Category: Military Privatization

August 14th, 2014

8/14/2014

WE CAN REVERSE ALL OF THESE POLICIES EASY PEASY BY SIMPLY VOTING FOR POLS THAT SHOUT OUT AGAINST GLOBAL CORPORATIONS DRIVING MARYLAND'S ECONOMY AND FOR REBUILDING RULE OF LAW

I have been speaking with and handing my research to Baltimore police officers for a few months now making sure they understand that Johns Hopkins has told City Hall and the Chief of Police Batts to move towards privatization of Baltimore police and fire departments. Since the economic collapse Baltimore has seen an explosion of fraud and corruption that is taking a billion dollars a year from city coffers and we cannot afford to support public sector employees as middle-class when all the money is being sent to corporate fraud and subsidy. The public union-busting by neo-liberals and neo-cons in Baltimore and Maryland-----those neo-liberals O'Malley/Brown and the Maryland Assembly with the neo-cons Rawlings-Blake and the Baltimore City Hall are now getting rid of our public police and fire. Remember, Clinton, Bush, Obama have almost finished privatizing the US military.....the manufactured sequestration cuts for the military were all about getting rid of public military and their benefits so now these global corporate pols are doing the same at the state and local level. When you are bringing a formerly first world nation to third world status you must have all security working for corporations and not loyal to the public as public sector employees say Johns Hopkins.

Baltimore Chief of Police Batts was brought to Baltimore to do just that. The Hopkins-owed SAIC surveillance and security systems Batts installed in Oakland, California are now being installed in Baltimore. Batts is paid a salary that looks like the corporate executive he is. The Baltimore Police have been battered with wage and benefit cuts and changes in shifts and hours that have Baltimore police one of the worst work environments and pay in the state and that doesn't even include the crime and violence and chronic intra-departmental problems. If one didn't know better it almost seems like they are trying to get Baltimore police officers with tenure and pensions to leave the city! Talking with officers that is indeed what is happening. Police officers with ten years invested in pensions are leaving because of the hostile environment brought by Hopkins and their pols at City Hall. The more stress on the police the more stress on the job. Baltimore City is a tinderbox as citizens are tired of crime and violence and the police ignoring civil rights and liberties in the communities. All of this is caused by the public policy written at Johns Hopkins and played out in City Hall. Deliberately high unemployment and a stagnant economy is impoverishing people and the police department is headed by a chief known for abuse inside and outside of the department. Remember, injustice necessitates chaos and that is what neo-liberals and neo-cons are allowing to happen under the guise of budget cuts and small government.

The Baltimore Police Department has sent representatives to Europe to contract with an International Security Corporation to send private security workers to Baltimore to replace existing public forces. The fire department will go next. The citizens already have trouble with police acting outside of the Constitution and when International security forces come----they will be working under Trans Pacific Trade Pact-----which replaces the US Constitution say the neo-liberals and neo-cons.

ONLY THE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION SO ANY ATTEMPTS TO INSTALL TPP CAN BE REVERSED AS ILLEGAL.

What does life under International Security forces look like? Well-----third world.

State Police, or Police State? --Nathan

Eleven facts about police militarization:
1. It harms, and sometimes kills, innocent people.
2. Children are impacted.
3. The use of SWAT teams is often unnecessary.
4. The “war on terror” is fueling militarization.
5. It’s a boon to contractor profits.
6. Border militarization and police militarization go hand in hand.
7. Police are cracking down on dissent.
8. Asset forfeitures are funding police militarization.
9. Dubious informants are used for raids.
10. There’s been little debate or oversight.
11. Communities of color bear the brunt.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/13/not-just-ferguson-11-eye-opening-facts-about-americas-militarized-police-forces/

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A police representative going to Europe to talk International Security contracting for the Baltimore City Police force would no doubt find an organization like the one below. This is a US global corporation that does much of its work overseas but we see these operations moving into Western nations under the guise of 'terrorism'. The threat of 'terrorism' falls squarely with dissent and protest---crime and violence by American citizens. As 70% of Americans fall into poverty from the massive corporate frauds and the deliberate global corporate stagnation of our domestic economy-----and with that 70% growing to 80% and more----this third world society will see people WAKING UP and this is the structure O'Malley and the Maryland Assembly and Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Hall are building. It is of course coming to your neck of the woods as well!

As important as a militarized government structure is we need to think as well how much taxpayer money is being spent on all of this Stalin-like security buildup. The article below states that so much taxpayer money was funneled to SAIC to create this Hopkins corporation that much of what all taxpayers paid in taxes for years went into building this surveillance structure unrolling in cities like Oakland, Calif, NYC, and Baltimore, Maryland.

You can see the job categories to see this organization will take over all public security duties as a global corporation. Our Bank of America in Charles Village Baltimore already has contracted International Security outside their bank branch.

ISIO - INTERNATIONAL SECURITY INDUSTRY ORGANIZATION
Security Case Studies and Applications

Belong to the most formidable International NETWORK for Security Professionals

ISIO Demographics

Reach increases world-wide. Security Directors, Managers, General Managers, Trainers, Staff in all sectors, namely, Military and Defence, Buildings, Mall and Security, Law Enforcement, Prisons, Investigators, Assessors, Consultants and Advisors for Ports and Cargo, Hotel and Casino Security landside and on ships. Location (289071)United States, (89152)United Kingdom, (38194)India (34709)Canada, (31546)South Africa

The Focused Security Professional, is able to identify companies that have experience in providing security solutions for [Their] region of interest.

* Bank Security

* Border Security

* Building Security

* Business and Commercial Security

* Cargo Security

* City Security

* Control Station Security

* Event Security

* Homeland Security

* Hospital Security

* Hotel, Casino & Landmark Security

* Military and Defense Security

* Industrial Security

* Law Enforcement Security

* Oil and Refinery Security

* Port Security

* Prison Security

* Rail/Tunnel and Subway Security

* Retail and Store Security

* School Security

PROVIDING INTERNATIONAL SOLUTIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES. ISIO Global is a boutique, international solutions provider headquartered in the U.S. with operations in North and South America, Africa and Asia. The ISIO Global team of Principals and associates is comprised of a unique and diverse set of professionals with backgrounds in government security, intelligence, logistics, political strategy, energy, finance, international trade, risk management, and the military.

ISIO Global provides comprehensive custom-tailored solutions to meet our clients’ needs. Our client list includes countries, presidents and other high ranking officials from both the private sector and the military, high net worth individuals, and Fortune 100 companies. Through our vast international experience and contacts, ISIO Global is uniquely positioned to quickly and efficiently design and implement comprehensive solutions for the most pressing problems and exciting opportunities around the globe.
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You can see how neo-con SAIC and Hopkins is with this connection to Bush/Cheney and Halliburton----the biggest fraudsters in the world. The reason I speak now about what most people who study this knows is that this is what will be brought to Baltimore -----and has been in the works for a while-----and it is completely ineffective, corrupt, and will work with no transparency or with any regard to Rule of Law. If you think Baltimore Police Department is lacking transparency or attention to Constitutional policing wait until this ISIO/SAIC consortium comes our way.

THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL AND NEO-CON FOR YOU----THIRD WORLD SOCIETY.

STOP VOTING FOR THEM. REMEMBER, IN MARYLAND WE HAVE LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS BACKING THESE NEO-LIBERALS EVERY ELECTION. VOTE FOR BROWN OR GANSLER SAY BALTIMORE MINISTERS AND MARYLAND LABOR UNION LEADERS----WELL, THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE PUSHING ON THE CITIZENS OF MARYLAND.

This is an attempt to make a blog in which I comment on scientific issues.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Who or what is SAIC? Vanity Fair has a quite interesting article about SAIC, a company I had never heard about before.

Washington's $8 Billion Shadow
Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.
The article goes on to describe SAIC, and their less than stellar record. The article also touches on why such companies exist.
It is a simple fact of life these days that, owing to a deliberate decision to downsize government, Washington can operate only by paying private companies to perform a wide range of functions. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS.
This is hardly a new trend. In his 1980 book, Fat City, Donald Lambro describes much the same going on. It goes without saying that this is not a cost effective way of running things, and that it creates problems with oversight and conflict of interest, as the article also explains.
In Washington these companies go by the generic name "body shops"—they supply flesh-and-blood human beings to do the specialized work that government agencies no longer can. Often they do this work outside the public eye, and with little official oversight—even if it involves the most sensitive matters of national security.

[....]

SAIC's relative anonymity has allowed large numbers of its executives to circulate freely between the company and the dozen or so government agencies it cares about. William B. Black Jr., who retired from the N.S.A. in 1997 after a 38-year career to become a vice president at SAIC, returned to the N.S.A. in 2000. Two years later the agency awarded the Trailblazer contract to SAIC.
I highly recommend the article - go read it, and see what the US taxpayers' money is really used on.

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SAIC is Johns Hopkins and represents billions of taxpayer dollars sent to Hopkins in development funding and as you see below-----it operates world-wide just as Baltimore Board of Estimates operates here in Baltimore. The corruption in cost overruns and bid-rigging is breath-taking and you see the same ethics permeates all of what these Ivy League Universities are involved.

SAIC is the spying network behind the NSA that Snowden exposed to the world and it is in the consortium of security and surveillance groups that operate as ISIO above. ISIO would be an example of what the police privatization in Baltimore would look like. For decades SAIC and ISIO have operated in developing worlds but they are now moving into Western countries to control dissent of Americans et al to being taken third world.

Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin have worked hard to send Federal funds to build these kinds of systems through Hopkins. HOW TOTALITARIAN OF THEM!

The article states that despite the known corruption in SAIC that Bloomberg of NYC handed a multi-million contract to the same and the reporter wonders why give business to a known criminal element-----WELL, HOPKINS IS BLOOMBERG.

'SO INEFFECTIVE'-----DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE GOVERNMENT IN MARYLAND AND BALTIMORE???

Just How Corrupt is SAIC?

Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 7:23PM
David Callahan The latest revelation in the CityTime corruption case offers yet more evidence that the Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, may have an unethical organizational culture. SAIC is one of the largest and most well-connected government contracting firms in the country, with 45,000 employees worldwide. It's incompetence in handling the CityTime contract, with hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns, appears to be part of a pattern -- with other clients, like the FBI, reporting similar experiences.

But now comes evidence of something darker. According to a files unearthed by New York City Controller John Liu, SAIC tried to exert improper influence over the top city official monitoring its work. Juan Gonzalez, the New York Daily News reporter who has been on top of this story all along describes the new revelations about SAIC:

On Jan. 28, 2002, Richard Valcich, then the director of the Office of Payroll Administration, wrote a one-page note to William Russell, a senior vice president for Virginia-based Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC).

"I appreciated meeting with you to discuss SAIC issues that are pending with the Office of Payroll Administration," Valcich wrote. He then apologized to Russell "if I seemed rude and abruptly shortened your discussion on a future post city-employment position with SAIC."

"[I]t is inappropriate to discuss any post employment with a company that I do business," Valcich warned him.

Valcich went on to say that he was "flattered you would consider me for such a position with SAIC but there are restrictions due to the city's conflicts of interest rules."

Such restrictions include a lifetime ban against working on the same "matter" that a city employee handled while in government.

Wow. Of course, those familiar with how big contractors and lobbyists corrupt government officials will not find any of this surprising. There is a long history of companies using offers of lucrative jobs to exert improper influence. These deals are simple and often hard to scrutinize: Do our bidding now, companies say, and we'll give you a job paying a million dollars a year (or whatever) down the road. A big focus of ethics reform in recent decades has been to crack down on "revolving door" enticements.

SAIC's tactic in this episode raises questions about its corrupt dealing around other contracts. Stay tuned for more on that topic.

Gonzalez's latest article on the subject of SAIC includes a kicker near the end:

Amazingly, despite years of red flags on the CityTime project, the Bloomberg administration confirmed yesterday it recently awarded a new $40 million contract to SAIC.

So what is it about Michael Bloomberg and SAIC? Why is a mayor so famously focused on efficiency so forgiving to a contractor that is so ineffective? That is a question that deserves closer attention.

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June 06th, 2014

6/6/2014

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When public justice is dismantled------when the public sector is dismantled with no oversight and accountability----when corporations take over all those functions and can act with impunity-----

SPYING AND SURVEILLANCE IS AN ATTACK ON OUR RIGHTS TO PRIVACY AND FREEDOM AND OUR CIVIL RIGHTS. IF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW----THE EXECUTIVE POSITION OF GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND CAN STAND FOR PUBLIC JUSTICE-

Do you hear any candidates in this Maryland governor's race shout out about this huge NSA/SPYING INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX DRIVING MARYLAND'S ECONOMY????? CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR IS THE ONLY ONE!

NEO-CONS AND NEO-LIBERALS WORK FOR GLOBAL CORPORATE RULE!

SAIC is a Johns Hopkins corporation Enterprise as Hopkins now refers to itself. It is almost fully funded by Federal money and it includes a massive super-computer on the Hopkins campus that receives all data collected from every avenue of society-----building profiles on every individual. The goal is to integrate to such an extent that corporations will know every aspect of a person's life before hiring or in keeping that person employed. This is totalitarianism. From grocery receipts that let corporations know how many packs of cigarettes or alcohol you buy----there goes the health insurance rates; to SMART METERS that tell when you are home and know how much disposable income you have as regards rates for utilities and waste pickup; to every movement by car and public transportation knowing where you go and with whom you speak. THIS IS A SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM THAT WOULD MAKE STALIN GREEN WITH ENVY. It is indeed what autocratic societies do.

Below you see how these systems are being tested-----they are being installed in cities like Oakland and Baltimore as a social unrest indicator as the poor are driven to third world conditions and lose all their rights as citizens. Remember, many of these poor are the former middle-class and many of today's middle class will be these poor-----DO NOT THINK IT IS OK BECAUSE THIS IS TARGETING THE WORKING CLASS AND POOR. AN INJUSTICE FOR ONE BECOMES INJUSTICE FOR ALL.

Baltimore's Chief of Police Batts was in Oakland for the short time he oversaw Johns Hopkins SAIC installation in that city and he is now here in Baltimore doing the same. You see, Batts is mostly a contractor----working with SAIC installing a business structure-----just as Baltimore School Superintendent Alonzo was in Baltimore to install the corporate structure for privatized K-12. This is why what are public appointees are paid as if they are business executives.......THEY ARE BUSINESS EXECUTIVES. Privatizing the police means creating a surveillance society and simply have the same kinds of computerized stations as with the drones overseas-----the drones having the capacity of striking/disabling/or reporting on any one person. Below you see it is Occupy Oakland who is being used as the development phase. KEEP IN MIND----IT IS SAIC AND NOT OCCUPY OAKLAND THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FIND TO BE THE THREAT!

Below you see an article with references that show you to what extent Johns Hopkins SAIC partnered with Wall Street plan on developing all across the country. Right now it seem NYC, Oakland, and Baltimore are ground zero for development. All of the republicans shouting Constitutional Rights are right. All of the labor and justice shouting Constitutional Rights---are right. None of this is legal and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money are being funneled to this Johns Hopkins Enterprise. Hopkin of course still calls itself a private non-profit for tax and taxpayer funding purposes.

California, Corporate, Intelligence Fusion Centers Oakland Domain Awareness Center SAIC Proposal and Emails

October 18, 2013

The following documents include the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) proposal to the City of Oakland for the construction of the Joint Domain Awareness Center as well as emails and weekly updates on construction progress. The documents were obtained via public records requests made by members of Occupy Oakland’s Privacy Working Group and originally posted online at Oakland Privacy. For updates on the center’s construction follow @OaklandPrivacy on Twitter.

SAIC Proposal for Oakland Domain Awareness Center 167 pages December 10, 2012 Download
(PDF 13.2 MB) City of Oakland, Port of Oakland, SAIC Emails and Progress Reports 261 pages July 2012-September 2013 Download
(PDF 42.9 MB)

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SERVICES & SOLUTIONS

Solving your toughest problems so you can solve the world’s. SAIC is a $4-billion technology and engineering company that uses its deep domain knowledge to solve problems of vital importance in the world. Our solutions are efficient, cost-effective, and repeatable.

Whatever the need; wherever the mission.

SAIC is the prime contractor on 91% of its contracts with the federal government, proudly serving the U.S. government and armed forces stateside and abroad. SAIC's wide array of technical services and robust scientific solutions are skillfully put to use on major task-order contracts around the globe daily.

______________________________________________

NDAA Critic Stranded In Hawaii After Turning Up On No-fly List
Source: RT

17 October, 2012, 20:15

Wade Hicks was en route to a US Navy base in Japan to see his wife when armed military guards informed him that they had other plans. Hicks, an American citizen with no criminal record, had just been put added to a federal no-fly list.

After being escorted off his plane during a routine re-fueling stop on the Pacific Island of Oahu, Hicks, 34, was left stranded in Hawaii this week. In an interview, he suggests that his opposition to a newly-created law that allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens at military prisons without charge or trial could be to blame for his mistreatment.

"I was very, very vocal about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and I did contact my representative” about it, Hicks tells talk show host Doug Hagmann. "I do believe that this is tied in some way to my free speech and my political view."

According to Hicks, he has little reason to believe otherwise. He tells Hagmann that he formerly worked as a contractor for the US Department of Defense and has undergone extensive background checks in order to obtain an enhanced license that allows him to carry a concealed firearm. Hicks says he also holds on to a special identification card issued by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the US Homeland Security Department sub-agency that administers pat-downs and screenings at airports across the country. An investigation carried out by Hagmann has led him to locating no criminal history for the man whatsoever.

My campaign for governor has been censured by public and private media and it is no coincidence that it is always NBC channel 4 in Washington that handles the Maryland debates. The NBC reporter covering a Montgomery College debate I was part said to me when she heard of my platform of civil rights, civil liberties, and Rule of Law said to me----NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT THAT----and indeed no one did because I was completely removed from any media coverage.

David Seaman, Critic of NDAA & SOPA, Dismissed by Business Insider After NBC News Complaints

By Connor Adams Sheets @ConnorASheets
on January 16 2012 5:01 PM

'Seaman, infuriated by Quintano's move, wrote an article for Business Insider Sunday alleging that his being blocked amounted to censorship due to his opinions about the controversial legislation. NBC Universal has gone on the record as being in support of SOPA, as Seaman reported in a previous article'.

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You know you are dealing with neo-cons and neo-liberals when a your state is being made into ground zero of totalitarian surveillance and warfare. From drones, to cyber (security), to security personnel-----that is Maryland's economy and all of higher education in Maryland focuses on these degree paths at the expense of humanities and liberal arts----

TAKING OVER A NATION'S ECONOMY WITH ENGINES OF REPRESSION IS MORE THAN A CANARY IN A CAGE.

NSA Building Quantum Supercomputer
An undated aerial handout photo shows the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters building in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Voice of America News
VOA News January 03, 2014 12:55 PM

Quantum computers that can perform vast numbers of calculations simultaneously may be closer to science fiction than reality, but previously unpublished documents indicate the secretive U.S. National Security Agency is working hard to build a real quantum supercomputer, powerful enough to decode virtually every form of encryption now known.

Such a computer, many times faster than today’s fastest machines, could easily solve codes now considered "unbreakable" - the type of ciphers currently used worldwide by scientific and financial institutions and governments to protect their data.

The basic principle of quantum computing is a physical phenomenon that is not yet fully understood: certain subatomic particles can simultaneously exist in two different states. A conventional computer works with binary "bits" of information that are represented as either zero or one; quantum bits could be both zero and one simultaneously.

In theory, that quirk of physics will allow quantum computers to skip through much of the elaborate mathematical computations necessary to solve complex encryption keys.

Documents made public by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the code-breaking agency is spending nearly $80 million on a secret research program called "Penetrating Hard Targets."

NSA would not comment on this week's disclosures by Snowden, who has been living in asylum in Russia since last year, after exposing secret U.S. diplomatic cables and worldwide surveillance activities.

The U.S. government is said to be competing against quantum-computer research efforts by the European Union and Switzerlands, but experts in the field say practical exploitation of such systems is years if not decades in the future.

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Below you see two articles----one from a right-leaning group and the next by a left-leaning group. Neo-liberal media will try to make the right's concerns fear-mongering. The neo-con media will say we need to get crazy people off the street:

BOTH GROUPS ARE RIGHTLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE PROVISIONS IN THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT THAT ATTACHED HOME HEALTH WITH REQUIRED SOME VISITS FROM CARE PROVIDERS.

The Affordable Care Act uses outpatient involuntary treatment with home visits by care providers in a broadly defined way that can be expanded to include anything. Addiction is a very subjective diagnosis----and it includes a huge number of mental health categories. Add to that social services and domestic and child welfare cases------ALL BEING MONITORED BY PRIVATE HOME HEALTH CORPORATIONS---and you have a serious attack on privacy and civil liberties.

Anyone can have a diagnosis of mental illness and addiction attached to them. Involuntary treatment whether it is home treatment, forced taking of drugs----IS TOTALITARIAN AND IT IS BURIED IN YOUR AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.

Have you heard your pols shouting against the extreme level of personal privacy and civil rights violated in the ACA in the guise of mental health and social services? Indefinite detention to home with visits from a corporate employee? OH REALLY?????

Remember, if this was still a first world Rule of Law Equal Protection nation----we may not be fearful of abuses. This is a second going to third world suspended Rule of Law with no equal protection making and preparing to enforce these laws. These ACA programs all aim at working class and poor families and in a third world nation---that is 90% of the population.

NEEDLESS TO SAY----IT IS JOHNS HOPKINS HOME HEALTH CARE CORPORATION THAT LEADS IN THE BALTIMORE AREA!

'Joshua Cook said that while the administration would claim the program only applies to those on Medicaid, the new law, by its own definition, has no such limitation'.

Report: Obamacare provision will allow 'forced' home inspections by gov't agents

Examiner.com
August 15, 2013

Citing the Heath and Human Services website, a report posted Wednesday at the Freedom Outpost says that under Obamacare, government agents can engage in "home health visits" for those in certain “high-risk” categories.

Those categories include:

• Families where mom is not yet 21;
• Families where someone is a tobacco user;
• Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities, and
• Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.

According to HHS, the visits fall under what is called the "Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program" allegedly designed to “help parents and children,” and could impact millions of Americans.

Constitutional attorney and author Kent Masterson Brown said that despite what HHS says, the program is not “voluntary."

"The eligible entity receiving the grant for performing the home visits is to identify the individuals to be visited and intervene so as to meet the improvement benchmarks," he said. "A homeschooling family, for instance, may be subject to 'intervention' in 'school readiness' and 'social-emotional developmental indicators.' A farm family may be subject to 'intervention' in order to 'prevent child injuries.' The sky is the limit."

Joshua Cook said that while the administration would claim the program only applies to those on Medicaid, the new law, by its own definition, has no such limitation.

"Intervention," he added, quoting Brown, "may be with any family for any reason. It may also result in the child or children being required to go to certain schools or taking certain medications and vaccines and even having more limited – or no – interaction with parents. The federal government will now set the standards for raising children and will enforce them by home visits.”

According to Cook, the program will require collection of a massive amount of private information including all sources of income and the amount gathered from each source.

One of the areas of emphasis mentioned by HHS is the "development of comprehensive early childhood systems that span the prenatal-through-age-eight continuum."

Last session, Cook added, South Carolina State Rep. Bill Chumley introduced a measure that would make the forced home visitations illegal in his state. The measure passed in the House but died in the Senate.

In 2011, he noted, HHS said $224 million would be allocated to support these home visiting programs.

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' "I simply don't think that involuntary commitments are going to be an effective tool toward stemming mass shootings," says Jeff Deeney, a social worker in Philadelphia who writes about mental health for The Atlantic.

Deeney says just a tiny fraction of mentally unstable people are a threat to public safety'.

The Divide Over Involuntary Mental Health Treatment
By Kirk Siegler Originally published on Thu May 29, 2014 12:19 pm

Listen 3:56

Involuntary commitment to a hospital for mental illness can be a lengthy and complex process. A California law makes mandatory outpatient treatment an option. iStockphoto

The attacks near the University of California, Santa Barbara, are renewing focus on programs aimed at requiring treatment for people who are mentally ill as a way to prevent mass shootings and other violence.

In California, a 2002 law allows authorities to require outpatient mental health care for people who have been refusing it. Proponents argue that this kind of intervention could prevent violent acts.

But counties within the state have been slow to adopt the legislation, and mental health professionals are divided over its effects.

Do Family And Friends Know Best?

The story behind Laura's Law begins in 2001. In rural Nevada County, near Lake Tahoe, 19-year-old Laura Wilcox was shot and killed by a 41-year-old man with a history of mental illness. He had walked into the county's behavioral health center and opened fire.

Tom Anderson was the county's chief public defender at the time and represented the gunman in court. He recalls that the man's family had tried to alert mental health officials numerous times before the shooting.

"[Officials] were declaiming privacy issues and stuff and wouldn't communicate with the family," Anderson says. "He ... started amassing guns and setting up booby traps around his house, and he had this psychosis of he was going to be attacked any minute."

Now Nevada County's presiding judge, Anderson is also a vocal advocate for Laura's Law, which was passed by the state Legislature in 2002. The law allows counties to compel outpatient treatment for people whose family or friends are concerned about their mental state. It's seen as an intermediate step before someone is forced into inpatient psychiatric care.

Anderson says this tool could be one way to prevent future violent incidents, including mass shootings. And, he says, the patients often respond positively.

"The beauty of the program — the wonderment of it to me — is that roughly about 60 percent of the people that they do outreach to, where they go out to intervene after a person has been referred, voluntarily accept services at that time," he says.

A Question Of Rights

So far, only two California counties — Nevada County and Orange County — have gone forward with implementing Laura's Law. And the state hasn't allocated any funding to it.

The legislation is controversial. There are concerns that involuntary treatment could make mentally ill people vulnerable to civil rights abuses.

"You do have to be conscious that even though these people are mentally ill, they do have rights," says Steve Pitman, board president of the Orange County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Pitman, whose brother dealt with mental illness for 50 years, says family members need more power to intervene and force treatment. He says they're the ones who often know what's really going on, while police or a county mental health official may have just a few minutes to drop by for a welfare check.

"The problem in so many of these cases is that when they're interviewed to see if they meet those kind of threshold requirements, they don't give off any signals of being a danger to themselves or others," Pitman says. "Somebody who's experienced in these kinds of things knows all the right answers to give. They don't want to go to the hospital, so they say all the right things."

That scenario echoes Elliot Rodger's alleged behavior prior to the Santa Barbara incident, in which he allegedly killed six people, then himself.

But Pitman and others are cautious about linking policy changes like Laura's Law too closely to recent mass shootings. For one thing, they say, intervention cases that fall under Laura's Law may take weeks, if not months, to fully implement. And that may be too late.

"I simply don't think that involuntary commitments are going to be an effective tool toward stemming mass shootings," says Jeff Deeney, a social worker in Philadelphia who writes about mental health for The Atlantic.

Deeney says just a tiny fraction of mentally unstable people are a threat to public safety.

"I think what we don't have that people want so desperately is the program that stops nonviolent non-offenders from committing their first violent crime because of a mental illness," he says.

Deeney wants to see the conversation shift away from involuntary treatment programs like Laura's Law and toward preventive measures at high schools and college campuses.

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April 28th, 2014

4/28/2014

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ALL CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND EXCEPT CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR WILL MOVE THESE KINDS OF POLICIES FORWARD. HAVE YOU HEARD THEM SHOUT AGAINST ALL OF THIS?

Neo-cons and neo-liberals are working hard to privatize the US military. Clinton started it and now Obama and Hillary have this on steroids. Last count it appears that over 70% of US military is private military contractors. The Defense Department was given the green light by neo-liberals in Congress and Obama to recruit troops overseas who are not citizens but will work as a US military contractor employee in nations around the world.

Remember, a public military is sworn to protect WE THE PEOPLE AND OUR NATION. A private military contractor employee simply works for that global corporation and falls under no US Rule of Law. This means that these troops will not look at US citizens as those to be protected but will act in defense of corporations and their profits.

THIS IS WHAT TOTALITARIANISM LOOKS LIKE FOLKS!

An extension of this is the fact that these private military employees are now coming back to the US to work as police and special forces in states across America. People living in Baltimore know that BAltimore police have gotten brutal in their approach to people they encounter. People are dying from simple infractions and are jailed as 'resisting arrest' when people pull away from what we know are illegal acts by police. Cities across the US have as a goal of privatizing police and fire departments as an extension of these military contracting corporations. We already see in Charles Village ---Baltimore----Bank of America guarded by a global security force.

THIS IS WHAT TOTALITARIANISM LOOKS LIKE FOLKS!!!

