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.
Tuesday, 21 June 2005
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.
Full story...
by Paul Vigay
Paul Vigay looks into the shady world of global conspiracies andmanipulations.
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.
Full story...
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.
Full story...
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.
Full story...
Monday, 13 June 2005
Britain accused of creating terror fears
Law lord says UK and US tried to bend international law with Belmarsh and Guantánamo detentions
One of Britain's most eminent judges yesterday accused the British and US governments of whipping up public fear of terrorism, and of being determined "to bend established international law to their will and to undermine its essential structures".
Lord Steyn, one of the longest-serving law lords in Britain's top court, the House of Lords, made the accusation while delivering his first public comments on the lords' ruling in the Belmarsh case.
He was forced to step down last year from the panel of judges hearing the challenge to the lawfulness of detention without trial for foreign ter rorist suspects after the government took exception to earlier remarks he had made on the subject.
Last December the law lords ruled by 8-1 that the detention without trial of foreign nationals in Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons and the Broadmoor high security hospital breached human rights laws.
Lord Steyn's remarks yesterday came a day after a damning report from the Council of Europe's committee for the prevention of torture, which concluded that the treatment of some detainees "could be considered as amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment".
He was giving the keynote address to an audience of judges and lawyers at the annual meeting in central London of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, whose chairman is Lord Bingham, the senior law lord.
The session was chaired by the appeal court judge Dame Mary Arden. The audience included Lord Brown, another law lord, Judge Luzius Wildhaber, president of the European court of human rights in Strasbourg, Sir Franklin Berman QC, former legal adviser to the Foreign Office, and Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy Foreign Office legal adviser who resigned over the attorney general's advice that the Iraq war was legal.
Lord Steyn hailed the Belmarsh ruling as "a great day for the law", and "a vindication of the rule of law, ranking with historic judgments of our courts".
He added: "Nobody doubts in any way the very real risk of international terrorism. But the Belmarsh decision came against the public fear whipped up by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom since September 11 2001 and their determination to bend established international law to their will and to undermine its essential structures."
As far as he could ascertain, he said, the Belmarsh case was the first in which a government had sought, and managed, to change the composition of the panel of law lords due to hear a particular case.
Full story...
One of Britain's most eminent judges yesterday accused the British and US governments of whipping up public fear of terrorism, and of being determined "to bend established international law to their will and to undermine its essential structures".Lord Steyn, one of the longest-serving law lords in Britain's top court, the House of Lords, made the accusation while delivering his first public comments on the lords' ruling in the Belmarsh case.
He was forced to step down last year from the panel of judges hearing the challenge to the lawfulness of detention without trial for foreign ter rorist suspects after the government took exception to earlier remarks he had made on the subject.
Last December the law lords ruled by 8-1 that the detention without trial of foreign nationals in Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons and the Broadmoor high security hospital breached human rights laws.
Lord Steyn's remarks yesterday came a day after a damning report from the Council of Europe's committee for the prevention of torture, which concluded that the treatment of some detainees "could be considered as amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment".
He was giving the keynote address to an audience of judges and lawyers at the annual meeting in central London of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, whose chairman is Lord Bingham, the senior law lord.
The session was chaired by the appeal court judge Dame Mary Arden. The audience included Lord Brown, another law lord, Judge Luzius Wildhaber, president of the European court of human rights in Strasbourg, Sir Franklin Berman QC, former legal adviser to the Foreign Office, and Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy Foreign Office legal adviser who resigned over the attorney general's advice that the Iraq war was legal.
Lord Steyn hailed the Belmarsh ruling as "a great day for the law", and "a vindication of the rule of law, ranking with historic judgments of our courts".
He added: "Nobody doubts in any way the very real risk of international terrorism. But the Belmarsh decision came against the public fear whipped up by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom since September 11 2001 and their determination to bend established international law to their will and to undermine its essential structures."
As far as he could ascertain, he said, the Belmarsh case was the first in which a government had sought, and managed, to change the composition of the panel of law lords due to hear a particular case.
Full story...
Ministers were told of need for Gulf war 'excuse'
We knew all along it was a lie, now it's coming out and is anybody facing legal sanction or the sack? No! And this is a "civilised" and "democratic" country....?!?!
Ministers were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.
The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.
This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.
“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality “would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation”.
The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times.
The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.
“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.
Full story...
Ministers were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.
The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.
This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.
“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality “would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation”.
The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times.
The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.
“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.
Full story...
Former Bush Team Member Says WTC Collapse Likely A Controlled Demolition
We've all been had! The whole thing is one big giant LIE that suits the purposes of the neo-totalitarian scum-bags who want to take control of the world 1984-style! 9/11 is the door through which much pain and suffering has entered the world, it should be closed and those who opened it should hang for their crimes.
Highly recognized former chief economist in Labor Department now doubts official 9/11 story, claiming suspicious facts and evidence cover-up indicate government foul play and possible criminal implications.
A former chief economist in the Labor Department during President Bush's first term now believes the official story about the collapse of the WTC is 'bogus,' saying it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7.
"If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling," said Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D, a former member of the Bush team who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX.
Reynolds, now a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University, also believes it's 'next to impossible' that 19 Arab Terrorists alone outfoxed the mighty U.S. military, adding the scientific conclusions about the WTC collapse may hold the key to the entire mysterious plot behind 9/11.
"It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7," said Reynolds this week from his offices at Texas A&M. "If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings.
"More importantly, momentous political and social consequences would follow if impartial observers concluded that professionals imploded the WTC. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right."
However, Reynolds said "getting it right in today's security state' remains challenging because he claims explosives and structural experts have been intimidated in their analyses of the collapses of 9/11.
From the beginning, the Bush administration claimed that burning jet fuel caused the collapse of the towers. Although many independent investigators have disagreed, they have been hard pressed to disprove the government theory since most of the evidence was removed by FEMA prior to independent investigation.
Critics claim the Bush administration has tried to cover-up the evidence and the recent 9/11 Commission has failed to address the major evidence contradicting the official version of 9/11.
Some facts demonstrating the flaws in the government jet fuel theory include:
-- Photos showing people walking around in the hole in the North Tower where 10,000 gallons of jet fuel supposedly was burning..
--When the South Tower was hit, most of the North Tower's flames had already vanished, burning for only 16 minutes, making it relatively easy to contain and control without a total collapse.
--The fire did not grow over time, probably because it quickly ran out of fuel and was suffocating, indicating without added explosive devices the firs could have been easily controlled.
--FDNY fire fighters still remain under a tight government gag order to not discuss the explosions they heard, felt and saw. FAA personnel are also under a similar 9/11 gag order.
--Even the flawed 9/11 Commission Report acknowledges that "none of the [fire] chiefs present believed that a total collapse of either tower was possible."
-- Fire had never before caused steel-frame buildings to collapse except for the three buildings on 9/11, nor has fire collapsed any steel high rise since 9/11.
-- The fires, especially in the South Tower and WTC-7, were relatively small.
-- WTC-7 was unharmed by an airplane and had only minor fires on the seventh and twelfth floors of this 47-story steel building yet it collapsed in less than 10 seconds.
-- WTC-5 and WTC-6 had raging fires but did not collapse despite much thinner steel beams.
-- In a PBS documentary, Larry Silverstein, the WTC leaseholder, told the fire department commander on 9/11 about WTC-7 that. "may be the smartest thing to do is pull it," slang for demolish it.
-- It's difficult if not impossible for hydrocarbon fires like those fed by jet fuel (kerosene) to raise the temperature of steel close to melting.
