The Cancer Of Corruption

By G. Asgar Mitha

10 July, 2008
Countercurrents.org

“Corruption charges!. Corruption? Corruption ain’t nothing more than government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation”. That’s a character in the movie Syriana quoting Milton Friedman. Much thanks to Mr. Cullen Murphy, author of “Are we Rome?…” for helping me to recollect.

There is government corruption in every country but as the Italians have a saying that the fish smells from the head and, today that head is the USA which buys, sells and influences foreign governments by supporting corruption. It sells democracy when it so suits or buys it when it so suits the objective. The US is a financial powerhouse that has toppled governments in many countries. The financial powerhouses, the big banks and businesses, fattened by Arab petrodollars, influence votes with their financing and manipulating the voters with help from the media. Bureaucracies (systems of governments by rules, regulations and laws) have been replaced with oligarchies over the past 60 years not only in western but just nearly every country on the face of the earth.

Oligarchy, as defined in the Encarta English dictionary is a small group of people who together govern a nation or control an organization, often for their own purposes. America, a sham democracy, more so since 9/11, is no less an oligarchy than is a monarchy or a dictatorship.

Just to cite a couple of examples among hundreds more are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In those cases, America has supported a monarchy without reference to democracy and a dictatorship with reference to democracy. Today in Pakistan two criminals rule the roost in the name of a sham democracy that is fully acceptable to the American agenda of fighting terrorism. Likewise, Prince Bandar bin Sultan al Saud is a part of a corrupt Saudi monarchy that subscribes to the American agenda and has been accepted as a part of the Bush clan and, hence as a personal friend he is widely referred to as Bandar bin Bush. Corruption, hypocrisy and greed run rampant among all Arab countries, thanks to the intrusion by and support from USA. It again serves American interest of offering protection in return for recycling of petrodollars to the financial powerhouses.

Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” should be re-written as “How to Win Corrupt Friends and Screw the People”. Simply put, influence peddlers get together in blackened pots such as Davos, G-7, G-8, Bilderberg forums and the UN(P) (United Nations of the Powerful). That was how the Iraqi Ahmed Chalabi met the neo-cons and sang their song from the music sheet provided to him. Chalabi is not alone as the western powers are always on a recruitment drive to find his likes. In these world class forums, birds of a feather gather to discuss ways to become more powerful by offering favours in return for favours on the sidelines that the ordinary people don’t see on the TV. The media only air programs and advertisements that are meant to rob the ordinary people of their hard earned earnings. The American media has set precedents for the media of all other countries to follow by supporting corruption. The medias are no longer free; they are tools of the corrupt governments.

The Dow Jones, Nasdaq, FTSE, Nymex, IPE and on their heels stock and commodities markets in other countries are instruments that whip up an euphoria of greed among the masses. When enough of it has been whipped up, the powerhouses come in with their giant straws (speculative rumours) and suck up the earnings. Arab petrodollars get recycled in the stock markets to create frenzies and when the markets get saturated with hard earned earnings, the walls get knocked down and the humpty dumpties with their dreams fall and are left with worthless papers. The petrodollar suppliers get their fair share so they can fly in their gold lined 747s bought from Boeing. They patronize western defence manufacturers by buying equipment they don’t need and moreover cannot maintain.

Corruption only exists in the most influential government, political and business echelons. The mechanism of corruption is controlled to ensure that it does not filter downwards. It is invisible and unaccountable by legislation in western countries but visible in those countries supported by western powers, predominantly Muslim countries that are “governed” and not ruled by law. The Arab monarchies and the leaders of Pakistan’s two parties in power and opposition can be cited in this respect. Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif are known criminals against whom charges were laid and conveniently withdrawn by the same administration of President Pervez Musharraf. Why? These leaders are supported by western interests and their corrupt practises are used as leverages to derive favours when the hour comes. When Saddam Hussein turned against his supporters a noose was put around his neck and the lever pulled. Saddam was hanged as an example to all other Arab and Muslim oligarchial regimes. The message has sunk in very well.

When the same western labelled anarchist, despot, terrorist, corrupt or criminal leader such as the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, Libya’s Ghaddafi and now Syria’s al-Assad relent to western pressures, they are honoured with peace prizes and status of heroes even if they continue to oppress their citizens amid violations of human rights. It is interesting to raise the flag and ask why it is that, mostly and generally, the leaders of Arab and Muslim countries are so corrupt and corruptible. Is it that the most powerful have victimized the weakest? Many leaders of other countries including in the west, too, are corrupt but they’re never cited.

Iran’s leadership never got favours so it doesn’t have to return any so now the plan is to bomb them and bring Reza Pahlavi to replace the so called mullahs. His father, the ex-shah of Iran was corrupt and in the western back pockets and the same will be expected of the son if the plan of regime change succeeds. And if the plan succeeds, it will be the last nail in the Muslim coffin because after Iran, Pakistan too will surrender its N-weapons when the corrupt generals will see that they’re surrounded on all sides of the compass. Maybe that is why, as part of the grand plan, they brought two corrupt leaders, ranked among the top ten richest Pakistanis, to lead the sham democracy?

Corruption, with its roots in the USA, grows like a cancer in the government echelons throughout the world and it has now spread throughout the world where the leaders, some more and some less, have amassed huge fortunes by looting their people, treasuries and resources only to get deposited in the western financial powerhouses. The cancer is so spread throughout the system that a major global surgery would be required to remove it. This surgery may come in the forms of upheavals of unimaginable dimensions, a war the world has never witnessed or sequential natural disasters that may uproot civilizations. The world leaders have a choice that they stop this cancerous growth by some mechanism or it may be forced upon them. I hope I’m wrong for the sake of our civilization and hope that, collectively this, the next and future generations will awaken to the task of intelligently removing the cancer rather than the cancer destroying our generations. The task is monumental but not impossible. It will require a leadership with veracity.

 

http://www.countercurrents.org/mitha100708.htm