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Julie Bishop's latest deal with the Clinton/Giustra dodgy brothers

Screen Shot 2016-10-17 at 7.17.46 pmFor well over a year we've been reporting alarming news about the Clintons ripping off Australian taxpayers.

They're also ripping off some of the poorest people living around us.  The Clintons treat people like trash.   The poor, the disadvantaged and the sympathy created by their plight are money making opportunities for the Clintons and mates.

Their conduct is indefensible.

I've written to DFAT and kept Julie Bishop posted.   We've passed on the evidence. 

Julie Bishop's focus has apparently been elsewhere.

Bishop has ignored the warnings, tried to defend the indefensible and thrown salt into terrible wounds by doing another deal with Clinton and his dodgy mate Frank Giustra just a couple of months ago.

Bishop has  apparently decided Indonesia's coconut sugar producers can no longer get along without Clinton and his Foundation's "help".

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So what value does Clinton and dodgy mate Giustra bring to the deal?

None.   Bugger all.   They're trying to find a consultant who can help with ideas for cooking down coconut sugar on home stoves, communal stoves and bigger stoves too.

Here's the job ad.

http://cgepartnership.com/job-opportunities/expert-consultant-coconut-sugar-processing/

Contract: Short-term consultancy

Start Date: Immediate

In Indonesia, a pilot is underway for a farmer services & aggregation enterprise, Acceso Indonesia, which will significantly improve the country’s coconut sugar value chain.

Consultancy Description

CGEP is seeking an Expert Consultant (“consultant”) to identify, analyze and propose multiple processing designs to cook coconut and palm sap into sugar. The consultant will review existing solutions, including investment costs, operations costs, and cooking and operations efficiency, developed for small to medium scale sugar processing as well as technology that could be transferred from other processing solutions. The consultant will propose a minimum of three solutions to respond to three distinct processing needs: household kitchens for smallholder farmers, multi-unit communal kitchens and semi-industrial processing for community plantations. If CGEP is satisfied with the consultant’s performance of this contract, further contracts to select and deploy the selected solutions are possible. To apply for this short-term consultancy, please submit CV and summary of relevant past experience. CGEP will provide qualified candidates additional information so that a detailed cost proposal can be developed.

ENDS

They're also looking for a consultant to help them work out the best place to grow coconut trees.   Why Indonesia needs Australia to fund American Bill Clinton to hire an expert to tell Indonesians the best spots in their country to grow coconut trees is beyond me.

http://cgepartnership.com/job-opportunities/expert-consultant-coconut-sugar-plantation-site-selection-and-setup-in-indonesia/

This is bullshit.

But it's not isolated bullshit.

And Julie Bishop is crowing about it.

In the DFAT promotional material (the cost of which would have fed several Indonesian families for years) Bishop promotes the Clinton's Shared Value Initiative.

http://dfat.gov.au/aid/who-we-work-with/private-sector-partnerships/bpp/Pages/improving-access-to-global-supply-chains-for-coconut-sugar-producers-in-indonesia.aspx

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EXTRACT ENDS

And just last week who do you reckon was awarded the gong for best Shared Value Promoter of the Year?

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Julie, your mates Bill Clinton and Frank Giustra are heartless thieving crooks.

You'll note in the Clinton Giustra marketing material above there's reference to an entity called Acceso Indonesia.

There are Giustra/Clinton Acceso entities all over the place popping up like the pox that it is.

Acceso is the trading company that bleeds the poor white.

The soon to be ripped off people of Indonesia are currently awaiting the misfortune of becoming collateral road kill for the Clintons and their colourful philanthropist friend.

The Clinton/Giustra mob engaged a consultant to put their business case together and to prepare the pitch documents seeking investment - like DFAT's - into this Acceso Indonesia entity.

The young bloke who did it was apparently bright, but not focused on making life better for coconut tree climbers and cooks.

Nor for Australian taxpayers.  

He was there to get the operating company business case up for the Acceso Indonesia business and to pitch for "investment".

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What a coincidence. Tanvir Uddin was also the Clinton Foundation's Social Enterprise Manager.

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Weren't we dealing with a charitable foundation acting in the interests of the poor of Indonesia?

Why would the Clinton Foundation's guy do the leg work for Acceso? Where does Acceso fit in?

It's in pride of place for Bill and Frank.  

Here are the white shoe brothers and their CGEP signage - and taking the central position,  Acceso.

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Before she gave Bill and Frank their Indonesian leg up, perhaps Julie Bishop should have read up a bit on what that pair of pond-scum in casual clothes did to people in Colombia.

Here's Sandra Valdivieso who was quite happily selling seafood in Cartagena until the Clinton bandwagon rolled into town and over the top of her.

