April 13, 2008

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 7 (The OMNINet: From Good Intentions …)

By liam

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 7 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index .

The OMNINet is one of the world’s largest corporations – or group of corporations – that exist on the planet. It has a broad reach, easily touching the lives of every North American, with an enormous influence on most other continents of the world as well.

But the OMNINet had its origins in from humble intentions. Towards the end of the 1930s, as the Depression subsided, the OMNINet emerged out of two core services: spiritual guidance and transportation.

Grant Garamond, the father of Griffith, started the Univist Church with an intent to guide the scores of lost soles that had been tempted by the ills of the market and who had lost their homes, their farms and for some, even their families, mostly to starvation. For those latter groups of people, the Univist Church became the home for these lost souls. It provided for them, fed them and took care of them long enough to give them a chance to get their feet on the ground.

Grant Garamond played the part well. He was a tall, lanky man who looked like he hadn’t had a decent meal in weeks, because he was born with sallow cheeks and thin, pale skin. His son Griffith inherited most of these traits.

If Grant Garamond’s physical appearance didn’t create a sense of empathy with his prospects and potential converts, his attire would: he intentionally dressed to the level of a common worker or migrant and occasionally, he made slight slits in some of his shirts or sleeves to make them appear well used and worn. He made sure that he wore a consistent roster of clothing that appealed to the people who came to him for guidance. He mastered the look of humility and was proud of it because it made him a very rich man.

In the early days of the Univist Church, millions of people needed help. The Depression years were rough and desperate days at and it’s unlikely that many would have survived without the support that organizations like Garamond’s provided. Some have argued that the US may not have survived at all had it not been for charities and honest corporations finding ways to give a hand up instead of a hand out.

The kind deeds of the early, unstructured Univist church resulted in an extremely loyal following that spread across America, parts of Canada and even into some European countries.

By the middle of the 20^th century, as the Univist Church counted more than 10 million members as part of its ‘flock’, with each member contributing an average of $200 per year in donations.

Imagine: $200 times 10 million translates to revenue in excess of $2 billion per year. In the 1960s! Today, the church continues to rake in more than $20 billion per year from more than 30 million members in the US and other countries. Most of these donations come in the form of cash – cash which is used for a number of questionable enterprises.

During the 1960s, charities and non-profit organizations became exceptional ways in which to funnel their own funds along with OSS, then CIA, then NSA dollars as the countries of the world were manipulated into believing the US way was the only way.

It’s no coincidence that Univist religious missions almost always preceded economic and military dominance of certain countries, especially when those countries owned resources that the US greatly needed.

With that much cash on hand, there were lots of ways to “convince” any government how to manage policies that would be beneficial to the Univists.

To gain a sense of the influence that they have on our day to day lives, think of the “banana” republics. Latin America in the 1940s and 1950s was thriving with economic growth, largely because of demand for basic agricultural and tropical goods that came from the north. It was common knowledge that bananas were rich in potassium, and as the “baby boom” took off in North America, so too did demand for a stable supply for the tropical fruit.

Let it be said that it’s rare that everyone plays fair, especially when the economic interests of the United States are concerned.

Policy makers and shareholders discovered that the only way to have a stable supply of tropical fruit was to buy one. It was common knowledge in Central and South America that trading with the US would have been as politically popular as collecting the left nut of every boy in their jurisdiction.

So it was that the Univist Church became the front door and “special interests” such as the American Fruit Company (AFC) and CIA-funded rebels completed the picture by becoming the back door.

The Univist Church began a number of missions to the south, starting with operations in Central America and quickly spreading to South America, with a focus on Colombia (drug trade), Venezuela (oil) and Chile (copper). These people were exceptionally well received, partly because they were trained in Spanish and Portuguese, but more so because they had a lot of money behind them.

As demand for something as simple as the banana grew, so too did the intensity of the political storms in many countries. The AFC went so far as to hire gangs to oust unfriendly leaders in order to obtain beneficial treatment from those that were willing to be paid well by their corporate lords.

Today, the term is now used as a derogatory phrase to describe any country that is unstable and, more importantly, who’s government is politically weak and dependent on the United States. There’s also a lot of stereotypes that seem to go with it: Spanish or Latino, greedy, dictatorial, and uncaring of their populace.

This may have changed somewhat with leaders like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and the original dictator, Fidel Castro, but there are massive moves afoot to demonize these people as they struggle to offer hope to their people.

So what does this have to do with the OMNINet? As the Univist congregation expanded, and by default, it’s influence with governments, businesses and other organizations, so too did the heads and egos of those that ran it. As the Univist Church grew, Grant Garamond had lost his sense of public duty and pursued private profits. There was so much cash floating around that it had to be organized into more mainstream and legitimate concerns. With that, we saw the genesis of the omnipresent network, or OMNINet, in the late 1960s. The OMNINet was the shell that pushed the cash flow and ubiquity of the Garamond family to new heights. It gave them the ticket they needed to align themselves with the ruling class of America, the Rockefellers, Morgans, Harrimans and Bushes and few dozen other families that are largely in control of the economic and political landscape of the United States.

By the 1970s, Grant’s son, Griffith, had consolidated the loose strands of business into eight entities representing the following businesses:

1. Media & Communications (lead by the International News Corporation, or INC )

2. Legal, Insurance, Finance & Economics (LIFE) with a focus on private equity groups

3. Oil & Natural Gas

4. Military Supply & Enforcement, largely through Greyrock

5. Pharmaceuticals & Homecare (OMNISanitas )

6. Agriculture & Food

7. Real Estate & Construction

8. Labour Supply

The structure of the OMNINet was exceptional in that each of the core divisions fed on each other and would ensure that it was always the OMNINet that won out over competitors.

When a new retirement home was being planned by a local state government, the HomeCare division was there, plying officials and planners with their way of doing business and the Construction division was right behind them, plowing holes in the ground and building sub-standard structures that would collapse within a decade.

If the Oil & Gas division had its eyes on a particular zone in the world that was not friendly to American companies, a peaceful route such as setting up a local subsidiary that would share revenues would be out of the question. Instead, the LIFE division would lobby for ‘regime change’. Once that happened, a heavily subsidized force or Greyrock thugs would outnumber US militia by a ratio of about three-to-one and they would all be fed sub-standard food product from the OMNICulture division.

With Iraq, some people estimate that the OMNINet is making $1-$1.5 billion per day using this model. Who needs the UN when you can make mega-profits from instability?

Grant Garamond died in 1974. The official story was that he died of natural causes in an OMNISanitas facility, but there were a few rumours that once the ink was dry on the will and agreement to transfer all wealth and assets to his only son and only close family member, the timing was accelerated so that Griffith could cement his place in the world of business.

The days of intentionally ripped shirts and populist speeches were history. The days of corporate domination of most facets of North American life were about to begin, with a pale, lean horse called the OMNINet and a man named Griffith Garamond as the rider.

(Note: "Excited Delirium" is a work of fiction. Any person, place or thing depicted in this work of fiction is also a work of fiction. Any relation of these subjects or characters to real locations, people or things are an unintentional coincidence.)

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30