Category Archives: Hidden history

Fukushima: the Cover-Up Continues

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crisis without end

Dr Helen Caldicott’s new book, Crisis Without End: the Medical and Ecological Consequences of Fukushima, is a compilation of the symposium she organized at the New York Academy of Medicine in March 2013.* The latter was a virtual Who’s Who of nuclear physicists and radiation health experts. In the short video below, she gives a brief overview of the nuclear accident at Fukushima and the systematic cover-up by the US and Japanese government of the on-going threat it poses to all global inhabitants.

What Actually Happened at Fukushima?

Following a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that knocked out their cooling systems, three nuclear reactors experienced core meltdowns. When a meltdown occurs, the core overheats to the point that it melts through the containment vessel into the grounds. Driven by the intense heat of continuous chain reactions, the molten mass continues to spew radiation into the environment over an extended period.

The mountain streams that flow under the stricken reactors absorb this radiation from the molten cores and carry it to the Pacific Ocean. Approximately four tons daily of radiation-contaminated water has been flowing into the Pacific Ocean for 3 ½ years.

One the radiation reaches the ocean, it’s taken up into the food chain where it’s “biomagnified” (i.e. small fish eat radioactive algae, which are eaten by larger fish). Tuna is at the top of the food chain. Which is why tuna caught off the coast of California contains radioactive cesium that originated at Fukushima.

The Cover-Up

The Japanese government knew almost immediately the meltdowns had occurred – expose the whole of Japan and the American West Coast to massive doses of airborne radioactive fallout – and covered it up for three months. They and Tepco, the private company running Fukushima, continue to mislead the public by asserting it will take forty years to stop the flow of radioactive water into the Pacific. According to Caldicott, no technology exists at present to reverse the effects of a nuclear meltdown.

A new law Japan passed in December 2013 makes it illegal for journalists to disclose any information about Fukushima that the government wishes to suppress.

Obama, the pro-nuclear president (he received a $250,000 campaign contribution from Exelon Corporation) colluded in the cover-up. Instead of warning Americans in Seattle, Florida and other US sites that they were being exposed to high levels of airborne radioactive fallout (specifically I 131), he specifically denied that the US faced any risk of radiation exposure.

Caldicott maintains the EPA has an absolute legal and moral obligation to monitor radiation levels of US air, water and sea food, especially as the Fukushima site remains extremely vulnerable to a future earthquake, tsunami or typhoon. Workers are still pumping seawater on the stricken reactors to cool them. Afterwards the radioactive seawater is stored in 1500 enormous storage tanks held together with adhesive tape.

Obama, in contrast, is far more concerned about protecting his friends in the nuclear industry. Amazingly he has just finalized $6.5 billion $6.5 billion in loan guarantees to build two new nuclear power plants in Georgia.

Hillary Clinton is also a major player in the cover-up, with the agreement she signed immediately after the Fukushima accident, for the US to continue to import Japanese seafood. Caldicott warns that under no circumstances should people anywhere eat rice, fish or miso imported Japan – owing to high levels of radiation it contains.

Chernobyl

Caldicot also discusses the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl (Ukraine) which has caused one million, mainly cancer-related, deaths across Europe. Information about the effects of Chernobyl in other parts of Europe is also being suppressed. Lambs in Wales, Wild boards in Germany and Turkish hazelnut are still too dangerous to eat due to radiation contamination.

 

* Free link to presentations from last year’s Symposium available via the Helen Caldicott Foundation

 

The Nuclear Waste Scandal

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Nightmare Nuclear Waste
(2009)

Film Review

In the face of growing international concern over the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima,  an excellent 2009 French/German film (with English subtitles) about nuclear waste has been re-released and is making the rounds of cyberspace. This is truly a life and death issue, owing to the research evidence linking high environmental radiation levels (from the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown) to a big spike in European cancer levels. Important facts come out in this film that the nuclear industry and government are doing their best to conceal:

1. The whole issue of nuclear waste is characterized by secrecy, cover-up, lies and deception by the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear governments (including the extremely pro-nuclear Obama administration).

2. As the world waits with baited breath for the nuclear industry to come up with a permanent solution for deadly waste that will take 100,000 years to decontaminate, massive amounts have been dumped in the ocean, released to the air or stored in leaky containers that are contaminating groundwater and rivers. In La Hague France a nuclear energy company called Areva is releasing it into the air and into the English Channel through a drain pipe d water or open air storage pools. In La Hague France a nuclear energy company is releasing it into the English Channel through a drain pipe (as of 2009, when this film was made).

3. The US and Russian government are covering up the devastating health impacts of the world’s two most contaminated nuclear sites: the Hanford nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington and the Chelyabinsk region in the former Soviet Union. The latter experienced massive contamination when a nuclear waste dump at the Mayak nuclear facility exploded in 1957. The very first nuclear disaster in history was covered up by both the Soviets and, at the behest of America’s fledgling nuclear power industry, the CIA

4. There has never been full disclosure about the 100,000 tons of nuclear waste dumped into the ocean prior to 1993 (as the film was made in 2009, this number excludes the four tons daily dumped into the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima), when the practice was banned by international treaty. Nor has there been any effort to investigate where these radionucleotides ended up or whether they have contaminated the food chain.

