Dissident Veteran For Peace

An automated release of documents this week by the FBI has stirred up a minor Twitter storm. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports the release announcement "spark[ed] anger and confusion".

According to an FBI apology posted on August 19, 2020:

Earlier today FOIA materials were posted to the FBI's Vault and FOIA Twitter account via an automated process without further outlining the context of the documents. We regret that this release may have inadvertently caused distress among the communities we serve.

The apology doesn't say what the "materials" in question were nor does it mention that the offending tweet was deleted. As it turns out the FBI released its file on the "Protocols of Learned Elders of Zion", which you can, for now, still access in the FBI's "Vault". The deleted tweet can be viewed here.

It appears someone decided to try to put a lid on the whole matter because people were starting to pay attention and it wasn't all in support of the 'angry and confused' folks. Thus, three of the four non-FBI tweets quoted in the JTA article have now disappeared too.

They probably needn't have worried as—except for high-profile stories that simply cannot be ignored such as Jonathan Pollard, Jack Abramoff, Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvey Weinstein—the mainstream media seldom reports on matters that may offend Jews or cast them in a negative light. Examples of buried stories that warrant greater coverage are the ongoing nefarious activities of Chabad, including the $40 million in federal funds allegedly defrauded by the Michigan Jewish Institute. The Trump DoJ put an end to this particular inquiry early this year.

In any case, one of the more pointed replies to the FBI's now deleted tweet quoted from a 2015 article by Yossi Sarid in Haaretz on Republican Jewish operatives waging a "campaign of intimidation ... to stop Democratic lawmakers from skipping Netanyahu's upcoming Congress speech". Here's the excerpt:

In these very moments, the protocols are being rewritten. Rich Jews are writing them in their own handwriting. They, in their wealth, are confirming with their own signatures what anti-Semites used to slander them with in days gone by: We, the elders of Zion, pull the strings of Congress, and the congressmen are nothing but marionettes who do our will. If they don’t understand our words, they’ll understand our threats. And if in the past, we ran the show from behind the scenes, now we’re doing it openly, from center stage. And if you forget our donations, the wellspring will run dry.

Labels: Chabad, conspiracy, crime, fraud, government, Israel, Jews, media, quotations, Rothschild, Trump, Zionism

The diagram below was created circa 2002 and is the product of someone decrying the alleged efforts of "Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors" to silence 9/11 conspiracy theorists/analysts.


I have looked at the evidence put forth to support the claim that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition. My conclusion is that this theory is unsupported by the evidence. That is, I think the evidence supports the claim that the Twin Towers (and WTC 7) collapsed as a result of the fires caused by airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers.  Frankly, I often wonder if the controlled demolition claims weren't concocted as a form of, what was later termed by Cass Sunstein, "cognitive infiltration" to discredit more reasonable scrutiny of the official 9/11 conspiracy narrative.

There is much in the story of 9/11 that has been hidden or distorted. At the most basic level, Americans have been fed a misleading narrative that the 9/11 perpetrators were driven by a blind Islamic-inspired hatred of America and its freedoms. In my view, it is more accurate to see the perpetrators' particularized interpretation of Islam, Salafi jihadism, as an organizing ideology used to help mobilize people to fight in response to grievances over US wars and other actions in support of the repressive Jewish state and repressive Arab regimes. Moreover, I find it interesting that, apparently, no US official was ever held accountable for the glaring intelligence and defense failures leading up to and on 9/11.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the "Gatekeepers" diagram but I can vouch for the curious, overzealous "conspiracy theory" bashing that prevails in certain Left circles. Noam Chomsky would be a good example of this. It is, for instance, accurately asserted that he "uses an institutional analysis as opposed to conspiracy theory to reach his conclusions."

Arguably, "institutional analysis" and "conspiracy analysis" are far from mutually exclusive and the existence of proven conspiracies concocted by high US government officials, e.g. Watergate, Iran-Contra, COINTELPRO, Operation Northwoods, etc., is well-established. Readers interested in this subject are advised to read Lance deHaven-Smith's Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin: Univ. of Texas Pr., 2013).

