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US to delay Iraq troops reductions
Monday, February 11th, 2008
The planned reduction in the number of US troops in Iraq is to be put on hold, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, indicated today.
Under a plan set out by General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, Washington had planned to withdraw five of the 20 brigades in the country by July.
More recently, however, Petraeus called for “period of evaluation” to assess the impact of such a move – a proposal that has now been backed by Gates.
“A brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense,” the defence secretary said, adding that the length of the evaluation was “one of the things we are still thinking about”.
His caution contrasted with remarks he made to troops in Baghdad yesterday.
“What a difference you made – al-Qaida routed, insurgents co-opted, levels of violence of all kinds dramatically reduced,” he told them.
“The situation in Iraq continues to remain fragile, but the Iraqi people now have an opportunity to forge a better, more secure, more prosperous future.”
Last year, the US president, George Bush, ordered five additional army brigades to Iraq as part of a “surge” in troop numbers.
One of those brigades left in December. The other four are due to withdraw by July, leaving 15 brigades – around 130,000 troops — the same number as pre surge levels.
Yesterday, Gates said Iraq’s political leaders faced hard choices about how to stabilise the country, but praised them for showing recent signs of progress towards reconciliation.
“They seem to have become energised over the last few weeks,” he added.
He said he would ask Iraqi politicians to assess the prospects for other measures including a law that would spell out power-sharing between the provinces and the national government.
Yesterday, insurgent attacks killed at least 50 people across northern Iraq.
Today, Reuters reported that two car bombs had exploded in southern Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding five others.
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‘MI6 team in Paris at time of Diana crash’
Monday, February 11th, 2008
An MI6 team was operating at the British Embassy in Paris at the time of Princess Diana’s death, her inquest has heard.
But former ambassador Lord Jay told the High Court hearing he had no reason to believe their presence had anything to do with Diana’s death in a car crash in the French capital.
Lord Jay - then known as Sir Michael Jay - said that the first he was even aware of her presence in Paris was when he was awoken with news of the crash just over an hour after the smash in the early hours of August 31, 1997.
Mohamed al Fayed, whose son Dodi Fayed was also killed in the Alma Tunnel, is convinced the crash was staged as part of an MI6 murder plot to eliminate the couple to prevent them marrying.
Mr al Fayed believes spies based at the Embassy were operating at the behest of the Duke of Edinburgh.
Asked by counsel to the inquest Ian Burnett whether the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) - better known as MI6 - had a presence at the Embassy in 1997 he confirmed that it had.
He added that there had also been a representative of the Security Service MI5 working there at the time.
He agreed with a passage from his earlier police statement which said: “There was such a team at the British Embassy in Paris staffed by members of the Secret Intelligence Service and one member of the Security Service.”
He explained: “It’s to liaise with the French authorities on issues such as counter terrorism, anti-drugs work, security issues and to share intelligence on matters of foreign policy.”
Asked if he had to be kept informed about MI6 operations in Paris he said: “Yes, if it had been a major operation which was likely to raise particular sensitivities then I would expect to have been told.”
Mr Burnett continued: “You have indicated that you would have been aware of anything significant going on, was there anything significant going on of which you were aware?”
He replied: “No”.
Mr Burnett said: “You are aware that it has been suggested that you personally ordered the embalming of the body of the Princess of Wales on the instructions of MI5 to conceal the fact that she was pregnant with Dodi’s child.”
Lord Jay replied: “There is no truth in this allegation whatsoever.”
Mr Burnett: “It has also been suggested that Lord Fellowes, who was at the time the Queen’s private secretary and also a brother-in-law of the Princess of Wales, was in Paris on the night of August 30 and had commandeered the operations room in the Embassy essentially to oversee and organise the murder of his sister-in-law. Was he in Paris?”
Lord Jay: “No. He was not.”
Earlier, the inquest heard that Mr Fayed had hinted that he and Diana were engaged.
Just days before the fatal crash, the 42-year-old rang his father’s legal adviser, Stuart Benson, to tell him he had “very exciting news”, which the lawyer interpreted to mean that the couple had decided to get married.
No other details were given during the brief call made as Mr Fayed and the Princess cruised around the Mediterranean on a luxury yacht.
But Mr Benson was asked if he was free the following Monday to discuss issues arising from the news.
The inquest has already heard that a ring was bought for the royal by Mr Fayed at the Repossi jewellers hours before their deaths on August 31, 1997.
© Independent Television News Limited 2008.
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Nutrition Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know About
Monday, February 11th, 2008
Rich Stacel | Newstarget
Today we know more about vitamins, minerals and nutrition in general then ever before, but at the same time there are various elements of the media and medical community that want to keep everyone in the dark about the true role and power that vitamins play in our health and life.
As many who study natural health, nutrition and those who subscribe to various newsletters such as this, the pharmaceutical companies are a major front in the war against nutrition. That’s because it’s been known since the turn of the last century that the cause of nearly all degenerative diseases as well as the weakening of the immune system that makes one susceptible to communicable diseases are deficiencies of various key nutrients or total lack of them altogether.
Of course this knowledge has been carefully and cleverly hidden from the public for over one hundred years now since they can’t have people learning that they can be healthy merely by taking the right nutrients and the right amounts of each. That’s why as is the case with vitamin C and many other vitamins, the RDA for most nutrients is pathetically low and barely enough to keep you alive, let alone for you to be healthy and strong.
Since the mid 1800’s, the naturopathic doctor has ceaselessly and constantly come under attack by the MD’s and organized medical community. As the mechanized view of the body and the germ theory of disease began to become more accepted along with the belief that chemicals and drugs were the way of the future, the attacks became more frequent, bold and progressed to outright lies at times. That’s because the MD, with his surgical procedures, chemical drugs, fancy concoctions and useless medical terminology had much more potential for financial gain than did the naturopath or “country doctor”. They saw the country doctor as a threat to their growing influence and livelihood as well. In fact the medical terminology that doctors use was created precisely to make the average person feel ignorant and stupid and to keep people from ever trying to diagnose or cure themselves.
The AMA was formed in 1847 specifically to protect the profits and practices of doctors, the MD, not the “country doctor” who they came to view as backwards and outdated. Of course they know that the methods and cures of the country doctor were far better, cheaper and safer than the drugs and surgery approach of the “medical doctor”, also known as the “Slash and Burn” method, but it was all about the profits, so if the AMA was going to represent any group they knew that the MD’s offered them the greatest chance at profits, growth and power. The AMA is a union created specifically for doctors, NOT patients, not to find cures, not to prevent disease, but to protect the profits of doctors. Just like any union, its job is to protect the jobs and income of its members. The AMA is not the wonderful, benign or righteous agency that it tries to convince the world that it is.
The western allopathic medical establishments knows that nutrition prevents disease and cures most non-communicable and even many communicable diseases as well. That’s why they work so hard to suppress this knowledge and why they keep trying to get nutrients like vitamin C labeled as a “drug”. They haven’t yet, but they’re not giving up on this either.
In the book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”, Dr. Weston A. Price details his discoveries in the 1920’s of primitive tribes and cultures around the world that were models of health and free of dental caries and degenerative diseases. Since he was a dentist searching for the cause of cavities (caries), that was the main focus of his book. However, he also discovered in his research and travels that a solid and irrefutable link existed between those who had cavities, crowded teeth, and “malformed” faces, and those that lacked nutrition. When the native peoples began to eat the modern processed foods devoid of real nutrients and loaded with chemicals and artificial ingredients, they too suffered the same dental and health problems as those raised on such diets. When the native peoples went back to their traditional whole foods diet, cavities that were progressing ceased and the next generation of children were born with perfect teeth and greatly improved immunity as had the previously untouched generations.
Knowledge such as this is powerful, and it’s this kind of knowledge that the “powers that be” don’t want too many people knowing about. The less real knowledge and truth that you have about how to prevent and eliminate disease and degenerative conditions with the power of nutrition, herbs, exercise, deep breathing, meditation, relaxation and many other natural and alternative methods, the more people will suffer needlessly while the people who control these organizations, including pharmaceutical companies, doctors and hospitals all get richer. The rest of us will continue to get poorer while trying to pay for this system of useless, dangerous and deadly so-called “medicines” and procedures.
The inexpensiveness and effectiveness of natural cures and the cultures that practice them, such as the Chinese, are a direct threat to the stranglehold that the western medical system has on this country and most of the world. That is one of the main reasons why many aspects of Chinese medicine were so strongly suppressed, laughed at, made fun of, ridiculed and ignored in the past thirty or so years.
It was through the actions of the patients themselves, who kept going to Chinese doctors and other natural doctors and spreading the word of how effective these methods were, that finally got the western medical establishment to start taking notice of Chinese medicine and other natural treatments. They realized that since they couldn’t suppress this any longer, they might as well admit how well it works so that they can control it, regulate it, license it and at least make some money off of it. This is especially the case with acupuncture. Even though they reject the Chinese explanations of Chi flow and balance and prefer to believe that it’s just effecting the nerves of the body or it’s an out of control placebo effect, they still allowed it to be practiced and covered by insurance as a valid and effective cure for certain illnesses.
Getting proper nutrition is vitally important, which is why I juice several times a week to make sure that I’m getting plenty of vital nutrients into my body and I can feel this as I drink the life in the juice down. What’s also interesting is that this is also a great way to help one lose weight, since juicing delivers tons of nutrients into the body; hunger often disappears for several hours or more afterward and it seems to also raise metabolism since the body is getting tons of nutrients and enzymes to function with greater efficiency and at a higher level.
I lost over twenty pounds when I started juicing about five times a week. As my appetite decreased and my taste for carrots, celery, broccoli, spinach and such increased, I no longer wanted to put pastries, pizza and doughnuts or other junk food into my body and certainly not fast food. After juicing at lunch time each day at one of my jobs, I often ate my last meal at 3 pm in the afternoon, had no dinner and was not even hungry till about 8 am the next morning. Even then I was not ravenous at all and could have easily gone till lunch without eating anything at all. That’s because when you’re hungry, your body is not so much craving the solid matter. . . it’s craving the nutrients in foods, real nutrients from natural, whole foods. Since juicing delivers large amounts of these nutrients to the body in liquid form, your body has plenty of nutrients in reserve to produce what it needs, so hunger simply goes into a stand-by mode until the cells tell the liver and brain once again that more nutrients are needed, at which point you start to feel hungry again.
You’re also getting these nutrients in a more readily bioavailable form since the nutrients are also being delivered with tons of natural plant enzymes, which again take a great load off the pancreas since the body does not have to produce large quantities of enzymes to digest solid matter. Of course juicing is never a long term substitute for real, solid whole foods, but doing short term juice fasts and juicing daily or at least several times a week is a vital and fantastic way to ensure that you’re getting large amounts of necessary nutrients in an unadulterated form each time you juice.
I mentioned above a little about the liver and brain receiving signals from the cells. The cells communicate with the rest of the body using energies very similar to light. A physicist by the name of Popp has demonstrated this in his many experiments with cellular communication. He started this work because the modern idea that the cells are all communicating via chemical messages simply did not hold up. Cells were receiving various signals far too quickly to be explained by chemical reactions. His research showed that in fact the whole body is communicating via energy in the light spectrum and that this communication goes on at nearly the speed of light. We are indeed all “luminous beings”. This is also why getting out into the sun for 10-15 minutes a day is absolutely vital, not only for the production of vitamin D, but so that your cells can properly communicate with each other and especially the brain. The Chinese and particularly the Taoists practice visual exercises called “Administering Sunbeams” early in the morning and late in the afternoon to ensure that the brain and body get adequate amounts of UV rays from the sun. I’ll talk more about this in a later article. The body does talk and has its own language of communication, it’s absolutely amazing!
