Mr. Trudeau, people are more informed about trade today. I hope that's OK with you. For example, 250,000 people in Berlin protested TTIP, a US-EU trade deal-UK Guardian, Oct. 10, 2015

Image, An estimated 250,000 "Protesters gather to demonstrate against the TTIP trade agreement in Berlin on Saturday [Oct. 2015]. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Getty Images," via UK Guardian 
.......
10/10/2015, "Berlin anti-TTIP trade deal protest attracts hundreds of thousands," UK Guardian, Chris Johnston

"Environmental groups, charities and opposition parties who organised protest against free trade deal between the EU and US say 250,000 people took part."
.....................

Added: Trade deals highlight the elite's contempt for the people:

"The European elite’s contempt for the people of Europe has manifested itself with brutal clarity in their imposition of austerity on the populations of Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Latvia, Ireland and Portugal, as well as their drive to conclude the TTIP [US-EU trade deal] negotiations in the face of such widespread public opposition."

6/26/2016, "We thought the best thing about Brexit would be avoiding TTIP - but the fight isn't over yet," UK Independent, John Hilary, Exec. Dir., War on Want 

..................

Added:

 




.................... 

Per Obama adviser, trade deals force constant downward pressure on US wages, aren't about promoting production in the US. US isn't even enforcing existing trade agreements adequately. TPP does nothing for Americans, is about increasing ability of global corporations to source at lowest cost-UK Guardian, 10/9/2015

10/9/2015, "Wikileaks release of TPP deal text stokes 'freedom of expression' fears," UK Guardian, Sam Thielman in NY

(scroll down): "Obama has pledged to make the TPP public but only after the legislation has passed.

Michael Wessel was one of the advisers who was asked by the US government to review what he said were woefully inadequate portions of the document. Wessel said the thrust of the TPP does nothing for Americans. 

“This is about increasing the ability of global corporations to source wherever they can at the lowest cost,” he said.

“It is not about enhancing or promoting production in the United States,” Wessel said. “We aren’t enforcing today’s trade agreements adequately. Look at China and Korea. Now we’re not only expanding trade to a far larger set of countries under a new set of rules that have yet to be tested but we’re preparing to expand that to many more countries. It would be easier to accept if we were enforcing today’s rules.”

Wessel said that ultimately, the countries currently benefiting from increased outsourcing of jobs by American firms aren’t likely to see wages rise above a certain level. “If you look in other countries, Mexico and India and others – there’s been a rise in the middle class but there’s been stagnation for those we’re hoping to get into the middle class,” Wessel said. 

“Companies are scouring the globe for countries they can get to produce most cheaply.”
 
That, he said, results in constant downward pressure on American wages. “Companies are not invested here the way we’d like them to; they’re doing stock buybacks and higher dividends,” Wessel continued. “They may yield support for the stock-holding class but it’s not creating jobs.”"

.......................

Added: Trades deals are a way politicians sell out their fellow citizens:

May 16, 2016, Der Spiegel: "It's hard to know what drives politicians to sell out their people and their country." (5th parag. from end)


5/6/2016, "The TTIPing Point: Protests Threaten Trans-Atlantic Trade Deal," Der Spiegel, Dinah Deckstein, Simone Salden, Michaela Schiebl 

TTIP was a planned trade deal between US and EU cronies that European citizens found out about in time to stop: TTIP was
 "a failed attempt to bypass 800 million European citizens  as they negotiate
 the world's largest bilateral trade agreement.  
From the very beginning, the government underestimated the level of resistance these incursions on virtually all aspects of life would unleash among the people."...

The most deadly part of these trade deals is addition of a global arbitration court, a new global bureaucracy, out of reach of elected officials of any country, to decide disputes and award financial settlements, and which supercedes existing laws of countries involved. Per Der Spiegel, "the Americans," meaning ultra-globalist Obama, insisted on this global court for TTIP:

"Even the pledge made on the European side that there would be no arbitration courts has turned out to be wishful thinking. So far, the Americans have insisted on the old style of arbitration court."
  
 


................

