Flash mob dancing in Red Square

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

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JFK, Mary Pinchot Meyer and the Leary Connection

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

Over two thousand books have been written about the life and death of John F. Kennedy almost 50 years ago and 60% of the American people don’t believe the “lone assassin” theory espoused by the official Warren Commission report. It’s interesting to reflect on the fact that if the real assassins have not been brought to justice, they have been and still are, if alive, “hiding in plain sight.” A fractious consensus among assassination researchers points to multiple, complex conspiracies involving elements in the CIA, the military, the mob and Cuban exile groups – all of whom had demonstrated antagonism against the President, thus the motive and the means to carry out the crime.

I am going to discuss two recently published books: (1) David Talbot’s Brothers – The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (2007) and (2) Peter Janney’s Mary’s Mosaic – The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace (2012). Both are extensively documented and annotated books of over 400 pages, telling complex stories impossible to summarize. I will follow the example of Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, and state out front the view that I have come to hold, so that the reader can know what my bias is, rather than trying to pretend I don’t have one. I have come to believe that the multiple assassinations of leaders (JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X to name only four of the most prominent) that occurred in the 1960s signaled the end of the American republic and the establishment of a military-industrial empire, governed according to increasingly secretive, fascistic and militaristic principles, with the formerly “free press” reduced to being the propaganda extension of the controlling elites.

The assassination of JFK brought about the end of the American republic analogously to the way the assassination of Julius Caesar by a cabal of wealthy land-owner senators, whose power and influence Caesar had started to break up, brought about the end of the 500-hundred year history of the Roman Republic and was followed by a totalitarian empire. For a fascinating fresh look at that event, read historian Michael Parenti’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar (2003).

David Talbot’s Brothers focuses on the relationship of JFK and Robert Kennedy, who became not only his attorney general, but his most trusted advisory as it became clear that, because of the debacle of the botched Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion he could not trust the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, who were always itching to go to war (that’s what the military always want) and had become his sworn enemies. He also could not trust the CIA (which he said he wanted to “splinter into a thousand pieces”) when he realized they were always pursuing their own subversive agendas in various parts of the world, without any oversight or even truthful disclosure, as required by law. The CIA and their Cuban exile allies wanted to take Cuba back from Castro and were deeply resentful of what they perceived as Kennedy’s failure to follow-up their Bay of Pigs invasion agenda by “sending in the Marines” even though Kennedy had assured them beforehand he had no intention of doing so.

During the Cuban missile crisis, when the entire world came within a hair’s breadth of exchanging nuclear missiles and terminating civilization as we know it, JFK only managed to defuse the situation through his personal back-channel connection to Nikita Krushchev, the Soviet Premier who was similarly being pushed by his military commanders breathing down his neck to let fly the missiles. The two men talked directly, but secretly, by telephone and agreed to turn their respective countries away from war and toward peace. Kennedy and Krushchev thereafter started taking the first, small steps toward a negotiated, gradual disarmament process. As a life-long peace activist, this was to me the most moving and dramatic revelation of Talbot’s book – to know that at the height of maximum tension in the Cold War, these two warriors at the heads of their respective imperial armies reached out and agreed to take steps to avert and avoid war for ever. Immediately after the assassination, Robert Kennedy, who was of course aware of his brother’s plans and activities, took pains to use his own back channel connection with the Kremlin to assure Krushchev that he and the Americans were not blaming the Soviets for his brother’s assassination (knowing that the CIA and the military would have attempted to do just that).

