Corporate Power = State Power = Secret Power = Insider Power

[Octafish]

Last edited Fri Jul 25, 2014, 04:10 PM - Edit history (1)

Greg Palast says that is how the game is played, via the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. His source, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist and a man of integrity.



An example of how, during the times of greatest accumulation o wealth in human history, the already rich beyond imagination rig the game:

Greg Palast: Why Are the Greek People Agreeing to Their Own Destruction?

By Michael Nevradakis, Truthout | Interview
Friday, 09 August 2013 00:00

EXCERPT...

In his critique of privatization programs, Palast referenced Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who had been the World Bank's chief economist prior to being fired for expressing dissent against its policies. &quot Stiglitz) called privatization 'briberization' because ... when we talk about privatization, we talk about a couple of guys who are close to the government in Greece, who are close to the German government, and they pick up the properties for next to nothing."

One of the biggest controversies in Greece over the past year has involved the Skouries gold mine. Originally transferred to private hands by the Greek state in 2004 for the paltry sum of 11 million euros, the mine has since come into the possession of the Canadian company Eldorado Gold, which has commenced mining activities. This has resulted in a vociferous grassroots movement, protesting the mine on both economic and environmental grounds. According to Palast, companies like Eldorado Gold prey on vulnerable countries.

"What they do is, they wait for the moment where a nation is really weak and on its back, and has to give away its gold. Tanzania sold its gold mines for nothing under IMF pressure to Barrick Gold. They've made billions and billions and billions."
"Let's not kid ourselves," added Palast. "Nobody gets a gold mine without making a payoff to the powers that be. That's just how it is ... they're not privatizing, they're stealing your gold."

CONTINUED...

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18069-why-are-the-greek-people-agreeing-to-their-own-destruction

Like Austerity and TPP, there really is amazingly little coverage in Corporate McPravda of how the filthy rich get richer from the labors of the many and wars without end.

Where does the Bush Family Evil Empire come in? Through the front door of the White House, via Poppy Bush.

Poppy Strikes Gold

Sunday, April 27, 2008
Originally Posted July 9, 2003
By Greg Palast

EXCERPT...

And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas by U.S. church leaders, Poppy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk) sponsored by organizations run by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax cheat—and formerly the guest of the U.S. federal prison system. Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997–2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation.

The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian's U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.

They could well afford it. [font color="green"]In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush–era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could "perfect its patent" on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $10,000. Eureka![/font color]

Barrick, of course, had to put up cash for the initial property rights and the cost of digging out the booty (and the cost of donations, in smaller amounts, to support Nevada's Democratic senator, Harry Reid). Still, the shift in rules paid off big time: According to experts at the Mineral Policy Center of Washington, DC, Barrick saved—and the U.S. taxpayer lost—a cool billion or so. Upon taking office, Bill Clinton's new interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, called Barrick's claim the "biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy." Nevertheless, because the company followed the fast-track process laid out for them under Bush, this corporate Goldfinger had Babbitt by the legal nuggets. Clinton had no choice but to give them the gold mine while the public got the shaft.

Barrick says it had no contact whatsoever with the president at the time of the rules change.(1) There was always a place in Barrick's heart for the older Bush—and a place on its payroll. In 1995, Barrick hired the former president as Honorary Senior Advisor to the Toronto company's International Advisory Board. Bush joined at the suggestion of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, who, like Bush, had been ignominiously booted from office. I was a bit surprised that the president had signed on. When Bush was voted out of the White House, he vowed never to lobby or join a corporate board. The chairman of Barrick openly boasts that granting the title "Senior Advisor" was a sly maneuver to help Bush tiptoe around this promise.

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/poppy-strikes-gold/

Wow. So his flock of supporters in the media and elsewhere wanted it known: George Herbert Walker Bush did do something nice when he was President. It just happened to be that he was really, really good to a rich, powerful corporate person.

The story continues, in which Mr. Palast details how said gold mining company employed fascist tactics to take over the mine, part of which involved bulldozing the miners homes and mines, some with the miners still inside. Let that, uh, sink in.



So, for his trouble in reporting the story, Barrick threatened to sue. And Barrick Gold, one of Poppy Bush's favorite charities, did -- to The Guardian and Greg Palast. Their crime? Telling the truth. And in Britain, if the Crown wants the truth to be a crime, it is.

The Truth Buried Alive

—By Greg Palast, From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin/Plume, 2003)

Source: UTNE Reader
April 2003 Issue

EXCERPT...