US and "allies" agreed to 'America Last' trade deal in 1994: EU gets to impose 10% duty on US cars, US gets to impose no more than 2.5% on cars coming from EU "allies"-Wall St. Journal

3/12/2018, "Trump Tariffs May Threaten U.S. Auto Jobs, European Executives Warn," Wall St. Journal, William Boston, Geneva
 
"Under global trade rules set in 1994, the European Union imposes a 10% duty on cars and trucks from the U.S. and other countries, the maximum allowed. The U.S. applies a 2.5% tariff on imported passenger cars, the maximum it is allowed under the pact, and a 25% tariff on pickup trucks and work vans."...Commenter Harry Graff: "Looks as though the US has already lost the trade war in autos."]

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.........................

Every US trade deal she's seen over 27 years has been bad for Americans said US congressional democrat Louise Slaughter: “In all the time I’ve been in Congress [27 years as of 2016], I have never seen a trade bill that benefited the American producer or the American worker. It’s all been give-away"-Politico, 2/19/2014

Democrat Rep. Louise Slaughter served in Congress from 1987 until her death in 2018.

2/19/2014, "Specter of NAFTA haunts Obama," Politico, Eric Bradner
 
"“Nonsense,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York.

“In all the time I’ve been in Congress [27 years as of 2016], I have never seen a trade bill that benefited the American producer or the American worker. It’s all been give-away, and we really can’t afford that anymore,” she said. “People are sick and tired of the one-way trade deal.”...

Every time the president [Obama] tells a home audience he’s working on a bigger and better approach to international trade, Democrats and public interest groups only seem to hear “NAFTA on steroids.”

Obama is pushing to complete the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP], which would link North America with Asian countries like Japan. But to get his way, the president will have to sell the American public and the congressional leaders of his own party on the notion that the deal is an escape from NAFTA’s mistakes, rather than just an expansion of its reach."... 

Rep. Louise Slaughter passed away on March 16, 2018.

..................

Added: Rep. Slaughter said US workers and manufacturers should be allowed level playing field with other countries. (Why would it be otherwise? Are Americans global slaves?)

"Slaughter spoke of her concern for the people of Rochester, N.Y., especially those in manufacturing jobs, which led her to battle against every free trade agreement, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
. 
She said these agreements have caused businesses in Rochester [NY state] serious harm and led to widespread hardship in local communities.

Rep. Slaughter has championed the bipartisan Reciprocal Market Access Act (RMAA), which would require the reduction of foreign market barriers before decreasing U.S. tariffs, a move that would level the playing field for American workers and support American manufacturing jobs. The RMAA would enhance the tools available to U.S. trade negotiators, ensuring that the U.S. is able to achieve real reciprocity in the international marketplace."...

May 19, 2014, "Boilermakers name Rep. Slaughter Legislator of the Year," boilermakers.org

"N.Y. congresswoman cited for opposing bad trade deals, defending workers."





.............

CIA parasites undermine efforts of US president, leak confidential report on N. Korea to parasite NBC's Ken Dilanian-Disobedient Media...(Dilanian and his CIA pals prove that we've never left CIA's Eisenhower administration glory days when CIA and other parasites were allowed to romp unsupervised around the world meddling, overthrowing and killing whomever they pleased. Expenses paid by US taxpayers)

Allen Dulles ran the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961. His brother, John Foster Dulles, was Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959. "President Johnson privately complained that the C.I.A. had been running “a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.”" "As commander in chief, [US President] Eisenhower “combined the mind-set of a warrior with a sober understanding of the devastation that full-scale warfare brings...That led him to covert action. With the Dulles brothers as his right and left arms, he led the United States into a secret global conflict that raged throughout his presidency.”"
..................

“They are us. We are them."

May 30, 2018, "CIA Undermines North Korea Summit By Leaking Report To Media Asset," Disobedient Media, Kenneth Whittle 

"Agency’s leak to a known “mop up man” represents a new low for the intelligence community."

"Just as it was reported that the summit between the United States and North Korea was back on and that Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea was on his way to New York to meet with officials in preparation for the June 12 summit, the CIA leaked an intelligence assessment concluding that “North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons any time soon.” The timing of this leak is striking, as it seems to be an effort to undermine negotiations between the two nations and comes just days after ranking members of the Democratic Party and Republican hardliners attacked President Donald Trump over his efforts to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The identity of the reporter who helped break the story also raises serious questions about whether or not a faction within the CIA deliberately attempted to undermine diplomatic efforts to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula. According to NBC News, the report was leaked to none other than NBC national security reporter Ken Dilanian, known as “The CIA’s Mop-Up Man.”

