CLIENTS ONLY - Current Documents: January 01/21/2001-8/2005
Nonproblematic unsubstantiated empirical setbacks
By Craig B Hulet?
The war in Iraq just keeps on going on and on. It is now interfering with Oprah’s space and incessant upbeatness. (Is that a word? It is now.) Hopefully, and here’s that word again, hopefully things will change soon but I don’t think so in my downbeatness.
If we, sorry, they, have elections in Iraq who wins? If those who claim victory, and there will be many, just like in Florida, Ohio and Washington state, whose Constitution will they adopt? Is that all that difficult to imagine? What’s the difficulty about drafting a Constitution for Iraq anyhow? Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it’s almost worked for over 200 years. We’re not using it anymore.
Unlike Iraq where they are fighting just to eat,
choosing to live is out of the question, they simply wait until the other 500-pound
shoe drops. Unlike Iraq, here in America we’re still fighting over fetal
tissue and abortions, school prayer, whether a couple-a-lesbians ought to get
a marriage license when all the rest of us are divorced, ... twice. We are fighting
over the Pledge of Allegiance, which I’ve never said even once. But I never
stood up and sang at pep-rallies in school either, which in Texas got you sent
to the vice-principle’s office as a traitor to the cause. I wasn’t a
Texan so I didn’t always understand exactly what the cause was; they seemed
so anxious all the time about things I didn‘t care about. Like rock music,
they keep repeating things I don’t agree with. I’ve never been one for
causes; because they were always someone else’s. I have never much been one
to moralize about what other’s should do. I can’t seem to keep my own
morality in check, let alone my principles and ethics. Some I know are in my sock
drawer.
I think a lot of Christians misunderstand what a lot of atheists
want when they want the Ten Commandments tossed out of federal courthouses. The
reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse is that you
cannot post “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,”
and “Thou Shalt Not Lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians.
It creates a hostile work environment.
This government, it seems to me is about to really tax the dickens out of us all (did that word in such usage come from a Dickens’ novel?). The largest federal deficits in galactic history. The worst rate of return on investments in U.S. history. The largest trade deficit in galactic history. The largest personal debt in galactic history. Another year of record bankruptcies. Two, maybe three ongoing, really very expensive wars; the next one might include the Russians. I worry about America. I can’t help it. I had a bad dad and a bad childhood. My Mom didn’t like me even a little bit. What are you going to do? Arrest me for pessimism?
And what about those Russians? They really aren’t commies any more, right? So why don’t we look at some of their great successes and apply them liberally, sorry, that’s a bad word, conservatively, to our present predicaments?
When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion dollars developing a pen that writes in zero gravity upside-down on almost any surface and at below freezing to over 300 C. The Russians used a pencil.
It seems to me our problems aren’t really problems
at all but a matter of perspective. If you see all the above as problems to be
solved you’ll need solutions to those problems if you want to sleep at night.
I don’t have any solutions. But if you perceive these problems not as problems
(you thought I was going to say they’re opportunities didn’t you), but
as nonproblematic unsubstantiated empirical setbacks to ongoing superficial qualified
internal dynamics of postmodernity, ... then well, hey, there’s really no
problem at all.
Profiling Muslims
By Craig B Hulet/
James Dobbins, director of the Defense Policy Center at Rand, recently wrote in Foreign Affairs that “by losing the trust of the Iraqi people, the Bush administration has already lost the war.” Moderate Iraqis can still win the war but only if they wean themselves from Washington, “the United States should reduce and ultimately eliminate its military presence,” Dobbins added.
The ongoing indictments against the war in Iraq now come from every reputable institution, conservative and liberal, government and non-governmental. Most of the Christian world has turned against the United States over this preemptive war against a corrupt, tyrannical but recognized sovereign nation state.
But, and this is too well-known to argue, Mr. Bush will not have any critique of his policies. Not at the White House, you are fired; not at the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans not abolished; nor at CIA where Boss Goss oversees a purge of professional analysts and senior members not seen since the days of Stalin.
The answer to all these heady indicators of trouble inside the Beltway? Blame it all on 9/11. Place the blame on Arabs, all Arabs, all Muslims. Bush said that everything had changed because of 9/11. It didn’t have to and it shouldn’t have.
Leadership is in question. Every act of subordinates flow back to the leader, the President. Subordinates reflect the leader’s lead: whether it is torture, killing civilians, random atrocities against insurgents and even the hubris of “hurrah,” in the face of meager victories.
Ideas held by the domestic population flow back to the President. Concepts quietly slipped into the consciousness of day to day lives of the citizenry are those of reaction. We refuse to admit that due to our policies the entire Muslim world, once so divided, are now of one mind: that Americans hate Muslims. A Muslim world unified because of U.S. policies, not because “they” hate our freedoms, “they” hate democracy, “they” hate our way of life! Not even Bush’s Defense Science Board believed that pre-9/11 and now its September 2004 Report rejects it once again stating: “[w]e must understand the U.S. is engaged in a generational and global struggle of ideas, not a war between the West and Islam.”
The world hates our government and corporate policies abroad in their countries. But rather than allow the policies to be looked at, altered, ameliorated, changed drastically, Mr. Bush reacts in a most expected way. Blame all Muslims and especially Arab state Muslims for everything failing in America; take away their civil liberties and end our domestic disputes by racial profiling of yet another internal enemy of the state.
Hannah Arendt observed that every state with ambitions abroad will “attempt to divide mankind into master and slave races, into higher and lower breeds, into colored and white men, ... all of which were attempts in the past to unify the people on the basis of the mob.” She called it tribal nationalism.
It has been a staple of our liberal free Republic no less than the old Soviet Union. Arendt noted well that it was important to see “Nazism and the Holocaust as something entirely comprehensible” though by no means determined within a historical-geographical trajectory.
Americans didn’t mind Chinese building our railroads for pennies a day, as long as they all lived in China-town -- still. We alternatively hated Irish Catholics -- then Protestant Irish; we despised greasy Italians only to make it greasy Mexicans; we alternated between hating and segregating our foreign enemies’ domestic equivalents: the Japanese while allowing German Americans a free ride, after all, America almost chose German as our national language over English. And Americans really didn’t care too much for those Jews either, now did we? - still. Native Americans? - still!
Vietnamese shrimp fishermen were beaten and killed in the Gulf States of America, particularly but not peculiarly in Texas, long after we had lost the war in Vietnam. We incarcerated, banned and blacklisted liberals during the deaf days of McCarthyism. Our own Uncle Joe calling one and all ensnared, socialists and communists. Like Fox’s talking-head bigots do today, - still.
Bigots forgetting that all the Founding Fathers were liberals with such fine liberal tokens passing muster as free speech, the right to practice one’s religion unmolested by the state and the right to keep and bear arms: a decidedly liberal experiential notion that the state might return to tyranny at any turn of events, profiling yet another internal threat ... all these were highly liberal notions of the day, - still.
But let us go ahead and profile all Muslims, take away their civil liberties: Arab Muslims first but let us not forget the Persian Muslims and so may of them are so very white in skin tone. Add Algerian Muslims, who are so very brown in skin tone. Add Asian Muslims from Indonesia to Burma, Azerbaijan to China: ah yes, China’s Urghers who look like the Dali Lama’s Tibetan brothers. Then add the Chechyan rebels of the former Soviet Union and those rabble in the Balkans who we once helped in Kosova, they may join Al Qaeda at any moment?
Better be smart about this. We need to fingerprint, infiltrate, surveillance of all opposition that direct dissent at the American Imperium. Just as we did during Woodstock, love-ins, anti-war groups and Yippies. (I still do not know exactly what a Yippie was but I know they must have been a threat because Nixon said so.)
Or shall we wait until we get hit by terrorists again like 9/11 or the World Trade Center bombing that preceded that? Or the worst terrorist act in American history pre-9/11? Oklahoma City and that irascible Timothy McVeigh? Linked inextricably to the clandestine Militia Phantom cell groups, McVeigh, a Caucasian Christian, U.S. combat veteran of Gulf War I, was no Muslim. Indeed, after over 600 exploded pipe bombs, trains derailed, homes torched, bank robberies, death threats against everyone that opposed their movement from radio stations to liberal Constitutionalists, threatened and kidnapped judges, these Caucasian Christian groups presaged these days.
Should we not think about profiling American Caucasian Christian militants whose acts of violence during the 1990s were nearly equal to 9/11 over an entire decade?
The state cannot stop with Arab Muslims. The threats are too varied, too many, and too often too white.
Between realists and surrealists
By Craig B Hulet?
If
the world is divided between pessimists and optimists we could rest easy. But
it isn’t. It’s between realists and surrealists. Retired general Brent
Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under presidents Gerald Ford
and George H.W. Bush told the New America Foundation luncheon on January 6 that
he expects “an incipient civil war” between Sunni and Shiite Muslims
in Iraq after the Jan. 30 elections. He said “the U.S. military presence
in Iraq is inflaming the Middle East and hurting the war on terrorism.”
“The
Iraqi elections, rather than turning out to be a promising turning point, have
the great potential for deepening the conflict,” Scowcroft, the realist,
added.
When George W. Bush was asked if he shares Scowcroft’s
views, Bush said , “Quite the opposite. I think elections will be such a
incredibly hopeful experience for the Iraqi people.” Bush the surrealist
speaks. Like the idea of Iraqis tucking little daisies down the barrel of U.S.
troops’ guns; that we would be seen as liberators of Iraq rather than Imperium’s
occupation forces, Bush the surrealist is wrong.
Here is how it stacks-up. According to year end Pentagon reports the U.S. military suffered at least 348 deaths in Iraq over the final four months of the year, more than in any other similar period since the invasion in March 2003. The number of combat wounded is over 10,000 with more than a quarter of those injured in the last four months by direct combat. When Bush the surrealist declared May 1, 2003 that major combat operations were over, the total number of wounded stood at just 542. The number of attacks on U.S. and allied troops grew from an estimated 1,400 attacks in September to 1,600 in October and 1,950 in November. A year earlier, the attacks numbered 649 in September, 896 in October and 864 in November. Overall there are now 1,500 Americans killed in action (KIA); some estimates are as high as 100,000 Iraqi civilians. According to CBS 60 Minutes there are no less than 5,500 Americans AWOL as deserters from the U.S. military. 60 Minutes added, asylum seekers in Canada alone is close to 300. Another 20,000 Americans are severely wounded. Another 20,000 are said to be treated stateside for mental stress. What are never counted on the Pentagon website are the private special security contractors KIA.
While those numbers don’t tell the full story of the conflict in Iraq, they suggest insurgents are growing more proficient, even as the size of the U.S. force increases.
According to a recent AP story “U.S. commanders insist they are making progress, in part by taking the fight more directly to the insurgents.” Some analysts are doubtful, many feel we are losing the war.
“The prospects in Iraq are grim,” Dan Goure, Lexington Institute analyst in Washington, said. Calling the conflict a standoff Goure added “Neither side can truly come to grips with the other so far and defeat them.,”
U.S. commanders constantly analyze the insurgents’ tactics and make adjustments, yet the insurgents are said to now control much of the city structures in Iraq. The insurgents include former members of the Iraq Republican Guard; they are well-trained in fighting this kind of war. Of concern is the day when the insurgents begin to deploy heavy weapons we know they have cached throughout the region. U.S. forces have found tons of hidden weaponry and ammunition, still the insurgents kill almost daily with makeshift bombs known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. These are effective and almost impossible to detect. So proficient have they become that the U.S. now airlifts most of the necessary logistical supplies, from ammo to food and water, rather than risk the convoy routes.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said “it has taken the Army many months to counter the IED threat because war planners had not foreseen its scope.... the sophistication of some of those IEDs, was never anticipated.” Maybe he believes that but any number of analysts warned before the invasion that this would be the outcome; that a guerrilla war would ensue.
According to these recent year end reports U.S. deaths averaged 62 per month through the first half of the year. But since June 28, when U.S. officials supposedly restored Iraqi sovereignty and dissolved the U.S. civilian occupation authority, that average has jumped to about 78.
“All along the way it’s bumpy,” Rumsfeld, the surrealist, told Marines at their base outside of Fallujah. “It’s tough, and there are setbacks. It’s not a smooth, easy, steady path to success.” We hear these comments from Rumsfeld, less heard in the mainstream media is how Rumsfeld failed to personally sign letters to relatives upon their son’s deaths in-country in Iraq, preferring to use a mechanical signature, stating he didn’t have time. He has attended maybe too many Squash matches, insiders have said. He says he’ll start signing the condolences by hand.
We hear the Marines have regained control of Fallujah after the fiercest battles of the war yet during November, which was the bloodiest month of the war for the Marine Corps. Now the focus of insurgent violence has shifted to the northern city of Mosul where a Dec. 21, 2004 attack on a military mess hall in Mosul killed 22, including 13 U.S. soldiers. This was the deadliest single attack on a U.S. installation of the war and took place during broad daylight with a shoulder fired rocket. If we cannot prevent an attack on a military base in broad daylight can we really claim to control any city or roads in Iraq?
Though U.S. losses mount, the real brunt of insurgent violence is hitting the Iraqi security forces, Iraqi political figures and Iraqis seen as supporting the Americans. This is the deadliest toll of all. This is causing more and more of the Iraqi security forces, police and Iraqi National Guard to defect to the other side, to infiltrate U.S. bases and orchestrate deadly attacks like the Dec. 21 attack noted above.
Now the divisions are becoming between those who support the occupation and those who will never do so. Seen as traitors by the latter the death toll will rise further. Should elections be held, this will inflame the violence more, not less. Scowcroft’s civil war is in the offing. A war many experts in military affairs say the U.S. cannot remain embroiled in and win.
I reject the political objectives of the Bush administration and still fully support the troops: bring them home now.
Bush has fallen right into Bin Laden’s trap
By Craig BHulet?
Every bomb dropped, every civilian collaterally damaged and dead, every insurgent killed in action, every prisoner tortured will make the Iraqi resistance stronger, more resilient and more violently opposed to any solution offered by Washington.
Mr. Bush has utterly mismanaged the U.S. into the worst quagmire, a most foolish war in the worst region of the world. Going to war with little thought to the peace was not his only mistake. Putting men in charge like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz, not one with a day of military service, has wrought this incipient debacle. Had these men read a book, they would know that “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish ... the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.” The words from Clausewitz, On War; his final imprimatur “This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.”
Not only can you not force democracy on a nationalistic people from without, you certainly cannot do it without sufficient well-trained active duty soldiers. Instead, Bush entertains (the word chosen for both meanings) fighting a theatre (again) Middle Eastern front with National Guard and Reservists ill-equipped for urban combat. The Herald-Leader reported that “The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department warned President Bush this week (01/07) that the United States and its Iraqi allies are not winning the battle against Iraqi insurgents who are trying to derail the country’s Jan. 30 elections...”
The officials, who agreed to speak to Knight Ridder only on condition of anonymity because intelligence estimates are classified, ... said the warnings -- one of which was delivered personally to Bush by newly appointed overseer of the worst Intel purge in US history, CIA Director Porter Goss -- that U.S. forces haven’t been able to stop the insurgents’ intimidation of Iraqi voters, candidates and others who want to participate in the elections.
The news gets worse for Mr. Bush, whose reputation for not listening to sound doctrine is known, rather, with itching ears remains fixated on the all-potent potion of coerced democracy. The Reserves, “drafted” heavily into active duty to provide soldiers for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is “degenerating into a ‘broken’ force” due to dysfunctional military policies.... “I do not wish to sound alarmist. I do wish to send a clear, distinctive signal of deepening concern,” Reserve Commander Lt. Gen. James Helmly said in a Dec. 20 memo to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker released by Reuters January 5..
