Bill Clinton and G.H.W. Bush Both Partnered with Canadian Mining Cos. in 3rd World Conflict areas

[leveymg]

The NYT reports today that Former President Bill Clinton operates a foundation with Canadian mining magnate, Frank Giustra. The two are reported to have worked together to seal a uranium mining deal with the President of Kazakhstan, who is accused of human rights violations. Clinton, who runs a non-profit foundation with Giustra, is not said to have personally gained from this transaction.

Meanwhile, the Times has failed to provide some important context. Former President G.H.W. Bush, Sr. has made a personal fortune doing business with Barrick Gold, a huge Canadian mining company affiliated with the Carlyle Group. Both former Presidents have, in their different ways, tapped into the $USD trillion global mining industry, based largely in Canada, which operates in the most unstable and underdeveloped regions of the world.

Giustra is a relative newcomer to the global mining business, while Barrick Gold is one of the very largest and oldest global extraction companies, and has long-established ties with conservative politicians in Canada and the United States. Both outfits do business with private military contractors and corrupt Third World dictatorships. These companies are major contributors to "charitable" and "development" agencies that operate in mineral-rich areas of Africa, South America, and Central Asia.

Giustra has partnered with Clinton as a major contributor to a charity that operates in the Third World. This is not really a new story. See, http://www.stockhouse.ca/bullboards/viewmessage.asp?no=15115993&tableid=0

Andy Hoffman
Thursday, June 21, 2007

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has teamed with a reclusive Vancouver mining financier and a Mexican billionaire to create a massive charitable effort that will see the mining industry channel funds to fight poverty in areas affected by the resource sector.

Frank Giustra, who has made millions for himself and investors financing mining deals, has pledged $100-million (U.S) and half of all his future earnings from the mining business towards the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative (CGSGI). Carlos Slim Helu, a Mexican billionaire who made his fortune in the telecom industry has also committed $100-million towards the effort, which will initially focus on alleviating poverty and fostering growth in Latin America.

“I firmly believe that this innovative partnership between the Clinton Foundation and the business community – and the mining industry in particular – will have a profound and positive effect on the lives of countless people in the developing world during the months and years ahead,” Mr. Giustra, the 49-year-old son of a Sudbury miner and former head of Yorkton Securities, said in a statement.

Several large mining companies including zinc and copper producer Teck Cominco Ltd. and gold miner Newmont Mining Corp. have signed on as partners to the charity group which plans to expand its efforts beyond Latin America to other parts of the developing world.

As well, mining focused Canadian brokerage firms including Canaccord Capital Inc. and GMP Securities LP have committed to the fund and will direct a percentage of their resource-related commission fees to the CGSCI.

Toronto law firm Cassels Brock has promised a financial contribution as well as a pledge to provide legal services at no charge. The Toronto Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange are also supporting the initiative.

SNIP

Although many mining companies have spent millions on funding sustainable development, education, health and infrastructure in countries and areas in which they operate, the industry still gets a bum rap, according to Newmont Mining board member and former company president Pierre Lassonde.

“What I find absolutely genius in the move here is that what has done is he has got Bill Clinton to more or less, be the spokesman for resource development. That is momentous,” Mr. Lassonde said in an interview.

In the past, some mining companies have faced severe criticism for exploiting resources in developing nations and giving little back to the community. In some cases, mining has caused environmental damage that has made some areas uninhabitable or been linked to illnesses in local people.

The CGSGI said it intends to work with local leaders to address, social, economic and environmental issues in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. The Clinton Foundation will act as the “implementing partner” linking the resource industry with local communities in the developing world.

SNIP

While the CGSGI may be the single largest charity initiative by the mining sector, Mr. Giustra's contribution follows previous large-scale donations by other industry heavyweights from Canada.

Mr. Lassonde has donated millions through his own active philanthropic efforts as has his Franco-Nevada co-founder and long-time business partner Seymour Schulich. Mr. Schulich recently gave $22.5-million (Canadian) to the Technion-Israel Institute, which is naming its chemistry department after him. His past gifts have included $27-million to York University's school of business and $20-million to McGill University's faculty of music. Barrick Gold co-founder Peter Munk gave almost $61-million to charity last year alone including $37-million to the Toronto General Hospital, $18.5-million to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and $5-million to the University of Toronto.