Another thing I can vouch for is the linkage in the diagram between uber-activist and self-described "socialist" Leslie Cagan and the CIA. The CIA was/is closely tied to the Ford Foundation (FF) and has long maintained a coterie of well-connected elite movers and shakers in its leadership. For example, its current president, Darren Walker, among other things, "was vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation" and "had a decade-long career in international law and finance at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and UBS" and "is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations."

The Rockefeller Foundation and the CFR are both enmeshed in the Deep State (see also here). Walker's old law firm had its own ties to the intelligence community with one of its attorneys serving as General Counsel for the Security Affairs Support Association. The firm was disciplined in 2007 for misconduct in a major Congolese corruption case. UBS is a notorious Swiss bank and these institutions have long had a reputation for serving "as sanctuaries for the wealth of dictators and despots, mobsters and arms dealers, corrupt officials and tax cheats of all kinds".

The FF was a major donor to Astraea during the period when Cagan claimed to be on the Astraea board of directors (I have not been able to verify her Astraea board service). For example, Astraea's 2007 annual report touts a $3.5 million grant "over 3 years from the Ford Foundation". Leslie Cagan did serve on the board of Pacifica, which received its "first major foundation grant" in 1951 from the Ford Foundation. In sum, there is enough evidence in support of the relationships alleged in the diagram to give it careful consideration.

As an aside, in a 2003 fluff piece on Cagan in the NY Times Chris Hedges wrote:

LESLIE CAGAN is willing to count many things. She will count the billions the United States will spend if it goes to war in Iraq. She will count the dead. She will count the oil companies that line up for the spoils. She will count the nations that turn their backs on this country in anger. And she will, on Feb. 15, count the demonstrators who are to gather in Manhattan and three dozen cities around the globe to rally to stop the war. She will count all this. She is counting now.

Two things Cagan (and Hedges) apparently weren't counting were the number of highly placed Zionist neo-conservatives pushing for the war and the number of Zionist shills (such as Cagan) in the peace movement pushing the bogus "war for oil" narrative and ensuring little attention was drawn to the primary driver—support for Israel.

Labels: 9/11, Cagan, Chris Hedges, conspiracy, critical thinking, Ford Foundation, Iraq, Islam, Israel, media, Neoconservatives, Zionism

... the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI [ministry of information—VFPD] or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

... The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question ... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness ...

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you are not allowed to criticise the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own ... [An American parallel would be the circumscribed nature of criticism of Israel in the US media—VFPD]

The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions. On one controversial issue after another the Russian viewpoint has been accepted without examination and then publicised with complete disregard to historical truth or intellectual decency. To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky. This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia. In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favoured by the Russians and libelled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so ... Very similar things happened during the Spanish civil war. Then, too, the factions on the Republican side which the Russians were determined to crush were recklessly libelled in the English leftwing [sic] press, and any statement in their defence even in letter form, was refused publication. At present, not only is serious criticism of the USSR considered reprehensible, but even the fact of the existence of such criticism is kept secret in some cases ...

What is disquieting is that where the USSR and its policies are concerned one cannot expect intelligent criticism or even, in many cases, plain honesty from Liberal [sic — and throughout as typescript] writers and journalists who are under no direct pressure to falsify their opinions. Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed. This rule has been almost universally observed since 1941, but it had operated, to a greater extent than is sometimes realised, for ten years earlier than that ... The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards the USSR, and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on the wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in the purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.

But now to come back to this book [i.e. Animal Farm] of mine. The reaction towards it of most English intellectuals will be quite simple: 'It oughtn't to have been published.' Naturally, those reviewers who understand the art of denigration will not attack it on political grounds but on literary ones. They will say that it is a dull, silly book and a disgraceful waste of paper. This may well be true, but it is obviously not the whole of the story. One does not say that a book 'ought not to have been published' merely because it is a bad book. After all, acres of rubbish are printed daily and no one bothers. The English intelligentsia, or most of them, will object to this book because it traduces their Leader and (as they see it) does harm to the cause of progress. If it did the opposite they would have nothing to say against it, even if its literary faults were ten times as glaring as they are. The success of, for instance, the Left Book Club over a period of four or five years shows how willing they are to tolerate both scurrility and slipshod writing, provided that it tells them what they want to hear.