In 2014, The Intercept reported on Ken Dilanian’s correspondence and relationship with the CIA while Dilanian was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

According to The Intercept, “Email exchanges between CIA public affairs officers and Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter who previously covered the CIA for the Times, show that Dilanian enjoyed a close collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times.”

According to the Huffington Post, while writing for the Los Angeles Times, Dilanian also reported a CIA claim as fact by stating that “there was no collateral murder in a 2012 drone strike on Al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi.” Dilanian’s article was directly disputed in an Amnesty International report.

In the aftermath of the revelations about Dilanian’s ties to the CIA, he was disavowed by the Los Angeles Times. The disclosure of Dilanian’s collaboration with the CIA also led his former employer, David Lauter of the Tribune Washington to believe Dilanian could have violated Tribune news policy. Lauter acknowledged that Tribune policy dictates that reporters “not share copies of stories outside the newsroom.” Lauter further stated that he was “disappointed that the emails indicate that Ken may have violated that rule.”

Dilanian has not shied away from pushing articles written by former CIA officials who continue to perpetuate the “Trump-Russia” collusion narrative without any regard to facts, such as Steven Hall’s Washington Post article titled: “I was in the CIA. We wouldn’t trust a country whose leader did what Trump did.”

Perspective | I was in the CIA. We wouldn't trust a country whose leader did what Trump did. https://t.co/4XG8TmhwKq

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) May 18, 2017

Wikileaks has also pointed out Dilanian’s agency connection and his pushing of the “Trump-Russia” collusion narrative, tweeting: “CIA’s ‘mop up man’ Ken Dilanian is the NBC ‘reporter’ used to channel claim about president Putin + US election.”

CIA's "mop up man" Ken Dilanian is the NBC 'reporter' used to channel claim about president Putin + US election https://t.co/GOci4EWwdv

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 15, 2016

In the aftermath of recent revelations concerning the CIA’s collaboration with foreign intelligence agencies to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 US Presidential Election the fresh leaks continue to show a pattern of rebellion that has long run rampant in the US intelligence community. While the CIA’s apparent violations of ethical considerations concerning surveillance of candidates running for public office was serious enough, their interference drags the reputation of the agency to a new (and in the case of Korean peace negotiations, more dangerous) low amid their conflict with the sitting President of the United States.

However, despite these attacks, preparations between the two countries have continued for the upcoming June 12 summit. 

President Trump announced earlier today via Twitter that: “We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea. Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York. Solid response to my letter, thank you!”

We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea. Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York. Solid response to my letter, thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2018""

image from Disobedient Media
 ..............
.................. 

Added: In the 1950s The Dulles brothers shaped the catastrophic US interventionist foreign policy that remains with the US today: Two reviews of 2013 book.

Catastrophic Dulles brothers' failures include Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Congo, and the 1961 Bay of Pigs. Hunting down imagined Moscow Stooges--then known as "Communists"--Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles together with Ike and unlimited US taxpayer dollars popularized US interventionism which has yet to achieve a positive result except for feeding a parasitic Endless War Industry and "Security Industry" into which US taxpayer cash is laundered. (No war, no free money). 

11/4/2013, "Book review: ‘The Brothers,’ on John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, by Stephen Kinzer," Washington Post, Gordon Goldstein 

"Stephen Kinzer’s “The Brothers” tells the story of two siblings who achieved remarkable influence, serving as secretary of state and director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Eisenhower administration. It is a bracing and disturbing study of the exercise of American global power.... 

With the election of Republican Dwight Eisenhower as president in 1952, [John] Foster [Dulles] finally secured the job he coveted: America’s premier diplomat. [His brother] Allen, who had joined the recently created CIA in 1951, was selected by Eisenhower to be its director....

As commander in chief, Eisenhower “combined the mind-set of a warrior with a sober understanding of the devastation that full-scale warfare brings,” Kinzer writes. “That led him to covert action. With the Dulles brothers as his right and left arms, he led the United States into a secret global conflict that raged throughout his presidency.”

