Secret Societies

Conspiracies

Proving the conspiracy.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/Story?id=6443988&page=1

I was just thinking about the ABC.com article that came out recently asking what is behind the Internet Conspiracy Empires? I think it’s a good question, and so I thought I would take you back through some of the conspiracies that we have looked at over the last couple of years. They will not all be conspiracies, but they will help to show why I have drawn my conclusion about our current conspiracy, and what is behind Gang Stalking.

The Snitching System.

http://www.thejusticeproject.org/wp-content/uploads/snitchsystembooklet1.pdf

[quote]“The history of the snitch is long and inglorious, dating to the common law. In old England, snitches were ubiquitous.Their motives, then as now, were unholy. In the 18th Century, Parliament prescribed monetary rewards—blood money—for snitches, who were turned back onto the streets where they were, in the words of one contemporary commentator,“the contempt and terror of society.”

“The system produced a cycle of betrayal in which each snitch knew he might find himself soon in the dock confronted by another snitch.”

“If all cases ended so poetically, perhaps informant dependent prosecutions would be more humorous than objectionable. In real life, however, O. Henry endings are rare.”

“The snitch system probably arrived in the New World with the Pilgrims.The first documented wrongful conviction case in the United States involved a snitch.The case arose in Manchester, Vermont, in 1819. Brothers Jesse and Stephen Boorn were suspected of killing their brother-in-law, Russell Colvin. Jesse was put into a cell with a forger, Silas Merrill, who would testify that Jesse confessed. Merrill was rewarded with freedom.
The Boorn brothers were convicted and sentenced to death but saved from the gallows when Colvin turned up alive in New Jersey.”[/quote]

With the advent of modern day society can we assume that the Snitching System became obsolete, or would it be better to rightfully conclude that it was and still is an integral part of society and as relevant today as it was yesterday? It is also just as much a concern for this time period as it has been in others?

The Secret Persuaders

During WWII before America agreed to join the war, the United Kingdom set up a secret agency inside of America, designed to convince the entire nation it was a good idea to join the war. This was back in 1940 and this agency had almost 3000 operatives. They sent out false media stories, via newspapers and other mediums they had set up within America. To the individuals that were anti-war they had a game that they played called VIK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/aug/19/military.secondworldwar

[quote]BSC invented a game called “Vik“, described as “a fascinating new pastime for lovers of democracy”. Printed booklets described up to 500 ways of harassing and annoying Nazi sympathisers. Players of Vik were encouraged to ring up their targets at all hours of the night and hang up. Dead rats could be put in water tanks, air could be let out of the subject’s car tyres, anonymous deliveries could be made to his house and so on. In the summer of 1941, BSC sent a sham Hungarian astrologer to the US called Louis de Wohl. At a press conference De Wohl said he had been studying Hitler’s astrological chart and could see nothing but disaster ahead for the German dictator. De Wohl became a minor celebrity and went on tour through the US, issuing similar dire prognostications about Hitler and his allies. De Wohl’s wholly bogus predictions were widely published.[/quote]

I have never been able to locate the booklet with the 500 ways of harassing those that were anti-war, but I am sure some of those methods survived to this time period.

Here are some more amazing details about this agency that was set up by a foreign body on U.S. soil for the sole purpose of manipulating the population intogoing to war. This would have continued, but conveniently ended when the Japanese hit pearl harbour, what a unique coincidence.

[quote]BSC was set up by a Canadian entrepreneur called William Stephenson, working on behalf of the British Secret Intelligence Services (SIS). An office was opened in the Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan with the discreet compliance of Roosevelt and J Edgar Hoover of the FBI. But nobody on the American side of the fence knew what BSC’s full agenda was nor, indeed, what would be the massive scale of its operations. What eventually occurred as 1940 became 1941 was that BSC became a huge secret agency of nationwide news manipulation and black propaganda. Pro-British and anti-German stories were planted in American newspapers and broadcast on American radio stations, and simultaneously a campaign of harassment and denigration was set in motion against those organisations perceived to be pro-Nazi or virulently isolationist (such as the notoriously anti-British America First Committee – it had more than a million paid-up members).
Stephenson called his methods “political warfare”, but the remarkable fact about BSC was that no one had ever tried to achieve such a level of “spin”, as we would call it today, on such a vast and pervasive scale in another country. The aim was to change the minds of an entire population: to make the people of America think that joining the war in Europe was a “good thing” and thereby free Roosevelt to act without fear of censure from Congress or at the polls in an election.

BSC’s media reach was extensive: it included such eminent American columnists as Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson, and influenced coverage in newspapers such as the Herald Tribune, the New York Post and the Baltimore Sun. BSC effectively ran its own radio station, WRUL, and a press agency, the Overseas News Agency (ONA), feeding stories to the media as they required from foreign datelines to disguise their provenance. WRUL would broadcast a story from ONA and it thus became a US “source” suitable for further dissemination, even though it had arrived there via BSC agents. It would then be legitimately picked up by other radio stations and newspapers, and relayed to listeners and readers as fact. The story would spread exponentially and nobody suspected this was all emanating from three floors of the Rockefeller Centre. BSC took enormous pains to ensure its propaganda was circulated and consumed as bona fide news reporting. To this degree its operations were 100% successful: they were never rumbled. [/quote]

That is an amazing conspiracy that very few knew anything about. Are branches of this program still operational in some capacity on foreign soil today? It’s hard to say.

