The longest story ever told (psychopaths, bullies, greedy, control freaks…)

Posted on December 29, 2011 by RonMamita — 20 Comments

As a kid I was a big fan of chinese martial arts movies and one major historical theme was the blatant bullying and mafia style rule of the people.
The people remained in poverty while their labor and taxes increased the riches of the wealthy rulers. I would rejoice over the prowess of the hero to defeat these bad thugs and help restore peace and justice.

From the past bully tactics to the modern version where Corporate-governments hide their bully tactics behind institutions and legislated statutes (false laws)…

Share with everyone the facts of institutional crime and the official criminals carrying out these misdeeds and the key to freedom.

The Debt Burden is Rising!

WE THE PEOPLE are the solution.
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According to the Financial Times :

http://blogs.ft.com/economistsforum/2011/07/debt-burden-advanced-economies-now-global-threat/#axzz1iEvv21zF

The US contributes 37 per cent of the increase in global debt from 2007 to 2011 and 40 per cent from 2011 to 2016. Its contributions to global GDP over those two periods are 8 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively.

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Ever since the murders of President Kennedy, His bro. Bobby, and PhD. M. L. King Jr. I had the feeling of unease that a government coup had taken place in the USA.
Three and a half decades later I became convinced of a Rogue Government after September 11, 2001 (“911”) as the evidence (lies to justify a pre-emptive war of aggression on two nations Afghanistan and then Iraq; along with pre-arranged legislation to abolish rights and liberties of the citizens and public…) was blatant and obvious.
Now the financial class are awake and feeling uncomfortable that the rogue government may actually be a full fledged fascist government (The central banks are the money cartel accountable to no one) looking for a strong arm figure to head the government to obey and protect the ruling financial oligarchs. I was surprised when I heard in this video David Galland said: “All the elements for fascism in the USA are in place.” (i.e. Monetary system accountable to no one; gov’t can finance anything they want and all the wars they want; militarized police forces in every city and a secret force {“HOMELAND SECURITY”} with unknown weaponry, spying capabilities, and armament.) He went on to indicate that this fascism extends beyond the USA to include many governments that serve the global money cartel.

“We’re Living in a Degraded Democracy”
Stefan Molyneux has a conversation with Casey Research’s Managing Director, David Galland about the state of the United States and the global financial system.
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http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/enron-taliban-warburg-the-untold-story/

Enron, Taliban & Warburg: The Untold Story

September 28, 2011 — Dean Henderson

(Excerpted from Chapter 9: The Texas Oil Mafia: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)

In 1985 Drexel Lambert S&L crook Michael Milken helped Houston Natural Gas merged with Internorth to create Enron. Kenneth Lay headed Houston Natural Gas and became chairman and CEO of the new company. Enron was the biggest corporate contributor to George W. Bush’s campaign to become Texas Governor. [1]

Bush won and Texas led the way in a nationwide deregulation of energy markets which Lay advocated. Deregulation allowed Lay to pioneer energy trading. By 1999 Enron monopolized online energy trading via Enron Online. Throughout the political career of George W. Bush, Lay was his largest financial supporter, personally giving Bush $650,000.

In 1993 Wendy Gramm, wife of Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm (R-TX), joined the board of Enron where she was chair of Enron’s Audit Committee. Wendy Gramm came to Enron straight from her job as 12-year chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where she ostensibly aided in the cover-up of BCCI, Capcom, Mena drug trade and S&L scandals. At CFTC Gramm’s main task was to oversee the complex derivatives market, a favorite haven for drug money laundering due to its opaque nature.

While Wendy was covering tracks at CFTC, husband Phil was busy blocking key money laundering legislation and pushing for bank deregulation. He pushed passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which severely reduced government oversight of the derivative and futures markets.

Enron, where Wendy Gramm now collected a $200,000 per year stipend, received exclusive regulatory exemptions through the legislation. Section 101 of the Act granted regulatory exemption to on-line energy traders. There was only one such entity – Enron OnLine. One CFTC official stated of Section 101, “everyone called it the Enron exemption”. [2]

Ken Raisler was a key lobbyist for Enron. Raisler served as general counsel to the CFTC before joining Enron. Currently he is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell – the spook law firm behind the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala.

Enron hired former Clinton Treasury official Linda Robertson to head its Washington offices. Former Montana Governor Marc Racicot joined Enron as a lobbyist. Racicot, whom the Montana Militia has fingered for providing cover for a cocaine ring operating along the Montana/Canadian border while serving as Montana Attorney General, was appointed chair of the Republican National Committee just days before Enron went bust. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were huge Enron lobbyists. [3]

James Baker, Robert Mosbacher and Bush economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey all lobbied for Enron. James Baker had been hired straight from office as Bush Sr. Secretary of State to lobby the Kuwaiti government on behalf of Enron. Enron received a $600 million contract from Kuwait to build an electrical power plant as a result of his efforts. President Bush Jr. himself earned lucrative fees from Enron for speaking engagements.

Just before Racicot bolted Enron, Sen. Phil Gramm announced his retirement. Enron executives began feverishly selling stock options, which had reached a high of $96/share. In October 2001 Enron froze its employees’ 401K plan, locking them into a downward spiral in Enron’s stock price. On December 2, 2001 Enron declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, making its shares worthless. Ten days later House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) announced his retirement. The Bush Justice Department announced an investigation, but Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case due to political contributions he received from Enron. Former Enron employee Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson took over the investigation.