Here’s the looming problem Bush and his military planners noted above failed to plan for: The Army Reserve is a force of only 200,000 week-end soldiers who decided not to sign up for active-duty. They are mobilized (read drafted) from their civilian lives in times of national need just like the National Guard who are even less prepared and lacking in any significant combat training. About 52,000 Army Reserve soldiers are on active duty, with 17,000 in Iraq and 2,000 in Afghanistan. A full 40 percent of all troops in Iraq are Reservists and Guard. This is unheard of in war!
This damning indictment of administration incompetence comes from General Helmly, who wrote in his eight-page memo, “While ability to meet the current demands associated with OIF (Operational Iraqi Freedom) and OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan) is of great importance, the Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements including those in named OPLANS (operational plans) and CONUS (continental United States) emergencies, and is rapidly degenerating into a ‘broken’ force.”
The press is fond of repeating that the Pentagon, failed to anticipate that a bloody guerrilla war would follow Hussein’s ouster in 2003, and has had to rely on Reserve and Guard soldiers. But there is some prevarication here. Every military and terrorism analyst worth a nickel warned publicly and even more did privately that a guerrilla war would ensue! A new higher level international urban guerrilla war was in the offing.
Helmly bravely asserted that there was “potential ‘sociological’ damage” to the all-volunteer military by paying inducements of $1,000 extra per month to reservists who volunteer to remobilize. “We must consider the point at which we confuse ‘volunteer to become an American Soldier’ with ‘mercenary.’” Brave indeed. Career careen on less.
The Pentagon under Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz
and our foreign policy in the grip of Cheney and Armitage, the response is predictable.
What does the Army of Rumsfeld do in response to this memo? MSNBC 01/07 reports,
Army leaders are considering seeking a change in Pentagon policy that would allow
for longer and more frequent call-ups of some reservists to meet the demands of
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
National Guard and Reservists are being
used most heavily to fill key military support jobs, but authorities are having
difficulty limiting the active-duty time of part-time soldiers to a set maximum
of two years, describing the National Guard’s 15 main combat units as close
to being “tapped out.” To avoid pushing reserve forces to the breaking
point, the official added, a temporary increase of 30,000 troops in active-duty
ranks that was authorized last year will probably need to be made permanent in
Iraq for four or five more years.
The official, as is now the rule, declined to be named because of the “political sensitivity” of the troop issue and the lack of decisions. The political sensitivity as threat is that a full military conscription of civilians is going to be required. We simply do not have enough active duty (nine of ten divisions deployed) nor Reserves and Guard. These numbers never added-up and this was known well before the invasion date was contemplated.
The Army will ask Secretary Rumsfeld in the next several months to change the policy on mobilization of reservists. “It’s coming,” the unnamed official told Pentagon reporters. “I think we’re going to have this discussion this spring.” Yes, this discussion will be held in the spring; more troops will be activated until there is nobody left state-side for domestic security. Anonymous looks more and more correct when he said in his first book, “Bush had fallen right into Bin Laden’s trap.”
There was a longing in Europe for fascism before the name...
By Craig B Hulet?
It is said that philosophy is the attempt to replace opinion by knowledge. But opinion is what rules America, not knowledge. Philosophy is therefore considered subversive, if not evil by the non-thinking masses. It is always dangerous to think in the modern world. Common sense is thought more than just common, even when it is common nonsense.
We are living
in a new world, with a new breed, we are told. They are called neo-conservatives;
so common is this that we spell it neoconservative though every computer spell-checker
has a tizzyfit (did it again). Supposedly Leo Strauss is the titular head of the
neoconservative movement which has Washington policy in a death grip. But even
here opinion errs on the side of sensationalism. True, Wolfowitz, Perle, Armitage
and too many to list are Strauss students. But there are differences among philosophical
and political Straussians.
Professor Michael Desch noted, “political
Straussians, who have now become largely indistinguishable from neoconservatives,
are radicals, clearly lacking the prudence that Strauss advocated in practical
politics.” Political Straussians along with Mr. Bush and their neoconservative
allies argue that the spread of democracy is a panacea for many of America’s
global problems. “But the intellectual justification for such a policy could
hardly have been Strauss, who was a critic of modern liberalism and democracy.”
Strauss maintained that “political regimes encompass more than just their
formal institutions but also depend upon the habits, mores, and customs of a society.”
Here is where I fear America is slowly being castrated culturally, plundered politically and moribund morally.
Dr. Fritz Stern, a Nazi
Germany refugee and European history scholar, Shocked and Awed his listeners in
a recent speech about the danger posed in America by the rise of the Christian
right. Receiving a literary prize presented by the German foreign minister, he
told his audience that Hitler saw himself as “the instrument of providence”
and fused his “racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity.”
Stern
said “some people” (like Stephan Haffner and Detrich Bonhoeffer), “...recognized
the moral perils of mixing religion and politics...but many more were seduced
by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured
[Hiltler’s] success, notably in Protestant areas.” The Lutheran church
was the state church in Germany at the time and often inseparable from Hitler’s
speeches and doctrines.
Others at the time were disheartened by the trend of the churches then, as I am now. One respected theologian said of the German church: “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling.” Admitting the Church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, never dominating, but helping and serving: “It must tell men of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.” Bonhoeffer would be dismayed at what he would see in America: Instead we see America’s churches, Evangelical and conservative fundamentalist primarily, lining-up for government largesse. Mr. Bush and a kow-towed Congress plan to give away some $40 billion in taxpayer’s hard earned cash this year alone, not to feed the hungry, house the homeless, not to see those on meager Social Security incomes see bettered lives. No, Mr. Bush wants to cut SS benefits while Congressmen and federal retirees, including double-dippers, reap a windfall. Bush’s faith-based initiative isn’t even a subtle state handout to the undeserving faithful, but an outright bribe to unify church elements at the polls; to make the church part of the state; a state church without the guilt of being so.
So, like Bonhoeffer we must today argue, “In particular, our own Church will have to take the field against the vices of hubris, power-worship, envy,” hate and prejudice, “as the roots of all evil.” The church should lead in stopping wars and anti-Semitism in its newest form of anti-Muslim-Semitism: the new Jews. The church Bonhoeffer said “will have to speak of moderation, purity, trust, loyalty, constancy, patience, discipline, humility, contentment and modesty.” Not exactly what we see today.
Dr. Stern, 78, was a schoolboy in 1933 when Hitler was elected by 43 percent of the popular vote. He is author of books like “The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology” and has devoted a lifetime to analyzing how the Nazi barbarity became possible. He stops short of calling the American Christian right fascist but his decision to draw parallels, especially in the uses of propaganda, was not controversial to me at all. Not with Fox T.V., CNN, O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh and Savage; not with so many local wannabes like Seattle’s Kirby Wilbur hitting the airwaves, not objectively, but as not-so-subtle Republican Christians. (Objectivity now seen as the sin of philosophical softness, the weakness of giving knowledgeable thought a nod; and knowledge, just as it was in Germany circa 1933-45 is today hated.)
“When I saw the speech my eyes lit up,” said John R. MacArthur, whose book “Second Front” examines wartime propaganda. “The comparison between the propagandistic manipulation and uses of Christianity, then and now, is hidden in plain sight. No one will talk about it. No one wants to look at it.”
Just as in America today, especially the Republican Christians, there is a lust for power. In Germany Stern noted “There was a longing in Europe for fascism before the name was ever invented,” Like America now, there was a longing for a new authoritarianism with some kind of religious orientation and above all a greater communal belongingness. He warned of the danger in an open society of “mass manipulation of public opinion, often mixed with mendacity and forms of intimidation.”
He
is a passionate defender of America’s Founding Fathers liberalism. “The
radical right and the radical left see liberalism’s appeal to reason and
tolerance as the denial of their uniform ideology,” he said. “Every
democracy needs a liberal fundament, a Bill of Rights enshrined in law and spirit,
for this alone gives democracy the chance for self-correction and reform.”
The Republic is at risk without this tolerance. Even genuine conservatives know
this. The tacit alliance between the neo-cons and the Christian right is less
easily understood and Stern admits this. Christians found out too late that Hitler’s
fascism and intolerance, racial profiling and surveillance soon included them.
I can imagine a similarly disillusioning outcome for American Republican Christians
tomorrow.
The greatest divider of all
By Craig B Hulet?
One of American’s problems is to not to be able to see but in black and white. Politically we have deconstructed our own political process, reducing it to two parties alone. A 2-party system has been endorsed by every elite thinker from Samuel P. Huntington to Carroll Quigley as the means to control every electoral outcome in the name of “throwing the rascals out,” without any fundamental change in the direction the state takes: they call it a continuity of government thesis. With the election of Bill Clinton by only 43 percent of the vote, Democrats still speak as though Clinton beat Bush Senior. That this is entirely untrue they cannot admit as their own individual impotence disallows admittance.
Bush didn’t lose because of the economy stupid. He lost because Ross Perot successfully created a third party whereby, had he not pulled out of the race in June due to the mainstream press investigating his many crude Texas deals (including two with corrupt former Speaker of the House Jim Wright), he would have garnered easily 33.3 percent of the popular vote. His return in September of that year to re-announce his re-run guaranteed Clinton’s victory but kept Perot out of hot water by not throwing the race to the U.S. Congress, which a three way split would have done. Perot still received almost 30 percent of the vote in the 39 states that matter.
The Perot Party fell to dust after Bush Junior was awarded the election from Al Gore without Perot in the race; he didn’t need Perot, the Supreme Court filled-in. Perot stayed out of that race because it was always a Texas Code Duelo, between the Senior Bush and little lord Perot. But in the case of Bush Junior, with Bush Senior’s hands no longer tied by being the incumbent president and having sold his shares in Zapata Oil for $2.3 billion, nearly matching Perot’s $3.2 billion net worth, Senior would have crushed Perot had he fouled his heir’s throne.
That is the true history of the last three presidential races. It included the utter wiping-out of all third parties. Along with Perot’s Party (which is all it ever was) the Green Party (discredited by disingenuous megalomaniac Ralph Nader), the Libertarian Party (lost long ago when then former Congressman Ron Paul (R) split the Libertarians left and right over abortion and gay rights) and even the rather silly socialist parties, each now but tiny footnotes in America’s dismal history.
We now have the perfect neck-in-neck, photo-finish, two-party-polarized-system Huntington and Quigley promised the corporate elite would maintain the corporate state under the new Corporazioni. Corporatism rules the state now as the people, not with their heads in the sand at all, but in befuddled exuberance, find themselves voting in greater numbers than ever for the elite’s given choices. One of two. Being ignorant of history, ignorant of political philosophy, 50 percent of American adults illiterate, the people are easily reduced to two choices; two uncomplicated choices: one black, one white. The one side -- white, depending on which side you are on, -- the other side nefarious black -- because they are evil doers! The racial overtones of the selection with more clarity than ever.
Now we come to war. The greatest divider of all. Sides must be taken. War is always couched in black and white. Evil against us worthies. Bush Junior sees no difference: with a withering mix of contempt and callous disregard for truth “you’re either with the U.S. or with the terrorists,” but he really means “you’re either with ‘him’ or against ‘him.’”
My God we are on dangerous turf here with a long history of destroying entire nation-states on all sides. Always the slaughter of innocents, the bane of innocence. The American people should not, but are, more polarized than ever before.
The choices seem clear with the snarling of debutante dogs of war, their skirts raised high: O’Rielly, Hannity, Limbaugh and Savage. A Tsunami wave of raw White House war-propaganda never seen before: CNN, Fox News, New York Times, et al. Banning of authors who dissent from the wave or whipped in staged ambushes with the host’s microphone mute button as weapon, while guest dissenters suffer the puerile punishing abuse from a polarized puppet host of the far-Right. To participate in the polarization, the simpleton’s black and white choice, is to aid and abet the nation’s socio/political dissolution.
One can be against the political and corporate objectives of Bush Junior’s administration and support the cannon fodder of war, “the troops.” To then demand their being brought home in what many perceive an illegal war is no contradiction. To hate Bush in the extreme may be alright for some (though hate clouds the mind, destroys the soul) but one doesn’t have to then see Saddam Hussein as victim and hero. One doesn’t have to endorse the insurgents in Iraq who kill innocent civilian Iraqis daily no differently than American cluster bombs and depleted uranium. An insurgency whose makeup includes but not limited to Republican Guard thugs of Saddam Hussein and sufficient foreign terrorists to matter. The progressive left always does this as the progressive left (primarily in America) operates on hate, not politics; suspicion of everyone not “of their ilk.” Hate of white Anglo-Saxon heterosexual male conservatives is their clarion call to liberty, not liberty itself. These progressive deconstructionist postmodern post-Marxist crackpots are a most racist mob little different than the bigotry they claim to oppose
Too many set aside all rational thought to join, or want to seem to join, the popular anti-war movement; some do it to sell a book; some to create traffic on an otherwise dull and meaningless website; some big fish move way over to the extreme left to join so they can stand out amongst that peculiar crowd in the little pond. Some adopting silly spurious language of fighting a “revolution” here at home to rid America and the world of “imperialists” in support of the “workers” (workers...really?); or better still the proletariat. When one hears such language coming from a retired member of the United States military Special Forces, ask him if he has refused his Pentagon pension check in protest of this war, before you give him much thought, no matter how itching your ears to hear more anti-war sloganizing.
One can easily reject
the political objectives of these wars and support the troops whose history as
cannon fodder is well-known. Bring them home now. Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned,
wars and tyranny are never “between good and evil, but between two evils.”
Saddam is no hero because Bush is malevolent; the insurgency and resistance in
Iraq is not “morally righteous” in all cases; their killing of their
own people seen as collaborators can be readily observed. War kills the innocent,
all innocence dies with it.
-----------------------------------------------------
Not everyone who is anti-war these days is exactly honest. Like the pastor of a liberal-left church in Seattle who claims his church stands for diversity and tolerance first, when in fact he is homosexual and that alone his real driving force behind his ministry, his real calling. Rich Lang, Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church: A Joy and Justice Church in his quest to convince his congregation of the coming Christian fascism blindly endorses, with itching ears, the work of such atheists, radical left homosexuals, hard-core drug users and leftist racists as Sarah Diamond and Chip Berlet because “they say what he likes to hear” about America becoming a Christian Fascist state. But these authors are not authorities who write objectively (a Jewish atheist attacking Christians?) but hateful racists of a simple leftist ilk: they hate in the reverse of right-wing Caucasian Republican Christians. Both sides filled with hate for each other, no truth, honor or moral vision prevails. Any pastor, so-called, who buys into the hate-filled lies and propaganda of such scribblers is no pastor, no Christian, no good man at all. One follows his Shepherdship of his flock at risk of being disciples of hate and ignorance.
I don’t care what anyone is or does; I am neither
anti-homosexual nor pro-homosexual; not pro atheist nor anti; not pro Christian
nor anti. I simply do not care “personally” on these issues as I mind
my own business; anyone who knows my work of 30 years knows this without doubt.
But I am and must be (as I am an engaged citizen) intolerant of the lying political
hustlers so bloody pervasive on the progressive left and always there on the rabid
right. Hypocrisy, lies, serve no cause but their own perpetuation.
I came
to know an editor of an allegedly objective news website whose efforts seemed
clear and honest on the face of it, but I soon discovered the tell-tale signs
of subtle but acute corruption. The Axis of Logic website seems to be objective
on the face of it. But the editor, Mr. Les Blough, is no genuine editor at all.