Operation Gladio

An actual operation that hired agents and had them in keeping in such a time as when they were needed. This is another jewel that came to light while doing research into Gang Stalking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

[quote]Emblem of NATO’s “stay-behind” paramilitary organizations.After World War II, the UK and the US decided to create “stay-behind” paramilitary organizations, with the official aim of countering a possible Soviet invasion through sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. Arms caches were hidden, escape routes prepared, and loyal members recruited: i.e. mainly hardline anticommunists, including many ex-Nazis or former fascists, whether in Italy or in other European countries. In Germany, for example, Gladio had as a central focus the Gehlen Org — also involved in ODESSA “ratlines” — named after Reinhard Gehlen who would become West Germany’s first head of intelligence, while the predominantly Italian P2 masonic lodge was composed of many members of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), including Licio Gelli. Its clandestine “cells” were to stay behind (hence the name) in enemy controlled territory and to act as resistance movements, conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations.

However, Italian Gladio was more far reaching. “A briefing minute of June 1, 1959, reveals Gladio was built around ‘internal subversion’. It was to play ‘a determining role… not only on the general policy level of warfare, but also in the politics of emergency’. In the 1970s, with communist electoral support growing and other leftists looking menacing, the establishment turned to the ‘Strategy of Tension’ … with Gladio eager to be involved.”[
[/quote]

A secret paramilitary army that exists in many European countries and has since the end of WWII, set up by the U.S. and the U.K.? Kept secret all the way up to 1990 when the Italian wing was exposed, and then the other branches were exposed as well. This secret army might have remained secret to this day, except for the extreme involvement of the Italian wing in local policy.

[quote]“Coordinated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), {the secret armies} were run by the European military secret services in close cooperation with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British foreign secret service Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also MI6). Trained together with US Green Berets and British Special Air Service (SAS), these clandestine NATO soldiers, armed with underground arms-caches, prepared against a potential Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, as well as the coming to power of communist parties. The clandestine international network covered the European NATO membership, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey, as well as the neutral European countries of Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland.

‘The existence of these clandestine NATO armies remained a closely guarded secret throughout the Cold War until 1990, when the first branch of the international network was discovered in Italy. It was code-named Gladio, the Latin word for a short double-edged sword [gladius]. While the press said the NATO secret armies were ‘the best-kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II’, the Italian government, amidst sharp public criticism, promised to close down the secret army. Italy insisted identical clandestine armies had also existed in all other countries of Western Europe. This allegation proved correct and subsequent research found that in Belgium, the secret NATO army was code-named SDRA8, in Denmark Absalon, in Germany TD BJD, in Greece LOK, in Luxemburg Stay-Behind, in the Netherlands I&O, in Norway ROC, in Portugal Aginter, in Switzerland P26, in Turkey Counter-Guerrilla, In Sweden AGAG (Aktions Gruppen Arla Gryning, and in Austria OWSGV. However, the code names of the secret armies in France, Finland and Spain remain unknown.
[/quote]

The promised that they would close down these secret armies. We however know that with other similar programs they are never shut down, they are just repackaged and start up again. That is one heck of a conspiracy. Secret armies in many European countries set up by the U.S. and the U.K.

Red Squads

Not so much a conspiracy, but a little known wing of the police that exists in many countries around the world. Set up for the sole purpose of destroying dissidence. During Cointelpro and the Canadian VIP program they worked closely with the government to neutralize dissidence.

http://www.amazon.com/Protectors-Privilege-Squads-Repression-America/dp/0520080351/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229548302&sr=1-1

[quote] The cops love these free-wheeling, elite units. They were ostensibly created to combat terrorism, but have been used mostly to infiltrate and suppress liberal and radical political organizations and civil rights groups. They lift their members out of the routine of police work into something of a James Bond life. As Frank Donner points out in this excellently researched, thoughtful and well-detailed study of police spying, their excesses have been many. But Donner, who directed the American Civil Liberties Project on Political Surveillance, concludes with the chilling thought that the Red squads will be around long after there are any Reds.[/quote]

These groups go back over a hundred years, as each new wave of immigrant population introduced themselves Red Squads were there, using informants to infiltrate, get information and help to disrupt these groups, movements, and unions. With other infiltration programs the idea is to try to get the corportion of members of the infiltrated groups, by asking some of them to become informants. Once you are an informant for the system, you are always considered an informant for the system.

[quote]Worse yet, the information, and misinformation, gathered by these sleuths is fed into the growing number of intelligence networks maintained by federal, state and local law-enforcement organizations. In the computer age, if you attend a left-wing meeting in Echo Park, your name is likely to be spread as far as New York.
As Donner points out, the squads are not a recent invention. One of his most important contributions is tracing the history of the Red squads, showing how deeply rooted they are in American political, social and economic life….

