Ron Paul: CIA runs the U.S. government

[23]

While I always liked JB, I never thought that he was infallible. This reply affirms that for me.

Libertarianism is the antithesis of coercive, centralized authoritarianism. And it is does not possess a "political/policy vacuum". A decentralized, nonintrusive, local government is not a vacuum. It is a counterpoint to an authoritarian, centralized one.

As Dave reminds JB in his original letter, the Tea Party started out with libertarian roots but was later co-opted by Christian nationalists.

The Christian nationalists are certainly fully capable of embracing authoritarian/fascist rule (they worship an authoritarian god, after all), but not the libertarians.

I'd give JB a lot more credit for precise thought construction if he didn't do what so many are too wiling to do: lump the two groups in one bag indiscriminately.

[JackRiddler]

23, the point is not that ideological secular libertarians and christian dominionists are always one and the same; it's that the former (insofar as they exist in a pure form) seem entirely blind to how they enable the latter.

Further, both poles of teabagger land see their enemy in some amorphous concept of "government" (and "liberals" or "collectivists") and give no acknowledgement to how capital is just as much a power and authority as the official government itself.

In this society - in this political economy - the seats of power and of state-like authority lie at least as much, if not more, in private capital, which is far less accountable to the people than even the constitutional government. The source of government corruption is not so much in the Orwellian tendencies of the state to grow into totalitarian forms, though this exists, as it is in the action of private interests pushing it in that direction with their money for their own reasons.

[compared2what?]

I haven't really gotten started with them yet. And probably won't ever be able to figure out their ownership in any meaningful way. That's kind of inherently a very difficult thing to determine

For example, from the home page of Rydex Dynamic Ventures, a mutual fund that's listed as one of his widely scattered assets in the $1000 - $15,000

The funds are distributed by Rydex Distributors, Inc. (RDI). Security Global InvestorsSM is the investment advisory arm of Security Benefit Corporation (Security Benefit). Security Global Investors consists of Security Global Investors, LLC, Security Investors, LLC and Rydex Investments. Rydex Investments is the primary business name for PADCO Advisors, Inc. and PADCO Advisors II, Inc. SGI and RDI are affiliates and are subsidiaries of Security Benefit.

I just don't have the energy for that, sorry to say. But since elfi raised the question of degrees of domestic-investmentitude, fwiw, out of his three largest holdings (reported by him as being in the $100,000 - $250,000) which look like they represent almost all of the $600-thou-ish pie-chart-slice for mining industry investments, two have headquarters in Canada, which has more lenient corporate reporting guidelines for evaluation of reserves and stuff like that, I think.

However, this is not my area. I only recognized one of them as a huge business I'd come across before. But it turns out all three of them are. So I sort of mispoke in saying they weren't huge multinational conglomerates. I don't know if they're conglomerates or not. (Please see: "I just don't have the energy for that.") But both of them, plus the third, which is HQ'd in Denver, are nothing if not multinational.

And they are:

Goldcorps

Goldcorp is one of the world's largest gold mining companies with the strongest production growth profile among all senior gold producers. Goldcorp, a Canadian company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, employs more than 10,000 people worldwide. The Company's 14 operations and development projects are located throughout the Americas. Over 70% of Goldcorp's reserves are in low political risk NAFTA countries.

Goldcorp is North America's lowest-cost and fastest growing senior gold producer. The Company does not hedge or sell forward its gold production.

Goldcorp shares are traded on the Toronto (TSX:G) and New York (NYSE:GG) stock exchanges.

and....

[compared2what?]

...sorry. Stupid computer....

Newmont

Newmont Mining Corporation is primarily a gold producer, with significant assets or operations in the United States, Australia, Peru, Indonesia, Ghana, Canada, New Zealand and Mexico. Founded in 1921 and publicly traded since 1925, Newmont is one of the world’s largest gold producers and is the only gold company included in the S&P 500 Index and Fortune 500. Headquartered near Denver, Colorado, the company has approximately 31,000 employees and contractors worldwide.

In 2007, Newmont became the first gold company selected to be part of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. Newmont’s industry leading performance is reflected through high standards in environmental management, health and safety for its employees and by creating value and opportunity for host communities and shareholders.