Peter Janney’s book Mary’s Mosaic is about Mary Pinchot Meyer – a woman whom Kennedy really loved (unlike the numerous bimbos his sex addiction brought to his bed) and with whom he came to share his vision of turning the world toward a lasting peace. Mary Meyer was assassinated in a Washington park where she was walking, a few months after the JFK assassination. An uneducated black man walking nearby was arrested and tried for the murder – but acquitted for lack of credible evidence. Since Mary Meyer came from an upper class family and had relatives and friends in high places (her former husband was Cord Meyer, who was a high CIA official) her death occupied the rumor mills for quite a while, but then receded into oblivion as yet another unsolved murder case. Peter Janney, who spent forty years researching this book, had a personal connection to Mary Meyer since he was best friends with her son, who got killed in an automobile accident as a child. And Janney’s father was also a high-ranking CIA official, making with Cord Meyer and James Angleton, a trio of CIA spooks who feature repeatedly in the various conspiratorial scenarios that swirl around the assassinations of the 1960s and beyond.

I found his book incredibly interesting and powerful, blending a poignant story of personal tragedy with stories of outrageous criminality in the highest corridors of the American imperial court. The Mary Meyer murder story, which features briefly in David Talbot’s book and hardly at all in most other Kennedy books is the central focus of Janney’s book, because of his personal connection to her family. My old friend and colleague Tim Leary also features in the Mary Meyer story, although I personally never heard him talk about this connection. (It does not surprise me at all that Leary would keep his contacts with Mary secret, at her request). In his autobiography Flashbacks, Leary relates that Mary came to see him in 1962-63, seeking guidance on how to guide LSD sessions for a small group of Washington insider wives, who were wanting to turn the world system to world peace. They had a few meetings, Mary reported that things were going well – but then something happened that alarmed her, her peace conspiracy had been discovered. She warned Leary to lie low, they lost contact. Then in November 1963, JFK was killed, three or four months later Mary Meyer was killed. Many people believe that Mary kept a diary of her meetings with JFK, which the CIA and others were anxious to retrieve.

Regardless of whether there was a diary in which Mary described her affair with the President and/or his designs for peace – a supposition that I for one find unlikely, given the woman’s obvious understanding of the explosiveness of their thinking if it was revealed prematurely or at all. Janney’s book includes a description of a never-before published two-hour interview of Tim Leary and what he knew about Mary Meyer, conducted by Leo Damore (himself an assassination researcher who died of a sudden brain tumor before he could finish his own book) in 1990 (i.e. more than forty years after the assassination) confirming much of the story Leary told in Flashbacks, and adding details.

The conclusions emerging from this book are staggering –Kennedy and the only woman he truly loved took LSD together in the White House, conceiving and birthing their vision for world peace and how to bring it about. As Janney writes, explaining his concluding understanding of why she was killed, –

After Dallas, amid utter horror and shock, Mary had taken it upon herself to to discover and make sense of the truth of the conspiracy that had taken place – only to realize the magnitude of the second conspiracy, a cover-up taking place right before her eyes.. It was her own mosaic of people, events, circumstances, and exploration that informed her understanding – not only of the evil that had taken place in Dallas, but of the villainous darkness that was now enveloping all of America. She had furiously confronted her ex-husband, Cord Meyer, possibly Jim Angleton as well, with what she had discovered, not fully realizing the extent of their own diabolical ruthlessness. The Warren Report was nothing but a house of cards; once ignited, it would be engulfed in flames. If Mary courageously went public with who she was, and what she knew, making clear her position in the final years of Jack’s life, people with influence would take notice; the fire of suspicion around Dallas would erupt into a conflagration. She had to be eliminated (p. 391).

This book shines a brave and brilliant light of truth into a still dark and somber chapter of American history (irrespective of whether the story he tells is precisely true in all its details), a crucial turning point on the pathway from republican democracy to military empire, a pathway on which he are still marching, blinded by fear and ignorance. May these two books (and others now coming out about the Kennedy era) contribute to our awakening and a returning to sanity.

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The American Imperial Project – Who Benefits and Who Pays?

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

An article by Paul Craig Roberts published on the Global Research website (www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29988) makes some insightful comments about the American empire in comparison with empires of the past.

Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive. The empires succeeded, because the value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance…The Roman empire failed, because Romans exhausted manpower and resources in civil wars fighting amongst themselves for power. The British empire failed, because the British exhausted themselves fighting Germany in two world wars.