In regards to the liver, in Chinese medicine it’s been known for centuries that the liver and spleen are very important for digestion. They are given a special relationship in the five element theory of Chinese medicine which teaches that each organ has solid ties with the others and that there is a definite cause and effect relationship at work. For example, the Chinese have known that the stomach and spleen are linked pairs. This is one of the strongest inter-organ relationships in the body. When the body needs nutrients and even more then just nutrients, but Chi, the liver, which is the vitamin storehouse of the body, sends a signal to the spleen (and stomach by extension) that it requires energy. The spleen, which gives its energy to the mind and is responsible for concentration and faith in Chinese medicine, then signals the stomach and brain that nutrients are needed and the brain interprets this and starts to send out a signal back to the stomach. We feel this as the beginnings of hunger. So naturally, we grab something to eat. When we were all eating real foods from nature, we got lots of nutrients, fiber, bulk matter, sunlight and earth energy in those natural foods and the various physical and energy systems of the human body were satisfied. This kept intense foods craving and bingeing to a minimum because those cravings simply never manifested themselves to the degree that we see today. This is precisely because so many people are consuming nutrient-, energy- and enzyme-dead foods, that the body is in a constant state of nutritional and energy deficiency. Because of this, the liver is not being given the nutrients, enzymes or bio-energy (chi) that it needs, so the feeling of hunger or of never feeling satisfied is nearly always “on” to some degree in most people today.
When you follow a whole foods diet, which includes juicing with lots of fresh vegetables that are nutrient and enzyme dense, you’re giving your body not only the physical nutrients and enzymes that it needs, but because such foods are alive, there is also the vital and indisputable non-physical element of Chi present in the foods that the body also requires to convert all those nutrients into other chemical compounds, hormones and enzymes to carry out all its functions. When we eat processed foods such as sugar, which leeches calcium from the bones and teeth and nutrients from the liver, we’re stripping away the nutrients needed and not giving the body what’s truly needed for us to be healthy, feel great and live long and happy lives.
See, the body is very smart. It knows what is natural and good for it and what is not. It knows that real foods have nutrients, vitamins, minerals and energy present in them. Most other man-made garbage is treated as a toxin by the body. The liver takes care of the nutrient part and the spleen extracts the Chi or energy from foods. But when we consume man-made junk foods and useless stomach fillers such as doughnuts, cakes, candies, cookies, refined white breads, pastries and more, the body senses the various non-organic and foreign chemicals in these foods and the almost total lack of nutrients. The body must have nutrients to digest those foods, so it must somehow “borrow” the nutrients that it needs to digest this “food” from the liver, because the body can’t digest them without these nutrients present.
Chemicals that the body cannot digest are considered foreign and toxic by the body and are moved to the eliminatory organs for excretion and elimination from the body. If it can’t eliminate it, it does the next best thing, which is to “isolate” it away from the vital internal organs. It mostly does this by storing such foreign matter in the fatty tissues, the fascia between the muscles and the joints. In the case of the latter, this becomes one of the main causes of arthritis which is the body’s attempt to store dangerous crystalline structures formed from the consumption of dangerous and unnatural chemical compounds away from the organs. Interesting that your computer anti-virus software also does the same thing when it can’t eliminate a virus from the system, it “quarantines” it away so it does not damage the operating system or other critical files.
Getting proper amounts of vitamins, minerals and nutrients is absolutely vital for health, regeneration, strength, happiness and longevity. Just as a lack of vitamin C causes rickets and scurvy, just as a sufficient lack of the “B” vitamins can cause severe illness and eventually death, so too the lack of nutrients in our bodies causes slow degeneration of the body and eventual premature death. Very famous fitness gurus of the 1950’s once said “If man makes it, don’t eat it” and “It’s not what you do some of the time that counts, it’s what you do all of the time that counts.”
We have to be aware of our nutrient intake every day, not just some days and not others. In this modern, fast-paced world it’s hard to make sure we’re getting all that we need. That’s why taking a good multi-vitamin on a daily basis is very important. A good multi is not your “once a day” vitamins popularly advertised. I recommend the “Alive-Whole Food Energizer” as my number one multivitamin. That’s because this product, made by Nature’s Way is a whole food vitamin, meaning its not synthesized by man, but merely whole natural foods compressed into a tablet form. Some of the ingredients are even organic. It has tons of great stuff such as all the main vitamins and minerals in very good amounts for most, plus the following: “Green food/Spirulina blend, Digestive enzyme blend, Amino Acid complex, Garden Veggie blend, Orchard fruit blend, Myco defense mushroom blend with about a dozen mushrooms known to increase immunity including Reishi and Shiitake, Omega fatty acid blend and a vitamin C complex all from natural sources”. Always remember that it’s never a substitute for consuming real, healthy and preferably organic natural raw foods from nature, untouched by man.
For some further reading on the topic of nutrition and its relationship to health and degeneration, read “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” by Weston A. Price and “Pottenger’s Cats: A study in nutrition” by Francis Marion Pottenger.
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How The Democrats Sold Out In Iraq
Monday, February 11th, 2008
MATT TAIBBI | Rolling Stone
Elected to end the war, Democrats have surrendered to Bush on Iraq and betrayed the peace movement for their own political ends
Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.
Solidifying his reputation as one of the biggest pussies in U.S. political history, Reid explained his decision to refocus his party’s energies on topics other than ending the war by saying he just couldn’t fit Iraq into his busy schedule. “We have the presidential election,” Reid said recently. “Our time is really squeezed.”
There was much public shedding of tears among the Democratic leadership, as Reid, Pelosi and other congressional heavyweights expressed deep sadness that their valiant charge up the hill of change had been thwarted by circumstances beyond their control — that, as much as they would love to continue trying to end the catastrophic Iraq deal, they would now have to wait until, oh, 2009 to try again. “We’ll have a new president,” said Pelosi. “And I do think at that time we’ll take a fresh look at it.”
Pelosi seemed especially broken up about having to surrender on Iraq, sounding like an NFL coach in a postgame presser, trying with a straight face to explain why he punted on first-and-goal. “We just didn’t have any plays we liked down there,” said the coach of the 0-15 Dems. “Sometimes you just have to play the field-position game….”
In reality, though, Pelosi and the Democrats were actually engaged in some serious point-shaving. Working behind the scenes, the Democrats have systematically taken over the anti-war movement, packing the nation’s leading group with party consultants more interested in attacking the GOP than ending the war. “Our focus is on the Republicans,” one Democratic apparatchik in charge of the anti-war coalition declared. “How can we juice up attacks on them?”
The story of how the Democrats finally betrayed the voters who handed them both houses of Congress a year ago is a depressing preview of what’s to come if they win the White House. And if we don’t pay attention to this sorry tale now, while there’s still time to change our minds about whom to nominate, we might be stuck with this same bunch of spineless creeps for four more years. With no one but ourselves to blame.
The controversy over the Democratic “strategy” to end the war basically comes down to whom you believe. According to the Reid-Pelosi version of history, the Democrats tried hard to force President Bush’s hand by repeatedly attempting to tie funding for the war to a scheduled withdrawal. Last spring they tried to get him to eat a timeline and failed to get the votes to override a presidential veto. Then they retreated and gave Bush his money, with the aim of trying again after the summer to convince a sufficient number of Republicans to cross the aisle in support of a timeline.
But in September, Gen. David Petraeus reported that Bush’s “surge” in Iraq was working, giving Republicans who might otherwise have flipped sufficient cover to continue supporting the war. The Democrats had no choice, the legend goes, but to wait until 2009, in the hopes that things would be different under a Democratic president.
Democrats insist that the reason they can’t cut off the money for the war, despite their majority in both houses, is purely political. “George Bush would be on TV every five minutes saying that the Democrats betrayed the troops,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Then he glumly adds another reason. “Also, it just wasn’t going to happen.”
Why it “just wasn’t going to happen” is the controversy. In and around the halls of Congress, the notion that the Democrats made a sincere effort to end the war meets with, at best, derisive laughter. Though few congressional aides would think of saying so on the record, in private many dismiss their party’s lame anti-war effort as an absurd dog-and-pony show, a calculated attempt to score political points without ever being serious about bringing the troops home.
“Yeah, the amount of expletives that flew in our office alone was unbelievable,” says an aide to one staunchly anti-war House member. “It was all about the public show. Reid and Pelosi would say they were taking this tough stand against Bush, but if you actually looked at what they were sending to a vote, it was like Swiss cheese. Full of holes.”
In the House, some seventy Democrats joined the Out of Iraq caucus and repeatedly butted heads with Reid and Pelosi, arguing passionately for tougher measures to end the war. The fight left some caucus members bitter about the party’s failure. Rep. Barbara Lee of California was one of the first to submit an amendment to cut off funding unless it was tied to an immediate withdrawal. “I couldn’t even get it through the Rules Committee in the spring,” Lee says.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a fellow caucus member, says Democrats should have refused from the beginning to approve any funding that wasn’t tied to a withdrawal. “If we’d been bold the minute we got control of the House — and that’s why we got the majority, because the people of this country wanted us out of Iraq — if we’d been bold, even if we lost the votes, we would have gained our voice.”
An honest attempt to end the war, say Democrats like Woolsey and Lee, would have involved forcing Bush to execute his veto and allowing the Republicans to filibuster all they wanted. Force a showdown, in other words, and use any means necessary to get the bloodshed ended.
“Can you imagine Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert taking no for an answer the way Reid and Pelosi did on Iraq?” asks the House aide in the expletive-filled office. “They’d find a way to get the votes. They’d get it done somehow.”
But any suggestion that the Democrats had an obligation to fight this good fight infuriates the bund of hedging careerists in charge of the party. In fact, nothing sums up the current Democratic leadership better than its vitriolic criticisms of those recalcitrant party members who insist on interpreting their 2006 mandate as a command to actually end the war. Rep. David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee and a key Pelosi-Reid ally, lambasted anti-war Democrats who “didn’t want to get specks on those white robes of theirs.” Obey even berated a soldier’s mother who begged him to cut off funds for the war, accusing her and her friends of “smoking something illegal.”
Rather than use the vast power they had to end the war, Democrats devoted their energy to making sure that “anti-war activism” became synonymous with “electing Democrats.” Capitalizing on America’s desire to end the war, they hijacked the anti-war movement itself, filling the ranks of peace groups with loyal party hacks. Anti-war organizations essentially became a political tool for the Democrats — one operated from inside the Beltway and devoted primarily to targeting Republicans.
This supposedly grass-roots “anti-war coalition” met regularly on K Street, the very capital of top-down Beltway politics. At the forefront of the groups are Thomas Matzzie and Brad Woodhouse of Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq, the leader of the anti-war lobby. Along with other K Street crusaders, the two have received iconic treatment from The Washington Post and The New York Times, both of which depicted the anti-war warriors as young idealist-progressives in shirtsleeves, riding a mirthful spirit into political combat — changing the world is fun!
But what exactly are these young idealists campaigning for? At its most recent meeting, the group eerily echoed the Reid-Pelosi “squeezed for time” mantra: Retreat from any attempt to end the war and focus on electing Democrats. “There was a lot of agreement that we can draw distinctions between anti-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans,” a spokeswoman for Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq announced.
What the Post and the Times failed to note is that much of the anti-war group’s leadership hails from a consulting firm called Hildebrand Tewes — whose partners, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, served as staffers for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). In addition, these anti-war leaders continue to consult for many of the same U.S. senators whom they need to pressure in order to end the war. This is the kind of conflict of interest that would normally be an embarrassment in the activist community.
Worst of all is the case of Woodhouse, who came to Hildebrand Tewes after years of working as the chief mouthpiece for the DSCC, where he campaigned actively to re-elect Democratic senators who supported the Iraq War in the first place. Anyone bothering to look — and clearly the Post and the Times did not before penning their ardent bios of Woodhouse — would have found the youthful idealist bragging to newspapers before the Iraq invasion about the pro-war credentials of North Carolina candidate Erskine Bowles. “No one has been stronger in this race in supporting President Bush in the War on Terror and his efforts to effect a regime change in Iraq,” boasted the future “anti-war” activist Woodhouse.
