“Jews & Communism - The SA Experience” – Part 1

https://rense.com/general85/jcom.htm

The Jewish author Chaim Bermant in his book The Jews (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1977, Sphere Books 1978) devotes a chapter to an aspect of Communism that is hardly generally known today, or at least not usually mentioned in the history books and encyclopaedias.

"No people is so averse to change yet none in recent times has dissipated more of its energy on revolution.. Although Jews formed less than five percent of Russia's population, they formed more than fifty percent of its revolutionaries..

"It must be added that most of the leading revolutionaries who convulsed Europe in the final decades of the last century and the first decades of this one, stemmed from prosperous Jewish families.. They were perhaps typified by the father of revolution, Karl Marx.. Thus when, after the chaos of World War I, revolutions broke out all over Europe, Jews were everywhere at the helm; Trotsky, Sverdlov, Kamenev and Zinoviev in Russia, Bela Kun in Hungary, Kurt Eisner in Bavaria, and, most improbable of all, Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin.

"To many outside observers, the Russian revolution looked like a Jewish conspiracy, especially when it was followed by Jewish-led revolutionary outbreaks in much of central Europe. The leadership of the Bolshevik Party had a preponderance of Jews and included Litvinov (real name Wallach), Liadov (Mandelshtam), Shklovsky, Saltz, Gusev (Drabkin), Zemliachka (Salkind), Helena Rozmirovich, Serafima Gopner, Yaroslavsky (Gubelman), Yaklovlev (Epstein), Riaznov(Goldendach), Uritsky and Larin. Of the seven members of the Politburo, the inner cabinet of the country, four, Trotsky (Bronstein), Zinoviev (Radomsky), Kamenev (Rosenfeld) and Sverdlov, were Jews."

"Jews had a prominent role in Communist parties elsewhere.."

“Jews & Communism - The SA Experience” – Part 2

https://rense.com/general85/jcom.htm

Is Bermant alone in these very serious allegations?

'The paroxysm of strong anti-Semitism came after the critical role of Jews in International Communism and the Russian Revolution and during the economic crises of the 1920s and 30s Anti-Semitism intensified throughout Europe and North America following the perceived and actual centrality of Jews in the Russian Revolution.. Such feelings were not restricted to Germany, or to vulgar extremists like the Nazis. All over Northern Europe and North America, anti-Semitism became the norm in 'nice society', and 'nice society' included the universities.'

• Black Athena (vol. 1) by Martin Bernal (1987) pp. 367, 387.

"The major role Jewish leaders played in the November (Russian) revolution was probably more important than any other factor in confirming (Hitler's) anti-Semitic beliefs."

• Who Financed Hitler, J&S Pool, p.164.

"There has been a tendency to circumvent or simply ignore the significant role of Jewish intellectuals in the German Communist Party, and thereby seriously neglect one of the genuine and objective reasons for increased anti-Semitism during and after World War 1.. The prominence of Jews in the revolution and early Weimar Republic is indisputable, and this was a very serious contributing cause for increased anti-Semitism in post-war years.. It is clear then that the stereotype of Jews as socialists and communists.. led many Germans to distrust the Jewish minority as a whole and to brand Jews as enemies of the German nation."

Hitler, Germans and the "Jewish Question" by Sarah Gordon (Princeton 1984) p23.

Was this Jewish involvement in Communism simply a well-intentioned, philanthropic activity aimed at improving the lot of the poor? Alexander Solzhenitsyn the Russian writer spent eight years in Soviet labor camps but afterwards received the Nobel Prize for literature. According to him, in the eighty years that preceded the Revolution in Russia, - years of revolutionary activity, uprisings and the assassination of a Czar, an average of ten persons a year were executed. After the Revolution, in 1918 and 1919, according to the figures of the Cheka (the secret police) itself - more than a thousand persons were executed per month without trial. In 1937-8, at the height of Stalin's terror, more than 40 000 persons were executed per month (Alexander Solzhenitsyn Speaks to the West (1978) p17).

Millions of persons were executed or sent to labor camps. In his magnum opus The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn credits Naftaly Frenkel, a 'Turkish-born Jew', with being chief overseer of the one-hundred-and-forty-mile-long Belomor (Baltic-White Sea) canal, built entirely with slave labour (paperback edition vol 2 p 72)… Is Solzhenitsyn alone in his accusations? Why are these names generally unknown to ordinary citizens in the West? The reason is unquestionably related to the very high involvement of Jews in gatekeeper roles in opinion-forming institutions such as the universities and particularly through ownership and control of the media.

“Jews & Communism - The SA Experience” – Part 3

https://rense.com/general85/jcom.htm

1. JEWS AND COMMUNISM IN SOUTH AFRICA

Against this background, have things in South Africa shown any parallels? Perhaps the best way to gain an insight into this topic is to quote from the books of various authorities.

BOOK ONE

A History of Communism in South Africa by Dr Henry R Pike (published by Christian Mission International of South Africa, Germiston, South Africa (1985, 1988).

A large number of Jews have worked to promote Communism in South Africa, as Pike's book indicates. Many of these Jews were involved in the organization of trade unions, particularly black trade unions. Some of the names mentioned by Pike are A Z Berman 'a noted Marxist' who headed the Industrial Socialist League in Cape Town; the communist writer David Shub, Solly Sachs, secretary of the Garment Workers Union and expelled from and then readmitted to the South African Communist Party, Bennie Weinbren who directed the Non-European Trade Union Federation, Issy Diamond, Abraham Levy, Hymie Levin, Issie Wolfson, Julius Lewin, Louis Joffe, Dr Max Joffe, Molly (Zelikowitz) Wolton, Lazar Bach, Rebecca (Notlowitz) Bunting, Fanny Klenerman, Michael Harmel, Sam Kahn, Katy Kagan, Eli Weinberg, Yetta Barenblatt, Hymie Barsel, Leon and Norman Levy, Lionel Forman, Jacqueline and Rowley Arenstein, Erroland Dorothy Shanley, Monty Berman, Bertram Hirson and Neville Rubin.

Dr Pike (p 212-3) quotes from a South African Government Gazette Extraordinary (vol VI 16 Nov 1962 pp 2-28) which listed 'persons who have been office-bearers, officers, members or active supporters of the Communist Party of South Africa'. The list included 66 'clearly identifiable as Jews', 61 'white non-Jews' and two uncertain. At the time, the South African population was approximately 3 million whites, while the South African Jewish population was 110 000 (World Almanac 1958 p270).

>>16334165

>"In his youth, Goldreich lived in Palestine and fought Palestinians as part of the Palmach; the Elite military wing of Haganah. He returned to South Africa and became a successful artist. Together with fellow activist Harold Wolpe, he used SACP funds to purchase Liliesleaf Farm, also aiding the armed wing MK. After escaping from prison, he left to live in Israel."

>>16332096

>Black South Africans are already in their homeland, he says, whereas Soviet Jewish emigration to Israel is another act in the age-old Jewish search for a homeland.

“Jews & Communism - The SA Experience” – Part 4

https://rense.com/general85/jcom.htm

BOOK TWO

Jews and Zionism: the South African Experience (1910-67), by Dr Gideon Shimoni (Oxford University Press, 1980). This book appears to have been written for a Jewish readership.

Two extended quotes from the book will serve as a summary of the situation some decades ago.

[Dr Shimoni was born in South Africa to parents from Lithuania, but settled in Israel where he lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and where he gained post-graduate degrees in Jewish history. While bitterly contemptuous of South Africa under the apartheid system, Dr Shimoni in effect identifies with the concept of geographically based ethnic groupings that was the basis of the South African system. This kind of irony, not to say hypocrisy, is typical of Jews opposed to 'racism' in Europe, the US or South Africa.]

Dr Shimoni writes of '..the extraordinary salience of Jewish individuals in the white opposition to the regime of apartheid. Throughout this period Jewish names kept appearing in every facet of the struggle: amongst reformist liberals; in the radical Communist opposition; in the courts, whether as defendants or as counsel for the defense; in the lists of bannings and amongst those who fled the country to evade arrest. Their prominence was particularly marked in the course of the Treason Trial which occupied an important place in the news media throughout the second half of the 1950's. This trial began in December 1956, when 156 people were arrested on charges of treason in the form of a conspiracy to overthrow the state by violence and to replace it with a state based on Communism. Twenty-three of those arrested were Whites, more than half of them Jews. They included Yetta Barenblatt, Hymie Barsel, Lionel (Rusty) Bernstein, Leon Levy, Norman Levy,Sydney Shall, Joe Slovo, Ruth (First) Slovo, Sonia Bunting, Lionel Forman, Isaac Horvitch, Ben Turok, Jacqueline Arenstein, Errol Shanley, Dorothy Shanley. To top it all, at one stage in the trial the defense counsel was led byIsrael Maisels, while the prosecutor was none other than Oswald Pirow. The juxtaposition was striking: Maisels, the prominent Jewish communal leader, defending those accused of trying to overthrow White supremacy; Pirow, the extreme Afrikaner Nationalist and former Nazi sympathizer, defending White supremacy.' (pp. 227-8).

'In this extended five-year period between the emergence of violent opposition and its effective suppression, the prominent involvement of individual Jews was in the public eye more than ever before. This was even more so than in the dramatic circumstances of the 'Rivonia arrests'. On 11 July 1963 the police raided the home of Arthur Goldreich in Rivonia near Johannesburg, where it captured, by surprise, the leadership cadre of the Umkonto we Sizwe underground. Seventeen people were arrested.. Five of those arrested were Whites, all of them Jews. They were: Arthur Goldreich, Lionel Bernstein, Hilliard Festenstein, Dennis Goldberg and Bob Hepple.. [There was an] overwhelming impression that Jews were in the forefront of the White radicals who were trying to overthrow the system of White supremacy in South Africa. When the secret African Resistance Movement (ARM) was crushed during 1964, it again became evident that many Jews were involved. One of its founders was identified as Monty Berman.. others were Adrian Leftwich and Bertram (Baruch) Hirson. Among those who were associated with ARM were Neville Rubin and Michael Schneider [and ] others implicated were Frederick and Rhoda Prager, Raymond Eisenstein and Hugh Lewin..' (pp. 232-3).

Dr Shimoni records with obvious distaste the wording of an Afrikaans letter in a newspaper criticizing this fundamentally hypocritical proclivity of Jews: 'They (the Jews) themselves are the most exclusive apartheid people, yet they exert themselves here for integration.' While Jews themselves have shown no intention to integrate or merge with the African masses, they have been hyper-critical of mainstream whites who are reluctant to follow this route, criticizing churches with segregationist policies, while their synagogues have remained ethnically 100% Jewish.

“Jews & Communism - The SA Experience” – Part 5

https://rense.com/general85/jcom.htm

BOOK THREE

Cutting Through the Mountain: Interviews with South African Activists Edited by Immanuel Suttner (Viking-Penguin, England and USA 1997). This book also appears to have been written for a Jewish readership. It is a thick expensively bound book of over 600 pages, financially supported by the Liberty Life Foundation created by the Jewish mega-capitalist Donald Gordon. Suttner says 'a disproportionate number of individual Jews played a part in transforming South Africa into a more just society. There are two streams: those who fought 'within the system' as jurists, members of parliament, via the media, or in civil society, and those who entered 'illegal' organizations which were socialist, communist or mass-based in character.' (p.2) He says the book 'welcomes (these Jews) back not only as worthy South Africans, socialists, communists or liberals, but as worthy Jews' (p.3). Some of the 'remarkable people' (page vii) who are heroes of the book include:

Taffy Adler who was involved in the 1970s and '80s in the 'formation and consolidation of the black trade union movement'. His father was a Lithuanian Jew who emigrated to South Africa in 1926 and who 'was tremendously loyal to Stalin and Russian communism' right up to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. His uncle, Michael Harmel, became general secretary of the South African Communist Party.

Ray Alexander (Rachel Alexandrowich) arrived in South Africa from Latvia and joined the SA Communist Party five days later. She played a leading role in the organization of trade unions. She was married to Jack Simons, a 'devoted communist' and lecturer at the University of Cape Town.

Pauline Podbrey (Podbrez) born in Lithuania came to South Africa at the age of eleven. She joined the Communist Youth League, run by Max Joffe, and the related Labor League of Youth, run by Hilda Bernstein. Of the Communist Party she says 'the majority of the members were Jewishlooking back on it now, it seems as if everybody was Jewish.' (*p52). She married a prominent Indian trade unionist and Communist Party leader, resulting in her mother being ostracized by the South African Jewish community, although it has been and still is normal practice for this community to depict white non-Jews as despicable prejudiced racists.