The ruling elites in empires past and present invent a myth justifying (to themselves and their own citizens) their imperial domination project in terms of the alleged civilizing benefits they bring to conquered and subservient peoples. Roberts quotes a book by historian Timothy H. Parsons – The Rule of Empires (2010), which replaces the myth of the civilizing empire with the truth of the extractive empire. He describes the successes of the Romans, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Spanish in Peru, Napoleon in Italy, and the British in India and Kenya in extracting resources. In my book Green Psychology (1999) I wrote about the self-justifying stories told by invaders and dominators, going back to the Indo-European pastoralist tribes that invaded settled farming communities in Old Europe during the Neolithic.

In his blog, Roberts cites the historian Parsons as wondering

whether America’s empire is really an empire as the Americans don’t seem to get any extractive benefits from it. After eight years of war and attempted occupation of Iraq, all Washington has for its efforts is several trillion dollars of additional debt and no Iraqi oil. After ten years of trillion dollar struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington has nothing to show for it except possibly some part of the drug trade that can be used to fund covert CIA operations. America’s wars are very expensive. Bush and Obama have doubled the national debt, and the American people have no benefits from it. No riches, no bread and circuses flow to Americans from Washington’s wars.

So what is it all about? Cui bono – who benefits -  is the question any criminal investigators seeks to answer. The answer to this question that Roberts, Parsons and others, including Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn provide is obvious once clearly stated. Paul Craig Roberts continues -

The answer is that Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American Empire functions.
The New Empire is different. It happens without achieving conquest. The American military did not conquer Iraq and has been forced out politically by the puppet government that Washington established. There is no victory in Afghanistan, and after a decade the American military does not control the country.
In the New Empire success at war no longer matters. The extraction takes place by being at war. Huge sums of American taxpayers’ money have flowed into the American armaments industries and huge amounts of power into Homeland Security. The American empire works by stripping Americans of wealth and liberty (my italics – RM).
This is why the wars cannot end, or if one does end, another starts. Remember when Obama came into office and was asked what the US mission was in Afghanistan? He replied that he did not know what the mission was and that the mission needed to be defined. Obama never defined the mission. He renewed the Afghan war without telling us its purpose. Obama cannot tell Americans that the purpose of the war is to build the power and profit of the military/security complex at the expense of American citizens (my italics – RM).

Here is the reason why the “bloated budgets” and “obscene profits” of the military-industrial-security complex, while the government expenditures on health, education, social welfare, environmental preservation keep being “slashed” in the name of some fictitious theory “balancing” theory.

Roberts concludes his comments by saying -

It is ironic that under the New Empire the citizens of the empire are extracted of their wealth and liberty in order to extract lives from the targeted foreign populations. Just like the bombed and murdered Muslims, the American people are also the victims of the American empire.

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CIA, LSD and Chemical Warfare – Part II

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

In my blog dated Jan 23, 2012, I reported a story from the UK Telegraph, by investigative journalist H.P. Albarelli,  on covert CIA experiments with LSD, which allegedly resulted in an incident of mass ergot poisoning through contaminated bread in the French village Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951.

I should have known better than to uncritically accept a story involving the CIA, the undisputed world masters at disinformation propaganda. Dieter Hagenbach, co-author of the recently published authoritative biography of Albert Hofmann, wrote to tell me that they investigated this story. Here, in extract, is what he and his co-author Lucius Werthmüller,  found. (Albert Hofmann und sein LSD, published by AT Verlag, 2011, has not as yet come out in an English translation).

The authors relate that Albert Hofmann and Werner Stoll,  the two Sandoz scientists most knowledgeable about ergot alkaloids and toxicity travelled to France in 1951, and talked to French research chemist Henri Olivier in Marseille, as well as physicians and psychiatrists who had investigated the epidemic and several of the patients who had suffered the symptoms of the pain maudit, the “cursed bread” as it was called. The chemical analyses and medical symptoms had led to a provisional conclusion of an ergot toxicosis.

