Saturday, October 31, 2009

U.S. Billionaire Warren Buffett's $4 Billion Investment In Israel

If you're a fan of Ralph Nader who now thinks that relying on U.S. Billionaire Warren Buffett to bankroll a U.S. movement for radical democratic change will magically end corporate totalitarianism and plutocracy in the United States and end U.S. government support for the Israeli war machine in the Middle East, you might be in for a big surprise. In recent years, for example, Buffett has invested over $4 billion in the Zionist movement's Israeli economy, despite the Israeli government's long history of violating the UN Charter, international law and the human rights and national self-determination rights of the Palestinian people.

As the website of the American Israel Investments Associates at http://www.israelgrowth.com/about.html notes:


“With the highest GDP growth (5.2%) of any Western country (2005), Israel has become a very popular market for foreign investors. Warren Buffett’s $4 billion purchase of Iscar, his largest international investment ever, continues a trend that has sent foreign investors running to invest in the dynamic Israeli economy. Global stalwarts such as Johnson and Johnson, Intel, Ebay, Kodak, HP, Cisco, Alcatel, Broadcom, Microsoft, BMC Software, Verifone, and PMC Sierra all purchased Israeli companies in the last year.

“With more companies listed on NASDAQ than any other country except for the United States, Israel is the focus of more and more investor attention.

“Israel has become a destination for all types of investors who seek potentially high returns. Over $1.4 billion of venture capital money was invested in 2005. This ranks Israel second only to the United States in venture capital funding, outranking European and Asian rivals. As the privatization of government companies continues, the large global hedge funds and private equity firms have become very active players, investing billions of dollars in purchasing firms like Bank Leumi (Israel’s second largest bank) and Bezeq (the national phone company)."


Rather than begging U.S. billionaires like Warren Buffett to use the surplus blood money they've acquired (from exploiting working-class people and consumers at home and abroad and then re-investing some of their surplus blood money in an economy that oppresses the Palestinian people) to finance the U.S. Movement for radical democratic change, perhaps people who seek radical democratic change in the United States in 2009 should now be demanding that U.S. billionaires like Buffett immediately divest themselves of their investments in Israel--until the democratic rights of the Palestinian people are fully restored?

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