4. The nuclear industry – and government – are willfully ignoring the “no threshold model” doctors use to evaluate cumulative radiation risk when they assure us that occasional releases from nuclear power plants are no more harmful than a “transatlantic jet flight” (due to higher radiation levels in the outer atmosphere) Under this model every exposure – no matter how small – increases your risk of developing cancer or having children with birth defects.

The Nuclear Nightmare at Hanford

As a former Washington resident, I took particular interest in the segment on Hanford, the desert site where the Manhattan Project secretly produced plutonium for the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Hanford also produced the vast majority of plutonium for America’s cold war arsenal (1950-1980). Most of Hanford’s nuclear waste is stored in 170 temporary underground concrete tanks. These were meant to be temporary until a permanent storage solution could be found. Beginning in 2001 the tanks, which were only built to last twenty years, were found to be leaking radionuclotides into the groundwater adjacent to the Columbia River.

According to the US Department of Energy, which is responsible for the Hanford clean-up, there are no nuclear contaminants in the Columbia River. This is virtually impossible for independent scientists to verify, as anyone trespassing on the Hanford reservation is subject to arrest and prosecution. The filmmakers accompanied an activist who entered the reservation secretly to take soil and water samples. French scientists at CRIIRAD (Commission de Recherche et d’Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité) who tested them found high levels of tritium (exceeding the drinking water standard), Iodine 129, Technetium 99 and Europium 152. The film also talks about an independent study local activists did in 2002, in which the majority of Columbia River fish they sampled contained high levels of Strontium 90.

The People in Muslimovo Who Are Waiting to Die

The situation of Russian farmers living adjacent to the Techa River in Chelyabinsk is far more tragic. After more than fifty years the Techa, which locals rely on to water their crops and pastures, remains contaminated with high levels of Cesium 137, tritium, Strontium 90 and Plutonium 239 and 240 – as do vegetables and milk produced in nearby farms.

The residents are all fully aware of the bleak future they face, as they watch family, neighbors and even their children and grandchildren succumb to cancer. Each family has been offered 20,000 Euros (about $25,000) to abandon their land and homes and voluntarily relocate. This is a paltry sum that would support them a few months at most. The government also tells them not to eat locally grown food. However with incomes averaging 80 euros a month, eating food trucked in from other regions is an unaffordable luxury. As one local woman states, “We have no choice but to stay here until we die.”

The Politics of Hemp

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3-types-cannabis2

The farm bill Obama signed in February 2014 included an amendment to legalize industrial hemp production for research purposes. The amendment allows State Agriculture Departments, colleges and universities to grow hemp (defined as the non-drug oilseed and fiber varieties of Cannabis) for academic or agricultural research purposes. However it only applies only to states where industrial hemp farming is already legal under state law.

As of September 15, 2014, nineteen states had passed laws to provide for hemp pilot studies and/or for production as described by the Farm Bill stipulations.

Six states (Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Tennessee and South Carolina) have gone even further, with legislation nullifying the longstanding federal ban on hemp cultivation. All six states allow farmers to produce hemp for the commercial market.  A year ago, the Obama Justice Department quietly signaled that they wouldn’t prosecute marijuana use in states that had legalized the drug for recreational and/or medical use. Thus far the same hands-off policy seems to apply to states that have legalized hemp production.

The Fiber Modern Synthetics  Replaced

Hemp cultivation is big business. Even though it hasn’t been grown in the United States for decades, America is one of the fastest-growing hemp markets.  In 2011, the U.S. imported $11.5 million worth of legal hemp products (mainly from China), up from $1.4 million in 2000. With the recent anti-smoking movement and declining tobacco exports, hemp is high on the list replacement crops for tobacco farmers.

Industrial hemp is one of the most versatile plants known to man. Hemp fiber is used in the production of paper, textiles, rope, sails, clothing, plastics, insulation, dry wall, fiber board and other construction materials; while hempseed oil is used as a lubricant and base for paints and varnishes, as well as in cooking and beauty products.

Hemp: Proven Alternative to Petroleum-Based Synthetics

hemp

Hemp-based paper, textiles, rope, construction materials and plastics are the tried and true low tech alternative to modern synthetics that consume large quantities of fossil fuel during manufacture. Prior to the industrial revolution, the vast majority of textiles, clothing, canvas (the Dutch word for cannabis), rope and paper was made of hemp.

Before the invention of the cotton gin in the 1820s, 80% of the world’s textiles, fabrics, and clothing were made of hemp. During the nineteenth century, hemp was the main ingredient of 75% of the world’s paper. Until the US government passed a crippling hemp tax in 1937, most bank notes and archival papers were made of hemp (owing to its greater durability) and most paints and varnishes were made from hemp seed oil.

