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Guest Post: Russia Bans Grain Exports as the End Game Trade Begins
Russia Bans Grain Exports as the End Game Trade Begins
Submitted by Michael Krieger
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks…
You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion'
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.
- Bob Dylan, Masters of War
Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.
- Joseph Goebbels
Has the Decoupling Already Started?
Two weeks back I wrote that we were at some major inflection point with oil being at $80/b and the market having had a significant bounce from the lows. At the time I pondered whether we might start to see a break down in the “risk on/risk off” mindset that has led to commodities and equities trading almost in perfect conjunction with one another since mid 2008. I said that I thought no one was positioned for a powerful move higher in commodity prices coupled with a flat to down market and that I saw evidence there was a good chance this was about to happen. I mentioned that agriculture, oil and precious metals would likely be the leadership to the upside in the commodities space should this occur.
Looking simply at the S&P500 and the oil price since that day we see that the oil price is up 3.4% and the market is up 3.1% so they have essentially moved together to the upside. However, the Asia Tapis oil price benchmark has seen a much more parabolic move in that same time frame up 8.8%. Meanwhile, wheat is up 32% and rice is up 12%. It’s a very good thing that food and energy are not included in the core CPI because if people around the world actually had to eat and consume energy there might be a problem.
Russia Bans Grain Exports as the End Game Trade Begins
I am now more convinced than I was two weeks ago that we are once again in the “end game trade.” Just like in the late 2007 to mid 2008 timeframe no one seems to notice or care. Back then the parabolic rise in commodities was attributed to phenomenal ROW growth that had decoupled from the U.S. and so no one really worried about the moves until it was too late. This time people don’t even seem to notice! I don’t even hear a make believe storyline that attempts to explain away what is happening in a bullish context….yet. The news this morning that Russian Prime Minister Putin has banned the export of grain and related farm products as a result of the drought is extraordinarily important. While the ideological nitwits at the Federal Reserve who pray to a false economic religion and Obama’s economic dream team of Neo-Keynesian psychopaths will completely fail to grasp what is happening due their never having worked a job in the real world in their lives instead having spent their entire existence being fawned on by their fellow academics and bureaucrats, the Chinese and others know exactly what is happening…
Before you rush out this morning and sell things across the board take a step back and think about the world from the perspective of government leaders. At a time like this when every government understands they will collapse overnight if they can’t feed their people don’t you think leaders are going to scramble like mad to get a hold of whatever food they can? What about oil? Do you think that countries like China might want to build up stockpiles as much as possible at such a juncture? Perhaps this is why oil prices in Asia are up so much more than here at home. Let’s also not forget that oil is rising as the economy has slowed. It is at $87/b in Asia and this is as China has tightened and cooled things off. What if they push on the accelerator again? Then there are precious metals. Anyone that doesn’t understand the comex is a manipulated illusion isn’t paying attention. More and more investors around the world are coming to understand this, which is why there is a movement into the physical. Real gold versus paper gold. Which do you own? The article in the FT the other day that seemed to uncover the mystery of the BIS gold swap is required reading (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e659ed0-9b39-11df-baaf-00144feab49a.html). Here is one excerpt:
The gold used in the swaps came mainly from investors’ deposit accounts at the European commercial banks. Some investors prefer to deposit their gold in so-called “allocated accounts”, which restrict the custodian banks’ ability to use the gold in their market operations by assigning them specific bullion bars. But other investors prefer cheaper “unallocated accounts”, which give banks access to their bullion for their day-to-day operations.
The banks identified in the swaps were HSBC, Societe Generale, and BNP Paribas. First of all I think it’s insane for anyone to have gold within a bank. The entire purpose of gold is to escape the banking system once it becomes so big, complex and fraudulent that there is no place to go but collapse upon its ponzi scheme structure. I smell a rat in this BIS deal. People are not going to be happy when they try to redeem their paper gold. I can’t tell you how many people I know that are selling GLD (HSBC is the custodian!!) and buying physical. Of great significance is also the fact that on every orchestrated comex plunge physical buying accelerates. As an example, the U.S. Mint reported selling only 85,000 coins in the first twenty one days of July but then sold 57,000 in the last seven days of the month. This sort of behavior is what will limit the downside. There are enough smart people with lots of money that see the current system for the fraud that it is and are getting out while physical gold is still available.
Massive Social and Geopolitical Change is Coming
What is happening at the moment on the world stage is that essentially the governments of all major countries on planet earth are on the verge of collapse one way or the other. While there are certainly many differences between the governments of China, Russia and the United States for example, there is one huge similarity. They are all highly bureaucratic centrally planned economies. What is so interesting about the present time is that we are witnessing the end of the current monetary and financial system that has dominated the world since 1971. This will also invariably mean that we are about to witness dramatic political and social change in virtually every country on earth. The very elite in the United States know this which is why they are using their puppets in D.C. to pass laws that will put the citizens into a neo-feudalistic debt slavery so that they will not revolt once it becomes clear to all that the politicians are a bunch of crooks and scoundrels that have sold them out entirely. On a positive note, I think a critical mass has already been achieved in the U.S. and I think D.C. will collapse under its own weight. As I wrote to a small group of friends earlier this week as relates to the fact that a sheriff there stated “Our Own Government Has Become Our Enemy.":
It doesn’t matter what you think about the AZ law. It is merely a microcosm for a bigger battle being waged between states rights and the gulag federal government. The second American revolution HAS begun and it started in Arizona (I thought it might be Texas). Either way, what I expect to happen in the months ahead is more and more people are going to STOP obeying federal laws and ultimately states will also simply not obey. This is not necessarily what I am endorsing I am just telling you where I think this is headed. This will put the Federal government into a corner where they will need to respond. The stock market is being used as a government weapon to make people think things are ok when there is a massive tempest brewing that will wipe away the entire structure. Either way, the revolution will not be televised. Commerce will increasingly move to a black market model (l have heard big discounts are being offered in Greece if you pay in cash and that will be here too).
This all fits into the whole “Dangers of a Failed Presidency” concept that I wrote about around a month ago. Washington D.C. has now officially lost the mandate of the people it governs and this is a very dangerous scenario. If history repeats itself the government will look for a way to vilify another country or a group of people within the country. As such, I implore everyone that reads this to be as vigilant as possible in the months and years ahead. Do not accept war (don’t we have enough wars) and do not allow the government or media to demonize a particular subset of the American people. This is the oldest trick in the book, it’s the divide and conquer or export chaos strategy. Right now we need to identify who sold us out and how they did it. Therefore when things crumble we know who the culprits are and we don’t let them change the story and divert anger and confusion elsewhere.
My Interview with Max Keiser
Last week I did another interview with Max Keiser and I have attached the link. I want to address something I said that has gotten many comment and that needs clarification. When discussing a new political party in the U.S. I said the word Progressive. This was totally misunderstood by many people and I can see why. I am not a politician and I don’t want to be one. The word brings to mind concepts and an ideology to which I do not adhere. That should be clear from everything I have written for years but to some apparently it wasn’t. I believe in the U.S. Constitution as the law of the land and I think it has been trampled on by both political parties for far too long. I believe that financial oligarchs, and the multi-national military/industrial complex have hijacked the U.S. via the Federal government and the Federal Reserve and are implementing immoral and unconstitutional policies extraordinarily detrimental to the American people. I just wanted to clear all this up and hopefully will never have to address it again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piXQGmJTt_g
A MUST WATCH Video with Yuri Bezmenov
Please take the time to watch this video interview from 1985. Yuri is an ex-KGB agent and he discusses the process of brainwashing a nation and describes how this is being done in the United States. It is 25 years later. Mission accomplished.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk&feature=related
Mike
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I thought it was a federation of Corporations. I believe I read some time ago that the individual states became corporations some time ago in the early/mid 20th century.
Thanks for the link. Very interesting read.
God Bless Texas.
Choose your God.
Your State is lost.
Your God is noe the God of Carbon Tax.
Now your State and Republic is lost.
No God will bless you or your State.
According to my man Yuri, America is now beyond "demoralized."
The citizenry will still revolt. And I'm afraid we're in for some rather violent riots, protests & what have you. It won't be pretty.
Mad Mad Woman
You may see some minority rioting in poor neighborhoods. Which does damage to those poor neighborhoods.
You may see some of the more vehement survivalists make claims wave their guns like dicks then shut the fuck up.
The vast majority will suffer and limp along as they alwys have.
No grand uprising, juts a few opportunists headline grabbing.
This time will be different I'm afraid. We shall see......
Mad Mad Woman
Simple test. Drive around and look at all the people. Now imagine them with sticks and stones facing off against armored riot police.
Now remove about forty percent that wouldn't even show up. Take away another twenty percent who would run because they were shit scared. Take away another twenty who would run AFTER the first shots were fired. Take away another ten who had more balls than brains and would be suffering righteous beatdowns.
Look at that handful left.
I bet most of them couldn't even agree on what direction to take the revolution in.
Meanwhile the first forty percent would channel surf right over the riot.
What's the matter Gully? Feeling a little fatalistic today?
ORI
Oh regional Indian
Observant.
One should always know their limitations. Many fools have drowned or fallen off mountains because they didn't.
Or as they say " Know Thyself".
Indeed. A good mantra.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
Here's a hint: during a civil war, the rebels don't go out into the streets with sticks and stones. More likely, they infiltrate the factories and supply lines, cut them off, and watch as the government falls apart.
It's a lot harder to field a modern army than it was back in 1860. Back then, you just needed soldiers, guns, equipment, and food. The latter two were widely available from the surrounding areas. Today, you need machine parts, oil, diesel, batteries, radios, etc etc. Soil their fuel tanks with a bit of water, and suddenly their war machine grinds to a halt, and all they have is hand held weapons, which aren't much better than what civilians have, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them.
The outcome, Gully will be determined by the level of discomfort. I somewhat agree with you that the people don't have the stomach to start swinging pols. from lampposts; I have no idea what level the "minority" rioting you alluded to will reach.
