>>16705467

>“Perenco acquires Glencore’s upstream oil interests in Chad”

“Revealed: The Frenchman, The Model, And Their $10 Billion Oil Fortune” - Perenco (1 of 3)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/02/07/revealed-the-frenchman-the-model-and-their-10-billion-oil-fortune/?sh=263555f42fed

February 7, 2014

With a net worth estimated to be at least $10 billion, Ka Yee (Carrie) Wong Perrodo and her family are set to be one of the wealthiest new entrants to the Forbes list of Global Billionaires this year. The family has previously been listed in the French media with a net worth of 2.8 billion euros.

A former model who in the 1970s founded a modeling agency that continues to this day, Carrie Perrodo (believed to be 65 years old) is more notably the widow of oil tycoon Hubert Perrodo, who founded and built the international oil company Perenco. Mrs. Perrodo remains stunning to this day, as shown in a picture of her here, presenting the Hubert Perrodo trophy for polo; here at a fashion party; and here at a luncheon. This Chinese-language site even features some vintage modeling photos of Carrie in the 1970s.

Perenco is almost as glamorous. The oil company operates in far-flung locales like Gabon, Nigeria and Egypt, has continued to grow since Hubert's death and now enjoys net production of at least 175,000 barrels of oil (and gas equivalents) per day. According to the company, which is believed to be 100% owned by the Perrodo family, its 2012 revenues were $5.9 billion (up from $3.5 billion in 2010). Its 2012 capital spending budget was $1.2 billion.

That year it bought ConocoPhillips' Vietnamese operations for $1.29 billion. And acquired North Sea fields from BP for $400 million. Last year it bought oil fields in Colombia from Petrobras for $380 million. And in Peru, Perenco is attempting to develop oil fields in a section of Amazonian rainforest still populated by indigenous people living in "voluntary isolation." Last year in Peru the company suffered a tragedy when a helicopter crash killed 12 contractors and one employee.

Perenco's founder Hubert Perrodo was a daring entrepreneur who hailed from the fishing towns of Brittany. During his youth he served in the French navy. In 1967 he spent a summer exploring the eastern coast of the United States. There his adventures one day had him working on a yacht owned by big Gulf Oil shareholder Jack Walton. A conversation with Walton convinced Perrodo he wanted to get into the oil business. In the years to come he worked at drilling company Forex, and marine operator Comex, traveling to the likes of Iraq, Gabon, Indonesia and Singapore. In 1975 he acquired some boats and launched his first business Cosnav, renting out barges to oil companies. In 1981 he founded offshore driller Techfor, which he sold in 1992 before forming Perenco. He moved to Gabon where he soon acquired an aging offshore oil field from Amoco. From there Perrodo perfected that model of buying Big Oil's hand-me-downs, building up his company until his death while hiking Courchevel in the Alps in 2006. He was 62. (See the family's tribute to him here.)

Although Hubert's estate has not yet been divided up among his heirs, it is clear that his wife and three children will inherit the fortune. Eldest son Francois Hubert Marie Perrodo (born Feb. 14, 1977) has assumed the role of chairman of Perenco. Francois is also a sometime race-car driver, who competed in last year's European Le Mans Series, driving this Porsche 911. The other children are Nathalie Perrodo (born 1980) and Bertrand Nicolas Hubert Perrodo (born 1984).

In an interview in the British press, Perenco executive John Sewell explained the Perenco strategy of buying unloved assets from bigger companies, then breathing new life into them. Sewell also made it clear who he works for. "We are owned by the Perrodo family, we are not answerable to shareholders, and financially we are in a good position so we can react quickly to opportunities that come along."

>>16707723

“Revealed: The Frenchman, The Model, And Their $10 Billion Oil Fortune” - Perenco (2 of 3)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/02/07/revealed-the-frenchman-the-model-and-their-10-billion-oil-fortune/?sh=263555f42fed

February 7, 2014

CEO Jean-Michel Jacoulot confirmed that in a 2011 interview with the Financial Times: "Being family owned gives us a long-term view. Our value creation comes from cash flow, not share price," Jacoulot said.

The Perrodo family is very private. Through a spokesman, they declined Forbes' request for an interview and also declined to participate in any factchecking for this story.

Much of what we know about their ownership stake in Perenco comes from documents stemming from a dispute between the company and PetroEcuador, the state oil company of Ecuador, which claimed Perenco owes some $300 million in back taxes.

Perenco in 2002 entered into a consortium to develop oil exploration blocks in the Ecuadorian jungle. The development proceeded and oil flowed, but in 2006 (once oil prices had started to rise) the Ecuadorian government enacted a law calling for oil companies to pay Ecuador up to 99% of the "extraordinary income" they were generating from fields there. Perenco complained about the tax; in 2009 Ecuador seized its oil field there, but got no buyers in an auction of 1.4 million barrels of Perenco's oil.

Perenco has fought this seizure by claiming that because the company is owned by French nationals, Ecuador cannot confiscate Perenco's oil revenues without breaching its obligations under a 1994 Bilateral Investment Treaty between the countries. PetroEcuador counters that Perenco Limited Ecuador isn't a French company, rather it is incorporated in the Bahamas.

The whole tete-a-tete is laid out in this 2011 report [http://www.italaw.com/documents/PerencoJurisdiction.pdf] from a tribunal from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. Regardless of the ultimate resolution of this dispute, what the documents reveal clearly is the assertion from the Perrodos that since Hubert's death, "the entire Perenco Group has been fully owned and controlled by Mr. Perrodo's heirs, consisting of his widow and three children. All are French nationals and his eldest son is now Chairman of Perenco Group."

So then, given that Hubert Perrodo's estate has not yet been distributed, how is anyone to know which Perrodo heir owns what? A declaration made by a Perrodo attorney states that "Ms. Wong, as the surviving spouse, inherited, at her discretion, either the totality of the estate in usufruct or full ownership of one fourth of the existing assets of the estate. The three children are also recorded as heirs to the estate." (I had to look up "usufruct." It means the legal right to use and enjoy the fruits or profits of something belonging to another.)

With that in mind, until the Hubert's estate is settled, we've decided to include the Perenco fortune on the Forbes list of Global Billionaires and list it under Carrie Wong Perrodo's name.

How to value an oil company like Perenco? The best way is to look for publicly traded companies with similarly diverse assets see what valuation the market gives them relative to their revenues and production volumes.

>>16707723

>>16707737

“Revealed: The Frenchman, The Model, And Their $10 Billion Oil Fortune” - Perenco (3 of 3)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/02/07/revealed-the-frenchman-the-model-and-their-10-billion-oil-fortune/?sh=263555f42fed

February 7, 2014

To that end, consider these comparators, which all have sizable international operations but, like Perenco, no refining operations: Tullow Oil has an equity market cap of 5.7 times its annual revenues. Noble Energy sells for 5.6 times. BG Group is at 4 times sales. Anadarko Petroleum goes for 3 times sales, Apache Corp. 1.9 times, Afren, at 1.9 times and Talisman Energy, 1.7 times sales. Marathon Oil is a laggard at 1.5 times. (As for the integrated supermajors like Shell and BP, they sell for merely .5 times sales).

The average price-to-sales multiple of these 8 international oil companies comes out to 3.2x. If we toss out the highest and the lowest, we get 3x, not much different.

Applying this 3x multiple to Perenco's 2012 revenues of $5.9 billion gives us an implied equity market cap of $18 billion.

When estimating the equity value of privately held companies for the Forbes billionaires list, there's a few reasons why we like to apply an average p/s multiple. First of all, it yields a number that presupposes that the company in question is carrying an average debt load, has average growth prospects and has an average management team. This may be conservative; the company, in its limited disclosures, says that it has a "very low debt/equity ratio." Thus, we should feel pretty confident about that $18 billion.

Another way to value Perenco is by deriving an educated guess of what the company's net income is and applying an average price-to-earnings multiple. How to do that? Well the international oil analysts at Bernstein Research figured in a report last year that the average international oil company generates net income of about $14 for every barrel of oil (or natural gas equivalents) it produces. In Perenco's case, its 175,000 bbl per day amounts to 63.8 million bbl per year. At $14 per bbl that's net income of nearly $900 million (for a net margin of 15%).