With guys like this in charge of the anti-war movement, much of what has passed for peace activism in the past year was little more than a thinly veiled scheme to use popular discontent over the war to unseat vulnerable Republicans up for re-election in 2008. David Sirota, a former congressional staffer whose new book, The Uprising, excoriates the Democrats for their failure to end the war, expresses disgust at the strategy of targeting only Republicans. “The whole idea is based on this insane fiction that there is no such thing as a pro-war Democrat,” he says. “Their strategy allows Democrats to take credit for being against the war without doing anything to stop it. It’s crazy.”
Justin Raimondo, the uncompromising editorial director of Antiwar.com, regrets contributing twenty dollars to Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq. “Not only did they use it to target Republicans,” he says, “they went after the ones who were on the fence about Iraq.” The most notorious case involved Lincoln Chafee, a moderate from Rhode Island who lost his Senate seat in 2006. Since then, Chafee has taken shots at Democrats like Reid, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, all of whom campaigned against him despite having voted for the war themselves.
“Look, I understand partisan politics,” says Chafee, who now concedes that voters were correct to punish him for his war vote. “I just find it amusing that those who helped get us into this mess now say we need to change the Senate — because we’re in a mess.”
The really tragic thing about the Democratic surrender on Iraq is that it’s now all but guaranteed that the war will be off the table during the presidential campaign. Once again — it happened in 2002, 2004 and 2006 — the Democrats have essentially decided to rely on the voters to give them credit for being anti-war, despite the fact that, for all the noise they’ve made to the contrary, in the end they’ve done nothing but vote for war and cough up every dime they’ve been asked to give, every step of the way.
Even beyond the war, the Democrats have repeatedly gone limp-dick every time the Bush administration so much as raises its voice. Most recently, twelve Democrats crossed the aisle to grant immunity to phone companies who participated in Bush’s notorious wiretapping program. Before that, Democrats caved in and confirmed Mike Mukasey as attorney general after he kept his middle finger extended and refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Democrats fattened by Wall Street also got cold feet about upsetting the country’s gazillionaires, refusing to close a tax loophole that rewarded hedge-fund managers with a tax rate less than half that paid by ordinary citizens.
But the war is where they showed their real mettle. Before the 2006 elections, Democrats told us we could expect more specifics on their war plans after Election Day. Nearly two years have passed since then, and now they are once again telling us to wait until after an election to see real action to stop the war. In the meantime, of course, we’re to remember that they’re the good guys, the Republicans are the real enemy, and, well, go Hillary! Semper fi! Yay, team!
How much of this bullshit are we going to take? How long are we supposed to give the Reids and Pelosis and Hillarys of the world credit for wanting, deep down in their moldy hearts, to do the right thing?
Look, fuck your hearts, OK? Just get it done. Because if you don’t, sooner or later this con is going to run dry. It may not be in ‘08, but it’ll be soon. Even Americans can’t be fooled forever.
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More NWO Inside Trading Pre-9/11
Monday, February 11th, 2008
Jim Hogue | Baltimore Chronicle
Had an investigation been done into the crime of failing to file the “currency transaction reports” in August 2001, then we would know who made the cash withdrawals in $100 bills amounting to the $5 billion surge.
When reviewing the record of July and August of 2001, Bill Bergman noticed a $5 billion surge in the currency component of the M1 money supply—the third largest such increase since 1947. Bergman asked about this anomaly—and was removed from his investigative duties.
It’s been over six years since 9/11, but U.S. regulatory entities have been slow to follow through with reports about the complex financial transactions that occurred just prior to and following the attacks. Such research could shed light on such questions as who was behind them—and who benefited—and could help lay to rest the rumors that have been festering.
Warning bells about anomalies in the fiscal sector were sounded in the summer of 2001, but not heeded.
Among those who has since raised questions was Bill Bergman. As a financial market analyst for the Federal Reserve, he was assigned in 2003 to review the record of July and August of 2001. He noticed an unusual surge in the currency component of the M1 money supply (cash circulating outside of banks) during that period. The surge totaled over $5 billion above the norm for a two-month increase.
The increase in August alone was the third largest single monthly increase since 1947, even after a significantly above-average month in July.
Surges in the currency component of M1 are often the result of people withdrawing their cash to protect themselves lest some anticipated disaster (such as Y2K) befall the economy. In January of 1991 a surge was recorded (the then second-largest since ’47), which could be attributed to “war-time hoarding” before the Iraq I invasion, but could also be attributed to financial maneuverings and liquefying of assets relating to the BCCI enforcement proceedings.
Bergman points out that the August 2001 withdrawals may have been, to a large extent, caused by the Argentinian banking crisis that was occurring at the time. However, he raises the point that no explanation has yet fully answered the important question: Why was the cashing out of billions of dollars just before the 9/11 attacks never investigated?
It’s possible that the answer to this question is also the answer to the other follow-the-money questions surrounding 9/11; and despite an embarrassing heap of evidence, neither the press, nor Congress, nor any agency with investigative responsibility has done its job on our behalf. On the contrary, their inaction might reasonably be construed as a cover-up.
Bergman “followed the money,” including developing a framework for working with money-laundering data and “suspicious activity” reports for monitoring and investigating terrorism. The questions he asked about what happened during the summer of 2001 should have led to investigations, which should have resulted in the prosecution of those with foreknowledge of the attacks.
Those who follow the history of the 9/11 fact-finding movement know that there is a laundry-list of unanswered questions that are just as compelling as those put forth by Bergman.
And there is also a laundry-list of whistle-blowers who have been fired and subsequently ignored. So it is not at all surprising that Bergman was removed from his investigative duties, and that his concerns were not publicly addressed.
Bergman’s supervisor instructed him to follow up on an unanswered question he had raised pertaining to an August 2, 2001 letter from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to the 12 Reserve Banks. This letter urged scrutiny of suspicious activity reports. Bergman learned of the pervasiveness of the warnings of the 9/11 attacks, and wondered how thoroughly these warnings had permeated the financial system.
In this capacity as Federal Reserve investigative point-man, and with his money-laundering portfolio being guided by his supervisor’s directive, he asked the Board why they had issued their August 2, 2001 directive, and whether this related to any heightened intelligence of a terrorist threat. His position was then eliminated, and a crucial investigation was terminated before it could even begin.
Another 9/11 Commission Misrepresentation
Footnote 28 of the Staff Monograph on Terrorist Financing from the official 9/11 Commission Report states that the National Money-laundering Strategy Report for 2001 “didn’t mention terrorist financing in any of its 50 pages.”
True? No. The NMLS Report mentions it 17 times.
One gets the impression that the commission staff (under Philip Zelikow) was trying to paint the picture that there wasn’t a lot of co-operation between those involved in counterterrorism and the banking regulators in 2001.
Why do they paint this picture, inasmuch as the contrary is the case? In fact, anti-terrorism was an important element of the National Money Strategy, and it was included and emphasized in its Report annually. It may have been part of the reason why the August 2, 2001 letter urging scrutiny of suspicious activity reports was issued in the first place.
In turn, the billions in currency shipments of July and August 2001 are completely omitted in the 9/11 Commission Report.
I make bold to point out that the official story-line is that the attacks were accomplished by “the evil-doers” on a shoe-string budget with little money changing hands. Therefore, according to Zelikow et al., it is pointless to look at large flows of money in an investigation of the attacks. That makes perfect sense—unless you happen to have a brain.
To state the obvious, there are two reasons why Zelikow et al. made the false statement regarding there having been no references to terrorism in the National Money-laundering Strategy Report.
One reason could be to justify and encourage more scrutiny (legal or otherwise) of small transactions generally, e.g. via USAPA, and the other could be to establish (read: invent) a reason for missing the evidence pertaining to the attacks. (’Transactions too small. No one could find.’) And since the real money trail points to foreknowledge within the financial community at large, and, possibly, the Federal Reserve specifically, the “low-budget terrorism” story-line that the 9/11 Commission had established needed to be protected.
If such a lack of attentiveness to a financial transaction of $5 billion goes unnoticed in August 2001, then a reason had to be established for this lack of attention. And Bergman’s attentiveness to the Board of Governor’s August 2 letter was the fly in the ointment, as this letter proves that the Board was indeed attentive to suspicious transactions, even very, very large ones. Bergman’s question of “Why” is therefore key to yet another avenue of inquiry.
All the News that’s Permissible to Print
Note that a few dollars sent to an Islamic charity could warrant arrests, investigations, front-page stories, and, sometimes, torture and many years in jail. That’s Propaganda 101: ‘Large amounts of money do not fund major acts of terrorism. Small amounts do. Small amounts covered the 9/11 tab, therefore large amounts didn’t.’ The news coverage, creating high-profile prosecutions for relatively small transactions, reinforces this scenario.
With this in mind, we suggest that the reader follow the story of Mark Siljander (major coverage) on the one hand, and also follow the Times UK reports from Sibel Edmonds (verboten in the US mainstream press) on the other hand. Edmonds told me recently of the major foreign media outlets that had offered to report her story. Not one major outlet did so in the US.
R.T. Naylor suggests, in his wonderful book Satanic Purses, that any major terrorist event that involves a lot of money is ’state terrorism,’ and this is independently confirmed by Sibel Edmonds’ statements as to the enormous sums changing hands at the time of the 9/11 attacks. I suggest that her testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee (Leahy and Grassley) gave the lie to the official financial myth of 9/11.
If Bergman had been allowed to continue his investigation, I suggest that he would have uncovered the same thing. Note that the drug money and other illicit transactions described by Edmonds occurred during the same time period, and the amounts in the billions are comparable.
The Law
To members of the constabulary: the operable statutes are
1) The 1970 Bank Secrecy Act that imposed new financial reporting requirements to facilitate the tracing of questionable transactions and
2) the 1986 Money Laundering Control Act that criminalized the act of money-laundering.
Also operable, and of particular relevance in a historical context, is the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act that was relied upon in October of 1942 to seize the assets of “Hitler’s Bankers in America,” Union Banking, (involving bank vice president Prescott Bush under his father-in-law and bank president, George Walker).
The law is not always followed, and the required “currency transaction reports” are sometimes not filed. The 9/11 Commission Report and the National Money-laundering Strategy Report for 2001 did not identify those who are involved with large cash transactions. Had the paperwork been done in August of 2001, or an investigation done into the crime of failing to file the “currency transaction reports,” then we would know who made the cash withdrawals in $100 bills amounting to the $5 billion surge.
Information about what transpired took years to develop after the fact. For example, the Federal Reserve fined United Bank of Switzerland and Riggs Bank in 2004.
Mr. Bergman states that he doesn’t want to be a dog barking up the wrong tree, but the authorities, apparently under orders from our top officials, are preventing a standard investigation and the most obvious prosecutorial methodology from going forth.
Congress could step in; a prosecutor could step up. But don’t hold your breath.
Jim Hogue, a former teacher, is now an actor who tours his performance of Ethan Allen. He also operates a small farm in Calais, VT. His seminal articles about Sibel Edmonds and CIA Whistleblower “Miss Moneypenny” may be found in this newspaper’s archives. Bill Bergman currently works in Chicago as an equity analyst for a private sector firm. From 1998 to 2004 he was a senior financial market analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, where his areas of expertise included Insolvency Issues in Derivatives Markets, Money Laundering, and Ethics and Payment System Policy. He holds an M.B.A. in Finance and an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.