Here's the bullshit published by the Lying Clintons about Sandra.

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The Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative has extensive experience in projects that organize market-driven activities to meet the private sector’s requirements for optimization of local supply chains. In partnership with National Hotel Association of Colombia in Cartagena we have developed an entire local supply chain and formed a supplier alliance to meet the purchasing needs of the luxury hospitality market.  Sandra Valdivieso is the owner of Pescadería Perlamar del Caribe, a small fishing company in Cartagena that has benefited from the program. Below, Sandra shares how her business has improved thanks to her new market connections.

(Editor's note from Michael Smith - marvel at the way Sandra speaks just like a New York PR flack)

Screen Shot 2016-10-17 at 8.36.28 pm“Thanks to the commitment, support and dependability of the technical assistance provided by the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, our products and services have earned great acceptance among our clients. This has allowed Pescadería Perlamar del Caribe to grow and create jobs. When I started my company, we had four direct and three indirect employees. Now, our workforce has doubled, we have hired eight direct and six indirect employees, and we have increased our sales by 150 percent. 

The next phase of assistance from the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative will continue to help my company very much. Sales payments will be made practically upfront, allowing us to be more competitive. In my case, I won’t have to pay exaggerated interests on borrowed money in order to buy the supplies needed to meet the requirements of the hotels and restaurants we work with.* The new logistics process is great because it will help us gain greater satisfaction and credibility with our customers. All the small companies that participate will grow and artisanal fishermen will also improve their quality of life. 

I am very happy, indeed. Thanks to the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative and their continued support we'll have all the tools and resources we need, such as the refrigerated storage rooms and support staff, to continue growing more and more every day.”

- Sandra Valdivieso
  Owner, Pescadería Perlamar del Caribe

ENDS - source, the Clinton Foundation website.

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The Fusion team's piece has just been published http://fusion.net/story/357169/hillary-clinton-foundation-victims-colombia/

It's first class journalism and I commend it to you.   Here's a relatively small extract from a massive body of work.

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Colombia should be the Clinton Foundation’s best case study. Ground zero for the drug wars of the 1980s and 90s, racked by uneven development and low-intensity conflict for half a century, Colombia has received more foundation money and attention than any other nation outside the United States. Bill and Hillary Clinton have visited the country often and enjoy close relationships with members of Colombia’s ruling party. Colombia has also been home to the vast oil and natural gas holdings of the man who is reportedly the Clinton Foundation’s largest individual donor, Canadian financier Frank Giustra. In short, conditions were right for Colombia to be the shining example of what the Clinton Foundation’s philanthropy can accomplish in the world, and what makes Hillary so proud of its efforts.

The American Media Institute, a nonprofit news service based in Alexandria, Virginia, partnered with Fusion to send us to Colombia to investigate the Clinton Foundation’s impact. We found ground realities that contrast, often starkly, with the nonprofit’s platitudes about its good work.

Many of the Colombian “success stories” touted on the foundation’s website – the ones specific enough for us to track down – were critical about the foundation’s effect on their lives. Labor leaders and progressive activists say foundation programs caused environmental harm, displaced indigenous people, and that it concentrated a larger share of Colombia’s oil and natural gas reserves in the hands of Giustra, who was involved in a now bankrupt oil company that worked closely with the Clinton Foundation and which used the Colombian military a 1984-style surveillance program to smash a strike by its workers.

It was a shocking record that belies the progressive principles on which the Clintons have based their political dynasty and philanthropy, embodied in the Clinton Foundation’s advertising copy: “Everyone deserves a chance to succeed.”

What’s missing from the press coverage of the Clinton Foundation is a basic question: What do its activities and outcomes reveal about Hillary Clinton’s political values?

We interviewed young women in the foundation’s job-training programs; female business owners who sought help from its programs; workers who toiled for the foundation’s biggest individual donor’s firms; indigenous fisherman who were promised jobs and aid; and union leaders, social-justice activists, and progressive lawmakers. Some say they lost money. Others said they were used as props. Still others simply thought that the foundation had wasted a lot of their time. “They are doing nothing for workers,” one Colombian union official told us, with disgust. “I don’t even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money.”

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton trumpets a progressive vision: worker’s rights, environmental protections, safeguards for indigenous peoples, support for women’s business ownership. Colombian political progressives who have experience with the Clinton Foundation conveyed skepticism to us about the former secretary of state’s support for those values. Indeed, the interviewees were hostile to the Clinton Foundation in general – and, in particular, to foundation board member Frank Giustra’s sizable Colombian energy corporation, Pacific Rubiales, which benefited richly from Bill Clinton’s politicking and the foundation’s operations.