Bad news. In July 2001, in the middle of trying to get out the word of the theft of the election in Florida, [font color="red"]I was about to become the guinea pig, the test case, for an attempt by a multinational corporation to suppress free speech in the USA using British libel law. I have a U.S.-based Web site for Americans who can’t otherwise read my columns or view my BBC television reports. The gold-mining company held my English newspaper liable for aggravated damages for my publishing the story in the USA. If I did not pull the Bush-Barrick story off my U.S. Web site, my paper would face a ruinously costly fight.(1)[/font color]

Panicked, the Guardian legal department begged me to delete not just the English versions of the story but also my Spanish translation, printed in Bolivia. (Caramba!)

The Goldfingers didn’t stop there. [font color="green"]Barrick’s lawyers told our papers that I personally would be sued in the United Kingdom over Web publications of my story in America, because the Web could be accessed in Britain. The success of this legal strategy would effectively annul the U.S. Bill of Rights.[/font color] Speak freely in the USA, but if your words are carried on a U.S. Web site, you may be sued in Britain. The Declaration of Independence would be null and void, at least for libel law. Suddenly, instead of the Internet becoming a means of spreading press freedom, the means to break through censorship, it would become the electronic highway for delivering repression.

And repression was winning. InterPress Services (IPS) of Washington, DC, sent a reporter to Tanzania with Lissu. They received a note from Barrick that said if the wire service ran a story that repeated the allegations, the company would sue. IPS did not run the story.

I was worried about Lissu. On July 19, 2001, a group of Tanzanian police interest lawyers wrote the nation’s president asking for an investigation–instead, Lissu’s law partner in Dar es Salaam was arrested. The police were hunting for Lissu. They broke into his home and office and turned them upside down looking for the names of Lissu’s sources, his whereabouts and the evidence he gathered on the mine site clearance. This was more than a legal skirmish. Over the next months, demonstrations by vicims’ families were broken up by police thugs. A member of Parliament joining protesters was beaten and hospitalized. I had to raise cash quick to get Lissu out, and with him, his copies of police files with more evidence of the killings. I called Maude Barlow, the “Ralph Nader of Canada”, head of the Council of Canadians. Without hesitation, she teamed up with Friends of the Earth in Holland, raised funds and prepared a press conference–and in August tipped the story to the Globe & Mail, Canada’s national paper.

CONTINUED...

http://www.mapcruzin.com/palast-2.htm

Greg Palast told the truth, including the bits about the buried alive gold miners, as it happens. So, the Big Corporation sued and sued and sued. With their deep pockets, they can buy justice, judges, prime ministers, presidents and whoever and whatever else they need to turn a buck. That is fascism, pure and simple.

The BFEE -- the War Party -- do that by using their money to buy political power and their political power to make money. So today, it's damn hard for a human voice to compete with that of a corporate person. Perhaps one day soon, no one will wonder why so few people remember democracy. They won't remember it.

[hootinholler]

1. So many wrongs

So few opportunities to correct them.

It's maddening.

[Octafish]

11. The extraction industries are highly profitable.

Which explains the wars for oil, although Prescott Bush, Sr. never really got around to mentioning that part when talking about the importance of Iraq in Reader's Digest of 1959:

To Preserve Peace Let’s Show Russians How Strong We Are

By Prescott Bush
U.S. Senator from Connecticut;
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee
The Reader’s Digest July 1959

MAN’S GREATEST danger, it is said, is ignorance. In a very real sense, the Soviet Union’s ignorance of our military strength may be the source of her gravest peril—and ours. Kaiser Wilhelm started World War I because he miscalculated Allied power. Hitler, mistakenly thinking he could blitz the world, launched World War II. Kruschev today lacks firsthand knowledge of our country; he may be given what others think he would like to hear—rather than an objective report on our actual military strength. Although it seems impossible that any sane person could start a war, we would be wise to take no chances.

Why not invite the Soviet high command to the United States for a conducted tour of our military might? We are bringing Russians to see our farms and factories, our scientific laboratories and research centers; we exchange dancers and musicians. Why not have their military leaders over for the most beneficial look of all? Our expressed policy, the aim and purpose of our entire defense system, is to deter the Kremlin from starting a war. What better way to deter than to show?

What we could show is nothing more nor less than the greatest military might ever assembled in the history of the world. If the Soviet high command could see what we have, they should be of our mind—that for them to start war today would be an act of insanity.