…That set the pattern for the Red squads, a pattern that continues today. Whatever the city, said Donner, the goal and tactics are much the same: “police behavior motivated or influenced in whole or in part by hostility to protest, dissent and related activities perceived as a threat to the status quo.”
[/quote]

Elite branches of the police designed to squash dissident and protect against perceived threats to the status quo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_squad

[quote]In New York, former City Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy traced their origin there to an “Italian Squad” formed in 1904 to monitor a group of Italian immigrants under suspicion[1]. However, it is their association with fighting communism which provides the basis for the name “Red Squad.” They became more commonplace in the 1930s, often conceived of as a countermeasure to Communist organizers who were charged with executing a policy of dual unionism – namely, building a revolutionary movement in parallel with membership in above-ground labor organizations. Similar units were established in Canada in this period, although only the Toronto police used the name.

In the late 1960s, as the protests against Vietnam and the general domestic upheaval intensified, the Red Squads augmented their focus, to include dissidents largely outside the labor movement, including therein not just war resisters, but protest movements of all political stripes, including Neonazis, Native American movements, the women’s movement, environmentalists, the civil rights movement, and others. The methods employed ranged from simple surveillance to isolated incidents of assassination. Anti-activist police operations were expanded under the Johnson and Nixon administrations, particularly in concert with, and within the cadre of the FBI’s COINTELPRO surveillance program, but also including domestic spying by the CIA.
[/quote]

This very rarely discussed unit of the police apparently were in and still are in existence in many cities, some going by different names, but the same concept applies, squash dissidence.

Alexandra Natapoff

http://www.aclu.org/images/asset_upload_file744_30623.pdf

[quote]
The use of criminal informants in the U.S. justice system has become a flourishing socio-legal institution. Every year, tens of thousands of criminal suspects, many of them drug offenders concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods, informally negotiate away liability in exchange for promised cooperation, while law enforcement at the local, state and federal levels rely on ever greater numbers of criminal actors in making basic decisions about investigations and prosecutions. While this marriage of convenience is fraught with peril, it is nearly devoid of judicial or public scrutiny as to the propriety, fairness, or utility of the deals being struck. At the same time, it is a quintessential expression of some of the most contentious characteristics of the modern criminal system: law enforcement discretion, secrecy, and the increasing informality of the adjudication process.
The informant institution is also an under-appreciated social force in low-income, high-crime, urban communities in which a high percentage of residents – as many as fifty percent of African American males in some cities – are in contact with the criminal justice system and therefore potentially under pressure to snitch. By relying heavily on snitching, particularly in drug-related cases, law enforcement officials create large numbers of informants who remain at large in the community, engaging in criminal activities while under pressure to provide information about others. These snitches are a communal liability: they increase crime and threaten social organization, interpersonal relationships, and socio-legal norms in their home communities, even as they are tolerated or under-punished by law enforcement because they are useful.

The Article also hypothesizes the harms imposed by the informant institution on socially disadvantaged, high-crime communities in which snitching is common. These harms may include increased crime, the erosion of trust in interpersonal, familial and community relationships and other psychological damage created by pervasive informing, the communal loss of faith in the state, and the undermining of law-abiding norms flowing from law enforcement’s rewarding of and complicity in snitch wrongdoing.

[/quote]

Many people see this article and assume it’s an inner city problem, but it’s not. This is a societal problem. These informant programs are not just going after African American males, they are going after the females, and they are going after other communities. They started in these communities, and these communities currently have higher ratios of Informants, but then it branches out.

Imagine a society where over 50% of your community is a potential snitch? Imagine what that does to the heart and soul of a society? Some people don’t have to imagine because they have already been through something very similar.

[quote]

http://www.november.org/razorwire/2005-02/art/RazorWire-V8N3a.pdf

“As summer travel ebbed, I dove into the study of
the informant system, as pertains to those whom the police arrest, then pressure to go back into their
places of home and work and set others up for arrest.”

How many informants do we have in communities? We can’t measure it because of this secret system, but experts have some guesses.

“Because researchers know what is behind the search warrants granted, they know that almost 98% of the time the police don’t have any goods on anyone, just a confidential informant. A lot of informing is going on, and it’s escalating.”

“So they squeeze these people into rolling on their mother. Our family involved my brother’s girlfriend; it was her brother who turned her in, and so we went through this ourselves. And it is hard to try to explain to people this part — people do 20, 30 years and they get through it. Somehow, I don’t know how.
I’ve never been to prison, but they get through
it, and what dogs them all of the time is this —
how could my sister do that to me? How could my friend do this to me? That stays with them.
That psychological damage never goes away.

And it spreads to everyone in the family, just like anything traumatic does, and you get a bunch of sick people.”

When I grew up, the Russians were doing it a lot, the informant system throughout all the communities. A person could be hauled off and interrogated and taken off to the ice fields. It terrified me, those Russian people. We studied these communities in
Russia after that period because there was a lot of
mental illness. Our country went over there to help them with all their crazy people. And do you know what our country found out? Our scientists and
doctors went over there and came back and said, “It was all those informants. It made them crazy to live
among people, and nobody knew who was going to rip them off, or who needed to ‘get in good,’ or some favor. And so turn someone in, and that person gets hauled off to Siberia. It made people crazy. <b>Well, that’s what is happening in our communities now.”</b>
[/quote]

The new face of snitching might surprise you. As mentioned they started in ethnic communities, but they have branched out so much further then this.

http://www.mapinc.org/images/Hoffman.jpg

Meet Rachel Hoffman she was a 23-year-old Florida State psychology graduate, she is also the face of snitching. Rachel earlier this year agreed to become an Informant to lower her sentence for a drug conviction. She was killed while making a drug purchase for the police to help reduce her drug sentence. Informants come from a variety of social and economical backgrounds and once caught up in the system, many will do anything to escape prison sentences normally offered for much more severe crimes.

http://november.org/stayinfo/breaking08/FinalNight.html

[quote]Immediately after Tallahassee police raided her apartment April 17, Hoffman went to her boyfriend’s house and told him about the deal she’d cut. Over the next three weeks, she would tell him and Liza all about her work as a confidential informant.

“They wanted her to turn in her friends, and she wouldn’t do that,” said Liza, a 24-year-old FSU graduate student. “She said she wanted to get some grimy people off the street. She wanted to get bad guys.”

At first she agreed to give up a guy she knew who dealt drugs and sometimes bought pot from her, her friends said. But after one controlled call from the police station, she confessed to him she was working for the police and asked him to help her find someone else to turn in.[/quote]

She was killed during a sting that went wrong. She was an inexperienced 23 year old, who didn’t want to go to jail, didn’t want her parents to find out, and thought this would be a cool way to work off her sentence. She paid the ultimate price for it. This story is not that uncommon in today’s modern society, but many of us, like myself, were previously unaware of the extent to which citizen informants are being used in society.

She should no more have been turned into an Informant than many of these young urban men and woman, who also don’t want to spend years in jail, vs living outside for minor drug possessions, these people exchange their freedoms for a type of slavery and servitude to the system that is unimaginable. These situations are becoming too common, and they are contributing to the detriment and moral fiber of our societies.

Fusion Centers and TLO

The informant system is not just using paid informants. They are also using an army of volunteer Informants. The Citizen Informants who are parts of various community programs, or who were inducted via their place of employment.

http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/privacy/fusion_update_20080729.pdf

The ACLU has released a report on Fusion Centers. 800,000 operatives will be dispersed throughout every American city and town. Set to report on even the most common everyday behaviors which will go into state, local and regional, linked data bases.

This number of 800,000 is outside of other Informant programs that are already in place within America. Informants working via Citizen Corps, and other sub programs.

There are informant programs for local businesses, informant programs for truckers, boats, and so many others.

http://blog.t1production.com/utility-workers-hired-as-stasi-informants-in-colorado-california-arizona

T.I.P.S. officially died, but lived on in many other forms.

Spying101

The Canadian Government spying on it’s own citizens? Canada that friendly and peaceful nation? The very one.

http://www.spying101.com/

http://www.gangstalkingunited.com/forum/books/spying-101/

[quote]If you attended a Canadian university in the past eighty years, it’s possible that, unbeknownst to you, Canadian security agents were surveying you, your fellow students, and your professors for ‘subversive’ tendencies and behaviour. Since the end of the First World War, members of the RCMP have infiltrated the campuses of Canada’s universities and colleges to spy, meet informants, gather information, and on occasion, to attend classes. [/quote]

[quote]RCMP spies kept secret files on hundreds of Canadian Politicians and bureaucrats at all three levels of government as part of a project known as the “VIP program,”[/quote]

[quote]The book, a thorough examination of RCMP surveillance of the academic world, also discusses the Mounties’ efforts to keep tabs on other
elements of society, including government, the media and women’s groups.

The RCMP created security files on 800,000 Canadians, and it has long been known the force took an active interest in politicians and public
servantswith links to Communist organizations or other pursuits deemed subversive.[/quote]

Talk about conspiracy. The Canadian government for over 80 years spied on it’s citizens and opened files on many of it’s citizens just because they attended a university or college? If the Canadian government was willing to do this, what about other nations?

This program after 80 years of operation within Canadian Universities and Colleges, when exposed supposedly formally ended. That is the official story that the public is suppose to believe.

These spying programs were not content to just watch the universities, the research shows that they branched out into the community, because after graduating, these people might still have subversive ideas.

Within the last 10 years since the program supposedly ended, it’s hard to imagine how many new files might have been opened on unsuspecting students.