Despite the numerous holes in the government story, the Bush administration has brushed aside or basically ignored any and all critics. Mainstream experts, speaking for the administration, offer a theory essentially arguing that an airplane impact weakened each structure and an intense fire thermally weakened structural components, causing buckling failures while allowing the upper floors to pancake onto the floors below.
One who supports the official account is Thomas Eager, professor of materials engineering and engineering systems at MIT. He argues that the collapse occurred by the extreme heat from the fires, causing the loss of loading-bearing capacity on the structural frame.
Eagar points out the steel in the towers could have collapsed only if heated to the point where it "lost 80 percent of its strength," or around 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit. Critics claim his theory is flawed since the fires did not appear to be intense and widespread enough to reach such high temperatures.
Other experts supporting the official story claim the impact of the airplanes, not the heat, weakened the entire structural system of the towers, but critics contend the beams on floors 94-98 did not appear severely weakened, much less the entire structural system.
Further complicating the matter, hard evidence to fully substantiate either theory since evidence is lacking due to FEMA's quick removal of the structural steel before it could be analyzed. Even though the criminal code requires that crime scene evidence be kept for forensic analysis, FEMA had it destroyed or shipped overseas before a serious investigation could take place.
And even more doubt is cast over why FEMA acted so swiftly since coincidentally officials had arrived the day before the 9/11 attacks at New York's Pier 29 to conduct a war game exercise, named "Tripod II."
Besides FEMA's quick removal of the debris, authorities considered the steel quite valuable as New York City officials had every debris truck tracked on GPS and even fired one truck driver who took an unauthorized lunch break.
In a detailed analysis just released supporting the controlled demolition theory, Reynolds presents a compelling case.
"First, no steel-framed skyscraper, even engulfed in flames hour after hour, had ever collapsed before. Suddenly, three stunning collapses occur within a few city blocks on the same day, two allegedly hit by aircraft, the third not," said Reynolds. "These extraordinary collapses after short-duration minor fires made it all the more important to preserve the evidence, mostly steel girders, to study what had happened.
"On fire intensity, consider this benchmark: A 1991 FEMA report on Philadelphia's Meridian Plaza fire said that the fire was so energetic that 'beams and girders sagged and twisted, but despite this extraordinary exposure, the columns continued to support their loads without obvious damage.' Such an intense fire with consequent sagging and twisting steel beams bears no resemblance to what we observed at the WTC."
After considering both sides of the 9/11 debate and after thoroughly sifting through all the available material, Reynolds concludes the government story regarding all four plane crashes on 9/11 remains highly suspect.
"In fact, the government has failed to produce significant wreckage from any of the four alleged airliners that fateful day. The familiar photo of the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania shows no fuselage, engine or anything recognizable as a plane, just a smoking hole in the ground," said Reynolds. "Photographers reportedly were not allowed near the hole. Neither the FBI nor the National Transportation Safety Board have investigated or produced any report on the alleged airliner crashes."
Full story...
Highly recognized former chief economist in Labor Department now doubts official 9/11 story, claiming suspicious facts and evidence cover-up indicate government foul play and possible criminal implications.
A former chief economist in the Labor Department during President Bush's first term now believes the official story about the collapse of the WTC is 'bogus,' saying it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7."If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling," said Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D, a former member of the Bush team who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX.
Reynolds, now a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University, also believes it's 'next to impossible' that 19 Arab Terrorists alone outfoxed the mighty U.S. military, adding the scientific conclusions about the WTC collapse may hold the key to the entire mysterious plot behind 9/11.
"It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7," said Reynolds this week from his offices at Texas A&M. "If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings.
"More importantly, momentous political and social consequences would follow if impartial observers concluded that professionals imploded the WTC. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right."
However, Reynolds said "getting it right in today's security state' remains challenging because he claims explosives and structural experts have been intimidated in their analyses of the collapses of 9/11.
From the beginning, the Bush administration claimed that burning jet fuel caused the collapse of the towers. Although many independent investigators have disagreed, they have been hard pressed to disprove the government theory since most of the evidence was removed by FEMA prior to independent investigation.
Critics claim the Bush administration has tried to cover-up the evidence and the recent 9/11 Commission has failed to address the major evidence contradicting the official version of 9/11.
Some facts demonstrating the flaws in the government jet fuel theory include:
-- Photos showing people walking around in the hole in the North Tower where 10,000 gallons of jet fuel supposedly was burning..
--When the South Tower was hit, most of the North Tower's flames had already vanished, burning for only 16 minutes, making it relatively easy to contain and control without a total collapse.
--The fire did not grow over time, probably because it quickly ran out of fuel and was suffocating, indicating without added explosive devices the firs could have been easily controlled.
--FDNY fire fighters still remain under a tight government gag order to not discuss the explosions they heard, felt and saw. FAA personnel are also under a similar 9/11 gag order.
--Even the flawed 9/11 Commission Report acknowledges that "none of the [fire] chiefs present believed that a total collapse of either tower was possible."
-- Fire had never before caused steel-frame buildings to collapse except for the three buildings on 9/11, nor has fire collapsed any steel high rise since 9/11.
-- The fires, especially in the South Tower and WTC-7, were relatively small.
-- WTC-7 was unharmed by an airplane and had only minor fires on the seventh and twelfth floors of this 47-story steel building yet it collapsed in less than 10 seconds.
-- WTC-5 and WTC-6 had raging fires but did not collapse despite much thinner steel beams.
-- In a PBS documentary, Larry Silverstein, the WTC leaseholder, told the fire department commander on 9/11 about WTC-7 that. "may be the smartest thing to do is pull it," slang for demolish it.
-- It's difficult if not impossible for hydrocarbon fires like those fed by jet fuel (kerosene) to raise the temperature of steel close to melting.
Despite the numerous holes in the government story, the Bush administration has brushed aside or basically ignored any and all critics. Mainstream experts, speaking for the administration, offer a theory essentially arguing that an airplane impact weakened each structure and an intense fire thermally weakened structural components, causing buckling failures while allowing the upper floors to pancake onto the floors below.
One who supports the official account is Thomas Eager, professor of materials engineering and engineering systems at MIT. He argues that the collapse occurred by the extreme heat from the fires, causing the loss of loading-bearing capacity on the structural frame.
Eagar points out the steel in the towers could have collapsed only if heated to the point where it "lost 80 percent of its strength," or around 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit. Critics claim his theory is flawed since the fires did not appear to be intense and widespread enough to reach such high temperatures.
Other experts supporting the official story claim the impact of the airplanes, not the heat, weakened the entire structural system of the towers, but critics contend the beams on floors 94-98 did not appear severely weakened, much less the entire structural system.
Further complicating the matter, hard evidence to fully substantiate either theory since evidence is lacking due to FEMA's quick removal of the structural steel before it could be analyzed. Even though the criminal code requires that crime scene evidence be kept for forensic analysis, FEMA had it destroyed or shipped overseas before a serious investigation could take place.
And even more doubt is cast over why FEMA acted so swiftly since coincidentally officials had arrived the day before the 9/11 attacks at New York's Pier 29 to conduct a war game exercise, named "Tripod II."
Besides FEMA's quick removal of the debris, authorities considered the steel quite valuable as New York City officials had every debris truck tracked on GPS and even fired one truck driver who took an unauthorized lunch break.
In a detailed analysis just released supporting the controlled demolition theory, Reynolds presents a compelling case.
"First, no steel-framed skyscraper, even engulfed in flames hour after hour, had ever collapsed before. Suddenly, three stunning collapses occur within a few city blocks on the same day, two allegedly hit by aircraft, the third not," said Reynolds. "These extraordinary collapses after short-duration minor fires made it all the more important to preserve the evidence, mostly steel girders, to study what had happened.