“The territory where Pacific Rubiales operated,” he said, thumbing through pages of alleged human-rights violations, “was a type of concentration camp for workers.”

Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo, a thin gray-haired three-term senator who once taught architecture at Colombia’s National University, is a leading voice of Colombia’s Left. He supports gay rights in a traditionalist Catholic country and opposes privatization efforts of his nation’s ruling party.

When we met him in his wood-paneled office in Colombia’s Capitol building in May, his desk was stacked high with papers related to Pacific Rubiales’s labor practices, the result of years of investigative work by his staff. He did not see the Clinton Foundation and its partnership with Giustra’s Pacific Rubiales as either progressive or positive. “The territory where Pacific Rubiales operated,” he said, thumbing through pages of alleged human-rights violations, “was a type of concentration camp for workers.”

Robledo said he had no doubt that Bill Clinton had successfully overcome legal and regulatory obstacles for Giustra’s benefit, especially given Clinton’s strong relationship with Colombian President Uribe and his stature as a former U.S. President: “Bringing Bill Clinton to Colombia was like bringing God,” he said.

Rafael Cabargas, a legendary local oil-worker’s union leader who was arrested during a strike at a Pacific Rubiales operation in 2011, was equally dismissive of the Clinton Foundation’s and Giustra’s activities in Colombia. We interviewed him in a tiny, cluttered union office in one of Cartagena’s poor, outlying neighborhoods. “They are doing nothing for workers,” he said with disgust. “I don’t even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money.”

For many on Colombia’s Left, Pacific Rubiales is no Ben and Jerry’s, and the Clintons are no friends to organized labor. When we looked into their claims, we began to see why.

 

The story of the oil and gas exploration company Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp., and its highly profitable Colombian adventure, centers on a graying, five-foot-tall Canadian investor named Frank Giustra. He made his first fortune in Vancouver brokerage circles where Adrian du Plessis, a former stock-fraud investigator, says that Giustra was known as the “Poison Dwarf” – a reference to Giustra’s short build and Giustra’s reputed penchant deals that were toxic to his buyers but profitable to him. Giustra co-founded Lionsgate Films, wrote the lyrics for a song by Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan, and recently signed on as an executive producer of the upcoming “Blade Runner” sequel. His own life could be a movie in the “Citizen Kane” mold.

Giustra’s relationship with the Clintons began in January 2005, when Bill Clinton spoke at a Giustra-organized fundraiser for Asian tsunami victims. The pair hit it off; later that year, Giustra’s private jet took Clinton to South America to deliver four speeches, where the former president collected some $800,000. Giustra also organized a 60th birthday bash for Bill Clinton, booking Jon Bon Jovi and others for the event, according to the New York Times.

Frank Giustra speaks as former President Bill Clinton looks on during a news conference to announce the Clinton Foundation's Latin America initiative, bankrolled with $100 million of Giustra's money, June 21, 2007, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)ASSOCIATED PRESS

Frank Giustra speaks as former President Bill Clinton looks on during a news conference to announce the Clinton Foundation's Latin America initiative, bankrolled with $100 million of Giustra's money, June 21, 2007, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Clinton brought to the friendship three things that Giustra lacked: prestige, charisma and global contacts with heads of state in resource-rich countries. Many of the governments with whom they partnered are not known for the sort of transparency, good governance and democracy that Bill and Hillary Clinton routinely call for when discussing American foreign policy.

In September 2005, Giustra and Clinton flew to Kazakhstan together to meet the Central Asian nation’s president. Shortly thereafter, Giustra secured a lucrative concession to mine Kazakh uranium, despite his company’s lack of experience with the radioactive ore. As Bill Clinton opened doors for Giustra, the financier gave generously to Clinton’s foundation. Within months of securing the Kazakh mining deal, Giustra had donated more than $31 million in all.

In 2007, while Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president, Giustra pledged to give a $100 million to the Clinton Foundation in a New York press conference. More Giustra-connected pledges followed, including $4.4 million from Pacific Rubiales (called Petro Rubiales Energy Corp. in foundation filings) and the firm’s other financial backers, according to documents surfaced by investigative reporters at the International Business Times. The Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative to combat global poverty was born.

“[T]he resource sector is prepared to step up and take the initiative off the drawing board and turn it into a reality for developing countries around the world,” Giustra said. He later joined the Clinton Foundation’s board of directors. At nearly the same time, Pacific Rubiales won oil and gas exploration rights along Colombia’s coast and another large concession to produce oil in the jungle state of Meta.

