Vietnam

We, the doubters of the Fear and Hatred programme, were slowly awakening to the vile and cynical travesty of this overwhelmingly one-sided war. We knew the military were stupid, but we didn’t realise the extent to which the global corporations were already dictating and driving policy.

That insufferably long and pointless war became a rude awakening for many of us (unfortunately, not nearly enough of us in nearly enough time). The first televised war, it showed us in graphic terms what our taxes were paying for and many of us were rightly horrified. The rationale was usually couched in terms of the protection of “our interests” abroad, but of course very few of us, and even fewer of the poor young men doing the fighting, had any “interests” abroad whatsoever.

The logic was inescapable. Our taxes were being used to protect our rich by pitting our poor, armed to the teeth with advanced weaponry, against the poor in another country. But the incessant narrative coming from McNamara and the other people orchestrating this shambles was still somehow that we were “protecting democracy”. And that same narrative was telling and re-telling us that we were on the very verge of winning that war outright. This mantra was kept up all the way to the last panic-stricken few days. To the days we saw American diplomats and press desperately and ignominiously scrambling aboard rooftop helicopters as the North Vietnamese, largely barefoot and with none of the enormous technological advantages available to the Americans, rolled into Saigon and took over.

But still my innocence persisted. Still in self-indulgent pursuit of the prime male directive and in sorting through the various “realities” I was encountering, I nevertheless deplored the obscene and inhumane immolation of the Vietnamese people. Mainstream media coverage, some of it still relatively principled in those days, brought us daily images of naked burning third world villagers. Combined with more and more returning American body bags, such images became unavoidable. I joined, as best I could, protests against the latest iterations of the escalating Fear and Hatred programme – which now included vicious and venomous attacks against such protests.

But my sad interventions were encumbered, as I think were the interventions of many of my contemporaries, with a profound lack of knowledge/understanding of what forces were actually at work in perpetrating these miseries. There was a growing realisation of the role of soulless corporations in all this, but we couldn’t see clear patterns of coordination.

I found my innocence slowly eroding as more and more of the investigative elements of the mainstream media began laying bare more and more of such patterns. The primary coordinating pattern was, of course, the universally slavish adherence, by the corporate humans, to “the bottom line”, ie the frenetic pursuit of exponentially increased returns to and bonuses for insatiable shareholders and their “chief executive officers” – to the absolute exclusion of ALL other considerations.

The global corporations and their rampaging Chief Executives knew legislation and laws were there to be bent in the pursuit of profit. Occasional convictions for these increasing forays into illegality were rarely absorbed by the actual perpetrators, and certainly the occasional corporate fine never impacted “the bottom line”. Such fines were really just another tax deductible “cost” on the Balance Sheet.

But other patterns began to emerge, many retrospectively. Not least among these was the running sore of the Kennedy assassination. It became blindingly obvious to all but the congenitally least curious that not only was it an inside job and but also that it was “investigated” by a dubious “official investigation” – the ridiculous “Warren Commission” – which was itself compromised at every step and at every level. And this led to the sense that “official” narratives couldn’t always – if at all – be trusted.

And there were emerging patterns in the way the mainstream media dealt with such glaring oddities and contradictions. The eerie sense of dark coordination was enhanced by the slavish adherence of the major outlets to “official” narratives. Instead of pursuing some kind of explanation for oddities and contradictions, they simply rounded on anybody who pointed them out – ridiculing them and undermining their very lives and careers.

And then there was the pattern of the growing centralisation of ownership and control. We found that more and more of the corporate media, as with the rest of the global economy, was drifting into the hands of fewer and fewer individuals and cabals.

But it wasn’t until “9/11” that I found that the loss of my innocence, incubating since November ‘63, had become, incontrovertibly, complete.

NEXT Instalment:

runaway Corporations

The first stop in my more detailed research was the involvement of what I call runaway Corporations (see The New Mutants).