According to this 2006 article by Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski, Barrick Gold is connected to both Bush and, less directly, with close Clinton associates in mineral extraction operations in some of the bloodiest areas in Africa. See, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9832

SNIP

Some people have lauded great progress in the exposure of illegal mining in DRC, particularly by the group Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose 2005 report “The Curse of Gold” exposed Ugandan officials and multi-national corporations smuggling gold through local rebel militias. The cited rebel groups were the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) and the People’s Armed Forces of Congo (FAPC). The western companies targeted by HRW were Anglo-Ashanti Gold, a company headquartered in South Africa, and Metalor, a Swedish firm. The HRW report failed to mention that Anglo-Ashanti is partnered with Anglo-American, owned by the Oppenheimer family and partnered with Canada-based Barrick Gold described below (3). London-based Anglo-American Plc. owns a 45% share in DeBeers, another Oppenheimer company that is infamous for its near monopoly of the international diamond industry (4). Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a director of Anglo-American, is a director of Royal Dutch/Shell and a member of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Advisory Board (5). The report also suppressed the most damning evidence discovered by HRW researchers—that Anglo-Ashanti sent its top lawyers into eastern DRC to aid rebel militia leaders arrested there.

Several multi-national mining companies have rarely if ever been mentioned in any human rights report. One is Barrick Gold, who operates in the town of Watsa, northwest of the town of Bunia, located in the most violent corner of the Congo. The Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) controlled the mines intermittently during the war. Officials in Bunia claim that Barrick executives flew into the region, with UPDF and RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) escorts, to survey and inspect their mining interests (6).

George H.W. Bush served as a paid advisor for Barrick Gold. Barrick directors include: Brian Mulroney, former PM of Canada; Edward Neys, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and chairman of the private PR firm Burston-Marsteller; former U.S. Senator Howard Baker; J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian Senate; and Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers (7).

Barrick Gold is one of the client companies of Andrew Young’s Goodworks International lobbying firm. Andrew Young is the former Mayor of Atlanta, and a key organizer of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. Young was chosen by President Clinton to chair the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund in October 1994. Goodworks’ clients—or business partners in some cases—include Coke, Chevron-Texaco, Monsanto, and the governments of Angola and Nigeria (note weapons transfers from Nigeria cited below). Young is a director of Cox Communications and Archers Daniels Midland—the “supermarket to the world” and National Public Radio sponsor whose directors include Brian Mulroney (Barrick) and G. Allen Andreas, a member of the European Advisory Board of The Carlyle Group.

Barrick Gold’s mining partners have included Adastra Mining—formerly named America Mineral Fields (AMFI, AMX, other names), formerly based in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s hometown. Adastra had close ties with Lazare Kaplan International Inc., the largest diamond brokerage firm in the U.S., whose president, Maurice Tempelsman, has been an advisor on African Affairs to the U.S. Government and has been the U.S. Honorary Consul General of the Congo since 1977 (8).

Maurice Tempelsman accompanied Bill Clinton during his African tour in 1998, and he sails with the Clintons off Martha’s Vineyard. He serves on the International Advisory Council of the American Stock Exchange, and is a director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a
”scientific” front for his offshore diamond mining—raking the seabed into oblivion.

Adastra also purchased a diamond concession on the Congolese-Angolan border from the Belgian mercenary firm International Defense and Security (1998), and currently has cobalt and copper concessions in Congo’s Katanga (Shaba) province (9). Adastra is a member of the Corporate Council on Africa, along with Goodworks, Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Northrop Grumman, GE, Boeing, Raytheon, Bechtel and SAIC—the latter two being secretive intelligence and defense entities involved in classified and supra-governmental “black” projects.

In April 1997, Jean-Ramon Boulle, a co-founder of Adastra (then AMFI), received a $1 billion dollar deal for mines in the Congo at Kolwezi (cobalt) and Kipushi (zinc) from Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) before they were even officially in power. The ADFL were even allowed to use Boulle’s private jet (10). Meanwhile, directors of Adastra are also former directors of Anglo-American (11). Other Clinton-connected founders of Adastra include Michael McMurrough and Robert Friedland—both involved in shady, criminal, offshore businesses in Indonesia, Africa, Burma and the Americas (12).

Barrick sub-contracts to Caleb International, who has also partnered with Adastra in the past. Caleb is run by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s half-brother Salim Saleh, the former acting General of the UPDF. When Uganda withdrew from the Congo in 2002 following a so-called “peace” agreement, Saleh began training paramilitary groups to act as Ugandan proxies to sustain the flow of minerals into Uganda (13).

