But there are also chemical impacts. When plastic gets into the water it acts like a
magnet for oily pollutants. Its hard to visualise the sheer amount, but the weight of it is more
than the entire biomass of humans." The research, the first of its kind to pull together data on
floating plastic from around the world, will be used to chart future trends in the amount of debris in
the oceans. But researchers predict the volume will increase due to rising production of throwaway
plastic, with only 5% of the worlds plastic currently recycled.
Note: Ocean acidification was number one on 2014's top 25 stories subjected to press censorship.
Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-allia...
Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other
corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their
political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year. The Times reported previously how
individual attorneys general have shut down investigations, changed policies or agreed to more
corporate-friendly settlement terms [for] campaign benefactors. But the attorneys general are also
working collectively. Out of public view, corporate representatives and attorneys general are
coordinating legal strategy and other efforts to fight federal regulations, according to a review of
thousands of emails and court documents and dozens of interviews. Attorney General Scott Pruitt
of Oklahoma [used his post] to help start what he and allies called the Rule of Law campaign. That
campaign, in which attorneys general band together to operate like a large national law firm, has
been used to back lawsuits and other challenges against the Obama administration on
environmental issues, the Affordable Care Act and securities regulation. The most recent
target is the presidents executive action on immigration. Coordination between the corporations
and teams of attorneys general involved in the Rule of Law effort also involves actual litigation to
try to clear roadblocks to energy projects, documents show.
corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Waste Water from Oil Fracking Injected into Clean Aquifers

2014-11-14, NBC News (San Francisco Affiliate)
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Waste-Water-from-Oil-Fracking-Inject...
State officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of waste
water into underground aquifers that could have been used for drinking water or irrigation.
Those aquifers are supposed to be off-limits to that kind of activity, protected by the EPA.
Californias Department of Conservations Chief Deputy Director, Jason Marshall, told NBC Bay
Area, There have been past issues where permits were issued to operators that they shouldnt be
injecting into those zones." In fracking or hydraulic fracturing operations, oil and gas companies
use massive amounts of water to force the release of underground fossil fuels. The practice
produces large amounts of waste water that must then be disposed of. Marshall said that often
times, oil and gas companies simply re-inject that waste water back deep underground where the
oil extraction took place. But other times, Marshall said, the waste water is re-injected into aquifers
closer to the surface. In the States letter to the EPA, officials admit that in at least nine waste
water injection wells, the waste water was injected into non-exempt or clean aquifers. For the
EPA, non-exempt aquifers are underground bodies of water that are containing high quality
water that can be used by humans to drink, water animals or irrigate crops. "It should not have
been permitted, said Marshall.
Note: The complete article summarized above includes maps of the Bakersfield, CA wells
contaminated by these fracking waste injections. For more along these lines, read this Los
Angeles Times article about how fracking poisons drinking water, and see concise summaries of
deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Lobbyists, Bearing Gifts, Pursue Attorneys General

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/us/lobbyists-bearing-gifts-pursue-attorneys...
Attorneys general are now the object of aggressive pursuit by lobbyists and lawyers who use ...
lavish corporate-sponsored conferences and other means to push them to drop investigations,
change policies, negotiate favorable settlements or pressure federal regulators, an investigation by
The New York Times has found. A robust industry of lobbyists and lawyers has blossomed as
attorneys general have joined to conduct multistate investigations. But unlike the lobbying rules
covering other elected officials, there are few revolving-door restrictions or disclosure
requirements governing state attorneys general. The routine lobbying and deal-making
occur largely out of view. The current and increasing level of the lobbying of attorneys general
creates, at the minimum, the appearance of undue influence, said James E. Tierney, a former
attorney general of Maine. It is undermining the credibility of the office of attorney general. Giant
energy producers and service companies ... have retained their own teams of attorney general
specialists, including Andrew P. Miller, a former attorney general of Virginia. An attorney general is
entrusted with the power to decide which lawsuits to file and how to settle them, and they have
great discretion in their work, said Anthony Johnstone, a former assistant attorney general in
Montana. Its vitally important that people can trust that those judgements are not subject to
undue influence because of outside forces. And from what I have seen ... those forces have
intensified.
Note: For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing government
corruption news articles from reliable sources.
Komen is supposed to be curing breast cancer. So why is its pink

ribbon on so many carcinogenic products?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/21/komen-is-supposed-...
Breast cancer giant Susan G. Komen has found its strangest bedfellow yet in one of the worlds
largest oilfield services corporations, Baker Hughes. The two have teamed up for a second year to
distribute 1,000 pink drill bits to oil fields worldwide. This is just the latest example of
pinkwashing when a company or organization claims to care about breast cancer by
promoting a pink-ribbon product but at the same time manufactures or sells products that
are linked to the disease. Pinkwashing has become a central component of the breast cancer
industry: a web of relationships and financial arrangements between corporations that cause
cancer, companies making billions off diagnosis and treatment, nonprofits seeking to support
patients or even to cure cancer, and public relations agencies that divert attention from the root
causes of disease. The partnership with fracking company Baker Hughes is among the worst
examples of Komens pinkwashing so far. More than 700 chemicals are used in the process of
drilling and fracking for oil and gas. In a study of about 350 of those chemicals, researchers found
that up to half can cause health problems, including nervous, immune and cardiovascular
symptoms. More than one-third can disrupt the hormone system. And a quarter of the chemicals,
such as benzene and formaldehyde, increase the risk of cancer. Baker Hughes is doing more to
cause breast cancer than to cure it. And Komen, with its poisonous partnerships, is giving Baker
Hughes and many other companies the perfect pink disguise.
Note: For more along these lines, read this Los Angeles Times article about how fracking
introduces carcinogens into drinking water, and see concise summaries of deeply revealing
corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Inside the Koch Brothers' Toxic Empire

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empi...
Together, Charles and David Koch control one of the world's largest fortunes, which they are using
to buy up our political system. The Kochs [have] cornered the market on Republican politics and
are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Koch-affiliated organizations raised
some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect
Republicans in this year's midterms. Koch ... is larger than IBM, Honda or Hewlett-Packard and is
America's second-largest private company. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than
$40 billion. But what they don't want you to know is how they made all that money. The company's
stock response to inquiries from reporters: "We are privately held and don't disclose this
information." The company's troubled legal history including a trail of congressional
investigations ... civil lawsuits and felony convictions ... combine to cast an unwelcome spotlight on
the toxic empire. The company has paid out record civil and criminal environmental penalties.
According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute,
only three companies rank among the top 30 polluters of America's air, water and climate:
ExxonMobil, American Electric Power and Koch Industries. Koch Industries dumps more
pollutants into the nation's waterways than General Electric and International Paper
combined. Koch has profited precisely by dumping billions of pounds of pollutants into our
waters and skies. The Koch brothers get richer as the costs of what Koch destroys are foisted on
the rest of us in the form of ill health, foul water and a climate crisis that threatens life as we
know it on this planet.
Who profits from our new war? Inside NSA and private contractors
secret plans
2014-09-24, Salon
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/24/heres_who_profits_from_our_new_war_inside_nsa...
A massive, $7.2 billion Army intelligence contract signed just 10 days ago underscores the central
role to be played by the National Security Agency and its army of private contractors in the
unfolding air war being carried out by the United States and its Gulf States allies against the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. INSCOMs global intelligence support contract will place the
contractors at the center of this fight. Under its terms, 21 companies, led by Booz Allen
Hamilton, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, will compete over the
next five years to provide fully integrated intelligence, security and information
operations in Afghanistan and future contingency operations around the world. INSCOM
announced the global intelligence contract two days after President Obama, in a speech to the
nation, essentially declared war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria and outlined a campaign of airstrikes and
combat actions to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group. The top contractors on the
INSCOM contract are already involved in the war. Lockheed Martin, for example, makes the
Hellfire missiles that are used extensively in U.S. drone strikes. Northrop Grumman makes the
Global Hawk surveillance drone. Both companies have large intelligence units. 70 percent of the
U.S. intelligence budget is spent on private contractors. This spending [is] estimated at around $70
billion a year. [There is a] revolving door between INSCOM and its contractors. The system is
corrupted by the close relationships between the companies and their agencies, said [Tom] Drake,
who as a whistle-blower was nearly sent to prison for exposing the waste, fraud and abuse in a
contracted program at the NSA that ended up losing over $7 billion.
Note: Read a powerful essay written by a top US general showing how he was fooled into
supporting wars that were generated by the powerful global elite who want never-ending war in
order to keep their profits flowing.
New Facebook Messenger App Has Some Frightening Terms And
Conditions
2014-08-18, Fox News (Memphis, Tennessee affiliate)
http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/story/26248710/new-facebook-messenger-app-has-som...
Could your smartphone be recording video of you without you knowing it? And if so, who is on the
other end watching it? A new Facebook Messenger App could be violating your privacy. If
you download and install the social network's new messenger app to an android device,
you're giving Facebook permission to call or text people from your phone, delete your
personal data even access your camera microphone. Facebook says it only needs that access
to make your messaging experience better, and that these terms have been in place for months.
So why are we telling you about it now? That's because some mobile Facebook users are about to
find out you won't be able to access your messages through the Facebook app anymore. Instead if
you want to read a message from a friend or coworker you'll have to download the messenger app
and consent to any fine print. The messenger app has over 6000 reviews on the iTunes app store.
Most of them are not too positive. The real question is will people still download it? And as for the
people who did download it, it seems a lot are just choosing to disconnect.
Note: Many apps have terms and conditions that people never read before downloading the allow
the app developer to access and even change phone logs, record conversations, and much more.
Learn more in this eye-opening video. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of
deeply revealing news articles about the erosion of privacy rights from reliable major media
sources.
Oil a key motive for U.S. air strikes in Iraq

http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Oil-a-key-motive-for-U-S-ai...
This week's U.S. air strikes in northern Iraq are being accompanied with an undertow of "it's all
about oil" talk. Take for example, Columbia School of Journalism Dean Steve Coll's observation in
The New Yorker, that "Obama's defense of Erbil (capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish
region) is effectively the defense of an undeclared Kurdish oil state." It's no secret that Iraqi
Kurdistan has an abundance of oil reserves, nor that U.S. oil companies, like [Chevron] are
busy exploring there. Chevron has three "production sharing contracts" with the Kurdish
government, covering a combined 444,000 acres, north of Irbil, where it's in the early testing and
drilling stage. And it likes what it sees. Asked for an update, a Chevron spokesman said Monday,
"We continue monitoring the situation. We remain in regular contact with the Kurdistan Regional
Government and are dedicated to supporting the (Kurdistan Region of Iraq) in developing its
natural resources." A potentially bigger worry for both Chevron and the Kurds .. could be if Iraq did
stabilize and unite, with Kurdistan under its umbrella. For Chevron ... a new arrangement in Iraq
could entail the renegotiation of contracts it has with the Kurds, which by the way, Baghdad
refused to recognize. Kurdistan's oil pipeline via Turkey continues to pump out oil - 120,000
barrels per day.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing military corruption news
Oil companies fracking into drinking water sources, new research

shows
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-fracking-groundwater-pavillion-20140811-s...
Energy companies are fracking for oil and gas at far shallower depths than widely believed,
sometimes through underground sources of drinking water, according to research released [on
August 12] by Stanford University scientists. Fracking involves high-pressure injection of millions of
gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals to crack geological formations and tap previously
unreachable oil and gas reserves. Fracking fluids contain a host of chemicals, including known
carcinogens and neurotoxins. Fears about possible water contamination and air pollution have fed
resistance in communities around the country. Fracking into underground drinking water sources is
not prohibited by the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted the practice from key provisions of
the Safe Drinking Water Act. But the industry has long held that it does not hydraulically fracture
into underground sources of drinking water because oil and gas deposits sit far deeper than
aquifers. The study, however, found that energy companies used acid stimulation ... and
hydraulic fracturing in the Wind River and Fort Union geological formations that make up
the Pavillion gas field and that contain both natural gas and sources of drinking water.
Thousands of gallons of diesel fuel and millions of gallons of fluids containing numerous
inorganic and organic additives were injected directly into these two formations during
hundreds of stimulation events, concluded Dominic DiGiulio and Robert Jackson of Stanfords
School of Earth Sciences.
Corporate Artful Dodgers

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/opinion/paul-krugman-tax-avoidance-du-jour-...
On current trends, were heading toward a world in which only the human people pay taxes. Were
not quite there yet: The federal government still gets a tenth of its revenue from corporate profits
taxation. But it used to get a lot more a third of revenue came from profits taxes in the early
1950s, a quarter or more well into the 1960s. Part of the decline since then reflects a fall in the tax
rate, but mainly it reflects ever-more-aggressive corporate tax avoidance avoidance that
politicians have done little to prevent. Which brings us to the tax-avoidance strategy du jour:
inversion. This refers to a legal maneuver in which a company declares that its U.S.
operations are owned by its foreign subsidiary, not the other way around, and uses this role
reversal to shift reported profits out of American jurisdiction to someplace with a lower tax
rate. The most important thing to understand about inversion is that it does not in any meaningful
sense involve American business moving overseas. Consider the case of Walgreen, the giant
drugstore chain that, according to multiple reports, is on the verge of making itself legally Swiss. If
the plan goes through, nothing about the business will change; your local pharmacy wont close
and reopen in Zurich. It will be a purely paper transaction but it will deprive the U.S. government
of several billion dollars in revenue that you, the taxpayer, will have to make up one way or
another.
Red Cross: How we spent Sandy money is a trade secret

2014-06-28, Salon/ProPublica
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/28/red_cross_how_we_spent_sandy_money_is_a_trade...
Just how badly does the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over
$300 million after Hurricane Sandy? The charity has hired [law firm Gibson Dunn] to fight a public
request [ProPublica] filed with New York state, arguing that information about its Sandy activities is
a trade secret. The Red Cross trade secret argument has persuaded the state to redact some
material, though its not clear yet how much since the documents havent yet been released. The
Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters. That makes
it difficult to figure out whether donor dollars are well spent. An attorney from [Gibson Dunn]
appealed to the attorney general to block disclosure of some of the Sandy information, citing the
state Freedom of Information Laws trade secret exemption. Doug White, a nonprofit expert who
directs the fundraising management program at Columbia University, said that its possible for
nonprofits to have trade interests the logo of a university, for example but its not clear what a
trade secret would be in the case of the Red Cross. He called the lawyers letter an apparent
delaying tactic. Ben Smilowitz of the Disaster Accountability Project, a watchdog group, said,
Invoking a trade secret exemption is not something you would expect from an
organization that purports to be transparent and accountable.
WikiLeaks publishes 'secret draft' of world trade agreement

2014-06-19, CBC News (Canada's Public Broadcasting Network)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/wikileaks-publishes-secret-draft-of-world-trade-...
WikiLeaks has published what it calls "the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement
(TISA) Financial Services Annex," apparently covering 50 countries and most of the world's trade
in services. "The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the
expansion of financial multinationals mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris
and Frankfurt into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers," the website says in a
statement. The draft deal is seen as a way to prevent more regulation of financial services,
despite calls for tighter regulatory measures that followed the 2007-08 world financial crisis. That
market meltdown set the world's biggest banks up against critics who said governments needed to
rein them in. The last round of TISA talks took place April 28 to May 2 in Geneva. WikiLeaks also
[stated] that the U.S. is "particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow" and that this would
include personal and financial data. During his teleconference, [Assange] urged U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder to end a four-year-long grand jury investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks.
"National security reporters are required by their profession to have intimate interactions in order to
assess and verify and investigate the nature of the material that they are dealing with," he said.
"So I call on Eric Holder today to immediately drop the ongoing national security investigation
against WikiLeaks or resign."
Note: Why is this important release getting so little news coverage? For more on this, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media
sources.
The Koch Cycle of Endless Cash

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/opinion/the-koch-cycle-of-endless-cash.html
Its not enough, apparently, that some of the wealthiest Americans spend millions to elect their
candidates to Congress. Now they are using their fortunes to lobby Congress against any limits on
their ability to buy elections. Koch Companies Public Sector, part of the industrial group owned by
a well-known pair of conservative brothers, has hired a big-name firm to lobby Congress on
campaign-finance issues, according to a registration form filed a few weeks ago. The form doesnt
say what those issues are, but there are several bills in the House that would reduce the role of
anonymous big money in campaigns, and restrict the kinds of super PACs and nonprofit groups
that the Koch brothers and others have inflated with cash. Clearly, its vital to the Kochs and others
like them to prevent such limits from being enacted; their network raised $400 million in 2012, and
it has been extremely active again this year. To that end, they have done something ordinary
citizens cannot do: They hired the lobbying firm of a well-known former senator, Don Nickles,
Republican of Oklahoma, to press their interests. Mr. Nickles started his firm a few months after
leaving the Senate in 2005, and he takes in up to $8 million a year from big firms like Exxon Mobil,
General Motors and Walmart. This is a perfect illustration of the cumulative power of cash in
todays Washington. Members of Congress get elected with substantial help from check
writers like the Kochs and others. Once there, they do the bidding of former members paid
by the Kochs to preserve their business interests and fight off campaign-finance reforms.
Angry mothers meet U.S. EPA over concerns with Roundup herbicide
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-05-27/news/sns-rt-us-monsanto-roundup...
A group of mothers, scientists and environmentalists met with U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency regulators on [May 27] over concerns that residues of Roundup, the world's most popular
herbicide, had been found in breast milk. The meeting ... followed a five-day phone call blitz of EPA
offices by a group called Moms Across America demanding that the EPA pay attention to their
demands for a recall of Roundup. "This is a poison and it's in our food. And now they've found it in
breast milk," said Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America. "Numerous studies show
serious harm to mammals. We want this toxic treadmill of chemical cocktails in our food to stop."
Roundup is an herbicide developed and sold by Monsanto Co. since the 1970s, and used in
agriculture and home lawns and gardens. The chief ingredient, glyphosate, is under a standard
registration review by the EPA. The agency has set a deadline of 2015 for determining if
glyphosate use should continue as is, be limited or halted. Environmentalists, consumer groups
and plant scientists from several countries have said in recent years that heavy use of
glyphosate is causing problems for plants, people and animals. They say some tests have
raised alarms about glyphosate levels found in urine samples and breast milk. In 2011, U.S.
government scientists said they detected significant levels of glyphosate in air and water samples.
Glyphosate is sprayed on most of the corn and soybean crops in the United States, as well as over
sugar beets, canola and other crops.
Note: For further studies showing the grave dangers of Roundup and Glyphosate, see this article.
Dr. Andres Carrasco, 67, neuroscientist fought Monsanto over Roundup

2014-05-13, Chicago Sun-Times/Associated Press
http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/27372174-418/dr-andres-carrasco-67-ne...
Dr. Andres Carrasco, an Argentine neuroscientist who challenged pesticide regulators to reexamine one of the worlds most widely used weed killers, has died. He was 67. Dr. Carrasco, a
molecular biologist at the University of Buenos Aires and past-president of Argentinas CONICET
science council, was a widely published expert in embryonic development. His 2010 study on
glyphosate [became] a major public relations challenge for the ... Monsanto Company. Glyphosate
is the key ingredient in Monsantos Roundup brand of pesticides, which have combined with
genetically modified Roundup-Ready plants to dramatically increase the spread of industrial
agriculture around the world. [The technology's] spread has increasingly exposed people to
glyphosate and other chemicals. Dr. Carrasco, principal investigator at his universitys Cellular
Biology and Neuroscience Institute, told The Associated Press in a 2013 interview that he had
heard reports of increasing birth defects in farming communities after genetically modified crops
were approved for use in Argentina, and so decided to test the impact of glyphosate on frog and
chicken embryos in his laboratory. His teams study, published in the peer-reviewed Chemical
Research in Toxicology journal, found that injecting very low doses of glyphosate into
embryos can change levels of retinoic acid, causing the same sort of spinal defects that
doctors are increasingly registering in communities where farm chemicals are ubiquitous.
If its possible to reproduce this in a laboratory, surely what is happening in the field is
much worse, Dr. Carrasco told the AP.
Note: For further studies showing the grave dangers of Roundup and Glyphosate, see this article.
Why both sides of the political aisle are turning against Wall Street
2014-05-07, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2014/0507/Why-both-sides-of-th...
More Americans than ever believe the economy is rigged in favor of Wall Street and big business
and their enablers in Washington. Were five years into a so-called recovery thats been a bonanza
for the rich but a bust for the middle class. The game is rigged and the American people know
that. They get it right down to their toes, says Senator Elizabeth Warren. Which is fueling a new
populism on both the left and the right. While still far apart, neo-populists on both sides are
bending toward one another and against the establishment. And its not only the rhetoric thats
converging. Populists on the right and left are also coming together around six principles: 1. Cut
the biggest Wall Street banks down to a size where theyre no longer too big to fail. 2. Resurrect
the Glass-Steagall Act, separating investment from commercial banking and thereby preventing
companies from gambling with their depositors money. 3. End corporate welfare including
subsidies to big oil, big agribusiness, big pharma, Wall Street, and the Ex-Im Bank. 5. Scale back
American interventions overseas. 6. Oppose trade agreements crafted by big corporations. Two
decades ago Democrats and Republicans enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Since then populists in both parties have mounted increasing opposition to such agreements. Left
and right-wing populists remain deeply divided over the role of government. Even so, the
major fault line in American politics seems to be shifting, from Democrat versus
Republican, to populist versus establishment those who think the game is rigged versus
those who do the rigging.
The Koch Attack on Solar Energy

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-koch-attack-on-solar-ene...
At long last, the Koch brothers and their conservative allies in state government have found a new
tax they can support. Naturally its a tax on something the country needs: solar energy panels. For
the last few months, the Kochs and other big polluters have been spending heavily to fight
incentives for renewable energy, which have been adopted by most states. They
particularly dislike state laws that allow homeowners with solar panels to sell power they
dont need back to electric utilities. So theyve been pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on
this increasingly popular practice, hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive.
Oklahoma lawmakers recently approved such a surcharge at the behest of the American
Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative group that often dictates bills to Republican
statehouses and receives financing from the utility industry and fossil-fuel producers, including the
Kochs. [The] group is trying to repeal or freeze Ohios requirement that 12.5 percent of the states
electric power come from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2025. Twenty-nine states have
established similar standards that call for 10 percent or more in renewable power. These states
can now anticipate well-financed campaigns to eliminate these targets or scale them back. The
coal producers motivation is clear: They see solar and wind energy as a long-term threat to their
businesses.
Note: For more on the growth of the solar energy industry, see the deeply revealing reports from
Koch brothers, big utilities attack solar, green energy policies

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-solar-kochs-20140420,0,7412286.story#axzz...
The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation's largest power
companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy.
The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with
the battle rapidly spreading to other states. Alarmed environmentalists and their allies in the solar
industry have fought back, battling the other side to a draw so far. Both sides say the fight is
growing more intense as new states, including Ohio, South Carolina and Washington, enter the
fray. At the nub of the dispute are two policies found in dozens of states. One requires utilities to
get a certain share of power from renewable sources. The other, known as net metering,
guarantees homeowners or businesses with solar panels on their roofs the right to sell any excess
electricity back into the power grid at attractive rates. Net metering forms the linchpin of the solarenergy business model. Without it, firms say, solar power would be prohibitively expensive. The
American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a membership group for conservative
state lawmakers, recently drafted model legislation that targeted net metering. The group
also helped launch efforts by conservative lawmakers in more than half a dozen states to
repeal green energy mandates. The group's campaign in [Kansas] compared the green energy
mandate to Obamacare, featuring ominous images of Kathleen Sebelius, the outgoing secretary of
Health and Human Services, who was Kansas' governor when the state adopted the requirement.
Note: For more on the growth of the solar energy industry, see the deeply revealing reports from
10 things wrong with what kids learn in school

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/02/10-things-wron...
Mainstream media, cued by corporate press releases, routinely claim that Americas
schools are markedly inferior to schools in other developed nations. The claim is part of an
organized, long-running, generously funded campaign to undermine confidence in public
schools to prove the need to privatize them. Educators have been handicapped for more
than a century by a curriculum adopted to serve a too-narrow purposeadmission to collegeand
failure to address that curriculums problems has made the institution vulnerable to destructive
corporate and political manipulation. Below are brief descriptions of some of the more obvious of
those problems. 1. The standard core curriculum is stuck in the past. Adopted in the late 19th
Century, the curriculum now shaping Americas schools reflects the big idea of that earlier era
the factory system, standardization of parts, mass production, centralized decision making, and
passive worker compliance. None of those fit the present era. 2. The standard core curriculum is
so inefficient it leaves little or no time for apprenticeships, internships, co-op programs, projects,
and other ways of learning by doing (which is how most of us learned most of what we know). 3.
The standard core curriculum gives thought processes other than recall short shrift, or no attention
at all. The ability to remember is, of course, important, but the main educational challenge
making better sense of real-world experiencerequires the ability not merely to recall but to infer,
generalize, hypothesize, relate, synthesize, value, and so on. 4. The standard core curriculum
ignores vast and important fields of knowledge.
Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-20...
The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays. The U.S. Justice Department granted a
total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism moneylaundering case ever. They issued a fine $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit but they didn't
extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying
abuses. For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash
hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in
tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years. The bank also ... aided countless common
tax cheats in hiding their cash. That nobody from the bank went to jail or paid a dollar in individual
fines is nothing new in this era of financial crisis. What is different about this settlement is that
the Justice Department, for the first time, admitted why it decided to go soft on this
particular kind of criminal. It was worried that anything more than a wrist slap for HSBC
might undermine the world economy. "Had the U.S. authorities decided to press criminal
charges," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer at a press conference to announce the
settlement, "HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the
institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been
destabilized."
Note: For more on the collusion of government with the biggest, most corrupt banks, see the
deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
New York regulator demands bank documents as investigation widens

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/05/new-york-regulator-banks-trad...
New York states top financial regulator has demanded documents from more than a dozen banks
including Barclays, Deutsche, Goldman Sachs and RBS as a probe widened into trading practices
in the $5.3tn-a-day global foreign exchange markets. Benjamin Lawsky, New York's financial
services superintendent, made the move following the banks decision to fire or suspend at least
20 traders following reports that employees at some firms had shared information about their
currency positions with counterparts at other companies. Lawskys move marks the latest
escalation in a global investigation by regulators into the manipulation of benchmark rates.
The currency probe comes as regulators are still investigating the manipulation of the Libor
lending rate by traders at some of the worlds biggest banks. The Wall Street Journal reported
that Goldman Sachs Steven Cho, formerly global head of spot and forward foreign exchange
trading for major currencies, was retiring from the bank. His departure came a day after Citigroup
announced that Anil Prasad, its global head of foreign exchange, was leaving the company. It is
not know if his retirement is in any way linked to any investigation. Prasads exit comes a month
after Rohan Ramchandani, formerly Citis head of European spot foreign exchange trading, was
fired. Ramchandani had been a member of the Bank of Englands foreign exchange joint standing
committee.
The anti-fracking activist barred from 312.5 sq miles of Pennsylvania

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/29/vera-scroggins-fracking-ac...
Vera Scroggins, an outspoken opponent of fracking, is legally barred from the new county
hospital. Also off-limits, unless Scroggins wants to risk fines and arrest, are the Chinese
restaurant where she takes her grandchildren, the supermarkets and drug stores where she
shops, the animal shelter where she adopted her Yorkshire terrier, bowling alley, recycling centre,
golf club, and lake shore. In total, 312.5 sq miles are no-go areas for Scroggins under a sweeping
court order granted by a local judge that bars her from any properties owned or leased by one of
the biggest drillers in the Pennsylvania natural gas rush, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation. The ban
represents one of the most extreme measures taken by the oil and gas industry to date against
protesters like Scroggins, who has operated peacefully and within the law including taking Yoko
Ono to frack sites in her bid to elevate public concerns about fracking. It was always going to be an
unequal fight when Scroggins, now 63, made it her self-appointed mission five years ago to stop
fracking in this, the richest part of the Marcellus Shale. The judge [granted] Cabot a temporary
injunction barring Scroggins from all property owned or leased by the company. In court filings,
Cabot said it holds leases on 200,000 acres of land, equivalent to 312.5 sq miles. That amounts
to nearly 40% of the largely rural county in north-eastern Pennsylvania where Scroggins
lives and where Cabot does most of its drilling.
Money made at others expense

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-money-made-at-others-e...
The paths that many of todays wealthiest Americans have taken on their road to riches
have not bettered most peoples lives. Many have actually hurt most peoples lives. Their
riches have come at most other peoples expense. Since the recession officially ended in June
2009, for instance, the wages for all private-sector jobs have fallen, on average, by 0.5 percent.
The wages for jobs in financial services, however, have risen by 5.5 percent. Inasmuch as the
recession was brought about by the financial services industry, its understandable that this
disparity would strike most people as unjust. Or consider the mechanisms by which some CEOs
earn huge salaries. Last week, the board of directors of JPMorgan Chase voted to raise chief
executive Jamie Dimons annual pay to $20 million up from $11.5 million despite the fact that
the bank paid the federal government around $20 billion last year to settle charges stemming from
its multiple misdeeds. Laying off workers and depressing their pay has become the key factor in
boosting corporate profits in recent years. With profits at a record high as a share of the
nations gross domestic product and wages at a record low, its entirely proper that
Americans question the legitimacy of the 1 percents wealth.
Note: For more on income inequality, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
Even After Volcker, Banks Aren't Safe Enough

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2160950,00.html
Despite the hoopla over the approval of the Volcker rule, which restricts banks from making certain
types of speculative investments, our financial system isn't much safer than it was before 2008. A
major reason for the continued complexity and risk in the financial system is lobbying power. The
Volcker rule as it stands now has been turned into Swiss cheese by bank lobbyists, who
represent the second biggest corporate special-interest bloc after the health care complex,
spending nearly half a billion dollars a year on lobbying, according to the nonprofit,
nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. So while the rule limits federally insured banks from
trading for its own sake, they are still allowed to hedge their portfolios, which opens up a lot of gray
territory for trading. Certainly having more lenders rather than fewer would help other kinds of
businesses, and having trading walled off from lending would encourage that. The fact that the
five largest U.S. financial holding companies control 55% of industry assets--compared
with 20% in 1990--keeps competition low and credit constrained. In the next two to five years,
there will likely be another crisis or trading loss of the kind that reignites the debate over closing
trading loopholes and creating a truly safer financial system. Right now, banks complain about
rules that would require them to hold a mere 5% of their assets in high-quality, low-risk capital
(known as Tier 1 capital), despite the fact that in any other industry, doing business with less than
50% of your own cash would be considered extreme.
Trans-Pacific Partnership: a guide to the most contentious issues

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/trans-pacific-partnership-a-guid...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement is being negotiated in Singapore this
week between Australia, New Zealand, the US, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Singapore, Brunei,
Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan. The countries have a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of
US$28,136bn on 2012 figures, which represents almost 40% of the worlds GDP. There have been
many contentious issues around the TPP: critics are particularly concerned about the secrecy
around the agreement given it has the capacity to change many local laws and regulations.
The majority of public criticism has centred on arguments relating to intellectual property
and the cost of medicines, though many have concerns about environmental issues
including climate change, investment, e-commerce and labour laws. The US has been rigid in
its demands for stronger intellectual property protection to champion the rights of its global giants
such as IT companies and its film and music industries. The US position on [the] investor-state
dispute settlement provision ... grants foreign companies the right to sue [a] government under
international law. All countries accepted there needed to be agreement on privacy obligations with
regard to information-sharing, apart from the US, which reserved its position on privacy. The US
position has left people wondering whether the TPP will undermine privacy, particularly in the wake
of the NSA revelations from the Snowden documents. There appear to be deep divisions on
environment and climate change, with the US and Australia opposing any extension of the text on
climate matters.
ALEC calls for penalties on 'freerider' homeowners in assault on clean

energy
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/alec-freerider-homeowners-assaul...
An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise
homeowners who install their own solar panels casting them as "freeriders" in a
sweeping new offensive against renewable energy. Over the coming year, the American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising
individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the
Environmental Protection Agency, [the government's] main channel for climate action. Details of
ALEC's strategy to block clean energy development at every stage from the individual rooftop to
the White House are revealed as the group gathers for its policy summit in Washington this
week. About 800 state legislators and business leaders are due to attend the three-day event,
which begins ... with appearances by the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson and the Republican
budget guru and fellow Wisconsinite Paul Ryan. Other ALEC speakers will be a leading figure
behind the recent government shutdown, US senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and the governors of
Indiana and Wyoming. For 2014, ALEC plans to promote a suite of model bills and resolutions
aimed at blocking Barack Obama from cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and state governments
from promoting the expansion of wind and solar power through regulations known as Renewable
Portfolio Standards. ALEC [wants] to lower the rate electricity companies pay homeowners
for direct power generation and maybe even charge homeowners for feeding power into
the grid.
Are Prisons Bleeding Us Dry?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/01/are-prisons-bleeding-us-dry....
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to introduce a mandatory prison sentence for anyone
caught with an illegal firearm. But reams of data shows that incarceration creates more crime. One
in 100 adults in the U.S. lives behind bars. One in nine African-American men are imprisoned.
This countrys addiction to incarceration has not made us safer, but has instead imposed
upon us an untenable, senseless tax while unfairly targeting poor communities of color and
perpetuating crime and violence in our neighborhoods. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle
and activists on the left and the right are taking action to roll back imprisonment rates. Chicagos
communities have been ravaged by mass imprisonment. The U.S. currently has the dubious
distinction of having the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. And communities
on Chicagos West and South sides have incarceration rates that are doubleand sometimes
triplethe national average. This is not because more crime occurs in these neighborhoods. A
National Institute of Health study that focused on the effects of mass incarceration on Chicagos
neighborhoods found that communities marked by poverty and racial segregation experience
incarceration rates that are more than three times higher communities with similar crime rates.
Note: For more on the devastating impacts on society of the government-prison-industrial

The Charity Swindle

"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/opinion/the-charity-swindle.html
By all outward indications, the U.S. Navy Veterans Association was a leader in the charitable
community. Founded in 2002 to provide support to Navy veterans in need, the charity recorded
astonishing financial success. In its first eight years, it raised around $100 million in charitable
contributions, almost all of it through a direct marketing campaign. The organization, headed by
Jack L. Nimitz, boasted of 41 state chapters and some 66,000 members. [But] virtually everything
about the association turned out to be false: no state chapters, no members, no leader with the
name redolent of naval history. Instead, there was one guy: a man calling himself Bobby
Thompson. But the money raised was real enough, generated by a series of for-profit
telemarketers. The victims, by and large, were unsuspecting small-money donors who received
urgent solicitations asking for support for needy naval veterans. Most of the money raised
stayed with the fund-raisers, though plenty apparently dripped through to Mr. Thompson
and a succession of Republican lawmakers who received generous contributions from the
associations political arm. But little ever made it to the intended beneficiaries. From June
2010, Mr. Thompson was on the run, the search for him hamstrung by the fact that no one had any
real idea of who he was. Finally, on April 30, 2012, federal marshals tracked him down in Portland,
Ore., finding him with a card to a storage unit containing $981,650 in cash and almost two dozen
fake identity cards. Authorities have identified him as John Donald Cody, a former Army
intelligence officer and Harvard Law graduate.
Note: As we enter the annual giving season, donors should look to sources like the GiveWell
website to find organizations with a track record of effectiveness. Seeking them out instead of
donating to charities that are first to call or that sound familiar or that weve heard are good is
the only way to ensure that money reaches those in need. For more on corporate corruption, see
Leaked treaty is a Hollywood wish list. Could it derail Obamas trade

agenda?
2013-11-12, Washington Post Blog
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/13/leaked-treaty-is...
Officially, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade treaty that will ease the flow of goods and
services among the United States ... and other nations along the Pacific Rim. But it has
attracted criticism for its secrecy, and for the inclusion of controversial provisions related to
copyright, patent, and trademark protections. Wikileaks released an August draft of the "intellectual
property" chapter of the treaty. The United States has been using the treaty as a vehicle to
pressure its negotiating partners to make their laws more favorable to the interests of U.S.
filmmakers, drug companies, and other large holders of copyright and patent rights. Several
proposed items are drawn from Hollywood's wish list. The United States has also pushed for a
wide variety of provisions that would benefit the U.S. pharmaceutical and medical device
industries. The Obama administration wants to require the extension of patent protection to
plants, animals, and medical procedures. It wants to require countries to offer longer terms of
patent protection to compensate for delays in the patent application process. The United States
also wants to bar the manufacturers of generic drugs from relying on safety and efficacy
information that was previously submitted by a brand-name drug maker a step that would make
it harder for generic manufacturers to enter the pharmaceutical market and could raise drug prices.
Note: Why was this vitally important, yet little-reported news relegated to a blog? Read an
October, 2014 update on the secret trade deal in The Guardian (One of the UK's leading
newspapers). The Environment Chapter of the TPP has also been leaked. For more along these
lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing articles about government secrecy.
Andrew Huszar: Confessions of a Quantitative Easer

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303763804579183680751473884
I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for
executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment
known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main
Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall
Street bailout of all time. Where are we today? The Fed keeps buying roughly $85 billion in bonds
a month, chronically delaying so much as a minor QE taper. Over five years, its bond purchases
have come to more than $4 trillion. Amazingly, in a supposedly free-market nation, QE has
become the largest financial-markets intervention by any government in world history. And the
impact? Even by the Fed's sunniest calculations, aggressive QE over five years has generated
only a few percentage points of U.S. growth. By contrast, experts outside the Fed, such as
Mohammed El Erian at the Pimco investment firm, suggest that the Fed may have created
and spent over $4 trillion for a total return of as little as 0.25% of GDP (i.e., a mere $40
billion bump in U.S. economic output). Both of those estimates indicate that QE isn't really
working. Unless you're Wall Street. Having racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in opaque Fed
subsidies, U.S. banks have seen their collective stock price triple since March 2009. The biggest
ones have only become more of a cartel: 0.2% of them now control more than 70% of the U.S.
bank assets. As for the rest of America, good luck.
California's addiction to Indian casinos

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/editorials/article/California-s-addiction-to-In...
In just over a decade, Indian casinos have shot from backcountry slot machine emporiums to
enormous gambling meccas, an escalation completely at odds with original promises. The latest
proof of this failed pledge is an $800 million operation in Rohnert Park due to open [on November
5]. The Graton Resort & Casino will be a major economic force in Sonoma County, employing
some 2,000 employees and promising $20 million in annual local payments. Instead of smokefilled gambling halls, it will offer high-end restaurants, ornate chandeliers and skylights in a main
building surrounded by nearly 6,000 parking slots. But the huge operation is a reminder of how
far things have strayed from the promises made to California voters in 2000. A state ballot
measure argued that impoverished tribes living in remote corners of California had few if
any alternatives for economic development. Now gambling is Vegas-scale, and casino
tribes are vying against each other for prime spots. The Rohnert Park casino will jump in front
of another operation 30 miles to the north in Geyserville, and that worried tribe has bought land in
Petaluma for a possible operation that will be closer to Bay Area gamblers. One tribe's win is
another's loss. California taxpayers have a stake too. Sold on an ever-increasing slice of revenues,
a string of state governors have approved more than 60 casinos. Gov. Jerry Brown, who approved
the Graton operation, signed two other casino deals in the Central Valley sought by tribes who
wanted more lucrative spots.
Rabobank Fined $1.1 Billion Over Libor, Euribor Manipulation

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-10-29/rabobank-fined-1-dot-1-billion-ov...
Rabobank Groep, the co-operative formed in 1898 to lend to Dutch farmers, was fined 774 million
euros ($1.1 billion) and the chairman resigned as the scandal over the rigging of benchmark
interest rates ensnared a fifth firm. The Utrecht, Netherlands-based lender entered into an
agreement with the Justice Department to accept responsibility for manipulation of Libor and
Euribor to avoid prosecution. The fines are the largest-ever against the bank and second-largest
over manipulation of the London interbank offered rate. Global investigations into banks attempts
to manipulate the benchmarks for profit have led to fines and settlements for Barclays, Royal Bank
of Scotland, UBS and ICAP. Rabobank derivatives and money-market traders influenced the
lenders submissions to benefit their positions linked to Libor and conspired with
employees of other banks to rig rates from May 2005 to January 2011. More than 500
attempts were made by Rabobank to manipulate Libor, according to the regulator. Thirty
current and former employees of the Dutch lender were involved, Rabobank executive board
member Sipko Schat said today. Five of them were fired, he said, while 14 are still working for the
bank. The lender is also clawing back 4.2 million euros in bonuses, Rabobank said in a statement.
The manipulation directly affected the rates referenced by financial products held by and on
behalf of companies and investors around the world, Valerie Parlave, Assistant Director in Charge
of the FBIs Washington field office, said in a statement.
Finally, a Guilty Verdict for Wall Street

2013-10-24, US News & World Report
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/pat-garofalo/2013/10/24/bank-of-america-t...
"The Hustle." That's the name of a program run by Countrywide, the slimy subprime lender
purchased by Bank of America in 2008. Under the program, Countrywide brokers were paid
bonuses to originate loans, firing them off to borrowers with less than stellar credit in an attempt to
gin up quick profits. The loans were then sold to government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac, where they often went sour. This sounds like a fairly typical tale from the
financial crisis: Most of the nation's largest banks have, in one way or another, been accused of
formulating sloppy loans and dumping them off on the taxpayer or of selling toxic mortgage
securities to unwitting customers. But there's a new twist to the old story: Yesterday, a jury found
Bank of America guilty of fraud, the first time that a major U.S. bank has been held responsible by
a U.S. court for actions tied to the financial crisis. The jury also held a former Countrywide
manager liable for fraud. That we're still wondering whether the banks will face any
consequences for their actions more than five years after the financial crisis began in
earnest is a pretty damning indictment of the Obama administration's approach to the
matter. Can lawmakers summon the will to actually take on Wall Street or are a few good
headlines from DOJ all we can hope for? The Dodd-Frank financial reform law was a good
opening effort and, despite its imperfections, will make some difference in reining Wall Street. But
there is still a lot that the law either left unaddressed or up to the interpretation of regulators who
are bombarded by missives from Wall Street lobbyists.
Note: For more on the collusion of big banks and banking regulators, see the deeply revealing
Fukushima 'not under control' warns TEPCO official

2013-09-13, Fox News/Agence France Presse
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/13/fukushima-not-under-control-warns-tep...
The Japanese government and TEPCO were scrambling to reassure people [on Sep. 13] that they
have a lid on Fukushima after a senior utility executive said the nuclear plant was "not under
control". The remarks by Kazuhiko Yamashita, who holds the executive-level title of "fellow" at
Tokyo Electric Power, seem to flatly contradict assurances Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave
Olympic chiefs a week earlier. In a meeting with members of the opposition Democratic Party
of Japan, Yamashita was asked whether he agreed that "the situation is under control" as
Abe had declared at the International Olympic Committee meeting in Buenos Aires. He
responded by saying, "I think the current situation is that it is not under control," according
to major media, including national broadcaster NHK. News of his comment prompted a rush by the
government and TEPCO to elaborate on Yamashita's remark, saying he was talking specifically
about the plant's waste water problem, and not the facility's situation in general. TEPCO has
poured thousands of tonnes of water on the Fukushima reactors to tame meltdowns sparked by
the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The utility says they are now stable but need to be kept
cool to prevent them running out of control again. Much of that now-contaminated water is being
stored in temporary tanks at the plant, and TEPCO has so far revealed no clear plan for it. The
problem has been worsened by leaks in some of those tanks that are believed to have seeped into
groundwater, which runs out to sea.
Note: For an excellent ABC News article titled "A Never-Ending Disaster at Fukushima," click here.
For more on the grave environmental impacts of nuclear power, see the deeply revealing reports
5 companies that make money by keeping Americans scared

2013-08-19, Salon
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/19/5_companies_that_make_money_by_keeping_americ...
Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, has invaded Americas
television sets in recent weeks to warn about Edward Snowdens leaks and the continuing terrorist
threat to America. But what often goes unmentioned, as the Guardians Glenn Greenwald pointed
out, is that Hayden has a financial stake in keeping Americans scared and on a permanent
war footing against Islamist militants. And the private firm he works for, called the Chertoff
Group, is not the only one making money by scaring Americans. Post-9/11 America has
witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped-up threat of terrorism. The drive to
privatize Americas national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks,
and its gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on
private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported [in Spies for Hire: the Secret World of
Intelligence Outsourcing]. The private intelligence contractors have profited to the tune of at least
$6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across
the country dedicated to fighting terrorism. What it all adds up to is a massive industry profiting off
government-induced fear of terrorism, even though Americans are more likely to be killed by a car
crash or their own furniture than a terror attack. Here are five private companies cashing in on
keeping you afraid. 1. The Chertoff Group 2. Booz Allen Hamilton 3. Science Applications
International Corp. 4. Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies 5. Security Solutions
International.
Note: For more on government and corporate corruption in pushing the terror hoax, see the deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Toxic Fukushima fallout threatens fishermen's livelihoods

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/fukushima-fallout-threatens-fish...
Despite his age, 63-year-old Kazuo Niitsuma believes there are many more years of fishing ahead
of him. The sea is in his family's blood, he says. His octogenarian father began working on boats
when he was 12, and only retired three years ago. But ... Niitsuma knows he may never again get
the chance to board his boat and head out into the Pacific in search of sole, whitebait, flounder and
greenling. The greatest threat to Niitsuma's livelihood, and that of other fishermen in Hisanohama
... lies just up the coast at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The environment ministry
recently announcement that 300 tonnes of contaminated groundwater from Fukushima
Daiichi is still seeping over or around barriers into the Pacific every day, more than two years
after it was struck by a tsunami in March 2011. Government officials said they suspected the leaks
had started soon after the accident. The admission by the ministry, confirmed by Tokyo
Electric Power (Tepco), which runs the plant, is likely to keep Hisanohama's 40 fishing
boats in port for the foreseeable future. Tepco's failure to handle the contaminated water and
accusations that it tried to cover up the leaks is a serious setback to attempts to clean up
Fukushima Daiichi, 18 months after the government declared it had reached a "safe" state known
as cold shutdown. "I haven't been able to fish since the tsunami," Niitsuma said. "People want to
be reassured that they are buying fish that is safe to eat, and we can't give them that guarantee at
the moment."
Note: Declaring the situation an "emergency", the Japanese government has stepped in to take
over control of the response from Tepco. For more on this, click here. For a National Geographic
article on what you need to know about the radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean by the
Fukushima disaster, click here. It reports that scientists have estimated that contaminated
seawater could reach the West Coast of the United States in five years or less. For more on the
environmental devastation of nuclear power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
The Stench of the Potomac

2013-08-01, New York Magazine
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/this-town-washington-lobbyists-2013-8/
The tale of how the Obama economic team was recruited en masse from Robert Rubin acolytes
who either facilitated Wall Streets pre-crash recklessness while in the Clinton administration or
cashed in on it later (or, like Rubin, did both) never loses its power to shock. Michael Froman,
Rubins chief of staff as Clinton Treasury secretary, not only served as the Obama transition teams
personnel director but moonlighted as a Citigroup managing director while doing so. Obama
essentially entrusted the repairing of the china shop to the bulls whod helped ransack it, [Jeff]
Connaughton writes [in The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins]. [In This Town Mark] Leibovich
updates the story of the tacky prehistory of the Obama White House with its aftermaththe steady
parade of Obama alumni who traded change we can believe in for cash on the barrelhead as soon
as they left public service. The starry list includes, among many others, Peter Orszag (director of
the White Houses Office of Management and Budget, now at Citi), Jake Siewert (the Treasury
Department counselor turned chief flack for Goldman Sachs), and David Plouffe (the campaign
manager and senior presidential adviser who did consulting for Boeing and General Electric).
When I am president, Obama had said in 2008, I will start by closing the revolving door
in the White House thats allowed people to use their administration job as a stepping-stone
to further their lobbying careers. Puzzling over how so many colleagues have strayed from this
credo, the former press secretary Robert Gibbs has theorized that either somehow we have all
changed or, alternatively, maybe Washington changed us.
Halliburton pleads guilty to destroying evidence in BP oil spill

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-halliburton-guilty-plea...
Oil-field services giant Halliburton has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence in connection
with the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Justice Department announced. Halliburton has been
charged with one count of destruction of evidence in U.S. District Court in New Orleans. Under a
plea agreement that is subject to court approval, Halliburton agreed to pay the maximumavailable statutory fine, to be subject to three years of probation and to continue its
cooperation in the governments ongoing criminal investigation, the Justice Department
said. The April 2010 explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was the largest
offshore oil disaster in U.S. history, killing 11 workers and spewing nearly 5 million barrels of oil into
the gulf. The Macondo well was owned by a consortium of energy companies, led by BP.
Transocean owned the drilling rig that BP was leasing for the venture. Halliburton was contracted
by BP to do the cement work on the well. The plea agreement was the third that the Justice
Department has obtained in the criminal investigation of the disaster. Transocean agreed to pay
$400 million as part of its criminal plea, and BP, $4 billion. A civil suit against the three companies
brought by the Justice Department and others is continuing. The Halliburton plea involves the
destruction of results of internal tests the company conducted after the drilling rig sank. The
Justice Department said, In agreeing to plead guilty, Halliburton has accepted criminal
responsibility for destroying the aforementioned evidence.
A Black Box for Car Crashes

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/black-boxes-in-cars-a-question-of-...
[There is] a growing debate over a little-known but increasingly important piece of equipment
buried deep inside a car: the event data recorder, more commonly known as the black box. About
96 percent of all new vehicles sold in the United States have the boxes, and in September
2014, if the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has its way, all will have them. Data
stored in the devices is increasingly being used to identify safety problems in cars and as evidence
in traffic accidents and criminal cases. And the trove of data inside the boxes has raised privacy
concerns, including questions about who owns the information, and what it can be used for, even
as critics have raised questions about its reliability. To consumer advocates, the data is only the
latest example of governments and companies having too much access to private information.
Once gathered, they say, the data can be used against car owners, to find fault in accidents or in
criminal investigations. These cars are equipped with computers that collect massive
amounts of data, said Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a
Washington-based consumer group. Without protections, it can lead to all kinds of abuse.
In [14] states, lawyers may subpoena the data for criminal investigations and civil lawsuits, making
the information accessible to third parties, including law enforcement or insurance companies that
could cancel a drivers policy or raise a drivers premium based on the recorders data.
ACLU warns of mass tracking through license plate scanners

2013-07-18, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57594179/aclu-warns-of-mass-tracking-thro...
The American Civil Liberties Union is warning that law enforcement officials are using license
plate scanners to amass massive and unregulated databases that can be used to track lawabiding citizens as their go about their daily lives. In a new report, "You Are Being Tracked:
How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans' Movements," the ACLU
discusses the data culled from license plate scanners - cameras mounted on patrol cars,
overpasses and elsewhere to record your license plate number and location at a given time. There
are tens of thousands such cameras now in operation, according to the group, with the data in
some cases being stored indefinitely. The ACLU report is the result of an analysis of 26,000 pages
of documents from police departments around the country, obtained through nearly 600 [FOIA]
requests. It finds that while some jurisdictions keep the information gleaned from the scanners for
a short time ... many hold onto the data for years. The organization complains that there are
"virtually no rules in place" to keep officials from tracking "everybody all the time." The
ACLU also warns that the data is being fed into larger databases, with the private National Vehicle
Location Service now holding more than 800 million license plate records. The group's database is
used by more than 2,200 law enforcement customers. The [ACLU] report warns that the data can
be used in an official capacity to spy on protesters or target communities based on their religious
beliefs, or unofficially by a police officer who wants to keep an eye on a romantic rival.
Note: For more on privacy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
Why Our Health Care Lets Prices Run Wild

http://swampland.time.com/2013/07/01/why-our-health-care-lets-prices-run-wild/
Of all the oddities of the U.S. health care system, one stands out: we spend far more on
health care per person than other industrialized nations yet have no better health
outcomes. Understanding why isnt easy. A 2012 paper by the Commonwealth Fund found that
among 13 industrialized countries studied, the U.S. has the highest rate of obesity, which is usually
a factor in higher health care costs. Yet, the U.S. ranks far behind many other countries in our
rates of citizens who smoke or are over 55, two other strong indicators of increased spending. So
why is our health care spending more than 17% of our gross domestic product, far more than any
other country? A central reason U.S. health care spending is so high is that hospitals and doctors
charge more for their services and theres little transparency about why. There is no uniformity to
the system, in which public and private insurers have separate, unrelated contracts with
hospitals and doctors. The result is a tangled, confusing and largely secretive collection of
forces driving health care prices higher and higher. This isnt possible in many other countries
either because governments set prices for health care services or broker negotiations between
coalitions of insurers and providers. Known as all-payer rate setting, insurers in these systems
band together to negotiate as groups. In contrast, U.S. insurers closely guard the secrecy of their
contracted prices with health care providers and negotiate individually. This is why a hospital
hosting five patients for knee replacements might get paid five different amounts for the surgeries.
How Chevron turned the tables in Ecuador

http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/2013/06/28/how-chevron-turned-the-tables-in-ecu...
Faced with a $19 billion fine for polluting Ecuadors rainforest, Chevron Corp. has done a
remarkable job of turning the tables on its foes. The lawyers who sued Chevron in Ecuador,
winning that eye-popping judgment, have come under non-stop attack from the oil company.
Chevron has hauled them into court in New York, accusing them of fraud and extortion. The
company has gone after Ecuadors judicial system as well, claiming judges there conspired with
the other side. That aggressive strategy has worked wonders, putting Chevrons opponents on the
defensive and convincing many people that the Ecuador suit is a sham. And you can trace much of
that strategy back to a 2008 memo by San Franciscos master of crisis communications, Sam
Singer. In October of 2008, he sent Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson a four-page memo
outlining steps the company could take to change public perceptions of the Ecuador lawsuit.
Singer recommended going on the offensive. The company should portray Ecuadors court
system as corrupt, with collusion between judges and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Pointing
out the leftward tilt of Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa wouldnt hurt. And Singer
recommended counter attacks on the plaintiffs and their legal team, particularly lead lawyer
Steven Donziger. Bear in mind that the memo was written more than two years before the
Ecuadoran judge presiding over the lawsuit ruled against Chevron, in February of 2011. Some of
Singers recommendations didnt fly. For example, he suggested portraying Ecuador as the next
major threat to America. But the company took much of his advice to heart.
Chipotle labels all GM items on menu

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-06-20/features/chi-gmo-news-chipotle-...
As part of its "Food With Integrity" program, Chipotle this week posted information on its website
identifying which items on its menu contain genetically modified ingredients. The chain posted a
chart noting that 12 out of 25 ingredients, including its rice, barbacoa, chips, chicken, vegetable
fajitas, steak and flour tortillas (except in certain restaurants) use either genetically modified corn
or soybean oil, the vast majority of which is derived from GM soybeans. The chain said that those
ingredients are "currently unavoidable" but that it is "working hard" to eliminate them. This move
comes on the heels of Ben & Jerry's announcement that all of its flavors will be GM
ingredient free by the end of the year and Whole Foods pledge to phase out all foods with
GM ingredients by 2018. Although GM crops ... are considered safe by federal authorities and
are legal to plant and sell, some independent studies have linked them to health and
environmental problems. The announcements happen amid a flurry of state bills to require
mandatory labeling of food with GM ingredients. In more GM news, this afternoon the U.S. Senate
passed a bipartisan amendment to require labeling of GM salmon as part of a 2014 Agriculture
Appropriations bill. Overseas, where the labeling question is largely over, the GM debate rages
over expanding GM crop planting approvals in the European Union. Asked [whether UK Prime
Minister David] Cameron would eat GM foods or allow his children to eat them, the spokesman
steadfastly declined to answer.
Note: Much of Europe labels their food for GMOs, which are even banned in many areas. Read an
MSN article on the banning of GM foods from all restaurants and food in the UK's parliament at
this link. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference,
click here.
Secret tax-haven names released to public

2013-06-14, CBC (Canada's public broadcasting network)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/06/14/offshore-leak-database-released...
An enormous trove of leaked records about secret companies and accounts is being opened to the
public in hope it will shed light on the murky world of offshore finance. The information, contained
in a new online database released [on June 14], has the names of more than 100,000 offshore
entities mainly companies and trusts set up in locales such as the British Virgin Islands and
Cook Islands and the people associated with them. Media outlets worldwide have been
reporting on the information leak since it came to light in early April, with far-reaching global
repercussions. The online names database was released ... by the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists, and contains a basic subset of the 260 gigabytes of leaked tax-haven
files that the Washington-based group obtained and shared with global news organizations. "What
we're doing for the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, and other offshore havens is
what's routinely done in many countries around the world making the control and
ownership of companies a matter of public record," said Michael Hudson, a senior editor at
the journalism consortium. The newly released database shows the names and, where available,
the shareholders and directors of offshore companies, and visually maps out links between them.
[ICIJ] said it hopes people will browse the names and tip off reporters to new revelations about
people and companies doing business offshore.
click here.
Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz launch the B Team challenge

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/richard-branson-jochen-z...
In a sign that the corporate sustainability movement may be entering a new dynamic phase, Sir
Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz, former chief executive of Puma and current director of Kering,
today launched a new global collaboration to drive transformational change in the business sector.
The B Team brings together an initial 14 leaders from major corporations around the world,
including Unilever, Natura, Celtel, Tata and Kering, in an attempt to enlarge projects that
demonstrate that long-term business success can be built only by prioritising people and
planet alongside profit. The collective ... has issued a declaration that places much of the
blame for the world's problems directly on the doorstep of companies. Recognising that their
views will be seen by many competitors as an "affront", the declaration states: "Business is now
waking up to the reality that if we carry on using the natural resources of the world unsustainably,
they'll quite simply run out. With a burgeoning population, more people are still living in poverty
than ever before and inequalities are increasing in many parts of the world. Unemployment rates
are at frightening levels. Non-Profits alone cannot solve the tasks at hand, while many
governments are unwilling or unable to act. While there are myriad reasons we've arrived at this
juncture, much of the blame rests with the principles and practices of business as usual." Rather
than go it alone, the B Team is forging partnerships with other organisations such as the World
Business Council for Sustainable Development and Ashoka, a leading light in the social enterprise
movement.
Note: For more on the inspiring B Team, see the great three-minute video here and click here. For
a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
U.S. races to reassure buyers

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52051021#.UaoR09jfKSo
U.S. officials raced to quell global alarm on [May 30] over the first-ever discovery of an unapproved
strain of genetically modified wheat, working to figure out how the rogue grain escaped from a field
trial a decade ago. In the wake of news that a strain developed by biotech giant Monsanto Co had
been found in an Oregon field late last month, major buyer Japan cancelled plans to buy U.S.
wheat while the Europe Union said it would step up testing. Worried U.S. farmers wondered if their
own fields had been contaminated. Even after weeks of investigation, experts are baffled as to
how the seed survived for years after Monsanto had ceased all field tests of the product. It was
found in a field growing a different type of wheat than Monsanto's strain, far from areas used for
field tests, according to an Oregon State University wheat researcher who tested the strain. The
discovery threatens to stoke consumer outcry over the possible risk of crosscontaminating natural products with genetically altered foods, and may embolden critics
who say U.S. regulation of GMO products is lax. It is all the more alarming because the
wheat strain was thought to have been eliminated after test trials ended in 2005, as
Monsanto abandoned efforts to secure regulatory approval due to worldwide opposition. While
there have been more than 20 major violations of U.S. regulations on handling or co-mingling
biotechnology crops, none have ever involved wheat before. Some analysts feared a potentially
damaging blow to the $8 billion wheat export business, recalling the more than yearlong disruption
to corn sales following a similar discovery in 2000.
Note: For a powerful summary of the dangers to health and the environment from genetically
modified foods, click here. For major media news articles revealing the risks and dangers of
GMOs, click here.
Anthrax drug brings $334 million to Pentagon advisor's biotech firm

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-anthrax-resistant-201305...
Over the last decade, former Navy Secretary Richard J. Danzig, a prominent lawyer, presidential
advisor and biowarfare consultant to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, has
urged the government to counter what he called a major threat to national security. Terrorists, he
warned, could easily engineer a devastating killer germ: a form of anthrax resistant to common
antibiotics. U.S. intelligence agencies have never established that any nation or terrorist group has
made such a weapon, and biodefense scientists say doing so would be very difficult. Nevertheless,
Danzig has energetically promoted the threat and prodded the government to stockpile a
new type of drug to defend against it. Danzig did this while serving as a director of a biotech
startup that won $334 million in federal contracts to supply just such a drug, a Los Angeles Times
investigation found. By his own account, Danzig encouraged Human Genome Sciences Inc. to
develop the compound, and from 2001 through 2012 he collected more than $1 million in director's
fees and other compensation from the company, records show. The drug, raxibacumab, or raxi,
was the first product the company was able to sell, and the U.S. government remains the
only customer, at a cost to date of about $5,100 per dose.
Note: This investigative report is well worth reading in its entirety at the above link. At this link you
can find major media articles showing among other revealing facts how Donald Rumsfeld pocketed
$5 million personally from sales of Tamiflu during the Avian flu scare. The word is getting out
thanks to caring people like you.
New app lets shoppers boycott companies by scanning barcodes

2013-05-15, MSN
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/new-app-lets-shoppers-boycott-companie...
Do you know where your money really goes? A new app aims to help consumers avoid companies
and products they don't even realize they're investing in. People can create campaigns or join
existing boycotts. For example, a campaign identified in the app asks consumers to avoid Koch
Industries. More than 8,000 people have pledged to boycott the company, which is owned by
conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch. Buycott helps consumers do this by untangling a
long trail of associations and relationships among companies. For example, sales of Brawny paper
towels accrue to Koch Industries because Koch's subsidiary, Georgia-Pacific, produces the towels.
Consumers may not be aware of those connections while casually browsing supermarket shelves.
The Buycott app scans barcodes and then traces products to their parent companies. The
app checks that the product doesn't already run afoul of boycott campaigns the user has
joined. If someone joins the Local & Sustainable Food Initiative through Buycott, for example, they
can scan barcodes at the supermarket to make sure their food really is coming from a local source.
The app can even tell you if a certain food product contains GMOs. One campaign pushes
buyers to boycott companies, including Monsanto, that fought against putting GMO labels
on food. The app isn't perfect though. As Buycott admits, "Corporate ownership structure is
always changing and can sometimes be complex." The app allows users to add their own
knowledge of products not yet part of the database, making Buycott more accurate as more people
download and contribute to it.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click
here.
BP and Shell raided in European commission price-rigging inquiry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/may/14/bp-shell-oil-price-rigging
The London offices of BP and Shell have been raided by European regulators investigating
allegations they have "colluded" to rig oil prices for more than a decade. The European
commission said its officers carried out "unannounced inspections" at several oil companies in
London, the Netherlands and Norway to investigate claims they may have "colluded in reporting
distorted prices to a price reporting agency [PRA] to manipulate the published prices for a number
of oil and biofuel products". The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have
been going on since 2002, could have had a "huge impact" on the price of petrol at the pumps
"potentially harming final consumers". Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury
spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was "as serious as rigging Libor" which
led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds. He demanded to know why the UK
authorities had not taken action earlier. "Why have we had to wait for Brussels to find out if
British oil giants are ripping off British consumers?" he said. "The price of energy ripples right
through our economy and really matters to every business and families." The European authorities
declined to name any of the companies raided but BP, Shell, Norway's Statoil and Platts, the
world's leading oil price reporting agency, all confirmed they are being investigated.
click here.
Monsanto and other GM firms are winning in the US and globally

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/monsanto-gm-crops-worldwide
Food & Water Watch ... spent months looking at the extent to which the US State Department is
working on behalf of the GM seed industry to make sure that biotech crops are served up abroad
whether the world wants them or not. Between 2007 and 2009, annual cables were distributed to
"encourage the use of agricultural biotechnology", directing US embassies to "pursue an active
biotech agenda". There was a comprehensive communications campaign aimed to "promote
understanding and acceptance of the technology" ... in light of the worldwide backlash against GM
crops. The State Department worked to diminish trade barriers to the benefit of seed companies,
and encouraged the embassies to "publicize the benefits of agbiotech as a development tool".
Monsanto was a great beneficiary of the State Department's taxpayer-funded diplomacy: the
company appeared in 6.1% of the biotech cables analyzed between 2005 and 2009 from 21
countries. The cables also show extensive lobbying against in-country efforts to require labeling of
GM foods. The US government is now quietly negotiating major trade deals with Europe and the
countries of the Pacific Rim that would force countries to accept biotech imports, commercialize
biotech crops and prevent the labeling of GM foods. The vast influence that Monsanto and the
biotech seed industry have on our foreign affairs is just one tentacle of a beast comprised
by a handful of huge corporations who wield enormous power over most food policy in the
United States.
click here.
An End to Medical-Billing Secrecy?

http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/08/an-end-to-medical-billing-secrecy/
Acting on the suggestion of her top data crunchers at the departments Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released an
enormous data file on May 8 that reveals the listor chargemasterprices of all hospitals across
the country for the 100 most common inpatient treatment services in 2011. It then compares those
prices with what Medicare actually paid hospitals for the same treatmentswhich was typically a
fraction of the chargemaster prices. As a result, Americans are a big step closer to being able to
compare what hospitals charge them for goods and services with what they actually cost. There
are two reasons Sebelius release of this newly crunched, massive data file is a great first step
toward a new transparency in health care costs. First, it reveals the vast disparity between what
hospitals charge for pills, procedures and operations and the real cost of those services, as
calculated by Medicare. The second reason the compilation and release of this data is a big deal
is that it demonstrates [that] most hospitals chargemaster prices are wildly inconsistent
and seem to have no rationale. Thus the release of this fire hose of datawhich prints out at
17,511 pagesshould become a tip sheet for reporters in every American city and town, who can
now ask hospitals to explain their pricing. In the through-the-looking-glass world of health care
economics, those who are asked to pay chargemaster rates are often under-insured or lack
insurance altogether. Moreover, insurers typically negotiate discounts off the grossly inflated
chargemaster prices ($77 for a box of gauze pads!), so the chargemaster matters for insured
patients too.
7 Dodgy Food Practices Banned in Europe But Just Fine Here

2013-05-08, Mother Jones Magazine
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/05/7-dodgy-foodag-practices-bann...
Last week, the European Commission voted to place a two-year moratorium on most uses
of neonicotinoid pesticides, on the suspicion that they're contributing to the global crisis in
honeybee health. Might [that] inspire the US Environmental Protection Agency to make a
similar move? The answer is no. The EU move will have no bearing on the EPA's own reviews
of the pesticides, which aren't scheduled for release until 2016 at the earliest. Other food-related
substances and practices that are banned in Europe [are] green-lighted [in the US]. 1. Atrazine: A
"potent endocrine disruptor," Syngenta's popular corn herbicide has been linked to a range of
reproductive problems at extremely low doses in both amphibians and humans, and it commonly
leaches out of farm fields and into people's drinking water. What Europe did: Banned it in 2003. US
status: EPA: "Atrazine will begin registration review, EPA's periodic reevaluation program for
existing pesticides, in mid-2013." 2. Arsenic in chicken, turkey, and pig feed. 3. "Poultry litter" in
cow feed. 4. Chlorine washes for poultry carcasses. 5. Antibiotics as growth promoters on livestock
farms. 6. Ractopomine and other pharmaceutical growth enhancers in animal feed. 7. Gestation
crates.
Note: For each numbered substance or practice, this article indicates the action taken by the EU
and the inaction by the US government. For an article that gives more information on all of this and
two additional banned practices, click here.
CEO Pay 1,795-to-1 Multiple of Wages Skirts U.S. Law

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-30/ceo-pay-1-795-to-1-multiple-of-worke...
Former fashion jewelry saleswoman Rebecca Gonzales and former Chief Executive Officer Ron
Johnson have one thing in common: J.C. Penney Co. no longer employs either. The similarity ends
there. Johnson, 54, got a compensation package worth 1,795 times the average wage and
benefits of a U.S. department store worker when he was hired in November 2011, according to
data compiled by Bloomberg. Gonzaless hourly wage was $8.30 that year. Across the [S&P] 500
Index of companies, the average multiple of CEO compensation to that of rank-and-file workers is
204, up 20 percent since 2009, the data show. Almost three years after Congress ordered
public companies to reveal actual CEO-to-worker pay ratios under the Dodd-Frank law, the
numbers remain unknown. As the Occupy Wall Street movement and 2012 election made
income inequality a social flashpoint, mandatory disclosure of the ratios remained bottled up
at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which hasnt yet drawn up the rules to
implement it. Some of Americas biggest companies are lobbying against the requirement. Its a
simple piece of information stockholders ought to have, said Phil Angelides, who led the Financial
Crisis Inquiry Commission, which investigated the economic collapse of 2008. The fact that
corporate executives wouldnt want to display the number speaks volumes. The lobbying is part of
a street-by-street, block-by-block fight waged by large corporations and their Wall Street
colleagues to obstruct the Dodd-Frank law, he said.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on income inequality, click
here .
Supreme Court sides with Monsanto in major patent case

2013-04-26, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/13/monsanto-patent-grain-bi...
The Supreme Court usually isn't friendly toward questionable patents, but it came down
overwhelmingly on the side of agribusiness giant Monsanto [on April 22] in a case that's bound to
resonate throughout the biotechnology industry. The court ruled unanimously that an Indiana
farmer violated Monsanto's patent on genetically modified soybeans when he culled some from a
grain elevator and used them to replant his own crop in future years. "If simple copying were a
protected use, a patent would plummet in value after the first sale of the first item containing the
invention," Justice Elena Kagan ruled in a short 10-page opinion. Who it helps: Inventors and
entrepreneurs who have patents on products that can be self-replicated, from computer software
to cell lines. Who it hurts: Consumers paying high prices. The Center for Food Safety released a
report in February that showed three corporations control much of the global commercial seed
market. It found that from 1995-2011, the average cost to plant 1 acre of soybeans rose 325%.
Center for Food Safety executive director Andrew Kimbrell called the ruling a setback for
farmers. "The court chose to protect Monsanto over farmers," he said. "The court's ruling is
contrary to logic and to agronomics, because it improperly attributes seeds' reproduction
to farmers, rather than nature."
click here.
Why this is the worst economic recovery on record

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2013/0415/Why-this-is-the-wors...
Were now witnessing what happens when all of the economic gains go to the top. Four years into
a so-called recovery and were still below recession levels in every important respect except the
stock market. A measly 88,000 jobs were created in March, and total employment remains some 3
million below its pre-recession level. Labor-force participation is its lowest since 1979. The
underlying problem is the vast middle class is running out of money. They cant borrow
more and shouldnt, given what happened after the last borrowing binge. Real annual
median household income keeps falling. Its down to $45,018, from $51,144 in 2010. All the
gains from the recovery continue to go to the top. Widening inequality is not inevitable. If we
wanted to reverse it and restore middle-class prosperity, we could. We could award tax cuts to
companies that link the pay of their hourly workers to profits and productivity, and that keep the
total pay of their top 5 executives within 20 times the pay of their median worker. And impose
higher taxes on companies that dont. We could raise the minimum wage to half the average wage.
We could increase public investment in education, including early-childhood. We could eliminate
college loans and allow all students to repay the cost of their higher education with a 10 percent
surcharge on the first 10 years of income from full-time employment. And we could pay for all this
by adding additional tax brackets at the top and increasing the top marginal tax rate to what it was
before 1981 at least 70 percent.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the collapse of the global
economy assisted by speculation and profiteering by financial corporations, click here.
Taping of Farm Cruelty Is Becoming the Crime

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/us/taping-of-farm-cruelty-is-becoming-the-c...
On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with
chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets
into the air. And at one of the countrys largest egg suppliers, a video shows hens caged alongside
rotting bird corpses, while workers burn and snap off the beaks of young chicks. Each video ...
drew a swift response: Federal prosecutors in Tennessee charged the horse trainer and other
workers, who have pleaded guilty, with violating the Horse Protection Act. Local authorities in
Wyoming charged nine farm employees with cruelty to animals. And the egg supplier, which
operates in Iowa and other states, lost one of its biggest customers, McDonalds, which said the
video played a part in its decision. But a dozen or so state legislatures have had a different
reaction: They proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock
farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups. They have also
drafted measures to require such videos to be given to the authorities almost immediately, which
activists say would thwart any meaningful undercover investigation of large factory farms. Critics
call them Ag-Gag bills. Some of the legislation appears inspired by the American Legislative
Exchange Council, a business advocacy group with hundreds of state representatives from
farm states as members. One of the groups model bills, The Animal and Ecological
Terrorism Act, prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to defame the
facility or its owner. Violators would be placed on a terrorist registry.
click here.
Monsanto Protection Act put GM companies above the federal courts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/apr/04/monsanto-protection-ac...
Even people used to the closeness of the US administration and food giants like Monsanto have
been shocked by the latest demonstration of the GM industry's political muscle. Little-noticed in
Europe or outside the US, President Barack Obama last week signed off what has become widely
known as "the Monsanto Protection Act", technically the Farmer Assurance Provision rider in HR
933: Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act 2013. According to an array of food
and consumer groups, organic farmers, civil liberty and trade unions and others, this hijacks the
constitution, sets a legal precedent and puts Monsanto and other biotech companies above
the federal courts. It means, they say, that not even the US government can now stop the
sale, planting, harvest or distribution of any GM seed, even if it is linked to illness or
environmental problems. The backlash has been furious. A Food Democracy Now petition has
attracted 250,000 names. The only good news, say the opponents, is that because the "Monsanto
Protection Act" was part of the much wider spending bill, it will formally expire in September. The
bad news however is that the precedent has been set and it is unlikely that the world's largest
seed company and the main driver of the divisive GM technology will ever agree to give up its new
legal protection. The company, in effect, now rules.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the harm caused by
GMOs, click here.
Road to tax havens is paved with potholes

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Road-to-tax-havens-is-pa...
Our government must act to close the loopholes that allow companies and wealthy individuals to
get out of paying their taxes - in particular, loopholes allowing them to move profits offshore to
avoid taxation. The U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) ... released a study outlining how
in California alone, an estimated $7.1 billion in potential tax revenue for 2011 was lost because
companies and individuals shifted profits to subsidiary shell companies in tax havens. Often
described as "sunny places for shady people," tax havens aren't usually associated with mundane
issues like potholes - or with cuts to programs for seniors; freezes in funding for public education ...
or cancellation of emergency services. Yet the PIRG study, which concludes that the United
States is losing about $150 billion in tax revenue annually, shows once again how tax havens
and shortfalls in government budgets are directly related. Despite the obvious damage to society,
shifting profits offshore is, in most cases, perfectly legal. In fact, tax haven use by big companies
is so common that a 2008 Government Accountability Office Report found 83 of the Fortune
100 companies in the United States had subsidiaries in offshore tax havens. Just because
something is legal does not mean that it is right.
Note: For a powerfully revealing documentary showing how huge corporations park profits
offshore to avoid taxes, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
on corporate corruption, click here.
The corporate predator state

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-the-corporate-pr...
Bipartisan agreement in Washington usually means citizens should hold on to their wallets or get
ready for another threat to peace. Beneath all the partisan bickering, bipartisan majorities are
solid for a trade policy run by and for multinationals, a health-care system serving
insurance and drug companies, an energy policy for Big Oil and King Coal, and finance
favoring banks that are too big to fail. Economist James Galbraith calls this the predator
state, one in which large corporate interests rig the rules to protect their subsidies, tax dodges
and monopolies. This isnt the free market; its a rigged market. Wall Street is a classic example.
The attorney general announces that some banks are too big to prosecute. Despite what the FBI
called an epidemic of fraud, not one head of a big bank has gone to jail or paid a major personal
fine. Bloomberg News estimated that the subsidy they are provided by being too big to fail adds up
to an estimated $83 billion a year. Corporate welfare is, of course, offensive to progressives. But
true conservatives are or should be offended by corporate welfare as well. Conservative
economists Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales argue that it is time to save capitalism from the
capitalists, urging conservatives to support strong measures to break up monopolies, cartels and
the predatory use of political power to distort competition. Here is where left and right meet, not in
a bipartisan big-money fix, but in an odd bedfellows campaign to clean out Washington. For that to
happen, small businesses and community banks will have to develop an independent voice in our
politics.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the collusion between the
US government and corrupt financial corporations, click here.
Hot Money Blues

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/opinion/krugman-hot-money-blues.html
Whatever the final outcome in the Cyprus crisis ... the island nation will have to maintain fairly
draconian controls on the movement of capital in and out of the country. It will mark the end of an
era for Cyprus, which has in effect spent the past decade advertising itself as a place where
wealthy individuals who want to avoid taxes and scrutiny can safely park their money, no questions
asked. But it may also mark at least the beginning of the end for something much bigger: the era
when unrestricted movement of capital was taken as a desirable norm around the world. [With] the
rise of free-market ideology, the assumption [is] that if financial markets want to move money
across borders, there must be a good reason, and bureaucrats shouldnt stand in their way. But
the truth, hard as it may be for ideologues to accept, is that unrestricted movement of
capital is looking more and more like a failed experiment. Its hard to imagine now, but for
more than three decades after World War II financial crises of the kind weve lately become
so familiar with hardly ever happened. Since 1980, however, the roster has been impressive:
Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile in 1982. Sweden and Finland in 1991. Mexico again in 1995.
Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Korea in 1998. Argentina again in 2002. And, of course, the
more recent run of disasters: Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Cyprus. The best
predictor of crisis is large inflows of foreign money: in all but a couple of the cases ... the
foundation for crisis was laid by a rush of foreign investors into a country, followed by a sudden
rush out.
FOIA Documents Obtained by Judicial Watch Reveal 200 Claims Filed

With HHS for HPV Vaccine Injuries and Deaths, 49 Compensated
2013-03-20, MarketWatch (a Wall Street Journal Website)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/foia-documents-obtained-by-judicial-watch-re...
Documents reveal that the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has paid
out nearly $6 million in claims to victims of HPV (Human Papillomavirus) vaccine, including
families of two dead. Judicial Watch announced today that it has received documents from the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealing that its VICP has awarded $5,877,710
dollars to 49 victims in claims made against the highly controversial HPV vaccines. To date 200
claims have been filed with VICP, with barely half adjudicated. The documents came in response
to a February 28, 2013, Judicial Watch lawsuit against HHS to force the department to comply with
a November 1, 2012, Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. From its
inception, the use of HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases has
been hotly disputed. According to the Annals of Medicine: "At present there are no significant data
showing that either Gardasil or Cervarix (GlaxoSmithKline) can prevent any type of cervical cancer
since the testing period employed was too short to evaluate long-term benefits of HPV
vaccination." "This new information from the government shows that the serious safety
concerns about the use of Gardasil have been well-founded," said Judicial Watch President
Tom Fitton. "Public health officials should stop pushing Gardasil on children."
Note: For lots more on the risks and dangers of this vaccine being promoted by big pharma, click
here.
Japans Energy Board Meets After Dropping Anti-Nuclear Members

2013-03-14, Washington Post/Bloomberg
http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-MJN96O6JIJXS01-037KLNTCSC52QTP...
Japans ruling Liberal Democratic Party has removed most anti-nuclear researchers from a
revamped post-Fukushima energy policy advisory board to the government. After a landslide
victory in a December election, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said the previous administrations
policy to abandon atomic power needs to be reviewed. Six of eight members that voted for phasing
out nuclear power on the board advising the previous government have been dropped from the
LDP panel. Another ten members were reappointed, including Akio Mimura, an adviser for Nippon
Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp., as chairman. He headed an energy advisory board under a
previous LDP government that promoted nuclear power. Its wrong to let the same man who
led discussions on pre-Fukushima energy policy be in charge, said Tetsunari Iida, the
executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies. Iida was one of those
dropped from the advisory board. In September, the government led by the Democratic Party of
Japan approved phasing out nuclear power by the end of the 2030s. Around 160,000 people were
evacuated because of radiation fallout. Three options were considered for the countrys future
energy supply: Zero nuclear, 15 percent nuclear, and 20 percent to 25 percent. A government poll
in August found 47 percent of citizens favored zero, with the remainder split on the other choices.
The LDP wants to avoid the zero nuclear scenario at all costs and is looking for a point of
compromise between 15 percent and 20 percent nuclear, said Hiroshi Takahashi, a research
fellow at Fujitsu Research Institute.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the grave dangers posed
by nuclear power, click here.
Fukushima And The Navy: Sailors Sue Japan Nuclear Plant Owner,
Saying Disaster Made Them Sick
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/fukushima-navy-health-problems_n_285...
Within weeks of setting off a geiger counter and scrubbing three layers of skin off his hands and
arms, former Navy quartermaster Maurice Enis recalled being pressured to sign away U.S.
government liability for any future health problems. Enis and about 5,000 fellow sailors aboard the
USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier had finally left Japan, after 80-some days aiding victims of
the March 11, 2011, Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, and were about to take a longawaited port call in Thailand. But first, they were told they needed to fill out some
paperwork. "They had us [to] sign off that we were medically fine, had no sickness, and that
we couldn't sue the U.S. government," Enis [says], recalling widespread anger among the
sailors who ... felt they had little choice. [On] the [second] anniversary of the Fukushima disaster,
Enis joined a lawsuit with more than 100 other service members who participated in the rescue
mission and who have since developed medical issues they contend are related to radioactive
fallout from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Rather than targeting the U.S.
government, the federal lawsuit names plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. the defendant.
TEPCO, as the company is known, provided false information to U.S. officials about the extent of
spreading radiation from its stricken reactors, according to Roger Witherspoon on his blog Energy
Matters.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing nuclear power news articles
from reliable major media sources.
Realities Behind Prosecuting Big Banks

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/big-banks-go-wrong-but-pay-a-little-pr...
Are banks too big to jail? If there was any doubt about the answer to that question, Eric H. Holder
Jr., the nations attorney general, last week blurted out what weve all known to be true but few
inside the Obama administration have said aloud: Yes, they are. I am concerned that the size of
some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them
when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute if we do bring a criminal charge it will
have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy, Mr. Holder
told the Senate Judiciary Committee. I think that is a function of the fact that some of these
institutions have become too large. Mr. Holder continued, acknowledging that the size of banks
has an inhibiting influence. To put this in the proper perspective, Mr. Holder said, for the first
time, that he has not pursued prosecutions of big banks out of fear that an indictment could
jeopardize the financial system. Does this mean that our banks are still too big to fail?
Should we prosecute corporations? Should the size of an institution or its systemic
importance influence the decision of prosecutors? It has been almost five years since the
financial crisis, but the big banks are still too big to fail, [Senator Elizabeth] Warren, a Democrat,
said in a statement. Attorney General Holders testimony that the biggest banks are too-big-to-jail
shows once again that it is past time to end too-big-to-fail.
government and finance, click here.
Its time to tax financial transactions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-its-time-to-tax-...
On Friday at midnight, the sequester kicked in, triggering $85 billion in deep, dumb budget cuts
that sent nonessential personnel such as air traffic controllers packing. Not to worry, though:
Wall Streets day was pretty much like any other. Billions of dollars in profits were made off of
trillions of dollars in financial transactions. And the vast majority of those transactions were
conducted tax-free. We dont need a team of policymakers to tell us this isnt good policy, or that it
needs changing. Policymakers propose exactly that: a change. Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), along with Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-Ore.), unveiled a bill that would
place a light tax on all financial transactions three pennies on every $100 traded. Its so small,
Wall Street could easily afford it and the average E-Trade investor would barely notice it. This
insignificant tax raises a significant amount of revenue $352 billion over the next 10 years, or
enough to refund about one-third of what the sequester will slash from the federal budget. The
high-frequency traders that now dominate our markets would be hardest-hit by the tax.
Analysts fear that such mass trading strategies could lead to disaster if markets behave
unexpectedly. The new tax would discourage these kinds of trades, which would be a good
thing. Europe, at least, seems to agree. Eleven nations, led by the conservative German
government, are on track to start collecting the tax by January 2014. Expected revenues: $50
billion per year.
here.
Monsanto, the court and the seeds of dissent

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kimbrell-monsanto-suprem...
Should anyone, or any corporation, control a product of life? The journey of a 75-year-old Indiana
farmer to the [Supreme Court] began rather uneventfully. Vernon Hugh Bowman purchased an
undifferentiated mix of soybean seeds from a grain elevator, planted the seeds and then saved
seed from the resulting harvest to replant another crop. Finding that Bowman's crops were largely
the progeny of its genetically engineered proprietary soybean seed, Monsanto sued the farmer for
patent infringement. The case [Bowman vs. Monsanto Co.] is a remarkable reflection on recent
fundamental changes in farming. In the 200-plus years since the founding of this country, and for
millenniums before that, seeds have been part of the public domain available for farmers to
exchange, save, modify through plant breeding and replant. Through this process, farmers
developed a diverse array of plants that could thrive in various geographies, soils, climates
and ecosystems. But today this history of seeds is seemingly forgotten in light of a patent
system that, since the mid-1980s, has allowed corporations to own products of life.
Although Monsanto and other agrochemical companies assert that they need the current patent
system to invent better seeds, the counterargument is that splicing an already existing gene or
other DNA into a plant and thereby transferring a new trait to that plant is not a novel invention. A
soybean, for example, has more than 46,000 genes. Properties of these genes are the product of
centuries of plant breeding and should not, many argue, become the product of a corporation.
Instead, these genes should remain in the public domain.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the destructive impacts of
genetically modified organisms (GMOs), click here.
Senator Elizabeth Warren grills regulators, ending quiet first month in

office
http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2013/02/14/senator-elizabeth-warr...
After campaigning last year as an outspoken consumer advocate and Wall Street critic, Senator
Elizabeth Warren was surprisingly quiet during her first month on Capitol Hill. But that changed on
[Feb. 14] at the Massachusetts senior senators first hearing, when she rebuked federal regulators
for settling civil cases with big banks instead of taking them to trial. Looking at the seven regulators
arrayed before the Senate Banking Committee, and noting that she had often sat at the same
witness table before becoming a senator, she used her new power to question why the federal
government has not been more aggressive. The question I really want to ask is about how tough
you are about how much leverage you really have, Warren said. Tell me a little bit about the
last few times youve taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to trial.
None of the witnesses representing the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission and others offered a response. Warren seized the hearing to
chide regulators for not taking legal stands against Wall Street, saying that the threat of trial
is an important tool in keeping big banks in line, despite the vast resources required to do
so. If a party is unwilling to go to trial either because theyre too timid or they lack
resources the consequence is they have a lot less leverage, Warren said. If [banks] can
break the law and drag in billions in profits and then turn around and settle paying out of those
profits, they dont have that much incentive to follow the law.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the corrupt regulation of
financial activities, click here.
11 EU nations to plan tax on financial transactions

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-11-eu-tax-financial-trans...
Pressing ahead where others have balked, 11 European countries received the green light ... to
plan a financial transaction tax that could generate billions of dollars in revenue for cash-strapped
governments. Led by Germany and France, the European Unions two heavyweights, the nations
will now work out how to introduce a levy on the buying and selling of stocks and bonds and on the
use of complex financial instruments known as derivatives. Advocates say such a tax is not only
necessary to help discourage risky transactions like those that precipitated the 2008 global
financial meltdown but also a fair way to make financial institutions pay to help clean up the
leftover mess. The U.S., at the urging of Wall Street, has opposed a financial transaction
tax; so has Britain, which is home to Europes largest financial trading hub. Hesitation in
London as well as some other European capitals stalled a proposal, made in September 2011, to
charge a unified financial transaction tax across the 27-nation EU. The 11 countries, all of which
share the euro as their currency, decided to forge ahead on their own, deepening integration
among a subset of EU members that together account for more than half of the regions economic
output. EU-wide, officials had estimated that a levy of just 0.1% on trades of stocks and bonds and
0.01% on derivatives could bring in $75 billion a year.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the profiteering of an
unregulated financial industry, click here.
MoveOn founder, Tea Party figure meet

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/MoveOn-founder-Tea-Party-f...
It was a mind-blowing political tableau: a co-founder of liberal bulwark MoveOn sitting in her
Berkeley living room, laughing, sharing homemade blueberry scones and occasionally
agreeing with a national Tea Party figure. MoveOn's Joan Blades ... and Mark Meckler, ...
have been talking online and over the phone for a few years now. Quietly, until now.
"Transpartisanship" is the genteel word for what they're doing. Blades has been involved in
similar types of projects for about a decade, but this is a fairly new school of political thought,
which posits that people can come together to find some common ground without abandoning their
core beliefs. The occasion was the latest installment of Living Room Conversations, Blades' latest
national transpartisan project that she co-founded with former GOP operative Amanda Kathryn
Roman [of] New Jersey. It involves one or two co-hosts pulling together an intimate gathering of
folks who might believe they agree on little politically - until they sit down together to listen to one
another's perspective. Civilly. Eventually, they find places they agree. That's what happened
between Blades and Meckler, and it should give hope to a nation locked in scrums over guns and
immigration and taxes. The day's assigned topic was "crony capitalism." It was conservative
commentator Ralph Benko who introduced Meckler and Blades online. As Meckler recalled Benko
saying, "If MoveOn and the Tea Party ever agree on anything, all politicians should watch out."
Note: What would happen if we focus less on what separates us and more on what brings us
together?
The four business gangs that run the US

2012-12-31, Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-four-business-gangs-that-run-the-us-201212...
If you've ever suspected politics is increasingly being run in the interests of big business, ... Jeffrey
Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University, agrees with you - at least in
respect of the United States. In his book, The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue
and Prosperity, he says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop. ''Corporate wealth
translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the
revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates
into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between
government and industry. Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,'' he says. Sachs
says four key sectors of US business exemplify this feedback loop and the takeover of political
power in America by the ''corporatocracy''. First is the well-known military-industrial complex.
Second is the Wall Street-Washington complex, which has steered the financial system towards
control by a few politically powerful Wall Street firms, notably Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase,
Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and a handful of other financial firms. Third is the Big Oil-transportmilitary complex, which has put the US on the trajectory of heavy oil-imports dependence and a
deepening military trap in the Middle East, he says. Fourth is the healthcare industry, America's
largest industry, absorbing no less than 17 per cent of US gross domestic product.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate and
government corruption, click here and here.
F.B.I. Counterterrorism Agents Monitored Occupy Movement

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/nyregion/occupy-movement-was-investigated-b...
The Federal Bureau of Investigation used counterterrorism agents to investigate the Occupy Wall
Street movement, including its communications and planning, according to newly disclosed agency
records. The F.B.I. records show that as early as September 2011, an agent from a
counterterrorism task force in New York notified officials of two landmarks in Lower Manhattan
Federal Hall and the Museum of American Finance that their building was identified as a point
of interest for the Occupy Wall Street. In the following months, F.B.I. personnel around the country
were routinely involved in exchanging information about the movement with businesses, local lawenforcement agencies and universities. An October 2011 memo from the bureaus
Jacksonville, Fla., field office was titled Domain Program Management Domestic Terrorist.
The memo said agents discussed past and upcoming meetings of the movement, and its
spread. It said agents should contact Occupy Wall Street activists to ascertain whether
people who attended their events had violent tendencies. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,
the F.B.I. has come under criticism for deploying counterterrorism agents to conduct surveillance
and gather intelligence on organizations active in environmental, animal-cruelty and poverty
issues. The records were obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, a civil-rights
organization in Washington, through a Freedom of Information request to the F.B.I.
Note: For analysis of these amazing documents revealing the use of joint government and
corporate counterterrorism structures against peaceful protestors of financial corruption, click here
and here. For a Democracy Now! video segment on this, click here.
The Peoples Bailout Was Just the Beginning: Whats Next for Strike
Debt?
2012-12-13, Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/peoples-bailout-just-the-beginning-wha...
Syracuse University art professor Thomas Gokey earned his Master of Fine Arts degree five years
ago, but remains chained to his alma mater by $49,983 of debt. Soon after he graduated, the grim
prospect of indefinite payments inspired its own art piece. Gokey put his debt up for sale in
reconstituted squares of shredded money from the Federal Reserve. This year, together with the
activist group Strike Debt, he helped organize a bold "People's Bailout" called the Rolling Jubilee,
which has raised over $465,000. Bringing that money to the marketplace where collections
companies buy and sell debt for pennies on the dollar, Strike Debt intends to purchase about $9
million of Americans' medical and educational debtand then cancel it. Strike Debt, which grew
out of Occupy Wall Street, wants to foment conversation about the debt we rack up in pursuit of
basic needs, and the industries that profit from that debt. Gokey is currently on a year-long unpaid
leave from teaching to help organize the Rolling Jubilee and upcoming Strike Debt projects.
Thomas Gokey: Since I'm an educator, I'm thinking about the ways in which my students and I
seem to be getting taken advantage of. We look at how much it's costing each one of my
students to take one of my classes, and how much I'm getting paid to teach the class. And
we look at each other and think, why don't we just go hold our classes at the public library?
Somebody's obviously making money off both of us, so can't we cut out that middleman
and focus on education?
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on income inequality, click
here.
HSBC to Pay $1.92 Billion to Settle Charges of Money Laundering

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/hsbc-said-to-near-1-9-billion-settleme...
State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a money-laundering case
over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the worlds largest banks and
ultimately destabilize the global financial system. Instead, HSBC announced ... that it had
agreed to a record $1.92 billion settlement with authorities. The bank, which is based in Britain,
faces accusations that it transferred billions of dollars for nations like Iran and enabled Mexican
drug cartels to move money illegally through its American subsidiaries. The case, officials say, will
claim violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and Trading with the Enemy Act. While the settlement
with HSBC is a major victory for the government, the case raises questions about whether certain
financial institutions, having grown so large and interconnected, are too big to indict. Four years
after the failure of Lehman Brothers nearly toppled the financial system, regulators are still wary
that a single institution could undermine the recovery of the industry and the economy. But the
threat of criminal prosecution acts as a powerful deterrent. If authorities signal such actions are
remote for big banks, the threat could lose its sting.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government collusion
with financial corruption, click here.
United States of ALEC

http://truth-out.org/news/item/13108-united-states-of-alec
BILL MOYERS: ALEC [The American Legislative Exchange Council] is a nationwide consortium of
elected state legislators working side by side with some of America's most powerful corporations.
They have an agenda you should know about, a mission to remake America, changing the country
by changing its laws, one state at a time. ALEC creates what it calls "model legislation," procorporate laws its members push in statehouses across the nation. ALEC says close to a
thousand bills, based at least in part on its models, are introduced each year. And an average of
200 pass. This has been going on for decades. Lisa Graves, a former Justice Department attorney,
runs the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit investigative reporting group in Madison,
Wisconsin. In 2011 by way of an ALEC insider, Graves got her hands on a virtual library of internal
ALEC documents. She was amazed by its contents. LISA GRAVES: Bills to change the law to
make it harder for American citizens to vote, those were ALEC bills. Bills to dramatically
change the rights of Americans who were killed or injured by corporations, those were
ALEC bills. Bills to make it harder for unions to do their work were ALEC bills. Bills to
basically block climate change agreements, those were ALEC bills. BILL MOYERS: She and
her team ... found hundreds of corporations [involved], from Coca-Cola and Koch Industries to
Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, and Wal-Mart. There were more than ... 850 boilerplate laws that ALEC
legislators could introduce as their own in any state in the union.
click here.
Report: Probe into Afghan bank scandal plagued by political

interference
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/report-afghan-probe-into-ban...
A scathing new report released [on November 28] details how high-level political interference and
institutional failures thwarted efforts to probe the 2010 collapse of Afghanistans largest bank,
recover hundreds of millions of dollars from fraudulent loans and prosecute the influential Afghans
who profited from a massive scheme to use depositors money as a private piggy bank. Without
naming names, an independent anti-corruption committee of Afghan and international experts
painted a damning portrait of foot-dragging, incompetence and blatant political manipulation
involving virtually every agency that was supposed to either investigate why the Kabul Bank failed
or take legal action against those responsible for looting it of more than $900 million. Kabul Bank
was nothing but a fraud perpetrated against depositors, and ultimately all Afghans, the
report says. Both the flagrant crimes and the repeated failures to pursue them, it said,
reflect an array of larger, worrisome problems that permeate Afghan society and
institutions, including incapacity, nepotism, entitlement and political interference. Over
and over, the report says, supposedly independent bodies such as the attorney generals office
deferred to higher political wishes. Earlier this year, about 20 bank associates were indicted on
charges including money laundering and using false documents or fictitious account names. The
report quotes sources as saying that a high-level committee, meaning a group of powerful
officials, decided which former bank associates would be charged with a crime and that
prosecutors were told to construct indictments to conform to the decisions.
here.
SEC Rocked By Lurid Sex-and-Corruption Lawsuit

2012-11-19, Rolling Stone blog
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/sec-rocked-by-lurid-sex-a...
Move over, adulterous generals. It might be time to make way for a new sexual rats' nest at
America's top financial police agency, the SEC. In a salacious 77-page complaint ... David Weber,
the former chief investigator for the SEC Inspector General's office, accuses the SEC of retaliating
against Weber for coming forward as a whistleblower. According to this lawsuit, Weber was made
a target of [retaliation] after he came forward with concerns that his bosses may have been
spending more time copulating than they were investigating the SEC. Weber claims that in recent
years, while the SEC Inspector General's office has been attempting to investigate the agency's
seemingly-negligent responses in such matters as the Bernie Madoff case and the less-well-known
(but nearly as disturbing) Stanford Financial Ponzi scandal, two of the IG office's senior officials
former Inspector General David Kotz and his successor, Noelle Maloney were sleeping
together. Weber also claims that Kotz was also having an affair with a lawyer representing a
key group of Stanford victims, a Dr. Gaytri Kachroo. Weber claims that Maloney last year
refused to meet with Kachroo as part of the Stanford investigation. By then, Kotz had stepped
down as SEC IG and Maloney had replaced him as Acting IG. Weber was fired on October 31st.
Apparently he has decided not to take the firing quietly. "When David Weber began to uncover the
depth of dysfunction at the SEC, they fired him," his attorney Cary Hansel said. "He has no
intention of being silenced by threats and false allegations."
Note: We don't normally use Rolling Stone as a source, but this important story has not been
covered elsewhere in the major media.
Afghan corruption, and how the U.S. facilitates it

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/afghan-corruption-and-h...
When it comes to corruption in Afghanistan, the time may be now for the United States to look in
the mirror and see what lessons can be learned from contracting out parts of that war. On Sept.
30, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CBSs 60 Minutes that the corruption wracking his
government and its people has been at a level not ever before seen in Afghanistan. In the
1980s, when the Soviets ran the country, the government was not even 5 percent as
corrupt, Karzai said. The Soviets didnt give contracts to the relatives, brothers and the
kin of the influential and high ups, he said. The Americans did, and they continue to do,
but we get blamed for it. The record shows Karzai has a point with which others agree. It is
time that we as Americans in government, in the media, and as analysts and academics took
a hard look at the causes of corruption in Afghanistan. The fact is that we are at least as much to
blame for what has happened as the Afghans, and we have been grindingly slow to either admit
our efforts or correct them. That was written in September 2010 by Anthony H. Cordesman ... in a
Center for Strategic and International Studies report, "How America Corrupted Afghanistan." He
particularly criticized the military contracting process, saying, The bulk of the money actually spent
inside Afghanistan went through poorly supervised military contracts and through aid projects
where the emphasis was speed, projected starts, and measuring progress in terms of spending
rather than results. U.S. and foreign contractors poured money into a limited number of Afghan
powerbrokers who set up companies that were corrupt and did not perform."
click here.
When corporations bankroll politics, we all pay the price

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/29/capitalism-bankrolls-poli...
It's a revolting spectacle: the two presidential candidates engaged in a frantic and demeaning
scramble for money. By 6 November, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will each have raised more
than $1bn. Other groups have already spent a further billion. Every election costs more than the
one before; every election, as a result, drags the United States deeper into cronyism and
corruption. Is it conceivable, for instance, that Romney, whose top five donors are all Wall Street
banks, would put the financial sector back in its cage? Or that Obama, who has received $700,000
from both Microsoft and Google, would challenge their monopolistic powers? Or, in the Senate,
that the leading climate change denier James Inhofe, whose biggest donors are fossil fuel
companies, could change his views, even when confronted by an overwhelming weight of
evidence? The US feeding frenzy shows how the safeguards and structures of a nominal
democracy can remain in place while the system they define mutates into plutocracy. Despite
perpetual attempts to reform it, US campaign finance is now more corrupt and corrupting
than it has been for decades. It is hard to see how it can be redeemed. If the corporate
cronies and billionaires' bootlickers who currently hold office were to vote to change the
system, they'd commit political suicide. We should see this system as a ghastly warning of
what happens if a nation fails to purge the big money from politics.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the corruption of the US
electoral system, click here.
Energy firm uses 'land grabs' to secure fracking rights from reluctant
landowners
2012-10-02, NBC News
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/02/14183177-energy-firm-uses-lan...
Ranjana Bhandari and her husband knew the natural gas beneath their ranch-style home in
Arlington, Texas, could be worth a lot - especially when they got offer after offer from Chesapeake
Energy Corp. Their repeated refusals didn't stop Chesapeake, the second-largest natural gas
producer in the United States. This June, after petitioning a Texas state agency for an exception to
a 93-year-old statute, the company effectively secured the ability to drain the gas from beneath the
Bhandari property anyway -- without having to pay the couple a penny. In fact, since January
2005, the Texas agency has rejected just five of Chesapeake's 1,628 requests for such
exceptions. Chesapeake's use of the Texas law is among the latest examples of how the
company executes what it calls a "land grab" -- an aggressive leasing strategy intended to
lock up prospective drilling sites and lock out competitors. Chesapeake has become the
principal player in the largest land boom in America since the California Gold Rush of the late
1840s and 50s, amassing drilling rights on more land than almost any U.S. energy company. After
years of leasing tracts from New York to Wyoming, the company now controls the right to drill for
oil and gas on about 15 million acres -- roughly the size of West Virginia.
click here.
G.M.O.s: Lets Label Em

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/g-m-o-s-lets-label-em
It's not an exaggeration to say that almost everyone wants to see the labeling of genetically
engineered materials contained in their food products. And on Nov. 6, in what's unquestionably
among the most important non-national votes this year, Californians will have the opportunity to
make that happen [by voting] on Proposition 37. It would require "labeling on raw or processed
food offered for sale to consumers if made from plants or animals with genetic material changed in
specified ways." And it would prohibit marketing "such food, or other processed food, as natural.' "
Polls show Prop 37 to be overwhelmingly popular: roughly 65 percent for to 20 percent against,
with 15 percent undecided. Nationally, on the broader issue of labeling, in answer to the question
of whether the Food and Drug Administration should require that "foods which have been
genetically engineered or containing genetically engineered ingredients be labeled to indicate
that," a whopping 91 percent of voters say yes and 5 percent say no. This is as nonpartisan as
an issue gets, and the polls haven't changed much in the last couple of years. Unsurprisingly,
Big Food in general - and particularly companies like Monsanto that produce genetically
engineered seeds ... have already thrown tens of millions of dollars into defeating Prop 37.
In general, as California goes, so goes the nation.
Note: With such a strong mandate, why do no U.S. states have GMO labeling laws? Will the many
millions of dollars pumped into the Prop 37 campaign by Monsanto and others sway the voters?
We will find out soon. For a powerful summary of the health risks from GMO foods, click here.
U.S. lays out examples of 'gross negligence' by BP

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48904731#.UEttgKDAHLQ
The U.S. Justice Department is ramping up its rhetoric against BP [formerly British Petroleum] for
the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, describing in new court papers examples of what it
calls "gross negligence and willful misconduct." The court filing is the sharpest position yet taken
by the U.S. government as it seeks to hold the British oil giant largely responsible for the largest oil
spill in U.S. history. Gross negligence is a central issue to the case, slated to go to trial in New
Orleans in January 2013. A gross negligence finding could nearly quadruple the civil damages
owed by BP under the Clean Water Act to $21 billion. The U.S. government and BP are engaged
in talks to settle civil and potential criminal liability, though neither side will comment on the status
of negotiations. Specifically, errors made by BP and Swiss-based Transocean Ltd, owner of the
Deepwater Horizon platform, in deciphering a key pressure test of the Macondo well are a clear
indication of gross negligence, the Justice Department said. "That such a simple, yet
fundamental and safety-critical test could have been so stunningly, blindingly botched in so
many ways, by so many people, demonstrates gross negligence," the government said in its
39-page filing.
click here.
Proposition 37 in California: A high-stakes food fight

2012-08-24, San Jose Mercury News (Silicon Valley's leading newspaper)
http://www.mercurynews.com/elections/ci_21391702/proposition-37-california-hi...
If Proposition 37 passes, California would become the first state in the nation to require new labels
on a host of food products commonly found on grocery store shelves. Many other nations,
including Japan, China and a host of European countries, already label genetically
engineered food. In the United States, however, products that contain genetically engineered
ingredients are generally not labeled. Proponents ... have raised $2.8 million. A company owned
by Joseph Mercola, a controversial holistic health activist from Illinois with more than 100,000
Twitter followers, has kicked in $800,000. Opponents have raised nine times as much. Almost all
of the nearly $25 million has come from a variety of chemical, seed and processed-food
companies. Monsanto, a leading producer of genetically engineered seeds, donated $4.2 million,
the largest donation. The labeling initiative largely covers processed foods. Milk, cheese and other
dairy products made from cows that are injected with the bovine growth hormone or eat genetically
engineered feed like alfalfa would be exempt, but meat or dairy products from animals that are
genetically engineered would be labeled. In 2000, 25 percent of the corn planted in the United
States was genetically engineered, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. By
2012, that figure had soared to 88 percent. The group California Right to Know, which is leading
the pro-labeling campaign, is counting on a vast social media network and volunteers to get its
message out. Stacy Malkan, a spokeswoman for the yes campaign, said [this] "is a people's
movement against out-of-state corporations."
Note: A graph in this article shows that 94% of the funds raised against Proposition 37 came from
outside of California. And how interesting that Dr. Mercola is called controversial, considering that
he now has nearly 2 million subscribers to his mos excellent email list. For an article titled "The
Top 10 Lies Told by Monsanto on GMO Labeling in California," click here. For a great collection of
past major media articles revealing the serious risks and dangers of genetically modified foods,
click here.
Oceana targets fishy labeling practices

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Oceana-targets-fishy-labeling-practices...
Oceana, a group dedicated to preserving the ocean ecosystem, is testing fish nationwide to find
out whether seafood fraud is as widespread as some people think it is. It is now possible to
determine exactly what species is being served at the local fish shack, thanks to recent advances
in genetic sequencing. Oceana has thus far found seafood mislabeling everywhere it has done
testing, including Boston, Los Angeles, Miami and Monterey. The DNA-testing campaign, in which
dozens of volunteers are provided testing kits with instructions and monitoring sheets, created an
uproar when the early results came out. In South Florida ... results showed that 31 percent of the
fish tested at restaurants and markets was mislabeled. In Los Angeles, 55 percent, and in
Boston, 48 percent of the fish sold was not what it was touted to be. In Los Angeles ... eight
out of nine sushi samples labeled as "white tuna," or shiro maguro, were actually escolar, which
[has been called] the "ex-lax fish" for its purgative effect on the digestive system. Escolar is not
among the 14 species that can legally be labeled as tuna. Oceana found that 87 percent of the
sushi venues tested misrepresented the fish being served. The results follow several Consumer
Reports studies that had similar results, including a 2006 report that found that 56 percent of
the salmon marketed in the United States as wild was actually farmed. Thirty-one percent of
grocery stores misidentified fish. In many cases, there is no way for the consumer to know
whether the fish is what the restaurant, fish market or grocery store claims it is.
click here.
Prop. 37: Consumers need to know

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Prop-37-Consumers-need-to-kno...
Voters will decide on an issue this November that affects us all: our right to know what's in our
food. Millions of Californians are saying: We want to know, and we have the right to know, if our
food has been genetically engineered. Parents, farmers, health care professionals,
environmentalists, politicians and labor groups want to know, too. Proposition 37 requires
companies to add a few words to labels if their food has been genetically modified. Also called
GMOs, these modified plant and animal products have been altered in a lab to combine DNA from
one species with another to create combinations that don't occur in nature. An example is
Monsanto's genetically modified sweet corn, which has been engineered to contain an insecticide,
Bt toxin, within the corn itself. Voters and consumers also have environmental concerns. GMO
crops have led to an overall increase in pesticide use, the emergence of superweeds and
superbugs, and the unintentional contamination of non-GMO crops with GMO-crop pollens. Here
in California, out-of-state pesticide and food companies have contributed $25 million to
blanket the airwaves with deceptive commercials trying to persuade us that labeling is too
costly, scary or confusing. We've heard it all before. They used the same tactics to claim
hardship if they were forced to tell consumers about calories, fat content or other information we
use every day to choose our food. We're not buying these scare stories. It's a simple label. We
have a right to know what's in our food. This is how our country is supposed to work - we are free
to make informed choices. Proposition 37 will help us exercise that freedom about what we eat.
We urge you to vote yes on Prop. 37.
Note: For a great collection of past major media articles revealing the serious risks and dangers of
genetically modified foods, click here.
Ag Giants Spend Big to Defeat Labeling Initiative

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ag-giants-spend-big-defeat-labeling-initia...
The nation's largest agribusiness and biotech companies are pouring millions of dollars into
California to stop the first-ever initiative to require special labels on foods made with genetically
modified ingredients, a sign of their determination to keep the measure from sparking a nationwide
movement. So far, farming giants such as Monsanto, Dupont Pioneer and Cargill have contributed
nearly $25 million to defeat the proposal, with much of that cash coming in the past few days.
Monsanto, the largest contributor, gave $4.2 million this week. It's nearly 10 times the amount
raised by backers of the ballot measure who say California's health-conscious shoppers want
more information about the food they eat. With nearly three months to go before the November
election, the measure's opponents appear to be following the previous blueprint developed
by major industries to defeat ballot initiatives in the nation's largest consumer market:
Raise large sums of money to swamp the airwaves with negative advertising. The food
initiative, known as Proposition 37, ... would require most processed foods to bear a label by 2014
letting shoppers know if the items contain ingredients derived from plants with DNA altered with
genes from other plants, animals, viruses or bacteria. "It's an epic food fight between the pesticide
companies and consumers who want to know what's in their food," said Stacy Malkan, media
director for the California Right to Know campaign.
Note: For a powerful essay showing the grave risks and dangers of GMOs, click here. For deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources on genetically modified foods, click here.
Washington's Wall Street Sugar Daddies

2012-08-14, Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/washingtons-wall-street-sugar-daddies
How much is democracy worth to you? If youre like most people, its priceless. But for the hedge
funds and insurance companies on Wall Street, it does have a price tag: approximately $4.2 billion.
Thats how much the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (F.I.R.E.) sector has invested in political
influence through campaign contributions and lobbying since 2006. That comes to $1,331 a minute
spent on political power. The new report is called Meet the F.I.R.E. Sector: How Wall Street Is
Burning Democracy. It was developed by Elect Democracy, a nonpartisan effort ... to expose and
challenge the impact of corporate money in U.S. politics. The report ... analyzes exactly how
Wall Street has secured ... industry-loyal voting practices in Congress: by shoveling
stacks of campaign cash in the direction of Congressional hopefuls from both major
political parties. That money lets these industries get what they want in Washington. The
F.I.R.E. sector contributed $879 million to members of Congress since 2006, and took
positions on 383 bills during the 112th Congress. For instance, they supported Free Trade
Agreements with Korea, Panama, and Colombia in 2007, and backed the bailout in 2008. Bills they
opposed include the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, the
Limited Homeowner and Investor Loss in Foreclosure Act of 2010, and the Stop Student Loan
Interest Rate Hike Act of 2011. At every turn, the F.I.R.E. sector demands special treatment for
Wall Street while consumers, homeowners, and students get stuck with the bills.
Note: Though not a major media source, Yes! Magazine is one of the very few media working
towards positive, sustainable solutions to the problems of our world. For deeply revealing reports
from reliable major media sources on the corrupt relationship between government and the
financial sector, click here.
Nuclear waste issues freeze permits for U.S. power plants

2012-08-09, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/09/news/economy/nuclear-plants-waste/index.htm
The U.S. government said it will stop issuing permits for new nuclear power plants and license
extensions for existing facilities until it resolves issues around storing radioactive waste. The
government's main watchdog, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, believes that current
storage plans are safe and achievable. But a federal court said that the NRC didn't detail
what the environmental consequences would be if the agency is wrong. There are 14
reactors awaiting license renewals at the NRC, and an additional 16 reactors awaiting permits for
new construction. Nuclear waste disposal has been a daunting political question that is still
unanswered after decades of study. Nuclear watchdog groups -- which don't agree with the NRC's
assertion that the waste is currently safely stored -- are hoping the new review will provide an
opportunity to push for stricter standards at nuclear power plants. There are currently 104
operating nuclear reactors at 64 plants across the country. Half are over 30 years old. '"The court
is ordering them to do this analysis that should have been done a long time ago," said
Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In particular, UCS and
others want less of the waste to be stored in pools of water, which they believe are vulnerable to
sudden draining and possible meltdown.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption in the nuclear
power industry, click here.
TSA defies the courts

2012-07-18, Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/18/editorial-tsa-defies-courts/
The days of secrecy at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) may be coming to an end.
Its a widely held belief that the agencys hasty embrace of expensive, X-rated x-ray machines has
more to do with closed-door lobbying efforts of manufacturers than a deliberate consideration of
the devices merits. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) [has] pushed for some
transparency by asking the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to compel the agency to hold a
public notice-and-comment period on the use of pornographic scanners, as the law requires. EPIC
has a good case because on July 15, 2011, the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling insisting TSA
promptly come into compliance with Administrative Procedure Act requirements regarding public
hearings. TSA believed it wasnt subject to such rules because the virtual strip-searching of
women, children and the elderly is an essential security operation. The last thing TSA wants
is the public-relations disaster of having to collect and publish the horror tales from
Americans subjected to humiliation from the nude photography and intrusive pat-down
groping sessions. Its time to admit the post-Sept. 11 experiment in having the government take
over airport screening duties has been a colossal flop. TSA has defied the Administrative
Procedures Act, an appellate court, the public will and common decency. Its not enough just to
pull the plug on the scanners; the plug should be pulled on TSA itself.
Note: According to this PBS report, "European Union regulators recently banned any body
scanner that uses X-rays, 'in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens' health and safety.'" It also
states, "The TSA tested the devices behind closed doors, without scrutiny from independent
scientists." For lots more on this topic important to all air travelers, click here.
Stand-off looms over U.S. plans to cut GMO crop oversight

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-usa-agriculture-biotechbre86...
Efforts to write benefits for biotech seed companies into U.S. legislation, including the new Farm
Bill, are sparking a backlash from groups that say the multiple measures would severely limit U.S.
oversight of genetically modified crops. From online petitions to face-to-face lobbying on Capitol
Hill, an array of consumer and environmental organizations and individuals are ringing alarm bells
over moves they say will eradicate badly needed safety checks on crops genetically modified to
withstand herbicides, pests and pesticides. The measures could speed the path to market for
big biotech companies like Monsanto and Dow Chemical that make billions of dollars from
genetically altered corn, soybeans, cotton and other crops. "They are trying to change the
rules," said George Kimbrell, senior attorney at the Center for Food Safety, which has lawsuits
pending against government regulators for failing to follow the law in approving certain biotech
crops. "It is to the detriment of good governance, farmers and to the environment." As early
as next week the U.S. House of Representatives could take up one of the more controversial
measures - a provision included in the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations bill known as Section 733
that would allow biotech crops to be planted even if courts rule they were approved illegally.
Opponents call it the "Monsanto Rider" because Monsanto's genetically altered alfalfa and sugar
beets have been subject to court challenges for illegal regulatory approvals.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the dangers of genetically
modified organisms, click here. Multiple reliable sources show that you may be eating genetically
modified food daily which scientific experiments have repeatedly demonstrated can cause
sickness and even death in lab animals. Click here to verify.
Wall Street sleaze keeps growing

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Wall-Street-sleaze-keeps-growing-...
Just when you thought Wall Street couldn't sink any lower - when its excesses are still causing
hardship to millions of Americans and its myriad abuses of public trust have already spread a
miasma of cynicism over the entire economic system - an even deeper level of public-be-damned
greed and corruption is revealed. Libor is the benchmark for trillions of dollars of loans worldwide mortgage loans, small-business loans, personal loans. It's compiled by averaging the rates at
which the major banks say they borrow. So far, the scandal has been limited to Barclays, a big,
London bank that just paid $453 million to U.S. and British bank regulators, whose top executives
have been forced to resign, and whose traders' e-mails give a chilling picture of how easily they
got their colleagues to rig interest rates in order to make big bucks. But Wall Street has almost
surely been involved in the same practice, including the usual suspects - JPMorgan Chase,
Citigroup and Bank of America - because every major bank participates in setting the Libor
rate, and Barclays couldn't have rigged it without their witting involvement. In fact, Barclays'
defense has been that every major bank was fixing Libor in the same way, and for the same
reason. And Barclays is "cooperating" (i.e., providing damning evidence about other big banks)
with the Justice Department and other regulators in order to avoid steeper penalties or criminal
prosecutions, so the fireworks have just begun.
Note: The author of this article, Robert Reich, is former U.S. secretary of labor, professor of public
policy at UC Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. He
blogs at www.robertreich.org.
Wells Fargo to pay $175 million to settle lending bias allegations

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-wells-bias-settlement-201207...
Wells Fargo & Co.'s settlement of allegations that it overcharged minorities for home loans
and wrongly steered them into subprime mortgages requires the bank to pay $125 million in
damages, including about $10 million to African Americans and Latinos in the Los Angeles
area. The settlement ... also requires the San Francisco company, by far the nation's largest home
lender, to provide $50 million in down-payment assistance to residents of areas where the alleged
discrimination had a significant effect. The $175-million total is the second-largest fair-lending
settlement by the civil rights arm of the Justice Department. The largest, reached in December,
requires Bank of America Corp. to pay $335 million to settle claims against Countrywide Financial
Corp., the aggressive Calabasas lender it acquired in 2008. Another former Wells Fargo unit the
now-defunct subprime storefront lender Wells Fargo Financial Inc. was the target of a separate
investigation by the Federal Reserve. Wells Fargo agreed last year to pay $85 million to settle
allegations that Wells Fargo Financial employees improperly pushed borrowers into more
expensive subprime loans and exaggerated income information on mortgage applications. The
agreement covers lending from 2004 through 2009 in the wholesale section of Wells Fargo Home
Mortgage, which made loans of all kinds, including prime and subprime mortgages, through
independent brokers.
JPMorgans black eye nears $6B as bank says traders may have tried to
conceal losses
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/jpmorgan-ceo-will-try-to-provide-clari...
JPMorgan Chase said Friday that its traders may have tried to conceal the losses from a soured
bet that has embarrassed the bank and cost it almost $6 billion far more than its CEO first
suggested. The bank said an internal investigation had uncovered evidence that led executives to
question the integrity of the values, or marks, that traders assigned to their trades. JPMorgan
also said that it planned to revoke two years worth of pay from some of the senior managers
involved in the bad bet, and that it had closed the division of the bank responsible for the mistake.
This has shaken our company to the core, CEO Jamie Dimon said. The bank said the loss,
which Dimon estimated at $2 billion when he disclosed it in May, had grown to $5.8 billion.
The investigation, which covered more than a million emails and tens of thousands of voice
messages, suggested traders were trying to make losses look smaller, the bank said. The
revelation could expose JPMorgan to civil fraud charges. If regulators decide that employee
deceptions caused JPMorgan to report inaccurate financial details, they could pursue charges
against the employees, the bank or both. JPMorgan could not necessarily hide behind the actions
of its employees. Regulators could decide that its oversight or risk management contributed to the
problematic statements.
Note: Yet will anyone go to jail for these shady activities? For key investigative reports on the
criminality and corruption in the financial industry and biggest banks, click here.
Lawmakers got loan deals from Countrywide

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48081344/ns/business-stocks_and_economy#.T_h445H4KNU
The former Countrywide Financial Corp., whose subprime loans helped start the nation's
foreclosure crisis, made hundreds of discount loans to buy influence with members of
Congress, congressional staff, top government officials and executives of troubled
mortgage giant Fannie Mae, according to a House report. The report ... said the discounts
from January 1996 to June 2008 were not only aimed at gaining influence for the company but
to help mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Countrywide's business depended largely on Fannie, which ...
was responsible for purchasing a large volume of Countrywide's subprime mortgages. "Documents
and testimony obtained by the committee show the VIP loan program was a tool used by
Countrywide to build goodwill with lawmakers and other individuals positioned to benefit the
company," the report said. "In the years that led up to the 2007 housing market decline,
Countrywide VIPs were positioned to affect dozens of pieces of legislation that would have
reformed Fannie" and its rival Freddie Mac, the committee said. The Justice Department has not
prosecuted any Countrywide official, but the House committee's report said documents and
testimony show that Mozilo and company lobbyists "may have skirted the federal bribery statute by
keeping conversations about discounts and other forms of preferential treatment internal. Rather
than making quid pro quo arrangements with lawmakers and staff, Countrywide used the VIP loan
program to cast a wide net of influence."
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable reports on the criminality and corruption within the financial
and banking industries, click here.
The Bank of England told us to do it, claims Barclays

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9374289/The-B...
The Deputy Governor of the Bank of England encouraged Barclays to try to lower interest rates
after coming under pressure from senior members of the last Labour government, documents have
disclosed. A memo published by Barclays suggested that Paul Tucker gave a hint to Bob
Diamond, the banks chief executive, in 2008 that the rate it was claiming to be paying to borrow
money from other banks could be lowered. His suggestion followed questions from senior figures
within Whitehall about why Barclays was having to pay so much interest on its borrowings, the
memo states. Barclays and other banks have been accused of artificially manipulating the Libor
rate, which is used to set the borrowing costs for millions of consumers, businesses and investors,
by falsely stating how much they were paying to borrow money. The bank claimed yesterday that
one of its most senior executives cut the Libor rate only at the height of the credit crisis after
intervention from the Bank of England. The memo, written on Oct 29, 2008, by Mr Diamond and
circulated to two other senior bank officials, said: Mr Tucker reiterated that he had
received calls from a number of senior figures within Whitehall to question why Barclays
was always toward the top end of the Libor pricing. Government sources suggested that
Baroness Vadera, one of Gordon Browns closest colleagues, was responsible for the contact with
the Bank of England.
Wall Street banks angling for Dodd-Frank loophole

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Wall-Street-banks-angling-for-Dod...
Wall Street has already watered down or delayed most of Dodd-Frank [financial reform act].
Now it wants to create a giant loophole, exempting its foreign branches from the law. Yet
the overseas branches of Wall Street banks are where the banks have done some of their
wilder betting. Four years ago, bad bets by American International Group's London office nearly
unraveled the U.S. financial system. When the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the main
regulator of derivatives (bets on bets), recently proposed extending Dodd-Frank to the foreign
branches of Wall Street banks, the banks screamed. "If JPMorgan overseas operates under
different rules than our foreign competitors," warned Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of
JPMorgan, Wall Street will lose financial business to the banks of nations with fewer regulations,
allowing "Deutsche Bank to make the better deal." This is the same Jamie Dimon who chose
London as the place to make highly risky derivatives trades that have lost the firm upward of $2
billion so far - and could leave American taxpayers holding the bag if JPMorgan's exposure to
tottering European banks gets much worse. JPMorgan's risky betting in London is added proof that
unless the overseas operations of Wall Street banks are covered by U.S. regulations, giant banks
will hide irresponsible bets overseas. Squadrons of Wall Street lawyers and lobbyists have been
pressing all the agencies charged with implementing Dodd-Frank to go easy on the Street.
Note: The author of this article, Robert Reich, is former U.S. secretary of labor, professor of public
policy at UC Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. He
blogs at www.robertreich.org.
Big banks craft "living wills" in case they fail

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-27/business/sns-rt-us-banks-bailou...
Five of the biggest banks in the United States are putting finishing touches on plans for
going out of business as part of government-mandated contingency planning that could
push them to untangle their complex operations. The plans, known as living wills, are due to
regulators no later than July 1 under provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law designed to
end too-big-to-fail bailouts by the government. The living wills could be as long as 4,000 pages.
Since the law allows regulators to go so far as to order a bank to divest subsidiaries if it cannot
plan an orderly resolution in bankruptcy, the deadline is pushing even healthy institutions to start a
multi-year process to untangle their complex global operations, according to industry consultants.
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are among
those submitting the first liquidation scenarios to regulators at the Federal Reserve and the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The liquidation plans are coming amid renewed questions about
the safety of big banks following JPMorgan's stunning announcement last month that a trading
debacle has cost it more than $2 billion.
Note: For other key major media articles showing blatant financial corruption, click here. For more
vitally important information on banking manipulations, explore the excellent, reliable information in
our Banking Corruption Information Center available here.
Why the U.S. Senate Sucks Up to Public Enemy Jamie Dimon

2012-06-20, Alternet
http://www.alternet.org/news/155962/why_the_u.s._senate_sucks_up_to_public_en...
When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank, appeared before the Senate Banking
Committee on June 13, he was wearing cufflinks bearing the presidential seal. Was Dimon trying
to send any particular message by wearing the presidential cufflinks? asked CNBC editor John
Carney. Was he . . . subtly hinting that hes really the guy in charge? The groveling of the
Senators was so obvious that Jon Stewart did a spoof news clip on it. JPMorgan Chase is the
biggest campaign donor to many of the members of the Banking Committee. Financial
analysts Jim Willie and Rob Kirby think it may be something far larger, deeper, and more ominous.
They contend that the $3 billion-plus losses in London hedging transactions that were the
subject of the hearing can be traced, not to European sovereign debt (as alleged), but to the
record-low interest rates maintained on U.S. government bonds. The national debt is growing
at $1.5 trillion per year. Ultra-low interest rates must be maintained to prevent the debt from
overwhelming the government budget. Near-zero rates also need to be maintained because even
a moderate rise would cause multi-trillion dollar derivative losses for the banks, and would remove
the banks chief income stream, the arbitrage afforded by borrowing at 0% and investing at higher
rates. The low rates are maintained by interest rate swaps, called by Willie a derivative tool which
controls the bond market in a devious artificial manner.
Note: We don't usually use alternet.org as a reliable source, but because the major media failed to
ask the hard, very important questions posed in this article, we've included it here. For powerful
reports on financial corruption, click here.
The Jamie Dimon Cufflinks Mystery

2012-06-14, CNBC
There's been a lot of speculation about the cufflinks [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon
wore during [his Congressional] testimony. They caught the eye of folks because they
seemed to bear some sort of official government stamp. As it turns out, they were
emblazoned with the seal of the President of the United States. CNN's Lizzie O'Leary first
confirmed the story last night over Twitter. They were, in fact, a gift from a resident of the White
House. But people close to the JPMorgan Chase CEO won't say which president gave them to
him. Dimon's got a bunch of official U.S. government cufflinks. Search for images of him and you'll
see FBI cufflinks, for example. Was Dimon trying to send any particular message by wearing the
presidential cufflinks? Was he, for instance, trying to remind the Democrats he supported Obama?
Or subtly hinting that he's really the guy in charge?
Note: For powerful reports on financial corruption, click here.
JPMorgan's top-down role in risky investments

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/19/BUD41OJUG3.DTL
Congress gets into the JPMorgan Chase affair Tuesday with the first in a series of hearings into
how a federally insured bank incurred [huge] losses on the kind of risky bets some, mistakenly,
thought were a thing of the past. The losses, as suspected, look to be far higher than the $2 billion
initially estimated. As of Friday, the number was $5 billion. What did CEO Jamie Dimon know, and
when did he know it? "Dimon personally approved the concept behind the disastrous trades,"
according to the Wall Street Journal. Reportedly, similar trades, involving credit derivatives, date to
2006, ramping up with ever bigger bets as risk controls were eased in 2011.On the one hand,
JPMorgan and other U.S. corporations are banking record profits and ever-growing piles of
cash - $2 trillion at last count. On the other, U.S. unemployment remains unacceptably high,
people are still losing their homes, small businesses are screaming for credit, local
governments are cutting services left and right, and the nation's infrastructure is
crumbling. Tons of money [are] sloshing around, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, but banks and
corporations ... are hoarding it.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corruption and criminality in the finance industry, click
here.
Video Reveals Torture of Horses Trained to Win Championships

2012-05-16, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/tennessee-walking-horses-abused/story?id=163608...
Large numbers of the famed Tennessee Walking Horses have been tortured and beaten in order to
make them produce the high-stepping gait that wins championships, an ABC News investigation
has found. "All too often, you have to cheat to win in this sport," said Keith Dane of the Humane
Society of the United States. In the most recent example, an undercover video made by an
investigator for the Humane Society documents the cruelty of one of the sport's leading trainers,
Jackie McConnell of Collierville, Tennessee. The tape shows McConnell and his stable hands
beating horses with wooden sticks and using electric cattle prods on them as part of a training
protocol to make them lift their feet in the pronounced gait judges like to see. In another scene,
McConnell oversees his hands as they apply caustic chemicals to the ankles of the horses
and them wrap them with plastic wrap so the chemicals eat into the skin. "That creates
intense pain and then the ankles are wrapped with large metal chains so the horses flinch, or raise
their feet even higher," said Dane. Leaders of the Tennessee Walking Horse industry maintain that
such brutality is rare and that trainers do not have to cheat to win championships, which can add
millions of dollars to the value of horses. But a random inspection by the agents of the
Department of Agriculture at last year's annual championship found that 52 of 52 horses
tested positive for some sort of foreign substance around front hooves, either to cause
pain or to hide it.
Note: The good news is that as a result of this report, Pepsi has dropped its support of the annual
Tennessee Walking Horse championship. For more on this, click here.
JPMorgan losses look familiar to Phil Angelides

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/14/BUOO1OHO2G.DTL
What strikes Phil Angelides the most about the $2 billion (and counting) loss sustained by
JPMorgan Chase on a big trade gone bad, is how little has changed since the financial
crash of 2008. "The big banks continue to be casinos," said the chairman of the
government-appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which laid out how such trades,
referred to in some quarters as "bets," contributed to the crash that the country is still struggling to
pull itself out of. "It has to be stopped," he said. Trouble is - as Angelides, the former California
state treasurer, and others point out - no one is stopping them. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's CEO,
dismissed initial concerns about the trades last month as a "complete tempest in a teapot." His
main concern, he told analysts, was how the affair "plays right into the hands of a bunch of pundits
out there." Dimon was referring to those who have been pushing for regulations to prevent
federally insured banks like JPMorgan from indulging in such trades in the first place. "They've
been fighting a ferocious rear-guard, no-holds-barred action," said Angelides, referring to the army
of lobbyists hired and millions of dollars spent to beat back the regulations. The Securities and
Exchange Commission is investigating the trades, which involved the use of complex financial
instruments called credit default swaps as a hedge against the value of U.S. bonds.
Note: For a most excellent two-minute video of former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich
presenting five of the most urgent problems with the economy and an easy solution all in two
minutes, click here. For an enlightening five-minute TED talks video further showing how the rich
getting richer while they pay increasingly less taxes is at the root of most economic woes, click
here. For a treasure trove of revealing reports from reliable sources on the criminality and
corruption of major financial corporations and their "regulators" in government, click here.
Before Loss, JPMorgan Was One of Volcker Rule's Fiercest Foes

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/before-big-loss-jpmorgan-was-one-of-vo...
The $2 billion trading loss that JPMorgan Chase disclosed late on Thursday provided ample
ammunition for supporters of the Volcker Rule, which would restrict government-backed banks'
ability to conduct proprietary trading. But it also prompted a fair amount of finger-wagging toward
the company, given JPMorgan's stance as one of the rule's fiercest opponents. JPMorgan has
been among the most outspoken detractors of the proposed financial regulation that is
making its way through Washington. The firm has laid bare its feelings about the Volcker Rule
several times, including in a Feb. 13 comment letter to the Federal Reserve. In that document,
JPMorgan argued that the proposal would restrict its efforts to rein in risk-taking and would harm
the firm's ability to compete against foreign rivals that did not face the same restrictions. In the
letter, JPMorgan specifically mentions its chief investment office, the trading group which caused
the $2 billion trading loss. JPMorgan also happens to run one of the most active and bestfinanced lobbying operations within the commercial banking industry. In the first four months
of 2012, the firm has spent $1.92 million, barely trailing Wells Fargo in terms of banks' lobbying
expenses. Last year, JPMorgan spent $7.62 million; two years ago, it spent $7.41 million, the most
in its industry. And JPMorgan's chief, Jamie Dimon has been among the most frequent visitors to
Washington to press his case.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the corruption of major financial corporations,
click here.
Rothschilds to merge British and French banking operations to secure

control
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9189053/Roths...
The Rothschild dynasty is to merge its British and French banking operations to secure long-term
control of the business and to boost the firm's financial strength ahead of the introduction of
tougher capital requirements for banks. The 200-year-old banks will be reunited under a single
shareholding that will bring together the fortunes of the French and English sides of the
renowned family as they attempt to safeguard the business against the effects of new
regulation and the fallout from the global financial crisis. Paris Orleans, the Rothschild
Group's Paris-based holding company, will convert into a French limited partnership, securing the
families' control of the bank against potential takeovers. The new partnership will then buy out
minority investors in NM Rothschild & Sons, the UK business, as well as outstanding minority
interests in the French operations. Paris Orleans has a market value of more than 500m (415m)
and is about 30pc owned by outside investors. The Rothschild Group employs 3,000 people in 42
countries and is one of the world's leading independent investment banks, advising some of the
largest international companies on capital raisings and mergers and acquisitions. The bank also
remains a player in the private equity industry and operates several merchant banking operations
that invest directly in business across Europe and the rest of the world.
Note: Why is that these two hugely wealthy families get so little press coverage? Could it be that
their wealth and influence exerts control over the major media? For more on secret societies which
command huge hidden power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
Wall Street speculation blamed for gas price spike

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/07/BUQ81NHHPQ.DTL
Public anger over high gasoline prices is turning to a familiar target - Wall Street. The role of
speculative investors in this year's price spike has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks,
nowhere more so than in Washington. Nearly 70 members of Congress wrote a stern letter
Monday to a federal commission that regulates the country's main market for crude oil, demanding
that the commission crack down on speculation. President Obama, his energy policies under
attack from Republicans, ordered a fresh look at speculation's role in the market on Tuesday. "This
is just another example, in my view, of Wall Street playing the casino," said Rep. Jackie Speier, DHillsborough, who signed the letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "Everyone
should be outraged that every time they're filling up their tank, they're paying a premium
because of speculation." How big is that premium? One of the trading commission's five
members estimated last month that speculative investors were adding 56 cents to the price
of each gallon of gas. As a result, Honda Civic drivers pay an additional $7.39 per fill-up, said
Commissioner Bart Chilton. Owners of the Ford F150 pickup pay an extra $14.56. Speculative
investors include hedge funds and investment banks that buy contracts for the future delivery of oil
but never intend to take possession of the fuel itself. They buy and sell strictly as a financial
investment, and their presence in the market has swelled.
Note: For lots more reliable information from the major media on energy manipulations, click here.
Homeowners deserve protections afforded businesses

