Monday, January 28, 2013

華裔白宮內閣秘書長離職‧奧巴馬盼盧沛寧續輔佐

(美國‧華盛頓27日訊)美國總統奧巴馬上週五發表聲明宣佈,總統助理兼白宮內閣秘書長盧沛寧已離職,他盛讚盧沛寧任內的政績,並邀請這位昔日的哈佛同窗兼好友考慮留任其他職位。
奧巴馬說,盧沛寧是其長期和最親密的顧問之一,先是在參議院幫他制定立法議程,後來又領導了其總統過渡團隊,接著又幫助他管理與內閣成員的關係。
他說,基於上述原因,他已經請克里斯(盧沛寧英文名)在休息一段時間後,考慮留在其政府內服務的其他機會。
目前,尚不清楚盧沛寧離任後的去向。通過他的工作,白宮和各行政部門減少了許多摩擦。因此有人稱他為白宮的“潤滑劑"。
(星洲日報/國際)

埃及3省暴亂進入緊急狀態

(埃及‧開羅28日訊)埃及總統穆爾西宣佈發生暴亂事件的3個省進入緊急狀態,並警告,他已準備採取進一步行動,以對抗埃及所受到的安全威脅。
穆爾西星期日傍晚在電視上宣佈,塞得港、蘇伊士及艾斯馬利亞省的緊急狀態由星期日半夜(大馬時間週一早上6時)開始生效,為期30天。”
他補充,這3個省也實施宵禁,由晚上9時至早上6時,他也警告,如果需要,他將採取進一步行動,以對抗埃及所受到的安全威脅。
不過,穆爾西也邀請反對派政治人物在週一舉行會談,以化解國家日益深化的政治分化。
他是在塞得港連續發生兩天暴亂事件後作出上述宣佈,塞得港是在上週六法庭判決去年足球致命暴亂事件的一些涉及者死刑後,爆發暴亂事件。
據醫護人員指出,星期日的暴亂事件,再有6人死亡及超過460人受傷。
安全人員說,群眾企圖硬闖這個蘇伊士運河城市的3個警察局,其他人則搶劫及縱火焚燒一間軍人俱樂部。
在最新的暴亂事件中,一名少年胸部中鎗身亡,使上週六的死亡人數增至31人,其中包括兩名鎮暴警察。
安全官員說,另一個運河城市蘇伊士星期日也發生暴亂,示威者包圍一個警察局,向安全部隊擲丟汽油燃燒彈,並阻塞一條通往首都的要道。
在開羅,警方與示威者爆發衝突,示威者指責穆爾西違反了兩年前推翻穆巴拉克的革命目標,導致目前由伊斯蘭派系統治的國家政治分裂深化。
推翻穆巴拉克的象徵地點解放廣場附近仍爆發衝突,目擊者說,星期日的白天到傍晚仍繼續發生暴亂事件。
由解放廣場只幾分鐘便可抵達的美國與英國大使館,在白天關閉,停止了公眾的服務。
穆爾西警告,除非上週五起爆發的席捲全國的致命暴亂事件平息下來,否則他將採取進一步的行動,在上週,示威者在紀念推翻穆巴拉克的起義兩週年期間,演變成暴亂事件。
他說:“如果必須這樣做,我將會為了埃及的利益大前提下,採取進一步行動。這是我的職責,而我會毫不猶豫的採取行動。”
他說:“這不會有代替的對話。”
(星洲日報/國際)

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Breaking Up the Big Banks is Not a Solution

Olafur Ragnar Grimsson Iceland president 'Let banks go bankrupt'


“Why do we consider banks to be like holy churches?” is the rhetorical question that Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimson asks (and answers) in this truly epic three minutes of truthiness from the farce that is the World Economic Forum in Davos. Amid a week of back-slapping and self-congratulatory party-outdoing, as John Aziz notes, the Icelandic President explains why his nation is growing strongly, why unemployment is negligible, and how they moved from the world’s poster-child for banking crisis 5 years ago to a thriving nation once again. Simply put, he says, “we didn’t follow the prevailing orthodoxies of the last 30 years in the Western world.” There are lessons here for everyone – as Grimson explains the process of creative destruction that remains much needed in Western economies – though we suspect his holographic pass for next year’s Swiss fun will be reneged…

 http://youtu.be/DDexDNn6vSM

Did The European Bankers Cause the Texas War for Independence in 1836?