So what happens when we apply a p/e multiple to that presumptive net income figure? Those same peer group companies currently trade at p/e multiples of 107x for Talisman, 36x for Tullow, 24x for Anadarko, 22x for Noble, 17x for BG, 14x for Marathon, 13x for Afren, 13x for Apache. Tossing out Talisman's outlier leaves an average p/e of 20. Applying that 20x earnings multiple to Perenco's estimated $900 million in net income gives us – $18 billion yet again. If we apply Afren's lowball 13x multiple, we get an $11.7 billion valuation.

As you may have gathered by now, when we value private companies, we like to err on the side of being conservative. That $18 billion does seem a little rich. When divided by Perenco's net production volumes of 175,000 barrels per day, that $18 billion comes out to $103,000 per flowing barrel. That's certainly in line with what oil companies are currently paying for production in the booming oil plays in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford shale of Texas, or the Bakken play of North Dakota (often as high as $120,000 per flowing barrel). But much of Perenco's portfolio has been cobbled together by acquiring castoffs from the supermajors. A couple years ago Apache Corp. bought ExxonMobil's fields in the North Sea for a price of roughly $61,000 per flowing barrel. And consider Talisman Energy, which produces roughly 400,000 bpd and has a market cap of just $12 billion (no wonder Carl Icahn is agitating for change at Talisman). Using the lower $12 billion valuation generates a more reasonable $69,000 per flowing barrel.

That $12 billion would also equate to just more than 2x Perenco's revenues – a very conservative and comfortable multiple.

But, the thing is, we just don't know what we don't know, and in the interest of being conservative in this valuation, $10 billion is both highly plausible and very defensible.

Not included in our calculations of the Perrodos' wealth: any of their diversified investments, nor the Bordeaux vineyards and chateaux that Hubert acquired. He started with Chateau Lebegorce Zede in 1989. Then bought the castle Abbot Gorsee de Gorsee in 2002. In 2006 he acquired the Labegorce chateau, and in June 2006, just months before his death, he bought the Chateau Marquis d'Alesme Becker (reportedly for $30 million). These jewels of Bordeaux are now believed to be managed by daughter Nathalie Perrodo Samani (who can be seen talking about the wines here).

>>16707723

>>16707737

>CEO Jean-Michel Jacoulot

>>16707907

JEAN JACOULOT; Archived Record Houston, TX — Previous President for Cms Nomeco Congo Inc. https://www.corporationwiki.com/Texas/Houston/jean-michel-jacoulot/30477934.aspx

“US operators ensnared in tussle over host-country debt” – Perenco; CMS Nomeco Congo Inc. and Nuevo Congo Co. (1 of 4)

https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/companies/article/17224959/us-operators-ensnared-in-tussle-over-hostcountry-debt

April 24, 2006

CMS Nomeco Congo Inc. and Nuevo Congo Co., US subsidiaries of independent Perenco SA, are fighting legal battles with potential to affect US Oil and gas companies operating in countries that have defaulted on sovereign debt.

CMS Nomeco Congo Inc. and Nuevo Congo Co., US subsidiaries of independent Perenco SA, are fighting legal battles with potential to affect US oil and gas companies operating in countries that have defaulted on sovereign debt.

In a series of US federal court actions across Texas, vulture funds are trying to collect defaulted debt of Congo (Brazzaville) by laying claim to royalty oil through garnishment of third parties, in this case the Perenco units.

So-called vulture funds buy a developing nation’s defaulted debt for pennies on the dollar and then seek to collect full payment. Some of the funds call themselves specialists in asset recovery from problematic emerging markets.

Chevron Corp. filed a brief in the CMS appeals case noting that its subsidiaries face similar efforts in the US District Court of the Northern District of California.

The potential burden of protracted garnishment litigation could discourage US companies from pursuing international ventures, Chevron said.

In addition, other nations could become reluctant to provide US oil companies access to oil and gas investment opportunities if garnishment actions become commonplace, attorneys for both CMS and Chevron said separately.

>>16716492

“US operators ensnared in tussle over host-country debt” – Perenco; CMS Nomeco Congo Inc. and Nuevo Congo Co. (2 of 4)

https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/companies/article/17224959/us-operators-ensnared-in-tussle-over-hostcountry-debt

April 24, 2006

CMS Nomeco

A US District Court in Houston ruled Apr. 5 that vulture fund FG Hemisphere Associates LLC of New York can garnish Congo’s royalty oil and the oil entitlement share of the national oil company, Ste. Nat. des Petroles du Congo (SNPC), through CMS Nomeco, the operator.

Congo courts have ruled the royalty oil is the property of the country and have ordered that lifting by the government proceed of a cargo aboard a tanker in Congolese waters.

CMS, which produces oil from Yombo field off Congo, appealed the Houston court’s decision to the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, said attorney Andrew B. Derman of Thompson & Knight LLC.

The Houston court ordered CMS to post a bond for the value of the royalty oil, Derman said, adding this situation amounts to “trapping CMS between US and Congo court orders and exposing CMS Nomeco to double liability for the value of the oil.”

FG Managing Director Keith Fogerty said his company has a valid order from a Texas court that says CMS owes a debt to Congo, and under Texas law, that is garnishable.

“If you do business in those types of places in the world, you have to accept the consequences,” Fogerty said. “This is not a case of an innocent third party. This is someone working hand in hand with the illegitimate government of the Congo to defeat a lawful garnishment claim.”

Garnishment cases against Perenco’s subsidiaries are complicated and involve federal courts in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, Derman said. Perenco has spent “millions” of dollars in litigation costs, he said, refusing to be more specific.

The cases involve an undisputed Congo government default on a highway construction loan from the 1980s, Derman told participants at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists annual convention in Houston on Apr. 12.

Perenco acquired CMS Nomeco in 2002, a year after a vulture fund started trying to collect oil proceeds from CMS Nomeco. Eventually, Perenco also acquired Nuevo Congo assets after Plains Exploration & Production Co. bought Nuevo Energy Co. in 2004.

>>16716492

>>16716499

“US operators ensnared in tussle over host-country debt” – Perenco; CMS Nomeco Congo Inc. and Nuevo Congo Co. (3 of 4)

https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/companies/article/17224959/us-operators-ensnared-in-tussle-over-hostcountry-debt

April 24, 2006

Immunities law

The legal arguments hinge on whether Congo’s royalty oil is protected as its property under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and whether it can be garnished.

The appellate court’s 2004 ruling on behalf of Af-Cap Inc., another vulture fund, said Congo’s royalty can be garnished in the US, Derman said.

Meanwhile, Congo courts last year ordered CMS to honor SNPC’s contractual right to lift the government’s royalty oil on time, regardless of US court decisions and the garnishment writs. Congo refuses to recognize US court actions, Derman said.

“The issue today is vulture funds are trying to collect SNPC’s share of oil from US oil and gas companies,” Derman said.

More than 70 nations throughout Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia have defaulted on sovereign debt, he said, adding that many US companies have investments in these countries.

“If the decision of the US federal court is upheld, US companies operating abroad will be at the mercy of vulture funds,” Derman said. “There are three critical issues that American companies will encounter if this continues: fear of investing abroad, negative effects on international debt restructuring, and US laws may have to change.”

In the meantime, he said, “Every US company doing business with nations that have defaulted sovereign debt or may default in the future are put directly in harm’s way by the vulture funds’ attempts to use US garnishment law to collect on the paper they bought for pennies on the dollar.”

>>16716499

>>16716492

>>16716505

“US operators ensnared in tussle over host-country debt” – Perenco; CMS Nomeco Congo Inc. and Nuevo Congo Co. (4 of 4)

https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/companies/article/17224959/us-operators-ensnared-in-tussle-over-hostcountry-debt

April 24, 2006

Chevron’s brief

In a brief filed in the CMS case, Chevron said US companies having international operations could find themselves in protracted and costly efforts brought by creditors holding sovereign debt.

“This result will substantially and adversely impact American companies in their efforts to develop foreign mineral resources and will subject them to burdensome and intrusive litigation to collect debts,” the Chevron brief said.

