Sinister Games with a "Free Market"

During my lifetime, there have been world events that I never fully understood.  Why were these things happening?  No one ever seemed to have a good explanation.  Some of these "unrelated" events have begun to create a pattern.  Take a look and let me know what you think:

The Sudden Disappearance of the Rain Forest

I never understood why, over the past two or three decades, has the Amazon rainforest, the so-called "Lungs of the Planet Earth" has suddenly been disappearing at an alarming rate.  Did  cattle ranchers suddenly come into alot of cash to clear their lands of trees? Why would South American governments fail to protect their most valuable asset?  Why is this happening so fast despite international outcry?  For example, in only six years (2000-2006) Brazil alone deforested an area of its rainforests the size of the country of Greece!  Since 1970, it has lost 232,000 square miles of forest.  That's like a goddam disappearing act!  What the heck is going on?

Presidents Dying in Airplane Crashes

Isn't it odd how many presidents of countries have died in airplane crashes?  Equadorian president Jaime Roldós Aguilera (1981), the Panamanian leader Omar Efraín Torrijos (1981), Polish President Lech Kaczinsky (2010), Philipine President Ramón del Fierro Magsaysay  (1957), Rwanda President President Juvenal Habyarimana (1994), Macedonian president Boris Trajkovski (2004), Pakistani president General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1988), Mozambique President Samora Machel (1986), Iraqi President Abdul Salam Arif (1966), to name only a few.  I thought air travel was supposed to be the safest method of travel - especially if you are a national leader!

Corporations Have the Rights of "Natural Persons"

As an attorney, I was shocked to read about a U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission in 2010.  That decision extended "corporate personhood" into a realm of nightmares.  Corporations now have the rights of real "natural persons" (just like you and me) under the First Amendment of the U.S. Consititution.  As a result, they are now free to lobby and pump as much money as they want into our "democratic" presidential elections!  Last year alone, the Fortune 100 corporations had $13 trillion of combined revenues (roughly equal to the size of our national debt).  Many of them, including oil drilling companies, are controlled by foreign nationals with interests not the same as ours.  We are no longer living in a democracy of "one man, one vote."  We live in a "more money, more votes" democracy now.  Our "national interest" is now a corporate interest.

$5 Million Gift and Estate Tax Exemptions Created

Another bizarre development:  In 2010, Congress passed tax legislation that raised the estate tax exemption to $5 million per person ($10 million per couple) and created a $5 million lifetime gift tax exclusion per person.  They are both much higher than they ever been historically.  Why now?  Aren't we in a recession?  In 2002, the estate tax exemption was only $1 million.  Now the wealthy are entitled to keep even more of their money than ever before in our American history.  Why?  So they can avoid paying taxes on their estates when they die and can gift millions of dollars to others during their lifetime tax-free.  The net effect of this legislation:  the rich get richer and the United States gets poorer.

The Global Collapse Caused by Bankers and Bailed Out by Governments

None of us will soon forget the worldwide financial crisis from 2007-2010. The stock markets around the world collapsed due to the totally strangely unregulated sale of mortgage derivatives; then the U.S. government bailed out banks to the tune of $700 billion in 2008 (more recent estimates suggest it was closer to $1.2 trillion); then we watched in total disbelief as Obama's Administration failed to attach any strings to the use of our money and the recipient banks gleefully showered their employees with more than $14 billion in year-end bonuses; mortgage lenders engaged in shady subprime lending practices resulting in the collapse of the housing market; and investment bankers share a revolving door with our government (see http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20001981-10391695.html for a shockingly long list of former Goldman Sachs employees making policy decisions in our highest ranking Democratic- and Republican-run administrations).  Former NASDAQ stock market chairman, Bernie Madoff, "made off" with $65 million in private client funds without detection by the SEC.   How is that possible?  Are only the foxes guarding the hen house now?

Corporations Buying Up Water Resources

Our world is running out of water.  Want to see the future?  Soon you will pay corporations, not governments, for bottled water.  Look at the Ukraine. I was told by a highly-successful Ukrainian businessman there is no more free water in the Ukraine. All water must be purchased in bottles.  That is our future also.  The state governments of Utah, Colorado and Washington have now made it illegal for you to collect the rainwater that falls on your own property!  Do you see the handwriting on the wall?  Meanwhile, many major oil companies are now shifting their investments into water resources and ownership of tracts of land containing underground water tables.  Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens has begun his quest to purchase as much land as possible above the huge Ogallala Aquifur, which stretches across 8 states and is one of the world's largest underground water tables, so he can begin deep drilling for water.  In 2006, he gave Texas legislators $1.2 million in campaign contributions and the next year he was able to turn his tract of land into an independent municipality with the power to take over neighboring (water-rich) lands using the governmental power of eminant domain.  Oh!  So, this is how it works...

These little examples may seem kind of disjointed and unrelated to you, but to me they are deeply related.  I recently read a book, first pulished in 2004, entitled "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," written by John Perkins.  It is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read and suddenly the mysterious events of my lifetime began to fall into place and make sense to me.  As Perkins, a former insider, explains it,  the world is being run and organized by a handful of multinational corporations, mostly banking, oil, construction and engineering consortiums, who through their distribution of money control governments (including the U.S.) and the CIA. 

Mega-corporations have forced entire developing nations into forced servitude by convincing them to accept sky-rocketing debt for infrastructure improvements that they cannot possibly pay back.  According to Perkins, corporations obtain "rights" to foreign drilling and resources by bribing a few top officials and making them fabulously wealthy in order to get them to steal land from the poor and give it to these corporations.  If they refuse to be bribed, they are assassinated.  Hmmm ... seems to explain some of those unfortunate airplane accidents and the sudden disappearance of the Amazonian rain forest not to mention all those fantastic tax benefits for the wealthy...

If you think this is just happening in "Third World" countries - think again.  Corporatocracy has arrived to enslave the Developed World as well.  We live in a "free market" society gone wild.  It is no longer "free" - that is an old myth.  We are slaves, even here in the United States.  We are all in danger.  Our environment is being raped.  We have lost our democratic voice in government.  The rich are indeed getting richer because they have implemented, step by step, the tools to keep themselves that way...