SNIP

Katanga’s militias and racketeering are connected to criminal networks of businessmen, including Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Billy Rautenbach, John Bredenkamp, and Marc Rich. U.S. diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman has profited from Katanga concessions since the Kennedy era. Lawrence Devlin, the old CIA station chief of Lubumbashi under Eisenhower, maintained Tempelsman’s criminal rackets with direct ties to Zaire’s former President Mobutu, and was subsequently employed by Tempelsman (16).

SNIP

Coltan ore is widely used in the aerospace and electronics industries for capacitors, superconductors and transistors after it is refined to tantalum. The U.S. is entirely dependant on foreign sources for tantalum, an enabling technology for capacitors essential to aerospace weaponry and every pager, cell phone, computer, VCR, CD player, P.D.A. and TV. U.S. import records show a dramatic jump of purchases from Rwanda and Uganda during the time they were smuggling tantalum and cobalt out of the Congo.

SNIP

Bechtel, a U.S. aerospace & construction company, provided satellite maps of reconnaissance photos of Mobutu’s troops for the ADFL invasion of Congo in 1996; they also created infrared maps of the Congo’s mineral deposits (22). The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan President graduate of the U.S. Army officers school at Fort Leavenworth, used Bechtel’s NASA maps to locate Rwandan Hutu civilians that fled the cataclysm in Rwanda in 1994. An estimated 800,000 refugees were hunted down and killed in the Congo’s forests (23). Bechtel’s friends in high places include former Secretary of State George Shultz (Board of Directors), former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger (Bechtel Counsel) and retired U.S.M.C. general Jack Sheehan (Senior Vice President), who is also a member of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon (24). Riley P. Bechtel is on the Board of J.P. Morgan (25). Bechtel’s Nexant Company is the prime contractor on the Uganda-Kenya pipeline project, believed to ultimately facilitate petroleum transport out of the Semliki Basin of Lake Albert.

The U.N. Panel of Experts named New England-based Cabot Co. for conducting unethical business practices (26). Cabot is one of the largest tantalum processors in the world. The current Deputy Director of the U.S. Treasury, Samuel Bodman, was CEO and chairman of the board for Cabot from 1997-2001 (27). Current Director John H. McArthur is a Senior Advisor to Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank (28).

SNIP

Perhaps reflecting a larger reality about global business, these interlocking mining and charitable operations make Bill Clinton and G.H.W. Bush both competitors and business partners.

[Octafish]

1. That explains it.

Money trumps politics, among other things.

KRB.

[leveymg]

5. Add the mining angle to the Caspian Sea oil deals in the 1990s, and then Iraq, and we see what truly

motivates both former Presidents, and their mutual friends. The best of rivals make the worst of enemies, all around the world.

[Octafish]

17. Uranium mining is very profitable. Uses a lot of tax money, too.

Refining it must be more so.

From the NYT article:

After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton

By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: January 31, 2008

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?_r=3&ref=politics&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Very profitable stuff, for those selling it to Uncle Sam.

US nuclear tab at $5.8 trillion

South News July 1

Washington: In an enormous drain on resources the United States has spent $5.8 trillion on nuclear weapons according to a new study

A four-year study of newly declassified Pentagon documents, released yesterday by the Brookings Institute, looked at the expenditures of producing and deploying nuclear explosives over the past 5 1/2 decades with current spending on the arsenal at about $35 billion annually, or roughly 15 percent of the total defense budget.

Since the birth of the atomic weapons program in 1940, a total of $5.5 trillion was spent through 1996, the Washington think tank reports. That is 29 percent of all U.S. military spending and almost 11 percent of all government spending through the 52 years.

In the first comprehensive audit of the US nuclear arsenal,it calculated costs for research, development, deployment, command and control, defenses and dismantlement. The U.S. government has never attempted to track these costs, and whether the weapons helped to bring down the Soviet Union, against whom most of the arms were aimed after World War II, remains an open question, Stephen I. Schwartz, chairman of the four-year study, said in the report.

"Given the significant sums expended on nuclear weapons and their central role in the cold war, it is striking that so few have expressed an interest in either the cumulative or the annual costs,'' Schwartz wrote.

SNIP...