Hofmann and Stoll took several kilograms of the flour and 600 grams of the bread that had been consumed in the episode in order to subject it to exhaustive chemical and toxicological analyses. The results were contradictory: a chemical analysis suggested the toxicity came from a mercury-containing seed-stock disinfectant, while a psychiatrist concluded the psychological symptoms resembled ergot poisoning. Albert Hofmann wrote in his concluding report to his superiors that “on the basis of the colorimetric analyses of the three samples, none of them contained ergot alkaloids.” Thus, the effects found in Pont-Saint-Esprit “remain a mystery. Neither LSD nor mercury produce the kinds of symptoms that had been reported. LSD does not produce intense toxic, organic reactions nor do the intense hallucinations reported correspond to any known forms of mercury poisoning.” (op.cit. p.99). They also pointed out that LSD could not have been involved in the poisoned bread since LSD dissolves rapidly in air and upon exposure to sunlight, or upon being dissolved in water, or being baked in bread.

Hagenbach and Werthmüller further discuss the sensationalist account of the episode found in a 2009 book by H.P. Albarelli – which had raised the possibility that the Pont-Saint-Esprit episode was part of  secret CIA cold war experiments with mass poisonings by anthrax and other biological warfare agents carried out under the direction of Frank Olson in the US Army laboratories at Fort Detrick in the 1950s. The actual nature of his work was, and remained, top-secret.  What is known is that Olson became horrified by the work that he was participating in. He either committed suicide or was pushed out of a window in New York, after being surreptitiously dosed with LSD by other CIA agents in 1953. A wrongful death case brought by his widow and family resulted in 1975 in a payment $750,000, together with an invitation to the White House where President Gerald Ford and CIA-Director William Colby personally apologized to the family. The exact details of the work he was involved in or how he was poisoned have remained secret. A website exists that is still accumulating data and reports relating to his case.

Hagenbach and Werthmüller concluded that “a connection between Frank Olson and Albert Hofmann or Sandoz cannot be found, and Hofmann’s diaries do not support even the slightest suspicion that he and Stoll had participated in an investigation of a secret CIA action.”

Despite Hofmann and Stoll’s conclusive rejection of any possible connection between the Pont-Saint-Esprit episode and LSD, a 1968 book by John G. Fuller – The Day of Saint Anthony’s Fire – repeated the same fabrication, with embellishments. New York psychiatrist John Beresford, MD (1924-2007; who was known to and friends with Leary, myself and the Harvard researchers, and who later dedicated himself to working with people that had been unjustly incarcerated as victims of America’s punitive drug-war laws) was troubled by the implications suggested in Fuller’s book and wrote to Hofmann concerning the concerns it raised for him. Hofmann replied in a letter to Beresford, using unmistakeably indignant language.

“The citations in John Fuller’s book The Day of Saint Anthony’s Fire are invented fictions as is the great majority of what he wrote in this book. .. The whole work is a scandal. It has been proven conclusively that ergot was not involved in the Pont-Saint-Esprit episode. Mr Fuller must have known this fact. … To mention just one fact that shows the falsehood of Fuller’s writing – LSD is a semi-synthetic product, that occurs as such neither in ergot nor anywhere else in nature. …Mr Fuller has misused ergot, St. Anthony’s Fire and LSD in order to try to write a best-selling work.” (Hagenbach & Werthmüller, p. 101).

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Howard Zinn Remembered – by Noam Chomsky

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

The following remarks below are excerpted from a tribute to the late Howard Zinn by his friend the eminent linguist and political critic Noam Chomsky, published in Al Jazeera, 27 January 2012, the second anniversary of the death of Howard Zinn. Zinn was dismissed in 1963 from his position as a tenured professor at Spelman College in Atlanta after siding with black women students in the struggle against segregation. In 1967, he wrote, one of the first, and most influential, books Vietnam-The Logic of Withdrawal, calling for an end to the war in Vietnam. A veteran of the US Army Air Force, he and Noam Chomsky edited The Pentagon Papers, leaked by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and was later designated a “high security risk” by the FBI. Toward the end of his life, Zinn said he wanted to be known as “somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn’t have before.”  In an interview he said he wanted to rehabilitate the term “socialism” which had became tainted by its identification with Soviet communism. He said he considered himself politically an “anarchist, socialist … maybe a democratic socialist.”