Have Your Say: More NWO Inside Trading Pre-9/11
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How Karl Rove and Torture Influenced the 9/11 Report
Monday, February 11th, 2008
A 9/11 commission chief answers to allegations that he let Karl Rove influence the probe investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
The following is a two-part transcript on the 9/11 Commission Report recently conducted by Democracy Now!. The first explores the role that Karl Rove may have played in influencing the report’s findings, and the second looks at how information gained through torture form a major part of of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Former 9/11 Commission Chief Philip Zelikow on Allegations He Secretly Allowed Karl Rove & White House to Influence 9/11 Probe
Philip Shenon, author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, recently suggested on Democracy Now! that Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, sought to minimize the Bush administration’s responsibility for failing to prevent the September 11th attacks. Shenon also revealed that Karl Rove repeatedly called Zelikow during the probe. In the following interview, Zelikow responds in his first broadcast interview since the publication of Shenon’s book.
Democracy Now! Co-host Juan Gonzalez: I’d like to ask you, Philip Zelikow, on the issue of — the book by Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, raises obviously some disturbing criticism, in addition, about the Commission’s work. I was struck in particular by the questions he raised about your communications with Karl Rove during that period and also that the issue of whether you sought to have your secretary remove the logs of your phone calls with Karl Rove during that period. Could you respond to those issues raised by Shenon?
Philip Zelikow: Well, not only can I respond to them, the commissioners actually have responded and will respond to anyone who asks them, because I was authorized by the Commission to talk to White House officials regularly, as was the general counsel, Dan Marcus. But on this business of Rove, it’s a little ironic, since I don’t even really know Rove. We had two brief contacts that had to do with University of Virginia business, because I used to direct a presidential research center. In both cases, we handed off the issues to others. The university actually has records on this matter. I told Shenon all of this.
The business about phone logs, actually two of the three people who took my calls don’t even remember the story. This appears to be a garble having to do with whether the message slips would be left out on the counter. I mean, this –
Amy Goodman: Well, let me ask you directly this very straightforward allegation of Philip Shenon, that he said that you called in your secretary, shut the door, informed her she was no longer to keep phone logs of your contacts with the White House. She got so alarmed that she — thinking it was improper, that she went to the chief lawyer for the Commission to alert him about what’s happened. Did you tell her not to keep logs of your White House calls?
Zelikow: Yes, well, if someone will just go talk to the chief lawyer of the Commission, you don’t have to rely on my account of this. I mean, there other people who have knowledge of these facts. And there’s no there there.
Goodman: You did not tell her not to keep logs.
Zelikow: There are no phone logs for the Commission. There are no phone — the Commission had no phone logs. So I couldn’t tell her not to keep logs in a situation where the Commission didn’t have phone logs.
Goodman: She kept your logs.
Zelikow: No, I did not have any phone logs.
Goodman: So you’re saying you did not — this is a completely fabricated story?
Zelikow: I did not have phone logs. This is a garble of something that’s probably come second — you know, two or three layers removed from people who don’t actually understand the way our office worked. But no one in the office thought that I was concealing anything from the commissioners, and the commissioners don’t think I was concealing anything from them, because they were briefed on all these contacts.
And they also knew very well what my relationship with the White House was, since, as the commissioners have recently put it, Zelikow was the White House’s biggest problem. And they, the commissioners, if you will just call them and ask them, will point out that I was actually a source of constant trouble for the White House, and the White House had hoped that the Commission would put someone else in my job. And in fact, the White House’s biggest supporters, like Bill Safire, were slamming me in their columns during 2004, because I was leading the Commission to knock down the theories they supported.
Gonzalez: There appears to be, at least according to Shenon, one commissioner, Max Cleland, who did raise questions about what was happening on the Commission, and he was removed, according to Shenon, because of his — or shortly after raising his criticisms of what he thought were cover-ups occurring in the Commission. He was removed. Is there any accuracy to that Shenon claim?
Zelikow: He was not removed. Max resigned from the Commission. There are commissioners who know very well the circumstances of Max’s resignation. And if anyone wants to know more about this, he should talk to either Max or Tom Daschle or the commissioners involved, because Max resigned on his own and quite voluntarily for very personal reasons that commissioners know about, but which I was not a part of at all.
Goodman: One of the points that Philip Shenon makes in his book, The Commission, is not only your relationship — your ongoing relationship with Rove, but with Condoleezza Rice, which went way back before the Commission, of course, that you co-authored a book with her.
Zelikow: May I just stop you, though? When you say my “ongoing relationship with Karl Rove,” I had no ongoing relationship with Karl Rove. I’ve never worked with Karl Rove. I’ve never had any political dealings with Karl Rove at all in my life. So this is — your question just kind of assumes things that just aren’t true.
Goodman: He talks about –
Zelikow: Now, I have had a relationship with Condi Rice, sure.
Goodman: — conversations that you had with Karl Rove at the White House and also a longtime relationship with Condoleezza Rice and talks about –
Zelikow: Sure.
Goodman: In the book, he talks about how the staff felt pressured and that any negative references to Condoleezza Rice in her role in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks was whitewashed in the report, because of pressure from you, her friend, her co-author, longtime colleague.
Zelikow: But, you know, Shenon doesn’t say that.
Goodman: Well, he does argue –
Zelikow: Shenon doesn’t say the report was — excuse me, Shenon does not say the report was “whitewashed,” quote/unquote, in any way at all.
Goodman: Well, let me say that he talks about the pressure that high-level staffers felt when talking — when writing about Condoleezza Rice.
Zelikow: Oh. Well, why don’t you — you or any journalist should call up the high-level staffers and ask them. And ask them whether or not they felt that they were bullied or pressured. The leader of that team, who worked in the Clinton White House, I’ll add, has gone on the record with the Associated Press saying that their team did not feel bullied in any way at all. He is happy to talk to any reporter about this. Another member of the staff who plays a very prominent role in Shenon’s account wrote to all the commissioners, reached out to all of them, and described Shenon’s account as, quote, “a case study in hype,” close quote. But journalists — so journalists who want to check this out, go talk to them. You don’t have to take my word for it. Go ask them if they felt pressured.
Of course, the irony in all of this was, at the time, the White House’s supporters were denouncing me, and here, three-and-a-half years later, I’m being attacked from the other side. The commissioners themselves don’t feel that they were — the commissioners feel that they understood exactly how I was running the Commission staff and how I was doing the work. They had transparency into what was going on. And I think they can speak for themselves now on the final product. But Shenon never alleges –
Goodman: What Shenon argues, what he argues –
Zelikow: — that any key facts were left out of the report.
Goodman: What he argues is that you sought to intimidate staff to avoid damaging findings for President Bush, who at the time was running for reelection, as well as references to Condoleezza Rice in any damaging way.
Zelikow: He — you’re saying he says “sought to intimidate,” quote/unquote?
Goodman: Yes.
Zelikow: I don’t think so.
Goodman: This is what Shenon alleges in The Commission, in his new book.
Zelikow: Well, as I — I mean, anyone who was in the White House at the time would find that accusation ridiculous. But, as I say, talk to the staffers. Ask them. Ask them if they thought that I was trying to intimidate them. The leader of the team is happy to talk to any reporters who will ask. So what I’m trying to do is, I don’t want to get into an argument where I’m saying, you know, Shenon says this, Zelikow says that. You don’t have to trust me or take my word for it. Go to the commissioners, go to the staffers, many of whom worked for Democratic administrations. I worked for one month on a transition team. Our general counsel had been the number three person in Janet Reno’s Justice Department.
*****
The 9/11 Commission & Torture: How Information Gained Through Waterboarding & Harsh Interrogations Form Major Part of 9/11 Commission Report
A new analysis by NBC News reveals that more than a quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Commission Report refer to controversial interrogation techniques. Yet, Commission staffers did not question the CIA about its techniques. They even ordered a second round of interrogations in early 2004 to get more information from the detainees.
Democracy Now! Co-host Juan Gonzalez: CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged Tuesday that the Agency had used the interrogation technique known as waterboarding on three individuals since the attacks of September 11th. Hayden also claimed the CIA has practiced what he called “enhanced interrogation techniques” on one-third of the around 100 prisoners he says have been detained. Hayden made the admission in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Have Your Say: How Karl Rove and Torture Influenced the 9/11 Report
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Secrecy: Update laws on openness
Monday, February 11th, 2008
“It being essential to the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government and to the maintenance of a democratic society that public business be performed in an open and public manner, and that citizens be advised of and be aware of the performance of public officials and the deliberations and decisions that go into the making of public policy, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the State of Mississippi that the formation and determination of public policy is public business and shall be conducted at open meetings except as otherwise provided herein.”
- Open Meetings Act, 1975
The legislative declaration at the beginning of Mississippi’s Open Meetings Act is a practical statement for the need for open government.
It is “essential” to the operation of our government that citizens be aware of the actions of public officials in determining the policies that affect their lives. While this idea is generally accepted, it is not always practiced.
Public officials, facing controversial decisions, or even worse, taking action they intentionally want to hide, shut the public out. Documents that detail the actions of government, often involving the use of taxpayer money, are hidden from public view.
Mississippi’s Open Meetings Act and the Open Records Act state the intention of openness, but do not adequately provide the practical requirements under law to ensure it.
The Open Meetings Act has a list of exceptions. While some are valid, including sensitive personnel issues and proprietary matters such as the purchase of land, the exemptions are too many and too broad.
Worse, exemptions and procedures that were intended for specific valid purposes are interpreted so broadly as to make the law useless. One example is that some law enforcement agencies close their records under the guise of protecting investigative material. Basic incident reports on crimes - information that involves public safety - are often hidden.
Agencies close meetings based on broad definitions of “personnel matters,” or possible “litigation.” Too often, the law is only as valid as the good intentions of the public officials.
Often, seeking enforcement of the laws requires expensive litigation, which puts a chilling effect on private citizens seeking open government.
Open government is promoted by the media, but it is not a media issue - it is a public issue. Any citizen should be able to observe the action of government officials or have access to public records. It’s that simple.
Today begins a series of reports on Mississippi’s problems with secrecy. There are various improvements that should be made to the state’s open meetings and records laws. Exemptions should be tightened and procedures improved to aid citizens seeking to know how their tax money is used, what their government is doing and how their lives are impacted.
Openness is “essential” to good government. The doors should open on Mississippi’s secrecy.
Have Your Say: Secrecy: Update laws on openness
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Six Gitmo detainees face death, officials say
Monday, February 11th, 2008
WILLIAM GLABERSON
The New York Times
Military prosecutors have decided to seek the death penalty for six Guantanamo detainees who are to be charged with central roles in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, government officials who have been briefed on the charges said Sunday.
The officials said the charges would be announced at the Pentagon as soon as today and were likely to include numerous war-crimes charges against the six men, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the former al-Qaida operations chief who has described himself as the mastermind of the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
A Defense Department official said prosecutors were seeking the death penalty because, “if any case warrants it, it would be for individuals who were parties to a crime of that scale.” The officials spoke anonymously because no one in the government was authorized to speak about the case.
NEW CHALLENGES
A decision to seek the death penalty would increase the international focus on the case and present new challenges to the troubled military commission system that has yet to begin a single trial.
“The system hasn’t been able to handle the less-complicated cases it has been presented with to date,” said David Glazier, a former Navy officer who is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
In addition to Mohammed, the other five to be charged include detainees officials say were coordinators and intermediaries in the plot, among them a man labeled the “20th hijacker,” who was denied entry to the United States in the month before the attacks. Under the rules of the Guantanamo war-crimes system, the military prosecutors can designate charges as capital when they present them, and it is that first phase of the process that’s expected this week. The military official who then reviews them, Susan Crawford, a former military appeals court judge, has the authority to accept or reject a death-penalty request.
A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment Sunday.
QUESTION OF CARRYING OUT EXECUTION
But some of those briefed on the case have said the prosecutors view their task in seeking convictions for the Sept. 11 attacks as a historic challenge. A special group of military and Justice Department lawyers has been working on the case for several years.
