Flashpoints, of which I listened to a piece this morning, has the piece of
yesterday's program with a portion of a film about the British company that
sells its brain washing services to various countries, and whose US branch, run
by the Mercers and Steve Bannon, engineered Trump's victory. All with
algorithms, using data culled from the internet, especially Facebook, on folks
in the key battleground states. Politics for profit. If the Democrats truly
wanted to find the villain responsible for Hillary's loss, they could look at
this company. If they truly wanted to impeach Trump, they could impeach him for
his sexual behavior, (like they did Clinton), his financial benefiting from the
Presidency, and putting the country in danger by threatening nuclear war. But
reality has nothing to do with politics, apparently.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2017 10:08 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Leaked Documents Expose How Corporations Use
Spies to Subvert People's Movements Worldwide
Naomi Klein, one of my Heroes. I put Naomi Klein at the podium along with
Chris Hedges and the ghost of Howard Zinn, as the Truth Speakers of the
Twenty-First Century. There are others, but if we only had room enough for
three, those would be my choices.
For me, it is easy to tell the Players apart. I just look for the "bottom
line" as our corporate masters are fond of telling us. Their bottom line is
Profit. Period! So I look for where the bottom line is People. People, Life,
and Mother Earth. I happen to love my fellow Humans, in spite of our many
short comings. And no matter how charming or smart the Corporate Profiteers
appear, I place them all in league with the Devil, Greed. We must always, no
matter how tempted we are, believe that these Corporate Masters cannot serve
both Profit and People. One or the other, that's the Law of the Universe.
I have spoken!
Carl Jarvis
On 12/12/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Leaked Documents Expose How Corporations Use Spies to Subvert People's
Movements Worldwide Published on Tuesday, December 12, 2017 by Common
Dreams Leaked Documents Expose How Corporations Use Spies to Subvert
People's Movements Worldwide Given what "these companies have gotten
away with," concluded Naomi Klein, it is "no wonder they fear our
power."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
Anti-war demonstrators rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the
United Nations September 19, 2006 in New York City. (Photo: Michael
Nagle/Getty
Images)
That governments deploy undercover law enforcement officers to
infiltrate, gather information on, and subvert protest movements has
long been common knowledge. Less well-known, however, is the extent to
which some of the world's most profitable businesses have hired
private spies to keep tabs on political movements they perceive as a threat
to their power and profits.
"The leaked documents suggest the use of secretive corporate security
firms to gather intelligence about political campaigners has been widespread."
-Meiron Jones and Rob Evans, the Guardian
Hundreds of pages of newly leaked documents-reported on for the first
time Tuesday by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism (TBIJ)-provide an unprecedented glimpse into this
mysterious world of "corporate spies," who have been hired by major
companies like the German carmaker Porsche, the U.S.-based
manufacturing giant Caterpillar, and the Royal Bank of Scotland to
monitor anti-war demonstrations, protests against the Israeli
occupation of Palestinian territories, and environmental campaigns against
the destruction of the planet.
"The leaked documents suggest the use of secretive corporate security
firms to gather intelligence about political campaigners has been widespread,"
report the Guardian's Rob Evans and Meirion Jones.
Despite this fact-and despite claims by police that corporate spies
embedded in protest movements frequently outnumber undercover law
enforcement officers-these private firms face "little or no
regulation."
And while these "security" companies have attempted to fashion
themselves as run-of-the-mill service providers, they are in reality
quite different.
"One key distinguishing factor is that corporate investigation firms
are often staffed and run by former spies and veterans of special
forces, even if they work alongside graduates, accountants and lawyers," TBIJ
notes.
"Some of the companies even have private military arms."
Speaking anonymously to the Guardian, a man who claims he personally
infiltrated political groups for a corporate spy firm said that his
work involved more than merely collecting information on protesters.
"He described how the spies surreptitiously fostered conflicts within
a campaign to set activists against each other, in order to wear them
down and make them lose their political motivation," the Guardian
reports.
One of the companies featured heavily in the cache of documents is the
private security firm C2i International, which has deployed spies on
behalf of Porsche and other major companies to infiltrate groups of
environmentalists and anti-Iraq war campaigners.
According to the Guardian, "documents show that C2i claimed it had
'real-time intelligence assets' in a range of environmental campaigns
including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, local green groups in
Oxford and 'all anti‐aviation groups.'"
In 2008, C2i also "pitched its services to Donald Trump's property
development firm, which was seeking to create a huge golf course and
build a hotel and flats on ecologically sensitive land in Scotland."
C2i reportedly warned Trump that his company was "under threat from a
consortium of environmental activists," but it is unclear whether
Trump took C2i up on its offer.
In one case exposed by the leaked documents, C2i-hired by
Caterpillar-spied on the family of Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to
death by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003 while protesting the
destruction of Palestinian homes. The bulldozer was manufactured and
sold to the Israeli military by Caterpillar.
As the Guardian reports, "Corrie's family took legal action against
Caterpillar, alleging that the firm was complicit in war crimes by
exporting bulldozers to the Israelis knowing that they would be used
to demolish Palestinian homes."
Just days after U.S. judges dismissed the lawsuit, Corrie's mother
spoke to members of the campaign supporting the family's legal action
on a conference call. C2i appears to have listened in on the call and
obtained the campaign's notes pertaining to the conversation.
After learning that her conversation was infiltrated by private spies,
Corrie's mother Cindy told the Guardian that it is "really distasteful"
that
corporate operatives would lie about their identities to listen to a
conversation she believed only consisted of supporters.
Reacting to the newly leaked trove of documents, author and
environmentalist Naomi Klein-who has written extensively on the
exploits of corporate contractors-argued that given the enormous human
and environmental abuses global corporations have committed, it is not
surprising that they would hire spies to monitor those who threaten to
expose their criminality.
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