Blowback:Before Osama Bin Laden, There Was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

“Blowback”:  A metaphor for the unintended consequences of the US government’s international activities that have been kept secret from the American people.

Osama bin Laden

Every sentient being in the US has heard the infamous name, Osama bin Laden, notorious as mastermind of the horrific events of September 11, 2001.  Everyone has heard the oft repeated explanation for the attack from the lips of George W. Bush and Co.:  The plane hijackers were evil terrorists simply bent on the destruction of  America’s freedom, democracy and civilization. Everyone also knows that 15 of the 9-11 airline hijackers were Saudi Arabians, as is Osama bin Laden.  Yet the US chose to fly the  Saudi royal family to safety when all other American aviation was grounded.  The US chose to throw its military might against Iraq, not Saudi Arabia.  Why did this happen?

The notion that history began on September 11, 2001 was an appealing one. The truth behind the river of lies and half-truths that followed the 9-11 attack is much more complex. Immediately following the 9-11 attack the US invaded Afghanistan, allegedly for harboring 9-11 mastermind bin Laden.  Then the US supposedly ousted the Taliban fighters hiding bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora.  Victorious in Afghanistan, the US then turned its wrath against Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq, another alleged sponsor of bin Laden’s al Qaeda thugs.  Well then, what was President Obama’s justification for taking the fight, yet again, to Afghanistan’s “al Qaeda” and the resurgent Taliban, as if al Qaeda and the Taliban were the same entity? This brief reading of available information on the Afghan imbroglio exposes decades of lies perpetrated on the American electorate by the White house and its clandestine services. The roots of the continuing Afghan military debacle and September 11 began in the Cold War, the post WWII struggle between Western and Russian Soviet imperialism.  Here is a brief overview of events:

In 1973 Afghan Prince Muhammad Daoud oust(ed) the Afghan king with help from the Soviet Union, and establishe(d) a Soviet  friendly Afghan republic.

USSR Invades Afghanistan

Prince Daoud was eventually assisted in this effort by the Soviets, who invaded the country in 1979.  As a result, the US, with the participation of Iran’s secret police, SAVAK , and Pakistan military intelligence, ISI, began funneling weapons and resources to the Islamist resistance.  The Islamist resistance was a collection of warlord factions, most ethnically Pashtun tribesmen, with strongholds in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul and spreading through Peshawar province, Pakistan.  From the same article:

After the pro-Soviet coup in April 1978, the Islamic militants (including ISI loyalist Gubbudin Hekmatyar) with the support of the ISI carr(ied) out a massive campaign of terrorism, assassinating hundreds of teachers and civil servants. [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 260 – 263]

Warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

In 1979, the CIA selected … Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as its primary operative within the Islamist resistance and for the next decade funneled half of all Afghan aid through his group.  The fact that Hekmatyar was a brutal drug dealer known for skinning his victims alive was considered a plus for anti-Russian ruthlessness.   By 1984 it is believed that CIA director William Casey enlisted Hekmatyar to carry the anti-Russian campaign into the southern Soviet republics, such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

At the same time, Osama bin Laden was developing a close working relationship with Saudi intelligence, the GID.  The Saudis had ideological and strategic interests in supporting the Afghan Islamist resistance.  Bin Laden began acting as intermediary between Saudi intelligence and the Islamist warlords.  Hekmatyar and bin Laden developed a close working relationship.  Contrary to the wishes of the Afghan fighters, William Casey decided to bring Arabs into the fight against the Soviets.  Osama bin Laden became a primary recruiter for foreign, mostly Arab, jihadists.  According to “A Legacy Of Ashes” (author Tim Weiner), “white robed Saudis” began to appear in war ravaged Afghanistan, declaring themselves emirs. “They were emissaries  of a new force abroad in the world that came to be called al Qaeda.”  in 1996, the Taliban, the anti-government  islamist faction prevailed and took power in Kabul.  Hakmatyar sought safe haven in Iran and was held there under virtual house arrest until early 2002 when he was returned to Afghanistan in retaliation for George Bush’s anti-Iranian “axis of Evil” speech.

Osama bin Laden remained active in the fight against foreign occupation in the middle east.  He found(ed) the Al-Kifah Refugee Center, also known in Arabic as “services center” or “struggle”, along with several banks with a primary office in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The Brooklyn office recruit(ed) Arab immigrants and Arab-Americans to go fight in Afghanistan, even after the Soviets withdraw in early 1989. As many as 200 are sent there from the office. Before they go, the office arranges training in the use of rifles, assault weapons, and handguns, and then helps them with visas, plane tickets, and contacts. They are generally sent to the MAK/Al-Kifah office in Peshawar, Pakistan, and then connected to either the radical Afghan faction led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf or the equally radical one led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. [New York Times, 4/11/1993]

Hekmatyar…  returned after the U.S. invasion to wage jihad against the Americans, and in 2006 he publicly declared an alliance with Al Qaeda: “They hold the banner”, he said.

We couldn’t catch bin Laden, and apparently, we can’t “catch” Hekmatyar, who is inflicting a bloody toll on American and NATO (what’s left of them) forces in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province.  The Islamists cry that they are doing to America what they did to the British and the Soviets before them.  Hekmatyar has stated that he wants an end to foreign occupation, and a place at the negotiating table as the price for “peace”.

Officials in Washington express mixed reactions to the idea of negotiating with Hekmatyar. His fighters are thought to have led assaults that nearly overran two small American bases in Nuristan province last October, killing eight American soldiers and wounding 24. Many national-security professionals, especially in the intelligence field, say they’re disgusted to think of cutting deals with someone who has so much blood on his hands. On the other hand, as Gen. David Petraeus likes to say, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends. People at the Pentagon are speaking more cautiously, mostly echoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s recent assertion that it’s too soon to begin discussing peace in Afghanistan.

Evidently, General Stanley McCrystal’s plan for military conquest of the Taliban was a failure.  it would require more blood and treasure than the US dares to commit in order to have any hope for success.  The new Afghan operations commander, General Patraeus, favors negotiated settlements such as the one in Iraq. So perhaps the McCrystal insults printed in Rolling Stone magazine were meant to give Obama an “out” with new leadership, an honorable way to change course in Afghanistan before the 2012 election cycle.

Once we declare victory and limp away from Afghanistan, who will repay the American people for the blood and treasure expended in pursuit of the Afghan falsehood.

Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, CIA Choice for Surgeon General

Obama and Dr. Regina Benjamin

From Wikipedia: The Surgeon General is nominated by the U.S. President and confirmed via majority vote by the Senate. The Surgeon General serves a four-year term of office and is the highest ranking uniformed officer of the PHSCC, holding the grade of a three-star vice admiral while in office.^[1] However, the Surgeon General reports to the United States Assistant Secretary for Health, who himself may hold the rank of a four-star admiral within the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.

The Surgeon General reports to the Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH), who is the principal advisor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on public health and scientific issues. The Surgeon General is the overall head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC), a 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the USPHS, a cadre of health professionals who are on call 24 hours a day, and can be dispatched by the Secretary of HHS or the Assistant Secretary for Health in the event of a public health emergency.

If Obama had gotten his way,and he hadn’t played fast and loose with his taxes, Tom Daschle, the darling of Big Health and Pharma lobbyists would be Secretary of Health and Human Services and the new Surgeon General would be working for him.  Tom Daschle is gone but his promises to health and pharma companies have not been forgotten.  Enter HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Dr. Regina Benjamin to deliver the goods for the corporate campaign contributors.