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/16/EDKF1N8M4N.DTL
[A] report from San Francisco auditors [shows] that 84 percent of foreclosures examined contained
at least one violation of the law by the foreclosing party. The report is only the latest in a series of
incidents involving bad actors in the foreclosure crisis. In fact, problems have been so rampant that
banks now require many buyers of foreclosed homes to sign contracts absolving the bank of
liability should irregularities appear with the original foreclosure. In light of these negligent
practices, the $26 billion settlement last week between the U.S. Department of Justice, state
attorneys general and the major banks raises as many questions as answers. For instance: If a
house is illegally foreclosed upon and subsequently sold by the bank, who owns the home? The
new buyer or the original owner? Untangling this mess might require new consumer protections,
not just a payout from the banks accused of wrongdoing. The best way to prevent foreclosure
problems, however, has always been to prevent foreclosures in the first place. Offering families
facing foreclosure the same bankruptcy protections enjoyed by business speculators is one place
to start. As it stands today, a single family that buys a home in a housing development is
treated differently in bankruptcy court than a businessman who bought 10 units in the
same project. If and when the housing bubble bursts, the underwater speculator is able to
seek bankruptcy relief on all 10 units, while the owner of the single home is left out in the
cold.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the impacts of the financial crisis on homeowners,
click here.
Eight arrests as Murdoch 'throws staff to the wolves'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/eight-arrests-as-murdoch-throws-st...
Police swooped on eight individuals between 6am and 8am yesterday, arresting the five Sun
journalists, two Ministry of Defence staff and a police officer. The arrests came hard on the heels of
five related arrests two weeks ago when four senior Sun journalists and a police officer were
questioned in connection with bribery allegations. The latest astonishing development ... prompted
fury among the newspaper's staff, amid allegations that those arrested had been "thrown to the
wolves" in an effort to bolster the embattled News Corp empire, and, particularly, to rekindle its
hopes of taking over BSkyB. The police were acting on information provided by News
International, owner of The Sun and Times newspapers. The investigation broke new ground
yesterday: for the first time, the arrests broadened beyond payments to police, with a
female member of the MoD and a member of the armed forces also held while their homes
were searched. The journalists arrested were Geoff Webster, The Sun's deputy editor; John Kay,
a former chief reporter who joined the title in 1974; Nick Parker, chief foreign correspondent; John
Edwards, picture editor; and John Sturgis, a reporter.
Note: The fact that the The Sun's deputy editor and chief foreign correspondent were arrested
along with a female member of the MoD and a member of the armed forces is astounding. Could
the predictions of David Wilcock of mass arrests of key people involved in major corruption be
coming true? Wilcock has written a thoroughly researched and amazingly deep and penetrating
paper on all that is going on at this link.
EU agrees rules to tame derivatives market

2012-02-09, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/eu-derivatives-idUSL5E8D969P20120209
European Union diplomats and the European Parliament agreed ... to overhaul regulation of the
roughly $700 trillion derivatives market, a move that will make it easier to control one of the most
opaque areas of finance. Under new EU laws, banks, hedge funds and other buyers and sellers of
derivatives will be encouraged to move away from the unregulated 'over-the-counter' market,
which accounts for almost 95 percent of all trades. In the past, it has been common for multimillion-euro contracts to be recorded by no more than a fax, with only the parties involved
aware of the details. This will change under the new law, which would standardise most
trading so it happens on open exchanges. Settlement of such deals will be cleared
centrally, making them easier to monitor. Those that do not shift to exchanges or a central
counterparty such as LCH Clearnet in London, which acts as an intermediary between buyer and
seller, will face higher capital charges to reflect the extra risk. Crucially, the new rules mean that all
deals must be recorded, whether conducted on or off an exchange. Supervisors hope that will
make it easier to monitor the market and intervene, if necessary, to avoid a repeat of the chaos
surrounding the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, where it proved difficult to assess exposure to
derivatives. By forcing increased transparency, the rules are likely to challenge the half a dozen or
so large banks that dominate the market now.
Note: For key reports on the grave risks posed by the unregulated derivatives market, click here.
UK police arrest Murdoch tabloid staff

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46174085/ns/world_news-europe/t/uk-police-arrest-...
British police arrested four current and former staff of Rupert Murdoch's best-selling Sun tabloid
plus a policeman ... as part of an investigation into suspected payments by journalists to officers.
Police also searched the paper's London offices at publisher News International, News Corp.'s
British arm, in a corruption probe linked to a continuing investigation into phone hacking at its now
closed News of the World weekly tabloid. The arrests included The Sun's crime editor Mike
Sullivan, its head of news Chris Pharo, and former deputy editor Fergus Shanahan Also
arrested was the paper's former managing editor Graham Dudman, now a columnist and
media writer. Thirteen people have now been arrested over allegations that journalists paid police
in return for information. Last week, News International settled a string of legal claims after it
admitted that people working for the tabloid had hacked in to the private phones of celebrities and
others to find stories. The phone hacking scandal drew attention to the level of political influence
held by editors and executives at News International, and other newspapers in Britain. It
embarrassed British politicians for their close ties with newspaper executives and also the police,
who repeatedly failed to investigate allegations of illegal phone hacking.
Note: If researcher David Wilcock is right, this may be the beginning of mass arrests of key people
involved in major corruption in our world. For lots more, see David's very well researched article at
this link.
George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War

2012-01-23, Newsweek Magazine
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/22/george-soros-on-the-coming-u...
I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as Ive experienced in
my career, [George] Soros tells Newsweek. We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable
in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in
the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The
best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the
financial system. Soros draws on his past to argue that the global economic crisis is as
significant, and unpredictable, as the end of Communism. To Soros, the spectacular
debunking of the credo of efficient markets the notion that markets are rational and can
regulate themselves to avert disaster is comparable to the collapse of Marxism as a
political system. Understanding, he says, is key. Unrestrained competition can drive people into
actions that they would otherwise regret. The tragedy of our current situation is the unintended
consequence of imperfect understanding. A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A
lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to. Still, Soros believes
the West is struggling to cope with the consequences of evil in the financial world just as former
Eastern bloc countries struggled with it politically. Is he really saying that the financial whizzes
behind our economic meltdown were not just wrong, but evil? Thats correct.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the criminal practices of the biggest banks and
financial firms and the collusion of government agencies, see our "Banking Bailout" newsarticles.
We must stop this corporate takeover of American democracy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/20/us-constitutio...
The corporate barbarians are through the gate of American democracy. Not satisfied with their allpervasive influence on our culture, economy and legislative processes, they want more. They want
it all. Two years ago, the United States supreme court betrayed our Constitution. In its now
infamous decision in the Citizens United case, five justices declared that corporations must be
treated as if they are actual people under the Constitution when it comes to spending
money to influence our elections, allowing them for the first time to draw on the corporate
checkbook in any amount and at any time to run ads explicitly for or against specific
candidates. What's next a corporate right to vote? When the supreme court says ... that
corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionallyprotected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable
restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, our democracy is in grave danger. Corporations
are not people with constitutional rights equal to flesh-and-blood human beings. Corporations are
subject to regulation by the people.
Note: For key reports on the overpowering influence of corporate money on the US political
system, click here and here.
J&J Said to Agree to Pay $1 Billion in Risperdal Marketing Probe

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-18/j-j-said-to-agree-to-pay-1-billio...
Johnson & Johnson will pay more than $1 billion to the U.S. and most states to resolve a civil
investigation into marketing of the antipsychotic Risperdal. Negotiations over a possible criminal
plea are still under way. The U.S. government has been investigating Risperdal sales practices
since 2004, including allegations the company marketed the drug for unapproved uses. J&J, the
worlds largest health products company ... disclosed in August that it reached an agreement to
settle a misdemeanor criminal charge related to Risperdal marketing. The company is discussing
paying about $400 million more to settle that portion of the investigation. Risperdal, once J&Js
best-selling drug, generated worldwide sales of $24.2 billion from 2003 to 2010, reaching $4.5
billion in 2007. After that, J&J lost patent protection and sales declined. The settlement represents
... about 5.6 percent of the drugs cumulative sales since 2003. The Food and Drug
Administration approved Risperdal in 1993 for psychotic disorders including
schizophrenia. That market is limited, and J&Js Janssen unit sought to sell Risperdal for
bipolar disorder, dementia, mood and anxiety disorders and other unapproved uses.
Note: For highly-illuminating reports from reliable sources on the corruption in the pharmaceutical
industry, click here.
Japan declares Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant stable, in cold

shutdown
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-declares-fukushima-dai...
The Japanese government [has] declared that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had reached a
stable state known as cold shutdown. But the formal status change at the plant, experts
cautioned, means only that its problems have become less dire; they have not disappeared. The
plant still leaks radiation into the sea. Its makeshift cooling system is vulnerable to earthquakes.
And the cleanup work remains dangerous, with many flooded and debris-strewn areas of the
reactor buildings difficult even for robots to access. In normal circumstances, a reactor in cold
shutdown mode is entirely stable, its fuel intact, with no chance of a chain reaction. To
achieve its version of a cold shutdown at Fukushima Daiichi, ... Japan had to loosen the
definition. Fukushima now meets the governments requirements because temperatures at the
bottom of the three damaged reactor pressure vessels have dropped below 100 degrees Celsius
(212 degrees Fahrenheit). Airborne leaks into the environment have also been almost halted. The
declaration poses new questions for many of the 80,000 people who fled towns around the plant ...
since the government had made the cold shutdown a precondition for even considering reopening
parts of the no-go zone to residents. Many areas within the no-entry zone a 12-mile radius
around the plant will be uninhabitable for decades, maybe longer.
Note: For further information on the claim of "cold shutdown" at Fukushima, click here and here.
Silicon Valley firms dodging taxes, report says

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/14/MN9C1MCI25.DTL
Silicon Valley technology firms that are lobbying Congress to slash taxes on money they bring
home from abroad, arguing that doing so would help them create millions of jobs, already send
more than half that money back to the United States without paying taxes, according to a Senate
investigation. The corporate tax code permits Google, Cisco, Apple, Adobe Systems, Oracle
and other U.S. multinational corporations surveyed to invest nearly $250 billion in the
United States without paying the 35 percent corporate tax rate that applies to repatriated
foreign earnings, according to the report by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations. The corporations, which are not allowed to invest the money in their own
companies, can escape the 35 percent tax if they invest in other domestic assets, such as stocks,
bonds and bank deposits. Silicon Valley's technology giants have banded together with
pharmaceutical companies and other multinationals in the Win America Coalition in an attempt to
get Congress to cut their tax rate from 35 percent to just over 5 percent on overseas earnings they
bring home. The survey data showed that Adobe, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco and Google have
invested 76 to 100 percent of their foreign earnings in U.S. stocks, bonds, bank deposits and other
domestic assets, a greater share than the other companies surveyed.
Note: For lots more on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
L.A. calls for end to 'corporate personhood'

2011-12-06, Los Angeles Times blog
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/corporate-personhood-la-constit...
At a packed City Council meeting ... Los Angeles lawmakers Tuesday called for more regulations
on how much corporations can spend on political campaigns. The vote in support of state and
federal legislation that would end so-called "corporate personhood is largely symbolic.
The council resolution includes support for a constitutional amendment that would assert
that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights, and that spending money is not a
form of free speech. City Council President Eric Garcetti, the resolution's sponsor, said such
actions are necessary because big special interest money is behind much of the gridlock in
Washington. He blamed a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. the Federal
Election Commission, which rolled back legal restrictions on corporate spending on the grounds
that political speech by a business entity should receive the same 1st Amendment protections that
people do. It allows corporations and other groups to spend unlimited money on behalf of
candidates. Councilman Richard Alarcon, who also supported the resolution, said corporations are
trying to take over every aspect of our lives. Corporations are at the wheel of America, Alarcon
said. And they are driving us to destruction.
Note: Why was this key decision only reported in a blog and hardly covered by the media
elsewhere? To understand how the media controls public debate, as reported by top journalists,
click here.
Tech titans lobby Congress for giant tax break

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/24/MNPO1M2LGM.DTL
Silicon Valley's tech titans are in full holiday mode - tax holiday that is. Google, Apple, Oracle,
Cisco and other multinationals have fielded more than 160 lobbyists and consultants - including,
according to Bloomberg Businessweek, 60 insiders such as Karen Olick, former chief of staff for
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. - to get Congress to give them a giant tax break on their overseas
profits. U.S. multinationals currently have $1.4 trillion parked offshore. Banded together with
pharmaceutical companies and other multinationals in a group called the Win America
coalition, Bay Area technology giants say that slashing their tax rate from 35 percent to
5.25 percent on foreign profits they return or "repatriate" to the United States will create
millions of jobs. Both parties in Congress, desperate to find something they can agree on to
goose the economy, are warming to the idea. But the last time a holiday was tried in 2004, under a
law Boxer sponsored, billions of dollars in tax breaks went to a tiny swath of multinationals
concentrated in the technology and pharmaceutical industries, many studies found. Most of the
money went to dividends, stock buybacks and executive pay, despite express prohibitions. Some
companies, such as Hewlett Packard, cut jobs after repatriating earnings, while boosting executive
pay.
Note: A Forbes magazine article states "most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate
than you do," yet now they want even more tax breaks. And did you know that before 1913, except
for a period during the Civil War, there was no personal income tax on the general public in the
U.S.?
$3 billion settlement expected in GlaxoSmithKline drug-marketing probe

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/3billion-settlement-expected-i...
The British drugmaker Glaxo-SmithKline has tentatively agreed to pay the U.S. government $3
billion to settle multiple civil and criminal investigations, the largest settlement in the federal
governments recent crackdown on the pharmaceutical industrys marketing practices. If the deal is
finalized, it will mark the latest success in the federal governments push to rein in drug companies
promotional efforts. Of the 165 settlements reached between pharmaceutical companies and
federal and state governments in the past two decades, about three-quarters took place between
2006 and 2010, according to a report by Public Citizen. Before the Glaxo agreement, the largest
federal settlements took place in 2009: Pfizer paid $2.3 billion to settle federal investigations tied to
the promotion of the anti-inflammatory drug Bextra and other drugs, and Eli Lilly & Co. paid $1.4
billion related to the marketing of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa. Still, consumer advocates said
the penalties are not enough. The size of the penalties, although large, are not as large as
the money [the drug companies] make and so they keep doing it over again, said Sidney
M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizens health research group. The only way this is going to
stop, or get reversed, is to greatly increase the size of the penalties or to start sending
some of the executives to jail.
Note: For insight into corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.
Banking on the people

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/02/ED3B1LP64K.DTL
Why give our money to Bank of America, only to have it lend us our own money at high interest
rates or with ridiculous fees? We could hold onto our money, save quite a bit in fees, and lend it
back to ourselves and to the businesses and people ... at more affordable rates. In 2008, Ellen
Brown authored The Web of Debt, an analysis of the U.S. banking system that now is even more
pertinent in light of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The thesis is that the power to create
money has been usurped by a private international banking cartel [the Federal Reserve],
which issues our money as debt and lends it back to us at interest. The cartel makes it
appear that governments are creating our money, and governments get blamed when
things go wrong; but they are just pawns of the cartel. We ... can regain our government and
our republic only by reclaiming the power to create our own money. We can use the same credit
system that private banks use, but administer it as a public utility - that is, monitored and overseen
by public servants on the model of libraries and courts. To be a sustainable system, profits need to
be returned to the community rather than siphoned off into private coffers.
Note: Few people realize that money in the U.S. is created by an entity privately owned by the
largest banks the Federal Reserve. For lots more important information on this, click here. For
lots more from major media sources on the collusion between financial interests and government,
click here.
Governments turn to hacking techniques for surveillance of citizens

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/nov/01/governments-hacking-techniqu...
In a luxury Washington, DC, hotel last month, governments from around the world gathered to
discuss surveillance technology they would rather you did not know about. The annual Intelligence
Support Systems (ISS) World Americas conference is a mecca for representatives from
intelligence agencies and law enforcement. But to the media or members of the public, it is strictly
off limits. Behind the cloak of secrecy at the ISS World conference, tips are shared about the latest
advanced ... methods used to spy on citizens computer hacking, covert bugging and GPS
tracking. The use of such methods is more commonly associated with criminal hacking groups,
who have used spyware and trojan viruses to infect computers and steal bank details or
passwords. But as the internet has grown, intelligence agencies and law enforcement have
adopted similar techniques. "The current method of choice would seem to be spyware, or trojan
horses," said Chris Soghoian, a Washington-based surveillance and privacy expert. "When there
are five or six conferences held in closed locations every year, where telecommunications
companies, surveillance companies and government ministers meet in secret to cut deals,
buy equipment, and discuss the latest methods to intercept their citizens' communications
that I think meets the level of concern," he said. "Decades of history show that surveillance
powers are abused usually for political purposes."
Note: For more on corporate and government threats to privacy and civil liberties, click here and
here.
Fukushima Fallout Was Almost Twice as Bad as Official Estimates, New

Study Says
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-10/fukushima-fallout-was-worse-off...
This springs nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant released almost double
the amount of radiation the Japanese government has claimed, according to a new
analysis. The authors say the boiling pools holding spent fuel rods played a role in the
release of some of the contaminants, primarily cesium-137 and that this could have been
mitigated by an earlier response. Researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Air Research ... say
the amount of cesium-137, a long-lived isotope that persists in the atmosphere, was about twice as
high as the Japanese governments official estimate. The researchers also say about 20 percent of
the total fallout landed over Japan, but the vast majority fell over the Pacific Ocean. (The effects of
this fallout on fisheries and aquatic wildlife are still being determined.) Cesium-137 emissions
peaked three or four days after the quake and tsunami, remaining high until March 19, according
to this new study. Thats the day authorities started spraying water on the spent-fuel pool at reactor
unit 4, the researchers note. This indicates that emissions were not only coming from the
damaged reactor cores, but also from the spent-fuel pool of unit 4 and confirms that the spraying
was an effective countermeasure, they say. This contradicts Japanese government reports
claiming the pools released no radiation.
Note: According to the French nuclear agency, the Institute for Radiological Protection and
Nuclear Safety (IRSN, Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire), even the higher
estimate of radiation release described in this article is too low. The agency estimates that 20
times more cesium-137 was released than has been admitted by Tepco.
Faith in the 99 percent: What drives Occupy Wall Street?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/faith-in-the-99-percent-wha...
We are the 99 percent! The chant thunders through the streets, from Wall Street in New York
City, where the Occupy movement began, to K Street in Washington, where high-paid lobbyists
influence government, to streets in cities and small towns all across the nation. In hundreds of
Occupations, ordinary people have been moved to fill parks and streets and squares with signs,
tents, impromptu soup kitchens, intense conversations and lengthy meetings. Whats going on? All
share a common heart, a revulsion against an economy and a politics that increasingly say, You
dont count, except as something to exploit. Your voice is drowned out by money, your labor is
expendable, your needs must be sacrificed to the gods of profit. The Occupy movement
demonstrates a very different model of organizing: emergent, decentralized, without a command
and control structure. At its essence, the message of the Occupations is simply this: Here in the
face of power we will sit and create a new society, in which you do count. Your voice carries
weight, your contributions have value, whoever you may be. We say that love and care are
the true foundations for the society we want to live in. Well stand with the poor and sleep
with the homeless if thats what it takes to get justice. Well build a new world.
Note: Find your nearest occupation at: http://www.occupytogether.org/ . For lots more from major
media sources on the reasons why people worldwide are occupying the financial centers of their
cities, check out our "Banking Bailout" news articles.
Beltway Earnings Make U.S. Capital Richer Than Silicon Valley

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-19/beltway-earnings-make-u-s-capital...
Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nations
greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest
U.S. metropolitan area, government data show. The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with
Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the
Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was
$50,046. The figures demonstrate how the nations political and financial classes are prospering as
the economy struggles with unemployment above 9 percent and thousands of Americans protest
in the streets against income disparity, said Kevin Zeese, director of Prosperity Agenda, a
Baltimore-based advocacy group trying to narrow the divide between rich and poor. Theres a gap
thats isolating Washington from the reality of the rest of the country, Zeese said. They just get
more and more out of touch. In recent years Washington has attracted more lobbyists and firms
with an interest in the health-care overhaul and financial regulations signed into law by President
Barack Obama. Wall Street has moved to K Street, said Barbara Lang, president and chief
executive officer of the DC Chamber of Commerce, referring to the Washington street thats home
to prominent lobbying firms.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on corporate and government corruption, click here
and here.
Wall Street Protests Spread Globally as Rome Turns Violent

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LT1FUB1A1I4H01-651L...
The Occupy Wall Street protest against income disparity spread across Western Europe, Asia, the
U.S. and Canada today. Rome's demonstration turned violent, contrasting with peaceful events
elsewhere. The rallies started last month in New York's financial district, where people have been
staying in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park. They widened to 1,500 cities today, including
Sydney and Toronto, the organizers said, in a global day of action against Wall Street greed.
Protesters say they represent the 99 percent, a nod to a study by Nobel Prize-winning economist
Joseph Stiglitz showing the top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of U.S. wealth. In
Berlin, 6,000 took to the streets and 1,500 gathered in Cologne, ZDF television said. In Frankfurt,
5,000 marched by the European Central Bank headquarters. In New York, demonstrators marched
past a JPMorgan Chase & Co. branch urging clients to transfer accounts to a financial institution
that supports the 99 percent. They distributed fliers with a list of community banks and credit
unions. New York police arrested 24 at a Citigroup Inc. bank branch and 6,000 gathered in Times
Square. About 1,000 people gathered in Toronto's financial district carrying signs saying
Nationalize the Banks. Demonstrations turned violent in Italy, where the unemployment rate for
15-to-24-year-olds was 27.6 percent in August.
FirstEnergy Falls After Report of Nuclear Reactor Cracks

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-13/firstenergy-falls-after-report-of...
FirstEnergy Corp. [stock price] fell after a report that engineers discovered cracks in the
concrete shell of its Davis-Besse nuclear plant. Contractors on Oct. 10 discovered a hairline
crack measuring about 30 feet (9.1 meters) long as they sliced a hole into the plants outer shell
in order to install a new reactor vessel head, said Jennifer Young, a FirstEnergy spokeswoman.
The cracked shell is the outermost of several layers of steel and concrete that protect the reactor,
which has been shut down since Oct. 1 in preparation for the repair work. Davis-Besse was
shuttered for more than three months in 2010 after workers discovered cooling water leaking
through cracks in some reactor-head nozzles, steel casings that hold fuel and control rods. Leaks
and reactor corrosion prompted FirstEnergy to close the plant for two years, from 2002 to 2004,
while the company retrained or replaced workers who ignored signs of damage, and eventually
replaced the reactor head. The leaks found last year at the 900-megawatt plant prompted the
Union of Concerned Scientists in April 2010 to demand that the plant remain closed until its
owners established better controls to maintain health and safety standards.
Note: If you want to see how safety around nuclear plants is ignored and threatened all the time by
money interests at all levels, watch the amazingly revealing documentary on Chernobyl at this link.
The most telling piece in this documentary involves the man tasked by Gorbechov to write the
official report of all the problems they faced. When he gave the report to the IAEA in a secret
meeting, he was ridiculed by the other international leaders there, who accused him of spreading
baseless fears. On the second anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, he committed suicide.
Occupy Wall Street, a primer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/occupy-wall-street-a-prim...
Occupy Wall Street, the growing, decentralized protest movement thats clashing with police in
New York City, spreading across the country, and grabbing headlines across the world ... is also,
somewhat unusually, a protest movement without clear demands, an identifiable leadership, or an
evident organizational structure. Decisions are made by the NYC General Assembly, which Nathan
Schneider describes as a horizontal, autonomous, leaderless, modified-consensus-based system
with roots in anarchist thought, and thus far, the General Assembly has decided against
yoking the movement to a particular set of goals, or even a particular ideology. Which is all
to say that its important to try and understand the movement on its own terms, rather than
the terms most of us are used to. Here are five places to start: - The ... Occupy Wall Street
blog, and in particular, the blogs forums. Here, for instance, is the movements Declaration of the
Occupation of New York City. - Nathan Schneiders Occupy Wall Street FAQ. Id perhaps
recommend this as the single best place to start. - Understanding the theory behind Occupy Wall
Streets approach, by Mike Konczal. Also see his post, 15 definitions of freedom from Occupy
Wall Street.
As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/world/as-scorn-for-vote-grows-protests-surg...
Their complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and joblessness, common
grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall
Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional
politicians and the democratic political process they preside over. They are taking to the
streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box. Economics have been one
driving force, with growing income inequality, high unemployment and recession-driven cuts in
social spending breeding widespread malaise. Alienation runs especially deep in Europe, with
boycotts and strikes. The protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike those that
have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and
Libya. Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly
hostile, toward traditional institutions of the elite. Youre looking at a generation of 20- and 30year-olds who are used to self-organizing, said Yochai Benkler, a director of the Berkman Center
for Internet and Society at Harvard University. They believe life can be more participatory, more
decentralized, less dependent on the traditional models of organization, either in the state or the
big company. Those were the dominant ways of doing things in the industrial economy, and they
arent anymore.
Note: For key insights from major media sources into the reasons why so many are protesting
worldwide, click here.
'Anyone can make money from a crash,' says market trader

2011-09-26, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15059135
Ministers from the world's richest nations are reportedly on the way to agreeing [to] a deal for
troubled eurozone countries. But one independent market trader - Alessio Rastani - told the BBC
the plan "won't work" and that people should be trying to make money from a market crash. Trader
Alessio Rastani: I'm fairly confident the Euro is going to crash, and it's going to fall pretty hard
because markets are ruled right now by fear. Investors and the big money, the smart money ...
don't buy this rescue plan. They know the stock market is finished. They don't really care. They're
moving their money away to safer assets like treasury bonds, 30-year bonds, and the U.S. dollar.
For most traders, we dont really care that much how they're going to fix the economy. Our
job is to make money from it. And personally, Ive been dreaming of this moment for three years.
I go to bed every night [and] I dream of another recession. When the market crashes if you
have the right plan set up, you can make a lot of money from this. Be prepared, and act now. The
biggest risk people can take right now is not acting. This economic crisis is like a cancer. In less
than 12 months, my prediction is that the savings of millions people is going to vanish, and this is
just the beginning. This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are
going to sort things out. The governments dont rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the
world.
Note: Part of the text above is not listed in the text at the link above, but in the BBC video on that
page. The video is a must watch for one expert's important view on an impending future economic
collapse. For lots more excellent information showing the incredible power of Goldman Sachs and
more on this important topic, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
sources on financial corruption, click here.
Oxfam warns of spiralling land grab in developing countries

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/22/oxfam-land-grab-developing-...
The scale of the rush by speculators, pension funds and global agri-businesses to acquire large
areas of developing countries is far greater than previously thought, and is already leading to
conflict, hunger and human rights abuses, says Oxfam. The NGO has identified 227m ha (561m
acre ha) of land an area the size of north-west Europe as having being reportedly sold, leased
or licensed, largely in Africa and mostly to international investors in thousands of secretive deals
since 2001. The new land rush, which was triggered by food riots, a series of harvest failures
following major droughts and the western investors moving out of the US property market in 2008,
is being justified by governments and speculators in the name of growing food for hungry people
and biofuels for environmental benefit. "Many of the deals are in fact 'land grabs' where the
rights and needs of the people previously living on the land are ignored, leaving them
homeless and without land to grow enough food to eat and make a living," said Oxfam chief
executive Dame Barbara Stocking. While some investors might claim to have experience in
agricultural production, many may only be purchasing land speculatively, anticipating price
increases in the coming years. In addition, developing countries are under pressure from the IMF,
the World Bank and other regional banks to put farmland on the international market to increase
economic development and improve the balance of payments.
Note: To read Oxfam's summary and report on land grabs worldwide, click here.
Being Like Soros in Buying Farm Land Reaps Annual Gains of 16%
2011-08-10, Businessweek/Bloomberg
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LPOB2G0D9L3501-5DC4...
Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and
Africa as global food prices soar. A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund
manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA. Hedge funds
Ospraie Management LLC and Passport Capital LLC as well as Harvard University's endowment
are also betting on farming. TIAA-CREF, the $466 billion financial services giant, has $2 billion
invested in some 600,000 acres (240,000 hectares) of farmland in Australia, Brazil and North
America and wants to double the size of its investment. The growth in demand for food, spurred by
the rising middle classes in China, India and other emerging markets, shows no signs of abating.
Food prices in June, as measured by a United Nations index of 55 food commodities, were just
slightly below their peak in February. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said in a June
report that it expects food costs to remain high through 2012. So many investors have rushed to
capitalize on food prices in the past three years that they may be creating a farmland
bubble. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which covers Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska
and other agricultural states, said in May that farmland prices had surged 20 percent in the first
quarter compared with a year earlier.
Note: This news is further clear evidence that the rapid increases in food prices is another ploy to
funnel money from the pockets of the public into the uber wealthy.
The great high-speed rail lie

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/02/EDTD1KID15.DTL
In 2008, voters approved a $10 billion bond to begin construction of a bullet train from Los Angeles
to San Francisco that would make that trip in less than three hours. So who knew that by 2011 the
general consensus would be that the project is an ill-conceived, mismanaged boondoggle? Former
Amtrak spokesman and Reason Foundation writer Joseph Vranich knew. In 2008, before the state
Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, he called the project "science fiction." He said the
train won't travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours because that
exceeds the speed of all existing high-speed rail. But on French railway schedules, a TGV (Train
Grande Vitesse) takes two hours, 38 minutes to go from Paris to Avignon. That's 430 miles. The
route for the L.A.-to-San Francisco line is 432. So what's going on here? It's simple. Vranich
makes stuff up. The Reason Foundation is funded by Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, the
American Petroleum Institute, Delta Airlines, the National Air Transportation Association
and, of course, the Koch Family Foundation. They know what will happen once Americans,
furious about gas prices and the way airlines treat them, experience electrically powered
200-mph trains.
Note: For lots more evidence that progress in the transportation sector is stymied by big money
interests, click here.
Murdochs were given secret defence briefings

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/murdochs-were-given-secret-defe...
The extraordinary access that Cabinet ministers granted Rupert Murdoch and his children was
revealed for the first time yesterday, with more than two dozen private meetings between the
family and senior members of the Government in the 15 months since David Cameron entered
Downing Street. In total, Cabinet ministers have had private meetings with Murdoch
executives more than 60 times and, if social events such as receptions at party conferences
are included, the figure is at least 107. On two occasions, James Murdoch and former News
International chief executive Rebekah Brooks were given confidential defence briefings on
Afghanistan and Britain's strategic defence review by the Defence Secretary, Liam Fox. A
further briefing was held with Ms Brooks, Rupert Murdoch and the Sunday Times editor John
Witherow. The Chancellor, George Osborne, has had 16 separate meetings since May 2010 with
News International editors and executives, including two with the Murdochs within just a month of
taking office. He also invited Elisabeth Murdoch as a guest to his 40th birthday party last month.
The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, dined with Rupert Murdoch within days of the Government
coming to power and, after being given quasi-judicial oversight for the Murdochs' 8bn attempted
takeover of BSkyB, had two meetings with James Murdoch in which they discussed the takeover.
here and here.
Ethical rules needed to curb 'Frankenstein-like experiments' on animals

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8652093/Ethical-rules-needed-...
Scientists are in danger of turning animals into monsters unless an ethical watchdog is appointed
to prevent Frankenstein-like experiments, the Academy of Medical Sciences has warned. A new
report into experiments which transplant human cells into animals for medical purposes said
scientists may not be far from giving apes the ability to think and talk like humans.
Concerns about the creation of talking apes should be taken seriously along with "what
one might call the 'Frankenstein fear' that the medical research which creates 'humanised'
animals is going to generate monsters", it was claimed. A regulatory body is needed to closely
monitor any experiments that risk creating animals with human-like consciousness, spawning
hybrid human-animal embryos, or giving animals any appearance or behavioural traits that too
closely resemble humans, the report said. Scientists would, for example, be prevented from
replacing a large number of an ape's brain [cells] with human cells as has already been done in
simpler animals like mice until much more is known about the potential results.
Note: For more on this in another media article, click here.
News of the World phone-hacking whistleblower found dead

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/18/news-of-the-world-sean-hoare
Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbusiness reporter who was the first named
journalist to allege that Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found
dead. Hertfordshire police would not confirm his identity, but said in a statement: "The death is
currently being treated as unexplained but not thought to be suspicious." There was an
unexplained delay in the arrival of forensics officers at the scene. There was no police presence at
the scene at all for several hours. Hoare was in his mid-40s. He first made his claims in a New
York Times investigation into the phone-hacking allegations at the News of the World. He told the
newspaper that not only did Coulson know of the hacking, but he also actively encouraged his staff
to intercept the calls of celebrities in the pursuit of exclusives. In a subsequent interview with the
BBC he alleged he was personally asked by his editor at the time, Coulson, to tap into phones.
Hoare returned to the spotlight last week, after he told the New York Times that reporters at
the NoW were able to use police technology to locate people using their mobile phone
signals, in exchange for payments to police officers. He said journalists were able to use
"pinging", which measured the distance between a mobile handset and a number of phone masts
to pinpoint its location.
and here.
Stain From Tabloids Rubs Off on a Cozy Scotland Yard

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/world/europe/17police.html
For nearly four years they lay piled in a Scotland Yard evidence room, six overstuffed plastic bags
gathering dust and little else. Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten
notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims
whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid
newspaper. Yet from August 2006, when the items were seized, until the autumn of 2010, no one
at the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly referred to as Scotland Yard, bothered to sort
through all the material and catalog every page. During that same time, senior Scotland Yard
officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media
and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid. After the
past week, that assertion has been reduced to tatters, torn apart by a spectacular avalanche
of contradictory evidence. The testimony and evidence that emerged last week, as well as
interviews with current and former officials, indicate that the police agency and News International,
the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdochs News Corporation and the publisher of The News of the
World, became so intertwined that they wound up sharing the goal of containing the investigation.
Members of Parliament said in interviews that they were troubled by a revolving door between
the police and News International.
Note: Media and government corruption could hardly get worse than seen in this case of the
Murdoch phone hacking scandal. Scotland Yard's primary responsibility is to protect the UK public
from criminal activity; instead it enabled the activity to continue and shared high-level information
and personnel with News Corporation. For lots more on media and government corruption click
here and here.
Radioactive tritium leaks found at 48 US nuke sites

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43475479/ns/us_news-environment/t/radioactive-tri...
Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often
into groundwater from corroded, buried piping. The number and severity of the leaks has been
escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the
nation. Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65
sites, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the
AP's yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at
least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water
standard sometimes at hundreds of times the limit. At three sites two in Illinois and one
in Minnesota leaks have contaminated drinking wells of nearby homes. At a fourth site, in New
Jersey, tritium has leaked into an aquifer and a discharge canal feeding picturesque Barnegat Bay
off the Atlantic Ocean. Any exposure to radioactivity, no matter how slight, boosts cancer risk,
according to the National Academy of Sciences. Tritium moves through soil quickly, and when it is
detected it often indicates the presence of more powerful radioactive isotopes that are often spilled
at the same time.
here.
Northwest sees 35% infant mortality spike post-Fukushima

2011-06-17, Q13 FOX-TV (Seattle FOX Network affiliate)
http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-northwest-sees-35-infant-mortality-spike-post...
Physician Janette Sherman, M.D. and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published a report Monday
highlighting a 35% spike in northwest infant mortality after Japan's nuclear meltdown. The report
spotlighted data from the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on infant mortality rates in
eight northwest cities, including Seattle, in the 10 weeks after Fukushima's nuclear meltdown. The
average number of infant deaths for the region moved from an average of 9.25 in the four
weeks before Fukushima' nuclear meltdown, to an average of 12.5 per week in the 10 weeks
after. The change represents a 35% increase in the northwest's infant mortality rates. In
comparison, the average rates for the entire U.S. rose only 2.3%.
Note: For details of this very important analysis of the CDC's data on US infant mortality after the
Fukushima meltdowns, click here and here.
Make companies' political spending transparent

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/03/INB11JNOSC.DTL
Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest contractor ... has received more than $19 billion in federal
contracts so far this year. Lockheed has already spent more than $3 million lobbying Congress this
year. Lockheed supports a platoon of Washington lawyers and lobbyists dedicated to getting more
federal contracts. Sixty-four of Lockheed's lobbyists are former congressional staffers, Pentagon
officials and White House aides. Two are former members of Congress. As such, they used to be
on the public payroll, representing us. Lockheed also has been spending more than $3 million a
year on political contributions to friendly members of Congress. Lockheed is hardly alone in using
taxpayer money to get fatter contracts from taxpayers. All of the 10 biggest government
contractors are defense contractors. Every one of them gets most of its revenue from the federal
government. And every one uses a portion of that money to lobby for even more defense
contracts. Next year's expected drawdown of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq is supposed
to save money. But Lockheed and other giant defense contractors have made sure all
anticipated savings will go to new weapons systems. Lockheed recently delivered a budget
bombshell with a proposed tab of more than $1 trillion for a fleet of F-35 joint-strike fighter
jets.
Note: $1 trillion for a fighter jet fleet means that each American will pay over $3,000 for this fleet.
The author of this op-ed, Robert Reich, is former U.S. secretary of labor, professor of public policy
at UC Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. He blogs
at www.robertreich.org.
Vermont governor signs single-payer health law

2011-05-26, CBS News
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin ... signed into law a bill establishing a single-payer health care plan
for the state, making Vermont the first state to do so. Shumlin lauded the legislation as an
"economic and fiscal imperative" -- as well as a moral one. "This law recognizes an economic and
fiscal imperative - that we must control the growth in health care costs that are putting families at
economic risk and making it harder for small employers to do business," he said. "We have a
moral imperative to fix this problem, with 47,000 Vermonters uninsured and another 150,000
underinsured and worried about how to afford keeping their families healthy." Vermont lawmakers
passed the legislation in March by a 92-49 margin. At the time of its passage, Shumlin lauded
the legislature for becoming "the first state in the country to make the first substantive step
to deliver a health care system where health care will be a right and not a privilege." The
legislation, when fully enacted, will guarantee every Vermont resident the right to enroll in a statesponsored insurance plan, Green Mountain Care. The law is set to become operational in 2014.
Note: The huge medical and pharmaceutical industries in the U.S. have a vested interest in
keeping health care private in order to maintain their massive profits. This may be why the
important news above was hardly reported in the media. The rest of the industrialized world
already knows that it is much cheaper for government to provide medical care than for the private
sector. Yet the media, a major source of whose income comes from advertising by these
industries, is quite biased against providing health care for all, unless it is done through a profitable
private system.
U.S. Faulted on Failing to Catch Credit-Crunch Bandits'

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LKQQ2B0D9L3501-7O8F...
In November 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed before television cameras to prosecute
those responsible for the market collapse a year earlier, saying the U.S. would be relentless in
pursuing corporate criminals. In the 18 months since, no senior Wall Street executive has been
criminally charged. Prosecutions of three categories of crime that could be linked to the
causes of the crisis -- corporate, securities and bank fraud -- declined last fiscal year by 39
percent from 2003, the period after the accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom
Inc., Justice Department records show. You need a massive prosecutorial effort, said Solomon
Wisenberg, a white-collar defense attorney at Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Washington and a
former federal prosecutor. I don't see evidence that it's happening." The seizing up of credit
markets led to the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and sparked the
worst economic slump in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Much of the blame belongs to
banks that profited from selling products that imploded with the housing market.
Note: For undeniable evidence of fraud at the highest levels of Wall Street, click here.
Prostitute-filled sex party was reward for German insurance salesmen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/19/sex-party-reward-german-salesmen
A German insurance firm has admitted rewarding its 100 best salesmen with a prostitute-filled "sex
party" in Budapest's most famous thermal baths. Hamburg-Mannheimer International (HMI), now
part of the huge Munich Re insurance conglomerate, rented out the historic Gellert Baths in the
Hungarian capital and turned it into an "open-air brothel", where it let staff run riot. At least 20
prostitutes were hired by HMI top brass for the so-called "incentive trip". According to
those present, the women were colour-coded to indicate which men were allowed to have
sex with them. Those wearing white ribbons were reserved for "the very best salespeople
and executives", said one HMI employee. After an investigation printed in the German
newspaper Handelsblatt, Munich Re has admitted that the party ... did occur. [A] guest said that
beds had been set up around the baths where the salesmen could "do what they wanted". The
women, he claimed, were then given an ink stamp on their forearms to show how popular they had
been: some of the women ended up with more than a dozen stamps, it is alleged.
Why Haven't Wall Streeters Gone to Jail?

2011-05-19, Time Magazine blog
http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/05/19/ny-ag-investigation-why-ha...
The New York Attorney General's office has been requesting information from Bank of America,
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on how they created and structured mortgage bonds at the
height of the credit boom. That investigation has reignited questions about why, nearly three years
after the financial crisis, no Wall Streeter has yet to face criminal charges directly related to the
mortgage bonds and other toxic deals that lead to the financial crisis. No one really knows the
answer, but there are a number of theories out there. Here are the best ones: Theory No. 1:
Prosecutors have been told to back off. In mid-April, the New York Times did a large investigative
piece that found a number of instances where prosecutors were told not to pursue Wall Street.
Theory No. 2: Wall Street is innocent. It may seem like the most bizarre answer, but it is getting
some traction. No one is really saying that Wall Street didn't do anything wrong. It's clear that
setting up risky mortgage bonds to sell to investors and then betting against them yourself is
wrong. But is it illegal? It's not quite clear. Theory No. 3: The cases are still in the works. There
seems to be some evidence that prosecutors are starting to be more aggressive in pursuing cases.
It's not clear what part of the mortgage process, or what potential wrong doing, the NY AG
Eric Schneiderman is investigating. The truth is that Wall Streeters rarely go to jail. Yes,
other bubbles and financial crises have resulted in numerous convictions, but generally not
of Wall Streeters.
Note: Remember that Elliot Spitzer probably got taken down for going after Wall Street. Now his
successor, Eric Schneiderman, is doing the same thing. For an excellent article on this brave man,
click here.
Tokyo Electric: reviewing records of how nuclear crisis unfolded

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/16/us-japan-nuclear-idUSTRE74F18020110516
The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said it is studying whether the
facility's reactors were damaged in the March 11 earthquake even before the massive tsunami that
followed cut off power and sent the reactors into crisis. Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed
source at the utility on Sunday as saying that the No. 1 reactor might have suffered structural
damage in the earthquake that caused a release of radiation separate from the tsunami. Tepco has
provided a new analysis of the early hours of the Fukushima crisis. The utility said on Sunday that
a review of data from March 11 suggested that the fuel rods in the No. 1 reactor were
completely exposed to the air and rapidly heating five hours after the quake. By the next
morning - just 16 hours later - the uranium fuel rods in the first reactor had melted down
and dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel. The No. 2 and No. 3 reactors are
expected to have gone through a similar process and like No. 1 are leaking most of the water
being pumped in a bid to keep their cores cool. A massive pond of radioactive water has collected
in the basement of the No. 1 reactor. Experts fear that the contaminated water leaking from the
plant could threaten groundwater and the Pacific.
Note: For lots more on corporate and government corruption from major media sources, click here
and here.
Big Oil's money gusher

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/13/INLT1JE8EA.DTL
ExxonMobil's first-quarter earnings of $10.7 billion are up 69 percent from last year. Other oil
companies are also scoring record gains. The five biggest oil companies together report more than
$35 billion in profits. An ExxonMobil vice president asks that we look past the "inevitable
headlines" and remember the company's investments in renewable energy. What investments,
exactly? Last time I looked, ExxonMobil was devoting a smaller percentage of its earnings
to renewables than most other oil companies, including the errant BP. In point of fact, no oil
company is investing much in renewables - precisely because they've got such a money
gusher going from oil. Republicans are defending oil's tax subsidy. They're responding to soaring
gas prices by trying to open more of our oceans to oil drilling. House Republicans recently passed
a bill to accelerate oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Virginia. They're
readying measures to open vast new areas of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans to oil
exploration. The oil companies now are gushing profits as Americans pay more and more at the
pump. This makes no sense. The gusher should be used to shift America away from our costly
dependence on oil.
Note: The author of this opinion, Robert Reich, is former U.S. secretary of labor, professor of
public policy at UC Berkeley and the author of the new book Aftershock: The Next Economy and
America's Future. He blogs at www.robertreich.org.
The Unwisdom of Elites

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/opinion/09krugman.html
The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has
mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europes single
currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong? The fact is that what were
experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess ... were, with
few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people in many cases, the
same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the
blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own
catastrophic mistakes. What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?
First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last
decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1
trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a
sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs. So who was
responsible for these budget busters? It wasnt the man in the street. We need to place the
blame where it belongs, to chasten our policy elites. Otherwise, theyll do even more
damage in the years ahead.
Note: For highly revealing major articles exposing secret gatherings of the global elite and their
activities, click here.
Japanese officials defend delay in revealing severity of radiation

2011-04-12, Seattle Times/New York Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014756803_quake13.html
Japanese officials have been forced to explain why it took them a month to disclose large-scale
releases of radioactive material in mid-March at a crippled nuclear-power plant. The government
announced [on April 12] that it had raised its rating of the severity of the accident at the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear complex to 7, the worst on an international scale, from 5. Japan's new assessment
was based largely on computer models showing heavy emissions of radioactive iodine and cesium
March 14-16, soon after a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami rendered the plant's emergency
cooling system inoperative. The nearly monthlong delay in acknowledging the extent of these
emissions is a fresh example of confused data and analysis from the Japanese and put authorities
on the defensive about whether they have delayed or blocked the release of information to avoid
alarming the public. Seiji Shiroya, a commissioner of Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission, an
independent panel that oversees the country's nuclear industry, ... suggested a public-policy
reason for having kept quiet. "Some foreigners fled the country even when there appeared to
be little risk," he said. "If we immediately decided to label the situation as Level 7, we could
have triggered a panicked reaction." The peak release in emissions of radioactive particles took
place after hydrogen explosions at three Fukujima reactors.
25 years on, what Chernobyl tells us about Japan's crisis

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/25-years-on-what-chernobyl-tel...
Igor Gramotkin is ... the manager of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, and has spent
more than two decades at the site of the most devastating nuclear accident in history, trying to stop
further radiation emissions and cleaning the area. Mr Gramotkin admitted that the destroyed
reactor, still full of radioactive waste and nuclear fuel, remains "a threat not only to Ukraine but to
the whole world" until it is encased in a vast steel structure that is being built. In the months after
the accident, a makeshift "sarcophagus" had been constructed to encase the reactor, but it is now
unstable and, despite work to shore it up, experts say a new shelter is desperately needed in case
the old one collapses. At more than 100m tall, the shelter will be the largest moveable structure
ever built. Those building it still have to be extremely careful. Standing in the area immediately
around the plant subjects a person to radiation equivalent to about one old-style chest X-ray per
day. The human costs of the Chernobyl accident are ... horrific by any estimate. [Some]
studies put the figure in the hundreds of thousands. There are incidences of genetic
mutations, children born lacking organs, and dramatically elevated thyroid cancer levels in
local children, who drank milk contaminated with radioactive iodine in the years after the
accident.
Note: For many reports from major media sources on the government and corporate corruption
that allows the nuclear industry to continue, click here and here.
Scrimping on regulators puts public safety at risk

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/26/IN6H1IGT7K.DTL
General Electric marketed the Mark 1 boiling water reactors that were used in Japan's Fukushima
Dai-ichi plant as cheaper to build than other reactors because they used a smaller and less
expensive containment structure. Yet American safety officials have long thought the smaller
design more vulnerable to explosion and rupture in emergencies than competing designs. Here's
the problem: Profit-making corporations have every incentive to underestimate these probabilities
and lowball the likely harms. This is why it's necessary to have such things as government
regulators and why regulators need enough resources to enforce the regulations. And it's why
recent proposals in Congress to cut the budgets of agencies charged with protecting public safety
are so wrong-headed. It's also why regulators have to be independent of the industries they
regulate. When there's a revolving door between regulatory agency and industry, officials are
reluctant to bite the hands that will feed them. Finally, the tendency of corporations to
understate the probabilities of public harms requires that limits be placed on corporate
political power. The public cannot not be adequately protected as long as big corporations
... are allowed to bribe legislators with campaign donations and boondoggles.
Note: The author of this opinion, Robert Reich, is a professor at UC Berkeley and former
Secretary of Labor.
Why No Nukes? The Real Cost of U.S. Nuclear Power

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2059453,00.html
The chaos at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant explosions, fires, ruptures has not shaken
the bipartisan support in partisan Washington for the U.S.'s so-called nuclear renaissance.
Republicans have dismissed Japan's crisis as a once-in-a-lifetime fluke. President Obama has
defended atomic energy as a carbon-free source of power, resisting calls to halt the renaissance
and freeze construction of the U.S.'s first new reactors in over three decades. But there is no
renaissance. Even before the earthquake-tsunami one-two punch, the endlessly hyped U.S.
nuclear revival was stumbling, pummeled by skyrocketing costs, stagnant demand and
skittish investors, not to mention the defeat of restrictions on carbon that could have
mitigated nuclear energy's economic insanity. Obama has offered unprecedented aid to an
industry that already enjoyed cradle-to-grave subsidies, and the antispending GOP has clamored
for even more largesse. But Wall Street hates nukes as much as K Street loves them, which is why
there's no new reactor construction to freeze. Once hailed as "too cheap to meter," nuclear fission
turns out to be an outlandishly expensive method of generating juice for our Xboxes.
Note: For many reports from major media sources on the government and corporate corruption
that allows the nuclear industry to continue, click here and here.
Fed to release bank loan data after Supreme Court rejects appeal
2011-03-21, Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg News
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/21/business/la-fi-fed-banks-20110321
The Federal Reserve will disclose details of emergency loans it made to banks in 2008, after the
U.S. Supreme Court rejected an industry appeal that aimed to shield the records from public view.
The justices ... left intact a court order that gives the Fed five days to release the records, sought
by Bloomberg News' parent company, Bloomberg. The order marks the first time a court has
forced the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed from its oldest lending program,
the 98-year-old discount window. "I can't recall that the Fed was ever sued and forced to
release information" in its 98-year history, said Allan H. Meltzer, the author of three books on
the U.S central bank and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The disclosures,
together with details of six bailout programs released by the central bank in December under a
congressional mandate, would give taxpayers insight into the Fed's unprecedented $3.5 trillion
effort to stem the 2008 financial panic. Under the trial judge's order, the Fed must reveal 231
pages of documents related to borrowers in April and May 2008, along with loan amounts. News
Corp.'s Fox News is pressing a bid for 6,186 pages of similar information on loans made from
August 2007 to November 2008.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from major media sources on the hidden activities of the Fed
and the biggest Wall Street and international banks, click here.
Nuclear power report: 14 'near misses' at US plants due to 'lax

oversight'
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0318/Nuclear-power-report-14-near-misses-at...
Nuclear plants in the United States last year experienced at least 14 "near misses," serious
failures in which safety was jeopardized, at least in part, due to lapses in oversight and
enforcement by US nuclear safety regulators, says a new report. They occurred with alarming
frequency more than once a month which is high for a mature industry, said the study of
nuclear plant safety performance in 2010 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washingtonbased nuclear watchdog group. The report, the first in what the UCS expects will become an
annual study, details both successes and failures by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
which it calls "the cop on the beat." Charged with overseeing America's fleet of 104 nuclear
reactors, the NRC made some "outstanding catches," but was also inconsistent in its oversight,
seeming at times to nod off when most needed. "The chances of a disaster at a nuclear plant are
low," the report states. "But when the NRC tolerates unresolved safety problems as it did
last year at Peach Bottom, Indian Point, and Vermont Yankee this lax oversight allows that
risk to rise. The more owners sweep safety problems under the rug and the longer safety
problems remain uncorrected, the higher the risk climbs."
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
Diablo Canyon nuclear plant 'near miss' in report

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/17/BUA01IDTUO.DTL
For 18 months, operators at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo didn't realize
that a system to pump water into one of their reactors during an emergency wasn't working. It had
been accidentally disabled by the plant's own engineers, according to a report ... from the Union
of Concerned Scientists watchdog group, [which] lists 14 recent "near misses" - instances
in which serious problems at a plant required federal regulators to respond. The report
criticizes both plant operators and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allowing some
known safety issues to fester. The problem at Diablo Canyon ... involved a series of valves that
allow water to pour into one of the plant's two reactors during emergencies, keeping the reactor
from overheating. A pair of remotely operated valves in the emergency cooling system was taking
too long to move from completely closed to completely open. So engineers shortened the distance
between those two positions, according to the report. Unfortunately, two other pairs of valves were
interlocked with the first. They couldn't open at all until the first pair opened all the way. No one
noticed until the valves refused to open during a test in October 2009, 18 months after the
engineers made the changes.
here.
Rich Take From Poor as U.S. Subsidy Law Funds Luxury Hotels
2011-02-12, Businessweek/Bloomberg
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LG994Q07SXKX01-70TC...
The landmark Blackstone Hotel in downtown Chicago, which has hosted 12 U.S. presidents,
opened in 2008 after a two-year, $116 million renovation. Buffed marble staircases greet guests
spending up to $699 a night for rooms with views of Lake Michigan. What's surprising isn't the
opulent makeover: It's how the project was financed. The work was subsidized by a federal
development program intended to help poor communities. The biggest beneficiary of taxpayer
help for the Blackstone revamp was Prudential Financial Inc., the second-largest U.S. life insurer.
The company got $15.6 million in tax credits from the U.S. Department of the Treasury for helping
to fund the project. JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, also took in
money by serving as a lender and the monitor of Blackstone construction financing, city records
show. Since 2003, some of the world's biggest financial companies, including Goldman Sachs
Group Inc., U.S. Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase and Prudential, have taken advantage of a federal
subsidy that will cost taxpayers $10.1 billion -- and most of the public has never heard of it.
Investors have used the program, called New Markets Tax Credits, to help build more than
300 upscale projects, including hotels, condominiums, office buildings and a car museum,
on streets far from poverty, according to ... records released through a federal Freedom of
Information Act request. JPMorgan spokesman Tom Kelly .. declines to discuss specifics. We
think these projects help the community, Kelly says.
Note: For other revealing major media articles showing blatant corruption in the government and
corporations, click here and here.
ConsumerWatch: Zero Percent Financing May Prove Costly

2011-02-03, KCBS (CBS San Francisco Affiliate)
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/02/03/consumerwatch-zero-percent-financ...
Zero-percent financing deals sound tempting when you are making a big purchase. But they can
have costly consequences. Justin Miller financed a new Tempur-Pedic bed through Citibank. Miller
said the deal was a credit plan offering 12 months interest free. Even though he had the
cash, he decided to finance $5,600. But after Miller made the last payment, he received a bill
from Citibank for $1,332.70. A years worth of interest Citibank calculated at 25 percent. I
thought this is crazy, either this is some kind of joke or some kind of scam, Miller said. But
according to the statement, the plan expired December 2nd. Millers payment was due four days
later, after the interest free deal expired on December 6th. The statement due date was different
from what they call the plan due date, Miller said. In fact Miller believes the due date was
intentional to fool customers into making their last payment after the interest rate expires. Jose
Quinonez with Mission Asset Fund said its a common practice. Quinonez adds banks rarely go
out of their way to tell customers about expiration dates on interest-free deals. My
recommendation to people is to make sure to pay off the whole balance completely in full by the
11th month, not wait till the 12th month to pay it off, he said. Citibank refused to discuss the
specifics of Millers case, but it told CBS 5 ConsumerWatch the terms of the deal are clearly
explained in the seven page contract.
The Paradox of Corporate Taxes

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/business/economy/02leonhardt.html
Of the 500 big companies in the well-known Standard & Poors stock index, 115 paid a total
corporate tax rate both federal and otherwise of less than 20 percent over the last five years,
according to an analysis of company reports done for The New York Times by Capital IQ, a
research firm. Thirty-nine of those companies paid a rate less than 10 percent. Arguably, the
United States now has a corporate tax code thats the worst of all worlds. The official rate is
higher than in almost any other country, which forces companies to devote enormous time
and effort to finding loopholes. Yet the government raises less money in corporate taxes
than it once did, because of all the loopholes that have been added in recent decades. Over
the last five years ... Boeing paid a total tax rate of just 4.5 percent. Southwest Airlines paid 6.3
percent. And the list goes on: Yahoo paid 7 percent; Prudential Financial, 7.6 percent; General
Electric, 14.3 percent. Economists have long pleaded for an overhaul of the corporate tax code.
But it wont be easy. Companies that use loopholes to avoid taxes dont mind the current system,
of course, and they have more than a few lobbyists at their disposal.
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable reports on corporate corruption, click here.
On Street, Pay Vaults to Record Altitude

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704124504576118421859347048-sea...
When it comes to paychecks, Wall Street's law of gravity is back in full force: What goes down
must come back up. In 2010, total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street
banks and securities firms hit a record of $135 billion, according to an analysis by The Wall
Street Journal. The total is up 5.7% from $128 billion in combined compensation and
benefits by the same companies in 2009. At 25 large financial firms that have reported full-year
results, revenue rose to $417 billion, another all-time high. "Things are shifting back to where they
were before," said J. Robert Brown, a law professor at the University of Denver who studies
compensation and corporate-governance issues. Buried in the numbers, though, are signs of how
Wall Street's pay culture is bending in response to pressure from regulators and shareholders.
Last year, deferred compensation made up as much as half of total pay, up from about a third
previously, estimates Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates Inc., a New York
pay consultant. Banks and securities firms are deferring a larger percentage of compensation than
they used to, trying to counter criticism that yearly cash bonuses encourage unwise risk-taking by
executives, traders and other employees aiming for a big payday.
Note: For the NY State Comptroller's analysis of Wall Street bonuses in 2010, click here and here.
US foreclosures in new legal trouble

2011-01-07, BBC
Two of the US's biggest mortgage lenders have had mortgage foreclosures cancelled in a case
that could affect other banks. The Supreme Court in Massachusetts ruled against US Bancorp and
Wells Fargo in a widely watched case. Backing a lower court ruling made in 2009, it said two
foreclosure sales were invalid because the banks did not prove that they owned them at the time.
The decision is among the earliest to address the validity of foreclosures done without proper
documentation - so-called robo-loans because they were carried out by people who were
unqualified and who often did not check a single line in the paperwork. Marty Mosby, an analyst at
Guggenheim Securities said: "A ruling like this will slow down the foreclosure process. They're
going to have to be really precise and get everything in order. It doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room."
The case also applies retrospectively to people who have already been foreclosed. Glenn
Russell, a lawyer for one of the couples in the case said: "I'm ecstatic. The fact the decision
applies retroactively could mean thousands of homeowners can seek recovery for homes
wrongfully foreclosed upon." Analysts said the decision may also threaten banks' ability to
package mortgages into securities, and may raise the spectre that loans transferred improperly will
need to be bought back.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the criminal profiteering by the largest banks
and Wall Street financial firms, click here.
Study: Many defibrillator implants went to marginal candidates

2011-01-05, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/04/defibrillator.implants.study/index.html
More than 20% of patients who received an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator -- a high-tech
device that produces electrical impulses to regulate heartbeats and prevent life-threatening
arrhythmias -- in recent years were not good candidates to receive the device, a new study
suggests. Researchers at Duke University looked at more than 111,000 patients who
received ICD implants between 2006 and 2009. More than 25,000 of those patients did not
meet evidence-based criteria for receiving the device, according to the study. The risk of
dying in the hospital was significantly higher for patients who received the ICD but did not meet the
criteria, and 1 out of 121 patients in this category experienced complications following the implant,
the study found. Dr. Robert Michler, chairman of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at
Montefiore-Einstein Heart Center, said the data should act as a "wake-up call" for physicians,
surgeons and patients. "Doctors are well-intentioned, but not all doctors should be determining the
use of what is a very sophisticated therapy," Michler says. He says that in this case
electophysiologists should be making the final determination if the patient needs the device.
Note: For powerful information from a top MD on how the profit motive corrupts the medical
industry and endangers our health, click here.
Environmentalists fight bioengineered seafood plan

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/26/MNOT1GH4M0.DTL
A genetically engineered fish infused with genes from other species, including an eel-like creature,
could soon be on dinner plates in the Bay Area and around the United States. The U.S. Food and
Drug Administration is considering an application by AquaBounty Technologies Inc. of
Massachusetts to bioengineer a sterile salmon that would grow extremely fast and, if all goes as
planned, never set so much as a fin in a natural body of water. It would be the first genetically
engineered animal to be approved for human consumption. The proposal, which is awaiting
an environmental assessment and a preliminary decision by the FDA, has created a furor among
environmentalists, who have dubbed the species "Frankenfish." They claim the doctored salmon
could spread disease in humans or circulate mutant genes in the wild if an accident or sabotage
ever set them loose. "The effect of what happens if these genetically engineered fish escape is
largely unknown and has been largely unquestioned by the FDA," said Colin O'Neil, the regulatory
policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, an environmental nonprofit based in Washington,
D.C. "These fish have been demonstrated to be less healthy. Consumers clearly do not
want to eat genetically engineered salmon."
Note: For a superb summary of the dangers posed by genetically-modified foods, click here.
While Washington pursues CEOs, they snub U.S.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2010%2F12%2F25%2FINJV1...
America's big businesses are less and less American. They're going abroad for sales and
employees. That's one reason they've showed record-breaking profits in 2010 while
creating almost no American jobs. Consider one of the most popular products for Christmas
gifts of all time - Apple's iPhone. Researchers from the Asian Development Bank Institute have
dissected an iPhone, whose wholesale price is around $179, to determine where the money
actually goes. Only about $11 of that iPhone goes to American workers, mostly researchers and
designers. Even old-tech American companies made big money abroad in 2010 - and created
scads of jobs there. General Motors, for example, is now turning a nice profit, and American
investors are bullish about its future. That doesn't mean GM will be creating lots more blue-collar
jobs in America, though. 2010 was a banner year for GM's foreign sales - already two-thirds of its
total sales, and rising. In October, GM became the first automaker to sell more than 2 million cars
a year in China. The company is now making more cars in China than in the United States.
Meanwhile, back home in the United States, GM has slashed its labor costs. New hires are
brought in at roughly half the wages and benefits of former GM employees, under a two-tier wage
structure accepted by the United Auto Workers. Almost all of GM's U.S. suppliers have also cut
their payrolls.
Note: Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at UC Berkeley
and the author of the new book Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. He blogs at
www.robertreich.org.
Firms' lobbying push comes amid rancor on TSA use of airport full-body
scanners
About eight of every 10 registered lobbyists who work for scanner-technology companies
previously held positions in the government or Congress, most commonly in the homeland
security, aviation or intelligence fields, a Washington Post review of lobbying-disclosure forms and
other data shows. Industries routinely employ well-connected lobbyists to seek favorable
legislation and regulations in the nation's capital. But the extent of the connections to the
federal government is particularly notable given the relatively small size of the scanner
industry, which is dominated by half a dozen specialized businesses with heavy
investments in airport and border security technology. The roster of lobbyists for L-3
Communications includes former U.S. senator Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-N.Y.) and Linda Daschle, a
former federal aviation official who is married to Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), a former Senate
majority leader. L-3 has won nearly $900 million worth of TSA business, including for its
"millimeter-wave" machines used for airport body scans. Former homeland security chief Michael
Chertoff, a longtime advocate for increased use of passenger scanners, worked until recently as a
consultant for Rapiscan, which provides "backscatter" X-ray scanners to the TSA. Privacy and civil
liberties advocates and other critics argue that the industry's lobbying ties have encouraged a
frenzy of TSA spending on technologies that are often untested or ineffective.
here and here.
Cuomo lashes out at Ernst & Young

2010-12-21, Reuters blog
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/12/21/cuomo-lashes-out-at-ernst-yo...
Excerpts from complaint by New York State Attorney General (and Governor-Elect) Andrew
Cuomo: E&Y [Ernst and Young] substantially assisted Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., now
bankrupt, to engage in a massive accounting fraud, involving the surreptitious removal of tens of
billions of dollars of securities from Lehmans balance sheet in order to create a false impression of
Lehmans liquidity, thereby defrauding the investing public. As the financial crisis deepened in
2007 and 2008 and Lehmans liquidity problems intensified, E&Y ... assisted Lehman in defrauding
the public about the Companys deteriorating financial condition, particularly its leverage. As the
public auditor for Lehman, E&Y had the absolute obligation to ensure that Lehmans financial
statements ... did not mislead the public. Instead of fulfilling this obligation ... E&Y sat by silently
while Lehman deceived the public by concealing [fraulent] transactions and misrepresenting the
Companys leverage. By doing so, E&Y directly facilitated a major accounting fraud, and
helped Lehman mislead the public as to its true financial condition. E&Y, which reaped over
$150 million in fees from Lehman, must be held accountable for its role in this fraud.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources detailing the fraud that led to the financial crisis and
bailout of Wall Street by taxpayers, click here.
$2tn debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US cities

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/20/debt-crisis-threatens-us-cities
More than 100 American cities could go bust next year as the debt crisis that has taken down
banks and countries threatens next to spark a municipal meltdown, a leading analyst has warned.
Meredith Whitney, the US research analyst who correctly predicted the global credit crunch,
described local and state debt as the biggest problem facing the US economy, and one that could
derail its recovery. "Next to housing this is the single most important issue in the US and certainly
the biggest threat to the US economy," Whitney [said]. "There's not a doubt on my mind that
you will see a spate of municipal bond defaults. You can see fifty to a hundred sizeable
defaults more. This will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of defaults."
American cities and states have debts in total of as much as $2tn. US states have spent nearly
half a trillion dollars more than they have collected in taxes, and face a $1tn hole in their pension
funds, said the CBS programme, apocalyptically titled The Day of Reckoning.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from major media sources on the dire impacts of the financial
crisis and government bailout of financial capitalists at taxpayers' expense, click here.
For $250M, Nigeria drops bribery charges against Cheney, Halliburton

2010-12-17, USA Today
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/12/for-250m-nige...
Nigeria announced today that in exchange for $250 million, the African nation has dropped
bribery charges against Dick Cheney, eight others and Halliburton, the oil-services
company he headed before becoming vice president. African and U.S. media say Halliburton
and Cheney have not commented on the deal, which the head of Nigeria's anti-corruption agency
said was offered by Texas-based Halliburton. As The Wall Street Journal points out, "U.S.
regulators collected $1.28 billion in penalties and criminal fines in the Bonny Island case after
settling charges of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that bans the bribery of
foreign officials to obtain business." Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission, said that the $250 million would include roughly $130 million frozen in a
Swiss bank, and that remainder would be paid as fines, Agence France-Presse reported Tuesday.
But a source told AFP $100 million was in Switzerland and $30 million was in Monaco, saying the
money was paid to an intermediary but never passed on as part of the bribery scheme.
Note: It sounds like Cheney and Halliburton basically bribed their way out of a potentially very
damaging court case. For lots more from major media sources on corporate and government
corruption, click here and here.
Bank of America to pay $137 million in state fraud cases

Bank of America will pay $137.3 million to settle allegations that it defrauded schools, hospitals
and dozens of other state and local government organizations, federal officials said [on December
7]. The settlement stems from a long-running investigation into misconduct in the municipal bond
business that raises money for localities to pay for public services. Bank of America is accused of
depriving local organizations of millions of dollars by engaging in illegal behavior when investing
the proceeds of municipal bond sales. The bank is paying $107.8 million to these organizations in
restitution, $25 million to the Internal Revenue Service for abuses related to the tax-free status of
municipal bonds and $4.5 million to state attorneys general for costs related to their investigations.
A number of bankers and other professionals from a variety of financial firms have pleaded guilty in
the probe, which centered on companies conspiring to win municipal securities business in
violation of statutes requiring fair competition. The banking giant is accused of taking part in a
conspiracy in which it and other banks paid kickbacks to win the business of municipalities
seeking to invest the proceeds of bond sales before the money is ready to be spent.
Note: For key reports on financial fraud from reliable sources, click here.
A Real Jaw Dropper at the Federal Reserve

2010-12-02, Yahoo News/Huffington Post
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20101202/cm_huffpost/791091
As a result of an amendment that I was able to include in the Wall Street reform bill, we have
begun to lift the veil of secrecy at the Fed. It is unfortunate that it took this long, and it is a shame
that the biggest banks in America and Mr. Bernanke fought to keep this secret from the American
public every step of the way. But, the details on this bailout are now on the Federal Reserve's
website. This is a major victory for the American taxpayer and for transparency in government.
After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and
jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America.
What have we learned so far from the disclosure of more than 21,000 transactions? We have
learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout signed into law by President George W.
Bush turned out to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars in
near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal Reserve doled out to
every major financial institution in this country.
Note: The author is Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). For key reports from reliable sources on the
massive federal bailout of the biggest banks and financial firms, click here.
Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/economy/24econ.html
The nations workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.
American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter,
according to a Commerce Department report. That is the highest figure recorded since the
government began keeping track over 60 years ago. The next-highest annual corporate profits
level on record was in the third quarter of 2006, when they were $1.655 trillion. Corporate profits
have been doing extremely well for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008,
profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history. As a
share of gross domestic product, corporate profits also have been increasing, and they now
represent 11.2 percent of total output. That is the highest share since the fourth quarter of 2006,
when they accounted for 11.7 percent of output.
Note: Long-term unemployment is at a record high, yet corporations are raking in record profits.
With record profits, why aren't corporations hiring more new employees? For many reports from
reliable souces on corporate profiteering, click here.
Disciplined doctors receiving pharmaceutical funds

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/17/MNJU1GDLRF.DTL
About 48 of the more than 1,730 California doctors who received money from pharmaceutical
companies over the past 21 months have been the subject of disciplinary action, a database
compiled by the investigative news organization ProPublica found. While that represents less than
3 percent of the California doctors who take pharmaceutical money, the fact that drug companies
are paying those doctors - some of whom have multiple disciplinary actions - for their expertise
calls into question how closely these companies vet the physicians who serve as the
spokespeople for their drugs. California doctors have received $28.6 million from top
pharmaceutical companies since 2009, with at least three physicians collecting more than
$200,000 and 36 others making more than $100,000 for promoting drug firm products. That
cash flowing from drug companies to doctors has raised ethical concerns from some observers. "If
they're getting as much money from pharmaceutical companies as they do for being a doctor, what
are they really? Are they working for a pharmaceutical company, or are they being a doctor?"
asked Lisa Bero, a pharmacy professor at UCSF who studies conflicts of interest in medicine and
research.
Note: For a detailed analysis of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry by a highly-respected
doctor, click here.
Ex-Glaxo Executive Is Charged in Drug Fraud

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/health/10glaxo.html
In a rare move, the Justice Department on Tuesday announced that it had charged a former vice
president and top lawyer for the British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline with making false statements
and obstructing a federal investigation into illegal marketing of the antidepressant Wellbutrin for
weight loss. This is absolutely precedent-setting this is really going to set people
s hair on fire, said Douglas B. Farquhar, a Washington lawyer. This is indicative of
the F.D.A. and Justice strategy to go after the very top-ranking managing officials at
regulated companies. The indictment accuses the Glaxo official, Lauren C. Stevens of
Durham, N.C., of lying to the Food and Drug Administration in 2003, by writing letters, as associate
general counsel, denying that doctors speaking at company events had promoted Wellbutrin for
uses not approved by the agency. Ms. Stevens made false statements and withheld
documents she recognized as incriminating, including slides the F.D.A. had sought during its
investigation, the indictment stated. The company was cooperating fully with a federal investigation
into allegations of illegal sales and marketing of Wellbutrin. Last year, it set aside $400 million to
resolve the case, which is still pending. Two weeks ago, in an unrelated case, GlaxoSmithKline
agreed to pay $750 million to the government to settle civil and criminal complaints that it sold
tainted or ineffective products from a large manufacturing facility in Puerto Rico.
Note: Even with fines in the hundreds of millions of dollars assessed to many of the large
pharmaceuticals, why isn't more being done? See what one of the top doctors in the US revealed
about corruption in health care at this link.
Pilots Refusing to Use Full Body Scanners or Submit to Patdown

2010-11-09, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/major-pilots-unions-rebel-tsa-screening-rules-ur...
Two of the largest pilots' unions in the nation are urging commercial pilots to rebel against current
airport screening rules. In late October, the Transport Security Administration implemented more
invasive patdown rules. Travelers and pilots were faced with a new dilemma -- have a revealing,
full-body scan or what some are calling an X-rated patdown. Pilots are piping mad over the
options, saying the full-body scanners emit dangerous levels of radiation and that the alternative
public patdown is disgraceful for a pilot in uniform. Some pilots have said they felt so violated after
a patdown, they were unfit to fly. The patdowns, implemented Oct. 29, allow TSA officers to pat
down passengers with the front of their hands, instead of the backs of their hands. A security
expert who demonstrated the new procedure on a mannequin for ABC News explained the
changes. "You go down the body and up to the breast portion," said Charles Slepian of the
Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center. "If it's a female passenger, you're going to see if there's
anything in the bra." The new patdown protocol could be used at any of the nation's 450 airports
on passengers who require additional screening. Tens of thousands of passengers are submitted
to patdowns and full-body scanners every day. More than 300 full-body scanners are being used at
65 airports across the country.
Note: And what about the general public having to submit to being groped?
What a scientist didn't tell the New York Times about his study on bee
deaths
2010-11-08, CNN News
http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm
Few ecological disasters have been as confounding as the massive and devastating die-off of the
world's honeybees. The phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- in which disoriented
honeybees die far from their hives -- has kept scientists, beekeepers, and regulators desperately
seeking the cause. The long list of possible suspects has included pests, viruses, fungi, and also
pesticides, particularly so-called neonicotinoids, a class of neurotoxins that kills insects by
attacking their nervous systems. For years, their leading manufacturer, Bayer Crop Science, a
subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG (BAYRY), has tangled with regulators
and fended off lawsuits from angry beekeepers who allege that the pesticides have disoriented
and ultimately killed their bees. A cheer must have gone up at Bayer on Thursday when a frontpage New York Times article, under the headline "Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery,"
described how a newly released study pinpoints a different cause for the die-off: "a fungus tagteaming with a virus." The Bayer pesticides, however, go unmentioned. What the Times article
did not explore -- nor did the study disclose -- was the relationship between the study's lead
author, Montana bee researcher Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, and Bayer Crop Science. In recent
years Bromenshenk has received a significant research grant from Bayer to study bee
pollination.
Note: Read the full, revealing article to learn how money often corrupts science. For lots more
from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
Glaxo to Pay $750 Million for Sale of Bad Products

GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug giant, has agreed to pay $750 million to settle criminal and civil
complaints that the company for years knowingly sold contaminated baby ointment and an
ineffective antidepressant the latest in a growing number of whistle-blower lawsuits that drug
makers have settled with multimillion-dollar fines. Altogether, GlaxoSmithKline sold 20 drugs
with questionable safety that were made at a huge plant in Puerto Rico that for years was
rife with contamination. Cheryl D. Eckard, the companys quality manager, asserted in
her whistle-blower suit that she had warned Glaxo of the problems but the company fired
her instead of addressing them. Among the drugs affected were Paxil, an antidepressant;
Bactroban, an ointment; Avandia, a troubled diabetes drug; Coreg, a heart drug; and Tagamet, an
acid reflux drug. Justice Department officials announced the settlement in a news conference
Tuesday afternoon in Boston, saying a $150 million payment to settle criminal charges was the
largest such payment ever by a manufacturer of adulterated drugs. The outcome also provides
$600 million in civil penalties. The share to the whistle-blower will be $96 million, one of the highest
such awards in a health care fraud case.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on corporate corruption and criminality, click here.
Documentary 'Inside Job' only tells part of story

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/24/BUAV1G0LEA.DTL
"Inside Job," as the movie title implies, sees the 2008 financial meltdown, its causes and ongoing
catastrophic consequences, as the work of crooks. Crooks as in members of the financial services
industry. Aided and abetted by ... administrations of both political stripes, ratings agencies and
regulators, all of whom were committed to an ideology that enabled larceny on a grand scale. The
documentary, written, produced and directed by Bay Area high-tech entrepreneur turned filmmaker
Charles Ferguson, opened in Bay Area cinemas [on October 22]. Even if you've read through the
growing pile of books, congressional hearings and material generated by the Financial Crisis
Inquiry Commission, it has plenty to remind you why you are furious, all over again. If further proof
is needed, the film effectively demolishes the "who knew?" argument proffered by Goldman Sachs
Group CEO Lloyd Blankfein and his peers. And it makes a convincing case that much of the
obscenely compensated financial services industry has been rotten to the core for
decades, but is yet to be held truly accountable for activities, both immoral and illegal.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the criminal practices of the largest financial
corporations and regulatory agencies which led to the current economic crisis, click here.
Big Oil money can influence research, study claims

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/14/BAHR1FSR2B.DTL
Research universities that accept millions of dollars from oil companies have failed to shield
themselves from corporate influence, according to a new study that faults UC Berkeley, UC Davis,
Stanford and seven others. Such cozy relationships give energy companies too much control in
deciding what research to fund and what faculty should study, says the report from the Center for
American Progress, "Big Oil Goes to College". The contracts ... give more control to companies
that foot the bill than to researchers, argues the report's author, Jennifer Washburn. "We want to
see university research translate into commercial technology, but we don't want the
research itself to be directed by individual corporations," she told The Chronicle. "They
shouldn't turn California's flagship universities into the research arm of a private
corporation." The report found that industry control over research is "poorly defined" in UC Davis'
long-term contract with Chevron Technology Ventures. It says industry shares control with faculty
at UC Berkeley, and control is fully corporate at Stanford. The report also says none of the three
California contracts "requires peer review when selecting faculty research projects."
Note: For lots more from major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.
Public 'misled' by drug trial claims

2010-10-13, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11521873
Doctors and patients are being misled about the effectiveness of some drugs because
negative trial results are not published, experts have warned. Writing in the British Medical
Journal, they say that pharmaceutical companies should be forced to publish all data, not
just positive findings. The German team give the example of the antidepressant reboxetine,
saying publications have failed to show the drug in a true light. Reboxetine (Edronax), made by
Pfizer, is used in many European countries, including the UK. But its rejection by US drug
regulators raised doubts about its effectiveness, and led some to hunt for missing data. This is not
the first time a large drug company has come under fire about its published drug trial data.
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was criticised for failing to raise the alarm on the risk
of suicidal behaviour associated with its antidepressant Seroxat. GSK has also been forced to
defend itself over allegations about hiding negative data regarding another of its drugs, Avandia,
which is used to treat diabetes. "Our findings underline the urgent need for mandatory publication
of trial data," [the researchers] say in the BMJ. They warn that the lack of all information means
policy makers are unable to make informed decisions. In the US, it is already a requirement that all
data - both positive and negative - is published.
Note: For a powerful summary of government/corporate corruption in the pharmaceutical industry
by a respected former editor of a major medical journal, click here.
U.S. companies buy back stock in droves as they hold record levels of
cash
For months, companies have been sitting on the sidelines with record piles of cash. Now they're
starting to deploy some of that money - not to hire workers or build factories, but to prop up their
share prices. Sitting on these unprecedented levels of cash, U.S. companies are buying back their
own stock in droves. So far this year, firms have announced they will purchase $273 billion of their
own shares, more than five times as much compared with this time last year, according to Birinyi
Associates, a stock market research firm. But the rise in buybacks signals that many
companies [do not plan to] spend their cash on the job-generating activities that could
produce economic growth. "They don't know what they want to do with all the cash they're
sitting on," said Zachary Karabell, president of RiverTwice Research. Historically low interest
rates are also prompting some companies to borrow to repurchase shares. Microsoft, for instance,
borrowed $4.75 billion last month by issuing new bonds at rock-bottom interest rates and
announced it would use some of that money to buy back shares. The company already has nearly
$37 billion in cash. A share buyback is a quick way to make a stock more attractive to Wall Street.
It improves a closely watched metric known as earnings per share, which divides a company's
profit by the total number of shares on the market. Such a move can produce a sudden burst of
interest in a stock, improving its price.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the massive profiteering by corporate recipients of
government financial largesse, click here.
White House squelched worst-case estimates of BP spill

2010-10-06, Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/06/1861031/report-white-house-squelched-wo...
Government scientists wanted to tell Americans early on how bad the BP oil spill could get, but the
White House denied their request to make the worst-case models public, a report by the staff of
the national panel investigating the spill said Wednesday. Although not a final report, it could raise
questions over whether the Obama administration tried to minimize the extent of the BP oil spill,
the worst man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history. The staff paper said that
underestimating the flow rates "undermined public confidence in the federal government's
response" by creating the impression that the government was either incompetent or
untrustworthy. The paper said that the loss of trust "fuels public fears." In a separate report,
the commission's staff concluded that despite the Coast Guard's insistence that it was always
responding to the worst-case scenario, the failure to have an accurate flow rate slowed the
response and lulled Obama administration officials into a false belief that the spill would be
controlled easily. The first report said that the "decision to withhold worst-case discharge figures"
may have been made at a high level. It said that in late April or early May, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration "wanted to make public some of its long-term, worst-case
discharge models for the Deepwater Horizon spill, and requested approval to do so from the White
House's Office of Management and Budget. Staff was told that the Office of Management and
Budget denied NOAA's request."
Note: For key reports on government corruption, click here.
After Growth, Fortunes Turn for Monsanto

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05monsanto.html
Monsanto, the giant of agricultural biotechnology, has been buffeted by setbacks this year that
have prompted analysts to question whether its winning streak of creating ever more expensive
genetically engineered crops is coming to an end. The latest blow came last week, when early
returns from this years harvest showed that Monsantos newest product, SmartStax corn, which
contains eight inserted genes, was providing yields no higher than the companys less expensive
corn, which contains only three foreign genes. Monsanto has already been forced to sharply cut
prices on SmartStax and on its newest soybean seeds, called Roundup Ready 2 Yield, as sales
fell below projections. Sales of Monsantos Roundup, the widely used herbicide, has collapsed this
year under an onslaught of low-priced generics made in China. Weeds are growing resistant to
Roundup, dimming the future of the entire Roundup Ready crop franchise. And the Justice
Department is investigating Monsanto for possible antitrust violations. Until now,
Monsantos main challenge has come from opponents of genetically modified crops, who
have slowed their adoption in Europe and some other regions. Now, however, the skeptics
also include farmers and investors who were once in Monsantos camp.
Note: For those who are not aware of how Monsanto executives are quite consciously
endangering your health, click here.
American Companies Wrest Big Earnings From Lower Revenue

U.S. companies are rebounding quickly from the recession and posting near-historic profits, the
result of aggressively re-tooling their operations to cope with lower revenue and an uncertain
outlook. An analysis by The Wall Street Journal found that companies in the Standard & Poor's
500-stock index posted second-quarter profits of $189 billion, up 38% from a year earlier and their
sixth-highest quarterly total ever, without adjustment for inflation. For all U.S. companies, the
Commerce Department estimates second-quarter after-tax profits rose to an annual rate of $1.208
trillion, up 3.9% from the first quarter and up 26.5% from a year earlier. That annual rate is the
highest on record, though it doesn't account for inflation. As a percentage of national income, aftertax profits were the third-highest since 1947, surpassed only by two quarters in 2006, near the
peak of the last economic expansion. The data indicate that big companies are recovering from the
downturn faster and more strongly than the overall economy, helping send stock prices higher this
year. To achieve that performance, companies laid off hundreds of thousands of workers,
closed less-profitable units, shifted work to cheaper regions and streamlined processes.
Despite the hefty profits, executives aren't expected to boost spending on new employees,
products and equipment anytime soon. "We've focused on permanent changes that won't have
to be undone as sales improve," said John Riccitiello, chief executive of Electronic Arts.
Note: For highly revealing reports on income inequality, click here.
Questionable U.S. spending after gulf oil spill

2010-09-14, San Francisco Chronicle /Associated Press
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/13/MN641FD4LP.DTL
The federal government hired a New Orleans man for $18,000 to appraise whether news stories
about its actions in the gulf oil spill were positive or negative for the Obama administration, which
was keenly sensitive to comparisons between its response and former President George W.
Bush's much-maligned reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The government also spent $10,000 for
just over three minutes of video showing a routine offshore rig inspection for news
organizations but couldn't say whether any ran the footage. While most of the contracts
don't raise alarms, some could provide ammunition for critics of government waste. Among
all the contracts, perhaps none is more striking than the Coast Guard's decision to pay $9,000 per
month for two months to John Brooks Rice of New Orleans, an on-call worker for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, under a no-bid contract to monitor media coverage from late
May through July. Rice told the AP that he compiled print and video news stories and offered his
subjective appraisal of the tone of the coverage. "From reading and watching the media I would
create reports," he said. "I reported either positive coverage, negative coverage, misinformation
coverage."
Probe Circles Globe to Find Dirty Money

An intelligence analyst named Eitan Arusy [at the district attorney's office in Manhattan] began
studying a slim lead. Suspicious money was flowing to and from an Iranian nonprofit. Mr. Arusy's
probe, later merged with a Justice Department inquiry, ultimately widened to some of Europe's
vaunted banks, helping spark a global inquiry that found they actively evaded U.S. law in aiding
sanctioned countries, banks or other enterprises move some $2 billion undetected. Nine banks
have been caught up in the probe. These weren't rogue operations. The investigators discovered
that the banks ran dedicated units to systematically aid the undetected transfer of money
through the U.S. banking system. They did that by removing identifying coding on fund
transfers so they could evade automated U.S. bank computer systems designed to spot money
flowing from a sanctioned state. The far-reaching inquiry started small. Mr. Arusy arrived at the
district attorney's office in 2005 to help ferret out illegal financing tied to the Middle East. Though
the office prosecutes everyday crime, it carved out a role infiltrating crimes tied to the city's
financial markets and institutions. Its expertise dates to the 1990s, when it led the investigation of
Bank of Credit & Commerce International, or BCCI, which collapsed in a fraud and moneylaundering scandal.
Note: For a treasure trove of articles from reliable sources revealing the criminality of many major
Goldman reveals where bailout cash went

2010-07-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2010-07-24-goldman-bailout-c...
Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas
banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public [on July 23]. Goldman
Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena
from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia. Goldman Sachs received $5.55 billion from the government in fall
of 2008 as payment for then-worthless securities it held in AIG. Goldman had already hedged its
risk that the securities would go bad. It had entered into agreements to spread the risk with the 32
entities named in Friday's report. Overall, Goldman Sachs received a $12.9 billion payout from the
government's bailout of AIG, which was at one time the world's largest insurance company.
Goldman Sachs also revealed to the Senate Finance Committee that it would have received $2.3
billion if AIG had gone under. Other large financial institutions, such as Citibank, JPMorgan
Chase and Morgan Stanley, sold Goldman Sachs protection in the case of AIG's collapse.
Those institutions did not have to pay Goldman Sachs after the government stepped in with
tax money. Shouldn't Goldman Sachs be expected to collect from those institutions "before they
collect the taxpayers' dollars?" Grassley asked. "It's a little bit like a farmer, if you got crop
insurance, you shouldn't be getting disaster aid."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the Wall Street bailout by taxpayers, click here.
BP oil spill Corexit dispersants suspected in widespread crop damage

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ybenjamin/detail??blogid=150&entry_id=65552
Just when you thought the damage BP could cause was limited to beaches, marshes, oceans,
people's livelihoods, birds and marine life, there's more. BP's favorite dispersant Corexit 9500 is
being sprayed at the oil gusher on the ocean floor. Corexit is also being air sprayed across
hundreds of miles of oil slicks all across the gulf. There have been widespread reports of oil
cleanup crews reporting various injuries including respiratory distress, dizziness and headaches.
Corexit 9500 is a solvent originally developed by Exxon. Corexit is four times more toxic than oil
(oil is toxic at 11 ppm (parts per million), Corexit 9500 at only 2.61ppm). In a report written by Anita
George-Ares and James R. Clark for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. titled "Acute Aquatic
Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview," Corexit 9500 was found to be one of the most
toxic dispersal agents ever developed. According to the Clark and George-Ares report, Corexit
mixed with the higher gulf coast water temperatures becomes even more toxic. The UK's Marine
Management Organization ... banned Corexit ... from a list of approved treatments for oil
spills in the U.K. more than a decade ago. The simple question I ask is: If the UK bans
Corexit ... why the hell are we using it on American waters?
Federal approval still flowing for flawed Gulf drilling plans

2010-06-18, Miami Herald/McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/18/1688759/federal-approval-still-flowing....
Despite President Barack Obama's promises of better safeguards for offshore drilling,
federal regulators continue to approve plans for oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico
with minimal or no environmental analysis. The Department of Interior's Minerals Management
Service has signed off on at least five new offshore drilling projects since June 2, when the
agency's acting director announced tougher safety regulations for drilling in the Gulf, a McClatchy
review of public records has discovered. Three of the projects were approved with waivers
exempting them from detailed studies of their environmental impact the same waiver the
MMS granted to BP for the ill-fated well that's been fouling the Gulf with crude for two months.
Environmental groups [say] the administration is allowing oil companies to proceed with drilling
plans that may be just as flawed as BP's, which concluded that a major spill was "unlikely" and that
the company was equipped to manage even the worst-case blowout. "It's just outrageous," said
Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation
organization. "The whole world is screaming and ... they're just continuing to move this stuff
through the system."
Note: For abundant reports from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
BP chief Tony Hayward sold shares weeks before oil spill

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7804922/BP-c...
Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on
the Deepwater Horizon rig burst, causing an environmental disaster. Mr Hayward, whose pay
package is 4 million a year, then paid off the mortgage on his familys mansion in Kent,
which is estimated to be valued at more than 1.2 million. His decision ... means he avoided
losing more than 423,000 when BPs share price plunged after the oil spill began six
weeks ago. Since he disposed of 223,288 shares on March 17, the companys share
price has fallen by 30 per cent. About 40 billion has been wiped off its total value. The spill,
which has still not been stemmed, has caused a serious environmental crisis and is estimated to
cost BP up to 40 billion to clean up. Mr Hayward, whose position is thought to be under threat,
risked further fury by continuing plans to pay out a dividend to investors next month.
Oil's gruesome toll on wildlife slowly emerging

2010-06-03, USA Today
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/oils-gruesome...
Images and reports of oil-drenched wildlife that's dead or slowly dying are starting to emerge. At
least one cleanup worker alleges that BP is trying to keep such disturbing pictures out of the public
eye. CBS News has gut-wrenching video of oil-covered birds in distress, including the brown
pelican, Louisiana's state bird, which for many years was on the Endangered Species List. An
unidentified cleanup worker took a New York Daily News reporter on a clandestine tour of the
hidden wildlife carnage in Louisiana, accusing the BP of keeping the media at bay. "There is a lot
of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don't want these pictures of the
dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It's important to
me that people know the truth about what's going on here," the contractor said. "The things
I've seen: They just aren't right. All the life out here is just full of oil. When you see some of the
things I've seen, it would make you sick," the contractor said. "No living creature should endure
that kind of suffering." More oil-soaked birds arrived at cleaning stations today, as Louisiana
officials continued to patrol the marshes and beaches.
Secretive Bilderberg Club ready for protests

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7142478.ece
The thing about the Bilderberg groups top secret meetings: you never know quite what is going on
behind the police checkpoints. Across the world, secretaries to the rich and the powerful have
blocked out the next three days in their bosses calendars for their annual gathering, this time at
the Dolce in Sitges, one of Spains most exclusive resorts. Normally, every minute of their working
lives is accounted for but, each year, a couple of hundred of the worlds financial elite and the more
business-friendly members of the political class disappear from view. It is all terribly confidential
breathe a word about it and youre out of the club but the Bilderberg watcher Daniel Estulin
claims to have a copy of the agenda. The big question this time around is whether the euro will
survive. They are afraid that the countries in trouble will leave and the euro will fall apart,
said Mr Estulin. The Bilderbergers are nervous that the erosion of the euro could nudge the
world back into recession while public services cuts could trigger unrest and radicalise the
political climate.
Note: For more information from reliable sources on Bilderberg, click here. For lots more on
powerful secret societies that make decisions in total secrecy that affect the whole world, click
here.
World arms spending soars

2010-06-01, Seattle Times/Associated Press
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012006095_arms02.html
Despite the global financial crisis, world military spending almost doubled in the past decade
to reach $1.53 trillion in 2009, a Swedish think-tank said Wednesday. In its 2010 yearbook, the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, said that spending between 2008 and
2009 grew 5.9 percent. The United States remains the biggest spender, accounting for some 54
percent of the increase, the report said. China, which became the second biggest military spender
in 2008, retained that position last year. Data also showed that Asia and Oceania are increasing
their military expenditures the fastest. The global financial turmoil had little effect on
governments upgrading their armed forces, even in countries whose economies were hit
the hardest, SIPRI spokesman Sam Perlo-Freeman said. Perlo-Freeman, who heads the thinktank's military-expenditure project [commented] "For major or intermediate powers such as the
USA, China, Russia, India and Brazil military spending represents a long-term strategic choice,
which they are willing to make even in hard economic times."
Note: Very few major media picked up this eye-opening article. With all of the threatened budget
cuts around the world, why is no one talking about the fact that military spending has literally
doubled in the last 10 years? Could it be that those who own the media don't want you to know this
information? For a powerful essay by a top US general revealing the deeper causes of war and
military spending, click here.
Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the
Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades. In fact, more oil is
spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms
every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a ... disaster which ... has made
headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted
on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the
price we have to pay for drilling oil today. With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the
crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural
communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years
over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely
believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil
leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution. "If this Gulf accident had happened in
Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the
writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the
delta."
Gulf oil spill is public health risk, environmental scientists warn

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/28/bp-gulf-oil-spill-pollution
Prolonged exposure to crude oil and chemical dispersants is a public health danger, environmental
scientists warned [on May 27]. With no immediate end in sight, there were growing concerns over
the effects on public health of a prolonged exposure to the oil as well as to the more than
3,640,000 litres (800,000 gallons) of chemical dispersants sprayed on the slick. Environmentalists
and fishing groups in Louisiana say prolonged exposure to the oil, in the form of tiny airborne
particles as well as dispersants, could be wreaking devastating damage on public health. They
also accuse BP of threatening to sack workers who try to turn up for clean-up duty wearing
protective respirators, and the Obama administration of refusing to release results of air and water
quality tests that would show the impact of crude oil and dispersants on the environment. Wilma
Subra, a chemist who has served as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency, said
"Every time the wind blows from the south-east to the shore, people are being made sick. It
causes severe headaches, nausea, respiratory problems, burning eyes and sore throats."
Long-term health effects include neurological disorders and cancer. Subra said there was
even greater concern for those recruited to lay booms and skim crude off the water, since they
were in closer proximity to the oil and the chemical dispersants. Clint Guidry, of the Louisiana
Shrimp Association, has accused BP of threatening to sack workers who turn up wearing
respirators.
BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill

2010-05-26, Newsweek magazine
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/26/the-missing-oil-spill-photos.html
As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining
that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being
thwarted by local and federal officials working with BP who are blocking access to the
sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host
of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and
Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access
to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers. Last week, a CBS TV
crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach. On Monday, Mother
Jones published this firsthand account of one reporters repeated attempts to gain access to cleanup operations on oil-soaked beaches, and the telling response of local law enforcement.
Note: To see some of the devastating photos from this tragic spill, click here. For an abundance of
revealing articles from major media sources on government and corporate collusion and
U.S. oil drilling regulator ignored experts' red flags on environmental

risks
The federal agency responsible for regulating U.S. offshore oil drilling repeatedly ignored warnings
from government scientists about environmental risks in its push to approve energy exploration
activities quickly, according to numerous documents and interviews. Minerals Management
Service officials, who can receive cash bonuses in the thousands of dollars based in large
part on meeting federal deadlines for leasing offshore oil and gas exploration, frequently
changed documents and bypassed legal requirements aimed at protecting the marine
environment, the documents show. This has dramatically weakened the scientific checks on
offshore drilling that were established under landmark laws such as the Marine Mammal Protection
Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Interviews and documents show numerous
examples in which senior officials discounted scientific data and advice -- even from scientists
elsewhere in the federal government -- that would have impeded oil and gas companies drilling
offshore.
Note: For an abundance of revealing articles from major media sources on government and
corporate collusion and corruption, click here and here.
Blowout: The Deepwater Horizon Disaster

The gusher unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico continues to spew crude oil. There are no reliable
estimates of how much oil is pouring into the gulf. But it comes to many millions of gallons since
the catastrophic blowout. Mike Williams, one of the last crewmembers to escape the inferno ...
says the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon [oil rig] had been building for weeks in a series of
mishaps. The tension in every drilling operation is between doing things safely and doing them
fast; time is money and this job was costing BP a million dollars a day. But Williams says there was
trouble from the start - getting to the oil was taking too long. Williams said they were told it would
take 21 days; according to him, it actually took six weeks. With the schedule slipping, Williams
says a BP manager ordered a faster pace. Williams says there was an accident on the rig that
has not been reported before. He says, four weeks before the explosion, the rig's most vital
piece of safety equipment was damaged ... the blowout preventer, or BOP. The spill has cost
BP about $500 million so far. But consider, in just the first three months this year, BP made profits
of $6 billion. There are plenty of accusations to go around that BP pressed for speed, Halliburton's
cement plugs failed, and Transocean damaged the blowout preventer. Through all the red flags,
they pressed ahead.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on corporate and government collusion and
Rig firms $270m profit from deadly spill

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resou...
The owner of the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and causing a
giant slick, has made a $270 million profit from insurance payouts for the disaster. The
revelation by Transocean, the worlds biggest offshore driller, will add to the political storm
over the disaster. The company was hired by BP to drill the well. The accounting gain arose
because the $560 million insurance policy Transocean took out on its Deepwater Horizon rig was
greater than the value of the rig itself. Transocean has already received a cash payment of $401
million with the rest due in the next few weeks. The windfall, revealed in a conference call with
analysts, will more than cover the $200 million that Transocean expects to pay to survivors and
their families and for higher insurance costs. The total cost of the clean-up and compensation
could reach $30 billion, according to some estimates. Transocean said that virtually all of that must
be covered by BP and two smaller partners, Anadarko Petroleum and Mitsui of Japan.
Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/07/1619046/since-spill-feds-have-given-27....
Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has
granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies
of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico. The waivers were granted despite President
Barack Obamas vow that his administration would launch a relentless response effort to stop the
leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday the day after Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling The exemptions, known
as categorical exclusions, were granted by the Interior Departments Minerals
Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP
exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko
Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet. Is there a moratorium on off shore drilling
or not? asked Peter Galvin, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, the
environmental group that discovered the administrations continued approval of the exemptions.
Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred and nothing appears to
have changed.
Feds Let BP Avoid Filing Blowout Plan For Gulf Rig

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/06/ap/business/main6467264.shtml
Petrochemical giant BP didn't file a plan to specifically handle a major oil spill from an uncontrolled
blowout at its Deepwater Horizon project because the federal agency that regulates offshore rigs
changed its rules two years ago to exempt certain projects in the central Gulf region, according to
an Associated Press review of official records. The Minerals Management Service, an arm of the
Interior Department known for its cozy relationship with major oil companies, says it issued the rule
relief because some of the industrywide mandates weren't practical for all of the exploratory and
production projects operating in the Gulf region. Robert Wiygul, an Ocean Springs, Miss.,
environmental lawyer, said the lack of a blowout scenario "is kind of an outrageous omission,
because you're drilling in extremely deep waters, where by definition you're looking for very large
reservoirs to justify the cost. If the MMS was allowing companies to drill in this ultra-deep
situation without a blowout scenario, then it seems clear they weren't doing the job they
were tasked with," he said. "The MMS can't change the law just by telling people that they
don't have to comply with it."
New U.S. Push to Regulate Internet Access

In a move that will stoke a battle over the future of the Internet, the federal government plans to
propose regulating broadband lines under decades-old rules designed for traditional phone
networks. The decision, by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski,
is likely to trigger a vigorous lobbying battle, arraying big phone and cable companies and their
allies on Capitol Hill against Silicon Valley giants and consumer advocates. He wants to adopt "net
neutrality" rules that require Internet providers like Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. to treat all traffic
equally, and not to slow or block access to websites. Internet giants like Google Inc.,
Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc., which want to offer more Web video and other highbandwidth services, have called for stronger action by the FCC to assure free access to
websites. Cable and telecommunications executives have warned that using land-line phone rules
to govern their management of Internet traffic would lead them to cut billions of capital expenditure
for their networks, slash jobs and go to court to fight the rules. Consumer groups hailed the
decision ..., an abrupt change from recent days, when they [had] bombarded the FCC chairman
with emails and phone calls imploring him to fight phone and cable companies lobbyists.
For $520 Million, AstraZeneca Will Settle Case Over Marketing of a Drug
AstraZeneca has completed a deal to pay $520 million to settle federal investigations into
marketing practices for its blockbuster schizophrenia drug, Seroquel. AstraZeneca becomes the
fourth pharmaceutical giant in the last three years to admit to federal charges of illegal
marketing of antipsychotic drugs, a lucrative category of medications that have quickly
risen to the top of United States sales charts. Aggressive sales and promotional practices have
helped expand the use of powerful new antipsychotic drugs for children and the elderly. The
company, based in London, has been accused of misleading doctors and patients by playing up
favorable research and not adequately disclosing studies that show Seroquel increases the risk of
diabetes. AstraZeneca still faces more than 25,000 civil lawsuits filed on behalf of patients
contending that the company did not disclose the drugs risks. As a result of aggressive
marketing, Seroquel has been increasingly used for children and elderly people for indications not
approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The drugs have caused rapid weight gain in
children, and side effects including deaths have prompted warnings against giving the drugs to
elderly patients for dementia.
Note: For more on corporate corruption, click here.
Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets

2010-04-15, CBS News
At a warehouse in New Jersey, 6,000 used copy machines sit ready to be sold. Almost every one
of them holds a secret. Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive ...
storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine. In the
process, it's turned an office staple into a digital time-bomb packed with highly-personal or
sensitive data. If you're in the identity theft business it seems this would be a pot of gold. "The
type of information we see on these machines with the social security numbers, birth certificates,
bank records, income tax forms," John Juntunen said, "that information would be very valuable."
Juntunen's Sacramento-based company Digital Copier Security developed software called
"INFOSWEEP" that can scrub all the data on hard drives. He's been trying to warn people about
the potential risk - with no luck. All the major [digital copier] manufacturers told us they offer
security or encryption packages on their products. One product from Sharp automatically erases
an image from the hard drive. It costs $500. But evidence keeps piling up in warehouses that many
businesses are unwilling to pay for such protection, and that the average American is completely
unaware of the dangers posed by digital copiers.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on threats to privacy, click here.
The Great Federal Reserve Bank Con Job

2010-04-13, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36233217#36233217
[video transcript:] In America today we are getting closer to fully exposing the greatest con and
cover-up in this [country's] history. It involves our banks, the federal reserve, our congress, and, of
course, you and me. Here's how the con went down. The bankers were operating under an
implicit guarantee from the godfather [at] the Federal Reserve, in the form of guaranteed
interest rates, guaranteed cheap money exclusively for the con men. Then, Chairman
Greenspan, the godfather, would agree to hold those rates -- let's say 2% -- for as far as the eye
could see. The banks, or bankers, the con men, would borrow that money from the Federal
Reserve, let's say 2%, and turn around and lend it back to [you], and let's say 6%. That
encouraged the patsies, you and me, to be drawn into the con because 6% looks like a pretty low
rate. Low rates for houses, low rates for cars. Heck, you could join a health club, make that into
payments, turn that into bonds, and of course promises of a higher-than-average return for those
managing teachers and policemen's and judge's pension funds that are buying into the con as
well. And here exactly is where the con comes in. As you and I both know, the banks had no
money. They were getting it from the Federal Reserve. It's funny money.
Note: For abundant reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of what may be the
greatest con job in financial history, click here.
A Pfizer Whistle-Blower Is Awarded $1.4 Million

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03pfizer.html
A federal jury has awarded $1.37 million in damages to a former Pfizer scientist who
claimed she was sickened by a genetically engineered virus at a company laboratory and
then fired for raising safety concerns. The case ... has raised questions about the safety of
workers in the biotechnology industry and about regulations to protect them. The jury ruled that
Pfizer had violated laws protecting free speech and whistle-blowers by retaliating against Ms.
McClain. The case has attracted the attention of some worker advocates, who say it shows the
risks workers in biological labs encounter and the lack of rules to protect them. Ms. McClain, for
example, claimed she encountered many difficulties in her attempts to learn the genetic content of
the virus she suspected had infected her because it was protected as a trade secret. [She] had
complained about what she saw as safety problems, including desks next to where biological
experiments were done. Jeremy Gruber, president of the Council for Responsible Genetics, an
advocacy group urging discussion of the ethical implications of biotechnology, applauded the
award. I personally believe that Becky McClain is really the canary in the coal mine, he said.
Regulations have not kept pace with the explosion of research.
Note: Why are they creating genetically engineered viruses that can sicken people? Could there
be some credence to those who claim the AIDS virus was manufactured?
Feds found Pfizer too big to nail

2010-04-02, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/02/pfizer.bextra
Imagine being charged with a crime, but an imaginary friend takes the rap for you. That is
essentially what happened when Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, was
caught illegally marketing Bextra, a painkiller that was taken off the market in 2005 because
of safety concerns. It's a story about the power major pharmaceutical companies have even
when they break the laws intended to protect patients. The story begins in 2001, when Bextra was
about to hit the market. The drug was part of a revolutionary class of painkillers known as Cox-2
inhibitors that were supposed to be safer than generic drugs, but at 20 times the price of ibuprofen.
Pfizer and its marketing partner, Pharmacia, planned to sell Bextra as a treatment for acute pain,
the kind you have after surgery. But in November 2001, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
said Bextra was not safe for patients at high risk of heart attacks and strokes. The FDA approved
Bextra only for arthritis and menstrual cramps. It rejected the drug in higher doses for acute,
surgical pain. Promoting drugs for unapproved uses can put patients at risk by circumventing the
FDA's judgment over which products are safe and effective. For that reason, "off-label" promotion
is against the law. Internal company documents show that Pfizer and Pharmacia (which Pfizer later
bought) used a multimillion-dollar medical education budget to pay hundreds of doctors as
speakers and consultants to tout Bextra.
Food, Inc.
2010-04-00, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/pov/foodinc
In "Food, Inc.", filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the
highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of
our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now
controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the
livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have
bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even
tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli the harmful bacteria that
causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread
obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. Featuring
interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan The Omnivore's
Dilemma along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farms' Gary Hirschberg
and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, "Food, Inc." reveals surprising and often shocking truths
about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going
from here.
Note: For reviews of this important documentary, click here.
Keeping drug companies honest

2010-03-12, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1003/12/acd.01.html
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Pfizer, Incorporated, with 116,000
employees and revenues of $50 billion a year, is the world's largest pharmaceutical company. The
government was building a case against Pfizer for fraudulently marketing a drug that had raked in
hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, a painkiller called Bextra. Pfizer aggressively marketed it
for uses and in doses not approved by the FDA. But our investigation found another story, ... about
the power major pharmaceutical companies have, even when they break the laws intended to
protect patients. In 2001, ... the FDA approved Bextra, but only for limited use and only for
menstrual cramps and arthritis. Even so, Pfizer sales reps promoted it, illegally, for surgical pain in
higher doses, uses the FDA had rejected due to safety concerns. Doctors responded. Instead of
prescribing, say, ibuprofen at pennies a pill, they prescribed Bextra at nearly $3 a pill for all kinds
of unapproved uses. Sales were very good. GLENN DEMOTT, FORMER PFIZER SALES REP:
They said that the district manager approved it. They think it might not be legal, but if they don't
make their numbers, they're not going to keep their job anyway. GRIFFIN : It brought Pfizer
nearly $1 billion in profits. And it cost us all, because Medicare, Medicaid, and our private
insurance picked up much of the tab. MICHAEL LOUCKS, FORMER FEDERAL
PROSECUTOR: If the company is able to push the product for the unapproved indication,
then it makes a mockery, if you will, of the FDA approval process.
Note: For an even deeper analysis on Mercola.com titled "Pulling Back the Curtain on the
Organized Crime Ring That Is the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel," click here. You can also watch a
video of the above CNN segment at that link. For more on pharmaceutical industry corruption, see
Medical groups assail patenting of human genes

2010-02-03, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-02-03-Genesuit03_ST_N.htm
In a case that could have far-reaching implications for medical research and health care based on
genetics, groups representing thousands of doctors, scientists and patients went to court ... to
argue that no one should be able to patent human genes, a question that has long been
controversial in scientific circles. The case involves a Utah company, Myriad Genetics, and the
University of Utah Research Foundation, which in 1994 isolated the DNA sequence for the BRCA1
and later the BRCA2 genes, mutations of which can greatly increase a woman's chance of
developing breast and ovarian cancer. Myriad sells a test for the genes. The American Civil
Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation ... argued before federal district court Judge
Robert Sweet that patents on genes are unconstitutional. The U.S. Patent Office allows genes to
be patented as soon as someone isolates the DNA by removing it from the cell, says ACLU
attorney Sandra Park. "We're arguing that isolating it does not make it patentable. It's a
natural phenomenon, and the Supreme Court has always said natural phenomena are not
patentable."
Note: For many key investigations from major media sources into corporate and governmental
threats against civil liberties, click here.
Swine flu false pandemic claim

2010-01-11, The Sun (One of the largest-circulation dailies in the UK)
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2803049/Swine-flu-false-pandemic-cl...
A leading health expert says the swine flu scare was a "false pandemic" led by drugs companies
that stood to make billions from vaccines. Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of
Europe, claims major [drug] firms organised a "campaign of panic" to put pressure on the
World Health Organisation to declare a pandemic. He believes it is "one of the greatest
medicine scandals of the century" and has called for an inquiry. Dr Wodarg said: "It's just a
normal kind of flu. It does not cause a tenth of deaths caused by the classic seasonal flu. The
great campaign of panic we have seen provided a golden opportunity for representatives from labs
who knew they would hit the jackpot in the case of a pandemic being declared. We want to clarify
everything that brought about this massive operation of disinformation. We want to know who
made decisions, on the basis of what evidence, and precisely how the influence of the
pharmaceutical industry came to bear on the decision-making." He added: "A group of people in
the WHO is associated very closely with the pharmaceutical industry."
Note: For powerfully revealing reports of the corruption regarding swine flu and previous health
scares, click here.
Bankers Get $4 Trillion Gift From Barney Frank

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a48c8UpUMxKQ
H.R. 4173 [is] the financial-reform legislation passed earlier this month by the House of
Representatives. The Senate has yet to pass its own reform plan. The baby of Financial Services
Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the House bill is meant to address everything from too-big-tofail banks to asleep-at-the-switch credit-ratings companies to the protection of consumers from
greedy lenders. At 1,279 pages, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a real
slog. While banks opposed the legislation, they should cheer for its passage by the full
Congress in the New Year: There are huge giveaways insuring the government will again
rescue banks and Wall Street if the need arises. For all its heft, the bill doesnt once mention
the words too-big-to-fail, the main issue confronting the financial system. Instead, it supports the
biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency
funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for no-more-bailouts talk. The bill also allows
the government, in a crisis, to back financial firms debts. Bondholders can sleep easy -- there are
more bailouts to come.
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable reports on the government bailout of Wall Street, click here.
Generics chafe under big pharma's reform shadow

2009-12-26, CNN/Reuters News
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/reuters/MTFH92863_2009-12-24_22-...
The massive U.S. Senate healthcare reform measure passed ... with support from the multibillion
drug industry, but makers of cheaper generic rivals are feeling left out in the cold. Generic
drugmakers face several obstacles in the bill backed by Democrats that they worry will dampen a
potential increase in use even as more people gain access to health insurance and prescription
medicines. The hurdles include extensive protections against generic versions of pricey
biotech medicines, an incentive for Medicare recipients to use more brand-name drugs, and a
possible end to payments from brandname makers to delay the launch of copy-cat medicines.
"The bill passed by the Senate unfortunately amounts to a treasure trove to brand drug
companies," said Generic Pharmaceutical Association President Kathleen Jaeger. Bill Marth,
chief executive of Teva's North American operations, said Democrats missed a chance to further
boost [generics] use: "It's frustrating," he said. "Maybe some people have just lost sight of what the
bill is supposed to do."
Note: For a powerful analysis by Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of the New England
Journal of Medicine, of the corrupt relationship between the biggest pharmaceutical companies
and the federal government, click here. Drug company lobbyists who contribute millions of dollars
to the elections campaigns of Congress members have a huge influence which is often detrimental
to public health.
Libel gag on talk of 'medical hurricane'

2009-12-20, Times of London
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6962816.ece
A healthcare firm is seeking to silence a Danish academic from expressing doubts about
one of its products by using Englands draconian libel laws. Two years ago in a conference
room in the Randolph hotel in Oxford, Henrik Thomsen ... one of Europes leading radiologists,
revealed how patients treated at his hospital had subsequently contracted a rare and potentially
fatal disease. Thomsen and other doctors at his Copenhagen University hospital were baffled as to
why 20 kidney patients who had been given routine scans were afflicted by a disorder
nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) in which the skin gradually swells, thickens and tightens.
Some sufferers were confined to wheelchairs. At least one died. There was no known cure. It was
confirmed that all those who had fallen ill with NSF had been given the same drug in advance of a
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. Omniscan was used to enhance the images produced by
the scan. The product was sold around the world and was manufactured by GE Healthcare, a
subsidiary of General Electric, one of the worlds largest corporations. Thomsen ... now refuses to
speak anywhere in England on the possible risks of Omniscan. The reason is that he faces
another kind of storm: GE Healthcare is suing him in the High Court for libel. GE has already
racked up costs of more than 380,000 pursuing the respected academic. Thomsen will have
to pay the firms costs if he loses the case.
Bill Moyers on Health Care Reform

2009-12-18, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12182009/watch.html
[Bill Moyers:] Something's not right here. One year after the great collapse of our financial system,
Wall Street is back on top while our politicians dither. As for health care reform, you're about to
be forced to buy insurance from companies whose stock is soaring, and that's just dandy
with the White House. It's capital. Raw money, mounds of it, buying politicians and policy
as if they were futures on the hog market. Some of the big insurance companies, Well Point,
Cigna, United Health, all surged to a 52 week high in their share prices this week when it was clear
there'd be no public option in the health care bill going through Congress right now. What does that
tell you? ROBERT KUTTNER: Their strategy was cut a deal with the insurance companies, the
drug industry going in. And the deal was, we're not going to attack your customer base, we're
going to subsidize a new customer base. And that script was pre-cooked so it's not surprising that
this is what comes out the other side. Once the White House made this deal with the insurance
companies, the public option was never going to be anything more than a fig leaf. And over the
summer and the fall, it got whittled down, whittled down, whittled down to almost nothing and now
it's really nothing.
here.
The Secret US War in Pakistan

2009-11-23, The Nation magazine
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091207/scahill
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in
the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a
secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda
operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside
Pakistan. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret
US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator
strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus. The
previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the
CIA assassination program. "This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source. "They
are two separate beasts." Blackwater's presence in Pakistan is "not really visible, and that's why
nobody has cracked down on it," said the source. Blackwater's operations in Pakistan, he said, are
not done through State Department contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. "It's
Blackwater via JSOC, and it's a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis. Some of
these strikes are attributed to [the CIA], but in reality it's JSOC. So when you see some of these
hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC strikes."
Note: Don't miss this key report in it's entirety. Why haven't other major media outlets mentioned
the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) drone operations in Pakistan, running parallel to
the CIA's?
Intel Wants Brain Implants in Its Customers' Heads by 2020

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-11/intel-wants-brain-implants-c...
If the idea of turning consumers into true cyborgs sounds creepy, don't tell Intel researchers. Intel's
Pittsburgh lab aims to develop brain implants that can control all sorts of gadgets directly via brain
waves by 2020. The scientists anticipate that consumers will adapt quickly to the idea, and indeed
crave the freedom of not requiring a keyboard, mouse, or remote control for surfing the Web or
changing channels. They also predict that people will tire of multi-touch devices such as ...
iPhones. Turning brain waves into real-world tech action still requires some heavy decoding of
brain activity. The Intel team has already made use of MRI brain scans to match brain patterns
with similar thoughts across many test subjects. Plenty of other researchers have also tinkered in
this area. Toyota recently demoed a wheelchair controlled with brainwaves, and University of Utah
researchers have created a wireless brain transmitter that allows monkeys to control robotic arms.
There are still more implications to creating a seamless brain interface, besides having more
cyborgs running around. If scientists can translate brain waves into specific actions, there's
no reason they could not create a virtual world with a full spectrum of activity tied to those
brain waves. That's right -- we're seeing Matrix creep.
Chemicals in Our Food, and Bodies

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08kristof.html
Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. Its a synthetic estrogen that
United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies to the tune of six pounds
per American per year. More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and
scientists have linked it ... to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit
disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike. Now it turns out its in our food.
Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its
December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels
turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbells condensed chicken noodle soup,
and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans. The magazine also says it found BPA in the canned
liquid version of Similac Advance infant formula ... and in canned Nestl Juicy Juice. The BPA in
the food probably came from an interior coating used in many cans. More than 200 other studies
have shown links between low doses of BPA and adverse health effects, according to the Breast
Cancer Fund, which is trying to ban the chemical from food and beverage containers. The vast
majority of independent scientists those not working for industry are concerned about earlylife low-dose exposures to BPA, said Janet Gray, a Vassar College professor who is science
adviser to the Breast Cancer Fund.
Note: For more on BPA and other health issues, click here.
Outrage as Doctors' Group Allows Coca-Cola to Sponsor Health Advice

Advice about soft drinks and health from one of the nation's largest doctors groups will soon be
brought to you by Coke. The American Academy of Family Physicians has prompted outcry and
lost members over its new six-figure alliance with the Coca-Cola Co. The deal will fund educational
materials about soft drinks for the academy's consumer health and wellness Web site,
www.FamilyDoctor.org. "Coca-Cola, like other sodas, causes enormous suffering and
premature death by increasing the risks of obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, gout, and
cavities," Harvard University nutrition expert Dr. Walter Willett said in an e-mail. He said the
academy "should be a loud critic of these products and practices, but by signing with Coke their
voice has almost surely been muzzled." Dr. Henry Blackburn, a University of Minnesota public
health specialist, said the deal "will inevitably have a chilling effect on the focus of their message in
regards to sweet drinks."
Note: For more on corruption in the medical/corporate complex, click here.
Novartis Expects Swine Flu Boost In Q4

2009-10-22, New York Times/Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/10/22/business/business-uk-novartis.html
Swiss drugmaker Novartis said sales would grow faster than expected this year, even without a
shot in the arm of up to $700 million from its H1N1 swine flu pandemic vaccine. Third-quarter net
profit at Novartis ... nudged up 1 percent to $2.1 billion. This year is turning out to be better
than initially feared for Novartis and other major pharmaceutical companies, thanks to hefty
price increases and windfall sales arising from the H1N1 outbreak. Both Pfizer, the world's
biggest drugmaker, and Eli Lilly topped earnings forecasts this week. Roche reported a sharp jump
in sales of its Tamiflu drug for flu last week and analysts expect GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza will
also see strong sales in the third quarter. On the vaccine front, Glaxo, Sanofi-Aventis and
AstraZeneca are all expected to highlight an expected jump in fourth-quarter sales due to swine
flu. The H1N1 flu vaccine is expected to contribute about $400-700 million of sales in the fourth
quarter.
Note: Donald Rumsfeld personally made millions as a direct result of the avian flu scare a few
year ago. For more on this, click here. For more on pharmaceutical corporation profiteering from
swine flu vaccines, click here.
Why Is the UBS Whistle-Blower Headed to Prison?

