An earlier  report from Euractiv (which styles itself as a “cross-lingual” network of news) claimed that Swedish law protects whistle-blowers who post documents to Wikileaks. This has been repeated like a mantra across the MSM. Now we have a Swedish newspaper report that confirms the opinion of more informed critics that Wikileaks‘ claims of protection under Swedish law are exaggerated and false. Swedish law requires a license before protection can be claimed, and Wikileaks doesn’t have one. So anyone who leaked documents to it would indeed be vulnerable. Just as Wikileaks’ original co-founder John Young of Cryptome pointed out, Wikileaks is guilty, at the very least, of overpromising security. That certainly adds to suspicions about its true nature:

“Whistle-blower website WikiLeaks did not have a licence to publish material in Sweden and its claim that its sources were protected by Swedish constitutional law could therefore be questioned, reports said Saturday.WikiLeaks recently published thousands of pages of classified documents detailing the war in Afghanistan. The move was criticised by the governments of Afghanistan and the United States, among others.The whistle-blower’s website says that material is “routed via Sweden and Belgium which have first rate journalist-source shield laws.”But the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act requires a certificate of publication issued by the Radio and TV Authority that lists a publisher who can, for instance, be prosecuted for publishing information.Both the Sydsvenskan daily and Swedish radio’s media affairs programme Medierna on Saturday carried interviews with media and legal experts who said that since WikiLeaks did not have a licence to publish material in Sweden, authorities could therefore probe sources without violating press freedom and freedom of speech laws.Medierna said it had tried to contact WikiLeaks about the issue, and late Friday received an email from WikiLeaks co-founder and editor in chief Julian Assange saying that the site’s lawyers would look into the matter.”To my mind, it is too simple to claim that all WikiLeaks sources are totally protected in Sweden,” Hakan Rustand, deputy Chancellor of Justice told Sydsvenskan.The Chancellor of Justice is the sole prosecutor in cases concerning offences against freedom of the press and freedom of expression.”If the constitutional laws are non-applicable, ordinary liability laws take effect. This means a source could be brought to court by a common prosecutor,” Rustand added.Journalist Anders R Olsson, a specialist on freedom of speech, observed that “even when the publisher is protected by constitutional law, the ban on investigating sources isn’t watertight.”

“In the case of top secret information that is of great importance to the military, police and prosecutors have a duty to try to find the leak and prosecute the source,” he said.”

You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power — he’s free again.

* Bobynin, in Ch. 17, The First Circle, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1968)

From The Old Thinker (hat-tip to The Daily Bell comments page:

(Note: the goals of the elites are not in themselves “evil,” which is the common assumption. In fact, they’re downright noble.  Harping on the “evil” essence of world government is thus misleading. The real issue is that it matters very little if an objective is good or bad, if the means to it involves manipulating human beings against their will.  When the method is perverted, the goal, even if it sounds laudable on paper, must become perverted…)

“In 1954 the Reece Committee, chaired by Carroll B. Reece, produced its findings regarding the influence of tax-exempt foundations in the field of education.* The report also briefly mentions their influence in politics, propaganda, social sciences and international affairs. The Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation and others were discussed during the Committee hearings.

The Reece Committee was smeared by the media and by John D. Rockefeller the 3rd himself as being wholly inaccurate, but historical hindsight gives us a perspective that shows what the Committee found is far closer to the truth than Rockefeller would have you believe.

A predominant theme found in the Committee’s findings is the desire of the foundations and those behind them to create a system of world governance. The use of propaganda and social engineering was identified as a means to and end to achieve this goal. In 1932, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Max Mason, stated that “The social sciences… will concern themselves with the rationalization of social control…”

The Committee cited a report from the President’s Commission on Higher Education, published in 1947, which outlines the goals of social engineering programs; The realization on part of the people of the necessity of world government “…psychologically, socially and… politically”. The cited report states,

“In speed of transportation and communication and in economic interdependence, the nations of the globe are already one world; the task is to secure recognition and acceptance of this oneness in the thinking of the people, as that the concept of one world may be realized psychologically, socially and in good time politically.

It is this task in particular that challenges our scholars and teachers to lead the way toward a new way of thinking. There is an urgent need for a program for world citizenship that can be made a part of every person’s general education.

It will take social science and social engineering to solve the problems of human relations. Our people must learn to respect the need for special knowledge and technical training in this field as they have come to defer to the expert in physics, chemistry, medicine, and other sciences.” [emphasis added] (p. 483)

Rene A. Wormser, author of the book Foundations: Their Power and Influence, served as counsel for the Committee. Wormser discussed the investigation of the social sciences on part of the foundations – such as the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations – and the influence that they wield.

“Mr. WORMSER. Professor, back to this term “social engineering,” again, is there not a certain presumption, or presumptuousness, on the part of social scientists, to consider themselves a group of the elite who are solely capable and should be given the sole opportunity to guide us in our social development? They exclude by inference, I suppose, religious leaders and what you might call humanistic leaders. They combine the tendency toward the self-generated social engineering concept with a high concentration of power in that interlocking arrangement of foundations and agencies, and it seems to me you might have something rather dangerous.” [emphasis added] (p. 579)

The Committee lists the various organizations who were involved with the Rockefeller Foundation’s investigation of the social sciences. Also identified were other organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, which have been instrumental in crafting globalist policy.

“When the Rockefeller Foundation turned to the social sciences and the humanities as the means to advance the “well-being” of humanity, the section entitled “Social Sciences” in the annual report was set up under the following headings, which remained unchanged until 1935:

General Social Science Projects : Cooperative Undertakings.
Research in Fundamental Disciplines.
Interracial and International Studies.
Current Social Studies.
Research in the Field of Public Administration.
Fundamental Research and Promotion of Certain Types of Organization.
Fellowships in the Social Sciences.

The report states that the arrangement was for the purpose of “simplification and in order to emphasize the purpose for which appropriations have been made.”

In the decade 1929-38 the foundation’s grants to social-science projects amounted to $31 .4 millions and grants were made to such agencies as the Brookings Institution, the Social Science Research Council, the National Research Council, the Foreign Policy Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Institute of Pacific Relations in this country as well as a dozen or more in other countries, and the Fiscal Committee of the League of Nations.” (p. 879)

A campaign to smear the Reece Committee began shortly after it was released. John D. Rockefeller the 3rd himself responded to the findings of the Committee, flatly denying that the Rockefeller foundation or any of the organizations that it has given money to has ever advocated world government. Rockefeller states,

“If the expression “one-world theories of government” means anything, it means world government. No shred of evidence is presented in the report to show that the Rockefeller Foundation or any of the organizations to which it has made grants has advocated world government.” (p. 1104)

With the advantage of historical hindsight, this claim from Rockefeller is easily debunked. In reality, the Rockefeller family has – from a very early date – promoted globalism and world government, which today is almost a reality. The following are a few examples of Rockefeller influence over the past several decades. Programs of social engineering designed to acclimate the people to globalist policy and goals, combined with pushes for global governance have been pushed on the American people for almost 100 years.

The Interchurch World Movement

An early project of the Rockefeller family was the Interchurch World Movement, started in 1919. John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of John D. Rockefeller the 3rd, founded the IWM. Charles E. Harvey, professor of history at California State University, wrote a history of the Interchurch World Movement in a 1982 paper titled “John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Interchurch World Movement of 1919-1920: A Different Angle on the Ecumenical Movement. The IWM goal was to consolidate the churches into a single organization that would control the direction of the churches as a whole. The IWM, in Rockefeller’s own words had a globalist slant. He writes,

“I do not think we can overestimate the importance of this Movement. As I see it, it is capable of having a much more far-reaching influence than the League of Nations in bringing about peace, contentment, goodwill and prosperity among the people of the earth.”

A revealing letter written by Rockefeller himself showed that he saw a potential for ensured “stability” by gaining control over the churches.

“I know of no better insurance for a businessman for the safety of his investments, the prosperity of the country and the future stability of our government than this movement affords…” [1]

The Federal Council of Churches

A later organization, the Federal Council of Churches, also highlights Rockefeller’s investment in world government promoting organizations.

Not surprisingly, the Federal Council of Churches – which was merged with the National Council of Churches in 1950 – received significant funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. [1] Using a similar corporate structure of churches that the Interchurch World Movement first pioneered, the program developed several agendas for churches to adopt, with world government named as the ultimate goal. As reported by Time magazine in 1942,

“These are the high spots of organized U.S. Protestantism’s super-protestant new program for a just and durable peace after World War II:

>Ultimately, “a world government of delegated powers.”

>Complete abandonment of U.S. isolationism.

>Strong immediate limitations on national sovereignty.

>International control of all armies & navies.

> “A universal system of money … so planned as to prevent inflation and deflation.”

> Worldwide freedom of immigration.

> Progressive elimination of all tariff and quota restrictions on world trade.

> “Autonomy for all subject and colonial peoples” (with much better treatment for Negroes in the U.S.).

> “No punitive reparations, no humiliating decrees of war guilt, no arbitrary dismemberment of nations.”

> A “democratically controlled” international bank “to make development capital available in all parts of the world without the predatory and imperialistic aftermath so characteristic of large-scale private and governmental loans.”

This program was adopted last week by 375 appointed representatives of 30-odd denominations called together at Ohio Wesleyan University by the Federal Council of Churches. Every local Protestant church in the country will now be urged to get behind the program. “As Christian citizens,” its sponsors affirmed, “we must seek to translate our beliefs into practical realities and to create a public opinion which will insure that the United States shall play its full and essential part in the creation of a moral way of international living.” [2]

The United Nations

After World War II, John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the land which holds the United Nations headquarters in New York City with a gift of $8.5 million. The U.N. has served as an outlet for various Rockefeller initiatives since its founding. Steven C. Rockefeller, former chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund board of trustees, has been intimately involved with the United Nations Earth Charter. During the early stages of the Earth Charter, he chaired the Earth Charter International Drafting Committee from 1997 to 2000.

The Atlantic Union

Nelson Rockefeller was a major proponent of the Atlantic Union between the United States and Europe. Today, this vision is a step closer to reality with the founding of the Transatlantic Economic Council in 2007. Gary Allen documents Rockefeller’s influence in the push for an Atlantic Union in The Rockefeller File (1976),

“In The Future of Federalism, Noble Nelson proclaimed:

No nation today can defend its freedom, or fulfill the needs and aspirations of its own people, from within its own borders or through its own resources alone …. And so the nation-state, standing alone, threatens, in many ways, to seem as anachronistic as the Greek city-states eventually became in ancient times.

Get it? The man who could not be elected to the White House, but managed to arrange an entrance there anyway, says that a free and independent United States is now anachronistic.

Webster’s defines “anachronism” as something from a former age that is incongruous in the present. Every effective World Government proponent learns early in the game some rhetorical tricks, such as calling black “white.” Nelson Rockefeller is no exception. In the same book, he suggests:

The federal idea, which our Founding Fathers applied in their historic act of political creation in the eighteenth century, can be applied in this twentieth century in the larger context of the world of free nations – if we will but match our forefathers in courage and vision.” [1]

The Alliance of Civilizations

As an example of the Rockefeller family’s continued commitment to social sciences and social engineering, the Alliance of Civilizations (AoC) Media Fund program for evaluating psychophysiological responses to media is a good place to start. The AoC is part of the organization’s “Rapid Response Media Mechanism” that is dedicated to oversee and attempt to guide the content of a variety of media outlets including Hollywood. With the goal of creating “…religious and cultural pluralism as a global value”, the AoC is supporting research into “…the process by which images of violence and humiliation affect physiological responses and behavior.” The research will further investigate,

“The use of psychophysiological (skin conductance, heart rate and impedence, hormone levels, etc.) and neuroimaging methods capture activation of the brain and body as individuals interact with media and/or out-group members, shedding light on how individuals’ emotions and beliefs may change — even without their awareness.”