Joe Slovo born in Lithuania, came to South Africa where he joined the Young Communist League at the age of sixteen. He became a central member of the Communist Party of South Africa and a 'hard-line Stalinist', becoming general secretary in 1986. He concentrated on building up Umkhonto we Sizwe, the 'armed wing' of the ANC (African National Congress), becoming its chief of staff and head strategist in the campaign of bombings directed at civilian targets and other acts of terror. He only abandoned his commitment to Stalinism and Soviet-style communism when the Soviet bloc started falling apart in the late 1980s and it became necessary to do so. A key strategist representing the ANC in the negotiations with De Klerk's government in the hand over of power, he became a minister in Mandela's Cabinet.

when the ANC came to power in 1994. He died of cancer a few years later. His daughter published an autobiographical book describing her father's affair with a Jewish Communist friend's wife and his utter refusal to acknowledge the son born of this relationship.

Gill Marcus, the daughter of parents involved with the Communist Party, a long-time member of the Party and of the ANC, is now a Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank after being a member of the first Mandela Cabinet.

Ronnie Kasrils became a central figure in the South African Communist Party and head of military intelligence of the ANC's military wing. He became Deputy Minister of Defense in the Mandela government, and is now Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry.

>>16334165

“Jews & Communism - The SA Experience” – Part 6

https://rense.com/general85/jcom.htm

BOOK FOUR

Traitors' End: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Movement in Southern Africa by Nathaniel Weyl (Tafelberg Press, South Africa and Arlington House, USA, 1970).

'For the most part, the Jews had come to South Africa from Lithuania at the turn of the century.. They had been popular at first, but by the mid-1930's this was no longer the case. The Jews had become heavily urbanized. In Johannesburg, they constituted 17 per cent of the population and were sufficiently conspicuous so that the metropolis was sometimes referred to, not as Jo'burg, but as Jewburg. They aroused envy and some rancor during the years of depression because they controlled a large part of the business of Johannesburg and other cities.. Anti-Semitism was fed by the economic discontent.. A perhaps more important ingredient was the prominence of South African Jews in finance, mining and the other economic command posts of the nation, on the one hand, and in revolutionary and racial reform movements on the other. From the outset, the Jews had been prominent in the Communist Party and its various fronts. They were equally conspicuous in the various movements that sought to break down the barriers separating the White from the non-White population. South African anti-Semitic propaganda.. depicted the Jew as a deracinated element who sought to destroy White civilization and nationalism with the twin weapons of Communism and international finance. Given the visible prominence of Jews in both areas, this doctrine fell on receptive ears.'

The famous Rivonia Trial of the 1960's resulted from a raid on a farm near Johannesburg in which many of the top leadership of the Communist party were detained. The White defendants were virtually all Jews, including Dennis Goldberg, 'a civil engineer who served as commander in a Communist camp that trained young guerrillas', and Lionel 'Rusty' Bernstein, the only prisoner to be acquitted. A Johannesburg architect, Bernstein 'admitted to having been a Communist for 25 years, but successfully alleged that he had left the party, without, however, changing his revolutionary convictions.' (Weyl pp 122-3). Amongst those implicated during the trial were the Jews Joe Slovo and his wife Ruth First, Bob Hepple andMichael Harmel. 'Operation Mayibuye [a plan for guerrilla warfare, armed invasion of South Africa and Communist conquest of the country] was drafted by Arthur Goldreich, perhaps the most important of the men captured by the South African Police at Rivonia. Goldreich managed to bribe his way out of prison.. During the trial, Goldreich was referred to by Nelson Mandela and other defendants as a military expert who served as an officer in the Israeli war for independence.. Goldreich's plan was modeled on the guerrilla strategy of the Chinese Communists.. Goldreich's notebook shows constant preoccupation with the practical details of revolutionary war. He goes into the types of explosives and fuses needed and their characteristics' (Weyl pp124, 127-8).

'On December 16, 1966, the United Nations branded Rhodesia "a threat to international peace". President Johnson's Ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, immediately pledged United States support for sanctions against Rhodesia "in order to drive home to the illegal regime (of Ian Smith) that the international community will not tolerate the existence of a discriminatory system based on minority rule in defiance of the United Nations and its principles." Ambassador Goldberg's logic was extraordinary, to say the least. Over half of the 122 UN member states had governments not based upon majority rule As for the United Nations statement that Rhodesia threatened international peace, the statement simply reversed the facts of the matter. Rhodesia was exposed to attacks by guerrillas, armed, financed, trained and abetted by Black African member states of the United Nations in flagrant defiance of the UN Charter.. AmbassadorGoldberg had shown on previous occasions that, where racial issues were involved, he practiced a double standard of morality in favor of Black demands.. Ambassador Goldberg was not alone in his fanatical hostility to White rule in Africa..' (Weyl pp 162-3).

“Jews & Communism - The SA Experience” – Part 7

https://rense.com/general85/jcom.htm

Jews in South Africa in the main and those mentioned above in particular have all been pushing for a majoritarian government in which population numbers effectively mean that whites have no say over their own affairs. The new ANC-dominated South Africa is proclaimed to be a 'democracy', although a leading political scientist, Professor Hermann Giliomee, has described the election system as a simple ethnic census. Whites, for example, have no effective power over the government as far as their own interests, such as schooling for their children or their language rights are concerned. The Constitutional Court, supposedly the custodian of these rights, has an over-representation of Jews who have shown little sympathy for white non-Jewish rights. Even the traditionally English South African game of cricket is being transformed - the Jewish director of the cricket board, Dr Ali Bacher, is doing everything in his power to turn cricket in the country into a black-dominated sport.

There are various kinds of hypocrisy at work here. Authors such as Immanuel Suttner perhaps unwittingly communicate their clear belief that Jews are morally better than South African whites, because of their political stance. This in itself is not only racist but also not true. We can study the attitude of South African Jews to Middle Eastern issues to see whether they really do display a genuine moral superiority. Until a few years ago South African Jews gave more per capita to Israel than any other Jewish community, including that of America (Suttner p. 420).

'When Ronnie Kasrils, a leader of the ANC's armed campaign against apartheid South Africa, returned home after 27 years in exile, he was lionized by a local Jewish establishment belatedly eager to associate itself with the struggle. His picture was put in the Jewish Museum in Cape Town and his name in the Book of Honor. The Jewish community basked in his reflected glory' (Fair Lady 22 May 2002 p.37). South Africa's Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris officiated at the funeral of Joe Slovo, calling Slovo 'a better Jew than most' (ibid p.39). Who was Slovo? He was general secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa and chief of staff of the armed terrorist wing of the ANC (African National Congress). When Kasrils, in an awkward position because of his cabinet post in the ANC government which includes several very influential Moslems, became one of a very small number of Jews to speak out against Israeli policies against the Palestinian people in Palestine, his name became mud. He signed a petition along with 286 other Jews to the effect that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians does not have their blessing. The South African Zionist Federation quickly organized a rival petition in support of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, and collected 11500 signatures. Helen Suzman, the veteran anti-Apartheid Jewish member of the South African parliament and consequently the recipient of numerous international honors and awards, 'believes that everything Israel has done has been retaliatory' (ibid p39) in spite of the fact that the Israelis, with support from Jews elswhere particularly in the US and its government, have been able to take over Palestine with absolute impunity, disregarding with absolute and violent contempt the lawful rights of the Palestinians. This hypocrisy is very common in the Zionist community which forms the overwhelmingly dominant part of South African Jewry.

No candid discussion of the issues raised above was permitted to take place in South Africa before the fall of white rule owing to the ownership pattern of the newspaper cartel. There has been much talk of a 'Jewish Capitalist-Communist nexus' - we have to recognize that monopoly capital has an affinity with Communism. According to Antony Sutton (Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution) international bankers funded the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1917, Trotsky and 200 revolutionaries were literally transferred from New York's Lower East Side to St. Petersburg to foment the revolution in Russia. Jews are internationally synonymous with hyper-capitalism or monopoly-capitalism, where ever-greater financial power is continually being sought, and there is the impression that the hunger behind this urge is insatiable. Media control is an important part of this program, because criticism must be stifled at all costs. These powerful people are ever-seeking to instruct or coerce non-Jewish people of European ancestry in the direction of non-discrimination, but always supporting their own country with its fundamental racial discrimination whereby Palestinians born in Jerusalem have no rights, while even atheistic Jews born in Milwaukee or Miami have citizenship full rights in Israel.

“Jews & Communism - The SA Experience” – Part 8

https://rense.com/general85/jcom.htm

The large reserves of gold, diamonds and other natural wealth attracted Jews in large numbers from Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Russia. The discovery of gold in the Boer republic of the Transvaal turned out to be tragically unfortunate for the Boers. According to J A Hobson, an English liberal-socialist thinker and correspondent who reported on the Boer War, 'a little ring of international financiers', mainly Jews, led Britain into the war for their own selfish capitalist interests. (Hobson, The War in South Africa ¬ its causes and effects (New York, Macmillan, 1900, pp194, 184, 190). Boer farms and towns were burnt to the ground. Boer women and children were herded into concentration camps, where 26 000 died through epidemics and unsanitary conditions. But the Jews gained a wonderful ascendancy in the gold and diamond industry, with leading names including Barney Barnato, Solly Joel and Lionel Phillips. Eventually the Oppenheimer family, with financial support from Rothschild interests, controlled not only the largest gold mines in the country but also the world diamond cartel De Beers and a very large part of the South African economy, as well as the English language newspaper monopoly. De Beers in recent decades has been often implicated in trading in 'blood-diamonds' from war zones in Africa. (The international diamond trade in New York and Amsterdam is also largely Jewish-controlled.) The Oppenheimer press cartel normally depicted white efforts in South Africa to find political self-determination, including the apartheid policy of parallel or separate development, as totally and utterly reprehensible and unacceptable. At the same time the cartel ensured that the Israeli State did not come in for parallel criticism for its incomparably inhumane and violent oppression of the native Palestinians. The Jews have found it useful to their ethnic agenda to exacerbate tensions between white and black in South Africa, with the clear objective of subverting the apartheid idea of ethnic self-determination for a situation in which non-Jewish whites would be subject to unfettered black political and social control. Since this goal has been achieved, Jews have been emigrating in large numbers, primarily to the United States. Although scornful of white non-Jews for racism during the apartheid era, none of these Jewish emigrants are known to have moved to any African country. As Immanuel Suttner says 'The Jewish community.. will likely continue to shrink through emigration, and those Jews who choose to stay in South Africa, and choose to involve themselves fully in South Africa's unfolding story, face a difficult period of redefining their role and finding a niche in which they believe they are relevant and useful.' (Cutting Through the Mountain p.4).

Why are Jews prominent as political activists in all western countries, but definitely not on behalf of the Palestinians, as fifty years of history have shown? Why were US Congressmen Stephen J. Solarz and Howard Wolpe, instrumental in securing financial sanctions against the South African apartheid regime, but 'unwavering in their commitments to Israel' (ex-Congressman Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Insttutions Confront Israel's Lobby (1985) p70-71). Are hidden tribal agendas a factor in American politics?

“Jews & Communism - The SA Experience” – Part 9

https://rense.com/general85/jcom.htm

George Steiner, Cambridge professor of English and comparative literature, author of numerous books such as Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, Language and Silence etc, set out his sobering views in a novel called The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. (1981). Strangely enough (Dr Steiner is a Jew) he hypothetically 'gives Hitler the chance to defend himself before a Jewish court', 'to defend the indefensible'. How on earth can a Cambridge professor, a Jew, in effect defend A.H., the 'greatest embodiment of evil in human history'? What can be his argument? In summary (Steiner pp 120-126):

Point One: 'The Nazi race doctrines were but a "parody" of the Jewish doctrine of "a chosen people, chosen by God for his own, the only race on earth chosen, exalted, made singular among mankind.. to set a race apart, to hold before it a promised land".'

Point Two: 'The Jew's addiction to the ideal.. "It is no accident that Marx and his minions were Jews, that the congregations of Bolshevism ¬ Trotsky, Rosa Luxemberg, Kamenev, the whole fanatic, murderous pack ¬ were of Israel..'

