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.

Filed under: Current Events, Modern History, Politics, Psychedelics, Roots of War & Domination, The Sixties | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

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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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 »

A conference on the military-industrial complex and how to get out from under its domination.

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Ralph Metzner

A three-day conference Sept 28-18, 2011 in Charlottesville, VA, sponsored by the group War is a Crime.org, addressed the disastrous effects of the permanent war economy on society, and how to get out of it. The roster of prominent speakers included David Swanson, Ellen Brown, Ann Wright, Lisa Savage, Robert Jensen, Bruce Cagnon, Ray McGovern and others.

Here is an excerpts from David Swanson, who organized the conference. to whet your appetite:

 Let’s say we want to create 29 million jobs in 10 years. That’s 2.9 million each year. Here’s one way to do it. Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs per year. Take another $50 billion and move it into healthcare spending. There’s an additional 400,000 jobs. Take another $100 billion and move it into clean energy. There’s another 550,000 jobs. And take another $62 billion and turn it into tax cuts, generating an additional 200,000 jobs. Now the military spending in the Department of Energy, the State Department, Homeland Security, and so forth have not been touched. And the Department of Defense has been cut back to about $388 billion, which is to say: more than it was getting 10 years ago when our country went collectively insane.

Here is an excerpt from a speech by Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt:

Military spending is the very essence of “built-in obsolescence”: it turns out products that are designed to blow up. The military is not subject to ordinary market principles but works on a “cost-plus” basis, with producers reimbursed for whatever they have spent plus a guaranteed profit. Gone are the usual competitive restraints that keep capitalist corporations “lean and mean.” Private contractors hired by the government on no-bid contracts can be as wasteful and inefficient as they like and still make a tidy profit. Yet legislators looking to slash wasteful “entitlements” persist in overlooking this obvious elephant in the room. …

Fortunately, there is a way to solve these problems without maintaining a perpetual state of war: keep the jobs but convert them to civilian use. Military conversion is a well thought-out program that could provide real economic stimulus and national security for people here and abroad. Existing military bases, laboratories, and production facilities can be converted to civilian uses. Bases can become industrial parks, schools, airports, hospitals, recreation facilities, and so forth. Converted factories can produce consumer and capital goods: machine tools, electric locomotives, farm machinery, oil field equipment, construction machinery for modernizing infrastructure. It has been done before.

Several thousand years ago, the prophet Isaiah spoke of his vision that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”   This is a worthy guiding motto for our times when the military-industrial complex is driving the entire civilization into self-destruct mode and oblivion.

Here is a link to the video of the conference.  Here is a link to the text of many of the papers presented.

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On the peculiar dissociation in the public media and the 9/11 Truth movement.

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Ralph Metzner

It’s very strange. The mainstream80media have been filled with extensive reports and photos commemorating grieving widows, fallen heroes, courageous “first responders” around the tragedy of an “attack” by Arab/Muslim extremists or fanatics – with not so much as a hint that there is another whole story here, a story of a horrendous crime against the American people by shadowy elements within its established power structure.

At the same time, there have been gatherings, in the SF Bay Area, in Toronto, and possibly elsewhere, of various branches of the 9/11 Truth Movement, (http://www.ae911truth.org/  http://www.911truth.org/) in which numerous independent investigations of films and descriptions the events of that tumultuous day are analyzed and scrutinized by scientists, independent journalists, scholars, politicians, military officials  – all of which lead one to question the veracity of almost every aspect of the official story.

These concerned professionals have created an eye-opening website filled with reliable information which examines the WTC 7 collapse. They conclude beyond any reasonable doubt that it must have been a controlled demolition. Of particular interest is an excellent 15-minute video examining the WTC 7 collapse with input from highly respected architects and engineers with scientific understanding of what happened on that fateful day. You can watch this highly educational video below or at this link. Video narrated by Ed Asner.

This compelling documentary explains in laymen’s terms how planned demolition is carried out, and how it is virtually impossible that WTC Building 7 collapsed because of office fires, as claimed in the official NIST report. Danny Jowenko, the Dutch owner of a large demolition company mentioned in the above 15-minute video, was unaware that a third building collapsed on 9/11. Watch a three-minute video in which he states he is absolutely certain building 7 was brought down by an expert demolition team at this link.

Over 200 senior government officials including U.S. Senators and Congress members have publicly questioned the government’s story of 9/11 and called for a new investigation? Click here for their statements and links for verification. For the statements of more than 100 professors calling for a new, independent investigation, click here. For literally thousands of other highly respected individuals who question the official story 9/11, click here.