His best-selling  A People’s History of the United States spawned a new field of historical study: People’s Histories. This approach countered the traditional triumphalist examination of “history as written by the victors”, instead concentrating on the poor and seemingly powerless; those who resisted imperial, cultural and corporate hegemony. Since its publication in 1980, the book has sold 1.7 million copies, became required reading in thousands of classes, been turned into a play, and excerpted on audio CDs read by Zinn and actor Matt  Damon. The People Speak, released in 2010, is a documentary movie inspired by the lives of ordinary people who fought back against oppressive conditions over the course of the history of the United States. Watch a preview:
The film includes performances by Zinn, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Viggo Mortensen, Josh Brolin, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Don Cheadle, and Sandra Oh.  The book was posted in its entirety at zero cost on the internet by an anonymous group calling themselves History is a Weapon with Zinn’s approval, despite the book publisher’s opposition (A People’s History of the United States). In 2008, a graphic adaptation by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki and Pul Buhle was published as A People’s History of American Empire, concentrating on America’s imperial role in the world. Significantly, this version also followed the Zinn model of history-writing – to place the historian’s point of view clearly into the narrative.

His uniquely personal, engaged and engaging views on history and modern society also were expressed in  short plays: a one-person play called Marx in Soho: A Play on History (1999) and another short play Emma: A Play in Two Acts about Emma Goldman, American Anarchist (2002).

His memoir, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn’s life and work.

Here is what Noam Chomsky wrote in his memorial tribute:  

It is not easy for me to write a few words about Howard Zinn, the great American activist and historian. He was a very close friend for 45 years. The families were very close too. His wife Roz, who died of cancer not long before, was also a marvellous person and close friend. Also somber is the realisation that a whole generation seems to be disappearing, including several other old friends: Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmed and others, who were not only astute and productive scholars, but also dedicated and courageous militants, always on call when needed – which was constant. A combination that is essential if there is to be hope of decent survival.

Howard’s remarkable life and work are summarised best in his own words. His primary concern, he explained, was “the countless small actions of unknown people” that lie at the roots of “those great moments” that enter the historical record – a record that will be profoundly misleading, and seriously disempowering, if it is torn from these roots as it passes through the filters of doctrine and dogma. His life was always closely intertwined with his writings and innumerable talks and interviews. It was devoted, selflessly, to empowerment of the unknown people who brought about great moments.

That was true when he was an industrial worker and labour activist, and from the days, 50 years ago, when he was teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, a black college that was open mostly to the small black elite. While teaching at Spelman, Howard supported the students who were at the cutting edge of the civil rights movement in its early and most dangerous days, many of whom became quite well-known in later years – Alice Walker, Julian Bond and others – and who loved and revered him, as did everyone who knew him well. And as always, he did not just support them, which was rare enough, but also participated directly with them in their most hazardous efforts – no easy undertaking at that time, before there was any organised popular movement and in the face of government hostility that lasted for some years. Finally, popular support was ignited, in large part by the courageous actions of the young people who were sitting in at lunch counters, riding freedom buses, organising demonstrations, facing bitter racism and brutality, sometimes death.

By the early 1960s, a mass popular movement was taking shape, by then with Martin Luther King in a leadership role – and the government had to respond. As a reward for his courage and honesty, Howard was soon expelled from the college where he taught. A few years later, he wrote the standard work on SNCC (the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee), the major organisation of those “unknown people” whose “countless small actions” played such an important part in creating the groundswell that enabled King to gain significant influence – as I am sure he would have been the first to say – and to bring the country to honour the constitutional amendments of a century earlier that had theoretically granted elementary civil rights to former slaves – at least to do so partially; no need to stress that there remains a long way to go. …

After being expelled from the Atlanta college where he taught, Howard came to Boston, and spent the rest of his academic career at Boston University, where he was, I am sure, the most admired and loved faculty member on campus, and the target of bitter antagonism and petty cruelty on the part of the administration. In later years, however, after his retirement, he gained the public honour and respect that was always overwhelming among students, staff, much of the faculty, and the general community. While there, Howard wrote the books that brought him well-deserved fame.