"On fire intensity, consider this benchmark: A 1991 FEMA report on Philadelphia's Meridian Plaza fire said that the fire was so energetic that 'beams and girders sagged and twisted, but despite this extraordinary exposure, the columns continued to support their loads without obvious damage.' Such an intense fire with consequent sagging and twisting steel beams bears no resemblance to what we observed at the WTC."
After considering both sides of the 9/11 debate and after thoroughly sifting through all the available material, Reynolds concludes the government story regarding all four plane crashes on 9/11 remains highly suspect.
"In fact, the government has failed to produce significant wreckage from any of the four alleged airliners that fateful day. The familiar photo of the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania shows no fuselage, engine or anything recognizable as a plane, just a smoking hole in the ground," said Reynolds. "Photographers reportedly were not allowed near the hole. Neither the FBI nor the National Transportation Safety Board have investigated or produced any report on the alleged airliner crashes."
Full story...
Friday, 10 June 2005
Indonesia Faces New Mega-Tsunami
Another catastrophic giant earthquake similar to the one that caused carnage across the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day last year is lurking off Indonesia, say scientists.Recent seismic activity in the region has piled dangerous levels of stress onto a section of the Sunda trench fault zone west of Sumatra. This makes a large earthquake there far more likely and could trigger another devastating tsunami.
The warning comes from a team of seismologists at the University of Ulster in Coleraine. Professor John McCloskey, who led the research, said: "This is a very scary event we're concerned about. The potential for a devastating tsunami from it is significant and real. I hope it doesn't happen, but the indications are really strong that it will, maybe even soon."
Giant earthquakes can raise stress in surrounding rocks, making other seismic slips more likely. In March the Ulster group looked at the effects of the Boxing Day event and predicted another giant earthquake would strike the region. Less than two weeks later, on March 28, an adjacent region of the fault gave way. The magnitude 8.7 earthquake killed an estimated 2,000 people, mainly on the island of Nias.
The Ulster team has now used the same technique to assess the aftermath of that second quake. Their analysis shows stress in the region to the south of the March 28 rupture has increased by up to 8 bar, priming it for a massive megathrust quake where one tectonic plate slips beneath another.
The scientists cannot predict exactly when the next earthquake might strike, but say local people ought to be prepared. There are plans to deploy sensors to detect tsunamis throughout the Indian Ocean, but no system is yet in place.
The Mentawai islands face the greatest threat. Although stress increases are higher near the Batu islands, an earthquake last struck there in 1935. The Mentawai section of the fault has not slipped since 1833, when records show the resulting giant earthquake caused a large tsunami.
Prof McCloskey said his calculations suggest the risk of another massive earthquake is now greater than it was before March 28. "There are several indications that this one looks like a stronger interaction than the last. The actual stresses we measure are more or less the same but the ripeness of the fault now is of real concern." The recent increase in the number of small and medium earthquakes in the area is also ringing alarm bells.
Full story...
Thursday, 9 June 2005
Bush and Blair Lie to the World again - Enough is Enough
I had to turn the Bush-Blair press conference off, it was making me ill. I agree completely with what Paul is saying in this article, his site is well worth a visit :-)
by DJ Paul Edge
Yesterday, George Bush and Tony Blair LIED before the world again..Harry Truman once said of Richard Nixon, "He's one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides", but if ever a description was to be applied to Bush and Blair, this would be it.
How long is this going to go on? How long are these two war criminals going to be allowed to LIE repeatedly to the world before anything is done...? How long is it before society steps in and says no more lies, no more deaths of US Troops or Iraqi citizens for lies, no more destruction of the constitution and Bill of Rights for lies? How long is it before we say collectively enough and prosecute these lying war criminals with the blood of brave US and Coalition Troops and Iraqi civilians on their hands? How long is it before the American people start listening to great thinkers like Louis D. Brandeis "Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
Enough, it is time to end this once and for all. Here is the overwhelming evidence that proves without any shadow of a doubt the validity of the Downing Street Document, here is the evidence that proves that Bush and Blair lied yesterday in their press conference.
The world waited to see of the media had the guts to bring up the Downing Street Document. Sure enough, on queue a reporter posed the following question....
Q Thank you, sir. On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?
Tony Blair responded first....
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Well, I can respond to that very easily. No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all. And let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations. Now, no one knows more intimately the discussions that we were conducting as two countries at the time than me. And the fact is we decided to go to the United Nations and went through that process, which resulted in the November 2002 United Nations resolution, to give a final chance to Saddam Hussein to comply with international law. He didn't do so. And that was the reason why we had to take military action.
But Mr Liar forgets he said the following prior to July 2002...Or as Abraham Lincoln once said " "No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."
LIE
"We know they are trying to accumulate weapons of mass destruction."- Tony Blair, 3 March 2002, Channel 9 News, Australia
LIE
"That there is a threat from Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction that he has acquired is not in doubt at all."- Tony Blair, 11 March 2002.
LIE
"We know that he [Saddam Hussein] has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons, we know that he is trying to acquire nuclear
capability, we know that he is trying to develop ballistic missile capability of a greater range."- Tony Blair, 3 April 2002, NBC news
LIE
"There is a reason why weapons inspectors went in there and that is because we know he has been developing these weapons. We know that those weapons constitute a threat."- Tony Blair, 6 April 2002.
LIE
"Saddam Hussein's regime is despicable, he is developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked. He is a threat to his
own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also."- Tony Blair, 10 April 2002, House of Common
LIE
"there is no doubt at all that the development of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein poses a severe threat not just to the region, but to the wider world.… He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also."- Tony Blair, 10 April 2002, House of Commons
Oh Tony...what a tangled web we weave. As for Dubya, well I am used to seeing that smirking idiot lie repeatedly, but for the record, here is his response...
And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth.
My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently, that took place in London happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- look, both us of didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option. The consequences of committing the military are -- are very difficult. The hardest things I do as the President is to try to comfort families who've lost a loved one in combat. It's the last option that the President must have -- and it's the last option I know my friend had, as well.
Ah George, you too are a LIAR..
Full story...
Monstrous Lies Are Causing Christians And Muslims To Kill Each Other
by DJ Paul Edge
Yesterday, George Bush and Tony Blair LIED before the world again..Harry Truman once said of Richard Nixon, "He's one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides", but if ever a description was to be applied to Bush and Blair, this would be it.How long is this going to go on? How long are these two war criminals going to be allowed to LIE repeatedly to the world before anything is done...? How long is it before society steps in and says no more lies, no more deaths of US Troops or Iraqi citizens for lies, no more destruction of the constitution and Bill of Rights for lies? How long is it before we say collectively enough and prosecute these lying war criminals with the blood of brave US and Coalition Troops and Iraqi civilians on their hands? How long is it before the American people start listening to great thinkers like Louis D. Brandeis "Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
Enough, it is time to end this once and for all. Here is the overwhelming evidence that proves without any shadow of a doubt the validity of the Downing Street Document, here is the evidence that proves that Bush and Blair lied yesterday in their press conference.
The world waited to see of the media had the guts to bring up the Downing Street Document. Sure enough, on queue a reporter posed the following question....
Q Thank you, sir. On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?
Tony Blair responded first....
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Well, I can respond to that very easily. No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all. And let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations. Now, no one knows more intimately the discussions that we were conducting as two countries at the time than me. And the fact is we decided to go to the United Nations and went through that process, which resulted in the November 2002 United Nations resolution, to give a final chance to Saddam Hussein to comply with international law. He didn't do so. And that was the reason why we had to take military action.