Remember, the US has a Constitution that provides Equal Protection under law and that provides a Bill of Rights that protects our civil rights and liberties. When a rogue government comes in and suspends Rule of Law they are acting illegally. The Supreme Court is impeachable for rulings that seek to take away the rights of US citizens. So, all of these policies and rulings CAN BE REVERSED.

STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DNC CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES----RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES.

Below is my blog on the privatization of military and police:

Regarding VoteVets.org as a political PAC for 21st Century Patriots:

Raise your hand if you understand that dismantling the entire public structure of the Veterans Administration and handing it to corporate private non-profits to make veterans beg for charity rather than receive the promised support being a member of the US military awards!!!!!! EVERYONE.

WE NOW HAVE TV COMMERCIALS ASKING AMERICANS TO DONATE TO VETERANS NON-PROFITS BECAUSE THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION IS BEING DISMANTLED.
At the same time we are hearing vets tell us they are getting no help from this private non-profit structure and the public VA has been gutted of staff.

Below you see how far neo-liberals have gone into third world politics. Today, the Maryland people had to listen to what should be public media------but is corporate and captured media-----go so far as to pretend that the group below actually works for veterans. This is an example of a private non-profit pretending to be progressive that is a great big neo-liberal private military contractor group. When you hear the words 21st Century Patriots you know you are listening to the private military complex and no doubt there are veterans of private military corporations. The US military is over 70% mercenary thanks to Bush, Obama, and Hillary. So, do corporate veterans care about the US military public troops? WELL, IT LOOKS NOT!

What this PAC represents is the killing of public sector unions or in this case public sector military and its benefits. Blackwater retirees would be the 21st Century Patriots for example.

Knowing this------it would be understandable that VOTEVETS would be backing Anthony Brown because O'Malley/Brown has been 100% behind privatization of the Veterans Administration in Maryland. See how it sounds different when you know what a private non-profit group is about? Indeed, this PAC is backing the most privatizing of Wall Street candidates because it is heavily invested in this private military complex. The absurdity of Maryland campaign of Brown, Gansler, and Mizeur is that they are all neo-liberals who will work to privatize the VA as well. So, Gansler bashing Brown is like Bush bashing Cheney.

PLEASE KNOW WHAT THESE CAMPAIGN PACs REPRESENT----THEY WILL ALL PRETEND TO BE PROGRESSIVE!

If a PAC supports the most Wall Street global corporation in the race for Governor of Maryland------it is a private mercenary patriot group.

O'MALLEY/BROWN HAS PLACED PRIVATIZATION OF VETERANS ADMINISTRATION ON STEROIDS IN MARYLAND SO WHY WOULD A VET GROUP SUPPORT BROWN? GANSLER WOULD BE JUST AS BAD.

VOTEVETS DEMANDS APOLOGY FROM GANSLER FOR SLUR AGAINST VETERANS

By VoteVets.org | Press Release
PUBLISHED: April 21, 2014

Annapolis, MD – The largest progressive group of veterans in America, with over 400,000 supporters, VoteVets.org PAC, is demanding an apology from Attorney General Doug Gansler for saying that those troops who served in Iraq didn’t have “real jobs.”

At a forum this morning, Gansler said, “You know I’m running against somebody [Iraq War Veteran, Lt. Gov Anthony Brown] who has never managed anybody, never run anything, you know his ads are about how he was a lawyer in Iraq, and that’s all fine and good but this is a real job.”

In response, Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org said, “Doug Gansler needs to stop smearing those of us who served in Iraq as not having had a ‘real job.’ It’s a horrible insult to all those men and women who put their lives on the line, and especially those who died, in service to this country. Additionally, Mr. Gansler, if he chooses to attack an Iraq War Veteran, ought to at least admit that the person he is attacking has been serving as Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor. This kind of slime ball politics is what turns people off to our democratic process, so Mr. Gansler is doing no favors for Maryland or our democratic electoral system by playing in the gutter like this.”

VoteVets.org PAC endorsed Brown’s campaign.

Founded in 2006, the mission of VoteVets.org Political Action Committee is to elect Veterans to public office, with a focus on Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, and hold public officials accountable for their words and actions that impact America's 21st century troops and veterans. Though VoteVets.org PAC is non-partisan, candidates it backs must support VoteVets.org's core mission and beliefs.
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Maryland is ground zero for surveillance industries. This is no doubt why our election process is captured because you need to be selective as to who would support this road to totalitarianism.

Johns Hopkins built their own surveillance corporations all from taxpayer money funneled to them by Mikulski, Cardin, and Cummings. SAIC is one such corporation headquartered in VA and MD now building surveillance systems in cities across America. Believe me-----this is not about keeping people in poor communities safe or keeping the middle-class safe from crimes of poverty.....it will be used as a tool against citizens living in a first world taken to a second world and now moving to a third world society. THEY KNOW WE THE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO BE ANGRY.

Combatting the Surveillance Industrial Complex

August 9, 2004

THE PRIVATIZATION OF SURVEILLANCE
The U.S. security establishment is rapidly increasing its ability to monitor average Americans by hiring or compelling private-sector corporations to provide billions of customer records. The explosive growth in surveillance by government and business is creating a "Surveillance-Industrial Complex" (PDF) that threatens all of our privacy.

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ABOUT THE REPORT
This report makes the case that, across a broad variety of areas, the same dynamic of the "privatization of surveillance" is underway. Different dimensions of this trend are examined in depth in four separate sections of the report:

"Recruiting Individuals." Documents how individuals are being recruited to serve as "eyes and ears" for the authorities even after Congress rejected the infamous TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) program that would have recruited workers like cable repairmen to spy on their customers.

"Recruiting Companies." Examines how companies are pressured to voluntarily provide consumer information to the government; the many ways security agencies can force companies to turn over sensitive information under federal laws such as the Patriot Act; how the government is forcing companies to participate in watchlist programs and in systems for the automatic scrutiny of individuals' financial transactions.

"Mass Data Use, Public and Private." Focuses on the government's use of private data on a mass scale, either through data mining programs like the MATRIX state information-sharing program, or the purchase of information from private-sector data aggregators.

"Pro-Surveillance Lobbying." Looks at the flip side of the issue: how some companies are pushing the government to adopt surveillance technologies and programs based on private-sector data.

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Keep in mind that Egypt has a state structure with the military as the most powerful branch of government and that there are large numbers of 'generals' in Egypt that are billionaires everyone knows are simply extensions of Wall Street. It is this military structure that is being built in the US now and we must stop it.

Do not sit and allow police brutality to occur in your city or community because it is the canary in the cage. Baltimore has over 20 citizens killed unjustly with no accountability in just a few years. This is unheard of in a democracy. Placing City Hall and police and fire departments with separate benefit plans and wages from other public sector employees is a sign of creating a tiered class surrounding corporate governance. You see with the dictators toppled this decade it is always this small group of administrative class that fights for the dictator.

These are the things we need to watch for and stop in their tracks. It is happening in small increments so do not allow it to expand!

A Capitalist System Gone Awry

The Military Industrial Complex has solidified its ties and deeply inserted his long horns into the arteries of the American taxpayers.

By Rev. Richard Skaff

December 10, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - Creating wars to feed the blood-thirsty and greedy beast of the military industry complex has been a common practice in an allegedly democratic nation. Taxpayers’ have flipped this bill for decades under the guise of self-preservation and protection. As always government has used fear to fashion people’s consent and obedience. Meanwhile, corruption is prevalent, our national debt is skyrocketing, and our parasitic superpower is broke. Parasitic it is, because you can’t become super-rich or super-powerful unless you suck the blood and the life out of someone else. In this case, it is the taxpayers (the proles).

Under the guise of the Private-Public Partnership (PPP) phenomenon, the Military Industrial Complex has solidified its ties and deeply inserted his long horns into the arteries of the American taxpayers. Citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington (CREW) has recently issued a scathing and disturbing report exposing this unethical and frightening phenomenon where high-ranking generals and admirals earn their stars, their stripes, and then, they earn their the big cash.

The CREW report found that 70 percent (or 76) of the 108 three-and-four star generals and Admirals who retired between 2009 and 2011 took jobs with defense contractors or consultants. In at least a few cases, the retirees have continued to advise the Department of Defense while on the payroll of defense contractors, suggesting the Pentagon may not always be receiving unbiased counsel.

The retired generals and admirals moving into the private sector in general do not appear to be breaking any rules. Nonetheless, their heavily traveled path through the military-industrial complex continues to raise important questions about the intersection of national security and the interests of private companies that stand to make billions of dollars. [1].

A 2010 Boston Globe investigation revealed that the number of retired three-and-four star Generals and admirals moving into lucrative defense industry jobs rose from less than 50 percent between 1994 and 1998 to a stratospheric 80 percent between 2004 and 2008, findings that brought new scrutiny to this unethical revolving door. [2], [1]

CREW’s research shows the number of high-level retirees taking those jobs has since ticked down, though the vast majority of retiring generals and admirals continue to sign on with defense contractors vying for their services.

Every year, the Pentagon awards hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts to the
defense industry. [3], [1] Retired generals, with their strong relationships, robust contact lists, and insider knowledge, are valuable assets in the competition for contracts and can easily make more than their base pay – currently $164,221 per year for a three-star general and $179,700 for a four-star general – by serving on a single corporate board. [4], [1]

A recent study found that when a defense company announced the hiring of a former defense department political appointee, on average, the company’s stock price increased. [5], [1] The relationship was statistically weak but positive, suggesting investors believe such hires bring benefits. [5], [1]

In 2011 alone, the Department of Defense committed to spending nearly $100 billion
with the five largest defense contractors – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. [3], [1] At least nine of the top-level generals and admirals who retired between 2009 and 2011 took positions with those five companies. In addition, 12 generals who retired during that period have gone on to work for Burdeshaw Associates, a “renta-general” consulting firm specializing in helping companies obtain defense contracts. [2], [1]

Burdeshaw’s clients have included Northrop Grumman. [2], [1]

Further, CREW found some retired generals and admirals work for defense contractors
while they continue to advise the Pentagon. Per example, both Gen. James Cartwright, who retired from the U. S. Marine Corps on September 1, 2011 after serving as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Gary Roughead, who retired from the Navy in 20119 after serving as the chief of naval operations, were appointed to the Defense Policy Board on October 4, 2011. [6]. [1] The board’s charter mandates that it provide the secretary of defense “with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of defense policy.” [7], [1]

Gen. Cartwright, shortly after his retirement, was elected to the Raytheon Co. board of
directors. [8], [1]

Raytheon, a public company that reports director compensation, disclosed paying
each of its non-employee directors an $85,000 annual cash retainer in 2011, as well as a $1,500 meeting fee for each board or committee meeting attended in person or by teleconference.[9], [1]

In addition, directors received $120,000 worth of restricted stock grants in 2011. [9], [1] Gen. Cartwright is also on the board of advisors of TASC, Inc., [10], [1] a former subsidiary of Northrop Grumman that advises military agencies, [11], [1] and a member of the U.S. federal advisory board of Accenture Federal Services.[12], [1].

Less than four months after his retirement, Adm. Roughead joined Northrop Grumman’s
board, for which he is paid $115,000 per year. [13], [1] Northrop Grumman, a public company that reports director compensation, will also pay him an additional $10,000 per year for serving on the board’s audit committee, and he receives an annual grant of $130,000 in deferred stock.[13], [1] Adm. Roughead also sits on the strategic advisory council of The SI Organization, [14], [1] a systems engineering and integration company previously owned by Lockheed Martin. [15], [1].

In some cases the revolving door spun quickly, with senior military officers retiring and
almost immediately taking industry jobs related to their military work. The examples are numerous (see CREW report for more details about our generals). In addition, the revolving door doesn’t stop at the generals’ doors but expands its horns to the lobbyists.

CREW’s research shows defense companies also covet lobbyists with backgrounds in appropriations and strong connections on the Hill. CREW analyzed the employment history of in-house lobbyists registered on behalf of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics as of the first quarter of 2012 and found at least 68 percent had prior public sector experience. Nearly half of the 84 lobbyists had worked for Congress. In addition, 21 percent, or 18 lobbyists had worked for a federal agency. Of those lobbyists with experience on the Hill, roughly a third – 14 lobbyists – had worked for either the House or Senate Appropriations Committees, the powerful panels responsible for directing billions of dollars in government spending. There were also other connections to the appropriations committees: of the 16 lobbyists who worked directly for members of Congress, seven had worked for members of the appropriations committees. [1]

The five companies spend millions of dollars on federal lobbying every year, and receive
billions of dollars in federal contracts. Lobbying records show their collective spending on lobbying increased by nearly 40 percent between 2007 and 2011, skyrocketing from $44.6 million to $62.3 million. Over the same period, the total amount of dollars committed to them in federal contracts increased by roughly 13 percent, growing from $100.61 billion in fiscal year 2007 to $113.28 billion in fiscal year 2011.[48]

The five companies spent roughly $33 million lobbying during the first half of this year,
indicating a likely overall increase for 2012 as well. As defense contractors step up the fight against planned budget cuts, well-connected lobbyists and senior military personnel are likely to become even more valuable. [1]

Boeing

Registered lobbyists as of first quarter 2012: 25
Revolving door lobbyists: 21
Amount spent on lobbying since 2007: $86.93 million
Campaign contributions since 2008 cycle: $7.58 million [2]
Top congressional recipients of campaign contributions during the 2012 election cycle:
Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Total dollars obligated to Boeing for Defense Department contracts in 2011: $20.49 billion. [1]

General Dynamics

Registered lobbyists as of first quarter of 2012: 10
Revolving door lobbyists: 2
Amount spent on lobbying since 2007: $53.08 million
Campaign contributions since 2008 cycle: $4.79 million [2]
Top congressional recipients of campaign contributions during the 2012 election cycle: Rep.
Buck McKeon (R-CA), Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI)
Total dollars obligated to General Dynamics for Defense Department contracts in 2011:
$17.98 billion. [1]

Lockheed Martin

Registered lobbyists as of first quarter 2012: 26
Revolving door lobbyists: 18
Amount spent on lobbying since 2007: $74.23 million
Campaign contributions since 2008 cycle: $ 8.03 million [2]
Top congressional recipients of campaign contributions during the 2012 election cycle: Rep.
Buck McKeon (R-CA), Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Total dollars obligated to Lockheed Martin for Defense Department contracts in 2011:
$35.76 billion. [1]

Northrop Grumman

Registered lobbyists as of first quarter 2012: 10
Revolving door lobbyists: 7
Amount spent on lobbying since 2007: $83.85 million
Campaign contributions since 2008 cycle: $6.19 million [2]
Top congressional recipients of campaign contributions during the 2012 election cycle: Rep.
Buck McKeon (R-CA), Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD)
Total dollars obligated to Northrop Grumman for Defense Department contracts in 2011:
$11.88 billion. [1]

Raytheon

Registered lobbyists as of first quarter 2012: 13
Revolving door lobbyists: 9
Amount spent on lobbying since 2007: $36.84 million
Campaign contributions since 2008 cycle: $5.85 million [2]
Top congressional recipients of campaign contributions during the 2012 election cycle: Sen.
Scott Brown (R-MA), Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI)
Total dollars obligated to Raytheon for Defense Department contracts in 2011: $13.57
Billion. [1]

Conclusion
Finally, The CREW report titled “Strategic maneuvers, the Revolving Door from the Pentagon to the Private Sector” is a stunning report of immense importance because it clearly exposes a capitalist system that has gone awry. The Defense Industry as well as other global corporations have co-opted and owned everyone in the Federal government under the guise of Public-Private Partnership. All of the watchdogs have been transformed into lap-dogs and sacrificed their integrity and country for few dollars and for ephemeral power. Meanwhile, the public continues its unconscious path by empowering the ten horned beast that has devoured everyone in its path.

The final solution would be to kill this beast by ceasing the cash nexus that perpetuates its strength, and to dethrone the harlot (our public leaders and elected officials) who is riding him and driving the American people and the nation into the abyss.

______________________________________________

Monday, May 25, 2009

Privatizing the Police: A Developing Model in the U.S.A.

By Jody Ray Bennett

Three months after 9/11, The New York Times ran a quiet story that highlighted a developing trend concerning a sudden increase in the number of police officers retiring from their jobs for careers with private security companies (PSCs). “The heightened hunger for private protection in the aftermath of history's worst terrorist attacks is fueling the potentially destabilizing exodus,” the story claimed.

The daily suspected that police officers were being lured by the lucrative salaries and benefits offered by the private sector, finding that within the New York Police Department, a “supervisor who plays matchmaker between retired officers and security firms [was] asked to provide hundreds of names to industry executives.”

Indeed, the article identified what at the time was thought of as a marginal development, but is now almost commonplace:

“In the Sept. 11 disaster that never seems to stop exacting its toll, one of the subtler but more serious losses is a consequence of the booming private security industry, which is draining the [NYPD] of some of its most desirable workers: the serious, smart and experienced senior officers the city needs most in a crisis.”

Fast forward nine years later and one finds a young industry built almost entirely on the backs of former military and police personnel who have provided everything from diplomatic, convoy, embassy, weapon storage and energy infrastructural security to gathering intelligence, conducting interrogations, patrolling borders on land, fighting pirates at sea and transporting goods and personnel by air. It would seem there is nothing these forces cannot do.

On private patrol

Policing some of the most dangerous US cities has quickly become the newest line of business for many of these companies, which have already replaced police officers in cities from Portland to Baltimore.

The phenomenon runs deeper than the normal shopping center or bank security guard. While in many cases private security personnel act more as city cleanup, organization or local ambassadors, some cities are pushing for armed private security personnel to patrol the streets, perform arrests and transport civilians. This is somewhat of a cause for concern, especially because of the more controversial issues surrounding the role of private military and security companies abroad in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cities are turning to the private sector for a variety of reasons. Some local and state governments are under pressure from budget deficits and are often convinced that privatized industries are more cost-effective than state agencies and bureaucracies. Other cities have an already overstretched force that cannot respond to increases in crime, so private contractors are seen as a quick fix and an easy force multiplier.

From Oakland to New Orleans

Oakland, California is the latest city looking to hire private companies to patrol some of its rougher neighborhoods in the wake of record municipal budget deficits. Last April, according to the Wall Street Journal, the city successfully voted to outsource part of its police patrol to International Services Inc, but later retracted after “two of its vice presidents were accused […] by the Los Angeles District Attorney's office of defrauding the state of California out of more thanUS$9 million in workers compensation.”

According to the daily Portland Mercury newspaper, Portland, Oregon’s downtown area is patrolled by armed personnel with arrest powers that are supplied by Portland Patrol, Inc, a company which, according to local media, has repeatedly evaded requests to appear before the city’s oversight committee.

Over 2,000 miles away, Chicago has turned to a company that currently operates in police-like automobiles marked “special patrol,” according to CBS News, and are expected to have their powers expanded as the city combats increased crime rates with an overstretched police force.

Down south in New Orleans, Louisiana, armed private guards patrol wealthy neighborhoods and private schools. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, “Some areas of New Orleans have used armed private patrols since 1997, when residents in an east New Orleans community petitioned Louisiana's legislature to create a tax on property owners to pay for a private force. About 20 residential tax districts have been established, employing an estimated 100 private guards. This month, seven more neighborhoods voted to create such districts.”

During the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was patrolled by approximately 150 heavily armed Blackwater personnel alongside several other big contractor companies like Dyncorp, Wackenhut and most interestingly, ISI, an Israeli company that flew in former Israeli Special Forces commandos.

Most notably of all of these companies is Capital Special Police, which not only supplies guards and corporate escorts, but also offers “real police officers [that] arrest for felonies and misdemeanors; issue citations for infractions; and enforce local ordinances.”

In January 2007, the Washington Post reported that the company was “one of dozens of private security companies given police powers by the state of North Carolina.”

“The more than 1 million contract security officers, and an equal number of guards estimated to work directly for U.S. corporations, dwarf the nearly 700,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States,” the daily wrote.

A 2000 report from American University in Washington, DC, concluded that “The great contemporary challenge confronting public safety in the United States is not primarily about whether privatization and civilianization are good things. It is about how best to serve the public’s need for protection against crime generally and, in particular, how to shape and coordinate our resources and energies to secure the safety of those quarters of society that are least able to afford effective security, public or private.”

Beginning of the boom

To this end, American cities might soon find a large surplus of job-seeking private security personnel when and if President Barack Obama pulls troops and contractors out of Iraq. Indeed, several US cities have already created public-private police associations in an attempt to bridge cooperation between the two forces. Suffice to say, the private policing boom is only just beginning.

The phenomenon transcends the public-private goods debate and indicates a new shift in how security is allocated by the state. Where the monopoly of force once consisted of exclusively state-owned functions, these have now been outsourced, in part or whole, to private entities.

In a post-Cold War age that heralds neoliberalism as a part of an “End of History,” privatization of police and military force should not come as a terribly big surprise. On the other hand, the transfer of security to private power (or the penetration of private power into a state’s monopoly of force) should hold serious implications over how the provision of security is conceptualized, as well as for the forces that create state power.

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Jody Ray Bennett is a freelance writer and academic researcher. His areas of analysis include the private military and security industries, the materialization of non-state forces, and the transformation of modern warfare.

This article was originally published at ISN Security Watch (05/18/09). The International Relations and Security Network (ISN) is a free public service that provides a wide range of high-quality and comprehensive products and resources to encourage the exchange of information among international relations and security professionals worldwide.

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This is the best assessment of the state of affairs regarding the world banking cartel and the capture of world governments. It also shows the intent of private military buildup in the Western nations and it is indeed what is happening as local governments 'reform' police departments. You can see once public union leaders being selected to move this privatization forward and the pay structures have the heads of public agencies paid as corporate executives-----because that is what they are intended to be.

The time is now to stop and reverse this process. IT IS NOT A DONE DEAL WE SIMPLY HAVE TO ENGAGE AS CITIZENS IN POLITICS AND TAKE BACK OUR GOVERNMENT. IF YOU ARE SILENT AND APATHETIC YOU WILL BE LIVING IN A THIRD WORLD IN A FEW DECADES.

The Road to World War III – The Global Banking Cartel Has One Card Left to Play
September 23rd, 2010 |

Editor’s Note: The following is Part I to David DeGraw’s new book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” This is the second installment to a new seven-part series that we will be posting throughout the next few weeks. You can read the introduction to the book here. To be notified via email of new postings from this series, subscribe here.

Part One I: Economic Imperial Operations
II: Violence on the Horizon
III: The IMF Riot, Step 3.5
IV: Bang the Drums of War
V: The Chinese Scapegoat: Trade &
—-Currency Wars
VI: Moves Upon the Grand Chessboard
VII: Resource Wars
VIII: Private Military Complex
IX: History Repeats Itself

I: Economic Imperial Operations

When we analyze our current crisis, focusing on the past few years of economic activity blinds us to the history and context that are vital to understanding the root cause. What we have been experiencing is not the result of an unforeseen economic crash that appeared out of the blue with the collapse of the housing market. It was certainly not brought on by people who bought homes they couldn’t afford. To frame this crisis around a debate on economic theory misses the point entirely. To even blame it on greedy bankers, while essentially accurate, also misses the most vital point.

This crisis is the direct result of a strategic economic attack on the existence of a middle class and democracy worldwide. The stock market and economy have become weapons of mass oppression manipulated by an imperial banking cartel to impose order and exploit the masses. This crisis boldly represents the manifest evolution of the fascist spirit reasserting itself as the dominant ideology.

Any fairytale notions of the United States being a democratic republic built on the rule of law have been utterly dispelled. As a nation we have been bred and conditioned to be dangerously naïve to the darker forces which operate beyond the spotlight of the mainstream media. We have been blinded to what has been developing throughout the world.

The economic imperialism that has now blown-back to the United States and Europe has been evolving for decades and can be directly traced back to the end of World War II, to the birth of the CIA, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

For those of us who have been paying attention to economic imperial operations that have been carried out against countries throughout the world, this looks all too familiar. The IMF and global bankers have conquered the second and third world, and they have now moved on to countries within the first world. Western European and American working classes are in the cross-hairs now.

Economic and societal indicators, along with recent G-20 policy decisions, clearly demonstrate that they are carrying out and escalating systemic economic attacks throughout Europe and the US.

To put it in technical terms, the United States government has been taken over by a financial terrorism network. They have bought off leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties, and have established a dominant role in all three branches of government and throughout the mainstream media. They have complete control of the economy, stock market, US Treasury, Federal Reserve, World Bank, IMF and global banking system. Free market capitalism has collapsed; it’s now a rigged global market. This is an organized criminal operation, an imperial fascist movement that is determined to destroy our very way of life.

A war has already been launched against us.

In just the past three years we have lost an unprecedented amount of national wealth, trillions upon trillions of our tax dollars have been looted by Wall Street, endless wars, enormous subsidies for the most profitable global corporations and tax cuts for the richest one percent of the population. Never before, in the history of civilization, has a nation been so thoroughly and systematically fleeced.

This is all the result of a coordinated economic attack by a global banking cartel against 99 percent of the US population.

Until we can become politically intelligent enough to see this as the reality and root cause of our current crisis, we will not be able to overcome it, our living standards will continue to decline and we will all be sentenced to a slow death in a neo-feudal system built on debt slavery.

The average American is horribly naïve to just how depraved, corrupt and addicted to power this banking cartel is. Through their control and domination of the mass media, they have kept their crimes against humanity out of public consciousness. We have been shielded from the global devastation and death toll that they have already wrought. The result is an unsuspecting population of confused and passive people having their future ripped out from under them, right before their eyes, without any organized defense or resistance.

II: Violence on the Horizon

As the entrenched global banking cartel continues to control domestic political policy, the next phase of this crisis will inevitably feature an escalation into mass violence. As the Army War College stated, the Pentagon is preparing for “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” and “widespread civil violence” due to “purposeful domestic resistance.”

In clear signs of what is to come, rioting and violence as a result of economic turmoil has already been experienced in many countries throughout the world. However, civil unrest has not yet occurred within the United States. There are many theories as to why there has been so little resistance from the US population thus far, and several factors play into it. The most significant factor is that social safety net programs have been vital in preventing people from resorting to extreme measures. Currently, a stunning number of Americans, 52 million, are receiving life-sustaining assistance from government “anti-poverty” programs, such as food stamps, unemployment benefits, Medicaid and Medicare. This has already stretched a social safety net system that is designed to handle significantly less people to its limit. This safety net system has now been drained of all reserve resources over the past two years, and is obviously not sustainable under current economic and political conditions.

As social safety net programs have been drained of reserves, many US citizens have also been burning through their personal savings. Over the past few years the percentage of Americans living paycheck to paycheck has dramatically increased. In 2007, 43 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. In 2008, the percentage increased to 49 percent. In 2009, the number skyrocketed up to 61 percent. The most recent number for 2010 has exploded to a shocking 77 percent. This means in our nation of 310 million citizens, 239 million Americans are one setback away from economic ruin and millions more are in danger of having to rely on government assistance for survival.

So as this prolonged economic crisis continues, these safety nets, that are already overwhelmed, will have to support more and more people and will inevitably break down. As we have just begun to see, budget cuts to vital social programs on the state and federal levels will become increasingly severe right at the point when many more Americans will need them. As the 52 million Americans currently surviving in “anti-poverty” programs are gradually cutoff from life-sustaining government assistance – and as the 239 million people now living paycheck to paycheck, buried in debt, stressing out and working their asses off just to make ends meet realize that things are not going to be getting any better — and are only going to get worse — social unrest and outbursts of violence will eventually start to bubble up to the surface and the ruling elite will no longer be able to maintain power by simply deceiving the masses via mainstream media propaganda.

When an overwhelming majority of the population directly feels negative effects upon their own living standards, the propaganda system collapses. The illusion comes crashing down and people will finally start to get wise to the horrific scam that is being played on them. When they wake from their media-induced American dream state and realize that they are now living in a nightmare, as crazy as it may sound, people will actually stop voting against their own interests. The apathetic majority, that doesn’t vote, will become active in the interests of self-preservation as their survival instincts kick in.

The handwriting is on the wall and the ruling class has to realize that by the time 2012 rolls around, their puppet politicians will be voted out of office, or their heads will roll, quite literally.

Looking at this from a purely technocratic sociological viewpoint, avoiding mass riots and violence while this many desperate people lose life-sustaining programs appears to be an impossible task, and given our current economic and political environment this seems inevitable.

In an article titled “A Planet at the Brink: Will Economic Brushfires Prove Too Virulent to Contain?” Michael T. Klare explained:

“As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a ‘lost decade,’ the result could be a global landscape filled with economically-fueled upheavals.”