The research will, according to the AoC “…be used to generate policy recommendations for media persons and government officials.” The research is a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

The Alliance of Civilizations’ methods are similar to another U.N. organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). UNESCO receives regular grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. In the founding document for the organization, UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, Sir Julian Huxley writes,

“Taking the techniques of persuasion and information and true propaganda that we have learnt to apply nationally in war, and deliberately bending them to the international tasks of peace, if necessary utilising them, as Lenin envisaged, to “overcome the resistance of millions” to desirable change. Using drama to reveal reality and art as the method by which, in Sir Stephen Tallent’s words, “truth becomes impressive and living principle of action,” and aiming to produce that concerted effort which, to quote Grierson once more, needs a background of faith and a sense of destiny. This must be a mass philosophy, a mass creed, and it can never be achieved without the use of the media of mass communication. Unesco, in the press of its detailed work, must never forget this enormous fact.”

If there is any doubt as to the Rockefeller family commitment to globalism and world government, take a look at the words of David Rockefeller on page 405 of his Memoirs,

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Citation:

*See the full Reece Committee document here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The Interchurch World Movement

[1] Harvey, Charles E. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Interchurch World Movement of 1919-1920: A Different Angle on the Ecumenical Movement. Church History, Vol. 51, No 2. (Jun., 1982), p. 198-209.

The Federal Council of Churches

[1] lbid, Harvey. p. 205.

[2] “American Malvern.” Time. March 16, 1942. Available at: <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801396,00.html>

The Atlantic Union

[1] Allen, Gary. The Rockefeller File. Seal Beach, California: ’76 Press, 1976

Psyop Strategies: Limited Hang-Out

A “limited hangout” is used by Intelligence Organizations when a clandestine operation goes bad; or, a phony cover story blows up. When discovered the Intelligence Organization volunteers some of the truth while still managing to withhold key and damaging facts in the case.

The public is so intrigued by the new information it doesn’t pursue the matter further. The new disclosures are sensational, but superficially so. Some of the lesser scoundrels are identified and publicly exposed to twist uncomfortably on network TV and in the press.“

An old review I did of John Perkins’ “Confessions Of An Economic Hitman”:

“In August 1981, my bag was packed for my fifth visit to Panama when the news came to me over the telephone of the death of General Omar Torrijos Herrera, my friend and host. The small plane in which he was flying to a house that he owned at Coclesito in the mountains of Panama had crashed, and there were no survivors. A few days later, the voice of his security guard, Sergeant Chuchu, alias Jose de Jesus Martinez, ex-professor of Marxist philosophy at Panama University, professor of mathematics and a poet, told me, “There was a bomb in that plane. I know there was a bomb in that plane, but I can’t tell you why over the telephone.” [1]

In 1971, at the age of 26, John Perkins became what he called an economic hit man (EHM) for a secretive international consulting firm called Chas. T. Main, Inc. His job was to produce research to justify World Bank loans of billions of dollars to poor countries for public projects like dams and electrification. He was to produce economic forecasts for them of up to 20-25 years that were so exuberant that they would convince the governments to take the loans.

Straight out of the Peace Corps in Ecuador, Perkins was dazzled by the money, prestige, and James Bond aura his new life offered. Soon, he became a master of producing outrageous forecasts that brought in massive contracts for construction and engineering to Main and other US companies, like Bechtel, Halliburton and Brown and Root. Perkins’ work didn’t end with just enriching his firm, though. He claims he was also actively involved in schemes to bankrupt countries so that they would forever present easy targets for their first world creditors when the creditors were in need of military bases, access to resources, or votes in the UN. If the leaders of the targeted countries displayed too independent a style of thinking, the EHM was replaced by a more sinister figure — the jackal. The jackal simply eliminated the troublemaker. The jackals were the CIA-sanctioned thugs who instigate coups, abduct and assassinate. And behind them was the US military.

We have no idea how much of Mr. Perkins mea culpa is true. But if even a quarter of it has a toe-hold in reality, it will shock the average reader. By his account, the US government is running an empire of a size and duplicity unparalleled in world history.

Perkins’ first job was in Java, Indonesia, where a glamorous brunette with green eyes, Claudine, who worked as a consultant with Main, gave him the low down on his real function. Indonesia, she tells him, is likely to be the next domino to fall to communism after Vietnam. Indonesia also just happens to be oil rich and Muslim. His job is to make sure that it stays in hock to the international banks and aid organizations who want to lend it money.

“A large part of your job is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interest,” says she. “In the end, these leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire — to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs . . . ” [2]

Heady stuff for a young man from a frigid Calvinist background in New England. looking for money and adventure. Of course, Perkins is married . . . with problems. And, of course, Claudine has to undertake all this initiation and training, seductively, in her own apartment. And of course, it is done over a bottle of Beaujolais . . . .

“Once you’re in, you’re in for life,” says his siren — somewhat improbably, considering Perkins’ various successful career moves since. [3]

Under the green eyes of big sister, Perkins will write the forecasts that make third world countries borrow billions from the World Bank to undertake mammoth utility projects. The money goes directly to the US contractors who get the lucrative bids; the projects never yield the benefits to the country that they are projected to. But in return for the “loans,” the countries are forced to let the US milk their natural resources, environment and infrastructure rapaciously.

What do the EHMs do?

They funnel money from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.

“It was not uncommon for us to seduce wives of oil company executives because that was a way of gaining information and learning things about their husbands.”

Our EHM then runs into a long-time Main forecaster, Howard Parker, whose conscience is still twitching. He refuses to pony up the inflated figures on Indonesia’s future energy needs that Main wants. Naturally, Perkins’s mentor, a Cary Grant double who will later become Main’s president, gets rid of Parker and promotes the more docile Perkins. Then it’s on to Panama. There, surrounded by graffiti announcing that Death for Freedom Is the Way to Christ, Perkins chats with the populist dictator Omar Torrijos. Torrijos, who wants to get the Japanese to build another Panama Canal, claims he needs bodyguards to protect him from the wrath of the Norte Americanos. Why? Perkins finds the answer in a desert in Iran, where a young radical introduces him to a victim of the Shah’s CIA trained Savak police. He is seated in the dark, in a wheelchair. Perkins catches the outline of the man’s face in profile — his nose has been cut off.

Comes the oil crisis of the 1970s, and the now savvy Perkins is given the task of finding out how to channel Saudi oil dollars back into the US. The answer is simple — outsource Saudi infrastructure to the US. Americans who are upset about losing jobs to Bangalore and Manila should console themselves with this episode in their country’s history. Aided by Perkins and Main, the US Treasury Department draws up a plan to bring modernity to Saudi Arabia, but it needs the help of the Saudi government and Perkins is given the job of convincing one Saudi prince — Prince W — whose weakness is blonds. Perkins procures “Sally,” a woman whose husband enjoys his own infidelities. The wages of pimping are hidden in expense accounts with posh Boston restaurants.

Through such titillating details do we learn of the swathe of plunder that the US has cut through the world — from Iran in the 1950s to Iraq in 2003 and of what happens to leaders who object. In Panama, Omar Torrijos is killed and Manuel Noriega is arrested and imprisoned. In Ecuador, Jaime Rold?s dies in a helicopter crash.

Then, at last, our hit-man’s somewhat supine conscience kicks him in the ankle, but only to lead him back later, one last time, into the mire. This time, he is an expert witness for the nuclear energy industry . . . at the same firm. One of his new jobs is to justify the Seabrook nuclear power plant to the New Hampshire Public Service Commission as the best and most economic choice to generate electricity in the state.

“Unfortunately,” he writes “the longer I studied the issue, the more I began to doubt the validity of my own arguments. I personally became uncomfortable with the position I was expected to take — was paid to take — under oath in what amounted to a court of law.”

It is after this last stint that he decides to quit. He enters his final incarnation — as a New Age guru. From prevaricating power plant purveyor to shape-shifting shaman might seem a bit of a hop, but the enterprising business major is equal to it. Soon, he is shuttling between home and the Amazon on trips intended to raise the consciousness of alienated gringos about indigenous cultures and the effects of globalization on them. His new career spawns several pre-Confessions tomes: Shapeshifting: Shamanic Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation; Spirit of the Shuar: Wisdom from the Last Unconquered People of the Amazon; The Stress Free Habit: Powerful Techniques for Health and Longevity from the Andes, Yucatan, and Far East; and Psychonavigation: Techniques for Travel Beyond Time.

We will let his blurb do the explaining:

“John Perkins relates his encounters with the Bugis of Indonesia, the Shuar of the Amazon, the Quechua of the Andes, and other psychonavigators around the world. He explains how the people of these tribal cultures navigate to a physical destination or to a source of inner wisdom by means of visions and dream wanderings. Learn to attract the inner guidance you seek.”

Dreams are important, Perkins says, because they enable the dreamer to visualize a different future, and then shape-shift to fit it. This shape-shifting varies: It can be cellular — which involves actual physical transformation, such as aging, or turning into a jaguar. It can be institutional — as when democracy emerged in the world. And it can be personal — as when one starts a new career, as Perkins did.

The bouncer at the New World Order club wakes up and smells the Ginseng. As New Age guru, the former hit man now urges people to put corporations to better use rather than simply attack them. We don’t need to get rid of Nike, he says. We just need to get Nike shoes on everyone. A McDonalds in every slum. Tom Friedman would feel right at home.

* * * * *

It’s all so inclusive . . . so warm and so very fuzzy we could easily not feel the hairs stand up on the back of our necks. But they do. We will explain why.

But first, we will explain why not.

It’s not that we find Perkins’ account outrageous, unbelievable or even implausible. In fact, we read the book at a sitting, feeling a bit of a let down. Mossadegh, Arbenz, Allende . . . the deposition of this smorgasbord of leaders by the CIA has never been seriously questioned . . . not even by the CIA. It’s all a matter not just of public record, but of PhD dissertations. Such stuff as stodgy careers at The Nation are made of.

So why does Perkins need all the Mata Hari trappings? Aha, says one suspicious critic, the man has just canvassed progressive opinion and tailored a book that perfectly plays to every anti-corporate globalist gallery and pulls at every Che-stricken heart-string, even to the point of dealing with media ownership — a concern right at the top for progressives, but an odd one for a truth-averse hit man.

And he may have a point. Perkins might talk the social consciousness talk but he walks the capitalist walk, with tidy book contracts from such fully paid members of the corporatocracy as Penguin books. From selling overpriced construction projects he’s simply gone on to selling social awareness. From limitless markets to “limitless potential.”

But if the book has been a capitalist success, it’s been one on its own . . . not because of the corporatocracy, but because of the free market. It was turned down 20 times before it got placed with an obscure San Francisco publisher; there was no advance, no marketing blitz; and, it was ignored by every major paper and magazine in the country. Yet, it’s been on the New York Times bestseller list and sold twice as many copies as Globalization and Its Discontents — the oeuvre of Nobel laureate and one-time World Bank chief Joseph Stiglitz. Anti-corporate globalization gurus cited it at their bash at Porto Alegre, and we hear it’s even managed to make it to Hugo Chavez’s reading list. Soon it will be turned into a film. Doubtless we can look forward to seeing Catherine Zeta-Jones in the role of Claudine.

But, we do not begrudge the book its success. If Perkins has looked steely-eyed at what the public wants and given it to them, and accomplished this without force or fraud, more power to him. And if a life of crime unfits you to be a preacher man, we will have to erase half of history’s most persuasive pulpit-pounders, from Saul of Tarsus to Jim Bakker of PTL.