In essence, corporations have been getting away with more and more since the industrial revolution, but this increased exponentially with the advent of the two World Wars. Much of the groundwork for corporate dominance and stupefying individual wealth for major shareholders was set during the First World War. In time of war, national governments borrow hugely – as much as they can possibly get away with – from private interest-charging banks and the bulk of it is heaved into the production of armaments. Armaments – from bullets to tanks and warships – are usually massively expensive but also have (ideal from the supplier point of view) a very short life expectancy. So while the majority of male humans were being thrown into horrific meat-grinder battles, the corporations and their major shareholders were enjoying profits and interest payments on a scale hitherto unimaginable.

The other factor in this runaway tendency is that corporate leaders and their major shareholders tend to have another advantage over the bulk of humanity.

They have reduced capacity for empathy.

Many of the men who gravitate towards the top of corporations and towards massive returns on capital get there by virtue of having a dysfunctional part of the brain called the amygdala.

A truly successful corporation must often turn a blind eye to the unhappy side effects of their activities on fellow humans. This is best achieved by having people in leadership positions who are themselves undeterred by such side effects, so it becomes inevitable that such people rise to the top of such organisations. The humans best hard-wired for not caring are those with dysfunctional amygdalae – roughly speaking, about 3% of the base human population but rising to much higher proportions in the upper levels of corporations. In modern psychoanalytical terms, people with sufficiently dysfunctional amygdalae are diagnosed/classified as psycho or sociopaths.

As touched upon above, these people are “hard wired”. That is to say, they are born with the defect. It is not a curable condition. There are different degrees of dysfunctional amygdala, but whatever the degree, if you’re born with it, you’re stuck with it. It can’t be cured, but it can be managed – if the afflicted individual wishes to try to manage it. But why would anyone with low or zero levels of empathy wish to do that?

These are the people to whom, by virtue of their rise to the top of these non-empathic organisations, we’ve entrusted virtually everything – including the introduction of genetic modification and now, artificial intelligence. Even the management of scientific research is now largely in the hands of corporations. Universities used to be much more attuned to empathic values and were less driven by “the bottom line”. While they were driving research, the fields were wide open and the sharing of discoveries and knowledge was as instantaneous as possible. Now those universities have research departments funded almost entirely by corporations and empathic values, not least the sharing of knowledge, have had to take a back seat.

Fully functioning amygdalae were instrumental to our success as a species. From the caves to the cities, our ability to imagine what fellow humans might be thinking or feeling is what allowed us to gather in ever larger groups and develop more and more refined communication skills. It wasn’t just about hunting and gathering skills. It’s thought that one of the reasons the Neanderthals declined was because they couldn’t function well in groups of more than about a dozen. The Cro-Magnons seemed to have had more highly developed amygdalae and were able to create larger and larger settlements and accommodate more and more specialised activities (activities not directly connected with hunting or gathering).

Corporate “values” – ie maximum return on capital investment in the shortest possible period of time – are now being allowed to set the agenda for humanity. The obvious projection, assuming the planet isn’t destroyed in the process, is that the amygdala, having served its purpose, will slowly die out of the human evolutionary path. The psycho/sociopaths will become the dominant subspecies and the empathisers will become the forlorn 3%.

Perhaps this is an inevitable aspect of human evolution – the evolution of consciousness. Perhaps this is a “good thing” in terms of the ultimate purpose we may eventually discover we are meant to serve. But I doubt it. The idea of us slowly expanding into the near universe with corporate values at our collective heart is too cold to contemplate for an empathiser. And as an empathiser, I feel it is my duty, as I feel it should be the duty of all empathisers, to resist this slide towards indifference and psychopathy.

“The Corporation”

A Canadian documentary directed by Mark Achbar/Jennifer Abbott and based on the book by Joel Bakan.