But Mr Liar forgets he said the following prior to July 2002...Or as Abraham Lincoln once said " "No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."
LIE
"We know they are trying to accumulate weapons of mass destruction."- Tony Blair, 3 March 2002, Channel 9 News, Australia
LIE
"That there is a threat from Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction that he has acquired is not in doubt at all."- Tony Blair, 11 March 2002.
LIE
"We know that he [Saddam Hussein] has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons, we know that he is trying to acquire nuclear
capability, we know that he is trying to develop ballistic missile capability of a greater range."- Tony Blair, 3 April 2002, NBC news
LIE
"There is a reason why weapons inspectors went in there and that is because we know he has been developing these weapons. We know that those weapons constitute a threat."- Tony Blair, 6 April 2002.
LIE
"Saddam Hussein's regime is despicable, he is developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked. He is a threat to his
own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also."- Tony Blair, 10 April 2002, House of Common
LIE
"there is no doubt at all that the development of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein poses a severe threat not just to the region, but to the wider world.… He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also."- Tony Blair, 10 April 2002, House of Commons
Oh Tony...what a tangled web we weave. As for Dubya, well I am used to seeing that smirking idiot lie repeatedly, but for the record, here is his response...
And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth.
My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently, that took place in London happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- look, both us of didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option. The consequences of committing the military are -- are very difficult. The hardest things I do as the President is to try to comfort families who've lost a loved one in combat. It's the last option that the President must have -- and it's the last option I know my friend had, as well.
Ah George, you too are a LIAR..
Full story...
Monstrous Lies Are Causing Christians And Muslims To Kill Each Other
Zionist Circles Benefit From WTC Collapse
Who benefited when the World Trade Center towers collapsed? Who controlled access prior to Sept. 11? These burning questions continue to be ignored by the mainstream media.
Exclusive to American Free Press
by Christopher Bollyn
Larry Silverstein, lease-holder of the World Trade Center, and Lewis Eisenberg, the man who negotiated the lease, are key supporters of Israel who have both held high positions in the largest Israeli fundraising institution in the United States.
Silverstein and his Australian-Israeli partner, Frank Lowy, are the real estate developers who obtained 99-year leases on the rental and retail spaces of the World Trade Center shortly before the catastrophe of Sept. 11.
Although their leased property is destroyed, the lease-holders themselves stand to gain billions of dollars from insurance.
Eisenberg, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, personally arranged the privatization of the World Trade Center property and oversaw the negotiations that delivered the leases into the private hands of Silverstein and Lowy.
Eisenberg was recently appointed finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
How did these well-known supporters of Israel come to control the property? What actually caused the buildings to collapse? There are two schools of thought.
There is the “official” theory that hijacked planes crashed into the towers and the subsequent fuel fires caused the twin towers to fall.
The second theory, however, argues that other devices, such as explosive charges, were used to collapse the towers in a kind of controlled demolition for which the planes provided a useful distraction.
There remain significant amounts of eyewitness testimony and evidence to support the theory that explosives contributed to the collapse of the twin towers and Seven World Trade Center, which fell for no apparent reason during the afternoon of Sept. 11.
Seven WTC was a 47-story building built by Silver stein on property leased from the Port Authority.
There are video recordings and photographs which appear to show explosions occurring at the base of the towers prior to and during the collapses.
In a remarkable three-dimensional image published in the German magazine GEO EPOCHE, which dedicated the December 2001 issue to 9-11, there are five or six large and deep craters to be seen beneath the rubble. At least four huge craters are seen where the twin towers stood and one is squarely at the center of Seven-WTC. Another photograph shows what appears to be a sand-colored blast originating at the base of one of the towers and growing into an immense cloud of dust.
If explosive charges were used to collapse the towers, the question of who had access to the buildings prior to 9-11 emerges. Silverstein controlled access to the towers from the end of July when he obtained the 99-year lease.
Who Silverstein is and how he obtained these leases for a fraction of their value are questions that have been completely avoided by the mainstream media.
Silverstein is the New York City commercial landlord who built Seven World Trade Center in 1987. Silverstein won, with Lowy’s Westfield America, a 99-year right-to-lease of the World Trade Center from Eisenberg, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on July 26, 2001. While Silverstein controlled the 10.6 million-square-foot office space in the WTC complex, Westfield leased the 427,000 square-foot retail mall.
Silverstein and Eisenberg have both held leadership positions with the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), a billion dollar Zionist “charity” organization.
Silverstein is a former chairman of United Jewish Appeal Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Inc. This is an umbrella organization which raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year for its network of hundreds of member Zionist agencies in the United States and Israel.
Eisenberg, who was instrumental in obtaining the lease for Silverstein, sits on the Planning Board of UJA/ United Jewish Federation.
Eisenberg was the key person in negotiating the lease for Silverstein and Westfield, who were in fact the low bidders in the final bidding process on the 110-story towers.
While the high bid came from Vornado Realty Trust, its path was reportedly blocked by demands to pay back taxes. In March 2001 the company pulled out after failing to reach a purchase agreement with Eisenberg. When Vornado pulled out, the door was opened for Silverstein and Lowy. Lowy obtained the retail lease in April while it took Silverstein until the end of July to obtain funding for the down payment.
One lender, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., accused Silverstein of misallocating insurance money paid out after the Sept. 11 attack. In a complaint filed on Jan. 14 in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the lender, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., asserts that Silver stein used some insurance money to pay lobbyists in Albany and in Washington to try to limit his liability to the victims.
Eisenberg is a “New York moneyman” and a former Democrat who supports the liberal wing of the Republican Party. He has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to “pro-choice” Republican candidates. The newly appointed finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, Eisenberg has also served as a vice president of the strong arm of the Israeli lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
When New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman appointed Eisenberg chairman of the Port Authority in February 1996, Forbes magazine said the formerly disgraced Goldman Sachs partner “got real lucky.”
“What a strange political appointment,” the magazine said, “considering the part he played in the sex scandal that rocked Goldman and the financial community in the late 1980s.”
Eisenberg quit Goldman Sachs after his secretary accused him of sexually harassing her.
“The truth ended up being that, yes, they had a brief affair, but, no, she was never harassed,” Forbes wrote, adding, “all charges were dismissed, though Eisenberg did resign.”
Silverstein is engaged in a lawsuit to double his insurance pay-off and may win as much as $7.1 billion from the insurance companies by arguing that the destruction of the towers was two insured events instead of one. The property was insured for $3.55 billion. Silverstein Properties Inc. had asked the judge to rule on the one-loss-or-two issue in a lawsuit against 20 of the 22 insurers on the property. District Judge John S. Martin Jr. rejected a motion for summary judgment in June.
A trial is scheduled Sept. 3, although a request for a delay by the insurers is under consideration.
While Silverstein Properties, a family-owned business, is “disappointed that the issue was not decided at this time, they are confident that they will prevail at trial,” said Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for Silverstein.
Exclusive to American Free Press
Exclusive to American Free Press
by Christopher Bollyn
Larry Silverstein, lease-holder of the World Trade Center, and Lewis Eisenberg, the man who negotiated the lease, are key supporters of Israel who have both held high positions in the largest Israeli fundraising institution in the United States.Silverstein and his Australian-Israeli partner, Frank Lowy, are the real estate developers who obtained 99-year leases on the rental and retail spaces of the World Trade Center shortly before the catastrophe of Sept. 11.
Although their leased property is destroyed, the lease-holders themselves stand to gain billions of dollars from insurance.
Eisenberg, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, personally arranged the privatization of the World Trade Center property and oversaw the negotiations that delivered the leases into the private hands of Silverstein and Lowy.