Nor do we grudge Perkins his Damascene conversion. We do not mind — as some do — the vignettes of his sexual peccadilloes, his drinking, his bouts of depression and anger, or his convenient conversion from empire-flack to empire-foe, once he’s made his million. Even a hit man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s Shambhala for?

And, we also don’t doubt the essential truth of what the book says, though we may quibble with the details. True, there’s not much hard evidence to hang onto now that EHMs are defunct and Parker and Torrijos are dead. Parsons Corporation, which bought out Main in 1985, claims it no longer has Main’s records, so the Sally story can’t be verified. And, the Cary Grant double who might know, Bruno Zambotti, isn’t talking. Other Main employees claim they don’t know what Perkins is about and accuse him of leaving not out of a crisis of conscience but because he “thought he was worth more than he was.”

Still, one would pretty much expect that to be the case. Cloak and dagger work is usually done, well, with a cloak and a dagger. Your neighbors don’t know. Most often, your wife and kids don’t know either. And, people do move on . . . or die.

The US government’s media department might call the book a fantasy. But, scanning the page they devote to it, we find it remarkably free of any concrete criticism. The government’s defense is simple:

The National Security Agency, which Perkins claims recruited him into his clandestine life, is really devoted to cryptography not espionage — just look what it says on its web page! [4]

But when we start believing the web page of a country’s defense department, dear reader, it will be time for us to trade in our pen and paper for eye-shades and a hearing-aid. We don’t know any spy agency that announces its operations on the door plate. Or posts the curriculum vitae of its alumni on the web.

The other criticisms the government hacks make are just as light-weight.. Perkins, they claim, also writes weird books on outre New Age topics . . . like shamans, and psychic travel. The implication is that Confessions is some kind of peyote-induced raving.

This is even thinner stuff than the NSA bit — especially since the American government itself is knee deep in the New Age. You didn’t know? Dear me, yes. Uncle Sam has been channeling, astral traveling, and bending spoons for quite awhile. As Jon Ronson tells it, it’s even in the business of staring into the eyes of goats. Why would it do that? Because, according to ancient yoga texts, a powerful psychic force directed into someone’s eyes can kill them.

That would be a lot cheaper than Abrams tanks and Daisy-Cutters, we imagine. Naturally, Don Rumsfeld and the cost-cutting brigade at the Pentagon got interested. But the goats were impervious, alas. No, next to the CIA and the Pentagon, we do not believe that Mr. Perkins can come even close to the bizarre. [5]

Then the government delivers the coup-de-grace. Perkins, they claim is a conspiracy theorist, who is on record claiming that 9-11 was an inside job.

Actually, Perkins doesn’t quite say what sort of a job 9-11 was, except that it didn’t look obviously like the work of a cave-dwelling Saudi on the lam. But even if he were to subscribe to every article of the alternative 9-11 dogma, from remote-controlled airlines to missiles hitting the Pentagon, it hardly undermines his case. The government wouldn’t do such a thing? No? What about the little matter of Operation Northwoods, put in place by only the post-war’s most popular president, Dwight Eisenhower. Northwoods was a plan for the US government to attack and kill its own citizens to provide a rationale for the county to go to war with Cuba. And recently we have learned that the US has had an operation going on in Europe since the end of WW II to knock off European citizens and put the blame on socialists to discredit them politically. Remote controlled airlines? Well, there is that Boeing system meant to foil hijackers. It’s been in place in some countries since the early 1990s. As for conspiracy theory, what would you call a group of people getting together to put through a plan to dominate the world? A quilting circle?

Dear reader, if you want a conspiracy theory, you don’t need Perkins or debates about the temperature at which jet fuel ignites. You need look no farther than the well known, clear as daylight “Project for the New American Century,” signed by the DC punditry’s most high-flying mainstream names from Bill Kristol to Francis Fukuyama.

But now we explain why Perkins’ book unsettles us:

The first problem with the book is all the parts that are obviously false and filled with the kind of fuzzy clap-trap that the silliest of the anti-corporate globalizers like to spout. In some of his economic analysis, Perkins doesn’t sound remotely like an economist — even a bad one.

The second problem with the book is — all the parts that are obviously true. The overthrow of Mossadegh, Arbenz, Noriega, and the rest are a matter of history. The US Treasury Department did create a commission called JECOR, under which the Saudis bid out all the construction projects in the country to foreign companies.

As for the motivations of the IMF and the World Bank, Perkins hasn’t gone half as far as Jude Wanniski, one-time economic adviser to Ronald Reagan and a senior editor of The Wall Street Journal, who likes to call the IMF-World Bank mafia an “Evil Empire.”

Wanniski does not mince words in describing the rationale for World Bank lending. It’s to get rid of the paper dollars accumulating in the vaults of private banks like Chase and Citicorp. Once America went off the gold standard in 1971, the paper could only lose value as it inflated. But lend them to foreign countries and the banks could be guaranteed a return . . . as long as you had the IMF — flush with tax payer dollars — stepping into the breach to collect the loan. It would force the countries to raise taxes on their people and devalue their currencies as part of the terms of the loan. [6]

So, we have no argument with Perkins on this. The World Bank and other organizations do routinely apply subtle and not so subtle pressure on governments to open up their countries to foreign contractors and privatization. Private companies do inflate their project estimates regularly. Einar Greve, the Norwegian who originally recruited Perkins to Main after his Peace Corps work in Ecuador and who also left the Tucson Electric Power in the thick of insider-trading allegations in 1989, did initially admit that Perkins was telling the truth, “Allowing for some author discretion, basically the story is true.”

Then he had second thoughts. Perkins and he didn’t meet on an airstrip but in a hotel bar; he doesn’t know anyone at the NSA . . . and even if he does, they wouldn’t talk about it to him. Perkins didn’t write to him from Ecuador and never set him up with Claudine. But Greve won’t come out and call Perkins a liar either. “I think that John,” he says, “really has convinced himself that a lot of this stuff is true.” [7]

We recognize weasel words as well as the next fellow. And we also recognize that Perkins’ psychological profile and background would have made him an ideal candidate for recruitment into a clandestine operation. Spy agencies don’t usually pick people with unshakable integrity. Habitual liars with a weakness for liquor, lucre, and loose living are what they want — they are easier to control. We would have had our doubts about the book if Perkins had confessed to being a celibate, tee-totaling origamist. We think Greve got it right the first time. The story is true.

Our problem with it is that it’s not true enough. Why does Perkins wait 33 years to come out with his tale? If his conscience hurt him as an EHM for Main, why did he leave and then go back to lie for the nuclear power industry? Why does he name no names, yet hint that he fears nameless retribution? Perkins points fingers at no one, using secondary material to back his claims most of the time. A Vanity Fair article is the source for his story about the Saudis. Why would the government bother with a book so thinly documented? Undergraduate papers on American foreign policy dig up more evidence every day. And, we wonder why the government didn’t try and do a better job trashing the book if it was so dangerous. That makes us think the book might not be dangerous . . . or even subversive at all.

We make no allegations, of course. We know nothing more than what we read in the papers about it. Confessions might be a fabrication from beginning to end . . . or it may be the most authoritative piece of writing since Moses came down from Mt. Sinai. We have no way of knowing. But that is the point. A book about the dirty deeds of empire that is neither verifiable nor falsifiable, does no real damage, and has a conclusion that would gladden the heart of Thomas Friedman, strikes us as one which the powers that be might actually want to cultivate. If we take Perkins at his word, Nike or McDonald’s or Pepsi or any of the lumbering giants of the corporate-state don’t have to get out of bed with their imperial paramour. They simply have to add a little do-gooding to their balance sheets. All that’s needed, says the reformed hit man, is a little shape-shifting for corporations. And really, they don’t even have to do that. They just have to put up a web-page saying they do. That should be evidence enough.

Copyright  2007 by Lila Rajiva.

ENDNOTES

[1] Getting to Know the Generals, Graham Greene, New York: Pocket Books, p. 1984, p. 11, cited in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, New York: Plume, January 2006, p. 186.

[2] Perkins, op.cit., pp. 20-1.

[3] Perkins, op.cit., p. 17.

[4] “Confessions — or Fantasies — of an Economic Hit Man?” U.S. Department of State, February 2, 2006.

[5] The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jon Ronson, Simon & Schuster, April 5, 2005.

[6] “Confession of an Economic Hit Man,” Jude Wanniski, Lew Rockwell, January 25, 2005.

[7] “Economic Hit Man,” Maureen Tcacik, Boston Magazine, July 2005.

A socialist asks if Bob Dylan “sold out”

“The implication of the initial question is that Bob Dylan was a committed, full-time member of the early 60s movement that we will call ‘folk protest’; and then later on he sold out, abandoning his left-wing principles in the name of making different types of music – more personal songs, a rock and roll style.

Well, clearly as the 60s progressed, Dylan moved away from protest songs and made many different types of music. But far too many histories of the era take a very, well, dialectical perspective, based on two types of Dylan: one, the author of Blowin’ in the Wind, Masters of War, and all the rest; and the other, the cool, disengaged rock and roller of the mid sixties, who dismissed his earlier songs as “finger-pointing songs”, a phrase calculated to upset the likes of us, and rejected all that they represented.

This way of looking at things rules out so many important factors – including his pre-Greenwich Village life, and the almost four decades since he played those shows with The Hawks and caused such outrage, and most importantly, the reasons for and the nature of the shift that undeniably took place. I think implicit in the question of whether Dylan sold out is another question – ‘Did Dylan buy in?’ If we can look more honestly and realistically about where Dylan was coming from in the early and mid sixties, we can make a more meaningful assessment of that ‘selling out’ era.

As a general point, I find it best not to be surprised, or too disappointed, when my musical heroes don’t agree with me politically. I have always felt that it was best not to judge my musical heroes, with left-wing tendencies, by the same standards as I would judge say, members of the same political party as me, or colleagues of mine in the trade union I work for, or people who explicitly claim to be something like a socialist, a Marxist, or whatever.

Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, none of them have ever claimed to be proper socialists. Bragg comes close; Earle even closer in some ways, claiming he is a borderline Marxist, but although I think he is head and shoulders above those others, politically, I am not sure he fully knows what that means. Anyway it is far better to have low political expectations of your musical heroes. Then when they do good, solid left-wing things, it’s a bonus.

A comment from Mike Davis on the blurb of Mike Marqusee’s book on Bob Dylan caught my attention. He says that Marqusee “rescues” Dylan “from the condescension of his own later cynicism”. Now, apart from being one of those smug, patronising statements that turn people away from your cause, this quote demonstrates what I am talking about. Dylan doesn’t need rescuing!

Left-wing readers may need rescuing from Dylan’s later cynicism; his protest songs themselves may even need rescuing from the same thing, so that they can still be enjoyed as what they were – among the greatest left-wing protest songs ever written. But to say that Dylan himself needs rescuing is breathtakingly arrogant, because it suggests that whoever is saying it knows the mind of Dylan better than Dylan himself. Has he listened to Blood on the Tracks? Or Time Out of Mind? Or any number of Dylan’s other great albums? The rest of us struggle to understand the workings of Dylan’s mind, and so we are in no position to second-guess him, although I’m about to try. But Dylan does not need rescuing from himself.

So let’s get down to the question, or rather the two questions as I’ve interpreted it – did Bob buy in, and did he sell out. First, some basic facts, which I think these days are beyond debate.

Bob Dylan started off as a teen rock and roller with no politics or folk music in his work. He played Little Richard numbers on his piano, he rarely played the guitar, and it took a long time before he started writing songs.