The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say 'Yes'. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, 'How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?', and the answer more often than not will be 'No', In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses ... It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.

One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that 'bourgeois liberty' is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. [This calls to mind Karl Popper, the "totalitarian liberal"—VFPD] If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who 'objectively' endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought ...

These people don't see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you.

Source: Orwell's Proposed Preface to Animal Farm. Animal Farm was first published in in England in 1945.

Labels: censorship, conspiracy, critical thinking, freedom, Karl Popper, media, Orwell, politics, quotations

This is the time of year where, in certain quarters, one hears about a "War on Christmas" (WoC). In fact, a recent poll found that "39% of people believe that "There is a 'War on Christmas' happening in the US." There is, indeed, good reason to believe that Christmas is under attack.

Marc Daalder, writing in the Jewish Forward in December 2016, situates the WoC within "the zone of the culture wars" and asserts that "saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas" is "one of the preeminent issues" that "must be pressed". In Daalder's view: "The War on Christmas is really a War for Inclusivity, and it is essential as we look towards remaking and repairing American culture going forward from this divisive election. To abandon multiculturalism or identity politics because Middle America rejected them is to simply surrender after years of hard work. No, the work must continue and the war must be fought."

Adam Kirsch (whom Daalder quotes), writing in another Jewish publication, Tablet Magazine, claims "Talk of a war on Christmas is, then, at least implicitly anti-Jewish ..." As evidence he cites a 2009 op-ed by Garrison Keillor entitled: "NONBELIEVERS, PLEASE LEAVE CHRISTMAS ALONE". Keillor had the temerity to write:

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.

Christmas is a Christian holiday - if you're not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don't mess with the Messiah.

Kirsch wasn't the only one to take umbrage to Keillor's remarks.

Also in 2009, Slate published an article by Benyamin Cohen noting:

The Jewish community has long had a tense relationship with Christmas ... As a public service announcement, I'm here to let you in on what the rabbis thought about Christmas Eve. Gather round, little ones. This is a scary tale.

The Talmud, with its share of rabbinic repudiations against Jesus, was never a big fan of Christmas. Call it the Grinch. Indeed, the rabbis looked at it as a day of mourning ...

And so the rabbis decreed that the public study hall be closed and that no Torah learning take place on this night [i.e. Christmas eve] ... the leaders were also concerned about the popularly held belief in Judaism that studying the Torah brings spiritual benefit to the world at large. Many didn't want to make this positive contribution on what they considered a "pagan" night.

In a similar vein Daniel J. Solomon writes about his "Hannukah bush" in the Forward: ".. to me, the bush isn't a sign of assimilation, a 'neither Jew nor Gentile' copout, a helping of potato love with bacon and cheese spread. It's a subversive act, claiming and reinterpreting an item historically representative of exclusion, and sometimes violence directed against us." Solomon concludes his piece:

... religious pluralism is now the norm. But there's still a need to create a more inclusive December. Some might call that fighting a "war on Christmas." Why not? There should be a "war on Christmas." We should de-center Christianity as the "reason for the season" in a diverse America.

American Jews have been doing that for a while. Irving Berlin helped transform Christmas into a celebration of snow, not Jesus. Jewish comedians have created "Reuben, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Hanukkah Harry." The Hanukkah bush does something akin to this, both claiming and satirizing the Christmas tree.

My impetus for this post was reading, some time ago, Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut's book A Kosher Christmas: 'Tis the Season to be Jewish (Rutgers UP, 2012). Early on Plaut affirmatively quotes "Jonathan Sarna, a preeminent historian of American Jewry". According to Plaut, Sarna argued that: "... American Jews have a 'Christmas problem.' Although American civil religion calls upon all Americans to join in the Christmas spirit, on the actual holiday of Christmas the religious overtones of Christianity are apparent throughout American society ..."