Even if the detainees are convicted on capital charges, any execution would be many months or, perhaps years, from being carried out, lawyers said, in part because a death sentence would have to be scrutinized by civilian appeals courts.
Federal officials have said in recent months that there’s no death chamber at the detention camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that they knew of no specific plans for how a death sentence would be carried out.
The last military execution was in 1961, when an Army private, John A. Bennett, was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempted murder.
Have Your Say: Six Gitmo detainees face death, officials say
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Continued prosperity for war contractors
Monday, February 11th, 2008
Muscular Defense Plan Buoys Contractors
Proposed Budget Would Benefit Area Companies
A run of healthy profits for defense contractors that has lasted nearly a decade will continue for at least another year, analysts and company executives said after the Bush administration last week submitted its new defense budget.
The $515.4 billion defense spending proposal for fiscal 2009 is 7.5 percent higher than the current year’s and promises to fund some of the armed forces’ largest and most costly weapons programs. It includes $104.2 billion for weapons procurement and nearly $80 billion for research and development, testing and evaluation.
That would mean big new opportunities and more funding for major projects for local defense and technology contractors, including Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, General Dynamics of Falls Church, SI International of Reston, CACI International of Arlington and Northrop Grumman, which is based in Los Angeles but has a large presence in the Washington area.
“The expectation has been that it can’t continue to increase as it has,” Phil Finnegan, a defense analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, said of defense spending. “But it has surprised everyone to see how long this increase has continued. This budget was a great budget for all defense contractors. It includes continuing growth — not as fast as last year, but it enabled everyone’s programs to be funded.”
Finnegan, other analysts and executives at contracting companies said they don’t expect the party to last indefinitely.
“The fiscal year 2009 budget may be about as good as it gets for defense contractors,” said Steve Kosiak, vice president of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “We have had eight years of quite dramatic growth in [the Defense Department's] weapons acquisition accounts. Whoever the next president is, it is unlikely that we are going to continue a major buildup.
“The major area contractors have all done reasonably well, but they all also have major programs that are likely to face growing scrutiny in coming years, especially if budgets begin to get tighter, which seems likely.”
In the proposed budget, the Air Force plans to spend $3.4 billion on 20 F-22 Raptors, which are made by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Pratt & Whitney. It also sets aside large sums to buy pilot-less planes such as Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems’ Predator.
The proposed budget sets aside $6.7 billion for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program which is being built by Lockheed Martin. The Pentagon has tried to save money on the $300 billion fighter program by eliminating a backup engine being developed by General Electric. The president’s proposed budget does not include such funding, however, Congress is expected to reverse that provision.
The White House moved $1 billion that was supposed to be used to buy more presidential helicopters from Lockheed Martin into research and development. The program has had problems with costs, changes the government wanted to make to the aircraft’s features and staying on schedule.
Lockheed Martin’s C-130 cargo plane is proposed to get $956.6 million, down slightly from what it got the year before.
The Army’s Future Combat Systems, a program that will use a wireless network to connect battlefield equipment overseen by SAIC and Boeing, would get $3.56 billion. And the White House asked for more than $21 billion for space and missile-defense initiatives, areas where Boeing, Lockheed and Northrop have strong roles. .
The demand for armored vehicles continues to benefit General Dynamics, which makes the Stryker and a version of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, or MRAP. The Stryker program got $1.2 billion and upgrades of the company’s Abrams tank was funded at $727 million, though no funding was allocated for MRAPs, which are being built by several contractors.
The Navy reduced the number of littoral combat ships being developed to operate close to shore — a reduction that is going to have “negative consequences” for Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, which are involved in building the ships, said defense consultant Loren Thompson. The fiscal 2009 budget proposes spending $1.3 billion for two such ships, but the long-term future of the program is uncertain.
Bush’s budget postpones decisions on some big-ticket items.
The Pentagon had been preparing to shut down the production lines of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, analysts said, and the C-17 transport plane, made by Boeing. But no money was set aside in the fiscal 2009 budget to do so. Without funding, analysts said, it effectively defers the decision of whether to buy more planes or to shut down the lines to the next administration.
“These are politically contentious,” said Finnegan. With elections coming up, he said, the White House “is saying, ‘Why deal with them? Why take the pain for them of shutting down the lines? Let the next administration decide.’ ”
CACI’s president and chief executive, Paul M. Cofoni, said that when the Pentagon shifts from wartime expenses to other programs that have been put on hold, he nevertheless sees opportunities for contractors. He expects that as the military draws down troops in Iraq, the “expenses necessary to house them, to feed them, to provide ammunition for them, all get reduced.
“Those funds can be redeployed to other needs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines,” he said. “So the money’s going to go to things like intelligence and homeland security. That’s where we’re well positioned.”
Have Your Say: Continued prosperity for war contractors
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Your doctor, your dealer
Monday, February 11th, 2008
Once it was cocaine, speed or heroin, but now the fashion is for legal pills, washed down by spirits. Last week’s news that actor Heath Ledger, right, died from an overdose of prescription tablets shed light on a startling new trend - misuse of over-the-counter pills now kills more Americans than illegal drugs.
Elizabeth Day in New York
Alex is a man who prides himself on sticking to routine. He likes to start the day with a large cappuccino from Starbucks and to end it with a handful of anti-depressants washed down with vodka. ‘It’s my treat after coming home from work,’ he says. ‘I guess it just chills me out a little.’
In many ways Alex, 31, is a typical well-heeled young New Yorker. He works in finance, holidays in the Hamptons and enjoys partying at the sort of exclusive nightclubs where having your name on the guest list is a prerequisite to entry. He also likes to get high on prescription drugs.
Tonight he is celebrating a friend’s birthday at Marquee, one of the city’s hippest nightspots. The main bar, lined with leather banquettes, is cast in a shadowy half-light. In the upstairs lavatory there is a small framed sign on the back of the door reminding guests the use of illegal drugs will not be permitted.
But Alex would not consider himself a drug abuser. For him, those small white Xanax tablets on his bathroom shelves are simply a recreational accompaniment to the $15 Grey Goose vodka martini he has just been served. And, what’s more, they’re entirely legal.
Over the past five years the United States has seen a ferocious increase in prescription drug abuse. According to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 49.8 million Americans over the age of 12 have reported non-medical use of illicit drugs in their lifetime, 20.3 per cent of the population. Among teenagers aged 12-17, prescription drugs are second only to marijuana in popularity, and in the past 15 years there has been a 140 per cent increase in painkiller abuse. It is the fastest-growing type of drug abuse in the US. Even more worryingly, prescription drugs have made it on to the party scene as a legal, seemingly safe, way to recreate an illicit high.
Until last month this was a largely silent epidemic. But the death of Heath Ledger, a regular at Marquee and other nightclubs, thrust it into the spotlight. The 28-year-old actor died from ‘acute intoxication’ caused by an accidental overdose of anti-anxiety medication and prescription painkillers.
‘Americans love to get pills for everything that ails them,’ says Dr Howard Markel, a professor of paediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Michigan. ‘The misuse of those drugs has become one of the major health problems of our time.’ The UK has less of a prescription culture than the US, although many experts believe the advent of internet pharmacies means it is only a matter of time. In the US, where pharmaceuticals are advertised on prime-time television, pill-popping has become normalised, a socially acceptable means of alleviating stress, sleeplessness or anxiety.
The most commonly abused prescription medications fall into three categories: opiate-based painkillers (OxyContin and Percocet); central nervous system depressants prescribed for anxiety and sleep disorders (Valium and Xanax); and stimulants, used to treat attention deficit disorders (Ritalin and Adderall).
Within these categories, the pharmaceutical industry has provided a full set of substitutes for just about every illegal narcotic available. Methylphenidate, the active chemical in Ritalin, targets the brain’s pleasure-producing centres in the same way as cocaine. Antidepressants can act as serotonin-boosting ‘uppers’. A few years ago OxyContin, an extremely powerful painkiller developed for cancer patients, became known as ‘hillbilly heroin’ after an epidemic of abuse took root in poor rural communities.
Such mishandled drugs now kill 20,000 a year, nearly twice as many as 10 years ago.
Dependence on legal drugs is not a new problem - during the American Civil War morphine abuse was labelled ‘the soldiers’ disease’ - but the practice of prescribing drugs has metamorphosed from a medical treatment of last resort to a way of life. ‘The problem has been greatly worsened by the internet, and that affects all countries - including Britain,’ says Susan Foster, of the National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, New York. ‘As long as you have a credit card, anyone can log on and have potentially lethal drugs delivered to their door. You don’t even need a prescription. You have what’s called an “online consultation” where you are asked how old you are, how bad your pain is.’
The substances most commonly traded over the internet are tranquilisers such as diazepam and stimulants like Ritalin. However, the most dangerous are the opiates, which include codeine and morphine.
The painkiller fentanyl can act like heroin and traffickers get hold of supplies by forging stolen prescriptions, breaking into pharmacies and stealing stocks or buying the drugs from patients who have been prescribed it. Another opiate painkiller, buprenorphine - prescribed for heroin addicts trying to kick their habit - is peddled in countries as diverse as India, Iran, Finland and France. From 2001-05, the global consumption of buprenorphine more than tripled to 1.5 billion daily doses.
Doctors are woefully ignorant of the dangers; a 2005 study by Casa found that 43.3 per cent of them did not ask about drug abuse when taking histories. Even if they do, the seasoned drug abuser will go from one doctor to the next until they get the quantities they want - a practice known as ‘doctor-shopping’.
This was Jeana Hutsell’s experience. A petite 35-year-old from Canton, Ohio, with cropped peroxide blonde hair and square-framed glasses, Hutsell became hooked on Percocet, an opiate-based painkiller, when she was prescribed it 12 years ago after an operation for Crohn’s disease. ‘I went to the doctor with abdominal cramps and he began writing me copious prescriptions,’ she says. Within a year, her habit had escalated to 60 pills a day and she was sewing emergency stashes into the lining of her handbag. ‘I felt they gave me personality. They made me chattier, friendlier.’
Hutsell began forging prescriptions, sometimes walking into hospital casualty departments over the weekend and saying she had run out. ‘I felt justified and safe because my doctor was giving them to me. I wasn’t getting them on the streets - I was going to a pharmacy.’
Whereas illegal street narcotics - heroin or crack cocaine - are more likely to be used by the poorer socio-economic classes, prescription drugs have become the preserve of the rich. In the privatised American healthcare industry, these pills do not come cheaply: an antidepressant like Wellbutrin can cost from $1,000 to $2,400 a year.
Wealthy individuals also enjoy the luxury of paying private physicians - known as ’script doctors’ - to provide them with prescriptions. And often, because the drugs are viewed as performance-enhancers, they will be taken by those at the higher end of the social strata: by the college students and Wall Street traders. In the 1980s cocaine was the glamour yuppie drug. Now, the line of white powder is being overtaken by the little white capsule.
Phoenix House is a tall, grey stone building on the Upper West Side, a former 19th-century hotel with mosaic-tiled floors in the hall. The genteel appearance belies its gritty purpose: Phoenix House is a rehabilitation centre for drug and alcohol abusers, treating 6,000 people a day. In recent years, such centres have seen a substantial increase in prescription drug admissions - some counsellors say that they account for 90 per cent of new patients.
Professor David Deitch, the chief clinical officer, does not want to use the word ‘epidemic’, but he concedes that ‘the genie is out of the bottle’. ‘You see prescription drug abuse in the same circles that you saw cocaine abuse - the high-performing executive class. They might have a big day, so they take some something to get to sleep. Then they’ll take another pill the next morning to enhance their performance. Then they’ll go out and use all kinds of drugs at a party, and then to recover from the party the next morning they’ll take a different pill. It’s pervasive.’
