Peter Dale Scott

by **starroute** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 7:08 pm

The main principle is, as so often, Follow the Money. Which in this case, means drug-smuggling, arms-dealing, and money-laundering. The early stages are easy to track, because they're mainly American. The drugs-and-arms linkage goes back to the OSS in China during World War II, bringing heroin in out and arms for the locals to fight the Japanese in. When the communists take over China after the war and kick out the heroin dealers, the US picks up where it left off, with Golden Triangle heroin paying for arms to support the Nationalist army. After the French get their asses handed to them in Indo-China, the US inherits the heroin trade in that area as well. From southeast Asia, the heroin is carried westward, through Marseilles (the "French connection"), then Cuba, and finally to the US, where it fuels the heroin epidemic of the 50's. The CIA and the Mob both have a hand in the business (a connection that also goes back to the OSS days), which is the reason for their shared hatred of Castro when he takes over Cuba and shuts them down. The resulting toxic mixture of CIA, Mob, and anti-Castro Cubans is many people's favored area of suspicion in the Kennedy assassination. However, the heroin continues to flow through slightly different channels. Many of the anti-Castro Cubans are involved with the trade. Paul Helliwell (a veteran of those OSS China operations) founds Castle Bank in the Bahamas in the early 60's as the first of the great money-laundering centers. And the people who come out of the CIA's anti-Castro operation in southern Florida, such as Ted Shackley and Tom Clines, continue the drugs-guns-and-money pattern wherever they go. They perpetuate it in Laos and Vietnam in the late 60's and early 70's, using the profits to fund the Phoenix Program of assassination. (One wonders to what extent the Vietnam War was really a drug war from the start.) However, they also begin skimming off both money and weapons, partly for private enrichment and partly as what becomes known as the "Enterprise" -- a set of backchannel operations that becomes increasingly active in the late 70's when Jimmy Carter tries to shut down the CIA's covert operations (like Air America.) During most of the 70's, the prime money-laundering conduit is Nugan Hand Bank in Australia (Castle Bank having become too tainted by its mob associations.) There's even a CIA-instigated coup in Australia in connection with this. At about the same time, the Enterprise moves the main base of its operations to Iran, where its leaders also teach Phoenix Program-style assassination techniques to the shah's secret police. This is one of the main causes of the overthrow of the shah a few years later. Iran, like Cuba, has been on the permanent shit-list ever since. By 1979, the Enterprise guys are hooking up with the Reagan campaign, where their Iranian connections underlie both the October Surprise in 1980 and the Iran end of Iran-Contra. Under Reagan, the Enterprise takes on a semi-official role, carrying out missions like Iran-Contra that Congress won't allow the government to do directly. There are several other significant developments around 1979-80. In 1979, the CIA starts flooding into Pakistan and creates the world's largest heroin source in Afghanistan in order to support the mujehedeen against the Russians. In 1980, the Cocaine Coup in Bolivia marks the appearance not only of a new major drug center but of one that is not completely dominated by US interests. There's also an international fascist network involved, including Latin American dictators, Italy's P2, and even the Reverend Moon. Also in 1980, Nugan Hand goes bottom up, and BCCI takes its place. Unlike the previous banks, BCCI does not originate with Americans, but has connections in both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. (Among other things, it is deeply tied in with A.Q. Khan's nuclear supermarket.) So by the 1980's, you have the start of an internationalized version of the Enterprise. Its core lies along the Islamic drugs-arms-nuclear proliferation arc from Pakistan, through Central Asia, to Turkey, and then to the Balkans. Americans, local governments, and various mafias all have an interest in it. After the Soviet Union falls in 1989, Russia's new breed of gangster capitalists become centrally involved as well. (I think it's the Scott piece which suggests that Russian banks are the new BCCI.) Trying to follow the American involvements alone can give you a headache. The Neocons have interests there, which are tangled up with Israel's policy of supporting Turkey and other non-Arab Islamic nations. Old-line foreign policy types like Kissinger, Haig, and Scowcroft are dabbling in the area -- though they may be more interested in the Caspian Oil. And Abramoff, as well as his dealing with the Russians, was also lobbying in the 90's for everyone from Pakistan to Montenegro. So ultimately, the THEY isn't really a THEY. It's more like a piece of turf, which rival gangs are sometimes fighting over and sometimes collaborating to exploit. But the really scary part is that whatever it is, it's in the process of becoming bigger than any nation-state. It's been able to buy and sell small countries since at least 1980. There are people who'll argue that it already bought the US in 2000. (And if it didn't, it will sure be able to pick it up at fire sale prices after the Bushies get done looting it.) Not only does it collectively command trillions of dollars of assets, but that money is sloshing around loose, unconstrained by ordinary ideas of national interest or human well-being. How to deal with it is going to be an interesting challenge. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=starroute>starroute</A> at: 1/5/06 4:08 pm