The oil companies, which have no connection with the underlying debt, find themselves as garnishees and are pulled into “limitless garnishment litigation,” Chevron said.

In California, Chevron has responded to three separate proceedings involving Af-Cap garnishment efforts. The oil company said it incurred almost 3,000 attorney-hr over 3 years “at substantial expense.”

Previously, Murphy Exploration & Production Co. International was a defendant in a garnishment case involving Congo (Brazzaville).

The 5th Circuit in December 2004 dismissed that case, which was filed by Walker International Holding Ltd. against Murphy about its signing bonuses.

FG arguments

Fogerty said Congo’s government oil accounts are in question.

“Congo is one of the most predatory, bad regimes in the world where the elite are stealing money left, right, and center. And as all of us know, you can’t steal that type of money without the cooperation of all different kinds of people,” Fogerty said. “Now I’m not suggesting that Perenco is helping them steal that money, but our auditing of the Congo oil accounts shows that somewhere between $500 million to $1 billion has disappeared, probably over the last 5 years.”

Forgerty said, “Our argument is that they [Perenco] are colluding with Congo to try to defeat the court orders. They are not third parties. They are partners who are knee deep in it.”

He added that Congo recently incarcerated two human rights activists who were pointing out the discrepancies in the country’s oil accounts.

Brice Mackosso, of the Congolese Justice and Peace Commission, and Christian Mounzeo, of the Rencontre pour la Paix et les Droits de l’Homme, who act as coordinators of the Congolese PWYP Coalition, have been held in Congo since Apr. 7 on civil charges.

Their detention is said to be linked to their campaign for greater transparency in the management of Congo’s oil revenues. ✦

>>16707723

>>16716492

>JEAN JACOULOT; Archived Record Houston, TX — Previous President for Cms Nomeco Congo Inc.

>>16706185

>“EQUATORIAL GUINEA 2020 HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT”

Jean-Michel Jacoulot – Trident Energy’s first asset in Equatorial Guinea

https://www.trident-energy.com/our-team/leadership-team/jean-michel-jacoulot

Chief Executive Officer

Jean-Michel Jacoulot co-founded Trident Energy in 2016. He is the Chief Executive Officer and a key member of the Board of Directors. He oversees strategic decision-making, the organization of the group and M&A activity, and was instrumental in the acquisition of Trident’s first asset in Equatorial Guinea.

Jean-Michel Jacoulot has over 25 years of experience in Senior Management roles in the Oil and Gas industry. He was the Chief Executive Officer of Perenco from 2007 to 2016. He completed a series of successful acquisitions of mid-life assets during this time and conducted major development projects, doubling the Group’s reserves and operated-production.

He joined Perenco in 1995 and held a number of key roles prior to becoming CEO. He started out as an Asset Manager in Gabon before moving to Colombia where he was a Project and Production Engineer. In 1999, he became the Country General Manager for Venezuela, supervising the operations and liaising with the regulatory authorities and the National Oil Company there. Three years later, he was named Country General Manager for Guatemala before becoming Africa Area Manager in 2003, and finally did a stint as Deputy Chief Executive Officer from 2005 until he was named Chief Executive Officer in 2007. In the Deputy Chief Executive Officer role, his was in charge of restructuring the business, overseeing M&A activity and reinforcing the “Perenco excellence in Operations” to fully establish a Quality, Health, Safety and Environment culture within the organisation.

Jean-Michel Jacoulot is a graduate of INSA Lyon, the French National Institute of Applied Sciences, and holds a Master’s degree in Petroleum Engineering from the IFP School in France, the French Institute of Petroleum.

>>16716541

Trident Energy – “backing from leading private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Quantum Energy Partners”

https://www.trident-energy.com/about-trident-energy

Trident Energy was formed with a focused mission: to unlock the value of mid-life oil & gas assets.

We acquired and successfully took over the Ceiba and Okume assets in Equatorial Guinea from Hess Corporation in 2017 and completed the acquisition of Pampo and Enchova, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, in 2020.

These acquisitions are in line with our strategy to acquire mid-life producing assets globally.

We focus on oil and gas fields lacking attention and investment, to re-develop them, increase production, unlock reserves, and create value for all stakeholders.

At Trident we have had the exciting opportunity to build our company from the ground up.

So we are flat in structure, entrepreneurial and nimble. We have no unnecessary layers or barriers to clear decision-making. And we never forget that the success of any business is hard-wired to the satisfaction of all its stakeholders:

For host states and governments we are a trusted and productive partner who generates important national revenues. We do not operate remotely – our project leaders and their families relocate in-country, as we fulfil our role as a major contributor to the local economy and community.

Trident Energy stands on firm financial foundations.

Central to our investment plans is a $400 million Line of Equity backing from leading private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Quantum Energy Partners. With their support Trident is well placed to achieve its continued growth and business development.

Warburg bring more than 50 years’ experience in growth investment and have supported over 800 companies with more than $60bn of equity. In the energy space, Warburg has invested, or committed, over $10bn across more than 50 investments. Trident Energy is currently unique in their portfolio as the only specialist in international mid-life oil & gas assets.

Quantum Energy Partners is a leading provider of private capital across the energy ecosystem, including traditional and sustainable energy with a long and proven track record of successfully investing in companies with a partnership approach.

Our respective investment cultures are like-minded: measured, selective growth, coupled with creative thinking and innovative ideas. We also believe in creating value but doing so responsibly.

>>16716562

>Trident Energy – “backing from leading private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Quantum Energy Partners”

>>16716541

>Trident Energy’s first asset in Equatorial Guinea

>>16706185 - Obama with Obiang in Blue Room of the White House

“Geithner grilled over AIG” - https://youtu.be/qWHLEPSwWtA

Warburg Pincus President, Timothy F. Geithner, was in the Obama administration

https://warburgpincus.com/firm/firm-history/

2013 – Former US Secretary of the Treasury Timothy F. Geithner joined Warburg Pincus as President.

https://warburgpincus.com/team/timothy-f-geithner/

Timothy Geithner serves as President of Warburg Pincus. In this capacity, Mr. Geithner helps oversee the investment decisions and the management of the firm. Before joining Warburg Pincus, Mr. Geithner served as the 75th Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2009 to 2013. He previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2009. He began his U.S. government career with the Treasury Department in 1988. Mr. Geithner is Chair of the Program on Financial Stability at the Yale University School of Management, where he is also a visiting lecturer. He is Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Rescue Committee. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of the Group of Thirty. Mr. Geithner holds a B.A. in Government and Asian Studies from Dartmouth College and an M.A. in International Economics and East Asian Studies from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

>>16716591

“BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | William K. Black | PBS” – “former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s” – Bush, Clinton, Obama administrations, Geithner, etc. (1 of 2)

https://youtu.be/Rz1b__MdtHY

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/transcript1.html

April 3, 2009

WILLIAM K. BLACK: The FBI publicly warned, in September 2004 that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud, that if it was allowed to continue it would produce a crisis at least as large as the Savings and Loan debacle. And that they were going to make sure that they didn't let that happen. So what goes wrong? After 9/11, the attacks, the Justice Department transfers 500 white-collar specialists in the FBI to national terrorism. Well, we can all understand that. But then, the Bush administration refused to replace the missing 500 agents. So even today, again, as you say, this crisis is 1000 times worse, perhaps, certainly 100 times worse, than the Savings and Loan crisis. There are one-fifth as many FBI agents as worked the Savings and Loan crisis.

BILL MOYERS: You talk about the Bush administration. Of course, there's that famous photograph of some of the regulators in 2003, who come to a press conference with a chainsaw suggesting that they're going to slash, cut business loose from regulation, right?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, they succeeded. And in that picture, by the way, the other — three of the other guys with pruning shears are the…

BILL MOYERS: That's right.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: They're the trade representatives. They're the lobbyists for the bankers. And everybody's grinning. The government's working together with the industry to destroy regulation. Well, we now know what happens when you destroy regulation. You get the biggest financial calamity of anybody under the age of 80.