The Conspiracy to Kill Hemp

Hemp first began losing ground in 1850 to cheaper substitutes made of cotton, jute and sisal. Prior to 1917, hemp had to be processed by hand, involving huge labor costs incompatible with mass commercial production. After George W Schlicten automated hemp processing in 1917 with a new machine called the hemp decorticator, Henry Ford set up the first biomass fuel production plant in Iron Mountain Michigan. His intention was to run his Model T on hemp-based ethanol.

ford_quote_about_use_of_hemp_product_smart_marijuana_use

All this was happening at the precise moment that the munitions company DuPont was patenting synthetic fibers (nylon, rayon, Dacron, etc) and plastics derived from petroleum. Hemp posed a major threat to DuPont’s ability to market these synthetic fibers for fabrics, rope and other products because hemp was so cheap and readily available. The chemical giant also had a commercial interest in replacing hemp-based paper with paper produced from wood chips (they held the patent on the sulfates and sulfites used to produce paper pulp) and in replacing ethanol with gasoline as the major fuel source in automobiles (they held the patent on tetraethyl lead, which allowed gasoline to burn more smoothly in the internal combustion engine Ford designed to run on ethanol).

The main co-conspirators in the plot to kill hemp included DuPont, William Randolph Hearst (who owned a logging company and a paper manufacturing plant) and Andrew Mellon, president of Mellon Bank and DuPont’s major financier.

In 1930, Mellon, as US Secretary of the Treasury, created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and appointed his nephew Henry Anslinger to run it. Between 1935 and 1937, Anslinger and a handful of DuPont’s cronies in Congress secretly wrote a bill to tax hemp production.

Meanwhile Anslinger and Hearst orchestrated a massive media campaign demonizing a dangerous new drug called marihuana that supposedly turned Mexicans and black jazz musicians into crazed killers. Anslinger and his cronies rushed through the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 on a Friday afternoon before any lawmakers had a chance to read it. Only a handful realized the crippling effect the new law, which would also tax hemp, would have on the hemp industry.

In 1970 the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act was declared unconstitutional and replaced with the Controlled Substances Act. The latter official equated hemp with the drug marijuana (even though they come from very different plants*) and enacted an official prohibition against hemp cultivation.

*Industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa, variety sativa) is a tall, skinny plant with few major branches below the primary branches at the top. It has seven long thin leaflets and is grown in rows a foot apart. It produces good quality fiber and has a tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) concentration of 1% or less. Marijuana plants (Cannabis sativa, variety indica), in contrast, are short and bushy and must be spaced six feet apart for optimum growth. They have five leaflets, with three of them nearly twice the width of hemp leaflets. They produce negligible usable fiber and have a THC concentration of 4-20%. See image above.

photo credit: arbyreed via photopin cc

Also posted at Veterans Today

The Origin of the White Race

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I’ve just discovered another excellent film series at the  African Element website. This 20 minute clip, Episode 4, is about Bacon’s Rebellion and how the British ruling elite invented race to to confuse poor white’s about their working class status.

Slavery in Black and White
Darius Spearman (2012)

Film Review

 

Bacon’s Rebellion

The concept of whiteness and race is only about four hundred years old. It originates in preferential race laws that were passed after Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. The latter consisted of an alliance of poor white settlers, former indentured servants and Africans who drove Governor William Berkeley out of Jamestown (the capital of colonial Virginia) and burnt it to the ground. A similar rebellion occurred in the Maryland colony around the same time.

Prior to the discovery of the New World, enslavement occurred exclusively in the context of war and military conquest. Ireland was the first plantation colony. During the fifteenth and sixteenth century, large numbers of Irish peasants were driven off their farms as the aristocracy converted them to sheep pasture. With no means of support, landless Irish peasants migrated to London, where they provided for themselves through begging, casual labor and petty crime.

Large numbers ended up in prison. They could win their release by agreeing to a seven to eleven year period of indentured servitude in the American colonies. There they commingled with African indentured servants, who enjoyed equally atrocious living and working conditions.

Classic Divide and Rule

Following Bacon’s rebellion, the Virginia colony sought to drive a wedge between poor blacks and whites by passing a series of laws awarding European indentured servants specific privileges. Among others, this included 50 acres of land (on their release) and the ability to testify in court and enter into contracts.

Simultaneously the legal status of African indentured servants also changed, with the passage of Slave Code laws in Virginia and other colonies. These laws enabled masters the right to claim Africans and their offspring as permanent chattel slaves or property. The legal justification was that Africans weren’t English and didn’t enjoy the protections of English common law.

It was a classic example of divide and rule. Convinced of their innate superiority over Africans, poor white settlers shunned any associate with them, making any cross-racial collaboration (against the British aristocracy) highly improbable.