The Bankers have been the parasites on humanity for centuries. They have caused more tyranny, wars and impoverishment than standing armies. When Mexico gained its independence from Spanish rule. The new Mexican government needed funding for the new government.  In every case, the borrower is the slave to the lender. Mexico is no exception falling into the trap for the banking cartel in Europe.
In 1824. Mexican President Santa Anna printed up government bonds to fund the new government.  The new independent Mexico needed to fund an Army and the new government. This foreign debt to European inverters will be the cause of all the Mexican Provinces  in revolt including Texas. Mexico defaulted on the bonds and needed to act to satisfy the Bondholders who were British inverters. Mexico shortly afterward abolished the Mexican constitution that mimicked the US Constitution. The new government was more centralized in power. Was this a demand to the bondholders in Britain?
Mexico has defaulted on the bonds within five years of selling them. Many inverters in Great Britain lost money because the Mexican treasury had no money to pay off the bonds. So the Mexican government raised taxes across the board that caused all of Mexico to be in revolt to the Military Dictatorship. When the Banks pressure a country to satisfy the debt or keep them in debt slavery. The country starts to oppress the people because that is how the bankers control a nation by controlling the debt.
Like the war for Independence we had breaking free from King George III and the Bank of England oppressing the colonist. The foreign debt of Mexico causing Santa Anna to become a Military Dictator to raise money to pay off the bondholders was one of the reasons for the Texas war of independence was started. The same parallels is that Great Britain was fighting uprisings in many of the colonies around the world. When we were fighting the British army. Great Britain put down all the rebellions except for the 13 colonies All of Mexico was in revolt also, only Texas beat the Mexican Army all for the same reasons.
Fast forwarding to today. We are still dealing with the same financial oligarchs trying to oppress us and rob us blind through taxation and inflation. They are trying to regulate us out of our livelihoods to only benefit a select few. Our nation is in debt and the Federal Reserve Bank has our government and economy in a stranglehold. The US government is losing revenue due to high unemployment and the loss of revenue as a result of people out of work. This is why they want to loot the people’s private pensions to prop up the government and to bail out the banks.
People will not comply with Obamacare. There are over 60 million people delinquent on their income taxes who are not filing or paying the IRS. Raising taxes will only adds insult to injury to an angry populace who does not trust the government and the bankers. Now the government want to go after the guns in the people’s possession. Nothing has changed between the battle of Gonzales and Lexington and Concord when the tyrants tried to disarm the people so they can rob the people later of their substance.
There is nothing new under the sun. The Banksters and tyrants always get stupid and arrogant in their quest to dominate their own people. Obama like Santa Anna and King George III are narcissistic. They over reach their hand and trigger a revolt against them. All these leaders are just puppets trying to make their own people a slave to the lenders who never consented to being in debt or their land and labor pledged as collateral. As Americans, when push comes to shove, We push back.
We are alive in such unique times. We are regaining our self-respect and dignity. We will not be ruled by corrupt and immoral aristocracy. We rediscovered our salvation lies within us and not waiting for the politicians to deliver for what we can do for ourselves. History repeats itself again like in 1775 at Lexington Green as well in Gonzalez. Come and take it, if they dare try.