Here’s a count of the people, listed on the above website, who are questioning the official 9/11 story:

  • 220+ Senior Military, Intelligence Service, Law Enforcement, and Government Officials.
  • 1500 + Engineers and Architects.
  • 250+ Pilots and Aviation Professionals.
  • 400+ Professors.
  • 300+ 9/11 Survivors and Family Members.
  • 400+ Medical Professionals.  
  • 200+ Artists and Media Professionals.

In the second edition of my book The Expansion of Consciousness, published in 2008, I wrote:

The attacks of 9/11 in 2001 delivered a violent shock to the American and indeed the global economic and political order, as well as the collective psyche of Western civilization. In my view, this shock is likely to have even more devastating repercussions, when it is revealed and widely understood that the attacks not only were used to instill a climate of fear in the American people and justify unlimited aggressive military interventions around the globe, but that they were planned and orchestrated by secret cabals within the US military-industrial-governmental complex, for the furtherance of their hegemonic ambitions and control of dwindling global energy resources. pg 80

Events and publications since that time have made me even more  convinced of the need for a new and totally independent investigation or “truth and reconciliation commission.” Given the demonstrated total inadequacy of the official 9/11 Commission report (accepted without a hint of questioning by the mainstream media) I was heartened to learn of a new movement to use state ballot initiatives to organize a new investigation, a Citizens 9/11 Commission Campaign (9-11cc.org), free of governmental or congressional interference, vested with subpoena powers. Among the sponsors of such a citizens commission are: US Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska, 1969-1981). Lt. Colonel Robert Bowman, Ph.D. (Former Director, Advanced Space Programs Development, U.S. Air Force) and Former U.S. Representative Dan Hamburg (D-Ukiah). For a powerful video with statements from these people and  others see 9/11 TV. org.

Appreciation for the information and links here to Fred Burks of the PEERS newsletter and Ken Jenkins of 9/11TV.org.

For German-speaking audiences, my friend the Berlin journalist Mathias Bröckers has just released his third book on 9/11: 9/11 – Der Einsturz eines Lügengebäudes (“The collapse of a building of lies”) published by http://www.westendverlag.de.

Filed under: Current Events, Economics & Finance, Films, Modern History, Politics, Roots of War & Domination, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

A progressive and obvious alternative to domestic budget cuts

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Ralph Metzner

Here is the information and analysis and links from the excellent newsletter of the Just Foreign Policy people (www.justforeignpolicy.org)

To hear the mainstream media tell it, America confronts a choice: Republican plans for cutting domestic spending or President Obama’s plans for cutting domestic spending. That’s what they want us to think.

You’d never know from the mainstream media that 80 Members of Congress have put forward an alternative to cuts in spending on domestic needs: the People’s Budget, advanced by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The People’s Budget would cut military spending and end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here is the link for the People’s Budget:
 http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70&sectiontree=5,70

Here is a piece by Colombia University economist Jeffrey Sachs about the People’s Budget: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/the-peoples-budget_b_846573.html

And here is a piece by JFP’s Robert Naiman on why Jeffrey Sachs’ endorsement of the People’s Budget is so important and has such potential to influence the budget debate. Embedded in the article is a video interview with Jeffrey Sachs on Democracy Now:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/can-jeff-sachs-get-us-out_b_847995.html

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Garbo the Spy – True Story of a Double Agent who helped change the outcome of WWII

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Ralph Metzner

I’m not a great fan of war movies, though I’ve sat through countless documentaries and docu-dramas in order to educate myself in history. This film was a revelation, a story completely unknown to me before – about a man who hated violence and couldn’t shoot, who, by his wits alone, changed the outcome of the war and saved thousands of lives.  A statement by General Eisenhower at the beginning of the film testifies to the effectiveness of his role in deciding the outcome of the war.

Juan Pujol was a middle-class Spaniard who was appalled by the violence and bloodshed of the Spanish Civil War,  and vowed to try to do something about the escalating fascist assault on European society that culminated in WWII. He offered his services to the British, but was at first rebuffed because of his lack of prior experience in either warfare or espionage. To establish his credibility as a double agent, he developed a relationship with the German High Command, selling information about military installations and troop movements that he said he gathered from his network of twenty-seven spies in various Western European countries. In a testament to his persuasive skill, his German handlers never caught on to the fact that his network of spies was entirely fictitious and that he had started working for the British spy agency MI-5 (who gave him the code name Garbo). He had to include enough verifiable true information in his coded messages in order to keep the trust of his German handlers.

His greatest coup (and this was a story I, for one, was completely unaware of) undoubtedly was the elaborate ruse he and his British superiors played at the Normandy invasion. He sent messages to the Germans that the invasion was going to happen in Flanders, hundreds of miles to the North, to allow time for the allied forces to land in Normandy in sufficient numbers. Supported by dummy military equipment and faked troop movements in Southeast England, which would show up on aerial photographs, the German High Command believed their agent and concentrated their forces in Belgium. Garbo even persuaded them that the evidence they were getting of troop ships approaching Normandy was a decoy. If they had been able to station themselves on the beachheads at Normandy, thousands more in the landing parties would have been killed.