Eisenberg was recently appointed finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
How did these well-known supporters of Israel come to control the property? What actually caused the buildings to collapse? There are two schools of thought.
There is the “official” theory that hijacked planes crashed into the towers and the subsequent fuel fires caused the twin towers to fall.
The second theory, however, argues that other devices, such as explosive charges, were used to collapse the towers in a kind of controlled demolition for which the planes provided a useful distraction.
There remain significant amounts of eyewitness testimony and evidence to support the theory that explosives contributed to the collapse of the twin towers and Seven World Trade Center, which fell for no apparent reason during the afternoon of Sept. 11.
Seven WTC was a 47-story building built by Silver stein on property leased from the Port Authority.
There are video recordings and photographs which appear to show explosions occurring at the base of the towers prior to and during the collapses.
In a remarkable three-dimensional image published in the German magazine GEO EPOCHE, which dedicated the December 2001 issue to 9-11, there are five or six large and deep craters to be seen beneath the rubble. At least four huge craters are seen where the twin towers stood and one is squarely at the center of Seven-WTC. Another photograph shows what appears to be a sand-colored blast originating at the base of one of the towers and growing into an immense cloud of dust.
If explosive charges were used to collapse the towers, the question of who had access to the buildings prior to 9-11 emerges. Silverstein controlled access to the towers from the end of July when he obtained the 99-year lease.
Who Silverstein is and how he obtained these leases for a fraction of their value are questions that have been completely avoided by the mainstream media.
Silverstein is the New York City commercial landlord who built Seven World Trade Center in 1987. Silverstein won, with Lowy’s Westfield America, a 99-year right-to-lease of the World Trade Center from Eisenberg, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on July 26, 2001. While Silverstein controlled the 10.6 million-square-foot office space in the WTC complex, Westfield leased the 427,000 square-foot retail mall.
Silverstein and Eisenberg have both held leadership positions with the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), a billion dollar Zionist “charity” organization.
Silverstein is a former chairman of United Jewish Appeal Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Inc. This is an umbrella organization which raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year for its network of hundreds of member Zionist agencies in the United States and Israel.
Eisenberg, who was instrumental in obtaining the lease for Silverstein, sits on the Planning Board of UJA/ United Jewish Federation.
Eisenberg was the key person in negotiating the lease for Silverstein and Westfield, who were in fact the low bidders in the final bidding process on the 110-story towers.
While the high bid came from Vornado Realty Trust, its path was reportedly blocked by demands to pay back taxes. In March 2001 the company pulled out after failing to reach a purchase agreement with Eisenberg. When Vornado pulled out, the door was opened for Silverstein and Lowy. Lowy obtained the retail lease in April while it took Silverstein until the end of July to obtain funding for the down payment.
One lender, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., accused Silverstein of misallocating insurance money paid out after the Sept. 11 attack. In a complaint filed on Jan. 14 in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the lender, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., asserts that Silver stein used some insurance money to pay lobbyists in Albany and in Washington to try to limit his liability to the victims.
Eisenberg is a “New York moneyman” and a former Democrat who supports the liberal wing of the Republican Party. He has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to “pro-choice” Republican candidates. The newly appointed finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, Eisenberg has also served as a vice president of the strong arm of the Israeli lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
When New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman appointed Eisenberg chairman of the Port Authority in February 1996, Forbes magazine said the formerly disgraced Goldman Sachs partner “got real lucky.”
“What a strange political appointment,” the magazine said, “considering the part he played in the sex scandal that rocked Goldman and the financial community in the late 1980s.”
Eisenberg quit Goldman Sachs after his secretary accused him of sexually harassing her.
“The truth ended up being that, yes, they had a brief affair, but, no, she was never harassed,” Forbes wrote, adding, “all charges were dismissed, though Eisenberg did resign.”
Silverstein is engaged in a lawsuit to double his insurance pay-off and may win as much as $7.1 billion from the insurance companies by arguing that the destruction of the towers was two insured events instead of one. The property was insured for $3.55 billion. Silverstein Properties Inc. had asked the judge to rule on the one-loss-or-two issue in a lawsuit against 20 of the 22 insurers on the property. District Judge John S. Martin Jr. rejected a motion for summary judgment in June.
A trial is scheduled Sept. 3, although a request for a delay by the insurers is under consideration.
While Silverstein Properties, a family-owned business, is “disappointed that the issue was not decided at this time, they are confident that they will prevail at trial,” said Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for Silverstein.
Exclusive to American Free Press
World's biggest hacker held
Gary is one of the many friends of codshit.com I know he visits the site and so if you're reading this Gary we're all with you man. Don't let the bastards get you down! Ok, so he committed a crime, but when that crime is committed against a government that is itself guilty of even more heinous crimes than hacking then I believe that this mitigates against the magnitude of what Gary did. Lets hope that he's put on trial here and not sent to WarMart!
A London man described as the "world's biggest computer hacker" has been arrested.
Gary McKinnon, 39, was seized by the Met's extradition unit at his Wood Green home.
The unemployed former computer engineer is accused of causing the US government $1billion of damage by breaking into its most secure computers at the Pentagon and Nasa. He is likely to be extradited to America to face eight counts of computer crime in 14 states and could be jailed for 70 years.
The former Highgate Wood comprehensive-pupil was granted bail today at Bow Street Magistrates' Court.
Most of the alleged hacking took place in 2001 and 2002. At one stage the US thought it was the work of the al Qaeda terror network.
Friends said that he broke into the networks from his home computer to try to prove his theory that the US was covering up the existence of UFOs.
He is accused of a series of hacking offences including deleting "critical" files from military computers. The US authorities said the cost of tracking him down and correcting the alleged problems was more than £570,000. The offences could also see him fined up to £950,000 if found guilty on all charges.
He was arrested yesterday evening but the US first issued an indictment against him in November 2002.
Prosecutor Paul McNulty alleged that McKinnon, known online as "Solo," had perpetrated "the biggest hack of military computers ever". He was named as the chief suspect after a series of electronic break-ins occurred over 12 months at 92 separate US military and Nasa networks.
McKinnon was also accused of hacking into the networks of six private companies and organisations.
Full story...
A London man described as the "world's biggest computer hacker" has been arrested.Gary McKinnon, 39, was seized by the Met's extradition unit at his Wood Green home.
The unemployed former computer engineer is accused of causing the US government $1billion of damage by breaking into its most secure computers at the Pentagon and Nasa. He is likely to be extradited to America to face eight counts of computer crime in 14 states and could be jailed for 70 years.
The former Highgate Wood comprehensive-pupil was granted bail today at Bow Street Magistrates' Court.
Most of the alleged hacking took place in 2001 and 2002. At one stage the US thought it was the work of the al Qaeda terror network.
Friends said that he broke into the networks from his home computer to try to prove his theory that the US was covering up the existence of UFOs.
He is accused of a series of hacking offences including deleting "critical" files from military computers. The US authorities said the cost of tracking him down and correcting the alleged problems was more than £570,000. The offences could also see him fined up to £950,000 if found guilty on all charges.
He was arrested yesterday evening but the US first issued an indictment against him in November 2002.
Prosecutor Paul McNulty alleged that McKinnon, known online as "Solo," had perpetrated "the biggest hack of military computers ever". He was named as the chief suspect after a series of electronic break-ins occurred over 12 months at 92 separate US military and Nasa networks.
McKinnon was also accused of hacking into the networks of six private companies and organisations.
Full story...
Wednesday, 8 June 2005
America's Rising Religious Zealotry
It never ceases to amaze me how the more religious a person becomes the less tolerant they seem to get. Not to mention that the more they preach, the less they seem to practise!
Some snapshots of religious zeal in the US: there are churches in Texas where 20,000 worshippers pray every Sunday; Alabama's most senior judge was dismissed for refusing to remove the Ten Commandments from his court; the re-election of George Bush returned with the support of thousands of evangelicals lured to the polls by local laws banning homosexual marriage.
Such images leave little doubt about the importance of religion in a country where more than 40 per cent of the population say they regularly attend church. But a survey has underlined the huge gulf between the US and other industrialised countries on the influence of religion in everyday life.
Despite the separation of church and state being enshrined in the US constitution, more than 40 per cent of US citizens said religious leaders should use their influence to try to sway policy-makers. In France, by contrast, 85 per cent of people said they opposed such "activism" by the clergy.
"These numbers are not surprising," Daniel Conkle, who teaches law and religion at Indiana University, told The Independent. "The US, in separating church and state, has not followed with the notion that it includes a separation of religion and politics.
"In other words, it's believed the institutions of church and state should be separate but there has never been a consensus that religious values should somehow be separated from public life or kept private."
The survey, carried out for the Associated Press by Ipsos, found that, in terms of the importance of religion to its citizens, only Mexico came close to the US. But unlike in the US, Mexicans were strongly opposed to the clergy being involved in politics an opposition to church influence rooted in their history.
The survey which questioned people in the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea and Spain found that only 2 per cent of people in the US said they did not believe in God. In France and South Korea the number of people who said they were atheists stood at 19 per cent.
The survey has again highlighted the gap between the US and Western Europe, where Pope Benedict XVI has complained that growing secularism has left churches empty. It has also reopened the debate among academics as to the reasons for the difference.
Some specialists, such as Roger Finke, a sociologist at Penn State University, point to the long history of religious freedom in the US and say it has created a greater supply of options for citizens than in other countries. That proliferation, they argue, has inspired wider observance.
"In the United States, you have an abundance of religions trying to motivate Americans to greater involvement. It makes a tremendous difference here," said Mr Finke.
Others argue that rejecting religion is a natural result of modernisation and the US is an exception to the trend. And then there are those who argue Europe is an anomaly and that people in modernised countries inevitably return to religion they yearn for tradition.
Gregg Easterbrook, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, said: "By a lot of measures, the US is the most religious of the industrialised nations."
Full story...
Some snapshots of religious zeal in the US: there are churches in Texas where 20,000 worshippers pray every Sunday; Alabama's most senior judge was dismissed for refusing to remove the Ten Commandments from his court; the re-election of George Bush returned with the support of thousands of evangelicals lured to the polls by local laws banning homosexual marriage.Such images leave little doubt about the importance of religion in a country where more than 40 per cent of the population say they regularly attend church. But a survey has underlined the huge gulf between the US and other industrialised countries on the influence of religion in everyday life.
Despite the separation of church and state being enshrined in the US constitution, more than 40 per cent of US citizens said religious leaders should use their influence to try to sway policy-makers. In France, by contrast, 85 per cent of people said they opposed such "activism" by the clergy.
"These numbers are not surprising," Daniel Conkle, who teaches law and religion at Indiana University, told The Independent. "The US, in separating church and state, has not followed with the notion that it includes a separation of religion and politics.
"In other words, it's believed the institutions of church and state should be separate but there has never been a consensus that religious values should somehow be separated from public life or kept private."
The survey, carried out for the Associated Press by Ipsos, found that, in terms of the importance of religion to its citizens, only Mexico came close to the US. But unlike in the US, Mexicans were strongly opposed to the clergy being involved in politics an opposition to church influence rooted in their history.
The survey which questioned people in the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea and Spain found that only 2 per cent of people in the US said they did not believe in God. In France and South Korea the number of people who said they were atheists stood at 19 per cent.
The survey has again highlighted the gap between the US and Western Europe, where Pope Benedict XVI has complained that growing secularism has left churches empty. It has also reopened the debate among academics as to the reasons for the difference.
Some specialists, such as Roger Finke, a sociologist at Penn State University, point to the long history of religious freedom in the US and say it has created a greater supply of options for citizens than in other countries. That proliferation, they argue, has inspired wider observance.
"In the United States, you have an abundance of religions trying to motivate Americans to greater involvement. It makes a tremendous difference here," said Mr Finke.
Others argue that rejecting religion is a natural result of modernisation and the US is an exception to the trend. And then there are those who argue Europe is an anomaly and that people in modernised countries inevitably return to religion they yearn for tradition.
Gregg Easterbrook, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, said: "By a lot of measures, the US is the most religious of the industrialised nations."
Full story...
Thursday, 2 June 2005
The Denouenent of the 'Deep Throat' Saga
by Trowbridge H. Ford
In today's highly conspiratorial world, there always has to be some release - some apparently telltale event or disclosure about what happened - to keep all the dirty linen about Anglo-American covert government from completely unraveling, whether it be a plot to assassinate some world leader, a diversion to prevent some devastating blowback from some dirty tricks, a gigantic fraud which would blacken the reputation of the governing elite, and the like. The plotters must always keep at least one step ahead of the publicists and the police in such matters.
Take, for example, the conspiracy which assassinated JFK in Dallas on November 22, 1963. No sooner did it happen than the press was increasingly filled with stories about some kind of conspiracy - Cuban agents, right-wingers in Dallas and New Orleans, the KGB, the Mafia, you name it. The plan was constructed to blame the Cubans and the KGB for the killing, but the wounding of Texas Governor John B. Connally, a leader, along with former Vice President Richard M. Nixon, in setting the President up for the shooting, prevented the plan from going ahead, as he survived his wounds, and threatened to get those responsible because he believed that he had been double-crossed.
Connally's threat completely panicked the plotters, especially when they discovered that the scapegoat they had set up at Havana's and Moscow's expense, Lee Harvey Oswald, had an iron-clad alibi, as he was standing in front of the Texas School Book Depository when the fatal shots were fired - what the AP photographer James Altgens' photograph of the shooting established, and what newspapers like The Washington Post confirmed by printing a blown-up version of it on the front page of its second section on the day after. The photo convinced even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that there was not enough evidence to convict the ex-Marine of the shooting despite all the efforts the Bureau's Dallas office had gone to in order to set him up.
In this potentially explosive situation, Jack Ruby was obliged to kill Oswald before he had any real chance of respond to the claim that he had killed JFK, much less make a convincing defense in court. The sleazy night club operator, armed with a .38 revolver, had attended the press conference that the District Attorney had given on the night of the shooting, and corrected Henry Wade when he indicated that Oswald was connected to an anti-Castro group - stating that he worked for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Once the Altgens' photograph appeared, though, Ruby had the assignment to kill LHO before he could mount a defence - what was accomplished on that Sunday, thanks to a police tipoff about his transfer from the city jail.
Once the leading suspect was dead, there was little chance of establishing his innocence in the whole affair. More important, there was no chance of getting to the bottom of the conspiracy which murdered the President.
The same kind of proactive prophylactic occurred when Britain's revenge killings in South Armagh during the fall of 1982 threatened to unravel because of the investigation by John Stalker - what the Thatcher government had been obliged to appoint because of nationalist complaints about the killing of the six, unarmed Republican volunteers. The killings had been carried out in response to the Provisional IRA bombings in Hyde Park the previous July, and were apparently committed by the Life Guards Captain Simon Hayward who had seen so many of his colleagues and mounts murdered.