Corporations are “legal persons” today who have as their primary obligation to their shareholders a duty to generate profit – over and above any other outcome. For this reason, they have no interest in safeguarding the well-being of workers or host community or natural environment or anything else. The documentary explains this phenomenon and illustrates it with various examples, which include, among other things:

• the exploitation of labour, especially in Central American countries, brought to light by the investigations of the American National Labour Committee;
• the synthesis and dissemination of chemicals that are hazardous to health, such as DDT and Agent Orange, produced by Monsanto and used in Vietnam by the US military;
• the administering to cows of a hormone (Monsanto’s rBGH, also called rBST or Posilac). This substance, considered safe by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), was supposed to increase milk production, but instead resulted in cases of mastitis (inflammation of the udder) in cows, which in turn resulted in bacterial infection of the milk. A Fox News program should have mentioned it, but Monsanto, with the support of Fox itself, censored it;
• the pollution of factories and farms;
• the trial conducted by General Electric against the US Patent Office, which refused to patent a genetically modified bacterium . Before this process it was not possible to patent living beings, but after GE’s victory, this rule was changed and now the ban applies only to modifications of human species;
• the privatization of public properties and services, including the water services of a Bolivian city (Cochabamba ) which presented the opportunity for corporations to distribute water in exchange for a quarter of the citizens’ income. The population rebelled, there were clashes that resulted in numerous injuries and one death;
• the collusion between corporations and dictatorial regimes, most notably between American corporations and the Nazis.

And of course we’ve been warned for decades about the horrendously extravagant use of anti-biotics in animal agribusiness. As fast as they pumped huge amounts into livestock, so the viruses mutated. Warnings were rife about how this could leave us defenceless in the face of a human pandemic. But profits for shareholders and bonuses for executives were deemed far more important by anybody with any access to effecting change, and now, as usual, we’re all paying the price.

Banks & banksterism

And let us not forget that Banks are corporations, and that successful banksters, like other successful corporate leaders, require low levels of empathy. All of the above applies to banking corporations just as much, if not more, as to oil or pharma or IT or armaments corporations.

It is important to recognise that most of modern banking is now no more nor less than gambling. And that while the gambles are winning, proceeds accrue to the banks and their major shareholders, but that when the gambles are losing, it is we the taxpayers who are inevitably called upon to absorb the losses. If you are a bankster with a dysfunctional amygdala, you won’t find this troubling at all.

Increasing numbers of historians and economists are recognising that many of the “boom and bust” cycles experienced in western economies are artificially generated by gambling banksters. It’s also true that, just as in actual wars triggered by other corporate entities, bust cycles, once triggered, are very difficult to control. Clever heads of banks can coordinate crashes, but will quickly run to central governments once they’ve well and truly lost control.

And why do they have such a sympathetic ear when they run to central government? Well, in part because they’re “too big to fail”. Entities of a certain size will inevitably bring down other entities, creating a domino effect ripping through the host economy. But also, if “too big to fail” isn’t argument enough, banking and other corporates now invest heavily in politicians. Modern idiot politicians can be bought and sold like never before, and even bumped into the highest possible offices. All the corporates have to say is: “Sign this and we’ll fund your next electoral campaign. Heck, just relax and we’ll even draft the legislation for you.”

Some sexy bankster-speak

“Mergers and acquisitions”. It sounds great doesn’t it? But what is actually achieved through these? They are themselves gambles of course, and the scale of gambling in which the chief execs and major shareholders can indulge is exponentially enlarged – as is the scale of the damage they can do to the economy generally. And as is the scale of the bail out often required from us when they go wrong. So stability isn’t guaranteed. “Economies of scale”? That usually means cutting supply side and labour costs. So small supplier businesses lose even more bargaining power with the combined colossus and people lose jobs up and down the line. As these are the only people buying locally, this translates into lower local spending – meaning emptier high streets, depressed local economies, and higher social welfare costs. There is rarely new investment in mergers and acquisitions and all the “cost cutting” surplus is usually translated into higher dividends for shareholders and bigger bonuses for chief execs. So where is the added value? Well, for the most part, it’s off-shore.

“Futures” and “derivatives”. Sounds so knowledgeable and optimistic. But it’s only enhanced gambling. Instead of gambling on a simple outcome, banksters can also gamble on outcomes – including losses – within specific sets of circumstances (eg. between specified dates or within specified share values). Just like when you bet on the ponies to “place” or “show”.

