In light of the current global economic crisis, there is a question that should be asked and discussed in regards to what our leaders are telling us is required to solve the crisis: what is fiscal austerity? We are told that “fiscal austerity” measures are required to create economic growth and prosperity, that there will be pain for a while, but it’s all for the ‘greater good’ of the economy. This episode breaks down these measures into what the specific policies of “austerity” are, what justifications are given for each one, and what the actual effect upon the population each measure has. Through this analysis, it becomes clear that when we are told, “fiscal austerity”, we should hear, “social genocide.”

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The US government has developed massive surveillance capabilities to monitor communications, travel and financial transactions in this country and abroad. But, even the government cannot monitor everything Americans do—not directly, anyway.  Thus, it created the Communities Against Terrorism (CAT) program to enlist your friendly local businesses as spies for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The CAT program, funded by the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training program (SLATT) is described as a “tool to engage members of the local community in the fight against terrorism.” The program interprets “local community” to mean businesses, and only registered businesses may access the program’s flyers listing “potential indicators” of terrorist activity.

Each flyer is designed for a particular kind of business. For example, this list was prepared for owners of internet cafes. Unquestionably, someone planning a terrorist attack has engaged in one or more of the “suspicious” activities on that list. But so, too, have most of the estimated 289 million computer users in this country.

The government’s flyer designates people as suspicious if they “always pay cash” at an internet café. That’s a jaw-dropping assumption considering that we’re talking about businesses that sell $2 cups of joe, not $600 airline tickets. Good luck paying with a credit card for a purchase under $10.

Evidence that one has a “residential based internet provider” (such as Comcast or AOL) is another pretext for government snooping. If your home internet connection is unreliable, if you are on travel, or if you simply relish a good cup of coffee with your internet browsing, you run the risk of acquiring an FBI file. Trying to shield personal information on your computer screen from the prying eyes of others will mark you as a potential terrorist, also.

It is officially creepy to use a café hotspot to download “photos, maps or diagrams” of a stadium, metro rail stop, or any “populated locations.” To be safe, confine your travel plans to the Alaskan tundra. And, should there be another terrorist attack, do not demonstrate any “preoccupation with press coverage” of the attack. Just move along–nothing to see here.

If you engage in these or any other “suspicious” activities listed on CAT flyers, businesses are encouraged to “gather information” about you, including “license plates, vehicle description, names used, languages spoken, ethnicity, etc.”  At least 25 CAT flyers, collected by Public Intelligence, are known to exist.

The CAT list of “suspicious” internet café activities suggests appalling ignorance of the ways ordinary Americans use computers. Those who are computerless can become surveillance targets, too, if they own guns or precious metals, store a seven-day supply of food, buy a flashlight, believe in conspiracies or participate in peaceful demonstrations.

The government’s paranoia would be laughable were it not for the potential consequences for citizens who find themselves in its crosshairs.  Under the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, the government may detain indefinitely any terrorism suspects–including U.S. citizens. And, since the government has created pretexts for arresting virtually anyone, no one is safe.

The consequences for public safety are no less grim. If the FBI cannot distinguish between legitimate computer use and credible evidence of terrorist activities, it cannot zero in on genuine threats.  So, what is the purpose of Big Brother and his business partners spying on millions of Americans if it doesn’t make us any safer?  Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Linda Lewis is a policy analyst with degrees in emergency management and geosciences.  Her experience includes 13 years as a policy analyst and planner for the U.S. government.  During that time, she brought attention to serious deficiencies in government preparedness prior to the disasters that confirmed her analyses.  Those included emergency communications (9/11 terrorist attacks), federal assistance (hurricane Katrina) and decision making (Columbia shuttle disaster).

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With the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good conclusion (or halfway decent … or better than nothing … or let’s get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis we haven’t yet killed), the best and the brightest in our government and media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears that no one seems to remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not really about 9-11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has created by its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines.

President Obama declared in August 2009: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”

Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.

Never mind that the “plotting to attack America” in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States bombed those countries?

Indeed, what actually was needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

The only “necessity” that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia — which reportedly contains the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world — and build oil and gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is well situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of south Asia, pipelines that can bypass those not-yet Washington clients, Iran and Russia. If only the Taliban would not attack the lines. Here’s Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, in 2007: “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south.”

Since the 1980s all kinds of pipelines have been planned for the area, only to be delayed or canceled by one military, financial or political problem or another. For example, the so-called TAPI pipeline (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) had strong support from Washington, which was eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran. TAPI goes back to the late 1990s, when the Taliban government held talks with the California-based oil company Unocal Corporation. These talks were conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and were undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society. Taliban officials even made trips to the United States for discussions. ¹¹ Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 12, 1998, Unocal representative John Maresca discussed the importance of the pipeline project and the increasing difficulties in dealing with the Taliban:

The region’s total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels … From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, leaders, and our company.

When those talks stalled in July, 2001 the Bush administration threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the government did not go along with American demands. The talks finally broke down for good the following month, a month before 9-11.

The United States has been serious indeed about the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oil and gas areas. Through one war or another beginning with the Gulf War of 1990-1, the US has managed to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.

The war against the Taliban can’t be “won” short of killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States may well try again to negotiate some form of pipeline security with the Taliban, then get out, and declare “victory”. Barack Obama can surely deliver an eloquent victory speech from his teleprompter. It might even include the words “freedom” and “democracy”, but certainly not “pipeline”.

William Blum is an American, historian and critic of United States foreign policy. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military & CIA Interventions Since World War II. He has described his life’s mission as: “If not ending, at least slowing down the American Empire. At least injuring the beast. It’s causing so much suffering around the world.“Mr. Blum can be reached through his website http://killinghope.org .

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This is Part III of our interview series on the Makings of a Police State. You can listen to previous segments here.

Philip Giraldi joins us to discuss the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act-NDAA, the claim by the White House that it will only use this new power carefully and with due process, and contrasts that to the well-established trend of law enforcement and security agencies, which is to expand on powers granted, not to rein them in or limit them. He provides us with his assessment of the recent case of former CIA operative John Kiriakou, and discusses President Obama’s horrendous track record on civil liberties- broadening its definition of war powers, silencing critics and government whistleblowers through the repeated exploitation of the state-secrets privilege, abuses of National Security Letters, continuation of Guantanamo Prison, supporting numerous dubious terrorism prosecutions.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA and DIA counter-terrorism officer, member of the American Conservative Defense Alliance, and contributing editor at The American Conservative magazine. He has a regular column, Smoke & Mirrors, at Antiwar.com.

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Here is our guest Philip Giraldi unplugged! (Subscribers only)

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The Decision-Makers-of-Wars have decided to end one in 2013. That is, after twelve years, after they made the decision to make that war in the first place. No talk of terrorists, wins, or liberation – no more. At least on that one. Same as the other one. The one that they ended with no WMD, no terrorists, and no democracy; only with added massive civilian casualties, fallen and injured soldiers, and loss of billions of dollars- leaving behind a civil-war-torn nation in rubbles. And it looks like the Decision-Makers-of- Wars will be announcing another war to make. Just like the other ones, and the ones before that. And then there is you, my friends- my loyal patriotic American veterans and all those-that-are-yours.

I want you to take a few minutes and take a look at those involved in making decisions to make wars and continue those wars. Please do it. You don’t have to place them under a microscope or analyze them for hours. Just engage in a cursory evaluation. They are alive and well. They still have their legs. Yes. They all possess two legs. They still have their arms; and, their eyes, ears, and all ten fingers. They still get to see and be with their sons and daughters- that is, fully alive offspring. And their children too have their arms, legs, eyes, ears, and all ten fingers. Their wallets are thick, very thick, and have been getting thicker; nonstop. They are all much richer than they were before each one of these wars.

Now please look at the pictures of the loved ones you once had. The ones gone forever for the wars that made those who made them happier, healthier and much richer. Please take a different look at your loved ones missing arms, legs, or eyes. Then, think about the Decision-Makers-of-Wars ‘loved ones’ arms, legs, and eyes; still intact. Now take out your wallet and measure its size. Once you do that, compare it to the size of those who sent your loved ones to the wars they decided upon. Think about how it is that you get to pay the suckers’ price; twice. Once with the lives and body-parts of your loved ones, and then one more time with your wallet.

You see, there is ‘you’, and then there are the Decision-Makers-of-Wars. There are those that are ‘yours,’ injured or gone- forever, and then there is the safe and prospering that are ‘theirs.’ There is your shrinking wallet and diminishing future, and there is ‘their’ thickening wallet and ever-brightening future – thanks to you, your loyalties, and patriotism. It boils down to you and them. And it is not one and the same. It is more like ‘them’ versus ‘you.’

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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!”

Speaking of defense and wars and the like, there is another entity with an inward-looking name and a broader set of goals.  In 1849, the Department of the Interior was created.  Its responsibilities have been described in terms of land and resource management and conservation, and the Department manages millions of acres of federal lands and dams.  But “land and resource management” can also be a broad ambition, depending on how you define those terms.

In 1879, an act of Congress established the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).  This organization did a lot of mapping and energy exploration support services as the U.S. frontier moved west.  During World War I, the USGS intensified its efforts supporting energy and mineral exploration, and in collaboration with the War Department.

Today, the USGS remains within the Department of the Interior — and tied not to the War Department, but to the Defense Department.  This ‘Interior’ department conducts many studies of energy and mineral resources internationally, like these studies for Afghanistan.  Considering Afghanistan a responsibility of the Interior Department, well, it gives a little cause for pause. Afghanistan might be an interior responsibility, one imagines, given that the most direct way to get there is through the interior of the earth.

The pause may get a little longer given that the USGS released an appraisal of Afghanistan in the summer of 2001.  This appraisal included a review of the country’s mineral resources, as well as respect for the country’s location within the “Interior.”

Afghanistan has additional economic potential because of its strategic geographical position as a transit route for Central Asian hydrocarbons to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes proposed multibillion dollar oil and gas export pipelines through the country.

U.S. negotiations over energy issues with Afghanistan were intensifying at this time, and reportedly soured, with military threats from the U.S., soon before 9/11.  We will survey this area of our interior history more closely in future articles. Meanwhile we may need to rename the Defense Department the War Department.  This could make things a little more honest, as well as constitutional.  In turn, maybe we should rename the “Department of the Interior,” and call it the “Department of the Interior and Exterior,” if it is to retain its global mission.

# # # #
 

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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How does power function? What are the effects of power? Is it necessary? This episode seeks to introduce the listener to some thoughts on the concept of power, in both the concentration of it on one hand, and the lack of it on the other. Power can be concentrated in both institutions and individuals, but if we seek to solve the big problems of our time, we cannot focus simply on changing those individuals, or abolishing specific institutions. We must, instead, come to ask questions about the nature of power, itself, and thus, how such institutions and individuals are able to exist in the first place.

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Update: Well, we did it. iWatch News corrected the order. Now Ron Paul is third from the top-as he should always have been. Not only that, they were ‘forced’ to correct the numbers as well, and use the correct quarter.The only thing left: changing that picture!

Update: Thanks to vigilant readers and their pressure, iWatch News has been scrambling since 3:00 PM EST, and the numbers on the post have been mysteriously changing …of course not the ‘order’ of listing, or the picture selection, or any explanation for such colossal belligerence …

Yesterday, as part of my daily news comb, I visited “iWatch News,” one of several dozen websites on my list of news outlets on government related scandals-revelations. I usually skim the headlines and stories to see whether anything gets my attention as coverage-worthy. Well, their top headline yesterday fit what I was looking for: “Candidate Super PACS.” It was brief, but boldly showcased data on how much money each major presidential candidate has raised and how much each has spent to date. I was happy to find an important but quick and hassle-free read without too many embellishing words or subjective spicing. So I began reading the list. Starting from the top they had the number 1 candidate based on money raised and spent:

 Barack Obama: Total Raised-$88.3 million Total Spent-$28.8 million  

Then came candidate number 2:

 Mitt Romney: Total Raised-$32.6 million Total Spent-$17.5 million  

After that came the third on the list, Number 3:

Newt Gingrich: Total Raised-$2.9 million Total Spent-$2.5 million  

Gingrich was followed by Number 4:

 Rick Santorum: Total Raised-$1.3 million Total Spent-$1.1 million  

And finally, there came the last one, the one all the way at the bottom, candidate Number 5, and naturally, I expected to see the loser of the bunch, the candidate with the least money raised and spent, in other words, the least viable candidate when it comes to raising money, which is one of the major indicators of the winner to come:

 Ron Paul: Total Raised-$12.7 million Total Spent-$9.1 million  

I was ready to get out of the site and move on to the next news site for my daily internet news surf, but then, my eyes caught the numbers listed as raised and spent for Ron Paul. As you know I usually don’t use cuss words, but the only way I can describe my strong reaction-surprise is ‘having a serious WTF!’ moment.

This list starts chronological, based on the amount of money raised and spent by each major candidate. The chronological ordering works as it is supposed to: starting with Obama with the biggest bucks raised, then to Romney with the second biggest money raised, and then something happens. What? They forget the number 3 candidate in the amount of money raised and spent, and instead list Gingrich as the Number 3 – who happens to have raised only a quarter of the amount raised by Ron Paul! Then, their chronological ordering starts working again, and they list the candidate with the least amount of money raised and spent- about 10% of Ron Paul’s amount. And finally, everything turns almost upside down: they list Ron Paul as the 5^th candidate, the last one, the bottom of the barrel, in raising money!

Not only that. I want you to look up and checkout the candidates’ photos above. I took these pictures from that same iWatch News story. Please do it. What do you see? A tough and confident looking number 1-Obama. A happy, confident and relaxed smiling Romney. Lip smacking and beaming Newt Gingrich. A typical silly male bimbo on his way out of the race, but too silly to realize it, thus semi-smiling-Santorum. And then, there comes the candidate they list as the last in money raising, bottom of the barrel, the one on the loser-spot – a real worried, grim and sour looking-Ron Paul.

Reality in this case: As far as raising money for the campaign goes, Ron Paul is the third candidate in the race overall, As far as Republican candidates are concerned, Ron Paul is number 2 in both raising and spending money.

We’ve been reading everyday on the establishment media’s belligerent attitude towards Ron Paul and all their attempts to avoid providing coverage when it comes to him. But this? At this level? Come on. This goes way beyond belligerence. It reaches ultimate pathetic levels and makes them look like fools. Or a better way to say it: their role as the establishment’s jokers. 

*You may want to check iWatch News’ fund-ers here to make a better sense of things. Here are two to give you an idea on what I mean by ‘establishment’:

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations

Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund

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Today Turkish Weekly ran an investigative piece on the newly appointed chief of police in Osh-Kyrgyzstan. The new police chief Suyun Omurzakov, who used to be a deputy minister of interior, has been known as a highly influential drug lord, a leader of organized criminal groups, and he was the subject of a criminal investigation in the past:

In October 2009, the Kyrgyznews.com published an article pointing to a direct link between the then Osh city deputy chief of police S. Omurzakov and organized criminal groups engaged into drug trafficking, referring to this person as one of the most influential drug lords in the south of Kyrgyzstan.

Another report that investigates the June 2010 events developed by a coalition of Kyrgyz and Uzbek human right defenders “Oshskaya Initsiativa” (Osh Initiative) speaks of Omurzakov as a leader of an organized Kyrgyz criminal group, along with the mayor of Osh Melis Myrzakmatov, and crime bosses Almanbet Manapiyaev and Kadyr Dusanov (“Jengo”), etc., who were directly involved into plotting, leading, financing and participating in anti-Uzbek pogroms and distributing arms and ammunition among Kyrgyz militia.
…

 

Since 2001 Kyrgyzstan has been hosting the Transit Center at Manas (formerly Manas Air Base) as the transit point for US military personnel coming and going from Afghanistan, and pays 200 million for continued use of the facilities. For years the base has been riddled with scandals and fiascos.  Last December Boiling Frogs Post EyeOpener Investigative Report took a closer look at “The Manas Question: Drugs, Revolution & Terrorism on the Road to Afghanistan”:

But as important as the base is to the Kyrgyz people, the true nature of Manas remains an open question. For years, it has been at the centre of a string of allegations revolving around drug-running, terrorism and stage-managed revolutions.One of the most surprising revelations to emerge from Manas centered around the story of Abdolmalek Rigi, the former leader of the Jundullah terrorist organization who was captured by Iran onboard a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Kyrgyzstan.

Jundullah is a Pakistani tribal militant group that concerns itself with plight of Sunni Muslims in the predominantly Shiite Iran. Despite widely-acknowledged links to al-Qaeda, the CIA has been funding the group for years as a proxy force to commit attacks inside Iran, where it is believed to have killed and injured over 500 civilians since 2003.As Rigi himself told his Iranian captors, his story included the air base at Manas, which he claims the US uses to conduct covert meetings with people like himself.

You can watch the full report here at Boiling Frogs Post.

Last year, Peter Dale Scott wrote a lengthy article outlining how US intervention in Kyrgyzstan, in the name of protecting its strategic air base, has led to the destabilization of Kyrgyz politics and to a drastic increase in the flow of drugs through the country:

“…that there is a deep force behind drug, intelligence, and jihadi activity, would be consistent with the legacy of the CIA’s earlier interventions in Afghanistan, Laos, and Burma, and with America’s overall responsibility for the huge increases in global drug trafficking since World War II. It is important to understand that the more than doubling of Afghan opium drug production since the U.S. invasion of 2001 merely replicates the massive drug increases in Burma, Thailand, and Laos between the late 1940s and the 1970s. These countries also only became major sources of supply in the international drug traffic as a result of CIA assistance (after the French, in the case of Laos) to what would otherwise have been only local traffickers.

As early as 2001 Kyrgyzstan’s location had made it a focal point for transnational trafficking groups. According to a U.S. Library of Congress Report of 2002,

Kyrgyzstan has become a primary center of all aspects of the narcotics industry: manufacture, sale, and drug trafficking. Kyrgyzstan’s location adjacent to major routes across the Tajik mountains from Afghanistan combines with ineffectual domestic smuggling controls to attract figures from what a Kyrgyz newspaper report characterized as “an international organization uniting an unprecedentedly wide circle of members in the United States, Romania, Brazil, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan….These are no half-literate Tajik-Afghan drug runners, but professionals who have passed through a probation period in the mafia clans of the world narcotics system….”

Mr. Scott goes on to shine a further spotlight on the importance of Kyrgyzstan as a critical US “Transit Hub”:

The Badakhshan drug corridor is a matter of urgent concern for Russia. The Afghan opiates entering Russia via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the chief smuggling route, come from Badakhshan and other northeastern provinces. The reductions of the last three years in Afghan drug production, while inadequate overall, have minimally impacted the northeast, allowing opiate imports into Russia to continue to grow. Meanwhile the much-touted clearing of opium poppy from the Afghan northern provinces has in some cases simply seen a switch “from opium poppies to another illegal crop: cannabis, the herb from which marijuana and hashish are derived.”

As a result, according to U.N. officials, Afghanistan is now also the world’s biggest producer of hashish (another drug inundating Russia).⁶⁷ This has added to the flow of drugs up the Badakhshan-Tajik-Kyrgyz corridor. In short, the political skewing of America’s Afghan anti-drug policies is a significant reason for the major drug problems faced by Russia today.

…

IN July 2010 I wrote a lengthy investigative piece at Boiling Frogs Post on Kyrgyzstan, Bakiyev, Mina Corp and the connected US operatives:

When we talk about the strategic importance of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and other ‘stans’ we are not talking only about strategic in the sense of traditional resources-oil, we also talk about ‘narcotics resources’:

At the moment the stock of pure heroin in Afghanistan is estimated at slightly below 3,000 tons, and the revenues of Afghan drug suppliers reach around $3 bn annually. The international drug mafia earns at least $100 bn annually on heroin from Afghanistan, the money nourishing organized crime not only in Afghanistan but also across Central Asia – in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

And no, the real lords of these resources are not the farmers in Afghanistan or the mules transporting them. The real lords of heroin enterprises happen to be those who’ve been ‘groomed and planted’ to rule the source and transit nations, and the ones who rule those rulers who reside in the United States and other Western countries:

The revenues generated by the drug business are distributed among the criminal groups controlling various segments of the supply chain linking poppy farms to narcotics consumers. While Afghan poppy growers are enduring extreme poverty, the owners of the fields mostly reside in the US, Great Britain, and other Western democracies.

…

I encourage you to take the time and read the entire investigative report on Kyrgyzstan here. Once you do that you’ll understand why it makes perfect sense to have a drug boss lead Kyrgyzstan’s police force. It takes far more than a few mules to transport tens of billions of dollars worth of poppies-heroin. And it takes more than a third-world shack to house-base the loads as a transit hub. What you need is a major airbase and a massive hub. A la USA.

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Winter sky drapes the land, like a canopy
dropped by unseen hands upon a cage.
Farm ground blurs between houses
at an imprecise place, over the creek, 
beyond my neighbors’ spruce.  Past
what we can see spreads
the topography of an uncertain age.
Fence posts pitch and lose themselves
in fog, like stick men heading off
to evening chores, or the dutiful poor
marched off to kill the poor in forgettable wars.
What I took for granted and thought I knew
when sunbeams slanted through
transparent pain, seems now
untenable and untrue.  Still, rockslides
and dying forests loom, like deficits
we must assume in this obscuring air.
The looted vault gapes, a victim’s mouth.
Herefords steaming under willows
birth their calves.  The little town rubs
its knees beside a flame and tunes
its set for a prompted reassurance.
I kick the empty streets in muffled gloom.
I bounce solid hopeful notes off walls
of unsold homes.  Kept birds balance
in dim rooms, each night, a new deception.
With sky this low, could it be more clear?
What we need to know we musn’t hate or fear.
On the Passamari, the dog star fluxes, red
to green, whether occluded or seen.

-G. Karl Marcus

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A few days ago presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich told the people of Florida about his plans for a permanent colony- base on the Moon, and promised to work toward turning the satellite into the 51st US state. I, and many others, including our leaders and representatives, thought we already had one- a 51^st State. Our current president, Barack Obama, has publicly and repeatedly recognized the 51^st State. So did our previous president, George W. Bush. The United States Congress has been treating ‘it’ as such. The ordinary but informed public has acknowledged ‘it’ for years. Thus, there was not anything new or groundbreaking about the notion of a 51^st state in Gingrich’s recently publicized statements and promises. That was not what quickly grabbed my attention. And certainly that was not what I consider a brilliant idea coming from a not so brilliant man. What I considered brilliant, both as an idea and a solution to a major problem, was sending the 51^st state up to the moon.

For years I have been thinking and pondering about possible solutions to our 51^st state, considered by many in the world as the greatest threat to global peace and security- far more dangerous than Iraq, Iran or North Korea. For a very long time I have been searching for a possible answer to stopping what world human rights organizations consider a major human rights violator. I know I am not among the minority when it comes to this 51^st state, which has been declared a “ Nightmare for Human Rights”, even inside the walls of the timid United Nations. As a life-long advocate for children, how could I not seek solutions to the 51^st state problem, known for its ongoing torture, abuse and imprisonment of children? I even thought about relocating the 51^st state from its current location, and considered various spots ruled by the 51^st state’s creators and backers.

I never considered Britain as a possible ideal location for the 51st state. Way too Europe.  Add to that their dense population, rainy and damp climate, more vocal anti-51^st state population not shying away from boycotts, and their government’s  preference for continuing their neo-colonialist practices subtly (unlike their flashy and boisterous counterpart-USA) made it a wrong fit. 

Next, I was thinking of Connecticut. You must admit, it makes practical sense in some respects. After all, the 51^st state has had one of its representatives representing it right from Connecticut … for a long time. But then again, other impractical factors such as the state’s size, high population density, and un-desert-like climate quickly eliminated Connecticut as an option.

After that, I seriously looked into deserts in Nevada. Its population density looked right, and so did its climate. Things were looking good until my libertarian-leaning friends and colleagues begged me to give them a ‘pass.’ Because admit it, with such a long and thick record of illegal wars, illegal settlements … who would want to take a chance? It might start as a limited state-colony in the Mojave Desert, and before you know it would get greedy, move toward Arizona and California, cross borders and start claiming the entire desert and beyond. They would end up with repeated aggressions, human rights violations and wars, all instigated by the 51^st colony-state, and relying on past history they would have no one come to the rescue! I value my friends, so I gave them a pass.

I then began looking past places within the United States’ borders. In this technology and communication age, with our military bases all over the world, there was no reason not to look for a place outside the US for our 51^st state, as a new colony with a fresh-er start.

Australia looked pretty darn good. A huge continent, all those deserts, so very little population, brand new, and heck, it has been serving our government-military pretty well. Many still consider it a UK-Colony now partially shared and ruled by the US. However, that idea too had to be discarded. Why? The 51^st state is known to be very touchy when it comes to titles-names-appearances. In this case it was Australia’s nickname-The Land Down Under. The 51^st state would consider this option as ‘moving down,’ thus not acceptable. They would claim that moving to a place referred to as ‘Down Under’ would have possible-potential discriminatory and pejorative implications … And with that, gone was my last possible option-location. That is, until …

Newt Gingrich came up with one of his most brilliant ideas. Let me correct myself: He accidentally came up with the only brilliant idea of his life; even if he is not nearly brilliant enough to realize it. I am not talking about the technological or political campaign strategy aspects associated with this accidentally brilliant statement. I am talking about the possible destination and solution he may have come up with for the 51^st state; however unintended. I am talking about the new Gingrich solution to end one of the major causes of global conflicts, human rights abuses, and the constant thorn in our side. Let’s move the 51^st State up to the moon. It’s a win-win situation. They would be moving up, and would have the entire moon as their colony base, where they wouldn’t be loathed, hated and despised by millions. The world will have one less major constant conflict to deal with, one less major threat, and one less instigator of atrocious acts against humanity. So yes, let’s pursue the Moon, and move our 51^st state up there.

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This is Part II of our interview series on the Makings of a Police State. You can listen to Part I here.

Coleen Rowley joins us to share her views and thoughts on the state of the misleadingly named ‘criminal justice system’ in the United States today, and the extent to which the apparatus has been transformed into a police state. She discusses the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the implications of this law for American citizens, and the troubling fact that many Americans are not aware of the serious threats to their liberties and rights posed by this police state enabling new law. Ms. Rowley talks about the Obama Administration’s increasing control of all information outlets together with the constant use of fear-hate-greed-false pride and blind loyalty propaganda to manufacture consent for the war machine as well as a panoply of other government-corporatocracy crimes, the escalating retaliation against government whistleblowers and government secrecy, FBI abuses and Director Mueller’s quietly extended term, and more!

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She came to national attention in June 2002, when she testified before Congress about serious lapses before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. She now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and on balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.

Listen to the preview Here

Here is our guest Coleen Rowley unplugged! (Subscribers only)

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Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and its largest oil producer, is from all evidence being systematically thrown into chaos and a state of civil war. The recent surprise decision by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to abruptly lift subsidies on imported gasoline and other fuel has a far more sinister background than mere corruption and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is playing a key role. China appears to be the likely loser along with Nigeria’s population.

The recent strikes protesting the government’s abrupt elimination of gasoline and other fuel subsidies, that brought Nigeria briefly to a standstill, came as a surprise to most in the country. Months earlier President Jonathan had promised the major trade union organizations that he would conduct a gradual four-stage lifting of the subsidy to ease the economic burden. Instead, without warning he announced an immediate full removal of subsidies effective January 1, 2012. It was “shock therapy” to put it mildly.

Nigeria today is one of the world’s most important producers of light, sweet crude oil—the same high quality crude oil that Libya and the British North Sea produce. The country is showing every indication of spiraling downward into deep disorder. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States and twelfth largest oil producer in the world on a par with Kuwait and just behind Venezuela with production exceeding two million barrels a day. [1]

The curious timing of IMF subsidy demand

Despite its oil riches, Nigeria remains one of Africa’s poorest countries. The known oilfields are concentrated around the vast Niger Delta roughly between Port Harcourt and extending in the direction of the capital Lagos, with large new finds being developed all along the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.  Nigeria’s oil is exploited and largely exported by the Anglo-American giants—Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco. Italy’s Agip also has a presence and most recently, to no one’s surprise, the Chinese state oil companies began seeking major exploration and oil infrastructure agreements with the Lagos government.

Ironically, despite the fact that Nigeria has abundant oil to earn dollar export revenue to build its domestic infrastructure, government policy has deliberately let its domestic oil refining capacity fall into ruin. The consequence has been that most of the gasoline and other refined petroleum products used to drive transportation and industry, has to be imported, despite the country’s abundant oil. In order to shield the population from the high import costs of gasoline and other refined fuels, the central government has subsidized prices.

Until January 1, 2012, that is. That was the day when, without advance warning President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan announced immediate removal of all fuel subsidies. Prices for gasoline shot up almost threefold in hours from 65 naira (35 cents of a dollar) a liter to 150 naira (93 cents). The impact rippled across the economy to everything including prices of grains and vegetables.[2]

In justifying the move, Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi insisted that “The monies will be used in provision of social amenities and infrastructural development that will benefit Nigerians more and save the country from economic rift.”[3] President Goodluck Jonathan says he is phasing out the subsidy as a part of a move to “clean up the Nigerian government.” If so how he plans to proceed is anything but apparent.

The huge unexpected price hike for domestic fuel triggered nationwide protests that threatened to bring the economy to a halt by mid-January. The president deftly took the wind out of protester sails by announcing a partial rollback in prices, still leaving prices effectively double that of December. The trade union federation immediately called off the protests. Then, revealingly, Goodluck Jonathan’s government ordered the military to take to the streets to “keep order” and de facto prevent new protests. All that took place during one of the bloodiest waves of bombings and murder rampages by the terrorist Boko Haram sect creating a climate of extreme chaos.[4]

The smoking gun of the IMF

What has been buried from international accounts of the unrest is the explicit role the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) played in the situation. With suspicious timing IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde was in Nigeria days before the abrupt subsidy decision of President Jonathan.[5] By all accounts, the IMF and the Nigerian government have been careful this time not to be blatant about openly announcing demands to ends subsidies as they were in Tunisia before food protests became the trigger for that country’s Twitter putsch in 2011. 

During her visit to Nigeria Lagarde said President Jonathan’s ‘Transformation Agenda’ for deregulation “is an agenda for Nigeria, driven by Nigerians. The IMF is here to support you and be a better partner for you.” [6] Few Nigerians were convinced.  On December 29 Reuters wrote, “The IMF has urged countries across West and Central Africa to cut fuel subsidies, which they say are not effective in directly aiding the poor, but do promote corruption and smuggling. The past months have seen governments in Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon and Chad moving to cut state subsidies on fuel.” [7]

Further confirming the role US and IMF pressure on the Nigerian government played, Jeffery Sachs, Special Adviser to the United Nations (UN) Secretary General, during a meeting with President Jonathan in Nigeria in early January days after the subsidy decision, Sachs declared Jonathan’s decision to withdraw petroleum subsidy  “a bold and correct policy.” [8]

Sachs, a former Harvard economics professor became notorious during the early 1990’s for prescribing IMF “shock therapy” for Poland, Russia, Ukraine and other former communist states which opened invaluable state assets for de facto plundering by dollar-rich western multinationals. [9]

Making the sudden decision to end the domestic fuel subsidy even more suspicious is the manner in which Washington and the IMF are putting pressure on only select countries to end subsidies. Nigeria, whose oil today sells for the equivalent of $1 a liter or roughly $3.78 a US gallon, is far from cheap. Brunei, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia all offer their petrol very cheap to their people. The Saudis sell their oil at 17 cents, Kuwait at 22 cents.[10] In the US gasoline averages 89 cents a liter.[11]

That means the IMF and Washington have forced one of the poorest economies in Africa to impose a huge tax on its citizens on the implausible argument it will help eliminate corruption in the state petroleum sector. The IMF knows well that the elimination of subsidies will do nothing about corruption in high places.  

Were the IMF and World Bank genuinely concerned with the health of the domestic Nigerian economy, they would have provided support for rebuilding and expanding a domestic oil refinery industry that has been let to rot so that the country need no longer import refined fuels using precious state budget resources to do so.  The easiest way to do that would be to expedite a two-year-old deal between China and the Nigerian government to invest some $28 billion in massive expansion of the oil refinery sector to eliminate need for importing foreign gasoline and other refined products.

Quite the opposite—the criminal cabal inside NNPC and the Government making huge profits on the old subsidy system are suddenly making double and potentially triple more to maintain the old corrupt import system, and, of course, to sabotage Chinese refinery construction that could put an end to their gravy train.

Cutting their nose to spite the face…

Rather than benefit ordinary Nigerians as the IMF proclaims to want, the elimination of the subsidies has further pauperized the 90 per cent living on less than $2 a day, according to Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Nigerian Central Bank governor.[12] An estimated 40 million Nigerians are unemployed in the country of 148 million.

Because transport costs are a significant factor in delivery of food to the cities, food price inflation has soared along with costs of public transportation for the majority of poorer Nigerians. According to the Nigerian Leadership Sunday, “prices of commodities which shot up as a fallout of the fuel pump price increase have refused to come down.” Everything from street vegetable sellers to carwashes to roadside photographers are feeling the shock of the rise in fuel prices. Unemployment is rising as small businesses fold. ^[13]

The argument of the IMF and  the Jonathan Administration  is that by freeing fuel prices, funds would be available to  more social services and rebuild Nigeria’s “infrastructure.” Both the IMF and the Government know it would have been far more economically viable to replace the current corrupt system of importing refined gasoline and fuels with investing in rebuilding Nigeria’s domestic refining capacity.

Son Gyoh of the Nigerian Awareness for Development organization stated, “Would it not be more expedient to pressure government to service the refineries to full production capacity given the implications on overhead and competitiveness for local industries?”  [14]

Gyoh pointed to the source of the problem: “Why have successive governments left the refineries in a state of disrepair while spending huge on subsidy? Is there any chance that the savings from subsidy withdrawal will go directly into rehabilitating the refineries? Does deregulation imply NNPC will no longer operate a monopoly in importation of refined petroleum product or is this lobby a self-serving lifeline to continue its monopoly? ” He concludes, “In any case, there is good reason to doubt subsidy removal will solve the fuel scarcity problem as the cabal will only regroup to change tactics, a fact Nigerians are only too aware of.” [15]

After Nigeria partly nationalized its oil sector in the late 1970’s they also took control of Shell Oil’s Port Harcourt I refinery. In 1989 Port Harcourt II refinery was built. Both refineries fell into serious disrepair after 1994 when the Abacha military dictatorship cut the “take” of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) from domestic sale of refined oil products such as gasoline from 84% to 22%. That caused a cash crisis for NNPC and a halt to refinery maintenance. Today only one of four refineries operates at all. ^[16]

What developed since was a system of NNPC importing foreign gasoline and other refined products for Nigeria’s domestic needs, naturally at a far more expensive cost. The price subsidies were to relieve that higher import cost, hardly a sensible solution but a very lucrative one for those corrupt elements in the state and private sector making a killing, literally, off the import process. 

NNPC criminal enterprise

The IMF is well aware of the real cause of Nigeria’s fuel industry problems. A Nigerian legislative committee examining the sources of the industry’s problems recently released a report documenting that at least $4 billion annually is taken from taxpayers in fuel industry corruption with the state Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) at the center. According to the commission, “every day, fuel importers drop off 59 million liters of fuel. The country consumes 35 million liters daily. That leaves 24 million liters of oil available for smugglers to export, paid for by government fuel subsidies. This costs the Nigerian people roughly $4 billion yearly, according to Reuters.” [17]

The Nigerian government has said that the 7.5 billion dollars spent yearly on fuel subsidies could be used to provide desperately needed infrastructure. But they omit any mention of the rampant siphoning off of $4 billion of oil by black market smugglers, reportedly with connivance of high NNPC government officials, to sell to neighboring countries at a hefty profit. The refined imported fuel is reportedly smuggled into neighboring countries like Cameroon, Chad and Niger where petrol prices are far higher, according to Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, Deputy Governor of Kano State.[18] 

China as IMF target?

One major geopolitical factor that is generally ignored in recent discussion of Nigerian oil politics is the growing role of China in the country. In May 2010 only days after President Jonathan was sworn in, China signed an impressive $28.5 billion deal with his government to build three new refineries, something that in no way fit into the plans of either the IMF or of Washington or of the Anglo-American oil majors.[19]

China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited (CSCEC) signed the deal to build three oil refineries with Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), in the biggest deal China has made with Africa. Shehu Ladan, head of NNPC, said at the signing ceremony that the added refineries would reduce the $10 billion spent annually on imported refined products. As of January 2012 the three Chinese refnery projects were still in the planning stage, reportedly blocked by the powerful vested interests gaining from the existing corrupt import system.[20]

A report in China Daily last November quoted Nigeria’s Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga, the minister of trade and investment that Nigeria was seeking added Chinese investors for its energy, mining and agribusiness industries. Last September on a visit to Beijing, Nigeria central bank governor Lamido Sanusi  announced his country planned to invest 5 percent to 10 percent of its foreign exchange reserves in China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB) or yuan, noting that he sees the yuan becoming reserve currency. In 2010 China’s loans and exports to Nigeria exceeded $7 billion, while Nigeria exported $1 billion of crude oil, Sanusi stated.  ^[21]

Until now Nigeria has held some 79% of her foreign currency reserves in dollars, the rest in Euro or Sterling, all of which look dicey given their financial and debt problems. The move of a major oil producer away from dollars, added to similar moves recently by India, Japan, Russia, Iran and others, augurs bad news for the continued role of the dollar as dominant world reserve currency. [22] Clearly some in Washington would not be happy with that.

The Chinese are also bidding to get a direct stake in Nigeria’s rich oil reserves, until now an Anglo-American domain. In July 2010, China’s CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) won four prospective oil blocks -two in the Niger Delta and two in the frontier Chad Basin, with plans to become core investor in the Kaduna refinery, and construction of a double track Lagos-Kano railway.[23]  As well China’s oil company, CNOOC Ltd has a major offshore production area in Nigeria.

The IMF and Washington pressure to lift subsidies on imported fuels is at this point in question as is the future of China in Nigeria’s energy industry. Clear is that lifting subsidies in no way will benefit Nigerians. More alarming in this context is the orchestration of a major new wave of terror killings and bombings by the mysterious and suspiciously well-armed Boko Haram. This we will look at next in the context of Nigeria’s recent transformation into a major narcotics hub.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.

Endnotes:

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Last week Boiling Frogs Post broke the newly brewing story-line in the war propaganda against Iran involving an alleged Iranian terror plot in Azerbaijan. Yesterday we had a follow up on the emerging ‘alleged’ details in the ‘alleged’ plot claiming Israeli diplomats and religious figures were the intended targets of the alleged Iranian assassination plot [All Emphasis Mine]:

Three Azerbaijani citizens who were arrested by security forces last week planned to attack Jewish targets, including Israeli ambassador to Baku Michael Lotem, a local media outlet reported Tuesday. Israeli sources also speculated that the terror cell members plotted to attack the embassy in Baku and the ambassador… The men are suspected of plotting to kill a rabbi and a teacher at the Ohr Avner Chabad Jewish Day School in Baku as revenge for the recent killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran…Two of the suspects were identified as Rasim Aliyev and Ali Huseynov. According to reports, they received instructions from Balagardash Dadashov, who was in contact with Iranian intelligence and received a sniper rifle, pistols and explosive devices to attack Chabad emissaries operating in Baku.

…

As with many stories, especially those involving ‘alleged’ terrorism operations conducted by the nations on the list of our to-be invaded-occupied nations it is important to pay specific attention to the context, and other ancillary and related details and facts. Before we do that let’s note the most important fact in the case of Iran: which actor in the current global imperial pursuits has been the primary and most active force against Iran and for its invasion? I believe everyone would unanimously and very easily answer this question. Israel.

While the pressure and the venues of attacks on Iran have been growing and escalating- think nuclear arms development accusations, meddling in Iraq accusations, alleged assassination attempt against Saudi Diplomat in the US accusations …, we suddenly get a brand new allegation accusing Iran of plotting a terror act in Azerbaijan. Not only that, the targets of this alleged terror plot happen to be none other than Israel. If that doesn’t give you pause, make it a long pause, followed by firm skepticism, well, your mental faculties may be in need of a serious check-up followed by a thorough tune-up.

Now, let’s review the latest details providing needed context in the new allegations pointed directly at Iran by Israel and Azerbaijan.

Four days after we brought the readers’ attention to this significant developing story, four days late, the mainstream media began its coverage, of course with their own version. Here is a report by Reuters:

Authorities in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic bordering Iran, have arrested two men suspected of plotting to attack prominent foreigners including Israel’s ambassador and a local rabbi, officials and media reported on Wednesday.

The National Security Ministry said the men were connected to an Iranian citizen who had links with Iran’s intelligence.

…

Here is an excerpt clarifying Azerbaijan’s position and its intimate ties to Israel and the US, but fails to mention its status as ‘To-Be-NATO Member’ soon:

Azerbaijan, a secular Muslim country, is home to more than 9,000 Jews and has friendly ties with Israel and the United States. A major energy producer, it exports oil to Israel and imports weapons and military hardware.

And here is the US setting the stage for the next wave of conspiracy in setting up Iran:

The U.S. embassy issued a warning to its citizens saying “the possibility remains for actions against U.S. or other high-profile foreign interests in Azerbaijan”.

…

Diplomatic ties between Azerbaijan and Iran are cool, but Iranian companies operate and have stakes in oil contracts in the Caspian Sea state, which exports around 1 million barrels of crude a day (bpd) westward through a pipeline operated by a consortium led by BP.

…

Also yesterday, Israeli President Shimon Peres personally saluted Azerbaijan for allegedly foiling the alleged terror plot:

Peres, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, told Ilham Aliyev that Israel saluted his country for “saving lives on your land from a murderous terrorist attack.” Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry revealed last week that it uncovered a cell planning terrorist attacks. Two Azerbaijanis and an Iranian citizen living in Iran were implicated in the plot. The two Azerbaijanis were arrested.

…

Here is what Aliyev emphasized:

Aliyev, according to Peres’s office, said the plot showed “to what degree we are in a difficult and dangerous neighborhood…Aliyev said Azerbaijan would continue to cooperate with Israel, especially on homeland security issues.

…

Speaking of relations getting more intimate between Azerbaijan and Israel:

During the signing ceremony SCC head noted that the State Customs Committee is interested in expanding cooperation with the Israeli Customs Directorate, “The agreement signed between the Azerbaijani and Israeli governments gives an impetus to bilateral relationships, and will accelerate the process of cooperation and integration of the parties.”