According to Kinzer’s reconstruction of the Eisenhower era, the president [Ike] was an enabler of the Dulles brothers’ obsession with six different nationalist and communist movements around the world that would provide successive case studies in the potential of covert action and its pronounced limitations. 

The first test came in Iran, where nationalist Mohammad Mossadegh became prime minister in 1951 and swiftly moved to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, seizing control of the country’s petroleum wealth from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a primarily British enterprise. Operation Ajax, designed to oust Mossadegh, initially floundered. But the CIA paid street mobs to terrorize Tehran and recruited dissident military units that converged on Mossadegh’s home on Aug. 19, 1953.

After a battle that killed hundreds, the Mossadegh government was overthrown. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed, “ruled with increasing repression for a quarter century, and then was overthrown in a revolution that brought fanatically anti-Western clerics to power.”

The CIA next, in 1954, deposed Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz, a former defense minister and leftist political reformer who expropriated nearly 400,000 acres of land owned by the powerful United Fruit Company."...

[Ed. note: "Washington feared Arbenz because he tried to institute agrarian reforms that would hand over fallow land to dispossessed peasants, thereby creating a middle class in a country where 2 percent of the population owned 72 percent of the land. Unfortunately for him, most of that territory belonged to the largest landowner and most powerful body in the state: the American-owned United Fruit Company. Though Arbenz was willing to compensate United Fruit for its losses, it [United Fruit] tried to persuade Washington that Arbenz was a crypto-communist who must be ousted. 

Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen, the C.I.A.’s director, were a receptive audience. In the cold war fervor of the times, Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers believed a strike against Arbenz would roll back communism. And the Dulleses had their own personal sympathies for United Fruit: they had done legal work for the company, and counted executives there among their close friends. 

It is true that Arbenz’s supporters in the Guatemalan Legislature did include the Communist Party, but it was the smallest part of his coalition. Arbenz had also appointed a few communists to lower-level jobs in his administration. But there was no evidence that Arbenz himself was anything more than a European-style democratic socialist. And Arbenz’s land reform program was less generous to peasants than a similar venture pushed by the Reagan administration in El Salvador several decades later." 6/3/2011, "Ghosts of Guatemala’s Past," NY Times op-ed, Stephen Schlesinger]

(continuing): "Arbenz [in Guatemala] represented a potent threat comparable to Mossadegh and his seizure of Iran’s oil assets. “Their crackdown on corporate power led Foster and Allen to presume that they were serving Soviet ends,” Kinzer writes. “Two reasons for striking them — defending corporate power and resisting Communism — blended into one.”

These early victories in covert action were followed by a series of failed or unnecessary interventions that the author attributes to the brothers’ hubris and incompetence. In Vietnam, the communist and nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh proved to be as resilient and relentless an adversary as the United States ever confronted. In Indonesia, the American effort to unseat neutralist President Sukarno constituted one of the largest covert operations of the 1950s but also ended in failure. 

In the African nation of Congo, a charismatic former postal clerk named Patrice Lumumba became leader after the end of Belgian colonial rule. The CIA perceived him as sympathetic to Moscow ["a Moscow stooge" in 2018 parlance] and in 1960 helped the Congolese military depose him. Lumumba was then abducted, beaten and murdered by his political rivals and Belgian police. Only 200 days separated his inauguration and his death. 

The Bay of Pigs operation remains among the greatest debacles in CIA history, an epic mess for which Allen Dulles was eventually fired. By the time 1,400 American-sponsored Cuban exiles blundered ashore in April 1961 in an effort to spark a spontaneous revolution, their mission had already been exposed. Months before, a New York Times headline had blared: “U.S. Helps Train an Anti-Castro Force at Secret Guatemalan Air-Ground Base.” 

Allen had a pattern of delegating operational responsibilities to a dangerous degree, in this instance entrusting the fate of the invasion to his deputy, Richard Bissell. Both men were mired in abject denial about the operation’s prospects. A Marine Corps amphibious-war expert advised them that the United States would “be courting disaster” if it did not neutralize Cuban air and naval assets by providing “adequate tactical air support.” Yet Allen and Bissell knew that a newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy had ruled out any intervention by U.S. forces, the precise condition upon which the invasion’s success depended. 