No less than fifteen Bush Administration officials owned Enron stock. Enron met at least six times with former Halliburton CEO Vice-President Dick Cheney to help craft a national energy policy. [4] Enron called Commerce Secretary and former Tom Brown natural gas executive Donald Evans, and Treasury Secretary and former ALCOA executive Paul O’Neill, to ask for a government bailout. On February 17, 2001 Enron executives met with O’Neill just three weeks into his appointment. O’Neill agreed to quash a law that limited Enron’s use of off-shore shell companies to hide losses. [5]

Enron called Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Kenneth Hebert to pressure him to make a ruling favorable to the company. When Hebert refused President Bush relieved him of his job. Enron CEO Ken Lay was told by Bush to interview four candidates for the FERC post during the Bush transition to the White House. During the 2000 Presidential elections Enron was the biggest corporate funder of the Bush Campaign, giving $113,000 to the campaign, $100,000 for the inaugural ball and $5,000 to the Florida Recount Fund, which was presided over by James Baker. During 1999-2000 Enron doled out $2,439,000 in political contributions.

This was chump change compared to the $20 million Enron had given as bribes to Indian officials in 1993 when it moved into the power generation business in that country’s Maharashta State. Enron snookered the Indians into a deal where they would pay $30 billion to Enron to provide electricity at rates 700% the national average. The Enron Dabhol plant produced the highest priced electricity in India. Maharashta state officials wanted out. The US Ambassador to India chastised officials for even considering backing out of the deal. [6]

In 1999 the Indians finally sent Enron packing after both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International cited Enron for human rights violations in handling opposition to Dabhol. Amnesty said women were dragged from their homes and beaten by thugs on Enron payroll.

There is a bigger story behind Enron’s failed Dabhol project in India. By the mid-1990’s the Unocal-led Centgas consortium, which proposed the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan natural gas pipeline to supply the Far East, began proposing an alternate route that would terminate at Multan, Pakistan on the Indian border in the heart of disputed Kashmir. A proposed 400-mile extension of the pipeline would bring cheap gas to India to supply the Dabhol plant, allowing Enron to be competitive in the Indian market. [7]

Were the last-ditch negotiations by the Bush Administration in summer 2001 with the Taliban an attempt to head off an Enron bankruptcy by pushing through the trans-Afghan pipeline necessary to bring Dabhol the cheap gas it needed to survive? The company sorely needed to recoup the over $3 billion it invested in the ultra-high-tech Dabhol facility just north of Bombay.

Enron’s partners in the project were Bechtel and GE. Enron had counted on a partnership in Qatar with the state-owned Qatar Gas & Pipeline Co. to supply Dabhol with cheap natural gas, but in April 1999 the project was canceled. With Central Asian gas reserves estimated at $3-$6 trillion, Enron looked north. While Centgas attempted to lay pipe across Taliban territory, Enron was busy laying pipe all across India, in anticipation of Centgas supply from Turkmenistan.

The US Trade & Development Agency was conducting feasibility studies on alternate gas routes should the Taliban continue to demand that any pipeline crossing their nation be open to local consumption, a condition unacceptable to Big Oil, which knew the gas would fetch a far higher price in the lucrative Japanese and South Korean markets they were targeting. Should an alternative Caspian Mountains to Turkey pipeline be built, Enron partners Bechtel and GE would get the contract to build it.

In February 2001 Cheney’s Energy Task Force called for a boost in oil and gas production in India, a move clearly designed to bail out Enron’s Dabhol white elephant. Cheney himself interceded to help Enron collect a $64 million debt from India during a June 27, 2001 meeting with Indian opposition leader Sonia Ghandi.

A series of emails obtained by the Washington Post and New York Daily News reveal that the National Security Council had taken charge of a “Dabhol Working Group” during the summer of 2001, just as the Bush Administration was meeting with the Taliban. Bush Central Asian expert and long-time CIA agent Christine Rocca met with the Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan on August 2, 2001 to remind Mr. Zaeef of the $132 million the US had provided the Taliban already that year. [8]

In the end, neither the Four Horsemen nor Enron got their new Silk Road. Enron went belly up, 911 happened and bombs began raining down on Afghanistan.

South of the Border

When Argentina went into an economic tailspin, Enron was there to scoop up the Buenos Aires water system in an IMF privatization shell game. Enron took over an important oil and gas pipeline running between Argentina and Chile. Both acquisitions were facilitated by the Bush Sr. White House. According to La Nacion, George W. Bush came to Argentina in 1988 as an Enron lobbyist and met with Argentine Minister of Public Works Rodolfo Terragano. Silverado S&L looter Neil Bush also lobbied Terragano. Bush told the minister to give Enron the first option to buy the country’s soon to be privatized energy complex. The Bush family has investments in Argentina. They are also friends of drug-scandal-ridden former President Carlos Menem, who was recently indicted.

By 1996 Enron Global Power & Pipelines had a controlling interest in a 4,100 mile natural gas pipeline system running throughout Argentina. It is the largest pipeline in South America with a capacity of 1.9 billion cubic feet of gas per day. On May 4, 1998 Enron’s Commercializadora de Energia Argentina was granted the first power marketing license in Argentina’s newly deregulated privatized energy sector.