by **StarmanSkye** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 8:00 pm

Outstanding synthesis, Starroute. But it's lacking in the South American connection. from: <a href="http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/DRUG.html">www.geocities.com/northst.../DRUG.html</a> More pieces of the global drugs-and-arms smuggling racket: · Operation Snow Cone - Parent Central American drug smuggling operation. Various operations under Operation Snow Cone include: *Operation Watch Tower - Operation Watch Tower consists of secret radio beacons stationed at remote locations between Columbia and Panama. The beacons help CIA drug pilots fly from Central America to Panama at near-sea-level without being detected by high flying U.S. drug interdiction aircraft. Pilots of the drug flights home in on the low frequency signals emitted by the beacons to reach their destination at Albrook Army Airfield in Panama. · Operation Toilet Seat - The CIA uses Boeing 727 and C-130 aircraft to haul drugs from Central and South America. The drugs are dumped out the rear ramps of the aircraft into waters offshore of the U.S. in waterproof containers. There the drugs are retrieved by boat and brought into the U.S. · Operation Whale Watch - Consists of using offshore oil drilling rigs as a cover for drug smuggling. The drugs are offloaded by ship onto the oil drilling platforms. The drugs are then flown by helicopter to nearby U.S. coastal areas. Companies owning the oil rigs included Rowan International and divisions of Zapata Corp., such as Zapata Petroleum and Zapata Off-Shore. Zapata Corp. is partly owned by former President George Bush. · Operation Buy Back - Operation involving CIA front Pacific Seafood Company. Drugs are packed in shrimp containers and shipped to various points in the U.S. This is a joint DEA-CIA operation. ADDITIONAL CIA DRUG SMUGGLING OPERATIONS: · Operation Indigo Sky - Massive CIA heroin smuggling operation based in Lagos, Nigeria. Heroin is grown and processed in Nigeria, then shipped for packaging to Amsterdam, Netherlands. From there the heroin is shipped to Europe and various points in the U.S., including bonded warehouses on the East Coast and Boeing Field in Seattle. · Operation New Wave - CIA heroin smuggling operation based in Thailand. CIA front Van Der Bergen International is responsible for getting the drugs out of the Orient. Typically the heroin is smuggled aboard freighters and cruise liners heading from the U.S. Transshipment points in the U.S. include San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles. Other operations include: Operation Short Field · Operation Burma Road · Operation Morning Gold · Operation Backlash · Operation Triangle. Information on the CIA drug smuggling operations listed above was provided by the following CIA and ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) operatives: Trenton Parker, Gunther Russbacher, Michael Maholy, Robert Hunt. There is extensive documentation confirming the intelligence status of each of these men. This documentation was taken from Rodney Stich's seminal work, Defrauding America. BTW Hugh Manatee: EXCELLANT observation re: "global carrier wave for subborning national governments just as the Council on Foreign Relations used the CIA and covert technology to subborn the public government designed by the US Constitution. "Drugs and spooks as the global virus softening the target with terror and chaos and corruption for a New World disOrder." *** Indeed -- and sometimes it DOES get a *tad* depressing when one loses an idealized impersonal objectivity -- I get real blue when I reflect on all the wounded, tortured, suffering souls caused by this unrestrained surfeit of violence and greed and power totally exempt from accountability -- at least according to earthly scales of justice. But there's no cheating karma forever, IMO. What goes around ... Starman Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=starmanskye>StarmanSkye</A> at: 1/5/06 7:17 pm