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski expressed his fears:

“I was worrying about it because we’re going to have millions and millions of unemployed, people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve. And at the same time there is public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America….

And you sort of say to yourself: what’s going to happen in this society when these people are without jobs, when their families hurt, when they lose their homes, and so forth?”

Outbreaks of civil unrest are something that the US government and Pentagon have been expecting, and preparing for. Former US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee stating that the greatest threat facing the US is not terrorism, it’s the current economic crisis:

“The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications. The crisis has been ongoing…. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”

Intelligence Committee Vice-Chair Christopher Bond said the economic crisis is now “the primary focus of the intelligence community.” As the Army War College has warned, the response to this coming phase of the economic crisis “might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance.”

Journalist Chris Hedges summed up this report:

“The specter of social unrest was raised at the US Army War College in November in a monograph titled ‘Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development.’ …

The ‘widespread civil violence,’ the document said, ‘would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.’

‘An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,’ it went on….

In plain English, something bureaucrats and the military seem incapable of employing, this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government being run out of the Department of Defense. They are considering it. So should you.”

III: The IMF Riot, Step 3.5

The International Monetary Fund is predicting a “social explosion” due to this crisis. The IMF and World Bank have a long history of creating social upheaval. Leaked documents from within the World Bank refer to the next phase of the crisis as the “IMF riot.”

Journalist Greg Palast obtained classified planning documents, which shed light on the covert economic imperial operations, Structural Adjustment Programs, that the IMF, World Bank and US Treasury have used in the past as a playbook for destabilizing and conquering foreign nations. In the UK newspaper The Observer, Palast interviewed Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who was a former World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, turned whistleblower. They revealed the four-step IMF plan. Though the strategy is slightly modified based on the nation being attacked, here in the United States we are currently about to enter a variation of step-three, which is currently being phased in throughout Europe. This step inevitably leads to a significant portion of the population losing the ability to obtain basic necessities essential for survival. Once this happens, riots inevitably occur, or as they put it: step 3.5 is executed.

Here is how Palast and Stiglitz summed it up:

“At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing – a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and… gas.

This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls ‘the IMF riot’.

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, ‘down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,’…

What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year’s Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests – with cold accuracy – that the plans could be expected to spark ‘social unrest’.”

To sum up, the interlocked IMF and World Bank set the conditions for ‘social unrest’ and then once it occurs they move to step-four, which is the ultimate in disaster capitalism – they profit off the misery and the civilian population is then buried in a neo-feudal system of severe debt and poverty.

So what is the IMF saying right now about our situation in Europe and the US? A recent Telegraph report reads:

“IMF fears ‘social explosion’ from world jobs crisis

America and Europe face the worst jobs crisis since the 1930s and risk ‘an explosion of social unrest’ unless they tread carefully, the International Monetary Fund has warned….

Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist, said the percentage of workers laid off for long stints has been rising with each downturn for decades but the figures have surged this time. ‘Long-term unemployment is alarmingly high: in the US, half the unemployed have been out of work for over six months, something we have not seen since the Great Depression,” he said….

The IMF said there may be a link between rising inequality within Western economies and deflating demand. Historians say the last time that the wealth gap reached such skewed extremes was in 1928-1929…”

To show you how insidious the IMF is, they have recently launched a propaganda campaign to publicly decry deficit budget cuts and austerity measures. However, behind the scenes they have been forcing implementation of them and making their usual demands for cuts in vital social services and public spending, once those cuts are in place, the riots obviously follow.

A recent Washington Post report states:

“IMF issues broad call for US financial prudence
Cut Social Security. Ditch the deduction for interest on home mortgages. Tax gasoline.
The United States recently opened itself to the most intense scrutiny yet by the International Monetary Fund, and on Thursday was offered a bitter pill when the agency criticized some well-defended aspects of American culture — cheap fuel, subsidized housing, and a government retirement check…. “

Economist Dean Baker writes:

“The central bankers and their accomplices at the IMF are dictating policies to democratically elected governments. Their agenda seems to be the same everywhere, cut back retirement benefits, reduce public support for health care, weaken unions and make ordinary workers take pay cuts.”

In another report Baker adds:

“The IMF program calls for cutbacks in government support for healthcare, pensions, and a wide range of other public services. It also calls for weakening labor market regulations that provide workers with job security.

These recommendations are being given in a context where the world economy is suffering from a massive shortfall of demand. In other words, tens of millions of people are unemployed right now because there is not enough spending to keep them employed. The IMF’s program is almost certain to reduce spending further leading to even larger shortfalls in demand and more unemployment….

The IMF’s track record gives us reason not only to question the institution’s competence but also its motivations…. It is possible to see a similar pattern in the IMF’s latest set of policy recommendations to deal with the economic crisis.”

In an article entitled, “The Attack of the Real Black Helicopter Gang: The IMF Is Coming for Your Social Security,” Baker continues:

“Last week, the IMF told the United States that it needs to start getting its budget deficit down. It put cutting Social Security at the top of the steps that the country should take to achieve deficit reduction. This one is more than a bit outrageous for two reasons…

While the IMF has no problem warning about retired workers getting too much in Social Security benefits, it apparently could not find its voice when the issue was the junk securities from Goldman Sachs or Citigroup that helped to fuel the housing bubble.

The collapse of this bubble has not only sank the world economy, it also destroyed most of the savings of the near retirees for whom the IMF wants to cut Social Security. The vast majority of middle-income retirees have most of their wealth in their home equity. This home equity largely disappeared when the bubble burst.”

So the IMF and global banking cartel are setting the conditions for social unrest and pushing for policies that will provoke it, and the Pentagon is preparing for a military response. As scary and unbelievable as all this may sound, we are on a fast track to this scenario.

To Sum Up

The American and global economy have already been looted and destroyed beyond repair. Most serious economists will admit that governments have already exhausted their capital by bailing out the banks and taking on unprecedented amounts of debt. The bailouts and recent return to high profits were just the final phase of the looting and a further consolidation of wealth on an unprecedented scale. There are still tens of trillions of dollars in debt hidden off-the-books and hundreds of trillions of dollars in dark pools of derivative liability. As the downturn continues, there is nothing left to revive the economy, the reserves and safety nets have already been stretched to their limits.

We have a political and economic system that has been overrun by organized corruption and theft. Along with a mass media system that does not inform the populace and has effectively marginalized and isolated the majority of the population. Meanwhile, bubbling just under the surface is a very heavily armed population with a militia movement that has doubled in size over the past year, and their memberships continue to rapidly grow. Without the necessary general political intelligence or infrastructure to organize an effective mass non-violent movement, we are steamrolling toward spontaneous riots and outbursts of armed insurrection.

In other words, as this economic downturn continues, what is now a passive and confused population will eventually devolve into an explosion of violence. Without a coherent non-violent movement to provide a viable alternative, without an outlet for severe and legitimate grievances that provides any chance for urgently affecting necessary political change, people will resort to violence as a last desperate act of vengeance and frustration. As time passes, these forgotten and isolated people, tens of millions of them, are quickly running out of options, and they will act out just as exploited people throughout the world always have.

A man who sparked a revolution against the same banking cartel that has caused our crisis described the general attitude among a population that successfully rebelled through armed insurrection:

“The people are weary of being oppressed, persecuted, exploited to the maximum. They are weary of the wretched selling of their labor-power day after day — faced with the fear of joining the enormous mass of unemployed — so that the greatest profit can be wrung from each human body, profit later squandered in the orgies of the masters of capital….

The feeling of revolt will grow stronger every day among the peoples subjected to various degrees of exploitation, and they will take up arms to gain by force the rights which reason alone has not won them.”

Whatever your preconceptions of the man who said this may be, the voice of Che Guevara can now be clearly understood and related to by the overwhelming majority of people throughout the United States.

Already, despite intensive propaganda, a stunning 80 percent of the US population believes that the government has failed them. The health care and financial reform bills have proven that our politicians are much more concerned about the short-sighted necessity to please the Economic Elite and raise campaign funds, than they are to understand the consequences of millions of Americans being forced into situations where their very survival is threatened. In a system where most elected officials are millionaires, this lack of perspective and understanding is ultimately what will lead to violence. Whether it is by arrogance or ignorance, perhaps both, it appears that our ruling class has suicidal tendencies. Unless they quickly recognize the growing threat posed by the dispossessed masses, our puppet politicians will themselves be in harm’s way.

To show you how incredibly out of touch our current elected officials are, and to give you a clear indication of the prevailing attitude on Capitol Hill, a recent report from the Washington Post summed up their response to the recent news that a record number of Americans are now living in poverty:

“The reluctance of political leaders on both sides of the aisle to directly confront the fact that growing numbers of Americans are slipping into poverty reflects a stubborn reality about the poor: They are not much of a political constituency.

‘We talk to many people on Capitol Hill who do believe poverty is important and is a blight on our nation, but we are also up against a general recognition that poor people don’t vote in great numbers. And they certainly aren’t going to be making campaign contributions. That definitely puts them behind many other people and interests when decisions are being made around here.’”

And that sums up our current crisis, doesn’t it? The “poor people don’t vote” and they don’t make “campaign contributions.”

As the Rage Against the Machine song goes, “The riot be the rhyme of the unheard.”

IV: Bang the Drums of War

How will this imperial fascist banking cartel respond to revolt? How will they maintain their power over an increasingly radicalized and hostile US population?

In an attempt to stave off organized rebellion, they are already escalating their propaganda efforts in attempts to divide and distract the population. The tactics of their divide and conquer strategy are already on full display. Their mainstream media outlets have drastically increased coverage and focused attention on the rhetoric of division – using divisive issues like immigration, racism, religious bigotry, the “lazy unemployed,” “entitlement welfare” and gay marriage to divide and distract the population and prevent the masses from organizing against their true oppressors.

This propaganda effort is only a temporary measure and will not suffice over the long-term. As the economy continues to collapse, the banking elite risk being overthrown as a result of their own greed. So they will then turn to physical, military-based violence to suppress populations that can no longer be controlled through propaganda and economic coercion.

To paraphrase policy analyst Anatol Lieven, the classic strategy of an endangered oligarchy is to divert discontent among the population into nationalistic militarism. It is time, once again, to bang the drums of war and “whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor.” The source of the following quote is unknown, but the evident wisdom of it is something that we have already experienced firsthand in the recent past:

“Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.”

An increased external threat will lead to an increased internal crackdown, which creates the pretext and conditions for a police state. As we have already seen in the first phase of the crackdown on civil liberties since the “War on Terror” began, when rioting and outbursts of armed insurrection begin within the US, external threats, real or imagined, will again be presented to justify extreme measures to suppress American citizens, and to further repress and divert internal dissent. Without an external enemy to rally the population against, the population will rally against the pre-existing internal powers.

To put a slight twist on what Guy DeBord insightfully said back in 1988: the banking cartel “constructs its own inconceivable foe, terrorism. Its wish is to be judged by its enemies rather than by its results. The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive. But they must always know enough to convince them that, compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.”

V:The Chinese Scapegoat: Trade & Currency Wars

As millions of Americans and the majority of the global population look for vengeance on those responsible for severely declining living standards, the global banking cartel are not going to blame themselves, so they will deflect blame to China, a most convenient target.

As a result of the crisis, national currencies are reeling, and the dollar, although currently one of the strongest paper currencies, is losing power as the crisis escalates. The IMF is working to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency and have begun discussing the possibility of making their Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) the new world reserve currency. A plummeting dollar will obviously put the American population in a severely desperate situation and the US-based banking cartel needs an excuse to divert political backlash. In China, the nation poised to replace the US as the preeminent global superpower, they have the perfect scapegoat.

US-based global corporations have been shifting their business to China and off-shoring millions of jobs to the region due to their extremely low worker wages. So the American population is already pre-disposed to blaming China, as opposed to the companies who are exploiting the cheap labor. US politicians have been conveniently shifting blame for unemployment from themselves to China. Meanwhile, China also owns a significant portion of US national debt. US Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has recently declared that the national debt is the number one security threat. As Mullen stated, “Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the national debt by 2012.” A significant portion of this interest will be going to China.

As national governments attempt to survive in an increasingly hostile global economy, trade and currency wars will flare up and escalate. China is in perhaps the strongest position to win these conflicts. China and Japan have just engaged in a fierce currency battle. This currency battle is not to be underestimated. We are talking about the world’s second and third largest economies, after the United States. China has just overtaken Japan for the number two position. The militant rhetoric between these two nations is escalating. US politicians were quick to jump on the situation with calls to classify China as a “currency manipulator” and impose trade tariffs and penalties against them.

International economic reporter Barry Grey recently summed up the situation in an article entitled, “Economic crisis threatens to unleash global currency wars:”

“The eruption of currency exchange conflicts is bound up with mounting signs that the global economic crisis is systemic, rather than merely conjunctural, and growing fears that a genuine recovery is not in the offing. The European sovereign debt crisis and the weakening of US economic growth have led governments around the world to seek to secure a greater share of export markets. Under conditions of slowing growth and stagnant markets, this inevitably heightens trade conflicts between competing capitalist nations.

In particular, the US and the European Union, spearheaded by the export power Germany, have aggressively pursued a cheap currency policy in order to gain a trade advantage against their rivals. Of the major economic powers, Japan has suffered the greatest damage from these policies, as investors and speculators have shifted from dollar- and euro-denominated investments to the yen, driving up the currency’s exchange rate.

This has embittered relations between Japan and both the US and the EU. Japan has also denounced China for artificially keeping its currency low while bidding up the yen by increasing its purchases of Japanese government securities.”

The global banking cartel’s leading puppets on Capitol Hill, Senators Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer and Richard Shelby were all quick to attack China. Barry Grey continued:

“In opening the Senate Banking Committee hearing, Chairman Christopher Dodd declared China a currency manipulator and said its ‘economic and trade policies’ present ‘roadblocks to our recovery.’ He went on to accuse China of stealing intellectual property, violating international trade agreements and dumping goods. He also denounced China for acquiring national resources in developing countries and building up its military.

In his opening statement, the ranking Republican on the committee, Richard Shelby of Alabama, declared, ‘There is no question that China manipulates its currency in order to subsidize Chinese exports. The only question is: Why is the administration protecting China by refusing to designate it as a currency manipulator?’

Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said, ‘China’s currency manipulation is like a boot on the throat of our recovery and this administration refuses to try to get China to remove that boot.’”

On top of all this, China has now overtaken the US as the world’s top energy consumer. Michael T. Klare reports on China’s new position of power:

“The main point: by becoming the world’s leading energy consumer, China will also become an ever more dominant international actor and so set the pace in shaping our global future.

Because energy is tied to so many aspects of the global economy, and because doubts are growing about the future availability of oil and other vital fuels, the decisions China makes regarding its energy portfolio will have far-reaching consequences. As the leading player in the global energy market, China will significantly determine not only the prices we will be paying for critical fuels but also the type of energy systems we will come to rely on. More importantly, China’s decisions on energy preferences will largely determine whether China and the United States can avoid becoming embroiled in a global struggle over imported oil and whether the world will escape catastrophic climate change.”

China’s rise in power, mixed with the decline of western economies and the need for an external scapegoat sets up a global collision and inevitable confrontation between vying superpowers. Currency and trade wars will likely be a prelude to military confrontation.

VI: Moves Upon the Grand Chessboard

Based on early maneuvering it is evident that the masters of war have already drawn up sides. You may have missed it, but the US, Israel and the NATO Alliance have already put Iran, Lebanon, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and China on notice. And the “withdrawals” from Iraq and the Af-Pak region are over-hyped. The occupation of these countries continues with no end in sight. In fact, they aren’t withdrawing as much as they are repositioning and shifting their forces, preparing for an escalation. In many ways the wars in Iraq and Af-Pak have only been the initial phase of a global attack, positioning forces and building massive military bases in pivotal geo-strategic locations. The operations in this region have essentially been a warm-up for much wider-ranging attacks against much stronger countries. While most of the US population is playing checkers, seeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as one-off battles, the global banking cartel is playing chess, using these wars as only initial geo-strategic moves in a grand strategy toward total world domination.

The intensity of military maneuvering presently occurring is alarming. Read through these recent news reports pulled from the AmpedStatus database, all from just the past few weeks, and let me know if you think I’m being extreme in foreseeing World War III:

- See more at: http://ampedstatus.com/the-road-to-world-war-iii-the-global-banking-cartel-has-one-card-left-to-play/#sthash.U9ibA1cf.dpuf

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April 22nd, 2014

4/22/2014

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PLEASE CHECK BELOW MY BLURB ON PUBLIC MEDIA'S ATTACK ON FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS AND ELECTION VIOLATIONS! I WILL SPEAK TODAY ON BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON AS GLOBAL CORPORATE CHAMPIONS REEKING HAVOC ON THE WORLD WITH ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER AND IMPOVERISHMENT!

Below you see that WYPR is about to block my campaign from speaking about the issues of this election. Mind you, my comments are always factual where the comments of the politicians given media coverage are not. This violates Federal Election laws. As you heard this morning, WYPR is no longer stating where a governor's forum was held because, as I state, all 501c3/4 political debates and forums must invite all candidates for office. At a time when elections are being bought.....at a time when candidates running for office are working for corporations in pay-to-play, it is critical that America has a public media that is not involved in this corporate corruption. I will be contacting all businesses that advertize with WYPR to ask why they support this suspension of Rule of Law and free and fair elections!

'Congratulations on your decision to run for the office of governor of Maryland . WYPR always supports diverse opinions and we wish you well in your campaign.
By the rules of the Public Broadcasting Act and by WYPR policies, the use of WYPR's airways, website, or social media outlets by ANY political candidate during an election campaign is strictly prohibited. We very much appreciate your cooperation with these restrictions AND you are welcome to contact our general manager who would be happy to provide further explanations. Therefore, we ask that you not make further postings as we are required to remove all of your posting to date and in the future so long as you are a candidate for public office.
Thank you for understanding'.

If a candidate cannot make comments on a public media site and those same candidates are excluded from all election coverage on public media in Maryland then how does that meet with Federal Election Laws requiring all 501c3/4 organizations to give all candidates for election a forum for their campaigns? Do you think constantly referring to all but the global corporate candidates meets that requirement? Of course not------I will continue to post my research information on policy as my organization Citizens Oversight Maryland does. Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland looks forward to WYPR giving all campaigns and platforms access to public media airwaves!

Here in Maryland all the media is preparing to block any comments about Bill and Hillary Clinton as the 2016 will see an onslaught of political advertizing and social media/email campaigning. As a candidate for governor of Maryland I was just told by WYPR that I cannot comment on their facebook page about election issues and at the same time they are refusing my campaign any media coverage. My campaign is completely blocked. Meanwhile, the candidates who are going to advance these global corporate policies of Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) and Clinton's global corporate rule has unlimited airtime on public media. BELOW YOU SEE WHAT BILL AND HILLARY HAVE BEEN UP TO SINCE ENDING GLASS STEAGALL AND PUSHING NAFTA-----THEY ALLOWED DEVELOPING WORLD'S TO BE ENSLAVED BY US CORPORATIONS AND WHEN THOSE NATIONS KICKED OUT THESE US CORPORATIONS NEO-LIBERALS ARE NOW MOVING INTO AFRICA, THE CARIBBEAN, AND IF TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT IS PASSED.,......INTO THE US. It is people of color who are being enslaved whether Asian, black, or Hispanic, but the Trans Pacific Trade Pact will take all Americans to the developing world level. See why it is so important for WYPR to block my campaign?

Haiti has been made the new sweat shop of the West. Clinton is bringing US manufacturing from Asia and installing them in the West.....first in the Caribbean and then in the US when TPP is installed. US labor unions know this is what will happen and they know that all of Maryland candidates for Governor of Maryland except Cindy Walsh for Governor will do this....Brown, Gansler, and Mizeur as well as the republicans.

Bill Clinton: Haiti’s Neo-Colonial Overlord

Tue, 11/16/2010 - 14:03 — Ashley Smith

by Ashley Smith

Bill Clinton is no friend to Haiti. The former president, who inflicted great harm to the Haitian people while in office, now acts as a kind of regent, “promoting sweatshops, tourism, and export-oriented agriculture.” A primary actor in stripping Haiti of its sovereignty, Clinton “is putting Haiti up for sale to multinational capital.”

Bill Clinton: Haiti’s Neo-Colonial Overlord

by Ashley Smith

Ashley Smith is a featured speaker at a “Day of Outrage in Harlem” rally and march in support of the people of Haiti, on November 20. The theme of the protest is, “U.S. Out of Haiti – Clinton Out of Harlem.”

“Clinton has betrayed all his humanitarian promises and failed to collect even a fraction of the promised $10 billion for reconstruction.”

The corporate media portrays former President Bill Clinton as a great humanitarian friend of Haiti. The truth could not be more different. He has always supported policies in the interests of multinational corporations and the Haitian ruling class at the expense of the country’s workers, urban poor and peasantry.

After the 1991 coup that toppled Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Clinton as President did maintain relatively ineffective sanctions. But he violated his campaign promise and continued George Bush Sr.’s policy of jailing Haitian refugees in Guantanamo. He also pressured Aristide to adopt free market economic policies as the condition of restoring him to power in 1994.

Clinton succeeded in getting Aristide to moderate his program of social reform and drop tariffs on rice to the advantage of U.S. Agribusiness. He then compelled Aristide’s successor, Rene Preval, to further deregulate the economy successfully turning Haiti into the most free market economy in the Western Hemisphere, and consequently its poorest.

“Clinton pressured Aristide to adopt free market economic policies as the condition of restoring him to power in 1994.”

Confronted with this evidence, he recently apologized for impoverishing the lives of peasant farmers in Haiti. But as always with Clinton, his rhetoric could not be more different than his policies. After the second U.S.-backed coup against Aristide in 2004, Clinton has worked with former World Bank employee Paul Collier, multinational corporations and the Haitian elite to impose another free-market plan on Haiti. While U.N. troops have occupied Haiti since 2004, Clinton and Collier toured the country promoting sweatshops, tourism, and export-oriented agriculture.

After the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Port au Prince, Clinton became co-chair of Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. He is now the country’s neo-colonial overlord. He has betrayed all his humanitarian promises and failed to collect even a fraction of the promised $10 billion for reconstruction. And his reconstruction plan is the same free market plan he has been touting since 2004. He is putting Haiti up for sale to multinational capital.

The last thing Haiti needs is more “help” from Bill Clinton and the U.S. Instead, the U.S. and other imperial powers including the U.N. should get out of Haiti and pay reparations so that Haitians can rebuild their country in their own interests.

Ashley Smith can be reached at: ashley05401@yahoo.com. For information on the November 20 “Day of Outrage in Harlem,” contact Nellie Bailey at harlemtenants@gmail.com

__________________________________________

Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) is a neo-con/neo-liberal effort to end the national sovereignty of all nations signing this pact and handing control of all public policy and law enforcement to global corporate tribunals. This is all courtesy of Bill and Hillary Clinton who, with Reagan embraced neo-liberalism and took the people's democratic party and handed it to corporations. This is why labor and justice, 80% of the democratic base has been silenced. We need labor unions to stop backing these neo-liberals and in Maryland all candidates other than Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland will push TPP.

Below you see the Neo-conservative think tank and the neo-liberal think tank all getting their dander up because the nations around the world being forced into TPP are fighting it and kicking the leaders out who signed this treaty. Don't think for one minute that any neo-liberal pol will not vote to pass this! Obama has built the lobby structure to push it through. Also note that NGOs are included in this TPP stakeholder deal. NGOs are simply corporations made to be non-profits controlling public policy!

IN THE US THAT WOULD BE OBAMA AND IN MARYLAND ALL OF THE MARYLAND ASSEMBLY AND CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR ARE PASSING LAWS SUPPORTING TPP!

Don't think that because a few democratic Congress people have shouted against Fast Track for TPP that it is not advancing------all of the policies passed during Obama's Administration have been TPP related. Bush set the stage and Obama is super-sizing it.

WE ARE AT THE CROSSROADS IN STOPPING TPP-----STOP ELECTING GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS!

Crunch Time for the Trans-Pacific Pact — and for U.S. Leadership in Asia

By Claude Barfield Thursday, October 10, 2013

Filed under: World Watch, Economic Policy

At a crucial time in U.S.-Asian relations, China is stealing the limelight. America needs to get back in the game. Admittedly, one can overreact to the negative consequences of President Obama’s decision to cancel his trip to Asia and forego participation in the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ meeting and the East Asian Summit. But it would also be a mistake to underestimate the blow — at least in the short term — to the ability of the United States to project a confident leadership role in the region. Headlines such as “Obama cancels Asia trip. Is the U.S. ‘pivot’ in jeopardy?” and “As Obama’s Asian ‘pivot’ falters, China steps into the gap” are all too representative of the reaction both within Asia and around the world.

My AEI colleague Michael Auslin has suggested that the real danger to U.S. leadership does not stem from the past week’s debacles but rather from the fact that the Obama administration is presiding over a decimated defense budget that in future years cannot sustain U.S. security promises and obligations in Asia — let alone around the world. The point is well taken, but my analysis will concentrate on the short and medium term effects relating to soft diplomacy and prestige and, in more detail, to the implications for the major U.S. regional economic initiative, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

Short-Term Losses

In the immediate future, the image embodied in Hillary Clinton’s robust announcement of an American ‘pivot’ to Asia and her comment that ‘We are back to stay’ will take a credibility beating. In the immediate future, the image embodied in Hillary Clinton’s robust announcement of an American “pivot” to Asia and her comment that “We are back to stay” will take a credibility beating. The White House had planned both practical deliverables in the TPP negotiations and also highly symbolic visits by the president to Malaysia and the Philippines. The picture of President Obama twiddling his thumbs in the White House and haggling over a looming U.S. default while Asian leaders meet in Bali and in Brunei will be hard to erase in the short term.

Worse, partly by coincidence, Chinese leaders stood ready to fill in the gap. Though long-planned, visits by President Xi Jinping to Malaysia and Indonesia captured headlines around the region, not least from the largesse dispensed along the way — a $15 billion currency swap agreement with Indonesia and a promise to triple trade with Malaysia to $160 billion by 2017. In a tag team display, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is now off on follow-up official visits to Vietnam, Thailand, and Brunei. Though President Xi was circumspect at the two summit meetings, the Chinese press was euphoric and scornful. Typical was the comment of the Hong Kong-based Communist party newspaper, Ta Kung Pao: “Chinese President Xi Jinping has become the brightest star on the Asian diplomatic platform. . . . The influence of the U.S. is questioned more and more.”

Looking back over the week, even a former administration official and loyal Obama supporter, Kenneth Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution, was led to conclude: “This is a serious blow to U.S. diplomacy” that will raise doubts about the president’s “ability to deliver on commitments.”

Moving on, the potential impact of the president’s no-show at TPP negotiations is a likewise negative development but not necessarily a fatal one to the successful conclusion of the agreement. With or without Obama’s presence, the situation with regards to the negotiations stands as follows. Since 2010, when serious bargaining began, there have been 19 negotiating sessions. At this point, most if not all of the technical underbrush has been cleared away by the trade bureaucrats from the 12 member states. What is left is a group of at least a dozen highly sensitive political questions and judgments that must be settled by political leaders. Among the issues outstanding are rules and commitments related to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the environment, labor, market access and rules of origin, intellectual property (IP), government procurement, services and investment, regulatory coherence and coordination, and data flows and protection, among others. (The list will vary from observer to observer and cannot be conclusive since no actual potential text has been made public).

Throughout 2013, TPP members have steadfastly maintained the goal of completing the negotiations by the end of the year, even though all knew that this was more a tactic to keep up momentum than a realistic endpoint. Neither President Obama nor other national TPP leaders could be expected to iron out the specific details of all of the aforementioned politically sensitive issues in the single day allotted to the TPP in Brunei. Rather, what Obama missed was the opportunity to push personally for a successful conclusion of the talks soon after the new year — and to weigh in with individual leaders on a limited number of issues where only the highest national leaders can seal the deal.

The Endgame

Neither President Obama nor other national TPP leaders could be expected to iron out the specific details in the single day allotted to the TPP in Brunei. Rather, what Obama missed was the opportunity to push personally for a successful conclusion of the talks. Without crying now over spilt milk, it will be crucial for the president and the administration to turn full attention to the TPP endgame. Trade policy and negotiations have been described by political scientists as a “two-level game.” On the first level, political leaders have to fix their own goals and bargain with their counterparts from other nations. In this case, the White House must decide quickly in coming weeks what its top offensive and defensive priorities will be. Will we demand, for example, quite detailed competition rules for SOEs? Will we push for greater IP protection for biotechnology products? Will the United States want enforceable rules in the environmental chapter and for health and safety provisions? And will the United States at this late date suddenly demand trade rules to curb currency manipulation? Defensively, the White House must make judgments on what we will give in return (and the offensive/defensive moves are linked): for instance, Vietnam has made it clear that it will not move on SOEs without U.S. concession on shoes and textiles. Further, what can the United States give on sugar or cotton? How much continued protection will it defend for the U.S. automobile industry? And what can we concede from our highly protected dairy sector?

