Bush backs transfer of ports to Dubai firm - U.S. news - Security ... Feb 21, 2006 ... President Bush on Tuesday endorsed the deal permitting a United Arab Emirates company to take over six major US seaports, and threatened to ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/1147444 0/
Article excerpt above with bolding by me was apparently re-worded at some point to read:
President Bush endorsed the takeover of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports by a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates. He pledged to veto any bill Congress might approve to block the agreement. ... The pending sale — expected to be finalized in early March — puts Dubai Ports in charge of major shipping operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. [end article excerpts]
DP World : The company was founded in 2005 by merging Dubai Ports Authority and Dubai Ports International (which had been founded in 1999). It purchased Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) of the United Kingdom in 2006 for £3.9 billion ($7 billion), which was at the time the world's fourth largest ports operator. ... DP World was created in 2005 by a merger between the Dubai Ports Authority (DPA) and an Dubai Ports International (DPI) which had been founded in 1999.[1] It purchased CSX World Terminals (CSX WT) in 2005 and the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) in March 2006. P&O was the fourth largest ports operator in the world and was acquired for £3.9 billion ($7 billion). .. The ownership of various US ports by DP World (which had been acquired as part of the P&O deal) was seen as highly controversial by many in the US even though it was supported by the US president of the time (George W. Bush); the US ports were sold shortly afterwards. ... On 22 February 2006, President George W. Bush threatened to veto any legislation passed by Congress to block the deal, which would be the first time in his presidency he would exercise the privilege. In a statement to reporters, Bush claimed, "It would send a terrible signal to friends and allies not to let this transaction go through."[8] On 23 February 2006, DP World volunteered to postpone its takeover of significant operations at the seaports and on 9 March 2006, is said that it would transfer its operations of American ports to a "U.S. entity".[9] [My note: link at footnote #9 to info on said "U.S. entity" is not working.] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DP_Wo rl d:
Greece Selling Islands to “Save Its Economy” « The Real Agenda Jun 25, 2010 ... As any other consolidation scheme created by the bankers, the control and acquisition of Greek lands and resources is well on its way. Greece asked for financial aid to the very bankers it was in debt with. Now, as part of the deal, Greece is giving away its land. ... In its battle to raise funds, the country is also planning to sell its rail and water companies. Chinese investors are understood to be interested in the Greek train system, as they already control some of the ports. ... After the socialist government of prime minister Geórgios Papandreou responded to the IMF bailout with draconian budget cuts, rioters took to the streets, costing three lives in May. http://real-agenda.com/2010/06/26/greece-selling-islands-to-save-its- economy/
The Great IMF Fire-Sale of the UK has Begun | The Liberty Voice Oct 25, 2010 ... The British Government is about to sell off over half of all UK Forests that are currently under the control of the Forestry Commission to private corporations as the asset-stripping of the UK is begun on behalf of the International Monetary Fund and the Big Six Beast Banks. ...The New Forest, Sherwood Forest, and the Forest of Dean could be targeted for sale. ... this selling off of prime forestry land is part of the mass looting that will occur by the IMF on behalf of the Big Six Beast Banks and Mega-Corporations. During the IMF Riots in Greece, the Greek government was busy selling off several islands to the same bankers who deliberately bankrupted Greece in the first place, so it comes as no surprise that similar things are being done here. What does come as a surprise is that this IMF Fire-Sale is occurring even before the British people have had their IMF Austerity Riots. Then there is the issue of the UN’s Agenda 21 – how they plan to push the vast majority of people into big cities and out of the countryside so that the people will be far easier to control as the One World Government takes over. ... which puts us in danger of manufactured scarcity and mass starvation, because we will not have independent means of growing our own food as more and more public land within the cities will be sold off for dormitory-style housing projects under Agenda 21. ... The government wants us to riot so that they can crack down hard on us and then use the riots as an excuse to implement even more of the New World Order Control Grid around us. http://www.thelibertyvoice.com/the-great-imf-fire-sale-of-the-uk-has-begun
Step Three: market-based pricing -- a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls `the IMF riot'. The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, `down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,' -- as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots.
There are other examples -- the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and, this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost believe the riot was expected.
And it is.
The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies. This economic arson has its bright side -- for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices.
A pattern emerges. [end summary]
Here's Palast at Infowars in early 2002 being interviewed by Alex Jones on that subject:
AJ: They come in, pay off politicians to transfer the water systems, the railways, the telephone companies, the nationalized oil companies, gas stations - they then hand it over to them for nothing. The Globalists pay them off individually, billions a piece in Swiss bank accounts. And the plan is total slavery for the entire population. Of course, Enron, as we told you was a dummy corporation for money laundering, drug money, you name it, from the other reporters we have had on.
[sic]
But it's not even privatization. They just steal it from the people and hand it over to the IMF/World Bank.