His book Vietnam – The Logic of Withdrawal, in 1967, was the first to express clearly and powerfully what many were then beginning barely to contemplate: that the US had no right even to call for a negotiated settlement in Vietnam, leaving Washington with power and substantial control in the country it had invaded and by then already largely destroyed. Rather, the US should do what any aggressor should: withdraw, allow the population to somehow reconstruct as they could from the wreckage, and if minimal honesty could be attained, pay massive reparations for the crimes that the invading armies had committed, vast crimes in this case. The book had wide influence among the public, although to this day, its message can barely even be comprehended in elite educated circles, an indication of how much necessary work lies ahead. Among the general public by the war’s end, 70 per cent regarded the war as “fundamentally wrong and immoral” a remarkable figure, considering the fact that scarcely a hint of such a thought was expressible in mainstream opinion.

Even more influential in the long run than Howard’s anti-war writings and actions was his enduring masterpiece, A People’s History of the United States, a book that literally changed the consciousness of a generation. Here he developed with care, lucidity and comprehensive sweep his fundamental message about the crucial role of the people who remain unknown in carrying forward the endless struggle for peace and justice, and about the victims of the systems of power that create their own versions of history and seek to impose it. Later, his “Voices” from the People’s History, now an acclaimed theatrical and television production, has brought to many the actual words of those forgotten or ignored people who have played such a valuable role in creating a better world.

Howard’s unique success in drawing the actions and voices of unknown people from the depths to which they had largely been consigned has spawned extensive historical research following a similar path, focusing on critical periods of US history, and turning to the record in other countries as well, a very welcome development. It is not entirely novel – there had been scholarly inquiries of particular topics before – but nothing to compare with Howard’s broad and incisive evocation of “history from below”, compensating for critical omissions in how US history had been interpreted and conveyed.

Howard’s dedicated activism continued, literally without a break, until the very end, even in his last years, when he was suffering from severe infirmity and personal loss – though one would hardly know it when meeting him or watching him speaking tirelessly to captivated audiences all over the country. Whenever there was a struggle for peace and justice, Howard was there, on the front lines, unflagging in his enthusiasm, and inspiring in his integrity, engagement, eloquence and insight; a light touch of humour in the face of adversity, and dedication to non-violence and sheer decency. It is hard even to imagine how many young people’s lives were touched, and how deeply, by his achievements, both in his work and his life.

Filed under: Current Events, Films, Modern History, Politics, Roots of War & Domination, The Sixties | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

An end to GM crop development for Europe


Posted on February 14, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

Awareness of and resistance to food from genetically modified organisms is much greater in Europe than the US. The battles between the industrial food and chemistry corporations on the one hand and public health experts, food nutritionists and small-scale organic farmers on the other hand, have been raging for years in Europe, yet have barely begun to emerge into US public media awareness. The news reported below, from the Financial Times, reports a watershed development.

BASF, the German chemical giant, is to pull out of genetically modified [GM] plant development in Europe and relocate it to the US, where political and consumer resistance to GM crops is not so entrenched. The headquarters of BASF Plant Science will move from south-west Germany to Raleigh, North Carolina, and two smaller sites in Germany and Sweden will close. The company will transfer some GM crop development to the US but stop work on crops targeted at the European market – four varieties of potato and one of wheat. The decision … signals the end of GM crop development for European farmers. Bayer, BASF’s German competitor, is working on GM cotton and rice in Ghent, Belgium – but not for European markets. “This is another nail in the coffin for genetically modified foods in Europe,” said Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth. BASF battled for some 13 years before the European Union approved in 2010 cultivation of its Amflora potato, which was intended to provide high-quality starch for industrial customers. However, German test sites had to be put under constant guard and activists still succeeded in destroying potato fields.