Political timing is now crucial. U.S. companies with both offensive and defensive issues at stake are aware that it is crunch time for key decisions on the products and services they hold dear, and they have begun high-powered lobbying campaigns to achieve their disparate goals. While the administration has worked diligently with domestic stakeholders (including NGOs), its own domestic political actions in this two-level game must be redoubled. This means moving forward quickly with Congress to pass new trade promotion authority that sets out congressional trade priorities and guarantees a timely up or down vote for a future TPP agreement. Down the line, it will also mean that the president himself must be willing to spend the political capital to craft a coalition that can assure congressional approval of the TPP (most particularly with congressional Republicans, who will almost certainly provide the majority of the votes).

At a news conference in the wake of the Pacific summits, President Obama ruefully admitted that missing the Asian leaders’ meeting was “almost like not showing up” for his own party, and that this inevitably “created a sense of concern” on the part of U.S. allies and trading partners. But on the larger canvass of U.S. leadership in Asia, the damage is not irreparable. Despite the burst of Chinese triumphalism, Asian nations certainly are aware that Beijing has in reality not backed off it belligerent stands and demands regarding the East and South Chinas seas — nor its bullying of smaller nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines. The ongoing, huge buildup of Chinese military prowess only underscores the perceived necessity for an enduring U.S. defense presence as a counterbalance.

In addition to committing full diplomatic and political resources to completing and passing the TPP, the president should also move with dispatch to assuage the “sense of concern” in Asia by quickly rescheduling the cancelled trips to Southeast Asia and add on Japan and Korea. For the TPP, there might be a quick payoff for the negotiations, as Korea was widely expected to announce at the Brunei summit that it would join the talks, but apparently backed off when Obama cancelled. A visit to Seoul might just seal that deal and further tip the balance toward the TPP as the lead institution in a new regional economic architecture.

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Right now the only thing saving Americans from this third world agreement is that citizens of other nations are in the streets and kicking their political leaders out of office to stop this Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP). In the US .......labor and justice leaders are backing the same neo-liberal candidates who will push these policies through. In Maryland, all the candidates for governor......especially Gansler, Brown, and Mizeur will push TPP through EXCEPT CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND!

As you hear, Clinton is stating the lifting of democratic and labor conditions even as ALL INTERNATIONAL LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS ARE SHOUTING LOUDLY AND STRONGLY AGAINST IT!

Clinton Announces Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement

Clinton Announces Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement Video Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Vietnam to pursue democracy while announcing details of a a new trans-Pacific trade agreement focused on south Asia, during a visit to Hanoi on Tuesday. (July 10)

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press

Clinton Announces Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement

AssociatedPress
441,355 781 views 14 24 Published on Jul 10, 2012

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Vietnam to pursue democracy while announcing details of a a new trans-Pacific trade agreement focused on south Asia, during a visit to Hanoi on Tuesday. (July 10)

Here in Maryland all media is captured by corporations and we are seeing the Clinton machine locking up all areas of campaigning and election exposure. Public media needs to be the one source of free and fair elections and in Maryland------WYPR and MPT controls most public media and they are completely blocking all candidates that do not support pushing TPP through.

Bill Moyers on why the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement is death for democracy
11/5/2013 10:05am by Gaius Publius

Many of you know I’ve been covering TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement) for a while now — for example, here. Obama and the rest of the neoliberal (“free-trade”) Democrats are dying to implement it, and the Republican servants of the same fine CEOs are not far behind.

But the TPP is complicated — at least in appearances — and the public is having a hard time bottom-lining it, in between taking kids to soccer and paying bills in the evening. By comparison, characterizing Keystone is easy — “Want to drink goo from your faucet and watch the earth cook? Support Keystone.”

It’s not really hard to understand TPP though, once you see the pattern — TPP puts the ruling class (and the corporations they control) in charge of most aspects of our economic and regulatory life. It rewrites the laws of every nation that signs it, all to increase the wealth of our pathological betters. We just need more people saying that.

Now comes Bill Moyers with an excellent, listenable primer on what TPP is and why it spells death to democracy (literally) and breathes even more life into the predator 1% of the 1%.

Governments involved with our betters in implementing the TPP “corporate-rule” agreement. These are the perps.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to Moyers’ great introduction, then to the discussion with Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism and Dean Baker of CEPR. This is one of the best ways to come up to speed on TPP I’ve found — very tight, very clear:

From the video’s introduction at Vimeo:

A US-led trade deal is currently being negotiated that could increase the price of prescription drugs, weaken financial regulations and even allow partner countries to challenge American laws. But few know its substance.

The pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is deliberately shrouded in secrecy, a trade deal powerful people, including President Obama, don’t want you to know about. Over 130 Members of Congress have asked the White House for more transparency about the negotiations and were essentially told to go fly a kite. While most of us are in the dark about the contents of the deal, which Obama aims to seal by year end, corporate lobbyists are in the know about what it contains.

And some vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the negotiations with sources they trust, including Dean Baker and Yves Smith, who join Moyers & Company this week. Both have written extensively about the TPP and tell Bill the pact actually has very little to do with free trade.

Instead, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “This really is a deal that’s being negotiated by corporations for corporations and any benefit it provides to the bulk of the population of this country will be purely incidental.” Yves Smith, an investment banking expert who runs the Naked Capitalism blog adds: “There would be no reason to keep it so secret if it was in the interest of the public.”

Suitable for sharing with your friends and online associates. Seriously; help to make TPP a household name ahead of the Senate hearings on it and the Fast-Track legislation that will introduce it.

We’ll be following this closely as well. At some point soon, we’ll all need concerted and raucous citizen opposition. As Moyers and company show, this is as big a deal as stopping Big Carbon in its tracks. If we don’t prevent this, TPP will rewrite constitutions across the globe, including here at home.

And believe me, our poor Constitution has taken on a lot of rewriting lately. Save the Constitution. Help kill the TPP “corporate-rule” agreement. (More information here.)

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Bill and Hillary Clinton were the head cheerleaders for Monsanto and are now major shareholders in chief of this global disaster waiting to happen. Yes, Bill Gates is now partnered with all of this and is behind global PHARMA and killing public health around the world. You know......public media's 'good billionaire'.

The reason you will see corporate NPR/APM keep all political comment to neo-liberals and neo-cons is that they want only global corporate pols to get airtime even is the only media outlet that should promote free and fair elections and -----PUBLIC MEDIA.

WYPR IN MARYLAND HAS DELIBERATELY CAPTURED ALL PUBLIC MEDIA AND SILENCES ELECTION RACES NOT COMMITTED TO GLOBAL CORPORATIONS!

Monsanto and Hillary Clinton's Redemptive First Act as Secretary of State

By Linn Cohen-Cole
Op-Ed News, February 9, 2009
Straight to the Source

For those who hope Obama will bring something different to the world, we must first see clearly what is happening, and make demands of him that are profound, not show.

Liberals are pleased he may appoint a White House farmer to plant an organic garden. That is empty show.

Meanwhile corporations like Monsanto are moving rapidly to take control of food supplies ... and democracies, including ours. www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/1/192127/2714/736/691835

Obama chose Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. We cannot know what deals were struck to make her stop her destructive campaigning long after it was apparent she had lost. But we do know that Mark Penn, CEO for Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's large PR firms representing Monsanto.
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=392
advised her for years and ran her campaign. And when she showed up again, by Obama's side, suddenly so did a man named Michael Taylor ... also again.

MIchael Taylor is a Monsanto lawyer Bill Clinton once put in charge of the FDA where he approved Monsanto's rBGH. Hillary was back, andObama was putting Taylor on his transition team. www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15710.cfm

Using the transition team's advice, Obama appointed Tom Vilsack to head the USDA, overriding 20,000 opposing "grassroots" emails. The objection to Vilsack? His deep Monsanto connections.

www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15573.cfm

Hillary Clinton's connections to Monsanto go way back the Rose Law Firm where she worked. Rose represents Monsanto, Tyson, and Walmart -the world leaders in#genetic engineering, animal production and industrialized food. She received favors there, as did Bill. In office, Bill's USDA immediately and significantly weakened chicken waste and contamination standards, easing Tyson's poultry-factory expansion, www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html , and his USDA head, Espy, was indicted for bribes, money laundering, and much more, with Tyson was the largest corporate offender.

What happened specifically with Monsanto?
Bill appointed Michael Taylor head of the FDA and put other Monsanto employees in as US Agricultural Trade Representatives, onto International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more ...

Original story, more: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-and-Hillary-Cli...

By MBD June 29, 2013
Yes, Monsanto Actually DID Buy the BLACKWATER Mercenary Group!

A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (later called Xe Services and more recently “Academi“) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State “security services,” that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.

Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training – for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.

One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.

Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of “public disclosure” of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a “totally separate entity from Blackwater.”

However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become “Monsanto’s intelligence arm,” spying on activists and other actions, including “our people to legally integrate these groups.” Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.

No wonder that a company engaged in the “science of death” as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of “philanthropy.” Another association that is not surprising.

It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of “market competition” of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really “donating” anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their “donations” finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.

Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa” (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.

Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.

So why were so many media outlets, editorialists and bloggers clamoring to say that the purchase was a “hoax”?

That’s a good question. The more cynical among us might suspect a financial incentive from Monsanto itself to such “journalists.” Monsanto indeed has hired a public relations team to seek out critical blogs and websites reporting on their crimes against both Nature and humankind. We have seen this first hand in comments on PoliticalBlindSpot.com articles on Monsanto. It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that they have created blogs where seemingly legitimate authors write organic thoughts, observations and rebuttals. The public presumes these are real-world people, when in fact they are working PR for the company.

But the core argument of those who claim that the Monsanto purchase of Blackwater is not true lies in the fact that we can only officially document Blackwater being hired by Monsanto for years. Immediately following this extensive work that Blackwater did for Monsanto, they sold the company. Because of the nature of how the sale transpired, it is impossible to document who the sale was to. The obvious and logical conclusion to insiders (particularly in the private security industry), however, is that the sale was in fact to Monsanto who had been employing the group.

Xe (now Academi) has, indeed, been purchased, and while there’s no way of DOCUMENTING who the new owners really are, the logical conclusion would be that Monsanto, who had been employing them prior to the sale are the new owners. This, of course, would also make sense of the secrecy surrounding the deal and the identity of the new owners. The company was bought out by private investors via private equity companies that don’t have to divulge any of their dealings, with Bank of America providing much of the $200 million in financing for the deal.

New York-based USTC Holdings said it will acquire Xe and its core operating subsidiaries, but did not disclose the price or terms of the agreement in a statement.

USTC Holdings is an investor consortium led by private equity firms Forte Capital Advisors and Manhattan Partners.

Various researchers have been trying to document the buy via a paper trail, but so far without much luck. That, of course, is the point…

Keeping it private

One thing that is known: Forte Capital Advisors is the baby of long-time Blackwater ally Jason De Yonker:

DeYonker has unique experience with the Company that dates back to its founding in the late 1990s. He advised the Company through development of its early business plan and expansion of the Moyock training facility as well as supporting negotiations of its first training contracts with U.S. government agencies. Between 1998 and 2002, Mr. DeYonker co-managed Xe founder, Erik Prince’s family office which included management of Mr. Prince’s portfolio companies.

What does that mean? The guy is a glorified accountant.

Prior to joining Forté, Jason co-managed a +$100 million family office. In addition to actively managing various platform companies, Jason was a part of the executive team responsible for family wealth management.

Jason has spent the last 18 years advising on various mergers, acquistions and divestitures with an aggregate transaction value greater than $1 billion. Jason’s experience include: transaction advisory, portfolio management, real estate development, venture capital and cross border dealings. Jason began his career with Arthur Andersen Corporate Finance Group, and was a Director in Deloitte & Touche’s Corporate Finance Group. He also was the Finance Director for the West Family Trust, a venture capital group focused on cross-border transactons.

Jason recieved a Bachelor of Business Administration, with a concentration in finance and accounting, from the Univeristy of Michigan.

The other investor? It looks like the very junior partner will be Manhattan Partners, a private equity company – a shop that gathers money from anonymous rich investors and uses the pool of cash to leverage buyouts of big companies they wouldn’t have been able to take over on their own.

Manhattan Partners invests in “compelling growth and special situation transactions,” but this will be their first known foray into defense industries – WarIsBusiness.com reports (via Spencer Ackerman):

Manhattan Growth Partners is led by Dean Bosacki and Patrick McBride. Bosacki serves on the board of “the world’s largest commencement photography business,” among other companies. Manhattan Growth Partners, which describes itself as “a progressive thinking private equity firm,” also holds a majority interest in Hugo Naturals, a line of organic, vegan-friendly soaps, lotions, scents and soy candles sold at Whole Foods and other greenwashed retailers.

At the end of the day, it would seem the logical conclusion is that in spite of arguments to the contrary, Monsanto in fact did by the Blackwater mercenary group… or at least the renamed Blackwater Xe (now Academi) Services group. The big question now is why?

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All over the world Monsanto and GMO are tied to massive crop failures as industrial agriculture and Monsanto's patented seed controls all the world's food when a nation allows it to enter their country. This is why Monsanto has needed to become militarized and it is why Bill and Hillary Clinton has had to make the Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) about forcing nations to allow industrial farming into nations signing these pacts. SEE WHY THE CITIZENS OF THE WORLD ARE FIGHTING THESE TRADE DEALS?

The American people are relying on nations of the world to force these neo-liberal policies down while US media captures all journalism on this fight against global trade agreements!

Scientists Warn EPA Over Monsanto’s GMO Crop Failures, Dangers

by Anthony Gucciardi
March 12th, 2012
Updated 11/04/2012 at 12:07 am

A group of scientists is calling for major federal action in order to deal with the threat posed by Monsanto’s GMO crops, now petitioning the EPA to address the issue head on. The group of 22 academic corn experts are drawing attention to the immense failure of Monsanto’s genetically modified corn, which is developing mutated and resistant insects as a result of its widespread usage. Corn is critical not only as a food staple, but is heavily used in ethanol production, animal feed, and much more. As GM corn becomes the norm, currently taking over 94 percent of the supply, these scientists are seriously concerned about the future of corn production.

Joseph Spencer is one outspoken member of the group, a corn entomologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, part of the University of Illinois. Spencer states that what is happening is no surprise, instead it is something that needs to be addressed. Warning the EPA over the dangers, the experts sent a letter on March 5th to the agency explaining their worries regarding long-term corn production prospects in light of GMO crops failures. Specifically, the experts are worried about the lack of protection presented by GMO crops against rootworms.

The EPA has already acknowledged that Monsanto’s GMO crops are creating resistant rootworms, which are now ravaging the GMO crops as they mutate to the biopesticide used known as Bacillus thuringiensis (BT). The EPA found that the resistant rootworms, which are evolving to resist the insecticide, are currently found Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska. After the EPA evaluated documented cases of severe crop damage as well as reports from entomologists, the EPA stated “Monsanto’s program for monitoring suspected cases of resistance is ‘inadequate’”.

Essentially, the GMO crops are doing the opposite of their supposed purpose — leading to more damage from rootworms as they become mutated to resist the defense of the crops. And Monsanto has answered by simply further genetically modifying the Bt, which research shows is extremely ineffective.

“When insecticides overlay transgenic technology, the economic and environmental advantages of rootworm-protected corn quickly disappear,” the scientists wrote.

It’s time for the EPA and other agencies to address the serious threats to nature and human health presented by Monsanto’s genetically modified creations.

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April 04th, 2014

4/4/2014

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A ENTIRE ECONOMY IS BEING BUILT WITHOUT ANY INPUT FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND IT ALL INVOLVES GLOBAL CORPORATIONS, SPYING AND SURVEILLANCE, AND SOAKING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WITH DEBT AND INCREASING ANGER AT THE US.

CAN YOU IMAGINE ALLOWING THE US TO DEVELOP AN EXPORT MARKET FOR DRONES AND SPYING SO THAT AUTOCRATIC SOCIETIES AROUND THE WORLD COULD SUPPRESS THEIR CITIZENS INTO OBLIVION?

THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL FOR YOU! 100% TOTALITARIAN AND ALL MARYLAND'S POLS ARE NEO-LIBERAL!

Regarding the political fight called Maryland's 'TILTING AT WINDMILLS:

The latest of political discourse is exactly the source for political satire seen on Saturday Night Live. It is absurd to the max and shows how our political system at both the Federal and State level is distorted beyond belief. Here are two neo-liberals both working for two sets of corporations neither of which has anything to do with public interest. Reforming Maryland contract bidding is a start. We will need Bernie Sanders hitting the Federal Military funding to end the mess Hoyer has built for his constituents.

CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND WILL FIX BOTH!

The wind farm project should have been public. We need our utilities taken public as a way to protect the citizens of Maryland from the current abuses of a criminal Wall Street market. This wind farm project should never have been given to a Texas corporation because Texas is a Right to Work state that abuses its labor and all these out-of-state contractors bring their own employees or work Maryland labor as they would in Texas.

MARYLAND CONTRACTS NEED TO GO TO MARYLAND SMALL BUSINESS FIRST. Cost Benefit Analysis------from a public interest and not corporate profit.

Raise your hand if you like the idea of drone warfare that has the entire world angry at the US for razing villages and killing innocent civilians-----NO ONE. Raise your hand if you want this technology mainstreamed into our domestic economy so that hummingbird drones fly into your open windows to videotape your every move----NO ONE. Stealth technology means nations of the world will be coming to the US to do the same. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND. So, MR. STENY HOYER who voted to break Glass Steagall and NAFTA to create these global corporations and corporate rule now needs these technologies to protect US corporations overseas. I know, let's return to rebuilding our US domestic economy by downsizing US global corporations and basing our economy on small and regional businesses that will not spread tyranny around the world. We have dolphin radar for goodness sake developed by mother nature.

BUILDING TOTALITARIAN MILITARY AND POLICING IS NOT A GOOD ECONOMIC ENGINE FOR MARYLAND!

Steny Hoyer is a Third Way neo-liberal as is O'Malley so neither support environmental issues. Neo-liberals support corporate interests first and that means labor and justice, including environmental justice will always lose. So, these windfarms deals were never about the environment and always about pay-to-play money to Obama campaign donors....and soon O'Malley campaign donors. Maryland has the worst of environmental policies and never enforce laws that do get passed so we fully expect these wind farms to send money to the private corporation to build and then be useless to alternative energy resources. Making alternative energy PUBLIC UTILITIES would show commitment to green energy.

Let's look at the issue. A Texas-based developer gets this Maryland state job. Texas has the worst Right to Work laws and these deals always allow the contractors to bring their own employees so there goes the strong employment/work for Maryland small business for the most part. Oh, that's right, Maryland businesses will be subcontractors to subcontractors. Then, let's look at the business Steny Hoyer is protecting-----stealth radar for drones. Indeed, Maryland is ground zero for all of the spying and drone warfare that no one in the US wants. HELLO!!!!!!!

So, we are watching our neo-liberal politicians argue over whether a Texas corporation gets to profit from what should be a public project and whether it will bother an unwanted spying/surveillance drone warfare operation. The answer is NONE OF THE ABOVE.

Southern Maryland is being made ground zero for this NSA/international-law breaking drone warfare. This is the problem. I'm sure that Southern Maryland would appreciate the opportunity to have completely different economic drivers.

The solution seems to be as is true of all neo-liberal policy coming from Maryland Assembly and O'Malley------NONE OF THE ABOVE. Kill the military research making the US a rogue nation that breaks international law and kill the deal with Texas corporations that take our business and bring workers that are subjected to the worst of labor laws.

Hoyer, O'Malley administration spar over Eastern Shore wind project Impact on Southern Maryland naval air base debated

By Timothy B. Wheeler, The Baltimore Sun 8:35 p.m. EDT, April 1, 2014

In a duel of sorts between two of Maryland's top Democrats, U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer went to Annapolis Tuesday to press for legislation opposed by Gov. Martin O'Malley that Southern Maryland officials insist is needed to protect their region's prized naval air base from an Eastern Shore wind energy project.

Hoyer, who represents Southern Maryland in Congress, said he was making his first appearance before a legislative committee since leaving the General Assembly for Washington in the 1970s. He said he did so because he fears giant wind turbines proposed in Somerset County could jeopardize the future of Naval Air Station Patuxent River, which supporters say is an economic engine not only for the region but for the entire state.

"I want wind energy in this state and in this country," Hoyer said. "But not at the expense of undermining the viability and effectiveness" of the St. Mary's County base, where a unique radar system is used to test the stealth capability of aircraft.

Hoyer and other Southern Maryland officials warned the Senate Finance Committee that the turbines could interfere with the radar and lead to the testing being transferred — along with the thousands of jobs associated with it — to an air base in California or elsewhere.

But the Texas-based developer of the $200 million Somerset wind project says it has reached an agreement in principle with the Navy to turn off the 25 turbines whenever radar tests are to be run. And some current and retired military officials have said that would work.

A state Senate committee is considering a bill passed by the House, which would for 15 months effectively block commercial wind development within 56 miles of the air base — a zone stretching across the Chesapeake Bay to encompass the proposed Great Bay wind project on the western edge of Somerset. The developer, Pioneer Green, has warned that the delay would kill the project.

Supporters of the bill contend that the wind project needs to be delayed pending completion of a $2 million study looking at ways to remedy a turbine's impact on the radar system.

O'Malley didn't appear in person to oppose the bill, but Abigail Hopper, his energy adviser and director of the Maryland Energy Administration, told lawmakers the governor considered the legislation both unnecessary and potentially harmful to the state's efforts to woo more renewable energy projects.

"The governor has no desire to harm Pax River," Hopper said, using the base's nickname, but argued it's not "an either-or-choice." She pointed out there are both federal and state laws guaranteeing that the Navy can impose conditions on or even block approval of any wind project it believes would impair or degrade operations of one of its facilities.

Moreover, she said, such a broad moratorium could make it harder for the state to achieve a goal set at O'Malley's urging of getting 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2022.

"You will create a reputation across the country that Maryland is not open for clean energy development," she said.

Adam Cohen, vice president and founder of Pioneer Green, said the company has already invested nearly $4 million in leasing land and planning for its 25 turbines. And he said the company has worked out a deal with Navy officials to turn off its turbines whenever the base needs to run radar tests, so there would be no interference.

That deal has not been signed by all the necessary officials, however. Hoyer said he had asked the Navy to hold off pending completion of the study.

The congressman suggested the wind project is being foisted on Pax River by an Obama administration committed to promoting renewable energy. He suggested turning off the turbines was no remedy because it might tip off the nation's adversaries when the Navy was conducting classified radar tests.

Moreover, Hoyer and other base supporters said unspecified "customers" of Patuxent River — military aircraft programs, foreign governments and private contractors conducting testing there — object to the agreement and could take their business elsewhere. Letting the wind project go forward now under that arrangement could weaken Maryland's ability to retain all the operations and jobs at Pax River the next time the Pentagon orders a realignment of bases nationwide, they warned.

Cohen countered that wind turbines generally operate only about 30 percent of the time anyway, so it would be hard to divine when testing was being done. And Pam Kasemeyer, the company's lobbyist, said Patuxent already signals publicly — by a balloon launch — when it is about to conduct radar tests.

The developer also pointed to a statement from a former director of the Pentagon agency that referees such disputes over energy projects near military bases, who called the concerns of Patuxent River supporters "misplaced." Turning off the turbines would remove any interference, said David Belote, a retired Air Force colonel. He also said there was little prospect of the Navy or its customers abandoning Patuxent River because the costs of moving the sophisticated radar system elsewhere would be "astronomical."

The Department of Defense has issued varying statements about the deal. When first asked about it last month by The Baltimore Sun, a Pentagon spokesman said Pioneer Green's agreement to turn off its turbines "will provide the periodic curtailment of operations required by the Navy."

More recently, a different spokesman, Navy Lt. Greg D. Raelson, said that the agreement "still requires revisions and has not been approved by the Navy." He declined to elaborate.

The only Navy representative to speak at the hearing told lawmakers that for security reasons he could not discuss what issues the base may still have with turning off the turbines.

Outside the hearing room, though, Gary Kessler, executive director of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, said the Navy's primary concern with the agreement is not technical but legal. Officials want to ensure that it is legally enforceable. Unless some technical fix is found, he said, base officials do worry how they could manage if more such projects are proposed on the lower Shore.

The developer's lobbyist and O'Malley's energy adviser both suggested a compromise — impose the moratorium, but allow any project with a signed agreement with the Navy to proceed.

Some members of the Finance Committee, particularly those with military background or with a military base in their district, indicated they side with the Southern Marylanders. But Sen. Allan Kittleman, a Howard County Republican, said he was torn.

"We talk about having these renewable energy goals," he said. If much of the state is off-limits to protect Patuxent River, he said, "I'm at a loss how we're going to get to these goals. This is really tough."
__________________________________________

As someone who supports public utilities I would support public alternative energy as would any democrat. Neo-liberals who are not democrats but corporate pols want all public sector operations privatized because then corporate profit soars. This is what O'Malley and Hoyer are fighting over. Not what is in the public interest, but which corporation has its profits threatened.

WE WANT MARYLAND UTILITIES PUBLIC AND REGULATED SO RATES STAY LOW, PUBLIC EMPLOYEES ARE WELL-PAID AND HAVE A CAREER, AND PUBLIC MONEY IS SPENT ON PUBLIC ASSETS.

I had a 'green' energy employee come to my door this week trying to get me to switch from BGE to this 'green' corporation that wants these BGE green surcharges tied to alternative energy in Maryland. COMMERCE ENERGY selling itself as a 'green energy' corporation wanting to receive the green energy surcharge on my BGE bill. This is all connected to wind farms. So, with a simple click of the computer Commerce Energy was going to get the green energy surcharge attached to the BGE bill. Commerce Energy now has 'local' businesses all over the country.

NOTICE THIS CORPORATION WAS CREATED IN 2008 JUST TO RECEIVE YOUR GREEN ENERGY SURCHARGE.
Commerce Energy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Commerce Energy Group, Inc., based in Costa Mesa, California, USA, was the parent company of a wholly owned independent electricity and natural gas marketing company, Commerce Energy Inc.. The company was purchased by Universal Energy Group on December 11, 2008.[1]

On July 31, 2008, Commerce had 155,000 customers. Revenue for the fiscal year 2008, ending July 31, 2008, was $460 million. The company had 200 employees on July 31, 2008.

Meanwhile, Maryland has doubled-down on making Maryland citizens pay Wall Street speculators for profits and completely deregulated its energy sector to maximize those profits. None of this has anything to do with the democratic party. It is neo-liberal.

States still having their public utilities are having to fight for them as these national energy corporations buy politicians right and left.

CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND WILL FIGHT FOR PUBLIC UTILITIES AND REGULATION.

Energy in New Hampshire

A blog about New Hampshire energy matters

by Mike Mooiman, an engineer and business program professor at Franklin Pierce University.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

What’s It All About, Alfie?* - A Primer on Public Utilities

I have followed with great interest the various reports, meetings and debates regarding the restructuring of the electricity market in New Hampshire and the impact it has had on the State's largest electrical utility, Public Services of New Hampshire (PSNH). In the past, we allowed public utilities, like PSNH, to have unopposed access to supply services to consumers in designated areas. For much of the last century this monopolistic model worked as it permitted the build-out of the infrastructure, such as roads, power lines, railways, airports, communications networks, etc., that we now have across the country and that are so important to our economic success.

However, times have changed, economic thought has evolved, and there has been deregulation of many of these utilities. We now require that utilities give up their monopolistic hold on their markets and that they compete with other suppliers for customers. For example, consider what has happened with telephone service and the airlines and more recently with electricity supply in some states. This has had profound implications for the utilities, their investors and for us as consumers. In my next series of posts, I plan to take a look at utilities in general, at what has been happening to electrical utilities during this wave of deregulation and at the issue of stranded costs.

I think it is important to understand what a public utility is and what its obligations are because, in the electricity deregulation debate here in NH, I am sometimes astonished at the vitriolic comments aimed at public utilities such as PSNH and the condemnation of their actions. Now I am no advocate for the public utility industry, but it is essential that we discuss these matters on the basis of facts and data rather than on emotion and gut feel. It is my sense that the debate surrounding public utilities and deregulation could benefit from a reiteration of some key facts about utilities. I appreciate that many of the readers of this blog are probably familiar with these matters, but for new students in the energy world, a primer on utilities is, I think, useful material to cover.