After the invasion his cover was blown, and as is customary in such operations, the British erased all records of his existence and name and he disappeared, at first to South Africa (where he supposedly “died”)  then to Venezuela, where he lived for thirty more years under another name, got married and had a family. He finally, in the 1980s,  came out of hiding and was given a public recognition and honor. Though no pictures of him existed from his earlier life, the movie reconstructs his story and we do get to see him a generation later.

Filed under: Current Events, Films, Modern History, Politics, Roots of War & Domination | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Even the Rain-Powerful Film about the Continuing Exploitation of Indigenous People and Resources

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Ralph Metzner

Even the Rain (También la lluvia) is a 2010 Spanish film about a filmmaker who travels to Bolivia to shoot a film about Christopher Columbus. He and his crew arrive during the tense time of the 2000 Cochabamba water crisis, when hundreds of thousands of poor Bolivians protested the industrial privatization and commodification of the water. The film interweaves the story of the landing and invasion by Columbus in the 16th century, with its egregious violations of human rights and violence visited upon the native population, with the 20th century privatization of natural resources of the indigenous poor. The title refers to a dramatic scene in which some corporate functionaries put a padlock on a rain catchment tank, while the locals protest vehemently. Their protest actions resulted ultimately in the water rights reverting to the people. Intercutting footage of the Columbus film with documentary recordings of the actual protests, one can appreciate the parallels between the exploitation of the past and the continued exploitation of Latin America by rich countries and multinational corporations. I love this film because, like Biutiful (also Spanish), it shows the connection between the personal lives of contemporary people and the political/economic context of globalization and exploitation – what Canadian journalist Naomic Klein has called The Shock Doctrine.

See the movie clip on YouTube

Filed under: Current Events, Ecology, Economics & Finance, Films, Modern History, Politics, Roots of War & Domination, Spirituality | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Could the Japan tsunami have been triggered by secret military experiments?

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Ralph Metzner

Conspiracy theories about that possibility have some support in an article published in 1999 in the New Zealand Herald:

Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal. An Auckland University professor seconded to the Army set off a series of underwater explosions triggering mini-tidal waves at Whangaparaoa in 1944 and 1945. Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. -New Zealand Herald

Fred Burks comments on WanttoKnow.info

Though it may seem far-fetched to imagine military involvement, these documents and reports raise serious questions about the recent tsunami in Japan and the December 26, 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. The many layers of intense secrecy both in the government and military result in very few people being aware of the gruesome capabilities for death and destruction that have been developed over the years. Were it not for the below article in New Zealand’s leading newspaper, the public would never have known that a tsunami bomb had been created many decades ago. No one denies that highly destructive weapons are being developed in secret by the militaries of the world. What the public doesn’t know is what these weapons are, and what they are being used for. All of this is generally classified for reasons of “national security.”

Few people are aware of the secret societies composed of some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people. Read the major media reports on this key topic at this link. Many serious researchers, including myself, suspect that factions of the power elite want to keep us in fear and even to promote a 2012 armageddon.

http://www.WantToKnow.info/050307tsunamibombweapon

Filed under: Current Events, Ecology, Economics & Finance, Modern History, Politics, Roots of War & Domination, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

The continuing search for an alternative (to the dollar) global currency

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Ralph Metzner

Bankers, economists, financiers and others have for some time been looking to find another kind of currency, besides the dollar, to help stabilize global markets and exchanges. The dollar has been the de facto currency used for most global transactions – but this makes the market vulnerable both to US political instability and to American imperial ambitions. Below is a report on the ongoing discussions:

The International Monetary Fund issued a report Thursday on a possible replacement for the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The IMF said Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, could help stabilize the global financial system. SDRs represent potential claims on the currencies of IMF members. They were created by the IMF in 1969 and can be converted into whatever currency a borrower requires at exchange rates based on a weighted basket of international currencies. The IMF typically lends countries funds denominated in SDRs. While they are not a tangible currency, some economists argue that SDRs could be used as a less volatile alternative to the U.S. dollar. The goal is to have a reserve asset for central banks that better reflects the global economy since the dollar is vulnerable to swings in the domestic economy and changes in U.S. policy. The Fund also suggested that certain assets, such as oil and gold, which are traded in U.S. dollars, could be priced using SDRs.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/10/markets/dollar/index.htm

Filed under: Current Events, Economics & Finance, Modern History, Politics, Roots of War & Domination | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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