Highlights of the report:

• The United States produced 70,000 nuclear warheads between 1945 and 1990, with an arsenal that peaked in the 1960s at 32,000 warheads
• Making the warheads was relatively inexpensive. Firing, storing and handling them was extremely costly. The 70,000 warheads cost $409.4 billion, only about 7 percent of the total. But thousands of aircraft, submarines, ships, missiles, and a large network of factories, bases and personnel cost $3.241 trillion.
• In 1996 dollars, the World War II Manhattan Project cost more than $26 billion.
• The United States has produced 65 warhead types for 116 different weapons systems.
• Thirteen major U.S. facilities - including Washington state's Bangor submarine base - handle and maintain nuclear weapons, and cover an area larger than Delaware, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined.
• Some 6,135 strategic ballistic missiles were purchased at a cost of $266 billion, as well as 4,680 strategic bombers since World War II at a cost of $227 billion.
• The 2,975 submarine-launched ballistic missiles alone cost $97 billion, said the report. Since their inception, the United States has designed and deployed 14 kinds of strategic bombers. Some 210 nuclear-powered military vessels have been built or are being built.
• The figures include the estimated $7 billion costs of attempting to develop a nuclear-powered airplane, which never got off the ground.
• At the moment, the U.S. nuclear arsenal - long-range strategic and short-range tactical - is estimated at 10,635 warheads.
• The current stockpile has the equivalent explosive force of about 120,000 Hiroshima bombs.
• The United States is spending an estimated $35 billion a year on nuclear weapons and related programs, the Brookings Institution says in a massive study.

CONTINUED...

http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/980701-USnukes.htm

Uranium must get real profitable selling to Israel and Pakistan, say.

BTW: For a while, I thought you were Don Van Natta or one of Jack Anderson's former assistants, leveymg.

[blm]

19. Heh...... would be great to sit down one day with ALL of you.

.

[leveymg]

22. Yes, let's do that.

I'm in the DC area. Always open to a DU get together.

First round's on me. :toast:

[leveymg]

23. We've bankrupted ourselves along with our principal opponent, poisoned the world in order to save it

The enemy is us -- rather, it is we, the American people, who allow this process of nuclear death and immiseration to grind on, unimpeded, seemingly forever, regardless of the political party in power in Washington and the self-proclaimed good will and love of humanity expressed by "our" politicians.

We are all such fools and hypocrites.

The result is that the parts of the world richest in uranium, oil and other strategic minerals -- Africa, Latin America, Central Asia -- are kept in permanent poverty and a continuous state of war and chaos in order to prevent them from ever organizing their own stable, democratic states that might effectively tax and capture this natural wealth for the betterment of their own people. And, we do this in the name of world peace, freedom, and humanitarian development. We applaud "our" politicans for the nobility of their good works in the developing world.

We are all such fools and hypocrites.

We continue to allow these same multinational energy, mineral and arms companies to dominate and rig the outcomes of our own political and economic systems. Our elected officials are bought and sold as fungible commodities, and their continued allegience insured by payolla, blackmail and assassination. These same organizations also incubate the highly lucrative criminal trade in nuclear materials, arms, black market gems, and human trafficking in slaves and prostitutes, all part of keeping the organization humming smoothly, efficiently producing projected profits. Where necessary, bets are hedged, terrorists strike, and wars are started. "Our" politicians express outrage and vow crusades to end corruption and bring justice to this world. Ever greater numbers of secret policemen and mercenary gunmen are hired. But, these business methods never really change, and peace, always threatening, never actually breaks out in this world.

We are all such fools and hypocrites.

Finally, no, I am not part of the Anderson-Van Natta-Trento organization, but have met them.

[mod mom]

2. Funny, but MARC RICH's name pops up again:

"Katanga’s militias and racketeering are connected to criminal networks of businessmen, including Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Billy Rautenbach, John Bredenkamp, and Marc Rich. U.S. diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman has profited from Katanga concessions since the Kennedy era. Lawrence Devlin, the old CIA station chief of Lubumbashi under Eisenhower, maintained Tempelsman’s criminal rackets with direct ties to Zaire’s former President Mobutu, and was subsequently employed by Tempelsman (16)."

FUNNY HOW THE SAME NAMES KEEP GETTING LINKED TOGETHER. JUST ANOTHER COINCIDENCE, I'M SURE.

[blm]

3. The 'coincidence theorists' will be along shortly to confirm this, too, is nothing.

Just like IranContra.

Just like BCCI.

Just like CIA drugrunning. In fact, some claim it NEVER HAPPENED at all.

[leveymg]

6. Marc Rich and Osama bin Laden shared a love for Africa

Diamonds are a spook's best friend. So much easier to transport than cash, and even more untraceable.