Celebrities who have admitted their own struggles with prescription medication include Elizabeth Taylor, the talkshow host Rush Limbaugh, and Cindy McCain, the wife of the Republican presidential candidate John McCain. More recently, there have been rumours that Britney Spears has been self-medicating. The impact has percolated down to impressionable adolescents. One of the most popular forms of recreation among high-school students is the ‘pharm party’. Teenagers raid their parents’ medicine cabinets, then pool their resources. ‘You throw your drugs into a bowl in the middle of the room, then people pick pills out and chase them with alcohol,’ says Susan Foster. ‘We’ve seen these internet recipe sites where you go online to find out how to mix drugs for a certain effect. You can trade drugs online - in fact, at one college the students reported that they had a prescription drug trade forum on the university website.’
Markel tells the story of one of his patients, a 16-year-old student called Mary, who liked to down a few tablets of OxyContin with a single shot of vodka. She called the combination ‘the sorority girl’s diet cocktail’ because it gave a stronger kick of inebriation with fewer calories than alcohol alone.
‘There’s a cachet to this sort of drug abuse, encouraged by the Paris Hiltons and the Lindsay Lohans going into rehab, so it becomes a really cool druggy, party culture,’ Markel says. ‘Now teenagers don’t want to smoke and drink, they want to take a pill because it’s so easy to get and some of them can really make you feel good.’
But it is easy to overdose on prescription drugs, partly because your consciousness is impaired and it can be difficult to remember how many you’ve taken, and partly because mixing medication without specialised knowledge can produce fatally toxic results. And however legal these drugs might be, their misuse carries the same consequences as illegal narcotics: the familiar, dispiriting tale of the addict losing their family, friends, job, home and, sometimes, their life. After two years of Percocet addiction, Jeana Hutsell took stock of the wreckage her life had become: ‘I was homeless, I didn’t have a car, my family didn’t like me. I realised that I was the cause of all my problems. That was the turning point.’
Others are not so lucky. Randy Colvin, an abuser of Valium, Xanax and Percocet, died of a drug overdose on his 35th birthday. ‘We tried to save him and we lost,’ says his older brother Rod. ‘For 15 years we tried to get him into treatment and each time he would be in denial, he would be furious with us. My mother and I even tried to get a court order so that he could be sectioned. We did everything we possibly could. Addiction is a family disease. His death was very painful. ‘
For Heath Ledger’s parents, the grieving process is still in the rawest stages. Their son cemented his fame for reasons that were nothing to do with his talent. Instead he is for ever associated with a seedy death on the floor of a Manhattan apartment, just one more victim of the pill-popping epidemic that has become America’s secret illness.
Have Your Say: Your doctor, your dealer
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IRAQ - Children Starved of Childhood
Monday, February 11th, 2008
By Ahmed Ali
The violence around the continuing U.S. military operations in this city has robbed children of their childhood.
Only two provincial schools and one private kindergarten school are functioning in this city of 280,000, located 50 km north of Baghdad. Most children know neither school nor play.
Or even the food they want. “We parents can hardly meet the basic requirements of food,” Mahdi Hassan, a father of four, told IPS.
“Nobody even mentions chocolate or pastries or anything else because Iraqis know they are not important,” Baquba resident Wissam Jafar told IPS. “Children eat what the other members of the family eat. Toys and games are offered only at festivals and on special occasions.”
Baquba city, capital of Diyala province, has been at the centre of major U.S. military operations to fight al-Qaeda like forces. People have suffered from the violence from both sides.
By now Iraq has seen a generation of children pass with just survival a major issue. During the period of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, more than half a million children died, according to the United Nations.
In 1996, former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright was asked by Lesley Stahl on the CBS ླྀ Minutes’ show if she thought the price of half a million dead children was worth it. She replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”
One in eight children in Iraq died during that period of malnutrition, disease, and lack of medicine.
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq during March 2003 brought hope that things might change, but that change has only been for the worse.
“During the nineties, they were malnourished but they could find a place to play in the streets,” Khalid Ali, a local economist, told IPS. “Nowadays, they cannot even get out of their home because of the violence. And a large number of children have been killed through the violence.”
There is one park in Baquba with some basic swings for children; another was recently renovated by an Iraqi NGO. Both get overcrowded on festivals and holidays. Parents feel obliged to take their children out on these days, despite the risk.
On other days, no more than two or three families visit the parks.
Sajid Asim who earns 175 dollars a month from his job in the water department says the money is barely enough for food for the family. “Surely, there won’t be any extra money to bring the children special food or clothes, or games, or even taking them to picnics.” For those without work — and there are many — the situation is worse.
Schoolteachers and managers spoke to IPS of the problems facing children who do manage to go to school.
“Teaching has been hit by the political situation in Iraq,” said Salma Majid, manager of a local primary school. “Children can often not get to the school, and we may have more than three days off in a week. The whole academic year may be delayed because the violence has been so extreme this year.”
Schools can provide children a chance to play but sometimes it is not safe,” she said. “A number of school buildings have been hit by mortar.”
According to an Oxfam report on Iraq released Jul. 30, “92 percent of children had learning impediments that are largely attributable to the current climate of fear. Schools are regularly closed as teachers and pupils are too fearful to attend. Over 800,000 children may now be out of school, according to a recent estimate by Save the Children UK — up from 600,000 in 2004.”
The Oxfam report also said that child malnutrition rates in Iraq have risen from 19 percent before the invasion in 2003, to 28 percent. “More than 11 percent of newborn babies were born underweight in 2006, compared with 4 percent in 2003.”
Scarcity has brought all sorts of difficulties for children. “I put a sandwich in the bag for my son to take to school,” said a mother who declined to give her name. “When he got back home, he said he could not have it because his classmates do not bring their own sandwiches; their parents do not give them sandwiches.”
A local primary school teacher, Ali Abbas, said it is common now for students to arrive at school without breakfast.
“One day, one of the children suddenly passed out,” Abbas said. “We immediately took her to the administration room. When she regained consciousness, I asked her why she fainted. She told me that she did not have breakfast because there was no breakfast at home.”
(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq’s Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)
Have Your Say: IRAQ - Children Starved of Childhood
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‘A Century of War’ Part I
Monday, February 11th, 2008
By Stephen Lendman
RINF Alternative News
F. William Engdahl is a leading researcher, economist and analyst of the New World Order who’s written on issues of energy, politics and economics for over 30 years. He contributes regularly to publications like Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine, Grant’s Investor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International. He’s also a frequent speaker at geopolitical, economic and energy related international conferences and is a distinguished Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization where he’s a regular contributor.
Engdahl wrote two important books. This writer reviewed his latest one in three parts called “Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation.” It’s the diabolical story of how Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting animal and vegetable life forms. They aim to control food worldwide, make it all genetically engineered, and use it as a weapon to reward friends and punish enemies.
The book is a sequel to Engdahl’s first one and subject of this review - “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.” It’s breathtaking in scope and content, and a shocking and essential history of geopolitics and strategic importance of oil. The book is reviewed in-depth so readers will know the type future Henry Kissinger had in mind in 1970 when he said: “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control people.” Engdahl recounts the story in his two masterful books, both critically essential reading.
The story line in his first one began late in the 19th century when oil’s advantage was first realized, and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill told Parliament in 1919:
“We must become the owners, or at any rate the controllers at the source, of at least a proportion of the supply (of oil) which we require….and obtain our oil supply, so far as possible, from sources under British control, or British influence.”
After defeating Napoleon in 1815, Britain was supreme until America emerged predominant during WW II. Engdahl explains how: through two pillars and one commodity - unchallengeable military power and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency combined with the quest to control global oil and other energy resources.
Engdahl calls his book “no ordinary history of oil” because what he recounts is suppressed in the mainstream and what passes for education in America. It settles for mediocrity, ignorance, and a barely literate public by design. As a result, people don’t know that US manipulators arranged “the greatest confidence game the world had ever seen” - a “special hegemony” to:
– print limitless dollar paper certificates to buy every imaginable product;
– accumulate endless trade deficits;
– “inflate (the) currency beyond imagination;”
– have the government pay interest on its own money; and
– create an unprecedented public and private debt to enrich an elite few at the expense of the greater good.
So far it’s worked because people haven’t caught on, other nations need our markets, fear our might, and countries like China, Japan and petrodollar recyclers remain lenders of last resort. Combined, it let America rule the world, control its energy, and crush all upstart competition. Washington had a good role model, and that’s where the story begins.
The Three Pillars of the British Empire
Geopolitical history for the last 100 years was shaped around the quest for what Big Oil acolyte Daniel Yergin called “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power” with two countries at its epicenter - first Britain and now America with its UK junior partner that built its rule on three essential pillars:
– controlling the seas and setting the terms of trade;
– dominating world banking and manipulating the world’s largest gold supply; and
– controlling world raw materials with oil the key one at the turn of the century; with these working, it devised an “informal empire” to loot world wealth and maintain a balance of power on the continent.
Britain’s “genius” was being able to shift alliances without letting sentiment interfere with its interests. Post-Waterloo, it operated “on an extremely sophisticated marriage between top (London) bankers and financiers, government cabinet ministers,” key industrialists and espionage chiefs. By keeping everything secret, it “wielded immense power over credulous and unsuspecting foreign economies.” By the late 19th century, however, things began to change, and a new strategy was needed. Key to it was oil geopolitics as a vital naval supremacy ingredient.
The Lines are Drawn: Germany and the Geopolitics of the Great War
The importance of oil and emergence of continental economies (especially in Germany) provided the backdrop to WW I. By the late 19th century, British bankers and political elites were alarmed that German industrial and technological development began surpassing its own that was in decline. Included was a modern German merchant and naval fleet and an ambitious railway project linking Berlin with Baghdad, then part of the Ottoman empire. At stake was British hegemony, and preserving it led to war.
Prior to its outbreak, coal was king, German output was impressive and so was its growth:
– its steel production increased 1000% in 20 years, leaving Britain far behind by 1900;
– its state-backed rail infrastructure doubled in track kilometers from 1870 to 1913;
– with the advent of centralized electric power generation and long-distance transmission, its electrical industry exploded to dominate half the world’s trade by 1913;
– impressive research built the country’s chemical industry and made Germany the world leader in analine dye production, pharmaceuticals and chemical fertilizers;
– German agriculture thrived; it made “astonishing” gains from the introduction of “scientific agriculture chemistry” and produced an 80% grain harvest increase from 1887 to 1914;
– population growth was dramatic - 75% to 67 million between 1870 and 1914;
– Germany’s merchant fleet rocketed to second place in the world behind Britain and at a pace to overtake it;
– steel and engineering advances were achieved; and consider another British concern:
– early in the century, British Dreadnought battleship leadership was surpassed; Germany’s super model was superior and that spelled trouble for UK sea power supremacy; by 1910, “dramatic remedies” were needed; Germany’s economic emergence had to be confronted, its growing naval strength as well, and for the first time oil was a factor.
A Global Fight for Control of Petroleum Begins
By 1882, British Admiral Lord Fisher saw oil’s potential as qualitatively superior to coal. It required one-quarter the tonnage, one-third the engine weight, and expanded a fleet’s “radius of action” fourfold. It was first used in 1885 after Gottlieb Daimler developed the internal combustion engine. Another 20 years passed, however, before its importance was realized, and that created a problem. Britain had no oil and needed a supply.
Up to then, its Middle East presence was limited, but that changed after oil was discovered in Masjed Soleiman, Persia (now Iran) in 1908. It secured Britain an “extraordinarily significant exclusive right (to potential) vast untapped petroleum deposits” for the country’s newly formed Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC).
Earlier in 1899, German industrialists and bankers got Ottoman approval for a Berlin-Baghdad railway. The aim - to establish strong economic ties to Turkey and develop new markets in the East. Once extended to Kuwait, it would be the fastest, cheapest rail link to the Indian subcontinent, and that spelled trouble for Britain. It would challenge UK supremacy and had to be confronted.