So let's turn our attention to improving our understanding of a utility. A useful definition of a utility is provided by Rick Geddes, Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He states that "Utilities typically create a good or service at one location, and then distribute it over a 'network' where it is delivered to numerous customers for end use."

The delivery of electricity, natural gas and land-line telephone service are obvious examples. The supply of these services are delivered by organizations that need to run their infrastructure, such as power lines or supply piping, through a community to get to their customers. Sewer service is another example of a utility. In this case, the service is removing water-borne waste from our homes through a network of piping to be treated at another location. Other utilities we tend to forget about are the transportation networks provided by trucking, rail and air travel.

The key to a utility is the distribution network that has to run between and through communities. As a result, the utilities need the ability to utilize parts of the public space of a community to put equipment in place to establish the network. These service networks can only be established and made to function if the community allows the utility access and rights-of-way to put up support structures to carry wires or to dig up roads and sidewalks to lay piping. However, establishing these networks is a very disruptive and expensive endeavor, so this led to the concept of a natural monopoly: we agree to provide the utility with the sole right to supply the service in a specified area - a franchise as it were - on condition that it is done cost effectively, safely and that the service is reliable.

By allowing the monopoly, we in the community benefit from having the service network built and operated and the utility benefits from an assured revenue and profit stream as they have no competition in the provision of the service. We as a community also gain by virtue of only having one company digging up our roads or stringing power lines, i.e, we avoid congestion of power lines, utility poles, and pipelines in our public spaces. In permitting monopolistic access to our community in exchange for cost-effective, safe and reliable service, we, in essence, establish a financial and regulatory agreement or compact with the service provider.

In the figure below I have attempted to capture the main aspects of the financial and regulatory compact. The fundamental nature of the agreement is that we get affordable, safe and reliable service and the utility gets an assured rate of return for an extended period of time. At the same time, we do not permit these utilities unchecked access to our communities. We insist on the regulation of these utilities; we want them to be transparent about their financial performance so that they make reasonable, but not excessive, returns on their investments; we want to be involved in establishing rates for service; we want them to make long-term investments in infrastructure; and not discriminate against customers. The utilities, on the other hand, without challenges from competitors, are assured of a large customer base, a profitable business, steady returns to investors and, as a result, they have the ability to borrow money at low rates to fund the infrastructure projects. They are also given the power of eminent domain to obtain the land to install their networks.

Administration of this regulatory compact, with all its different configurations and nuances, is largely done by the various state-based Public Utilities Commissions (PUCs) which sit between the communities and the utilities. There is some federal based regulation of utilities. Specifically, it is the task of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to regulate the interstate transmission of electricity, oil and gas as well as the operation and location of hydropower projects. The NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is in charge of nuclear power plants.

As noted, most of the regulation of utilities is done on a state by state basis. Here in NH, we have the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission which is run by three appointed Commissioners. They have the challenging and interesting task of regulating a range of utilities to ensure folks in New Hampshire get reliable, safe and reasonably priced services. In New Hampshire the law is quite clear on what a public utility is. Specifically RSA 362:2 states that:
"The term "public utility" shall include every corporation, company, association, joint stock association, partnership and person, their lessees, trustees or receivers appointed by any court, except municipal corporations and county corporations operating within their corporate limits, owning, operating or managing any plant or equipment or any part of the same for the conveyance of telephone or telegraph messages or for the manufacture or furnishing of light, heat, sewage disposal, power or water for the public, or in the generation, transmission or sale of electricity ultimately sold to the public, or owning or operating any pipeline, including pumping stations, storage depots and other facilities, for the transportation, distribution or sale of gas, crude petroleum, refined petroleum products, or combinations of petroleum products, rural electric cooperatives organized pursuant to RSA 301 or RSA 301-A and any other business, except as hereinafter exempted, over which on September 1, 1951, the public utilities commission exercised jurisdiction."

So in New Hampshire, public utilities are electricity and natural gas suppliers, landline telephone companies, as well as drinking water supply and sewage treatment enterprises. They do not include your cable company or your cell phone service supplier.

There are different ownership structures for public utilities. There are utilities that are owned by the community - municipal drinking water supply and sewage services are typical examples and there are even a few communities in NH that have municipal electricity companies – there are cooperatives that are owned by their members, and then there are large investor-owned utilities, such as natural gas, electricity providers and landline telephone services that we all know (and like to complain about).

In supplying a service to a community, a public utility has to take into account three key aspects of the utility business. The first is the generation of service that it is supplying. This is usually some central location like a power plant for an electrical utility or the treatment works for the handling and discharge of domestic sewage. Secondly, these services often need to be supplied over long distances, so there is the transmission part of a utility. For example, consider the railway lines between cities or those large power lines that run across the state delivering electricity to towns. Finally, there is the distribution network where the service is dispersed throughout the community to reach individual residences and businesses. Examples of distribution networks include the telephone lines that run down our roads or the electrical wires and transformers that are spread throughout our communities.

The basic structure of the utility industry - the generation, transmission and distribution aspects - is shown in the figure below. Some utilities are focused on just one or two aspects of this network, e.g., I live in a community with a municipal electrical company and their focus is just on the distribution network, whereas some utilities deal with all three. PSNH is a public utility that deals with all three aspects of the utility business which is the cause for some of the challenges they currently face.

With this basic knowledge of a public utility and the regulatory compact involved, I will, in my next post, take a closer look at electrical utilities and the some aspects of deregulation of electricity supply in New Hampshire.

Until next time, remember to turn off the lights when you leave the room but, before you do, take a moment to think about the network that was involved in getting electricity to that light bulb.

____________________________________________

Meanwhile this is what O'Malley and Hoyer are working towards. Skyrocketing private wind energy global corporations. The Texas corporation? It is a venture capitalist----One51 is a global corporation that intends to take over control of these facilities for the long-term.

So, in Somerset County, Maryland this opertation is given a name of Great Bay------the development firm is Pioneer Green Energy and the investment corporation set to take control is One51, a global energy corporation. What part of this sounds good for Maryland citizens?

Do you think Eastern Shore residents know that a global corporation controls what is being marketed as a 'local' business is taking hold? Do Maryland citizens know yet another global corporation controls the economy in Maryland? A utility at that!

Renewable Energy: Pioneer Green Energy
NTR

In 2010, One51 invested in Pioneer Green Energy LLC, a next generation wind developer focused on developing assets in a number of US states. One51 has board representation and an option to take a controlling interest in the business.

Pioneer Green aims to assemble a large pipeline of competitive build-ready wind and solar projects targeted to the mid-term market in the United States. The company sees its niche in the innovative approach it takes solving transmission and other special issues blocking otherwise good renewable energy projects.
Wind Map

Headed by Andrew Bowman, Pioneer Green boasts an experienced founding team who, in their respective careers to date, have helped develop almost 3 GW of operational projects across America. These projects are now owned by some of the largest renewable energy companies in the industry.

Pioneer Green has a broad geographic reach, however the team remain extremely discerning when considering potential projects. Once a development is selected, Pioneer Green’s hands-on detail orientated approach to project management fosters a collaborative relationship with property owners and other stakeholders, enabling previous obstacles to be surmounted to mutual benefit.

Wind Energy Companies
A Snapshot of the Global Wind Industry

By Nick Hodge    August 26, 2008

Editor's Note: The article below provides an excellent snapshot of the global wind industry from a bird's-eye view. For a more detailed and updated look at the sector, check out Jeff Siegel's piece on top wind energy companies.

I've discussed wind energy in these pages many times before, but the conversation seems to have always turned to a discussion of wind turbine stocks.

Today, I want to take a step back, look at the industry as a whole, and focus more broadly on wind energy companies.

The Wind Energy Industry

First, let's get a quick rundown of the growth of the domestic and international wind markets out of the way.

Here's the chart for wind power capacity growth by year:

wind power capacity growth by country

As you can see, global installed capacity for wind energy has grown 482% over the last seven years, from 14,604 MW in 2000 to 84,934 MW in 2007.

Broken down further, the international wind industry has a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR or year-over-year) of 28.6%, which is impressive, to say the least.

But the past performance of the wind energy stocks is going to do little to help the future performance of your portfolio, apart from establishing an historic trend and highlighting what you've been missing.

So here's the global wind energy installed capacity forecast, going out to 2012:

wind energy installed capacity forecast
This data reveals that the industry will grow 215% between 2007 and 2012, from 84,934 MW to 267,837 MW. That's a CAGR of 25.8%

Now this is information that can give your portfolio a boost. In an industry that's doubling in size every four years or less, there are surely more than a few companies worthy of investment operating within it.

The only thing left to do is to actively seek out the best ones.

To start the search, it's probably worth taking a look at the countries currently boasting the highest year-over-year growth in the wind industry. So here they are, along with their respective annual growth rates, as provided by GlobalData:

    Turkey, 95.4%

    Mexico, 84.7%

    Brazil, 61%

    China, 54%

    Poland, 50.9%

Of course, those are the fastest growing markets. According to GlobalData, the largest markets by megawatt capacity are:

    China, 51,200 MW

    U.S, 45,454 MW

    Spain, 36,715 MW

    Germany, 35,829 MW

    India, 25,935 MW

The only thing left to do is single out the largest operators in those areas, invest, and reap the profits.

Wind Energy Companies

Let's begin with China since that's the only country to appear in both the largest market and fastest grower categories. Per GlobalData, here are the largest wind companies operating in China that each installed more than 100 MW in 2007:

    Goldwind Science and Technology (SZ: 002202)

    Sinovel Windtec Co.

    Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica (MCE: GAM)

    Vestas Wind Systems (CPH: VWS)

    Dongfang Electric Corporation (HKSE: 1072)

    GE Energy (NYSE: GE)

    Suzlon Energy Limited (NSE: SUZLON)

Most of those companies trade on foreign exchanges. If you dabble in those markets, my money is on Vestas and Gamesa, with Suzlon in third. But the companies that trade in China could see significant growth as the industry continues to mature.

Vestas, for example, is getting $1,628 per kW for their turbines. The average price is $1,008 per kW.

In the U.S., which is the market most of you are probably interested in, the dynamic shifts dramatically.

Here are the largest companies operating in our domestic wind market:

    GE Energy (NYSE: GE)

    Vestas Wind Systems (CPH: VWS)

    Siemens AG (NYSE: SI)

    Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica (MCE: GAM)

    Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (TYO: 7011)

    Suzlon Energy Limited (NSE: SUZLON)

    Clipper Windpower (LSE: CWP)

    Nordex (FRANKFURT: NDX1)

Of course, my first two picks of Vestas and Gamesa still stand, and now you can see it's because of their intense presence across multiple markets. My sleeper pick here is Nordex.

The other side of the coin is to look at the largest wind farms being erected to identify the companies involved. Here are the companies that come up when discussing the largest planned wind farms in the U.S., and around the world:

    Clipper Windpower (LSE: CWP)

    British Petroleum (NYSE: BP)

    Naikun Wind (TSX.V: NKW)

    Vattenfall AB

    SUEZ (PARIS: SZE)

    RWE Group (XETRA: RWE)

Naikun probably offers the lowest share price in relation to potential for that group.

A Windy Future

So that's a snapshot of the global wind industry. I think some clear winners are definitely emerging.

But there is much more to come. And some tiny companies will certainly make their mark before all is said and done.

This is because the big boys alone can't satiate the surging demand for wind energy and related products and services.

For example, through 2020 in Europe, wind is expected to account for 34% of new generating capacity. It'll account for 46% from 2020-2030.

And the goal of attaining 12-14% of Europe's power from wind by 2020 is well within reach.

Here in the U.S., an Energy Department study found that wind energy could generate 20% of U.S. electricity by 2030, as compared to today's one percent.

So there's still a lot of work and investment to come.

The companies discussed so far will certainly play a vital role in wind's growth. But a handful of companies are providing specialty parts and service that are also crucial to the industry, like transmission cables, installation services, gearboxes, and, increasingly, turbines.

As I said, this is snapshot of the industry—a very dynamic industry that's constantly changing.

While it's possible to base investment decisions on stationary data like this, it's probably wise to have constant updates and recommendations to really stay on top of things, especially since they change everyday.

With that in mind, the Alternative Energy Speculator has designed a way for you to cash in on the booming wind energy market.

I've compiled a full report that analyzes the wind industry, telling you exactly how much it's going to grow, and releasing the names of three companies you must own if you want to reap lucrative wind profits.

You can't afford to miss this opportunity or the chance to get in today on the wind energy giants of tomorrow.

Read the report today!

Call it like you see it,

nick hodge

Nick

___________________________________________

Below you see how this was sold in Maryland and it is always the minority contractors and labor unions who are told they will benefit. A Texas corporation awarded the development contract forces local contractors to bid so low for awards that they almost always earn no profit and rarely use union labor.

Imagine a Texas development corporation bringing its labor to Maryland and then a global corporation One51 bringing its staff from all over the world.
Who gets hired?

Friday, March 30, 2012

Maryland’s offshore wind farm could blow contracts ashore
Businesses prepare for work on proposed turbine project
Lindsey Robbins, Staff Writer

An offshore wind farm will mean opportunities for a range of small and minority-owned businesses in Maryland, executives learned Wednesday.

“There are many different industries involved in this project, industries that are already here in Maryland,” Ross Tyler, director of the Business Coalition for Maryland Offshore Wind told businesspeople attending a forum in Annapolis.

Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) is calling for a 310-megawatt installation off the coast of Ocean City, at a cost of almost $1 billion. State estimates predict the project’s economic impact during the next five years could reach $2 billion, with $8.7 million in additional state tax revenues. O’Malley has introduced legislation that would add fees to electric users’ bills to help attract developers to build the wind farm.

The House Economic Matters Committee approved the bill Monday, after reducing the average residential ratepayers’ additional monthly fee to $1.50 from $2 and exempting from the surcharge the first 750 million kilowatt hours of annual electricity use by an industrial concern.

Other amendments under discussion include creating a $10 million Offshore Wind Business Development Fund to support a local supply chain for small and minority-owned businesses and a potential wind business incubator.

Prince George’s County Del. Michael L. Vaughn (D-Dist. 24) of Bowie said the fund is an important piece of the legislation to ensure small and minority-owned businesses receive equal opportunity to benefit from this project.

“I appreciated being able to give this my yes vote,” he said.

Ross illustrated the opportunities for businesses along every step of the wind farm’s life cycle, including its development, preparation of the turbine, preparation of the balance of the plant, installation, commissioning and operation.

He pointed out that local companies already are engaging in services and technologies that could bank off this project. AC Wind, a Salisbury manufacturer of wind energy composites, is prepared to make turbine blades, some of which can extend 300 feet in length. Areva of France, whose North American headquarters is in Bethesda, has the resources to make the wind tower’s nacelle, which is the size of a small house and stores all the electrical systems. Eaton, which makes electronic converters for offshore turbines and has an aerospace facility in Beltsville, also could work on the project.

At least 30 businesses support Ross’ coalition, ranging from those with ready skills to those trying to figure out where they could fit in, he said.

“There are thousands of components that go into this. It has an enormous tertiary supply chain,” Ross said. “This could operate for at least 25 years.”

‘Boots-on-the-ground jobs’

“These projects are going to create boots-on-the-ground jobs,” said R. Daniel Wallace, director of renewable energy systems for BithEnergy in Baltimore.

He cautioned that businesses prepare early and begin collaborating so they do not lose to outside competition, especially from the foreign market.

“When these jobs come to Maryland, you need to be able to identify where you can play,” he said.

Joe Gaskins, executive director of the nonprofit Economic Development & Training Institute incubator in Suitland, emphasized the need for proper training for businesses to get involved.

“You have to understand things like how wind works on water,” he said.

Gaskins said he hopes to be part of the proposed wind industry incubator, which would support up to 100 small and minority-owned businesses starting in 2013.

He said 200 small and minority-owned businesses already have the potential to compete for these contracts.

Richard Cerkovnik of Anne Arundel Community College discussed the community college resources, especially those in the science, technology, engineering and math fields, available for businesses to build capacity before these contracts go to bid.

Cerkovik’s college received a $19.7 million grant from the federal government last fall to lead the National STEM Consortium, which develops portable, certificate-level programs in these fields to meet occupational demands.

“If an industry needs something in terms of training, we can quickly ramp up our programs to meet it,” Cerkovnik said.

After the forum, Terry Goolsby of Sowinergy and Clozynergy in Upper Marlboro, said the nation needs better public policy in renewables if it hopes to keep up with other regions, such as Europe.

“This is a piecemeal reaction to a stimulus, rather than a holistic approach,” she said, referring to how the Ocean City farm is intended to connect to the Atlantic Wind Connection, which will help add 7,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbine capacity to the regional grid.

She said she supports the legislation because it gives Maryland businesses a chance at the opportunities, which otherwise would go to others.

The House committee’s approval is a good sign, Goolsby said.

“This is a proven industry and proven technology in other parts of the world, especially Europe. There’s absolutely no reason the U.S. can’t be participating and embracing this industry,” Ross said.

_____________________________

You don't hear Steny Hoyer and O'Malley shouting about the fact that there has been no public comment or input as to concerns. Maryland State Police now use drone radar that is part of tracking license plates and vehicular movement of all Maryland citizens. What's to worry? Well, totalitarianism doesn't end well for American citizens.

People are not afraid of technology development, they demand to be the ones making these decisions. When the Maryland Assembly and governor/mayor tell us over and over public business is classified simply because of outsourcing to private business---

WE HAVE ELIMINATED WE THE PEOPLE FROM ALL PUBLIC POLICY!

As Mary Pat Clarke shouted to me in Baltimore City Hall----SHE'LL WRITE ABOUT IT! That's all we are to expect as peasants.

Drones Flying Under the Radar
Thursday, 05 April 2012 09:33 By Tom Barry, Truthout | News Analysis



An undated handout photo of a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper, a drone aircraft aimed with laser-guided munitions and Hellfire missiles.An undated handout photo of a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper, a drone aircraft aimed with laser-guided munitions and Hellfire missiles. (Photo: Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt / US Air Force via The New York Times)

Drones are the future, especially in foreign wars, surveillance and law enforcement.

In all sizes, armed and unarmed, drones are proliferating at home and abroad. Some are loaded with missiles, others simply with Tasers, but all carry surveillance payloads.

These "eyes in the skies," also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPA), may soon be inescapable. For the most part, however, drones fly outside the radar of public scrutiny, Congressional oversight or international control.

In the seven years that the CIA and US military have deployed killer drones, the US Congress has never once debated the new commitment to drone operations. Although the CIA and the US military now routinely direct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) operations that enter foreign airspace, these interventions haven't been subject to serious Congressional review.

Drone operations often proceed without any authorization or knowledge of the intervened nations.

On the domestic front, local police and Homeland Security agents are also enthusiastically deploying drones for law enforcement and border security missions. At all levels, government in the United States is sidelining mounting civil rights, privacy and air safety concerns. The US Congress functions more as a booster for the drone industry than as a regulator.

In the United States, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the ACLU have brought a legal challenge to the "targeted killings" carried out by the CIA and the military's Joint Special Operations Command. "The executive branch is claiming the authority to target and kill any individual anywhere in the world - including American citizens - without any judicial process or oversight and without any transparency or accountability," Leili Kashani, CCR's advocacy program manager, told Truthout. "It is subverting the Constitution and international law in assuming the role of judge, jury and executioner."

Lately, other civil liberties groups, local and national, are also raising concerns about the lack of transparency, accountability and oversight over domestic drone deployment. Such groups include the Center for Technology and Democracy, the Electronic Policy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Drone proliferation has sparked the creation of new organizations, such as the International Center for Robotic Arms Controls, which are demanding global governance over international drone missions.

A stream of recent media reports about drone proliferation at home has sparked rising public interest and concern in the United States. The lack of attention by Congress to the drone-related privacy issues has precipitated a surge of citizen activism and nongovernmental organization advocacy - accompanied by a wave of alarmed blog postings and commentary.

The rising concerns in America about the implications of drone deployment parallels a more advanced public debate in Great Britain about the onset of the "surveillance society" and about the legal and human consequences of drone interventions in foreign nations.

One example of this new attention in the United States is the upcoming Drone Summit, which will bring a variety of civil libertarians, human rights activists, robotics technology experts and peace activists to Washington, DC, on April 28-29. The Drone Summit is jointly sponsored by the peace group CodePink and the legal advocacy organizations Reprieve (UK) and Center for Constitutional Rights. Described as the "first international drone summit," the event will feature military experts and first-hand testimonies by victims of drone strikes in Pakistan.

Medea Benjamin, author of the forthcoming book "Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control," says that "our nation is leading the way toward a new form of warfare where pilots sitting on the ground thousands of miles away command drone strikes, where targets are- in military jargon- 'neutralized,' and where unintended victims are dismissed as 'collateral damage.'"

Yet, drones aren't only about war fighting and extrajudicial killings overseas. Drones are also being deployed domestically by border security and law enforcement agencies. Predator drones deployed by Customs and Border Protection search for immigrants and drugs on the northern and southern borders, while metropolitan police and county sheriffs are acquiring smaller drones to assist their SWAT operations.

Under industry pressure, the Federal Aviation Administration was mandated by new Congressional legislation to adopt procedures to open US domestic airspace to private and governmental drones by 2015 and to allow police to start flying lightweight, line-of-sight drones by this summer. The new law was a major success for the new House Unmanned System Caucus and for the Association of Unmanned Vehicles Systems International, a drone industry group that works closely with the House drone caucus.

The drone freedom law also served as a wake-up call for a US public, which has been largely oblivious to advance of drones as a surveillance and law-enforcement instrument. Benjamin, who founded CodePink, warns, "As drones become an increasingly preferred form of warfare and as their presence expands at home, it is time to educate ourselves, the US public and our policymakers about drone proliferation." For Benjamin, activism needs to complement education if drone proliferation is to be subjected to the necessary accountability, transparency and oversight. "As remotely controlled warfare and spying race forward," she says, "it is also time to organize to end current abuses and to prevent the potentially widespread misuse both overseas and here at home."

Internationally, the simultaneously contentious and mutually self-serving relationship between the United States and Pakistan has lately been stuck at an impasse over routine US drone surveillance over that nation and killer drone strikes in Pakistani tribal areas. The Pakistani Parliament and public protests say the drone interventions must stop, while the Obama administration says that the UAV deployments must and will continue.

It wasn't until January of this year that the president even acknowledged the secret targeted killing missions of drones by the CIA when he insisted in the midst of rising concern of noncombatant (collateral damage) deaths that the overseas killer drones were on a "very tight leash."

"Under the Obama administration, drone strikes have escalated and expanded in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia," said Kashani. "In Pakistan alone, the Obama administration has launched six times as many drone strikes as the Bush administration, in fewer years in office, killing hundreds of innocent people and devastating families."
"Ultimately, efforts to end the expansion of US drone strikes and covert wars are not only a legal matter," Kashani said, "but a political and ethical one on which the viability of a livable future and meaningful democracy is based."

Although information is restricted and controlled, it does appear that noncombatant deaths by killer drone strikes are declining - although continuing. But security questions remain about the level of threats represented by combatants who are being targeted and constitutional questions persist about the legality of these extrajudicial killings.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may be winding down after nearly a decade. But the US military and the Obama administration are committed to the increased use of UAVs in intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and war fighting.

In January, President Obama announced a shift in US military strategy, including the shedding of "outdated Cold War systems" in favor of the high-tech instruments and conflicts of the future - including the aptly denominated "shadow wars." This evolution in military strategy, including the increased reliance on drones and special operations (and presumably a continuing pattern of extrajudicial killings by drone strikes around the globe) may, as its supporters contend, be exactly the course the US military needs to ensure national and global security.
Whether strategically right or not, this is a shift that clearly calls out for the processes of moral, ethical and legal scrutiny at all levels of government - local, national and international.

The crash of the CIA's highly sophisticated - and extremely expensive (even its price tag is secret) - US stealth Sentinel drone in Iran last December proved another wake-up call about the risks of drone interventions. The US military, intelligence agencies and counterterrorist units may be the top dogs in the drone world now - but things change, blowback happens and drones have no national loyalty. Many close observers of drone proliferation point to near complete lack of governance structures, international conventions and adequate export controls to regulate drones.

Meanwhile, Iran is busy incorporating US drone technology into its own now-extensive drone program, and China has surged into the international drone market.

Understandably, this competition concerns the US drone industry - led by the major US military contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, among others.

Currently the industry - with support of the Congressional caucus - is pressuring the administration to continue relaxing the export controls on US-made drone technology to ensure that the industry keeps its market share of the fastest growing military and aviation sector. As speakers at the annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference in February reminded industry representatives and the attending Congressional representatives, drone competition is sparking new markets for drone detection technology, defenses against enemy drones and electronic warfare instruments designed to break drone communications with their remote piloting.

"It is vital that the debate on drones is brought to American public since US drone policy is becoming vital part of US foreign policy in conflict zones," says Shahzad Akbar, attorney with Reprieve in London and with the Pakistani Foundation for Fundamental Fights. Akbar, who is listed as a summit speaker, says that a debate about drones needs to include all stakeholders, including the US public and that's a central objective of the planned drone summit in Washington, DC.

"Central to the debate are questions about the rights of individuals, whether as objects of surveillance or targets of killing machines," says Akbar. Essentially, we are asking to what degree "we [are] ready to allow government to "usurp the rights of individuals and under exactly what circumstances?" With respect to the objectives of the drone Summit, Akbar said that the summit's organizers are working to ensure that in the United States and in other drone-deploying countries they will subject their use to the "due-process rule of law" and to "proper judicial and democratic oversight."

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March 27th, 2014

3/27/2014

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REMEMBER, THE GOAL OF NEO-LIBERALISM IS TAKING THE US FROM A FIRST WORLD SOCIAL DEMOCRACY TO A THIRD WORLD AUTOCRATIC PLUTOCRACY. THAT MEANS INSTEAD OF MODERN DAY AMERICA THEY LOOK TO MEDIEVAL EUROPE----THE DARK AGES ----FOR THEIR SOCIAL MODEL. THE MASSES IMPOVERISHED, HEAVILY TAXED WAITING FOR THE GENTRY TO SPONSOR PUBLIC PROJECTS WHILE THE CHURCH HANDLES THE POOR---AND NOT SO WELL!

Today's blog looks at billionaires as benevolent philanthropist.

This is indeed where neo-liberals are going. The next phase after -'we have all the money and will do as we please' - is building the image of billionaire as benevolent philanthropist----you know----THE MEDICIs. You could feel sorry for the delusions of grandeur from a moneyed-class equal to mafia-cartels, but this is life and death and fighting for democracy in America. We are seeing in US media a build-up of image of billionaires for social good. As they starve public coffers by fraud and tax evasion they are being allowed to 'donate' for the common good and corporate tax deductions.

Meanwhile, you and I have moved back to the vision of the US as first world social democracy. HMMMMM...did I see 900,000 registered democrats in Maryland? Do you really think they want to go with neo-liberalism and Medicis?

I DON'T THINK SO!!! SEE WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO KEEP CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND OUT OF ELECTION COVERAGE AND OFF THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL!

What I am seeing and hoping to build with my candidacy is a structure around crony democratic politics in Maryland and the US. We do not need party machines and media money for campaigns. We need labor unions and justice organizations, churches and university political groups to network for the candidate working for labor and justice. Simple community networking and education about the need to ignore the onslaught of media campaign advertising by neo-liberal candidates with corporate war chests.

ALL OF MARYLAND CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR ARE NEO-LIBERALS EXCEPT CINDY WALSH. SHAKE THE BUGS FROM THE RUG------GET RID OF CORPORATE CONTROL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Regarding Basu's singing of praises for US billionaires and funding of basic research:

NEO-LIBERALS MAKING BILLIONAIRES LOOK WARM AND FUZZY AS THEY PUSH AMERICAN CITIZENS TO CHARITY!

Who doesn't like a billionaire made rich from the massive corporate frauds of last decade exploding shareholder wealth from looting the US Treasury and American people. A billionaire that parks hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue off-shore to avoid paying taxes and who is guilty of more hundreds of billions of dollars in tax fraud and tax evasion. A billionaire that backs basic research that will earn his corporation trillions of dollars in profit at the expense of public health and interest. God bless those billionaires say Basu and corporate public media. Who needs those trillions of dollars stolen from the public that funded basic research in public universities and gave the development benefits to the public rather than private patenting to soak the public as consumer. WHAT AMERICAN PATRIOTS THESE BILLIONAIRES ARE! Sound like the North Korean Great Leader propaganda? YOU BETCHA!