There is something about the new Surgeon General nominee, Dr. Regina Benjamin, that merits attention: while completing her undergraduate degree in chemistry at Louisiana’s Xavier University she was a CIA undergraduate intern.  Imagine that.  There’s just that one sentence about Dr. Benjamin’s association with the CIA program in the article and nothing further from her about it, but here’s what the CIA recruiters say about their program:  On campus CIA recruiters sponsor the chosen undergraduate with scholarships and paid fees.  In exchange students work on a variety of classified programs during annual breaks.  CIA scholarships anyone?  What did they get in return?

Plenty of others have ugly things to say about the activities of the CIA recruitment on campus here, here, and here.  From the Church Committee Report on the CIA, 1976:

The Central Intelligence Agency is now using several hundred American academics (“academics” includes administrators, faculty members and graduate students engaged in teaching), who in addition to providing leads and, on occasion, making introductions for intelligence purposes, occasionally write books and other material to be used for propaganda purposes abroad. Beyond these, an additional few score are used in an unwitting manner for minor activities.

It’s no surprise that President Obama would choose a CIA associate for another important post in his administration, since faux liberal Obama is the biggest intelligence hawk in the history of the nation. But why Dr. Regina Benjamin?  Why her and why now?  Aside from the up from the disarming poverty and deprivation biography she shares with Obama’s fake one, here’s my answer:  It’s the medical records stupid! What better individual to oversee the electronic upgrade of national medical records and act as conduit and interlocutor between the intelligence community, Big Health, Big Pharma and Jane Q. Public than a country doctor and former CIA recruit.  The biggest heist in world history, the stealing and patenting of the world’s genomic information and resources, will be carried out under the auspices of the intelligence community and the benign appearing people’s doctor.  Perhaps the fact that our medical information will be examined under an unbreakable, warrantless, national security gag order of the Patriot Act will be easier to accept if we see the  friendly face of the  female, African-American, the country doctor next door. Does the support of a nice looking, African-American with a sympathetic biography and a career in community activism and a CIA connection sound familiar?  CIA scholarships anyone?

If you’ve read some of my other posts you know I believe Obama comes from a line of naval intelligence officers, his grandparents Sidney and Madelyn Dunham and his mother Ann Dunham Soetoro.  Not only is Obama comfortable with the intelligence community, he has militarized U.S. intelligence, appointing PACOM chief Admiral Dennis Blair (who attended the Cold War created East-West Institute in Honolulu and studying Russian, as did Ann Soetoro).  He has kept in place DoD Chief and former CIA Chief, Robert Gates, among others, while downgrading the importance of the civilian arm of the CIA, Leon Panetta.  Obama also has plans to extend intelligence and surveillance within the U.S.:

In addition to stepping up efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Mr. Obama wants to tackle some of the tougher intelligence issues that the Bush administration hasn’t resolved. Two former intelligence officials said the Obama team is weighing whether to propose the creation of a domestic intelligence agency (emphasis mine).

Isn’t this unlawful, unconstitutional? Very Troubling.

But the Obama payoff to Big Health and Big Pharma for the gigantic campaign contributions that helped put him in office is the electronic bundling and availability of the nation’s medical histories combined with patient biological tissues and DNA as well as all information that can be triangulated from other cyber sources to reap an intelligence and marketing bonanza heretofore unknown.  The secret plundering of human raw material will have the biggest payoff since the discovery of the New World.

Obambush State Secrets and Operation MK-ULTRA

Governments adore secrets. The uglier the government’s activities, the greater the likelihood a program of state secrecy will be be enacted to prevent the public from finding out how ugly it really is.

ObamBush

George Bush had his state secrets-kidnapping and torturing subjects he called terrorists -but who remained unnamed and uncharged. His activities were unlawful by most definitions other than his own, requiring the legal efforts of lackeys to compose a complex network of baffling and self-serving work arounds to provide the veneer of legitimacy. Bush/Cheney still makes the claim that there was no wrong-doing but the the CIA operatives who carried out the kidnappings and tortures have disposed of the taped torture sessions that would have confirmed their point.

President Obama, promising an end to torture and an unprecedented level of transparency within his administration, has instead reverted to Bush/Cheney style cover-ups (surprise!) and more legal demands for state secrecy regarding torture and perpetual detention without trial.

Some Americans express complete disinterest in the cloak of secrecy the government invokes when called to account for illegal acts. They assume they’ll be immune from negative consequences of the government’s use of so-called black ops because they’re law abiding citizens, above government suspicion.

For those who hold this view consider the MK-Ultra projects begun by the CIA during the last phase of WWII and continuing well into the 1970s and probably beyond.  Nazi scientists carried on advanced research on “worthless” test subjects:

Mengele experiments

Much of the preliminary experimentation concerning genetic engineering and behavior modification was conducted by Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz, where he coldly analyzed the effects of trauma-bonding,

drug experiments

eye-coloring and “twinning” upon his victims. Besides the insidious surgical experimentation performed at the concentration camp, some of the children were subjected to massive amounts of electroshock. Sadly, many of them did not survive the brutality. Concurrently, “brain-washing” was carried out on inmates at Dachau, who were placed under hypnosis and given the hallucinogenic drug mescaline. During the war, parallel behavioral research was led by Dr. George Estabrooks of Colgate University. His involvement with the Army, CID, FBI and other agencies remains shrouded in secrecy. However, Estabrooks would occasionally “slip” and discuss his work involving the creation of hypno-programmed couriers and hypnotically-induced split personalities.

MK-Ultra was the code name the CIA, under the auspices of The Office of Scientific Intelligence, eventually gave to a series of secret experiments and projects carried out on unwitting citizens and foreigners.  Prostitutes, given get-out-of-jail “chits” lured johns to hotel trysts where they could more easily be drugged and observed. The experiments and projects included mind control and physical experiments using toxic and lethal substances on human test subjects.  The OSS (later the CIA) enlisted the services of indicted Nazi war criminals to continue the experiments conducted in concentration camps.  Code names such as Operation Paperclip, Naomi, Bluebird and Artichoke were subsumed under the rubric Ultra, indicating their super secret nature.  From Wikipedia:

MK-ULTRA involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methods, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function.

and…

The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an “extensive testing and experimentation” program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens “at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.” Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to “unwitting subjects in social situations.” At least one death, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers.^[7]

To this day most specific information regarding Project MKULTRA remains highly classified information.

In response to mind control and other experimentation carried out by the post-war Chinese and Soviet Union the U.S. government, CIA, DOD and DOE did this:

Beginning in the early 1950s, CIA engaged in an extensive program of human experimentation, using drugs, psychological. and other means in search of techniques to control human behavior CIA has so far found no evidence that radiation experiments on humans were part of this program. CIA documents and a 1963 CIA Inspector General (IG) report. however state quite clearly that MKULTRA was a program “concerned with research and development of chemical. biological. and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”

In another MKULTRA project, CIA secretly provided funding for the construction of a wing of Georgetown University Hospital in the 1950s so that it would have a locale to carry out clinical testing of its biological and chemical programs. Dr. Charles F. Geschickter, a Georgetown doctor who conducted cancer research and experimented with radiation therapy, acted as cover for CIA financing.

U.S. military personnel, convinced they were used as unwitting test subjects, sued the government.  Wired.com says

The experiments allegedly included “the use of troops to test nerve gas, psychochemicals, and thousands of other toxic chemical or biological substances, and … the insertion of septal implants in the brains of subjects in … mind control experiments that went awry, leaving many civilian and military subjects with permanent disabilities.” Subjects were tested without their consent, the veterans say. And when the trials were over, the government failed to “provide health care or compensation.”