“Financial instruments”. I know. Wish I had a degree in gambling too. But this is simply the clever sounding name for the various forms of gambling in which banksters and other speculators can indulge themselves – usually with other people’s money.

For example

An example of…. corporate madness

A note on Artificial Intelligence

One of the reasons empathic humans should not leave the development and control of AI in the hands of non-empathics is that the latter will assume they know the purpose of human life.

Just as they run corporations with the absolute certainty that nothing but maximum return on capital in the shortest possible time is the only thing that matters – to the complete exclusion of all other considerations, so they will impart that delusional certainty and the associated “values” to AI.

And if they succeed, the journey for the rest of us towards the distant hope that we may eventually discover that purpose will come to an end.
.

NEXT Instalment:
.

Al Dulles – the spooks’ spook

Runaway “Intelligence” Services

Many historians agree that the Cold War commenced, effectively, with “Operation Sunrise” in the closing stages of the second world war.

Sunrise was a rogue operation run by Allen Dulles to secure the freedom of Nazi SS General Karl Wolff, second in command to Himmler of the entire SS and then the head of Nazi operations in Italy.

So who was Allen Dulles? At the time, Dulles was both a Wall Street lawyer with mega-corporate law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and a Swiss-based US intelligence agent with the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) – the military spy service which eventually became the CIA. Dulles was doing deals on behalf of US corporate clients with Nazi Germany before, during, and after the war. Many of these corporate clients were utilising slave labour in Nazi concentration camps to assist in cutting costs globally and were heavily committed to siding with Germany at the outset of war.

Instrumental to this were Dulles’ good relations with leading Nazi figures. Apart from Wolff, Dulles met and knew personally many Nazi and SS luminaries, including Hitler himself (in March 1933) and SS Leader Heinrich Himmler, many of whom he assisted to escape via his “ratlines” to Argentina and elsewhere in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Dulles went on to become the longest serving head of the CIA, America’s chief “spook”.

So why was his Sunrise operation considered the commencement of the Cold War? Because Dulles undermined Roosevelt’s insistence that Nazi surrender should be unconditional, ie: no secret negotiations or deals for clemency. This was an insistence shared by all the Allied leaders, including Churchill and Stalin. In blatant contradiction of this policy, Dulles secured an “early” (it was only a mere six days before the full unconditional capitulation of Germany and all Axis forces) surrender of German troops in Italy in exchange for clemency towards General Wolff. Stalin, already paranoid about Western duplicity, interpreted this as a unilateral US breach of the agreed unconditional surrender policy and suspected that America was now doing secret deals with Germany and others which would eventually lead to an invasion of the Soviet Union (as Western powers had done before in the course of the Russian revolution).

Stalin apparently trusted Roosevelt, but when Roosevelt died he was left with Harry Truman – a staunch “anti-communist” and relatively weak force. If Roosevelt had lived, it is very likely that he would have had Dulles tried for treason, but Truman, even though he disliked and distrusted Dulles, lacked the resolve and political strength to pull such a thing off.

All of this led to the diminishment of Stalin’s trust and the hardening of his position and the certainty of an “iron curtain” at the final battle lines.

But Dulles didn’t stop at Sunrise. He went on to involve himself deeply in the above mentioned “ratlines” – the programmes by which leading Nazis were able to escape Germany and settle quietly elsewhere in the world. As part of his ratline operations, Dulles even went so far as to interfere with the Nuremberg trials, doing what he could to protect his Nazi “assets” and clients, not least Karl Wolff. He was also a staunch supporter of Thomas McKittrick, the driving force behind the infamous Bank of International Settlements (BIS). BIS, set up to handle German reparation payments after WW1, had become the vehicle of choice for leading Nazis to stash their ill-gotten gains in Switzerland.

Dulles’s career as CIA chief spook ended when Kennedy fired him for lying to him in the build up to the invasion of Cuba. The resulting Bay of Pigs fiasco led directly on to the later, potentially globally cataclysmic Cuban missile crisis which was defused by Kennedy at the very last minute. Despite being fired, Dulles continued to exert informal control over many CIA activities, including – many allege – the assassination of Kennedy himself.