Rich had a particular affinity for Congolese and Condileeza oil, as well.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

4. Not niiiiiice!

[leveymg]

9. Lord Almaty! My eyes!

:wow:

[DiamondJay]

7. even if he did this, SO WHAT????

even if Bill Clinton did this, which he may have done, the fact is he was not supplying enemies, he was simply raising money for a charitable foundation. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how fund raising for stuff like the Clinton Foundation is done. As is with the 9/11 Foundation, Cancer Foudnations, and all other billion dollar philanthropies. And let us not forget the Clinton foundation gives AIDS drugs for free in Africa, works against hunger and poverty, and makes the world a better place. The man he was helping does not pollute the air like the oil companies Bush and Republicans help. And hes not raising Democratic Party money like this, as Republicans do for their political party. This is a charitable foundation, so this is acceptable. This is in no way political.

[leveymg]

11. Just an peek into the back-office operations at your favorite charity.

You don't think this is just about free AIDS drugs, do you?

[blm]

12. Because....that's what they ALL say.

And we've been burned enough by Bill Clinton to know that he's far more like GHWBush than many of you may want to believe.

You don't see him arm and arm for years with Jimmy Carter, do you?

[leveymg]

14. But, BLM, they really do hate each others guts.

And, I really do prefer Bill. The last 7 years have taught me that much. But, thank G-d, there are other options. Even if we have to make them, ourselves.

[blm]

15. Would you HATE the guy who protected your legacy?

.

[leveymg]

16. I'd hate the guy who blackmailed me.

That's why they both hate each other. Blackmail is a nearly unversal occupational hazard among politicians and ranking intelligence officers. It's practically impossible to get hired above a certain level unless you're under someone's control.

[blm]

18. Sometimes I think that, but the level of deceit has to be maintained to the degree

that you can only TRUST the other person who is now as deep into it the schemes as you are. So, you may as well enjoy their company. Like a twisted family, eh?

[leveymg]

24. All in the family. Just like the Inca and the Pharaohs.

Dynastic regimes produce impressive monuments to themselves and the sacrifice of their subjects -- think of a trillion dollars in debt as bricks in a pyramid 600 feet on each side (Dubya built two, just in Iraq) -- but, these incestuous dynasties seem to be terribly prone to producing madmen and defective leaders, and ultimately fall to outside pressure from more innovative competitors.

[blm]

35. heheh...well I hope innovative competitor is in the cards for Nov2008.

.

[countryjake]

8. Corporate thieves raping the world...resources, profit, & control...

what more could an American president ask for?

god, how I despise these people.

rah rah team!

[countryjake]

25. and they are "respected" for their actions! n/t

[blm]

26. Exactly - throw a few million at a starving people while you pocket their resources

that they are too poor to harvest for themselves.

[countryjake]

29. and then convince them that military bases are needed for "their protection".

Speaking of imperialism, while reading that other article which Octafish posted, I was interested in the date of that transaction Clinton was involved with in Kazakhstan and thought, how opportune, that the deal was hastily accomplished almost within days after Uzbekistan handed the USA an ultimatum to clear their military base off of Uzbek soil. It seems that "aid packages" and silence about human rights violations are the necessary components in planting strategic "defense" operations on that central Asian front.

Not trying to change the subject or anything, but I see a certain connection between that Clinton "mission" of 2005, with this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1540185,00.html

[Wiley50]

10. Thanks Mark. Most non-monied people don't understand what "charitable" foundations are about

Foundations ARE HOW the Ultra-Rich Manage their Fortune and Transfer it to Next Generation

Been done this way in the US for over a century now.

Foundations have Boards who take Huge Pay Plans and other high paid employees.

They invest in corporations just like other corporations do, except it's tax sheltered as a Charitable Org.

They give back more bang for the buck than other ways to use the PR budget.

"Sure we raped Mother Nature, but we gave her kids some bags of rice and expired AIDS vaccine"

Where the fuck do you think rich fucks like Pat Robertson got their game plan from.

Foundations don't pay inheritance taxes.

The very first thing any smart person does when they have a windfall of assets
like if any of us won a multi-hundred million Powerball or something

First thing, start a foundation. Say it's for a charitable purpose

Then take as much from it for yourself as you want.

Give your kids and all of your buddies huge salaries too, working for the foundation
and doing jack shit for it.

I am dirt fucking poor and probably always will be

But I know how the fucking scam works

[leveymg]

13. Absolutely. This is how wealth is preserved.

That's why Carlos Slim and Bill Gates (#1 and #2 wealthiest men in the world) just signed over a large percentage of their paper assets to Foundations.