These medical and psychological experiments were supposed to have ended but… from Wired:

In a 2003 memo, then-Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo suggesting that
interrogation drugs could be used if their effects were not permanent or profound. Since then, evidence has accumulated that some detainees may have been drugged. “It’s coming back,” retired Colonel John Alexander told Sharon.

The Carlyle Group-Busted! But Skates On Much More.

Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group, primary home for half of the former Reagan and Bush administration defense, CIA chiefs and presidents 41 and 43 was nabbed in a play for pay scheme throwing $13 million in bribes to New York pension fund directors to elicit contracts. New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said:

Carlyle had agreed to $20 million to “resolve its role” in the ongoing corruption investigation and agreed to a new code of conduct that prohibits the use of such middlemen.

Carlyle enlisted the aid of a “fixer”, Hank Morris, and “paid Morris through shell companies he controlled”.

Carlyle then received more than $730 million in New York state pension funds for five different projects, according to Cuomo.

Carlyle employees also made about $78,000 in campaign contributions to Comptroller Hevesi’s campaign in 2005 and 2006, according to Cuomo, some solicited by Morris.

Finally.  Carlyle caught with it’s pants down mooning the public.

But the whole deal seems amateurish and penny ante compared to their propensity for buying up military contractors before and while declaring “war on terror”.

General Dynamics Tank

Carlyle chairman, Frank Carlucci, former defense department chief during the Reagan years and head of defense contractor, General Dynamics, was unhappy about the fortunes of his industry during the late 1990’s.  Firms had been consolidating, business was slow.  The wars waged by the Reagan-Bush administration were winding down, The Cold War barely a memory. Contracts, previously lucrative, were trickling in.  Carlyle and the rest of the military-industrial complex despaired at the military’s “socialism” and wanted more of it handed over to the private sector.

In 1997 Carlyle Group bought United Defense Industries.  The company’s prospectus describes its mission manufacturing:

Combat Vehicle Systems, Fire Support, Combat Support Vehicle Systems, Weapons Delivery Systems, Amphibious Assault Vehicles, Logistics and Training Support, Intelligent Munitions, and Marine Repair.

….United Defense was upgrading existing vehicles. The company was also busy developing the next generation Crusader Field Artillery System, designed to replace the M109A6 Paladin, and was hoping to land a $20 billion Crusader production contract in 2000. The company was also developing a Composite Armor Vehicle and a Grizzly minefield-breaching vehicle.

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, President George Bush and his administration launched immense military initiatives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other areas, and these initiatives greatly impacted the U.S. defense industry. In December of that year, United Defense went public on the New York Stock Exchange and was awarded many new contracts.

Iraq soldiers

Carlyle snapped up Cercom, Inc.

In 2004, United Defense acquired Cercom Inc., which specialized in developing armor protection for soldiers as well as for defense vehicles.

From the New York Times:

Cercom, an advanced materials company based in Vista, Calif., began making enhanced plates for the Pentagon this summer and said it was working round the clock to fill its part of the military order.

Weren’t there complaints and desperate calls for help from soldiers and their families for more body and vehicle armor?  Did president Bush send them into the field with inadequate armor from his own company? Just asking.

War is  business.  An eternal war is very good business.

In July 2002, United Defense acquired United States Marine Repair, the country’s largest non-nuclear ship repair, modernization, conversion, and overhaul company. United Defense’s work with the U.S. Army was bolstered as well when, in 2003, the company was awarded a $2 billion contract by Boeing Co. to develop five types of manned ground vehicles (MGVs) for the Army.

From Funding Universe, above:

As the country’s war efforts continued, United Defense’s first quarter revenues in 2004 increased 17 percent, with sales from the Defense System division generating the bulk of the first quarter growth in 2004. These were attributed, in particular, to Bradley Fighting Vehicle upgrades, spare parts, and ramped-up development programs including the Army’s Future Combat Systems and the Navy’s new destroyer program, DD(X).

What a lovely pair of warmongers: Bush with the Carlyle Group, United Defense, Cercom.  Cheney running Halliburton and KBR.  What a racket!  We know the costs and cost over runs for no-bid Halliburton and KBR were enormous.  Could we see the same pattern for United Defense and Cercom?  Did I forget to mention the CIA and Defense Department officials that sit on the Carlyle board?  And how about the Saudi royal family, close associates of Osama and the bin Ladins and countrymen of 13 of the 15 airline hijackers that plowed into the World Trade Center towers to start the Iraq(!!!!???) invasion? What a tangled web they weave.

In 2008 The Carlyle Group acquired Booz Allen, the global management and intelligence consulting firm, for $2.54 billion.

Dick Cheney-sneers

Bush I I with Saudis

Bush I with Saudis

Company Snapshot:

A recent deal between Booz Allen and the Carlyle Group has been deemed a national security threat by the Service Employees Union International. The government of Abu-Dhabi holds high stakes in the Carlyle group, and this new union of Booz Allen with the Carlyle Group risks allowing the foreign government access to national security information. Booz Allen is headquartered in Mclean, Virginia and is one of the oldest management consulting firms in the world. The company is one of the largest contractors to the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. The ties between Booz Allen and intelligence agencies are very close. Former intelligence agency officers have held the position of vice president for Booz Allen and a retired CIA deputy director referred to Booz Allen as “the shadow intelligence community.”

From Democracy Now!:

Mike McConnell, Booz Allen and the Privatization of Intelligence

Mike McConnell, the man President Bush tapped to replace John Negroponte as National Intelligence Director, has been a leading figure in outsourcing U.S. intelligence operations to private industry. McConnell is a former director of the National Security Agency and the current director of defense programs at Booz Allen. We take a look at McConnell and the privatization of intelligence with journalist Tim Shorrock.

McConnell is a former director of the National Security Agency and the current director of defense programs at Booz Allen—one of the nation’s biggest defense and intelligence contractors. Under his watch, Booz Allen has been deeply involved in some of the most controversial counterterrorism programs run by the Bush administration, including the infamous Total Information Awareness data-mining scheme. McConnell has also been a leading figure in outsourcing U.S. intelligence operations to private industry.

McConnell has since the 2008 election stepped down from the top spy post as DNI and returned to Booz-Allen. He has been replaced by Admiral Dennis Blair.

President Bush rushed through FISA and the Patriot Act to ensure the legal authority for comprehensive, high stakes, “drift-net” style and satellite spying capacity on all communications, cell phones, emails, internet searches, medical records, bank accounts, etc.  The FBI has been afforded similarly advanced legal authority and technological support to spy on Americans.  President Obama has gone a step further-shielding telecomunications companies such as Verizon and AT&T and government officials from privacy violations lawsuits.  Obama has also included funds in the stimulus package to  hook up the nation to the telecommunications grid, digitize and upload personal medical files, examining them without consent or knowledge.

Looks like Obama’s going to follow in the Bush-Cheney footsteps. General Michael Hayden, Obama’s NSA spymaster, and the man who doesn’t believe in “probable cause” provisions or search warrants, is George Bush’s old CIA partner.

Bush I I with General Hayden

Soros-ex-Carlyle Group member

Obama’s favorite companies seem to be General Electric, Microsoft and Google. They, too, will reap the benefits of data mining in the “war on terror”.  I wonder what’s in it for him?  Oh yeah, his mentor George Soros owns 6 million shares of Halliburton?  Guess we know where this is headed.