Once in New York, he became part of the burgeoning folk protest movement, and in 1962 and 1963 made two albums, Freewheelin’ and The Times They Are A-Changing, which helped begin the definition of a generation. I don’t think I am engaging in hyperbole when I say that. These albums were full of acoustic protest songs which need no introduction – songs which were at once directly political and wonderfully poetic. ‘Blowin in the Wind’, ‘Masters of War’, ‘The Lonsesome Death of Hattie Carroll’, ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’. These songs had some effect, though it’s impossible to say how much, in galvanising and broadening the appeal of the civil rights and peace movements of the early 60s.

In the mid-sixties he left the folk scene behind, wrote songs about a variety of less political and more personal topics, and made more electric rock and blues music. Subsequently, he has made great albums in many genres – older-style folk, country, rock and roll, blues…Dylan is such a great songwriter that he transcends genre. Since the mid 60s, bar the odd political song and a flirtation with born-again Christianity, he has stayed out of politics, and these days seems comfortable performing for the Pope and selling an old live recording through Starbucks.

So far, so uncontroversial.

Now I would just like briefly to cover the argument that Dylan going electric, and all of the hoo-ha that accompanied it, was a political sell-out. Many of you will have seen the footage and read accounts of the set with the Butterfield Blues Band at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and his 66 tour with The Hawks. These moves were of enormous historical significance for music, but not for politics.

For an acoustic folk singer, as Dylan was then seen, to go electric was a huge deal, not least because at the time he was subject to a hell of a lot of criticism. But that was because many people felt that electric meant pop. Years later, we know that serious messages can come from electrified music. From a political perspective, we shouldn’t dwell on Dylan going electric. You can sing political and non-political songs both electric or acoustic.

‘Folk’ does not mean ‘left-wing’. Before Pete Seeger ever played a guitar, people were singing folk music about their washing lines. And some great left-wing music has been recorded with electrification. So although at the time many people did equate an abandonment of acoustic music with selling out politically, it’s not a good argument.

Whether he sold out is a legitimate question, but using Dylan’s switch to electric music as justification for arguing that he did so doesn’t hold up.

Before Dylan wrote and played his outright folk protest songs, he was already playing what you might call that authentic, older-styled folk music. The quintessentially American music that everyday people would play to each other around the camp-fire, in their homes in the country, in the fields – music which could be about anything; not necessarily even vaguely political. Music chronicled by Alan Lomax and Harry Smith, usually based on either blues or country.

Dylan went back to this music not long after the Greenwich Village days, when he recorded the Basement Tapes with The Band in Woodstock; and he has returned to that music many times since, on record and in concert. One thing seems clear: Woody Guthrie, who was an exponent of both political and what might be called “pre-political” folk music, was an early hero of Dylan’s. Not just in terms of the politics: Dylan was attracted to Guthrie’s story-song style; his finger-picking techniques; his travelling hobo persona (to the extent that Dylan invented tales of his own travels); and his politics, which were very much for the common person, against oppression, and for a fair deal.

But maybe Dylan only paid lip service to each of these aspects of Guthrie’s personality and life. The young Dylan never travelled in the same way that Guthrie did; he wasn’t satisfied with sticking to the story-song spoken blues, let alone acoustic finger-picking; and, in terms of politics, while Guthrie was a sometime member and long-time supporter of the Communist Party, who dedicated the latter half of his life to the struggle, Dylan never went anywhere near that far.

So exactly how political was Dylan?

Richard Farina, with whom Dylan lived in the early 60s, characterises the politics of Dylan at the time as feeling “the intolerability of bigoted opposition to civil rights”. Fairly bland in itself. But Farina goes on to say that Dylan found opposition to such basic rights as an absurdity, and consequently he found it easy to write songs about it. The issue was open-and-shut, and so good material for songs; especially when there were specific, horrific case studies at hand – natural topics for songs like The ‘Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’, and ‘Only a Pawn in Their Game’. The nuclear bomb situation seemed similarly obvious and clear-cut to Dylan – hence Masters of War.

Even then, Farina points out that it was always the music that mattered to Dylan, not the politics. Not that he didn’t believe in what he was singing about; in that sense he was very much a part of the civil rights movement, and an important one at that. But artistically speaking, the political issues were being used by the songs, not the other way round.

And Dylan has always – always – been an artist over and above anything else. And just as Dylan’s songs made use of the issues, in a general sense Dylan himself made use of the folk protest movement. Fame was not an end in itself – but Dylan was wily enough to realise that without it, he would not get the opportunity to practice his art with as much freedom as he wanted.

But as I hope I have made clear, I don’t believe that the exploitation here was all one way. Dylan did believe in the politics he was singing about – as I have said, it was the very fact that he believed them so strongly that made him put them in song. And the exploitation that went on was two-way, as Dylan used the movement to a degree, and the movement used him.

But one of the things that impressed me most about Martin Scorsese’s recent documentary about those years was that he wasn’t painted either as an all-out left-wing firebrand or as an unbelieving and cynical user. Cynicism may have come on later, but at the time, Dylan did go far beyond what he needed to do if he was only in it to advance his own career. And Scorcese’s film makes that point with its footage of Dylan, with only an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, playing songs for black sharecroppers in a field in the Deep South.

That footage was from Dylan’s trip, along with Theo Bikel and Pete Seeger, to a voter-registration drive in Greenwood, Mississippi – the kind of gradualist method for improving civil rights that President Kennedy approved of. The trip in itself proved that Dylan had some sort of belief in, and commitment to, the protest movement of the time, and the footage made quite an impression on me personally.

The trip was to be a significant one in other ways too. He debuted ‘Only a Pawn in Their Game’, a superb song telling the story of the murder of Medgar Evers, an NAACP activist. Also at the time, Dylan had long conversations with Jim Forman, the Secretary of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, and Dylan was impressed by what Forman had to say – questioning the effectiveness of the slow-moving Kennedy reforms, expressing outrage at Kennedy’s refusal to protect vote-registration workers, and favouring more direct action.

Nearly all chroniclers of Dylan’s career at that time accept that Dylan, Joan Baez and the rest were an integral part of that gradual approach – basically taking up the baton from Kennedy’s inaugural address and taking it to the people. Forman and SNCC rejected their approach. And in ‘Only a Pawn’ Dylan seems to lean towards Forman’s views – the murder wasn’t simply the white murderer’s fault – “it ain’t him to blame” – he is only a pawn in their game. There was a real structural problem here which required a more dramatic approach than the non-confrontational methods favoured up to that point.

Around the same time, Dylan wrote an apology to the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, for making a speech (which you may remember from the Scorsese documentary) when he accepted the group’s Tom Paine award, where he compared himself to Lee Harvey Oswald and attacked bald politicians for being bald, and bourgeois Negroes for wearing suits on the platform at the Great March on Washington, and “generally pissed on liberalism” as Dave Marsh puts it. But what is interesting is that his apology makes it crystal clear that his treatment of the ECLU event was not because he was rejecting left-wing politics; in actual fact, his behaviour represented a radicalisation, offering support to the Black Panther position that direct action led by black people, not white people, was the only solution to civil rights problems. The only thing he rejected was the liberal, white-led folk protest movement.

Dylan did perform at the March on Washington, despite Jim Forman discouraging attendance. But by this point his protest days were numbered. Dylan was increasingly struck by what the folk protest movement had or rather hadn’t achieved, its naivete, and as Marqusee points out, the authoritarian and hence hypocritical way in which it was run. He faced a choice: break off from the musical-political movement that had given him fame, and embrace a more direct form of political action; or, still break off from the musical-political movement that had given him fame, and retreat into himself, artistically.

Either way, events, lack of progress and the influence of others had helped persuade him that a new direction was required. And this is where we go back to a point I made earlier: above all else, Bob Dylan was and is an artist. So of those two choices, with hindsight, there can have been little doubt about which he would choose. And there should be no surprise. Such complicated political feelings as he was going through at the time would not make good song material.

I’ve had a look at the discussion on the Workers’ Liberty website, and the point is made that, from 1964 onwards, after the album The Times They Are A-Changing, Dylan still wrote political songs, damning critiques of the political elite, big business, inequality, and so on. His very next album, Another Side Of, contained some of these songs – like ‘Chimes of Freedom’. And not too long afterwards he wrote ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’, one his most lyrically brilliant songs, and a superb indictment of modern society.

I think Mike Marqusee’s central thesis is that Dylan’s post-acoustic songs of the mid-sixties – during that run of three magnificent, magnificent, albums – were actually full of social and political comment: ‘Maggie’s Farm’ is a class-based cry of rage against wage labour; ‘It’s Alright Ma’ is a damning indictment of a hypocritical, greedy and corrupt society. And there are more examples.

It is certainly true that Dylan didn’t retreat totally into himself, pulling back from any social awareness. But while we don’t have time to pick lots of songs and albums apart here, I’m not sure I’m with Marqusee all the way.

It seems to me that by the mid-sixties, Dylan was taking pot-shots against all manner of people and groups. He’d sweep in, condemn someone poetically, brilliantly and concisely, then move off somewhere else. And that would be that. Just like in the past, the ideal, the opinion, served the song; not the other way around. But now he would publicly deny any politics – ok he answered hecklers with “come on man, these are all protest songs”, but they weren’t. They were commentary. As he said to folk singer Phil Ochs at the time, “The stuff you’re writing is bullshit…the only thing that’s real is inside you. Your feelings. Just look at the world you’re writing about and you’ll see you’re wasting your time. The world is, well – it’s just absurd”.

You could say that while Dylan still ruled the counter-culture, he provided its apolitical, its personal direction – not its political direction. From a political perspective, the songs became increasingly less specific, less pointed, and with less purpose. He wrote for himself, and never even attempted to use them externally – and nor would he dream of licensing others to do so. One of the most memorable instructions on the 1965 album Bringing it All Back Home was this one: “don’t follow leaders”. He included himself among those leaders. He was moving away from the movement.

And in many ways, from the same album, It’s Alright Ma’ sums up most of what Dylan has ever tried to get across in song. The tension between the peaceful, folky style of protest on the one hand, and the more direct and possibly violent solutions on the other hand is made clear with these lyrics:

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

And while presidents, advertising and various other ills of modern liberal democratic capitalistic society are condemned, Dylan constantly refers back to his individualistic outlook, and implicitly his rejection of collective action to solve the problems he’s mentioned:

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.

And finally, he admits to the presence in his mind of what would be seen as impure and unworthy thoughts by his former folk protest comrades:

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.

Later on in Dylan’s career, there was the occasional direct protest song. In 1971 he released the single ‘George Jackson’, about the death in prison of the Black Panther; and more importantly, in 1975 he wrote and recorded ‘Hurricane’ – a long and detailed exposition and critique of the miscarriage of justice surrounding the boxer Reuben Carter, wrongly convicted of murder.

Dylan sings with urgency, anger and conviction. But even this song reads like a tacit admission of the failure of the folk protest movement: “if you’re black, you might as well not show up on the streets”. So much for voter-registration; inequality runs a lot deeper than that, as we know. In any case, these songs were isolated instances.

So, bringing all of this together so as to answer the original questions. Did Dylan buy in? Dylan bought in to an extent. He was a part-time member of that folk protest movement – he just happened to be by a long way its best songwriter and hence an invaluable asset to it. He did far more than he needed to if his only goal had been to become famous, cynically, on the back of the movement.

As he became more involved in the movement, he came to question it, and as a result he drifted away from it. He continued to write what from most other songwriters would be called dangerously revolutionary songs, and he continued to work and perform with well-known left-wing artists – Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, and Joan Baez again in the 70s – but once the songs were written, that was it. He would play them live, sure, but as songs at Bob Dylan concerts, not as statements.