He is a former Bob Jones University graduate and former Christian minister who
only turned against the Vietnam war, which he had fully supported, when the body-bags
of his own congregation piled-up. He admits becoming a minister “to avoid
the draft” and the Vietnam war to begin with. This is not always a conscientious
objector’s stand you understand. Those of us who did serve, were drafted
and protested the war while serving (a stand the theologian C.S. Lewis was recognized
for stating one ought to do) we always understood. You see, the truth is always
and everywhere transparent; some really are conscientious objectors and like Frederich
Nietzsche during World War I, a war he early on predicted in the late 1890s, served
as a combat medic and ran hospital evacuations in the field. Risking life and
limb to help his fellow soldiers, soldiers who no more supported the war effort
itself than most soldiers in every war.
Every military general is the last one to vote for war, as he knows the cost better than the chicken-hawks who send others to die in their stead. But generals don’t get to vote but with their feet. Nor do most of us when called-up for a war, whether drafted from civilian comfort or activated from reserve duty where the pitiful training prepares one for only standing in queues.
This editor, so-called, who decries the chicken-hawks who send our troops to die, but had never served his country in time of war, or peace, stands on as shaky ground as Bush, Cheney, Armitage, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. Yes, by no means protest this war. Protest Bush. But let us not forget the vicious tyrant Saddam Hussein is still, was, when in power. Like Assad of Syria, Al Sabah of Kuwait, that sick Sheikdom in Saudi Arabia, tyrants all. Yes, Harmid Karzai is a CIA tyrant replacing the Taliban who were tyrants. But as Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated of Hitler and Germany’s drift to tyranny, the fight “is never between good and evil, but between two evils.” Still, we must choose.
But here is how those who always see the world in black and white choose, here is where the subtle and not so subtle truths find the crack, and so the light gets in.
Les Blough finally said it the way he thinks: “ .... As editors of Axis of Logic who research and report daily on the war on Iraq, let there be no confusion: We stand - openly - and ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ with the Iraqi resistance who are doing no less than we would do if we in the U.S. were invaded by a foreign nation.” He followed with a bit of much needed dissembling by adding “We also stand ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ with all U.S. soldiers as we demand that the government withdraw them from harm’s way in Iraq.”
Let me take the last one first. First of all Les Blough, who avoided the draft during Vietnam by going to college to become a minister (he admitted this to me as his reason) and did not then stand shoulder to shoulder with us troops in Vietnam, myself included, as he supported that war while avoiding it, (just like the cowards O’Rielly, Hannity, Savage and Limbaugh) until, as I stated, his own congregation’s body count grew. Bush supports the troops too Mr. Blough, he sent them and like you he never served his country.
On the question of standing “shoulder to shoulder” with the resistance in Iraq, let’s look at the resistance honestly: whether one calls them terrorists, as a few certainly are, or insurgents, which a few certainly are (former Baathist regime military and civilian government Sunnis), or resistance, which the majority are, as just regular Iraqi citizens Sunni and Shiite, Christian and Muslim, that want us out of their country “for all the right reasons.”
But to claim to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with all of them, regardless of which we speak, means you are standing as well with Iraqis who are killing other innocent Iraqi civilians, women and children just as American troops are; Iraqis killing outright those who are innocently, though seemingly supporting the American occupation. Please: not every Iraqi who applies for a damn job under the American occupation government is a traitor, any more than Les Blough is a traitor now (according to the likes of O’Rielly, et al) by his present domestic dissent. These particular “resistance” fighters are in fact “insurgents,” by definition in too many cases, definitively terrorists in other cases, which, like it or not, in fact includes a minority of foreign fighters and now even Al Qaida. (Nothing shocking here and fully expected to happen by every thinking analyst on Middle Eastern affairs.) Indeed, if Bush has accomplished anything well it is this: the unification of radical Islam along lines never imagined pre-9/11.
Bush alone could change Usamah bin Laden’s mind whereby bin Laden now has endorsed the likes of Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who bin Laden rejected giving any aid or endorsement in Iraq as late as February 20, 2004 according to the CIA. This is not a world of homogenous bad guys as much as Bush once believed. But Mr. Bush’s policies are making it so. The once rejected terrorist group whose head is Zarqawi, Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad, renamed has become Tanzim Qaedat al Jihad fi Billad al Rafidain, which translates roughly as Qaeda Organization for Jihad in Iraq, with bin Laden’s blessings. I will not stand shoulder to shoulder with any terrorists in any case under any conditions.
But for a Christian to do so is anathema to the teachings of Jesus, if that even matters any longer to Leftist Christians; it certainly doesn’t matter to Republican Christians.
Regarding the Iraqis who apply for jobs under the Allawi regime and are then targeted as traitors and murdered outright: These Iraqis are in need of work to feed their family; not every Iraqi is as politically savvy as Blough thinks he is. These starving victims of war must choose to live or die, but choose they must and under considerably harsher conditions than Mr. Blough, sitting comfortably in his cabin in the woods or behind his computer in his well-heated Boston office where he acts as a paid court witness in civil liability cases (what some might call ambulance chaser‘s cases). Comfy Blough.
If Blough wants to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the resistance, there is nothing stopping him from going to the Middle East, slipping across the border from Syria into Iraq and joining this jolly little war against America. Nothing. Not even his Iranian wife would object. (Which I fear may be some cause for Blough’s excitability in prose of late regarding this war.) I risk condemnation by bringing her up as Iranian as a cheap shot, I know. But without her as a computer whiz, there would be no Axis of Logic website at all. And her political input as a victim of yet another American CIA horror show, the Shah of Iran being put in power by a CIA Coup d‘etat, overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadegh government in 1953 only to be later overthrown by the Grand Ayatollah’s Coup d‘etat, she has some reason for anger and her political views. I do not disparage her this at all. I am still on my subject.
I am carrying my share of baggage from
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the corrupt corporate system that strained my militaristic
discipline more than once to not terminate with great prejudice specific American
businessmen. But I didn’t. And the baggage does not reduce my clarity over
this present war. And but just one war of many to come like so many of our past.
Les Blough says “Our position is based on principle: The right for any
nation to defend their national boundaries and sovereignty against invasion and
occupation - on the principles of the rights to independence and national self-determination.”
What he fails to understand is nobody is asking him to fight their
fight, not even with his misguided words. The analogy is false, false logic a
principle drawback of the progressive left always and everywhere. Blough only
sounds like a Leftist by the way. He never was and is not today; it just generates
traffic on his website and endears him to the Arab and Muslim readers and the
anti-war Left growing more popular as Bush grows more hateful. Should Russians
invade America (I refuse to use the utterly stupid argument, by saying “should
Muslims invade America,” they have no Navy, no Air Force, no nation-state
unity of any kind), no let’s stick with Russians for our trip into fantasy;
should that happen, how is it justified to kill American collaborators with the
Russian imposed but American regime as guerrilla resistance? Justified, like members
of the French resistance who would kill a woman for sleeping with a German, for
falling in love with a German as many did? Those who did so making their resistance
cause morally indistinguishable from the German’s. And it was condemned by
the true French resistance: they never lost sight of the enemy and it was the
German Nazi regime.
The insurgents and terrorists calling themselves resistance
fighters that kill innocent Iraqis seen as collaborators are as barbaric as the
American forces using cluster bombs, depleted uranium and carpet bombing. Torture
is no answer. The slaughter of innocents no answer.
During this media siege we do not need spurious hyperbolic pseudo authors writing nasty little pieces denouncing America from a pseudo-Marxist perspective in what is purportedly a legitimate news site. www.AxisofLogic.com has been guilty of this more than once. They are doing it again. One author, so-called, writes nasty little pieces denouncing America from a Leftist point of view. He gets a “byline” on Axis of Logic’s site, he has an archive of his past pieces on Axis. And on most there is the original source of the story as say, "http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=24200"
Worse. His story because it appeared on Axis of Logic’s site other more legitimate sources, thinking the Axis editors vetted Shaw as legit, reprinted it at, say, "http://uruknet.info?s1=2&p=8851&s2=14"
But in every case, through all search engines, when we try to verify the existence of Shaw or the original source material we find “The page cannot be displayed.” When name searched for Arthur Shaw there is the Music Conductor Shaw, a Financial guy Shaw, but no Arthur Shaw except where Axis of Logic appears and then the original source for this “story” is, guess: “"http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=24200" ” And then “The page cannot be displayed.” There is no Arthur Shaw on the Net. There is no original source for his stories, there is no www.vheadline.com, there is only the thoroughly conned once again, Axis of Logic, who it now seems clear, anyone, any crackpot, can get his story published on Axis of Logic. All that is needed as a thorough hatred of the United States, an antiwar leftist point of view (no matter how crazy) or a certain level of subtle or not so subtle anti-Semitism and/or hype in favor of the Iraqi Resistance. Arthur Shaw can be reached at "mailto:belial4444@aol.com" ...an AOL e-mail address, as he has no website nor contributes articles to any legitimate website one can find. We asked him who is Arthur Shaw, the response from him? "Arthur Shaw is little ole me. I'm a worker in the good ole USA.." A worker of the world no doubt.
An MSN Search found this rather extravagant
claim: "http://www.vheadline.com/"
VHeadline.com
(Venezuela) is recognized internationally as the premier source of independent
news & views on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (South America)
www.vheadline.com
Then
there is this:
"http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=11121"
VHeadline.com (Venezuela) is recognized internationally as the premier source
of independent news & views on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (South
America)
www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=11121
And you
guessed it: This page cannot be displayed. We need this? Les Blough shame on you.
This war is tearing Iraq apart, tearing the Middle East to shreds, polarizing
the entire world against America. And Mr. Bush is to blame first and foremost
along with the Democrats and Republicans of both Houses of Congress; along with
a totally corrupt major media like Fox news; along with the putrid pundits like
O’Rielly; along with the local talk show hosts like Kirby Wilbur in Seattle
who parrot the putrid pundits; along with those who support the war baldly with
lips curled back, bared-teeth, but do not enlist, nor enlist their sons.
But then we here in America must bear these others: like the cowards who claim, suddenly, though they have never cared about anyone else in their lives, never read a book, or voted, never did anything but take of the bread of life here in Paradise America, now claiming the moral high-ground and plead they are “conscientiously objecting” to the war itself as unjust, immoral and just wrong. We know these numbers well, we Vietnam combat vets, too many are just plain cowards. Those, like Bush Junior, who avoided Vietnam by any means necessary, not out of some “eternal consciousness” of the immorality of all war, but blind fear. And like the theologian C.S. Lewis, I hold no truck with cowards; like Nietzsche, I protested the war, every day, in every way, but I served “in country” tossed my medals aside in rage and came home to find my unit’s colors sent home with me: 80 percent losses; almost everyone I knew died. I know something of survivor guilt, I had to stand in the color guard at the ceremony!
No, the claim that one stands “shoulder to shoulder” with the resistance, “shoulder to shoulder” with the U.S. troops are both false claims of Les Blough’s and we shall hear more such disingenuous sloganizing before the anti-war protests in New York on March 20, 2005.
I do support the U.S. troops as the cannon fodder I once was -- bring them all home now. Support them when they return where you can. (Too many will commit suicide, like Andreas Raya in California; others will take their own lives rather than taking a few cops with them; still others will take their wives and families with them; war is hell is no slogan!) But I shall not claim to stand shoulder to shoulder with them as that would require I re-enlist in the United States Army as a weapons and ordnance expert (45J20 MOS) and join the fight. Such radical bluster may impress one’s wife here at home, maybe even a radio audience at Midnight on Pacifica radio, but it impresses not one former member of the armed forces, not one serving their country in combat in Iraq.
I reject the murderous regime inside the U.S. Beltway whose imaginings of Empire reject this country’s founding principles. I reject the insurgents and former Republican Guard thugs of Saddam Hussein’s vicious tyranny, as they put up the fight to restore their murderous regime to power; they remain simple killers.
I entirely reject foreign terrorists, while fully understanding why they have become what they are. (U.S. policies for fifty years have created these men and women, I understand this well.) But those foreign and domestic terrorists who have joined the fight against America’s illegal occupation whose sole desire is to kill all Americans, all Jews and all Iraqis who are not fighting the good fight by their violent and hate-filled side, I reject as the vicious thugs they too are.
As far as the legitimate resistance by “everyday Iraqis” who have seen their children, wives and mothers slaughtered, their brothers, fathers and entire families wiped from existence by one 500 pound high explosive bomb, killed and tortured by U.S. troops taking illegal orders from a chain of command run amuck? I genuinely care for these poor souls. I will continue to do everything I can to stop my government from committing more atrocities against a people who have suffered under our corrupt corporate policies side by side with a monstrous tyrant we created in Saddam Hussein.
But I will not now see Saddam Hussein as a victim, as a hero standing against the U.S. crusade! I shall not succumb to slogans from the American progressive left who have hated America for decades and decades, ... still do, claiming with their flabby fists rolled-up in the air... “I’m an atheist, I’m a socialist, I’m for the workers.” Their stupid post-Marxist rhetoric as disgusting as it was in the sixties. I know them well: their racist tyranny is (and was, where tried) no better than the right wing fascist tyrannies they claim America creates the world over.
Les Blough should reduce his rhetoric to reality, rather than an effort to increase traffic on his website by attracting an ever more market share to his newest ministry, manipulating language to enlist ever more misguided and many dutifully disingenuous leftists. His own less than honorable past should have been cause for some little sense of humility.
One
repeats for clarity: Wars and tyrannies have always been, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer
so eloquently put it, never a “choice between good and evil, but between
two evils.”
(Source for original article: www.axisoflogic.com titled
George Walker Bush's Willing Executors Les Blough, Editor Jan 8, 2005)
Propaganda masked as real news
By Craig B Hulet?
The White House is using taxpayer funds to push political propaganda masked as real news. Conservatives, once self-described defenders of absolute truth in the face of moral relativism, have succumbed to neoconservative ideas about how to run government, especially at the White House. They now seem to believe the truth is something to be packaged. Machiavellian-like they see the war on terror as the over-ruling dictum to manipulate the people of America for their own good. We are not able to grasp the finer points of foreign policy, the machinations necessary to prosecute asymmetrical warfare in the face of such an elusive enemy, in short we’re too stupid to hear the truth. Domestically the feeling is the same.
In a rush of blood to the brain, Washington acts more akin to a third-rate tyrant, as the White House paid “journalist” Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote the president’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation on his syndicated program and among other African-American media personalities. Buying of journalists is probably not entirely new. Buying them to spread White House war-propaganda will even be tolerated as we shall see. But this latest episode in the neoconservative assault on honesty is an outrage and demonstrates the withering mix of contemptuous disregard towards the media and the manipulation of the people.
The reality? “The bipartisan National Governors Association voted unanimously in 2003 to name No Child Left Behind an ‘unfunded mandate,’ which means the federal government isn’t supplying the money needed to make the law work.” - Bloomberg, 1/12/04. Some of that money went to Williams.
Though one shall hear little of it, it is called “the Williams contract,” and was filtered through Ketchum, a public relations firm the Education department paid $1 million to help promote its policies. Part of a $700,000 contract uncovered by the People for the American Way, Ketchum helped the administration produce a “video news release geared for television stations.” It also developed “a ranking system for newspaper coverage of NCLB. Points were awarded for stories saying, “President Bush and the Republican Party are strong on education,” while “stories lost five points for negative messages, including claims that the law is not adequately funded or is too tough on states,” according to the Associated Press.