We could start in a Pentagon briefing room. There, with maps, globes, films and sound-projection equipment to help illustrate our points, we could give them a good hard look at the distribution of American power. Then we could fly the group to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Montana, where bombers of the Strategic Air Command are on 24-hour alert, many ready to take off within 15 minutes. We could see an awe-inspiring line of B-47’s, any one of which can, in a single mission, deliver explosive power equivalent to that of all the bombs dropped by all sides in World War II. We could invite the commander of the Soviet air force to ride in one of these planes, and see it refueled in the air, thus quietly demonstrating that, while most Soviet bombers would have to fly one-way missions, ours can strike any target in the world and return nonstop.

SNIP...

The demonstration at SAC should effectively dismiss from Soviet minds any speculation about the possibility of their gaining an advantage from all-out war any time soon. But we must face the fact that in a few years the Russians may be able to zero in our SAC bases with ballistic missiles. To drive this temptation out of their minds, we could show them other deterrents.

CONTINUES…

The Reader’s Digest
July 1959 pp. 25-30

Prescott Bush detailed how Kruschev and the head of the Soviet armed forces be our guest on nuclear submarines, demonstrations of sea- and land-launched ICBMs, operations from aircraft carriers and a cruise aboard the inter-continental strategic bomber, the B-52.

The guy was on to something. You know how much they get for a B-2 these days? Two bill? Each?



Here's where Prescott discussed the strategic importance of Iraq – the very same right next door to Iran, the very place the CIA and MI6 had, five years earlier, replaced a democratically elected government with a despot, the Shah. For the oil, I’d wager.

It’s fortunate for them that we want only peace with justice. Our entire record attests to that. We have no history of aggression, profess no desire for world domination, as do the Communists. Only by their continued menace have we been forced to take these measures for defense.

I ASK, “Why don’t we show the Russians many of these defense measures?” What I would not show them is any self-satisfaction on our part about the future, any slowing-up of plans to produce the new weapons which must inevitably take the place of the old ones. I believe we are in a continuing struggle to keep on top in this business of declaring war. I think that the Russians are never to be underrated. [font color="red"]I also believe that the Communists are master bluffers that they seek to put us off by arrogant threats to Berlin and to the peace of the far Pacific, and, while our people are preoccupied with these threats, they may try to take over Iraq as the Chinese Reds have conquered Tibet.[/font color]

So. At least three generations of the Bush Family Evil Empire have had their eyes on Iraq’s oil. Interesting how Prescott mentioned Tibet's destruction by China. How was he to know his namesake would one day become head of the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce? The article also shows how Prescott boosted the Cold War, way back in ’59. It’s not so odd to think that three generations of crazy petrodollar-loving warmongers would rise to the top echelons of American leadership.



IMFO, this is exactly what Ike was talking about when he mentioned being on our guard against the “Military-Industrial Complex.” Also explains the wars for oil without end for profits without end a bit better than what Corporate McPravda and the Texas history books say.

[HornBuckler]

2. Thank you Octafish!

You're one of the reasons I continue to read DU. I appreciate all you do.

[Octafish]

12. You are most welcome, HornBuckler! Neil Barofsky describes what greases the Revolving Door...

For the non-paupers in spirit, a pot of gold awaits...

Neil Barofsky Gave Us The Best Explanation For Washington's Dysfunction We've Ever Heard

Linette Lopez
Business Insider, Aug. 1, 2012, 2:57 PM

Neil Barofsky was the Inspector General for TARP, and just wrote a book about his time in D.C. called Bailout: An Insider Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.

SNIP...

Bottom line: Barofsky said the incentive structure in our nation's capitol is all wrong. There's a revolving door between bureaucrats in Washington and Wall Street banks, and politicians just want to keep their jobs.

For regulators it's something like this:

"You can play ball and good things can happen to you get a big pot of gold at the end of the Wall Street rainbow or you can do your job be aggressive and face personal ruin...We really need to rethink how we govern and how regulate," Barofsky said.

CONTINUED... http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-barofsky-2012-8

Like our public servants, smart journalists sure know how to avoid ruin when they see it. Thus, "Integrity is for paupers" became a traditional saying at ABCNNBCBSFoxNutworks.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

3. K&R. Important stuff. Depressing, but it's a story that's got to be told.

[Octafish]

13. Insiders Rule and its un-democratic as all get-out.

Behind the Curtain: Booz Allen Hamilton and its Owner, The Carlyle Group

Written by Bob Adelmann
The New American; June 13, 2013

According to writers Thomas Heath and Marjorie Censer at the Washington Post, The Carlyle Group and its errant child, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), have a public relations problem, thanks to NSA leaker and former BAH employee Edward Snowden. By the time top management at BAH learned that one of their top level agents had gone rogue, and terminated his employment, it was too late.