Stasis- What happened to these people who were former spies for the East German state?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,540771,00.html

[quote]More East Germans were spying on their neighbors, colleagues, family and friends when the Berlin Wall fell than had previously been thought. According to a report published Monday, 189,000 people were informers for the Stasi — the former Communist secret police — when East Germany collapsed in 1989 — 15,000 more than previous studies had suggested.[/quote]

The C.I.A. were handed the list of these names after the Berlin Wall fell. How many went to other countries and were asked to continue with their domestic spying is unclear.

The above scenarios are just a few of the conspiracies, intrigues, and surprising information I have come across when researching Gang Stalking.

what I am seeing is a continual and consistent pattern of something that is systemic, with many absorption points. This means that citizens are being incorporated into these programs through many different venues, some via their families. Other through educational institutions, others via their places of employment, other through religious institutions, etc.

I am also seeing a link to some people that are being mobbed and bullied out of this system. I am also seeing the same patterns of collusion that has been reported elsewhere, by others.

http://www.bullyonline.org/action/obstruct.htm

http://www.targetedindividuals.com/System.html

That’s part of the conspiracy that I am seeing, and this conspiracy has been ongoing within society for some time now. Many communities have been affected by this and some are very aware of the level of snitching and informing that is ongoing in society, paid and unpaid. Others have had very limited or no exposure to these concepts, and therefore are not aware of what is ongoing in society.

gangstalking
http://www.articlesbase.com/news-and-society-articles/conspiracies-695384.html

The Disciplinary Coaches in Frugal Relation

Discrete spiritual societies weigh over the frugality of its temper or else scriptural discipline. In short, frugal forms a pattern that attracts retainers, clientele, or an audience by miscellany traditions and beliefs that fit the frugality profile.

Repeatedly those who practice frugal relations will restrain worldly desires to exploit comfort for buying economical services and goods carefully. The purpose is to make their purchases of goods closing. It seems to fulfill the frugality ritual.

Exploiting the cash economical utilidor the frugal follower emphasizes their spending while focusing on the economy. The pocket money is employed to meet secret long-term goals, communal needs and family.

These thrifty souls, goal to save energy, money and the meanness while few of the chief schemes of frugal rivet toward waste decrement, whilst focusing on the changes and common cost matching funds or ethnics. The goal of achieving self-fulfillment based on humane beliefs directly right through means of self-restraining capital at the time striving toward efficiency sets the mark of unique survivors.

Rather than filling their own greed, they focus on fellowship of the human race. Instead of buying materials for having it, they will buy goods or services they need rather than want.

A frugal saves money, time and energy. Not only is these commodities saved for their own need, rather for the need of humankind. Instead of dwelling on fabricated rituals of religion and worldly needs, these people focus on the need of the next man.

A frugal stays informed, especially staying updated with district situations, including products, telephone service and market changes. This is because they use this information to find ways to save money.

Some people call the frugal a stingy person or penny-pincher but the fact is these people are self-reliant, self-sufficient and extremely considerate of other people in the world.

Since our world has caused a major decline in humanity traits, as well being that of desensitized souls, the frugal is someone you want to follow, since compassion is far removed from their souls.

A frugal is a self-sufficient person that prefers to bide the simple life. Often forthwith-family associates concepts of their frugality to that of the philosophic. Some people believe this is because these people lack trust. Their acts are far over the heads of many spectators that fail to see a frugal is someone attempting to bring humanity back to its original state.

The frugal people often gain professional knowledge that guides them to understand the profitable cultures in the concentrated world. Frugality followers and coaches are proposed to claim to have an understanding of the economic changes, spiritual interests and materials, thus understanding this structure better than anyone does. This is according to spectators failing to see the full light of a frugal.

Martin Lukac
http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/the-disciplinary-coaches-in-frugal-relation-125751.html

VERACITY – PART3: Secret Societies

Contact Veracity6@yahoo.Com for more Info or links on any videos you seen on my channels. Please Check out other videos on my channels. More videos soon!

Duration : 57 min 50 sec

Corruption in Africa: a Cancer That Won’t Go Away

‘Corruption is one of the most formidable challenges to good governance, development and poverty reduction’ in Africa says 2008 Transparency International Report.

It has been said that corruption in Africa is like an advanced cancer or tumour that cannot be treated. Like cancer, corruption has tragically devastated African societies and made millions of people very poor. From South Africa to Egypt the tentacles of corruption reaches every where. Corruption has no boundaries. From the offices of presidents and prime ministers to the smallest administration unit of government corruption is everywhere. According to the Africa Union (AU) around $148 billion are stolen from the continent by its leaders and civil servants every year. The recent Forbes’ list of most corrupt nations had 9 out of the first 16 countries coming from Africa.

In Africa, very few government officials and civil servants perform services for free. You cannot get your birth certificate or passport unless you grease the palm of officials. You cannot get good education for your kid unless you pay a bribe. You cannot obtain electricity meter for your house unless you pay a bribe. You cannot get your goods out from the harbour unless you pay kickback. Anything involving signing of documents involves paying inducements. In Africa you can hardly find someone who has not paid bribe before either willingly or unwillingly. To receive attention when you are sick you need to grease the palm of hospital officials.