BILL MOYERS: But I can point you to statements by Larry Summers, who was then Bill Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, or the other Clinton Secretary of the Treasury, Rubin. I can point you to suspects in both parties, right?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: There were two really big things, under the Clinton administration. One, they got rid of the law that came out of the real-world disasters of the Great Depression. We learned a lot of things in the Great Depression. And one is we had to separate what's called commercial banking from investment banking. That's the Glass-Steagall law. But we thought we were much smarter, supposedly. So we got rid of that law, and that was bipartisan. And the other thing is we passed a law, because there was a very good regulator, Brooksley Born, that everybody should know about and probably doesn't. She tried to do the right thing to regulate one of these exotic derivatives that you're talking about. We call them C.D.F.S. And Summers, Rubin, and Phil Gramm came together to say not only will we block this particular regulation. We will pass a law that says you can't regulate. And it's this type of derivative that is most involved in the AIG scandal. AIG all by itself, cost the same as the entire Savings and Loan debacle.

BILL MOYERS: What did AIG contribute? What did they do wrong?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: They made bad loans. Their type of loan was to sell a guarantee, right? And they charged a lot of fees up front. So, they booked a lot of income. Paid enormous bonuses. The bonuses we're thinking about now, they're much smaller than these bonuses that were also the product of accounting fraud. And they got very, very rich. But, of course, then they had guaranteed this toxic waste. These liars' loans.

>>16716614

“BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | William K. Black | PBS” – “former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s” – Bush, Clinton, Obama administrations, Geithner, etc. (2 of 2)

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/transcript1.html

April 3, 2009

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, we've just gone through why those toxic waste, those liars' loans, are going to have enormous losses. And so, you have to pay the guarantee on those enormous losses. And you go bankrupt. Except that you don't in the modern world, because you've come to the United States, and the taxpayers play the fool. Under Secretary Geithner and under Secretary Paulson before him… we took $5 billion dollars, for example, in U.S. taxpayer money. And sent it to a huge Swiss Bank called UBS. At the same time that that bank was defrauding the taxpayers of America. And we were bringing a criminal case against them. We eventually get them to pay a $780 million fine, but wait, we gave them $5 billion. So, the taxpayers of America paid the fine of a Swiss Bank. And why are we bailing out somebody who that is defrauding us?

BILL MOYERS: Who's covering up?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they're fine.

These are all people who have failed. Paulson failed, Geithner failed. They were all promoted because they failed, not because…

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, Geithner has, was one of our nation's top regulators, during the entire subprime scandal, that I just described. He took absolutely no effective action. He gave no warning. He did nothing in response to the FBI warning that there was an epidemic of fraud. All this pig in the poke stuff happened under him. So, in his phrase about legacy assets. Well he's a failed legacy regulator.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: You are.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. And we won't rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it's foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, "We just can't let the big banks fail." That's wrong.

BILL MOYERS: But what might happen, at this point, if in fact they keep from us the true health of the banks?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, then the banks will, as they did in Japan, either stay enormously weak, or Treasury will be forced to increasingly absurd giveaways of taxpayer money. We've seen how horrific AIG – and remember, they kept secrets from everyone.

BILL MOYERS: A.I.G. did?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: What we're doing with – no, Treasury and both administrations. The Bush administration and now the Obama administration kept secret from us what was being done with AIG. AIG was being used secretly to bail out favored banks like UBS and like Goldman Sachs. Secretary Paulson's firm, that he had come from being CEO. It got the largest amount of money. $12.9 billion. And they didn't want us to know that. And it was only Congressional pressure, and not Congressional pressure, by the way, on Geithner, but Congressional pressure on AIG.

Where Congress said, "We will not give you a single penny more unless we know who received the money." And, you know, when he was Treasury Secretary, Paulson created a recommendation group to tell Treasury what they ought to do with AIG. And he put Goldman Sachs on it.

BILL MOYERS: Even though Goldman Sachs had a big vested stake.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Massive stake. And even though he had just been CEO of Goldman Sachs before becoming Treasury Secretary. Now, in most stages in American history, that would be a scandal of such proportions that he wouldn't be allowed in civilized society.

“The Benefits of World Hunger” – United Nations Article

https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/benefits-world-hunger

http://web.archive.org/web/20220705153241/https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/benefits-world-hunger

We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people. Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world's economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour.

We in developed countries sometimes see poor people by the roadside holding up signs saying "Will Work for Food". Actually, most people work for food. It is mainly because people need food to survive that they work so hard either in producing food for themselves in subsistence-level production, or by selling their services to others in exchange for money. How many of us would sell our services if it were not for the threat of hunger?

More importantly, how many of us would sell our services so cheaply if it were not for the threat of hunger? When we sell our services cheaply, we enrich others, those who own the factories, the machines and the lands, and ultimately own the people who work for them. For those who depend on the availability of cheap labour, hunger is the foundation of their wealth.

The conventional thinking is that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs. For example, an article reports on "Brazil's ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom".1 While it is true that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs, we need to understand that hunger at the same time causes low-paying jobs to be created. Who would have established massive biofuel production operations in Brazil if they did not know there were thousands of hungry people desperate enough to take the awful jobs they would offer? Who would build any sort of factory if they did not know that many people would be available to take the jobs at low-pay rates?

Much of the hunger literature talks about how it is important to assure that people are well fed so that they can be more productive. That is nonsense. No one works harder than hungry people. Yes, people who are well nourished have greater capacity for productive physical activity, but well-nourished people are far less willing to do that work.

The non-governmental organization Free the Slaves defines slaves as people who are not allowed to walk away from their jobs. It estimates that there are about 27 million slaves in the world,2 including those who are literally locked into workrooms and held as bonded labourers in South Asia. However, they do not include people who might be described as slaves to hunger, that is, those who are free to walk away from their jobs but have nothing better to go to. Maybe most people who work are slaves to hunger?

For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.

Notes 1 Tom Phillipps, "Brazil's ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom". The Guardian. Online, 9 March 2007.
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/energy/story/0,,2030144,00.html

2 Free the Slaves. Online, 2007. http://www.freetheslaves.net/

About the author

George Kent

George Kent is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaii. He works on human rights, international relations, peace, development and environmental issues, with a special focus on nutrition and children. He has written several books, the latest is Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food.

“Sri Lanka Just Fell. What Do We Have to Do With It?” – (1 of 2)

https://www.commonsense.news/p/sri-lanka-just-fell-what-do-we-have?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

July 12, 2022

Sri Lanka has fallen. On Saturday, thousands of protesters stormed the presidential palace. While the angry and the aggrieved swam in the president’s pool, had a cookout on his lawn, lounged on his bed, and set fire to his residence, the president was spirited away to a naval ship off the Sri Lankan coast.

The proximate reason for the chaos is that the nation is bankrupt, suffering its worst financial crisis in decades. Millions are struggling to buy food, medicine and fuel. Between June 2021 to June 2022, food prices rose by 80 percent. Last month, annual inflation hit nearly 55 percent. Since the start of the pandemic, half a million people have fallen into poverty.

If you’ve never paid attention to the island country just off India’s southeastern coast, you might think this is just how it goes in developing nations. But the truth is that Sri Lanka had been gradually rebuilding itself—after decades of civil war and authoritarianism—and then this happened. We in the West had a lot to do with it.

The underlying reason for the fall of Sri Lanka is that its leaders—starting with former President Maithripala Sirisena and continuing with his successor, the recently deposed Gotabaya Rajapaksa—fell under the spell of Western green elites peddling organic agriculture and “ESG,” which refers to investments made following supposedly higher Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria. Sri Lanka has a near-perfect ESG score of 98—higher than Sweden (96) and the United States (51).

What does having such a high ESG score mean? In short, it meant that Sri Lanka’s two million farmers were forced to stop using fertilizers and pesticides, laying waste to its critical agricultural sector. (Never mind that Tesla has been booted from the ESG S&P Index, while Exxon Mobil is in the top ten. None of it makes much sense.)

To be sure, there were other factors behind Sri Lanka’s fall. Covid lockdowns and a 2019 bombing hurt tourism—an industry that usually generates between $3 billion and $5 billion a year. Sri Lanka racked up huge foreign debt, with China lending the country billions of dollars as part of its Belt and Road initiative. Transportation costs have rocketed 128 percent since May due to rising oil prices. And overall trends have not helped: Since 2012, growth has been declining.