Let's look at the tax policies at the Federal, state, and local level that that allow this fleecing of the US Treasury beyond an IRS that has been gutted of employees to keep from doing investigations of hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate tax fraud that when recovered will make state and local universities flush with cash in education Trusts and grants and public research funding.

YOU SEE, IT IS THE MONEY THAT MADE THESE BILLIONAIRES RICH THAT IS NOW MISSING FROM THE ECONOMY BRINGING DEBT AND DISMANTLING OF PUBLIC SECTOR SERVICES AND PROGRAMS. UNIVERSITY TUITION TOO HIGH----BLAME THAT BILLIONAIRE.

Do you get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when a corporate CEO from the likes Starbucks receives all kinds of media coverage for 'donating' to veterans charities because he is upset with the conditions for veterans at VA hospitals around the country? Let's see how Starbucks evades paying corporate taxes and bring that back to fund all the public VA hospitals.

Starbucks wakes up and smells the stench of tax avoidance controversy

Cafe chain executive to face questions from MPs, while protesters plan to turn branches into creches and refuges

    Simon Neville and Shiv Malik
    The Guardian, Sunday 11 November 2012

Starbucks
Police protect a Starbucks branch during an anti-cuts march last month after the company's low tax bill was revealed. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

On an average day its outlets are a hive of social activity, hosting everything from business meetings to reading groups looking for that all-important appointment with a morning caffeine rush, approvingly overlooked by a branded community bulletin board. But Starbucks should be careful what it wishes for.

The direct action group UK Uncut plans to turn dozens of the coffee empire's UK branches into creches, refuges and homeless shelters to highlight the chain's tax avoidance tactics.

The announcement of the action comes on the day a Starbucks executive faces questions from the House of Commons public accounts committee over why the company paid no corporation tax in the UK during the past three years, despite senior US management trumpeting the company's profitable operations in Britain.

MPs will also question management representatives from Google and Amazon, both of which have faced criticism for basing their European operations in countries that have lower tax rates such as Ireland and Luxembourg.

In his appearance before the committee, Starbucks' chief financial officer, Troy Alstead, will attempt to repair the company's reputation, which, according to research by YouGov, continues to suffer because of the controversy.

In a similar session last week, MPs accused HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) officials of having cosy relationships with big businesses. Speaking about the arrangements with Starbucks, the Conservative MP Richard Bacon said: "It smells – and it doesn't smell of coffee. It smells bad."

UK Uncut has said it will start targeting Starbucks on the Saturday following the autumn statement by the chancellor, George Osborne, on 8 December. The campaign group is attempting to draw a link between government cuts, in particular those that affect women, and tax avoidance by multinational businesses.

Sarah Greene, a UK Uncut activist, said funding for refuges and rape crisis centres faced cuts unless companies paid their fair share of tax. HMRC estimates around £32bn was lost to tax avoidance last year.

Greene said the government could easily bring in billions that could fund vital services by clamping down on tax avoidance, but was instead "making cuts that are forcing women to choose between motherhood and work, and trapping them in abusive relationships".

The group, which rose to prominence after staging a sit-in at Vodafone stores, Sir Philip Green's Topshop and Fortnum & Mason, turned its attentions to Starbucks last month after an investigation by Reuters discovered the company had paid only £8.6m in corporation tax since launching in the UK 14 years ago, despite cumulative sales of £3bn.

Longstanding Uncut campaigner Anna Walker said the group wanted to "galvanise the anger" that women were feeling: "We've chosen to really highlight the impact of the cuts on women this time. So there is going to be a real focus on transforming Starbucks into those services that are being cut by the government … [such as] refuges and creches," she said.

Walker said the campaign group had been in touch with women's groups across the country in the lead-up to the direct action event and believed that, along with a pre-established network of activists, dozens of the company's coffee shops were likely to be targeted.

"Starbucks is a really great target because it is on every high street across the country and that's what UK Uncut finds really important: people can take action in their local areas," she said. "We're really hoping that women who are impacted by the cuts, who are seeing their Sure Start centres where their kids go being reduced in services, and people who use refuges, [will] be involved."

Several international organisations have faced criticism over their UK accounts, with Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google and Ikea all paying little or no corporation tax despite large British operations.

However, according to pollsters at YouGov's BrandIndex, Starbucks has suffered the deepest damage to its image.

The organisation, which records the strength of companies' brand identities, revealed Starbucks' cachet plummeted following the tax revelations and continues to languish at near-record lows.

Its "buzz" score, which measures the number of negative and positive comments customers have heard, hit -16.7. That is only slightly higher than the lowest levels it hit during the most heated point of the controversy last month, at -28.6. A year ago its rating was at +3.1.

By comparison, Google and Amazon – both due at the select committee – have seen their ratings seemingly unaffected.

UK BrandIndex director Sarah Murphy said: "A brand's buzz score typically recovers quite quickly following a spate of bad press, but we aren't seeing that with Starbucks, which is quite unusual. Its scores started to level out around the end of last month, but whatever modest recovery Starbucks has made could well be in jeopardy if this story flares up again in the media."

The coffee store chain insists it pays the correct level of taxes. The group chief executive, Howard Schultz, has said in a statement: "Starbucks has always paid taxes in the UK despite recent suggestions to the contrary.

"Over the last three years alone, our company has paid more than £160m in various taxes, including national insurance contributions, VAT and business rates."

However, MPs will no doubt point out that VAT is paid by the customers at point of sale and collected by Starbucks.

Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, told parliament last month that Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google and Starbucks had avoided nearly £900m of tax. The prime minister, David Cameron responded to the claim by saying: "I'm not happy with the current situation. I think [HMRC] needs to look at it very carefully. We do need to make sure we are encouraging these businesses to invest in our country as they are but they should be paying fair taxes as well."

A spokeswoman for Starbucks said on Sunday: "While the subject of tax law can be extremely complex, Starbucks respects and complies with tax laws and accounting rules" in each of the 61 countries where we do business, including the UK – a market that we remain committed to for the long term. We've posted the facts about our tax practices in the UK on our website .

"Starbucks' economic impact in the UK spans far beyond our stores and partners (employees). We spend hundreds of millions of pounds with local suppliers on milk, cakes and sandwiches, and on store design and renovations. When you take into account the indirect employment created by Starbucks' investments in the UK, the company's extended economic impact to the UK economy exceeds £80m annually.

"We hope that UK Uncut will respect the wellbeing of our partners and customers, and recognise the value that we add to the economy, creating jobs and apprenticeships, as well as paying our fair share of taxes in the UK."
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How does a US global corporation go from being called a tax cheat and immoral in overseas press.....which is far more free and fair than a US state-run corporate media......to being the good guys in America donating all that money for tax write-offs instead of paying US taxes that would flood government coffers with revenue?

NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS CONTROL US MEDIA AND HAVE MADE IT US CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ALL THE TIME. THE US MEDIA IS NOW EQUAL TO ROMANIA AS FREE PRESS. ERGO, BASU'S LOVEFEST.

We all know that as all US commerce becomes consolidated and owned by the same few people at the top we will not be able to police US global corporations overseas and while they stagnate our US economy for growing profits overseas, all that wealth generated overseas does nothing for US yet we have the global headquarters ruling over all government and public policies and taxpayers subsidizing corporate wealth. The article above on the state of US corporations doing business in the UK paying no taxes is mirrored in America. The difference, the American people are electing the very neo-liberals turning their heads to this massive fraud and allowing media to ignore all of this.

EUROPE IS SEEING MORE ACCOUNTABILITY BECAUSE ITS CITIZENS HIT THE STREETS AND VOTE BAD POLS OUT OF OFFICE.

Starbucks, Google, Amazon accused of 'immoral' tax avoidance ...

www.csmonitor.com/.../1203/Starbucks...immoral-tax-avoidance

Starbucks, Google, and Amazon were among the major multinational corporations accused by lawyers of exploiting British tax laws to move UK-made profits ...
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Sending money stolen through tax fraud and shareholder wealth created by massive corporate fraud of US Treasury to charity just to write the donation off future taxes-----WHAT A GUY-----HOWARD SCHULTZ! Mind you, I have a history of Starbucks and its beginning in Seattle even having a Starbuck's green Jeep in my enthusiasm for fair trade coffee. THOSE DAYS ARE LONG GONE.

Do you know the entire GI Bill would be flush with money if Starbucks paid its corporate taxes and shouted to end massive corporate fraud?

THE LEVEL OF DISGRACE IN PUSHING AMERICAN VETERANS TO HAWKING FOR CHARITY IS UNMEASURABLE.

Starbucks CEO To Donate $30 Million To Support PTSD Research For Veterans

The Huffington Post | by Melissa McGlensey

Posted: 03/21/2014 6:18 pm EDT Updated: 03/21/2014 6:59 pm EDT

Starbucks Starbucks Coffee Howard Schultz Charity Military Veterans Veterans Video Impact News

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is making a large donation to help U.S. veterans.

Schultz spoke to CBS Evening News on Wednesday and announced his plan to allocate most of the $30 million donation toward researching solutions to brain trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD affects between 11 and 20 percent of military members who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Schultz told CBS that veterans often don't get the treatment or understanding they need and deserve.

"The truth of the matter is, and I say this with respect, more often than not, the government does a very -- a much better job of sending people to war than they do bringing them home, " he stated. "They're coming home to an American public that really doesn't understand and never embraced, what these people have done."

Schultz has shown support for troops in the past. Last year, Starbucks announced its initiative to hire 10,000 veterans and spouses of active military in five years.

The unemployment rate among post-9/11 veterans dropped to 9.0 percent last year, down from 9.9 percent the year before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This number is about 1.6 percentage points above the civilian population.
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Bill Gates was given the 'good billionaire' logo by neo-liberals trying to push the Buffett 'billionaires need to pay what their secretary pays in taxes' at a time when the US needs billionaires to pay what they paid before the Reagan/Clinton era-----60-70% tax rate -----to bring back the massive frauds and swing the pendulum back to flush government coffers and a first world society. This is not targeted tax policy-----

IT IS SIMPLY RULE OF LAW AND JUSTICE BRINGING TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CORPORATE FRAUD BACK TO US TREASURY AND PUBLIC TRUSTS.

As Basu pretends that Bill Gates created the Gates Global Health Initiative for the good of mankind the first thing that comes to mind is that African and Asian PHARMA developed and patented by the Gates foundation has Bill Gates, Obama, and Clinton lobbying hardest this past decade to dismantle all of public health and protections of generic manufacturing and subsidy of PHARMA around the world with the Trans Pacific Trade Pact. It is Bill Gates building a PHARMA corporation that seeks to maximize profits by gutting all public health protections for medicine around the world. WHAT A GUY-----BILL GATES THAT GOOD BILLIONAIRE!

While in Washington State I attended Microsoft shareholder meetings that had stockholders angry that Bill was moving all Microsoft money to a trust that was then spending billions of dollars in Pharma and health care products in Africa and Asia. Warren Buffett moved his billions to this new economy as well. WHILE BEING TOUTED AS PHILANTHROPISTS THEY WERE SIMPLY GUARDING MONEY FROM TAXATION UNDER THE GUISE OF PRIVATE NON-PROFITS WHILE THEY BUILT WHAT THEY KNEW WAS THE NEXT ECONOMIC ENGINE-----HEALTH AND EDUCATION. This was at the end of Reagan and the beginning of Clinton when the transition to privatization of public health and education to create the next Wall Street markets were made.

RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU THINK A BILLIONAIRE USING PRIVATE NON-PROFITS AND THE GUISE OF PUBLIC HEALTH TO SHIELD MONEY FROM TAXATION ALL TO CREATE AND PATENT PHARMA TARGETING A DEVELOPING WORLD THEY WANT TO MAKE A MARKET IS A GOOD GUY------NO ONE!!!!

Bill Gates is the face of Race to the Top and education privatization for the same reason-----creating private education businesses centered online and developed by Microsoft and other tech institutions. The Industrial Philanthropists built the public structures of public universities, libraries, and K-12 and Bill Gates Foundation seeks to tear them down for profit. WHAT A GUY-----BILL GATES!

Keep in mind that all these excuses of republicans defunding the IRS or Wall Street regulatory agencies made by neo-liberals are a farce. Look to neo-liberal Maryland where fraud and corruption is king to see a dismantled and unfunded oversight.

RECOVERING CORPORATE FRAUD PAYS FOR ITSELF, NO REPUBLICANS OR TAXPAYER MONEY NEEDED. THAT FIRST BILLION IN RECOVERY PAYS FOR THE NEXT TRILLION DOLLARS IN RECOVERY!

Microsoft, HP skirted taxes via offshore units: U.S. Senate panel

By Kim Dixon

WASHINGTON Thu Sep 20, 2012 7:12pm EDT

A variety of logos hover above the Microsoft booth on the opening day of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas January 10, 2012. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

A variety of logos hover above the Microsoft booth on the opening day of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas January 10, 2012.

(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co pushed back against claims by a U.S. Senate panel on Thursday that they used offshore units and loopholes to shield billions of dollars in profits from U.S. taxes.

Calling tax avoidance rampant in the technology sector, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said tech companies used intellectual property, royalties and license fees in overseas tax havens to skirt taxes.

The panel subpoenaed internal documents from the companies and interviewed Microsoft and HP officials to compile its report, which uses the companies as case studies.

"The tax practices and gimmicks range from egregious to dubious validity," Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the panel, said at a news conference.

Officials at HP and Microsoft strongly denied any wrongdoing, noted tax officials had not objected to the structures and said there were valid reasons for tax planning.

Senator Tom Coburn, the top Republican on the panel, signed onto the new report but blamed Congress.

"Tax avoidance is not illegal. Congress has created this situation," Coburn said, criticizing the complex tax code and the 35 percent corporate tax rate, among of the world's highest, though few companies pay that statutory rate.

The subcommittee said that from 2009 to 2011, Microsoft shifted $21 billion offshore, almost half its U.S. retail sales revenue, saving up to $4.5 billion in taxes on goods sold in the United States.

This was accomplished, the report said, by aggressive transfer pricing, where companies value intra-company movement of assets. Corporate units must use a fair market price to value transfers, but critics say they are manipulated to minimize tax.

The report also said the software giant shifts royalty revenue to units in low-tax nations, such as Singapore and Ireland, avoiding billions of dollars of U.S. tax.

Levin said one Microsoft Singapore unit was legally headquartered in Bermuda and had no employees. Levin asked Microsoft's tax vice president, William Sample, if the reason was to cut its tax bill. "Yes, that is correct," Sample said.

Sample also said several offshore units employ hundreds of workers, which Levin noted was a tiny fraction of its workforce.

IRS CITES CHALLENGE

Internal Revenue Service officials are not allowed to comment on specific taxpayers, but Chief Counsel William Wilkins said enforcing transfer pricing law "has been the IRS's most significant international enforcement challenge."

U.S. companies have at least $1.5 trillion in profits sitting offshore. Most say they are keeping them there to avoid U.S. tax. Of the top 10 companies with the biggest offshore cash balances, five are in the technology sector.

"The high-tech industry is probably the No. 1 user of these offshore entities to transfer intellectual property," Levin said.

The panel said Hewlett-Packard funded U.S. operations with a stream of intra-company loans, using an exception in the law for short-term loans, to avoid billions of dollars in taxes.

Levin said more than 90 percent of HP's cash was sitting offshore, as opposed to about 65 percent of revenue coming from countries outside the United States.

An HP spokesman said in a statement that the hearing was a politically motivated attack.

"We are disappointed to see what appears to be a politically motivated attack on one of America's largest employers," HP spokesman Michael Thacker said before the hearing.

Lester Ezrati, an HP tax vice president, said HP used cash faster in the United States for valid reasons including that certain payments like pensions must be made with U.S. cash.

"HP has an overall strategy to minimize expenses and that is what generates where the cash is located," and "one of those expenses is taxes," Ezrati said.

REPATRIATED PROFITS TAXABLE

Under tax law, foreign profits are subject to U.S. tax when they are "repatriated," or brought into the United States, usually in the form of a dividend.

One internal document released by the panel suggested that HP routinely brought money into the U.S. without paying U.S. tax. An HP presentation noted that "without planning, repatriation of foreign earnings could lead to tax payments."

Loans by the foreign units to a related U.S. entity are considered a dividend for tax purposes but there is an exception for loans that are repaid within 30 days, according to the committee's tax experts.

HP set up a complicated series of short-term loans starting in 2008 to these businesses that were continuous without gaps, to get around that provision, the panel found.

Big companies have lobbied for a tax holiday to let them bring offshore profits into the United States at a reduced tax rate, arguing that the profits are trapped offshore. That effort has fallen flat amid reports suggesting such a program would cost the government significant revenue and not produce U.S. jobs.

The report on transfer pricing "mocks the notion that profits of U.S. multinationals are 'locked-up' or 'trapped' offshore," Levin said.

The subcommittee also criticized accounting giant Ernst & Young for blessing HP's practices.

Ernst & Young partner Beth Carr said that the firm stands firmly behind its auditing for HP.
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Below you see from 2002-2005 Bill Gates was positioning himself for the coming Affordable Care Act health legislation and privatization and making of global health corporations. Keep in mind that mental health pharma was just given a boost in rewriting the Psychiatric definition of what constitutes depression. increasing government subsidy of more depression PHARMA as Gates moves to Prozac. Medicare and Medicaid will now pay for depression medicine for what we all know is common sadness.

Bill Gates was simply moving his wealth to what he knew would be the new markets created by privatization of public health and education-----AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND RACE TO THE TOP.

ALWAYS WORKING FOR THE PUBLIC'S INTERESTS THOSE GOOD BILLIONAIRES! NEO-LIBERALS----WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND THIRD WORLD QUALITY OF LIFE. HOW DO THEY RUN AS DEMOCRATS?

Below you see a blogger that obviously attended the same Microsoft shareholder meetings I did.

created 04/07/2005 - 07:35, updated 31/08/2006 - 14:01 by cybe

Bill Gates is [alledgedly] giving 95% of his wealth for africa ......

I wonder if he is diversifying his investments and has bought shares in the pharmaceutical industry so he is just transferring his money into a new business venture whilst "looking" as though he is giving it away.

The Real Way to Health is a completely different one:- "Healing in His Wings"

Three articles below:

Bill Gates sells MSFT, takes Prozac
Bill Gates and Big Pharma
Bush's bogus AIDS offer, and why Bill Gates is making it worse.
The Gates And Buffet Foundation Shell Game

Bill Gates sells MSFT, takes Prozac

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2002/09/09/bill_gates_sells_msft_takes/

Published Monday 9th September 2002 19:48 GMT

Bill Gates has sold almost half a billion dollar's worth of Microsoft stock this year, and begun to invest heavily in big pharma. In the second half of this year he bought 2.5 million shares in Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Prozac, and also made major investments in Merck and Pfizer, notes /Information Week/.

The 9 million shares Gates relinquished represent only a tiny proportion of Chairman Bill's MSFT holdings, or about 1.36 per cent.

Eli Lily's patent on Prozac expired a year ago, but the company has sought to widen its appeal, combining its with other drugs and marketing it as a kind of MSG of anti-depressants.

"Companies are getting a lot more creative in ways to sustain the product lifespan of drugs," a J.P. Morgan told The Street.

In sickness and in wealth, big pharma remains the most profitable industry in America. No doubt Gates took comfort in the Bush administration's indulgent attitude towards the inflated prices charged by the pharmaceutical industry. Although nine out of ten drugs fail clinical tests, the industry - which argues that high prices are needed to justify R&D - spends two and half times as much on marketing than on research, according to Families USA .

(I'll defer to our very own Thomas C Greene, who covered the industry in detail).

A crack about anxiety-inducing computer software would simply be too cheap, so we won't dream of making it here.

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We must be very careful to follow where these last few years of US global corporation has led under Obama and neo-liberals in Congress. Remember, between the FED policy and trillions in fake job stimulus money that was just used to expand US global corporations overseas, the US has allowed global corporations to create a global network of empire that looks just like this one below. IT IS HORRENDOUS.

So, as Basu tells us on corporate 'public' media WYPR that billionaires are doing good in their bequests to basic research, the entire world knows what kind of empire Bill Gates is building!

'Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism'.

A Link Between Monsanto, Blackwater & Bill Gates?

By majestic on January 3, 2011 in News

There’s an unlikely story circulating on various underground news sites claiming that the controversial biotech company Monsanto has acquired infamous mercenary outfit Blackwater (now trading as Xe Services). The report apparently first appeared in La Jornada, one of Mexico City’s leading daily newspapers, described by Noam Chomsky as “the one independent newspaper in the whole hemisphere.” Pravda has translated the original Spanish text written by Silvia Ribeiro into English. From my reading of the Jeremy Scahill article that seems to form the basis of the report, the most you can deduce is that Monsanto hired the creeps at Blackwater to do dirty work for them, but the rumor keeps circulating, so could there be a grain of truth somewhere in this story?:

A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater’s Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State “security services,” that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.

Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training – for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.

One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.

Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of “public disclosure” of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a “totally separate entity from Blackwater.”

However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become “Monsanto’s intelligence arm,” spying on activists and other actions, including “our people to legally integrate these groups.” Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.

No wonder that a company engaged in the “science of death” as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of “philanthropy.” Another association that is not surprising.

It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of “market competition” of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really “donating” anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their “donations” finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.

Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa” (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.

Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.

* The author is a researcher at ETC Group

__________________________________________

I watched a TV commercial that had UnderArmour CEO standing on an African mountaintop stating that he wants to use his billions to help the poor worldwide. This is the same CEO who demands his UnderArmour headquarters in Baltimore be given tax-free status starving Baltimore City government coffers of money that would go to underserved communities and public schools.

IF THAT ISN'T OBSCENE ENOUGH-----UNDERARMOUR USES THE FACT THAT THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN DISMANTLED AND NEO-LIBERALS ARE PUSHING VET CHARITY TO SUPPORT VETS.

So, rather than paying taxes that would support a strong, public supported VA, he is making profits off of his athletic brand and 'donating' money to vet charities for corporate tax write-offs. WHAT A GUY-------BILLIONAIRE PROFITS OFF OF VETS FORCED TO SEEK CHARITY IN LIEU OF VETERAN'S BENEFITS!

Below you see yet another corporation that is ground zero for making the American people impoverished and yet finding time to 'donate' to help the poor.

THIS IS NEO-LIBERALISM WHERE WEALTH AND PROFIT CREATE AN AUTOCRATIC SYSTEM MODELED ON MEDIEVAL EUROPE-----THEY CALLED IT THE DARK AGES.

UNDERARMOUR---GlassDoor

“Employee survey results were poor”
Director (Former Employee)
Baltimore, MD

I worked at Under Armour full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Successful brand w/ currently valuable stock

Cons – Don't just go by these anonymous reviews. In a recent survey of all employees, findings were that an overwhelming majority feel "disengaged", "overworked" , "underpaid", and "under appreciated". What was the founder's response when he pulled Directors into a room? Instead of saying "here's what we're going to do", he said "it's your problem. You fix it." Needless to say there's extremely high turnover. Those that do stay wish they were somewhere else.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to employee issues and do something about. Currently you're doing neither.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

__________________________________________

TAX CREDITS FOR HIRING VETS IS LIKE ENTERPRISE ZONE TAX CREDITS FOR HIRING THE UNDERSERVED ------AS IN BALTIMORE'S INNER HARBOR THESE CONTRACTS ARE ALL IGNORED AND THE JOBS ARE FILLED WITH FRAUD AND WORKPLACE ABUSE.

All across the country veterans are being hired into the worst of jobs and working conditions as corporations get tax credits for simply hiring. Those fighting to keep public military positions are being harassed and denied civil liberties and workplace safety. Remember, the Bush Administration made military service contracts NULL and VOID requiring national guard and military to serve extended service tours knowing these troops would be battle weary and did while dismantling Va facilities. AS Obama does the same, O'Malley travels overseas to recruit Veterans to substandard online degrees and career colleges.

UNDERARMOUR
Shop the Wounded Warrior project

Between August 2012 and December 2014, Under Armour® will make a donation of over $1 Million to Wounded Warrior Project™ benefitting injured service members and their families.
__________________________________________

The neo-liberals spent all last decade shouting against the abuses of the US troops by neo-conservatives and now neo-conservatives are blaming neo-liberals for the outrageous move to dismantle all that is public veterans administration.

TAG TEAM OF GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS----STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES---RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!

Below you see the same labor and justice conditions that existed under Bush are now super-sized under Obama and neo-liberals in Congress. Do you hear your incumbent shouting out against the deliberate attack of public sector workers in order to get them to quit and be replaced by private contractors and to protect yet more people breaking the US laws from prosecution?

General News 3/1/2014 at 17:57:53

Veterans Speak Out Against a Debilitating Federal Workplace Harming the Health of America's Returning Military

By Ward Jordan

opednews.com

(WASHINGTON, DC)   -- In a recently released statement veterans, members of The Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C), called for the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration to stop the political power play and to mandate that federal supervisory and management officials face discipline for willfully breaking civil rights and whistleblower-protection laws.

"The unrestrained retaliatory actions the VA supervisors take against subordinate employees cripples the agency's healthcare system and stifles many employees from exposing unfair customs, unsafe conditions and unlawful practices," said Oliver Mitchell, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and a former employee with the Veterans Affairs' Greater West Los Angeles Medical Center Imaging Service, Radiology Section. While serving as a Patient Services Assistant, Mitchell received "excellent" performance ratings.   "Things changed rapidly after I refused an order to purge patient documents," Mitchell explained.   "The harassment started and VA officials detailed me repeatedly after I filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC)."

According to Mitchell, both the VA's Office of Inspector General and the OSC failed to properly pursue the matter even after hearing Mitchell's submitted audio tape of employees discussing how to destroy veteran patients' records.   "Although I declined to purge patient records, VA officials hired another employee to delete valid MRI requests from the system as a means of reducing the backlog," said Mitchell, now homeless after being constructively removed from the U.S. Veterans Affairs pursuant to terms put in a settlement agreement.

"The constructive discharge is a popular tactic used in discharging complaining parties," said Janel Smith, a disabled Air Force veteran and the Vice President of the Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C).

Ralph Saunders, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and a former employee with the VA's New Orleans Medical Center, agreed that reprisal against employees who file complaints is a daunting problem.   According to Saunders, VA personnel once destroyed his medical documents and subjected him to endless reprisal after he filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint against a manager who had denied him requested time off from work to accommodate his wife's heart-surgery operation. Saunders prevailed in his discrimination complaint (Saunders v Shinseki, Case Number 200L-0629-2004-100828).

Unequivocally, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found managers (Cassandra Holiday, Jeanette Butler, and Linda Cosey) guilty of "abusing the rules" and "retaliating against Saunders for his protected EEO activity."   The EEOC also found "evidence that officials retaliated against other employees who filed EEO complaints."   Saunders, who had worked sixteen years with the VA before officials targeted him for removal from federal service, is presently challenging the VA on a settlement-breach issue.

"Retaliation by rogue VA managers is destroying the lives of men and women who served honorably on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces," said Isaac Decatur, a U.S. Navy veteran, who after eighteen years with the department was fired from Veterans Affairs' Durham, North Carolina, office after filing an EEO complaint (Decatur v Shinseki, 0120073404).

"I wrote to President Obama about the VA's failure to take discipline against the supervisors who engaged in the blacklisting of employees and who the EEOC found guilty of discrimination," said Decatur. "My letter to the President spurred a reply letter from the EEOC in which the federal agency, charged with enforcing federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination, openly asserted: While EEOC orders agencies to consider; we have no authority to issue discipline."

"Some of these VA managers need to face conspiracy criminal charges for destroying veterans' records and engaging in various illegal activities," said Chauncey L. Robinson, who served in the Persian Gulf War. Robinson reported that he has been waiting twenty-one years for the VA to process his claim for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a heart condition. "VA officials destroyed my records," said Robinson, who joined other veterans in a class-action lawsuit that asserts the VA has been systematically violating veterans' due process for decades (Gary Kendall v Eric A. Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Case No. CV07-103-S-EJL).

"The ill-treatment of VA's workforce harms the well-being of VA's employees as well as the veterans deserving of timely health care and benefits," said Al Hunt, III, a Gulf War veteran and a former VA supervisor with the New Orleans Medical Center. Hunt explained that he was forced to resign from the VA due to discriminatory practices and harassment. "I refused to be complicit in a managerial scheme to write-up and fire black veterans who bravely served our country solely because they had exposed civil rights abuses in the VA workplace," Hunt said.