Two years earlier Enron teamed up with Royal Dutch/Shell to buy Bolivia’s denationalized 1,655 mile gas pipeline system, while acquiring another pipeline stretching from Bolivia to Brazil. Enron also controlled a major pipeline in Columbia. All of these investments were guaranteed by the US taxpayer through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). Enron’s bankruptcy leaves US taxpayers holding the bag for around $1 billion according to OPIC officials. [9]

Enron paid no federal income tax in four of the five years from 1996-2000 and was eligible for a $382 million tax refund under the new Bush tax plan. An October 2000 study conducted by Citizens for Tax Justice showed that of half of the Fortune 500 companies, 24% paid no federal income taxes for 1998. Enron avoided the tax man by declaring profits in tax haven countries, while declaring losses in the US, a practice incorporated by most US multinationals.

Enron had 692 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands alone and numerous other ventures based in the equally drug money-infested Turks & Caicos. [10] Texas Sen. Phil Gramm and Texas House Majority Leader Rep. Dick Armey worked against President Clinton’s proposals to work with the EU in clamping down on these off-shore tax havens.

While Enron executives bailed out, its employees lost their retirement nest eggs. So did millions of US workers whose state pension funds were invested in Enron. In Florida, a New York investment firm called Alliance Capital bought 7.6 million shares in Enron at $82 per share for the Florida State Pension Fund.

The aptly-named Frank Savage was a director at Alliance and also sat on the board at Enron and Lockheed Martin. Later Alliance dumped the shares for less than a dollar each and thousands of Florida state employees lost everything while Enron officials such as Savage made off with $681 million as Enron plunged into the financial abyss.

Enron’s spooky board also included Herbert Winokur, who sat on the board of Cincinnati cocaine king Carl Lindner’s failed Penn Central; John Duncan, board member at Gulf & Western, owned by Lindner and Detroit mob boss Max Fischer; Ronnie Chan, board member of Standard Chartered, the London gold fixer and Hong Kong currency printer whose Dubai branch was used to wire money to the 911 hijackers; John Mendelsohn, chair of the Department of Medicine at Lawrence Rockefeller’s Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where the Shah of Iran had been “treated”; and Lord John Wakeham, former British Secretary of State for Energy who headed NM Rothschild & Sons in London.

On January 24, 2002 former Enron Vice-President Cliff Baxter was found shot to death in his car. Baxter’s death was quickly ruled a suicide, but Baxter had resigned Enron in May 2001 when he uncovered unsavory business practices. He was described by co-workers as a bulldog who, “got to the bottom of things”. He would have been a key prosecution witness in any case put forth against the energy giant and its partners.

At the center of Enron’s shadier deals was a partnership known as LJM2. The partnership, which dealt in highly speculative Internet IPO’s, was underwritten by Merrill Lynch. Partners included Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse First Boston. These same firms fed the internet bubble and made billions running up these stocks before offloading the junk onto the general public. A February 21, 2002 Wall Street Journal article stated that JP Morgan Chase was also involved in questionable commodity trades with Enron.

On January 11, 2002 Enron Online was auctioned off by a bankruptcy court. These same bankers now circled around the Enron carcass. The Warburg family-controlled investment bank UBS Warburg was awarded the company for a price of $0, agreeing to share Enron Online profits with another Wall Street vulture -Lehman Brothers. [11]

On October 7, 2002 now-retired Texas Senator Phil Gramm was rewarded for the deregulation frenzy which he and his Enron board member wife Wendy helped create. Gramm was named Vice-President and partner at UBS Warburg. Lehman went under in 2008, leaving the Warburgs firmly in command.

[1] BBC World News. 1-9-02

[2] “Mr. & Mrs. Enron”. Erin E. Arvedlund. Barron’s. 12-10-01. p.MW15

[3] “The Enron Debacle Spotlights Huge Void in Financial Regulation”. Michael Schroeder and Greg Ip. Wall Street Journal. 12-13-01. p.1

[4] BBC World News. 1-9-02

[5] “Interview with Tyson Slocum” Free Speech TV. Boulder, CO. 1-24-02

[6] “Speech by Arundati Roy”. Free Speech TV. Boulder, CO. 1-24-02

[7] “Enron Cheney Taliban Connection?” Ron Callari. Albion Monitor. 2-28-02

[8] Ibid

[9] “With Help From a Friend, Enron Fleeces South America”. Tim Wheeler. People’s Weekly World. 2-23-02

[10] “How Enron Used the Off-Shore System to Hide Millions”. Lucy Komisar. San Diego Union-Tribune. 1-23-02

[11] CNN Headline News. 1-11-02

deanhenderson.wordpress.com

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By Damon Vrabel Thursday, August 12, 2010

Some people have asked what I mean by “international banking cartel” and if it really exists. indeed it is very real and it has profound power over our lives. here are the details…

The Federal Reserve has been at the top of the news for a long time and it’s getting a lot of attention now as it appears the next down cycle in the depression may be upon us. So what’s the real reason the world listens so intently to an Ivy League bureaucrat like Bernanke? Of course, it has nothing to do with him. It’s who he is accountable to–the international banking cartel:

US

Bank of America Securities LLC
Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.
Citigroup Global Markets Inc.
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Jefferies & Company, Inc.
J. P. Morgan Securities Inc.
Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc.

Britain

Barclays Capital Inc.
HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.

Switzerland

Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC
UBS Securities LLC.

Japan

Daiwa Capital Markets America Inc.
Mizuho Securities USA Inc.
Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Germany

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.