From an article in Financial Times
, Jan 16, 2012.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6e074ee4-403e-11e1-82f6-00144feab49a.html#axzz1jkDcQbe9

The European public is well aware of the serious threats of GM food, yet the U.S. public, Seeds of Deception is a book by Jeffrey M. Smith, which exposes industry and government deception about the safety of genetically engineered foods. John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, says of this book “clear, profound and unerringly accurate, .. tells you what you need to know about genetically engineered food – and what Monsanto won’t tell you.” For a ten-page summary click here.

For key articles from major media sources on the risks of genetically modified foods, click here.  This and the other two sources listed here come from the excellent wanttoknow.info series of websites.

This excellent website has a 12-page list and description of seasoned and respected journalists who have exposed mass media cover-ups on a variety of topics. The general public generally knows very little about this. For details on the work of these courageous and independent-minded journalists, click on this link controlled media. Here are excerpts from the revealing accounts of 20 award-winning journalists in the highly acclaimed book Into the Buzzsaw. These courageous writers were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major news stories. Some were even fired or laid off. They have won numerous awards, including several Emmys and a Pulitzer. A partial list of the journalists whose work was censored by the major media is Jane Akre, Dan Rather, Monika Jensen-Stevenson, Kristian Borjesson, Greg Palast, Michael Levine, Gary Webb, Joh Kelly, Robert McChesney.

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Class War and Inequality in America – Some Startling Facts and Perspectives

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

A dominant theme in the Occupy movement that is roiling urban centers in the US is the extreme wealth inequality, expressed in the slogan of the 1% vs the 99%. Those who have lost their jobs or their homes or both are well aware of the extent of poverty in their community, but the wealthy class and the media they own do not dwell on the uncomfortable statistics demonstrating this inequality. That may be changing. A PBS Newshour special (Aug 16, 2011), entitled Land of the Free, Home of the Poor, took on this project.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec11/makingsense_08-16.html

Here are some extracts from it, with statements by several different commentators:

Inequality in America. It’s a subject that’s getting more attention in light of the weak economy and the ongoing debate around budget cuts and raising revenues… People don’t understand how much wealth the top 20 percent have. They actually have 84 percent of the wealth. And more disturbingly, people don’t understand how little wealth the bottom of the distribution have. The bottom 40 percent of the U.S. have about 0.3 percent of the wealth, basically zero. … In the last 30 years or so, the share of national income that has gone to the upper 0.1 percent rose by 10 percentage points. That is one of the most astounding patterns I have ever seen in data. People sometimes say, oh, the rich, it’s the upper 10 percent, it’s the upper 5 percent. No, no, this is the 0.1 percent.

The program featured an interview with one of the wealthiest men in the world billionaire businessman Warren Buffett, who has argued in favor of higher taxes on the wealthiest. He said:

It should be a land of opportunity. But the market system has led to extremes. Everybody in this country owes their good fortune in some way to the rest of the country.

A wonderful statement and valuable reminder.

Buffett says: Yes, there’s been a class war in the United States. And my class, namely the super rich people, have won.

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Noam Chomsky on the American Policy of World Militarization

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

In an interview with The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, published Dec 16, 2011 in the online journal Waging Nonviolence and republished in  TRUTHOUT.ORG, Noam Chomsky returns to his familiar, valid and essential critique of the long-standing U.S. agenda of world imperial domination.

There is very little doubt that the U.S. government intends to maintain effective military control over Afghanistan by one means or another, either through a client state with military bases, and support for what they’ll call Afghan troops. That’s the pattern elsewhere as well. So, for example, after bombing Serbia in 1999, the United States maintains a huge military base in Kosovo, which was the goal of the bombing. In Iraq, they’re still building military bases even though there is rhetoric about leaving the country. And I presume they will do the same in Afghanistan too, which is regarded by the U.S. as of strategic significance in the long term, within the plans of maintaining control of essentially the energy resources and other resources of the region, including western and Central Asia. So this is a piece of ongoing plans which in fact go back to the Second World War.