by **Qutb** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:38 pm

Excellent contributions, Starroute and Starman. I especially agree with this: THEY are not a they. It's a new international system, a "new world disorder", in which no law and no borders exist for the super-wealthy cosmopolitan 0.001% über-elite. They exist in a sphere entirely above and separate from the nation-state system. The world is open for business. In France, most of the media are already owned by arms companies. There was a big scandal a couple of years back involving the oil company Elf and their sponsorhip of various African dictators. Those who've dug a little deeper in that affair know that the arms traffic was just beneath the surface, but how could you expect French media to touch a subject like, say, French arms exporters supplying both sides of the war in the Congo, when those same companies own the friggin' media? I'm just bringing this up as an example that this is a global thing.

by **starroute** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 1:37 am

Starman - I left out South America mostly because there's so damned much of it that it would have overloaded what was already becoming an overly long post. But your mention in passing of Operation Watch Tower is interesting, because that's a name I ran into just a few days ago, while googling on the Shackley-Clines bunch -- specifically in connection with Edwin Wilson (the one who later got the whole gang in trouble by being a little too close to Colonel Qaddafi) and Frank Terpil. I'd really love to know if there was some way to verify the assertions below. It all sounds just a little too melodramatic to be true -- but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't. <a href="http://www.copi.com/articles/guyatt/deep_black.html">www.copi.com/articles/guy...black.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>What follows is drawn from an affidavit signed by Col. Edward P. Cutolo; a letter written by his close friend, Paul Neri - an employee of America's huge National Security Agency; and an additional supporting affidavit signed by PFC William Tyree - a soldier under Cutolo's command. Collectively, they amount to a powerful indictment of the Central Intelligence Agency and senior Pentagon officers who knowingly engaged in large scale narcotics trafficking. More alarming still, are Cutolo's and Tyree's allegations concerning a black operation suitably named "George Orwell" - that utilised US Special Forces to spy on well-known American politicians, members of the judiciary, law enforcement agencies and the Catholic church in New York and Boston. The "product" of this covert surveillance was used for the purpose of blackmail. Colonel Edward P. Cutolo was commanding officer of the US 10th Special Forces (airborne), 1st Special Forces stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. Possessing a distinguished record as a military officer, Cutolo doubtless had seen many peculiar things and undertaken numerous classified missions. Despite this, he would rue the day, in December 1975, he was approached by the CIA's Edwin Wilson and Frank Terpil. The two CIA officers introduced Cutolo to two highly sensitive missions unlike anything he had undertaken previously. According to his close friends and comrades, Cutolo's later investigation into the legality of these missions would lead to his death under suspicious circumstances. Other senior military officers who investigated Cutolo's death also soon died under questionable circumstances. As we shall see, all were believed to have been murdered by Mike Harari, an alleged Israeli assassin who is known to have headed Mossad Assassination Operations in the early 1970's against the terrorists who massacred athletes at the 1972 Olympics, and would come to prominence a decade later for his role in the now infamous Contragate affair. . . . Cutolo thereafter commanded the second and third Watch Tower missions. The second mission took place in February 1975 and lasted a total of 22 days. The purpose of the mission was to "establish a series of three electronic beacon towers beginning outside of Bogata, Columbia, and running northeast to the border of Panama." With the beacons in place and activated, aircraft could fix on their signal and fly undetected from Bogata to Panama, landing at Albrook Air Station. All told. 30 "high performance aircraft" flew the covert route to Allbrook. The aircraft were met by Panama's Colonel Manuel Noriega - who would later become head of state, prior to experiencing a US invasion tasked to arrest