While probably 95% of the people where I live are armed in some fashion, I would only expect them to be wielded in defense of their lives or property. I don't doubt however their ability (even if reluctant) to use them if they needed to.
If left to their own devices, I would place them in the group you said would just keep their heads down and toil through it. That wouldn't bother them much, because they tend to be a relatively self sufficient people anyway.
The variable is when either the "have nots", or the Government encroach apon the "haves" in a way that threatens the well being of their families. I make no prediction in that scenario. I just know it won't be good for anybody.
Then add the millions on millions of firearms owned in this country. add 25 percent for thugs that have nothing to lose anyway and are out for free goods. Add 25 percent for those defending thier homes.
There will be a curve, the US populace could erupt, it would make the majority of the US look like a mix of NO and LA during the king riots.
There is more class warefare and race baiting on the news today than I can remember in my lifetime. Some areas are a powder keg.
"Then add the millions on millions of firearms owned in this country."
No no no. He has already set the rules - sticks and rocks. Remember, Chicago and Noo Yock have strict gun control laws, there will only be sticks... and rocks.
Heh...well you might want to look at what happened in the American Revolution. A very small minority of the populace actually took up arms against the Crown. And furthermore we revolted about something that was minor...we were the best treated colony in the world. We had nearly the same freedoms as Englishmen. But that wasn't good enough. So around 3% of population took up arms and administered a severe ass whipping to THE most powerful nation of the time. 3%.
3% of our adult population would be around a million souls going to war. And they are well armed souls. Many of whom have been are in the military right now. Snickering about what we can do might just be the last thing a politician does once we rise up.
Read "Civil War Two: the coming break up of America"
http://www.amfirstbooks.com/
Hmm, is that what the French aristos said in 1788? Ignore the peasants. Let them rant away in their wine clubs. The vast majority will simply limp along as they always have.
"Hmm, is that what the French aristos said in 1788"
What, they have no bread? Let them eat cake.
No, the French aristos never said "let them eat cake" as it is indoctrinated to this day into into the soft brain of the proletarians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
By the way, many "aristos" were the intellectual "force motrice" behind the ghastly French Revolution.
Paraphrasing what Voltaire said, if they can make you believe in absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities.
I'm not so sure about that. I guess it depends where one lives. Suburbs no doubt will be full of whimpering ones, but this country does have some downright tough people. The kind that doesn't go looking to fight, but is just as comfortable making sure others keep out.
Some parts of the Appalachians come to mind, like where the mine wars took place last century.
Or Kenctucky. I can think of a lot of other places I'd rather beg for a meal if things sour quickly.
Hack kneed but true, you must keep thinking outside the box.
Topsoil, bitchez!
Hydroponics, bitchez!
Thanks Mike, I'll be spreading that thought.
Wow--great article. Thank you.
Thanks, Michael!
This is nothing short of EXCELLENT!
Thanks for this intriguing update Tyler. He doesn't hold back does he? I have been following the developments on wheat and had noticed that the analysis of the notayesmanseconomics web blog was showing rises in commodity prices generally as evidenced by the CRB spot index. Yet as he points out we have government bond markets signaling deflation and disinflation.
We will not need much inflation to make bond yields look rather thin particularly if you are one of those questioning the US Consumer Price Index as a reliable measure of inflation...
http://notayesmanseconomics.wordpress.com
I've said it before and I'll say it as many times as necessary, contemporary deflation is nothing but a myth and a lie being peddled by an increasingly desperate and Orwellian power elite to attempt to convince the masses that up is down and black is white. I never bought the lie for a second.
It's frustrating because all we get is what the internet tells us, which is inherently unreliable. What is true?
"Nothing is true, all is permitted" - Nietzsche
Michael Krieger should be voted the next Secratary of State in the new US Government after our velvet revolution of 2012.
oh tyler thanks for the great article, i liked it a lot.
did all you know that bob dylan is touring
R I G H T N O W !
does any body want to go with me? definitly need a body guard cause last bob dylan concert i got really pushed and then the damn men want to rub up on you. they plan this out, you know. he is up in montanta anybody live up there? in the H O L E actually, just hope cheney isn't in town. ok http://www.bobdylan.com/#/tour
Wait a second......
I know you!
Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULjCSK0oOlI
hey lennon, did you know my daughter use to teach pilates to paul simon over christmas when he would come to ski. she said he was really cool. did pilates to get stretched out.
Nice! He is one of the greatests! She is lucky!
Mr Lennon Hendrix
Hard to get that Annie Hall image out of my head.
rapunzel
I saw Dylan during his Hollywood Bob phase. Not bad. Wouldn't go now though.
Miss the Dead. Good times.
Maybe I'd see David Bromberg, Kinky Friedman, Leonard Cohen, JJ Cale.
Add CSN to my list. Ad I just saw Jethro Tull, okay, a little old now.
Good list. Dylan......hmmmm......Once I found Cohen, Dylan didn't matter to me anymore. Plus he was in his Band phase, terrible stuff.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
Jethro Tull that was the last concert i saw at R E D R O C K S
but i took my first ever peyote. it really really really really really scared the hell out of me. can't do hallucinogens.
well i don't like you any more, dylan has never done terrible stuff. excuse me, who are you to judge B O B D Y L A N.
Leonard Cohen has been the Man for me for decades!
I saw him, finally, in his latest N. American tour.
I do not need to see any other show for the rest of my life.
:-)
Now I've heard there was a secret chord...that DoChen played and it pleased.....
You know the rest!
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
I saw Dylan during his Hollywood Bob phase.
I saw Dylan during his Slow Train Coming tour. He only did songs from that album (I guess that his earlier work was too sinful for him at that point). There was a continuous stream of folks walking out on the show. Big disappointment.
US equities to lose almost 2% today, -1% tomorrow, and -1% on Monday as the DXY winds back up to 82.5. Then come Tuesday, as I am anticipating QE 1.67, I think we will have a huge reversal and the DXY will plummet to 73, this by the midterms. Equities will most likely rise along this time frame. Gold and the other PMs will sky rocket.
I'm afraid that the algos and HFTs will not be able to compute your plausible theory
Yeah I see that last move. DXY now in a descending channel and PMs all looking to make a route. Hmmm, well, if I am wrong and we do not get a 5% pullback by next weeks plausible QE one.point.whatever, then GS' "Prop Desk" will go to the highest bidder.
Who wants to bet that the prop desk is sold the day before QE 1.point.whatever commences?
Who is ready for the final lap!?
PS, I would not be surprised if we flash crash into the close.
Nah, just your standard, late-day meltup, on zero volume, that overwhelms all the negative news of the day so that the evening headlines can state that the market closed higher.
Feel good happy smiles all around.
Tau Jonas kicks the spit outta the RUS 2k...great!
"Have a cookie cnbc!" -Bernanke Panky
No one alive seems to remember the poisionous populism during previous depressions. 97% of the people don't give a flying f*ck about history. That more or less guarantees it will happen again.
all the fear mongering, immigrant bashing, racism, oppression, propaganda. Risks of a failed presidency? God is that ever stupid in the context of history.
same shit different century.
Immigrant bashing? Unemployment is around 15%. What the fuck are 12 million illegals doing working in a broke country with 15% unemployment? Racism? Against whom? What planet are you on?
I have unemployment at 26.5%...I include the homeless.
Mr Lennon Hendrix
"I include the homeless."
Now that they can marry would it cut your numbers in half?
BEing married is a fulltime job! Haha!
+1
I believe the immigrants do need bashing. America is a plot of land on planet Earth. The entire world population cannot fit here. What they need to do is fix their own governments and overcome their oppression so that they too can have the glorious freedom they seek. Americans can't afford to take care of them any longer. If you disagree than by all means don't be a hypocrite.... go out and pick up a homeless person and move them into your home. After all you have a home and they need one. What's the difference? I don't blame them for wanting to be here, but they are killing that which they seek. I'm sick of everyone BASHING AMERICANS and then demanding to be one!!!!!
+ 50 states
ahhh, where to start with this. . .
in order to be an "immigrant" (and by this I'm assuming you mean illegal immigrant, eh?) one needs to believe in the arbitrary, imaginary and moving lines dividing "nation states" - something amrka sucks at respecting, by the way. . . any "illegal" that's earning in the States is being paid by someone, maybe spread your hate to include those who seek the lowest exchange of their FRN for labour they can find. . . and if someone seeks to live in amrka, it MIGHT be because their homeland is polluted, impoverished, or otherwise less than liveable, quite possibly because of amrkn "foreign policy". . .
as to
you might want to do a little R'n'R (reading and research) as to the MANY MANY nation states that amrkn military intervenes in, overthrowing elected governments to install a paid puppet theatre favourable to amrkn corporate interests. . .
it's only gone on, like, forever.
If They Can’t Afford Wheat Let Them Buy Real Estate? Why the Price of Food Will Guarantee a Chinese Real Estate Crash
China has been suffering from surging wage and food prices for the last few months. However, since there were a lot of restrictions on imports prices in China were much higher than in the rest of the world, especially the United States and Europe. But recent developments signal that the arbitrage is starting to close. The direct implication of this development is that the Federal Reserve’s hands are tied even more, it simply can’t resume Q.E until the demand from China cools down, and that is happening during a classic deflationary spiral in the Western Economies.
If They Can’t Afford Wheat Let Them Buy Real Estate? Why the Price of Food Will Guarantee a Chinese Real Estate Crash
The arbitrage in corn prices is being closed via a surge in exports from the United States to China:
China has purchased more U.S. corn this year than at any point since 1995 as soaring domestic prices and rising needs for livestock feed have boosted China’s demand for corn from the world’s top exporter.
One cargo of U.S. corn has already landed in China and started unloading and two to three more are scheduled to begin loading at U.S. ports this week, tempering at least some fears that China could not take delivery of the corn.
Only a month has passed since these articles were published and yet wheat prices have risen almost 50% from their lows, while corn and rice prices closely followed
"Neo-feudalistic debt slavery" is a much more creative and original definition than those ideological nonsense recycled from the Cold War, where people throw to the wind words like "socialism" and "communism" and see Soviet spies controlling the White House.
I think DC will send drones around to kill us if they fear a loss of control. I see no hope. We can not revolt against a machine as well armed as is the US government.
Any possible salvation in the US does not lie through combat but a breakdown of the FRN interantionally and local people just not complying with the Fed God. The Army can't hold the land, they must rule by fear. Granted if they wanted to they could scorch the cities and make the USA a total hellpit so they definitely have a lot of power over us. I'm still waiting for the US to engage in a little nuclear blackmail at home and abroad.
The US has 2 million adults in prison. There has been torture in our domestic prisons and torture/homicide abroad (Camp Victory, etc). We have a gulag, already. And we have the debt-gulag. We are so far gone.
And fuck. The bread and circuses aren't even that good.
Yes We Can...
Oooops, sorry. Heard that somewhere before.
Obama - Yes We Can = Thank You Satan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqALdkTArqs
They can't kill us all.... they need our taxes! The uber-rich are renouncing their citizenship. The politicians are evading taxes and the poor/victims only take tax money. Non-citizens and corporations don't pay. Government and non-profits don't pay. The Tea Party are the only people left to collect from. What does everybody think their b*tching about? TAXES.
T axed
E enough
A lready
They don't need the tax revenue. They have the dollar standard and 1000 military bases around the world.
"We can not revolt against a machine as well armed as is the US government."
I am sure that this is the attitude of the Taliban....
The "machine" is made up of people. People have family. When the family is directly threatened, these people tend to go to their aid. Many times they will also bring the tools of their trade. Don't underestimate the loyalty of the U.S. Soldier to family and God. Been there, done that.
The US government hasn't thrown 2million Afgans in jail. It has thrown 2million Americans in jail. And the god damn scum sucking prison guard unions actually fucking lobby for harsher drug laws and mandatory minimum sentences.
We will devour eachother for a dime.
Woo.
More gloom and doom. I know others have mentioned this before on Zerohedge - but I will add that it might be nice to propose some solutions other than 'hide in my bunker with my gold and my guns'. I know the poster isn't necessarily coming out and saying this, but the sentiment is pretty clear. My reading is that the 'hole up' (read Libertarian) crowd really doesn't care much about the fate of others -- therefore, why should the rest of us care about them? Good luck with that. Yes, you are going to run away and hide from the impending conflageration. Go and do that already - you're boring.
I'm much more interested in reading/working on plans that actually create progress and prosperity for people. Yelling fire in a crowded theatre isn't helping - it just makes you look like an uncaring douche. If you are out to just 'get yours' that doesn't make you any different than Goldman Sachs. Junk all you want, haters.
As for the BIS, I'm surprised anyone trusts them at all. They've been shady since their inception in 1930. Thomas H. McKittrick, who was president of the BIS from 1940-46, was a wizard at hiding and swapping gold. Speaking of which, does anyone know what happened to this man after he came back to the states and worked for Chase? Inquiring minds want to know..
How would you create wheat?
If the current model of mega-agribusiness does break down, I suspect there will be a whole lot more microfarming. The real question is how people engaged in practices like this could sustain themselves and their communities without the threat of violence during a period of economic/political upheaval.
The flaw in your thinking is that microfarming only works if the world population was like it was before the rise of oil, something around 2 billion. The current world population can only be fed with mega-agribusiness and enormous quantities of cheap oil. If mega-agribusiness breaks down, microfarming will take its place but only after 2/3 of the world population dies off.
Thanks for saying what I was thinking.
Actually there's a good argument that "organic" farming can sustain current population levels. You just need a millions of farmers to do it. What's the current unemployment rate?
"The flaw in your thinking is that microfarming only works if the world population was like it was before the rise of oil"
Microfarming will sustain my immediate family. Oh, wait, that is exactly the attitude he was railing against. Sorry. I'll just go back to my bunker and plan next years crop....
"How would you create wheat?"
um, with organic seed from last year's crop?
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Growing-Wheat-Types-Of-Wheat.aspx
I disagree. If the majority of people in the theater do not know there's a fire, you are saving lives...
Pure genius. Why don't you yell a warning the next time you are in a crowded theatre and see what happens?
<sarcasm off>
According to the information here:
http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/sfa/McKittrickThomas.htm
He retired from Chase and died in 1970.
Here is someone working on something useful:
http://www.bankofenglandact.co.uk/
not everyone here thinks alike Maniac, though some days you'll be hard pressed to find dissent between the lines. . .
not sure exactly what you're after, but if it's feeding yourself and family, and maybe having some "extra" for barter, here's a link you might start with:
http://www.dervaesgardens.com/the-urban-homestead
Sharon Astyk has written some great articles, and a book I've given to a few to get started in re-thinking their "reality" - she, and many others, post over at the Energy Bulletin, link: http://www.energybulletin.net/authors/Sharon+Astyk
again, not sure if that's what you were after, but all the best anyhow.
A lot of this post seems overblown to me, but certainly an inflection is coming.
I think that people who are simpathetic to Minute Men/tea party thinking can fool themselves that "Americans are about to stop following federal laws." These are still fringe movements. Most people are not up-in-arms over what's going on in Arizona. They just see politicking.
Much more likely than organized rebellion by freedom-loving patriots is that funding for law enforcement will erode and general lawlessness will set in. Think urban centers in the 1970's.
"Freedom" will amount to suspicious people hoarding and protecting their own. A rise in selfishness is hardly a prescription for some ideal new society.
We won't come out of this Fourth Turning crisis for at least ten years. Who knows what the new value set will look like?
I really suggest that more people read histories of the 1970s. I'm 24, so I wasn't alive back then, but just going through primary source docs, you can't help but be stunned by the reality.
The social fabric unraveled and the government nearly collapsed. But the pop culture only remembers disco balls. Weird.
Apostate
It wasn't that bad. Unless you meant in the rest of the world.
Lot's of cheap Mexican weed. Big old bags you could afford.
We still had factories and gas was dirt cheap.
Yeah, I come at it from an NYC perspective. The neighborhoods that are now rich person shangri las were fourth world hell-holes. That may be why it's so freaky to me.
Cleaning the seeds was a nightmare though--took forever.
Jendrzejczyk
But you had those big ass album covers to use. I wonder how many albums are sticky with resin still.
Double albums were the best.
Mom to Dad, "Did you notice all those strange weeds in the side yard too?"
Yes, I was pretty young, but a strange decade that gets way less attention then it should. I guess because people want to forget it.
My feeling is that the big optimistic party of the late 60's burned hot and bright, but burned out quickly. What was left were the drug problems, the societal drop-outs, the erosion of social order, but without any of the optimistic hippie nonsense to give it meaning. Just a raging house party at 3:00 am, and only the addicts and outlaws are still awake tearing the place apart.
Normal people got the hell out and went the suburbs. The hedonistic selfishness morphed into the "I'm going to get mine, and you better get the fuck out of my way" attitude of the 80's.
Vietnam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUO8ScYVeDo
Street Fighting Man
Ev'rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging
feet, boy
'Cause summer's here and the time is right for
fighting in the street, boy
But what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No
Hey! Think the time is right for a palace
revolution
But where I live the game to play is compromise
solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's no place for a street fighting man
No
Hey! Said my name is called disturbance
I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll
rail at all his servants
Well, what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's no place for a street fighting man
No
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPudiBR15mk
As same as it ever was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0SJYgBjm1A&feature=related
many of us lived through the sixties and seventies and we remember what happened.
We remember watching, helpless, as most of our heroes were gunned down.
We rioted and struck and passively resisted and wrote letters and howled.
And all the idiotic policies that we were trying to stop, just went on and on and on.
We won't do it again.
A different form of resistance is required here.
Too true.
By the time the 60s rolled about the game was over. The suburbs and the Cold War and General Motors had won the heart and mind of America, there was no fire in the belly for a fight, and the 80s and 90s became empty consumerist fuck-fests of greed and squander. US domestic oil production hit peak, and nobody noticed, but right then the handwriting was all over the wall.
Fast forward to today, and nobody can remember a time when Americans gave shit about anything except Hollywood and scandals and the price of gasoline. It's as if nobody plans on living past the age of 50..
Well it's game over folks. The PTB won the day. We're stupid fucks now, on average, with no more inclination to examine our lives or our leadership closely than we have wings to fly. We will now pay a very dear price for becoming fat and lazy and stupid and easily led. Ring in the nose, tag in the ear, eyes on the next Happy Meal.
And so it's off to the slaughterhouse. Enjoy.
well i remember being at OSU (funked out freshmen year) living with my sister (parents thought good idea, wasn't really) columbus was under night time curfew. my girlfriend and i would go out and run around and avoid the big spot lights out of the helicopters. that was exciting.
I lived north of OSU for ten years in the 80s and 90s. Every night for ten years the helicopter was directly over my house at 2:30 am like clockwork. Hell on sleep. Finally moved. Not that they ever closed down the three crack houses on my block; somebody wouldn't have an adventure every night at 2:30 then.
When food stamps won't buy food; when the grocery stores have lines like the old Soviet Russia, waiting for shipments; when the unemployed have advantages because they can shop when the workers are at work; when inflation means a two-hour lunch for food shopping before prices go up; that's when the revolution will not be televised.
And all those countries that use dollars on the streets will switch to yuan, or rubles, or pesos.
"Freedom" will amount to suspicious people hoarding and protecting their own. A rise in selfishness is hardly a prescription for some ideal new society.
+1
exactly my point.
A rise in selfishness is hardly a prescription for some ideal new society.
+1
exactly my point.
Time for some folks to read (or reread) Atlas Shrugged.
Who are you employing as of today?
Perhaps you aren't doing this - but it seems like your oblique defence of the 'bunker crowd' isn't the best confidence builder...I certainly wouldn't bang your door down for work.
Free market economics are a fickle thing, btw. Making it sound like a simple matter is a bit disingenuous. There's a reason why other regimes attempted to produce alternatives.
In your hurry to bash the bunker crowd, you are entirely missing the point. This isn't about "hiring" your neighbor. You say you wouldn't bang down my door for work, but do you have any goddamned thing to eat?
Would you work in my tilled ground for a share of the yield? Would you split wood in my woodpile for a couple of chickens?
I already do most of the things needed in a self sustaining lifestyle. But if there were to be a large scale collapse, I'd need help. The end result is that: I, (who have made many preperations), would be willing to pay you, (who have made none) to help. I am able to keep up, and you eat. Together if we work hard enough, we may be able to feed others who are unable to feed themselves.
I have no illusions about "holing up" as you put it. You can't hole up forever, and it doesn't rebuild shit. You say you want an answer, but you seem to dismiss the one we offer.
"You say you want an answer, but you seem to dismiss the one we offer. "
Sometimes you just cannot appease the idealist. They passionately cling to their Utopian view of the world, and are typically the least prepared for disaster. Disaster can come in the form of unemployment, prolonged severe weather, or upheaval. They won't be prepared to survive, but they will gladly provide you with "ideas", "solutions" and "answers" rather than labor or barter goods.
I'm not an idealist. I just happen to think that hiding in a bunker with some gold and some guns is silly and unrealistic.
I see a lot of people bragging about this particular "survival" method. From where I'm standing it looks like a cry for attention.
You want to know what my strategy is? I analyze situations and attempt to take reasonable actions based on said analysis. I attempt not to REact. If this method somehow constitutes as being "utopian", then so be it.
Sure, maybe someone who has seen Fight Club too many times might think its edgy and cool to jump right to amassing ammo as a reasonable solution to their problems - but for some of us, there's more of a range of options between "do nothing/welcome the apocalypse" and "grab a gun and prepare to shoot at imagined enemies".
It's actually pretty easy to see why you would want to paint me as naive and dismiss me for daring to question your strategy and motivations -- it's due to your insecurities. Sleep well.
Btw -Sorry Cooper, but I think I'll skip the idyllic life with you and take my chances elsewhere. I tend to avoid people who sound like they are heading down 'ye olde sociopath lane'.
For what it's worth, I do hope that you can predict the future well enough to know if whatever the specific preparations you've made will actually help you survive ..good luck with that.
I understand free market economics.
Your point is that self-interest can be the means to a larger end. Fair enough. But self-interest can also congeal into just self-interest. That's my point.
People scraping money together is fine. I do my best to scrape money together. But it is a sad thing to base a society around.
The people who decry self interest are likely to be the ones who attempt to form a society based on scraping together money earned by the labor of others.
"These are still fringe movements."
Not anymore. I think you are missing the signs of real change. Hardly anyone grew a garden ten years ago... now I see veggie gardens EVERYWHERE. The self-sufficiency/survivalist mindset has gone mainstream in a big way. If you still see these things as 'fringe' then you haven't been paying attention these past 2-3 years...
This is not original on my part, it was discussed higher up on this thread. But the most likely threat to federal power is not an armed poplulace rising up en mass. There are not nearly enough people who are prepared to take that step, and any who tried would not last long against the "anti-insurgency" techniques now being employed in Afghanistan. But it is concievable that individual states will start just saying "no" to unacceptable edicts out of DC. If a governor defies a federal order, and is backed by a significant portion of the state legislature and citizens, a precedent might be established that eventually erodes the Imperial Presidency. This could happen non-violently unless someone behaves with incredible stupidity.
The vast majority of the operators out there will not act against a grass roots populace. I still have many many contacts in and around the services. There is a huge contingent of Oathkeepers and prior service veterans of military and law enforcement that have their pulse on such things daily.
The idea that "The man" can subdue real unrest with black helicopters and the like is outdated. The more force used guarantees government failure.
The best trained people I know no longer wear patches. Many are still contractors but they only care of the republic, the constitution, and first to their friends and family. Rural America has the best trained organic militia the world has known.
These are not 19 year old's playing call of duty until 2 am.
The Feds have a history of acting stupidly. Given five choices they will go for the worst first.
"the most likely threat to federal power is not an armed poplulace rising up en mass"
.....but instead a gradual decrease in the amount of citizens willing to pay taxes to keep the whole affair running. With more and more people working off-the-books, the tax base grows ever smaller, and the funding to maintain the power elite dwindles.
Is that what you meant?
Go long Cryptograhic Software -- the Fed's can only steal what they can find.
" If history repeats itself the government will look for a way to vilify another country or a group of people within the country."
Uh, we already have this and it is precisely what allows the system to perpetuate. It's called fervent, vitriolic partisanship. I hear everything you are saying, but I'll bet that incumbents get voted out and replaced largely by Repubs and assorted Independents, which will pacify the uninformed masses long enough until the replacements become incumbents and subsequently villified. It's like a replicating virus...
i cant even imagine what this FOOD CRISIS will do to people in INDIA.....apart from todaysnews in Russia , we hadnt seen any crisis causing news or event ...and still the food prices in India are going sky high......i have no idea whats gonna happen when the real crisis HITS...
India and Africa. We talk about trading opportunities while exhausted 3-year-olds with distended bellies lie on a dirt floor, waiting for....
The high food prices just a couple years ago killed a lot of people. Fucked up world.
chet
"India and Africa. We talk about trading opportunities while exhausted 3-year-olds with distended bellies lie on a dirt floor, waiting for...."
You understand that the guns/gold/collapse crowd don't appreciate that will be their future.
Tense INDIAN, not to be too callous, but India has made its own bed to a large extent in that it has done basically nothing to reduce its large fertility rate. How many families do you know back in India that still have 5-10 children? I work with a guy from India who married a woman who had 9 sisters. Hopefully, this latest food shortage will be a wake up call to more sustainable family structures in India.
offcourse i dont blame the fate of Indians on Westerners or the Conspirators....most of the fault lies within us....most of the people especially north indians cant follow any rule.....
I'm not saying you're wrong, but you're certainly reading alot into a weather market. Wheat, corn and beans are rallying from pretty oversold levels, and are well below their respective historical highs (around 50%), even with all of that Neo-Keynesian fuel behind them. CIY not exactly parabolic. Natty near all time lows. Several of the developed countries are expected to harvest pretty significant wheat crops. Maybe we will actually have something to export ! http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-03/wheat-may-surge-as-speculators-hunt-what-s-moving-cwa-says.html
But even the degree of commodity strength we're witnessing highlights that the current bubble is not in these commodities per se, but in the fixed income markets...a government induced yield drought that's producing some pretty extreme reactions at the long end of the yield curve. In my humble opinion, that's the next bubble that is about to pop: If the deflation scenario really unfolds, sovereign risk in developed debtor nations will savage these ultra low yields...if we witness the type of hyper inflation you expect, do you really want to be holding sub-3 10 year paper? TIC data is crucial here.
Do bear in mind that Yuri Bezmenov needed to earn his keep. I'm sure President Reagan was very happy for a bit of 'informed' anti-Soviet propaganda being broadcast during that part of the cold war. He won a great election victory the year before and wanted to keep the voters supporting him.
Please remember that the best propoganda is that which you want to believe in.
Thats a rather disingenuous statement, considering what Yuri was warning about differed greatly from the fear the actor president was mongering
I was suggesting Yuri was being disengenuous for the benefit of his landlord!
I was suggesting Yuri was being disengenuous for the benefit of his landlord!
THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING.. on a side note.. nice RC helicopter ad... i might buy one
Michael Krieger has identified the problem ("Militaristic/Financial Corporatocracy"), but has provided incomplete solutions, in his video interview.
My list of solutions are as follows:
1. Eliminate two-party duopoly with a 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th party.
2. Pass a Constitutional Amendment that eliminates corporate rights and enhances individual rights in the political process. This would blunt effects of Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.
3. Once this Amendment is ratified by the states, legislate the elimination of corporate influence in Washington and our electoral system. This would manifest itself in many ways......
A) Outlaw the writing of legislation by corporate lobbyists.
B) Make it illegal for elected public servants to take corporate executive, lobbying, or board positions within a set number of years after leaving public office. Let's face it.....such positions are gifts corporations hand out to elected officials to buy certain policies. It's bribary through the back door.
C) To further keep public elected public servants pristine, offer fully vested and healthy pensions to these people immediately upon leaving office.
D) Outlaw corporate campaign contributions in any forms, PAC or otherwise.
E) Mandate the media outlets provide 24-hour campaign channels that give equal opportunity for all candidates from the six parties to inform the public as to their views and policy proposals.
F) Publicly fund an independent cable news channel that would be free from ideological influence, conservative or liberal. The six political parties could have equal board representation and influence over editorial content. This news organization would be like our "BBC", except better, and would keep the other commercial for-profit news media honest.
4. Slash defense spending by 50% over a 5-year period, so as to blunt the side-effects on cities and towns dependent on military spending.
5. Naturally, break up the big banks, restore some form of Glass Steagal, and outlaw all CDS speculation.
This is just for starters. The six parties, by the way, would be.....
The two legacy parties, Democratic and Republican, PLUS....
1. Social Democrats - Progressive party with Western Europrean socioeconomic model.
2. Libertarian - Conservative free-marketers who are anti-empire.
3. Moderate Capitalists - Believers in limited social safety nets, lean government, and right-sized corporate regulatory regimes with a strong military.
4. Social Conservatives - The haven for Christian-authoritarians outside of the traditional Republican Party. Platform based on God, guns, and American Exceptionalism.
Your system assures that a virtual minority will control politics forever. In other countries where such approaches are common, they seldom work. Not well thought out at all on your part.
so, single party authoritarian rule is better? What's your solution? Maybe you're fine with corporate-run government, but I'm not.
just put a balanced budget amendment in, and voila, all is fixed
6. Abolish the Federal level of government... the root of ALL of our problems.
And I don't like 3.C. Rewarding amateur politicians (a good thing) with a lifetime pension/benefits is a net negative. The expectation should be that these people have a real job to go back to...
I'm in favor of a Lottery where if you win, you're forced to become a Congressman or Senator and work for free! Remove the incentive(s) to make Govt a career.
"It doesn’t matter what you think about the AZ law. It is merely a microcosm for a bigger battle being waged between states rights and the gulag federal government."
The AZ law is an example of AZ securing itself as a gulag state, not a battle against the federal government. Puh-lease.
And "Neo-Keynesian"? Is that what we're supposed to call the Chicago School monetarism of the Milton Friedman that has held sway for the last thirty years? Volcker, Greenspan, Bernanke - monetarists, not Keynesians. You can't purge them of their libertarian roots by simply coining a new nonsense term.
Under our system of government as developed by the Founders, it is Arizona's right to be whatever Arizona wants to be. I can't quite grasp what is so fucking hard to understand about that.
As long as they aren't trying to supercede rights granted to everyone by the constitution. That's the legal question.
It's not the right of a state to treat any group of people however they want.
Whether or not AZ is overstepping, I don't know. I'm not a constitutional lawyer.
"It's not the right of a state to treat any group of people however they want."
Replace the bolded text with "U.S. Citizens" and I would agree. They should be able to treat a group of Illegal Aliens any way they want. Notice the word "Illegal"? The determination of an aliens standing is based on Federal law, they (AZ) are willing to enforce the laws that are currently written.
Greenspan is the only one who had libertarian roots, and he firmly betrayed them to their death.
Calling Greenspan a libertarian is like calling Castro a capitalist because he lied to get support and then abandoned his ideology as soon as he gained power.
Extolling the libertarian roots of monetarism is like sentencing/executing Jeffery Dahmer's grand-parents because their grandson was a psychopath.
Chicago school/monetarism is an abomination that has far more in common with Keynes than von Mises.
If any 'fringe' politics have the capacity to save this country, it's libertarianism.
<<<having worked a job in the real world in their lives instead having spent their entire existence being fawned on by their fellow academics and bureaucrats, the Chinese and others know exactly what is happening… >>>
Very true... but if you think those commies actually know better than you don't understand.
I have one word to say "jim rogers"
Go RJA
the writings of the author seem mainstream and logical to me. my takeaway is that folks (government) are planning for the worst just in case their optimism (unmentioned) in the future is misplaced. i realize i'm an outlier in thinking like that.
You still have not identified
who will be raped and plundered this time around?
Yes, TPTB surely have in mind the same target
they have had in mind for at least 2000 years.
But in the US, that will not be enough.
The mexicans will also be stripped of their homes,
money, and anything valuable.
It has started in AZ. And it will spread like wildfire.
Yeah, blame them...
They're the ones that made you buy shitloads of
stuff you don't need on credit!
How far back do we go in determining who is responsible?
The repeal of Glass-Sregall?
The U.S.S. Liberty?
Kennedy's assissination?
The Suprememe Court Coup d'etat in the 2000 election?
Reagan's victory over Carter when his people told the Iranians to HOLD the hostages until after the election?
9/11?
Exterordinary Rendition, and eliminating Haebus-Corpus?
Authorization to murder american citizens?
Trillion-Dollar theft frm 2008 forward?
The role and players in a certain lobby that has taken over Congress?
The Neo-Cons and the illegal wars in Iraq and Afganistan after 9/11, which they orchastrated (following PNAC).
Funny how some of the same players are involved all the way through this mess, and will probably have their marketing media people trying to bury the history and create a new image that keeps them alive.
Instead of a deck of 52...we need one with at least 5200.
I'd go back to 1913 with the creation of the "Fed", and the same year the Protocols of Zion were written.
The Origins of the Overclass
By Steve Kangas
The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.
The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet surface — and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.
During the 1970s, these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques they had learned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War. Therefore it is no surprise that the American version of the machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versions designed to fight communism. The CIA's expert and comprehensive organization of the business class would succeed beyond their wildest dreams. In 1975, the richest 1 percent owned 22 percent of America’s wealth. By 1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent — the highest level of inequality in the 20th century.
How did this alliance start? The CIA has always recruited the nation’s elite: millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy League scholars. During World War II, General "Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively from the nation’s rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"
Another early elite was Allen Dulles, who served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Dulles was a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Rockefeller empire and other mammoth trusts, corporations and cartels. He was also a board member of the J. Henry Schroeder Bank, with offices in Wall Street, London, Zurich and Hamburg. His financial interests across the world would become a conflict of interest when he became head of the CIA. Like Donavan, he would recruit exclusively from society’s elite.
By the 1950s, the CIA had riddled the nation’s businesses, media and universities with tens of thousands of part-time, on-call operatives. Their employment with the agency took a variety of forms, which included:
Historically, the CIA and society’s elite have been one and the same people. This means that their interests and goals are one and the same as well. Perhaps the most frequent description of the intelligence community is the "old boy network," where members socialize, talk shop, conduct business and tap each other for favors well outside the formal halls of government.
Many common traits made it inevitable that the CIA and Corporate America would become allies. Both share an intense dislike of democracy, and feel they should be liberated from democratic regulations and oversight. Both share a culture of secrecy, either hiding their actions from the American public or lying about them to present the best public image. And both are in a perfect position to help each other.
How? International businesses give CIA agents cover, secret funding, top-quality resources and important contacts in foreign lands. In return, the CIA gives corporations billion-dollar federal contracts (for spy planes, satellites and other hi-tech spycraft). Businessmen also enjoy the romantic thrill of participating in spy operations. The CIA also gives businesses a certain amount of protection and privacy from the media and government watchdogs, under the guise of "national security." Finally, the CIA helps American corporations remain dominant in foreign markets, by overthrowing governments hostile to unregulated capitalism and installing puppet regimes whose policies favor American corporations at the expense of their people.
The CIA’s alliance with the elite turned out to be an unholy one. Each enabled the other to rise above the law. Indeed, a review of the CIA’s history is one of such crime and atrocity that no one can reasonably defend it, even in the name of anticommunism. Before reviewing this alliance in detail, it is useful to know the CIA’s history of atrocity first.
The Crimes of the CIA
During World War II, the OSS actively engaged in propaganda, sabotage and countless other dirty tricks. After the war, and even after the CIA was created in 1947, the American intelligence community reverted to harmless information gathering and analysis, thinking that the danger to national security had passed. That changed in 1948 with the emergence of the Cold War. In that year, the CIA recreated its covert action wing, innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination. Its first director was Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner. According to its secret charter, its responsibilities included
propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.
By 1953, the dirty tricks department of the CIA had grown to 7,200 personnel and commanded 74 percent of the CIA’s total budget. The following quotes describe the culture of lawlessness that pervaded the CIA:
Stanley Lovell, a CIA recruiter for "Wild Bill" Donovan: "What I have to do is to stimulate the Peck's Bad Boy beneath the surface of every American scientist and say to him, 'Throw all your normal law-abiding concepts out the window. Here's a chance to raise merry hell. Come help me raise it.'" (1)
George Hunter White, writing of his CIA escapades: "I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun... Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the all-highest?" (2)
A retired CIA agency caseworker with twenty years experience: "I never gave a thought to legality or morality. Frankly, I did what worked."
Blessed with secrecy and lack of congressional oversight, CIA operations became corrupt almost immediately. Using propaganda stations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the CIA felt justified in manipulating the public for its own good. The broadcasts were so patently false that for a time it was illegal to publish transcripts of them in the U.S. This was a classic case of a powerful organization deciding what was best for the people, and then abusing the powers it had helped itself to.
During the 40s and 50s, most of the public was unaware of what the CIA was doing. Those who knew thought they were fighting the good fight against communism, like James Bond. However, they could not keep their actions secret forever, and by the 60s and 70s, Americans began learning about the agency’s crimes and atrocities. (3) It turns out the CIA has:
The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (4) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."
We should note that the CIA gets away with this because it is not accountable to democratic government. Former CIA officer Philip Agee put it best: "The CIA is the President's secret army." Prior to 1975, the agency answered only to the President (creating all the usual problems of authoritarianism). And because the CIA’s activities were secret, the President rarely had to worry about public criticism and pressure. After the 1975 Church hearings, Congress tried to create congressional oversight of the CIA, but this has failed miserably. One reason is that the congressional oversight committee is a sham, filled with Cold Warriors, conservatives, businessmen, and even ex-CIA personnel.
The Business Origins of CIA Crimes
Although many people think that the CIA’s primary mission during the Cold War was to "deter communism," Noam Chomksy correctly points out that its real mission was "deterring democracy." From corrupting elections to overthrowing democratic governments, from assassinating elected leaders to installing murderous dictators, the CIA has virtually always replaced democracy with dictatorship. It didn’t help that the CIA was run by businessmen, whose hostility towards democracy is legendary. The reason they overthrew so many democracies is because the people usually voted for policies that multi-national corporations didn't like: land reform, strong labor unions, nationalization of their industries, and greater regulation protecting workers, consumers and the environment.
So the CIA’s greatest "successes" were usually more pro-corporate than anti-communist. Citing a communist threat, the CIA helped overthrow the democratically elected Mohammed Mussadegh government in Iran in 1953. But there was no communist threat — the Soviets stood back and watched the coup from afar. What really happened was that Mussadegh threatened to nationalize British and American oil companies in Iran. Consequently, the CIA and MI6 toppled Mussadegh and replaced him with a puppet government, headed by the Shah of Iran and his murderous secret police, SAVAK. The reason why the Ayatollah Khomeini and his revolutionaries took 52 Americans hostage in Tehran in 1979 was because the CIA had helped SAVAK torture and murder their people.
Another "success" was the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacabo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Again, there was no communist threat. The real threat was to Guatemala’s United Fruit Company, a Rockefeller-owned firm whose stockholders included CIA Director Allen Dulles. Arbenz threatened to nationalize the company, albeit with generous compensation. In response, the CIA initiated a coup that overthrew Arbenz and installed the murderous dictator Castillo Armas. For four decades, CIA-backed dicatators would torture and murder hundreds of thousands of leftists, union members and others who would fight for a more equitable distribution of the country’s resources.
Another "success" story was Chile. In 1973, the country’s democratically elected leader, Salvadore Allende, nationalized foreign-owned interests, like Chile’s lucrative copper mines and telephone system. International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) offered the CIA $1 million to overthrow Allende — which the CIA allegedly refused — but paid $350,000 to his political opponents. The CIA responded with a coup that murdered Allende and replaced him with a brutal tyrant, General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet tortured and murdered thousands of leftists, union members and political opponents as economists trained at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman installed a "free market" economy. Since then, income inequality has soared higher in Chile than anywhere else in Latin America.
Even when the communist threat was real, the CIA first and foremost took care of the elite. In testimony before Congress in the early 50s, it artificially inflated Soviet military capabilities. A notorious example was the "bomber gap" that later turned out to be grossly exaggerated. Another was "Team B," a group of hawkish CIA analysts who seriously distorted Soviet military data. These scare tactics worked. Congress awarded giant defense contracts to the U.S. military-industrial complex.
And not even the fall of the Soviet Union and the demise of American defense contracts have stopped the CIA from serving the elite. Journalist Robert Dreyfuss writes:
Since the end of the Cold War, Washington has been abuzz with talk about using the CIA for economic espionage. Stripped of euphemism, economic espionage simply means that American spies would target foreign companies, such as Toyota, Nissan and Honda, and then covertly pass stolen trade secrets and technology to U.S. corporate executives. (5)
If this isn’t bad enough, a worse problem arises in that the CIA doesn’t hand over this technology to every American auto-related company, but only the Big Three: Ford, Chrysler and General Motors.
In a 1975 interview, Ex-CIA agent Philip Agee summed up his personal observations of the agency:
To the people who work for it, the CIA is known as The Company. The Big Business mentality pervades everything. Agents, for instance, are called assets. The man in charge of the United Kingdom desk is said to have the "U.K. account"…
American multinational corporations have built up colossal interests all over the world, and you can bet your ass that wherever you find U. S. business interests, you also find the CIA… The multinational corporations want a peaceful status quo in countries where they have investments, because that gives them undisturbed access to cheap raw materials, cheap labor and stable markets for their finished goods. The status quo suits bankers, because their money remains secure and multiplies. And, of course, the status quo suits the small ruling groups the CIA supports abroad, because all they want is to keep themselves on top of the socioeconomic pyramid and the majority of their people on the bottom. But do you realize what being on the bottom means in most parts of the world? Ignorance, poverty, often early death by starvation or disease…
Remember, the CIA is an instrument of the President; it only carries out policy. And, like everyone else, the President has to respond to forces in the society he's trying to lead, right? In America, the most powerful force is Big Business, and American Big Business has a vested interest in the Cold War. (6)
Domestic Recruitment
The CIA had no trouble recruiting elites who sought a more exciting life. Between 1948 and 1959, more than 40,000 American individuals and companies acted as sources for the U.S. intelligence community. (7) Let’s look at each area of recruitment, and see how they enabled the CIA to conduct its crimes:
Big Business
The CIA co-opted big business right from the start, beginning with the most famous billionaire of the time: Howard Hughes. Hughes had inherited his father’s million-dollar tool and die company at age 19. Anxious to expand his fortune, he made a conscientious decision "to go where the money is" — namely, government. With a few well-placed bribes, Hughes secured defense contracts to build military planes. The result was the Hughes Aircraft company. By 1940, he had also acquired a controlling interest in Trans World Airlines. His government connections and international airline soon caught the attention of the CIA, and the two began a lifelong relationship. Hughes, whom the CIA dubbed "The Stockbroker," became the agency’s largest contractor. Not only did he let the CIA use his business firms as fronts, but he also funded countless CIA operations. Perhaps the most notorious was Operation Jennifer, an allegedly failed attempt to recover nuclear codes from a sunken Soviet submarine. Hughes’ right-hand security man, Robert Maheu, was a CIA agent who at one time represented the CIA in negotiations with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro.
The CIA’s contacts with big business quickly spread. The agency showed a preference for international companies, public relations firms, media companies, law offices, banks, financiers and stockbrokers. The CIA didn’t limit its activities to recruiting businessmen; sometimes the CIA bought or created entire companies outright. One benefit of co-opting big business was that the CIA was able to create a secret source of funds other than from government. With stock portfolios multiplying their profits, it’s impossible now to say how flush the CIA really is. If Congress ever cut off funds for a mission, the business fraternity could easily replace them, either by donations or even setting up profitable businesses in the target country. In fact, this is precisely what happened during the Iran/Contra scandal.
By allying itself with the business community, the CIA received the funds and ability it needed to remove itself from democratic control.
The Media
Journalism is a perfect cover for CIA agents. People talk freely to journalists, and few think suspiciously of a journalist aggressively searching for information. Journalists also have power, influence and clout. Not surprisingly, the CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit American journalists on a wide scale, a mission it dubbed Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The agency wanted these journalists not only to relay any sensitive information they discovered, but also to write anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda when needed.
The instigators of MOCKINGBIRD were Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham was the husband of Katherine Graham, today’s publisher of the Washington Post. In fact, it was the Post’s ties to the CIA that allowed it to grow so quickly after the war, both in readership and influence. (8)
MOCKINGBIRD was extraordinarily successful. In no time, the agency had recruited at least 25 media organizations to disseminate CIA propaganda. At least 400 journalists would eventually join the CIA payroll, according to the CIA’s testimony before a stunned Church Committee in 1975. (The committee felt the true number was considerably higher.) The names of those recruited reads like a Who's Who of journalism:
Perhaps no newspaper is more important to the CIA than the Washington Post, one of the nation’s most right-wing dailies. Its location in the nation’s capitol enables the paper to maintain valuable personal contacts with leading intelligence, political and business figures. Unlike other newspapers, the Post operates its own bureaus around the world, rather than relying on AP wire services. Owner Philip Graham was a military intelligence officer in World War II, and later became close friends with CIA figures like Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Desmond FitzGerald and Richard Helms. He inherited the Post by marrying Katherine Graham, whose father owned it.
After Philip’s suicide in 1963, Katharine Graham took over the Post. Seduced by her husband’s world of government and espionage, she expanded her newspaper’s relationship with the CIA. In a 1988 speech before CIA officials at Langley, Virginia, she stated:
We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things that the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.
This quote has since become a classic among CIA critics for its belittlement of democracy and its admission that there is a political agenda behind the Post’s headlines.
Ben Bradlee was the Post’s managing editor during most of the Cold War. He worked in the U.S. Paris embassy from 1951 to 1953, where he followed orders by the CIA station chief to place propaganda in the European press. (9) Most Americans incorrectly believe that Bradlee personifies the liberal slant of the Post, given his role in publishing the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate investigations. But neither of these two incidents are what they seem. The Post merely published the Pentagon Papers after The New York Times already had, because it wanted to appear competitive. As for Watergate, we’ll examine the CIA’s reasons for wanting to bring down Nixon in a moment. Someone once asked Bradlee: "Does it irk you when The Washington Post is made out to be a bastion of slanted liberal thinkers instead of champion journalists just because of Watergate?" Bradlee responded: "Damn right it does!" (10)
It would be impossible to elaborate in this short space even the most important examples of the CIA/media alliance. Sig Mickelson was a CIA asset the entire time he was president of CBS News from 1954 to 1961. Later he went on to become president of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, two major outlets of CIA propaganda.
The CIA also secretly bought or created its own media companies. It owned 40 percent of the Rome Daily American at a time when communists were threatening to win the Italian elections. Worse, the CIA has bought many domestic media companies. A prime example is Capital Cities, created in 1954 by CIA businessman William Casey (who would later become Reagan’s CIA director). Another founder was Lowell Thomas, a close friend and business contact with CIA Director Allen Dulles. Another founder was CIA businessman Thomas Dewey. By 1985, Capital Cities had grown so powerful that it was able to buy an entire TV network: ABC.
For those who believe in "separation of press and state," the very idea that the CIA has secret propaganda outlets throughout the media is appalling. The reason why America was so oblivious to CIA crimes in the 40s and 50s was because the media willingly complied with the agency. Even today, when the immorality of the CIA should be an open-and-shut case, "debate" about the issue rages in the media. Here is but one example:
In 1996, The San Jose Mercury News published an investigative report suggesting that the CIA had sold crack in Los Angeles to fund the Contra war in Central America. A month later, three of the CIA’s most important media allies — The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times — immediately leveled their guns at the Mercury report and blasted away in an attempt to discredit it. Who wrote the Post article? Walter Pincus, longtime CIA journalist. The dangers here are obvious.
Academia
By the early 50s, CIA Director Allen Dulles had staffed the CIA almost exclusively with Ivy League graduates, especially from Yale. (A disproportionate number of CIA figures, like George Bush, come from Yale’s "Skull and Crossbones" Society.) CIA recruiters also approached thousands of other professors to work in place at their universities on a part-time, contract basis. Not stopping at recruiting scholars, the agency would go on to create several departments at elite universities, including Harvard's Russian Research Center and the Center for International Studies at MIT.
Although most academics were supportive of the CIA in the 50s, most were unaware of its abuses. In the 60s, academia would become outraged to learn that anti-communist organizations like the National Student Association were actually creations of the CIA. The most audacious CIA front was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization that attracted liberal, freethinking artists and intellectuals who nonetheless deplored communism.
By the late 60s and 70s, growing reports of CIA crimes and atrocities had deeply alienated academia. Scholars were further troubled to learn that the CIA had penetrated and disrupted student antiwar groups. Unlike business and the media, academia overwhelmingly denounced the CIA after the Vietnam era. This eventually forced the CIA to turn to new places to find their analysts and scholars. The most important source was the conservative think-tank movement, which it helped to create. More on this later.
The Roman Catholic Church
Although the CIA began as a mostly Protestant organization, Roman Catholics quickly came to dominate the new covert-action wing in 1948. All were staunchly conservative, fiercely anti-communist and socially elite. Just a few of the many Catholic operatives included future CIA directors William Colby, William Casey, and John McCone. Another well-known personality from this period was William F. Buckley, Jr., editor of the National Review and gadfly host of TV’s Firing Line. Buckley, it turns out, served as a CIA agent in Mexico City, and his experiences there served as fodder for his Blackford Oakes spy novels.
There were several reasons for this influx of Catholic elites. First, Wisner (himself a Wall Street lawyer) had an extensive and glamorous circle of friends to recruit from. Second, Italy was in constant crisis in the 1940s, both during World War II and after. Throughout this troubled period, the American intelligence community’s greatest ally in Italy was the Roman Catholic Church.
The Roman Catholic Church, of course, is one of the most anti-communist organizations in the world. The Marxist doctrine of atheism threatens Catholic theology, and its equality threatens the Church’s strict tradition of hierarchy and authoritarianism. When Hitler invaded Communist Russia, the Vatican openly approved. Jesuit Michael Serafian wrote: "It cannot be denied that [Pope] Pius XII's closest advisors for some time regarded Hitler's armoured divisions as the right hand of God." (11)
But Hitler persecuted Catholics as well, and ultimately drove the Church to the Americans. In 1943, the Vatican reached a secret agreement with OSS Chief Donovan — himself a devout Catholic — to let the Holy See become the center of Allied spy operations in Italy. Donovan considered the Church to be one of his prize intelligence assets, given its global power, membership and contacts. He cultivated this alliance by sending America’s most prestigious Catholics to the Vatican to establish rapport and forge an alliance.
After the war, half of Europe lay under Communist control, and the Italian communist party threatened to win the 1948 elections. The prospect of communism ruling over the heart of Catholicism terrified the Vatican. Once again, American intelligence gathered their most prestigious Catholics to strengthen ties with the Vatican. Because this was the first mission of the new covert action division, the American Catholic agents acquired positions of power early on, and would dominate covert operations for the rest of the Cold War.
At a public level, the U.S. government sunk $350 million in social and military aid into Italy to sway the vote. On a secret level, Wisner spent $10 million in black budget funds to steal the elections. This included disseminating propaganda, beating up left-wing politicians, intimidating voters and disrupting leftist parties. The dirty tricks worked — the Communists lost, and the Catholic Americans’ success permanently secured their power within the CIA.
The Knights of Malta (12)
The Roman Catholic Church did not forget the American agents who had saved them from both Nazism and Communism. It rewarded them by making them Knights of Malta, or members of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM).
SMOM is one of the oldest and most elite religious orders in the Catholic Church. Until recently, it limited its membership to Italians and foreign heads of state. In 1927, however, an exception was made for the United States, given its emerging status as a world power. SMOM opened an American branch, awarding knighthood or damehood to several American Catholic business tycoons. This group was so conservative that one, John Raskob, the Chairman of General Motors, actually became involved in an aborted military plot to remove Franklin Roosevelt from the White House. SMOM has also been embarrassed by knighting or giving awards to countless people who later turned out to be Nazi war criminals. This is the sort of culture that thrives within the leadership of SMOM.
Officially, the Knights of Malta are a global charity organization. But beginning in the 1940s, knighthood was granted to countless CIA agents, and the organization has become a front for intelligence operations. SMOM is ideal for this kind of activity, because it is recognized as the world’s only landless sovereignty, and members enjoy diplomatic immunity. This allows agents and supplies to pass through customs without interference from the host country. Such privileges enabled the Knights of Malta to become a major supplier of "humanitarian aid" to the Contras during their war in the 1980s.
A partial list of the Knights and Dames of Malta reads like a Who’s Who of American Catholicism:
Jeremy Denton – Senator (R–Al).
When this group gets together, obviously, the topics are spying, business and politics.
The CIA has also used other religious and charity organizations as fronts. For example, John F. Kennedy -- another anticommunist Roman Catholic who greatly expanded covert operations -- created the U.S. Peace Corps to serve as cover for CIA operatives. The CIA has also made extensive use of missionaries, with the blessings of many right-wing, anticommunist Christian denominations.
But the World Grows Wise…
It was only a matter of time before other nations caught on to these fronts. They learned that when the CIA comes to their countries to commit their crimes and atrocities, they come disguised as American journalists, businessmen, missionaries and charity volunteers. Unfortunately, foreigners are now targeting these professions as hostile. In Lebanon, terrorists held U.S. journalist Terry Anderson hostage for nearly seven years, on the not unreasonable assumption that he was a spy. Whether or not this was true is beside the point. The CIA has put all Americans abroad at risk, whether they are CIA agents or not. In hearings before the Senate in 1996, many organizations urged Congress to stop using their professions as CIA cover. Don Argue of the National Association of Evangelicals testified: "Such use of missionary agents for covert activities by the CIA would be unethical and immoral." (13)
From the Cold War to the Class War
As noted above, academia was the first major institution to denounce the crimes of the CIA. Why? One reason is that scholars conduct their own extensive research into world affairs, so naturally they were the first to learn the truth. This is the main reason why protest against the Vietnam War and the CIA erupted first among students on the nation’s campuses. By the end of the Vietnam War, the CIA had suffered a "brain drain" as its academic allies became its most articulate, passionate and eloquent critics.
The social revolutions of the 60s terrified the CIA. James Jesus Angleton, chief of counter-intelligence and a truly paranoid man, was convinced the Soviets had masterminded the entire antiwar movement. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover shared his conviction. The CIA had always spied on student groups throughout the 60s, but in 1968 President Johnson dramatically stepped up the effort with Operation CHAOS. This initially called for 50 CIA agents to go undercover as student radicals, penetrate their antiwar organizations and root out the Russian spies who were causing the rebellion. Tellingly, they never found a single spy. The agents also began a campaign of wire-tapping, mail-opening, burglary, deception, intimidation and disruption against thousands of protesting American civilians.
By the time Operation CHAOS wound down in 1973, the CIA had spied on 7,000 Americans, 1,000 organizations and traded information on more than 300,000 persons with various law agencies. (14) When academia learned of this, its outrage grew.
The loss of academia was only the first blow for the CIA. Other disasters quickly followed; in the early 70s, the CIA was trying desperately to stave off a growing number of scandals. The first was Watergate.
The CIA’s fingerprints were all over Watergate. First, we should note the CIA had clear motives for helping oust Nixon. He was the ultimate "outsider," a poor California Quaker who grew up feeling bitter resentment towards the elite "Eastern establishment." Nixon, for all his arch-conservatism, was surprisingly liberal on economic issues, enfuriating businessmen with statements like "We are all Keynesians now." He created a whole host of new agencies to regulate business, like the FDA, EPA and OSHA. He signed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, which forced businesses to clean up their toxic emissions. He imposed price controls to fight inflation, and took the nation fully off the gold standard. Nixon also strengthened affirmative action. Even his staffers were famously anti-elitist, like Kevin Philips, who would eventually write the bible on inequality during the 1980s, The Politics of Rich and Poor. Add to this Nixon’s withdrawal from Vietnam and Détente with China and the Soviet Union. Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had not only tried to remove control of foreign policy from the CIA, but had also taken measures to bring the CIA itself under control. Not surprisingly, Nixon and his CIA Director, Richard Helms, couldn’t stand each other. (Nixon fired him for failing to cover up for Watergate.) Clearly, Nixon was fighting at cross-purposes with the CIA and the nation’s elite.
As it turns out, the CIA had inside knowledge of Nixon’s dirty work. Nixon had created his own covert action team, "The Committee to Reelect the President," more amusingly known by its acronym, CREEP. The team consisted of two CIA agents — E. Howard Hunt and James McCord — as well as former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy. They also employed four Cubans with long CIA histories. In fact, a CIA front called the Mullen Company funded their activities, which ranged from disrupting Democratic campaigns to laundering Nixon’s illegal campaign contributions.
The CIA not only had intimate knowledge of Nixon’s crimes, but it also acted as though it wanted the world to know them. When the FBI began investigating Watergate, Nixon tried using the CIA to cover up for him. At first the CIA half-heartedly complied, telling the FBI that the investigation would endanger CIA operations in Mexico. But a few weeks later it gave the FBI a green light again to proceed again with their investigation.
Furthermore, Watergate was exposed by the CIA’s main newspaper in America, The Washington Post. One of the two journalists who investigated the scandal, Robert Woodward, had only recently become a journalist. Previously Woodward had worked as a Naval intelligence liaison to the White House, privy to some of the nation’s highest secrets. He would later write a sympathetic portrait of CIA Director Bill Casey in a book entitled Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA. It was Woodward who personally knew and interviewed "Deep Throat," the unnamed source who revealed inside information on Nixon’s activities. Many Watergate researchers consider one of Woodward’s old intelligence contacts to be a prime candidate for Deep Throat. (15)
Despite all the facts of CIA involvement, Woodward and Bernstein made virtually no mention of the CIA in their Watergate reporting. Even during Senate hearings on Watergate, the CIA somehow managed to stay out of the spotlight. In 1974, the House would clear the CIA of any involvement in Watergate.
The CIA was not as lucky in 1974, when the Senate held hearings on James Jesus Angleton’s illegal surveillance of American citizens. These disclosures resulted in his firing. But that was nothing compared to the 1975 Church Committee. This Senate investigation looked into virtually every type of CIA crime, from assassination to secret war to manipulating the domestic media. The "reforms" that resulted from these hearings were mostly cosmetic, but the details that emerged shattered the CIA’s reputation forever. Interestingly enough, the two Senators who held these hearings — Frank Church and Otis Pike — were both defeated for reelection, despite a 98 percent reelection rate for incumbents.
The CIA wasn’t the only conservative institution that found itself embattled in the early 70s. This was a bad time for conservatives everywhere. America had lost the war in Vietnam. U.S. corporations had to cope with the rise of OPEC. The anti-poverty programs of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society were causing a major redistribution of wealth. And Nixon was making things worse with his own anti-poverty and regulatory programs. Between 1960 and 1973, these efforts cut poverty in half, from 22 to 11 percent. Meanwhile, between 1965 and 1976, the richest 1 percent had gone from owning 37 percent of America’s wealth to only 22 percent. (16)
At a 1973 Conference Board meeting of top American business leaders, executives declared: "We are fighting for our lives," "We are fighting a delaying action," and "If we don’t take action now, we will see our own demise. We will evolve into another social democracy." (17)
The CIA to the rescue
In the mid-1970s, at this historic low point in American conservatism, the CIA began a major campaign to turn corporate fortunes around.
They did this in several ways. First, they helped create numerous foundations to finance their domestic operations. Even before 1973, the CIA had co-opted the most famous ones, like the Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations. But after 1973, they created more. One of their most notorious recruits was billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. During World War II, Scaife's father served in the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. By his mid-twenties, both of Scaife's parents had died, and he inherited a fortune under four foundations: the Carthage Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundations and the Allegheny Foundation. In the early 1970s, Scaife was encouraged by CIA agent Frank Barnett to begin investing his fortune to fight the "Soviet menace." (18) From 1973 to 1975, Scaife ran Forum World Features, a foreign news service used as a front to disseminate CIA propaganda around the world. Shortly afterwards he began donating millions to fund the New Right.
Scaife's CIA roots are typical of those who head the new conservative foundations. By 1994 the most active were:
Between 1992 and 1994, these foundations gave $210 million to conservative causes. Here is the breakdown of their donations:
The political machine they built is broad and comprehensive, covering every aspect of the political fight. It includes right-wing departments and chairs in the nation’s top universities, think tanks, public relations firms, media companies, fake grassroots organizations that pressure Congress (irreverently known as "Astroturf" movements), "Roll-out-the-vote" machines, pollsters, fax networks, lobbyist organizations, economic seminars for the nation’s judges, and more. And because corporations are the richest sector of society, their greater financing overwhelms similar efforts by Democrats.
Besides creating foundations, the CIA helped organize the business community. There have always been special interest groups representing business, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, and the CIA has long been involved with them. However, after 1973, a spate of powerful new groups would come into existence, like the Business Roundtable and the Trilateral Commission. These organizations quickly became powerhouses in promoting the business agenda.
Their efforts clearly succeeded. With the 1975 SUN-PAC decision, corporations persuaded government to legalize corporate Political Action Committees (the lobbyist organizations that bribe our government). By 1992, corporations formed 67 percent of all PACs, and they donated 79 percent of all campaign contributions to political parties. (20) In two landmark elections — 1980 and 1994 — corporations gave heavily and one-sidedly to Republicans, turning one or both houses of Congress over to the GOP. Democratic incumbents were shocked by the threat of being rolled completely out of power, so they quietly shifted to the right on economic issues, even though they continued a public façade of liberalism. Corporations went ahead and donated to Democratic incumbents in all other elections, but only as long as they abandoned the interests of workers, consumers, minorities and the poor. As expected, the new pro-corporate Congress passed laws favoring the rich: between 1975 and 1992, the amount of national household wealth owned by the richest 1 percent soared from 22 to 42 percent. (21)
The CIA also helped create the conservative think tank movement. Prior to the 70s, think tanks spanned the political spectrum, with moderate think tanks receiving three times as much funding as conservative ones. At these early think tanks, scholars typically brainstormed for creative solutions to policy problems. This would all change after the rise of conservative foundations in the early 70s. The Heritage Foundation opened its doors in 1973, the recipient of $250,000 in seed money from the Coors Foundation. A flood of conservative think tanks followed shortly thereafter, and by 1980 they overwhelmed the scene. The new think tanks turned out to be little more than propaganda mills, rigging studies to "prove" that their corporate sponsors needed tax breaks, deregulation and other favors from government.
Of course, think-tank studies are useless without publicity, and here the CIA proved especially valuable. Using propaganda techniques it had perfected at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the CIA and its allies turned American AM radio into a haven for conservative talk show hosts. Yes — Rush Limbaugh uses the same propaganda techniques that Muscovites once heard from Voice of America. The CIA has also developed countless other media outlets, like Capital Cities (which eventually bought ABC), major PR firms like Hill & Knowlton, and of course, all the Agency’s connections in the national news media. (22)
The following is a typical example of how the "New Media" operates. As most political observers know, the Republicans suffer from a "gender gap," in which women prefer Democrats by huge majorities. This is, in fact, why Clinton has twice won the presidency. But, curiously enough, as the 90s progressed, conservative female pundits began popping up everywhere in the media. Hard-right pundits like Ann Coulter, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, Laura Ingraham, Barbara Olson, Melinda Sidak, Anita Blair and Whitney Adams conditioned us to the idea of the conservative woman. This phenomenon was no accident. It turns out that Richard Mellon Scaife donated $450,000 over three years to the Independent Women's Forum, a booking agency that heavily seeds such female conservative pundits into the media. (23)
Conclusion
The most obvious criticism of the New Overclass is that their political machine is undemocratic. Using subversive techniques once aimed at communists, and with all the money they ever need to succeed, the Overclass undemocratically controls our government, our media, and even a growing part of academia. These institutions in turn allow the Overclass to control the supposedly "free" market. It doesn't win all the time, of course — witness Bill Clinton's impeachment trial — but it does score an endless string of other victories elsewhere, all to the detriment of workers, consumers, women, minorities and the poor. We need to fight it with everything we've got.
Related links:
Myth: There’s no "vast right wing conspiracy" to get Clinton.
Myth: Conservative think tanks are the answer to liberal academia.
A Timeline of CIA Atrocities.
Return to Liberalism Resurgent
Endnotes:
1. Mind Manipulators, Scheflin and Opton. p.241.
2. Captain George White in a letter to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.
3. All history concerning CIA intervention in foreign countries is summarized from William Blum’s encyclopedic work, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995). Sources for domestic CIA operations come from Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen’s The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1997). Information about CIA drug running can be found at http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/cia/blum1.html and http://speech.csun.edu/ben/news/cia/index.html.
4. Coleman McCarthy, "The Consequences of Covert Tactics" Washington Post, December 13, 1987.
5. Robert Dreyfuss, "Company Spies," Mother Jones. Website: http://www.mojones.com/mother_jones/MJ94/dreyfuss.html
6. Philip Agee: The Playboy Interview. Website: http://www.connix.com/~harry/agee.htm
7. Lara Shohet, "Intelligence, Academia and Industry," The Final Report of the Snyder Commission, Edward Cheng and Diane C. Snyder, eds., (Princeton Unversity: The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, January 1997). Website: http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/snyder/academia.htm.
8. Website: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn/cn9-35.
9. Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great and the Washington Post, 2nd ed. (Bethesda MD: National Press, 1987)
10. "Forum for Ben Bradlee," Watergate 25. Website: http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/zforum/97/bradlee.htm.
11. Lewy, Guenter, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (London and New York, 1964), pp. 249-250.
12. National Catholic Reporter, Jan 89, Mar 89, Apr 89, May 89, "Nazis, the Vatican and the CIA," Covert Action Information Bulletin, Winter 1986, Number 25 Website: http://www.mosquitonet.com/~prewett/knightsofmaltalist.html.
13. Anthony Collings, "Journalists tell Senate they want no CIA ties," CNN, July 18, 1996. Website: http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/18/spies.journalists/.
14. Morton Halperin, et al, eds., The Lawless State (New York: Penguin, 1976), p. 153.
15. Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA.
16. Edward N. Wolff, "How the Pie is Sliced" The American Prospect no. 22 (Summer 1995), pp. 58-64. Website: http://epn.org/prospect/22/22wolf.html.
17. Quoted in Leonard Silk and David Vogel, Ethics and Profits (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), pp. 44-47.
18. Karen Rothmyer, "The man behind the mask," Salon, April 7, 1998.
19. Study conducted by National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, July 1997, as reported by the National Education Association. Website: http://www.nea.org/publiced/paycheck/paychkf.html.
20. Center for Responsive Politics, Washington D.C., 1993.
21. Wolff.
22. For CIA involvement in Capital Cities/ABC, see Dennis Mazzocco, Networks of Power (Boston: South End Press, 1994). For CIA involvement in the PR industry, see John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge is Good for You! (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995), pp. 49-51,153,157,160-63.
23. Jonathon Broder and Murray Waas, [Untitled] Salon, April 20, 1998. Website: http://www.salonmag.com/news/1998/04/20news.html
I'd like to see some primary sources for this article other than footnote #2.
Thank you for posting this.
What a tangled mess of a web.
It appears that the author, Steve Kangas,
may have been killed for writing it.
"Who killed Steve Kangas?"
http://www.psnw.com/~bashford/ka-matre.html
Yeah, I know, "suicided" in the bathroom of a billionaire's office building after buying an alarm and a handgun and traveling across the country. Just like Gary Webb, US Special Forces colonels Cutolo, Rowe, Baker, USMC Col. Sabow, Danny Casolaro etc.
I laugh at whoever junked my post; stooges!
Can somebody please get me an Executive Summary of this? The Turd, being a practicing Catholic, cannot decipher whether he should be proud or disgusted. The Turd, being a proud conservative/libertarian, cannot decipher whether he should be proud or disgusted. The Turd, being a proud American, cannot decipher whether he should be proud or disgusted.
Turd Ferguson
"The Turd, being a proud conservative/libertarian,"
Wouldn't a Libertarian by definition be Liberal?
Your claim looks to be a Jumbo Shrimp moment.
Wouldn't a Libertarian by definition be Liberal?
Depends on the context and the era.