Plaut's book, then, is about how Jews have responded to this "Christmas problem". He claims:

Jews in the United States have, in fact, made great progress in resolving December dilemmas. Such an ongoing resolution is evolving out of the creative efforts of American Jewry to coopt the Christmas season by reshaping it to reflect uniquely Jewish ideas, concerns, and practices and by developing a variety of strategies directed toward neutralizing Christmas in America. American Jewry's success in challenging Christmas's vaunted status rests upon forging an identity that is at once separate from the religious and historical dimensions of Christmas, yet convergent with its underlying spirit. Jews in America, particularly during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, employ a multitude of strategies to face the particular challenges of Christmas and to overcome feelings of exclusion and isolation. Jews have played a crucial role in popularizing Christmas. They have enhanced the national observance of Christmas by composing many of the Christmas songs beloved by all Americans. More secular than religious, these songs, among them Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," Walter Rollins and Steve Fletcher's "Frosty the Snowman," and, most recently, Paul Simon's "Getting Ready for Christmas Day," remind celebrants that Christmas belongs to all Americans who share in the spirit of patriotism, generosity, peace, and goodwill. It is ironic, however, that other Jews in the United States have developed strategies to downplay the significance of Christmas by composing poems and songs—in print, performance, and the media—that satirize and neutralize the religious nature of the holiday ...

Responding to the resurgence of Jewish identity in the United States, partially occasioned by support for the State of lsrael, Jews in America have reinvented the celebration of Hanukkah as an alternative to Christmas. This strategy has made it easier for Jewish parents to influence their children to avoid Christmas in favor of celebrating Hanukkah. [emphasis added]

On this note, the aforementioned Kirsch references "... how American Jews could develop Hanukkah, previously a fairly minor winter holiday, into such a successful counterpart to Christmas. Religiously and ideologically, Hanukkah is just about the worst holiday possible for such a purpose—it is, after all, a story about Jews resisting assimilation by violence." It would be more accurate to say that Hanukkah commemorates a bloody civil war where assimilationists were defeated by traditionalists.

However, even self-described "assimilated Jews" who believe "the story of Hanukkah" has "at its heart ... an eight-night-long celebration of religious fundamentalism and violence" will still celebrate it "Because at the end of the day, it's all about beating Santa." (On Hanukkah as a Zionist holiday see "Reinventing Hanukkah: The Israeli Politics of the Maccabean Holiday".)

Plaut also writes:

With a constitutional bravado emanating from a growing religious segment within the American Jewish community, the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch organization ... has waged war against strict separation of religion and state and has won from the courts the right to display menorahs in public venues. Members of the Chabad-Lubavitch group have been supported by Christian religious fundamentalists who want crèches allowed in these same municipally governed spaces. These religious groups, Jewish and Christian alike, have come up against the American Civil Liberties Union and Jewish organizations with a long history of winning court injunctions against any encroachment of religion on state.

Curiously, in his Introduction at least, Plaut fails to mention that while Jews were successful in 1989 in getting Supreme Court approval (6-3) for menorahs to be displayed on public property in County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, 492 U.S. 573 (1989) in the very same decision the Court ruled 5-4 that crèches or nativity scenes on public property were generally forbidden. I believe that County of Allegheny is still considered a valid precedent.

To sum up, I have presented a variety of mostly Jewish perspectives acknowledging and even applauding that Jews qua Jews are waging a War on Christmas. This is, apparently, okay for Jews to write about but not okay for folks like Garrison Keillor, however tepidly or tangentially they may address the subject. Perhaps, this is why the people at Fox News, the outlet that, arguably, did the most to popularize the idea of a WoC are too cowardly to say that—even as they are not the only ones waging the fight—Jews are front and center in the War on Christmas.

For an interesting review of A Kosher Christmas see " 'Twas the Day After Christmas ..." by Ethan Schwartz on Jewish Ideas Daily. Among other things Schwartz worries:

There is something disconcerting about [Plaut's] thesis, summoning up classic anti-Semitic images of conspiracy and sabotage. Without a trace of irony, Plaut recounts incidents in which fundamentalist Christian groups complained that "certain Americans, particularly Jews, were trying to take the 'Christ' out of Christmas." He adds that "anti-Semitic comments often ensued." Those Christian fundamentalists might well feel vindicated by Plaut's argument ...

