Smedley
"Meets" John
For
some people, it is difficult, even unpleasant, to begin realizing
what's going on in the world, and right down town. Often in this
discovery, notions that have been held dear are vaporized. Some
people prefer to cling to pet notions rather than acknowledge
information new to them.
That's
OK, because we operate in varying frames of reference, and people
have to be ready to see. Others will oppose it to protect personal
or selfish interest. Still others will resist because it implies
getting off one's butt. And some find it just too overwhelming
and awful, and go into sensory shutdown. Denial and cognitive
dissonance serve the day.
However,
as one begins to connect events, such as a news items or something
that has happened to them or a loved one, to the Elite
agenda and "M-O" things start to fall into place.
Just one or two connections can greatly ease this challenging
shift in perspective. I got into all this decades ago when I began
studying about health, and learned about the relentless persecution
of people with the 'audacity' to offer safe and effective cures
for 'incurable diseases.' Folks sometimes begin to understand
when conventional medicine kills a loved one.
Expanding
awareness per se has value, even if one doesn't become an activist.
I say, "awareness has a mind of its own" in the collective
human psyche, and can change society's direction. It may obviously
influence how one votes, for example. Anyone with even a beginning
awareness would find it impossible to vote for the Bush cabal,
an elitist criminal dynasty, as detailed in Kevin Phillips excellent
account American
Dynasty, which also provides a look into the creation
and control of America's military/intelligence/industrial complex.
But,
with a little more awareness, one finds that, for example, candidate
Kerry is little better, because he too is an elitist (and a cousin
of Bush to boot), coming from a family (Forbes) that made its
fortune in opium. That by itself isn't condemning, only circumstantial;
but a closer look at his investigation of the BCCI scandal reveals
masked damage control. And during the investigation, Kerry became
Chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which received
large contributions from BCCI.
Here's
a short lesson on how the Elite operate: infiltrate both sides;
create/nurture the chaos of opposing views, create and debilitate
a two-party system; get people arguing about superficialities—liberal/conservative,
two-party values and political differences, the drama of daily
events, and so on. It's mostly show, because underneath it all,
the 'Elite-beat' goes on. They've weakened America by functionally
turning the Republic into a democracy.
Looking
at the sordid history of the Elite and its
ruthless manipulation and control of human
societies, one will realize there are few,
if any, aspects of our lives they don't heavily
influence, and even control. The more you
learn about them, the easier it is to see
that this is so, and to see through many politicians
and 'the news.'
Here
is an excellent example of Elite influence on the behavior of
government, military and corporations.
Smedley Butler was perhaps the most decorated
Major General in Marine Corps history. In
the early part of the 20th century, he fought
for the United States around the world. He
was awarded two Congressional Medals of Honor.
When he returned to the United States he wrote a short book in
1935 titled War
is a Racket,
which opens with the memorable line: "War is a racket. It
always has been."
"I
was a high class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and
for the Bankers," Butler said. "In short, I was a racketeer,
a gangster for capitalism."
In a speech in 1933, Butler said the following:
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American
oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place
for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped
in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the
benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I
helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of
Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped
to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
Smedley Butler, meet John Perkins.
Perkins has just written a book, Confessions of an
Economic Hit Man (Barrett Koehler, 2004). It is
the War is A Racket for our times. How
the Elite, via its USA/IMF/World Bank/Spy/corporate mechanisms,
"help" nations to drown in debt.
Here
is an excerpt from John Perkins's book "Confessions of an
Economic Hit Man." "MAIN" is Charles T. Main, Inc,
an international "consulting" firm that, like many other
legitimate/criminal operations, keeps a very low profile (closely
held, like Bechtel). Of note is the way in which the Elite use
women/sexual intrigue to get the job done.
Not quoted here, but of special interest also are a couple of
chapters detailing the background of the US Treasury/Bush/Saudi/Osama
bin Laden connections that go back at least to GHW Bush's tenure
as Ambassador to the UN (1971-73), that took off around 1974,
and lead up to 9/11.
The book is a worthy read, especially for those with delusions
about America's righteousness and beneficence in the international
community. Some
of it is hard to believe. You be the judge. I've broken up the
longer paragraphs to make reading easier. My
comments in [brackets].