Point Three: "You have exaggerated. Grossly. Hysterically. What were Rotterdam or Coventry compared to Dresden and Hiroshima? Did I invent the camps? Ask the Boers.. To whom did you hand over millions, tens of millions of men and women from Prague to the Baltic? What did (Solzhenitsyn) say? That Stalin had slaughtered thirty million. I was a man of a murderous time, but a small man compared to him. That he perfected genocide (of the kulaks) when I was still a nameless scribbler in Munich. My boys used their fists and their whips. I won't deny it. The times stank of hunger and blood. But when a man spat out the truth they would stop their fun. Stalin's torturers worked for the pleasure of the thing. To make men befoul themselves, to obtain confessions that are lies, insanities, obscene jokes. The truth only made them more bestial. It is not I who assert these things: it is your own Jewish survivors, your historians, the sage of the Gulag. Who, then was the great destroyer, whose blood-lust the more implacable? Stalin's or mine? Our terrors were a village carnival compared to his. Our camps covered absurd acres; he had strung wire and death-pits around a continent. Yet Stalin died in bed, and yet you hunt me down like a rabid dog.."

Point Four: 'Zionism was shaped in the image of German nationalism.. "The Holocaust gave you the courage of injustice, to drive the Arab out of his home, out of his field, because he was without resource, because he was in your way, knowing that those you had driven out were rotting in refugee camps, not ten miles away, buried alive in despair and lunatic dreams of vengeance.. You used the Holocaust to create Israel.. Should you not honour me who have made your long, vacuous dream of Zion a reality?".'

Why is anti-Palestinianism, without doubt a form of anti-Semitism, not 'politically incorrect'? As various commentators for years have been pointing out, the Palestinians have been made for decades to pay for the Holocaust. Is this fair or just? Is it logical or even reasonable? Does it matter? Does anything matter?

>>16369559

>Sachs became the architect of the post-apartheid constitution of 1996.

“Albie Sachs adds his voice to the land issue”

https://youtu.be/HxH7askckLA

Jul 27, 2018

“Retired Constitutional Court judge Albie Sachs believes land expropriation without compensation can be achieved without changing the Constitution. He says a very strong case can be made for this. Sachs was giving the opening address at the land colloquium being held at the University of Cape Town.”

“Glencore redirected over $75 million in mining payments to scandal-hit friend of Congolese President, Global Witness reveals”

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/glencore-redirected-over-75-million-mining-payments-scandal-hit-friend-president-global-witness-reveals/

March 3, 2017

Below are excerpts.

Between 2013 and 2016 mining giant Glencore paid over $75m to Dan Gertler, a controversial businessman accused of bribing senior officials in Democratic Republic of Congo to advance his mining interests, Global Witness revealed today. These payments were due to be paid to Congo’s state mining company Gécamines under the terms of the original contract it had with Glencore.

Glencore did not disclose in company filings that it was instead making these payments to Gertler, a known corruption risk. That he was the recipient of the payments comes to light only weeks after Glencore bought Gertler out of mining assets it held jointly with him in Congo in a billion dollar deal.

A Global Witness investigation found that from 2013 to 2016 Toronto-listed Katanga Mining, majority-owned by Glencore, made “signature bonus” and other payments totalling over $75 million to Dan Gertler’s Africa Horizons company, registered in the Cayman Islands. Under the original contract these payments would have gone to Gécamines, but Global Witness wrote to Glencore after reviewing company documents and filings that raised questions over the true recipient of the payments. Glencore admitted that they were made to Gertler’s company.

“It’s outrageous that Glencore has been making payments to a friend of the Congolese President who has been accused of bribery and corruption, and then not telling its shareholders or the public that it’s done so,” said Pete Jones from the Congo team at Global Witness. “Glencore has been in business in Congo with Gertler for a decade and has known about the allegations that have been made against him for years.”

Gertler is a close friend of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila and has been a focus of major foreign bribery investigations in the US and UK. In a finding by US authorities in September against the hedge fund Och-Ziff, an “infamous Israeli businessman” was identified as having paid bribes to Congolese officials to win mining licences for Och-Ziff. The businessman is widely understood to be Gertler. He is reported to be a central focus of a corruption investigation by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office into Kazakh mining company ENRC, based in part on ENRC’s deals with Gertler in Congo. Gertler’s spokesman told Bloomberg that his company “vigorously contests any and all accusations of wrongdoing in any of its dealings in [Congo]”.

Congo has vast natural resource wealth, but corruption, mismanagement and the sale of mines below market value have helped keep it one of the world’s poorest countries, consistently languishing near the bottom of the UN Human Development Index.

Glencore has now admitted, in a letter to Global Witness, that these payments actually went to Gertler from 2013 to 2016.

>>16405067

>Glencore has now admitted, in a letter to Global Witness, that these payments actually went to Gertler from 2013 to 2016.

“Cyril Ramaphosa’s history a red flag – expert” - Glencore

https://www.security.co.za/news/47386

3 June 2022

Glencore denied Ramaphosa’s direct involvement in its operations

A leading scholar on the workings of multinationals, has poohpoohed as “an evasion of tough questions” a move by mining house Glencore to absolve President Cyril Ramaphosa from day-to-day operational involvement in a major coal mine supplying Eskom.

Ramaphosa was chair and co-owner of the company’s subsidiary Optimum Coal Holdings (OCH) prior to being appointed deputy president in 2014.

University of Johannesburg sociology professor Patrick Bond was responding to this week’s statement by Glencore, in which it denied Ramaphosa’s direct involvement in the company’s operations, or in its Eskom-supplying Optimum Coal Mine (OCM).

“Mr Ramaphosa divested his entire interest in OCH on 22 May 2014 – prior to him taking office as deputy president and prior to his involvement with the Eskom war room,” the statement read. [They are covering up for him]

Citing Ramaphosa’s past involvement as a director of London Stock Exchange-listed Lonmin, Bond said: “We have learnt a lot about what multinational mining houses want from Cyril Ramaphosa – for example his e-mail on 15 August 2012, to political decision-makers.

“What these multinationals need is a licence to do what they want to do in any country, by assimilating a guy who has influence. In the case of Lonmin, it regrettably meant using Ramaphosa to put down a strike,” said Bond.

“We saw this in an e-mail he sent to then minerals minister Susan Shabangu, describing the Lonmin strike as a criminal act and not a labour dispute.

“We must remember what followed when the police force went overboard in doing what they thought he wanted [now known as the Marikana Massacre].”

Turning to the Glencore saga in which the company was last week fined more than $1.5 billion (about R23 billion) after pleading guilty in the US to bribery and market manipulation, mainly against Africans, Bond said: “The fine of $1.5 billion they paid is not compared to the revenue they collected over this period, which amounted to $3.2 trillion.

“This is a slap on the wrist. And Washington collects the fine, not victims in Africa.

“They are the single biggest mining and commodities trading house in the world.

“The other question is that when Glencore was fined, its share price went up by six percent on the London Stock Exchange and Johannesburg Stock Exchange. How does this happen?

“Here we are dealing with a company employing bribery as its main technique – seen in other parts of the world like Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, elsewhere in Africa and Venezuela.”

Former Eskom chief executive Matshela Koko this week told The Citizen of his intention to submit documents to the US attorney-general about flaws in the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, which he maintained failed to properly investigate Ramaphosa’s role in pushing Optimum’s agenda.

“Scandal-hit mining companies BHP and Glencore pay record $12bn to investors”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/15/scandal-hit-mining-companies-bhp-and-glencore-pay-record-12bn-to-investors

15 February 2022

Scandal-hit mining companies BHP and Glencore have paid out a record $12bn in dividends to investors as the price of the materials the companies mine continues to boom.

BHP, the world’s biggest mining group which scrapped its dual stock market structure dropping London last year for a sole listing in Sydney, announced a record $7.6bn half-year dividend on Tuesday.

The company makes most of its profits from mining iron ore in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, where it has ministerial permission to destroy as many as 40 sites of cultural importance to the country’s native Aborigines.

Following investor outrage at its mining plans, the company subsequently pledged not to damage any of the sites without “extensive consultation” with native owners.

BHP is aiming to transition its business to derive half of revenues from “future facing commodities” – metals needed in a low-carbon economy beyond fossil fuels – by 2030. BHP made $9.7bn in adjusted profits for the half year to the end of December, a 57% year-on-year increase.

Anglo-Swiss rival Glencore, one of the world’s biggest miners and commodity traders, has also benefited from the soaring price of oil, gas and metals as economies seek to recover from the pandemic.

The company paid a $4bn dividend to shareholders as it reported record adjusted profits of $21.3bn last year, an 83% increase over 2020. Glencore also said it had set aside $1.5bn to pay for the costs of investigations into bribery and market manipulation.

The company is facing corruption investigations in the US, UK and Brazil relating to its mining operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, home to the world’s largest reserves of cobalt, a crucial metal in electric battery manufacture, as well as Venezuela and Nigeria.

“We recognise there has been misconduct in this company historically. We’ve worked hard to correct that,” said Gary Nagle, chief executive at Glencore. “Looking forward, we remain focused on our strategy … while operating in a responsible manner across all aspects of our business.”

Glencore, which said it expects to resolve the US, UK and Brazilian investigations this year, still faces potential corruption and bribery investigations by other countries, including Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Instead of selling or spinning off its coal operations as a number of its peers are – a strategy activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners has also urged the company to do – Glencore is instead pursuing a strategy of running them down with the aim of closure by the mid-2040s.

“Touting the work the company is doing in reducing its exposure to fossil fuels is one thing but while its peers are distancing themselves from coal, Glencore seems happy to hang onto it and deplete its use ‘responsibly’,” said Dan Lane, senior analyst at Freetrade. “The best PR machine out there wouldn’t be able to convince the market that the coal division is a sustainable or responsible one.”

“Glencore’s Corruption guilty verdict vindicates Critics of the New Dawn’s blind trust in dodgy Mining Houses” – Zambia

https://www.lusakatimes.com/2022/06/02/glencores-corruption-guilty-verdict-vindicates-critics-of-the-new-dawns-blind-trust-in-dodgy-mining-houses/

June 2, 2022

The New Dawn government has been accused of being too cosy to the mining houses despite their poor record. The UPND administration’s development strategy is mainly anchored on mining without making changes to decades old agreements and unfair incentives, through negotiations with mining houses, despite overwhelming evidence in the past 20 years which shows that they have been ripping Zambia off with all sorts of legal machinations as well as through financial and environmental criminal practices.

The corruption guilty verdict in the US, of Glencore, the former owners of Mopani Copper Mines (MCM), vindicates the New Dawn critics. Glencore bought MCM for $30m and sold it back to Zambia for $1.5billion, after 20 years of paying no income taxes, claiming losses throughout the period.

Glencore, is expected to pay to authorities in the US, UK and Brazil the sum US$1.5bn after pleading guilty to a 10-year international bribery scheme as well as a plot to manipulate commodity prices. Guess what, the penalty may even be paid from the loan repayments they receive from Zambia for MCM which they sold us at such an exorbitant amount having bought it for a song.

“The scope of this criminal bribery scheme is staggering,” Damian Williams, US attorney for the Southern District of New York told a press conference. “Glencore paid bribes to secure oil contracts. Glencore paid bribes to avoid government audits. Glencore bribed judges to make lawsuits disappear. At bottom, Glencore paid bribes to make money – hundreds of millions of dollars. And it did so with the approval, and even encouragement, of its top executives.”

According to the US Department of Justice, Glencore was involved in a “decade-long scheme by Glencore and its subsidiaries to make and conceal corrupt payments and bribes through intermediaries for the benefit of foreign officials across multiple countries”. And between 2007 and 2018, Glencore paid around US$80mn to third-party intermediaries to secure business with state-owned or state-controlled entities. The practices took place in several African and Latin American countries, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil and Venezuela. Glencore is also said to use inflated invoices, sham consulting agreements and intermediary companies to conceal payments to foreign officials

In its recent opinion piece on the verdict, the UK Financial Times wrote: “Glencore is not alone in needing a cultural overhaul on bribery. Broadly, the contribution of global resources companies to the impoverishment and penury of African nations was considered a niche concern in the Square Mile.” (the Square mile is the City of London- Central London- which has been a doyen of dirty and bloody money which we never knew until the Ukraine-Russia was has exposed the City)

The Financial Times Opinion clearly show that Glencore is not the only Mining house involved in corruption but others are also guilty of this. But Glencore appears to have been in the premier league of Multinational corruption and has been caught red handed. Although Zambia is not mentioned by name in guilty the verdict, it is included in the phrase “multiple countries”, “African Countries”. It follows that Zambia should not be naïve and have blind trust of other Mining houses. In any case, Vendetta Resources is another mining house in Zambia whose record in Zambia for various crimes is well documented.