Azerbaijan has become an important trading partner with Israel on security and foreign affairs. Economic cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan has grown significantly. In 2011, the trade between the two countries totaled more than $2.5 billion.

…

Remember those ‘conflicting’ reports on the ‘alleged’ Iranian assassination plot against the Saudi Diplomat in the US? You can refresh your memory here.  Well, this ‘alleged’ plot is also filled with ‘conflicting’ reports and details, already:

Conflicting reports have emerged about the terror plot. While local media said an Iranian-backed terror cell had planned to kill Jewish teachers at the Or Avner Jewish schooll just outside the capital Baku, other reports in the media claimed the men were offered $150,000 by Iran to assassinate Israel’s Ambassador Michael Lotem.

A spokesman for the Or Avner network of Jewish schools, however, denied on Tuesday night any knowledge of a planned attack. “The Jews of Baku and the administrators of the school have no information on what was reported in Azeri media last Thursday,” said the spokesman. “The community’s routine has not changed.”

…

Here is a video clip on this new alleged Iranian Terror Plot:

In the UK, the Telegraph also reported on the ‘alleged’ story, and of course, it added the usual UK twist and spice:

If true, the plot will be seen as the latest evidence of Iran’s intentions to strike at its enemies abroad. Last October, the US justice ministry said it had uncovered an Iranian conspiracy to use members of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

…

Speaking of Britain, the following data is also noteworthy:

The volume of investments made by BP and its partners in Azerbaijan amounted to $ 35 billion during its activity in the country, BP Azerbaijan company head Rashid Javanshir said during a ceremony of signing the agreement on the support with the National Olympic and National Paralympic Committees… BP will continue its activity to develop the economy as a whole and oil and gas industry in particular in subsequent years, he said.

…

We were the first US site to break and cover this still-brewing story. We will continue our coverage and rely on you to disseminate this new scheme in our nation’s desperate attempt to invade-occupy yet another nation.  Please stay tuned.

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Last week we broke the newly brewing story-line in the war propaganda against Iran here at Boiling Frogs Post. The new scenario was originated, disseminated and promoted by a known member of the loyal propaganda machine of our global imperial pursuits, Radio Free Europe. According to the new story-line, our soon-to-be-NATO member intimate ally regime in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, claims it has allegedly exposed an Iranian assassination plot and Iranian terror cell in its capital city-Baku [All Emphasis Mine]:

Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry (MNS) says it has uncovered a terror group that was plotting to assassinate public figures, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reports. The ministry said on January 19 that the group was planning terrorist acts and had illegally acquired firearms, military supplies, and explosives. The APA news agency quoted the MNS as saying that Azerbaijani citizens Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov, and Balaqardash Dadashov — the latter of whom is living in Iran — coordinated efforts to acquire firearms and explosives.It said those materials were brought illegally to Azerbaijan from Iran.

The MSN said Dadashov was in contact with Iranian special service bodies and ordered the assassination of prominent foreigners living in Baku. It claims that Dadashov promised Aliyev — his brother-in-law — $150,000 for his work.The MSN said Dadashov had told his accomplices that he would discuss their plans with Iranian secret services.

…

Today, brewing in the background are new allegations and  further thickening of this new plot directed against Iran, providing further unsubstantiated details.  According to the unsubstantiated new claims those arrested by Azeri security forces last week planned to attack Jewish targets, including Israeli ambassador to Baku, Michael Lotem:

Three Azerbaijani citizens who were arrested by security forces last week planned to attack Jewish targets, including Israeli ambassador to Baku Michael Lotem, a local media outlet reported Tuesday. Israeli sources also speculated that the terror cell members plotted to attack the embassy in Baku and the ambassador.

…

The men are suspected of plotting to kill a rabbi and a teacher at the Ohr Avner Chabad Jewish Day School in Baku as revenge for the recent killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran. The Iranian regime claimed Israel was behind the assassination. Two of the suspects were identified as Rasim Aliyev and Ali Huseynov. According to reports, they received instructions from Balagardash Dadashov, who was in contact with Iranian intelligence and received a sniper rifle, pistols and explosive devices to attack Chabad emissaries operating in Baku.

…

Azeri politicians are accusing Iran of creating provocations following the uncovering of an alleged terror plot to allegedly assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Baku.

“On one hand, Iran talks of Shiite Muslim brotherhood, but on the other it cooperates with and supports terrorists of Christian-Armenian,” said chairman of the country’s Civil Solidarity Party Sabir Rustamkhanly…

…

For the last few months the empire’s nuclear weapons allegations against Iran have produced very little results; they haven’t really stuck. Most likely the Saudi Prince-Ambassador Assassination Plot-Scenario was outsourced to a not very competent or bright Hollywood producer-director; it failed big time and it certainly was embarrassing to all secondary actors such as the FBI. The empire still hasn’t invaded Iran. The Caspian Sea is waiting, and so many are drooling. It must be time for a new scenario. A new script. A brand new actor. Welcome Azerbaijan, a thickening new assassination plot, an alleged scary terror cell in Baku, and alleged Israeli targets. The powers up there seem desperate, and desperation can do stupid things with irreversible damage.

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This podcast episode examines the early 20th century United States military occupations of Haiti (1915-1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), undertaken as an imposition of the Monroe Doctrine (1823) declaring Latin America as the “backyard” of the United States. The ruthless military occupations, inflamed by racism, supported by the media, and undertaken by the ruthlessly imperialistic and racist politicians who are today celebrated as champions of ‘democracy,’ resulted in the strengthening of state structures, establishment of brutal militaries, and exploitation by American corporations and banks, leading to the establishment of military dictatorships which dominated these countries for much of their recent history, while American economic interests reigned supreme. These incidents provide a brief, yet illuminating look at the nature of American imperialism as it progressed throughout the 20th century.

Listen to the podcast show here:

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I was overseas during the most intense stage of the 2008 US Presidential Election; thankfully. However, I was not completely spared from this ludicrous ‘politics the American way’ even outside the country- think CNN international, think Wall Street international edition … basically think the inability to escape it all thanks to the globalization of the news, more like Americanization of the global news. The around the clock coverage of elections a la USA was booming in the background, more like foreground, of every single international (Western) hotel and resort, tourist hangout cafes and bars, and airport lounges. And I heard many comments from ‘outsiders’ on the ridiculously long, expensive, and show-like phony distraction called Presidential Election USA. Of course, deservedly, many of those comments were ‘snarly.’ Some were plain witty and truthfully hilarious-muckraking a la Brits.

I almost never disagreed with the outsiders’ assessment of and take on our painfully long, money-driven and for-show-scripted presidential election season. However, I slightly differed in one characterization:

Many referred to our uber costly and glitzy presidential race as ‘A Dog & Pony Show.’ I certainly saw, and still see, the appropriateness of this characterization of our presidential race: A Dog & Pony Show. But I had, and still have, my own characterization that applies equally well, and actually goes even deeper: A One-Man-Owned Cock Fight.

A Cock Fight is a contest in which gamecocks usually fitted with metal spurs are pitted against each other. Here is a bit more expanded description:

A cockfight is a blood sport between two roosters (cocks), held in a ring called a cockpit. Cockfighting is now illegal throughout all states in the United States, Brazil, Australia and most of Europe.

The combatants, referred to as gamecocks, are specially bred birds, conditioned for increased stamina and strength. The comb and wattle are cut off in order to meet show standards of the American Gamefowl Society and the Old English Game Club and to prevent freezing in colder climates. Cocks possess congenital aggression toward all males of the same species. Cocks are given the best of care until near the age of two years old. They are conditioned, much like professional athletes prior to events or shows. Wagers are often made on the outcome of the match. While not all fights are to the death, the cocks may endure significant physical trauma. In many other areas around the world, cockfighting is still practiced as a mainstream event; in some countries it is government controlled.

…

There are variations and regionally based differentiations in cockfighting shows and betting-gambling, but the two main ones are based on one owner-two cocks or two-owners-two cocks.

I happen to view our presidential race as a one-owner-two cocks show. Of course, initially, during the primaries it all starts with several cocks-one owner, and after that it gets narrowed down until we have two cocks-still-standing and one-owner. To understand this a bit better you must look at the major backers of our presidential candidates; take the last round in 2008: Obama-Clinton-McCain. Take a look at the fund-ers, owners. What do you see? Military Industrial Complex mega players, Financial Industry mega players, Oil industry mega players …All spreading their bets between three cocks, and later on two. They train and groom their multiple cocks, write the show scripts for the PR-Marketers (mainstream media), let the cocks put on the show, and no matter which cock wins, they get to win.

So yes, we Americans love everything big: big cars, big houses, big food portions, and big-glitzy and ludicrously long presidential election races with way too many bells and whistles, which  can appropriately be called ‘A Dog & Pony Show.’ When examined closer a better analogy seems to be a One-Man-Owned Cockfight.

*** A few readers have suggested that we cover the 2012 presidential election here @ Boiling Frogs Post. I personally would rather stay away from all that nonsense glitz. After all, the entire MSM is covering it 24 X 7, and almost all popular blogs-forums have committed their entire sites to it. However, I would like to hear from more of you.

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The imperial establishment’s desperation to militarily go after and take over the last ‘real’ domino – Iran, has truly reached a peak, and with that desperation comes a new farfetched and fantastical scenario. Last time the script of their scenario was written based on a Saudi Diplomat actor. It was only three months ago when the puppet mainstream media jumped in with a made-up, dubious, far-reaching, murkily and vaguely-sourced story of the thwarted Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in US. Here are a few excerpts from CNN’s fabulous-ized headline story that played around the clock for days, beating the war drums for its masters:  

U.S. agents disrupted an Iranian assassination-for-hire scheme targeting Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, U.S. officials said Tuesday…The Saudi ambassador was not the only intended target, U.S. officials said. The suspects also discussed attacking Israeli and Saudi embassies in Washington and possibly Buenos Aires, Argentina, a senior U.S. official said.

…

Of course CNN was not the lone wolf in the intense broadcasting and dissemination of this Washington script. The rest of the MSM puppets followed the same trend: Washington Post, New York Times, FOX … Not only that, the pseudo-alternative con outlets did exactly the same thing. Just check out the verbatim dissemination by Huffington Post and other ‘popular’ so-called alternatives. Thankfully we had enough facts, critical thinkers, and independent news fronts to expose all the holes in that concocted story:

A close analysis of the FBI deposition reveals, however, that independent evidence for the charge that Arbabsiar was sent by the Qods Force on a mission to arrange for the assassination of Jubeir is lacking. The FBI account is full of holes and contradictions, moreover. The document gives good reason to doubt that Arbabsiar and his confederates in Iran had the intention of assassinating Jubeir, and to believe instead that the FBI hatched the plot as part of a sting operation.

…

So that scenario script kinda failed. Of course the other long-cooking concoction on Iran’s nuclear weapons development has not gotten the establishment hawks far either. Even the mainstream has been grudgingly admitting the holes-filled allegations on dangerous nuclear weapons armed Iran!

You’d think all the debunked allegations and failed attempts would give the imperial hawks a bit of a pause to come up with a better concoction. At least go away for a while and rethink their strategy; no? Obviously not. Desperation can do amazingly stupid things to greed-driven, wild-eyed and blood-thirsty bullies in pursuit of expanded turf.  They just came out with a new concocted scenario and allegations. This time their lead actor happens to be Azerbaijan.

Our soon-to-be-NATO member intimate ally regime in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, claims it has allegedly exposed an Iranian assassination plot and Iranian terror cell in its capital city-Baku [All Emphasis Mine]:

Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry (MNS) says it has uncovered a terror group that was plotting to assassinate public figures, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reports. The ministry said on January 19 that the group was planning terrorist acts and had illegally acquired firearms, military supplies, and explosives.

The APA news agency quoted the MNS as saying that Azerbaijani citizens Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov, and Balaqardash Dadashov — the latter of whom is living in Iran — coordinated efforts to acquire firearms and explosives.It said those materials were brought illegally to Azerbaijan from Iran.

The MSN said Dadashov was in contact with Iranian special service bodies and ordered the assassination of prominent foreigners living in Baku. It claims that Dadashov promised Aliyev — his brother-in-law — $150,000 for his work.The MSN said Dadashov had told his accomplices that he would discuss their plans with Iranian secret services.

…

Now, interestingly the first place/source to start to disseminate our script writers’ new concocted scenario involving another ‘Iranian Plot’ was no other than … yes, you guessed it: Radio Free Europe. Check out this news’ origination by this long-propaganda machine of our global imperial pursuits here. The second source to pick up on it was no other than a Soros-Funded site on Central Asia here. Guaranteed: the other MSM outlets will be having a field day with this new propaganda. In fact, they’ve been hot on another related side story with the same actor written by the same writers. I kid you not; here it is: Azerbaijan claims that the recent cyber attacks that destroyed its government and news websites originated in … Iran! Let’s check out the headline on this today at …Business Week:

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — Cyber attacks that destroyed government and news websites in Azerbaijan this week mostly originated in Iran, government minister Ali Abbasov said. An investigation by Abbasov’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology found that of 25 attacks, 24 came from Iran and one from the Netherlands, Abbasov told reporters in the Azeri capital, Baku, today.

…

For the last few months the empire’s nuclear weapons allegations against Iran have produced very little results; they haven’t really stuck. Most likely the Saudi Prince-Ambassador Assassination Plot-Scenario was outsourced to a not very competent or bright Hollywood producer-director; it failed big time and it certainly was embarrassing to all secondary actors such as the FBI. The empire still hasn’t invaded Iran. The Caspian Sea is waiting, and so many are drooling. It must be time for a new scenario. A new script. A brand new actor. Welcome Azerbaijan, a thickening new assassination plot, a scary terror cell in Baku, and savvy Iranian cyber-terrorists obsessed with this dingy little country’s dingier-littler government and news websites.

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This is Part I of our interview series on the Makings of a Police State.

Shahid Buttar joins us to discuss the continuous erosion of our civil liberties from illegal domestic surveillance to Guantanamo, NDAA and its discretionary detention provision authorizing the President to detain Americans accused by the government of supporting terrorism. Mr. Buttar talks about the many abuses committed by the unchecked Federal Bureau of Investigation, the extension of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s Term quietly and readily by Congress, its significance and troubling implications, the capacity of the FBI to be used for political purposes established since the Hoover days, the US media’s silence on this significant issue, and more!

Shahid Buttar is the executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the People’s Campaign for the Constitution (PCC). He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2003, where he served as executive editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal and as Professor Lawrence Lessig’s teaching assistant for Constitutional Law. In addition to his work leading BORDC, Shahid serves on the advisory bodies of the Rights Working Group, the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, and the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights. He also supports populist constitutionalism as a civil rights lawyer, independent columnist, community organizer, and hip-hop and electronica MC. In his creative capacities as a poet and musician, Mr. Buttar has performed around the world, co-founded several grassroots art and culture groups around the country, facilitated workshops for young people and emerging artists.

Here is our guest Shahid Buttar unplugged! (Subscribers only)

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One central facet to the development of the modern institutional society under which we live and are dominated today, was the redefining of the concept of ‘democracy’ that took place in the early 20^th century. This immensely important discussion took place among the educated, elite intellectual class in the United States at that time, and the consequences of which were profound for the development of not only American society and democracy, but for the globalization that followed after World War II. The central theme that emerged was that in the age of ‘mass democracy’, where people came to be known as “the public,” the concept of ‘democracy’ was redefined to be a system of government and social organization which was to be managed by an intellectual elite, largely concerned with “the engineering of consent” of the masses in order to allow elite-management of society to continue unhindered.

The socio-economic and political situation of the United States had, throughout the 19^th century, rapidly changed. Official slavery was ended after the Civil War and the wage-slave method of labour was introduced on a much wider scale; that is, the approach at which people are no longer property themselves, but rather lend their labour at minimal hourly wages, a difference equated with rental slavery versus owned slavery. While the system of labour had itself changed, the living conditions of the labourers did not improve a great deal. With Industrialization also came increased urbanization, poverty, and thus, social unrest. The 19^th Century in the United States was one of near-constant labour unrest, social upheaval and a rapidly growing wealth divide. And it was not simply the lower labouring classes that were experiencing the harsh rigors of a modern industrial life. One social critic of the era, writing in 1873, discussed the situation of the middle class in America:

Very few among them are saving money. Many of them are in debt; and all they can earn for years, is, in many cases, mortgaged to pay such debt… [We see] the unmistakable signs of their incessant anxiety and struggles to get on in life, and to obtain in addition to a mere subsistence, a standing in society… The poverty of the great middle classes consists in the fact that they have only barely enough to cover up their poverty… their poverty is felt, mentally and socially, through their sense of dependence and pride. They must work constantly, and with an angry sense of the limited opportunities for a career at their command.[1]

As immigrants from Europe and Asia flooded America, a growing sense of racism emerged among the faltering middle class. This situation created enormous tension and unease among middle and working class Americans, and indeed, the industrialists who ruled over them. Yet many in the middle class viewed the lower class, which was increasingly rebellious, as well as the immigrant labourers – also quite militant – as a threat to their own standing in society. Instead of focusing primarily on the need for reorganization at the top of the social structure, they looked to the masses – the working people – as the greatest source of instability. Their approach was in attempting to preserve – or construct – a system beneficial to their own particular interests. Since the middle class survived on the backs of the workers, it was not in their interest as a class to support radical workers movements and revolutionary philosophies. Thus, while criticizing those at the top, the call came for ‘reform’, not revolution; for passive pluralism not democratic populism; for amelioration, not anarchy.

This is what became known as the ‘Progressive Movement’ in American history. Influential journalists became leading ‘Progressives,’ and prominent social thinkers and social critics began further analyzing and arming the journalists with reformist ideas. The middle class was itself a major audience for progressive journalists. They acknowledged the need for social change and reorganization, and pushed for a method of achieving such change through the rational approach of ‘social science’ and “social evaluation.”[2] One of these leading progressive journalists, Edward Bellamy, wrote a book in 1888, “Looking Backward,” in which he argued that, “it would be the force of public opinion – opinion bolstered by the instrument of reason – that would perform the task of remaking the world for the benefit of all humanity.” Thus, “an informed and intelligent ‘public’ would be the agency through which a new historical epoch would be initiated.”[3]

This progressive form of journalism came to be known as “muckraking,” a term coined by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906, as this reform-oriented investigative journalism “began to reshape the discourse of public life,” driven by increasing discontent over governmental and corporate corruption.

The notion of “the public” was born in the eighteenth century Enlightenment, fused with the notion that the public was a rational body of persons, able to comprehend, identify and organize facts, premised on – as philosopher Jürgen Habermas articulated – the “informed, literate men, engaged with one another in an ongoing process of ‘critical-rational’ debate.” Thomas Jefferson reiterated such notions, suggesting that, “the creed of our political faith” rested at “the bar of public reason.” Progressive journalism gave profound emphasis to the promotion of facts and “social documentation.”[4]

Mass circulation media had changed the nature of “the public” in the late 19^th century. In particular, the newspaper industry grew, and like with other industries between the 1880s and World War I, “financial consolidation and technological innovation combined to alter the character and scale of big-city and small-town journalism,” as newspapers became big business. Thus, news was becoming ‘standardized,’ and the growth and business of magazine publishing followed suit.[5]

Yet, the proliferation of mass media was of a dual nature. While more people were able to gain access to more information from more places simultaneously, there was also the development of a trend in the emergence of a “public” increasingly defined as “spectators,” no longer active participants in the ‘public square,’ but observers from afar, in their geographically segregated middle class.[6]

As the first decade of the 20^th century drew to a close, and World War I drew nearer, a new concern was increasingly developing among the ‘Progressive’ movement and its ideologues and journalists. While continuing to push for reform, there was a growing rumbling and sense of revolution brewing from below, among the working class people. This concern increasingly moved to the forefront among Progressive intellectuals, who saw their own class and social conceptions threatened by the grumbling masses trapped in poverty beneath them. Perhaps the most influential intellect of the early 20^th century was a man named Walter Lippmann, a Harvard graduate who joined with Progressive publicists and had even joined the Socialist Party in 1910. By 1914, however, Lippmann had turned from his socialist inclinations, and wrote the well-received Drift and Mastery, which prompted Teddy Roosevelt to refer to Lippmann as “the most brilliant man of his age,” at just 25 years old. Lippmann’s principle concern was with the notion of the people ruling:

Ongoing middle-class hostility toward big business – once understood as a constructive catalyst for social reform – had now become, to Lippmann’s increasingly conservative mind, an inadvertent stimulus of social disintegration. As attacks on the practices of big business mounted and an increasingly militant working-class movement challenged the very concept of privately held wealth, Lippmann became more and more alarmed… In a country once “notorious for its worship of success,” Lippmann wrote, public disfavor was being heaped “savagely upon those who had achieved it.”[7]

Lippmann held the muckraking journalists increasingly responsible for this change on social perception, in which social unrest “threatened to spin out of control.” Lippmann described what he saw as an atmosphere of “accusation,” largely aimed at big business, which he viewed as “a collective psychological malady, a dangerous condition of paranoia, that, unless checked, posed a greater danger to society than the excesses of wealth.” Society was a pot on the verge of boiling over. As Lippmann wrote:

The sense of conspiracy and secret scheming which transpire is almost uncanny. “Big Business,” and its ruthless tentacles, have become the material for the feverish fantasy of illiterate thousands thrown out of kilter by the rack and strain of modern life… all the frictions of life are readily ascribed to a deliberate evil intelligence, and men like Morgan and Rockefeller take on attributes of omnipotence, that ten minutes of cold sanity would reduce to a barbarous myth.[8]

In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt gave an interview with the New Haven Register in which he lamented that the excesses of big business, coupled with the challenge of muckraking journalism, was creating a deeply precarious situation, in which, “sooner or later, unless there is a readjustment, there will come a riotous wicked, murderous day of atonement.” Thus, a “search for order” had come to dominate the minds of the once-reformist intellectuals of the day. As Stewart Ewen wrote in his excellent book, PR! A Social History of Spin:

Progressives looked for new strategies that might be employed to contain this impending social crisis. In this quest, a growing number turned toward the new ideas and techniques of the social sciences, hoping to discover foolproof instruments for diagnosing social problems and achieving social stability… To Lippmann and a growing number of others… the social sciences appealed less in their ability to create an informed public and more in their promise to help establish social control.[9]

Lippmann felt that the “discipline of science” would need to be applied to democracy, and that, “social engineers, social scientists, armed with their emerging expertise, would provide the modern state with a foundation upon which a new stability might be realized.” Thus, explained Ewen:

[N]ovel strategies of social management and the conviction that a technical elite might be able to engineer social order were becoming increasingly attractive… Accompanying a democratic current of social analysis that sought to educate the public at large, another – more cabalistic – tradition of social-scientific thought was emerging, one that saw the study of society as a tool by which a technocratic elite could help serve the interests of vested power.[10]

One of the most important works of this period was the 1895 work by French social psychologist, Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, in which he analyzed the changing nature of politics from being middle class oriented to transforming into popular democracy in which “the opinion of the masses” was becoming the most important opinion in society. Le Bon wrote that, “The destinies of nations are elaborated at present in the heart of the masses, and no longer in the councils of princes.” He lamented that, “the claims of the masses are becoming more and more sharply defined, and amount to nothing less than a determination to destroy utterly society as it now exists,” and that, “The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings.” The “crowd,” postulated Le Bon, was only able to ‘react’ and was driven not by logic or reason, but by passion and emotion.[11]

An associate and friend of Le Bon’s, Gabriel Tarde, expanded upon this concept, and articulated the idea that “the crowd” was a social group of the past, and that “the public” was “the social group of the future.” The public, argued Tarde, was a “spiritual collectivity, a dispersion of individuals who are physically separated and whose cohesion is entirely mental.” Thus, Tarde identified in the growth of the printing press and mass communications, a powerful medium through which “the public” is shaped, and that, if managed appropriately, could bring a sense of order to a situation increasingly chaotic. The newspaper, Tarde explained, facilitated “the fusion of personal opinions into local opinions, and this into national and world opinion, the grandiose unification of the public mind.” A German sociologist named Ferdinand Tonnies argued that the newspaper became a channel through which one faction of society could “present its own will as the rational general will.” Thus, “objective reality” was in actuality, managed and controlled. The press, in this case, as the “organ of public opinion” could be a “weapon and tool in the hands of those who know how to use it and have to use it… It is comparable and, in some respects, superior to the material power which the states possess through their armies, their treasuries, and their bureaucratic civil service.”[12]

One of Walter Lippmann’s most influential teachers at Harvard, Graham Wallas, wrote that, “Organized Thought has become typical.” Thus, the idea of “the public” – malleable to suggestion, organized and controlled – came to manifest a type of ‘solution’ to the problem of “the crowd” – irrational, emotionally driven, and reactive. While the crowd was irrational, the ‘public’ could be reasoned with.[13]

One individual who was greatly influenced by these ideas was a man named Ivy Lee, a newspaperman who graduated from Princeton in 1898, and had come to offer his services to major industrial executives as one of the first corporate public relations practitioners. In 1916, he told a group of railroad executives that, “You suddenly find you are not running a private business, but running a business of which the public itself is taking complete supervision. The crowd is in the saddle, the people are on the job, and we must take consideration of that fact, whether we like it or not.” Thus, Lee felt that it was essential for the business community to “manufacture a commonality of interests between them and an often censorious public to establish a critical line of defense against the crowd.”[14]

Ivy Lee defined the job of public relations persons to that of a “news engineer,” and described himself as “a physician for corporate bodies.” The aim was to “supply news” to the press and the public so as to “understand better the soundness of a corporation’s policy or perspective.”[15]

One notable event was what came to be known as the Ludlow Massacre. The Colorado coal strike began in September 1913, in which roughly eleven thousand miners (mostly Greeks, Italians and Serbs) went on strike following the murder of one of their organizers. They went on strike against the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation, which was owned by the Rockefeller family, and against their low pay, horrible living conditions, and the “feudal domination of their lives in towns completely controlled by the mining companies.” The strikers were immediately evicted from their shacks in the towns, and subsequently set up tent colonies, when the Rockefellers hired gunmen (using Gatling guns and rifles) to raid the tent colonies. The Colorado governor called out the National Guard (whose wages were paid by the Rockefellers), and raided the colonies. On 20 April 1914, the largest tent colony at Ludlow, housing over one thousand men, women and children, was machine gunned by the National Guard, with the strikers firing back. When the leader of the strike was called up to negotiate a truce, he was shot dead, and the machine gun fire continued, with the Guard moving in at nightfall to set fire to the tents. The following day it was discovered that one tent included the charred bodies of eleven children and two women. This became known as the Ludlow Massacre.[16]

The Rockefeller Foundation emerged in this era, and became immediately interested in the ‘construction of knowledge’ as a means to defending the interests of the Rockefeller Group and capitalist society as a whole. The Rockefeller Foundation secretary, Jerome Greene, identified “research and propaganda” as a means to quiet social and political unrest. It was felt that “public opinion on the labor question could be shaped through the foundation in order to counter leftist and populist attacks on both the Rockefeller business enterprises and on capitalism.”[17]

Following the Ludlow Massacre in 1914, a government commission – the Walsh Commission – was appointed to study the issue, and the Rockefeller Foundation began preparation for its own study.[18] As the Walsh Commission began their work, the Rockefeller Foundation sought to join forces with other major corporate leaders to advance their formation of ideology, and attended a conference “held between representatives of some of the largest financial interests” in the United States. This conference resulted in two approaches being pushed forward in terms of seeking to “educate the citizenry in procapitalistic ideology and thus relieve unrest.” One view was the interpretation that the public was provided with “poor quality of facts and interpretation available on social and economic issues.” Thus, they felt there was a need for a “publicity bureau” to provide a “constant stream of correct information” targeted at the lower and middle classes. However:

The Rockefeller representatives at the conference proposed an alternative strategy of public enlightenment. Although they accepted the usefulness of such a publicity organization, they also wanted a permanent research organization to manufacture knowledge on these subjects. While a publicity organization would “correct popular misinformation,” the research institution would study the “causes of social and economic evils,” using its reputation for disinterestedness and scientific detachment to “obtain public confidence and respect,” for its findings. And, of course, the research findings could be disseminated through the publicity bureau as well as other outlets.[19]

While the Rockefeller Foundation sought to manufacture ideology in response to the Ludlow Massacre and industrial relations in general, on the corporate side of the matter, the Rockefeller group employed the ideas of an emerging field of public relations, and specifically utilized the talent of Ivy Lee, one of the first PR men in America. Lee’s efforts were employed in “damage control” for the Rockefeller name, which was highly despised by the general public in the early 20^th century. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. hired Ivy Lee on behalf of the Rockefellers to “secure publicity for their views.” What Lee did for the Rockefellers initially was to produce a series of circulars entitled, “Facts Concerning the Strike in Colorado for Industrial Freedom,” which were sent to “public officials, editors, ministers, teachers, and prominent professional and business men,” in an attempt “to cultivate middle-class allies.”[20]

Based around the concept that “truth happens to an idea” – a famous phrase of Ivy Lee’s – his bulletins were operating on the basis that “something asserted might become a fact, regardless of its connection to actual events.” As Lee explained to the Walsh Commission in 1915, in regards to his definition of ‘truth’: “By the truth, Mr. Chairman, I mean the truth about the operators’ case. What I was to do was to advise and get their case into proper shape for them.”[21] When asked the question, “What personal effort did you ever make to ascertain that the facts given to you by the operators [the Rockefeller group] were correct?,” Lee responded: “None whatever.” As Lee stated to a grouping of railroad executives in 1916:

It is not the facts alone that strike the popular mind, but the way in which they take place and in which they are published that kindle the imagination… Besides, What is a fact? The effort to state an absolute fact is simply an attempt to… give you my interpretation of the facts.[22]

With World War I, the term ‘propaganda’ became popularized and took on negative connotations. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson established the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI) as a “vast propaganda ministry.” The aim of the CPI was to build support in the public for the war, and such an effort was especially challenging in the face of significant anti-war sentiments and potential resistance. This potential was especially ripe in immigrant communities, cramped in urban ghettos and lost to the failed promises of “opportunity” that drew them to America in the first place. Before U.S. involvement in the war, “working-class and radical organizations, pacifists, anarchists and many socialists, maintained that this was nothing but a ‘rich man’s war’.”[23]

It was not only in America that working class sentiments were extremely anti-war, but in Britain and other major nations as well. To add to this situation, in 1917, Russia was in the midst of revolution, leading to the exacerbation of fears on the part of many leading intellectuals and social analysts that revolution was possible anywhere. Thus, many of these analysts and intellectuals had begun lobbying President Wilson “for the establishment of an ideological apparatus that would systematically promote the cause of war. One of these analysts was Arthur Bullard, a leading Progressive, who had been a student of Wilson when the president had been a history professor at Princeton.” Bullard advocated a strong wave of publicity for the government in promoting the war, to “electrify public opinion.” Bullard thus suggested the formation of a “publicity bureau” for the government, “which would constantly keep before the public the importance of supporting the men at the front. It would requisition space on the front page of every newspaper; it would call for a ‘draft’ of trained writers to feed ‘Army stories’ to the public; it would create a Corps of Press Agents,” and to organize a propaganda campaign aimed at making the struggle “comprehensible and popular.”[24]

Walter Lippmann, who was the most respected and influential political thinker of that era, wrote a private letter to President Wilson supporting Bullard’s recommendation, adding that the chief aim of such an agency should be to promote a vision and advertise the war as seeking “to make a world that is safe for democracy.” According to Lippmann, war necessitated the nurturing of “a healthy public opinion.” The President asked Lippmann to develop a plan for the specifics of such an agency, for which Lippmann developed a grand strategic vision, mobilizing communications specialists, and the motion picture industry. Thus, in April of 1917, the Committee on Public Information (CPI) was formed, whose membership included the secretary of state, the secretary of war, and the secretary of the navy, as well as a civilian director, George Creel, a Progressive journalist. Creel, who had been central in the original generation of Progressive writers and publicists, had developed an extensive list of contacts and understood well “the importance of public opinion.” Thus, as Stuart Ewen wrote, “When war was declared, an impassioned generation of Progressive publicists fell into line, surrounding the war effort with a veil of much-needed liberal-democratic rhetoric.”[25]

As the concepts and ideas of “public opinion” and “mass democracy” emerged, the dominant political and social theorists of the era took to a debate on redefining democracy. Central to this discussion were the books and ideas of Walter Lippmann. With the concept of the “scientific management” of society by social scientists standing firm in the background, society’s problems were viewed as “technical problems” intended to be resolved through rational professionals and experts. Scientific Management, then, would be applied not merely to the Industrial factories to which the concept was introduced by Frederick Taylor, but to society as a whole. Lippmann took it upon himself to describe the role and means through which “Scientific Management” could be applied within an industrial democratic society. Lippmann felt that the notion of an “omnicompetent, sovereign citizen” was “a false ideal. It is unattainable. The pursuit of it is misleading. The failure to produce it has produced the current disenchantment.” Further, for Lippmann, society had gained “a complexity now so great as to be humanly unmanageable.” Thus, there was a need, wrote Lippmann, “for interposing some form of expertness between the private citizen and the vast environment in which he is entangled.” Just as with Frederick Taylor’s conception of “scientific management” of the factory, the application of this concept to society would require, in Lippmann’s words, “systematic intelligence and information control,” which would become “the normal accompaniment of action.” With such control, Lippmann asserted, “persuasion… become[s] a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government,” and the “manufacture of consent improve[s] enormously in technique, because it is now based on analysis rather than rule of thumb.”[26]

Thus, arose the panacea of propaganda: the solution to society’s ailments. “In a world of competing political doctrines,” wrote Lippmann, “the partisans of democratic government cannot depend solely upon appeal to reason or abstract liberalism.” Henceforth, “propaganda, as the advocacy of ideas and doctrines, has a legitimate and desirable part to play in our democratic system.” Harold Lasswell, a leading political scientist and communications theorist in the early 20^th century, wrote that: “The modern conception of social management is profoundly affected by the propagandist outlook. Concerted action for public ends depends upon a certain concentration of motives… Propaganda is surely here to stay; the modern world is peculiarly dependent upon it for the co-ordination of atomized components in times of crisis and for the conduct of large scale ‘normal operations’.” In other words, propaganda is not merely a tool for times of war and crisis, but for times of peace and stability as well; that propaganda is the means and method through which to attain and maintain that stability. Lippmann added to the discussion that, “without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct a propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event.”[27]

In 1922, Lippmann wrote his profoundly influential book, Public Opinion, in which he expressed his thoughts on the inability of citizens – or the public – to guide democracy or society for themselves. The “intellectuality of mankind,” Lippmann argued, was exaggerated and false. Instead, he defined the public as “an amalgam of stereotypes, prejudices and inferences, a creature of habits and associations, moved by impulses of fear and greed and imitation, exalted by tags and labels.”[28] Lippmann suggested that for the effective “manufacture of consent,” what was needed were “intelligence bureaus” or “observatories,” employing the social scientific techniques of “disinterested” information to be provided to journalists, governments, and businesses regarding the complex issues of modern society.[29] These essentially came to be known and widely employed as think tanks, the most famous of which is the Council on Foreign Relations, founded in 1921 and to which Lippmann later belonged as a member.

In 1925, Lippmann wrote another immensely important work entitled, The Phantom Public, in which he expanded upon his conceptions of the public and democracy. In his concept of democratic society, Lippmann wrote that, “A false ideal of democracy can lead only to disillusionment and to meddlesome tyranny,” and to prevent this from taking place, “the public must be put in its place… so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.”[30] Defining the public as a “bewildered herd,” Lippmann went on to conceive of ‘public opinion,’ not as “the voice of God, nor the voice of society, but the voice of the interested spectators of action.” Thus, “the opinions of the spectators must be essentially different from those of the actors.” This new conception of society, managed by actors and not the “bewildered herd” of “spectators” would be constructed so as to subject the managers of society, wrote Lippmann, “to the least possible interference from ignorant and meddlesome outsiders.”[31] In case there was any confusion, the “bewildered herd” of “spectators” made up of “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” is the public, is we, the people.

Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and former member of Woodrow Wilson’s wartime propaganda machine, the Committee on Public Information (CPI), was another ‘actor’ who played his part in redefining democracy in the age of public opinion. In his 1923 book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, Bernays explained how the ideas of individuals could be shaped into mass opinions through the use of propaganda and ‘public relations.’ Known commonly as the “Father of Public Relations,” Bernays, returning from the post-War Paris Conference in 1919, believed quite strongly in the idea that if propaganda could be used effectively in times of war, it can and should be used effectively in times of peace.

In 1928, Edward Bernays wrote an article for the American Journal of Sociology entitled, “Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and the How.” Public opinion, explained Bernays, “is the thought of a society at a given time toward a given object; broadly conceived, it is the power of the group to sway the larger public in its attitude.” Bernays was also influenced not simply by his own experiences in the wartime Committee on Public Information, but also by his uncle, Sigmund Freud’s ideas which regarded people as irrational and driven by subconscious emotional desires. With such a conception of the psychology of individuals and groups, Bernays and others felt that people must have their beliefs and opinions shaped by others, others who presumably are the exceptions to the rule regarding the emotionally driven irrational mind. Reflecting this belief, Bernays wrote: “Public opinion can be manipulated, but in teaching the public how to ask for what it wants the manipulator is safeguarding the public against his own possible aggressiveness.”[32] Today – claimed Bernays – the swaying of public opinion “is one of the manifestations of democracy that anyone may try to convince others and to assume leadership on behalf of his own thesis.”[33]

Bernays’ attempt to present the manipulation of public opinion as a “manifestation of democracy” crudely neglects the reality of those who have access to the apparatus and mechanisms that sway public opinion, itself. If that apparatus, which it largely is, is confined to the upper class of society, is that not a bastardization of democratic ideals? Bernays further explained:

The manipulation of the public mind… serves a social purpose. This manipulation serves to gain acceptance for new ideas.[34]

Bernays described the nature of propaganda, explaining that one major experiment on the manipulation of public opinion concluded that “attitudes were often created by a circumstance or circumstances of dramatic moment.” Thus, Bernays explained, “very often the propagandist is called upon to create a circumstance that will eventuate in the desired reaction on the part of the public he is endeavoring to reach.”[35] In other words: problem, reaction, solution. Create a problem to incur a specific reaction for which you provide a desired solution. For the propagandist, “analysis of the problem and its causes is the first step toward shaping the public mind on any subject.”[36] Bernays wrote:

This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas. Public opinion can be moved, directed, and formed by such a technique. But at the core of this great heterogeneous body of public opinion is a tenacious will to live, to progress, to move in the direction of ultimate social and individual benefit. He who seeks to manipulate public opinion must always heed it.[37]

Bernays later wrote on the development of the public relations industry, of which he was a central and pioneering actor. “Public relations,” wrote Bernays, was “a relatively new profession, and its practitioner, the professional counsel on public relations, serve a constructive function in our complex, free society.” He elaborated: “public relations came about because organized activity, which depends on public support, needed a societal technician to counsel it – the counsel on public relations.” This, Bernays felt, was vital to a “democratic society”:

New and faster means of communication and transportation furthered the growth of the profession. Social science research increased understanding of human behavior. The greater complexity of the society and the overlapping and interwoven network of communications that hold it together almost made the evolution of the new profession inevitable.[38]

As Bernays explained, “[i]n a democratic society almost every activity depends on public understanding and support,” and thus, he concluded, this can only be brought about “by public education, persuasion, and suggestion by effective public relations. This profession makes it possible for minority ideas to be more readily accepted by the majority.” He referred to this as “the marketplace of ideas,” but neglected to explain that, like other markets, this one, too, is rigged. His conception of “democratic society” is very much an elitist view of democratic society, articulated best by Walter Lippmann in seeking to “engineer the consent” of the public, which was viewed as irrational and incapable of true democracy. Reflecting on his 1923 book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, Bernays discussed the concept of the “manufacture of consent,” a term coined by Walter Lippmann but which Bernays was eager to present as his own. He stated: “I refined the approach and called it the engineering of consent”:

In the engineering of consent, determination of goals is subject to change after research about the relevant publics. Only after we know the state of public opinion through research can we be sure that our goals are realistic.[39]

In 1947, Bernays re-examined his support for propaganda in a democratic society, writing that:

Today it is impossible to overestimate the importance of engineering consent; it affects almost every aspect of our daily lives. When used for social purposes, it is among our most valuable contributions to the efficient functioning of modern society.[40]

Naturally, it seems, “efficiency” is held in high regard as an objective of social planning and thus, an aim of society itself. As such, “effect” is often left by the wayside, as in: the effect of an “efficient” modern society is secondary to the actual efficiency of it. Thus, if the effect of a modern society is dehumanization, so long as that process is “efficient,” social planners may view it as desirable, present it as “functioning,” and see whatever means which bring it about as “valuable contributions.” But then, it must be conceded, the ‘desired effect’ for social planners is always social control. Regardless of the human or dehumanizing effects of such a system, if the result is “order and control,” and so long as this is achieved “efficiently,” the system functions well.

In 1928, Edward Bernays wrote a book entitled, Propaganda, which later became used by infamous propagandists such as Hitler’s propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels. On the first page of his book, Bernays wrote, and it is worth quoting at some length:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.[41]

These ideas, among many others, have had incredible influence on the philosophy, actions, intentions, and perceptions of not only American society, but the world at large. They spurred on the development of the consumer society, along with other projects of social engineering that have, through the course of the 20^th century, been focused on the application of social control. It is fundamentally though the notion of “engineering consent” that we have come to the point where so few are able to control so much, leaving little to nothing for the vast majority of the world’s people. This elite intellectual discussion which took place in the early 20^th century came to define democracy not only for America, but the world as a whole. Thus, we have a new understanding when it comes to our leaders expressing their desires and objectives of spreading democracy around the world. In short, they seek to “engineer consent” on a much larger, grander scale than ever before imagined. It is the globalization of social engineering which we are witnessing in the modern era, and its origins lay in the discernable past.

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project.

NOTE: The above article is the documented transcript from the second episode of a new podcast show, Empire, Power, and People with Andrew Gavin Marshall. You can listen to the podcast episode here.

Notes

[1]            Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin (New York: Basic Books, 1996), page 42

[2]            Ibid, pages 44-46.

[3]            Ibid, page 46.

[4]            Ibid, pages 49-50.

[5]            Ibid, pages 50-54.

[6]            Ibid, pages 58-59.

[7]            Ibid, pages 60-61.

[8]            Ibid, pages 62.