"Internal federal workplace dysfunction will continue to adversely impact public programs and services until supervisors and managers are held accountable for violating civil rights and whistleblower-protection laws." said Tanya Ward Jordan, the President and Founder of the volunteer support and advocacy group, C4C.

-------------------------------------------------------
About The Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C)
The Coalition For Change, Inc. (C4C) is a Washington, DC-based volunteer organization comprised of present and former federal employees who have been injured or ill-treated due to workplace race discrimination and /or reprisal. C4C recently produced a YouTube video to expose how an internal broken workplace system harms the public. The video is entitled -- Veterans Affairs Dishonoring America's Veterans and Civil Servants.

__________________________________________________

Below is possibly more than you want to know about Bill Gates as US corporate lobby to end public health and capture health patents and curb generics but it is one of the best overviews. Keep in mind this was written in 2011 and we now know TPP is worse than this article shows.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett placed hundreds of billions of dollars into trusts under the guise of private non-profits and health care that are now these very patents and intellectual rights protections sought for the PHARMA and health industry. So, rather than paying taxes and allowing the public do the research to produce these PHARMA results as it always has, these billionaires privatized the research and seeks patents and protections on what would be a trillion-dollar PHARMA industry in developing worlds.

AS BILL GATES SAID AT THE 1990s SHAREHOLDER MEETING QUESTIONING HIS MOVING OF ALL THAT MONEY INTO TRUSTS RATHER THAN REINVESTING IT IN TECH INNOVATION-----'WE ARE MOVING TO AFRICA AS THE NEXT MARKET AND WE HAVE TO MAKE IT LIVABLE FOR US EMPLOYEES BEING SENT THERE TO WORK. Meanwhile, all of the African citizens that were helped by these research and development activities are now seeing funding disappear and are not feeling to advantages of all that patented research.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011

How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Threatens Access to Medicines

The eighth round of closed-door negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will be held in
Chicago from September 6-15, 2011. Negotiations during this round are expected to be substantial, as the
current nine negotiating countries, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United
States and Vietnam, plan to present the outlines of an agreement at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) Leaders’ meeting in Honolulu, November 8-13 2011.1
According to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), “U.S. involvement in the TPP is predicated on the
expansion of the agreement to include more economies across the Asia-Pacific region,”2 and should “set the
standard for 21st-century trade agreements going forward.”3 It is therefore expected that the norms that emerge
from these negotiations will serve as a baseline for future trade agreements, potentially impacting a much wider
group of countries, including developing countries where MSF has medical operations and beyond. For
example, Japan and South Korea are reportedly currently considering joining the TPP.
TPP negotiating parties are under no obligation to subject their negotiating positions to public scrutiny; only the
final agreed-upon text will be made publicly available. However, a leaked draft of the U.S. position, now
available to the public,4 indicates that the U.S. is demanding aggressive intellectual property provisions that go
beyond what international trade law requires. Furthermore, the U.S. position represents a major retreat from
previous U.S. commitments to global health, including the 2007 bipartisan New Trade Policy, in which
Congress and the Bush administration agreed to abide by important public health safeguards in future trade
agreements.

1. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES
Vital Importance of Affordable Medicines
Affordable, quality generic medicines are a critical component of treatment programs. About 80% of the HIV
medicines that MSF uses are generics, and MSF routinely relies on generic drugs to treat TB, malaria, and a
wide range of infectious diseases. In fact, all the major donors and leading international treatment providers,
including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for
AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), UNITAID and UNICEF, rely on quality affordable generic drugs for the programs they
support. PEPFAR, which purchases 80-90 percent of its ARVs drugs from generic suppliers, has reported
significant savings through the purchase of generic medicines.5
The first generation of HIV drugs have come down in price by 99 percent over the last decade, from
U.S.$10,000 per person per year in 2000 to roughly $60 today, thanks to generic production in India, Brazil and
Thailand, where these drugs were not patented. This dramatic price drop has been instrumental in helping scale
up HIV/AIDS treatment for more than six million people in developing countries. About 80 percent of donorfunded
anti-AIDS drugs and 92 percent of drugs to treat children with AIDS across the developing world comes
from generic manufacturers.

1 http://www.ustr.gov/tpp
2 http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2010/june/ustr-ron-kirk-comments-trans-pacific-partnership-talk
3 http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2009/november/ustr-news-kirk-comments-trans-pacific-partnership
4 Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
5 http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/304/3/313.short

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011

Public Health Safeguards Threatened
Since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the conclusion of the Agreement on Trade
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 1995, the most comprehensive multilateral
agreement on intellectual property to date, developing countries have struggled to strike a balance between
protecting public health and making their patent laws TRIPS compliant. Patents and other intellectual property
(IP) regulations pose significant barriers to access to life-saving medicines, and flexibilities in patent systems are
recognized as important public policy tools in the fight to protect public health interests. Even developed
countries like the U.S. have utilized TRIPS-compliant legal flexibilities to protect public health and other
national interests.
The WTO 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health was signed to reaffirm that the TRIPS
Agreement does not and should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health, and that it
can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO members' right to protect public
health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.

These commitments were reaffirmed and
strengthened in the 2008 World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public
Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property.
However, over the last decade, many developing countries have come under pressure in trade negotiations not to
use TRIPS flexibilities and to implement even tougher rules than those set out in TRIPS – these are known as
“TRIPS plus.” The U.S. and the European Union routinely use bilateral and regional trade agreements to limit
or circumvent developing countries’ abilities to implement the Doha Declaration and safeguard public health.
The U.S. and the E.U. both have large pharmaceutical industries lobbying for stricter patent regulations, and
these interests not only tip the balance away from public health protections and threaten access to medicines, but
also work to counter the efforts of global health programs.

In fact, studies have shown that U.S. bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have already
undermined access to medicines in developing countries. For example, Oxfam found in a 2007 study6 that
during the five-year period since Jordan implemented TRIPS plus measures included in the U.S.-Jordan FTA,
medicines prices rose 20 percent, without any corresponding benefit in terms of domestic innovation or access
to new products. In addition, the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH) found in a 2009
study7 that once Guatemala enacted data exclusivity, on the basis of the Dominican Republic-Central America-
United States (CAFTA-DR) FTA, prices for some medicines rose significantly – even though just a handful of
medicines were under patent protection.
Recognizing the damaging effects that trade agreements have had on public health, the Bush administration and
the U.S. Congress signed a bipartisan agreement on May 10th, 2007, known as the 2007 New Trade Policy to
scale-back the harshest IP protections in order to strike a better balance between protection of IP and public
health needs. The agreement specifies that the USTR should modify its intellectual property demands in trade
agreement negotiations so that important public health safeguards are included. Yet in several meetings with
U.S. civil society, the USTR has stated on the record that they are considering options in the TPP that would
shift U.S. policy away from the 2007 New Trade Policy.
MSF is concerned that the U.S. demands for the TPP negotiations threaten to roll back vitally important public
health safeguards in developing countries, creating a fundamental contradiction between U.S. trade policy and
U.S. commitments and priorities on global health.
Medical Innovation Threatened
MSF is also concerned about the effects that intellectual property norms have on innovation for essential
medical technologies. The USTR presents its efforts to demand stronger regimes for intellectual property
protection in developing countries as a tool to protect innovation. MSF recognizes the importance of innovation

6 http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/bp102_jordan_us_fta
7 http://www.cpath.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/cpathhaonline8-25-09.pdf
8 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/enewsletter/5-11-07/07%2005%2010%20New%20Trade%20Policy%20Outline.pdf

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011

and the need to finance research and development. We are a humanitarian medical organization that needs and
welcomes biomedical innovation to better treat our patients. However, the reality is that intellectual property
protection in the medical field keeps prices high and limits access to treatment, and furthermore does not
stimulate innovation for many of the diseases affecting people in developing countries, where patients have
limited purchasing power. By seeking greater and higher intellectual property norms in developing countries,
the U.S. government is perpetuating a failed business model that links innovation costs to high prices, and does
not address the innovation needs of developing countries.

2. THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES

The TPP negotiations are being conducted in secret, so MSF other interested stakeholders don’t have access to
the U.S. or other countries’ demands. However, according to a leaked draft of the U.S. position, now available
to the public at http://keionline.org/node/1091, as well as correspondence and discussions between Congress and
the USTR, the U.S. is expected to demand the following TRIPS plus measures to be included in the

Intellectual Property Chapter of the TPP:

a) Broadening the scope of patentability: the U.S. wants to make it easier to patent new forms of old
medicines that offer no added therapeutic efficacy for patients
The TRIPS agreement includes important flexibilities for governments to decide what type of “innovation”
deserves to be protected by patents in a given country. Essential terms such as ‘novelty,’ ‘inventive step,’ and
‘industrial applicability’ are left undefined as standards to be best determined by individual governments within
the context of existing national legislation and circumstances.
However, the U.S. is seeking to erode this flexibility by requesting that TPP partners introduce new rules that
would severely limit the ability of each country to define what is ‘patentable.’

For example, the U.S. proposal for the TPP requests the patenting of a “new form, use, or method of using” an
existing product - even if there is no increase in efficacy. This technique, known as “evergreening,” allows
pharmaceutical companies to obtain or extend monopoly protection for old drugs simply by making minor
modifications to existing formulas. Evergreening significantly delays the arrival of more affordable generic
medicines onto the market.
Novartis has been battling the Indian government on its implementation of this flexibility since 2006, when its
patent for the cancer drug imatinib mesylate (Gleevec) was rejected on the grounds it was based on a drug
compound that already existed. Having lost its case in 2007 and the patent appeal in 2009, Novartis is now
attempting to ensure the words ‘therapeutic efficacy’ are interpreted in a way that allows even small changes to
an old medicine – such as imatinib mesylate – to be patentable10.
Additionally, the US seeks to require that parties make patents available on plants and animals, as well as
diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical methods for the treatment of humans or animals despite the fact that Article
27 of the TRIPS Agreement explicitly allows for the exclusion of these inventions from patent protection11.
Aside from the serious ethical concerns for surgeons performing procedures on patients, this text is not even
compatible with the U.S. policy not to enforce patents against medical professionals.

b) Restrictions on pre-grant patent oppositions: the U.S. wants to make it harder to challenge unjustified
patents
The TRIPS agreement allows countries and third parties (including generic companies and civil society organizations such as patient groups) to file an opposition to the granting of a patent - either before it has been

Article 8.1, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
http://www.msfaccess.org/about-us/media-room/press-releases/drug-company-novartis-tries-weaken-indian-patent-law-protects
Article 8.2, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
http://keionline.org/node/1216

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011

granted (pre-grant opposition) or after (post-grant opposition). Patent opposition procedures have been
successfully used in several countries to prevent patents being granted undeservedly.
For example, in June 2008 the Indian patent office rejected a patent for the hemihydrate (syrup) form of
Nevirapine (NVP), a widely-used antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, based on pre-grant oppositions by civil society
groups. The price of NVP has decreased dramatically over the past years as a result of generic competition.
Similarly, the Indian patent office rejected the patent application for Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate (TDF), an
important HIV drug highly recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), and Darunavir (DRV), a
third-line ARV, based on pre-grant oppositions.
Patent oppositions are an essential public health safeguard that can accelerate the entry of generic competition,
improve the patent system through public participation, and help reduce over-patenting.
However, the U.S. government is now seeking to clamp down on this flexibility and prevent pre-grant oppositions in TPP partner countries,13 making it more costly and cumbersome to oppose a patent. In addition, patent offices will not have the benefit of the expertise of opponents/competitors to the applicant who may be
able to identify inaccuracies in the application before a patent is approved.

c) Imposing new forms of IP enforcement: the U.S. wants to allow customs officials to seize shipments of drugs on mere suspicion of IP infringement and to increase damages for IP infringement
The TRIPS agreement allows for governments to have a great amount of flexibility when designing the mechanisms that the country will allow for the enforcement of IP rights. However, the U.S., through the TPP and other tools (e.g. ACTA14), is demanding that countries enforce IP rights with new forms of enforcement beyond what TRIPS requires.
For example, the U.S. is requesting that TPP countries grant customs officials the ex officio right to detain
shipments of medicines at the border, even in transit, if the goods are suspected of being counterfeits or if they
are considered “confusingly similar” to trademarked goods.
Under TRIPS, “counterfeit” products are defined as those resulting from criminal – and not civil – trademark
infringement, which occurs knowingly and on a commercial scale. The U.S.’s proposed TPP IP chapter allows border officials to rely on a different, more lenient standard - “confusingly similar” – in order to seize consignments. This standard conflates pure commercial trademark disputes, which do not represent a threat to
public health or patent rights, with criminal offenses, such as production of counterfeit, falsified or substandard
medicines.

In fact, customs and border officials are often not fully trained or equipped to make accurate assessments with
regard to intellectual property infringement and may be overzealous in the protection of brand name companies.
For example, during 2008 and 2009, at least 19 shipments of generic medicines from India to other countries
were impounded while in transit in Europe on grounds that the shipments were suspected of infringing patent
rights. In one instance, German customs authorities wrongfully seized a drug shipment of “Amoxicillin” on the
suspicion that it infringed the brand name “Amoxil” – the cargo was detained for four weeks while further
investigation took place, eventually revealing that there was no trademark infringement. In another instance,
the Dutch customs authorities seized a shipment of the AIDS drug abacavir sulfate while it was en route (via
Europe) from India to a Clinton Foundation project in Nigeria.

Article 8.7, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) would impose limits on price-reducing generic competition and jeopardize the free flow of legitimate medicines across borders.

Article 14.4, Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
16 http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2011/2011Special301MSF_Final.pdf
17 http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/2011/2011Special301MSF_Final.pdf
18 http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2672.extract
19 http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/IPR/pdf/ipr13.pdf
20 http://www.safemedicines.org/nigeriabound-hivaids-drugs-seized-in-netherlands.html

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011

In addition, under the U.S.’s proposed TPP regulations, shipments that are legitimate in the country of origin
and the country of ultimate destination would still be subject to detention in the transit country. Unwarranted
interception of legitimate in-transit pharmaceutical supplies can undermine legitimate trade in generic
medicines.

Furthermore, the U.S. is requesting TPP countries to mandate that judicial authorities consider valuing damages
based on “the suggested retail price or other legitimate measure of value submitted by the right holder” in cases
of infringement of intellectual property rights,” a mechanism that strongly favors the rights holder and
increases damage amounts. Each country should have the flexibility to individually determine the appropriate
measure for damages for IP infringement.

d) Expanding data exclusivity: the U.S. is seeking to expand a backdoor way to grant monopoly status
Data exclusivity is a TRIPS plus provision that restricts access to essential clinical trial data pertaining to the
safety and efficacy of drugs. Data exclusivity measures prevent generic manufacturers from using existing
clinical research to gain regulatory approval of their medicines, forcing them to perform duplicate clinical trials
or wait for the “data monopoly” period to end.
In the absence of data exclusivity measures, when a generic manufacturer applies to register and sell a version of
a previously-registered medicine, they only have to provide data showing that their product is equivalent to the
original. The drug regulatory authority relies on the clinical trial data provided by the original manufacturer to
evaluate the safety and efficacy of the generic drug.
The introduction of data exclusivity provisions essentially creates a new system for granting monopolies by
blocking registration of generic medicines until the data exclusivity period ends, even if the patent monopoly
has already ended or been overcome, for example with the use of a compulsory license. Under these terms,
generic competition is stifled not only for old medicines no longer under patent protection, but also for new
medicines that don’t warrant patent protection.
Data exclusivity prevents the registration of generic versions of a medicine for many years (the U.S. is asking
for up to 12 years of data exclusivity for some classes of drugs), unless the generic manufacturer repeats the
necessary clinical trials. This is not only extremely costly, but also arguably unethical, as it forces duplication
of clinical trials for patients and animals in order to prove something that is already known.
In addition, while there are clear methods and procedures by which patents can be challenged and overcome –
such as patent oppositions and compulsory licenses – rules governing data exclusivity for pharmaceutical test
data do not always provide the same public health safeguards.
Although it is not yet clear what the U.S. demands for data exclusivity will be for the TPP, the U.S. has
traditionally pressed for a minimum term of five years, similar to U.S. law for certain products. However,
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has been aggressively lobbying for the TPP
to require 12 years of data exclusivity for a subset of pharmaceutical drugs, called biologic (also called
biosimilar or biopharmaceutical) drugs.

In August 2011, several members of the House of Representatives,
led by Rep. Henry Waxman, urged president Obama to refrain from negotiating any provisions on exclusivity
for biologics in the TPP, noting that a 12-year exclusivity period would impede the ability of Congress to
achieve the administration's proposal that the exclusivity period for biologics be reduced to seven years, as
reflected in the FY2012 budget proposal, without running afoul of U.S. trade obligations. It is also unclear if
the U.S will allow the public health safeguards for data exclusivity specified in the 2007 New Trade Policy.

Article 12.3 (b), Leaked TPP IPR chapter (http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf)
http://www.who.int/medicines/services/expertcommittees/pharmprep/QAS04_093Rev4_final.pdf
http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/05/phrma-wants-12-years-data-protection-in-tpp-talks
http://www.waxman.house.gov/UploadedFiles/TPP_Biologics_Letter_08-04-11.pdf
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011

e) Requesting patent term extensions: the U.S. is seeking to keep generic competitors out of the market,
for longer
The TRIPS Agreement requires patents to last 20 years. Although it is not yet clear what the U.S. demands for
patent term extensions in the TPP will be, the U.S. is expected to seek to extend the monopoly patent period in
order to compensate for administrative delays in the regulatory process, even though the 2007 New Trade Policy
made patent extensions optional for countries negotiating trade agreements with the U.S. Such extensions delay
the entry of generic medicines, punishing patients for bureaucratic delays.

f) Requesting patent linkage: the U.S. is seeking to turn drug regulatory authorities into ‘patent police’
Patent linkage provisions prevent drug regulatory authorities from approving new drugs if they could potentially
infringe existing patents. Such provisions effectively require drug regulatory authorities, which are responsible
for evaluating the safety, quality, and efficacy of medicines, to take on the responsibility of policing patents, an
area normally under the purview of separate patent authorities. Linking drug registration and patent status can
delay generic entry into the market and is an aggressive TRIPS plus measure.
The 2007 New Trade Policy made patent linkage optional for countries negotiating trade agreements with the
U.S. Most countries in Europe do not impose linkage between patent status and drug registration. If a linkage
obligation is included in the TPP, it will impose on developing countries more restrictive conditions for the
registration of generic medicines than are found in Europe3. OBAMA ADMINISTRATION BACKTRACKING ON U.S. COMMITMENTS TO ACCESS TO
MEDICINES

The TPP is the first trade agreement negotiated under the Obama administration. Leaked U.S. positions and
correspondence and discussions between Congress and the USTR indicate that the U.S. is prepared to walk
away from its previous public health commitments, including the 2007 New Trade Policy.

The bipartisan May 10th, 2007 New Trade Policy,25 signed by the Bush administration and U.S. Congress,
specified that the USTR should modify its intellectual property demands in trade agreement negotiations so that
important public health safeguards are included. The 2007 New Trade Policy aims to scale-back the harshest IP
protections for developing countries in order to strike a better balance between protection of IP and public health
needs. Although it did not go far enough, it was a step in the right direction. In particular:26
 Patent linkage provisions were made voluntary (whereas they had been mandatory in previous US trade
agreements).
 Patent term extension provisions were made voluntary (whereas they had been mandatory in previous
US trade agreements).
 Data exclusivity was limited to five years for new chemical entities; concurrent periods of exclusivity
were mandated, and public health exceptions were allowed to ensure governments could still implement
public health safeguards such as compulsory licenses.
When the 2007 New Trade Policy was announced, the House Ways and Means Committee called it “a
fundamental shift in U.S. trade policy.”27 However, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry has been aggressively
lobbying against the 2007 New Trade Policy being applied to the TPP negotiation countries.

USTR has stated
that they are considering options in the TPP that would shift U.S. policy away from the 2007 New Trade Policy
and toward greater protection of intellectual property rights for brand-name pharmaceutical companies in the
25 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/enewsletter/5-11-07/07%2005%2010%20New%20Trade%20Policy%20Outline.pdf
26

For an analysis of the May 10 agreement, see: Fabiana Jorge. New U.S. trade policy: A turning point?. Journal of Generic Medicines
(2007) 5, 5–8. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jgm.4950093. Available at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jgm/journal/v5/n1/abs/4950093a.html
27 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/enewsletter/5-11-07/07%2005%2010%20New%20Trade%20Policy%20Outline.pdf

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
TPP Issue Brief - September 2011

Several Members of US Congress have also warned against this possibility and written to the
Obama administration to demand that it uphold the 2007 New Trade Policy28.

0 Comments

February 26th, 2014

2/26/2014

0 Comments

FOLKS......PRIVATE MILITARY CONTRACTORS ACTING AS OUR NATIONAL MILITARY AND RECRUITING FOREIGN NATIONALS TO PROTECT US GLOBAL CORPORATE INTERESTS OVERSEAS!!!!!!! REALLY????? THESE EMPLOYEES HAVE ALLIANCE TO CORPORATIONS AND NOT THE PUBLIC! TPP ON STEROIDS.

NEO-LIBERALS HAVE WORKED TO PRIVATIZE THE MILITARY HARDER THAN BUSH/CHENEY.   SO, WHEN YOU LISTEN TO ONE FEEL OUR PAIN AND NOT SHOUTING OUT AGAINST ALL OF THIS POLICY....IT IS PROGRESSIVE PROPAGANDA. THEY ARE NOT DEMOCRATS!

Regarding the WYPR's voice out to Van Hollen on military cuts:

HELLO!!!!!!!! THE PROBLEM IS PRIVATIZATION OF US MILITARY!

'The Clinton administration's "Reinventing Government" initiative promised to downsize it by shifting functions to contractors as a way cut costs and improve efficiency. Later under George Bush, private companies got to compete for 450,000 government jobs, and in 2001, the Pentagon's contracted workforce exceeded civilian DOD employees for the first time'.

*************************************

First, I listened to Van Hollen remorse about the treatment of Vets and outraged at this austerity that would have vets with 1% COLA raises each year and no access to health care as premiums, co-pays, and deductibles would keep vets from accessing most care. Haven't heard Van Hollen say anything about recovering trillions of dollars in defense industry fraud or the dismantling of all that is public with the Veteran's Administration. Haven't heard a thing from Van Hollen over the suggestion that after freezing wages of teachers and other public sector workers that they too were to get 1% increases, and lastly, Van Hollen said nothing about Social Security monthly payments being gutted of hundreds of dollars because the FED manipulates the inflation numbers to make what is 3-4% inflation look as if it is near zero. So, Van Hollen is surrounded by people getting only 1% pay raises and yet....it is this one that hurts.

All of this is happening of course in the State of Maryland....Van Hollen's neo-liberal state. It is neo-liberals who are allowing massive fraud to go without recovery making the public and a manufactured 'austerity' pay down the debt of tens of trillions stolen from the American people.

There is a greater concern in this conversation that Van Hollen is not telling you....the cuts to the defense industry is not only about gutting veterans benefits just as neo-liberals in Maryland are gutting all public sector wealth....it is about the fact that hundreds of thousands more public military staff are being let go. Remember, I wrote a while ago that today's US military is over 70% private military contractors all of which operate with impunity overseas without government oversight. The further downsizing of public military troops does not tell Americans the over side of the coin. Congress passed laws that allow foreign citizens to serve as US military in the nation's where US global corporations have investments so as to protect them overseas. So, Americans are having fewer and fewer public military troops accountable to them as corporate military contractors protecting corporate interests are taking most of the US military budget and is subsidized by global corporations. WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THAT? WELL, YOUR MILITARY NO LONGER WORKS FOR WE THE PEOPLE....IT WORKS FOR CORPORATIONS.

HOW TPP IS THAT????

Of course Van Hollen knows all of this as he comes on media and feels the pain of vets being thrown under the bus by Obama and neo-liberals after Bush and neo-cons forced them to fight in military tour after tour after tour.....all the time knowing they were going to take all of what was due to these vets. MARYLAND IS DOING THIS NOW SO THIS IS NOT A REPUBLICAN ISSUE....IT IS NEO-LIBERAL/NEO-CON. Wouldn't you think the goal of making the US military completely privatized and working for US global corporations would be shouted by democratic pols? NOT IF THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS!

Below is a great overview of the goal of transferring our public military over to private military contractors. You can see how, with no oversight these military contractors are stealing trillions of dollars in fraud and now have more alliance to the global corporation for which it fights than to a sovereign nation called the US. HOW TPP IS THAT?????? This is a long article so please continue down to the last few articles.

Outsourcing War: The Rise of Private Military Contractors
Contributed by Stephen Lendman on Tue, 2010/01/19 - 6:37pm

In sections:

Outsourcing War: The Rise of Private Military Contractors (PMCs) - by Stephen Lendman

In The Prince, Machiavelli (May 1469 - June 1527) wrote:

"The mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous, and if anyone supports his state by the arms of mercenaries, he will never stand firm or sure, as they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, faithless, bold amongst friends, cowardly amongst enemies, they have no fear of God, and keep no faith with men."

In an August 11, 2009 Global Research article titled, "The Real Grand Chessboard and the Profiteers of War," Peter Dale Scott called Private Military Contractors (PMCs) businesses "authorized to commit violence in the name of their employers....predatory bandits (transformed into) uncontrollable subordinates....representing....public power in....remote places."

True enough. Those performing security functions are paramilitaries, hired guns, unprincipled, in it for the money, and might easily switch sides if offered more. Though technically accountable under international and domestic laws where they're assigned, they, in fact, are unregulated, unchecked, free from criminal or civil accountability, and are licensed to kill and get away with it. Political and institutional expediency affords them immunity and impunity to pretty much do as they please and be handsomely paid for it.

So wherever they're deployed, they're menacing and feared with good reason even though many of their member firms belong to associations like the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) and the British Association of Private and Security Companies (BAPSC). Their conduct codes are mere voluntary guidelines that at worst subject violators to expulsion.

When IPOA wanted Blackwater USA investigated (later Blackwater Worldwide, now Xe - pronounced Zee) for slaughtering 28 Iraqis in Al-Nisour Square in central Baghdad and wounding dozens more on September 16, 2007, the company left the association and set up its own, the Global Peace and Security Operations Institute (GPSOI), with no conduct code besides saying:

"Blackwater desires a safer world though practical application of ideas that create solution making a genuine difference to those in need (by) solving the seemingly impossible problems that threaten global peace and stability."

Blackwater, now Xe, makes them far worse as unchecked hired guns. Wherever deployed, they operate as they wish, take full advantage, and stay unaccountable for their worst crimes, the types that would subject ordinary people to the severest punishments.

In his book "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," Jeremy Scahill described a:

"shadowy mercenary company (employing) some of the most feared professional killers in the world (accustomed) to operating without worry or legal consequences....largely off the congressional radar. (It has) remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus" to practice violence with impunity, including cold-blooded murder of non-combatant civilians.

Employing Mercenaries - A Longstanding Practice

Called various names, including mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, dogs of war, and Condottieri for wealthy city states in Renaissance Italy, employing them goes back centuries. In 13th century BC Egypt, Rameses II used thousands of them in battle. Ancient Greeks and Romans also used them. So didn't Alexander the Great, feudal lords in the Middle Ages, popes since 1506, Napoleon, and George Washington against the British in America's war of independence even though by the early 18th century western states enacted laws prohibiting their citizens from bearing arms for other nations. Although the practice continued sporadically, until more recently, private armies fell out of favor.

Defining a Mercenary

Article 47 in the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions provides the most widely, though not universally, accepted definition, based on six criteria, all of which must be met.

"A mercenary is any person who:

(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;

(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities:

(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of the Party;

(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;

(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and

(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces."

This Article's Focus and Some Background

This article covers the modern era of their resurgence, specifically America's use of private military contractors (PMCs) during the post-Cold War period. However, the roots of today's practice began in 1941 in the UK under Captain David Stirling's Special Air Service (SAS), hired to fight the Nazis in small hard-hitting groups. In 1967, he then founded the 20th century's first private military company, WatchGuard International.

Others followed, especially during the 1980s Reagan-Thatcher era when privatizing government services began in earnest. As vice-president, GHW Bush applied it to intelligence, and then defense secretary Dick Cheney hired Brown and Root Services (now KBR, Inc., a former Halliburton subsidiary) to devise how to integrate private companies effectively into warfare.

The Current Proliferation of PMCs

According to PW Singer, author of "Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry:"

Included are companies offering "the functions of warfare....spanning a wide range of activities. They perform everything from tactical combat to consulting (to) mundane logistics....The result is that (the industry) now offers every function that was once limited to state militaries."