The Economic Religion of Finance Capital

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The Virgin birth.
The Chosen people.
The Resurrection of the dead.
The Free Market.
Which of those is unsupported by material evidence but exists by virtue of practice based on fervent , coerced, or simply uncritical belief and is thus subject to failure at any moment when the belief is shaken to its roots by experienced reality? All of them.
Of course farmers and flea markets are real, as are the corporate malls where millions enter with credit desire and leave in debt frustration. But the global financial market whose minority controllers run the planet is a vast electronic church sustained by a congregation of mentally and physically brutalized parishioners. A political clergy of rabbis, priests and ministers operate its banking cathedrals as an international casino whose minority profits accrue on the loss of billions of people forced to gamble their existence on its success, and their failure.
The ruling minority relies on its giant computers, mathematicians and symbol manipulators to transform global wealth into weapons of war for humanity’s forced use on itself, and luxury goods for lives of wretched excess for them and their servants. All this is supported by the majority whose struggles for survival increase in debt, pain, and endless war.
Financial dictatorship is maintained by military power capable of slaughtering thousands of people instantly and destroying governments through domination of minds as well as bodies. It is more profitable to manipulate worshippers through the consciousness control of political media rather than by brute force. Propaganda is especially useful at programming patriotism during wars, and civic duty during elections. Voting rituals have servant clergy driven into the collective mind as representing an abstraction called “the people” rather than the financial elites who run the temples, banks and  the election business.
Philosophers who once claimed that god was dead encountered little resistance since no material evidence could oppose an immaterial charge. But the time for secular and spiritual communities to unite and proclaim that the financial market-god is dead may be at hand, before fanatic faith in this deity of the dollar obliterates us all.
What many religious people site as indications of the downfall of humanity sometimes offer a clearer view of reality than that of secular  types skeptical of mythological belief, while they help perpetuate the most fantastic fable:
A political economic dementia that claims minority rule of the planet by a tiny caste of master-race-self-chosen people is creating the best life imaginable for their subject billions, while evidence increases that the material world can no longer support this fanaticism without ultimate destruction of much that passes for civilized reality.
Social critics who hold the spiritual in disdain can make seemingly more credible scientific arguments to indicate that radical change is needed in the political economic foundation of society in order for the race to succeed. Whether one side or the other is right is a dualistic argument and part of the problem.  Both are correct to argue that we can’t go on as we have or we will face possible failure for humanity itself and not just the usual segments always sacrificed to the unjust dogma that benefits some at the cost of all.
While severe problems increase, protectors of the status quo take a more crazed and sadistic tone, screeching about peace and democracy while they murder the first and make the second impossible. Public programs are savaged by policies which lavish money on those who have great wealth, steal money from those who create all wealth, and deny money to those who have no wealth. The increased suffering inflicted on western populations manipulated into accepting the irrational idea that minority created financial collapse is the fault of majority need for human service is countered by more savage brutality inflicted on foreigners, especially in the middle east.
The plan to break up Arab nations that do not obey the west, criticize Israel or relate to Iran as an ally, has taken a more brutal turn. Viciously punishing any disobedience to the dogma of the great white church of the west, first Libya and now Syria – with Iran still pending – have been subjected to open warfare and the more covert murder of embargoes and infiltration by illegitimate outsiders who pervert insider’s legitimate struggles for change.
Libya has been shattered and the same fate is sought for Syria, but the shaman shysters of global finance capital have learned no lessons from their near destruction of Iraq. That nation is now an ally of Iran, strengthening the supposed center of an “axis of evil”. The real evil,  known to be so by the overwhelming majority of global people, is the dualist deity of Israel and the USA. An entity calling itself the international community is actually a relative handful of toadies and one massive military power, insisting that the world is its possession to be regulated by a perversion of language, thought and practice that it calls democracy.
All of this is motivated for the gathering of profits by minorities at the expense of majorities, and the loss sustained by the earth and its people has become so staggering that life itself may be scarred for generations if we do not pierce the darkness of compulsory ignorance and create a more enlightened future of hope. That means tearing out the roots of superstition imposed by a few in order to enable the growth of wisdom for the many.
We are all forced into worshipping this false god, no matter what label we attach to ourselves, our nations or our faiths. Continued belief in and support of the religious madness called global finance capitalism  will be the undoing of  the ultimate identity group; deists, atheists, agnostics and the rest of humanity. In short, all of us.
email: fpscott@gmail.comFrank Scott writes  political commentary and satire which appears online at the blog Legalienate

Louisiana supermarket forced to yank its low-cost milk - auditors objected to the price

Holy cow!





