Category: Corruption

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Andrew Garfield: Afghan Government Indicted for Fraud – Ghani Wins Unless International Community Fails to Run Polls and Contest Massive Fraud by Abdullah and Karzai

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Peace Intelligence
Andrew Garfield
Andrew Garfield

Afghanistan On The Brink – The Last Chance For A “Correction”

By Andrew Garfield

Foreign Policy Research Institute, June 10, 2014 – 10:03am

PBI Executive Summary: Significant fraud in first round (at least one seventh of the total votes); 3,000 election staff fired, Afghan government indicted for forbidding polls (the major fraud detection measure) and allowing repeat of massive fraud. New polls indicate Ghani wins easily on demographics alone. If normally standard measures do not counter fraud, election will be polarizing, civil war the outcome, and all investment to date made moot.

Continue reading “Andrew Garfield: Afghan Government Indicted for Fraud – Ghani Wins Unless International Community Fails to Run Polls and Contest Massive Fraud by Abdullah and Karzai”

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Eagle: The Purchase of the Republic — Extraordinary Graphics, Griftopia in One Article

Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

The Purchase of Our Republic

A Democracy in Name Only

The massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government.

Y. Falkson

Americans know that something is wrong, deeply wrong. They see signs of the problem everywhere: income inequality, growing concentration and power of mega corporations, political donations/corruption, the absence of jobs with decent salaries, the explosion of the US prison population, healthcare costs, student loan debt, homelessness, etc. etc. However, the true causes and benefactors behind these problems are purposely hidden from view. What Americans see is Kabuki Theater of a functioning form of capitalism and democracy, but beyond this veneer our country has devolved into the exact opposite.

Continue reading “Eagle: The Purchase of the Republic — Extraordinary Graphics, Griftopia in One Article”

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SchwartzReport: NSA Collects Millions of Facial Images — and Images of Human Interactions — Each Day

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Idiocy, Military
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

And the surveillance state just keeps oozing out across our lives like a toxic smog. It will soon be possible to track any person, almost anywhere. There is already no problem turning on your phone's camera, or microphone. Moving through any public space will result in multiple images, which are keyed to every electronic interaction you have.

Report: NSA Collects Millions of Facial Images Per Day
DANA FORD – CNN

The National Security Agency is reportedly capturing millions of images per day to feed facial recognition programs. Citing top-secret documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the New York Times reported the agency ‘s reliance on such technology has grown in recent years.

New software allows the NSA to “exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications,” the newspaper said. “The agency intercepts ‘millions of images per day' – including about 55,000 ‘facial recognition quality images' – which translate into ‘tremendous untapped potential,'” the newspaper reported, citing documents from 2011.

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SchwartzReport: Joseph Stiglitz on Corporate Tax Dodging

Commerce, Corruption
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

It's perfectly clear that the cuddling of the uber-rich must stop. Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz makes the point as well as anyone could.

Joseph E. Stiglitz: Let's Stop Subsidizing Tax Dodgers
BILL MOYERS – Moyers & Company

A new report by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz for the Roosevelt Institute suggests that paying our fair share of taxes and cracking down on corporate tax dodgers could be a cure for inequality and a faltering economy.

This week on Moyers & Company, Stiglitz tells Bill that Apple, Google, GE and a host of other Fortune 500 companies are creating what amounts to ‘an unlimited IRA for corporations.” The result? Vast amounts of lost revenue for our treasury and the exporting of much-needed jobs to other countries.

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Matt Taibi: The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap — Legal Immunity for the 1%, Criminalization of Everything for the 99%

01 Poverty, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement
Amazon Pagae
Amazon Page

A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis
 
Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:

Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.

Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.

In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

Continue reading “Matt Taibi: The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap — Legal Immunity for the 1%, Criminalization of Everything for the 99%”

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Eagle: Charles Hugh Smith on Failed US Economy — Endless Parade of Lies, Manipulations, and Deceptions

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

Our “Make It Look Good” Economy Has Failed

When rigged numbers are the basis of our success, we have failed.

The essence of the U.S. economy is make it look good: never mind quality or long-term consequences, just make it look good today, this week, this month, this quarter: make the pink slime look like meat, make the company look profitable, make the low-quality product look good enough to close the sale, make the unemployment rate low enough to justify re-electing the toadies currently in power, make the body count of bad guys look good, and on and on–just makes the numbers look good now, the future will take care of itself.

This is, of course, an attractive lie: the future is a direct consequence of present decisions and actions. It is remarkable how quickly we latch onto the notion that an endless parade of lies, manipulations and deceptions will magically produce a warm and fuzzy future of organic growth fostered by sound investments.

Continue reading “Eagle: Charles Hugh Smith on Failed US Economy — Endless Parade of Lies, Manipulations, and Deceptions”