It is with the above back ground, that critics including the author of this article have been critical of the New Dawn’s fallacious belief that ramping up production to 3million tonne will benefit Zambia without negotiating better deals, including revision of the archaic development agreements. The reality is that increased production will only benefit foreign mining houses’ shareholders and very little will remain in Zambia for development. The argument by critics is that Zambia will not sufficiently benefits from increased mining production as Mining houses having been involved in widespread schemes financial crimes like corruption, tax evasion through transfer pricing and other machinations to deny Zambia sufficient benefits from their natural resources due to pure greed by foreign investors and their local accomplices.

“China’s GEM Co. Ltd and Glencore extend their long-term strategic cobalt partnership”

https://www.glencore.com/media-and-insights/news/Chinas-Gem-Co-Ltd-and-Glencore-extend-their-long-term-strategic-cobalt-partnership

Baar, Switzerland 7 October 2019

GEM Co. Ltd (GEM) and Glencore are pleased to announce that they have entered into a five year agreement for the supply of cobalt hydroxide (cobalt).

Under the terms of the agreement, Glencore will provide a minimum of 61,200 tonnes of Cobalt for GEM between 2020 and 2024.

Mr Xu, Chairman of GEM commented:

“GEM is very pleased to announce this long-term strategic co-operation with Glencore. This agreement represents a major cornerstone in GEM’s cobalt sourcing strategy as it will support GEM’s continued contribution to the Chinese New Energy Market.

“In an ever-changing and fast evolving cobalt environment, GEM and Glencore have managed to maintain a very strong working relationship.

“By securing a key battery raw material, GEM clearly demonstrates its ability to implement and deliver its vision for an electrified, carbon-free transportation system.

“GEM will continue focusing on the development and the manufacturing of high quality sustainable cobalt products to meet the fast growing demand for cobalt containing battery products.

“GEM truly appreciates Glencore’s long term approach and its support in establishing a stable and sustainable cobalt supply chain.”

Nico Paraskevas, Head of Marketing, Copper & Cobalt, Glencore, commented:

“The extension of our long established partnership with GEM further endorses Glencore’s important role in supplying the materials that enable the energy and mobility transition. Furthermore, this long term partnership provides Glencore with a stable outlet for a significant portion of its expected future Cobalt Hydroxide production.”

”China Huaneng Group and Glencore sign MOU on CCUS Project” – Australian Funding

https://www.glencore.com/media-and-insights/news/china-huaneng-and-glencore-sign-mou-on-ccus-project

Beijing, China

12 April 2021

On 10 April at the 6th China International Conference on CO2 Capture Utilization and Storage, China Huaneng Group Clean Energy Research Institute Co., Ltd. and Carbon Capture Transport and Storage Company of Glencore have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the cooperation on carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) technology, commencing with the CTSCo Project in Millmerran power station in Australia.

Glencore is one of the world’s largest diversified natural resource companies and China Huaneng is one of the world’s largest energy and technology companies.

Signing the MOU today both companies committed to supporting the deployment of low emissions technologies like CCUS to reduce greenhouse emissions from the use of fossil fuels and other industrial processes.

The CTSCo Project in Queensland, Australia will use China Huaneng’s CO2 capture technology at the Millmerran coal fired power station to capture a stream of CO2 which will then be transported and stored permanently in a non-potable aquifer at a depth of more than 2 kilometres.

“This is the first integrated international carbon dioxide capture and storage project that China has participated in. Huaneng will work with Glencore to complete a high-quality carbon capture project in Australia's Surat Basin, build a high-quality cross-industry international cooperation project, help coal-fired power generation achieve "near zero emissions", and enhance its international influence,” said Dr Li Weidong, Chairman of China Huaneng Group Clean Energy Research Institute Co., Ltd.

Glencore CEO, Ivan Glasenberg, welcomed the ongoing collaboration with China Huaneng. “We are very pleased to strengthen our collaboration with China Huaneng on the CTSCo Project. This project is vitally important because it can scale up to support the reduction of Scope 3 emissions from the use of fossil fuels across a broad range of industrial sectors.”

The CTSCo Project is Australia’s most advanced onshore CCUS project and will demonstrate CCUS at an industrial scale. Key funding and project participants include Glencore, China Huaneng, Low Emission Technology Australia (LETA), Australian National Low Emissions Coal Research and Development (ANLECR&D) and the Australian Government.

“Glencore to honour pre-existing Russia contracts, no new deals”

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/glencore-honour-pre-existing-russia-contracts-no-new-deals-2022-03-30/

March 30, 2022

LONDON, March 30 (Reuters) - Global mining and trading Glencore (GLEN.L) said on Wednesday it had "no realistic way to exit" its stakes in Russian company En+ Group and state oil firm Rosneft (ROSN.MM) after reviewing its business ties.

The London-listed miner added in the statement that it would "not enter into any new trading business in respect of Russian origin commodities unless directed by the relevant government authorities".

On March 1, the Swiss company said it was reviewing its business activities in Russia.

Western companies began severing ties with Moscow days after its invasion of Ukraine, under pressure from governments and shareholders.

Glencore holds a 10.5% stake in aluminium and hydropower company En+ that in turns is the majority owner of Russian aluminium producer Rusal (RUAL.MM).

Glencore has a 0.57% stake in Rosneft.

It does not have any board or management representation in either company.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rusal-glencore-idUSKBN21L1AO

“Rusal, Glencore agree aluminium deal worth up to $16.3 billion” – April 3, 2020

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s Rusal has approved a new long-term aluminium supply contract with Glencore worth up to $16.3 billion, it said in a Hong-Kong regulatory statement on Friday.

Swiss trader and metals producer Glencore has long been one of the main clients of Hong Kong-listed Rusal, the world’s largest aluminium producer outside China.

Glencore owns a stake in Rusal parent En+ Group.

The new contract is for 2020-2024 and can be extended for 2025, Rusal said.

“Calls mount for SA probe into Glencore” – Ties to the ANC

https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/companies/calls-mount-for-sa-probe-into-glencore-39c35f28-3721-46ea-828f-c4e94419f468

THE CALLS for a local investigation into the activities of diversified miner Glencore are intensifying as civil society organisations have requested South Africa to look at its relationship with the company following it being found guilty of corruption.

Bench Marks Foundation, Corruption Watch and South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), supported the calls from civil rights groups in countries where bribes took place to conduct further probes into Glencore.

The Anglo-Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company this month admitted to paying more than $100 million (R1.5 billion) in bribes to officials in Brazil, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, South Sudan and Venezuela between 2007 and 2018.

On Friday, the Bench Marks Foundation, which has conducted investigations on Glencore on pollution in some African countries, said there needed to be an investigation into Glencore in Africa, particularly in South Africa.

It said it was not surprised by the latest allegations that had come out regarding corruption of Glencore and its officials.

In an interview, Bench Marks chief researcher David van Wyk said: “In the past, we pointed out direct incidents of very problematic allegations that are now proven in the US, which happened in the DRC. We have been saying this since 2010, and now it's come out.”

Van Wyk said Glencore and South Africa had a long history and that warrants an investigation on its South African dealings.

“We suspect that Glencore was involved in bribes in South Africa, but worse we suspect that it and other companies are involved in tax haven fraud. These companies are registered in tax havens like Zurich in Switzerland or Cayman Islands. They mine the minerals here and sell them below global prices to themselves in those countries and then sell them at high global prices, that way they avoid paying tax here,” he said.

Van Wyk said if Glencore could be found guilty of corruption in the US, how was South Africa exempted?

“If they could participate in bribing and price-fixing around America, how much of that happened in Africa? How is it that SA escaped that? I don’t believe that for a moment,” he said.

Van Wyk said an investigation of Glencore in South Africa would depend on the upcoming ANC conference, as the company has ties to the ruling political party.

“If the current factions win that conference there will be no investigation. If the opposing faction wins that conference, then, there will be an investigation. This means the investigation would not be based on principle, or on ethics, it would be based on opportunism, and faction power in the ruling party,” he said.

“It is the culture of that organisation. That company was the one that managed to get arms in SA during apartheid. They also got oil from the apartheid government to run their military by dubious means,” according to Van Wyk.

Ncala agreed with Van Wyk and said: “To say that people have left the organisation as a form of defence to ward off any enquiry is preposterous. It is very disingenuous, in this particular era, we are looking for ethical leadership, we need to bear in mind that Glencore is a company that is a legal person so an entity needs to look at how it conducts itself,” he said.

Saftu on Friday also called on the government to initiate investigations into all Glencore operations.

“We have a reason to believe, because of Glencore’s notoriety in dealing with commodities across the world over the years, that it may have been involved in bribery,” it said.

Glencore’s History – Marc Rich, Rudolph Giuliani and Bill Clinton

https://www.glencore.com/south-africa/who-are-we

Glencore’s marketing activities in South Africa began in 1974, with mining starting 14 years later, in 1988. Over the years, we have established a strong presence in South Africa’s coal and ferroalloy sectors, and have become a major contributor to the country’s local, provincial and national economies.

“The four-decade story of Glencore's explosive rise and fall”

https://www.businessinsider.com/glencores-history-and-what-happened-to-the-company-2015-10?op=1&r=US&IR=T

Oct 7, 2015

The company's name doesn't give much away about what it does, and it's a relative newcomer to the public markets, listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2011.

But it's important to understand what trouble at Glencore means because of the huge size of the company's debt pile, banks' exposure to it and its role in the world economy as a producer and trader of more than 90 commodities.

So here's an explainer of Glencore's mess is and how it got there.

The story starts with Belgian-born commodities billionaire Marc Rich, who, in 1974, circumvented the Arab oil embargo to buy oil from Iran and Iraq for $12 a barrel and sell it for a huge profit to US companies.

With the profits, Rich founds Marc + Co. AG in 1974. The company focuses on trading metals and oil.

In 1981, the company acquired a Dutch grain trading business, expanded into agricultural commodities and adds coal to its list of traded products.

In 1983, Marc Rich was indicted in the U.S. by then-U.S. prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani for multiple criminal activities including tax-evasion, racketeering and embargo breaches.

The charges could have come with a 300-year jail sentence, but Rich fled to Switzerland, protesting his innocence. He stayed on the FBI's most wanted list for many years. HIs companies pay $90 million in fines for breaches of the tax code.

In 1987, Glencore diversified away from pure commodities trading. It bought a 27% stake in a U.S. aluminium smelter. A year later, it bought a two-thirds stake in a Peruvian lead and zinc mine. The company became notable for its use of debt financing – a deliberate strategy adopted by Rich.

In 1993, Rich lost $172 million and control of his firm in a failed attempt to dominate the market for zinc. After a management buy-out, Marc Rich + Co AG was reborn as Glencore in 1994. Willy Strothotte became CEO.

In 2001, Marc Rich was controversially pardoned by Bill Clinton on his last day as US president. It later emerged that Denise Rich, Marc Rich's wife, made a $1 million donation to the Democrat party.

Glencore went public on the London and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges in 2011. Shares were priced at 530p each in a deal valuing the company at $60 billion. The prospectus provided to investors about the company was 1,637 pages long.

In 2013, Glencore completed its merger with mining company Xstrata. The deal, which took 450 days, created a company with 190,000 employees in 50 countries and more ships than the British navy. Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg took the helm of the new firm.

Marc Rich died in the same year.

Marc Rich’s ties to Apartheid – Part 1

https://www.opensecrets.org.za/marc-rich-open-secret/

July 17, 2013

There has been a stream of obituaries for Marc Rich, infamous billionaire, sanctions-buster, and one-time “King of Oil”. But these obituaries cannot tell the full story: we are still piecing together his true legacy

Probably the most successful oil trader of all time, Marc Rich’s true fame came from his 1983 indictment in the US on tax evasion charges, which led him to flee to Switzerland to avoid prosecution. After 18 years (during which time he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list) Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton, during Clinton’s final hours in office. For this he became even more famous – perhaps the most notorious businessman who ever lived.

Marc Rich’s successes as a trader – in oil primarily, but also in metals and minerals – will be forever be eclipsed by the unsavoury people he did business with (including corrupt dictatorships, and rightwing regimes such as Franco’s Spain and apartheid South Africa). There were also unlikely business bedfellows for a man with strong ties to the Israeli state such as the Ayatollah of Iran and Soviet Russia, to name a few. However, what enabled all of this were his controversial methods of conducting business. His disregard for international sanctions has become legendary – as he based Marc Rich & Co. in neutral Switzerland, he refused to recognise international sanctions on South Africa or any other country.