and imprison him for laundering drug money. Accompanying Noriega were a number of officers of the Panama Defence Forces (PDF), CIA agent, Edwin Wilson, and Israeli agent Mike Harari. Cutolo adds that Harari had the authority from the "U.S. Army Southern Command in Panama to be in the A.O (Area of Operations)." Nor does Cutolo beat around the bush when explicitly stating "The cargo flown from Columbia into Panama was cocaine." . . . By 1978, Colonel Cutolo assumed command of the 10th Special Forces Group (airborne) at Fort Devens, where he recognised two soldiers - PFC William Tyree and Sgt. John Newby - both of whom had operated under his command during Watch Tower, and who now were assigned (in Tyree's case re-assigned) to his command. 1978 also saw the return of Edwin Wilson with another deep black covert operation on offer. This was known as Operation George Orwell. . . . In effect, Operation Orwell was tasked with implementing intense "surveillance of politicians, judicial figures, law enforcement agencies at the state level and of religious groups." The underlying purpose was to provide the "United States government and the Army" with advance warning of the discovery of Watch Tower to enable them to "prepare a defence." Cutolo further states that he "was under orders not to inform Colonel Forrest Rittgers, commanding officer of Fort Devens," of this mission. The reason was to give Colonel Rittgers a "margin of plausible deniability" in the event that Fort Devens personnel were "caught in the act of implementing surveillance." Cutolo goes on to reveal that he instituted surveillance against "Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Edward King, Michael Dukakis, Levin H. Campbell, Andrew A Caffrey, Fred Johnson, Kenneth A. Chandler, Thomas P. O'Neil, to name a few of the targets." Additionally surveillance was placed on "...the Governors residences of Massachusetts, Manine, New York and New Hampshire. The Catholic cathedrals of New York and Boston were placed under electronic surveillance also. In the area of Fort Devens, all local police and politicians were under some form of surveillance at various times." As part of the operation, Cutolo recruited "a number of local state employees who worked within the ranks of local police and court personnel. . . . According to the Paul Neri's accompanying letter, in 1980, Colonel Cutolo died "while on a military exercise in England. Just prior to his death he notified me that he was to meet with Michael Harari, an Israeli Mossad agent. It is my belief, though unsubstantiated, that Harari murdered Col. Cutolo because of the information Col. Cutolo possessed." Neri then reveals that in the event of Cutolo's death, he was to discretely contact Col, Bo Baker. In turn, Col. Baker enlisted the aid of Col. Nick Rowe - all three were Special Forces officers with exemplary records. The three of them thereafter set out to "prove that Harari murdered Col. Cutolo..." Colonel Nick Rowe was killed soon afterwards. On 21 April 1989 he was shot to death by automatic fire from an M-16 assault rifle in Manilla, Phillippines. Neri reveals that "Harari was in the Phillippines for three days just prior to and after Col. Rowe's murder." Chief Warrant Officer (WCO) Hugh Pearce, who also received a copy of Cutolo's affidavit, also died in June 1989, as a result of a helicopter accident. Pearce had commenced to help the others with their enquiries. Prior to his death he had directed Col. Rowe to an address at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and state politican, Larkin Smith. Both Col. Rowe and CWO Hugh Pearce died prior to a scheduled meeting with Smith - both having previously agreed to "go public" and call for a "full investigation into the events described in Col. Cutolo's affidavit" following the arranged meeting. Smith, died in August 1989 - in an airplane accident. Others to conveniently die included Colonel Bo Baker and Colonel Robert Bayard - who was murdered in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, just prior to his meeting with Israeli Mossad officer David Kimche.<hr></blockquote> Michael Ledeen was also tied in with some of these people, specifically Shackley (with whom he apparently worked on the October Surprise) and Kimche (with whom he worked on Iran-Contra), which is why I happened to pull out my own notes on them and start looking for more. There's lots and lots of dark secrets buried in that particular hole. (Has anybody seen Spielberg's "Munich," by the way? It sounds like it's based on Harari, though apparently without using his name.)