In Ghana, officials illegally charge 15 and 150 Ghana cedis for a birth certificate and a passport respectively. Again in Ghana Police officers openly ask bus and taxi drivers to pay bribe before they are allowed to cross mounted road blocks. Customs officials adopt all manner of tactics in order to collect money from importers and exporters before their goods are allowed to leave the ports.

Most projects in Africa are carried out by corrupt contractors who collude and connive with public officials to inflate project cost in order to enrich themselves. As a result every project carried out cost three times the usual cost and it is always the tax payers who bear the brunt of it. Due to corruption, project inspectors fail to do their job and allow substandard work to be done at the expense of the people and the nation.

In Africa, it is totally useless to bid for contracts because contracts are awarded to the contractors who are able to pay the biggest bribe. In most countries there are no announcements for tenders rather contracts are awarded to companies who secretly pay large sums of commission to government officials.

For example on 17th September 2002 a Canadian Engineering company called Acres International was convicted by a High Court in Lesotho for paying $260,000 bribe to secure an $8 billion dam contract in the tiny Southern African nation of Lesotho.

Achair Partners a Swiss company and Progresso an Italian company have been accused of bribing Somali Transition Government officials in order to secure contracts to deposit highly toxic industrial waste in the waters of Somalia.

In 2002 Halliburton a US company was accused of establishing $180m flush fund with the intent of using it to bribe Nigeria officials in order to secure a $10 billion Liquefied Gas Plant contract in the Nigeria. In response to the accusation the company fired Mr. Albert Jack Stanley. Mr. Stanley a former executive of Halliburton (KBR) has pleaded guilty for orchestrating the $180m flush fund. Even though Halliburton denied any knowledge of such a fund a report by the company later named a British called Jeffrey Tesler as the middleman behind the bribery. Such corrupt practices by western companies seeking contracts in Africa are not uncommon.

In Africa contracts are awarded to party faithfuls who in turn make handsome financial contributions to the party in power. Because of corruption and nepotism anyone can become a contractor in Africa. In Africa, state coffers or the treasury are the personal property of the president/prime minister, his family, his cronies and his political party. In most African countries there is no separation or difference between state and ruling party resources.

Corruption is so endemic in African societies that, political parties have been pledging to combat it with deadly force but when they are elected nothing seem to change. When former president of Ghana John Kuffour took office he said ‘there will be zero tolerance for corruption’ in his government but his party recently lost power amid accusation that he was unable to tame his corrupt officials.

Despite years of exports of oil, gold, diamond, bauxite, tin, coltan, uranium, manganese timber and several other valuable minerals the continent continue to be ranked as the poorest on earth because most of the revenue from these exports do not get to the people but find its way into the bank accounts of corrupt government officials, civil servants and their allies.

Since oil was first discovered in Nigeria about 50 years ago, over $400 billion have been realised from its sale but today the whole population continue to live in abject poverty and the country has nothing to show or account for the billions of dollars she has received for years. Those who have benefited from the oil are corrupt politicians, civil servants, a shadow economy, armed bandits, army generals and the big oil corporations such as Shell, Mobil, BP and their American counterparts. As a result able men and women are battling dangerous seas just to enter Europe and try their luck. Others have resulted to 419 a popular scam used to trick people into given out their money and valuables. In fact Nigeria has consistently featured in the top 1% of the most corrupt nation on the planet.

Between 2005 and 2007 several state governors and their immediate families were arrested by Scotlandyard in London on corruption and money laundering charges.

Among them are James Ibori of oil rich Delta State and his wife Theresa who had their $35m asset frozen by the English court. Mr. Ibori earns about a thousand dollars a month but during his eight years as a state governor he managed to acquire wealth to the tune of $35m and was a key financial contributor to the campaign of the current president of Nigeria. He owns a private jet and a lavish London home.

Another corrupt governor is Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, governor of oil-rich state of Bayelsa who was also arrested in London for money laundering charges. Mr. Alamieyeseigha broke his bail conditions and evaded capture in Britain by dressing up as a woman. When Police conducted a search in his London home they discovered one million pounds worth of cash in his home.

Another governor who was arrested in England was Joshua Dariye of Plateau State. He was arrested in a London hotel for stealing money meant for development of his state.

But these thieves have no rank compared to the heavyweights like Abacha, Mobutu, Eyadema, Lansana Conte, Obiang Nguema, Omar Bongo, Mubarak and Arap Moi.

In the 1990s economic hardship, abject poverty and destruction of the environment forced the people of Ogoniland in Nigeria to demand a say in which Shell operates but the military regime led by Gen. Sani Abacha arrested the environmentalists led by Ken Sorowiwa and executed them. You may wonder why Abacha killed his country men instead of protecting and providing for their needs. According to available data Nigeria government Lawyers within the period that Abacha became Head of State i.e. between 1993 and 1998 he stole $4 billion of Nigeria’s oil money and stashed it in several secret bank accounts in Switzerland, Britain, Luxemburg, Jersey Island and Liechtenstein. In April, 2002 these countries agreed to return $1 billion of the stolen money to the people of Nigeria. So far about $2 billion have been returned to the government of Nigeria and the rest of the money is still sitting in bank accounts in Western countries notably Switzerland and Britain.