The fact that a monster like Dulles could act with impunity in direct contradiction of US policy and in defiance of US presidents serves to illustrate what has become of intelligence services generally. In the heady days of his Swiss intrigues with Nazis before, during, and after the war, Dulles was not alone. Elements of British, French, and the earliest forms of Mossad (Israeli intelligence) were engaged in the same sorts of practises.

Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles (also at Sullivan & Cromwell) had an abiding hatred of communism because it threatened the interests of their corporate clients. They hated trade unionists and “liberals” for the same reason and for the two post war decades oversaw the development of US “national security” policy – Al as head of CIA; JF as US Secretary of State (Foreign Secretary).

Apart from rebuilding the then West German intelligence service with former Nazis, Dulles was also dabbling in the clandestine overthrow of foreign governments. For starters, he was instrumental to the toppling of the democratically elected Persian (now Iranian) government of Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh rose to popular acclaim in the face of the excesses and abuses of the hereditary Shah and his consumer-driven wife Soraya. They fled the country to live it up in Rome where they were contacted by Dulles. Through copious CIA slush funding, infiltrations, and mass media manipulations, Mossadegh was hounded out of office in 1953 and the grateful Shah returned to his throne. There followed years of repressions, torturings, and murders while Gulf, Texaco, Mobil, Standard Oil, and other corporate entities swept back in, paid the Shah his backhanders, and resumed control of the country’s vast natural resources.

John Foster was just as rabidly anti-communist as his brother. As the French were on the verge of being booted out of Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, he offered “two A-bombs” to French foreign minister Georges Bidault. Fortunately Bidault was sufficiently shocked and horrified to decline the offer.

Having developed a taste for “the game” of toppling governments, Dulles moved on to Guatemala where he oversaw the destruction of Jacobo Arbenz and his democratically elected socialist, people-oriented government. This was managed on the ground by Howard Hunt – later of Watergate fame. Arbenz was replaced by the dictator Castillo Armas to the tumultuous applause of America’s United Fruit Company who, just like the oil corporations in Persia/Iran, swept back in to take control of Guatamala’s economy.

These set the pattern for continuing CIA international meddlings in the affairs of Chile, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Cuba, and elsewhere. The techniques included blackmail, media manipulation, bribery, mis and disinformation, support for dictators, assassinations, and paid for “revolutions”.

The fact that so few of us knew or know about these despicable activities, and that Dulles served so long as CIA chief, suggests that things have moved right along since. Like Hoover at the FBI, Dulles was so entrenched at the CIA that incoming US presidents found it very difficult to govern without his “knowledge” and guidance. The same applied to his successors as CIA chief. They always “knew better” than incoming presidents – especially as the quality of those presidents began to decline sharply.

Caitlin Johnstone (https://caitlinjohnstone.com/ ) makes the point that “So Much Of What The CIA Used To Do Covertly It Now Does Overtly”. She holds the view that : “I was reminded of this while watching a recent Fox News appearance by Glenn Greenwald where he made an observation we’ve discussed here previously about the way the CIA used to have to infiltrate the media, but now just openly has US intelligence veterans in mainstream media punditry positions managing public perception.

Greenwald said: “If you go and Google, and I hope your viewers do, Operation Mockingbird, what you will find is that during the Cold War these agencies used to plot how to clandestinely manipulate the news media to disseminate propaganda to the American population,” Greenwald said. “They used to try to do it secretly. They don’t even do it secretly any more. They don’t need Operation Mockingbird. They literally put John Brennan who works for NBC and James Clapper who works for CNN and tons of FBI agents right on the payroll of these news organizations. They now shape the news openly to manipulate and to deceive the American population.”

Although Dulles met with David Ben-Gurion in Washington in May 1953 to formalise, without the knowledge of US government and contrary to its policies, covert co-operation between the two agencies, it appears that, over time, Mossad has become the tail that wags the CIA dog. For example, Zionist Jonathan Pollard was tried for spying for Mossad whilst working at US naval intelligence during the 1980s. There are other ongoing examples, not least the appallingly lax security regarding the Pennsylvania-based NUMEC corporation and its depleted uranium products which seem to reach other parts of the planet without let or hindrance.

