Russian Energy Pipeline Giants to Form Corporate Armies
July 15th, 2007Via: mnweekly:
Lawmakers voted Wednesday to give Russia’s natural-gas and oil pipeline monopolies the right to set up armed security units to protect the country’s energy infrastructure.
One lawmaker said the move could lead to “a multitude of corporate armies.”
Instead of hiring private security firms, state-controlled gas giant OAO Gazprom and oil pipeline monopoly OAO Transneft would be able to directly arm and recruit their own security forces, under a bill passed by the lower parliament house, the State Duma.
To become law it must be approved by the upper house, the Federation Council, and signed by President Vladimir Putin.
Gazprom, the world’s biggest gas producer, controls Russia’s main gas pipelines and is the only company allowed to handle exports. Transneft, which is also state-run, has the monopoly on oil pipelines.
Lawmaker Gennady Gudkov, who opposed the bill, warned that it could open a “Pandora’s Box.”
State-controlled giants like savings bank Sberbank, electricity utility UES and the railways monopoly could all seek the same right, he said.
“As a result there will soon be a multitude of corporate armies in the country,” Gudkov said.
It is hard for individuals to protect themselves from the unwise actions of governments and other large entities. For governments are characteristically untrustworhty in doing what is in the interest of the people, when other factors more in the interest of persons in government present themselves. Nor is that the only reason. We need to remember that governments are not real entities, but are ambitious individuals acting alone or together to create the illusion of authority, where, in fact, little or none exits. We are mistaken to trust such illusions. Our real responsibility is not loyalty to unreal entities, but to our own interests actualized in ways that are not sociopathic.
And all those science fiction stories with corporate armies etc. don’t sound so far fetched after all.
as you probably already know, the private army approach has been in use for some time in the congo to protect the various mining operations there… also because of the almost total lack of the government’s ability to operate even the most basic elements of a national infrastructure, some of these companies are also building and operating their own immigration and customs entry points in order to get their equipment and supplies into the country… it’s interesting what you find out when you sit next to a mining engineer on a transcontinental flight…
It truly is amazing the extent to which corrupt national governments and huge corporations the world over have merged, and continue to merge.
“It truly is amazing the extent to which corrupt national governments and huge corporations the world over have merged, and continue to merge.” …. into the Underground Movement of Control.
Is that the New World Order to replace corrupt national governments and huge corporations?
Now there is an Opportunity for an Operating System capable of dealing with the Out of the Ordinary.