A Louisiana supermarket was forced to yank its low-cost milk special after state auditors objected to the price.
Fresh Markets in Perkins Rowe was selling milk for $2.99 a gallon as part of a weekly promotion deal, but Louisiana requires that retailer markups be at least 6 percent above invoice and shipping costs, The Advocate reports.
State Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain said Fresh Market violated state regulations by selling milk below cost as part of a promotion.
The supermarket routinely sells a gallon of skim, 1 percent, 2 percent or whole milk for $2.99 on Tuesdays, limiting the quantity to four per customer, according to The Advocate.
 “They can sell it 6 percent over cost all day long. It’s when they sell it below cost that it becomes a problem,” Strain told the paper.
Strain’s office reportedly sent an auditor to the store to investigate the Fresh Market promotional deal after getting a complaint.
During the second week of January, the price for a gallon of whole milk in Baton Rouge ranged from $4 to $6.89.

Olafur Ragnar Grimsson Iceland president 'Let banks go bankrupt'


"Why do we consider banks to be like holy churches?" is the rhetorical question that Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimson asks (and answers) in this truly epic three minutes of truthiness from the farce that is the World Economic Forum in Davos. Amid a week of back-slapping and self-congratulatory party-outdoing, as John Aziz notes, the Icelandic President explains why his nation is growing strongly, why unemployment is negligible, and how they moved from the world's poster-child for banking crisis 5 years ago to a thriving nation once again. Simply put, he says, "we didn't follow the prevailing orthodoxies of the last 30 years in the Western world." There are lessons here for everyone - as Grimson explains the process of creative destruction that remains much needed in Western economies - though we suspect his holographic pass for next year's Swiss fun will be reneged...

Government Thieves and Parasites at the Top of the Income Chain

The parasite class keeps getting richer. And richer. At your expense. New census bureau data shows that seven of the top ten richest counties in terms of median household income are part of the Parasitic Potomac. As the Post reports, the recession has been everywhere ... except D.C. According to the article in the Post (try to abstain from laughing):
The area has the nation’s highest level of adults with college degrees. It also is high in shares of households that have two incomes and married couples who postpone having children until they establish themselves professionally.
“A big sliver of American society that generally does well tends to cluster in Washington,” said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. “When people make the argument that $250,000 is middle income, that’s way higher than most of the country regards as middle income. But here in Washington, your next-door neighbor has that kind of income.”
Well, yeah, and why are people attracted to the area, especially the educated and the DINKs (double income, no kids)? Is it perhaps because there are plenty of government contracts and therefore plenty of high-paying jobs? There is that, indeed, because there exists a perpetual stream of thievery to keep the cash cows sustained, due to arbitrary government monetary and fiscal policies that are robbing the future to fund the current criminal crop. No mention in the Washington Post, of course. You have to go to Breitbart to see the word "aristocracy" disclosed.

James Turk: Central Banks Are Losing The War to Suppress Gold & Silver Prices

My guess is that 2013 and 2014 are going to be big up year for the precious metals, but we still have to contend with the central planners and the various government policies, which have been actively trying to keep the gold and silver prices from reaching fair value. The central planners are losing the war. They may win an occasional battle or two, but they're losing the war, and eventually gold and silver are going to go higher.
So predicts James Turk, founder and Chairman of GoldMoney.com. From James' perspective, gold is not an investment. It's a sterile asset, meaning it does not generate income. What it is, is money. Its function is to store wealth.
But money, like investments, can be overvalued or undervalued. And what we're witnessing on the world stage is a gross mis-pricing of money as central banks engage in depreciation of their fiat currencies via inflation (i.e. money printing).
The process causes a transfer of wealth from those holding overvalued money to those who hold undervalued money. That's what's been going on for the past decade as the price of gold has steadily marched upwards versus fiat currencies.
But this process is not efficient. Mass awareness of this wealth transfer is low, so confidence in paper currencies is still high, supporting their perceived value. Market intervention by central banks and other parties conspires to keep the prices of precious metals artificially low and suspect.
This maintains an arbitrage for individuals to buy gold and silver at a discount to true value, which James believes will be slowly realized in full over the next several years as the bull market in precious metals approaches its third and final phase.
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Hospital pays £1,800 a day for a nurse in NHS staff crisis