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1928897,00.html
No one, including himself, would argue that Bradley Birkenfeld, 44, is a saint. But at the same time,
almost no one in the U.S. government would deny that Birkenfeld was absolutely essential to its
landmark tax-evasion case against Swiss banking giant UBS. The former UBS employee turned
whistle-blower exposed the previously hidden world of offshore tax shelters, which cheats the
Treasury out of about $100 billion a year. Thanks to his insider information, UBS was fined $780
million, and it promised to "exit entirely" from the U.S. tax-shelter business and to provide the
names of thousands of American tax dodgers, from which hundreds of millions of dollars still might
be collected. It also led to new tax treaties with the Swiss that should provide unprecedented tax
information in civil cases and better access to such data in criminal cases. Considering
Birkenfeld's help, many observers wonder why the Justice Department decided to arrest
and prosecute him. Many critics believe the decision to prosecute Birkenfeld, whom some
consider the most important whistle-blower in years, sends the worst possible message to
other financial-industry insiders who might be considering coming forward. The
Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington watchdog organization that has extensive
whistle-blower experience, says a chilling effect is already apparent: a senior executive at a
European bank that offers similar U.S. tax shelters is having second thoughts about going public
because of the Birkenfeld case.
Note: For lots more, including Obama's tight ties with UBS, see the New York Daily News article
here.
U.S. aid often misses targets in Afghanistan

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/04/MN8L19NHRM.DTL
When built in 2004, the agricultural storage facility in Nangarhar province was supposed to win the
hearts and minds of the Afghan people. The U.S. government paid for its construction along with
several other so-called "market centers" that would enable farmers to store crops and boost
exports to nearby Pakistan. But construction and design flaws left it unusable, one of many dozens
of similar failures in the country, critics say. Opponents say the Nangarhar project is just one
example of massive waste of taxpayer dollars in aid programs since the U.S.-led invasion ousted
the Taliban government in 2001. A Washington, D.C., company, Chemonics International, won the
bid for [a] $145 million program - known as Rebuilding Agricultural Markets Program, or RAMP that ran from 2003 to 2006. Chemonics then subcontracted the training and construction work to
other Americans, who in turn subcontracted to numerous Afghan companies who did the work. At
each level, the subcontractors deducted costs for salaries, office expenses and security. Only a
small percentage of the original RAMP contract money actually reached farmers and other
intended recipients. The exact percentage may never be known because neither Chemonics
nor the U.S. government tracks such figures. Moreover, opponents note, many constructed
market centers have deteriorated or are not being used for their original purpose. Afghanistan's
foreign minister, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, sharply criticized how U.S. aid is spent in his country. He
estimates that only "$10 or $20" of every $100 reaches its intended recipients.
A Little Judge Who Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/nyregion/31judge.html
Every week, the nations mightiest banks come to his court seeking to take the homes of New
Yorkers who cannot pay their mortgages. And nearly as often, the judge says, they file foreclosure
papers speckled with errors. He plucks out one motion and leafs through: a Deutsche Bank
representative signed an affidavit claiming to be the vice president of two different banks. His office
was in Kansas City, Mo., but the signature was notarized in Texas. And the bank did not even own
the mortgage when it began to foreclose on the homeowner. Im a little guy in Brooklyn who
doesnt belong to their country clubs, what can I tell you? he says, adding a shrug for punctuation.
I wont accept their comedy of errors. The judge, Arthur M. Schack, 64, fashions himself a judicial
Don Quixote, tilting at the phalanxes of bankers, foreclosure facilitators and lawyers who file
motions by the bale. He has tossed out 46 of the 102 foreclosure motions that have come before
him in the last two years. And his often scathing decisions, peppered with allusions to the Croesuslike wealth of bank presidents, have attracted the respectful attention of judges and lawyers from
Florida to Ohio to California. At recent judicial conferences in Chicago and Arizona, several
panelists praised his rulings as a possible national model. Justice Schack, like a handful of state
and federal judges, has taken a magnifying glass to the mortgage industry. Justice Schacks take
is straightforward, and sends a tremor through some bank suites: If a bank cannot prove
ownership, it cannot foreclose. If you are going to take away someones house, everything
should be legal and correct, he said. Im a strange guy I dont want to put a family on
the street unless its legitimate.
Banks 'Too Big to Fail' Have Grown Even Bigger

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/08/28/ST2009082800437...
When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the
nation's leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their
failure would ruin the entire financial system. Today, the biggest of those banks are even bigger.
The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A
series of federally arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable
firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions,
giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit. J.P. Morgan
Chase ... now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of
America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a
result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks,
plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about
two of every three credit cards, federal data show. Concerns are twofold: that consumers will wind
up with fewer choices for services and that big banks will assume they always have the
government's backing if things go wrong. That presumed guarantee means large companies could
return to the risky behavior that led to the crisis if they figure federal officials will clean up their
mess. The worry for consumers is that the bailouts skewed the financial industry in favor of the big
and powerful. Fresh data from the FDIC show that big banks have the ability to borrow more
cheaply than their peers because creditors assume these large companies are not at risk of failing.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Doctors may refuse swine flu vaccine

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/24/doctors-refuse-swine-flu-vaccine
Many GPs, as well as their patients, may be reluctant to be immunised against swine flu once a
vaccine is developed, surveys suggest today. A survey of GPs published on Healthcare Republic,
the website of GP magazine, found that up to 60% of GPs may decline vaccination. Although the
numbers who responded were small 216 GPs they are in line with a much bigger survey of
nurses published a week ago by Nursing Times, which found that a third of 1,500 nurses would
refuse vaccination. A Canadian study published today in the journal Emerging Health Threats
suggests the public, too, will have reservations that must be overcome if a vaccination campaign is
to be successful in the autumn or winter. The study, which used focus groups to establish the likely
response of different people to a vaccine, pointed to the need to win over people who believe that
alternative therapies and a good diet are a better option than vaccines. But the biggest problem
in persuading people and healthcare professionals to have the jab may be the relative
shortage of evidence from trials about its safety and efficacy. Because of the urgent need for
a vaccine, testing will be limited. Among the GPs who responded to the survey published by
Healthcare Republic, 29% said they would not choose to have the vaccine and 29% said they
were unsure whether or not they would. The biggest reason given by those who said they would
not have it was concern that the safety trials would not be adequate: 71.3% said they were
"concerned that the vaccine has not yet been through sufficient trials to guarantee safety". Half
50.4% said they "believe that swine flu is too mild to justify taking the vaccine".
Note: Yet the Massachusetts Senate has now passed a bill which would impose fines up to $1,000
and jail up to 30 days for those who refuse vaccines or quarantine orders in a health emergency.
Other states are considering similar legislation. For lots more on the real dangers of the swine flu
vaccine, click here.
Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/business/economy/21inequality.html
The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent.
They began to pull away from everyone else in the 1970s. By 2006, income was more
concentrated at the top than it had been since the late 1920s. The recent news about resurgent
Wall Street pay has seemed to suggest that not even the Great Recession could reverse the rise
in income inequality. But economists say and data is beginning to show that a significant
change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last
two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and
income anytime soon. Last year, the number of Americans with a net worth of at least $30 million
dropped 24 percent. Few economists expect the country to return to the relatively flat income
distribution of the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, they say that inequality is likely to remain significantly
greater than it was for most of the 20th century. In 2007, the top one ten-thousandth of
households took home 6 percent of the nations income, up from 0.9 percent in 1977. It was
the highest such level since at least 1913, the first year for which the I.R.S. has data. The
top 1 percent of earners took home 23.5 percent of income, up from 9 percent three
decades earlier.
Note: Two researchers into income inequality, Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, recently
released a detailed report showing that income inequality in 2007, just before the real estate
bubble burst and the financial crisis unfolded, was the highest since 1917. To read their report,
"Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States," click here. For analysis of
the report, click here.
Oil lobby to fund campaign against Obama's climate change strategy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/aug/14/us-lobbying
The US oil and gas lobby are planning to stage public events to give the appearance of a
groundswell of public opinion against legislation that is key to Barack Obama's climate change
strategy. A key lobbying group will bankroll and organise 20 "energy citizen" rallies in 20 states. In
an email obtained by Greenpeace, Jack Gerard, the president of the American Petroleum Institute
(API), outlined what he called a "sensitive" plan to stage events during the August congressional
recess to put a "human face" on opposition to climate and energy reform. "Our goal is to energise
people and show them that they are not alone," said Cathy Landry, for API, who confirmed that the
memo was authentic. The email from Gerard lays out ambitious plans to stage a series of
lunchtime rallies to try to shape the climate bill that was passed by the house in June and will
come before the Senate in September. "We must move aggressively," it reads.The API strategy
also extends to a PR drive. Gerard cites polls to test the effectiveness of its arguments against
climate change legislation. It offers up the "energy citizen" rallies as ready-made events,
noting that allies which include manufacturing and farm alliances as well as 400 oil and
gas member organisations will have to do little more than turn up. "API will provide the
up-front resources," the email said. "This includes contracting with a highly experienced events
management company that has produced successful rallies for presidential campaigns."
Note: For important reports from major media sources on global warming and oil company
manipulation of public perception, click here.
Glaxo profits soar as drug firm charges NHS 6 for swine flu vaccine
that costs 1 to make
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1201450/GlaxoSmithKline-accused-profi...
Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline was accused of cashing in on swine flu after it revealed its
profits have risen 10 per cent since the virus was identified. It announced profits yesterday of
2.1billion in the past three months. Sales of vaccines and antiviral drugs could push the figure up
even higher. GSK chief executive Andrew Witty admitted the swine flu crisis would be a
'significant financial event for the company'. Sales of the company's Relenza inhaler, an
alternative to Tamiflu used by pregnant women among others, are expected to top 600million.
And this figure could be boosted by up to 2billion once deliveries of the swine flu vaccine begin in
September. But Mr Witty denied Europe's biggest drugs company was gearing up to cash in. He
admitted it was planning to charge the UK 6 a jab, but vociferously denied reports it cost a pound
to manufacture. Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'This is clearly a
bonanza for the company. This is a staggeringly substantial return. I will write to the National Audit
Office to determine whether we got the best deal for the taxpayer.' Susi Squire of the TaxPayers'
Alliance said: 'We need an assurance from the Government that they have got the most
competitive rate out of GlaxoSmith-Kline.' Geoff Martin of London Health Emergency said: 'It's a
scandal that any company could use the swine flu pandemic as an opportunity to jack up profits.
'The Government should step in and impose a windfall tax on private companies that have hit the
jackpot as a result of the flu crisis.'
Note: For more on profiteering in the vaccination industry, click here.
With Big Profit, Goldman Sees Big Payday Ahead

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/business/15goldman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...
After all that federal aid, a resurgent Goldman Sachs is on course to dole out bonuses that could
rival the record paydays of the heady bull-market years. Goldman posted the richest quarterly
profit in its 140-year history and, to the envy of its rivals, announced that it had earmarked
$11.4 billion so far this year to compensate its workers. At that rate, Goldman employees
could, on average, earn roughly $770,000 each this year or nearly what they did at the height of
the boom. Senior Goldman executives and bankers would be paid considerably more. Only three
years ago, Goldman paid more than 50 employees above $20 million each. In 2007, its chief
executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, collected one of the biggest bonuses in corporate history. The latest
headline results $3.44 billion in profits were powered by earnings from the banks
secretive trading operations and exceeded even the most optimistic predictions. But Goldmans
sudden good fortune, coming only a month after the bank repaid billions of bailout dollars, raises
questions for Washington policy makers. In Washington, some lawmakers warned on Tuesday that
a quick return to such high pay would stoke public anger as the Obama administration tried to
overhaul financial regulation. They warned that Wall Street lobbyists were already trying to block
financial reforms. People all over this country feel an incredible frustration that they are seeing
their neighbors lose their jobs and the government is helping companies like A.I.G. and Goldman
Sachs and then the next thing they are reporting huge profits and huge compensation, said
Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio and a member of the banking committee. I think
people are incredulous that this system is working this way.
Note: For a treasure trove of revelations from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the
Wall Street bailout, click here.
Wendell Potter on Profits Before Patients

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/profile.html
Last month, testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and
Transportation by a former health insurance insider named Wendell Potter made news even before
it occurred: CBS NEWS headlined: "Cigna Whistleblower to Testify." After Potter's testimony the
industry scrambled to do damage control: "Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of
transparency." In his first extended television interview since leaving the health insurance industry,
Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations
for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry.
Potter began his trip from health care spokesperson to reform advocate while back home in
Tennessee. Potter attended a "health care expedition," a makeshift health clinic set up at a
fairgrounds, and he tells Bill Moyers, "It was absolutely stunning. When I walked through the
fairground gates, I saw hundreds of people lined up, in the rain. It was raining that day. Lined up,
waiting to get care, in animal stalls. Animal stalls." Looking back over his long career, Potter sees
an industry corrupted by Wall Street expectations and greed. According to Potter, insurers
have every incentive to deny coverage every dollar they don't pay out to a claim is a
dollar they can add to their profits, and Wall Street investors demand they pay out less
every year. Under these conditions, Potter says, "You don't think about individual people. You
think about the numbers, and whether or not you're going to meet Wall Street's expectations."
Note: To educate yourself on this important issue, watch this revealing PBS Bill Moyers segment
available here.
Life-threatening disease is the price we pay for cheap meat

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-lif...
A swelling number of scientists believe swine flu has not happened by accident. No: they argue
that [it] is the direct result of our demand for cheap meat. So is the way we produce our food really
making us sick as a pig? The scientific evidence increasingly suggests that we have unwittingly
invented an artificial way to accelerate the evolution of these deadly viruses and pump them out
across the world. They are called factory farms. They manufacture low-cost flesh, with a side-dish
of viruses to go. In most swine farms today, 6,000 pigs are crammed snout-to-snout in tiny cages
where they can barely move, and are fed for life on an artificial pulp, while living on top of cesspools of their own stale faeces. The virus ... has a pool of thousands [of pigs], constantly infecting
and reinfecting each other. The virus can combine and recombine again and again. The
ammonium from the waste they live above burns the pigs' respiratory tracts, making it easier yet
for viruses to enter them. Better still, the pigs' immune systems are in free-fall. They are stressed,
depressed, and permanently in panic, making them far easier to infect. There is no fresh air or
sunlight to bolster their natural powers of resistance. They live in air thick with viral loads, and they
are exposed every time they breathe in. As Dr Michael Greger, director of Public Health and
Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States, explains: "Put all this together,
and you have a perfect storm environment for these super-strains. If you wanted to create
global pandemics, you'd build as many of these factory farms as possible."
Note: For many important reports on health issues from reliable sources, click here.
Companies look to Swine Flu to drive profits

2009-04-29, ABC News
http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/national_world&id=6786340
Pharmaceutical stocks are skyrocketing on fears that a swine flu outbreak could go global.
Manufacturers of antiviral drugs [and] companies gearing up to produce a vaccine ... are turning
profits in an otherwise skittish and down market. Companies gearing up for swine flu, including
Roche, Gilead Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturers of the leading antiviral flu
medications, are best positioned to see a boost in profits if the disease escalates to epidemic
proportions, analysts said. Tamiflu ... was developed by Gilead and manufactured by Roche. Both
companies' share prices spiked soon after the U.S. government allowed for its stockpiles of the
drug to be made publicly available. Gilead stock surged to $47.53 at the end of the day Monday,
up 3.78 percent. Roche rose to $31.72, up 4.34 percent. The other major flu drug currently on the
market is Relenza, also stockpiled and released by the government, and manufactured by
GlaxoSmithKline. Shares of Glaxo closed surged Monday to $31.56, up 7.57 percent. Both Tamiflu
and Relenza are stockpiled by governments and in the case of an outbreak the companies are
often required to sell the drugs directly to the government at a discount. "Government
stockpiling is viewed as boon for profits. Though the government gets a discount and the
margins sold to the government are lower than those if they sold to Walgreens, from a
stock perspective it's an unexpected positive surprise," he said.
Note: Pharmaceutical companies make big bucks from scares like the avian flu and swine flu. Yet
are the recommended drugs really effective? Many studies say they are not. For analysis of
profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry during a previous flu scare, click here. See this link for
lots more.
Revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall

Street

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/transcript1.html
BILL MOYERS: For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of
Wall Street have reminded us that "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." In fact, the man
you're about to meet wrote a book with just that title. Bill Black, ... what's your definition of fraud?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I create trust in you, and
then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value." And as a result, there's
no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's
what we have. Well, The way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better.
Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you're a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing
you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination
creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you
rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it
inevitable that there's going to be a disaster down the road. BILL MOYERS: So you're ... saying
that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal
income, deliberately set out to make bad loans? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes. BILL MOYERS: If I
wanted to go looking for the parties to this, with a good bird dog, where would you send me?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, that's exactly what hasn't happened. We haven't looked, all right? You'd
look at the specialty lenders. The lenders that did almost all of their work in the sub-prime and
what's called Alt-A, liars' loans.
Note: William K. Black is the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the
savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. He is now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at
the University of Missouri. The video of this fascinating interview is available here. For a powerfully
revealing archive of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the financial bailout,
click here.
Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another $1 Trillion Bailout

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA
Public pension funds across the U.S. are hiding the size of a crisis thats been looming for years.
Retirement plans play accounting games with numbers, giving the illusion that the funds are
healthy. The paper alchemy gives governors and legislators the easy choice to contribute too little
or nothing to the funds, year after year. The misleading numbers posted by retirement fund
administrators help mask this reality: Public pensions in the U.S. had total liabilities of $2.9 trillion
as of Dec. 16, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Their total
assets are about 30 percent less than that, at $2 trillion. With stock market losses this year,
public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trillion. That lack of funds
explains why dozens of retirement plans in the U.S. have issued more than $50 billion in
pension obligation bonds during the past 25 years -- more than half of them since 1997 -public records show. The quick fix for pension funds becomes a future albatross for taxpayers.
The public gets nothing from pension bonds -- other than a chance to at least temporarily avoid
paying for higher pension fund contributions. Pension bonds portend the possibility of steep tax
increases. By law, states must guarantee public pension fund debts. What appears to be a
riskless strategy is actually very risky, says David Zion, director of accounting research for New
York-based Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. If the returns on the pension bond-financed assets
dont exceed the cost of servicing the debt, the taxpayers bear the brunt.
Note: The risks to pension funds may require yet another huge public bailout. Where will the
money come from? For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Stimulus Plan Places New Limits on Wall St. Bonuses

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/business/economy/14pay.html?partner=rss&emc...
Buried deep inside the ... economic stimulus bill ... is some bitter medicine for companies that have
received financial bailout funds. Over staunch objections from the Obama administration, Senate
Democrats inserted a provision that would impose restrictions on executive bonuses at financial
institutions that are much tougher than those proposed 10 days ago by the Treasury Department.
The provisions would prohibit cash bonuses and almost all other incentive compensation for the
five most-senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies that receive
money under TARP. The restriction with the most bite would bar top executives from receiving
bonuses that exceed one-third of their annual pay. The provision, written by Sen. Chris Dodd, DConn., highlighted the growing wrath ... over the lavish compensation that top Wall Street firms
and big banks awarded to senior executives at the same time that many of the companies,
teetering on the brink of insolvency, received taxpayer-paid bailouts. "The decisions of certain
Wall Street executives to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers have seriously
undermined public confidence," Dodd said Friday. "These tough new rules will help ensure
that taxpayer dollars no longer effectively subsidize lavish Wall Street bonuses." Top
economic advisers to President Obama adamantly opposed the pay restrictions, according to
congressional officials.
Note: For powerfully revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Analyst who raised alarm about Madoff nine years ago lambasts
authorities
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/feb/04/analyst-fingered-madoff-9-yea...
The financial analyst who nine years ago discovered Bernard Madoff's multi-billion dollar ... fraud
scheme today lambasted US securities officials who ignored his warnings, calling for a shakeup of
the US securities and exchange commission's structure. Harry Markopolos, a Massachusetts
financial analyst who since 2000 several times sought to alert the SEC to Madoff's fraud, told a
House of Representatives committee that the agency should replace its lawyer-heavy enforcement
staff with senior securities professionals who have years of industry experience and can
understand cutting-edge financial instruments used by hedge fund traders. He said regulators
should give fraud investigators a pay incentive to unearth large fraud, and eliminate the turf wars
that he said kept New York-based regulators from heeding tips he fed to the Boston office.
Markopolos discovered Madoff's alleged malfeasance in May 2000, after he became
suspicious of his years-long record of success in all market conditions. Markopolos said it
took him about five minutes perusing Madoff's marketing materials to suspect fraud, and
another roughly four hours to develop mathematical models to prove it. He eventually
delivered a detailed case to securities regulators in Boston and followed up several times over the
next eight years as he continued to gather evidence. He said that important SEC officials in New
York and Boston brushed his reports aside. In testimony before members of the House financial
services committee, Markopolos described "an abject failure by the regulatory agencies we entrust
as our watchdog".
Bad bank + toxic debts = moral hazard x10

2009-02-02, MarketWatch.com
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Bad-bank-toxic-debt-one/story.aspx?guid...
BusinessWeek says Paulson/Bush & Co. wasted $350 billion in TARP money ... the Congressional
Budget Office and GOP say Obama & Co. will waste another $800 billion on "non-stimulus"
programs ... Nobel economist [Joseph Stiglitz] calls [the Bad Bank] plan "cash for trash" ...
Warning, you are entering a bizarre space-time continuum ... where Wall Street makes
random quantum leaps between metaphoric realities. In the "Lost" television series we're
transported into a parallel reality, a perfect metaphor for today's global economic
meltdown, which is misunderstood and grossly mismanaged. Wall Street crashed ... on the
"Lost Island ... of Manhattan," the former center of world banking. The collateral damage has been
enormous: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, global trade, Iceland. [Wall
Street's] clueless leaders ... are "Lost" with no bottom, no recovery, no strategy in sight. A new
president, a secretive Fed and an old Congress are throwing around taxpayer trillions like free
candy ... on top of Bush's "$10 Trillion Hangover" ...after a clueless Wall Street wrote off trillions in
toxic debt, then wasted $350 billion in TARP bailout money, buying $50 million private jets,
attending golf outings at exclusive resorts, spending millions on CEO's office renovations and
paying $18 billion in year-end bonuses. Hope masks denial: Even President Obama's consultant
[Warren] Buffett acknowledges that the proposed stimulus plan "might not work." The stimulus
might not work? What if this last bullet is a blank? Should you prepare for the worst-case scenario?
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Exxon Mobil sets record with $45.2 billion profit

2009-01-30, Miami Herald/Associated Press
http://www.miamiherald.com/business/nation/story/879748.html
Exxon Mobil Corp. ... reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, breaking its own record for a U.S.
company. The previous record for annual profit was $40.6 billion, which the world's largest publicly
traded oil company set in 2007. The extraordinary full-year profit wasn't a surprise given
crude's triple-digit price for much of 2008, peaking near an unheard of $150 a barrel in July.
Since then, however, prices have fallen roughly 70 percent amid a deepening global
economic crisis. In the fourth quarter alone crude tumbled 60 percent, prompting spending and
job cuts in an industry that was reporting robust, often record, profits as recently as last summer.
Irving, Texas-based Exxon said net income slid sharply to $7.8 billion, or $1.55 a share, in the
October-December period. That compared with $11.7 billion, or $2.13 a share, in the same period
a year ago, when Exxon set a U.S. record for quarterly profit. It has since topped that mark twice,
first in last year's second quarter and then with earnings of $14.83 billion in the third quarter.
Revenue in the most-recent quarter fell 27 percent to $84.7 billion. The industry went into
retrenchment toward the end of the year with demand falling. The company, which produces about
3 percent of the world's oil, said overall output fell 3 percent in the most-recent period. For the full
year, Exxon Mobil's massive profit amounted to $8.69 a share, versus $7.28 a share a year ago.
Note: How can it be said that this record-breaking profit "wasn't a surprise," when ethically we
would all expect the oil companies not to gouge consumers world-wide at the time when oil prices
were artificially driven to record highs? Why should the oil companies be allowed to rake in huge
profits causing the vast majority of us to suffer even greater losses at the gas pump? This is
generally called gross profiteering. Shouldn't these "windfall profits" be taxed away?
What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...
By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street except, that is, when the
bonuses arrived. Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of
the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the
now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for
the year. That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday
by the New York State comptroller. Some bankers took home millions last year even as their
employers lost billions. The comptrollers estimate, a closely watched guidepost of the annual
December-January bonus season, is based largely on personal income tax collections. It excludes
stock option awards that could push the figures even higher. The state comptroller, Thomas P.
DiNapoli, said it was unclear if banks had used taxpayer money for the bonuses, a possibility that
strikes corporate governance experts, and indeed many ordinary Americans, as outrageous. He
urged the Obama administration to examine the issue closely. The issue of transparency is a
significant one, and there needs to be an accounting about whether there was any taxpayer money
used to pay bonuses or to pay for corporate jets or dividends or anything else, Mr. DiNapoli said in
an interview.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
U.S. moving toward czarism, away from democracy

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/18/INGP158S4G.DTL
Every patriot should be concerned about the intensifying efforts to supplant democracy with
something far more authoritarian. Call it American czarism. Czars - i.e., policymakers granted
extralegal, cross-agency powers - have become increasingly prevalent in our government over the
past century. Until now, this slow lurch toward czarism has primarily reflected the ancient, almost
innate human desire for power and paternalistic leadership. In recent years, this culture of
"presidentialism," as Vanderbilt Professor Dana Nelson calls it, has justified the Patriot Act,
warrantless wiretaps and a radical theory of the "unitary executive" that aims to provide a
jurisprudential rationale for total White House supremacy over all government. But only in the past
three months has American czarism metastasized from a troubling slow-growth tumor to a
potentially deadly cancer. In October, Congress relinquished its most basic oversight powers and
gave Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sole authority to dole out billions of bailout dollars to Wall
Street. At the same time, it did nothing when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke used
fiats to commit $5 trillion worth of new money, loan guarantees and loosened lending
requirements ... all while he refused to tell the public who is receiving the largesse. Indeed,
the Economist magazine's prediction that the "economic crisis may increase the attractiveness of
the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism" is coming true right here at home, as we seem ever
more intent on replicating - rather than resisting - that model.
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Madoff's fund may not have made a single trade

http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2009/01/15/afx5928915.html
Bernie Madoff's investment fund may never have executed a single trade, industry officials
say, suggesting detailed statements mailed to investors each month may have been an
elaborate mirage in a $50 billion fraud. An industry-run regulator for brokerage firms said ...
there was no record of Madoff's investment fund placing trades through his brokerage operation.
That means Madoff either placed trades through other brokerage firms, a move industry officials
consider unlikely, or he was not executing trades at all. 'Our exams showed no evidence of trading
on behalf of the investment advisor, no evidence of any customer statements being generated by
the broker-dealer,' said Herb Perone, spokesman for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Each month, Madoff sent out elaborate statements of trades conducted by his broker-dealer. There
also appear to be discrepancies between monthly statements sent to investors and the actual
prices at which the stocks traded on Wall Street. To some, the numbers did not add up. About 10
years ago, Harry Markopolos, then chief investment officer at Rampart Investment Management
Co in Boston, asked risk management consultant Daniel diBartolomeo to run Madoff's numbers
after Markopolos tried to emulate Madoff's strategy. DiBartolomeo ran regression analyses and
various calculations, but failed to reconcile them. For a decade, Markopolos raised the issue with
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has come under fire in Congress in recent
weeks for failing to act on Markopolos's warnings.
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.
Eight Years of Madoffs

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11rich.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...
Three days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoffs Ponzi
scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off.
This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution
to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction a sinkhole of corruption,
cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and
abroad. The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal
history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special
Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among
other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into
believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a new Iraq. The $50 billion
... pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345
billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-fromtransparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat
Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have defined deviancy down in terms of how low a standard of
ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials.
Note: To read the draft of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction's
report, click here. To read the New York Times analysis of this important document, click here.
Katie Couric's Notebook: Bottled Water

2008-12-03, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-4646553-500803.htm
Take a walk down the street or through the park and you'll see them people of all ages toting
bottles of water. Last year, Americans drank nine billion gallons out of those little plastic bottles.
Sure, it's healthier than soda, but all that plastic is just as bad for the environment, creating an
estimated 1.5 million tons of waste each year. So, more and more places are banning bottled
water. Washington University in St. Louis will end almost all sales by the end of this semester. San
Francisco declared it a no-no in city offices last year. Other local governments may do the same.
Some brands, including Coca-Cola's Dasani and Pepsi's Aquafina, come from the tap and
supporters of these measures argue you're better off just filling a reusable container at the
water fountain for free. A cheap, calorie-free alternative that doesn't hurt the environment. Now,
I'll drink to that.
Note: For a powerful six-minute trailer to the movie "Tapped," which exposes the many scams
around bottled water, click here. For more on this, click here.
Credit-card industry may cut $2 trillion lines: analyst

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4B01HI20081201
The U.S. credit-card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months
due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending,
prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said. The credit card is the second key source of
consumer liquidity, the first being jobs, the Oppenheimer & Co analyst noted. "In other words, we
expect available consumer liquidity in the form of credit-card lines to decline by 45 percent."
Closing millions of accounts, cutting credit lines and raising interest rates are just some of the
moves credit card issuers are using to try to inoculate themselves from a tsunami of expected
consumer defaults. A consolidated U.S. lending market that is pulling back on credit is also posing
a risk to the overall consumer liquidity, Whitney said. Mortgages and credit cards are now
dominated by five players who are all pulling back liquidity, making reductions in consumer
liquidity seem unavoidable, she said. "We are now beginning to see evidence of broad-based
declines in overall consumer liquidity. Already, we have witnessed the entire mortgage market hit a
wall, and we believe it will, for the first time ever, show actual shrinkage over the next few months,"
she wrote. "In a country that offers hundreds of cereal and soda pop choices, the banking
industry has become one that offers very few choices", Whitney wrote in a note dated
November 30. "Pulling credit when job losses are increasing by over 50 percent year-over-year in
most key states is a dangerous and unprecedented combination, in our view," the analyst said.
Note: This article, in pointing out that the banking industry offers few choices for consumers, fails
to mention that the industry is rapidly becoming extremely concentrated, with major bank failures
and takeovers accelerating due to the financial crisis on Wall Street. And the bailout from the Fed
and Treasury has encouraged this concentration through huge tax breaks and risk protections. For
many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from reliable sources, click here.
Economic rescue could cost $8.5 trillion

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pricetag30-2008nov30,0,7549258.story
With its decision last week to pump an additional $1 trillion into the financial crisis, the government
eliminated any doubt that [it has] no hesitation in pledging to spend previously almost
unimaginable sums of money and running up federal budget deficits on a scale not seen since
World War II. Indeed, analysts warn that the nation's next financial crisis could come from the
staggering cost of battling the current one. Just last week, new initiatives added $600 billion to
lower mortgage rates, $200 billion to stimulate consumer loans and nearly $300 billion to
steady Citigroup, the banking conglomerate. That pushed the potential long-term cost of the
government's varied economic rescue initiatives, including direct loans and loan guarantees, to an
estimated total of $8.5 trillion -- half of the entire economic output of the U.S. this year. The
spending already has had a dramatic effect on the federal budget deficit, which soared to a record
$455 billion last year and began the 2009 fiscal year with an amazing $237-billion deficit for
October alone. Analysts say next year's budget deficit could easily bust the $1-trillion barrier. "I
didn't think we'd see that for a long time," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for
a Responsible Federal Budget. "There's a huge risk of another economic crisis, a debt crisis, once
we get on the other side of this one." Once the financial crisis eases, higher interest rates and
soaring inflation will be risks.
Citigroup gets a monetary lifeline from feds

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/24/BUST14B71M.DTL
The bailouts keep coming, and they seem to be getting worse for taxpayers. The deal worked out
over the weekend to prevent the collapse of Citigroup "is a terrible deal for taxpayers," says
Campbell Harvey, a Duke University global finance professor. "Some intervention was
necessary. But the terms of the intervention basically shafted the U.S. taxpayer." Under the
deal, the U.S. government will invest $20 billion in Citigroup preferred stock (on top of its previous
$25 billion capital injection from the Troubled Asset Relief Program) and guarantee up to $306
billion in mortgage and other assets. Citigroup would absorb the first $29 billion in losses on that
asset pool. Losses exceeding $29 billion would be shared 90 percent by the government and 10
percent by Citigroup. What do taxpayers get for taking on this risk? Citigroup will pay an 8 percent
dividend on the preferred stock or $560 million a year. By comparison, when Warren Buffett's
Berkshire Hathaway recently invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and $3 billion in General
Electric, it got preferred stock that pays a 10 percent dividend. The government also gets warrants
to purchase about $2.7 billion worth of Citigroup common stock at $10.61 per share. Citigroup's
shares closed at $5.95 per share Monday, up $2.18 from Friday. For the warrants to become
profitable, the common shares would have to nearly double.
Note: The answer to the question of what taxpayers get should be essentially nothing. Only
Citigroup shareholders will see the benefits mentioned, and very few taxpayers are shareholders.
Money is being thrown around like never before. For many revealing reports on the realities of the
Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions

2008-11-18, CNBC
Given the speed at which the federal government is throwing money at the financial crisis, the
average taxpayer, never mind member of Congress, might not be faulted for losing track. CNBC,
however, has been paying very close attention and keeping a running tally of actual
spending as well as the commitments involved. Try $4.28 trillion dollars. That's
$4,284,500,000,000 and more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation, based
on our computations from a variety of estimates and sources. Not only is it an astronomical
amount of money, it's a complicated cocktail of budgeted dollars, actual spending, guarantees,
loans, swaps and other market mechanisms by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and other
offices of government taken over roughly the last year, based on government data and news
releases. Strictly speaking, not every cent is a direct result of what's called the financial crisis, but
it is arguably related to it. Some 68-percent of the sum falls under the Federal Reserve's umbrella,
while another 16 percent is the under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, as defined under
the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, signed into law in early October. The TARP alone is
bigger than virtually any other US government endeavor dating back to the Louisiana Purchase.
Note: That's over $10,000 per man, woman, and child in the U.S. Click on the link above to view a
highly informative slideshow, the "Biggest Budget Items in US History," comparing the Wall Street
bailout to famous historic government expenditures, and a chart, the "Financial Crisis Balance
Sheet," detailing the many components of the bailout. For many key articles revealing the hidden
realities of the bailout, click here.
Europe's secret plan to boost GM crop production

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/europes-secret-plan-to-...
Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to
spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents
obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal. The documents - minutes of a series of private
meetings of representatives of 27 governments - disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of
the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them. The secret meetings
were convened by Jose Manuel Barroso, the pro-GM President of the Commission, and chaired by
his head of cabinet, Joao Vale de Almeida. The prime ministers of each of the EU's 27 member
states were asked to nominate a special representative. Neither the membership of the group, nor
its objectives, nor the outcomes of its meetings have been made public. But The IoS has obtained
confidential documents, including an attendance list and the conclusions of the two meetings held
so far on 17 July and just two weeks ago on 10 October written by the chairman. The list
shows that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany sent
close aides. Britain was represented by Sonia Phippard, director for food and farming at the
Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The conclusions reveal the discussions
were mainly preoccupied with how to speed up the introduction of GM crops and food and
how to persuade the public to accept them. The documents also make clear that Mr Barroso
is going beyond mere exhortation by trying to get prime ministers to overrule their own
agriculture and environment ministers in favour of GM.
Note: For an excellent summary of the many health risks posed by genetically modified foods,
click here.
No curbs on Wall Street pay despite meltdown

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/10/24/national/a143651D...
Despite the Wall Street meltdown, the nation's biggest banks are preparing to pay their workers as
much as last year or more, including bonuses tied to personal and company performance. So far
this year, nine of the largest U.S. banks, including some that have cut thousands of jobs, have
seen total costs for salaries, benefits and bonuses grow by an average of 3 percent from a year
ago, according to an Associated Press review. "Taxpayers have lost their life savings, and now
they are being asked to bail out corporations," New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
said of the AP findings. "It's adding insult to injury to continue to pay outsized bonuses and
exorbitant compensation." That there is a rise in pay, or at least not a pronounced dropoff, from
2007 is surprising because many of the same companies were doing some of their best business
ever, at least in the first half of last year. In 2008, each quarter has been weaker than the last.
"There are, of course, expectations that the payouts should be going down," David Schmidt, a
senior compensation consultant at James F. Reda & Associates. "But we haven't seen that show
up yet." Some banks are setting aside large amounts. At Citigroup, which has cut 23,000 jobs this
year amid the crisis, pay expenses for the first nine months of this year came to $25.9 billion, 4
percent more than the same period last year. Typically, about 60 percent of Wall Street pay goes to
salary and benefits, while about 40 percent goes to end-of-the-year cash and stock bonuses that
hinge on performance, both for the individual and the company.
Note: For lots more on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Insiders Projects Drained Missile-Defense Millions

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/washington/12missile.html?partner=rssuserla...
Michael Cantrell, an engineer at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command headquarters in
Huntsville, Ala., along with his deputy, Doug Ennis, had lined up millions of dollars from Congress
for defense companies. Mr. Cantrell decided it was time to take a cut. Within months, [he] began
getting personal checks from contractors and later [picked] up a briefcase stuffed with $75,000.
The two men eventually collected more than $1.6 million in kickbacks, through 2007, [causing]
them to plead guilty this year to corruption charges. But what has drawn little scrutiny are
[Cantrell's] activities leading up to it. Thanks to important allies in Congress, he extracted nearly
$350 million for projects the Pentagon did not want, wasting taxpayer money on what would
become dead-end ventures. He often bypassed his bosses and broke department rules to make
his case on Capitol Hill. He enlisted contractors to pitch projects that would keep the dollars
flowing and paid lobbyists to ease them through. He cultivated lawmakers, who were eager to
send money back home or to favored contractors and did not ask many questions. And when he
ran into trouble, he could count on his powerful friends for protection from Pentagon officials who
provided little oversight and were afraid of alienating lawmakers. I could go over to the Hill and put
pressure on people above me and get something done, Mr. Cantrell explained. With the Army,
as long as the senator is not calling over and complaining, everything is O.K. And the
senator will not call over and complain unless the contractor youre working with does not
get his money. So you just have to keep the players happy and it works.
Note: For key reports on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Outrage Leads AIG To Cancel Second Luxury Retreat

2008-10-09, ABC News
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5994567
Battered by outrage over the $440,000 it spent on a luxury retreat less than a week after the
federal government loaned it $85 billion dollars, the giant AIG Insurance Company says it has
called off plans to hold a second retreat next week at the exclusive Ritz-Carlton Resort in Half
Moon Bay, California. The Ritz-Carlton outing, like the earlier one, was to reward top independent
insurance agents, which the company called a "standard industry practice." "I am somewhat
relieved to hear that AIG has canceled their Ritz-Carlton conference, which was nothing less than
a slap in the face of the American people," said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). "I cannot fathom
how in the same day -- the very same day -- that AIG asked the government for another
$37.8 billion loan, the company would even consider moving forward with plans to host
another large conference at another luxury resort." Critics ... have denounced AIG for holding
an expensive retreat at a time of economic crisis. The criticism has been "demoralizing" within AIG
said Nicholas Ashooh, a spokesperson for AIG, "but we have to recognize that we're in a different
environment and we have to adjust to that." AIG says it has instructed its worldwide managers to
re-scrutinize how money is being spent. "We're certainly reviewing all our expenditures in light of
financial circumstances and the fact that taxpayer dollars are helping to support AIG as we get
through this difficult credit crisis," said Ashooh.
Note: For many reports of corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
After Bailout, AIG Execs Head to California Resort

2008-10-07, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5973452&page=1
Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of
the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St.
Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today. "Rooms at
this resort can cost over $1,000 a night," Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said. AIG
documents obtained by Waxman's investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for
the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa
charges. "They're getting their pedicures and their manicures and the American people are
paying for that," said Cong. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). Appearing before the committee, Martin
Sullivan, the AIG CEO until June, said the company was overwhelmed by a "financial global
tsunami," and that "no simple or single cause" was to blame. "I am heartbroken at what has
happened," Sullivan said. Robert Willumstad, the CEO from June to September, 2008, maintained
AIG was a victim of a "crisis in confidence" and an "unprecedented global catastrophe." But
Congressional investigators raised questions of "mismanagement" and whether AIG executives
sought to "cook the books" and hide negative information from outside auditors. Waxman also said
there is evidence the two men changed the bonus schedule once the company began to post
losses, so that executives under the "Senior Partners Plan" would continue to make multi-million
dollar salaries. Sullivan was given a $15 million "golden parachute" payment after being replaced
as CEO in June.
BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions

2008-06-10, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7444083.stm
A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not
properly accounted for in Iraq. The BBC's Panorama programme has used US and Iraqi
government sources to research how much some private contractors have profited from the
conflict and rebuilding. A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations. The order
applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies. While President George W Bush
remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted. To date, no major US
contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq. Henry Waxman, who chairs the
House committee on oversight and government reform, said: "It may well turn out to be the largest
war profiteering in history." In the run-up to the invasion, one of the most senior officials in
charge of procurement in the Pentagon objected to a contract potentially worth $7bn that
was given to Halliburton, a Texan company which used to be run by Dick Cheney before he
became vice-president. Only Halliburton got to bid. The search for the missing billions also led
... to a house in ... west London where Hazem Shalaan lived until he was appointed to the new
Iraqi government as minister of defence in 2004. He and his associates siphoned an estimated
$1.2bn out of the ministry. They bought old military equipment from Poland but claimed for topclass weapons. Meanwhile they diverted money into their own accounts. Judge Radhi al-Radhi of
Iraq's Commission for Public Integrity investigated. He said: "I believe these people are criminals."
Note: For many other reports on war profiteering, click here.
U.S. using food crisis to boost bio-engineered crops

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-food-crops_14may14,0,72299...
The Bush administration has slipped a controversial ingredient into the $770 million aid package it
recently proposed to ease the world food crisis, adding language that would promote the use of
genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries. The value of genetically modified, or bioengineered, food is an intensely disputed issue in the U.S. and in Europe, where many countries
have banned foods made from genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Opponents of
GMO crops say they can cause unforeseen medical problems. They also contend that the
administration's plan is aimed at helping American agribusinesses. "This is a hot topic now
with the food crisis," said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers
Association. "I think it's pretty obvious at this point that genetically engineered crops ... don't
increase yields. There are no commercialized crops that are designed to deal with the climate
crisis." Noah Zerbe, an assistant professor of government and politics at Humboldt State
University in California, said that GMO crops might not be appropriate for developing countries.
"You get fantastic yields if you're able to apply fertilizer and water at the right times, and herbicides
to go along with that," Zerbe said. "Unfortunately, most African farmers ... can't afford these
inputs." The U.S. tried to introduce GMO crops to Africa in 2002, with mixed results. European
Union opposition was part of the reason that several African nations that year balked at an offer of
U.S. aid that included corn, some of which was genetically modified. [Despite] a severe drought,
Zambia rejected the U.S. aid altogether.
Note: For an eye-opening overview of the risks of genetically modified foods, click here.
Safe websites let you embarrass people in high places

2008-05-08, New Scientist magazine
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826555.400-safe-websites-let-you-emba...
Just how accurate are GPS-guided precision bombs, and what is most likely to send them offtarget? Now you can find out by simply reading the smart bombs tactical manual on the internet.
No, the Pentagon didnt slip up and post the instructions online. Rather, a whistle-blower leaked
the manual via Wikileaks, a website that uses anonymising technology to disguise the source of
leaked information. Launched online in early 2007, Wikileaks is run by an informal group of open
government and anti-secrecy advocates who want to allow people living under oppressive
regimes, or with something to say in the public interest, to anonymously leak documents that have
been censored or are of ethical, political or diplomatic significance. Thanks to Wikileaks, potential
whistle-blowers are now far more willing to come forward, says John Young, who runs the longstanding site Cryptome.org, which specialises in posting documents on espionage, intelligence
and cryptography issues. We started getting a lot less information after 9/11 as people
became more cautious when law enforcement agencies got more draconian powers. So we
are very happy to see Wikileaks doing what they are doing so aggressively. This flood of
leaked documents has been made possible by internet technology that allows whistle-blowers to
post documents online without revealing their identity or IP address.
Note: To read the full article for free, click here.
Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/multinationals-make-bil...
Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is
driving millions of people towards starvation. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic
foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry. The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the
past year driving the world's poor who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food
into hunger and destitution. The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe
hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last
month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year
had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (275m) to $1.12bn. Its
profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn. Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from
$553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the
world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per
cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains
merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m. Similarly, the Mosaic
Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months
ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of
fertiliser. Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating
earnings and profits "immoral."
Note: For a cornucopia of reports on corporate corruption from reliable, verifiable sources, click
here.
Judge orders stun gun references removed from autopsies

2008-05-03, KTAR/Associated Press
http://www.ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=826236
A medical examiner must change her autopsy findings to delete any reference that stun guns
contributed to the deaths of three people involved in confrontations with law enforcement officers,
a judge ruled. [The] decision was a victory for Taser International Inc., which had challenged
rulings by Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler, including a case in which five sheriff's
deputies are charged in the death a jail inmate who was restrained by the wrists and ankles and hit
with pepper spray and a stun gun. Kohler ruled that the 2006 death of Mark McCullaugh Jr., 28,
was a homicide and that he died from asphyxiation due to the "combined effects of chemical,
mechanical and electrical restraint." Visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman said in his ruling that there
was no expert evidence to indicate that Taser devices impaired McCullaugh's respiration. "More
likely, the death was due to a fatal cardiac arrhythmia brought on by severe heart disease," the
judge wrote. Schneiderman ordered Kohler to rule McCullaugh's death undetermined and to delete
any references to homicide. The judge also said references to stun guns contributing to the deaths
of two other men must be deleted from autopsy findings. Steve Tuttle, vice president of
communications for Taser International, said the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company is pleased with
Schneiderman's ruling. John Manley, a Summit County prosecutor who represented Kohler,
said the judge's order went too far. The county is considering an appeal, he said. "Taser is
quite a force to be reckoned with and does everything to protect their golden egg, which is
the Model X26," Manley said.
Note: This AP article was not picked up by any major or even local media other than this Phoenix,
AZ talk radio station. Considering the lack of reporting on Taser International's stunning 69
victories before its first loss in the courts, do you think there might be some bias in the news
coverage?
JPMorgan memo shows dirty tricks of mortgage trade

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed1/idUSN2838474720080328
An internal JPMorgan Chase memo entitled "Zippy Cheats & Tricks" offers a peek into just the sort
of dubious lending tactics that underpinned the U.S. housing market's deepening downward spiral.
The memo outlines step-by-step instructions on how to beef up mortgage applicants' stated
incomes in order to help them qualify for home loans. They read as follows: "1. Make sure you
input all income in base income. DO NOT break it down by overtime, commissions or bonus. 2. If
your borrower is getting a gift, add it to a bank account along with the rest of the assets. Be sure to
remove any mention of gift funds. 3. If you do not get (the desired results), try resubmitting with
slightly higher income. Inch it up $500 to see if you can get the findings you want. Do the same for
assets." In the context of a broader housing debacle, the memo [provides] some clues into just
what lengths bankers went to [to] push loans through the system. Over the past six months, rising
defaults on home loans have not only battered the mortgage sector, threatening recession, but
also sent the banking industry into a tailspin. Many large banks repackaged mortgages and held
them on their balance sheets as complex derivatives securities, essentially bonds backed by other
types of loans. The conclusion of the JPMorgan memo, written in bright purple letters,
certainly hints at a credit system gone awry: "It's super easy! Give it a try!" it reads. "If you
get stuck, call me ... I am happy to help!"
Note: Though this highly revealing news was reported by the venerable Reuters news agency,
why did no major media pick it up? For numerous reports of financial corruption from verifiable
sources, click here.
Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2008/03/06/top_iraq_contractor_skir...
Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of
Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and
Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in [the Cayman Islands].
More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed
as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a
palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in
the Cayman Islands. The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was
avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell
companies. With an estimated $16 billion in contracts, KBR is by far the largest contractor in Iraq,
with eight times the work of its nearest competitor. The no-bid contract it received in 2002 to
rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure and a multibillion-dollar contract to provide support services
to troops have long drawn scrutiny because Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton's
chief executive from 1995 until he joined the Republican ticket with President Bush in 2000.
The largest of the Cayman Islands shell companies - called Service Employers International Inc.,
which is now listed as having more than 20,000 workers in Iraq, according to KBR - was created
two years before Cheney became Halliburton's chief executive. But a second Cayman Islands
company called Overseas Administrative Services, which now is listed as the employer of 1,020
mostly managerial workers in Iraq, was established two months after Cheney's appointment.
Note: To read a powerful personal statement about the reality of war profiteering by a highly
decorated Marine Corps general, click here.
U.S. expanding the law - domestic and foreign - to benefit corporations

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/17/EDR1V0LCD.DTL
As a U.S. taxpayer, you may be contributing to fewer cheap drugs on international shelves. Public
dollars support the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the trade agency with authority to
pressure foreign governments to change their domestic intellectual property laws. As such, the
agency actively presses for laws that would keep generic drugs out of markets worldwide.
Congress is considering legislation to create a separate executive branch office dedicated to using
government resources for lobbying other countries to change their laws, sometimes exclusively to
benefit certain U.S. companies. That's a bad idea for patients here and abroad, because it would
give the U.S. government more power in an area where it should instead have less. The trade
agency's interpretation of what other countries' domestic laws need to cover expands beyond the
broadest definitions within U.S. law. To give one example, data gathered during clinical trials of
new drugs are not protected by copyright, patent or trademark in the United States. The Food and
Drug Administration restricts use of test results finding that a brand-name drug is safe when
considering the safety of identical generic drugs. The trade representative is using its authority to
press for comparable rules restricting the approval process for generic drugs in other countries. It
doesn't take much sleuthing to follow the money back to the U.S. pharmaceutical
manufacturers on the trade agency's advisory panel, who can maintain monopolist profits
while a generic drug is blocked from the market in Guatemala, Malaysia or any of the dozen
other countries that the trade agency is pressuring to adopt U.S.-style restrictions on
generic drug approval.
Note: For more reports on the power of the pharmaceutical industry to influence government
policy, click here.
Fraud Crackdown Comes With a Loophole

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4279612
A Bush administration plan to crack down on contract fraud has a multibillion-dollar loophole: The
proposal to force companies to report abuse of taxpayer money will not apply to work overseas,
including projects to secure and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. For decades, contractors have been
asked to report internal fraud or overpayment on government-funded projects. Compliance has
been voluntary, and over the past 15 years the number of company-reported fraud cases has
declined steadily. Now, the Justice Department wants to force companies to notify the government
if they find evidence of contract abuse of more than $5 million. Failure to comply could make a
company ineligible for future government work. The proposal, now in the final approval stages,
specifically exempts "contracts to be performed outside the United States," according to a notice
published last month in the Federal Register. Critics including the watchdog group Taxpayers
Against Fraud said the overseas exemption raises suspicions. "I hate to sound cynical, but what
lobbyist working for a contractor in Iraq wanted this get-out-of-jail card?" asked Patrick
Burns, spokesman for the government watchdog group. "I'm not saying that's the way it
went - I'm just suggesting that's the most logical line to draw. I think somebody's got some
explaining to do." After the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. poured billions of dollars
into projects [in] those nations. With the money came the fraud. At least $14 million has been lost
in bribes alone over the past five years in Iraq and Afghanistan. An estimated $350 billion is spent
on government contracts annually, according to the White House Office of Federal Procurement
Policy.
Note: For many additional reports from reliable sources on war profiteering, click here.
Exxon Mobil Makes Monster Profit

2008-02-01, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/01/business/main3777996.shtml
Exxon Mobil Corp. [has] posted the largest annual profit [ever] by a U.S. company - $40.6
billion. Exxon Mobil also set a U.S. record for the biggest quarterly profit, posting net
income of $11.7 billion for the final three months of 2007, besting its own mark of $10.71 billion
in the fourth quarter of 2005. The previous record for annual profit was $39.5 billion, which Exxon
Mobil reported for 2006. The eye-popping results weren't a surprise given record prices for a barrel
of oil at the end of 2007. For much of the fourth quarter, they hovered around $90 a barrel, more
than 50 percent higher than a year ago. Crude prices reached an all-time trading high of $100.09
on Jan. 3 but have fallen about 10 percent since. Also extraordinary was Exxon Mobil's revenue,
which rose 30 percent in the fourth quarter to $116.6 billion from $90 billion a year ago. For the
year, sales rose to $404.5 billion - the most ever for the Irving, Texas-based company - from the
$377.64 billion it posted in 2006. Exxon Mobil produces about 3 percent of the world's oil.
Note: How strange that they don't even mention that high pump prices is what fed these huge
profits? If they are making such "monster" profits, why do they make the public pay such high
gasoline prices?
Wall Street paying record bonuses

2008-01-08, New York Daily News/Bloomberg News
http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/01/18/2008-01-18_wall_street_paying_rec...
Wall Street's five biggest firms are paying a record $39 billion in bonuses for 2007. It was a year
when three of the firms suffered their worst quarterly losses in history and shareholders lost over
$80 billion. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns
together awarded $65.6 billion in compensation and benefits last year to their 186,000 employees.
That means year-end bonuses, at 60% of the total, exceeded the $36 billion distributed in 2006
when the industry reported all-time high profits. The firms have said they are eliminating at least
6,200 jobs amid mounting losses from the subprime mortgage mess. The payouts come as the
economy slows, with unemployment rising, retail sales declining and new home foreclosures
surging to a record. The industry's bonuses are larger than the gross domestic products of
Sri Lanka, Lebanon or Bulgaria, and the average bonus of $219,198 is more than four times
higher than the median U.S. household income in 2006, according to Census Bureau data.
Shareholders in the securities industry endured their worst year since 2002, as Merrill and Bear
Stearns slumped more than 40% and the CEOs at both firms gave up their jobs. Morgan Stanley
fell 21% and Lehman dropped 16%. Only Goldman rose, gaining 7.9%.
Note: For lots more on escalating income inequality, click here.
Blackwater's Owner Has Spies for Hire

The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has been building an
operation that will [develop] intelligence ... for clients in industry and government. The operation,
Total Intelligence Solutions, has assembled a roster of former ... high-ranking figures from
agencies such as the CIA and defense intelligence. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the former head of
counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many of the agency's more controversial
programs, including the rendition and interrogation of ... suspects and the detention of some of
them in secret prisons overseas. Its chief executive is Robert Richer, a former CIA associate
deputy director of operations who was heavily involved in running the agency's role in the Iraq war.
Because of its roster and its ties to owner Erik Prince, the multimillionaire former Navy SEAL, the
company's thrust into this world highlights the blurring of lines between government, industry and
activities formerly reserved for agents operating in the shadows. Richer, for instance, once
served as the chief of the CIA's Near East division and is said to have ties to King Abdullah
of Jordan. The CIA had spent millions helping train Jordan's intelligence service in
exchange for information. Now Jordan has hired Blackwater to train its special forces.
"Cofer can open doors," said Richer, who served 22 years at the CIA. "I can open doors. We can
generally get in to see who we need to see. We ... can deal with the right minister or person."
"They have the skills and background to do anything anyone wants," said RJ Hillhouse, who writes
a national security blog called The Spy Who Billed Me. "There's no oversight. They're an
independent company offering freelance espionage services. They're rent-a-spies."
Report Says Firm Sought to Cover Up Iraq Shootings

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/washington/02blackwater.html?ex=1348977600&...
Employees of Blackwater USA have engaged in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, in [the]
vast majority of cases firing their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the
dead or assist the wounded, according to a new report from Congress. In at least two cases,
Blackwater paid victims family members who complained, and sought to cover up other
episodes, the Congressional report said. It said State Department officials approved the
payments in the hope of keeping the shootings quiet. In one case last year, the department
helped Blackwater spirit an employee out of Iraq less than 36 hours after the employee, while
drunk, killed a bodyguard for one of Iraqs two vice presidents on Christmas Eve. The report ...
adds weight to complaints from Iraqi officials, American military officers and Blackwaters
competitors that company guards have taken an aggressive, trigger-happy approach to their work
and have repeatedly acted with reckless disregard for Iraqi life. But the report is also harshly
critical of the State Department for exercising virtually no restraint or supervision of the private
security companys 861 employees in Iraq. There is no evidence in the documents that the
committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwaters actions, raised
concerns about the number of shooting episodes involving Blackwater or the companys high rate
of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation, the report states. Based on
437 internal Blackwater incident reports as well as internal State Department correspondence, the
report said Blackwaters use of force was frequent and extensive, resulting in significant
casualties and property damage. The State Department ... has paid Blackwater more than $832
million for security services in Iraq and elsewhere, under a diplomatic security contract it shares
with two other companies, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.
Bleakonomics
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html?ex=1348804800&...
The Shock Doctrine is [Naomi] Kleins ambitious look at the economic history of the last 50 years
and the rise of free-market fundamentalism around the world. Disaster capitalism, as she calls it,
is a violent system that ... requires terror to do its job. Extreme capitalism loves a blank slate, often
finding its opening after crises or shocks. Klein compares radical capitalist economic policy to
shock therapy administered by psychiatrists. She interviews Gail Kastner, a victim of covert C.I.A.
experiments in interrogation techniques that were carried out by the scientist Ewen Cameron in the
1950s. His idea was to use electroshock therapy to break down patients. Once complete
depatterning had been achieved, the patients could be reprogrammed. For Klein the larger
lessons are clear: Countries are shocked by wars, terror attacks, coups dtat and
natural disasters. Then they are shocked again by corporations and politicians who
exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock
therapy. People who dare to resist are shocked for a third time, by police, soldiers and
prison interrogators. Klein offers an account of Milton Friedman she calls him the other
doctor shock. In the 1950s, as Cameron was conducting his experiments, the Chicago School
was developing the ideas that [dominate capitalist planning today]. She quotes the Chilean
economist Orlando Letelier on the inner harmony between the terror of the Pinochet regime and
its free-market policies. Letelier said that Milton Friedman shared responsibility for the regimes
crimes, rejecting his argument that he was only offering technical advice. Letelier was killed in
1976 by a car bomb planted in Washington [DC]. For Klein, he was another victim of the Chicago
Boys who wanted to impose free-market capitalism on the region. In the Southern Cone, where
contemporary capitalism was born, the war on terror was a war against all obstacles to the new
order, she writes.
Note: For highly revealing, verifiable information on government mind control programs, click here.
Consumers lose most credit card disputes

2007-09-27, CNN/Associated Press
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-19878484.htm
A consumer advocacy group [has] released a study alleging credit card companies use arbitration
firms that they know will rarely rule in favor of consumers. Nearly all credit card customer service
agreements mandate binding arbitration because it is a cheaper and faster way to resolve
disputes, industry officials say. Public Citizen though says the companies hire arbitration firms that
almost always rule in favor of the card issuer. Arbitration firms used by companies such as
Mastercard Inc., Visa, Discover Financial Services LLC and American Express Co. ruled
against consumers in 32,300 of 34,000 disputes that went to arbitration, according to Public
Citizen's study. 'This is a system that is unfair to consumers,' Joan Claybrook, the group's
president said at a press briefing. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. and Rep Hank Johnson, D-Ga.,
attended the briefing to say they have introduced legislation that would let credit card customers
choose arbitration or civil court in a dispute. 'People shouldn't have to give up their legal rights just
to get a credit card,' Claybrook said. Public Citizen's study singled out arbitration disputes in
California because it is the only state that requires arbitration resolutions be disclosed. Public
Citizen also singled out the Minneapolis-based National Arbitration Forum, which has arbitrated
many of the disputes analyzed.
Food Conscious
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/27/FDGFMQJFG21.DTL
Opponents of GE [genetically engineered] food ... say problems suggested in some health
studies could take years to show up. Meanwhile, we're eating lots of GE foods anyway,
whether we know it or not -- especially in processed foods, because corn, soy and canola
are the Big 3 GE food crops." Since our government has refused to label these foods, how do we
avoid buying and eating these foods?" asks [Andrew] Kimbrell, an attorney who heads the
Washington, D.C.-based Center for Food Safety, a vocal opponent of GE foods. His new book,
Your Right to Know: Genetic Engineering and the Secret Changes in Your Food ... answers that
question. For conscious eaters, the heart of the book is a 14-page guide to your local supermarket.
It tells you which foods are the most likely to contain GE ingredients (chips, snacks and baby
formula), which aren't (fruits, vegetables, wheat), and how to read labels for "hidden ingredients"
derived from corn, soy or canola (hint: look for high fructose corn syrup, soy lecithin and canola
oil). A passport-size version of the guide, small enough to slide into most pockets or purses, comes
along with the book. "I wanted to give people a usable tool to avoid these foods so they don't feel
so helpless," said Kimbrell. The book isn't intended to present the pros and cons of GE foods.
Kimbrell is 100 percent against the technology and spends a lot of time in court fighting companies
like Monsanto, to keep GE crops from spreading. The Center for Food Safety also opposes
irradiation and food animal cloning, and has labored to keep industry from weakening federal
organic standards. In fact, Kimbrell is the man who calls the current administration's efforts to
protect food safety "Katrina on a plate."
Sicko? The truth about the US healthcare system

2007-06-04, The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2611736.ece
Within a few hours, Cynthia Kline was dead. She died in an American city with one of the highest
concentrations of top-flight medical specialists in the world. And it happened largely because of
America's broken health care system - one where 50 million people are entirely without insurance
coverage and tens of millions more struggle to have the treatment they need approved. As a
result, medical problems go unattended until they reach crisis point. America's health system
offers a tremendous paradox. In medical technology and in the scientific understanding of
disease, it is second-to-none. And yet many, if not most, Americans are unable to reap the
advantages of this. In fact, as The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has argued, the very
proliferation of research and high-tech equipment is part of the reason for the imbalance in
coverage between the privileged few and the increasingly underserved masses. "[The system]
compensates for higher spending on insiders, in part, by consigning more people to outsider status
--robbing Peter of basic care in order to pay for Paul's state-of-the-art treatment," Krugman wrote.
"Thus we have the cruel paradox that medical progress is bad for many Americans' health."
Having the system run by for-profit insurance companies turns out to be inefficient and expensive
as well as dehumanising. America spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as
France, and almost two and a half times as much as Britain. And yet it falls down in almost every
key indicator of public health, starting ... with infant mortality, which is 36 per cent higher than in
Britain.
Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/science/earth/22ander.html?ex=1337486400&en...
What Ray Anderson calls his conversion experience occurred in the summer of 1994, when he
was asked to give the sales force at Interface, the carpet tile company he founded, some talking
points about the companys approach to the environment. So he started reading about
environmental issues, and thinking about them, until pretty soon it hit him: I was running a
company that was plundering the earth, he realized. I thought, Damn, some day people
like me will be put in jail! He devoted his speech to his newfound vision of polluted air,
overflowing landfills, depleted aquifers and used-up resources. Only one institution was powerful
enough and pervasive enough to turn these problems around, he told his colleagues, and it was
the institution that was causing them in the first place: Business. Industry. People like us. Us!" He
challenged his colleagues to set a deadline for Interface to become a restorative enterprise, a
sustainable operation that takes nothing out of the earth that cannot be recycled or quickly
regenerated, and that does no harm to the biosphere. The deadline they ultimately set is 2020,
and the idea has taken hold throughout the company. Mr. Anderson said that through waste
reduction, recycling, energy efficiency and other steps, Interface was about 45 percent from
where we were to where we want to be. Use of fossil fuels is down 45 percent ... he said, while
sales are up 49 percent. Globally, the companys carpet-making uses one-third the water it used
to. The companys worldwide contribution to landfills has been cut by 80 percent. And in the
process, Mr. Anderson has turned into perhaps the leading corporate evangelist for sustainability.
Gas-sipping vehicle gets 1,900 mpg

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-garagebriefs21apr21,1,5317797.story
We couldn't pass up mention of the winner of last week's Eco-marathon Americas, a fuel-economy
challenge sponsored by Shell Oil Co. A team from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo won the $10,000
grand prize by achieving the equivalent of 1,902.7 miles per gallon on regular gasoline in a
student-built vehicle. Granted, the students didn't win in someone's mom's Dodge minivan. Their
"car" is a one-occupant streamliner built of carbon fiber composite. At a measly 98 pounds, it
weighed less than the driver. And that was 98 pounds including the car's 50-cubic-centimeter
Honda engine. "The main reason we do this is because it's a way to encourage students to focus
on technical innovation for potential future careers," said David Sexton, president of Shell Oil
Products. But there is a practical side to the competition, said Cal Poly team manager Tom Heckel,
a junior mechanical engineering major. "Any publicity we can get makes people aware that the
20 mpg or so they're averaging in their cars can be improved on a lot." The event, held
April 14 at the California Speedway in Fontana, was the first time that Shell had brought its 25year-old Eco-marathon competition to the U.S. The event drew 20 university, college and high
school teams from around the U.S. and Canada. Rules called for each vehicle to complete seven
1.45-mile laps around the speedway's inner track, averaging at least 15 mph. Fuel consumption
was measured after each attempt and adjusted for ambient temperature and other factors in a
complex formula that ends up giving an extrapolation of miles per gallon.
Note: Why would the president of Shell Oil Products state the main reason for this competition is
about careers and not finding ways to improve gas mileage? The world record is over 10,000 mpg.
How is it that the average car gets only 22 mpg when the Ford Model T got 25 mpg almost 100
years ago? For more, click here.
Web entrepreneurs have an eye on social need -- not personal greed

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/15/BUG5SP63BR85.DTL
Ryan Mickle's life was the stuff young bourgeois dreams are made of. Then a year ago ... Mickle
began to take stock of his life. He was earning a lot of money but was giving very little of himself.
So Mickle ditched his high-paying job to brainstorm a new venture with friend Rod Ebrahimi. The
result was Dotherightthing.com, a San Francisco startup that allows users to rank companies
based on their social impact on the world. Their site [allows] consumers to influence corporate
behavior. The sentiment is summed up in Dotherightthing.com's T-shirt slogan: "It's cool to
care." Mickle, 26, and Ebrahimi, 25, are among a growing number of entrepreneurs betting they
can build ventures that deliver both financial and social returns. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar has
dedicated much of his fortune to helping for-profits and nonprofits alike discover their power to do
good. At www.freepledge.com, shoppers buy the same products from the same merchants for the
same price, but a percentage is donated to the nonprofit of their choice. Darian Hickman, 28, is
designing an online strategy game that turns the players into entrepreneurs who help bring
prosperity to impoverished villages in underdeveloped countries. [He was] inspired by Muhammad
Yunus, the Nobel prize-winning micro-finance pioneer. Premal Shah [is a] former PayPal executive
who is president of online micro-lender Kiva.org. Brian Johnson, 32 ... said he felt uncomfortable
with capitalism until he hit on the concept of "using economics as a force for good. How do we live
our spiritual ideals and make money?" Now Johnson tries to have it both ways with Zaadz.com,
which he describes as MySpace for people who want to change the world.
Note: We encourage you to take some time to explore some of these exciting new adventures
which are transforming the face of business and building a brighter future for us all. For more on
micro-finance, micro-lending, and how you can help end poverty without donating a penny, click
here. And for the profile of website founder Fred Burks on Zaadz.com, click here.
Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html?ex=1332820800&en=fb472e...
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans those with
incomes that year of more than $348,000 receiving their largest share of national income since
1928. The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of
income share not seen since before the Depression. While total reported income in the United
States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is
available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared
with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent. The gains went largely to the top 1
percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more
than $139,000, or about 14 percent. The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans
collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. The top group
received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the
gap from 1980. The disparities may be even greater. The [IRS] estimates that it is able to
accurately tax 99 percent of wage income but that it captures only about 70 percent of business
and investment income, most of which flows to upper-income individuals. For Americans in the
middle, the share of income taken by federal taxes has been essentially unchanged across four
decades. By comparison, it has fallen by half for those at the very top of the income ladder.
[Incomes of] the top tenth of a percent and top one-hundredth of a percent ... soared by about a
fifth in one year, largely because of the rising stock market and increased business profits.
Unsung fortune: A rich man's secret

2007-03-26, Philadelphia Inquirer
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20070326_Unsung_fortune__A_rich_ma...
Hal Taussig wears baggy jeans and fraying work shirts that Goodwill might reject. His shoes have
been resoled three times. At age 81, he doesn't own a car. He performs errands and commutes to
the office by bicycle. And he has given away millions. Given the fortune that Taussig has made
through Untours, his unique travel business, and has given away through the Untours Foundation,
you could call him the Un-millionaire. If he so chose, he could be living in a Main Line mansion and
driving a Mercedes. But he considers money and what he calls "stuff," beyond what he needs
to survive, a burden, an embarrassment. In many respects, he's a 21st-century Thoreau. "Let
your capital be simplicity and contentment," the sage of Walden Pond wrote. "Those are my
sentiments precisely," says Taussig, who has three children, five grandchildren, and five greatgrandchildren. He directs the Untours Foundation, into which he pours all his profits - $5 million
since 1992. The money is used to make low-interest loans to ventures and projects that help the
needy and jobless - from a craft store in Hanoi to a home-health-care cooperative in Philadelphia.
"I invest in entrepreneurial efforts to help poor people leverage themselves out of poverty." "In
America, we worship success," he says. "It's a shoddy ethic that leads us to value who we are by
what we are." The motto of the Untours Foundation is "a hand up, not a handout." It provides lowinterest loans, here and abroad, to create jobs, build low-income housing, and support fair-trade
products: goods such as coffee that are sold at a price that guarantees producers and workers a
fair wage and decent livelihood.
Note: For an easy way you can use your investments to help families pull out of poverty, click
here.
Got rbST in your milk?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/25/BUGBROQASE1.DTL
Richard Cotta, CEO of California Dairies Inc., the nation's second-largest dairy cooperative, is
guided by a simple business philosophy: "If you want milk with little blue dots, you'll have it, as long
as you are willing to pay for it." So, when a string of major customers, including supermarket giant
Safeway, came to his co-op saying they would no longer accept milk from cows treated with a
genetically engineered growth hormone, the co-op bowed to the inevitable. In January, California
Dairies' board voted to ask its members not to inject synthetic bovine growth hormone into their
cows. The action by a co-op that ships 50 million pounds of milk every day is part of a sweeping,
consumer-driven agricultural makeover. Demand for natural foods is rising, while increasing
numbers of consumers are avoiding products that rely on antibiotics or growth hormones.
And food retailers are listening. Recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rbST, was approved by
the Food and Drug Administration 14 years ago. It sustains lactation by stimulating cows' appetites
so they eat more and produce more milk, perhaps an extra 5 quarts per day. The European Union,
Japan, Canada and Australia did not approve rbST. The reasons included questions about human
and animal safety, as well social and economic considerations. Research that shows injections of
rbST increase another hormone, insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1, in cows. Too much IGF-1 in
humans is linked with increased rates of colon, breast and prostate cancer. Synthetic hormone use
also ... leads to increased use of antibiotics, whose overuse is already a serious problem in the
livestock industry.
Note: For many years the media has avoided even mentioning the major controversy over growth
hormone use in milk and other animal products. To better understand how the mass media and big
industry sometimes work together for profit at the expense of your health, click here.
Scientists muzzled, Congress told

2007-03-21, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia's leading newspaper)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/scientists-muzzled/2007/03/20/11741530...
The Bush Administration has run a systematic campaign to play down the dangers of climate
change, demanding hundreds of politically motivated changes to scientific reports and muzzling a
pre-eminent expert on global warming, the US Congress has been told. The testimony ... painted
the Administration as determined to maintain its line on climate change even when it clashed with
the findings of scientific experts. The Administration has moved to exercise control over
environmental agencies by installing political appointees including a former oil industry lobbyist,
Philip Cooney, as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality. In 2003 Mr Cooney and
other senior appointed officials made at least 181 changes to a strategic plan on climate
change to play down the scientific consensus on global warming. They made a further 113
alterations to minimise the human role in climate change. "These changes must be made," a note
in Mr Cooney's handwriting says. Under heated questioning, Mr Cooney admitted the changes
were all intended to cast doubt on the impact of global warming. Control from the White House
became the norm, [NASA's Dr. James] Hansen told the committee. "Scientific press releases were
going to the White House for editing," he said. "It's very unfortunate that we developed this
politicisation of science. The public relations office should be staffed by expert appointees otherwise they become offices of propaganda." Hansen was also restrained from giving press
interviews by a junior political appointee, George Deutsch. Mr Deutsch left NASA early last year
after it emerged he had falsified his CV.
When Organic Isn't Really Organic

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1599110,00.html
When you buy a gallon of organic milk, you expect to get tasty milk from happy cows who haven't
been subjected to antibiotics, hormones or pesticides. But you might also unknowingly be getting
genetically modified cattle feed. Albert Straus, owner of the Straus Family Creamery ... decided to
test the feed that he gives his 1,600 cows last year and was alarmed to find that nearly 6% of the
organic corn feed he received from suppliers was "contaminated" by genetically modified (GM)
organisms. Organic food is, by definition, supposed to be free of genetically modified material. But
as GM crops become more prevalent, there is little that an organic farmer can do to prevent a
speck of GM pollen or a stray GM seed from being blown by the wind onto his land. In 2006, GM
crops accounted for 61% of all the corn planted in the U.S. and 89% of all the soybeans. So Straus
and five other natural food producers, including industry leader Whole Foods, announced last
week that they would seek a new certification for their products, "non-GMO verified," in the hopes
that it will become a voluntary industry standard for GM-free goods. In a few weeks, Straus
expects to become the first food manufacturer in the country to carry the label in addition to his
"organic" one. With Whole Foods in the ring, the rest of the industry will soon be under competitive
pressure to follow. Genetically modified crops have become so prevalent in the U.S. that
chances are you've been buying and eating them for years. You just wouldn't know it from
the label: the U.S. Department of Agriculture, unlike agencies in Europe and Japan, do not
require GM foods to be labeled.
Note: This article also states "scientists have not identified any specific health risks from eating
GM foods." This is a clear lie, when two sentences later the article mentions Jeffrey Smith, who
has written an entire book with excellent documentation showing many scientific studies in which
animals died shortly after consuming GM foods. To see an excellent summary of this book
including reliable footnotes, click here.
Safety Second?
2007-02-23, WXYZ - Detroit's ABC News Affiliate
http://www1.wxyz.com/wxyz/ys_investigations/article/0,2132,WXYZ_15949_5373880...
The Pentagon has said it, the President has said it, everybody says it: "Our troops deserve nothing
but the best when we send them into combat." Its a goal that isnt always met. Did a retired Marine
colonels connections count more than the best design for a new vehicle for the troops? Jerry
Bazinski has made a career of designing and helping to develop new vehicles here in Detroit for
years. So when the Marines called for new vehicle small enough to load into an Osprey helicopter
but lean and mean enough to allow soldiers to move quickly and launch attacks deep into enemy
territory, Jerry and a team of veteran Detroit vehicle designers came up with [a model that] met or
exceeded all the specifications. It was designed to provide for bullet-proof protection from enemy
gunfire. It included a sturdy built-in roll-cage. And the Marines were impressed, as you can see
from the report card that shows a whole list of many strengths ... and "no significant weaknesses."
Well, heres what the Marines ultimately bought ... a model known as the Growler that sort of looks
like a dune buggy with a machine gun. Though it may seem it should have a lower sticker price, its
turned out to cost us upwards of $127,000 a copy. Former Colonel Terry Crews ... sold the Marines
on the Growler. [Investigative Reporter Steve] Wilson to Wayne Blake/Growler Plant Manager:
Thats how he got this contract, he had some friends, didnt he? Blake: Yeah, he lives 15
miles from the Pentagon. And the military version is $127,000. And if you bought it as a
civilian version? 17,000.
Note: This article has disappeared from the website, though you can try this Google cache
version. For a highly revealing, two-page summary by a top U.S. general on major war corruption,
click here.
Merck Suspends Lobbying for Vaccine

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/21/ap/business/mainD8NDU4AG0.shtml
Pediatricians, gynecologists and even health insurers all call Gardasil, the first vaccine to prevent
cervical cancer, a big medical advance. But medical groups, politicians and parents began
rebelling after disclosure of a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign by Gardasil's maker,
Merck & Co., to get state legislatures to require 11- and 12-year-old girls to get the threedose vaccine as a requirement for school attendance. Some parents' groups and doctors
particularly objected because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted disease.
Vaccines mandated for school attendance usually are for diseases easily spread through casual
contact, such as measles and mumps. Bowing to pressure, Merck said Tuesday that it is
immediately suspending its controversial campaign, which it had funded through a third party.
Legislatures in roughly 20 states have introduced measures that would mandate girls have the
vaccine to attend school. Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Feb. 2 issued an executive order requiring
Texas girls entering the sixth grade as of 2008 get the vaccinations. Dr. Anne Francis, who chairs
an American Academy of Pediatrics committee [stated] "I believe that their timing was a little bit
premature," she said, "so soon after (Gardasil's) release, before we have a picture of whether
there are going to be any untoward side effects." The country has been "burned" by some drugs
whose serious side effects emerged only after they were in wide use, including Merck's withdrawn
painkiller Vioxx. The vaccine also is controversial because of its price - $360 for the three doses
required.
Note: $360 for every girl in school would amount to quite a hefty transfer of funds from taxpayers
into the pockets of Merck. Could profit and campaign contributions be behind the move to make
this mandatory?
Auditors: Billions of U.S. tax dollars wasted in Iraq

2007-02-16, CNN News/Associated Press
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/16/iraq.reconstruction.ap
The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in
Iraq contracts found that ... about $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq
reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses. Of the $10
billion in overpriced contracts or undocumented costs, more than $2.7 billion were charged by
Halliburton Co., the oil-field services company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk. More
than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported,
nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall.
"There is no accountability," said David M. Walker, who heads the auditing arm of Congress.
"Organizations charged with overseeing contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not
held accountable. The individuals responsible are not held accountable." The investigators urged
the Pentagon to reconsider its growing reliance on outside contractors. Layers of subcontractors,
poor documentation and lack of strong contract management are rampant. Walker complained that
GAO investigators have difficulty getting basic detail about reconstruction contracts such as
expenses and subcontractors involved because many Pentagon divisions fail to consistently track
or fully report them. Noting that auditors still have $300 billion of Iraq spending to review, Waxman
said the total amount of waste, fraud and abuse "could be astronomical."
Note: To understand how so much money can go missing, read what a top U.S. general has to say
here. And for major media articles claiming hundreds of billions of dollars are missing, click here.
Exxon's 'outlandish' earnings spark furor

2007-02-02, Globe and Mail (One of Canada's Leading Newspapers)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070202.EXXON02/TPStory
The world's largest publicly owned oil company announced yesterday the largest corporate profit
ever, but news of its near $40-billion (U.S.) windfall in 2006 sparked an angry backlash, coming on
the eve of a major report blaming the use of fossil fuels for wreaking devastation on the planet.
Exxon shares have risen by about 20 per cent in the past year. Exxon wasn't alone in
unprecedented oil earnings. Royal Dutch Shell PLC, an Anglo-Dutch company, and U.S.-run
Marathon Oil and Valero Energy, also posted best-ever annual results yesterday. And
ConocoPhillips Co., also American, last week posted its highest profits. Profits at the five
companies together totalled $91.1-billion -- in a year when drivers paid record prices for
gasoline. Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have also urged Exxon to end
its funding of organizations that deny the existence of -- or minimize the seriousness of -- humanmade global warming. Scientists yesterday accused the conservative American Enterprise
Institute, which receives funding from Exxon, of offering scientists up to $10,000 for articles that
undercut a report to be released today from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Last
month, the Union of Concerned Scientists ... said that Exxon has spent $16-million over the past
10 years financing organizations that deny the seriousness of climate change. Alden Meyer, a
strategist with the group, compared Exxon's efforts to discredit the science of global warming to
the tobacco companies' efforts to sow doubts about the link between smoking and lung cancer in
order to protect their profits.
Note: Compare this Canadian article with the New York Times reporting of this record profit, or
that of any other major U.S. newspaper. The U.S. press barely mentions that oil company gouging
which took dollars from your pocket is what led to record profits. To understand why the U.S. press
behaves in this way, click here.
Scientists find way to slash cost of drugs

2007-01-02, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,1981200,00.html
Two UK-based academics have devised a way to invent new medicines and get them to market at
a fraction of the cost charged by big drug companies. Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious
diseases at Imperial College ... calls their revolutionary new model "ethical pharmaceuticals".
Improvements they devise to the molecular structure of an existing, expensive drug turn it
technically into a new medicine which is no longer under a 20-year patent to a multinational drug
company and can be made and sold cheaply. The process has the potential to undermine the
monopoly of the big drug companies and bring cheaper drugs not only to poor countries
but back to the UK. Professor Shaunak and his colleague from the London School of Pharmacy,
Steve Brocchini, have linked up with an Indian biotech company which will manufacture the first
drug - for hepatitis C. Hepatitis C affects 170 million people worldwide and at least 200,000 in the
UK. Multinational drug companies put the cost of the research and development of a new drug at
$800m (408m). Professors Shaunak and Brocchini say the cost of theirs will be only a few million
pounds. Professor Shaunak says it is time that the monopoly on drug invention and production by
multinational corporations - which charge high prices because they need to make big profits for
their shareholders - was broken. The team's work on the hepatitis C drug has impeccable
establishment credentials. But the professors' ethical pharmaceutical model is unlikely to find
much favour with the multinational pharmaceutical companies, which already employ large teams
of lawyers to defend the patents which they describe as the lifeblood of the industry.
Note: This is very exciting news, but we'll see what happens when the hugely profitable
pharmaceutical industry presses its might against this effort. For more, click here.
Has Politics Contaminated the Food Supply?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/opinion/11schlosser.html?ex=1323493200&en=4...
One hundred years ago, companies were free to follow their own rules. The publication of Upton
Sinclairs novel The Jungle in 1906 with its descriptions of rat-infested slaughterhouses and
rancid meat created public outrage over food safety. Even though the book was written by a
socialist agitator, a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, eagerly read it. After confirming
Sinclairs claims, Roosevelt battled the drug companies, the big food processors and the
meatpacking companies to protect American consumers from irresponsible corporate behavior.
Over the past 40 years, the industrialization and centralization of our food system has greatly
magnified the potential for big outbreaks. As a result, a little contamination can go a long way. The
Taco Bell distribution center in New Jersey now being investigated as a possible source of E. coli
supplies more than 1,100 restaurants in the Northeast. Since 2000, the fast-food and meatpacking
industries have given about four-fifths of their political donations to Republican candidates for
national office. In return, these industries have effectively been given control of the agencies
created to regulate them. The current chief of staff at the Agriculture Department used to be
the beef industrys chief lobbyist. The person who headed the Food and Drug
Administration until recently used to be an executive at the National Food Processors
Association. Cutbacks in staff and budgets have reduced the number of food-safety inspections
conducted by the F.D.A. to about 3,400 a year from 35,000 in the 1970s.
Note: If you care about the health of our nation's food supply, write your political and media
representatives encouraging the passage of the Safe Food Act mentioned in this article, which by
the way, was written by the author of the most excellent book, Fast Food America.
Oil industry denies price manipulation

2006-11-26, BusinessWeek/Associated Press
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8LKSUQO0.htm
An Associated Press analysis suggests that big oil companies have been crimping supplies ...
across the country for years. The analysis, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information
Administration, indicates that the industry slacked off supplying oil and gasoline during the
prolonged price boom between early 1999 and last summer, when prices began to fall. The
findings support a conclusion already reached by many motorists. Fifty-five percent of Americans
believe gas prices are high because [of] oil companies. Though set back temporarily by the [9/11]
attacks, the oil business has profited handsomely since then. The biggest six refiners ... rang up
$400 billion in profits since 2001. Though reserves have kept pretty steady, the oil industry taps
those resources to varying degrees from year to year. The industry has shelved an average of 21
percent more unrefined oil from the start of 2004 through last June. Last spring, stocks of shelved
crude reached their highest level in eight years, despite the fabulous riches at hand in high prices
then. The industry also protected profits by not building any new refineries. [And] thanks to
mergers, the top 10 companies now control three-quarters of national refining capacity, up from
half in the early 1990s. A 2001 study by the Federal Trade Commission reported that some
firms were deciding to "maximize their profits" by crimping supply. One executive told
regulators "he would rather sell less gasoline and earn a higher margin on each gallon
sold." However upsetting to drivers, such tactics are usually viewed as legal. "A decision to limit
supply does not violate the antitrust laws," regulators wrote in one FTC report.
Senators to Exxon: Stop the Denial

2006-10-27, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2612021
ExxonMobil should stop funding groups that have spread the idea that global warming is a myth
and that try to influence policymakers to adopt that view, two senators said today in a letter to the
oil company. In their letter to ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Sens. Olympia Snowe,
R-Maine, and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., appealed to Exxon's sense of corporate responsibility,
asking the company to "come clean about its past denial activities." The two senators called on
ExxonMobil to "end any further financial assistance" to groups "whose public advocacy has
contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth." An upcoming
study from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate
change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report said, the company has spent more
than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that
are not peer reviewed by the scientific community.
Big Tobacco Lied to Public, Judge Says

A federal judge ruled yesterday that tobacco companies have violated civil racketeering laws,
concluding that cigarette makers conspired for decades to deceive the public about the dangers of
their product. But U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said that under a 2005 appellate court ruling,
she could not impose billions of dollars in penalties that had been sought by the Justice
Department in its civil racketeering suit. In the opinion...Kessler wrote that there is "overwhelming
evidence" [that the industry] conspired to violate, and indeed violated, federal racketeering laws.
"In short," she wrote, "defendants have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal,
with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard
for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted. Over the course of more than 50
years, defendants lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public, including smokers and
the young people...about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco
smoke." Kessler added that the companies "suppressed research, they destroyed documents, they
manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction...and they abused the
legal system in order to achieve their goal -- to make money." The Justice Department lawsuit
originally sought $280 billion. But the U.S. Court of Appeals [ruled] a company could not be forced
to turn over past profits as a way of preventing future misconduct. The Justice Department
subsequently proposed a $130 billion penalty to pay for anti-smoking programs, but...it scaled that
back to a total of $14 billion.
The 100-mpg car is coming

2006-07-19, MSN
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveonaCar/The100mpgCarIsC...
Though the 100 mpg car sounds like a myth, it turns out that such vehicles do exist -- only
they're built in your neighbor's garage, not a giant production plant. Known as plug-in hybridelectric vehicles ... theyre basically Priuses or similar hybrids that have been equipped with extra
batteries, so that they rarely use their gasoline engines at all. "People are salivating for plug-ins,"
says Bradley Berman, editor of the site HybridCars.com. A hybrid vehicle today like a Prius has
both a gasoline engine and a battery, which is fed by the braking energy produced by the car. It
cant be plugged in. A plug-in hybrid keeps those components, but essentially gets an extra fuel
tank, in the form of an added battery bank ... that allows the car to run exclusively off battery power
for most driving. Felix Kramer, founder of the California Cars Initiative, a nonprofit group that
promotes the use of high-efficiency, low-emission cars, owns the first consumer plug-in in North
America. Not surprisingly, he loves it. "Many days I use no gasoline, because I go at neighborhood
speeds for under 30 miles, and Im just all-electric all day," he says. And the mileage? "At highway
speeds, you can easily get over 100 mpg." Other plug-in owners offer up similar results. "I used to
fill up every 400 miles or so," he says ... "and now I fill up every 800 miles or so." Advocates
estimate that it costs less than $1 per gallon to replenish a plug-in hybrid. "Our goal is to have a
$3,000 kit," CalCars' Kramer says. (That number, coincidentally, is also what many plug-in
evangelists think that the technology would cost for Toyota to add to its hybrids.)
Note: If people are doing this in their garage, why aren't the auto makers already producing them?
In fact, a similar vehicle was produced to be marketed in 2002, but then pulled off the market. To
find why average car mileage has remained virtually unchanged for 100 years, click here.
Secretive society's big names include Kissinger, Rockefeller, a queen

2006-06-09, Toronto Star (one of Canada's leading newspapers)
Among prominent attendees at this year's conference of the Bilderberg group, a secretive
society that includes some of the world's most powerful people: Jacques Aigrain, CEO of
Swiss Re. Ahmad Chalabi, former deputy prime minister of Iraq and long-time opponent of
Saddam Hussein. George A. David, chairman of Coca-Cola. Paul Desmarais, CEO of Power
Corporation. Richard Holbrooke, key American negotiator for 1995 Bosnian peace accords.
Vernon Jordan, friend and onetime presidential aide to Bill Clinton. Henry Kissinger, foreignpolicy guru and secretary of state under Richard Nixon. Ed Kronenburg, director of NATO's private
office. Bernardino Leon Gross, Spain's foreign minister. Ronald S. Lloyd, chairman of Credit
Suisse First Boston. Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands. Gordon Nixon, Royal Bank of Canada
president, CEO. George Pataki, governor of New York state. Richard Perle, senior foreign policy
adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush. David Rockefeller, retired banker, heir to oil fortune.
Dennis Ross, former Clinton Mideast negotiator. Giulio Tremonti, VP of Italy's chamber of deputies.
James Wolfensohn, U.S. Mideast envoy, former head of the World Bank. Robert Zoellick, deputy
U.S. secretary of state.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For those who know about the pre-war manipulations
involving weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the participation of Ahmed Chalabi speaks
volumes. And for a revealing three-minute video clip on CNN about this highly secretive group,
click here.
Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules

2006-05-23, BusinessWeek
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2006/nf20060523_2210.htm
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad
authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual
accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry
in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye. Unbeknownst to
almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy
Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects
from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that
they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside
the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver
under this provision. The timing of Bush's move is intriguing. On the same day the President
signed the memo, Porter Goss resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Only
six days later ... USA Today reported that the National Security Agency had obtained
millions of calling records of ordinary citizens provided by three major U.S. phone
companies. Negroponte oversees both the CIA and NSA in his role as the administration's top
intelligence official. In addition to refusing to explain why Bush decided to delegate this authority to
Negroponte, the White House declined to say whether Bush or any other President has ever
exercised the authority and allowed a company to avoid standard securities disclosure and
accounting requirements.
Note: For many revealing reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
Exposed: the secret corporate funding behind health research

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1703694,00.html
Academics and the media have failed dismally to ask the crucial question of scientists' claims: who
is paying you? In the 1990s, [Arise] was one of the world's most influential public-health groups. It
described itself as "a worldwide association of eminent scientists who act as independent
commentators". Its purpose ... was to show how "everyday pleasures, such as eating chocolate,
smoking, drinking tea, coffee and alcohol, contribute to the quality of life". "Scientific studies show
that enjoying the simple pleasures in life, without feeling guilty, can reduce stress and increase
resistance to disease". Between September 1993 and March 1994 ... [Arise] generated 195
newspaper articles and radio and television interviews, in places such as the Wall Street Journal,
the International Herald Tribune, the Independent, the Evening Standard, El Pas, La Repubblica,
Rai and the BBC. In 1998 [tobacco] firms were obliged to place their internal documents in a public
archive. Among them ... is a memo from ... Philip Morris - the world's largest tobacco company.
The title is "Arise 1994-95 Activities and Funding". This showed that in the previous financial
year Arise had received $373,400: ... over 99% - from Philip Morris, British American
Tobacco, RJ Reynolds and Rothmans. The memo suggests Arise was run not by eminent
scientists but by eminent tobacco companies. How much more science is being published in
academic journals with undeclared interests like these? How many more media campaigns ... have
been secretly funded and steered by corporations?
Note: If you want to understand how corporate interests secretly manipulate both scientific results
and public perception, this excellent article is well worth reading.
Corporate Wealth Share Rises for Top-Income Americans

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/national/29rich.html?ex=1296190800&en=78482...
New government data indicate that the concentration of corporate wealth among the highestincome Americans grew significantly in 2003, as a trend that began in 1991 accelerated in the first
year that President Bush and Congress cut taxes on capital. In 2003 the top 1 percent of
households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, up from 53.4 percent the year before,
according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the latest income tax data. The top
group's share of corporate wealth has grown by half since 1991, when it was 38.7 percent.
In 2003, incomes in the top 1 percent of households ranged from $237,000 to several billion
dollars. For every group below the top 1 percent, shares of corporate wealth have declined since
1991. Long-term capital gains were taxed at 28 percent until 1997, and at 20 percent until 2003,
when rates were cut to 15 percent. The top rate on dividends was cut to 15 percent from 35
percent that year. The White House said it did not believe that the 2003 tax cuts had much
influence on wealth shares.
'National interest' halts arms corruption inquiry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,1972749,00.html
A major criminal investigation into alleged corruption by the arms company BAE Systems and its
executives was stopped in its tracks yesterday when the prime minister claimed it would endanger
Britain's security. The remarkable intervention was announced by the attorney general, Lord
Goldsmith, who took the decision to end the Serious Fraud Office [SFO] inquiry into alleged bribes
paid by the company to Saudi officials. BAE and the Saudi embassy had frantically lobbied the
government for the long-running investigation to be discontinued, with the company insisting it was
poised to lose another lucrative Saudi contract. This came at a time when the SFO appeared to
have made a significant breakthrough, with investigators on the brink of accessing key Swiss bank
accounts. Lord Goldsmith consulted the prime minister, the defence secretary, foreign
secretary, and the intelligence services, and they decided that "the wider public interest"
"outweighed the need to maintain the rule of law". The decision was condemned last night as
naked political interference in a criminal case. The Liberal Democrat chief of staff said the
government had succumbed to Saudi pressure. The UK made overseas bribery illegal in 2002,
under US pressure. No prosecutions have taken place under the new law. Clare Short, Mr Blair's
former cabinet colleague, said: "The message it sends to corrupt businessmen is carry on - the
government will support you."
Note: It's interesting how "the wider public interest" is so often tied to lucrative contracts and
profits.
'The Future of Food'

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/30/DDGHOEVICB1.DTL#f...
Food insiders may already know the disturbing facts highlighted by this film, but the general public
is in for a shock at how corporations are using misleading campaigns -- and scare tactics -- to
ensure that people around the world become dependent on genetically modified food. Monsanto
and other corporate behemoths are motivated (not surprisingly) by profits, according to farmers,
academics and others who talk to documentarian Deborah Koons Garcia. Canadian farmer Percy
Schmeiser was targeted by Monsanto's lawyers because some of the corporation's patented
seedlings were found on his property. Schmeiser didn't plant them there; wind blew the insecticideresistant seeds onto his farm from another farm, or the seeds fell off a passing truck. Monsanto
didn't care, ordering Schmeiser to kill all his family's seed because they'd potentially been
contaminated by its patented product. Schmeiser ... fought Monsanto, spending his retirement
money against the sort of legal attack that has already scared farmers throughout North America.
Incredibly, a judge ruled in favor of Monsanto. Garcia's documentary shows how much the U.S.
federal government favors these corporations, especially through lax oversight (the [FDA] and the
Department of Agriculture seem to rubber-stamp every corporate project having to do with
genetically modified food). In the past 20 years, Monsanto's alumni have occupied the high
reaches of American power. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, did
legal work for the corporation, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was president
of a Monsanto subsidiary.
Note: To view this highly educational film, click here. To read another excellent review of this
important documentary, click here.
Garrett of 'Newsday' Rips Tribune Co. 'Greed' in Exit Memo

2005-03-01, Editor and Publisher (Leading Media Trade Publication)
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=100081...
Laurie Garrett, the prize-winning Newsday reporter, left the Melville, N.Y., paper Monday with a
blistering memo to her colleagues that may provoke debate elsewhere in the newspaper industry.
"The leaders of Times Mirror and Tribune have proven to be mirrors of a general trend in the media
world: They serve their stockholders first, Wall St. second and somewhere far down the list comes
service to newspaper readerships. Garrett won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for her reporting on Ebola.
Shes also won a Polk Award and a Peabody and was finalist for another Pulitzer in 1998. The
deterioration we experienced at Newsday was hardly unique," she wrote.. "All across America
news organizations have been devoured by massive corporations, and allegiance to
stockholders, the drive for higher share prices, and push for larger dividend returns trumps
everything that the grunts in the newsrooms consider their missions. Honesty and tenacity ...
seem to have taken backseats to the sort of 'snappy news', sensationalism, scandal-for-the-sake
of scandal crap that sells. Profits: that's what it's all about now. This is terrible for democracy. I can
attest to the horrible impact the deterioration of journalism has had on the national psyche. But
giving up is not an option. There is too much at stake. Now is the time to think in imaginative ways.
Opportunities for quality journalism are still there, though you may need to scratch new surfaces,
open locked doors and nudge a few reticent editors to find them. Your readers desperately need
for you to try, over and over again, to tell the stories, dig the dirt and bring them the news."
Note: If above link fails, click here.
U.S. corporations paying less in taxes

2004-09-23, MSNBC/Forbes
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6080561/
The effective tax rate for America's largest and most profitable corporations has sharply
declined in recent years, and one third of such companies paid zero taxes -- or less -- in at
least one of the last three years. In 2003 alone, 46 of the 275 companies...paid no taxes at all in
2003, despite reporting a total of $42.6 billion in pre-tax profits. Indeed, these companies received
$5.4 billion in tax rebates that year. Half of the "tax-break dollars" over the three-year period went
to just 25 companies. All told, 82 companies paid zero or negative taxes in at least one of the
last three years and 28, including Boeing, paid negative taxes for the entire period. The
largest beneficiaries were some of the most profitable companies: General Electric, SBC
Communications, Citigroup, IBM and Microsoft. Of the 10 most profitable U.S.-based companies
on the Forbes 2000, only Wal-Mart and Freddie Mac do not appear on the study's list of top 25 tax
break beneficiaries. At the same time, IRS data indicates that the overall share of federal taxes
paid by corporations in now less than 10 percent, down from nearly 13 percent in 1997. This trend
occurred against a backdrop of rising corporate earnings. The study attributes the trend to the
widening availability of offshore tax shelters and other lawful avoidance techniques.
Technology gets under clubbers' skin

2004-06-09, CNN News
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06/09/spain.club
Queuing to get into one nightclub in Spain could soon be a thing of the past for regular
customers thanks to a tiny computer chip implanted under their skin. The technology,
known as a VeriChip, also means nightclubbers can leave their cash and cards at home and
buy drinks using a scanner. The bill can then be paid later. Clubbers who want to join the
scheme at Baja Beach Club in Barcelona pay 125 euros (about US $150) for the VeriChip -- about
the size of a grain of rice -- to be implanted in their body. Then when they pass through a scanner
the chip is activated and it emits a signal containing the individual's number, which is then
transmitted to a secure data storage site. The club's director, Conrad Chase, said he began using
the VeriChip, made by Applied Digital Solutions, in March 2004 because he needed something
similar to a VIP card and wanted to provide his customers with better service. He said 10 of the
club's regular customers, including himself, have been implanted with the chip, and predicted more
would follow. "I know many people who want to be implanted," said Chase. "Almost everybody now
has a piercing, tattoos or silicone. Why not get the chip and be original?" Chase said VeriChip
could also boost security by speeding up checks at airports, for example. He denied the scheme
had any drawbacks. The VeriChip is an in-house debit card and contains no personal information.
Note: Why is the media so upbeat about this? The article raises very few questions, yet seems to
promote microchip implants in humans as the wave of the future for commerce.
Biotech critics at risk : Economics calls the shots in the debate

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/11/INGH...
Between 1999 and 2001, unbeknownst to the others, each [of four scientists] made a simple but
dramatic discovery that challenged the catechism of the same powerful industry -- biotechnology -that by then had become the handmaiden of industrial agriculture and the darling of venture
capitalists. When he was the principal scientific officer of the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen,
Scotland, Hungarian citizen Arpad Pusztai fed transgenically modified [GMO] potatoes to rodents
in one of the few experiments that have ever tested the safety of genetically modified food. Almost
immediately, the rats displayed tissue and immunological damage. After he reported his
findings, which eventually underwent peer review and were published in the United
Kingdom's leading medical journal, Lancet, Pusztai's home was burglarized and his
research files taken. Soon thereafter, he was fired from his job at Rowett, and he has since
suffered an orchestrated international campaign of discreditation. [Read full article for the
other three distrubing stories of scientific suppression] These four men were not attacked because
of flawed or imperfect experiments but because the findings of their work have a potential
economic effect. The sad part is that the academies and other allegedly independent institutions
that once defended scientific freedom and protected employees like Hayes, Chapela, Losey and
Pusztai are abandoning them to the wolves of commerce, the brands of which are being engraved
over the entrances to a disturbing number of university labs.
Note: Big money is clearly stifling good science and keeping the public in the dark about genetic
modifications in the food we eat. To educate yourself on this most important topic, click here.
Bush's Grandfather Directed Bank Tied to Man Who Funded Hitler

President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because
of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government
documents show. Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp., a New
York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to
recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press. Fritz
Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler. Reports of Bush's involvement with the
seized bank have been circulating on the Internet for years and have been reported by some
mainstream media. The newly declassified documents provide additional details about the Union
Banking-Thyssen connection. Union Banking was owned by a Dutch bank, Bank voor Handel en
Scheepvaardt N.V., which was "closely affiliated" with the German conglomerate United Steel
Works, according to an Oct. 5, 1942, report from the federal Office of Alien Property Custodian.
The Dutch bank and the steel firm were part of the business and financial empire of Thyssen and
his brother, Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, the report said. The 4,000 Union Banking shares
owned by the Dutch bank were registered in the names of the seven U.S. directors, [including
Prescott Bush and E. Roland Harriman, the bank chairman and brother of former New York Gov.
W. Averell Harriman]. Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of
Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as
other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel.
2 Paths of Bayer Drug in 80's: Riskier One Steered Overseas

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A00E4DA1F3EF931A15...
A division of the pharmaceutical company Bayer sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine
for hemophiliacs -- medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS -- to Asia and Latin
America in the mid-1980's while selling a new, safer product in the West. The Bayer unit, Cutter
Biological, introduced its safer medicine in late February 1984 as evidence mounted that the
earlier version was infecting hemophiliacs with H.I.V. Yet for over a year, the company continued to
sell the old medicine overseas. Cutter officials were trying to avoid being stuck with large stores of
a product. Yet even after it began selling the new product, the company kept making the old
medicine for several months more. In Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs
got H.I.V. after using Cutter's old medicine. Many have since died. Cutter also continued to sell the
older product after February 1984 in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Argentina. While
admitting no wrongdoing, Bayer and three other companies that made the concentrate have
paid hemophiliacs about $600 million to settle more than 15 years of lawsuits accusing
them of making a dangerous product. Federal regulators helped keep the overseas sales
out of the public eye. The Food and Drug Administration's regulator of blood products, Dr. Harry
M. Meyer Jr....asked that the issue be "quietly solved without alerting the Congress, the medical
community and the public."
Buffett warns on investment 'time bomb'

2003-03-04, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2817995.stm
The rapidly growing trade in derivatives poses a "mega-catastrophic risk" for the economy and
most shares are still "too expensive", ... investor Warren Buffett has warned. The derivatives
market has exploded in recent years, with investment banks selling billions of dollars worth of
these investments to clients as a way to off-load or manage market risk. But Mr Buffett argues
that such highly complex financial instruments are time bombs and "financial weapons of
mass destruction" that could harm not only their buyers and sellers, but the whole
economic system. Derivatives are financial instruments that allow investors to speculate on the
future price of, for example, commodities or shares - without buying the underlying investment.
Outstanding derivatives contracts - excluding those traded on exchanges such as the International
Petroleum Exchange - are worth close to $85 trillion, according to the International Swaps and
Derivatives Association. Some derivatives contracts, Mr Buffett says, appear to have been devised
by "madmen". He warns that derivatives can push companies onto a "spiral that can lead to a
corporate meltdown", like the demise of the notorious hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management
in 1998.
Note: Though written in 2003, this excellent article reveals the incredible risk of creating
derivatives that have more value than the entire GDP of the world. The risk has increased
tremendously since then.
Military Contractors Behind New Pressure Group Targeting Presidential

Candidates
2015-05-09, The Intercept
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/09/military-contractors-form-group...
Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers has formed a new pressure group ...
to serve as the premiere national security and foreign policy organization during the 2016 debate
and to help elect a president who supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy.
Rogers group, Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, is hosting candidate events
and intends to host a candidate forum later this year. A look at the business executives
helping APPS steer presidential candidates towards more hawkish positions reveals that
many are defense contractors who stand to gain financially from continued militarism.
Rogers may have a conflict of interest as well. Explaining the goals of his group to a news outlet in
Indiana, Rogers lamented the lack of surveillance capabilities and warned of increasing threat of
cyberwarfare. Its not unusual for the arms industry to use front groups to press for a more
aggressive foreign policy, says William Hartung, director of the Arms & Security Project at the
Center for International Policy. It sounds a lot more credible when a group called Americans for
Peace, Prosperity and Security calls for a policy shift than if the same argument comes out of the
mouth of an arms executive or lobbyist whose livelihood is tied to the spread of tension and
conflict, Hartung said.
Note: Read a powerful essay by a top US general exposing the war machine titled "War is a
Racket." For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing electoral process corruption news
Big oil is pressuring scientists not to link fracking to earthquakes in

Oklahoma
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/03/big-oil-is-pressuring-sc...
Many Oklahomans can still vividly recall the day they experienced their first earthquake. Ever since
2009/2010, earthquakes in the state have increased exponentially leading to what are called
seismic swarms. In 2000 there was not a single earthquake, but in 2014 we experienced 585
quakes of magnitude three or larger. For some time now, scientists have wondered whether
fracking-related activities, such as wastewater injection, might be the source of increased seismic
activity in Oklahoma. In May of last year, the Oklahoma Geological Survey, an affiliate entity
of the University of Oklahoma, released a statement in conjunction with the United States
Geological Survey, saying that wastewater injection was a likely contributing factor the
increase in earthquakes. Not long after this statement, David Boren, president of the university,
summoned the Oklahoma Geological Surveys lead seismologist Austin Holland, who was also
one of the authors of the statement, to a meeting with Harold Hamm, CEO of ... one of Oklahomas
largest oil and gas exploration and production companies. Boren facilitated the meeting despite the
fact that he also serves as a member of the Continental Resources board of directors. In July
2014, Continental Resources released a presentation positing an alternative theory for the seismic
swarms and downplaying the influence of induced seismicity. One can only imagine the pressure
this meeting must have brought upon Holland and his team of scientists.
Note: Jason W Murphey, an Oklahoma State Representative, wrote the above. For more on this,
read this informative New York Times article titled "As Quakes Rattle Oklahoma, Fingers Point to
Oil and Gas Industry." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing
news articles about corruption in science.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership won't deliver jobs or curb China's power

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-prestowitz-tpp-trade-pact-20150123...
What President Obama called for in his State of the Union: completion and adoption of the TransPacific Partnership free-trade agreement, or TPP, for the Asia-Pacific region. The president [and
other TPP supporters] make two major arguments. One is that the trade pact would create lots of
new jobs and raise American incomes and living standards. The other is that it would strengthen
U.S. alliances in Asia while curbing Chinese influence. Over the last 35 years, the U.S. has ...
concluded many free-trade agreements. In advance of each, U.S. leaders promised the
deals would create high-paying jobs, reduce the trade deficit, increase GDP and raise living
standards. None of these [promises] came true. In fact, the U.S. non-oil trade deficit continued
to grow, millions of jobs were offshored and mean household income has hardly risen since 2000.
And economists overwhelmingly agree that rising U.S. income inequality is being driven in part by
international trade. The ever-closer linking of the U.S. economy to those of the TPP countries over
the last 35 years has not ... deterred U.S. trade partners and allies from developing ever closer ties
with China. The TPP is not going to bring together nations such as Mexico, Peru, Chile, New
Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei to gang up against China. That is just not
going to happen. Thus the TPP fails on both economic and political grounds.
Note: Read an excellent Washington Post article showing how the claim of 65,000 jobs created
with the TPP is a blatant lie and manipulation. Then watch an excellent, two-minute video by
former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on the TPP titled "The Worst Trade Deal You've
Never Heard of," or read leaked draft texts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership for yourself.
Spy Drones Over North Carolina Factory Farms Reveal Lagoons Of

Filth
http://www.ibtimes.com/spy-drones-over-north-carolina-factory-farms-reveal-la...
Mark Devries ... a documentary filmmaker who flew spy drones over North Carolina pig
farms, claims to have captured video footage showing oceans of untreated animal waste ...
oozing into the green Carolina countryside, in some cases close to residential areas. [Devries] shot
the drone footage as part of a two-year investigation into the public-health consequences of waste
management on farms operated by Smithfield Foods Inc. -- the largest pork producer in the
country. Devries said he first became aware of the toxic cesspools after speaking with
neighbors who live near Smithfield facilities. I was shocked, Devries said. Pig manure is
fairly similar to human waste, so it would be similar to having a pit of untreated human sewage the
size of several football fields out in the open -- and in many cases, right in the vicinity of peoples
homes. A spokeswoman for Smithfield Foods said [that] state and federal regulators sign off on
the companys treatment systems. The meat-packing giant is no stranger to criticism from
environmentalists and animal-rights groups. Its sea of waste once earned it one of the largest
fines ever from the Environmental Protection Agency, Rolling Stone reported in 2006. The project
is likely to further spur the debate over ag-gag laws, which make it illegal to conduct undercover
investigations at agricultural facilities. Although ag-gag is often framed as an animal-rights issue,
such laws also meet with fierce opposition and legal challenges from free-speech advocates. The
issue that it brings up is a much broader issue of laws criminalizing information gathering by the
press, Devries said.
Note: Learn how cruelly pigs are treated in this revealing video. For more along these lines, see
concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major
media sources.
HSBC and Goldman sued for allegedly fixing metal price

2014-11-26, BBC News
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30209544
Goldman Sachs and HSBC are among four platinum and palladium dealers to be sued in
New York for allegedly fixing the price of the metals. The four companies are said to have
rigged prices for eight years. BASF and Standard bank were also sued in the first lawsuit of
its kind in the US. The four defendants declined to comment. Modern Settings, a Florida-based
maker of jewellery and police badges, said purchasers lost millions of dollars. The Florida
company filed the complaint in Manhattan federal court. The companies were accused of having
conspired since 2007 to rig the twice-daily platinum and palladium fixings. It is alleged that the
companies illegally shared customer data and then used that information to engage in front
running ... a form of market manipulation in which traders profit by using information about their
clients' trading intentions. Traders will often know how a particular client order will affect the market
and can place their own trades ahead of that order to benefit. The four companies in this case
are also accused of manufacturing "spoof" orders. Goldman, HSBC and Standard Bank
declined to comment. International regulators have tightened scrutiny of pricing benchmarks in
recent years. The tighter regulation comes after a currency trading scandal and the Libor scandal,
which fixed a benchmark interest rate.
widespread corruption in banking and finance. For additional information, see the excellent,
reliable resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information Center.
Free Pigs From the Abusive Crates

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/opinion/free-pigs-from-the-abusive-crates.html
Would you cram a dog into a crate for her entire life, never letting her out, until you took her to the
pound to kill her? Of course you wouldnt, and yet thats effectively what happens to most mother
pigs in this country. They spend their lives in what are called gestation crates ... immobilized
in these crates until they are taken to the slaughterhouse. Pigs are smart. They learn
rudimentary video games as quickly as chimpanzees. When abnormally enclosed, their muscles
and bones waste away, and they go insane from boredom. Fortunately, were seeing changes.
Were seeing policies to get rid of these crates from the likes of McDonalds, Burger King and
Smithfield Foods. Weve also seen bills or initiatives passed in nine states that require that
all pigs be given at least enough space to turn around. Its a modest improvement, but the
pork producers are fighting it. These laws are bipartisan. A poll conducted last month by MasonDixon Polling and Research found that 93 percent of New Jersey voters wanted to see these
crates banned. A year ago, Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a ... bill (to ban gestation crates) that had
passed the Assembly and Senate by huge bipartisan majorities.
Note: For more along these lines, see this excerpt of a deeply revealing ABC News article about
standardized animal cruelty in chicken farming.
Travelers, say bon voyage to privacy

2014-10-16, Dallas News
http://www.dallasnews.com/investigations/watchdog/20141016-watchdog-travelers...
Did you know that when you buy an airline ticket and make other travel reservations, the federal
government keeps a record of the details in a file called Passenger Name Record or PNR? If
airlines dont comply, they cant fly in the U.S., explains Ed Hasbrouck, a privacy expert with the
Identity Project who has studied the records for years and is considered the nations top expert.
Before each trip, the system creates a travel score for you, generated by your PNR. Before an
airline can issue you a boarding pass, the system must approve your passage, Hasbrouck
explains. Thats one way people on the No Fly List are targeted. The idea behind extensive
use of PNRs, he says, is not necessarily to watch known suspects but to find new ones.
Want to appeal the process? Its a secret administrative process based on the score you dont
know, based on files you havent seen, Hasbrouck says. The program collects seemingly trivial
details. If you have an argument with an airline gate agent and that agent enters a notation ... that
record stays in your PNR. The U.S. government is getting the data and sharing it in ways we dont
fully know about with other governments, Hasbrouck says. The information collected by the
airlines is shared with third-party data companies who store it. Where? In the cloud. Make you feel
safer? In Canada and the European Union, the collection of this information spurred public debate.
But not here.
Note: Read this excellent article for lots more details on how the government spies on your travels.
For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news articles
from reliable sources.
US telecom giants call on FCC to block cities' expansion of high-speed

internet
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/29/us-telecoms-fcc-block-high-sp...
The US telecom industry called on the Federal Communications Commission ... to block two cities
plans to expand high-speed internet services to their residents. USTelecom, which represents
telecom giants Verizon, AT&T and others, wants the FCC to block expansion of two popular
municipally owned high-speed internet networks. Chattanooga has the largest high-speed
internet service in the US, offering customers access to speeds of 1 gigabit per second
about 50 times faster than the US average. The service, provided by municipally owned EPB,
has sparked a tech boom in the city and attracted international attention. EPB is now petitioning
the FCC to expand its territory. Comcast and other companies have previously sued
unsuccessfully to stop EPBs fibre optic roll out. Wilson [North Carolina], a town of a little more
than 49,000 people, launched Greenlight, its own service offering high-speed internet, after
complaints about the cost and quality of Time Warner cables service. Time Warner lobbied the
North Carolina senate to outlaw the service and similar municipal efforts. In January this year, the
FCC issued the Gigabit City Challenge, calling on providers to offer gigabit service in at least one
community in each state by 2015. The challenge has come amid intense lobbying from cable and
telecoms firms to stop municipal rivals and new competitors including Google from building and
expanding high speed networks.
Credit Suisse Pleads Guilty to Aiding Tax Evasion

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/55216700#.U4CjcHbRl9Q
Credit Suisse has agreed to pay a $2.5 billion fine to authorities in the United States for helping
Americans evade taxes, after becoming the largest bank in 20 years to plead guilty to a U.S.
criminal charge. Switzerland's second largest bank escaped what could have been the worst
outcome for its business - its top management stayed in place and it will not have to hand over
client data, protected by Swiss secrecy laws. And the New York state bank regulator decided not
to revoke the bank's license in the state. U.S. prosecutors said the bank helped clients deceive
U.S. tax authorities by concealing assets in illegal, undeclared bank accounts, in a
conspiracy that spanned decades, and in one case began more than a century ago. The
Justice Department has not often pursued such convictions of financial companies,
especially large ones that could become destabilized following an indictment. Credit Suisse
will pay the penalties to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal
Reserve and New York's banking regulator, the New York State Department of Financial Services.
It had already paid just under $200 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Some
analysts said clients and counterparties could pull their business due to the guilty plea. The United
States has been trying to wrest client data from Swiss banks in a long-standing fight with
Switzerland and its bank secrecy laws. The standoff has already forced Wegelin & Co, the oldest
Swiss private bank, to close shop after a guilty plea to charges of helping U.S. clients evade taxes.
Monsanto: The Enemy Of Family Farmers

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-kucinich/the-enemy-of-family-farmers_...
Consumers around the world are becoming aware of the dangers of industrial, chemical-based
agriculture. The most legitimate science and research bodies recommend turning toward organic
and sustainable agriculture, shunning genetically engineered (GE or GMO) products and the
chemicals they are designed to promote. With the growth and power of the food movement,
corporate giants are beginning to take action. After decades of employing a "block-us-and-we'llsue-you" approach, Monsanto recently began an intense makeover PR campaign: popularity by
association. Monsanto is cozying up to the reputation, authenticity and wholesomeness of family
farmers -- and hoping the all-American nostalgia many associate with the small scale farmer rubs
off on them. During the Super Bowl, key media markets saw Monsanto's "It Begins with a
Farmer" commercials, which were intended to demonstrate that the company shares the
same values as family farmers and the consumers they feed and clothe. In reality,
Monsanto is no friend to the family farmer or the communities they live in and support. In
fact, Monsanto (and other chemical companies like Dow Chemical, Syngenta, BASF,
Pioneer/Dupont, and Bayer) have forced small farmers into a dying breed. The cost of industrial
agriculture forces farmers to get big or get out. This is particularly true of GE herbicide-resistant
seeds, which USDA economists tell us have contributed to increased consolidation of farmland in
fewer hands. In the end, family farmers get squeezed out by the mammoth farms enabled by
biotechnology.
10 Things Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Protection Agency Has Done

for You
2014-03-14, Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/elizabeth-warren-consumer-financi...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the watchdog agency conceived of and
established by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the wake of the financial crisis, ... has
issued dozens of protections shielding consumers from shady practices by mortgage
lenders, student loan servicers, and credit card companies. Here are ten things the CFPB,
which was created in 2011, has done to protect the little guy: 1. Mortgage lenders can no longer
push you into a high-priced loan. 2. New homeowners are less likely to be hit by foreclosure. 3. If
you are are delinquent on your mortgage payments, loan servicers have to try harder to help you
avoid foreclosure. 4. Millions of Americans get a low-cost home loan counselor. 5. Borrowers with
high-cost mortgages get an outside eye. 6. Fly-by-night financial players will be held accountable.
7. Folks scammed by credit card companies get refunds. 8. Student lenders face scrutiny. 9.
Service members get extra protection. 10. Consumers get a help center: If your bank or lender
does anything you think is unfair, the bureau has a division dedicated to fielding consumer
complaints. The agency promises to work with companies to try to fix consumers' problems.
Justice Department Inquiry Takes Aim at Banks Business With Payday

Lenders
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/justice-dept-inquiry-takes-aim-at-bank...
Federal prosecutors are trying to thwart the easy access that predatory lenders and dubious online
merchants have to Americans bank accounts by going after banks that fail to meet their
obligations as gatekeepers to the United States financial system. The Justice Department is
weighing civil and criminal actions against dozens of banks, sending out subpoenas to more than
50 payment processors and the banks that do business with them, according to government
officials. In the new initiative, called Operation Choke Point, the agency is scrutinizing banks both
big and small over whether they, in exchange for handsome fees, enable businesses to illegally
siphon billions of dollars from consumers checking accounts. The critical role played by banks
largely plays out in the shadows because they typically do not deal directly with the Internet
merchants. What they do is provide banking services to third-party payment processors, financial
middlemen that, in turn, handle payments for their merchant customers. The new, more rigorous
oversight could have a chilling effect on Internet payday lenders, which have migrated from
storefronts to websites where they offer short-term loans at interest rates that often exceed 500
percent annually. As a growing number of states enact interest rate caps that effectively ban the
loans, the lenders increasingly depend on the banks for their survival. With the banks help,
the lenders that typically work with a third-party payment processor that has an account at
the banks are able, authorities say, to automatically deduct payments from customers
checking accounts even in states where the loans are illegal.
Historic smoking report marks 50th anniversary

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/historic-smoking-report-marks-50th-ann...
Fifty years ago, ... more than 42 percent of U.S. adults smoked, and there was a good chance your
doctor was among them. The turning point came on Jan. 11, 1964 [when] U.S. Surgeon General
Luther Terry released an emphatic and authoritative report that said smoking causes illness and
death and the government should do something about it. The reports bottom-line message was
hardly revolutionary. Since 1950, head-turning studies that found higher rates of lung cancer in
heavy smokers had been appearing in medical journals. A widely read article in Readers Digest in
1952, Cancer by the Carton, contributed to the largest drop in cigarette consumption since the
Depression. In 1954, the American Cancer Society announced that smokers had a higher cancer
risk. But the tobacco industry fought back. Manufacturers came out with cigarettes with
filters that they claimed would trap toxins before they settled into smokers lungs. And in
1954, they placed a full-page ad in hundreds of newspapers in which they argued that
research linking their products and cancer was inconclusive. It was a brilliant counteroffensive that left physicians and the public unsure how dangerous smoking really was. Cigarette
sales rebounded. In the decades that followed, warning labels were put on cigarette packs,
cigarette commercials were banned, taxes were raised and new restrictions were placed on where
people could light up. While the U.S. smoking rate has fallen by more than half to 18 percent, that
still translates to more than 43 million smokers. Smoking is still far and away the leading
preventable cause of death in the U.S.
Grocers' group spends record lobbying amid food-labeling fights

2013-12-03, Chicago Tribune/Bloomberg News
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-grocers03-20131203,0,75...
A proposal to require labeling of genetically engineered foods and seeds in Washington state
enjoyed broad public support in polls this summer. That was before some of the largest food
companies swooped in to spend more so consumers would know less about what they are eating.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association, a Washington-based trade group that represents
companies such as ConAgra Foods and Kraft Foods, was responsible for $11 million of the
$22 million campaign against the initiative, compared with about $9 million by pro-labeling
advocates. The GMA's campaign made the difference. The initiative, which had 66 percent
support in a September survey, was defeated by 51 percent to 49 percent. The grocers, who
opposed the proposal as arbitrary and costly for businesses, raised more than $2.3 million from
PepsiCo Inc. and about $1.5 million each from Coca-Cola Co., [and] Nestle USA. Those groups
also were part of a $45 million campaign that defeated a labeling initiative in California last year.
"Spending is not a problem" for organizations opposed to labeling requirements, said Colin O'Neil,
director of government affairs for the Center for Food Safety, which backed the Washington state
initiative. "These companies will spend whatever it takes to defeat labeling at the state level." If
that's the case, the trade associations and their members will be issuing a lot more checks as
fights over labeling food are breaking out in other states and advocates are pressing the matter in
Congress with proposed legislation from both sides awaiting action.
Note: For more on the risks from genetically-modified organisms in food and the environment, see
WikiLeaks publishes secret draft chapter of Trans-Pacific Partnership

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/nov/13/wikileaks-trans-pacific-partners...
WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim
nations. Negotiations for the TPP have ... been conducted behind closed doors. Even members of
the US Congress were only allowed to view selected portions of the documents under supervision.
The 30,000 word intellectual property chapter contains proposals to increase the term of patents,
including medical patents, beyond 20 years, and lower global standards for patentability. It also
pushes for aggressive measures to prevent hackers breaking copyright protection, although that
comes with some exceptions: protection can be broken in the course of "lawfully authorised
activities carried out by government employees, agents, or contractors for the purpose of law
enforcement, intelligence, essential security, or similar governmental purposes". WikiLeaks claims
that the text shows America attempting to enforce its highly restrictive vision of intellectual property
on the world and on itself. "The US administration is aggressively pushing the TPP through
the US legislative process on the sly," says Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of
WikiLeaks. "If instituted," Assange continues, "the TPPs intellectual property regime would trample
over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and
creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm
or consume food; if youre ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its
crosshairs."
Note: To read the Wikileaks release of the secret agreements from the TPP, click here. For further
critical analysis of the TPP text, click here.
Serco: the company that is running Britain

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/29/serco-biggest-company-never-h...
In May this year, a huge company listed on the London Stock Exchange found itself in the midst of
controversy about a prison it runs for the government Thameside, a newly built jail ... in southeast London. Two months later, the same company was the subject of a high- profile report
published by the House Of Commons. Again, the verdict was damning: data had been falsified,
national standards had not been met, there was a culture of "lying and cheating", and the service
offered to the public was simply "not good enough". Three weeks ago, there came grimmer news.
The company ... was one of two contractors that had somehow overcharged the government for its
services, possibly by as much as 50m; The firm that links these three stories together is Serco.
Its range of activities, here and abroad, is truly mind-boggling. As a private firm it's not
open to Freedom of Information requests, so looking into the details of what it does is
fraught with difficulty. But the basic facts are plain enough. As well as five British prisons and the
tags attached to over 8,000 English and Welsh offenders, Serco sees to two immigration removal
centres. You'll also see its logo on the Docklands Light Railway and Woolwich ferry. But even this
is only a fraction of the story. Serco is responsible for air traffic control in the United Arab Emirates,
parking-meter services in Chicago, driving tests in Ontario, and an immigration detention centre on
Christmas Island.
Note: Serco is possibly the largest company you've never heard of. Did you know that the Obama
administration awarded Serco a $1.25 billion contract to help implement online health insurance
exchanges under Obamacare, as reported in this Reuters article? Watch this video to see just how
powerful and pervasive they are.
G-20 Nations Fully Endorse OECD Action Plan on Tax Evasion

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-20/g-20-nations-fully-endorse-oecd-acti...
Group of 20 nations, [which account] for almost 90 percent of the global economy, fully endorse
the ambitious and comprehensive plan presented by the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development to prevent the largest companies from using complicated ownership structures
and transfer pricing to avoid paying taxes where they do most of their business. Strategies used at
U.S. companies including Google, Apple and Yahoo! have been targeted in legislative hearings as
governments look to improved tax collection to fill state coffers. Low tax rates paid by large
multinational companies means smaller businesses and individuals are left with a
disproportionately larger burden, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria told reporters yesterday.
The OECD published its 40-page report as deficit-laden governments attempt to increase revenue
collected from profitable enterprises. It follows hearings in the U.S. and U.K. that revealed how
companies have avoided billions in taxes by attributing profits to mailbox subsidiaries in
places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Under current law, such offshore subsidiaries
can take credit for profits arising from patents developed in countries like the U.S. and U.K. -generally with cash the parent companies provided. Mountain View, California-based Google has
avoided as much as $2 billion in worldwide income taxes annually by attributing profits to a
subsidiary in Bermuda that holds the rights to its intellectual property for sales outside the U.S..
U.K. Bankers Face Decade Bonus Delay and Criminal Sanctions

2013-06-19, Bloomberg/Washington Post
http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-MOLK2O07SXL101-0E799136C7JHEP4...
Senior employees at U.K. banks may face a 10-year wait for bonuses under proposals put forward
by a committee investigating the failures of the industry, which also recommended making
reckless management of lenders a crime. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards'
... proposal to introduce a criminal offence for mismanagement, which could see executives of
failed firms facing jail time, was endorsed by Prime Minister David Cameron. The potential
rewards for fleeting short-term success have sometimes been huge, but the penalties for failure,
often manifest only later, have been much smaller or negligible, the authors of the report said.
"Performance should be assessed using a range of measures rather than just return on
equity, which creates perverse incentives, the committee said. "Taxpayers have bailed out
the banks. The public have the sense that advantage has been taken of them, that bankers have
received huge rewards, that some of those rewards have not been properly earned, and in some
cases have been obtained through dishonesty, and that these huge rewards are excessive,
bearing little or no relationship to the value of the work done. The committee recommended
introducing an offence for reckless misconduct and potential prison time for bankers
found responsible for the worst mismanagement, the first such sanctions."
Note: For a related article in the London Review of Books, which starts "the blame in Spain falls
mainly on the banks as it does in Ireland, in Greece, in the US, and pretty much everywhere else
too," click here. For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable
GM wheat find threatens exports, stokes consumer fears

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52045235#.UaoRJtjfKSo
Unapproved genetically modified wheat found growing in the United States is threatening the
outlook for U.S. exports of the world's biggest traded food commodity, with importers keenly aware
of consumer sensitivity to gene-altered food. Major importer Japan has canceled a tender offer to
buy U.S. western white wheat, while other top Asian wheat importers South Korea, China and the
Philippines said they were closely monitoring the situation. The European Union is preparing to
test incoming shipments, and will block any containing GM wheat. GM wheat was discovered
this spring on a farm [in] Oregon, in a field that grew winter wheat in 2012. Scientists found
the wheat was a strain field-tested from 1998 to 2005 and deemed safe before St. Louisbased biotech giant Monsanto withdrew it from the regulatory approval process on
worldwide opposition to genetically engineered wheat. No GM wheat varieties are approved
for general planting in the U.S. or elsewhere, the USDA said. The EU has asked Monsanto for a
detection method to allow its controls to be carried out. With high consumer wariness to
genetically-modified food, few countries allow imports of such cereals for direct human
consumption. However, the bulk of U.S. corn and soybean crops are genetically modified.
GMOs, click here.
Political intelligence firms set up investor meetings at White House

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/political-intelligence-firms-set-up-in...
Wall Street investors hungry for advance information on upcoming federal health-care decisions
repeatedly held private discussions with Obama administration officials, including a top White
House adviser helping to implement the Affordable Care Act. The private conversations show that
the increasingly urgent race to acquire political intelligence goes beyond the communications
with congressional staffers that have become the focus of heightened scrutiny in recent weeks.
White House records show that Elizabeth Fowler, then a top health-policy adviser to President
Obama, met with executives from half a dozen investment firms in 2011 and 2012. Among
them was Kris Jenner, a stock picker with T. Rowe Price Investment Services who managed
its $6 billion Health Sciences Fund. Separately, [Andrew Shin,] an official in the agency that
oversees Medicare and Medicaid spoke in December with managers of hedge funds, pension
plans and mutual funds in a conference call. That call and the White House meetings Fowler
attended were arranged by political-intelligence firms, an expanding class of consultants in
Washington that specialize in providing government information to Wall Street. Hedge fund
executives and other investors are increasingly interested in the timing and nature of health-policy
decisions in Washington because they directly affect the profits and stock prices of
pharmaceutical, insurance, hospital and managed-care companies. Similar interest surrounds
other industry sectors, such as defense, agriculture and energy, whose fortunes are especially
dependent on government decisions.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate and
government corruption, click here and here.
Flow of Tainted Water Is Latest Crisis at Japan Nuclear Plant

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/asia/radioactive-water-imperils-fukus...
Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the worlds second worst nuclear disaster, the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive
wastewater that workers are struggling to contain. Groundwater is pouring into the plants ravaged
reactor buildings at a rate of almost 75 gallons a minute. It becomes highly contaminated there,
before being pumped out to keep from swamping a critical cooling system. A small army of
workers has struggled to contain the continuous flow of radioactive wastewater, relying on ...
storage tanks sprawling over 42 acres of parking lots and lawns. The tanks hold the equivalent of
112 Olympic-size pools. But even they are not enough to handle the tons of strontium-laced water
at the plant a reflection of the scale of the 2011 disaster. In a sign of the sheer size of the
problem, the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, plans to chop down a
small forest on its southern edge to make room for hundreds more tanks, a task that became more
urgent when underground pits built to handle the overflow sprang leaks in recent weeks. While the
company has managed to stay ahead, the constant threat of running out of storage space has
turned into what Tepco itself called an emergency, with the sheer volume of water raising
fears of future leaks at the seaside plant that could reach the Pacific Ocean. Two years after
the meltdowns, the plant remains vulnerable to the same sort of large earthquake and tsunami that
set the original calamity in motion.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on risks and corruption in
the nuclear power industry, click here.
The 1% aren't like the rest of us

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-page-wealth-and-politics...
Over the last two years, President Obama and Congress have put the country on track to reduce
projected federal budget deficits by nearly $4 trillion. Yet when that process began, in early 2011,
only about 12% of Americans in Gallup polls cited federal debt as the nation's most important
problem. Two to three times as many cited unemployment and jobs as the biggest challenge facing
the country. So why did policymakers focus so intently on the deficit issue? One reason may be
that the small minority that saw the deficit as the nation's priority had more clout than the majority
that didn't. We recently conducted a survey of top wealth-holders (with an average net worth of
$14 million) in the Chicago area, one of the first studies to systematically examine the political
attitudes of wealthy Americans. Our research found that the biggest concern of this top 1% of
wealth-holders was curbing budget deficits and government spending. When surveyed,
they ranked those things as priorities three times as often as they did unemployment
and far more often than any other issue. Our Survey of Economically Successful Americans
[found that] two-thirds of the respondents had contributed money (averaging $4,633) in the most
recent presidential election, and fully one-fifth of them "bundled" contributions from others. About
half recently initiated contact with a U.S. senator or representative, and nearly half (44%) of those
contacts concerned matters of relatively narrow economic self-interest rather than broader national
concerns. This kind of access to elected officials suggests an outsized influence in Washington.
Food cravings engineered by industry

2013-03-05, CBC News (Canada's public broadcasting company)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2013/03/05/f-vp-crowe-food-addiction.html
Pat Guillet is a food addict. She has finally wrestled her addiction under control and now she
counsels other food addicts to avoid processed food. "Yeah, just the sight of the packages will
trigger cravings," she said. Craving. It doesn't just happen to food addicts. "These companies
rely on deep science and pure science to understand how we're attracted to food and how
they can make their foods attractive to us," Michael Moss said. The New York Times
investigative reporter spent four years prying open the secrets of the food industrys scientists.
"This was like a detective story for me, getting inside the companies with thousands of pages of
inside documents and getting their scientists and executives to reveal to me the secrets of how
they go at this," he said. What he found became the title of his new book, Salt, Sugar Fat: How the
food giants hooked us. "I spent time with the top scientists at the largest companies in this country
and it's amazing how much math and science and regression analysis and energy they put
into finding the very perfect amount of salt, sugar and fat in their products that will send ...
their products flying off the shelves and have us buy more, eat more and make more money
for them."
click here.
Tobacco companies ordered to publicly admit deception on smoking

dangers
2012-11-27, CNN
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019771284_floridavoting28.html
Tobacco companies have been ordered by a federal judge to publicly admit, through
advertisements and package warnings, that they deceived American consumers for decades about
the dangers of smoking. Federal Judge Gladys Kessler issued her ruling [on November 27] in one
of the last legal steps settling liability in the long-running government prosecution of cigarette
makers. "By ensuring that consumers know that [tobacco companies] have misled the
public in the past on the issue of secondhand smoke in addition to putting forth the fact
that a scientific consensus on this subject exists," said Kessler, "defendants will be less
likely to attempt to argue in the future that such a consensus does not exist." Several other
lawsuits over cigarette labeling are pending in federal court, part of a two-decade federal and state
effort to force tobacco companies to limit their advertising, and settle billions of dollars in state and
private class-action claims over the health dangers of smoking. The judge, six years ago,
concluded that tobacco companies were guilty of racketeering, and had ordered them to put
tougher warning labels and other language in their marketing.
click here.
Money-Laundering Inquiry Said to Aim at US Banks

2012-09-15, CNBC/New York Times
Federal and state authorities are investigating [several] major American banks for failing to monitor
cash transactions in and out of their branches, a lapse that may have enabled drug dealers and
terrorists to launder tainted money. Regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency, are close to taking action against JPMorgan Chase for insufficient safeguards.
The agency is also scrutinizing several other Wall Street giants, including Bank of America.
In addition to the comptroller, prosecutors from the Justice Department and the Manhattan district
attorneys office are investigating several financial institutions in the United States. The surge in
investigations, compliance experts say, is coming now because authorities were previously
inundated with problems stemming from the 2008 financial turmoil. Until now, investigators have
primarily focused on financial transactions at European banks. The authorities accused several
foreign banks of flouting American law by transferring billions of dollars on behalf of sanctioned
nations. As the investigation shifts to American shores, the Justice Department and the Manhattan
district attorneys office are moving beyond those violations to focus on money-laundering, in
which criminals around the globe try to hide illicit funds in United States bank accounts.
here.
Company once known as Blackwater settles arms case

http://articles.boston.com/2012-08-08/nation/33081023_1_blackwater-arms-case-...
The international security contractor formerly known as Blackwater [and now called Academi LLC]
has agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to settle federal criminal charges related to arms smuggling
and other crimes. The list of 17 violations includes possessing automatic weapons in the
United States without registration, lying to federal firearms regulators about weapons
provided to the king of Jordan, passing secret plans for armored personnel carriers to
Sweden and Denmark without US government approval, and illegally shipping body armor
overseas. Federal prosecutors said the company, which has held billions in US security contracts
in Iraq and Afghanistan, repeatedly flouted US laws. Compliance with these laws is critical to the
proper conduct of our defense efforts and to international diplomatic relations, said Thomas G.
Walker, the US attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina. This prosecution is an important
step to ensuring that our corporate citizens comply with these rules in every circumstance.
Blackwater was founded in 1997 by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince. The company rose to national
attention after winning massive no-bid security contracts from the US government at the Iraq Wars
start. In 2010, after several high-profile controversies, the company reached a $42 million
settlement with the Department of State over repeated violations of the Arms Export Control Act
and the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations.
click here.
Wal-Mart OK with selling genetically modified sweet corn

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-03/news/chi-walmart-to-sell-geneti...
Rejecting entreaties from consumers and activists, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it has no objection to
selling a new crop of genetically modified sweet corn created by biotech giant Monsanto.
Environmental and health activists expressed surprise and disappointment at Wal-Marts decision.
Earlier this year, Whole Foods, Trader Joes and General Mills said they would not carry or use the
genetically modified sweet corn. A lot of people who were their customers explicitly said we
dont want you to carry this product, and I think its unfortunate that they chose not listen to
that feedback, said Patty Lovera, assistant director of the consumer group Food and Water
Watch. In March, the group presented Wal-Mart with a petition signed by 463,000 people
asking it to boycott the product, she said. Monsantos genetically modified sweet corn is
resistant to a common herbicide, which allows farmers to kill weeds without killing the corn. It also
contains a toxin that fends off certain pests. Critics say they would like the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration to require some pre-market safety testing and labeling of genetically modified foods,
saying the lack of study makes it impossible to know whether they pose health risks. There has
been a doubling of food allergies in this country since 1996, said Michael Hansen, a senior
scientist at Consumers Union, the policy arm of Consumer Reports. Is it connected to genetically
engineered foods? Who knows when you have no labeling? That is the problem.
Note: Strangely, this article was taken down from the Tribune website shortly after its original
posting. To read the complete article, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major
media sources on the dangers of genetically modified foods, click here.
Frackers Fund University Research That Proves Their Case

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-23/frackers-fund-university-research...
Pennsylvania remains the largest U.S. state without a tax on natural gas production, thanks in part
to a study released under the banner of the Pennsylvania State University. The 2009 report
predicted drillers would shun Pennsylvania if new taxes were imposed, and lawmakers cited it the
following year when they rejected a 5 percent tax proposed by then-Governor Ed Rendell. What
the study didnt do was note that it was sponsored by gas drillers and led by an economist with a
history of producing industry-friendly research on economic and energy issues. As the U.S.
enjoys a natural-gas boom from a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,
producers are taking a page from the tobacco industry playbook: funding research at
established universities that arrives at conclusions that counter concerns raised by critics.
Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, who made the
tobacco analogy, said companies and their trade associations are buying the prestige of
universities that are sometimes not transparent about funding nor vigilant enough to prevent
financial interests from shaping research findings. The Penn State report is not the only example.
A professor at the University of Texas at Austin led a February study that found no evidence of
ground-water contamination from fracking. He did not reveal that he is a member of the board of a
gas producer. Company filings examined by Bloomberg indicate that in 2011, he received more
than $400,000 in compensation from the company, which has fracking operations in Texas.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government and
corporate corruption, click here and here.
U.S. must do more to fight false ads

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/U-S-must-do-more-to-fight-fal...
The U.S. Department of Justice has reached a settlement in the largest health care fraud case in
U.S. history. The ruling, which included accusations of false advertising, forced the once widely
respected British drugmaker, GlaxoSmithKline ... to pay a record-shattering $3 billion to various
plaintiffs and the Department of Justice. Despite this $3 billion settlement, advertising fraud is
on the rise in the United States. Expert public relations teams are called in to spin stories
and confuse consumers. It is clear there is not enough being done to prevent, stop or
resolve matters of false advertising in this country. The effect of the GlaxoSmithKline case has
yet to be fully seen. If GlaxoSmithKline is [creative and deceptive] then we might see it roll out ads
that skew the $3 billion loss in its favor - blatantly distorting the ruling as an endorsement of its
products. At this point, even as regulators secure record-breaking settlements, the American
people are losing, and the corporate spin teams are winning, the fight. Record settlements mean
little if the deception continues. While winning lawsuits is a first step, what really matters is
changing corporate behavior.
The rotten heart of finance

2012-07-07, The Economist Magazine
http://www.economist.com/node/21558281
The rapidly spreading scandal of LIBOR (the London inter-bank offered rate) ... is beginning to
assume global significance. The number that the traders were toying with determines the prices
that people and corporations around the world pay for loans or receive for their savings. It is used
as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from
complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages. The number determines the global flow of
billions of dollars each year. Yet it turns out to have been flawed. Over the past week damning
evidence has emerged, in documents detailing a settlement between Barclays and regulators in
America and Britain, that employees at the bank and at several other unnamed banks tried to rig
the number time and again over a period of at least five years. And worse is likely to emerge.
Investigations by regulators in several countries, including Canada, America, Japan, the
EU, Switzerland and Britain, are looking into allegations that LIBOR and similar rates were
rigged by large numbers of banks. As many as 20 big banks have been named in various
investigations or lawsuits alleging that LIBOR was rigged. The scandal also corrodes further what
little remains of public trust in banks and those who run them.
Dimon's Unshakable Hubris

2012-05-16, MSNBC
http://powerwall.msnbc.msn.com/politics/dimons-unshakable-hubris-1718428.story
Jamie Dimon was reelected chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase yesterday afternoon. He got
to keep his $23 million pay package, too. This means that at ... three of the top five bank holding
companies dominating U.S. derivatives exposure, loans, assets, and deposits, the same man
holds the chairman and CEO positions - at Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and JPM Chase. At
the shareholders meeting there was no mention of the details behind the mistake that
cost the bank $2 billion, just that it should never have happened. The fact that after a
formal announcement, a friendly Meet the Press chat, and a face-to-face with the firm's
shareholders, Dimon can still call it a mistaken hedge is ludicrous. It was a directional bet on
the health of North American corporate bonds that the firm got wrong, enacted via the synthetic
derivatives market, to worsen the blow. To the extent that it's betting wrong, it's a mistake, but it's
not a hedge. Included in the proxy materials in the shareholder package that went out before the
vote was ... a wealth of negativity about regulations. The letter stressed that ... two regulations
would actively hurt the bank's competitive ability, the Volker Rule and the derivatives rules. JPM
Chase holds nearly $70 trillion of derivatives exposure on $1.8 trillion of assets. Bank chairmen,
like Jamie Dimon ... claim that regulation is too complex, too anti-competitive, and too un-American
(putting U.S. banks at a disadvantage against other global banks). [Yet] pretending that it's okay to
allow dormant volcanoes of risk to remain embedded in big bank balance sheets, supported by
customer money and taxpayer guarantees is not sensible.
Note: For a treasure trove of revealing reports from reliable sources on the criminality and
corruption of major financial corporations and their "regulators" in government, click here. For
disturbing news articles on the derivatives market time bomb, click here.
Goldman, Merrill E-Mails Show Naked Shorting, Filing Says

2012-05-16, Businessweek/Bloomberg News
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-15/goldman-merrill-e-mails-show-nake...
Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch employees discussed helping naked short-sales by
market-maker clients in e-mails the banks sought to keep secret, including one in which a
Merrill official told another to ignore compliance rules, Overstock.com ... said in a court filing.
The online retailer accused Merrill, now part of Bank of America and Goldman Sachs of
manipulating its stock from 2005 to 2007, causing its shares to fall. Lawyers for Overstock ...
asked a judge to make public e-mails sent in 2005 and 2006 that it said reflect business decisions
to put profits and corporate ambition over compliance at Goldman Sachs and Merrill. The banks
decisions to intentionally fail to deliver Overstock shares caused large-scale naked short selling of
the companys stock, according to the filing. Four media organizations, including Bloomberg, the
New York Times, Wenner Media and The Economist, intervened in the Overstock case and joined
the companys request to unseal court files. Bloomberg News obtained a copy of the filing
describing the e-mails.
Note: For more on this from reporter Matt Taibbi, click here.
Gulf's dolphins pay heavy price for Deepwater oil spill

2012-03-31, The Guardian (one of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/31/dolphins-sick-deepwater-oil...
A new study of dolphins living close to the site of North America's worst ever oil spill the BP
Deepwater Horizon catastrophe two years ago has established serious health problems afflicting
the marine mammals. The report, commissioned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration [NOAA], found that many of the 32 dolphins studied were underweight,
anaemic and suffering from lung and liver disease. More than 200m gallons of crude oil flowed
from the well after a series of explosions on 20 April 2010, which killed 11 workers. The spill
contaminated the Gulf of Mexico and its coastline in what President Barack Obama called
America's worst environmental disaster. The research follows the publication of several scientific
studies into insect populations on the nearby Gulf coastline and into the health of deepwater coral
populations, which all suggest that the environmental impact of the five-month long spill may have
been far worse than previously appreciated. The study of the dolphins ... followed two years in
which the number of dead dolphins found stranded on the coast close to the spill had
dramatically increased. Although all but one of the 32 dolphins were still alive when the study
ended, lead researcher Lori Schwacke said survival prospects for many were grim. A study of
deep ocean corals seven miles from the spill source jointly funded by the NOAA and BP has found
dead and dying corals coated "in brown gunk". Chemical analysis of oil found on the dying coral
showed that it came from the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Note: For other informative major media articles dealing with dolphins and whales, click here.
Greek debt nightmare laid bare

2012-02-21, CNN/Financial Times
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/20/business/greece-debt-report/index.html
A "strictly confidential" report on Greece's debt projections prepared for eurozone finance ministers
reveals Athens' rescue programme is way off track. The ... debt sustainability analysis ... found that
even under the most optimistic scenario, the austerity measures being imposed on Athens risk
a recession so deep that Greece will not be able to climb out of the debt hole over the
course of a new three-year, 170bn bail-out. It warned that two of the new bail-out's main
principles might be self-defeating. Forcing austerity on Greece could cause debt levels to rise by
severely weakening the economy. The report made clear why the fight over the new Greek bail-out
has been so intense. A German-led group of creditor countries -- including the Netherlands
and Finland -- has expressed extreme reluctance to go through with the deal since they
received the report. A "tailored downside scenario" in the report suggests Greek debt could fall
far more slowly than hoped, to only 160 per cent of economic output by 2020 -- well below the
target of 120 per cent set by the International Monetary Fund. Under such a scenario, Greece
would need about 245bn in bail-out aid, far more than the 170bn under the "baseline"
projections eurozone ministers were using in all-night negotiations in Brussels on Monday.
Note: For key reports from major media sources exposing the interests served by the imposition of
austerity on Greece and other countries, click here.
Calif. 'downer' pig ban blocked by Supreme Court

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/23/MNUN1MTDBQ.DTL
California's ban on the sale of pork from "downer" pigs, those that were too feeble to walk
before being slaughtered, can't be enforced because a less stringent federal law regulates
slaughterhouse inspections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously [on January 23].
State lawmakers enacted the ban in 2008 after a Humane Society video showed immobile cows
being kicked, dragged, shocked and rammed with forklifts at a warehouse in San Bernardino
County. Advocates said meat from those animals was more likely to be diseased. Federal law
forbids the sale of meat from animals suffering from serious diseases, a ban that recent
regulations extended to cattle that were unable to walk. But federal law allows meat sales from
downer pigs and other nonambulatory animals, like sheep and goats, that pass federal inspection.
Court challenges from meat processors and packers prevented the California law from taking
effect. A federal appeals court upheld the California statute in 2010, but the Obama administration
joined the National Meat Association in a successful Supreme Court appeal. The ruling dismayed
the Humane Society of the United States, which has unsuccessfully lobbied Congress and the
U.S. Department of Agriculture for nationwide rules like California's. "The meat industry has the
USDA and Congress in its tight grips," said the society's president, Wayne Pacelle.
and here.
A Judge Rules Vermont Cant Shut Nuclear Plant

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/science/earth/vermont-cant-shut-down-nuclea...
A federal judge on [January 19] blocked Vermont from forcing the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor
to shut down when its license expires in March, saying that the state is trying to regulate nuclear
safety, which only the federal government can do. The judge [said] in his ruling that ... state
lawmakers and witnesses made clear that their effort to close the plant was "grounded in
radiological safety concerns" - the province of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The
commission has already granted Vermont Yankee a 20-year license extension. The ruling is
almost certain to be appealed by the state and an array of private groups that want the plant
shut down because of leaks of radioactive tritium and other issues. Since Entergy bought
Vermont Yankee 10 years ago, public opinion has turned sharply against the plant. After
several plants around the country suffered leaks of radioactive water into the soil, state officials
asked Vermont Yankee executives in 2009 whether their plant might be susceptible to that
problem. The executives said that Vermont Yankee had no underground pipes carrying radioactive
material. But it did - and the pipes leaked. The State Senate voted 26 to 4 in 2010 not to authorize
the needed certificate.
Note: How convenient for the nuclear power industry that federal judges can block state legislation
to shut down dangerous nuclear power plants. For more on corporate and government corruption,
Regulators approve nuclear reactor design for Southeast utilities