That is hardly the only lie. Molly Ivins January 11, said: “I wouldn’t go calling anyone a liar, but as we say in our quaint Texas fashion, this administration is stuffed with people who are on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck. They’ve been telling us only four out of the 18 provinces in Iraq will be too unsafe to vote in. Doesn’t sound that bad, does it? Unless you happen to know that about 50 percent of the population lives in those four provinces. Will someone explain to me what earthly good they expect to do by misleading us?”
They expect that nobody really cares one whit one way or ‘tuther Molly. Like when Chief weapons inspector Duelfer reports that Saddam Hussein not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, ... that he had no capability of making any either, Mr. Bush remains unapologetic and defends his decision, “absolutely, yes,” to invade Iraq. We need to understand the contempt this President holds for the American people.
When House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Mr. Bush should explain what happened. “Now that the search is finished, President Bush needs to explain to the American people why he was so wrong, for so long, about the reasons for war.” He will not. We need to understand the contempt this President holds for the Congress.
The Government Accountability Office pointed out to the White House last year that it was distributing fake news segments promoting its Medicare legislation. One segment featured Karen Ryan, a paid actress, posing as a “reporter.” Another video, showed a government official being interviewed in Spanish by an actor posing as a reporter with the name “Alberto Garcia.” This was clearly to target Hispanic segments of the population prior to the elections. The GAO did rule the segments “violated federal law” and were a form of “covert propaganda” because “the government was not identified as the source of the materials.” The segment was broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets, according to the New York Times, calling it the White House Propaganda Mill..
But we haven’t seen the half of it. In its latest September 2004 Report to the President and the Pentagon, The Defense Science Board (DSB) Task Force on Strategic Communication intends to see that we go much farther down the road to a full Stalinesk “Ministry of Propaganda.” The War on Terror demands it, they say. While the report was widely quoted as stating “...we must understand the United States is engaged in a generational and global struggle about ideas, not a war between the West and Islam.” ... few quoted what the report recommended. Arguing that we should be communicating globally and domestically, the report added “Words in tone and substance should avoid offence where possible: messages should seek to reduce, not increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism and double standards.”
So is the DSB suggesting the White House clean up its act? Change our foreign policies towards Muslim states, which the DSB admits create terrorism? That we should start telling the world the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth....? No, they are not.
The report, instead offers this as a solution to the fact that America is perceived negatively by almost every nation’s people worldwide: “Information saturation means attention, not information, becomes a scarce resource. Power flows to credible messengers. Asymmetrical credibility matters. What’s around information is critical. Reputations count. Brands are important. Editors, filters, and cue givers are influential. .... Today political struggles are about the creation and destruction of credibility.”
Witness Dan Rather’s timely destruction of his credibility and one does wonder what White House/Cheney/Rove black ops rendered him mute? Dan Rather made such a mistake? The documents must have been creatively created by someone well-versed in document fraud to get past the entire 60 Minutes staff. I do not buy it in the face of what you are about to read in my next piece on the new proposed DSB Ministry of Propaganda.
All of the above articles were written January 2005 for The Daily World newspaper in Washington State at the request of its publisher John Hughes. New upcoming articles soon!
Bush warned that
his actions in the Middle East will backfire:
Bush responds exactly wrong.
By Craig B Hulet?
June 21, 2004
In
a new book, by an author many have by now read going by the name Anonymous (A
senior U.S. intelligence official) has published an outright and strong condemnation
of America’s counter-terrorism policy. The author argues that the west is
losing the war against al-Qaida and that an “avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked”
war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden’s hands. This argument was made
by another writer in several pieces written over these past two years and most
especially in a working paper for federal law enforcement titled Record of Terror:
The Causal Relationship. (See www.kcandassociates.org by CBH?, 2002)
The new book, out the first week of July, is titled “Imperial Hubris: Why
the West is Losing the War on Terror,” dismisses two of the most frequent
boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are “on the
run” and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.
In Record of Terror I noted U.S. conventional military force is the vehicle to prosecute these wars, when it was and is U.S. military intervention all over the world that has been a primary cause for individuals to form groups and retaliate against that very intervention. U.S. military intervention has been identified as the major cause for terrorist acts against Americans and American facilities, corporate, military and governmental by none other than the United States Pentagon’s Defense Science Board:
As part of its global power position, the United States is called upon frequently to respond to international causes and deploy forces around the world. America’s position in the world invited attack simply because of its presence. Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. (Source: October, 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DoD Responses to Transnational Threats, DSB)
In
an interview with the Guardian Anonymous, “described al-Qaida as a much more
proficient and focused organization than it was in 2001, and predicted that it
would “inevitably” acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use
them.”
He said Bin Laden was probably “comfortable” commanding
his organization from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan
and Afghanistan. ... The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the “war
against terror” [yesterday] with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek Mohammed,
who was one of al-Qaida’s protectors in Waziristan. (Source: “Bush told
he is playing into Bin Laden’s hands Al-Qaida may ‘reward’ American
president with strike aimed at keeping him in office, senior intelligence man
says.” Julian Borger in Washington, Saturday June 19, 2004, "http://www.guardian.co.uk/"
)
Another widely respected expert on International Relations noted something similar when he wrote:
If steps to deal with the problem in terms of capabilities are limited, can anything be done to address intentions -- the incentives for any foreign power or group to lash out at the United States? There are few answers to this question that do not compromise the fundamental strategic activism and international thrust of U.S. foreign policy over the past half century. That is because the best way to keep people from believing that the United States is responsible for their problems is to avoid involvement in their conflicts. (Source: Richard K. Betts: Foreign Affairs Vol. 77, No. 1, Page 40)
On
our relentless war in Afghanistan Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in
the hunt for Bin Laden, said: “Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area.
We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are.” He believes President
Pervez Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without endangering
his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. “He walks a very fine line,”
he said.
The Guardian reported this important difference in the new book’s
release stating “Imperial Hubris is the latest in a relentless stream of
books attacking the administration in election year. Most of the earlier ones,
however, were written by embittered former officials. This one is unprecedented
in being the work of a serving official with nearly 20 years experience in counter-terrorism
who is still part of the intelligence establishment.
The fact that he has been allowed to publish, albeit anonymously and without naming
which agency he works for, may reflect the increasing frustration of senior intelligence
officials at the course the administration has taken.” (Ibid., Julian Borger)
Another author whose read the new book’s manuscript, one Peter Bergen, the author of two books on Bin Laden and al-Qaida, said: “His views represent an amped-up version of what is emerging as a consensus among intelligence counter-terrorist professionals.”
Anonymous does not try to veil his contempt for the Bush White House and its policies. His book describes the Iraq invasion as “an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage.” Our argument was oil and the economic global regime’s thirst for this commodity all along. Anonymous is to the point on Bush’s alleged reasons for going to war:
“Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject, even willful failure to recognize the ideological power, lethality and growth potential of the threat personified by Bin Laden, as well as the impetus that threat has been given by the US-led invasion and occupation of Muslim Iraq.” In his view, the US missed its biggest chance to capture the al-Qaida leader at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in December 2001. Instead of sending large numbers of his own troops, General Tommy Franks relied on surrogates who proved to be unreliable. “For my money, the game was over at Tora Bora,” Anonymous said. (Ibid., Borger)
President Bush has repeated his assertion that Bin Laden was cornered and that there was “no hole or cave deep enough to hide from American justice”. Anonymous rebuts this when he said: “I think we overestimate significantly the stress [Bin Laden’s] under. Our media and sometimes our policymakers suggest he’s hiding from rock to rock and hill to hill and cave to cave. My own hunch is that he’s fairly comfortable where he is.” (Ibid.)
“I don't think we’ve laid a glove on him.”...What I think we’re seeing in al-Qaida is a change of generation, ... The people who are leading al-Qaida now seem a lot more professional group.... They are more bureaucratic, more management competent, certainly more literate. Certainly, this generation is more computer literate, more comfortable with the tools of modernity. I also think they’re much less prone to being the Errol Flynns of al-Qaida. They’re just much more careful across the board in the way they operate.” (Ibid.)
Recall just how vulnerable the west is to the kinds of attacks like 9/11 presented. In the aftermath of 9/11 Time magazine quoted a senior FBI official and counterterrorism expert who stated the following discomforting piece of news:
The worldwide dragnet has snared 600 alleged al-Qaeda operatives. And yet the bottom line is sobering: after six months of gumshoe work by just about every law-enforcement official in the U.S., the number of al-Qaeda sleeper cells that have been busted inside the country is precisely zero. Does that mean bin Laden’s men have gone further underground? “We don’t know,” says an FBI official. “If you go back and look at the hijackers, they had zero contact with any known al-Qaeda people we were looking at. They didn’t break laws. They didn’t do anything to come to anybody's attention. Are there other people in the U.S. like that? We don’t know. (Source: Can We Stop the Next Attack? TIME, Page 35, March 11, 2002)
As for weapons of mass destruction, The Guardian reported that Anonymous thinks that if al-Qaida does not have them already, it will inevitably acquire them. The most likely source of a nuclear device would be the former Soviet Union, he believes. Dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons, could be home-made by al-Qaida’s own experts, many of them trained in the U.S. and Britain.
The
most profound assertion the author made [Anonymous], who published an analysis
of al-Qaida last year called “Through Our Enemies’ Eyes,” thinks
it quite possible that another devastating strike against the U.S. could come
during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration,
as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place! Bush
is good for the Islamists the world over who want to make war on America and the
west. Anonymous again:
“I’m very sure they can’t have
a better administration for them than the one they have now, ...One way to keep
the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around
the president.”
In
every age...the ultimate sources of war are the beliefs of those in power:
their idea about what is of most fundamental importance
and may therefore
ultimately be worth a war.
-- Evan Luard, International War
Along with Anonymous’s enormously important work, and angered by Bush administration policies, 26 retired U.S. diplomats and military officers contend the administration policies endanger national security, these diplomats and military officers are urging Americans to vote President Bush out of office in November. The group, which calls itself “Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change,” does not explicitly endorse Democrat John Kerry for president in its campaign. The Bush-Cheney campaign said Sunday it would have no response until the group formally issues its statement at the news conference. (Source: 26 Former U.S. Officials Oppose Bush, Mon Jun 14, AP, Washington). This is just the beginning of the outpouring of significant people who oppose this administration and everything it seems to stand for.
Among the group are 20 ambassadors,
appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, other former State Department
officials and military leaders whose careers span three decades. Prominent members
include retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle
East during the administration of Bush’s father; retired Adm. William J.
Crowe Jr., ambassador to Britain under President Clinton and chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff under President Reagan; and Jack F. Matlock Jr., a member of the
National Security Council under Reagan and ambassador to the Soviet Union from
1987 to 1991. “We agreed that we had just lost confidence in the ability
of the Bush administration to advocate for American interests or to provide the
kind of leadership that we think is essential,” said William C. Harrop, the
first President Bush’s ambassador to Israel, and earlier to four African
countries. “The group does not endorse Kerry, although it more or less goes
without saying in the statement,” Harrop said in a telephone interview. (Ibid.)
Harrop said he listed himself as an independent for years for career purposes
but usually has voted Republican. The former ambassador said diplomats and military
officials normally avoid making political statements, especially in an election
year.
“Some of us are not that comfortable with it, but we just feel very strongly that the country needs new leadership,” Harrop said.... He said the group was disillusioned by Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq and a list of other subjects, including the Middle East, environmental conservation, AIDS policy, ethnic and religious conflict and weapons proliferation. (Ibid.)
One would think Mr. Bush would listen to such experts whose warnings seem to go, not just unheeded, but the administration’s elite neo-conservatives positively vilify their critics. The White House has yet to comment publicly on the book “Imperial Hubris,” which is due to be published on July 4, but intelligence experts say it may try to portray him as a professionally embittered maverick.” (Ibid., Borger) The tone of Imperial Hubris is certainly angry and urgent, and the stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from a highly sensitive job in the late 90s. But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA counter-terrorism centre, said he had been vindicated by events. “He is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of the subject.”
Anonymous believes Mr. Bush is taking the U.S. in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy. He said: “It’s going to take 10,000-15,000 dead Americans before we say to ourselves: “What is going on’?” (Source: Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden’s hands Al-Qaida may ‘reward’ American president with strike aimed at keeping him in office, senior intelligence man says. Julian Borger in Washington Saturday June 19, 2004, "http://www.guardian.co.uk/" )
Bush’s reaction? Bush’s next move?
One must question not only what the administration is doing presently but what will they do should they return to office after the November elections? The upcoming wars against other nation-states (which clearly have been targeted) is on the Pentagon’s desk. Further evidence that the latter is officially on the agenda is below: This was dated Monday, February 17, 2003:
U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials on Monday that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterwards. Bolton, who is undersecretary for arms control and international security, is in Israel for meetings about preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. In a meeting with Bolton on Monday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that Israel is concerned about the security threat posed by Iran. It’s important to deal with Iran even while American attention is turned toward Iraq, Sharon said. (Source: U.S. official to Israel: We’ll deal with Syria, Iran after Iraq war, Monday, February 17, 2003, By Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and Agencies)
Add to that the French intelligence services have seen more on the horizon than Americans would: “It has been reliably reported that the American President and his closest military advisors, in conjunction with the highest military commands, have determined that military operations should be prepared for and executed against two main targets. The first and primary ones are in the Middle East and comprise Iraq and most especially Iran. The secondary object is North Korea. The use of conventional U.S. ground troops is counter-indicated. U.S. ground troops are being withdrawn from South Korea (2nd Infantry Division, etc.) ostensibly for replacement duties in Iraq but in fact to remove these units from any collateral damage from projected nuclear attacks on North Korea. There are insufficient personnel available for either operation at the present time and increasing their size is not politically viable. Therefore, a determination is made for both a show of force and the ability to launch a powerful attack against these targets if and when the Commander in Chief deems it necessary. In furtherance of this policy, the United States Naval forces will be utilized as the focus of the attack forces. These units will not be subject to counter attacks because they can stand off at a distance and attack their targets with complete impunity. Naval personnel will not be subject to guerrilla warfare in any sense and will supply a very powerful attack force capable of delivering deadly blows against designated targets. (Source: TBRNEWS -SPECIAL EDITION of June 17, 2004, Serious New Military Actions of the Administration: Another War or Just Bluff? “From [redacted] Report: [translation from the French] )
Immediately below is a quote from an e-mail I received from the federal intelligence agent now at the Department of Justice and Homeland Security after a thorough review of this office's original working paper “Record of Terror” 2002. I made the argument that terrorism is related directly to American military and economic intervention into other sovereign state’s regions where I suggested we ought to stay out of these nation’s affairs, period.
Well
don’t you paint a happy picture! Perhaps we should pull out of Korea
and some of these other conflict zones and let the parties resolve their own issues?
I think you under estimate the logic of your position. If one actuallyreads
what you are saying (assuming the reader is willing to set aside
personal
agendas) I really think you make a lot of sense. But then again
logic has
very little to do with anything anymore, be it justice or foreign policy!
(A Federal Agent with Justice/Homeland Security)
The following is supplied for the reader to comprehend the level of military operations necessary to fight a global war on terrorism, a war that cannot be won, and a number of experts seem to agree with this assessment.