When Stalker was becoming convinced that the killings were unjustified, and was looking for an MI5 tape of the shooting of 17-year-old Michael Tigue in hayloft near Lurgan - what would establish who actually killed him, and under what conditions - he was suddenly 'removed forever' from the case on May 29, 1986, and suspended from duty, charged with being criminally involved with Manchester businessman Kevin Taylor, and Simon Hayward's brother, Christopher, in drug smuggling in Spain on the catamaran, True Love. While Stalker was allowed to return to work a few months later, the inquiry ultimately fizzled out under the direction of Colin Sampson, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, because of the need keeping Simon Hayward quiet during the runup to the shooting of more unarmed Republican volunteers in March 1988 at Gibraltar.
In sum, Stalker's removal from the inquiry allowed British covert operators time to hush up the South Armagh murders, thanks to need of maintaining security for ongoing secret operations.
The same kind of preventive action against the fallout from Watergate during Nixon's administration has now occurred with a former Assistant Director of the FBI, Mark Felt, coming forward to claim that he was 'Deep Throat', the famous source within the Executive Branch, and the White House which Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein used so effectively in forcing the President's resignation. Though Felt had denied that he was 'Deep Throat' while Nixon was still in office, he admitted to his son in 2002 that he was, in fact, the source, and the corrupt media, like The Guardian, have immediately jumped on the band wagon with his admission which apparently finally ends the mystery.
The trouble with Felt's last-hour confession is that it has no credibility, given what Woodward and Bernstein put together in All the President's Men, and General Alexander M. Haig wrote in Inner Circles. The reporters, in making their articles into a book, were too revealing about who 'Deep Throat' really was, while still attempting to hide his identity. (For more on this, see my article in the Trowbridge Archive about Haig as 'Deep Throat'.) They said far too much about his working at the White House, first in the Executive Office Building, and then within its inter core to be anyone as far away as the Bureau. Then they declined to include Haig in their cast of characters - The President's Men (pp. 9-10) - though he was clearly one of Nixon's closest servants, being Deputy National Security Adviser before he became the President's Chief of Staff.
Haig compounded his problems by how he recounted his service in the White House, and dealt with the issue of who 'Deep Throat' really was. Haig was hired personally by Henry Kissinger as a military aide whose job was to keep the NSC leak-proof - what the Plumbers were hired to track down after Hoover refused to do the checks Haig and Kissinger requested. Then, in discussing his alibi for not being the mole, Haig was most unconvincing in claiming that he was elsewhere when 'Deep Throat's meetings and calls took place with Woodward, otherwise occupied completely in foreign affairs, and did not know personally either of the reporters. More important, Haig wrote this about his being the mole:
"This pusillanimous lie was given currency in 1982 by John W. Dean III in his book Lost Honor. Dean admits therein that his theory is pure speculation and that he was unable to find a single scrap of actual proof to support his thesis. Dean's accusation was false and defamatory, but lawyers advised me that it was useless to sue. Because I happened to be a former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of State, I was a public figure who could be libeled with impunity as a result of decisions of the Supreme Court that had, for all practical purposes, stripped people in public life of the traditional rights to protect their reputations." (p. 321)
This, of course, is blatantly untrue, and it is hard to imagine any two competent lawyers so claiming. No one can deliberately and falsely defame any public figure, and get away with it. The Supreme Court only permits innocent defaming during the political process. Haig could have won a bundle and exonerated himself completely if he had decided to sue Dean, and had won.
The truth of this being the case was demonstrated when Haig worked with Nixon and President Clinton to get me to say and write deliberately false claims about the ex-President - what Jim Marrs and Jim DiEugenio were attempting to accomplish through false and indirect means with me during the 1990s. (See my articles about America's plot to kill me in the archives.) If they could have gotten such statements, I am sure I would have been sued.
The reason why Haig did not sue Dean was because the President's former counsel knew better than anyone else what he was claiming - what he had gone ultimately to the greatest lengths to cover up for Haig's benefit in the end. It was Dean who got Fred Fielding, another candidate for 'Deep Throat, to make sure that Kathleen Chenow, the Plumbers' secretary, did not tell the Bureau and Watergate prosecutors anything revealing about their operations (Woodward and Bernstein, pp. 216-7) - testimony which ultimately would have led to Haig's exposure and destruction.
Instead, Haig changed Woodward's description of 'Deep Throat' into one more fitting for Felt - ..."tall, gaunt, careless in his appearance, with a tough beard that he sometimes does not shave....He thinks, talks, and acts like a lawyer. He is an expert handler of the press and a superb spotter of journalist talent...His speech is guarded, though fluent and eloquent." (p. 324) Woodward never spoke of 'Deep Throat' being tall and gaunt, his behavior was never lawyer-like, and his speech was much like Haig's.
Once Haig's false claims received considerable support, he expanded upon them for the Strobers while they were preparing Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency:
"What a lot of people don't know about Watergate is that the FBI knew more about the subject than anybody, and was feeding the press; that was Woodward and Bernstein's 'Deep Throat'. I only realized this when I was researching my own book. I always thought that 'Deep Throat was someone around the White House - Len Garment or Dave Gergen. It had to be somebody who was very coherent and also had a collective picture, and only the FBI had that, because they were working intensely on it." (p. 498)
This has to be the falsest statement ever muttered by man. The Bureau, thanks to Felt, was anything but intensely involved - avoiding the Agency like the plague in its inquiries - though Dean and the President were clamoring for it to become so, and Nixon had placed his own yes-man, L. Patrick Gray, as its acting Director to speed up its involvement in the attempted cover up. Haig's alleged lack of knowledge about White House affairs is totally laughable and unbelieveable. And while pointing in Felt's direction, he still implicates others as possible candidates in place of himself.
Now, Felt has finally emerged from the woodwork to admit that he is 'Deep Throat', though Woodward, Bernstein, and their former editor Ben Bradlee refused at first to confirm his claim, explaining that they would only do so after he dies. Of course, this meant we would have to wait a bit longer until Felt does, but thanks to public pressure by people like former Senator Mike Garvel -my old housemate from CIC back in Paris, and leaker of The Pentagon Papers to try to stem Haig's paranoia about them - who thinks Felt should get a medal for something he never did, the Post people have caved in with their false acknowledgement.
Watergate was too terrible for continued confusion about it causes and resolution. And they will certainly do nothing to change the picture when 'Deep Throat' himself actually dies.
In today's highly conspiratorial world, there always has to be some release - some apparently telltale event or disclosure about what happened - to keep all the dirty linen about Anglo-American covert government from completely unraveling, whether it be a plot to assassinate some world leader, a diversion to prevent some devastating blowback from some dirty tricks, a gigantic fraud which would blacken the reputation of the governing elite, and the like. The plotters must always keep at least one step ahead of the publicists and the police in such matters.Take, for example, the conspiracy which assassinated JFK in Dallas on November 22, 1963. No sooner did it happen than the press was increasingly filled with stories about some kind of conspiracy - Cuban agents, right-wingers in Dallas and New Orleans, the KGB, the Mafia, you name it. The plan was constructed to blame the Cubans and the KGB for the killing, but the wounding of Texas Governor John B. Connally, a leader, along with former Vice President Richard M. Nixon, in setting the President up for the shooting, prevented the plan from going ahead, as he survived his wounds, and threatened to get those responsible because he believed that he had been double-crossed.
Connally's threat completely panicked the plotters, especially when they discovered that the scapegoat they had set up at Havana's and Moscow's expense, Lee Harvey Oswald, had an iron-clad alibi, as he was standing in front of the Texas School Book Depository when the fatal shots were fired - what the AP photographer James Altgens' photograph of the shooting established, and what newspapers like The Washington Post confirmed by printing a blown-up version of it on the front page of its second section on the day after. The photo convinced even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that there was not enough evidence to convict the ex-Marine of the shooting despite all the efforts the Bureau's Dallas office had gone to in order to set him up.
