Corporate version of the CIA exposed

Are the Yes Men – a group of anti-corporate activists who stage amazing stunts – just an insignificant bunch of pranksters? Those who control one of the world’s biggest spy companies and their corporate paymasters don’t think so.

The Global Intelligence Files, five million emails obtained by the Anonymous hacker group and released by WikiLeaks this morning, reveal that Dow chemical corporation paid an intelligence firm, Stratfor, to spy on the Yes Men.

Dow Chemical is the owner of Union Carbide, the company responsible for the 1984 gas disaster in Bhopal, India in which thousands died and more than half a million suffered terrible injuries. (Dow is also a sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics).

But snooping on the Yes Men is only the tip of Stratfor’s vast iceberg of espionage. Its tentacles around the world show that the CIA has a serious rival in the private sector. The company runs networks in governments and media companies especially those close to the Israeli government and Mossad. The latter are referred to within the company as the “Confed Fuck House”.

Stratfor, which is based in Texas, counts the US government plus other countries, and arms manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Ratheon amongst its paymasters. It trains US marines and “other government intelligence agencies” in becoming “government Stratfors”.

WikiLeaks’ Global Intelligence Files are an email trail, tracking networks of informants who are paid through Swiss bank accounts and pre-paid credit cards. They include “government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world”. WikiLeaks has found Stratfor’s list of informants and evidence of secret deals with media organisations, including Reuters, plus records of many payoffs.

Knowing there is good money to be made by exploiting corporate fears about whistleblowers and leaked information, Stratfor has been anxious to exploit what it called the “leak focused” gravy train. “This is an obvious fear sale, so that’s a good thing,” writes one operative. But in the case of General Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s notorious ISI intelligence service, Stratfor generously provided complimentary membership.

Its noxious methods are clear: “You have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control,” CEO George Friedman wrote on 6 December 2011 on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant on the medical condition of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

They also reveal close cooperation with Goldman Sachs, whose managing director Shea Morenz joined Stratfor’s board of directors in 2011. He worked closely with Friedman to set up an offshore share structure which could use intelligence to “trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like”.

The emails, which are presently being analysed by media organisations and members of the public, point to the fears haunting those at the top of corporate and state trees. They include contain classified information about US government and Stratfor’s attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

Assange remains under house arrest, where he has been since December 2010, fighting extradition to Sweden over alleged sex crimes. A decision from the UK Supreme Court on his extradition to Sweden is expected in March. Meanwhile, prosecutors in the US are still trying to pin him down under the 1917 Espionage Act.

Thanks to the socialised nature of today’s technologies and courageous whistleblowers, like Bradley Manning, it has become impossible to keep secret the vast web of connections between the corporations, intelligence agencies and political rulers. This latest cache should give confidence to all those seeking to end their rule.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Making a killing at our expense

As the European Union struggles to hold together, riven with differences over impending bail-outs to save the euro (while ejecting Greece), others are moving in for the kill.

The fact is that there are profits to be made in periods of economic turmoil. Buying at the bottom of the market and selling on at a later date is classic capitalist behaviour.

Not that the BBC News team grasped this when financial market trader Alessio Rastani was interviewed about the so-called rescue plan for the eurozone.

The candour of his “bring it on’” message at the prospect of economic collapse astonished his interviewers.

The interview is full of choice phrases and suggestions: “The market is toast”, “The market is going to crash”, “Hedge funds are moving their money to safer assets” and “most traders we don’t care about the rescue plan”.

While others hope for pleasant night-time experiences, Rastani said: “I’ve been dreaming of a depression for three years…Just like in the thirties, when the market crashes we can make a lot of money out of hedging strategies.”

After telling viewers that “this economic crisis is like a cancer. By the time you discover it, it’s too late”, he told them: “Governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world."

Some, trying to undermine his message, are suggesting that he’s a phony, a member of the famous Yes Men hoaxers.

They’d like to think his message is the lie that encircled the world before the truth got its boots on. But the frenzy of withdrawal of funds from the junk bond markets confirms Rastani’s message.

The Yes Men issued a statement commending Rastani for his "masterful performance", adding:

"Who in big banking doesn't bet against the interests of the poor and find themselves massively recompensed – if not by the market, then by humongous taxpayer bailouts? Rastani's approach has been completely mainstream for several years now; we must thank him for putting a human face on it yesterday."

By observing the behaviour of traders like Rastani, Felix Salmon of Reuters news agency has arrived at an interesting hypothesis – capitalism has produced its own opposite from within itself. Salmon characterises some traders as anti-capitalists, writing:

“It’s a common misconception that all traders are die-hard capitalists. But in fact many of them are quite the opposite. They still want to make money, of course. But that doesn’t mean they want the stock market to go up.”

Make no mistake, hedge traders are not the new proletariat, but they do represent the contradictory nature of a capitalist economy that has become hopelessly, irretrievably over-run by the cancer of credit and debt which has metastasized throughout the entire system.

Under extreme pressure from the deepening world crisis, the world’s policy makers have adopted a plan which they hope will stop the cancer in its tracks, isolating it in Greece. But the medicine depends on vast sums of new credit to recapitalise the banks and to build up the as yet non-existent stability fund against further impending crises in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain and France

Oh, and there is the small matter of getting the banks which are exposed to Greek debt to take a 50% loss. The IMF would also have to act as a backstop for the eurozone, standing by with another even bigger source of credit. The mind boggles at the numbers being talked about.

The costs of another meltdown are, according to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, “too grave to contemplate”. The panic written all over the faces of political leaders across the globe tells us that, with the world economy contracting, such an event is indeed on the cards.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor