Tuesday 28 June 2005

Former MI5 Agent Says 9/11 An Inside Job

Attack Was 'Coup de'tat,' Buildings Were Demolished By Controlled Demolitions

Former MI5 agent David Shayler, who previously blew the whistle on the British government paying Al Qaeda $200,000 to carry out political assassinations, has gone on the record with his conviction that 9/11 was an inside job meant to bring about a permanent state of emergency in America and pave the way for the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and ultimately Iran and Syria.

David Shayler joined MI5 in October 1991 and worked there for five years. He started at F Branch (counter-subversion) in January 1992, and worked in T Branch (Irish terrorism) from August 1992 until October 1994. He left the organization in 1996.

Shayler appeared on The Alex Jones Show to kick off what will be a wider public campaign to educate the public on 9/11 issues and government corruption.

Shayler again risked jail by speaking out. The British government has a legal gag preventing him from speaking about his work during his MI5 tenure. Since what Shayler discussed was already on the public record (a consequence of which was his imprisonment on two separate occasions), he now feels safer in stepping back out into the limelight.

Shayler delved into his past investigations and the evidence that led some within MI5 to conclude that the Israelis bombed their own London embassy in July 1994. Shayler said that the Israelis framed two Palestinians who remain in jail to this day.

"The same thing has happened with two Palestinians who were convicted of conspiracy to cause the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Britain in 1994 but MI5 didn't disclose two documents which indicated their innocence. One document indicated another group had carried out the attack and the other document was the belief of an MI5 officer that the Israelis had actually bombed their own embassy and allowed a controlled explosion to try and get better security and these documents were never shown to the trial judge let alone the defense."

Shayler said that his suspicions were first aroused about 9/11 when the usual route of crime scene investigation was impeded when the debris was immediately seized and shipped off to China.

"It is in fact a criminal offence to interfere with a crime scene and yet in the case of 9/11 all the metal from the buildings is shipped out to China, there are no forensications done on that metal. Now that to me suggests they never wanted anybody to look at that metal because it was not going to provide the evidence they wanted to show people that it was Al-Qaeda."

Shayler then went on to dismiss the incompetence theory.

"The more I look at it, you realize that it's not incompetence. There were FBI officers all over the country, Colleen Rowley is obviously the one who managed to get a congressional hearing, but there was plenty of evidence certainly."

"There are so many questions that need to be answered, protocols being overridden within national defense, people actively being stopped from carrying out investigations. This wasn't an accident, they were aware there was intelligence indicating those kind of attacks, there were FBI intercepts saying it in the days before the attacks. When you look at it all, that is a big big intelligence picture and yet these people were crucially stopped from doing their jobs, stopped from trying to protect the American people."

Shayler elaborated by saying the evidence suggests the attack was originally meant to be much wider in scope and was an attempt at a violent coup intended to decapitate the entire government as a pretext for martial law.

"So you're looking at a situation in which you almost have a coup de'tat because you've got to bear in mind that there were weapons discovered on planes that didn't take off on 9/11. Now people have obviously postulated that they were going perhaps to attack the White House, Capitol Hill. That looks to me like an attempt to destroy American government and declare a state of emergency, in fact a coup de'tat, a violent coup de'tat."

"There are so very many questions about this and you realize again that none of the enquiries ever get to the bottom of any of these things, they don't take all the evidence, they don't often take any evidence under oath when they should be taking it under oath."

Shayler was forthright in his assertion that the attack was planned and executed within the jurisdiction of the military-industrial complex.

"They let it happen, they made it happen to create a trigger to be able to allow the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq and of course what they're trying to do now is the same thing with the invasion of Iran and Syria."

Shayler ended by questioning the highly suspicious nature of the collapse of the twin towers and Building 7, the first buildings in history, all in the same day, to collapse from so-called fire damage alone.

"I've seen the results of terroristic explosions and so on and no terrorist explosion has ever brought down a building. When the IRA put something like a thousands tonnes of home-made explosives in front of the Baltic Exchange building in Bishopsgate and let off the bomb, all the glass came out, the building shook a bit but there was no question about the building falling down and it doesn't obey the laws of physics for buildings to fall down in the way the World Trade Center came down. So you have the comparison of the two, Building 7 compared with the north and south towers coming down and those two things are exactly the same, they were demolished."

David Shayler joins a spate of recent credible whistleblowers who share the same sentiments about the real story behind 9/11. Former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds publicly questioned the unexplained collapse of WTC Building 7 earlier this month. In addition, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, shared his concerns last week when he said the Bush Administration were making the same mistakes as the Nazis when they invaded Russia in the dead of Winter. Roberts seriously doubts the official explanation behind 9/11.

Full story...

Monday 27 June 2005

WTC Basement Blast And Injured Burn Victim Blows 'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High

WTC janitor pulls burn victim to safety after basement explosion rocks north tower seconds before jetliner hit top floors. Also, two other men trapped and drowning in a basement elevator shaft, were also pulled to safety from underground explosion..

What happened to William Rodriguez the morning of 9/11 is a miracle. What happened to his story after-the-fact is a tragedy.

But with miracles and tragedies comes truth. And truth is exactly what Rodriguez brings to the whole mystery surrounding 9/11.

Declared a hero for saving numerous lives at Ground Zero, he was the janitor on duty the morning of 9/11 who heard and felt explosions rock the basement sub-levels of the north tower just seconds before the jetliner struck the top floors.

He not only claims he felt explosions coming from below the first sub-level while working in the basement, he says the walls were cracking around him and he pulled a man to safety by the name of Felipe David, who was severely burned from the basement explosions.

All these events occurred only seconds before and during the jetliner strike above. And through it all, he now asks a simple question everybody should be asking? How could a jetliner hit 90 floors above and burn a man’s arms and face to a crisp in the basement below within seconds of impact?

Rodriguez claims this was impossible and clearly demonstrates a controlled demolition brought down the WTC, saying "Let’s see them (the government) try to wiggle out of this one."

Well, they haven’t wiggled out of it because the government continues to act like Rodriguez doesn’t exist, basically ignoring his statements and the fact he rescued a man burnt and bleeding from the basement explosions.

His eye witness account, ignored by the media and the government, points the finger squarely on an official cover-up at the highest levels since the government contends the WTC fell only from burning jet fuel. And after listening to Rodriguez, it’s easy to see why the Bush administration wants him kept quiet.

Bush wants him quiet because Rodriguez’s account is ‘proof positive’ the WTC was brought down by a controlled demolition, not burning jet fuel. And Bush knows if he’s caught lying about this or caught in a cover-up, it’s just a matter of time before the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

In fact, Rodriguez’s story is so damaging – so damning – it literally blows the lid off the government story, literally exposing the whole 9/11 investigation as a sham and a cover-up of the worst kind.

And it appears the cover-up also extends to the media.

NBC news knew about his story several years ago, even spending a full day at his house taping his comments. But when push came to shove, his story was never aired. Why?

His eyewitness account, backed up by at least 14 people at the scene with him, isn’t speculation or conjecture. It isn’t a story that takes a network out on a journalistic limb. It’s a story that can be backed up, a story that can be verified with hospital records and testimony from many others.

It’s a story about 14 people who felt and heard the same explosion and even saw Rodriguez, moments after the airplane hit, take David to safety, after he was burnt so bad from the basement explosion flesh was hanging from his face and both arms

So why didn’t NBC or any other major news outlets cover the story? They didn’t run it because it shot the government story to hell and back. They didn’t run it because "the powers that be" wouldn’t allow it.

Since 9/11, Rodriguez has stuck to his guns, never wavering from what he said from day one. Left homeless at times, warned to keep quiet and subtly harassed, he nevertheless has continued trying to tell get his message out in the face of a country not willing to listen.

Full story...

Sunday 26 June 2005

Mossad local assistants or sayanim operating in western countries

'By Way of Deception' by Victor Ostrovsky (pp. 86-9)

Alan's lecture was followed by one on technical cooperation between agencies, in which we learned that the Mossad had the best capability of all for cracking locks. Various lock manufacturers in Great Britain, for example, would send new mechanisms to British intelligence for security testing; they in turn sent them on to the Mossad for analysis. The procedure was for our people to analyze it, figure out how to open it, then send it back with a report that it's "impregnable."

After lunch that day, Dov L. took the class out to the parking lot where seven white Ford Escorts were parked. In Israel, most Mossad, Shaback, and police cars are white, although the head of Mossad then drove a burgundy Lincoln Town Car.) The idea was to learn how to detect if you were being followed by a car. It's something you practice again and again. There's no such thing as you see in the movies or read in books about little hairs on the back of your neck standing up and telling you somebody is behind you. It's something you learn only by practice, and more practice.

Each night when we went home, and each day when we left home for school, it was still our responsibility to make, sure we weren't being followed.

The next day Ran S. delivered a lecture on the sayanim, a unique and important part of the Mossad's operation. Sayanim ? assistants ? must be 100 percent Jewish. They live abroad, and though they are not Israeli citizens, many are reached through their relatives in Israel. An Israeli with a relative in England, for example, might be asked to write a letter saying the person bearing the letter represents an organization whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the diaspora. Could the British relative help in any way?

There are thousands of sayanim around the world. In London alone, there are about 2,000 who are active, and another 5,000 on the list. They fulfill many different roles. A car sayan, for example, running a rental agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual documentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could get you money if you needed it in the middle of the night, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police, and so on. The idea is to have a pool of people available when needed who can provide services but will keep quiet about them out of loyalty to the cause. They are paid only costs. Often the loyalty of sayanim is abused by katsas who take advantage of the available help for their own personal use. There is no way for the sayan to check this.

One thing you know for sure is that even if a Jewish person knows it is the Mossad, he might not agree to work with you, but he won't turn you in. You have at your disposal a nonrisk recruitment system that actually gives you a pool of millions of Jewish people to tap from outside your own borders. It's much easier to operate with what is available on the spot, and sayanim offer incredible practical support everywhere. But they are never put at risk nor are they privy to classified information.

Suppose during an operation a katsa suddenly had to come up with an electronics store as a cover. A call to a sayan in that business could bring 50 television sets, 200 VCRs, whatever was needed, from his warehouse to your building, and in next to no time, you'd have a store with $3 or $4 million worth of stock in it.

Since most Mossad activity is in Europe, it may be preferable to have a business address in North America. So, there are address sayanim and telephone sayanim. If a katsa has to give out an address or a phone number, he can use the sayan's. And if the sayan gets a letter or a phone call, he will know immediately how to proceed. Some business sayanim have a bank of 20 operators answering phones, typing letters, faxing messages, all a front for the Mossad. The joke is that 60 percent of the business of those telephone answering companies in Europe comes from the Mossad. They'd fold otherwise.

The one problem with the system is that the Mossad does seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the Diaspora if it was known. The you get if you ask is: "So what's the worst that could happen to those Jews?' they'd all come to Israel - Great."

Katsas in the stations are in charge of the sayanim, and most active sayanim will be visited by a katsa once every three months or so, which for the katsa usually means between two and four face-to-face meetings a day with sayanim, along with numerous telephone conversations. The system allows the Mossad to work with a skeleton staff. That's why, for example, a KGB station would employ about 100 people, while a comparable Mossad station would need only six or seven.

People make the mistake of thinking the Mossad is at a disadvantage by not having stations in obvious target countries. The United States, for example, has a station in Moscow and the Russians have stations in Washington and New York. But Israel doesn't have a station in Damascus. They don't understand that the Mossad regards the whole world outside Israel as a target, including Europe and the United States. Most of the Arab countries don't manufacture their own weapons. Most don't have high-level military colleges, for example. If you want to recruit a Syrian diplomat, you don't have to do that in Damascus. You can do it in Paris. If you want data on an Arab missile, you get that in Paris or London or the United States where it is made. You can get less information on Saudi Arabia from the Saudis themselves than you can from the Americans. What do the Saudis have? AWACs. Those are Boeing, and Boeing's American. What do you need the Saudis for? The total recruitment in Saudi Arabia during my time with the Institute was one attache in the Japanese embassy. That was it.

And if you want to get to the senior officers, they study in England or the United States. Their pilots train in England, France, and the United States. Their commandos train in Italy and France. You can recruit them there. It's easier and it's less dangerous.

Ran S. also taught his class about "white agents," individuals being recruited, either by covert or direct means, who may or may not know they're working for Israel. They are always non?Arabs and usually more sophisticated in cal knowledge. The prejudice in Israel is that Arabs don't understand technical things. It shows itself in jokes, like the one about the man selling Arab brains for $150 a pound and Jewish brains for $2 a pound. Asked why the Arab brain was so expensive, he says, "Because it's hardly been used." A widely held perception of Arabs in Israel.

White agents are usually less risky to deal with than "black," or Arab, agents. For one thing, Arabs working abroad are very likely to be subjected to security by Arab intelligence and if they catch you working with one as a black agent, they'll want to kill you. The worst that would happen to a Mossad katsa caught working with a white agent in France is deportation. But the white agent himself could be charged with treason. You do everything you can to protect him, but the main danger is to him. If you're working with an Arab, both of you are in danger.

While our classes at the Academy went on, exercises outside with cars continued apace. We learned a technique called maulter, the unplanned use of a car in detecting, or, improvised following. If you have to drive in an area you're unfamiliar with, and you have no preplanned route, there's a series of procedures, turning left then right, moving, stopping, and so on,. to follow, mainly to eliminate coincidence and make certain whether or not you are being followed. We were also frequently reminded that we were not "bolted" to our cars. If we thought we were being followed, but couldn't verify it completely, it might be wise to park, venture out on foot, and take it from there.

Another lecture, by a katsa named Rabitz, explained the Israel Station, or local station, which handles Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, and Turkey. Its katsas are called "hoppers" or "jumpers," because they work out of Tel Aviv headquarters. They recruit by hopping back and forth for a few days at a time, to operate the agents and the sayanim. All these countries are dangerous to operate in because their governments tend to be pro-PLO.

The Israel station is not a popular assignment for katsas. During his lecture on the subject, Ran S. dumped on it. Ironically, he was later appointed its head.

Extract from 'By Way of Deception', Ostrovsky, Victor and Hoy, Claire, St. Martin's Press, 1990

Full story...

Friday 24 June 2005

U.N. Uncovers Torture at Guantanamo Bay

Isn't civilisation just great!!!

U.N. human rights investigators said Thursday they had reliable accounts of detainees being tortured at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but the United States had not responded to repeated requests to check conditions there.

``The time is up,'' one investigator said.

The four independent specialists told reporters that U.N. experts had made numerous requests since early 2002 to check on the conditions of terror suspects at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba, as well as at U.S. facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

They cited ``information, from reliable sources, of serious allegations of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, arbitrary detention, violations of their right to health and their due process rights.

``Many of these allegations have come to light through declassified (U.S.) government documents,'' said a statement from the four, who report to U.N. bodies on different human rights issues.

A U.S. spokeswoman said the experts' request to visit Guantanamo was being reviewed in Washington.

The four experts are appointed to their three-year terms by the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission, the global body's top rights watchdog. They are unpaid for their work, although their expenses are paid.

The United States has criticized the commission because its members include countries with tyrannical governments and poor human rights records, but the experts operate autonomously, often criticizing their own countries and others in the commission.

The failure of the United States to respond is leading the experts to conclude that Washington has something to hide, said the specialist on torture, Manfred Nowak, a professor of international law in Vienna, Austria.

``At a certain point, you have to take well-founded allegations as proven in the absence of a clear explanation by the government,'' he said, though he also noted: ``We are not making a judgment if torture or treatment under degrading conditions has taken place.''

Full story...

Wednesday 22 June 2005

In the name of security

Listen to this man! He speaks words of infinite wisdom, this country has been hijacked by those who would seek to sell us a corporate slaves whilst enriching themselves in the process. Tony Benn is one of the last credible politicians left in this country for who I have any respect. Most of the rest fall under the definition of "Lying Cocksucker" and should be treated as such.

by Tony Benn

Obey! Since the attack on the twin towers, in which many innocent Americans were killed, we have been told that we are engaged in a war against terrorism that threatens our way of life and our liberties. From that moment on we have been asked to adopt a whole range of measures that pose what many believe could be a greater threat to those very liberties and to our way of life.

Article continues
That fact obliges us to examine them, one by one, as a part of the whole, lest we slip into an acceptance of a situation where we can be seen as acquiescing to restrictions on our political and personal freedoms that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

For example, the forthcoming debate in the House of Commons on identity cards is motivated by a determination on the part of the government to set up a massive database incorporating everything that is known about us all. It integrates our personal particulars with police and security service files that may or may not be accurate, some of which we may never be allowed to know. It is that which makes it all look so like an embryonic police state.

Much of the argument may rotate around the cost incurred or the reliability of biometric testing but, important as they are, the danger lies in the accumulation, storage and use that may be made of this information.

For example, under the arrangements that Britain has with the US that allow us access to their nuclear technology in the Trident programme, America has long insisted that it should have access to all our intelligence material. That means the ID database will be automatically available to it.

Given the number of leaks that occur and the value of the database, the possibility that it could fall into the hands of others for their private commercial purposes cannot be ruled out - with all the opportunities for abuse that would make possible.

I have retained all my wartime ID cards with my name, address and photo but none of these posed any threat of the nature set out above.

In addition, we now have the latest anti-terrorist legislation, which permits house arrest and detention without a jury trial - eroding principles going back to the Magna Carta.

Full story...

Yes, they did lie to us

No shit, Sherlock!

In the US the latest leaked memos are seen as a smoking gun on Iraq, but in Britain we are struggling to keep up

by Jonathan Freedland


Now try to work this one out. Before the war on Iraq, Britain witnessed a ferocious debate over whether the case for conflict was legal and honest. It culminated in the largest demonstration in the country's history, as a million or more took to the streets to stop the war. At the same time, the US sleepwalked into battle. Its press subjected George Bush to a fraction of the scrutiny endured by Tony Blair: the president's claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida were barely challenged. While Blair had to cajole and persuade his MPs to back him, Bush counted on the easy loyalty of his fellow Republicans - and of most leading Democrats.

Yet now the picture has reversed. In Washington Iraq remains close to the centre of politics while in Britain it has all but vanished. So the big news on Capitol Hill is the Democrats' refusal to confirm John Bolton, the man Bush wants to serve as US ambassador to the UN, in part because of suspicions arising from the lead-up to war. Meanwhile, RAF planes were involved last weekend in bombing raids in north-west Iraq - a marked escalation of their role - and British politics barely stirs. America has woken up; we are aslumber.

The best illustration of this strange reversal is the curious fate of the Downing Street memo. Leaked to the Sunday Times just before the election, it contained a slew of striking revelations. It minuted a meeting of Blair, Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon and a clutch of top officials back on July 23 2002 - when both Bush and Blair were adamant that no decision had been taken - and confirms that, on the contrary, Washington had resolved to go to war. Despite Straw's insistence that the case against Saddam was "thin", the course was set. According to the memo, Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, explained that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

As if that were not devastating enough - vindicating one of the anti-war camp's key charges, that the decision for war came first and the evidence was "fixed" to fit - the leaks have kept coming. In the past fortnight, six more documents have surfaced, their authenticity not challenged. One shows that Britain and the US heavily increased bombing raids on Iraq in the summer of 2002 - when London and Washington were still insisting that war was a last resort - even though the Foreign Office's own lawyers had advised that such action was illegal. These "spikes of activity" were aimed at provoking Saddam into action that might justify war. Other documents confirm that Blair had agreed to back regime change in the spring of 2002, that he was warned it was illegal and that ministers were told to "create the conditions" that would make it legal. Other gems include the admission that the threat from Saddam and WMD had not increased and that US attempts to link Baghdad to al-Qaida were "frankly unconvincing".

Taken together, these papers amount to an indictment of the way the British and American peoples were led to war. In Britain they have scarcely made a dent, but in America they have developed an unexpected momentum. Initially circulated on left-leaning websites, they have now broken out of the blogosphere and into the mainstream. The big newspapers have editorialised on the topic; last week Democratic congressmen held unofficial hearings into the memos; whole campaigns have formed solely to publicise their existence. (Now downingstreetmemo.com is there as an alternative to thankyoutony.com, where Americans are invited to signal their gratitude to their staunchest ally.) The memos have earned the two definitive accolades of a hot political issue: their own abbreviation - the DSM - and a customised line of T-shirts. ("Read the memo or die" is available in extra-large.)

The administration has been put on the defensive, lamely insisting that the decision for war was only taken in February 2003. Some Democrats believe the distance between that claim and these memos supplies the vital element of any scandal: proof that the president lied. They argue that if a fib about a dalliance with an intern was enough to see Bill Clinton impeached, lies that led to the deaths of 1,600 US troops and hundreds of thousands of uncounted and unnamed Iraqi civilians deserve at least the same treatment.

Full story...

Tuesday 21 June 2005

U.S. Desperately Seeking to Dismiss AIDS Origin Lawsuit

This one is just frightening, but would it suprise you if it were true? Come now little lamb, you didn't really think those heinous lying scumnbags were playing the Game for your benefit like they say they are... Did you?

San Diego, CA. - Federal Judge Sabraw has ordered an open court oral argument for Friday, June 24, 2005 at 1:30p.m.to hear arguments by the United States to support a motion to dismiss the AIDS ORIGIN lawsuit of Dr. Boyd Ed Graves. Dr. Graves AIDS ORIGIN research and his nearly eight years of continuous legal action against the United States for the creation, production and proliferation of HIV/AIDS has been receiving critical acclaim from scientists and medical doctors from all over the world.

I am hopeful, said Graves, that the Federal Court will deny the United States motion to dismiss and allow this issue to reach a jury verdict some time next year. I am certain reasonable people will conclude the U.S AIDS ORIGIN documents require and demand further accountability from the defendant, the United States of America.

According to the 1971 progress report of the U.S. Special Virus program, HIV/AIDS is a recombinant (virus) agent that has been formed by converging a leukemia and a lymphoma, a BIOLOGOCAL WEAPON.

In 1984, (alleged) co-discoverers of HIV/AIDS, Drs. Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnue, concluded the original name of HIV/AIDS is LEUKEMIA/LYMPHOMA virus. See, Montagnue, L. & Gallo, R.C., et. al., Human T-Cell Leukemia Lymphoma Virus Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, (Cold Spring Harbor, NY, 1984). Additionally, the United States admits that the Nazi sheep virus visna, had not yet appeared in human disease. Because no one could explain how this Nazi sheep virus supposedly hopped species, the U.S. General Accounting Office began an investigation into the U.S. origin of HIV/AIDS in July, 2001 at the bequest of a Congressman.

The United States has sought to hide, dispel, distract and mislead any serious inquiry into the U.S. Special Virus program at every level and by every means necessary until this litigation.

AIDS co-developer himself, defendant, Robert C. Gallo concluded in a report that HIV/AIDS evolved from Nazi sheep visna virus disease. ( See Gallo, R.C., et. al., Science, Vol. 223, pp. 173 ­ 177, January, 1985. See also, Proceedings of the United States of America, National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 83, pp. 4007 ­ 4011, June, 1986, Sonigo, Cell, 1985 Aug 42(1):369 ­ 362, Nucleotide Sequence of the Visna Lentivirus: Relationship to the HIV/AIDS Virus. )

Proceedings of the United States of America, National Academy of Sciences, ( Vol. 92, pp. 3283 ­ 3287, April 11, 1995.) outlined the relationship of the Nazi sheep visna virus to the HIV virus.

Now what is interesting is the following:

In 1902, the United States funded the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory in New York, and two years later they opened the U.S. Station for Experimental Evolution. (Development of Biological Weapons)

In 1910, chickens became the victims of a man made transmissible agent which bears striking homology to HIV/AIDS, the Rous Sarcoma Virus. The U.S. government has had a biological weapons program since 1910. What is even more interesting is that the Nazi sheep visna virus did not exist before 1932. Yes, you got it, the Nazis' developed the first strains and the U. S. Government Biologiocal Weapons program continued on with this deadly virus. It is a recombinant turned into the HIV (virus) agent, formed by converging a leukemia and a lymphomathat according to Dr. Gallo and other researchers.

What is so disturbing also is that a cure for the HIV virus has been held back. On November 14, 1997, the U.S. awarded Rhode Island Company, Marentech, ( the patent is registered to a Marvin S. Antleman, Antleman Technologies Inc., Antlemann licensed it to Marentech ), patent #5676977 for the cure for AIDS. In November, 2001, Boyd Graves who is the Plaintiff in this lawsuit accessed the cure and has been free of prescription drugs for nearly two years. The Plaintiff in the lawsuit and numerous other individuals have taken the drug and have been free of having to take any other HIV/AID prescriptions for two years.

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The Marijuana Conspiracy

The Real Reason Hemp is Illegal

by Doug Yurchey

THE REAL REASON CANNABIS HAS BEEN OUTLAWED HAS NOTHING
TO DO WITH ITS EFFECTS ON THE MIND AND BODY.


Click the image to enlarge it Pot is NOT harmful to the human body or mind. Marijuana does NOT pose a threat to the general public. Marijuana is very much a danger to the oil companies, alcohol, tobacco industries and a large number of chemical corporations. Various big businesses, with plenty of dollars and influence, have suppressed the truth from the people.

The truth is if marijuana was utilized for its vast array of commercial products, it would create an industrial atomic bomb! Entrepreneurs have not been educated on the product potential of pot. The super rich have conspired to spread misinformation about an extremely versatile plant that, if used properly, would ruin their companies.

Where did the word 'marijuana' come from? In the mid 1930s, the M-word was created to tarnish the good image and phenomenal history of the hemp plant...as you will read. The facts cited here, with references, are generally verifiable in the Encyclopedia Britannica which was printed on hemp paper for 150 years:

* All schoolbooks were made from hemp or flax paper until the 1880s; Hemp Paper Reconsidered, Jack Frazier, 1974.

* It was LEGAL TO PAY TAXES WITH HEMP in America from 1631 until the early 1800s; LA Times, Aug. 12, 1981.

* REFUSING TO GROW HEMP in America during the 17th and 18th Centuries WAS AGAINST THE LAW! You could be jailed in Virginia for refusing to grow hemp from 1763 to 1769; Hemp in Colonial Virginia, G. M. Herdon.

"I grew Hemp", George Washington

* George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers GREW HEMP; Washington and Jefferson Diaries. Jefferson smuggled hemp seeds from China to France then to America.

* Benjamin Franklin owned one of the first paper mills in America and it processed hemp. Also, the War of 1812 was fought over hemp. Napoleon wanted to cut off Moscow's export to England; Emperor Wears No Clothes, Jack Herer.

* For thousands of years, 90% of all ships' sails and rope were made from hemp. The word 'canvas' is Dutch for cannabis; Webster's New World Dictionary.

* 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets, etc. were made from hemp until the 1820s with the introduction of the cotton gin.

* The first Bibles, maps, charts, Betsy Ross's flag, the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were made from hemp; U.S. Government Archives.

* The first crop grown in many states was hemp. 1850 was a peak year for Kentucky producing 40,000 tons. Hemp was the largest cash crop until the 20th Century; State Archives.

* Oldest known records of hemp farming go back 5000 years in China, although hemp industrialization probably goes back to ancient Egypt.

* Rembrants, Gainsboroughs, Van Goghs as well as most early canvas paintings were principally painted on hemp linen.

* In 1916, the U.S. Government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees need to be cut down. Government studies report that 1 acre of hemp equals 4.1 acres of trees. Plans were in the works to implement such programs; Department of Agriculture

* Quality paints and varnishes were made from hemp seed oil until 1937. 58,000 tons of hemp seeds were used in America for paint products in 1935; Sherman Williams Paint Co. testimony before Congress against the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act.

* Henry Ford's first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the CAR ITSELF WAS CONTRUCTED FROM HEMP! On his large estate, Ford was photographed among his hemp fields. The car, 'grown from the soil,' had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel; Popular Mechanics, 1941.

* Hemp called 'Billion Dollar Crop.' It was the first time a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a billion dollars; Popular Mechanics, Feb., 1938.

* Mechanical Engineering Magazine (Feb. 1938) published an article entitled 'The Most Profitable and Desirable Crop that Can be Grown.' It stated that if hemp was cultivated using 20th Century technology, it would be the single largest agricultural crop in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

The following information comes directly from the United States Department of Agriculture's 1942 14-minute film encouraging and instructing 'patriotic American farmers' to grow 350,000 acres of hemp each year for the war effort:

'...(When) Grecian temples were new, hemp was already old in the service of mankind. For thousands of years, even then, this plant had been grown for cordage and cloth in China and elsewhere in the East. For centuries prior to about 1850, all the ships that sailed the western seas were rigged with hempen rope and sails. For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable...

...Now with Philippine and East Indian sources of hemp in the hands of the Japanese...American hemp must meet the needs of our Army and Navy as well as of our industries...

...the Navy's rapidly dwindling reserves. When that is gone, American hemp will go on duty again; hemp for mooring ships; hemp for tow lines; hemp for tackle and gear; hemp for countless naval uses both on ship and shore. Just as in the days when Old Ironsides sailed the seas victorious with her hempen shrouds and hempen sails. Hemp for victory!'

Certified proof from the Library of Congress; found by the research of Jack Herer, refuting claims of other government agencies that the 1942 USDA film 'Hemp for Victory' did not exist.

Hemp cultivation and production do not harm the environment. The USDA Bulletin #404 concluded that Hemphemp produces 4 times as much pulp with at least 4 to 7 times less pollution. From Popular Mechanics, Feb. 1938:

'It has a short growing season...It can be grown in any state...The long roots penetrate and break the soil to leave it in perfect condition for the next year's crop. The dense shock of leaves, 8 to 12 feet above the ground, chokes out weeds.
...hemp, this new crop can add immeasurably to American agriculture and industry.'

In the 1930s, innovations in farm machinery would have caused an industrial revolution when applied to hemp. This single resource could have created millions of new jobs generating thousands of quality products. Hemp, if not made illegal, would have brought America out of the Great Depression.

William Randolph Hearst (Citizen Kane) and the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division of Kimberly Clark owned vast acreage of timberlands. The Hearst Company supplied most paper products. Patty Hearst's grandfather, a destroyer of nature for his own personal profit, stood to lose billions because of hemp.

In 1937, Dupont patented the processes to make plastics from oil and coal. Dupont's Annual Report urged stockholders to invest in its new petrochemical division. Synthetics such as plastics, cellophane, celluloid, methanol, nylon, rayon, Dacron, etc., could now be made from oil. Natural hemp industrialization would have ruined over 80% of Dupont's business.


THE CONSPIRACY

Andrew Mellon became Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury and Dupont's primary investor. He appointed his future nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, to head the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Secret meetings were held by these financial tycoons. Hemp was declared dangerous and a threat to their billion dollar enterprises. For their dynasties to remain intact, hemp had to go. These men took an obscure Mexican slang word: 'marihuana' and pushed it into the consciousness of America.

MEDIA MANIPULATION

A media blitz of 'yellow journalism' raged in the late 1920s and 1930s. Hearst's newspapers ran stories emphasizing the horrors of marihuana. The menace of marihuana made headlines. Readers learned that it was responsible for everything from car accidents to loose morality.

Films like 'Reefer Madness' (1936), 'Marihuana: Assassin of Youth' (1935) and 'Marihuana: The Devil's Weed' (1936) were propaganda designed by these industrialists to create an enemy. Their purpose was to gain public support so that anti-marihuana laws could be passed.

Examine the following quotes from 'The Burning Question' aka REEFER MADNESS:

* a violent narcotic.
* acts of shocking violence.
* incurable insanity.
* soul-destroying effects.
* under the influence of the drug he killed his entire family with an ax.
* more vicious, more deadly even than these soul-destroying drugs (heroin, cocaine) is the menace of marihuana!

Reefer Madness did not end with the usual 'the end.' The film concluded with these words plastered on the screen: TELL YOUR CHILDREN.

In the 1930s, people were very naive; even to the point of ignorance. The masses were like sheep waiting to be led by the few in power. They did not challenge authority. If the news was in print or on the radio, they believed it had to be true. They told their children and their children grew up to be the parents of the baby-boomers.

On April 14, 1937, the Prohibitive Marihuana Tax Law or the bill that outlawed hemp was directly brought to the House Ways and Means Committee. This committee is the only one that can introduce a bill to the House floor without it being debated by other committees. The Chairman of the Ways and Means, Robert Doughton, was a Dupont supporter. He insured that the bill would pass Congress.

Dr. James Woodward, a physician and attorney, testified too late on behalf of the American Medical Association. He told the committee that the reason the AMA had not denounced the Marihuana Tax Law sooner was that the Association had just discovered that marihuana was hemp.

Few people, at the time, realized that the deadly menace they had been reading about on Hearst's front pages was in fact passive hemp. The AMA understood cannabis to be a MEDICINE found in numerous healing products sold over the last hundred years.

In September of 1937, hemp became illegal. The most useful crop known became a drug and our planet has been suffering ever since.

Congress banned hemp because it was said to be the most violence-causing drug known. Anslinger, head of the Drug Commission for 31 years, promoted the idea that marihuana made users act extremely violent. In the 1950s, under the Communist threat of McCarthyism, Anslinger now said the exact opposite. Marijuana will pacify you so much that soldiers would not want to fight.

Today, our planet is in desperate trouble. Earth is suffocating as large tracts of rain forests disappear. Pollution, poisons and chemicals are killing people. These great problems could be reversed if we industrialized hemp. Natural biomass could provide all of the planet's energy needs that are currently supplied by fossil fuels. We have consumed 80% of our oil and gas reserves. We need a renewable resource. Hemp could be the solution to soaring gas prices.

THE WONDER PLANT

Hemp has a higher quality fiber than wood fiber. Far fewer caustic chemicals are required to make paper from hemp than from trees. Hemp paper does not turn yellow and is very durable. The plant grows quickly to maturity in a season where trees take a lifetime.

ALL PLASTIC PRODUCTS SHOULD BE MADE FROM HEMP SEED OIL. Hempen plastics are biodegradable! Over time, they would break down and not harm the environment. Oil-based plastics, the ones we are very familiar with, help ruin nature; they do not break down and will do great harm in the future. The process to produce the vast array of natural (hempen) plastics will not ruin the rivers as Dupont and other petrochemical companies have done. Ecology does not fit in with the plans of the Oil Industry and the political machine. Hemp products are safe and natural.

MEDICINES SHOULD BE MADE FROM HEMP. We should go back to the days when the AMA supported cannabis cures. 'Medical Marijuana' is given out legally to only a handful of people while the rest of us are forced into a system that relies on chemicals. Pot is only healthy for the human body.

WORLD HUNGER COULD END. A large variety of food products can be generated from hemp. The seeds contain one of the highest sources of protein in nature. ALSO: They have two essential fatty acids that clean your body of cholesterol. These essential fatty acids are not found anywhere else in nature! Consuming pot seeds is the best thing you could do for your body. Eat uncooked hemp seeds.

CLOTHES SHOULD BE MADE FROM HEMP. Hemp clothing is extremely strong and durable over time. You could hand clothing, made from pot, down to your grandchildren. Today, there are American companies that make hemp clothing; usually 50% hemp. Hemp fabrics should be everywhere. Instead, they are almost underground. Superior hemp products are not allowed to advertise on fascist television. Kentucky, once the top hemp producing state, made it ILLEGAL TO WEAR hemp clothing! Can you imagine being thrown into jail for wearing quality jeans?

The world is crazy...but that does not mean you have to join the insanity. Get together. Spread the news. Tell people, and that includes your children, the truth. Use hemp products. Eliminate the word 'marijuana.' Realize the history that created it. Make it politically incorrect to say or print the M-word. Fight against the propaganda (designed to favor the agenda of the super rich) and the bullshit. Hemp must be utilized in the future. We need a clean energy source to save our planet. INDUSTRIALIZE HEMP!

The liquor, tobacco and oil companies fund more than a million dollars a day to Partnership for a Drug-Free America and other similar agencies. We have all seen their commercials. Now, their motto is: ‘It's more dangerous than we thought.’ Lies from the powerful corporations, that began with Hearst, are still alive and well today.

The brainwashing continues. Now, the commercials say: If you buy a joint, you contribute to murders and gang wars. The latest anti-pot commercials say: If you buy a joint...you are promoting TERRORISM! The new enemy (terrorism) has paved the road to brainwash you any way THEY see fit.

There is only one enemy; the friendly people you pay your taxes to; the war-makers and nature destroyers. With your funding, they are killing the world right in front of your eyes. HALF A MILLION DEATHS EACH YEAR ARE CAUSED BY TOBACCO. HALF A MILLION DEATHS EACH YEAR ARE CAUSED BY ALCOHOL. NO ONE HAS EVER, EVER DIED FROM SMOKING POT!! In the entire history of the human race, not one death can be attributed to cannabis. Our society has outlawed grass but condones the use of the KILLERS: TOBACCO and ALCOHOL. Hemp should be declassified and placed in DRUG stores to relieve stress. Hardening and constriction of the arteries are bad; but hemp usage actually enlarges the arteries...which is a healthy condition. We have been so conditioned to think that: Smoking is harmful. That is NOT the case for passive pot.

Ingesting THC, hemp's active agent, has a positive effect; relieving asthma and glaucoma. A joint tends to alleviate the nausea caused by chemotherapy. You are able to eat on hemp. This is a healthy state of being.

{One personal note: During the pregnancy of my wife, she was having some difficulty gaining weight. We were in the hospital. A nurse called us to one side and said: ‘Off the record, if you smoke pot...you'd get something called the munchies and you’ll gain weight.' I swear that is a true story}.

The stereotype for a pothead is similar to a drunk, bubble-brain. Yet, the truth is one’s creative abilities can be enhanced under its influence. The perception of time slightly slows and one can become more sensitive. You can more appreciate all arts; be closer to nature and generally FEEL more under the influence of cannabis. It is, in fact, the exact opposite state of mind and body as the drunken state. You can be more aware with pot.

The pot plant is an ALIEN plant. There is physical evidence that cannabis is not like any other plant on this planet. One could conclude that it was brought here for the benefit of humanity. Hemp is the ONLY plant where the males appear one way and the females appear very different, physically! No one ever speaks of males and females in regard to the plant kingdom because plants do not show their sexes; except for cannabis. To determine what sex a certain, normal, Earthly plant is: You have to look internally, at its DNA. A male blade of grass (physically) looks exactly like a female blade of grass. The hemp plant has an intense sexuallity. Growers know to kill the males before they fertilize the females. Yes, folks...the most potent pot comes from 'horny females.'

The reason this amazing, very sophisticated, ET plant from the future is illegal has nothing to do with how it physically affects us…..

POT IS ILLEGAL BECAUSE BILLIONAIRES WANT TO REMAIN BILLIONAIRES!

Why I Am Writing So Much Now

by Trowbridge H. Ford

My writing over the past two or three years has started to raise people's eyebrows, even those of friends. They all assumed that since I had voluntarily retired from my tenured teaching position in a well-endowed, American undergraduate college nearly 20 years ago, I had long given up on writing anything since I was no longer in the so-called "publish and perish" business - what academics in any kind of establishment worth its salt must engage in if they hope to continue advancement. My critics thought that I should simply be enjoying my retirement out on the links, courts and beaches - and I did for many years.

Friends and acquaintances wondered if I was in need of money, and writing to make up for financial shortfalls, especially given the collapse of the dollar, and the apparently impending meltdown of Social Security. Of course, almost everyone can use more cash, I certainly, but my recent writing has been no more financially rewarding than my previous publications while an academic. In fact, my work on the internet has been running a signifcant deficit since its inception.

The only reward for scholarly work in the political field, except for a few high flyers like Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, and Condi Rice who can get big advances for whatever catches the eye of the international political elite, is the fellowships and expenses one receives for researching and writing about some peripheral subject or issue. One is only paid for working outside the classroom. And there is no money in posting articles on the internet.

Critics wondered if I was experiencing some kind of mental difficulty, and doctors had over or under prescribed my medication. 'Martin Ingram' apparently aka Captain Simon Hayward, a former British covert operator, and co-author of Stakeknife - an apparent exposé of Britain's Shoot-to-Kill mission in Northern Ireland during the 1980s - has resorted to such prescriptions when I have pursued him about his role in these operations I have never taken any medication for alleged mental problems, much less even seen doctors about any such problems, though, of course, I may have been suffering from some for some time. Other critics have responded to my articles by claiming that I hate Americans and their government.

My renewed interest in writing was caused, however, by injesting unwanted and unknown material - ricin, it seems - after I was set up by Jim Marrs in his book Crossfire and Jim DiEugenio in a Chairman's Letter to an issue of Probe magazine for having allegedly tried to set up falsely former President Richard Nixon in the conspiracy which assassinated JFK - what former President Bill Clinton tried to rectify while I was living in retirement in Portugal through the activities of the American Ambassador there, Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, its resident CIA agent Michael Thomas, and the Portuguese intelligence service. While these efforts failed to kill me (see my two confession articles about being an American exile in the Trowbridge Archive.), I was slowly roused to make known my complaints in any way I could all over the political spectrum.

Most people also discount, if not disparage, the work and trouble aspiring teachers experience in getting started and progressing in their profession, largely because the low esteem teaching has. The conventional adage claims that if a person can't do anything worthwhile, he or she can always teach. The general public still believes that teachers can begin with the flimsiest credentials, perhaps a degree purchased from an ad in a newspaper or on the internet, and once hired, they can continue to get promotions and salary increases simply by renewing their contracts. The only career threats apparently are dying early or suffering incapacitating injury prematurely.

Of course, these are merely convenient myths, usually held by the general public to justify rejection of tax hikes to improve educational standards, and alumni of private schools to avoid
contributing to their fund-raising. Teachers in primary and secondary education usually have real educational requirements - both in terms of knowledge and skill - to gain a position, and then they are required to undergo periodic review about their performance and to obtain new training in order to progress. It is almost always quite stressful.

In higher education - teaching in colleges and universities - the distorted view of what it entails seems to have more validity - it's a cushy job which can be obtained easily, and one can do and say what one likes pretty much after that - but will not withstand any serious scrutiny. To even be considered for a position in these institutions, the candidate must not only have done well in getting degrees at respectable institutions but have recognized scholars willing to write letters of recommendation about his or her achievement, character, and potential. Then an applicant for a real position will generally have to visit the establishment in order to satisfy a cross-section of its community that he seems competent, and satisfy superiors in the department that he knows what he is talking about, and can handle himself in an academic environment.

Once hired, the junior faculty member must satisfy its administration, senior department members, and students. If he is too outspoken about his subjects or controversial about matters relating to the alumni and community relations, he can hardly expect to survive for long, much less survive the tenure process. Possible exceptions about airing minority opinions can only occur during times of widespread turmoil and controversy - like what happened in America during the Vietnam War - and when students are increasingly receptive to, if not accepting of, them. Washing the institution's dirty linen - especially its treatment of hired staff, and disruptive students - is even more dangerous activity. It can lead fellow teachers, especially in one's department, to conclude that the tenure candidate is a troublemarker - what they will prudently choose to call 'lacking collegiality'.

Then there are all the expected obligations the tenure-track candidate must satisfy - be a successful instructor, serve the institution in various administrative matters, and demonstrate increasing competence in his chosen fields of study - at least achieve a doctoral degree from a recognized institution, and hopefully have it published, preferably by some university press.
Service can concern all kinds of things - advising students, serving on committees dealing with things like cirriculum development, degree requirements, departmental hiring, student status, athletics, community affairs, etc. - straightforward matters under normal circumstances. As for teaching evaluation, it too can be fairly uncontroversial, as students should be allowed to judge how well an instructor articulates his knowledge of the subject, engages students constructively in the classroom process, reacts to differences of opinion and student challenges, and like.

This never meant, though, that the academy was ever some kind of irovy-tower where freedom of thought reigned - misconceptions which have been enhanced by current controversies in the mainstream media surrounding the so-called 'war on terror'. With Britain's Association of
University Teachers (AUT) instituting a boycott of Israeli universities because of the treatment of dissent at the universities of Bar-Ilan and Haifa, and professors at Yale, Columbia, Harvard, Colorado and other universities engaged in the process of helping terminate staff who are making waves, the public is inclined to think that academic freedom is under renewed assault.

It has always been this way when academics make unwelcome waves which threaten an institution's reputation, financial well-being, and internal stability, though the general public can
often be unsure about who are making the threats, why, and with what result because of the secrecy observed in handling such matters. Usually, the alleged offender simply disappears after the institution initiates an early retirement, or refuses to renew a contract.

The only possible strenghtening of academic freedom recently has been the boycott, called by the AUT, though one would not know it by reading mainstream media stories about the dispute. Haifa University has punished senior lecturer Ilan Pappe for encouraging a student, Teddy Katz, to study alleged massacres of Arabs in Tanturin during Israel's War of Independence, and Bar-Ilan has a close relationship with the College of Judia and Samaria in the Ariel settlement on the West Bank.

Of course, the mainstream media have compared it to the boycotting of Nazi universities during the rise of Hitler, and all kinds of elitist teaching groups, like the American Association of University Professors and the American Political Science Association, have chimed in. Individuals, like the NYT's Jon Weiner, have concurred, claiming that the boycott will only silence critics within the universities themselves. The move is a sensible one, though, putting Israeli universities on notice that they just cannot do what they want with minority voices and views - what the boycott may well encourage.

The only problem with the boycott is that it is hardly likely to have much impact of the ground, as it is hardly likely that the universities will be calling upon the services of any AUT member soon, though it does have 50,000 members. Then there is nothing to stop an AUT member from going there if he or she wants. There is no mechanism for punishing members who break the ban.

The attempt to get rid of Ward Churchill, the tenured professor at the University of Colorado who caused all kinds of controversy by comparing the victims of the 9/11attacks to little Adolf
Eichmanns - equating them rather crudely with chickens who had come home to roost because of the assaults on Iraq - is much harder to evaluate. Churchill has continued to make unpopular demands - like the Coalition withdrawing immediately from Afghanistan and Iraq - and has mixed up his career with demands of the American Indian Movement, claiming to be a Cherokee himself, but one cannot be sure if he is just speaking his mind, or trying to throw a damper on all governmental dissent while obtaining a nice nest egg for his retirement in the process.

The hoopla at Columbia over the conduct in the classroom by its Middlle Eastern and Asian Language and Cultural Dpartment, especially Joseph Massad, in considering how Palestinians were treated by the Israelis - one student Deana Shenker claiming in one of her statements that he had told her to drop the course if she did not believe that they had committed atrocities against them - reminds me of how I was treated when I sought to punish the son of one of its leading professors in my class for plagiarizing a paper when I was teaching there. She took her complaint to The David Project which highlighted them in a short documentary film, Columbia Unbecoming. My student took his complaint to the deans of the colleges involved, and to the head of the department in which the course was being taught, who was also the first reader of my proposed Ph.D. disssertation.

She was so successful that President Bollinger just "assumed" that her complaint was true, and took steps to stop student intimidation - making apparently no mention of protecting academic freedom in the process - what resulted in the tightening up of student grievance procedures, and the appointment of an Ad Hoc Grievance Committee to investigate the charges. Its report in March corroborated Shenker's complaint, though acknowledging that MEALAC teachers had been subjected to repeated harrassment by outside visitors, and auditors of classes, and called for the appointment of a Presidential Council on Student Affairs to establish a revamped set of procedures to deal with student grievances - what Bollinger has instituted.

My student too thought that he had done nothing wrong, and was so successful in getting the
University's elite to back up his false claim that it not only gave him an A+ grade for the paper I required him to redo while I went on leave for a year - resulting in a final grade of B for the course which would permit him to transfer from one college to the other - but also put my career in jeopardy by allowing the revenge-seeking departmental head to reject my dissertation when he got the chance. I only was able to frustrate his effort by having evidence of his antipathy to my work, and threatening to take the University to court if it continued with his vendetta. Of course, my employment had been terminated while this was happening - what Hassad undoubtedly is experiencing now.

Besides these unexpected controversies which unduly politicize the academic climate for individuals and institutions alike, there were always impediments upon what a teacher can say, and do on any campus. Individuals are hired to teach, and do research in specific fields. And to get started in this process, one has to continue to satisfy recognized scholars in those areas - what calls for being a team player rather than a maverick who strikes out on his own. If one does, one may well strike out permanently. Then, once gains tenure at an institution, one is still expected to stay within the fields one was orginally hired for.

While public disputes about wars, campus labor relations and the like, as we have already seen, can result in colleagues stepping on one another's toes, teaching requirements, except for most senior professors, result in an individual teacher widening his knowledge whether he likes it or not.
There are introductory and internediate courses in all fields which must be taught, and then a colleague teaching a special course way outside the area of others' expertise might get sick or die, requiring other department members to fill in the gap. After such a career, a teacher's areas of interest and competence might have changed radically, though there are all kinds of feathers to worry about ruffling if he seriously starts working in these related fields.

I certainly experienced this kind of transformation, and expected blowback during my academic career. While my fields for the doctorate were comparative government, and traditional political theory, I ended up being essentially interested in modern British political history, and Anglo-American covert government during the Cold War. The transformation could have only occurred because of changing positions often because of the Vietnam War - what obliged me to change the focus of my teaching, and leaving the place before professorial opposition became well organized. In a 30-year period, I imagine I taught 30 different courses in the areas of European government and foreign policy, American national and local government, and introductory ones to both political science and comparative politics.

The biggest trouble with this learning experience was that it was difficult to fully exploit in a professional way. I was pegged as the person who taught Western European politics, with a special interest in French politics of the Fourth and Fifth Republics. Actually, I was soon interested in the development of modern British politics and foreign policy. As far as I can
remember, I have never written a word about continental European politics, though I have taught more courses about it - the comparative politics of the major powers, the minor powers, Eastern Europe, Soviet politics, Soviet foreign policy, etc., than I could ever hope to recall. While writing extensively about British political development during the 19th and 20th centuries - extensions of my Ph.D. thesis - I became increasingly interested in the conduct of the Cold War, especially from the point of view of Washington and London.

The biggest impediment then was getting any standing with leaders in these fields who were interested in my research, and its publication. People outside higher education have no idea of how hard it is to get an audience for any really new research by any outsider to any established field. I vividly remember contacts with well-known professors like Bernard Crick, Ian Christie, Michael Thompson, Geoffrey Elton, Richard Neustadt, and Eric Hobsbawn. They considered my projects and queries those of a rank amateur who had never even studied the basics of the field at university.

I shall never forget when I finally arranged a meeting with Professor Neustadt, the head of the department when I was at Columbia, and then a leading light at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, about my research into the JFK assassination, especially how the President was apparently set up for assassination by the activities of former Vice President Richard M. Nixon, and Navy Secretary John B. Connally. Neustadt had been a leading academic adviser to JFK. When Neustadt learned of my reason for the appointment, he immediately clammed up, like acquaintance David Halberstam did when I asked him about similar concerns when he came to Holy Cross College to give a lecture.

While I finally was able to establish some kind of standing in British criminal law history circles, especially through my efforts at British Legal History Conferences, and those of Professor Albert Kiralfy's The Journal of Legal History, I was still amazed when I gave a paper at another legal history conference, only to witness the leading academic giving another paper refusing to appear, apparently because of my participation - what resulted in another conferee reading his paper in his stead. Then the discussion of the papers took place without even the slightest mention of what I had said. It was as if I wasn't even there.

Fortunately, the internet has rendered all this trial and tribulation unnecessary with instant circulation of one's ideas, and whatever their value, to far bigger audiences. Even if one is obliged to develop one's own web site for them to appear, at least it can be done. The transmission of new ideas can take place without one having to curry a favorable opinion of them by some powerful figure in a position to either stop them or to amend them in ways which suit his interests more than yours. I certainly shall continue to take advantage of its potential as long as I can be instructive.

The Bilderberg Group

Excellent primer on Bilderberg and that whole rotting pile of manure. Worth a read, especially if you're new to this whole thing.

by Paul Vigay

Paul Vigay looks into the shady world of global conspiracies and
manipulations.

His findings are at least eye-opening, at worst downright frightening.
Have you ever wondered if there really is a 'global elite'? Some secret group
of people who control world events and hide their agenda from public
knowledge?

Could there be a group of people; politicians, heads of multinational
companies, directors of world banking organisations and even royalty, who
decide what policies will determine the way ordinary people live - and die?

As David Icke says, it is relatively easy for a small group of people to
control the masses when everyday we give our power and freedom away, fearing
to step out from the comfort of our 'hassle free zone'. Who perpetrate the
'Problem, Reaction, Solution' events which shape and manipulate our perceived
'democracy and freedom'?

If you control governments and the media you control the world, or do you?
What if a problem so terrible, so grotesque, so 'unbelievable' begins to
occur with startling regularity? Do you demand answers? Do you demand what
'the government' is going to do about it? Do you pass the problem to someone
else do deal with? What happens if that person you hand the solution to, is
the person who created the problem in the first place? So forms the basis for
the problem, reaction, solution method of controlling the people with the
minimum of effort.

Imagine a scenario where a lone-gunman walks into a crowded shopping centre
and guns down a number of innocent people. Terrible enough, but what if at a
later time, some innocent school children in a quiet, peaceful school are the
targets? The more outrageous and disgusting an event, the more people will
demand something must be done; "Guns must be banned",
"Something must be done now!".

Believe it or not, David Icke predicted just such a scenario in his 1994 book
"The Robots' Rebellion", before we witnessed the terrible events at
Dunblane.

Supposing someone, somewhere wanted the end 'solution' to be "to ban
guns". Obviously, gun clubs, enthusiasts and legitimate people are going
to complain, perhaps with the backing or at least, indifference, of the
general public. After all "it doesn't affect us does it". You need
to somehow manipulate the public to demand that you offer the solution. You
need a public 'reaction', for which you need to stage a perceived 'problem'.
The more horrific and unbelievable you can make it, the more the public will
demand what you wanted to do in the first place.

Rising Crime? or Big Brother?
What if you want to install video cameras and monitoring equipment into towns
and villages. Of course, this costs huge amounts of money, which could be
spent on hospitals, research into illnesses or saving the environment, so you
need the public to demand you do it, or at the minimum, not offer resistance
when you propose it. You need the 'problem' of rising crime, which needs to
be perpetuated throughout the media and on TV. People will then fear being
mugged in the streets and approve the 'safety' offered by cameras and
surveillance equipment - even though the need was not high enough in the
first place.

Does such a group of people exist? There is ample evidence to say that there
does, and what's more, once you become aware of the facts, you can see their
influence in world events - even though seemingly forged by 'opposing
factions'.

Democracy or Denial?
Why are the public losing interest in government and their right to vote? Is
it because people think "it doesn't matter who you vote for, they both
end up doing the same old things". How precise this turns out to be,
once you dig deep enough.

No wonder The Sun newspaper decided to back Tony Blair of New Labour (what a
joke) in the May 1997 UK general election. The chief executive of News
International (the parent of The Sun) is Mr Andrew Knight, a member of the
Bilderberg Group.

Opposite sides, same views:-
Opposames!
Mr Tony Blair was a guest of the annual Bilderberg meeting in 1993, together with his colleague Kenneth Clarke. Hang on a minute though..... Aren't those
two on opposite sides? What about Bilderberg attendees Margaret Thatcher and
Denis Healey - and you thought we lived in a democracy where your vote
actually counted.

Incidentally, this could account for why Margaret Thatcher was one of Tony
Blair's first guests at Number Ten, something the independent media were
quick to pick up on after New Labour won power.

The same goes for US presidents. Every one since Jimmy Carter has been a
Bilderberg representative. Democrat, Republican - it doesn't matter. They all
have the same policies, decided upon at top secret meetings held annually in
hidden locations.

What exactly are 'The Bilderbergers' then? What are their aims? This article,
mainly extracts from "The Bilderberg Group... the Trilateral
Commission... covert power groups of the West", by Robert Eringer,
(Pentacle Books, 1980) tries to expose some of their secret agenda.

As the concepts and plans behind the global elite could pose such a threat to
our freedom, I will periodically return to this subject in order to keep
Enigma readers aware of the world around them. If anything in this article,
or any keywords on the cover of this issue, strike a chord with you, or if
you have further information, please do not hesitate to contact me at the
editorial address.

The Global Manipulators: In Search of Answers It is indeed intriguing when a prestigious collection of internationally powerful men lock themselves away for a weekend in some remote town far away from the Press to talk about world problems. Since the late 1950s, the Bilderberg Group has been the subject of a variety of conspiracy theories. For the most part, conspiracy theories emanate from political extremist organisations, Right and Left. The 'Radical Right' view Bilderberg as an integral part of the 'international Zionist-communist conspiracy'. At the other end of the political spectrum, the radical Left perceive Bilderberg to be a branch of the 'Rockefeller-Rothschild grand design to rule the world'. For many it is less frightening to believe in hostile conspirators than it is to face the fact that no one is in control. And after all, isn't conspiracy the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means? Conspiracy or not, the Bilderberg Group is a fascinating example of behind-the-scenes 'invisible' influence-peddling in action. Bilderbergers represent the elite and wealthy establishment of every Western nation. They include bankers, industrialists, politicians and leaders of giant multinational corporations. Their annual meetings, which take place at a different location each year, go unannounced, their debates unreported, their decisions unknown. The group certainly fits C.Wright Mills's definition of a Power Elite: 'A group of men, similar in interest and outlook, shaping events from invulnerable positions behind the scenes.' The New World Order I began my investigation of Bilderberg while in Washington, D.C. in the autumn of 1975. I had read bits and pieces on Bilderberg in right-wing literature and so I went directly to its source, the Liberty Lobby, an ultra-conservative political pressure group located a stone's throw from Capitol Hill. There I interviewed one E.Stanley Rittenhouse, Liberty Lobby's legislative aide. Rittenhouse solemnly explained the existence of a Jewish-communist conspiracy to rule the world by way of a 'New World Order', whose eventual goal is one world government. To prove this point Rittenhouse incessantly recited passages from his handy pocket Bible and explained the evolution of this great conspiracy. The Illuminati It all goes back to the Illuminati, a secret society/fraternity formed in Bavaria in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, based on the philosophical ideals of Plato. John Ruskin, 'a secret disciple of the Illuminati' and a professor of art and philosophy at Oxford University in the 1870s, revived these ideals in his teachings. A Privileged Ruling Class The late Dr. Carroll Quigley, a distinguished professor at Georgetown University for many years, wrote in "Tragedy and Hope" that 'Ruskin spoke to the Oxford undergraduates as members of the privileged ruling class ... that they were possessors of a magnificent tradition of education, beauty, rule of law, freedom, decency, and self-discipline but that this tradition could not be saved, and indeed did not deserve to be saved, unless it could be extended to the lower classes in England and to the non-English masses throughout the world'. Diamond Mining Cecil Rhodes, a student and devoted fan of Ruskin, 'Feverishly exploited the diamond and gold fields of South Africa. With financial support from Lord Rothschild he was able to monopolise the diamond mines of South Africa as De Beers Consolidated Mines. 'In the middle of the 1890s Rhodes had a personal income of a least a million pounds a year which he spent so freely for his mysterious purposes that he was usually overdrawn on his account. These purposes centred on his desire to federate the English-speaking peoples and to bring all habitable portions of the world under their control.' The founding of The Round Table To this end, Rhodes, along with other disciples of Ruskin, formed a secret society in association with a group of Cambridge men who shared the same ideals. This society, which was later to become the original Round Table Group (better known in the 1920s as the 'Cliveden Set') was formed on February 5th 1881. According to Dr. Quigley, "This group was able to get access to Rhodes's money after his death in 1902. Under the trusteeship of Alfred (later Lord) Milner, They sought to extend and execute the ideals that Rhodes had obtained from Ruskin." "As governor-general of South Africa in the period 1897-1905, Milner recruited a group of young men, chiefly from Oxford and from Toynbee Hall, to assist him in organising his administration. Through this influence these men were able to win influential posts in government and international finance and became the dominant influence in British imperial and foreign affairs up to 1939. Under Milner in South Africa, they were known as Milner's Kindergarten until 1910. In 1909-1903 they organised semi-secret groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British dependencies and in the United States." The CFR and RIIA It was at the Majestic Hotel in Paris in 1919 that the Round Table Groups of the United States and Britain emerged out from under a cloak of secrecy and officially became the (American) Council on Foreign Relations and the (British) Royal Institute for International Affairs. To Mr Rittenhouse and his breed of religious isolationists at Liberty Lobby, Bilderberg evolved directly from the 'satanic-communist' Illuminati, and the Council on Foreign Relations - Royal Institute of International Affairs relationship. I phoned Dr. Quigley at his office in Georgetown University's elite School of Foreign Service. A man of impeccable credentials, Quigley used "Tragedy and Hope" as a text for his courses on Western Civilisation. Published in 1966, "Tragedy and Hope" has become a rare book to locate. Quigley apparently had trouble with his publisher over the book's distribution. The publisher claimed demand was poor. When Quigley sought and acquired the necessary demand, the publisher responded by saying that the plates had been destroyed. In his book, 1310 pages in all, Quigley detailed how the intricate financial and commercial patterns of the West prior to 1914 influenced the development of today's world. It has been suggested that these revelations, especially in coming from a respected historian, did not amuse the higher echelons of big banking; hence a form of censorship resulted. It is for this reason that "Tragedy and Hope", much to Quigley's annoyance, has become the Bible of conspiracy theorists and may be found for sale only through mail order book clubs which specialise in conspiracy literature. Quigley, in his best Boston accent, dismissed the Radical-Right inter-pretation as 'garbage'. But he was quick to add, "To be perfectly blunt, you could find yourself in trouble dealing with this subject." He explained that his career as a lecturer in the government institution circuit was all but ruined because of the twenty or so pages he had written about the existence of Round Table Groups. I recently studied the late Dr. Quigley's private files on the Round Table Groups at the Georgetown University library. There I discovered great substance to his findings in the form of personal correspondence and notes of interviews and conversations. Exhausted with right-wing cries of communist conspiracy, I wrote to the embassies in Washington of each one of the countries whose citizens are involved with Bilderberg. I received only three replies. A letter from the Royal Swedish Embassy states: 'Prominent Swedish businessmen in their private capacities are and have been members of the group. Swedish politicians have also - mostly as invited guests as I understand it - participated in meetings with the group. I may add that I am not aware of any official Swedish view on the Bilderberg Group.' The Canadian Embassy wrote: 'To our knowledge, the Canadian Government has no position with regard to this group.' Official Denials I telephoned all of the embassies. Out of twenty, the only one which had any information of Bilderberg was that of the Netherlands. The official I spoke with knew very little about the group but he speculated that its purpose was to make this 'a more liveable world'. A diplomat at the Embassy of West Germany exclaimed, 'Bilder What?', and he refuse to believe the existence of such a group. This was a familiar response, even from many university professors of politics whom I questioned. Mark Felt, the former Assistant Director of the FBI, had never heard of Bilderberg. Neither had Michael Moffitt of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of Global Reach. After spotting his Name on a poster advertising a seminar on the power elite, I phoned Dr. Peter David Beter, a former Counsel to the Import-Export Bank. Beter contends that Bilderberg Conferences are nothing more than social occasions where prostitutes and large amounts of alcohol are enjoyed. But these days, Dr. Beter's full-time profession consists of peddling a monthly 'Audio Letter' to a very gullible public. Beter was last heard by this author proclaiming that the Russians have secretly implanted nuclear missiles in the Mississippi River. White House Enquiries I wrote to President Gerald Ford at the White House to enquire about Bilderberg when I heard of his one-time involvement. His 'Director of Correspondence' replied and stated: 'The Conference does not intend that its program be secret, although in the interest of a free and open discussion, no records are kept of the meetings.' (I later learned that records are indeed kept of the meetings, although they are marked 'Strictly Confidential'.) I wrote to David Rockefeller, Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, to enquire about Bilderberg. An assistant wrote back and he suggested I write to 'Mr. Charles Muller, a Vice President at Muden and Company, the organisation which assists with the administration of American Friend of Bilderberg, Incorporated' I wrote to Mr. Muller and was sent the following printed message: "In the early 1950s a number of people in both sides of the Atlantic sought a means of bringing together leading citizens both in and out of government, for informal discussions of problems facing the Western world. Such meetings, they felt, would create a better understanding of the forces and trends affecting Western nations." The first meeting that brought Americans and Europeans together took place under the chairmanship of H.R.H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands at the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeck, Holland, from 29th May to 31st May, 1954. Ever since, the meetings have been called Bilderberg Meetings.



Photo of first Bilderberg meeting
The first Bilderberg Meeting, in Oosterbeck, Holland, May 1954

Each year since its inception, Prince Bernhard has been the Bilderberg chairman. There are no members' of Bilderberg. Each year an invitation list is compiled by Prince Bernhard in consultation with an informal international steering committee; individuals are chosen in the light of their knowledge and standing. To ensure full discussion an attempt is made to include participants representing many political and economic points of view. Of the 80 to 100 participant, approximately one-third are from government and politics, the other are from many fields - finance, industry, labour, education and journalism. They attend in a personal and not in an official capacity. from the beginning participants have come from North America and Western Europe, and from various international organisations. The official languages are English and French. 'The meetings take place in a different county each year. Since 1957, they have been held in many Western European countries and in North America as well. The discussion at each meeting is centred upon topics of current concern in the broad fields of foreign policy, world economy, and other contemporary issues. Basic groundwork for the symposium is laid by means of working papers and general discussion follows. In order to assure freedom of speech and opinion, the gatherings are closed and off the record. No resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued during or after the meetings. In short, Bilderberg is a high-ranking and flexibly international forum in which opposing viewpoints can be brought closer together and mutual understanding furthered.' I wrote to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and received a reply from the Bureau of European Affairs at the State Department: 'In the early 1950s a number of people on both sides of the Atlantic sought a means of bringing together leading citizens ' And so on. Official Business or Not? I went to see Charles Muller at his Murden and Company office in New York City. He appeared to know little about Bilderberg and merely repeated information available on the printed message. It is claimed that "Government officials attend in a personal and not an official capacity". Mr. Muller was surprised to learn from me that the State Department acknowledged in a letter to Liberty Lobby that department officials Helmut Sonnenfeldt and Winston Lord attended a Bilderberg Conference at government expense in their official capacities. (as did Kenneth Clarke and Tony Blair in 1993) I tried to obtain interviews with both Sonnenfeldt and Lord. Their secretaries channelled me through to many different offices. Finally, Francis Seidner, a public affairs advisor, advised me to mind my own business. Back in London and armed with a list of Bilderberg participants (available on request - Ed.), I sought out and conducted an interview with Lord Roll, chairman of the S.G. Warburg Bank. Roll gave little away and he stated outright that records of Bilderberg Conferences do not exist. (Little did he realise that I had one in my briefcase?) I wrote to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and they replied: 'Thank you for your letter enquiring about the Bilderberg Group. Unfortunately, we can find no trace of the Bilderberg Group in any of our reference works on international organisations.' (Much later, I learned that the Foreign Office has on occasion paid the way for British members to attend Bilderberg Conferences.) A letter to one-time member Sir Paul Chambers brought this response: 'I am under obligation not to disclose anything about the Bilderberg Group to anybody who is not a member of that Group, I am very sorry that I cannot help, but I am clearly powerless to do so and it would be wrong in the circumstances to say anything to you about Bilderberg.' Sir Paul suggested I write to the Bilderberg secretariat at an address in the Hague. I did so and was again sent a copy of the standard printed message. I had eagerly looked forward to the next Bilderberg Conference, which in 1976 was to be held in Hot Springs, Virginia. For the first time since 1954, the meeting was cancelled. The international steering committee felt it inappropriate to conduct a conference that year because permanent chairman Prince Bernhard was under such heavy public scrutiny after having been publicly disgraced for taking a bribe from the Lockheed Aircraft Company. UK Meeting in 1977 So my first Bilderberg Conference took place a year later, in April 1977, at the serene Devon resort of Torquay. It is the Bilderberg custom to book a whole hotel for the weekend conference. The five-star Imperial Hotel was no exception and it, too, was emptied to accommodate over 100 Bilderberg participants. Even the Imperials permanent guests were told to find lodging elsewhere for the weekend. I managed a booking at the Imperial for three nights before the Bilderbergers moved in. On Thursday, two days before the conference was due to begin, heavy lorries and workmen unloaded large wooden file cabinets and sealed crates. I was not allowed access to the conference hall, despite assurances from a Bilderberg secretary that 'We have nothing to hide'. At 2 am Friday morning with the night club finally closed and the Imperial asleep, I tiptoed down five flights of stairs from my room to the conference hall. To my surprise, the doors were unlocked and unguarded. I slipped into the darkened hall and inspected the locked file cabinets, glass translation booth and electronic equipment for tape-recording and translation. Having already consumed a half-dozen whiskies, I could not repulse an urge to purloin a mahogany and brass-plated Bilderberg gavel. It now sits atop my desk, a trophy of my research. Like all others, I was thrown out of the hotel on the Friday to make way for American Secret Servicemen and Special Branch bodyguards. The Bilderbergers arrived later, mostly by way of a quiet entry through Exeter Airport 10 miles form Torquay. They held their hush-hush meetings and then, just as quietly, disappeared back to their respective banks, multinational corporations and government jobs, perhaps a little more the wiser than when they arrived.

~~~~~~~~


As you can see from the article above, people 'in the know' seem intent on
keeping the purpose and attendees to each Bilderberg meeting top secret.

The meetings still continue annually with the 1998 meeting having occurred
only a few weeks ago at the remote Turnberry Hotel in Ayreshire, Scotland.
Not long afterwards, I managed to obtain a list of attendees to this, most
recent, meeting. The full list appears on the following page, for the benefit
of, and to aid the personal research of, Enigma readers.

One noticeable omission from the list, is British Prime Minister Mr Tony
Blair. Does this mean that he is on the way out? It's interesting to note
that William Hague (leader of the Opposition) and Tony Blair's own Secretary
of State for Defence, Mr George Robertson were both present, as were (as
usual) international media moguls.

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Monday 20 June 2005

The coming trade war and global depression

by Henry C K Liu

Many historians have suggested that the 1929 stock market crash was not the cause of the Great Depression. If anything, the 1929 crash was the technical reflection of the inevitable fate of an overblown bubble economy. Yet stock market crashes can recover within a relatively short time with the help of effective government monetary measures, as demonstrated by the crashes of 1987 (23% drop, recovered in nine months), 1998 (36% drop, recovered in three months) and 2002 (37% drop, recovered in two months).

There was no quick recovery after the 1929 crash. Structurally, what made the Great Depression last for more than a decade from 1929 until the US entry into World War II in 1941 were the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which put world trade into a tailspin from which it did not recover until the war began. While the US economy finally recovered through war mobilization after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, most of the world's market economies sank deeper into war-torn distress and did not fully recover until the Korean War boom in 1951.

Barely five years into the 21st century, with a globalized neo-liberal trade regime firmly in place in a world where market economy has become the norm, trade protectionism appears to be fast re-emerging and developing into a new global trade war of complex dimensions. The irony is that this new trade war is being launched not by the poor economies that have been receiving the short end of the trade stick, but by the US, which has been winning more than it has been losing on all counts from globalized neo-liberal trade, with the European Union following suit in lockstep. Japan, of course, has never let up on protectionism and never taken competition policy seriously. The rich nations need to recognize that their efforts to squeeze every last drop of advantage out of already unfair trade will only plunge the world into deep depression. History has shown that while the poor suffer more in economic depressions, the rich, even as they are financially cushioned by their wealth, are hurt by political repercussions in the form of either war or revolution, or both.

Cold War and moral imperative
During the Cold War, there was no international free trade. The economies of the two contending ideology blocs were completely disconnected. Within each bloc, economies interacted through foreign aid and memorandum trade from their respective superpowers. The competition was not for profit but for the hearts and minds of the people in the two opposing blocs, as well as those in the non-aligned nations in the Third World. The competition between the two superpowers was to give rather than to take from their separate fraternal economies.

The population of the superpowers worked hard to help the poorer people within their separate blocs, and convergence toward equality was the policy aim even if not always the practice. The Cold War era of foreign aid and memorandum trade had a better record of poverty reduction in both camps than post-Cold War globalized neo-liberal trade dominated by one single superpower. The aim was not only to raise income and increase wealth, but also to close income and wealth disparity between and within economies. Today, income and wealth disparity is rationalized as a necessity for capital formation. The New York Times reports that from 1980 to 2002, the total income earned by the top 0.1% of earners in the United States more than doubled, while the share earned by everyone else in the top 10% rose far less and the share of the bottom 90% declined.

For all its ill effects, the Cold War achieved two formidable ends: it prevented nuclear war and it introduced development as a moral imperative into superpower geopolitical competition with rising economic equality within each bloc. In the years since the end of the Cold War, nuclear terrorism has emerged as a serious threat and domestic development is preempted by global trade, even in the rich economies, while income and wealth disparity has widened everywhere.

Since the end of the Cold War some 15 years ago, world economic growth has shifted to rely exclusively on globalized neo-liberal trade engineered and led by the US as the sole remaining superpower, financed with the US dollar as the main reserve currency for trade and anchored by the huge US consumer market made possible by the high wages of US workers. This growth has been sustained by knocking down national tariffs everywhere around the world through supranational institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), and financed by a deregulated foreign-exchange market working in concert with a global central-banking regime independent of local political pressure, lorded over by the supranational Bank of International Settlement (BIS) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Redefining humanist morality, the United States asserts that world trade is a moral imperative and as such trade promotes democracy, political freedom and respect for human rights in trade participating nations. Unfortunately, income and wealth equality is not among the benefits promoted by trade. Even if the validity of this twisted ideological assertion is not questioned, it clearly contradicts the US practice of trade embargo against countries Washington deems undemocratic, lacking in political freedom and deficient in respect for human rights. If trade promotes such desirable conditions, the practice of linking trade to freedom is tantamount to denying medicine to the sick.

US President George W Bush defends his free-trade agenda in moralistic terms. "Open trade is not just an economic opportunity, it is a moral imperative," he declared in a May 7, 2001, speech. "Trade creates jobs for the unemployed. When we negotiate for open markets, we're providing new hope for the world's poor. And when we promote open trade, we are promoting political freedom." Such claims remain highly controversial when tested by actual data.

Phyllis Schlafly, a syndicated conservative columnist, responded three weeks later in an article "Free trade is an economic issue, not a moral one". In it, she noted that while conservatives should be happy finally to have a president who added a moral dimension to his actions, "the Bible does not instruct us on free trade and it's not one of the Ten Commandments. Jesus did not tell us to follow Him along the road to free trade ... Nor is there anything in the US constitution that requires us to support free trade and to abhor protectionism. In fact, protectionism was the economic system believed in and practiced by the framers of our constitution. Protective tariffs were the principal source of revenue for our federal government from its beginning in 1789 until the passage of the 16th Amendment, which created the federal income tax, in 1913. Were all those public officials during those hundred-plus years remiss in not adhering to a "moral obligation" of free trade?" Hardly, argued Schlafly, whose views are noteworthy because US politics is currently enmeshed in a struggle between strict-constructionist paleo-conservatives and moral-imperialist neo-conservatives. Despite the ascendance of neo-imperialism in US foreign policy, protectionism remains strong in US political culture, particularly among conservatives and in the labor movement.

Bush also said China, which reached a trade agreement with the United States at the close of the administration of his predecessor Bill Clinton, and became a member of the WTO in late 2001, would benefit from political changes as a result of liberalized trade policies. This pronouncement gives clear evidence to those in China who see foreign trade as part of an anti-China "peaceful evolution" strategy first envisaged by John Forster Dulles, US secretary of state under president Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s. It is a strategy of inducing through peaceful trade the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to reform itself out of power and to eliminate the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of bourgeois liberalization. Almost four decades later, Deng Xiaoping criticized CCP chairman Hu Yaobang and premier Zhao Ziyang for having failed to contain bourgeois liberalization in their implementation of China's modernization policy. Deng warned in November 1989, five months after the Tiananmen incident: "The Western imperialist countries are staging a third world war without guns. They want to bring about the peaceful evolution of socialist countries towards capitalism." Deng's handling of the Tiananmen incident prevented China from going the catastrophic route of the USSR, which dissolved in 1991.

Hostility in the name of 'freedom'
Yet it is clear that political freedom is often the first casualty of a garrison-state mentality and such mentality inevitably results from hostile economic and security policy toward any country the US deems as not free. Whenever the US pronounces a nation to be not free, that nation will become less free as a result of US policy. This has been repeatedly evident in China and elsewhere in the Third World. Whenever US policy toward China turns hostile, as it currently appears to be heading, political and press freedoms inevitably face stricter curbs. For trade mutually and truly to benefit the trading economies, three conditions are necessary: 1) the de-linking of trade from ideological/political objectives, 2) maintenance of equality in the terms of trade and 3) recognition that global full employment at rising, living wages is the prerequisite for true comparative advantage in global trade.

The developing rupture between the sole superpower and its traditionally deferential allies lies in mounting trade conflicts. The United States has benefited from an international financial architecture that gives the US economy a structural monetary advantage over those of the EU and Japan, not to mention the rest of the world. Trade issues range from government-subsidy disputes between Airbus and Boeing to those regarding bananas, sugar, beef, oranges and steel, as well as disputes over fair competition associated with mergers and acquisition and financial services. If either government is found to be in breach of WTO rules when these disputes wind through long processes of judgment, the other will be authorized to retaliate. The US could put tariffs on other European goods if the WTO rules against Airbus and vice versa. So if both governments are found in breach, both could retaliate, leading to a cycle of offensive protectionism. When the US was ruled to have unfairly supported its steel industry, tariffs were slapped by the EU on Florida oranges to make a political point in a politically important state in US politics.

Trade competition between the EU and the US is spilling over into security areas, allowing economic interests to conflict with ideological sympathy. Both of these production engines, saddled with serious overcapacity, are desperately seeking new markets, which inevitably leads them to Asia in general and China in particular, with its phenomenal growth rate and its 1.2 billion eager consumers bulging with rapidly rising disposable income. The growth of the Chinese economy will lift all other economies in Asia, including Australia, which has only recently begun to understand that its future cannot be separated from its geographic location and that its prosperity is interdependent with those of other Asia-Pacific economies. Australian iron ore and beef and dairy products are destined for China, not the British Isles. The EU is eager to lift its 15-year-old arms embargo on China, much to the displeasure of the US. Israel, with its close relations with the US, faces a similar dilemma on military sales to China.

Even the US defense establishment has largely come around to the view that the US arms industry must export, even to China, to remain on top. It was reported recently that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried to sell to Thailand F-16 warplanes capable of firing advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles two days after he lashed out in Singapore at China for upgrading its own military when no neighboring nations are threatening it (see Rumsfeld pitches in for F-16s, June 9). The sales pitch was in competition with Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30s and Swedish JAS-39s. The open competition in arms export had been spelled out for the US Congress years earlier by Donald Hicks, a leading Pentagon technologist in the administration of president Ronald Reagan. "Globalization is not a policy option, but a fact to which policymakers must adapt," he said. "The emerging reality is that all nations' militaries are sharing essentially the same global commercial-defense industrial base." The boots and uniforms worn by US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq were made in China.

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