While all of his obituaries mention his apartheid business link in passing, the regime in Pretoria may have been the single greatest source of his wealth. In the years before his death, Rich admitted that busting oil sanctions for South Africa was his company’s “most important and most profitable” business[1]. Where others feared to do business with South Africa directly, Marc Rich was happy to step in as a middleman ¬– along with characters such as Marino Chiavelli of Italy, John Deuss of the Netherlands, and the Greek shipping merchant Tony Georgiadis (who continued to find ways to do business with a democratic South Africa).

Those who were willing to break sanctions did so for a higher price, earning huge commissions. Although the true extent of the relationship has yet to come to light, Marc Rich & Co. insiders have reportedly claimed that business with South Africa brought in as much as US$2 billion in pure profit[2], an extraordinary figure at that time. Much of this was channeled through a front company called Minoil.

Marc Rich’s ties to Apartheid – Part 2

https://www.opensecrets.org.za/marc-rich-open-secret/

July 17, 2013

This is the double devilry of those who profit from sanctions busting: not only do they violate international sanctions, but they also rip off the end user in the process. The National Party government estimated that South Africa paid about $22 billion more than market prices for oil between 1973 and 1984.[3]

Yet these give just a hint of the extent of the relationship, and the story has yet to be told in full. Much of what is known was pieced together during the period of sanctions by the Shipping Research Bureau, a Dutch NGO that monitored oil traffic to South Africa. Though their reports were vital in exposing unseemly secretive relationships in the oil industry at the time, the record remains incomplete.

Rich himself managed to achieve a remarkable cognitive dissonance on the question of his relationship with the apartheid state. He denied that his business had helped prolong apartheid, insisting: “I was fundamentally against apartheid. We were all against apartheid. I just was doing normal business with South Africa.”[4] (The definition of ‘normal business’ is, of course, flexible: his success in selling oil from Soviet Russia to apartheid South Africa at the height of the Cold War, is as remarkable as his ability to trade oil between Iran and Israel. An early, critical biography of Rich raised the allegation, via an anonymous ‘former shareholder’ that “We were selling Iranian and Soviet oil to South Africa in return for Namibian uranium we sold to the Soviets”[5].)

He also freely admitted that bribery was an acceptable practice in his business. Many of the mainstream business media have criticised Rich’s legacy, but how unusual was this way of doing business? United States law did not forbid the bribing of foreign officials until 1977. In Switzerland, bribes to foreign officials were treated as tax-deductible business expenses until 2000. Britain’s lax regulations on international bribery were only tightened in 2010. Rich’s approach may have been extreme, but it is a symbol of amoral business practices legitimised by weak regulation. (Not all are so equivocating: two weeks ago a columnist in the Financial Times claimed that Marc Rich “deserves credit as one of the greatest creators and sharers of wealth in business history.”)

Furthermore, those who believe that Rich’s legacy lies in the past misunderstand the nature of that legacy. One of the most remarkable things about Marc Rich was his ability to make money talk louder than politics – hence why, after 1994 he was able to continue doing business with South Africa, despite his links to the apartheid regime.

The Spectator argues: “his former protégés and apprentices now control, through his empire’s successor companies Glencore Xstrata and Trafigura, the price of just about everything.” They control a truly startling share of the world’s natural resources.

It is also worth remembering that, before his indictment in 1983, Rich was virtually unknown outside of trade circles – despite having already built up a commodities empire that was in bed with every oil-producing dictatorship and every oil hungry regime; unknown to many at the time, it even included a secret 50 percent of the entertainment empire 20th Century Fox. His indictment and eventual pardon made Rich notorious – yet it was his way of doing ‘normal’ business, no matter what the human cost, which did such terrific harm. The full extent of that harm – this is a question that still begs an answer and a far greater sense of public accountability than was ever achieved in his lifetime.

>>16409517

>>16409519

Is history repeating in the form of corporations?

“Could Bill Clinton's 2001 pardon of Rich affect election?” (Posted November 2, 2016) - https://youtu.be/HgGfiaZJRxw

“HOW MARC [RICH] HELPED PLUNDER RUSSIA”

https://nypost.com/2001/02/15/how-marc-helped-plunder-russia/

February 15, 2001

Overlooked so far is Rich’s role in the looting of the disintegrating Soviet Union by Communist Party officials and their associates in the early 1990s.

You can read about it in “Godfather of the Kremlin,” an exhaustively researched book about Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky [Boris Abramovich Berezovsky was born in 1946, in Moscow, to Abram Markovich Berezovsky (1911–1979),[24] a Jewish civil engineer in construction works - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Berezovsky_(businessman)], which was published last fall. The author is Paul Klebnikov, an expert on Russia and a Forbes magazine senior editor.

The book details the myriad ways Berezovsky and his minions stole untold sums from the Russian people through international financial schemes.

According to Klebnikov, Rich came into the picture around 1990, when the Soviet Union began to open up to outsiders. [About the same time South African/Lithuanian Jew, Mendel Kaplan, ran Operation Exodus for Soviet Jews to return to Israel - >>16332096 ]

“Governmental authority began to crumble. All these local Communist Party bosses got to strike deals on their own,” the author tells me.

Based in Switzerland, with its secretive banking laws, Rich was in a prime position to help Russia’s plunderers carry out their dirty work. Klebnikov reported that Rich dealt in oil, aluminum, zinc and other raw commodities.

“He’d strike a deal with the local party boss, or the director of a state-owned company,” explains the author. “He’d say, ‘OK, you will sell me the [commodity] at 5 to 10 percent of the world market price.

“‘And in return, I will deposit some of the profit I make by reselling it 10 times higher on the world market, and put the kickback in a Swiss bank account.'”

For at least two years, as the Soviet Union was in its death throes, Rich was that nation’s largest trader of aluminum and oil on a spot basis.

“He made a complete mint off of Russia,” says Klebnikov.

A former foreign-trade minister told the author that Rich instructed the robber-baron elite how to skirt the law by doing secret deals through shell companies and the like.

“Marc Rich ended up being a mentor to all these young kids who came out of the Communist Party establishment, and who made billions off these schemes themselves,” Klebnikov charges.

There were allegations at the time in the Russian press and elsewhere that Rich was aiding and abetting capital flight from the country, but he was never charged.

A widely read 1999 article in the foreign-policy journal The National Interest, written by ex-CIA officer and National Security Council staffer Fritz W. Ermarth, noted that, as far back as 1985, the KGB was engaged in the massive transfer of assets abroad via commodities trading through front companies.

“The program evolved into . . . avenues for squirreling away funds for the safe retirement or political comeback of embattled communist leaders,” Ermarth writes.

If Rich had anything to do with this, then he would have had a key role in making the world safe for nuclear-armed communist tyrants who were America’s greatest enemies.

Can U.S. intelligence files from the era establish a link between Rich and the transferred KGB billions? Congress should find out.

Rich’s profitable relationship with the Russians ended in 1993, when the monster he helped create turned on him. The Russian swindlers became so good at Rich’s game that they muscled him out of the action.

“Applying the lessons they learned from Marc Rich, they bankrupted Russia,” Klebnikov alleges. “As a result, you have a ruined economy, bankrupt government, and an impoverished population.”

Tens of millions of Russians are suffering through the worst winter there in 50 years. They and their government are broke. There is no money to buy coal to run the power stations.

People are sick, cold and dying. They are freezing to death in the dark. One man told the Red Cross that life has turned into “a permanent struggle for survival. It’s not even life, it’s just existence.”

This is part of the legacy of the man pardoned by Bill Clinton. It is now part of the 42nd president’s legacy as well. Clinton, his belly full, sleeps in warmth and comfort in cozy Chappaqua. If he can sleep at all.

Was the Russian Revolution Jewish? – Part 1

https://www.jpost.com/magazine/was-the-russian-revolution-jewish-514323

February 7, 2018

Below are excerpts

A hundred years after the Bolsheviks swept to power, historians and contemporaries still struggle to understand the prominent role played by Jews.

The role of Jews in the Russian Revolution, and by extension Communism writ large, has always been a sensitive subject because antisemitic voices often painted Soviet Communism as a Jewish plot, or “Jewish Bolshevism.” When Alexander Solzhenitsyn began work on a book called 200 Years Together, he was criticized for what touching this taboo issue. His own comments to the press didn’t help the matter, claiming two-thirds of the Cheka (secret police) in Ukraine were Jewish.

Winston Churchill agreed. In a piece in the Illustrated Sunday Herald in 1920, he broadly stereotyped Jews as either “international” communists, loyal nationalists or Zionists. He called it the “struggle for the soul of the Jewish people” and claimed the Jewish role in the Russian Revolution “probably outweighs [the role] of all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews.”

Churchill claimed that the driving power came from Jewish leaders, who eclipsed their counterparts. He named names: Maxim Litvinoff, Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Radek, Leonid Krassin. He called this tendency “astonishing” and accused Jews of playing “the prominent, if not indeed the principal part in the system of terrorism” that had then become known as “red terror” or the suppression of those in the Soviet Union who deviated from the communist line.

One of those whom Churchill singled out for opprobrium was Bela Kun, the Hungarian Jew who briefly played the leading role in Hungary when it was a Soviet republic in 1919. Kun fled when Hungary was invaded by Romania, fleeing to the Soviet Union where he was put in charge of the Revolutionary Committee in Crimea along with Rosalia Zemlyachka. Their regime there was responsible for murdering around 60,000 people. Kun was arrested during Stalin’s purges, accused of promoting “Trotskyism” and executed in 1938. His life was symbolic of so many others: a young revolutionary whose idealism was colored by the murderous methods of Communism and who ended up a victim of the very regime he sought to create, like so many Jewish revolutionaries, accused of being counter-revolutionaries.

The roughly three million Jews of the Soviet Union at the time of the revolution constituted the largest Jewish community in the world, but they were only around 2% of the USSR’s population. They were concentrated in the Pale of Settlement (a western region of Imperial Russia) and in Ukraine and Belarussia, where they were 5% to 10% of the population, whereas in Russia itself the 1926 census found only 600,000 Jews.

“There is an explanation. Oppositionist and revolutionary elements formed a higher percentage among Jews than among Russians. Insulted, injured and oppressed, they were more versatile. They penetrated everywhere, so to speak.” He claimed that Jews were more “active” than average Russians.

The fork in the road of history that led some Jews in the Russian Empire to embrace Zionism and many others to embrace various leftist revolutionary movements that eventually led to the Soviet Union was reached in the 19th century.

When Theodor Herzl visited the Russian Empire in 1903, he met Count Witte, the minister of finance. According to Leonard Schapiro, who authored The Role of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement in 1961, Herzl found that “50% of the membership of the revolutionary parties was Jewish.”

Pinsker’s friend Meir Dizengoff, a veteran of the Russian army, was the first mayor of Tel Aviv. Among the founders of the first self-defense organization in Palestine, called Hashomer, were Alexander Zaid from Siberia and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi from Poltava in Ukraine.

Was the Russian Revolution Jewish? – Part 2

https://www.jpost.com/magazine/was-the-russian-revolution-jewish-514323

February 7, 2018

Below are excerpts

One group sought a radical solution to their and society’s predicament, a communist revolution, and one that would not include other voices such as the Bund or Mensheviks, but solely that of their party. They had no compunction at murdering their coreligionists. They were not more or less ethical than their non-Jewish peers. How can we explain their disproportionate presence in the leadership of the revolution? It would be as if the Druse minority in Israel made up half of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, or Armenians were half of Emmanuel Macron’s government in France.

Perhaps the only way to understand some of it is to recognize that at Nelson Mandela’s 1963 Rivonia trial in South Africa five of the 13 arrested were Jewish, as were around one quarter of the 1960s Freedom Riders in the US. The 20th century was a century of Jewish activism, often for non-Jewish causes and often without an outwardly “Jewish” context. The Freedom Riders didn’t go as a “Jewish voice for African- Americans,” they went as activists for civil rights.

>>16425184

>The roughly three million Jews of the Soviet Union at the time of the revolution constituted the largest Jewish community in the world, but they were only around 2% of the USSR’s population. They were concentrated in the Pale of Settlement (a western region of Imperial Russia) and in Ukraine and Belarussia, where they were 5% to 10% of the population, whereas in Russia itself the 1926 census found only 600,000 Jews.

“Putin: First Soviet government was mostly Jewish”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/putin-first-soviet-government-was-mostly-jewish/

19 June 2013

JTA — Russian President Vladimir Putin said that at least 80 percent of the members of the first Soviet government were Jewish.

“I thought about something just now: The decision to nationalize this library was made by the first Soviet government, whose composition was 80-85 percent Jewish,” Putin said June 13 during a visit to Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.