A visit to the Niger Delta region of Nigeria shows that majority of the people especially the youth are unemployed. Years of oil spills have made the soil unfit for any agricultural activity. Their streams and wells are polluted and the people have no access to basic necessities of life because their leaders have enriched themselves with the money.

Every effort to get the Nigeria government to develop the oil rich areas fell on death ears until the unemployed youth took up arms against the federal government and oil companies. They kidnapped foreign oil workers and demanded ransom before their victims were released. They disrupted the oil production forcing the oil companies to move several miles offshore for their own safety but they were not safe either. Eventually, the companies had to reduce their output by 25% in 2007-8. These disruptions affected supply of oil in the world market forcing the price to skyrocket to $140 a barrel in the summer of 2008.

If Abacha could steal $4 billion within 5 years then you can tell how much the leaders who have ruled for decades have stolen. For example Gaddafi of Libya has been in power for 39 years now. Omar Bongo of Gabon 31 years, Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea 28 years, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe 28 years, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt 27 years, Paul Biya of Cameroon 26 years, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda 22 years, Omar Al Bashir of Sudan 19 years, Iddriss Derby of Chad 17 years, Yahya Jammeh of Gambia 14 years.

I think you have now got the picture and understand why the African Union says $148 billion leave the continent every year.

The late Lansana Conte ruled Guinea for 24 years from 1984 to 2008. Sometimes having a leader maintaining stability in a country could translate into economic prosperity but this is not the case for Guinea. Even though Guinea is the world’s biggest exporter of bauxite, there is little very the country can show for it. Apart from bauxite, Guinea also have large deposits of gold diamond, iron, nickel and uranium yet poverty is so severe that the country was ranked among the top 1% of most corrupt countries in Africa. In fact according to a report by UN, Guinea ranks 160th out of 177 in the UN’s Development scale.

According to available documents 70% of revenue from of all mineral exports every year finds its way in the bank accounts of Lansana Conte and his cronies. Today the people lack portable water and electricity. Roads, rail lines, telecommunication, schools, hospitals are in severe deplorable conditions while money meant for their repair and maintenance sit in Europe and America being protected by banking secrecy laws. According to Aljazeera a credible and popular news broadcaster, corruption is so woven in Guinean society that school girls need not study as their promotion to next class is always assured by their male teachers who solicit sex from them. According to the students, those who refuse to sleep with their teachers are made to repeat a year in class. Female teachers on the other hand demand money to be paid in exchange for higher marks.

Why won’t the people be poor when their livelihoods have been taken away from them? Why?

On Friday 31, 2007 the Guardian newspaper in Britain reported a corruption scandal perpetrated by former president of Kenya Daniel Arap Moi and his family. According to the Guardian a 110 page report prepared by international risk consultancy firm Kroll exposed Arap Moi and his family and accused them of banking £1 billion in 28 countries including Britain. The report went further to say that the family used Shell Oil Company, secret trusts, front men and his entourage to siphon the money away.

Apart from the money, the Moi family also bought several multimillion pound properties in London, New York, South Africa including 10,000-hectare ranch in Australia and bank accounts containing hundreds of millions of pounds. It is on record that Mr. Moi’s sons Philip and Gideon are wealth £384m and £550m respectively. While majority of Kenyans live in rural areas, and live in mud/thatched houses with bamboo/raffia leaves as roofing sheet the Moi family live in a £4m home in Surrey and £2m flat in Knightsbridge. Arap Moi’s 24 year rule was largely corrupt and contributed to endemic poverty seen in Kenya today.

How do you expect the continent to develop when monies meant for her development are stolen by her leaders and kept by countries who praise themselves as civilised, cultured, loving and democratic?

In South Africa, Jacob Zuma is still battling it out with the court for his part in the multi-billion arms deal in South Africa in 2001. He was forced to resign as Deputy President of South Africa a clear embarrassment to the ANC government of former president Mbeki.

In 2006 former president of Malawi Bakili Muluzi was arrested for pocketing $12m donated to his poor country by foreign governments. Again former Zambia president Frederick Chiluba was arrested together with two business men Aaron Chungu and Faustin Kabwe and charged with 11 counts of stealing money meant for the Zambia’s development.

In Equatorial Guinea where oil export has earned the country billions of dollars, the 600,000 people living in the country continue to live in poverty while Teodoro Obiang Nguema and his cronies continue to siphon the oil revenue with no accountability.

Gabon and Angola both Oil exporting countries are no different. In fact, the governments in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea can best be described as Kleptocracy that is government by thieves. In countries such as Nigeria, Egypt, Cameroon, The Gambia, Sudan, Uganda, Libya, Tunisia a Kleptocracy class of people have replaced anything democracy. In these countries very few people continue to remain in power and the people have no say in the way their country is govern or run. For example Gaddafi of Libya has been in power for 39 years now. Omar Bongo of Gabon 31 years, Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea 28 years, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe 28 years, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt 27 years and the list is unending.