The Neocon Myths Behind Afghanistan and Iraq

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The Power of Nightmares

Directed by Adam Curtis

BBC (2003)

Part 3 Shadows in the Cave

Film Review

Part 3 concerns the mythology the neoconservatives created around international terrorism to justify the US wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US Invents al Qaeda

The final video starts with the car bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. These were the first attacks Bin Laden and Zawahiri organized against US interests as part of their new international jihad (see How the CIA Funds Jihad). They recruited four bombers from training camps Abdullah Azzam started during the Soviet occupation.

Contrary to the myth promoted by the neocons, these camps were exclusively dedicated to training Muslims to conduct jihad in their own countries (e.g. Uzbekistan and Chechnya). Their leaders wanted absolutely nothing to do with international terrorism or Bin Laden’s jihad against the US. They allowed Zawahiri and Bin Laden to recruit from these camps because he was financing them. Nevertheless, even members of Islamic Jihad opposed what they were doing.

In Jan 2001 the US government brought the embassy bombers to trial in the US. They also tried Bin Laden in absentia. To charge him under existing US law, federal prosecutors had to prove an organized group he commanded carried out the bombings. Because no such group existed, they invented one. The name al Qaeda came from a paid FBI informant.

9-11

Immediately following his election George W Bush, like his father, totally rejected the neoconservative’s insistence that the US should invade other nations and “dictate how to run their countries.”

9-11 would change all this, propelling Richard Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Rumsfeld to international power with four terrifying myths:

  1. That Bin Laden was responsible for the 9-11 attacks (according to official FBI accounts, Khalid Sheik Mohammed was responsible for the “plane operations).”*
  2. That “al Qaeda,” a phantom organization the neocons latched onto for propaganda purposes, was a genuine international entity running sleeper cells in 50-60 countries.
  3. That “al Qaeda’s” ultimate goal was to force the US to live under Islamic fundamentalism.
  4. That the invasion of Afghanistan was essential to destroy the heart of “al Qaeda.”

During the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the US and NATO allied themselves with the Afghan Northern Alliance. The latter hated the foreign Muslims who came to came to Afghanistan for training and received a generous bounty for handing them over to US troops. Nearly all of them ended up in Guantanomo, despite having no connection with bin Laden or international terrorism.

The Role of Hollywood

Following the US invasion, the neocons invested two new myths. The first was that bin Laden was hiding out in a sophisticated bunker built into the Torah Borah caves on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The second was that the US was harboring a vast network of terrorist sleeper cells preparing a new attack on US soil. Although both were totally discredited by mid-2003, these myths would be solidified in the public mind by dozens of TV dramas about hidden terrorist sleeper cells in major US cities.

A popular theme of these dramas was the dirty bomb*, which according to actual DD tests was unlikely to kill anyone because the radiation produced by a dirty bomb was so dispersed.

So-called “dirty bombs** featured prominently in most of these productions, despite numerous Pentagon tests demonstrating dirty bomb radiation is too widely dispersed to kill anyone.

World Leaders Rush to Sign On

Inspired by the immense power this ideology of fear gave political leaders, other western leaders quickly signed on to the terror agenda. When the neocons began circulating the new mythology in mid-2002 that Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda and 9-11, British Prime Minister Tony Blair became one of its most vocal proponents. Despite knowing from the outside that the war on Iraq was based on fabricated evidence.

*This video was produced in 2003, when it was still widely believed that 19 Muslim hijackers were responsible for the attack on the Twin Towers. This version of events is now totally discredited.
**A dirty bomb is an explosive device made from nuclear waste combined with conventional explosives – with the intent of spreading radioactive material over a widely populated area
***This revelation is all the more remarkable given that Curtis made this documentary prior to Dr David Kelly’s so-called “suicide” in 2003. Kelly worked for the British Ministry of Defense and was a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He came to public attention in July 2003, when a BBC journalist published an-off-the record discussion about the British role in fabricating evidence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. He died under extremely suspicious circumstances in later that month. A group of British doctors is demanding a fresh investigation into Kelly’s death: Doctors Claim Cover Upl

http://vimeo.com/84421510

How the CIA Funds Jihad

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The Power of Nightmares

Directed by Adam Curtis

BBC (2003)

Part 2 The Phantom Victory

Film Review

Part 2 focuses on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989 – and how the CIA funded and trained the Islamist Mujahideen to combat the occupation.

Both Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and the neoconservatives claim credit for the hare-brained and incredibly short sighted scheme to recruit, fund and train a jihadist army in Afghanistan. In addition to providing sophisticated weaponry, the CIA trained the Mujahideen in terror techniques, such as assassination, car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IDEs).

Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian who led the Mujahideen, put out a call for all Muslims to join Afghanistan’s holy war. He believed that victory in Afghanistan would inspire foreign fighters to return to their homelands and overthrow corrupt secular dictators the US was propping up.

One Saudi who answered this call was a phenomenally wealthy construction contractor named Osama bin Laden. He, too, provided funding for the Mujahideen.