***** MAIN was a macho corporation. There were only four women
who held professional positions in 1971. However, there were perhaps
two hundred women divided between the cadres of personal secretaries
-- every vice president and department manager had one -- and
the steno pool, which served the rest of us. I had become accustomed
to this gender bias, and I was therefore especially astounded
by what happened one day in the BPL's [Boston Public Library]
reference section.
An attractive brunette woman came up and sat in a chair across
the table from me. In her dark green business suit, she looked
very sophisticated. I judged her to be several years my senior,
but I tried to focus on not noticing her, on acting indifferent.
After a few minutes, without a word, she slid an open book in
my direction. It contained a table with information I had been
searching for about Kuwait -- and a card with her name, Claudine
Martin, and her title, Special Consultant to Chas. T. Main, Inc.
I looked up into her soft green eyes, and she extended her hand.
"I've been asked to help in your training," she said.
I could not believe this was happening to me.
Beginning the next day, we met in Claudine's Beacon Street apartment,
a few blocks from MAIN'S Prudential Center headquarters. During
our first hour together, she explained that my position was an
unusual one and that we needed to keep everything highly confidential.
She told me that no one had given me specifics about my job because
no one was authorized to -- except her. Then she informed me that
her assignment was to mold me into an economic hit man.
The very name awakened old cloak-and-dagger dreams. I was embarrassed
by the nervous laughter I heard coming from me. She smiled and
assured me that humor was one of the reasons they used the term.
"Who would take it seriously?" she asked. I confessed
ignorance about the role of economic hit men.
"You're not alone," she laughed. "We're a rare
breed, in a dirty business. No one can know about your involvement
-- not even your wife." Then she turned serious. "I'll
be very frank with you, teach you all I can during the next weeks.
Then you'll have to choose. Your decision is final. Once you're
in, you're in for life." After that, she seldom used the
full name; we were simply EHMs.
I know now what I did not then -- that Claudine took full advantage
of the personality weaknesses the NSA profile had disclosed about
me. I do not know who supplied her with the information -- Einar,
the NSA, MAIN'S personnel department, or someone else -- only
that she used it masterfully. Her approach, a combination of physical
seduction and verbal manipulation, was tailored specifically for
me, and yet it fit within the standard operating procedures I
have since seen used by a variety of businesses when the stakes
are high and the pressure to close lucrative deals is great.
She
knew from the start that I would not jeopardize my marriage by
disclosing our clandestine activities. And she was brutally frank
when it came to describing the shadowy side of things that would
be expected of me. I have no idea who paid her salary, although
I have no reason to suspect it was not, as her business card implied,
MAIN. At the time, I was too naive, intimidated, and bedazzled
to ask the questions that today seem so obvious.
Claudine told me that there were two primary objectives of my
work. First, I was to justify huge international loans that would
funnel money back to MAIN and other U.S. companies (such as Bechtel,
Halliburton, Stone & Webster, and Brown & Root) through
massive engineering and construction projects. Second, I would
work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans (after
they had paid MAIN and the other U.S. contractors, of course)
so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors, and
so they would present easy targets when we needed favors, including
military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources.
My job, she said, was to forecast the effects of investing billions
of dollars in a country. Specifically, I would produce studies
that projected economic growth twenty to twenty-five years into
the future and that evaluated the impacts of a variety of projects.
For example, if a decision was made to lend a country $1 billion
to persuade its leaders not to align with the Soviet Union, I
would compare the benefits of investing that money in power plants
with the benefits of investing in a new national railroad network
or a telecommunications system.
Or
I might be told that the country was being offered the opportunity
to receive a modern electric utility system, and it would be up
to me to demonstrate that such a system would result in sufficient
economic growth to justify the loan. The critical factor, in every
case, was gross national product. The project that resulted in
the highest average annual growth of GNP won. If only one project
was under consideration, I would need to demonstrate that developing
it would bring superior benefits to the GNP.
The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they
were intended to create large profits for the contractors, and
to make a handful of wealthy and influential families in the receiving
countries very happy, while assuring the long-term financial dependence
and therefore the political loyalty of governments around the
world. The larger the loan, the better. The fact that the debt
burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest citizens
of health, education, and other social services for decades to
come was not taken into consideration [Of course it was--that's
the plan! Both Claudine and Perkins here exhibit incomplete understanding
of the power Elite and its MO, part of which is the ongoing promotion
of illness, poverty and slow genocide].
Claudine
and I openly discussed the deceptive nature of GNP. For instance,
the growth of GNP may result even when it profits only one person,
such as an individual who owns a utility company, and even if
the majority of the population is burdened with debt. The rich
get richer and the poor grow poorer. Yet, from a statistical standpoint,
this is recorded as economic progress [yes, 'even' in America].
Like U.S. citizens in general, most MAIN employees believed we
were doing countries favors when we built power plants, highways,
and ports. Our schools and our press have taught us to perceive
all of our actions as altruistic. Over the years, I've repeatedly
heard comments like, "If they're going to burn the U.S. flag
and demonstrate against our embassy, why don't we just get out
of their damn country and let them wallow in their own poverty?"
People who say such things often hold diplomas certifying that
they are well educated. However, these people have no clue that
the main reason we establish embassies around the world is to
serve our own interests, which during the last half of the twentieth
century meant turning the American republic into a global empire
[and maintaining the global scene as a playground for ruthless
Elite power games]. Despite credentials, such people are as uneducated
as those eighteenth-century colonists who believed that the Indians
fighting to defend their lands were servants of the devil.
Within several months, I would leave for the island of Java in
the country of Indonesia, described at that time as the most heavily
populated piece of real estate on the planet. Indonesia also happened
to be an oil-rich Muslim nation and a hotbed of communist activity
[The overall Indonesian 'operation' abetted by Gerald Ford and
Henry-the- Reptile Kissinger resulted in at least 200,000 people
simply shot down in cold blood on East Timor by our ally Suharto
while we turned our back--and with weapons we sold him].
"It's the next domino after Vietnam," [a couple of million
lives] is the way Claudine put it. "We must win the Indonesians
over. If they join the Communist bloc, well..." She drew
a finger across her throat and then smiled sweetly [It's likely
Claudine didn't understand that the USSR/ Commie threat was an
Elite creation. She was sold a bill of goods which may partly
underlie 'justification' for her behavior. Perkins also seems
a bit out of touch on this subject.] "Let's just say you
need to come up with a very optimistic forecast of the economy,
how it will mushroom after all the new power plants and distribution
lines are built. That will allow USAID and the international banks
to justify the loans.
You'll
be well rewarded, of course, and can move on to other projects
in exotic places. The world is your shopping cart." She went
on to warn me that my role would be tough. "Experts at the
banks will come after you. It's their job to punch holes in your
forecasts -- that's what they're paid to do. Making you look bad
makes them look good."
One day I reminded Claudine that the MAIN team being sent to Java
included ten other men. I asked if they all were receiving the
same type of training as me. She assured me they were not.
"They're engineers, she said. "They design power plants,
transmission and distribution lines, and seaports and roads to
bring in the fuel. You're the one who predicts the future. Your
forecasts determine the magnitude of the systems they design --
and the size of the loans. You see, you're the key."
Every time I walked away from Claudine's apartment, I wondered
whether I was doing the right thing. Somewhere in my heart, I
suspected I was not. But the frustrations of my past haunted me.
MAIN seemed to offer everything my life had lacked, and yet I
kept asking myself if Tom Paine would have approved. In the end,
I convinced myself that by learning more, by experiencing it,
I could better expose it later -- the old "working from the
inside" justification.
When I shared this idea with Claudine, she gave me a perplexed
look. "Don't be ridiculous. Once you're in, you can never
get out. You must decide for yourself, before you get in any deeper."
I understood her, and what she said frightened me. After I left,
I strolled down Commonwealth Avenue, turned onto Dartmouth Street,
and assured myself that I was the exception.
One afternoon some months later, Claudine and I sat in a window
settee watching the snow fall on Beacon Street. "We're a
small, exclusive club," she said. 'We're paid -- well paid
-- to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars.
A large part of your job is to encourage world leaders to become
part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests.
In the end, those 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. In turn,
these leaders bolster their political positions by bringing industrial
parks, power plants, and airports to their people. Meanwhile,
the owners of U.S. engineering and construction companies become
very wealthy."
That afternoon, in the idyllic setting of Claudine's apartment,
relaxing in the window while snow swirled around outside, I learned
the history of the profession I was about to enter. Claudine described
how, throughout most of history empires were built largely through
military force or the threat of it. But with the end of World
War II, the emergence of the Soviet Union, and the specter of
nuclear holocaust, the military solution became just too risky
[Not at all. Many wars have been created since. One development
was secretly supporting overt 'monsters' in other nations to demonize
and potentiate violence--Saddam perfect example].
The decisive moment occurred in 1951, when Iran rebelled against
a British oil company that was exploiting Iranian natural resources
and its people. The company was the forerunner of British Petroleum,
today's BP. In response, the highly popular, democratically elected
Iranian prime minister (and TIME magazine's Man of the Year in
1951), Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized all Iranian petroleum
assets. An outraged England sought the help of her World War II
ally, the United States. However, both countries feared that military
retaliation would provoke the Soviet Union into taking action
on behalf of Iran.
Instead of sending in the Marines, therefore, Washington dispatched
CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt (Theodore's grandson). He performed
brilliantly, winning people over through payoffs and threats [major
field 'experiment' for fledgling CIA]. He then enlisted them to
organize a series of street riots and violent demonstrations,
which created the impression that Mossadegh was both unpopular
and inept. In the end, Mossadegh went down, and he spent the rest
of his life under house arrest. The pro-American Mohammad Reza
Shah became the unchallenged dictator. Kermit Roosevelt had set
the stage for a new profession, the one whose ranks I was joining
[my money is on the probability that the Shah was also brought
down in similar way].
Roosevelt's gambit reshaped Middle Eastern history even as it
rendered obsolete all the old strategies for empire building [not
entirely true, as is patently obvious now. It has become an amalgam
of methods]. It also coincided with the beginning of experiments
in "limited nonnuclear military actions," which ultimately
resulted in U.S. humiliations in Korea and Vietnam [military/strategic
losses only--certainly not profit- wise, a major plus for any
military operation]. By 1968, the year I interviewed with the
NSA, it had become clear that if the United States wanted to realize
its dream of global empire (as envisioned by men like presidents
Johnson and Nixon), it would have to employ strategies modeled
on Roosevelt's Iranian example. This was the only way to beat
the Soviets without the threat of nuclear war.
There was one problem, however. Kermit Roosevelt was a CIA employee.
Had he been caught, the consequences would have been dire [CIA
owned by Elites/Wall Street from day one--only ostensibly operated/operates
as US agency]. He had orchestrated the first U.S. operation to
overthrow a foreign government, and it was likely that many more
would follow but it was important to find an approach that would
not directly implicate Washington.
Fortunately for the strategists, the 1960s also witnessed another
type of revolution: the empowerment of international corporations
and of multinational organizations such as the World Bank and
the IMF. The latter were financed primarily by the United States
and our sister empire builders in Europe. A symbiotic relationship
developed between governments, corporations, and multinational
organizations [Another example of unfamiliarity with the Elite
MO. This was a tactical development in a long-established relationship;
e.g., unconstitutional Federal Reserve, a tentacle of the Rothschild/Rockefeller
central-bank cartel].
By the time I enrolled in BU's business school, a solution to
the Roosevelt-as-CIA-agent problem had already been worked out.
U.S. intelligence agencies -- including the NSA -- would identify
prospective EHMs, who could then be hired by international corporations.
These EHMs would never be paid by the government; instead, they
would draw their salaries from the private sector. As a result,
their dirty work, if exposed, would be chalked up to corporate
greed rather than to government policy. In addition, the corporations
that hired them, although paid by government agencies and their
multinational banking counterparts (with taxpayer money), would
be insulated from congressional oversight and public scrutiny,
shielded by a growing body of legal initiatives, including trademark,
international trade, and Freedom of Information laws [the FOI
bit seems contradictory--not sure what he means here].
"So you see" Claudine concluded,
"we are just the next generation in a
proud tradition that began back when you were
in first grade" [new phase of a very
old tradition].