Phantom ReportSource: SRI Express
Direct investment’ has been redefined and it is this direct directive by corporates that has forced Western political leaders to advocate military interventions of the immoral and unethical nature we see unfolding before us. All these compilations of war crimes, abuses etc are nothing but a sham to give a touch of ‘we did justice’ to the injustice taking place. The fact is military interventions are happening primarily for the economic interests of not the country invading by the corporate lobbyists who are waiting to land and plunder invaded nations. It is not foreign invasion it is corporate invasion that is taking place and national leaders/governments are getting eliminated for standing in the way of that quest.
Iraq was a neoliberal invasion – so too have been all the countries that have fallen before and after Iraq. If it is not oil, it is some other ‘monetary’ interest that leads to the declaration of ‘war’ without any provocation. What happens thereafter is removal of restrictions to foreign ownership and trade, contracts given to foreign corporations to develop this that and the other. The smokescreens are ‘production sharing agreements’ where governments own the oil but the development of the oil field, the pumping, refining, shipping are all done by the foreign companies. It is simply draining out everything that should belong to the country and its people. American corporates NOT America or its people have secured the world’s second largest oil reserves which belonged to Iraq! This was why Bush immediately announced after the invasion of a Middle East Free Trade Area to spread the economic invasion to the rest of the region by 2013. That has happened through the Arab Springs! When Bush said he would ‘counter terror with trade’ it was a giveaway. The war plan was prepared by US consultancy firm Bearing Point Inc – which received $250millon contract to make Iraq’s economic infrastructure!
The plan was to fire entire Iraqi military (500,000), so that many of these jobless would take to guns and start an insurgency, which happened according to plan. 120,000 of Iraq’s senior bureaucrats were fired throughout government, schools and even hospitals, new laws reduced taxes on all corporations by 25% to open up for foreign investment and these firms were allowed to own 100% of Iraqi businesses as opposed to partnership framework, corporates could send their entire profits home without investing a cent in Iraq. More than 150 US companies won contracts in Iraq worth over $50billion. There was no law to state foreign companies had to hire Iraqis – so these firms imported foreign workers! What resulted were the Iraqis turning against the new invaders who came in as ‘liberators’. Whats more new laws entitled foreigners to buy land in Iraq that are now exclusive holiday homes for foreigners – is it difficult to picture what Iraq would look like in time to come?
The American troops are just kept in Iraq until the contracts are secured and this is the case in all other countries where military intervention have taken place.
The foreign contracts:
· Halliburton – $12 billion
· 13 other US companies received contracts worth more than $1.3billion each
7 largest reconstruction contracts (water, bridges, roads, hospitals, sewers, electricity)
1. Parsons Corporation of Pasadena, California ($5.3billion) – $243m contract given to build 150 health care centres was cancelled when only 6 centres had been built in 2 years and only 2 are useable!
2. Fluor Corporation of Aliso Viejo, Calif. ($3.75 billion)
3. Washington Group International of Boise, Idaho ($3.1 billion);
4. Shaw Group of Baton Rouge, La. ($3 billion);
5. Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco ($2.8 billion);
6. Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass. ($2.5 billion);
7. Contrack International, Inc. of Arlington, Va. ($2.3 billion).
Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR is also been investigated for waste, fraud and abuse.
With all these foreign experts in Iraq, Iraqis enjoy only 11 hours of electricity a day in a country that had 24 hours electricity during Saddam’s rule. Potable water projects are useless when there is no electricity to pump water to homes, hospitals or Iraqi businesses! To add to Iraq’s woes the IMF has enforced a structural adjustment program that equates to nothing but the globalist agenda.
The real winners are actually the oil and gas industry – these are the people that donate billions for presidential campaigns to elect a President that would do what they want done. Is this not why for the 1sttime under Bush, the President, Vice President and Secretary of State were all former energy company officials!
The references to local puppets comes in the form of local traitors who actually create and endorse laws that gave Iraq’s oil to foreign firms and allowed these firms to control virtual all of Iraq’s oil and they use a lot of Ox-bridge English to fool the masses! The traitors in Iraqi Government end up changing Iraq’s constitution so that all of Iraq’s developed and undeveloped oil fields fall into the hands of foreigners!
What happens in turn with the wave of corporate mooted military interventions taking place is that a 1% global transnational ruling class has emerged and they are far more dangerous than the terrorists using guns! They are the one’s creating the guns to use.
To this list of 1% includes global central banks, major investment money management firms, insurance companies etc and governments are only in their service!
It is this 1% who plan, manipulate, create and enforce policies – politicians are told to only carry them out.
This is what the US/NATO military industrial-media empire is all about and they are simply serving the interests of a group of transnational corporate class to protect their international capital and amass more wealth.