Arab governments, recognizing a unique opportunity to expel their own jihadist troublemakers, opened their jails and exiled their Islamic extremists to Afhanistan. Egypt released Islamic Jihad founder Dr Zawahiri and his followers.

Gorbachov Orders Soviet Withdrawal

In 1987 when Gorbachov came to power, the Soviet Union was on the brink of economic collapse. Believing he could still save it through political reform, Gorby quickly commenced Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. He also reached out to the Bush senior administration to help install a stable government in Kabul. He warned that failure to do so would allow the Mujahideen to install an Islamic dictatorship. The neoconservatives who ran the Pentagon and State Department refused. With Pakistani support, the Mujahideen (renamed the Taliban) took control of Afghanistan and installed a brutal fundamentalist regime.

Both the neoconservatives and the Taliban/Mujahideen would claim sole credit for victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan. Both groups (and Zbigniew Brzezinski) would also credit US intervention in Afghanistan for the demise of the Soviet Union. In reality the USSR collapsed due to gross economic mismanagement and internal decay.

The Split Between Azzam and Zawahiri

Following the Soviet withdrawal, a major rift occurred between Zawahiri and Azzam. As it turned out, torture also radicalized Zawahiri. Who now proclaimed that politicians who were in bed with the Americans – and their civilian supporters – were legitimate targets for assassination.

Azzam, in contrast, compelled Islamic freedom fighters to swear an oath not to kill innocent civilians. Osama Bin Laden, former deputy to Azzam, joined forces with Zawahiri shortly before the latter’s assassination in 1989.

By the early nineties, powerful movements the Islamic Jihad (and related groups) had built in Egypt and Algeria were on track to win national elections. Aided by the US and France, the Algerian military launched a coup and cancelled the Algerian elections. Egypt, in turn, banned the Muslim Brotherhood and arrested and tortured their leadership.

Islamic Jihad responded by attempting to launch violent jihad in both countries. Owing to their failure to attract a mass following, in May 1998 Zawahuri and Bin Laden would announce a new strategy: taking jihad to their real enemies: the US and Israel.

Meanwhile Back in Washington

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the neoconservatives were more committed than ever to promoting the myth that the US was the sole force for good in a world of evil regimes. Fingering Saddam Hussein as the next satan to be overthrown, in 1990 they put immense pressure on Bush senior to overthrow the Iraqi government during the first Gulf War. Bush wisely took the sage advice of Pentagon advisers who warned that a full scale invasion of Iraq would result in a hopeless quagmire.

Mainstream Republicans Back Clinton

In 1992, mainstream Republicans, frightened by the religious fundamentalism that had overtaken the Republican Party, voted for Clinton in droves. The neocons, in turn, latched onto Clinton as the new evil. They began a vicious propaganda campaign against him, spearheaded by the conservative American Spectator. The campaign widely disseminated spurious allegations that the Clintons had committed financial fraud in Whitewater*, murdered their friend Vince Foster and participated in drug smuggling at the Mena Airport in Arkansas.**

Under immense pressure, Clinton agreed to appoint Kenneth Starr as special prosecutor to investigate these allegations. Starr couldn’t find any evidence of Clinton wrongdoing until he stumbled onto the President’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Following their failure to impeach Clinton, the neocons became as marginalized in the US as Bin Laden, Zawahiri and their ragtag followers in the Arab world.

All this would change with 9-11, which would propel both the Islamists and the neocons.

*The Whitewater controversy involved a questionable real estate deal Clinton engaged in while he was attorney general of Arkansas. The Whitewater investigations would result in criminal convictions for several of Clinton’s associates. Although there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges against the President, his conduct was clearly unethical: see Whitewater Scandal

**While there’s no evidence Governor Clinton was directly involved in cocaine smuggling, he was unresponsive to strong grassroots demand that he investigate the CIA’a drug-gun smuggling operation at the Mena Airport – and to Ross Perot’s (presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996) request that Clinton back the Internal Revenue’s investigation of Menta.

Marketing Terror

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The Power of Nightmares

Directed by Adam Curtis

BBC (2003)

Part 1 Baby It’s Cold Outside

Film Review

This final series of Adam Curtis documentaries is the oldest and, in my view, the best. It has special relevance given the current western crusade against evil incarnate (and CIA creation) ISIS.*

The Power of Nightmares traces the parallel movements of radical Islam and neoconservativism – how both rose to power by inventing terrifying fantasies which they promise to protect us from them.

Curtis begins by tracing the roots of radical Islam, which dates back to 1949 when Egyptian scholar Sayed Qutb attended college briefly in Greely Colorado. Qutb was instantly repelled by the pervasive decay, crassness and vulgarity stemming from America’s fanatical devotion to individualism (an ideology perpetuated by saturation pro-consumption messaging by Edward Bernays’ public relations industry – see The Science of Thought Control).*

The Americans Qutb met were unbelievably selfish and materialistic and lived lonely, sterile lives surrounded by perfectly manicured lawns.

