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The corporate and economic reasons for war

By Chris Shaw - posted Friday, 10 November 2006


All the happenings in the Middle East have some connection to this simple notion of safely bringing vast quantities of the world's most energy-rich oil to the most convenient port of embarkation on the Mediterranean.

To divide and conquer - turn up the noise

In order to play the race and religion jokers, it is necessary to ply people with a childish, almost irresistible notion - the need to feel superior. Arrogance is a hallmark of the insecure.

Group people according to genetics, religion or imaginary geographical borders. Identify each group with a name. Give each group a symbol, maybe a flag. Glorify each group's history, being careful to leave out the bad bits which might otherwise spoil the trick.

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Then convince each group that it is "special". The need to feel "special" is a self-fulfilling pathological urge. Having yielded to this deception, some groups go to a great deal of trouble to emphasise their differences to their neighbours. Then they are compelled to fossilise their brains and turn their hearts to stone in order to cope with their new-found feelings of insecurity.

And where do these feelings of insecurity come from? Naturally they are the result of being isolated from one's neighbours. What a cheap trick.

Now the profiteers can cut the cake. Now they have tin soldiers who will further their economic agenda - and do it cheaply. The soldiers often count their lives as being worth no more than a piece of coloured cloth. Oh Glory! Those financiers just LOVE a bargain.

The world is their cake. No matter how it is divided, the financiers' cream filling joins the segments: governments, intelligence, industry, defence - because economic and budgetary matters penetrate and subvert every seen and unseen aspect of public and private life. Unfortunately, that economic cream turned rancid long, long ago.

Message in a bottle - history's whistleblowers

Although we rail against the weapons manufacturers and other corporate entities who lobby to advance the cause of war, there is a more subterranean layer of investors and bankers who wield the real influence and garner the greatest share of profit. For the last hundred years, they have enjoyed an immunity which is seldom questioned, because they themselves wrote the rules of the corporate game.

Lying beneath layers of cross-ownership, hiding in the tangle of paperwork, live the troglodytes - a handful of men whose vast family fortunes and impeccable credentials conceal the sordid reality of their history and power.

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In his book All Honorable Men, James Martin, head of Roosevelt's Economic Warfare Division, described the wartime financiers as termites who live in the very foundations of civilisation. He used the termite metaphor deliberately, because their machinations cannot stand the light of day. Other whistleblowers down the ages have left similar clues:

Aristotle (350 BC): “The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.”

Frederich Von Haytec, economist: “To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.”

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About the Author

Chris Shaw was a mining metallurgist, until retreating to care for his beloved partner. Mining metallurgists are trained to appreciate the laws of natural abundance. Mining is where the wishful thinking of economists meets the reality of nature. Chris sometimes operates under the pseudonym "Feral Metallurgist", so that he can enjoy an air of mystique which he doesn't actually deserve.

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Prof Albert Bartlett explains the simple math behind it all
Robert Newman History of oil

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