In this potentially explosive situation, Jack Ruby was obliged to kill Oswald before he had any real chance of respond to the claim that he had killed JFK, much less make a convincing defense in court. The sleazy night club operator, armed with a .38 revolver, had attended the press conference that the District Attorney had given on the night of the shooting, and corrected Henry Wade when he indicated that Oswald was connected to an anti-Castro group - stating that he worked for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Once the Altgens' photograph appeared, though, Ruby had the assignment to kill LHO before he could mount a defence - what was accomplished on that Sunday, thanks to a police tipoff about his transfer from the city jail.
Once the leading suspect was dead, there was little chance of establishing his innocence in the whole affair. More important, there was no chance of getting to the bottom of the conspiracy which murdered the President.
The same kind of proactive prophylactic occurred when Britain's revenge killings in South Armagh during the fall of 1982 threatened to unravel because of the investigation by John Stalker - what the Thatcher government had been obliged to appoint because of nationalist complaints about the killing of the six, unarmed Republican volunteers. The killings had been carried out in response to the Provisional IRA bombings in Hyde Park the previous July, and were apparently committed by the Life Guards Captain Simon Hayward who had seen so many of his colleagues and mounts murdered.
When Stalker was becoming convinced that the killings were unjustified, and was looking for an MI5 tape of the shooting of 17-year-old Michael Tigue in hayloft near Lurgan - what would establish who actually killed him, and under what conditions - he was suddenly 'removed forever' from the case on May 29, 1986, and suspended from duty, charged with being criminally involved with Manchester businessman Kevin Taylor, and Simon Hayward's brother, Christopher, in drug smuggling in Spain on the catamaran, True Love. While Stalker was allowed to return to work a few months later, the inquiry ultimately fizzled out under the direction of Colin Sampson, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, because of the need keeping Simon Hayward quiet during the runup to the shooting of more unarmed Republican volunteers in March 1988 at Gibraltar.
In sum, Stalker's removal from the inquiry allowed British covert operators time to hush up the South Armagh murders, thanks to need of maintaining security for ongoing secret operations.
The same kind of preventive action against the fallout from Watergate during Nixon's administration has now occurred with a former Assistant Director of the FBI, Mark Felt, coming forward to claim that he was 'Deep Throat', the famous source within the Executive Branch, and the White House which Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein used so effectively in forcing the President's resignation. Though Felt had denied that he was 'Deep Throat' while Nixon was still in office, he admitted to his son in 2002 that he was, in fact, the source, and the corrupt media, like The Guardian, have immediately jumped on the band wagon with his admission which apparently finally ends the mystery.
The trouble with Felt's last-hour confession is that it has no credibility, given what Woodward and Bernstein put together in All the President's Men, and General Alexander M. Haig wrote in Inner Circles. The reporters, in making their articles into a book, were too revealing about who 'Deep Throat' really was, while still attempting to hide his identity. (For more on this, see my article in the Trowbridge Archive about Haig as 'Deep Throat'.) They said far too much about his working at the White House, first in the Executive Office Building, and then within its inter core to be anyone as far away as the Bureau. Then they declined to include Haig in their cast of characters - The President's Men (pp. 9-10) - though he was clearly one of Nixon's closest servants, being Deputy National Security Adviser before he became the President's Chief of Staff.
Haig compounded his problems by how he recounted his service in the White House, and dealt with the issue of who 'Deep Throat' really was. Haig was hired personally by Henry Kissinger as a military aide whose job was to keep the NSC leak-proof - what the Plumbers were hired to track down after Hoover refused to do the checks Haig and Kissinger requested. Then, in discussing his alibi for not being the mole, Haig was most unconvincing in claiming that he was elsewhere when 'Deep Throat's meetings and calls took place with Woodward, otherwise occupied completely in foreign affairs, and did not know personally either of the reporters. More important, Haig wrote this about his being the mole:
"This pusillanimous lie was given currency in 1982 by John W. Dean III in his book Lost Honor. Dean admits therein that his theory is pure speculation and that he was unable to find a single scrap of actual proof to support his thesis. Dean's accusation was false and defamatory, but lawyers advised me that it was useless to sue. Because I happened to be a former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of State, I was a public figure who could be libeled with impunity as a result of decisions of the Supreme Court that had, for all practical purposes, stripped people in public life of the traditional rights to protect their reputations." (p. 321)
This, of course, is blatantly untrue, and it is hard to imagine any two competent lawyers so claiming. No one can deliberately and falsely defame any public figure, and get away with it. The Supreme Court only permits innocent defaming during the political process. Haig could have won a bundle and exonerated himself completely if he had decided to sue Dean, and had won.
The truth of this being the case was demonstrated when Haig worked with Nixon and President Clinton to get me to say and write deliberately false claims about the ex-President - what Jim Marrs and Jim DiEugenio were attempting to accomplish through false and indirect means with me during the 1990s. (See my articles about America's plot to kill me in the archives.) If they could have gotten such statements, I am sure I would have been sued.
The reason why Haig did not sue Dean was because the President's former counsel knew better than anyone else what he was claiming - what he had gone ultimately to the greatest lengths to cover up for Haig's benefit in the end. It was Dean who got Fred Fielding, another candidate for 'Deep Throat, to make sure that Kathleen Chenow, the Plumbers' secretary, did not tell the Bureau and Watergate prosecutors anything revealing about their operations (Woodward and Bernstein, pp. 216-7) - testimony which ultimately would have led to Haig's exposure and destruction.
Instead, Haig changed Woodward's description of 'Deep Throat' into one more fitting for Felt - ..."tall, gaunt, careless in his appearance, with a tough beard that he sometimes does not shave....He thinks, talks, and acts like a lawyer. He is an expert handler of the press and a superb spotter of journalist talent...His speech is guarded, though fluent and eloquent." (p. 324) Woodward never spoke of 'Deep Throat' being tall and gaunt, his behavior was never lawyer-like, and his speech was much like Haig's.
Once Haig's false claims received considerable support, he expanded upon them for the Strobers while they were preparing Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency:
"What a lot of people don't know about Watergate is that the FBI knew more about the subject than anybody, and was feeding the press; that was Woodward and Bernstein's 'Deep Throat'. I only realized this when I was researching my own book. I always thought that 'Deep Throat was someone around the White House - Len Garment or Dave Gergen. It had to be somebody who was very coherent and also had a collective picture, and only the FBI had that, because they were working intensely on it." (p. 498)
This has to be the falsest statement ever muttered by man. The Bureau, thanks to Felt, was anything but intensely involved - avoiding the Agency like the plague in its inquiries - though Dean and the President were clamoring for it to become so, and Nixon had placed his own yes-man, L. Patrick Gray, as its acting Director to speed up its involvement in the attempted cover up. Haig's alleged lack of knowledge about White House affairs is totally laughable and unbelieveable. And while pointing in Felt's direction, he still implicates others as possible candidates in place of himself.
Now, Felt has finally emerged from the woodwork to admit that he is 'Deep Throat', though Woodward, Bernstein, and their former editor Ben Bradlee refused at first to confirm his claim, explaining that they would only do so after he dies. Of course, this meant we would have to wait a bit longer until Felt does, but thanks to public pressure by people like former Senator Mike Garvel -my old housemate from CIC back in Paris, and leaker of The Pentagon Papers to try to stem Haig's paranoia about them - who thinks Felt should get a medal for something he never did, the Post people have caved in with their false acknowledgement.
Watergate was too terrible for continued confusion about it causes and resolution. And they will certainly do nothing to change the picture when 'Deep Throat' himself actually dies.
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