Why Colombia? The Clintons open doors

Although details on the Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative were sparse, the two men knew exactly where they wanted to start spending. They explained their vision together to a Canadian TV outlet in 2007. Clinton leaned back in his chair, relaxed as usual, reeling off charity buzz words: “broadly-shared prosperity,” “sustainable growth,” “scalability.” Giustra, with his trademark Caesar hairstyle, spoke quietly, rarely changing his facial expression.

“We’re going to begin work in Colombia, where the government has already invited us to come,” Clinton said.

The interviewer turned to Giustra. Why Colombia?

“We have several interests there in mining and oil and gas,” said Giustra in a soft monotone. “I love the people of that country.” At least in this case, the foundation’s priorities seemed to march in step with the investment interests of its major donors.

Giustra’s firm purchased Colombian land from middlemen who had obtained it from poor campesino indigenous farmers, according to government data provided to Sen. Jesus Alberto Castilla Salazar, the first campesino ever elected to the Colombian senate. Some of the land on which Pacific Rubiales is drilling appears to have been received from known drug traffickers, whose names appear on the “Clinton List” — a blacklist of mostly Colombian drug-connected businesses and associates, created under President Clinton in 1995 to bar U.S. entities from doing business with drug traffickers.

One of the individuals Pacific Rubiales bought land from was Peña Torres Miguel de los Santos, whom the U.S. Treasury Department connects to a drug operation headed by two thugs whose evocative nicknames translate as “The Crazy One” and “The Knife.” Peña Torres was added to the Clinton List in 2010, while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state—around the time that Giustra was buying land from him.

Castilla, the Colombian senator, told us that Pacific Rubiales used front companies (including something called Major International Oil S.A.) to buy up blocks of land and later lump them together – a conscious effort, he said, to skirt Colombian laws that prohibit single ownership of estates larger than 3,000 acres.

“This has created a grave situation, and they took control of land that was intended for peasants,” Castilla said. “Land is at the heart of the conflict in this country and it’s very important that small farmers have land. The government has moved in another direction.”

Bill Clinton’s long history of friendly ties to Colombia’s political elite positioned him to open doors for Giustra and Pacific Rubiales. Clinton began promoting a free-trade agreement with Colombia in 2000, his last year in office. He also signed an executive waiver to push through a controversial $1.3-billion military aid package to the country while it was under intense international scrutiny for human-rights violations. After leaving office, Clinton struck up a close relationship with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who served from 2002 to 2010.

Bill Clinton’s support for the free-trade deal clashed sharply with his wife’s platform during her 2008 presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton scornfully denounced the agreement citing labor and human-rights abuses in that country. “I have spoken out against the deal, I will vote against the deal and I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombia Free Trade Agreement,” she told a union audienceon the campaign trail. “I am very concerned about the history of violence against trade unionists in Colombia,” she said in a campaign release.

As President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, however, Clinton championed the agreement –as the Clinton Foundation was increasing its activities in Colombia and Giustra’s investments there were growing.

Clinton’s support appears to have included ignoring corruption in Colombia. Shortly before leaving for a trip to meet Uribe there in June 2010, Clinton received a briefing memo from Cindy Buhl, a congressional staffer for liberal Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass), that urged her to confront the Colombian president publicly about “the recent rise in death threats, attacks and murders of Colombian human rights defenders, religious, community and other NGO leaders.”

There is no evidence that Hillary took that advice. She dined with the Colombian president at a Bogotá steakhouse, along with VIP guests that included Bill Clinton and Frank Giustra. (In her memoir “Hard Choices,”Hillary described Bill’s presence in Bogotá as “a happy coincidence in our hectic schedules.”) During an ensuing press conference, Clinton said she wanted to “publicly express our admiration for President Uribe providing a remarkable example of strong democratic leadership.”

“Your visit,” a happy Uribe responded, “the fact that you spent the night in Bogotá, and President Clinton’s frequent visits, are a greanifestation of confidence in Colombia.”

That same month, the Uribe regime awarded control of a gold mine to Giustra and his business partners.

This period proved to be a charmed one for Giustra and Pacific Rubiales. Its stock soared to more than $35 a share by November 2010 — which proved to be its all-time high.

EXTRACT ENDS - believe it or not there's heaps more at the Fusion website - it really is great journalism. You can visit their site here. http://fusion.net/story/357169/hillary-clinton-foundation-victims-colombia/

 

The warning signs about Clinton and his crooked mates are plain to see.  But Julie Bishop has chosen not to ignore them - but to argue in support of the thieving bastard and his mates causing so much pain to those least able to bear it.

Unspeakable, unnecessary and unforgivable.

Julie, if you feel the need to dispense Australian taxpayer money to a fraudster, you don't need to go to America.   There are enough of them here without you inviting in more.

Bill-Clinton-Julie-Bishop (1)

*Proud of yourself Julie?

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