Obama and Bush, Uhhh ObamBush

The Manchurian Candidate. Remember him? The meta-zombie cum progressive Democrat, skillfully mind-controlled by North Korean operatives into a George Bush sleeper traitor?  The North Koreans didn’t need water boarding, did they?  But, you say, the Manchurian Candidate was just a movie; the fevered raving of a Hollywood screenwriter who feared a Barack ObamaBush might one day come to power.  Well, the uber-sleeperzoid is here, reading his teleprompter while taking twitter orders from corporate republicrat masters.

The cockeyed optimists

So let’s relax and take another sip of  Kool-Aid while we join Barack O’Bam-Bush, our South Pacific island boy, Nurse Nellie and deBecque for a chorus of A Cockeyed Optimist.

I went to bed on November 4, 2008 and when I woke up the human face of corruption was still in office.  Sure, he had a nice Hawaiian tan and a big pair of man titties but I recognized the beady eyes and arrogant sneer.  Was I dreaming?  Of course, it was Bush, it had to be.  Wasn’t old CIA hand, Robert Gates, still there managing yet another front in the war on terror? And how about General Michael Hayden, National Eavesdropper-in-Chief, who can’t recall where he put the “probable cause” provision of The Constitution. And, oh yeah, there was neither push-back nor comment on this interpretation emanating from Attorney General Eric Holder nor Obama.  Whoa! Did I see single-payer health care protesters arrested on Capitol Hill?   Hell, even before the election I saw Nancy Pelosi order security to remove Cindy Sheehan because she wanted to debate the merits of the war and bringing the Bush crooks to justice.

New Mantra.  Neither Bush cons nor Obama crooks will be brought to justice.

And FISA? How could we still have that after O’Bambi filibustered it (not)?  Best of all is the Patriot Act which laid around under Bush II because the liberals railed against it but will be dusted off and shined up now for faugressive  BushBama’s third term. The liberals are deafeningly silent and poisonously defensive about their choice of the freaky, spy loving, Chicago constitutional part-time professor. So why is it that the new ObamaBush fauxgressive president, who promised to bring the troops home, is imposing the stealthiest domestic spying campaign ever?  The prosecution of the “war on terror” is the biggest boondoggle, military-industrial gravy train, coup d’etat, and trumped up causus belli since Julius Caeser but it has its megawinners. It is a distraction from the destructive tsunami of globalization, international financial irresponsibility, and environmental collapse, so it will never end.  Only it’s parameters will change. The same people that armed the “bad guys” yesterday are the ones who would now incinerate them.

And the Patriot Act is even spookier than I imagined.  I thought it was for those stupid terrorists making reckless phone calls back and forth between terrorland and the hated US of A.  But it’s not just for those pesky terror calls.  The spies-in-chief also want to know everything YOU think and say, believe, read, watch on television, how much money you donate and to which candidate.  Google, Microsoft, and GE want your information.  As an even exchange they are committed to giving you nothing back.  You get NO information, no useful data, no news, no reasons. They also want your MEDICAL RECORDS.  They can get your medical records right now, no subpoena required, just a national security letter issued by THEM to an administrator who can’t tell anyone they requested the records.  Once O’Bush gets all of our medical records digitized and uploaded to a database NO ONE WILL KNOW what’s been done with them.  And you can’t ever take “them” to court to find out what they know or why you’re being charged with anything because of what they found. Once a medical record is triangulated with what personal data is readily available there is nothing about you that can’t be identified.Why should you care? Because maybe some of us may get to know what it’s like to disappear inside a secret prison. Because , as somebody once said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

They’re not just watching the terrorists, they’re watching YOU!

The “Red” Dunhams of Washington State 1956

1956.  The year that the Dunham family, Stanley, Madelyn and Stanley Ann moved to Mercer Island, Washington State.

The official biographical sketch of the maternal family of Barack Obama has them uprooting from Texas or Oklahoma, moving to Washington, where Stanley could get a better salesman’s position in a better furniture store (yup), and StanleyAnn could enroll in a leftist high school.  The family moved because, we are told, the Dunhams were “red”, perhaps crypto-communists. It’s been said Stanley Ann was just an atheist, but in 1956 Godless atheism was as suspect as communism. Maybe more suspect.  Stanley Ann was 13 years old, already described by an unnamed source as a “fellow traveler”.  We’ve been told that Stanley Ann attended classes with highly influential, radical teachers where Marxism was discussed. The family attended the local Universalist Unitarian Church, aka “the little red church on the hill”.  Why this church was called “red” or why the Dunhams (strict Methodists) attended it, I don’t know.  However,  while the family remained in Washington for five years,  it is solely these anecdotal reports which link the Dunhams to any leftist organization, any leftist political group, labor union or feminist organization, let alone a communist group, not just then, but ever.  It seems utterly unbelievable to me that middle class parents would take on the expense of a cross country move just to enroll their 13 year old in a class for radicals and socialists.  How would the Dunhams have found out about this new school as far away as Washington State?  And if Stanley Ann were were truly a “red diaper” baby she wouldn’t have needed outside instruction.

careers at risk in red scare

Remember, this was 1956, and being a communist was illegal.  Being thought a “fellow traveler” was dangerous to health and freedom.  The red scare was in full swing, and mere suspicion of being communist affiliated could bring a visit from the FBI. A communist had to register with the federal government and risk being detained and interrogated regarding their associations.  The war and post war years saw a gradual tightening of laws designed to smoke out and hobble leftist activity.

First, there was the Smith Act, enacted in 1940.  From Wikipedia:

The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act (18 U.S.C. § 2385) of 1940 is a United States federal statute that makes it a criminal offense for anyone to

“

knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association.

”

It also required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government; within four months, 4,741,971 aliens had registered under the Act’s provisions.

The Act is best known for its use against political organizations and figures, mostly on the left. Prosecutions continued until a series of United States Supreme Court decisions in 1957 threw out numerous convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional. The statute remains on the books, however.

The Act was proposed by Congressman Howard W. Smith of Virginia, a Democrat and a leader of the “anti-labor” bloc of Congressmen. It was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Washington State in the 1930’s and 1940’s was a hotbed of radical unionist activity.  But the FBI smashed most of the radical unions.  By 1950 the Communist press had been mostly shut down.  A show trial of leftist university professors in 1948, known as “the Seattle Ten”, ended with one leader committing suicide, while another turned FBI informant, implicating everyone she had ever had contact with, communist or not.  The rest of the “ten” were imprisoned and then blacklisted, some ending their careers as laborers.  So a person didn’t go about calling herself a communist or an atheist without thinking about consequences.

Calls that Canwell hearing was unconstitutional

There were loyalty boards and obligatory loyalty oaths. The FBI had expanded powers, opening more than 400,000 files on potential subversives.  Simple membership or advocacy of a banned organization could lead to imprisonment.  Life for “leftists” became marginally better after 1957 but it’s hard to fathom how Madelyn Dunham would have been allowed to become a high level bank official with rumors swirling around her of “communist” affiliation.  It’s hard to believe the official scenario as presented by the Obama resume enhancers.

For this and other reasons I will discuss later, I have trouble believing the Dunhams were “red”.

I have an alternate theory to explain the facts as they are so often presented.  I’m more than willing to be disproved but some of the “facts” just don’t make sense.

Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama’s mama, was apparently born in a military hospital in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas in November 1942.  Her father, Stanley, was in the military, and there for the birth, though regularly assigned, it is said, to General Patton’s tank corp.  No military records can be found to establish the arena of Stanley’s war service.  Some reports say his military records were destroyed in the attack on the World Trade Center.  That seems highly unlikely and, I suppose, that’s an attempt to wrap Stanley Dunham in the flag, for the sake of Obama’s image.  The problem is there has to be record of his service existing somewhere besides the World Trade Center. Madelyn Dunham refused all interviews, so she was not helpful in fleshing out any details. But perhaps one clue is that Ft. Leavenworth is also the headquarters of naval intelligence and the training center for SESKOAD, military center of the Indonesian officer corp in the 1950’s.  If you’ve read my previous posts I link Ann Dunham Soetoro to the Indonesian military officer corp (by marriage to Colonel Lolo Soetoro) and employment at the U.S. Embassy at the time of the great Indonesian communist massacres of 1965-1968.  Both the U.S. Embassy and the Indonesian officer corp was fully involved in the massacre. Read the full report here, Building an Elite for Indonesia.  Excerpts from this astounding article (please read it):

Education had long been an arm of statecraft, and it was Dean Rusk who spelled out its function in the Pacific in 1952, just months before resigning as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs to head up the Rockefeller Foundation. “Communist aggression” in Asia required not only that Americans be trained to combat it there, but “we must open our training facilities for increasing numbers of our friends from across the Pacific.”

and

Fortunately for Ford and its academic image there was yet another school at hand: SESKOAD, the Army Staff and Command School. Situated seventy miles southeast of Djakarta in cosmopolitan Bandung, SESKOAD was the Army’s nerve center. There, generals decided organizational and political matters; there, senior officers on regular rotation were “upgraded” with manuals and methods picked up during training in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas(emphasis mine).

So, back to Mercer Island.  Washington State is also a home of U.S. Naval Intelligence.  From Wikipedia:

Cryptanalytic problems facing the United States in the Pacific prior to World War II were largely those related to Japan. An early decision by OP-20-G in Washington divided responsibilities for them among CAST at Cavite and then Corregidor, in the Philippines, HYPO in Hawaii, and OP-20-G itself in Washington. Other Navy crypto stations, including Guam, Puget Sound, Bainbridge Island were tasked and staffed for signals interception and traffic analysis.

I noted in an above article that U.S. Naval Intelligence was sometimes associated with covert F.B.I. or C.I.A.  operations.  And sometimes normal seeming families were recruited by the F.B.I. to aid in  anti-communist intelligence gathering.

Next, the family lived in Berkeley for two years.  Berkeley, along with MIT, Cornell and Harvard, became the academic platforms funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations for the eventual ideological makeover for a military government in Indonesia. Madelyn Dunham attended Berkeley, taking no degree.   Here’s what Building an Elite for Indonesia says about the importance of Berkeley in the creation of an elite for Indonesia:

witnessed fall of Sukarno

MIT and Cornell made contacts, collected data, built up expertise. It was left to Berkeley to actually train most of the key Indonesians who would seize government power and put their pro-American lessons into practice. Dean Sumitro’s Faculty of Economics provided a perfect academic boot camp for these economic shock troops.

and

This time the professional touch and academic respectability were to be provided by Berkeley. The Berkeley team’s first task was to replace the Dutch professors, whose colonial influence and capitalist economics Sukarno was trying to phase out. The Berkeley team would also relieve Sumitro’s Indonesian junior faculty so that Ford could send them back to Berkeley for advanced credentials. …

While the Indonesian junior faculty studied American economics in Berkeley classrooms, the Berkeley professors turned the Faculty in Djakarta into an American-style school of economics, statistics, and business administration.

After a two year stint in Berkeley the Dunhams moved to Hawaii, where Stanley could build a better career selling furniture.  Madelyn got a job in a bank, where, without formal training, she eventually became Vice President at the Bank of Hawaii.  I guess Stanley kept selling furniture until he died.

Honolulu is headquarters of Naval Intelligence in the Pacific and headquarters of the Pacific Area Command, U.S.P.A.C.O.M.  I noted in an earlier post that Admiral Dennis Blair, President Obama’s appointee as Director of National Intelligence,  was the supreme commander of PACOM.  He and Obama’s mama have something in common:  they both attended the East-West center and studied Russian there, as the former USSR was the most important arena for intelligence gathering during the Cold War.  President Eisenhower funded the East-West center with contributions from the Ford Foundation after the annexation of Hawaii in 1959 for Cold War studies.  Senator and later president Johnson, advocated for it.  The Ford Foundation established a fellowship program for it.

Once established in Hawaii, Ann Dunham enrolled at the East-West Center.

To be continued…..

Obama Wants to Sell Your X-Rays

Obama’s new stimulus plan provides $20 billion for the electronic updating of medical records. The electronic medical update was Tom  Daschle’s plan. Although Obama insisted during the campaign that he would rid Washington of lobbyist influence, it was Daschle’s schemes with and for the insurance and pharmaceutical conglomerates that got him Obama’s nod for Health and  Human Services Secretary. Tom has been benched.  But Obama has already taken the hand-off.  Not only is it a vast financial boon for marketers , it will allow insurance companies to get around privacy requirements and perhaps charge more for drugs, or decline coverage for pre-existing conditions.

No worries for company’s over privacy violation lawsuits.  No one can find out if their privacy has been breached.

This huge attack on privacy was shoved through in an “emergency” bill because otherwise the public wouldn’t have swallowed it.

And what’s Obama going to do with this data base?

Do you trust this administration to have everything bit of information about you available to them at the touch of a button?  Have you taken illegal drugs? What legal drugs do you take?  What’s your preferred form of birth control? Any abortions? How about a rare blood type,or  psychiatric problem?  Anything else you can think of that you don’t want Google to put on the internet, upload to your employer or send around the world?

What of the obvious national security implications around this vast network of data collection?

Just a few years ago hackers and identity thieves repeatedly accessed credit data and social security numbers.  Hundreds of thousands of military veteran’s and university records were lifted.  No firewalls to protect data were put in place after the first thefts and the public was not notified.  Who has that stolen data now?  The Russian Mafia?

Maybe I just don’t trust this administration.  But with good reason.

Make no mistake.  The rush to update medical records is not for the benefit of American citizens. Globalizing information is about globalization. It will allow the globalizers, hedge fund operators, military strategists and world bankers to plan and build for the future, for their future, without your knowledge. It’s a money-making or money saving enterprise for the big transnational industrial, pharmaceutical, insurance and information companies that sit at the plutocrat’s table.

But it’s part of a larger picture.  Obama wants a complete record of every American.

Obama is the creator of the most far reaching surveillance and secrecy schemes in American history.  Not only did he back FISA after insisting he would filibuster it, he has appointed former CIA deputy Michael Hayden as head of the NSA.  Remember Micheal Hayden, the former CIA official who insists “probable cause” does not apply to the “search” or “seizure” clauses of the 4th amendment to the Constitution, only to the issuance of warrants?  The Director of National Intelligence will also have vast and probably unlimited powers to collect information from all forms of communications intercepted within the U.S, including emails and blogs. The surveillance possibilities have yet to be tapped.

Obama also wants every American to be signed up as a volunteer, like it or not.  Young people will be required to volunteer for the public good, college age students will volunteer as community workers or civil defense agents in order to receive college loans.  The elderly will be enlisted to serve as mentors to the students. All of this “volunteering” will require every person to be tracked for grant aid or employment purposes.