NHS hospitals are hiring agency nurses at rates of up £1,800 a day in a bid to plug dangerous staff shortages, an investigation has found.

Two nurses in corridor of healthcare centre, Barnsley, Yorkshire, UK.
Private agencies have been paid up to £1,794 per shift to provide the health service with specialist nurses Photo: Alamy
 
 
The bill for temporary workers has risen by more than 20 per cent in just one year, with private agencies receiving more than seven times the rate paid to nurses on the pay roll.
Experts said the disclosures show how cost-cutting efforts have backfired, with thousands of frontline posts being cut - only for agency nurses to be hired at vastly inflated rates, when wards became short-staffed.
The use of temporary staff has become endemic in the NHS, with almost every trust in the country now relying on private agencies to plug gaps in staffing.
Hospital trusts with soaring bills for agency workers include nine which were identified last week as having dangerously low staffing levels, according to rulings by the official safety watchdog.
An investigation has found since 2010, private agencies have been paid up to £1,794 per shift to provide the health service with specialist nurses - compared with an average rate of around £212 a day for those on the NHS pay roll.


The nurses do not receive all the money, with agencies taking a fee of at least 20 per cent of the total. Our investigation found:
• The total bill for temporary nurses is set to reach £450 million by the end of this financial year - a 21 per cent rise on 2011/12;
• Mid Staffordshire Hospitals Foundation trust paid £1,794 for a specialist nurse to work 13.5 hours in Accident & Emergency (A&E) unit in December 2011 - the equivalent to an annual salary of £230,000. The NHS pays between £25,528 and £34,189 for the same role;
• University Hospital Southampton Foundation trust paid £1,591 for a 12 hour A&E shift the previous December;
• In April 2011, a 12-hour nursing shift cost North Lincolnshire and Goole trust £1,572;
• Derby Hospitals Foundation trust spent £1,489 on an 11-hour shift in A&E in January 2011;
Research from 106 NHS trusts - two thirds of those in England - shows that in 2011/12, they spent £238 million on temporary nurses.
The same trusts are facing a bill of £287m by the end of the current financial year - equivalent to £450 million, when extrapolated to all NHS trusts.
Just 15 organisations agreed to supply figures about the highest rate paid for a shift. Of those, several admitted to paying rates of more than £1,000 a day for short-term staff.
In most cases, nurses were provided by private agencies, which normally take a commission of at least 20 per cent.
Such agencies usually pay nurses rates of between £25 and £40 an hour, but pay more for bank holidays, specialist nurses and to meet surges in demand.
All hospitals rely on some temporary staff, to cover sickness absence. However, experts are concerned by the scale of spending identified in our investigation, and the sharp rise in it, indicating that agency nurses are increasingly being used routinely, to fill gaps in the permanent workforce.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) says the firms have been able to vastly increase their rates - and the percentage they take in commission - because many hospitals are desperately short of nurses after cutting thousands of frontline posts.
Official figures show there are 6,000 fewer nurses working in the NHS since May 2010.
The payment by Mid Staffordshire Hospitals Foundation trust for £1,794 shift was made to Thornbury Nursing Services, one of the largest agencies in the UK.
The firm pays specialist nurses up to £93.25 an hour to work bank holidays - which is £1,119 for a 12-hour shift.
In its marketing materials, potential recruits that they can earn twice as much as a full-time NHS nurse if they can take on shifts at short notice.