[9]            Ibid, pages 63-64.

[10]            Ibid, page 64.

[11]            Ibid, pages 64-66.

[12]            Ibid, pages 67-71.

[13]            Ibid, pages 71-73.

[14]            Ibid, pages 74-75.

[15]            Ibid, pages 76-78.

[16]            Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (Harper Perennial: New York, 2003), pages 354-355.

[17]            Robert F. Arnove, ed., Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (Indiana University Press: Boston, 1980), page 67.

[18]            Ibid, page 68.

[19]            Ibid, pages 69-70.

[20]            Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin (New York: Basic Books, 1996), page 78.

[21]            Ibid, page 79.

[21]            Ibid, pages 80-81.

[22]            Ibid, pages 104-105.

[23]            Ibid, pages 104-105.

[24]            Ibid, pages 106-107.

[25]            Ibid, pages 108-109.

[26]            Frank Webster and Kevin Robins, “Plan and Control: Towards a Cultural History of the Information Society,” Theory and Society (Vol. 18, 1989), pages 341-342.

[27]            Ibid, pages 342-343.

[28]            Sidney Kaplan, “Social Engineers as Saviors: Effects of World War I on Some American Liberals,” Journal of the History of Ideas (Vol. 17, No. 3, June 1956), pages 366-367.

[29]            Sue Curry Jansen, “Phantom Conflict: Lippmann, Dewey, and the Fate of the Public in Modern Society,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (Vol. 6, No. 3, 2009), page 225.

[30]            Walter Lippmann, et. al., The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy (Harvard University Press, 1982), page 91.

[31]            Ibid, page 92.

[32]            Edward Bernays, “Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and the How,” American Journal of Sociology (Vol. 33, No. 6, May 1928), page 958.

[33]            Ibid, page 959.

[34]            Ibid.

[35]            Ibid, pages 961-962.

[36]            Ibid, page 969.

[37]            Ibid, page 971.

[38]            Edward Bernays, “Emergence of the Public Relations Counsel: Principles and Recollections,” The Business History Review (Vol. 45, No. 3, Autumn 1971), page 296.

[39]            Ibid, page 297.

[40]            Edward Bernays, “The Engineering of Consent,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Vol. 250, Communication and Social Action, March 1947), page 115.

[41]            Edward Bernays, Propaganda (New York: Ig Publishing, 1928), page 37.

This podcast examines a concept of power that emerged in the early 20th century United States, born of social unrest and elite fears of revolution, this new conception sought to redefine democracy for the 20th century. That new definition was based upon using propaganda in order to “engineer consent” of the masses – “the bewildered herd” – as they were referred to, with the purpose of allowing the modern industrial democratic society to be run by an intellectual elite in service to the financial wealth of the nation. Democracy, then, came to be: of the few, by the few, for the few, and with the ‘consent’ of the many.

Listen to the podcast show here:

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In the last few decades one never-changing modus operandi in our imperial pursuits and operations overseas has been the formation, financing, training, control and domination of our target countries’ military force. Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia … whether here right in our backyard under joint Pentagon and military industrial complex mega corporations or abroad, through our tentacles-NATO member nations, we’ve always ensured holding the most important string in ruling and managing our overseas puppetries- their military. Because, admit it, the figure-head dictators come and go; rise and fall; are made and destroyed, easily and frequently. On the other hand, their ruling military elite are more of a constant. Think Egypt: ‘Bye-bye Mubarak, stay put military regime.’ However, all that seems to be changing. We are getting savvier, more ambitious and far greedier. We want more: more control. Thus, welcome our new extended imperial sphere: Police Force a la USA.

According to the latest news, of course not covered by US media, our NATO Member Turkey will be training the new Libyan Police Force. Let’s read this extremely important new development with even more important implications [All Emphasis Mine]:

Turkey has started negotiations with Libya to begin training the country’s police force, which is being rebuilt after Libya’s violent revolution that began in February 2011 and ended the 42-year dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi.

A delegation from the Turkish General Directorate of Security, headed by Deputy National Police Chief Ahmet Pek, traveled to the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Saturday to discuss projects related to Libyan police training in Turkey. The Turkish delegation considered the issue with Libyan Interior Affairs Minister Omar al-Hadravi on Sunday.

The meeting was also attended by high-ranking Libyan security officers. The officials talked about the resumption of Libyan police education, which was interrupted during the civil war, in Turkish police academies. They also discussed the possibility of including primary vocational training in the Libyan police force for former armed insurgents, in Turkey.

…

Pek stated that the Turkish delegation supplied necessary equipment for Libyan police forces during their recent visit and said they will be delivered to Libyan leaders during an official ceremony in Tripoli this week.

…

We all know about Turkey’s ‘water-bearer’ position for the West as an important and the only Muslim NATO member. However, what is not well-known here in the United States, thanks to its media’s complete submission to government, military mega corporations and foreign lobby powers, is Turkey’s internationally recognized status and fame for its atrocious police brutality and abuses.

In a damning report, Human Rights Watch said complaints against the police for excessive force had risen sharply since the start of last year while the number of officers convicted had dropped. A total of 3,339 people had complained about police ill-treatment in 2007, up from 2,854 the year before, but only 48 of those complaints had led to convictions.

The 80-page report, Closing Ranks Against Accountability, recounts numerous cases of suspects dying or suffering serious injury at the hands of police, sometimes after being stopped for routine identity checks. Police frequently cover up evidence while accused officers are routinely exonerated after internal disciplinary proceedings, the report says.

The rise in violent incidents was partly attributable, he said, to laws introduced by the governing Justice and Development party (AKP), which has built its image on a reform programme designed to aid Turkey’s EU membership bid. These include a law permitting police to use lethal force before it becomes a “last resort” necessary to prevent a threat to life, another allowing officers to conduct identity checks without reasonable grounds for suspicion, and anti-terrorism legislation enabling suspects to be detained for 24 hours without access to a lawyer.

…

Turkey has held on to its record as one of the world champions in extreme torture practices thanks to the direct financial and training support from its US masters:

When a harsh report asserting that torture is widespread in Turkey was released this week, the surprise was not just the amount of damning evidence it contained, but also the source. Rather than being prepared by a private advocacy group, the report was the work of the parliamentary committee on human rights.

For years, Turkish leaders have sought to play down accusations that torture is widely practiced here. That will be harder after what the parliamentary committee found. Its report contains transcripts of interviews with many prisoners who said they had been abused. It also includes photos of torture equipment and floor plans that show where torture cells are supposedly located in various police stations. No report by a government human rights body has ever been nearly this extensive or graphic.

Committee members and investigators interviewed more than 8,500 prisoners during a two-year period. They also conducted unannounced visits to 50 prisons and two dozen police stations, said the vice chairman, Sebgetullah Seydaoglu.

“This committee has existed for seven years but it hasn’t been functioning properly,” said Mr. Seydaoglu, who represents the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, where the mostly Kurdish population has long complained of bad treatment by police. “In the last year we’ve become very decisive about our mission.”

…

Even Turkey’s financial and procedural backers in torture practices couldn’t help but admit to its status:

The United States State Department said in its latest human rights report that during 1999 “torture, beatings and other abuses by security forces remained widespread, at times resulting in deaths.”

Human rights advocates are unhappy with the government’s record. The bluntness of the new parliamentary report suggests that impatience for change is growing.”This report says what we have been saying for years, that torture is extensive and systematic in Turkey,” said Nazmi Gur, chairman of the Human Rights Association, which has often been at odds with the government. “This could be the beginning of progress toward meeting European legal standards.”

…

Maybe a few videos would better depict the Turkish police’s claim to fame:

Rather than filling many hundreds of pages with examples and reports I invite all readers to run a search for credible reports and documentations on Turkish police and its record on torture, violence and other brutalities.  This is the kind of police force and practices that have been deemed appropriate for the New Libya by US-NATO powers. The new trend has begun – we not only form, train, finance and command these nations’ military forces, but we now extend our ruling into their daily lives on the street via selecting, training, arming, financing, and controlling their police forces.

The United States has fulfilled its main objective on Libya: regime change; replacing it with its own regime, one that will be equally if not more brutal and abusive of its people. The only difference – the strings will be fully in its hand.

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This morning I was interviewed by Ernest Hancock. There are a few things I like about Ernest’s show: long enough to really cover the subjects, daring and bold, flexible enough to get into unexpected topics spontaneously, and its ability to always get me fired up. As you know I have far less inhibitions when I write than when I talk. Well, all that goes out the window when I’m interviewed by Mr. Hancock. And today was no exception. We started with our nonstop war machine, got into the US media, and bam, from there we landed on the topic of systemic government indoctrination and the creation of our culture of outsourcing. Sounds intriguing, right? Well, you be the judge-here is the interview (I’m the 3^rd guest – the last 45 minutes of the audio clip): Click Here

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Coleen Rowley was in DC last week, and I missed her visit again. She came all the way from Minneapolis to participate in the March on January 11and stand in solidarity with others who have not given up the fight- the vigilance; notwithstanding the frigid weather and the pouring rain. She drove all the way here, and then back. Because she is one of those people who doesn’t only talk-the-talk. This lady has always walked-the-walk. Whether in the fight for persecuted and prosecuted government whistleblowers, whether on our government’s  widely-practiced and now-normalized torture, illegal detainment, assassination practices, Coleen has always been there; notwithstanding all the odds that appear to be against us and all the defeats that we have been experiencing-back-to-back and nonstop. (She is in the picture-on the right)

Here are a few excerpts from a recent article she wrote on her march in DC last week:

It’s hard to know what to do, as mere citizens, to try and fix things so many years after the United States government decided it did not have to follow its own laws, the Geneva Conventions or the jus cogens torture prohibition. It’s now ten years after the indefinite detention prison of Guantanamo was created, an entire decade since the US went off the rails. With the recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act broadening and making permanent its “war on terror”, the US government seems to have given up on ever righting itself.

…

A country that cannot look back and learn from its mistakes is doomed to repeat its mistakes. Not surprisingly, torture memo author John Yoo is amongst those most vigorously urging the US to the “unavoidable challenge” of more war. Eerily similar to the lies and false hyping of Iraq’s WMD that led to an unjustified and catastrophic war, we find ourselves perched on the brink of watching a new war break out, this time on Iran. It will, in all likelihood, be a repeat of the destructive invasion of Iraq but many times worse not only in terms of the millions of people who could be killed in the Mid-east but also in terms of the potential blowback upon the United States and Israel. We could even experience the World War III that some neo-conservatives seem to long for.

And yet almost no one speaks out here in the U.S.! The Democrats have turned to war mongering almost to the same extent as the Republicans (with the exception of Ron Paul). Not only do most congresspersons and politicians of both parties give speeches in support of draconian sanctions (seen as war provocation) and stopping diplomacy, but they ultimately urge on this next war on Iran.

It seems the only thing we can do is get more ordinary citizens to take to the streets to demonstrate against war and torture.

…

You can read the entire piece here.

I feel terrible for not being able to make it there. I was less than 5 miles from the location, yet didn’t try hard enough to organize care for my toddler and join these activists. On the other hand, Coleen didn’t let many hundreds of miles of excruciating driving deter her. I salute you, Coleen. I always have.

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Fukushima, Passamari, Spring

Bow-legged two-legged, leaning on his hoe
peers for garlic, late beneath the plum.
Cuffs unbuttoned cut the wind like wings.
He veers a stretch of sky between limbs
and bed, tallying spears as if a golden
gauging hares. Planes his friends insist
don’t spray poison for many good reasons
and returning geese persist against
the pelt of fronts. A neighbor’s tom
deserves his adulation. Clouds decay
to cumulus and haze when no fields burn.
Fat Mouse dies without a kick in yellow grass.
Orach cotyledons pool in paths like blood.

Early spinach vernal under hog fence hoops
and plastic from the dump needs safe water
from the county’s deepest well. Still, rain
threatens, at a hundred counts per minute,
not him so much but kids who play next door.
When did the world’s backup generators seize?
The missing witness, shoeless on the tape,
muttering, stumbled- on by mistake
in a landfill heap. And this newest war,
when were there debates? He leans on stone
to sort intrusive roots from wanted stock.
One wind whips the town’s flags all directions.

Doves weight air a gray he shoulders
like a bar. Admitting defeat so late and far
from sanctuary waves, snow geese argue
security measures all the way to straw. Truth
is north and hurts worse faced head on.
Land a million peasants hoed subsides
while dying aspens turn silver he can’t save
and nations crash in gardens like the sea.
Aerosol merges dark as news in sky
when sun unwinds in tongues that peel his ears.
Teetering worlds lose bearings like bickering geese.
He takes the dog whose eyes beg for a walk.
She shows him when you turn you’re halfway home.

G. Karl Marcus

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I was scheduled for an interview on the latest developments on the Turkish-Syria topic, however, they had a last minute change and suddenly I was facing questions regarding the latest exposé on Bahrain-Washington Times. If you look carefully you’ll see my eye-balls turning rapidly (mine are too tightly connected to the wheels spinning inside my head) …Anyhow, I needed at least an extra five minutes to explain the real macro points on this topic (Yap, I’m one of those who cannot sum up things in short bullet points. Why do you think I always prefer interviews of a minimum of 30-minutes?), but life (TV interviews) doesn’t work that way. That, and feeling uncomfortable using my intended (and well-deserved) words: Whores-Pimps-Johns… Well, here is the RT clip:

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The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is frequently described as a ‘private, not-for-profit foundation.’  At least, at its website, NED acknowledges funding from the US Congress.  In NED’s latest IRS Form 990 filing, over $135 million of their $136 million in revenue is identified as coming from government sources.

NED was founded in 1983.  It was founded not by private action, but by an Act of Congress.  Yet its authorizing legislation seems a bit ambiguous, stating in part that “Nothing in this title shall be construed to make the Endowment an agency or establishment of the United States government.” 

At its website, NED couches its goals in noble terms:  “NED is dedicated to fostering the growth of a wide range of democratic institutions abroad, including political parties, trade unions, free markets and business organizations, as well as the many elements of a vibrant civil society that ensure human rights, an independent media, and the rule of law.”

Following heated debate in its early years, and charges that it was dominated by Republican interests, NED has worked to involve labor unions in its support, and tries to communicate a broader, encompassing set of stated goals.   At its website today, NED emphasizes that “From its beginning, NED has remained steadfastedly bipartisan.  Created jointly be Republicans and Democrats, NED is governed by a board balanced between both parties and enjoys Congressional support across the political spectrum.”

Whether or not a ‘steadfastedly bipartisan’ organization is necessarily independent or unbiased remains a good question, however, in light of the proved ability of both our major parties to be captured by special interest groups. 

The current Chairman of the Board of NED is Richard Gephardt, formerly Majority as well as Minority Leader in the US Senate, and Senator from Missouri.  In 2005, after his final term in the Senate, Gephardt became a consultant and lobbyist.  One of his clients has been the Republic of Turkey.  Norm Coleman, formerly a Senator from Minnesota whose service included a role as Chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is another board member.  The entire roster of board members for NED can be seen here.

NED has been open in its expression of concern about recent developments in Russia; for example, see its Eurasia overview here, and a listing of its grants for projects in Russia here.   Whether taxpayers should be funding these efforts, however noble they may appear, remains a matter of debate.   Noble-sounding goals can become a form of advertising for more intense, concentrated special interests.  And the energy-rich Central Asia region certainly has its share of attention from Americans who care primarily about their own wallets, and are happy to try to have taxpayer resources applied in ways that may make their own wallets fatter, at general expense.

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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This post is a major exception for Boiling Frogs Post. I almost never bother commenting or giving coverage to ‘easy-come, easy-go’ dime-a-dozen flake personalities in politics. As you know we have never even named that ‘one’ from Alaska, or the other one from ‘The Pizza Chain,’ … However, I just watched the video below, and couldn’t help myself. You must watch it, you must let that critical thinking kick in, and then afterwards, apply this particular half-psychopath, half-sociopath, and a quarter-flake’s rational across the board using a fairness doctrine to see and understand the real implications of what he is saying:

Based on what this US presidential candidate is saying all our past and present scientists who’ve been involved in developing many thousands of weapons of mass destruction for many decades should go on Code Red Alert, and maybe even go under the Federal Protection Program. Because all those family members, direct and indirect victims of our WMD in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Agent Orange, Kuwait, Iraq, Cambodia … may be on their way. Sanctioned and justified by Mr. Santorum and those who agree with him (in practice as well) in our government, they are now justified to come and take out hundreds, if not thousands of scientists in our universities, all Pentagon branches , RAND… who have been developing thousands of deadly WMDs for a government who has been using them for many decades.

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This episode takes a critical look at the development of the American Empire during and after World War II, using official State Department documents, formerly top secret documents from the Council on Foreign Relations, and other official sources.

Comparing the statements and ideas of those who formed the American Empire during this period with the intellectual elites of recent years who claim that America is a “benevolent empire”, we can see that America was shaped into an empire by design, with the overt and directly stated intent to control the world and its resources. In the words of a ‘Top Secret’ U.S. State Department document in 1948, the aim of the United States was to “maintain this position of disparity” between American wealth and the rest of the world. Thus, we may critically examine the American Empire by looking at it in the words of those who shaped it, compared to the myths that prevail today.

Listen to the podcast show here:

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As a result of successive political blunders by the Obama administration, Matthew Bryza was forced to abandon his ambassadorial post in Azerbaijan last week.

President Obama ignored repeated warnings that the candidate he was nominating as Ambassador to Azerbaijan in May 2010 had serious flaws. Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee accused Bryza of having a pro-Azerbaijani bias and questionable ties to Azeri officials. The Senators were troubled by reports that foreign officials had given Bryza lavish gifts at his Istanbul wedding, during which the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan had served as a groomsman. In addition, the nominee’s Turkish-born wife Zeyno Baran was accused of conflicts of interest while working on Caspian energy issues at a Washington think tank. She had also antagonized the Armenian-American community by testifying against recognition of the Armenian Genocide at a Senate Subcommittee hearing.

When Pres. Obama failed to take these concerns seriously, Senators Barbara Boxer (Dem.-CA) and Robert Menendez (Dem.-New Jersey) had no choice but to place a hold on Bryza’s nomination, effectively blocking his confirmation. Obama then compounded his error by appointing Bryza as Ambassador to Azerbaijan in late 2010 without Senate approval. The President seemed oblivious to the potential damage to his own reputation, the prestige of the United States, and U.S.-Azeri relations, should the Senate not confirm Bryza’s nomination, forcing him to leave his post and return to Washington upon expiration of his 12-month appointment.

As Amb. Bryza’s temporary assignment was ending in December 2011, Obama administration officials pressured Senators Boxer and Menendez to allow him to continue serving in Azerbaijan by confirming his nomination. The two Senators remained steadfast in opposing Bryza, even though it is not easy for these Democratic politicians to turn down a request from the President of the United States, who also happens to be the nominal leader of their own party.

The Senators were also pressured by the government of Azerbaijan and its powerful lobbying firms which went into overdrive to justify their exorbitant fees. Through their special connections they were able to get the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post to publish editorials attacking the Senators and the Armenian National Committee of America which had spearheaded a public campaign against this unqualified Ambassadorial nominee.

Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal heaped lavish praise on Bryza, calling him a “respected career foreign service officer,” and accused the two Senators of “kissing up to the Armenian-American lobby.”

The Washington Post was even nastier. Its editorial could be described as outright racist and anti-Armenian. Contrary to its claim of defending “the larger U.S. national interest,” the newspaper was actually advocating the confirmation of an Ambassador with questionable credentials who would weaken, rather than strengthen America’s interests.

The Washington Post concluded its shameful editorial by accusing “oil-poor” and “isolated” Armenia as being the biggest loser in the Bryza controversy. We beg to disagree. This is an American issue and Armenia had no role in it. In fact, the biggest losers are those who lobbied long and hard for the confirmation of an ill-qualified Ambassador who was more intent on serving the interests of Baku in Washington than those of America in Azerbaijan.

In my opinion, the real losers are:

1) Pres. Obama who picked a poorly qualified nominee and stubbornly pushed for his confirmation when it was crystal clear from day one that Bryza did not have the chance of a snowball in hell to get confirmed.

2) The government of Azerbaijan which spent a fortune on lobbyists who miserably failed to get the job done.

3) Azeri and Turkish organizations, such as the Azerbaijani-American Council, Azerbaijan Society of America, Pax Turcica Institute, US Azeris Network, and Assembly of Turkish-American Associations, which issued countless press releases and sent thousands of e-mails to the Senate — to no avail. By supporting Bryza, they confirmed that in fact he was “their man,” and not an unbiased diplomat.

4) The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post which compromised their journalistic integrity to please their “petro-friends.”

5) The 36 former U.S. officials who signed a joint letter urging the Senate to confirm Bryza. It is no mere coincidence that most of these signatories are currently associated with think tanks and lobbying firms that are funded by Azerbaijan or expect such funding in the future.

There are, however, two clear winners:

1) The Armenian-American community which has sent a loud and clear message to Baku, Ankara, and Washington that it represents a powerful political force to be reckoned with.

2) Matthew Bryza and his wife, who as lobbyists for Azerbaijan and Turkey, can be expected to make millions by cashing in on their high-level connections in Baku and Ankara.

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On December 8 several days after election results for Russia’s parliamentary elections were announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin’s United Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fuelling the Russian opposition protesters and their election protests. Putin stated, “The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers.”[1]

Putin went on to claim that Clinton’s premature comments were the necessary signal to the waiting opposition groups that the US Government would back their protests. Clinton’s comments, the seasoned Russian intelligence pro stated, became a “signal for our activists who began active work with the US Department of State.” [2]

Major western media chose either to downplay the Putin statement or to focus almost entirely on the claims of an emerging Russian opposition movement. A little research shows that, if anything, Putin was downplaying the degree of brazen US Government interference into the political processes of his country. In this case the country is not Tunisia or Yemen or even Egypt. It is the world’s second nuclear superpower, even if it might still be an economic lesser power. Hillary is playing with thermonuclear fire.

Democracy or something else?

No mistake, Putin is not a world champion practitioner of what most consider democracy. His announcement some months back that he and current President Medvedev had agreed to switch jobs after Russia’s March 4 Presidential vote struck even many Russians as crass power politics and backroom deal-making. That being said, what Washington is doing to interfere with that regime change is more than brazen and interventionist. The same Obama Administration which just signed into law measures effectively ripping to shreds the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution for American citizens[3] is posing as world supreme judge of others’ adherence to what they define as democracy.

 Let’s examine closely Putin’s charge of US interference in the election process. If we look, we find openly stated in their August 2011 Annual Report that a Washington-based NGO with the innocuous name, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is all over the place inside Russia.

The NED is financing an International Press Center in Moscow where some 80 international NGOs can hold press briefings on whatever they choose. They fund numerous “youth advocacy” and leadership workshops to “help youth engage in political activism.” In fact, officially they spent more than $2,783,000 in 2010 on dozens of such programs across Russia. Spending for 2011 won’t be published until later in 2012. [4]

The NED is also financing key parts of the Russian “independent” polling and election monitoring, a crucial part of being able to claim election fraud. They finance in part the Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties “GOLOS.” According to the NED Annual Report the funds went “to carry out a detailed analysis of the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 election cycles in Russia, which will include press monitoring, monitoring of political agitation, activity of electoral commissions, and other aspects of the application of electoral legislation in the long-term run-up to the elections.”[5]

In September, 2011, a few weeks before the December elections the NED financed a Washington invitation-only conference featuring the Russian “independent” polling organization, the Levada Center. According to NED’s own website Levada, another recipient of NED money, [6] had done a series of opinion polls, a standard method used in the West to analyze the feelings of citizens. The polls profiled “the mood of the electorate in the run up to the Duma and presidential elections, perceptions of candidates and parties, and voter confidence in the system of ‘managed democracy’ that has been established over the last decade.”

 One of the featured speakers at that Washington conference was Vladimir Kara-Murza, member of the federal council of Solidarnost (“Solidarity”), Russia’s democratic opposition movement. He is also “advisor to Duma opposition leader Boris Nemtsov” according to NED. Another speaker came from the right-wing neo-conservative Hudson Institute. [7]

Nemtsov, one of the most prominent of the Putin opposition today is also co-chairman of Solidarnost, a name curiously enough imitated from the Cold War days when the CIA financed the Polish Solidarnosc workers’ opposition of Lech Walesa. More on Nemtsov later.

And on December 15, 2011, again in Washington, just as the series of US-supported protests were being launched against Putin, led by Solidarnost and other organizations, the NED held another conference titled, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation Make a Difference? The featured speaker was Tamirlan Kurbanov, who according to the NED, “most recently served as a program officer at the Moscow office of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, where he was involved in developing and expanding the capacities of political and civic organizations; promoting citizen participation in public life, youth engagement in particular.” [8] The National Democratic Institute is an arm of the NED.

The shady history of NED

Helping youth engage in political activism is precisely what the same NED did in Egypt over the past several years in the lead up to the toppling of Mubarak. The same NED was instrumental by informed accounts in the US-backed “Color Revolutions” in 2003-2004 in Ukraine and Georgia that brought US-backed pro-NATO surrogates to power. The same NED has been active in promoting “human rights” in Myanmar, in Tibet, and China’s oil-rich Xinjiang province. [9] 

As careful analysts of the 2004 Ukraine “Orange revolution” and the numerous other US-financed color revolutions discovered, control of polling and ability to dominate international media perceptions, especially major TV such as CNN or BBC is an essential component of the Washington destabilization agenda. The Levada Center would likely be in a crucial position in this regard to issue polls showing discontent with the regime.

By their description, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a “private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, with funding from the US Congress, NED supports more than 1,000 projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.”[10]

It couldn’t sound more noble or high-minded. However, they prefer to leave out their own true history. In the early 1980’s CIA director Bill Casey convinced President Ronald Reagan to create a plausibly private NGO, the NED, to advance Washington’s global agenda via other means than direct CIA action. It was a part of the process of “privatizing” US intelligence to make their work more “effective.” Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, said in a Washington Post interview in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”[11] Interesting. The majority of funds for NED come from US taxpayers through Congress. It is in every way, shape and form a US Government intelligence community asset.

The NED was created during the Reagan Administration to function as a de facto CIA, privatized so as to allow it more freedom of action. NED board members are typically drawn from the Pentagon and US intelligence community. It has included retired NATO General Wesley Clark, the man who led the US bombing of Serbia in 1999. Key figures linked to clandestine CIA actions who served on NED’s board have included Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros and Elliot Abrams. The Chairman of the NED Board of Directors in 2008 was Vin Weber, founder of the ultraconservative organization, Empower America, and campaign fundraiser for George W. Bush. Current NED chairman is John Bohn, former CEO of the controversial Moody’s rating agency which played a nefarious role in the still-unraveling US mortgage securities collapse. As well today’s NED board includes neo-conservative Bush-era ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan, Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad.[12]

Putin’s well-rehearsed opposition

It’s also instructive to look at the leading opposition figures who seem to have stepped forward in Russia in recent days. The current opposition “poster boy” favorite of Russian youth and especially western media is Russian blogger Alexei Navalny whose blog is titled LiveJournal. Navalny has featured prominently as a quasi-martyr of the protest movement after spending 15 days in Putin’s jail for partaking in a banned protest. At a large protest rally on Christmas Day December 25 in Moscow, Navalny, perhaps intoxicated by seeing too many romantic Sergei Eisenstein films of the 1917 Russian Revolution, told the crowd, “I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and the White House (Russia’s Presidential home-w.e.) right now…”[13]

Western establishment media is infatuated with Navalny. England’s BBC  described Navalny as “arguably the only major opposition figure to emerge in Russia in the past five years,” and US Time magazine called him “Russia’s Erin Brockovich,” a curious reference to the Hollywood film starring Julie Roberts as a trade union organizer. However, more relevant is the fact that Navalny went to the elite American East Coast Yale University, also home to the Bush family, where he was a “Yale World Fellow.” [14] 

The charismatic Navalny however is also or has been on the payroll of Washington’s regime-destabilizing National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to a posting on Navalny’s own blog, LiveJournal, he was financed in 2007-2008 by the NED. His Washington NED contact person was Frank Conatser.[15] A facsimile of an email exchange between Navalny and Conatser fronm November 17, 2007 is partially reproduced here.

Along with Navalny, key actors in the anti-Putin protest movement are centered around Solidarnost which was created in December 2008 by Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and others. Nemtsov is hardly one to protest corruption. According to Business Week Russia of September 23, 2007, Nemtsov introduced Russian banker Boris Brevnov to Gretchen Wilson, a US citizen and an employee of the International Finance Corporation, a financing arm of the World Bank. Wilson and Brevnov married. With the help of Nemtsov Wilson managed to privatize Balakhna Pulp and Paper mill at the giveaway price of just $7 million. The enterprise was sucked dry and then sold to the Wall Street-Swiss investment bank, CS First Boston bank. The annual turnover of the mill was reportedly $250 million. [17]

CS First Boston bank also paid for Nemtsov’s trips to the very expensive Davos World Economic Forum. When Nemtsov became a member of the cabinet, his protégé Brevnov was appointed the chairman of the Unified Energy System of Russia JSC. Two years later in 2009 Boris Nemtsov, today’s “Mr. anti-corruption,” used his influence reportedly to get Brevnov off the hook for charges of embezzling billions from assets of Unified Energy System. [18]

Nemtsov also took money from jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 1999 when the latter was using his billions to try to buy the Russian parliament or Duma. In 2004 Nemtsov met with exiled billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky in a secret gathering with other exiled Russian tycoons. When Nemtsov was detailed by Russian authorities for allegations of foreign funding of his new political party, “For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption,”  US Senators John McCain and Joe Liberman and Mike Hammer of the Obama National Security Council came to support of Nemtsov. [19]

Nemtsov’s close crony, Vladimir Ryzhkov of Solidarnost is also closely tied to the Swiss Davos circles, even founding a Siberian Davos. According to Russian press accounts from April 2005, Ryzhkov formed a Committee 2008 in 2003 to “draw” funds of the imprisoned Khodorkovsky along with soliciting funds from fugitive oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky and western foundations such as the Soros Foundation. The stated aim of the effort was to rally “democratic” forces against Putin. On May 23, 2011 Ryzhkov, Nemtzov and several others filed to register a new Party of Peoples’ Freedom to ostensibly field a presidential candidate against Putin in 2012.[20] 

Another prominent face in the recent anti-Putin rallies is former world chess champion turned right-wing politician, Garry Kasparov, another founder of Solidarnost. Kasparov was identified several years ago as being a board member of a Washington neo-conservative military think-tank. In April 2007, Kasparov admitted he was a board member of the National Security Advisory Council of Center for Security Policy, a “non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security.” Inside Russia Kasparov is more infamous for his earlier financial ties to Leonid Nevzlin, former Yukos vice-president and partner of Michael Khodorokvsky. Nevzlin fled to Israel on being charged in Russia on charges of murder and hiring contract killers to eliminate “objectionable people” while Yukos vice-president. ^[21]

In 2009 Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov met with no less than Barack Obama to discuss Russia’s opposition to Putin at the US President’s personal invitation at Washington’s Ritz Carlton Hotel. Nemtsov had called for Obama to meet with opposition forces in Russia: “If the White House agrees to Putin’s suggestion to speak only with pro-Putin organizations… this will mean that Putin has won, but not only that: Putin will become be assured that Obama is weak,” he said. During the same 2009 US trip Nemtsov was invited to speak at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, perhaps the most influential US foreign policy think-tank. Significantly, not only has the US State Department and US-backed political NGOs such as NED poured millions into building an anti-Putin coalition inside Russia. The President personally has intervened into the process.[22]

Ryzhkov, Nemtzov, Navalty and Putin’s former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were all involved in organizing the December 25^th Moscow Christmas anti-Putin rally which drew an estimated 120,000.[23]

Why Putin?

The salient question is why Putin at this point? We need not look far for the answer. Washington and especially Barack Obama’s Administration don’t give a hoot about whether Russia is democratic or not. Their concern is the obstacle to Washington’s plans for Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet that a Putin Presidency will represent. According to the Russian Constitution, the President of the Russian Federation head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office in the Russian Federation. He will take direct control of defense and foreign policy.

We must ask what policy? Clearly strong countermeasures against the blatant NATO encirclement of Russia with Washington’s dangerous ballistic missile installations around Russia will be high on Putin’s agenda. Hillary Clinton’s “reset” will be in the dustbin if it is not already. We can also expect a more aggressive use of Russia’s energy card with pipeline diplomacy to deepen economic ties between European NATO members such as Germany, France and Italy, ultimately weakening the EU support for aggressive NATO measures against Russia. We can expect a deepening of Russia’s turn towards Eurasia, especially with China, Iran and perhaps India to firm up the shaky spine of resistance to Washington’s New World Order plans.

It will take more than a few demonstrations in sub-freezing weather in Moscow and St. Petersburg by a gaggle of corrupt or shady opposition figures such as Nemtsov or  Kasparov to derail Russia. What is clear is that Washington is pushing on all fronts—Iran and Syria, where Russia has a vital naval port, on China, now on Russia, and on the Eurozone countries led by Germany. It has the smell of an end-game attempt by a declining superpower.

The United States today is a de facto bankrupt nuclear superpower.  The reserve currency role of the dollar is being challenged as never since Bretton Woods in 1944. That role along with maintaining the United States as the world’s unchallenged military power have been the basis of the American Century hegemony since 1945.

Weakening the role of the dollar in international trade and ultimately as reserve currency, China is now settling trade with Japan in bilateral currencies, side-stepping the dollar. Russia is implementing similar steps with her major trade partners. The primary reason Washington launched a full-scale currency war against the Euro in late 2009 was to preempt a growing threat that China and others would turn away from the dollar to the Euro as reserve currency. That is no small matter. In effect Washington finances its foreign wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere through the fact that China and other trade surplus nations invest their surplus trade dollars in US government Treasury debt. Were that to shift significantly, US interest rates would rise substantially and the financial pressures on Washington would become immense.

Faced with growing erosion of her unchallenged global status as sole superpower, Washington appears now to be turning increasingly to raw military force to hold that. For that to succeed Russia must be neutralized along with China and Iran. This will be the prime agenda of whoever is next US President.  

Endnotes:

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Launched in 1995, Antiwar.com describes itself as a site “devoted to the cause of non-interventionism” whose “initial project was to fight against intervention in the Balkans under the Clinton presidency.” Explaining their “key role” in the battle for public opinion during that seminal “humanitarian intervention,” the editors write:

Our goal was not only to inform but also to mobilize informed citizens in concerted action to stop the war. The war at home was an information war: an attempt by the government to both limit and shape the information that Americans had. It was, above all, a propaganda war, one in which the American government and its allies in the media were bombing and strafing their own people with hi-tech lies.

Back in the early days of the internet, Antiwar.com did indeed do a very good job of countering the interventionist narrative. Writers such as John Laughland, Chad Nagle, Justin Raimondo, Christine Stone, and George Szamuely showed readers what was really going on in the Balkans and elsewhere, helping many to understand the imperative of non-interventionism. Today, only Raimondo still writes for Antiwar.com. 

By 2011, the information war had shifted from the former Yugoslavia to the Middle East and North Africa, as country after country was being destabilized by a wave of supposedly “spontaneous” uprisings against the region’s dictators — not unlike the one that toppled Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 — dubbed an “Arab Spring” by some dubious cheerleaders (the term was originally used by Israel partisans such as Charles Krauthammer to refer to an “initial flourishing of democracy” in 2005) and an “Arab Awakening” by others. But while the people were still being bombed and strafed by the interventionists’ lies, Antiwar.com appeared to be either missing in action or even to have gone over to the other side.

As the media focus quickly shifted from a “liberated” but devastated Libya to a besieged Syria, there was disturbingly little to distinguish between mainstream reports and those in Antiwar.com. Apparently having forgotten the interventionists’ need to “limit and shape the information” getting to the public, Antiwar.com managed to limit and shape it even further by providing a largely uncritical daily synopsis of mainstream reporting of suspect opposition claims, without even the mainstream’s caveat that “the opposition claims could not be independently verified.”

Its reliance on the interventionists’ “allies in the media” for its “news” on Syria can be gauged from examining its research editor’s choice of sources. In a survey of 10 news reports on Syria between December 14 and December 27, Jason Ditz linked to a total of 24 outside sources, 16 of which were from mainstream media such as the BBC, New York Times and Haaretz; two were from Voice of America, the official external broadcast institution of the US government and a key instrument of its regime change agenda; two from Monsters and Critics, a web-only entertainment/celebrity news and review publication with political commentary and news; and one was from Human Rights Watch, to which billionaire hedge fund manager and prominent “pro-democracy” advocate George Soros (astutely described in an excellent February 2001 Antiwar column as a “False Prophet-At-Large”) pledged $100 million last year, enabling it “to deepen its research presence on countries of concern.” The remaining three were taken from SANA, the Syrian Arab News Agency, whose claims were briefly mentioned only to be dismissed with a cynicism clearly absent in the credulous treatment of opposition sources.

The almost exclusive reliance on mainstream sources was clearly reflected in the content of the news reports. By far the most popular phrase appears to have been “At least … killed,” which appeared in at least 36 separate headlines on Syria in 2011, such as “Good Friday Massacre: At Least 88 Protesters Killed in Syria Crackdown” (April 22), “At Least 60 Killed as Protests Grow in Syria” (June 3), “Hama Massacre: At Least 140 Killed in Syrian Tank Offensive” (July 31), “Syrian Navy Attacks Latakia, At Least 31 Killed” (August 14), “At Least 16 Killed as Syrian Troops Launch New Crackdowns” (August 25), “At Least 17 Killed in Syria Protest Crackdown” (September 2), “At Least 40 Killed as Syria Protesters Call for ‘No-Fly Zone’” (October 28), “At Least 65 Killed in Two Days Since Syria Announced Arab League Deal” (November 3), “At Least 57 Killed in Two Days as Syrian Opposition Express Fear of New Massacre” (December 10) and “At Least 30 Killed as Syrian Forces Shell Homs” (December 26). A September 4 report typically entitled “At Least 24 Killed as Syria Crackdown Continues” encapsulates Jason Ditz’s tendentious analysis of the situation:

The violence marks continued public protests against the Assad regime and months of security forces attacking the demonstrators under the assumption that the attacks will eventually end the nationwide rallies.

Massive Negative Reader Feedback

Throughout the crisis in Syria, dismayed readers have pointed out Antiwar’s complicity in the propaganda war, despite the clear parallels with previous interventions, particularly the most recent one in Libya. In response to that September 4 report entitled “At Least 24 Killed As Syria Crackdown Continues,” someone called “keltrava” commented:

Let me get this wrapped around my head.

The article says as a matter of fact 24 “more” people killed. Yet when it comes to Syrian troops killed it is qualified as “reported by state media”. Why is it written in stone that 24 people [were] killed[?] What are the sources? This is typical of the reporting from Syria and Libya.

Even one of Antiwar’s top columnists was prompted to point out the obvious flaws in Jason Ditz’s reporting. Commenting on the July 31 “Hama Massacre” report, Phil Giraldi wrote:

Any story that is unsourced or is sourced to the rebels or to any of their supporters, as this story is, should be considered suspect. I don’t know what is happening in Syria but nor does any antiwar editor or any source that has a stake in what is going on and is probably writing his account from a hotel in Beirut. The US has clearly sided with the rebels and is doing everything in its power to advance their cause, including easing the passage of their propaganda into international media.

In stark contrast to the readers’ concerns about another Libya-style intervention, Ditz displayed what might most charitably be described as wishful thinking. In an October 25 report predictably entitled “At Least 24 Killed as Syrian Protestors Mass Nationwide,” he averred:

Enthusiasm has tended to grow in protest cities when other regimes fall, and while the situation in Syria isn’t the same as the one in Libya, the causes are largely the same. The protesters are hoping the end result will be too, though ideally without the multi-month civil war and the post-dictator mess Libya is facing.

Despite what another reader accurately described as “massive negative reader feedback,” Jason Ditz appears neither to have responded directly to the criticism nor to have let it in any way moderate his subsequent reports. Antiwar’s response to its readers’ (including at least two of its own writers’) concerns appears to have been mainly in the form of a moderator’s snide remarks attached to some of the more persistent critics’ comments. On December 29, an exasperated Gordon Arnaut exclaimed:

Even as readers have been pointing out the gaping holes in your so-called coverage…you have done NOTHING to address these problems…

You are a WASTE OF TIME…for anyone who is truly interested in truth about current events…

His criticism elicited this response from Thomas L. Knapp:

[Moderator's Note: Mr. Arnaut, if you consider Antiwar.com a waste of time, why do you waste so much time here? Pull down your hem, dear, your agenda is showing - TLK]

Arnaut replied:

Mr. Knapp:

Yes I have an agenda…it’s called THE TRUTH…

Yes I waste time here because I can’t stand FAKE NEWS…

On other occasions, Knapp did attempt to make a slightly more reasonable defence of Antiwar’s coverage. For example, in response to this writer’s question as to how its uncritical reporting of claims coming from Western-based and -backed opposition sources has differed from the pro-war propaganda in the mainstream media, Knapp replied:

If I could snap my fingers and cause Antiwar.com to be able to afford to send its own correspondent to Syria and environs to get the real scoop, I’d snap them immediately. Since I can’t, I try to be understanding of the fact that Mr. Ditz et. al have to rely on outside sources and try to squeeze the truth from the information they can get, a process that’s obviously vulnerable to error.

But as David Daniels had commented on a rather belated “Obama Secretly Preparing for Syria Intervention” on December 28:

And instead of leading the fight with facts and hard research against the lies that stimulate the R2P instinct, this website has once again fallen for all of the lies that led NATO into Libya and the various overt and covert interventions (like the lie of the “Green Movement”).

This is important and all readers should take note: Antiwar.com has repeatedly pushed the lies that lead NATO to attack. Draw your own conclusions. The “moderators” here will say that they just don’t have enough information and any mistakes are not theirs. Do you believe that, readers? Are you that gullible, or did you first come here as I did to see behind the bull**** of the mainstream propaganda machine?

If Antiwar.com had tried a little harder “to squeeze the truth from the information they can get” (or even paid better attention to the information that all too infrequently appeared on its own site) they would find that the reality in Syria (see a more recent and comprehensive analysis here) was quite different from what their research editor would have its readers believe. Moreover, it wasn’t as difficult as some seem to have have found it to see who was pushing hardest (as they had done in Libya and in previous interventions) to get America to take the “humanitarian” road to Damascus.