Allen Dulles’s “mind was undisciplined,” Kinzer concludes. “A senior British agent who worked with him for years recalled being ‘seldom able to penetrate beyond his laugh, or to conduct any serious professional conversation with him for more than a few sentences.’ ” Kinzer is similarly blunt in his assessment of Foster’s intellect, quoting Winston Churchill’s disparaging verdict that the secretary of state was “dull, unimaginative, uncomprehending.”

The author asserts that the Dulles brothers suffered from a form of sibling groupthink. “Their worldviews and operational codes were identical,” Kinzer writes. “Deeply intimate since childhood, they turned the State Department and the CIA into a reverberating echo chamber for their shared certainties.”
................

Allen Dulles ran the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961. His brother, John Foster Dulles, served as secretary of state from 1953 to 1959. "President Johnson privately complained that the C.I.A. had been running “a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.”"

Nov. 8, 2013, "Overt and Covert,‘The Brothers,’ by Stephen Kinzer," NY Times, Adam LeBor 

"Anyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book. “The Brothers” is a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of “inconvenient” regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world.

John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen, were scions of the American establishment. Their grandfather John Watson Foster served as secretary of state, as had their uncle Robert Lansing. Both brothers were lawyers, partners in the immensely powerful firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, whose New York offices were for decades an important link between big business and American policy making.

John Foster Dulles served as secretary of state from 1953 to 1959; his brother ran the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961. But their influence was felt long before these official appointments. In his detailed, well-­constructed and highly readable book, Stephen Kinzer, formerly a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a columnist for The Guardian, shows how the brothers drove America’s interventionist foreign policy.... 

Eventually, the United States government tired of Allen Dulles’s schemes. President Johnson privately complained that the C.I.A. had been running “a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean,” an entirely accurate assessment— except the beneficiaries were American corporations rather than organized crime. Nowadays, the Dulles brothers have faded from America’s collective memory. The bust of John Foster, once on view at the airport west of Washington that bears his name, has been relocated to a private conference room. Outside the world of intelligence aficionados, Allen Dulles is little known. Yet both these men shaped our modern world and America’s sense of its “exceptionalism.”

They should be remembered, Kinzer argues, precisely because of their failures: “They are us. We are them.”"

...................


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US political class is accessory to sex crimes of UN workers against starving refugees. UN exists only because US political class forces US taxpayers to pay billions yearly to unelected, unaccountable, criminal UN whose personnel can't be prosecuted for any crime anywhere in the world. When will US political class be held complicit in all UN crimes?

UN personnel are totally immune from criminal prosecution, for example can put all US taxpayer dollars in a personal bank account without consequence. (near end of article) 4/16/2009, "Report: U.N. spent U.S. funds on shoddy projects," USA Today, Ken Dilanian
..................

5/29/18, "UN knew years ago about refugee sex-for-food scandal, leaked report reveals," NY Post, Lia Eustachewich

"Workers from more than 40 charity organizations exploited refugee children and women in West Africa by trading food for sex, according to a leaked report — that the United Nations has known about for 16 years.

The disturbing scandal is laid out in an 84-page report produced in 2001 by researchers for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Save the Children working at refugee camps in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The report was handed over to the UNHCR in 2002 but only a summary of the allegations was published.

Identified in it are 40 organizations “whose workers are alleged to be in sexually exploitative relationships with refugee children,” according to The Times in the UK, which obtained a copy of the full report.

Aid workers were “among the prime sexual exploiters of refugee children, often using the very humanitarian assistance and services intended to benefit refugees as a tool of exploitation.”

They allegedly traded basic needs — like food, oil, access to education and plastic sheeting for shelters — for sex.

Women at a camp in Guinea told the researchers, “In this community, no one can get corn soya blend without having sex first. They say, ‘A kilo for sex,’” the Sun reported.

“These NGO workers are clever, they use the ration as bait to get you to have sex with them,” a teenage girl in Liberia added. 

Some families felt compelled to offer their young daughters as a way to “make ends meet,” the report found.

Many of the organizations implicated were small and local but 15 were international, including UNHCR, the World Food Programme, Save the Children and Merlin.