So call me crazy but…

The electronic updating and storing of medical records by this administration may be something we live to regret.

Who Are America’s Oligarchs?

Why is this man smiling?

Like his mother, Ann Dunham Soetoro, the media has sold Barack Obama as a “Leftist”.  I don’t believe this story about mother or son. What better camouflage for a corporatist/opportunist/operative than soft focus “Leftist”?  While investigating the theory that Obama’s mama, Ann Dunham Soetoro, was a possible CIA covert operative stationed in Indonesia, Thailand and Pakistan, I have been taken in many directions. Most investigative paths led back to Southeast Asia. After a coup  and the corporate “opening” of one of the most resource rich countries in the world, Indonesia became one of the poorest-per capita-nations in Asia, with low educational levels and enormous divisions between rich and poor .

Summarizing some of my earlier posts,

Poor area of Jakarta

I followed the connections between Peter Geithner (long time head of the Ford Foundation’s Asia Division) and Ann Soetero. The Ford Foundation in Asia is widely held to be connected to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.  Ann Dunham Soetoro worked extensively with the Ford Foundation as well as the U.S.A.I.D. and the World Bank, both considered sometime partners in covert operations. Barack Obama’s step-father, Lolo Soetoro was a high ranking military officer in Suharto’s Army and a government liaison between the Indonesian military government and the international oil industry.

Peter Geithner’s son Tim, Obama’s Treasury Secretary, was raised primarily in China and Southeast Asia. As Clinton undersecretary for Asian Affairs and high ranking officer in the International Monetary Fund, it was Geithner’s monetary medicine that led to a worsening of the Asian financial catastrophe — which wrecked the economies primarily of Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea.  Many experts believe Geithner’s monetary policy led to the crash of the Southeast Asian economies. Other factors in the collapse were overvalued real-estate assets and outside currency manipulations. Foreign capital had been pouring into the Southeast Asian economies, due to high interest rates relative to the dollar. When American interest rates began to rise, capital flowed toward American investments, out of Asia. Thailand was forced to “float” its currency against the dollar. This resulted in the crash of the value of the Asian currencies and a deep retrenchment of real estate values.  The financial collapse called for a massive infusion of IMF funds.

Does this scenario sound familiar to you?

The foreign ministers of the 10 ASEAN countries believed that the well co-ordinated manipulation of their currencies was a deliberate attempt to destabilize the ASEAN economies. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused George Soros of ruining Malaysia’s economy with “massive currency speculation.”

The economic crisis also led to a political upheaval, most notably culminating in the resignations of President Suharto in Indonesia and Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh in Thailand. There was a general rise in anti-Western sentiment, with George Soros and the IMF in particular singled out as targets of criticisms.

George Soros

Soros is also reviled in some quarters for his speculative manipulation shorting of the British Pound Sterling.  The British government fought back with massive central bank intervention but was unable to defend its currency which lost 20% of its value.  With this attack, Soros made (I won’t say earned) more than 1.1 billion dollars in a single day.

Soros doesn’t just anticipate currency devaluations, his hedge fund movements and his dire warnings often cause the events.

From Wikipedia:

When investment regulations restricted his ability to run the funds as he wished, he quit his position in 1973 and established a private investment company that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund.

Soros is also a former member of the Carlyle Group.  Recall that the Carlyle Group’s members include former defense department and CIA heads as well as members of the Saudi royal family.

According to Wikipedia this is the focus of the Carlyle Group’s financial interests:

Carlyle invests primarily in the following industries: aerospace and defense, automotive, consumer and retail, energy and power, health care, real estate, technology and business services, telecommunications and media, and transportation. The Carlyle Group’s investments are focused on East Asia, Europe and North America, with most investment money coming from the United States (65%), Europe (25%), Asia (6%), Latin America, and the Middle East. Defense investments represent about 1% of the group’s current portfolio; for example, Carlyle owns 33.8% of QinetiQ, the recently privatized British defense contractor.

Hmmm…CFR’s interests, healthcare, automotive, electric power,real estate, all Obama’s primary interests in the Economic stimulus package. And…
Interesting that Britain is also privatizing ITS military.

According to Wikipedia:

In late 2006, Soros bought about 2 million shares of Halliburton.

With this information on the table, tell me, do you think Obama is going to end the war? Or will he continue to fill the coffers of Halliburton?

From Chinadaily BBS

Soros likes to portray himself as an outsider, an independent-minded Hungarian emigre and philosopher-pundit who stands detached from the US military-industrial complex. But take a look at the board members of the NGOs he organises and finances. At Human Rights Watch, for example, there is Morton Abramowitz, US assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research from 1985-89, and now a fellow at the interventionist Council on Foreign Relations; ex-ambassador Warren Zimmerman (whose spell in Yugoslavia coincided with the break-up of that country); and Paul Goble, director of communications at the CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (which Soros also funds). Soros’s International Crisis Group boasts such “independent” luminaries as the former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Allen, as well as General Wesley Clark, once Nato supreme allied commander for Europe. The group’s vice-chairman is the former congressman Stephen Solarz, once described as “the Israel lobby’s chief legislative tactician on Capitol Hill” and a signatory, along with the likes of Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, to a notorious letter to President Clinton in 1998 calling for a “comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime”.

George Soros was Barack Obama’s primary, early deep-pocket supporter through MoveOn.Org.  Is Soros a conventional “Leftist” or an opportunist who exploits the gaps caused by social transition and political instability?  My guess is that he’s the same type of “Leftist” as Obama.

Soros has also speculated that an international reserve currency will replace the dollar

China recently proposed greater use of Special Drawing Rights, possibly as an eventual global reserve currency. “In the long run, having an international accounting unit rather than the dollar may, in fact, be to our advantage …

Where is the “advantage” for the average American citizen?

So, Soros backed Obama. Then, Obama has chosen Tim Geithner (architect of the IMF collapse of the Indonesian and Thai economies) to rescue America from the financial collapse created by unregulated banks and hedge funds. Seems to me like a cluster fuck of the American taxpayer.

Soros and Geithner have something else in common. Both are members of the Council of Foreign Relations, which some believe to be the most influential private foreign policy group in the world.  CFR publishes Foreign Affairs.  It’s policy think tank is the Rockefeller Institute (closely allied with the Ford foundation). According to Wikipedia:

Journalist Joseph Kraft, a former member of both the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, said the Council “comes close to being an organ of what C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite – a group of men, similar in interest and outlook, shaping events from invulnerable positions behind the scenes.”

Corporate members of the board of CFR

BC News Alcoa American Express AIG Bank of America Bloomberg L.P. Boeing BP CA, Inc. Chevron Citigroup Coca-Cola De Beers Deutsche Bank Duke Energy ExxonMobil FedEx Ford Motor General Electric GlaxoSmithKline Google

Halliburton Heinz Hess IBM JPMorgan Chase Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Lockheed Martin MasterCard McGraw-Hill McKinsey Merck Merrill Lynch Morgan Stanley Motorola NASDAQ News Corp Nike PepsiCo Pfizer

Shell Oil Sony Corporation of America Tata Group Time Warner Total S.A. Toyota Motor North America UBS United Technologies United States Chamber of Commerce U.S. Trust Corporation Verizon Visa[

One long term and influential member of the CFR is Henry Kissinger.  Timothy Geithner was an associate of Kissinger and Associates from 1986-1989.  Since Kissinger’s clients and activities are totally secret, we don’t know what Geithner actually did while with Kissinger and Associates.

the Times then-national security correspondent, Leslie Gelb, reported that the Midland Bank of Britain was also one of the special influence-purchasing clients of Kissinger Associates that paid Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner and his colleagues “slightly more than $150,000 yearly for varying services.”