But the biggest problem was Sri Lanka’s chemical fertilizer ban, which passed last year and was central to the country’s effort to comply with ESG.

“Sri Lanka Just Fell. What Do We Have to Do With It?” – (2 of 2)

https://www.commonsense.news/p/sri-lanka-just-fell-what-do-we-have?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

July 12, 2022

The numbers are shocking.

One-third of Sri Lanka’s farm lands were dormant in 2021 due to the fertilizer ban. Over 90 percent of Sri Lanka’s farmers had used chemical fertilizers before they were banned. After they were banned, an astonishing 85 percent experienced crop losses. Rice production fell 20 percent and prices skyrocketed 50 percent in just six months. Sri Lanka had to import $450 million worth of rice despite having been self-sufficient just months earlier. The price of carrots and tomatoes rose fivefold. All this had a dramatic impact on the more than 15 million people of the country’s 22 million people who are directly or indirectly dependent on farming.

Things were worse for smaller farmers. In the Rajanganaya region, where the majority of farmers operate two-and-a-half-acre lots, families reported 50 percent to 60 percent reductions in their harvest. “Before the ban, this was one of the biggest markets in the country, with tons and tons of rice and vegetables,” one farmer said earlier this year. “But after the ban, it became almost zero. If you talk to the rice mills, they don’t have any stock because people’s harvest dropped so much. The income of this whole community has dropped to an extremely low level.”

But the damage to tea was the key to Sri Lanka’s ruin. Before 2021, tea production generated $1.3 billion in exports annually. Tea exports paid for 71 percent of the nation’s food imports before 2021.

The fertilizer ban, starting in April 2021, changed everything. Four months after the ban took effect, the president, realizing that things were not going according to plan, lifted the ban on the import of chemical fertilizers—and then, two days later, reinstated it.

The results have been devastating and widely predicted by tea farmers, with exports crashing 18 percent between November 2021 and February 2022—reaching their lowest level in more than two decades.

“We don’t have enough chemical fertilizers,” Rajapaksa admitted in December 2021, “because we didn’t import them. There is a shortage.”

In May 2022, Sri Lanka failed to pay $77 million on its foreign debt repayments. That may seem like a small sum in the bigger scheme of things, but the default made it hard for Sri Lanka to borrow money. So, it devalued its currency, inflation rose 30 percent, and the government ran out of the cash it needed to import fuel, food and medicines.

What, exactly, were Rajapaksa and other Sri Lankan leaders thinking? Why did they engage in such a radical experiment with the most important industry in their country?

After World War II, Sri Lanka, like many poor nations, subsidized farmers to transition from biofertilizers, like manure, to chemical fertilizers in what is known as the Green Revolution. (This was popularized by Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize-winning agronomist.) Rice yields rose quickly, and the nation overcame chronic food shortages and started earning foreign revenue through the export of rubber and tea.

As yields rose, young people were able to get jobs in cities. Salaries increased—so much so that Sri Lanka became a middle-income nation.

But what looked like a dream to most Sri Lankans looked like a nightmare to many environmentalists in the West. In the 1970s, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich and other activists raged against the Green Revolution. They claimed that overpopulation would cause mass death and suffering and that humankind needed to play “triage.” In other words, we had to let some people die so the rest of us could live.

>>16752102

>>16752130

“World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ Plan for Big Food Benefits Industry, Not People” - Wellcome Trust, GlaxoSmithKline, Google, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, Bayer, Cargill, Syngenta, Unilever, etc. (1 of 2)

https://www.oval.media/en/world-economic-forums-great-reset-plan-for-big-food-benefits-industry-not-people/

02/06/2022

The Great Reset is about maintaining and empowering a corporate extraction machine and the private ownership of life.” — Vandana Shiva

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) The Great Reset includes a plan to transform the global food and agricultural industries and the human diet. The architects of the plan claim it will reduce food scarcity, hunger and disease, and even mitigate climate change.

But a closer look at the corporations and think tanks the WEF is partnering with to usher in this global transformation suggests that the real motive is tighter corporate control over the food system by means of technological solutions.

Vandana Shiva, scholar, environmentalist, food sovereignty advocate and author, told The Defender, “The Great Reset is about multinational corporate stakeholders at the World Economic Forum controlling as many elements of planetary life as they possibly can. From the digital data humans produce to each morsel of food we eat.”

The WEF describes itself as “the global platform for public-private cooperation” that creates partnerships between corporations, politicians, intellectuals, scientists and other leaders of society to “define, discuss and advance key issues on the global agenda.”

According to WEF’s founder and executive chairman, Klaus Schwab, the forum is guided by the goal of positioning “private corporations as the trustees of society” to “address social and environmental challenges.”

In July, Schwab published a 195-page book, “COVID-19: The Great Reset,” in which he challenged industry leaders and decision makers to “make good use of the pandemic by not letting the crisis go to waste.”

TIME magazine (whose owner Marc Benioff is a WEF board member) recently partnered with the WEF to cover The Great Reset and to provide a “look at how the COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to transform the way we live.”

The Great Reset is meant to be all-encompassing. Its partner organizations include the biggest players in data collection, telecommunications, weapons manufacturing, finance, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and the food industry.

The WEF’s plans for the “reset” of food and agriculture include projects and strategic partnerships that favor genetically modified organisms, lab-made proteins and pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals as sustainable solutions to food and health issues.

For example, WEF has promoted and partnered with an organization called EAT Forum. EAT Forum describes itself as a “Davos for food” that plans to “add value to business and industry” and “set the political agenda.”

EAT was co-founded by Wellcome Trust, an organization established with funds from GlaxoSmithKline and which still has strategic partnerships with the drugmaker. EAT collaborates with nearly 40 city governments in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America and Australia. The organization also assists the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the “creation of new dietary guidelines” and sustainable development initiatives.

“World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ Plan for Big Food Benefits Industry, Not People” - Wellcome Trust, GlaxoSmithKline, Google, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, Bayer, Cargill, Syngenta, Unilever, etc. (2 of 2)

https://www.oval.media/en/world-economic-forums-great-reset-plan-for-big-food-benefits-industry-not-people/

02/06/2022

According to Federic Leroy, a food science and biotechnology professor at University of Brussels, EAT network interacts closely with some of the biggest imitation meat companies, including Impossible Foods and other biotech companies, which aim to replace wholesome nutritious foods with genetically modified lab creations.

“They frame it as healthy and sustainable, which of course it is neither,” Leroy told The Defender.

Impossible Foods was initially co-funded by Google, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Recent lab results showed the company’s imitation meat contained glyphosate levels 11 times higher than its closest competitor.

EAT’s biggest initiative is called FReSH, which the organization describes as an effort to drive the transformation of the food system. The project’s partners include Bayer, Cargill, Syngenta, Unilever and even tech giant Google.

“Companies like Unilever and Bayer and other pharmaceutical companies are already chemical processors — so many of these companies are very well positioned to profit off of this new food business which revolves around processing chemicals and extracts needed to produce these lab-made foods on a global scale,” Leroy said.

In Schwab’s book, he discusses how biotechnology and genetically modified food should become a central pillar to repairing global food scarcity issues, issues which COVID has revealed and exacerbated.

He writes “global food security will only be achieved if regulations on genetically modified foods are adapted to reflect the reality that gene editing offers a precise, efficient and safe method of improving crops.”

Shiva disagrees. She told The Defender that the “WEF is parading fake science,” and “for Mr. Schwab to promote these technologies as solutions proves that The Great Reset is about maintaining and empowering a corporate extraction machine and the private ownership of life.”

EAT developed what it refers to as “the planetary health diet,” which the WEF champions as the “sustainable dietary solution of the future.” But according to Leroy, it’s a diet that’s supposed to replace everything else. “The diet aims to cut the meat and dairy intake of the global population by as much as 90% in some cases and replaces it with lab-made foods, cereals and oil,” he said.