Also named were Medecins Sans Frontieres, Care International, the International Rescue Committee, the International Federation of Red Cross Societies and the Norwegian Refugee Council."...

[Ed. note: The "International Rescue Committee" has been under investigation for alleged bid-rigging and bribery. The group is heavily funded by the US government.]

(continuing): "The researchers said some of the allegations in the report couldn’t be fully verified and needed further investigation.

But they noted, “The number of allegations documented, however, is a critical indicator of the scale of the problem.”

Allegations leveled against 67 people were provided to senior UNHCR officials in “confidential lists” but fewer than 10 were dismissed and none were prosecuted, The Times said.

The UNHCR notified all of the charities about the allegations and sent UN investigators who identified 43 separate cases in west Africa.

The UN said it had implemented “specific preventative and remedial actions.”

In a 2005 interview, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers downplayed the report.

“We have to find concrete evidence,” he said at the time. “It’s very scarce. So the idea of widespread sexual exploitation by humanitarian workers, I think it’s simply not a reality.”

Christine Lipohar, a Save the Children official who co-authored the report, was “frustrated and annoyed” at Lubbers’ response.

“Good systems for preventing and responding were developed on paper, but have not been effectively and consistently rolled out in all locations; so implementation . . . is often reliant on individuals committed to the issue,” she said.

The UNHCR said it had a “a zero-tolerance policy, which means that every possible report or allegation of sexual exploitation, abuse or harassment by UNHCR or partner personnel is thoroughly assessed and if substantiated leads to sanctions, including summary dismissal.”"

................................

Added: UN personnel are totally immune from criminal prosecution, for example can put all US taxpayer dollars in a personal bank account without consequence:

4/16/2009, "Report: U.N. spent U.S. funds on shoddy projects," USA Today, Ken Dilanian

"Federal prosecutors in New York City were forced to drop criminal and civil cases because the U.N. officials have immunity....

Do UN "agencies have immunity "if they siphon (their U.S. grants) all off into Swiss banks? Is that accurate?

They will be totally immune, no matter what they do with the money?" "My understanding is, yes," Gambatesa replied." (item near end)

................................

Added: International Rescue Committee is known for skillfully defrauding refugees:

Above image, IRC pres. David Miliband with George Soros, 2013 IRC Freedom Award winner. via Refugee Resettlement Watch.
 
...................

May 11, 2016, "David Miliband's refugee aid group in corruption probe," UK Telegraph, Louisa Loveluck, Istanbul

"The United States is investigating an international aid group headed by David Miliband over allegations of corruption in projects intended to help Syrian civilians and refugees.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is one of three international groups to have had millions of pounds in funding withdrawn over alleged bid-rigging and bribery.

Mr Miliband, a former foreign secretary, was appointed president and chief executive of the organisation in 2013, following his exit from Westminster politics.

USAID's Office of the Inspector General confirmed on Friday that 14 entities and individuals had been suspended as part of a "complex investigation into cross-border aid programs".

This includes International Medical Corps, one of the largest providers of medical aid to Syrians, and GOAL, an Irish NGO.

Allegations relate to the organisations systematically overpaying for goods in Turkey. A senior USAID official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said private Turkish companies had sold cut-rate blankets and other basic materials at vastly inflated prices and pocketed the difference.

The items are meant to ensure the survival of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians, many of whom have been left with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

"What became clear in the course of this investigation was this was a pretty sophisticated operation," the USAID official said. 

The IRC, which has an annual budget of £350 million, relies heavily on government funding from Britain and the United States.

An IRC spokesman told The Times: "We are fully engaged and working with USAID on this issue.”

Two IRC staff members were dismissed in January after it was found that they had accepted money from suppliers in return for awarding them contracts.

The Telegraph understands that International Medical Corps has suspended one of its most senior officials working on the cross-border aid operation. GOAL has also replaced a locally staffed logistics team in Turkey and is currently barred from using its €6.2m of US grant money to procure food and non-food items."...

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Added: Miliband's group International Rescue Committee is one of nine biggest winners of US taxpayer cash in the lucrative refugee resettlement racket as of June 2017: From Refugee Resettlement Watch: 

"These are the nine major US resettlement contractors and working under them (using your tax dollars) are hundreds of local subcontractors.

• Church World Service (CWS)
• Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
• Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
• Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
• International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
• US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
• Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
• World Relief Corporation (WR)"

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Lacking a soul but loving being on tv, Trey Gowdy was destined for the Deep State. After Nov. 2012 election GOP House Speaker Boehner told GOP to start acting like losers and let him do deals with Democrats. In awe of Boehner, Gowdy agreed, saying: “Perhaps I am practicing the grace that comes from watching someone try to do what I myself cannot do”-NY Times, 12/6/2012

By a 234-201 margin, Republicans retained control of the House in Nov. 2012 but to the NY Times and its pal, then GOP House Speaker and “sage counsel” John Boehner, it meant it was time for elected Republicans in the House to start acting like losers, declare defeat, and accept the Democrat agenda. GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy agreed with Boehner who had long tried to persuade GOP House members to sell out Republican voters: 

““He is the de facto negotiator for the party,” said   

Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who along with other lawmakers from his state has given Mr. Boehner headaches in the past. 

“Perhaps I am practicing the grace that comes from watching someone try to do  

• what I myself cannot do.””… 

2012 was a repeat performance of 2011, when “Mr. Boehner tried to persuade members to compromise with Democrats.”… 
………………….

Sources: Two NY Times articles, 12/6/2012 11/10/2012:

12/6/2012, “Boehner gains strong backing from House Republicans,” NY Times, Steinhauer 

“Many House Republicans appear to view Mr. Boehner with the same sort of respect that adult children award their parents for the sage counsel they ignored in their younger days....

On Wednesday, in a private meeting between Mr. Boehner and House Republicans, member after member spoke in support of him, in some cases saying a deal they would have rejected six months ago would most likely be taken today. 
 
“But with Mitt Romney’s and Mr. Ryan’s White House dreams dashed, Mr. Boehner resumes the role of the titular head of his party here, and many members realize they have little choice left but to support him. 

.

“He is the de facto negotiator for the party,” said

Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who along with other lawmakers from his state has given Mr. Boehner headaches in the past. 

“Perhaps I am practicing the grace that comes from watching someone try to do  

• what I myself cannot do.””… 

………………………………..

Second NY Times article: “Their party lost, badly, Mr. Boehner said.” (By a 234-201 margin, Republicans had retained control of the House)

11/10/2012, “Boehner Tells House G.O.P. to Fall in Line,” NY Times, by Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer 

“On a conference call with House Republicans a day after the party’s electoral battering last week, Speaker John A. Boehner dished out some bitter medicine, and for the first time in the 112th Congress, most members took their dose. 

Their party lost, badly, Mr. Boehner said, and while Republicans would still control the House and would continue to staunchly oppose tax rate increases as Congress grapples with the impending fiscal battle, they had to avoid the nasty showdowns that marked so much of the last two years. 

Members on the call, subdued and dark, murmured words of support — even a few who had been a thorn in the speaker’s side for much of this Congress.

It was a striking contrast to a similar call last year, when Mr. Boehner tried to persuade members to compromise with Democrats.”…
.

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Added: NPR cheers for Boehner too because he tells elected Republicans to act like losers:

12/8/2012, “Once Boxed-In, Boehner May Finally Be Master Of The House,“ NPR, Frank James

“”It’s vindictive,” complained Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, talking to reporters after a closed-door meeting of the House Republican Conference on Wednesday. House GOP leaders booted the congressman from the House Agriculture Committee, an assignment important to his district and state.

“It’s not a message to me. It punishes my constituents and I still represent them,” Huelskamp said. 

“It’s meant as a message to the Republican conference in general, especially the comment today [that Boehner reportedly made at the meeting] that there may be more punishment coming if you don’t vote the right way.””…
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Added:

Boehner was known for crying

Added: Others noticed Gowdy's contribution to the country: 

Boehner and Gowdy


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Italy, we hear ya. Italy's vibrant working class culture is no more, destroyed by neoliberal economic policies imposed by Brussels parasites and Italian politicians. Gone are many of Italy's industrial towns and the very fabric of Italian society. The mafia and organized crime are biggest 'employers' in southern Italy-Attilio Mora, Consortium News

"All the traditional political parties have been wiped away. They have been replaced by the so-called ‘populists’: The Lega and the 5 Star Movement, undisputed winners of the latest elections in March."
 