The new order is globalization: the sweeping away of national institutions and borders and transitioning to free trade, mobile international labor markets, mobility of capital movement, worldwide corporate structures.  Looking at your family and neighbors — how many are affected by NAFTA, immigration, job loss, outsourcing, …?

Is the U.S. just another country to be destabilized in the global leveling process?
In this article the author takes up globalization fostered by interests in both the political Left and the political Right.

In his book, Promoting Polyarchy, William Robinson describes the formation of a new hegemonic bloc that has emerged to lead the process of globalization. This bloc consists of various economic and political forces that have become the dominant sector of the ruling class throughout the developed world. The politics and policies of this ruling bloc are conditioned by the new global structure of accumulation and production. This historic bloc is composed of the transnational corporations and financial institutions, supranational economic planning agencies, major forces in the dominant political parties, media conglomerates, and technocratic elites in the Third World.

The new integrated circuits of world production and finance are possible because information technologies allow the centralization of decision making along with a geographic decentralization of production. The results are world mobility for investments, markets,and production, which leads globalists to harmonize a wide range of fiscal, monetary and industrial policies across national borders. Therefore, it is the logic of global accumulation, rather than national accumulation, that guides the political and economic behavior of the ruling bloc.   (Emphasis mine)

In the U.S., the globalist ruling bloc has three main factions: neo-liberal structuralists; free-market conservatives, and liberal regulationists. Their debates dominate Washington and don’t correspond to the familiar political categories of the industrial era. The same is true of the anti-globalist camp, which contains both the anti-imperialist left and the reactionary populous right.

The globalists consolidated ideologically in the early 1980s under the policy of the Washington Consensus. Developed to deal with the debt crisis in Latin America and Mexico, its main principles were privatization, free trade, high interest rates, and a sharply diminished role for the state in economic activity and social services. This became the policy mantra of the Reagan revolution, and a siren call for the new Democrats. However, the recent Asian crisis has exposed important contradictions and major splits in the globalists camp. Foremost is the question of how best to structure the new world economy, with the debate centered on IMF policies.

Obama’s mama had a cover:  a leftist do-gooder.  Obama’s acorn didn’t fall far from it’s tree. Left and Right have one goal – weilding power for the accumulation of riches.  Left and Right are embodied in one person, and that person is Barack Obama.

It’s All About Oil. Part II … Venezuela

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Venezuela.  This is an interesting tale of a Latin American coup that failed. It was a garden variety coup like the failed Indonesian coup of 1958;  certainly not as horrifying as the 1965-1999 massacres and land grabs in Indonesia and East Timor, but definitely instructive in its political architecture.

Moreover, the cast of characters and their methods never really change. Breathtakingly, American political operatives are able to set policies, carry them out and then step back into the comfort and riches of defense contracts and think tanks.

The more things change…

Will Obama, President Fauxgressive, be any different?  So far, I’m thinking: NAAH!

Perhaps the most important thing to know about Venezuela is that it is an oil exporting country, the fifth largest in the world, with the largest reserves of conventional oil (light and heavy crude) in the western hemisphere and the largest reserves of non-conventional oil (extra-heavy crude) in the world.

Thus begins Gregory Wilpert’s 2003 article concerning the politics of Venezuelan oil and the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted President Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela’s oil boom years encompassed 1912-1943. Standard Oil and Shell Oil were the first companies to drill on Venezuelan soil. Things changed in 1943 with Venezuela’s  Hydrocarbons Act which declared that no foreign oil interest could make more profit on Venezuelan oil than the Venezuelan state. Oil revenues increased.   However, as oil production rose, other parts of the economy suffered and the populous became more dependent upon state services provided by oil revenues rather than income taxes.

In the 1950’s large international surpluses of oil (especially in the Middle East) drove  prices to record lows, causing social instability in a nation economically dependent on one resource. So

In 1960, the world’s main oil exporting countries, largely due to the prodding of the Venezuelan government, decided to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Also in 1960, Venezuela created the Venezuelan Oil Corporation, which later formed the basis for the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil industry.

Political stability in a petro state necessitated a “pacted democracy” which guaranteed proportional access to state produced wealth by oligarchs of both parties regardless of which was in power.

Sound familiar?

The 1973 embargo of Middle East oil had a huge impact on Venezuela, quadrupling its oil revenues. By 1976 the country moved to fully nationalize its oil industry with the creation of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). PDVSA outsourced many of its general operations, including accounting and information technology.

The government promised to “sow the oil”, raising all boats in a nation coasting on oil. The article cited above also points out:

Critics of the nationalization process, such as Carlos Mendoza, say that the newly nationalized oil industry was nothing more than a Trojan Horse. Venezuela’s oil industry maintained an anti-statist and transnational corporatist management culture throughout its existence. The ties to the former owners of the nationalized Venezuelan companies were maintained primarily through technical assistance contracts with the former owners and through commercialization contracts, which heavily discounted the price of oil to their former owners.

By the 1990’s the world’s over-supply of oil had, once again, plunged Venezuela into the economic doldrums.

Hugo Chavez was elected by popular referendum in 1998. Almost immediately, Chavez pressured members of OPEC and the non-OPEC producers to hold the line on production quotas. When Chavez moved to replace the PDVSA board with other technical resources, PDVSA joined a work stoppage against the government. More from the article cited above –

Perhaps the most important instance of outsourcing, in terms of the management of PDVSA, is the joint venture it engaged in with the U.S.-based company SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) to create INTESA (Informática, Negocios, y Tecnología, S.A.) in 1996. INTESA was to manage all of PDVSA’s data processing needs.

A recent investigation into INTESA, and especially into its majority owner SAIC (60%), revealed some information that ought to be quite disturbing to the government of Hugo Chávez. That is, INTESA, which controlled all of PDVSA’s information, is in turn controlled by SAIC, a Fortune 500 company … that is deeply involved in the U.S. defense industry, particularly as it relates to nuclear technology, defense intelligence, and computing technology. Its managers included two former U.S. Secretaries of Defense (William Perry and Melvin Laird) and two former CIA directors (John Deutch and Robert Gates). Its current Board of Directors includes the former commander of the U.S. Special Forces (Wayne Downing), a former coordinator of the National Security Council (Jasper Welch), and the former director of the National Security Agency (Bobby Ray Inman)           (italics mine).

Recall that Robert Gates served in the Reagan and Bush II administrations. He now serves President Barack Obama’s as Defense Department chief.

The government moved from taxing oil industry profits to charging royalties, making oil extraction more expensive. Chavez also re-directed Venezuelan oil supplies to non-U.S. buyers.

Then in 2002 came the attempted coup.

2002 Venezuelan coup d’état attempt

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The Venezuelan coup attempt of 2002 was a failed coup d’état on April 11, 2002 that lasted only 47 hours, whereby the head of state President Hugo Chávez was illegally detained, the National Assembly and the Supreme Court dissolved, and the country’s Constitution declared void.

Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce (Fedecámaras) president Pedro Carmona was installed as interim president. In Caracas, the coup led to a pro-Chávez uprising that the Metropolitan Police attempted to suppress. Key sectors of the military and parts of the anti-Chávez movement refused to back Carmona. The pro-Chávez Presidential Guard eventually retook the Miraflores presidential palace without firing a shot, leading to the collapse of the Carmona government and the re-installation of Chávez as president.