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/22/2558385/regulators-approve-nuclear-reac...
Federal regulators on [December 22] signed off on a next-generation nuclear reactor slated for
Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point plant and five other utilities in the Southeast, paving the way
for construction of the first new reactors in the U.S. in three decades. The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's approval of the Westinghouse AP 1000 design was a major milestone for the
nuclear power industry, which hasn't built a new reactor since the Three Mile Island
accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. Opponents of the AP 1000 ... bristled at the decision. [Some
elected officials and] environmental groups ... contend the NRC "fast-tracked" the AP 1000 without
thoroughly addressing potential safety concerns or incorporating lessons learned from the March
meltdown of the nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan, disabled by an earthquake and tsunami. Arnie
Gunderson, an outside expert ... warned the design might be vulnerable to rust that could cause
dangerous holes and cracks in the steel reactor containment vessel - a particular problem in the
marine environment of Turkey Point. Another study, commissioned by NC Warn, a North Carolina
anti-nuclear group, and Friends of the Earth, argued the safety margin for an accidental high
pressure build-up inside the reactor was dangerously slim.
here.
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-cong...
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the
largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing. The
Fed didnt tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion
on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didnt mention that they took tens of
billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their
firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13
billion of income by taking advantage of the Feds below-market rates. Saved by the bailout,
bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never
disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and
debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse. Details suggest taxpayers paid a price
beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest
banks to grow even bigger. When you see the dollars the banks got, its hard to make the case
these were successful institutions, says Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio who in
2010 introduced an unsuccessful bill to limit bank size. This is an issue that can unite the Tea
Party and Occupy Wall Street.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on corruption and collusion between
government officials and the largest financial firms, click here.
Retired Police Captain Arrested At OWS

2011-11-17, Fox News (Philadelphia Fox affiliate)
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/Retired_Police_Captain_Ray_Lew...
A retired Philadelphia police captain has been arrested in New York at an Occupy Wall
Street demonstration. Ray Lewis retired from the Philadelphia Police Department in 2004. It
was Philadelphia police who confirmed Lewis' arrest in New York on Thursday morning. Any
additional details, they said, would have to come from NYPD. First news of the arrest was
broadcast over Twitter around 9:15 a.m. by the protest group ... stating, "Philly Police Captain
(Retired) has just been ARRESTED!" The group then tweeted, "The arrested retired police
captain's name is Captain Ray Lewis. Immense cheers and music as he is taken away." Video
posted to YouTube by RT America and linked to by Occupy Wall Street appears to show Lewis'
arrest. There were messages online stating that Lewis had joined the protesters, including a
photo of him holding a sign that read "NYPD Don't Be Wall Street Mercenaries," and talking
with a helmeted New York police officer at Zuccotti Park.
Note: For a four-minute video interview with Officer Lewis, click here. For a treasure trove of
reports from reliable sources on the reasons why protestors worldwide are occupying their city
centers to protest against the "1 percent", click here.
JPMorgan Joins Goldman Keeping Italy Derivatives Risk in Dark

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LURLN51A1I4K01-4BQL...
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., among the world's biggest traders of
credit derivatives, disclosed to shareholders that they have sold protection on more than $5 trillion
of debt globally. Just don't ask them how much of that was issued by Greece, Italy, Ireland,
Portugal and Spain, known as the GIIPS. As concerns mount that those countries may not be
creditworthy, investors are being kept in the dark about how much risk U.S. banks face
from a default. Firms including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan don't provide a full picture of
potential losses and gains in such a scenario, giving only net numbers or excluding some
derivatives altogether. Goldman Sachs discloses only what it calls funded exposure to GIIPS
debt -- $4.16 billion before hedges and $2.46 billion after, as of Sept. 30. Those amounts exclude
commitments or contingent payments, such as credit-default swaps. JPMorgan said ... its net
exposure was no more than $1.5 billion, with a portion coming from debt and equity securities. The
company didn't disclose gross numbers or how much of the $1.5 billion came from swaps, leaving
investors wondering whether the notional value of CDS sold could be as high as $150 billion.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the reasons why protestors
worldwide are occupying their city centers to protest against the "1 percent", click here.
The bankers' blockade of WikiLeaks must end

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/bankers-wikileaks-free-sp...
In December 2010 three of the world's biggest payment providers, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal,
cut off funding to WikiLeaks. Ten months later, Julian Assange has announced the whistleblowing
site will suspend operations until the blockade is lifted and warned WikiLeaks does not have the
money to continue into 2012 at current levels of funding. The banking blockade against
WikiLeaks is one of the most sinister developments in recent years, and perhaps the most
extreme example in a western democracy of extrajudicial actions aimed at stifling free
speech. Payment companies representing more than 97% of the global market have shut off
the funding taps between WikiLeaks and those who would donate to it. Unlike many of the
country's leading corporations, WikiLeaks has neither been charged with, nor convicted of, any
crime at either state, federal, or international level. Visa and Mastercard are already inescapable.
As the world becomes ever-more digital ... they will become still more pervasive. If they are
allowed to cut off payment to lawful organisations with whom they disagree, the US's first
amendment, the European convention on human rights' article 10, and all other legal free speech
protections become irrelevant. Those who value free expression, whether they like WikiLeaks or
loathe it, should hope it wins its current battle.
Note: For more on this from BBC, click here.
Tepco: radiation from Fukushima plant declines further

2011-10-17, Scientific American/Reuters
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tepco-radiation-from-fukushi...
The operator of Japan's tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant [Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco)]
said the amount of radiation being emitted from the complex has halved from a month ago, in the
latest sign that efforts to bring the plant under control are progressing. In light of the progress
being made in cooling its damaged reactors, which suffered nuclear fuel meltdowns in the first
days of the crisis, Tepco formally brought forward its plan to bring the plant to a state of "cold
shutdown" within this year. Technically, a cold shutdown is a state in which water used to cool
nuclear fuel rods remains below 100 degrees Celsius, preventing the fuel from reheating.
Declaring a cold shutdown will have repercussions well beyond the plant as it is one of the criteria
the government said must be met before it begins allowing about 80,000 residents evacuated from
within a 20 km (12 mile) radius of the plant to go home. Japan faces a massive cleanup task if
these residents are to be returned home -- the environmental ministry says about 2,400 square
km (930 square miles) of land surrounding Daiichi may need decontamination. Even if a
cold shutdown is declared Tepco has acknowledged that it may not be able to remove the
fuel from the reactors for another 10 years and that the cleanup at the plant could take
several decades.
Note: For more on the Fukushima situation from the standpoint of the tens of thousands of
evacuees, click here.
Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/25/occupy-wall-st...
Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation despite the latest police
crackdown sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send
pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago,
OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA? We are watching the beginnings of the defiant
self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing
their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Is it
really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?
Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the
very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be
marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring
the whole system down. But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. If the occupiers finally
manage to break the 30-year stranglehold that has been placed on the human imagination ...
everything will once again be on the table and the occupiers of Wall Street and other cities
around the US will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can.
Note: A post on the JP Morgan Chase website confirms an unprecedented $4.6 million gift to the
New York City Police Foundation. The money was donated ostensibly as a "gift ... to strengthen
security in the Big Apple." Now why would this huge bank be donating millions for security in New
York City? For key insights from major media sources into the reasons why so many are protesting
worldwide, click here.
The Whistleblowers How-To Guide

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/11/frederic-whitehurst-more-whi...
Frederic Whitehurst had no idea what being a whistleblower entailed. He simply became outraged
when he witnessed a colleague in the FBI laboratory giving misleading testimony in a criminal case
two decades ago. So the supervisory agent decided to speak up, telling the defense experts about
the inaccuracies. It cost him nearly a decade of his career, almost all his life savings, several
emotionally draining internal investigations, the humiliation of a psychiatric exam, and an epic legal
fight with the bureau. But the proudly stubborn Vietnam veteran persevered and ultimately
prevailed in forcing sweeping ethical and scientific reforms at the vaunted FBI crime lab that began
in the 1990s and still reverberate today. And while hed do it all again, Whitehurst doesnt want
future whistleblowers to make the same mistakes he did. Thats why he and 19 other of
Americas most famous corporate and government muckrakers of the last quarter century
have banded together this month to donate thousands of copies of a book by their lawyer,
Stephen Kohn, to libraries across America. Their goal is to give the next generation of
American whistleblowers a roadmap, a virtual how-to guide to ensure they can call out wrongdoing
successfully, be protected from the customary retributions, and maybe even cash in on False
Claim Act awards that can reach into the millions of dollars. [They] are using their own money to
buy copies of Kohns book, The Whistleblowers Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing Whats
Right and Protecting Yourself, and donating them to libraries around the country.
click here.
The race is on for Libya's oil, with Britain and France both staking a
claim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/01/libya-oil
The starting pistol has been fired on bids by Britain and other western powers to secure a slice of
the oil prize in Libya when France said it was "fair and logical" for its companies to benefit. Alain
Jupp, the French foreign minister, [told] the Guardian ... that BP was already holding private talks
with members of Libya's interim government. Rebel leaders had already made clear that
countries active in supporting their insurrection notably Britain and France should
expect to be treated favourably once the dust of war had settled. [But] the new Tripoli
government has denied the existence of a reported secret deal by which French companies would
control more than a third of Libya's oil production in return for Paris's support for the revolution.
The letter referring to the reported deal [was published] in the French daily newspaper Libration.
It purported to show an undertaking by the National Transitional Council (NTC) to reserve "35% of
total crude oil in exchange for the total and permanent support for our council".
Note: The descent of the corporate vultures on the corpse of Libya clearly exposes the profiteering
which motivates modern war. For key reports on corporate and government corruption from major
media sources, click here and here.
Obama sets fuel-efficiency goal: 54.5 mpg by 2025

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/29/BAS81KGSRJ.DTL
Fuel efficiency of automobiles in the United States will increase dramatically under an agreement
reached by the federal government, auto manufacturers and the state of California that was
announced by President Obama on [July 29]. The agreement requires that cars and light-duty
trucks achieve an average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, up from the
requirement of 35.5 miles per gallon that is mandated by 2016. The new requirement will ...
reduce oil consumption by 2.2 million barrels per day by 2025. Currently, the United States
imports 9.1 million barrels of oil per day. Thirteen auto manufacturers, which account for 90
percent of vehicles sold in the United States, agreed to the standard. They are Ford, GM, Chrysler,
BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar/Land Rover, Kia, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Volvo.
The fuel economy standard is an average for a fleet of cars, which means that the actual miles per
gallon for some vehicles will be lower because fleets also include electric cars and other vehicles
that will far exceed the standard. The average vehicle at a dealership is likely to be closer to 40
miles per gallon, though that is double the average today.
Note: Some people believe the market drives innovation in gas mileage. As this article clearly
shows, this is not the case. For a revealing article showing how car manufacturers have avoided
better gas mileage, click here.
Phone hacking: US authorities preparing to subpoena News Corp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/22/phone-hacking-authorities-subpoen...
The judicial screws are tightening on Rupert Murdoch's empire in America as the US justice
department prepares to subpoena News Corporation in its investigation into whether the company
broke anti-bribery and hacking laws on both sides of the Atlantic. The news that subpoenas are
being drawn up, reported by News Corp's flagship newspaper the Wall Street Journal, comes a
week after attorney general Eric Holder said he was launching a preliminary investigation into the
media group as a result of the UK phone-hacking scandal. In addition, it has emerged that federal
prosecutors have begun probing allegations that News Corp's advertising arm in the US hacked
into a computer of a competitor as part of a campaign to crush its rival. News Corp also faces a
possibly lengthy and costly federal probe into whether it broke anti-bribery laws as part of
the illegal News of the World phone hacking in the UK. The company is potentially liable
under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which bans US-based companies from
profiting from bribery and corruption in other countries. News Corp is a US-based firm, its
headquarters on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. FCPA experts have suggested that it could be
brought under the auspices of the act because News of the World journalists bribed police officers
in the UK in search of exclusive stories that in turn increased sales and generated profits.
and here.
Another Top Police Official Resigns in British Scandal

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/world/europe/19hacking.html
The phone hacking scandal in Britain claimed another high-profile casualty on [July 18] when John
Yates, the deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, resigned his post. His
departure comes a day after the countrys top police officer quit and Rebekah Brooks, the former
chief executive of Rupert Murdochs News International, was arrested on suspicion of illegally
intercepting phone calls and bribing the police. Such is the severity of the crisis swirling around the
Murdoch empire and Britains public life that Prime Minister David Cameron cut short an African
trip on Monday and, bowing to opposition pressure, called a special parliamentary session on
Wednesday to debate the widening scandal. Mr. Murdoch, his son James and Ms. Brooks are set
to testify before a parliamentary inquiry into the scandal on Tuesday. The home secretary,
Theresa May, said on Monday that the countrys Inspectorate of Constabulary, a police
oversight body that reports to her, would investigate possible corruption in the links
between the police and journalists. Mr. Yates has been criticized for his decision not to reopen
the investigation even though the police under his command possessed some 11,000 pages of
largely unexamined evidence. Im not going to go down and look at bin bags, Mr. Yates said.
Note: For lots more on media and government corruption click here and here.
For Years, the Tabloids Sting Kept British Politicians in Line

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/world/europe/10britain.html
However much they might deplore tabloid methods and articles the photographers lurking in the
bushes; the reporters in disguise entrapping subjects into sexual indiscretion or financial
malfeasance; the editors paying tens of thousands of dollars for exclusive access to the mistresses
of politicians and sports stars; the hidden taping devices; the constant stream of stories about illicit
sex romps politicians have often been afraid to say so publicly, for fear of losing the papers
support or finding themselves the target of their wrath. If showering politicians with political
rewards for cultivating his support has been the carrot in the Murdoch equation, then
punishing them for speaking out has generally been the stick. But the latest revelations in the
phone-hacking scandal appear to have broken the spell, emboldening even Murdoch allies like
Prime Minister David Cameron to criticize his organization and convene a commission to examine
press regulation. The power to harass and intimidate is hardly limited to the Murdoch
newspapers; British tabloids are all guilty to some extent of using their power to discredit
those who cross them, politicians and analysts say.
Pundit Under Protest

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/opinion/14brooks.html
The two parties contesting this election are unusually pathetic. Their programs are unusually
unimaginative. Their policies are unusually incommensurate to the problem at hand. The election
is happening during a downturn in the economic cycle, but the core issue is the accumulation of
deeper structural problems that this recession has exposed unsustainable levels of debt, an
inability to generate middle-class incomes, a dysfunctional political system, [and] the steady
growth of special-interest sinecures. Workers share of national income has been declining
since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working
class those without a college degree is being decimated, economically and socially.
Voters are certainly aware of the scope of the challenges before them. Their pessimism and
anxiety does not just reflect the ebb and flow of the business cycle, but is deeper and more
pervasive. Trust in institutions is at historic lows. Large majorities think the country is on the wrong
track, and have for years. Large pluralities believe their children will have fewer opportunities than
they do. Voters are in the market for new movements and new combinations, yet the two parties
have grown more rigid.
Chiquita sued over Colombian paramilitary payments

2011-05-30, Miami Herald/Associated Press
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/30/2242250/chiquita-sued-over-colombian-pa...
Each name is next to a number, in black type on a thick legal document. They are the mothers and
fathers, spouses, sisters and brothers of thousands of Colombians who were killed or vanished
during a bloody civil conflict between leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups whose
victims have largely been civilians. The list has at least 4,000 names, each one targeting
Chiquita Brands International in U.S. lawsuits, claiming the produce giant's payments and
other assistance to the paramilitary groups amounted to supporting terrorists. Cincinnatibased Chiquita in 2007 pleaded guilty to similar criminal charges brought by the Justice
Department and paid a $25 million fine. But if the lawsuits succeed, plaintiffs' lawyers estimate the
damages against Chiquita could reach into the billions. The cases filed around the country are
being consolidated before a South Florida federal judge who must decide whether to dismiss them
or let them proceed. Chiquita has long maintained it was essentially blackmailed into paying the
paramilitary groups - perpetrators of the majority of civilian deaths in Colombia's dirty war.
Companies can block customers' class-action lawsuits, Supreme Court

rules
http://www.latimes.com/business/sc-dc-0428-court-class-action-web-20110427,0,...
The Supreme Court gave corporations a major win [on April 27], ruling in a 5-4 decision that
companies can block their disgruntled customers from joining together in a class-action lawsuit.
The ruling arose from a California lawsuit involving cellphones, but it will have a nationwide impact.
In the past, consumers who bought a product or a service had been free to join a class-action
lawsuit if they were dissatisfied or felt they had been cheated. By combining these small claims,
they could bring a major lawsuit against a corporation. But in [the] decision, the high court said that
under the Federal Arbitration Act companies can force these disgruntled customers to arbitrate
their complaints individually, not as part of a group. Consumer-rights advocates said this rule
would spell the end for small claims involving products or services. Justice Antonin Scalia said
companies may require buyers to sign arbitration agreements, and those agreements may
preclude class-action claims. But the dissenters said a practical ban on class action would be
unfair to cheated consumers. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the California courts had
insisted on permitting class-action claims, despite arbitration clauses that forbade them.
Otherwise, he said, it would allow a company to "insulate" itself "from liability for its own
frauds by deliberately cheating large numbers of consumers out of individually small sums
of money."
Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Foreign Banks Tapped Feds Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-01/foreign-banks-tapped-fed-s-lifeline-...
Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New
York branch from the Feds discount window lending program, according to Fed documents
released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa
Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German
government, drew $24.5 billion. The biggest borrowers from the ... discount window as the
program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent
of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program
surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S.
taxpayers by the central banks role in global financial markets. Separate data disclosed in
December on temporary emergency-lending programs set up by the Fed also showed big foreign
banks as borrowers. Six European banks were among the top 11 companies that sold the most
debt overall -- a combined $274.1 billion -- to the Commercial Paper Funding Facility. Those
programs also loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to the biggest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan
Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the bailout of banks worldwide by
the US taxpayer, click here.
AT&T Case Asks High Court to Assign Privacy Rights to Companies
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-19/at-t-case-asks-high-court-to-assi...
A business privacy case that comes before the U.S. Supreme Court today may rekindle a debate
among the justices over whether corporations are like people, even to the point of suffering
embarrassment. The case ... pits the Obama administration against AT&T Inc. over the release of
documents stemming from a government investigation of the company. The question is whether
corporations can invoke a Freedom of Information Act provision that protects against invasions of
personal privacy. In siding with AT&T, a lower court said companies can be embarrassed and
stigmatized just like human beings -- a contention the Obama administration scoffed at. The
courts divisions were on display when it considered whether to overturn decades-old restrictions
on corporate campaign spending. During arguments in 2009, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said
that judges created corporations as persons and that they might have been wrong to
have imbued a creature of state law with human characteristics. Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg said that a corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights.
The court majority disagreed, ruling in a 5-4 decision that corporations have the same
constitutional right to spend money on campaign ads as individuals do.
Note: For lots more on government and corporate corruption, click here and here.
Stanford faculty still taking drug firms' money

2010-12-20, San Francisco Chronicle/ProPublica
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/20/MNB51GSBQO.DTL
Last year, Stanford banned its physicians from giving paid promotional talks for pharmaceutical
companies. One thing it didn't do was make sure its faculty followed that rule. A ProPublica
investigation ["Dollars for Docs"] found that more than a dozen of the school's doctors were paid
speakers in apparent violation of Stanford policy - two of them were paid six figures since last year.
Conflict-of-interest policies have become increasingly important as academic medical centers
worry that promotional talks undermine the credibility not only of the physicians giving them, but
also of the institutions they represent. Yet when it comes to enforcing the policies, universities
have allowed permissive interpretations and relied on the honor system. That approach isn't
working. Many physicians are in apparent violation, and ignorance or confusion about the rules is
widespread. As a result, some faculty physicians stay on the industry lecture circuit, where they
can net tens of thousands of dollars in additional income. Critics of the practice say delivering
talks for drug companies is incompatible with teaching future generations of physicians.
That's because drug firms typically pick the topic of the lecture, train the speakers and
require them to use company-provided presentation slides.
Note: "Dollars for Docs" is an ongoing investigation into the influence of drug company marketing
payments on medical providers. To search for a doctor in the database, click here.
CalPERS lawsuit shows need for strict ethics rules

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/14/BAB81GQJ8B.DTL
An independent examiner has just recommended stricter ethics rules for managers of the $218.8
billion California Public Employees' Retirement System. According to a suit filed by state Attorney
General Jerry Brown, back in 2007, CalPERS board member-turned-investment broker Alfred
Villalobos took one of the pension fund's senior investment officers on a private jet ride to New
York to attend a Museum of Modern Art fundraiser honoring a client Villalobos was representing.
The client, Leon Black, heads the private-equity firm Apollo Global Management, which was
seeking a $700 million investment from CalPERS. According to the suit, Villalobos and the
investment officer, Leon Shahinian, shared a $1,000-a-night-plus suite at the five-star
Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The suit claims Villalobos' firm billed the trip to Apollo. Sometime
after, the suit claims, Shahinian touted the $700 million investment to the CalPERS board
with nary a mention of the New York trip - and the deal was approved. Shahinian was not
named as a defendant in Brown's suit, which is seeking $95 million in penalties against Villalobos
and CalPERS' former chief executive, Fred Buenrostro - both of whom have denied any
wrongdoing. As for Shahinian, who also maintains he did nothing wrong, he was placed on paid
administrative leave over the incident and four months later resigned from CalPERS, where he
was earning about $350,000 a year.
Note: For lots more on government and corporate corruption from major media sources, click here
and here.
WikiLeaks Julian Assange Wants To Spill Corporate Secrets

2010-11-29, Forbes.com blog
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/wikileaks-julian-assange-wan...
Early next year, Julian Assange says, a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside
out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org. The data dump
will lay bare the finance firms secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every
regulator to examine and pass judgment on. When? Which bank? What documents? Cagey as
always, Assange wont say. He compares what he is ready to unleash to the damning e-mails that
poured out of the Enron trial: a comprehensive vivisection of corporate bad behavior. You could
call it the ecosystem of corruption, he says, refusing to characterize the coming release in more
detail. Does Assange have unpublished, damaging documents on pharmaceutical
companies? Yes, he says. Finance? Yes, many more than the single bank scandal weve
been discussing. Energy? Plenty, on everything from BP to an Albanian oil firm that he says
attempted to sabotage its competitors wells. Like informational IEDs, these damaging
revelations can be detonated at will. Long gone are the days when Daniel Ellsberg had to
photocopy thousands of Vietnam War documents to leak the Pentagon Papers. Modern
whistleblowers ... can zip up their troves of incriminating documents on a laptop, USB stick or
portable hard drive, spirit them out through personal e-mail accounts or online drop sitesor
simply submit them directly to WikiLeaks.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government and corporate secrecy, click here.
Forbes Was Wrong On Monsanto. Really Wrong.

2010-10-12, Forbes.com blog
http://blogs.forbes.com/robertlangreth/2010/10/12/forbes-was-wrong-on-monsant...
Forbes made Monsanto the company of the year last year in "The Planet Versus Monsanto."
I know because I wrote the article. Since then everything that could have gone wrong for
the genetically engineered seed company has gone wrong. Super-weeds that are resistant to
its RoundUp weed killer are emerging, even as weed killer sales are being hit by cheap Chinese
generics. An expensive new bioengineered corn seed with eight new genes does not look
impressive in its first harvest. And the Justice Department is invesigating over antitrust issues. All
this has led to massive share declines. Other publications are making fun of our cover story.
Monsanto is destined to remain the dominant bioengineered seed company for some time to
come. But unless it comes up with a hot new product, its growth years could all be behind it.
Note: WantToKnow.info's Fred Burks was blacklisted by Monsanto, likely for reporting stories like
that above. For more on this, click here.
Johnson & Johnson CEO: 'We made a mistake'

2010-09-30, CNN Money
http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/30/news/companies/hearing_johnson_fda_drug_recal...
Johnson & Johnson CEO William Weldon delivered both a mea culpa and clear admission to [the
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform] that his company let the public down through
numerous recent drug recalls. He also admitted that the company secretly bought up defective
drugs without informing regulators and consumers of its actions. The committee has been
investigating circumstances that have led to more than half a dozen recalls this year of nonprescription cold and pain drugs such as Tylenol, Benadryl and Motrin made by Johnson &
Johnson's McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit. Weldon's [pledge] to never let this happen again was
met with some skepticism. [Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-NY)] said [the] testimony
indicates some very serious problems in "the way Johnson & Johnson viewed its responsibility to
the public and its day-to-day relationship with the FDA." There is often a thin line between
"working cooperatively" and having a "cozy relationship," he said. "The documents we
have seen in this case indicate this line may have been crossed early and often."
here.
US wasted billions in rebuilding Iraq

A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children's hospital
goes unused in the south. A $100 million wastewater treatment system in Fallujah has cost three
times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets. As the U.S. draws down in
Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in
U.S. taxpayer funds has been wasted on these projects - more than 10 percent of the $53.7
billion the US has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog
agency. That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by
auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account
security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects. Even completed projects for
the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds
of audits and investigations and visits to several sites. The reconstruction program in Iraq has
been troubled since its birth shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The U.S. was forced to
scale back many projects even as they spiked in cost, sometimes to more than double or triple
initial projections.
Note: For key reports on the corruption and profiteering that are the real fuels for war, click here.
Pakistan spot-betting scandal throws cricket into crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/aug/29/pakistan-spot-betting-scandal-cri...
Scotland Yard detectives have confiscated the mobile phones of three of the Pakistan cricket
team's leading players as part of an investigation into one of the biggest betting scandals in the
sport's history. The cricketers, captain Salman Butt and bowlers Mohammad Amir and Mohammad
Asif, were questioned along with wicket keeper Kamran Akmal by detectives following allegations
that they were involved in a betting scandal during the Lord's Test match, won by England. As well
as the phones, detectives took away documents and other possessions in plastic bags. The
allegations centre on the timing of three no-balls where the bowler oversteps the line delivered
by Amir and Asif during the game. Undercover reporters from the News of the World, posing
as representatives of a "far east gambling cartel", allegedly paid a middleman 150,000 and
in return were told exactly when the balls would be bowled. The England captain, Andrew
Strauss, said he was "absolutely astonished" by the allegations. "There was no prior warning or
anything like that First astonished, then pretty saddened straight away."
Canola, Pushed by Genetics, Moves Into Uncharted Territories

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/science/10canola.html
Genetically engineered versions of the canola plant are flourishing in the form of roadside weeds in
North Dakota, scientists say, in one of the first instances of a genetically modified crop establishing
itself in the wild. Critics of biotech crops have long warned that it is hard to keep genes in
this case, genes conferring resistance to common herbicides from spreading with
unwanted consequences. The roadside plants apparently start growing when seeds blow from
fields or fall out of trucks carrying the crops to market. In the plains of Canada, where canola is
widely grown, roadside biotech plants resistant to the herbicide Roundup have become a problem,
said Alexis Knispel, who has just completed a doctoral dissertation on the subject at the University
of Manitoba. Some farmers, she said, have had to return to plowing their fields to control weeds
a practice that contributes to soil erosion because they can no longer use Roundup to control
the stray canola plants. She also said the proliferation of roadside canola would make it
difficult to keep organic canola free of genetically engineered material. The biotech canola
has also been found growing in Japan, which does not even grow the crop, only imports it.
Scientists have also reported that genetically engineered grass established itself in the wild in
Oregon.
Note: For a highly-informative survey of the dangers of genetically-modified foods, click here.
Raw-food raid highlights a hunger

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fi-raw-food-raid-20100725,0,4350641,full.story
With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search
warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream
and to step away from the nuts. Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome
Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the
raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk. Cartons of raw goat and cow
milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized in the June 30
raid by federal, state and local authorities the latest salvo in the heated food fight over what
people can put in their mouths. On one side are government regulators, who say they are
enforcing rules designed to protect consumers from unsafe foods and to provide a level playing
field for producers. On the other side are " healthy food" consumers [who] seek food in its most
pure form. "This is about control and profit, not our health," said Aajonus Vonderplanitz, cofounder of Rawesome Foods. "How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?"
Demand for all manner of raw foods including honey, nuts and meat has been growing,
spurred by heightened interest in the way food is produced. But raw milk in particular has drawn
a lot of regulatory scrutiny, largely because the politically powerful dairy industry has
pressed the government to act.
State Supreme Court allows price-fixing suit

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/12/BUR31ED6VO.DTL
California retailers who accuse manufacturers of scheming to inflate prices scored a significant
legal victory [on July 12] when the state Supreme Court allowed them to sue for triple damages
despite their ability to pass higher charges along to customers. The court unanimously reinstated a
price-fixing suit by a group of pharmacies that accused major drug companies of conspiring to
overcharge purchasers by as much as 400 percent from 2000 to 2004. While denying the
allegations, the companies also argued that pharmacists could avoid any damages by raising their
own prices. Overturning lower-court rulings that dismissed the suit, the court said a "passon" defense - allowing manufacturers to avoid damages for illegal overcharges that could
be passed on to consumers - is unavailable in California. Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar ...
said enforcement of the law is promoted by allowing a retailer or wholesaler who buys directly from
the manufacturer to seek damages - tripled under antitrust law - for overcharges caused by pricefixing. If such suits were prohibited, Werdegar said, overcharged retailers would have to choose
between absorbing the losses or raising their prices and potentially losing sales. Such a ban might
allow manufacturers to fix prices with impunity, Werdegar said, because individual consumers'
losses might be too small to make a suit worthwhile.
Note:
The
ruling
in
Clayworth
vs.
Pfizer,
www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S166435.PDF.
S166435,
can
be
viewed
at
Cholesterol-Busting Statins: Study Raises New Concerns

2010-06-29, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartHealth/cholesterol-busting-statins-study-ra...
Nearly two years ago, a study known as the JUPITER [Justification for the Use of Statins in
Primary Prevention] trial hinted at a new era in the use of statins -- one in which the cholesterolbusting drugs could be used to stave off heart-related death in many more people than just those
with high cholesterol. Now, however, researchers behind a new review that takes a second look at
the findings of the landmark study say that these results are flawed -- and that they do not support
the benefits initially reported. Not only did this second look turn up no evidence of the
"striking decrease in coronary heart disease complications" reported by investigators
behind JUPITER, but it has also called into question drug companies' involvement in such
trials, according to an article in the June 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. Moreover, Dr.
Michel de Lorgeril of Joseph Fourier University and the National Center of Scientific Research in
Grenoble, France, and coauthors argue that major discrepancies exists between the significant
reductions in nonfatal stroke and heart attacks reported in the JUPITER trial and what has been
found in other research. "The JUPITER data set appears biased," Lorgeril and coauthors wrote in
conclusion. De Lorgeril and coauthors point out that nine of 14 authors of the JUPITER article
have financial relationships with AstraZeneca, which sponsored the trial.
Note: There is intriguing evidence that much of the fear around cholesterol was fabricated to sell
drugs. For more on this, see the article by one of the most respected doctors on the Internet at this
link.
Are Cells the New Cigarettes?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27dowd.html
The great cosmic joke would be to find out definitively that the advances we thought were
blessings from the hormones women pump into their bodies all their lives to the fancy phones
people wait in line for all night are really time bombs. We dont yet really know the physical and
psychological impact of being slaves to technology. We just know that technology is a narcotic.
Were living in the cloud, in a force field, so afraid of being disconnected and plunged into a world
of silence and stillness that even if scientists told us our computers would make our arms fall off,
wed probably keep typing. San Francisco just became the first city in the country to pass
legislation making cellphone retailers display radiation levels. The citys Board of Supervisors
voted 10 to 1 in favor. Different phone models emit anywhere from 0.2 watts per kilogram of body
tissue to 1.6 watts, the legal limit. Sure enough, when the bill passed Tuesday, CTIA [The
Wireless Association] issued a petulant statement that after 2010, it would relocate its
annual three-day fall exhibition, with 68,000 exhibitors and attendees and $80 million in
business, away from San Francisco.
Note: For many highly important articles from reliable sources on major health issues, click here.
Is Using Dispersants on the BP Gulf Oil Spill Fighting Pollution with

Pollution?
2010-06-18, Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-using-dispersants-fightin...
Roughly five million liters of dispersants have now been used to break up the oil spilling into the
Gulf of Mexico, making this the largest use of such chemicals in U.S. history. And there is no
doubt that dispersants are toxic: Both types of the dispersal compound COREXIT used in
the Gulf so far are capable of killing or depressing the growth of a wide range of aquatic
species, ranging from phytoplankton to fish. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), for one, has become concerned about the toxicity of the most-used dispersant at the Gulf of
Mexico spillCOREXIT 9500and ordered BP to look at alternatives. The problem? The EPA's
industry-generated data is unclear as to the relative toxicity of various dispersants. "If you think the
data on COREXIT is bad, try to find any decent toxicology data on the alternatives," says
toxicologist Carys Mitchelmore of the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory,
who helped write a 2005 National Research Council (NRC) report on dispersants. "I couldn't
compare and contrast which one was more toxic than the other based on that."
Oil Spill Outrage

2010-06-07, CNN
http://www.cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1006/07/ec.01.html
CAMPBELL BROWN: [There is] growing outrage over the millions of gallons of chemical
dispersants BP is dumping into the gulf. Some local residents insist the chemicals along with the
oil are making them violently ill. Kerry Kennedy from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and
Human Rights has been touring the coast and talking to folks who complain that they are being
exposed to a lot of unknown toxins right now. Kerry, people who have come in contact with the oil
and the dispersants are complaining of nausea, headaches, burning eyes. Talk to me a little bit
about your experience when you were touring these gulf communities. KERRY KENNEDY: People
are getting sick. And the patients, the health care providers cannot properly diagnose what the
problems are because BP will not give them the names of the chemicals that are in the
dispersants. However, we know that they're the same types of illnesses that people reported in
Alaska. Now, the average lifespan of a person who did cleanup on the Exxon Valdez is 51
years old. Almost all those people who did work on the Exxon Valdez are now dead. And BP
still here, once again, is big oil not giving the information to the doctors and health care
officials. A county nurse was not given permission to go on to the BP property. When she finally
did that, the people who work at BP who were coming to see her were only allowed to get band
aids and aspirin from her. And they were told that they only could go to the BP doctors if they
wanted to get treated.
Note: For a powerful, one-minute CNN News video of this segment, click here.
Disaster in the Amazon

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05herbert.html
BPs calamitous behavior in the Gulf of Mexico is the big oil story of the moment. But for many
years, indigenous people from a formerly pristine region of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador have
been trying to get relief from an American company, Texaco (which later merged with Chevron), for
what has been described as the largest oil-related environmental catastrophe ever. As horrible
as the gulf spill has been, what happened in the Amazon was worse, said Jonathan Abady, a
New York lawyer who is part of the legal team that is suing Chevron on behalf of the rainforest
inhabitants. Texaco operated more than 300 oil wells for the better part of three decades in a vast
swath of Ecuadors northern Amazon region. Texaco came barreling into this delicate ancient
landscape in the early 1960s with all the subtlety and grace of an invading army. And when it left in
1992, it left behind, according to the lawsuit, widespread toxic contamination that devastated the
livelihoods and traditions of the local people, and took a severe toll on their physical well-being.
The quest for oil is, by its nature, colossally destructive. And the giant oil companies, when
left to their own devices, will treat even the most magnificent of natures wonders like a sewer.
But the riches to be made are so vastly corrupting that governments refuse to impose the
kinds of rigid oversight and safeguards that would mitigate the damage to the environment
and its human and animal inhabitants.
Low oil spill estimate could save BP millions in court, experts say
2010-05-20, Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/20/1959836/low-oil-spill-estimate-could-sav...
BP's estimate that only 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking daily from a well in the Gulf of Mexico,
which the Obama administration hasn't disputed, could save the company millions of dollars in
damages when the financial impact of the spill is resolved in court, legal experts say. Neither BP
nor the federal government has tried to measure at the source the amount of crude pouring
into the water. BP and the Obama administration have said they don't want to take the
measurements for fear of interfering with efforts to stop the leaks. The amount of oil spilled is
certain to be key evidence in the court battles that are likely to result from the disaster. The size of
the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, for example, was a significant factor that the jury considered
when it assessed damages against Exxon. "If they put off measuring, then it's going to be a battle
of dueling experts after the fact trying to extrapolate how much spilled after it has all sunk or has
been carried away," said Lloyd Benton Miller, one of the lead plaintiffs' lawyers in the Exxon Valdez
spill litigation. "The ability to measure how much oil was released will be impossible."
Pfizer Employee Claims Company Fired Her After Infection From An

Engineered Virus
2010-03-16, Popular Science
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/pfizer-employee-claims-company-...
A former Pfizer scientist is suing the pharmaceuticals giant after alleging she contracted an
artificial, HIV-like, virus created by a colleague. In her lawsuit, Becky McClain claims Pfizer
unlawfully dismissed her while she suffered bouts of paralysis brought on by the man-made virus.
Pfizer denies these accusations, and says McClain simply didn't come to work, and only linked her
problems to engineered-disease exposure after she was fired. According to McClain, researchers
in her lab genetically engineered an artificial lentivirus, a class of viruses that also includes
HIV. McClain believes that she became infected by the virus due to faulty safety measures,
resulting in complete body paralysis as often as 12 times every month. Most likely, we will never
know if it is Pfizer's virus that caused McClain's health problems. The court case will focus mostly
on safety procedures in the laboratory, not on what exactly from the lab caused the illness. Also,
Pfizer refuses to release the genome of the suspected virus, preventing both identification
of the disease, as well as the development of a possible cure.
Note: Isn't it interesting that Pfizer is involved in creating HIV-like viruses? How long has this been
going on?
Corporation Says It Will Run for Congress

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/corporation-says-it-will-run-for...
Following the Supreme Court decision implicitly granting corporations the right to free
speech (by determining that political spending is a kind of speech), a corporation has
decided to take what it believes to be democracys next step: It is running for Congress.
With more than a twinge of irony, Murray Hill Incorporated, a liberal public relations firm, recently
announced that it planned to run in the Republican primary in Marylands 8th Congressional
District.
Note: To watch the companys first campaign ad, click on the link above.
Goldman Fueled AIG Gambles

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. played a bigger role than has been publicly disclosed in fueling the
mortgage bets that nearly felled American International Group Inc. Goldman was one of 16 banks
paid off when the U.S. government last year spent billions closing out soured trades that AIG made
with the financial firms. A Wall Street Journal analysis of AIG's trades, which were on pools of
mortgage debt, shows that Goldman was a key player in many of them, even the ones involving
other banks. Goldman originated or bought protection from AIG on about $33 billion of the
$80 billion of U.S. mortgage assets that AIG insured during the housing boom. That is
roughly twice as much as Socit Gnrale and Merrill Lynch, the banks with the biggest
exposure to AIG after Goldman. In Goldman's biggest deal, it acted as a middleman between AIG
and banks, taking on the risk of as much as $14 billion of mortgage-related investments. Then
Goldman insured that risk with one trading partner AIG. When the federal government bailed out
the insurer, Goldman avoided losses on its trades with AIG covering a total of $22 billion in assets.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable, verifiable sources on the hidden realities behind
the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret C.I.A. Raids

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/us/politics/11blackwater.html
Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.s most
sensitive activities clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being
insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company
employees and intelligence officials. The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly
basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel
playing central roles in what company insiders called snatch and grab operations. Several former
Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines
supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred.
Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times
became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that
raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield. The secret missions illuminate
a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than
government officials had acknowledged. Blackwaters ties to the C.I.A. have emerged in recent
months, beginning with disclosures in The New York Times that the agency had hired the company
as part of a program to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda and to assist in the C.I.A.s Predator
drone program in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Note: After this report was published, the CIA announced it had terminated contracts with
Blackwater. The reality is that many of Blackwater's services are provided under classified
contracts, with both the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command, so the denial of
"contracts" with Blackwater may be deceptive.
A Cloud Still Hangs Over Bhopal

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/opinion/03mehta.html
This is the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster. [It] started one night when a pesticide plant
owned by the American chemical giant Union Carbide leaked a cloud of poisonous gas. Before the
sun rose, almost 4,000 human beings capable of love and anguish sank to their knees and did not
get up. Half a million more fell ill, many with severely damaged lungs and eyes. An additional
15,000 people have since died from the aftereffects, and 10 to 30 people are said to die every
month from exposure to the hundreds of tons of toxic waste left over in the former factory. But
amazingly, the site still has not been cleaned up, because Dow Chemical, which since
acquired Union Carbide, refuses to accept any responsibility. In 2001, the maker of napalm
married the bane of Bhopal: Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide for $11.6 billion and promptly
distanced itself from the disaster. Union Carbide and Dow were allowed to get away with it
because of the international legal structures that protect multinationals from liability. Union
Carbide sold its Indian subsidiary and pulled out of India. Warren Anderson, the Union Carbide
chief executive at the time of the gas leak, lives in luxurious exile in the Hamptons, even though
theres an international arrest warrant out for him for culpable homicide. The Indian government
has yet to pursue an extradition request. Imagine if an Indian chief executive had jumped bail for
causing an industrial disaster that killed tens of thousands of Americans. What are the chances
hed be sunning himself in Goa?
Plastic chemicals 'feminise boys'

2009-11-16, BBC News
Chemicals in plastics alter the brains of baby boys, making them "more feminine", say US
researchers. Males exposed to high doses in the womb went on to be less likely to play with boys'
toys like cars or to join in rough and tumble games, they found. The University of Rochester team's
latest work adds to concerns about the safety of phthalates, found in vinyl flooring and PVC
shower curtains. The findings are reported in the International Journal of Andrology. Phthalates
have the ability to disrupt hormones, and have been banned in toys in the EU for some years.
There are many different types and some mimic the female hormone oestrogen. The same
researchers have already shown that this can mean boys are born with genital abnormalities. Now
they say certain phthalates also impact on the developing brain, by knocking out the action of the
male hormone testosterone. Dr Shanna Swan and her team ... found that two phthalates DEHP
and DBP can affect play behaviour. Boys exposed to high levels of these in the womb were less
likely than other boys to play with cars, trains and guns or engage in "rougher" games like
playfighting. Elizabeth Salter-Green, director of the chemicals campaign group CHEM Trust, said
the results were worrying. "We now know that phthalates, to which we are all constantly
exposed, are extremely worrying from a health perspective, leading to disruption of male
reproduction health and, it appears, male behaviour too."
Note: For further reports from reliable sources on important health issues, click here.
Report: Blackwater Sent $1M Bribe to Iraq

[Four] former top executives at Blackwater Worldwide say the U.S. security contractor sent
about $1 million to its Iraq office with the intention of paying off officials in the country who
were angry about the fatal shootings of 17 civilians by Blackwater employees. Iraqis had
long complained about ground operations by the North Carolina-based company, now known as
Xe Corp. Then the shooting by Blackwater guards in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in September 2007
left 17 civilians dead, further strained relations between Baghdad and Washington and led U.S.
prosecutors to bring charges against the Blackwater contractors involved. The State Department
has since turned to DynCorp and another private security firm, Triple Canopy, to handle diplomatic
protective services in the country. But Xe continues to provide security for diplomats in other
nations, most notably in Afghanistan. The former executives told the [New York Times] that the
payments were approved by the company's then-president, Gary Jackson. They did not know if he
came up with the idea. Any payments would have been illegal under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act, which bans bribes to foreign officials. Two of the former executives said they were
directly involved in discussions about paying Iraqi officials, and the other two said they were told
about the discussions by others at Blackwater.
Questions for a Trade Official

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/opinion/04wed4.html
When Islam Siddiqui appears for his Senate confirmation, possibly as early as next week, it will be
time for some tough questions. The White House has nominated Mr. Siddiqui for the position
of chief agricultural negotiator in the office of the United States trade representative. He is
presently a vice president at CropLife America, a coalition of the major industrial players in
the pesticide industry, including Syngenta, Monsanto, Dow Chemical and DuPont. That job
doesnt seem to square with the Obama administrations professed interest in more
sustainable, less chemically dependent approaches to agriculture. Nor does much of the rest of
Mr. Siddiquis resum. The White House has touted his role in the first phase of developing
national organic standards. But those standards, as they first emerged in draft form in the Clinton
years, were notoriously loose about allowing genetically engineered crops and the use of sewagesludge fertilizers to be labeled as organic. But the business of [Siddiqui's] CropLife an
arm of which openly scoffed at Michelle Obamas plans for an organic garden is to
increase exports of agricultural chemicals.
Note: For a powerful overview of the risks of genetically modified food, click here.
Goldman Sachs defends dark pools, short selling

Goldman Sachs defended a range of trading practices currently under regulatory scrutiny,
including dark pools and short selling, in a report to the Securities and Exchange Commission and
a series of postings on its Web site. In defending dark pools, private venues where large blocks of
securities are traded anonymously, Goldman said they are simply the result of technology
improving on the kind of non-displayed liquidity that has always existed in the market. Dark pools
have been criticized by lawmakers and targeted by regulators seeking a better idea of how
much trading takes place away from exchanges. While it reiterated its support for regulation of
abusive, or "naked" short selling, Goldman said further regulation isn't necessary and could
actually hurt the market. As for high-frequency trading, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro at a
Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference ... reiterated that she has asked
SEC staff to propose ways the agency can collect more information about high frequency traders,
noting that lightning speed trading now represents more than 50% of trading volume.
Note: To read this article without a subscription to the WSJ, click here. Is it a surprise that
Goldman Sachs wants to keep its secret deals hidden? Full transparency for the banks would
almost certainly reveal major manipulations.
Pakistan kept billions in US aid from military

2009-10-05, Boston Globe/Associated Press
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2009/10/05/pakistan_kept_billi...
The United States has long suspected that [many] of the billions of dollars it has sent Pakistan to
battle militants has been diverted to the domestic economy and other causes, such as fighting
India. Now the scope and longevity of the misuse is becoming clear: Between 2002 and 2008 ...
only $500 million of the $6.6 billion in American aid actually made it to the Pakistani
military, two army generals said. At the time of the siphoning, Pervez Musharraf, a
Washington ally, served as chief of staff and president, making it easier to divert money
intended for the military to bolster his image at home through economic subsidies. The
army itself got very little, said Mahmud Durrani, a retired general who was Pakistans
ambassador to the United States under Musharraf. It went to things like subsidies, which is
why everything looked hunky-dory." Generals and ministers say the diversion of the money hurt
the military in several ways. Helicopters critical to the battle in rugged border regions were not
available. At one point in 2007, more than 200 soldiers were trapped by insurgents in the tribal
regions without a helicopter lift to rescue them. Equipment was broken, and training was lacking.
The details on misuse of American aid come as Washington again promises Pakistan money.
Legislation to triple general aid to Pakistan cleared Congress last week. We dont have a
mechanism for tracking the money after we have given it to them, said Lieutenant
Colonel Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman.
Blackwater Tapped Foreigners on Secret CIA Program

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=8450594
When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture [alleged] terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the
well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA. With Blackwater's lucrative
government security work and contacts arrayed in hot spots around the world, company officials
offered the services of foreigners supposedly skilled at tracking [people] in lawless regions and
countries where the CIA had no working relationships with the government. But the CIA's use of
the private contractor as part of its now-abandoned plan to dispatch death squads skirted concerns
now re-emerging with recent disclosures about Blackwater's role. Blackwater's later hiring of
several senior CIA officials who were involved in or aware of the secret program, including one of
the men who ran the operation, showed the blurred lines of using a private contractor for such a
highly classified and dangerous project. The 2004 decision by CIA officials to entrust the North
Carolina-based company with such a sensitive overseas operation struck some former agency
officials as highly unusual. "The question remains: Why do we need Blackwater?" said Charles
Faddis, a former department chief at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center who retired in 2008 and
was not involved in the secret program. "I remain mystified. This is quintessential CIA work.
You wonder what it means that the CIA has to rely on Blackwater? Why are we still funding
the CIA?" The former senior CIA official who had knowledge of the program explained that "you
wouldn't want to have American fingerprints on it."
Note: For lots more on government corruption, click here.
World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few

2009-08-26, Inside Science News/American Institute of Physics
http://www.livescience.com/culture/090826-stock-market.html
A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world's
finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear
picture of the global concentration of financial power, and ... the worldwide financial system's
vulnerability. A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a
physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and
James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and
106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the "backbone" of each
country's financial market. The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries,
including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K.. The biggest fish was the Capital Group Companies,
with major stakes in 36 of the 48 countries studied. The results raise questions of where and when
a company could choose to exert this influence. Glattfelder added that the internationalism of
these powerful companies makes it difficult to gauge their economic influence. "[With] company
structures which are so big and spanning the globe, it's hard to see what they're up to and
what they're doing, he said. Large, sparse networks dominated by a few major companies
could also be more vulnerable, he said. "In network speak, if those nodes fail, that has a big
effect on the network." The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical
Review E.
Note: For a treasure trove of revelations about the realities of the global financial structure, click
here.
Swine flu doses on way to Wales

2009-07-13, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/wales_politics/8148345.stm
Enough doses of swine flu vaccines for everyone in Wales should begin arriving in the next few
weeks. Latest figures show 64 confirmed Welsh cases, but new counting methods mean up to 1m
people in Wales could be diagnosed with the illness long term. Up to six million doses would
become available, with two per person, and those most at risk would be first in line to receive a
jab. Experts will carry out tests and work out how to administer the vaccine. Wales' chief medical
officer Dr Tony Jewell said it would be a huge logistical exercise. Dr Jewell said the vaccine would
reduce the impact of a second phase of swine flu. "It will put us in a good position to modify it. It is
an unprecedented situation," he said. So far 64 cases of swine flu in Wales have been confirmed
by laboratory testing. Latest figures across Wales reveal that 426 people have gone to their
local doctor in the past week with flu-like symptoms. Three were admitted to hospital over
the last few days. Health officials said for every 100,000 people there have been 14.2 cases of
flu-like illnesses. But Wales is behind other parts of the UK for infection rates. In Scotland the rate
is 23.6 cases, while in England it is 51.9 cases. Seven people in Wales with swine flu had to be
hospitalised but five have since been discharged. 17 people in the UK have died - all but one of
them had underlying health problems. Experts say that for most people the illness is mild and gets
better within five to seven days.
Note: 426 people had flu-like symptoms? Couldn't that be the normal flu? And all but one of the 17
who died had underlying health problems. Hmmmm. So why are they preparing six million vaccine
doses? Could there be lots of money to be made here? A Wall Street Journal article states that $1
billion of our tax dollars have already been set aside with $7.5 billion more on the way. For more
reliable information on manipulations involving swine flu, click here and here.
Weed-Whacking Herbicide Proves Deadly to Human Cells

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=weed-whacking-herbicide-p
Used in yards, farms and parks throughout the world, Roundup has long been a top-selling weed
killer. But now researchers have found that one of Roundups inert ingredients can kill human cells,
particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. The new findings intensify a debate
about so-called inerts the solvents, preservatives, surfactants and other substances that
manufacturers add to pesticides. Nearly 4,000 inert ingredients are approved for use by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency. Glyphosate, Roundups active ingredient, is the most widely
used herbicide in the United States. About 100 million pounds are applied to U.S. farms and lawns
every year, according to the EPA. Until now, most health studies have focused on the safety of
glyphosate, rather than the mixture of ingredients found in Roundup. But in the new study,
scientists found that Roundups inert ingredients amplified the toxic effect on human cells even at
concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns. One specific inert
ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic,
placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself - a finding the researchers call
astonishing. This clearly confirms that the [inert ingredients] in Roundup formulations are not
inert, wrote the study authors from Frances University of Caen. Moreover, the proprietary
mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death [at the] residual
levels found on Roundup-treated crops, such as soybeans, alfalfa and corn, or lawns and
gardens.
Note: Monsanto, Roundups manufacturer, is the same company that has been using a corrupt
judicial system to bankrupt farmers who won't use their seeds. For more on this important topic,
click here.
Lawmakers Reveal Health-Care Investments

Almost 30 key lawmakers helping draft landmark health-care legislation have financial holdings in
the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments in a sector that could be
dramatically reshaped by this summer's debate. The list of members who have personal
investments in the corporations that will be affected by the legislation -- which President Obama
has called this year's highest domestic priority -- includes Congress's most powerful leaders and a
bipartisan collection of lawmakers in key committee posts. Their total health-care holdings could
be worth $27 million, because congressional financial disclosure forms released yesterday require
reporting of only broad ranges of holdings rather than precise values of assets. Senate Majority
Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), for instance, has at least $50,000 invested in a health-care index,
and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a senior member of the health committee, has between $254,000
and $560,000 worth of stock holdings in major health-care companies, including Bristol-Myers
Squibb and Merck. The family of Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), a senior member of the House
Energy and Commerce Committee drafting that chamber's legislation, held at least $3.2 million in
more than 20 health-care companies at the end of last year. "If someone is going to be
substantially enriched by the consequences of the vote, particularly if it represents a
meaningful amount of their net worth, then there is a problem," said Harlan Krumholz, a
professor of medicine at Yale University.
Note: For more powerful information on major corruption in health care reform, click here. For lots
more on government corruption from reliable, verfiiable sources, click here.
Chrysler rejects new loan over exec pay limits

2009-04-21, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/04/21/chrysler.loan/
Chrysler turned down additional government funding this month because executives at the
troubled auto manufacturer could not agree to new government-mandated limits on
executive pay, according to a source familiar with the matter. An official with Chrysler Financial
told CNN that the loan was turned down because the company "has determined that it has
adequate private capital funding to cover the short-term needs of our dealers and customers and
as such, no additional TARP funding is necessary at this time." The official also said that company
executives "have not been presented with any new demands with regard to executive
compensation." Chrysler already borrowed $1.5 billion from the Treasury under the Troubled Asset
Relief Program, or TARP, but those loans were made under less strict regulations pertaining to
executive compensation. The Washington Post, which first reported the story online Monday, said
the amount of the loan Chrysler rejected was $750 million. A Treasury department spokesman
declined to confirm the loan rejection, but told CNN that the administration's Auto Task Force
continues to monitor the financing situations for Chrysler and General Motors. "This is an issue
that Chrysler and its stakeholders will need to address as part of this process," the spokesman
said.
Note: The reason many banks are giving back government loans is very likely also because of
executive pay limits. The limits were reported in a NY Times article on Feb. 14, 2009. Not long
after came the first news that banks were considering returning the bailout money. Do you think
these top execs are more interested in their own paychecks or the health of the company? For a
highly revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click
here.
The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency

2009-04-03, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5096524/The...
The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary
policy for all humanity. A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqu issued by the G20 leaders
amounts to revolution in the global financial order. "We have agreed to support a general SDR
allocation which will inject $250bn (170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity," it
said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International
Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.In effect, the G20 leaders have activated
the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they
are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign
body. Conspiracy theorists will love it. There is now a world currency in waiting. In time,
SDRs are likely evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the
People's Bank of China. Beijing's moves this week to offer $95bn in yuan currency swaps to
developing economies show how fast China aims to break dollar dependence.
click here.
Banks Get New Leeway in Valuing Their Assets

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/business/03fasb.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pa...
A once-obscure accounting rule that infuriated banks ... was changed Thursday to give banks
more discretion in reporting the value of mortgage securities. The change seems likely to allow
banks to report higher profits by assuming that the securities are worth more than anyone
is now willing to pay for them. But critics objected that the change could further damage
the credibility of financial institutions by enabling them to avoid recognizing losses from
bad loans they have made. Critics also said that since the rules were changed under heavy
political pressure, the move compromised the independence of the organization that did it, the
Financial Accounting Standards Board. During the financial crisis, the market prices of many
securities, particularly those backed by subprime home mortgages, have plunged to fractions of
their original prices. That has forced banks to report hundreds of billions of dollars in losses over
the last year, because some of those securities must be reported at market value each three
months, with the bank showing a profit or loss based on the change. At first FASB ... resisted
making changes, but that changed within a few days of a Congressional hearing at which
legislators from both parties demanded the board act. There is a perception that we are yielding to
political pressure, one board member, Lawrence W. Smith, said as he voted for the changes. A
group headed by two former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission, one who
served under President Bill Clinton and one who was appointed by President George W. Bush,
said that it feared that politicization of accounting standards would destroy the credibility of the
board.
AIG - the biggest shark of all

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/18/ED0316IQ82.DTL
There must be a criminal investigation of the AIG debacle, and it looks as if New York's top
lawman is on the case. The collusion to save this toxic company in order to salvage the rogue
financiers who conspired to enrich themselves by impoverishing millions is being revealed as the
greatest financial scandal in U.S. history. Instead of taking bonuses, the culprits should be taking
perp walks. The real culprits are the AIG leaders who, as New York Attorney General Andrew
Cuomo revealed Tuesday, signed those bonus contracts a year ago to reward the very
people "principally responsible for the firm's meltdown." As Cuomo noted in a letter to Rep.
Barney Frank: "The contracts shockingly contain a provision that required most individuals'
bonuses to be 100 percent of their 2007 bonuses. Eleven of the individuals who received
'retention' bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received
$4.6 million." But the $165 million in taxpayer funds used to reward them is but a sideshow in a far
larger drama of moral decay swirling around the banking bailout. It should not distract from the
many billions, not paltry millions, of our dollars being diverted to reward the very folks who brought
us such misery. Consider the $12.8 billion of the $170 billion that taxpayers gave AIG in bailout
funds that AIG then secretly diverted to Goldman Sachs, a company that evidently has a lock on
both the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve no matter which political party is in power.
Note: For an excellent analysis of "the real AIG conspiracy", click here. For lots more on the
hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Spitzer Takes Aim at Real Disgrace at A.I.G.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/spitzer-takes-aim-at-real-disgra...
Eliot Spitzer must miss his glory days when he was the scourge of Wall Street as New Yorks
attorney general. With the bonus battle exploding at the American International Group, Mr. Spitzer
has jumped into the fray and dismissed the bonus scandal, arguing that it is obscuring the real
disgrace at A.I.G. Why are A.I.G.s counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of
billions of taxpayer dollars? he asks in an article on Slate. Mr. Spitzer notes that A.I.G.s trading
parties were all the big banks including Goldman Sachs, many of which received billions of dollars
from the governments Troubled Asset Relief Program. So now we know for sure what we already
surmised: The A.I.G. bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the
same group that had received TARP money already, he writes. It all appears, once again, to be
the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad
adventure, Mr. Spitzer writes. Recounting how the economic crisis is affecting workers, with tax
increases, pay cuts and layoffs, Mr. Spitzer asks: Why cant Wall Street royalty shoulder some
of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didnt we
already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and arent they sitting on more than
$100 billion in cash? What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and A.I.G.?
Note: For the article written in 2008 by former NY Governor Spitzer which likely caused him to be
targeted for a takedown just weeks later, click here. For lots more on the hidden realities of the
Curtailing executives' pay? Good luck with that

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/05/BUHF15NF2U.DTL
Will President Obama's new plan to rein in executive compensation at companies receiving
taxpayer money be more successful than previous attempts? Not if history is any guide. Since at
least 1984, Congress and accounting authorities have enacted measures designed in whole or
part to stem runaway pay. Yet compensation for top executives has continued to climb in both
dollar terms and as a multiple of average worker pay. In 1992, the average chief executive
earned $5 million, or 126 times the average hourly worker. By 2007, the average CEO was
earning $12.3 million, or 275 times the average worker. No matter what Congress cooks up, it
seems like executives, companies and their consultants find a way over, under or through the
rules. "It's like putting up a dam for a river. The water tries very hard to find a way around it," says
John Olson, a partner with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher who advises corporate boards on
compensation and other matters. Obama's plan will apply only to companies taking bailout money
in the future and has escape hatches of its own. "You can try all these different reforms," [says
Corey Rosen, executive director of the National Center for Employee Ownership,] but none will be
truly effective "unless the board of directors, the media and public stop thinking of executives as
superstars and that if we just get the right CEO, everything will be OK."
U.N. crime chief says drug money flowed into banks

2009-01-25, International Herald Tribune/Reuters News
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2009/01/25/europe/OUKWD-UK-FINANCIAL-UN-D...
The United Nations' crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade
has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on
Sunday. Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview
released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when
the crisis spiralled out of control last year. "In many instances, drug money is currently the only
liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008,
liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important
factor." The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had found evidence that "interbank loans
were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities," Costa
was quoted as saying. There were "signs that some banks were rescued in that way." Profil
said Costa declined to identify countries or banks which may have received drug money and gave
no indication how much cash might be involved.
Note:. For powerful evidence that corporations and even rogue elements of government are
involved in the huge amounts of cash generated in the drug trade, click here. For lots more on
Oil market manipulation alleged

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/10/BUIC156VSD.DTL
Accusations that a big oil company is trying to manipulate California's gasoline market are swirling
around a Bakersfield refinery whose owner filed for bankruptcy late last month. Flying J, owner of
the Big West refinery, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Dec. 22 and reported that it was closing
the plant for maintenance. But a memo written Thursday by a union official at the plant said "the
refinery is out of Crude oil" and blamed Shell Oil for closing a pipeline that brings crude into the
plant, effectively starving it of raw material. Shell used to own the refinery and threatened to close
it in 2004, saying it wasn't profitable. California politicians, however, suspected Shell was trying to
reduce the state's gasoline supplies to drive up the price, and they pressured Shell to sell the plant
instead. Those suspicions resurfaced Friday, with Sen. Barbara Boxer asking California Attorney
General Jerry Brown to investigate the union memo's accusations. "The Big West Refinery
supplies our state with 2 percent of its gasoline and 6 percent of its diesel fuel, and in these
tough economic times, Californians can't afford high gas prices stemming from refinery
closures," Boxer, D-Calif., wrote in a letter to Brown, who said he would "take a hard look at the
situation." With the refinery closed, Shell has had to scramble to find other sources of gasoline for
Shell gas stations in the Bakersfield area.
U.S. Debt Expected To Soar This Year

With President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats considering a massive
spending package aimed at pulling the nation out of recession, the national debt is projected to
jump by as much as $2 trillion this year, an unprecedented increase that could test the world's
appetite for financing U.S. government spending. For now, investors are frantically stuffing money
into the relative safety of the U.S. Treasury, which has come to serve as the world's mattress in
troubled times. Interest rates on Treasury bills have plummeted to historic lows, with some shortterm investors literally giving the government money for free. But about 40 percent of the debt held
by private investors will mature in a year or less, according to Treasury officials. When those loans
come due, the Treasury will have to borrow more money to repay them, even as it launches
perhaps the most aggressive expansion of U.S. debt in modern history. With the government
planning to roll over its short-term loans into more stable, long-term securities, experts say
investors are likely to demand a greater return on their money, saddling taxpayers with huge new
interest payments for years to come. Some analysts also worry that foreign investors, the
largest U.S. creditors, may prove unable to absorb the skyrocketing debt, undermining
confidence in the United States as the bedrock of the global financial system.
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout and its impacts on the
national debt, click here.
UAW busting, Southern style

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-raynor18-2008dec18,0,406...
The foreign nonunion auto companies located in the South have a plan to reduce wages and
benefits at their factories in the United States. And to do it, they need to destroy the United Auto
Workers. Last week, Senate Republicans from some Southern states went to work trying to do just
that, on the foreign car companies' behalf. [Republican] representatives from states that subsidize
companies such as Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota and Nissan first tried to force the UAW to take
reductions in wages and benefits as a condition for supporting the auto industry bailout bill. When
the UAW refused, those senators torpedoed the bill. They claimed that they couldn't support the
bill without specifics about how wages would be "restructured." They didn't, however, require such
specificity when it came to bailing out the financial sector. Their grandstanding, and the
government's generally lackluster response to the auto crisis, highlight many of the
problems that have caused our current economic mess: the lack of concern about
manufacturing, the privileged way our government treats the financial sector, and political
support given to companies that attempt to slash worker's wages. When one compares how
the auto industry and the financial sector are being treated by Congress, the double standard is
staggering. At Goldman Sachs ... employee compensation made up 71% of total operating
expenses in 2007. In the auto industry, by contrast, autoworker compensation makes up less than
10% of the cost of manufacturing a car. Hundreds of billions were given to the financial-services
industry with barely a question about compensation; the auto bailout, however, was sunk on this
issue alone.
Note: For highly revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout,
click here.
UCSF says reports on drug trials skew positive

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/14/MNKF14GTLO.DTL
What are the pills in your medicine cabinet, and how do you know they're best for you? When drug
companies seek approval to market new medicines, they must show the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration the results of all the tests they've run on volunteer patients - at first on only a few,
then on dozens, and finally on hundreds or sometimes thousands. After winning approval, the
companies typically sponsor reports of those tests in medical journal publications, which many
doctors often rely on to determine whether to prescribe new drugs for their patients. Now a
skeptical team of medical investigators at UCSF has accused the major drug companies of
bias by distorting the results of their trials in those publications, making it hard for doctors
to judge for themselves the pros and cons of prescribing the new drugs. As a result, the
researchers say, patients may sometimes be taking medicines they don't need - or with unwanted
side effects - that their doctors have prescribed on the basis of inadequate information. The UCSF
team, led by Lisa A. Bero of the medical center's Institute for Health Policy Studies, probed the
details of 164 drug trials involving as many as 1,500 patients over a two-year period and then
examined reports on those trials that were published in medical journals, as well as those that
remained unpublished. "We found really important information from the official trial reports that
were either not published at all or that stressed mostly the positive results of trials in the published
versions," said Kristin Rising, a physician at the institute who did the major investigation.
Jim Rogers calls most big U.S. banks "bankrupt"

http://www.reuters.com/article/InvestmentOutlook09/idUSTRE4BA5CO20081211
Jim Rogers, one of the world's most prominent international investors, ... called most of the largest
U.S. banks "totally bankrupt," and said government efforts to fix the sector are wrongheaded. Cofounder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund, [Rogers] said the government's $700 billion
rescue package for the sector doesn't address how banks manage their balance sheets, and
instead rewards weaker lenders with new capital. "Without giving specific names, most of the
significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt," said Rogers. "What is
outrageous economically and is outrageous morally is that normally in times like this, people who
are competent and who saw it coming and who kept their powder dry go and take over the assets
from the incompetent," he said. "What's happening this time is that the government is taking
the assets from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people and
saying, now you can compete with the competent people. It is horrible economics." While
not saying how long the U.S. economic recession will last, he said conditions could ultimately
mirror those of Japan in the 1990s. "The way things are going, we're going to have a lost decade
too, just like the 1970s," he said. "Governments are making mistakes," he said. "They're saying to
all the banks, you don't have to tell us your situation. You can continue to use your balance sheet
that is phony.... All these guys are bankrupt, they're still worrying about their bonuses, they're still
trying to pay their dividends, and the whole system is weakened."
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable reports exposing the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click
here.
Ditch the smooth transition. The people voted for change

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/14/obama-white-house-wall-st...
The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street
bail-out is not merely incompetent: it is borderline criminal. In a moment of high panic in
September, the US treasury pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are
taxed - a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the
government of as much as $140bn in tax revenue, legislators found out only after the fact.
According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "[the] treasury
had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice". Of equally dubious legality are the equity
deals the treasury has negotiated with many of the banks. According to Congressman Barney
Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals: "Any use of these funds for
any purpose other than lending - for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of
other institutions ... is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used. Then
there is the nearly $2 trillion that America's central bank, the Federal Reserve, has handed out in
emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans
or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg news service believes this secrecy violates the
law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure. Yet the Democrats are either openly
defending the administration or refusing to intervene. Obama owes it to the people who elected
him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.
Note: For many key articles revealing the hidden realities of the bailout, click here.
Illinois sheriff scolds banks for evictions of 'innocent' renters

2008-10-09, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/08/chicago.evictions/index.html
An outraged sheriff in Illinois who refuses to evict ... renters from foreclosed homes criticized
mortgage companies ... and said the law should protect victims of the mortgage meltdown. Sheriff
Thomas J. Dart said earlier he is suspending foreclosure evictions in Cook County, which includes
the city of Chicago. The county had been on track to reach a record number of evictions, many
because of mortgage foreclosures. "Many good tenants are suffering because building owners
have fallen behind on their mortgage payments," he said Thursday on CNN's "American Morning."
"These poor people are seeing everything they own put out on the street. ... They've paid their
bills, paid them on time. Here we are with a battering ram at the front door going to throw them out.
It's gotten insane," he said. Mortgage companies are supposed to identify a building's occupants
before asking for an eviction, but sheriff's deputies routinely find that the mortgage companies
have not done so, Dart said. "This is an example where the banking industry has not done any of
the work they should do. It's a piece of paper to them," Dart said. "These mortgage companies ...
don't care who's in the building," Dart said. "They simply want their money and don't care who gets
hurt along the way. "On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them.
We're not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We're just not going to evict innocent
tenants. It stops today. When you're blindly sending me out to houses where I'm coming
across innocent tenant after innocent tenant, I can't keep doing this and have a good
conscience about it."
Note: For many reports of corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Bailout tests how much the American public will tolerate theft
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/23/ED0J132MOV.DTL
Treasury Secretary Paulson's edict to create a $700 billion fund to buy worthless mortgage
securities from agitated wealthy bond investors is nothing short of a final step on the path to the
end of the republic. The secretary claims he can only be effective if his decisions are beyond
judicial review. Our government and its owners appear to be testing how much the American public
will tolerate. A few years ago, no one could have imagined that the silent majority would quietly
accept thefts of this magnitude from a government that stopped tiny payments to single mothers
with poor children in the name of welfare reform because the program's $10 billion cost was
breaking the federal budget. If the public allows this theft, then it will signal to powerful
forces that they can essentially do anything, because the American public has become so
mushy-headed that it will stand up for nothing. When power discovers that those from whom it
would exact payment are powerless, its viciousness increases infinitely. Our enemy has revealed
itself, and it is our own government. Because the American public has not been introduced to
methods for controlling its government for generations, I will suggest one called a general strike.
This fundamental democratic power is where everyone decides to send a message to the
government by not going to work, to school, shopping, nowhere. This is the critical time when
charlatans among us will promise they can save us from the inevitable if we only allow them the
power they need to save us. They are lying.
Note: This article's author Sean Olender is an attorney in San Mateo, California. Mr. Oleander
predicted the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac months before it happened based on clearly
disempowering moves by the government. To see his prescient article on this from Feb. 2008, click
here.
Almost Armageddon: Markets were 500 Trades from a Meltdown

2008-09-21, New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09212008/business/almost_armageddon_130110.htm
The market was 500 trades away from Armageddon on Thursday [September 18], traders inside
two large custodial banks tell The Post. Had the Treasury and Fed not quickly stepped into the fray
that morning with a quick $105 billion injection of liquidity, the Dow could have collapsed.
According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were
inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening. The Fed's dramatic $105 billion
liquidity injection on Thursday (pre-market) was just enough to keep key institutional accounts from
following through on the sell orders and starting a stampede of cash that could have brought large
tracts of the US economy to a halt. Cracks started to show in money market accounts late
Tuesday when shares in one fund, the Reserve Primary Fund - which touted itself as super safe fell below the golden $1 a share level. By Wednesday, banks sensed a run on their accounts.
They started stockpiling cash in anticipation of withdrawals. Banks, which usually keep an
average of $2 billion in excess reserves earmarked for withdrawals, pumped that up to an
astounding $90 billion, Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrighton ICAP, told The [Wall Street]
Journal. And for good reason. By the close of business on Wednesday, $144.5 billion - a record had been withdrawn. How much money was taken out of money market funds the prior week?
Roughly $7.1 billion, according to AMG Data Services. By Thursday, that level ... had grown to
$100 billion.
Note: For insight into the banking and financial powers that runs today's governments, click here.
Britain's worst polluters set for windfall of millions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/12/emissionstrading
A flagship European scheme designed to fight global warming is set to hand hundreds of millions
of pounds to some of Britain's most polluting companies, with little or no benefit to the
environment. Dozens of multinational firms stand to benefit from the windfall, which comes from
the over-allocation of carbon permits under the European emissions trading scheme. The permits
are given to companies by the government, and are supposed to account for their carbon pollution
over the next five years. But figures published by the European Commission show that many
companies have been allocated far too many permits, which they can sell for cash. The scheme is
supposed to only distribute as many permits as companies require, with one permit allocated for
each tonne of CO2 produced. The figures ... suggest that up to 9m extra annual permits have been
allocated to 200 companies across almost all sectors of the British economy, from steel and
cement making, to car manufacturing and the food and drink industry. Dozens of household names
such as Ford, Thames Water, Astra Zeneca and Vauxhall are among the companies that could
benefit. Campaigners say the allocations were ... influenced by industry group lobbying. A
source at a major UK car manufacturing firm, which has been allocated more than double
the number of permits it needs, told the Guardian they were given out based on "magical
logic".
Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on government corruption, click here.
Politicians fume as Exxon profits soar to U.S. record

2008-07-31, Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5918750.html
Exxon Mobil Corp. jumped into the political fray Thursday as its $11.7 billion record quarterly
earnings and $8 billion in share buybacks raised hackles in Washington. "They tell us they
want to do more domestic production," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "They tell us they
need to drill offshore. They tell us that they can find oil on the mainland. And what do they
do with their profits? They buy back stock, simply to increase their share price." Democrats
argue that producers already hold 68 million acres of federal lands on which they are not
producing oil or gas. Irving-based Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, was the fourth
major oil giant to release quarterly results. Hours earlier, Royal Dutch Shell, based in the
Netherlands, announced a 33 percent increase in profit. Houston-based ConocoPhillips last week
announced a 13 percent increase in net income during a quarter in which oil prices rose from
about $100 to $140 a barrel. London-based BP announced a 28 percent profit increase on
Tuesday. Analysts ... focused less on Exxon Mobil's profits than on its 8 percent drop in
production. The world's largest oil companies ... are benefiting from record-high oil prices. Exxon
Mobil increased spending on capital and exploration projects by 38 percent in the quarter to $7
billion. It also spent $8 billion buying back its own shares and reported $39 billion in cash on hand.
A Democratic analysis of the top five oil company's expenditures from 2004 through 2007 found
that the majors plowed about $181 billion into stock buybacks, nearly three times as much as they
spent on U.S. production activity.
Psychiatric Group Faces Scrutiny Over Drug Industry Ties

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/washington/12psych.html?partner=rssuserland...
It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides.
Psychiatrists would bring ... their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide
their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications,
faster. But now the profession itself is under attack in Congress, accused of allowing this
relationship to become too cozy. After a series of stinging investigations of individual doctors
arrangements with drug makers, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is
demanding that the American Psychiatric Association, the fields premier professional
organization, give an accounting of its financing. "I have come to understand that money from
the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of nonprofit organizations that purport to be
independent in their viewpoints and actions," Mr. Grassley said. In 2006 ... the drug industry
accounted for about 30 percent of the associations $62.5 million in financing. One of the
doctors named by Mr. Grassley is the associations president-elect, Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg of
Stanford, whose $4.8 million stock holdings in a drug development company raised the senators
concern. Commercial arrangements are rampant throughout medicine. In the past two decades,
drug and device makers have paid tens of thousands of doctors and researchers of all specialties.
Worried that this money could taint doctors research plans or clinical judgment, government
agencies, medical journals and universities have been forced to look more closely at deal details.
Note: For many powerful reports of corporate corruption, click here.
Taser Suffers a Rare Loss in Court

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/taser-suffers-a-rare-loss-in-court/
Despite a steady stream of negative news coverage, Taser Internationals business has sailed
above it all, rolling with the punches before coming out on top of a growing industry. Perhaps most
importantly, the company has been remarkably successful inside the courtroom. With 69 straight
trial victories, according to one count, Taser had assembled a nearly unmatchable record
3 more wins than this years much-vaunted Boston Celtics, with none of the embarrassing
losses. None until [Friday, June 4], that is, when an unfavorable verdict represented the first
chink in the taser-proof body armor. From The Herald of Monterey County, Calif., the local
paper on the case: A federal jury has held Taser International responsible for the death of a
Salinas man in U.S. District Court in San Jose ... and awarded his family more than $6 million in
punitive and compensatory damages. An attorney for the family called the verdict a "landmark
decision," and indicated that it was the first time Taser International had been held responsible for
a death or injury linked to its product. During trading on Monday, the companys stock dropped
almost 12 percent. "Investors will assume heightened operating risk in the Taser model in the
short-term," one analyst told Barrons. Bloomberg News reported last month that more than half of
Tasers top 10 shareholders sold some of their shares this year.
Note: Do a search in Google News and you will find that no major media outlets reported that
Taser International had 69 straight victories with no losses in the courts till now. Even the above
was in a NY Times blog and not in the paper. How interesting that they don't seem to want us to
know this.
Rescue Me: A Fed Bailout Crosses a Line

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/business/16gret.html?ex=1363320000&en=04d1c...
What are the consequences of a world in which regulators rescue even the financial institutions
whose recklessness and greed helped create the titanic credit mess we are in? Will the
consequences be an even weaker currency, rampant inflation, a continuation of the slow bleed that
we have witnessed at banks and brokerage firms for the past year? Or all of the above? Stick
around, because well soon find out. And its not going to be pretty. Agreeing to guarantee a 28day credit line to Bear Stearns, by way of JPMorgan Chase, the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York conceded last Friday that no sizable firm with a book of mortgage securities or loans out
to mortgage issuers could be allowed to fail right now. It was the most explicit sign yet of
the Feds Rescues R Us doctrine that already helped to force the marriage of Bank of
America and Countrywide. But why save Bear Stearns? Why not set an example of Bear
Stearns, the guys who have this record of dog-eat-dog, were brass knuckles, were tough? asked
William A. Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital in Issaquah, Wash., and co-author with
Fred Sheehan of Greenspans Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve. After years
of never allowing any of our financial institutions to fail, they have become so enormous that
nobody will be allowed to sink beneath the waves. Otherwise, a tsunami would swamp the hedge
funds, banks and other brokerage firms that remain afloat. If Bear Stearns failed, for example, it
would result in a wholesale dumping of mortgage securities and other assets onto a market that is
frozen and where buyers are in hiding. This fire sale would force surviving institutions carrying the
same types of securities on their books to mark down their positions, generating more margin calls
and creating more failures.
Note: This excellent article should be read in its entirety by anyone who wants to understand the
impending financial meltdown and the government's response to it.
Lawmakers blast USDA for food inspection lapses

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/19/MN17V4MU9.DTL
Lawmakers and watchdog groups had harsh words Monday for the U.S. Department of Agriculture
after the agency ordered a recall of 143 million pounds of beef from a Southern California
slaughterhouse. Beef products dating to Feb. 1, 2006, that came from Westland/Hallmark Meat
Co. of Chino (San Bernardino County) are subject to the recall, which is the largest such action in
U.S. history. The notice came after the Humane Society of the United States shot undercover
video showing crippled and sick animals being shoved with forklifts - treatment that has
also triggered an animal-abuse investigation. A congresswoman who chairs a House
subcommittee that determines funding levels for the USDA sent a letter ... to the agency's
undersecretary for food safety demanding an explanation of the Westland case before a March 5
budgetary review hearing. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., chairwoman of the House Agriculture,
Food and Drug Administration Appropriations Subcommittee, called the scenes in the video
inhumane and said the video "demonstrates just how far our food safety system has collapsed."
DeLauro has called for an investigation into the government's ability to secure the safety of meat in
the nation's schools. Westland was a major supplier of beef for the National School Lunch
Program. She also asked how the agency is addressing staff shortages among slaughterhouse
inspectors - an issue also raised by several food safety experts and watchdog groups. According
to Felicia Nestor, a senior policy analyst with Food and Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group
based in Washington, anywhere from 7 to 21 percent of slaughterhouse inspector positions have
been left vacant by the USDA, depending on the district. "They just don't fill vacancies," Nestor
said.
Note: For many revealing articles from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
Military Contractors Are Hard to Fire

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/02/02/national/w003206S...
Contract personnel working for the Defense Department now outnumber U.S. forces in Iraq and
Afghanistan; there are 196,000 private-sector workers in both countries compared to 182,000
troops. Contractors are responsible for a slew of duties, including repairing warfighting equipment,
supplying food and water, building barracks, providing armed security and gathering intelligence.
The dependence has come with serious consequences. A shortage of experienced federal
employees to oversee this growing industrial army is blamed for much of the waste, fraud and
abuse on contracts collectively worth billions of dollars. "We do not have the contracting personnel
that we need to guarantee that the taxpayer dollar is being protected," said William Moser, the
State Department's deputy assistant secretary for logistics management. "We are very, very
concerned about the integrity [of] the contracting process. We don't feel like ... we can continue in
the same situation." The office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has
52 open cases related to bribery, false billing, contract fraud, kickbacks and theft; 36 of
those cases have been referred to the Justice Department for prosecution, according to the
inspector general's office. The Army Criminal Investigation Command is busy, too. The command
has 90 criminal investigations under way related to alleged contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and
Afghanistan. Two dozen U.S. citizens have been charged or indicted so far 19 of those are
Army military and civilian employees and more than $15 million in bribes has changed hands.
Note: For many more revelations of war profiteering, click here.
USDA Recommends That Food From Clones Stay Off the Market
The U.S. Department of Agriculture yesterday asked U.S. farmers to keep their cloned animals off
the market indefinitely even as Food and Drug Administration officials announced that food from
cloned livestock is safe to eat. Bruce I. Knight, the USDA's undersecretary for marketing and
regulatory programs, requested an ongoing "voluntary moratorium" to buy time for "an acceptance
process" that Knight said consumers in the United States and abroad will need, "given the
emotional nature of this issue." Yet even as the two agencies sought a unified message -- that food
from clones is safe for people but perhaps dangerous to U.S. markets and trade relations -evidence surfaced suggesting that Americans and others are probably already eating meat from
the offspring of clones. Executives from the nation's major cattle cloning companies conceded
yesterday that they have not been able to keep track of how many offspring of clones have entered
the food supply, despite a years-old request by the FDA to keep them off the market pending
completion of the agency's safety report. At least one Kansas cattle producer also disclosed
yesterday that he has openly sold semen from prize-winning clones to many U.S. meat producers
in the past few years, and that he is certain he is not alone. "This is a fairy tale that this
technology is not being used and is not already in the food chain," said Donald Coover, a
Galesburg cattleman and veterinarian who has a specialty cattle semen business. "Anyone
who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about, or they're not being
honest." Last year, [only] 22 percent of Americans who responded to a major survey said they
had a favorable impression of food from clones.
Note: For lots more reliable information on how big business takes huge risks with the food we
eat, click here.
O Brother, Who Art Thou?

"I am not my brother's keeper," Howard "Cookie" Krongard, the State Department's inspector
general, testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee yesterday. As
Cookie surely must know, that excuse hasn't worked since Genesis. In this case, the players
weren't Cain and Abel, but Cookie and his brother Buzzy. Cookie, under fire for allegedly quashing
probes of the infamous Blackwater security contractor, began his testimony by angrily denying the
"ugly rumors" that his brother, former CIA official Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, is on Blackwater's
advisory board. But during a recess, Cookie called Buzzy and learned that -- gulp -- the ugly
rumors are true: His brother is on the board. When the lawmakers returned, Cookie revised and
extended his testimony. "I had not been aware of that," Cookie told the congressmen. "I hereby
recuse myself from any matters having to do with Blackwater." The lawmakers reacted with Old
Testament fury. The swaggering Cookie -- he alternately addressed the lawmakers with his thumb
in his waistband, slouching in his chair, rolling his eyes and making baffled glances -- had spent
the morning aggressively denying the allegations lodged against him: that he had impeded
investigations into contracting fraud, including weapons smuggling by Blackwater, and that he had
abused his underlings. But then came Buzzy's bombshell -- and Cookie's credibility crumbled.
Either he had lied to Congress, or his own brother had lied to him. It was only the latest bit of
strangeness for the powerful but eccentric Brothers Krongard. Buzzy [is] known for his cigar
chomping, martial arts and recreational workouts with SWAT teams. "Krongard once punched a
great white shark in the jaw," his hometown Baltimore Sun reported when he took the No. 3
job at the CIA a decade ago. More recently, Buzzy joined the advisory board of Blackwater,
the firm known for its ready trigger fingers in Iraq.
Note: Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard was the Executive Director (the third-highest position) at the CIA on
9/11, and had until 1998 been the head of the firm used to buy many of the "put" options on United
Airlines stock made just prior to 9/11 that were never claimed, though this received little media
coverage.
Chinese Chemicals Flow Unchecked Onto World Drug Market

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/world/asia/31chemical.html?ex=1351483200&en...
Pharmaceutical ingredients exported from China are often made by chemical companies that are
neither certified nor inspected by Chinese drug regulators, The New York Times has found.
Because the chemical companies are not required to meet even minimal drug-manufacturing
standards, there is little to stop them from exporting unapproved, adulterated or counterfeit
ingredients. The substandard formulations made from those ingredients often end up in
pharmacies in developing countries and for sale on the Internet, where more Americans are
turning for cheap medicine. [At a pharmaceutical trade show in Milan], the Times identified at least
82 Chinese chemical companies that said they made and exported pharmaceutical ingredients
yet not one was certified by the State Food and Drug Administration in China, records show.
Nonetheless, the companies were negotiating deals at the pharmaceutical show, where suppliers
wooed customers with live music, wine and vibrating chairs. In China, chemical manufacturers that
sell drug ingredients fall into a regulatory hole. Pharmaceutical companies are regulated by the
food and drug agency. Chemical companies that make products as varied as fertilizer and
industrial solvents are overseen by other agencies. The problem arises when chemical companies
cross over into drug ingredients. We have never investigated a chemical company, said Ms.
Yan [Jiangying], deputy director of policy and regulation at the State Food and Drug
Administration. We dont have jurisdiction. China has an estimated 80,000 chemical
companies, and the United States Food and Drug Administration does not know how many
sell ingredients used in drugs consumed by Americans. The Times examined thousands of
companies selling products on major business-to-business Internet trading sites and found more
than 1,300 [Chinese] chemical companies offering pharmaceutical ingredients.
Note: For many other reliable reports concerning health, click here.
Drug Co. To Pay $515M Over Marketing

2007-09-28, CBS News
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and a former subsidiary have agreed to pay more than $515 million to
settle federal and state investigations into their drug marketing and pricing practices. The civil
settlement ... resolves a broad array of allegations against Bristol-Myers Squibb, dating from 1994
through 2005. Among them was a charge that the ... company illegally promoted the sale of Abilify,
an anti-psychotic drug, for pediatric use and to treat dementia-related psychoses. Neither use is
approved by the U.S. [FDA]. Although physicians are permitted to prescribe drugs for off-label
uses, drug companies are prohibited from marketing them for uses that have not been approved
by the FDA. U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan said when pharmaceutical companies market drugs for
unapproved uses, there is a potential risk that patients could be harmed, because the drugs have
not been tested as rigorously as they are during the FDA approval process. The government also
alleged the company paid illegal inducements in the form of consulting fees and trips to
luxury resorts to influence doctors and other health care providers to buy and prescribe the
company's drugs. The company's former generic drug subsidiary, Apothecon Inc., also was
accused of giving illegal enticements to induce retail pharmacy and wholesale customers to buy its
products. Bristol-Myers Squibb misreported its best price for the anti-depression drug Serzone,
violating a law that requires drug companies to report their lowest price to Medicaid, prosecutors
said. The company was selling Serzone to a larger commercial purchaser at a lower price,
prosecutors said. Bristol-Myers Squibb and Apothecon also inflated prices for an assortment of
oncology and generic drugs knowing that federal health care programs established reimbursement
rates based on those prices, Sullivan said.
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption, click here.
Telecom Firms Helped With Government's Warrantless Wiretaps

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that telecommunications companies
assisted the government's warrantless surveillance program and were being sued as a result, an
admission some legal experts say could complicate the government's bid to halt numerous
lawsuits challenging the program's legality. "[U]nder the president's program, the terrorist
surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us," Director of National Intelligence Mike
McConnell said in an interview with the El Paso Times. His statement could help plaintiffs in
dozens of lawsuits against the telecom companies, which allege that the companies participated in
a wiretapping program that violated Americans' privacy rights. David Kris, a former Justice
Department official, ... said McConnell's admission makes it difficult to argue that the phone
companies' cooperation with the government is a state secret. "It's going to be tough to
continue to call it 'alleged' when he's just admitted it," Kris said. McConnell has just added
to "the list of publicly available facts that are no longer state secrets," increasing the
plaintiffs' chances that their cases can proceed, Kris said. McConnell's statement "does
serious damage to the government's state secrets claims that are at the heart of its defenses," said
Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Bruce Fein, an
associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said that McConnell's disclosure
shows that "an important element of a program can be discussed publicly and openly without
endangering the nation. These Cassandran cries that the earth is going to fall every time you have
a discussion simply are not borne out by the facts," he said.
Suit: Oil giants fixed prices for 23,000 gas station owners
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2007-08-22-gas-lawsuit_N.htm
Nearly two dozen gas station owners in California [have] sued Shell Oil, Chevron (CVX) and Saudi
Refining ... claiming the companies conspired to fix prices for 23,000 franchise owners nationwide.
The plaintiffs ... say chairmen of the three oil companies met privately nearly every month starting
in March 1996 for the "purpose of forming and organizing a combination." The lawsuit alleges
executives destroyed documents from the meetings, and a defunct joint venture violated U.S.
antitrust laws and caused artificially high wholesale gas prices in nearly every state from 1999 to
2001. The lawsuit hinges on a marketing deal that, plaintiffs say, allowed former rivals to collude
on prices starting in 1998, when Shell and Texaco formed Equilon Enterprises [and] Motiva
Enterprises LLC. Equilon and Motiva began operating when ... crude oil prices hit their lowest
levels since the Great Depression, according to ... lawyer Joseph M. Alioto, who [represents] the
plaintiffs. Yet gas prices soared for franchise owners, forcing them to pass on the cost to
consumers or cut profit margins. "These executives get together and say, 'OK, we're going
to raise Texaco's price to Shell's price, then we're going to raise both of them 50 to 75%,
and we're going to do it after we've already had all these cost savings,'" Alioto said. [He]
argues wholesale prices were higher by at least 20 cents a gallon and possibly as much as 40
cents per gallon from 1999 to 2001. Station owners had little choice but to pay higher prices.
Franchises typically sign long-term contracts with oil suppliers, making it tough to switch to another
brand or an independent supplier.
Stung by Harper's In a Web Of Deceit

Ken Silverstein says he lied, deceived and fabricated to get the story. But it was worth it, he insists.
Those on the receiving end don't agree. As Washington editor of Harper's magazine, Silverstein
posed as Kenneth Case, a London-based executive with the fictional Maldon Group, claiming to
represent the government of Turkmenistan. He had fake business cards printed, bought a London
cellphone number and created a bogus Web site -- all to persuade Beltway lobbying firms to pitch
him on representing Turkmenistan. "For me to deny, or try to shade the fact that I tricked them
would be stupid," Silverstein says. "Obviously we did. If our readers feel uncomfortable, they're
free to dismiss the findings of the story." Says Harper's Editor Roger Hodge: "The big question in
our mind was whether anybody was going to fall for it." They did. According to Harper's, executives
at the Washington firm APCO Worldwide laid out a communications plan that included lobbying
policymakers -- possibly including a trip for members of Congress -- and generating "news items."
Senior Vice President Barry Schumacher told Silverstein the firm could drum up positive op-ed
pieces by utilizing certain think tank experts. The proposed fee: $40,000 a month. Another
Washington firm, Cassidy & Associates, asked for at least $1.2 million a year and touted a
proposed trip to Turkmenistan for journalists and think tank analysts. Hodge says the caper is
part of "a long history of sting operations" by journalists. But that undercover tradition has
faded in recent years. No newspaper today would do what the Chicago Sun-Times did in the
1970s, setting up a bar to entrap crooked politicians. Fewer television programs are doing
what ABC did in the 1990s, having producers lie to get jobs at a supermarket chain to expose
unsanitary practices.
Note: To read the hard-hitting, in-depth article in Harper's magazine, click here.
Diagnosis: Conflict of Interest

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/opinion/13carlat.html?ex=1339387200&en=68ba...
The revelation that the diabetes drug Avandia can potentially cause heart disease is the latest in a
string of pharmaceutical disappointments. Vioxx was pulled from the market in 2004 because it
doubled the risks for heart attacks and strokes. Eli Lilly recently paid $750 million to settle lawsuits
alleging that Zyprexa causes diabetes. Many have criticized the Food and Drug Administration as
being too lax about monitoring drug safety. While those criticisms have merit, there is another
culprit: the transformation of continuing medical education into an enterprise for drug marketing.
The chore of teaching doctors how to practice medicine has been handed to the
pharmaceutical industry. As a result, dangerous side effects are rarely on the curriculum.
Most states require that doctors obtain a minimum number of credit hours of continuing medical
education each year to maintain their medical licenses. Not so long ago, most of these courses
were produced and paid for by universities and medical associations. But this has changed
drastically over the past decade. Drug-industry financing of continuing medical education has
nearly quadrupled since 1998, from $302 million to $1.12 billion. Half of all continuing medical
education courses in the United States are now paid for by drug companies, up from a third a
decade ago. Because pharmaceutical companies now set much of the agenda for what doctors
learn about drugs, crucial information about potential drug dangers is played down, to the
detriment of patient care. For example, GlaxoSmithKline footed the bill for dozens of educational
courses intended to emphasize the benefits of Avandia over other drugs.
Note: For a concise, reliable overview of medical corruption, click here.
Inside Medicine: Some 'diseases' invented for profit
2007-05-26, Sacramento Bee (Sacramento's leading newspaper)

http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/193101.html
By Dr. Michael Wilkes. When is a disease really a disease? Young doctors in training work hard,
and so do lots of other people. When people work 24 hours in a row ... the body feels tired. Is this
fatigue an abnormal physiologic state requiring medication and treatment, or is it a normal part of
belonging to the human race? If abnormal, then doctors and pharmaceutical companies argue that
the fatigue requires treatment. If it is normal -- despite a movement to label it as an illness -- then
post-work fatigue belongs to the growing phenomenon of disease-mongering. "Diseasemongering" ... is the process of trying to convince healthy people that they are sick, or people with
minor problems that they have extremely worrisome symptoms. This is all in an attempt to sell
treatments. Countless examples of disease-mongering are driven by the pharmaceutical industry's
drive to sell drugs. Conditions such as female sexual dysfunction syndrome, premenstrual
dysphoric disorder, toenail fungus, baldness and social anxiety disorder (a.k.a. shyness) are a few
places where the medical community has stepped in, thereby turning normal or mild conditions into
diseases for which medication is the treatment. Most pharmaceutical companies devote huge
amounts of money to prevent, control and cure diseases. When their profits don't match corporate
expectations, they invent "new" diseases to be cured by existing drugs. What happens to real
diseases when [the media] are filled with information promoting disease mongering? Government
funding for public health campaigns pales by comparison with the billions spent by
pharmaceutical companies on disease mongering intended to increase the markets for their
products.
Note: For more reliable information about major corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click
here.
Big Oil buys Sacramento

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-court14may14,1,728748...
Who's afraid of Big Oil? Apparently, California's elected officials. Gasoline prices are stuck well
above last year's record highs and about 50 cents above the national average. Yet state politicians
are not saying or doing a thing, except for raking in political cash from the oil companies and flying
around the world on their dime. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ... once claimed that he was so rich
he did not need anyone else's money. Yet as gasoline prices were breaking last year's record of
$3.38 a gallon, Schwarzenegger collected a $100,000 check May 1 from Chevron, the West's
largest refiner. Just three days earlier, it reported a $4.7-billion first-quarter profit, up 18% over the
same period last year. The contribution brought Schwarzenegger's take from Chevron to $665,000
(making it his 15th largest donor) since 2003, and his total political tribute from the energy industry
is now $4 million. According to a recent Schwarzenegger fundraising solicitation, Chevron's
$100,000 buys the company special briefings with the governor. Refiners such as Chevron have
discovered that they can make more money by producing less gasoline. So they do. They have,
over more than 20 years, deliberately reduced their capacity. Chevron refined 22% less oil in the
U.S. during the first quarter of this year than in the same quarter of 2006. Yet its total profit on U.S.
refining increased 66%. Making less gasoline, it made much more money. Oil companies poured
$90 million into California political campaigns during the 2006 election cycle. This display
of sheer political muscle deters even well-meaning politicians from clashing with Big Oil.
Democrats take Big Oil's millions too. The state Democratic Party accepted $50,000 from
Chevron just last week.
Note: If above link fails, click here. So is it one person equals one vote in elections or one dollar
one vote?
Doctors' Ties to Drug Companies Called Commonplace

The ties between doctors and drug manufacturers are close indeed. Most physicians (94 percent)
reported some type of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry ... according to [a] study,
published in the April 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Most of these relationships
involved receiving food in the workplace (83 percent) or receiving drug samples (78 percent). More
than one-third of the respondents (35 percent) were reimbursed for costs associated with
professional meetings or continuing medical education, while more than one-quarter (28
percent) were paid for consulting, delivering lectures or enrolling patients in clinical trials.
Over the past two decades, physician-industry relationships have attracted increasing scrutiny.
One review found that, on average, physicians meet with industry representatives four times a
month, and medical residents accept six gifts annually from industry representatives. "We know
that these relationships have benefits and risks, and we know that they benefit the companies that
are involved, and we know from our data that they benefit doctors," said study author Eric G.
Campbell, an assistant professor of health care policy at the Institute for Health Policy at Harvard
Medical School. "The real question is to what extent do these relationships benefit patients, and
the answer is, we don't know." Campbell said that he found it hard to believe that free football
tickets for a doctor would trickle down to benefit patients.
Note: For an excellent article by one of the foremost doctors in the nation on how the
pharmaceutical industry has corrupted politics and damaged our health, click here.
Here Comes the Sun

2007-03-02, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/11/01/8392039
Venture capitalists are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into [Silicon] Valley solar startups
pursuing technological breakthroughs to make sun power as cheap as fossil fuel. Three of the
largest tech IPOs of 2005 were for solar companies. The world's largest chip-equipment maker will
begin producing machines to manufacture solar wafers, laying the groundwork for an industrial
infrastructure that should lower the cost of producing solar cells. Solar energy has just the sort
of oversize potential that the titans of tech saw in computing: a free and practically
inexhaustible power source. California is also committing $3.2 billion to fund a drive to install
solar panels on a million rooftops by 2018, and a November ballot initiative ... would tax Big Oil to
provide $4 billion in funding for alternative-energy research, programs, and startups. Perhaps no
startup has benefited more from the solar gold rush than Nanosolar. The Palo Alto company ... has
racked up more than $100 million in funding so far. Nanosolar is pursuing a technology that
produces solar cells on a film that's a 100th the thickness of conventional silicon wafers. Its
ultimate goal: integrating thin-film cells directly into building materials. A skyscraper's glass
windows, for instance, could be embedded with thin-film cells, giving them energy-producing
capabilities. Nanosolar plans to build a manufacturing facility next year ... that will eventually
produce 430 megawatts' worth of solar cells per year. That would nearly triple the nation's
manufacturing capacity and make Nanosolar one of the world's largest solar producers. Thanks to
aggressive government subsidies, Germany and Japan are currently the global leaders in solar
production.
Note: With all of its talk about energy independence, why isn't the U.S. aggressively supporting
research into solar power like Japan and Germany? For reliable, verifiable information which
answers this question, click here.
Report: In U.S., record numbers are plunged into poverty

2007-02-23, USA Today/AFP
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-25-us-poverty_x.htm
The gulf between rich and poor in the United States is yawning wider than ever, and the number of
extremely impoverished is at a three-decade high. Based on the latest available U.S. census data
from 2005, [a] McClatchy Newspapers analysis found that almost 16 million Americans live in
"deep or severe poverty" defined as a family of four with two children earning less than 9,903
dollars one half the federal poverty line figure. For individuals the "deep poverty" threshold was
an income under 5,080 dollars a year. The number of severely poor Americans grew by 26% from
2000 to 2005. The surge in poverty comes alongside an unusual economic expansion. "Worker
productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job
growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate
profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the
median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five
straight years. These and other factors have helped push 43% of the nation's 37 million poor
people into deep poverty the highest rate since at least 1975," the report said. Since 2000, the
number of severely poor far below basic poverty terms in the United States has grown "more
than any other segment of the population. That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated
when we began," said Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, a study co-author. U.S.
social programs are minimal compared to those of western Europe and Canada.
Texas Governor Defends Vaccine Order

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&Date=2...
Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday angrily defended his relationship with Merck & Co. and his executive
order requiring that schoolgirls receive the drugmaker's vaccine against the sexually transmitted
cervical-cancer virus. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Perry's chief of staff had
met with key aides about the vaccine on Oct. 16, the same day Merck's political action committee
donated $5,000 to the governor's campaign. In issuing the order, the governor made Texas the
first state to require the vaccine Gardasil for all schoolgirls. But many lawmakers have
complained about his bypassing the Legislature altogether. The executive order has inflamed
conservatives, who said it contradicts Texas' abstinence-only sexual education policies and
intrudes into families' lives. Critics have previously questioned Perry's ties to Merck. Mike Toomey,
Perry's former chief of staff, now lobbies for the drug company. And the governor accepted a total
of $6,000 from Merck during his re-election campaign. Merck has waged a behind-the-scenes
lobbying campaign to get state legislatures to require girls to get the three-dose vaccine to enroll in
school. But on Tuesday the pharmaceutical company announced it was suspending the effort
because of pressure from parents and medical groups. The Kentucky House on Thurday passed a
bill that would require the vaccination for middle school girls unless their parents sign a form
opposing it. Virginia lawmakers have also passed legislation requiring the vaccine, but the
governor has not decided if he will sign it.
Note: The drug company lobby is the most powerful in the U.S., as reported by the former editorin-chief of one of the most respected medical journals in the U.S. Click here for more.
ExxonMobil tried to mislead, scientists say

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/01/04/exxonmobil_tried_to_...
ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in an
effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of
Concerned Scientists asserted yesterday. The report by the advocacy group mirrors similar
claims by Britain's leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil
company asking it to halt support for groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change."
Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' strategy and policy director, said in a
teleconference that ExxonMobil based its tactics on those of tobacco companies, spreading
uncertainty by misrepresenting peer-reviewed scientific studies or emphasizing only selected facts.
James McCarthy, a professor at Harvard University, said the company has sought to "create the
illusion of a vigorous debate" about global warming.
Science a la Joe Camel

At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the first thing many viewers said
after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see
this movie. The producers of former vice president Al Gore's film about global warming ... certainly
agreed. So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the
National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). It seemed like a no-brainer. In their e-mail
rejection, they expressed concern that ... they didn't want to offer "political" endorsement of the
film; and they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs. As for
classroom benefits, the movie has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists
worldwide, and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden. But there was one
more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary
risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those
supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp. That's the same Exxon Mobil that for more
than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global
warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading newspapers ...
questioning the role of manmade emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small
band of scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that heat-trapping pollution is
drastically altering our atmosphere. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company
since 1996. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory board.
Eli Lilly accused of shaping drug guidelines

Several government doctors say drug maker Eli Lilly & Co. subtly orchestrated medical guidelines
for treatment of an often lethal blood infection, hoping to boost sales of a drug whose value is
being debated. This company is trying to insinuate its drug into many aspects of patient care that
industry really shouldnt be involved in, said Dr. Naomi OGrady, a critical care specialist at the
National Institutes of Health. Three of her NIH colleagues claim in Thursdays New England
Journal of Medicine that Lilly worked through medical societies to influence standards for treating
the blood infection, sepsis. Ultimately, Xigris was incorporated into the guidelines. Both the
guidelines committee and a larger information campaign on sepsis were heavily funded by [Lilly].
Dr. Phil Dellinger, who helped lead the guidelines committee, said...Weve been catching grief
because weve been taking a lot of Lilly money and were appreciative of Lilly giving it. The
U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Xigris in 2001, despite an evenly split vote by its
advisory committee. The lead author of Thursdays journal article, Dr. Peter Q. Eichacker, voted
against approval. Some critics are unhappy that the drug, which works only for the sickest
patients, was approved on the basis of a single experiment. Academic officials
acknowledged in the published guidelines that Lilly gave more than 90 percent of $861,000
in grants for the campaign and medical recommendations. OGrady, of NIH, said a panel of
disease experts that she headed refused to endorse the sepsis guidelines largely because Lilly
convened the whole panel.
Note: For lots more on how the powerful pharmaceutical industry endangers our lives, click here.
Fuelling debate
2006-07-10, Toronto Star
A poignant new documentary asks who killed GM's promising electric car project? A new
documentary released June 28 in New York and Los Angeles, appropriately titled Who Killed The
Electric Car? tries in Clue-like fashion to figure out why GM pulled the plug on its EV1 electric
vehicle program, which by most accounts was approaching success when the first prototype was
introduced in the mid-1990s. "It was a revolutionary, modern car, requiring no gas, no oil changes,
no mufflers, and rare brake maintenance," according to a synopsis of the film. In the 1990s a strict
clean-air mandate introduced in California that called for zero-emission vehicles was what led GM
to introduce the EV1. Eventually that California mandate got watered down from "zero" to "low"
emissions, and the automakers decided to literally blow up their EV programs. GM, which leased
out the EV1 cars it produced, called them all back after California changed its policy. The cars
were crushed and shredded. Who were the people leasing these vehicles? Tom Hanks, Mel
Gibson and Ted Danson, among others, many of whom appear in the movie and talk favourably
about their electric cars. If the implications of an advance means loss of future business to a
paradigm, the key players of that paradigm will lobby to kill it. The paradigm? Big oil.
Similarly, the auto industry has an interest in perpetuating the manufacture of vehicles that require
routine, costly maintenance.
Note: For more information and showing times on the highly revealing Who Killed The Electric Car,
visit
www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com.
For
even
deeper
information
www.WantToKnow.info/newenergysources
Donations tie drug firms and nonprofits

2006-05-28, Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia's leading newspaper)
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/health/14687073.htm
The American Diabetes Association...privately enlisted an Eli Lilly & Co. executive to chart its
growth strategy. The National Alliance on Mental Illness...lobbies for treatment programs that also
benefit its drug-company donors. The National Gaucher Foundation...gets nearly all its revenue
from one drugmaker, Genzyme Corp. Many patient groups and drug companies maintain close,
multimillion-dollar relationships while disclosing limited or no details about the ties. An Inquirer
examination of six groups, each a leading advocate for patients in a disease area, found that the
groups rarely disclose such ties when commenting or lobbying about donors' drugs. Combined, the
six received at least $29 million from drug companies last year. The amount ranged from 2 percent
to 7 percent of revenue at the Arthritis Foundation, to 89 percent to 91 percent at the much smaller
National Gaucher Foundation. The funding usually comes from the companies' marketing or sales
divisions, not charity offices. Grants often rise with promotional spending as a drug hits the market
and fall when sales ebb. Donations from Merck and Pfizer Inc. to the Arthritis Foundation
more than doubled, to at least $1.65 million combined, in 2000 as they launched Vioxx and
Celebrex. Merck explicitly wove the foundation into sales strategies. In 2000-2001, the
American Diabetes Association did not disclose an unusual gift from Lilly: a lent executive,
Emerson "Randy" Hall Jr., who moved into its Alexandria, Va., headquarters and coached it on
growth strategies, all paid by Lilly.
Note: If you want to understand how the huge pharmaceutical industry influences what you know
about their drugs, this article is a must read. You may first want to read a riveting two-page
summary of an expos by the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, who
details
major
collusion
and
corruption
in
the
pharmaceutical
industry
at
http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup
Drug firms accused of turning healthy people into patients

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1751362,00.html
According to reports published today...healthy people are being turned into patients by drug firms
which publicise mental and sexual problems and promote little-known conditions only then to
reveal the medicines they say will treat them.The studies, published in a respected medical
journal, accuse the pharmaceutical industry of "disease mongering" - a practice in which
the market for a drug is inflated by convincing people they are sick and in need of medical
treatment. The "corporate-sponsored creation of disease" wastes resources and may even harm
people because of the medication they turn to, the researchers add. In 11 papers in the journal
Public Library of Science Medicine, experts from Britain, the US and elsewhere argue that new
diseases are being defined by specialists who are often funded by the drug industry.According to
the researchers, the campaigns boost drug sales by medicalising aspects of normal life.
Note: For more on how the pharmaceutical companies can negatively impact your health and your
wallet:
http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup
Medical research increasingly funded by industry

2006-03-17, Reuters/Princeton Media Associates
http://princetoncme.com/news.php?story=20060317prof001
From 1994 to 2003, medical research funded by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies
steadily increased and now surpasses research funded by government or public sources,
according to a review of the most frequently cited studies. In the new study, reported in the March
17th online issue of the British Medical Journal, the sponsorship of 289 articles...was determined.
Overall, 60% of articles had government or public funding and 36% were funded by industry.
However, this masks the dramatic rise in industry funding that occurred over time: in 1994,
roughly 30% of articles were funded by industry compared with over 50% in 2001.
Moreover, 65 of the 77 most cited randomized controlled trials involved industry funding.
"Medical research should reflect public needs more closely and the efforts of all of those involved
should be better coordinated," the authors emphasize.
DuPont Stuck With Big Teflon Fine

2005-12-14, CBS/Associated Press
DuPont Co. has agreed to pay $10.25 million in fines and $6.25 million for environmental
projects in a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency over the company's
alleged failure to report the dangers of a toxic chemical used to make Teflon. EPA officials
said the settlement represents the largest civil administrative penalty the agency has ever obtained
under any federal environmental statute. The EPA alleged that DuPont withheld information for
more than 20 years about the health effects of PFOA. DuPont faced a potential fine of more than
$300 million for not reporting that the chemical posed a substantial risk of injury to health or the
environment. "The settlement allows us to put this matter behind us and move forward," said
[DuPont general counsel Stacey] Mobley, who noted that the company has cut PFOA emissions
from U.S. plant sites by 98 percent and hopes to reduce emissions even further by 2007.
DuPont...still faces a federal criminal investigation of its actions concerning PFOA. In a draft report
released in June, the majority of members on a scientific advisory board that reviewed the EPA's
draft risk assessment concluded that the chemical is "likely" to be carcinogenic to humans.
Gulf Between Top, Bottom Gets Wider

http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-fi-execpay31may31,1,7406992.s...
A Times survey of the state's largest companies shows that CEOs' pay is growing at a much faster
pace than that of rank-and-file employees. The difference is even sharper at the top rungs of the
ladder. The 10 highest-paid executives on this year's list earned 36.7% more than last year's top
10 garnering a collective $467.5 million. That's enough to buy about 275 homes in Malibu or 1.5
million sets of golf clubs or two 747 jumbo jets. Although limited to California companies, the
survey reflects a national trend: a widening chasm between the pay of chief executives and rankand-file employees. CEOs at California's largest 100 public companies took home a
collective $1.1 billion in 2004, up almost 20% from 2003. That compares with the 2.9% raise
that the average California worker saw last year. The average CEO made 42 times the average
worker's pay in 1980. That increased to 85 times in 1990 and is now over 300 times. Sometimes,
executive pay soars even in bad years. Sanmina-SCI Corp., a San Jose telecommunications
company with $12 billion in sales, lost money in 2003 and 2004. Yet Chief Executive Jure Sola
scored a 1,500% hike in total pay during 2004, according to The Times survey. Sola was paid
$19.8 million last year, while the company lost $14.9 million.
Merck CEO Resigns as Drug Probe Continues

Merck & Co.'s longtime leader Raymond V. Gilmartin abruptly resigned yesterday on the same day
congressional investigators released a slew of documents detailing how the company continued to
aggressively promote its arthritis drug Vioxx after it knew of potentially serious safety concerns.
The documents...showed that Merck directed its 3,000-person Vioxx sales force to avoid
discussions with doctors about the cardiovascular risks identified in a major clinical trial of
the drug in 2000. Sales representatives were told instead to rely on a "Cardiovascular Card"
that said Vioxx was protecting the heart rather than potentially harming it. They were [also]
trained how to smile, speak and position themselves most effectively when talking with doctors,
and were exhorted to sell Vioxx and other Merck drugs using the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I
Have a Dream" speech. Vioxx was withdrawn from the market last September after another clinical
trial found that people who had taken the drug for 18 months were five times more likely to have
heart attacks and strokes than those on a placebo. Merck was sharply criticized in a hearing into
how the company and the Food and Drug Administration had handled the safety concerns
surrounding Vioxx.
EPA Mercury Rule Omits Conflicting Data

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55268-2005Mar21.html
When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions
from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive
because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff. What they did not
reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and
peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion. That analysis
estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did, but top agency officials
ordered the finding stripped from public documents.
Tapes Show Enron Arranged Plant Shutdown

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/national/04energy.html?ex=1265259600&en=172...
In the midst of the California energy troubles in early 2001, when power plants were under a
federal order to deliver a full output of electricity, the Enron Corporation arranged to take a plant
off-line on the same day that California was hit by rolling blackouts, according to audiotapes of
company traders. The tapes and memorandums were made public by a small public utility north of
Seattle that is fighting Enron over a power contract. They also showed that Enron, as early as
1998, was creating artificial energy shortages and running up prices in Canada in advance
of California's larger experiment with deregulation. The tapes provide new details of market
manipulation during the California energy crisis that produced blackouts and billions of dollars
of surcharges to homes and businesses on the West Coast in 2000 and 2001. In one January
2001 telephone tape of an Enron trader the public utility identified as Bill Williams and a Las Vegas
energy official identified only as Rich, an agreement was made to shut down a power plant
providing energy to California. The shutdown was set for an afternoon of peak energy demand.
The next day, Jan. 17, 2001, as the plant was taken out of service, the State of California called a
power emergency, and rolling blackouts hit up to a half-million consumers, according to daily logs
of the western power grid. Officials with the Snohomish County Public Utility District in Washington
State, which released the tapes, said they believed Enron officials had taken similar measures with
other power plants. This tape, they said, was proof of what was going on.
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
A Real Chip On Your Shoulder

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/17/tech/main563819.shtml
A U.S. company launched Thursday in Mexico the sale of microchips that can be implanted
under a person's skin and used to confirm everything from health history to identity. The
microchips ... went on sale last year in the United States. The microchip, the size of a grain of rice,
is implanted in the arm or hip and can contain information on everything from a person's blood
type to their name. In a two-hour presentation, Palm Beach, Florida-based Applied Digital
Solutions Inc. introduced reporters to the VeriChip and used a syringe-like device and local
anesthetic to implant a sample in the right arm of employee Carlos Altamirano. It doesn't hurt at
all, he said. The whole process is just painless. Antonio Aceves, the director of the Mexican
company charged with distributing the chip here, said that in the first year of sales, the company
hoped to implant chips in 10,000 people and ensure that at least 70 percent of all hospitals had the
technology to read the devices. One chip costs $150 and has a $50 annual fee. Users can update
and manage their chips' information by calling a 24-hour customer service line. The VeriChip can
track subjects who are within 5 miles, but officials want to develop a new chip that can use satellite
technology to track people who are farther away and may have been kidnapped. While the idea of
using the chip to track people has raised privacy concerns in the United States, the idea has been
popular with Mexicans. The company hopes to have the new anti-kidnapping chip developed by
2003.
Weekend break for the global elite

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/may/25/globalisation.madeleinebunting
Global power-brokers have a penchant for siting their get-togethers in inaccessible places. Since
Seattle 1999, Washington and Prague 2000, the calendar of global get-togethers has attracted
lively anti-globalisation demonstrations. Davos this year had unusually tight security to try and
keep protestors well away, leading to allegations of unnecessary heavy-handedness by the Swiss
police. This weekend, it is the turn of Bilderberg, perhaps the most secretive (or as the organisers
would prefer to claim, discrete) club for the global elite. It holds its weekend on Stenungsund, an
island off the Swedish west coast. The group was created by Denis (now Lord) Healey, Joseph
Retinger, David Rockefeller and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (a former SS officer) - the
group aimed to [bring] together financiers, industrialists, politicians and opinion formers; the press
have never been allowed access. There is a growing perception that globalisation is a
process which is being managed for the benefit of a small proportion of the planet's
residents and at terrible cost to many more. There is a perception of illegitimacy about
unaccountable corporate power and governments elected on low turnout: sooner or later global
power-brokers will have to recognise this crisis of legitimacy, and engage with protestors rather
than run away from them.
Note: For lots more reliable news on powerful secret societies, click here. And for another
balanced article on the powerful Bilderberg Group, click here.
Congress Passes Wide-Ranging Bill Easing Bank Laws

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/congress-passes-wide-ranging-bill-...
Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in
which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter
one another's businesses. The measure, considered by many the most important banking
legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight
by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said.
''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great
Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H.
Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the
new economy.'' The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire
warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday
wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that
separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were
thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression. Consumer
groups and civil rights advocates criticized the legislation for being a sop to the nation's biggest
financial institutions. The opponents of the measure ... predicted that by unshackling banks and
enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead
to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.
Note: Clearly these critics of the elimination of Glass-Steagall have been proven right by the
financial crisis which has unfolded less than 10 years later. Note the key role played by President
Obama's top economic advisor, Larry Summers. If the players haven't changed, how likely is it that
the game has?
How chemical industry hoodwinked California Legislature

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/diaz/article/How-chemical-industry-hoodwin...
Grant David Gillham, former legislative staffer ... knows how to work the system. Three major
manufacturers of fire retardants went to the right person in 2007 when they enlisted him to
help defeat legislation that would ban two classes of retardants believed to cause cancer.
Their instructions to him: Dont worry about the science. Run a political campaign. Oh, and
by the way, he was not to reveal his association with the industry. Now Gillham is speaking out in a
big way, and his story ... illustrates the extent to which the legislative process can be manipulated.
The chemical industrys main trade group, the American Chemistry Council, denied any connection
with Gillham after a 2012 Chicago Tribune series exposed that the advocacy group he created,
Citizens for Fire Safety, was not as it claimed, a coalition of fire professionals, educators,
community activists, burn centers, doctors, fire departments and industry leaders, [but] was
funded by three manufacturers who controlled 40 percent of the global market for the targeted
chemicals. The strategy worked in California Lenos bill to ban chlorinated and brominated fire
retardants died on the Senate floor on Aug. 26, 2008 and Citizens for Fire Safety went on to
help defeat similar bills in other states. The manufacturers claims of the lifesaving benefits of fire
retardants have been contradicted by scientific studies that suggests their flame-resisting
properties are minimal, and are more than offset by their negative effect in making fires more toxic.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing stories about
manipulation of mass media and corporate corruption from reliable sources.
Sale of U.S. Arms Fuels the Wars of Arab States

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/world/middleeast/sale-of-us-arms-fuels-the-...
To wage war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is using F-15 fighter jets bought from Boeing. Pilots from the
United Arab Emirates are flying Lockheed Martins F-16 to bomb both Yemen and Syria. Soon, the
Emirates are expected to complete a deal with General Atomics for a fleet of Predator drones to
run spying missions in their neighborhood. As the Middle East descends into proxy wars,
sectarian conflicts and battles against terrorist networks, countries in the region that have
stockpiled American military hardware are now actually using it and wanting more.
American defense firms are following the money. Boeing opened an office in Doha, Qatar, in
2011, and Lockheed Martin set up an office there this year. Lockheed created a division in 2013
devoted solely to foreign military sales, and the companys chief executive, Marillyn Hewson, has
said that Lockheed needs to increase foreign business with a goal of global arms sales
becoming 25 percent to 30 percent of its revenue. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms
Control Association ... said he viewed the increase in arms sales to the region with a great deal of
trepidation, as it is leading to an escalation in the type and number and sophistication in the
weaponry in these countries. Meanwhile, the deal to sell Predator drones to the Emirates is
nearing final approval. If the sale goes through, it will be the first time that the drones will go to an
American ally outside of NATO.
Note: If you look at history from the viewpoint that most wars are fostered and enflamed by the
military-industrial complex, a lot of things make sense. Read a powerful essay by a top US general
exposing the war machine titled "War is a Racket." For more along these lines, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign-wealth-flows-to-...
Behind the dark glass towers of the Time Warner Center ... a majority of owners have taken steps
to keep their identities hidden, registering condos in trusts, limited liability companies or other
entities that shield their names. By piercing the secrecy of more than 200 shell companies, The
New York Times documented a decade of ownership in this iconic Manhattan way station for
global money, [and] found a growing proportion of wealthy foreigners, at least 16 of whom have
been the subject of government inquiries around the world. The cases range from housing and
environmental violations to financial fraud. Four owners have been arrested, and another four have
been the subject of fines or penalties for illegal activities. They have been able to make these
multimillion-dollar [real estate] purchases with few questions asked because of United
States laws that foster the movement of largely untraceable money through shell
companies. Vast sums are flowing unchecked around the world as never before whether
motivated by corruption, tax avoidance or investment strategy, and enabled by an ever-moreborderless economy and a proliferation of ways to move and hide assets. The high-end real estate
market has become less and less transparent and more alluring for those abroad with assets
they wish to keep anonymous even as the United States pushes other nations to help stanch
the flow of American money leaving the country to avoid taxes.
Note: The New York Times investigation at the above link provides a comprehensive look at the
international crime and political corruption at the heart of Manhattan's spiking real estate prices.
'Suppressed' EU report could have banned pesticides worth billions

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/02/suppressed-eu-report-could...
As many as 31 pesticides with a value running into billions of pounds could have been banned
because of potential health risks, if a blocked EU paper on hormone-mimicking chemicals had
been acted upon. The science paper, seen by the Guardian, recommends ways of identifying
and categorising the endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that scientists link to a rise in
foetal abnormalities, genital mutations, infertility, and adverse health effects ranging from
cancer to IQ loss. Commission sources say that the paper was buried by top EU officials
under pressure from big chemical firms which use EDCs in toiletries, plastics and cosmetics,
despite an annual health cost that studies peg at hundreds of millions of euros. The unpublished
EU paper ... was supposed to have enabled EU bans of hazardous substances to take place last
year. Under pressure from major chemical industry players, such as Bayer and BASF, the criteria
were blocked. In their place, less stringent options emerged. Last month, 11 MEPs complained in a
cross-party letter to the health and food safety commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, about the EUs
failure to honour its mandate and adopt the EDC criteria. This was supposed to have happened by
the end of 2013. In place of the proposed identification of hormone-mimicking compounds, the
EUs current roadmap favours industry-supported options for potency-based measurements of
EDCs. These would set thresholds, below which exposure to low-potency EDCs would be deemed
safe.
Note: One key study estimates that as few as zero endocrine-disrupting pesticides will be
withdrawn from the EU market as a result of this profit-driven manipulation of policy. For more
along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing articles about corporate and
government corruption from reliable major media sources.
McDonalds fries in the US have way more ingredients than UK fries

2015-01-26, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015/01/26/mcdonalds-fries-in-us-have-more-ing...
McDonalds is really trying to be more transparent about what goes into their food. Mythbusters
host Grant Imahara took us from fryer to farm in a reverse process peek at what goes into
McDonalds potatoes. While the global burger chain does explain the usage of a few
unpronounceable ingredients meant to preserve color and texture, it looks like these practices
arent being implemented across the board. After checking out McDonalds.co.uk, a blogger on
Boing Boing points out that McDonalds french fries in the U.K. appear to have far fewer
ingredients than those produced in the U.S.-- and no crazy, hard-to-say additives.
FoxNews.com did a side by side comparison of the two websites and found the same information.
Across the pond, Brits are enjoying McDonalds French fries sans additives like Sodium Acid
Pyrophosphate, Dimethylpolysiloxane and natural beef flavor. Dimethylpolysiloxane is added
as an anti-foaming agent but its also a silicon-based organic polymer used to make Silly
Putty. Hmm. Looks like the chain has some more explaining to do to American consumers.
Note: For lots more on this, read this great mercola.com article. For more along these lines, see
concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major
media sources.
The Davos oligarchs are right to fear the world theyve made
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/22/davos-oligarchs-fear-ine...
The billionaires and corporate oligarchs meeting in Davos this week are getting worried about
inequality. The architects of the crisis-ridden international economic order are starting to see the
dangers ... of the widest global economic gulf in human history. The scale of the crisis has been
laid out for them by the charity Oxfam. On current trends, the richest 1% will have pocketed
more than the other 99% put together next year. The 0.1% have been doing even better,
quadrupling their share of US income since the 1980s. In most of the world, labours share of
national income has fallen continuously and wages have stagnated under this regime of
privatisation, deregulation and low taxes on the rich. At the same time finance has sucked wealth
from the public realm into the hands of a small minority, even as it has laid waste the rest of the
economy. Now the evidence has piled up that not only is such appropriation of wealth a moral and
social outrage, but it is fuelling social and climate conflict, wars, mass migration and political
corruption, stunting health and life chances, increasing poverty, and widening gender and
ethnic divides. Escalating inequality has also been a crucial factor in the economic crisis of
the past seven years, squeezing demand and fuelling the credit boom. The thinking persons
Davos oligarch realises that allowing things to carry on as they are is dangerous. What they wont
accept is any change in the balance of social power.
Note: Oxfam's complete report "identifies the two powerful driving forces that have led to the rapid
rise in inequality" as "market fundamentalism and the capture of politics by elites." For more along
these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality and
secret societies which manipulate global politics.
With limited oversight, the wealthy get a charitable tax break

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/With-limited-oversight-the-wealthy-get...
Nicholas and Jill Woodman ... will receive a huge tax deduction for their [charitable] donation of 5.8
million shares of company stock to a donor-advised fund. But theres no guarantee that one dollar
of their October donation will ever be spent [on charity]. Donors gets an immediate, one-time tax
break by depositing their money or assets in a donor-advised fund. They can advise the
institution holding their money where and when to spend it on their timetable. Boston
College Law School Professor Ray Madoff points out, It is like money-laundering." There
was $54 billion under management in donor-advised funds in 2013. Top financial houses like
Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard have fully embraced donor-advised funds. Fidelity Charitable, with
$13.2 billion worth of assets under management, is now the nations second-largest charity. Even
though organizations like Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable and Vanguard Charitable were
founded by their financial house namesakes, they are separate 501(c)3 charities. But while Fidelity
Charitable is independent from the financial institution, roughly two-thirds of the money in the
charitable arm is invested in Fidelity mutual funds. Madoff said that because investment advisers
can charge a fee for managing the money in these accounts, they have a natural incentive to keep
the money in these accounts growing and not leaving.
widespread corruption in government and banking and finance.
New Scrutiny of Goldmans Ties to the New York Fed After a Leak
http://dealbook.nytimes.com//2014/11/19/rising-scrutiny-as-banks-hire-from-th...
From his desk in Lower Manhattan, a banker at Goldman Sachs thumbed through confidential
documents courtesy of a source inside the United States government. The banker came to
Goldman through the so-called revolving door ... that connects financial regulators to Wall Street.
He joined in July after spending seven years as a regulator at the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York, the governments front line in overseeing the financial industry. He received the confidential
information, lawyers briefed on the matter suspect, from a former colleague who was still working
at the New York Fed. The previously unreported leak, recounted in interviews with the
lawyers briefed on the matter who spoke anonymously ... illustrates the blurred lines
between Wall Street and the government. When Goldman hired the former New York Fed
regulator, who is 29, it assigned him to advise the same type of banks that he once policed.
And the banker obtained confidential information [that] provided Goldman a window into the New
York Feds private insights. The emergence of the leak comes as questions mount about a
perceived coziness between the New York Fed and Wall Street banks Goldman in particular.
Revelations from a former New York Fed employee, Carmen Segarra, recently stoked that debate.
Ms. Segarra released taped conversations suggesting that her supervisors went soft on Goldman.
The new accounts of a regulator and a banker actually sharing confidential documents violating
a cardinal rule of the regulatory world suggest that ... Goldman, perhaps more than any other
Wall Street bank, appears to be entwined with the New York Fed.
widespread corruption in government and banking and finance. For additional information, see the
excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information Center.
Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279447
In June 2011, (WikiLeaks founder) Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman of
Google, Eric Schmidt. The stated reason for the visit was a book. Schmidt was penning a treatise
with Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas. Cohen had moved to Google from the U.S. State
Department. Schmidt arrived first, accompanied by his then partner, Lisa Shields ... a vice
president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Two months later, WikiLeaks release of State
Department cables was coming to an abrupt end. Two years later, in the wake of his early 2013
visits to China, North Korea and Burma, it would come to be appreciated that the chairman of
Google might be conducting, in one way or another, back-channel diplomacy for Washington. In
1999 ... Schmidt joined the New America Foundation. The foundation and its 100 staff serve
as an influence mill, using its network of approved national security, foreign policy and
technology pundits to place hundreds of articles and op-eds per year. In 2003, the U.S.
National Security Agency (NSA) had already started systematically violating the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). During the same period, Google ... was accepting NSA money
to the tune of $2 million to provide the agency with search tools. In 2012, Google arrived on the list
of top-spending Washington, D.C., lobbyists. Whether it is being just a company or more than just
a company, Googles geopolitical aspirations are firmly enmeshed within the foreign-policy
agenda of the worlds largest superpower.
Note: Read the complete Newsweek article summarized above for Julian Assange's detailed
accounting of the connections between Washington D.C. insiders, Google and related technology
companies, intelligence agencies, and civil society organizations. For more about Wikileaks, read
this news article summary. For more on the geopolitical big picture, see these concise summaries
of deeply revealing news articles from reliable major media sources.
Our Dysfunctional Financial System

http://time.com/3455631/our-dysfunctional-financial-system/
Did anyone ever doubt that the New York Fed was in hock to Wall Street? Or that Fed bank
examiners ... might fear alienating the powerful financiers on whom they depend for information or
future jobs? Its one thing to know and another to hear in painful, crackling detail how the
Feds financial cops slip on their velvet gloves to deal with Goldman Sachs. Or how
Segarra, one of a group of examiners brought in after the financial crisis to keep a closer
watch on the till, was fired, perhaps for doing her job. Consider one of the shady deals
highlighted on the secret tapes of New York Fed meetings, which Segarra made with a spy
recorder before she was let go and which were made public on Sept. 26. The Fed employees,
who work inside the banks they examine (yes, its literally an inside job), knew the deal was
dodgy. Numerous experts believe that the size of the financial sector is slowing growth in the real
economy by sucking the monetary oxygen out of the room. Banks dont want to lend; they want to
trade, often via esoteric deals that do almost nothing for anyone outside Wall Street. This
disconnect between the real economy and finance is now being closely studied by policymakers
and academics. Adair Turner, a former British banking regulator, thinks that only about 15% of U.K.
financial flows go to the real economy; the rest stay within the financial system, propping up
existing corporate assets, supporting trading and enabling $40 million briefcase-watching fees. If
the New York Fed really wants to redeem itself, it might consider commissioning a similar study to
look at Wall Streets contribution to the U.S. economy.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing financial news
articles from reliable major media sources. For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable
resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information Center.
Seeds of Doubt
2014-08-25, The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/seeds-of-doubt
[Vandana] Shivas fiery opposition to globalization and to the use of genetically modified crops has
made her a hero to anti-G.M.O. activists everywhere. At each stop [on a recent European tour],
Shiva delivered a message that she has honed for nearly three decades: by engineering,
patenting, and transforming seeds into costly packets of intellectual property, multinational
corporations such as Monsanto, with considerable assistance from the World Bank, the World
Trade Organization, the United States government, and even philanthropies like the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, are attempting to impose food totalitarianism on the world. She
describes the fight against agricultural biotechnology as a global war against a few giant seed
companies on behalf of the billions of farmers who depend on what they themselves grow to
survive. Shiva contends that nothing less than the future of humanity rides on the outcome. Shiva,
along with a growing army of supporters, argues that the prevailing model of industrial agriculture,
heavily reliant on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fossil fuels, and a seemingly limitless supply of
cheap water, places an unacceptable burden on the Earths resources. The global food supply is
indeed in danger. Feeding the expanding population without further harming the Earth
presents one of the greatest challenges of our time, perhaps of all time. By the end of the
century, the world may well have to accommodate ten billion inhabitants. Sustaining that
many people will require farmers to grow more food in the next seventy-five years than has been
produced in all of human history.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing GMO news articles from
Goldman to Pay $3.15 Billion to Settle Mortgage Claims

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/22/goldman-to-pay-3-15-billion-to-settle-...
Goldman Sachs is paying its largest bill yet to resolve a government lawsuit related to the financial
crisis. The bank said ... that it had agreed to buy back $3.15 billion in mortgage bonds from
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to end a lawsuit filed in 2011 by the Federal Housing Finance
Agency, the federal regulator that oversees the two mortgage companies. The agency had
accused Goldman of unloading low-quality mortgage bonds onto Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in
the run-up to the financial crisis. It estimates that Goldman is paying $1.2 billion more than the
bonds are now worth. Most of the other 18 banks that faced similar suits from the housing agency
have already reached settlements. The previous settlements have included penalties, which
Goldman avoided. But Goldman had been hoping to avoid settling the suit altogether, contending
as recently as last month that many of the governments claims should be dismissed. The $1.2
billion figure carries a sting because it is double the $550 million payment that Goldman made in
2010 to settle the most prominent crisis-era case it has faced the so-called Abacus case. Since
then, Goldman has largely avoided the billion-dollar penalties paid by other banks for wrongdoing
before the 2008 crisis. This week, Bank of America reached a $16.65 billion settlement with the
Justice Department related to the banks handling of shoddy mortgages. In a separate deal this
year, Bank of America agreed to pay $9.5 billion to settle its part of the housing finance agencys
lawsuit. Some of that money was a penalty and the rest was used to buy back mortgage bonds.
F.C.C., in a Shift, Backs Fast Lanes for Web Traffic

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/technology/fcc-new-net-neutrality-rules.html
The principle that all Internet content should be treated equally as it flows through cables and
pipes to consumers looks all but dead. The Federal Communications Commission said on [April
23] that it would propose new rules that allow companies like Disney, Google or Netflix to pay
Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon for special, faster lanes to send video and
other content to their customers. The proposed changes would affect what is known as net
neutrality the idea that no providers of legal Internet content should face discrimination in
providing offerings to consumers, and that users should have equal access to see any legal
content they choose. The proposal comes three months after a federal appeals court struck down,
for the second time, agency rules intended to guarantee a free and open Internet. The regulations
could radically reshape how Internet content is delivered to consumers. The rules are also likely to
eventually raise prices as the likes of Disney and Netflix pass on to customers whatever they pay
for the speedier lanes, which are the digital equivalent of an uncongested car pool lane on a busy
freeway. Consumer groups immediately attacked the proposal, saying that not only would
costs rise, but also that big, rich companies with the money to pay large fees to Internet
service providers would be favored over small start-ups with innovative business models.
Its Official, Secret Money Corrupts