Big, int'l foundations provide great cover, too. Read "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"

[goforit]

20. Ahhhhh....Bill and Poppy best of buds!!!....It's over folks!!!

[Orwellian_Ghost]

21. Very necessary

for folks to read this and understand how this works.

K&R

[seemslikeadream]

27. A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U28joj6d1A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMMQhHuI9_Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biEXCEOy_vs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKcgo4Es8E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIM8kVSN8ug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_WEY7xQEhk

[seemslikeadream]

34. Over Five Million Dead in Congo?

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16386

America’s Secret Warriors

Amongst the trustees or overseers of the International Rescue Committee is Henry Kissinger, a man whose interests run very deep in Congo. Henry Kissinger is tied to Freeport McMoRan (FXC) and FCX is all over the copper and cobalt show in Katanga. FCX director J. Stapleton Roy was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research under Madeleine Albright, 1999-2000, during the Clinton administration invasions of Rwanda (1994) and then Congo/Zaire (1996); Roy retired to join Kissinger Associates.2

Another Kissinger Associates principal is Lawrence Eagleburger, who has past affiliations with the defense and intelligence insider Scowcroft Group, and has been a director of Halliburton Corporation since 1998. Scowcroft Group founder Brent Scowcroft served as the National Security Advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush and, 1982-1989, he was Vice-Chairman of Kissinger Associates.

Walter Kansteiner, a National Security insider for the Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations and a “principal member” of the Scowcroft Group today, is a director of Moto Gold (operating in blood-drenched Ituri, Congo) and of the military-based “conservation” organization, the Africa Wildlife Foundation (Washington D.C.), that is backing mercenary activities in the Congo’s Virungas Mountains region under the cover of gorilla protection.

Another Kissinger Associates director is Belgium’s Viscount Etienne Davignon, one of the Congo’s most lasting and current enemies. Davignon was directly involved, 1964-1965, in the code-named “Dragon” operations that installed the “kleptocrat” Mobutu and seeded the beginning of the end for millions of Congolese people.3,4 Davignon is also a close associate of Donald Rumsfeld through the bio-warfare production company Gilead Sciences.

[Hutzpa]

28. No surprise there then with the partnership

Of Bill and Poppy during Katrina. Its just another exploitation adventure...

up to this moment people are still displaced in New Orleans, nothing has been

done. What happen to all that money both of them collected for Katrina?

We can all agree this is a partnership between the two, hence big dawgs attitude

of saying anything to get his wife elected, his cue is coming from Poppy.


:wtf:

[blm]

30. Will the money get recycled to corporations with their eye on the NEW New Orleans

built to GOP specifications?

I remember Kerry predicting that is what would happen in a speech he made in early 2006, I believe - he said that New Orleans was being targeted as a way to rebuild an entire city and an economy using ONLY the GOP's playbook.

[dysfunctional press]

31. poppy bush gave barrick a sweetheart deal on some u.s. government land in nevada

http://newsmine.org/archive/cabal-elite/international-banking/gold-scam/bush-gang-barrick-gold-corporation.txt