The project was costly and needed help to complete, so Germany turned to Britain. London, for its part however, used “every device known to delay and obstruct progress. The game lasted” until war began in 1914 and after Britain secured an exclusive oil development “lease in perpetuity” in what today is Iraq and Kuwait. Yet competition remained because Germany got the Ottoman emperor to grant its Baghdad Railway Company full rights to all oil and minerals on a parallel 20 kilometers of land on either side of the rail line. By 1912, oil’s importance was apparent, and geologists discovered it between Mosul and Baghdad.
WW I stalled efforts for a German-owned oil company, independent of Rockefeller interests. At a time, the US produced over 63% of world supply, Russia’s Baku 19% and Mexico 5%. Britain’s new APOC was barely a player when First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill convinced the government to buy a majority interest in what today is British Petroleum (BP). “From that point, oil was at the core of British strategic interests,” and the game was this - secure its own supplies, deny them to key rivals like Germany, and do it if necessary by war.
That became London’s scheme early in the century when Britain, France and Russia allied in a Triple Entente against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian powers. By 1907, it was solidified, effectively encircled Germany, and it laid the foundation for the coming showdown with Kaiser Wilhelm II. From then until 1914, preparations were made for the “final elimination of the German threat.” Included was a “series of continuous crises and regional (Balkans) wars (in) the ’soft underbelly’ of Central Europe.” Three months after the alliance, Austria’s heir to the throne was assassinated in Sarajavo, and it “detonated the Great War.”
Oil Becomes the Weapon, the Near East the Battleground
WW I was no different from other wars. Imperial, territorial and economic rivalries were at its root. It lasted from July 28, 1914 to November 11, 1918 and at a time Britain was effectively bankrupt, had big plans along with other combatants, plus a “secret weapon” that later emerged: the special relationship of “His Majesty’s Treasury” with The House of Morgan.
The conflict matched the Allied powers of Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, Greece, Romania, Montenegro, Italy, Portugal, Japan and for its last seven months the US against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Ottoman Turkey. The timeline was as follows:
– on June 28, Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated;
– on July 28, Austria declared war on Serbia;
– on August 1, Germany declared war on Russia;
– on August 3, Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium on August 4; and
– on August 4, Britain declared war on Germany, and the world was at war. Four years later, its toll was horrific, and four empires were destroyed - Ottoman Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia. Later on, so would Britain’s, but in 1914 schemes and intrigue drove the winners to reallocate the spoils, especially where it was thought large oil deposits lay.
Well before 1914, Britain’s geostrategy was threefold:
– create and preserve an unchallengeable global empire;
– defeat its main rival Germany; and
– secure and control the most strategically important resource - oil that was crucial to winning the war.
At its end, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon commented: “The Allies were carried to victory on a flood of oil.” Germany ran short and lost because it couldn’t mount a decisive offensive in 1918. In 1915, however, Britain gambled and lost. It failed to defeat Turkey in the Battle of Gallipoli, and the stakes involved were high - to secure Russia’s rich Baku oil fields at a time they supplied almost a fifth of world production. It was early in the war, Britain ultimately prevailed, and in no small measure by preemptively occupying Baku in August, 1918 to deny Germany its vital resources.
Throughout the war, oil’s importance was key and the reason for the Allies’ secret 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement. It spelled “betrayal and Britain’s intent to….control….the undeveloped petroleum reserves of the Arabian Gulf after the war.” Britain was devious. While France and Germany clashed along the Western Front, London moved 1.4 million troops to the Gulf and eastern Mediterranean on the pretext of bolstering Russia. After 1918, a million forces remained on what became a “British Lake” by 1919 with access to the region’s oil. Its potential was later learned, France was cheated out of its share, Saudi Arabia’s value was unknown, and turned out to be a major British blunder that didn’t elude America in the 1930s.
Partitioning the Ottoman Empire proceeded post-war and included an “extraordinary new element.” Now known as the Balfour Declaration, it was a classified British policy statement supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine at a time Jews comprised 1% of the population. It came on November 2, 1917, a year of conflict remained, and it was the basis for the post-1919 British mandate over Palestine that gave London “strategic possibilities of enormous importance.” British elites and its principal think tank (the Royal Institute for International Affairs or Chatham House) supported a “Jewish-dominated Palestine, beholden to England for its survival (and) surrounded by a balkanized group of squabbling Arab states.”
The scheme was to link England’s colonial possessions from South Africa’s gold and diamond mines, north to Egypt and the Suez canal, through Mesopotamia (Iraq and Kuwait), Persia (Iran) and East into India and what today is Pakistan and Bangladesh. Controlling this territory became crucial. It meant dominating the world’s most strategically valuable resources before their vast potential was realized.
Combined and Conflicting Goals: The United States Rivals Britain
Britain was the world’s major post-WW I power, its territorial winner, and borrowed Wall Street money secured the victory, but with a problem. The country was deeply in debt, mired in depression, and the US now loomed as the world’s economic power. In the 1920s, a rivalry ensued pitting America against Britain’s three imperial pillars: control of world sea lanes, its banking and finance, and its strategic raw materials. At stake was whether London or Washington would be the world’s new capital, with no assured winner at the time. Later, it was very clear that WW II’s seeds were planted in a place called Versailles and a 1919 treaty in its name.
Its terms were outrageous and onerous. They made unimaginable demands, and therein lay the problem. In May 1921, Germany got an ultimatum with six days to accept or the industrial Ruhr Valley would be militarily occupied. Even worse, the country lost its colonial possessions and all their raw material resources. In the end, all combatants were losers. Their combined debt overwhelmed world finance and monetary policy from 1919 to the 1929 Wall Street crash. The entire pyramid was built on punitive war debts with Morgan and other major New York banks uncompromising on the terms. They was so burdensome that yearly payments exceeded America’s annual 1920s foreign trade. In addition, paying it took precedence over rebuilding and modernizing war-torn European economies.
At the same time, oil’s importance grew as Britain exploited the spoils at France and America’s expense. In March 1921, Winston Churchill was UK secretary of state for colonial affairs, the British Colonial Office Middle East Department was established, and Mesopotamia was renamed Iraq and became a British colony. Anglo-Persian Oil officials got administrative control, American companies gained no British Middle East concessions, and a fierce battle raged over the region’s oil throughout the 1920s. Then it moved to Latin America.
In the 19th century, US Senator Henry Cabot Lodge stated “commerce follows the flag” and by it meant economic progress requires expansion. In 1912, it got Mexico targeted after oil was discovered in Tampico in 1910. Woodrow Wilson sent in troops to seize control from Britain and the UK-connected Mexican Eagle Oil Company that had concessions for half the country’s oil at the time. As war in Europe loomed, Britain backed off, and America secured Tampico’s enormous potential.
Britain, nonetheless, pressed on, and by the early 1920s controlled “a formidable arsenal of apparently private companies” that, in fact, let His Majesty’s government “dominate and ultimately control all” major world oil-containing regions. Four companies were empowered that were also an “integral part of British secret intelligence activities:”
– Royal Dutch Shell that rivaled Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, even in America through California Oil Fields and Oklahoma-based Roxana Petroleum;
– the Anglo-Persian Oil Company that became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and is now British Petroleum;
– the little-known d’Arcy Exploitation Company; it was tied to the Foreign Office and British intelligence, and its agents showed up wherever there was oil development potential; and
– the nominally Canadian company called British Controlled Oilfields (BCO); it was secretly government- owned as were Shell and the others.
In 1912, British companies controlled about 12% of world oil production. By 1925, it was most of it, America noticed, but in 1922, London and Washington united against a common threat and called a truce to their post-Versailles conflict.
The Anglo-Americans Close Ranks
In April 1922, Germany and Russia stunned the West by their bilateral Rapello Treaty. Under it, Russia waived its war reparations claims in return for Germany’s industrial technology. The news shocked the continent, especially as it emerged from a British-organized Genoa meeting with other strategic aims in mind.
While secretly financing an anti-Soviet counterrevolution, London approached Russia regarding Baku’s oil fields, hoping to arrange lucrative deals for Royal Dutch Shell and other UK oil companies. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil also eyed them, but was disadvantaged by Britain’s favored position and its own unsavory reputation. Yet it proceeded through Harry Sinclair of Sinclair Petroleum as a perceived independent middleman with no Rockefeller taint.
Moscow was interested because Sinclair had ties to President Harding, and a deal meant US diplomatic recognition and an end to Russia’s international isolation post-1917. Sinclair agreed, Harding approved, but events then intervened.
It was scandal in Wyoming in a place called Teapot Dome. It involved political influence and the awarding of no-bid oil leases to Sinclair Oil (then called Mammoth Oil) and a whole lot more with illegal payoffs and no-interest loans as part of the deal. Harding, though not directly involved, was implicated, a year later he was dead (”under strange circumstances”), Coolidge became President, dropped the Baku project, and ended plans to recognize Russia. At the time, it was thought British intelligence was involved, blocked the bid to give UK oil companies an edge, but Germany’s deal with Russia intervened.
It was Germany’s second option at a time its onerous debt made dealing with Britain preferable. Efforts failed because London was hard-line, stuck to its punitive repayment process, and imposed stiff tariffs to make things worse with Germany already on its knees.
The looting ruined the country’s economy and forced the Reichsbank to print enormous amounts of money to survive. Inevitable inflation followed and by 1923 was catastrophic. In January, the mark dropped to 18,000 to the dollar. By July, it was at 353,000, by August 4,620,000, and by November an astonishing 4,200,000,000,000. It was effectively worthless in the greatest ever (before or since) inflation that destroyed the country’s savings and made further calamitous events inevitable.
The misery was compounded when Germany lost its assets. Britain took its colonies, and also seized was Alsace-Lorraine and Silesia with its rich mineral and agricultural resources. Gone was 75% of the country’s iron ore, 68% of zinc ore, 26% of coal as well as Alsatian textile industries and potash mines. In addition, Germany’s entire merchant fleet was taken, a portion of its transport and fishing fleet plus locomotives, railroad cars and trucks - all justified as war debts that were fixed at an impossible to pay 132 billion gold marks at 6% annual interest, and with it an ultimatum. Agree in six days or Allied troops would occupy the Ruhr. Unsurprisingly, the Reichstag approved.
It made dealing with Russia essential as Germany sought practical ways to survive. It proved impossible, France objected to a minor treaty obligation and occupied the Ruhr anyway. In the meantime, inflation soared, German industrial activity was erased, Reichsbank and other German bank assets were seized, and the currency became worthless.
In 1923, a so-called Dawes Plan (named for US banker Charles Dawes) was adopted. It was the Anglo-American banking community’s way to reassert fiscal control over Germany, assure reparations were paid, and continue the state-sponsored looting. It continued until 1929 when the debt pyramid collapsed, an ensuing banking crisis followed, capital flowed out of the country, its economy crashed, the world headed into depression, and radical political elements gained prominence.
Reichbank president, Hjalmar Schacht, was a key figure. He resigned his post to organize financial support for the man he and Bank of England governor Montagu Norman wanted as chancellor. From 1926, Schacht secretly backed the radical National Socialist German workers party, the NSDAP Nazis. Britain also favored the “Hitler Project,” support for it went right to the top and included figures like Prime Minister Chamberlain and the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII in 1936 until he abdication later in the year).
Throughout the period, Wall Street and Washington were comfortable with the Nazis, and a key government official met Hitler in 1922. He came away saying he “was deeply impressed by his personality and thought it likely he would play an important part in German politics.”
By this time, the Anglo-American power struggle was resolved. So, too, the oil wars with the creation of an “enormously powerful Anglo-American oil cartel,” later called the “Seven Sisters.” British and American companies struck a deal. They ended competition, kept existing market shares, and secretly set prices with governments of both countries arranging a Red Line agreement. From then to now, Big Oil ruled the energy world and devised how to deal with “outsiders.”
