5 Wikileaks Revelations Exposing the rapidly growing Corporatism dominated U.S. diplomacy abroad
2011-06-23 16:51:00 GMT
One of the biggest successes Wikileaks' has been to the exorbitant amount of influence that multinational companies have more than diplomacy from Washington to expose.
One of the major pests crippling our democracy is the merger of corporate power with the elected and appointed officials at the highest levels of the office. Influence has a steep price in U.S. politics, where politicians are bought and paid for by increasing campaign
contributions from large corporations, mostly drowning out all voices of the public interest advocates.
Millions of dollars in campaign finance floods halls of Washington power, combined with tens of thousands of high-paid lobbyists and a never ending revolving door that allows corporate executives to shuffle between the public and private sectors blurs the line between public and private companies.
This corporate dominance over public affairs helps explain why we are plagued by a health care system that lines the pockets of industry executives at the expense of the sick, a war industry that death and destruction caused insurmountable enrich weapons makers and defense contractors, and a financial sector that is contrary to the working class and poor to distribute billions of dollars in bonuses to Wall Street CEOs.
The implications of this rapidly growing corporatism far beyond our borders and into the realm of American diplomacy, as in a case where the efforts of U.S. diplomats forced the minimum wage for the beleaguered Haitian workers to continue under sweatshop levels.
In this context of corporate corruption in government, one of the greatest achievements Wikileaks' has been to the exorbitant amount of influence that multinational companies have more than diplomacy from Washington to expose. Many of the Wikileaks U.S. embassy cables reveal the naked intervention of our ambassadorial staff in the business of other countries on behalf of U.S. companies. Of mining companies in Peru to pharmaceutical companies in Ecuador, an embassy cable Wikileaks after the next light a pattern of American diplomats shilling for corporate interests abroad in the most devious and sleazy ways imaginable.
While the merger of companies and government power is not exactly breaking news, it's one of the most critical yet under-reported issues of our time. Wikileaks and gave us a peek into the inner-working of this corporate-government collusion, often operates at the highest levels of power. It is clear that the standard procedure for the U.S. government and corporate officials moonlight Stooges. With thanks to Wikileaks, here are five bodies that display the lengths to which Washington is willing to protect and promote American companies around the world.
1. U.S. officials working for Boeing and sellers. The merger of state and corporate power is striking in a slew of cables detailing U.S. State Department officials as a marketing agent on behalf of a happy business. Earlier this year the New York Times revealed details of how American diplomats have actively promoted the sale of commercial aircraft built by the American company Boeing.
Hundreds cables Wikileaks show that Boeing sales force of U.S. diplomats who went to the highest levels of government, even going so far as to sabotage the sale to European rival Airbus, Boeing had. Tempting offers for the jets were presented to the Heads of airline executives in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey and other countries. The Wikileaks documents show that still demand bribes, or at least suspicious payments to intermediaries, occur.
In a deal that was valued at approximately $ 3.4 billion, the U.S. embassy in Istanbul, called for the sale of Boeing jet aircraft to Turkish Airlines (THY), according to a cable from January 2010. In return, the president of Turkey asked Obama to a Turkish astronaut sitting on a NASA flight.
The most puzzling and ironic tidbit in the cable, the American ambassador bewilderment at the "fusion of USG GOT interactions and what is apparently a commercial sale between private companies," which he complains is "an undesirable, but not surprising degree of political influence in this transaction. "The charge that the undue political influence is exerted by the Turkish government and a private airline is ludicrous given that the U.S. State Department, it is pitching the sale on behalf of a private company.
The cable goes on to say: "We can probably not a Turkish astronaut into orbit, but there are programs that might be taken to Turkey's capacity in this area that our goals would meet for improved aviation safety strengthening. In any case, we show some vague response from the minister to ask if we want opportunities for selling to maximize. "
In November of last year, Saudi Arabia announced a deal with Boeing for more than $ 3.3 billion worth of aircraft, a deal that was preceded by Wikileaks reveal years of intensive lobbying by U.S. officials of the highest order to buy.
In late 2006, when President George W. Bush wrote a personal letter he hand-delivered to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, almost begging the king to buy as many as 43 Boeing jets to Saudi Arabian Airlines jets and 13 of the Saudi royal fleet modernization.
