Time to Rename the Defense Department the War Department?

The U.S. Congress created the Department of War in 1789.  One hundred and sixty years later, in 1949, it became the Department of Defense.  The various factors involved in the name change likely included fatigue with death and destruction after World War II.  But these factors may also have included salesmanship among the dogs of war, soft-selling their wares.  Two years after the name change, President Truman and friends took the nation to war with the newly named Department of Defense, albeit without a formal declaration of war by Congress.  He called Korea a “police action.� History has taken him to task on that one, and it is now commonly called the “Korean War.�  We’ve had lots of wars since then, as well, but not a single formal declaration of war since World War II.

In November 2002, a new entity arrived when the Department of Homeland Security was established.  The DHS had seemingly laudable goals, on the surface.  But the question arises — if we already had a Department of Defense, why did we need a Department of Homeland Security?  Back in 2003, I asked this question of a top political historian, and he responded “Bill, don’t be silly.  We need the Department of Defense to protect our troops overseas!â€� Read more È

“The Marriage from Hell: Jane Harman & the Woodrow Wilson Center�

Last year investigative journalist David Boyajian wrote two exposés on Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center, revealing how the center has been violating its Congressional mandate and been up to its neck in tainted corporate cash. You can read Boyajian’s exposés here and here. Many agreed with Boyajian’s damning assessment, including a prominent journalist who called the WWC “a global joke.� I too wrote a follow up article on WWC with a special focus on its ‘oily’ President, Mr. Lee Hamilton. By oily, I mean ‘glisteningly greasy.’ I am sure you recognize his name from his highly publicized position and face as one of the 9/11 Commissioners, but his possibly pay-off position with WWC was not the lone factor for his glistening status in my report. Here are a few excerpts from my piece to illustrate what I mean:

Fortunately one independent reporter researched and reported on one such case, call it ‘chased the egg,’ on one of the 9/11 Commissioners, a Former Representative, Mr. Lee Hamilton, which I happened to come across yesterday. It was truly interesting to see how many ‘honorary’ positions Mr. Hamilton has been given, handed, by our government alone, just check out a few here:

-Co-chair of the Department of Energy Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future with Brent Scowcroft

-Serves on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board & the FBI Director’s Advisory Board,

-Serves on the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force

- Serves on the CIA External Advisory Board

The White House, the CIA, and the FBI must have been extremely well-served by Hamilton’s performance as the commissioner to grant him this many prestigious quasi positions. No? For me, the most interesting aspect which was covered by CounterCurrents.Org had to do with Hamilton’s position with and current salary from the Woodrow Wilson Center, and his questionable corporate ties, particularly with BAE Systems, the main sponsor of his forthcoming gala dinner…

You can read my entire article ‘9/11 Commissioner’s Turkey Baste: Chicken or the Egg?’ here. Now back to the focus of this post.

Read more È

The Boiling Frogs Presents Richard Moore

This is Part 5 of our interview series on the New World Order. You can listen to the previous interviews in this series here: Part I, Part II, Part III , and Part IV.

Richard Moore shares with us his unique perspective on the working of the political world at the highest levels, the matrix of a fabricated collective illusion, how this matrix of unreality is formed for us, and his proposals for escaping it. He discusses consensus reality, as generated by official rhetoric and amplified by mass media, and how this perspective on the political process, and on the roles of left and right, bears very little relationship to actual reality, and remain as a fabricated collective illusion. Mr. Moore further discusses the new post World War II paradigm which was designed and planned in a series of meetings, by a handful of people selected from the Council on Foreign Relations, to specifically serve the interests of central bankers. He talks about the recent rise in collective activism energy such as the Arab Spring uprisings, the Occupy Movement, and various protests in Europe, the left and right as illusions foisted on us to keep us divided, the importance of localism and inclusiveness in pursuit of real changes, and more!

Richard K Moore, an expatriate from Silicon Valley, retired and moved to Ireland in 1994 to begin his ‘real work’ – trying to understand how the world works, and how we can make it better. Many years of researching and writing culminated in his widely acclaimed book Escaping the Matrix: How We the People Can Change the World (The Cyberjournal Project, 2005). His Cyberjournal email list has been going since 1994 (cyberjournal.org). The book’s website is http://escapingthematrix.org, and his website is http://cyberjournal.org. He can be contacted via email at rkm@quaylargo.com.

 

Here is our guest Richard Moore unplugged!

 

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The Question of “what has become of the America I knew and loved?�

A question asked by many shocked observers today both inside and outside of the United States is “what has become of the America I knew and loved?�

Beginning in the late 1930s as an overt propaganda campaign against fascist Germany and Imperial Japan, the world was treated to a Hollywood version of America as a democratic society that despite its flaws managed to maintain the egalitarian principles of its founding fathers and continued to press forward as a beacon of liberty, individualism and human rights.

As a romanticized ideal, the narrative of that America was of a “great melting pot� for all races where upward mobility, modernism and economic and religious freedom promised a better life for all those willing to make it work. And for millions it once did.

With a manufacturing and farm economy the envy of the world, a burgeoning middle-class and a huge military establishment garrisoning the world, the ideal was temporarily sustainable. But as the years wore on, the economy and political system constricted and the Pentagon grew to gargantuan proportions, the yawing schism between the real America and the illusory bygone America of Hollywood’s imagination began to take on a frightening dimension.