France

BNP Paribas Securities Corp.

Canada

RBC Capital Markets Corp.

Scotland

RBS Securities Inc.

These institutions are the current primary dealers of the Federal Reserve System. They have power over the entire economy, everything in “the market,” very much a non-free market. They sit at the top of the world’s monetary system, currently the Fed’s debt-dollar pyramid, with a governmental license to what has been the most secure capital in the world–US Treasury debt–for a monopoly price that nobody else can get. And when it comes to global finance, the difference between the strongest banks vs. dying banks is just a few basis points in price (cost of capital).

These banks get first dibs on buying the servitude of the US population through the Fed/Treasury auction process. They distribute some of it to subordinate capital for a guaranteed premium, and they park a large amount of it on their own balance sheets as assets upon which they can speculate, trade, and fractionalize to create the rest of the money in the economy and put other countries, companies, and people in even more debt. So these institutions hold a monopoly position that even leviathan Standard Oil never dreamed of: a government-enforced usury license that generates trillions for their premium capital holders and senior employees and allows them to act as imperial armies sucking in more territory around the world as neoliberalism breaks down sovereignty.

This is why the country list above doesn’t mean what some may think. The institutions aren’t national. The list only indicates that the banking establishment has a permanent parasitic stake in those countries to churn their populations under the Fed’s debt system. All of the listed institutions are global in nature. Together with hedge funds and their other buy-side buddies, they have power over nations. Like any corporate institution, banks drive earnings per share (EPS) by expanding and leveraging their balance sheets, which for banks means putting everything else in more debt. So these cartel banks work to expand their territorial control beyond their national borders to put other populations in debt. This is a mathematical requirement of exponential growth enforced by the private capital system. The eventual end state of this dynamic is one integrated, global banking empire. It’s only a matter of time before their collective balance sheets (plus the large Chinese banks now that the cartel is colluding with them) control the rest of the world if people don’t awaken and choose to put a stop to it.

Will they succeed? The Fed system is in transition. The crash of 2008 was the first phase of global capital holders shifting their private capital out of the system so the Fed was forced to add public capital, i.e. your debt, into the system. More of this is likely coming. But does this mean the international banks behind the Fed are dying? No. They’ve simply transferred their bad assets to the public through the Fed and prepared to ramp up operations in Asia, which will be a primary churn center for the 21st century global banking system. Capital assets have been transferred, production assets have been transferred, and the capital holders can transfer much more capital in a short period of time if they so choose.

All the specifics of this coming transition may not be clear, but it is coming unless the global population says no. The banks have set up the ultimate voluntary test. If we continue to say yes by playing along with the banks and the multinational corporations they control, then they will have proven that a global empire ruled by an integrated banking system is preferred and possibly superior to independent countries. But they appear to be failing their own test. Ivy League neoliberalism has been exposed for what it is. The people are now indeed saying no.
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The Four Horsemen Behind The Oil Wars

April 25, 2011 — Dean Henderson

(Excerpted from Chapter 7: The Four Horsemen: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf…)

While Americans are robbed at the gas pump, Exxon Mobil will this week report a 60% increase in its quarterly net profits to a cool $10 billion. Royal Dutch/Shell will report a 30% increase.

In 1975 British writer Anthony Sampson penned The Seven Sisters, bestowing a collective name on a shadowy oil cartel, which throughout its history has sought to eliminate competitors and control the world’s oil resource. Sampson’s “Seven Sisters” name came from independent Italian oil man Enrico Mattei.

In the 1960’s Mattei began negotiating with Algeria, Libya and other nationalistic OPEC states who wanted to sell their oil internationally without having to deal with the Seven Sisters. Algeria had a long history of defying Big Oil and was once ruled by President Houari Boumedienne, one of the great Arab socialist leaders of all time, who initiated the original ideas for a more just “New International Economic Order” in fiery speeches at the UN, where he encouraged producer cartels modeled on OPEC as a means to Third World emancipation.

In 1962 Mattei died in a mysterious plane crash. Former French intelligence agent Thyraud de Vosjoli says French intelligence was involved. William McHale of Time magazine, who covered Mattei’s attempt to break the Big Oil cartel, also died under strange circumstances.

A tidal wave of mergers at the turn of the millennium transformed Sampson’s Seven Sisters – Royal Dutch/Shell, British Petroleum, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco and Gulf – into a more tightly controlled cartel which, in my book Big Oil & Their Bankers…, I term the Four Horsemen: Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Royal Dutch/Shell.

By the late 1800’s John D. Rockefeller had become popularly known as “the Illumination Merchant” during a time when oil was powering the reading lamps of every American household. Rockefeller figured out that it was the refining of oil into various end products and not actual crude production which held the key to control of the industry.

By 1895 his Standard Oil Company owned 95% of all refineries in the US while expanding operations overseas. Summing up his attitude towards his new oil monopoly, Rockefeller once stated, “The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism is gone never to return”.

Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust began illuminating the New World with funding from Kuhn Loeb and Rothschild banking families. While the Rockefellers worked the American side of the energy matrix, the Rothschilds consolidated their control over Old World oil resources.

By 1892 Shell Oil, under the direction of Marcus Samuel, began shipping SouthSeacrude through the new Suez Canal to supply Europe’s factories. Shell took its name from the abundance of seashells which lined the shores of the Dutch-controlled archipelago that is now Indonesia. The Samuel family controls London’s biggest merchant bank Hill Samuel, along with the trading house Samuel Montagu.