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/its-official-secret-money-corr...
Lawmakers of both parties are desperately trying to stop the Internal Revenue Service from
interfering with the most powerful political invention that ever fell into their laps: the use of
non-profit groups as a source of unlimited and anonymous campaign money. An
investigation now unfolding in Utah ... exposes in remarkable detail how profoundly the non-profit
system can be corrupted for the benefit of a single industry and a single politician. The politician
involved was John Swallow, a former lobbyist for an empire of payday-loan and check-cashing
companies. When Mr. Swallow ran for Utah Attorney General as a Republican in 2012, his
strategist established several social-welfare groups, which dont have to name their donors, so that
the payday-loan industry could support him financially without anyone knowing. The groups
collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret donations from the industry, and the money
was used to run attack ads against Mr. Swallows opponent, who wanted to crack down on payday
lenders. The ads worked, and Mr. Swallow was elected. When the I.R.S. started looking into the
non-profit groups and demanding documentation, ... Congressional Republicans accused the
agency (falsely) of singling out conservative non-profit groups. Eventually, a parallel state
investigation drove Mr. Swallow from office; he resigned last fall, and last week a state legislative
panel accused him of breaching the public trust by hanging a veritable for sale sign on the office
door that invited moneyed interests to seek special treatment and favors.
Note: For more on serious problems with the US electoral system, see the deeply revealing
For the Love of Money

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html
In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million and I was angry because it wasnt big
enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in
mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was
addicted. It was actually my absurdly wealthy bosses who helped me see the limitations of
unlimited wealth. I was in a meeting with one of them, and a few other traders, and they were
talking about the new hedge-fund regulations. Most everyone on Wall Street thought they were a
bad idea. But isnt it better for the system as a whole? I asked. The room went quiet, and my
boss shot me a withering look. I remember his saying, I dont have the brain capacity to think
about the system as a whole. All Im concerned with is how this affects our company. I felt as if Id
been punched in the gut. He was afraid of losing money, despite all that he had. From that moment
on, I started to see Wall Street with new eyes. I noticed the vitriol that traders directed at the
government for limiting bonuses after the crash. I heard the fury in their voices at the
mention of higher taxes. These traders despised anything or anyone that threatened their
bonuses. Wealth addiction was described by the late sociologist and playwright Philip Slater in a
1980 book, but addiction researchers have paid the concept little attention. Like alcoholics driving
drunk, wealth addiction imperils everyone. Wealth addicts are, more than anybody, specifically
responsible for the ever widening rift that is tearing apart our once great country.
Japan Ex-Leaders Join Calls Against Nuclear Power

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/japan-leaders-join-calls-nuclea...
Japan's flagging anti-nuclear movement is getting a boost from two former prime ministers who are
calling for atomic power to be phased out following the Fukushima disaster. Former Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi said [on November 12] that the current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, ... "should
use the power given to him to do what the majority of the people want," Koizumi said in a speech
at the Japan Press Club. "It can be achieved. Why miss this chance?" Koizumi, who supported
nuclear power during his 2001-2006 term in office, said that with Japan's nuclear plants all offline
for safety checks it would be easiest to begin the phase-out soon. Polls have shown the majority of
the public ... prefers to shift away from the nuclear plants that provided nearly a third of Japan's
power generation capacity before the accident at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. Three
[former prime ministers], including Koizumi, have said they support ending use of nuclear power.
Their support could help reinvigorate the anti-nuclear movement, which has lost some of its vitality
nearly three years after the Fukushima accident. Another former prime minister, Morihiro
Hosokawa, said in an interview ... that he also favors an end to reliance on nuclear power. "I can't
understand why they want restarts of the nuclear plants when there is no place to discard
the nuclear waste," said Hosokawa, who served as prime minister for eight months in 199394. "It would be a crime against future generations for our generation to restart nuclear
plants without resolving this issue," he said. Experts have questioned whether earthquakeprone Japan can safely store nuclear waste under any scenario.
Note: For more on the risks of nuclear power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
Feds Dudley: Deep Seated Cultural, Ethical Lapses at Many Financial

Firms
2013-11-07, Wall Street Journal blog
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/11/07/feds-dudley-sees-deep-seated-cultur...
Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley said [that] any effort to reduce
the threat to financial stability posed by massive financial firms also must include
compelling banking executives to have more respect for the law and the broader impact on
society of their actions. There is evidence of deep-seated cultural and ethical failures at many
large financial institutions, Mr. Dudley said. Whether this is due to size and complexity, bad
incentives or some other issues is difficult to judge, but it is another critical problem that needs to
be addressed as regulators seek to deal with the problem of banks that are considered too big to
fail, the official said. Mr. Dudley [added] that ending too big to fail and shifting the emphasis to
longer-term sustainability will encourage the needed cultural shift necessary to restore public trust
in the industry. His comments on banking issues come in the wake of last weeks decision by the
Fed to stay the course on its $85-billion-a-month bond-buying program. Mr. Dudley has been a
steadfast supporter of the aggressively easy-money policies pursued by the central bank.
Note: For more on the banking bailout, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
Volkswagen stops academics from revealing car hack

2013-07-30, NBC News/Associated Press
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52620905#.Uf0oE6zfKSo
A British university is delaying the release of an academic paper on how the anti-theft systems of
millions of Volkswagen vehicles are at risk of being hacked after the German carmaker took legal
action against it. In a statement, the University of Birmingham said it would "defer publication" of
the paper which explains how researchers were able to subvert Volkswagen's security system
after an interim injunction issued by England's High Court. It said it was "disappointed with the
judgment which did not uphold the defense of academic freedom and public interest, but respects
the decision." The paper ... revealed three ways to bypass a brand of computer chip used by
several auto manufacturers to fight vehicle theft. Often referred to as immobilizers, such
chips use a secret algorithm to ensure that a car can only be started with the right key, and
they've been a mandatory in all new vehicles sold in Britain over the past 15 years. Crucially, the
researchers planned to reveal how they were able to reverse-engineer the algorithm and
publish a copy of it in their paper. Volkswagen said that publishing the formula would be "highly
damaging" and "facilitate theft of cars," according to a ruling handed down last month by High
Court Justice Colin Birss. The judge said that millions of Volkswagen vehicles were issued with the
chip, including high-end cars such as Porsches, Audis, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis. The
researchers countered that Volkswagen's claim that the paper would be a boon to car thieves was
overblown, that they had warned the chip's manufacturer about the vulnerability six months ago,
and that a gag order would interfere with their legitimate academic work.
Tech firms push back on digital spying

http://www.sfchronicle.com/technology/article/Tech-firms-push-back-on-digital...
Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower shining spotlights on federal surveillance practices, made a
rhetorical - and volatile - point during an online question-and-answer session Monday. "If
Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the
intelligence community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?"
he asked. Snowden's point implies that tech companies should push back on all government
requests for data on their users. Prosecuting these much-used companies for noncompliance
would only shed light on the extent of the programs they aimed to keep secret in the first place.
Whether a tech company dares go that far remains to be seen. But in the past week a number of
household names in Silicon Valley have at least started demanding more freedom to disclose what
the government wants to know about their users. As the tech companies associated with
Snowden's leaked materials scramble to comply with government requests, they're also
scrambling to save face with customers. It's still not clear what exact technical mechanism the
government used to acquire information about users of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and
Apple, among others. But it is clear that some Internet users have come to view these tech giants
as proxy spies as a result of their assumed compliance. The companies say they would like
nothing better than to clear their names, but they simply aren't allowed to release details about
government requests.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government assaults on
privacy, click here.
Monsanto backing away from GMO crops in Europe

2013-05-31, MSN/Reuters
Monsanto Co is not pushing for expansion of genetically modified crops in most of Europe
as opposition to its biotech seeds in many countries remains high, company officials said on
[May 31]. European [spokespersons for] Monsanto told the German daily [Die Tagezeitung] that
they were no longer doing any lobby work for cultivation in Europe and [were] not seeking any new
approvals for genetically modified plants. Monsanto corporate spokesman Thomas Helscher said
... that the company is making it clear that it will only pursue market penetration of biotech crops in
areas that provide broad support. "As far as we're convinced this only applies to a few countries in
Europe today, primarily Spain and Portugal." The company has been focusing lately on gaining
market share in the conventional corn market in Ukraine, and Monsanto Vice President Jesus
Madrazo, who oversees international corporate affairs, said Eastern Europe and South America
are key growth areas for the company now. Unlike Europe, South America has largely been
welcoming of Monsanto's crop biotechnology, but the company is also facing hurdles there
as it is awaiting approvals by China, which is a large buyer of soybeans from Brazil.
GMOs, click here.
Pesticides Make a Comeback

Insecticide sales are surging after years of decline, as American farmers plant more corn and a
genetic modification designed to protect the crop from pests has started to lose its effectiveness. It
has sparked fresh concerns among environmental groups and some scientists that one of the
most widely touted benefits of genetically modified cropsthat they reduce the need for
chemical pest controlis unraveling. At the same time, the resurgence of insecticides
could expose both farmers and beneficial insects to potential harm. Until recently, corn
farmers in the U.S. had largely abandoned soil insecticides, thanks mostly to a widely adopted
genetic trait developed by Monsanto Co. that causes corn seeds to generate their own pest-killing
toxins. Today, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, two-thirds of all corn grown in the
U.S. includes a rootworm-targeting gene known as Bt. In 2011, however, entomologists at Iowa
State University and the University of Illinois started to document rootworms that were immune to
the Monsanto gene, and have found these resistant pests scattered across the Midwest. Now,
many farmers have decided they need to spray their soil to kill any rootworms that have developed
Bt resistance, as well as growing populations of other pests. Scott Greenlee, who farms 1,700
acres in Sac City, Iowa, said he planned to start using a soil insecticide this year after part of his
crop succumbed to rootworms in 2012. The 53-year-old Mr. Greenlee, who had planted
Monsanto's Bt corn, said the affected fields produced just 50 or 60 bushels per acre, about a third
of his normal yield. "It was a train wreck," he added.
Note: For more on the destructive impacts of GMO crop technology, see the deeply revealing
Lloyd Blankfein's $21m haul makes him the world's best paid banker
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/apr/12/goldman-sachs-lloyd-blankfein-pay
Goldman Sachs paid its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, $21m last year and granted him a
further $5m in bonus shares in January. The Wall Street bank handed Blankfein $13.3m (8.7m) in
restricted shares and a $5.7m cash bonus on top of his $2m annual salary last year. His total 2012
pay was $9m more than in 2011, and the highest since the $68m he received in 2007, before the
financial crisis struck. The payout, disclosed in a filing with the US regulator the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC), makes Blankfein, 58, the world's best paid banker. Blankfein's top
four lieutenants collected a total of $72m in annual pay, bonuses and share options last year.
Goldman paid its bankers an average of $400,000 last year, $30,000 more than in 2011. The
total pay, bonuses and perks bill to its 32,400 staff came in at $13bn. The payroll figures come
after the bank ... reported a near-doubling of full year net profits to $7.5bn. The payouts come
despite a senior employee attacking it as "morally bankrupt" and revealing that senior
Goldman bankers describe clients as "muppets".
Note: For an excellent four-minute video clip of Sen. Elizabeth Warren questioning government
bank regulators and showing without doubt they are protecting the banks rather than consumers,
click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption,
click here.
Dont Blink, or Youll Miss Another Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/business/dont-blink-or-youll-miss-another-b...
Many people became rightfully upset about bailouts given to big banks during the mortgage crisis.
But it turns out that they are still going on, if more quietly, through the back door. The existence of
one such secret deal, struck in July between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Bank of
America, came to light just last week in court filings. Not only do the filings show the New York
Fed helping to thwart another institutions fraud case against the bank, they also reveal that
the New York Fed agreed to give away what may be billions of dollars in potential legal
claims. The New York Fed said in a court filing that in July it had released Bank of America from
all legal claims arising from losses in some mortgage-backed securities the Fed received when the
government bailed out the American International Group in 2008. One surprise in the filing, which
was part of a case brought by A.I.G., was that the New York Fed let Bank of America off the hook
even as A.I.G. was seeking to recover $7 billion in losses on those very mortgage securities. What
did the New York Fed get from Bank of America in this settlement? Some $43 million, it seems,
from a small dispute the New York Fed had with the bank on two of the mortgage securities. At the
same time, and for no compensation, it released Bank of America from all other legal claims. For
zero compensation, the New York Fed released Bank of America from what may be sizable legal
claims, knowing that A.I.G. was trying to recover on those claims.
regulators and financial corporations, click here.
Food, drink industries undermine health policy, study finds

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-11/lifestyle/sns-rt-us-chronic-dis...
Multinational food, drink and alcohol companies are using strategies similar to those employed by
the tobacco industry to undermine public health policies, health experts said. In an international
analysis of involvement by so-called "unhealthy commodity" companies in health policy-making,
researchers from Australia, Britain, Brazil and elsewhere said self-regulation was failing and it was
time the industry was regulated more stringently from outside. The researchers said that through
the aggressive marketing of ultra-processed food and drink, multinational companies were now
major drivers of the world's growing epidemic of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer
and diabetes. Writing in The Lancet medical journal, the researchers cited industry documents
they said revealed how companies seek to shape health legislation and avoid regulation.
This is done by "building financial and institutional relations" with health professionals,
non-governmental organizations and health agencies, distorting research findings, and
lobbying politicians to oppose health reforms, they said. The researchers [added] that their
evidence showed [the] collaborative approach had failed. They recommended that, in the future,
food, drinks and tobacco firms should have no role in national or international policies on chronic
diseases. Instead, they proposed a system of "public regulation" which they said would focus on
directly pressuring industry by "raising awareness of their shady practices and maintaining active
public pressure".
click here.
'Who knew' mortgage defense falling apart

http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Who-knew-mortgage-defense-f...
The "who knew?" defense [was] thrown down by financial institutions and their senior executives to
ward off accusations that they were somehow responsible for the disaster that befell the country.
That defense is now crumbling by the day, thanks in part to their own employees' admissions.
Citing internal e-mails, California joined the federal government and 15 other states this week in
filing multibillion-dollar civil fraud lawsuits against the nation's leading credit ratings agency,
Standard & Poor's, for allegedly deliberately "downplaying and disregarding the true extent of the
credit risks" of the financial instruments it had rated as rock-solid. S&P says the charges are
"without factual or legal merit," while adding that it, "like everyone else, did not predict the speed
and severity of the coming crisis and how credit quality would ultimately be affected." Stack that
up against an S&P executive who warned in an internal memo in December 2006, "This
market is a wildly spinning top which is going to end badly." Or the 2007 e-mail from an
analyst that read, "Job's going great, aside from the fact that the MBS (residential
mortgage-backed securities) is crashing." Foreknowledge seemed to be apparent at JPMorgan
Chase and Morgan Stanley as well. Internal documents in a lawsuit filed by Dexia SA, a FrenchBelgian bank, alleging "egregious fraud" by JPMorgan in the sale of $1.7 billion of mortgagebacked bonds, suggested executives at JPMorgan, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual ...
intentionally covered up the unworthiness of the securities they were selling.
Oil supply grows, but so does price

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Oil-supply-grows-but-so-does-price-422...
Since 2008, oil production in the United States has surged ... 28 percent as the controversial
practice of fracking unlocks new supplies in North Dakota and Texas. At the same time, use of oil
and petroleum products has fallen 4 percent, as Americans switch to more efficient cars. In theory
at least, both of those factors should have pushed the price of crude down. Instead, it's gone up.
Since bottoming out during the financial crisis, oil futures traded on the New York Mercantile
Exchange have nearly tripled in value, climbing from $33.87 per barrel in December 2008 to
roughly $95 this month. Oil still costs substantially more now than it did in 2007, before the
recession began. The high price illustrates a brutal truth of today's interconnected world - oil is a
global commodity, bought and sold in a global marketplace. Even while demand falls in the United
States, it's growing in countries such as China and India. Critics say the price paradox undercuts
the oil industry's efforts to drill in more of America's public lands and coastal waters. "It really
debunks the myth of 'Drill, baby, drill,' that if we just produce more oil, prices will stay low or go
lower," said Michael Marx, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Oil campaign. Will all that extra
petroleum finally mean lower prices? "It's a difficult question to answer, because there's not a
one-for-one (relationship) between an increase in production and a decrease in prices,"
said Doug MacIntyre, director of the Energy Information Administration's office of
petroleum statistics. "There are so many other factors."
Note: Though the author refers to "so many other factors," he doesn't even mention greed and
corruption which almost everyone knows are rampant. When will the media focus their attention on
these fundamental challenges of our world?
Abu Ghraib torture lawsuit settled

http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Abu-Ghraib-torture-lawsuit-settled-417799...
A defense contractor whose subsidiary was accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to torture detainees
at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has paid $5.28 million to 71 former inmates held there
and at other U.S.-run detention sites between 2003 and 2007. The settlement in the case involving
Engility Holdings Inc. of Chantilly, Va., marks the first successful effort by lawyers for former
prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers to collect money from a U.S. defense
contractor in lawsuits alleging torture. Another contractor, CACI, is expected to go to trial over
similar allegations this summer. The defendant in the lawsuit, L-3 Services Inc., now an Engility
subsidiary, provided translators to the U.S. military in Iraq. The former detainees filed the lawsuit in
federal court in Greenbelt, Md., in 2008. L-3 Services "permitted scores of its employees to
participate in torturing and abusing prisoners over an extended period of time throughout
Iraq," the lawsuit stated. The company "willfully failed to report L-3 employees' repeated
assaults and other criminal conduct by its employees to the United States or Iraq
authorities." A military investigation in 2004 identified 44 alleged incidents of detainee abuse at
Abu Ghraib. No employee from L-3 Services was charged with a crime in investigations by the
U.S. Justice Department.
click here.
'Shadow Banking' Still Thrives, System Hits $67 Trillion

The system of so-called "shadow banking" ... grew to a new high of $67 trillion globally last year, a
top regulatory group said, calling for tighter control of the sector. A report by the Financial Stability
Board (FSB) [states] that shadow banking is set to thrive, beyond the reach of a regulatory net
tightening around traditional banks and banking activities. The FSB, a task force from the world's
top 20 economies, also called for greater regulatory control of shadow banking. The study by the
FSB said shadow banking around the world more than doubled to $62 trillion in the five years to
2007 before the crisis struck. But the size of the total system had grown to $67 trillion in 2011
more than the total economic output of all the countries in the study. The multitrillion-dollar
activities of hedge funds and private equity companies are often cited as examples of shadow
banking. But the term also covers investment funds, money market funds and even cash-rich firms
that lend government bonds to banks, which in turn use them as security when taking credit from
the European Central Bank. The United States had the largest shadow banking system, said
the FSB, with assets of $23 trillion in 2011, followed by the euro area with $22 trillion
and the United Kingdom at $9 trillion.
Note: That's $10,000 for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Do you think the bankers are
somehow manipulating the system? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
sources on financial corruption, click here.
State seeks answers in gas price spikes

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/State-seeks-answers-in-gas-price-spike...
October's record-setting jump in gasoline prices cost Californians $320 million, and yet state
officials lack some of the basic information needed to ensure that refineries aren't playing games
with the fuel market. That was the testimony [on November 15] at a hearing that explored the
causes of the price spike, which saw the state's average price for a gallon of regular reach $4.67.
The hearing could lead to legislation. With its own specialized gasoline blends made by just a
handful of refineries, California has long been prone to price spikes. But four of the most severe on
record happened in 2012. The October price spike began after an electrical outage suddenly shut
down an ExxonMobil refinery in Los Angeles County. Fuel supplies in California had already been
strained by the Aug. 6 fire at Chevron Corp.'s Richmond refinery, as well as the closure of a crudeoil pipeline in the Central Valley. Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy
Institute in Berkeley, noted that the state's reliance on just a few refining companies gives those
businesses significant power over the market, even if they don't conspire to raise prices. No
pipelines connect California to refineries in the Midwest or on the Gulf Coast, leading many
analysts to label the state an "energy island." "Unfortunately, we've created a situation in the
California market where because we're an island and because it's pretty concentrated, we
actually do have companies that are in a pretty strong position to raise prices by putting
less (gas) on the market. There is no law against them doing that," [Borenstein said].
click here.
The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of-the-...
In the early 14th century, Venice was one of the richest cities in Europe. By 1500, Venices
population was smaller than it had been in 1330. In the 17th and 18th centuries, as the rest of
Europe grew, the city continued to shrink. The story of Venices rise and fall is told by the scholars
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power,
Prosperity, and Poverty, as an illustration of their thesis that what separates successful states from
failed ones is whether their governing institutions are inclusive or extractive. Extractive states are
controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of
society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater
inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness.
The history of the United States can be read as one such virtuous circle. But as the story of Venice
shows, virtuous circles can be broken. Elites that have prospered from inclusive systems can
be tempted to pull up the ladder they climbed to the top. Eventually, their societies become
extractive and their economies languish. That ... is the danger America faces today, as the 1
percent pulls away from everyone else and pursues an economic, political and social agenda
that will increase that gap even further ultimately destroying the open system that made
America rich and allowed its 1 percent to thrive in the first place.
Note: The author of this article, Chrystia Freeland, wrote the book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New
Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, from which this essay is adapted. For deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources on income inequality, click here.
Billionaire Koch brothers try to buy states court

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/29/3025110/billionaire-koch-brothers-try.html
The new stealth campaign against three Florida Supreme Court justices is being backed by those
meddling right-wing billionaires from Wichita, Charles and David Koch. Last week they uncorked
the first of a series of commercials from their political action committee, Americans for Prosperity.
The targets are Justices R. Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince. They were three of
the five-vote majority that in 2010 knocked down a half-baked amendment slapped together by
state lawmakers seeking to nullify the federal Affordable Health Care Act. The Florida Supreme
Court upheld lower court decisions in finding that the proposed amendment contained misleading
and ambiguous language, the hallmark of practically everything produced by this Legislature. On
the November ballot, Lewis, Pariente and Quince are up for merit retention, meaning voters can
choose to retain them or not. This simple system was put in place to keep the states high court
above the sleaze of political races. The mission of the Kochs, hiding as always behind their
super PAC, is to get the three justices dumped at the polls so that Gov. Rick Scott can
appoint replacements. The last thing these guys want is fair judges who know the law; they
want partisan judges wholl obediently support their political agenda. Its worse than just
trying to buy an election. Its trying to hijack Floridas justice system at the highest levels.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the control of elections by
corporations and rich individuals, click here.
HSAs force health providers to compete

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/HSAs-force-health-providers-to-compete-...
A growing number of patients are paying directly most, or all, of their medical bills these days. One
problem they face: Finding out what health care services really cost before they make the decision
to buy. Even though it accounts for one-sixth of the U.S. economy, health care is difficult to shop
for in all but a small percentage of health care purchases. For the most part, no one ever sees a
real price for health care services - not doctors, not patients, not employers, not
employees. The reason patients never see the prices is because third-party payers (insurance
companies, employers and government) negotiate with providers - leaving patients with a small copay under traditional insurance. And without real prices, there is no basis for third-party payers or
anyone to negotiate the lowest possible prices. Recently, however, more and more employers are
encouraging their employees to shop for health care the way they shop for groceries. To
encourage that activity, employers are allowing their employees to manage more of their own
health care dollars by means of a health savings account. The idea behind an HSA is a simple
one: Instead of giving all of your health dollars to an insurance company or the
government, you put some of those dollars into an account that you own and control. This
reduces wasteful health care spending because individuals ... spending their own money often get
the lowest prices, and they also can decide whether they really want to buy those services. A
recent Rand Corp. study found that patients with HSA plans reduced medical spending by about
30 percent, without adversely affecting their health.
click here.
SEC whistle-blower program starts paying off for agency, tipsters

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/22/business/la-fi-sec-whistleblower-2012...
For the last year, whistle-blowers deep inside corporate America have been dishing dirt on their
employers under a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission program that could give them a cut
of multimillion-dollar penalties won by financial regulators. A new bounty program has been an
intelligence boon to the securities industry regulator, which has struggled to redeem itself after
failing to stop Bernard Madoff's epic Ponzi scheme and rein in Wall Street before the 2008
financial crisis. Motivated by cash and the chance to rat out wrongdoers, tipsters are dropping
more than names. Whistle-blowers and their attorneys are turning over boxes of documents,
copies of emails and even audio recordings of alleged fraud or illegal overseas bribery. "We
are getting very, very high-quality information from whistle-blowers," said Sean McKessy,
director of the SEC's whistle-blower office. In the program's first year, 2,870 tips or about eight a
day rolled in as of Aug. 12. And on Tuesday, one of them finally led to the agency's first payout:
$50,000 to an informant who alerted regulators to an investment fraud. They declined to specify
the case, careful to avoid identifying the whistle-blower. Some say shielding identities could pose a
challenge for publicizing the program, but the anonymity probably will yield more information. The
flood of new information doesn't necessarily mean the SEC will be more effective. In the case of
Madoff, one whistle-blower repeatedly sounded the alarm years before the scheme blew up to
no avail.
government and the big banks, click here.
Lawyers From Suits Against Big Tobacco Target Food Makers

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/lawyers-of-big-tobacco-lawsuits-ta...
Don Barrett, a Mississippi lawyer, took in hundreds of millions of dollars a decade ago after suing
Big Tobacco and winning record settlements from R. J. Reynolds, Philip Morris and other cigarette
makers. So did Walter Umphrey, Dewitt M. Lovelace and Stuart and Carol Nelkin. More than a
dozen lawyers who took on the tobacco companies have filed 25 cases against industry players
like ConAgra Foods, PepsiCo, Heinz, General Mills and Chobani. The suits, filed over the last four
months, assert that food makers are misleading consumers and violating federal regulations
by wrongly labeling products and ingredients. "[Mislabeling of a product is] a crime - and
that makes it a crime to sell it," said Mr. Barrett. "That means these products should be
taken off the shelves." Mr. Barrett said his group could seek damages amounting to four years of
sales of mislabeled products - which could total many billions of dollars. In recent weeks, the
Center for Science in the Public Interest has sued General Mills and McNeil Nutritionals over their
claims on Nature Valley and Splenda Essentials products, and warned Welch's it would sue unless
the company changed the wording on its juice and fruit snacks. The Federal Trade Commission
won settlements from companies like Dannon and Pom Wonderful for claims about their products'
health benefits. And PepsiCo and Coca-Cola face lawsuits over claims that their orange juice
products are "100% natural."
click here.
CNBC Reports Financial System Changeover: Theyre Going to Put the

Old System In a Coma
2012-08-10, CNBC
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000108212
Kevin Ferry: There are Libor subpoenas raining down on the New York branches of these foreign
banks today. So I think you really have to watch it. The [British Bankers' Association] is now
saying they are going to go into overhaul mode. So as if we dont have enough things going
on, youre going to start opening up a Pandoras Box here in the Libor sector of the market. I think
what theyre going to do ... is basically put the old system in a coma, and work to devise
something thats a little bit better, and its going to be tricky. Doug Dachille: So what are they
going to do with the euro/dollar futures and all the outstanding notion of principal of contracts
linked to Libor? I mean is everybody going to convert their Libor interest rate swaps to cost of fund
funds or Fed fund basis swaps or some other index? KF: Are you asking me? Ive asked that
question as high as I could ask it and I get blank stares. DD: Its not clear that every bank has
exactly the same Libor exposure, so its not clear that that cartel, in setting Libor and manipulating
it, actually is as powerful as the cartel that manages oil prices. Yet I dont hear any outrage of
people routinely trading commodity derivatives and commodity futures, as much as I hear the
outrage over euro/dollar futures and Libor-based interest rate swaps. Everybody assumes thats
what goes on when you trade commodity futures, but nobody ever really thought that was going on
when you were trading euro/dollar futures.
Note: The text above is an excerpt from a CNBC news video. Click on the link above for the full
report. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption in the
financial sector, click here.
Twitter undermines free speech

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/dotcommentary/article/Twitter-undermines-fre...
In a welcome about-face Tuesday morning, Twitter restored the account of journalist Guy Adams,
who posted a series of critical comments about NBC's handling of the Olympics. While it's
encouraging to hear NBC backed away - even if it required an enormous online backlash - it
remains disturbing that Twitter revoked the account in the first place. Let's be perfectly clear:
Twitter suspended a user for committing an act of journalism. The mind-boggling move
undermines the San Francisco startup's credibility as a supposed advocate of open
communications, and whittles away the goodwill of professional and citizen journalists who
are the lifeblood of the service. In a series of tweets in recent days, Adams colorfully assailed,
among other things, NBC's ridiculous decision to force West Coast viewers to watch the Olympics
on a time delay, presumably so the network could charge prime-time advertising rates. It's been an
infuriating experience for fans who can't duck the spoilers blasting at them from all quarters of the
Internet. Adams, a correspondent for London's Independent newspaper, simply supplied them an
appropriate outlet for those frustrations in the tweet that supposedly got his account deactivated.
click here.
Faulty computer modeling caused San Onofre equipment problems

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-san-onofre-20120619,0,3178971.story
Faulty computer modeling caused the equipment problems that are expected to keep the San
Onofre nuclear plant dark through the summer, federal regulators said Monday. The plant has
been out of service since Jan. 31, when operators discovered a small leak in one of the thousands
of steam generator tubes that carry hot, radioactive water used to create steam to turn turbines
that generate electricity. That led to the discovery that other tubes were rubbing against support
structures and adjacent tubes, and wearing out more quickly than expected. Eight tubes failed
pressure testing, which NRC officials said ... is the first time in the nuclear industry that more than
one tube at a plant has failed. The wear is a safety concern because tube ruptures can release
radiation. The plant's operator, Southern California Edison; the NRC; and Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries, the manufacturer of the steam generators, have been studying the cause and extent of
the wear. The NRC has ordered Edison to keep the plant shuttered until it has determined the
cause and how to fix it. "This is a significant, serious safety issue," said NRC regional
administrator Elmo Collins. "This is a very difficult technical issue, and to be honest, it's
not one we've seen before." NRC officials said it appears that simulations by Mitsubishi
underpredicted the velocity of steam and water flowing among the tubes by a factor of
three or four. The high rate of flow caused the tubes to vibrate and knock against each other,
leading to the wear. It was not clear why the computer modeling was so far off.
Note: For lots more on corruption in the nuclear power industry, click here.
The Austerity Agenda

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/opinion/krugman-the-austerity-agenda.html
Slashing spending while the economy is deeply depressed is a self-defeating strategy, because it
just deepens the depression. So why is Britain doing exactly what it shouldnt? Unlike the
governments of, say, Spain or California, the British government can borrow freely, at historically
low interest rates. So why is that government sharply reducing investment and eliminating
hundreds of thousands of public-sector jobs, rather than waiting until the economy is stronger?
The great American economist Irving Fisher explained it all the way back in 1933, summarizing
what he called debt deflation with the pithy slogan the more the debtors pay, the more they
owe. Recent events, above all the austerity death spiral in Europe, have dramatically illustrated
the truth of Fishers insight. So why have so many politicians insisted on pursuing austerity in [the]
slump? And why wont they change course even as experience confirms the lessons of theory and
history? When you push austerians ... they almost always retreat to assertions along the lines of:
But its essential that we shrink the size of the state. These assertions often go along with claims
that the economic crisis itself demonstrates the need to shrink government. So the austerity drive
in Britain isnt really about debt and deficits at all; its about using deficit panic as an
excuse to dismantle social programs. And this is, of course, exactly the same thing that has
been happening in America.
Note: For lots more on the devastating impacts created by the corruption of governments and
Novartis takes legal action in UK to make hospitals use $1,000 eye drug
over $97 alternative
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/novartis-takes-legal-action-in-uk-...
Drug maker Novartis is taking legal action in Britain to make state-run hospitals use an eye drug
that costs about 700 pounds ($1,130) per shot instead of a cheaper one that costs 60 pounds
($97). In a statement, Novartis said it was calling for a judicial review as a last resort because it
believed patient safety was being potentially compromised. According to the U.K.s health
watchdog, Novartis Lucentis is the only drug recommended to treat the eye problem macular
degeneration in the countrys state-run National Health Service hospitals. However, several NHS
hospitals have been prescribing the much cheaper Avastin, a cancer drug made by Genentech
Inc., a subsidiary of Roche, for the same problem even though it has not been officially approved.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year showed Avastin
worked just as well as Lucentis for treating the eye disorder. Lucentis and Avastin act on
the same biological protein in the body to spur blood vessel growth. In the U.S., eye
doctors have often used tiny amounts of Avastin and billed the government for the cost,
rather than buying Lucentis. Patient groups called for an independent analysis to determine
which drug should be used.
A Drumbeat on Profit Takers

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/science/a-drumbeat-on-profit-takers.html
Dr. Arnold S. Relman [is] 88; Dr. Marcia Angell, 72. But their voices are as strong as ever.
Colleagues for decades, late-life romantic partners, the pair has occasionally, wistfully, been called
American medicines royal couple. In fact, controversy and some considerably less complimentary
labels have dogged them as well. From 1977 to 2000, one or both of them filled top editorial slots
at The New England Journal of Medicine as it grew into perhaps the most influential medical
publication in the world, with a voice echoing to Wall Street, Washington and beyond. Many of the
urgent questions in the accelerating turmoil surrounding health care today were first articulated
during their tenure. Or, as Dr. Relman summarized one recent afternoon ..., Dr. Angell nodding in
agreement by his side: I told you so. Their joint crusade ... is against for-profit medicine,
especially its ancillary profit centers of commercial insurance and drug manufacture in
Dr. Relmans words, the people who are making a zillion bucks out of the commercial
exploitation of medicine. Some have dismissed the pair as medical Don Quixotes, comically
deluded figures tilting at benign features of the landscape. Others consider them first responders in
what has become a battle for the soul of American medicine.
Note: For a powerful summary of Dr. Marcia Angell's critique of corruption in the medical industry,
click here.
Monsanto found guilty of chemical poisoning in France

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/13/monsanto-guilty-chemical-po...
A French court has declared the US biotech giant Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of a
French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides. In the
first such case heard in court in France, the grain grower Paul Francois, 47, said he suffered
neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling
Monsanto's Lasso weedkiller in 2004. He blames Monsanto for not providing adequate warnings
on the product label. "It is a historic decision in so far as it is the first time that a [pesticide]
maker is found guilty of such a poisoning," Francois Lafforgue, Francois's lawyer, told Reuters.
Francois and other farmers suffering from illness set up an association last year to make a case
that their health problems should be linked to their use of crop protection products. The agricultural
branch of the French social security system says that since 1996, it has gathered farmers' reports
of sickness potentially related to pesticides, with about 200 alerts a year. The Francois case goes
back to a period of intensive use of crop-protection chemicals in the European Union. The EU and
its member countries have since banned a large number of substances considered
dangerous.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.
F.D.A. Finds Short Supply of Attention Deficit Drugs

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/health/policy/fda-is-finding-attention-drug...
Medicines to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are in such short supply that hundreds of
patients complain daily to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that they are unable to find a
pharmacy with enough pills to fill their prescriptions. The shortages are a result of a troubled
partnership between drug manufacturers and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),
with companies trying to maximize their profits and drug-enforcement agents trying to
minimize abuse by people. Shortages, particularly of cheaper generics, have become so
endemic that some patients say they worry almost constantly about availability. The DEA sets
manufacturing quotas that are designed to control supplies and thwart abuse. Every year, the DEA
... allots portions of the expected demand to various companies. How each manufacturer divides
its quota among its own ADHD medicines preparing some as high-priced brands and others as
cheaper generics is left up to the company. Officials at the FDA say the shortages are a result of
overly strict quotas set by the DEA, which, for its part, questions whether there really are shortages
or whether manufacturers are simply choosing to make more of the expensive pills than the
generics, creating supply and demand imbalances.
Note: This curious story reveals an astonishing level of government manipulation of the
manufacturing and availability of medications, and corporations appear to go along with it because
it keeps profits high. For lots more on government and corportate corruption from reliable sources,
Wall Street - a raw deal for the 100 percent

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/28/EDQN1MHHJI.DTL
The stunning reality is that five years into the financial meltdown, it's business as usual on Wall
Street - outlandish rewards for insiders with downside for almost everyone else. Occupy Wall
Street protesters are right - something is wrong - but they're not sure what. Let's revisit the latest
debacle - the implosion of yet another Wall Street darling, MF Global. The fallout of its bad bets on
European bonds is hitting home hard, even in rural America, where many of its agricultural
customers work. As the eighth-largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, MF Global represents just
about everything that is wrong on Wall Street. 1. The cult of a Wall Street superstar. 2. Gambling
disguised as investing. 3. The bail-me-out syndrome. 4. Enormous conflicts of interest. 5.
Leverage on a grand scale. 6. Failure of regulators and the reform law. 7. Misappropriation of client
funds. 8. Worthless rating agencies. 9. Golden parachutes soaring high. 10. Breakdown of
morality. Wall Street will keep sucking huge sums out of our economy and putting 100
percent of us at risk unless the rules change. Most important, we must stop gambling and
start investing again to build valuable companies. The next crisis will make 2008 look like a
warm-up. Imagine how big the Occupy camps will be if that happens.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources which provide detailed information on
all the problematic dimensions of Wall Street's operations described in the article above, click here.
Person of the Year Introduction

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102139_21...
No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square in
a town barely on a map, he would spark protests that would bring down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt
and Libya and rattle regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Or that that spirit of dissent would spur
Mexicans to rise up against the terror of drug cartels, Greeks to march against unaccountable
leaders, Americans to occupy public spaces to protest income inequality, and Russians to marshal
themselves against a corrupt autocracy. Protests have now occurred in countries whose
populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspapers and
online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history. Everywhere, it seems,
people said they'd had enough. They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when
the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. The root of the word
democracy is demos, "the people," and the meaning of democracy is "the people rule." And
they did, if not at the ballot box, then in the streets. Protest is in some ways the source
code for democracy and evidence of the lack of it. For steering the planet on a more
democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century, the Protester is
TIME's 2011 Person of the Year.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from major media sources that explain why protestors
worldwide have been occupying their cities, click here.
Biggest Nuclear Breach Raises Alarm as France Debates Reactors

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-14/biggest-nuclear-breach-raises-ala...
Just after 6 a.m. on Dec. 5, under cover of darkness, nine Greenpeace activists cut through a
fence at the Nogent-sur-Seine atomic plant 95 kilometers (59 miles) southeast of Paris and
headed for a domed reactor building. They scaled the roof and unfurled a Safe Nuclear Doesnt
Exist banner before attracting the attention of security guards. Two remained at large for four
hours. On the same day, two more campaigners breached the perimeter of the Cruas-Meysse
plant on the Rhone, escaping detection for more than 14 hours while posting videos of their sit-in
on the Internet. The security lapses ... come at a time when debate has intensified on
Frances reliance on atomic power for three-quarters of its energy needs in the run-up to
next years presidential elections. They also preempt next months release of the results of
safety checks at Frances 58 reactors, commissioned in the aftermath of the Fukushima
tragedy. Greenpeace said its activists exposed the biggest security lapse to date at the reactors
that are operated by Electricite de France SA.
Europe Bans Airport X-Ray Scanners that U.S. Still Uses

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/11/17/europe-bans-airport-x-ray-scanners-that-u...
The European Commission adopted new rules Nov. 14 regarding X-ray, or backscatter, body
scanners at all airports in Europe. A press release ordered members of the European Union to
remove X-ray scanners from its airports to avoid risking citizens health and safety. The news
[brings] into question the continued use of the very same X-ray scanners in U.S. airports. While the
Transportation Security Administration also employs millimeter-wave scanners in U.S. airports, Xray scanners are the ones that have received more criticism from public-safety advocates. While ...
the amount of radiation exposure from X-ray machines is very low, several studies have shown
that a small number of cancer cases could result from scanning millions of passengers
every year. Some critics of the scanners say that any small amount of cancer is too much to
tolerate. Although the TSA doesnt show signs of budging on the use of X-ray scanners, Europe
will instead use machines that rely on radio frequency waves, which have not been linked to
cancer.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on government and corporate threats to privacy, click
here.
Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don't get it

2011-10-05, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/05/opinion/rushkoff-occupy-wall-street/index.html
Yes, there are a wide array of complaints, demands, and goals from the Wall Street protesters: the
collapsing environment, labor standards, housing policy, government corruption, ... and so on.
Different people have been affected by different aspects of the same system -- and they believe
they are symptoms of the same core problem. I witnessed [many cogent conversations] as I
strolled by Occupy Wall Street's many teach-ins this morning. There were young people teaching
one another about, among other things, how the economy works, ... the history of centralized
interest-bearing currency, the creation and growth of the derivatives industry, and about the
Obama administration deciding to settle with, rather than investigate and prosecute the investment
banking industry for housing fraud. Anyone who says he has no idea what these folks are
protesting is not being truthful. We all know that there are investment bankers working on
Wall Street getting richer while things for most of the rest of us are getting tougher. Occupy
Wall Street is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion, creates as many
questions as it answers, aims to force a reconsideration of the way the nation does business and
offers hope to those of us who previously felt alone in our belief that the current economic system
is broken.
Note: For insights into the reasons why people have decided they must occupy their cities in
protest of the predations of financial corporations, check out our extensive "Banking Bailout" news
articles.
Tony Blair is godfather to Rupert Murdochs daughter

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8740530/Tony-Blair-is-god...
Tony Blair is godfather to one of Rupert Murdochs young children, it has emerged in an interview
with the media tycoons wife Wendi. The former prime minister was reportedly present in March
last year when Murdochs two daughters by his third wife were baptised on the banks of the
Jordan. The information was not made public and its disclosure in an interview with Mrs Murdoch
in Vogue will prove highly embarrassing for Mr Blair. His close ties to the Murdochs could
explain his reluctance to condemn the News International phone hacking scandal. In July, it
was reported that he asked Gordon Brown to put pressure on Tom Watson, the Labour MP
who helped expose the scandal, to drop his investigation. Last night, Mr Blairs spokesman
refused to comment, but a News Corp source confirmed that Mr Blair was godfather to Grace, as
was Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdochs eldest son. While Mrs Murdoch does not comment on Mr
Blair directly, the article states that Miss Kidman, Mr Jackman and Mr Blair are godparents. It
claims that Mr Blair attended the Jordanian ceremony garbed in white and describes him as one
of Mrs Murdochs closest friends. They have a mutual friend in Queen Rania of Jordan, who
hosted the baptism. Both women were recently on the judging panel for a film prize organised by
the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.
Note: For more on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
While Wall St. flourishes, Main St. flounders

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/28/EDKO1KRVJM.DTL
What if we stood up for Main Street? Corporations and elected officials are making decisions that
are impacting our lives, and we are at their mercy. Americans, many [of] whose lives have been
destroyed by the 2008 subprime mortgage market disaster, resent the lack of accountability on the
part of Wall Street for its role in this scandal. Few have been indicted for the market collapse
and resulting meltdown of the global economy. After the federal government bailed out the
financial institutions, it is back to business as usual. Corporate profits are accumulating
and bonuses are raining down on the very players who created the bubble and crash in the
first place. On the other hand, the taxpayers who bailed out Wall Street aren't doing so well.
Instead of bonuses, we are suffering from unemployment and underemployment of epic
proportions. Homeowners continue to lose their homes to foreclosure, and homelessness is on the
rise. Public services, public safety and public welfare funding is being cut back or cut out. Public
education has been decimated. American corporations have lost all sense of responsibility for U.S.
citizens. While the U.S. economy fights to survive, corporations have turned their backs on those
whose tax dollars kept our ship of state from sinking. Sending jobs overseas might improve
corporate profit margins, but at what expense to the workforce and U.S. economy? These
decisions have devastated American workers' lives. So, what needs to be done? What if we begin
to stand up for Main Street?
Note: For a treasure trove of reports detailing the criminal collusion between the federal
government and Wall Street financial corporations, click here.
Ghostwritten medical articles called fraud

2011-08-02, CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/08/02/ghostwriting-medical-legal-fra...
It's fraudulent for academics to give their names to medical articles ghostwritten by pharmaceutical
industry writers, say two Canadian law professors who call for potential legal sanctions. Studies
suggest that industry-driven drug trials and industry-sponsored publications are more likely to
downplay a drug's harms and exaggerate a drug's virtues, said Trudo Lemmens, a law professor
at the University of Toronto. The integrity of medical research is also harmed by ghostwritten
articles, he said. Ghostwriting is part of marketing that can distort the evidence on a drug,
Lemmens said. Industry authors are concealed to insert marketing messages and academic
experts are recruited as "guest" authors to lend credibility despite not fulfilling criteria for
authorship, such as participating in the design of the study, gathering data, analyzing the results
and writing up of the findings. Lemmens and his colleague Prof. Simon Stern argue that legal
remedies are needed for medical ghostwriting since medical journals, academic institutions and
professional disciplinary bodies haven't succeeded in enforcing sanctions against the practice.
Ghostwritten publications are used in court to support a manufacturer's arguments about a drug's
safety and effectiveness, and academic experts who appear as witnesses for pharmaceutical and
medical device companies also boost their credibility with the publications on their CV, Lemmens
said.
Note: For a respected doctor's powerful analysis of fraud in the pharmaceutical industry, click
here. For lots more from reliable sources on key health issues, click here.
Army Corps Agrees to Pay Whistle-Blower In Iraq Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/world/middleeast/29reconstruct.html
Ending a six-year legal battle, the Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to pay nearly $1 million to
a former top contracting official who charged that she was demoted after she objected to a $7
billion no-bid contract granted to a Halliburton subsidiary to repair oil fields in Iraq. In a settlement
agreement signed this month and made final by a federal judge this week, the Army Corps of
Engineers agreed to pay the former official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, $970,000 to cover lost
wages, legal fees and compensatory damages, including for harm to her reputation and her mental
health. The payment for damages is unusually large for a lawsuit by a federal employee. In early
2003, the Army, in secret and without competitive bidding, put KBR, then a subsidiary of
Halliburton, in charge of restoring Iraqi oil production, in a contract potentially worth $7
billion over five years. Ms. Greenhouse, a career civil servant who was the chief contracts
monitor at the Army Corps of Engineers at the time, objected that the contract was based on repair
plans and cost estimates that KBR itself had been hired by the corps to prepare, and that the
emergency conditions did not justify a multiyear no-bid contract. After internal clashes and threats
of demotion, she went public with her concerns in 2004. Ms. Greenhouse was demoted from the
Senior Executive Service and given a poor performance rating, prompting her to bring the lawsuit.
As part of the settlement, Ms. Greenhouse, 67, formally retired this week with full benefits.
Note: The press has reported little on this most important case. For a much better description of all
that went on and the intense corruption revealed, click here.
Dog's glow-in-the-dark effect can be turned on or off

2011-07-27, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43915467/ns/technology_and_science-science
Scientists say they have bred a dog that glows under ultraviolet light when an antibiotic is
added to its food. Scientists started cloning glow-in-the-dark puppies two years ago by inserting
genes from other species that produce fluorescent proteins, such as jellyfish and coral. In the
journal Genesis, researchers from Seoul National University report that they produced a dog that
expresses the green fluorescent protein gene when it eats food containing a doxycycline antibiotic.
When the drug is no longer added to the food, the glow-in-the-dark effect fades away. The
technique could be used to help find cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. The genetically modified female
beagle, named Tegon, was born in 2009. Other methods can produce dogs that glow, but "the
uncontrollable expression often results in unwanted outcomes," they said.
Note: Though this may have some beneficial applications, why doesn't the article raise any of the
serious ethical considerations?
With moving truck, Fla. couple threatens bank with foreclosure

Months after Bank of America wrongly foreclosed on a house Warren and Maureen Nyerges had
already paid for, they were still fighting to get reimbursed for the court battle. So on Friday, their
attorney showed up at a branch office in Naples with a moving truck and sheriff's deputies who had
a judge's permission to seize the furniture if necessary. An hour later, the bank had written a check
for $5,772.88. "The branch manager was visibly shaken," attorney Todd Allen said Monday,
recalling the visit to the bank last week. "At that point I was willing to take the desk and the chair
he was sitting in." After the moving company and sheriff's deputies get their share, the Nyerges
should receive the rest of the money this week, ending a bizarre saga that started when they paid
Bank of America $165,000 cash for a 2,700-square-foot (250 meter) foreclosed home in Naples in
2009. About four months later, a process server knocked on their door and handed Warren
Nyerges a notice of foreclosure. That started 18 months of frustrating phone calls, paperwork and
court hearings. Whenever Nyerges called the bank, representatives told him to "come up to
date" with his payments. When he called 25 different law firms, no attorney would take the
case. When he went to court, the lawyers for the bank filed incorrect motions and were
woefully unprepared for the hearings.
Note: For a great two-minute video on this most unusual happening, click here.
Food prices: World Bank warns millions face poverty

2011-04-14, BBC
The World Bank has warned that rising food prices, driven partly by rising fuel costs, are
pushing millions of people into extreme poverty. World food prices are 36% above levels of
a year ago, driven by problems in the Middle East and North Africa, and remain volatile, the bank
said. That has pushed 44 million people into poverty since last June. A further 10% rise would
push 10m more below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 (76p) a day, the bank said. And it warned
that a 30% cost hike in the price of staples could lead to 34 million more poor. The World Bank
estimates there are about 1.2 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day. "More poor people are
suffering and more people could become poor because of high and volatile food prices," said
World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "We have to put food first and protect the poor and
vulnerable, who spend most of their money on food." The World Bank says prices of basic
commodities remain close to their 2008 peak, with the prices of wheat, maize and soya all
rocketing.
Note: What this article fails to mention is that two top UK newspapers have exposed how much
of the rise in food prices has been cause by speculation, especially that of big banks. To
read these two excellent articles, click here and here. As prices continue to rise, remember the key
role of speculators, whether it be food, oil, gold, or any other commodity.
Got Plans for the Next 25,000 Years?

2011-03-21, CNBC
It turns out that nuclear waste has more in common with the financial world than being a metaphor
for the worst of its toxic assets. Nuclear waste some of which remains disastrously radioactive
for 100,000 years turns out to be the ultimate tail risk. Tail risk, of course, is the statistical term
much in vogue in the financial press for describing unlikely events. (The 'tail' in tail risk refers to the
tail-shaped edges in the bell curve of a normal distribution.) These allegedly unlikely events are
sometimes referred to as black swans. Black swans are occurring with such regularity in these
volatile times that they can no longer be considered true statistical outliers. [Take] a look at these
outlier events within the context of building nuclear waste containment vessels. Repository
builders have to take into account a tail risk of future humans disturbing the site and not
realising the danger facing themselves and their ecology. People might regress towards a
pre-industrial state or lose language over a timescale like that. So you have to design a
marker that scares people away, but doesn't flip them over into morbid curiosity towards exploring
further and, potentially, dooming an entire civilisation with radioactive poisoning.
Audit: Pentagon overpaid oilman by up to $200 million

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pentagon-overpaid-oilman-millions-audi...
A Pentagon audit has found that the federal government overpaid a billionaire oilman by as much
as $200 million on several military contracts worth nearly $2.7 billion. The audit by the Defense
Departments inspector general ... estimated that the department paid the oilman $160
[million] to $204 million more for fuel than could be supported by price or cost analysis.
The study also reported that the three contracts were awarded under conditions that
effectively eliminated the other bidders. Harry Sargeant III, a well-connected Florida
businessman and once-prominent Republican donor, first faced scrutiny over his defense work in
October 2008, when he was accused in a congressional probe of using his close relationship with
Jordans royal family to secure exclusive rights over supply routes to U.S. bases in western Iraq.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who led the probe, ... said in a statement Thursday that the
report confirmed what we found in 2008: the International Oil Trading Company overcharged by
hundreds of millions of dollars while the Bush administration looked the other way. Waxman called
on Sargeant to repay the Pentagon.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
From Hiroshima to Fukushima

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/opinion/17iht-edschell17.html
The horrible and heartbreaking events in Japan present a strange concatenation of disasters.
Succumbing to the one-two punch of the earthquake and the tsunami, eleven of Japans 54
nuclear power reactors were shut down. Three of them have lost coolant to their cores and have
experienced partial meltdowns. The same three have also suffered large explosions. The spent
fuel in a fourth caught fire. Now a second filthy wave is beginning to roll this one composed of
radioactive elements in the atmosphere. They include unknown amounts of cesium-137 and
iodine-131, which can only have originated in the melting cores or in nearby spent fuel rod pools.
The Japanese government has evacuated some 200,000 people in the vicinity of the plants. The
second shock was, of course, different from the first in at least one fundamental respect. The first
was dealt by Mother Nature, who has thus reminded us of her sovereign power to nourish or
punish our delicate planet, its axis now tipping ever so slightly in a new direction. No finger of
blame can be pointed at any perpetrator. The second shock, on the other hand, is the product
of humankind, and involves human responsibility. Until the human species stepped in,
there was no appreciable release of atomic energy from nuclear fission or fusion on earth.
Note: For an excellent list of experiments in which humans, either individually or collectively as a
species, are being used as guinea pigs in most unethical and dangerous ways, click here.
American who sparked diplomatic crisis over Lahore shooting was CIA
spy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/20/us-raymond-davis-lahore-cia
The American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan
and the US, is a CIA agent who was on assignment at the time. Raymond Davis has been the
subject of widespread speculation since he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the
two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January. Pakistani authorities
charged him with murder, but the Obama administration has insisted he is an "administrative and
technical official" attached to its Lahore consulate and has diplomatic immunity. Based on
interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special
forces soldier is employed by the CIA. "It's beyond a shadow of a doubt," said a senior Pakistani
intelligence official. Washington's case is hobbled by its resounding silence on Davis's role. He
served in the US special forces for 10 years before leaving in 2003 to become a security
contractor. A senior Pakistani official said he believed Davis had worked with Xe, the firm
formerly known as Blackwater. Pakistani suspicions about Davis's role were stoked by the
equipment police confiscated from his car: an unlicensed pistol, a long-range radio, a GPS
device, an infrared torch and a camera with pictures of buildings around Lahore.
Note: For further details on Raymond Davis' work for the CIA and Blackwater Corp., click here.
Discussing the two Pakistanis killed by Davis, an ABC News blog states, "Pakistani government
officials have told ABC News that the two were working for that country's intelligence agency, InterService Intelligence, and were also conducting surveillance." Click here for that article.
Inside Job: how bankers caused the financial crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/feb/17/inside-job-financial-crisis-banker...
Charles Ferguson's film Inside Job ... explains why so little has been done to reform the financial
world or bring criminal prosecutions against the main protagonists [of the financial crash that
began in 2008]. His villainous lineup includes bankers, politicians (many of whom were previously
bankers), regulators, the credit ratings agencies and academics. In Inside Job, the name that
keeps cropping up is Larry Summers, a friend of President Bill Clinton and more recently Barack
Obama. Summers exemplifies the links between cheerleaders in academia, Wall Street,
supine regulators and an ignorant Capitol Hill that Ferguson stresses were at the root of the
problem. Still, no matter how much it is explained, the general public is not going to understand.
How does one go into battle yelling slogans about credit default swaps? The bankers know
ignorance is their trump card. Maybe Inside Job will make us more savvy in time for the next crash.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable souces on the criminality of the major financial
firms, regulatory agencies and politicians which led to the global financial crisis and Greater
Depression, click here.
Doctors, nurses, execs among record number charged with Medicare

fraud
2011-02-17, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/17/medicare.arrests/index.html
Federal authorities indicted and arrested more than 100 doctors, nurses and health care
executives nationwide [on February 17] in what officials said was the biggest crackdown
ever in a single day in connection with Medicare fraud. The arrests occurred in nine cities.
Thirty-two defendants including two doctors and eight nurses were charged in Miami with various
fraud schemes. Another 21 defendants were charged in Detroit, along with 11 in Chicago; 10 in
Brooklyn, New York; 10 in Tampa, Florida; nine in Houston; seven in Dallas; six in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana; and five in Los Angeles. Officials from the Justice Department and the Department of
Health and Human Services said the cost of enforcing health care fraud laws is proving to be a
good financial investment. Last year, federal agencies recovered a record $4 billion from
fraudsters. "From 2008 to 2010, every dollar the federal government spent under its health care
fraud and abuse control programs averaged a return on investment (of) $6.80," Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.
Note: For powerful information from a top MD exposing how many in the health care industry put
profits above public health and put us all at risk, click here.
The little red book that swept France

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-little-red-book-that-swept...
Take a book of just 13 pages, written by a relatively obscure 93-year-old man, which contains no
sex, no jokes, no fine writing and no startlingly original message. A publishing disaster? No, a
publishing phenomenon. Indignez vous! (Cry out!), a slim pamphlet by a wartime French
resistance hero, Stphane Hessel, is smashing all publishing records in France. The book urges
the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by
rejecting the "insolent, selfish" power of money and markets and by defending the social
"values of modern democracy". The book, which costs 3, has sold 600,000 copies in three
months and another 200,000 have just been printed. Its original print run was 8,000. In the run-up
to Christmas, Mr Hessel's call for a "peaceful insurrection" not only topped the French bestsellers
list, it sold eight times more copies than the second most popular book. Mr Hessel, who survived
Nazi concentration camps to become a French diplomat, said he was "profoundly touched" by the
success of his book. Just as he "cried out" against Nazism in the 1940s, he said, young people
today should "cry out against the complicity between politicians and economic and financial
powers" and "defend our democratic rights acquired over two centuries".
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the "complicity between politicians and
economic and financial powers", click here.
WikiLeaks cables: Pfizer 'used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-cables-pfizer-nigeria
The world's biggest pharmaceutical company hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption
against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a
controversial drug trial involving children with meningitis, according to a leaked US embassy cable.
Pfizer was sued by the Nigerian state and federal authorities, who claimed that children were
harmed by a new antibiotic, Trovan, during the trial, which took place in the middle of a meningitis
epidemic of unprecedented scale in Kano in the north of Nigeria in 1996. But the cable suggests
that the US drug giant did not want to pay out to settle the two cases one civil and one criminal
brought by the Nigerian federal government. The cable reports a meeting between Pfizer's country
manager, Enrico Liggeri, and US officials at the Abuja embassy on 9 April 2009. It states:
"According to Liggeri, Pfizer had hired investigators to uncover corruption links to federal
attorney general Michael Aondoakaa to expose him and put pressure on him to drop the
federal cases. He said Pfizer's investigators were passing this information to local media."
The cable ... continues: "A series of damaging articles detailing Aondoakaa's 'alleged' corruption
ties were published in February and March. Liggeri contended that Pfizer had much more
damaging information on Aondoakaa and that Aondoakaa's cronies were pressuring him to drop
the suit for fear of further negative articles."
Note: For more on this revealing case, see the New York Times article available here.
72 super PACs spent $83.7 million on election, financial disclosure

reports show
The newly created independent political groups known as super PACs, which raised and spent
millions of dollars on last month's elections, drew much of their funding from private-equity
partners and others in the financial industry, according to new financial disclosure reports. The 72
super PACs, all formed this year, together spent $83.7 million on the election. The figures provide
the best indication yet of the impact of recent Supreme Court decisions that opened the door for
wealthy individuals and corporations to give unlimited contributions. The financial disclosure
reports also underscore the extent to which the flow of corporate money will be tied to political
goals. Private-equity partners and hedge fund managers, for example, have a substantial stake in
several issues before Congress, primarily the taxes they pay on their earnings. "Super PACs
provide a means for the super wealthy to have even more influence and an even greater
voice in the political process," said Meredith McGehee, a lobbyist for the Campaign Legal
Center, which advocates for tighter regulation of money in politics.
Note: For key reports on growing threats to the US electoral process, click here.
Obama administration gives billions in stimulus money without

environmental safeguards
The Obama administration has doled out about $2 billion in stimulus money to some of the nation's
biggest polluters while granting them exemptions from a basic form of environmental oversight, a
Center for Public Integrity investigation has found. The administration has awarded more than
179,000 "categorical exclusions" to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing
the projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Officials
said they did not consider companies' pollution records in deciding whether to grant the
waivers. The projects include: - An electrical-grid upgrade project in Kansas led by Westar
Energy, the state's largest coal-burning utility, which settled a major air pollution case by paying
half a billion dollars in penalties and remediation costs. - A project to create clean-burning biofuel
from seaweed led by chemical giant DuPont, which received $8.9 million in stimulus funds in
February. In all, about three dozen of the country's biggest polluters with past environmental
problems won NEPA exemptions for the stimulus grants totaling $2 billion from the Energy
Department - about 6 percent of the department's total money awarded so far.
BofA halts foreclosures in 50 states

2010-10-08, Salt Lake Tribune/Associated Press
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/50440207-79/bank-foreclosures-documents-fo...
A mushrooming crisis over potential flaws in foreclosure documents is threatening to throw the real
estate industry into chaos as Bank of America [today] became the first bank to stop taking back
tens of thousands of foreclosed homes in all 50 states. The move ... adds to growing concerns that
mortgage lenders have been evicting homeowners using flawed court papers, without verifying the
information in them. Bank of America Corp., the nations largest bank, said [its decision] applies to
homes that the bank takes back itself and those that it transfers to investors such as mortgage
giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The bank did so in reaction to mounting pressure from public
officials inquiring about the accuracy of foreclosure documents. A document obtained last week
by The Associated Press showed a Bank of America official acknowledging in a legal
proceeding that she signed thousands of foreclosure documents a month and typically
didnt read them. The official, Renee Hertzler, said in a February deposition that she signed
up to 8,000 such documents a month.
Note: For any who might be facing home foreclosure, don't miss the CNN News clip with important
advice from a courageous congresswoman available here. For many key reports from reliable
sources on the corrupt practices of major banks, click here.
Why is the Gates foundation investing in GM giant Monsanto?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/29/gate...
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ... is being heavily criticised in Africa and the US for getting
into bed not just with notorious GM company Monsanto, but also with agribusiness commodity
giant Cargill. Trouble began when a US financial website published the foundation's annual
investment portfolio, which showed it had bought 500,000 Monsanto shares worth around $23m.
Seattle-based Agra Watch - a project of the Community Alliance for Global Justice - was outraged.
"Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well being of small
farmers around the world [This] casts serious doubt on the foundation's heavy funding of
agricultural development in Africa," it [said]. South Africa-based watchdog the African Centre
for Biosafety then found that the foundation was teaming up with Cargill in a $10m project to
"develop the soya value chain" in Mozambique and elsewhere. Who knows what this corporatespeak really means, but in all probability it heralds the big time introduction of GM soya in southern
Africa. The fact is that Cargill is a faceless agri-giant that controls most of the world's food
commodities and Monsanto has been blundering around poor Asian countries for a decade giving
itself and the US a lousy name for corporate bullying. Does the foundation actually share their
corporate vision of farming and intend to work with them more in future?
Note: To read how WantToKnow.info manager Fred Burks was blacklisted by Monsanto for
reporting on its blatant disregard of the dangers of genetically modified foods, click here.
With Neighbors Unaware, Toxic Spill at a BP Plant

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/us/30bprefinery.html
While the world was focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP refinery [in Texas City,
Texas] released huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the air that went unnoticed by residents until
many saw their children come down with respiratory problems. For 40 days after a piece of
equipment critical to the refinerys operation broke down, a total of 538,000 pounds of toxic
chemicals, including the carcinogen benzene, poured out of the refinery. Rather than taking the
costly step of shutting down the refinery to make repairs, the engineers at the plant diverted gases
to a smokestack and tried to burn them off, but hundreds of thousands of pounds still escaped into
the air, according to state environmental officials. Neither the state nor the oil company
informed neighbors or local officials about the pollutants until two weeks after the release
ended, and angry residents of Texas City have signed up in droves to join a $10 billion
class-action lawsuit against BP. The state attorney general, Greg Abbott, has also sued the
company, seeking fines of about $600,000. Scores of Texas City residents said they experienced
respiratory problems this spring, and environmentalists said the release of toxic gases ranked as
one of the largest in the states history. Neil Carman of the Lone Star Sierra Club said the release
was probably even larger than BP had acknowledged.
here.
22-mile-long oily plume mapped near BP well site

2010-08-19, MSNBC
Scientists on [August 19] reported results from the first detailed study of a giant plume of oily water
near the blown-out BP well stating that it measured at least 22 miles long, more than a mile
wide and 650 feet tall. While other scientists earlier found evidence of plumes in the area, the new
data is the first peer-reviewed study about oil lurking in the water, in this case at some 3,000 feet
below the surface. It's also the first to offer some details about the size and characteristics of a
plume not only vast in size but which remained stable and intact during a 10-day survey last June.
Moreover, the study adds to the controversy over how much oil is still in the Gulf ecosystem from
the spill. The U.S. government earlier this month estimated that 75 percent of the oil that spewed
from the Macondo well had been skimmed, burned or broken up by chemical dispersants and
natural microbes in the water. The plume ... shows the oil "is persisting for longer periods
than we would have expected," lead researcher Rich Camilli said in a statement issued with the
study. "Many people speculated that subsurface oil droplets were being easily biodegraded.
Well, we didnt find that. We found it was still there."
Note: Yet another major media report states an oil eating microbe has made this plume
"undetectable." Is this true, or could it be just pro-oil company propaganda?
Drug recalls surge

2010-08-16, CNN Money
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/16/news/companies/drug_recall_surge/index.htm
Recalls of prescription and over the counter drugs are surging, raising questions about the quality
of drug manufacturing in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration reported more than
1,742 recalls last year, skyrocketing from 426 in 2008, according to the Gold Sheet, a trade
publication on drug quality that analyzes FDA data. One company, drug repackager Advantage
Dose, accounted for more than 1,000 of those recalls. Even excluding Advantage Dose, which has
shut down, recalls jumped 50% last year. "We've seen a trend where the last four years are
among the top five for the most number of drug recalls since we began tallying recalls in
1988," said Bowman Cox, managing editor of the Gold Sheet. "That's a meaningful
development." The fast pace of drug recalls seems to be continuing in 2010. Drug recalls totaled
296 from January through June of this year, said Cox. "If we continue at this same rate, we could
get 600 or more recalls by the end of the year," he said. "That's still a very high rate of recalls."
High-profile recalls of Tylenol and other products by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a unit of
Johnson & Johnson, have drawn attention to quality concerns in manufacturing. The spike in
recalls, especially of generic and over-the-counter drugs, is being driven by manufacturing lapses,
experts say. Some of the biggest culprits: the quality of raw materials, faulty labeling and
packaging and contamination.
The Genocide Behind Your Smart Phone

2010-07-16, Newsweek magazine
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/16/the-genocide-behind-your-smart-phone.html
Our biggest gadget makers including HP and Apple may inadvertently get their raw
ingredients from murderous Congolese militias. A new movement wants them to trace rare metals
from conflict mines. [It] stands on the cusp of going mainstream. Its the push to make major
electronics companies (manufacturers of cell phones, laptops, portable music players, and
cameras) disclose whether they use conflict mineralsthe rare metals that finance civil
wars and militia atrocities, most notably in Congo. Congo raises especially disturbing issues
for famous tech brand names that fancy themselves responsible corporate citizens. Congo is a
classic victim of the resource curse. Its bountiful depositsin everything from copper to diamonds
are brazenly plundered by corrupt governments and regional warlords while the population goes
without basic services. Today, most violenceincluding mass rape, slavery, mutilation, and
possibly even forced cannibalismis concentrated in the war-ravaged eastern Kivu provinces,
where the Congolese Army and ethnic militias bludgeon each other over the right to trade in
mineral ore.
Goldman Sachs exec to advise central bank

2010-06-29, Businessweek/Associated Press
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9GLB2AO3.htm
The chief executive of Goldman Sachs Canada has been named a special adviser to the head of
Canada's central bank. The Bank of Canada said [on June 29] that Timothy Hodgson will
advise central bank head Mark Carney, a former Goldman Sachs executive, on financial
reform. Carney says Hodgson is one of Canada's top investment bankers. Hodgson is leaving
Goldman Sachs. The company has come under sharp criticism over civil fraud charges brought by
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and because of the high pay its executives and
traders received during the financial crisis. Hodgson joined Goldman Sachs in 1990 and became
CEO of its Canadian operations in 2005.
Note: So Canada's central bank head, a former Goldman Sachs exec, will now be advised by the
chief executive of Goldman Sachs Canada. Hmmmmm.
High Court Sides With Ex-Enron CEO Skilling

2010-06-24, NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128088331&ft=1&f=1001
The U.S Supreme Court has severely restricted the ability of federal prosecutors to bring
corruption cases against public officials and corporate executives. The court unanimously
imposed stark limits on the so-called honest services law that for decades has been a key
tool in prosecuting corruption cases. The court's ruling came in the case of former Enron
executive Jeffrey Skilling, convicted of engaging in a scheme to enrich himself by
deceiving shareholders about his company's true financial condition. He was convicted of a
variety of charges, including depriving the Enron investors of his honest services. The Supreme
Court ruled that the definition of honest services in federal law was so broad that, if viewed literally,
it would be unconstitutionally vague, providing inadequate notice to citizens about what conduct is
legal and what is not. Instead, a six-justice majority led by Ruth Bader Ginsburg declined to
invalidate the law outright, but read it narrowly to cover only bribery and kickbacks. Three other
justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas would have, for all practical
purposes, invalided the statute in its entirety.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on corporate and government (including the judicial
branch) corruption, click here and here.
Each day, another way to define worst-case for oil spill

The base-line measures of the [Gulf of Mexico] crisis have steadily worsened. The estimated flow
rate keeps rising. The well is like something deranged, stronger than anyone anticipated. Week by
week, the truth of this disaster has drifted toward the stamping ground of the alarmists. The most
disturbing of the worst-case scenarios ... is that the Deepwater Horizon well has been so badly
damaged that it has spawned multiple leaks from the seafloor, making containment impossible and
a long-term solution much more complicated. Much of the worst-case-scenario talk has centered
on the flow rate of the well. Rep. Edward J. Markey [said on NBC's "Meet the Press], "I ... have a
document that shows that BP actually believes it could go upwards of 100,000 barrels per
day. So, again, right from the beginning, BP was either lying or grossly incompetent." Today
the official government estimate of the flow, based on multiple techniques that include subsea
video and satellite surveys of the oil sick on the surface, is 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day. In
effect, what BP considered the worst-case scenario in early May is in late June the bitter reality -call it the new normal -- of the gulf blowout.
Note: A NASA photo of the extent of the gulf oil spill speaks a thousand words at this link.
Gulf oil spill worsens -- but what about the safety of gas fracking?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/06/gulf-oil-spill-bp-hydrauli...
Imagine a siege of hydrocarbons spewing from deep below ground, polluting water and air,
sickening animals and threatening the health of unsuspecting Americans. And no one knows how
long it will last. No, were not talking about BPs gulf oil spill. Were talking about hydraulic
fracturing of natural gas deposits. Fracking, as the practice is also known, may be coming to a
drinking well or a water system near you. It involves blasting water, sand and chemicals, many of
them toxic, into underground rock to extract oil or gas. "Gasland," a compelling documentary on
HBO ..., traces hydraulic fracturing across 34 states from California to Louisiana to Pennsylvania.
The expos by filmmaker Josh Fox, alternately chilling and darkly humorous, won the 2010
Sundance Film Festivals special jury prize for documentary. It details how former Vice
President Dick Cheney, in partnership with the energy industry and drilling companies such
as his former employer, Halliburton Corp., successfully pressured Congress in 2005 to
exempt fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act and other
environmental laws. Each well requires the high-pressure injection of a cocktail of nearly 600
chemicals, including known carcinogens and neurotoxins, diluted in 1 million to 7 million gallons of
water. Some 450,000 wells have been drilled nationwide.
Note: For many reliable reports on government and corporate corruption, click here and here.
BP Buys 'Oil' Search Terms to Redirect Users to Official Company

Website
2010-06-05, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Broadcast/bp-buys-search-engine-phrases-redi...
BP, the very company responsible for the oil spill that is already the worst in U.S. history, has
purchased several phrases on search engines such as Google and Yahoo so that the first result
that shows up directs information seekers to the company's official website. A simple Google
search of "oil spill" turns up several thousand news results, but the first link, highlighted at
the very top of the page, is from BP. "Learn more about how BP is helping," the link's
tagline reads. A spokesman for the company confirmed to ABC News that it had, in fact, bought
these search terms to make information on the spill more accessible to the public. Several search
engine marketing experts are questioning BP's intentions, suggesting that controlling what the
public finds when they look online for oil spill information is just another way for the company to try
and rebuild the company's suffering public image. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal slammed BP for its
PR efforts, saying in a statement, "Instead of BP shelling out $50 million on an ad campaign that
promises to do good work in responding to this spill, BP should just focus on actually doing a good
job and spend the $50 million on assistance to our people, our industries and our communities that
are suffering as a result of this ongoing spill."
Note: For revealing reports from major media sources on corporate corruption and collusion, click
here.
Gulf Spill May Far Exceed Official Estimates

2010-05-14, NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126809525
The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico may be at least 10 times the size of official
estimates, according to an exclusive analysis conducted for NPR. At NPR's request, experts
examined video that BP released Wednesday. Their findings suggest the BP spill is already far
larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil.
BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by
looking at the oil gushing out of the pipe. But scientists say there are actually many proven
techniques for doing just that. Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering
at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle
image velocimetry. A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are
moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple
calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000
barrels a day much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day. The method is
accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent. This new, much larger number suggests that
capturing and cleaning up this oil may be a much bigger challenge than anyone has let on.
Bankers jailed, sued as Iceland seeks culprits for crisis

2010-05-13, Daily Telegraph (Australia)/AFP
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/breaking-news/bankers-jailed-sued-a...
More than a year and a half after Iceland's major banks failed, all but sinking the country's
economy, police have begun rounding up a number of top bankers while other former executives
and owners face a $US2 billion ($2.24 billion) lawsuit. Since Iceland's three largest banks Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir - collapsed in late 2008, their former executives and owners
have largely been living untroubled lives abroad. But the publication last month of a
parliamentary inquiry into the island nation's profound financial and economic crisis
signalled a turning of the tide, laying much of the blame for the downfall on the former bank
heads who had taken "inappropriate loans from the banks" they worked for. Overnight, the
administrators of Glitnir's liquidation announced they had filed a $US2 billion lawsuit in a New York
court against former large shareholders and executives for alleged fraud. "I think this lawsuit is
without precedence in Iceland," Steinunn Gudbjartsdottir, who chairs Glitnir's so-called winding-up
board, told reporters in Reykjavik. The bank also said it was "taking action against its former
auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for facilitating and helping to conceal the fraudulent
transactions engineered by [its principal shareholder] and his associates, which ultimately led to
the bank's collapse in October 2008."
Note: Yet American and British bankers who played a major role in the economic collapse are
getting record pay. For an incisive article in Rolling Stone titled "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?" click
here. For key reports on financial fraud from major media sources, click here.
GM repays federal loan with government money

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/26/BUS91D55HR.DTL
You'd think that General Motors Co., having been rescued by U.S. taxpayers, would be more upfront with them. In an ad that has been blanketing the airwaves since last week, General Motors
Chairman and chief executive Ed Whitacre boasts that "we have repaid our government loan, in
full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule." In a press release, Whitacre said GM
was able to repay the loans "because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet
Malibu and Buick LaCrosse." Neither the ad nor the press release mentioned that GM repaid
its government loan with other government money, or that U.S. taxpayers could lose money
on the roughly $50 billion they still have invested in General Motors. In a letter to Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the repayment "appears
to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle."
Note: For lots more on the bailout shell game from reliable sources, click here.
Banks Making Big Profits From Tiny Loans

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/world/14microfinance.html
In recent years, the idea of giving small loans to poor people became the darling of the
development world, hailed as the long elusive formula to propel even the most destitute into better
lives. Actors like Natalie Portman and Michael Douglas lent their boldface names to the cause.
Muhammad Yunus, the economist who pioneered the practice by lending small amounts to basket
weavers in Bangladesh, won a Nobel Peace Prize for it in 2006. The idea even got its very own
United Nations year in 2005. But the phenomenon has grown so popular that some of its biggest
proponents are now wringing their hands over the direction it has taken. Drawn by the prospect of
hefty profits from even the smallest of loans, a raft of banks and financial institutions now dominate
the field, with some charging interest rates of 100 percent or more. We created microcredit to
fight the loan sharks; we didnt create microcredit to encourage new loan sharks, Mr.
Yunus recently said at a gathering of financial officials at the United Nations. Microcredit
should be seen as an opportunity to help people get out of poverty in a business way, but
not as an opportunity to make money out of poor people. The noisy interest rate fight has
even attracted Congressional scrutiny, with the House Financial Services Committee holding
hearings this year focused in part on whether some microcredit institutions are scamming the poor.
Note: An excellent introduction to the power of microloans to pull people out of poverty is available
here. For key news reports on the exciting prospects of microlending, click here.
Goldman Sachs denies 'betting against clients'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/07/goldman-sachs-letter-shareholders
Nine months after being labelled "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity",
Goldman Sachs has issued a wide-ranging justification of its conduct before, during and after the
financial crisis. In a letter to shareholders issued alongside Goldman's 2009 annual report, the Wall
Street bank denied that it "bet against its clients" when it changed its position in the housing
market in 2007, shortly before prices began to collapse. The eight-page letter, signed by chief
executive Lloyd Blankfein and president Gary Cohn, also contained a detailed defence of the
$12.9bn (8.5bn) payout which Goldman received from AIG after the failed insurance giant was
bailed out by the US government. The letter appears to be a detailed response to some of the
allegations made nine months ago by Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi. His article, which argued
that Goldman had repeatedly profited by inflating unsustainable financial bubbles ... included the
claim that the company [is] "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,
relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money". Goldman ...
actually profited from the fiasco by short-selling the market before the credit crunch struck in
summer 2007.
Note: Read Matt Taibbi's article on Goldman Sachs here.
Tracking a new kind of civil disobedience

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/articles/2010/02/18/bc_professor_lisa_d...
As Newton resident Lisa Dodson, a Boston College sociology professor in the thick of a research
project, was interviewing a grocery story manager in the Midwest about the difficulties of the lowincome workers he supervised, he asked her a curious question: Dont you want to know what this
does to me too? She did. And so the manager talked about the sense of unfairness he felt as a
supervisor, making enough to live comfortably while overseeing workers who couldnt feed their
families on the money they earned. That inequality, he told her, tainted his job, making him feel
complicit in an unfair system that paid hard workers too little to cover basic needs. The interview
changed the way Dodson talked with other supervisors and managers of low-income workers, and
she began to find that many of them felt the same discomfort as the grocery store manager. And
many went a step further, finding ways to undermine the system and slip their workers
extra money, food, or time needed to care for sick children. She was surprised how
widespread these acts were. In her new book, The Moral Underground: How Ordinary
Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy, she called such behavior economic disobedience."
Dodson concluded that [many] were following the American tradition of civil disobedience - this
time, against the economy - and creating a moral underground."
Can Bosses Do That? As It Turns Out, Yes They Can

2010-01-29, NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123024596
Did you know you could be fired for not removing a political sticker from your car or even having
a beer after work? Lewis Maltby says it's more than possible it has happened. His new book,
Can They Do That? explores rights in the workplace. As he tells NPR's Ari Shapiro, "Freedom of
speech is protected by the First Amendment but only where the government is
concerned. What most Americans generally don't know is that the Constitution doesn't
apply to private corporations at all." In terms of monitoring its employees, the list of things a
corporation can't do is a short one it's basically confined to eavesdropping on a personal oral
conversation, Maltby said. "Anything else is open season." And outside the workplace, personal
blogs or social media pages on services like Twitter or Facebook offer no refuge. Asked if workers
can be fired for things they write on those sites, Maltby said, "Absolutely. Happens every day. I've
been getting calls from people for 20 years who've been abused in all sorts of ways," Maltby said.
"When I tell them, 'Sorry, you don't have any legal rights,' they literally don't believe me," Maltby
said.
Ex-Homeland Security chief head said to abuse public trust by touting

body scanners
Since the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, former Homeland Security
secretary Michael Chertoff has given dozens of media interviews touting the need for the federal
government to buy more full-body scanners for airports. What he has made little mention of is that
the Chertoff Group, his security consulting agency, includes a client that manufactures the
machines. An airport passengers' rights group ... criticized Chertoff, who left office less than a year
ago, for using his former government credentials to advocate for a product that benefits his clients.
"Mr. Chertoff should not be allowed to ... privately gain from the sale of full-body scanners
under the pretense that the scanners would have detected this particular type of
explosive," said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org, which opposes the use of the scanners.
Chertoff's advocacy for the technology dates back to his time in the Bush administration. In 2005,
Homeland Security ordered the government's first batch of the scanners. Today, 40 body scanners
are in use at 19 U.S. airports. The number is expected to skyrocket at least in part because of the
Christmas Day incident. The Transportation Security Administration this week said it will order 300
more machines.
Note: For lots more on the profiteering that underlies "the war on terror," click here.
New nonprofit uses Web to pressure Chevron

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/15/BUCM1AJM61.DTL
Retired retail executive Richard Goldman was astonished when he heard about the $27 billion
pollution lawsuit against Chevron Corp. in Ecuador. Astonished at the soil and water contamination
surrounding Ecuador's oil fields. And astonished that he'd never heard of it before. So Goldman,
one of the founders of the Men's Wearhouse clothing chain, has created a nonprofit group
that will use social-networking tools to spread word of the case and put pressure on
Chevron. The group, Ethos Alliance, will ask visitors to its Web site to tell others about the issue,
hoping that viral communication via the Internet will reach people that news stories about the suit
haven't. The site will raise money for humanitarian relief projects in Ecuador's oil patch,
encouraging visitors to donate $5 apiece to build a water treatment plant and buy medicine for a
health clinic. The Web site, www.ethosalliance.org, goes online today. Ethos also will urge
Chevron to settle the long-running lawsuit, something the San Ramon company has vowed not to
do. Ethos plans to tackle other issues of corporate responsibility in the future, uniting the alliance's
online members with businesses willing to join the cause. Ethos is the latest example of social
or political causes using social networking to increase their reach. Earlier this year, a oneday fundraising effort organized via Twitter collected $250,000 for drinking water projects in the
developing world.
Monsanto guilty in 'false ad' row

2009-10-15, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8308903.stm
France's highest court has ruled that US agrochemical giant Monsanto had not told the truth about
the safety of its best-selling weed-killer, Roundup. The court confirmed an earlier judgment that
Monsanto had falsely advertised its herbicide as "biodegradable" and claimed it "left the
soil clean". The company was fined 15,000 euros (13,800; $22,400). Roundup is the world's
best-selling herbicide. Monsanto also sells crops genetically-engineered to be tolerant to Roundup.
French environmental groups had brought the case in 2001 on the basis that glyphosate,
Roundup's main ingredient, is classed as "dangerous for the environment" by the European Union.
Earlier this month, Monsanto reported a fourth quarter loss of $233m (147m), driven mostly by a
drop in sales of its Roundup brand.
Note: For an article on the dangers of Monsanto's RoundUp, click here.
45,000 American deaths associated with lack of insurance

2009-09-18, CNN
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-09-18/health/deaths.health.insurance_1_health-in...
A freelance cameraman's appendix ruptured and by the time he was admitted to surgery, it was too
late. A self-employed mother of two is found dead in bed from undiagnosed heart disease. A 26year-old aspiring fashion designer collapsed in her bathroom after feeling unusually fatigued for
days. What all three of these people have in common is that they experienced symptoms, but
didn't seek care because they were uninsured and they worried about the hospital expense,
according to their families. All three died. Research released ... in the American Journal of
Public Health estimates that 45,000 deaths per year in the United States are associated with
the lack of health insurance. If a person is uninsured, "it means you're at mortal risk," said
one of the authors, Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard
Medical School. The researchers examined government health surveys from more than 9,000
people aged 17 to 64, taken from 1986-1994, and then followed up through 2000. They
determined that the uninsured have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private health
insurance as a result of being unable to obtain necessary medical care. The researchers then
extrapolated the results to census data from 2005 and calculated there were 44,789 deaths
associated with lack of health insurance.
Note: For key reports on important health issues from reliable sources, click here.
Oil, Ecuador and its people

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-chevron28-2009aug28,0,6949161.story
Chevron Corp., California's largest company and one of the world's largest oil producers, will soon
face a day of reckoning. After 16 years of litigation, a case the company inherited in a merger,
Aguinda vs. Texaco Inc., is nearing an end. The legal battle that began in the United States in
1993 and resumed in Ecuador in 2003 has pitted the multinational against an unlikely adversary, a
coalition of indigenous tribes and communities. A verdict is expected early next year. The plaintiffs
are poised to prevail, and Chevron acknowledges that it is likely to lose. The case is historic by
several measures. Never before have indigenous peoples brought a multinational oil
corporation to trial in their own country. Moreover, a victory would mark a turning point in
the relations between native populations around the world and the foreign corporations
that do business in their homelands. And the potential damages are staggering: A court-
appointed expert has determined that they could run to $27 billion, almost 10 times that initially
awarded to plaintiffs after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Today, a swath of the Ecuadorean Amazon the
size of Rhode Island remains contaminated beyond imagining. At one site after another, oil hangs
in the air, slides on the water's surface and saturates the land. Pipelines and waste pits left behind
years ago still drip and ooze. Advocates for the plaintiffs have called the former Texaco concession
area the "Amazon Chernobyl." Were it in the United States, it would easily qualify as a Superfund
site. Neither side in the case disputes the devastation, only who should pay for it.
Note: For the inspiring story of the courageous Ecuadorian lawyer behind this David vs. Goliath
lawsuit, click here. A smear campaign by Chevron against the judge in this case has more recently
swayed opinion in favor of Chevron again. Contact your political and media representatives at this
link to express your opinion.
'We are fighting for our lives and our dignity'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/13/forests-environment-oil-com...
Across the globe, as mining and oil firms race for dwindling resources, indigenous peoples are
battling to defend their lands often paying the ultimate price. It has been called the world's
second "oil war", but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru
over the last few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been the police armed
with automatic weapons, teargas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are
several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows
and arrows and spears. The Indians this week warned Latin America what could happen if
companies are given free access to the Amazonian forests to exploit an estimated 6bn barrels of
oil and take as much timber they like. After months of peaceful protests, the police were ordered to
use force to remove a road block near Bagua Grande. In the fights that followed, at least 50
Indians and nine police officers were killed, with hundreds more wounded or arrested. The
indigenous rights group Survival International described it as "Peru's Tiananmen Square". "For
thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the
protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our
sovereignty, human dignity." Peru is just one of many countries now in open conflict with its
indigenous people over natural resources. Barely reported in the international press, there have
been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America,
Asia and North America. Hydro electric dams, biofuel plantations as well as coal, copper, gold and
bauxite mines are all at the centre of major land rights disputes.
Note: Click on the link above to read this important article in its entirety. It reports on numerous
struggles around the world by indigenous people to protect their livelihoods and traditions from
corporate and governmental predation.
Health care's enigma in chief

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/14/EDMF17KIVP.DTL
The most stunning and least reported news about President Obama's press conference with
health industry executives this week wasn't those executives' willingness to negotiate with a
Democrat. It was that Democrat's eagerness to involve those executives in a discussion about
health care reform even as they revealed their previous plans to pilfer $2 trillion from Americans.
That was the little-noticed message from the made-for-TV spectacle administration officials called
a health care "game changer": In saying they can voluntarily slash $200 billion a year from
the country's medical bills over the next decade and still preserve their profits, health care
companies implicitly acknowledged they were plotting to fleece consumers, and have been
fleecing them for years. With that acknowledgment came the tacit admission that the industry's
business is based not on respectable returns but on grotesque profiteering and waste - the kind
that can give up $2 trillion and still guarantee huge margins. Chief among the profiteers at the
White House event were insurance companies, which have raised premiums by 119 percent since
1999, and one obvious question is why - why would Obama engage those particular thieves? It's a
difficult query to answer, because Obama is a health care mystery, struggling to muster consistent
positions on the issue. Listening to a 2003 Obama speech, it's hard to believe he has become
such an enigma. Back then, he declared himself "a proponent of a single-payer universal health
care program" - i.e., one eliminating private insurers and their overhead costs by having
government finance health care.
Note: For lots more on health issues from reliable sources, click here.
Reported Suicide Is Latest Shock at Freddie Mac

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/23freddie.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...
The pressures were already immense when David B. Kellermann was promoted to the top
financial position at the mortgage giant Freddie Mac last September. Mr. Kellermann's boss and
other top executives were ousted when the Treasury secretary seized Freddie Mac and its sibling
company, Fannie Mae; others left on their own and were not replaced. Early on Wednesday, Mr.
Kellermann went to the basement of his brick home and hanged himself, according to people
familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak. His body was removed five hours
later, through a throng of neighbors, television crews and others. "David was such an honest and
humble person," said Tim Bitsberger, Freddie Mac"s treasurer until he left in December. "It just
doesn't make sense," Mr. Bitsberger said. The roots and causes of suicide are often unclear. It
is not known if Mr. Kellermann succumbed to the pressures of his job. But in the aftermath
of his death, it is plain that at Freddie Mac, as at many of the companies in the center of this
economic storm, there are forces so strong they can overwhelm almost anyone. Mr.
Kellermann ... was at the intersection of some of the most difficult issues facing the company. Mr.
Kellermann was also working in a poisonous political atmosphere. He was recently involved in
tense conversations with the company's federal regulator over its routine financial disclosures.
Freddie Mac executives wanted to emphasize to investors that they believed the company was
being run to benefit the government, rather than shareholders.
Note: For a revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street bailout,
click here.
Restrain the credit card industry

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/22/EDK817761J.DTL
While American consumers have been struggling, credit card companies have been enjoying a
field day. Not only are most of them receiving federal bailout money, but they've been jacking up
interest rates (there were rate hikes on nearly 25 percent of accounts between 2007 and 2008)
and switching the terms of agreements with consumers. Why the rush to gouge consumers in the
depths of a recession? In July 2010, the Federal Reserve will impose new, consumer-friendly
disclosure and administrative restrictions on the credit card industry. Scrambling to get ahead of
the deadline, the card companies have been raising interest rates, slicing credit lines and, in too
many cases, simply dumping customers with little rhyme or reason. Defaults and delinquencies
have skyrocketed - and consumers are livid. "It's off the charts in terms of their ire about
paying higher interest rates, particularly when their money, as they see it, is being given to
the banks to prop them up," said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough. Speier's staff says her
office has been "flooded" with calls from furious constituents. Speier is ... a co-sponsor of HR627,
better known as "The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights." The bill - which has the support of the
Obama administration - would prevent card issuers from raising interest rates without advance
notice and end the practice of "double-cycle billing" so that consumers do not have to pay interest
on debts they've already paid.
Note: For a highly revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street
The U.S. Financial System Is Effectively Insolvent

2009-03-05, Forbes Magazine
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/04/global-recession-insolvent-opinions-columnis...
With economic activity contracting in 2009's first quarter at the same rate as in 2008's fourth
quarter, a nasty U-shaped recession could turn into a more severe L-shaped near-depression (or
stag-deflation). The scale and speed of synchronized global economic contraction is really
unprecedented (at least since the Great Depression), with a free fall of GDP, income, consumption,
industrial production, employment, exports, imports, residential investment and, more ominously,
capital expenditures around the world. And now many emerging-market economies are on the
verge of a fully fledged financial crisis, starting with emerging Europe. In the meantime, the
massacre in financial markets and among financial firms is continuing. The debate on "bank
nationalization" is borderline surreal, with the U.S. government having already committed-between guarantees, investment, recapitalization and liquidity provision--about $9 trillion of
government financial resources to the financial system (and having already spent $2 trillion of
this staggering $9 trillion figure). Thus, the U.S. financial system is de facto nationalized, as the
Federal Reserve has become the lender of first and only resort rather than the lender of last resort,
and the U.S. Treasury is the spender and guarantor of first and only resort. And even with the $2
trillion of government support, most of these financial institutions are insolvent, as delinquency and
charge-off rates are now rising at a rate ... that means expected credit losses for U.S. financial
firms will peak at $3.6 trillion. So, in simple words, the U.S. financial system is effectively insolvent.
Note: The author of this insightful analysis, Nouriel Roubini, has a very informative blog, available
here.
The Death of 'Rational Man'

What allowed some people to see the financial crash coming while so many others missed its
gathering force? I put that question recently to Nouriel Roubini, who has come to be known as "Dr.
Doom" because of his insistent warnings starting in 2006 that we were heading into a global
firestorm. Roubini gave two kinds of answers. The first involves standard number-crunching of the
sort that economists routinely do -- and that Roubini just did better and sooner. It's his second
answer that's more interesting, because it goes to the heart of what we should take away from this
crisis: Roubini decided to discard the assumption of market rationality that underlies most
economics and to embrace the psychological insights of what's known as "behavioral economics."
Everyone else had those same numbers. Why did Roubini act? The answer is that he
decided to trust his gut, which told him there was trouble ahead, rather than Wall Street's
"wisdom of the crowd," which -- as reflected in stock prices -- said everything was rosy. He
concluded that the markets were not pricing in the degree of risk that was actually present in
housing. "The rational man theory of economics has not worked," Roubini said last month at a
session of the World Economic Forum at Davos. That's why he and other prominent economists
are paying more attention to behavioral economics, which starts from the premise that economic
decisions, like other aspects of human behavior, are influenced by irrational psychological factors.
Note: To visit Nouriel Roubini's highly informative blog, click here. For lots more on the financial
crisis and bailout, click here.
US Treasury overpaid $78 bln under TARP-watchdog

2009-02-06, CNN News/Reuters
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/reuters/MTFH29185_2009-02-06_01-...
The U.S. Treasury looks to have overpaid financial institutions to the tune of $78 billion in carrying
out capital injections last year, the head of a congressional oversight panel for the government's
$700 billion bailout program told lawmakers. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor, said her
group estimated the Treasury paid $254 billion in 2008 in return for stocks and warrants worth
about $176 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Warren said the Treasury,
under then-Secretary Henry Paulson, misled the public about how it would price them.
"Treasury simply did not do what it said it was doing ... They described the program one
way, and they priced it another," Warren said at a hearing before the Senate Banking
Committee. She added that Paulson "was not entirely candid" in describing TARP's bank capital
injection program. Neil Barofsky, another watchdog for the TARP program, told the Senate
committee his office is turning to criminal investigations. "That's going to be a large focus of my
office," he said. Warren told the banking committee that after three months on the job, her panel is
still not getting enough answers from Treasury. She described the bailout as "an opaque process
at best." Barofsky raised concerns about potential fraud in one of several programs funded by
bailout money -- the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility (TALF).
Note: Was the overpayment by Treasury to Wall Street banks for nearly-worthless assets they
created a mistake? Or was it the real, hidden purpose of TARP to pay the banks more for the
assets than they are worth? For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities
behind the Wall Street bailout, click here.
U.S. Pledges Top $7.7 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=arEE1iClqDrk
The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American
taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The unprecedented
pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest
response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled
by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury
Departments $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was
1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis. When Congress approved the
TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more
money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in
return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in. Whether its
lending or spending, its tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding
collateral we dont know anything about, said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey
Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. The time has come that we
consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to
elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.
Note: How is it possible that trillions of taxpayer dollars are being thrown around, yet Congress is
not being told where the money is going? For revealing information on how the Fed manipulates
government, click here.
Bailout Expands to Insurers

The Treasury Department is dramatically expanding the scope of its bailout of the financial system
with a plan to take ownership stakes in the nation's insurance companies, signaling new concerns
about a sector of the economy whose troubles until now have been overshadowed by the banking
industry, government and industry sources said. Insurers, including The Hartford, Prudential and
MetLife, have pushed the Bush administration to include them in the plan. Many firms have taken
losses from mortgage-related securities and other investments and are struggling to replenish their
coffers. The new initiative underscores the growing range of problems that Treasury is scrambling
to address with the $700 billion allocated by Congress this month. The shape of the plan has
changed repeatedly since Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. introduced it last month
as an effort to rescue banks by buying their troubled mortgage-related assets. That original
mandate has now been pushed aside by a plan to take equity stakes in banks and
insurance companies, and other businesses are lobbying to be included. The government has
been forced to expand the plan partly because the federal guarantees previously given some
institutions, such as banks, have put other companies and financial sectors at a disadvantage,
making them less attractive to uneasy investors. The cost of saving the country's largest insurer
continues to rise. Senior managers at troubled insurance giant American International Group
warned the Federal Reserve yesterday that the company would probably need more taxpayer
money than the $123 billion in rescue loans the government has provided.
Note: For lots more highly revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Gifts to Pet Charities Keep Lawmakers Happy

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/us/politics/19charity.html?partner=rssuserl...
They do not seem the most likely classical music patrons: Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics,
Boeing and Lockheed Martin. But together, these defense contractors are donating hundreds of
thousands of dollars to the symphony orchestra in Johnstown, Pa., underwriting performances of
Mozart and Wagner in this struggling former steel town. A defense lobbying firm, the PMA Group,
even sprang for a champagne reception at the symphonys opera festival last month. Company
representatives say they are being generous corporate citizens. But the orchestra is also a
beloved charity of Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, whose
Congressional committee hands out lucrative defense contracts, and whose wife, Joyce, is a major
booster of the symphony. For the first time, corporations and their lobbyists are being
required to disclose donations they make to the favorite causes of House and Senate
members, and a review of thousands of pages of records shows the extent and
lavishness of this once hidden practice. During the first six months of 2008, lobbyists,
corporations and interest groups gave approximately $13 million to charities and nonprofit
organizations in honor of more than 200 members of the House and Senate. The donations came
from firms with numerous interests before the Congress, such as Wal-Mart, the Ford Motor
Company, Kraft Foods and Pfizer, and were received by charities ... as well as local groups
controlled by members of Congress or those close to them.
Note: For revelations of corporate corruption from major media sources, click here.
Cheney Colleague Admits Bribery in Halliburton Oil Deals

2008-09-04, The Independent (One of the U.K.s leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cheney-colleague-admits-brib...
A former colleague of the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has pleaded guilty to funnelling
millions of dollars in bribes to win lucrative contracts in Nigeria for Halliburton, during the
period in the Nineties when Mr Cheney ran the giant oil and gas services company. Albert
Stanley, who was appointed by Mr Cheney as chief executive of Halliburton's subsidiary KBR,
admitted using a north London lawyer to channel payments to Nigerian officials as part of a bribery
scheme that landed some $6bn of work in the country over a decade. Mr Cheney led
Halliburton from 1995 until returning to government in 2000. He had previously been Defence
Secretary under the first President George Bush, and the links with Halliburton have been a
constant thorn in the side of the current administration as the company has gone on to win billions
of dollars of contracts in Iraq and other US military spheres. The corruption scandal centres on
more than $180m channelled into Nigeria via intermediaries between 1994 and 2004.
Prosecutors allege that the payments were vital to a KBR-led consortium securing a succession of
construction projects related to a liquefied natural gas plant at Bonny Island, on the Atlantic coast
of Nigeria.
California medical schools earn A's in conflict grading

2008-06-04, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/04/BUV3112O9V.DTL
Drug companies shower medical school faculty members with pens, pricey dinners, free samples
and other inducements to influence their prescribing patterns, an organization of U.S. medical
students says. The med students are now trying to erase that pattern by grading their teachers.
The American Medical Student Association issued its second annual report card ... on the conflictof-interest policies maintained at 150 universities that grant a medical degree. California
dominated the honor roll. UC Davis, UCSF and UCLA captured three of the seven A grades across
the country. But only 15 percent of U.S. medical schools made the top of the class with a
grade of A or B, based on their adoption of rules such as barring drug companies from
distributing lavish gifts to physicians. Sixty of the schools, or 40 percent, got an F on the
student association's 2008 PharmFree Scorecard. The American Medical Student Association
started its PharmFree campaign in 2002 after members shared their concerns about interactions
they observed between their medical professors and drug industry representatives. The
Association of American Medical Colleges in April proposed that all med schools adopt policies to
prevent drug marketing efforts from distorting the educational environment. The proposed rules
would restrict industry funding of seminars, forbid companies from selecting the recipients of
scholarships they fund and strongly discourage medical school faculty members from participating
in industry-sponsored speakers' bureaus.
Note: For a treasure trove of important reports on health issues from reliable sources, click here.
Firms Seek Patents on 'Climate Ready' Altered Crops

A handful of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of
patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses,
part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global
warming. Three companies -- BASF of Germany, Syngenta of Switzerland and Monsanto of St.
Louis -- have filed applications to control nearly two-thirds of the climate-related gene families
submitted to patent offices worldwide, according to the report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, an
activist organization that advocates for subsistence farmers. Many of the world's poorest countries,
destined to be hit hardest by climate change, have rejected biotech crops, citing environmental
and economic concerns. Importantly, gene patents generally preclude the age-old practice of
saving seeds from a harvest for replanting, requiring instead that farmers purchase the high-tech
seeds each year. The ETC report concludes that biotech giants are hoping to leverage climate
change as a way to get into resistant markets, and it warns that the move could undermine publicsector plant-breeding institutions such as those coordinated by the United Nations and the World
Bank, which have long made their improved varieties freely available. "When a market is
dominated by a handful of large multinational companies, the research agenda gets biased
toward proprietary products," said Hope Shand, ETC's research director. "Monopoly control
of plant genes is a bad idea under any circumstance. During a global food crisis, it is
unacceptable and has to be challenged."
Note: For many disturbing reports on risks from genetic engineering from major media sources,
click here.
Bush administration rules limit lawsuits

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/05/13/bush_administration_rules_...
Faced with an unfriendly Congress, the Bush administration has found another, quieter way to
make it more difficult for consumers to sue businesses over faulty products. It's rewriting the
bureaucratic rulebook. Lawsuit limits have been included in 51 rules proposed or adopted since
2005 by agency bureaucrats governing just about everything Americans use: drugs, cars,
railroads, medical devices and food. Decried by consumer advocates and embraced by industry,
the agencies' use of the government's rule-making authority represents the administration's final
act in a long-standing drive to shield companies from lawsuits. Of the 51 regulations, 41 came from
the Food and Drug Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or
NHTSA. Underlying this bureaucratic version of lawsuit reform is the concept of federal
preemption. Rooted in the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal preemption refers to
circumstances in which federal law and regulation trump state law, in this instance state laws that
govern when one person may be held liable for another's injury. An expansive interpretation of
preemption leaves little room for consumers to sue, and that is what the national trial lawyers
group, the American Association for Justice, says is taking place. Jon Haber, AAJ's chief executive
officer, says the agencies are engaging in "a brazen end run around Congress, the
Constitution and the states in an effort to let negligent corporations off the hook and
knowingly put consumers at risk."
Note: For lots more on government corruption from major media sources, click here.
Nanoparticles scrutinized for health effects

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/12/BU4P10BB88.DTL
Windows cleaned by raindrops, white sofas immune to red wine spills, tiles protected from
limescale buildup -- new products created from minute substances called nanoparticles are making
such domestic dreams come true. Based on tiny particles 10,000 times thinner than a strand of
hair, ... nanoparticles are showing up in everything from fabric coatings to socks to plush teddy
bears. But some scientists are concerned that these seemingly magical materials are hitting the
market before their effects on human health and the environment have been sufficiently studied.
The few scientific reports available suggest that nanoparticles can pose a threat to human health
and to the environment. For example, fish swimming in water containing modest amounts of
fullerenes, soccer-ball-shaped nanoparticles made out of 60 carbon atoms, showed a large
increase in brain damage. These are the same types of fullerenes being used in various skin
products. From the skin, they can travel through the lymphatic duct system to lymph nodes and
eventually end up in organs such as the liver, kidney and spleen. When inhaled, nanoparticles will
go deeper into the lungs than larger particles and reach more sensitive parts. Because of that,
scientists are particularly concerned about nanoparticles being used in spray products. "We have
research showing that as a material shrinks in size, it becomes more harmful to the lungs.
Nanoparticles tend to be more inflammatory to the lung, and it seems as if the lung has to
work harder to get rid of them," said Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser at the Project on
Emerging Nanotechnologies in Washington.
Note: For a treasure trove of health reports from major media, click here.
FDA warns Merck to fix vaccine plant problems

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/30/financial/f084419...
The Food and Drug Administration has ordered Merck & Co. to correct numerous manufacturing
deficiencies at its main vaccine plant. The agency ... released a warning letter sent to Merck's chief
executive, Richard T. Clark, that states FDA inspectors determined manufacturing rules are not
being followed at the plant in West Point, Pa., just outside Philadelphia. The plant, which recalled
two vaccines in December over sterility problems, makes a number of children's vaccines and four
for adults. The nine-page letter states FDA found "significant objectionable conditions" in the
manufacture of vaccines and drug ingredients during repeated inspections from Nov. 26 to
Jan. 17. According to the heavily redacted warning letter, Merck officials didn't thoroughly
investigate when vaccine batches inexplicably failed to meet specifications, even if batches had
been distributed, and some combination measles-mumps-rubella shots that failed "visual
inspection for critical defects" were distributed anyway. Production of two vaccines made at West
Point PedvaxHIB, to prevent Haemophilus influenza type B, and Comvax, a combination
vaccine for Haemophilus B and hepatitis B stopped last year and 1.2 million doses of them were
recalled after a sterility problem was discovered in October. The plant also makes ProQuad, which
protects children against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox; hepatitis A, hepatitis B and
meningitis vaccines for children and adults; and Gardasil, to protect young women against cervical
cancer.
Note: For further revelations from reliable sources on the dangers of vaccines, click here.
A Bailout. For Everyone.

Last week, it was a $200 billion cash-for-bond swap for the banks. This week, it was a $200 billion
bond-for-bond swap for the big investment houses. If they keep this up, pretty soon you'll be able
to walk into any Federal Reserve bank and hock that diamond brooch you inherited from Aunt
Mildred. Forget all that nonsense about the Bernanke Fed being too timid or behind the curve. In
the face of what is turning into the most serious financial market crisis since the Great Depression,
the Fed has been more aggressive and more creative in using its limitless balance sheet -- in
effect, its ability to print money -- than at any time in history. We can argue till the cows come home
about whether this is a bailout for Wall Street. It is -- but only to the extent that it is also a bailout
for all of us, meant to prevent a financial and economic meltdown that drags everyone down with it.
In broad strokes, we're going through a massive "de-leveraging" of the economy, wringing
out trillions of dollars of debt that had artificially driven up the price of real estate and
financial assets, and, more generally, allowed Americans to live beyond their means. Fed
officials warn that this de-leveraging is nowhere near finished. It's anyone's guess how long
this credit crunch will last, but the chances are that we'll have several more market meltdowns and
Fed rescues before it's over, probably in the fall. Until then, the dollar will continue to get
hammered and stocks will continue their fitful decline. And if the last two financially induced
recessions are any guide, it will be well into 2009 before the economy hits bottom, followed by a
couple of years of slow growth and "jobless" recovery.
Note: The title of this article is quite revealing. A bailout for the big banks is considered to be a
bailout for everyone. If you believe this, we most highly encourage you to read our powerful twopage summary of the banking cover-up available here.
FDA to Back Food From Cloned Animals

The Food and Drug Administration is set to announce as early as next week that meat and milk
from cloned farm animals and their offspring can start making their way toward supermarket
shelves. The decision would be a notable act of defiance against Congress, which last month
passed appropriations legislation recommending that any such approval be delayed pending
further studies. Moreover, the Senate version of the Farm bill ... contains stronger, binding
language that would block FDA action on cloned food, probably for years. The FDA has hinted
strongly in the past year that it is ready to lift its "voluntary moratorium" on the marketing of milk
and meat from clones and their offspring, saying that the science led them to that decision. But
public opinion has been negative on the issue, with some saying that not enough safety studies
have been conducted and others concerned about the health of the clones, which are far more
likely than ordinary farm animals to die early in life. A handful of U.S. companies have pushed for
marketing approval. Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy
group, said she had read the entire 678-page draft risk assessment and found it to be "long
on assumptions and short on data, and especially short on the data that are directly
relevant to food consumption safety." Of particular concern, she said, was that even though the
vast majority of clones die either before birth or soon after, those that survive are deemed normal.
She said the FDA should withhold approval at least until it has a regulatory plan in place that will
give it an ability to track food from clones and watch for human health impacts. Others have called
for mandatory labeling so consumers can avoid products from clones. The FDA has said that
lacking any safety concerns, it will not demand such labels. The Agriculture Department has also
declared that meat from clones cannot be deemed organic.
Note: For lots more reliable information on how big business takes huge risks with the food we
eat, click here.
Big Brother Spying on Americans' Internet Data?

2007-11-07, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3833172
According to a former AT&T employee, the government has warrantless access to a great deal of
Internet traffic should they care to take a peek. As information is traded between users it flows also
into a locked, secret room on the sixth floor of AT&T's San Francisco offices and other rooms
around the country -- where the U.S. government can sift through and find the information it wants,
former AT&T employee Mark Klein alleged Wednesday at a press conference on Capitol Hill. "An
exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables -- e-mails,
documents, pictures, Web browsing, voice-over-Internet phone conversations, everything -was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room," he said. Klein ... said that as an
AT&T technician overseeing Internet operations in San Francisco, he helped maintain optical
splitters that diverted data en route to and from AT&T customers. One day he found that the
splitters were hard-wired into a secret room on the sixth floor. Documents he obtained [from] AT&T
showed that highly sophisticated data mining equipment was kept there. Conversations he had
with other technicians and the AT&T documents led Klein to believe there are 15 to 20 such sites
nationwide, including in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego and Atlanta, he said. Brian
Reid, a former Stanford electrical engineering professor who appeared with Klein, said the NSA
would logically collect phone and Internet data simultaneously because of the way fiber optic
cables are intertwined. He said ... the system described by Klein suggests a "wholesale,
dragnet surveillance." Of the major telecom companies, only Qwest is known to have rejected
government requests for access to data. Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, appealing an
insider trading conviction last month, said the government was seeking access to data even before
Sept. 11.
Panel: Kids Shouldn't Use Cold Medicines

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/10/18/national/w000553D...
The medicines long used by parents to treat their children's coughs and colds don't work and
shouldn't be used in those younger than 6, federal health advisers recommended. "The data that
we have now is they don't seem to work," said Sean Hennessy, a University of Pennsylvania
epidemiologist. The recommendation applies to medicines containing one or more of the following
ingredients: decongestants, antihistamines and antitussives. In two separate votes ... the panelists
said the medicines shouldn't be used in children younger than 2 or in those younger than 6. A third
vote, to recommend against use in children 6 to 11, failed. The panel's advice dovetails with a
petition filed by pediatricians that argued the over-the-counter medicines shouldn't be given to
children younger than 6, an age group they called the most vulnerable to potential ill effects. The
American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups back the petition. But FDA officials and
panelists agreed there's no evidence they work in older children, either. Still, panelists held off from
recommending against use in those 6 and older. And some said they feared such a prohibition
wouldn't eliminate use of the medicines by parents. "They will administer adult products to their
children because they work for them or feel they work for them," said the panel's patient and family
representative, Amy Celento of Nutley, N.J. Some of the drugs which include Wyeth's
Dimetapp and Robitussin, Johnson & Johnson's Pediacare and Novartis AG's Triaminic
products have never been tested in children, something flagged as long ago as 1972 by a
previous FDA panel. An FDA review found just 11 studies of children published over the last halfcentury. Those studies did not establish that the medicines worked in those cases, according to
the agency.
Note: For a powerful expos of corporate and government corruption in the health industry, click
here.
U.S. Cites Secrets Privilege to Stop Suit on Banking Records

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/us/nationalspecial3/31swift.html?ex=1346212...
The Bush administration ... plans to turn again to a legal tool, the state secrets privilege, to try to
stop a suit against a Belgian banking cooperative [known as Swift] that secretly supplied millions of
private financial records to the United States government. The state secrets privilege, allowing
the government to shut down litigation on national security grounds, was once rarely used. The
Bush administration has turned to it more than 30 times, seeking to end public discussion of cases
like the claims of an F.B.I. whistle-blower and the abduction of a German terrorism suspect. Most
notably, the administration has sought to use the privilege to kill numerous suits against
telecommunications carriers over the National Security Agencys eavesdropping program. Swift is
considered the nerve center of the global banking industry, routing trillions of dollars each
day among banks, brokerage houses and other financial institutions. Its partnership with
Washington ... gave Central Intelligence Agency and Treasury Department officials access
to millions of records on international banking transactions. Months after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, Swift began turning over large chunks of its database in response to a series of unusually
broad subpoenas from the Treasury Department. Two American banking customers ... sued Swift
on invasion-of-privacy grounds. [Steven E. Schwarz, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the Swift
program] is an Orwellian example of government overreaching and unfettered access to private
financial information that is not consistent with the values upon which our country was founded.
Weve seen a real erosion of the state secrets privilege in the last year. I think it is from overuse.
Weve seen it used in record numbers, in situations where it was inappropriate, and the courts are
starting to recognize that.
Bird flu vaccine recommended

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-birdflu28feb28,1,454874...
A federal advisory committee on Tuesday recommended approval of the first bird flu
vaccine for humans, despite concerns about its safety and evidence that the shots won't
protect most people. The panel said although the vaccine had significant shortcomings, it was
safe and effective for use during a pandemic or in high-risk situations, such as military deployment
to regions facing an outbreak. The government plans to buy and stockpile enough doses for 20
million people. [The] director of the FDA's vaccine office told the panel that the vaccine was a
stopgap measure. "There are numerous vaccines under development that are potentially better
than this one," he said. The bird flu strain known as H5N1 originated in Asia. Although it rarely
infects people, experts fear a mutation could make it easily transmissible, triggering a pandemic.
From the start of 2003, 167 people, mostly in Asia, have died of the virus, according to the World
Health Organization. In clinical trials, a two-shot series of the Sanofi vaccine provided protection in
45% of adults who received the highest dose, according to an FDA analysis this week. No serious
side effects were detected among the 450 healthy adults who participated in a clinical test.
However, some panel members were concerned that the trial was too small to reveal rare side
effects. Some experts also worried about possible allergic reactions to the vaccine because it
requires a massive dose 12 times that of the seasonal inoculation.
Note: Who pays for and who profits from the purchase of these 20 million vaccine doses? It's
pretty clear that the taxpayer covers the costs and the big drug companies make huge profits. Fear
is quite useful for driving up profits. For lots more on profiteering from the avian flu, click here.
2 Ex-Enron Traders Get Probation

Two of three former Enron Corp. traders accused of driving up energy prices during California's
power crisis were each sentenced Wednesday to two years of court-supervised release in federal
court. Timothy Belden ... was sentenced after pleading guilty in October 2002 to one count of
conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Belden's plea was the first prosecution of anyone related to the
West's energy crisis in 2000 and 2001. He had faced up to five years in prison, and must forfeit
$2.1 million. The second defendant, Jeffrey Richter, was a lower-level trading manager ... who also
pleaded guilty to two counts related to manipulating energy prices. He had faced up to five years
and agreed to pay a $410,000 fine. Internal company memos describe how Belden's trading unit
took power out of California at a time of rolling blackouts and shortages and sold it out of state to
elude price caps. Enron bought California power at cheap, capped prices, routed it outside the
state, then sold it back into California at vastly inflated prices. The crisis played a role in Pacific
Gas & Electric Co.'s bankruptcy and will leave California consumers paying abnormally
high electricity prices for years. Transcripts of Enron energy traders showed them openly
discussing manipulating California's power market during profanity-laced telephone conversations
in which they merrily gloated about ripping off those poor grandmothers during the energy
crunch. On the calls, other traders openly and gleefully discussed creating congestion on
transmission lines and taking generating units off-line to pump up electricity prices.
Note: So while California taxpayers cough up hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of Enron's
scheming and thousands of employees across the U.S. lost their entire pensions, the result of the
first prosecution of anyone related to the Enron scam is probation? For lots more on this, click
here.
Drug firms a danger to health - report

2006-07-26, Guardian (One of U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1806084,00.html
Drug companies are accused today of endangering public health through widescale
marketing malpractices, ranging from covertly attempting to persuade consumers that they
are ill to bribing doctors and misrepresenting the results of safety and efficacy tests on
their products. In a report that charts the scale of illicit practices by drug companies in the UK and
across Europe, Consumers International - the world federation of consumer organisations - says
people are not being given facts about the medicines they take because the companies hide the
marketing tactics on which they spend billions. "Irresponsible marketing practices form a serious,
persistent and widespread problem among the entire pharmaceutical industry," says the report,
which analyses the conduct of 20 of the biggest companies. Scandals such as the withdrawal of
Vioxx ... show that unethical drug promotion is a consumer concern. Merck withdrew the drug in
September 2004, but allegedly knew it could increase the chances of heart attacks and strokes
from 2000 and has been accused of manipulating study results to play down the risk. More than
6,000 lawsuits have been filed against the company in the United States by people who claim they
suffered heart attacks as a result of the drug. There is no room for complacency when drug
companies spend twice as much on marketing as on research...but do not publish information on
their drug promotion practices.
Vaccine makers helped write Frist-backed shield law

2006-05-08, The Tennessean
http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060508/NEWS02/605080356
Vaccine industry officials helped shape legislation behind the scenes that Senate Majority Leader
Bill Frist secretly amended into a bill to shield them from lawsuits, according to e-mails obtained by
a public advocacy group. E-mails and documents written by a trade group for the vaccine-makers
show the organization met privately with Frist's staff and the White House about measures that
would give the industry protection from lawsuits filed by people hurt by the vaccines. Frist, along
with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., ordered the vaccine liability language inserted in
a defense spending bill in December without debate and in violation of usual Senate
practice. In a written statement, Frist spokeswoman Amy Call stated that the senator had
promised publicly to include the vaccine liability protection in the defense spending bill. She did not
address the issue of the influence of industry lobbyists.
Note: For one-paragraph summaries of media articles showing why the vaccine makers want this
protection, click here.
Selling Sickness to the Well

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8789159/site/newsweek/
A new book looks at how pharmaceutical companies are using aggressive marketing
campaigns to turn more people into patients. In their new book, Selling Sickness: How the
Worlds Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients, Ray Moynihan and
Alan Cassels examine how the drug industry has transformed the way we think about physical and
mental health and turned more and more of us each year into customers. Moynihan...a regular
contributor to the British Medical Journal [discusses] how -- and why -- drug makers have begun
targeting people who arent sick. The so-called preventives are where the big money are: like the
bone-density drugs or the cholesterol [-lowering] drugs. Increasingly were seeing the marketing
shift to those types of drugs. People talk about the "worried well." There are many ways in which
the drug companies target those people. Theres an informal alliance between the drug companies
and aspects of the medical profession and aspects of the patient advocacy world who all seem to
have interests in defining more and more people as ill. Americans make up less than 5 percent of
the worlds population but the U.S. makes up...half of total spending on drugs.
US regulator suppresses vital data on prescription drugs on sale in

Britain
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=646243
Despite calls for more transparency after revelations about the side effects of ibuprofen, the FDA
has withheld 28 pages of information on a new wave of painkillers. Vital data on prescription
medicines found in millions of British homes has been suppressed by the powerful US drug
regulators, even though the information could potentially save lives. An investigation by The
Independent on Sunday shows that, under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, the
American Food and Drug Administration routinely conceals information it considers
commercially sensitive, leaving medical specialists unable to assess the true risks. Dr Peter
Juni, one of the team of Swiss investigators who helped to expose the risk of the new-generation
drugs, claims his efforts were obstructed by the FDA. "Too often the FDA saw and continues to see
the pharmaceutical industry as its customers, a vital source of funding for its activities, and not as
a sector of society in need of strong regulation."
Despite Vow, Drug Makers Still Withhold Data

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/business/31trials.html?ex=1275192000&en=43d...
When the drug industry came under fire last summer for failing to disclose poor results from
studies of antidepressants, major drug makers promised to provide more information about their
research on new medicines. But nearly a year later, crucial facts about many clinical trials remain
hidden. Eli Lilly and some other companies have posted hundreds of trial results on the Web and
pledged to disclose all results for all drugs they sell. But other drug makers, including Merck and
Pfizer, release less information and are reluctant to add more, citing competitive pressures. As a
result, doctors and patients lack critical information about important drugs ... and the
companies can hide negative trial results by refusing to publish studies, or by cherrypicking and highlighting the most favorable data. GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $2.5 million
to settle a suit ... alleging that Glaxo had hidden results from trials showing that its antidepressant
Paxil might increase suicidal thoughts in children and teenagers. Federal laws require the
disclosure of all trials and trial results to the F.D.A. But companies are not required to disclose trial
results to scientists or the public. Under pressure from the editors of medical journals, the major
drug companies in January agreed to expand the number of trials registered on clinicaltrials.gov.
Three companies have filed only vague descriptions of many studies, often failing even to name
the drugs under investigation. For example, Merck describes one trial as a "one-year study of an
investigational drug in obese patients."
Fighting for the future of food

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/07/LVG709K7MV1.DTL
"Just about everybody is pretty serious about their chow," says Deborah Koons Garcia, enjoying
the understatement. No matter how serious they are, though, Garcia knows most people
don't realize that genetically engineered foods have quietly slipped into much of the
American food supply, mostly from corn and canola. They're in an estimated 60 percent of
all processed foods. "We are at a crossroads," says Garcia. She's spent the last three years ...
making "The Future of Food," a documentary about GMO (genetically modified organism) foods.
"Someone needed to make this film, because if this technology isn't challenged and if this
corporatization of our whole food system isn't stopped, at some point it will be too late," says
Garcia. "It became clear that GMOs are really a much bigger issue ... And it was really clear that
there hadn't been a really good film that told the whole story from the cellular, from the microscopic
level, all the way up to the global," Garcia says. Her 90-minute documentary ... expresses a strong
point of view against letting new life forms loose on the land without long-term testing of the health
effects and real government controls, especially labeling of foods. Garcia threads a clear path
through the history, science and politics of GMO foods to a clear call for action.
Note: To view this highly educational film, which may encourage you to change your eating habits,
click here.
Schwarzenegger electricity plan fuels fears of another debacle

Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing a push to deregulate the state's electricity markets
-- a move embraced by business leaders and some energy analysts but criticized by many
Democrats and consumer advocates as a return to the failed policies that sparked California's
energy crisis. "Deregulation has already cost the state $50 billion, give or take," said Mike Florio,
senior attorney for The Utility Reform Network. "Why on earth anyone would want to do that again
is mystifying to us." Florio also said he was suspicious of Schwarzenegger's idea because
former Enron Corp. Chairman and CEO Ken Lay met with the actor and others in the spring
of 2001, when Lay was pushing deregulation in California. Schwarzenegger has said he
doesn't remember details of the meeting.
Note: What was Schwarzenegger doing meeting with the CEO of Enron well over two years before
the recall vote which gave him the governorship of California? Could it be big business had plans
for him?
Coal giant exploited Ebola crisis for corporate gain, say health experts
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/19/peabody-energy-exploited-e...
As part of a PR offensive to rebrand coal as a 21st-century fuel that can help solve global
poverty, it has emerged that at the height of Ebolas impact in Africa, Peabody Energy
promoted its product as an answer to Africas devastating public health crisis. Greg Boyce,
the chief executive of Peabody, a US-based multinational with mining interests around the world,
included a slide on Ebola and energy in a presentation to a coal industry conference in September
last year. The slide suggested that more energy would have spurred the distribution of a
hypothetical Ebola vaccine. Public health experts who were involved in fighting the spread of Ebola
were outraged at Peabodys suggestion that expanding energy access with coal generation could
have hindered the spread of Ebola and helped with the distribution of a vaccine especially as
there is no approved vaccine against the disease. Skip Burkle, a senior fellow of the Harvard
Humanitarian Initiative ... said Peabodys claims were absolutely ludicrous. He went on: The coal
industry is going down but there are other answers to this and it is not to dump it in Africa. It is just
an insult to the population. The Ebola claims surfaced amid growing pressure on Peabody Energy
from the downturn in coal and a global anti-apartheid style fossil fuel divestment campaign.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on
global warming and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
Quakes in once-stable areas linked to oil, gas drilling

http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Quakes-in-once-stable-areas-linked-to-oi...
More than a dozen areas in the U.S. have been shaken in recent years by small earthquakes
triggered by oil and gas drilling, a government report released Thursday found. The manmade quakes jolted once stable regions in eight states, including parts of Alabama, Arkansas,
Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, according to researchers at the U.S.
Geological Survey. Experts said the spike in seismic activity is mainly caused by the oil and gas
industry injecting wastewater deep underground, which can activate dormant faults. A few
instances stem from hydraulic fracturing, in which water, sand and chemicals are pumped into rock
formations to free oil or gas. Many studies have linked the rise in small quakes to the injection of
wastewater into disposal wells, but the Geological Surveys report takes the first comprehensive
look at where the man-made quakes are occurring. Oklahoma lately has been rocked by more
magnitude 3 quakes than California, the most seismically active of the Lower 48 states, Petersen
said. Oklahoma was not on scientists radar until recently, when the state experienced a spate of
quakes, the largest registering a magnitude 5.6 in 2011. This week, the Oklahoma Geological
Survey acknowledged that it is very likely most of the recent shaking is from wastewater disposal.
Many faults awakened by drilling have not moved in millions of years, Geological Survey
geophysicist William Ellsworth said.
Note: Even this article avoids the obvious. The big change since these quakes started is fracking.
Big money buys off institutions democracy depends on

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Big-money-buys-off-institutions-d...
Not long ago I was asked to speak to a religious congregation about widening inequality. Shortly
before I began, the head of the congregation asked that I not advocate raising taxes on the
wealthy. I had a similar exchange last year with the president of a small college who had invited
me to give a lecture that his board of trustees would be attending. Id appreciate it if you didnt
criticize Wall Street, he said. It seems to be happening all over. A nonprofit group devoted to
voting rights decides it wont launch a campaign against big money in politics for fear of alienating
wealthy donors. A Washington think tank releases a study on inequality that fails to mention the
role big corporations and Wall Street have played ... presumably because the think tank doesnt
want to antagonize its corporate and Wall Street donors. A major university shapes research and
courses around economic topics of interest to its biggest donors, notably avoiding any mention of
the increasing power of large corporations and Wall Street on the economy. Its bad enough that
big money is buying off politicians. Its also buying off nonprofits that used to be sources
of investigation, information and social change, from criticizing big money. Our democracy
is directly threatened when the rich buy off politicians. But no less dangerous is the quieter and
more insidious buy-off of institutions democracy depends on to research, investigate, expose and
mobilize action against what is occurring.
Note: The above article was written by former U.S. Secretary of Labor and UC Berkeley professor
Robert Reich. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income
inequality news articles from reliable major media sources.
Showdown looms as California eyes pesticides

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/showdown-looms-as-c...
With organic food growers reporting double-digit growth in U.S. sales each year, producers are
challenging a proposed California pest-management program they say enshrines a pesticideheavy approach for decades to come, including compulsory spraying of organic crops at the
states discretion. The California Department of Food and Agricultures pest-management
plan says compulsory state pesticide spraying of organic crops would do no economic
harm to organic producers, on the grounds that the growers could sell sprayed crops as
non-organic instead. I would rather stop farming than have to be a conventional farmer. I think I
am not alone in that, said Zea Sonnabend, a Watsonville organic apple-grower with California
Certified Organic Farmers. The fate of the pest-management plan outlined by the state isnt a
theoretical concern. Its an immediate issue ... due, in part, to a disease-carrying pest. The disease
spread by the Asian citrus psyllid kills citrus trees. Californias $2.4 billion citrus industry has found
incursions by the bug. The standard treatment for the citrus pest is conventional pesticides,
including neocotinoids linked to the decline of crop-pollinating bees. Organic farmers are
asking the state to give more consideration to non-toxic controls, including long-term methods to
strengthen crops and habitats in advance against marauding tropical species, said Kelly
Damewood, policy director for California Certified Organic Farmers.
Note: Read concise summaries of deeply revealing articles that show bee colony deaths and
autism are linked to pesticide exposure. Is compulsory state spraying of these pesticides really in
the public's best interest?
4 Banks, Including JPMorgan, Fined in Europe Over Cartel Behavior

http://dealbook.nytimes.com//2014/10/21/4-banks-including-jpmorgan-fined-in-e...
The European Commission on Tuesday fined four major financial institutions 93.9 million euros, or
about $120 million, over two types of activity that it deemed as cartel behavior. In one case, the
European Commission fined JPMorgan Chase 61.7 million euros for manipulating the Swiss franc
Libor benchmark interest rate in an illegal bilateral cartel with the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Interest-rate derivatives such as forward rate agreements, swaps, futures and options are
financial products intended to help manage interest-rate fluctuations. In December 2013, the
European Union fined several global financial institutions a combined 1.7 billion to settle charges
that they colluded to fix benchmark interest rates. Regulators accused R.B.S. and JPMorgan of
trying to distort the process used to price interest rate derivatives. In a separate settlement also
announced on Tuesday, the European Commission said R.B.S., UBS, JPMorgan and Credit
Suisse, operated a cartel on bid-ask spreads of Swiss franc interest-rate derivatives, imposing
fines worth a total of 32.4 million. from May to September 2007, R.B.S., UBS, JPMorgan and
Credit Suisse agreed to quote to clients wider, fixed bid-ask spreads on certain categories of franc
interest-rate derivatives. The banks maintained narrower spreads for trades among themselves.
The aim was to lower the banks transaction costs and continue the flow of trades between
themselves while preventing others from participating on the same terms in the franc
derivatives market. Global financial institutions have paid more than $6 billion in fines over
manipulating benchmark rates.
Note: For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking
Corruption Information Center.
Rockefellers, Heirs to an Oil Fortune, Will Divest Charity of Fossil Fuels

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/us/heirs-to-an-oil-fortune-join-the-divestm...
John D. Rockefeller built a vast fortune on oil. Now his heirs are abandoning fossil fuels. The
family whose legendary wealth flowed from Standard Oil is planning to announce on Monday that
its $860 million philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is joining the
divestment movement that began a couple years ago on college campuses. In recent years,
180 institutions including philanthropies, religious organizations, pension funds and
local governments ... have pledged to sell assets tied to fossil fuel companies from their
portfolios and to invest in cleaner alternatives. In all, the groups have pledged to divest assets
worth more than $50 billion from portfolios. Some say they are taking action to align their assets
with their environmental principles. Others want to shame companies that they believe are
recklessly contributing to a warming planet. Ultimately ... their actions, like those of the antiapartheid divestment fights of the 1980s, could help spur international debate, while the shift of
investment funds to energy alternatives could lead to solutions to the carbon puzzle. At the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, there is no equivocation. The fund has already eliminated investments
involved in coal and tar sands entirely while increasing its investment in alternate energy sources.
The family has also engaged in shareholder activism with Exxon Mobil, the largest successor to
Standard Oil. Members have met privately with the company ... in efforts to get it to moderate its
stance on issues pertaining to the environment and climate change. They acknowledged that they
have not caused the company to greatly alter its course.
Note: Read through a rich collection of energy news articles with inspiring and revealing news on
energy developments. Then explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring
news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The criminalisation of American business

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21614138-companies-must-be-punished-whe...
Who runs the worlds most lucrative shakedown operation? If you are a big business ... Americas
regulatory system. The formula is simple: find a large company that may (or may not) have done
something wrong; threaten its managers; force them to use their shareholders money to pay an
enormous fine to drop the charges in a secret settlement. Repeat with another large company. In
many cases, the companies deserved some form of punishment: BNP Paribas ... abetted
genocide, American banks fleeced customers. BP despoiled the Gulf of Mexico. But justice should
not be based on extortion. Regulators and prosecutors are in effect conducting closed-door
trials. The agencies that pocket the fines have become profit centres: Rhode Islands
bureaucrats have been on a spending spree courtesy of a $500m payout by Google, while New
Yorks governor and attorney-general have squabbled over a $613m settlement from JPMorgan.
Not only are regulators in effect judge and jury as well as plaintiff in the cases they bring;
they can also use the threat of the criminal law. The public never finds out the full facts of
the case, nor discovers which specific people with souls and bodies were to blame. Since
the cases never go to court ... it is unclear what exactly is illegal. That enables future shakedowns.
Nor is it clear how the regulatory booty is being carved up. This ... risks the prospect of a selective
and potentially corrupt system of justice in which everybody is guilty of something and
punishment is determined by political deals.
Note: For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing government
corruption and civil liberties news articles from reliable sources.
Removing Fuel Rods Poses New Risks at Crippled Nuclear Plant in

Japan
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/world/asia/removing-fuel-rods-poses-new-ris...
It was the part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that spooked American officials the
most, as the complex spiraled out of control two and a half years ago: the spent fuel pool at
Reactor No. 4, with more than 1,500 radioactive fuel assemblies left exposed when a hydrogen
explosion blew the roof off the building. In the next 10 days, the plants operator, the Tokyo Electric
Power Company, is set to start the delicate and risky task of using a crane to remove the fuel
assemblies from the pool, a critical step in a long decommissioning process that has already had
serious setbacks. The operation addresses a threat that has hung over the plant since the crisis
started. It is still dangerous to have the fuel high up in a damaged structure that could collapse in
another quake, experts warn. But removing it poses dangers, too. The fuel rods must remain
immersed in water to block the gamma radiation they emit and allow workers to be in the area, and
to prevent the rods from overheating. An accident could expose the rods and in a worst-case
scenario, some experts say allow them to release radioactive materials beyond the plant.
There are potentially very big risks involved, Shunichi Tanaka, the head of Japans
nuclear regulator, said last week. Each assembly must be handled very carefully. All I
can do is pray that nothing goes wrong, said Yasuro Kawai, a former plant engineer who now
heads a group that is independently monitoring the decommissioning process.
Note: For further assessment of the risks associated with any attempt to remove the rods from the
damaged Fukushima Reactor #4 fuel pool, click here. For more on the risks of nuclear power, see
Warren Says U.S. Political System Rigged by Special Interests

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-07/warren-says-u-s-political-system-rig...
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said the political system is still rigged by lobbyists and special
interests who work to keep the public in the dark. Ive been in the Senate for nearly a year and
believe as strongly as ever that the system is rigged for powerful interests and against working
families, Warren said. Warren, a critic of Wall Street, rose to prominence by highlighting tricks
and traps of credit-card disclosures and creating [the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB)] as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. Warren said despite progress by the consumer
bureau and confirmation of its director after a two-year delay, lobbyists for the financial industry
continue to fight it and consumer groups shouldnt let down their guard. We all know that the fight
isnt over and that the lobbyists are still working to undercut the agencys work, Warren said. She
compared the CFPB to government agencies that test the safety of physical products like
cribs and paint, and said the bureaus work on the safety of financial products will become
just as valued by the public. You tell me: When was the last time you heard someone call for
regulators to go easier on companies that want to use lead paint on our childrens toys or leave the
safety switches off toasters? Warren asked. The CFPB was designed from the very beginning
to cut out tricks and traps in consumer finance and add transparency to the marketplace.
Note: For an excellent video showing the courage and forthrightness of Elizabeth Warren, click
here. For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
Lawyers in Stratfor leak case present letters of support ahead of

sentencing
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/04/stratfor-leak-jeremy-hammond-sup...
Lawyers acting for Jeremy Hammond, the Chicago-based hacktivist facing up to 10 years in prison
for releasing internal emails from the private intelligence agency Stratfor, have lodged 265 letters
of support with the federal judge who will determine his sentence on 15 November. The letters call
on judge Loretta Preska ... to show leniency towards Hammond, a former member of the hacking
network Anonymous who has become a cause clbre for hacktivists, civil libertarians and those
concerned about the rights of whistleblowers. Among the correspondents are Daniel Ellsberg,
source of the 1970s Pentagon Papers leak on the Vietnam war, and Jesselyn Radack, a former
Justice Department whistleblower who now works at the Government Accountability Project.
Hammond, 28, has pleaded guilty to one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)
relating to a 2011 cyber attack on Strategic Forecasting, Inc, known as Stratfor an information
analysis company based in Austin, Texas. Working alongside a fellow hacker operating under the
internet handle Sabu who was later revealed to be an FBI informant Hammond downloaded an
email spool from Stratfor containing millions of files and sent the data to the anti-secrecy website
WikiLeaks which released them as the Global Intelligence Files. The Stratfor emails revealed
that [Stratfor] had been contracted by Dow Chemical, parent company of Union Carbide
which owned the Bhopal pesticide plant where the worlds worst industrial catastrophe
took place in 1984, to follow the activities of campaigners seeking redress for the victims.
Note: For an excellent follow-up article titled "The Revolutionaries in Our Midst," click here. For
more on privatization of "intelligence", see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
Calif. finds more instances of offshore fracking

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/19/calif-finds-more-inst...
The oil production technique known as fracking is more widespread and frequently used in the
offshore platforms and man-made islands near some of California's most populous and famous
coastal communities than state officials believed. In waters off Long Beach, Seal Beach and
Huntington Beach some of the region's most popular surfing strands and tourist attractions
oil companies have used fracking at least 203 times at six sites in the past two decades, according
to interviews and drilling records obtained by The Associated Press through a public records
request. Offshore hydraulic fracturing ... occurs with little state or federal oversight of the
operations. The state oil permitting agency said it doesn't track fracking. Environmental groups are
calling for a moratorium on the practice. "How is it that nobody in state government knew
anything about this? It's a huge institutional failure," said Kassie Siegel, an attorney with the
Center for Biological Diversity. "Offshore fracking is far more common than anyone realized." Little
is known about the effects on the marine environment of fracking, which shoots water, sand and
chemicals at high pressure to clear old wells or crack rock formations to free oil. Yet neither state
nor federal environmental regulators have had any role in overseeing the practice as it
increased to revitalize old wells. New oil leases off the state's shores have been prohibited since
a 1969 oil platform blowout off Santa Barbara, which fouled miles of coastline and gave rise to the
modern environmental movement. With no room for physical expansion, oil companies instead
have turned to fracking to keep the oil flowing.
The Bar Keeps Going Up for Venerable Entrepreneurs

2013-07-12, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2013/07/12/the-bar-keeps-going-up-...
Its always been tough to start a new business, even when the bottom line was just making a profit
to stay alive. A few years ago, a second focus of sustainability (green) was added as a
requirement for respectability. Now I often hear a third mandate of social responsibility.
Entrepreneurs are now measured against the triple bottom line (TBL or 3BL) of people,
planet, and profit. The real challenge with the triple bottom line is that these three separate
accounts cannot be easily added up. Its difficult to measure the planet and people accounts in any
quantifiable terms, compared to profits. How does any entrepreneur define the right balance, and
then measure their performance against real metrics? Lots of people are trying to help. Current
examples include the Conscious Capitalism movement led by John Mackey, The B Team, led by
Sir Richard Branson, the 1% for the Planet organization, and the Benefit Corporation (B Corp) now
available in 14 States. The reality is that you cant help people or the environment, or yourself, if
you dont have any money. Businesses run by ethical people create value and prosperity based on
voluntary exchange, while reducing poverty. The whole can be greater than the sum of the parts.
The real opportunity for entrepreneurs is to provide solutions that solve a problem better
than the competition, while also providing sustainability and social responsibility.
Responsibility and integrity are still the key. A responsible entrepreneur promotes both loyalty
and responsible consumption by educating consumers so they can make more informed decisions
about their purchases, based on ecological footprints, and other sustainability criteria. Thats a winwin business for the customer and the entrepreneur.
Note: For more on the inspiring B Team, see the great three-minute video here and click here. For
a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
Shocking list of popular foods and drinks readily available in U.S.

grocery stores that are BANNED in other countries
2013-06-20, Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345564/Shocking-list-US-foods-BANNED...
Many of the chemicals found in America's most common foods are considered to be so unhealthy
that they're actually illegal in other countries. Rich Food, Poor Food by [Dr.] Jayson Calton and
Mira Calton, a certified nutritionist, features a list of what the authors call 'Banned Bad Boys' - a list
of the ingredients, where they're banned and what caused governments to ban them. One of the
most common 'Bad Boys' is different variations of food coloring, which actually is made from
petroleum and is found in everyday items like soda, sports drinks, mac and cheese, cake, candy
and several other common, American products. The chemicals used to make these different
dyes have proven to cause various different cancers and can even potentially mutate
healthy DNA. European countries like Norway, Finland, France and Austria all have banned
at least one variation of petroleum-containing food coloring. Another common additive
banned in other countries but allowed in the U.S. is Olestra, which essentially is a fat substitute
found in products that traditionally have actual fat. For example, low-fat potato chips ... contain
Olestra - which is shown to cause the depletion of fat-soluble vitamins. Olestra has been banned in
several countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada. In 2003, the FDA lifted a
requirement forcing companies that use Olestra in their products to include a label warning
consumers that the food their eating could cause 'cramps and diarrhea,' despite the fact that the
agency received more than 20,000 reports of gastrointestinal complaints among olestra eaters.
Note: We don't usually use the Daily Mail as a reliable source, but as this article is so important
and no other major media is reporting it, we decided to include it here. For more on corporate and
government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here and here.
Angola missing $750 million, report says

http://www.sfchronicle.com/world/article/Angola-missing-750-million-report-sa...
An estimated $750 million is missing from Angola's treasury [after] a deal with Russia facilitated by
a Swiss bank and a shell company registered in Britain's Isle of Man, a report by a corruption
watchdog group said. Russian and French arms dealers got away with $263 million, Angola's
president reportedly stashed away more than $36 million, and three Angolan officials and a former
Russian legislator got away with smaller amounts. Another $400 million is unaccounted for,
according to Corruption Watch UK. The Angolan expos is the latest of a slew of reports on
corruption, its cost to development, and how it is aided by bankers and shell companies
that keep secret the identities of owners. Angola has long been accused of siphoning off
payments from its massive oil production, worth about $40 billion in 2011 according to
Revenue Watch. They enrich a small coterie surrounding President Jose Eduardo dos Santos,
while nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. Dos Santos has ruled Angola for 33
years. The $750 million that disappeared from Angola was supposed to repay a $1.5 billion debt to
Russia for help in its 27-year civil war. Angola paid with promissory notes on future oil shipments,
but those notes went through shell companies that milked much of the money, the report said.
Russian and French arms dealers took most of the money owed to Russia, the report said. The
illegal transfer of capital from Africa has surpassed $50 billion a year.
Note: Global arms dealers work feverishly behind the scenes to enflame wars so that their huge
profits keep rolling. Yet governments around the world seem reluctant to try to stop or even
monitor this lucrative trade. Do you think there might be any collusion here?
Protesters around the world march against Monsanto

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/05/25/global-protests-monsanto/...
Protesters rallied in dozens of cities [on May 26] as part of a global protest against seed giant
Monsanto and the genetically modified food it produces. Organizers said "March Against
Monsanto" protests were held in 52 countries and 436 cities, including Los Angeles where
demonstrators waved signs that read "Real Food 4 Real People" and "Label GMOs, It's Our Right
to Know." The 'March Against Monsanto' movement began just a few months ago, when founder
and organizer Tami Canal created a Facebook page on Feb. 28 calling for a rally against the
company's practices. "If I had gotten 3,000 people to join me, I would have considered that a
success," she said Saturday. Instead, she said an "incredible" number of people responded
to her message and turned out to rally. "It was empowering and inspiring to see so many
people, from different walks of life, put aside their differences and come together today,"
Canal said. The group plans to harness the success of the event to continue its anti-GMO cause.
"We will continue until Monsanto complies with consumer demand. They are poisoning our
children, poisoning our planet," she said. Protesters in Buenos Aires and other cities in Argentina,
where Monsanto's genetically modified soy and grains now command nearly 100% of the market,
... carried signs saying "Monsanto-Get out of Latin America." In Portland, thousands of protesters
took to Oregon streets. Police estimate about 6,000 protesters took part in Portland's peaceful
march.
GMOs, click here. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a
difference, click here.
Sean FitzPatrick is third ex-Anglo Irish Bank executive to be arrested in

24 hours
2012-07-24, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18965510
The former head of Anglo Irish Bank, Sean FitzPatrick, has been arrested by Irish police in
connection with alleged financial irregularities at the bank. He is the third former senior
executive from Anglo Irish Bank to appear in court within the past 24 hours. All three men
face 16 charges in relation to an alleged failed attempt to prop up Anglo's share price after a stock
market collapse. Anglo was nationalised at a cost of about 30bn euros (23.4bn) to Irish
taxpayers. Anglo was badly exposed by the bursting of the Irish property bubble and suffered the
largest corporate loss in the history of the Republic of Ireland. It is the third time Mr FitzPatrick has
been arrested as part of the three-and-a-half year long investigation into the collapse of Anglo Irish
Bank. Willie McAteer - the second in command at the bank before his resignation in January 2009
- appeared in court alongside Pat Whelan, a former head of lending and operations at the bank.
The former bank is being wound down and is currently being run by the Irish Bank Resolution
Corporation Limited (IBRC).
Auditors say billions likely wasted in Iraq work

After years of following the paper trail of $51 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars provided to rebuild a
broken Iraq, the U.S. government can say with certainty that too much was wasted. But it can't say
how much. In what it called its final audit report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction Funds ... spelled out a range of accounting weaknesses that put
"billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation" in the largest
reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history. "The precise amount lost to fraud and
waste can never be known," the report said. The office has spent more than $200 million
tracking the reconstruction funds, and in addition to producing numerous reports, his office has
investigated criminal fraud that has resulted in 87 indictments, 71 convictions and $176 million in
fines and other penalties. These include civilians and military members accused of kickbacks,
bribery, bid-rigging, fraud, embezzlement and outright theft of government property and funds. Of
the $51 billion that Congress approved for Iraq reconstruction, about $20 billion was for rebuilding
Iraqi security forces and about $20 billion was for rebuilding the country's basic infrastructure.
Note: For lots more from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.
Has Organic Been Oversized?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/business/organic-food-purists-worry-about-b...
Organic food has become a wildly lucrative business for Big Food and a premium-price-meanspremium-profit section of the grocery store. The industrys image contented cows grazing on the
green hills of family-owned farms is mostly pure fantasy. Or rather, pure marketing. Big Food, it
turns out, has spawned what might be called Big Organic. Bear Naked, Wholesome & Hearty,
Kashi: All three and more actually belong to the cereals giant Kellogg. Naked Juice? That would be
PepsiCo, of Pepsi and Fritos fame. And behind the pastoral-sounding Walnut Acres, Healthy
Valley and Spectrum Organics is none other than Hain Celestial, once affiliated with Heinz, the
grand old name in ketchup. Over the past decade, since federal organic standards have come to
the fore, giant agri-food corporations like these and others Coca-Cola, Cargill, ConAgra,
General Mills, Kraft and M&M Mars among them have gobbled up most of the nations organic
food industry. Pure, locally produced ingredients from small family farms? Not so much anymore.
Many consumers may not realize the extent to which giant corporations have come to dominate
organic food. Then again, giant corporations dont exactly trumpet their role in the industry. Their
financial motivation, however, is obvious. Between the time the Agriculture Department came
up with its proposed regulations for the organic industry in 1997 and the time those rules
became law in 2002, myriad small, independent organic companies from Honest Tea to
Cascadian Farm were snapped up by corporate titans. Heinz and Hain together bought
19 organic brands.
Japans plutonium glut: Plan to make more raises red flag as country
reassesses nuclear future
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japans-plutonium-glut-plan-t...
Last years tsunami disaster in Japan clouded the nations nuclear future, idled its reactors and
rendered its huge stockpile of plutonium useless for now. So, the industrys plan to produce even
more has raised a red flag. Nuclear industry officials say they hope to start producing a half-ton of
plutonium within months, in addition to the more than 35 tons Japan already has stored around the
world. Thats even though all the reactors that might use it are either inoperable or offline while the
country rethinks its nuclear policy after the tsunami-generated Fukushima crisis. Its crazy, said
Princeton University professor Frank von Hippel, a leading authority on nonproliferation issues
and a former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and
Technology. There is absolutely no reason to do that. Japans nuclear industry produces
plutonium which is strictly regulated globally because it also is used for nuclear weapons by
reprocessing spent, uranium-based fuel in a procedure aimed at decreasing radioactive waste that
otherwise would require long-term storage. Fuel reprocessing remains unreliable and it is
questionable whether it is a viable way of reducing Japans massive amounts of spent fuel rods,
said Takeo Kikkawa, a Hitotsubashi University professor specializing in energy issues. Japan
should abandon the program altogether, said Hideyuki Ban, co-director of a respected antinuclear Citizens Nuclear Information Center. Then we can also contribute to the global effort for
nuclear non-proliferation.
Note: For a state-of-the-art analysis revealing that radioactive fallout from the Fukushima
meltdown is at least as big as Chernobyl and more global in reach, click here.
National debt: Will the U.S. be like Japan?

