Tag: corporations

A Confluence of Monopolies, Manipulations, and Moore’s Law

The current crisis is the story of: 

  1. Billionaires = unprecedented personal power

    There have always been very rich people who bend society to serve their personal interests. But today’s billionaires have so much more power at their fingertips. They can write a check to a PR firm with 100,000 employees around the globe, or buy a slate of politicians, or hire a private intelligence agency like BlackCube made up of former Mossad agents to blackmail a rival, manipulate a market, or rig an election. Bill Gates, the Wellcome Trust, and BlackRock are key instigators of the Covid crisis. Billionaires are playing a different game than the rest of us and the WEF is one of their coordinating councils (I’m sure there are many more that we cannot see).
  2. Monopolies = unprecedented corporate power

    The classic economic liberalism of Adam Smith does not exist anymore. In its place are oligopolies and monopolies. The US is controlled by ten cartels and collectively they are destroying our country and enslaving the population. The economics of monopoly capitalism are completely different than the economics of liberal capitalism. Under monopoly capitalism firms set prices, write the laws, and generally do not have to compete (instead they use bottlenecks and the coercive power of the state to extract economic rents from the population). 
  3. Psyops = unprecedented psychological insight deployed in service of unprecedented government/corporate power

    The CIA has spent the last 77 years studying human behavior and ways to manipulate and control the human mind. They learned from the best psychologists, researched how various chemicals impact the brain, and mastered the art of television and film for the purposes of persuasion. The Asch Conformity Experiment, Stanford Prison Experiment, and Milgram Experiment revealed that 65% to 75% of society are basically non-playing characters who will do whatever they are told. The CIA then conducted countless experiments to hone their craft and reshape society. The CIA weaponized this knowledge to serve the interests of their clients — first the US government and large multinational corporations and now they’ve gone rogue and they just serve their own interests. 

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The Great Job Replacement: How Corporations Are Replacing American Workers With “Temporary Protected Status” Migrants Across Ohio & Pennsylvania

Another burgeoning crisis involving the importation of Haitian migrants is bubbling over, this time not in Ohio – but Pennsylvania too.

Recently at one of his rallies, former President Donald Trump spoke of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, detailing that the 4,000 person town has experienced a 2,000% surge in the Haitian migrant population under Kamala Harris.

Charleroi councilman, Larry Celaschi explained the worsening situation.

Councilman Celaschi says that Charleroi is getting no money or funding from having such a large number of Haitian migrants dumped in their town.

Celaschi describes that Charleroi is already unable to make ends meet with their budget and is now somehow expected to find extra revenue to bear the strain of an influx of Haitians on their town’s infrastructure.

Celaschi also explains that there has been a huge spike in car crashes and that the town needs new traffic signage in English and Creole so migrants can understand what to do when operating a vehicle on the roadways.

Over the past five years, 1.4 million native-born U.S. workers have lost their job. In that same span of time, 3 million foreign-born workers gained employment.

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The Odd Connections Between David Becker, Georgia Election Officials, Sunoco Oil And A GA Election Organization You Likely Have Never Heard Of

In telling the story – it’s hard to judge where to start, but let’s begin with David Becker. Mr. Becker founded an organization known as the Center for Election Innovation and Research, better known as CEIR.

Prior to forming the organization Becker was a Director at PEW Charitible Trust and founded the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) with which Georgia contracts to “clean” our voter rolls.

A number of States have already exited their agreements with ERIC citing a variety of concerns including errors, lack of information regarding their operations and security measures.  In at least one case, an official from another State travelled to ERIC’ listed headquarters only to find no evidence of systems or staff at the address listed.

PEW Charitible Trusts, where Becker was a Director, gets its name from the PEW family who made their fortune largely through Sunoco Oil.

Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger and Jamie Raskin, (Representative from Maryland and member of the infamous J6 Committee) were highlighted speakers at CEIR’s “secret” meeting in Washington DC last year.

David Becker also started EOLDN, Election Official Legal Defense Network claiming election officials around the country needed a method for protecting themselves legally.

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Walgreens Agrees to Pay $107 Million to Settle Allegations of Falsely Billing Medicare, Medicaid

Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., one of the nation’s largest retail pharmacy chains, has agreed to pay $106.8 million to settle allegations of submitting false claims to federal health care programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release.

The allegations involve claims for prescriptions that were processed but never dispensed, spanning a period from 2009 to 2020. This settlement resolution falls under the False Claims Act, a tool for addressing fraud involving taxpayer-funded health care programs.