Shiva further explained, “EAT’s proposed diet is not about nutrition at all, it’s about big business and it’s about a corporate takeover of the food system.”

According to EAT’s own reports, the big adjustments the organization and its corporate partners want to make to the food system are “unlikely to be successful if left up to the individual,” and the changes they wish to impose on societal eating habits and food “require reframing at the systemic level with hard policy interventions that include laws, fiscal measures, subsidies and penalties, trade reconfiguration and other economic and structural measures.”

But Shiva said this is the wrong approach, because “all of the science” shows that diets should be centered around regional and geographical biodiversity. She explained that “EAT’s uniform global diet will be produced with western technology and agricultural chemicals. Forcing this onto sovereign nations by multinational lobbying is what I refer to as food imperialism.”

>>16752102

>>16752130

>>16756542

>>16756549

“History of Wellcome” - Wellcome Trust

https://wellcome.org/who-we-are/history-wellcome

Henry Wellcome (1853-1936) was a pharmaceutical entrepreneur. He left us three things in his will: his wealth, his collection of historical medical items, and a mission to improve health through research.

Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust was founded in 1936, in accordance with Henry Wellcome’s will, to improve health by supporting scientific research and the study of medicine. Funding for this mission came from the profits of the pharmaceutical business he had built up over 50 years.

In 1880, Silas Burroughs and Henry Wellcome, two pharmaceutical salesmen from America, started a new company in London called Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. They used mass production and proactive marketing to sell remedies and medicines throughout the UK and territories colonised by the British, building the company’s reputation on scientific rigour.

Henry Wellcome became a wealthy and prominent figure in the growth of the modern pharmaceutical industry. After his death in 1936 (Silas Burroughs had died in 1895), the company became the property of the newly formed Wellcome Trust, which used the profits to fund charitable activities supporting research related to health.

Despite financial difficulties after World War II, the business began to thrive again, pioneering a new approach to drug design. Successful products included the first leukaemia drug, immune suppressants for organ transplants, and antivirals such as AZT, the first drug approved to treat HIV.

Towards the end of the 20th century, the Wellcome Trust decided to sell the company, which is now part of GlaxoSmithKline and no longer has any ownership or governance relationship with Wellcome. We do work with GlaxoSmithKline, as we work with many other healthcare companies, when it helps us to achieve our mission.

The considerable proceeds from the sale gave the Wellcome Trust financial independence. Today, we invest in a wide range of financial assets around the world, and the returns from our portfolio – currently worth around £38 billion – fund everything we do.

>>16751618

>>16756767

“CORONAVIRUS UNCOVERS ROTHSCHILD LORD PIRBRIGHT AS KEY TO THE 140-YR. PILGRIMS SOCIETY MONOPOLY OVER WORLD CULTURE, COMMERCE & WAR” - Wellcome Trust

https://stateofthenation.co/?p=8136

Below are excerpts.

Lord Pirbright (Rothschild) and his banker cousins at N.M. Rothschild & Co. were godfathers of the 2nd Boer War concentration camps (1899-1902) to drive the French, Dutch and Germans out of South Africa

New Evidence: Leading London Jews were running the first modern war concentration camps where over 60,000 whites and blacks died, including more than 14,000 mostly white children who were subjected to Burroughs Wellcome & Co. (now Wellcome Trust–Coronavirus funder and GlaxoSmithKline) vaccine experiments

These Privy Council and Parliamentary records have been discovered after much difficulty and missing documents

Pirbright grew up in Ceylon on “The Rothschild Plantation” where they grew coffee and tea sold through their Rothschild-financed British East India Company. At age 45, Baron Pirbright became the British minister of trade and colonies (1885-1892). During those years just prior to the founding of the Pilgrims Society in 1902, Lord Pirbright promoted Cecil Rhodes, N.M. Rothschild, Alfred Milner and John Buchan in the Boer Wars.

Pirbright also coached Henry S. Wellcome and Sir Henry M. Stanley in their rapacious acquisition of valuable African poisons and cures used in extensive vaccine experimentation on human beings—including black and Boer (German, Dutch and French) prisoners they had put in concentration camps and performed fatal Wellcome Trust drug experiments. Pirbright gave Cecil Rhodes an almost free hand in the British South Africa Company to write laws, collect taxes and run his own police force in their new British Imperial-Fascist Corporatism model for reorganizing the British Empire while continuing to control the resources of their colonies, even after Home Rule was implemented (like Rio Tinto – global mining company [including uranium] that is also a Rothschild creation for the British Crown that the Monarch controls to this day), Viscount Alfred Milner, co-founder of the Pilgrims Society, was Rio Tinto chairman from 1923-1925, and earlier a director for many years.

(FEB. 20, 2020)—Once we discovered that the Coronavirus was created and patented (U.S. Pat. No. 10,130,701) by “The Pirbright Institute, Woking, Pirbright, Surrey,” we were compelled to learn more about this Pirbright organization and the village of Pirbright.

One of our conclusions from this investigation is that The Pirbright Institute is very evidently part of the Pilgrims Society’s 200-year Rhodes-ian plan to create an un-elected one-world government where America is made subservient to the Pilgrims Society and its United Nations. As we are just now discovering, Rhodes had a mentor for his 200-year plan.

The tracing of patent ownership lineage of “U.S. Pat. No. 10,130,701, Coronavirus” led us to The Pirbright Institute, Surrey, UK, near Woking and Guildford.

The man who appears to be the Pilgrims Society nexus point is not Cecil Rhodes, but rather Rhodes’ Rothschild family mentor Henry (Rothschild) de Worms, 1st Baron Pirbright, sometimes referenced simply as “Lord Pirbright” or “Baron Pirbright.)

>>16771230

Independent Media also investigated the baby trade in South Africa. Their YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChW8d3UEx6jt6zhyh5h_efQ/videos

“Episode Seven: Fertile Ground | Baby Trade”

https://youtu.be/AmZ8KJpeRWo

Posted March 23, 2022

Fertile Ground, Episode 7 of Independent Media’s compelling docuseries, Baby Trade lands with a bang, as Gosiame Sithole, mother of the Tembisa 10, spills the beans on who the doctors were who delivered her.

>>16716499

>>>16716492 is missing

>>16707723

>>16707737

>CEO Jean-Michel Jacoulot

>>16707907

JEAN JACOULOT; Archived Record Houston, TX — Previous President for Cms Nomeco Congo Inc. https://www.corporationwiki.com/Texas/Houston/jean-michel-jacoulot/30477934.aspx

“US operators ensnared in tussle over host-country debt” – Perenco; CMS Nomeco Congo Inc. and Nuevo Congo Co. (1 of 4)

https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/companies/article/17224959/us-operators-ensnared-in-tussle-over-hostcountry-debt

April 24, 2006

CMS Nomeco Congo Inc. and Nuevo Congo Co., US subsidiaries of independent Perenco SA, are fighting legal battles with potential to affect US Oil and gas companies operating in countries that have defaulted on sovereign debt.

CMS Nomeco Congo Inc. and Nuevo Congo Co., US subsidiaries of independent Perenco SA, are fighting legal battles with potential to affect US oil and gas companies operating in countries that have defaulted on sovereign debt.

In a series of US federal court actions across Texas, vulture funds are trying to collect defaulted debt of Congo (Brazzaville) by laying claim to royalty oil through garnishment of third parties, in this case the Perenco units.

So-called vulture funds buy a developing nation’s defaulted debt for pennies on the dollar and then seek to collect full payment. Some of the funds call themselves specialists in asset recovery from problematic emerging markets.

Chevron Corp. filed a brief in the CMS appeals case noting that its subsidiaries face similar efforts in the US District Court of the Northern District of California.

The potential burden of protracted garnishment litigation could discourage US companies from pursuing international ventures, Chevron said.

In addition, other nations could become reluctant to provide US oil companies access to oil and gas investment opportunities if garnishment actions become commonplace, attorneys for both CMS and Chevron said separately.

Is the Apartheid research being used today?