Warfare, in part, has been privatized so that "any actor in the global system can access these skills and functions simply by writing a check."

In the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon employed one PMC operative per 50 troops. For the 1999 Yugoslavia conflict, it was one for every 10, and by the 2003 Iraq War, PMCs comprised the second largest force after the US military.

They've also been used in numerous civil wars globally in nations like Angola, Sierra Leone, the Balkans throughout the 1990s, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere. From 1990 - 2000, they participated in 80 conflicts, compared to 15 from 1950 - 1989.

Singer cites three reasons why, combined into "one dynamic:"

1. Supply and demand

Since the Cold War ended in 1991, the US military downsized to about two-thirds its former size, a process Dick Cheney, as defense secretary, called BRAC - Base Realignment and Closure, followed by privatizing military functions. But given America's permanent war agenda, the Pentagon needed help, especially because of the proliferation of small arms, over 550 million globally or about one for every 12 human beings, and their increased use in local conflicts.

2. Changes in the conduct of war

Earlier distinctions between soldiers and civilians are breaking down, the result of low-intensity conflicts against drug cartels, warlords and persons or groups aggressor nations call "terrorists," the same ones they call "freedom fighters" when on their side for imperial purposes.

High-intensity warfare also changed, so sailors aboard guided missile ships, for example, serve along side weapons and technology company personal, needed for their specialized expertise.

In addition, the combination of powerful weapons and sophisticated information technology let the Pentagon topple Saddam with one-fourth the number of forces for the Gulf War. This strategy can be just as effective in other conventional warfare theaters, depending on how formidable the adversary, but it doesn't work in guerrilla wars - the dilemma America faces in Afghanistan, earlier in Iraq and still now as violence there is increasing.

3. The "privatization revolution"

Singer calls it a "change in mentality, a change in political thinking, (a) new ideology that" whatever governments can do, business can do better so let it. The transformation is pervasive in public services, including more spent on private police than actual ones in America. And the phenomenon is global. In China, for example, the private security industry is one of its fastest growing.

By privatizing the military, America pierced the last frontier to let private mercenaries serve in place of conventional forces. Singer defines three types of companies:

1. "Military provider firms"

Whatever their functions, they're used tactically as combatants with weapons performing services formerly done exclusively by conventional or special forces.

2. Military consulting companies

They train and advise, much the way management consulting firms operate for business. They also provide personal security and bodyguard services.

3. Military support firms

They perform non-lethal services. They're "supply-chain management firms....tak(ing) care of the back-end, (including) logistics and technology assistance...." They also supply intelligence and analysis, ordnance disposal, weapons maintenance and other non-combat functions.

Overall, the industry is huge and growing, grossing over $100 billion annually worldwide, operating in over 50 countries. By far, the Pentagon is their biggest client, and in the decade leading up to the Iraq War, it contracted with over 3,000 PMCs, and now many more spending increasingly larger amounts.

A single company, Halliburton and its divisions grossed between $13 - $16 billion from the Iraq War, an amount 2.5 times America's cost for the entire Gulf War. The company profits handsomely because of America's commitment to privatized militarization. More about it below.

Since 2003, Iraq alone represents the "single largest commitment of US military forces in a generation (and) by far the largest marketplace for the private military industry ever."

In 2005, 80 PMCs operated there with over 20,000 personnel. Today, in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, it's grown exponentially, according to US Department of Defense figures - nearly 250,000 as of Q 3, 2009, mostly in Iraq but rising in Afghanistan to support more troops.

Not included are PMCs working for the State Department, 16 US intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, other branches and foreign governments, commercial businesses, and individuals, so the true total is much higher. In addition, as Iraq troops are drawn down, PMCs will replace them, and in Afghanistan, they already exceed America's military force.

According to a September 21, 2009 Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report, as of June 2009, PMCs in Afghanistan numbered 73,968, and a later year end 2009 US Central Command figure is over 104,000 and rising. The expense is enormous and growing with CRS reporting that supporting each soldier costs $1 million annually, in large part because of rampant waste, fraud and abuse, unmonitored and unchecked.

With America heading for 100,000 troops on the ground and more likely coming, $100 billion will be spent annually supporting them, then more billions as new forces arrive, and the Iraq amount is even greater - much, or perhaps most, from supplemental funding for both theaters on top of America's largest ever military budget at a time the country has no enemies except for ones it makes by invading and occupying other countries and waging global proxy wars.

Regulating PMCs

Efforts to do so have been fruitless despite the General Assembly trying in 1989 through the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It took over a decade to get the required 22 signatories, but neither
America or other major PMC users were included.

An earlier effort also failed when in 1987 a special UN rapporteur was established to examine "the use of mercenaries as a means of impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination." It was largely ignored, and a 2005 effort won't likely fare better under a working group for the same purpose. Nor will industry associations functioning more for show than a commitment to end bad practices that will always go on as long as rogue firms like Xe and others like it are employed.

Singer noted how PMCs have been involved in some of the most controversial aspects of war - from over-billing to ritual slaughter of unarmed civilians. Yet none of them have ever been prosecuted, convicted or imprisoned, an issue Singer cites in listing five "dilemmas:"

1. Contractual ones - hiring PMCs for their skills, to save money, or do jobs nations prefer to avoid. Yet unaccountability injects a "worrisome layer of uncertainty" into military operations, opening the door to unchecked abuses.

2. PMCs constitute an unregulated global business operating for profit, not peace and security when skilled killers are hired - former Green Berets, Delta Force soldiers, Navy Seals, and foreign ones like the British SAS.

3. Conducting public policy as serious as war through private means is worrisome, including covert operations to avoid official oversight and legislative constraints.

4. Moving private companies into the military sphere creates disturbing gray areas. PMCs can't be court martialed, and international law doesn't cover them. Further, operating in war zones makes them even less accountable as who can prove their actions weren't in self-defense, even against unarmed civilians.

5. Increasing PMC use also "raises some deep questions about the military itself." How do you retain the most talented combat troops when they can sell their skills for far greater pay? Also consider the uniqueness of the military.

"It is the only profession that has its own court system, its own laws; the only profession that has its own grocery stores and separate bases;" its own pensions and other benefits for those staying around long enough to qualify. So what happens when it's transformed into a business with profit the prime motive? Simple - more wars, greater profits. The same idea as privatizing prisons - more prisoners, fatter bottom line.

Another consideration is also worrisome. Given America's imperial ambitions, global dominance, permanent war agenda, and virtual disregard for the law, public distrust is growing for politicians who never earned it in the first place.

Given the Pentagon's transformation since 1991, the number of services it privatized, and America's permanent war agenda, what will conditions be in another decade or a few years? How much more prominent will PMCs be? How much more insecurity will result? How soon will it be before hordes of them are deployed throughout America as enforcers in civilian communities outside of conflict zones, with as much unaccountability here as abroad? What will the nation be like if it happens?

Halliburton/KRB

In his book, "Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War," Pratap Chatterjee describes a company tainted by bribes, kickbacks, inefficiency, corruption and fraud, exploitation of workers as near-slaves, and other serious offenses, yet operates with impunity and sticks taxpayers with many billions of dollars in charges.

Before spun off in 2007, KBR won the bulk of Iraq contracts as part of Halliburton, many of them no-bid. Earlier from 2002 to March 2003, it was involved with the Pentagon in planning the war and its role once it ended - the one co-founder George Brown claimed Lyndon Johnson described in the 1960s as a "joint venture (in which) I'm going to take care of politics and you're going to take care of the business side of it." Fast forward, and nothing's changed.

In a February 19, 2009 article, titled "Inheriting Halliburton's Army," Chatterjee writes how their employees are in "every nook and cranny of US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan," yet stateside operations yield additional billions in revenue. He describes their "shoddy electrical work, unchlorinated shower water, overcharges for trucks sitting idle in the desert, deaths of KRB (its former subsidiary) employees and affiliated soldiers in Iraq, alleged million-dollar bribes accepted by KBR managers, and billions of dollars in missing receipts, among the slew of other complaints" that got wide publicity since the beginning of the Iraq war.

He explains that since it got a 2001 contract to supply US forces in combat theaters, KBR grossed over $25 billion. It then got new contracts under Obama, leading Chatterjee to ask: "How did the US military become this dependent on one giant company?"

Tracing its history since the 1960s, he noted its connection to Lyndon Johnson, its profiteering from the Vietnam War, again under Ronald Reagan, then more under GHW Bush and Dick Cheney, his defense secretary who accelerated the Pentagon's privatization agenda, then headed the company as CEO. Bill Clinton continued it, hiring KBR in 1994 to build bases in Bosnia, later Kosovo, and run their daily operations.

Then under Bush/Cheney, outsourcing accelerated further, so today there's one KBR worker for every three US soldiers in Iraq. They build base infrastructure and maintain them by handling all their duties - feeding soldiers, doing their laundry, performing maintenance, and virtually all other non-combat functions.

Despite its abusive practices, KBR is such an integral part of the Pentagon that Chatterjee asks "could Obama dismiss (its) army, even if he wanted to?" Not at all so expect KRB's $150 billion 10-year LOGCAP contract (the Army's Logistics Augmentation Program - beginning September 20, 2008) to continue, and KBR's army to remain on the march reaping billions from the public treasury as the nation's largest PMC war profiteer.

PMCs Under Obama

In February 2007, Senator Obama introduced the Transparency and Accountability in Military Security Contracting Act as an amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, requiring federal agencies to report to Congress on the numbers of security contractors employed, killed, wounded, and disciplinary actions taken against them. Referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee, it never passed.

Then in February 2009 as president, Obama introduced reforms to reduce PMC spending and shift outsourced work back to government. He also promised to improve the quality of acquisition workers - government employees involved in supervising and auditing billions of dollars spent monthly on contracts. Even so, PMCs are fully integrated into national security and other government functions, as evidenced by the massive numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan alone.

Earlier, PMCs were at times used in lieu of US forces. As mentioned above, they helped General Washington win America's war of independence. Later the war of 1812, and in WW II the Flying Tigers fought the Japanese for China's Chiang Kai-Shek. In the 1960s and early 1970s, they were prominent nation builders in South Vietnam. From 1947 through 1976, the CIA's Southern Air Transport performed paramilitary services, including delivering weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

In 1985, the Army's LOGCAP was a precursor for more extensive civilian contractor use in wartime and for other purposes. It's involved in pre-planned logistics and engineering or construction contracts, including vehicle maintenance, warehousing, base building abroad, and a range of non-combat functions on them.

The Clinton administration's "Reinventing Government" initiative promised to downsize it by shifting functions to contractors as a way cut costs and improve efficiency. Later under George Bush, private companies got to compete for 450,000 government jobs, and in 2001, the Pentagon's contracted workforce exceeded civilian DOD employees for the first time.

In 2002, under Army Secretary Thomas White, the military planned to increase its long-term reliance on contracted workers, a plan known as the "Third Wave" after two earlier ones. Its purposes were to free up military manpower for the global war on terror, get non-core products and services from private sources so Army leaders could focus on their core competencies, and support Bush's Management Agenda.

In April 2003, the initiative stalled when White resigned, among other reasons for a lack of basic information required to effectively manage a growing PMC force, then estimated to be between 124,000 - 605,000 workers. Today, more precise figures are known and for what functions, but a lack of transparency and oversight makes it impossible for the public, Congress, the administration, or others in government to assess them with regard to cost, effectiveness, their services, whether government or business should perform them, and their effect on the nation for good or ill, with strong evidence of the latter.

The 2008 Montreux Document is an agreement obligating signatories with regard to their PMCs in war zones. Seventeen nations ratified it, including America, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada and China, pledging to promote responsible PMC conduct in armed conflicts. Divided in two sections, its first one covers international laws binding on private contractors, explains states can't circumvent their obligations by using them, requires they take appropriate measures to prevent violations, address them responsibly when they do, and take effective steps to prevent future occurrences.

The second section lists 70 practices for helping countries fulfill their legal obligations, including not using PMCs for activities requiring force, implementing effective control, using surveillance and sanctions in case of breaches, and regulating and licensing contracted companies, that in turn, must train their personnel to observe the rules of law.

Given the obvious conflicts of interest, self-regulation won't work. Unchecked, combatant PMCs are accountable only to themselves, operating secretly outside the law - for the Pentagon as an imperial tool.

Given Obama's permanent war agenda and how entrenched PMCs have become, expect little constructive change, save for tinkering around the edges and regular rhetorical promises, followed by new fronts in the war on terror and even greater numbers civilians and soldiers for them.

Then add hundreds more billions diverted from vital homeland needs to enrich thousands of war profiteers, addicted to sure-fire blood money, and expecting plenty more ahead. They'll get it unless enough public outrage demands an end to this madness before it's too late to matter.

Some Final Comments

On January 13 (on antiwar.com), Jeremy Scahill reported that Representative Jan Schakowsky (D. IL and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence member):

"is preparing to introduce legislation (Stop Outsourcing Security Act - SOS) aimed at ending the US government's relationship with Blackwater and other armed contracting companies."

Originally introduced in 2007 but not passed, Schakowsky says:

"The legislation would prohibit the use of private contractors for military, security, law enforcement, intelligence, and armed rescue functions unless the President tells Congress why the military is unable to perform those functions. It would also increase transparency over any remaining security contracts by increasing reporting requirements and giving Congress access to details about large contracts."

Meanwhile on January 12, 2010, a coalition of groups opposed to Blackwater called on Congress to investigate why criminal charges against the company were dismissed on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. They also want to "pull the funding on war profiteers like Blackwater (and) stop them for good."

It's a tall order given how entrenched they are and expanding. In Haiti, for example, reports say Blackwater is there providing security, an indication perhaps of more contingents to follow, from them and other armed contractors, "authorized to commit violence in the name of their employers."

Stephen Lendman is Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

____________________________________________

As we see both Clinton and now Obama are working as hard as they can to hand almost all of the US military off to private military contractors. The 'austerity' cuts neo-liberals and neo-cons are using to pay for the massive corporate fraud of trillions of dollars are a continuation of that privatization. More and more cuts of public troops and what would have been their benefits as more and more private contractor troops are hired overseas. Your military tax dollars are going to a defense industry budget to pay for the US hiring of African citizens to protect US global corporate interests in Africa. This isn't just the fight against terrorists....this is the protection of oil fields, banking systems, industrial factories. This army works for corporations and not me and you.

I THINK MOST AMERICANS FIND THIS OUTRAGEOUS AND UNACCEPTABLE YET YOU DO NOT HEAR ONE PEEP FROM NEO-LIBERALS! They simply have to pretend to feel our pain as they work to see this all implemented!

This article from 2005 does not include Obama as the one above does....but it does show that Clinton era is when this process grew. It is important to know that as Secretary of State, Hillary moved Bill's military privatization forward with Obama.

DON'T YOU THINK VAN HOLLEN AND MARYLAND POLS WOULD BE SHOUTING OUT ABOUT THIS AS THE PROBLEM!

What do private military contractors do?
Frontline PBS 2005

Doug Brooks, the president of the International Peace Operations Association, an association of private contractors, describes three categories of companies: logistical support firms, private security firms, and private military companies. The private military companies provide combat forces for hire. These types of companies, such as the now-dissolved South African company Executive Outcomes, are rare and none of them are currently operating in Iraq.

+ When did the relationship between private contractors and the military take off?

"You're talking about an industry that really didn't exist until the start of the 1990s," says Peter Singer, the author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. "And since then, it's grown in size, in monetary terms to about $100 billion worth of revenue a year. In geographic terms, it operates in over 50 different countries. It's operated on every single continent but Antarctica."

Singer says three trends coalesced during this time that drove the industry's growth: the end of the Cold War, which led to military downsizing not only in the U.S., but around the world; a global increase in smaller conflicts; and the ideological shift towards privatizing government functions in general. The Pentagon's use of private contractors has increased dramatically between the two Gulf wars: During the first Gulf War in 1991, there were 50 military personnel for every one contractor; in the 2003 conflict the ratio was 10 to 1.

+ How many private security firms are working in Iraq?

No one knows the exact number of private security contractors that rushed into Iraq following the war. In April 2004, in response to a request from Congress, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) compiled a list of 60 different firms employing a total of 20,000 personnel (including U.S. citizens, Iraqis and third-country nationals).

Before handing over power to the newly elected Iraqi government in January 2005, the CPA established "Memorandum 17," a notice that called for all private security companies operating in Iraq to register by June 1 and established an oversight committee led by Iraq's Ministry of the Interior.

According to Lawrence Peter, a former CPA official and the director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, as of June 21, 2005, 37 security contractors have registered with the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. One is awaiting approval, and at least 18 additional security companies are in the process of registering.

+ Who is employed by the private contracting firms in Iraq?

Here is a breakdown of the numbers:

    50,000 support/logistics contractors
    These are civilians hired by KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary which holds the military's logistical support contract. They work as weathermen, cooks, carpenters, mechanics, etc. Most are from Third World countries and the majority are Filipinos.

    20,000 non-Iraqi security contractors
    Of these, 5-6,000 are British, American, South African, Russian or European; another 12,000 are from Third World countries, such as Fiji, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and India.

    15,000 Iraqi security contractors
    Most of these were hired mainly by the British security firm Erinys to guard Iraq's oil infrastructure.

    40-70,000 reconstruction contractors
    Hired to rebuild Iraq. Some are Iraqis, but they're mostly from the U.S. and dozens of other countries and employed by companies such as General Electric, Bechtel, Parsons, KBR, Fluor and Perini.

+ How much do private contractors get paid?

Money is a prime motivator for those working in Iraq. Guards for private security firms can typically make between $400 and $600 per day. Guards employed by Blackwater, a high-profile American company that guarded Ambassador Paul Bremer, the former head of the CPA, are paid up to $1000 per day.

+ How many contractors have been killed in Iraq?

The exact number is not known; not all companies report casualty numbers. In June 2005, when the film originally aired, Erinys said it had lost three employees on its contract with the Army Corps of Engineers, and an additional 16 employees who were killed guarding Iraqi oil infrastructure. KBR, which employs over 50,000 in the region, told FRONTLINE that 65 of its employees, including 16 truckers, have been killed since the beginning of the war.

Update: In November 2005, Knight Ridder obtained insurance-claim statistics from the Department of Labor and reported 428 civilian contractor deaths and 3,963 other casualties. However, the story quoted two companies -- Halliburton and L-3 Communications -- as saying their casualty figures were higher than those reported by the Labor Department for their companies.

+ Given the continuing violence and dangers facing contractors, are the companies having problems hiring?

So far, no. The private companies can increase salaries to correspond with need, and as yet, there haven't been recruitment problems.

+ What are some advantages and disadvantages of hiring private contractors?

The number one reason cited for using private contractors in Iraq is the same reason driving arguments for privatizing other government functions: Outsourcing saves taxpayer money because private firms in a competitive market can do the job more efficiently and at a lower cost. Critics question how money is saved if firms must pay employees higher wages to attract them to work in Iraq, but defenders point out that a) firms can hire and fire based on a surge capacity; b) that employees from non-Western countries can be paid lower wages; and c) that companies don't have to pay all the long-term benefits that are required of the military.

Critics also argue that financial efficiencies are lost when companies subcontract with other companies, as is typical of the private contractors operating in Iraq.

No definitive studies on the cost-effectiveness of military outsourcing have been done yet.

+ Read more on the debate over cost-effectiveness.

One of the major disadvantages of using private contractors in Iraq is that they operate outside of the military chain of command, with two consequences. First, if a situation becomes too dangerous, individuals can halt operations or break their contracts and leave. For example, after an incident on April 9, 2004, in which a 19-truck KBR convoy was ambushed -- six drivers were killed, one was taken hostage, and one is still missing -- FRONTLINE was told that scores of KBR truckers refused to drive until security improved and hundreds of contractors left the country. For weeks, the military was left with dwindling stores of ammunition, fuel and water.

+ Read this July 2005 GAO report on the continuing challenges in getting capable private security contractors, coordinating their working relationship with the U.S. military and tracking the costs of these forces. (pdf file)

Another consequence of contractors being outside the military command structure is the lack of coordination on the battlefield. As Steven Schooner, an expert in government contracting, explains, "[Contractors and the military] don't communicate in the same networks. They don't get the same intelligence information. And so, when things begin to develop quickly, there's an awful lot of people around with weapons who have important tactical responsibilities who don't have the same information and aren't getting the same messages from the tactical leadership." This problem was evident on March 31, 2004, when four contractors working for the private security firm Blackwater were ambushed and killed while escorting a convoy in Fallujah. Marine Col. John Toolan, who at the time was in command of the region including Fallujah, told FRONTLINE that not only did he not know the Blackwater contractors were in the area, but that their deaths forced him to set aside his initial strategy for quelling the insurgency in the area when he was forced to invade the city and find the killers.

In order to remedy the coordination problem, the CPA contracted with another private security firm, the British company Aegis, to coordinate and track all the security teams operating in Iraq through a Reconstruction Operations Center (ROC). But participation is voluntary and because they want to maintain their competitive advantage in the marketplace, some companies are loathe to share information with another company. A July 2005 report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the ROC had improved coordination between the military and the security contractors, but it also suggested two problems remain. First, there were still incidents when security personnel approached military convoys or checkpoints, and second, upon deployment to Iraq, many military personnel were not aware of security personnel operating within the country.

+ Is the use of private contractors leading to a "brain drain" from the U.S. military?

This is an argument of some critics, who say private security firms are poaching highly trained Special Forces soldiers with salaries that are two to four times what they can earn in the military. According to a report from the British-American Security Information Council, "Reportedly, exhausted American and British Special Forces personnel are resigning in record numbers and taking highly-paid jobs as private security guards in Iraq and Afghanistan." The Pentagon has responded by offering cash bonuses of up to $150,000 for Special Forces to reenlist.

Brooks of the IPOA acknowledges that the industry's growth has created a new market for Special Forces soldiers. However, he argues that the temporary nature of the security industry is unlikely to draw those who didn't already want to leave the military. "How long is Baghdad going to last? How long is there going to be demand for these services? It's not a career-ending decision," he says. "You have to think if you're about ready to leave Special Forces it makes sense. If you're in it for a career, then there's no point in leaving just to do one or two years of personal security work.

+ What is the legal status of private contractors in Iraq? Are they accountable under U.S. or Iraqi law?

One of the real problems in regulating all private contractors is their somewhat ambiguous legal status. As Singer wrote in a March 2005 article in Foreign Affairs, "Although private military firms and their employees are now integral parts of many military operations, they tend to fall through the cracks of current legal codes, which sharply distinguish civilians from soldiers. Contractors are not quite civilians, given that they often carry and use weapons, interrogate prisoners, load bombs and fulfill other critical military roles. Yet they are not quite soldiers, either."

In June 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority handed down Memorandum 17, which grants foreign contractors immunity from Iraqi law while working within the boundaries of their contracted tasks. The memo placed private contractors under the legal authority of the workers' home countries. In June 2004, one day before the CPA transferred sovereignty in Iraq to the interim Iraqi government, Paul Bremer signed a revised version of Memorandum 17, which stipulates that the rule remain in effect until multinational forces are withdrawn from Iraq or until it is amended by Iraqi lawmakers.

U.S. government contracts worth $50 million or more with private companies must be reported to Congress, and the companies must comply with the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which regulates the import and export of arms material and services. But, for example, of the 60 known private security companies operating in Iraq, only eight worked directly for the CPA; the rest are subcontracted to provide protection for the primary contractors or even other subcontractors. When companies are not contracted directly to the government, they are accountable only to the contractor whom employs them.

Companies that contract with the Pentagon are required to follow a set of rules known as the Defense Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS). DFARS governs all aspects of contract enforcement, from accounting procedures to use of government property, and contains a section on "Contractor Standards of Conduct" covering proper behavior and a hotline for reporting improper conduct. DFARS was amended on June 6, 2005, to hold contractors working to provide support to U.S. forces deployed overseas accountable under U.S. and international laws as well as those of the host country. It also permits contractors to carry weapons at the discretion of the military commander.

American private contractors are also subject to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), which allows for the prosecution of civilians employed by or accompanying the military while overseas and was signed by President Bill Clinton in October 2000. MEJA has been criticized for loopholes, which came to attention after reports surfaced of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Although private contractors stand accused in a series of lawsuits filed in U.S. courts by former detainees, the companies might not be liable under MEJA because the law deals only with contractors employed by the Department of Defense. As of June 2005, the only person to be prosecuted under MEJA was Latasha Lorraine Arnt, who in February 2005 was sentenced to eight years in prison for killing her husband, a military policeman stationed at a U.S. Air Force Base in Turkey.

+ Have any contractors been prosecuted for misbehavior in Iraq?

No, according to Peter Singer. However, there have been civil lawsuits filed against some of the PMCs; for example, the families of the four Blackwater guards killed in Fallujah are suing for wrongful death.

+ What about allegations against Halliburton/KBR?

KBR has inspired a cottage industry of critics charging undue political influence -- as its parent company Halliburton was formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney -- and financial fraud. The company has been the subject of numerous audits: One by the U.S. Government Accountability Office of dining hall costs for one four-month period alleges KBR charged $88 million for meals it never served. And Pentagon audits allege that KBR overcharged $212 million for fuel and billed the government $1.8 billion in other unsupported costs. The Pentagon terminated the fuel contract. As for meals, KBR says workers prepared food that just wasn't consumed. And the unsupported $1.8 billion, they say, is a paperwork issue that's being resolved.

But for all the controversy, there are many in Wall Street and in Washington who believe KBR is making only a slim profit, and that they've simply been overwhelmed by the military's needs and failed to adequately track costs.

________________________________________________

You can see why neo-liberals paint Kirsten Gillibrand as the next Hillary.....SHE IS AS NEO-LIBERAL AS IT GETS. THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PARTY/NEO-LIBERALS MEDIA LOVES GILLIBRAND!

Remember, it is Harry Reid as Senate leader who appoints the heads of these committees. You do not have a raging privatization without these people.

United States Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel
From Wikipedia,

    Kirsten Gillibrand, New York, Chairwoman
    Kay Hagan, North Carolina
    Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut
    Mazie Hirono, Hawaii
    Tim Kaine, Virginia
    Angus King, Maine[1]



    Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, Ranking Member
    Saxby Chambliss, Georgia
    Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire
    Roy Blunt, Missouri
    Mike Lee, Utah

Ex officio

    Carl Levin, Michigan
********************************************

SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE.

Majority

    Carl Levin, Michigan, Chairman
    Jack Reed, Rhode Island
    Bill Nelson, Florida
    Claire McCaskill, Missouri
    Mark Udall, Colorado
    Kay Hagan, North Carolina
    Joe Manchin, West Virginia
    Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire
    Kirsten Gillibrand, New York
    Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut
    Joe Donnelly, Indiana
    Mazie Hirono, Hawaii
    Tim Kaine, Virginia
    Angus King, Maine[2]
***************************
If you know Pelosi and Hoyer are neo-liberals and the DCCC is controlled by neo-liberals .....you know Van Hollen is right there. Now, if you were on the House Budget Committee and Deficit REduction Committee the first thing you would do as a democrat...

SHOUT LOUDLY AND STRONGLY THAT ALL OF THE NATIONAL DEBT WAS CREATED BY MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD AND RECOVERY OF THAT FRAUD WILL PAY THE ENTIRE NATIONAL DEBT.

Just because a pol is a nice guy or gal....doesn't mean they are working for you and me. These pols can use their platforms to protect the American people from TPP

Chris Van Hollen
From Wikipedia

Christopher "Chris" Van Hollen, Jr. (born January 10, 1959) is the U.S. Representative for Maryland's 8th congressional district, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes most of Montgomery County, an affluent suburban county adjacent to Washington, D.C., as well as portions of Carroll and Frederick counties. He is an alumnus of the Kodaikanal International School, a very prestigious school in southern India.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi created a new leadership post, Assistant to the Speaker, in 2006 so that Van Hollen could be present at all leadership meetings. After the Democrats regained control of the House in the 2006 elections, Van Hollen became the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the fifth-ranking position among House Democrats. In this post, Van Hollen was responsible for leading efforts to get more Democrats elected to Congress.

After the Democratic losses in 2010, Van Hollen did not run for re-election to chair of the DCCC. Van Hollen instead chose to run for the top Democratic spot on the House Budget Committee, which was being vacated by outgoing chairman John Spratt who had been defeated for re-election. Van Hollen was elected as the ranking member on the Budget Committee on November 17, 2010. Pelosi appointed him to the 12-member bipartisan Committee on Deficit Reduction with a mandate for finding major budget reductions by late 2011.

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