Because terrorism is one of the few dimensions on which the United States does not have an advantage, it is a promising tool for those who feel strongly about interests they believe have suffered because of other dimensions of U.S. power. (Source: Paul Pillar, Terrorism, Page 57)
Empirical evidence that there is a causal relationship between terrorism and what we do as nation-state in these foreign lands was supplied by defense specialist Ivan Eland of the Cato Institute. Listing incidents that could be proven to have a direct correlation to U.S. military intervention in regions of the world where we did not belong, in both the view of terrorists and none too few American experts, Eland begins as early as 1915 and ends through September 1998. The title of his briefing, “Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record.” Eland observed that “although the Defense Science Board noted a historical correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States, the board apparently believed the conclusion to be so obvious that it did not publish detailed data to support it. Some analysts apparently remain unconvinced of the relationship.”
Another component
of U.S. vulnerability is that Americans tend to view
transnational threats
singularly. That is, terrorist incidents...tend to look like
individual events
that do not evidence a campaign against U.S. policies or interests.
Deeper
investigation shows that a number of transnational adversaries
have planned
campaigns of unconventional warfare.
--Defense Policy Board, 1997, Vol. 1,
Pg. 15
(Guerrilla Warfare is not the same as Terrorism, CBH)
Paul R. Pillar, whose book Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy was a staple
for reading in counter-terror circles and private security specialists like myself,
pre-9/11, notes this regarding the afore mentioned arguments:
More than anything else, it is the United States’ predominant place atop the world order (with everything that implies militarily, economically, and culturally) and the perceived U.S. opposition to change in any part of that order that underlie terrorists’ resentment of the United States and their intent to attack it. (Pillar, Terrorism, Page 60)
The Defense Science Board’s 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DoD Responses to Transnational Threats notes a relationship between an activist American foreign policy and terrorism against the United States:
As part of its global power position, the United States is called upon frequently to respond to international causes and deploy forces around the world. America’s position in the world invites attack simply because of its presence. Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States.
Given the evidence immediately below one cannot but admit Mr. Bush and his gruesome crew are going to continue the path they have chosen as the chosen elite to administer peace through strength under a new definition. Bush, if reelected by even a reasonably decent percentage will declare this a mandate for his policies, all his policies, and the present deployment of troops and ships, reserves and Guard units makes it patently clear Iraq is not the end, but the beginning of a new and larger “footprint” for the Pentagon. Also obviously a military draft seems inevitable for American youth. Please take note of the following evidence of deployment of naval forces.
A current review of U.S. Naval units
and their current dispositions:
US NAVAL DEPLOYMENT AS OF June 15, 2004:
USS Enterprise - Atlantic (unknown location - possibly headed for the Middle East)
USS George Washington - en route to the Gulf of Arabia
USS John F. Kennedy
- Atlantic (unknown location - possibly headed for the Middle East)
USS Roosevelt
- Atlantic, heading for the Middle East
USS Harry S. Truman - Atlantic
USS Kitty Hawk - normally stationed in Japan, now moving towards China (Korea
Operation)
USS Stennis - Pacific - headed for Taiwan (Korea Operation)
USS Carl Vinson - Pacific - headed for Taiwan (Korea Operation)
USS Abraham
Lincoln - Pacific (backup-Korea Operation)
USS Ronald Reagan - port visit
in Rio De Janiero, Brazil
USS Nimitz - Still in drydock, refueling its reactor
USS Eisenhower - Still in drydock, refueling its reactor
NB: Most ships left
port with little notice and were markedly understaffed.
Navy Personnel
Active Duty: 376,185
Officers: 55,793
Enlisted: 317,213
Midshipmen:
3,179 Ready Reserve: 147,622 [As of 30 Apr.]
Selected Reserves: 83,719
Individual Ready Reserve: 63,903
Reserves currently mobilized: 2,535 [as of
9 June]
Personnel on deployment: 49,604
Navy Department Civilian Employees:
181,701 [as of 30 April, 2004.]
Ships and Submarines
Ships: 295
Ships
Underway (away from homeport):
164 (56% of total)
On deployment:
108
ships (37% of total)
Submarines underway (away from homeport):
30 submarines
(57% of submarine force)
Submarines on deployment:
8 submarines (15% of
submarine force)
Ships Underway (other than Carriers)
Expeditionary Strike
Group (ESG) Two
USS Wasp (LHD 1)[22 MEU] - Arabian Gulf
USS Leyte Gulf
(CG 55) - Arabian Gulf
USS Yorktown (CG 48) - Gulf of Oman
USS Shreveport
(LPD 12) - Indian Ocean
USS Whidbey Island (LSD 41) - Arabian Gulf
USS
McFaul (DDG 74) - Arabian Gulf
Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) Three
[11th Marine Expeditionary Unit]
USS Belleau Wood (LHA 3) - Pacific
USS
Denver (LPD 9) - Pacific
USS Comstock (LSD 45) - Pacific
Amphibious Ships:
USS Tarawa (LHA 1) - Pacific
USS Nassau (LHA 4) - Atlantic
USS Peleliu
(LHA 5) - Pacific
USS Essex (LHD 2) - Pacific
USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) -
Atlantic
USS Boxer (LHD 4) - Pacific
USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) - Pacific
USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) - Atlantic
USS Austin (LPD 4) - Atlantic
USS
Duluth (LPD 6) - Pacific
USS Dubuque (LPD 8) - Pacific
USS Juneau (LPD
10) - Pacific
USS Ponce (LPD 15) - Atlantic
USS Fort McHenry (LSD 43)
- port visit, Singapore
USS Tortuga (LSD 46) - Atlantic
USS Rushmore
(LSD 47) - Pacific
USS Ashland (LSD 48) - Atlantic
USS Harpers Ferry
(LSD 49) - Sunda Sea
USS Carter Hall (LSD 50) - Atlantic
USS Oak Hill
(LSD 51) - port visit, Mayport, Fla.
Aircraft (operational): 4,000+
End
Copyright 2004 Craig B Hulet and The Artful Nuance
Left-wing Gatekeepers
One of the better, and more important areas of research which has been done of late appeared on the Internet; I have placed the important links in this appendix for readers who are less familiar with research done regarding the links between multinational corporation’s tax exempt foundations’ funding the so-called Indy-journalism or independent press like Pacifica Radio and The Nation magazine. Below is some of the best journalism to date on these links to the CIA, the NSC and every administration since Johnson. The Ford Foundation’s ties to Ralph Nader’s groups like Public Citizen have been discussed by this author in other books and papers. The links below should be each downloaded and printed out before they are no longer available on the Web.
The Ford Foundation's history
of collaboration and interlock with the CIA in pursuit of U.S. world hegemony
is now a well-documented fact...The Ford Foundation has in some ways refined their
style of collaboration with Washington's attempt to produce world cultural domination,
but retained the substance of that policy...The ties between the top officials
of the Ford Foundation and the U.S. government are explicit and continuing.
—James Petras in ""http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/FordFandCIA.html""
on 12/15/2001
The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation’s historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica’s DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, at Political Research Associates or Public Eye, on FAIR’s COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute’s RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian’s ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left’s alternative media gatekeepers / censors.
NEW:
Time For Ford Foundation & CFR To Divest?
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/ff_divest.html
Part 1: PACIFICA / DEMOCRACY NOW / DEEP DISH TV
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman01.html
Part 2: FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY / WORKING
ASSETS
RADIO http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman02.html
Part 3: THE
NATION INSTITUTE / RADIO NATION / THE NATION MAGAZINE
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman03.html
Part 4: ALTERNATIVE RADIO / Z MAGAZINE / SOUTH END PRESS
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman04.html
Part
5: MOTHER JONES / FOUNDATION FOR NATIONAL PROGRESS
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman05.html
Part
6: PROGRESSIVE
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman06.html
Part 7: FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA &
U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY ‹
part 1
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman07.html
Part
8: FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA &
U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY ‹ part
2
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman08.html
Part 9: FORD
FOUNDATION, THE CIA &
U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY ‹ part 3
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman09.html
Part 10: POLITICAL
RESEARCH ASSOCIATES' EDELMAN-BUNDY CONNECTION
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman10.html
The Ford Foundation's Skull and Bones Link
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/ford_sb.html
Bob Feldman and Brian Salter reply to a reader (21 Sep 2002)
http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs0209/0920_response.html
original URL for this article: http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html
___________________________________________________________________________________
Gatekeepers chart by Eric Salter. Special thanks to Don Paul for editorial assistance. For further reading about the Left establishment media and marginalization of independent 9/11 research: "topics/left_gatekeepers.html"
Regulated Resistance:
Is it possible
to change the system when you are the system?
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
BY CHARLES SHAW
In February of this year, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), a coalition of more than 800 peace and justice groups throughout the United States, held their second annual Assembly to hear and vote on proposals for a 2005 “action plan.” With the war in Iraq fast approaching its second anniversary, and the larger “War on Terror” crossing its third and half year, close to 500 delegates from 275 member groups traveled to St. Louis in the hopes that the “anti-war movement”—which emerged with unprecedented speed and size just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in spring of 2003—could be resuscitated. Despite impressive beginnings, the movement as a whole has yet to make any significant impact on US policy, or achieve any lasting public resonance. More disturbing is the fact that since Bush’s victory in November, it has gone completely MIA.
One week after the election, the US launched a massive, sustained offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which absolutely leveled the metropolis of 350,000. Virtually everyone in the “movement” knew this offensive was a forgone conclusion should Bush be reelected (though few understood that the offensive would likely have gone ahead regardless of who won). Yet, despite this foreknowledge, the streets of America remained empty. In San Francisco, the usual hotbed for anti-war activism, barely 500 people showed up to a demonstration organized by the local chapter of International ANSWER, and endorsed by Global Exchange & Code Pink, the two most prominent activist groups in the Bay Area.
Most rationalized the poor turnout by claiming the movement was “saving its energy for the Counter-Inaugural Protests.” It was believed by activists and even by FEMA that the protests would be the largest and most volatile since the reelection of Richard Nixon in 1972. But instead, the Counter-Inaugural became an organizing boondoggle, and in the end an anemic gaggle of less than 10,000 protestors showed up in Washington, DC. The Inauguration itself turned out to be one gigantic Republican hootenanny with over 400,000 fur-clad Bush supporters turning out to hail their Chief. So innocuous were the protestors that Bush backers actively harassed and on a few occasions even physically attacked them in the street.
Even though the hard core members of the anti-war movement had been protesting for three and a half years—since the days following 9/11 when the Bush Administration leapt immediately and, some argued, recklessly into war mode, audaciously proclaiming “a war that will not end in our lifetime”—it was clear that whatever the “movement” was doing, it wasn’t working. It sadly had become the proverbial tree that falls in the forest, unseen, unheard, and unheeded. By the time the UFPJ Assembly came around, it was clear that time had come to consider radical new possibilities.
Unfortunately, the Assembly was far from radical. What emerged from that conclave was a benign and puzzling collection of campaigns utterly lacking in passion, outrage, or threat. There was really no way to explain such politically correct palaver as “Presenting the Cost of War to Local Communities”, and “Supporting Clergy and Laity”, and tacit lip service was paid to a series of fourteen other proposals which UFPJ stated they “will support through website publicity, email announcements, and/or other similar means.” Some of these, such as War Tax Resistance, Counter-Recruitment campaigns, and Direct Actions on SUV manufacturers for contributing to oil dependence, are substantially more important, more powerful and, many would argue, more necessary tactics than letting the local priest know you’re down with his peace efforts.
I spoke with many attendees who left the Assembly wondering what had happened to the “resistance” in the resistance movement, and why the “anti-war movement,” in its present incarnation, is not addressing the root causes of our war policies.
Janice Matthews, a mother of six from Kansas City, Kansas, two of whom are draft age, has been involved with the 9/11 Truth Movement since its inception more than two years ago. She and seven colleagues attended the Assembly to present a campaign to raise awareness of the government cover-up of the real facts behind the September 11th attacks. She believes that the proposals that were adopted at the Assembly speak pretty clearly to the direction of UFPJ and, more importantly, their seeming lack of willingness to accept or participate in any risk.
“It was a contingent of mainly middle-aged, middle-class Liberals who chose very safe, mostly easy proposals,” Matthews said, “and rejected the more powerful and potentially more ‘dangerous’ proposals—the ones that might have had a real impact. It also seemed like they alienated the youth contingent by flatly rejecting all the Direct Action proposals. I fear this will come back to haunt the movement.”
It was über-activist David Solnit who helped meld eight individually proposed Direct Action campaigns into one comprehensive “People Power” proposal. Solnit (who is so well-respected The Simpsons did an episode which parodied a composite of him and Julia Butterfly Hill called "Lisa the Treehugger") disagrees with Matthews, even though his proposal was voted down.
“Those of us who brought the ‘People Power’ proposal did not expect it to pass for a number of reasons,” Solnit said. “But felt we had achieved our goals of raising the discussion of strategy and of a people power approach that moved from influencing to asserting power.”
Jim MacDonald of DAWN (the DC Anti-War Network) rebuffs Solnit’s acceptance of UFPJ’s refusal to adopt Direct Action plans. “I see a contradiction between pressuring Congress and nonviolent resistance because the rationale used for engaging in nonviolent resistance (especially nonviolent civil disobedience) is the belief that democracy and the democratic process are broken. I believe that one should always engage in negotiation rather than resistance if one still has the slightest hope. But many of us who engage in nonviolent resistance believe that the system is hopelessly broken, and do not believe that it can be remedied at all.”
People’s strategies of public opposition…are in my opinion unlikely to succeed until they expose the unjust secret arrangements and deals on which these official policies are based. The US political establishment, seemingly unassailable on its surface, becomes more vulnerable when the private, covert, and sometimes conspiratorial origins of what passes for public policy are exposed. — Peter Dale Scott, Oil, Drugs, and War
In social movements, such tactical conservatism is often linked to an underlying unwillingness to address root causes. At the UPFJ Assembly, this tendency played itself out in the marginalization of the “9/11 Truthers.”
Even though Matthews knows that she and fellow 9/11 Truthers are not popular people, that people say derogatory and mean-spirited things about them and the work they do, call them “crazy” and “conspiracy nuts” or just plain “freaks,” and make the ubiquitous snide remarks about tin foil hats when they are not around, she thought that they’d get at least a fair shake, considering that 9/11 is the lynchpin for the entire “War on Terror.” But despite meticulous research, well produced media presentations, and reams of compelling evidence that shows, at the very least, significant holes in the “official story,” Matthews soon learned that when Truthers do speak up, more often than not they find themselves marginalized out of the public debate.
“We submitted a proposal which summarized how 9/11 impacts the issues UFPJ and all their member groups take on regularly and therefore why it matters to them. We really asked for very little—simply that UFPJ publicly acknowledge the need for a real investigation into 9/11. Some of the members individually were very kind to our faces, and heaped lots of praise and bluster on us for our ‘courage’ and the ‘importance’ of our work, but in the end I don’t think they had any intention of taking us seriously. The fact that ‘second-tier’ proposals like ours, which didn’t ask for much in the way of UFPJ resources, were not even allowed into debate in the general Assembly didn’t help. Worse still, without even hearing pro and con statements or having an opportunity to ask questions about our proposal, it was voted down.”
Matthews colleague Gabriel Day believes those delegates who voted against 9/11 Truth did so because they only will let themselves believe in the safe "blowback" theory of 9/11, which asserts that the US was attacked solely by radical Islamic fundamentalists because of its policies in the Middle East, and that the Bush Administration chose to “hijack” this catastrophe to serve their own purposes, but had no idea the attacks were coming, nor had any complicity in organizing or facilitating them.
“This approach completely ignores mountains of evidence pointing to government foreknowledge and even potential complicity in the attacks,” said Day. “[UFPJ] are more concerned with ending the current hot conflict in Iraq and still fail to see the huge potential to derail the whole PNAC war machine by exposing the criminal, treasonous acts of 9/11.”