We have illustrated in our two multi-part series, 9/11, Psychological Warfare and the American Narrative and House of Mirrors that whatever America once appeared to be, at least since World War II and the beginning of the Cold War up to 9/11, it never was the country we thought it to be.  

Although still theoretically governed by rules, democratic laws and financial regulations, the real America of today has come to be controlled by the private and personal agendas of a handful of people and the vast majority of the American public disapproves of it. Over the years, organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg group and the Club of Rome are known to have exerted a decisive role over government policies and mass media. We have been warned of the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Rothschilds and their desires for political control of the world through financial manipulation. Yet, despite their monopolistic and anti-democratic efforts their power and their money continue to fuel popular allure. We have written of secret intelligence organizations such as Le Cercle, the Safari Club and the 61 which at the behest of international business cartels both legal and illegal have secretly undermined democratic elections, overthrown governments and generally subverted the will of the people for the benefit of a chosen few. Read more È

Obama’s National Emergency Powers

As financial markets struggle with repeated failures by our central planners in ‘managing’ the crisis in the Eurozone, a recent statement by President Barack Obama is worth highlighting.  On September 13, 2011, in a speech addressing criticism of his jobs plan, Obama stated in part:

“I get fed up with that kind of game plan, and we’ve been seen it for too long.  Too long.  We’re in a national emergency.� 

Granted, this has been the worst recession, and worst jobs recovery from a recession, since the Great Depression.  But a national emergency?  Are we talking nuclear attacks, poison in the water supply, or a new and unstoppable infectious disease?

What is a ‘national emergency,’ anyway?  Might those words carry legal meaning?

In fact, they do, and speaking of the Great Depression and financial markets, well, history matters.

When Obama was giving his speech back in early September, the flare-up in the crisis in the Eurozone was just getting started.   Stock prices for large financial services firms in the US exposed to their counterparts in Europe were falling anew, while the CBOE “VIX� index (a volatility index, also called the ‘market fear index’) was spiking sharply higher.   Money market funds in the US were also exposed, with European investments comprising a surprisingly large share of their assets. 

Was this financial backdrop one component of Obama’s ‘national emergency?’  Correlation is not necessarily causation, the saying goes in econometrics.  In other words, it could have just been a coincidence.

But it is worth recognizing as well the tinderbox underneath that phase.  There is a very important area of constitutional law called ‘national emergency powers.’  The area deals with assertions of extraordinary Presidential and executive branch authority during a crisis, including any formally declared state of national emergency or a ‘time of war.’  Read more È

The Boiling Frogs Presents Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald This is Part IV of our interview series on the New World Order. You can listen to the previous interviews in this series here: Part I, Part II, and Part III

Authors and investigative journalists Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald join us to discuss their ground-breaking exclusive series ‘House of Mirrors’ on how America’s full blown surge into personal and private holy war caused the U.S. to slip into a crisis of identity. They explore the little-analyzed facts and mystical covert agendas that the United States continues to press on with into the 21st century, what those agendas may mean to America’s new role as the dark force that orders the universe, the prevailing motives that drive American national security policy today, and its de-evolution of rational defense policy and its immersion into the mystical. Gould-Fitzgerald talk about the top secret military operation known as the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which views itself as a ‘dark force,’ Mystical Imperialism traced to both Britain and Russia’s 19th century efforts to establish dominion through a mix of imperialism and Christian zeal, and more!

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story , Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire and The Voice. Visit their website here.

 

Listen to the preview Here

 

Here are our guest Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald unplugged!

 

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The Neoconized Just War Doctrine

By Paul Fitzgerald & Elizabeth Gould

More than one policy pundit has scratched their head at the strange, increasingly irrational nature of what guides American and European foreign policy. In November of 2010, commentator William Pfaff resorted to the term “medieval mysticism� to describe the “the cloud of unknowing� surrounding the run up to the all important NATO summit in Lisbon. He marveled that only by invoking the mystical past could one contemplate what was in store as the West pondered a dark future.

As odd as it may seem to modern audiences, medieval mysticism and its attendant priesthoods are not as far beneath the surface of present day policy as one might think. In fact following the crisis brought about by the failure of advanced technology to defeat Communism in Vietnam, America’s premier defense intellectuals were quick to fall back on the Middle Ages for answers to what seemed eternal and imponderable questions. 

One vivid example came from future Reagan administration officials Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne in the summer 1980 edition of Foreign Policy magazine who declared in an article titled “Victory is Possible� that: “Nuclear War is possible. But unlike Armageddon, the apocalyptic war prophesied to end history, nuclear war can have a wide range of options… If American nuclear power is to support U.S. foreign policy objectives, the United States must possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally.�

Having come of age at a time when the U.S. enjoyed an overwhelming nuclear advantage and unquestioned technological superiority, America’s plunge into military defeat in Vietnam and a rough nuclear parity with the USSR was cause for a deep philosophical reassessment. The “new rightâ€� embodied in groups like Team B, the Committee on the Present Danger and the American Security Council needed to undo the debilitating effects caused by their own failures and discrediting the strategic doctrine implemented by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara known as Mutual Assured Destruction or (MAD) topped a long list. Read more È