For years Carlyle had, according to the Post, “nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries”; but now the light from the Snowden revelations has revealed nothing more than two companies, parent and child, “bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits.”

And have they ever. When The Carlyle Group bought BAH back in 2008, it was totally dependent upon government contracts in the fields of information technology (IT) and systems engineering for its bread and butter. But there wasn't much butter: After two years the company’s gross revenues were $5.1 billion but net profits were a minuscule $25 million, close to a rounding error on the company’s financial statement. In 2012, however, BAH grossed $5.8 billion and showed earnings of $219 million, nearly a nine-fold increase in net revenues and a nice gain in value for Carlyle.

Unwittingly, the Post authors exposed the real reason for the jump in profitability: close ties and interconnected relationships between top people at Carlyle and BAH, and the agencies with which they are working. The authors quoted George Price, an equity analyst at BB&T Capital: "[Booz Allen has] got a great brand, they've focused over time on hiring top people, including bringing on people who have a lot of senior government experience." (Emphasis added.)

For instance, James Clapper had a stint at BAH before becoming the current Director of National Intelligence; George Little consulted with BAH before taking a position at the Central Intelligence Agency; John McConnell, now vice chairman at BAH, was director of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the ‘90s before moving up to director of national intelligence in 2007; Todd Park began his career with BAH and now serves as the country's chief technology officer; James Woolsey, currently a senior vice president at BAH, served in the past as director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and so on.

BAH has had more than a little problem with self-dealing and conflicts of interest over the years. For instance in 2006 the European Commission asked the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Privacy International (PI) to investigate BAH’s involvement with President George Bush’s SWIFT surveillance program, which was viewed by that administration as “just another tool” in its so-called “War on Terror.” The only problem is that it was illegal, as it violated U.S., Belgian, and European privacy laws. BAH was right in the middle of it. According to the ACLU/PI report,

Though Booz Allen’s role is to verify that the access to the SWIFT data is not abused, its relationship with the U.S. Government calls its objectivity significantly into question. (Emphasis added.)

Among Booz Allen’s senior consulting staff are several former members of the intelligence community, including a former Director of the CIA and a former director of the NSA.

As noted by Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU director, “It’s bad enough that the [Bush] administration is trying to hold out a private company as a substitute for genuine checks and balances on its surveillance activities. But of all companies to perform audits on a secret surveillance program, it would be difficult to find one less objective and more intertwined with the U.S. government security establishment.” (Emphasis added.)

CONTINUED w Links n Privatized INTEL...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15696-behind-the-curtain-booz-allen-hamilton-and-its-owner-the-carlyle-group

Odd how they insist it's all legal-like, just because they privatized intel and war.

Most importantly: Thank you, Dark n Stormy Knight! Very much appreciate your understanding.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Octafish.

[Octafish]

14. You are most welcome, Uncle Joe! The money angle needs explaining.

Specifically, no one asked: "Where did all the money go?" during the S&L crisis of the Reagan-Bush years.

Then, during the banking crisis of Bush-Obama years, no one asked: "Where did all the money go?"

What a coincidence.

Banking System Rotten to the Core

William K Black PhD
11/25/2011

The following is a transcript of a recent speech given by Professor William Black on an Economics Panel regarding the fradulent roots of our current crisis and the urgent need for criminal prosecutions among major US banks.

In the Savings and Loans crisis, which was 1/70th the size of this crisis, our agency made over 10,000 criminal referrals that resulted in the conviction on felony grounds of over 1,000 elites in what were designated as major cases. And to pick up on what’s just been said, this is not just some sidelight to economics, this is why we have recurrent intensifying crises, is these epidemics of fraud from the C-Street—from the CEOs and CFOs.

In the Savings and Loans crisis, the inevitable National Commission said that fraud was invariably present at the typical large failure. In the Enron era, always frauds from the very top of the organization, and in this crisis the frauds came from the very top of the organization again. But what’s different in this crisis? In this crisis, the same agency that I worked with that made over 10,000 criminal referrals in a tinier crisis made zero criminal referrals. They got rid of the entire function. And so there are zero convictions of anybody in the elite ranks of Wall Street. And if they can defraud us with impunity they will cause crisis after crisis and they will produce maximum inequality.