Bush cashes his gold chips -
In 1986-87, at the height of the Iran-Contra controversy, the Barrick Gold Corp. acquired the Goldstrike property in Nevada for $63 million. The land, proving to hold $10 billion in gold, was the property of the U.S. government. Bush was elected President in 1988, and his administration put through a special dispensation--applied only to the Barrick Gold Corp.--to speed up the normal procedures for a mining company to take official title (``patent'') to the land.
With the Bush Goldstrike intervention, Barrick Gold shot up from insignificance, to world power status, and Bush himself climbed onboard.
President Bush's ambassador to Canada (1989-92), Edward N. Ney, had been for many years a Bush political operative and an international coordinator of Bush's ``privatized'' intelligence activities. In 1992, Ney quit as ambassador and became a director of the Barrick Gold Corp.
The following year, Brian Mulroney resigned as Canadian prime minister. Mulroney was the most unpopular Canadian politician; but, in power, he had directly aided Barrick's international ventures, and had worked closely with Bush to force through free trade agreements. Munk immediately hired the former prime minister as a Barrick step-'n'-fetchit. The approved biography explains Munk's point of view:
``Mulroney the unhappy lightning rod for the angst of a whole nation, in office and out. Munk was well aware of these feelings toward his new recruit.... After nine years trotting around the world to meet world leaders, he had incomparable access to Presidents and prime ministers in all the key spots.... Mulroney arranged the necessary access to the key decision makers. Munk was starting to salivate at the prospect of an inside track into the huge Chinese territory.''
Mulroney has been paid over $300,000 per year by Barrick.
Barrick announced in May 1995, that a new international advisory board was being assembled, under the leadership of ``honorary senior adviser'' George Bush, the former U.S. President, who, like Mulroney, had recently lost his job at the hands of the voters.
On Nov. 27, 1996, the French newspaper {Le Monde} leaked the news that Barrick had been granted a concession to prospect for gold in Zaire--a lead which prompted the present {EIR} Barrick investigation. Canadian newspapers that same day reported that Barrick Gold had convinced the government of Indonesia to award to Barrick control over the world's largest gold find, and that {George Bush and Brian Mulroney had personally done the heavy lobbying} to accomplish this.
The Indonesia deal is indeed startling. The small Canadian mining company Bre-X Minerals Ltd. had intended to develop the Busang gold mine, on East Kalimantan. Suddenly, the government announced that it demanded that Barrick Gold Corp. be cut in to a 75% ownership stake in the mine, which is estimated to hold 57 million ounces of gold, with a current estimated value over $20 billion.
{EIR} contacted Placer Dome Inc., a rival company which has been bidding for the right to develop a share of the Busang mine. A Placer Dome spokesman would make no comment on Barrick Gold, saying only, of his own firm, ``We are a gold mining company, not a political organization.''
The U.S. Republican Party, of course, has been attempting to use President Clinton's fund-raising relationship with Indonesian supporters as a scandal to break the President. Former President Bush, meanwhile, has been reportedly telling world leaders, privately, that the Clinton Presidency is destroyed; that his son, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, will be the next President, reviving the Bush dynasty; and that, therefore, leaders would be smart to work with him now.

[seemslikeadream]

32. War is Golden for the Bush Administration

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02152003.html

Cold Fronts
War is Golden for the Bush Administration
By CHRIS FLOYD

The opening of a long-delayed civil suit in a London courtroom; a brief, buried article on a judicial nomination; a fluctuation in the commodities market: three mundane, seemingly-unrelated items in the news last week that combined to give a fleeting glimpse of the ugly reality behind the frantic, diversionary façade of the "civilized world."

The London case involves our old friends, BCCI, the international bank that served as the front for a global crime ring involving top officials and Establishment worthies in dozens of "civilized" nations. BCCI ran guns to Saddam and other heavies, funded Pakistan's illegal nuclear weapons program, laundered drug profits, peddled prostitutes, doled out bribes, served as a conduit for covert CIA operations--and, through its connections to the bin Laden family, gave George W. Bush a sweetheart loan of $25 million to bail out one of his many business failures.

One of the respectable organizations tainted by the ring was the Bank of England, which was the financial regulator for BCCI when the front finally collapsed in 1991--leaving its legitimate creditors some $11 billion in the hole. Not surprisingly, some of these victims filed suit against ye olde B of E, claiming that its oversight of BCCI left something to be desired. But successive British governments--including the plagiaristic poodle-led pack currently in power--have fought for years to quash the lawsuit, the Observer reports.

That's because the trial could open a can of particularly grubby worms concerning the UK government's extensive canoodling with BCCI. A host of worthies are expected to be grilled in the dock, including John Major, former UK prime minister and current business partner of George Bush I in yet another secretive international front that profits from war, weapons, violence, repression and the greasing of highly-placed palms: the Carlyle Group.

Even as the trial finally gets underway, British PM Tony "Bow-Wow" Blair is withholding crucial BCCI evidence, claiming it's top secret. In fact, says Blair, the hidden juice is so red hot that even the law under which it has been declared secret must remain secret. An overreaction? Probably not--not when you consider the fact that BCCI was one of the chief conduits by which Western governments secretly armed Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction throughout the 1980s. This is not the kind of dirty laundry you want aired at the very moment you are waving the bloody shirt of war at, er, Saddam Hussein for, er, possessing weapons of mass destruction that, er, you and your allies sold to him in the first place.

The Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's Atlanta branch was the primary funnel used by the first Bush Administration to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly chemicals and other WMD materials supplied by the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in the United States like, weapons merchant Matrix Churchill. (As always with the Busha Nostra, geopolitics--in this case, helping Saddam wage aggressive war against Iran--and crony profits go hand in hand. Once the war was over and Iran was left a shattered hulk, with millions dead and displaced, the useful idiot Saddam was expendable, swiftly morphing from good buddy into budding Hitler.)