Returning to Egypt in 1950, he was horrified to see that that western individualism, materialism and moral degradation had corrupted his own country, thanks to the invasion of American pop culture.

Believing Islam provided a moral framework to protect Egypt from this selfish individualism, in 1952 he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and supported Gamal Nasser in overthrowing British rule in Egypt.

The CIA Teaches Egypt How to Torture

As Nasser’s vice president, Anwar Sadat (who would become president in 1970) invited the CIA to set up Egypt’s security services and train them how to torture members of the growing Muslim Brotherhood.

As often happens, torture radicalized Qutb. He came to believe that individualism unleashes a barbarous violence and that Muslims infected by materialism cease to be true Muslim. This, in turn, makes them legitimate targets for assassination.

Following Qutb’s execution for treason in 1966, Dr Ayman Zawahari assumed leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. After Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Zawahiri founded the Islamic Jihad (IJ). The treaty was taken as evidence that Sadat was no longer a true Muslim and thus a legitimate assassination target. In 1981, IJ members of his military guard would assassinate him.

Leo Strauss: Father of Neoconservatism

Leo Strauss, German-American political philosopher and Zionist, is considered the father of neoconservatism. Refusing to give interviews or publish articles, Strauss spread his ideas by surrounding himself with a dedicated band of students at the University of Chicago.

Like Qutb, Strauss was horrified by the moral degeneration and social decay he witnessed in the fifties and sixties. He blamed it on liberalism, with its claims hat morality his relative ( i.e. that each individual is entitled to set their own standards of morality). He taught that political leaders had an obligation to set strong moral standards by creating powerful myths for the masses to live by.

In the early seventies, his students, Irving and William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and Francis Fukyama, would formally launch the neoconservative movement to disseminate the myth that the US is the only force for good in a world full of evil.

According to this world view, any country or individual that opposes US policies is satanic. The neoconservatives were perfectly aware they were deliberately creating a fear-inducing myth. Yet according to their Straussian belief system, this was a necessary myth and a necessary fear for the overall good of society.

The Neocons Target Henry Kissinger

Their initial target in their crusade against evil was Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. In 1972, Kissinger was trying to reduce fear and instability through world cooperation, détente with the Soviets and propping up fascist dictators (he called this Realpolitik).

Recruiting Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney (Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford) to the neoconservative cause, they blanketed the media with claims that the Russians were cheating on the nuclear test ban treaty. This directly contradicted CIA evidence that Soviet air defenses were on the verge of collapse, owing to the sorry state of the Soviet economy. So the neocons claimed the Soviets had devised methods of cheating the CIA was incapable of detecting.

When Carter assumed the presidency in 1976, they would revive the Committee on the Present Danger to promote their mythology that the Soviet Union posed a growing threat to the US. Ronald Reagan would be their most prominent recruit.

Politicizing Christianity

Simultaneously, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the neocons embraced fundamentalist Christianity as a vehicle for enforcing socially redeeming moral values. Fundamentalist pastors had always discouraged their congregations from participating in the political process. Guided by the neocons, they reversed themselves, transforming millions of fundamentalists into popular force to lobby for the neoconservative world view.

In 1980, millions of them voted for the first time for Ronald Reagan.

*See excellent article by British historian Nafeez Ahmed tracing the history of ISIS: How the West Created ISIS

** As I am. What emotionally balanced rational being wouldn’t be repulsed by the empty sterile lives Americans lead?

 

http://vimeo.com/84414208

The Ideology of Revolution

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Trapped: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

Adam Curtis

BBC (2007)

Film Review

Part 3 We Will Force You to be Free

Part 3 is about the philosophy of revolution, as articulated by the Algerian psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (author of Wretched of the Earth and Black Faces, White Masks). Fanon, who studied in Paris, was strongly influenced by French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre, who viewed economic equality as essential to personal freedom, believed true freedom was only possible through the overthrow of bourgeois society via violent revolution. Fanon was convinced that the western elites got into people’s heads and turned them into zombies devoid of the ability to think critically or act altruistically for the collective welfare of the community. He also believed that the mere act of organized violence freed people from their competitive individualistic conditioning.

Fanon’s ideas had major influence over numerous third world revolutionaries, including Che Guevara in the 1952 Cuban revolution, Pol Pot in the 1975 Cambodian revolution and Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Pol Pot believed the only way to rid society of bourgeois self-interest was to kill the entire bourgeoisie – all 3 million of them.

Positive and Negative Liberty

The documentary goes on to discuss the work of British political philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997). Berlin believed only two types of freedom, which he called positive and negative liberty, were possible. He labeled Fanon’s type of freedom “positive liberty,” as it involved a new elite forcing the masses to adopt a new way of thinking through violence. In contrast, “negative liberty,” allowed individuals to do whatever they want so long as they don’t infringe on the rights of anyone else.

Curtis contends that both types of so-called liberty involve violence and coercion. As examples, he offers the “shock therapy” the US corporate elite carried out in Russia in 1992 and in Iraq in 2003. While on the surface, both instances of “shock therapy” looks like pure exploitation by US banks and corporations, both were examples of the neoconservative doctrine of spreading “democracy” via armed force.