So did he sell out? Unless you live in the world of pigeon-holes and mass over-simplifications, then the answer has to be no. Just as he had gone into the folk protest movement both for reasons of expediency and belief, he came out of it both because he questioned where it was going and also, and moreover, because it was where his art was going. That last point is one too huge to examine here, but let us not forget that it is the central point: within two years of Another Side Of, Dylan had recorded probably the best three consecutive albums recorded by one person – Highway 61 Revisited, Bringing it all Back Home, and Blonde on Blonde. As Bruce Springsteen said in a recent interview (one which was very revealing, both musically and politically), “Trust the art, not the artist”. So did he sell out? Not really – he just moved on.”

Mike Short

The Great Bong:

“Arundhati Roy advanced yet another step towards her Nobel Peace Prize [Link] making it to the list of Forbes (evil capitalist alert) world’s most inspiring women  and  Wikileaks confirmed that the ship of government is the only ship that leaks from the top [Link]. As to the so-called classified information leak, while it may be big news in the US with Pakistan’s duplicity in the AfPak region being exposed for me it was more like “Tell me something I don’t know.” The day Wikileaks has the full Amar Singh transcripts [link] or the gory inconvenient truths behind all Al Gore globally warming shenanigans [link] or details of Zardari’s five female Turkish “guides” whose services were not compensated for by the Pakistanis [links], I would be mildly interested.  But not now”

Update (August 7, 2010)

Note: I’ve accepted this petition at my blog at the request of a libertarian outfit in Bavaria that is a staunch supported of Ron Paul.  It was the first to draw my attention to the work of Dr. Wolfgang Eggert, the author of the article that follows. Eggert, it seems, is a widely published scholar in the developing field of “deep politics” – which studies politics through the prism of secret clubs, cults, covert operations, and similar outfits. These kind of studies are long overdue, but they have to constantly battle the stigma of “conspiracism” – doubly unfair in their case because a researcher in this area is by definition a conspiracist. I don’t know Eggert’s work at first hand, let me admit, and accept the recommendation of the Bavarian outfit that it is not in its main thrust anti-Semitic. I don’t find anything in the piece below anti-Semitic myself. Controversial, yes. Politically incorrect, yes. Offensive to many, probably. But a critique in universalist terms of any kind of exceptionalism – no matter how politically favored – cannot by definition be anti-Semitic, since it grounds itself in the universal. As you can see, Eggert equally denounces the influence in the councils of power of Christian zealots and Islamicists.

But since one of my long-time readers has stated plainly that he finds this piece anti-Semitic, let me add (redundantly, in my opinion) that this writing isn’t intended to asperse Chabad across the board. Let me also add that I have over the years been a student of popular Kabbalism and do not consider the teachings of Chabad to be essentially obscurantist, which is the point of view of militant secularists and atheists. Quite the contrary. Rebbe Schneerson, might, for all anyone knows, be the greatest of saints…even an avatar. For aught I know, he is the Messiah…or at least, a Messiah.  My issue is not with Chabad in its teachings. My issue is with the nexus of Chabad with the state, the infiltration of the mechanism of government with the teachings of a religion. This is the danger.

Secondly, I should point out, that though I have no theological training in exegesis of the Talmud or of the Kabbalah, I can point out humbly to those who do that Bible codes are subject to interpretation. Numbers and their significations are mysterious and not fixed. That’s to say, even if something is prophesied in a text, the prophecy is dependent on the spiritual state of those who read it. Which is the reason Jesus admonished his followers, “Let him who has ears, hear.”

By this, he meant that each of his parables had many meanings and these meanings were available to the listeners according to their spiritual endowment….(more to follow)

Petition – Apocalypse NO

Please read the following petition and, if you agree, fill out the form at the top of the right column and submit it.
This petition will be submitted to national legislature and parliaments all over the world.

Not Another Holocaust!

IN THE NAME OF GOD?

How would you react if you became aware of the fact that extremist sects were gradually taking over key positions of international power? And what if these groups were doing so because they consider themselves the chosen ones of God? — chosen to bring global events into line with Biblical prophecy so that this would make possible the coming of the Messiah as predicted at the end of times? What if these fanatics, as the final step towards achieving their goal, are planning to provoke a Third World War starting in the Middle East, a Third World War that will first reduce the Holy Land to ashes and then the rest of the world? Frightening, but a sad reality – because this is exactly what is happening now.

Evangelical Pentecostal churches play a major role in this secret apocalyptic battle as well as the pseudo-judaic esoteric cult of Chabad Lubavich and Hardal – the radical representatives of “religious Zionism”. Each group today has succeeded in gaining alarming positions of power:

Estimating the worldwide budget of the american Kabbala-Church Chabad at “100 Million Dollar a year, to say the least” – which is no less than half of the sum the Vatican has to its disposal – the German Magazine “Focus” calls the late leader of the Cult, rabbi Schneerson, “the hidden ruler of Israel… No jewish statesman on a visit to the United States, no matter if likud or labor, could get around a private audience.” Moishe, son of the most intimate Schneerson-confidant Yehudah Krinsky and Press-Secretary, admits to the journal: “The Rebbe did participate in every Israli development.”On top of that during the last years Chabad was successfully seizing the majority of the jewish chief rabbinates all over the world. Supported from here and via Israeli diplomatic and intelligence channels as well as lobbying the sect (which was called a “mental disease” by the former Berlin Jewish community rabbi Walther Rothschild) promotes its political aims.

The most profound influence of Chabad and Hardal is exerted on the United States, where in the wake of George W. Bush, the spirit of Christian apocalyptic thinking has taken over. In 2003 chabadnik Paul Wolfowitz, an éminence grise of occult power, led the world into the Iraq war which was allegedly prophesied in the Bible. He was assisted by the following persons who were either allegedly inspired directly by the Bible or who had lent an ear to such whisperings: The US President, Vice-President Dick Cheney; National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, now Secretary of State; Minister of Justice John Ashcroft, the leader of the Republican Party in Congress, Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader (no. 1 and leader of his party), Bill Frist; his vice-secretary (and no. 2) Mitch McConnell, the Republicans’ no. 3, Senate Republican Conference Chairman Senator Rick Santorum, the no. 4 of the party; Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman Jon Kyl; the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives and vice party spokesperson Dennis Hastert. Furthermore, several advisors of the US President and the chief of the Home Security Department. Each of the above persons had ideological and/or personal ties with the apocalyptic messianic network, some of them sort advice from obscure bible-code experts and doomsday gurus on the eve of the Iraq war.

Now this doomsday-cabal is promoting a war against Iran – with the clear intention of dragging Russia into the final battle of the Apocalypse “Gog versus Magog” and leading the battle towards its climax on the battlefield of Armageddon in the Middle East. We shouldn’t be surprised if President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Teheran joins in the last act of this Biblical drama, as he too is a believer in the coming of a heavenly Messiah, as are his supporters. Final precondition to this “heavenly liberation act”: the start of the Third World War. Prominent White House critics in the USA (amongst them Senators and Congressmen) already point to the danger of a staged nuclear attack which would provoke this war and initiate a process of mass murder.

WE SAY NO!

Bearing in mind the international silence before and during the murdering of Jews between 1942 and 1944 we are warning of a Second Holocaust in Israel and a mass bloodbath on a global scale. We oppose apocalyptical sectarianism which is reaching for the heart of our governments via non-elected think-tanks, elite networks and lobby groups worth billions in order that they may set the world on fire. We say this to the members of parliament representing the people who are responsible and accountable to their citizens and required to give information to them: if you allow yourselves to become part of or even influenced by this plot, you risk a catastrophe and …

YOU DO NOT ACT IN OUR NAME!

OUR CLAIMS

• We call for a ban on sects and networks, which have been proven guilty of undermining the separation between state and church, particularly if such groups are pursuing apocalyptical plans. Even in cases of doubt such groups should be kept under surveillance by the pertinent offices for the defence of the constitution and closely observed by official religious sect advisors. State benefits such as exemption from tax etc. must definitely be stopped until it has been proven beyond a doubt that the respective group does NOT fit into the described scheme.

• We call for the introduction of a law which bans members of government and government bureaucracy (including members of the state controlled media) from being members of such networks.

• We propose the intervention of inter/national commissions of inquiry to deal with the threat which may emerge from the above organisations and to inform the public about the results of their inquiry. Already existing subsidized institutions for peace and conflict research should be involved in this investigation.

• We urge the establishment of a permanent structure within a framework of international cooperation (UN, Council of Europe) to deal with this task and to exchange the results of these investigations across national borders. Alternatively or in addition to this we expect that an exchange of information be undertaken at an international level on the subject of Armageddon sects which includes legislative, executive (intelligence service and police) as well as judicial administrations and that this exchange of information be initiated at a government level and from there further down.

• The subject of an elitist apocalyptic Internationale has not yet been fully researched by historians. We consider it important for historians to attend to this issue and above all to include this subject in high school and university education.

• In the face of this existing threat we find it unacceptable that the media does not fulfil its public duty as a critical supervisory institution. Continued silence by the media gives credit to rumours that the “fourth pillar of democracy” is controlled by US-American and Israeli intelligence which has already been undermined by messianic networks or is at least cooperating symbiotically with them. (According to the former CIA head William Colby “the Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” David McGowan, “Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You to See”, Common Courage 2000, p. 13).
  We request those resonsible in state broadcasting companys and in senior government departments to counter this alarming impression.Broadcasts immediately must discuss war preparations, which have their origin in so called armageddon-networks.

Background information

NOT ANOTHER HOLOCAUST!

A terrifying scenario

Please imagine the following scenario for just one moment:
A messianic sect, which sees itself as the right arm of God, undermines mainstream Judaism as well as key positions of international power. Supported by Christian fanatics it gains access to presidential palaces in America, Russia and Israel. From there both parties try to bring world events into line with Biblical prophecies – events that have to be pursued to their bitter end: Then only when the last prophecy has been fulfilled, will the longed-for Messiah descend to earth. It is exactly this vision which prepares the ground for the most devastating of all wars – Armageddon – starting with the Middle East.

It reads like the script for a James Bond film but may soon become reality even though the media ignores the subject totally. Neither is the pseudo-Judaic Chabad sect fiction nor are the highly political machinations of its omnipresent networkers; researchers of the scene have been pointing out for years that this doomsday-cult which is worth billions is about to put itself at the head of mainstream Judaism by a secretive as well as broad undermining manoeuvre. (Toby Axelrod, Chabad Broadens Reach, May 13th, 2005, Jewish News of Greater Phoenix and Philip Carmel, Chabad Within Europe, ibd., May 20th, 2005). The cult which actively supports radical right-wing settlers in the Holy Land is even now being courted by national policy in the heart of Europe: In 2006 newspapers reported the support of the German Minister of the Interior Schäuble as well as the Minister of Justice Zypries for the inauguration of the sect’s grandiose centre in the capital of Berlin. In 2007 the German Foreign Minister Steinmeier inaugurated the Chabad synagogue in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. Jewish end time networkers have, as a result of clever power management, become even more influential within the Israeli establishment. Leading politicians such as Benjamin Netanjahu turn to it for advice before making serious decisions; President Katzav is also said to be a follower of the messianic sectarians headed by the rabbis Schneerson and Kook.

In the US, where books dealing with eschatological themes have been heading the bestseller lists for years, professed “Christian” fundamentalists have, in the wake of George W. Bush, taken over top positions in the state. Prominent representatives of the White House, amongst them the President himself, sympathize with apocalyptic Pentacostal churches. Equally strong is the influence of biblical inspired Scotch Rite Lodges and quasi-freemasonic orders who – apart from striving on their own to “fulfill the book” – support their members’ delusions of vocation and of being one of the chosen few.

There is evidence in abundance that this dangerous cabal constitutes a key element in the administration “gearbox” of the last superpower. From there it is exerting highly dangerous political influence – bypassing the peoples’ will and without any democratic legitimation whatsoever.