2012-05-24, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/24/news/economy/national-debt-us-japan/index.htm
Political gridlock. High national debt. Rock-bottom bond rates. An aging population. Warnings
about more downgrades. Sound like the United States? Indeed. But those characteristics also
describe Japan -- the country that fiscal experts often point to as a cautionary tale about the risk of
carrying too much national debt for too long. Ever since a stock market crash and banking
crisis more than 20 years ago, Japan has suffered from anemic growth for much of that
time and its debt has soared. The country's debt is projected to be 239% of the size of its
economy by the end of this year. U.S. gross debt, by contrast, is a little over 100% of GDP. On
almost every economic and demographic measure, U.S. fiscal problems are still less urgent than
the ones facing Japan today, said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight. In
his view, the biggest debt-related problem facing Americans today is gridlock in Washington. "We
have a political crisis in the United States," he said. There are plenty of ideas for how Washington
could curb the growth in debt without undermining the economy. For example, lawmakers could
phase in tax increases and spending cuts over time. They could agree on a credible plan that puts
off serious fiscal restraint until the economy is stronger. What's missing though is political
cooperation. But, Behravesh said, "If we're careful, we can resolve this sensibly."
Note: For an alternative analysis by Paul Craig Roberts, click here. He notes that "Unlike Japan,
whose national debt is the largest of all, Americans do not own their own public debt. Much of US
debt is owned abroad, especially by China, Japan, and OPEC, the oil exporting countries. This
places the US economy in foreign hands." Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US
Treasury, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week, and professor
of economics.
Earthquake Outbreak in U.S. Tied to Fracking Wastewater

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/04/12/bloomberg_article...
A spate of earthquakes across the middle of the U.S. is "almost certainly" man-made, and may be
caused by wastewater from oil or gas drilling injected into the ground, U.S. government scientists
said in a study. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey said that for the three decades
until 2000, seismic events in the nation's midsection averaged 21 a year. They jumped to 50
in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011. Those statistics, included in the abstract of a research paper
to be discussed at the Seismological Society of America conference next week in San Diego, will
add pressure on an energy industry already confronting more regulation of the process of hydraulic
fracturing. An abstract of the federal study, which was led by William Ellsworth, Earthquake
Science Center staff director for the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, was
published online earlier this month. "A naturally-occurring rate change of this magnitude is
unprecedented outside of volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were
neither in this region," Ellsworth and his colleagues wrote.
Note: Few are aware that Canada's province Quebec has banned fracking. Many other places are
considering similar measures.
Gregg Williams' speech adds fuel to bountygate fire

2012-04-06, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/story/2012-04-05/saints-violence-...
Gregg Williams' profanity-filled speech to the New Orleans Saints' defensive players the
night before their mid-January playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers included a
target list: Alex Smith's chin. Vernon Davis' ankles. Kyle Williams' head. Frank Gore's head.
And, according to audio captured ... Williams chillingly suggested that 49ers wide receiver Michael
Crabtree "becomes human when we (expletive) take out that outside ACL." [This] provided more
evidence against the Saints on a day when coach Sean Payton, assistant head coach Joe Vitt and
general manager Mickey Loomis met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to appeal penalties
for their roles in a bounty scandal that has rocked the league. The audio also raised anew some
questions for the NFL. Has the league lost control of what is supposed to be the controlled
violence of America's most popular game? And how might the sport be affected by its professional
level's apparent disregard for player safety. While Williams' speech ... could easily be criticized for
ill intent, it also illustrated the type of macho mentality that has existed in pro football since its
inception. A former linebacker [Coy Wire] played under Williams with the Buffalo Bills when players
were also paid cash in a similar bounty scheme. "Gregg Williams was part of a culture of
relentlessness," says Wire. "It wasn't just him. It was a group of people who wanted to find a
competitive edge." In its findings announced in early March, the league maintained that between
22 and 27 players from the Saints defenses from 2009 to 2011 were involved in the bounty
program.
FDA deputy with ties to Monsanto draws fire

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/29/MNEN1NDVO3.DTL
A top federal regulator's ties to Monsanto Co., a maker of genetically modified food, are fueling an
election-year recall push by consumer and public-interest groups flexing their clout on the Internet.
Michael Taylor, the Food and Drug Administration's deputy commissioner for food safety, is at the
center of a burgeoning dispute between opponents who have collected more than 420,000
signatures on an online petition demanding he be fired and supporters who praise his efforts to
curb food-borne illnesses. At issue is the 16 months ending in 2000 that Taylor worked as
Monsanto's vice president for public policy, between stints in the Clinton and Obama
administrations. The petition reflects anger over the agency's enforcement actions against
small food producers and products such as raw milk. The online petition, along with others
circulated on Facebook and other social-media sites since at least August, blames Taylor for
allowing genetically modified organisms into the U.S. food supply without requiring testing as to
their effects while he served at the agency in the 1990s. Taylor, in an interview, said his work is
misrepresented, and the effort to have him fired "is more about Monsanto than about me. The
claim is I was a Monsanto lobbyist, which paints a bad picture," he said. "It doesn't say what I did
there or what I think about biotechnology."
Note: For lots more on Monsanto's unethical practices, click here and here. For key reports from
reliable sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
Japanese mothers rise up against nuclear power

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/22/japanese-mothers-rise-nucle...
Japan's nuclear power industry, which once ignored opposition, now finds its existence threatened
by women angered by official [secrecy] on radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
More than 100 anti-nuclear demonstrators, most of them women, met with officials of the Nuclear
Safety Commission this week and handed over a statement calling for a transparent investigation
into the accident and a permanent shutdown of all nuclear power plants. Groups of women,
braving a cold winter, have been setting up tents since last week preparing for a new sit-in
campaign in front of the ministry of economic affairs. The women have pledged to continue their
demonstration for 10 months and 10 days, traditionally reckoned in Japan as a full term that covers
a pregnancy. "Our protests are aimed at achieving a rebirth in Japanese society," said
Chieko Shina, a participant, and a grandmother from Fukushima. "The ongoing
demonstrations symbolise the determination of ordinary people who do not want nuclear
power because it is dangerous. There is also the bigger message that we do not trust the
government any more," said Takanobu Kobayashi, who manages the Matsudo network of
citizens' movements. Distrust stems primarily from the fact that the meltdown of the Fukushima
reactors was not reported to the public immediately, causing huge health risks to the local
population from radiation leaks.
here.
Insects Find Crack In Biotech Corn's Armor

2011-12-05, NPR
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/12/05/143141300/insects-find-crack-in-b...
Hidden in the soil of Illinois and Iowa, a new generation of insect larvae appears to be munching
happily on the roots of genetically engineered corn, according to scientists. It's bad news for corn
farmers, who paid extra money for this line of corn, counting on the power of its inserted genes to
kill those pests. It's also bad news for the biotech company Monsanto, which inserted the larvaekilling gene in the first place. In fact, the gene's apparent failure ... may be the most serious threat
to a genetically modified crop in the U.S. since farmers first started growing them 15 years ago.
The economic impact could be "huge," says the University of Arizona's Bruce Tabashnik, one of
the country's top experts on the adaptation of insects to genetically engineered crops. Billions of
dollars are at stake. The scientists who called for caution now are saying "I told you so,"
because there are signs that a new strain of resistant rootworms is emerging. In eastern
Iowa, northwestern Illinois, and parts of Minnesota and Nebraska, rows of Bt corn have
toppled over, their roots eaten by rootworms. Entomologist Aaron Gassmann at Iowa State
University, who authored the [new] paper, collected insects from some of these fields and found
many with a greater-than-expected ability to tolerate Bt. The EPA is now recommending that ...
farmers in areas where such damage has been observed to stop planting this kind of Bt corn
altogether. Instead, those farmers will have to use other methods, such as spraying chemical
insecticides, to control the rootworm.
Note: For more on the destructive impacts of GMO crop technology, see the deeply revealing
How to win business in Libya

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/09/23/special-report-how-to-win-bu...
In August, as rebels fought forces loyal to President Muammar Gaddafi, two representatives of a
British business consortium took a "rather long and arduous ferry journey from Malta" to the North
African country. The men traveled to Libya at the invitation of the rebel administration. Britain,
along with France and the United States, had given political and military support for the uprising
against Gaddafi and sponsored the rebel leadership, the National Transitional Council (NTC). This
was a chance to close some deals. The visitors keep coming. French President Nicolas Sarkozy
and British Prime Minister David Cameron received a heroes' welcome last week when they
became the first western leaders to visit since Gaddafi's ouster. Interim leader Abdel Jalil said
the rebels' allies could expect preferential treatment in return for their help. It was a clear
signal that countries which had not backed the NATO bombing campaign, including Russia,
China and Germany, or which were slow to denounce Gaddafi, like Italy, stand to lose out.
But if French and British politicians are tallying up the contracts, business executives are leaving
little to chance. Dozens of executives from France, Britain, Italy and other countries have spent
months building ties with potential Libyan partners. The potential profits are huge.
Note: For a two-page summary of US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler's explanation of the
profiteering behind modern wars, click here. For key reports on corporate and government
corruption from major media sources, click here and here.
$52 Steaks on Menu as AT&T Feted Lawmakers During T-Mobile Push

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LQUSNI1A74E901-63CR...
AT&T feted lawmakers at Washington restaurants offering $52 steaks and a $15 Lobbyist's
Libation made of gin and cucumber puree as the company sought U.S. approval to buy T-Mobile
USA. The parties, carrying $1,000 admission charges and aimed at replenishing congressional
campaign coffers, were held as the largest U.S. phone company sought regulators' blessing for the
$39 billion deal. On Aug. 31, the Justice Department sued to block the transaction, saying it would
harm competition. The litigation marks a rare setback for AT&T, long a leading Washington power.
The Dallas-based company boosted lobbying spending by 30 percent to $11.7 million in the
first six months of 2011 compared with a year earlier, Senate records show. AT&T's political
action committee gave $805,500 to federal candidates, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics, a Washington research group. The one thing you can say about their losing is that it
wasn't for a lack of lobbyists, Bill Allison, editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation, a
Washington-based nonprofit that promotes government transparency, said in an interview. They
left no stone unturned. AT&T's political action committee, which funnels employees' contributions
to lawmakers' campaigns, was the most generous corporate PAC this year, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics.
Note: For more on corporate and government corruption from reliable sources, click here and
here.
Pennsylvania judge gets 28 years in 'kids for cash' case

2011-08-11, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44105072/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts
A longtime judge has been ordered to spend nearly three decades in prison for his role in a
massive juvenile justice bribery scandal that prompted the state's high court to toss thousands of
convictions. Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced ... to 28 years in
federal prison for taking $1 million in bribes from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers
in a case that became known as "kids-for-cash." The Pennsylvania Supreme Court tossed
about 4,000 convictions issued by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008, saying he violated the
constitutional rights of the juveniles, including the right to legal counsel and the right to
intelligently enter a plea. Ciavarella, 61, was tried and convicted of racketeering charges earlier
this year. Federal prosecutors accused Ciavarella and a second judge, Michael Conahan, of taking
more than $2 million in bribes from the builder of the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care
detention centers and extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the facilities' co-owner.
Ciavarella, known for his harsh and autocratic courtroom demeanor, filled the beds of the private
lockups with children as young as 10, many of them first-time offenders convicted of petty theft and
other minor crimes.
here.
Mistakes in Scientific Studies Surge

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB100014240527023036271045764118506665820...
It was the kind of study that made doctors around the world sit up and take notice: Two popular
high-blood-pressure drugs were found to be much better in combination than either alone.
Unfortunately, it wasn't true. Six and a half years later, the prestigious medical journal the Lancet
retracted the paper, citing "serious concerns" about the findings. The damage was done. Doctors
by then had given the drug combination to well over 100,000 patients. Instead of protecting them
from kidney problems, as the study said the drug combo could do, it left them more vulnerable to
potentially life-threatening side effects, later studies showed. Today, "tens of thousands" of patients
are still on the dual therapy, according to research firm SDI. When a study is retracted, "it can be
hard to make its effects go away," says Sheldon Tobe, a kidney-disease specialist at the University
of Toronto. And that's more important today than ever because retractions of scientific studies are
surging. Since 2001, while the number of papers published in research journals has risen
44%, the number retracted has leapt more than 15-fold, data compiled for The Wall Street
Journal by Thomson Reuters reveal. Just 22 retraction notices appeared in 2001, but 139 in 2006
and 339 last year
Note: To learn lots more of how the medical industry puts profit above public health, click here.
Argentina accuses world's largest grain traders of huge tax evasion

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/01/argentina-accuses-grain-trader...
The world's four largest grain traders, responsible for the vast majority of global corn, soya and
wheat trading and processing, have been accused of large-scale tax evasion in a landmark series
of cases being brought against them by the Argentinian government. Ricardo Echegaray, the head
of Afip, the country's revenue and customs service, has given a detailed account of the charges
his department is bringing against ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus. "These companies have
gone into criminality," Echegaray said. "2008 was when agricultural commodities prices spiked and
was the best year for them in prices, yet we could see that the companies with the biggest sales
showed very little profit in this country." Afip is seeking to claim $476m (290m) for what it says are
unpaid tax and duties from Bunge, $252m from Cargill and $140m from Dreyfus. With the global
food system and who controls it under intense scrutiny in recent weeks, thanks to record prices,
the legal battle between Afip and the "ABCD four", as they are known, has taken on heightened
significance. Oxfam, in a report earlier this week, warned of spiralling prices and a huge
increase in global hunger over the next two decades, and said that corporate concentration
in the global food trade was a structural flaw in the system.
Note: When you hear of global food prices spiraling, think of market manipulation by companies
like this and inside traders.
Feds must probe banks further over mortgage crisis

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/20/EDFL1IEOFE.DTL
Anonymous, an online hacker group, released a string of e-mails last week that purportedly show
mortgage document fraud at Bank of America. Many people yawned. After all, there have been
well-documented cases of mortgage fraud and illegal foreclosures, and little has been done to
punish Bank of America or any of the banks for their behavior. But just because the federal
government has been slow to act on the mortgage crisis doesn't mean that these e-mails are any
less valuable. The e-mails are a chain showing requests for Balboa Insurance employees to
remove document tracking numbers from the system of record. Balboa Insurance became a
division of Bank of America after the bank bought the bankrupt home loan company Countrywide
Financial. The idea suggested in the e-mails was to misplace individual documents away
from matching loans. This would make it harder for federal auditors to investigate
individual loans. It would also make it far more difficult for individual homeowners to
dispute or question bank action on their loans - and therefore obtain mortgage
modifications or a stay on bank foreclosure. The Anonymous e-mails are serious indeed.
They're a snapshot into why the mortgage mess spiraled out of control. While they don't tell the
whole story, they point to the need for further investigation and possible action on behalf of the
federal government. When people are losing their homes, the banks shouldn't be allowed to get
away with deception.
government and banks against the public interest, click here.
US Supreme Court won't review drug patent deal

2011-03-07, The Guardian/Reuters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/9533058
The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling that drug companies can pay rivals to delay production
of generic drugs without violating federal antitrust laws. The justices refused to review a federal
appeals court ruling that upheld the dismissal of a legal challenge to a deal between Bayer AG and
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd's Barr Laboratories. Bayer paid Barr to prevent it from bringing
to market a version of the antibiotic drug Cipro. The deal, involving Bayer's 1997 settlement of
patent litigation with Barr, was challenged by a number of pharmacies, which appealed to the
Supreme Court. More than 30 states and various consumer groups supported the appeal.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has opposed such deals, saying they violate antitrust
law and cost consumers an estimated $3.5 billion a year in higher prescription drug prices.
It has supported legislation pending in Congress to prohibit such settlements, which it says have
increased in recent years. The New York-based appeals court, in its ruling last year, cited its
similar 2005 decision involving the drug Tamoxifen, used to treat breast cancer, infertility and other
conditions. The Supreme Court declined to review that case. In the Cipro case, the Supreme Court
rejected the appeal by the pharmacies without comment.
here.
FDA panel on genetically modified salmon leaves questions

unanswered
2010-09-21, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/food/safety/2010-09-22-SalmonQA22_ST_N.htm
The Food and Drug Administration has wrapped up three days of hearings and public comment on
the effort by AquaBounty Technologies, a Massachusetts company, to sell salmon genetically
engineered to grow twice as fast as normal salmon. But the meetings ended without an FDA
decision on whether the company can move ahead with sales. USA TODAY's Elizabeth Weise
[answers questions about the issue]: Q: What are the issues? A: There are really two: Are these
fish safe to eat, and are they safe for the environment? FDA staff, in a report released earlier this
month, found the genetically engineered (or GE) salmon to be as safe to eat as normal salmon.
But several members of the agency's Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee felt that the tests
for food safety could have included more data and encouraged the agency to request more from
the company. Q: What's the environmental issue? A: Some scientists and environmental
groups worry that if these fast-growing salmon escaped into the ocean, they might outcompete native salmon populations for both food and mates. As almost all wild Atlantic
salmon are endangered, anything that could harm them is of concern.
here. For a highly-informative overview of the threats posesd to health and the environment by
genetically modified foods, click here.
UK firm Octel bribed Iraqis to keep buying toxic fuel additive

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/30/octel-petrol-iraq-lead
The former chief executive of a British chemical company faces the prospect of extradition to the
US after the firm admitted million-dollar bribes to officials to sell toxic fuel additives to Iraq. Paul
Jennings, until last year chief executive of the Octel chemical works ... and his predecessor,
Dennis Kerrison, exported tonnes of tetra ethyl lead (TEL), to Iraq. TEL is banned from cars in
western countries because of links with brain damage to children. Iraq is believed to be the only
country that still adds lead to petrol. The company recently admitted that, in a deliberate policy
to maximise profits, executives from Octel which since changed its name to Innospec
bribed officials in Iraq and Indonesia with millions of dollars to carry on using TEL, despite
its health hazards. Senior Iraqi oil ministry officials are accused of taking British bribes throughout
the UK-US occupation, up until 2008. US prosecutors say multi-million dollar bribes to Iraq were
agreed in 2001-3, when Kerrison was chief executive. A decade ago, Octel decided to remain the
world's only manufacturer of TEL for cars, after it was banned in the US and Europe. They used
high profits from non-western countries to diversify into other products and to pay back investors,
mainly US hedge funds run by Connecticut billionaire Jeffrey Gendell. According to prosecutors,
the strategy included the corrupt blocking of health campaigns.
BP secrecy keeps oil-spill facts from public view

2010-05-19, Sacramento Bee/McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/05/19/2760498/bp-secrecy-keeps-oil-spill-facts.html
BP, the company in charge of the rig that exploded last month in the Gulf of Mexico, hasn't publicly
divulged the results of tests on the extent of workers' exposure to evaporating oil or from the
burning of crude over the gulf, even though researchers say those data are crucial in determining
whether the conditions are safe. Moreover, the company isn't monitoring the extent of the spill and
only reluctantly released videos of the spill site that could give scientists a clue to the amount of
the oil in the gulf. BP's role as the primary source of information has raised questions about
whether the government should intervene to gather such data and to publicize them and
whether an adequate cleanup can be accomplished without the details of crude oil
spreading across the gulf. The company also hasn't publicly released air sampling for oil spill
workers although Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency in charge of
monitoring compliance with worker safety regulations, is relying on the information and has urged it
to do so.
Report Says SEC Missed Many Shots at Stanford

The Securities and Exchange Commission suspected Texas financier R. Allen Stanford of running
a Ponzi scheme as early as 1997 but took more than a decade to pursue him seriously. The report
by the SEC's inspector general says SEC examiners concluded four times between 1997 and
2004 that Mr. Stanford's businesses were fraudulent, but each time decided not to go further. It
singles out the former head of the SEC's enforcement office in Fort Worth, Texas, accusing him of
repeatedly quashing Stanford probes and then trying to represent Mr. Stanford as a lawyer in
private practice. The former SEC official, Spencer Barasch, is now a partner at law firm Andrews
Kurth LLP. The inspector general referred Mr. Barasch for possible disbarment from practicing law.
Mr. Stanford was indicted last June and accused of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that swindled
investors out of $7 billion. SEC Inspector General David Kotz's report suggests the agency's
mistakes in the Stanford case were in part the result of a culture that favored easily
resolved cases over messier ones. Cases such as the alleged Stanford fraud weren't
considered "quick-hit" and "slam-dunk," and examiners were discouraged from pursuing
them, Mr. Kotz found.
Note: For many more examples from major media sources of the astonishing performance of the
SEC in the runup to the Wall Street crisis, click here.
Only a Hint of Roosevelt in Financial Overhaul

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/business/18nocera.html
Three quarters of a century ago, President Franklin Roosevelt earned the undying enmity of Wall
Street when he used his enormous popularity to push through a series of radical regulatory
reforms that completely changed the norms of the financial industry. Wall Street hated the reforms,
of course, but Roosevelt didnt care. Wall Street and the financial industry had engaged in
practices they shouldnt have, and had helped lead the country into the Great Depression. Those
practices had to be stopped. To the president, thats all that mattered. On Wednesday, President
Obama unveiled what he described as a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system, a
transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression. In terms
of the sheer number of proposals, outlined in an 88-page document the administration released on
Tuesday, that is undoubtedly true. But in terms of the scope and breadth of the Obama plan and
more important, in terms of its overall effect on Wall Streets modus operandi its not even close
to what Roosevelt accomplished during the Great Depression. Rather, the Obama plan is little
more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam
rather than rebuild the dam itself. Everywhere you look in the plan, you see the same thing:
additional regulation on the margin, but nothing that amounts to a true overhaul. The plan
places enormous trust in the judgment of the Federal Reserve trust that critics say has not
really been borne out by its actions during the Internet and housing bubbles. Firms will have to put
up a little more capital, and deal with a little more oversight, but once the financial crisis is over, it
will, in all likelihood, be back to business as usual.
Note: To watch the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve testify to Congress that she knows
pracitcally nothing of trillions of dollars that are unaccounted for, click here. For many revealing
reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the continuing taxpayer bailout of the
biggest financial corporations, click here.
Meet Your New Farmer: Hungry Corporate Giant

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/movies/12food.html
Forget buckets of blood. Nothing says horror like one of those tubs of artificially buttered,
nonorganic popcorn at the concession stand. That, at least, is one of the unappetizing lessons to
draw from one of the scariest movies of the year, Food, Inc., an informative ... documentary
about the big business of feeding or, more to the political point, force-feeding, Americans all the
junk that multinational corporate money can buy. Youll shudder, shake and just possibly lose your
genetically modified lunch. The director Robert Kenner jumps all over the food map, from
industrial feedlots where millions of cruelly crammed cattle mill about in their own waste
until slaughter, to the chains where millions of consumers gobble down industrially
produced meat and an occasional serving of E. coli bacteria. The voice in the opening
belongs to the ethical epicurean and locavore champion Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of
Food and The Omnivores Dilemma. Mr. Pollan ... is a great strength of Food, Inc., as is one of its
co-producers, Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation. [They], together with Mr. Kenner,
chart how and why the villains not only outnumber the heroes in contemporary food production, but
also how and why they outbluff, outmuscle and outspend their opponents by billions of often
government-subsidized dollars. The movie takes a look at the animal abuse in industrial food
production including clandestine images of sick and crippled cows being prodded to join the rest
of the ill-fated herd but its main focus is on the human cost. Its a cost visible in the rounded
bodies of a poor family that eats cheap if filling fast-food burgers for breakfast and in the obscured
faces of farmers too frightened to go on record about Monsanto, the agricultural biotech giant.
Note: For another excellent review of this important film, click here.
A lesson for Detroit - Tata Nano

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/30/EDTK16PF19.DTL
Don't dismiss the Nano as a small, poor man's car that will cause a mere ripple on the world
market. The Nano is a radical innovation, with the potential to revolutionize automobile
manufacturing and distribution. The tiny Nano incorporates three innovations, which together make
it huge. First, the Nano uses a modular design that enables a knowledgeable mechanic to
assemble the car in a workshop. Thus, Tata can outsource assembly to independent workshops
that can then assemble the car on buyers' orders. This innovation not only removes costly labor
from the manufacturer's side but also allows for distributed entrepreneurship on the dealer's side.
Second, the low cost of the Nano comes from a combination of its no-frills design and its use of
numerous lighter components, from simple door handles and bulbs to the transmission and engine
parts. The lighter vehicle enables a more energy-efficient engine that gets 67 miles to the gallon.
Third, at just 122 inches long, the Nano is one of the shortest four-passenger cars on the market,
yet it allows for ample interior space. These innovations have enabled Tata to introduce the Nano
at a base price of $2,000. The low price has triggered worldwide interest in the car and a
surge of orders, even in a struggling auto market. The Nano has the potential of flourishing
despite the recession or softening its sting because of its extraordinary low price. It's a
radical innovation precisely because it is a poor man's car.
Note: For a treasure trove of inspiring developments in new energy and automotive technologies,
click here.
Inquiry Asks Why A.I.G. Paid Banks

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/27cuomo.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...
Members of Congress and the New York State attorney general demanded detailed information
Thursday on how tens of billions of taxpayer dollars flowed through the American International
Group during its crisis last fall and ended up in the coffers of several dozen big banks, shielding
them from losses. The new inquiries shine a spotlight on a question that is exponentially
bigger, in dollars, than the $165 million in bonuses that A.I.G. paid out this month, but
which has been overshadowed until now by the uproar over the bonuses. We would like to
know if the A.I.G. counterparty payments, as made, were in the best interests of the taxpayers who
provided the funding, said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, in a letter
to Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The
banks and investment firms that ended up with A.I.G.s bailout money last fall were, in many
cases, counterparties to derivatives contracts it had sold, known as credit-default swaps, which
guaranteed the value of assets in their investment portfolios. They included Wall Street firms, like
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, that have successfully resisted efforts to
regulate credit derivatives in the past. In several hearings this month, members of Congress said
they believed the derivatives had often been used to speculate, not to manage risk. They have
expressed outrage that A.I.G.s trading partners got 100 cents on the dollar for their money-losing
trades when ordinary Americans paying for the bailout have suffered big losses in their 401(k)
accounts and other investments.
IRS defends drop in audits of millionaires

The Internal Revenue Service is not living up to its pledge to crack down on wealthy tax cheats, an
IRS watchdog group says, citing a drop in audits of millionaires last year. Those with incomes of $1
million and above had a 5.6 percent chance of getting audited in fiscal year 2008, which ended last
September, down from 6.8 percent the previous year, according to IRS figures. The actual number
of millionaires audited fell from 23,200 to 21,874; the number of millionaires filing tax returns grew
from 339,138 to 392,776. "In the face of growing federal deficits and public calls to lower the
tax gap the amount of taxes due but not reported and paid the drop in millionaire
audits is surprising," said the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse in a report Monday. It said the significant drop in audits of richer Americans
contrasted with IRS statements last year that it was making strong progress in enforcement,
especially of those with incomes of more than $1 million. The TRAC report said focus on high
earner returns is critical because of the huge rewards. Among those millionaire audit cases where
additional taxes were recommended, the average was $198,000 after face-to-face audits and
$137,000 for audits done through correspondence. In total, the IRS collected $56.4 billion in
enforcement revenues last year, down from $59.2 billion in 2007 and the first decline in collections
in a decade.
Note: The highly important statistic only mentioned in passing here is "the number of millionaires
filing tax returns grew from 339,138 to 392,776." That's an over-15% increase in the number of
millionaires in one year, while most everyone else seems to be losing money. Hmmmm. Makes
you wonder.
Surviving Recession: Medical research seen as lure in hard times
2009-03-13, Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, CA's leading newspaper)

Retirement slammed Carole Jacko. Raising two grandchildren, she's too young for Medicare and
too strapped to pay $600 a month for health insurance. So when a trip to the emergency room
ended with a diagnosis of diabetes, Jacko found a creative solution. She became a medical guinea
pig, offering herself to science in exchange for free medication, free doctor's visits and even a
modest payment. With the economy careening and millions uninsured, some doctors and
researchers believe the lure of volunteering for medical research is growing and so are potential
ethical pitfalls. "Sometimes desperation leads people to be poor shoppers," to gloss over risks or
grasp at imagined benefits, said Kevin Weinfurt, a Duke University professor who focuses on
medical decision-making and ethics. No regulations limit how much a person can be paid to take
part in medical research. Researchers do not agree on how much money it takes to cross the line
and exert "undue influence" or coercion to get someone to enroll in a study. That's something
federal regulations do forbid. "This is the most complicated issue in research ethics, and it's
still an unsettled question," Weinfurt said. It has lingered for more than 100 years, since an
Army surgeon named Walter Reed paid volunteers at a Cuban outpost $100 in gold to risk
being infected with yellow fever. The men got another $100 if they contracted the disease,
payable to themselves or any designated survivor.
Note: For many reports on corruption in the pharmaceutical and medical industries from major
media sources, click here.
Bailout Oversight Lacking, GAO Says

The Bush administration has failed to adequately oversee its $700 billion bailout program and must
move rapidly to guarantee that banks are complying with the plan's limits on conflicts of interest
and lavish executive compensation, congressional investigators said yesterday. The new report
by the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress,
said the Treasury Department has yet to impose necessary safeguards or decide how to
determine whether the program is achieving its goals. The auditors said it was too soon for
them to tell whether the bailout was working. "The rapid pace of implementation and evolving
nature of the program have hampered efforts to put a comprehensive system of internal control in
place," the report said. "Until such a system is fully developed and implemented, there is
heightened risk that the interests of the government and taxpayers may not be adequately
protected and that the program objectives may not be achieved in an efficient and effective
manner." So far, the rescue package has provided at least $150 billion in capital infusions to 52
financial institutions, the auditors said. They added that no applications for funding were denied by
the Treasury. The congressional auditors urged Treasury officials to determine how each bank
receiving bailout money is using the money and whether they are using it in a way consistent with
the intent of the law. Several congressional leaders have criticized financial firms for
hoarding the money instead of using it to lend to borrowers.
Audit: Feds wasted millions on Katrina work

The government wasted millions of dollars on four no-bid contracts it handed out for Hurricane
Katrina work, including paying $20 million for a camp for evacuees that was never inspected and
proved to be unusable, investigators say. A report by the Homeland Security Department's office of
inspector general, obtained ... by The Associated Press is the latest to detail mismanagement in
the multibillion-dollar Katrina hurricane recovery effort, which investigators have said wasted at
least $1 billion. The review examined temporary housing contracts awarded without competition to
Shaw Group Inc., Bechtel Group Inc., CH2M Hill Companies Ltd. and Fluor Corp. in the days
immediately before and after the August 2005 storm that smashed into the U.S. Gulf Coast. It
found that FEMA wasted at least $45.9 million on the four contracts that together were initially
worth $400 million. FEMA subsequently raised the total amounts for the four contracts twice, both
times without competition, to $2 billion and then $3 billion. FEMA did not always properly review
the invoices submitted by the four companies, exposing taxpayers to significant waste and
fraud, investigators wrote. In many cases, the agency also issued open-ended contract
instructions for months without clear guidelines on what work was needed to be done and
the appropriate charges. "We question how FEMA determined that the amounts invoiced were
allowable and reasonable," the IG report states, warning that its review was limited in scope so
that additional waste and fraud might yet to be found.
Note: For many more reports of government corruption from major media sources, click here.
KBR, Partner in Iraq Contract Sued in Human Trafficking Case

A Washington law firm filed a lawsuit yesterday against KBR, one of the largest U.S.
contractors in Iraq, alleging that the company and its Jordanian subcontractor engaged in
the human trafficking of Nepali workers. Agnieszka Fryszman, a partner at Cohen, Milstein,
Hausfeld & Toll, said 13 Nepali men, between the ages of 18 and 27, were recruited in Nepal to
work as kitchen staff in hotels and restaurants in Amman, Jordan. But once the men arrived in
Jordan, their passports were seized and they were told they were being sent to a military facility in
Iraq, Fryszman said. As the men were driven in cars to Iraq, they were stopped by insurgents.
Twelve were kidnapped and later executed, Fryszman said. The thirteenth man survived and
worked in a warehouse in Iraq for 15 months before returning to Nepal. The lawsuit, filed in a
federal court in California on behalf of the workers' families and the survivor, claims that the
trafficking scheme was engineered by KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners,
according to Fryszman. This spring, an administrative law judge at the Department of Labor, which
has jurisdiction over cases that involve on the job injuries at overseas military bases, ordered
Daoud to pay $1 million to the families of 11 of the victims.
Note: For many more reports on corporate corruption from major media sources, click here.
Sovereign Funds Become Big Speculators

Sovereign wealth funds, the massive investment pools run by foreign governments, are now
among the biggest speculators in the trading of oil and other vital goods like corn and cotton in the
United States, according to interviews with brokers who handle their investments at leading Wall
Street banks, veteran traders and congressional investigators. Some lawmakers say the
unregulated activity of sovereign wealth funds and other speculators such as hedge funds has
contributed to the dramatic swing in oil prices in recent months. The agency regulating the market
said it had not picked up on this activity by sovereign wealth funds. In a June letter, the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission told lawmakers that its monitoring showed that these funds were not
a significant factor in commodity trading. But the CFTC is not detecting the growing influence
of foreign funds because they invest through Wall Street brokers known as "swap dealers"
who often operate on unregulated markets. For this reason, the extent of their activities
may be known only to the swap dealers at investment banks such as Goldman Sachs,
Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, which handle such transactions. The foreign funds involved
in commodity trading are ... mainly from countries ... in Asia that do not already make money from
producing oil. While it is difficult to quantify how large foreign funds have become, they now
represent 12 percent or more of the overall commodity business for some of the largest investment
banks, said an industry veteran who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Note: For many revealing reports on corporate corruption from reliable, verifiable sources, click
here.
U.S. Advised Iraqi Ministry on Oil Deals

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/world/middleeast/30contract.html?partner=rs...
A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part
in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil
companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say. The disclosure,
coming on the eve of the contracts announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement
by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraqs oil to commercial development and is likely to
stoke criticism. In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and
private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the
contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said. At a time of spiraling oil prices,
the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the worlds largest untapped fields and
potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry. The contracts are expected to be
awarded Monday to Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, as well as to several smaller oil
companies. The deals have been criticized by opponents of the Iraq war, who accuse the Bush
administration of working behind the scenes to ensure Western access to Iraqi oil fields even as
most other oil-exporting countries have been sharply limiting the roles of international oil
companies in development. Though enriched by high prices, the companies are starved for new oil
fields. American military officials say the pipelines [in Iraq] now have excess capacity, waiting for
output to increase at the fields.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the real reasons behind the war in Iraq,
click here.
The Business of Intelligence Gathering

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/business/15shelf.html?partner=rssuserland&e...
America is ruled by an intelligence-industrial complex whose allegiance is not to the taxpaying
public but to a cabal of private-sector contractors. That is the central thesis of Spies for Hire: The
Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing by Tim Shorrock, ... an investigative journalist. His book
[provides a] disturbing overview of the intelligence community, also known as the I.C. Mr.
Shorrock says our government is outsourcing 70 percent of its intelligence budget, or more than
$42 billion a year, to a secret army of corporate vendors. Because of accelerated privatization
efforts after 9/11, these companies are participating in covert operations and intelligencegathering activities that were considered inherently governmental functions reserved for
agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, he says. Some of the books most intriguing
assertions concern the permeating influence of the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. In 2006,
Mr. Shorrock reports, Booz Allen amassed $3.7 billion in revenue, much of which came from
classified government contracts exempt from public oversight. Among its more than 18,000
employees are R. James Woolsey, the former C.I.A. director, and Joan Dempsey, a former
longtime United States intelligence official who declared in a 2004 speech, I like to refer to Booz
Allen as the shadow I.C. The revolving door between Booz Allen and the I.C. is personified by
Mike McConnell, who joined the firm after serving as head of the National Security Agency under
President Bill Clinton, only to return as director of national intelligence under President Bush.
Note: For revealing reports on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Monsantos Harvest of Fear
2008-05-01, Vanity Fair magazine

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805
Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued
his threat. Rinehart was behind the counter of the Square Deal, his old-time country store, as he
calls it, on the fading town square of Eagleville, Missouri, a tiny farm community 100 miles north of
Kansas City. As Rinehart would recall, the man began verbally attacking him, saying he had proof
that Rinehart had planted Monsantos genetically modified (G.M.) soybeans in violation of the
companys patent. Better come clean and settle with Monsanto, Rinehart says the man told him
or face the consequences. But Rinehart wasnt a farmer. He wasnt a seed dealer. He hadnt
planted any seeds or sold any seeds. He owned a smalla really smallcountry store in a town
of 350 people. On the way out the man kept making threats. Rinehart says he cant remember the
exact words, but they were to the effect of: Monsanto is big. You cant win. We will get you. You
will pay. Scenes like this are playing out in many parts of rural America these days as Monsanto
goes after farmers, farmers co-ops, seed dealersanyone it suspects may have infringed its
patents of genetically modified seeds. As interviews and reams of court documents reveal,
Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American
heartland to strike fear into farm country. They fan out into fields and farm towns, where
they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops; infiltrate
community meetings; and gather information from informants about farming activities.
Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their
land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records.
Note: For a revealing summary on the health impacts of genetically modified food, click here.
Congress Examines Role Of Industry in Regulation

Despite more than 100 published studies by government scientists and university laboratories that
have raised health concerns about a chemical compound that is central to the multibillion-dollar
plastics industry, the Food and Drug Administration has deemed it safe largely because of two
studies, both funded by an industry trade group. The compound, bisphenol A (BPA), has been
linked to breast and prostate cancer, behavioral disorders and reproductive health problems in
laboratory animals. The FDA's position on the compound was called into question earlier this
month when a National Institutes of Health panel issued a draft report linking BPA to health
concerns. As part of his investigation, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House
Energy and Commerce Committee, wants to examine the role played by the Weinberg Group, a
Washington firm that employs scientists, lawyers and public relations specialists to defend
products from legal and regulatory action. The firm has worked on Agent Orange, tobacco and
Teflon, among other products linked to health hazards, and congressional investigators say it was
hired by Sunoco, a BPA manufacturer. From 1997 to 2005, 116 studies of the compound were
published, many of them focused on its effects in low doses. Of those funded by
government, 90 percent showed a health effect linked to BPA. None of the industry-funded
studies found an effect; all of them said BPA is safe. There is a clear bias in studies funded by
industry, said [David] Michaels, who ... runs the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy
at George Washington University and wrote the book Doubt is Their Product, which details how
various industries have used science to stave off regulation.
Note: For many powerful reports on corporate corruption, click here.
Colorado Proposes Tough Law on Executive Accountability

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/business/01fraud.html?ex=1364702400&en=6a78...
For 30 years, Lew Ellingson loved being a telephone man. His job splicing phone cables was one
that he says gave him a true sense of accomplishment, first for Northwestern Bell, then US West
and finally Qwest Communications International. But by the time Mr. Ellingson retired from Qwest
last year at 52, he had grown angry. An insider trading scandal had damaged the companys
reputation, and the life savings of former colleagues had evaporated in the face of Qwests stock
troubles. It was a good place, he said wistfully. And then something like this happened. Now,
Mr. Ellingson is the public face of a proposed ballot measure in Colorado that seeks to create what
supporters hope will be the nations toughest corporate fraud law. Buttressed by local advocacy
groups and criticized by a Colorado business organization, the measure would make business
executives criminally responsible if their companies run afoul of the law. It would also permit any
Colorado resident to sue the executives under such circumstances. Proceeds from successful
suits would go to the state. If passed by voters in November, the proposal would leave top
business officers [with] unprecedented individual accountability, said Mr. Ellingson. If
nothing else, these folks in charge of the corporations and companies will think twice about
cutting corners to make themselves look more profitable than they really are, he said. The
plight of Mr. Ellingsons former employer, Qwest, based in Denver, was a motivation for the
proposal. Last April, a jury in Denver convicted Qwests former chief executive, Joseph P. Nacchio,
of 19 of 42 counts of insider trading. Mr. Nacchio was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered
to pay a fine of $19 million and forfeit $52 million in money he earned from stock sales in 2001.
Note: As reported in the Washington Post, Joseph P. Nacchio, the former Qwest CEO, has
claimed that he was singled out for prosecution because he refused to cooperate with the National
Security Agency's electronic surveillance of American citizens, which began before 9/11.
Companies Seeking Immunity Donate to Senator

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/washington/23nsa.html?ex=1350792000&en=f9b3...
Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political
donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity
for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping. The surge in contributions
came from a Whos Who of executives at the companies, AT&T and Verizon, starting with the chief
executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to
campaign finance reports. The money came primarily from a fund-raiser that Verizon held for Mr.
Rockefeller in March in New York and another that AT&T sponsored for him in May in San Antonio.
Mr. Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, [has emerged] as the most
important supporter of immunity in [the Senate]. Mr. Rockefellers office said ... that the sharp
increases in contributions from the telecommunications executives had no influence on his support
for the immunity provision. Any suggestion that Senator Rockefeller would make policy decisions
based on campaign contributions is patently false, Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for him, said.
AT&T and Verizon have been lobbying hard to insulate themselves from suits over their reported
roles in the security agency program by gaining legal immunity from Congress. The effort included
meetings with Mr. Rockefeller and other members of the intelligence panels. Mr. Rockefeller
received little in the way of contributions from AT&T or Verizon executives before this year,
reporting $4,050 from 2002 through 2006. From last March to June, he collected a total of
$42,850 from executives at the two companies. The increase was first reported by the online
journal Wired, using data compiled by the Web site OpenSecrets.org. [Telecommunications]
industry executives have given significant contributions to a number of other Washington
politicians, including two presidential contenders, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John
McCain.
State Department Use of Contractors Leaps in 4 Years

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/washington/24contractor.html?ex=1350878400&...
Over the past four years, the amount of money the State Department pays to private security and
law enforcement contractors has soared to nearly $4 billion a year from $1 billion, ... but ... the
department had added few new officials to oversee the contracts. Auditors and outside exerts say
the results have been vast cost overruns, poor contract performance and, in some cases, violence
that has so far gone unpunished. A vast majority of the money goes to companies like DynCorp
International and Blackwater [Worldwide] to protect diplomats overseas, train foreign police forces
and assist in drug eradication programs. There are only 17 contract compliance officers at the
State Departments management bureau overseeing spending of the billions of dollars on these
programs, officials said. Two new reports have delivered harsh judgments about the State
Departments handling of the contracts, including the protective services contract that employs
Blackwater guards whose involvement in a Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad has raised questions
about their role in guarding American diplomats in Iraq. The ballooning budget for outside
contracts at the State Department is emblematic of a broader trend, contracting experts say. The
Bush administration has doubled the amount of government money going to all types of
contractors to $400 billion, creating a new and thriving class of post-9/11 corporations
carrying out delicate work for the government. But the number of government employees
issuing, managing and auditing contracts has barely grown. Thats a criticism thats true of not just
State but of almost every agency, said Jody Freeman, an expert on administrative law at Harvard
Law School.
An Opportunity for Wall St. in Chinas Surveillance Boom

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/business/worldbusiness/11security.html?ex=1...
Li Runsen, the powerful technology director of Chinas ministry of public security, is best known for
leading Project Golden Shield, Chinas intensive effort to strengthen police control over the
Internet. But last month Mr. Li took an additional title: director for China Security and Surveillance
Technology, a fast-growing company that installs and sometimes operates surveillance systems for
Chinese police agencies, jails and banks, among other customers. The company has just been
approved for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The companys listing and Mr. Lis
membership on its board are just the latest signs of ever-closer ties among Wall Street,
surveillance companies and the Chinese governments security apparatus. Wall Street analysts
now follow the growth of companies that install surveillance systems providing Chinese police
stations with 24-hour video feeds from nearby Internet cafes. Hedge fund money from the
United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but facerecognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software designed to spot the
beginnings of a street protest and notify police. Executives of Chinese surveillance companies
say they are helping their government reduce street crime, preserve social stability and prevent
terrorism. They note that London has a more sophisticated surveillance system, although the
Chinese system will soon be far more extensive. Wall Street executives also defend the industry
as necessary to keep the peace at a time of rapid change in China. They point out that New York
has begun experimenting with surveillance cameras in Lower Manhattan and other areas of the
city.
We spend far more, but our health care is falling behind

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/10/MNGNUQTQJB1.DTL
These days, fewer Americans are buying the claim that the United States has the best medical
system in the world. Consumers are buying lower-cost online drugs from foreign sources, and
some even become "medical tourists" to obtain affordable treatment in other countries. Studies
show Americans aren't healthier, nor are they living longer than people in industrialized
nations that spend half per capita of what we do on care. A 2007 ... study that compared the
United States with five other nations -- Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the
United Kingdom -- ranked the U.S. health system last. And a 2000 report by the World Health
Organization ... put the United States 37th out of 190 nations in health care services -- between
Costa Rica and Slovenia. France was rated No. 1. In a New York Times/CBS poll conducted in
March, health care ranked as the top domestic concern. We spend far more, but our health care is
falling behind, studies say. "We, unlike any other country, have 46 million people who are
uninsured, and that raises a whole host of health and financial issues," said Ken Thorpe, professor
of health policy at Emory University. "Ours is really is a sick-care system." Thorpe said. He argues
... that it is far more cost-effective to prevent people from getting sick or at least catch illnesses
early through better monitoring. Karen Davis, president of .... a nonprofit foundation that supports
health care research said, "We tend to have more medical errors than other countries, in part
because of this highly specialized, fragmented system. More things can go wrong and do go
wrong."
Note: For many highly informative major media articles on the U.S. health crisis, click here.
Care in need of a cure

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-global18jun18,1,1444274.story
The knee-jerk attitude that the U.S. is the best place on earth to be sick, fueled by the reputations
of great institutions like the Mayo Clinic and by America's leadership in drug and technology
development, is beginning to be challenged by rigorous international comparisons. There is
increasing evidence that, despite justified pride in individual institutions and medical
breakthroughs, the world's biggest medical spender isn't buying its citizens the longest, healthiest
lives in the world. It's not just moviemakers and comics saying so. The dire message that the U.S.
healthcare system is, by some measures, an also-ran on the worldwide stage is being delivered by
doctors, researchers even insurance industry giants. On screen, slamming U.S. medical care is
coming of age with Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko." Through the eyes of people who have
faced healthcare catastrophes, he tells graphic stories of the problems with America's system.
Considerably more sobering are the warnings from an official at the National Institutes of
Health, who declared in the May 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn. that
the U.S. healthcare system is "a dysfunctional mess." Amid stacks of reports, all with ...
measures of access, equity, efficiency and medical outcomes, two statistics stand out. The U.S.
spends more on medical care than any other nation, and gets far less for it than many countries.
The U.S. spends an annual $6,102 per person more than any other country and more than
twice the average of $2,571. Yet Americans have the 22nd highest life expectancy among those
nations at 77.2 years. People in Japan, the world leader in longevity, live an average of 81.8 years.
Senators who weakened drug bill got millions from industry

2007-05-16, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-05-10-senators-drug-bill_N.htm
Senators who raised millions of dollars in campaign donations from pharmaceutical interests
secured industry-friendly changes to a landmark drug-safety bill. The bill, which passed 93-1,
grants the Food and Drug Administration broad new authority to monitor the safety of drugs after
they are approved. It addressed some shortcomings that allowed the painkiller Vioxx to stay on the
market for years after initial signs that it could cause heart attacks. However, the powers granted to
the FDA in the bill's original version were pared back during private meetings. And efforts to curb
conflicts of interest among FDA advisers and allow consumers to buy cheaper drugs from other
countries were defeated in close votes. A measure that blocked an effort to allow drug
importation passed, 49-40. The 49 senators who voted against drug importation received
about $5 million from industry executives and political action committees since 2001
nearly three quarters of the industry donations to current members of the Senate. Sen.
Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. [was] the lone vote against the bill. "You have a culture in which big money
has significant influence. Big money gains you access, access gives you the time to influence
people." The pharmaceutical companies spend more money on lobbying than any other single
industry $855 million from 1998 to 2006. The biggest drug trade group, Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers of America, praised the bill after it passed. The group's spokesman,
Ken Johnson, said its critics "never point out that a great deal of this money is spent trying to
defeat bills that are designed to cripple this industry."
Note: For lots more reliable, verifiable information on drug company manipulations, click here.
Graduates versus Oligarchs

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/opinion/27krugman.html
Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree
has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells
us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between
2000 and 2004. So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even
the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that. A
new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where
Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary
income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or
about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a
college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains. But income at the 99th percentile rose 87
percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile
rose 497 percent. Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American
society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both
history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly
corrupt.
Note: If the above link fails, click here.
Exxon Mobil Posts Largest Annual Profit for U.S. Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/business/30cnd-exxon.html?ex=1296277200&en=...
Exxon Mobil, the nation's largest energy company, today reported a 27 percent surge in profits for
the fourth quarter as elevated fuel prices gave rise to the most lucrative year ever for an American
company. Exxon's profits are expected to generate new scrutiny of the company's operations in
Washington, where legislators have recently expressed concern over Big Oil's good fortune as
soaring oil and natural gas prices pressure consumers. Exxon said its profits climbed more
than 40 percent last year, while its tax bill rose only 14 percent. Exxon's revenue last year
allowed it to surpass Wal-Mart as the largest company in the United States. [The company's]
revenue of $371 billion surpassed the gross domestic product of $245 billion for Indonesia, an
OPEC member and the world's fourth most populous country with 242 million people.
Note: This article fails to mention the huge profits reaped by oil companies as a result of gas price
gouging immediately after Katrina.
A Donor Who Had Big Allies

http://web.archive.org/web/20080228192833/www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...
In a case that echoes the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, two Northern California
Republican congressmen used their official positions to try to stop a federal investigation of a
wealthy Texas businessman who provided them with political contributions. Reps. John T. Doolittle
and Richard W. Pombo joined forces with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to
oppose an investigation by federal banking regulators into the affairs of Houston millionaire
Charles Hurwitz, documents recently obtained by The Times show. The Federal Deposit Insurance
Corp. was seeking $300 million from Hurwitz for his role in the collapse of a Texas savings and
loan that cost taxpayers $1.6 billion. The investigation was ultimately dropped. Doolittle and
Pombo both considered protgs of DeLay used their power as members of the
House Resources Committee to subpoena the agency's confidential records on the case,
including details of the evidence FDIC investigators had compiled on Hurwitz. Then, in 2001, the
two congressmen inserted many of the sensitive documents into the Congressional Record,
making them public and accessible to Hurwitz's lawyers, a move that FDIC officials said damaged
the government's ability to pursue the banker. The FDIC's chief spokesman characterized what
Doolittle and Pombo did as "a seamy abuse of the legislative process."
Bush allies getting Katrina work

2005-09-13, CNN News/Reuters
http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/12/news/economy/katrina_contracts.reut
Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of
the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina. At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former
campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have
already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast. One is...Halliburton Co.
(Research) subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of
Halliburton. Allbaugh formally registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and
Root in February. Allbaugh is also a friend of Michael Brown, director of FEMA who was removed
as head of Katrina disaster relief and sent back to Washington amid allegations he had padded his
resume. Halliburton continues to be a source of income for Cheney, who served as its chief
executive officer from 1995 until 2000. According to tax filings released in April, Cheney's
income included $194,852 in deferred pay from the company.
Maker of drug admits hiding its risks

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/front/9231611.htm
The maker of a billion-dollar antipsychotic medication has acknowledged misleading
doctors and other healthcare providers about the safety of its product, minimizing
potentially deadly side effects. On Wednesday, drug maker Janssen Pharmaceutica wrote a
two-page letter to doctors, warning them that the company, in promotional material, had
"minimized potentially fatal risks, and made misleading claims" that the medication was more safe
in treating mental illness than other drugs in the same category. Risperdal is the leading drug used
to combat schizophrenia and other types of psychotic disorders, earning Janssen about $2.1 billion
in annual sales. The drug was first marketed about eight years ago, and is prescribed to more than
10 million people worldwide. The "important correction of drug information" came shortly after
federal regulators had accused Janssen of "disseminating" advertising and marketing material that
was "false or misleading."
Don't miss the highly revealing article on this vital topic by the New England Journal of Medicine's
former editor in chief Marica Angell. Click here
Rats fed GM corn due for sale in Britain developed abnormalities in

blood and kidneys
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=640430
Rats fed on a diet rich in genetically modified corn developed abnormalities to internal organs and
changes to their blood, raising fears that human health could be affected by eating GM food.
Details of secret research carried out by Monsanto, the GM food giant...shows that rats fed the
modified corn had smaller kidneys and variations in the composition of their blood. According to
the confidential 1,139-page report, these health problems were absent from another batch of
rodents fed non-GM food. Although Monsanto last night dismissed the abnormalities in rats as
meaningless and due to chance...a senior British government source said ministers were so
worried by the findings that they had called for further information. The full details of the rat
research are included in the main report, which Monsanto refuses to release on the
grounds that "it contains confidential business information which could be of commercial
use to our competitors".
Note: For lots more reliable, verifiable information on this vital topic, see our summary of Seeds of
Deception.
California v. New York

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,787713.html
Dr. Walter Bernard Coffey of San Francisco was again asking the State of New York's Department
of Social Welfare permission to open a cancer research laboratory and clinic at Huntington, L. I.
His cohorts surrounded him. Opposed were Dr. John Augustus Hartwell, president of the New York
Academy of Medicine, spokesman for organized Medicine, and his cohorts. The simple question
was: Should the State authorize the cancer clinic? But in the train of that simple question
came a most extraordinary range of considerationsthe nature and cause of cancer; the
nature and authenticity of the Coffey-Humber cancer treatment; medical ethics, human
nature, public policy, money, fame, and even national politics. Dr. Coffey ... is chief surgeon of
Southern Pacific Co. He has 600 doctors working under him. They care for 70,000 railroad men
and their families. Dr. John Augustus Hartwell, 61, president of the New York Academy of Medicine
... and most of his associates want Drs. Coffey & Humber and their cancer extract kept away from
New York. They fear that the hope of a Coffey-Humber cancer cure will persuade the cancerous to
abandon the orthodox treatment of surgery, X-rays and radium. Very quickly after a sufferer gets a
Coffey-Humber injection, his pain quiets, and in 71% of the cases disappears. In most of the cases
who do not die (Drs. Coffey & Humber will treat only the moribund, cases rejected as hopeless by
at least two reputable doctors), the cancer becomes necrotic, ceases to smell, and sloughs off
leaving a clean hole. That undeniably happens. Why that happens is debatable.
Note: To read how permission for the innovative cancer clinic was eventually refused, click here. If
you want to understand how politics and big money prevented the legitimate study of promising
cancer cures back in the 1930s, this article is a highly revealing "must read."
NutraSweet to Stop Making Aspartame

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/nutrasweet-stop-making-aspartame-257...
NutraSweet says it will no longer make the artificial sweetener aspartame as a result of foreign
competition. The privately held company said Wednesday it expects to shut down a major portion
of a plant that employs about 210 workers, including contractors, by year-end as a result. That will
leave it with only about 10 to 20 employees to focus on its two other smaller sweeteners, the
company said. "Low-cost imports now dominate the aspartame market, making it impossible for us
to sustain a profitable business while maintaining our unmatched standard of quality," NutraSweet
CEO William DeFer said in a statement. Aspartame is more commonly known as the
ingredient used in Equal, the blue packets of sweetener often found on tables at
restaurants. NutraSweet spokesman Hud Englehart said the company started facing
competition as a supplier of aspartame once its patents on the artificial sweetener expired.
Note: This article fails to mention anything about the serious risks and dangers of aspartame
which have been exposed by top doctors and scientists. See the powerful documentary "Sweet
Misery" on this which has saved many lives. For more on health corruption and manipulation, see
concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.
Microsoft Admits Keeping $92 Billion Offshore to Avoid Paying $29

Billion in U.S. Taxes
http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-admits-keeping-92-billion-offshore-avoid-pay...
Microsoft Corp. is currently sitting on almost $29.6 billion it would owe in U.S. taxes if it repatriated
the $92.9 billion of earnings it is keeping offshore, according to disclosures in the companys most
recent annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company says it has "not
provided deferred U.S. income taxes" because it says the earnings were generated from its "nonU.S. subsidiaries and then "reinvested outside the U.S. Tax experts, however, say that details of
the filing suggest the company is using tax shelters to dodge the taxes it owes as a
company domiciled in the United States. The disclosure in Microsofts SEC filing lands
amid an intensifying debate over the fairness of U.S.-based multinational corporations
using offshore subsidiaries and so-called "inversions" to avoid paying American taxes.
Such maneuvers -- although often legal -- threaten to significantly reduce U.S. corporate tax
receipts during an era marked by government budget deficits.
Four Kaupthing bankers sentenced to prison for market abuses in 2008

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/12/kaupthing-bankers-prison-mark...
An Icelandic court has sentenced four former Kaupthing bankers to jail for market abuses related
to a large stake taken in the bank by a Qatari sheikh just before it went under in late 2008. Weeks
before the country's top three banks collapsed under huge debts as the global credit crunch struck,
Kaupthing announced that Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani had bought 5 of its
shares in a confidence-boosting move. A parliamentary commission later said the shares had been
bought with a loan from Kaupthing itself. A Reykjavik district court sentenced Hreidar Mar
Sigurdsson, Kaupthing's former chief executive, to five and a half years in prison while
former chairman Sigurdur Einarsson received a five-year sentence. Magnus Gudmundsson,

former chief executive of Kaupthing Luxembourg, was given a three-year sentence and Olafur
Olafsson the bank's second largest shareholder at the time received three and a half years.
None of the bankers, now based in London and Luxembourg, were present [at the
sentencing].
Note: Yet not a single executive of US or multinational banks has been jailed for funneling billions
of dollars into their own pockets and crashing the entire global economy. For more on this, click
here. For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
Japans Nuclear Refugees, Still Stuck in Limbo

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/world/asia/japans-nuclear-refugees-still-st...
While the continuing environmental disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has grabbed world
headlines with hundreds of tons of contaminated water flowing into the Pacific Ocean daily a
human crisis has been quietly unfolding. Two and a half years after the plant belched plumes of
radioactive materials over northeast Japan, the almost 83,000 nuclear refugees evacuated from
the worst-hit areas are still unable to go home. Some have moved on, reluctantly, but tens of
thousands remain in a legal and emotional limbo while the government holds out hope that they
can one day return. As they wait, many are growing bitter. Now they suspect the government
knows that the unprecedented cleanup will take years, if not decades longer than promised,
as a growing chorus of independent experts have warned, but will not admit it for fear of
dooming plans to restart Japans other nuclear plants. That has left the people of Namie and
many of the 10 other evacuated towns with few good choices. They can continue to live in
cramped temporary housing and collect relatively meager monthly compensation from the
government. Or they can try to build a new life elsewhere, a near impossibility for many unless the
government admits defeat and fully compensates them for their lost homes and livelihoods. For
Namies residents, government obfuscation is nothing new. On the day they fled, bureaucrats in
Tokyo knew the direction they were taking could be dangerous, based on computer modeling, but
did not say so for fear of causing panic. The townspeople headed north, straight into an invisible,
radioactive plume.
Note: For more on the devastation caused by nuclear power, see the deeply revealing reports
Senators to query Apple on tax shelters

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Congress-targets-Apple-on-tax-shelters-...
Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to appear [on May 21] before the Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations to explain why the Cupertino computer giant is avoiding paying
billions of dollars in taxes by diverting nearly two-thirds of its pretax revenue through Irish
subsidiaries. The novel tax avoidance scheme, according to a committee report, uses
entities that do not exist in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, Ireland or any taxing
authority anywhere. Committee staffers said they could not estimate Apple's total tax avoidance,
but they hazarded that one loophole has let the company avoid $9 billion in U.S. taxes in 2012
alone, while bragging that it paid $6 billion in federal taxes. A subsidiary called Apple Operations
International reported a net income of $30 billion from 2009 to 2012, according to the report, but
"has no declared tax residency anywhere in the world and, as a consequence, has not paid
corporate income tax to any national government for the past five years." Another subsidiary,
Apple Sales International, also claims no tax residency anywhere, despite sales income of $74
billion from 2009 to 2012, the report said. The subsidiary has no employees and no physical
presence. Apple sits atop a cash pile of $145 billion, significantly larger than the U.S.
Treasury's cash balance and larger than the national income of most small countries. More
than $100 billion of that cash is in retained foreign earnings.
click here.
Rate-Rigging Investigation Rolls On

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/rate-rigging-investigation-rolls-on/
The global investigation into interest-rate manipulation has emboldened prosecutors to crack down
on banks, and the settlement with the Royal Bank of Scotland on [Feb. 6] underscored that
strategy. As part of the $612 million deal that American and British authorities reached with R.B.S.,
the banks Japanese unit was required to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing, echoing an earlier
action taken against a subsidiary of UBS. The cases announced so far give other banks some idea
of what to expect. Three questions come into play: how much it will cost, whether a guilty plea will
be required and whether embarrassing e-mails will be released. The winners in all this may be the
lawyers and other advisers. The trove of internal e-mails and employee interviews, filed as part of
a lawsuit by one of the investors in the securities, offers a fresh glimpse into Wall Streets
mortgage machine, which churned out billions of dollars of securities that later imploded. The
documents reveal that JPMorgan, as well as two firms the bank acquired during the credit
crisis, Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns, flouted quality controls and ignored problems,
sometimes hiding them entirely, in a quest for profit.
Doubt Is Cast on Firms Hired to Help Banks

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/doubt-is-cast-on-firms-hired-to-help-b...
Federal authorities are scrutinizing private consultants hired to clean up financial misdeeds like
money laundering and foreclosure abuses, taking aim at an industry that is paid billions of dollars
by the same banks it is expected to police. The consultants operate with scant supervision and
produce mixed results, according to government documents and interviews with prosecutors and
regulators. In one case, the consulting firms enabled the wrongdoing. The deficiencies, officials
say, can leave consumers vulnerable and allow tainted money to flow through the financial system.
The pitfalls were exposed last month when federal regulators halted a broad effort to help millions
of homeowners in foreclosure. The regulators reached an $8.5 billion settlement with banks,
scuttling a flawed foreclosure review run by eight consulting firms. In the end, borrowers hurt by
shoddy practices are likely to receive less money than they deserve, regulators said. Critics
concede that regulators have little choice but to hire outsiders for certain responsibilities
after they find problems at the banks. The government does not have the resources to
ensure that banks follow the rules. Some banks that work with consultants continue to run afoul
of the law. At other times, consultants underestimate the extent of the misdeeds or facilitate them,
preventing regulators from holding institutions accountable.
Pollution, Poverty and People of Color: Dirty Soil and Diabetes

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pollution-poverty-people-col...
For four decades, from 1929 until 1971, a Monsanto plant in West Anniston produced chemicals
called PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls. Somehow even today no one is quite sure how the
chemicals got into the soil and waterways. As the Environmental Protection Agency's
oversight of the cleanup of this neighborhood stretches into its eighth year, new research
has linked PCBs exposure to a high rate of diabetes in this community of about 4,000
people, nearly all African American and half living in poverty. It's the latest chapter in a saga
that this poverty-stricken, powerless community feels has dragged on far too long. PCBs were one
of the most widely used industrial substances on Earth until they were banned in the United
States, and most other developed countries, in the late 1970s. PCBs are stubborn chemicals. They
persist in soil and sediment for decades, perhaps centuries, and are locked away in the fatty
tissues of animals, building up in food webs. Seventy percent of all the PCBs ever made are still in
the environment. In Anniston, class action lawsuits were filed and settled. The national media
came and went. Monsanto split up and left town. Some residents took buyouts and moved. Other
houses were abandoned and with fenced off. In 2003, Solutia and Monsanto paid a $600 million
settlement to more than 20,000 people based on their exposure to PCBs. An additional $100
million was to be spent on cleanup and other programs. Annistons PCBs contamination qualifies
as a Superfund site, making it one of the most contaminated places in the country.
Financiers and Sex Trafficking

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/kristof-financers-and-sex-tr...
The biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls in the United States appears to be a Web
site called Backpage.com. This emporium for girls and women some under age or forced into
prostitution is in turn owned by an opaque private company called Village Voice Media. Until
now it has been unclear who the ultimate owners are. The owners turn out to include private
equity financiers, including Goldman Sachs with a 16 percent stake. Goldman Sachs was
mortified when I began inquiring last week about its stake. It began working frantically to unload its
shares. Backpage has 70 percent of the market for prostitution ads. Village Voice Media makes
some effort to screen out ads placed by traffickers and to alert authorities to abuses, but neither
law enforcement officials nor antitrafficking organizations are much impressed. A Goldman
managing director, Scott L. Lebovitz, sat on the Village Voice Media board for many years.
Goldman says he stepped down in early 2010. The two biggest owners are Jim Larkin and Michael
Lacey, the managers of the company, and they seem to own about half of the shares. The best
known of the other owners is Goldman Sachs, which invested in the company in 2000 (before
Backpage became a part of Village Voice Media in a 2006 merger). That said, for more than six
years Goldman has held a significant stake in a company notorious for ties to sex
trafficking, and it sat on the companys board for four of those years. Theres no indication
that Goldman or anyone else ever used its ownership to urge Village Voice Media to drop escort
ads or verify ages.
Note: For an abundance or major media articles revealing massive sex scandals implication top
authorities, click here.
How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word of Fannie Rescue

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LVDZC507SXKX01-21E0...
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge
fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were
mounting. Amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a
new source of contagion: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in
mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding. Around the conference room table were a
dozen or so hedge-fund managers and other Wall Street executives -- at least five of them alumni
of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from
1999 to 2006. After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil ... the discussion turned to
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The secretary [desribed] a possible scenario for placing Fannie and
Freddie into conservatorship -- a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue
operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets. Paulson explained that under this
scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would
be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said ...
leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers
attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on corruption and collusion between
government officials and the largest financial firms, click here.
MF Global customers who pulled funds before bankruptcy might face

clawback attempt
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-1111-mf-global-clawback-2011111...
Former MF Global customers like Koch Industries, which pulled billions of dollars out of the
stricken broker's accounts weeks or months before its collapse, have counted their blessings in
recent days. But their relief may prove premature depending on the outcome of a separate, 4-yearold bankruptcy case involving Sentinel Management Group Inc. The lawyer overseeing that case
has gone to court to try to force some of Sentinel's former clients to take a share of the losses.
Many customers pulled out a large sum of cash before the company declared bankruptcy Oct. 31,
regulatory data and exchange estimates show. At issue is MF Global's "segregated accounts,"
client money meant to be kept strictly separate from the broker's own funds, but which regulators
say is $600 million short. That pot of money shrank by $1.5 billion in August alone, government
data showed. Another $1.8 billion fled during the following two months, according to preliminary
estimates. In total, customers pulled out more than a third of their accounts in the three months
leading up to MF Global's downfall, much of that in the frenzied final days, traders reckon. For
instance, privately held Koch Industries, whose businesses make it a leading commodities
trader, sent a letter to trading partners Oct. 3 saying it was switching eight accounts from
MF Global to Mizuho Securities USA. Koch Industries did not comment on the reason for its
move.
Note: For evidence that the Koch brothers and others were warned to move their money before
the bankruptcy, click here.
Confronting the Malefactors

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors...
When the Occupy Wall Street protests began three weeks ago, most news organizations were
derisive if they deigned to mention the events at all. For example, nine days into the protests,
National Public Radio had provided no coverage whatsoever. It is, therefore, a testament to the
passion of those involved that the protests not only continued but grew, eventually becoming too
big to ignore. Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even
eventually be seen as a turning point. The protesters indictment of Wall Street as a
destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right. Bankers took advantage of
deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through
reckless lending. The bubbles burst but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably
few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the
bankers sins. Bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them,
throwing their support and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts behind
politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the
aftermath of the crisis. Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking
a stand?
articles.
Ex-Minn. governor sues over body scans, pat-downs

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is suing the Department of Homeland Security and
the Transportation Security Administration, saying full-body scans and pat-downs at airport
checkpoints are violating his rights. Ventura filed his lawsuit [on January 24] in federal court in
Minnesota. He says the new security measures violate his right to be free from unreasonable
searches and seizures. He's asking a federal court to order officials to stop subjecting him to these
searches. Ventura was governor of Minnesota from 1999 through 2002. He now hosts the
television program "Conspiracy Theory." The lawsuit says Ventura had a hip replacement in 2008,
and his titanium implant sets off metal detectors.
Note: Jesse Ventura is one of the heros of our time. Do a video search on his name to watch
episodes of his amazingly revealing "Conspiracy Theory" programs.
Panel challenges Gulf seafood safety all-clear

2010-12-27, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40494122/ns/us_news-environment
A New Orleans law firm is challenging government assurances that Gulf Coast seafood is safe to
eat in the wake of the BP oil spill, saying it poses a significant danger to public health. Citing what
the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine
biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the
government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free
of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements.
And they say that their own testing examining fewer samples but more comprehensively
shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage. What
we have found is that FDA simply overlooked an important aspect of safety in their protocol,
contends William Sawyer, a Florida-based toxicologist on Smiths team. Five months after crude oil
stopped gushing from the broken BP wellhead into the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government has
reopened more than 90 percent of fishing waters that were in danger of contamination from the
broken Deepwater Horizon rig. But many fishermen have yet to return to sea, and consumer
confidence in Gulf seafood remains lukewarm.
Note: For important reports from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
McDonald's, 29 other firms get health care coverage waivers

2010-10-07, USA Today/Bloomberg News
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2010-10-07-healthlaw07_ST_N.htm
Nearly a million workers won't get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law
meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers. Thirty
companies and organizations, including McDonald's and Jack in the Box, won't be required
to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans, which are often used
to cover part-time or low-wage employees. The Department of Health and Human Services, which
provided a list of exemptions, said it granted waivers in late September so workers with such plans
wouldn't lose coverage from employers who might choose instead to drop health insurance
altogether. Without waivers, companies would have had to provide a minimum of $750,000 in
coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013 and unlimited in 2014.
here.
BP and the Axis of Evil

2010-06-19, BBC Blogs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/06/post.html
BP is accused of destroying the wildlife and coastline of America, but if you look back into history
you find that BP did something even worse to America. They gave the world Ayatollah Khomeini.
Back in 1951 the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company - which would later become BP - and its principal
owner the British government, conspired to destroy democracy and install a western-controlled
regime in Iran. The resulting anger and the repression that followed was one of the principal
causes of the Iranian revolution in 1978/79 - out of which came the Islamist regime of Ayatollah
Khomeini. And what's more, BP and the British government were so arrogant and bumblingly
inept at handling the crisis that they had to persuade the Americans help them. They did
this by pretending there was a Communist threat to Iran. The American government, led by
President Eisenhower, believed them and the CIA were instructed to engineer a coup which
removed the Iranian prime minister Mohamed Mossadegh. The CIA, led by Allen Dulles, ... sent
the CIA's top Middle East agen, Kermit Roosevelt, to run Operation Ajax. The plan, drawn up by
the British and the Americans, was to bribe the street gangs of Tehran to create chaos, and then
install an army general, General Zahedi, as prime minister.
New Estimates Double Rate of Oil Flowing Into Gulf

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/11spill.html
A government panel on [June 10] essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been
spewing from the out-of-control BP well, with the new calculation suggesting that an amount
equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10
days. The new estimate is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day. That range, still preliminary, is far
above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day. The higher estimates will ... most
likely increase suspicion among skeptics about how honest and forthcoming the oil
company has been throughout the catastrophe. The new estimate appears to be a far better
match than earlier ones for the reality that Americans can see every day on their
televisions. As investors have fled BP stock over uncertainties about the companys future
and its ability to pay what it will end up owing, BP has lost nearly half its market capitalization since
April, and its bonds are now trading at junk levels. Credit Suisse estimates the cleanup costs could
end up at $15 billion to $23 billion, plus an additional $14 billion of claims. Ira Leifer, a researcher
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a member of the flow-rate group, said the new
figures confirmed a suspicion he had developed, based on looking at satellite data, that the rate of
flow for the well was increasing even before BP cut the riser pipe. The situation is growing
worse, Dr. Leifer said.
Note: For an analysis of the series of false estimates by BP and the US government of the size of
the catastrophic Deep Horizon oil blowout, click here.
BP well may be spewing 100,000 barrels a day, scientist says

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/07/1668495/bp-oil-spill-seems-certain-to.html
BP's runaway Deepwater Horizon well may be spewing ...100,000 barrels a day, a member of the
government panel tasked with determining the size of the spill told McClatchy [Newspapers]. "In
the data I've seen, there's nothing inconsistent with BP's worst case scenario," Ira Leifer, an
associate researcher at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara,
and a member of the government's Flow Rate Technical Group, told McClatchy. Leifer said that
based on satellite data he's examined, the rate of flow from the well has been increasing over
time, especially since BP's "top kill" effort failed last month to stanch the flow. The decision
last week to sever the well's damaged riser pipe from the its blowout preventer in order to
install a "top hat" containment device has increased the flow still more -- far more, Leifer
said, than the 20 percent that BP and the Obama administration predicted. Leifer noted that BP
had estimated before the April 20 explosion that caused the leak that a freely flowing pipe from the
well would release 100,000 barrels of oil a day in the worst-case scenario. The oil was not freely
flowing before the top kill or before they cut the pipe, Leifer said, but once the riser pipe was
cleared, there was little blocking the oil's rise to the top of the blowout preventer. Video images
confirm that the flow of black oil is unimpeded.
Note: For an analysis of the series of false estimates by BP and the US government of the size of
the catastrophic Deep Horizon oil blowout, click here.
Rich NYC Mayor: Drug CEOs Don't Make Much Money

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=8382748
Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical
companies and their chief executives on Friday, declaring that they "don't make a lot of
money" and shouldn't be scapegoats in the health care debate. The mayor and wealthiest
person in New York City with a fortune estimated at $16.5 billion made the comments on his
radio show Friday. "You know, last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don't make a lot of
money, their executives don't make a lot of money," Bloomberg said. Pharmaceutical CEOs are
known to make millions, with generous salaries, stock options and other perks. Abbott
Laboratories Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Miles White's compensation was $25.3 million in
2008. The North Chicago, Ill.-based company saw profit rising 35 percent to $4.88 billion. Merck &
Co.'s chief executive, Richard T. Clark, received a $17.3 million compensation package for 2008.
The company's profit more than doubled to $7.8 billion. The mayor ... often battles criticism that he
is out of touch with regular people. Earlier this year he declared "we love the rich people" while
arguing against raising taxes on the wealthy. It was clear that Bloomberg or one of his aides
realized his gaffe while he was still on the air Friday. The mayor, who has sought to cast himself as
a financial and business expert, came back from a break and said he had looked up the pay of
some pharmaceutical executives. "Some of them are making a decent amount, more than a
decent amount of money," he said.
Speculators busier as crude oil cost spikes

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/28/BU1B19EQFS.DTL
Speculators now account for half of all traders in the main U.S. oil market, and their
growing presence coincided with this decade's historic rise in the price of crude, according
to a new Rice University study. The study does not try to prove that speculators caused the price
spike, as many politicians and consumer advocates believe. But the authors note that prices rose
steadily along with the number of speculative investors, and fell with them as well. Seven
years ago, speculators accounted for 20 percent of oil traders on the New York Mercantile
Exchange. That number jumped to 55 percent by the time oil prices reached their all-time peak
above $145 per barrel last summer. Now oil costs $72, and speculative investors account for half
the traders. The government limits the number of oil contracts that each speculator can hold. But
under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act [passed in 2000], trades on electronic exchanges
or overseas markets don't count toward those limits. The study uses data from the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission. Speculators are defined as traders who use oil strictly as a financial
investment, those who will never take delivery of a tanker-full of crude. "This confirms what we and
others have said for some time," said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the Public
Citizen watchdog group. "The good thing from the oil price run-up of 2008 is it has forced
Congress to realize there's a problem in these markets, and the answer is re-regulation." The
financial industry opposes tightening the regulations.
Note: To read the full study, click here.
Swine flu resembles feared 1918 flu, study finds

2009-07-13, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31889365/ns/health-swine_flu
The new H1N1 influenza virus bears a disturbing resemblance to the virus strain that caused the
1918 flu pandemic, with a greater ability to infect the lungs than common seasonal flu viruses,
researchers reported on Monday. Separately, a top official at the World Health Organization said
Monday a fully licensed swine flu vaccine might not be available until the end of the year. The
report could affect many countries' vaccination plans. But countries could use emergency
provisions to get the vaccines out quicker if they decide their populations need them. The swine flu
viruses currently being used to develop a vaccine aren't producing enough of the ingredient
needed for the vaccine, and WHO has asked its laboratory network to produce a new set of
viruses as soon as possible. Other tests showed the virus could be controlled by the antiviral drugs
Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline, and Tamiflu, made by Roche AG, the researchers said. The
World Health Organization said on Monday that vaccine makers should start making
immunizations against H1N1 and that healthcare workers should be first in line to get them. The
WHO has previously estimated that the world could have as many as 4.9 billion doses of
H1N1 swine flu vaccine ready for the next flu season but this assumes people only need
one shot and production yields are similar to seasonal vaccine.
Note: Who's making the big bucks here? Why is the WHO so strongly promoting billions of doses
of vaccines for a disease in which the vast majority of the relatively few people who have died had
underlying causes. For more on the blatant corruption of our health industry from reliable sources,
U.S. May Enlist Small Investors in Bank Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/business/09fund.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pa...
During World War I, Americans were exhorted to buy Liberty Bonds to help their soldiers on the
front. Now, it seems, they will be asked to come to the aid of their banks with the added
inducement of possibly making some money for themselves. As part of its sweeping plan to purge
banks of troublesome assets, the Obama administration is encouraging several large investment
companies to create the financial-crisis equivalent of war bonds: bailout funds. The idea is that
these investments, akin to mutual funds that buy stocks and bonds, would give ordinary Americans
a chance to profit from the bailouts that are being financed by their tax dollars. But there is
another, deeply political motivation as well: to quiet accusations that all of these giant
bailouts will benefit only Wall Street plutocrats. If, as some analysts suspect, the banks assets
are worth even less than believed, the funds investors could suffer significant losses. Nonetheless,
the administration and executives in the financial industry are pushing to establish the investment
funds, in part to counter swelling hostility against the financial industry. The embrace of smaller
investors underscores the concern in Washington and on Wall Street that Americans anger
could imperil further efforts to stimulate the economy with vast amounts of government
spending. Many Americans say they believe the bailout programs ... will benefit only a golden few,
including some of the institutions that helped push the economy to the brink. Critics like Joseph E.
Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, argue that the bailouts merely privatize profits and
socialize losses.
Financial Industry Paid Millions to Obama Aide

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/politics/04disclose.html?partner=rss&emc...
Lawrence H. Summers, the top economic adviser to President Obama, earned more than $5
million last year from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from
Wall Street companies that received government bailout money, the White House disclosed. Mr.
Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr.
Obamas policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently
received payments. Last year, he reported making 40 paid appearances, including a $135,000
speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, in addition to his earnings from the hedge
fund, a sector the administration is trying to regulate. Mr. Summerss role at the White
House includes advising Mr. Obama on whether and how to tighten regulation of
hedge funds, which engage in highly sophisticated financial trading that many analysts have said
contributed to the economic collapse. Mr. Summers ... appeared before large Wall Street
companies like Citigroup ($45,000), J. P. Morgan ($67,500) and the now defunct Lehman Brothers
($67,500), according to his disclosure report. While Mr. Obama campaigned on a pledge to restrict
lobbyists from working in the White House, a step intended to reduce any influence between the
administration and corporations, the ban did not apply to former executives like Mr. Summers, who
was not a registered lobbyist. In 2006, he became a managing director of D. E. Shaw, a firm that
manages about $30 billion in assets, making it one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.
Whitney Sees Credit Cards as the Next Crunch: Report

2009-03-10, CNBC
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29611789/
Prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney warned that "credit cards are the next credit crunch,"
as contracting credit lines will lower consumer spending and hurt the U.S. economy. "Few doubt
the importance of consumer spending to the U.S. economy and its multiplier effect on the global
economy, but what is under-appreciated is the role of credit-card availability in that spending,"
Whitney wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Although credit was extended "too freely over the past 15
years" and rationalization of lending is unavoidable, what needs to be avoided was "taking credit
away from people who have the ability to pay their bills," said Whitney, CEO of Meredith Whitney
Advisory Group. Whitney said available lines were reduced by nearly $500 billion in the fourth
quarter of 2008 alone, and she estimates over $2 trillion of credit-card lines will be cut within 2009,
and $2.7 trillion by the end of 2010. "Inevitably, credit lines will continue to be reduced across
the system, but the velocity at which it is already occurring and will continue to occur will
result in unintended consequences for consumer confidence, spending and the overall
economy," Whitney said. There is roughly $5 trillion in credit-card lines outstanding in the U.S.,
and a little more than $800 billion is currently drawn upon, she said. "Lenders, regulators and
politicians need to show thoughtful leadership now on this issue in order to derail what I believe will
be at least a 57 percent contraction in credit-card lines," she said.
Note: Some believe that rising defaults on credit card debt could cause yet another financial shock
to the system. For many more revelations of the amazing realites of the Wall Street bailout and the
now world-wide financial and credit crises, click here.
Idled workers occupy factory in Chicago

2008-12-06, Chicago Tribune/Associated Press
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-workersoccupyfact,0,1928458.story
Outraged and determined Chicago factory workers who were abruptly laid off this week have
occupied their former workplace and say they won't leave until they get the severance and
vacation pay they say they're owed. The employees say they received three days notice their plant
was closing. In the second day of a sit-in on the factory floor Saturday, about 250 union workers
occupied the building in shifts while union leaders outside criticized a Wall Street bailout they say
is leaving laborers behind. Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the
Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give its 300 employees the 60 days' notice
required by law before shutting. She said the company can't pay employees because its creditor,
Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won't let them. Bank of America received $25 billion from
the government's financial bailout package. The company said in a statement to news outlets
Saturday that it isn't responsible for Republic's financial obligations to its employees. "Across
cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame," said Richard
Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to
the workers of this country." Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs
that said, "You got bailed out, we got sold out."
Note: For many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from major media sources, click here.
Congress Wants Details On Bailout Firms' Bonus Plans

2008-10-30, CNBC
The hot-button issues of CEO pay and the Wall Street bailout may soon collide with the real world
of Wall Street bonuses, taxpayer and shareholder anger over the financial crisis, and a Treasury
secretary with deep roots on Wall Street. And that collision could be loud and ugly. Though what's
commonly known as the Wall Street bailout package includes modest restrictions on CEO pay, it
hardly prevents participating financial firms from paying bonuses to top executives and others. And
in an environment of beaten-down stock prices, rising layoffs, recession and huge government
bailouts, experts and legislators say big end-of-year bonuses will cause a firestorm of public
outrage and likely provoke a Congressional backlash. "The corporate community doesn't seem
to get it," says a seething Nell Minow, founder of the Corporate Library, which focuses on
corporate governance issues. "If the corporate leaders don't come to the American people
with some accountability, they are going to find themselves in a world of pain. Congress
will set CEO pay." "People are going to be demanding that someone go to jail," say Rep.
Peter DeFazio (D.-Ore), who says his constituents have applauded him for voting against the
legislation. "It will require Democrats to revisit restrictions [on CEO pay]. " DeFazio says he would
also recommend Congress "empower a division in the FBI and Justice Department to investigate
the fraud and misdeeds that went on."
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Days Before Scandal, Interior Got Ethics Award

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/09/day_bef...
Just before the Department of Interior's inspector general released reports that laid bare the oiland-sex scandal in the department's oil royalties office this week, Interior won an annual award
from the federal Office of Government Ethics. The inspector general said Wednesday that federal
officials in the Mineral Management Service's royalty-in-kind program allegedly were plied with
alcohol and expensive gifts from industry representatives, and in some cases had sex and did
drugs with them. The Denver-area office takes in roughly $4 billion each year in oil and natural gas
reserves from companies drilling on federal and Indian land and offshore. But, on Monday, the
Interior Department was praised for "developing a dynamic laminated Ethics Guide for employees"
that was a "polished, professional guide" with "colorful pictures and prints which demand
employees' attention." The guide, the award noted, was small enough for employees to carry.
Interior also was lauded for having held a four-day seminar for its ethics advisors nationwide. It
isn't known if those seminars included the royalty office, where investigators found that a former
program director was paid more than $30,000 for improper outside work, bought cocaine
using a personal check from his office and engaged in an illicit sexual relationship with a
subordinate; employees accepted gifts, including sports tickets and vacations, from
industry executives; and two former officials, with the help of a supervisor, arranged to get
themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting work after they retired.
Note: For many more reports of government corruption from major media sources, click here.
FDA Faulted for Approving Studies of Artificial Blood

A new analysis concludes that the Food and Drug Administration approved experiments with
artificial blood substitutes even after studies showed that the controversial products posed a clear
risk of causing heart attacks and death. The review of combined data from more than 3,711
patients who participated in 16 studies testing five different types of artificial blood, released
yesterday, found that the products nearly tripled the risk of heart attacks and boosted the chances
of dying by 30 percent. Based on the findings, the researchers questioned why the FDA allowed
additional testing of the products to go forward and why the agency is considering letting yet
another study proceed. "It's hard to understand," said Charles Natanson, a senior
investigator at the National Institutes of Health who led the analysis. "They already had data
that these products could cause heart attacks and evidence that they could kill." An artificial
blood substitute that has a long shelf life and does not need refrigeration could save untold lives by
providing an alternative to trauma patients in emergencies, especially in rural areas and in combat
settings. But attempts to develop such products have been marred by repeated failures and
fraught with controversy, in part because some products have been studied under rules allowing
researchers to administer them without obtaining consent from individual patients. After the
Washington-based consumer group Public Citizen sued the FDA to gain access to data submitted
to the agency, Natanson and colleagues at NIH and Public Citizen pooled data from studies
conducted between 1998 and 2007.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable, verifiable sources on government corruption,
click here.
Fewer Large Corporations Audited by IRS

2008-04-14, Associated Press
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hRLsCIPHsx_U88frjisSL7tE2z4gD901DS380
The tax audit rates of the largest companies are less than half what they were 20 years ago
while more small and mid-size businesses are coming under scrutiny, according to an
organization that monitors the Internal Revenue Service. The Syracuse University-based
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse described what it said was a "historic collapse" in
audits for corporations holding assets of $250 million or more. About 26 percent of them were
audited in the 2007 budget year compared with 34 percent in 2006 and 43 percent in 2005. The
IRS did not dispute the numbers, based on agency data. The TRAC report concluded that the IRS
also was concentrating on regular small and mid-sized companies to boost audit numbers.
"Moving the focus of the corporate auditors away from the large corporations and toward the
smaller ones has been quite effective when it came to increasing the overall number of these kinds
of audits but actually was counterproductive in financial terms," the researchers said. TRAC also
questioned the financial benefits of the shift. The group said that last year the government
uncovered $682 in additional recommended taxes for every revenue agent hour spent auditing the
smallest corporations, compared with $7,498 in additional taxes for audits of the largest
corporations. Dean Zerbe, national managing director for Houston-based alliantgroup, which
provides tax services for medium-sized companies, said his fear was that "in the IRS' zeal to show
Congress improved numbers in corporate audit, it is America's small and medium businesses that
are taking it on the chin."
Note: For more revelations of government corruption from major media sources, click here.
The FBI Deputizes Business

2008-02-07, Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/07/6918/
Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and
the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called
InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does -- and, at least on one
occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government,
which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who
showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to "shoot to kill" in the event
of martial law. In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January,
InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that "350
of our nation's Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard." FBI Director Robert Mueller
addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. He urged InfraGard members to contact
the FBI if they "note suspicious activity or an unusual event." And he said they could sic the FBI on
"disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers."
Note: We don't normally use Common Dreams as a news source, but as this news is so important
and the major media failed to report it, we decided to include this article here. For a revealing
report by the ACLU on this key topic, click here. For important reports from major media sources
on threats to civil liberties, click here.
Pentagon Won't Probe KBR Rape Charges

2008-01-08, ABC News
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4099514
The Defense Department's top watchdog has declined to investigate allegations that an American
woman working under an Army contract in Iraq was raped by her co-workers. The case of former
Halliburton/KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones gained national attention last month. An ABC News
investigation revealed how an earlier investigation into Jones' alleged gang-rape in 2005 had not
resulted in any prosecution, and that neither Jones nor Democratic and Republican lawmakers
have been able to get answers from the Bush administration on the state of her case. In letters to
lawmakers, DoD Inspector General Claude Kicklighter said that because the Justice Department
still considers the investigation into Jones' case open, there is no need for him to look into the
matter. "We're not satisfied with that," a Nelson spokesman said. Jones' lawyers also professed
disappointment. Despite deferring to the Justice Department, Kicklighter's office told Nelson it was
willing to pursue other questions Nelson raised about Jones' case. Kicklighter agreed to explore
"whether and why" a U.S. Army doctor handed to KBR security officials the results of
Jones' medical examination, a so-called "rape kit," which would have contained evidence of
the crime if it had occurred. In a separate letter, Kicklighter's office said that the State
Department had said its security officials had Jones' rape kit in their possession at one point.
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable reports on government corruption from major media sources,
click here.
Drug makers spend more on marketing than research: study

2008-01-03, CBC News (Canada's equivalent of PBS)
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/01/03/drugs.html
U.S. drug companies spend almost twice as much on marketing and promoting medications [as]
on research and development, a new Canadian study says. "These numbers clearly show how
promotion predominates over R&D in the pharmaceutical industry, contrary to the industry's claim,"
the authors write in this week's peer-reviewed journal Public Library of Science Medicine. Using
data from two market research companies, the University of Quebec's Marc-Andr Gagnon and
York University's Joel Lexchin found U.S. drug companies spent $57.5 billion US on
promotional activities in 2004 compared with $31.5 billion on research and development.
Promotional activities included free samples, visits from drug reps, direct-to-consumer
advertising of drugs, meetings with doctors to promote products, e-mail promotions, direct
mail and clinical trials designed to promote the prescribing of new drugs rather than to generate
scientific data. The authors say their figure of $57.5 billion US is likely an underestimate, citing
other avenues for promotion such as ghostwriting of articles in medical journals by drug company
employees, or the off-label promotion of drugs. Drug companies have long argued they are driven
primarily by research, while critics charge that marketing and profits are their primary concerns.
There were extensive U.S. government reviews of the pharmacy business in the 1950s and '60s
and again in the 1980s. But there hasn't been a comprehensive study of drug industry profits and
spending in more than a decade.
Note: For a powerful overview of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.
Back In Iraq: The 'Whores Of War'

2007-09-29, Sunday Herald (Scotland's leading newspaper, Sunday edition)
http://www.sundayherald.com/search/display.var.1724225.0.back_in_iraq_the_who...
Despite being implicated in several controversial killings, [Blackwater] is the Pentagon's most
favoured contractor and has effective diplomatic immunity in Iraq. Referred to as "the most
powerful mercenary army in the world", both the US ambassador to Iraq and the army's top
generals hold it in regard. The company, based near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina,
was co-founded by Erik Prince, a billionaire right-wing fundamentalist. At its HQ, Blackwater has
trained more than 20,000 mercenaries to operate as freelancers in wars around the world. Prince
is a big bankroller of the Republican Party - giving a total of around $275,550 - and was a young
intern in the White House of George Bush Sr. Under George Bush Jr, Blackwater received
lucrative no-bid contracts for work in Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.
His firm has pulled down contracts worth at least $320 million in Iraq alone. Jeremy Scahill, who
wrote the book Blackwater: The Rise Of The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, says when
Bush was re-elected in 2004, one company boss sent this email to staff: "Bush Wins, Four More
Years!! Hooyah!!" One Blackwater employment policy is to hire ex-administration big-hitters
into key positions. It hired Cofer Black, a former State Department co-ordinator for counterterrorism and former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre, as vice-chairman. Robert Richer,
a former CIA divisional head, joined Blackwater as vice-president of intelligence in 2005. Scahill
says the firm is "the front line in what the Bush administration views as the necessary
revolution in military affairs" - privatisation of as many roles as possible. Scahill went on to
call Prince a "neo-crusader, a Christian supremacist, who ... has been allowed to create a private
army to defend Christendom around the world."
Case Dismissed?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20884696/site/newsweek/from/ET/
The nations biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the White
House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a
measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence
communitys warrantless surveillance programs. The campaign which involves some of
Washington's most prominent lobbying and law firms has taken on new urgency in recent
weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised to rule that the
lawsuits should be allowed to proceed. If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be
forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community or risk potentially
crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to
the government without a judicial warrant. But critics say the language proposed by the White
House drafted in close cooperation with the industry officials is so extraordinarily broad that it
would provide retroactive immunity for all past telecom actions related to the surveillance program.
Its practical effect, they argue, would be to shut down any independent judicial or state inquires
into how the companies have assisted the government in eavesdropping on the telephone calls
and e-mails of U.S. residents in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks. Its clear the
goal is to kill our case," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
[which] filed the main lawsuit against the telecoms after The New York Times first disclosed, in
December 2005, that President Bush had approved a secret program to monitor the phone
conversations of U.S. residents without first seeking judicial warrants. I find it a little shocking that
Congress would participate in the covering up of what has been going on," added Cohn.
China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/business/worldbusiness/12security.html?ex=1...
At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here [in Shenzhen] in
southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an Americanfinanced company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual
activity. Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of
12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same
company will be issued to most citizens. Data on the chip will include not just the citizens
name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police
record, medical insurance status and landlords phone number. Even personal reproductive
history will be included, for enforcement of Chinas controversial one child policy. Plans
are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to
the card. Security experts describe Chinas plans as the worlds largest effort to meld cutting-edge
computer technology with police work to track the activities of a population. But they say the
technology can be used to violate civil rights. We have a very good relationship with U.S.
companies like I.B.M., Cisco, H.P., Dell, said Robin Huang, the chief operating officer of China
Public Security. All of these U.S. companies work with us to build our system together. The role
of American companies in helping Chinese security forces has periodically been controversial in
the United States. Executives from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems testified in
February 2006 at a Congressional hearing called to review whether they had deliberately designed
their systems to help the Chinese state muzzle dissidents on the Internet; they denied having done
so.
U.S. dropped Enron-like fraud probe

2007-07-23, Sacramento Bee (Leading newspaper of California's capital city)
Two years into a fraud investigation, veteran federal prosecutor David Maguire told colleagues
he'd uncovered one of the biggest cases of his career. Maguire described crimes "far worse"
than those of Arthur Andersen, the accounting giant that collapsed in the wake of the Enron
scandal. Among those in his sights: executives from a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, the
investment empire overseen by billionaire Warren Buffett. In May 2006, he felt strongly enough
about his case that he prepared a draft indictment accusing executives from a Virginia insurer,
Reciprocal of America, of concocting a series of secret deals to hide its losses from regulators.
Although he didn't name anyone from Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiary, he described the company
as a participant in the scheme. But Maguire never brought those charges. Months after preparing
the draft, he was removed as the lead prosecutor on the case and reassigned. His replacement, a
prosecutor who hadn't been involved in the case until then, soon announced that the Berkshire
Hathaway subsidiary, General Reinsurance, would not be indicted. By April of this year, the entire
investigation ... had fizzled. Former employees and policyholders of the Richmond-based insurer
were astounded. Why had the Justice Department spent upward of $2 million to investigate
the case only to decline to prosecute? Maguire and his team of investigators had secured two
related guilty pleas, interviewed dozens of witnesses and gathered 7,000 boxes of documents.
Tom Gober, a certified fraud examiner who worked on the case ... concluded that the Justice
Department had buckled under pressure from defense lawyers. "It just stinks," he said. "You don't
come in out of nowhere and in no time kill three years of sophisticated effort."
AAA wants gas-price inquiry

2007-05-16, The San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/16/BUGVAPRFRQ1.DTL
AAA asked the U.S. Senate Tuesday to investigate why oil companies are making huge profits at a
time when glitches at gas refineries have caused pump prices to soar. "We are concerned about
the number and frequency of refinery outages this year in light of the large profits the industry has
been reporting," AAA Public Affairs Director Geoff Sundstrom told the Senate Committee on
Energy and Natural Resources. "AAA doesn't know why refiners appear to be failing at this task,
but we do think it would be worth the committee's time and trouble to find out." Sundstrom spoke at
a Senate hearing at which lawmakers asked energy experts to explain the spell of unplanned
refinery shutdowns that have thrown gas supplies into disarray from coast to coast, boosting
average pump prices to a record $3.09 per gallon in the United States. California Energy
Commission spokesman Bob Aldrich said his agency does not investigate the industry but does
track its practices. This year the big story was a series of glitches in the annual switchover from
winter gas to a differently formulated summer gas. Tom Kloza, publisher of the Oil Price
Information Service ... said the surprise this year was that refineries outside California also had
unplanned problems with their normal spring maintenance. "I did not think we'd see the same
downtime elsewhere in the country," he said. Sean Comey, spokesman for AAA of Northern
California, said the gas refining business is unusual because it seems that even when
production goes down, prices and profits go up. "When most industries have production
problems, profits suffer as a result," he said.
New fears over additives in children's food

2007-05-08, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2074349,00.html
Food safety experts have advised parents to eliminate a series of additives from their children's
diet while they await the publication of a new study that is understood to link these ingredients to
behaviour problems in youngsters. The latest scientific research into the effect of food additives on
children's behaviour is thought to raise fresh doubts about the safety of controversial food
colourings and a preservative widely used in sweets, drinks and processed foods. It will be several
months before the results are published, despite the importance of the findings for children's
health. Researchers at Southampton University have tested combinations of synthetic colourings
and preservative that an average child might consume in a day to measure what effect they had on
behaviour. A source at the university [said] their results supported findings first made seven
years ago that linked the additives to behavioural problems, such as temper tantrums, poor
concentration and hyperactivity, and to allergic reactions. Independent experts say that
consumers should consider removing these additives from their children's diets now. Dr Alex
Richardson, the director of Food and Behaviour Research and senior research scientist at Oxford
University, said: "There are well-documented potential risks from these additives. In my view the
researchers had done an excellent piece of work first time round and there was enough evidence
to act. If this new study essentially replicates that, what more evidence do they need to remove
these additives from children's food and drink?"
Note: For how drug companies collude with government to suppress this kind of information, click
here.
Nicotine boost was deliberate, study says

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/01/18/nicotine_boost_was_delib...
Data supplied by tobacco companies strongly suggest that in recent years manufacturers
deliberately boosted nicotine levels in cigarettes to more effectively hook smokers, Harvard
researchers conclude in a study being released today. The companies increasingly used
tobacco richer in nicotine and made design changes to give smokers more puffs per cigarette,
according to the analysis from the Harvard School of Public Health. The report expands on a
landmark Massachusetts Department of Public Health study issued last August showing that the
amount of nicotine that could be inhaled from cigarettes increased an average of 10 percent from
1998 through 2004. A 1996 state law required cigarette makers to test the nicotine that could be
inhaled from their products, and the state ordered the use of machines that simulate a typical
smoker's puffing. The Harvard researchers, who corroborated the basic findings of the state study,
wanted to determine why cigarettes were delivering more nicotine. "Industry says it's changed,"
said Greg Connolly, an author of the Harvard study. "They've changed -- maybe for the worse."
The Harvard study relies on information supplied by the industry. "It was systematic, it was
pervasive, it involved all the manufacturers, and it was by design," said Dr. Howard Koh, an
associate dean at the Harvard School of Public Health and an author of the study. Another author
said that the likelihood that the nicotine increase happened by chance was less than 1 in 1,000.
CEOs earn 262 times pay of average worker

2006-06-21, ABC News/Reuters
Chief executive officers in the United States earned 262 times the pay of an average worker in
2005. In fact, a CEO earned more in one workday than an average worker earned in 52
weeks, said the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. The typical worker's compensation
averaged just under $42,000 for the year, while the average CEO brought home almost $11
million. In 1965, U.S. CEOs at major companies earned 24 times a worker's pay. In recent years,
compensation has been a hot issue with shareholders who have been bombarded with news
stories about chief executives who are given multimillion dollar bonus and pay packages even if
shares have declined. The chief executives of 11 of the largest companies were awarded a
total of $865 million in pay in the last two years, even as they presided over a total loss of
$640 billion in shareholder value, a recent study from governance firm the Corporate
Library, found.
U.S. corporations are sitting on huge stockpiles of cash

2006-05-28, Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Associated Press
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/271828_market27.html
Imagine the dilemma of having so much cash in your bank account that you didn't know what to do
with it. This pipe dream for the average American is now reality for the country's biggest
corporations. The industrial companies that make up the Standard & Poor's 500 index...have a
staggering $643 billion in cash and equivalents. "We're in a time that is out of whack with all
historical numbers," said Howard Silverblatt, equity market analyst at Standard & Poor's. "People
are demanding why corporations need so much cash, what are they going to do with it?"
Companies began propping up their reserves through 16 straight quarters of double-digit
profit growth. Leading the pack with the most cash is Exxon Mobil Corp., which has about
$36.55 billion on its balance sheet. That amount is nearly equal to its 2005 profit of $36.13
billion, the highest ever for a U.S. company. Some results of the cash riches: An unprecedented
$500 billion of stock buybacks. Last year, ExxonMobil spent $18.2 billion buying its shares. One of
the biggest avenues in which companies have spent this excess money has been through mergers
and acquisitions. Some 75.4 percent of all deals under $1 billion so far this year were done purely
with cash.
Note: A Google search reveals that though this Associated Press article was widely picked up by
medium-sized newspapers in the U.S., none of the top 10 papers picked it up. The Seattle
newspaper above also removed the word "huge" from the title after it was published. $36 billion
means that more than $100 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. went into ExxonMobil
profits last year, and another $100 for each person went into their cash reserves. If ExxonMobil
and other oil companies have so much extra cash, why are gas prices so high? It's also quite
interesting that the advertisements of these mega-corporations continually invite us to go into debt
buying their products, while their profits and cash reserves grow ever higher.
A case for conspiracy theorists

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12759539/site/newsweek/
Is there a case for conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the Iraq war? About 10 minutes into the
ultra-low-budget documentary 'Loose Change,' now making its way around the Internet, that late,
great genius of addled truth-telling, Hunter S. Thompson, is heard giving his gonzo opinion of the
way the American press behaved after 9/11. "Well, let's see, 'shamefully' is the word that comes to
mind," he says. The kernel of truth in all the conspiracy theories is that the Bush administration's
biggest supporters and closest political allies have benefited mightily from its policy of open-ended
war. Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old company -- which is all about both oil
and defense -- has seen its stock rise from about $12 a share to about $80 a share under
this administration. ExxonMobil, which has contributed mightily to the Republican Party,
has seen its stock soar from about $32 to $64 since Bush took office. Share prices in both
companies, and in their industries, were plunging before the Bush administration came to office in
early 2001. 'Loose Change' doesn't present a plausible case for conspiracy, only a collection of
innuendoes. But the invasion of Iraq, well, that's a rather different matter. As a whole raft of books
by former members of the administration, Bush admirers and outside analysts have established
over the last couple of years, the president and vice president were hell-bent on toppling Saddam
Hussein even before September 2001.
Note: Though the author belittles 'Loose Change,' he also makes some great points and alerts
people to the fact that this free documentary has gained wide popularity.
The true story of how multinational drug companies took liberties with
African lives
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article315125.ece
The pharmaceutical industry is bracing itself for criticism when the film 'The Constant
Gardener' opens next month. Away from the Hollywood script is a true story of how
multinational drug companies took liberties with African lives with devastating
consequences. Directed by Fernando Meirelles, of City of God fame, it is a thriller, a love story
and a blistering attack on the drugs industry and the way it carelessly expends the lives of innocent
citizens in the Third World in the quest for billion-dollar medicines to sell to the first world. After the
credits roll, a note from John Le Carr appears on screen that reads: "As my journey through the
pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realise that, by comparison with the reality, my story
was as tame as a holiday postcard." The film features two brutal killings, a savage beating, a
campaign of harassment, intimidation and threats. The crimes of the pharmaceutical industry from the price protection of Aids drugs which have denied life-saving medicines to millions, to the
cover up of lethal side effects to protect profits - are well documented. The companies are not
obliged to disclose a lot of information about how they test or make their drugs. There's big, big
money involved. Editors of medical journals including The Lancet and The Journal of the American
Medical Association had come under pressure not to publish data or to change it. The bigger
scandal...lies in the rapacious pricing of the pharmaceutical industry that puts lifesaving drugs out
of reach of individuals, hospitals and even nations.
You've got to find what you love [by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs]
2005-06-15, Stanford Report of Stanford University
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the
world. I never graduated from college. This is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. I
dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months. If I had never dropped out, I would have
never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful
typography that they do. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. I was lucky I
found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20.
We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2
billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation the
Macintosh a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. I didn't see it then,
but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever
happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a
beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of
my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named
Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Sometimes life hits you
in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was
that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And most important, have the courage to
follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.
Note: The full speech (available at the link above) is highly inspiring. For some excellent ideas on
how to find what you love and develop the courage to follow your heart and intuition, click here.
A Serious Drug Problem

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/opinion/06krugman.html
Note: The following is the New York Times website's abstract of this article, which is a very good
summary.
2003 Medicare bill is object lesson in how special interests hold America's health care system
hostage; says law subsidizes private health plans, which have repeatedly failed to deliver
promised cost savings, and creates unnecessary layer of middlemen by requiring that drug benefit
be administered by private insurers; says it specifically prohibits Medicare from using its
purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices; notes that Rep Billy Tauzin, who shepherded
drug bill through Congress, now heads all-powerful drug-industry lobbying group, and Thomas
Scully, former Medicare administrator, negotiated for future health industry lobbying job at same
time he was pushing drug bill; calls Medicare bill corrupt deal created by corrupt system.
Secret US plans for Iraq's oil

2005-03-17, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4354269.stm
The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks,
sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil. Two years ago today - when President
George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters
claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered. In fact there
were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the
Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department
"pragmatists". "Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan [was] drafted with the help of
American oil industry consultants. Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of
Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US. The industryfavoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which
called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent
on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel. Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who
took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the
sell-off scheme. Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who
arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or facilities
while I was involved." Formerly US Secretary of State, [James] Baker is now an attorney
representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government.
NJ court rules for nurse in vaccine-refusal firing

2015-06-05, Denver Post/Associated Press
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_25906577/
A nurse was unfairly denied unemployment benefits after she was fired for refusing a flu
shot without claiming a religious or medical exemption, a New Jersey appeals court ruled
Thursday. The three-judge panel wrote that the hospital's policy of allowing religious or medical
exemptions to the flu shot requirement "unconstitutionally discriminated against" plaintiff June
Valent by rejecting her refusal to be vaccinated for secular reasons. Valent was working as a nurse
at Hackettstown Community Hospital in 2010 when the hospital's parent company began requiring
employees to take the flu vaccine unless they had medical or religious reasons not to. Employees
claiming an exemption were required to sign a form and provide documentation. Anyone refusing
the vaccine was required to wear a mask while at work. Valent declined the vaccine but didn't state
a medical or religious reason, and agreed to wear a mask. She was terminated based on her
refusal of the vaccine and disqualified for unemployment benefits by a Department of Labor board
of review after several hearings and appeals from both sides. The board concluded that the
hospital demonstrated Valent had engaged in work-related misconduct by refusing the flu shot,
according to Thursday's ruling. The appellate judges concluded that the hospital violated Valent's
right to freedom of expression by endorsing the religious-based exemption while denying her
secular choice.
Note: Read powerful evidence that some vaccines are not safe nor effective. Remember that big
Pharma makes billions in profit from vaccines.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-settlement-language-i...
The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a
massive free-trade agreement. Who will benefit from the TPP? One strong hint is [a provision]
called Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic
chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If
a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to
challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before
an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldnt be challenged in U.S.
courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions
and even billions of dollars in damages. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldnt
employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and
forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgement the next. If the tilt
toward giant corporations wasnt clear enough, consider who would get to use this special court:
only international investors, which are, by and large, big corporations. So if a Vietnamese company
with U.S. operations wanted to challenge an increase in the U.S. minimum wage, it could use
ISDS. But if an American labor union believed Vietnam was allowing Vietnamese companies to
pay slave wages in violation of trade commitments, the union would have to make its case in the
Vietnamese courts.
Note: The above article was written by courageous US Senator Elizabeth Warren, and further
clarifies why the TPP is a pending disaster.
What Halliburton's $1.1 Billion Spill Settlement Means for BP

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-02/what-halliburtons-1-dot-1-bil...
Halliburton has wrapped up most of its lingering liability for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill with a
$1.1 billion settlement announced on [September 2]. The pact will resolve accusations that
Halliburtons cement work on the ill-fated Macondo well contributed to a disaster that killed 11 rig
workers and spewed millions of barrels of crude into the gulf. First off, the timing of the settlement
announcement may signal that U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is nearing a decision on the Big
Question of how to apportion overall blame for the spilland, more specifically, what kind of
additional legal bill faces BP as the main operator of the well. The British company has already
paid out more than $28 billion and faces additional liability that could total an additional
tens of billions. The $1.1 billion settlement represents Halliburtons biggest payout yet in
the disaster. Transocean, owner of the drilling rig, settled a batch of claims last year for $1.4
billion. Beyond settlement payouts, the Gulf spill litigation is costing the various companies
implicated in the disaster enormous legal feesor, more precisely, its costing their insurance
carriers large amounts. Prior to settlement, Halliburton had incurred fees and expenses of $294
million, $263 million of which was covered by insurance, according to a filing in July. Halliburton
had set aside reserves of $1.3 billion for costs related to the spill.
Companies proclaim water the next oil in a rush to turn resources into
profit
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jul/27/water-nestle-drink-charge-privat...
Making money from water? Is this what Wall Street wants next? This summer, however,
myriad business forces are combining to remind us that fresh water isnt necessarily or
automatically a free resource. It could all too easily end up becoming just another
economic commodity. At the forefront of this firestorm is Peter Brabeck, chairman and former
CEO of Nestl. In his view, citizens dont have an automatic right to more than the water they
require for mere survival, unless they can afford to pay for it. For context, the World Health
Organization sets such survival consumption levels at a minimum of 20 liters a day for basic
hygiene and food hygiene higher, if you add laundry and bathing. But Brabeck probably isnt the
best standard-bearer for the cause of responsible water management, by any stretch of the
imagination. Consider the fact that as the drought has worsened, Nestl Waters North Americas
Inc the largest bottled water company in the country has continued to pump water from an
aquifer near Palm Springs, California, thanks to its partnership with the Morongo Band of Mission
Indians. Their joint venture, bottling water from a spring on land owned by the band in Millard
Canyon, has another advantage: since the Morongo are considered a sovereign nation, no one
needs to report exactly how much water is being drawn from the aquifer.
U.S. Criticized for Lack of Action on Mortgage Fraud

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/u-s-overstates-efforts-to-prosecute-mo...
Four years after President Obama promised to crack down on mortgage fraud, his
administration has quietly made the crime its lowest priority and has closed hundreds of
cases after little or no investigation, the Justice Departments internal watchdog said on [March
13]. The report by the departments inspector general undercuts the presidents contentions that
the government is holding people responsible for the collapse of the financial and housing
markets. The administration has been criticized, in particular, for not pursuing large banks
and their executives. The inspector generals report ... shows that the F.B.I. considered mortgage
fraud to be its lowest-ranked national criminal priority. In several large cities, including New York
and Los Angeles, F.B.I. agents either ranked mortgage fraud as a low priority or did not rank it at
all. The F.B.I. received $196 million from the 2009 to 2011 fiscal years to investigate mortgage
fraud, the report said, but the number of pending cases and agents investigating them dropped in
2011. Mortgage fraud was one of the causes of the 2008 financial collapse. Mortgage brokers and
lenders falsified documents, sometimes to make mortgages look safer, other times to make the
property look more valuable.
Note: For more on government collusion with the banking industry, see the deeply revealing
Facial Scanning Is Making Gains in Surveillance

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/us/facial-scanning-is-making-gains-in-surve...
The federal government is making progress on developing a surveillance system that would pair
computers with video cameras to scan crowds and automatically identify people by their faces,
according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with researchers working on the project.
The Department of Homeland Security tested a crowd-scanning project called the Biometric
Optical Surveillance System or BOSS last fall after two years of government-financed
development. Although the system is not ready for use, researchers say they are making
significant advances. That alarms privacy advocates, who say that now is the time for the
government to establish oversight rules and limits on how it will someday be used. In a sign of
how the use of such technologies can be developed for one use but then expanded to
another, the BOSS research began as an effort to help the military detect potential suicide
bombers. But in 2010, the effort was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security to
be developed for use instead by the police in the United States. The effort to build the BOSS
system involved a two-year, $5.2 million federal contract given to Electronic Warfare Associates, a
Washington-area military contractor with a branch office in Kentucky. Significant progress is
already being made in automated face recognition using photographs taken under ideal conditions,
like passport pictures and mug shots. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is spending $1 billion to
roll out a Next Generation Identification system that will provide a national mug shot database to
help local police departments verify identities.
Note: For more on government and corporate threats to privacy, see the deeply revealing reports
Livestock antibiotic use rampant despite warnings

http://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/Livestock-antibiotic-use-rampant-de...
In March, the head of the Centers for Disease Control issued an alarm, echoed by virtually every
health authority in the world, that antibiotic-resistant bacteria threaten to return humans to the days
when ordinary infections routinely killed and maimed. Yet the United States continues to use at
least 70 percent of its antibiotics on livestock. Millions of pounds of antibiotics are routinely
administered at low doses to large numbers of animals living in crowded conditions ... to speed
their growth and prevent possible infections, creating ideal conditions for bacteria to become
resistant. At the same time, drug-resistant infections acquired in hospitals kill 70,000 people a
year. The problem is so dire that the Obama administration is paying drug companies to develop
new antibiotics, and some groups want to test them directly on sick people to speed approval.
While many physicians try to limit antibiotic use on sick patients to slow the spread of
resistance, livestock growers can buy antibiotics over the counter at a feed store. "Many
hospitals have implemented antimicrobial stewardship programs, in which every milligram
of antibiotic use is scrutinized," said Dr. Tom Newman, a professor of epidemiology and
biostatistics at UCSF. About once a month, Brad Spellberg, an infectious disease researcher at
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said he sees patients with abdominal or urinary tract E. coli
infections that resist all oral antibiotics. Doctors are down to "one or two last-ditch IVs," or
intravenous administration of antibiotics against some bacteria.
Note: For more on important health issues, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-challenges-us-gag-or...
Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on [June 18] to ease longstanding gag orders over data requests the court makes, arguing that the company has a
constitutional right to speak about information it is forced to give the government. The legal filing,
which invokes the First Amendments guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the
California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about broad
National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic. Revelations about the program, called
PRISM, have opened fissures between U.S. officials and the involved companies, which have
scrambled to reassure their users without violating strict rules against disclosing information that
the government has classified as top secret. A high-profile legal showdown might help
Googles efforts to portray itself as aggressively resisting government surveillance, and a
victory could bolster the companys campaign to portray government surveillance requests
as targeted narrowly and affecting only a small number of users. [The] unusual legal move
came after days of intense talks between federal officials and several of the technology
companies, including Google, over what details can be released. It also comes as the firms
increasingly show signs of wanting to outdo each other in demonstrating their commitment to
protecting user privacy. Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo in recent days have won federal
government permission to include requests from the court as part of the overall number of data
requests they receive from federal, state and local officials.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government assaults on
privacy, click here.
Reformer in the black hat

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/diaz/article/Reformer-in-the-black-hat-458...
Jack Abramoff had just delivered a primer on the corruption of Congress when a University of San
Francisco graduate student in public affairs posed the question: Does ethical lobbying exist, or is
the cutting of moral corners just part of the job description? Abramoff, whose mastery of capital
sleaze earned him a fortune and then a prison term, estimated that 95 percent of the
thousands of lobbyists who populate Washington are ethical. He was, by his own
admission, among the 5 percent. "The problem is, when you're one of those (unethical)
lobbyists, you will be able to crush the other lobbyists," said Abramoff, now 55, repentant
after 43 months in federal prison and on a crusade to reform the system he exploited so adroitly.
Abramoff's reform plan ... would expand the definition of lobbyist to anyone (person or corporation)
that tries to influence legislation, impose a limit on campaign contributions to $500 per election
cycle and prohibit legislators, staffers and administration decisionmakers from lobbying activity for
10 years after leaving government. In Abramoff's eyes, well-directed money is the only way to
overcome the corrosive influence of strategically distributed money in Washington. He has written
a book, Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most
Notorious Lobbyist, and become an advocate of political reform. He still owes nearly $44 million in
restitution for defrauding his tribal clients.
Note: Abramoff, who manipulated tens of millions of dollars, was sentenced to a total of 10 years
in jail, yet was released after less than four years. At the same time petty thieves caught three
times in many US states are sentenced to life in prison. Where's the justice? For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.
What would the Koch brothers do to the Los Angeles Times?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-what-would-the-koch-br...
The [Los Angeles Times] is one of the eight daily newspapers now owned by the creditors who
took control of the Tribune Co. after real estate wheeler-dealer Sam Zell drove it into bankruptcy.
The Tribune board members whom the creditors selected want to unload the papers in favor of
more money-making ventures. Right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch are looking to buy
all eight papers. The Koch boys, whose oil-and-gas-based fortune places them just behind Bill
Gates, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison as the wealthiest Americans, have been among the chief
donors to the tea party wing of the Republican Party. Their political funding vehicle, Americans for
Prosperity, ranked with casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson among the largest funders of right-wing
causes and candidates in 2012. Their purchase offer [comes] complete with a commitment to
journalism as a branch of right-wing ideology. The staffs at [the Tribune Co.] papers fear that,
once Kochified, the papers would quickly turn into print versions of Fox News. A recent
informal poll that one L.A. Times writer conducted of his colleagues showed that almost all
planned to exit if the Kochs took control (and that included sportswriters and arts writers).
Those who stayed would have to grapple with how to cover politics and elections in which their
papers owners played a leading role. Its also unclear who in Los Angeles, one of the nations
most liberal cities, would actually want to read such a paper, but then the Kochs dont appear to
view this as a money-making venture.
UN Adopts Treaty to Regulate Global Arms Trade

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/adopts-treaty-regulate-global-arms-trade-1...
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the first international treaty regulating the
multibillion-dollar global arms trade [on April 2], after a more than decade-long campaign. The final
vote: 154 in favor, 3 against and 23 abstentions. "This is a victory for the world's people," U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "The Arms Trade Treaty will make it more difficult for deadly
weapons to be diverted into the illicit market. ... It will be a powerful new tool in our efforts to
prevent grave human rights abuses or violations of international humanitarian law." Never before
has there been a treaty regulating the global arms trade, which is estimated to be worth $60 billion.
Frank Jannuzi, deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA [said,] "The voices of
reason triumphed over skeptics, treaty opponents and dealers in death to establish a
revolutionary treaty that constitutes a major step toward keeping assault rifles, rocketpropelled grenades and other weapons out of the hands of despots and warlords who use
them to kill and maim civilians, recruit child soldiers and commit other serious abuses."
What impact the treaty will actually have remains to be seen. It will take effect 90 days after 50
countries ratify it, and a lot will depend on which ones ratify and which ones don't, and how
stringently it is implemented. As for its chances of being ratified by the U.S., the powerful National
Rifle Association has vehemently opposed it, and it is likely to face stiff resistance from
conservatives in the Senate, where it needs two-thirds to win ratification.
Sucker Alert? Insider Selling Surges After Dow 14,000

2013-02-05, CNBC
Insiders have been pulling out of stocks just as small investors are getting in. Selling by corporate
executives has surged recently as the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 14,000 and retail investors
flooded into stocks. The amount of insider selling has usually preceded market selloffs. "In almost
perfect coordination with an equity market that was rushing toward new all-time highs, insider
sentiment has weakened sharply falling to its lowest level since late March 2012," wrote David
Coleman of the Vickers Weekly Insider report, one of the longest researchers of executive buying
and selling on Wall Street. "Insiders are waving the cautionary flag in an increasingly aggressive
manner." There have been more than nine insider sales for every one buy over the past
week among NYSE stocks, according to Vickers. The last time executives sold their company's
stock this aggressively was in early 2012, just before the S&P 500 went on to correct by 10
percent to its low for the year. "Insiders know more than the vast majority of market participants,"
said Enis Taner, global macro editor for RiskReversal.com. "And they're usually right over a long
period of time." "Insiders (are) showing a remarkable ability of late to identify both market
peaks and troughs," states the Vickers report. For selling to be big enough that firms like Vickers
raise a bearish flag, the bulls may want to take heed.
Note: For more on this, click here.
Justice Department sues S&P over mortgage bond ratings