Later, the consequences from Baron Kurt von Schroeder’s January 4, 1932 meeting would have to be faced after he, Heinrich von Papen and Hitler secretly arranged a Nazi takeover. A year later, another meeting followed preparatory to acting. The Weimar government was weak, the scheme was to topple it, and it made Hitler Reichschancellor on January 30, 1933. On August 2, 1934 he seized absolute power as Fuhrer. British interests backed him, Royal Dutch Shell financed him, and the Bank of England “moved with indecent haste to reward” him with a vital line of credit. The rest, as they say, is history, and from it would emerge a new world order.
Oil and the New World Order of Bretton Woods
In 1945, the world had changed. Post-WW I, Britain was preeminent with an empire spanning one-fourth the globe. Thirty years later, it was disintegrating and “in the throes of the largest upheaval of perhaps any empire in history” (although it happened most prominently to Rome, but it took longer). It wasn’t from “beneficence” or a matter of principle. It was unavoidable because the war took its toll. It shattered Britain’s financial power, its industry was decaying, its housing stock was dilapidated, and its people exhausted. Britain was “utterly dependent on America,” so the baton passed to the only major power left standing in a ravaged post-war world.
A “special relationship” between them emerged post-Versailles. Britain led it then, it hoped post-1945 to continue indirectly, and a new element was added - the post-war CIA that worked with Britain in the war as the OSS (Office of Strategic Services). The relationship continued as the two countries have mutual interests and jointly share intelligence, except that Britain now is junior in a US-dominated world.
Post-war, Anglo-American oil interests had enormous power. It was assured by the 1944 Bretton Woods system that was built around three dominant pillars - the IMF, World Bank and managed “free trade” from GATT. Clauses were built into each to ensure Anglo and especially American dominance over monetary and trade issues. Both countries have voting control, and the arrangement created a “gold exchange system.” Under it, each member country’s currency was pegged to the dollar that, in turn, was set at a fixed $35 an ounce gold price. It suited Big Oil fine as America by then had the bulk of world gold reserves.
They also benefitted from the Marshall Plan as more than 10% of it went for American oil, and five US companies supplied over half of western Europe’s supply at a dear price (that was pennies on the dollar compared to today). They profited enormously, nonetheless, as oil became the key commodity fueling world growth that without which would halt.
Partnered with Big Oil and its trade were Wall Street and New York international banks. They profited hugely from its capital inflows, and it ensured their advantage that was built into the Bretton Woods system. They also had cartel power by having consolidated to hold disproportionate control over world finance.
Britain, as well, had its post-war priorities in the wake of its lost empire. Its leadership regrouped around the power and profits of oil and other strategic raw materials with US help. It made Iran a target, Britain humiliated its nationalist elements, occupied the country, and demanded concessions for its government-linked Royal Dutch Shell. Finally in December, 1944, nationalist leader Mohammed Mossadegh introduced a bill to bar foreign country oil negotiations. A bitter fight ensued, by 1948 foreign troops were withdrawn, but the country remained under UK control through its Anglo-Iranian Oil Company at a time Iran’s southern region had the world’s richest known reserves.
In late 1947, the Iranian government demanded an increase in its oil revenue share (meager at the time) and cited Venezuela where Standard Oil had a 50 - 50 arrangement. London wasn’t pleased, talks dragged on, and the strategy was to stall and delay. In late 1949, Mossadegh headed a parliamentary commission, a 50 - 50 split was demanded, Britain refused, and by 1951 Mossadegh was Prime Minister. Around the same time, Iran’s parliament nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and paid fair compensation for it. Britain, nonetheless, was outraged and reacted.
Full economic sanctions and an oil embargo followed. In addition, Iranian assets in British banks were frozen, and major Anglo-American oil companies supported London. Iran’s economy was devastated. Its oil revenues plummeted from $400 million in 1950 to less than $2 million from July 1951 to August 1953 when Mossadegh was ousted by a CIA-British SIS coup. Shah Reza Pahlevi returned to power, sanctions were lifted, and America and Britain regained their client state until 1979 when the same Anglo-American interests turned on the Shah and deposed him. More on that below.
An Italian company defied the sanctions at the time - Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli (AGIP). Its founder and head was Enrico Mattei, a man to be reckoned with. He sought indigenous energy resources for Italy that Anglo-American oil interests wouldn’t co-opt. It was no simple task, yet he got a new law passed that established a central semi-autonomous state energy company called Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI). AGIP became a subsidiary.
As its leader in 1957, he negotiated an unprecedented deal with Iran - 75% of profits to the National Iranian Oil Company and 25% to ENI. Washington, London and Big Oil weren’t pleased. If unchecked, this type arrangement would upset their entire world oil order benefitting them at the expense of host countries. Mattei had to be stopped, and the US and Britain pressured the Shah to opt out - to no avail.
Mattei became a major irritant. He challenged Big Oil with low gasoline prices. He also offered deals with former colonies on more favorable terms than the majors, including the prospect of local refineries so supplier countries could be more than just raw material sources.
Finally, in October 1960 he went too far and enraged Washington and London. He negotiated a deal with Moscow they opposed. In 1958, he contracted to buy one million annual tons of Soviet crude. He then signed an exchange agreement for 2.4 million tons for five years but not to be paid in cash. Instead it would be in large-diameter oil pipe that Russia badly needed to construct a huge pipeline network bringing Volga-Urals oil to Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary - 15 million tons annually when completed. The deal helped both sides with Mattei getting Russian oil at below market price and the Soviets getting a pipe works plant completed for them in September, 1962.
A month later, Mattei was dead. His private plane crashed on takeoff killing him and two others on board. To this day, deliberate sabotage was suspected, and why not. Mattei was at the peak of his powers, he’d already signed deals with Iran, Russia, Morocco, Sudan, Tanzania, Ghana, India and Argentina and upset the established order. He also planned to meet President Kennedy who, at the time, was pressing Big Oil to reach accommodation with him. A year later, Kennedy was also dead, and the finger pointed to “US intelligence, through a complex web of organized crime cutouts.”
A Sterling Crisis and the Adenauer-De Gaulle Threat
In 1957, western European countries headed by France, West Germany and Italy signed the Treaty of Rome. It established the European Economic Community (EEC) that came into force on January 1, 1959. Germany was recovering from the war, and Charles De Gaulle regained power in France with vigorous restructuring plans - to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, expand its devastated industrial and agricultural economy, and restore fiscal stability.
It was already under way in continental Europe, the result of unprecedented EEC trade-driven growth. De Gaulle and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer led the effort with the French President exerting a strong independent voice. The two leaders bonded, and the Treaty Between and French Republic and Federal Republic of Germany was concluded on January 22, 1963. It assured close cooperation and coordination of economic and industrial policy. Washington and London were alarmed at the prospect of an independent alliance that included Italy under Aldo Moro.
An Anglo-American alliance was hatched to counter it. It targeted Europe and took the form of pushing the EEC to open to US imports and be firmly part of a Washington-London-dominated NATO. Britain also demanded inclusion in the six nation Common Market. De Gaulle strongly opposed it, but was denied when Atlanticist Ludwig Erhard became Germany’s Chancellor in April 1963. He favored admitting Britain and agreed to support London’s 19th century “balance of power” strategy against continental Europe. Though formally ratified, the Franco-German accord was lifeless, and the culmination of Adenauer’s work was lost - stolen by the America and Britain at the last moment.
Washington supported the EEC but not as an independent alliance. It might have become that in 1957 at a time recession hit America and lasted into the 1960s. It led to debate in the US with the New York Council of Foreign Relations and Rockefeller Brothers Fund drafting options at a time Henry Kissinger emerged. It was also when Big Oil and New York banks (the East Coast establishment) were dominant and viewed the world as their market. They also controlled the media and used it to promote their interests over what was best for the nation and greater good.
Rebuilding US infrastructure, investing in modern factories, improving the national economy and developing a skilled labor force were ignored. Instead, investment flowed abroad for greater returns. Cheating on quality also became fashionable, and productive pride lost out to bottom line priorities to please Wall Street.
It came with a cost, however, and part of it was the state’s financial health. As dollars flowed abroad, US gold reserves plunged enough to threaten the Bretton Woods system. The problem was a “fatal flaw” in its design. Its rules established a “gold exchange standard” requiring IMF countries to fix the value of their currencies to the US dollar and indirectly to gold at $35 an ounce.
By the 1960s, European growth outpaced the US, and domestic investment sought to take advantage of double the returns it could get domestically. It was the beginning of the Eurodollar market, and the start of a decade of “ever worsening international monetary crises.” By the late 1970s, it became a cancer that “threatened to destroy its entire host - the world monetary system.” It also influenced the Johnson administration to believe that a full-scale southeast Asian conflict could stimulate a stagnant economy and show the world who was still boss.
In the 1960s, New York bankers, Big Oil and the defense establishment advocated war and a homeland garrison state to boost profits, but consider the strategy. DOD Secretary Robert McNamara and Pentagon planners obliged. They designed a protracted “no-win war from the outset” to rev up spending and secure the defense component of the economy. Deficits resulted, the dollar inflated, and Washington forced its trading partners to accept war costs in the form of cheapened greenbacks.
It led to European central banks accumulating large Eurodollars reserves they then earned interest on from US treasuries. The net effect was continental bankers funded US deficits the way they do now, along with China and Japan. Engdahl quoted futurist Herman Kahn saying: “We’ve pulled off the biggest ripoff in history (running) rings around the British empire.” Nonetheless, London planned a comeback with “expatriate American dollars.” More on that below.
Lyndon Johnson waged war on two fronts, and failed at both. Vietnam cost him his presidency while his War on Poverty and Great Society barely made a difference but amassed huge European-financed deficits. At the same time, industrial and scientific investment declined, financial speculation grew, a service-oriented economy was favored, and America headed down the same “road to ruin” Britain followed earlier.
Few understood that Johnson’s domestic policy had little to do with alleviating poverty. It was a corporate scheme to exploit economic decay, curb wage growth and back a 19th century colonial-style looting. Inciting “race war” was part of the plan. Engdahl described it as a domestic Vietnam pitting blacks against whites, unemployed against employed, and high wage earners against lower paid ones in a “new Great Society, while Wall Street bankers benefited from slashed union wages and cuts in infrastructure investment.” They, in turn, recycled their profits into cheap Asian and South American labor markets for still greater profits. It’s the same scheme writ large today.
By 1967, trouble was evident. The Bretton Woods system was threatened as US external debt soared and the nation’s gold reserves plummeted to one-third their liability. At the same time, Britain’s economy was “a rotting mess and getting worse.” Faith in the pound sterling was eroding because the UK, like America, neglected its industrial base, amassed large trade deficits, and was a net currency exporter. Something had to give, and it was the pound.
At this time, De Gaulle withdrew from the gold pool, and “the entire Bretton Woods edifice (shook) at its weakest link, the pound sterling.” The crisis highlighted the core vulnerability of the international monetary system, the US dollar. Things came to a head on November 18, 1967. Britain devalued the pound by 14% for the first time since 1949. It abated the sterling crisis, but the dollar one was just beginning as international holders of the currency demanded gold in exchange.
Crisis built in 1968, and Business Week magazine devoted an astonishing nine articles and feature editorial to it in its March 23 issue headlined “Gold crisis jolts the West” on its front cover. A publisher’s memo also addressed it and quoted Virgil’s Aeneid, Book III: “Oh cursed lust for gold, to what dost thou not drive the hearts of men!” It affected Charles De Gaulle as well. His independence made him a target for removal that succeeded. It got him voted out of office a year later. For Washington and London, however, it was a Pyrrhic victory.
“A Century of War” will continue in Part II of this review to complete the story to the present era under George Bush.
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