The DOJ alleged that Walgreens billed federal health care programs for prescriptions that beneficiaries never picked up, allowing the company to receive millions of dollars in payments for medications that were never provided.

Walgreens, which is based in Deerfield, Illinois, did not admit liability in agreeing to settle.

“Due to a software error, we inadvertently billed some government health care programs for a relatively small number of prescriptions our patients submitted but never picked up,” the company said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

“We corrected the error, reported the issue to the government, and voluntarily refunded all overpayments. We appreciate the government acknowledged our compliance efforts as part of resolving this matter.”

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How the Opiate Conspiracy Widened

Many businesses will gleefully sell you a harmful addiction.

The tobacco industry was supposedly subdued decades ago by a historic legal beat-down, yet somehow spends $22 million every day promoting its wares. That’s nearly a million dollars an hour. Websites for kids sport vaping ads. “Cigfluencers” work the podcasts. And movies are smoke-choked like never before.

There was a time when a cigarette company could pay a mere $43,000 for Superman to be thrown into a Marlboro truck by the evil General Zod in front of Marlboro-smoker Lois Lane. (She had never smoked in the comic books, by the way.)

These days, modern Hollywood supposedly disdains tobacco cash. Yet somehow the movies remain one long, glamorous advertisement for cigarettes. Of this year’s ten Oscar Best Picture nominees, nine featured seductive and edgy smoking. (Only “Barbie” did not.)

The marketeers assure us we’ll be inhaling happiness and hipness. Maybe so, but there are also those hot, lung-damaging fumes — a reality that eventually catches up and kills about half a million of us every year.

(Brief digression: COVID-19 had a U.S. death toll of about 1.2 million over three tough years. Many COVID-19 victims were also smokers, so it’s hard to compare the pandemic and smoking death tolls. That said, we can certainly compare the public health responses. When COVID-19 arrived, we shut down the entire planet, and the virus would go on to kill an average of 400,000 Americans a year for three years. Smoking has been here all along — glamorized, marketed to kids — cheerfully killing 500,000 Americans a year, every year, forever.)

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60% of Infant and Toddler Foods in the US Do Not Meet Nutritional Standards

A significant majority of infant and toddler foods in the US do not meet international nutritional standards, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales, Australia, looked at 651 infant and toddler foods for sale in the top eight US supermarket chains.

Around 60% of the food products studied did not meet nutritional guidelines. 70% did not meet protein guidelines and 44% had more sugar than is recommended. 25% did not meet calorie requirements.

The researchers singled out infant and toddler foods in squeezable pouches, which are designed to allow infants to be fed without the use of a spoon. Just 7% of pouch products tested met sugar recommendations.

In addition, the researchers found almost all of the products were deceptively labelled in some way. 99.4% of the products tested contained at least one false claim on their packaging, and some products had as many as 11.

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Man Kicked Off Flight For Wearing Pro Trump T-Shirt

Delta Airlines removed a passenger from one of its flights this past weekend for wearing a pro Donald Trump t-shirt.

The shirt featured a design of Trump wearing sunglasses adorned with the US flag, while flipping a double ‘up yours’.

The airline had flagged the shirt before boarding at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport following a complaint from one other passenger.

The man was allowed to board after he agreed to turn the shirt inside out, but then reversed it back once inside the plane.

A staff member then asked the man to leave and escorted him from the plane.

In video of the incident, the man can be heard saying, “I’m getting kicked off because of my shirt,” and calls the flight attendant “stupid-ass Wendy” after reading her name tag.

The passenger who captured footage of the incident noted “Crazy day in Sarasota airport, I was sitting next to a young man before boarding that had on a Trump shirt with middle fingers and a red coat came over and told him some lady complained and he had to change his shirt or he could not get on the plane.”

The other passenger continued, “He turned his shirt inside out, and we all boarded. Next thing I know, right before takeoff, a Delta employee comes on the plane and escorts him off the flight, he had flipped his shirt back to the decal side. IDK but I’ve seen way worse….girl half naked boarded and left alone.”

Delta guidelines note that the company reserves the right to remove anyone if their “conduct, attire, hygiene or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers.”

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Blacklisted Huawei posts record profits despite U.S. sanctions — Chinese tech giant raked in $7.7B in net profit in 1H 2024

As a high-tech giant whose capabilities span from ‘almost’ fundamental research to end-user consumer products, Huawei has been targeted by the U.S. government’s sanctions for quite a while amid suspicions of ties with the Chinese military. However, according to data from the Chinese Business Network (CBN), the company has adapted to sanctions as its consumer business revived in the first half of the year.

