Wide Wide World of Leaks: Shell Oil's infiltration of the Nigerian government

Leaks of the Day:

US State Dept Directives to Embassies around the world. From Guardian UK

(1) A directive on "Palestinian issues" sent to Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Amman, Damascus and Riyadh demanded the exact travel plans and vehicles used by leading members of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, without explaining why. (FFWP: information for assassinations of Palestinian leaders by Israelis)

(2) Washington ordered staff in the DRC, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi to obtain biometric information of leading figures in business, politics, intelligence, military, religion and in key ethnic groups. Fingerprints and photographs are collected as part of embassies' consular and visa operations, but it is harder to see how diplomats could justify obtaining DNA samples and iris scans. 

Shell in Nigeria, From the cables:
“Shell EVP for Shell Companies in Africa Ann Pickard met with the Ambassador at the Embassy on October 13.”
“Pickard said Shell had good sources to show that their data had been sent to both China and Russia. She said the GON had forgotten that Shell had seconded people to all the relevant ministries and that Shell consequently had access to everything that was being done in those ministries.”  (FFWP: The conditions of the people in the oil rich area that Shell occupies is one of extreme poverty, so severe there has been numerous attempts at armed resistance and kidnapping of Shell employees.)

From Cables:
“Collaboration between the USG and China in Kenya should be approached cautiously as there appears to be little dovetailing of our interests to date. The GOC has been silent on the implementation of the reform agenda, which we consider essential to Kenya's future stability and prosperity; the GOC turns a blind eye to the flooding of the Kenyan market with Chinese counterfeit goods, such as batteries, which directly damage U.S. market share here; and the GOC has not demonstrated any commitment to curb ivory poaching. We expect China's engagement in Kenya to continue to grow given Kenya's strategic location. If oil or gas is found in Kenya, this engagement will likely grow even faster.”

(FFWP: There is nothing especially revealing here, the reason why the US and global capitalist class is so intent on stopping Wikileaks is that it is revealing to the world an inherently competitive and permanently in conflict social system incapable of creating a harmonious world community. This is contrary to their propaganda.)

Nigeria and Pfizer's Pharmaceutical Corp: Guardian UK
The world's biggest pharmaceutical company hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial drug trial involving children with meningitis. Pfizer was sued by the Nigerian state and federal authorities, who claimed that children were harmed by a new antibiotic, Trovan, during the trial, which took place in the middle of a meningitis epidemic of unprecedented scale in Kano in the north of Nigeria in 1996.

The cable reports a meeting between Pfizer's country manager, Enrico Liggeri, and US officials at the Abuja embassy on 9 April 2009. It states: "According to Liggeri, Pfizer had hired investigators to uncover corruption links to federal attorney general Michael Aondoakaa to expose him and put pressure on him to drop the federal cases. He said Pfizer's investigators were passing this information to local media."Pfizer and the Kano State government had reached a preliminary settlement on lawsuits arising from medical tests conducted with Trovan (oral antibiotic) on children living in Kano during a meningitis epidemic in 1996.  (from the cable)

Remember the episode described here:
"When Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case to the United Nations Security Council in February, 2003 for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he invoked the power of access to the classified world. "I cannot tell you everything that we know," Powell stated, "but what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling." And despite his trust-me-I-have-the-goods declaration that "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources," it has been definitively proven that the claims of Iraq's weapons programs and the Hussein regime's alliance with Al-Qaida were grossly exaggerated and falsified (here leaving aside the important question of whether such claims, if accurate, would then have justified war). "
The Secret Secret: Jimmy Johnson: http://www.counterpunch.com/johnson12092010.html