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Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996
Sender: Charles Bell <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Re: cj#569> re: U.S. Hegemony & the Presidency
I can't resist throwing in a few comments here. To make it clear at the
outset where I am coming from: yes, I do believe in `conspiracies', if
conspiracy is defined as a concerted effort by a group of powerful
people/interests to gain ends different from those they profess to the
public, by whatever ruthless means they deem necessary. I do *not*
believe that all conspiracies act in concert as elements of one giant
worldwide conspiracy; not yet, anyway. Lucky for us. There are still
cracks through which we can peer and which we may be able to widen.
On Fri, 23 Aug 1996, Richard K. Moore wrote:
>
> Below, Frank Chartrand continues his rebuttal re/U.S. Hegemony. He
> argues that Clinton is to be blamed for an alleged deterioriation in the
> U.S. military situation. I disagree with his characterization, as you'll
> see at the end, but there's another issue I'd like to raise.
>
> I find the style of this material somehow disturbing. It looks
> like what you would get if you assigned some professor to write a piece to
> achieve a certain propaganda objective, namely to show:
> (1) Clinton is weak and we need a Republican.
> (2) The U.S. is getting pushed around, and needs to assert itself.
> (3) We need a larger military budget.
>
> What we see are skillfully documented vignettes that seem to prove
> certain conclusions, and then a chain of interpretation that seeks to
> establish more general principles. That's fair enough, but there's also a
> very deft framing of issues, limiting of alternatives, and information
> selectivity that makes the whole presentation seem bogus. There's more
> than a whiff of sophistry.
>
> It is a fact, not a conspiracy theory, that one of the largest
> groups of people to receive regular CIA payments are professors. Selected
> academics are funded to write internal documents (confidential studies,
> analyses, position papers, etc.) and propaganda documents (OpEd pieces,
> papers for journals, newspaper columns, etc.) which argue in requested
> directions, using as much professorial flair and fact-waving as possible.
This is undeniably true. I have long maintained that one of the
longest-lasting crimes of our intelligence establishment during the Cold
War has been the poisoning of the well of historical scholarship. Unless
someday the unpurged secret files are open for careful academic
inspection, we will *never* know how many books, how many magazines, how
many articles -- how many sentences or paragraphs in otherwise
unexceptionable research publications -- were planted with specific intent
to deceive.
I think in fact there is evidence that certain publications were covertly
founded by that establishment for the purpose of producing profound
effects on national policy, both domestic and international. If any
members of this list wish to engage in investigative research on this
topic, I can provide a lead involving two persons known personally to me,
and two influential publications they founded.
But I must also add that I found the Chartrand article shallow, callow
and quite unworthy of CIA funding. (Maybe the DEA or the BATF, whose
academic standards are presumably lower, might have thrown a buck or so
his way.)
Frank Chartrand wrote:
> Subject: Re: cj#562> re: U.S. Hegemony
>
>
> Well, if one looks at the weeks leading up to the 1992 election and comments
> made even up until January 1993 - it was critical according to Bill Clinton
> and Warren Christopher that N Korea not be allowed to have nuclear material.
> All efforts would be expended according to Clinton - to stop N Korea from
> achieiving that power. And then in the following 2-3 years N Korea has the
> power. I do blame it on Clinton and it is quite easy to do so. Wasn't
> before ... he said he wouldn't allow it ... and now they do. Very simple.
>
> The same goes for Iran. Before - no. Now ... quite possibly. Considering
> the Russian Security Police arrested 11 people in 1995 for selling /
> attempting to sell nuclear material to various countries. 2 of these were:
> N Korea and Iran. So again I blame him and that is, again quite easy to do.
> Wasn't before ... now it is.
>
> According to NERC - Nuclear Emergency Response Commission - in 1990 the
> chance of someone detonating a nuclear device in the US was 1-3%. In 1993
> it was 15-17%. In 1996 it is 24-29%. According to them it is a matter of
> 'when' not 'if'. Again it seems clear from before and after that it falls
> on Clinton. if not on Clinton then on Christopher. He made 13 visits to N
> Korea. Underlings made 23 visits between 1992-1995. In all the visits ...