The transnational capitalist class is divided into
1. Owners and controllers of TNCs and their local affiliates
2. Globalizing bureaucrats and politicians
3. Globalizing professionals
4. Consumerist elites (merchants/media)
Note: the four are unlikely to be doing everything in cohesion – conflicts have arisen at times but the structure never changes.
· It is estimated that the total world’s wealth is close to $200trillion with US and Europe holding approximately 63%.
· To belong to the wealthiest half of the world, a person needs to have only $4000 in assets (with debts subtracted).
· To belong to the top 10% of global wealth holders, a person needs to have more than $72,000.
· If a person has more than $588,000 he belongs to the top 10% of global wealth holders and people with more than $588,000 automatically belong to the top 1%.
· It is believed that the top 1% of the wealthiest in the world had hidden $21trillion to $32 trillion in secret tax exempt bank accounts.
· The wealthiest 1% of the world represents approximately 40million adults.
· The assets of 10million of these exceed $1million. Approximately 100,000 have financial assets worth over $30million.
· The tier below the 1% are working people in major corporations/government, self-owned businesses and make up 30-40% of employed in developed countries while there are only 20% of the 3rd world belonging to this group.
· What is alarming is that 1% of global elite dominates and controls world’s public relations firms and corporate media and the global corporate media protects the interests of the 1% by serving as a propaganda machine for the super rich. There is no such thing as an unbiased media if it is a corporate media especially if it is own or linked to the First World.
· There are over 1000 billionaires but they are not part of the superclass and they don’t influence global policies but these 1000 billionaires have twice as much wealth as the 2.5billion least wealthy.
According to the World Bank there are 1.2billion living in extreme poverty making $1.25 a day (2008)
According to www.starvation.net35,000 people die every day from starvation. When farmers grow enough food why are people dying from hunger? That is because the corporations are making a killing from hunger! They control global food prices and distribution and also manipulate the scarcity.
ROLE OF NATO
It is to protect the capital of the superclass that NATO countries now account for 85% of the world’s defense spending. NATO’s agenda is to quell or crush rebellions and other forms of unrest.
The Third World needs to start worrying when NATO’s global agenda was laid bare at the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago wherein its declaration read “ . . . we have confidently set ourselves the goal of NATO Forces 2020: modern, tightly connected forces equipped, trained, exercised and commanded so that they can operate together and with partners in any (emphaisis added) environment.”This must ring alarm bells that NATO is emerging as a police force for the transnational corporate class.
NATO remains in the Balkans, it is now in Afghanistan, NATO started training in Iraq since 2005, it is now inside Libya and NATO is also eyeing Syria.
The strategy to use NATO as a global security for the super rich is all too clear and will work in unison with the industrial-military-media empires fooling the masses while plundering the world. Plugged onto this are numerous initiatives that are being drafted and launched through the UN like the depopulation programs as well as other methods to wipe out entire populations or starve them to death. Notice the increase in private security forces, mass incarceration, new forms of social apartheid. Drone killings, extrajudicial assassinations did not just happen. These were all planned.
US private firms like Blackwater and DynCorp are receiving contracts via CIA and billions from the US federal government. If the military does wrong there are channels to address but when Blackwater contractors killed 17 unarmed civilians in 2007 in Iraq – nothing was done because they were immune from Iraqi law.
Privatizing what belonged to the Government is said to improve efficiency. So prisons became privatized because companies were said to guard, house and feed prisoners better. What happens when private prisons cut guard pay, food quality, abuse prisoners as a management tool? Nothing.
Then there is the media – you can be rest assured that no one reports wrong doing and those that do end up fired or blacklisted from the media. Nothing will get published regarding big corporates or their shady deals because they influence editorial content and that which gets relayed. That is why we are still to know if powdered milk is nutritious or not, or whether we are importing foods that are GMOs, what is really inside the drugs/medication we take – a lot is being concealed. Doctors are given perks and privileges depending on the drugs he/she prescribes. We call these kickbacks. Then in the realm of education/research companies spend millions to see how they could manipulate things. Since 2002 ExxonMobil donated over $225million to Stanford to research how to ‘curb greenhouse gas emissions’ and the panel were made up of oil industry.
The Trade Laws Shaping Future
We are looking at a future of permanent war, spending on destruction means spending for reconstruction and this cycle is just perfect for the transnational corporates.
