The Quiet Hand of Offshore Influence
Here's what they buried in paragraph 15: FIRST INSTANCE: The 2010 Australian Mining Tax Playbook In mid-2010, the Australian Labor government under then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed a 'Mineral Resource Rent Tax', a 40% super profits tax on mining companies. This move was met with immediate and aggressive opposition from the mining industry, mobilizing an estimated $22 million against it (
ABC News, 2010 ). Simultaneously, Guardian World now reveals private emails from Peter Mandelson, a former UK Labour minister now linked to Epstein, stating 'pressure needs to be maintained' against the tax. This email surfaced just two weeks before Rudd was replaced as Prime Minister by Julia Gillard. The tax, ultimately implemented in a watered-down form, was repealed by the incoming Liberal
government in 2014. REPETITIONS: Echoes of Influence This tactic of external, business-aligned pressure on sovereign economic policy is not new: 1953 Iran: Oil and Intervention: The joint CIA/MI6 coup against democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 was directly precipitated by his attempt to nationalize Iran's oil industry ( National Security Archive, 2013 ). The
'pressure' applied here was maximal, leading to a decades-long destabilization of the region and the installation of a pro-Western monarch. 2002 Venezuela: Oil and Regime Change: The attempted coup against Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 2002, supported by elements within the US government, was in part a response to his government's moves to exert greater state control over its vast oil resources (