(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
A look at the global arms industry and the effect corruption has on our politics, society and culture.
Bribery, fraud and dishonest conduct by people in power – corruption is a cancer in society, no matter where you live. But who are the guilty parties? Is corruption becoming socially accepted? And what can we do about it?
On this episode of South2North, Redi Tlhabi takes a look at the effect corruption has on our politics, society and culture.
Redi talks to Andrew Feinstein, a former parliamentarian and co-founder of Corruption Watch UK, an organisation dedicated to exposing bribery and corruption. Feinstein is also a whistleblower on illegal arms deals and the author of the book, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, that investigates the dark side of this trillion-dollar industry.
Feinstein explains why corruption in the global arms trade has interested him specifically:
“It’s estimated that the trade in weapons accounts for around 40 percent of all corruption in all world trade ….The thing that I think is so important about it is it runs to the core of the way we’re governed, because the trade in weapons is extremely closely tied into the mechanics of government. The defence manufacturers, those who make the weapons, are closely tied in to governments, to militaries, to intelligence agencies and crucially to political parties. So they have enormous influence.”
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Personally, I believe the main source of corruption is the confusion of the citizenry of various countries. This confusion is, in my view, engineered by propagandists who have learned all the tricks of the trade in manufacturing consent. But they are also aided by a cultures (particularly in the U.S.) that is focused on consumption–not just of goods and services but on entertainment. As long as the corporate oligarchs can provide us with something approaching the power of the Matrix people will ignore the machinations involved in the corrupt politics that surrounds them both on a local, national and global level.
If people paid more attention and started hanging out together and re-forming real social networks this situation might change.
When I was coming home from Vietnam through Japan, I was struck by advice that Japanese merchants could be relied on to give the precise price of pearls in New York from which they offered a fine discount but it was necessary to know that you were not dealing with a Chinese merchant. Seemed the Chinese merchant could be depended only to lie.
I bought no pearls, had no interest in buying pearls, was never good at determining the ethnicity of people but I was struck by the difference in perceived ways of doing business.
Was one corrupt and the other ethical if the proposition was correct?
Or was it something else?
Something else is my guess.
Others here must have heard how the Nazis cleaned up corruption when they first took control in Germany. Yeah, that worked out swell.
How do you explain Reagan putting the crooked bankers in jail and Obama putting them in charge of the Treasury, the Fed and economic advice? Didn’t Reagan have the most corrupt administration in history?
Broad brush generalities leave a bit of the story out.
IMO.
Best, Terry
We are predators. We have two eyes to focus on what we had to kill to survive. We did not eat grass like horses do and somewhere along the evolutionary scale we got “intelligent which made us the ultimate predator. Check out my latest SOFEX post the ultimate arms trade trade show.
If people were perfect, we would’nt have needed the first law, we could just turn everyone loose and they would behave perfectly all on their own.
It’s the law of the jungle without regulation (primarily against greed).