Putin was referencing the library of Rabbi Joseph I. Schneerson, the late leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. The books, which are claimed by Chabad representatives in the United States, began being moved to the museum in Moscow this month.

‘The Greatest Mass Murderers of all Time were Jews, says Jewish Columnist”

https://nationalvanguard.org/2019/08/the-greatest-mass-murderers-of-all-time-were-jews-says-jewish-columnist/

Important admission needs wider publicity.

In 2006, a remarkable article — and admission — appeared in the Israeli news source Ynet News. Titled “Stalin’s Jews” and written by Jewish columnist Sever Plocker, this piece confirmed the terrible crimes which Jewish Communists had committed under Stalin.

“We must not forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish,” Plocker started out by saying. He went on to make a number of startling confessions:

“Here’s a particularly forlorn historical date: Almost 90 years ago, between the 19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also known as Cheka.

“Within a short period of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB.

“Lenin, Stalin, and their successors could not have carried out their deeds without wide-scale cooperation of disciplined ‘terror officials,’ cruel interrogators, snitches, executioners, guards, judges, perverts, and many bleeding hearts who were members of the progressive Western Left and were deceived by the Soviet regime of horror and even provided it with a kosher certificate.

“And us, the Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name Genrikh Yagoda, the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU’s deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD.

“Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin’s collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people.

“His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system.

The Gulags: Jewish-Run Concentration Camps

As mentioned above, the infamous Soviet Gulags were under the direct control of the Jew Yagoda. He was not the only such Jew involved in the running of these camps, in which millions were interned and nearly 1.4 million died.

The most famous revelation about the Jewish nature of the Gulags was that of famous dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Speaking from personal experience as a Gulag prisoner, Solzhenitsyn gave a candid account of Jews in charge of the Soviet prison camps in his book, Two Hundred Years Together.

According to his observations, Jews made up a clear preponderance in the Gulag administration and in the early Bolshevist government, saying that of the 22 ministers in the first Soviet government three were Russian, one Georgian, one Armenian and 17 were Jews. In addition, he points out, from personal experience once again, that “two thirds of the Kiev Cheka” (secret police) were Jews.

In 1937, another book appeared in Germany called Jewish-Run Concentration Camps in the Soviet Union, which revealed that Communist Jews were the commandants of 11 out of the 12 main Gulags.

>>16425237

>>16426171 - Then the Jew who wrote the article is also a hater? How can one build a better future if one avoids the past? Do you not think that “antisemitism” can be used deflect accusations/facts?… Otherwise the worst in history will perpetuate.

“Stalin's Jews”

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html

12.21.06

Sever Plocker

We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish

Here's a particularly forlorn historical date: Almost 90 years ago, between the 19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also known as Cheka.

Within a short period of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB.

We cannot know with certainty the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments, executions, and mass death at Gulag.

Whole population strata were eliminated: Independent farmers, ethnic minorities, members of the bourgeoisie, senior officers, intellectuals, artists, labor movement activists, "opposition members" who were defined completely randomly, and countless members of the Communist party itself.

In his new, highly praised book "The War of the World, "Historian Niall Ferguson writes that no revolution in the history of mankind devoured its children with the same unrestrained appetite as did the Soviet revolution. In his book on the Stalinist purges, Tel Aviv University's Dr. Igal Halfin writes that Stalinist violence was unique in that it was directed internally.

Lenin, Stalin, and their successors could not have carried out their deeds without wide-scale cooperation of disciplined "terror officials," cruel interrogators, snitches, executioners, guards, judges, perverts, and many bleeding hearts who were members of the progressive Western Left and were deceived by the Soviet regime of horror and even provided it with a kosher certificate.

All these things are well-known to some extent or another, even though the former Soviet Union's archives have not yet been fully opened to the public. But who knows about this? Within Russia itself, very few people have been brought to justice for their crimes in the NKVD's and KGB's service. The Russian public discourse today completely ignores the question of "How could it have happened to us?" As opposed to Eastern European nations, the Russians did not settle the score with their Stalinist past.

And us, the Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name "Genrikh Yagoda," the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU's deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the "bloodthirsty dwarf."

Yezhov was not Jewish but was blessed with an active Jewish wife. In his Book "Stalin: Court of the Red Star", Jewish historian Sebag Montefiore writes that during the darkest period of terror, when the Communist killing machine worked in full force, Stalin was surrounded by beautiful, young Jewish women.

Stalin's close associates and loyalists included member of the Central Committee and Politburo Lazar Kaganovich. Montefiore characterizes him as the "first Stalinist" and adds that those starving to death in Ukraine, an unparalleled tragedy in the history of human kind aside from the Nazi horrors and Mao's terror in China, did not move Kaganovich.

Many Jews sold their soul to the devil of the Communist revolution and have blood on their hands for eternity. We'll mention just one more: Leonid Reichman, head of the NKVD's special department and the organization's chief interrogator, who was a particularly cruel sadist.

In 1934, according to published statistics, 38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin. They too, of course, were gradually eliminated in the next purges. In a fascinating lecture at a Tel Aviv University convention this week, Dr. Halfin described the waves of soviet terror as a "carnival of mass murder," "fantasy of purges", and "essianism of evil." Turns out that Jews too, when they become captivated by messianic ideology, can become great murderers, among the greatest known by modern history.

>>16439979

>>16426171 - The article ends with the following words whic I agree with.

The Jews active in official communist terror apparatuses (In the Soviet Union and abroad) and who at times led them, did not do this, obviously, as Jews, but rather, as Stalinists, communists, and "Soviet people." Therefore, we find it easy to ignore their origin and "play dumb": What do we have to do with them? But let's not forget them. My own view is different. I find it unacceptable that a person will be considered a member of the Jewish people when he does great things, but not considered part of our people when he does amazingly despicable things.

Even if we deny it, we cannot escape the Jewishness of "our hangmen," who served the Red Terror with loyalty and dedication from its establishment. After all, others will always remind us of their origin.

>>16435203

>Although Xstrata’s website talks about the company’s ‘small beginnings a decade ago’, the diversified mining giant was founded as an infrastructure and electrics company called Südelektra in Switzerland in 1926. In 1990 the company’s business changed dramatically when the man who started Glencore – namely [Marc] Rich – acquired the majority of the company’s shares, focused the business on mining and got rid of non-core interests.

>>16425988

>Today, Marc Rich's successor companies, Glencore Xstrata and Trafigura, control the price of just about every commodity.

Jewish Chronicle “Power 100 2014” - “1: Mick Davis: New boss in town”

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/122424/jc-power-100-2014

http://web.archive.org/web/20140912191042/https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/122424/jc-power-100-2014

September 10, 2014

When Mick Davis became chairman of the trustees of the Jewish Leadership Council in July 2009, it may not have been exactly a palace coup but it showed who was boss in town.

The council had till then been led by the elected president of the Board of Deputies, Henry Grunwald, but while his successor Vivian Wineman became chairman of the JLC's "council of membership", it was Mick Davis who grasped the reins of its executive.

The burly South African émigré, who is 56, emerged into the spotlight in 2006 as chairman of the UJIA, which remains one of British Jewry's most powerful organisations, if not quite as dominant as yesteryear. During his tenure, he helped to stage the central London parade for Israel's 65th birthday in 2008, one of the most successful communal organisations in recent memory, and the We Believe In Israel advocacy conference in 2011.

He had proved his prowess in business, building up the mining company Xstrata into a FTSE 100 company until his departure last year after its merger with commodities giant Glencore. But Mick the Miner, as he is known in the business press, is not at a loose end; his new X2 venture was reported to be exploring a new multi-billion coalmining venture recently. His pockets are deep - he and his wife Barbara's names are almost everywhere on the donor lists of Jewish charities. He is also involved with Kew Gardens and the Royal Opera House and gave £500,000 to the Conservative Party last year.

JLC colleagues say he "leads from the front". But he took many by surprise four years ago when he stuck his neck out and broke a taboo long observed by senior community lay leaders by publicly criticising the Israeli government. His warning that, without a two-state solution, the country risked becoming an apartheid state triggered an explosive debate.

But his critics failed to recognise that as the UJIA was the prime sponsor of Zionist youth movements, he understood the new and more complex attitude to Israel apparent among many of the younger generation.

While his backing for the anti-boycott campaign and his unqualified support for Israel in its recent conflict with Hamas are clear, he has nonetheless been unafraid to court further controversy, complaining this year in an opinion piece in Ha'aretz that diaspora activists were battling with "one hand tied behind their back" because of Israel's posture on the peace process.

Mick the Miner had at one time looked like Mick the Diner but a few years ago he dramatically shed the pounds and a new slimline Mick strode on to the stage. "Many people in business, their businesses get smaller and they get bigger. He has managed to do things the other way round," David Cameron quipped in 2012. Last year the PM appointed him as chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Commission to consider its future remembrance in Britain, a position which reflected his unrivalled access and influence.

The challenges faced by British Jews because of events in the Middle East hardly need stating. But the JLC leader also has internal matters to attend to. Amid a growing feeling that there are too many Jewish organisations and too little money to pay for them, can he persuade the voluntary sector to follow his example and trim itself too?

And will the JLC and the Board show the way by pulling off a merger - a move which could mean Mr Davis having to give up some of his executive power for the sake of democracy?

“Paradise Papers: Glencore hid link to ghost shipping fleet during Iran scandal” – Part 1

https://www.afr.com/policy/tax-and-super/paradise-papers-glencore-hid-link-to-ghost-shipping-fleet-during-iran-scandal-20171105-gzf0sz

November 6, 2017

Swiss commodities trader Glencore was struggling to contain a looming sanctions busting scandal when it secured Australian government approval to take over mining giant Xstrata in 2013.

The $US90 billion merger with Xstrata in May 2013 transformed Glencore into the third largest mining company in Australia and one of the largest coal producers in the world.

But behind the scenes Glencore was fighting allegations that linked one of its partners to secret deals with Iran, money laundering and bank fraud – claims which if unchecked could have had impacts on the newly merged group.

This centred on a major shipping company, SwissMarine Corporation, in which Glencore secretly was the major shareholder, according to leaked documents from the Paradise Papers.

The Australian Financial Review has identified material mis-statements and omissions in bank applications and financial agreements prepared by SwissMarine in 2013 which may skirt international anti-money laundering laws.

At the time, Greek shipowner Victor Restis, SwissMarine's second largest shareholder, was in jail awaiting trial for fraud, money laundering and embezzlement. But he remained a SwissMarine director.

SwissMarine's board approved bank account forms and an application to join NASDAQ OMX Commodities Clearing House in Stockholm which deleted Mr Restis from both the list of directors, and from the list of major shareholders, while explicitly denying that any director was under investigation for fraud or money laundering.

In a statement to the Financial Review on Saturday, SwissMarine said this was the result of an "inadvertent error", and that the company kept banks and counter parties fully informed "as required or as applicable".

Copies of the bank applications are contained in the files of Bermuda-based law firm Appleby, obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The documents reveal Glencore's hidden links to the sanctions scandal, which unfolded as Western intelligence agencies worked in 2012 and 2013 to identify companies trading with Iran.

The documents show that Glencore secretly funds and helps operate a "ghost fleet" of 167 bulk cargo ships through SwissMarine Corporation.

Glencore owns 47.1 per cent of SwissMarine's voting stock but says that its three directors do not control the company, because Mr Restis, who has sold down to 23 per cent, also appoints three of SwissMarine's nine directors.

None of this would surface in 2012 when Glencore and Xstrata announced merger plans.

Australian government approval was a shoo-in, with the government desperate to keep miners onside while it introduced the Mining Tax.

“Paradise Papers: Glencore hid link to ghost shipping fleet during Iran scandal” – Part 2

https://www.afr.com/policy/tax-and-super/paradise-papers-glencore-hid-link-to-ghost-shipping-fleet-during-iran-scandal-20171105-gzf0sz

November 6, 2017

Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey taunted the government, repeatedly citing Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg's comparison of Australia to the Congo: "At least in the Congo they need you. They want you there. And if they start changing the rules on you, you may not continue investing."

Today SwissMarine owns 11 Capesize vessels – the huge ships that carry coal and iron ore – and charters another 156 ships.

SwissMarine ships are regular visitors to Australian ports, carrying coal, iron ore and grain for BHP, Rio Tinto and Glencore

Glencore has its own subsidiary, ST Shipping, that operates ships under a tax-free deal with Singapore. So why would a commodities trader need or want a secret holding in another shipping fleet?

