Untwisting Reality

Masters of Corruption

• By Poetry X
• 17 April, 2020
• No Comments

One of the most epic moments in the history of the United States congress should be when Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney on September 10th, 2001 demanded an explanation on $2.3 trillion missing from the Pentagon budget. That moment became irrelevant the next day as we know. Now, many would think the situation was solved but actually the last time the Pentagon budged was revised, the loss of funds went from those $2.3 trillion to $21 trillion missing [Forbes Jan 9 2019].

That previous example is just one of many cases of a systemic reality of the US government massive corruption. This becomes more important when the US is a champion in accusing countries not with its agenda of being corrupt to justify all kinds of interventions including the military option. To be clear, this kind of phenomena is not accidental, it occurs constantly and is covered up because of legalized bribery.

The first thing we must understand is that corruption is not a one way street where the government is the main actor. Rather, we must realize corruption exists because of powerful interests that depends on corporations and power groups. In fact, we can say corruption at the corporate level is 100% not just justified, but actually rationalized at the academic level as part of “utilitarian decision making.” This kind of academic philosophical approach states there is such a thing as “honest graft.” This concept states that when an acction brings a profit to the briber and bribee and there is “no harm to the public” then the action is not bad. When we go deep into corporate practices we find companies have booked bribes or “gifts” as a tax-deductible expense. Indeed, bribes are so customary in some countries that there are accounted for as “gifts” for tax purposes [NYT Apr 28 1968].

Going into the examples, we have just way to many to go through. We could mention Rio Tinto and BSG Resources in Guinea bribing corrupt officials to win the rights to mine world’s largest high-quality iron ore deposits. Or Monsanto’s bribery scandal in Indonesia. Or ExxonMobil in Equatorial Guinea. Now, considered bribing is never called bribing, there is always fancy terminology used, and money is not always the mean to bribe governments. For example, GSK pharmaceuticals bribed medical professionals with cash, paid vacations trips and even sexual favors. We could point out also to the case of HSBC as a tax evasion and the money laundering machine revealed by the “Swiss Leaks.” HSBC was caught money laundering for blood diamond trafficking, drug trafficking and even Al-Qaeda transactions [DW News Feb 25 2015]

To be clear about this issue of bribing, it has been found the most “bribery-riddled” sectors of the global economy are oil, gas, mining, construction, and transportation. In 53% of cases, bribes were authorized by high-level corporate managers, and in 12% of cases, the bribe came directly from the CEO. As an example, companies like Northrup, Gulf Oil Corporation, and Lockheed were involved in major corruption scandals that implicated top executives. For Lockheed itself, the total amount they paid was just less than 3% of what they would receive on the sale of its 21 TriStar planes, so those bribes were definitely a good “investment”  [Business Ethics by R Spinello Early Ethical Controversies Chap 14].

Now, what do we get out of this legalized bribery? What we get is extreme corrupt governments. Incidentally those governments that are friendly to those corporations, happen to be the most obedient followers of the US agenda. For example, a top ally of the US is Colombia, and that country was classified as the most corrupt government on 2020 [El Heraldo Jan 17 2020]. In fact, about 250 Colombian authorities were found on the “Paradise Papers,” that revealed these politicians having hidden money on offshore tax heavens. We also have the cases of the “Panama Papers,” that revealed a vast majority of US friendly politicians with the same kind of hidden accounts [El Espectador Nov 5 2017]. We also can mention the Penta-SQM Case where, another US friendly government, Chile had top politician diverting state funds [BBC Jan 16 2015].

Many times those leaks, investigations and revelations don’t come for free. We have the case of the “INA Papers” that revealed Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno hiding money out of the country. Moreno got so furious he took it against Julian Assange violating his status of asylum to give him to the British authorities. It is not clear WikiLeaks had anything to do with the “INA Papers.” We must also consider the case of the Intercept revealing the corruption of the Brazilian government. President Bolsonaro immediately took issue with Glen Greenwald, who got charged for conspiracy [The Intercept Jan 24 2019].

Of course the most emblematic case on the media is Odebrecht. By these time, that case has been used rather as a lawfare weapons to take down disobedient politicians. Odebrecht had paid prominent rights wing politicians but the media has refused reporting on those cases. Consider the case of Colombia where Jorge Enrique Pizano a key witness and his son died after drinking out of the same bottle of water. The substance in the water caused a reaction that simulated a heart attack but when the son also died of the same cause, they found the witness was actually assassinated [El UniversalNov 13 2018]. Consider Colombian Senator Aida Merlano run to Venezuela when “according to her” the Colombian government tried to kill her. Among many of her revelations she claims to have evidence Odebrecht financed former President Santos campaign. It is not surprising to find that the lawyer and judges behind the investigation are actually conspiring to involved politicians they don’t like into the case. Judge Sergio Moro was caught exchanging email where they discussed to get Nicolas Maduro as part of the Odebrecht scandal [MercoPress Jul 9, 2019].

Now, coming back home, it doesn’t take a great intellect or incredible amounts of investigation to find enough corruption cases in the US to write a book, or two. For now, just let’s take the case of the this 2020 COVID-19 humanitarian crisis. President Donald trump himself is probably the most corrupt president the US has ever had but nothing is more emblematic than he pushing hydroxychloroquine as some kind of cure for the virus. It was found Donald Trump has investments in the company that produces hydroxychloroquine [DemocracyNow Apr 13 2020]. Well, trump is an easy case, we can be sure the rest of government are not as corrupt. Well, it was found the Congress Intelligence Committee was informed back in February about the crisis coming from the virus. It is known congress people Richard Burr, James Inhofe, Kelly Loeffler, Ron Johnson and Dianne Feinstein, all of them went to the public and either said nothing or said the situation is under control. In the meantime these congress people sold their stock and gained millions out of those transactions. We should mention Senator Loeffler is married to the chair and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange [MSN  Mar 20 2020].

Well, we can be sure those are just exceptional cases, however we must point out that the US government got intelligence information about the COVID 19 crisis as early as January 2020, and no major authority took the necessary steps to protect the public [NY Times Nov 11 2020]. In fact, this situation gave the perfect cover up to pass the COVID-19 Relief Bill Passed with almost zero opposition – one single exception opposed the bill. Well, but the bill included a single payment $1200 check for the people, how is that a bad thing? We have to consider, the single congress person opposing this bill was Thomas Massie and described those “$1200 checks as the cheese in the mouse trap.” The bill has been described by experts as probably the most shameful give away to the rich, even worse that the TARP that caused the foreclosure of at leas 5 million homes back in 2008.

Some would still insist the situation is extreme only with republicans. Even great people as Ralph Nader describes the situation a system where republicans are energized by money and greed and democrats are energized by compromised. However, at this point we should agree Democrats are just as corrupt as the republicans. Congress woman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez when she just started in congress revealed that the very first orientation they receive is from lobbyists [JDS Dec 9 2018]. And if you still think the democrats are better than the republicans just consider Citigroup emailed the list of people to conform the Barak Obama’s cabinet [RT Oct 14 2016]. Not necesary to say the beloved president Obama followed those orders step by step and as a recompense now he gives corporate speeches where he gets paid $400.000 per speech.