The corporate and economic reasons for war

Benjamin Disraeli (British PM): “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the US since the days of Andrew Jackson.”

Henry Ford: “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Lord Acton: “The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.”

Lord Acton's observations bring us to the crux of the problem, but how do we confront a parasite which to most of us is as diffuse and insubstantial as smoke? The answer is to peel back the layers of corporate secrecy and let the sunlight of understanding be our disinfectant. Then watch the termites run. They are few and we are many.

Sly-boys of the war-for-profit gang

The Central Intelligence Agency of the USA was created in the aftermath of World War II. Key positions are occupied by Wall Street bankers and lawyers, and members of the Council of Foreign Relations. The CIA has relentlessly enabled the hegemony of influential financiers, in both the foreign and domestic spheres. Above all, the CIA frequently operates free of the constraints of government oversight.

The CIA's first notable "success" was the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadeq, democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. Mossadeq's sin was to demand more oil revenues for his people's welfare. Not only did Iran receive a pittance for its precious resource, but Iranians paid more for gasoline than the wealthy British, so Mossadeq moved to nationalise Iran's oil industry. The CIA struck back and the rest is history - a history for which we still pay. All hail the cunning of Anglo-Iranian Oil (now BP). Do Americans note that this caper may not have been exactly in their national interest?

How cheap was that oil really? Obviously the global financiers reaped the benefit, but the citizens of the United States and Iran inherited the fallout. In corporate speak, we call that "externalising the costs".

L. Fletcher Prouty (Colonel, US Air Force, Retired) roughed out the basic modus operandi: "The power of the (CIA) Team derives from its vast intragovernmental undercover infrastructure and its direct relationship with great private industries, mutual funds and investment houses, universities, and the news media, including foreign and domestic publishing houses. The Secret Team has very close affiliations with elements of power in more than three-score foreign countries and is able when it chooses to topple governments, to create governments, and to influence governments almost anywhere in the world."

A bloodless little skirmish Down Under

We Australians had our "Mossadeq moment" back in the mid 1970s. At that time, our bean-counters calculated that a $1 investment in Australian minerals and energy would return a cool $1,425, for a total value of $5.7 trillion - a truly astronomical amount in the currency of those days (Parliamentary broadcast). The rights to this national treasure were largely in the hands of overseas interests, so the socialist Whitlam Government set out to compete for a larger nationally owned share, with money borrowed from OPEC countries (the oil producers had quite a lot of spare change in those days).

This immense treasure house of Australian resources was far too great a gift to be granted to Australians, so the CIA's old-boy network swung into action through their sympathisers within the public service and Australia's wealthy elite. It was all too easy to lay a trap to discredit and topple the fiscally naive socialists. The ATM turned out to be a fake. The media shills soothed us back to sleep. The global financiers breathed a sigh of relief.

Although it was a bloodless coup, that sly act of economic warfare established the relationship that defines our role as America's sidekick today. Our Australian government helped to justify the destruction of Iraq. Somehow, it supported the liquidation of 655,000 consumers of our wheat. Who gains from that? Most importantly, who will pay the price in the end?