Ideological Blinders

 While most readers were perplexed by Jason Ditz’s blatant bias in favour of the Syrian opposition, a look at some of his earlier writings provides an explanation. In a March 3, 2008 post on the Antiwar Blog entitled “In Defense of Non-Violence,” Ditz opined:

Rather, we know precisely what strategy the Israeli military employs in response to non-violence, because it is the only strategy available to it. Indeed it is the only strategy militaries ever employ in response to non-violence, and we saw it clearly this weekend.

Escalation.

Seeing the path of non-violence to its necessary conclusion is not easy for precisely this reason: that every act of non-violence [sic] defiance is met with an act of increasingly disproportionate violence in the hopes of realizing a violent response and vindicating the claim that the posture of non-violence is an insincere one.

[…]

The people of the Gaza Strip must hold firm in their resolve for non-violence. They must make it clear to the Israeli military that they will not be swayed, nor will they respond violently. They must leave the Israeli government with only two choices: acquiescence or committing genocide. And despite what Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister or anyone else may say, they must remain confident that Israel cannot choose the latter.

This weekend may have been a setback for non-violence, but it is nothing resembling failure. Non-violence remains not just an option for the Palestinians in the face of occupation, but at the end of the day, the only one.

In March 2005, Ditz was the first to respond to a message on an Anti-State.com discussion forum entitled “Ideas for How Somalis can defend themselves” in which someone called “chemical_ali” notified participants of the Albert Einstein Institute’s release of Robert Helvey’s On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict as a free PDF. Describing “chemical_ali” – a rather odd choice of pseudonym for an advocate of nonviolence – as “probably my favorite new poster in the past year,” Ditz didn’t raise any questions (nor did anyone else in the discussion) about why Gene Sharp’s nice-sounding “nonviolent resistance thinktank” might be offering a book on strategic nonviolent conflict for free by the former military attaché at the US Embassy in Rangoon.

As luck would have it, Antiwar.com soon provided an answer. In his column on April 16, editorial director Justin Raimondo noted the collaboration between a key sponsor of nonviolent revolution (who later told the Wall Street Journal that he had given a sum in the “low eight figures” to the Albert Einstein Institute) with one of the more notorious proponents of violent regime change:

“Say You Want a Revolution,” is the title of a piece by neoconservative Michael “Faster Please” Ledeen, a tireless advocate of the U.S. waging endless wars of “liberation,” and Peter Ackerman, chairman of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). Its theme: more U.S. tax dollars to fund “revolutionaries” in a new model of “regime change” – as in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. According to these two, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria are next. Now, before you say anything, it’s just a coincidence that all these countries are in the Middle East and just happen to be Israel’s worst enemies – stop being such a killjoy! Besides, the “revolutionaries” are ready to roll, but they can’t do it without U.S. tax dollars and other assistance.

Observing that Ackerman’s ICNC had been “at the center of machinations that have felled regimes from Belgrade to Bishkek and back,” Raimondo traced the business ties of its founding vice-chairman, Berel Rodal, to then Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, whose short-lived controversial venture capital company, Trireme Partners LLP, invested in technology, goods, and services related to Homeland Security. Pointing out that “[t]he little stormtroopers of the ‘democratic’ revolutions are in most cases unwitting foot-soldiers of War Profits, Inc.,” Raimondo concluded that the seemingly idealistic advocates of nonviolent resistance and the most extreme warmongering ideologues were little more than two sides of the same deceptive coin:

Chameleon-like, they readily assume “left” and “right“-wing forms, appropriating the language of whatever audience they’re trying to manipulate: they speak the harsh language of nationalism and super-patriotism as well as the more polite PC lingo of “humanitarian intervention” and “human rights” internationalism. Ledeen invokes Mussolini’s ghost, while the ICNC channels Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

Interestingly, it was reported in an April 2005 profile of Ackerman in The New Republic, aptly entitled “Regime Change, Inc.,” that he had sent a trainer to Palestine “to spend twelve days creating a nonviolent vanguard to challenge Hamas” – three years before Antiwar’s Jason Ditz opined that nonviolence was the Palestinians’ only option.

Platform for Regime Change, Inc.

Yet despite Raimondo’s exposure of the nonviolent revolutionaries, the chameleon-like channelers of King and Gandhi continued to be given a platform at Antiwar.com. On February 28, 2011, its Viewpoints section featured a link to an interview with Gene Sharp entitled “Teaching People Power,” just as, in the words of Reason Magazine’s Jesse Walker, “the revolutionary fire lit in Tunisia in December was burning across the Middle East and Africa.” On December 5, as that Regime Change, Inc.-kindled fire was being directed against Damascus, Antiwar’s Viewpoints featured Gene Sharp’s “Choices for Defecting Syrian Soldiers,” in which “The 83 Year Old Who Toppled Egypt” offered strategic advice to the few who had already defected, suggesting that they “help the regime’s other soldiers also to defect from the Assad regime.”

While Regime Change, Inc.’s aging intellectual guru appears to have at least one or two fans at Antiwar.com, its “publicist within the progressive community,” Stephen Zunes, is even more popular there. During the so-called “Green Revolution” in Iran, they reprinted his “Iran’s Do-It-Yourself Revolution,” in which the well-paid chair of the academic advisory committee of Peter Ackerman’s International Center on Nonviolent Conflict attempted to deny the democracy-meddling establishment’s self-confessed role in that and other “colour revolutions.”

On one of the rare occasions that Regime Change, Inc.’s role in the so-called “Arab Spring” was actually acknowledged at Antiwar.com, Zunes appeared semi-anonymously in the comments section to pooh-pooh the very idea. In a June 24 column entitled “Invasion of the Mind Snatchers,” Nebosja Malic reviewed “The Revolution Business,” a documentary that shows veterans of Otpor, the Sharp/Helvey/Ackerman-linked Serbian youth group that toppled Milosevic, training the activists who directed the not-so-spontaneous-after-all “Arab Spring.” Touting one of the Serbian trainer’s “anti-imperial” credentials, “StephenZ” commented:

And does Malic really think that a handful of Serbs can get millions of peoples out on the streets? Does he really think that Arabs are simply sheep that a few white Europeans lead to a popular insurrection against entrenched US-backed dictatorships? Get real!

StephenZ did not respond to my comment inquiring whether this was part of his responsibilities as chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

More recently, “the great Stephen Zunes” was interviewed by Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio in which he argued that the Arab Spring was “the culmination of decades of peaceful rebellion against tyrannical governments.” Despite his collaboration with Otpor alumni in training activists in Egypt and elsewhere in nonviolent conflict (an important fact that was deftly obscured during the interview, unless we count Zunes’ oblique reference to having “met” Syrian activists), the ICNC’s academic advisor claimed that the US had “very little” to do with these “really exciting” developments.

But as Professor William I. Robinson, the author of the seminal critique of the “democracy promotion” establishment, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony, has written of the man who funds Zunes’ work:

That Ackerman is a part of the U.S. foreign policy elite and integral to the new modalities of intervention under the rubric of “democracy promotion,” etc., is beyond question. There is nothing controversial about that and anyone who believes otherwise is clearly seriously misinformed or just ignorant.

When it comes to Antiwar.com, however, one certainly cannot rule out the possibility of ignorance. Asked by Russia Today’s Adam Kokesh in early August “to help put what’s going on in Syria into the broader context of modern history in the Arab world,” Antiwar Radio producer Angela Keaton offered this astounding explanation of the mainstream media’s supposed “reluctance” to report the Syrian government’s alleged atrocities:

I mean, you know, [inaudible], Assad’s a US puppet. 

Change We Can Believe In?

While there had been a few exceptions to Antiwar’s biased coverage of Syria throughout 2011, most notably from Justin Raimondo, Philip Giraldi, Eric Margolis, and Pepe Escobar, the prevailing impression one got from reading it was a simplistic narrative of peaceful protestors being killed by a tyrannical regime. However, in his January 2, 2012 column, Justin Raimondo wrote:

The last bastion of Ba’athist secular rule in the region has been rocked by anti-government riots, with groups of well-armed men taking on the Syrian military and hundreds killed and wounded in violent street demonstrations. What’s interesting is that we hear much about the latter in the Western media, while the former is downplayed or not reported at all.

As the intensity of the anti-Syrian propaganda war picks up in the “mainstream” media – which focuses on alleged atrocities committed by government forces while maintaining a soft focus on the violence of armed rebel groups – the news that the Obama administration is making plans to intervene comes as no surprise. Indeed, the Americans are already intervening behind the scenes: the question is, will they come out in the open and call for “regime change”?

Considering that Jason Ditz’s reporting on Syria has been marked by the exact same bias, Raimondo’s criticism of the mainstream media seems disingenuous to say the least. Ironically, Raimondo’s link to “alleged atrocities” takes the reader to VOA News, one of his colleague’s most trusted sources, regularly cited as evidence of Assad’s alleged violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators.

In a recent op-ed piece not published on Antiwar.com, Professor James Petras warns against the “anti-imperialism of the fools”:

The long history of imperialist manipulation of “anti-imperialist” narratives has found virulent expression in the present day. The New Cold War launched by Obama against China and Russia, the hot war brewing in the Gulf over Iran’s alleged military threat, the interventionist threat against Venezuela’s “drug-networks”, and Syria’s “bloodbath” are part and parcel of the use and abuse of “anti-imperialism” to prop up a declining empire. Hopefully, the progressive and leftist writers and scribes will learn from the ideological pitfalls of the past and resist the temptation to access the mass media by providing a ‘progressive cover’ to imperial dubbed “rebels”. It is time to distinguish between genuine anti-imperialism and pro-democracy movements and those promoted by Washington, NATO and the mass media. (emphasis added)

If Antiwar.com wants its claim to be “the central locus of opposition to a new imperialism that masks its ambitions in the rhetoric of ‘human rights,’ ‘humanitarianism,’ ‘freedom from terror,’ and ‘global democracy’ to be taken seriously, they will need to heed that warning.

However, if it is to regain the trust of its readers, Antiwar.com will also need to address the serious concerns raised in this report. An important first step would be to undertake an internal review of its reporting of last year’s tumultuous events in the Middle East and North Africa. For it to be worthwhile, it should provide its many disillusioned readers with satisfactory answers to the following questions:

1. Are all members of staff qualified to comment on foreign policy? Have some staff members allowed their ideological biases to adversely affect their analysis of complex foreign policy issues?

2. Why has well-documented information provided by readers that challenge its interpretation of events either been ignored or treated with contempt? Why do critical comments by certain readers either get deleted or have to be approved by the site admins before they appear publicly, while comments by others are banned altogether?

3. Why does it provide a platform for those who are “integral to the new modalities of intervention” while ignoring the work of others who could have provided a genuinely non-interventionist perspective on last year’s events? Among those overlooked by Antiwar.com in 2011 were Prof. Mark Almond, Ibrahim al-Amin, Michael Barker, Jeffrey Blankfort, Dr. K R Bolton, Alistair Crooke, Sibel Edmonds (banned from even posting comments on the site), Belén Fernández, Jeff Gates, Prof. David N. Gibbs, Diana Johnstone, Dr. Franklin Lamb, Prof. Joshua Landis (apart from a couple of references in articles by others), John Laughland, Dr. Rania Masri, Cynthia McKinney, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Maidhc Ó Cathail (despite the submission of articles publishedin mainstream media), Gearóid Ó Colmáin, Dr. Adrienne Pine, Prof. William I. Robinson, Prof. Jeremy Salt, Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski, Julien Teil, and Amjad Yamein.

4. How can readers be assured that one or more of its “generous” but anonymous “angels” do not have an interest in interventionism?

Maidhc Ó Cathail is an anti-war journalist and Middle East analyst.

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This is Part 7 of our interview series on the New World Order. You can listen to the previous interviews in this series here.

Dr. James Petras joins us to discuss the changing contemporary context of imperial domination, the demise of longstanding client regimes, and the previous significant ties between western imperial powers and Islamist movements and regimes, and how, faced with the ouster of Mubarak, in Egypt, Ali in Tunisia and Saleh in Yemen, mass protests in Morocco and Algeria, the US-EU have now turned to conservative Muslim leaders who are willing to work within the existing state institutional framework, uphold the capitalist order and align with the empire against anti-imperial movements and states. He shares with us his evaluation of the ‘Moderately Islamic’ Government of Turkey as an example of Israel-approved US-EU alignment against democratic and anti-imperial movements. Dr. Petras talks about the western-led operations and regime change in Libya, Syria as a collateral damage and more!

Professor James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has a long history of commitment to social justice, working in particular with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement for 11 years. He writes a monthly column for the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, and previously, for the Spanish daily, El Mundo. Dr. Petras received his B.A. from Boston University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. You can visit his website here.

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Here is our guest Dr. James Petras unplugged! (Subscribers only)

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When you and I write checks, we tend to pay up if the check goes through despite an insufficient balance.  In 2008, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation released a study of overdraft fees charged to bank consumers.  This study found that overdraft fees averaged close to $27, which amounted to a huge effective interest rate on the credit extended when compared to the amount overdrawn (one estimate drawn from this study called it over 3000%).   And a more recent study, released in early 2011 from the Pew Charitable Trusts, found that the average overdraft fee came to $35, with total overdraft fee revenue for banks of $39 billion, up from $20 billion in 2000.

You and I use banks when we pay each other money.  Banks pay each other money, too.  They use private and public ‘wholesale’ or interbank payment systems.  This is a dry but fascinating area of research, given the public policy and risk management issues and the large dollar amounts involved. 

Many people immediately associate the Fed with monetary policy, and a smaller subset of the population understands that the central bank also performs a ‘lender of last result function’ along with supervisory and regulatory roles.  But the Fed’s payment system responsibilities are another leg of the stool, and an important one.  For example, the Federal Reserve’s “Fedwire” wire transfer system moves over one trillion dollars every day among banks with access to it.

The Federal Reserve frequently refers to Fedwire as an efficient payment system.  It is certainly popular, and ‘efficient’ from the point of view of the users, but whether it is efficient when it comes to the general welfare is another matter.  In turn, the Federal Reserve’s pricing of this service raises some questions about the meaning of the rule of law.

Back in 1980, amidst accelerating inflation and tumult in the financial services industry, Congress passed the Monetary Control Act.  This comprehensive legislation included provisions requiring the Federal Reserve to price the payment services it provides to fully recover their costs.  And since then, the Fed has annually produced accounting statements listing the revenue and costs of these services, which assert that the services fully recover their costs as required by the law.  Fed leaders have frequently testified to their compliance with the law in citing these estimates, and asserted that Fedwire is not a source of subsidy to banks.

But in the late 1990s, leading up the Gramm-Leach-Bliley banking legislation, while the Fed was trying to make a case for itself as the lead supervisor for new financial services holding companies, Fed leaders were regularly referring to their concern for the subsidy banks enjoy from public services, and also cited Fedwire access as part of this subsidy, in part because of the way the service can shift risk to the public.  

How can a subsidy fully recover its cost?

Well, when looking at Fedwire historically, it sure looks like a source of subsidy.   When the Fed processes payments over Fedwire, it guarantees the funds to the recipient – even if the sending bank has insufficient funds on its account.  This ‘finality’ feature is uniquely provided by the monetary authority.   But it also exposes the Fed to the risk from daylight overdrafts, which may become a loss if the bank incurring them can’t pay the Fed back at the end of the day. 

The Federal Reserve began charging fees for daylight overdrafts back in 1994, but this was about 14 years after the Monetary Control Act, and the fees charged came to a small fraction of market interest rates.  Since 1994, daylight overdraft fees have not been included in the cost recovery equation.

Fedwire access can become more valuable during a crisis, given that bank counterparties can lose confidence in one another but retain confidence in the Fed and its guarantee of payments over Fedwire.  This helps explain why Fedwire overdrafts were mushrooming in 2008, as the financial crisis intensified.   In fact, peak daylight overdraft volume on Fedwire was approaching $280 billion in late 2008 (see this), before the Fed flooded the banking system with reserves and reduced the need for banks to rely on overdrafts.

In its defense, the Fed might point to its ability to flood the system with reserves as a way for it to defend itself from the risk of daylight overdrafts.  But there are costs and risks associated with this defense, as well, and the Fed itself has frequently referred to its management and monitoring responsibilities arising from the risk of daylight overdrafts.

Looking back, we’ve hopefully learned some lessons from the financial crisis, including the consequences of extending public guarantees and insurance to large financial services firms without sufficient pricing or monitoring of the risk-taking underway on our shoulders.  This phenomenon, long recognized (and priced) in the insurance industry, is called ‘moral hazard.’

And if Fedwire pricing is one element of the moral hazard problem, despite law to the contrary, well, that seems to raise important questions about the rule of law.  Do they just make this stuff up as they go along, to suit their interests?  In theory, the law is a check on tyranny, but law can also become a tool of tyranny.

# # # #Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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Yesterday Justin Elliott at Salon reported on an international media-lobbying intrigue involving Bahrain, a Lockheed Martin executive and the Washington Times:

A top executive at Lockheed Martin recently worked with lobbyists for Bahrain to place an op-ed defending the nation’s embattled regime in the Washington Times — but the newspaper did not reveal the role of the regime’s lobbyists to its readers. Hence, they did not know that the pro-Bahrain opinion column they were reading was published at the behest of … Bahrain, an oil-rich kingdom of 1.2 million people that has been rocked by popular protests since early 2011.

The episode is a glimpse into the usually hidden world of how Washington’s op-ed pages, which are prized real estate for those with interests before the U.S. government, are shaped. It also shows how Lockheed gave an assist to a major client — Bahrain has bought hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons from the company over the years —as it faces widespread criticism for human rights abuses against pro-democracy protesters.

…

The story is worth reading. Just remember this is an itsy bitsy tiny little case; only one example of many more similar cases occurring regularly. Hello? Think about our Congress and over 400 lobby-able crooks in it. Think about our government providing perks and access to ‘select’ reporters for being good pet boys. Think about dime-a-dozen plentiful retired generals linking their MIC bosses to the mighty purchaser Pentagon…on a daily basis hundreds of prostitution transactions like the one with the Washington Times. Come to think of it, one major difference between the examples I’m providing and prostitution in the true sense of the term is that usually the American public is at the center of services and transactions provided. That is, the services and products offered are their hard-earned dollars, their liberties, their security, their gullibly misplaced trust…

Let’s take Salon’s exposé on the Washington Times. The paper and the reporter appear to be the prostitutes. Now, figuring out the pimp(s) and distinguishing it from the client is a bit more difficult. You see, at first glance it looks like Bahrain is the client, and the Lockheed Martin Executive is the pimp, right? But if you really look at it you’ll see Lockheed Martin as the ultimate beneficiary: too much publicity on our Bahraini puppet regime may bring a few sanctions, and those sanctions may include an arms embargo, and then Lockheed Martin may lose a few hundred million dollars (peanuts of course, but hey…). Let me show you one example of the stakes for LM:

SYRACUSE, NY, October 2nd, 2007 — Lockheed Martin [NYSE:LMT] has delivered an AN/TPS-59(V)3B ballistic missile defense radar system to the Kingdom of Bahrain. The radar proceeded smoothly through a site acceptance test in August and now is being used by the Bahrain Defence Force for air surveillance. In May 2004, the U.S. Marine Corps awarded Lockheed Martin a $43.6 million contract to provide the long-range radar system to Bahrain, along with associated supplies, equipment and services, as a foreign military sale (FMS).

So ordinarily, in more US Congress-like scenarios, we’d have the pimps aka the lobby firms; we’d have the client, let’s say a MIC firm or a pharma or a foreign country, and then, we’d have the prostitutes: our elected representatives…

In this particular case there seems to be an absence of a ‘pimp.’ Pretty cost effective, efficient, direct and smart: the client, Lockheed, goes to the prostitute directly and gets ‘his thing’ done, but the Arab Sheikh pays for ‘the thing.’ But wait a minute, the ultimate payment, the real dough, is going to ultimately be paid to Lockheed for all those ‘arms.’ So, in a way, we are looking at a sucker paying a client for going to and getting his ‘thing’ done with a media prostitute …

Okay it gets a bit confusing. We have these sucker puppet Arab regimes. We have MIC or Oil as ultimate clients, and then, we have the media as … what? It is the ‘John’ the client who is getting paid, so it is not exactly prostitution because that would be too noble for what these guys in the media are and do. It is more like a whore than a good ole fashioned prostitute. Then allow me to recap one more time:

In this latest US media exposé we’ve got a case of a ‘John’ and a ‘sucker’ and a ‘whore’; no?

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The official Israeli government explanation for the ‘disappearance’ of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from the land (roughly half the Arab population in Palestine in 1948) was that they left “voluntarily.” The “new history” of Israel emerged within the past couple decades due to declassified documents relating to the 1948 war and its origins, and with a number of Israeli historians recreating the history of Israel and challenging the official story. David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel’s first Prime Minister, was a leading Zionist at the time. He and other Zionists “accepted” the UN partition plan, wrote Jerome Slater, “only as a necessary tactical step that would later be reversed.” In a 1937 letter to his son, Ben-Gurion wrote:

A partial Jewish state is not the end, but only the beginning. The establishment of such a Jewish state will serve as a means in our historical efforts to redeem the country in its entirety… We shall organize a modern defense force… and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means… We will expel the Arabs and take their places… with the forces at our disposal. [1]

In the same year, Ben-Gurion also wrote that, “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.”[2] A year later, in 1938, Ben-Gurion told a Zionist meeting that, “I favor partition of the country because when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine.” Palestine, as defined by the Zionists, had included the West Bank, Golan Heights in Syria, Jerusalem, southern Lebanon, and a significant degree of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.[3]

For any settler colonies, as the Zionists were, there are roughly four conditions which have to met if they are to survive. Graham Usher, an Israeli journalist, wrote that:

They must obtain a measure of political, military, and economic independence from their metropolitan sponsors. They must achieve military hegemony over, or at least normal relations with, their neighboring states. They must acquire international legitimacy. And they must solve their “native problem.”[4]

The Jewish state, as defined by leading Zionists such as David Ben-Gurion, was not to simply be Jewish in its sociopolitical structure, explained Ilan Pappé, “but also in its ethnic composition.” Further, this would be made possible “only by force.” To accomplish this task, an efficient military organization was built over several years, with extensive financial resources. The main Jewish paramilitary organization in Palestine was founded in 1920 in order to protect the Jewish colonies, assisted by “sympathetic” British officers. Orde Wingate, a British officer, was central to convincing Zionist leaders of the need for such a military organization, associating the idea of a Jewish state with militarism and an army. Wingate was assigned to Palestine in 1936, and had established close connections between the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah and the British forces during the 1936-39 Arab Revolt.[5]

In 1940, Ben-Zion Luria, a historian at Hebrew University who was also employed by the Jewish Agency in Palestine suggested that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) should conduct a registry of all the Arab villages in Palestine, numbering some 1,200 in all, which had spread across the countryside for hundreds of years. Luria stated that, “This would greatly help the redemption of the land” into Jewish hands. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was founded in 1901 as one of the principal colonization organizations focused on buying Palestinian land to settle Jewish colonies. By the end of the Mandate in 1948, the Zionists had control over 5.8% of the land in Palestine.[6]

When news about the “village files” reached Yossef Weitz, the chief of the JNF settlement department (a major Zionist colonialist), he suggested that it be transformed into a “national project.” Other top Zionists became very enthusiastic about the project, of which the main emphasis was on mapping the villages. In several cases, these maps in the Israeli State Archives are all that remains of the entire villages. The British, aware of these projects, were unable to find the headquarters for the secret intelligence network that was established to construct the maps. By the later 1940s, the “village files” included much more than mere locations of villages, but rather had details about road access, the quality of the land, water resources, common sources of income for the local population, religious and sociopolitical affiliations, and even the age of individual men within the village. One important category, explained Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, was the index of “hostility,” referring to those individuals and communities which were ‘hostile’ to the Zionist project of colonization, which was largely determined according to examining the participation of certain villages and people in the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, which “included lists of everyone involved in the revolt and the families of those who had lost someone in the fight against the British. Particular attention was given to people alleged to have killed Jews.”[7]

The British, who had the Mandate over Palestine from 1923, when it was given to the British by the League of Nations, always saw Palestine as a highly strategic and vital imperial possession, largely due to its proximity to the Suez Canal, and thus, the route to Britain’s colonial “Jewel”, India. Palestine was considered a ‘buffer’ in the Middle East, in a land of potentially hostile peoples infused with the ideas of Arab nationalism. Just prior to World War II, the Arab population in Palestine revolted against the British rule in reaction to the dramatically increased rate of Jewish immigration and colonization of the land. The Arab Revolt (1936-39) presented the British with a civil war situation, which was suppressed by force of arms. Where the Arabs were a major problem for the British in the 1930s, the Zionists became a problem for the British in the 1940s, for they too turned to terrorist tactics to make British rule over Palestine impossible. Following World War II, the British Security Service (MI5), according to declassified documents from the agency, focused on the threat to Britain posed by Zionist terrorism, both within the Mandate and within Britain itself. The two main organizations identified by MI5 as terrorist groups were the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang, who had planned on taking the war against Britain to its home, hoping to send several terrorist “cells” to London to “beat the dog in his own kennel.” As the secret documents reveal, “MI5 was actually more concerned about the threat of Zionist terrorism than about the looming threat of the Soviet Union.”[8]

MI5’s wartime Director-General, Sir David Petrie, stated in 1946 in regards to the threat of Zionist terrorism that, “the red light is definitely showing.” From a network of informers within Zionist organizations, Britain uncovered plots to assassinate British politicians associated with Palestine policy, including the Prime Minister himself. The Stern Gang had, in 1944, assassinated the British Minister of State in the Middle East, Lord Moyne, and had also tried (on several occasions) to assassinate the British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael. On July 22, 1946, the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which was home to British government officials and personnel, and resulted in the deaths of 91 individuals, some of them Jews. Both MI5 and MI6 had offices in the Hotel at the time. As Britain responded with force against Zionist terrorist groups and other organizations, the extremist nature of the groups naturally increased. In October of 1946, the Irgun bombed the British Embassy in Rome, and conducted several sabotage operations against British military transportation routes in occupied Germany. In April of 1947, the British Colonial Office in London discovered an Irgun bomb consisting of 24 sticks of explosives, but the timer had broken, so the bomb did not detonate. In June of 1947, the Stern Gang launched a letter bomb campaign in Britain, “targeting every prominent member of the Cabinet,” totaling 21 in all, but none of them ultimately got through to their targets. Another letter bomb assault was undertaken by the Stern Gang in 1948.[9]

In June of 1946, the British Army in Palestine undertook a search for the Jewish Agency, Haganah, and Palmach to retrieve their arms and arrest specific members and leaders. The Zionist organizations, however, had infiltrated the British just as the British had infiltrated the Zionist organizations; thus, the Zionists had advanced warning of the raid and some top officials were able to avoid arrest. The chief of the Haganah, Moshe Sneh, which was the military branch of the Jewish Agency, was in liaison with the terrorist organizations Irgun and Lehi. David Ben-Gurion, the president of the Jewish Agency, was also wanted by the British for his complicity in terrorist attacks. All in all, during the raid, roughly 2,700 people were arrested, including a significant portion of the political leadership within the Palestinian Jewish community, and some arms caches were retrieved. The result, predictably, was to multiply the violence committed against the British in retribution for the raids and arrests. Thus, the British High Commissioner in Palestine, Sir Alan Cunningham, concluded that, “immediate partition is the only solution which gives a chance of stability.”[10]

This was largely the result of the Jewish Resistance Movement (JRM) which had emerged and developed between 1945 and 1946, consisting of the Haganah, Palmach, Irgun and Lehi, “directed and coordinated by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, despite the objections of some of its left-wing members.” The aims of the JRM were to “weaken or destroy British rule in Palestine.” The Haganah was founded as a territorial militia to defend Zionist settlements in Palestine, and in 1938, several Haganah units worked with the British to help crush the Arab Revolt. The British created the Palmach during World War II as an “elite offensive unit” in order “to assist [the British] in the event of a German invasion of Palestine.” In 1945, the Haganah engaged in a secret agreement with the terrorist groups Irgun and Lehi against the British Mandate government. The Irgun was formed in 1931 when several officers separated from the Haganah over socialist sympathies within the defense forces, and became a right-wing paramilitary army, standing in opposition to the original conception of socialist and labour Zionism. The Stern Gang (also known as Lehi) separated from the Irgun during World War II when the Irgun agreed to cooperate with the British. The Stern Gang was a radical far-right group which held many fascist sympathies, and even “pursued agreements with Mussolini and the Nazis in 1940,” though unsurprisingly, Hitler did not respond to the requests.[11]

It was within these various terrorist and paramilitary organizations that Plan D was formed among several Zionist leaders, most notably, David Ben-Gurion, to plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Throughout the 1940s, the planning stages of the village files went through many revisions, and encapsulated Plans A through D. In the planning stages during 1940, as one member of the data collection team, Moshe Pasternak, later recalled:

We had to study the structure of the Arab village. This means the structure and how best to attack it. In the military schools, I had been taught how to attack a modern European city, not a primitive village in the Near East. We could not compare it [an Arab village] to a Polish, or an Austrian one. The Arab village, unlike the European ones, was built topographically on hills. That meant we had to find out how best to approach the village from above or enter it from below. We had to train our “Arabists” [the Orientalists who operated a network of collaborators] how best to work with informants. [12]

A large network of informants had been established to gain intelligence on the Palestinian villages throughout the Mandate. The intelligence which was provided allowed for even more details into the village files, especially after 1943, as the expanded information included: “detailed descriptions of the husbandry, cultivation, the number of trees in plantations, the quality of each fruit grove (even of individual trees!), the average land holding per family, the number of cars, the names of shop owners, members of work shops, and the names of the artisans and their skills.” As time passed, and the village files collected more information, political affiliations were added in regards to individuals within the villages, and in 1945, information regarding village mosques, the names of the imams and even accounts of the inside of particular homes. As the end of the Mandate grew close, the village files increasingly provided information of a more militaristic nature: “the number of guards in each village (most had none) and the quantity and quality of arms at the villagers’ disposal (generally antiquated or even nonexistent).” In 1944, a small village was home to the training of informants and spies and from which they would conduct reconnaissance missions. The final report for the village files was in 1947, focusing on forming lists of “wanted” individuals. As Ilan Pappé explained:

In 1948, Jewish troops used these lists for the search-and-arrest operations they carried out as soon as they had occupied a village. That is, the men in the village would be lined up and those whose names appeared on the lists would be identified, often by the same person who had informed on them in the first place, but now wearing a cloth sack over his head with two holes cut out for his eyes so as not to be recognized. The men who were picked out were often shot on the spot… Among the criteria for inclusion in these lists, besides having participated in actions against the British and the Zionists, were involvement in the Palestinian national movement (which could apply to entire villages) and having close ties to the leader of the movement, the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husayni, or being affiliated with his political party. Given the Mufti’s dominance of Palestinian politics since the establishment of the Mandate in 1923, and the prominent positions held by members of his party in the Arab Higher Committee that became the embryo government of the Palestinians, this offense too was very common.[13]

Villages of roughly 1,500 people had about 20-30 individual “suspects” within them. In November of 1947, the Zionist military command concluded that, “the Palestine Arabs had nobody to organize them properly,” and that, “If not for the British, we could have quelled the Arab riot [the opposition to the UN Partition Resolution in 1947] in one month.” The Arabs, while constituting a demographic challenge to the Zionist aspirations for Palestine, were not a military threat. Their military structures and leadership were largely destroyed by the British during the Arab Revolt and the Zionists were also aware that the Arab states were disorganized and hesitant to move forward on the Palestine issue. Thus, it was the British that primarily stood in the way of the Zionist plans for Palestine, and with 100,000 troops stationed in the an area with roughly 2 million people, it was no small force to contend with. Thus, the Zionist leadership, and specifically David Ben-Gurion, began advocating to support the Partition in the hopes of establishing a small Jewish state in order to have a base from which to expand. In 1946, Ben-Gurion told a gathering of the Zionist leadership that they could accept a smaller state, but that, “We will demand a large chunk of Palestine.” Within a few months, the Jewish Agency created a map of a partitioned Palestine. The UN produced a partition map with less land allotted for the Jewish state. After the 1948-49 war, however, the new Jewish state had – through ethnic cleansing – established itself along the lines set out for it in the Jewish Agency map: all of Palestine, save the West Bank and Gaza.[14]

It was in this context that Plan C was evolved from Plans A and B. The British could not repress the eventual Jewish uprising in Palestine after World War II as they had the Arab Revolt prior to the war, and it was clear to the Zionist leadership that the British were on the way out, in no small part due to pressure from Zionist terrorism. In 1946, Plan C was finalized to prepare the Jewish military structures for their offense against the Palestinian population, including striking against political leadership, anti-Zionist Arabs, senior Arab officials, transportation routes, economic infrastructure, etc. Plan C added upon the village files information regarding leaders and activists within the Arab population and other “potential human targets.” Within a few months, the addition of “operational specifics” became the basis for Plan D, which envisioned a Jewish State composed of 78% of the land of Palestine, as set out in the Jewish Agency map. As for the one million Palestinians within those lands, Plan D was very specific:

These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their rubble), and especially those population centers that are difficult to control permanently; or by mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state.[15]

As Ghazi Falah wrote in the journal, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Plan D’s “underlying objective was the nationwide conquest and control of territories.” Among the tactical objectives of Zionist forces were to occupy “all police fortresses/stations evacuated by British forces, and of Arab villages close to Jewish settlements; creating continuity between Jewish cities and neighbouring Jewish settlements; gaining control of lines of communications; besieging enemy cities; capturing forward bases of the enemy; counter attacks both inside and outside the borders of the State.”[16]

In November of 1947 the UN proposed the partition plan into two states, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem as an international zone. The UN partition plan vastly increased the amount of land for the Zionists, as Jewish land amounted to less than 7% of the total of Palestine in 1947, which was increased to 56% in the UN partition plan, leaving 42% for the Palestinians, who prior to partition had over 90% of the land. The Zionists immediately began the ethnic cleansing in December of 1947 prior to the British leaving, and the first Arab army did not invade until May of 1948, when the British left. Thus, under British rule, wrote Falah, “Jewish forces initiated a war of demographic and territorial expansion which took on the dimension of space purification – expulsion and prevention on the return of the expellees.” All able-bodies Jews within Palestine were mobilized by the Zionist forces to partake in the operation, with civilian Jews settling in the depopulated Palestinian villages in order to prevent any possible return of refugees. Civilians also imposed economic sanctions, disseminating propaganda, and preventing Palestinians from harvesting their crops. Destruction of Arab crops was a general policy, or to have Jewish settlers move in and harvest existing Arab fields in cleansed towns.[17]

Certain towns were then selected for massacres, usually carried out in small villages which had previously good relations with their Jewish neighbours. These towns were selected with the specific purpose of providing “lessons in toughness” for other Palestinians villages to incite them to leave and not return. Between May 1947 and March 1948, there were 92 cases of Zionist terrorism and massacres against Palestinians, organized by the Haganah in cooperation with the Irgun and Stern Gang. The small villages were chosen to be “victims,” to be an example – a terror campaign – to incite fear in the Palestinian population. One such massacre in April of 1948 killed 254 Arab civilians in one village. On top of the massacres, the rape of Arab Palestinian women, whether Christian or Muslim, was also a prominent feature of the more brutal cleansings. When the British left Palestine and the Arab states invaded, they prevented the Zionist forces from occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[18]

All in all, some 400 Palestinian villages were cleansed, forcing roughly 750,000 Palestinians to flee, leaving roughly 100,000 Palestinians within the newly conquered Jewish territories, who remained under a virtual state of martial law and concentrated in small pales within Israel, the state which was declared by the Zionists in May of 1948. Massive Jewish immigration commenced for survivors of the Holocaust as well as Jews from Arab nations and the Soviet Union.[19]

The men who carried out the ethnic cleansing of Palestine became the mythical heroes of the founding of the state of Israel, most notably David Ben-Gurion, and the future leaders of the Israeli army, Yigael Yadin and Moshe Dayan, along with prominent Arabist academics, who, much like the intellectuals of the Nazi state, were among the most systematically malevolent, responsible for the final decisions regarding which villages were to be eradicated and which villagers were to be executed. The operations of the Arabists – Orientalist intellectuals – “were supervised by Issar Harel, who later became the first head of Mossad and the Shin bet, Israel’s secret services.”[20] The ruthless murders, assassinations, and massacres – even of women and children – were not a mere ‘result’ of the war, as many historians have claimed, but were a matter of policy. As Ezra Dannin, the Israeli government adviser on Arab affairs stated that, “If the High Command believes that by destruction, killing, and human suffering its aims will be achieved faster, then I would not stand in its way. If we don’t hurry up, our enemies will do the same things to us.”[21]

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project.

[1]            Jerome Slater, “What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process,” Political Science Quarterly (Vol. 116, No. 2, 2001), pages 173-174.

[2]            Ilan Pappé, “The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 36, No. 1, Autumn 2006), page 9.

[3]            Jerome Slater, “What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process,” Political Science Quarterly (Vol. 116, No. 2, 2001), page 174.

[4]            Graham Usher, “Unmaking Palestine: On Israel, the Palestinians, and the Wall,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 35, No. 1, Autumn 2005), page 26.

[5]            Ilan Pappé, “The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 36, No. 1, Autumn 2006), pages 9-10.

[6]            Ibid, pages 10-11.

[7]            Ibid, page 11.

[8]            Calder Walton, “British Intelligence and the Mandate of Palestine: Threats to British National Security Immediately After the Second World War,” Intelligence and National Security (Vol. 23, No. 4, 2008), pages 435-436.

[9]            Ibid, pages 439-440.

[10]            Steven Wagner, “British Intelligence and the Jewish Resistance Movement in the Palestine Mandate,” Intelligence and National Security (Vol. 23, No. 5, 2008), pages 629-630.

[11]            Ibid, pages 630-631.

[12]            Ilan Pappé, “The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 36, No. 1, Autumn 2006), pages 11-12.

[13]            Ibid, pages 12-13.

[14]            Ibid, pages 13-15.

[15]            Ibid, pages 15-16.

[16]            Ghazi Falah, “The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and its Aftermath: The Transformation and Se-Signification of Palestine’s Cultural Landscape,” Annals of the American Association of American Geographers (Vol. 86, No. 2, 1996), page 259.

[17]            Ibid, page 261.

[18]            Ibid, page 262.

[19]            Graham Usher, “Unmaking Palestine: On Israel, the Palestinians, and the Wall,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 35, No. 1, Autumn 2005), page 27.

[20]            Ilan Pappé, “The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 36, No. 1, Autumn 2006), pages 18-19.

[21]            Jerome Slater, “What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process,” Political Science Quarterly (Vol. 116, No. 2, 2001), page 175.

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In the 1960s and 1970s, amidst accelerated government spending on foreign affairs (including the Vietnam War) and domestic programs (the ‘Great Society’), as well as accommodative Federal Reserve monetary policy, inflation also accelerated significantly.  Here’s a look at the Consumer Price Index from 1950 to 1977:

Over time, the body politic experienced a spreading realization that you can’t get something for nothing, and that accelerating inflation was undermining real economic growth.  In 1977, in the Federal Reserve Reform Act, the Congress added new explicit goals for the Federal Reserve while conducting monetary policy.  The Fed was to pursue ‘maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.’  Those goals remain the same today.

How has the Fed done? Did the CPI go up, down, or sideways?  Here’s a look at the CPI since 1977, when the Fed was first directed to pursue ‘stable prices’:

The rate of increase in the CPI may have slowed from the 1960s and 1970s, but the law doesn’t direct the Fed to pursue ‘stable inflation.’  It calls, rightly or wrongly, for ‘stable prices.’  And the CPI has nearly quadrupled since the Fed was directed to promote them. 

The stuff we buy costs us over three times as much as it did when our Congress directed our monetary authority to keep their prices stable, on average.

Does the law matter?

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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Israel emerged in the post-War period due to a great many complex domestic and international political reasons: to provide a place to direct the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, to allow the British to formally end the Mandate over Palestine which they held as their empire was crumbling, and to serve as a ‘buffer state’ for Western nations in the Middle East, a region of the world which was identified as a necessity to control in order to secure its vast oil resources and strategic position in relation to the East. America in the post-War period, however, was deeply divided in its strategic-imperial circles on whether or not to support the State of Israel, which did not become a stated and strong policy until the later 1950s. The State Department, in particular, full of individuals who were familiar with the politics and changes in the Middle East, were worried that support for Israel would threaten America’s interests in the region by antagonizing the Arab states and ruining America’s good reputation following the War. Others, however, won out in the end, largely by arguing that such a state in the Middle East would be a significant support to American interests, acting as a powerful ‘buffer’ against the spread of Arab nationalism and Pan-Arabism. In its first years, Israel walked a balance of receiving support from both the United States and the Soviet Union. With the rise of Nasser in Egypt, however, America saw its imperial interest in supporting Israel.

The notion of a “Jewish State” as a ‘buffer’ for the West had been a long-held desire among imperial strategists and was even a popular means of promoting the Zionist cause from leaders within the Zionist movement. In the early 20^th century, the Zionists, keenly aware of the British and French imperial rivalry in the Arab East, “knew how to convince London of the value of a British-controlled Jewish buffer-state in Palestine for the protection of the Suez Canal and imperial communications to India.”[1] In 1907, the London Colonial Conference emphasized the increasing interest in establishing a ‘buffer state’ for British imperial interests in the Near East. The Conference agreed “to establish a strong but alien human bridge in the land that links Europe with the Old World which would constitute, near the Suez Canal, a hostile power to the people of the area and a friendly power to Europe and its interests.”[2]

British imperial strategists were increasingly alarmed with the growing “Arab Awakening” emerging in the context of Arab indigenous nationalism. These fears of a growing and developing Arab nationalism informed British Prime Minister Campbell Bannerman when he stated at the 1907 Colonial Conference:

Empires are formed, enlarged and stabilized so very little before they disintegrate and disappear… Do we have the means of preventing this fall, this crumbling, is it possible for us to put a halt to the destiny of European colonialism which at present is at a critical stage?[3]

The answer Bannerman received from the commission he established to look at the question, was that it was necessary

[to fight] against the Union of popular masses in the Arab region or the establishment of any intellectual, spiritual or historical link between them… [and thus recommended] all practical ways of dividing them as such as possible should be taught, and one way of doing so would be to construct a powerful, human ‘barrier’ foreign to the region – a bridge linking Asia and Africa – thus creating in this part of the world, and near the Suez Canal, a force friendly towards imperialism and hostile towards the inhabitants of the region.[4]

The report submitted to Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman recommended the following actions:

1) To promote disintegration, division and separation in the region.