Before we dive into details, which are hard to do without knowledge of what we do know so far, we should know that what we do know is based on third-party reports.

Huawei’s revenue for the first half of 2024 reached CNY 417.5 billion, representing a 34.3% increase compared to last year. The company also achieved a net profit of CNY 55.1 billion, an 18.2% year-on-year rise, marking the best performance in its history for this period. These record figures show that after the U.S. started to impose sanctions against Huawei in mid-2020, its business took a significant hit, so, before 2024, the company’s record financial results were achieved in the first half of 2020.

Huawei’s revenue for the first half of the year exceeded the CNY 401.3 billion reported in the first half of 2019 and is second only to the CNY 454 billion posted in the first half of 2020.

Furthermore, this is the first time that Huawei’s net profit for the first half of the year has exceeded CNY 50 billion (up from CNY 46.6 billion last year), with the profit margin reaching 13.2%.

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FDA Lets Chemical Companies Decide if Recycled Plastics Are Safe for Food Containers

Recycled content in food packaging is increasing as sustainability advocates press manufacturers to cut their use of virgin plastic.

Since 1990, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency responsible for ensuring food contact materials are safe, has approved at least 347 voluntary manufacturer applications for food contact materials made with recycled plastic, according to a database on its website.

Approvals have tripled in recent years, from an average of 7 to 8 per year through 2019, to 23 per year since then, and they continue to climb. The FDA has already approved 27 proposals through June this year.

Other than Coca-Cola, most manufacturers seeking approval are petrochemical giants such as Eastman Chemicals, Dupont and Indorama; and lesser-known plastic packaging manufacturers, including many from China, India and other countries.

The end buyers of the recycled materials aren’t included in the FDA database, but many popular brands are using recycled content. Cadbury chocolate bars come in a wrapper marketed as 30% recycled “soft plastic packaging.”

The Coca-Cola Co. in North America reports it sells soft drinks in 100% recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, while General Mills says its Annie’s cereal boxes use a liner made from 35% recycled plastic film.

Increasing recycled content in packaging may be good news for the planet, but researchers say the FDA has a lax approval process for plastic food packaging that hasn’t kept pace with the science on chemical hazards in plastics.

The agency’s approval process for recycled plastics is voluntary and ignores the potential risk of chemical mixtures, researchers told Environmental Health News (EHN). Companies can seek guidance on their recycling process, but they are not required to.

In addition, the FDA relies on manufacturers’ test data when it approves materials, leaving companies essentially in charge of policing themselves. Meanwhile, some studies show that recycled plastic can harbor even more toxic chemicals — such as bisphenol-A (BPA), phthalates, benzene and others — than virgin plastic.

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Intoxicating Hemp Products Are Undercutting South Dakota Medical Marijuana Sales, Businesses Tell Lawmakers

South Dakota’s legislative oversight committee on medical marijuana was thrust into the world of synthetic THC on Monday as members heard complaints about how loosely regulated, hemp-derived products are affecting the state’s medical marijuana industry.

The Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee heard from business owners and the State Public Health Laboratory director during a meeting in Pierre. They’re concerned about the growth in synthetically altered, hemp-derived products, sold under terms including delta-8 THC and delta-10 THC, which are compounds that can produce a high similar to marijuana. The compound that gives marijuana its high is delta-9 THC.

As with marijuana, the synthetic products take the form of smokable flower, pre-rolled joints, vape oil and edibles. Unlike marijuana, the companies that produce them aren’t subject to the testing, security and labeling requirements attached to the state’s legal medical cannabis market.

Alternatives not only pose a health risk, the witnesses told the oversight committee, but can cut into demand for medical marijuana since the products can be purchased without a medical marijuana patient card and can be loaded with large enough quantities of THC variants to act as a stand-in for marijuana.

Congress authorized hemp growing with the 2018 Farm Bill, and South Dakota has become the largest producer of hemp in the country after legalizing it four years ago. In that time period, the availability and variety of hemp-derived marijuana alternatives has exploded.

The Legislature passed House Bill 1125 last winter to address the “diet weed” market. The law, which went into effect in July but is being challenged in court, bans the creation or sale of some products created through chemical modification of hemp. Possession of the products is still legal.

The new law bans four THC variants, State Public Health Laboratory Director Tim Southern told the committee, but several others remain available. THC-A products, for example, remain widely available in smoke shops that had previously sold other products that are now illegal to sell.

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