In its early days Glencore, then known as Marc Rich & Co AG, had a colourful reputation, notably for buying oil from Iran during the 1979 Teheran hostage crisis.

"Marc Rich knew how to deliver," Rich biographer Craig Copetas told German broadcaster WDR. "He knew how to do that on time and in massive amounts. You want oil in South Africa during an oil embargo – you call Marc Rich. He gets it there.

"You know how hard it is to get tankers of oil in and out of a sanctioned country? Marc Rich knew how to do it. It is all in the traffic."

By traffic, Copetas means shipping.

In February 2001, Glencore had just begun paying kickbacks to the Iraqi government for oil shipments in a breach of the UN's Oil For Food program, the 2005 Volcker report concluded (Glencore denied any knowledge that its agents paid up to $US25 million in kickbacks).

In February 2001, Glencore had just begun paying kickbacks to the Iraqi government for oil shipments in a breach of the UN's Oil For Food program, the 2005 Volcker report concluded (Glencore denied any knowledge that its agents paid up to $US25 million in kickbacks).

It was also that month, on February 2 and February 28 in 2001, that two Iraqi oil shipments bound for the US were diverted to Singapore and Croatia, where Glencore stood to make up to $7 million in extra profit (Glencore denied any intention to breach UN Oil For Food rules).

“Paradise Papers: Glencore hid link to ghost shipping fleet during Iran scandal” – Part 3

https://www.afr.com/policy/tax-and-super/paradise-papers-glencore-hid-link-to-ghost-shipping-fleet-during-iran-scandal-20171105-gzf0sz

November 6, 2017

Between these two diverted shipments, on February 20 2001, Bermuda law firm Conyers Dill & Pearman lodged an application to register SwissMarine. Glencore declined to say why it decided to launch a shipping venture at that time.

Glencore and Restis Group, one of the 10 biggest ship-owning businesses in Greece, teamed with four former Cargill commodities traders in the new company.

Glencore and Restis each had 43 per cent of the voting A stock. Employees received B and C shares which were cash settled. This was not permanent equity – when employees resigned, their shares were paid out in cash.

By 2004 SwissMarine was grossing $US1 billion a year in freight revenue.

The Volcker report detailed the strict instructions Glencore gave to its bankers never to divulge its connection with Iraq oil sales. Glencore imposed similar levels of secrecy on its new shipping company.

Glencore held its stake in SwissMarine through a Swiss company, Sidhalu SA. Appleby Bermuda provided three SwissMarine directors to represent Sidhalu.

"We are providing these directors at the request of Glencore International AG but this is very confidential information," Appleby's April 2003 file note said. "Accordingly, do NOT associate Glencore with SwissMarine under any circumstances."

Glencore told the Financial Review, "For commercial reasons, Glencore's investment in SwissMarine Corporation Ltd ('SMC') was not widely disclosed. Where required, Glencore has disclosed its beneficial ownership in SMC, such as to banks or tax authorities."

In November 2012, the shipping market buzzed with gossip that Dimitris Cambis, a Greek professor with no previous shipping experience, had just bought eight ageing supertankers through a web of front companies for $US204 million.

On February 27 2013 Reuters journalist Jonathan Saul reported in London that "officials involved with sanctions" had shown him shipping documents which showed that Cambis' tankers were being used to ship Iranian oil to China to beat US sanctions.

“Paradise Papers: Glencore hid link to ghost shipping fleet during Iran scandal” – Part 4

https://www.afr.com/policy/tax-and-super/paradise-papers-glencore-hid-link-to-ghost-shipping-fleet-during-iran-scandal-20171105-gzf0sz

November 6, 2017

Western intelligence

Cambis denied any involvement with Iran.

Two days later in New York another Reuters reporter, Louis Charbonneau, broke another story: "Glencore bartered with firm linked to Iran nuclear program."

He said he had been shown a report by a Western intelligence agency which revealed that since 2011 Glencore had a barter deal with Iran Aluminium Company (Iralco) to exchange thousands of tonnes of alumina in exchange for processed aluminium.

The report said that from mid-2012 Iralco had been supplying aluminium to Iran Centrifuge Technology Co (TESA), which was on the UN sanctions list and had been making uranium enrichment gas centrifuges for the nuclear program.

Glencore told Charbonneau the trade was legal and it had no knowledge of the link to Iralco until the EU banned alumina sales in December 2012, when it "ceased transactions".

On March 13 2013 the US Treasury blacklisted Cambris, 14 of his companies and his eight tankers, for helping Iran avoid oil sanctions.

At this point the Iran sanctions story had two unrelated arms: the aluminum deals by Glencore; and Cambris and his tankers. In both cases the information appeared to be based on Western intelligence sources.

Then on May 13 the stakes increased again. A US lobby group, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), claimed it had been given documents that showed that Victor Restis, his shipping firm EST, and the failing Greek bank he controlled, FB Bank, had been part of the Iranian tanker scheme—which Restis vehemently denied.

Later in court UANI would be more specific, claiming that "by at least mid-2010, Restis was conspiring with Cambris to devise a web of business entities and relationships to buy crude oil from Iran and sell it to Chinese buyers".

The UANI court documents gave a detailed account of Restis' involvement in the scheme and claimed that "Restis viewed himself as the strategic partner in the business plans because he had the knowledge and resources to provide and manage a fleet of tankers".

Glencore was in a difficult position. The merger with Xstrata had gone through on May 2 and the new group needed some good press.

“Paradise Papers: Glencore hid link to ghost shipping fleet during Iran scandal” – Part 5

https://www.afr.com/policy/tax-and-super/paradise-papers-glencore-hid-link-to-ghost-shipping-fleet-during-iran-scandal-20171105-gzf0sz

November 6, 2017

On May 23 Charbonneau had another exclusive, reporting that a confidential UN Panel of Experts report had concluded the aluminum swap deals by Glencore and Trafigura could have been a way to get around international sanctions against Teheran over its nuclear program.

Glencore denies any wrongdoing and points to a UN Security Council statement in June 2104 13 months later, that "there are no sanctions that prohibit barter or swaps in aluminium or other materials".

But that was 13 months later. In mid-2013 Glencore was under pressure.

On July 19 2013 Restis sued UANI for $2 billion in defamation damages, claiming its documents were forgeries. Four days later Restis himself was arrested by Greek police and charged with bank fraud, embezzlement and money laundering.

The charges related €15 million in loans Restis had from FB Bank, part of €500 million in suspect loans to major shareholders of the bank, which previously Restis controlled.

Restis was released but when he returned to court on July 26 the magistrate remanded him in custody to face the charges.

Restis' lawyers said the Iran sanctions claims had been devastating to Restis' business, leading to the cancellation of a billion-dollar IPO on Nasdaq, while Restis' shipping company, Enterprises Shipping and Trading SA, had been put on a blacklist of companies said to trade with Iran – triggering difficulties with banks refusing to process its funds.

This was the prospect that Glencore faced: the two sides of the Iran sanctions story, the aluminum trading and the allegations about Restis and the oil tankers, had an obvious overlap – SwissMarine.

The secrecy that Glencore had attached to its shareholding, if it was revealed now in the context of the two Iran controversies, would look doubly bad for the newly formed Glencore Xstrata.

SwissMarine had just contracted to spend €300 million on six new ships, half of which was to be funded by Glencore. And now their partner was in prison, facing trial on fraud and money laundering charges.

At the minimum, the risk was that SwissMarine could be blacklisted, just as EST had been.

But this was only if the secret of the shareholdings became public knowledge.

“Paradise Papers: Glencore hid link to ghost shipping fleet during Iran scandal” – Part 6

https://www.afr.com/policy/tax-and-super/paradise-papers-glencore-hid-link-to-ghost-shipping-fleet-during-iran-scandal-20171105-gzf0sz

November 6, 2017

In June 2013, before Restis' arrest, SwissMarine had filed a Know Your Customer form with Standard Chartered Bank which listed Restis owning 24.1 per cent of the company.

In October 2013 SwissMarine had to apply to join the Nasdaq OMX Commodities Clearing House in Stockholm, which was critical to the bunkerage and forward freight agreement contacts that SwissMarine used. It also had to set up a bank account.

Copies of SwissMarine's application to DNB Bank ASA Caymans branch and to Nasdaq were sent to Glencore's Appleby nominees on the SwissMarine board.

In the DNB form, Restis' name had been cut from the list of directors. SwissMarine listed Sidhalu SA as the only shareholder with more than 20 per cent and made no reference to Glencore or to Restis' holding.

SwissMarine's Nasdaq application included Restis in the list of directors but listed only Glencore as the ultimate beneficial owner of more than 30 per cent, despite Restis' contractual right to three of the nine board seats.

As part of the entry SwissMarine gave details of "Relevant Persons", which meant "the Company, its board directors, senior management and anyone controlling 30 per cent or more of the shares or voting rights".

The form asked: "Has any Relevant Person ever been convicted in a court of law of any theft, embezzlement, fraud, misfeasance, malpractice or other similar misconduct, or any other serious criminal offence? Has any Relevant Person been the subject of any such proceedings or been investigated for the same?"

Victor Restis, still a SwissMarine director, was in prison in Greece at the time.

SwissMarine ticked the box "No".

SwissMarine executive Peter Weernink told the Financial Review that it was not necessary for SwissMarine to answer this question, and ticking the No box was an inadvertent error.

He said in July 2013 SwissMarine had discussed Mr Restis' arrest with the Oslo compliance team of Nasdaq NOS, before it was merged into Nasdaq OMX in Stockholm.

With the DNB form SwissMarine had changed the way it calculated share capital for Standard Chartered Bank four months before. It now included the cash-settled employee shares, which reduced Restis' stake to 18.15%, which meant it did not have to be declared..

Mr Weernink said the form was submitted to DNB in February 2014 and did list Restis as a director.

However the copy of the form obtained by the Financial Review, which a senior Glencore executive sent to Appleby with instructions for directors to approve it, lists only five directors, and does not include Restis.

“Paradise Papers: Glencore hid link to ghost shipping fleet during Iran scandal” – Part 7

https://www.afr.com/policy/tax-and-super/paradise-papers-glencore-hid-link-to-ghost-shipping-fleet-during-iran-scandal-20171105-gzf0sz

November 6, 2017

The link between Glencore and Restis was never made public.

The Appleby directors did not appear to be aware that Mr Restis was in prison.

In the same period one Appleby director asked Glencore if they could be given more information when they approved decisions. Glencore refused and said that it would prefer if they acted as they always had.

Restis was released on bail on December 3 2013. He repaid the €15.8 million loans and three years later the charges against Restis, his mother Bella and 15 others were all dismissed by the Greek Supreme Court.

The UANI defamation case was dismissed in March 2015 after the US Department of Justice intervened to claim that for UANI to disclose its sources and other details that Restis' lawyers were demanding would threaten US national interests. It fuelled the belief that the information on Restis' alleged email accounts had come from US intelligence or the Mossad.

"As to Mr Restis," Glencore told the Financial Review, "Mr Restis is one of a number of other shareholders in SwissMarine which is a non- controlled investment of Glencore. Glencore has no other commercial relationship with Mr Restis."

This isn't quite accurate. While Restis remains on the SwissMarine board, the Appleby documents show he is also chairman of SwissMarine Services SA, an independent company where Glencore is the largest shareholder, which has a commissionaire agreement with the shipping group.

When asked if Glencore directors were aware of any sanctions breaches by SwissMarine vessels trading with Iran, Glencore responded: "Glencore is unable to comment on this question without more detail or access to the underlying documents being reviewed by the ICIJ that form the basis of this question."

>>16452396

>The UANI defamation case was dismissed in March 2015 after the US Department of Justice intervened to claim that for UANI to disclose its sources and other details that Restis' lawyers were demanding would threaten US national interests. It fuelled the belief that the information on Restis' alleged email accounts had come from US intelligence or the Mossad.

“Lawsuit Against Anti-Iran Group Dismissed Over US State Secrets”

https://www.newsmax.com/US/state-secrets-lawsuit-anti-iran-dismissed/2015/03/23/id/632017/

23 March 2015

The U.S. government on Monday won the dismissal of a private defamation lawsuit against an influential anti-Iran advocacy group, after claiming that the case could jeopardize U.S. national security by revealing state secrets.

U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos in Manhattan agreed with the Department of Justice that letting Greek shipping magnate Victor Restis pursue his case against United Against Nuclear Iran posed what the judge called an "unjustifiable" risk of damaging disclosures.

"The court recognizes that dismissal is a harsh sanction," Ramos wrote. "It is particularly so in this case because plaintiffs not only do not get their day in court, but cannot be told why."