> 36 odd times ... N Korea now has the capability. It is quite clear that the
> efforts taken result in nothing but babbling.
These contentions resemble the old allegation that FDR sold us out at
Yalta because he didn't make Stalin take his armies back home.
Only immediate aggressive war (as advocated by Patton) could have done
that. Or the allegation (still made in some quarters today) that only
treason by our scientists enabled Russia to break the `secret' of the
nuclear bomb. Only the repeal of scientific inquiry could have done that.
rkm wrote:
> The "fascism ratchet" uses the bi-partisan system, in these days of
> a dummy PR Presdency, to move the country ever-closer to outright fascism.
> It works like this. By and large, U.S. policy unfolds according to its
> unnanounced, elite-established agenda. But the timing, and the media
> spin, of events is staged so that Republican Presidents always come out
> heroes, and Democratic Presidents always come out looking like buffoons.
There is a modicum of truth to this -- but only a modicum.
The larger truth, as I think you really know, is that party labels are
immaterial to the Establishment, which can and does secure its ends
through both vehicles. In fact, the `new Democrats' are if anything more
responsive to the interests of global business and finance than today's
Republican party, which is more closely identified with the parochial and
the paranoid (small businessmen and the anxious lower-middle classes).
As an early example of this `bipartisan' phenomenon -- and one which
should warm the hearts of all true conspiracy theorists -- I point you to
the CTs' formerly favorite (now, alas, almost forgotten) whipping boy: the
Trilateral Commission. When David Rockefeller and friends founded this
organization in the early 70s, they invited many of the heaviest hitters
in the international business/finance/academic elite to join the
commission or its staff. (One of the most prominent staff members, by the
way, was one of the two academics I mentioned above.) But they invited
only two then-incumbent elective politicians to join their ranks: one from
each party. The Republican was Dan Evans, then Governor of Washington
State -- a `Western Easterner' or `progressive' Republican who could have
stood as a counterweight to the unpredictable nationalist ideologues of
the Goldwater/Reagan `cowboy' wing of the party.
The Democrat was a little-known governor of a second-tier southern State,
whose international expertise was nil and whose domestic exposure had been
slight up to then. His name was Jimmy Carter.
Charles
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Dear Charles,
Thanks for your interesting observations, most of which I find spot on.
re/ Frank Chartrand -- He has assured me that he's a student on his
own, and that he can't write. Fair enough, but I still find his stuff
superficially persuasive, in harmony with other propagada I see around the
net, well-compacted & styled for net attention spans, and sprinkled with
more than casual research. Maybe that's just how some students like to
spend their free time.
re/ Party labels -- On a day-to-day basis it may be true that party
labels are immaterial, but on a bigger scale, the Democrats are
distinguished in the media-mythology as being more liberal and more
public-spending oriented (whether true or not). As a consequence, I
maintain, there is a concious media policy of dis-respecting Democratic
officeholders, and a covert policy of undermining their high-profile
efforts, so as to underscore the "wisdom" of the anti-liberal,
anti-spending -- neoliberal -- establishment position.
Just contrast the deferrence Bill & Barbara Bush got from the
press, while Clinton & Hillary get the full brunt of unrestricted tabloid
warfare. The way the S&L collapse was ignored and Contra-gate was
manipulated into a Colonel-North love-fest, while Whitewater is allowed to
sleaze all over the streets.
Also, I think the identification of Republicans with smaller
business minds is no longer valid. William Greider makes the point in "Who
Will Tell the People" (if memory serves) that an historic shift occurred in
the 80s (approx), when Republicans and Multinationals underwent a mutually
transcendent, love-at-first-night experience. They've been going crazy
screwing us ever since.
imho,
rkm
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Posted by Richard K. Moore - •••@••.••• - Wexford, Ireland
Cyberlib: www | ftp --> ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib
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