Mossad has always been careful about what it shares with the CIA. The latter has become such a large sprawling organisation rife with internal fiefdoms and competition that it’s relatively easy to play elements off against each other. Mossad, being much smaller and much tighter, tends to be contemptuous of the beast. It knows much more about the CIA than the CIA knows about Mossad. In this sense, Mossad could be said to be the leading intelligence service of today.

But the other frightening fact about runaway intelligence services is the extent to which they are involving themselves in commerce. Not only is there a revolving door which allows high ranking spooks to become executive officers of corporations and vice versa, but there is also increasing involvement by spook agencies, using non-accountable offshore slush funds, to invest heavily in such corporations. This is most notable among corporations involved in armaments and, more and more, cyber-security.

The pattern that emerges is that “our interests abroad” are not “our” interests at all; they are (and have been since colonial times) the interests of corporations and their major shareholders, who now not only buy and sell politicians but also buy and sell intelligence services. The armed interventions so regularly called for to protect “their” interests are funded by “us” and fought for by our more expendable sons and daughters.

Generally speaking, these orientations are reflected more and more in all the smaller fry western “intelligence” services (such as the UK ones) with one major difference. Being effectively left out of the global loop, they exist more exclusively to manipulate and control domestic populations than to counter the activities of foreign interventions.

The travesty of the 2019 UK elections and the ongoing internal machinations of the UK Labour Party are a graphic testament to the interventions of “intelligence” services from home and from abroad.
.

NEXT Instalment:
.

Cecil…
.

Secret Societies of the Privileged

Secret societies are often considered a phenomenon of the past and no longer significant. However they still exist, and exist in varying degrees of visibility and wielding varying amounts of clandestine power.

A good example is Cecil Rhodes, the supposed hero of Britain’s colonising of Africa.

Cecil Rhodes made a vast fortune out of diamonds and gold dug out of the south African ground by impoverished barefoot Africans. It was rumoured to be the largest personal fortune of his time. He was the Bezos/Gates of his day.

However, he bequeathed nothing to family. Rhodes’ will bequeathed his fortune to a series of trusts and enterprises committed to protecting, at all costs, the great “British Empire”. Some of the trusts and entities were known to the public (eg the “Rhodes Scholarship”). Others were not.

To protect his wilful posthumous investments, Rhodes apparently reverted to a form of organisation espoused by a German philosophy professor by the name of Adam Weishaupt. The guiding principle of this was the creation of “rings within rings”, augmented by the strict rule that very very few of the people in any of the rings should be aware of any inner rings at all. Only the very central ring should have an inkling of the size and scale of the subservient outer rings.

With all this in mind Rhodes first established the secret “Society of the Elect”. This consisted of three classes of membership. At its core was the “Junta of Three”, consisting of: “Lord” Alfred Milner, Rhodes’ right hand man, confidante, and gofer; “Sir” William Stead, an early press magnate; and “Viscount” Esher who effectively represented “King” Edward 7. Then came the “Elect” which was broadened to include, among others, “Lord” Nathaniel Rothschild the banker, and possibly Alfred Beit, a co-founder with Rhodes of deBeers – the global diamond monopolist.

Then, according to the wills, came the “Helpers” – the B list of the privileged, carefully chosen from the realms of politics and commerce for their contacts and pliability. Each of the “Elect” had their own networks of privilege and they encouraged the development of lower level Helpers who were then encouraged to use their contacts to create yet more outer rings among the pliable privileged and “influencers”, without ever letting on that there was an inner ring. None of the Helpers could know of the Elect or the Junta. And the members of these outer rings would in turn, believing themselves to be the inner ring, seek to form yet more outer rings whilst, again, assuring that none of these recruits knew anything of other rings but believed themselves to be at the centre.

This is just an example. We cannot know how many other such “Trusts” have been set up by capital hoarders to carry on their obsessions posthumously.
.

TRYING to bring it all together: See “Unified Theory”