by **Iroquois** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 12:28 am

While slowly making my way through Picknett and Prince's The Stargate Conspiracy I ran across a mention of high level Soviets visiting the both New Age and spooky Esalen Institute at Big Sur under an apparently organized spook foreign exchange program during the height of the Cold War. This encouraged me do some web searches, which eventually led me to some more details in the memoirs of Jack Sarfatti. Here's an excerpt from: <a href="http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/ufos/esalen.html.">www.mystae.com/restricted...alen.html.</a> I had trouble with the original site, so the actual content is from google's cache. <blockquote>Quote:<hr> "I am 'The God Father' of New Age Physics in California starting with Esalen in the 70's and the Physics Consciousness Research Grope (pun intended) in San Francisco which at various times included Nick Herbert, Saul Paul Sirag, Time Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Gary Zukav, Fritjof Capra, Fred Alan Wolf, Henry Pierce Stapp, Brian Josephson, Russell Targ, Hal Puthoff, Ralph Abraham, Phillipe Eberhard and many others who had dinner or were our guests at our Palatial quarters at top of Nob Hill 1155 Jones with money provided by Werner Erhard and by Laurence Rockefeller's close friend Jean Lanier who was the widow of the Chairman Of Stone Webster. We also got money from US Air Force Training command via the late spook George Koopman - as well as from CIA sources indirectly via the late Hal Chipman. We were part of the covert psy war op which got high level Soviet officials to Esalen hot tubs where their minds were altered by psychedelics and our boys turned them - hence the fall of the Soviet Empire. Note that Boris Yeltsin came to America with Esalen money before he became President of Russia and that the head of Gorbachev Foundation USA is a former Esalen official."<hr></blockquote> Yeah, I can't say this is what I had in mind when I said I suspected inside collusion in the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, where do these folks fit into the force X drug meta-group?

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 7:58 am

I just found PDS's 'Politics of Heroin' on the shelf at Borders. $33. Ouch. Since Phillip Agee's old partner William Blum just got 'bin-Laden-dipped' in the latest fake OBL video, I wonder if the CIA are going to try to also discredit PDS to innoculate their political base against knowing their government deals drugs on a macro-level..