In 1903 the Swedish Nobel and the French Rothschild’s Far East Trading – financed by King Wilhelm III – combined with Samuel and Oppenheimer’s Shell Oil to form the Asiatic Petroleum Company.

In 1927 Royal Dutch Petroleum discovered oil at Seria off the coast of Brunei, whose Sultan would become the world’s richest man as a result of his loyalty to Royal Dutch. The Dutch and British monarchs who control Royal Dutch merged their company with the Oppenheimer and Samuel’s Shell Oil and Nobel and Rothschild’s Far East Trading and Royal Dutch/Shell was born. Queen Beatrix of the Dutch House of Orangeand Lord Victor Rothschild are its two largest shareholders.

In 1872 Baron Julius du Reuter was granted his 50-year concession in Iran. In 1914 the British government took control of his Anglo-Persian Company and renamed it Anglo-Iranian, then British Petroleum, then BP. Britain’s House of Windsor controls a large stake in BP Amoco while the Kuwaiti monarchy owns 9.5%.

In 1906 the US government ordered the dissolution of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust, charging that Standard violated the new Sherman Anti-Trust Act. On May 15, 1911 the US Supreme Court declared, “Seven men and a corporate machine have conspired against their fellow citizens. For the safety of the Republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15th”.

But the breakup of Standard Oil along state lines only served to increase the wealth of the Rockefeller family, who retained 25% interest in each new company. Soon the new companies began to reintegrate.

The new Standard Oil of New York merged with Vacuum Oil to form Socony-Vacuum, which became Mobil in 1966. Standard Oil of Indiana joined with Standard Oil of Nebraska and Standard Oil of Kansas and in 1985 became Amoco. In 1972 Standard Oil of New Jersey became Exxon. In 1984 Standard Oil of California joined with Standard Oil Kentuckyto become Chevron. Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio) retained the Standard brand until it was bought by BP, which also bought trust-baby Atlantic Richfield (ARCO). Thus the Rockefellers came to own a large chunk of BP.

By 1920 Exxon, BP and Royal Dutch/Shell dominated the world’s booming oil business, with the Rockefeller, Rothschild, Samuel, Nobel and Oppenheimer families, along with British and Dutch royals owning the brunt of their stock. Two other Rockefeller babies, Mobil and Chevron, weren’t far behind the Big Three. The Texas Murchison family – themselves patronized by the Rockefellers – controlled Texaco, while the Mellon family – with its own ties to the Rockefeller fortune – controlled Seventh Sister Gulf Oil.

The first known attempt by the Seven Sisters to stifle competition came in 1928 when Sir John Cadman of British Petroleum, Sir Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch/Shell, Walter Teagle of Exxon and William Mellon of Gulf met at Cadman’s castle near Achnacarry, Scotland. Here an agreement was reached that would divide up the world’s oil reserves and markets.

The Achnacarry Agreement became known to oil industry insiders as the As Is Agreement because its aim was to maintain a status quo under which the Seven Sisters controlled the world’s oil through market share agreements, sharing of refining and storage facilities, and by agreeing to limit production to keep prices high.

Big Oil signed three more agreements in the next six years. The 1930 Memorandum of Understanding for European Markets was followed by the 1932 Heads of Agreement for Distribution and the 1934 Draft Memorandum of Principles.

Between 1931 and 1933 the Four Horsemen ruthlessly cut the price forEast Texascrude from $.98/barrel to $.10/barrel. Many Texas wildcatters were run out of business. Those that remained were forced to agree to strict production quotas under threat of ruin by the majors – quotas that still exist to this day. It is these quotas, not “the environmentalists” (as the reactionary right claims) that serve to keep the US dependent on Persian Gulf oil, where Big Oil dominates the game.

By taking the oil industry international – which requires billions in capital – the Four Horsemen keep independent challenges to their hegemony at bay. They also put thousands of US oil workers out of jobs in Texas and Louisiana.

John D. Rockefeller himself did not control crude reserves. Instead he invested heavily in refining and cut deals with the Morgan-controlled railroads to cut his shipping costs. Texas wildcatters had to pay much more to ship their oil. They possessed neither the esoteric knowledge of refining crude, nor the capital to build expensive refineries. All their money was tied up in drilling rigs, which were not cheap either.

Today the Rockefeller family fortune is even more heavily invested in downstream oil operations such as petrochemicals and plastics, as well as in industries that are dependent on oil such as banking, aerospace and automobiles.

In the 1980’s long-time Chase Manhattan chairman David Rockefeller invested $35 billion inSingapore, which has since become an important refining and storage center. Royal Dutch/Shell’s largest single refinery is at Pulau Bukom, Singapore. In 1991, as the Asian Tigers began to roar, Exxon Mobil introduced unleaded gas to Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. It produces it at its giant Jurong refinery in Singapore.

The Four Horsemen have followed the money downstream. They are the world’s largest refiners and marketers of crude oil in all of its various end-product forms. RoyalDutch/Shell is both the leading marketer and refiner of crude oil and is currently the source of one in ten barrels of refined product in the world. Its bottom line has benefited greatly from this downstream move with the firm showing record profits starting in 1988 and many years since. Seventy-seven percent of Shell profits now come from petrochemicals.