5/29/18, "This is the New Italy," by Attilio Moro in Brussels, Special to Consortium News

"Years of neoliberal economic policies imposed by Brussels and by Italian politicians alike have devastated numerous industrial towns and the very fabric of Italian society reports Attilio Moro."

"Sesto San Giovanni, a town on the outskirts of Milan, used to be one of the industrial capitals of Italy.
 

With around 200,000 inhabitants (45,000 blue collar workers, and a robust middle class), it was the headquarters of some of the most dynamic Italian companies, including Magneti Marelli, Falck, Breda and many more. 

Today Sesto is an industrial desert – the factories are gone, the professional middle class has fled, many stores have shut down, and the city is trying to reinvent itself as a medical research center. 

Twenty-three kilometers (14 miles) to the north of Sesto, the town of Meda was the seat of various symbols of Italian excellence: Salotti Cassina and Poltrona Frau, both of which exported high-quality furniture all over the world and employed tens of thousands of workers and designers. They fed a number of small family-based companies providing parts and highly qualified seasonal labour. Today both companies are gone. 

Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, a former chairman of Ferrari, Fiat and Alitalia, and now a public enemy because of his dismissal of the “Made in Italy” label, acquired both companies and moved them to Turkey, choosing profit over quality—and Italian jobs. Montezemolo, of aristocratic background, is a champion of Italian neoliberalism, having founded the influential “free market” think tank Italia Futura (Future Italy) in 2009.

Another victim is the town of Sora, with a population of 25,000, 80 km. (50 miles) east of Rome. Until recently Sora was an affluent commercial city, with medium-sized paper factories and hundreds of shops. Today, all of the factories are gone and 50 percent of shops have closed. 

All over Italy, the neoliberal policies that led to the economic crisis and resulting social decadence have accelerated in the wake of the financial collapse of 2007. 

Once The Stalingrad of Italy

Sesto San Giovanni used to be known as ‘the Italian Stalingrad’, due to the strength of its working class and the Communist Party receiving over 50 percent of the vote. Now the strongest party in town is the Lega (The League), a right wing, xenophobic party. This has been accompanied by a demographic shift, as Sesto has lost almost one third of its population, but acquired tens of thousands of immigrants, which today constitute almost 20 percent of its population. 

The Italian Communist Party, once the strongest in the capitalist world, has in the meantime disappeared, together with the working class. There is also the destitution of a dwindling middle class accompanying the breakdown of the social fabric with rampant corruption. 

All the traditional political parties have been wiped away. 

They have been replaced by the so-called ‘populists’: The Lega and the 5 Star Movement, undisputed winners of the latest elections in March, who are now in the process of trying to form a new government. The Lega expresses the frustrations of the north of Italy that is still productive (fashion, services and some high quality products), and demands lower taxes, as Italian taxes are among the highest in Europe. They also want a parallel national currency, a reduction in circulation of the Euro (which slows down exports, especially to Germany) and limits to immigration. 

The 5 Star Movement, which is partly considered to be the heir of the former Communist Party but with a different social base consisting of an undifferentiated lower class replacing the disappearing working class. It advocates a moralization of the political parties and a universal basic income of 750 euros per month ($875) for the poorest to reduce the effects of the social disaster which took place in the south of the country in the last 10 years: 20 percent unemployment, affecting 40 percent of young people, making the mafia and organized crime the biggest ‘employers’ in the most critical southern regions.

This is the new Italy. The old one, the Italy of Fiat, Cassina, small family-run businesses, the Italy of the Christian Democrats, the Communist Party and vibrant working-class culture is no more."

"Attilio Moro is a veteran Italian journalist who was a correspondent for the daily Il Giorno from New York and worked earlier in both radio (Italia Radio) and TV. He has travelled extensively, covering the first Iraq war, the first elections in Cambodia and South Africa, and has reported from Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan and several Latin American countries, including Cuba, Ecuador and Argentina. Presently he is a correspondent on European affairs based in Brussels."

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Comment: Nothing will change, certainly not in the US. The entire US political class would rather see the country burn to the ground than share it with us.

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