[2011 Dec] Bribery Scandal Almost Nabbed Newt by Michael Collins Piper  the bottom line is that Gingrich and his wife were allegedly attempting  to shake down Soghanalian for a $10 million  bribe and that, from the beginning, operatives for Israel  were on the scene, acting as middlemen for the Gingrich duo.....at the last minute, FBI Director Louis  Freeh sent down the order that Soghanalian was not  to attend the event—which Gingrich did attend—  and the two-year-long investigation was brought to an abrupt end just when the FBI might have caught Gingrich agreeing to accept the payoff.  Journalist Trento quoted one FBI agent, who said:  “We got so close, and when the target was in sight, we  were stopped by Washington.”

[2011] British gun dealer investigated in US over AK-47 empire

[2011 Dec] Newt Gingrich, Marianne and the Arms Dealer:  A Buried FBI Investigation By Joseph Trento   Gingrich was at the center of a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation in the late 1990s for a scheme to shake down the arms dealer for a $10 million bribe in exchange for Gingrich using his influence as Speaker to get the Iraq arms embargo lifted so Soghanalian could collect $54 million from Saddam Hussein’s regime for weapons he had delivered during the Iran-Iraq War.

[2011 Oct] The intelligence experts who doubled profits under Dr Fox since he became minister Poju Zabludowicz – a former arms dealer who owns much of Las Vegas and helped bankroll David Cameron’s campaign to become Tory leader....In 2005, Mr Zabludowicz’s firm paid £15,000 to Mr Cameron’s campaign to lead the Conservative Party, and last year donated £131,805 to the party itself. Tamares is said to own approximately 40 per cent of the property in downtown Las Vegas, including numerous casinos, plus property in Washington DC and New York’s Times Square. 
    The billionaire’s father Shlomo was an Auschwitz survivor who moved to Finland and built up the Israeli arms company Soltam. After Shlomo’s death in 1994, his son took over the business and sold most of the defence interests in favour of property. However, he is still chairman of a U.S. firm which manufactures ammunition for the military.
    Mr Zabludowicz, worth an estimated £2billion, is also a key  figure in Bicom, the British Israel Communications and Research  Centre, which is the UK’s major pro-Israel lobby and one of the common threads running through Mr Werritty’s network of political friendships.

[2010] Machines of War: Blackwater, Monsanto, and Bill Gates  A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater's Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto....Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.

The details of this business were frequently very curious. Germany needed chemicals for explosives and bauxite for aluminum; France, deprived in part of her iron resources, was sorely in need of iron and steel. The Swiss engineered this matter for both parties. For a long time during the war the Germans exported an average of 150,000 tons of iron and steel every month into Switzerland. In some months a peak of 250,000 tons was reached. It went in the form of scrap iron and manufactured products, such as railroad tracks and barbed wire. The German trademark was removed from steel rollers in Switzerland. The German companies carrying on his trade were accused of treason, but their defense was that they were merely fulfilling their part of what was virtually an international bargain by which France and Germany supplied vital materials to one another during the war. Their contention was accepted by the court and they were found not guilty.15
    The French also lived up to their part of the bargain. A great ado was made about the affaire des carbures when it became known in 1917. It happened in November, 1914. The Lonza Company was a Swiss industrial firm, owned by Germans, which had one of those international boards of directors so typical of the armament makers. It was made up of French, Italian, German, and Austrian nationals. Under the pretext of paying a debt, the French Societé; Commerciale des Carbures delivered to the Lonza Company in Switzerland 300 tons of carbide-cyanamide, a chemical which is readily converted into saltpeter, which in turn is an essential of gunpowder. The French company did owe money to Lonza, but the value of the chemicals delivered was very much greater than the debt.16
    When this story became known in 1917, there was great excitement in some quarters. A trial was ordered for the great industrialists who were charged with treason. Immediately a great "hush" fell over the entire affair. Hardly a word concerning it appeared in the press. Only the radical papers knew that a scandal had broken. The accused protested that they had merely paid a commercial debt and that they had believed the chemicals were to be used for—fertilizer. Of course, this was possible. At that point mysterious influences began to make themselves felt in the trial, supposedly set in motion by Poincaré, a close friend of the great industrialists. The entire prosecution had been carried on reluctantly and half-heartedly and the final acquittal surprised nobody. [1934] MERCHANTS OF DEATH A Study of the International Armament Industry by H.C. ENGELBRECHT, Ph.D.

French bauxite also entered Switzerland freely during the war, was there manufactured into aluminum, and then shipped into Germany for the construction of submarines. The Swiss delivered about 20,000 tons of aluminum annually to Germany and 200 tons to the Allies. As to saltpeter, it is reported that the Swiss supplied annually to Germany enough for 56 billion rifle shots or 147,000,000 grenades. In 1917 alone Germany produced with the help of the Swiss 300,000 tons of saltpeter. Before the war, the world production had been 214,000 tons a year.
    The Swiss were not only intermediaries between the warring nations; they also supplied to both sides vast amounts of electrical power, useful especially in the new process of extracting nitrates from the air. The lack of coal during the war compelled the Swiss to develop their hydroelectric resources. All along their frontier, facing Germany, France, and Italy, great power houses sprang into being, using the vast water power of the country. It was an easy matter to transmit this current to the three neighbouring countries. The export of electrical power reached enormous proportions: 382,000 HP to Germany and 76,500 HP to the Allies. [1934] MERCHANTS OF DEATH A Study of the International Armament Industry by H.C. ENGELBRECHT, Ph.D.

The profits of this war traffic in iron, bauxite, chemicals, and electric power were colossal. Swiss statistics for the period are utterly unreliable; in some cases they are only 25 per cent correct.17 Swiss aid to both belligerents, given under tremendous pressure undoubtedly did much to prolong the war.
    Various other stories are told about the international commerce of the belligerents during the war. The German Zeiss factory was famous for its lenses and optical instruments which were in demand throughout the world. Armies and navies everywhere used Zeiss instruments for gun sighters and firing directors. The British needed the Zeiss products during the war and they managed to get them. Stories differ as to how they did it. One account declares that they reached England via Holland.18 Another has it that the British got hold of some Zeiss workmen and "persuaded" them to produce these instruments in the Vickers factory in England.19 Whatever the method employed, there seems to be no doubt that the British fought the battle of the Skagerrak with Zeiss instruments acquired after the beginning of the war.
    The Germans came to grief elsewhere through materials manufactured by their own countrymen. In the terrific fighting around Verdun, Fort Douaumont was repeatedly a bone of contention. It changed hands several times. In one of the attacks, the Germans ran into some barbed wire entanglements which only two months previously had been shipped into Switzerland by a German factory, the Magdeburger Draht-und-Kabelwerke.[1934] MERCHANTS OF DEATH A Study of the International Armament Industry by H.C. ENGELBRECHT, Ph.D.

Maxim, it is all right and highly commendable for a man to be very patriotic and do all he can for his country, but you are one of the directors of an English company. We are neutral; we cannot take sides.
—A fellow director to Hiram Maxim. [1934] MERCHANTS OF DEATH A Study of the International Armament Industry by H.C. ENGELBRECHT, Ph.D.

Political Mafia  [2016 Sept] UK government works ‘hand in glove’ with arms firms, say campaigners