Shell also owns the world’s largest refinery complex on the Netherlands Antilles island of Aruba, just off the Venezuelan coast. In 1991 Shell sold an outdated refinery on the neighboring island of Curacao while upgrading its Aruba facilities. The completion of this massive complex caused Venezuelan crude to become much more important to global oil supply. Crude from African nations like Nigeria and Angola is also refined at the Shell Aruba facility, which sits next to a hulking Exxon Mobil refinery named Lago, after Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo, from where most Venezuelan crude is derived.

Royal Dutch/Shell is currently focused on development of natural gas markets, investing heavily in Middle Distillate Synthesis (MDS) plants that convert liquefied natural gas to high-grade liquid products. By 1996 they had built MDS facilities in Malaysia, Nigeria and Norway. In 1993 Shell joined with Mitsubishi and Exxon Mobil in a $3 billion natural gas project in Venezuela and launched a $1.1 billion petrochemical expansion in Brazil. That same year BP Amoco discovered huge oilfields in neighboring Columbia.

By 1969 Exxon owned 67 oil refineries in 37 countries. Over 60% of Exxon’s 1991 profits came from downstream operations. In the first quarter of that year alone, Exxon made a $2.4 billion profit, the highest quarterly profit since Rockefeller founded Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1882. It was no coincidence that the Gulf War was being prosecuted during this time, with Exxon meeting much of the demand generated by the US military and its allies.

In the early 1990’s Exxon bought the plastics division of Allied Signal and entered joint ventures with both Dow and Monsanto in the thermoplastic elastomer realm. According to Exxon Mobil’s 2001 10K filing to the SEC, the company netted $17 billion in year 2000. From 2003-2006, during the US occupation of Iraq, the company regularly broke its own record for biggest quarterly profit by any corporation in US history.

Recently the Four Horsemen have been swimming back upstream, becoming the top four retailers of gas in the US. They own every major pipeline in the world and the vast majority of oil tankers. Royal Dutch/Shell has 114 ships in its armada. Recently the company added seven giant liquefied natural gas tankers. Shell has 133,000 employees worldwide and in 1991, boasted assets of $105 billion. Shell’s Bullwinkle oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico is taller than the world’s highest building.

Exxon Mobil leads the way in producing lubricant base stocks and its scientists invented butyl rubber. It has operations in 200 countries and is the only firm that operates in the harsh Beaufort Sea, where it built 19 islands of steel to drill from. Exxon owns most of the land inYemen (5.6 million acres), Oman and Chad. Its 1991 assets totaled $87 billion.

The latest wave of mergers in the oil industry began in the early 1960’s. Eight of the top twenty-five oil companies in 1960 had merged by 1970. Exxon bought Monterey Oil and Honolulu Oil. Chevron scooped up Standard Oil of Kentucky. Atlantic Oil merged with Richfield Refining to form ARCO, which then gobbled up Sinclair. Marathon Oil bought Plymouth Refining.

Another merger wave ensued in the 1980’s. Chevron bought Gulf in 1984. Texaco purchased Getty Oil. Mobil bought Superior Oil. BP grabbed both Britoil and Sohio (Standard Oil of Ohio). ARCO bought City Services. US Steel purchased Marathon Oil. The 1984 discovery of North Sea oil consolidated the position of Big Oil – especially Royal Dutch/Shell and Exxon – whose Shell Expro joint venture was awarded the prime concessions.

In 1985 Shell bought Occidental Petroleum’s Columbian interests. In 1988 it took over Tenneco’s assets in that country. The 1990’s saw Amoco (Standard Oil of IN) hitching its wagons to BP to form BP Amoco. In 1999 BP Amoco bought ARCO, giving the company 72% ownership of the Alaskan Pipeline.

Exxon bought Texaco Canada and Mexico’s Compania General de Lubricantes in 1991. Conoco was purchased by DuPont. In March 1997, Texaco and RD/Shell merged their US refining operations.

The final and most dramatic wave of consolidation saw Exxon merge with Mobil in November 1999. That same year Chevron bought Thailand’s Rutherford-Moran Oil and Argentina’s Petrolera Argentina San Jorge. In July 2000 Chevron merged its petrochemical business with that of Phillips to form Chevron Phillips Chemical Company. That same year Chevron tied the knot with Texaco.

On August 30, 2002 Conoco’s merger with Phillips Petroleum was approved creating Conoco Phillips, which in 2005 bought coal titan Burlington Resources. In 2002 Royal Dutch/Shell bought up previously merged Pennzoil/Quaker State as well as Britain’s biggest remaining independent oil company – Enterprise Oil. In 2005 Chevron Texaco bought Unocal. And Four Horsemen rode on.

The Four Horsemen have interlocking directorates with the international mega-banks. Exxon Mobil shares board members with JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Prudential. Chevron Texaco has interlocks with Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. BP Amoco shares directors with JP Morgan Chase. RD/Shell has ties with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, N. M. Rothschild & Sons and Bank of England.

Former Citibank chairman Walter Shipley sat on Exxon Mobil’s board, as did Wayne Calloway of Citigroup and Allen Murray of JP Morgan Chase. Willard Butcher of Chase sat on the board of Chevron Texaco. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan came from Morgan Guaranty Trust and served on the board of Mobil. BP Amoco director Lewis Preston went on to become president of the World Bank.