“South Africa: ‘Dr Death’ [Wouter Basson] discovered to still be practising medicine” – General Constand Viljoen, chemical and biological weapons (Part 1)

https://www.theafricareport.com/63661/south-africa-dr-death-discovered-to-still-be-practising-medicine/

5 February 2021

Wouter Basson, the doctor who led Project Coast, an apartheid-era chemical and biological weapons programme that targeted the country’s black population, continues to practise medicine in a private clinic outside Cape Town. The revelation has hit South Africa hard.

Mediclinic International is your typical successful company. Founded in 1983 in Stellenbosch, South Africa, the private healthcare services group eventually expanded its geographic footprint to include Namibia, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. [Dr Edwin Hertzog, our current chairman, commissioned by the then Rembrandt Group (now Remgro Group (“Johann Rupert’s listed empire: Remgro, Richemont and Reinet”- https://www.biznews.com/global-investing/2021/10/18/johann-rupert-remgro)) to undertake a feasibility study on private hospitals, leading to the founding of Mediclinic. https://www.mediclinic.com/content/dam/mediclinic-com/downloads/en/about-us/mediclinic-history.pdf. Also, “Rembrandt thus entered the South African cigarette and tobacco industry in 1948” - https://www.remgro.com/about-remgro/history/]

According to figures from 2019, the company owns more than 50 clinics in South Africa, generates €3.31bn in revenues and has over 32,000 employees. One of these employees is a cardiologist – well past retirement age – going by the name of Wouter Basson.

Mediclinic Durbanville, a hospital located in a north-east suburb of Cape Town, has a website with Basson’s profile in which his CV, address, phone number and email are made available to the public.

In his professional photo, the physician has a hint of a smile. He is bald, grey-bearded and dressed in a charcoal-coloured suit paired with a striped tie. By all appearances, this is a completely normal man, except for one detail: from 1981 until the mid-1990s, Basson was the all-powerful leader of Project Coast, a chemical and biological weapons programme set up by the apartheid regime to develop substances that could poison, sterilise or kill South Africa’s black citizens.

Its origins take us almost 50 years back in time, when the world was divided into two halves by the Cold War. South Africa’s president was a white man, PW Botha, elected in 1984. During his time as defence minister this staunch supporter of apartheid had developed the concept of “total war”, i.e., that a conflict was playing out between his country and its enemies – both foreign and domestic.

It was under these particular circumstances that in August 1981, General Constand Viljoen, chief of the South African Defence Force (SADF), authorised, with the approval of political leaders, a feasibility study for the establishment of a chemical and biological weapons programme.

All that was left to do was to find a leader qualified to carry out this delicate mission. The young personal physician to President Botha, Basson, a lieutenant colonel who joined the army in 1979, was a competent, extremely motivated volunteer.

After making a few short “information-gathering trips” abroad, during which Basson had the opportunity to meet an array of experts, he returned to South Africa persuaded of the programme’s feasibility. A research and production of unconventional weapons programme was swiftly set up, with General Daniel Knobel, SADF surgeon-general, running the project. However, in reality the project’s leader was, and would continue to be through to the end, Basson.

>>16941522

>Phalatse’s appointment at Armscor, the state arms procurement body, was announced by Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota on Wednesday. Phalatse is among four new board members expected to steer the troubled arms parastatal into calmer waters. Another surprise appointment is Constand Viljoen, the former South African Defence Force chief and Freedom Front leader.

“Dr. Susan Vosloo [South African heart surgeon]”

https://rumble.com/vrnrd3-dr.-susan-vosloo.html

https://rumble.com/embed/vp1l97/?pub=4

0:27 - “That the vaccine was not brought in for COVID but the COVID was brought in for the vaccine.”

“South Africa: ‘Dr Death’ [Wouter Basson] discovered to still be practising medicine” – General Constand Viljoen, chemical and biological weapons (Part 2)

https://www.theafricareport.com/63661/south-africa-dr-death-discovered-to-still-be-practising-medicine/

5 February 2021

Obsession with fertility

Project Coast conducted its business through three front companies specifically created to conceal the SADF’s involvement in the programme: Delta G Scientific, responsible for production, Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL), where evaluation and testing were conducted, and Infladel, the administrative and finance company. According to Chandré Gould and Peter Folb’s 2006 UN report, Project Coast: Apartheid’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme:

The front companies of Project Coast were designed to hide the military’s involvement in chemical and biological warfare. It was argued that they would be able to procure equipment and substances more easily than official military structures, an appealing argument in the light of economic sanctions against South Africa. The use of front companies also allowed the scientists access to colleagues internationally and scientists could be attracted by the higher salaries offered at these institutions compared to the military.

Within the Afrikaans scientific community, Project Coast’s real purpose was an open secret and Delta G Scientific “was referred to jokingly as ‘the secretive organisation’ (die geheimsinnige organisasie)”. Though the number of staff employed by the project has never been officially disclosed, investigators from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which held a hearing into Project Coast during Basson’s trial, estimated that in 1987 it had 165 employees, including some 20 scientists.

The project may not have operated in secret, but it was discreet. Overseen by a committee, the Co-ordinating Management Committee (CMC), specially set up within the Ministry of Defence, the CMC was however “never fully informed of the [project’s] details”. What we do know about it is that Project Coast’s researchers were tasked with a twofold mission of developing “crowd control” agents for domestic use and weapons “to counter the threat posed by the Soviet-backed Cuban forces in Angola”.

Under this vague umbrella, anything went and Basson became especially obsessed with all things fertility related: according to RRL’s former director, “[f]ertility and fertility control studies comprised 18% of all projects”, and more specifically involved research on an anti-fertility vaccine that could be administered to women without their knowledge.

Basson assumed much of the responsibility for Project Coast’s financing. The Ministry of Defence allocated a generous budget to the programme, but how Basson actually used the funds has never been explained. Over the years, the doctor established an international network of financial structures led by managers who reported back to him and him only.

Basson would later go on to say that he created these structures to hide that the funds had originated in South Africa, as that allowed him to bypass economic sanctions imposed by a number of anti-apartheid countries. TRC judges found that Basson was listed as the sole owner [yeah right!] of three companies established in the Cayman Islands and were thus persuaded that he had misappropriated an undetermined portion of project funds for personal gain.

“South Africa: ‘Dr Death’ [Wouter Basson] discovered to still be practising medicine” – General Constand Viljoen, chemical and biological weapons (Part 3)

https://www.theafricareport.com/63661/south-africa-dr-death-discovered-to-still-be-practising-medicine/

5 February 2021

Poisons and bacterial pathogens

Once the project’s various structures were in place, the work to develop substances that could be used as chemical and biological weapons finally began, and the wide range of avenues explored is mind-boggling.

Most of the research had a common purpose: to develop agents that could poison human beings and go undetected post-mortem. Scientists began by working with known toxic substances and tried to develop liquid and powder forms that could be used in weapons, ammunition and even in everyday items, such as drinks, cigarettes, chocolates, etc.

Researchers at RRL, which moved to Sinoville, north of Pretoria, in 1985, were studying conventional poisons, including anthrax, botulinum, potassium cyanide, cantharidin and black mamba venom. They also conducted experiments on bacterial pathogens like salmonella and Escherichia coli, and took a keen interest in the organism that causes cholera. Herbicides and pesticides were also seen as having potential and researchers tested the toxicity of various substances on mice, hamsters, dogs, pigs and several different species of primates supplied by RRL.

[Remember the documentary, “LIVE WORLD PREMIERE: WATCH THE WATER” at https://rumble.com/v10mnew-live-world-premiere-watch-the-water.html (embedded), symptoms of COVID patients are similar to King Cobra venom.]

While the courts were never able to prove it, it is highly likely that certain poisons were also tested on prisoners (particularly Namibians from the South West Africa People’s Organisation [SWAPO]) and soldiers.

Various drugs, particularly general anaesthetic agents and sedatives, were also diverted from their original use. Around 1987, a new company, QB Labs, began producing covert assassination weapons containing poisons developed at RRL.

The weapons included poisonous signet rings, needled units that could be slipped into cigarettes, screwdrivers and even bicycle pumps with a syringe-like mechanism in the handle, as well as umbrellas – similar to the devices used by some Eastern bloc security agencies – which could shoot out a tiny poison-filled ball. When shot into a victim’s leg, the ball “would cause a stinging sensation like a bee sting. The autopsy would not reveal the cause of death since polycarbonate is not revealed on X-rays”.