2) To establish artificial political entities that would be under the authority of the imperialist countries.

3) To fight any kind of unity – whether intellectual, religious or historical – and taking practical measures to divide the region’s inhabitants.

4) To achieve this, it was proposed that a “buffer state” be established in Palestine, populated by a strong, foreign presence which would be hostile to its neighbors and friendly to European countries and their interests. [5]

In 1917, the British issued the Balfour Declaration as a statement of support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine (though it also stipulated that it was not to disadvantage or remove the Arab inhabitants of the land). In 1922, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution endorsing the Balfour Declaration, though the State Department subsequently issued a notice stating that the resolution “did not constitute a commitment to any foreign obligation or entanglement.”[6] In 1936, the Arabs resorted to armed resistance within Palestine, and the British responded by crushing them. During World War II, under the British Mandate of Palestine, the Zionists were “forming, training and arming their forces under the ‘British Shield’.” At the same time, during the War, Zionists increasingly focused on promoting their cause in America, taking note of the declining influence of Britain and rising dominance of America.[7]

It was during the 1940s that America increasingly recognized the importance of the oil resources of the Middle East to the developing plans and concepts of American global hegemony following the War. Thus, American approaches to the region were “developed within an anti-Arab nationalist and hegemonic framework designed to protect American access to oil.”[8]

The Zionist leadership recognized this vital interest to the United States, and thus began to promote the Zionist cause along similar lines of securing American access to Middle Eastern oil. In the 1940s, American oil companies were largely against the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine, which they viewed as inimical to their interests in the region. In 1933, the Saudi King had granted the Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil exclusive rights over Saudi oil prospecting and extraction in the east of the country. The eventual formation of the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) as a joint venture between the House of Saud and Standard Oil (the House of Rockefeller) took place in 1943. The oil companies stressed the importance of American security over and for Saudi Arabia. Zionist leaders in America held several meetings with oil company executives in an attempt to secure their support for a Jewish state, but to little avail. In fact, an oil industry publication, Oil Weekly, editorialized in 1946 that, “a Jewish state established with American support might endanger the ability of the US to assure a steady supply of oil from the Middle East.”[9]

In 1946, an agreement was established between the American government and Aramco to build a pipeline between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean coast, though this ran into problems with the U.S. Congress blocking such efforts, leading Aramco to decide to build the pipeline separate from U.S. involvement. As it was deduced, “the best place to offload the oil would be Haifa bay in the north of Palestine, and an agreement to this effect was signed with Sir Allan Jordan Cunningham, the British High Commissioner for Palestine.” Zionists, simultaneously, sought to advocate the pipeline project as necessarily transporting through areas of Jewish settlement in Palestine, and thus, the promotion of a Jewish state along the pipeline route “would introduce a stable element loyal to the United States into the project,” and reduce security costs for America.[10]

A confidential memo produced for the Jewish Agency in Palestine in 1947, in close proximity of the United Nations partition of Palestine, was titled, “The Jewish National Home and American Oil in the Middle East,” which stated that the purpose of the Zionist movement:

…was to establish in Palestine a democratic society whose citizens would enjoy the living standard of advanced western states, in an economy based on modern agriculture, industry and scientific development.[11]

In 1945, a profoundly prophetic article was written by an American philosopher, William Ernest Hocking, in the journal The Muslim World, in which he explained the emerging conflict of “Arab Nationalism and Political Zionism.” Hocking stressed that with the increased pressures in the U.S. Congress to support the Zionist cause, America may be rushing into a situation which it does not fully understand, stressing the need to weigh humanitarian concerns for the remaining European Jews following the Holocaust with the political objectives that exist in the complex circumstances of the Middle East, “and consider to what extent the proposed means will serve the humanitarian end, and to what extent it will serve other ends.” While acknowledging that “a place or places of refuge for Jews driven from Europe must be provided,” the question of Palestine needs a wider context.[12]

In examining the economic conditions upon which the Jews would find themselves thrust into within Palestine, Hocking explained that for a country roughly the size of New Hampshire, only half of the land is cultivable, and yet, planners desired “a program of intensive industrialization” to be undertaken. Hocking questioned the viability of imposing a “forced industrialization” on a location with little rainfall, requiring imported fuel, and few water resources as “an appropriate center for an industry based on the resources of the wider Near East.” Further, Hocking noted that while the notion of Palestine as the natural home for the Jewish people is based upon religious principles, “a Palestine heavily industrialized is a Palestine defaced from this point of view for Jew, Moslem, and Christian alike,”[13] as industrialization would be an affront to the spiritual significance of the location for all peoples.

Asserting that the reasons for the support of a Jewish state are not humanitarian, but political, Hocking examined how the Jewish National Fund in Palestine had increasingly deprived land from Arab labourers, as land granted to Jewish settlers was, by law, only allowed to be cultivated by Jewish labourers, and thus, it “cease[d] automatically to be a place of possible residence or work to those [Arab] laborers.” As Sir John Simpson reported on that matter:

It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either nor or at any time in the future… He is deprived forever from employment on that land… Nor can anyone help him by purchasing the land and restoring it to common use. The land is in mortmain and inalienable. [14]

Thus, wrote Hocking, “the Arab masses as a whole have felt their relative position deteriorating,” and the true question, then, was “of the attitude of the slowly advancing power,” that is, the Zionist power. “Its strength, intelligence, cash backing, splendid equipment, render it in Arab eyes the more formidable” because of this exclusionary and discriminatory attitude: “Hence they have come to face the future with concern.” As to the question, increasingly discussed within the West, as to why the Arabs and Muslims cannot simply grant this small piece of land to the Jews and go elsewhere, Hocking explained:

Those who are promoting this view do not explain what they propose to do with the extensive religious establishments of Islam in Palestine, including the great mosques and various schools. These establishments are not, like those of the Christians, primarily of a memorial nature: they are important educational and devotional centers for a living religion, within the region of its central activity. To maintain such establishments a considerable local population is required and assumed: to deport the million Arabs to Iraq would be another way of strangling these institutions. [15]

Further, in terms of those arguments which favour deportation due to the “immense domain” of the Arab people, Hocking explained that the domain, in fact, is mostly desert, with the “cultivable portions” being strewn around the rim, “whose northern arch is known as the Fertile Crescent.” Thus, the advantages of Palestine for Jew and Arab alike come from its position on the Mediterranean coast:

Commercially it belongs to the European Area. Palestine stands in an important strategic position between Europe and the budding industrial development, not so much of Palestine itself as of the lands behind Palestine, Arab lands which are entering on a new economic era… If the future economic importance of Palestine is to be, as I surmise, commercial rather than agricultural or industrial, its prosperity will depend to a large extent on its relations to this growingly important hinterland. And vice versa, the prosperity of that hinterland might depend to a considerable extent on its relations with the financial powers, the warehouses, and the commercial lanes centering in Palestine and vicinity.[16]

This emphasizes the notion of a Jewish state in Palestine as a buffer between the West and the Near East, between the imperial powers and the growing spread of Arab nationalism. Thus for the Arabs, leaving Palestine to exclusive Zionist control would “amount to acceptance of a barrier between them and Europe at the outset of their newer national career.” Yet, even with all of the Palestinian and Arab desires for, like the Jews themselves, a “new beginning,” they are increasingly portrayed as “nomadic,” “backward,” and “half-civilized,” ignoring the fact that “it was the Arabs who for six hundred years preserved the classical culture of Greece for a dark Europe,” or that they are still emanating out of the oppressive domination of four centuries of Turkish rule. Thus, what was being asked of the Arabs was to accept their entire potential for progress as being entirely dependent upon the political state of Zionism, which had thus far shown enormous animosity and disregard for the Arab peoples within Palestine. Hocking concluded by writing:

I believe the political Zionists at this moment as distinct from the cultural Zionists who have built the noble Hebrew University and who know what a National Home must be, – I believe the political Zionists to be the chief enemies of the cause of Zionism as well as of the Jewish interests in the world of tomorrow. What can they hope to gain by extricating their brethren from the prejudices of Europe only to build a community in Palestine which has to be protected by Western force (and if we intervene, then by American force also) because it is cradled in an environment of distrust and fear cultivated by their own methods of realizing a misplaced nationalistic ambition? [17]

In the Truman administration in 1947, as the United Nations recommended the partition of Palestine into two states, the CIA released an assessment of the situation in one of its first major reports, which predicted that if a Jewish state were created, “war would break out between Arabs and Jews, and the Arabs would win.” While the former turned out to be true, the latter, of course, did not. However, without stating it outright, the CIA report essentially led to the assumed conclusion that, as Thomas Lippman wrote, “partition would be detrimental to the long-term interests of the United States and would ultimately augment rather than alleviate the suffering of the world’s Jews.”[18]

The United States, in 1947, had reached a point where a decision finally had to be made on the issue of a Jewish state in Palestine. Within Palestine itself, Jewish gangs (such as the Hagana, the Irgun, and the Stern Gang), “were waging a guerrilla war against the British,” and thus, the issue became central to the United Nations and global politics. In the White House, some of Truman’s closest advisers supported the Zionists, though his national security and foreign policy advisers, especially within the State Department, had opposed partition and the formation of a Jewish state, arguing that, “such an outcome would alienate the Arabs, jeopardize American strategic and economic interests throughout the Middle East, open the door to the political penetration of the Arab world by the Soviet Union, and possibly lead to the loss of the American oil bonanza in Saudi Arabia.” As the State Department chief for the Bureau of Near East and Africa Affairs, Loy Henderson, wrote to Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1945:

In case the government of the United States should continue to press for the mass immigration of Jews into Palestine at this time, on humanitarian or other grounds, much of the work done in the Near East in recent years in building up respect for, and confidence in, the United States and in increasing American prestige, will be undone… The mere resentment of the Near Eastern peoples towards the United States on the ground that we have decided to disregard the Arab viewpoint with regard to Palestine would be unpleasant… It would be much more serious, however, if we should give them ground to believe that we do not live up to our firm promises already given. [19]

Henderson here was referring to the promise from the United States to engage in “full consultation” with the Arab states, primarily Saudi Arabia, in the lead up to any potential decision the United States would make on the issue. As the CIA report emphasized, partition would “solve nothing and would only intensify support for Zionist expansion,” and the report further stressed the importance of regional implications for the Arab states:

Arab nationalism is the strongest political force in the Arab world. It grew up in secret societies under Ottoman rule, came out into the open in the Arab Revolt of World War I, and has been the major factor in the independence movement in the Arab world ever since. Because of the strong ties between the various Arab states, political developments in any one country are of vital concern to Arabs everywhere. Palestinian independence is, consequently, the major aim not only of the Palestinian Arabs but also of Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Transjordanians, Egyptians and Saudi Arabians. It would be political suicide for any Arab government to ignore this situation. [20]

Tellingly, the report also predicted that the Arabs “fear that the Jews will consolidate their position through unlimited immigration and that they will attempt to expand until they become a threat to the newly won independence of each of the other Arab countries.” The CIA felt that this perception was, indeed, correct: “In the long run no Zionists in Palestine will be satisfied with the territorial arrangements of the partition settlement.” The CIA felt that such a partition would inevitably create “instability and hostility” in the Arab world.[21] In the immediate aftermath of partition, the CIA report predicted that “war would break out” between the Arabs and the Jews, that the Jewish populations in other Arab nations would be in danger, “American oil interests would be damaged,” and that the Zionists would “continue to wage a strong propaganda campaign in the US and Europe,” and that, “whatever the actual circumstances may be,” the Arabs would, said the report, “be accused of aggression,” which would “doubtless continue to influence the US public, and the US government [could], consequently, be forced into actions which [would] further complicate and embitter its relations with the entire Arab world,” and finally, the Soviet Union could make considerable political gains in the region as a result. Further, the report stated that eventually the Arabs could turn to “religious fanaticism,” which could become “an extremely powerful force.”[22]

Where the report was wrong, however, was in predicting that the Jewish state would fail in a war with the Arab states, having mistakenly underestimated the organizational capabilities of the military Zionist groups in Palestine, as well as over-estimating the cooperation of the Arab states, which actually had many suspicions of one another. As early as 1943, a special envoy dispatched by President Roosevelt to the Arab leaders to discuss Palestine, Colonel Harold Hoskins, stated that, “only by military force can a Zionist state be imposed upon the Arabs.”[23] This logic, of course, was not lost upon the Zionist military and strategic leaders, who had immense national ambitions.

These ambitions, however, were not merely political, but racial. In a disturbing parallel with the Nazi German state from which many European Jews would later escape to the Holy Land, several Zionist leaders were themselves drawing up plans for a program of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Palestine. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappé documented, Plan D, as it was called, “was the fourth and final version of vaguer plans outlining the fate that was in store for the native population of Palestine.” The first three plans involved obscure and vague means for dealing with the Palestinians, whereas the fourth plan – the final plan – was a detailed military document written and plotted out by less than a dozen Zionist leaders, led by David Ben-Gurion. Plan D was emphatic and adamantine in its purpose: to remove the Palestinian population from the land. Ethnic cleansing, as defined by the U.S. State Department, is “the systematic and forced removal of the members of an ethnic group from communities in order to change the ethnic composition of a given region.”[24] By definition, then, the Zionist leaders were preparing a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project.

Notes

[1]            Ibrahim Ibrahimi, “Review: The Making of the Jewish State,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 1, No. 1, Autumn 1971), page 122.

[2]            Adnan Amad, “History and Fiction in Boasson’s Comments on Galtung,” Journal of Peace Research (Vol. 10, No ½, 1973), page 151.

[3]            Anwarul Haque Haqqi, West Asia Since Camp David (Mittal Publications, 1988), pages 104-105.

[4]            Ibid, page 105.

[5]            Robert I. Rotberg, Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History’s Double Helix (Indiana University Press, 2006), page 220.

[6]            Michael C. Hudson, “To Play the Hegemon: Fifty Years of US Policy Toward the Middle East,” Middle East Journal (Vol. 50, No. 3, Summer 1996), pages 333-334.

[7]            Ibrahim Ibrahimi, “Review: The Making of the Jewish State,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 1, No. 1, Autumn 1971), pages 124-125.

[8]            Ibrahim I. Ibrahim, “The American-Israeli Alliance: Raison d’etat Revisited,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 15, No. 3, Spring 1986), page 23.

[9]            Zohar Segev, “Struggle for Cooperation and Integration: American Zionists and Arab Oil, 1940s,” Middle Eastern Studies (Vol. 42, No. 5, September 2006), pages 820-821.

[10]            Ibid, pages 822-823.

[11]            Ibid, pages 824-825.

[12]            William Ernest Hocking, “Arab Nationalism and Political Zionism,” The Muslim World (Vol. 35, No. 3, July 1945), page 216.

[13]            Ibid, pages 216-217.

[14]            Ibid, pages 219-220.

[15]            Ibid, page 220.

[16]            Ibid, pages 220-222.

[17]            Ibid, pages 222-223.

[18]            Thomas W. Lippman, “The View From 1947: The CIA and the Parititon of Palestine,” Middle East Journal (Vol. 61, No. 1, Winter 2007), page 17.

[19]            Ibid, pages 18-19.

[20]            Ibid, pages 19-21.

[21]            Ibid, pages 21-22.

[22]            Ibid, pages 22-23.

[23]            Ibid, pages 25-26.

[24]            Ilan Pappé, “The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 36, No. 1, Autumn 2006), pages 6-7.

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Take yourself back to the early 1900s.  You are rich, and you just bought a ticket on a worldwide tour offered by a touring company.  But then the tour company goes bankrupt.  Assume it had enough cash on its balance sheet just before its bankruptcy to refund the advance you gave them.  Except for one thing — they also owed money to the same bank where they deposited the money you sent them.  And the bank said no, sorry, that money of yours isn’t there anymore, and the tour company bankruptcy trustee can’t get it either. 

A few years later, in 1913, in Studley v. Boylston National Bank, these basic facts were the nature of the case, and the Supreme Court of the United States effectively ruled against you, citing ‘the absurdity of making A pay B when B owes A.’  This important decision helped cement something called the ‘right of set-off,’ with the Supreme Court concluding:

“But to deny the right of set-off, in cases like this, would in many cases make banks hesitate to honor checks given to third persons, would precipitate bankruptcy and so interfere with the course of business as to produce evils of serious and far-reaching consequence.”

But you are left wondering whether making A pay B is really all that absurd.  Why should the bank get money before you do?  Was it those ‘evils of serious and far-reaching consequence?’ 

OK, now let’s get out of the time machine, at least until a few months ago.   In October 2011, one of the largest futures brokerage companies in the world files for bankruptcy protection – less than a year after the Federal Reserve Bank of New York grants the organization ‘primary dealer’ status, allowing the organization to trade directly with the Federal Reserve.  Then, all hell breaks loose.  One estimate comes out that the company, MF Global, ‘lost’ about $600 million in customer funds.  Then, another estimate has it that the amount ‘lost’ is closer to $1.2 billion.  The company’s CEO then testifies before the United States Senate, stating that “I simply do not know where the money is.”

Well, when lawyers can get involved, and legal uncertainty arises similar to determining setoff and netting rights in insolvency, that’s one way you can have discrepancies as large as $600 million to $1.2 billion, and a CEO testifying “I simply do not know where the money is.”  This is a true statement, at least until the courts make a decision whose rights are respected.

So, how can I assert that the system actually worked? 

Well, it certainly didn’t work all that well for the people who found out, or were otherwise made more certainly aware, that their funds with MF Global were at risk. 

This scandalous situation has had its share of ink spilled on it in recent months, and deservedly so, given the politically well-connected nature of MF Global’s leadership, and the fact that the largest U.S. Federal Reserve Bank in history (and one whose balance sheet remains bloated following its massive effort to ‘rescue’ the financial system) had certified MF Global as a primary dealer even after its stock price had fallen over 80% following the financial crisis.  

Once the Federal Reserve granted MF Global primary dealer status, that status allowed MF Global to enter into transactions directly with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and to expose the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to new forms of counterparty risk.   As MF Global became bankrupt, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York acted, in a way, like the Boylston National Bank cited above.   On Monday, October 31, 2011, after MF Global had failed to meet a margin call, the New York Fed declared an event of default, and then exercised what it asserted as its contractual right ‘to set off the calculated loss against the margin provided to the New York Fed by MF Global.’ 

The New York Fed was certainly not the only party trying to defend its position against MF Global.  But if the setoff arrangement proves a solid one through the litigation certain to follow (and this appears probable, at least in light of Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general counsel Thomas Baxter’s testimony that “To be clear, the New York Fed sustained no loss from its relationship with MF Global”), it means that U.S. taxpayers did not take a direct hit from the resolution of the MF Global bankruptcy, at least through this channel.

Say what?  Taxpayers were protected?

So, what’s the scandal all about?  Perhaps this should be cause for celebration!   Sophisticated futures market participants relied on the existing system of ‘self-regulation,’ including the work of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the CME, where MF Global was a clearing member) as well as the not-so-self-regulation Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the CFTC, a federal government agency).  The safeguards established through the markets tend to do an effective job, but they aren’t foolproof. 

And we avoided the result where risky things are made less risky by applying our resources generally, and to have We, the People stand behind the well-connected few. 

This case helps illustrate what market discipline is all about.  The CME is going to work harder, and so is the CFTC.  So will futures market participants, while monitoring their counterparties.  This is a good thing, not a bad thing.

We have more to learn from this affair, including the possible indirect channels through which taxpayers absorbed more underpriced risk.  But consider the alternative.  Like the banking debacle in recent years.  Self-regulation looks like it beats regulation by a mile.

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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This is Part 6 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 , Part IV, and Part 5.

Investigative journalist and NATO expert Rick Rozoff joins us to discuss the eighteen-year-old project of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Wolfowitz and their cabal to destroy the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States and create a chain of buffer states around Russia, enclosing it with NATO member states and partners. He provides us with analyses and implications of the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. and NATO, and the duo’s expansion into Central Asia where Russian, Chinese and Iranian interests converge. Mr. Rozoff talks about the Central Asia chessboard and how the region may be transformed into a battleground of conflicting 21st century geopolitical interests, the role of Islamic extremism and how it is used by the West on this grand chess board, Mujahideen and Al Qaeda’s partnership with US-NATO in the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia operations, the real mission of Afghanistan’s NATO-trained 7,000 troops as guardians of the oil and gas pipeline connecting Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India- the TAPI pipeline & more!

Rick Rozoff is an investigative journalist based in Chicago and has been an active opponent of war, militarism and intervention for over 40 years. He manages the Stop NATO e-mail list , and is the editor of Stop NATO, a website on the threat of international militarization, especially on the globalization of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Mr. Rozoff has a graduate degree in European literature.

Listen to the preview Here

Here is our guest Rick Rozoff unplugged! (Subscribers only)

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A cohesive American imperial strategy to manage the “Grand Area” of Latin America in the post-War period was established by the newly formed Eisenhower administration in the National Security Council’s draft paper, “U.S. Policy With Respect to Latin America,” in January of 1953. In March, a final draft was submitted as NSC 144, a report on “United States Objectives and Courses of Action With Respect to Latin America.” As the strategy document was produced through the NSC, the highest policy-planning body in the American government, it necessarily involved the participation of high-level officials from the Departments of State, Defense, Treasury, the C.I.A., the Mutual Security Agency, and the Office of Defense Mobilization.[1]

Issued on March 18, 1953, the “Statement of Policy by the National Security Council” outlined the primary threat posed to American interests in Latin America:

There is a trend in Latin America toward nationalistic regimes maintained in large part by appeals to the masses of the population. Concurrently, there is an increasing popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses, with the result that most Latin American governments are under intense domestic political pressures to increase production and to diversify their economies… [Thus, a] realistic and constructive approach to this need which recognizes the importance of bettering conditions for the general population, is essential to arrest the drift in the area toward radical and nationalistic regimes. The growth of nationalism is facilitated by historic anti-U.S. prejudices and exploited by Communists [emphasis added].[2]

Thus, the true threat – far from the “strategic sham” of Cold War rhetoric (as Zbigniew Brzezinski referred to it) – was the actualized and very realistic challenge to American domination posed by “nationalistic regimes” which support “the masses of the population” of various Latin American countries. Worse still, the masses were demanding “immediate improvement in [their] low living standards,” thus threatening the traditional elite-dominated system of control and subordination which had been established in Latin America for so many centuries. These “radical and nationalistic regimes” had to be prevented from meeting the demands of the masses. Almost as an afterthought, the document stated that – by the way – these “radical and nationalistic regimes” are given strength “by historic anti-U.S. prejudices and exploited by Communists,” as if to simply brush over the immediate imperial threat with the common rhetoric. The use of the word “prejudices” also portends to portray such views of the United States as unwarranted and unjustified, as if the United States were the victim. Indeed, for the strategists in the National Security Council, the threat of radical nationalism had the potential to victimize them of their vast imperial domains.

Thus, the NSC-144 document listed a number of “Objectives” for the United States to undertake in this highly threatening situation where the poor masses of an entire continent no longer wanted to be subjected to the ruthless domination of a tiny domestic and foreign minority. These ‘objectives’ included: “Hemisphere solidarity in support of our world policies, particularly in the UN and other international organizations,” which, in other words, means towing the line with the United States in regards to American foreign policy around the world; “An orderly political and economic development in Latin America so that the states in the area will be more effective members of the hemisphere system and increasingly important participants in the economic and political affairs of the free world,” which can be roughly translated as supporting the development of a Western-oriented middle class which would support the elites and keep the lower classes – the masses – at bay; “The safeguarding of the hemisphere… against external aggression through the development of indigenous military forces and local bases necessary for hemisphere defense,” which implies allowing America to establish military bases throughout the continent – naturally for “defensive” purposes – in offensively defending America’s resources (which happen to be in other countries), as well as establishing local military proxies through which America can exert regional hegemony. Further objectives included: “The reduction and elimination of the menace of internal Communist or other anti-U.S. subversion,” which equates to purging and liquidating the countries of dissenters, a patently fascistic policy objective; “Adequate production in Latin America of, and access by the United States to, raw materials essential to U.S. security,” which means that American corporations get unhindered access to exploit the region’s resources; and “The ultimate standardization of Latin American military organization, training, doctrine and equipment along U.S. lines,” which implies making every country’s military structure and apparatus of internal repression dependent upon U.S. support, and thus, it would ensure a structure of dependency between domestic elites and the American Empire, as the domestic elites would need the military and police apparatus to repress the “masses” whom they rule over and exploit. Therefore, America would need to essentially subsidize Latin America’s systems and structures of repression.[3]

In identifying “courses of action” to achieve America’s “objectives” in Latin America, the NSC document stated that the United States could achieve a “greater degree of hemisphere solidarity” – i.e., hegemony – if it utilizes the Organization of American States (OAS) “as a means of achieving our objectives,” because this would “avoid the appearance of unilateral action and identify our interests with those of the other American states.” It further recommended undertaking consultations with Latin American states, “whenever possible,” before America took unilateral action within Latin America. The “consultations,” it should not be confused, were not designed to weigh the opinions of Latin American states in the decision-making processes of the empire, but rather to explain “as fully as security permits the reasons for our decisions and actions.” So essentially, it’s more of a courtesy call, a polite announcement of imperial actions.[4]

Importantly, one major “course of action” included the encouraging – via ‘consultation,’ assistance, and “other available means” – of “individual and collective action against internal subversive activities by communists and other anti-U.S. elements.” What this amounts to, then, as a “course of action,” was for America to undertake a comprehensive program aimed at advising (“consulting”), financing, arming, and organizing Latin American states to internally and regionally oppress, control, or eliminate dissidents and activists. Not unrelated, of course, the “courses of action” also stated that the United States should work to “encourage” Latin American nations to “recognize” (i.e., submit) to the idea that the “best” way to “development” for them is through “private enterprise,” which required “a climate which will attract private investment,” which meant to grant favourable concessions, low tariffs, and easy exploitation of resources to foreign conglomerates, namely, American. The document even directly recommended simplifying “customs procedures and reduction of trade barriers” in order to “[make] it easy for Latin American countries to sell their products to us,” which is kind of like saying, “If I give you a large loan, it will make it easier for you to pay a higher interest to me.” What it really implies, then, is not to improve conditions for Latin American countries in “selling” products, but in making it “easier” for Northern countries to buy products, as in, making them much cheaper, and thus, Latin American countries will get less for them, and their resources could be appropriated with greater ease than previously. Naturally, the “courses of action” in the economic realm also stipulated that the United States should “assist” Latin America in playing “a more vigorous and responsible role in economic development of the area.”[5]

The notion of “responsible” development means that the nations would not be attempting to nationalize their resources or impose strict trade controls over their national wealth and products so as to industrialize and develop internally (as the United States did following the American Revolution), because this is “irresponsible” behaviour. It is irresponsible precisely because it is effective in the process of national development, as evidenced by the fact that every major industrial economy in the early 20^th century had been established through state protections and interventions into the economy, and this is what allowed them to rise as industrial giants and become powerful global powers. Thus, the notion of a ‘Third World’ state possibly becoming a powerful industrial nation in its own right is not a “responsible” way to establish oneself as a vassal state for a regional and global empire, which requires its protectorates to be dependent, not self-sufficient.

Conveniently for the United States, then, which articulates the rhetoric of “free market” capitalism (which it does not practice, with heavy state subsidies, trade restrictions, and market controls), the Soviet Union – its new ideological ‘enemy’ – overtly imposed and openly advocated state control of the economy (though in practice it relied quite heavily upon American industrial corporations for support), and thus, any state which nationalized resources or imposed state controls and interventions in the economy could be said to be following the path of the Soviet Union, and subsequently be presented to the domestic American populace as a “Communist threat.” This is, indeed, exactly what took place throughout the Cold War period.

On this very note, the NSC-144 document directly stated that in relation to its propaganda efforts in the region – “Information and Cultural Programs for Latin American states” – the United States “should be specifically directed to the problems and psychology of specific states in the area,” of which the objective would be to ‘alert’ these states and their populations “to the dangers of Soviet imperialism and communist and other anti-U.S. subversion,” and thus, indirectly “convincing them that their own self-interest requires an orientation of Latin American policies to our objectives.” In other words, unless following the strict dictates of the United States, these states will be branded as Communist or “subversive.” Subversive elements, as the NSC-144 document stipulates, were to be dealt with largely through military means. The United States recommended as a “course of action” to “provide military assistance to Latin America,” which would “be designed to reduce to a minimum the diversion of U.S. forces for the maintenance of hemispheric security,” or in other words, building up domestic Latin American military and police forces so that the American military won’t have to directly respond to every threat to its hegemony in the region. On this note, it was also vital to ensure that America had several military bases in the region, and, as the document suggested, “the United States should take political, economic or military action, as appropriate, to insure the continued availability of U.S. bases in Latin America.”[6] What this implied was that if U.S. military bases were threatened in the region, that was reason enough to take military action against any entity which challenged the presumed permanence of the bases.

NSC-144 even directly stated that, “where necessary,” the United States should directly protect certain resources and industries and their transportation routes to the United States, but that each Latin American country “should organize its own civil defense.” One example of this would be the American bases along the Panama Canal. The United States should also, according to the document, “establish where appropriate, military training missions in Latin American nations,” as well as “to provide training in the United States for selected Latin American personnel.” Ultimately, then, a key aim of U.S. military assistance to the region was to “seek the ultimate standardization along U.S. lines of the organization, training, doctrine and equipment of Latin American armed forces,”[7] a very typical imperial phenomenon, along the notion of God creating man “in his own image.”

The NSC-144 document of 1953 and its appendage in NSC 5432/1 of 1954 were incredibly important in establishing a method and process of United States hegemony in Latin America during the Cold War period. With the Eisenhower administration in power in 1953, America took a hard-line approach to Latin America. His Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, stated – following the Caracas Conference in 1954 which adopted an “anticommunist resolution” for the OAS – that the United States could “operate more effectively to meet Communist subversion in the American Republics.”[8] One of the most important examples of American imperialism in Latin America almost immediately followed NSC-144, with the 1954 coup in Guatemala.

Guatemala: Democracy is not in the “American Interest”

In 1950, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was elected President of Guatemala under the popularly supported pretense of continuing socio-economic reforms such as instituting land reform, an extremely popular policy among the people. President Eisenhower identified the ‘threat’ posed by the Arbenz regime to the “American interest” when he wrote that, “the Arbenz government announced its intentions, under an agrarian reform law, to seize about 225,000 acres of unused United Fruit Company land.”[9]

The Council on Foreign Relations had many interests in the issues presented by Guatemala, as the Council’s early “studies on Latin America had focused precisely on United States economic interests there.” As Shoup and Minter wrote:

In 1952 and 1953, Spruille Braden, former assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs and a consultant for the United Fruit Company, led a Council study group on Political Unrest in Latin America… the first meeting, in the fall of 1952, was devoted to Guatemala, with John McClintock of the United Fruit Company as the discussion leader.[10]

One member of the study group wrote in his journal, following one of the meetings, that “the Council on Foreign Relations the other night agreed generally that the Guatemalan government was Communist,” and that the United States “should welcome” the overthrow of the Arbenz government, “and if possible guide it into a reasonably sound channel.” Those most involved in deciding U.S. policy towards Guatemala within the U.S. government were also members of the Council:

Most important were President Eisenhower himself, the CIA head Allen Dulles, who continued on the Council’s board of directors at the same time, and Frank Wisner, another Council member who was the CIA’s deputy director for plans (the man in charge of clandestine operations).[11]

It should also be noted that U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, while not a member of the Council, was the brother of Council board member and CIA Director Allen Dulles. Arbenz in Guatemala represented exactly the “threat” as identified in NSC-144 of, “nationalistic regimes maintained in large part by appeals to the masses of the population,” and was thus considered to be a “radical and nationalistic” regime. The immense threat posed by such a regime to America was in the Arbenz government’s willingness to direct its policies to meet “an increasing popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses,” as the NSC-144 identified as the key trend in Latin America.

Operation PBSUCCESS, authorized by Eisenhower in August 1953, boasted a $2.7 million budget for “psychological warfare and political action” and “subversion,” among the other components of a small paramilitary war.[12] As the CIA officer in charge of the operation, E. Howard Hunt (later infamous for the Watergate burglary), explained in an interview some years later, “What we [the CIA] wanted to do was to have a terror campaign… to terrify Arbenz particularly, to terrify his troops, much as the German Stuka bombers terrified the population of Holland, Belgium and Poland at the onset of World War Two.”[13]

In December of 1953, an organization established by the U.S. government called the National Planning Association on the Guatemala Situation produced a report proclaiming that, “Communist infiltration in Guatemala constitutes a threat not only to the freedom of that country but to the security of all Western Hemisphere nations.” With twenty-two committee members signing this statement, fifteen of them were Council on Foreign Relations members.[14]

In short, the Council on Foreign Relations made the argument that the “improvement in the low living standards of the masses” presented a Communist threat to the entire Western Hemisphere and threatened the “freedom” of Guatemala itself. While the notion of “Communism” here is a metaphor for “radical nationalism,” such nationalistic regimes which were listening to and acting on the needs of the “masses of the population” – what can be called democracy – are indeed a major security threat to the United States and its hegemony over the entire region, and this is no metaphor.

It is not an exaggeration to say that a comparatively small country presents such an enormous threat to American regional and even global hegemony if it were to actually meet the “demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses,” and this is so not in spite of the country being a small Central American nation, but because it was a small, seemingly insignificant nation to the course of global affairs. This is precisely so because if a small nation could successfully chart its own path separate from the United States, especially one so geographically close to the United States, it could serve as an example to other nations in the region and around the world as presenting a method of independence and autonomy which could become increasingly attractive, especially to the “masses” of the world. Such an example could not be permitted to exist, least of all in such close regional proximity to the United States, for if a nation could successfully resist American dominance in its own “backyard” – as Latin America was established to be with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 – then it could happen anywhere. Nothing would appear to be a greater threat to a large global power than a successful resistance by a small, local actor: David and Goliath.

In regards to U.S. policy toward Guatemala, the ties between the government, United Fruit Company and the Council on Foreign Relations were well established so as to create a consensus on defining the “national interest” as seeking to replace the Arbenz regime:

Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, a future President of Guatemala, recorded that his cooperation in the coup was sought by Walter Turnbell, a former executive of United Fruit, who came accompanied by two CIA agents… [U.S. Secretary of State] John Foster Dulles, while at [Wall Street law firm] Sullivan and Cromwell, had represented the United Fruit Company in negotiating a contract with Guatemala some years before. [Assistant Secretary of State] John M. Cabot’s brother was a director and former president of the United Fruit Company. Spruille Braden [at the State Department] served as a United Fruit Company consultant. Former CIA director Walter Bedell Smith, after leaving the government, became a director of United Fruit, as did Robert D. Hill, a participant in the operation as ambassador to Costa Rica.[15]

The Council itself also had extensive ties to United Fruit Company, with three Council members serving on the board of United Fruit, not to mention the Dulles brothers who were very close with the Council and United Fruit, while being in the key positions of CIA Director and Secretary of State.[16]

Propaganda as Policy

Another major facet of the significance of the U.S. operation to overthrow the democratic government of Guatemala was not simply that it was the first post-World War II U.S. coup in Latin America, but that it involved a monumental propaganda campaign aimed at shaping domestic American opinion, which would ultimately come to define much of the methods and substance of U.S. domestic propaganda throughout the Cold War. Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and the “Father of Public Relations” was pivotal in this program.

Bernays was hired as a public relations counsel for United Fruit Company in the early 1940s in order to help sell bananas during the winter. Bernays began finding new ways to sell bananas by marketing them not simply as a product to be consumed, but as a healthy life choice, and he further emphasized the need that United Fruit not simply educate North Americans about bananas, but about Latin America in general. Thus, Bernays established the Middle America Information Bureau, which was “in part an honest attempt to educate, providing scholars, journalists, and others with the latest information about a nearby place that most Americans knew almost nothing about.” However, Bernays wrote a memo to all employees of the Bureau that, “all material released by this office must be approved by responsible executives of the United Fruit Company.” The information that informed the articles produced by Bureau staff was provided directly by United Fruit.[17]

Bernays had early persuaded the United Fruit Company to begin framing the reformist democratic government of Arbenz as Communist, and had launched a campaign of planting stories in the media embracing this perspective. Articles began appearing in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, the New York Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek, and even the left-leaning progressive magazine, The Nation, which “was especially satisfying to Bernays, who believed that winning the liberals over was essential to winning America over.”[18]

In January of 1952, Bernays took a group of journalists on a two-week tour of the region. The trip was “under the [United Fruit] Company’s careful guidance and, of course, company expense… The trips were ostensibly to gather information, but what the press would hear and see was carefully staged and regulated by the host.”[19] Bernays had control over media information on Guatemala up to and during the CIA coup. The government in Guatemala that came to power then ruled for decades with an iron fist “as it condemned hundreds of thousands of people (mostly members of the country’s impoverished Maya Indian majority) to dislocation, torture and death.”[20]

The achievement of scaring the American public with the threat of Communism proved to be incredibly successful in terms of creating public support for regime change in Guatemala. Thus, in 1954, when the exiled army officer in Honduras, Carlos Castillo Armas, had crossed the border into Guatemala with two hundred men who had been recruited and trained (and armed) by the CIA, Bernays framed this invasion in the American media as an “army of liberation.”[21] These tactics of media manipulation and the shaping of public opinion would come to define the Cold War propaganda strategy of the United States. For decades to come, every liberation struggle, every government, and every policy of foreign peoples and nations that threatened the dominance of U.S. hegemony and in particular, U.S. economic interests, would henceforth be framed as ‘Communist.’ As such, any force or process set against the ‘Communists’ in these regions would be seen as “liberators” and “democratic freedom fighters,” whether the strategy was that of fomenting rebellion, supporting death squads and terrorists, undertaking coups, “terror campaigns,” or outright war.

The underlying and far-reaching implications of this has been to create a historically unique situation in which the home population of the imperial nation (in this case, Americans) are subjected to a process of indoctrination so profound that they are in a state of ‘imperial denial.’ As such, Americans see their country and its role in the world as exceptional, in that they do not by and large accept or even contemplate the imperial nature of America and its policies, but rather are imbued with a type of ‘manifest destiny’ in which they believe that America is the “greatest nation” on earth, and thus have the ‘responsibility’ to ‘protect’ the world as a type of global policeman. This is unique in the history of empires, which until the dawn of the American empire, never denied their imperial nature as such (though they still justified it in various rhetorical ploys), nor were their populations entirely ignorant of their countries’ imperial status.

The Regional Politics of Global Dominance

As a result of the coup in Guatemala, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Henry F. Holland, stated that America “had paid a price in terms of prestige and good will” in the eyes of many Latin American nations and peoples.[22] It is telling to note the perspectives of several other Latin American nations and politicians in the lead-up to the Guatemala coup in late June of 1954. The United States learned an important lesson from their intervention in Guatemala, best examined with the case of internal politics in Chile, an important U.S. ally in the region, that the U.S. had to cultivate friendly perceptions and undertake propaganda efforts within Latin American countries, not simply within the United States itself.

Chile was an important source of resources for the United States, but in the early 1950s, its economy was in deep trouble, which then began to translate into political trouble for the United States. Chile elected a new president, Carlos Ibañez del Campo in 1952 (who had previously been a dictator in Chile from 1927-1931), with a priority to deal with Chile’s economic problems, though in ways that frustrated American interests. America appointed a new Ambassador to Chile, Willard L. Beaulac, who saw Chile’s economic problems as a threat to “solvency but also the stability of its political institutions.” As the Chilean public became increasingly dissatisfied with Ibañez’s handling of the economic situation, U.S. officials worried that he may try to do away with the democratic model and resort back to his dictatorial ways, modeling himself along the lines of Argentina’s Juan Peron, a populist dictatorship disliked by America. In the 1952 Chilean elections, Ibañez had framed himself as a “Peronist populist,” running as “the General of Hope.” Thus, the-then Ambassador to Chile declared, “The grave danger to Chile, and to us, is still Ibañez.” Further, a Socialist senator from northern Chile, Salvador Allende, increased in popularity, and declared: “If the President of the Republic does not consider himself capable of resolving [Chile’s] problems and fulfilling the promises he made, he would do well to take the democratic course of calling the country to resolve the problem through new elections.”[23]

Ibañez began courting the dictatorial path. His Undersecretary of Defense, Colonel Horacio Arce, approached U.S. Ambassador Beaulac “about how the United States would react to an Ibañez-led authoritarian regime,” to which Beaulac stated the American preference for a democratic regime. Ibañez had twice stated personally to the American Ambassador that he intended to impose an authoritarian regime. In Chile, American officials at the State Department did not view Communists as a real threat to the country, despite having one of the largest Communist organizations in Latin America (the others being in Brazil and Cuba). In 1948, the Chilean Congress had passed the Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy, “which banned the Chilean Communist party and removed all Communists from the voter rolls.”[24] Thus, the ‘threat’ was generally contained.

With the Eisenhower administration’s focus on handling Guatemala and expanding U.S. actions against the Arbenz government, it then attempted to mobilize other Latin American countries to support its policies. The U.S. undertook a policy recommendation right out of the playbook – NSC paper 144 – which stated that the United States could achieve a “greater degree of hemisphere solidarity” if it utilized the Organization of American States (OAS) “as a means of achieving our objectives,” because this would “avoid the appearance of unilateral action and identify our interests with those of the other American states.”[25] Thus, for the OAS’s approaching Tenth Inter-American Conference, set in Caracas, Venezuela in March of 1954 (one year after the final draft of NSC-144 was published), U.S. officials proposed the addition of an “anti-Communist” resolution. This resolution stated:

That the domination or control of the political institutions of any American state by the international Communist movement… would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and political independence of the American states, endangering the peace of America, and would call for appropriate action in accordance with existing treaties.[26]

The treaty referred to specifically was the 1947 Rio Treaty, which stipulated that “if two thirds of member nations agreed, the OAS could take action against the nation that posed the threat.” One historian, Stephen Rabe, contended that the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles – with this resolution – essentially expanded “the Monroe Doctrine to include outlawing foreign ideologies in the American Republics.” The greatest opposition to this resolution at Caracas, interestingly, came from the Chilean delegation of Left and Center politicians and representatives, who openly opposed the Caracas Conference itself, as well as U.S. policy in Guatemala. One Chilean politician pointed out that the OAS should be concerned with the internal policies of the region’s dictatorships, not with Guatemala, and noted the irony of holding the conference in Venezuela, ruled by a “ruthless” dictator, General Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Eduardo Frei of Chile’s Falange party refused to attend the Chilean delegation to Caracas, stating:

I do not believe that the Department of State would be so bold as to suggest, least of all, an intervention into the internal affairs of [Guatemala] which is at liberty to determine freely its own destiny. If [the Department of State] did, all democratic forces of America would rise up to repudiate the aggression and to make common cause with Guatemala.[27]

Apparently, he underestimated the extent of America’s domestic propaganda system, which presented the “terror campaign” against a democratically elected and incredibly popular government as a victory for freedom and democracy. Orwellian artistry at its most malevolent.

