Blood-Soaked U.S. Multinationals
The facts are
well-known. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has spread its narrow, puritanical
and intolerant version of Islam — originally practiced almost nowhere else —
across the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was Saudi, as were 15 of the 19 9/11
terrorists.
And we know, via a leaked email from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in recent years the
Saudi government, along with Qatar, has been “providing clandestine financial
and logistic support to [the Islamic State] and other radical Sunni groups in
the region.” Saudi nationals make up the second-largest
group of foreign
fighters in the Islamic State and, by some accounts, the largest in the
terrorist group’s Iraqi operations. The kingdom is in a tacit alliance with
al-Qaeda in Yemen.
The Islamic State draws its beliefs from Saudi Arabia’s
Wahhabi version of Islam. As the former imam of the kingdom’s Grand Mosque said last year, the Islamic State “exploited our own
principles, that can be found in our books. . . . We follow the same thought
but apply it in a refined way.” Until the Islamic State could write its own
textbooks for its schools, it adopted the Saudi curriculum as its own.
Saudi money is now transforming European Islam. Leaked
German intelligence reports show that charities “closely connected with
government offices” of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait are funding mosques,
schools and imams to disseminate a fundamentalist, intolerant version of Islam throughout Germany.
Tillerson said U.S.
foreign policy priorities had gotten "a little bit out of balance" in
the previous decades, with the United States too focused on promoting economic
activity and trade with emerging economies.
"These are really
important relationships to us, and they're really important alliances, but
we've got to bring them back into balance," he said, speaking without
notes and walking around the stage in a packed State Department auditorium.
He also signaled that
the United States would de-emphasize human rights concerns in some of its
interactions with other countries, saying that while U.S. values remain
constant, its policies can adapt.
"If we condition
too heavily that others must adopt this value that we've come to over a long
history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance our
national security interests, our economic interests," Tillerson said.
-
Reuters: U.S. needs to balance foreign alliances: Tillerson
By J.M. Hamilton (6-4-2017)
Per the CIA Factbook, the median age of the U.S. population
is nearly 38 years of age. The Cold War
ended, officially, in 1991. This means
half the U.S. population was 12 years of age, or younger (e.g. not born), when
the Cold War came to an end. This means
half the U.S. population has limited or no knowledge or memory of what this country, or
its economy, looked like at the close of the 80s.
JMH brings this up because the end of the Cold War probably
was the beginning of the ethical collapse of capitalism, as we knew it. By 1991, the country had two terms of
Reagan’s laissez faire/Ayn Rand rhetoric to indoctrinate the population; that
is to say, whatever is good for Big Business is good for Americans – The U.S.
Chamber’s mantra.
Americans have been suffering with the fallout ever since.
Of course, Cold War capitalism wasn’t w/out its troubles (read Jim Crow),
but it was a far more ethical animal… far more moral than the predatory
capitalism that stains America and the world today.
The 80s and Reagan were marked by the rise of Michael Milken and junk debt. Key features of the
financialization of the economy that are with us to this very day, whereby
private and public companies, and multinationals, are often leveraged to the hilt
to enrich the C-Suite and shareholders (at the expense of the American economy, tax base, and worker).
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was game over;
there was no competition, and so it was capitalism uber alles, or the Ayn Rand economy run amok. An economy marked by a significant decline in
the number of publicly traded companies (as recently noted by Jamie Dimon), the
formation of cartels & monopolies throughout the economy, wage stagnation,
ever growing wage & wealth inequality, and now, growing political
instability throughout the West.
What exactly did capitalism look like pre-nineties,
before the collapse of the Soviet Union? Well, for
starters, the U.S. did very limited business with the former Soviet Union. We did very limited business with totalitarian
China and North Korea. No small number of despots and dictators around the globe were shunned. Under the Export Control Act of 1949, the
Export Administration Act of 1979, and the National Security Decision Directive
75, et al., the U.S., and often our allies, didn’t do a great deal of business
with some dictators and assorted totalitarians.
There were economic reasons for not doing business with these
countries, but there were also ethical and moral reasons as well. For example, take the quaint notions of human
rights, personal liberties, freedom of the press, democracy, and the rights of
self-determination and freedom of religion.
You know, those crazy freedoms and rights that the U.S. was founded
upon, and this once great nation, stood for globally.
The very rights and privileges Trump’s Commerce Secretary,
Wilbur Ross, appears to delight in seeing trampled, while recently visiting the
Saudi regime; the very same rights and privileges that have suffered a hostile
takeover/attack by a megalomaniacal oligarchy w/in this country.
