by robertdreed » Fri Jul 15, 2005 10:09 pm
My first exposure to the idea of political conspiracy came with my father's jesting references to "the Rothschild conspiracy" running the world. Dad was an Army officer working at the Pentagon at that time- late Vietnam era- doing desk jockey work, being a flak-catcher. Nothing spooky (although I visited his office once or twice, and lounging in the adjacent stacks I scored neat-o DoD publications on how the Viet Cong constructed zip guns, booby traps, and IEDs like gunpowder mines made from coconuts- the sort of material that would probably not make it out of the building these days...) Dad was just another bureaucratic functionary, of the sort that helps make modern societies run smoothly, without asking awkward questions. ( Later, in college, I learned a lot from the works of Max Weber, who had it down about the innate tendencies and inherent hazards of bureaucracy, hierarchy, modernity, compartmentalization of large institutions...) <br><br>I could tell that Dad didn't believe a bit of it. But I found it interesting that he seemed to have picked up on ideas floating around somewhere in his work environment, or among his military colleagues. <br><br>Around the same time, I came across a pair of books purchased by my mother, Whitewash, and Whitewash II, on the Kennedy assassination. I looked through them, but it didn't add up to me. Still, I found it interesting that my Mom would be reading something so out-there...<br><br>That was about it, up until Watergate, 1973-74. Then the Church Committeee hearings followed- unearthing a lot of hidden history on various clandestine projects of the CIA. Soon afterward, Victor Marchetti's memoir came out, detailing more CIA skullduggery. And the fallout of the CIA disclosures continued into 1977...these included televised reportage on the evening news about the revelations of MK-ULTRA.<br><br>But at that point, I took those media revelations as evidence that our system worked, that the US government was ready, willing, and able to clean house. The net effect was to reassure me about the integrity of the system. <br><br>(How could I know what wasn't being told by the mainstream press- about the fascist juntas and Death Squads of the Southern Cone and elsewhere in the world supported by the US, and all the other dirty work? Only the insignificant US Left press published those stories, which were easy for me to dismiss as commie propaganda. I was a Cold Warrior...and to this day, a supporter of American ideals of liberty, free enterprise and ethical capitalism. So I found those stories simple to dismiss, pre-emptively...just refuse to look at the evidence.) <br><br>The War On Drugs really bugged me, but I didn't preceive any hidden agenda behind it. I grew up with it as someone caught up in an ongoing state of inter-generational conflict- a tragic, misbegotten, misplaced moral crusade brought on and sustained by the irrational fears and ignorance of my parents generation. Occasionally in high school, I had heard other teenagers make the claim that drug prohibition was left in place for corrupt reasons by the government, in order to ensure high profits from the illegal trade. That just sounded like nonsense to me, teenage cynicism. I paid it no mind.<br><br>Then the Iran-Contra imbroglio came along in the 1980s, and I began hearing that the some of anti-communist Contras had gotten away with running drugs from time to time. I figured that was simply par for the course. I was think that occasionally some of them were running ounces of coke, maybe a few kilos at most. That was the impression given by the media, whenever the story was brought up...<br><br>Time went by...the Cold War ended in 1989. I celebrated, anticipating the Peace Dividend that would inevitably result. (hey, I was a Cold Warrior, not a war-monger.) I returned to University, got my BA in cultural anthro. I was almost 40 years old. And then one day in 1994, I heard a radio interview with a former US DEA agent, Michael Levine, who was claiming that elements of the US Federal government intelligence apparatus- which he explicitly associated with George Bush's political direction- were consistently running interference for the biggest cocaine smuggling networks in the world, as an informal "quid pro quo" related to the agreeably right-wing political policies of the corrupt national governments and militaries intertwined with the traffickers. And this wasn't about the occasional ounce or kilo, it was about pipelines into the USA, allowed impunity at the highest levels. <br><br>I found that so unbelievable that I set out to debunk it...<br><br>hey, I tried. <br><br>That project led me to the world of money laundering- which leaped from relative insignificance at its advent in the 1950s to comprising $100 billion- 10% of the world economy- by 1980, and it's simply spiralled on from there... When I first read that statistic, found in the 1994 book Hot Money, by McGill University econ professor R. T. Naylor, I found myself amazed that there was a functioning economy of law-abiding merchants and legitimate international trade left anywhere in the world. <br><br>As for the political realm...organized crime syndicates, many of global scope, are in the process of penetrating every government in the world, buying influence wherever they can, across the ideological spectrum, at every level of government they can reach. <br><br><br><br>Welcome to the Underground Empire. <br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 7/15/05 8:10 pm<br></i>