Two weeks prior to the Caracas Conference, a group was organized within Chile’s Chamber of Deputies, led by the Chamber’s president, Baltasar Castro, as well as a number of Socialist party members and other radicals, calling themselves the “Friends of Guatemala,” who expressed their support for Arbenz in Guatemala, as well as their opposition to U.S. policy. Other “Friends of Guatemala” organizations appeared in El Salvador, Cuba, and Mexico, but Chile’s was the most influential and best mobilized, as they focused on the issues of “self-determination, Arbenz’s status as a democratically elected president, and the United States abusing its power to pressure smaller neighbors.” Baltasar Castro, as leader of the “Friends of Guatemala,” attracted negative attention from the U.S. embassy in Santiago, Chile. As their criticism intensified, other Latin American neighbours increasingly expressed reservations regarding the OAS meeting and specifically the anti-Communist resolution. Thus, they amended the resolution to stipulate that instead of taking “direct action,” they would “call for future consultations on additional measures,” and Chile, as well as several other nations, then voted in favour of the resolution, believing that it no longer stood for “unilateral or collective intervention” against Guatemala. A member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff who attended the meeting observed that Latin America had “more fear of U.S. interventionism than of Guatemalan communism.”[28]

Salvador Allende, an important Socialist party politician in Chile, had not yet reached the national political stage in Chile (as he would later), but was generally considered by U.S. officials in the region to be “a friend,” whom they thought could act as a significant counter-weight to Ibañez. However, Allende had been increasingly critical of poverty and malnutrition among the poor and lower classes of society. This was tolerated by American officials who felt Allende had “no use” for Communism. Thus, as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Edward G. Miller stated, Allende could “do substantial damage to Ibañez,” so he was tolerated. With the 1954 Caracas conference, Allende was provided “with a new political issue,” and began speaking out against U.S. policy in the region, stating that the anti-Communist resolution at the OAS conference was “nothing more than an instrument of the Cold War,” and it did “not reflect any of the fundamental concerns of the peoples of this part of the continent.” Further, Allende admonished Secretary of State John Foster Dulles for leaving the OAS conference “ten minutes after obtaining” the acceptance of the anti-Communist resolution, which exposed, according to Allende, how the conference was an instrument “for approving the anti-Communist resolution of Mr. Dulles.” As Allende presciently observed, American propaganda gave:

the impression that the mountains of [our] countries are infested with communists, that our coasts are full of communist ships, that the small country of Guatemala threatens the existence of the largest of the bourgeois countries. Like David and Goliath. But Guatemala does not have a sling. Its only sling is showing the road to follow for introducing progress and liberty into the nations of America.[29]

That was, however, certainly enough to make an enemy of America. After all, “introducing progress and liberty into the nations of America” is inimical to the interests of the United States, which sought to control and dominate the region and exploit its resources under the obedient command of local elites and with the ultimate pacification and submission of the “masses.”

Following the Caracas conference, as some State Department officials observed, “anti-U.S. sentiment runs quite high” in Chile, and that U.S. diplomats in the country were “striving to preserve such good-will as we still have.” U.S. officials, growing increasingly frustrated with the “anti-U.S. sentiment” in Chile, then began to hope that Ibañez would undertake an “anti-Communist campaign,” in order “to change the existing Chilean attitude that communism in Chile is a local phenomenon.” As U.S. Ambassador Beaulac noted, “The communists were Chileans… and it was difficult for the United States to compete with Chileans in Chile.” As the U.S. stepped up pressure against Guatemala in the lead-up to the coup, the “Friends of Guatemala” in Chile stepped up their own efforts against U.S. policy in the region, and proposed to hold a conference in Chile on the matter, focusing on three major agendas for deliberation:

(1) The self-determination of peoples, (2) the right of nations to dispose of their raw materials and autonomously to conduct their diplomatic and commercial relations, and (3) the internal democracy of countries, the full exercise of human rights, and the inviolability of individual guarantees.[30]

Naturally, this angered U.S. officials, who accused the Friends of Guatemala of attempting “to create pro-Guatemala propaganda,” and Assistant Secretary of State Holland stated: “I sincerely hope something will shock the Chileans out of their present posture of complete irresponsibility, political and economic.”[31] This goes again to the NSC-144 document which emphasized the need for America to “encourage” Latin American nations onto “responsible” modes of governance, politically and especially economically. Thus, supporting the “self-determination of peoples” is politically “irresponsible,” and worse yet, “the right of nations to dispose of their raw materials and autonomously to conduct their diplomatic and commercial relations,” is incredibly “irresponsible” for U.S. officials, who, as stated in NSC-144, were to “assist” Latin America in playing “a more vigorous and responsible role in economic development of the area.”[32] The Latin American countries were viewed by the United States as being akin to misbehaving children, and thus, they had to be properly disciplined and have their behaviour ‘corrected.’

The “shock” for Chile came with the coup in Guatemala, though not a ‘shock’ in the sense that U.S. officials had hoped. When the invasion of Guatemala began on June 17 with Colonel Castillo Armas and his CIA-backed army, mass protests erupted in Chile (and elsewhere in the continent), “often in front of the U.S. embassy,” and in Santiago’s city center, protesters burned a U.S. flag “amid the cheers of thousands of students.” A U.S. reporter took a photo of the flag burning which ended up in several U.S. newspapers, and the protests continued, even burning effigies of U.S. President Eisenhower. Ibañez’s Undersecretary of Defense told Ambassador Beaulac that Chilean students thought “that the United States is persecuting Guatemala.” Apparently, Chileans and other peoples in the region had no misunderstandings about who was responsible for the invasion and coup in Guatemala, as Chilean public opinion “continued to run high” in support of Guatemala and showed “accumulated pent up resentment against the United States,” as the American Embassy in Chile admitted.[33]

Chile’s Chamber of Deputies and Senate passed a resolution opposing U.S. policy and in support of Arbenz in Guatemala, and discussed the role of United Fruit in “supporting movements designed to overthrow a government which is not amenable to its interests.” Salvador Allende, Baltasar Castro, and others organized protests against the United States in cooperation with workers organizations, student groups, and radical political parties, of which American officials lamented that these men were “giving comfort to the communist cause.” As the U.S. Embassy in Chile cabled to Washington, the invasion of Guatemala “provided the communists with an issue – U.S. ‘aggression’ against the integrity of a duly constituted government, around which many in Latin America are quick to unite.”[34]

When the image of a U.S. flag being burned in Chilean protests showed up in American newspapers, the New York Times, in its usual animosity toward truth and justice, declared that Chilean Communism “comes the nearest to being a menace now,” while the New York Herald Tribune suddenly cited “recent reports of growing Communist strength in Chile.” Thus, the image of a U.S. flag being burned in protest against a violent action of state terror against an innocent country and its people who were only seeking liberty, autonomy, and justice, suddenly became represented in the American media as an act of “Communism” against American ‘democracy.’ The role of the aggressive superpower waging a brutal assault and “terror campaign” against an innocent country was removed from the dialogue, and it was presented as a “Democracy versus Communism” issue, with those who oppose U.S. terrorism being “Communists.” This negative image of Chile in the American media, however, urged several Chilean elites to quickly address the situation, and President Ibañez conducted an interview with NBC in which he stated that Communism was “a real menace in Latin America,” but Chileans would “defend inter-American principles,” and that, “Chilean public opinion is in no way represented by the provocations of certain uncontrolled groups.” In a meeting with Ambassador Beaulac, Ibañez declared, “I don’t know how much longer I am going [to] stand for this. I am going to do something but I don’t know yet what it is. You can be sure of one thing, however, and that is that Chile will not go Communist. I will cut off their heads when the time comes.” Thus, as Ibañez pursued constitutional “reforms” to give himself more power, American media and public officials responded negatively (fearing he was attempting to resort to his dictatorial origins), and they sought to discourage such moves. At the same time, the Friends of Guatemala were mobilizing their efforts, holding a conference in July of 1954 with delegates from Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Paraguay, at which, the U.S. Embassy later wrote, “oratory was uniformly and usually vehemently critical of the United States and the OAS.” U.S.-supported dictators in the region were also denounced, including Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Manuel Odria in Peru, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, and Tiburcio Carias in Honduras. More worrying, still, was that American corporations like Standard Oil, United Fruit, and Anaconda Copper were presented “as the present-day counterparts of the pirate marauders of yore.”[35]

The conference ended with the approval of five resolutions, the first of which rejected the Caracas anti-Communist resolution, “which give[s] the United States a presumed right of intervention in complicity with illegitimate Latin American governments [i.e., dictatorships] in the political and economic life of our peoples.” The second resolution was in recognizing “the inalienable right” of self-determination; third, they would fight against the pact which created the OAS; and fourth, to “fight against all forms of colonialism, especially on the American continent.” The fifth resolution was to express “sympathy for all underdeveloped nations” in the struggle for “self-determination and called on them ‘for common action in defense of this right’.”[36]

Frustrated with the “anti-U.S. sentiment” within Chile, Ambassador Beaulac increased his rhetorical assault on those who opposed U.S. policies, and speaking before the American Chamber of Commerce in Santiago, Beaulac lambasted those who are “quick to talk against the United States, as though the United States and not Russia… menaced freedom everywhere,” and divided these “anti-U.S.” elements into two groups: the “dupes,” who were “simple-minded people who know no better and who will never know any better,” and secondly, the “demagogues,” who were “ambitious men” seeking to advance “their own political fortunes.” The lesson of Guatemala, then, for Beaulac, was “for decent men [i.e., those who support U.S. policy] to work as hard to tell the truth [i.e., the American version of the truth].” As the Chilean press attacked Beaulac for “interference” in domestic affairs, the American media countered with suggesting that “responsible quarters” in Washington had been concerned that “Communists are gaining power in Chile.”[37]

As Chile was portrayed in a negative light by the American media, Chilean officials complained to U.S. State Department officials who replied that it was “normal for the American public, press, and Congressional opinion to interpret the many of these acts as indicative of a strong pro-Communist bias in Chile,” and that, “acts like burning of the American flag are bound to cause resentment in the American people,” and thus, “the public would draw its own conclusions.” The Eisenhower administration had grown increasingly frustrated with Chile, a country it had given the status of “a favored nation” to, and Ambassador Beaulac told a Chilean official that Chileans should not “try to make political capital at the expense of the United States,” as “Chile cannot gain the good will and cooperation [of] the Government of the United States by attacking it.”[38]

In surveys of Chilean public opinion conducted in 1955 and 1956, the United States Information Agency (USIA) discovered that Chileans had the least “favorable impression” of the United States, being “inclined to say that U.S. words do not agree with U.S. actions,” referring to the rhetoric of democracy versus the actions and support of tyranny.[39] Reports increasingly emerged within the United States that Chile was “the major source of anxiety for many weeks” in the U.S. State Department, with its Communist movement (relative to its population size), being “the largest and most alarming in Latin America.” In 1955, Ambassador Beaulac stated, following a visit to Washington, that “a number of highly placed people” in Washington felt that “communism in Chile constitutes a serious threat to the stability of the Chilean government.”[40]

Over the following years, Salvador Allende mobilized the Chilean left into a wide coalition of Socialists, workers, democratic parties, populists, and others, leading to Allende being the nomination for the presidential election of 1958. At a rally of more than sixty-five thousand supporters in 1958, Allende declared that, “The Department of State insists upon a policy that is odious and anti-popular… We demand the right to seek our own solutions and to follow the roads that best suit our habits and traditions.” His political rise coincided with that of Fidel Castro in Cuba, leading to intense frustrations and fears among State Department and other foreign policy officials in Washington. As one official stated, “our political interests will not permit us to stand by and watch Chile ‘go down the drain’.”[41]

Indeed, some years later, Salvador Allende rose to great political prominence in Chile, becoming the president in the early 1970s, and this set in motion one of Latin America’s most infamous American-led coups which established a dictatorship of infamous brutality. However, that story will be told later.

What the story of Guatemala in the 1950s underscored was the continuing relevance of the Monroe Doctrine, established by the United States in 1823, which declared Latin America to be the “backyard” of the United States, and thus, the U.S. would inevitably control the entire Western Hemisphere, which it would exploit for its own benefit and imperial expansion. Over 125 years after the Monroe Doctrine, the United States finally had the means to make it an established fact: America was the ultimate empire, and most especially, the only dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, no opposition – no matter how small or large – would or could be tolerated. This doctrine remained throughout the rest of the Cold War, and led to countless coups, dictatorships, “terror campaigns” and ruthless repression and mass murder on a monstrous scale. Perhaps more than anywhere else, the history of the United States in Latin America presents an image of America not as a “benevolent empire” as some American commentators have suggested, but as a truly brutal, dehumanizing, oppressive and transnational tyranny: a continental terror state. This, however, does not reinforce American perceptions of themselves or the role of their country in the world; thus, this history is – as George Orwell predicted it would be – thrown into the “memory hole.” In truth, it’s known little to those outside Latin America itself. The best way to gain a clear conception of the nature of a particular nation is to look at how it treats the most vulnerable. In the case of America, looking at Latin American history is a character study of the United States itself, from which one can only deduce that its ‘human’ characteristics more closely resemble a technocratic psychopath than a benevolent leader.

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project.

NOTE: This is an excerpt from a chapter in a current book-in-progress being funded through The People’s Book Project. The chapter is on the American Empire’s early implementation of its “Grand Area” designs in Latin America, as defined by the Council on Foreign Relations during World War II. The Project is currently in dire need of funding, so please donate if possible to allow progress on this book to continue.

Notes

[1]            NSC 144, United States General Policy With Respect to Latin America, Foreign Relations, 1952-1954, Volume IV, page 1.

[2]            Ibid, page 6.

[3]            Ibid, page 7.

[4]            Ibid.

[5]            Ibid, page 8.

[6]            Ibid, page 9.

[7]            Ibid, page 10.

[8]            Dennis M. Rempe, “An American Trojan Horse? Eisenhower, Latin America, and the Development of US Internal Security Policy 1954-1960,” Small Wars & Insurgencies (Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 1999), pages 35-36.

[9]            Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (Authors Choice Press, New York: 2004), page 195.

[10]            Ibid, pages 195-196.

[11]            Ibid, page 196.

[12]            Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh, CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents. The National Security Archives: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

[13]            Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Random House, New York: 2008), pages 112-113.

[14]            Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (Authors Choice Press, New York: 2004), page 197.

[15]            Ibid, page 198.

[16]            Ibid, pages 198-199.

[17]            Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998), pages 161-163.

[18]            Ibid, pages 167-168.

[19]            Ibid, page 170.

[20]            John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PR. PR Watch, Second Quarter 1999, Volume 6, No. 2: http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q2/bernays.html

[21]            Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998), page 176.

[22]            Mark T. Hove, “The Arbenz Factor: Salvador Allende, U.S.-Chilean Relations, and the 1954 U.S. Intervention in Guatemala,” Diplomatic History (Vol. 31, No. 4, September 2007), page 623.

[23]            Ibid, page 628.

[24]            Ibid, page 629.

[25]            NSC 144, United States General Policy With Respect to Latin America, Foreign Relations, 1952-1954, Volume IV, page 7.

[26]            Mark T. Hove, “The Arbenz Factor: Salvador Allende, U.S.-Chilean Relations, and the 1954 U.S. Intervention in Guatemala,” Diplomatic History (Vol. 31, No. 4, September 2007), pages 629-630.

[27]            Ibid, pages 630-631.

[28]            Ibid, pages 631-633.

[29]            Ibid, pages 633-634.

[30]            Ibid, pages 635-636.

[31]            Ibid, page 636.

[32]            NSC 144, United States General Policy With Respect to Latin America, Foreign Relations, 1952-1954, Volume IV, page 8.

[33]            Mark T. Hove, “The Arbenz Factor: Salvador Allende, U.S.-Chilean Relations, and the 1954 U.S. Intervention in Guatemala,” Diplomatic History (Vol. 31, No. 4, September 2007), pages 636-639.

[34]            Ibid.

[35]            Ibid, pages 639-642.

[36]            Ibid, pages 642-643.

[37]            Ibid, pages 643-646.

[38]            Ibid, pages 646-648.

[39]            Ibid, page 654.

[40]            Ibid, page 655.

[41]            Ibid, pages 658-661.

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The process of establishing an American Empire during and after World War II was not – as has been postulated (by those who even admit there is such a thing as an ‘American Empire’) – an ‘accident’ of history, something America seemingly stumbled into as a result of its unhindered economic growth and military-political position as arbiter of world peace and prosperity. A vast literature has developed in the academic realm and policy circles – particularly within Political Science and the think tank community, respectively – which postulates a notion of ‘American empire’ or ‘American hegemony’ as accidental, incidental, benevolent, reluctant, and desirable.

Robert Kagan is a prominent American neoconservative historian. He is a Senior Fellow at the prestigious think tank, the Brookings Institution, was a founder of the neoconservative think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), formerly worked at the State Department in the Reagan administration under Secretary of State, George Shultz, and served for over a decade as a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and is, of course, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Kagan has written a great deal on the notion of American hegemony. As he wrote in the journal, Foreign Policy, in 1998, “the truth about America’s dominant role in the world is known to most clear-eyed international observers.” This truth, according to Kagan, “is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is good for a vast portion of the world’s population.” Samuel Huntington, another Council member and prominent American strategist, wrote that, “A world without U.S. primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to have more influence than any other country shaping global affairs.”[1] This “Benevolent Empire” – as Kagan titles his article – rests on such fundamental ideas as the notion “that American freedom depends on the survival and spread of freedom elsewhere,” and that, “American prosperity cannot occur in the absence of global prosperity.” For half a century, Kagan wrote, Americans “have been guided by the kind of enlightened self-interest that, in practice, comes dangerously close to resembling generosity.”[2]

Sebastian Mallaby, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, former Editorial Board Member and columnist at the Washington Post as well as correspondent and bureau chief for The Economist, wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs, that “empire’s are not always planned,” referring to America as “The Reluctant Imperialist.”[3] Lawrence Summers, another prominent economist, politician, and policy-maker for the Clinton and Obama administrations, referred to America as “history’s only nonimperialist superpower.”[4] Niall Ferguson, a prominent British liberal economic historian, has written extensively on the open acknowledgement of “American Empire,” but stipulates, as he did in his book Colossus, “that the United States is an empire and that this might not be wholly bad.” Referring to America as an “Unconscious Colossus,” Ferguson stressed that, “a self-conscious American imperialism might well be preferable to the available alternatives.”[5] Ferguson in fact stresses the need for Americans to “recognize the imperial characteristics of their own power today [writing in 2005] and, if possible, to learn from the achievements and failures of past empires.” This, Ferguson felt, would reduce the so-called “perils” of being an “empire in denial.”[6]

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., famed American liberal historian and adviser to President Kennedy, wrote that the United States enjoys “an informal empire – military bases, status-of-forces agreements, trade concessions, multinational corporations, cultural penetrations, and other favors,” yet, contends Schlesinger, “these are marginal to the subject of direct control,” and instead, “far from ruling an empire in the old sense,” America “has become the virtual prisoner of its client states.”[7] Some other commentators referred to America as a “virtual” or even “inadvertent” imperial power.[8]

The notion of America as a “reluctant imperialist” or a “benevolent empire” is not a new one. This has been the mainstay within the academic literature and policy-planning circles to both advocate for and justify the existence of American domination of the world. The concept of the reluctant, yet benevolent great power presents an image of a dutiful personage coming to the aid of those in need, following the responsibility which is derived from great power; that America’s rise to economic prominence – also seen as the product of free and democratic initiative and ideals (thus negating America’s long history of being a slave state and subsequently a brutal industrial society) – was the precursor to America being thrown the title of ‘global power,’ and with that title bestowed upon it – like a child-king still unsure of his own abilities to rule – took up the activities of a global power with a desire to bring the rest of the world the same altruistic truths and enlightened ideals which made America flourish so; that America’s gift to the world was to spread freedom and democracy, in the economic, political, and social spheres. This myth has been a constant foundation for the advocacy and justification of empire. Its importance rests most especially on the ideals and global public opinion which prevailed as the great European empires waned and ultimately collapsed through two World Wars.

The colonized peoples of the world had had enough of empire, had suffered so immeasurably and consistently under its tutelage, that the concept of empire was so discredited in the eyes of the world’s majority as to be incapable of justifying in the formal imperial-colonial sense. At home, America’s domestic political situation and public opinion had been largely isolationist, seeking to refrain from an expansive foreign policy, leading many American presidents and strategists to bemoan the struggle for empire beyond the continent on the reluctance of the American people and Congress to pursue aggressive expansionism (save for the expansion across the continent, wiping out Native American populations for American Lebensraum and the slow, increasing expression of trans-sovereign rights in Latin America, long considered “America’s backyard”).

World War II, then, presented a new opportunity, and a new challenge for America in the world. The opportunity was to become the worlds most powerful empire history had ever witnessed; the challenge, then, was to justify it in explicitly anti-imperial rhetoric. America, thus, was not a reluctant or accidental empire, nor, for that matter, a benevolent one. America was chosen to be an empire; it was strategised, discussed, debated, planned and implemented. The key architects of this empire were the bankers and corporations which arose out of America’s Industrial Revolution in the late 19^th century, the philanthropic foundations they established in the early 20^th century, the prominent think tanks created throughout the first half of the 20^th century, and the major academics, strategists and policy-makers who emerged from the foundation-funded universities, institutes, think tanks, and the business community, and who dominated the corridors of power in the planning circles that made policy.

No sooner had World War II begun than American strategists began calling for a new global American empire. Henry R. Luce, a Yale graduate and founder of Time Magazine, Life, and Fortune, was among America’s most influential publishers in the first half of the 20^th century. A strong supporter of the Republican Party and virulent anti-Communist, Luce was also a staunch advocate of fascism in Europe – notably Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany – as a means of preventing the spread of Communism. In 1941, Luce wrote a famous article in Life entitled, “The American Century,” in which he stated that, “the 20^th Century must be to a significant degree an American Century.” Luce wrote that America has “that indefinable, unmistakable sign of leadership: prestige.” As such, unlike past empires like Rome, Genghis Khan, or Imperial Britain, “American prestige throughout the world is faith in the good intentions as well as the ultimate intelligence and ultimate strength of the whole American people.”[9] Luce felt that the “abundant life” of America should be made available “for all mankind,” as soon as mankind embraces “America’s vision.” Luce wrote:

It must be a sharing with all peoples of our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our magnificent industrial products, our technical skills. It must be an internationalism of the people, by the people and for the people… We must undertake now to be the Good Samaritan of the entire world.[10]

While Luce was perhaps the first theorist to posit the specific concept of “the American Century,” the actual work done to create this century (or at least the latter half of it) for America was chiefly initiated by the Council on Foreign Relations, and the prominent strategist Dean Acheson, among others. As Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Dean Acheson delivered a speech at Yale entitled, “An American Attitude Toward Foreign Affairs,” in which he articulated a vision of America in the near future, and as he later recalled, it was at the time of delivering this speech that Acheson began “work on a new postwar world system.” Acheson declared in his speech that, “Our vital interests… do not permit us to be indifferent to the outcome” of the wars erupting in Europe and Asia. The causes of the war, according to Acheson, were in “the failure of some mechanisms of the Nineteenth Century world economy,” which resulted in “this break-up of the world into exclusive areas for armed exploitation administered along oriental lines.” Recreating a world peace, posited Acheson, would require “a broader market for goods made under decent standards,” as well as “a stable international monetary system” and the removal of “exclusive preferential trade agreements.” Essentially, it was an advocacy for a global liberal economic order as the means to world peace, and without a hint of irony, Acheson then called for the immediate establishment of “a navy and air force adequate to secure us in both oceans simultaneously and with striking power sufficient to reach to the other side of each of them.”[11] Dean Acheson was also closely involved in the Council on Foreign Relations’ plans for the shaping of the post-War world order.

The Council on Foreign Relations and the ‘Grand Area’

Before America had even entered the war in late 1941, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was planning for America’s assumed entry into the war. The CFR effectively undertook a policy coup d’état over American foreign policy with the Second World War. When war broke out, the Council began a “strictly confidential” project called the War and Peace Studies, in which top CFR members collaborated with the US State Department in determining US policy, and the project was entirely financed by the Rockefeller Foundation.[12] The War and Peace Studies project had come up with a number of initiatives for the post-War world. One of the most important objectives it laid out was the identification of what areas of the world America would need to control in order to facilitate strong economic growth. This came to be known as the “Grand Area,” and it included:

Latin America, Europe, the colonies of the British Empire, and all of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia was necessary as a source of raw materials for Great Britain and Japan and as a consumer of Japanese products. The American national interest was then defined in terms of the integration and defense of the Grand Area, which led to plans for the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank and eventually to the decision to defend Vietnam from a Communist takeover at all costs.[13]

In 1940, the Council on Foreign Relations also began a wide-ranging study of the war-time economic needs of the United States (prior to U.S. entry into the war), called the Financial and Economic Experts, which divided the world into four main blocs: continental Europe (which was dominated by Germany at the time), the U.S. –Western hemisphere, the United Kingdom and its colonial and commonwealth nations, and the Far-East-Pacific Area, including Japan, China, and the Dutch East Indies. The study compiled a list of each region’s main imports and exports. Upon completion of the study in the fall of 1940, the Council sent its conclusions and policy recommendations to President Roosevelt and the State Department. The conclusions stated that the United States needed larger export markets for its products, and specifically that the U.S. needed “living space” (or as the Nazi German state referred to it, Lebensraum) throughout the Western hemisphere and beyond, as well as trade and “economic integration” with the Far East and the British Empire/Commonwealth blocs. The report stated bluntly, “as a minimum, the American ‘national interests’ involved the free access to markets and raw materials in the British Empire, the Far East, and the entire Western hemisphere.”[14]

This was the foundation for the Grand Area designs of the Council in the post-War world. The Grand Area project emphasized that for America to manage the “Grand Areas” of the world, multilateral organizations would be needed to help facilitate “appropriate measures in the fields of trade, investment, and monetary arrangements.” The study further emphasized the need to maintain “military supremacy” in order to help facilitate control of these areas. As the Council’s 1940 report to the U.S. State Department stated: “The foremost requirement of the United States in a world in which it proposes to hold unquestioned power is the rapid fulfillment of a program of complete re-armament,” which would “involve increased military expenditures and other risks.”[15]

While the Grand Area project was made and designed for the United States during World War II, it included plans for the post-War world, and included continental Europe in its designs following the assumed defeat of Germany. Thus, as economist Ismael Hossein-Zadeh wrote, “making the Grand Area global.” The idea behind the “Grand Area” was “even more grandiose – one world economy dominated by the United States,” and the study itself suggested that the Grand Area “would then be an organized nucleus for building an integrated world economy after the war.”[16] As Shoup and Minter wrote in their study of the Council, Imperial Brain Trust, “the United States had to enter the war and organize a new world order satisfactory to the United States.”[17] Benevolent, indeed.

Following Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into the War, the Council concluded as early as 1941 that the defeat of the Axis powers was simply a matter of time. As such, they were advancing their plans for the post-War world, expanding the Grand Area to:

include the entire globe. A new world order with international political and economic institutions was projected, which would join and integrate all of the earth’s nations under the leadership of the United States. The Unification of the whole world was now the aim of the Council [on Foreign Relations] and government planners.[18]

As a part of this planning process, the U.S. Department of State formed the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy in late December of 1941, of which the first document that was produced, “stressed the danger of another world depression and the need to provide confidence in world economic stability.” Thus, “the United States had to be involved with the internal affairs of the key industrial and raw materials-producing countries.” A key question in this was, as one postwar planner articulated, “how to create purchasing power outside of our country which would be converted into domestic purchasing power through exportation.” The idea was about “devising appropriate institutions” which would fulfill this role, ultimately resting with the formation of the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (later known as the World Bank). The postwar planners had to continually construct an idea of an international order, directed by the United States, which would not so easily resemble the formal colonial period or its methods of exerting hegemony.[19]

Recommendations of the Council suggested that such new international financial institutions were necessary in terms of “stabilizing currencies and facilitating programs of capital investment for constructive undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions.” These plans included for the establishment of an International Reconstruction Finance Corporations and an “international investment agency which would stimulate world trade and prosperity by facilitating investment in development programs the world over.” These plans were drafted in recommendations and given to President Roosevelt and the Department of State.[20]

One Council member suggested that, “It might be wise to set up two financial institutions: one an international exchange stabilization board and one an international bank to handle short-term transactions not directly concerned with stabilization.” Thus, the Council drafted in 1941 and 1942 plans that would result in the formation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which formally emerged from the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, an event that is commonly acknowledged as the “birthplace” of the World Bank and IMF, thus ignoring their ideological origins at the Council on Foreign Relations two-to-three years prior. The internal department committees established in the Department of State and Treasury were well represented by Council members who drew up the final plans for the creation of these two major institutions.[21]

Whereas the League of Nations had been a major objective of the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Corporation-funded Council on Foreign Relations following World War I, so too was the United Nations near the end of World War II. A steering committee consisting of U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and five Council on Foreign Relations members was formed in 1943. One of the Council members, Isaiah Bowman,

suggested a way to solve the problem of maintaining effective control over weaker territories while avoiding overt imperial conquest. At a Council [on Foreign Relations] meeting in May 1942, he stated that the United States had to exercise the strength needed to assure “security,” and at the same time “avoid conventional forms of imperialism.” The way to do this, he argued, was to make the exercise of that power international in character through a United Nations body.[22]

The “secret steering committee,” later called the Informal Agenda Group, undertook a series of consultations and meetings with foreign governments which would be essential in creating the new institution, including the Soviet Union, Canada, and Britain, and the Charter of the United Nations was subsequently decided upon with the consent of President Roosevelt in June 1944.[23] The Informal Agenda Group was made up of six individuals, including Secretary of State Cordell Hull. All of them, with the exception of Hull, were Council members. President Roosevelt had referred to them as “my postwar advisers,” and aside from formal policy recommendations, they “served as advisers to the Secretary of State and the President on the final decisions.” By December 1943, a new member was added to the Group, Under Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., who was not only a Council member, but was also a former top executive at United States Steel and was the son of a partner in the J.P. Morgan Bank. After the Group had drafted the recommendations for a United Nations body, Secretary Hull had asked three lawyers to rule on its constitutionality. The three lawyers he chose were Charles Evan Hughes, John W. Davis, and Nathan L. Miller. Both Hughes and Davis were Council members, and John Davis was even a former President of the Council and remained as a Director.[24] John D. Rockefeller Jr. subsequently gifted the United Nations with $8.5 million in order to buy the land for its headquarters in New York City.[25]

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project.

NOTE: This was but a small sample from the chapter on the origins of the American Empire in the post-World War II world. The very same chapter includes the internal policy discussions relating to the formation of the Cold War, the establishment of the National Security State, and the advancement of policy programs aimed at securing the “Grand Areas” for American dominance around the world. The chapter also studies the emergence of the Marshall Plan, NATO, European integration, the Bilderberg Group, and a number of other institutions and ideas related to establishing and expanding a ‘New World Order.’

Endnotes

[1]            Robert Kagan, “The Benevolent Empire,” Foreign Policy (No. 111, Summer 1998), page 26.

[2]            Ibid, page 28.

[3]            Sebastian Mallaby, “The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, and the Case for American Empire,” Foreign Affairs (Vol. 81, No. 2, March-April 2002), page 6.

[4]            Ibid, page 2.

[5]            Niall Ferguson, “The Unconscious Colossus: Limits of (& Alternatives to) American Empire,” Daedalus (Vol. 134, No. 2, On Imperialism, Spring 2005), page 21.

[6]            Ibid, pages 21-22.

[7]            Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “The American Empire? Not so Fast,” World Policy Journal (Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2005), page 45.

[8]            Michael Cox, “Empire by Denial: The Strange Case of the United States,” International Affairs (Vol. 81, No. 1, January 2005), page 18.

[9]            Geir Lundestad, “‘Empire by Invitation’ in the American Century,” Diplomatic History (Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring 1999), page 189.

[10]            Bruce Cumings, “The American Century and the Third World,” Diplomatic History (Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring 1999), page 356.

[11]            Ibid, pages 358-359.

[12]            CFR, War and Peace. CFR History: http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/war_peace.html

[13]            Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), page 74.

[14]            Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pages 43-45.

[15]            Ibid, page 45.

[16]            Ibid, page 46.

[17]            Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (Authors Choice Press, New York: 2004), page 118.

[18]            Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), page 48.

[19]            Ibid, pages 49-51.

[20]            Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (Authors Choice Press, New York: 2004), pages 166-167.

[21]            Ibid, pages 168-169.

[22]            Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), page 159.

[23]            Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), page 51.

[24]            Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (Authors Choice Press, New York: 2004), pages 169-171.

[25]            Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), page 160.

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Several years ago, after American International Group (AIG) threatened some powerful players in the financial world with deserved extinction, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury extended massive financial aid to American International Group in 2008.  This assistance didn’t just keep AIG afloat – it helped AIG make good on insurance and other financial promises it extended to large banks and other parties in financial markets.  Some of AIG’s largest counterparties were actually based in Europe.  In effect, the American Taxpayer was standing behind American International Group.

Some of AIG’s largest exposures arose due to a financial instrument called a credit default swap.  These instruments allow one party (the ‘protection buyer’) to hedge themselves, or otherwise bet against, any financial difficulty for another party (the ‘reference entity’) by effectively paying a form of insurance premium to a third party (the ‘protection seller’).   AIG wrote massive amounts of protection against default on a wide range of instruments exposed to the housing crisis in the U.S., including huge pools of mortgage-backed securities and other derivatives.  When AIG couldn’t make good on its own promises backing these instruments, our central planners stepped in and saved the company and its counterparties.  That’s one reason we as taxpayers own a large majority stake in AIG today, a position on which we still have significant losses (to the tune of billions of dollars).

Credit default swaps and other forms of credit protection can be purchased on a wide range of financial exposures, including sovereign debt.   As the European crisis flared anew in recent months, the cost of buying protection against sovereign default has risen markedly.   A popular index of swaps on 15 Western European governments hit a record high of 385 on November 25^th, and remains near that record level.  This indicates that the cost of protecting against a default on Western European government debt has risen markedly, as it has become more probable.

But who is selling this protection?  How valid are their promises to make good on default insurance, if an event of default actually arises?

Assume, for the moment, that after the financial crisis of 2007-2009, large players in the financial system were increasingly ambitious in selling protection like this.  Getting some cash in the door in a difficult period can promote the willingness to assume this large ‘tail risk,’ but other factors may also have been at work.  After the AIG and related bailouts, some of the largest players in the market may have seen this as a relatively riskless way to get money in the door.   Given that the events sparking the need to pay out on the protection would also likely threaten the largest banks and other financial market participants, there may be an incentive for governments to stand behind the ‘protection sellers’ and make good on their promises with taxpayer dollars, a la AIG.

There may be safeguards against abuses like this, but history shows that laws can change in a heartbeat if the powers that be see fit during a crisis.

Capitalism at work?  Far from it.  Moral hazard facing the many, to the benefit of the few.

# # # #Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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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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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.

But who are these few, and what are their plans for our country and the world? Where are we headed and most of all, what principles are guiding what increasingly resembles an international governmental, financial and geopolitical shipwreck brought on by years of Laissez-faire fiscal abuse, corporate greed and political delusion?

Our personal understanding of the present dilemma starts with another shipwreck, this one off the coast of Ireland in the year 1577. That was the year a notorious English pirate and slave trader named Martin Frobisher smashed a schooner filled with what was thought to be gold bullion onto the isolated, rocky, western coast of Ireland at a place known as Smerwick. According to one account, Frobisher’s mission was intended to find the fabled Northwest Passage to China as part of a “Protestant adventure that would rival the Catholic quest as well as enrich the queen’s [Elizabeth I] treasury.” The “gold”—which was soon revealed to be nothing more than iron pyrites (fools gold)—spilled from the broken ship’s hull, littering the base of the cliffs.

An Irish rebel-captain by the name of James Fitzmaurice raised a fort at the summit of the cliffs and named it Fort Del Oro, (Fort of Gold) to mock Queen Elizabeth’s greed and her vain quest to challenge Rome for wealth and power. Fitzmaurice’s family, the Fitzgeralds had been in conflict with London over land and authority since initiating the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the twelfth century at the behest of their lord, Richard de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke.

Chafing under the rule of King Henry II of England, Strongbow pictured himself as the King of Ireland and his marriage to the daughter of Irish King Dermot MacMurrough was intended to seal the agreement. But fate and the driving ambitions of Henry II soon scuttled the plan and upon Strongbow’s death a short time later, the equally ambitious Fitzgeralds assumed his mission.  

Known for their loyalty to a Catholic Rome, their embrace of Ireland’s Celtic culture and their fierce desire to establish their control over Ireland, the next four hundred years found the family drawn deeply into English as well as European politics with numerous Geraldines (the family name) interned in the Tower of London. The coming of the Reformation to England in the 16^th century turned four hundred years of border disputes and jurisdictional feuding into holy war. And in 1580, the Holy See in Rome sent an army of Italians and Spaniards to help the Geraldines under the authority drafted by the “Just War Doctrine,”to help in the fight against Queen Elizabeth’s Protestant forces.

Dubbed by author Richard Berleth as the “Twilight Lords” for their role as the last doomed, feudal barons of Ireland, the Fitzgeralds and their struggle to fight off the Elizabethans and the Renaissance Neoplatonism of men such as Edmund Spencer and Walter Raleigh offers a glimpse into more than just another stale moment in history. It offers a revelation into a secret esoteric struggle between the spiritual forces of London, Rome, Moscow, Washington and Berlin that exploded openly into war numerous times during the 20^th century and whose ominous final confrontation looms over today’s geopolitical arena like a sword of Damocles.

Allegorized by the Elizabethans as evil and representative of the darkness in Spencer’s Faerie Queene, the Fitzgeralds came to embody the “Other” in the English propaganda of the day, while Elizabeth as both the Faerie Queene and Britomart and her knights embodied only the most chaste and blessed in the tradition of the Arthurian Round Table.

Far from being only a war over ecclesiastical principles, this “holy war” fought between the Catholic Geraldines and their Protestant others was also a war against economic domination and colonization from London. From London’s perspective, the war was a just war because it was a struggle to the death against the Papal forces of the Counter Reformation, which were encircling it militarily and economically and rolling back Protestant reforms. In the end, the war depopulated the Irish countryside, shifted the balance of power from local landowners to mercantilists in London and instilled a lasting fear and anger between Protestants and Catholics. As an experiment in colonization, Ireland set the standards of behavior that marked the beginnings of Britain’s empire that live on as much today in the neighborhoods of Kabul, Kandahar and Peshawar as they do in Derry and Belfast. But it also marked a turning point in the Holy Roman Empire’s ability to control events through military force and a shift from the ecclesiastically sanctioned violence of “just war” to the secular/state sanctioned violence of “just war.”

When in 1980 Colin Gray and Keith Payne attempted to stretch that concept of just war to justify nuclear war-fighting by transforming immorality into morality, it came as a cruel awakening to us that despite the gulf of four hundred years little had changed in the need to bend reality to justify war.

But in the thirty years since, the savage carnival of endless war with its attendant think tanks and lobbyists has only made the darkness blacker. In fact, the spiritual inspiration that propels today’s Washington/London/Berlin/Paris alliance and its so called humanitarian interventions could be considered nothing less than diabolic in which – as stated in the opening chapter to this series – America has turned from the light into its very opposite as it seeks to emulate “the dark matter… the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen.”

In battling the Elizabethans, the Fitzgeralds exhausted the very idea of Just War by plunging themselves and their hopeless cause into darkness. We can only hope as the U.S. continues to wander through the many facets of darkness contained within this House of Mirrors that someday soon, it will heed the lessons of history and find its way back to the clarity and sanity of the light.

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Originally inspired in part by the “Arab Spring,” this movement has drawn strength from popular anger against economic conditions, and more fundamentally, concern that the playing field is stacked against the little guy.  Like the Tea Party before it, the early success has attracted powerful special interest groups hoping to capitalize.  Time will tell if corrupting forces like this end up undermining the Occupy impact.

Here is a question for anyone trying to grapple with the fundamental roots of the movement — are they after capitalism, per se, or crony capitalism specifically?  Certainly, special interest groups like unions as well as bona fide socialists are trying to inculcate themselves in the movement, and exercise their vocal cords to latch onto the underlying concerns.  “Jobs, not Profits,” read some of the signs.  “No More Corporate Money in Politics,” read some of the others.  It is hard to see many signs yet saying things like “No More Union Money in Politics,” or “Union Money Married Wall Street Money to Elect Obama, and Lead the Bailouts.”

From those on the right, there has been a mixed, largely scornful reaction.   You hear things like “they need to take a bath, and look for a job.”  But there have been some more thoughtful communications too.  Recently, asked about his take on the movement, Rep. Ron Paul (TX) summarized “I think it’s a very healthy movement.”  Paul identified common concerns he and others concerned about the responsibility of government, not just “capitalism,” had for our current economic state of affairs.

Yesterday’s Occupiers – the “Bonus Army”

Today’s “Occupy” movement has some very interesting historical precedent.   Back in 1932, as the early stages of the Great Depression gathered steam, industrial production fell dramatically while joblessness soared.   A group of jobless, hungry World War I veterans calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force (shortened to the Bonus Army) organized themselves and their families, and developed a demand that the government accelerate a bonus payment they had been promised, but not to be paid until 1945.

Then, they marched on Washington.   Over 40,000 people camped out near the U.S. Capitol, pitched tents, and didn’t leave.  During the day, they would mass in front of the capitol, and occupied much of the space on the stairs going up to the doors.

How did D.C. respond?  They didn’t have pepper spray back then, but they did have tear gas, as well as other tools.

A sympathetic superintendent of police and war veteran, Pelham Glassford, actually tried to maintain a supportive environment for awhile.  But as legislative efforts to accommodate their demands stalled, and as the Bonus Army continued to occupy the area, they wore out their welcome.  Troops, not police, would end up dealing with this situation. 