[seemslikeadream]

33. Harry Reid = Nevada Senator

just sayin'

[leveymg]

36. Errata: Barrick was established in the early 1980s (with Adnan Khashoggi)

Here's the sanitzied version (note the reference to unnamed "Arab investors":

See, http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Barrick-Gold-Corporation-Company-History.html

Hungarian-born Peter Munk, whose family fled from the Nazis to Switzerland, came to Canada in 1948 with big dreams and even bigger ambition. After several ventures--some hits, others misses--Munk, his longtime partner David Gilmour, and several Arab investors founded Barrick Petroleum Corporation in 1980. The new company drew little notice until Munk and Gilmour bought Viking Petroleum and began working with the legendary D.O. 'Swede' Nelson to find oil. Much to their dismay, the partners never found any gushers and the industry bottomed out.

Munk then decided to go into precious metals, selecting gold as his venue, a field drastically in need of a boost. Targeting European pension funds with gold investments in South Africa, the new Barrick Resources Corporation (later renamed American Barrick Resources Corporation) hoped to get fund managers to invest their capital in North American gold stocks. With growing discord in South Africa's political and financial arenas, Munk and his partners believed Barrick could offer a more prudent investment. The new Barrick went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in May 1983 with 1.3 million shares.

However, here's a much broader and darker picture of Barrick:

Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists (Part 1-7)

By Alex Constantine



Decades before burning skyscrapers, codified torture, secret trials and mass detentions, there was Barrick Gold, a mining concern in Canada with roots in the American intelligence establishment. It is fitting that gold, the seductive but dead heart of world capitalism, should christen a story about the most unconscionable event in Wall Street history: 911.

Barrick's incorporation is obscure. Most accounts claim that the firm was founded by Peter Munk, a former radio manufacturer who made a splash in the Canadian press when he disposed of his shares in the company shortly before it was declared insolvent, a golden parachute paid for by investors and the Canadian taxpayer. His name was instantly mud in the investment community, but fortunately for Munk, no indictment was ever brought against him.

Today, his overall worth is estimated at $350 million.1 Munk's redemption was the work of Saudi entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi, who would go on to notoriety as an Ollie North intermediary in the Iran-Contra affair. Khashoggi and Munk kicked off their partnership with a series of hotel investments. In 1983, the Saudi entrepeneur raided his fat cash reserves to purchase Barrick. Munk was installed as chairman.

Khashoggi distanced himself from Barrick shortly after the Iran-Contra scandal broke (but held onto his stock, tied up as collateral for North's arms transfers to Iran in 1985), notes Observer reporter Gregg Palast in a book on the 2000 presidential election, before Bush was invited in. That was in 1995: "Munk's reputation was restored, at least in his own mind, in part by massive donations to the University of Toronto. Following this act of philanthropy, the university awarded Munk‚adviser Bush an honorary degree. Several students were arrested protesting what appeared to them as a cash-for-honors deal."2

The bonds were positively Sicilian. in 1986, Khashoggi was was arrested for fraud and held in a New York prison. Munk paid his $4 million bail.3

Financial researcher Lois Battuello was Palast's key source of information concerning Barrick. It was Battuello who gave Palast a file on Barrick Resources International (BRI), the nascent firm founded two years before Barrick Gold, a spin-off, by the Central Intelligence Agency's Kermit Roosevelt to serve as a dummy business front.

This was roughly the same time that Roosevelt cemented relations with Khashoggi, who brought Munk along, on behalf of the CIA. In 1983, Battuello says, the disgraced entrepeneur "picked up the mantle of this clandestine front (read looted taxpayer dollars) in Toronto as though it was his operation. It was simply put together with 'evil money,' and it gave Adnan Khashoggi an excuse to be visible in Toronto, where he established yet more businesses and outposts."4 The offshore division of Khashoggi's Barrick Resources, for instance, controlled Jetborne, Inc., a company in Toronto used by Khashoggi to ship arms to Iran under the direction of Reagan's NSC.5

[TexasObserver]

37. Bill, Bill, Bill. What have you done?!!

I have never tolerated 95% of the things said disparagingly about Bill Clinton. He was a very good president, in spite of some failings and failures that I won't discuss now.

But this thing with the dictator and energy tycoon is repulsive. I am so disappointed in him, and don't think I will ever see him the same again.