Power over the last superpower:

Chabad Lubavitch

The social position of Chabad Lubavitch in the United States is very impressive. In 1983 on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Schneerson, the sect’s messiah, the US Congress established his birthday as a National Day of Education (Education Day) and he was awarded the National Scroll of Honour. This is why millions of students are now “entitled” to remember a guru who is worshipped by a great part of his followers as an incarnate messiah. But wait for this: When rabbi Schneerson died in 1994 he was posthumously awarded with the highest civil honour of the US Congress, the Congressional Gold Medal, for his lifework and “for his extraordinary and incessant contribution to a global education, morals and deeds of kindness”. Never before has a religious person, whether Christian or otherwise, been honoured like this.

Chabad – a shining example? In the past leading chabadniks have on several occasions been taken to court and convicted of money laundering, mafia connections and drug trafficking. “Isolated incidences” and thus insignificant explains the sect’s leadership. However, the fact that the religious delusion of belonging to a chosen race has reached most alarming proportions within this cult, can not be regarded as insignificant. Rabbi Schneerson, according to the praise of several US presidents, an example for brotherliness and compassion, taught that “´the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all other nations of the world … A non-Jew’s entire reality is only vanity. It is written: And the strangers shall guard and feed your flocks. The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.´” (Allen C. Brownfeld, Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel, Washington Report of Middle East Affairs, March 2000). This is an adaptation of the most important text of Lubavitch Chassidism, the book of HaTanya. Its author, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, the founder of the Chabad movement, maintained “that Jewish and gentile souls are fundamentally different, the former ´divine´ and the latter ´animalistic´.” (Allan Nadler, Charedi Rabbis Rush To Disavow Anti-Gentile Book, Forward, December, 19th 2003). Zalman’s words are: “The souls of Goyim (Gentiles) are of a totally different inferior kind. All Jews are good by nature, all Goyim (Gentiles) are bad by nature. Jews are the pride of creation, the Goyim are its scum.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 11th, 1994).

In spite of this fact, according to Rabbi Schneerson, Judaism has to take care of the ones repudiated by God, so that they may fulfil their prophesied task and render support, respect and earthly riches to the chosen ones. As a means of achieving this goal Chabad draws upon the non-biblical Noachidic laws in order to tie the Gentiles to the Israelite god of the Old Testament. From the point of view of a Talmud follower Noachidism is the religion for the rank and file of mankind whereas the Jews in accordance with the laws of Moses perform the function of a superior “priest” above the others. Chief Rabbi Schneerson taught: “It is obvious and self-evident that in modern times we must carry out the Divine Command we received through Moshe: ´To compel all human beings to accept the commandments enjoined upon the descendants of Noach.´” (Shabbos Parshas Vayeishev, 21th Day of Kislev, 5745c in Sichos in English, vol. 24). By 1723 freemasonry had already incorporated the Noachidic statutes into its Consitutions… Charges & Regulations; freemasons have always called themselves “Noachids”. In 1991 when the first war on Iraq was started, George Bush sen. forwarded this peculiar “blessing” to the whole nation: The seven Noachidic laws were solemnly declared to be the foundation of the United States by the Congress and the President (Public Law 102-14, 102nd Congress).

This most probably explains the strong Chabad influence on American politics. Levi Shemtov, the chief representative of the sect, is called by influential newspapers “the unofficial rabbi of the Capitol”, which is the US parliament. (Bill Broadway, Hassidic Outpost in D.C., Washington Post. July 3rd, 1999). According to the Jerusalem Post Thomas Kahn, Staff Director of the Democratic Budget Committee in the Congress, added: “There’s nobody who is more widely respected and warmly received in Congress, the administration, and the diplomatic corps.” (Jerusalem Post, Internet edition, October 22nd, 2000). The Post further confirms this fact from its own point of view: In its internet edition the renowned Israeli paper casts its eyes over the events of the day in the Chabad “embassy” in Washington. We are informed that there are photos of associated politicians in Shemtov’s office “including former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a close personal friend. On the walls … a bipartisan array of other VIPs including President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.”

Furthermore we are told that Shemtov’s interests are also adopted by the National Security Council and the State Department and that the cult’s lobbyist is in regular contact with a few dozen ambassadors. “Twenty-five, he says proudly, came to the Habad building’s dedication, which was also attended by the Democratic candidate for Vice-President, Senator Lieberman, other members of Congress, the mayor of D.C., and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.” (Jerusalem Post, Internet edition, October 22nd, 2000).

When George W. Bush became president he brought three admirers of Rabbi Schneerson into the White House: His long term press officer Ari Fleischer, Vice-Chief of Staff (now Chief of Staff) Joshua Bolton and Vice-Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz. The latter is considered to be the driving force behind the neo-conservative movement, which in turn forms the link to the powerful Israel-lobby for imperialist US-geopolitics connected with oil interests. It was Wolfowitz who produced a strategic document one year before 9/11 in which he called for a militarization of the American energy policy which included foreign interventions. To achieve this, the study envisaged a catalytic catastrophic event such as a new Pearl Harbour as being helpful.

The timing of the 9/11 attack as well as the attendant consequences achieved the desired effect and also coincided with the prophetic timetable of Chabad. The same holds true for the war in Iraq with none other than Paul Wolfowitz identified by mainstream press as the main instigator and driving force. (Gregor Peter Schmitz, Weltbank-Präsident Zoellick: Der Bush-Mann, den alle lieben, Spiegel –Online, October 19th, 2007).

Chabad rabbi Naftali Estulin writes under the title “The rebbe’s revolution in 5762” (i.e. 2001 AD): “Providence had it that Bush’s son has become president and is now being given the opportunity to complete that which his father began: eradicating evil from the world as a beginning and foretaste of the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies…” “…What practical lessons can we derive from current events? The Rebbe gave us the job of bringing Moshiach [the messiah]. If we thought for a moment that we could get out of it, recent events have shown us otherwise. The previous President Bush also thought he could get out of fulfilling the role which the Rebbe said America has, but the Rebbe arranged things so that his son could complete the job. The world is waiting for us, for us to fulfill our role in preparing the world to greet Moshiach. The Rebbe is waging the wars of Moshiach on his own, but he gave the job of preparing the world to us.” (Beis Moshiach Magazine, Brooklyn/New York, Online-Edition, www.beismoshiach.org )

Power within the last superpower:

Evangelicalism

Bush’s advisor and speechwriter, David Frum, says: “To understand the Bush White House, you must understand its predominant creed.” This is a reference to “the culture of modern Evangelicalism.” (Matthew Rothschild, Bush’s Messiah Complex, The Progressive, February 2003).

It was Bush’s friendship with Dr. Tony Evans, pastor of a large Dallas church and founder of the Promise Keepers movement, that shaped Bush’s political understanding of how to deport himself in an apocalyptic era. S. R. Shearer, head of the messianic news service Antipas Ministries writes: “Most of the leaders of the Promise Keepers embrace a doctrine of ‘end time’ (eschatology), known as ‘dominionim.’ Dominionism pictures the seizure of earthly (temporal) power by the ‘people of God’ as the only means through which the world can be rescued…. It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been called by him to ‘restore the earth to God’s control’, a ‘chosen vessel’, so to speak, to bring in the Restoration of All Things.” Shearer calls this delusion, “Messianic leadership”– that is to say usurping the role usually ascribed to the Messiah.(Michael Ortiz Hill, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. Bush’s Armageddon Obsession, Revisited, CounterPunch, January 4th, 2003:
The President obviously believes in it. In the summer of 2004 he concluded his meeting with a group of the Christian Amish sect with the following words: “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn´t do my job.” (Jack Brubaker, Bush Meets With Amish, Lancester New Era, July 16th, 2004).

However, which role will Bush have to play? Professor George Monbiot strings together the events of the Last Days of Mankind as follows: Foundation of the state of Israel. Occupation of the rest of “the biblical land.” Restoration of the Third Temple on the ruins of the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Raising up to Heaven of the 144.000 chosen ones. Final battle in the valley of Armageddon. Mass deaths amongst Israeli Jews. Second coming of Jesus Christ. Monbiot in his own words: “The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about” up to including the attempt “to provoke a final battle – with the Muslim world, the Axis of Evil … The people who believe all this don’t believe it just a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death. And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft, the attorney general [who anointed himself with oil as an homage to King David before he was installed in office], is a true believer, so are several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. (George Monbiot, Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power, The Guardian, April 20th, 2004).

Due to the fact that the doomsday-congregation is connecting its fundamentalist visions with broad ambitions for power, the collaboration between big politics and big evangelicalism is growing steadily. A successful exponent among these “operational Armageddon Lobbyists” is Timothy LaHaye. The evangelical Reverend has written best selling books – both fiction and non fiction – based on the apocalyptic Book of Revelations. In this world the Rapture is near at hand in which Christ’s faithful will be caught up in the clouds and given new, immortal bodies while the rest of the population faces the horrors of the last seven years of human history. Israel plays a key role in this theology, which posits that the Second Coming requires Israel to be reconstituted and the Jewish Temple, destroyed in 70 A.D., rebuilt.

Tim LaHaye is least known as the founder and first president of the secretive Council for National Policy. The CNP was formed in 1981 as an umbrella organization to advance an ultra-conservative, right wing Christian agenda. LaHaye’s particular agenda is a Middle East foreign policy that expedites the Second Coming.

According to the New York Times, the CNP consists of “a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country” who meet “behind closed doors at undisclosed locations…to strategize about how to turn the country to the right.” (David D. Kirkpatrick, Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy, New York Times, August 28, 2004) Though the membership of the CNP is a guarded secret, a list of those known to have been associated with it reads like a who’s who of Christian Zionists and neocon ideologues whose passion is to see the Middle East in flames and in chains.

Apart from the late Jerry Falwell, Chuck Missler and Pat Robertson a short list includes: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Deputy Director CIA Lt. General Daniel Graham, former special assistant CIA Deputy Director for Administration, and Deputy Director for Operations Max Hugel, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton.

Linking Americas dixie bible-belt to the vandalized Middle East, Monbiot concludes: “So here we have a major political constituency – representing much of the current president’s core vote – in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels ´which are bound in the great river Euphrates´ will be released to slay the third part of men.” (George Monbiot, Their beliefs…, ibid).

Those responsible take this task seriously. Michael Lind writes in his Bush biography “Made in Texas”: “Regarding the situation in the Middle East there is a very important religious factor. As strange as it sounds, many of the Protestant right-wingers associated with George W. Bush interpret events especially in Israel and its neighbouring states in the light of Biblical prophecy. They believe that Armageddon will take place soon starting from the Middle East.”

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:

Iraq

Can you imagine the White House would manipulate Americas national politics in a way, that it matches with the mythologic script of Jewish and Christian prophets, wo have died thousands of years ago in remote Palestine? You probably should! Incredible, but yet the fact reamins that Washington is advised by Messianists when it comes to making the more serious decisions. “Bible code specialist” Michael Drosnin was consulted on the eve if the Iraq invasion. The occult summit which took place in the Pentagon on February, 21st 2003 according to well-informed sources was convened by none less than Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz. It was attended by a head of the Operations Directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whose name wasn’t published and seven leading representatives of military intelligence, amongst them the three-star general Lowell “Jake” Jacoby, Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency and Wolfowitz’ deputy Dr Linton Wells who manages the “nerve centre” of the Pentagon also known by the abbreviation 3CI (command, control, communication & intelligence). The conference which lasted more than one hour had only one item on the agenda: What does the Bible say about the present situation in the Middle East, terrorism and about the fate of Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden? It is said that a special interest was taken in decoding when devastation was expected to descend upon the Iraqi president. Result: the Jewish year of 5763 which corresponds to the year 2003 of the Christian calendar. The outcome of this conference is said to have been analysed immediately after by American and Israeli intelligence. The Americans “took it very seriously”, Drosnin later said. (Bill Keller, Is It Good For The Jews?, New York Times, March 8th, 2003). White House started the campaign “Iraqi Freedom” within the prophesied time frame.