When the boiling point was reached, the U.S. Secretary of War directed the D.C. police to evacuate some buildings that had been occupied.  The police became the object of sticks, bricks, and other objects of affections.   Glassford’s superiors appealed to President Herbert Hoover to call out the troops.

An assault led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur (assisted by other famous military leaders like then-Major Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton) ensued, with troops supplied with machine guns, tear gas, and bayonets.  In a mid-crisis incident, Gen. MacArthur, foreshadowing later behavior, apparently ignored higher civilian authority calling for restraint.  The assault ended up leaving over 100 casualties, including deaths, including deaths for babies.  After the Bonus Army was forced out, the real Army leveled and set fire to the camp.   The Bonus Army dissipated, joining millions of other less-well organized citizens ‘on the road’ in the Great Depression.

Today’s Occupy movement isn’t the only recent development that has historical precedent from the Great Depression.  In light of the government’s response to the Bonus Army, recent claims that the “US is a battlefield,” and the debate over efforts to assert a military role in jailing suspects of terrorism on U.S. soil, including U.S. citizens – well, history never repeats itself exactly, but it rhymes, the saying goes.

Will Winter Chill Our Own “Arab Spring?”

Today, as temperatures fall ahead of the winter months in much of the nation, so too are many of the Occupy crowds.  Some are dismissive of the movement’s staying power in general, citing in part the upcoming winter.  But there are other places to Occupy.   They didn’t have the Internet back in the Great Depression, and the social media presence for the Occupy movement has been growing robustly in recent weeks.

We are going to continue to keep an eye on the Occupy movement, and how people are reacting to it, in the months ahead.

# # # #Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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When the Vietnam War became history, and the protest signs and the bullhorns were put away, so too was the serious side of most protestors’ alienation and hostility toward the government. They returned, with minimal resistance, to the restless pursuit of success, and the belief that the choice facing the world was either “capitalist democracy” or “communist dictatorship”. The war had been an aberration, was the implicit verdict, a blemish on an otherwise humane American record. The fear felt by the powers-that-be that society’s fabric was unraveling and that the Republic was hanging by a thread turned out to be little more than media hype; it had been great copy.

I mention this to explain why I’ve been reluctant to jump with both feet on the Occupy bandwagon. I first thought that if nothing else the approaching winter would do them in; if not, it would be the demands of their lives — they have to make some money at some point, attend classes somewhere, lovers and friends and family they have to cater to somewhere; lately I’ve been thinking it’s the police that will do them in, writing finis to their marvelous movement adventure — if you hold the system up to a mirror the system can go crazy.

But now I don’t know. Those young people, and the old ones as well, keep surprising me, with their dedication and energy, their camaraderie and courage, their optimism and innovation, their non-violence and their keen awareness of the danger of being co-opted their focusing on the economic institutions more than on the politicians or political parties. There is also their splendid signs and slogans, walking from New York to Washington, and not falling apart following the despicable police destruction of the Occupy Wall Street encampment. They’ve given a million young people other ideas about how to spend the rest of their lives, and commandeered a remarkable amount of media space. The Washington Post on several occasions has devoted full page or near-full page sympathetic coverage. Occupy is being taken increasingly seriously by virtually all media.

Yet, the 1960s and 70s were also a marvelous movement adventure — for me as much as for anyone — but nothing actually changed in US foreign policy as a result of our endless protests, many of which were also innovative. American imperialism has continued to add to its brutal record right up to this very moment. We can’t even claim Vietnam as a victory. Most people believe that the US lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, by poisoning the earth, the water, the air, and the gene pool for generations, Washington in fact achieved its primary purpose: preventing the rise of what might have been a good development option for Asia, an alternative to the capitalist model.

It has greatly helped Occupy’s growth and survival that they have seldom mentioned foreign policy. That’s much more sensitive ground than corporate abuse. Foreign policy gets into flag-waving, “our brave boys” risking their lives, American exceptionalism, nationalism, patriotism, loyalty, treason, terrorism, “anti-American”, “conspiracy theorist” … all those emotional icons that mainstream America uses to separate a Good American from one who ain’t really one of us.

Foreign policy cannot be ignored permanently of course, if for no other reason than that the nation’s wealth that’s wasted on war could be used to pay for anything Occupy calls for … or anything anyone calls for.

The education which Occupy has caused to be thrust upon the citizenry — about corporate abuse and criminality, political corruption, inequality, poverty, etc., virtually all unprosecuted — would be highly significant if America were a democracy. But as it is, more and more people can learn more and more about these matters, and get more and more angry, but have nowhere to turn to, to effectuate meaningful change. Money must be removed from the political process. Completely. It is my favorite Latin expression: sine qua non — “without which, nothing”.

William Blum is an American, historian, and critic of United States foreign policy.He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military & CIA Interventions Since World War II. He has described his life’s mission as: “If not ending, at least slowing down the American Empire. At least injuring the beast. It’s causing so much suffering around the world.“Mr. Blum can be reached through his website http://killinghope.org.

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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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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 right” 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.

These former government insiders and harsh critics of détente believed that the constraints on nuclear war fighting posed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty (ABM) and the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks I and II (SALT), were predicated on a false assumption that nuclear weapons were too horrible to ever be used again. Neoconservative defense intellectuals viewed this restraint as a form of suicide and vowed to break free of it utilizing some pre-enlightenment thinking that challenged the very nature of modern reality.

The ideological cold war against Communism had never relied on facts. No one on the left or right could predict with any certainty where or when a nuclear war would stop if one ever broke out. Regardless of the kind or size of nuclear weapons used, with the enemy leadership decapitated and communications destroyed, there’d be no one left who could stop it. That’s what made nuclear war irrational. Anti-Communism was a matter of faith in which the political right and the political left shared the same goals but differed only in tactics. But the political right’s accommodation of the political left was never more than an elaborate game of deception played in a house of mirrors. In fact, according to the CIA’s own documents, “the theoretical foundation of the Agency’s political operations against Communism” for the first twenty years of the Cold War relied completely on the manipulation and control of the so called progressive, liberal, non-Communist left.

Blamed by the neoconservative right for the failure in Vietnam and the relative decline in America’s nuclear posture, this faux left’s legitimacy as a valid political factor in American politics began to crumble. With the left’s policy of nuclear restraint now dismissed as irrational what possible justification could be found to wage a nuclear war in which tens of millions of innocent Russians and Americans as well as millions of others would be killed? 

By the late 1970s, those obscure strategic analysts who had formulated America’s nuclear policies had attained the status of religious figures. With their wisdom “worshipped as gospel truth,” and their insight raised to “an almost mystical level and accepted as dogma” the high priests of the new right stood ready to displace not only the left but traditional conservatives as well. By the summer of 1980 (6 months after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan)  two of those high priests were willing to take the dogma one step further by reinterpreting the Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church to justify what reality, reason and common sense had forbad the U.S. from doing since the final days of World War II. 

“Ironically, it is commonplace to assert that war-survival theories affront the crucial test of political and moral acceptability” wrote Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne that summer. “Surely no one can be comfortable with the claim that a strategy that would kill tens of millions of U.S. citizens would be politically and morally acceptable. However it is worth recalling the six guidelines for the use of force provided by the “just war” doctrine of the Catholic Church…”

Carefully sidestepping the principle that war can only be “just” when used as a last resort and that targeting innocents is strictly forbidden, Gray and Payne would go on to claim that based on the most ancient rules of the game, not only did U.S. policy of nuclear deterrence toward the Soviet Union (MAD) fail to qualify for “just war,” but that in failing to plan to actually fight a nuclear war, “U.S. nuclear strategy is immoral.”

In other words, since neoconservative hawks could not use a rational scientific process to achieve victory through nuclear weapons or to find hard evidence to support their claims that the Soviets assumed they could achieve victory through theirs, they devised a new process that simply viewed the empirical evidence as a lie and whatever they could imagine as truth, based on precepts evolved by medieval monks.

The idea of justly killing one’s fellow humans had presented a moral dilemma since the origins of Christianity. St Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) originated the Just War theory which was later refined and expanded by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). But murdering in the name of Christ was tricky business and subject to self-serving and often conflicting interpretations. Far from the romantic notions of chivalry presented by today’s popular mythology, medieval knights were viewed by the Catholic Church at the time as lawless thugs engaged in an illicit business whose behavior was clearly “unjust.” The idea that a monk would engage in the plunder and murder of innocents, much less warfare that would bring about widespread death and destruction was anathema to church teaching.

The powerful Cistercian abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux weighed in with a different opinion in his famous twelfth-century treatise De Laude Novae Militiae (In Praise of the new Knighthood) by redefining the very nature of murder itself in support of his friend Hugues de Payens, Grand Master of the warrior monks known as the Knights Templar.

 “The soldier of Christ kills safely and dies the more safely… He is the instrument of God for the punishment of malefactors and for the defense of the just. Indeed, when he kills a malefactor this is not homicide but malicide, and he is accounted Christ’s legal executioner against evildoers.”

Like Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne’s “Victory is Possible,” Clairvaux’s treatise was propaganda intended to bend the rules for the uses of acceptable violence. It opened the floodgates of recruits for the Crusades, established the legal authority of powerful, wealthy Catholic military orders and put the power of the feudal machine under Church control, at least temporarily. 

Following the publication of Gray and Payne’s 1980 treatise we became drawn to the history of just war. After three years working as the host of a public affairs program for an affiliate of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network in Boston (remember the Fairness Doctrine?) we bore witness to an aggressive underground rightwing/Christian political movement merging into the American mainstream. Some basic assumptions about America’s secular democracy and defense policy were being challenged on the basis of faith, not facts. But the idea that some medieval religious precepts could or would be called upon to justify a nuclear war-fighting doctrine was staggering.

What we didn’t know at the time was that the Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church had been invoked by the Papal Nuncio for the Fitzgerald family in Ireland during the 1570s. As a Fitzgerald I knew something of my family’s history. A terrible war, brought on the Fitzgeralds by the English had destroyed much of the family’s power and depopulated the Irish countryside.

Because of the Just War Doctrine, history had suddenly become personal and as it led us into the past we began to see behind the cover story into a hidden history of events ranging from the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the events of 9/11.

Join us as we explore the journey that took us from the emerging Christian Reconstructionism of the 1970s back in time to the 12^th century Norman invasion of Ireland and what it means to the upcoming Presidential elections of 2012 in our next installment titled The Twilight Lords. 

House of Mirrors Part I

House of Mirrors Part II

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould 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.

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Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war. No, it’s not at all about Iran and Israel. It’s about the decision of Washington and the Pentagon to push Moscow up against the wall with what is euphemistically called Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD).

On November 23, a normally low-keyed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the world in clear terms that Russia was prepared to deploy its missiles on the border to the EU between Poland and Lithuania, and possibly in the south near Georgia and NATO member Turkey to counter the advanced construction process of the US ballistic missile defense shield: “The Russian Federation will deploy in the west and the south of the country modern weapons systems that could be used to destroy the European component of the US missile defense,” he announced on Russian television. “One of these steps could be the deployment of the Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad.” [i] Those would be theatre ballistic missile systems. The latest version of Iskander, the Iskander-K, whose details remain top secret, reportedly has a range up to 2000 km and carries cruise missiles and a target accuracy to 7 meters or less.

Medvedev declared he has ordered the Russian defense ministry to “immediately” put radar systems in Kaliningrad that warn of incoming missile attacks on a state of combat readiness. He called for extending the targeting range of Russia’s strategic nuclear missile forces and re-equipping Russia’s nuclear arsenal with new warheads capable of piercing the US/NATO defense shield due to become operational in six years, by 2018. Medvedev also threatened to pull Russia out of the New START missile reduction treaty if the United States moves as announced. 

Medvedev then correctly pointed to the inevitable link between “defensive” missiles and “offensive” missiles: “Given the intrinsic link between strategic offensive and defensive arms, conditions for our withdrawal from the New Start treaty could also arise,” he said. [ii]

The Russian President didn’t mince words: “I have ordered the armed forces to develop measures to ensure, if necessary, that we can destroy the command and control systems” of the US shield, Medvedev said. “These measures are appropriate, effective and low-cost.” Russia has repeatedly warned that the US BMD global shield is designed to destabilize the nuclear balance and risks provoking a new arms race. The Russian President said that rather than take the Russian concerns seriously, Washington has instead been “accelerating” its BMD development.[iii]

It was not the first time Medvedev threatened to take countermeasures to the increasing Pentagon military encirclement pressure on Russia. Back in November 2008 as the US BMD threat was first made known to the world, Medvedev made a televised address to the Russian people in which he declared, “I would add something about what we have had to face in recent years: what is it? It is the construction of a global missile defense system, the installation of military bases around Russia, the unbridled expansion of NATO and other similar ‘presents’ for Russia ­ we therefore have every reason to believe that they are simply testing our strength.” [iv] That threat was dropped some months later when the Obama Administration offered the now-clearly deceptive olive branch of reversing the BMD decision to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russia is threatening to deploy its Iskander anti-BMD missiles in Kaliningrad

This time around Washington lost no time signaling it was in the developing game of thermonuclear chicken to stay. No more pretty words about “reset” in US-Russia relations. A spokesman for the Obama National Security Council declared, “we will not in any way limit or change our deployment plans for Europe.” The US Administration continues to insist on the implausible argument that the missile defense installations are aimed at a threat from a possible Iranian nuclear launch, something hardly credible. The real risk of Iranian nuclear missile attack on Europe given the reality of the global US as well as Israeli BMD installations and the reality of Iran’s nuclear delivery capabilities, is by best impartial accounts, near zero.

Two days earlier on November 21, Washington had thrown a small carrot to Moscow. US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher said that Washington was ready to provide information about the missile’s speed after it uses up all of its fuel. This information, referred to as burnout velocity (VBO), helps to determine how to target it.[v] That clearly was not seen as a serious concession by Moscow, which demands a full hands-on partnership with the US/NATO missile deployment to insure it will never be used against Russia. After all, given Washington’s track record of lies and broken promises, there is no guarantee the speeds would even be true.

After the early October Brussels NATO defense ministers meeting, NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in regard to the nominally NATO European Missile Defense Program, “We would expect it to be fully operational in 2018.” Spain just announced it plans to join the US-controlled missile program, joining Romania, Poland, the Netherlands and Turkey, which have already agreed to deploy key components of the future missile defense network on their territories.[vi]

The concerns of Russia are caused by the dramatic improvement of an entire system of missile defense by Washington, which is taking the form of a global BMD system encircling Russia on all sides.

Full Spectrum Dominance…

The last time Washington’s Missile Defense “Shield” made headlines was in September 2009 early in the Obama Administration when the US President offered to downgrade the provocative stationing of US special radar and anti-missile missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. That was a clear tactic to prepare the way for what Hillary Clinton ludicrously called the “reset” in US-Russian relations from the tense Bush-Putin days. However the strategic goal of encircling the one nuclear potential opponent in the world with credible missile defense remained US strategy.

Barack Obama announced back then that the US was altering Bush Administration plans to station US anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and sophisticated radar in the Czech Republic. The news was greeted in Moscow as an important concession.[vii] Subsequent developments clearly show that far from ditching its plans for a missile shield that could cripple any potential Russian nuclear launch, the US was merely opting for a more effective global system, whose feasibility had been proven in the meantime.

To assuage the Poles, the Obama Administration also agreed to provide Poland with US Patriot missiles. Poland’s Foreign Minister then and now is Radek Sikorski. From 2002 to 2005 he was in Washington as a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a noted neo-conservative hawkish think-tank,  and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, a project to bring as many former communist countries of eastern Europe into NATO as possible. Little wonder Moscow did not view US missiles in Poland as friendly, nor does it today.

In May 2011 the Obama Administration announced that the missiles it would now give Poland consisted of new Raytheon (RTN) SM-3 missile defense systems at the Redzikowo military base in Poland (see map), roughly 50 miles from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, a unique piece of Russian real estate not connected to mainland Russia, but adjacent to the Baltic Sea and Lithuania. That puts US missiles closer to Russia than during the 1961 Cuba Missile Crisis when Washington placed ICBM’s at sites in Turkey aimed at key Soviet nuclear sites. [viii]

The new Raytheon SM-3 missile is part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System that will be aimed at intercepting short to intermediate range ballistic missiles. The SM-3 Kinetic Warhead intercepts incoming ballistic missiles outside the earth’s atmosphere. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors developed the Aegis BMD Weapon System. The SM-3 comes from Raytheon Missile Systems.

The Polish SM-3 missile deployment is but one part of a global web encircling Russia’s nuclear capacities. One should not forget that official Pentagon military strategy is called Full Spectrum Dominance—control of pretty much the entire universe. This past September the US and Romania, another new NATO member, signed an agreement to deploy a US-controlled Missile Defense System on the Deveselu Air Base in Romania using the SM-3 missiles.

As well Washington has signed an agreement with NATO member Turkey to place a sophisticated missile tracking radar atop a high mountain in the Kuluncak district of Malatya province in south-eastern Turkey. Though the Pentagon insists its radar is pointed at Iran, a look at a map reveals how easily the focal direction could cover key Russian nuclear sites such as Stevastopol where the bulk of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet is stationed or to the vital Russian Krasnodar radar installation.[ix]

The Malataya radar will send data to US ships equipped with the Aegis combat system that will intercept “Iranian” ballistic missiles. According to Russian military experts, one of the main aims of that radar, which targets at a range up to 2000 kilometers, will also be the surveillance and control of the air space of the South Caucasus, part of Central Asia as well as the south of Russia, in particular tracking the experimental launches of the Russian missiles at their test ranges.[x]

Further, the US-controlled BMD deployment now also includes sea-based “Aegis” systems in the Black Sea near Russia’s Sevastopol Naval Base, as well as possible deployment of intermediate range missiles in Black Sea and Caspian region.[xi]

But the European BMS deployments of the US Pentagon are but a part of a huge global web. At the Fort Greeley Alaska Missile Field the US has installed BMD ground-based missile interceptors, as well as at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And the Pentagon just opened two missile sites at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. To add to it, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has joined formally with the US Missile Defense Agency to develop a system of so-called Aegis BMD deploying the SM-3 Raytheon missiles on Japanese naval ships. [xii]  That gives the US a Pacific platform from which it can hit both China and Russia’s Far East as well as the Korean Peninsula. These are all a pretty long and curious way to reach any Iranian threat.

Origins of US Missile Defense

The US program to build a global network of ‘defense’ against possible enemy ballistic missile attacks began back in March 23, 1983 when then-President Ronald Reagan proposed the program popularly known as Star Wars, formally called then the Strategic Defense Initiative.

In 1994 at a private dinner discussion with this author in Moscow, the former head of economic studies for the Soviet Union’s Institute of World Economy & International Relations, IMEMO, declared that it had been the huge financial demands required by Russia to keep pace with the multi-billion dollar US Star Wars effort that finally led to the economic collapse of the Warsaw Pact and to German reunification in 1990. With a losing war in Afghanistan, collapsing oil revenues caused by a 1986 US policy of flooding the world market with Saudi oil, the military economy of the USSR was unable to keep pace, short of risking massive civilian unrest across the Warsaw Pact nations.[xiii]

This time around the US BMD deployment is designed to bring Russia to her knees as well, only in the context of a US creation of what military strategists call “Nuclear Primacy.”

Nuclear Primacy: Thinking the Unthinkable

While the Soviet era armed forces have undergone a drastic shrinking down since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Russia has tenaciously held on to the core of its strategic nuclear deterrent. That is something that gives Washington pause when considering how to deal with Russia. The potential for Russia to deepen its military and economic cooperation with its Central Asian partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, above all with China, is something Washington has gone to great lengths to frustrate. Such a strategic cooperation is becoming increasingly a matter of life-or-death for both China and Russia. China’s nuclear arsenal is not yet strategic as is Russia’s.

What the Pentagon is going for is what it has dreamed of since the Soviets developed intercontinental ballistic missiles during the 1950’s. Weapons professionals term it Nuclear Primacy. Translated into layman’s language, Nuclear Primacy means that if one of two evenly-matched nuclear foes is able to deploy even a crude anti-ballistic missile defense system that can seriously damage the nuclear strike capacity of the other, while he launches a full-scale nuclear barrage against that foe, he has won the nuclear war.

The darker side of that military-strategic Nuclear Primacy coin is that the side without adequate offsetting BMD anti-missile defenses, as he watches his national security vanish with each new BMD missile and radar installation, is under growing pressure to launch a pre-emptive nuclear or other devastating strike before the window closes. That in simple words means that far from being “defensive” as Washington claims, BMD is offensive and destabilizing in the extreme. Moreover, those nations blissfully deluding themselves that by granting the Pentagon rights to install BMS infrastructure, that they are buying the security umbrella of the mighty United States Armed Forces, find that they have allowed their territory to become a potential nuclear field of battle in an ever more likely confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

Dr. Robert Bowman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Air Force and former head of President Reagan’s BMD effort of the 1980’s, then dubbed derisively “Star Wars,” noted the true nature of Washington’s current ballistic missile “defense” under what is today called the Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency:

Under Reagan and Bush I, it was the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). Under Clinton, it became the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). Now Bush II has made it the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and given it the freedom from oversight and audit previously enjoyed only by the black programs. If Congress doesn’t act soon, this new independent agency may take their essentially unlimited budget and spend it outside of public and Congressional scrutiny on weapons that we won’t know anything about until they’re in space. In theory, then, the space warriors would rule the world, able to destroy any target on earth without warning. Will these new super weapons bring the American people security? Hardly.[xiv]

During the Cold War, the ability of both sides—the Warsaw Pact and NATO—to mutually annihilate one another, had led to a nuclear stalemate dubbed by military strategists, MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction. It was scary but, in a bizarre sense, more stable than what Washington now pursues relentlessly with its Ballistic Missile Defense in Europe, Asia and globally in unilateral pursuit of US nuclear primacy. MAD was based on the prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation with no decisive advantage for either side; it led to a world in which nuclear war had been ‘unthinkable.’ Now, the US was pursuing the possibility of nuclear war as ‘thinkable.’

 Lt. Colonel Bowman, in a telephone interview with this author called missile defense, “the missing link to a First Strike.” [xv]

The fact is that Washington hides behind a NATO facade with its deployment of the European BMD, while keeping absolute US control over it. Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin recently called the European portion of the US BMD a fig leaf for “a missile defense umbrella that says ‘Made in USA. European NATO members will have neither a button to push nor a finger to push it with.” [xvi]

That’s clearly why Russia continues to insist on guarantees – from the United States – that the shield is not directed against Russia. Worryingly enough, to date Washington has categorically refused that. Could it be that the dear souls in Washington entrusted with maintaining world peace have gone bonkers? In any case the fact that Washington continues to tear up solemn international arms treaties and illegally proceed to install its global missile shield is basis enough for those in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere to regard US promises, even treaties as not worth the paper they were written on.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.

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The following is a sneak peak from a chapter in Andrew Gavin Marshall’s upcoming book funded through The People’s Book Project.

It is quite apparent in the history of America from the late 19^th century and into the 20^th century, that the Rockefeller family has wielded massive influence in shaping the socio-political economic landscape of society. However, up until the first half of the 20^th century came to a close, there were several other large dominant families with whom the Rockefellers shared power and purpose, notably among them, the Morgans. As the century progressed, their interests aligned further still, and following World War II, the Rockefellers became the dominant group in America, and arguably, the world. Of course, there was the well-established business links between the major families emerging out of the American Industrial Revolution going into the 20^th century, followed with the establishment of the major foundations designed to engage in social engineering. It was with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that the changing dynamics of the Morgan-Rockefeller clan became most apparent.

As discussed earlier in this book, the Council on Foreign Relations is the ultimate networking and socializing institution among the American elite. The influence of the CFR is unparalleled among other think tanks. One study revealed that between 1945 and 1972, roughly 45% of the top foreign policy officials who served in the United States government were also members of the Council, leading one prominent member to once state that membership in the Council is essentially a “rite of passage” for being a member of the foreign policy establishment. One Council member, Theodore White, explained that the Council’s “roster of members has for a generation, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, been the chief recruiting ground for Cabinet-level officials in Washington.”[1]

The CIA, as previously examined, is also no stranger to this network, since more often than not in the first several decades of the existence of the Agency, its leaders were drawn from Council membership, such as Allen Dulles, John A. McCone, Richard Helms, William Colby, and George H.W. Bush. As some researchers have examined:

The influential but private Council, composed of several hundred of the country’s top political, military, business, and academic leaders has long been the CIA’s principal “constituency” in the American public. When the agency has needed prominent citizens to front for its proprietary (cover) companies or for other special assistance, it has often turned to Council members.[2]

Roughly 42% of the top foreign policy positions in the Truman administration were filled by Council members, with 40% in the Eisenhower administration, 51% of the Kennedy administration, and 57% of the Johnson administration, many of whom were holdovers from the Kennedy administration.[3] The Council has had and continues to have enormous influence in the mainstream media, through which it is able to propagate its ideology, advance its agendas, and conceal its influence. In 1972, three out of ten directors and five out of nine executives of the New York Times were Council members. In the same year, one out of four editorial executives and four of nine directors of the Washington Post were also Council members, including its President, Katharine Graham, as well as the Vice-President Osborn Elliott, who was also editor-in-chief of Newsweek. Of both Time Magazine and Newsweek, almost half of their directors in 1972 were also Council members.[4]

The Council also has extensive ties to the other major American think tanks, most especially the Brookings Institution, as well as the RAND Corporation, the Hudson Institute, the Foreign Policy Association, and of course, the special-purpose foundations such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of which fifteen of its twenty-one trustees (as of 1971) were also Council members, and its president from 1950 to 1971, Joseph E. Johnson, was also a director of the Council during the same time period.[5]

The Council and the major philanthropic foundations have had extensive ties not only to each other, but in working together in constructing research and programs of study in foreign affairs. The State Department undertook a study of 191 university-connected centers for foreign affairs research, which revealed that the largest sources of funding came from the Ford Foundation (which funded 107 of the 191 centers), the federal government (which funded 67 centers), the Rockefeller Foundation (18 centers), and the Carnegie Corporation (17 centers), and that, “for eleven of the top twelve universities with institutes of international studies, Ford is the principal source of funding.”[6] These foundations, aside from being major sources of funding for the Council throughout the years from its origins, also share extensive leadership ties with the Council. At the top of the list is the Rockefeller Foundation, which in 1971 had fourteen out of nineteen of its directors also being members of the Council; the Carnegie Corporation followed with ten out of seventeen; then came the Ford Foundation with seven out of sixteen; and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund with six out of eleven board members also being members of the Council. It should also be noted that the Carnegie network extended beyond the Carnegie Corporation, and also included the Carnegie Endowment, the Carnegie Institute of Washington, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. From its founding until 1972, one-fourth of all the Council’s directors had served as trustees or directors of at least one of the several Carnegie foundations. John J. McCloy had served as chairman of both the Council and the Ford Foundation at the same time, from the 1950s until the late 60s.[7]

Of all the networks associated with the Council, the most highly represented is the New York financial oligarchy. This broadly refers to the capitalist class, and more specifically the elite financial and banking groups. In a 1969 survey it was found that seven percent of the total membership of the Council are drawn from the propertied rich, with 33% more being top executives and directors of major corporations. Roughly 11% of Council members had relatives who were also members, and the most common occupation for members of the Council, at 40%, was in business. When adding in media corporations, the number reaches nearly 50%, with less than 1% representing labour or working class organizations.[8]

When it comes to Council leadership, the officers are almost exclusively drawn from membership of the ruling capitalist class, with 22% of Council directors having relatives who were also Council members. Financing for the Council has also been largely drawn from this group, primarily from foundations and corporations, as well as various investments and subscriptions to Foreign Affairs. When the Council got its own building in 1929, a Council director, Paul Warburg, contributed a significant portion, and John D. Rockefeller II contributed even more. When the Council moved into a larger building in 1945, the house was donated by Mrs. Harold Pratt, whose husband had made his fortune from the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil enterprise, and John D. Rockefeller II contributed $150,000 for upkeep of the house. Between 1936 and 1946, funding from the major foundations averaged roughly $90,000 per year, mostly from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, who continued their funding into the 1950s, 60s and 70s. In 1953, the Ford Foundation made its first major contribution to the Council at $100,000 for a study of US-Soviet relations which was chaired by John J. McCloy. In that same year, McCloy became Chairman of the Council, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller-owned Chase Bank.[9]

Among the top corporations and banks represented in the Council (as of 1969/70) were: U.S. Steel (founded by J.P. Morgan in 1901 after acquiring Andrew Carnegie’s steel companies for a hefty sum), Mobil Oil (now merged with Exxon), Standard Oil of New Jersey (later to be Exxon Mobil), IBM, ITT, General Electric, Du Pont, Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan and Co. (now merged with Chase into J.P. Morgan Chase), First National City Bank, Chemical Bank, Brown Brothers Harriman, Bank of New York, Morgan Stanley, Kuhn Loeb, Lehman Brothers, and several others.[10]

The New York financial oligarchy could previously be divided into separate groups, notably among them, the Rockefeller group, Morgan group, Harriman group, the Lehman-Goldman, Sachs group, and a few select others. The Rockefeller group included: Chase Manhattan Bank, Chemical Bank, Bank of New York, Equitable Life, Metropolitan Life, Mobil Oil, Kuhn, Loeb, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy (law firm), and Standard Oil. The Morgan group included: J.P. Morgan and Co., Morgan Stanley, New York Life, Mutual of New York, Davis, Polk (law firm), U.S. Steel, General Electric, and IBM. As Laurence Shoup and William Minter examined in their book on the Council:

At the Council’s origin and until the early 1950s, the most prominent place within the Council was held by men tied to Morgan interests. Since the 1950s the Rockefeller interests have taken the major role in directing Council affairs.[11]

The Council, while always representative of Rockefeller interests, had seemed to officially pass from Morgan hands into those of the Rockefeller family in 1953. Three of John D. Rockefeller II’s sons, John D. III, Nelson, and David joined the Council in the late 30s and early 40s, and David became a director in 1949. From 1953 until 1971, George S. Franklin became executive director of the Council. Franklin was a college roommate of David Rockefeller’s, and they were related by marriage, and he had worked at the law firm of Davis, Polk (within the Morgan group), before becoming an assistant to Nelson Rockefeller. In 1950, David Rockefeller became a vice-president, and John J. McCloy, a long-time representative of the Rockefeller group, became chairman of the Council in 1953, as well as chairman of the Rockefeller’s Chase Bank. It could also be said that the Rockefeller group overtook the Ford group around this time, as indicative of McCloy taking position as chairman of the Ford Foundation in the same year (while also being a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation). In the following years, several leadership positions in the Council were drawn from organizations within the Rockefeller group. John W. Davis, Robert Roosa, and Bill Moyers were all Council leaders who were connected with the Rockefeller Foundation.[12]

As the years and decades passed, the Rockefeller group became even more powerful and dominant within the American establishment and indeed around the world, firmly establishing itself alongside the Rothschild family as the principle dynastic rulers of the globalized world. Of course, there were and still are several connections between these dynastic ruling families, perhaps so much so that it may be difficult to entirely differentiate between them. Both were involved in the founding and remain involved in the leadership of the Bilderberg Group. In the 1970s, however, it became apparent that the Rockefellers had certainly become the most influential dynasty in America, if not the world (as America was and remains the imperial hegemon of the world). More specifically, David Rockefeller arose as perhaps the most influential man in America, if not the world.

David Rockefeller graduated from Harvard in 1936, and then went to school at the London School of Economics, where he first met John F. Kennedy, and had even dated JKF’s sister, Kathleen.[13] During World War II, David Rockefeller served in North Africa and France, working for military intelligence.[14] In 1947, he became a member of the board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a major international think tank, a job that was offered to him by the Carnegie’s President, Alger Hiss. Other members of the board included John Foster Dulles, who in 1953 would become Secretary of State; Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1953 would become President; and Thomas J. Watson, the CEO of IBM.[15] Thomas J. Watson had previously overseen IBM’s deep business relationship with Hitler in providing the technological machinery for organizing the Holocaust.[16] In 1949, David joined the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1946, he had joined Chase Bank, and through the years rose up to becoming President in 1960, and became Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan in 1969.

David Rockefeller had long family ties to the Dulles brothers, whom he knew personally since his college years.[17] Allen Dulles had been the CIA Director and John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower’s Secretary of State. David was also associated with Richard Helms, former top CIA official, as well as Archibald Roosevelt, Jr., a former CIA agent who worked with Chase Manhattan, and whose brother, Kermit Roosevelt was another CIA agent who had been responsible for organizing the 1953 coup in Iran.[18] David Rockefeller also developed close ties with a former CIA agent, William Bundy, who was close to CIA Director Allen Dulles, and who later served in both the Defense Department and the State Department in the JFK and Lyndon Johnson administrations, where he was a pivotal adviser on matters related to the Vietnam War. In 1971, one year following David Rockefeller becoming Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Bundy was invited by David to become the editor of Foreign Affairs, the influential journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, which he then ran for 11 years.[19] David had also been extensively briefed on covert intelligence operations by various CIA division chiefs at the direction of Director Allen Dulles, David’s “friend and confidante.”[20]

Thus, in the early 1970s, David Rockefeller has risen to a position of great influence as Chairman of the Council and Chase Manhattan, placing him at the centre of the network which defines, designs, and profits from America’s imperial interests. Thus, the international situation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, of a general feeling of American imperial decline, competition increasing and cooperation decreasing between the major industrialized nations, and the general independence and liberations struggles throughout the ‘Third World’ and at home had created a general sense of oligarchic uncertainty. Of particular interest, and much more so to a banker, was the international functions of the debt market, specifically for the ‘Third World’ nations. As examined in Holly Sklar’s book, Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management:

West European and Japanese firms invaded the U.S. market and competed for the growing Third World market. Moreover, European nations began to give aid and loans to Third World nations, becoming an alternative source of aid and strengthening economic ties to their former colonies. Third World nations began to use U.S. aid to repay debts to Western Europe or relied on U.S. aid to offset chronic balance-of-payments shortages incurred, in part, through buying European products. In effect, the U.S. saw itself as paying for Third World importation of European and Japanese goods… In short, the problem from the perspective of the U.S. was that the situation then unfolding gave Third World borrowing nations too much freedom to manipulate the system, to the partial advantage of Western Europe and the Third World and to the definite disadvantage of the U.S. … In particular, the U.S. was concerned with extending its economic (and political) hegemony over the emerging Third World politically-independent nations without creating undue tensions with Western Europe and Japan.[21]

Naturally, these concerns raised the importance and the increasing potential behind institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, themselves products of the Council on Foreign Relations. Various proposals began to emerge in ‘reforming’ these institutions to meet the changing international circumstances. One proposal was to increase the practice of what was referred to as ‘tied’ aid: “aid to a country under the conditions that it be used by the country to buy U.S. goods and services.” Another proposal favoured cooperation among the major industrial nations, a “consortium approach to aid, which involved increased coordination among donor nations about scheduling payments due them by recipient nations.” Further, “each donor nation would refuse to grant aid except on terms identical to those of other donor nations in the consortium.” A third proposal, gaining in popularity, was referred to as “program aid,” which was “aid given with definite stipulations, often within the context of an overall program of economic planning, to which a recipient nation had to agree in order to obtain the aid or loans.”[22] George Ball, a long-time Council member and Bilderberg participant, was Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, said in 1967 that, “the political boundaries of nation-states are too narrow and constricted to define the scope and activities of modern business.”[23]

This was the context in which Zbigniew Brzezinski, then a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg group, had written his book, Between Two Ages, in which he called for the creation of a ‘Community of Developed Nations.’ David Rockefeller had taken note of Brzezinski’s writings, and was “getting worried about the deteriorating relations between the U.S., Europe, and Japan,” as a result of Nixon’s economic shocks. In 1972, David Rockefeller and Brzezinski “presented the idea of a trilateral grouping at the annual Bilderberg meeting,” which was rejected on the idea of not wanting to admit the Japanese into the Bilderberg group. Many Europeans did not want to include the Japanese at the high table. In July of 1972, seventeen powerful people met at David Rockefeller’s estate in New York to plan for the creation of the Commission. At the meeting were Brzezinski, McGeorge Bundy, the President of the Ford Foundation, (brother of William Bundy, editor of Foreign Affairs) and Bayless Manning, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.[24] So, in 1973, the Trilateral Commission was formed to address these issues. Initial funding to set up the Commission came from David Rockefeller and the Ford Foundation.[25] For the first several years, most of the Commission’s funding came from foundations, with increasing support from major corporations, which contributed roughly 12% of its funding in 1973-76, to roughly 50% in 1984.[26] Thus, in the 1970s David Rockefeller rose to an even more prominent international position, simultaneously holding a leadership position within the Bilderberg Group, and being Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was the Executive Director of the Trilateral Commission, and at the same time served as a director of the Council on Foreign Relations. The Trilateral Commission acted as an organization through which ‘hegemony of consent’ could be organized, particularly that of socializing elites from the ‘trilateral’ nations to one another, integrating their views, ideologies, objectives, and methods just as think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations have done within the United States. As the CFR acts domestically, the Trilateral Commission acts internationally (at least with the leading industrial nations of the North). The first European Chairman of the Commission, Max Kohnstamm, emphasized the role of ‘intellectuals’ in the construction of hegemony within the Commission:

This, which must be done by absolutely first-rate intellectuals will tend to become irrelevant unless it is done in constant checking with those who are in power or who have a considerable influence on those in power. It seems to me that the linkage between the kind of people we must get for our Trilateral Commission and the intellectuals doing the indispensable work of thinking about the elements for a new system is of the greatest importance. A Trilateral Commission without the intellectuals will become very soon a second-class negotiating forum. The intellectuals not being forced to test their ideas constantly with the establishment of our world will tend to become abstract and therefore useless… [It must be] the joint effort of our very best minds and a group of really influential citizens in our respective countries.[27]

In a 1972 speech at the Bilderberg meeting at which David Rockefeller proposed (alongside Zbigniew Brzezinski) the establishment of the Trilateral Commission, he stated that the Commission would be “bringing the best brains in the world to bear on the problems of the future… to collect and synthesize the knowledge that would enable a new generation to rebuild the conceptual framework of foreign and domestic policies.”[28]

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People’s Book Project.

Yesterday I came across an article on DHS plans to create its own internal fusion center so that its many agencies can aggregate the data they have and make it searchable from a central location. Let’s read a few excerpts from this typical half-hearted MSM attempt to provide a semi-complete picture of the state of ‘things’ when it comes to our government:

Information sharing (or lack thereof) between intelligence agencies has been a sensitive topic in the U.S. After 9/11, there was a push to create fusion centers so that local, state, and federal agencies could share intelligence, allowing the FBI, for example, to see if the local police have anything in their files on a particular individual. Now the Department of Homeland Security wants to create its own internal fusion center so that its many agencies can aggregate the data they have and make it searchable from a central location…

Of course this is another troubling development in an extremely troubling state of ‘things.’ However, this wasn’t the focus my attention. Here comes the not-really-reported angle in this half-covered story [All emphasis mine]:

The DHS is calling it a “Federated Information Sharing System” and asked its privacy advisory committee to weigh in on the repercussions at a public meeting in D.C. last month…

So what is this ‘privacy advisory committee’ and who are its members? This is what the article provides on that front:

The committee, consisting ofan unpaid group of peoplefrom the world of corporate privacy as well as the civil liberty community, were asked last December to review the plan and provide feedback on which privacy protections need to be put in place when info from DHS components (which include the TSA, the Secret Service, and Immigration Services, to name a few) are consolidated. The committee raised concerns about who would get access to the data given the potentially comprehensive profile this would provide of American citizens…

It sounds good. Doesn’t it? It hits all the rights adjectives and catch phrases: Unpaid, Civil Liberties Community, Corporate Privacy Activists-Experts …Let’s read one more relevant excerpt and then I’ll tell you the ‘real’ significance of this half-covered report:

The committee’s recommendations are available in draft form below. DHS would not provide the original document — a “tasking letter” — that it issued to the committee describing its plans. But DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division did announce this month that it had awardeda contract to Raytheonfor a “new system [that] will enhance how agencies manage, investigate, and report on law enforcement and intelligence activities by improving data sharing between multiple law-enforcement agencies,” reported Information Week. Raytheon’s work started on September 27, a week before the privacy committee got back to DHS with its draft privacy policy recommendations (available below). The committee noted that it had been given an “aggressive timeline” by DHS on coming up with its recommendations…

What got my mind wondering, what should have gotten the wheels turning in MSM reporters’ head, was this question:

Who are the members of this ‘selected’ aka government hand-picked, privacy-integrity advisory committee?

An important and very logical question, no? And I tell you what, not a difficult one to find an answer to. The article even had a link to the DHS website where the members of this ‘select’ committee are listed by name with their background. Check for yourself here. Because the information contained in this page is at least as significant and revealing as the point half-covered in this quasi exposé. Let me show you a few examples of what I am talking about here:

Chairman: Richard V. Purcell, Chief Executive Officer, Corporate Privacy Group, Nordland, Wash. Mr. Purcell runs an independent privacy consulting group, focusing on policies, practices, and education. He is currently Chairman of TRUSTe and was formally the Chief Privacy Officer for the Microsoft Corporation.

Well, Mr. Purcell had served Microsoft Corporations for many years, and only recently left MS to start his ‘vague’ consulting business.

In 2003 Microsoft was chosen as exclusive Department of Homeland Security contractor.

DHS has chosen Microsoft Corp. as its preferred supplier of desktop computer and server software, according to a statement issued late Tuesday…The contract “establishes a key partnership relationship” between the government and Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, the statement said…The deal is worth $90 million.

The business (and the large dollars involved) between Microsoft and DHS has been growing and prospering ever since. Every year, including this year, 2011, Microsoft is listed as one of DHS’ major private business contractors. Are you with me so far? Now during all these lucrative Microsoft-DHS business marriage years, Mr. Purcell was working as the CPO at Microsoft. Not only that, he was royally exposed in his involvement in the Microsoft-NSA Key-Echelon case and its subsequent cover up. You can read more on this major 2000 exposé and related communications here at Cryptome. Here is the title of the exposé and some background on Microsoft’s and Purcell’s  ‘intimate’ involvement in the NSA Key controversy and the subsequent cover up:

Microsoft Offer to Resolve “Questions About NSA_Key”, then Put Up a Brick Wall

Background : Duncan Campbell gave a presentation on Global surveillance and the Echelon network at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2000 (CFP2000) conference held in Toronto, Canada from 4-7 April 2000. During the presentation, he instanced the NSA_KEY controversy as one of a number of outstanding issues related to security and surveillance.