The US and 11 Pacific Rim countries (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam and Brunei) representing 40% of global GDP will sign the Trans Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The document being drafted by US has been given access to only 3 individuals in each of the TPP nations while 600 ‘trade advisors’ of companies such as Monsanto, Chevron, Halliburton, Walmart have been granted access. Wikileaks disclosed its contents which covered medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents, it also covered patents, copyright, trademarks and industrial design. The draft detailed new policing measures that would curtail civil liberties, individual rights wherein sovereign national courts would have to defer to supranational litigation tribunals where hearings would be conducted with secret evidence.
The TPP is just part of the other project – the EU/US Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which will roll out principles for EU and UK. 65% input to this secret agreement came from companies and industry associations. What the agreement proposes to do is to remove/reduce trade tariffs that favors consumers, would reintroduce US led anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) without any democratic mandate, creating grounds for corporates to sue national governments directly at supra-national courts, the US proposes to use TTIP to overturn EU food standards on GMOs, meat (chlorine washed chicken, growth hormones etc).
What would happen if tariffs are removed? Haiti is a good example. Haiti could feed itself. Then the US and IMF entered forcing Haiti to reduce its tariffs on imports. US subsidized US farmers to undercut domestic producers decimating Haiti’s domestic rice market resulting in Haiti importing rice from US and Haiti became recipient of US food aid (US taxpayer pays $1.5billion to US food corporations to produce food for Food Aid).
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between EU and US is aimed to conclude before 2016 and the transnationals are using various means to ensure all government barriers are removed. The corporates will get the US President to invoke the President’s Trade Promotion Authority to make it impossible for Congress to amend or debate TPP.
The corporates will force Downing Street to cede powers enabling sections of the agreement to come into force before UK Parliament ratifies it.
We are slowly walking towards corporatized governments where agreements will soon suppress internet freedom, restrict civil liberties, take apart internal economies, directly overturn state subsidies on drugs, healthcare and other social benefits.
We may end up holding elections to elect leaders under what we believe is ‘democracy’ but these elected leaders will not be able to amend any of the agreements which would be written by the corporates.
Some alarming revelations were made by Karen Hudes with over 20years experience in the World Bank legal department (1986-2007) who was dismissed because she investigated the elites agenda and formed a whistleblower group.
The findings were as follows:
· 43,000 transnational corporations hold shares on capital markets
· The banks Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank own US Federal Reserve System
· These banks control 60% of annual earnings of capital markets and 40% of vales of these companies.
· Their investments were done by placing the same directors from one company to another and another.
· They also control the media
· Existing gentleman’s agreement – US appoints World Bank head, EU appoints IMF head.
· The banksters plan is to keep people imprisoned in debt
· Hude also says that if the Treasury Department issues currency then interest is not required to be paid. If Treasury Department issues a promissory note to the Federal Reserve, Federal Reserve issues currency and that note will have interest – that’s why debt increases annually. In the US when tax forms are sent to one place, the cheque is sent to the Federal Reserve, that cheques is then sent to the UK, the UK banksters (not the government) keep 40% and then send 60% to the Jesuits in the Vatican. Hude gives an explanation for this. She says that in 1200, the King of England borrowed money from the Vatican to finance wars and signed a treaty to guarantee repayment of loan – this is the war reparation being paid to the UK since 1812.
· Karen Hude goes on to say “this has absolutely nothing to do with the Catholic faith….. this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the people of faith who are not aware of this…..read what our founding fathers had to say about the Jesuits. After Lincoln was assassinated, the Jesuits were not allowed certain privileges in the United States….the ban on the Jesuits was lifted by Ronald Regan.”
· Karen Hude says that the US government stays afloat by selling drugs grown in Afghanistan.
· Karen also says that the CIA was created to guard the world’s gold. She says Hawaii possesses 170 thousand tons of gold. Now she says the Jesuits are in charge of the CIA.
· Karen also says that a nuclear bomb was to be detonated in South Carolina but 2 army generals made sure the bomb went off 600miles off the coast and under the sea – these 2 officers were fired and so too will be 180 generals because they are protecting the US citizens.
· The last of Karen Hude’s whistleblower findings ends with the fact that Pope Benedict Ratzinger was removed because of child trafficking and financial crimes and that is why Pope Francis is not using the papal apartment.
The International Tribunal for Crimes of Church and State [ITCCS] has declared that the Roman Catholic Church as a Transnational Criminal Organization under the terms of another corporate entity known to the world as the United Nations, and is about to issue an international warrant of arrest against Pope Francis.
We are told that officials are coming to ‘investigate’ ‘review’ and what not but they are all being tasked to help draft decrees that would make legitimate illegal actions usurping all customary laws. The only fear these superclass has is the real democratic movement. But only a handful realizes the transnational agenda and links it to the governments that push their agendas.
Now that we know the scenario – the next question what can we do about it?
Shenali D Waduge
Powerful article. A Sri Lankan writer?