by **robertdreed** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:19 am

...Yeah, I can't say this is what I had in mind when I said I suspected inside collusion in the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, where do these folks fit into the force X drug meta-group? They don't sound like the same people, to me. Gorbachev and his supporters seem to have been primarily socialist-humanist idealists. They were undone by forces arrayed against them, including those of the "hardliner" faction of the Politburo, like Haidar Aliyev, many of whom who put themselves on the fast track to cash in, once the Berlin Wall fell. Aliyev's fomenting of the separationist and secessionist tendencies of the "autonomous republic" that he led, Azerbaijan, was perhaps the straw that broke the back of the Soviet Union that Gorbachev was attempting to preserve in the 1990s in a more open and democratized version in the early 1990s. Gorbachev's difficulties with the secession of the Baltic republics was more well-known, but it was when oil-rich Azerbaijan broke off that the southern republics began to follow. Gorbachev lost in his bid to keep the USSR together because he wouldn't resort to military repression- in my view because of three factors: his distaste for repression, which would have put the lie to glasnost and perestroika; his recognition that world public opinion would villify him; his acknowledgement that a military crackdown would have led to civil insurrections that would have been impossible to suppress. And for his forbearance, he got pushed out of the way. Since then, he got the consolation prize of being a well-respected figure in the West, leading a foundation instead of a country. But he's a non-entity in his homeland. Boris Yeltsin was Gorbachev's rival and eventual challenger. And this was apparently fine with George Bush, who granted the faction led by the drunk legitimacy and approval, in preference to Gorbachev's liberal socialist technocrats. Funny how the establishment Western media played along with that one during Yeltsin's ascendancy. Readers of this website should know that I'm not a Marxist-Leninist, or a big fan of socialism. But come on...the situation in the immediate wake of the Cold War called out for gradual transformation of the central planning institutions of the USSR into something more like a Western European social democracy, and that's what Gorbachev was trying to do. And here comes Yeltsin, seemingly out of nowhere, to sideswipe Gorbachev and facilitate the dismantling of the country, selling it off in pieces in partnership with the organized crime syndicates and their banksters. And old-line Chekists and Brezhnev toadies like Aliyev were at the head of the line in cashing in on that... ( Michael Ledeen took a different public position than the official US line at the end of the Cold War, railing against the leaders of the USSR and Eastern Bloc, insisting that they should have been put on trial for their crimes as leaders of repressive regimes and purged. Yeah, you know, like the Nazis and fascists...as if the USA should have rolled tanks into Moscow and occupied it. Is any American political commentator more disingenuous than Ledeen, with the high-school fantasy Cold Warriorism he peddles? Ledeen knows full well who sold Russia to the Western commodity brokers, oil companies, and money laundering banks...just like he knows about the Waffen SS-Genoa ratline pedigree of his buddy Licio Gelli.) By the way, the power of organized crime and the "Mafiyas" of Eurasia preceded the dissolution of the USSR. From what I've managed to glean, it began to loom large as an especially important force for systemic political corruption during the Brezhnev era of the 1970s. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 2/3/06 7:23 am

by **edge of darkness** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:46 am

"Politics of Heroin" is actually by Alfred McCoy

by **Hugh Manatee Wins** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 6:01 pm

'Politics of Heroin' by Alfred McCoy. Borders has no Blum on their shelves and their distributor has none available right after 'bin Laden' started his book of the month club with Blum, according to the eye-rolling clerk. So I was quite surprised to find McCoy's book there. Pacifica Radio's Peter Bernstein just played an interview with McCoy where he gave a concise history of CIA mind control from MKUltra to Gitmo, the 'Manhatten Project of the mind.' McCoy gave a good explanation of the discovery that psychological torture was more effective than just physical torture and how it is easier to get away with legally.. Your tax dollars at work.

by **havanagila** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 6:28 pm

this reminds me that at some point I thought that perhaps the entire Vanunu affair was "cooked" in order to have a man, as human guineapig, out there in the open, subject to the most grandiose psychological torture possible, and under the color of law (18 years in prison, 11 of which in solitary. his own accounts on that time include a lot more than just "isolation" but a long mind game, many hypnosis, sexual issues, in short - a larger than life gitmo). the more I read stuff, the more it looks likely, or perhaps a large "by product" of another scam. there's a LOT of money into this "traceless torture" business, at least from my case, the impression I have is that those organizing these studies/experiments/exploits have an endless budget.

by **Iroquois** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:06 pm

robertreed, thank you for that excellent reply. At least based on my limited knowledge of that bit of history, it makes sense to me. I'm not sure his idealism makes him safe, however. And, even if Gorbachev is at odds rather than in bed with the X force types, the Gorbachev Foundation is still one of those NGO's that I wouldn't mind learning more about. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>We are going to end up with world government. It's inevitable ... There's going to be conflict, coercion and consensus. That's all part of what will be required as we give birth to the first global civilization. James Garrison, president, Gorbachev Foundation USA - reportedly from The Daily Record, Dunn, NC, p.410/17/95<hr></blockquote>