Labels: Chabad, Christmas, conspiracy, culture, Jews, religion, United States

It's 1987 and Rep. Brooks (D-TX), during the Iran-Contra hearings, asks Lt. Col. Oliver North about Garden Plot, REX 84, etc. and, boy, is Ollie miffed. Sen. Inouye (D-HI) stops that line of questioning and the mainstream media, for the most part, dutifully ignore the story. And the American public, for the most part, dutifully stay asleep. As far as I can tell Brooks never again bucked the powers that be on the subject.

See also:

• “Look It Up, Check It Out”: REX 84 and the History of an American Conspiracy by Michael Grasso
• "Church and Pike Committees Post-mortem" by VFPD
• Operation Northwoods on the National Security Archive site

Labels: civil liberties, conspiracy, history, media, politics, repression, United States

One element, however, tends to go flagrantly missing in even the most vivid conspiracy theories about the banking system, let alone in official accounts: that is, the role of war and military power. There's a reason why the wizard has such strange capacity to create money out of nothing. Behind him, there's a man with a gun.

True, in one sense, he's been there from the start. I have already pointed out that modern money is based on government debt, and that governments borrow money in order to finance wars. This is just as true today as it was in the age of King Phillip II. The creation of central banks represented a permanent institutionalization of that marriage between the interests of warriors and financiers that had already begun to emerge in Renaissance Italy, and that eventually became the foundation of financial capitalism.

Source: David Graeber. Debt: The First 5,000 Years (New York: Melville House Publishing, 2011) p. 364.

Labels: banking, conspiracy, debt, militarism, money, War

An intelligence service is the ideal vehicle for a conspiracy. Its members can travel about at home and abroad under secret orders, and no questions are asked. Every scrap of paper in the files, its membership, its expenditure of funds, its contacts, even enemy contacts, are state secrets.

Source: Allen Dulles, US Director of Central Intelligence (1953-1961) as quoted in James Srodes, Allen Dulles: Master of Spies (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1999) p. 252.

See also:

• "Conspiracy Theories and Stylized Facts" by Kurtis Hagen in the Journal for Peace and Justice Studies. (Vol. 21, No 2; 2011) pp. 3-22.
• "Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962" on the National Security Archive web site.
• Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin: Univ. of Texas Pr., 2013) by Lance deHaven-Smith.

Labels: conspiracy, critical thinking, politics, quotations, repression, War

The excerpts below are from Economix: How and Why Our Economy Works (and Doesn't Work), in Words and Pictures by Michael Goodwin and Dan E. Burr. All page numbers below are from Economix or the book's online references.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members [the workers] are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged. -Adam Smith qtd. in Economix, p. 27 (Goodwin quotes only the first sentence); Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 90.

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People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.-Adam Smith qtd. in Economix, p. 28; Smith, p. 148.

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The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from [capitalists], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. -Adam Smith qtd. in Economix, p. 29; Smith, p. 288.

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Great is the usefulness of Ricardo's method. But even greater are the evils which may arise form a crude application of its suggestions to real problems. For that simplicity which makes it helpful, also makes it deficient and treacherous. -Alfred Marshall qtd. in Economix, p. 40; Alfred Marshall, Money, Credit, and Commerce, p. 190. This is a comment on the pitfalls of taking economist David Ricardo's economic models too seriously.

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Its limitations are so constantly overlooked, especially by those who approach it from an abstract point of view, that there is a danger in throwing it into definite form at all. -Alfred Marshall qtd. in Economix, p. 70; Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, p. 461. This is a comment on the pitfalls of taking Marshall's own market equilibrium models too seriously.

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An industrial system which uses forty per cent of the world's resources to supply less than six per cent of the world's population could be called efficient only if obtained strikingly successful results in terms of human happiness, well-being, culture, peace, and harmony. I do not need to dwell on the fact that the American system fails to do this, or that there are not the slightest prospects that it could do so if only it achieved a higher rate of growth of production. -E. F. Schumacher qtd. in Economix, p. 162; E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, p. 96.

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All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. -Adam Smith qtd. in Economix, p. 198; Smith, p. 444.

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Everything the communists said about communism was false. Everything they said about capitalism was true. -Economix, p. 242; William J. Duiker & Jackson J. Spielvogel, World History Since 1500, p. 763. This is a bitter joke that Russians reportedly told one another in the wake of devastating economic reorganization after the collapse of the Soviet Union--the rise of the oligarchs.