GP: They hand it over, generally to the cronies, like Citibank was very big and grabbed half the Argentine banks. You've got British Petroleum grabbing pipelines in Ecuador. I mentioned Enron grabbing water systems all over the place. And the problem is that they are destroying these systems as well. You can't even get drinking water in Buenos Aires. I mean it is not just a question of the theft. You can't turn on the tap. It is more than someone getting rich at th e public expense.
AJ: And the IMF just got handed the Great Lakes. They have the sole control over the water supply now. That's been in the Chicago Tribune.
GP: Well the problem that we have is - look, the IMF and the World Bank is 51% owned by the United States Treasury. So the question becomes, what are we getting for the money that we put into there? And it looks like we are getting mayhem in several nations. Indonesia is in flames. He was telling me, the Chief Economist, Stiglitz, was telling me that he started questioning what was happening. You know, everywhere we go, every country we end up meddling in, we destroy their economy and they end up in flames. And he was saying that he questioned this and he got fired for it. But he was saying that they even kind of plan in the riots. They know that when they squeeze a country and destroy its economy, you are going to get riots in the streets. And they say, well that's the IMF riot. In other words, because you have riot, you lose. All the capital runs away from your country and that gives the opportunity for the IMF to then add more conditions.
AJ: And that makes them even more desperate. So it is really an imperial economy war to implode countries and now they are doing it here with Enron. They are getting so greedy - they are preparing it for this country.
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"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC
If you'd like to forward a copy of the post, each linked path in it is listed individually but they should be copied from the sites for any that have extra spacing added by the 4um format. This is the path for the link on the IMF'S FOUR STEPS TO DAMNATION: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/Stiglitz.html
Member and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (1993-1997) [Clinton admin advisor] Senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank (1997-2000). [reportedly fired, reason(s) unknown] Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics
[Nobel prize winning economist Joseph] Stiglitz told Yahoo’s Daily Finance on October 20th:
This is a really important point to understand from the point of view of our society. The legal system is supposed to be the codification of our norms and beliefs, things that we need to make our system work. If the legal system is seen as exploitative, then confidence in our whole system starts eroding. And that’s really the problem that’s going on.
***
A lot of the predatory practices in automobile loans are going to be able to be continued. Why is it OK to engage in bad lending in automobiles and not in the mortgage market? Is there any principle? We all know the answer to that. No, there’s no principle. It’s money. It’s campaign contributions, lobbying, revolving door, all of those kinds of things
***
The system is designed to actually encourage that kind of thing, even with the fines [referring to former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozillo, who recently paid tens of millions of dollars in fines, a small fraction of what he actually earned, because he earned hundreds of millions.].
***
I know so many people who say it’s an outrage that we had more accountability in the ’80’s with the S&L crisis than we are having today. Yeah, we fine them, and what is the big lesson? Behave badly, and the government might take 5% or 10% of what you got in your ill-gotten gains, but you’re still sitting home pretty with your several hundred million dollars that you have left over after paying fines that look very large by ordinary standards but look small compared to the amount that you’ve been able to cash in.
So the system is set so that even if you’re caught, the penalty is just a small number relative to what you walk home with.
The fine is just a cost of doing business. It’s like a parking fine. Sometimes you make a decision to park knowing that you might get a fine because going around the corner to the parking lot takes you too much time.
***
I think we ought to go do what we did in the S&L [crisis] and actually put many of these guys in prison. Absolutely. These are not just white-collar crimes or little accidents. There were victims. That’s the point. There were victims all over the world. [end excerpts]
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"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC
Stiglitz's cultural alienation within the White House became most obvious in the matter of privatizing uranium stores, one of those obscure yet important issues that Stiglitz loves to latch on to. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it had large stores of high-grade, weapons-quality uranium lying about, vulnerable to theft or sale. The [George Herbert Walker] Bush administration proposed to purchase that uranium, convert it into lower- grade, fuel-quality uranium, and sell it to nuclear reactors—removing the dangerous uranium from the hands of terrorists and rogue nations, and providing work for Russian scientists who might otherwise be tempted to put their services and wares at the disposal of those same bad guys. Everybody agreed on the basic approach; the controversy came when Bush sought to privatize the plutonium company—the United States Enrichment Corporation—on the grounds that the profit incentive would spur it to carry out its work more efficiently. Privatization had not yet taken effect when Clinton took office, and Stiglitz vigorously pleaded to overturn it. He argued that a private company would not, in fact, have the correct incentives; since Russian uranium is expensive and not profitable, the corporation would seek to obtain cheaper uranium elsewhere. Other White House officials considered privatization a fine example of reinventing government, and maintained that proper federal oversight would correct for any misincentives. This view prevailed.
The trouble, as far as the White House was concerned, was not that Stiglitz took the wrong side of the argument, but that he wouldn't shut up.
Possibly explains some of the US and Russia pressures on Iran to outsource its nuclear fuel enrichment process.
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"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC