Yemeni dictator and Pentagon ally Saleh, and other corrupt politicians

This video says about itself:

Yemen Opposition Calls for Massive Campaign to Oust Dictator

7 September 2011

Walid Al-Saqaf: Opposition has united with students to intensify campaign to overthrow President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

NOS TV in the Netherlands reports today on a list of the most corrupt politicians, made by Transparency International. The list is from 2004, so is very probably outdated by now.

According to the United Nations now, at least one statesman is more corrupt than even the worst criminals on the 2004 list: Ali Abdullah Saleh, dictator of Yemen until the people drove him away. The United Nations estimate that Mr Saleh amassed a fortune of between 28-53 billion euro, mostly by corruption.

Dictator Saleh was a close ally of the United States Pentagon. When the people of Yemen, the poorest people in the Middle East, demonstrated against Saleh, one of the richest dictators, Saleh ordered his troops to commit massacres. Saleh’s troops had been trained by United States General Petraeus; later CIA boss; still later resigned in disgrace.

Now, from Saleh, to the Transparency International 2004 list of other corrupt politicians.

I have some remarks on that list. All these politicians are from ‘Third World’ (or, in one case, ‘Second World’, ex-COMECON) countries. While there is also a lot of corruption in ‘First World’, rich, NATO, ‘western’ countries. Did Transparency International check seriously whether statesmen like Tony Blair (Britain), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy) or Nicolas Sarkozy (France) should be on the list? Or were they too afraid of conflicts with the ‘First World’ establishment for that?

Another remark: all those ‘Third World’ politicians on the list are presidents or prime ministers. No monarchs or princely family members from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Brunei, etc. Again: why not?

Third remark: with one exception, as we shall see, all these corrupt politicians listed were allies of the self-styled ‘free world’ of the USA, the European Union, Japan, etc.

On the 2004 Transparency International list, corrupt politician number one is the late Suharto, ruler of Indonesia. Suharto amassed between 13 and 30 billion euro by corruption. Working with the CIA, he made himself military dictator in a bloody coup d’état. He had over a million Indonesians murdered for being communists or ‘communists’. He had about half a million people killed after invading East Timor at the request of the United States Nixon administration. Suharto was a buddy of United States ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz; later Iraq war propagandist in the George W Bush administration; still later World Bank boss; still later sacked as World Bank boss for nepotism.

Number two on the list is ex-president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, suspected of 3-9 billion euro in corruption money. Marcos was a good friend of the CIA and Pentagon as well, until the people drove him out.

3. Mobutu Sese Seko, military dictator of Congo (then called Zaire). Suspected of 4 billion euro in corruption. Mobutu became dictator after the anti-colonial elected prime minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, had been murdered in a NATO countries’ intelligence services plot. Mobutu, too, got along well with the CIA and Pentagon.

4. Sani Abacha. From 1993-1998 military dictator of Nigeria. Sent about 2-4 billion euro in corruption money to Swiss banks. Abacha practiced his corruption disguising it as ‘investments in national security’. Abacha was a good friend of Shell and other multinational oil corporations: during his dictatorship, environmentalists and critics of Big Oil, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, were hanged after sham trials.

According to Wikipedia, in 1997, Senator James Inhofe (Republican-Oklahoma) travelled to Nigeria to meet with Abacha as a representative of the “Family”, a group of fundamentalist Christian politicians (infamous, eg, for their role in advocating the death penalty for LGBTQ people in Uganda). Abacha and the Family had a business and political relationship from that point until his death in the company of prostitutes. The Family is also known as The Fellowship.

5. Slobodan Milosevic, ex-president of Yugoslavia. Suspect of 1 billion euro in corruption. The exception on this list in not being a close ally of CIA, Pentagon, and NATO. Quite the contrary: the western establishment depicted him as ‘the new Hitler’ (a blatant injustice to the tens of millions of victims of the real Hitler) in order to justify their war against Serbia and Montenegro, in which NATO killed many civilians.

6. François Duvalier, nicknamed ‘Papa Doc’, dictator of Haiti. Estimates of his corruption loot are from 264 to 700 million euro. Duvalier had the Haitian people tortured and massacred by his infamous Tonton Macoute secret police. Nevertheless, the United States establishment supported him, as Duvalier was staunchly ‘anti-communist’.

7. Alberto Fujimori, 1990s president of Peru. Suspect of 528 million euro in corruption. During his presidency, Fujimori was popular with the Western establishment for his CIA-subsidized ‘anti-terrorist’ oppression and pro-big business austerity ‘reforms’, the Thatcherite ‘Fujishock‘.

8. Pavlo Lazarenko, prime minister of Ukraine in 1996-1997. Suspect of 100-175 million euro in corruption. According to Wikipedia, Lazarenko had ‘a close business relationship with Yulia Tymoshenko’. Ms Tymoshenko, nicknamed ‘the gas princess’, is often promoted in United States and European Union corporate media as a freedom loving ‘pro-Western’ politician. Ms Tymoshenko used to be a member of Pavlo Lazarenko’s political party.

9. Arnoldo Alemán, right wing, pro-United States president of Nicaragua, 1997-2002. It is estimated he made 87 million euro by corruption. Arnoldo Alemán is from a rich family, cronies of the Somoza dictatorship.

10. Joseph Estrada, president of the Philippines 1998-2001. Suspect of 68-70 million euro in corruption. In 1999, Estrada concluded a military treaty with the USA.