The coup was publicly condemned by Latin American nations (the Rio Group presidents were gathered together in San José, Costa Rica, at the time, and were able to issue a joint communiqué) and international organizations. The United States and Chile quickly acknowledged the de facto pro-US Carmona government, but ended up condemning the coup after it had been defeated.

And more from Gregory Wilpert in his 2003 article:

Matters reached a boiling point in April 2002 with the coup d’etat against Chavez Frias which surprisingly lasted only two days as millions of Venezuelan poor came to his defense. The 48-hour usurper, Carmona, moved almost instantaneously to turn around ChavezFrias’ Bolivarian policies and consolidate what amounts to an “oiligarchy.” Within 48 hours, he dissolved the parliament and the supreme court, dismissed all mayors and governors, stopped the shipment of oil to Cuba, and started a massive wave of repression across the country. But there is more…

According to the British paper The Observer

… one of those giving the nod to the attempted coup was Elliot Abrams, a member of the Reagan team involved in the dirty wars in Central America convicted over actions during the Iran-Contra Affair. He was later pardoned by George Bush, Sr. Another coup advocate was Cuban, Otto Reich, assistant administrator for USAID 1981-1983 and named ambassador to Caracas in 1986.

There it is again, USAID. For those of you who doubted USAID, a benevolent agency of the U.S. government, might be converted to covert uses, enjoy the view.  My previous post noted that Ann Dunham Soetoro was engaged in “microfinance” with USAID in Indonesia in the 1970’s and 1980’s  — during one of the worst human rights atrocities of the century — and perhaps Pakistan in the 1980’s.

Next step:  let’s see what the World Bank, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and East-West Center, University of Hawaii, were up to.

It’s All About Oil.

To quote the French:  The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Change you can believe in.

On January 28, 2009, Obama appointee, retired 4 star Admiral Dennis Blair was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Director of National Intelligence.  The DNI chief reports directly to the president and defense department chief and co-ordinates all other national intelligence agencies. It prepares the National Defense Estimate annual report to congress.  The office of DNI was created by the Bush administration in response to the 9/11 attacks.

Admiral Blair has an impressive resume: Rhodes Scholar, Russian speaker, attended East-West Center at the University of  Hawaii in 1968, former Commander-in -Chief of U.S. Pacific Command:

PACOM area of responsibility

From 2003 to 2007, Blair was president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit corporation that manages federally funded national security research and development centers. He stepped down in the face of concerns that his positions on the boards of major defense contractors presented a conflict of interest.

Excerpt from article by

Author:	Joanna Klonsky, Associate Editor

updated: February 9, 2009

Retired four-star Admiral Dennis C. Blair is President Obama’s director of national intelligence (DNI)–confirmed by the U.S. Senate on January 28, 2009. Blair, a thirty-four-year Navy veteran, is the former commander-in-chief of U.S. Pacific Command.

He also served as associate director of central intelligence for military support, coordinating intelligence and military operations under the Clinton administration. He was director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, and commanded the Kitty Hawk Strike Group aircraft carrier and the destroyer Cochrane.

Admiral Blair advised congress in 1999 that U.S.-Indonesian  military co-ordination should be resumed. The above article does not mention that Admiral Blair’s 1999 advice came  just one day after the outbreak of an Indonesian Army massacre of civilians in Dili, East Timor.  Blair has contended that he was not aware of the Indonesian army’s  massacre, although evidence has been produced indicating that he did.  The army killings in Dili increased after the congressional approval of the new pact.  What is clear is that for some time the U.S. military and intelligence agencies have had a cordial relationship with Indonesia’s murderous dictators.

The massacre in Dili was about oil.

The top U.S. officer in the Pacific (unidentified, not Blair) met with Indonesia's president to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the region and applaud Indonesia’s role in security initiatives.

Blair Senate Appearance.

In a 2007 appearance before the Senate Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation,  retired admiral Dennis Blair urged the U.S. to pursue increased automobile mileage efficiency among the major auto makers in order to relieve stress on the military in the security of oil supplies.

Blair clearly emphasizes, throughout his senate testimony, that a large part of U.S. military commitment in the Pacific theater and Central Asia and the Middle East is the protection and preservation of energy (oil, natural gas) supplies.  In my post of March 1, 2009 I noted that the U.S. interest in Afghanistan and support of the Taliban throughout Afghanistan’s war with the invading Soviet Union  (which began in 1979-1980), included  an interest in extending an oil pipeline connecting the Middle East and Asia.  An effort to build the pipeline with the aid of trained Taliban workers was discontinued due to pressure from American feminist groups over the Taliban’s treatment of women.  Unocal attempted to take over the pipeline project from the U.S. Government but dropped the proposal.

It’s about oil.

Here’s an excerpt from Dennis Blair’s committee presentation:

In the late 1970s two serious threats to Persian Gulf oil were identified by the Carter Administration, which became seized by the issue. The first was a potential Soviet invasion from the north into the oil regions around the Gulf, a concern heightened by the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The second was an aggressive and fundamentalist Iran, which was led by a regime that had permitted and then exploited the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran. In response, the department of defense created the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, the RDJTF, a planning headquarters and contingency force that could quickly deploy to the Gulf to defeat a major land invasion.  In 1983 as part of its general military build up against the Soviet Union, the Reagan administration upgraded this task force to a regional command like the European Command and the Pacific Command, where I served and where I ultimately commanded. So this Central Command had full time responsibility for U.S. interests in the region.

U.S. interests in the region – does that mean oil?

This article has an interesting timeline of events for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.  I can’t vouch for all the facts but it is tantalizing.

Obama plans to send 17,000 additional troops into Afghanistan to beef up the “war on terror”.  Along with this change comes an offer by his administration to “negotiate” with the “moderate” factions of the Taliban.  Thus Obama can argue that he will have two options for bringing peace to Afghanistan, a carrot and stick approach, if you will:  more troops and more bombing, or a settlement of differences.  In addition to bringing peace, the carrot and stick will also help build a new pipeline.  I doubt that feminist groups  this time will be able to stand in the way of the pipeline — not under a “progressive, feminist friendly” president.

Recall Ann Dunham Soetoro’s resume of helping poor women:  with microloans in Pakistan and Indonesia, cataloging various native crafts during major massacres in Indonesia under the auspices of the Ford Foundation (working for Peter Geithner, the Treasury Secretary’s father), USAID, and the World Bank (all of which are widely believed to have CIA associations).  Ann Dunham Soetero’s connection to these mineral rich regions is Barack Obama’s connection to these mineral rich regions.

Here’s a little bit of history about past DNI chiefs:

George W. Bush’s first DNI chief was John Negroponte, who previously held a position under Condaleeza Rice when she was NSA chief.  Negroponte served under Ronald Reagan as ambassador to El Salvador during Reagan’s dirty wars in Central America in the 1980’s, and was implicated in the training of death squads and the cover-up to congress of their barbarous activities.  A staunch anti-communist, he was appointed ambassador to Mexico during the populist Chiapas uprising, and suspected of using ruthless countermeasures against them. George Bush’s second DNI chief was Mike McConnell, a member of the controversial and influential quasi-governmental body, the Carlyle Group. Recall that the Carlyle Group is a conglomerate of American defense department chiefs, the two Bush presidents, and Saudi oil interests, among others.

Dennis Blair is Obama’s new DNI chief –another man with a strong resume protecting oil.

The more things change … the more it’s still about oil.