The Chabad sect however has been predicting America’s second attack on Iraq for much longer – allegedly even to the exact date. Directly after September, 11th 2001 God’s self-appointed henchmen announced quite openly the “certain” coming of a new Iraq war. The Lubavitch rabbi had envisaged this war ten years before and indicated the Jewish holiday of Purim (on which the first Gulf War ended) as the crucial day for his prophecy. The sect’s magazine Emes News writes: “While the press doesn’t foresee such a move and while the US-State-Department is denying any plan of attack against Iraq, those who know about the Lubavitcher rebbe know quite well, that when he said, America would wage war against Basra [a city in Iraq], nothing in the world could stop such an event coming true.” (Emes News, October 24th, 2001). As we all know now the Iraq war actually took place one and a half years later. It was started on the 20th of March, the holyday of Purim. [For an “illuminating” Israeli reaction on this, see document annexed]

How could that happen? As we have already mentioned, the German journal Der Spiegel sees the machinations of the Chabad darling Paul Wolfowitz as the main cause for the outbreak of the war. The Biblical establishment however had organised “its” campaign above the level of party politics as per the motto “better safe than sorry”. This is the reason why, after the big game ended, the Democratic candidate for vice-presidency, Lieberman, was able to announce that the Iraqi conflict-based- strategy followed exactly that line which he himself together with his colleague Senator John McCain had imposed in the US Congress by pushing through the “Iraq Liberation Act”. (Rainer Apel, Eurasien ist gegen Irakkrieg, in: Neue Solidarität, February 6th, 2003). We must call to mind that Senator Joseph Lieberman is a devoted follower of the prophetic Chabad sect and calls rabbi Schneerson “the greatest Jewish religious person in my life”. McCain, who has already expressed his solidarity on several occasions with the messiah cult, is the Republican Party’s candidate for presidency in 2008. Lieberman is publicly supporting him.

The war was subsequently waged with the characteristic puns and personalities belonging to the Middle Ages or the ideological world of the Taliban – but not to a supposedly enlightened nation of the first world: Major General William Boykin for example regards his professional activities in the light of a service to religion and was appointed Secretary of State in the Department of Defence by the Pentagon towards the end of the Iraq war. His area of responsibility: intelligence information and war on terror, especially the capture of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Boykin declared publicly and in all conscience to be “serving in God’s army”. The fundamentalist further stated that the battle in Iraq was being waged for religious reasons: Satan wished to destroy the American nation and “God’s army”. During a speech in a Baptist church the general showed photos he had shot in Mogadishu shortly after a Black Hawk helicopter was brought down by Somali rebels. Whilst developing the photos he found a strange dark shadow over the city. Boykin’s comment: “This is our enemy. It is the principalities of darkness It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy.” (William M. Arkin, The Pentagon Unleashes a Holy Warrior, Los Angeles Times, October 16th, 2003)

His President justified the decision to go to war against Iraq in the same spirit. According to the British BBC, Bush declared in the peace summit of Akaba, Jordania, in June 2003: “’I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ´George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.´ And I did, and then God would tell me, ´George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …´ And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ´Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.´ And by God I’m gonna do it.'” (BBC-Press Releases, God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers, October 6th, 2005)

The military historian of the University of Cambridge, Prof. Corelli Barnett, consequently commented on this during the Iraq war: “ The regimes in Washington and London, now, are acting like the mirror-images of Bin Laden. They believe themselves to be ‘born-again Christians’ with a religious mission. This terrifies me.” (Mark Burdman, Top Military Historian: Iraq War Is Like 1938/39, EIR, March 28th, 2003).

The story goes on:

From Iran to Armageddon

At the same time, directly after the end of the war on Iraq the radical American TV pastor Jack “Apocalypse” Van Impe was asked: “Do you think that President Bush believes and knows he is involved in prophetic events concerning the Middle East and final battle between good and evil?”

“I believe he is a wonderful man,” Van Impe responded, and goes on to say, “I was contacted a few weeks ago by the Office of Public Liaison for the White House and by the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to make an outline. And I’ve spent hours preparing it. I will release this information to the public in September, but it’s in his hands. He will know exactly what is going to happen in the Middle East and what part he will have under the leading of the Holy Spirit of God.” (MSNBC, Is Bush Getting Apocalyptic Advice?, August 13th, 2003).

So far the author of books such as “Israel’s Final Holocaust”, and “The Great Escape: Preparing for the Rapture, the Next Event on God’s Prophetic Clock”. Van Impe predicts that the world’s last hour will come by 2012 at the latest. By then Russia and the Arab nations would have attacked Israel and would have been exterminated in Armageddon.

Van Impe is not the only doomsday pastor who was awarded the honour of advising the White House concerning world politics. Pastor Robert G. Upton met the President personally and boasts: “We’re in constant contact with the White House.” (Rick Perlstein, The Jesus Landing Pad, The Village Voice, May 11th /18th, 2004) Upton leads the Evangelical Union “Apostolic Congress” which describes its Messianic orientation as Christian-Zionist and maintains close contacts to Israeli leadership. On its Internet site the Apostolic Congress proclaims: “Today, as a direct result of Pastor Upton and his team, Christians are affecting policy in Washington, and bringing about real change in America.”

The present conflict in Iraq is only considered as a “warm-up” for the real “hot phase” which is to be ignited by the invasion of the neighbouring Iran.

The Texas TV pastor John Hagee welcomes the impending confrontation. In his bestselling book “Jerusalem Countdown” Hagee insists that the United States have to stand by the side of Israel in a pre-emptive strike against Iran in order to fulfil God’s plan for Israel and for the West. He argues that the strike against Iran will cause the Arab nations to unite under Russian leadership against Israel, as indicated in Ezekiel, chapter 38 and 39. This will escalate to an “inferno in the whole Middle East and plunge the world into Armageddon” [On Netanjahu advisor Joel Rosenberg´s similar stance, see http://www.joelrosenberg.com/ezekiel.asp] – a mass slaughter, that enables Jesus Christ to return and establish his millennium kingdom.

Shortly after the publishing of the book Hagee founded Christians United for Israel (CUFI). At CUFI’s kick-off banquet at the Washington Hilton, Republican support for both Hagee’s effort and his drumbeat for war with Iran were on full view. Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman told the group that “no regime is more central to the global jihad” than Iran. Just two days before, Newt Gingrich and John McCain made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows to sound the same message, leading Benny Elon, a member of the Israeli Knesset, to comment to the Jerusalem Post that their remarks originated with Hagee. Republican senators Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback also addressed the group, and Bush sent words of support to the gathering. Republicans, and even some Democrats, spoke at CUFI events to show their “support for Israel.” Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a prominent Jewish associate of the Evangelical right, told the Prospect that Hagee “without question, yes, absolutely” has the ear of the White House. (Sarah Posner, Pastor Strangelove, in: The American Prospect, June 2006)

In order to justify the war on Iran the hawks of the military-religious complex of America need an appropriate bogey at the head of the Iranian government. Initially the situation did not seem too promising. After the millennium the Islamic Republic was, for the second time around, being led by President Mohammad Chatami. Chatami is a liberal-minded reformist who during the late 1970s had been director of the “Islamic Centre in Hamburg”. The ideal candidate of women and the younger generation won 70 percent of the vote in the 1997 elections and even 78 percent in the 2001 elections. That is why all observers assumed that the supporters of a policy of reform would clearly win once again when elections were due in 2005. But then a strange transatlantic electioneering in favour of the Islamic hardliners was started overnight. At first the Pentagon announced that it was sending fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan into Iranian airspace to ascertain “target data” for a future war. This caused an increasing storm of indignation which radicalized the atmosphere and put the pro-Western camp at a disadvantage. A similar effect was caused soon after, when the Iranians were called to boycott the elections “by a strange coalition, which ranged from the White House to ‘left-wing’ European circles” (Peter Philipp, Der Iran auf dem Weg zurück in die Isolation?, Deutscher Welle, DW-World-De, June 27th, 2005). Many liberal and reform-oriented voters followed this call whereas the Traditionalists went to the polls unanimously. So the strictly conservative Mahmud Ahmadinejad was elected as the new President – a mirror image of President George W. Bush and Moshe Katzav: Himself an adherent of messianism, he is currently awaiting the twelfth and last approved successor of the prophet Mohammed, who in the year of 873 went into a state of seclusion, will return as the “Mahdi” – the world ruler guided by God. According to Muslim prophecies this savior is believed to appear at the climax of a devastating global war …

Is Israel digging its own Grave?

The Israeli Messiah faction joyfully awaits the coming of this war as well. Thus Rabbi Elieser Waldmann who belongs to both of the leading cadres of “Gush Emunim” and “Temple Mount Faithful” writes that the late cabbala icon, Kook, demanded a holy war, as the only means of achieving the coming of the Messiah. “On the one hand,” Waldman wrote, “war is accompanied by destruction and death, on the other hand, it increases the power of the Messiah. . . . Unfortunately, it is still impossible to achieve the completion of Redemption by any means other than war.” (Jeffrey Steinberg, Temple Mount Fanatics Forment A New Thirty Years’ War, in: Executive Intelligence Review, November 3rd, 2000).

The problem, however: Israel is supposed to be the first victim of this doomsday battle. Its population begins to feel this impending threat. Thus Uri Avnery, the leader of the Israeli peace organisation Gush Shalom, stated when describing the theology of Evangelicalism: “Before the coming [of the Messiah], the Jews must convert to Christianity. Those who don’t will perish in a gigantic holocaust in the battle of Armageddon.”(Robert Fisk, A Strange Kind Of Freedom, The Independent, July 9th/10th, 2002)

In a special documentary the biggest US TV network CBS puts this in more concrete terms: “the final battle in the history of the future will be fought on an ancient battlefield in northern Israel called Armageddon. … And the Jews? Well, two-thirds of them will have been wiped out by now.” Gershom Gorenberg, author of “The End of Days”, a book about the Christian community of the last days, is presented saying: “The Jews die or convert. … If you listen to the drama they’re describing, essentially it’s a five-act play in which the Jews disappear in the fourth act.” (CBS, 60 Minutes, October 6th, 2002, Zion’s Christian Soldiers)

Furthermore Gorenberg quotes the Evangelical Chuck Missler stating “that Auschwitz was ´just a prelude´ to what will happen to the Jews in the approaching End of Days.” (Gershom Gorenberg, Unorthodox Alliance, Washington Post, October 11th, 2002) “The implications for Israel are very serious”, declared Richard Landes, director for the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University. “We have fundamentalists who are very favorable to Israel who will also talk about the fact that in the [prophetic] battle of Armageddon, two-thirds of the Jews will be destroyed, and it will make the Holocaust look like a picnic.” (Eric J. Greenberg, Manic Christians, Millennial Panic, The Jewish Week, February, 5th 1999). Pastor Chuck Smith, founder of the Calvary Baptist Church, when asked whether he had any compunctions about unleashing a holy war that would lead to the possible extermination of millions of Jews and Muslims, replied, “Frankly, no, because it is all part of Biblical prophesy.” (Jeffrey Steinberg, Temple Mount … ibid.)

“Basically, we’re a doormat for them to get to their own eschatological culmination,” says Rabbi Richman, founder of the non-denominational apocalyptical network “Light to the Nations” . “It’s a pretty scary thing, because the whole rapture thing that is popular in some Evangelical circles, which calls for a fulfillment of the hard times for Jacob, is essentially an invitation to genocide.” (Lawrence Wright, Forcing the End, July 20th, 1998, The New Yorker)

But in spite of that – in spite of knowing about this – the rabbi builds a Jewish bridge to American Pentacostal churches which want to see Israel go up in flames. Why? …because Richman also considers mass death in the Holy Land necessary. However of course not in the service of the Second Coming of Christ but as a prelude for the first coming of the Jewish Messiah.