King Abdullah responded by asking the U.S. government and President Bush to trick out his private plane with the same high-tech equipment used on Air Force One. He hinted that if the United States to his request, he would make a large purchase of Boeing aircraft for the fleet of the royal family and Saudi Arabian Airlines to. And look, King Abdullah has to upgrade its aircraft, and Boeing made billions.
A cable from the beginning of 2008 the details of a plan that successfully sabotaged an Airbus sale. In December 2007, the airline owned by Bahrain-Gulf Air announced plans for a new fleet of Airbus aircraft to buy. Boeing warned State Department officials, who immediately intervened urging them instead to buy from Boeing. After months of intense lobbying by the ambassador, the crown prince and the king of Bahrain agreed to purchase from Airbus to kill. Gulf Air ordered them to reopen negotiations with Boeing that eventually the deal worth $ 6 billion, which was signed while President Bush was visiting Bahrain.
2. U.S. diplomats a day - Monsanto agents by night. Boeing is not the only multi-billion-dollar company American diplomats have been shilling. In a cable from the end of 2007, former ambassador to France, Craig Stapleton, Washington suggested a military style commercial to war against any EU country that genetically modified (GM) crops against.
"Country Team Paris recommends we calibrate a target retaliation list that some pain across the EU causes because this is a collective responsibility, but also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should rather be measured only evil and must be sustainable over the long term, because we should not expect an early victory, "he wrote.
Stapleton was responding to attempts by France to a Monsanto GM maize ban. He specifically asked Washington to the EU countries that do not support the use of genetically modified crops to punish.
"Moving to revenge would make clear that the current path actually cost the EU's interests and is helping to strengthen the European pro-biotech vote."
An embassy cable from 2009 written by the Spanish ambassador takes direct encounters with Monsanto managers, showing that U.S. diplomats had to take orders directly from GM companies.
Monsanto's director of biotechnology for Spain and Portugal Embassy officials informed about the region, complaining that "Spain is increasingly a target of anti-biotech forces in Europe. If Spain does, the rest of Europe will follow."
In any insult thrown in the cable, the ambassador said: "Within the agricultural sector, but leftist farmers' associations have negative opinions of GMOs."
The cable ends with a dramatic call for intervention by the U.S. Government to Monsanto: "required action: In response to recent urgent request of [the Spanish National Affairs Ministry] Minister Josep PUXEU and Monsanto, after requests renewed U.S. government support of Spain's science-based agricultural biotechnology position by high-level U.S. government intervention. "
3. U.S. diplomats Pharmaceuticals + = best friends forever. In October 2009, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa issued a decree to increase access to medicines to improve and support public health programs through a protocol that would reduce drug costs. Cables from the American Embassy staff in Ecuador to the U.S. Department of State to see the United States, multinational pharmaceutical companies, and three ministers in the government sharing information and working on new policies to undermine Ecuador.
In a cable of 13 October 2009, before the decision was issued, the U.S. ambassador was plagued by Correa's plans, because it would be to prioritize local production and eliminate pharmaceutical patents. In other words, Ecuador was on the verge of changes that impact negatively the profits of U.S. pharmaceutical companies.
Immediately after word of Correa's plans, the U.S. Embassy staff met with local representatives of American pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Merck, Sharp and Dohme, Scering-Plough and Wyeth to develop strategies that would prevent or restrict the license changes Ecuador share.
USA, reinforced according to a cable written days later, referring to meetings with "well-placed contacts" with "potentially sympathetic ministries." In what sounds like attempted blackmail, Health Minister Caroline Chang - one of the "well-placed contacts" as an ally - especially multinational pharmaceutical products they are looking for financial irregularities and the business activities of a number of local producers the purpose of gaining leverage.
Despite Ecuador's efforts to undermine Access Protocol, Ecuador's first compulsory license in April 2010, allowing the importation of generic HIV / AIDS drug ritonavir.
4. Washington 'hearts' abuse mining companies in Peru. From Bolivia to Venezuela to Peru, U.S. diplomats obsessed with securing the profits of multinational mining companies at the expense of indigenous rights and the environment. At least that's the impression given by Wikileaks cables detail of the eruption of anti-mining protests near the Ecuador border against the mining company Minera Majaz.
In August 2005, a group of protesters marched in northern Peru on the site of a copper mine operated by the company Minera Majaz, a subsidiary of the British mining company Monterrico Metals. Of the hundreds of people converged on the mine site to the surrounding communities, 28 were brutally tortured and three were shot, one of whom bled to death.