The group that has the audacity to refer to itself as the productive class is the largest destroyer of lives, jobs, and of wealth of any group ever produced in this world. They wiped out six million existing jobs and five to six million jobs that would’ve been created. As you’ve heard, they’ve left 26 million Americans wanting full-time work with no ability to find that work. If you look at just losses in the household sector, it is $11 trillion. A trillion is a thousand billion. And then they have the nerve to say they are the productive class; and, not this journalist, but what we get as faux journalism today, repeats this endlessly as if it were a fact—that they create jobs. They destroy jobs. They are mass destroyers of jobs.

I told you I would bring you a message of hope. I will disagree a little bit with a fact pattern about the Reagan administration and re-regulation on Savings and Loans, because that’s where I was. I will tell you this: everyone opposed our re-regulation of the industry. The big deregulation bill, the equivalent of the repeal of Glass-Steagall and such, occurred in 1982 and became effective in 1983. By November 1983, we were already re-regulating the Savings and Loan industry. And we were called re-regulators because that was the greatest swear word the Reagan administration believed existed—to call people re-regulators. But this was not partisan—a majority of the members of the House at the time it was controlled by Democrats co-sponsored a resolution saying do not go forward with re-regulation.

Five US Senators who became known as the Keating 5 because the most infamous fraud of that era got them together—and who, by the way, did Charles Keating and that fraud use to recruit the Keating 5? Brought him as a lobbyist to walk the halls of the Senate—a guy named Alan Greenspan. Who also put in writing Lincoln Savings posed no foreseeable risk of loss. It was only the most expensive failure—a 3000 position error. And after he got everything wrong in the most important issues he had ever dealt with, after that fact we named him Chairman of the Federal Reserve because we promote incompetence if it helps the 1%.

The Reagan administration was so outraged that we were closing insolvent Savings and Loans with great political support that the Office of Management and Budget threatened to file a criminal referral against the head of our agency on the grounds that he was closing too many insolvent banks. Do we have that problem recently? You see Geithner out trying to close the big powerful banks? And that Reagan administration tried to appoint two members—there were only three members running the place—so this would’ve given control to Charles Keating, the most notorious fraudster in the Savings and Loans crisis, who selected two individuals to run the agency that would then not regulate him. One of them got knocked out on ambiguous political grounds and the other I had to blow the whistle to get him to resign in disgrace, but of course they didn’t prosecute him.

We can prosecute these frauds. The Federal Housing Finance Administration has just filed complaints saying 17 of the largest banks in America committed massive fraud—endemic fraud—and that there’s a paper trail proving that they did so. So where is the Justice department? Why is it not indicting these clear frauds?

CONTINUED...

http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/william-black/2011/11/25/banking-system-rotten-to-the-core

The first time, the taxpayers footed a $ one trillion dollar bill. The latter, the taxpayer was put on the hook for $16 trillion.

Hey! Another coincidence.

[Mnemosyne]

5. Poppy

[G_j]

6. thank you Greg Palast!

once again.

[Initech]

7. George Carlin was half right.

It's not really a big club - it's actually a really small club. But still - we're not in it.

[Dustlawyer]

8. K&R!!! This is why we need to GET THE $ OUT OF OUR ELECTIONS NOW!!!

September 13th - November 4th and beyond we need to protest outside of local TV and Radio Stations to get the money out of our elections! Demand Publicly Funded Federal, State, and Local Elections. Make the culpable TV and Radio conglomerates air the campaign ads as a public service for the use of our airwaves under public license.

This takes their control over our politicians away from the corporations and the 1%. We would be amazed what we could accomplish then. We could then bust up the oligarchies in media and banking. Many of our current problems could be dealt with and the propaganda feeding the flames of partisanship could be neutered by requiring truth in the news. What a novel concept!

Spread the word and organize, peace!

[JDPriestly]

9. K&R.

[HornBuckler]

10. Kicking for importance. nt.

[johnnyreb]

15. Kick for the weekenders.

Goldfinger was an amateur.

[woo me with science]

16. K&R

Thank you, Octafish.

[LisaLynne]

17. Thank you for this post.

Depressing, but we need to face what is going on if we have any hope of changing anything at all. As the wealth gap worsens, their money will be able to buy even more atrocities.