Shock Therapy in Russia

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, US vulture capitalists invaded Russia and pressured the new regime to abandon its centrally controlled economy virtually overnight. All subsidies for food, energy and other basic necessities were discontinued and most of Russia’s state owned industries were privatized. Millions of Russians lost their jobs and were plunged into abject poverty, as Russian oligarchs and American venture capitalists stripped the newly privatized industries of their wealth. Face with the loss of government subsidies, ordinary Russians lined up on the street and traded everything they owned for food.

In 1993, with the economy on the verge of collapse, Boris Yeltsin dissolved Parliament and launched a military coup to install himself as absolute ruler. He had to borrow money from the oligarchs to run his government, for which he handed over the remaining state-owned industries.

By 1998, the oligarchs and their American investors had bled Russia dry and the currency collapsed. Yeltsin was forced to resign and the Russian people elected Putin as president. The latter moved quickly to strip the oligarchs of their wealth and jailed them or forced them into exile. The vast majority of the Russian people adored him. They didn’t care if they lost basic freedoms (e.g. of speech, the press and assembly) because it was a better alternative than starvation.

Shock Therapy in Iraq

The Americans applied similar shock therapy during their occupation of Iraq, privatizing all the state owned industries (selling them for a pittance to US investors) and writing a new constitution that allowed foreign companies to expatriate 100% of their profits tax free.

In Iraq, the brutal US occupation would enhance the rise of a radical Islamist movement violently opposed to both western colonization and exploitation and the selfish, hedonistic and morally bankrupt lifestyle that seemed to be the driving force behind US foreign policy.

The US and Britain, in turn, responded to the threat of Islamic terrorism by severely restricting the freedom of their own citizens.

Both Fanon and Berlin Were Wrong

The two conclusions Curtis draws is that 1) both the so-called positive and negative liberty Berlin describes lead to violence and coercion and 2) Berlin was wrong in claiming that all attempts to change the world for better lead to tyranny.

My own perspective is that both Fanon and Berlin are wrong. As educated members of the upper middle class, they both made the mistake of assuming that the working class thinks the same way they do, i.e. that the working class is afflicted to the same extent as the middle class by individualism and competitive self interest.

Both failed to appreciate or understand that working class people share a distinct culture with its own values, language and world view. In fact, the issue of working class culture received little attention in academic circles prior to the 1970s.* Basic to this culture are the loyalty and group allegiance based on shared hardship.

Both are deeply ingrained values stemming from early childhood experience, which makes them difficult to reverse with mass media messaging, no matter how pervasive it is.

This is certainly my experience in working with blue collar families for 33+ years. It’s also born out by working class patterns of charitable giving.**

* Some of the better known authors on working class culture include Lillian Breslow Rubin (Worlds of Pain), Richard Sennett (Hidden Injuries of Class), Jake Ryan and Charles Sackrey (Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class), and Alfred Lubrano (Limbo: Blue Collar Roots and White Collar Dreams).

**Studies of working class charitable giving:

 

Free link to Part 3: The Trap 3 We_Will_Force_You_To_Be_Free_BBC/

Human Beings as Machines

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Trapped: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

Adam Curtis

BBC (2007)

Film Review

Part 2 The Lonely Robot

Part 2 takes a close look at the role American economist James Buchanan played in extending free market economic theory to human biology, politics and governments. The Impossibility Theorem is fundamental to Buchanan’s concept of “market democracy.” According to the Impossibility Theorem, collective will is impossible in a democracy because the desires of millions of individuals are too varied and complex. Buchanan maintained the only way to respond democratically to people’s wishes was to allow them to fully pursue their selfish self-interest in the marketplace.

Clinton Dismantles New Deal Welfare Programs

A direct result of Buchanan’s influence over Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton was massive cuts in taxes and social services, coupled with a repeal of corporate regulation. The most immediate result was a massive increase in inequality. Corporate elites became much, much richer – while nearly everyone else became much poorer. Ironically the gap between rich and poor would increase far more rapidly under liberal-leaning Blair and Clinton than under Thatcher and Reagan. Clinton will go down in history as the president who dismantled the welfare programs Roosevelt enacted under the New Deal.

Meanwhile overconfidence in computers and so called “behavioral economics” (free market theory) would result in government departments run by targets and incentive schemes. Sociopaths and economists quickly learned how to game the system by cheating on their targets.*

The Selfish Gene Hypothesis

Likewise biological scientists used free market and game theory to promote the Selfish Gene hypothesis. This theory conceptualized a simplistic view of human beings as machines that were controlled entirely by their genes. It held that genes, which were likened to on-board computers, compelled people to act selfishly to guarantee their genes’ survival.