Other BP Amoco directors have included Sir Eric Drake, the #2 man at the world’s largest port operator P&O Nedlloyd and a director at Hudson Bay Company and Kleinwort Benson. William Johnston Keswick, whose family controls Hong Kong powerhouse Jardine Matheson, also sat on the board of BP Amoco. Keswick’s son is a director at HSBC. The Hong Kong connection is even stronger at Royal Dutch/Shell.

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster sat on the boards of Royal Dutch/Shell, N. M. Rothschild & Sons, Rio Tinto and Inchcape. Cathay Pacific Airlines owner and HSBC insider Sir John Swire was a director at Shell, as was Sir Peter Orr, who joins Armstrong on Inchape’s board. Shell director Sir Peter Baxendell joins Armstrong on the board of Rio Tinto, while Shell’s Sir Robert Clark sits on the board of the Bank of England.

As a result of the deregulation craze in the US companies no longer have to report their top shareholders to the SEC. According to 1993 10K reports filed by the Four Horsemen, the Rothschild, Rockefeller and Warburg banking combines still control Big Oil. The Rockefellers exert control through New York mega-banks and Banker’s Trust, which in 1999 was purchased by Warburg-controlled Deutsche Bank in its bid to become the largest bank in the world.

As of 1993 Banker’s Trust was #1 shareholder in Exxon. Chemical Bank was #4 and J.P. Morgan was #5. Both are now part of JP Morgan Chase. Banker’s Trust was also leading shareholder at Mobil. BP listed Morgan Guaranty as its biggest owner in 1993, while Amoco listed Banker’s Trust as its #2 shareholder. Chevron listed Banker’s Trust as its #5 shareholder, while Texaco listed J.P. Morgan as its #4 owner and Banker’s Trust as #9.

Thus, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase – the banks of Warburg and Rockefeller – have increased shares in Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco and Chevron Texaco. Rothschild-controlled Bank of America and Wells Fargo exert West Coast control over Big Oil, while Mellon Bank also remains a big player. Wells Fargo and Mellon Bank were both top 10 shareholders of Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and BP Amoco as of 1993.

Information on Royal Dutch/Shell is even harder to obtain since they are registered in the UK and Hollandand are not required to file 10K reports. It is 60% owned by Royal Dutch Petroleum of Holland and 40% owned by Shell Trading & Transport of the UK. The company has only 14,000 stockholders and few directors. The consensus from researchers is that Royal Dutch/Shell is still controlled by the Rothschild, Oppenheimer, Nobel and Samuel families along with the British House of Windsor and the Dutch House of Orange.

Queen Beatrix of the Dutch House of Orangeand Lord Victor Rothschild are the two largest shareholders. Queen Beatix’ mother Juliana was once the richest woman in the world and a patroness of the right-wing occult movement. Prince Bernhard, who married Juliana in 1937, was a member of the Hitler Youth Movement, the Nazi SS and an employee of Nazi combine I.G. Farben. He sat on the boards of over 300 European companies and founded the Bilderbergers.

When you’re being robbed, it’s always a good idea to be able to identify the perp. Now if only we could get the cops to bring em’ in…

www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 25th, 2010

Contact:
Travis English, AGRA Watch
(206) 335-4405
Brenda Biddle, The Evergreen State College & AGRA Watch
(360) 878-7833

http://www.seattleglobaljustice.org/agra-watch

GATES FOUNDATION INVESTS IN MONSANTO
Both will profit at expense of small-scale African farmers

Seattle, WA – Farmers and civil society organizations around the world are outraged by the recent discovery of further connections between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and agribusiness titan Monsanto. Last week, a financial website published the Gates Foundation’s investment portfolio, including 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock with an estimated worth of $23.1 million purchased in the second quarter of 2010 (see the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission). This marks a substantial increase from its previous holdings, valued at just over $360,000 (see the Foundation’s 2008 990 Form).

“The Foundation’s direct investment in Monsanto is problematic on two primary levels,” said Dr. Phil Bereano, University of Washington Professor Emeritus and recognized expert on genetic engineering. “First, Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well-being of small farmers around the world, as well as an appalling environmental track record. The strong connections to Monsanto cast serious doubt on the Foundation’s heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa and purported goal of alleviating poverty and hunger among small-scale farmers. Second, this investment represents an enormous conflict of interests.”

Monsanto has already negatively impacted agriculture in African countries. For example, in South Africa in 2009, Monsanto’s genetically modified maize failed to produce kernels and hundreds of farmers were devastated. According to Mariam Mayet, environmental attorney and director of the Africa Centre for Biosafety in Johannesburg, some farmers suffered up to an 80% crop failure. While Monsanto compensated the large-scale farmers to whom it directly sold the faulty product, it gave nothing to the small-scale farmers to whom it had handed out free sachets of seeds. “When the economic power of Gates is coupled with the irresponsibility of Monsanto, the outlook for African smallholders is not very promising,” said Mayet. Monsanto’s aggressive patenting practices have also monopolized control over seed in ways that deny farmers control over their own harvest, going so far as to sue—and bankrupt—farmers for “patent infringement.”