Rejection is something Matthews and her ilk have grown used to in this work. For strength, she has latched on to a quote by Michael Rivero which she thinks sums up the individual public resistance to 9/11 Truth:
“Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one’s self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.”
“Our issue took thought, reading, education, questioning,” Matthews says, airing a long, painful sigh. “‘Pressuring Congress & Elected Officials to Bring the Troops Home’ (one of the five proposals that passed) doesn’t take any thought, any courage, or outside-the-box thinking and is very easy to vote for. It also takes no effort to get your membership to ‘go along’ with it.”
In the end the UFPJ assembly appeared to have more in common with the recent Republican and Democratic conventions than it did with the now infamous 1969 SDS conference in Chicago. That loose analogy had been drawn on a few occasions preceding the gathering, owing to the crucial dilemma in which the “movement” now finds itself. It was, to many, a cliquish, backslapping exercise in self-adulation by the ruling elite of the “movement” within a rote setting where everything was predetermined and stage-managed. This was reflected not only in the tepid proposals passed by the Assembly, but also by the fact that “Steering Committee” membership turnover was nominal at best, even though the previous leadership had failed to make any sort of lasting impact on the American consciousness, and the “movement”, as stated earlier, was floundering in obscurity.
Looking at the UFPJ 2005 “action plan” to end the war, one is reminded of the passage in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where eternity is described as a mountain of sand the size of Ireland, over which every million years a bird flies, swooping in to remove one single grain. But the question no one seems to be asking is, why did they approve such a milquetoast plan of action? What, if anything, was influencing their decisions?
For a growing number of activists and concerned citizens, the American “anti-war movement” should not be only about protesting our one unpopular war in Iraq. It should be about bringing an end to this Leviathan known, speciously, as the United States Department of Defense (DOD), specious because it has a peculiar understanding of the word “Defense”. With an annual budget of almost half a trillion dollars, the United States funds a global garrison of scores of overseas military bases in 130 of the 191 member nations of the United Nations, fleets of air and water craft which control air space and shipping routes, a battalion of classified technology satellites with the ability to read a wristwatch, a standing army of 1.7 million of the most heavily armed professional soldiers on earth, and an arsenal of 10,600 nuclear weapons on 15 minute alert which have the capability to destroy the world a dozen times over.
The US is presently engaged in two hot wars in Central Asia, and plays a significant military role in the ongoing conflicts of Colombia, Georgia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Horn of Africa, which includes Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sudan. It is currently engaged in diplomatic warfare against Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela, and a hot conflict with one or more of the above is by all accounts imminent. The DOD routinely engages in arms deals with other nations in service of the weapons industry, which are used to foment civil wars and transnational conflicts and secure the illegal drug trade. The US also exports military training in “advisory” roles, generally a euphemism for providing intelligence and Special Forces support to indigenous armies.
And in what is perhaps the most contentious issue, the US gives somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 billion annually in direct and indirect military aid to Israel, which the Israelis have used to build the fourth largest armed forces on earth, a secret stockpile of an estimated 200 nuclear warheads, and to continue the 38-year-old brutal occupation of Palestine. This aid, and the ongoing diplomatic cover the US gives Israel in the United Nations, is the bedrock of anti-American hatred in the Middle East, yet it goes largely misunderstood in the American public, and is intentionally censored by the “anti-war movement” due to the strong pro-Israeli interests of the Democratic Party, their corporate benefactors, and the mainstream media, which plays a substantial role by intentionally misreporting and distorting news emerging from the Occupied Territories.
Recently, the US has consented to sell big-ticket arms to both India and Pakistan, irrespective of the fact that, of all the potential wars facing the world today, this one is considered the most likely conflict to end in a nuclear exchange.
The American people appear to have willingly acquiesced to a prevailing social culture of war and militarism, reflected in the biased reporting of corporate media and a flood of television, film, and corporate promotions glorifying the military. The domestic impact of these war policies has had a devastating impact on federal social programs and state assistance. Moreover, with the Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security, civil liberties and Constitutional protections have found themselves undermined, putting our very freedom in jeopardy.
This glaring policy disaster on the part of the leadership of the “anti-war movement” was discussed in an article by Virginia Rodino that appeared in Dissident Voice, “How US Anti-War Activists Can Help Topple the Empire”:
The first implication is to simultaneously build an anti-imperialist movement, as we build the anti-war movement. An anti-imperialist movement will situate within our present work US military endeavors since World War II, and give our movement a history and theoretical foundation which is today in a weakened state. Deconstructing imperialism will also allow our movement to identify with current domestic crises, and give us the theoretical tools to identify and build broad coalitions with the masses of working people in the United States who also suffer from imperialism through such projects as the War on Drugs, union-busting, the prison-industrial-complex, and the two-corporate-party electoral system.
The anti-war movement must develop an understanding that the war in Iraq is linked inextricably to the entire neo-liberal project. As New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman has unequivocally stated in an analysis cheerleading Madeline Albright’s State Department, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps."
Rodino is a member of the UFPJ Steering Committee, and was compelled to put a disclaimer on this article clarifying the opinions stated therein were “solely her own.”
This omission of anti-imperialist rhetoric, and Rodino’s forced disclaimer, speaks volumes to the present political climate, where it is “suicide” to challenge the legitimacy of the Leviathan. Americans have watched the Democratic Party becoming more and more unabashed about their support for the bloated and ever escalating “Defense” budget, and have stood in befuddlement as Democrats come out of the closet in droves regarding their support for the war in Iraq and developing conflicts with Iran and Syria. Listening to Howard Dean, Hilary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, Carl Levin, or even Barak Obama these days, one is hard pressed to differentiate between their rhetoric and that of the Neocons. Even ostensible “progressive” heroes like Barbara Boxer, John Conyers, Ted Kennedy, and Dick Durbin are mum on the Empire question.
And lest we all forget, the Democrats ran a pro-war candidate for President last year, and odds are they will run a pro-war candidate for President in 2008. This, to say the least, has presented a fundamental paradox within the “anti-war movement.”
UFPJ’s most notable achievement—the half-million strong march during the RNC—was done under the slogan, “We Say No to the Bush Agenda!” But it’s clear war is not just the Bush agenda, it is bipartisan Foreign Policy, as the Democrats have signed off on every dime Bush has bilked from the American people.
Eric Ruder, reporting on the Assembly for the Socialist Worker wrote, “Throughout the weekend, no one addressed the elephant in the living room—the decision of leading members and forces in UFPJ to campaign for John Kerry. For most of last year, the antiwar movement was at a standstill—even as the potential audience for antiwar opposition increased, and the US occupation was shaken by the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and a growing Iraqi resistance.”
Perhaps a smaller elephant to consider is how UFPJ got away with its surreptitious campaigning for Kerry when it is prohibited by law from doing so, under the very not-for-profit rules that keep it from adopting a more appropriate radical anti-imperialist, anti-war agenda.
Two things become have become readily apparent. The first is that it has been clear for some time that the Democratic Party is not particularly interested in peace. So long as the “anti-war movement” remains in bed with the Democratic Party, regardless of whatever dubious claims they make about the anti-war sentiments of “the rank and file” of the party, they will never be permitted to address the legitimacy of the Leviathan.
The second is that Iraq truly is a huge and magnificent pissing
match between the two ruling parties and their respective corporate benefactors.
This schism can more properly be described as two competing forms of Neoliberal
expansionism. And they are fighting it out any way they can, including flooding
millions of dollars through various establishment foundations down into the not-for-profit
activist sector, where a few, highly visible members of the “progressive
left” have imprisoned the “anti-war” debate inside Iraq like an
ideological Abu Ghraib.
Regulated Resistance:
The Gatekeepers of the So-Called Left
CHARLES SHAW, Newtopia Magazine
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Last February United for Peace and Justice, the largest representative coalition within the American "anti-war movement", emerged from their second annual Assembly with a 2005 "action plan" that effectively caged the "anti-war" debate exclusively within the Iraq conflict to achieve partisan ends on behalf of the pro-war Democratic Party and their Neoliberal corporate benefactors. Their "action plan" refused to address any of the core issues of US Foreign and Defense policy, which are the root causes of a pervading culture of war and militarism that has taken over the nation in the years since WWII.
These decisions are part of a larger pattern of "regulated resistance", a system by which dissent is carefully managed and constrained by self, overt, or covert censorship; denial-based-psychology; fear of personal or professional criticism and reprisal; and pressure from powers above including elected officials and those establishment foundations which flood millions into the not-for-profit activist sector.
This establishment money, and the access it grants, has caused many ostensible resistance leaders to suddenly and dramatically abandon long-held ideological positions and shift their behavior towards doing what can clearly be seen as the bidding of those in power whose views and values are in direct contravention to the established mores of peace and justice movements throughout history.
These "resistance leaders" of the "Left" act as "Gatekeepers"—influential "progressive" figures who use their resources and visibility to regulate the debate, tactics, and rhetoric of the "anti-war" and other "progressive" movements.
The Gatekeepers of the So-Called "Left"
"The
press is the hired agent of a moneyed system, set up for no other reason than
to tell us lies where their interests are concerned." — Henry Adams
In
his shocking investigative report < http://questionsquestions.net/topics/left_gatekeepers.html
> "The Left Gatekeepers", journalist Bob Feldman researched purportedly
"Left" activist and media organizations that receive substantial funding
from large establishment foundations with known ties to the CIA, the Council on
Foreign Relations
< http://www.cfr.org/ > , the Trilateral Commission
< http://www.trilateral.org/ >, and even the much-maligned Carlyle Group,
the arms dealing "investment fund" featured in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit
9/11, of which GHW Bush, the Saudi royal family, and, at one time, the Bin Laden
family, are all equity partners.
The Foundation structure is used by these organizations to funnel corporate and personal wealth into the policy-making process. Foundations are tax-free, and contributions to foundations are deductible from federal corporate and individual income taxes. The Foundations themselves are not subject to federal income taxation, and they control hundreds of billions of dollars of money that would normally go to pay these necessary taxes.
Feldman asks, "Are the interests of the people being served by 'dissidents' who are being subsidized by the agencies of the ruling class whom they should be exposing? What does this say about the motivations behind the Left establishment's ideological warfare against conspiracy researchers, and their adoption of an increasingly watered-down analytical view which fails to look closely at the inner power structures and conspiracies of the ruling elite?"
Many of these "dissidents" Feldman describes are members of the UFPJ Steering Committee, and he specifically cites prominent peace activist Medea Benjamin, and Leslie Cagan, the renowned anti-nuke activist who is now UFPJ's National Director.
Disproportionate Influence and a Profound Conflict of Interest
Medea Benjamin and Kevin Danaher co-founded the international human rights organization Global Exchange < http://www.globalexchange.org/ >17 years ago. In that time they have been consistently clear and outspoken with their views on war and Neoliberalism—more commonly known as corporate globalization. Because of their combined intellectual acuity and renowned fearlessness, Benjamin's media savvy, and the access they have been granted through some of their more prominent benefactors such as the MacArthur Foundation and billionaire financier George Soros, they have come to command a high level of visibility in progressive politics.
Benjamin
has fast made a name for herself as a leading figure in the "anti-war movement"
with well-publicized media stunts at the Republican and Democratic Conventions,
disruptions of FCC and Congressional hearings, and frequent trips to the Middle
East to showcase the suffering of the Iraqi and Afghani people. She also benefits
from her proximity to well-known "progressive" leaders, celebrities,
and journalists.
Alongside her Code Pink Women for Peace < http://www.codepink4peace.org/index.php,
and Danaher's Green Festivals < http://www.greenfestivals.com/ >, Global
Exchange has come to command a significant market share in the larger peace and
justice community, reaping enormous "street cred" within the activist
world.
Benjamin also wields a disproportionate amount of weight within the Green Party of the United States, having run for Senator of California on their ticket in 2000, and within the anti-war umbrella group United for Peace and Justice < http://www.unitedforpeace.org/ >, where she sits on their Steering Committee and is arguably their most influential member. As testament, Benjamin and her Global Exchange/Code Pink cadre were the authors of three of the five proposals passed by UFPJ at the February Assembly.
But during the 2004 Presidential campaign, Benjamin's message and tone began to shift dramatically into what came to be known as the "ABB" movement—Anybody But Bush. She and eighty fellow prominent leaders who once formed the one hundred-thirteen member "Nader 2000 Citizens Committee"< http://www.vote2stopbush.com/ > put forth a petition urging anti-war Nader not to run, and instead threw their support behind pro-war Democratic Party candidate John Kerry. At the Green Party National Convention in Milwaukee last June Benjamin campaigned heavily for "safe-state" candidate David Cobb, who was also unabashedly ABB and even initially pledged not to run in swing states, though he now denies it. Benjamin cajoled Greens into neither nominating Nader nor giving him the official endorsement he and running mate Peter Camejo had publicly sought from the party.
The pro and con arguments of ABB have been argued exhaustively, and many do not find the issue relevant any longer. But they are relevant when considering just how UFPJ became ABB and has since found itself embroiled in partisan politics working to attack exclusively the Bush Administration and their competing Neoconservative movement, despite the fact that American war policy is a bipartisan program.
Leslie
Cagan's Pacifica Foundation is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting (which was recently taken over by what has been described
as a "Right Wing coup": http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0412-11.htm
), the Rockefeller-funded Working Assets group, and the ubiquitous George Soros.
Like
PBS , the Pacifica Network recently went through a takeover drama < http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_2_61/ai_7
2274469
> where a cabal of Board members attempted to sell the station off to center-mainstream
corporate interests. Cagan is also reportedly connected to the right-wing Ford
Foundation, which funnels money to her through a Lesbian advocacy group known
as Astraea.
Peace Action < http://www.peace-action.org/ >,
which describes itself as "the nation's largest grassroots peace group"
that "gets results," is funded in part by a Working Assets grant.
Both
Peace Action and Working Assets gave UFPJ a combined total of $45,000 for their
2003 operating budget (the last year UFPJ published their financial statements,
< http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=1762 >something they are
required by law to do annually). UFPJ also received a $151,000 grant from the
Funding Exchange, a network of social justice foundations throughout the United
States that gives money to progressive organizations.
What outrages many of those within the activist community who are aware of these funding sources is that these so-called "dissidents" would consent to take money from these foundations given the long and voluminous history they have as part of the war-making establishment < http://questionsquestions.net/topics/left_gatekeepers.html >.
In his book Trading with the Enemy, Charles Hingham documents how both the Rockefeller and Ford fortunes were enhanced in part through collaboration with Nazi Germany, the Rockefellers by selling the Nazis oil through the Standard Oil Company, and the Fords by selling the Nazis tanks through subsidiary corporations (note: the only industrial infrastructure spared in the Allied bombing of Germany was the Ford Motors plant near Cologne). Both Standard Oil (eventually Amoco) and the Ford Motor Co. made huge profits from Defense contracts following WWII. Since 1950 a Rockefeller has held a prominent leadership position in the Council on Foreign Relations, and David Rockefeller was cofounder of the Trilateral Commission. Both organizations helped craft the "Carter Doctrine" of the late 1970s which stated that the US would heretofore intervene militarily to protect its oil supply from the Middle East.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has been the historical driving force behind such bedrock institutions of corporate globalization as the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Word Trade Organization, and NATO, and which Esquire magazine referred to in 1962 as "that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny as a nation." In 1950, the Chicago Tribune published a story on the CFR in which they stated, "[the members] have used the prestige that their wealth, their social position, and their education have given them to lead their country towards bankruptcy and military debacle. They should look at their hands. There is blood on them—the dried blood of the last war and the fresh blood of the present one."
