These events were shown in Season of the television series The Crown, titled 'Coup.' In 1933, a similar conspiracy was hatched in the United States. Following the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised to abolish the gold standard and implement a series of left-wing economic policies known as the 'New Deal,' magnates behind major corporations such as Chase Bank, Standard Oil, General Motors, Goodyear, Dupont, Heinz, and others plotted to assemble a private army of up to half a million military veterans to overthrow Roosevelt. Major General Smedley Butler, a 34-year veteran of the US Marine Corps and the most decorated marine in US history at the time, was asked by the conspirators to lead their private army, which became known as the 'Business Plot.'
Butler, on the other hand, had become disillusioned by his time in the US military, and he not only refused to take part in the conspiracy, but he also testified about it before the US House of Representatives in 1934. Despite the fact that Congress concluded that it was "possible to corroborate all the important assertions made by General Butler," no one was ever prosecuted, and none of the key persons suspected of involvement in the scheme were ever brought to testify before Congress. Shortly later, in 1935, Smedley Butler published War Is A Racket, which contains the following summary. War is a con game. It's been that way all along. It's the oldest, easily the most profitable, and unquestionably the most dangerous. It is the only one of its kind with a global reach. It's the only one where profits are measured in cash and losses are measured in human lives. A racket, in my opinion, is something that does not appear to the majority of people to be what it appears to be. Only a select 'inside' group is aware of the situation. It is carried out for the advantage of a small number of people at the expense of a large number of others. A few people become extremely wealthy as a result of the battle.
More recently, the sequence of events that saw Dick Cheney serve as Chairman and CEO of the American oil corporation Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, then become Vice-President of the United States in 2001, followed by Halliburton winning a $7 billion contract in the run-up to the Iraq war that only they were authorised to bid on is unlikely to be coincidental. In addition, former Labour Home Secretary Robin Cook writes in his memoirs about the extremely tight relationship that the British defence business BAE Systems had with the top echelons of the UK government, and how they benefited from it.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, BAE's International Business Development Director, was appointed five years later. Many billionaires have increased their wealth as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas the majority of ordinary people have seen their earnings decrease or their jobs evaporate entirely. For example, the BBC claimed that "billionaires have seen their fortunes hit record highs throughout the pandemic," while also stating that "severe poverty is projected to climb this year for the first time in more than two decades," according to a World Bank report Slate chipping bulk bag store near me. 'The chairman of BAE appeared to have the key to the garden entrance to Number 10,' Cook said. 'I've never known Number 10 to make a judgement that would be inconvenient for BAE.' Finally, in 2006, the UK's Serious Fraud Office was investigating an armaments contract between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia's rulers for probable corruption, but the probe was discontinued under pressure from Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