Thus Jewish Messiah activists are spreading the word that the days of Israel are numbered. They consequently oppose a state which they themselves brought into being as active Zionists. They are using the same “logic” today as 60 years ago when they spoke up for Zion: It is biblical prophecy that dictates their actions. As in the case of European Jewry which had to pass the cemetery of the first Holocaust in order to reach Israel and like the Zion State which was based on the ruins of the exile, so the Messianic kingdom is supposed to be founded on the sacrifice of the Israelites and on the ruins of their state.

Hard to believe, but true: Followers of the occult amongst highest representatives of the Israeli establishment are actually involved in this suicidal game. As a matter of fact the already mentioned Bible cabbalist Michael Drosnin advises the American government as well as the Zion state. When in the late nineties Drosnin found encoded remarks in the Bible about a catastrophic Third World War which would be started by a nuclear strike in present times (“nuclear holocaust”) he was promptly invited to official bureaus in the Holy Land. First he was received by the Israeli left-wing Prime Minister Shimon Peres, then he held a conference with the father of Peres successor Netanjahu, with Mossad head Jatom and with the security advisor of the head of government, Dore Gold. (Michael Drosnin, Der Bibel-Code, München, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag 1997, p. 66 ff, 90, 167, 267 ff, 220).

Benjamin Netanjahu, who “himself studies Rabbi Kook’s writings with some of the biggest rabbis in Merkaz HaRav, on a regular basis” (according to the leading Kook-devotee and Kook biographer Rabbi David Samson, as quoted by Steinberg, Temple Mount …, op.cit.) consulted Rabbi Schneerson in New York as did Ariel Sharon, his successor as head of the government. Moshe Katzav also asked for advice in the New York headquarters of Chabad long before he was in office “as did numerous less prominent politicians, diplomats, members of the military and media personalities.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Mendel_Schneerson)

A New Holocaust

The threat of an increasing influence of fundamentalism on the political scene is more and more apparent. Only recently Motti Golan, one of the most respected broadcasting commentators in Israel, expressed his concerns in a stage play, in which a Messianistic Jewish sect seizes control of the Israeli government, assassinates the prime minister, and then drops atom bombs on various Arab capitals. With the help of the resulting nuclear counterpunch they want to sacrifice the secularized part of the populace and thereby hasten the arrival of the Messiah.

This view is echoed in a book published by the Haaretz journalist Sefi Rachlevsky, which caused a sensation. The journalist proves that the Messianic networks in the Zionist state are indulging in a plan of sacrificing secular Israel in a horrific war as a means to establishing a theocracy, the prophesied New Jerusalem, on it ruins.

The historian Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former general, is worried that his compatriots are digging their own grave. He is especially alarmed by the current widely increasing practice of reviving not only the memory of the Bar Kochba revolt (which caused the Jews’ exodus from their native country) but also the memory of the mass suicide of Masada and the tendency to transform both events into myths of national importance. He calls this phenomenon the “Bar Kochba Syndrome” as it has the potential to drive Jews into insane behaviour and under certain circumstances even into deadly catastrophes. (Allan C. Brownfeld, Religious Zionism: A Growing Impediment To Middle East Peace, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2002).

Palestinian TV commentator and documentary film director Kawther Salam captures some of the end-time hysteria: “The last time I stayed at the house of my friend Anat Even (prize-winning producer and film maker) in Tel Aviv while we were working together she bought a new lock for the entrance of her house. She was scared and talking about a new Holocaust in the making. She said Israel was not a safe country for Jews, that in her opinion the practices of the government were preparing the Jews for new Holocaust, and it was important to find a safe place to live. She was talking with a deep pain, just as if a new Holocaust was happening right then. Anat told me that lots of Jews felt in the same way.” (Kawther Salam, What Are Israeli Army Reconnaisance Teams Doing in Patagonia?, Humanity 2000, edition 5/2004, April 2004).

There is a storm brewing and thus it is not surprising that members of the controlling “caste” are looking around for safe harbours. Kawther Salam reports that the Israeli government is carrying out huge purchases of land at the other end of the world, in the remote Southern tip of South America. Her report coincides with revelations on the Internet, allegedly originating from German Intelligence Sources (Bundesnachrichtendienst), stating that this is an Israeli-American joint venture safety manoeuvre. Financial head of this venture: Paul Wolfowitz. (http://thetruthseeker.co.uk/index.asp). The truth is that almost a sixth part of Patagonia – which means a territory as big as Austria and Switzerland together – is now owned by 350 foreign “investors”. Media baron Ted Turner (CNN) only recently purchased a huge property including a safe water supply provided by a private river. George Soros, the Hungary-born Billionaire residing in New York, is one of the biggest private land owners in this area. The same is true for his associate Eduardo Elzstain, the Argentine business magnate and great Chabad donor. In the North of the American continent investments in building projects of the better-informed-circles are meanwhile being moved into the bowels of the earth. The neo-conservative US Vice-President Dick Cheney only recently had a sophisticated private bunker system installed under his home. (The Guardian, December 8th, 2002).

This is indeed news which should rob us of our sleep.

Annex

ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS.COM
Federal News-Website of Israel
Published: 03/26/03, 3:19 AM

This War is for Us

by Ariel Natan Pasko

Of course this war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein is for us. … – i.e., the Jews and Israel. Chazal – our sages – throughout the ages have explained the Torah, telling us that everything that happens in the world is for the benefit of the Jewish People.

Simply put another way, if all the world is a stage, then the Jews – and especially those in the Land of Israel – are the lead actors on the stage of history, and the goyim – the nations, i.e. the gentiles – have supporting roles, while the evil-doers are props and background scenery. As our tradition states, G-D – the great playwright – created the world for the sake of the Jewish People, and it is our responsibility to implement the Torah … in it.

Stop and think for a moment: the last Gulf War in 1991 ended erev – just before – Purim. This Gulf War began motzei – just after – Shushan Purim. Get the picture? In between, “The Jews had light, and gladness, and joy, and honor.” (Book of Esther 8:16)

Read the Purim story in Megilat Esther again, it is a rags to riches story on a national scale. Haman, the proto-typical anti-Semite, plans mass murder of the Jews and in the end pays with his life, the life of his ten sons – all hanged – and the Jews kill 75, 800 members of the anti-Semitic – i.e. Nazi – party of the time.

This is not so different from the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, when 23 Nazi war criminals were tried. Originally 11 were to have the death penalty imposed if found guilty. Everybody in those days thought that they would be shot – as is customary in military executions – or get the electric chair – as was common in the United States. But when the judges announced the verdict of guilty, they also said that hanging would be the method of execution. Two hours before the execution, they found Hermann Goering dead in his cell. He had committed suicide. That left only 10 Nazis to execute.

There is more to this story than meets the eye. In Megilat Esther (9:7-9), when it describes the execution of Haman’s ten sons, their names are listed in a vertical column. If you look at the Hebrew closely, you’ll notice extra-small letters in three of the names. The first name, Parshandata, has a small tav. The seventh name, Parmashta, has a small shin. The tenth name, Vayzata, has a small zayn. Hebrew letters are also used as numbers, as well as for dates in the Jewish calendar. Tav, shin, zayn numerically means 707, corresponding to the year 5707, which began with Rosh HaShanah – the Jewish New Year – on September 25, 1946. On October 16, 1946, as foreshadowed in the names of Haman’s ten sons, ten Nazi leaders were hanged as war criminals. And if that doesn’t impress you, out of nowhere, with the rope around his neck, Julius Schtreicher – editor of Der Sturmer, the Nazi propaganda newspaper – shouted out with flaming hatred in his eyes, just as the trap door opened, “Purimfest 1946!” It was reported in the international press of the day.

As I said earlier, of course this war is for the Jews and Israel, and instead of hiding from the accusation, … we should gratefully acknowledge what the Master of the Universe is doing to our enemies for us. Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, Bashar Assad, Osama Bin-Laden, and the other dictators, terrorists and mullahs of the region, are the modern day Hamans and Hitlers.

Great things are yet to come. …

Ariel Natan Pasko is an independent analyst and consultant. He has a master´s degree in international relations und policy analysis. He also has degrees in economics, politics, Jewish history and Jewish thought. His articles of commentary & analysis appear in numerous news/views and think-tank websites, in newspapers, and can be read at www.geocities.com/ariel_natan_pasko.

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I blogged on 8/3/10 about Digg censorship, revealed in the Wikileaks documents. I’m more inclined to believe those sorts of revelations than anything about foreign policy, where I kind of doubt anyone would let out any really sensitive new information so cavalierly without some ulterior motive.

Now comes a lengthy Alternet piece – the result of a year-long investigation apparently – about a conservative cabal that manipulates Digg, the social media ratings site.  My own experience with Digg has been that, as with Wikipedia there is a group of extremist Zionists that downgrades criticism of Israel or analysis of 9-11 or of the elites (as it relates to the one-world project).

It’s possible, of course, that there are several cabals…

Strictly speaking, using the label censorship for these sorts of web manipulation isn’t correct, since Digg, like Wikipedia or Google, is a private outfit. But if the material being manipulated is political, if the manipulation is being done on behalf of specific interest groups or lobbies that do also have a strong influence on government policies, then, in effect, it is political censorship of a very sophisticated and psychologically coercive kind.

The result is that while racially inflammatory and politically useless forms of expression (like the photoshopped image of Michele Obama as a chimp that appears on the first page of a Google search of her name) is widely available..and this is considered a brave blow for freedom of expression…when it comes to political news of the most vital sort, we are kept deliberately in the dark.

In the same way, all those highly incendiary sites spewing vile epithets about Jewish people manage to stay afloat, while people engaged in responsible and dispassionate criticism are denigrated as anti-Semites and driven from respectable discourse.

Racism is abhorrent to the elites?  No. They love inflammatory hate-mongers and divisive stunts (like the building of the mosque at Ground Zero).

It’s serious and informed criticism that the elites fear…

Here’s the Alternet piece

“A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year.

“The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I’ll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives.”
-phoenixtx (aka vrayz)

Digg.com is the powerhouse of social media websites. It is ranked 50th among US websites by Alexa (117th in the world), by far the most influential social media site. It reached one million users in 2007 and likely has more than tripled that by this point. Digg generates around 25 million page views per month, over one third of the page views of the NY Times. Front page stories regularly overwhelm and temporarily shut down websites in a process called the “Digg Effect.”

The concept behind the site is simple. Submitted webpages (news, videos, or images) can be voted up (digging) or down (burying) by each user, sort of a democracy in the internet model. If an article gets enough diggs, it leaves the upcoming section and reaches the front page where most users spend their time, and can generate thousands of page views.

This model also made it very susceptible to external gaming whereby users from certain groups attempt to push their viewpoint or articles to the front page to give them traction. This was evident with the daily spamming of the upcoming Political section with white supremacist material from the British National Party (articles which rarely reached the front page). The inverse of this effect is more devastating however. Bury brigades could effectively remove stories from the upcoming sections by collectively burying them.

One bury brigade in particular is a conservative group that has become so organized and influential that they are able to bury over 90% of the articles by certain users and websites submitted within 1-3 hours, regardless of subject material. Literally thousands of stories have already been artificially removed from Digg due to this group. When a story is buried, it is removed from the upcoming section (where it is usually at for ~24 hours) and cannot reach the front page, so by doing this, this one group is removing the ability of the community as a whole to judge the merits or interest of these stories on their own (in essence: censoring content). This group is known as the Digg “Patriots”.….”