The firm was founded by former nurse Moira Sloss and her husband John in 1983, and became part of Independent Clinical Services Limited which they sold for £66 million in 2002.
The couple personally made £45 million on the deal.
The company, which declared pre-tax profits of £7.5 million on a turnover of £36.6 million in its latest accounts, is now owned by US private equity giant Blackstone, which owns a string of businesses, including Hilton Hotels and tourist attractions such as Madame Tussauds.
There are now more than 60 private firms providing nursing and medical staff to NHS trusts in the UK.
Other major companies include Medacs Healthcare, which advertises 300 shifts for nurses every day, and declared an operating profit of £5.9 million on an annual turnover of £172 million in its latest accounts.
Guy's and St Thomas' Foundation trust had the highest total bill, and is on course to spend £19 million by the end of March.
Dr Peter Carter, General Secretary of the RCN said: "We frankly despair about what we are seeing going on across the country.
Even the most hard-nosed accountant would think it is bizarre that the NHS should lose thousands of frontline posts, and then end up at the mercy of agencies, who can charge hospitals what they like."
He said that when NHS managers became desperate to fill shifts, agencies were able to increase the percentage of commission they took, as well as the overall rate paid.
Last week The Sunday Telegraph disclosed that 17 hospitals have been warned of dangerously low staffing levels following their latest inspections from regulators Care Quality Commission.
Ten of the trusts who received the warning responded to this newspaper's FOI request about agency spending and at nine, bills for temporary workers are soaring amid the staffing crises.
Although the NHS has been protected from cuts by being guaranteed a rise in annual spending in line with inflation, the service is attempting to save £20 billion by 2015, to ensure there are sufficient funds to cope with the rising demands of an ageing population.
Experts said the disclosures reflected their concern that too many cuts had been made on over-stretched wards, instead of in the bureaucracy running the health service.
Colin Ovington, Director of Nursing & Midwifery at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust said the trust sometimes had to employ agency staff, and that on such occasions patient safety was given a higher priority than cost.
He said: "This means that we have to pay the going rate for those staff who are available to cover, sometimes at short notice – these costs are often extremely high, due to the agencies' fees."
He said the two payments identified were for specialist nurses working on a bank holiday weekend, and included travel expenses.
Guy's and St Thomas' Foundation trust said it was one of the largest and busiest trusts in the country and that the rise in staff was primarily a result of the organisation taking over community services.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said hospitals should publish their staffing levels twice a year.
He said agency staff should be used to cover sickness if necessary, but that hospitals which saved money did so by cutting back on such spending, and instead filling their permanent posts.
The most costly nursing shifts:
  • Mid Staffordshire Hospitals, 13.5 hours, A&E, £1,794, December 2011
  • University Hospital Southampton, 12 hours, A&E, £1,591, December 2010
  • North Lincolnshire and Goole, 12 hours, speciality unknown, £1,572, April 2011
  • Derby Hospitals, 11 hours, A&E, £1,489, January 2011
  • Mid Staffordshire Hospitals, 13.5 hours, A&E, £1,475, December 2011
 

Bill Nighy: tackle tax avoidance to put an end to world hunger

Poor countries lose three times as much from multinationals' accounting practices as they get in aid. Sarah Morrison reports