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sandp-justice-20130205,0,1104883.story
The federal government is ... going after Wall Street's biggest credit rating firm for its role in
pumping up the housing bubble. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit [on Feb. 4] against
Standard & Poor's Corp. The suit accuses the company's analysts of issuing glowing reviews
on troubled mortgage securities whose subsequent failure helped cause the worst financial
crisis since the Great Depression. The action marks the first federal crackdown against a
major credit rater, and it signals an untested legal tack after limited success in holding the
nation's banks accountable for the part they played in the crisis. The government selected Los
Angeles as the venue to file the lawsuit in part because it was one of the regions hardest hit when
the bottom fell out of the housing market. Hundreds of thousands of California residents lost their
homes to foreclosure, and others saw their wealth evaporate as properties plummeted in value. In
addition to the Justice Department, several state attorneys general are investigating the ratings
agency. States such as California and New York are expected to pursue their own investigations
and legal action, people familiar with the matter said. The federal action does not involve any
criminal allegations. Critics have complained that the government has yet to send any senior
bankers or Wall Street executives to jail for potential illegal behavior that led to the crisis. But civil
actions typically require a much lower burden of proof.
Soldiers win $85m compensation from Iraq war contractor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/03/soldiers-win-compensation-iraq-co...
A jury has ordered an $85m compensation payout by the American military contractor Kellogg
Brown and Root ... after finding it guilty of negligence for illnesses suffered by a dozen soldiers
who guarded an oilfield water plant during the Iraq war. KBR was ordered to pay $6.2m to each of
the soldiers in punitive damages and $850,000 in non-economic damages. During the Iraq war
KBR was the engineering and construction arm of Halliburton, the biggest US contractor during the
conflict. KBR split from Halliburton in April 2007. The US lawsuit was the first concerning American
soldiers' exposure to a toxin at a water plant in southern Iraq. The soldiers have said they suffer
from respiratory ailments after their exposure to sodium dichromate and fear that a carcinogen it
contains hexavalent chromium could cause cancer later in life. The contractor's defence
ultimately rested on the fact that it informed the US army of the risks of exposure to sodium
dichromate. KBR was tasked with reconstructing the decrepit, scavenged plant just after the March
2003 invasion while troops from the US national guard defended the area. Bags of unguarded
sodium dichromate a corrosive substance used to keep pipes at the water plant free of rust
were ripped open, allowing the substance to spread across the plant and into the air. When KBR
was still part of Halliburton it won a large share of Pentagon contracts to build and manage
US military bases in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Its former chief executive, Dick Cheney,
was US vice-president.
Top Bank of England director admits Occupy movement had a point

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/top-bank-of-england-director-ad...
The Occupy movement received vindication from an unlikely source tonight, as a senior executive
at the Bank of England credited it with stirring a reformation of finance. Andrew Haldane,
executive director of financial stability, said Occupy protesters had been both loud and
persuasive, and had attracted public support because they are right. Some have suggested
that Occupys voice has been loud but vague, long on problems, short on solutions. Others have
argued that the fault-lines in the global financial system, which chasmed during the crisis, are
essentially unaltered, that reform has failed, Mr Haldane said. I wish to argue that both are wrong
that Occupys voice has been both loud and persuasive and that policymakers have listened and
are acting in ways which will close those fault-lines. In fact, I want to argue that we are in the early
stages of a reformation of finance, a reformation which Occupy has helped stir. Speaking at an
Occupy Economics event in central London, Mr Haldane said that Occupy had been
successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one
very simple reason: they are right. He added that protesters ... touched a moral nerve in
pointing to growing inequities in the allocation of wealth. Mr Haldane ended with a direct
appeal to activists to continue putting pressure on governments and regulators. He said: You have
put the arguments. You have helped win the debate. And policymakers, like me, will need your
continuing support in delivering that radical change.
here.
Most expired drugs work fine, study says

http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Most-expired-drugs-work-fine-study-says-...
Thinking about going through your medicine cabinet and throwing out all your expired
prescriptions? That might not be necessary, according to a UCSF-led study. Researchers
analyzed eight prescription drugs with 15 active ingredients that expired between 28 and 40
years ago and found that most remained just as potent as they were on the day they were
made. In 12 of the 14 drug compounds, or 86 percent of the time, the amount of active
ingredient present in the drugs was at least 90 percent of the amount indicated on the label.
That's well within the "reasonable variation" allowed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of
90 percent to 110 percent. Only two compounds - aspirin and the stimulant amphetamine - fell
below the 90 percent threshold. Another medication, the painkiller phenacetin, fell below the
threshold in one sample but was found in levels greater than 90 percent in another. The study was
published online last week in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Note: A drug listed expired as 40 years ago is still just as potent as the day it was made. Could
short expiration dates be an example of drug companies finding a way to make more money
through unnecessary disposal of older medications?
U.S. sues Wells Fargo in mortgage fraud case

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49351559/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/us-sues...
The U.S. government filed a civil mortgage fraud lawsuit on [October 9] against Wells Fargo & Co,
the latest legal volley against big banks for their lending during the housing boom. The complaint,
brought by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, seeks damages and civil penalties from Wells Fargo
for more than 10 years of alleged misconduct related to government-insured Federal Housing
Administration loans. The lawsuit alleges the FHA paid hundreds of millions of dollars on
insurance claims on thousands of defaulted mortgages as a result of false certifications by
Wells Fargo, the fourth-biggest U.S. bank as measured by assets. "As the complaint alleges, yet
another major bank has engaged in a longstanding and reckless trifecta of deficient training,
deficient underwriting and deficient disclosure, all while relying on the convenient backstop of
government insurance," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Bharara's office has brought
similar cases in the past few years, including one against Citigroup Inc unit CitiMortgage Inc, which
settled the case for $158.3 million in February, and against Deutsche Bank, which paid $202.3
million in May to resolve its case. The U.S. Attorney's office in Brooklyn brought the biggest such
case, against Bank of America Corp's Countrywide unit, which agreed in February to pay $1 billion
to resolve the allegations.
here.
Supreme Court denies Chevron $19bn Ecuador appeal

2012-10-09, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19892561
The US Supreme Court has declined to block a judgement from an Ecuadorean court that a
US oil firm pay billions in damages for pollution in the Amazon. Chevron was fighting a
ruling that it must pay $18.2bn (11.4bn) in damages, a sum increased to $19bn in July. It is
the latest move in a decades-long legal wrangle between Texaco, bought by Chevron in 2001, and
the people of the Lago Agrio region of Ecuador. The decision could affect other oil firms accused of
pollution. The case claimed that Texaco contaminated land between 1964 and 1992, and has
triggered several other lawsuits in courts within the US and elsewhere. In March 2011 a court in
New York issued an injunction that blocked the judgement. But it was overturned in January this
year by an appeals court, which said Chevron had challenged the judgement prematurely. The
appeals court also said the New York judge could not stop other, foreign courts from enforcing the
judgement - something the Ecuadorean plaintiffs are working to do in Canada and Brazil. The
judgement originally ordered $8.6bn in environmental damages, but that was more than doubled
because the oil company did not apologise publicly.
click here.
Get Antibiotics Off the Farm

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/opinion/get-antibiotics-off-the-farm.html
The feeding of antibiotics in small doses to entire herds or flocks to promote rapid weight gain
poses a serious threat to human health. The constant dosing promotes the emergence of germs
that are resistant to veterinary drugs and to the very similar drugs used in humans. That raises the
risk that when humans are infected by the germs, the medicines they rely on will be less effective.
Earlier this month, a federal magistrate judge in New York told the Food and Drug Administration
to quit dillydallying on its three-decade effort to curb indiscriminate use of antibiotics in farm
animals to spur their growth. He set a timetable for the agency to follow in withdrawing two
important drugs - penicillin and two forms of tetracycline - from widespread use in animals.
The trouble is, that timetable will give the F.D.A. five more years to complete the process.
click here.
Spent Fuel Rods Drive Growing Fear Over Plant in Japan

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/asia/concerns-grow-about-spent-fuel-r...
Fourteen months after the accident [at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant], a pool brimming with
used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a
heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic. The publics fears about the pool have
grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off
a new catastrophe ... as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region. The jury-rigged cooling
system for the pool has already malfunctioned several times, including a 24-hour failure in April.
Had the outages continued, they would have left the rods at risk of dangerous overheating. The
No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel
pool, said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto Universitys Research Reactor Institute
and one of the experts raising concerns. Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly
into the environment. The worst-case situations for Reactor No. 4 would be for the pool to
run dry if there is another problem with the cooling system and the rods catch fire,
releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material, or for fission to restart if the metal
panels that separate the rods are knocked over in a quake. That would be especially bad
because the pool, unlike reactors, lacks containment vessels to hold in radioactive materials.
Note: For extensive coverage from reliable sources on corruption in the nuclear power industry,
click here.
Report: Apple legally sidesteps billions in taxes

2012-04-29, Sacramento Bee/Associated Press
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/29/4451423/report-apple-legally-sidesteps.html
A published report says Apple Inc. uses subsidiaries in Ireland, the Netherlands and other low-tax
nations as part of a strategy that enables the technology giant to cut its global tax bill by billions of
dollars every year. The New York Times on [April 29] outlined legal methods used by Cupertino,
Calif.-based Apple to avoid paying billions of dollars in federal and state taxes. One approach
highlighted in the report: Even though the company is based in California, Apple has set up a
small office in Reno, Nev. to collect and invest its profits. The corporate tax rate in Nevada
is zero. In California, it's 8.84 percent. While many major corporations try to reduce their tax
bills, technology companies like Apple, Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have more options
to do so. That's because some of their revenue comes from digital products or royalties on
patents, which makes it easier for them to move profits to tax-friendly states or countries. Apple
has legally allocated about 70 percent of its profits overseas, where tax rates are often much lower
than in the U.S., according to company filings. The Times cites a study by former Treasury
Department economist Martin A. Sullivan that estimates Apple's federal tax bill would have been
$2.4 billion higher last year without such tactics.
Protesters air grievances at Wells Fargo meeting

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/24/MN881O8BCL.DTL
Protesters enraged about the country's economic miasma disrupted Wells Fargo's annual summit
[on April 24], as shareholders celebrated the bank's record profit and awarded its chief executive a
pay package of nearly $20 million. Hundreds of activists - including union members, Occupy
activists and people whose homes have been foreclosed - surrounded the Merchants Exchange
Building in downtown San Francisco, where about 250 shareholders gathered on the 15th floor to
hear details of the bank's 28 percent profit increase last year. Fifteen protesters, allowed into the
meeting because they own stock in Wells Fargo, shouted over CEO John Stumpf as he presented
a PowerPoint slide show about the bank's $15.9 billion profit last year. Police escorted out the
protesters, who were cited for disrupting the meeting and released. It was the bank's
involvement in foreclosures ... that brought hundreds of protesters to the meeting. Some
came from as far away as Minnesota. They filled the air with lively chants, led by people
using loudspeakers set up on a flatbed truck alongside an 8-foot-high, inflated rat smoking
a cigar. A protester-built, 10-foot-high mockup of Wells Fargo's signature stagecoach stood in the
street, covered with slogans denouncing the bank.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on Occupy and other protests against the criminal
profiteering of banks and other financial corporations, click here.
The Best-Selling Drugs In America

2012-04-19, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2011/04/19/the-best-selling-drugs-i...
Why is a me-too drug for which there are much cheaper alternatives the second-best selling
medicine in the United States? Today, IMS Health released its annual look at the sales of
prescription drugs in America. It is the first year in which all of the top ten medicines in
America are generics. This year, cancer drugs passed antipsychotic medicines as the top
revenue generators. The biggest surprise ... is in the second-place spot: Nexium, ... from
AstraZeneca, which generated $6.3 billion in sales. Abilify, from Otsuka and Bristol-Myers Squibb,
passed Seroquel from Astra as the top-selling antipsychotic drug for disease like schizophrenia,
bipolar disorder, and depression. Crestor, AstraZenecas cholesterol drug, has delivered a pretty
stunning 5-year sales increase of 190%, apparently grabbing patients for whom Lipitor, from Pfizer,
is not powerful enough. Sales do not equal popularity. Only three of these drugs (Lipitor, Plavix,
and Singulair) rank among the top 25 most popular medicines. Price is often as big a component in
making money as volume.
Illinois lawmakers target practice of jailing debtors

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505247_162-57416794/ill-lawmakers-target-practice...
Jailed for unpaid debts? It happened to breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay. She got a $280
medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it. But the bill was turned over to a
collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in
handcuffs. Debt collectors have become so aggressive in some parts of Illinois that they
commonly use taxpayer-financed courts, sheriff's deputies and county jails to squeeze
poor people who fall behind on small payments of $25 or $50 a month, according to
supporters of the proposed legislative reforms. Lawmakers in Springfield are pushing to make it
harder to jail poor people who miss court dates or are found in contempt of court as they struggle
with unpaid debts an aggressive practice that got worse, some say, during the recession.
Lindsay, a teaching assistant from Herrin in southern Illinois, ended up paying more than $600
because legal fees had been added to the original amount. "I paid it in full so they couldn't do it to
me again," Lindsay said. The Illinois bill would require court appearance notices to be served to a
debtor's home, rather than merely mailed. It would require arrest warrants to expire after a year,
and it would return most bail money to the debtor, rather than allow it to be used to pay off the
debt.
Note: For more on this, click here.
Japan nuke plant leaks radioactive water again

2012-04-05, Salt Lake Tribune/Associated Press
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/53866558-68/plant-leaks-japan-leak.html.csp
The operator of Japans tsunami-hit nuclear plant says tons of highly radioactive water
appears to have leaked into the ocean from a purification unit. The leak comes as Tokyo
Electric Power Co. struggles to keep the melted reactors cool and contain radiation and raises
concerns about its ability to keep the plant stable. Similar leaks have occurred several times since
last year, and officials say they do not pose an immediate health threat.
Note: For an abundance of major media articles showing major problems with nuclear power, click
here.
2 Studies Point to Common Pesticide as a Culprit in Declining Bee

Colonies
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/science/neocotinoid-pesticides-play-a-role-...
Scientists have been alarmed and puzzled by declines in bee populations in the United States and
other parts of the world. They have suspected that pesticides are playing a part, but to date their
experiments have yielded conflicting, ambiguous results. In Thursdays issue of the journal
Science, two teams of researchers published studies suggesting that low levels of a common
pesticide can have significant effects on bee colonies. One experiment, conducted by French
researchers, indicates that the chemicals fog honeybee brains, making it harder for them to find
their way home. The other study, by scientists in Britain, suggests that they keep bumblebees from
supplying their hives with enough food to produce new queens. The authors of both studies
contend that their results raise serious questions about the use of the pesticides, known as
neonicotinoids. I personally would like to see them not being used until more research has
been done, said David Goulson, an author of the bumblebee paper who teaches at the
University of Stirling, in Scotland. If it confirms what weve found, then they certainly
shouldnt be used when theyre going to be fed on by bees. Environmentalists say that both
studies support their view that the insecticides should be banned. The insecticides, introduced in
the early 1990s, have exploded in popularity; virtually all corn grown in the United States is treated
with them. Neonicotinoids are taken up by plants and moved to all their tissues including the
nectar on which bees feed.
Note: For many disturbing reports from reliable sources on the mysterious mass deaths of
animals, click here.
Goldmans Tax-Free Building Loan Makes Liberty Bonds Tough Sell

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-11/goldman-s-tax-free-building-loan-...
A tax-free bond program that provided below-market financing to build Goldman Sachs Group
Inc.s headquarters is expiring while New York developers say the citys commercial real estate
market still needs support. Congress created the Liberty Bond program in March 2002 with $8
billion in tax-exempt funds to rebuild lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The
allocation ran out last month, and the tax exemption ended on Dec. 31 along with dozens of other
breaks for manufacturers, energy companies and transit commuters. Critics that include
affordable housing advocates say the bonds were little more than a subsidy for fancy
Manhattan apartments and office towers for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp.
Developers counter that, more than a decade after the attacks, low-cost financing remains
necessary to help lower Manhattans commercial market recover. The Liberty Bonds made
available to the World Trade Center site are only enough to support rebuilding a little less than 60
percent of the office space lost on 9/11, Larry Silverstein, the World Trade Centers developer,
said in an e- mail. In an ideal world, more such resources would be made available to help jumpstart construction of the remaining 40 percent of the office space that was destroyed by terrorists.
His company, Silverstein Properties Inc., received almost $3 billion through the Liberty Bond
program to help redevelop the World Trade Center site. Goldman financed construction of its
headquarters at 200 West St. with about $1.5 billion in Liberty Bond financing. Bank of Americas
tower across from Bryant Park was financed with $650 million in Liberty Bonds.
Note: Larry Silverstein can't stop complaining about terrorists despite the billions of dollars he
made from the 9/11 attacks. For his admission on television that WTC 7 was brought down by
controlled demolition at his command, not by terrorists, click here.
Ecuador court upholds $8.6 billion ruling against Chevron

2012-01-04, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/04/world/americas/ecuador-chevron-lawsuit
An Ecuadorian appeals court upheld an $8.6 billion ruling against oil giant Chevron stemming from
claims that the company had a detrimental impact on Amazonian communities where it operated.
The judgment against Chevron is the latest in 19 years of litigation between Amazon residents and
Texaco, which was later purchased by Chevron. In addition, the appeals court ruled that Chevron
must publicly apologize to Ecuador, and if it fails to do so, the fine will be doubled to nearly $18
billion. The case, Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco, was originally filed in New York in 1993 on behalf of
30,000 inhabitants of Ecuador's Amazon region. The suit was eventually transferred to the
Ecuadorian court and Ecuadorian jurisdiction. The lawsuit alleges that Texaco used a variety of
substandard production practices in Ecuador that resulted in pollution that decimated several
indigenous groups in the area, according to a fact sheet provided by the Amazon Defense
Coalition. According to the group, Texaco dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste
into Amazon waterways, abandoned more than 900 waste pits, burned millions of cubic
meters of gases with no controls and spilled more than 17 million gallons of oil due to
pipeline ruptures. Cancer and other health problems were reported at higher rates in the
area, the group says.
Note: For key reports on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Passive Occupy protesters take pepper spray blast

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/11/20/passive_occup...
As video spread of an officer in riot gear blasting pepper spray into the faces of seated protesters
at a northern California university, outrage came quickly -- followed almost as quickly by defense
from police and calls for the chancellor's resignation. In the video, an officer dispassionately
pepper-sprays a line of several sitting protesters who flinch and cover their faces but
remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the
officer to stop. As the images were circulated widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on
Saturday, the university's faculty association called on [UC Davis Chancellor Linda] Katehi
to resign, saying in a letter there had been a "gross failure of leadership." The protest was held in
support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement and in solidarity with protesters at the
University of California, Berkeley. Images of police actions have served to galvanize support during
the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the clash between protesters and police in Oakland last
month that left an Iraq War veteran with serious injuries to more recent skirmishes in New York
City, San Diego, Denver and Portland, Ore. Some of the most notorious instances went viral
online, including the use of pepper spray on an 84-year-old activist in Seattle and a group of
women in New York.
Note: For a one-minute video of this disturbing action, click here. For an eight-minute video
showing how students eventually drive the police out after this, click here.
Japan: signs of possible nuclear fission at Fukushima plant

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8863967/Japan-signs-of-p...
The radioactive gas xenon, which is often the byproduct of unexpected nuclear fission, was
detected at the Fukushima Daiichi plant during tests. Officials were today injecting boric
acid as an emergency precautionary measure to stem any accidental chain reactions which
could result in further radiation leakages. The discovery of such a gas is likely to be regarded
as an unwelcome setback among operators who are keen to achieve cold shutdown by the end of
the year. Officials both from Tokyo Electric Power Co, which operates the plant, and from Japan
Atomic Energy Agency, were today (WED) reexamining the gases to double check their identity.
The discovery of the gases coincided with the controversial reopening of a nuclear reactor in
southern Japan the first to be put back online since the March 11 Fukushima disaster. The
Genkai plant in Kyushu was restarted despite strong public opposition, after officials confirmed it
had passed safety tests following its closure over technical problems last month. Anti-nuclear
public sentiment has been growing across Japan since the nation was caught up in the on-going
atomic crisis, the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Around 40 of Japan's 54
reactors currently remain offline for testing, with the Genkai plant widely regarded as a symbolic
first step in restarting dozens more across the country.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on corporate and government corruption, click here
and here.
Is Homeland Security spending paying off?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-911-homeland-money-20110...
A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal
and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up
sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing
surveillance cameras and bombproof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an everevolving list of mobile explosives. But how effective has that 10-year spending spree been? "The
number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes,
is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who
die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor
who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting
terrorism. "So if your chance of being killed by a terrorist in the United States is 1 in 3.5 million, the
question is, how much do you want to spend to get that down to 1 in 4.5 million?" he said. The vast
network of Homeland Security spyware, concrete barricades and high-tech identity screening is
here to stay. The Department of Homeland Security, a collection of agencies ranging from border
control to airport security sewn quickly together after Sept. 11, is the third-largest Cabinet
department and with almost no lawmaker willing to render the U.S. less prepared for a terrorist
attack one of those least to fall victim to budget cuts.
Note: For a powerful article that goes much deeper into huge sums of money wasted in the war on
terror by journalist Glenn Greenwald, click here.
AIG sues Bank of America for $10 billion

2011-08-08, The Globe and Mail/Reuters News
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/aig-sues-bank-of-america-for-10...
The insurer AIG is suing Bank of America to recover more than $10 billion of losses from a
"massive fraud" on mortgage debt, deepening the morass of litigation faced by the largest U.S.
bank. American International Group Inc, still largely owned by taxpayers after $182.3-billion of
government bailouts, is the latest of a growing number of investors filing lawsuits to hold banks
responsible for losses on soured mortgages that contributed to the financial crisis. The AIG
complaint accuses Bank of America and its Countrywide and Merrill Lynch units of
misrepresenting the quality of mortgages placed in securities and sold to investors.
"Defendants were engaged in a massive scheme to manipulate and deceive investors, like
AIG, who had no alternative but to rely on the lies and omissions made," said the complaint,
being filed in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Bank of America bought
Countrywide for $2.5 billion in July 2008 and acquired Merrill six months later. The Countrywide
acquisition is almost universally considered a disaster because of the costs of litigation and writing
down bad loans.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the government bailout of major banks and Wall
Street corporations, click here.
Banking Run Amok Is Less Likely a Year After Dodd-Frank

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-17/banking-run-amok-is-less-likely-a-ye...
With the first anniversary of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law on July 21, ... what has it
accomplished? Consumer advocates, many congressional Democrats and some economists
say banks are still too big, the derivatives market remains untamed and opaque, and
regulators have been slow to write hundreds of rules. Rules forcing most derivatives trades to
be processed through clearinghouses, and backed by collateral, should ... be accepted globally to
avoid regulatory arbitrage, in which trading firms move to countries with the least intrusive, and
lowest cost, oversight. Less than three years ago, the financial system almost buckled under the
weight of worthless mortgages, and the country narrowly avoided another Great Depression.
Regulators had been blind to the credit boom and bust; banks took huge risks that exploited
regulatory gaps. Today, the economy remains weak ... because of the lingering fallout of the
financial crisis. Dodd-Frank isnt perfect, but already its influence on the financial system has been
positive, in ways big and small. Accounting is more transparent; off-balance-sheet assets are
largely a thing of the past. [Yet] with the top 10 U.S. banks holding 77 percent of the
industrys domestic assets, compared with 55 percent in 2002, too-big-to-fail is an even
bigger worry today. Thomas M. Hoenig, the Kansas City Federal Reserve president, has said
that the incentives for risk-taking that existed before the crisis all remain in place.
Note: For many of the most informative reports from major media sources on the financial
meltdown and government bailout of the biggest banks, click here.
Industries lobby against voluntary nutrition guidelines for food

marketed to kids
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/industries-lobby-against-voluntary-nut...
The food and advertising industries have launched a multi-pronged campaign to squash
government efforts to create voluntary nutritional guidelines for foods marketed to
children. Calling themselves the Sensible Food Policy Coalition, the nations biggest
foodmakers, fast-food chains and media companies, including Viacom and Time Warner,
are trying to derail standards proposed by four federal agencies. The U.S. Chamber of
Commerce has also lent its lobbying muscle to the effort. The guidelines are designed to
encourage foodmakers to reduce salt, added sugars and fats in foods and drinks targeted to
children. Public-health experts say children, many of whom may lack the critical-thinking skills to
understand advertising, are bombarded daily by television ads, Web sites, toy giveaways and
cartoon characters promoting junk food. The food and beverage industry spends about $2 billion a
year marketing directly to children. The business community has portrayed the governments
guidelines as job-killing government overreach. We allow companies into our homes to
manipulate children to want food that will make them sick, said Margo Wootan of the Center for
Science in the Public Interest.
Note: The "Sensible Food Policy Coalition" is arguing against voluntary guidelines designed to
help our children eat more nutritious food. Is that Orwellian doublespeak or what?
Storms knock out TVA nuclear units and power lines

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-rt-usreport-us-utilititre73r03g-20110428,0,...
Severe storms and tornadoes moving through the U.S. Southeast dealt a severe blow to the
Tennessee Valley Authority [on April 27], causing three nuclear reactors in Alabama to shut and
knocking out 11 high-voltage power lines, the utility and regulators said. All three units at TVA's
3,274-megawatt Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama tripped about 5:30 EDT after losing
outside power to the plant, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. A TVA
spokeswoman said the station's backup power systems, including diesel generators, started and
operated as designed. External power was restored quickly to the plant but diesel generators
remained running Wednesday evening, she said. The Browns Ferry units are among 23 U.S.
reactors that are similar in design to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan
where backup generators were swept away in the tsunami that followed the massive
earthquake on March 11.
Note: And what might have happened if one of those tornadoes happened to hit a nuclear power
plant?
Can you get hooked on diet soda?

2011-03-02, CNN/Health.com
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/01/diet.soda.health/index.html
People who down several diet sodas per day are hardly rare. Government surveys have found that
people who drink diet beverages average more than 26 ounces per day (some drink far more) and
that 3% of diet-soda drinkers have at least four daily. Are these diet-soda fiends true addicts? And
if so, what are they addicted to? Research suggests that the artificial sweeteners in diet soda
(such as aspartame) may prompt people to keep refilling their glass because these fake sugars
don't satisfy like the real thing. "Your senses tell you there's something sweet that you're tasting,
but your brain tells you, 'Actually, it's not as much of a reward as I expected,'" says Martin P.
Paulus, MD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, and one of the
authors of the study. "The consequence might be that the brain says, 'Well, I'll have more of this.'"
In other words, artificial sweeteners may spur drinkers -- or their brains -- to keep chasing a
"high" that diet soda keeps forever just out of reach. It's not clear that this teasing effect
can lead to dependence, but it's a possibility, Dr. Paulus says. "Artificial sweeteners have
positive reinforcing effects -- meaning humans will work for it, like for other foods, alcohol, and
even drugs of abuse," he says. "Whenever you have that, there is a potential that a subgroup of
people ... will have a chance of getting addicted."
Note: This article fails to mention the many scientists and brain surgeons who have gone on
record describing the incredible dangers of aspartame, the main ingredient in most artificial
sweeteners. To educate yourself on the serious health risks of aspartame, watch the very well
researched documentary at this link.
Avastin increases fatal side effects in cancer patients

2011-02-02, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/cancer/2011-02-02-avastin02_o...
One of the most financially successful cancer drugs in the world appears to cause more fatal side
effects than previously realized, a new study says. Avastin, a blockbuster drug with more than $5.5
billion in global sales, increases the rate of fatal side effects by almost 50% when added to
traditional chemotherapy, compared with chemo alone. About 2.5% of cancer patients who
combine Avastin and chemo die from their treatment rather than their disease, according
to an analysis of 10,217 patients in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. In
comparison, 1.7% of cancer patients who received only conventional chemo died as a
result of therapy. The most common causes of death were hemorrhages, the loss of infectionfighting white blood cells, and perforations in the stomach or intestines, says Shenhong Wu of
Stony Brook University School of Medicine, co-author of the analysis of 10,217 patients.
Note: Sadly, most studies that reveal such results are suppressed by the pharmaceutical industry.
Nigeria charges Dick Cheney in Halliburton bribery case

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40555171/ns/world_news-africa/
Nigeria's anti-corruption agency on [December 7] charged former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney
over a bribery scheme involving oil services firm Halliburton Co. during time he served as its top
official. The charges stem from a case involving as much as $180 million allegedly paid in bribes to
Nigerian officials, said Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission. Halliburton and other firms allegedly paid the bribes to win a contract to build
a $6 billion liquefied natural gas plant in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta, he said. The
Halliburton case involves its former subsidiary KBR, a major engineering and construction services
firm based in Houston. In February 2009, KBR Inc. pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to
authorizing and paying bribes from 1995 to 2004 for the plant contracts in Nigeria. The spokesman
said each charge in the 16-count indictment carried as much as three years in prison. Nigeria, a
major oil supplier to the U.S., long has been considered by analysts and watchdog groups as
having one of the world's most corrupt governments.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on government and corporate corruption, click here
and here.
S African hospital group pleads guilty in organ scandal

2010-11-10, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11725536
South Africa's largest private medical group has pleaded guilty to performing illegal kidney
transplant operations at one of its hospitals. The medical group Netcare admitted that
children were recruited to donate their organs, and said the hospital had wrongly profited
from the operations. The charges related to more than 100 operations carried out at the hospital
in Durban between 2001 and 2003. Poor donors, often from Brazil, were flown in and given
thousands of dollars to have a kidney removed. These were then given to those in need, who were
often wealthy Israelis. Several of those directly involved pleaded guilty at the time, but Netcare which runs more than 50 hospitals in South Africa - had until now refused to accept responsibility.
Things began to change when prosecutors brought charges against Netcare's chief executive and
the company made a plea bargain. In return for those charges being dropped, Netcare accepted
that some of its employees had known that the kidney donors and recipients had not been related.
It acknowledged that "payments must have been made to the donors for their kidneys, and that
certain of the kidney donors were minors at the time that their kidneys were removed. Certain
employees participated in these illegalities, and (the hospital) wrongly benefited from the
proceeds."
Note: For key reports from major media sources on corporate corruption and criminality, click here
Court OKs Hormone-Free Label On Dairy Products In Ohio

2010-10-01, NPR blog
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/10/01/130270131/court-give-hormone-free-...
A federal court yesterday struck down an Ohio ban on dairy products whose labels say they're
made from milk that's free of hormones that increase cows' milk production. That means
companies that want to say their products are "rbGH free" and "rbST free" and "artificial hormone
free" are now free to do so. The ruling challenges the FDA's 17-year-old finding that there's
"no significant difference" between the milk of cows given growth hormone and those that
aren't. Just that sort of distinction ... is part of the ongoing debate about how to label
genetically engineered salmon. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said there is a
"compositional difference" between milk from cows given growth hormones and those without. The
court gave three reasons they're different: * Increased levels of the hormone IGF-1; * A period of
milk with lower nutritional quality during each lactation; and * Increased somatic cell counts (i.e.
more pus in the milk). But the FDA concluded in 1993 when it approved the growth hormone that
the milk shows "no significant difference" in milk from untreated cows.
Note: To learn more about how your health has been endangered by previous media and
government decisions, click here. For a stunning 10-minute video clip showing how crazy this can
get, click here.
WJLA-TV fires veteran anchor Doug McKelway, cites insubordination,

misconduct
WJLA-TV has fired veteran anchorman Doug McKelway for a verbal confrontation this summer
with the station's news director that came after McKelway broadcast a sharply worded live report
about congressional Democrats and President Obama. McKelway was placed on indefinite
suspension in late July after his run-in with ABC7's news director and general manager, Bill Lord.
In a letter to McKelway this week, the station said it was terminating his contract immediately,
citing insubordination and misconduct. Amid the ongoing BP oil spill in July, McKelway covered a
Capitol Hill demonstration by environmental groups protesting the influence of oil-industry
contributions to members of Congress. In his piece, McKelway said the sparsely attended event
attracted protesters "largely representing far-left environmental groups." He went on to say the
protest "may be a risky strategy because the one man who has more campaign contributions
from BP than anybody else in history is now sitting in the Oval Office, President Barack
Obama, who accepted $77,051 in campaign contributions from BP." Lord took exception to
McKelway's reporting and asked to meet with him, according to several station sources who were
granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel matter. A shouting match between the two
men ensued, leading to McKelway's suspension, sources said.
Spill Bound BP, Feds Together

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=11451806
For months, the U.S. government talked with a boot-on-the-neck toughness about BP, with the
president wondering aloud about whose butt to kick. But privately, it worked hand-in-hand with the
oil giant to cap the runaway Gulf well and chose to effectively be the company's banker -- allowing
future drilling revenues to potentially be used as collateral for a victim compensation fund. Now,
with a new round of investigative hearings set to begin [today] on BP's home turf and the disaster
largely off the front pages, there's worry BP PLC could get a slap on the wrist from its behind-thescenes partner. That could trickle down to states hurt by the spill and hoping for large fines
because they may share in the pie. In the past few weeks, public messages from BP and the
government have been almost in lockstep. The government even released a report
criticized by academic researchers and some lawmakers as too rosy asserting that much
of the oil released into the Gulf is gone, playing into BP's message that its unprecedented
response effort is working. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Thursday that White House support
for the oil report shows the administration's "pre-occupation with the public relations of the oil spill
has superseded the realities on the ground."
and here.
Obama administration's scientists admit alarm over chemicals

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/03/gulf-oil-spill-chemicals-epa
The Obama administration is facing internal dissent from its scientists for approving the use of
huge quantities of chemical dispersants to tackle the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Guardian
has learned. Jeff Ruch, the exective director of the whistleblower support group Public Employees
for Environmental Responsibility, said he had heard from five [EPA] scientists and two other
officials who had expressed concerns to their superiors about the use of dispersants. "There was
one toxicologist who was very concerned about the underwater application particularly," he said.
"The concern was the agency appeared to be flying blind and not consulting its own specialists
and even the literature that was available." Veterans of the Exxon Valdez spill questioned the
wisdom of trying to break up the oil in the deep water at the same time as trying to skim it on the
surface. Other EPA experts raised alarm about the effect of dispersants on seafood. Ruch said
EPA experts were being excluded from decision-making on the spill. "Other than a few
people in the united command, there is no involvement from the rest of the agency," he
said. EPA scientists would not go public for fear of retaliation, he added.
CIA hires Xe, formerly Blackwater, to guard facilities in Afghanistan,

elsewhere
The CIA has hired Xe Services, the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide,
to guard its facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The previously undisclosed CIA contract is
worth about $100 million. The revelation comes only a day after members of a federal
commission investigating war-zone contractors blasted the State Department for granting
Xe a new $120 million contract to guard U.S. consulates under construction in Afghanistan.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano stopped short of confirming the contract, saying only that Xe
personnel would not be involved in operations. The firm, based in Moyock, N.C., has been fighting
off prosecution and lawsuits since a September 2007 incident in Baghdad, when its guards opened
fire in a city square, allegedly killing 17 unarmed civilians and wounding 24. Two weeks ago, [CEO
Erik] Prince announced that he was putting the company on the block. A spokeswoman said "a
number of firms" are interested in buying but declined to elaborate.
Blackwater Firm Gets $120M U.S. Gov't Contract

2010-06-18, CBS News
CBS News has learned in an exclusive report that the State Department has awarded a part of
what was formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide a contract worth more than $120 million for
providing security services in Afghanistan. Private security firm U.S. Training Center, a business
unit of the Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater, now called Xe Services, was awarded the contract [on
June 18], a State Department spokeswoman said. Under the contract, U.S. Training Center will
provide "protective security services" at the new U.S. consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif,
Afghanistan, the spokeswoman said. The firm can begin work "immediately" and has to start within
two months. The contract lasts a year but can be extended twice for three months at a time to last
a maximum of 18 months. The awarding of the contract comes just more than four months
after the government of Iraq ordered hundreds of Blackwater-linked security guards to
leave the country within seven days or face possible arrest. The Justice Department is also
trying to prosecute a case against five Blackwater guards who had opened fire on a
crowded Baghdad street in 2007. The Justice Department's case or Blackwater's expulsion from
Iraq didn't block U.S. Training Center from bidding on the multi-million dollar contract, the State
Department spokeswoman said.
Note: For an analysis, click here. For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources,
click here.
Report: Revolving Door Spins Quickly Between Congress, Wall Street

2010-06-03, Center for Responsive Politics/Public Citizen
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/06/report-revolving-door-spins-quickly.html
Organizations in the financial services sector have deployed at least 1,447 former federal
employees to lobby Congress and federal agencies since the beginning of 2009, according to a
joint analysis of federal disclosure records and other data released today by Public Citizen and the
Center for Responsive Politics. This small army of registered financial services sector lobbyists
includes at least 73 former members of Congress, of whom 17 served on the banking committees
of either the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate. At least 66 industry lobbyists worked
for these committees as staffers, while 82 additional lobbyists once worked for congressional
members who currently serve on these key committees. Further, at least 42 financial services
lobbyists formerly served in some capacity in the U.S. Treasury Department. At least seven served
in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, including two former comptrollers. Wall Street
hires former members of Congress and their staff for a reason," said David Arkush, director of
Public Citizens Congress Watch division. "These people are influential because they have
personal relationships with current members and staff. Its hard to say no to your friends."
Note: To read the full report, click here. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics
is the nation's premier research group tracking money in federal politics and its effect on elections
and public policy. Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in
Washington, D.C.
Green Gone Wrong: Can Capitalism Save the Planet?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/business/energy-environment/04shelf.html
The global economic collapse pushed the rise of green capitalism off business magazine covers,
but it will surely resurface. Now, along comes Heather Rogers, who warns about the dangers of
buying into this mind-set with Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the
Environmental Revolution. She says green capitalism is actually undermining ecological progress.
She says corporate America has led us into thinking that we can save the earth mainly by buying
things like compact fluorescent light bulbs, hybrid gas-electric cars and carbon offsets. Green
Gone Wrong ... doesnt just go after easy targets like big corporations that she says are clearly
more interested in making money than saving the earth. Some of the most poignant moments
come when Ms. Rogers visits organic farmers in upstate New York. She laments that they cant
make a living because it is so expensive for them to comply with the federal certification
requirements for organic foods. What isnt being talked about is that many of the small
organic producers who are expected to lead the reinvention of the food system can barely
make ends meet, she says. [The book] would have been better had Ms. Rogers delved more
deeply into another of her suggestions: instead of buying green, we simply need to buy less stuff.
She seems reluctant to push this too hard because its a truly radical idea that flies in the face of
capitalism green or not.
Note: Heather Rogers is an established investigative journalist who is also the author of the
acclaimed book Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage.
2 Ex-Workers Accuse Blackwater Security Company of Defrauding the

U.S. for Years
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/us/11suit.html
Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security company of
defrauding the government for years by filing bogus receipts, double billing for the same services
and charging government agencies for strippers and prostitutes, according to court documents
unsealed this week. In a December 2008 lawsuit, the former employees said top Blackwater
officials had engaged in a pattern of deception as they carried out government contracts in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The lawsuit,
filed under the False Claims Act, also asserts that Blackwater officials turned a blind eye to
excessive and unjustified force against Iraqi civilians by several Blackwater guards. Blackwater
has earned billions of dollars from government agencies in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks,
when the company won contracts to protect American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan. The
former employees who filed the lawsuit, a married couple named Brad and Melan Davis, said there
was little financial oversight of the money. The documents detailing the Davises accusations were
unsealed after the Justice Department declined to join in the case against Blackwater, which last
year changed its name to Xe Services.
Note: For lots more on corporate fraud and war profiteering from reliable sources, click here.
U.S. Companies Join Race on Iraqi Oil Bonanza

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/middleeast/14rebuild.html
A wave of American companies have been arriving in Iraq in recent months to pursue what is
expected to be a multibillion-dollar bonanza of projects to revive the countrys stagnant petroleum
industry, as Iraq seeks to establish itself as a rival to Saudi Arabia as the worlds top oil producer.
Since the 2003 American-led invasion, nearly all of the biggest reconstruction projects in
Iraq have been controlled by the United States. Many rebuilding contracts are expected to
be awarded as soon as this month. Concerns have been heightened by the prominent role
expected to be played by American companies that have been criticized in the past ... for
overcharging by hundreds of millions of dollars, performing shoddy work and failing to finish
hundreds of crucial projects while under contract in Iraq. Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR,
as well as Bechtel and Parsons, have been singled out for criticism by the Special Inspector
General for Iraq Reconstruction for their previous work in Iraq.
Note: The contracts just keep on coming for this key group of US corporations with connections to
the highest levels of the US government. For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the
profiteering which is such a major drive to modern war, click here.
"Capitalism is evil", says new Michael Moore film

2009-09-06, Calgary Herald/Reuters
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Capitalism+evil+says+Michael+Moore+film/196...
Capitalism is evil. That is the conclusion U.S. documentary maker Michael Moore comes to in his
latest movie "Capitalism: A Love Story", which [premiered] at the Venice film festival on Sunday.
Blending his trademark humour with tragic individual stories, archive footage and publicity stunts,
the 55-year-old launches an all out attack on the capitalist system, arguing that it benefits the rich
and condemns millions to poverty. "Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil," the
two-hour movie concludes. "You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is
good for all people and that something is democracy." The bad guys in Moore's mind are big
banks and hedge funds which "gambled" investors' money in complex derivatives that few, if any,
really understood and which belonged in the casino. The filmmaker also sees an uncomfortably
close relationship between banks, politicians and U.S. Treasury officials, meaning that regulation
has been changed to favour the few on Wall Street rather than the many on Main Street. He says
that by encouraging Americans to borrow against the value of their homes, businesses created the
conditions that led to the crisis, and with it homelessness and unemployment. Moore even features
priests who say capitalism is anti-Christian by failing to protect the poor.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street
Pandemic flu shows need for pharma incentives: WHO

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE56D1XM20090714
Pharmaceutical firms need incentives, including lucrative patents, to keep creating drugs and
vaccines against emergent threats such as the H1N1 influenza pandemic, the World Health
Organization's head said on Tuesday. "Progress in public health depends on innovation.
Some of the greatest strides forward for health have followed the development and
introduction of new medicines and vaccines," said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan
said. Chan, who last month declared a full pandemic underway from the H1N1 virus, said that
patents can help ensure that companies develop medicines to "stay ahead of the development of
drug resistance" in diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. The discovery of isolated H1N1
infections that resist the anti-viral Tamiflu, made by Roche and Gilead, and the global scramble to
secure flu vaccines have shown the importance of robust research and development, Chan said.
"Innovation is needed to keep pace with the emergence of new diseases, including pandemic
influenza caused by the new H1N1 virus," she told a meeting on intellectual property and health, a
contentious issue that has divided rich and poor nations.
Note: How much more blatant can it get? The WHO is telling us to pump money into the corrupt
pharmaceutical corporations, who make huge profits from fear mongering and health disasters.
When profit drives the health industry, which do you think comes first, money or public health? For
lots more revealing, reliable information on the fear-mongering around swine flu, click here and
here.
'Run on UK' sees foreign investors pull $1 trillion out of the City
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/run-on-uk-sees=foreign-invest...
A silent $1 trillion "Run on Britain" by foreign investors was revealed yesterday in the latest
statistical releases from the Bank of England. The external liabilities of banks operating in the UK
that is monies held in the UK on behalf of foreign investors fell by $1 trillion (700bn) between
the spring and the end of 2008, representing a huge loss of funds and of confidence in the City of
London. Some $597.5bn was lost to the banks in the last quarter of last year alone, after a ...
massive $682.5bn haemorrhaged in the second quarter of 2008 a record. About 15 per cent of
the monies held by foreigners in the UK were withdrawn over the period. This is by far the
largest withdrawal of foreign funds from the UK in recent decades about 10 times what
might flow out during a "normal" quarter. The revelation will fuel fears that the UK's reputation
as a safe place to hold funds is being fatally compromised by the acute crisis in the banking
system and a general trend to financial protectionism internationally. The slide in sterling it has
shed a quarter of its value since mid-2007 has been both cause and effect of the run on London,
seemingly becoming a self-fulfilling phenomenon. The danger is that the heavy depreciation of the
pound could become a rout if confidence completely evaporates. Paranoia that the UK could follow
Iceland into effective national insolvency and jibes about "Reykjavik on Thames" will find an
unwelcome substantiation in these statistics.
Note: For many deep revelations of the realities of the world financial crisis from reliable sources,
click here.
Bair Says Insurance Fund Could Be Insolvent This Year

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=alsJZqIFuN3k
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the fund it uses to protect customer
deposits at U.S. banks could dry up amid a surge in bank failures, as she responded to an industry
outcry against new fees approved by the agency. Without these assessments, the deposit
insurance fund could become insolvent this year, Bair wrote in a March 2 letter to the industry. A
large number of bank failures may occur through 2010 because of rapidly deteriorating economic
conditions. The fund, which lost $33.5 billion in 2008, was drained by 25 bank failures last year.
Sixteen banks have failed so far this year, further straining the fund. Smaller banks are outraged
over the one-time fee ... Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of
America, said yesterday. The agency, which has released the change for 30 days of public
comment, could modify the assessment to shift the burden to the large banks that caused this
train wreck, Fine said. Community bankers are feeling like they are paying for the incompetence
and greed of Wall Street, he said. Consumers should watch this issue closely, said Edmund
Mierzwinski, consumer program director at U.S. PIRG, a Boston- based consumer-watchdog
group. I wouldnt take their money out of the bank yet, Mierzwinski said. If the FDIC is
saying that there is this serious problem, then we should all be concerned. I think there is a
chance the FDIC is going to have to ask taxpayers for money in the future.
Note: For lots more on the financial crisis from reliable sources, click here.
Goldman, JPMorgan Wont Feel Effects of Executive-Salary Caps

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=azVLk.22AkLI
Executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and hundreds of financial
institutions receiving federal aid arent likely to be affected by pay restrictions announced
yesterday by President Barack Obama. The rules, created in response to growing public
anger about the record bonuses the financial industry doled out last year, will apply only to
top executives at companies that need exceptional assistance in the future. The limits
arent retroactive, meaning firms that have already taken government money wont be subject to
the restrictions unless they have to come back for more. Pay caps may provide the political cover
the administration needs to deliver additional infusions of capital into the financial sector. Obama ...
is not proposing to go back and get that $18.4 billion in bonuses back, Laura Thatcher, head of
law firm Alston & Birds executive compensation practice in Atlanta, said of the cash bonuses New
York banks paid last year, the sixth-biggest haul in history. Right now, we have not clamped down
on pay at banks. In addition, some executives may be compensated for the potential reduced
salaries with restricted stock grants, which may result in huge paydays after the bank repays the
government assistance with interest. Theyre just allowing companies to defer compensation,
said Graef Crystal, a former compensation consultant. The restrictions are a joke, he said,
because if the government is paid pack, you can be sure that the stock will have risen hugely.
Panel Criticizes U.S. Effort on Nanomaterial Risks

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/science/11nano.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...
In a sweeping critique ... an expert panel of the National Research Council said the federal
government was not doing enough to identify potential health and environmental risks from
engineered nanomaterials. Nanomaterials are engineered on the scale of a billionth of a meter,
perhaps 1/10,000 the width of a human hair. They are turning up in a range of items including
consumer products like toothpaste and tennis rackets and industrial products like degreasers or
adhesives. But some experts say they may pose health or environmental risks. For example,
researchers in Scotland reported this year that carbon nanotubes may pose the same
health risks as asbestos. Industry wants to run with it, said Andrew D. Maynard, chief
science adviser to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson Institute,
who was the chairman of the panel. But he added, one of the big barriers at the moment is
understanding how to use it safely. The panel analyzed the risk research strategy of the
National Nanotechnology Initiative, the program to coordinate federal efforts in nanotechnology
research and development. Its report concluded that the initiatives strategy does not present a
vision, contain a clear set of goals, have a plan of action for how the goals are to be achieved, or
describe mechanisms to review and evaluate funded research and assess whether progress has
been achieved. An informal coalition of environmental and business organizations praised the
report, saying that for three years they had been urging the federal government to do more to
assess potential health and environmental effects of nanomaterials.
Note: For many important articles on health issues from reliable sources, click here.
Keating 5 ring a bell?

http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-brooks25-2008sep25,0,1039504.column
Once upon a time, a politician took campaign contributions and favors from a friendly constituent
who happened to run a savings and loan association. The contributions were generous: They
came to about $200,000 in today's dollars, and on top of that there were several free vacations for
the politician and his family, along with private jet trips and other perks. The politician voted
repeatedly against congressional efforts to tighten regulation of S&Ls, and in 1987, when he
learned that his constituent's S&L was the target of a federal investigation, he met with regulators
in an effort to get them to back off. That politician was John McCain, and his generous friend was
Charles Keating, head of Lincoln Savings & Loan. While he was courting McCain and other
senators and urging them to oppose tougher regulation of S&Ls, Keating was also investing his
depositors' federally insured savings in risky ventures. In 1989, [Lincoln] went belly up -- and more
than 20,000 Lincoln customers saw their savings vanish. Keating went to prison, and McCain's
Senate career almost ended. Together with the rest of the so-called Keating Five ... McCain
was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and ultimately reprimanded for "poor
judgment." But the savings and loan crisis mushroomed. Eventually, the government spent about
$125 billion in taxpayer dollars to bail out hundreds of failed S&Ls. The $125 billion seems like
small change compared to the $700-billion price tag for the Bush administration's proposed Wall
Street bailout. But the root causes of both crises are the same: a lethal mix of deregulation and
greed.
Use of Iraq Contractors Costs Billions, Report Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/washington/12contractors.html?partner=rssus...
The United States this year will have spent [at least] $100 billion on contractors in Iraq since the
invasion in 2003, a milestone that reflects the Bush administrations unprecedented level of
dependence on private firms for help in the war, according to a government report to be released
[on August 12]. The report, by the Congressional Budget Office ... will say that one out of every
five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the United States military and other
government agencies. The Pentagons reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is
proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this
outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered
and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new
legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on
private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield. The budget offices report found that from
2003 to 2007, the government awarded contracts in Iraq worth about $85 billion, and that the
administration was now awarding contracts at a rate of $15 billion to $20 billion a year. At that
pace, contracting costs will surge past the $100 billion mark before the end of the year. Through
2007, spending on outside contractors accounted for 20 percent of the total costs of the war, the
budget office found. The dependence on private companies to support the war effort has led to
questions about whether political favoritism has played a role in the awarding of multibillion-dollar
contracts.
Note: For many disturbing reports on the realities of the Afghan and Iraq wars from major media
sources, click here.
Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?partner=rssuse...
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will
return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concessions to nationalization as Saddam
Hussein rose to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP the original partners in the Iraq
Petroleum Company along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks
with Iraqs Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraqs largest fields. The deals, expected to
be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major
companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country
for their operations. The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over
others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts
[would] give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts. There was suspicion
among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United
States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to
extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism.
Sensitive to the appearance that they were profiting from the war and already under pressure
because of record high oil prices, senior officials of two of the companies, speaking only on the
condition that they not be identified, said they were helping Iraq rebuild its decrepit oil industry.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the real reasons behind the war in Iraq,
click here.
Don't blame us for prices - oil execs

2008-05-21, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/21/news/economy/oil_hearing/?postversion=2008052115
Amid increasing public outcry over record-shattering oil and gas prices, senators ... hauled industry
executives in to testify about the recent runup. The Senate Judiciary Committee ... grilled
executives from Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips Co., Shell Oil Co., Chevron and BP as to how their
companies can in good conscience make so much money, while American drivers pay so much at
the pump. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. [asked] "Does it trouble any one of you - the costs you're
imposing on families, on small businesses, on truckers?" The hearing marked the second time in
as many months that top oil industry officials have been called before Congress. The hearing was
ostensibly called to ask the executives why they needed some $18 billion in federal subsidies in
light of their record profits, but quickly became a Q&A on bigger questions in the energy business.
Lawmakers criticized the firms for not investing enough in finding new oil and developing
renewable resources and told them, in thinly disguised terms, that they'd be forced to enact
extra profit taxes if Big Oil continued to post such large earnings. Although lawmakers don't
vote on energy issues strictly along party lines, Democrats generally want to increase taxes on Big
Oil and use the money to fund renewable energy research. Republicans generally favor opening
up the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, large parts of the Rocky Mountains, and areas off the east and west
coast that have been closed to drilling since the 1970s following a public backlash after several big
oil spills.
Hundreds of Iraq schemes 'failed'

2008-04-28, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7370355.stm
An audit of US-funded reconstruction projects for Iraq has found millions of dollars have been
wasted because many schemes have never been completed. The Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction blamed delays, costs, poor performance and violence for failure to finish some
855 projects. Many other projects had been falsely described as complete, found the audit of
47,321 reconstruction projects. Iraq reconstruction has cost US taxpayers more than $100bn so
far. USAID, the body responsible for overseeing Iraqi reconstruction, has responded that the
database used for the review was incomplete. The audit by Senator Stuart Bowen found US
officials had terminated at least 855 projects before completion. Of this number, 112 were ended
because of the contractors' poor performance. Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog
group Project on Government Oversight, said: "The report paints a depressing picture of
money being poured into failed Iraq reconstruction projects. Contractors are killed, projects
are blown up just before being completed, or the contractor just stops doing the work." Last
year, congressional investigators said as much as $10bn (5bn) charged by US contractors for
Iraq reconstruction had been questionable.
Note: Why is the U.S. spending over $100 billion to "reconstruct" Iraq? That's over $500 for each
taxpayer in the U.S., with little to show for it. For more, see what a highly decorated U.S. general
has to say on all this by clicking here.
Katrina contractor has reaped millions

2008-03-14, Los Angeles Times/Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-katrina14mar14,1,4559085...
Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of homeowners are still waiting for
their government rebuilding checks, and many complain they can't even get their calls returned.
But the company that holds the contract to distribute the aid is doing quite well. ICF
International of Fairfax, Va., has posted strong profits, gone public, landed additional
multimillion-dollar government contracts -- and recently secured a potentially big raise from
the state of Louisiana. In the waning days of Democratic Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's
administration, state officials increased the management contract ceiling from $756 million to $912
million -- this, after the Legislature wanted to fire ICF over its handling of the homeowner recovery
program, called Road Home. "It is outrageous that ICF couldn't do the job for more than $750
million and that they were given a pay raise after their history of disappointing service," Blanco's
successor, Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, said in an e-mail Thursday. Displaced residents
expressed anger. Road Home was created in June 2006 as a state-run, federally funded plan to
compensate homeowners for the breach of New Orleans' government-run levees. Homeowners
can apply for grants to repair their homes or to obtain buyouts if they don't want to fix things up. As
of last month, 56,000 applicants -- nearly 40% of the qualified total -- had yet to receive a cent.
Plagued by cost overruns and delays, Road Home is expected to cost federal taxpayers $10 billion
and has become a glaring symbol of frustration in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Note: For many more revealing reports on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, click here.
Journalist Who Exposes U.N. Corruption Disappears From Google

2008-02-18, FOX News
How big do you have to be to earn the wrath of the United Nations and Internet giant Google? If
you're journalist Matthew Lee, all it takes are some critical articles and a scrappy little Web site.
Lee is the editor-in-chief, Webmaster and pretty much the only reporter for Inner City Press, a pintsized Internet news operation that's taken on Goliath-sized entities like Citigroup since 1987. Since
2005, he's been focusing almost entirely on stories that deal with internal corruption inside the
U.N., posting several stories online almost daily. Many of Lee's stories were featured prominently
whenever Web users looked for news about the U.N. using the powerful Google News search
engine, a vital way for media outlets both large and small to get their articles read. But beginning
Feb. 13, Google News users could no longer find new stories from the Inner City Press. "I
think they said, 'If we can't get this guy out of the U.N., let's disappear him from the
Internet,'" Lee said. It began with an innocuous-sounding yet chilling form letter from Google to
Lee, e-mailed on Feb. 8: "We periodically review news sources, particularly following user
complaints, to ensure Google News offers a high quality experience for our users," it said. "When
we reviewed your site we've found that we can no longer include it in Google News." As soon as
he read it, Lee immediately suspected one thing: That someone at the [UN] had pressured Google
into "de-listing" him from Google News essentially preventing Inner City Press from being
classified on Google News as a legitimate news source and from having its stories pop up when
someone conducts a Google News search.
Slave labour that shames America

Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year,
finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in
which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom. When they found sanctuary
one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of
the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another
man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists
swollen. The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and
forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food. If they took a
shower with a garden hose or bucket, it cost them $5. Their story of slavery and abuse in the fruit
fields of sub-tropical Florida threatens to lift the lid on some appalling human rights abuses in
America today. Between December and May, Florida produces virtually the entire US crop of fieldgrown fresh tomatoes. Fruit picked here in the winter months ends up on the shelves of
supermarkets and is also served in the country's top restaurants and in tens of thousands of fastfood outlets. But conditions in the state's fruit-picking industry range from straightforward
exploitation to forced labour. Tens of thousands of men, women and children excluded from
the protection of America's employment laws and banned from unionising work their fingers to
the bone for rates of pay which have hardly budged in 30 years. Until now, even appeals
from the former president Jimmy Carter to help raise the wages of fruit-pickers have gone
unheeded. Fruit-pickers, who typically earn about $200 (100) a week, are part of an unregulated
system designed to keep food prices low and the plates of America's overweight families piled
high.
Immunity for Telecoms May Set Bad Precedent, Legal Scholars Say
When previous Republican administrations were accused of illegality in the FBI and CIA spying
abuses of the 1970s or the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, Democrats in Congress launched
investigations or pushed for legislative reforms. But last week, faced with admissions by several
telecommunication companies that they assisted the Bush administration in warrantless spying on
Americans, leaders of the Senate intelligence committee took a much different tack -- proposing
legislation that would grant those companies retroactive immunity from prosecution or lawsuits.
The proposal marks the second time in recent years that Congress has moved toward providing
legal immunity for past actions that may have been illegal. The Military Commissions Act, passed
by a GOP-led Congress in September 2006, provided retroactive immunity for CIA interrogators
who could have been accused of war crimes for mistreating detainees. Legal experts say the
granting of such retroactive immunity by Congress is unusual, particularly in a case involving
private companies. "It's particularly unusual in the case of the telecoms because you don't really
know what you're immunizing," said Louis Fisher, a specialist in constitutional law with the Law
Library of the Library of Congress. Civil liberties groups and many academics argue that
Congress is allowing the government to cover up possible wrongdoing and is
inappropriately interfering in disputes that the courts should decide. The American Civil
Liberties Union [said] in a news release Friday that "the administration is trying to cover its
tracks."
Outsourcing foreign policy

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks21sep21,0,4584140.column
For years, the [Bush] administration has been quietly auctioning off U.S. foreign policy to the
highest corporate bidder -- and it may be too late for us to buy it back. Look at Blackwater.
Blackwater increasingly promises to do everything the U.S. government can do, but better.
Blackwater's facility in North Carolina is the world's largest private military facility -- it's so good that
the U.S. military uses it for training. Since its founding, it has trained 50,000 "consultants" who can
be deployed anywhere in the world. With no geographical limits, the company is eager to prove its
value. Blackwater has trained police in Afghanistan and naval commandos in Azerbaijan, and it
sent heavily armed employees to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They started off offering
their services as volunteers -- or vigilantes, some critics said. FEMA, playing catch-up, followed
with contracts, as did a number of other agencies. Increasingly, Blackwater looks like a miniature
government. It has people, infrastructure and hardware. For instance, it is buying Brazilian-made
fighter bombers -- great in combat but not really necessary if you're merely providing civilian
bodyguards. Blackwater is unusual, but it's not entirely unique. Other corporations ... are also
eagerly filling the vacuum as the U.S. government retreats worldwide from the business of
governing. The White House's motives are obvious. Why fight another war, with all the bother
of convincing Congress, if you can quietly hire a private military company to fight it for
you? Why interrogate suspected insurgents if you can outsource the whole messy
business? As for the corporations so eagerly lapping up the contracting dollars, there's no
conspiracy -- it's just the good old profit motive.
HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads

In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials
commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers
that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of
insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples. Plans to run these blunt ads
infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of
the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health
and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned
down the campaign. The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherrytopped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems
and obesity. In a February 2004 letter (pdf), the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G.
Thompson they were "grateful" for his staff's intervention to stop health officials from "scaring
expectant mothers into breast-feeding," and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads. The
formula industry's intervention -- which did not block the ads but helped change their content -- is
being scrutinized by Congress in the wake of last month's testimony by former surgeon general
Richard H. Carmona that the Bush administration repeatedly allowed political considerations to
interfere with his efforts to promote public health. "This is a credible allegation of political
interference that [may] have had serious public health consequences," said [Rep. Henry] Waxman,
a California Democrat. The milder campaign HHS eventually used had no discernible impact on
the nation's breast-feeding rate, which lags behind the rate in many European countries.
Special military group looks ahead to fight America's future wars

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/26/BU5ORKEUK.DTL
For half a century, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - a low-profile but vital
division of the Defense Department - has ... been the force behind dozens of weapons, from the
M-16 rifle and night-vision goggles to smart bombs and stealth aircraft. Now, DARPA is planning
for a long war in which U.S. troops will be expected to face guerrilla adversaries. And just as
during the Cold War, DARPA is counting on high-tech Silicon Valley to give U.S. forces the edge.
More than 3,000 scientists, entrepreneurs and military leaders ... gathered in Anaheim ... for the
agency's 50th anniversary conference. The agency is operating on a $3.1 billion budget, up 8
percent from fiscal 2006. Virtually every Silicon Valley company, from the obvious candidates
like Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space to ... Google, has been touched in some way by
DARPA. "Almost every great digital oak has a DARPA acorn at the bottom," said futurist
Paul Saffo. During three days in Anaheim, DARPA and Pentagon officials made 60 presentations,
painting a picture of a future in which the United States will have to spend $1 million on
countermeasures for every dollar shelled out by bomb-building guerrillas like those U.S. forces are
encountering in Iraq. But DARPA's high-tech dreams have their critics, who view its "visions" as
boondoggles the nation can't afford. "I think it (DARPA) is basically a jobs program," said Chalmers
Johnson, a retired University of California political scientist. Thomas Barnett, author of The
Pentagon's New Map, one of the treatises that lay out the scenario for these asymmetrical wars
that planners expect, [said] "The million-to-one (ratio) is unsustainable."
Tenn. Nuclear Fuel Problems Kept Secret

A three-year veil of secrecy in the name of national security was used to keep the public in
the dark about the handling of highly enriched uranium at a nuclear fuel processing plant -including a leak that could have caused a deadly, uncontrolled nuclear reaction. The leak
turned out to be one of nine violations or test failures since 2005 at privately owned Nuclear Fuel
Services Inc., a longtime supplier of fuel to the U.S. Navy's nuclear fleet. The public was never told
about the problems when they happened. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed them for
the first time last month when it released an order demanding improvements at the company, but
no fine. In 2004, the government became so concerned about releasing nuclear secrets that the
commission removed more than 1,740 documents from its public archive -- even some that
apparently involved basic safety violations at the company. Environmental activists are still
suspicious of the belated revelations and may challenge the commission's decision not to fine
Nuclear Fuel Services for the safety violations. "That party is not over -- the full story of what is
going on up there," said Ann Harris, a member of the Sierra Club's national nuclear task force.
While reviewing the commission's public Web page in 2004, the Department of Energy's Office of
Naval Reactors found what it considered protected information about Nuclear Fuel Service's work
for the Navy. The commission responded by sealing every document related to Nuclear Fuel
Services. Under the policy, all the documents were stamped "Official Use Only," including papers
about the policy itself and more than 1,740 documents from the commission's public archive.
Defense Agency Proposes Outsourcing More Spying

The Defense Intelligence Agency is preparing to pay private contractors up to $1 billion to
conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the next five years, an
amount that would set a record in the outsourcing of such functions by the Pentagon's top
spying agency. The proposed contracts ... reflect a continuing expansion of the Defense
Department's intelligence-related work and fit a well-established pattern of Bush administration
transfers of government work to private contractors. Since 2000, the value of federal contracts
signed by all agencies each year has more than doubled to reach $412 billion, with the largest
growth at the Defense Department. Outsourcing particularly accelerated among intelligence
agencies after the [Sept. 11] 2001 terrorist attacks. The DIA's action comes a few months after CIA
Director Michael V. Hayden, acting under pressure from Congress, announced a program to cut
the agency's hiring of outside contractors by at least 10 percent. The DIA is the country's major
manager and producer of foreign military intelligence, with more than 11,000 military and civilian
employees worldwide and a budget of nearly $1 billion. It has its own analysts from the various
services as well as collectors of human intelligence in the Defense HUMINT Service. DIA also
manages the Defense attaches stationed in embassies all over the world. Unlike the CIA, the DIA
outsources the major analytical products known as all-source intelligence reports, a senior
intelligence official said.
F.D.A. Panel Votes to Keep Diabetes Drug on Market

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/health/30cnd-avandia.html?ex=1343448000&en=...
A federal drug advisory committee voted 20 to 3 late this afternoon that Avandia, a controversial
diabetes drug made by GlaxoSmithKline, raises the risks of heart attacks, but it then voted 22 to 1
that the drug should nonetheless remain on the market. Dr. Clifford J. Rosen, chairman of the
committee [said] there was enough concern on the advisory committee that virtually everybody
felt there was risk of heart attacks from taking Avandia. Patients who have congestive heart failure
or a history of cardiovascular disease, or those taking insulin or nitrates should not be given
Avandia, Dr. Rosen said. The votes came after an extraordinary meeting in which officials from the
Food and Drug Administration, which brought the committee together, openly disagreed with one
another about the right course to take. Dr. David Graham, a drug safety officer at the F.D.A.,
called for the drugs withdrawal and estimated that its toxic effects on the heart had caused
as many as 205,000 heart attacks, strokes and death from 1999 to 2006. For every month
that Avandia is sold, he said, another 1,600 to 2,200 patients are likely to suffer from heart
attacks and strokes, some of them fatal. Dr. Robert Meyer, director of the office within the F.D.A.
that approved Avandias initial application, immediately disagreed with Dr. Graham. Dr. Douglas C.
Throckmorton, a deputy director of the F.D.A.s center for drugs, explained at a news conference
after the meeting that the split within the agency resulted from the complexity of the issue. The
open disagreement within the F.D.A. reflects a fierce debate that has occurred among diabetes
experts across the country since The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in May
suggesting that Avandia increases the risks of heart attacks.
Note: To read a succinct, powerful summary of how drug companies control the regulation of their
own industry, click here.
America's Secret Obsession

In April 1971, CIA officer John Seabury Thomson paddled his aluminum canoe across the
Potomac on his daily commute from his home in Maryland to CIA headquarters in Langley. When
he reached the Virginia shore, he noticed a milky substance clouding the waters around Pulp Run.
A fierce environmentalist, Thomson traced the pollution to its source: his employer. The murky
white discharge was a chemical mash, the residue of thousands of liquefied secrets that the
agency had been quietly disposing of in his beloved river. He single-handedly brought the practice
to a halt. Nearly four decades later, though, that trickle of secrets would be a tsunami that would
capsize Thomson's small craft. Today the nation's obsession with secrecy is redefining public and
private institutions and taking a toll on the lives of ordinary citizens. Excessive secrecy is at the
root of multiple scandals -- the phantom weapons of mass destruction, the collapse of Enron, the
tragedies traced to Firestone tires and the arthritis drug Vioxx, and more. In this self-proclaimed
"Information Age," our country is on the brink of becoming a secretocracy, a place where the right
to know is being replaced by the need to know. [There] is a confluence of causes behind it, among
them the chill wrought by 9/11, industry deregulation, the long dominance of a single political party,
fear of litigation and liability and the threat of the Internet. But perhaps most alarming [is] the
public's increasing tolerance of secrecy. Without timely information, citizens are reduced to
mere residents, and representative government atrophies into a representational image of
democracy as illusory as a hologram.
Note: The author of this superb article is Ted Gup. He is a journalism professor at Case Western
Reserve University and author of Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American
Way of Life.
China corners vitamin market

2007-06-03, Seattle Times (One of Seattle's two leading newspapers)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003732744_vitamins03.html
If you pop a vitamin C tablet in your mouth, it's a good bet it came from China. Indeed, many of the
world's vitamins are now made in China. In less than a decade, China has captured 90 percent of
the U.S. market for vitamin C, driving almost everyone else out of business. Chinese
pharmaceutical companies also have taken over much of the world market in the production of
antibiotics, analgesics, enzymes and primary amino acids. According to an industry group, China
makes 70 percent of the world's penicillin, 50 percent of its aspirin and 35 percent of its [Tylenol],
as well as the bulk of vitamins A, B12, C and E. In the wake of a pet-food scandal, in which
adulterated wheat gluten from China led to the deaths of thousands of pets in North America, and
other instances of food and toothpaste tampering, China's vitamin producers are reaching out to
reassure U.S. consumers that their vitamins are safe. Whether that's true isn't clear, however.
Foreign food-safety experts say China's larger companies have reputations to protect. The
question is how they maintain quality control. Since U.S. laws don't require food and drug
sellers to label products with the country of origin of ingredients, it's impossible for
consumers to know where food or supplements are coming from, not to mention what
factory produced them.
Doctors, Legislators Resist Drugmakers' Prying Eyes

Pediatrician Rupin Thakkar's first inkling that the pharmaceutical industry was peering over his
shoulder ... came in a letter from a drug representative about the generic drops Thakkar prescribes
to treat infectious pinkeye. In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his
patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more
expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories. "My initial thought was 'How does
she know what I'm prescribing?' " Thakkar said. "It feels intrusive ... I just feel strongly that medical
encounters need to be private." He is not alone. Many doctors object to drugmakers' common
practice of contracting with data-mining companies to track exactly which medicines physicians
prescribe and in what quantities -- information marketers and salespeople use to fine-tune their
efforts. The concerns are not merely about privacy. Proponents say using such detailed data
for drug marketing serves mainly to influence physicians to prescribe more expensive
medicines, not necessarily to provide the best treatment. "We don't like the practice, and we want
it to stop," said Jean Silver-Isenstadt, executive director of the National Physicians Alliance.
(Thakkar is on the group's board of directors.) "We think it's a contaminant to the doctor-patient
relationship, and it's driving up costs." The American Medical Association makes millions of
dollars each year by helping data-mining companies link prescribing data to individual
physicians. It does so by licensing access to the AMA Physician Masterfile, a database containing
names, birth dates, educational background, specialties and addresses for more than 800,000
doctors.
Note: For more reliable, verifiable information about major corruption in the drug industry, click
here.
A Windfall From Shifts to Medicare

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/business/18place.html?ex=1310875200&en=64d0...
The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to reap a windfall from a surprisingly lucrative niche
market: drugs for poor people. The windfall, which by some estimates could be $2 billion or more
this year, is a result of the transfer of millions of low-income people into the new Medicare Part D
drug program that went into effect in January. Under that program...the prices paid by insurers,
and eventually the taxpayer, for the medications given to those transferred are likely to be higher
than what was paid under the federal-state Medicaid programs. Analysts expect it to generate
hundreds of millions of additional dollars this year for the drug companies. Drugs tend to be
cheaper under the Medicaid programs because the states are the buyers and by law they receive
the lowest available prices for drugs. But in creating the federal Part D program, Congress -- in
what critics saw as a sop to the drug industry -- barred the government from having a
negotiating role. The windfall for the drug makers was made possible by a provision of the 2003
Medicare law that exempts Part D drugs from "best price" rebates that the drug makers have been
required to give to the state Medicaid programs. Those rebates are meant to make sure that state
Medicaid agencies pay no more than the best prices drug companies offer to any big commercial
insurer. Now, under Part D, all sorts of price deals will be negotiated by dozens of Medicare drug
plans. The prices will be reported to Medicare, but under a provision of the law pushed by industry
lobbyists, they will otherwise be kept secret.
Oil refiners' golden age of profits

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/27/MNG52IG4LV1.DTL
High crude oil prices aren't the only reason you're paying $3.15 for a gallon of regular. For
America's giant gasoline refiners...this is a golden age. By California state estimates, refinery profit
margins have more than doubled in 2006, though that figure doesn't take into account some key
expenses. Meanwhile, oil prices have risen by 14 percent. Oil industry critics hunting for proof
of price gouging point to refineries' expanding profit margins as evidence. Critics say the
companies deliberately closed many U.S. refineries years ago as a way to drive up their
margins. The country now has 144 refineries, down from 324 in 1981. "The refining business
used to be pretty lousy, but they took very aggressive actions to correct that," said Tyson Slocum,
director of the energy program at the Public Citizen watchdog group. "They're choosing not to build
new refineries because it's not in their economic interest." Exact profit margins for the industry are
difficult to track, because the companies involved don't reveal financial details. The California
Energy Commission publishes a loose weekly estimate, measuring the difference between what
the state's 21 refineries pay for crude oil and what they charge for their products. Since the start of
the year, that figure has jumped 130 percent, from 30 cents for each gallon of finished gasoline to
69 cents last week. During the same time, the price refiners pay for crude oil has increased 14
percent.
The blog in the corporate machine

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5501039
They have always had their critics, but corporations are having an especially hard time making
friends of late. Scandals at Enron and WorldCom destroyed thousands of employees' livelihoods,
raised hackles about bosses' pay and cast doubt on the reliability of companies' accounts. Big
companies such as McDonald's and Wal-Mart have found themselves the targets of scathing films.
Labour groups and environmental activists are finding new ways to co-ordinate their attacks on
business. But those are just the enemies that companies can see. Even more troubling for many
managers is dealing with their critics online -- because, in the ether, they have little idea who the
attackers are. One of the main reasons that executives find bloggers so very challenging is
because, unlike other 'stakeholders', they rarely belong to well-organised groups. That makes
them harder to identify, appease and control. When a company is dealing directly with a labour
union or an environmental outfit, its top brass often take the easy route, by co-opting the
leaders or paying some sort of Danegeld. Until a couple of decades ago, that meant doling out
generous union contracts and sticking shareholders, taxpayers or consumers with the bill.
Increasingly, companies are learning that the best defence against these attacks is to take blogs
seriously and fix rapidly whatever problems they turn up.
Secretly, tiny nations hold much wealth

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0425/p17s01-cogn.html
They're tax havens: 70 mostly tiny nations that offer no-tax or low-tax status to the wealthy so they
can stash their money. Usually, the process is so secret that it draws little attention. But the sums and lost tax revenues - are growing so large that the havens are getting new and unaccustomed
scrutiny. There are about 3 million shell companies (set up largely to duck taxes) in offshore tax
havens, Komisar reckons. These tiny tax havens hold 31 percent of total world assets and 26
percent of the stock of US multinationals.
Cancer Crusade
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,741262,00.html
Drs. Coffey & Humber ... last year cautiously announced that they were alleviating hopeless cases
of cancer by means of adrenal cortex extract derived from sheep. The Hearst press recognized the
kernel of news in this announcement and puffed it so that thousands of cancer victims abandoned
the orthodox treatment of surgery, X-rays and radium, rushed for the sure-cure. The two doctors
were amazed, but nonetheless swam with the tide of publicity and patients. They opened auxiliary
clinics at Los Angeles and Long Beach. They went before a Senate committee to argue for
Government aid for cancer research. They gained a patent for their extract. Mrs. Grace Hammond
Conners ... gave Drs. Coffey & Humber her $1,000,000 estate, "The Monastery," at Huntington, L.
I. Although Dr. Hartwell & friends who last week opposed opening "The Monastery" as a clinic "do
not for a minute question the sincerity of Drs. Coffey and Humber in believing they have something
of value," the critics "do question the way they have handled their work." The New York men are
certain that their San Francisco colleagues have had no training to qualify for research in "the most
complex field that exists" in medicine. They do not believe that adrenal cortex extract will cure
cancer or that it has value in cancer treatment. They fear that the Californians will experiment on
New York humans, hence want them (or at least their methods; excluded, to remain in California
where patients are "abundantly available." This was obviously a campaign to ostracize Drs.
Coffey & Humber from Manhattan's vicinity. It was conducted ... "by persons who had their
own methods, hospitals and funds."
Note: The doctors eventually not only were denied permission to open a cancer clinic for their
promising work, they were stripped of the $1 million dollar estate donated to them (worth about
$15 million in current U.S. dollars). For the full, fascinating story, click here.
End Is Seen to Free Checking

Bank of America Corp. and other banks are preparing new fees on basic banking services as they
try to replace revenue lost to regulatory rules, in a push that is expected to spell an end to free
checking accounts for many Americans. Free checking accounts, which have been widely
available for more than a decade, have been a boon to middle-class consumers and attracted low-
income customers to the banking system for the first time. Customers will likely be required to
pay new monthly maintenance fees on the most basic accounts that don't generate a lot of
activity. To avoid a fee, customers will have to maintain certain account balances or
frequently use other banking services, such as credit and debit cards, automated teller
machines and online accounts. Some consumer advocates warn the new fees will whack
consumers who now manage their bank accounts to avoid such charges. The transformation of
checking accounts comes at a time when banks are bouncing back from the steepest financial
losses in a generation and are facing new regulations. To accelerate that recovery and recoup
losses from new banking rules, financial institutions are increasingly leaning on customers who
don't now generate enough revenue for the bank.
Note: Why hasn't the federal government protected consumers from this sort of response by the
banking industry to new regulations imposed after the massive taxpayer bailout of these failing
corporations?
Federal No-Bid Contracts On Rise

Last year, officials at the Department of Homeland Security's counter-narcotics office took a
shortcut that has become common at federal agencies: They hired help through a no-bid contract.
And the firm they hired showed them how to do it. A contract worth up to $579,000 was awarded to
the consultant's firm in September. Though small by government standards, the counter-narcotics
contract illustrates the government's steady move away from relying on competition to secure the
best deals for products and services. A recent congressional report estimated that federal
spending on contracts awarded without "full and open" competition has tripled, to $207 billion,
since 2000, with a $60 billion increase last year alone. The category includes deals in which
officials take advantage of provisions allowing them to sidestep competition for speed and
convenience and cases in which the government sharply limits the number of bidders or expands
work under open-ended contracts. Government auditors say the result is often higher prices for
taxpayers and an undue reliance on a limited number of contractors. "The rapid growth in no-bid
and limited-competition contracts has made full and open competition the exception, not the rule,"
according to the report, by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Keith
Ashdown, chief investigator at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said
that in many cases, officials are simply choosing favored contractors as part of a "club
mentality." "Contracting officials are throwing out decades of work to develop fair and
sensible rules to promote competition," Ashdown said. "Government officials are skirting
the rules in favor of expediency or their favored contractors."
Scientists issue warning on chemical

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-plastic3aug03,0,1828523....
In an unusual effort targeting a single chemical, several dozen scientists on Thursday issued a
strongly worded consensus statement warning that an estrogen-like compound in plastic is likely
causing an array of serious reproductive disorders in people. The compound, bisphenol A or
BPA, is one of the highest-volume chemicals in the world and has found its way into the
bodies of most human beings. Used to make hard plastic, BPA can seep from beverage
containers and other materials. It is used in all polycarbonate plastic baby bottles as well as
... large water cooler containers, sports bottles and microwave oven dishes, along with canned
food liners and some dental sealants for children. The scientists including four from federal
health agencies reviewed about 700 studies before concluding that people are exposed to
levels of the chemical exceeding those that harm lab animals. Infants and fetuses are most
vulnerable, they said. The statement, published online by the journal Reproductive Toxicology, was
accompanied by a new study from researchers from the National Institutes of Health that found
uterine damage in newborn animals exposed to BPA. That damage is a possible predictor of
reproductive diseases in women, including fibroids, endometriosis, cystic ovaries and cancers. It is
the first time BPA has been linked to disorders of the female reproductive tract, although earlier
studies have found early-stage prostate and breast cancer and decreased sperm counts in
animals exposed to low doses. The scientists' statement and the new study accompanied by
five scientific reviews summarizing the 700 studies intensify a contentious debate over whether
the plastic compound poses a public threat. So far no government agency here or abroad has
restricted its use.
Attack of the mutant rice

2007-07-02, Fortune magazine
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/07/09/100122123/i...
In the spring of 2001, a ... rice farmer named Jacko Garrett watched a fleet of 18-wheelers haul
away truckloads of rice that he had grown with great care. "It just bothers me so bad," Garrett said.
"I'm sitting here trying to find food to feed people, and I've got to bury five million pounds of rice."
Garrett's rice was genetically modified, part of an experiment that was brought to an abrupt halt by
its sponsor, a ... biotechnology company called Aventis Crop Science. The company had
contracted with a handful of farmers to grow the rice, which was known as Liberty Link because its
genes had been altered to resist a weed killer called Liberty, also made by Aventis. In January
2006, small amounts of genetically engineered rice turned up in a shipment that was tested ... by a
French customer of Riceland Foods. Because no transgenic rice is grown commercially in the
U.S., the people at Riceland were stunned. Then came another shock. Testing revealed that the
genetically modified rice contained a strain of Liberty Link that had not been approved for
human consumption. What's more, trace amounts of the Liberty Link had mysteriously
made their way into the commercial rice supply in all five of the Southern states where
long-grain rice is grown. The tainted rice was everywhere. If in the past year or so you or your
family ate Uncle Ben's, Rice Krispies, or Gerber's, or drank a Budweiser ... you probably ingested
a little bit of Liberty Link, with the unapproved gene. Last November, over the howls of anti-GMO
activists, the USDA retroactively approved the Liberty Link rice, known as LL601. The department
said the genes that it approved are similar to those inserted for years into canola and corn, with no
apparent ill effects.
Note: To read a ten-page summary of Seeds of Deception, a ground-breaking expos of the
dangers of the genetic engineering of foods, click here.
AT+T revises privacy policy, says owns customer data

AT&T Inc. said on Wednesday it was revising its privacy policy, explaining to customers that it
owns their phone records and can hand them over to law enforcers if necessary. The
changes...come at a time when AT&T and other phone companies face lawsuits claiming they
aided a U.S. government domestic spying program by giving the National Security Agency call
records of millions of customers without their permission. The new policy, unlike the old one,
spells out the fact that AT&T...customer information constitutes "business records that are
owned by AT&T. As such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate
business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process." The earlier policy had
simply said that...the company could share customer information to "respond to subpoenas, court
orders or other legal process, to the extent required and/or permitted by law." Under the new
policy...the company also said that it would track viewing information for customers of a television
service it is developing in order to help it make recommendations to customers based on their
viewing habits. It also said that before customers use its services they must agree to the policy, an
element that was not in its previous guidelines.
Congress eyes voting machines in disputed race

2007-06-15, Miami Herald (Miami's leading newspaper)
http://www.miamiherald.com/569/story/140319.html
A congressional task force called Thursday for a speedy resolution to a southwest Florida election
dispute that questions the accuracy of ATM-style voting machines. Democrat Christine Jennings
claims that touch-screen voting machines in Sarasota County failed to register up to 18,000 votes.
Republican Vern Buchanan was declared the winner by 369 votes after two recounts and a state
audit found no problems. GAO investigators will gather information on Sarasota County's voting
systems, analyze the 18,000 so-called ''undervotes,'' review tests and audits done after the
election and determine if more tests are needed. Jennings said Thursday the she was pleased
even though the approach brings her no closer to gaining access to hardware and software
that the machines' maker, Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software Inc., says is a
trade secret.
Note: The software in electronic voting machines is considered proprietary information, kept secret
from Congress, the courts and even the President. Yet any computer programmer will tell you that
this software can be manipulated. To join in demanding transparency in our elections process,
contact your political representatives by clicking here. For more reliable information on this issue
vital to democracy, click here.
The Dubai Deal You Don't Know About

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1171773,00.html
Dubai Ports World, the firm at the center of the controversy, announced today that it would give up
its bid to manage U.S. ports, agreeing to transfer the contracts to a U.S. entity." Yet while one
Dubai company may be giving up on U.S. ports, another one shows no signs of...giving up a
contract with the Navy to provide shore services for vessels in the Middle East. The firm, Inchcape
Shipping Services (ISS)...was sold to a Dubai government investment vehicle for $285 million.
Why is a Dubai shipping services company doing business with the Pentagon when
handing over U.S. port operations to the emirate would supposedly compromise national
security? ISS will be responsible for providing all the logistics requirements of U.S. Navy and
Coast Guard ships in ports throughout the [Middle East] region. The release also notes that ISS
may be asked to provide services for U.S. military training exercises and contingency operations
inland. ISSs partner for those services? None other than KBR, the division of Halliburton -Vice President Dick Cheneys old firm -- that has won billions of dollars in contracts for the
Iraq war and reconstruction. Ironically, Halliburton's name has come up as a possible candidate
to be the "U.S. entity" to take over the U.S. ports management from Dubai Ports World.
Midwest Oil fined for selling gas too cheaply

2006-02-24, Star Tribune (Leading newspaper of Minneapolis-St. Paul)
http://www.startribune.com/535/story/267143.html
The Minnesota Commerce Department on Thursday announced plans to fine a gas station
chain $140,000 for repeatedly selling gas below the state's legal minimum price. The fine
against Midwest Oil of Minnesota is twice as large as any imposed on a company since 2001,
when the state established a formula based on wholesale prices, fees and taxes to determine a
daily floor for gas prices. The price law was intended to prevent large oil companies from driving
smaller competitors out of business, but some critics argue it fails to protect consumers. According
to the Commerce Department, the Midwest-owned stations in Anoka, Oakdale and Albert Lea sold
gas below the minimum price on 293 days in 2005. Kevin Murphy, deputy commissioner of the
department, called the violations "willful, continuing, and egregious and warrant a substantial
penalty."
Let's debate the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- history's largest trade deal - before OKing it
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-reich-trumka-tpp-trade-fast-track-...
This spring, President Obama and Republican leaders in Congress want to use an outdated
process used to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement more than 20 years ago a rule
called fast track to force ... passage of the giant Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade deal.
A fast-tracked TPP would lock in a rigged set of economic rules, lasting potentially forever,
before most Americans let alone some members of Congress have had a chance to
understand it thoroughly. It would be a grave mistake for Congress to authorize fast-tracking this
giant trade deal. We now know that NAFTA [has] contributed to the huge U.S. trade deficits. We
now import about $500 billion more in goods and services each year than we export. Following
NAFTA with the Trans-Pacific Partnership is like turning a bad television show into a terrible movie.
As for the problems with the TPP? What's been leaked about its proposals reveals, for example,
that the pharmaceutical industry would get stronger patent protections, delaying cheaper generic
versions of drugs. The deal also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private
attorneys, outside any nation's legal system, that can order compensation for lost expected profits
resulting from a nation's regulations, including our own. These extraordinary rights for corporations
put governments on the defensive over legitimate public health or environmental rules.
Note: The above article was co-authored by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and
current president of the AFL-CIO Richard Trumka. For more, see this article, or watch the two
minute video Robert Reich made to educate the public about the dangers of the TPP.
WikiLeaks' stepchildren
2011-01-06, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/01/04/f-forbes-wikileaks-stepchildren...
As leak enthusiasts go, few resemble Julian Assange less than Daniel Domscheit-Berg. The wideeyed and softspoken German left WikiLeaks in September to start his own leak-focused
organization known as OpenLeaks. Like its parent organization, OpenLeaks will solicit secret
documents from leakers in government and business. But instead of publishing the leaks on its site
a strategy that has made WikiLeaks the target of cyber- and legal attacks since it began posting
a quarter-million secret cables from the U.S. State Department last month OpenLeaks will
function as a secure tip box that passes leaked files on to whatever media outlet or NGO the
leaker chooses. OpenLeaks is just one of a bumper crop of WikiLeaks-inspired sites popping up
across the globe, borrowing various pieces of the original site's model of anonymous submissions
and online publishing. That's good news for WikiLeaks, too, as Assange himself said in an
interview last month. "The supply of leaks is very large," he said. "It's helpful for us to have more
people in this industry. It's protective to us." In the long term, Domscheit-Berg argues, WikiLeaks'
greatest impact may not be any particular document release but the entire movement of
second-generation sites like OpenLeaks that it has spawned.
AT&T, Verizon to Target Visa, MasterCard With Smartphones

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-02/at-t-verizon-said-to-target-visa-mas...
AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile carriers, are planning a venture to
displace credit and debit cards with smartphones, posing a new threat to Visa Inc. and MasterCard
Inc., three people with direct knowledge of the plan said. The trial would be the carriers biggest
effort to spur mobile payments in the U.S. and supplant more than 1 billion plastic cards in
American wallets. Smartphones have encroached on tasks ranging from Web browsing to
street navigation and now may help the phone companies compete with San Franciscobased Visa and MasterCard, the worlds biggest payments networks. The service, similar to
those already available in Japan, Turkey and the U.K., would use contactless technology to
complete purchases in stores. Theyd be processed through Discovers payments network,
currently the fourth-biggest behind Visa, MasterCard and American Express Co. Barclays would
be the bank helping to manage the accounts, said the people, who requested anonymity because
of confidentiality agreements. Retailers may be eager to help another network after years of
fighting over transaction fees set by Visa and MasterCard.
Facing foreclosure? Don't leave. Squat

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/04/EDK215MNA0.DTL
Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is the longest-serving Democratic congresswoman in U.S. history. Her
district, stretching along the shore of Lake Erie from west of Cleveland to Toledo, faces an
epidemic of home foreclosures and 11.5 percent unemployment. Now, she is recommending a
radical foreclosure solution from the floor of the U.S. Congress: "So I say to the American people,
you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave." She criticizes the bailout's failure to protect
homeowners facing foreclosure. These mortgages were made, then bundled into securities and
sold and resold repeatedly, by the very Wall Street banks that are now benefiting from [a
government bailout]. The banks foreclosing on families very often can't locate the actual loan
note that binds the homeowner to the bad loan. "Produce the note," Kaptur recommends
[to] those facing foreclosure demands of the banks. "[P]ossession is nine-tenths of the law,"
Rep. Kaptur [said]. "Therefore, stay in your property. Get proper legal representation ... [if] Wall
Street cannot produce the deed nor the mortgage audit trail ... you should stay in your
home. It is your castle. It's more than a piece of property. ... If you look at the bad paper, if you
look at where there's trouble, 95 to 98 percent of the paper really has moved to five institutions:
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wachovia, Citigroup and HSBC. They have this country held
by the neck."
Note: Why is it that with the trillions of dollars given by the U.S. government to prop up banks who
used shady loan practices, so few homeowners facing foreclosure have received any assistance?
For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Some risk linked to plastic chemical

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-plastic9aug09,0,4581047....
A federal panel of scientists [has concluded] that an estrogen-like compound in plastic could be
posing some risk to the brain development of babies and children. Bisphenol A, or BPA, [a
component of polycarbonate plastic,] is found in low levels in virtually every human body. The
decision by the 12 advisors of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction ... is
the first official, government action related to the chemical. The scientists ranked their concerns
about BPA, concluding they had "some concern" about neurological and behavioral effects in
fetuses, infants and children, but "minimal" or "negligible" concern about reproductive effects. The
findings put the panel roughly in the middle -- between the chemical industry, which has long said
there is no evidence of danger to humans, and the environmental activists and scientists who say
it is probably harming people. Environmentalists lambasted the panel, saying it had minimized the
risks and ignored important research. "Only the chemical industry agrees with the decision
that BPA has little or no human health risks. That by itself should speak volumes about the
corrupted process endorsed by the panel today," said Dr. Anila Jacob of the Environmental
Working Group. The panel's preliminary report on BPA was drafted by a private consulting
firm with financial ties to the chemical industry. The National Toxicology Program fired the
company but ruled that the report was unbiased. The panel rejected several dozen animal studies
that found reproductive effects. The decision to reject the studies has been controversial with
toxicologists.
The state can take your dreams, too

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/15/EDG3IQ8JHE1.DTL
John Revelli vividly remembers the day the U.S. Supreme Court issued its infamous Kelo decision
that allowed local governments to condemn private property under eminent domain, not only for
public uses such as roads and schools, but also to accommodate private developers. "The Kelo
decision," the former owner of Revelli Tires in Oakland [said,] "came out on June 23 of '05, and the
deadline that the city put up against us to move out was July 1." The U.S. Constitution states, "Nor
shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." The big bench wrongly
ruled that "public use" could be whatever states want it to be -- including private developments
designed to expand the tax base. The ruling allowed the City of New London, Conn., to seize the
land under Susette Kelo's "little pink cottage" and hand it over to a private developer for a
development featuring high-end waterfront homes. And Oakland went ahead with its plans to seize
Revelli Tires [as well as] Autohouse -- a business owned and run by first-generation American
Tony Fung -- in order to accommodate a private apartment project. Revelli and Fung lost their
businesses and their property. As former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who dissented on
Kelo, warned, "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent
the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or
any farm with a factory." No government should be able to take your land to give it to a
corporation. When states and cities, in search of a richer tax base, can take your land and give it to
a private developer -- they have license to trample on everyone's rights. And no one, except the
very rich, is safe.
When Fakery Turns Fatal

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/worldbusiness/05fakes.html?ex=1338...
They might be called Chinas renegade businessmen, small entrepreneurs who are experts at
counterfeiting and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make a profit. But just how far out of the
Chinese mainstream are they? Cutting corners or producing fake goods is not just a legacy of
Chinas initial rush toward the free market three decades ago but [is] still woven into the fabric of
the nations thriving industrial economy. It is driven by entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of
a weak legal system, lax regulations and a business culture where bribery and corruption are
rampant. This is cut-throat market capitalism, said Wenran Jiang, a specialist in China who
teaches at the University of Alberta. Since this countrys economic reforms began to take root in
the 1980s, businesses have engineered countless ways to produce everything from fake car parts,
cosmetics and brand name bags to counterfeit electrical cables and phony Viagra. Counterfeiting
rings are broken nearly every week; nonetheless, the government seems to be waging a losing
battle against the operations. Dozens of Chinese cities have risen to prominence over the last
two decades by first specializing in fake goods, like Wenzhou, which was once known for
selling counterfeit Procter & Gamble products, and Kaihua in Zhejiang province, which
specialized in fake Philips light bulbs. For a time, people even derided the entire province of
Henan as the capital of substandard or fake goods, like medicines that could make you
miraculously grow taller.
Note: The fact that China recently sentenced to death the former head of the State Food and Drug
Administration may show that China is trying to address the problem, yet corruption is rampant in
the drug industries of China, the U.S., and most other countries.
Dealer ... says tactics used by Shell are unfair to operators

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/10/MNGUKPOGKJ1.DTL
At Bob Oyster's Shell station ... putting the price way up over $4 a gallon isn't about making a
profit. It's about making a statement to a multinational corporation. After Shell forced him to pay
higher prices for gas in San Francisco and jacked up his rent, Oyster says, he decided to fight
back. Far from making a huge profit, Oyster is going out of business. He has operated the Shell
station at Sixth and Harrison for 22 years, but he's walking away from it at the end of the month.
"I'm getting nothing for the station,'' he says. At a time when the oil companies are posting
record profits, the little guys are struggling to stay in business. And many, like Oyster, are
giving up the fight. "The dealer can no longer be competitive,'' says Dennis DeCota,
executive director of the California Service Station and Automotive Repair Association.
"The companies are squeezing these guys out. It's just wrong.'' Oyster says his rent has gone up
exponentially. Fifteen years ago it was $1,000 a month. Then it went to $6,000, then $8,000. This
year Shell came back with a demand of $13,000. DeCota and Oyster see [a] sinister motive: If the
dealers like them leave, a company like Shell can run its stations with its own employees and set
its own pump prices. "That way they really are controlling it from the well head to the gas pump,''
says DeCota. While the price per gallon gets all the attention, Oyster says the little secret of
independent dealers is that, like movie theater operators, they make their profit on the extras -snacks, drinks and other items.
Note: When the big oil boys supposedly believe in the "trickle down" theory, why are they not
sharing any of their huge profits with their dealers? And why is there so little reporting on the
arbitrary raising of gas prices?
US and EU agree 'single market'

2007-04-30, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6607757.stm
The United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic
partnership at a summit in Washington. The pact is designed to boost trade and investment by
harmonising regulatory standards, laying the basis for a US-EU single market. The two sides
agreed to set up an "economic council" to push ahead with regulatory convergence in
nearly 40 areas, including intellectual property, financial services, business takeovers and
the motor industry. The aim is to increase trade and lower costs. Some reports suggest that
incompatible regulations in the world's two richest regions add 10% to the cost of developing and
producing new cars.
Note: Why is this important news getting such minimal press coverage?
Bigger than you think: The story behind the pet food recall
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/04/03/petscol.DTL
The March 16 recall of 91 pet food products manufactured by Menu Foods wasn't big news at first.
Early coverage reported only 10-15 cats and dogs dying. I'm a contributing editor for a nationally
syndicated pet feature ... and all of us there have close ties to the veterinary profession. What we
were hearing from veterinarians wasn't matching what we were hearing on the news. Although ...
Menu Foods started getting complaints as early as December 2006, FDA records state the
company received their first report of a food-related pet death on February 20. One week later, on
February 27, Menu started testing the suspect foods. Three days later, on March 3, the first cat in
the trial died of acute kidney failure. Nearly one month passed from the date Menu got its first
report of a death to the date it issued the recall. At that point, Menu had seen a 35 percent death
rate in their test-lab cats. We started a database for people to report their dead or sick pets. As of
March 31, the number of deaths alone was at 2,797. Pet owners were encouraged to report deaths
and illness to the FDA. But ... there was no place on the agency's Web site to do so. The FDA
kept confirming a number it had to have known was only the tip of the iceberg. It prevented
veterinarians from having the information they needed to treat their patients. It allowed the
media to repeat a misleadingly low number ... preventing a lot of people from really grasping the
scope and implication of the problem. An import alert buried on the FDA Web site ... identified the
Chinese company that is the source of the contaminated gluten -- gluten that is now known to be
sold not only for use in animal feed, but in human food products, too.
Note: If you want to understand how the FDA sometimes works to support big industry at the
expense of our health (and in this case the health of our pets), the entire article is a big eyeopener. Click here for more.
Fastest Train in the World Hits France

2007-04-03, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3004116
France's famous high-speed train, the TGV, broke its 17-year-old world speed record today
when it hit a top speed of 357.2 mph. Another French train held the previous rail train record, set
in 1990, of 320.2 mph. Normal TGV trains have a cruising speed of 186 mph. Japan holds the
absolute speed record for a train, with its magnetically levitated Maglev train that floats over a
guideway on a magnetic field without ever touching the track. The Maglev set a record of 361 mph
in 2003.
Note: A CNN report states that the fastest train in the U.S. is the Acela, with a top speed of 150
mph. The same report notes "the top speed for most passenger trains outside the Northeast
Corridor ... is 79 mph." Another CNN article comments "Japan's Shinkansen trains, introduced just
before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, regularly hit 186 mph." Why are American trains so backward
compared to the rest of the world? Could it have anything to do with oil? For more, click here.
FDA To Make Changes To Boost Drug Safety

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=2835505
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it would make organizational changes to
improve internal communication about potential risks that emerge after a new drug reaches the
market. The move is part of the agency's response to an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report that
sharply criticized the FDA's drug safety oversight and called for more staffing, funding and power
to police the drug industry. The September 2006 report also found a "dysfunctional" FDA
structure that hindered the agency's ability to protect public health. The IOM experts said
they found FDA officials had trouble managing scientific disagreements among staff and
downplayed some concerns by safety reviewers who monitor drugs after they win approval. On
Tuesday, the agency said it was "making specific organizational and management changes to
increase communications among FDA review staff and safety staff." The announcement came as
lawmakers prepare to debate critical funding legislation for the agency that could become a vehicle
for drug safety reforms. The FDA had requested the IOM report after it came under harsh criticism
for its handling of Merck & Co. Inc.'s withdrawn arthritis drug Vioxx and other medicines. Merck
pulled Vioxx from the market in 2004, five years after its approval, because of a link to heart
attacks and strokes.
Documents Describe U.S. Auditors' Battles With Halliburton

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-halliburton29mar29,1,...
Frustrated government auditors pleaded, cajoled and finally threatened Halliburton Co. executives
who repeatedly failed to comply with government reporting requirements under a key Iraq contract
with a $1.2-billion potential price tag. The 15-page report cites findings by auditors that
Halliburton overcharged -- "apparently intentionally" -- on the contract by using hidden
calculations, and attempted in one instance to bill the government for $26 million in costs it
did not incur. The report blamed the Department of Defense for awarding the contract despite
warnings from auditors that Halliburton's cost estimating system had "significant deficiencies."
Although federal officials have criticized the company and threatened to cancel its contracts,
Halliburton remains the largest private contractor in Iraq. The contract, awarded in January 2004,
was one of three Iraq pacts for the company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Although the other two agreements...have faced heavy criticism as no-bid contracts...Tuesday's
report was the first to focus on the third Halliburton contract. "You are hereby notified that the
government considers that you have universally failed to provide adequate cost information as
required under the subject contract," a U.S. contracting officer wrote in an Aug. 28, 2004, letter to
an executive of KBR, the Halliburton unit formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root.
Exxon Mobil Posts New Record for Profit

2005-10-27, ABC/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=1255549
Exxon Mobil Corp. had a quarter for the record books. The world's largest publicly traded oil
company said Thursday high oil and natural-gas prices helped its third-quarter profit surge
almost 75 percent to $9.92 billion, the largest quarterly profit for a U.S. company ever, and it
was the first to ring up more than $100 billion in quarterly sales. The hurricanes slashed
Exxon Mobil's U.S. production volumes by 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, down nearly 5
percent year-over-year, costing the company $45 million before taxes. The company said total
daily production slipped to 2.45 million barrels of oil equivalent from 2.51 million barrels.
Note: Isn't it amazing that though oil production fell, and though we all are paying much higher gas
prices, Exxon Mobil earned the largest profits ever in the same quarter as Hurricane Katrina?
Wouldn't it be nice if during a national catastrophe the oil companies were willing to drop their
prices and suffer a little with the rest of us?
Debate rages over genetically modified crops

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/19/BUGBONL8D91.DTL
The two sides in the debate over genetically modified crops issued warring reports
assessing the first decade of the technology this week, as the industry's sunny view
clashed with the darker vision of critics. The world's farmland planted with biotechnology crops
reached 252 million acres in 2006, the industry-backed International Service for the Acquisition of
Agri-Biotech Applications calculated in a report ... that promotes the products as solutions for
hunger and future fuel demand. The report concluded that biotechnology boosts crop yields and
benefits the environment. That view was challenged by Friends of the Earth International and the
Center for Food Safety in a report released Wednesday. The two groups argued that engineered
plants don't produce larger harvests than conventional varieties, are often more vulnerable to
drought and have increased the use of pesticides. The United States and Argentina host about 70
percent of the world's biotech crop acreage, both sides said. But adoption of the technology is
growing at a faster rate in developing countries than in industrialized nations, according to the
International Service. About 10 million farmers in 22 countries sow genetically modified crops, it
said. The dominant biotech crop is soybeans, with 57 percent of world acreage, followed by maize,
cotton and canola. Opponents said the crops are mainly a boon to agribusiness and big
agricultural chemical companies trying to increase sales of seeds, weed-killers and bug sprays.
Biotech crop seeds are often engineered to be resistant to the herbicides or pesticides sold by the
same company.
Note: For reliable information showing that you may be eating genetically modified food every day
which scientific experiments have repeatedly demonstrated can cause sickness and even death,
click here.
Psychiatric drugs fare favorably when companies pay for studies

2006-05-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-05-24-drug-studies_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA
Drug companies fund a growing number of the studies in leading psychiatric journals, and drugs
fare much better in these company-funded studies than in trials done independently or by
competitors, researchers reported Wednesday. About 57% of published studies were paid for by
drug companies in 2002, compared with 25% in 1992, says psychiatrist Igor Galynker of Beth
Israel Medical Center in New York City. His team looked at clinical research in four influential
journals: American Journal of Psychiatry, Archives of General Psychiatry, Journal of Clinical
Psychiatry and Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. In the report, released at the American
Psychiatric Association meeting in Toronto, reviewers did not know who paid for the studies they
evaluated, Galynker says. There were favorable outcomes for a medication in about: eight
out of 10 studies paid for by the company that makes the drug; five out of 10 studies done
with no industry support; three out of 10 studies done by competitors of the firm making
the drug. As drug companies increasingly fund research that yields favorable outcomes for their
drugs, there may be a built-in bias because journals are reluctant to publish studies with negative
or inconclusive findings.
Note: To learn more about the astonishing profits and power of the major drug companies, read
our concise summary of a major insider's research at http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup
Royal Rife: Discovering a Cure for Cancer Can Be Dangerous to Your

Health
2000-10-09, WantToKnow.info/Jeff Rense
http://www.WantToKnow.info/cancercuresroyalrife
Note: We usually limit ourselves to information from sources known and respected by the public.
For this message, we're making an exception. Jeff Rense of rense.com is a radio personality and
researcher of major cover-ups with no strong credentials other than a large following of people
convinced of the quality of his work. His popular website receives millions of visits a month. Below
is vital information everyone should know.
Royal Raymond Rife was a brilliant scientist born in 1888 and died in 1971. He received 14 major
awards and honors and was given an honorary Doctorate by the University of Heidelberg for his
work. By 1933, he had ... constructed the incredibly complex Universal Microscope, which ... was
capable of magnifying objects 30,000 times their normal size. With this incredible microscope, Rife
became the first human being to actually see a live virus. In 1934, the University of Southern
California appointed a Special Medical Research Committee to bring terminal cancer patients ... to
Rife's San Diego Laboratory and clinic for treatment. The team included doctors and pathologists
assigned to examine the patients - if still alive - in 90 days. After the 90 days of treatment, the
Committee concluded that 86.5% of the patients had been completely cured. On November
20, 1931, forty-four of the nation's most respected medical authorities honored Royal Rife
with a banquet. But by 1939, almost all of these distinguished doctors and scientists were
denying that they had ever met Rife. The last thing in the world that the pharmaceutical industry
wanted was ... a painless therapy that cured ... terminal cancer patients and cost nothing to use
but a little electricity. It might give people the idea that they didn't need drugs. Medical journals,
supported almost entirely by drug company revenues and controlled by the AMA, refused to
publish any paper by anyone on Rife's therapy. Rife technology became public knowledge again in
1986 with the publication of The Cancer Cure That Worked, by Barry Lynes, and other material
about Royal Rife and his monumental work.
Note: For excellent video documentaries, including interviews with Royal Rife:
http://www.rifevideos.com. For an excellent website focused on Rife's work, click here. For more
reliable, verifiable information on health cover-ups, click here.
Shell accused of strategy risking catastrophic climate change

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/17/shell-accused-of-strategy-...
Royal Dutch Shell has been accused of pursuing a strategy that would lead to potentially
catastrophic climate change after an internal document acknowledged a global temperature rise of
4C, twice the level considered safe for the planet. A paper used for guiding future business
planning at the Anglo-Dutch multinational assumes that carbon dioxide emissions will fail to limit
temperature increases to 2C, the internationally agreed threshold to prevent widespread flooding,
famine and desertification. Instead, the New Lens Scenarios document refers to a forecast by the
independent International Energy Agency (IEA) that points to a temperature rise of up to 4C in the
short term, rising later to 6C. Louise Rouse, an investor relations specialist and consultant to
Greenpeace, said the New Lens document undermined Shells claim that ongoing oil and gas
exploration helps raise living standards in the developing world by supplying the energy for rapidly
expanding economies. There is an incoherence at best between oil companies on the one
hand positioning themselves as being on the side of the worlds developing countries and
while on the other actively pursuing strategies which will entail catastrophic climate change
which we already know is having a significant impact on the global south, she said. Shells carbon
dioxide emissions have risen in 2014 and are set to increase further as it expands the business
through a planned 47bn takeover of rival BG.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing stories about global
warming and corporate corruption from reliable sources.
Elizabeth Warren fires back at Obama: Heres what theyre really fighting
about
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/11/elizabeth-warren-...
This week, the Senate will vote on whether to grant Obama fast track authority to negotiate the
TPP agreement, which involves a dozen countries around the Pacific. [Senator Elizabeth] Warren
has previously claimed that the TPPs controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement provision, or
ISDS, could undermine or chill public interest regulations in the U.S. and other participating
countries, and could even undercut Dodd Frank financial reform, one of Obamas signature
achievements. Obama has strongly rejected Warrens arguments in [an] interview with Yahoo and
elsewhere. "The president said ... that hes confident that when people read the agreement for
themselves, that theyll see its a great deal. But the president wont actually let people read the
agreement for themselves, [and] has committed only to letting the public see this deal after
Congress votes to authorize fast track. At that point it will be impossible for us to amend
the agreement or to block any part of it without tanking the whole TPP." Senator Warren went
into more detail: Congress will decide whether to give the President Fast Track authority. That
authority would prevent Congress from amending trade deals and reduce its ability to block trade
deals ... for ANY trade deal cut by ANY president over the next six years. Big banks on both sides
of the Atlantic are gearing up to use that agreement to water down financial regulations. A six-year
Fast Track bill is the missing link they need to make that happen.
Note: Senator Warren's opposition to the TPP is further explained in this Washington Post article.
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and many others are also vocally opposed to the
TPP and how this pending disaster is being pushed through under a veil of secrecy with little public
debate.
Why Zephyr Teachout can claim victory after losing by 30 points

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/11/why-zephyr-teachou...
Zephyr Teachout took only 34 percent of the vote in [2014's] Democratic primary against
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but she succeeded in bringing her old-fashioned populist
platform to the attention of the media and a broad audience of voters. Outside of New York,
of course, it's still only a few people who have had exposure to Teachout's unusual political views.
The Fordham University law professor has consistently argued -- on the stump and in her
academic work -- that the government should do more to ensure free competition, both in elections
and in the economy. She is calling for more aggressive government in these areas, but to the end
of decentralizing political and financial power. Public financing of campaigns was one of two main
planks in her platform. The other plank was a renewed commitment to preventing monopolies and
oligopolies in business. She argues that in industries from health care to banking to meat
processing, policies adopted during the Reagan administration have permitted mergers and
acquisitions resulting in the concentration of market power in the hands of a few firms. As a result
... consumers pay higher prices and workers are paid less, and large firms can lobby in a
coordinated way for legislative protection from would-be competitors. As Democrats decide on a
compelling agenda to rally voters in 2016 ... the ideas Teachout has advocated could be appealing.
Note: Learn how Teachout spent 1/40th of what her opponent did in the elections, yet she still
gained over 30% of the vote. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply
revealing elections news articles from reliable major media sources.
Elizabeth Warren: The market is broken

2014-09-05, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/05/news/economy/elizabeth-warren-market-broken/i...
Senator Elizabeth Warren ... believes the most important [problem] to solve is how to get the
American economy working for someone other than billionaires. It's a message she's been taking
all over the country, and she isn't afraid to call banks, credit card companies and some
employers cheats and tricksters. "The biggest financial institutions figured out they could
make a lot of money by cheating people on mortgages, credit cards and payday loans," she
told a packed auditorium at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she
spoke alongside New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. The biggest applause of the night was
on three issues that come up frequently in Warren's speeches. 1) Financial regulation: Warren was
the driving force behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the 2008
financial crisis. The agency has returned billions of dollars to Americans who were wronged. 2)
Reducing student loans: Last summer Warren made headlines for arguing that student loans
should have the same interest rates that banks get when they borrow money from the Federal
Reserve. As she likes to remind people, "Student loans issued from 2007 to 2012 are on target to
produce $66 billion in profit for the United States government." 3) Raising the minimum wage: "No
one should work full time and still live in poverty," Warren said. Her other big push is for basic
worker rights.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income inequality news
30 Years Later, 2 Men's Convictions Overturned in Rape-Murder

2014-09-03, NBC News/Associated Press
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/55979430/ns/us_news/t/nc-mens-convictions-overturne...
One of North Carolina's longest-serving death-row inmates and his half brother are being freed
after three decades in prison after another man's DNA was discovered on a cigarette butt left near
the body of a girl the siblings were convicted of killing. On Tuesday, a judge overturned the
convictions of Henry McCollum, 50, and Leon Brown, 46, in the 1983 rape and murder of Sabrina
Buie, citing the new evidence that they didn't commit the crime. The ruling is the latest twist in a
notorious legal case that began with what defense attorneys said were coerced
confessions from two scared teenagers with low IQs. McCollum was 19 at the time and Brown
was 15. Defense lawyers petitioned for their release after a recent analysis from the butt pointed to
another man who lived near the soybean field where Buie's body was found in Robeson County.
That man is already serving a life sentence for a similar rape and murder that happened less than
a month later. The DNA from the cigarette butts doesn't match Brown or McCollum, and
fingerprints taken from a beer can at the scene aren't theirs either, attorneys say. No
physical evidence connects them to the crime. Ken Rose, a senior staff attorney at the Center
for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, has represented Henry McCollum for 20 years. "It's
terrifying that our justice system allowed two intellectually disabled children to go to prison for a
crime they had nothing to do with, and then to suffer there for 30 years," Rose said.
Note: How many thousands of innocent people have been executed or given life sentences like
this? For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing prisons news articles from
Fracking is depleting water supplies in America's driest areas, report

shows
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/05/fracking-water-america-dro...
America's oil and gas rush is depleting water supplies in the driest and most drought-prone areas
of the country, from Texas to California, new research has found. Of the nearly 40,000 oil and gas
wells drilled since 2011, three-quarters were located in areas where water is scarce, and 55%
were in areas experiencing drought, the report by the Ceres investor network found. Fracking
those wells used 97bn gallons of water, raising new concerns about unforeseen costs of America's
energy rush. "Hydraulic fracturing is increasing competitive pressures for water in some of
the country's most water-stressed and drought-ridden regions," said Mindy Lubber,
president of the Ceres green investors' network. Without new tougher regulations on water
use, she warned industry could be on a "collision course" with other water users. "It's a
wake-up call," said Prof James Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine. "[I]t
is time to have a conversation about what impacts there are, and do our best to try to minimise any
damage." It can take millions of gallons of fresh water to frack a single well, and much of the
drilling is tightly concentrated in areas where water is in chronically short supply, or where there
have been multi-year droughts. Half of the 97bn gallons of water was used to frack wells in Texas,
which has experienced severe drought for years. "Shale producers are having significant impacts
at the county level, especially in smaller rural counties with limited water infrastructure capacity,"
the report said.
Elizabeth Warren: The contender

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/11/21/elizabeth-warren-the-contender/...
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the champion of Main Street versus Wall Street, just got another boost
to the presidential campaign she said she isnt running. It lies in the $13 billion deal that JP Morgan
Chase reached with the US Justice Department. The settlement, which ends the governments
probe into the banks risky mortgage business, reportedly represents the largest amount a single
company has ever committed to pay Uncle Sam. Thats significant but so is the banks unusual
admission that it failed to disclose the risks of buying its mortgage securities. Warren was a force
in both aspects of JP Morgans day of reckoning. After the economic collapse of 2008
and before her election as senator Warren led the charge for Wall Street accountability
while overseeing the government response to the banking crisis. As senator from
Massachusetts, she ... isnt shy about acknowledging her role in achieving them. In September,
Warren [said] that her lobbying of Mary Jo White, the newly installed chairwoman of the Securities
and Exchange Commission, played a key role in getting government regulators to require more
companies to admit wrongdoing, not just pay fines which is what happened in JP Morgans
case. The JP Morgan headlines play out as the stock market surges and unemployment ticks up.
The gap between Americas rich and poor is growing bigger. The divide creates an opening for a
Democrat who speaks to the shrinking middle class, as well as to those already squeezed out of it.
Warren could be that candidate, if she chooses.
Banks hate Richmond homeowners' bailout plan

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Banks-hate-Richmond-homeow...
Richmond [CA] city officials took a giant leap forward for everyday people last week when they
announced a program to purchase ailing residential mortgages and refinance them through a
financial partnership and a bold new initiative that's already begun. To accomplish the task, the city
said it will use its eminent domain powers in reverse: To save a home instead of condemn it. Much
to the displeasure of the banking industry, the city sent offer letters to more than 600
homeowners whose mortgages are held by nongovernment lending institutions. The
program offers to pay lenders the current market value of the property, not the higher value
of the mortgage. Under the Richmond program, a bank that approved a $500,000 mortgage
would be paid roughly 80 percent of its investment. Already, some lenders contend that such a law
violates constitutionally protected property rights and sets a precedent that could open the
floodgates for other cities in the same predicament. The mere exploration of similar programs in a
half-dozen California cities and counties provoked a strong reaction from the banking industry.
Financial experts have warned that the Richmond policy is certain to spawn legal challenges and a
backlash from lenders who recalculate higher mortgages in Richmond to offset the risk of the city
using a local law to claim a foreclosed property. That's interesting, because no measure was too
extreme, no taxpayer sacrifice too great to come up with and fund a new financial model to bail out
the bankers and brokerage firms in 2008. But that's what the federal government - and American
taxpayers did.
The Billionaire Brothers Behind America's Predator Drones -- And Their

Very Strange Past
2013-04-24, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/billionaire-brothers-behind-americas-p...
Gray Butte, CA: The General Atomics drone base, way out in the wastelands of the Mojave Desert
... today ranks as possibly the largest private drone base in the United States. General Atomics
took the base over in 2001 and converted it into a testing and quality control facility for its drone
fleet. This is where the company tests experimental drone technology--like the newfangled stealth
bomber jet drone. But mostly the base is where General Atomics techs assemble and test their
Predator and Reaper drones before breaking them down again and shipping them to eager
customers in the Air Force, Border Patrol, National Guard and the CIA. The Guardian estimated
that U.S. armed forces had about 250 General Atomics drones in 2012. And a good number of
them first came through Grey Butte. [The] brothers who make them: Linden Stanley and James
Neal Blue, the mysterious Blue brothers who own and run General Atomics. General
Atomics does not disclose its financial information, but stats gleaned from public data
show that they took in just under $5 billion from U.S. taxpayers from 2000 to 2009. Current
annual revenue is estimated to between $600 million and $1 billion, with about 80 percent coming
from government defense contracts. Today, General Atomics dominates 25% of the UAV market--a
market that will only keep getting bigger and bigger.
Note: For lots more excellent background to the Blue brothers and their predator-producing
company, read the NY Times article at this link.
Banks score major win in private Libor suits

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-29/business/sns-rt-us-libor-lawsui...
The world's biggest banks won a major victory on [March 29] when a U.S. judge dismissed a
"substantial portion" of the claims in private lawsuits accusing them of rigging global benchmark
interest rates. The 16 banks had faced claims totaling billions of dollars in the case. The banks
include: Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings, JPMorgan
Chase, [and others]. They had been accused by a diverse body of private plaintiffs, ranging from
bondholders to the city of Baltimore, of conspiring to manipulate the London Interbank Offered
Rate (Libor), a key benchmark at the heart of more than $550 trillion in financial products. In a
significant setback for the plaintiffs, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan
granted the banks' motion to dismiss federal antitrust claims and partially dismissed the
plaintiffs' claims of commodities manipulation. She also dismissed racketeering and statelaw claims. Buchwald did allow a portion of the lawsuit to continue that claims the banks' alleged
manipulation of Libor harmed traders who bet on interest rates. Small movements in those rates
can mean sizable gains or losses for those gambling on which way the rates move. Buchwald's
decision may make it more likely that banks will talk settlement with a significant win in their
pocket. The decision also could cast doubt on some of the highest analyst projections about
potential Libor damages, and quell some concerns that the banks have not reserved enough for
litigation expenses.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on criminal operations of the
financial industry, click here.
Unrepresentative democracy
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Unrepresentative-democracy-4337889.php
Why are ideas widely supported in most of the country so often portrayed as controversial,
polarizing and divisive once they are taken up by legislatures? Why does the professional political
class seem like a wholly separate society that does not understand the constituents it is supposed
to be representing? These are the questions at the root of America's political dysfunction - and a
new study marshaling reams of data finally provides some concrete answers. Conducted by
graduate students David Broockman at UC Berkeley and Christopher Skovron at the University of
Michigan, the survey of nearly 2,000 legislators from across America documents politicians'
perceptions of their constituents' views on hot-button issues like universal health care and samesex marriage. It then compares them with constituents' views. The juxtaposition reveals a jarring
truth: Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers hugely overestimate the conservatism of the
very people they are supposed to represent. In all, the report finds that "conservative politicians
systematically believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are by
over 20 percentage points, while liberal politicians also typically overestimate their
constituents' conservatism by several percentage points." Ultimately, that has resulted in a
political system inherently hostile to mainstream proposals and utterly unrepresentative of public
opinion. Ensconced in a bubble of conservative-minded corporate lobbyists and mega-donors,
they come to wrongly assume that what passes for a mainstream position in that bubble somehow
represents consensus in the larger world.
Court case draws Monsanto protesters to White House

2013-01-10, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/political-fix/court-case...
An appeal by organic farmers [of] a court ruling last year turned into a wide-ranging protest this
morning with speakers skewering Monsanto Co. for its policies and demanding labeling of
genetically modified food. About 200 people, many from organic seed companies, rallied in a park
directly across from the White House. The protest suggested an uptick in efforts to demand
labeling, which was defeated in a California ballot initiative in November. Monsanto spent at least
$8 million in an industry-wide effort to sink the California proposition. Organic farmers, who are
pressing a lawsuit against Monsanto, often complain that their products are threatened by
wind-blown pollen from genetically altered crops. "We want and demand the right of clean
seed not contaminated by a massive biotech company that's in it for the profit," Carol Koury,
who operates Sow True Seeds in Asheville, N.C., said at the rally. The gathering was held in
conjunction with an appeal heard today before a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel in
Washington. The suit questions the legality of Monsanto's seed patents and seeks protection from
patent-infringement suits against farmers in the event their fields are found to contain genetically
modified seed. Last February, U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald in the Southern District of New
York dismissed the suit.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the risks from genetically
modified organisms, click here.
Racketeering and Money Laundering Lawsuit Seeking Return of $43

Trillion to the United States Treasury
2012-10-25, MarketWatch/Wall Street Journal
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/major-banks-governmental-officials-and-their...
Spire Law Group's national home owners' lawsuit [is] the largest money laundering and
racketeering lawsuit in United States history, identifying $43 trillion of laundered money. [In] the
federal lawsuit now [pending] in the United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York ... plaintiffs
now establish the location of the $43 trillion of laundered money in a racketeering
enterprise. [The] mass tort action [seeks] to halt all foreclosures nationwide pending the
return of the $43 trillion, an audit of the Fed and audits of all the "bailout programs." The
epicenter of this laundering and racketeering enterprise has been and continues to be Wall Street
and continues to involve the very "Banksters" located there who have repeatedly asked in the past
to be "bailed out" and to be "bailed out" in the future. The Havens for the money laundering
schemes ... are located in such venues as Switzerland, the Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Malaysia,
Cypress and [other entities] identified in both the United Nations and the U.S. Senate's recent
reports on international money laundering. The case further alleges that through these obscure
foreign companies, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo Bank, Citibank, Citigroup, One
West Bank, and numerous other federally chartered banks stole trillions of dollars of home owners'
and taxpayers' money during the last decade and then laundered it through offshore companies.
Note: CNBC also reported this astonishing news. Yet within hours the original page for the article
was taken down, and CNBC senior vice president Kevin Krim received news that his children were
killed under very suspicious circumstances. Could this have been a strong warning? For more in
this, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial
Court blocks S.F. warning on cell phones

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Court-blocks-S-F-warning-on-cell-phones...
A federal appeals court blocked San Francisco on [September 10] from requiring cell phone
dealers to tell customers the products may expose them to dangerous levels of radiation,
saying the city can't force retailers to pass along messages they dispute. The ordinance, the
first of its kind in the nation, had been scheduled to take effect last October, but has remained on
hold during an industry challenge. It would require retailers to give each cell phone buyer a fact
sheet saying the World Health Organization had classified the phones' radio-frequency emissions
as a "possible carcinogen." The sheet also shows human silhouettes absorbing radiation and
suggests protective measures, like wearing headsets, making shorter calls and limiting use by
children. Stores would have to put similar messages on large wall posters and on stickers attached
to display ads. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government can require businesses to
display factual, undisputed information about their products. The city's lawyers and policymakers
will review the ruling before deciding their next steps.
click here.
Seismologists warn Japan against nuclear restart

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47958890/ns/us_news-environment/t/seismologists-w...
Two prominent seismologists said on Tuesday that Japan is ignoring the safety lessons of last
year's Fukushima crisis and warned against restarting two reactors next month. Japan has
approved the restart of the two reactors at the Kansai Electric Power Ohi nuclear plant, northwest
of Tokyo, despite mass public opposition. They will be the first to come back on line after all
reactors were shut following a massive earthquake and tsunami last March that caused the worst
nuclear crisis since Chernobyl at Tokyo Electric Power's Daiichi Fukushima plant. Seismic
modeling by Japan's nuclear regulator did not properly take into account active fault lines near the
Ohi plant, Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist at Kobe University, told reporters. "The stress tests
and new safety guidelines for restarting nuclear power plants both allow for accidents at
plants to occur," Ishibashi told reporters. "Instead of making standards more strict, they
both represent a severe setback in safety standards." Experts advising Japan's nuclear
industry had underestimated the seismic threat, Mitsuhisa Watanabe, a tectonic geomorphology
professor at Tokyo University, said at the same news conference. "The expertise and neutrality of
experts advising Japan's Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency are highly questionable," Watanabe
said.
Note: For more from reliable sources on corruption on the nuclear power industry, click here.
Goldman Sachs is latest to hear wrath of ex-worker

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/16/BUNA1NKMIE.DTL
The Goldman Sachs executive who didn't so much burn as firebomb his career bridges with
a poisonous resignation letter in the New York Times wasn't the only former employee to go
on a publicized rant this week. A couple of days earlier, James Whittaker, an engineering
director at Google who recently moved to Microsoft, took direct aim at the Mountain View search
giant in a blog post arguing that the company has lost its way in the desperate quest to funnel
users into its social network. Later that day, in an opinion piece on Wired.com, Andy Baio assailed
Yahoo's patent-infringement suit against Facebook ... calling it "extortion" and a betrayal of
employees. Obviously these parting shots carried extra weight coming from onetime senior,
internal sources. While it's hard to draw broad conclusions about the criticisms, we can safely draw
some narrow ones: Goldman Sachs should stop being an awful, awful corporate citizen (but then
we've known that). Google shouldn't undermine its culture and core product in search of the next
big thing. And Yahoo should drop this embarrassing lawsuit over bogus patents and get to work on
real innovation. Alas, the conclusion most companies will probably draw from these episodes is
that they need to toughen up their nondisclosure agreements.
Note: For revealing reports from reliable sources on corruption and criminality at the biggest
financial corporations, click here. For lots more on corporate corruption, click here.
Monsanto Agrees To Pay Up $93 Million In Agent Orange Settlement

2012-02-24, NPR blog
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/24/147370124/monsanto-agrees-to-p...
More details about [a] preliminary agreement to settle an "Agent Orange" related class-action
lawsuit filed against the Monsanto Company [have been released]. Monsanto agreed to settle a
case over pollution claims made on behalf of current and former residents of the small
town of Nitro, West Virginia. In a written statement today Monsanto says it's agreeing to pay
up to $93 million dollars. $84 million of that would go toward medical monitoring for residents
($21 million up front and up to $63 million over 30 years). The company also is agreeing to spend
up to $9 million to professionally clean homes in the affected area, which includes an estimated
4500 houses. Putnam Circuit Court Judge Derek Swope will now give the agreement a thorough
review before giving the deal his final approval.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here. For information on
a major lawsuit and settlement for U.S. veterans injured by the government's use of agent orange,
click here.
Petition tells Obama: Cease FDA ties to Monsanto

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/monsanto-petition-tells-oba...
A two-year-old Food and Drug Administration appointment is stirring up online protests once more.
In 2009, President Obama appointed Michael Taylor as a senior adviser for the FDA. Consumer
groups protested the appointment because Taylor had formerly served as a vice president for
Monsanto, the controversial agricultural multinational at the forefront of genetically modified food.
In recent days, a petition calling for the former Monsanto VPs ouster is gaining steam. President
Obama, I oppose your appointment of Michael Taylor, the petition on Signon.org reads. Taylor is
the same person who was Food Safety Czar at the FDA when genetically modified
organisms were allowed into the U.S. food supply without undergoing a single test to
determine their safety or risks. This is a travesty. Signers of the petition argue that Monsanto
should not have influence at the FDA because it will hurt farmers and threaten plants and animals.
They cite scientific research that has found genetically modified foods could be a cause for chronic
illnesses or cancer in the U.S. The petition calls Taylors appointment an example of a fox
watching the hen house.
Note: To sign the petition, click here. For lots more on this danger to public health, click here. For
how WantToKnow.info founder Fred Burks found himself blacklisted by Monsanto, click here.
Overall, about 5.6 million people moved their bank accounts in the last
quarter of 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-bank-transfer-idUSTRE80Q1TU20120127
More than 600,000 U.S. consumers have moved their money from big banks to community banks
or credit unions, thanks to the much-publicized Bank Transfer Day last fall, according to an
analysis released by Javelin Strategy & Research. The grassroots campaign to get people to shift
out of big banks capitalized on the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement, and picked up
further momentum from a Bank of America plan in September to charge customers a $5 per month
debit card fee. "It was a meaningful movement of people from big banks into small
community banks and credit unions ..." said Jim Van Dyke, founder of Javelin. Historically,
people don't switch banks easily, even if they are unhappy, Van Dyke says. Consumers have
strong ties to their banks because of direct deposit, automated bill payments and habit -- making
change more complex than simply going someplace else. "Individuals are really resistant to
moving their money out of banks," Van Dyke says. Overall, about 5.6 million people moved their
bank accounts in the last quarter of 2011, Javelin says. Account changes attributed to Bank
Transfer Day represented about 11 percent of total moves.
Note: As the article mentions, people rarely change banks, so the fact that 6 million changed
banks in three months is quite impressive!
Founder Says WikiLeaks, Starved of Cash, May Close

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/world/europe/blocks-on-wikileaks-donations-...
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said ... that his controversial website could be forced to
shut down by the end of the year because a 10-month-old "financial blockade" had sharply
reduced the donations on which it depends. Calling the blockade a "dangerous, oppressive and
undemocratic" attack led by the United States, Assange said at a news conference that it had
deprived his organization of "tens of millions of dollars," and warned, "If WikiLeaks does not find
a way to remove this blockade, we will not be able to continue by the turn of the new year."
Since the end of 2010, financial intermediaries - including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and
Western Union - have refused to allow donations to WikiLeaks to flow through their
systems, he said, blocking "95 percent" of the website's revenue and leaving it to operate on its
cash reserves for the past 10 months. An aide said that WikiLeaks was now receiving less than
$10,000 a month in donations. Assange said that WikiLeaks had been forced to halt work on the
processing of tens of thousands of secret documents that it has received, and to turn its attention
instead to lawsuits it has filed in the United States, Australia, Scandinavian countries and
elsewhere, as well as to a formal petition to the European Commission to try to restore donors'
ability to send it money through normal channels.
Note: For more on this from BBC, click here.
Wall Street protest movement spreads to cities across US, Canada and
Europe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/04/wall-street-protest-movement-spreads
It began as the brainchild of activists across the border in Canada when an anti-consumerism
magazine put out a call in July for supporters to occupy Wall Street. Now, three weeks after a few
hundred people heeded that initial call and rolled out their sleeping bags in a park in New York's
financial district, they are being joined by supporters in cities across the US and beyond.
Protesters against corporate greed, unemployment and the political corruption that they say Wall
Street represents have taken to the streets in Boston, Los Angeles, St Louis and Kansas City. The
core group, Occupy Wall Street, claims people will take part in demonstrations in as many as 147
US cities this month, while the website occupytogether.org lists 47 US states as being involved.
Around the world, protests in Canada, the UK, Germany and Sweden are also planned, they
say. The speed of the leaderless movement's growth has taken many by surprise. The
movement, which organisers say has its roots in the Arab spring and in Madrid's Puerta del
Sol protests, has been galvanised by recent media attention. Last week, the Guardian
reported that a NYPD police officer had been filmed spraying four women protesters with pepper
spray. On Saturday, a peaceful march on Brooklyn bridge intended as a call to the other four
boroughs of New York to join in resulted in 700 arrests. Some protesters claim the police trapped
them.
articles.
Trader tells BBC 'millions of people's savings will vanish'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8790719/Trader-tells-BBC-m...
An independent trader, appearing on BBC News, reveal[ed] that he thinks banks and hedge funds
believe the stock market 'is toast'. Alessio Rastani said that Goldman Sachs rules the world,
not governments, and that Goldman Sachs don't care about this rescue package because
they know the stock market is finished and they don't really care about the Euro. US
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said over the weekend: "Sovereign and banking stresses in
Europe are the most serious risk now confronting the world economy. Decisions cannot wait until
the crisis gets more severe." He has proposed the so-called Geithner plan which will leverage the
EU's 440bn bail-out fund (EFSF) from 440bn to 2 trillion to cope with Italy and Spain. But
according to Mr Rastani it may already be too late as: In less than twelve months, my prediction
is, the savings of millions of people are going to vanish.
Note: To watch the full BBC video of this most unusual interview, click here. For lots more on the
fraudulent practices of major financial firms, click here.
Shell profits jump 77% on higher oil prices

2011-07-28, BBC News
Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has reported a 77% jump in second-quarter profit, thanks to
higher energy prices. Shell's profit for the three months to June came in at $8bn (4.9bn) on
a current cost of supplies basis, up from $4.5bn in the same period last year. Earlier this week,
rival BP announced second-quarter profits of $5.3bn. Larger US rival Exxon Mobil said that net
profit rose 41% to $10.7bn for the three months to June from the same period last year. The
price of oil is much higher now than it was a year ago, in part inflated by political unrest in oilproducing countries such as Libya. Twelve months ago, US light sweet crude oil was trading at
about $78 a barrel. It is currently trading at about $97 a barrel, having topped $110 at the end of
April.
Note: Why aren't any of the major media questioning the practice of oil companies making huge
profits from gas price increases, profits which come directly from the pockets of consumers?
Shouldn't they all be responsible for at least part of the burden?
Sharpton Appears to Win Anchor Spot on MSNBC

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/business/media/sharpton-close-to-being-msnb...
After giving a nearly six-month tryout for the Internet talk show host Cenk Uygur, the cable news
channel MSNBC is preparing to instead hand its 6 p.m. time slot to the Rev. Al Sharpton. Cenk
Uygur said MSNBC's management decided that they did not care for his aggressive style. Mr.
Uygur, who had been made a paid contributor to MSNBC months earlier, was handed 6 p.m., a big
coup given that he had earlier campaigned to have his progressive Web show The Young Turks
picked up by MSNBC. Mr. Uygur, who by most accounts was well liked within MSNBC, said in an
interview that he turned down the new contract because he felt [MSNBC President Phil] Griffin had
been the recipient of political pressure. In April, he said, Mr. Griffin called me into his office
and said that hed been talking to people in Washington, and that they did not like my tone.
He said he guessed Mr. Griffin was referring to White House officials, though he had no
evidence for the assertion. He also said that Mr. Griffin said the channel was part of the
establishment, and that you need to act like it.
Note: To understand why Uygur was forced out by powerful forces behind the scenes, watch the
amazing 10-minute video of him exposing the blatant corruption of the bankers at this link. For an
interview of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Uygur's resignation, click here.
Exxon Profit Up 69 Percent as Gas and Oil Prices Boost Top Five Oil
Companies
2011-04-28, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/exxon-shell-profits-bp-oil-companies-high-expe...
Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell today reported first-quarter profit increases of 69 percent and
30 percent, respectively, from the same period last year. With rising gas and oil prices, analysts
expected the five biggest oil companies -- with Exxon as the largest -- to report that they are
swimming in revenue. Exxon earned $10.7 billion in the first quarter, up from $6.3 billion.
Shell announced profit of $6.3 billion in the first quarter this year, up from $4.8 billion.
ConocoPhillips said its first quarter earnings increased 43 percent to $3 billion from $2.1 billion in
the same period last year. BP's first quarter earnings dipped this year -- $5.48 billion compared
with $5.60 billion during the first quarter a year ago -- including a charge of $384 million related to
the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Valero Energy, based in San Antonio, Texas, and the largest
independent U.S. refiner, announced ... a first quarter profit of $98 million "primarily due to higher
margins for diesel and jet fuel," compared to a first quarter loss last year of $113 million.
Note: Why are oil companies raising their profit margins to drive gas prices even higher? For lots
more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.
Fukushima and the 'nuclear renaissance' that wasn't

2011-04-15, CNN
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/15/fukushima-and-the-nuclear-...
A month after a devastating earthquake sent a wall of water across the Japanese landscape, the
global terrain of the atomic power industry has been forever altered. The ongoing drama at the
power plant in Fukushima ... has erased the momentum the nuclear industry has seen in recent
years. Before Fukushima, a "nuclear renaissance" - as it was termed in the press - seemed well
underway, except for this point: Nuclear power, as a total of world energy supply, has been in
steady decline for the past decade. From 2000 to 2008, nuclear energy dropped from 16.7% to
13.5% of global energy production, according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report
2009. The 2010-11 preliminary report, expected to be released [on April 20], will show the
downward trend has continued. Costs of nuclear power plants can be as high as $10 billion. The
average construction time is seven years, but with licensing approval new builds often take a
decade. Nuclear power reactors are dependent on government subsidies and loan guarantees to
be built, cover costs in case of accidents and assume long-term responsibility for storage of spent
radioactive fuel, critics say, which artificially lowers the cost of production. Market reaction has
been swift against the nuclear industry after the Fukushima disaster. Companies on the Standard
& Poor's Clean Energy Index rose on average 17% in the wake of the disaster, while companies
on the S&P Nuclear Index fell 8.7%.
Radiation Detected In Drinking Water In 13 More US Cities, Cesium-137

In Vermont Milk
http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/2011/04/09/radiation-detected-in-drinking...
Radiation from Japan has been detected in drinking water in 13 more American cities, and cesium137 has been found in American milk - in Montpelier, Vermont - for the first time since the
Japan nuclear disaster began, according to data released by the Environmental Protection Agency
[on April 8]. Milk samples from Phoenix and Los Angeles contained iodine-131 at levels
roughly equal to the maximum contaminant level permitted by EPA, the data shows. The
cesium-137 found in milk in Vermont is the first cesium detected in milk since the
Fukushima-Daichi nuclear accident occurred last month. The sample contained 1.9
picoCuries per liter of cesium-137, which falls under the [EPA's] 3.0 standard. Airborne
contamination continues to cross the western states, the new data shows, and Boise has seen the
highest concentrations of radioactive isotopes in rain so far. A rainwater sample collected in Boise
on March 27 contained 390 picocures per liter of iodine-131, plus 41 of cesium-134 and 36 of
cesium-137. EPA released this result for the first time yesterday. Typically several days pass
between sample collection and data release because of the time required to collect, transport and
analyze the samples. In most of the data released Friday the levels of contaminants detected are
far below the standards observed by EPA and other U.S. agencies.
Scientist Finds Bottom Of Gulf Still Oily, Dead

2011-02-20, NPR/Associated Press
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/20/133912491/scientist-finds-bottom-of-gulf-still-...
Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top
scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and
has decimated life on parts of the sea floor. That report is at odds with a recent report by
the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012. At a science conference
in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early
results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had
visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone
by then. It wasn't. "There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff
doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of
Science annual conference in Washington.
'Prince of Mercenaries' who wreaked havoc in Iraq turns up in Somalia

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/prince-of-mercenaries-who-wrea...
Erik Prince, the American founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, has cropped
up at the centre of a controversial scheme to establish a new mercenary force to crack down on
piracy ... in the war-torn East African country of Somalia. The project, which emerged yesterday
when an intelligence report was leaked to media in the United States, requires Mr Prince to help
train a private army of 2,000 Somali troops that will be loyal to the country's United Nations-backed
government. Several neighbouring states, including the United Arab Emirates, will pay the bills. Mr
Prince is working in Somalia alongside Saracen International, a murky South African firm
which is run by a former officer from the Civil Co-operation Bureau, an apartheid-era force
notorious for killing opponents of the white minority government. News of his latest project
has alarmed, though hardly surprised, critics of Blackwater. The firm made hundreds of millions of
dollars from the "war on terror", but was severely tarnished by a string of incidents in post-invasion
Iraq, in which its employees were accused of committing dozens of unlawful killings. Mr Prince ...
remains entangled in a string of lawsuits pertaining to the alleged recklessness of the firm. For
most of the past year, he has been living in Abu Dhabi, where he has close relations with the
government and feels better positioned to dodge lawsuits.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources exposing the crimes carried out by corporations and
the military in the "Global War on Terrorism", click here.
Houston TV stations refuse ad that slams fast food

2010-12-14, Houston Chronicle (Houston's leading newspaper)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7339356.html
A physicians' group campaigning against McDonald's fast food offerings says that four Houston TV
stations have refused to run its advertisement equating cheeseburgers with heart disease and
death. The advertisement from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, titled
"Consequences," displays a doctor and a weeping woman standing over a corpse clutching a
cheeseburger in its right hand. The 30-second spot ends with a picture of the McDonald's logo, the
words "I was lovin' it," a parody of the company's "I'm lovin' it" slogan, and the voiceover, "High
cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks. Tonight, make it vegetarian." Susan Levin, director
of nutrition of education for the Washington, D.C., nonprofit, said all four of Houston's major
network affiliates turned down "Consequences," which she said has aired in Chicago and
Washington and was rejected by stations in Miami. The group was prepared to pay $5,000 to air
the ad locally. Houston was selected for the campaign, the group said, because of its market
size, its reputation as having one of the nation's highest obesity rates and because it has
149 McDonald's outlets, more than any city in the nation other than New York. The
"Consequences" spot has been viewed more than 1.1 million times on the group's YouTube site.
Note: To view the commercial at YouTube, click here.
Allied Irish Banks to pay 40m bonuses despite bailout

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/08/allied-irish-banks-pay-bonuses...
Stricken Allied Irish Banks is preparing to hand out 40m (34m) of bonuses next week despite
being on the brink of receiving another emergency bailout from the Irish government. As many as
2,400 bankers in its Dublin capital markets division are to receive the payments on 17 December
under agreements struck with the bank in 2008. The bank, 19% owned by Ireland's taxpayers but
expected to reach 95% state-ownership, had originally been blocked from making the payments
under one of the government's bailout programmes. But legal action by a trader, John Foy, over a
deferred 161,000 bonus awarded in 2008 has led the bank to conclude it will need to pay
bonuses to many of the staff to whom they were awarded for that year. The bonuses are being
handed out at a time when the government is instigating four years of tax rises and brutal
cuts to benefits. Bankers are receiving much of the blame for forcing Ireland to take
international assistance and implement the austerity budgetary measures.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the worldwide bailout by taxpayers of failed banks,
click here.
Growing backlash against TSA body scanners, pat-downs

2010-11-13, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/11/12/travel.screening/index.html
A growing pilot and passenger revolt over full-body scans and what many consider intrusive patdowns couldn't have come at a worse time for the nation's air travel system. Thanksgiving, the
busiest travel time of the year, is less than two weeks away. Grassroots groups are urging
travelers to either not fly or to protest by opting out of the full-body scanners and undergo
time-consuming pat-downs instead. Some pilots, passengers and flight attendants have
chosen to opt out of the revealing scans. One online group, National Opt Out Day calls for a
day of protest against the scanners on Wednesday, November 24, the busiest travel day of the
year. Another group argues the TSA should remove the scanners from all airports. The Electronic
Privacy Information Center (EPIC)... is taking legal action. Pilots' unions for US Airways and
American Airlines are urging their members to avoid full-body scanning at airport security
checkpoints, citing health risks and concerns about intrusiveness and security officer behavior.
"Pilots should NOT submit to AIT (Advanced Imaging Technology) screening," wrote Capt. Mike
Cleary, president of the U.S. Airline Pilots Association. "Frequent exposure to TSA-operated
scanner devices may subject pilots to significant health risks," Cleary wrote. The website We Won't
Fly urgers travelers to "Act now. Travel with Dignity."
Note: For a powerful, one-minute video showing just how invasive these searches are, click here.
Gulf oil blowout: White House accused of spinning report

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/05/oil-spill-white-house-accus...
The White House was accused today of spinning a government scientific report into the amount of
oil left in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP [blowout] which had officials declaring that the vast
majority of the oil had been removed. Environmental groups and scientists including those
working with government agencies said White House officials had painted far too optimistic a
picture of a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency [NOAA] into the fate of the oil.
"Recent reports seem to say that about 75% of the oil is taken care of and that is just not
true," said John Kessler, of Texas A&M University, who led a National Science Foundation on-site
study of the spill. "The fact is that 50% to 75% of the material that came out of the well is still
in the water. It's just in a dissolved or dispersed form." Rick Steiner, a former University of
Alaska marine biologist, suggested that the White House had been too eager to try to put the oil
spill behind it, with Democrats in Congress facing tough election fights in November. "It seems that
there was a rush to declare this done, and there were obvious political objectives there," he said.
"Even if there is not a drop of oil out there, and it had truly magically vanished, it would still be an
environmental disaster caused by the toxic shock of the release of 5m barrels of oil."
U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/us/14agency.html
The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil
companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency
that assesses threats to endangered species and despite strong warnings from that agency
about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf. Those approvals, federal records show,
include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11
workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day. The Minerals
Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who
raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the
gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists. Those
scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their
internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.
M.M.S. has given up any pretense of regulating the offshore oil industry, said Kiern
Suckling, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, ... which filed notice of intent to sue the
agency over its noncompliance with federal law concerning endangered species. The agency
seems to think its mission is to help the oil industry evade environmental laws.
Who will pay for Amazon's 'Chernobyl'?