[compared2what?]

And finally, the one that even I had heard of:

Barrick Gold Corporation

Barrick is the gold industry leader, with a portfolio of 26 operating mines, pipeline of projects located across five continents, and large land positions on some of the world’s most prospective mineral trends.

They're really huge. Excuse me one moment while I yell at my stupid computer.

[Truth4Youth]

23, the point is not that ideological secular libertarians and christian dominionists are always one and the same; it's that the former (insofar as they exist in a pure form) seem entirely blind to how they enable the latter.

Further, both poles of teabagger land see their enemy in some amorphous concept of "government" (and "liberals" or "collectivists") and give no acknowledgement to how capital is just as much a power and authority as the official government itself.

But the latter's opposition to "government" is insincere. From what I can see the Teabag Movement is a neocon op passing itself off as libertarian.

Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio recently covered this in an interview with paleoconservative writer Christopher Mannion.

[compared2what?]

Okay. Back. Barrick at a glance...



...is a decent stand-in for the locations of the....I don't know, one or two dozen companies for which he reports $1000 to $15,000 holdings. Which are all over the place, from Mali to Argentina.

Also from Barrick's website, and also probably roughly representative:

Projects

Barrick has a deep pipeline of advanced and earlier stage projects.

Click below for details on:

* Cortez Hills (Nevada, USA)
* Pueblo Viejo (Dominican Republic)
* Pascua-Lama (Chile/Argentina)
* Cerro Casale (Chile)
* Donlin Creek (Alaska, USA)
* Reko Diq (Pakistan)
* Sedibelo (South Africa)
* Kabanga (Tanzania)
* Federova (Russia)

I do not like to break hearts. But it kind of defies belief that a company can do any significant business in the Dominican, Chile, Argentina, Pakistan, South Africa, Tanzania, and Russia and not be paying off either the same local plutocrats as the CIA or their competitors. I mean, that's truly and profoundly just not a credible proposition in a single damn one of them.

It's also a little unbecoming for him to be forcefully advocating a return to the gold standard -- or to the use of precious metals as legal tender, or what-have-you -- from his position as a salaried employee of the taxpayer, while encouraging the view that said advocacy is solely due to the natural national-autonomy-bestowing properties of Austrian-school economics. I mean: Without mentioning that he himself would hit the personal-finances jackpot if the policies he lobbies for were enacted into law.

Though I suppose you could say he was just putting his money where his mouth is, too.

But that still wouldn't really take care of the kind of notable silence about what kind of foreign policy his economic policy would really entail, were America to have any hope of staying economically competitive in a totally free market. Or about the very large military and/or private-militia presence those competitive American companies would either have to maintain or have provided to them in order to stay in the competition.

I don't curse or blast him to all hell for that stuff, or anything like that. But it's as I said before: His personal finances don't look exceptionally twisty. They're par for the course for someone in his position.

Plus, I'd say the odds that he forgot to put absolutely every single asset on his PFD are about fifty-fifty. That doesn't really have any distinct implications, though. Those things are self-reported by busy people and no one verifies them. So a certain amount of casual attitude is kind of bound to ensue, just via entropy, even among the non-corrupt.

So that's it. Or...There might be more, and probably is. But I didn't look that hard, and you have links to everything and some of it is just my opinion, I fully concede. Also: I know something but not everything about how business is done in some but not all of those countries, but again: That's elementary-overview-level knowledge, at best. None of it is really totally in my zone.

So recourse to someone who thoroughly and expertly knows what they're talking about probably couldn't hurt. Is my point. The above is just my notional not-even-really-copper two cents.

[compared2what?]

Sorry. I piqued my own curiosity.