How do you expect a person to rule for 30 years without being corrupt?

What is clear is that these unelected leaders continue to amass wealth at the expense of their poor countries and continue to mismanage whatever remains of their corrupt activities. Because most of the leaders are former military officers or former rebels with no grasp of economics and management, they are unable to formulate any good economic policies that will transform and grow their economies hence poverty has become a part of the people but their leaders know not what poverty is.

In DR Congo it is estimated that gold and diamond deposits alone could fetch the country 23 trillion dollars not to mention the abundance of timber and other several minerals that are found in large quantities such as columbo-tantalite (coltan) and cassiterite (tin ore) yet years of corruption, mismanagement, conflicts and foreign involvement have made this resource rich nation one of the poorest in the world.

It is often said that western nations cannot maintain their current level of lifestyle without Congo and most corporations in the west can easily go bust without Congo. The question is if Congo is the blood line of the west and the west is rich because of Congo then why is Congo so poor?

And where are the billions of dollars from the sale of these minerals? The answer lies in the history of the nation which is endemic corruption, colonialism, armed conflicts and foreign involvements. Mobutu in his 32 year reign is believed to have taken several billions of dollars from the treasury and deposited it in his numerous Swiss bank accounts. When President Kabila requested the Swiss for the money to be returned he was told Mobutu had just $7.6m. President Kabila frustrated and disappointment with the Swiss announcement said he had expected the Swiss to announce something like $1 billion or more.

But unconfirmed report indicate that the Swiss decided not to give the billions of dollars to the Congo government for fear that it would be stolen again by Kabila and his regime who are also deadly corrupt. Mobutu have several villas and mansions in France and Switzerland bought with money stolen from the Congo people. In 2001, items auctioned in his luxurious home in Switzerland fetched $100,000. The billions of dollars taken away from the country have made Congo one of the poorest in Africa. In Congo today there are no schools, hospitals, roads, telecommunication, rail, electricity and potable water. The only means of transport is through River Congo.

Everyday in Walikale about 16 aircraft fly out of the city with loads of minerals bound for Rwanda. These stolen minerals further find their way in the western mineral markets in London and Switzerland. The proceeds are shared by the Generals, politicians, western companies the businessmen in Rwanda, the warlords in Congo who use part of their share to acquire weapons that are used to terrorise the people and prolong the war. Watch the video below about Congo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io8c81xHLmw

Conclusion

Western governments are quick to preach good governance to Africa but they fail to preach the same message to their banks who act as save havens for these corrupt leaders. The western governments have forgotten that the existence of bank secrecy laws in Switzerland, Jersey Island, Britain, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Austria have encouraged these corrupt leaders to bank away monies meant for their countries’ development.

The name of Switzerland, Britain, France, Jersey Island, Liechtenstein and Luxemburg came up several times throughout this study of corruption in Africa as I try to establish where most of the stolen monies go. Even though these countries like to portray themselves as civilised and cultured with hearts of angels, they have failed to recognise that keeping monies that were dishonestly obtained from the poor people on earth taint whatever reputation they might have. In the case of Switzerland and her allies who keep these stolen monies it is so pathetic that they know they are receiving stolen monies yet due to greed they have done nothing to stop it.

The next time you are looking for stolen money from your country ask the Swiss government and the Swiss banks they always have a clue about it where about.

Africa is poor today because of colluding and connivance of Swiss and other western banks and the kleptocrats who rule Africa. Corruption is rife on the continent because those who steal the money never lack a place to hide them.

Fighting corruption should not be left to the poor countries alone.

Western media who always portray Africa as underdeveloped and backward must expose the banks in their countries who serve as save havens. The media should put pressure on politicians in Europe and America to reform the banking secrecy laws and make it punishable offence to receive monies from these corrupt leaders. Again the western media must campaign vigorously for all looted monies to be returned to their rightful owners in Africa. The western media must team up with civil organisations to expose western companies who pay bribes to secure contracts in Africa like Acres International, Halliburton, Trafigura, Achair Partners and Progresso.

Western countries have a duty to stop their nations being used as save havens for stolen monies from the African continent. Western countries should reform their banking laws. They should return all looted money put there by corrupt African leaders to the African people. There must be an international coalition dedicated to tracking all stolen monies on the face of the earth with Africa given to priority.

Africans should establish well funded independent Corruption watchdogs to investigate, prosecute and severely punish corrupt officials who engage in corrupt practices. The Africans must demand transparency and accountability in government. Laws must be enacted in Africa to protect whistle blowers who take the risk to expose corrupt practices.

It is by uniting to fight corruption that Africa can ever dream of parting with poverty.

Lord Aikins Adusei
http://www.articlesbase.com/economics-articles/corruption-in-africa-a-cancer-that-wont-go-away-738350.html