Category Archives: Profiteering

Rabobank raids rural Romania | Europe | DW.COM | 12.11.2015

On the unpaved streets of Zarand, a village in Western Romania where hundreds of subsistence farmers scratch a living on tiny plots of land, everyone is telling the same story. In hushed tones, they tell how hundreds of hectares of farmland have been stolen from local families by a corrupt mafia, leaving them with no kind of income and no access to the food source they almost wholly relied on. How it happened, few of them know, but they are aware of one thing: it now belongs to foreign-owned companies, and those companies have little interest in farming.Zarand is one of over 50 Romanian villages where the Dutch banking giant Rabobank now owns large tracts of land, as part of a 315-million-euro ($337-million) investment into farmland in Romania and Poland. Through subsidiaries belonging to a farmland investment fund called Rabo Farm, Rabobank have bought up at least 140 hectares in Zarand since 2011, and over 21,000 hectares in Romania as a whole. In 10 to 15 years, the fund plans to sell at a profit of over 900 million euros, in line with the rapidly soaring price of land in Eastern Europe.

Source: Rabobank raids rural Romania | Europe | DW.COM | 12.11.2015

Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video — Medium {So is anyone surprised? Profit before people debases the whole system and is not likely to change}

Among the user generated content that drove traffic to YouTube in 2006 and 2007, there were plenty of Family Guy and Daily Show clips. But YouTube was a tiny start-up flying under the radar. As soon as it got big (and got bought) Google fixed this problem with “Content ID,” a system that analyzes every single video uploaded to YouTube and checks it against a massive database of known owned content.It’s a little inexcusable that Facebook, a company with a market cap of $260 BILLION, launched their video platform with no system to protect independent rights holders. It wouldn’t be surprising if Facebook was working on a solution now which they can roll out conveniently after having made their initial claims at being the biggest, most important thing in video.But even if they do have a system, it won’t function as well as Content ID. Content ID works so well largely because YouTube is good at monetizing content. So, instead of taking a video down, a copyright holder can claim the video and receive revenue from it. Content ID has claimed millions of videos and is responsible for over a billion dollars in revenue so copyright holders love it. But without a good system of monetization, Facebook can only remove videos, not send big checks to the owners of stolen content. For the copyright holder, interfacing with a profitless system is just a pain in the ass with no upside.

Source: Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video — Medium

Illinois police officer whose death prompted a manhunt was killed in ‘carefully staged suicide,’ officials say

Police now say that a police officer known as “G.I. Joe” took his own life after stealing money from his department.

Source: Illinois police officer whose death prompted a manhunt was killed in ‘carefully staged suicide,’ officials say

Whistleblower Claims Censorship of Research into Pesticide Linked to Bee Deaths | Civil Eats

A senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture filed a whistleblower complaint on Wednesday accusing the federal agency of suppressing research findings that could call into question the use of a popular pesticide class that is a revenue powerhouse for the agrichemical industry.Jonathan Lundgren, a senior research entomologist with the USDA’s Agriculture Research Service who has spent 11 years with the agency based in Brookings, S.D., said that retaliation and harassment from inside USDA started in April 2014, following media interviews he gave in March of that year regarding some of his research conclusions.Lundgren’s work has included extensive examination of a class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, which are widely used by U.S. farmers to control pest damage to corn and other crops, helping protect production. The insecticides are sold in forms that both are sprayed on plants or coated on seeds before they are planted. They are also used on plants sold by lawns and garden retailers.

Source: Whistleblower Claims Censorship of Research into Pesticide Linked to Bee Deaths | Civil Eats

Northrop Grumman wins $60-billion Air Force contract to build new stealth bomber – LA Times

{This tells the tale – Northrop which began is California, now based near the Pentagon in DC to be closer to the feedline for dollars. Are the new bombers needed? Or is this just a jobs and budget game for lobbiests and folks planning to cash in when they “retire” and take cushy jobs for companies like Northrop?}

Northrop, based in Falls Church, Va., built the iconic bat-winged B-2 stealth bomber two decades ago. But the company was seen as the underdog in the battle against a team considered better funded and more politically connected.

Source: Northrop Grumman wins $60-billion Air Force contract to build new stealth bomber – LA Times

Ex-Im Bank Dispute Threatens G.E. Factory That Obama Praised – The New York Times

Opponents of the bank reply that organized labor and major corporations are the kinds of powerful lobbying institutions that can extract special favors from the government. The bank, they say, classifies a lot of big-company business as small business. “The big guys can extend the financing themselves,” said Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.In a study published this year, Ms. de Rugy and a co-author, Diane Katz, looked at the largest buyers of exports supported by Export-Import Bank financing and found that the top 10 were all either foreign oil companies or airlines. The authors singled out the subsidies to foreign oil companies: “The federal government,” the report said, “doubly disadvantages U.S. energy firms — through Washington’s excessive regulation and Ex-Im Bank subsidies to U.S. firms’ foreign competitors.”

The Mercatus Center is listed as one of the projects of the Koch family foundations. Charles G. and David H. Koch, libertarian conservative philanthropists, are also the chief executive and executive vice president, respectively, of the privately owned Koch Industries, which has substantial oil and energy interests. Another Koch-backed group, Heritage Action for America, is an opponent of the Export-Import Bank.

Source: Ex-Im Bank Dispute Threatens G.E. Factory That Obama Praised – The New York Times

Nestlé Is Pumping Water From A National Forest On An Expired Permit: LAist

Nestlé was allowed to pump 28.3 million gallons of groundwater from San Bernardino National Forest last year, and it was done with a permit that expired in 1988.Three environmental groups—Center for Biological Diversity, the Story of Stuff Project and the Courage Campaign Institute—have sued the U.S. Forest Service for allowing the company to continue to pump water without a valid permit. According to The Desert Sun, the lawsuit argues that the activity threatens natural habitats along the Strawberry Creek for protected and threatened species such as mountain yellow-legged frogs and California spotted owls.

Source: Nestlé Is Pumping Water From A National Forest On An Expired Permit: LAist

South African murder and attempted murder rates soar to almost 100 a day

(not good but news spin for more readers rather than understanding?) With 49 people killed every day, South Africa has been battling a reputation as one of the crime capitals of the world. Recent trends show that this state of affairs is not going to improve any time soon.

Source: South African murder and attempted murder rates soar to almost 100 a day

CENSORED NEWS: MAINE: New Film on Battle of Penobscot River Territory

Indian Island, MAINE: On Friday, Sunlight Media Collective released The Penobscot: Ancestral River, Contested Territory, a documentary film that explores the conflict between the state of Maine and the Penobscot Nation over contested river territory. Spanning from the 1700’s to the present-day legal battle of Penobscot Nation v. Mills, the film illustrates the Penobscots’ centuries-long fight to retain their territory and their inherent, treaty-reserved sustenance fishing rights for future generations. Featuring first-person accounts, the film tells the urgent, inspiring story of a struggle for justice and cultural survival in the face of an astonishingly open abuse of state power.

Source: CENSORED NEWS: MAINE: New Film on Battle of Penobscot River Territory

Big Price Increase for Tuberculosis Drug Is Rescinded – The New York Times

Cycloserine was acquired last month by Rodelis Therapeutics, which promptly raised the price to $10,800 for 30 capsules, from $500.But the company agreed to return the drug to its former owner, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Purdue University, the organization said on Monday.“We discovered literally on Thursday the strategy that had been undertaken” by Rodelis, said Dan Hasler, the president of the Purdue Research Foundation, which has oversight of the manufacturing operation. “We said this was not what we had intended.”By Saturday, he said, Rodelis had agreed to give back the drug. Rodelis confirmed this in a brief statement on its website.The foundation now will charge $1,050 for 30 capsules, twice what it charged before, but far less than Rodelis was charging. Mr. Hasler said the new price was needed to stem losses.Cycloserine is used to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, a serious form of the disease that does not respond to the usual drugs. There are only about 90 new cases a year in the United States, Mr. Hasler said, and about half those patients get treated with cycloserine.

Source: Big Price Increase for Tuberculosis Drug Is Rescinded – The New York Times