How Economic Hitmen Cheat Countries out of Trillions of Dollars and Leave them with A Huge Debt Burden They Are Unable To Pay Off
September 6, 2008
Economic Hitmen funnel money from the world bank,the (U.S.A.I.D)The U.S Agency for International Development,and other foreign(AID)organisations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planets natural resources.Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex and murder.They play a game as old as empire,but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalisation and how they are encouraging world leaders to become part of a vast network, as they are doing right now in Guyana, the collective corporatocracy, like the gold mining companies, the electricity corporation, the telecommunications corporations, the proposed road to Brazil, the timber companies.
The Economic Hitmen are making a killing in Guyana,don’t forget the many oil companies that are lining up to tap into our oil wealth.Guyana is ripe for the picking.Given the situation in the Middle East.These companies all promote U.S commercial lnterest.In the end,those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty.The E.H.M’s can draw on them when they desire,to satisfy their political,economic,or military needs.In turn they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks,power plants and airports to their people.The owners of U.S engineering and construction companies become fabulously wealthy.That is what the E.H.M’s does best to build a global empire and utilize international financial organisations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations,our government and our banks.Like our counterparts in the mafia,E.H.M’s provide favors.These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure,electric generating plants,highways,ports,airports,or industrial parks.A condition of such loan is that engineering and construction companies from our own country the(U.S.A)must build all these projects.In essence most of the money never leaves the United States;it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York,Houston,or San-Francisco.Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy(the creditor)the recipient country is required to pay it all back principal plus interest,if the E.H.M’s are completely succcessful,the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years.When this happens,then like the mafia,the E.H.M’s would demand their pound of flesh.This often includes one or more of the following;control over the U.N,the United Nations votes,the installation of military bases,or acess to precious resources such as oil or like the Panama canal,of course,the debtor still owe us the money and another country is added to our global empire.It was a classic example of a country that rose from rags to riches as a result of oil.It was also a model of the turmoil oil wealth foments of the disequilibrium between rich and poor and of a country shamelessly exploited by the corporatocracy in the 1998 elections.When the poor and disenfranchised of Venezuela elected Hugo Chavez by a landslide as their President.He immediately instituted drastic measures,taking control of the courts and other institutions and dissolving the Venezuelan congress.He denounced the United States for its(shameless imperialism),and spoke out forcefully against globalisation and introduced a hydrocarbons law that was reminiscent.The law doubled the royalties charged to foreign oil companies.Then Chavez defied the traditional independence of the state owned oil company,Petroleos de Venezuela by replacing its top executives with people loyal to him.Venezuelan oil is crucial to economies around the world.In 2002 the nation was the world’s fourth largest oil exporter and the number three supplier to the United States.Petroleos de Venezuela with forty thousand employees and 50 billion a year in sales provides 80 percent of the countries export revenue.It is by far the most important factor in Venezuela’s economy.By taking over the industry,Chavez had thrust himself onto the world stage as a major player.Many Venezuelans saw this as destiny,the completion of a process that began eighty years earlier.On December 14,1922 a huge oil blowout had gushed from the earth near Maracaibo.One hundred thousand barrels of crude sprayed into the air each day for the next three days,and this single geologic event changed Venezuela forever.By 1930,the count was the worlds largest oil exporter.Venezuelans look to oil as a solution to all their problems.Oil revenues during the next forty years enabled Venezuela to evolve from one of the most impoverish nations in the world to one of the wealthiest in Latin America.All of the country’s vital statistics improved:health care,education,employment,longevity and infant survival rates.Business prospered.During 1973 O.P.E.C oil embargo,petroleum prices skyrocketed and Venezuela’s national budget quadrupled.The E.H.M’s went to work.The international banks flooded the country with loans that paid for vast infrastructure and industrial projects and for the highest skyscrapers on the continent.Then,in the 80’s the corporate style E.H.M’s arrived.It was ideal opportunity for them to cut their fledgling teeth.The Venezuelan middle class had become sizable,and provided a ripe market for a vast array of products,yet their was still a very large poor sector available to labor in the sweatshops and factories.The oil prices crashed,and Venezuela could not repay its debts.In 1989,the I.M.F imposed austerity measures and pressured Caracas to support the corporatocracy in many other ways.Venezuelans reacted violently,riots killed over two hundred people.The illusion of oil as bottomless source of support was shattered.Between 1978 and 2003,Venezuela’s per capita income plummeted by over 40 percent.As poverty increased,resentment intensified.Polarization resulted,with the middle class pitted against the poor.As so often occurs in countries whose economies depend on oil production,demography’s radically shifted.The sinking economy took its toll on the middle class,and many fell into the ranks of the poor.The new demographics set the stage for Chavez and for conflict with Washington.Once in power,the new president took actions that challenged the Bush Administration.Just before the September 11 attacks,Washington was considering its options,was it time to send in the Jackals?then 9/11 changed all priorities.President Bush and his advisers focused on rallying the world