Billionaire
George Soros, who refers to himself as a "progressive philanthropist",
has since 1995 been part of the arms-dealing Carlyle Group < http://www.rense.com/general45/georgesorosistheissue.htm
>, in which he has invested a reported $100 Million, and has substantial stock
holdings in weapons manufacturers Boeing and Lockheed-Martin.
He is a member
and former Director of the CFR, and is a member of the enigmatic Bilderberg Group
< http://www.bilderberg.org/ >, a collection of approximately 1300 of the
world's richest and most powerful figures in business, banking, media, military,
and government, who meet once a year in extreme secrecy and under almost unfathomable
security, and whose official purpose and actions remain a mystery, spurring a
deluge of wide-ranging speculation.
The 353-member American contingent of Bilderberg is a bipartisan cavalcade that includes Paul Wolfowitz, David Rockefeller, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Vernon Jordan, Melinda Gates, Bill Clinton, and Alan Greenspan. It is long argued and well documented that the mission of this organization, working in conjunction with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, is to manipulate world governments and economies to promote a global, capitalist agenda commonly referred to as the "New World Order". These supranational bodies seek to dismantle national sovereignty (through mechanisms such as "Free Trade" agreements) in favor of a one-world government which primarily upholds the rights of corporations and the wealthy over the people.
This connection begs the question: How much influence does Soros and his ilk have over Benjamin et al, and, by proxy, the "anti-war movement"? Is this relationship the reason Benjamin has dropped the anti-Globalization rhetoric and instead become immersed in partisan wrangling over the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq? Is this the reason she has adopted a "blowback" stance with regards to 9/11 and the resultant "War on Terror"? At the UFPJ Assembly, Benjamin abstained from voting on the 9/11 Truth proposal, and afterwards explained her abstention by claiming she was "afraid a vote for the proposal would mean that UFPJ would have to work with certain 'difficult people' involved in the 9/11 Truth movement."
It is unfortunate Benjamin cannot bring herself to work with "difficult" people (even though it is doubtful she is even aware of just who is and is not a recognized credible member of 9/11 Truth). Because of the nature of 9/11 research, it sadly finds itself constantly infiltrated by the proverbial kook and various degrees of disinformation, but Benjamin and UFPJ have taken an all-inclusive, monolithic view of this very complex and diverse movement. It is even more unfortunate, and some might argue tragic, that personal foibles take priority over justice for the families of 3,000 people killed on that fateful day in September, and the hundreds of thousands killed in the name of the "War on Terror" as some form of retribution for 9/11. Unless, of course, it was not a personal foible that influenced her decision to abstain, but something more direct, such as a mandate from her funders, the threat of some form of professional backlash or reprisal, or simple peer disapproval.
And
perhaps the greatest insult to injury is that she is now raising money for the
(somewhat oxymoronic) Progressive Democrats of America. As Ralph Nader's running
mate Peter Camejo wrote in an open letter to the Green Party < http://www.geocities.com/grnsfrdmcrcyndndpndnc/-2005-april-.
html
>, "In the fund appeal for the PDA [Benjamin] says the PDA is not the
Democratic Party. It is like saying the Panama Canal is not Panama."
The Failed Obligations and Inexcusable Denials of the "Left" Media
To offer a clear portrait of how "regulated resistance" works within the "Left" or "progressive" media, consider their steadfast refusal to report on or organize around two of the most important incidents in modern American history as pertains to our present situation—possible US government involvement in 9/11, and the relationship between the Bush family and the Nazi regime in Germany.
Sins of Omission and Distortion: 9/11, and the Rubber Stamp
As mentioned throughout this article, the first and perhaps greatest failure of the "anti-war movement" is the shameful irresponsibility the "Left" has shown by their refusal to challenge the "official" story behind 9/11. < http://questionsquestions.net/topics/left_911.html >
Bob Feldman writes:
Not surprisingly, the rank and file didn't
buy into the hype—nor were many convinced by the gatekeepers' offhand, passionless
calls for an official investigation. Interest in alternative 9/11 reporting continued
to grow, and by the time that members of 9/11 victim's families began publicly
demanding an end to the government cover-up and even mainstream media outlets
such as the New York Times were admitting that the lack of an independent investigatory
commission was "extraordinary," the Left media gatekeepers backed down
and adopted a new tactic of silent stonewalling and tacit support for the official
story.
Despite widespread and well-documented critiques that even "War
on Terror" apologists acknowledge, the corporate media has never once challenged
the "official" story < http://www.oilempire.us/media.html>.
Instead,
they gleefully lapped up the Osama theory fed to it by the Bush Administration
while the fires at Ground Zero were still burning, and in the 18 months between
9/11 and the invasion of Iraq settled comfortably into its role as "Bush
handmaiden and peace movement disciplinarian." < http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=
News&file=article&sid=24&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
... >
But the absence of any challenge to this story from the "anti-war movement" is frankly disturbing on a level that supersedes even the craven behavior of the corporate media. Although the "Left" has no compunction attacking Bush and his Neoconservative cabal, it consistently fails to see how the ongoing bipartisan validation of the "official" story is the license the US Government takes to continue their imperial ambitions through the chimera known as the "War on Terror", and by proxy, the corporate neocolonialism occurring across the globe.
The 9/11 Truth movement got a fledgling chance to make its case to the "Left" on May 26th, 2004, when, Amy Goodman, host of the flagship Progressive news source Democracy NOW!, agreed to host prominent theologian David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11. Her decision followed a long and relentless "Waking Amy" < http://www.septembereleventh.org/alerts/dn.php > campaign organized by Emanuel Sferios of the 9/11 Visibility Project.
However, at the last minute, Goodman abruptly and without explanation changed the format of the show from an interview to a "debate," and brought in long-time "anti-conspiracist" Chip Berlet. Berlet is not an expert on 9/11 research, and his group, Political Research Associates, is an alleged "Left" organization that is funded in part by the Ford Foundation. (It is interesting to note that "Chip" Berlet's full name is John Foster Berlet. He was named after John Foster Dulles who, with his brother Allen, designed the CIA for Harry Truman in 1947, and played a prominent role in smuggling Nazis into America to help build the post-WWII American "Defense" and Intelligence apparatus).
Despite their being a virtual laundry list of inconsistencies to the "official" story, and documented proof of government cover-up activity, the final product, "The New Pearl Harbor: A Debate On A New Book That Alleges The Bush Administration Was Behind The 9/11 Attacks," http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/26/150221 focused almost exclusively on a handful of weak speculations made by French researcher Thierry Meyssan, not Griffin, about aspects of the Pentagon strike. This well-worn tactic known as the "straw man argument" is used by detractors to attack and undermine the weakest part of an alternative theory in order to dismiss it and alienate the public from the larger issue. If a journalist with otherwise flawless research happens to have one bad assertion, the 90 per cent he or she got right is generally ignored in favor of attaching the person to their one misstep. This tactic presupposes in a "deductive" argument that the theory is only as strong as the weakest link. Berlet tried to discredit Griffin by associating him with Meyssan, even though Griffin stated clearly on the show that his book merely compiled information from other researchers in order to raise questions that made a solid case that the "official" was simply implausible.
By only choosing to focus on the most difficult theories to believe—regardless of their potential merit—Goodman and Berlet completely missed the point. Griffin stated quite clearly on the program: "There are all sorts of possible theories as to what happened. You don't have to come up with an alternative theory to show that the 'official' theory is very problematic."
Berlet countered by saying, "It's not good to believe in conspiracies that cannot be proven by available evidence." But this principle does not take into account the prevalent role of cover-ups in these types of operations (such as this one being perpetrated by the US Government), which prevents potentially enlightening evidence from ever being examined. Some more notable examples include the total failure of air defenses and the role of hijack-based "war games" exercises taking place that morning, the admitted controlled-demolition of Building 7 which had to have been pre-wired, all the steel from the Twin Towers which was immediately shipped to China without being studied, all the video footage of the Pentagon strike which was promptly seized by the FBI (even though disclosure would have put an end to all the wild "no plane, missile strike" theories of Meyssan and others), and the notes from the now infamous closed-door Bush/Cheney "visit" with the 9/11 Commission, which were promptly confiscated.
Berlet's approach to discrediting "conspiracy theory" reinforces what can be called the "disbelief" factor, as in "I just can't believe that the Bush Administration/US Government/Americans/people would do such a thing!" Although this knee-jerk emotional response is understandable and easily explainable within the context of human psychology, it does not amount to a logical defense of the "official" story. In the absence of any substantive debate, another psychological factor operated alongside the "disbelief" factor: As Griffin states, "the Bush administration created a halo over 9/11, so it became not only unpatriotic, but almost sacrilegious to raise any questions." The "anti-war movement" and "Left" media, ostensibly dissident by nature and thus obliged to question, instead pulled right into lockstep with the government and corporate media, rubber-stamping the "official" version of events.
Griffin did end up writing a lengthy response to Berlet's misleading critique < http://globalresearch.ca/articles/GRI405A.html >, but the damage had already been done. Goodman never really inquired beyond the "straw man" arguments Berlet kept pounding, and no other "Left" media outlet with the audience of Democracy NOW! has touched the story since.
It
is important to note that Democracy NOW! was awarded a $75,000 Ford Foundation
grant in 2002 http://www.fordfound.org/grants_db/view_grant_detail.cfm?gra
nt_id=209798
"to continue incorporating the aftermath of the September 11th attack into
future broadcasts," and received a further $150,000 from Ford in 2004
<
http://www.fordfound.org/search/results.cfm >.
Emanuel Sferios says the Ford Foundation does not have to explicitly tell Democracy NOW! how they want 9/11 to be covered. He explains that "Democracy NOW! will simply self-censor, because they want future money from the Ford Foundation. It's also important to note that Amy Goodman coined a new, pejorative phrase to dismiss the 9/11 Truth Movement. She is the first in history, as far as I know, to refer to us as a "conspiracy theory movement."
The most glaring irony in all of this is that
it was Goodman herself who uttered these words:
"I think the media has
reached an all-time low in this country. And that is a terrible violation of what
our profession is supposed to do. We are supposed to hold those in power accountable.
We're not supposed to cozy up to those in power, not supposed get the perks of
the powerful. We are supposed to be there to, if not keep the politicians honest,
show what's going on. And it is very serious now because we're talking about wartime...
And when the media acts as a conveyer belt for the lies of the administration,
we not only are violating our responsibility, but those lies take lives."
Furthering
these sins of omission regarding 9/11 is the "Left's" refusal to address
any of the voluminous evidence uncovered by controversial journalist Michael Ruppert
< http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ > in his book Crossing the Rubicon:
The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.
< http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0865715408/qid
=1114178403/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5627087-8649532?v=glance&s
... >
Ruppert's investigation, the most thorough of any effort thus far including the Kean Commission, has been publicly attacked more than any other independent effort, which for many is a testament to its effectiveness.
In what seemed like a coordinated effort, David Corn and Norman Solomon, purported "Left" journalists, through The Nation and Pacifica Radio, repeatedly pilloried Ruppert for almost two years before his book was released—without once addressing the evidence presented. The sum total of their response to Rubicon was to engage in a series of ad hominem attacks portraying Ruppert as mentally unstable. Although Ruppert is an impassioned, domineering, even frequently alienating character with a classic type-A personality (perhaps he could be described as "difficult"?) who has very little patience for those who question his work, he is anything but insane, and his personality is not all that different from many of the personalities we have been discussing. What is never taken into consideration when discussing his "psychology", however, is that Ruppert has a lot of reason to be sensitive about the issue of government corruption and malfeasance. Multiple attempts have been made on his life for trying to expose CIA and LAPD complicity in the South Central crack-cocaine trade. Anyone familiar with the history of disinformation tactics will recognize the Corn/Solomon attacks as a tried and true method of discrediting not only an author or researcher, but an entire line of investigation.
It should be noted that the MacArthur-funded
Nation, for which Corn is a staff writer, has ties back to the CIA and its former
director William Casey, and the Manhattan Institute < http://www.manhattan-institute.org/
>, and Chief Editor Katrina vanden Heuval's father was involved in "Operation
Mockingbird"
< http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_louise_01_03_03_mocking
bird.html
>, a CIA project originating in the early days of the Cold War to buy influence
behind the scenes at major media outlets and put reporters on the CIA payroll.
Solomon is the Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington and
is the ostensible head of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting), funded by
the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Working Assets group, and the Shumann Foundation.
A Story That Would Outrage Anyone—But No One Knows About
The "Left" has also consistently refused, on any level, to report or act on the established connection between the Bush Family and the Nazi Party during the 1930's, 40's, and early 50's.
John Buchanan, the charismatic,
relentless independent journalist from Miami wrote about his inability to get
any mainstream media source to pick up his New Hampshire Gazette story, "Bush—Nazi
Dealings Continued Until 1951" < http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=de
tail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2
>in his 2004 book, Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule,
Big Media, and the Religious Right.
Even though Buchanan's reporting was based on facts that came directly from declassified official documents currently in the National Archives, not one single mainstream news source agreed to even look at the government documents, which chronicled the long history of collaboration between Bush's grandfathers Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker, Prescott Bush's employer A. Averell Harriman of Brown Brothers Harriman, and Nazi industrialist and financier Fritz Thyssen. Between 1942 and 1951, under the "Trading with the Enemy Act," the US Government seized 33 Bush-Harriman-Nazi businesses and client assets. But instead of facing a firing squad for treason during war time, Prescott Bush pocketed $1.5 Million from the liquidation of the first and largest of the 33 businesses, the Union Banking Corporation, principle investor in the Silesian-American Corporation which used slave-labor from the Auschwitz concentration camp for mining in Poland. None of the principles in the deal were ever brought to justice.
This story should have resurfaced every time one of the Bush men ran for or was appointed to public office. Instead, it was spun relentlessly, and eventually buried. Only The Guardian of London eventually picked up on this story in one subsequent article nearly a year later titled, "How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power" < http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html >
Buchanan goes on to say:
"Perhaps more troubling, and
certainly more surprising, not even left-leaning media, 'alternative media' outlets,
or media watchdog groups would touch the story. The Bush-bashing editor of the
Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and her assistant Peggy Suttles, both declined
to pursue the story... Don Hazen, a founder of alt-media online syndicate, Alternet,
also refused to report the story... Norman Solomon, a regular op-ed contributor
to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Washington
Post, initially agreed to help get the story out "to the world" until
he discovered that his four bread-and-butter newspapers had all turned down the
documents... Later, even the Center for American Progress, a George Soros-funded
liberal think tank in Washington—headed by former Clinton Chief of Staff
John Podesta—would refuse to acknowledge or help expose the Bush-Nazi connection."
(Ed's
note: Alternet also refused to consider this article for publication).
Although history tends to ignore it, the United States' rise to global dominance was largely made possible by former Nazis who were smuggled into the country during and after the war to work in secret weapons labs, and lay the foundation for what would become the controlled mass-media. Nazi scientists invented the technology for the jet engine, the ballistic missile, the nuclear bomb, and other classified weapons and surveillance technologies that both the Americans and the Soviets appropriated for use in the Cold War.
These parent companies of the
Left Gatekeeper foundations became part of what Dwight D. Eisenhower coined in
his farewell address the "Military-Industrial Complex," which since
the end of WWII has expropriated an estimated $15 Trillion in American taxpayer
money for "Defense" spending. That, as author Joel Andreas notes <
http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/archives/content/issue19/fea
tures/dorrellandreas.php
>, "is more than the amount of money spent on all the existing man-made
wealth of the US: that is every building, highway, park, factory, car, and what
have you."