Basson also wanted to explore less conventional means of crowd control. His dream project involved inventing what he referred to as the “black bomb”, i.e., a biological weapon that would selectively attack black people.

Around the same time, Basson and his team were working closely with Barnacle, the SADF’s Special Forces unit created in 1979, which operated covertly and specialised in carrying out targeted assassinations of political opponents. Gould and Folb’s 2006 report on Project Coast provides a long list of leading figures who were poisoned, whether lethally or otherwise, between 1977 and 1993, and many of these poisonings can be traced back to Barnacle and Basson’s research team.

The list includes a number of ANC activists and leaders living in exile in the UK, Swaziland, Namibia and Mozambique, and journalists, but also police and military officers suspected of providing information to black opposition members or being too obliging towards anti-apartheid movement leaders.

“South Africa: ‘Dr Death’ [Wouter Basson] discovered to still be practising medicine” – General Constand Viljoen, chemical and biological weapons (Part 4)

https://www.theafricareport.com/63661/south-africa-dr-death-discovered-to-still-be-practising-medicine/

5 February 2021

‘Black bomb’

Project Coast’s other priority was to develop chemical and biological agents for “crowd control” and part of the research team was working on producing a substance that could be used as a gas or in ammunition and grenades by police during major protests involving black opposition groups. Large quantities of tear gas and other irritants were produced for this purpose.

However, Basson also wanted to explore less conventional means of crowd control. His dream project involved inventing what he referred to as the “black bomb”, i.e., a biological weapon that would selectively attack black people. His hopes rested on what is known as polymorphism, or the idea that a genetic variation is present between black and white populations.

Basson’s team tried to develop a sterilant that could be sprayed onto crowds of protesters from a gas cylinder in order to make them temporarily or permanently sterile. Another idea they had was to poison water supplies in black neighbourhoods with such substances, but the researchers never successfully produced them.

Nevertheless, RRL scientists, channelling their imaginative powers, came up with another project: weaponizing street drugs. Basson knew that narcotics were widely distributed to the general public, so he was drawn to the idea of creating poisonous drugs that could incapacitate or kill their users. The labs focused their research on cannabis and methaqualone, a sedative, the two most frequently used drugs in the black community.

Combinations of drugs were tested and active ingredients were extracted to create a formulation that could be used as a powder and mixed with other substances. Cocaine and LSD were also studied, but Project Coast’s chemists spent the bulk of their time working with MDMA – more commonly known as ecstasy – because it was easy to make.

According to Gould and Folb’s report, the exact motivation for conducting this research has never been clearly established. The intention may have been to infiltrate the drugs “into ANC trade routes to compromise ANC members” or “to undermine [black] communities by introducing addictive drugs”. There is also a third possibility: it was simply about generating extra money.

“South Africa: ‘Dr Death’ [Wouter Basson] discovered to still be practising medicine” – General Constand Viljoen, chemical and biological weapons (Part 5)

https://www.theafricareport.com/63661/south-africa-dr-death-discovered-to-still-be-practising-medicine/

5 February 2021

Damning report

In 1989, the research outfit of the man later nicknamed “Dr Death” was operating in full swing, but a single event threw a wrench in everything: FW de Klerk replaced Botha as president and, unlike his predecessor, he knew that it was time for the apartheid regime to retreat.

In the early 1990s, De Klerk “announced the unbanning of political movements” and the release of ANC leaders from prison. Around the same time, Basson met with the president to discuss Project Coast. He insisted that its foremost purpose was to produce incapacitants agents and irritants, which were permitted by the Geneva Protocol. De Klerk “authorised the continued work on incapacitants and teargas”, but officially banned research on lethal agents. Project Coast’s days were numbered.

In 1992, General Pierre Steyn was appointed to head a commission “on alleged dangerous activities of SADF components”. His report was damning enough that within a month De Klerk ordered the early retirement of 23 military officers, including Basson, who had recently obtained the rank of general.

The doctor officially retired from the armed forces on 31 March 1993 and the government ordered that all stocks of chemical and biological weapons owned by the SADF and the police be destroyed. Project-related technical data were placed on optical disks and hard copy documents were destroyed, at least in theory, as investigators have said that they never obtained clear evidence that any biological agents or documents were destroyed.

Basson’s trial

Basson, just 43 at the time, stayed active after his forced retirement, creating an import-export company and making frequent trips abroad to find markets for South African manufactured goods – or so he said. One of his employees, Grant Wentzel, was financially strapped and had heard that “big money” could be made in the illicit ecstasy market. Aware of his boss’s former research activities, he discreetly approached Basson to see if he could supply him with the valuable drug. The doctor unwisely accepted Wentzel’s request and ended up giving him a small quantity of capsules.

But in 1997, Wentzel, who was not the most talented drug dealer, got arrested by the police and confessed to everything. After accepting to become an informant, he helped set a trap and in January of that same year, Basson was arrested by the narcotics division of the South African Police Service. The “Josef Mengele of apartheid” was in jail, but “merely” on drug trafficking charges. His trial began shortly thereafter, but the proceedings were rushed. No serious evidence that Basson had supplied Wentzler with MDMA was found.

However, during a search of the home of an associate, police found four trunks of Project Coast documents. Astonished by the discovery, investigators notified the TRC, a body set up to shed light on crimes committed under apartheid.

“South Africa: ‘Dr Death’ [Wouter Basson] discovered to still be practising medicine” – General Constand Viljoen, chemical and biological weapons (Part 6)

https://www.theafricareport.com/63661/south-africa-dr-death-discovered-to-still-be-practising-medicine/

5 February 2021

Basson’s real trial could finally begin. Tens of witnesses testified, including Gen Knobel and a number of scientists. Every testimony was damning: the doctor alone had knowledge of the project’s full scope, pushed to develop offensive rather than just defensive weapons, managed project funds with as little transparency as possible, etc. In October 1999, his criminal case went before the Pretoria High Court. Basson stood indicted on an array of charges, including murder, attempted murder and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. He was questioned about his recent trips abroad and extensive network of contacts in countries such as the US, Switzerland, Croatia, Syria and Libya.

Basson denied and played down everything, claiming that the project files found in the trunks did not belong to him and that he had no idea how they ended up at his associate’s home. The doctor maintained that his right not to incriminate himself was protected by the constitution.

He regularly said in court that he “was only following orders”, to the immense irritation of the judges and plaintiffs. To everyone’s surprise, it turned out to be extremely difficult to directly and personally implicate the defendant in the manufacture of weapons and toxic substances, even though his responsibility as head of a programme to develop such weapons was accepted by all parties.

On 11 April 2002, the verdict was handed down: Basson was acquitted on all charges against him. Though the TRC’s purpose was to grant amnesty to perpetrators of human rights violations and to help heal divisions in South African society, authorities were upset by the verdict and the state announced it would appeal the court’s decision. In 2005, the Constitutional Court confirmed that the prosecution could reopen the proceedings, but this never actually happened.

In 2013, following a seven-year investigation, the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) came to the conclusion that the doctor should be removed from the roll of registered practitioners since he was guilty of unethical conduct. But once again, no action was taken.

This is how it came to be that, in 2021, the “Josef Mengele of apartheid” is still a cardiologist practising in a high-end clinic in the suburbs of Cape Town, even though Desmond Tutu, who presided over the TRC’s work, wrote in 2006 that Project Coast was “a reflection of the inherent evil of apartheid” and that forgiveness “depends on repentance”.

The problem is, as several political leaders have pointed out in recent days, Basson has never expressed the slightest hint of remorse. Worse still, in the 2009 documentary Anthrax War, he described his work on developing the “black bomb” in the following terms: “That was great, ja, that was the most fun I’ve had in my life.”

The Julius Malema-led Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party wrote in a statement that Basson “belongs in jail” and called his licence to practice medicine an “abhorrence”. Mediclinic, taking an entirely different tone, said it could not prohibit him from practising since he is registered with the HPCSA. As the principle goes, everything which is not forbidden is allowed.