Richard Purcell, Microsoft’s Director of Corporate Privacy, also attended the CFP2000 conference. After the presentation, Purcell approached Campbell. He said that he wished to resolved the doubts about NSA_KEY. He would see that this was done.

Campbell then put a number of key questions, politely but persistently. After three weeks, Microsoft backed off. They refused to answer outstanding questions. They declined even to explain why they were unwilling to continue contact. They stopped answering e-mail.
…

I encourage you to read the entire communication-correspondence between the investigator and Purcell’s unit at Microsoft here. Also check out this article on ‘How NSA Access was Built into Microsoft Windows.’

You see, our government, the Department of Homeland Security, could not have cherry-picked a better candidate as its Chairman of Privacy-Integrity Advisory Committee. With his long years in Microsoft as an executive until recently, with his stocks and shares tied to Microsoft, with his proven track record in covering up privacy and liberty-violating government-private business collusion and practices, Mr. Richard Purcell appears to be the best candidate to chair the Department of Homeland Security’s ‘Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.’

Let’s check out another hand-selected colluder by DHS for its mockery of an advisory board on ‘privacy and integrity’:

Christopher Pierson, Chief Privacy Officer and Senior Vice President, Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (Royal Bank of Scotland- RBS). Dr. Pierson was President and Chairman of the Board of the Intraguard Phoenix Member’s Alliance, Inc., from 2003-2007 and served on the Arizona Office of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Coordinating Council from 2003-2006.

Well, right off the bat, this dude used to directly work for the Department of Homeland Security; 2003-2006. Now, what is this the Intraguard Phoenix Member’s Alliance, Inc.? Here are a few noteworthy excerpts from its website:

Arizona InfraGard is an alliance between the Arizona Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and individuals committed to protecting the nation’s infrastructure and its people. The members, who are representative of all infrastructure sectors, public and private, identify and mitigate physical and cyber threats through information sharing. Arizona InfraGard promotes best practices, security awareness and training, community outreach, and the exchange of information between law enforcement and infrastructure owners and operators.

So we have Mr. Christopher Pierson hand-picked by the DHS to watch over DHS practices and objectively advise on whether certain policies and practices violate the people’s privacy and integrity. The man used to work for them-the DHS, he worked with the FBI to help ‘share data,’ and now he will watch out for your privacy and mine!

Let’s check out other member:

David A. Hoffman, Director of Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer, Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, Ore. Mr. Hoffman has experience in privacy policy issues at the business and technical level, working on issues of interoperability, improved data quality, and data retention. He serves on the board of directors for the non-profit privacy compliance organization, TRUSTe.

Where do I begin? Let’s begin with Intel Corporation’s business and services to the federal government as a contractor. They had so much that they had to form a wholly owned subsidiary ‘Intel Federal LLC.’ Of course Intel has major contracts and advisory positions with DHS. Oh, interestingly he is closely connected to Richard Purcell, the Chairman of this DHS mockery privacy advisory committee. Purcell is the chairman of this TRUSTe, and Hoffman serves on its board of directors. And here is another blurb on Hoffman from a release only 3 months ago:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ – The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), a nonprofit public-private partnership focused on cybersecurity awareness and education for all digital citizens, today announced that David Hoffman, director of security policy and global privacy officer at Intel Corporation, has joined the organization’s board of directors.

…

NCSA board includes all our government partners and contributors to its surveillance program:

NCSA board members include: ADP, AT&T, Bank of America, Cisco Systems, EMC Corporation, ESET, Facebook, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, Google, Intel, Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Services, McAfee, Microsoft, PayPal, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Symantec, Verizon and Visa…

Please check the list of this laughable privacy advisory board and continue this thread. Whether it is a member from other government contractor moguls like IBM, or academics from University departments generously and heavily funded by our governments, or lap-dog watch-dog organizations funded by the shadow government players such as Rockefellers, Soros, Carnegie, Ford…you’ll see a board of clowns juggling self-interest and profits while faking advisory roles on the 99% absent-privacy and long-gone integrity committee.

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A year or so ago I wrote a couple of pieces on the WikiLeaks case explaining my reluctance to form and communicate a conclusive opinion or reaction on this confusing intrigue. I encourage you to read my only two responses to the case here and here. Today, a new article paired with another fairly recent development in the case and a not so recent disclosure by a former WikiLeaks insider prompted another long-withheld response from me. Let me begin with the curious article from today’s news via RT:

US Government Demands Wikileaks Destroy All Files About Them- Assange

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has told a media summit that the US government has ordered Wikileaks to destroy all the material is has published on them and stop working with its sources in the government.

­“[When we released our documents] the Pentagon said we must destroy everything we published and were going to publish,” Assange said. ”And if we didn’t, we would be ‘compelled to do so,’” the summit’s website says. Assange made the allegation in the course of a speech made via Skype at the News 2011 Summit in Hong Kong.

…

Now let’s pair this up with two other developments in this case. I’ll start with the first one in December 2010.

Last December a former Wikileaks insider in one of its European branches contacted me with excitement and an anticipation inducing piece of information. According to this credible source the large cache of the State Department Cables contained explosive communication- discussions and reports that were directly related to my case which involved secret joint US-Turkey operations in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Balkans.

These cables, dated 1996 to 2002, were part of the case files I worked on during my work with the FBI. These FBI files and cases were later designated as ‘State Secrets Privilege,’ and with that came all the classification, gag orders and other retaliations in my case, spilling into congressional inquiries and active court cases. Basically everyone, every party, whether congressional offices or federal court judges, were slapped with a gag by the US government under the guise of ‘State Secrets’ only to cover up criminal black operations as part of hypocrisy-ridden US foreign policy in the target region.

The heads up by my Wikileaks source became a cause for my reserved optimistic anticipation of further vindication and truth-exposure in my long-buried and covered up ‘State Secrets’ case. That’s when I wrote this piece with the following excerpts on December 3, 2010:

Meanwhile, while I am restraining myself and being uncharacteristically patient, I am going to go on record and tell you what I expect to see if this whole deal proves to be completely genuine, and if the obtained files go as far as they say they go.

I prepared a long list of items (documented diplomatic correspondence) I know to be included in diplomatic communications which took place between the mid 90s and early 2000s. I know I have a fairly large credit due with Santa since I’ve never made a wish list for him; ever. He owes me. He knows it and I know it. While that justifies my very long list (now you know I am old!!) I am going to exercise a little bit of fairness and present my list in manageable quantities and intervals. I hope my Wikileaks Santa has ‘word/phrase search’ technology at his disposal, because that would make his task of sorting and finding my requested items a far easier task. Okay, here it goes Wikileaks Santa, my first list for you, may your immensely large goodies bag contain these items highly beneficial for not only me but many others here and abroad…

Well, months passed with nothing of importance being released by Wikileaks pertaining to Turkey-related cables. There were a couple of inconsequential cables here and there, but not a single cable from the most crucial target years, 1996-2001, or explosive communications pertaining to our evil-deeds conducted in that part of the world-Turkey, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Balkans, and joint operations and partnerships with our Bin Laden and Mujahedeen entourage, and later with Fethullah Gulen’s Islamist Army there.

The absence of those cables for month after month was extremely curious and highly troubling. Considering the known fact that the largest portion of Wikileaks’ cables was those from Turkey, why didn’t we have anything on Turkey, especially those covering the most crucial years-1996-2001? Well, I chose to remain silent, observe and wait. I did.

A few months ago, whether by design or slip up, the entire Wikileaks Cache was released to the public. Now, over a quarter million State Department Cables, with the largest percentage being from Turkey, was public and readily available to all. I frantically began the query, sorting through thousands of ‘Turkey Cables’ and looking for the ‘crucial dates.’  I had several other savvy researchers who had volunteered doing the same, so they began pouring over the cables. We looked. We read. We searched, and then we searched again. We found nothing. Zip zip zilch.

That was not all. Even more curiously, far more troubling, unprecedented with any other countries’ cables cache, was the entire missing block of years for Turkey related cables. No cables from 1996 to 2001. Nothing. The entire six-year period in one big block was missing. There was this glaring 6-year period. I mean nothing; whether classified or public, absolutely nothing. Had the State Department, the US Embassy, the Turkish government, US-Turkish businesses ceased all communications with each other for an entire 6+ -year period?

Troubled and bewildered by the void I contacted John Young of Crptome.Org, one of very few experts in this area whom I trust, to get his response. The following is the comment I received from Mr. Young on this never-touched aspect of Wikileaks’ coverage by the media:

Cables on the topics you seek may have been classified above Secret. This is the innocent explanation. A more sinister view would be that the collection was sifted either by the source (who may have been officially enlisted to execute the disclosure), by parties involved in the transmission from the source to the disclosure site(s), or by the disclosure site(s). Note that there may have been more than one disclosure site which received the cables as well as each offering differing cable collections. WL alone has made public disclosures but has stated that it carefully packaged releases among selected outlets and it is unknown what all those outlets may be beyond those publicized…

And here comes sound and astute observation and analysis by Mr. Young:

The so-called full release is suspect due to the ease with which authentication measures can be forged and faked. Beyond this sinister view, it would not be unusual in the black market for information to monetize such materials by offering the most valuable to the highest bidder, among them the US Government, its allies and opponents. Nor would forgeries be unexpected due to their prevalence in the black market by governments and NGOs. Authentication of the cables remains unresolved due to the seemingly inept way they have been handled (maybe a subterfuge), not only at the source but at the many-pronged outlets. Nor would disinformation about authentication be unexpected by those most adversely and beneficially affected. The cables of your interest are likely to be quite valuable due to the authentication you have publicly given them.

Today, a year since my first brief coverage of the Wikileaks’ saga, my questions still remain:

Was Wikileaks’ given a sanitized version of the cables by design by the US government?

I highly doubt that. Especially when you consider my intimate Wikileaks’ insider’s (who had seen the entire original cable cache) tip, that becomes highly unlikely. This credible source had confirmed the existence of a group of cables related to Turkey which were directly related to my case. And this source had zero incentive to make up something like that, and go to all the trouble of ‘cautiously’ contacting me.

Did Wikileaks put aside those cables, somewhere safe, as an insurance policy against further and grimmer US government action(s) against them?

Possibly. Is it highly likely? I don’t know.

Did the US government issue a bold and highly-threatening threat to WikiLeaks’ Assange against releasing ‘particular’ cables?

Again, I consider this highly unlikely, but not impossible. As we see in the article released today, Assange appears to be cocky and bold enough to go on record and report the alleged threats by the US government. Why would he not talk about or report specific warnings and threats against releasing specific cables?

My questions and wariness still remain. I would even say, with the latest developments I have more reservations, questions and wariness towards this entire case than I did a year ago. If it isn’t what is advertised, then what the heck is this case about? You tell me.

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I have been closely following the situation and events in Syria as they unfold. In doing so I totally bypass what’s being misreported by the US mainstream media-Washington Post, New York Times, and the like. I also pass on anything dished out by the Rockefeller-Soros-Carnegie connected popular quasi alternatives. Instead I rely on a few truly alternative news sources, my own sources in the area (let’s call it the vicinity), and my current and former government insiders. As you may expect I end up with facts and a picture completely different than the popular marketing products fed to our public by the mainstream media and quasi sources.

I want to bring to your attention a crucial case (operation) largely blacked out or significantly lightened up by the popular press. Here is the sanitized version, twisted, and reported by the mainstream

Chief military defector in Turkey denies training troops in Syria

Head of Syrian military defectors has denied a news report that he crossed the border from Turkey to Syria to command troops loyal to the opposition force called the Free Syrian Army.

“News reports that appeared on a number of Internet sites that I had crossed into Syria to command troops there are false. I am in Turkey at the moment in a safe place,” Col. Riad Al Assad told the Anadolu Agency on Tuesday. Al Assad said an estimated 15 thousand Syrian soldiers had deserted and joined the Free Syrian Army to fight against the Damascus regime.

“Four hundred troops quit the Syrian army yesterday alone. Last week, 15 officers including colonels have pledged their allegiance. The Syrian regime is scared of the Free Syrian Army now,” Al Assad said.”The fall of the Syrian regime is unavoidable.”

…

First, let me tell you right off the bat: the above article is in the ‘lightened up’ category. While the article doesn’t provide its own false information, it does showcase a main premise based on a subject who is in fact issuing a false denial. Further, the article purposefully doesn’t delve into why and how Col. Riad Al Assad ended up in Turkey, and what he’s been doing there.

Here is another brief mainstream paragraph on Col. Al Assad:

Dissident colonel Riad al-Asaad, organising defectors in Syria from his new base in southern Turkey, denied government allegations that adjacent states were allowing arms smuggling into Syria. “Not a single bullet” had been smuggled from abroad, he told Al Jazeera television.

Again, as in the previous piece, this article stops short purposefully. It doesn’t get into logical questions such as: What exactly is ‘organizing defectors’? How do you organize defectors in Syria from across the border? Is it a coincidence that his HQ is right inside the US Incirlik Base in Adana, Turkey?

You see, those alternative news and blog sites put down by the first cited article had it exactly right. Col. Riad al-Assad has been in Turkey, working with U.S. & NATO, right inside the US Incirlik Base in Turkey, to do exactly what he vehemently denies: smuggle US weapons into Syria, participate in US psychological and information warfare inside Syria as the middle-man whom Syrian protesters tend to trust, and help with funneling intelligence and military operators across the border and night-time drop offs by air.

The joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. Since then, in addition to Col. Riad al-Assad, several other high-ranking Syrian military and intelligence officials have been added to operations’ headquarters in the US base. Weekly weapons smuggling operations have been carried out with full NATO-US participation since last May. The HQ also includes an information warfare division where US-NATO crafted communications are directed to dissidents in Syria via the core group of Syrian military and Intelligence defectors.

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As the U.S. becomes more and more the kind of country it has traditionally opposed, the answer to where we are headed may lie more in the arcane traditions of a dim past than in a bright future.

On the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, numerous commentators from across a broad spectrum of opinion focused their alarm not so much on the horror of events in lower Manhattan ten years before, but on what America has become in the aftermath of that horror. Ten years on, the United States desperately expands what appears to be an increasingly irrational, corrosive and ultimately self-destructive national security mandate around the globe and here at home.

In the darkening gloom of  the upcoming 2012 Presidential elections as the U.S. builds up its forces in the Middle East and returns its attention to Asia’s Pacific rim, the CIA’s focus is no longer on analyzing intelligence on terrorists, but simply killing those perceived as a threat to its existence or perhaps more cynically, its livelihood. In the hardened fortresses of endless war, American soldiers walled off from human society claim their own lives in record numbers while in beltway foreign policy circles “Peace” has become a dirty word. In the darkening gloom, robot Predator drones target those thought to be “terrorists” or those suspected of being terrorists. Those unfortunate enough to be standing nearby are targeted as well and will one day be the target of drones piloted by computer software and facial recognition, making the machine-killing completely autonomous.

In this house of mirrors where endless war has made guilt and innocence or even facts irrelevant, the U.S. has left the realm of science and empiricism and entered a realm more mystical than real. It is a realm where ideology dictates plans and programs and not logic and empirical evidence.  It is a realm where ideology dictates who dies and who lives and is populated by men and women who can neither be understood nor reasoned with outside the confines of their own internal and hermetically sealed logic. 

From its inception during World War II, America’s military/intelligence apparatus has acted more as a subculture of America’s ruling elite than a bureaucracy dedicated to the nation’s security. It was said of America’s first spy agency the OSS that its initials stood for Oh-So-Social because of its abundant staffing with New York’s high society blue bloods. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks even titled their 1974 book on their life in the CIA and Foreign Service as The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. 

But over the last forty years and especially since the events of 9/11, that “Cult,” and its sister organizations in the military/intelligence community have emerged from behind the curtain to become a ubiquitous and forbidding presence.

In effect, 1974’s American “Cult” of intelligence has grown to become in 2011 the dominant American “Cult-ure.” But what that culture really is and where it’s leading us remains a frightening proposition that each and every American needs to understand.

Openly and unashamedly, “national security” now pervades all aspects of American life from the grocery store to academia to hotel check-ins to manufacturing to religion. This militarization of American society has helped to polarize the political process, dwarf diplomacy as a tool of American interests overseas and slowly and inexorably change the way Americans think about their country and behave towards each other.

Its hypnotic pull on the young (and not so young) through online electronic video games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare whose most recent release pulled in a staggering $400 million on the first day of British and American sales, continues to astonish even professional observers. This celebration of modern warfare as a “game” after ten years of budget-busting real war and only two days before the November 11, Veterans Day commemoration was a cruel reminder of the Orwellian illogic of life on the other side of the mirror. But the deeper and more troubling problem now surfacing is that real war and the imagined war played out on the video screens of America now appear to have merged into one stark unreality.

Apart from the moral implications, the future of society and the very nature of who we are as human beings have been fundamentally altered by such technology. Recent studies indicate that heavy gaming may structurally alter the brain in ways comparable to a behavioral addiction.

The altered states of awareness traditionally offered by drugs and mysticism, religion and meditation have been replaced by technology of all kinds and through technology real war and fantasy war have exchanged places. But as this narcotic enticement spreads into the public sphere of politics and business, this new altered state of mind threatens to permanently upend the very nature of reality.

The tyranny of illogical thinking evidenced by the U.S. in its War on Terror can be traced most recently to the Cold War where it became necessary to throw out the burden of proof and invert the rules of logic in order to defeat Communism.

We were personally subjected to this illogic in 1982. In response to our PBS documentary on Afghanistan, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds we were informed by Karen McKay, a former U.S. army officer and spokesperson for the right-wing Washington-based propaganda outfit Committee for a Free Afghanistan,  that the Soviet’s use of poison gas in that war didn’t require proof because “we know they’re guilty.”

Such faith-based assumptions were more the realm of medieval theologians than rational analysts and the late Senator J. William Fulbright said so in his 1972 New Yorker article titled, Reflections: In Thrall To Fear.

“The truly remarkable thing about this Cold War psychology,” he wrote, “is the totally illogical transfer of the burden of proof from those who make charges to those who question them… The Cold Warriors, instead of having to say how they knew that Vietnam was part of a plan for the Communization of the world, so manipulated the terms of public discussion as to be able to demand that the skeptics prove that it was not.”

Fulbright realized that “Rational men could not deal with each other on this basis,” and arrive at anything resembling “truth.” But this understanding quickly evaporated as the Vietnam era ended and the U.S. drifted into a realm governed by irrational men unable to accept that God might not forever be on America’s side. Powered by an ideology freed from logic as well as the reality that Vietnam had overwhelmingly disproved their theories of war and their rationales for using them, America’s defense intellectuals lapsed deeper into a distorted mirror of illogic.

Guided by old ideologues who’d helped to create the Cold War like Paul Nitze, Leo Cherne, William Casey and General Danny Graham and leading neoconservatives like Richard Perle, Harvard professor Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz, their group known as Team B guided the restructuring of American military policy towards the Soviet Union not on the basis of fact or proof, but only on what their minds could imagine in their wildest fantasies.

In fact, Team B accused the CIA’s analysts of “Mirror imaging,” their own intentions once again as President Kennedy’s science advisor Jerome Wiesner had claimed back in the 1960s. Only this time (in a further twist of logic) they claimed the mirror image was of American weakness and not strength reflected in the mirror of the Soviets’ steely eyes.

The idea that the Soviet Union could or should be judged solely based on an ideological perspective was rejected by Washington’s more rational elite. “I would say that all of it was fantasy,” said Anne Hessing Cahn who worked on the staff of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1982 to 1988. “They looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said ‘this is a laser beam weapon’ when in fact it was nothing of the sort… And if you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems and you examine them one by one, they were all wrong… I don’t believe anything in Team B was really true.”

So what is true about the prevailing motives that drive American national security policy today?  In the summer of 1980 we got a major clue to the thinking behind the neoconservative’ s aggressive plotting to overturn the U.S. government’s rational policy regarding nuclear weapons (Mutual Assured Destruction) by replacing it with a faith-based policy that would justify fighting nuclear wars.

Join us next as we unravel the de-evolution of rational defense policy and its immersion into the mystical as we explore the radical 1980 re-interpretation of  the 4^th century Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church and it perennial advocates.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould 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.

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Did you know that we haven’t had a single case of smallpox in the United States for over 60 years? To be exact, the last case of smallpox was in 1949. So, why would Obama hand out $433 Million, let’s put the zeros all in there to get a better sense, $433,000,000, on experimental smallpox drugs? Ain’t that a logical question to ask?

You see there is this billionaire guy. His name is Ronald Perelman, and he is one of the world’s richest men who happens to be a longtime Democratic Party supporter. This Obama-Backer Perelman guy owns stock in Siga Technologies Inc., which received the smallpox drug contract over the objections of specialists in the Department of Health & Human Services.

So, what happened to those who objected to this outrageous sum being paid for ludicrous unjustified experimentation? Well, the department’s lead negotiator for the deal who objected to Siga’s financial demands was replaced. Poof. Just like that.  

But wait, that’s not all. The Obama administration also blocked other companies from bidding on the work, to ensure that Siga received a non-competitive contract deal.

Siga will be delivering 1.7 million doses of smallpox drug to our government “in case” there’s ever a bio-terror attack. Aha. Let’s remind ourselves again with hard data:

The last time an American was diagnosed with the disease was 1949, and the last case of naturally occurring smallpox anywhere in the world was in 1977.

So my friends, what are you going to do about it? Are you thinking of contacting your congressional representatives? I think you better think twice before wasting your time and energy. You see, congress is following the same trend-just like their corrupt stinking con president. Let me get more specific here:

Senator Feinstein Loaded Up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Government Grants

 With a new congressional insider trading scandal unfolding in Washington, another name has been added to the hit parade:  U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

In the new blockbuster tell-all Throw Them All Out, investigative reporter and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer reveals that on November 18, 2009, Sen. Feinstein and her husband invested $1 million into Amyris Biotechnologies, a “green” company focused on plant-based renewable fuels and chemicals. The Feinsteins’ million-dollar investment was their only stock transaction for the entire year.

Feinstein, however, had good reason to feel that all her investment eggs were secure in the biotech basket, because just weeks after her seven-figure investment in Amyris, the company scored a $24 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to build a pilot plant where altered yeast would turn sugar into hydrocarbons.

The company went public the following year with an IPO that raked in $85 million. Currently, it’s unclear exactly how much money Senator Feinstein and her husband made off their investment, “but it’s safe to assume that they did well,” concludes Schweizer.Do we know for certain that Feinstein’s willingness to bet $1 million bet on Amyris was the result of insider knowledge that the DOE’s $24 million infusion of federal funds was forthcoming?  No, not without further investigation.

You see why? You see, most Members of our Congress have been enjoying a robust financial status despite our sluggish economy in crisis.

Of course these two cases are just an aperitif for many bigger cases. You still remember Solyndra? Congress Insider Trading  Scandal?

Now, I am looking for a savvy music tech volunteer to slightly modify the lyrics of the following song for us: Money for Nothing ….Where have all our Dollars Gone

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Some recent and not-so-recent news items help reinforce the arguments for broader audits of the Federal Reserve.

The Government Accountability Office recently issued two special audit reports relating to the Fed’s activities leading up to and amidst the recent financial and economic crisis.  The reports from those audits outlined the breathtaking scope of the Fed’s bailout (“rescue”?), and also described some of the conflicts of interest arising within the Fed while pursuing those efforts.  But these audits were constrained by the law that required them (Dodd-Frank).

A congressional effort remains underway to broaden the scope and deepen the authority of Congressional oversight of the Fed.  This effort is resisted by defenders within and attached to the Fed, with some of their most important arguments rooted in concern that the Fed’s operations should retain their ‘independence’ from murky political forces.

Three interesting but little-discussed topics related to Fed independence matter for the effort to develop a more strenuous audit.  They include a recent scolding of a large accounting firm, a curious Fed income statement line item, and some older information from visitor logs.

Peek-A-Boo!

When faced with demands for audits, the Fed and the public frequently have to deal with shrill but sometimes-uninformed complaints that “the Fed isn’t audited.”  The Federal Reserve Banks have internal auditors, and the Reserve Banks are also overseen by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, a government agency.  The Federal Reserve Banks produce financial statements, and those financial statements are audited by independent accounting firms.  And the Congress has directed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct special Fed audits in the past.  The Fed frequently points to these facts in its defense.

But existing audit mechanisms could still be inadequate, particularly in light of special issues relating to the financial crisis, such as the prices paid for risky securities that the Fed has purchased in its open market operations in massive quantities recent years.  The law currently puts monetary policy out-of-bounds for GAO audits, for example, and the GAO was so constrained in the most recent audit on this score as well.

And several weeks ago, a news item arose that undermined one of the defenses that the Fed uses to deflect demands for more forceful Congressional oversight and auditing.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (the PCAOB, sometimes referred to as PeekABoo) was created by law in 2002 in response to the Enron and related scandals.  The PCAOB is directed to oversee the work of public accounting firms.  The PCAOB issues standards, examines auditors, and pursues enforcement actions.  In mid-October, the PCAOB released a previously-private portion of an inspection report of Deloitte Touche LLP, one of the largest accounting firms in the world – and the firm that audits the Federal Reserve Banks.  The release of this previously-private portion of its inspection report indicated that the PCAOB found insufficient progress at Deloitte in addressing issues for which it was cited in previous years.

This development provides a reminder that ‘independent’ audits may not always be so independent, and that one element of the control system over the Federal Reserve Banks might not have been all that it was advertised – during the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression.  The Deloitte citation supports the case for those calling for Congress to pass H.R. 459 and S. 202, the bills providing for broader audit authority.

One Item on the Fed’s Financial Statements

The Washington D.C. economy has been in the news lately.  It has proved remarkably resilient to the crisis that impacted the rest of the nation.  The 12 Federal Reserve Banks may be Federal, although outside the Beltway.  Their compensation and employment levels have also been very resilient to the recession.  On the one hand, the Fed could argue that they have been doing a lot of hard work dealing with the financial mess, and this is a certainty.  But there are some interesting arguments put forward, by Ed Kane and others, that we should reconsider compensation schemes and their incentives not only for ‘private’ financial firms, but for financial regulators as well.  Kane argues for better performance sensitivity in the compensation of regulators, including a downside if a crisis arises on their watch.

Putting the merits of that debate aside, a simple question arises.  What has actually happened?  How has the compensation of the Reserve Banks trended in recent years?

Well, based on the Fed’s publicly reported (and ‘independently audited’) statements, it isn’t that easy to tell, at least on the surface.

The individual Reserve Banks all publish annual reports, including financial statements audited by the above-noted Deloitte and Touche LLP.  Those statements are not prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), like public company statements, but by the Financial Accounting Manual developed by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.  There are material differences between GAAP and these principles, including those for the valuations of securities on Reserve Bank balance sheets that raise questions relating to the demand for stronger audits of monetary policy operations.

But the ‘salaries and other benefits’ line item on the Reserve Bank income statements poses some questions.

If you simply add up the totals for what the individual Reserve Banks report for their salaries and other benefits expense, you get a smooth, unbroken upward trend seen in the chart below.  But if you use the salary and benefits expense line reported on the Combined Financial Statements for the Reserve Banks, you get another result – with much faster growth from 2008 to 2010, amidst the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression.

There may be interesting and valid reasons why this discrepancy arises.  One clue may lie in that these expenses are titled “Salaries and other benefits” on the individual Reserve Bank statements, while they are called more simply “Salaries and benefits” in the combined financial statements from the Board of Governors.  But even if valid reasons for the discrepancy exist, other questions arise.  The Federal Reserve banks individually report compensation results to their Boards of Directors, the Congress, and the public that appear significantly at odds with those the Board of Governors reports on the Combined Financial Statements. Compensation costs in the Reserve Banks have grown much more sharply under the aggregated measure.  In fact, there are roughly $1 billion more compensation costs on the combined statement in 2009 and 2010.  In either case, the Reserve Banks’ compensation certainly didn’t suffer like it did in much of America.

The Fed and its defenders regularly cite the need to keep monetary policy independent from politics as a bulwark from efforts in Congress and elsewhere for broader audit and oversight authority.  But is the Fed itself really an apolitical creature?  Special interest groups have a well-documented ability to ‘capture’ regulatory agencies, and the Fed is certainly not immune to those political forces.  But some questions about Fed independence might also arise in a more traditional, partisan context.

In 2004, the Washington Post published an article describing the work of Ken Thomas, then a lecturer at the Wharton School.  Thomas sought and obtained records of visits to the White House by then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.  Thomas documented a sharp increase in the frequency of visits to the White House beginning in 2001 – the year of the new Republican Bush Administration.  In a world with a nonpartisan, truly independent Fed, this is a curious if not compelling statistical discrepancy.

This mid-2004 article cited ‘at least’ 17 meetings Greenspan had with Vice President Richard Cheney, 11 meetings with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 12 meetings with National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, six meetings with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, two meetings with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, and one meeting with Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.  The article also noted that Greenspan met with George W. Bush once, but it wasn’t with President Bush.  It was about a month before he was inaugurated.

Was this in response to the events of September 11?  The article also noted:

Greenspan had at least four official appointments with Cheney and one with Rumsfeld before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the Fed records.

Any future Fed audit could also include an audit of the sharp increase in currency shipments from Federal Reserve facilities, billions of dollars in $100 bills, in July and August of 2001 as well.

The recent release of two lengthy if constrained GAO Fed audit reports provided some grist for the mainstream news mill, and coupled with a steady drumbeat of other newsworthy financial events to take some of the air out of the balloon of the “Audit the Fed” movement.  But the bills providing for wider audit authority have attracted a significant number of co-sponsors.  In light of the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression, the time still appears ripe for a thorough, honest review of the functioning of our central bank in recent years.

When the Fed and its defenders point to the possibility of Congress getting its grimy hands on what should be a nonpolitical process, they certainly find fertile soil among the millions of people fed up with our political representatives.  But at the end of the day, the Fed is not only ‘nonpolitical,’ it is a constitutional being, and a creature of our Congress.  For all our cynicism, we would also note that we as citizens have done a poor job monitoring our risk exposure through the entities we have created.  A thorough Fed audit from the Congress appears warranted.

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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On November 7 the first of two pipelines for Nord Stream, the huge Russian-German gas pipeline project, began delivery of gas. The event was no minor affair. German Chancellor Merkel and Russian President Medvedev along with the prime ministers of France and the Netherlands and the EU Energy Commissioner formally opened the first of two 1224-kilometre pipelines at Lubmin in northern Germany, beginning delivery of the first gas direct from Russia’s Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field in Siberia to Germany.

Nord Stream was not cheap. It cost a total of more than $12 billion for the complex 760 mile long undersea pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Vyborg near Russia’s St Petersburg to north eastern Germany. It was laid in remarkable time and with extraordinary environmental precautions to insure protection of sea life, a precondition set by several EU Baltic countries. When the second pipeline is finished in late 2012, Nord Stream will be able to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas a year, almost ten percent the entire EU annual gas consumption, or roughly one third the entire current gas consumption of China.

Nord Stream estimates it will provide enough energy to fuel 56 million West European households. With current EU political decisions over reducing CO² “carbon footprint” emissions, the Russian gas giant argues its natural gas gives 50% less CO² than rival coal plants at as much as 50% greater energy efficiency.

Even if Moscow is being more than somewhat opportunist and is not convinced about the shoddy science of global warming, Gazprom does not hesitate to use this as a shrewd political selling point. The EU is going for natural gas energy big time and Moscow intends to be a major, if not the major beneficiary of that push. In addition to delivering Siberian gas to Germany, Nord Stream will deliver to the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the Czech Republic.

Moscow appears to hold a winning hand in the one important non-military lever it has to tip the global geopolitical balance of power in its direction and away from Washington’s overwhelming dominance. Oil and natural gas are at the heart of the strategy. For some months Russian production of crude oil has surpassed Saudi Arabia’s to be the world’s largest oil producer with over 10.3 million barrels daily, nearly one million barrels more.[1] And in terms of known reserves of natural gas Russia is far away the world leader according to industry data.

Russian natural gas has increasingly been the foundation for a brilliant series of Russian energy geopolitical initiatives for several years. Gazprom, a closely-held state company, is the centerpiece of this energy strategy.

To counter the eastward march of NATO into countries of the former Warsaw Pact such as Poland, the Czech Republic or Romania and the various US attempts to lure Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, both as President and more recently as Prime Minister, has used the economic lever of Gazprom. With its enormous gas resources Russia seeks to win stronger economic ties in Western Europe, thereby hopefully neutralizing somewhat the potential military strategic threat from the NATO encirclement. No country has been more the focus of this Russian pipeline diplomacy than former wartime foe Germany where Nord Stream lands.

The undersea route across the Baltic to Germany was chosen by a German-Russian consortium including Gazprom with 51% and the German chemicals group BASF Wintershall and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany each today with 15.5% share, giving the German-Russian partners a dominating 82% control. Further adding to the political support from key EU countries, later they were joined by N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie and France’s GDF Suez which each own a 9% share.

The Baltic undersea route was chosen deliberately to avoid potential geopolitical disruptions such as occurred several years ago when a pro-NATO Ukrainian government blocked Russian gas deliveries to Western Europe to undercut Russian attempts to come closer to western Europe. Behind Ukraine was the long arm of Washington. [2]

Had Ukraine joined NATO as Washington urgently sought after Kiev’s 2004 “Orange Revolution” brought Washington’s man Viktor Yushchenko in as President, then Ukraine would have been in a strategic position to economically strangle Russia on command. Prior to opening of Nord Stream in November some 80% of all Russian gas exports to EU countries—mainly to Germany, Italy and France—were flowing across Ukrainian territory. Political instability and ongoing NATO meddling in Ukraine dictated the decision to build the new Nord Stream undersea route to Germany and other EU markets bypassing entirely Ukraine and Poland. Today some 40% of all state revenue in Russia comes from Russia’s oil and gas exports.[3]

South Stream vs. Nabucco

While few outside the energy industry and special political interest groups have paid much attention to it, at the same time Nord Stream was coming into play a ferocious geopolitical battle has also been raging over a second planned major Gazprom Russian gas pipeline project to EU countries called South Stream. South Stream gas pipeline will be laid on the Black Sea floor, pass through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia and on to west European markets from the southern part of the EU.

To politically counter the growing Russian energy ties to the EU, with strong Washington backing, the EU Commission proposed an alternative in 2002 called the Nabucco pipeline, curiously named after the Verdi opera. To date Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria have agreed “in principle” to build the 3,900 km Nabucco pipeline that theoretically would pump up to 31 billion cubic meters of gas annually from the Caspian and the Middle East across Turkey into western Europe. Nabucco partners to date include energy companies RWE of Germany; OMV of Austria; MOL of Hungary; Botas of Turkey; Bulgaria Energy Holding of Bulgaria; and Transgaz of Romania.

The problem is that the Nabucco partners have yet to secure gas anywhere to fill the pipeline. Moscow has deftly locked up the gas from the obvious supplier Azerbaijan, and surplus gas from former Soviet Republic Turkmenistan is also secured in deals with Gazprom, leaving only Iran as an option, something politically Washington is not ready to consider, to put it mildly.

Both Nord Stream and South Stream came into being when Ukraine’s previous Yushchenko regime, with reported strong US behind-the-scenes backing, twice disrupted transit gas flows to European markets beginning 2006. To assure stability of supplies, Moscow created both new pipeline projects to bypass Ukraine.[4]

The geopolitical problem for Washington and its allies in Brussels is the fact that its Nabucco project appears dead in the water before it even gets started. Not only has Gazprom locked up the major gas supply sources including Azerbaijan. Nabucco is also far more costly than its Russian rival.

Latest estimates put Nabucco’s ultimate construction cost at almost double that of South Stream. Tamás Fellegi, Hungarian National Development Minister, recently stated that the cost of Nabucco gas pipeline will exceed original plans by four times. “No one can predict the final cost of Nabucco, but according to optimistic estimates, its cost may reach 24-26 billion euro,” Fellegi said.[5]

In late October Gazprom made a major move to secure partners for its South Stream in a Moscow meeting with its largest consortium partner, Italy’s ENI. [6] Some days before in September, Gazprom secured the significant participation into South Stream of its major Nord Stream German partner, BASF Wintershall, a major blow to Nabucco hopes. They joined the major French energy company EDF to give the South Stream project major clout versus the floundering Nabucco.

Last April, Turkey, also at least on paper a key player in Nabucco, gave permission to Gazprom to begin offshore prospecting for the potential undersea route of South Stream, a first step to gain Turkish approval to begin construction in Turkish territorial waters on the Black Sea. Turkey is trying to play a new role as an energy crossroads between the EU and its neighbors. By giving Gazprom the green light to begin prospecting, Turkey’s Erdogan government clearly has decided not to put all its energy eggs into the NATO Nabucco basket.[7]

Possible routes for Gazprom’s South Stream Pipeline

Already Gazprom is the largest natural gas supplier to the EU. Gazprom with Nord Stream and other lines plans to increase its gas supply to Europe this year by 12% to 155 billion cubic meters. It now controls 25% of the total European gas market and aims to reach 30% with completion of South Stream and other projects.

Rainer Seele, chairman of Wintershall, suggested the geopolitical thinking behind the decision to join South Stream: “In the global race against Asian countries for raw materials, South Stream, like Nord Stream, will ensure access to energy resources which are vital to our economy.” [8]

But rather than Asia, the real focus of South Stream lies to the West. The ongoing battle between Russia’s South Stream and the Washington-backed Nabucco is intensely geopolitical. The winner will hold a major advantage in the future political terrain of Europe.

According to Andrei Polischuk, an energy analyst at the BKS Finance Group, Nabucco is in far the weaker position at present. “This project is facing several problems. One of them is how to fill it with gas and how to find a resource basis. The second is its growing cost. Earlier, the project was estimated at 8 billion US dollars, but at present, it has grown up to 12 to 15 billion US dollars.” says Polischuk. “All these projects have first and foremost a hidden political motive. By implementing them, Europe tries to lower its dependence on Russian gas.” [9]

Reinhard Mitschek, director of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International, recently admitted that Nabucco now has been pushed back until 2017, three years later than originally planned. The construction work won’t begin until at least 2013. He feebly admitted in a recent press conference when pressed on a date for gas deliveries, that gas would flow, “as soon as there are firm indications that gas supply commitments are in place.” [10]

EU Nacht und Nebel Raid on Gazprom

As if on cue, just days before the planned opening ceremony for Gazprom’s Nord Stream pipeline the EU launched an unprecedented “nacht und nebel” style raid on the offices of Gazprom and its EU partners covering ten countries.

In response to a complaint by the Washington-friendly government of Lithuania, on September 28 EU officials raided Gazprom and associated offices in central and eastern European states to investigate firms involved in the supply, transmission and storage of natural gas. The Commission claimed the raids were linked to “suspicions” about anti-competitive practices.

The raids were an unprecedented use of new EU “antitrust” weapons including the threat of fines up to 10% of a company’s global turnover. Following a Thatcherite “free market” model, the EU Commission has in recent years forced E.ON, RWE and ENI to open up or sell their energy pipelines to rivals. E.ON and GDF were also forced to dismantle their market-sharing deals.

The EU is working a so-called Third Energy Package, which imposes limits on ownership of EU pipeline infrastructure by gas suppliers and calls for the “unbundling” of over-concentrated ownership. Under the rules, Russia could be forced to sell off parts of its pipeline network in the EU, something Moscow is understandably not about to do. It could open a Pandora’s box of geopolitical interference with potential for anti-Russian companies to in effect sabotage the vital and growing Russian gas trade with the EU, a mainstay today of Russian state finances.

The Gazprom raids were explicitly political. The EU even admits it has little evidence: “We’re at the beginning of the investigation; we have our suspicions and we have to see whether these are confirmed on the basis of the evidence we find and our analysis,” Commission spokeswoman Amelia Torres told press in Brussels.[11]

According to Reuters, “A Commission official, who declined to be named, told Reuters the raids were part of the EU’s efforts to wean itself off reliance on Russian gas and concerns about Gazprom’s power as a state-controlled entity.” Gazprom itself clearly links the raids to their recent progress on South Stream: “My guess is that it comes as Russia is speeding up its projects, including the South Stream underwater link,” a Gazprom source said. [12]

Vladimir Feigin, a member of the Russian delegation discussing the issue with EU officials, charges the European Commission with taking a “dangerous path” with the raids. “It’s not a simple demonstration of muscles … There are lots of issues, which are highly politicized, including Gazprom’s long-term contracts,” he insisted. [13]

While free market game rules may sound attractive to market outsiders, for the future planning of Gazprom long-term fixed contracts are essential. As oil markets reveal in recent years, while prices sometimes fall, most often they are subject to manipulation by major Wall Street banks like JP MorganChase, Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, the gang that pushed oil prices above $147 a barrel in June 2008 at a time supply on the world market was in glut, making a literal killing in the process.[14]

In anticipation of the larger export market for its gas to Europe, Gazprom has been making huge infrastructure investments across Europe which could be wiped out by an adverse EU decision. It is in the process of doubling its underground storage capacities for gas. It already operates gas storage facilities in Austria and leases facilities in Britain, France and Germany to handle the planned new flow from Nord Stream and South Stream. As well, Gazprom has built a joint venture storage facility with Serbia to serve gas exports to Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Hungary. Feasibility studies are being done for similar joint storage projects in the Czech Republic, France, Romania, Belgium, Britain, Slovakia, Turkey and Greece. This, in addition to the major investment in the pipelines, makes it clear the EU raids are aimed at Moscow’s energy jugular.[15]

Were Moscow to succeed in completing South Stream and retain its integral control over the delivery pipeline infrastructure, it would represent nothing less than a major geopolitical defeat for Washington. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, Washington energy geopolitics in the Caspian region and across Eurasia into Russia have attempted to weaken if not permanently cripple the one major remaining geopolitical lever Moscow holds to counter Washington’s NATO encirclement strategy. Not letting itself be totally dependent on EU gas or oil revenues, Moscow has recently indicated it is greatly increasing its focus on building long-term energy partnerships with its eastern neighbors of Eurasia, most notably with China. The geopolitical implications for Washington of that shift will be examined in a subsequent article.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.

Endnotes:

[1] News Wires, Russian Output Hits Post-Soviet Highs, 2 November 2011, accessed in http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article286798.ece.

[2] F. William Engdahl, Ukraine Geopolitics and the US-NATO Military Agenda: Tectonic Shift in Heartland Power–Part I, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18128.