This mechanistic view of human biology would lead to a profound change, led by psychiatrists and drug companies, in the way Brits and Americans viewed themselves. The new checklist diagnostic system the American Psychiatric Association (APA) launched in 1979 (see Part 1), coupled with the aggressive marketing of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) would lead people to view themselves as machines – machines that needed to be fixed if they experienced unpleasant emotional states, such as worrying, conflict, insecurity or anxiety.

People Pop Pills to Cope with Deteriorating Social Conditions

Because these checklists deliberately ignored life circumstances that might cause unpleasant feelings, common reactions to life stresses became medicalized. This, in turn, led to an expectation that people would take pills to adjust to steadily worsening social conditions.**

The theoretical basis of behavioral economics began to unravel in the 1990s. The Selfish Gene hypothesis was abandoned when new genetic research revealed that cell’s ability to choose, based on environmental conditions, which parts of the DNA molecule become operational.

*More recent research shows that only two sectors of society are driven purely by self-interest: sociopaths and economists.

** For example, loss of good paying and secure jobs, loss of representation in a rigid and corrupt government and overall loss of control over our lives.

Free link to film: The Trap 2 The Lonely Robot [BBC]

The Myth of Individual Freedom

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Another great series of Adam Curtis documentaries about the myth of individual freedom

Trapped: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

Adam Curtis

BBC (2007)

Film Review

Part 1 Fuck You Buddy

Trapped is an exploration of the major thinkers behind the ideologies of extreme individualism and consumerism championed by Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s.

“Part 1 Fuck You Buddy” traces the major influence Game Theory and so-called Public Choice Theory played in the pro-freedom ideologies that propelled both leaders to power. It begins begins by introducing Rand Corporation and their use of Game Theory to fashion America’s cold war strategy. Game Theory is used in poker to predict all possible best moves for each player. Because it allows you to predict mathematically how your opponent will respond, Rand scientists used it to calculate how far the Soviets could be pushed without resorting to nuclear war.

Rand mathematician John Nash (played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind) figured very prominently in this work. A number of cold war strategies are attributed to Nash, including the Nash Equilibrium, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Fuck You Buddy and the Sucker Payoff.

John Nash Proves that Altruism Destroys Social Harmony

Like radical individualist Ayn Rand and conservative economist Friedrich von Hayek, Nash argued that altruism was irrational and destructive to social harmony. In fact, he proved mathematically that the only rational choice in any encounter is to act selfishly and betray the other person. He and his fellow Rand scientists also proved nuclear disarmament was impossible – their equations showed the Russians would cheat.

What’s Wrong with this Picture?*

Ironically every time Nash tested the secretaries at Rand, women always behaved “irrationally” and trusted each other. In 1959, Nash was committed for paranoid schizophrenia.** Yet none of the technocrats at Rand never thought to question the validity of his so-called “proofs.”

Enter R.D. Laing

Over the next decade, Nash’s ideas spread beyond Rand and the Pentagon to the broader public, thanks mainly to the work of radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing. Laing’s contribution was to apply Game Theory to family life. Based on questionnaires he administered to hundreds of families, he produced mathematical equations showing that all so-called normal families continuously use complex strategies to selfishly manipulate one another.

Laing, who dismissed psychiatry as a fake science, became the hero of America’s counter culture anti-psychiatry movement. His ideas also led to the widespread mistrust of authority (i.e. anyone over 30) and institutions that characterized the sixties.

James Buchanan and Public Choice Theory

Conservative economist James Buchanan took Laing’s ideas one step further with Public Choice Theory. Buchanan maintained that politicians and bureaucrats who claimed to be working for the public interest were really self-deluding hypocrites acting in their own self-interest. He also argued that the only way to trust public officials was to reward them for behaving appropriately with mathematical targets, incentives and rewards.

Thatcher would became prime minister in 1979 by promising to free the British public from power mad, unsympathetic bureaucrats.

The Chinese Menu System of Psychiatric Diagnosis

Laing would also have a profound influence on both psychiatric and medical practice. In 1979, the growing influence of the anti-psychiatry movement would lead to a new psychiatric diagnostic system. Unlike physical illnesses, which are diagnosed based on history and physical findings, mental illness would now be diagnosed based on symptom checklists resembling Chinese menus. The adoption of this checklist approach also made it possible for people to “diagnose” themselves and to demand drugs and other treatment interventions to make them “normal.”

*The failure of the Fuck You Buddy model to work with women should have rung all kinds of alarm bells. Not that all women are necessarily more inclined to interpersonal trust and cooperation. However at the very minimum, someone should have taken a hard look at the geeky, Aspergerish types who relied entirely on cold mathematical models to explain social behavior.
**Based on everything I’ve read by and about Nash, I’m highly skeptical he suffered from schizophrenia. It seems much more likely he suffered from Asperger’s disorder complicated by bipolar disorder (which often presents with hallucinations and paranoid delusions). Prior to the 1970s, bipolar disorder was commonly misdiagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. Asperger’s wasn’t formally recognized until 1981.

Free link to Part 1: The Trap 1 Fuck You Buddy [BBC]