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Labels: conspiracy, economics, quotations

I first got wind of this latest episode of the building neocon backlash while reading "Neo-Con Nadir?" by Jim Lobe. I thought the Haig quote that the "Iraq war had been 'driven by the so-called neo-cons that hijacked my party...' " would be featured more prominently in the mainstream media but it's not. Below is a portion of the text from a "rush transcript" of the 10/22/2006 episode of CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer (my emphasis appears in bold). Note that Brzezinski agrees with Haig.

[Zbigniew] BRZEZINSKI [former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter]: Look, most of the Iraqis who are fighting against us and most of the Iraqis who are fighting with each other are not members of Al Qaida.

The ones who are fighting against us mostly don't like us being there because, after all, we are seen by them as legacies of the age of colonialism, as foreigners.

And a lot of Iraqis are fighting against each other for sectarian, religious reasons. We have actually destabilized, broken up Iraq. And we have created the mess in which we find ourselves now entangled.

BLITZER: And many military commanders in Iraq themselves acknowledge that the great threat to the U.S. is not necessarily from the Al Qaida operatives but from the sectarian violence, the Shia and the Sunni who hate each other and who are killing each other and, as a result, are killing American troops.

AL HAIG, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, first, I think that this is a conflict that's essentially political. It's not just purely military. It's political and religious and ideological. And it was driven by the so-called neocons that hijacked my party, the Republican Party, before this administration...

BLITZER: Name names, Mr. Secretary. Who are you talking about?

HAIG: Well, I'm talking about...

BLITZER: Because a lot of our viewers hear the word "neocon" and they don't know what you're talking about.

HAIG: Well, they're a group of people who are ex-Democrats. Many of them hovered around the Seattle Conservative Democrats some years ago, who...

BLITZER: Who specifically are you referring to?

HAIG: I'm talking about Wolfowitz. I'm talking about Richard Perle. I'm talking about some newly-made ones. I'm talking about the former editor of the Wall Street Journal.[Max Boot?]

These people are very, very deeply embedded in Yale and certain intellectual circles. And for years, they've been against NATO...

BLITZER: But did they hijack the strategy, the policy, from the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States?

HAIG: Yes.

BLITZER: The secretary of state, the secretary of defense?

HAIG: Well, no, not the secretary of state, but he sat there and had to be a passenger on a train that he wasn't driving?

BLITZER: Was Rumsfeld a neocon?

HAIG: I wouldn't say he was. I wouldn't say...

BLITZER: But was he in charge of the military strategy?

HAIG: No, no. The outcome of the strategy was to create democracy with a bayonet.

BLITZER: Is Cheney a neocon?

HAIG: I think so.

BLITZER: So he's part of that neocon conspiracy, or cabal, or whatever?

HAIG: Those around him were, if he wasn't.

BLITZER: And they could basically influence the president and dictate to the president what to do, in terms of going to war against Saddam Hussein?

HAIG: Well, I'm not here to talk about that. There were a lot of influences on the president, but he's the president, and he's responsible.

BLITZER: So what do you think of this argument?

Because you hear it all the time, Dr. Brzezinski, that there were these group of of neoconservatives in there, like Paul Wolfowitz, who has the deputy secretary of defense; Richard Perle, who wasn't even in the government but he was an outside adviser, who were effectively shaping U.S. strategy.

Do you buy that?

BRZEZINSKI: I buy a great deal of that. I think Al Haig is absolutely right.

We had, at the top a president, who was essentially uninformed about foreign policy, and then top policy-makers like Rumsfeld and, of course, Cheney who are, kind of, traditional, quote, end quote, "realists," hard nosed types.

But the guys who provided the strategy and made the argument that we have to go into Iraq, that we have to link the war on terror with an attack on Iraq, were the guys that Al Haig is talking about.

They provided strategy. They provided the argument that we would be greeted as liberators, that this would be a cake walk. And they have devastated American national interests as a consequence.

See also:

• The Israel Lobby and the US War Against Iraq
• The "JINSA Crowd" and the Iraq War

Labels: conspiracy, Iraq, Israel Lobby, Neoconservatives, United States, Zbigniew Brzezinski