But you would not know it from the Wikileaks U.S. embassy cables to describe the protests. The tone is one of sympathy for the mining company, while depicting the protesters as dark and sinister "militant anti-mining protestors' malicious sabotage Majaz.
In a cable in response to the protests, J. Curtis Struble, former U.S. ambassador to Peru, toes Majaz line communists and the unions were to blame for sowing the seeds of rebellion, a charge that smells Washington, the typical red-baiting from opposing something to abuse corporate practices in developing countries .
"The anti-mining forces in action in Majaz are a strange group of companions indeed -. The Catholic Church, violent radical left, NGOs, about eros and perhaps narco traffickers working behind the scenes are a combination of the Peruvian Communist Party / Patria Roja, national teachers, union SUTEP opium poppy smugglers and perhaps, "said Struble.
Struble glowing profile of the mining company is "Majaz has $ 20 million spent on exploring for copper for more than one year, building roads and providing services and employment to residents of the euro area, militants still access most of the route to deny .. "
Not once does Struble's long history of devastation that mining companies have caused in the region, such as pollution of local water and land to recognize the use of brutal paramilitaries murder indigenous leaders who challenge them, or the displacement caused by theft of native land.
A few days after the flagrant human rights violations committed against the protesters, another cable that the American and Canadian ambassadors a meeting with representatives of several international mining companies in Peru hosted. Struble pushes his pan to enhancing security in the mines, the closure of roads by protesters who might disrupt trafficking prevention, and to promote the Peruvian government to prosecute the protesters.
5. Diplomats and corporate spies. A more recent U.S. embassy cable, dated March 17, 2008, shows that American diplomats spied Indigenous activists and their supporters who are anti-summit protests organized against the European Union and Latin American heads of state summit that was scheduled in Lima that year.
U.S. Ambassador to Peru James Nealon identify specific indigenous activists and followed the involvement of Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Bolivian Ambassador Pablo Solon, a prominent activist Miguel Palacin Quispe Quechua and other influential community leaders.
What do all these people have in common? Their continued support for indigenous rights and the environment, along with their successful organizing tactics and popularity among the indigenous population, that corporate masters of Washington is shaking in their boots.
Nealon describes the anti-summit group as "a large number of radical Peruvian social movements and the European anti-globalization NGOs," cites the specific farmers and indigenous groups together with the names of prominent organizers of the American embassy tabs to hold on. The cable is littered with insulting references to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales of Bolivia, particularly Morales and his supporters. A Bolivian social leader is described as a "pro-Morales ideologist" and another as a "top Evo Morales advisor and anti- Free trade and globalization guru. "
In almost all of the cables Peru, the U.S. government interprets the enemies of corporate power as enemies of the United States. As a result, leftist activists and community organizers, particularly those that threaten corporate profits, a regular target. Unions, environmentalists and indigenous communities challenge multinational consistently treated with disdain and seen as hostile villains. The U.S. government tends to coincide threats to business interests as a threat to American interests should alarm anyone who values democracy.
What we do not know?
Besides getting a good laugh to look pathetic corrupt diplomats whore themselves out to corporate executives, these cables give us a rare glimpse of the U.S. diplomatic service to corporate behemoths, regardless of cost to people and environment.
It appears that the collusion between corporate executives and American diplomats held in a rapid rate over the whole world, more and more, these shady efforts are shrouded in mystery. Transparency and accountability such a devastating blow in the last ten years, the whistleblowers and the media as the only mechanisms left Wikileaks is still able to shed light on the consequences of unbridled corporate influence infecting our government.
With tens of thousands Wikileaks embassy cables still waiting to be published, is sure to be hundreds if not thousands of episodes with U.S. companies and government appointments still to be discovered.
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21-04-12 -:- 07:24:22 - PEgsHIuyYyEmleDZPe
The Saudi are nothing but a bunch of paiehttc worms, puppets and slaves of western powers. They along with Kuwait gave saddam $52 billion in aid during Iraqs attack on Iran in 1980, and I love how their Arab brother Saddam repaid them 2 years after the end of that war, by attacking them!Iran should develop nukes (not to use of course) but to have as a deterrent against American, Israeli and Arab aggression as demonstrated in the past. When has Iran ever attacked another country? Now compare that to the US, Israel and the Arabs.
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