community to support U.S activities in Afghanistan and an invasion of Iraq.On top of that,the U.S economy was in the middle of a recession.Venezuela was relegated to a back burner.However,it was obvious that at some point Bush and Chavez would come to blows.With Iraqi and other Middle Eastern oil supplies threatened,Washington could not afford to ignore Venezuela for long.The response was simply to undermine leaders who stood in the way of our oil policies.In many respects,Venezuela was the most intriguing case because,while military intervention had already occured in Afghanistan and in Iraq,the administration’s response to Chavez remained a mystery.As far as i am concerned,the issue was not about wether Chavez is a good leader;it was about Washington’s reaction to a leader who stood in the way of the corporatocracy’s march to global empire.In Venezuela,the Bush administration was bringing Kermit Roosevelt’s Iranian model into play.As the New York Times reported:-Hundreds of Thousands of Venezuelans filled the streets here today to declare their commitment to a national strike,now in its 28 days,to force the ouster of President Hugo Chavez.The strike,joined by an estimated 30,000 oil workers threatens to wreak havoc on this nation,the world’s fifth largest oil producer for months to come.In recent days,the strike has reached a kind of stalemate.Mr.Chavez is using nonstriking workers to try to normalize operations at the state owned oil company.His opponents,led by a coalition of business and labor leaders,contend, though,that their strike will push the company,and thus the Chavez government,to collapse.This is exactly how the C.I.A brought down Mossadegh and replaced him with the Shah.The analogy could not have been stronger.It seemed history was uncannily repeating itself fifty years later.Five decades,and still oil was the driving force.Chavez supporters continued to clash with his opponents.Several people it is reported,were shot to death and dozens more were wounded.The next day an old friend who for many years had been involved with the jackals said he had never worked directly for any government,but he had led clandestine operations in many countries.He told me that a private contractor had approached him to foment strikes in Caracas and to bribe military officers,many of whom had been trained at the school of the Americas,to turn against their elected president.He had turned down the offer,but he confided,(the man who took the job knows what he is doing).Oil company executives and Wall Street feared a rise in oil prices and a decline in American inventories.Given the Middle East situation,i knew the Bush administration was doing everything in its power to overthrow Chavez.Then came the news that they had succeeded;Chavez had been ousted.The New York Times took this turn of events as an opportunity to provide a historical perspective and also to identify the man who appeared to play the Kermit Roosevelt role in contemporary Venezuela.The United States supported authoritarian regimes throughout central and South America during and after the cold war in defense of its economic and political interest.In tiny Guatemala,the Central Intelligence Agency mounted a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government in 1954 and it backed subsequent right wing governments against small leftist rebel groups for four decades.Roughly 200,000 civilians died.In Chile a C.I.A supported coup helped put General Augusto Pinochet in power from 1973-1990.In Peru,a fragile democratic government is still unraveling the agency’s role in a decade of support for the now deposed and disgraced president,Alberto K. Fujimory,and his disreputable spy chief,Vladimiro L. Montesinos.The United States had to invade Panama in 1989 to topple its narco dictator,Manuel A.Noriega,who,for almost 20 years,was a valued informant for American intelligence.And the struggle to mount an unarmed opposition against Nicaragua’s leftist in the 80’s by any means necessary,include selling arms to Iran for cold cash,led to indictments against senior Reagan administration officials.Among those investigated back then was Otto J.Reich a veteran of Latin American struggles.No charges were ever filed against Mr.Reich.He later became United States Ambassador to Venezuela and now serves as assistant Secretary of State for inter-American affairs by Presidential appointment.The fall of Mr.Chavez is a feather in his cap.If Mr.Reich and the Bush Administration were celebrating the coup against Chavez,the party was suddenly cut short.In an amazing turnabout,Chavez regained the upper hand and was back in power less than seventy-two hours later.Unlike Mossadegh in Iran,Chavez had managed to keep the military on his side,despite all attempts to turn its highest ranking officers against him.In addition he had the powerful state oil company on his side.Petroleos de Venezuela defied the thousands of striking workers and made a come back.Once the dust cleared,Chavez tightened his governments grip on oil company employees,purged the military of the few disloyal officers who had been persuaded to betray him,and forced many of his key opponents out of the country.He demanded twenty year prison terms for two prominent opposition leaders.Washington connected operatives who had directed the nationwide strike.In the final analysis,the entire sequence of events was a calamity for the Bush administration.As the Los Angeles Times reported:Bush administration officials acknowleged Tuesday that they had discussed the removal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for months with military and civilian leaders from Venezuela.The administration’s handling of the abortive coup has come under increasing scrutiny.It was obviously that not only had the C.I.A failed but so had the Jackals.Venezuela in 2003 turned out to be very different from Iran in 1953.I wondered if this was a harbinger or simply an anomaly and what Washington would do next.At least for the time being,i believe a serious crisis was averted in Venezuela and Chavez was saved by Saddam Hussein.The Bush administration could not take on Afghanistan,Iraq and Venezuela all at once.At the moment,it had neither the military muscle nor the political support to do so.I knew,however,that such circumstances could change quickly,and that president Chavez was likely to face fierce opposition in the near future.Nonetheless,Venezuela was a reminder that not much had changed in fifty years except the outcome.
CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON PAUL WOLFOWITZ’S APPOINTMENT AS PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD BANK?
Wolfowitz’s appointment left no doubt if any ever existed, that is not a world bank.It is a U.S bank.The president of the United States chooses its president and controls its major decisions.It really doesn’t matter what i think of Wolfowitz’s as a person or manager.The important question should be:what do the Brazillians,Nigerians,Indonesians,and others around the world think of him? if it were a world bank,selection of its president,along with all major decisions,would be the responsibility of a board comprised of representatives from all countries.
IS THE CURRENT MOVE TO FORGIVE THIRD WORLD DEBT AN INDICATION THAT THE E.H.M’s ARE LOSING?
On the contrary,i’m sorry to have to say that it shows a new level of sophistication on the part of the E.H.M’s.I certainly favor the idea of forgiving those debts,which,we must remember,were accumulated without the consent of the majority of the people in those contries and served to make the corporatocracy and a few wealthy Third World families even richer,but debt forgiveness is not what this is all about.The G8(the United States,the United Kingdom, Canada, France,Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia), the World Bank, and the I.M.F are once again exploiting these nations and they are calling it “debt forgiveness.” They are insisting on “conditionalities” that are cloaked in phrases like “good governance”,”sound economics”,and “trade liberalization”.While the language is enticing,it is also terrible deceptive.These policies are “good” and “sound” only if you are looking at them through corporate windows.The countries that agree to such conditionalities are called upon to privatize their health,education,electric,water,and other public services,in other words,sell them to the corporatocracy.They are forced to drop subsidies and trade restrictions that support local businesses while at the same time accepting that the U.S and other G8 countries can continue to subsidize certain G8 businesses and erect trade barriers on imports that threaten G8 industries.When Bolivia give in to such “good governance” policies,it opened the door for multinationals to privatize its water supply system;prices of water skyrocketed and Bolivians claimed that service was suspended to thousands of people.In Cote d’Ivoire,the French firm that bought the assets of the privatized telephone company reportedly raised prices so high that many people had to forego connections to the system,including university students who could not afford internet access essential for their studies.In Tanzania,these policies led to the appalling situation where children have to pay to go to school and many are simply too poor to do so.Similar stories abound in the countries that have accepted the conditionalities that come as a perequisite to what is being toted as debt forgiveness.One of the shocking things about this new sham is that so many people seem willing to accept it,rather than seeing it for what it truly is,an E.H.M ploy and the latest and perhaps most subtle step along the road to World Empire.The Third World,however,is conscious of what is going on and they are angry.The resistance to the July 2005 G8 meetings in Scotland was,to a large degree,an expression of anger against the deceptions.Many people believed that Blair and Bush were simply playing “good guy,bad guy”in an attempt to legitimatize a highly exploitative system that is balanced heavily in favor of multinational corporations at the expense of the poor,downtrodden,and starving around the world.When will we in the U.S,which is the coach and captain of the G8 corporatocracy team demand that our leaders fess up to their lies?When will we admit to the deeper truth behind 9/11,the Madrid and London bombings,and so many other acts of violence,that they may be the acts of fanatical murderers but that they continue to happen only because millions of people are desperate and are silently applauding?When will someone point the finger and say”look,the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes?”
WHY DID YOU NOT DISCUSS THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION IN CONFESSIONS?
During the 1990s i was running a nonprofit organization,taking groups into the Amazon,and being paid as a”consultant”who did very little except to keep quiet.For me it was very different time from the 80s when,as CEO for an energy company,i was very aware of what was going on with the first Bush Administration and George W’s oil interest.Clinton and i had nothing to do with each other.I did not watch with great interest the way the corporatocracy went after him and Hillary during his first term;it seemed like warning shots fired across the bow,and,in fact,those warning shots brought many of Clinton’s promised programs to a halt.Later,i had to wonder what he had done to convince them to bring Monica out into the public,after all,they have plenty of “negatives”to expose on all leaders,but only do so when the need arises.But since i was out of the loop,had no inside information,and could only speculate like everyone else,there was noting for me to confess,or that might enlighten others about Clinton.See confessions of an economic hitman.
S.Harald
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2 Responses to “How Economic Hitmen Cheat Countries out of Trillions of Dollars and Leave them with A Huge Debt Burden They Are Unable To Pay Off”
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wonderful article,a must read for all in the political business.
I hope this article open the eyes of those that were only hearing what were being told by the western media,