But Ramos said dismissal was "appropriate," given that there was "a reasonable danger that disclosure of the facts underlying the government's assertion would in fact jeopardize national security," even if a trial were held out of public view.

The government has often successfully used the state secrets privilege to defeat court challenges to federal activity, such as the National Security Agency's covert wiretapping and the Central Intelligence Agency's treatment of terrorism suspects.

But its use in the Restis case marked a rare expansion by Attorney General Eric Holder into private civil litigation in which the government was not a party. [Or was it?]

The government did not publicly say why or on whose behalf it invoked the privilege, which empowers it to shield more information than necessary to protect law enforcement generally.

"We are mystified that the U.S. government has such a stake in this case that it would take such extraordinary steps to prevent full disclosure of the secret interest it has with UANI or others," Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Restis, said in a statement, using the abbreviation for United Against Nuclear Iran. He said Restis has not decided his next legal step.

>>16453018 -

If Jewish terrorists justified their actions to push for a Jewish state… then it is relevant. Who says that they stopped? Is their plan to dominate the world? They have played major roles in organisations like the ANC and now it rules the country into the ground. It seems like that their playbook has never changed. Below are excerpts from a 1937 document… It is worth reading in full.

“THE GREATEST WAR IN HISTORY NOW ON! International Jewish System Against National Patriotism”

https://balderexlibris.com/public/ebook3/Beamish_Henry_Hamilton_-Arcand_Adrien-Edmondson_Robert_Edward-_The_greatest_war_in_History_now_on.zip

Captain Henry Hamilton Beamish notes;

“We are engaged in the greatest war history has ever known. The last war was a picnic compared to the one we are now fighting. The question is, whether the Jew shall rule the world, or we white men.

“Communism is Judaism. The Jewish Revolution in Russia was in 1918. I found it out pretty quickly and I put it in writing. Jews are a race and not a religion.

“The Boer War occurred 37 years ago. Boer means Farmer. Many criticized a great power like Great Britain for trying to wipe out the Boers. Upon making inquiry, I found all the gold and diamond mines were owned by Jews; that Rothstein controlled gold; Samuels controlled silver, Samuels controlled oil; Baum controlled other minerals, and Moses controlled base metals. Anything those people touch they inevitably pollute.

“Up to 1933, Russia, France and other nations were politically Kosherized; England was going perfectly—all on complete Bolshevick architecture. Spain, with Prima Rivera, was really Judaized.

“What we have to realize today is that the Jews are working overtime to bring on another war. The position is serious. They tried their utmost in Spain. The movement having failed there, they have shifted to Shanghai, where there are 7,000 Jews—refugees, lawyers, doctors and dentists now working day and night to bring trouble to the far east.

“There are very few newspapers not owned or controlled by Jews except in the countries that have named the Bolshevists as the enemies of mankind. The newspapers never attack Kosher France, Belgium and England.

“Every man should be fined for saying “anti-Semitic.” The Arabs are Semites and they have been standing up against the Jews. In 1848 the word “anti-Semitic” was invented by the Jews to prevent the use of the word “Jew.” The right word for them is “Jew.” We are not against the Syrians, Armenians and Arabs, all of them Semites let down by the “kosher” power behind England.

“The real war began in Germany in 1918 when they had the “kosher” peace terms. It is the power behind. The Jew's make the wars. The Jews manufactured Bolshevism and inflation. The question of money is only the question of the Jew's manipulating it. The Jew' will inflate it or deflate it at will. Why is it done? To wipe out the upper and middle classes. It is the Jews who preach Communism for us, and who spread socialism, bolshevism and anarchy. Then the Jew is supreme.

“Who rules Russia? How do you account for the fact that out of 550 commissars in Russia only 17 are Russians?

Adrien Arcand notes;

“One of these slogans is ‘TOLERANCE’, which is the basis of the other slogan ‘No race, color or creed discrimination.’ The Jew has only to yell ‘TOLERANCE’, and the whole of Gentility immediately becomes paralyzed.

“But what is Tolerance? It is a word used only for evil. Can you tolerate Virtue, Good, Justice, Beauty? No, because they have rights by and in themselves. They exist by right and not by tolerance.

And the Jews call it ‘the century of progress,’ ‘the age of advancement!’ Out of the Ghetto, they have ghetto-ized the whole world. >>16332080

“The world is not brought to Communism ‘just like that’; and people won’t renounce their property from night to day. There were long preparations for that stage. >>16381002

“It began with the so-called democracy—which has never been democracy—brought by the Jews through the Illuminati one hundred and fifty years ago. >>16303715

“Eskom warns of stage 6, blames ‘unlawful industrial action’”

https://mg.co.za/news/2022-06-28-eskom-warns-of-stage-6-blames-unlawful-industrial-action/

28 June 2022

South Africans must prepare for stage six load-shedding from 5pm because “unlawful industrial action” had intensified overnight, Eskom chief executive André de Ruyter warned at an urgent media briefing called at short notice on Tuesday.

“There is a possibility we may avert stage six but the risk is there, and therefore we are communicating proactively with the South African public in order for the necessary preparations to be made,” he said.

The country is presently experiencing stage four rotational blackouts, the ongoing symptom of a looted and poorly managed and maintained public entity that has been degenerating for decades.

Eskom had experienced unplanned losses of 14 204 megawatts, said De Ruyter.

He did say the power utility had plans in place to return 3 400MW to service by 5pm but that the possibility of stage six remained high.

The electricity demand forecast for Tuesday evening is 31 990MW but Eskom has only 27 124MW capacity.

There is strike action at six of Eskom’s power stations. This had led to an increase in load-shedding to stage four.

Employees have been blocking roads since last week. Demonstrations have taken place at Duvha, Hendrina, Matla and Arnot power stations in Mpumalanga as well as Medupi and Matimba in Limpopo.

De Ruyter said the unlawful industrial action had intensified on Monday evening.

This included the blocking of access to the station at Camden, in Mpumalanga, when coal was dumped on the road, and four houses belonging to managers were attacked at the Lethabo power station on Monday night. The farm of a contingency worker had also been set alight.

Maintenance staff were absent from work, he said.

Eskom’s chief operating officer, Jan Oberholzer, said at the same briefing that the system was “slowly but surely recovering, so you must ask yourself what happened overnight”.

South Africa last experienced stage six load-shedding in December 2019.

In March this year, Eskom put out a warning about the possibility of stage six but managed to avert such.

"Gravitas: South Africa Nightclub Horror: 22 teenagers found dead"

https://youtu.be/R6zhY2hQ7WA

22 teenagers were found mysteriously dead at a #tavern in South Africa. Some say there were killed in a stampede, others say they died due to poisoned drinks. What's the truth? Why are authorities tight-lipped about the matter? Palki Sharma Upadhyay reports.

>>16493808

“Glencore and Xstrata's chief executives' links go back to university days” – Ivan Glasenberg, Mick Davis, HSBC, Nat Rothschild, Rusal, Vallares, Tony Hayward, etc.ties

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/07/xstrata-glencore-merger-too-many-chiefs

7 February 2012

The real drivers behind the deal were Ivan Glasenberg, chief executive of Glencore and his Xstrata counterpart Mick Davis

To prevent leaks, the codename for the takeover of Xstrata by Glencore was "Everest". The name was apt – both Sir John Bond, the chairman of Xstrata, and Simon Murray, the chairman of Glencore, are keen mountaineers.

Bond's daughter Annabelle is an accomplished mountaineer who has scaled Everest – a feat that prompted him to visit the base camp.

Bond, who is best known for his four decade career at HSBC, is to become chairman of the enlarged mining and trading organisation. An international banker, his HSBC career began in Hong Kong where he arrived having earned his sea passage from California by mopping floors on the ship.

It was not immediately clear what role would be handed to Murray, who once sat on the board of Vodafone, where Bond has also been chairman. Murray caused a row over sexism shortly after he was appointed chairman of Glencore to help facilitate its stock market flotation, when he said women were a risk to hire because they took nine months off to have children.

Murray and Bond, both septuagenarians, are thought to be well acquainted through connections in Hong Kong, though sources close to the deal insisted they were bit part players in the talks. The real drivers were Ivan Glasenberg, chief executive of Glencore, and his counterpart Mick Davis. Despite the fact that Glencore is in effect taking over Xstrata, Davis comes out top as chief executive with Glasenberg as his deputy. The pair have known each other since their days at Witwatersrand University in South Africa but have not always seen eye to eye.

Until last year Glencore was kept private, away from the glare of the stock market, while Xstrata was a public company embarking on high profile acquisitions. Glencore, which owns 34% of Xstrata, made life tricky for Davis during a rights issue in which it refused to participate in the cash call.

The flotation of Glencore last year marked the beginnings of the rehabilitation of Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP whose reputation was undermined by the Gulf of Mexico disaster. He became a non-executive director of Glencore as the company listed, and then popped up as a partner to the billionaire financier Nat Rothschild in an oil venture called Vallares. There is speculation Hayward will take on the crucial role of senior independent director of the enlarged company, though it was not clear last night whether he had secured that role over David Rough, the former fund manager who holds the same position at Xstrata.

The Rothshild connections run deep. Rothschild is a personal friend of Glasenberg's. Before Glencore appointed Murray as chairman, Glasenberg called Rothschild to obtain Murray's mobile phone number.

Meanwhile, Glasenberg sits on the board of Rusal, the aluminium group run by Rothschild's close contact Oleg Deripaska and where Glencore and Rothschild are leading investors. Rothschild was also a pre-flotation investor in Glencore, while the prospectus of Rothschild's coal mining group Vallar mentions Glencore 73 times, an indication of the importance of the trading group's long-term marketing deals with the group's assets.

>>16493808

>>16547828

Glencore sells Mopani back to the Zambian government then hired Rothschild & Co, South Africa again to review mine – Coincidence?

https://www.mining.com/web/zambias-zccm-ih-hires-rothschild-co-for-mopani-copper-mines-restructuring/

In April, ZCCM-IH said it was seeking a financial adviser to restructure Mopani and help find a new external investor for the mining complex, which Glencore had sold back to the state in January last year [2021].

“They are back! ZCCM-IH engages Rothschild & Co to review Mopani operations”

https://www.lusakatimes.com/2022/06/15/they-are-back-zccm-ih-engages-rothschild-co-to-review-mopani-operations/

June 15, 2022

ZCCM-IH has engaged Rothschild & Co., South Africa to assist with the strategic review of Mopani Copper Mines Plc.

Rothschild & Co., South Africa was engaged as Consultants in the 90s by the Zambia Privatization Agency on the privatization of ZCCM.

In a statement, ZCCM-IH says this engagement follows a competitive procurement process in which five other companies, both local and international, participated.

It says Rothschild & Co has extensive experience and an established reputation as a leading global financial services group, with a history of over 200 years at the centre of the world’s financial markets.

“South Africa: President to Officiate Launch of Anglo American Nugen™️ Zero Emission Haulage Solution”

https://allafrica.com/stories/202205050426.html

5 May 2022

President Cyril Ramaphosa will tomorrow, Friday, 6 May 2022, officiate the launch of Anglo American's nuGen™️ Zero Emission Haulage Solution.

The launch of the haulage solution, which is a hydrogen-powered, ultra-class mine haul truck, will take place at the Mogalakwena PGM mine in Mokopane, Limpopo.

Anglo American's nuGen™️ Zero Emission Haulage Solution is designed to operate fully laden with a payload of 290 tonnes in conventional mine conditions.

The use of this technology demonstrates the efficiency of hydrogen in the heaviest classes of transport and the role it can play in the transition toward a low carbon future.

This innovative investment fulfills part of the pledges made by Anglo American at the South Africa Investment Conference to contribute to the expansion of the South African economy, including assisting South African industry to achieve a clean energy future.

President Ramaphosa will as part of the launch activities observe the working demonstration of the nuGen™️ hydrogen-powered truck and join a guided tour of Anglo American's on-site hydrogen production, storage and refuelling complex, which incorporates the largest electrolyser in Africa.

South Africa is committed, as a signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Paris Agreement, to a just transition, a low carbon economy and a climate-resilient society.

South Africa is party to an historic agreement signed in 2021 with France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union to mobilise an initial $8.5 billion over the next three to five years through a range of instruments, including grants and concessional finance, to support the implementation of our revised NDC through a just transition to a low carbon and climate resilient economy.

Following his tour of the mine the President will deliver an address at the formal proceedings of the launch of the nuGen™️ Zero Emission Haulage Solution.