On this date a few years back, in the first post of this series, Dredd Blog took a look at American International Group (AIG), a company founded in China.
Needless to say, when one attempts to follow that company's footprints and fingerprints around the world, one will find a trail that reveals the sordid corruption and criminality of the banana republic ideology that the Bush II regime brought to Americans.
Here is the text of that post:
Many are beginning to experience distrust any time they see a business with the name "American" in it.
And AIG is acting like it is anything but "American".
Lets face it, if something is "American" it has the interests of the American people at heart.
Just what business is AIG in that the government "can't do anything about" them giving out $165 million in bonuses? AIG received $165 billion in bailout money and the government put a new CEO in place of the old one. The government can fire people but can't stop bonuses?
Something is fishy in Denmark:
The AIG companies were one of the very few U.S. companies to have their origins in China when their founder, C.V. Starr, formed American Asiatic Underwriters in Shanghai.
(About AIG, emphasis added [the Chinese hacked that page, a wayback machine link for 2007 is here; also verify here, here, and here]). So AIG is originally a Chinese company that is now neighbor to Dick Cheney's Halliburton in Dubai.
Where it has the name AIG Dubai [the site with that URL has changed since the feds bailed them out, so to see some things they were into, here is a wayback machine copy of the page, also check out this].
To top that off the mystery extends to "operations in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions" (AIG About, [wayback machine shows it used to be like this, note the "Global Business Network"]).
Lets face it, when they are this brazen and Obama administration officials and the congress are slithering around stuttering to the press on Sunday morning, explaining their missing spines, we do not have a government for the people and of the people any more.
No wonder Larry Summers, on Face The Nation today, talked like a weasel who was an apologist in the fashion of the neoCon robber baron mouth pieces.
International conglomerates from foreign nations are running the show now, and Larry tells us there is nothing we can do about it because of "contracts".
Was he trying to tell us there would be "contracts" out on him if he did not toe the line and play his part?
Posts here at Dredd Blog have wondered where the money went, following the largest infrastructure bill in U.S. history, passed a few years back.
For example, in one post, in December of 2009, Dredd Blog was still asking where the money went that had been approved for domestic infrastructure repair and rebuilding, in the 2005 bill signed into law by Bush II, representing the largest infrastructure bill in U.S. history.
Surely, with all the money spent on infrastructure, our systems in the United States are totally up to date, up to par, modern, working, fundamentally sound, and sophisticated.
Which is exactly and completely like any rich, well educated, great, leading, exceptional, and number one superpower, composed of hard working, tax paying, democratic, self-respecting, and concerned citizens would demand that it be!
The problem is that the money provided from the national treasury was evidently not spent on U.S. infrastructure, but there has been no complete or coherent answer to that question yet.
In today's post we will ask that question again, as well as asking "what has been done for other U.S. infrastructure, such as the energy grid and the water infrastructure?"
In that 2009 post, mentioned above, we pointed out that having the best infrastructure of any nation, as it should be, was not the case:
"The enormous bill -- 1,752 pages long" costing "$286.4 BILLION" known as "the highway bill" was the republican congress and republican president's bill passed in late 2005.
But it did not stop the Minnesota bridge from collapsing and killing American citizens, nor did it stop the great recession that is still ongoing.
So how is the next most expensive public works legislation in US history going to be any different?
The answer is that nothing is going to work until we stop destroying wealth with the stupid wars, the stupid military spending gone pork barrel wild, and the stupid military propaganda deciding our fate.
(Mega Infrastructure Bill To Make Jobs?). Consider also the fact that Teddy Roosevelt (1901-1909), was evidently the last president with sincere enough water infrastructure concern to do something about it:
Consider for a moment that much of our water infrastructure – the millions of miles of pipes, wastewater treatment plants, pump stations and drinking water treatment systems – dates to before the Roosevelt Administration and you start to get a picture of what we’re up against. (That’s Teddy Roosevelt, by the way.)
In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers rated the nation’s water systems a D-, the lowest grades of any infrastructure including roads and bridges. Not surprising considering we lose some 6 billion gallons of treated water each day due to leaky and aging pipes, some 14 percent of the nation’s water use.
That energy grid, upon which U.S. electricity is distributed, is especially in need of improvement considering dependence on foreign oil (America's Changing Energy Choices).
And for your asking yourself how much things have changed for the 99% of Americans you belong to.
You have done nothing negative to your house for years.
But your equity in it, what you use as a measure of what you are financially worth, is being taken away from you daily.
As a matter of fact, one shocking article says it this way:
The net worth of American households fell by the largest amount in more than a half-century of record keeping during the fourth quarter of last year.
The Federal Reserve said Thursday that household net worth dropped by a record 9 percent from the level in the third quarter.
The decline was the sixth straight quarterly drop in net worth and underscored the battering that U.S. families are undergoing in the midst of a steep recession with unemployment surging and the value of their homes and investments plunging.
(NY Times). Who is taking this equity, value, wealth, and worth from you?
If it was the government, it might violate the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment which is an injunction against violations of your property rights.
That amendment says "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation". When it is taken without an official declaration that is what is called inverse condemnation.
This current form of "taking your property" is just as real as if they build a garbage dump in the lot adjacent to your property.
The loss is just as real but there seems to be no just compensation to this current insidious mess.
We have suggested here and here some remedy that we feel could, if properly and carefully developed over time, bring more security and safety to our economy.
This UPI article indicates things are about the same now.
In the first post of this series we touched upon a case where the descendants of Geronimo have been terrorized for many years by grave robbers, of the robber baron sort, at a "decent" university.
The photo of Johnny Depp (left), as Tonto in the movie "The Lone Ranger", still being filmed, may capture how the Native Americans feel about frat boys toying with the remains of their ancestors after having terrorized Native Americans.
It was Noam Chomsky who said "terrorism is what other nations do", meaning the government of the U.S.eh? calls terrorism something else when they do it to others.
It has come to light that the government of the U.S.eh? may also not be willing to do anything about Saudi Arabian terrorism either.
At least that is the case if one gives credence to multi-district litigation taking place in the federal district court in Manhattan, concerning the 9/11 attacks, accusing Saudi Arabia of bankrolling that terrorism.
Saudi Arabia is being sued for taking part in 9/11 by various insurance companies, the estate of a high ranking FBI agent, and family members who say Saudi Arabia conspired to kill their relatives on 9/11/01.
The MSNBC videos at the bottom of this post contain, first, discussions of the case between Chris Matthews of Hardball, ex-CIA agent Baer, and NY Times investigative reporter Lichtblau.
They discuss the sworn testimony of two U.S. Senators, one of whom was a commissioner on the 9/11 Commission, the other was the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee overseeing the 9/11 issues.
Chris Matthews asks CIA agent Baer why the U.S. government did not go after Saudi Arabia back then, and why they still are not doing so now.
Agent Baer replied that it is because we needed Saudi Arabia to be on our side in the Iraq war then, they had big oil then, and still have big oil now.
Did you notice that there is a problem with Baer's comments in response to Matthew's question, about why the Saudi's were hurriedly spirited out of the United States on 9/11?
Baer says Saudi's were allowed to fly their planes out of the U.S. (when all U.S. civilian aircraft were grounded) on 9/11/01, because we needed Saudi Arabia as an ally in the Iraq war, plus they have oil that we needed then and still need now.
The problem with Baer's attempted explanation is that, for quite a while after 9/11, the Bush II regime said they had not made up their "minds" about whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11, in the sense of whether or not Iraq would be invaded.
So, is Baer saying that the Bush II administration was lying about Iraq, i.e., is he saying that they had their minds made up to invade Iraq on or before 9/11?
Be that as it may, others, including Richard Clarke and General Wesley Clark have said that an invasion of several nations, including Iraq, had been planned before 2001, by oil barons wanting Iraqi oil.
Iraq was invaded in March of 2003, ~2.5 years after the Saudi's were protected on 9/11/01, so as to keep them as allies, even though they were conspirators in 9/11?
The discussions on Morning Joe reflect the same general flow, which really boils down to:
The U.S. government allows its citizens to be killeden masse by foreigners, without repercussions so long as the country doing it has more oil than any other terrorist country involved?
It is not like it would be hard to find the Saudi agent who got money from the Saudi Embassy, then gave it to two of the hijackers in San Diego, nor would it be hard to locate the Sarasota, Florida, Saudi Agent:
A Saudi Arabian accused of associating with several of the September 11 hijackers and who disappeared from his home in the United States a few weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, is in London working for his country’s state oil company.
Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida — one of them new — and flew to Saudi Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating.
Bush II Holds Hands with Saudi King
Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijji’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001.
The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house.
All three men had trained to fly at Venice Airport, which is 19 miles from Sarasota.
On this date a few years back, in the first post of this series, Dredd Blog took a look at American International Group (AIG), a company founded in China.