Backgrounder: Issues Related to Barrick’s Porgera Joint Venture Mine in Papua New Guinea
May 17 2009

by Catherine Coumans, MiningWatch Canada, May 2009
Violence perpetrated by Porgera Joint Venture’s security forces

Allegations of rapes, beatings and killings of community members by Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) security forces have been prevalent for at least a decade. In 2005, a grass roots human rights organization established by indigenous community members of Porgera, Akali Tange Association Inc., issued a report called “The Shooting Fields of Porgera Joint Venture.” This report documents incidents of killings (14, of which 11 were by shooting), torture, arbitrary arrest, and beatings by the mine’s security forces. In a news article of 2005 then-mine operator Canada’s Placer Dome admitted to 8 killings of community members by PJV security guards and police. [1]

Early in 2006 Barrick Gold Corp. took over the mine when it acquired Placer Dome. There have been further allegations of killings by PJV security forces in 2007 and 2008.[2]

A Papua New Guinea (PNG) government investigation established in 2006 heard witnesses report that the mine’s private security guards committed abuses but, to date, the government’s findings have not been publicly released. The terms of reference for the PNG government’s inquiry have been called prejudicial as they assume a link between the shootings and killings by Porgera Joint Ventures’s security forces and alleged unauthorized gold mining before such a link has been established in evidence. [3]

On December 2, 2007, MiningWatch Canada filed a complaint with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions regarding killings of residents of Porgera by PJV’s private security guards (tolerated by the government), PNG Police, and Mobile Unit Police at the Porgera Mine. [4]and more at link...

[Joe Hillshoist]

http://www.miningwatch.ca/en/home/company/barrick-gold

Enjoy

[compared2what?]

"Watershed" - New Documentary on Barrick Gold's Pascua Lama Project in Chile
Feb 22 2008

Watershed, a documentary by Lauren Rosenfeld, intimately captures agrarian life in the heart of the Andes Mountains and portrays the struggle of a Chilean farming community to preserve its culture, land, and water rights. Pascua Lama, an open-pit gold mine owned by the Canadian Barrick Gold Corporation, is the first of many projects under construction in the Cordillera between Chile and Argentina. Residents of the pristine Huasco Valley confront this imminent threat and peacefully resist the influx of mining and industrial development that endangers their watershed system and way of life.

Trailer: http://www.creativevisions.org/projects/watershed.htm

Clips: http://www.youtube.com/Interfluvial

(also found at http://www.miningwatch.ca/)

[compared2what?]

http://www.miningwatch.ca/en/home/company/barrick-gold

Enjoy

Thanks, Joe! That was going to be my very next post.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Oh ...

Great minds eh c2w

http://www.miningwatch.ca/en/home/company/goldcorp

[Joe Hillshoist]

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/list.php?r=338 - Goldcorp

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/list.php?r=586 - Newmont

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/list.php?r=98 - Barrick Gold

Might also want to check out:

http://www.miningwatch.ca/en/investing- ... p-americas

I don't see much difference between western economic and military imperialism and if Paul can't see the link he's a fool at best and at worst doesn't care.

[compared2what?]

Oh ...

Great minds eh c2w

http://www.miningwatch.ca/en/home/company/goldcorp

You flatter me WAY too much. Because it actually hadn't occurred to me to go beyond Barrick. Because I've heard of them. (IOW -- I'm kind of an idiot.)

FWIW, I have a dim recollection of seeing them named in connection with spookery of some sort, too. However, I now can't find the source, if I did. It looks like the subject might have come up on PrisonPlanet or Alex Constantine. But I remember it as....being maybe from a book or something? But something not web-site-y. And, I think, connected to South Africa. Maybe. Or possibly I just misremember it.

It's another area of inquiry for inquiring minds, though, at least.

[Joe Hillshoist]

I know those particular companies are pretty sus, in that i recognised the names straight away from various acts of greedy selfishness I'd heard about over the years. Look as far as US federal politicians are concerned he certainly seems better than most, but really, thats not saying alot to me. Its like saying some fatal car crashes aren't as bad as others.

(on edit - which is true, some involve one fatality and no injuries, some kill whole families.)

I think he is very consistent tho, I'll give him that. I think if Ron Paul was president we'd all know what we'd get, I think he'd have integrity - he'd stick to his guns. I dunno if I really like that tho.

Ultimately it doesn't matter if Paul was/is elected president, if there isn't a committed, active and involved electorate, across the whole population, things won't be much better.

And if there was a committed, active and involved electorate across the whole population, regardless of their actual political views, it wouldn't matter who was president, things would be much better.