Right now, the United States is militarily engaged in one form or another in almost a hundred countries, including bases, special forces operations, support for domestic military and security forces. This is a global program of world militarization, essentially tracing back to headquarters in Washington, and Afghanistan is a part of it. It will be up to Afghans to see if, first of all, if they want this; secondly, if they can act in ways which will exclude it. That’s pretty much what’s happening in Iraq. As late as early 2008, the United States was officially insisting that it maintain military bases and be able to carry out combat operations in Iraq, and that the Iraqi government must privilege U.S. investors for the oil and energy system. Well, Iraqi resistance has compelled the United States to withdraw somewhat from that, substantially, in fact. But the efforts will still continue. These are ongoing conflicts based on long standing principles.

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Bear in a Rain Barrel

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

People living in Colorado Springs wondered why their rain water barrel was almost empty every day.  They set up a couple of cameras and look what they caught on film.

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We need a jobs policy to get us out of the depression

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Ralph Metzner

In an article published in Vanity Fair (Dec 21, 2011), Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and author of Globalization and its Discontents (2003) takes a different tack, arguing that monetary policy changes are not as important as a vigorous jobs policy.

It has now been almost five years since the bursting of the housing bubble, and four years since the onset of the recession. There are 6.6 million fewer jobs in the United States than there were four years ago. Some 23 million Americans who would like to work full-time cannot get a job. Almost half of those who are unemployed have been unemployed long-term. Wages are falling—the real income of a typical American household is now below the level it was in 1997. …

Many, especially in the financial sector, argued that strong, resolute, and generous action to save not just the banks but the bankers, their shareholders, and their creditors would return the economy to where it had been before the crisis. In the meantime, a short-term stimulus, moderate in size, would suffice to tide the economy over until the banks could be restored to health. The banks got their bailout. Some of the money went to bonuses. Little of it went to lending. And the economy didn’t really recover—output is barely greater than it was before the crisis, and the job situation is bleak. …

But incomes for most working Americans still hadn’t returned to their levels prior to the previous recession. The American standard of living was sustained only by rising debt—debt so large that the U.S. savings rate had dropped to near zero. And “zero” doesn’t really tell the story. Because the rich have always been able to save a significant percentage of their income, putting them in the positive column, an average rate of close to zero means that everyone else must be in negative numbers. (Here’s the reality: in the years leading up to the recession, according to research done by my Columbia University colleague Bruce Greenwald, the bottom 80 percent of the American population had been spending around 110 percent of its income.) What made this level of indebtedness possible was the housing bubble, which Alan Greenspan and then Ben Bernanke, chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board, helped to engineer through low interest rates and nonregulation.

The fact is the economy in the years before the current crisis was fundamentally weak, with the bubble, and the unsustainable consumption to which it gave rise, acting as life support. Without these, unemployment would have been high. …

Until now, the Depression was the last time in American history that unemployment exceeded 8 percent four years after the onset of recession. And never in the last 60 years has economic output been barely greater, four years after a recession, than it was before the recession started. The percentage of the civilian population at work has fallen by twice as much as in any post-World War II downturn. Not surprisingly, economists have begun to reflect on the similarities and differences between our Long Slump and the Great Depression. Extracting the right lessons is not easy.

Many have argued that the Depression was caused primarily by excessive tightening of the money supply on the part of the Federal Reserve Board. Ben Bernanke, a scholar of the Depression, has stated publicly that this was the lesson he took away, and the reason he opened the monetary spigots. He opened them very wide. Beginning in 2008, the balance sheet of the Fed doubled and then rose to three times its earlier level. Today it is $2.8 trillion. While the Fed, by doing this, may have succeeded in saving the banks, it didn’t succeed in saving the economy.

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