News of the Foundation’s recent Monsanto investment has confirmed the misgivings of many farmers and sustainable agriculture advocates in Africa, among them the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition, who commented, “We have long suspected that the founders of AGRA—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—had a long and more intimate affair with Monsanto.” Indeed, according to Travis English, researcher with AGRA Watch, “The Foundation’s ownership of Monsanto stock is emblematic of a deeper, more long-standing involvement with the corporation, particularly in Africa.” In 2008, AGRA Watch, a project of the Seattle-based organization Community Alliance for Global Justice, uncovered many linkages between the Foundation’s grantees and Monsanto. For example, some grantees (in particular about 70% of grantees in Kenya) of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)—considered by the Foundation to be its “African face”—work directly with Monsanto on agricultural development projects. Other prominent links include high-level Foundation staff members who were once senior officials for Monsanto, such as Rob Horsch, formerly Monsanto Vice President of International Development Partnerships and current Senior Program Officer of the Gates Agricultural Development Program.

Transnational corporations like Monsanto have been key collaborators with the Foundation and AGRA’s grantees in promoting the spread of industrial agriculture on the continent. This model of production relies on expensive inputs such as chemical fertilizers, genetically modified seeds, and herbicides. Though this package represents enticing market development opportunities for the private sector, many civil society organizations contend it will lead to further displacement of farmers from the land, an actual increase in hunger, and migration to already swollen cities unable to provide employment opportunities. In the words of a representative from the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition, “AGRA is poison for our farming systems and livelihoods. Under the philanthropic banner of greening agriculture, AGRA will eventually eat away what little is left of sustainable small-scale farming in Africa.”

A 2008 report initiated by the World Bank and the UN, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), promotes alternative solutions to the problems of hunger and poverty that emphasize their social and economic roots. The IAASTD concluded that small-scale agroecological farming is more suitable for the third world than the industrial agricultural model favored by Gates and Monsanto. In a summary of the key findings of IAASTD, the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) emphasizes the report’s warning that “continued reliance on simplistic technological fixes—including transgenic crops—will not reduce persistent hunger and poverty and could exacerbate environmental problems and worsen social inequity.” Furthermore, PANNA explains, “The Assessment’s 21 key findings suggest that small-scale agroecological farming may offer one of the best means to feed the hungry while protecting the planet.”

The Gates Foundation has been challenged in the past for its questionable investments; in 2007, the L.A. Times exposed the Foundation for investing in its own grantees and for its “holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices.” The Times chastised the Foundation for what it called “blind-eye investing,” with at least 41% of its assets invested in “companies that countered the foundation’s charitable goals or socially-concerned philosophy.”

Although the Foundation announced it would reassess its practices, it decided to retain them. As reported by the L.A. Times, chief executive of the Foundation Patty Stonesifer defended their investments, stating, “It would be naïve…to think that changing the foundation’s investment policy could stop the human suffering blamed on the practices of companies in which it invests billions of dollars.” This decision is in direct contradiction to the Foundation’s official “Investment Philosophy”, which, according to its website, “defined areas in which the endowment will not invest, such as companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that [Bill and Melinda] find egregious. This is why the endowment does not invest in tobacco stocks.”

More recently, the Foundation has come under fire in its own hometown. This week, 250 Seattle residents sent postcards expressing their concern that the Foundation’s approach to agricultural development, rather than reducing hunger as pledged, would instead “increase farmer debt, enrich agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and Syngenta, degrade the environment, and dispossess small farmers.” In addition to demanding that the Foundation instead fund “socially and ecologically appropriate practices determined locally by African farmers and scientists” and support African food sovereignty, they urged the Foundation to cut all ties to Monsanto and the biotechnology industry.

AGRA Watch, a program of Seattle-based Community Alliance for Global Justice, supports African initiatives and programs that foster farmers’ self-determination and food sovereignty. AGRA Watch also supports public engagement in fighting genetic engineering and exploitative agricultural policies, and demands transparency and accountability on the part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and AGRA.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/29/gates-foundation-gm-monsanto
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is sponsoring the Guardian’s Global development site is being heavily criticised in Africa and the US for getting into bed not just with notorious GM company Monsanto, but also with agribusiness commodity giant Cargill.

Trouble began when a US financial website published the foundation’s annual investment portfolio, which showed it had bought 500,000 Monsanto shares worth around $23m. This was a substantial increase in the last six months and while it is just small change for Bill and Melinda, it has been enough to let loose their fiercest critics.

Seattle-based Agra Watch – a project of the Community Alliance for Global Justice – was outraged. “Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well being of small farmers around the world… [This] casts serious doubt on the foundation’s heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa,” it thundered.

But it got worse. South Africa-based watchdog the African Centre for Biosafety then found that the foundation was teaming up with Cargill in a $10m project to “develop the soya value chain” in Mozambique and elsewhere. Who knows what this corporate-speak really means, but in all probability it heralds the big time introduction of GM soya in southern Africa.

The two incidents raise a host of questions for the foundation. Few people doubt that GM has a place in Africa, but is Gates being hopelessly naïve by backing two of the world’s most aggressive agri-giants? There is, after all, genuine concern at governmental and community level that the United State’s model of extensive hi-tech farming is inappropriate for most of Africa and should not be foist on the poorest farmers in the name of “feeding the world”.

The fact is that Cargill is a faceless agri-giant that controls most of the world’s food commodities and Monsanto has been blundering around poor Asian countries for a decade giving itself and the US a lousy name for corporate bullying. Does Gates know it is in danger of being caught up in their reputations, or does the foundation actually share their corporate vision of farming and intend to work with them more in future?

The foundation has never been upfront about its vision for agriculture in the world’s poorest countries, nor the role of controversial technologies like GM. But perhaps it could start the debate here?

In the meantime, it could tell us how many of its senior agricultural staff used to work for Monsanto or Cargill?

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