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/who-will-pay-for-amazon...
So severe is the environmental damage [at Lago Agrio, on the fringes of the Ecuadorian Amazon]
that experts have called it an "Amazon Chernobyl". But the people of Lago Agrio and its
surrounding area have been fighting back. Sixteen years ago, 30,000 Ecuadorians began legal
action against the US oil company now owned by Chevron they hold responsible. This week,
while both sides await the verdict, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the case goes on release in
Britain. Directed by Joe Berlinger ... "Crude" tells a story [that] began when Steve Donziger, a
lawyer acting for the Ecuadorians, arrived at the film-maker's office. "The story the lawyer told me
was indeed shocking," said Berlinger. Within a few days of Berlinger's trip to Ecuador, he realised
that the case was virtually demanding to be made into a film. "I noticed a group of indigenous
people sitting by the riverbank, preparing a meal by an open fire using processed tuna fish from a
big industrial-sized can. They were eating this canned tuna because the fish that swam in their
river, which had fed these proud people for millennia, were dead." "Crude" is a head-on culture
clash bursting with strong personalities where brash US lawyers on both sides are at
loggerheads, and Ecuador's indigenous incongruous in New York with their traditional
dress and warpaint are carefully coached to fight their case in a foreign system.
Note: To watch the trailer for the film "Crude," click here.
Labor Fight Ends in Win for Students

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/business/18labor.html
The anti-sweatshop movement at dozens of American universities, from Georgetown to U.C.L.A.,

has had plenty of idealism and energy, but not many victories. Until now. Its pressure tactics
persuaded one of the nations leading sportswear companies, Russell Athletic, to agree to
rehire 1,200 workers in Honduras who lost their jobs when Russell closed their factory soon after
the workers had unionized. From the time Russell shut the factory last January, the anti-sweatshop
coalition orchestrated a nationwide campaign against the company. Most important, the coalition,
United Students Against Sweatshops, persuaded the administrations of Boston College, Columbia,
Harvard, New York University, Stanford, Michigan, North Carolina and 89 other colleges and
universities to sever or suspend their licensing agreements with Russell. Student activists picketed
the N.B.A. finals in Orlando and Los Angeles this year to protest the leagues licensing
agreement with Russell. In its agreement, not only did Russell agree to reinstate the dismissed
workers and open a new plant in Honduras as a unionized factory, it also pledged not to fight
unionization at its seven existing factories there. For us, it was very important to receive the
support of the universities, Moises Alvarado, president of the union at the closed plant
in Choloma, said. We are impressed by the social conscience of the students in the
United States.
Biotech crops cause big jump in pesticide use

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE5AG0QY20091117
The rapid adoption by U.S. farmers of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton has
promoted increased use of pesticides, an epidemic of herbicide-resistant weeds and more
chemical residues in foods, according to a report ... by health and environmental protection
groups. The groups said research showed that herbicide use grew by 383 million pounds from
1996 to 2008, with 46 percent of the total increase occurring in 2007 and 2008. The report was
released by nonprofits The Organic Center (TOC), the Union for Concerned Scientists (UCS) and
the Center for Food Safety (CFS). The groups said that [there is] a net overall increase on U.S.
farm fields of 318 million pounds of pesticides, which includes insecticides and herbicides, over the
first 13 years of commercial use. The rise in herbicide use comes as U.S. farmers increasingly
adopt corn, soy and cotton that have been engineered with traits that allow them to tolerate
dousings of weed killer. The report by the environmental groups states that a key problem resulting
from the increase in herbicide use is the emergence of "super weeds," which are difficult to kill
because they have become resistant to the herbicides. "This report confirms what we've been
saying for years," said Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety. "The
most common type of genetically engineered crops promotes increased use of pesticides,
an epidemic of resistant weeds, and more chemical residues in our foods. This may be
profitable for the biotech/pesticide companies, but it's bad news for farmers, human health
and the environment."
Note: Why did the major media fail to report this Reuters' article? To read the full report, "Impacts
of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years", and to view
additional information, click here. And for a powerful online lesson on health which has already
transformed lives, click here.
The Halliburton Loophole

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/opinion/03tue3.html
Among the many dubious provisions in the 2005 energy bill was one dubbed the Halliburton
loophole, which was inserted at the behest of you guessed it then-Vice President Dick
Cheney, a former chief executive of Halliburton. It stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of
its authority to regulate a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing [commonly referred to as
"fracking"]. Invented by Halliburton in the 1940s, it involves injecting a mixture of water, sand and
chemicals, some of them toxic, into underground rock formations to blast them open and release
natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing has been implicated in a growing number of water pollution
cases across the country. It has become especially controversial in New York, where
regulators are eager to clear the way for drilling in the New York City watershed, potentially
imperiling the citys water supply. Congress last week approved a bill that asks the E.P.A. to
conduct a new study on the risks of hydraulic fracturing. An agency study in 2004 whitewashed the
industry and was dismissed by experts as superficial and politically motivated. This time Congress
is demanding a transparent, peer-reviewed process. Cumbersomely named the Fracturing
Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, it would close the loophole and restore the
E.P.A.s rightful authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing. It would also require the oil and gas
industry to disclose the chemicals they use.
Note: Energy-development corporations using the fracking process will not disclose the chemicals
they inject into the subsurface because of the chemicals' high toxicity when they penetrate
groundwater supplies. For many more examples from reliable sources of corporate and
government secrecy, click here.
Big business and security

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/sep/25/eu-security
The European security research programme (ESRP) has a 1.4bn EU budget and its twin
objectives are to enhance European security and foster the growth of a globally competitive
security industry in Europe. Unfortunately, in its haste to cash-in on the homeland security boom,
the EU has effectively outsourced the design of its security research agenda to some of the
corporations that have the most to gain from its implementation. It has created bodies outside
the formal structure of the EU, beyond parliamentary scrutiny and democratic control. The
result is a public research programme designed by lobbyists, for lobbyists, with
corporations invited to shape the objectives and annual priorities, and then apply for the
money on offer. ESRP was the brainchild of the "group of personalities", an EU advisory body
convened in 2003 that included some of Europe's largest defence and IT contractors alongside the
likes of NATO, the EU military committee and the Rand Corporation. The group's primary concern
was the scale of the US government's investment in homeland security R&D, which meant that the
US was "taking a lead" in the development of security "technologies and equipment which could
meet a number of Europe's needs", putting US multinationals in "a very strong competitive
position".
Note: The author of this article, Ben Hayes, has written a detailed report, NeoConOpticon: the EU
Security-Industrial Complex published by Statewatch and the Transnational Institute.
Big Oils Stain in the Amazon

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/movies/09crude.html
Because of concerns about climate change, a lot of current environmentalist advocacy including
movies like An Inconvenient Truth concentrates on the dire results of burning fossil fuels. Joe
Berlingers Crude, a thorough and impassioned new documentary, focuses its gaze on
production rather than consumption. The film, which follows the fitful progress of a class-action
lawsuit undertaken on behalf of the people of the Ecuadorean Amazon, is not about the
unintended consequences of using petroleum. Instead, it examines the terrible, frequently
unacknowledged costs of extracting oil from the ground. Crude, in other words,
investigates the local manifestations cancer, contaminated water, cultural degradation
of a global problem. Even as Crude dwells on a single, relatively small slice of territory (about
the size of Rhode Island), its action shifts from muddy villages in Amazonia to law offices and
shareholders meetings in the steel-and-glass cities of North America, drawing into its purview a
motley cast of scientists, human rights crusaders, civil servants and international celebrities. Like
almost every other recent documentary on a politically charged topic, Crude does not pretend to
neutrality. Yet while Mr. Berlingers sympathies clearly lie with the oddly matched pair of lawyers
Steven Donziger, a big, outgoing American, and Pablo Fajardo, a wiry, diffident Ecuadorean
who are consumed by the now 16-year-old suit against Chevron, he is fair-minded enough to
include rebuttals from the companys executives and in-house environmental scientists. And since
this is, in part, a courtroom drama, both sides have a chance to be heard.
Purity of Federal 'Organic' Label Is Questioned

Three years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture employees determined that synthetic additives in
organic baby formula violated federal standards and should be banned from a product carrying the
federal organic label. Today the same additives, purported to boost brainpower and vision, can be
found in 90 percent of organic baby formula. The government's turnaround, from prohibition to
permission, came after a USDA program manager was lobbied by the formula makers and
overruled her staff. That decision and others by a handful of USDA employees, along with an
advisory board's approval of a growing list of non-organic ingredients, have helped numerous
companies win a coveted green-and-white "USDA Organic" seal on an array of products. Grated
organic cheese, for example, contains wood starch to prevent clumping. Organic beer can be
made from non-organic hops. Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer
demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest
growing segment of the food industry. Half of the country's adults say they buy organic food often
or sometimes, according to a survey last year by the Harvard School of Public Health. But the
USDA program's shortcomings mean that consumers, who at times must pay twice as
much for organic products, are not always getting what they expect: foods without
pesticides and other chemicals, produced in a way that is gentle to the environment. "It will
unravel everything we've done if the standards can no longer be trusted," said Sen. Patrick J.
Leahy (D-Vt.), who sponsored the federal organics legislation. "If we don't protect the brand, the
organic label, the program is finished. It could disappear overnight."
Note: For many revealing reports from major media sources on government corruption, click here.
Fed to Buy Up to $300 Billion Long-Term Bonds

2009-03-18, CNBC/Reuters News
The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will spend up to $300 billion over the next six
months to buy long-term government bonds, a new step aimed at lifting the country out of
recession by lowering rates on mortgages and other consumer debt. Fed purchases should boost
Treasury prices and drive down their rates. That would ripple through and lower rates on other
kinds of debt. The last time the Fed set out to influence long-term interest rates was during the
1960s. The Fed also said it will buy more mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac to help that battered market. The central bank will buy an additional $750
billion, bringing its total purchases of these securities to $1.25 trillion. It also will boost its
purchase of Fannie and Freddie debt to $200 billion. Pimco's Bill Gross tells CNBC that the
move has expanded the Feds balance sheet by perhaps 50 percent, up to $3 trillion. In
addition, the Fed said a $1 trillion program to jump-start consumer and small business lending
could be expanded to include other financial assets. Across the Atlantic, the Bank of England last
week began buying government bonds from financial institutions as it turned to other ways to help
revive Britain's moribund economy. The Bank of England, like the Fed, already had lowered its key
interest rate to a record low of 0.5 percent. Finance leaders from top economies have discussed
coordinating actions from their governments and central banks to provide a more potent punch
against the global financial crisis.
Note: The Fed is now buying long-term Treasury bonds because it cannot directly lower interest
rates any further. Isn't this just a hidden form of increasing the money supply, with the risk of
further devaluing the dollar and eventually causing high inflation? For lots more on the hidden
realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here
Treasurys Are 'Disaster Waiting to Happen'

2009-03-17, CNBC
The Federal Reserve has no option but to start buying Treasurys as the government's needs for
financing are huge, but the government bond market is a disaster in the making, Marc Faber,
editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, told CNBC. "Other central banks have
done it already around the world but basically what it amounts to is money printing and in fact I
don't think that it will help the bond market at all in the long run," Faber told CNBC. "Yields have
already backed up pretty substantially and I tell you, I think the US government bond market is a
disaster waiting to happen for the simple reason that the requirements of the government to cover
its fiscal deficit will be very, very high," Faber said. "The Federal Reserve will have to buy
Treasurys, otherwise yields will go up substantially," he said, adding that as their reserves
were dwindling, foreign investors were likely to scale down their purchases. But there will
be a time when the Federal Reserve will have to increase interest rates to fight inflation, and
it will be reluctant to do so because the cost of servicing government debt will rise
substantially. "So we'll go into high inflation rates one day," Faber said. The stock market ...
outlook is bleak, he added. "I think we may still have a rally ... until about the end of April and
probably then a total collapse in the second half of the year sometimes, when it becomes clear that
the economy is a total disaster," Faber said.
Note: For lots more on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here
Regulatory reports show 5 big banks face huge loss risk

2009-03-09, Miami Herald/McClatchy News
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/940829.html
Five of America's largest banks, most of which have received $145 billion in taxpayer bailout
dollars, still face potentially catastrophic losses from exotic investments if economic conditions
substantially worsen, their latest financial reports show. Citibank, Bank of America, HSBC Bank
USA, Wells Fargo Bank and J.P. Morgan Chase reported that their "current" net loss risks
from derivatives insurance-like bets tied to a loan or other underlying asset surged to
$587 billion as of Dec. 31 ... a jump of 49 percent in just 90 days. The banks' potentially huge
losses ... shed new light on the hurdles that President Barack Obama's economic team must
overcome to save institutions it deems too big to fail. While the potential loss totals include risks
reported by Wachovia Bank, which Wells Fargo agreed to acquire in October, they don't reflect
another Pandora's Box: the impact of Bank of America's Jan. 1 acquisition of tottering investment
bank Merrill Lynch, a major derivatives dealer. The risks of these off-balance sheet investments,
once thought minimal, have risen sharply. Fears are rising that a spate of corporate bankruptcies
could deliver a new, crippling blow to major banks. Because of the trading in derivatives, corporate
bankruptcies could cause a chain reaction that deprives the banks of hundreds of billions of dollars
in insurance they bought on risky debt or forces them to shell out huge sums to cover debt they
guaranteed. The biggest concerns are the banks' holdings of contracts known as credit-default
swaps.
Note: For many powerful revelations from major media sources of the Wall Street bailout, click
here.
Gold Climbs to Seven-Month High as Economy May Worsen

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=acerPa4tlqXg
Gold rose to its highest [price] in almost seven months in London as investors bought the precious
metal to preserve their wealth on speculation the global economy will deteriorate. Bullion has
climbed 33 percent since October as governments lowered interest rates and spent trillions of
dollars to combat the recession. The very big uncertainties in the stock market and economy are
driving investors into gold and precious metals, said Peter Fertig, owner of Quantitative
Commodity Research Ltd. in Hainburg, Germany. Gold for immediate delivery rose as much as
$25.40, or 2.7 percent, to $967.15 an ounce, the highest since July 22. April futures gained
$22.10, or 2.4 percent, to $964.40. Some investors are buying precious metals on speculation
government stimulus packages [and bank bailouts] will spur inflation, Fertig said. Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner last week pledged as much as $2 trillion in financing for programs
aimed at spurring new lending. The Treasury will likely borrow a record $2.5 trillion this fiscal year
ending Sept. 30, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Investors have been aggressively
adding physical gold to their portfolios as concerns about counterparty risk increase, ETF
Securities wrote in a report. Investors are hedging against the risk of currency depreciation
and longer term inflation risks as government debt projections balloon. Gold has
become, for all intents, the worlds second reserve currency, Dennis Gartman, an economist
and the editor of the ... Gartman Letter, said.
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of government bailouts of banks worldwide, click
here.
Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/2235676/Homeless-peop...
Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless
people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus. The medical staff, from
the northern town of Grudziadz, are being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350
homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the
highly-contagious virus. Authorities claim that the alleged victims received 1-2 to be tested
with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was
actually an anti bird-flu drug. The director of a Grudziadz homeless centre, Mieczyslaw
Waclawski, told a Polish newspaper that last year, 21 people from his centre died, a figure well
above the average of about eight. Investigators are also probing the possibility that the medical
staff may have also have deceived the pharmaceutical companies that commissioned the trials.
The news of the investigation will come as another blow to the reputation of Poland's beleaguered
and poverty-stricken national health service. In 2002, a number of ambulance medics were found
guilty of killing their patients for commissions from funeral companies.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the bird flu scare, which resulted in many deaths
from vaccines and anti-viral pharmaceutical products, click here.
EPA official ousted while fighting Dow

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-epa-official-resig...
The battle over dioxin contamination in [the Saginaw, Mich.] region had been raging for years
when a top [EPA] official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up. On Thursday,
following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the [Bush]
administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest
office. Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen
Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.
Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxinsaturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw
Bay and Lake Huron. Gade, appointed ... regional EPA administrator in September 2006, invoked
emergency powers last summer to order the company to remove three hotspots of dioxin near its
Midland headquarters. She demanded more dredging in November, when it was revealed that
dioxin levels along a park in Saginaw were 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever
found in the U.S. Dow then sought to cut a deal on a more comprehensive cleanup. But Gade
ended the negotiations in January, saying Dow was refusing to take action necessary to protect
public health and wildlife. Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington, according to
heavily redacted letters the Tribune obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. On Thursday,
Gade said of her resignation: "There's no question this is about Dow. I stand behind what I
did and what my staff did. I'm proud of what we did."
Note: For many powerful reports on government corruption from the major media, click here.
In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Trials

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/washington/09justice.html?ex=1365393600&en=...
In a major shift of policy, the Justice Department, once known for taking down giant corporations,
including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, has put off prosecuting more than 50 companies
suspected of wrongdoing over the last three years. Instead, many companies, from boutique outfits
to immense corporations like American Express, have avoided the cost and stigma of defending
themselves against criminal charges with a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, which
allows the government to collect fines and appoint an outside monitor to impose internal reforms
without going through a trial. In many cases, the name of the monitor and the details of the
agreement are kept secret. Deferred prosecutions have become a favorite tool of the Bush
administration. But some legal experts now wonder if the policy shift has led companies, in
particular financial institutions now under investigation for their roles in the subprime
mortgage debacle, to test the limits of corporate anti-fraud laws. Firms have readily agreed to
the deferred prosecutions, said Vikramaditya S. Khanna, a law professor at the University of
Michigan who has studied their use, because clearly it avoids a bigger headache for them. Some
lawyers suggest that companies may be willing to take more risks because they know that, if they
are caught, the chances of getting a deferred prosecution are good. Some companies may bear
the risk of legally questionable business practices if they believe they can cut a deal to defer their
prosecution indefinitely, Mr. Khanna said. Legal experts say the tactic may have sent the wrong
signal to corporations the promise, in effect, of a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Note: For more revelations of government corruption from major media sources, click here.
Google has lots to do with intelligence

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/29/BUQLUAP8L.DTL
When the nation's intelligence agencies wanted a computer network to better share information ...
they turned to a big name in the technology industry to supply some of the equipment: Google Inc.
The Mountain View company sold the agencies servers for searching documents. Many of the
contracts are for search appliances - servers for storing and searching internal documents.
Agencies can use the devices to create their own mini-Googles on intranets made up entirely of
government data. Additionally, Google has had success licensing a souped-up version of its aerial
mapping service, Google Earth. Spy agencies are using Google equipment as the backbone
of Intellipedia, a network aimed at helping agents share intelligence. [The system] is
maintained by the director of national intelligence and is accessible only to the CIA, FBI,
National Security Agency and an alphabet soup of other intelligence agencies and offices.
Google supplies the computer servers that support the network, as well as the search software
that allows users to sift through messages and data. Because of the complexities of doing
business with the government, Google uses resellers to process orders on its behalf. Google takes
care of the sales, marketing and management of the accounts. Google is one of many technology
vendors vying for government contracts. On occasion, Google is the target of conspiracy theories
from bloggers who say it is working with spy agencies more closely than simply selling search
equipment.
Ashcroft Defends Contract That U.S. Steered to Him

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/washington/12ashcroft.html
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft responded angrily Tuesday to Congressional Democrats
who suggested that a no-bid private contract directed to him by the Justice Department last year
amounted to a back-room sweetheart deal worth tens of millions of dollars to his consulting firm.
There is not a conflict; there is not an appearance of a conflict, Mr. Ashcroft said at a hearing of a
House Judiciary subcommittee exploring the circumstances of the contract. He repeatedly tried to
talk over the panels Democratic chairwoman, Representative Linda T. Snchez of California, who
offered the severest questioning. Mr. Ashcroft stepped down from the Justice Department three
years ago and now runs a Washington consulting and lobbying firm that bears his name. Ms.
Snchez opened the hearing by suggesting the appearance of a conflict of interest in the
departments decision last year to steer a monitoring contract worth $28 million to $52 million to
Mr. Ashcrofts firm as part of an out-of-court settlement with a medical supply company under
criminal investigation. The Indiana company, Zimmer Holdings, hired the Ashcroft firm as the
settlement monitor at the direction of Christopher J. Christie, the United States attorney in New
Jersey, who had pursued the investigation and had worked under Mr. Ashcroft at the Justice
Department. You dont believe that it may be a conflict of interest in a former employee
hiring the former boss, or suggesting that he be hired, for a very lucrative contract? she
said of the 18-month contract, which requires Mr. Ashcroft to make sure that Zimmer complies with
the terms of its settlement of kickback allegations. Ms. Snchez described the contract as a backroom sweetheart deal in which Mr. Ashcroft was selected with no public notice and no bidding.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable, verifiable sources on government corruption,
click here.
EPA toxicologist was dismissed after industry complained

2008-02-29, San Francisco Chronicle/Los Angeles Times
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/29/MNK3VB80B.DTL
Under pressure from the chemical industry, the Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed
an outspoken scientist who chaired a federal panel responsible for helping the agency determine
the dangers of a flame retardant widely used in electronic equipment. Toxicologist Deborah Rice
was appointed chair of an EPA scientific panel reviewing the chemical a year ago. Federal records
show that she was removed from the panel in August after the American Chemistry Council, the
lobbying group for chemical manufacturers, complained to a top-ranking EPA official that she was
biased. The chemical, a brominated compound known as deca, is [commonly] used in the plastic
housings of television sets. Rice, an award-winning former EPA scientist ... has studied low doses
of deca and reported neurological effects in lab animals. The EPA is in the process of deciding how
much daily exposure to deca is safe - a decision, expected next month, that could determine
whether it can still be used in consumer products. The role of the expert panel was to review and
comment on the scientific evidence. Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working
Group, an advocacy group in Washington, said it was unprecedented for the EPA to remove an
expert for expressing concerns about the potential dangers of a chemical. "It's a scary world if
we create a precedent that says scientists involved in decision-making are perceived to be
too biased," she said. In 2004, the EPA gave Rice and four colleagues an award for what it
called "exceptionally high-quality research" for a study that linked lead exposure to
premature puberty in girls.
Note: For many revealing articles on government corruption, click here.
Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time
tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal
suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers. In some cases, judges have granted the
requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe
that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear
such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their
daily lives. The requests and orders are sealed at the government's request, so it is difficult to
know how often the orders are issued or denied. "Most people don't realize it, but they're
carrying a tracking device in their pocket," said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy
group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Cellphones can reveal very precise information
about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air." In a stinging
opinion this month, a federal judge in Texas denied a request by a Drug Enforcement
Administration agent for data that would identify a drug trafficker's phone location by using the
carrier's E911 tracking capability. E911 tracking systems read signals sent to satellites from a
phone's Global Positioning System (GPS) chip or triangulated radio signals sent from phones to
cell towers. "Law enforcement routinely now requests carriers to continuously 'ping' wireless
devices of suspects to locate them when a call is not being made . . . so law enforcement can
triangulate the precise location of a device and [seek] the location of all associates communicating
with a target," wrote Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA -the Wireless Association.
Note: For many major media reports on serious new threats to civil liberties, click here.
Foreclosure wave sweeps America

2007-11-05, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7070935.stm
A wave of foreclosures and evictions is about to sweep the United States in the wake of the subprime mortgage lending crisis. This could destabilise the US housing market and may also lead to
further turmoil in financial institutions, who collectively own $1 trillion (480.6bn) worth of subprime debt. Cleveland, Ohio, is an industrial city on the banks of Lake Erie in the US "rust belt". It
is the sub-prime capital of the United States. One in ten homes in the city is now vacant, and
whole neighbourhoods have been blighted by foreclosed, vandalized and boarded-up homes.
Cleveland is facing a rising crime wave, and the cost of demolishing the vacant houses alone will
cost the city $100m of its tax base. According to Jim Rokakis, the County Treasurer for Cleveland's
Cuyahoga County, "Wall Street strategies that made the cycle of no-money-down, noquestions-asked lending possible have sucked the life out of my city". As the credit crunch
continues to bite "families all over the country continue to lose homes in record numbers,
stripping families of their wealth and destroying entire neighbourhoods," says Michael
Calhoun of the Center for Responsible Lending, which tracks these issues. There have already
been 1.7 million foreclosure proceedings in the US in the first eight months of 2007, and up to 2
million families are expected to lose their homes over the next two years, according to estimates
by the US Congress's Joint Economic Committee. Many of these mortgages were sold by
unscrupulous and little regulated mortgage brokers, who received handsome commissions for
selling expensive and unsuitable products. Some customers were not told that their interest rates
would go up sharply after two years; others were promised they could refinance their home before
higher rates took effect. Others found that when they had difficulties paying, huge unexplained
fees were added to their bills, putting them further in debt.
Clinton rakes in cash from the US weapons industry

2007-10-19, Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
The US arms industry is backing Hillary Clinton for President and has all but abandoned its
traditional allies in the Republican party. Mrs Clinton has also emerged as Wall Street's
favourite. Investment bankers have opened their wallets in unprecedented numbers for the
New York senator over the past three months and, in the process, dumped their earlier
favourite, Barack Obama. An analysis of campaign contributions shows senior defence industry
employees are pouring money into her war chest in the belief that their generosity will be repaid
many times over with future defence contracts. Employees of the top five US arms manufacturers
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon gave
Democratic presidential candidates $103,900, with only $86,800 going to the Republicans. "The
contributions clearly suggest the arms industry has reached the conclusion that Democratic
prospects for 2008 are very good indeed," said Thomas Edsall, an academic at Columbia
University in New York. Republican administrations are by tradition much stronger supporters of
US armaments programmes and Pentagon spending plans than Democratic governments.
Relations between the arms industry and Bill Clinton soured when he slimmed down the military
after the end of the Cold War. His wife, however, has been careful not to make the same mistake.
After her election to the Senate, she became the first New York senator on the armed services
committee, where she revealed her hawkish tendencies by supporting the invasion of Iraq. Her
position on Iran is among the most warlike of all the candidates Democrat or Republican. While
on the armed services committee, Mrs Clinton has befriended key generals and has won the
endorsement of General Wesley Clarke, who ran Nato's war in Kosovo. The arms industry has
duly taken note.
Note: For a revealing personal account of the "War Racket" by a U.S. general, click here.
Public health: The hidden menace of mobile phones

2007-10-07, Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article3036005.ece
Using a mobile phone for more than 10 years increases the risk of getting brain cancer, according
to the most comprehensive study of the risks yet published. The study which contradicts official
pronouncements that there is no danger of getting the disease found that people who have had
the phones for a decade or more are twice as likely to get a malignant tumour on the side of the
brain where they hold the handset. The scientists who conducted the research say using a mobile
for just an hour every working day during that period is enough to increase the risk and
that the international standard used to protect users from the radiation emitted is "not safe"
and "needs to be revised". They conclude that "caution is needed in the use of mobile
phones" and believe children, who are especially vulnerable, should be discouraged from
using them at all. Official assurances that the phones are safe have been based on research that
has, at best, included only a few people who have been exposed to the radiation for long enough
to get the disease, and are therefore of little or no value in assessing the real risk. The scientists
pulled together the results of the 11 studies that have so far investigated the occurrence of
tumours in people who have used phones for more than a decade, drawing on research in
Sweden, Denmark Finland, Japan, Germany, the United States and Britain. They found almost all
had discovered an increased risk, especially on the side of the head where people listened to their
handsets. [One of the study's authors] said he uses a mobile phone as little as possible, and urges
others to use hands-free equipment and make only short calls, reserving longer ones for landlines.
He also said that mobiles should not be given to children, whose thinner skulls and developing
nervous systems make them particularly vulnerable.
Note: Evidence has been mounting for some years that cell phones and wireless technology
(WiFi) have significant health risks. For a recent brief summary by a highly respected scientist,
click here.
Probe Into Tainted Rice Ends

More than 14 months after the Agriculture Department began an investigation into how the U.S.
supply of long-grain rice became tainted with an unapproved genetically engineered variety -- an
event that continues to disrupt U.S. exports -- the government announced yesterday that it could
not figure out how the contamination happened. Agency officials said documents from several
years ago that might have helped them determine what went wrong had been lost or
destroyed. Lacking clear evidence of who was responsible, they said, the government will not
take enforcement action against any person or entity, including Bayer CropScience, the company
whose gene-altered products slipped into the food supply. The widespread, low-level
contamination with experimental genes that make the rice pesticide-tolerant, one of several such
events in recent years, prompted countries around the world to cut off imports of U.S. long-grain
rice. Rice prices plummeted, and many farmers, scientists and biotechnology activists called for an
overhaul of the oversight system for gene-altered crops. While some countries have begun to
accept U.S. rice with added testing, the European Union and Russia have not -- a trade loss
valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Critics assailed the report as yet more
evidence that the nation's regulatory system for gene-altered crops is broken. "This
underlines the anxiety people have about more such incidents occurring," said Margaret
Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science-based advocacy group that has called for a
more rigorous approval process for biotech crops.
Note: For important reports from major media sources which reveal the dangers of genetically
modified foods and other organisms, click here.
Review: Slavery's shockingly alive and well today

2007-09-16, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/2007-09-16-nobodies_N.htm
A globalized world that could bring down the Berlin Wall, and deliver fresh fruit in the middle of the
coldest winter months, wasn't supposed to foster one of the darkest of human practices slavery.
This version of the world was supposed to make life for everyone, everywhere, better. Better
medicine, better prices, better democracies. Not so, says John Bowe in his incredible book,
Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy. Not only
is slavery a reality, but how we've executed this rush toward globalization may have created the
very conditions necessary for slavery to gain a toehold in the modern world. Nobodies is
investigative, immersion reporting at its best. The line between observer and participant blurs, and
the reality of time, place and subject come crashing out in full detail. Bowe is a master storyteller
whose work is finely tuned and fearless. When the time is appropriate, he goes so far as to
question his own assumptions, ideals and practices without holding back. "Go out into this newly
globalized world you're profiting from," he writes, "go visit the people being 'lifted' out of poverty,
the workers who are making your products. Go live in their huts, eat their rice and plantains, squat
on their floors, and listen to their babies cry. Sniff some glue and pray with them. Try to get justice
from their police if someone hurts you. And then come back and let's talk about freedom." There's
a chill in the air when he writes: "If you can read this page, you are on top of the world and
billions of people are beneath you. Your ignorance and your lack of a program will likely
equal the squalor of your grandchildren's existence."
Investigative Report: U.S. ships unsafe products

2007-09-09, Sacramento Bee (leading newspaper of California's capital)
Ten days ago, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced another in a series of wellpublicized recalls of Chinese-made goods: children's art sets containing crayons, markers, pastels,
pencils, water colors -- and lead -- distributed by Toys "R" Us. "Consumers should immediately
take the products away from children," warned a news release from the federal government's
watchdog for thousands of household items. "The CPSC is committed to protecting consumers
and families." But 13 months earlier, in July 2006, the CPSC ... authorized a Los Angeles company
to export to Venezuela 16,520 art sets that violated the same CPSC standard protecting children
from dangerous art supplies. The following month, the agency authorized a Miami company to
export to Jamaica 5,184 sets of wax crayons that also violated the standard. For decades the
federal agency has allowed American-based companies to export products deemed unsafe here.
Those products can present an even greater danger in a country that has only a handful of
government employees devoted to consumer protection, said R. David Pittle, a former acting
CPSC chairman who spent 22 years as a senior vice president for Consumers Union. "If the
United States doesn't have very many inspectors, how many do you think there are in Honduras or
Jamaica or Trinidad or Bulgaria?" Pittle asked. Using the CPSC's database of exports of nonapproved products and hundreds of pages of documents obtained through the federal Freedom of
Information Act, The Bee found that between October 1993 and September 2006, the CPSC
received 1,031 requests from companies to export products the agency had found unsafe
for American consumers. The CPSC approved 991 of those requests, or 96 percent.
Defense Dept. pays $1B to outside analysts

2007-08-29, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-08-29-dia_N.htm
The Defense Department is paying private contractors more than $1 billion in more than 30
separate contracts to collect and analyze intelligence for the four military services and its own
Defense Intelligence Agency, according to contract documents and a Pentagon spokesman. The
disclosure marks the first time a U.S. intelligence service has made public its outside payments.
Intelligence payments to contractors have climbed dramatically since the terror attacks in
September 2001, but none had been made public, according to a report filed in April by the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence. Outside contracting ... places critical security tasks and
sensitive information in the hands of private parties, says Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy
specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington privacy group. "Private
contractors don't have to undergo congressional oversight or justify their budgets to
appropriators," Aftergood says. "We're starting to create a new kind of intelligence

bureaucracy, one that is both more expensive and less accountable (than government's
own intelligence agencies)." Most of the contracts, which extend up to five years, pay for
analysis of intelligence data and for related services, such as translation and interpretation of
photo and electronic intelligence. A small fraction, which [a Pentagon spokesman] declined to
specify, pay for private spies. Private contractors often hire former intelligence officers, sometimes
leasing them back at higher salaries to the agencies that first recruited and trained them.
No buyer for voting machine unit

2007-08-16, BBC
US cash dispenser and security company Diebold has admitted that it has failed to find a buyer for
its troubled electronic voting machine business. Diebold and other manufacturers of such
voting machines have been hit by criticism that they are unreliable and vulnerable to
tampering. Growing unease about the machines in the US has led to a number of delayed
orders from states. Diebold said that as a result, its 2007 revenues would fall $120m (61m). It
added that it would now allow the unit to operate more independently, with a separate board of
directors and, possibly, a new management structure. Diebold said it had not ruled out another
attempt at a full or partial sale. Some 50 million Americans, about 30% of registered voters, used
electronic machines to cast their vote in the 2004 presidential election. The machines were
introduced in the aftermath of the problems caused by antiquated punch-card systems in the 2000
presidential election. However, there has since been growing concern that electronic machines
may be equally as unreliable.
Note: For more reliable information on the serious problems with the new electronic voting
machines, click here.
Bechtel meets goals on fewer than half of its Iraq rebuilding projects
2007-07-26, International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/26/africa/26reconstruct.php
One of the largest American contractors working in Iraq, Bechtel National, met its original
objectives on fewer than half of the projects it received as part of a $1.8 billion reconstruction
contract, while most of the rest were canceled, reduced in scope or never completed as designed.
But the report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent agency,
places a large share of the blame for the failures on the government overseers at the United
States Agency for International Development who administered the contract. [USAID] assigned
just two people in Iraq to oversee the giant contract, which included some 24 major
projects and 150 subcontractors and stipulated that all invoices be approved or denied in
just 10 days. The report is the first of a planned series of audits of Western contractors that have
received large slices of the roughly $40 billion in American taxpayer money that has been spent on
the troubled program to rebuild Iraq. Stuart Bowen Jr., who heads the special inspector general's
office, said the United States government clearly shared responsibility with the company for the
project failures. "I would say there's fault on both sides," Bowen said in an interview Wednesday.
He added that neither the aid agency nor the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which also
oversaw aspects of the contract, ever came close to filling all their staff positions in Iraq. "This isn't
so much an indictment of Bechtel as it is a criticism of the system," said Stephen Ellis, a vice
president at Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington.
FBI Would Skirt the Law With Proposed Phone Record Program, Experts
Say
2007-07-10, ABC News blog
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/fbi-would-skirt.html
A proposed new FBI program would skirt federal laws by paying private companies to hold millions
of phone and Internet records which the bureau is barred from keeping itself, experts say. The $5
million project would apparently pay private firms to store at least two years' worth of telephone
and Internet activity by millions of Americans, few of whom would ever be considered a suspect in
any terrorism, intelligence or criminal matter. The FBI is barred by law from collecting and storing
such data if it has no connection to a specific investigation or intelligence matter. In recent years
the bureau has tried to encourage telecommunications firms to voluntarily store such information,
but corporations have balked at the cost of keeping records they don't need. "The government isn't
allowed to warehouse the information, and the companies don't want to, so this creates a business
incentive for the companies to warehouse it, so the government can access it later," said Mike
German, a policy expert on national security and privacy issues for the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU). "It's a public-private partnership that puts civil liberties to the test." In March, an
FBI official identified the companies as Verizon, MCI and AT&T. Even the bureau's own top
lawyer said she found the [FBI's] behavior "disturbing," noting that when requesting access
to phone company records, it repeatedly referenced "emergency" situations that did not
exist, falsely claimed grand juries had subpoenaed information and failed to keep records
on much of its own activity.
Nonorganic ingredients get tentative OK

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-organic23jun23,1,6277674.story
The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave interim approval Friday to a controversial proposal to
allow 38 nonorganic ingredients to be used in foods carrying the "USDA Organic" seal.
Manufacturers of organic foods had pushed for the change, arguing that the 38 items are minor
ingredients in their products and are difficult to find in organic form. But consumers opposed to the
use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics and growth hormones in food production
bombarded the USDA with more than 1,000 complaints last month. "If the label says organic,
everything in that food should be organic," wrote Kimberly Wilson of Austin, Texas, in one typical
comment. "If they put something in the food that isn't organic, they shouldn't be able to call it
organic. No exception." The list approved Friday includes 19 food colorings, two starches, hops,
sausage casings, fish oil, chipotle chili pepper, gelatin, celery powder, dill weed oil, frozen
lemongrass, Wakame seaweed, Turkish bay leaves and whey protein concentrate. Manufacturers
will be allowed to use conventionally grown versions of these ingredients in foods carrying the
USDA seal, provided that they can't find organic equivalents and that nonorganics comprise no
more than 5% of the product. A wide range of organic food could be affected, including cereal,
sausage, bread, beer, pasta, candy and soup mixes. The Organic Consumers Assn. ... has led the
opposition to the USDA proposal. Ronnie Cummins, executive director of the consumers
group, said ... that the USDA was caving in to pressure from large food companies. USDA
officials "don't seem to care what the public wants. They're just more interested in what's
convenient for the big companies."
US on Mad Cow: Don't Test All Cattle

2007-05-29, New York Times/Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Mad-Cow.html
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their
animals for mad cow disease. The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered
cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows. Larger meat companies
feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they
might have to perform the expensive test, too. The Agriculture Department regulates the test
and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat
industry. A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James
Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said
the government didn't have the authority to restrict it. The ruling was to take effect June 1, but the
Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal -- effectively delaying the testing until the
court challenge plays out. Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is linked to
more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain. There have been three cases of mad
cow disease in the U.S.
Congress Tells Auditor in Iraq to Close Office

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03reconstruct.html?ex=1320...
Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American
occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor
construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that
the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security
forces. And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks
ago is what some of Mr. Bowens supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the
administration: a pink slip. An obscure provision...terminates his federal oversight agency, the
Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The clause was inserted by the
Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee. It has generated surprise and some
outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation. Susan Collins, a
Maine Republican who followed the bill closely as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security and Government Affairs, says that she still does not know how the
provision made its way into what is called the conference report, which reconciles
differences between House and Senate versions of a bill. Neither the House nor the Senate
version contained such a termination clause before the conference, all involved agree. Mr.
Bowens office has 55 auditors and inspectors in Iraq and about 300 reports and investigations
already to its credit, far outstripping any other oversight agency in the country.
Nicotine Levels Rose 10 Percent in Last Six Years

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/health/31nicotine.html?ex=1314676800&en=80e...
The level of nicotine that smokers typically consume per cigarette has risen 10 percent in the past
six years, making it harder to quit and easier to be addicted, said a report that the Massachusetts
Department of Health released on Tuesday. The study shows a steady increase in the amount of
nicotine delivered to the smokers? lungs regardless of brand, with overall yields increasing 10
percent. Massachusetts is one of three states to require tobacco companies to submit
information on nicotine testing to its specifications and is the sole state with data as far
back as 1998. The study found that the three most popular brands with young smokers, Marlboro,
Newport and Camel, delivered significantly more nicotine than they did six years ago. Nicotine
consumed in Kool, a popular menthol brand, rose 20 percent.
Medical Journal Says It Was Again Misled

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/health/13jama.html?ex=1310443200&en=a20364b...
For the second time in two months, The Journal of the American Medical Association says it was
misled by researchers who failed to reveal financial ties to drug companies. The latest incident,
disclosed in letters to the editor and a correction in Wednesday's journal, involves a study showing
that pregnant women who stop taking antidepressants risk slipping back into depression. Most of
the 13 authors have financial ties to drug companies including antidepressant makers, but
only two of them revealed their ties when the study was published in February.
Note: To understand how the drug companies manipulate results and even exert tremendous
influence over the U.S. Congress, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup
Election Whistle-Blower Stymied by Vendors

Among those who worry that hackers might sabotage election tallies, Ion Sancho is something of a
hero. The maverick elections supervisor in Leon County, Fla., last year helped show that electronic
voting machines from one of the major manufacturers are vulnerable...and would allow election
workers to alter vote counts without detection. Now, however, Sancho may be paying an
unexpected price for his whistle-blowing: None of the state-approved companies here will sell him
the voting machines the county needs. "I believe I'm being singled out for punishment by the
vendors," he said. The trouble began last year when Sancho allowed a Finnish computer scientist
to test Leon County's Diebold voting machines, a common type that uses an optical scanner to
count votes from ballots that voters have marked. Some tests...showed that elections workers
could alter the vote tallies by manipulating the removable memory cards in the voting
machines, and do so without detection. Last month, California elections officials arranged for
experts to perform a similar analysis of the Diebold machines and also found them vulnerable -noting a wider variety of flaws than Sancho's experts had. A spokesman said Diebold will not sell
to Sancho without assurances that he will not permit more such tests, which the company
considers a reckless use of the machines.
Defending the party of Davos

2006-03-13, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/10/news/international/pluggedin_2_fortune/
I went to hear Jeff Faux talk recently about his new book "The Global Class War," an account of
how the corporate elite has been selling out American workers. I don't entirely buy his argument.
Faux is founder of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank...which I think is best
described as "gloomy." There is no economic news that the EPI can't find a way to spin negatively.
That said, the work the group does is always meticulous and usually thought-provoking. The same
can be said of Faux's book. His main point is that there now exists a global "party of Davos" (the
Swiss ski resort where politicians, businesspeople, journalists, and scholars gather every January
for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum), whose members have more in common
with each other than with the peoples of their home countries. I can testify that there is truth to this.
I am a member of the junior auxiliary of the party of Davos. Faux's point is not that people like
me are sinister and evil -- there's no Trilateral Commission/Council on Foreign
Relations/Bilderberg Group conspiracy nonsense in his book -- just that the interests of
corporate America aren't necessarily the same as America's interests. My chief solace is that
Faux doesn't seem to have an obviously better alternative. Or maybe that shouldn't be a solace -because Faux is right that a global economic system designed entirely by corporations, without
any democratic input to speak of, isn't what anybody really wants.
Note: This is a heartening article from one who rubs elbows with the power elite. If you don't know
about the secret gatherings of the global elite, the BBC and other articles available here are
essential reading.
Exxon pay limits rejected

2006-06-01, Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-bz.exxon01jun01,0,1510751.story
Shareholders of Exxon Mobil Corp., whose departing chief executive got a $357 million
retirement package, overwhelmingly rejected resolutions to rein in compensation at the
company's annual meeting yesterday. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rex W. Tillerson
said predecessor Lee Raymond deserved a $357 million retirement package that he received in
January because he delivered record profits.
Note: So price gouging at the gas pumps brings record oil profits and one of the CEO's
responsible gets hundreds of millions of dollars as a retirement gift. What kind of message does
that send? Why didn't other major newspapers pick up this little "detail."
The War Dividend: The British companies making a fortune out of

conflict-riven Iraq
2006-03-13, Independent (one of the UK's top newspapers)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article350959.ece
British businesses have profited by at least 1.1bn since coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein
three years ago. The company roll-call of post-war profiteers includes some of the best known
names in Britain's boardrooms. The evidence of massive investments and the promise of more
multimillion-pound profits to come was discovered in a joint investigation by Corporate Watch, an
independent watchdog, and The Independent. The findings show how much is [at] stake if Britain
were to withdraw military protection from Iraq. British company involvement at the top of Iraq's new
political and economic structures means Iraq will be forced to rely on British business for many
years to come. A total of 61 British companies are identified as benefiting from at least 1.1bn of
contracts and investment in the new Iraq. But that figure is just the tip of the iceberg. It could be as
much as five times higher, because many companies prefer to keep their relationship secret. The
waters are further muddied by the Government's refusal to release the names of companies it has
helped to win contracts in Iraq. The report acknowledges that British business still lags
behind the huge profits paid to American companies. In five years, the 1.1bn of contracts
identified in the report will be dwarfed by what Britain and the US hope to reap from
investments. Highly lucrative oil contracts have yet to be handed out.
Note: For more powerful information on war-profiteering revealed by a highly decorated U.S.
general see http://www.WantToKnow.info/warisaracket
Ministers back 'terminator' GM crops

2006-03-05, Independent (one of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article349331.ece
Ministers are trying to scrap an international agreement banning the world's most controversial
genetic modification of crops, grimly nicknamed "terminator technology", a move which threatens
to increase hunger in the Third World. The Government is to push for terminator crops to be
considered for approval on a "case-by-case basis" at two meetings this month; its position closely
mirrors the stance of the United States and other GM [genetically modified organisms]-promoting
countries. Terminator technology...would stop hundreds of millions of poor farmers from
saving seeds from their crops for resowing for the following harvest, forcing them to buy
new ones from biotech companies every year. The technique is officially known as genetic use
restriction technology (Gurt), making crops produce sterile seeds. It could be applied to any crop,
including maize and rice, widely grown in developing countries. The UK working group on
terminator technology...says: "It could destroy traditional farming methods, damage farmers'
livelihoods and threaten food security, particularly in developing countries." [Former UK Minister of
Environment Michael] Meacher said: "For the first time in the history of the world, farmers would be
stopped from using their own seeds."
Note: For more on this alarming development: http://www.WantToKnow.info/deception10pg
Sex Slaves
2006-02-07, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/slaves/etc/synopsis.html
Twenty-one-year-old Katia...left home on what she believed would be a trip to buy goods in Turkey,
but instead she was sold into sexual slavery for $1,000. In "Sex Slaves," FRONTLINE follows [her
husband] Viorel on an extraordinary journey deep into the world of sex trafficking to try to find his
wife...and then free her from the violent pimp who now "owns" her. Along the way, the production
team takes a rare, hidden-camera look at the various traffickers, pimps and middlemen who
illegally buy and sell hundreds of thousands of women each year. Lured by traffickers who prey on
their dreams of employment abroad, many of the women are then kidnapped and "exported" to
Europe, the Middle East, the United States and elsewhere. During this process, they may be sold
to pimps, locked in brothels, drugged, terrorized and raped repeatedly. "How much will a girl cost?"
co-producer Felix Golubev asks a trafficker in Moldova while posing undercover as an interested
buyer from North America. "Five hundred to 600 dollars" replies the trafficker." As Viorel searches
for Katia, we learn what she might be enduring from other trafficked women. Twenty-eight-year-old
Oksana was sold 13 times over an eight-month period before finally being allowed to return to her
native Ukraine. "There were 22 girls in a three-bedroom apartment, and each girl got beaten up at
least once a day. One girl ran away and went to the police for help, but she was taken back.
Policemenused our services." "Sex Slaves" exposes the government indifference that allows
the global sex trade to continue virtually unchecked and what needs to be done.
Note: If you want to know about secret government involvement in the sex trade and sex abuse,
see the harrowing, yet powerful essay at http://www.WantToKnow.info/nationbetrayed10pg and a
highly
revealing,
free
Discovery
Channel
documentary
at
http://www.WantToKnow.info/060501conspiracyofsilence
Junketing Judges: A Case of Bad Science

Just how far will corporate lobbyists go to tilt governmental decisions in their favor? Last fall, the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Clean Air Act does not
require regulating carbon dioxide emissions that are heating up the planet at an unprecedented
rate. It turns out that two of the jurists who helped decide the case -- Chief Judge Douglas H.
Ginsburg and Judge David B. Sentelle -- attended a six-day global warming seminar at
Yellowstone National Park sponsored by a free-market foundation and featuring presentations
from companies with a clear financial interest in limiting regulation. Exxon Mobil Corp. and other
large businesses contribute to conservative think tanks to help "educate" federal judges
through seminars like the one at Yellowstone. The Code of Conduct for federal judges does not
prohibit attending such seminars -- as long as participation does not "cast reasonable doubt on the
capacity to decide impartially issues that may come before them." Leaders of Congress and the
federal courts seem to recognize that the federal judiciary ought to be out of bounds for lobbyists.
Judges are appointed for life, and allowing insider access threatens the integrity of the one branch
of government that should stand above politics. Court cases must be won by argument, not by
influence, and that means putting a stop to judicial junkets that give one side of the debate an
unfair advantage.
EPA Charges DuPont Hid Teflon's Carcinogenic Risks

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0501180271jan18,1,1986717....
More than 50 years after DuPont started producing Teflon ... federal officials are accusing the
company of hiding information suggesting that [the chemical] might cause cancer, birth defects and
other ailments. Environmental regulators are particularly alarmed because scientists are finding
perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in the blood of people worldwide and it takes years for the
chemical to leave the body. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported last week that
exposure even to low levels of PFOA could be harmful. With virtually no government oversight,
PFOA has been used since the early 1950s. Questions about potential effects on human health
and the environment often aren't raised until years after a chemical is introduced to the
marketplace. The long and mostly secret history of PFOA began to unravel down the road from
DuPont's Teflon plant...where a Parkersburg family began asking questions in the late 1990s about
a mysterious wasting disease killing their cattle. Their lawsuit ended with a monetary settlement ...
but the legal battle uncovered a trove of industry documents about PFOA. One document
detailed how DuPont scientists started warning company executives to avoid human
contact with PFOA as early as 1961. Industry tests later determined the chemical accumulates in
the body [and] doesn't break down in the environment. Tests on lab animals have found links to
illnesses including liver and testicular cancer, reduced weight of newborns and immune-system
suppression. The findings concern EPA officials because rats flush the chemical out of their bodies
within days, while PFOA stays in human blood for at least four years.
Note: As this article is no longer available on the Chicago Tribune website, to read it in full, click
here.
Psychiatrists, Children and Drug Industrys Role

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/health/10psyche.html?ex=1336449600&en=027d7...
When Anya Bailey developed an eating disorder after her 12th birthday, her mother took her to a
psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota who prescribed a powerful antipsychotic drug called
Risperdal. Created for schizophrenia, Risperdal is not approved to treat eating disorders, but
increased appetite is a common side effect and doctors may prescribe drugs as they see fit. Anya
gained weight but within two years developed a crippling knot in her back. She now receives
regular injections of Botox to unclench her back muscles. She often awakens crying in pain.
Isabella Bailey, Anyas mother, said she had no idea that children might be especially susceptible
to Risperdals side effects. Nor did she know that Risperdal and similar medicines were not
approved at the time to treat children. Just as surprising, Ms. Bailey said, was learning that the
university psychiatrist who supervised Anyas care received more than $7,000 from 2003 to
2004 from Johnson & Johnson, Risperdals maker, in return for lectures about one of the
companys drugs. The intersection of money and medicine, and its effect on the well-being
of patients, has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. Nowhere is that
more true than in psychiatry, where increasing payments to doctors have coincided with the
growing use in children of a relatively new class of drugs known as atypical antipsychotics. These
best-selling drugs, including Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify and Geodon, are now being
prescribed to more than half a million children in the United States to help parents deal with
behavior problems despite profound risks and almost no approved uses for minors.
Note: For lots more reliable information on cover-ups affecting your health, click here. To read an
inspiring story on the benefits of healthy school diet for students' health, behavior and studies, click
here.
Electric cars lighting up again

2006-07-31, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2006-07-26-electric-cars-usat_x.htm
Several small, independent automakers are juicing up electric cars. Among the companies trying
to lead the charge: Tesla. Tesla Motors...is taking orders for a $100,000 electric high-performance
sports car...billed as capable of a Ferrari-like zero to 60 mph in four seconds. The car was
designed in California but will be built by Lotus in Great Britain. Its sophisticated lithium-ion battery
will allow a range of 250 miles on a single charge and a top speed of 130 mph.
Wrightspeed...hopes to produce its own, $100,000 high-performance car within two years. It will
have about a 200-mile range. Ian Wright, who heads Wrightspeed...says the new breed of electric
cars could have three times the energy efficiency of gas-electric hybrids. "You can build something
that's seriously fast and a lot of fun to drive." Zap. At the other end of the performance
spectrum...Zap last month started selling a three-wheel electric "city car" imported from China that
it says is capable of a top speed of 40 mph. Priced at $9,000, the Xebra has a range of about 40
miles. Tomberlin Group...plans to sell three versions of electric cars. Prices will range from $5,000
for E-Merge E-2 to $8,000 for the four-seat Anvil. The electric revival comes as...Who Killed the
Electric Car? has started playing in theaters. The movie alleges that big automakers, oil
companies and the government sank promising electric-car technology. The film singles out
General Motors for...having created a futuristic electric car that became a Hollywood envirodarling. When leases ran out, GM collected its Saturn EV1s and sent them to the crusher.
Note: I've heard that Who Killed the Electric Car? is an excellent, revealing film. For lots more on
why car mileage has not significantly increased since the days of the Model T (which got 25 miles
to the gallon), see http://www.WantToKnow.info/050711carmileageaveragempg
Secretive, powerful Bilderberg group meets near Ottawa

2006-06-08, Globe and Mail (Canada's leading newspaper)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060608.wbilder0608/BNSto...
Ottawa. On the outskirts of the nation's capital, a tony high-rise hotel beside a golf course is
hosting the annual meeting for one of the world's most secretive and powerful societies. They're
called the Bilderberg group. Those who follow the Bilderberg group say it got Europe to adopt a
common currency, got Bill Clinton elected after he agreed to support NAFTA, and is spending this
week deciding what to do about high oil prices and that pesky fundamentalist president of Iran.
The Bilderberg group is a half-century-old organization comprising about 130 of the world's
wealthiest and most powerful people. They don't have a website. Bilderberg says the
privacy of its meetings helps encourage freewheeling discussion. An unsigned press
release...confirmed this year's meeting would deal with energy issues, Iran, the Middle East,
terrorism, immigration, Russia, European-American relations and Asia. The 2006 group includes
David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of Holland, New York Gov. George Pataki, the
heads of Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Canada, cabinet ministers from Spain,
Greece and a number of media moguls. The group also includes a pair of prominent figures
involved in planning the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- Richard Perle and Ahmad Chalabi. Fellow White
House power-players Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, now head of the World Bank, have
spoken to the group in the past. The prime ministers of Britain and Canada -- Tony Blair and
Stephen Harper -- have addressed the group before.
Note: For two excellent articles from BBC describing this incredibly powerful, highly secretive
group of elites:
http://www.WantToKnow.info/051115secretsocietiesbilderberg
A Pesticide Banned, or Not, Underscores Trans-Atlantic Trade

Sensitivities
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/business/international/a-pesticide-banned-o...
Syngenta, a Swiss chemicals company, produces one of Americas most popular herbicides. It is
called atrazine, and 73.7 million pounds of the chemical compound were applied in the United
States in 2013. It was used on more than half of all corn crops, two-thirds of sorghum and up to 90
percent of sugar cane. The weed killer is banned as a pesticide in the European Union as well as
in Switzerland over concerns that it is a groundwater contaminant. Syngenta, however, did not get
the memo. Even though the European Union banned atrazine over a decade ago, the company
has long insisted that the pesticide was not banned. Sensitivity over regulatory gaps between
the United States and Europe has flared during trans-Atlantic trade talks, which have been
underway since 2013. An increasing number of critics of the process are concerned that the
outcome could favor corporations more than consumers. Advocacy groups have particularly
focused on chemicals, given the disparities in policy. Baskut O. Tuncak, a senior lawyer at the
Center for International Environmental Law, said that in his view the chemical proposals that have
surfaced so far reflect a lot of industrys demands and their concerns with more protective E.U.
policies. He added that proposed changes could slow or stop and possibly weaken efforts to
develop stronger chemical regulation in either the E.U. or the U.S.
Note: Syngenta did everything in its power to discredit atrazine researcher Tyrone Hayes after
Hayes published science proving that Syngenta's products were poisonous. The New Yorker
published a detailed article on Syngenta's smear campaign. For more along these lines, see
concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corporate corruption from reliable
Raging Against Hacks With Muckraker Turned Magazine-Maker Matt

Taibbi
2014-03-09, New York Magazine
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/matt-taibbi-on-wall-street-first...
In mid-February, [reporter Matt] Taibbi announced he was leaving Rolling Stone, where he has
worked for almost a decade, to start a digital magazine for First Look Media, the company owned
by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar. The last few weeks have been consumed with business
mattershiring editorial staff, signing off on designs. Taibbi wont discuss the exact format of the
new venture, nor its namethats still being worked out, toobut he sees it focusing, in part, on
the same matters of corporate malfeasance hes been covering for years. What people expect, of
course, is the ribald, loudly antagonistic voice of a writer who is, in his own words, full of outrage.
The guy who compared Goldman Sachs to a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,
relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. None of Taibbis anger
at the toothlessness of the media has dissipated. Taibbi says his decision to leave Rolling Stone
was predicated in part on ... his desire to be on Glenns side. Glenn being Glenn Greenwald,
who, along with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, is currently editing another First Look property,
the national-security-centric The Intercept, which has been live since February. Glenns in this
position of being a reporter trying to put out material that came from a whistle-blower, and
now theyre both essentially in exile. Its crazy. If the press corps that existed in the 60s
and 70s had seen this situation, theyd be rising as one and denouncing the government
for it, Taibbi says.
Monsantos Losses Widen as Seed Sales Decline

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/10/02/business/ap-us-earns-monsanto.html
Agricultural business giant Monsanto reported worse-than-expected losses for its fiscal fourth
quarter ... due to lower sales of its genetically engineered seeds. The company forecast for fiscal
2014 also came in below Wall Street expectations, and it revealed plans to buy farming software
and data firm The Climate Corporation. The combination sent shares lower in morning trading. The
St. Louis company recorded a loss of $249 million, or 47 cents per share, for the quarter
ended Aug. 31. That was wider than its loss of $264 million, or 42 cents per share, in the
2012 fourth quarter. The company's performance was hurt by a steep drop in sales of
genetically modified soybean seeds, which fell 38 percent to $87 million.
Note: For more on the destructive impacts of Monsanto's GMO seed/pesticides technology, see
Apple, Google, Facebook and others urge government surveillance

disclosure
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/apple-google-facebook-others-urge-surveilla...
Dozens of companies, non-profits and trade organizations including Apple, Google, and Facebook
sent a letter [on July 18] pushing the Obama administration and Congress for more disclosures on
the government's national security-related requests for user data. Together with LinkedIn, Yahoo!,
Microsoft, Twitter and many others, the companies asked for more transparency of secret data
gathering in the letter. Tech companies have been scrambling to assert their independence
after documents leaked last month by former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden
suggested they had given the government direct access to their computers as part of the
NSA's secret surveillance program called Prism. The classified nature of the data gathering
has barred the participating companies from disclosing even their involvement, let alone the
content of the requests. Some companies, including Facebook and Apple, in June struck an
agreement with the government to release some information about the number of surveillance
requests they receive. But they were limited to disclosing aggregate government requests for data
without showing the split between surveillance and criminal requests, and only for a six-month
period.
Chuck Hagel's Chevron tie not criticized

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Chuck-Hagel-s-Chevron-tie-not-criticiz...
In his bid to become Secretary of Defense, former Sen. Chuck Hagel has come under fire from
both the left and right for his comments on Iraq, Israel and gays. His membership on the board of
one of America's largest oil companies, however, has caused barely a stir. Since 2010, Hagel has
served on the board of Chevron Corp., a position he would have to leave if he wins Senate
confirmation as defense secretary. He received $301,199 in compensation from the San Ramon
company in 2011, including $184,000 in stock. Chevron is a major federal contractor, with more
than $501 million in sales to the U.S. government in the last fiscal year. But critics of the "revolving
door" between the federal government and the private sector haven't raised any complaints about
Hagel. That's largely due to the nature of Chevron's federal contracts. Almost all the money
Chevron made from the U.S. government in fiscal year 2012 came from selling fuel to the
Pentagon, according to a government website that tracks federal spending. Chevron, the nation's
second-largest oil company, has a history of politically connected board members.
Condoleezza Rice served on the company's board before becoming national security
adviser for President George W. Bush. The practice of former federal officials landing jobs with
government contractors - and vice versa - has long angered many government watchdogs. They
were appalled when Obama, early in his first term, nominated a lobbyist for the Raytheon Corp. to
serve as deputy secretary of defense.
Note: US Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel has also been implicated in serious elections
manipulations by none other than the New York Times. For more, see this link.
Heads or Tails, Some CEOs Win the Pay Game

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-04/heads-or-tails-some-ceos-win-...
Most companies in the Standard & Poors 500-stock index pay their CEOs annual bonuses
that are conditional on meeting specific goals. Yet companies often find ways to lower or
reset the performance benchmarks to ensure that their CEOs get at least a portion of their
bonus. The practice, which has become more frequent since the 2007 economic downturn, risks
turning bonus plans into a meaningless exercise, says Carol Bowie, head of Americas research
at ISS Governance. Bonus plans are not simply a mechanism to deliver pay, she says, but they
should be designed to focus executives on the kinds of operational metrics that are going to deliver
value. Companies often justify moving the goal posts as a way to protect executives from events
out of their controlbad luck, such as a hurricane or rising fuel costs. Yet CEOs also benefit
financially when good luck strikes. Departing from a bonus plan only works if a board is willing to
use it on the upside and the downside, says Blair Jones of Semler Brossy Consulting Group. If
its only used for the downside, it calls into question the process. Several studies of U.S. CEO pay
have confirmed the lopsided practice. One study, from researchers at Claremont Graduate
University and Washington University in St. Louis, found that executives lost far less pay for bad
luck than they gained for good luck.
here.
Carter: 'Financial Corruption' Harms US Elections

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/carter-financial-corruption-harms-us-elect...
Former President Jimmy Carter issued a blistering indictment of the U.S. electoral process ...,
saying it is shot through with "financial corruption" that threatens American democracy. Carter said
"we have one of the worst election processes in the world right in the United States of America,
and it's almost entirely because of the excessive influx of money." The 39th president lamented a
recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows unlimited contributions to third-party
groups that don't have to disclose their donors. The dynamic is fed, Carter said, by an
income tax code that exacerbates the gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of
the electorate, allowing the rich even greater influence over public discourse and electioneering.
He added that he hopes the "Supreme Court will reverse that stupid ruling," referring to the case
known as Citizens United. He said the United States should return to publicly financed elections for
president. The system technically is still in place, but it is voluntary and both President Barack
Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have chosen to bypass the taxpayer money
because they can amass far more on their own. "You know how much I raised to run against
Gerald Ford? Zero," Carter said, referring to his 1976 general election opponent. "You know how
much I raised to run against Ronald Reagan? Zero. You know how much will be raised this year by
all presidential, Senate and House campaigns? $6 billion. That's 6,000 millions."
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on our dysfunctional
electoral system, click here.
Protesters Granted 4-Month Extension to Stay on Freedom Plaza

2011-10-13, NBC Washington (Washington DC's NBC affiliate)
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Protesters-Continue-to-Occupy-DC-on-C...
Authorities granted protesters a four-month extension to continue occupying Freedom Plaza in
D.C.. A deadline for protesters with the October 2011/Stop the Machine demonstration to pack up
and leave Freedom Plaza came and went Monday afternoon. The protesters were given until 2
p.m. to break down their stage and other equipment after their original four-day permit expired
Sunday. While the protesters cleaned the space and took down the stage where they led rallies,
made speeches and played music, they didn't leave. At about 2 p.m. Monday, Park Police went to
Freedom Plaza and requested a private meeting with protest organizers. They met at National
Park Service headquarters about 4 pm. Before leaving Freedom Plaza, the organizers told the
crowd they'd stay until they're ready to leave. The organizers returned to a round of applause
when they told demonstrators that authorities offered the four-month extension. Park
Police realized it was not in their best interests to shut the demonstrators down or make
arrests, organizers said, and asked if demonstrators needed to be arrested to make their point.
The organizers replied that they dont need to be arrested over a permit issue and want their
issues addressed.
Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/peak-oil-international-ener...
The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a
whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying
a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. The allegations raise serious questions
about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply. In
particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook ... repeated again this
year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels.
External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence. "The
IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although
it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," said the IEA source, who
was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. "Many inside the
organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would
be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the
figures were brought down further." A second senior IEA source ... said a key rule at the
organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there
was not as much oil in the world as had been [claimed].
Some Web Firms Say They Track Behavior Without Explicit Consent
Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising
technology without explicitly informing customers, according to letters released yesterday by the
House Energy and Commerce Committee. The revelations came in response to a bipartisan
inquiry of how more than 30 Internet companies might have gathered data to target customers.
Some privacy advocates and lawmakers said the disclosures help build a case for an
overarching online-privacy law. "Increasingly, there are no limits technologically as to what
a company can do in terms of collecting information . . . and then selling it as a commodity
to other providers," said committee member Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). "Our responsibility is
to make sure that we create a law that, regardless of the technology, includes a set of legal
guarantees that consumers have with respect to their information." Markey said he and his
colleagues plan to introduce legislation next year, a sort of online-privacy Bill of Rights, that would
require that consumers must opt in to the tracking of their online behavior and the collection and
sharing of their personal data. Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy and
Technology, said lawmakers are beginning to understand the convergence across platforms.
"People are starting to see: 'Oh, we have these different industries that are collecting the same
types of information to profile individuals and the devices they use on the network," he said.
"Internet. Cellphones. Cable. Any way you tap into the network, concerns are raised."
Note: For lots more on increasing threats to privacy from reliable sources, click here.
Mature Human Embryos Created From Adult Skin Cells

Scientists at a California company reported yesterday that they had created the first mature cloned
human embryos from single skin cells taken from adults, a significant advance toward the goal of
growing personalized stem cells for patients suffering from various diseases. Creation of the
embryos -- grown from cells taken from the company's chief executive and one of its
investors -- also offered sobering evidence that few, if any, technical barriers may remain to
the creation of cloned babies. The study leader, who is also the medical director of a fertility
clinic ... emphasized that he has no interest in cloning people. "It's unethical and it's illegal, and we
hope no one else does it either," said Samuel H. Wood, chief executive of Stemagen in La Jolla,
whose skin cells were cloned and who led the study. The closely held company hopes to make
embryos that are clones, or genetic twins, of patients, then harvest stem cells from those embryos
and grow them into replacement tissues. Opponents of research on human embryos lashed out at
the approach. "This study seems to confirm that human cloning ... is technically possible," said
Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "It does not answer the ethical or
social questions about the mass-production of developing human lives in order to destroy them. It
only tells us that these questions are more urgent than ever." Other critics noted that scientists in
Japan and Wisconsin recently discovered a way to "reprogram" stem cells directly from skin cells,
without having to make embryos as a middle step. "In light of the recent cell reprogramming
developments, cloning-based stem cell research is less justified than ever," said Marcy Darnovsky
of the Center for Genetics and Society.
Brothers, Bad Blood and the Blackwater Tangle

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17brothers.html?ex=1352955600&en=1cb325e...
They were smart, scrappy brothers who rose from modest circumstances in Baltimore to become
lacrosse stars at Princeton, succeed in business and land big government jobs. Now the Krongard
brothers who have carried childhood nicknames, Buzzy and Cookie, through long careers
are tied up in the tangled story of Blackwater, the security contractor accused in the deaths of at
least 17 Iraqis while guarding a State Department convoy in Baghdad. The shorthand version boils
their involvement down to that Washington catchall conflict of interest. The full story appears more
complicated. Alvin [Buzzy] Krongard, 71, ... left a $4 million-a-year job in investment banking to
serve in top posts at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1998 to 2004. Buzzy Krongard spoke [to
the New York Times] in his 15,000-square-foot Georgian mansion, Torch Hill, north of Baltimore.
After rising to the helm of Alex. Brown & Sons, the venerable Baltimore investment banking
firm, Buzzy Krongard oversaw its acquisition by Bankers Trust in 1997 and left the next
year for the C.I.A., as a counselor to George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence. He
became executive director, the No. 3 post, in 2001 and helped design the agencys secret
detention program after the Sept. 11 attacks. Buzzy Krongard vigorously defends Blackwaters
record in Iraq. Its very easy to second-guess them when youre sitting back in an air-conditioned
office, he said.
Note: Buzzy Krongard took quite a cut in pay to move from Bankers Trust to the comparatively
modest salary of even a high-ranking CIA position. Bankers Trust was purchased by the same
company that placed the highly unusual and suspicious "put options" on United Airlines stock just
days before 9/11. For a powerful summary of similarly strange, unexplained facts related to 9/11,
click here.
N.Y.'s Cuomo alleges appraiser, lender collusion upped home values

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/02/MNO8T4NNM.DTL
In a major legal action alleging misdeeds in the mortgage business, New York's attorney general
[Andrew Cuomo] has accused appraisers of helping fuel the nation's foreclosure crisis by pumping
up home values at the behest of lenders and other real estate professionals. The lawsuit said that
First American eAppraiseIT, a subsidiary of Fortune 500 company First American Corp., caved in
to pressure from Washington Mutual to rely on "proven appraisers" who were willing to inflate
home prices. Washington Mutual profited from the artificially high appraisals because they allowed
the company to close more home loans at greater values, the lawsuit said. First American, a
provider of business information, title insurance and related services, wanted to win more business
from Washington Mutual, the suit said. The lawsuit comes in the midst of the nation's subprime
lending crisis, which industry experts say could cause up to 2 million homes to be lost to
foreclosure over the next couple of years. Most subprime foreclosures are caused by a confluence
of two factors: mortgage payments that rise when adjustable loans reset, and home prices that are
lower than the amount owed on the mortgage. A moribund real estate market has caused prices to
flatten or fall. But if home prices were artificially high to begin with - which would be the case
if appraisers inflated values, as the lawsuit alleged - the likelihood increases of
homeowners owing more on the mortgage than their properties are worth. Cuomo said
fraudulent appraisal practices were pervasive in the industry. At a news conference
announcing the lawsuit, he said lenders, mortgage brokers, real estate agents and others
frequently pressured appraisers to "come in with the right number, the number that justifies the
transaction" so that everyone in the chain would receive commissions.
From Casinos to Counterterrorism

[Las Vegas], famous for being America's playground, has also become its security lab. Like
nowhere else in the United States, Las Vegas has embraced the twin trends of data mining
and high-tech surveillance, with arguably more cameras per square foot than any airport or
sports arena in the country. Even the city's cabs and monorail have cameras. Some privacy
advocates view the city as a harbinger of things to come. In secret rooms in casinos across
Las Vegas, surveillance specialists are busy analyzing information about players and employees.
Relying on thousands of cameras in nearly every cranny of the casinos, they evaluate ... behavior.
They ping names against databases that share information with other casinos, sometimes using
facial-recognition software to validate a match. And in the marketing suites, casino staffers track
players' every wager, every win or loss, the better to target high-rollers for special treatment and
low- and middle-rollers for promotions. "You could almost look at Vegas as the incubator of a
whole host of surveillance technologies," said James X. Dempsey, policy director for the Center for
Democracy and Technology. Those technologies, he said, have spread to other commercial
venues: malls, stadiums, amusement parks. After Sept. 11, 2001, several airports tested facialrecognition software, with little success. But the government is continuing to invest in biometric
technologies. "We often hear of the surveillance technology du jour, but what we're seeing now in
America is a collection of surveillance technologies that work together," said Barry Steinhardt, the
American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty project director. "It isn't just video
surveillance or face recognition or license plate readers or RFID chips. It's that all these
technologies are converging to create a surveillance society."
Note: For revealing major media reports of privacy risks and invasions, click here.
EPA approves new pesticide despite scientists' concerns

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pesticide6oct06,0,2247860.story
Despite the protests of more than 50 scientists, including five Nobel laureates in chemistry, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday approved use of a new, highly toxic fumigant,
mainly for strawberry fields. The new pesticide, methyl iodide, is designed for growers, mainly in
California and Florida, who need to replace methyl bromide, which has been banned under an
international treaty because it damages the Earth's ozone layer. In a letter sent last month to EPA
Administrator Stephen Johnson, 54 scientists, mostly chemists, warned that "pregnant
women and the fetus, children, the elderly, farmworkers and other people living near
application sites would be at serious risk." Methyl iodide is a neurotoxin and carcinogen
that has caused thyroid tumors, neurological damage and miscarriages in lab animals. But
EPA officials said Friday that they carefully evaluated the risks and decided to approve its use for
one year, imposing restrictions such as buffer zones to protect farmworkers and neighbors.
Growers, particularly those who grow strawberries and tomatoes, have been searching for 15
years for a new soil fumigant to replace methyl bromide. Fumigants are valuable to growers
because they can be injected into the soil before planting to sterilize the field and kill a broad
spectrum of insects and diseases without leaving residue on crops. But fumigants are among the
most potentially dangerous pesticides in use today because the toxic gas can evaporate from the
soil, exposing farmworkers and drifting into neighborhoods. Methyl iodide ... will be allowed on
fields growing strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, ornamentals, turf, trees and vines.
From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/world/americas/06poison.html?ex=1336104000&...
The syrupy poison, diethylene glycol, is an indispensable part of the modern world, an industrial
solvent and prime ingredient in some antifreeze. It is also a killer. And the deaths, if not intentional,
are often no accident. Over the years, the poison has been loaded into all varieties of
medicine cough syrup, fever medication, injectable drugs a result of counterfeiters
who profit by substituting the sweet-tasting solvent for a safe, more expensive syrup,
usually glycerin, commonly used in drugs, food, toothpaste and other products. Toxic syrup
has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades.
Researchers estimate that thousands have died. In many cases, the precise origin of the poison
has never been determined. But records and interviews show that in three of the last four cases it
was made in China, a major source of counterfeit drugs. Panama is the most recent victim. Last
year, government officials there unwittingly mixed diethylene glycol into 260,000 bottles of cold
medicine with devastating results. Families have reported 365 deaths from the poison, 100 of
which have been confirmed so far. Panamas death toll leads directly to Chinese companies that
made and exported the poison as 99.5 percent pure glycerin.
Diebold demands HBO cancel film on voting machines

2006-11-01, Seattle Times/Bloomberg
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003335983_webdiebold01.html
Diebold Inc. demanded that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity
of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair. The program, "Hacking
Democracy," is scheduled to debut on Nov. 2, five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections.
The film claims Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change
voting results. "Hacking Democracy" is "replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,"
Diebold Election System President David Byrd said in a letter to HBO President and Chief
Executive Officer Chris Albrecht. "We stand by the film," HBO spokesman Jeff Cusson said in an
interview. "We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule." This is Diebold's second
defense of its system since last month. On Sept. 26, Byrd wrote to Jann Wenner, editor and
publisher of Rolling Stone, saying a story written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "Will the Next
Election Be Hacked?" was "error- riddled" and that readers "deserve a better researched
and reported article." The documentary is based on the work of Bev Harris of Renton, founder of
BlackBoxVoting.org, which monitors election accuracy. Harris says on the HBO Web site that she
found "secret program files" used by Diebold for its electronic voting machines. Harris copied them
and distributed the programs to others as a way to show the vulnerability of a system designed to
safeguard voting, according to the Web site.
Note: For the revealing story in Rolling Stone, click here.
Medicare drug plan is prescribing profits

2006-08-04, San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/04/BUG2PKAJGH39.DTL
Medicare's drug benefit has given a shot in the arm to pharmaceutical companies and
insurers, whose revenue is climbing thanks to government subsidies for prescription
medicine. What's happened so far: Drugmakers including GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer reported
higher-than-expected sales and profit in the second quarter, with some of the momentum coming
from Medicare. Meanwhile, membership rolls of big insurers, including UnitedHealth Group and
Humana, are mushrooming as Medicare beneficiaries sign up for drug plans. Drug companies -which successfully thwarted price-control attempts -- are reaping the rewards of more seniors and
disabled people getting access to their medications. British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline's secondquarter net income grew 14 percent over the same quarter last year due in part to strong Medicare
drug sales. Merck & Co., Schering Plough, Wyeth, Roche and Pfizer ... all exceeded analysts'
expectations, reflecting sales boosts from the program. In the first three months of the benefit,
brand-name drug prices rose 4 percent, according to a report from the AARP. WellPoint Inc., the
nation's largest insurer, reported second-quarter profit gains of 34 percent. UnitedHealth ... posted
quarterly profit gains of 26 percent. Humana reported earlier this week its second-quarter profit
increased 9.9 percent and revenue jumped 52 percent over the same quarter last year, due in
large part to a surge in Medicare membership. The insurer expects annual revenue to grow by 50
percent.
Note: This article fails to mention who pays for all these profits -- our tax dollars. To understand the
degree of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, read a two-page summary by one of the most
respected MDs in the U.S. at http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup
Big Oil's enormous profits ignite suspicion of gouging

2006-07-28, Denver Post
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_4105814
As motorists continue to pay more at the gas pump, two of the nation's largest oil companies on
Thursday reported second-quarter profits of nearly $18 billion. The huge profits come at a time
when refiners are marking up wholesale gas prices to levels seen during the weeks after Hurricane
Katrina, reigniting concerns about the possibility of price gouging. Exxon Mobil Corp. said
Thursday that its second-quarter profits increased 36 percent to $10.36 billion, the second-largest
quarterly profit ever for a U.S. publicly traded company. Royal Dutch Shell, which operates 155
gas stations in Colorado, reported earnings of $7.32 billion, up 40 percent from a year ago.
Including earnings from BP and ConocoPhillips, which reported earlier this week, four of the
nation's five largest oil companies netted more than $30 billion in profit during the second quarter.
National gross profit margins for refiners have hovered around $21 a barrel this week, compared
with about $12 a barrel a year ago. Amid outcry from lawmakers about its profits, the oil industry
this week paid for advertisements in 14 newspapers - including The Denver Post, The New York
Times and The Washington Post - that insist oil companies' earnings are not exorbitant. The
national average price of regular unleaded gasoline is $3 a gallon this week, according to
AAA. The price would be about $2.60 a gallon, factoring in taxes and transportation and
other costs, if the refiners' gross profit margin had remained at the same levels from a year
ago.
Note: At the bottom of this article is an excellent, revealing graph showing the extent of profit
margins for oil refiners since January 2005. Very few other major media have been willing to show
the hard data in this article.
Warning: This bill could make you sick

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-meyerhoff21mar21,0,33357...
The House of Representatives this month passed the National Uniformity for Foods Act, a
measure that would kill or cancel significant parts of 200 food-safety laws in 50 states. This illadvised bill, supported by millions of food-industry dollars, passed without a single hearing. Now
it's in the hands of the Senate. If it passes there, among its many victims would be California's
requirement that foods containing harmful chemicals display a warning for consumers. Those
warnings are mandated by Proposition 65, enacted...by an overwhelming majority of voters in
1986. In passing the measure, Californians wanted to encourage manufacturers to remove
dangerous substances from their products before they reached supermarket shelves. Proposition
65's requirement that companies either warn consumers or remove harmful chemicals works, and
it remains a vital protection. The clear lesson is that states often do more to protect consumers
than do federal regulators. So why is Congress even considering passing a bill denying
California and other states the right to protect citizens? Follow the money. All told, food
companies have forked over $5.2 million to the bill's 226 co-sponsors.
Moore film attacks health U.S. care

2007-05-19, ABC News/ Reuters
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=3192032
Director Michael Moore says the U.S. health care system is driven by greed in his new
documentary "SiCKO," and asks of Americans in general, "Where is our soul?" He also said he
could go to jail for taking a group of volunteers suffering ill health after helping in the September
11, 2001 rescue efforts on an unauthorized trip to Cuba, where they received exemplary treatment
at virtually no cost. In "SiCKO" he turns his attention to health, asking why 50 million Americans, 9
million of them children, live without [coverage], while those that are insured are often driven to
poverty by spiraling costs or wrongly refused treatment at all. But the movie, which has taken
Cannes by storm, goes further by portraying a country where the government is more interested in
personal profit and protecting big business than caring for its citizens, many of whom cannot afford
health insurance. "I'm trying to explore bigger ideas and bigger issues, and in this case the bigger
issue in this film is who are we as a people?" Moore told reporters after a press screening. "Why
do we behave the way we behave? What has become of us? Where is our soul?" One section of
the film explains how a U.S. man severed the tip of two fingers in an accident and was told he
would have to pay $12,000 to re-attach the end of his ring finger, and $60,000 to re-attach
that of his index finger. "Being a hopeless romantic, Rick chose his ring finger," Moore quipped in
a typically sardonic voiceover. It also follows a woman whose young daughter falls seriously ill but
who said she was refused admission to a general hospital and instructed to go to a private one
instead. By the time she got to the second hospital, it was too late to save the girl.
Lawmakers find ways to get around new ethics rules

2007-02-11, San Francisco Chronicle/New York Times
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/02/11/...
The 110th Congress opened with the passage of sweeping new rules intended to curb the
influence of lobbyists by prohibiting them from treating lawmakers to meals, trips, stadium box
seats or the discounted use of private jets. But it didn't take long for lawmakers to find ways to
keep having fun while lobbyists pick up the tab. In just the last two months, lawmakers
invited lobbyists to help pay for a catalog of outings: lavish birthday parties in a lawmaker's
honor ($1,000 a lobbyist), martinis and margaritas at Washington restaurants (at least $1,000), a
California wine-tasting tour (all donors welcome), hunting and fishing trips (typically $5,000),
weekend golf tournaments ($2,500 and up), a Presidents Day weekend at Disney World ($5,000),
parties in South Beach in Miami ($5,000), concerts by the Who or Bob Seger ($2,500 for two
seats), and Broadway shows such as "Mary Poppins" and "The Drowsy Chaperone" (also $2,500
for two). The lobbyists and their employers typically end up paying for the events, but within the
new rules. Instead of picking up the tab directly, lobbyists pay a political fundraising committee
created by an individual politician and, in turn, the committee pays the lawmaker's way. Lobbyists
say that the rules might even increase the volume of contributions flowing from K Street, where
many lobbying firms have their offices, to Congress. Members of Congress are becoming more
and more creative in finding ways to engage lobbyists to help pay for their campaigns.
Japan's Shinkansen Bullet Train Turns 50

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/japans-shinkansen-bullet-train-...
Zipping cross-country in a super-high speed train has become commonplace in many countries
these days, but it was unheard of when Japan launched its bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka
50 years ago Wednesday. The Shinkansen, as it's called in Japan, gave a boost to train travel in
Europe and Asia at a time when the rise of the automobile and the airplane threatened to eclipse
it. The first bullet train, with its almost cute bulbous round nose, traveled from Tokyo to Osaka in
four hours, shaving two and a half hours off the 513-kilometer (319-mile) journey. The latest model,
with a space-age-like elongated nose, takes just two hours and 25 minutes. The first Shinkansen
had a maximum speed of 210 kilometers (130 miles) per hour. The fastest trains previously, in
Europe, could reach 160 kph. Today's bullet trains, in Japan and elsewhere, have reached and in
some cases exceeded 300 kph (186 mph). By average speed, China has the fastest train in the
world, averaging 284 kph. Turkey last year became the ninth country to operate a train at an
average speed of 200 kph. South Korea and Taiwan also operate high-speed systems in Asia. The
fastest train in the U.S., Amtrak's Acela Express, averages 169 kph (105 mph) on a short
stretch between Baltimore and Wilmington, Delaware. Shanghai launched a German-built
maglev train in 2004 on a 30-kilometer route between the city and the airport. It can hit 430
kph (267 mph). A Japanese maglev train in development has topped 500 kph (310 mph) in tests.
Note: Gas and oil interests have lobbied hard to keep Americans wedded to their cars and stop
the development of high-speed trains. For more on this, see this excellent article and concise
summaries of deeply revealing news articles on suppressed energy inventions from reliable major
media sources.
Monsanto gives $4.7M to Colorado campaign against GMO labeling

2014-09-30, Colorado Public Radio
http://www.cpr.org/news/story/monsanto-gives-47m-colorado-campaign-against-gm...
Monsanto is donating $4.7 million to the campaign to oppose GMO labeling in Colorado. The St.
Louis-based agriculture company is a primary producer of genetically modified seeds. The No on
105 committee has raised almost $10 million through Sept. 24, with Pepsico and Kraft
Foods also giving more than $1 million each. The group begins running TV ads against the
initiative this week. Meanwhile, the supporters of the labeling initiative, Right to Know GMO,
have raised about $323,000, including almost $120,000 in the most recent two weeks. That
groups top donors are Food Democracy Action at $140,000 total and Dr. Bronners Magic Soaps
at $25,000.
Note: In every election where GMO labeling was on the ballot, big industry has poured in many
times more money that those in favor of disclosure. This is a very good example of how in the US,
it is much more a democracy of every dollar gets one vote rather than every person gets one vote.
For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing GMO news articles from reliable
Syria-to-Ukraine Wars Send U.S. Defense Stocks to Records

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-25/syria-to-ukraine-wars-send-u-s-defen...
Led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record
prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world. Investors
see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic
State fighters in Syria and Iraq, said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Chicago-based BMO
Private Bank. As we ramp up our military muscle in the Mideast, theres a sense that demand for
military equipment and weaponry will likely rise, said Ablin, who oversees $66 billion including
Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) and Boeing Co. (BA) shares. To the extent we can shift away
from relying on troops and rely more heavily on equipment -- that could present an
opportunity. Bombardments of Islamic State strongholds added to tensions this year that include
U.S.-led sanctions on Russia for backing Ukrainian rebels. The U.S. also is the biggest foreign
military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in
the Gaza Strip. A Bloomberg Intelligence gauge of the four largest Pentagon contractors ... rose 19
percent this year through yesterday, outstripping the 2.2 percent gain for the Standard & Poors
500 Industrials Index. Lockheed, the worlds biggest defense company, reached an all-time high of
$180.74 on Sept. 19, when Northrop, Raytheon Co. (RTN) and General Dynamics Corp. (GD) also
set records. That quartet and Chicago-based Boeing accounted for about $105 billion in federal
contract orders last year. U.S. lawmakers including Representative Peter King, a New York
Republican, have suggested that the new global threats could prompt Congress to reconsider
planned reductions in defense spending.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war profiteering
news articles from reliable major media sources.
Washington state battles over genetically modified food

2013-10-06, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/06/washington-state-gmo-lab...
Washington state is the next battleground in an ongoing effort by food activists to get products
containing genetically engineered ingredients labeled. Initiative 522 goes before voters Nov. 5. It
would require that foods containing ingredients from genetically engineered plants be labeled as
such. "We believe that we have a right to know what's in our food," said Elizabeth Larter, the
Seattle-based communications director for the Yes on 522 campaign. "This campaign is not about
whether GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are good or bad; this is really just providing more
information for consumers." The labeling effort is being funded by grass-roots donations and a
large contribution from Dr. Bronner's Magic All-One, a California soap company founded in the
1960s. "This is about chemical companies buying up the seed companies," said David
Bronner, president of the company. Opponents to labeling "understand that if they lose in
Washington state, game over," he said of why the company is supporting the initiative and
encouraging others to do so. "In 2013 alone there have been 26 states that have introduced
labeling legislation," says Katey Parker with the Just Label It coalition, a pro-labeling group based
in Washington, D.C. Washington's Yes on 522 campaign so far has raised $4.8 million. Squaring
off on the other side is a coalition of food manufacturers and seed producers that thus far has
raised a war chest of $17.2 million. That's a state record. The top five contributors were the
Grocery Manufacturers Association, Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Dow AgroSciences and Bayer
CropScience.
Note: For lots more on the serious risks posed by genetically-modified food, see the deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Some might choke at giving Chevron a prize

http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/bottomline/article/Some-might-choke-at-gi...
A number of major Bay Area companies were up for what were described as the "Oscars of the
investment-relations industry." Sponsored by the trade publication IR Magazine, the event featured
a notable award for "best crisis management," and San Ramon's Chevron Corp. was nominated
for its handling of the Aug. 6 explosions and fire at the company's refinery in Richmond. Chevron's
performance, one might recall, didn't play so well locally, having so far earned $1 million in fines
and citations alleging "willful serious" health and safety violations, and the company's own
admission last month "that we failed to live up to our own expectations in this incident." Perhaps it
was just as well that Chevron, which was not at the event, didn't make it to the winner's
circle ... at the palatial Cipriani Club 55 in New York. Few of the thousands of Richmond and
other East Bay residents choking their way through black smoke to local hospitals last
August would likely have appreciated it. The winner, announced with the opening of an
envelope, might have seemed even less likely to the general public: JPMorgan Chase for its
management of the $6.2 billion trading loss involving what was known as the "London whale" last
year.
click here.
Economies in peril
2011-11-15, MSNBC
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/dylan-ratigan-show/45311653
Lazy people on social services, a spree of borrowed money. That's how the Greek people are
being portrayed. But like Wall Street, the streets of Athens are like a crime scene. The Greek
people [are] victims of a fraud and cover-up. Greg Palast is a renowned investigative reporter and
author of the new book Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and HighFinance Carnivores. Greg, how is it that a bank can lend money to a country that has an economy
smaller than Dallas, at a level that is this big? Palast: Greece is a crime scene. Goldman Sachs,
beginning in 2001 [or] 2002 ... cut a deal to secretly take euros out of the Greek treasury, convert
them to yen, convert them back to euros. This is through some fancy derivative action. Goldman
takes a multi-billion dollar loss. The Greek government gets a gain. There's no deficit in the
Greek treasury. It's only 3%. The Greek economy looks good. Goldman doesn't take billions
of dollars in losses. It's a fraud. They've cut a secret deal to get that money back and then
some. Goldman charged about $300, $400 million to pull off this scam.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the chicaneries of central banks and financial
corporations, click here. For other powerful reporting by journalist Greg Palast, click here.
Gold price hits record at $1,500 an ounce

2011-04-20, BBC
The gold price has risen above $1,500 an ounce for the first time after concerns about global
economic recovery lifted the metal's appeal as a haven. In Hong Kong trade, gold hit a record
$1,500.70 an ounce, which traders said was mainly due to Standard & Poor's downgrade of
its outlook on US debt. Silver also touched a 31-year high of $44.34 an ounce. But analysts
were divided about whether the price could go higher and are waiting to see if trading in Europe
and the US continues the momentum seen in Asia. Some market watchers see gold consolidating
at its current level as it waits for the next reason to push higher. Silver continued to soar, rising to a
31-year high for the fifth consecutive session. Not only is silver increasingly seen as a haven, but
there is also rising demand for industrial consumption.
Note: Gold is one of the most highly manipulated of all commodities. As a glaring example, when
gold first broke the $1,000 mark in Feb. 2009, just over two years before this article was published,
almost no media reported on this major news. In 2004, gold was around $400 an ounce and has
been soaring ever since. For reliable charts showing this, see the bottom of the webpage at this
link. Key individuals with inside information on precious metal manipulations, like whistleblower
Catherine Austin Fitts (Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under George H.
W. Bush), have been predicting this rise for years.
CalPERS scandal detailed in report

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/19/BUFR1IELSM.DTL
"The facts in the report speak for themselves, but the principles it describes could apply to funds
throughout the United States and overseas." That's attorney Philip Khinda, talking about the 75page report he delivered last week to the California Public Employees' Retirement System on
dealings involving former senior executives and board members with so-called placement agents,
and how the latter got tens of millions of dollars in questionable fees for their services. The report
is the culmination of a 17-month investigation headed by Khinda, a partner at the Washington law
firm Steptoe & Johnson, which was hired by CalPERS for the job. Citing the $800 million a year
CalPERS was paying out in fees, the report concludes that "the excessive nature created an
environment in which external managers were willing and able to pay fees at a level that bore little
or no relationship to the services apparently provided by the placement agents ... Many of the
abuses relating to placement agent arrangements were, in a sense, a symptom of a larger
problem." That larger problem applies, in part, to funds throughout the United States and
overseas, ranging from other public pension funds to sovereign wealth funds investing in
the United States. With the amount of money at stake, the fat fees involved, and the various
middlemen looking for a piece, events similar to what transpired at CalPERS could just as
easily appear elsewhere.
government and financial corporations against the public interest, click here.
NYSE May Soon Have European Owners

2011-02-10, CBS News
The New York Times reports that the New York Stock Exchange is in "talks on a merger with
the operator of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange." The exchange faces pressure from electronic
upstarts that are taking business from it, reports the Times. The paper says a deal would create
the world's largest financial market. The Times reports that the merger ... is an example of
technology and globalization changing the world marketplace.
Note: A Los Angeles Times blog on this news states, "the potential deal is the next step in the
evolution of stock exchanges from nonprofit entities owned by their members to fast-moving
companies with publicly traded stocks." Yet none of these reports discusses the huge significance
of this potential deal.
Julian Assange vows to reveal tax details of 2,000 wealthy people

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/17/julian-assange-tax-wikileaks-swiss
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, today pledged to make public the confidential tax details of
2,000 wealthy and prominent individuals, after being passed the data by a Swiss banker who
claims the information potentially reveals instances of money-laundering and large-scale illegal tax
evasion. Rudolf Elmer, formerly a senior executive at the Swiss bank Julius Baer, based in
the Cayman islands, said he was handing the data to WikiLeaks as part of an attempt "to
educate society" about the amount of potential tax revenues lost thanks to offshore
schemes and money-laundering. "As [a] banker, I have the right to stand up if something is
wrong," he said. "I am against the system. I know how the system works and I know the day-to-day
business. I want to let society know how this system works because it's damaging our society," he
said. Elmer will appear in a Swiss court on Wednesday charged with breaking Swiss banking
secrecy laws, forging documents and sending threatening messages to two officials at his former
employer. He denies the charges. Assange ... said he would pass the information to the Serious
Fraud Office(SFO), examine it to ensure sources were protected, and then release it on the
WikiLeaks site, potentially within "a couple of weeks".
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on how the rich cheat the rest with help from lax
regulations, click here.
Risk on the shelves from BPA

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/18/EDNS1BJSM8.DTL
Our federal and state governments have dragged their feet in addressing the risks of BPA
exposure - due mainly to relentless lobbying by the chemical industry. The chemical industry has
used every weapon at its disposal - including lawsuits, in the case of San Francisco - to
keep BPA on the shelves and in our bodies. So the Food and Drug Administration deserves
mild applause for reversing its position on BPA, calling it a "concern" and offering ways in
which the public can reduce its exposure to the chemical. It would have been far better for the FDA
to ban the chemical, or at least require manufacturers to label products that contain it. Instead, it
offered the familiar "more study is needed" defense and said that it doesn't have enough data to
support a legal crackdown.
Note: The Department of Health and Human Services has released a list of ways to reduce your
exposure. It can be found at www.hhs.gov/safety/bpa.
Political writer Irving Kristol dead at 89

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32920052/ns/politics-more_politics
Irving Kristol, the political writer and publisher known as the godfather of neo-conservatism,... died
Friday. He was 89. A Trotskyist in the 1930s, Kristol would soon sour on socialism, break from
liberalism after the rise of the New Left in the 1960s and in the 1970s commit the unthinkable
support the Republican Party, once as "foreign to me as attending a Catholic mass." He was a
flagship in the network of think tanks, media outlets and corporations that helped make
conservatism a reigning ideology for at least two decades. Former Vice President Dick Cheney
was a longtime admirer and former President George W. Bush, whose administration was heavily
populated by neo-conservatives, awarded Kristol a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. Kristol
himself would regard neo-conservatism as a job well done. But the Iraq War and the poor
economy badly damaged the right's unity and credibility over the past few years. "If there is any
one thing that neo-conservatives are unanimous about, it is their dislike of the
counterculture," Kristol once said. With funding from Joseph Coors, Richard Mellon Scaife and
others, the right created such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic
and International Studies. Kristol himself was a fellow at a key think tank, the American Enterprise
Institute. Kristol also taught at New York University, worked for several years as a senior editor at
the Basic Books publishing house and in the 1950s headed the anti-communist magazine
Encounter, which turned out to have been funded without Kristol's knowledge, he said
by the CIA.
Note: To learn how Kristol became a top manager in spreading fear to support the political elite,
watch the powerful BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares" at this link. This revealing film
show how much of the fear spread by the media is consciously fabricated by people like Kristol
and his colleagues.
Prescription Data Used To Assess Consumers

Health and life insurance companies have access to a powerful new tool for evaluating whether to
cover individual consumers: a health "credit report" drawn from databases containing prescription
drug records on more than 200 million Americans. Collecting and analyzing personal health
information in commercial databases is a fledgling industry, but one poised to take off as the nation
enters the age of electronic medical records. Some insurers have already begun testing systems
that tap into not only prescription drug information, but also data about patients held by clinical and
pathological laboratories. Privacy and consumer advocates fear [the trend] it is taking place
largely outside the scrutiny of federal health regulators and lawmakers. The practice also
illustrates how electronic data gathered for one purpose can be used and marketed for
another -- often without consumers' knowledge, privacy advocates say. And they argue that
although consumers sign consent forms, they effectively have to authorize the data release if they
want insurance. "As health care moves into the digital age, there are more and more companies
holding vast amounts of patients' health information," said Joy Pritts, research professor at
Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute. "Most people don't even know these [companies]
exist. Unfortunately the federal health privacy rule does not cover many of them." Tim Sparapani,
senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "We've got to stop these
practices before the marketplace is fully developed and patients lose all control over their medical
information."
Note: For lots more on increasing threats to privacy from reliable sources, click here.
Family seed business takes on Goliath of genetic modification

2008-05-25, Edmonton Journal (Edmonton's leading newspaper)
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=1be275ca-cd91-4bfc-9...
Heather Meek leafs through the seed catalogue she wrote on the family computer, on winter nights
after the kids went to bed. Selling seeds is more than just an extra source of income on [her]
organic farm an hour northwest of Montreal. For Meek and partner Frederic Sauriol, propagating
local varieties is part of a David and Goliath struggle by small farmers against big seed companies.
At stake, they believe, is no less than control of the world's food supply. Since the dawn of
civilization, farmers have saved seeds from the harvest and replanted them the following
year. But makers of genetically modified (GM) seeds -- introduced in 1996 -- have been
putting a stop to that practice. The 12 million farmers worldwide who will plant GM seeds this
year sign contracts agreeing not to save or replant seeds. That means they must buy new seeds
every year. Critics charge such contracts confer almost unlimited power over farmers' lives to
multinational companies whose priority is profit. They say GM seeds are sowing a humanitarian
and ecological disaster. Worldwide, GM crops have grown 67-fold in 12 years, now covering 690.9
million hectares in 23 countries. Alexander Muller, assistant director of [the] Food and Agriculture
Organization, warned that loss of agricultural biodiversity threatens the world's ability to survive
climate change. "The erosion of biodiversity for food and agriculture severely compromises global
food security," [he said]. Muller's words resonate with farmers Meek and Sauriol, whose four
daughters help with the painstaking work of cleaning seeds over the winter. "Growing seed is a big
job," says Meek. "But if you don't grow your seed, you lose your power."
Note: For a powerful overview of the risks of genetically modified organisms, click here.
Centers Tap Into Personal Databases

Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about
millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver's license
photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post. One
center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it's not
clear what information those systems contain. Dozens of the organizations known as fusion
centers were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The centers use law
enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and
clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies. Though officials have publicly
discussed the fusion centers' importance to national security, they have generally declined to
elaborate on the centers' activities. But a document that lists resources used by the fusion centers
shows how a dozen of the organizations in the northeastern United States rely far more on access
to commercial and government databases than had previously been disclosed. The list of
information resources was part of a survey conducted last year, officials familiar with the effort
said. It shows that, like most police agencies, the fusion centers have subscriptions to private
information-broker services that keep records about Americans' locations, financial
holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like. "Fusion centers have grown,
really, off the radar screen of public accountability," said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public
policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonpartisan watchdog group in the District.
"Congress and the state legislatures need to get a handle over what is going on at all these fusion
centers."
Note: For further disturbing reports on threats to privacy, click here.
Clinton, Obama are Wall Street darlings

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wallstdems21mar21,1,1953...
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who are running for president as economic populists,
are benefiting handsomely from Wall Street donations, easily surpassing Republican John McCain
in campaign contributions from the troubled financial services sector. It is part of a broader
fundraising shift toward Democrats, compared to past campaigns when Republicans were the
favorites of Wall Street. The flow of campaign cash is a measure of how open-fisted banks and
other financial institutions have been to politicians of both parties. Concern is rising that "no matter
who the Democratic nominee is and who wins in November, Wall Street will have a friend in the
White House," said Massie Ritsch of the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks
campaign donations. "The door will be open to these big banks." Sen. Clinton of New York is
leading the way, bringing in at least $6.29 million from the securities and investment industry,
compared with $6.03 million for Sen. Obama of Illinois and $2.59 million for McCain. Those figures
include donations from the investment companies' employees and political action committees. The
candidates' receipts reflect a broader trend that demonstrates how money follows power in
Washington. It suggests that the nation's money managers are betting heavily that either Clinton or
Obama will capture the White House and that Democrats will retain control of Congress. "What
that Wall Street money means is that few people in Washington, including the leading
presidential candidates, say a thing when the government moves to bail out Wall Street
before it helps homeowners," said David Sirota, a liberal activist and former congressional aide.
Note: For more insight into the relationship between big finance and big government, click here.
National Dragnet Is a Click Away

Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence
system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information. As federal
authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks, police agencies from Alaska and California to the Washington region poured millions of ...
records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts
new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues. Those
network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect
to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. The
expanding police systems illustrate the prominent roles that private companies play in homeland
security and counterterrorism efforts. They also underscore how the use of new data -- and data
surveillance -- is evolving faster than the public's understanding or the laws intended to check
government power and protect civil liberties. Three decades ago, Congress imposed limits on
domestic intelligence activity after revelations that the FBI, Army, local police and others
had misused their authority for years to build troves of personal dossiers and monitor
political activists and other law-abiding Americans. Since those reforms, police and federal
authorities have observed a wall between law enforcement information-gathering, relating to
crimes and prosecutions, and more open-ended intelligence that relates to national security and
[politics]. That wall is fast eroding following the passage of laws expanding surveillance authorities,
the push for information-sharing networks, and the expectation that local and state police will play
larger roles.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources of serious threats to civil liberties, click
here.
Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/technology/23mobile.html?ex=1350792000&en=e...
Two new questions arise, courtesy of the latest advancement in cellphone technology: Do you
want your friends, family, or colleagues to know where you are at any given time? And do you want
to know where they are? Obvious benefits come to mind. Parents can take advantage of the
Global Positioning System chips embedded in many cellphones to track the whereabouts of their
phone-toting children. And for teenagers and 20-somethings, who are fond of sharing their
comings and goings on the Internet, youth-oriented services like Loopt and Buddy Beacon are a
natural next step. But ... if G.P.S. [makes] it harder to get lost, new cellphone services are now
making it harder to hide. There are massive changes going on in society, particularly among
young people who feel comfortable sharing information in a digital society, said Kevin Bankston, a
staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We seem to be getting into a period where
people are closely watching each other, he said. There are privacy risks we havent begun
to grapple with. What if a boss asks an employee to use the service? Almost 55 percent of all
mobile phones sold today in the United States have the technology that makes such friend- and
family-tracking services possible. Consumers can turn off their service, making them invisible to
people in their social-mapping network. Still, the G.P.S. service embedded in the phone means
that your whereabouts are not a complete mystery. There is a Big Brother component, said
Charles S. Golvin, a wireless analyst. The thinking goes that if my friends can find me, the
telephone company knows my location all the time, too.
Note: For revealing major media reports of privacy risks and invasions, click here.
Senators Try to Limit Fuel-Efficiency Rules

Allies of the U.S. auto industry stepped up a campaign yesterday to soften strict vehicle fuelefficiency mandates in proposed energy legislation before the Senate, even as momentum for the
tougher measures continued to build. Auto lobbyists said they were encountering stiff resistance
on Capitol Hill. They said they felt like the industry was being punished for what one called the
"sins of the past" -- successfully beating back attempts to make major changes to the nation's
vehicle mileage laws. Yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) defended the current bill, arguing
that it would provide flexibility for automakers. "There are all kinds of dire warnings," Feinstein
said. "The fact of matter is that Detroit has done nothing about mileage efficiency for the
past 20 years, and the time has come."
Note: It is also worth noting that Congress itself has done nothing to mandate higher fuel efficiency
in cars over the last twenty years. For a highly revealing article showing that while other industries
have had many major breakthroughs and huge technological advances over the decades,
automobile makers for some strange reason have been unable to improve car mileage since the
days of the Model T, click here.
Top oil firms expected to report huge earnings

The countrys three largest oil and gas companies are expected to report combined first-quarter
profits this week in excess of $16 billion, a 19 percent surge from last year. Elected officials are
scrambling for ways to assuage angry consumers and businesses. President Bush on Tuesday
gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to temporarily waive regional clean-fuel
regulations to promote greater gasoline-supply flexibility, but members of Congress have other
ideas. Some are renewing calls for a windfall profits tax and some want federal regulators to
investigate industry consolidation. Still others are threatening hearings and expressing outrage at
how the industry invests cautiously in new refining capacity yet rewards its executives lavishly. The
combined earnings expected from ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.
will be 14 times greater than the combined first-quarter profits of Google Inc., Apple
Computer Inc. and Oracle Corp. Analysts say full-year profits for the oil majors are likely to
surpass the record-setting earnings of 2005, when Exxon reported a $36.13 billion profit -- the
highest ever for a U.S. company.
Big Oil's Big Windfall

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/opinion/28tue1.html?ex=1301202000&en=c70b43...
A public already groaning under huge deficits does not need more red ink. An oil industry already
rolling in record profits does not need more tax breaks. But both are sure to happen unless some
way can be found to claw back from a decade's worth of Congressional and administrative
blunders, aggressive lobbying and industry greed. According to a detailed account in Monday's
Times...oil companies stand to gain a minimum of $7 billion and as much as $28 billion over
the next five years under an obscure provision in last year's giant energy bill that allows
companies to avoid paying royalties on oil and gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico. The
provision received almost no Congressional debate, in part because Congress was lazy and in
part because the provision was misleadingly advertised as cost-free. A court decision in 2003
effectively doubled the amount of oil and gas exempted from royalties. Then the Bush
administration offered special exemptions for "deep gas" producers, drilling more than 15,000 feet
below the sea bottom. Then came the 2005 energy bill, which essentially locked in the old
incentives for five more years.
Forbes reports billionaire boom

2006-03-10, BBC
A worldwide economic boom has yielded a record number of dollar billionaires in the past
year, according to Forbes. Their number rose by 15%. Microsoft's Bill Gates tops the list for the
12th year running, with a net worth of $50bn (29bn). The combined net worth of the 793 is $2.6
trillion and US billionaires account for just under half the amount. The figures were conservative
estimates for different reasons. While New York has the highest number of resident billionaires
with 40, Moscow is second with 25, and London comes third with 23. Steve Forbes, Forbes' chief
executive and editor-in-chief, attributed the global rise in the number of billionaires to an economic
boom.
Note: Yet a recent New York Times article shows that the income of 90% of citizens is basically
stagnant or even decreasing. See http://www.WantToKnow.info/060306newsarticles#1
KBR Awarded DHS Contingency Support Project for Emergency

Support Services
2006-01-24, Houston Chronicle/Business Wire
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/prn/texas/3608687.html
KBR [Kellogg, Brown, and Root] announced today that the Department of Homeland Security's
(DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component has awarded KBR an
Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contingency contract to support ICE facilities in the
event of an emergency. KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton.
The competitively awarded contract [has] a maximum total value of $385 million over a fiveyear term. The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary
detention and processing capabilities...in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants
into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contract may also
provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an
immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency,
such as a natural disaster.
Note: $385 million more is channeled to Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton to build more
prisons to possibly support the rapid development of new programs. What might those new
programs be?
Weapons in space put the world at risk

2005-07-13, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (One of Seattle's two leading newspapers)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/232239_spaceweapons13.html
Within the next few weeks, President Bush is expected to release his administration's new national
space policy. There have been a series of reports since 2001 that essentially advocate deploying
space weapons. The Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management
and Organization, initially chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, argued that the United States must take
steps to avoid a "space Pearl Harbor." The Rumsfeld report said there is no current bar to "placing
or using weapons in space, applying force from space to Earth, or conducting military operations in
and through space." Not so coincidentally, seven of the 13 members of the Rumsfeld space
commission had ties to aerospace companies that could stand to gain from the launching
of a major space weapons program. There are also plans afoot to develop Hypervelocity Rod
Bundles, frequently called "Rods from God," designed to drop from space and hit targets on Earth.
Note: Why aren't other major newspapers reporting this critical news?
The Sale of Electoral Politics

2005-06-00, Project Censored (University website exposing media cover-ups)
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/6.html
ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia are the companies primarily involved in implementing the new,
often faulty, technology at voting stations throughout the country. All three have strong ties
to the Bush Administration along with major defense contractors in the United States. Some
of the most generous contributors to Republican campaigns are also some of the largest investors
in ES&S, Sequoia, and Diebold. Most notable of these are government defense contractors
Northrup-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Electronic Data Systems.
The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/22/news/mn-25118
They knew which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up, which cargo ships could be sunk in
good conscience. They had pothole counts for roads used for invasion and head counts for city
blocks marked for incineration. They weren't just secret agents. They were secret insurance
agents. These undercover underwriters gave their World War II spymasters access to a
global industry that both bankrolled and, ultimately, helped bring down Adolf Hitler's Third
Reich. Newly declassified U.S. intelligence files tell the remarkable story of the ultra-secret
Insurance Intelligence Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the
CIA, and its elite counterintelligence branch X-2. Though rarely numbering more than a half dozen
agents, the unit gathered intelligence on the enemy's insurance industry, Nazi insurance titans and
suspected collaborators in the insurance business. But, more significantly, the unit mined standard
insurance records for blueprints of bomb plants, timetables of tide changes and thousands of other
details about targets, from a brewery in Bangkok to a candy company in Bergedorf. "They used
insurance information as a weapon of war," said Greg Bradsher, a historian and National Archives
expert on the declassified records. That insurance information was critical to Allied strategists, who
were seeking to cripple the enemy's industrial base and batter morale by burning cities.
Halliburton Subsidiary Taps Contract For Repairs

An Arlington-based Halliburton Co. subsidiary that has been criticized for its reconstruction
work in Iraq has begun tapping a $500 million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf
Coast naval and Marine facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown &
Root Services Inc., won the competitive bid contract last July to provide debris removal and other
emergency work associated with natural disasters. KBR has been at the center of scrutiny for
receiving a five-year, no-bid contract to restore Iraqi oil fields shortly before the war began
in 2003. Halliburton has reported being paid $10.7 billion for Iraq-related government work during
2003 and 2004. The company reported its pretax profits from that work as $163 million. Pentagon
auditors have questioned tens of millions of dollars of Halliburton charges for its operations there.
Last month three congressional Democrats asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to
investigate the demotion of a senior civilian Army official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, who publicly
criticized the awarding of that contract. Vice President Cheney headed Halliburton from 1995 to
2000.
Profits of doom
2010-07-29, Times Higher Education (a Times of London publication)
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=412726
Climate change is serious business - in more ways than one. Capitalist 'bootleggers' have coopted the environmental [movement] to fulfil their raison d'etre - making money. Thanks to the
'greenwash', the solutions could be worse than the problems. Sitting on the board of [a] virtuoussounding group - the Alliance for Climate Protection (ACP) - is one of the world's most famous
green champions, Al Gore. Alongside him sits Theodore Roosevelt IV. Theodore the Fourth is a ...
managing director of Barclays Capital. Consider another environmental-economics powerhouse,
Generation Investment Management (GIM). Gore founded it ... with the aid of David Blood - chief
executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management from 1999 to 2003. It is economics, not
environmentalism, that has driven the search for ethically superior energy from "clean"
sources derived from previously sacrosanct areas of wilderness, the exploitation of which
has suddenly been legitimised, perhaps as new "energy farms" or for "biofuels". Likewise,
previously off-limits coastal areas have been designated as not only suitable but also positively
benign sites on which to drill for oil and gas. After all, the long-term interest - one might say the fuel
- propelling countries is money. "Greenwash" is the term environmentalists use to describe
businesses that present themselves as green although their practices are not.
Dubious Fees Hit Borrowers in Foreclosures

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/business/06mortgage.html?ex=1352005200&en=2...
As record numbers of homeowners default on their mortgages, questionable practices among
lenders are coming to light in bankruptcy courts, leading some legal specialists to contend that
companies instigating foreclosures may be taking advantage of imperiled borrowers. Because
there is little oversight of foreclosure practices and the fees that are charged, bankruptcy
specialists fear that some consumers may be losing their homes unnecessarily or that
mortgage servicers, who collect loan payments, are profiting from foreclosures. Bankruptcy
specialists say lenders and loan servicers often do not comply with even the most basic legal
requirements, like correctly computing the amount a borrower owes on a foreclosed loan or
providing proof of holding the mortgage note in question. Regulators need to look beyond their
current, myopic focus on loan origination and consider how servicers calculation and collection
practices leave families vulnerable to foreclosure, said Katherine M. Porter, associate professor of
law at the University of Iowa. In an analysis of foreclosures in Chapter 13 bankruptcy, the program
intended to help troubled borrowers save their homes, Ms. Porter found that questionable fees had
been added to almost half of the loans she examined, and many of the charges were identified
only vaguely. Collectively they could raise millions of dollars for loan servicers at a time when the
other side of the business, mortgage origination, has faltered. In one example, Ms. Porter found
that a lender had filed a claim stating that the borrower owed more than $1 million. But after the
loan history was scrutinized, the balance turned out to be $60,000. And a judge in Louisiana is
considering an award for sanctions against Wells Fargo in a case in which the bank assessed
improper fees and charges that added more than $24,000 to a borrowers loan.
USDA may relax standards for organic foods

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-organic9jun09,1,1653705....
Many beer drinkers may not know that Anheuser-Busch has the organic blessing from federal
regulators even though Wild Hop Lager uses hops grown with chemical fertilizers and sprayed with
pesticides. The [USDA] is considering a list of 38 nonorganic ingredients that will be permitted in
organic foods. Because of the broad uses of these ingredients as colorings and flavorings, for
example almost any type of manufactured organic food could be affected, including cereal,
sausage, bread and beer. Organic food advocates have fought to block approval of some or all of
the proposed ingredients, saying consumers would be misled. "This proposal is blatant catering
to powerful industry players who want the benefits of labeling their products 'USDA
organic' without doing the work to source organic materials," said Ronnie Cummins,
executive director of the Organic Consumers Assn. of Finland, Minn., a nonprofit group that boasts
850,000 members. With big companies entering what was formerly a mom-and-pop industry, new
questions have arisen about what exactly goes into organic food. Many nonorganic ingredients,
including hops, are already being used in organic products, thanks to a USDA interpretation of the
Organic Foods Protection Act of 1990. In addition to hops, the list includes 19 food colorings, two
starches, casings for sausages and hot dogs, fish oil, chipotle chili pepper, gelatin and a host of
obscure ingredients (one, for instance, is a "bulking agent" and sweetener with the tongue-twisting
name of fructooligosaccharides). Under the agency's proposal, as much as 5% of a food product
could be made with these ingredients and still get the "USDA organic" seal.
NHS sues drug firms 'for 100m'

2004-06-23, BBC News
The NHS is seeking at least 100m compensation from two drug companies who it alleges
"fixed" the price of an ulcer drug in the late 1990s. The allegations relate to the sale and supply
of ranitidine between 1997 and 2000. The NHS's Counter Fraud Service [CFS]...is currently
investigating similar concerns in regard to around 30 other drugs. As in any case where a drug
comes off patent, the NHS expected its price to fall, but this did not happen with ranitidine. The
investigation into why this failed to happen has led to the High Court action against Generics, a
subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical company Merck, and the British arm of the Indian
company Ranbaxy. The CFS estimates that the NHS could have lost out on at least 100m, and
possibly as much as 110m. It has already said it will sue seven companies over the sale of
common medicines including warfarin and penicillin-based drugs.
Shooting the messenger: Report on layoffs killed

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/03/MN120712.DTL
The Bush administration ... has quietly killed off a Labor Department program that tracked mass
layoffs by U.S. companies. The statistic ... comprised an easy-to-understand overview of which
industries are in the greatest distress and which workers are bearing the brunt of the turmoil.
Sharon Brown oversaw compilation of the mass-layoffs number at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in
Washington. "This was a high-quality program, producing timely information on important
developments in the labor market," Brown said. The $6.6 million in annual funding for the masslayoffs program ... was channeled through the Labor Department's Employment and Training
Administration. When that agency decided it needed more cash ... the Bureau of Labor Statistics
was told to look elsewhere for its budget needs. Apparently no extra money was to be found
anywhere within the Labor Department, which had a total budget of $44.4 billion last year, up from
$39.2 billion in 2001. The same conclusion was reached in 1992 when the first President Bush
canceled the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program. Now Bush the younger is following in his
father's footsteps, once again deciding that the American people have no real need to know
how many mass layoffs are made each month.
Suits Say U.S. Impeded Audits for Oil Leases

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/business/21royalty.html?ex=1316491200&en=3f...
Four government auditors who monitor leases for oil and gas on federal property say the Interior
Department suppressed their efforts to recover millions of dollars from companies they said were
cheating the government. The auditors contend that they were blocked by their bosses from
pursuing more than $30 million in fraudulent underpayments of royalties for oil produced in publicly
owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico. "The agency has lost its sense of mission, which is to protect
American taxpayers," said Bobby L. Maxwell, who was formerly in charge of Gulf of Mexico
auditing. "These are assets that belong to the American public, and they are supposed to be used
for things like education, public infrastructure and roadways." The lawsuits have surfaced as
Democrats and Republicans alike are questioning the Bush administration's willingness to
challenge the oil and gas industry. The new accusations surfaced just one week after the
Interior Department's inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, told a House subcommittee that
"short of crime, anything goes" at the top levels of the Interior Department. In another clash,
frustrated federal auditors have complained that the Interior Department no longer allows them to
subpoena documents from oil companies. Agency officials acknowledged that they have not
issued any subpoenas in the last three years.
Citizens 1, Corporations 0
2006-06-07, Yahoo! News/The Nation (partisan source)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060607/cm_thenation/189125
In Northern California's Humboldt County, voters decided by a 55-45 margin that
corporations do not have the same rights...as citizens when it comes to participating in
local political campaigns. Until Tuesday in Humboldt County, corporations were able to
claim citizenship rights, as they do elsewhere in the United States. With the passage of
Measure T...voters have signaled that they want out-of-town corporations barred from meddling in
local elections. The "Yes on T" campaign was rooted in regard for the American experiment,
from...references to Tuesday's election as a modern-day "Boston Tea Party," to the quote from
Thomas Jefferson: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
which dare already to challenge our government." Just as Jefferson and his contemporaries were
angered by dominance of the affairs of the American colonies by King George III and the British
business combines...so Humboldt County residents were angered by the attempts of outside
corporate interests to dominate local politics. Humboldt County residents...put Measure T on the
ballot, declaring, "Our Founding Fathers never intended corporations to have this kind of power."
Let us hope that the spirit of '76 prevailed Tuesday in Humboldt County will spread until that day
when American democracy is guided by the will of the people rather than the campaign
contribution checks of the corporations that are the rampaging "empires" of our age.
Free trade leaves world food in grip of global giants

http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,1399480,00.html
Global food companies are aggravating poverty in developing countries by dominating markets,
buying up seed firms and forcing down prices for staple goods including tea, coffee, milk, bananas
and wheat, according to a report to be launched today. Two companies dominate sales of half the
world's bananas, three trade 85% of the world's tea, and one, Wal-mart, now controls 40% of
Mexico's retail food sector. It also found that Monsanto controls 91% of the global GM seed
market.
Americans Skeptical About Gas Price Drop

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/25/ap/business/mainD8KC5MEO0.shtml
Almost half of all Americans believe the November elections have more influence than market
forces. For them, the plunge at the pump is about politics, not economics. According to a new
Gallup poll, 42 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the Bush
administration "deliberately manipulated the price of gasoline so that it would decrease
before this fall's elections." Fifty-three percent of those surveyed did not believe in this
conspiracy theory, while 5 percent said they had no opinion. The excitementand suspicion
among U.S. motorists follows a post-summer decline in gasoline prices that even veteran analysts
and gas station owners concede has been steeper than usual. The retail price of gasoline has
plunged by 50 cents, or 17 percent, over the past month to average $2.38 a gallon nationwide,
according to Energy Department statistics. That is 42.5 cents lower than a year ago, when the
energy industry was still reeling from the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which damaged
petroleum platforms, pipelines and refineries across the Gulf Coast. Fimat USA oil analyst Antoine
Halff said there is no doubt that "the downturn in prices is welcome news from an electoral
standpoint for the ruling party." But he scoffed at the notion that the U.S. president had the power
to muscle around a global market.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on
several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing
news articles ever published.

Corporate Corruption News Articles - COMPLETE ARCHIVE

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Corporate Corruption News Articles - COMPLETE ARCHIVE

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Excerpts of Key Corporate Corruption News Articles in Media

Inside the secretive Bilderberg Group

A New Way to Fight Cancer?

Merck Created Hit List to 'Destroy,' 'Neutralize' or 'Discredit' Dissenting

reliable major media sources.

Where'd the Bailout Money Go? Shhhh, It's a Secret

How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders?

Patents Over Patients

Lockheed and the Future of Warfare

Connections And Then Some

Pipeline politics taint U.S. war

Gold price rigging fears put investors on alert

IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers

A Doctor's Dilemma: When Crucial New-Drug Data Is Hidden

Study finds tumors in rats fed on Monsanto's GM corn

Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong

A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives

The rich get richer, then buy elections

Tamiflu Developer: Swine Flu Could Have Come From Bio-Experiment

New Merck Allegations: A Fake Journal; Ghostwritten Studies; Vioxx

The $700 trillion elephant

Under The Influence

Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug

Deadly Immunity - by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Enron Schemes Caught On Tape

Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle

Western Europe: New Elan in an Old Clan

What Ever Happened to Antitrust?

inequality that this contributes to.

Red Cross 'Diverted Assets' During Storms' Aftermath To Focus On

Did Merck Unfairly Monopolize the Market for a Mumps Vaccine?

Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater

Health conspiracy theories are widely believed

2014-03-19, USA Today

Fake-food scandal revealed as tests show third of products mislabelled

Here's why Wall Street has a hard time being ethical

New Leaks Into Pacific at Japan Nuclear Plant

Is Big Pharma Addicted To Fraud?

The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis

Cypriot Bailout Sends Shivers Throughout the Euro Zone

Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

Goldman Sachs' Global Coup D'etat

Libor: They all knew and no one acted

Was the petrol price rigged too?

Bank rate rigging scandal widens; Diamond fights on

Prisons, Privatization, Patronage

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

No magic bullet on the flu

Money's stranglehold on government is key issue

OCCs Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities:

Abramoff: Lobbying reforms haven't fixed 'flawed' system

Jack Abramoff: The lobbyist's playbook

The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest

Citigroup to Pay $285 Million to Settle Fraud Charges

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Loans

The Fed Audit

Top lobbying banks got biggest bailouts: study

WikiLeaks: US targets EU over GM crops

Reports accuse WHO of exaggerating H1N1 threat, possible ties to drug

Speedy New Traders Make Waves Far From Wall Street

2010-05-17, New York Times

Use of potentially harmful chemicals kept secret under law