by **robertdreed** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:34 pm

I'm a one-worlder...always hav been. It's what kind of "one world" we're going to get. I don't know much about the Gorbachev Foundation. I do know that there are no greater adherents to "globalism" than today's larger organized crime syndicates. Those would be the ones who have partnership access with heads of state, top level political leaders, and/or corrupt financial institutions. Gorbachev strikes me as not much more than a dinner speaker, these days. He has a sinecure in some mostly ineffectual foundation as a consolation prize for losing his power struggle, while the real players are out there ripping and running. A fiction book on parapolitics & illegal drugs that I can highly recommend: Trinities, by Nick Tosches, about global heroin mafias double-crossing each other. Set during the 1990s. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 2/3/06 7:37 pm

by **Iroquois** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:05 am

I once believed that the only chance for humanity to survive the nuclear age was a government with global authority. Later, as I began to get an understanding of what power such social structures provide so few and how that seems to invevitably lead to so much destruction and suffering, I began to think we'd have a better chance with no governments at all. An idea I've played around with a little bit is that some form of either is waiting for us on the other end of the singularity that we seem to be careening toward. Which, however, is not yet decided. end of self-indulgent rant You may well be right about Gorbachev. Really, I tend to think of most political leaders as little more than spokesmodels. They're too busy with photo-ops and hand shaking to do the real work of running the government. I was at an industry convention a few years ago where the nation's Prime Minister and the CEO of the national oil co. were both wandering the floor at the same time. (Both came across as genuinely nice guys by the way, but it was a small country.) Guess which one had the more press hanging around. Still, even if Mr. Gorbachev is more of a nuts and bolts leader, the Gorbachev Foundation, or at least branches of it, may well have an agenda that he knows little or nothing about and can do even less to control. Its the US branch in particular that I've started to notice. But, at this point its just another org that I'm trying to keep concious of, but not really motivated to research directly. And, thank you very much for the book recommendation. I've got it at the top of my wishlist along with Breaking Open the Head.

by **robertdreed** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 1:40 am

What ordinary folks most object to when they consider "globalism" is top-down authority, from a centralized source. Globalism is doomed to by Dystopia without power balancing mechanisms and honest feedback, acknowledgment of autonomous regional concerns and insitutions of checks and balances. I correspond in an on-line forum with a businessman who's presently located in China. The topic of the anti-WTO protests came up, and he basically said "fuck the WTO." He doesn't think much of a central organization making a global regime that all countries have to abide by. In his opinion, the old way of nation-to-nation trade negotiation is more productive, fair, effective, and stable, since any imbalances and mistakes that occur are contained mistakes, rather than "World Order" directives that are much more difficult to countermand. Like myself, my friend is very much a "globalist", in the sense that he think that as a rule, lowering trade barriers and interdependence are key to global stability, prosperity, and progress. It's the top-down centralization that he finds objectionable. This brings up yet another lie in George Bush's speech- his characterization of the opponents of his military adventures as "isolationists." Nothing could be further than the truth. I'm all in favor of the USA engaging the rest of the world, it's the troops, bobmbs, and bullets part of the present administration's foreign policy that I find to be bogus. The USA is on track to spend something like $500 billion over the term of the Bush presidency enforcing Bushite investment elite foreign investment directives overseas by military means. And, to quote Dwight Eisenhower, every dollar spent on that is a dollar stolen from education, medical care, housing, vital infrastructure, transportation...and how many Americans will do without education in foreign languages like Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Arabic, so George Bush can enforce the rule of the Ignoranti? I just heard Daivd Brooks on NPR analyzing Bush's SOTU speech, and breaking the rather obvious news that the references to inaugurating Federal programs to emphasize educational excellence in science and math ( something that needs to begin at the elementary grade level, in my opinion ) were just so much empty rhetoric, it being the case that such programs would inevitably come up against the constraints built into domestic spending due to the tax cuts and imperialist wars (he didn't say that last part)...Who's the "isolationist", here? Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 2/3/06 10:48 pm

Peter Dale Scott

Who are THEY?

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post-Cold-War Russia

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DOH. Yes, McCoy-not PDS. Too much reading on no sleep.

Re: DOH. Yes, McCoy-not PDS. Too much reading on no sleep.

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Who is online