Now, compare Cold War, U.S. international trade to
today, where there is almost no country – no matter how despicable or hostile
to human rights, women, minorities, and freedom of religion – that U.S.
multinationals won’t do business with (providing they have cold hard cash).
The United States saw a horrific example of exactly what U.S. leadership, the Republican Party, and U.S. multinational CEOs (the,
alleged, crème de la crème) stands for, when they visited the host of radical
Islam, and the sponsor of global terrorism against the West…. Saudi
Arabia. It was in the Kingdom, last month, where morally repugnant contracts
-- soaked in the blood of U.S.
soldiers, who have been fighting a global war on terror, since 9-11 -- were signed between Saudi dictators and U.S. multinationals (contracts & memorandums estimated to be worth between a third and half a trillion dollars).
The Saudi cancer, the royalty and the princes, must have been
laughing their asses off, as these contracts were signed. They knew, once those contracts &
memorandums of understanding were signed, there would be no chance that the
U.S. would ever hold the Kingdom accountable for: their abysmal human rights
record; their obscene treatment of women; their constant attack upon Western
values & the Judeo/Christian religion; and perhaps, most importantly, the
killing of U.S. troops. U.S. troops have been slogging it out in the Middle East & globally, for going on
two decades, fighting the war on terror (sponsored by, Saudi Arabia & gulf
monarchies, and funded and supported, directly & indirectly, with the aid
and complicity of U.S. banks & multinationals operating in the region).
No wonder Secretary of State Tillerson, the former Exxon CEO,
has been so quick to distance U.S. foreign policy from the beliefs and values the
nation was founded upon. Not under Mr.
Tillerson’s and Mr. Trump’s watch. From
now on, and for the duration of Trump’s reign, U.S. foreign policy will be
guided by the criminality, & Machiavellian realpolitik, practiced by the oligarchs,
who own and operate the U.S. government - and our nation’s foreign policy - for
their personal gain. As for the master
negotiator, The Donald… did he lift a finger to pressure the Saudis into
reform of any kind? After all, the
Saudis are bent over a barrel: an ever declining in value, oil barrel – to be
exact. So did POTUS – Art of the Deal - Trump
leverage the situation for the benefit of America’s and the West’s values(?)… not
a chance.
The transactional POTUS doesn’t care about the oppressed citizens of
Saudi Arabia (a breeding ground for future terrorists), and apparently, cares even less about the women and men who
serve. After the Trump family registered
eight companies within the Kingdom, all talk about “radical Islam,” and the
nefarious Saudi regime, mysteriously perished in May. (Except against Iran, and ISIS, of course,
which is funded by the oil rich gulf-monarchies… after all, the United States
MIC must maintain some enemies to justify a trillion dollar, per annum,
DOD/Surveillance State budget). Come to
think of it, Trump’s about-face with the Saudis is similar to his 180 with
Totalitarian China. During the campaign, Trump went after China’s unfair trade
practices, and stealing American jobs, and currency manipulation. But after China gave the Trump family
financial concession after concession, trademark after trademark, and access to China’s fabulous supply of slave labor…. Most of the anti-Sino talk quieted
down, as Trump shared chocolate cake w/ Chairman Xi at Mar-a-Lago.
This is today’s capitalism: leveraged to hilt, morally
bankrupt, and highly unstable… propped up by central bank printing presses, and
a galaxy of highly volatile debt and derivative products. This is today’s capitalism: exemplified by a cadre of U.S. banksters and CEOs, who lined up to kiss the Royal House of Saud’s
ring for hundreds of billions in cash prizes. Sorry to say, the tired old argument that these executives have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to conduct business dealings with war criminals & terrorist no longer cuts it.
As for creating new jobs in the U.S…. sure, the DOD is always
hiring fresh recruits to fight the Wahhabism, and radicalism, spread by the oil
rich monarchy states. Americans who like to cheer Big Oil, at the expense of renewables & solar power, should know exactly what they are supporting: tyranny and dictatorships. Mr. Trump rejecting the Paris Accord? Likely payback to his friends in Big Oil, and his new found friends w/in Terror's Kingdom.
Meanwhile, U.S. troops will continue to die, and be mired in
the Middle East conflict, as U.S. multinationals partner and finance the Saudi Kingdom’s war crimes. And if past is prologue, Mr. Trump will continue to praise dictators, and their enviable powers, from around the globe.
Seemingly, Trump’s betrayal of his political base, and the
United States of America, continues unabated. And can you blame him? The POTUS has
got to make as much gold as he can before he - quite possibly - is impeached. After all, the Trump brand will, likely, be
of limited value, if he’s unceremoniously forced out of office.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing
2017