Corporate tax avoidance is costing developing countries an estimated £70bn a year, according to a coalition of more than a hundred leading charities. If taxes were paid in full, campaigners suggest, the money could be used to save the lives of 85,000 children under the age of five in the world's poorest countries every year.
The figures, released days after the Prime Minister said tackling tax avoidance was one of the UK's priorities for its G8 presidency, put the scale of the issue worldwide into perspective. The actor and tax campaigner Bill Nighy told The Independent on Sunday last week they were "breathtaking".
He added: "[Developing countries] lose three times as much to tax havens as [they] receive in aid every year. [Hunger and poverty] are not inevitable. They are completely preventable. When you think about how these things happen – you look at that one fact, and understand how."
The star is backing the Enough Food for Everyone "If" campaign, which is urging David Cameron to tackle the root causes of hunger in the developing world. Mr Nighy said eliminating tax avoidance was one of the "greater ambitions" of the campaign, which wants to "stop people feeding toxically" on Africa and other developing nations.
"The whole thing hangs on whether we see ourselves as citizens for the world, whether we see ourselves as responsible for a situation," he said. "Hunger is almost like something the West does. It's almost like the direct result of the way the West performs. And in 2013, it's shaming that two million children, on average, die every 12 months when … we have everything we need."
While British MPs have cited Google, Amazon and Starbucks as companies that legally avoided paying tax in the UK last year, experts warn similar tax avoidance has an even graver impact in the developing world. The deaths of 1.4 million children in poorer countries since the turn of the millennium could have been prevented had multinationals paid their tax bills in full, according to the If campaign.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is publishing a report next month on the extent to which multinationals take advantage of global tax structures. Ben Dickinson, head of the OECD's tax and development programme, said developing countries often "don't have the basic frontline protection" against unfair profit shifting. "We are scratching the surface at the moment, but the demands for help are huge."
Zambia, Africa's biggest copper producer, announced last year it was losing almost £1bn annually through tax avoidance, with the mining industry the biggest culprit. Colombia and Vietnam recently revised legislation to protect themselves against "transfer pricing", which enables companies to avoid tax by making payments to each other within the same corporate structure. Colombia's tax revenues increased 76 per cent as a result, and in Vietnam one audit of a large multinational rose by almost £3m.
Alvin Mosioma, director of Africa's Tax Justice Network, said tax avoidance is "the biggest challenge" his continent faces. "[The fact that] many African countries are surviving by dependence on aid, despite the amount of resources flowing out of the country, is a scandal."
UK-based SABMiller, one of the world's leading brewers and the owner of Grolsch and Peroni, was accused by ActionAid of avoiding an estimated £20m of taxes in Africa and India in 2010. The company paid corporation tax in Ghana in just one of the four years from 2007 to 2010, according to the charity. SABMiller rejects the claim. Nigel Fairbrass, the company's head of media, said the collapse of local currency after the financial crisis, as well as increased costs, meant the business was then unprofitable. He added that the company has invested more than £45m in the business in Ghana, qualifying for capital allowance from the government and a reduction in tax.
Glencore, the world's largest commodity trader, came under scrutiny in 2011, when an internal report by the accountancy firm Grant Thornton into Mopani Copper Mines, a Glencore subsidiary in Zambia, stated there had been an "unexplainable" increase in Mopani's costs between 2006 and 2008 and that it "may be using incorrect disposal proceeds for tax purposes". Glencore denies avoiding tax, saying the report "contains fundamental factual errors".
Justine Greening, the International Development Secretary, said this weekend: "By driving a serious debate on tax evasion and avoidance, we can help poorer countries to receive the taxes they are due. This will help countries to fund public services and investment for all of their citizens."
Case study: 'If my wife sells merchandise at the market, she has to pay a tax. If companies aren't doing that, it's wrong'
Pepino Musakalu, 58, a father of seven, lives close to the Mopani mine in Kankoyo, the Copperbelt region of Zambia. He acts as secretary for a local NGO called Green and Justice.
"We are hearing that [certain companies] are not paying their taxes. If my own wife wants to sell merchandise at the market, she has to pay a fixed tax every day. If companies are not, it is wrong. And it's a shame.
"Some families here are headed by children; some have no form of income. The government could use those taxes. People are not happy."
List of shame
£70bn: The amount of money developing countries are estimated to lose each year to corporate tax avoidance
85,000: The estimated number of deaths of children under five that could be prevented each year if multinationals paid tax bills in full
3 times: Developing countries lose this much more to tax havens each year than they receive in aid
3,000: There are at least this many tax treaties in place around the world