CONCLUSION: The Death of Authentic Resistance
Michael Novick of the Anti-Racist Action network has been around a long time, and has a list of bona fides pages long. He has seen many an organization come and go, and he believes that the 501(c)3/NGO/not-for-profit corporate model has been the death of popular movements and authentic resistance.
"Such organizations vacuumed up the flotsam and jetsam of the resistance movements of the 60s and 70s, gave them paid staff positions, and neutered them. This was true long before the emergence of the current round of the 'anti-war movement'. It happened to the women's movement and the Black and Chicano liberation struggles as far back as the 70s. In the late 80s, most of the anti-racist projects that sprung up to deal with the first wave of Neo-Nazism went the board and staff, grant-writing model, with the result that they lost both their militancy and their anti-establishment spark, making them politically irrelevant. Most went out of business as other vogues took precedence with funders."
There is no doubt that this madness must stop, and yet, where is the "anti-war movement" here when we need them most? Not reading this article, for sure, even though it was written for those who would attack just-cause critics of the "anti-war movement", those who lament that they have no other funding options and who can bring themselves to rationalize taking blood money, those who put their own names and careers ahead of the people they purportedly represent—and for all those who recognize this hypocrisy and want something more, something better. Though it is difficult and may require sacrifice and even dismantling this corrupted system, we must look at how our movements come to dance with the devil, and turn into the very things that we once so despised.
_____
Charles Shaw is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Newtopia, and has been deeply involved in the anti-war movement since the bombing of Afghanistan. Newtopia Magazine is a member group of United for Peace and Justice.
Thanks to Orb Standard
http://orbstandard.com/
One
of the best sources on Left-wing hate groups calling themselves Watchdogs and
anti-racist watchdog groups is Laird Wilcox. An academic and respected researcher
into both Right-wing hate groups and Left-wing hate groups, his published works
can be purchased at his website Laird Wilcox.
His e-mail address is lwilcox3@aol.com His
address is Editorial Research Service PO Box 2047 Olathe, KS 66051 Phone/Fax (913)
829-0609. get his paper "'The Watchdogs' A close look at Anti-Racist 'Watchdog'
Groups." $25.00 last time I checked. CBH
There are two new papers in the set of five Mr. Peter Cole commissioned of Craig B Hulet: See Globalization and Corporatism Sections Below.
The best option to use is the Works links. If you are using Microsoft Word, please click here to download the Converter program necessary to view the Works document.
 Working Papers - Description: |
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| The Hydra of Carnage--The Silk Road Strategy: The bellum justum Between Empire and Revolt | |||
ABSTRACT: | In this paper Hulet defines in the clearest terms yet...Empire; what it means to the people throughout the world and for Americans as well. The revolt against Empire, led by a cadre of international urban guerrillas has marked a new passage in history; what this war of attrition will mean for Americans is spelled out in detail. The most important find exposed in this paper is The Silk Road Strategy; the other political objective of the Bush Administration. Now we understand why Bush would be prepared to violate international law and international norms and try to remove the ruling Taliban from power in Afghanistan. | ||
| Oil & Sovereignty: In Whose Interests?Available Nov. 20, 2001! | |||
ABSTRACT: | In this paper Hulet spells out for the first time, since he broke this story on Frank Sontag's "Impact" Program, October 29th, 2001, in detail, who stands to gain financially by the political objective from 1996 called the Silk Road Strategy. The lobbying efforts of some ten or so highly placed government officials, mostly former Defense Secretaries, during the period between 1993 and 2000, has become the policy objectives of the new Bush regime.Many of these (then) lobbyists are now back in government service prosecuting the war. Understood in light of the above Hydra paper, Americans will finally understand Corporatism and Empire for what it is! (109 pages) | ||
| Record of Terror: The Causal Relationship | |||
ABSTRACT: | President George Bush Junior claimed that the reason why America was attacked on September 11, 2001, was because "they hate us, they hate our institutions, they hate our liberties and culture of freedom and tolerance." This theme is echoed in the media and all over America. Craig B Hulet, drawing on expert sources from 1998 to the present has prepared a document which refutes these claims. Using empirical evidence compiled on terrorist attacks both here and abroad, Hulet makes a clear case that terrorists attack Americans the world over for specific acts on the part of the American government; military intervention is the primary reason for these acts of retaliation, but economic intervention and dominance and the U.S. neoimperial vision are found to be just as responsible. One conclusion to come out of this well-researched document: when we attack Iraq, Iran, Syria and/or N. Korea, Americans the world over will be held accountable. More Americans will die. | ||
| The World Trade Organization - The End of Geography? | |||
ABSTRACT: | The idea has been put forward by many scholars and elite thinkers that globalization and the interdependence throughout the world between nation states has created and environment where the nation state is being replaced by global governance. Hulet's theory is less sure of that outcome in that the global governance, should it succeed as the elite would wish, may create a state within a state, a power within a power; that is to say, an Imperium in Imperio. | ||
| Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: Is Greenspan's Fed the World's Central Bank? | |||
ABSTRACT: | Alan Greenspan has had more to do with the wild speculation in the U.S. stock market, and the economic boom, than any other single individual; he is therefore as responsible for the late 2000 crashes. But just what does the Fed want and does (de facto) act as the world's Federal reserve System? | ||
| Interested in the Interest - American's Pay For Their own Currency | |||
ABSTRACT: | Americans do pay for the use of the debt instrument called the Federal Reserve Note. In fact there is a great deal about the power of the Fed most are unaware of. Hulet's research uncovers some powerful arguments from Federal Reserve Board members to make his own that the Fed has grown too powerful and Greenspan in particular. | ||
 Special Reports - Description: |
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| Strategic and Economic Analysis: Afghanistan and Global Economic Forecast: | |||
ABSTRACT: | This paper was originally prepared for two of Mr. Hulet's business clients; their specific sections have been removed so the remainder of the paper can be made available to the general public.The first section covers the "Afghan Arab Diaspora" (the guerrilla's dispersal over many nation's soil. The guerrilla war will continue as these fighters seek haven in their own countries and other's. The effect of this ongoing war on the global economic outlook is the second section of the paper. It should be of interest to everyone, not just those whose business is directly affected. | ||
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| Gulf War Illnesses | |||
ABSTRACT: | Too many Gulf War veterans returned home to another kind of war; they're becoming ill; many are crippled; many have now died. The Pentagon refused to even realistically look into the matter. You may have read press reports: the press lied. You may have heard Pentagon officials speak to the issue: they lied. And whatever crazy conspiracy theories you have read on the Web?-- are wrong-headed. But what Mr. Hulet personally discovered while with Congressman Metcalf's office as Special Assistant, you have yet to read about anywhere. The most important information about why what may have happened, and who is then really responsible, never made it into the Metcalf Report. You will understand why when you read this Special Report. | ||
| Gulf War Illness - The Metcalf Report | |||
ABSTRACT: | Here is provided the reader a summary of the lengthy Metcalf Report that was submitted to Congress by Congressman Jack Metcalf and his Special Assistant Norma Smith. To Metcalf's credit he alone pursued the question of whether an illegal (non-approved) adjuvant squalene was introduced in the Anthrax Vaccines troops received in-theatre during the Gulf War hostilities. Metcalf had drawn into the enquiry the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate; and they did their job admirably. This summary of the overall report is made available to readers along with the above report by Mr. Hulet as an aid to understanding the first. | ||
| Project Badger 1990 and the Illusive Colonel Alving | |||
ABSTRACT: | One of the key figures in the GAO enquiry was one Col. Carl Alving M.D. and the Pentagon's expert on biological warfare vaccines and adjuvants; yet Col. Alving repeatedly lied, contradicted himself and refused to cooperate with the investigators. The story about squalene being added to the anthrax vaccine may not be the end of this sordid tale, but surely it begins somewhere, with someone. The mysterious Dr. Alving is a case history of how a Green Suit responds under pressure. | ||
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 Globalization - Description: |
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| NEW PAPER 02/18/04: The U.S. Dollar's Decline | |||
ABSTRACT: |
The U.S. Federal Reserve note known as the U.S. dollar has declined in value against a number of foreign currencies. How far can it go down before the world's Central Banks must intervene to prop up the world's reserve currency? Is there ever going to be an alternative to the dollar as reserve status currency? Hulet argues that the dollar will continue to decline further but to watch its decline not against other nation's currencies but all other currencies against Gold and Silver. Will Bush (Greenspan if he remains Fed Chairman) defend the Dollar once he is re-elected? This is the first volume of a five volume set of working papers commissioned by one of Mr. Hulet's business clients. See Vol. Two on the Corporatism Section below titled Out-Sourcing Jobs | ||
ABSTRACT: | |||
| How Multinationals Act Domestically | |||
ABSTRACT: | Quietly and efficiently the OECD investigators around the world are trying to fight monopoly power even while monopolies are formed with full U.S. official approval. How these giant transnational alliances form and act has only recently (during 2000) been reported. How the giant multinationals act domestically here in the U.S. has never been. Hulet does it here for the first time. To really understand Ralph Nader's betrayal in the above Report one must read this study of power. | ||
| Medieval Multinationals: Law Merchants and Corporate Governance | |||
ABSTRACT: | Few investigators have ever looked at our modern world of Corporatism and Globalization as closely as has Mr. Hulet. He understands power. He also understands when power can deceive the ignorant and unwary by proposing some aspect of its growth and consolidation under a false disguise; language is always the culprit. So, is the new economy, the new world, the new global regime anything really new? Hulet demonstrates that the only thing new is its breadth and expansiveness; demonstrates finally that it is in fact positively medieval! | ||
| Foreign Affairs Affects Domestic Policy | |||
| This piece was first written when the North American Free Trade Agreement was being voted on in the House. But its argument went much further than NAFTA and encompassed the Drug War and the expanded role of the U.S. Military and CIA in domestic law enforcement. His sources to make his argument were drawn from articles written for the elite journal Foreign Affairs and each article appeared along side Hulet's in a Foreign Affairs Anthology published by Foreign Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations. The book with the same title is only available from KC&A on our website (it is out of print) as an archived special edition (see our Books page for the volume's availability by clicking here. | ||
 Crime & Justice - Description: |
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| What Bush Knew and When Did He Know it? | |||
ABSTRACT: | The now constant drumbeat, What did President Bush know, and when did he know it? is analyzed by Hulet in brief notes (in parentheses) throughout the text of several articles which have appeared of late (Newsweek the most notable). He starts with opening remarks and closes with the same. There are extensive Appendices to review as well; his arguments were made recently in discourse on Frank Sontag's Impact Program, but one should see the arguments in favor of critical thinking done in proper fashion. | ||
ABSTRACT: | |||
| Al Gore's Reinventing Government Analysis | |||
ABSTRACT: | We were all led to believe at the time (1993) that Al Gore was out to Create a Government that Works Better & Costs Less. He was to achieve this by moving from RED TAPE TO RESULTS. Nobody asked then, nor today, what the real intent of the entire process was. This Report by Hulet was the only report then, and remains the only report still, that addressed the real intentions and consequences behind the effort. It was the single most insidious manipulation ever attempted by any administration to date. And President George Bush Jr. will do nothing to alter the authoritarian consolidation of police powers the real program succeeded in getting accomplished. | ||
| Fat Kats and Takers | |||
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 Corporatism - Description: |
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| NEW PAPER 02/18/04: Outsourcing and Offshoring Ameircan Jobs | |||
ABSTRACT: | In this second volume to the series of commissioned papers Hulet discusses the reality behind both Bush's remarks and those of members of the administration over just how good outsourcing and offshoring American jobs is to the overall economy and the American workers in general; IT workers are the target of the investigation but any job that can be filled, as well, or better, by outsourcing the functions to a foreign company is looked a specifically. Who stands to gain is always the first question Hulet asks. | ||
| Behind the War with Iraq "Aspects document." | |||
ABSTRACT: | This document is offerred to only the KC&A client base and was produced by a research organization out of India: www.india.org --which publishes an on-line journal called Aspects of the Indian Economy. It was as thorough a job as this office might have produced and used a number of sources Mr. Hulet has used often; some are identical quotes used in the Hydra and other papers for those who have bothered themselves enough to read all of Mr. Hulet's works. Give it a read and show it to others. There is of course no charge to clients and we wouldn't in any case as it is a reprint. About 91 pages. | ||
| Bank Consolidation: Towards Monopoly Banking | |||
ABSTRACT: | The bank merger frenzy has only just begun. Each time the New York Times announces the probable end of mergers another mega-merger comes to pass. The consolidation of the banking industry, the violation for years of ant-trust laws went on and on. Hulet finds the most important critics of this process where? You'll have to read this one to believe it! | ||
| Does Wage Inflation Cause Price Inflation? | |||
ABSTRACT: | How does the Federal Reserve Board set interest rates and what is their new criterion? Hulet answers these two important questions in this Report on Corporatism where nobody has even dared to tread. The answers and critics of the new Fed Policy formulations will surprise and offend sensible people. | ||
| National Treatment and The World Trade Organization - Ralph Nader's Endorsement | |||
ABSTRACT: | The world argues about the meaning of globalization, while the real meaning, the why and how it is pressed forward, and in whose benefit, is ignored. Occupied with terms and definitions the most important aspect is lost. The progressive left, led by Nader's Public Citizen of Seattle's festival fame (it was no protest), not only does not protest the most important beneficial aspect to the multinational corporate system, he endorses it! Not surprisingly, it is because he gains power and wealth right along with the corporations he pretends to protest. | ||
| The Folklore of Corporatism: The Coronation of George | |||
| The Folklore of Corporatism was written during early 1999, before George Bush Jr. declared his bid for the Presidency. It was originally requested and commissioned by one of Mr. Hulet's private clients. The intent was to describe the world and nation state of George Bush's comeback through his son. Written in a unique prose using Jesuitism and religion as metaphor, it has been hailed as Hulet's finest work by artists that make up his client base. | ||
 Briefings - Description: |
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| Polling the Electorate | |||
ABSTRACT: | When pollsters poll the electorate they can understandably ask questions in particular ways to get particular results. But even the understood bias in the mainstream media, often the polling agency itself and certainly the print media whether one looks at liberal reporters or conservative owners, is not the only answer. The Why every significant major race for office from President on down is a horse race is explained here for the first time. This explains as well the end of the Greens, Libertarians and the Reform parties in domestic politics. Add the evidence as to who really wins and you have a clue to what happened 2000. | ||
| On War: September 11th, 2001 | |||
ABSTRACT: | The September attacks on America is in this office's view, not perpetrated by "bin Laden," nor any typical Arab terrorist groups. Instead, we feel nation-states are directly involved. This Briefing spells out WHY America was attacked, and why the evidence supplied to the media by the FBI must be reinterpreted. This is the first of what likely will become many briefings on this topic. New documents will be posted periodically. | ||
| Hulet per contra Bush: A Study in the Theory of International Guerrilla Warfare | |||
ABSTRACT: | In this paper Hulet redefines guerrilla warfare using Che Guevera's and Mao's historical works as the backdrop. International and now a focus on the urban centers of the selected targets (now including the United States as never before) these newest forms of guerrilla warfare may no longer need the forests and mountains to hide in while executing their targets; they will come from every nation and they will live amongst us. | ||
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| The United Nations Millennium Report and Summit | |||
 Philosophy
and Perspective | Word:
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| Conspiracy Theories | |||
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