Image: Ukraine Uprising (Wikimedia Commons).

Former Time magazine journalist and top Clinton State Department official  Strobe Talbott, and adviser to George Soros, was a dupe of the Russian  intelligence service.

Comrade  J, a blockbuster book about Russian espionage written by former  Washington Post reporter and author Pete Earley, includes these sensational  allegations.

Comrade J is about a Russian master spy, Sergei Tretyakov, who  defected to the United States because he was disgusted with the Russian/Soviet  system and wanted to start a new and better life with his family in America. He  identifies former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, an adviser  to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as having been a trusted contact of  the Russian intelligence service.

Back in 2000, when Talbott was named head of the Yale Center for the Study of  Globalization, he was described as “a key architect of U.S. foreign policy” during the Clinton years. He now heads the Brookings Institution, a liberal  Washington, D.C. think tank. But Tretyakov has some impressive credentials  of his own. He wasn’t just a low-level official. He is described as the highest  ranking Russian intelligence official ever to defect while stationed in the U.S.  and handled all Russian intelligence operations against the U.S. He served under  cover from 1995-2000 at Russia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations but was  secretly working for the FBI for at least three years.

Talbott denies the charges, calling them “erroneous and/or misleading,” and  his denials are featured on page 184 of the book. He says that he always  promoted U.S. foreign policy goals and that the close relationship that he had  with a top Russian official by the name of Georgi Mamedov did not involve any  manipulation or deception.

This is not the first time that Talbott has come under scrutiny for his  alleged contacts with agents of a foreign intelligence service. In 1994, when he  was being considered for his State Department post in the Clinton  Administration, he was grilled by Senator Jesse Helms, a member of the Senate  Foreign Relations Committee, about his relationship with Victor Louis, a Soviet “journalist” who was actually a Soviet KGB intelligence agent. Talbott had been  a young correspondent for Time magazine in Moscow.

As reported by Herbert Romerstein in Human Events newspaper, Talbott admitted  knowing Louis from 1969 until his death in 1992 but that he was not aware of his “organizational affiliations.” Pressed further, Talbott acknowledged that he was  aware of assertions or speculation to that effect about Louis. Helms then  confronted Talbott with a 1986 State Department publication revealing that Louis  had been identified as a KGB agent by KGB defectors and had been used by the  Soviets to spread disinformation. Talbott said he still didn’t know for sure  that Louis was a KGB agent.

Romerstein’s Human Events article accused Talbott of writing articles  following the Soviet line. However, Talbott had powerful friends, including  Senator and fellow Rhodes Scholar Richard Lugar, who supported his nomination.  Lugar continues to call Talbott a “good friend” and “source of sound counsel” who “continues to provide outstanding national and international leadership.”   Romerstein, a retired government expert on anti-American and communist  propaganda activities, said the Earley book is valuable because it documents  that the Russian intelligence service picked up where the KGB left off, and that  operations against the U.S. continued after the end of the Cold War.

But he said the information about Talbott needs further explanation from  Talbott himself. “Talbott really has to explain more than he did to Pete Earley  what his relationship was to Mamedov, and he should tell us about his  relationship with Victor Louis,” Romerstein said.

While the accusations against Talbott are sensational and raise serious  questions about security and procedures at the Department of State, Tretyakov  also aims heavy fire at the institution where he was based-the U.N. He calls the  world body “a nest of spies and scoundrels,” says a major figure in the U.N.’s  International Atomic Energy Agency is a Russian spy, names several U.N.  ambassadors as Russian spies, and describes how a Russian spy infiltrated the  U.N.’s oil-for-food program for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in order to help loot  it.

Earley said that while the timing of the release of the book could have been  better, coming during a time of frenetic presidential campaign activity, the  information deserves more attention than it is getting. He says the three major  broadcasting networks, as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post,  have shown no interest in treating the information in the book as a major news  story. He says he is also disappointed that conservative talk radio has failed to cover the book.

Unfortunately, Tretyakov concluded his interviews about the book and went  into hiding, fearing retaliation from the Russian government.  He “died  unexpectedly,” according to Early, on June 13, 2009.

The book, however, speaks for itself. And the allegations about Strobe  Talbott could prove damaging to the Clinton machine and the Democratic Party in  general.  A close personal friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Talbott is  described in the book as having been “a special unofficial contact” of the  Russian intelligence agency, the SVR, when he was Deputy Secretary of State in  the Clinton Administration. Talbott had been in charge of Russian affairs.

“Inside the SVR, that term was used only to identify a top-level intelligence  source who had high social and/or political status and whose identity needed to  be carefully guarded,” the book says. On the same level of interest was Fidel  Castro’s brother Raul, a communist “recruited by the KGB during the  Khrushchev era” who continued to work for the Russians after the Soviet collapse, the  book says. He, too, was a “special unofficial contact.”

Talbott’s Russian Friend

Talbott was allegedly manipulated and deceived by Russia’s then Deputy  Minister of Foreign Affairs, Georgi Mamedov, who was “secretly working” for  Russian intelligence, the book alleges. The book, however, does not make the  specific charge that Talbott was recruited as a Russian spy or was a conscious  agent of the Russian regime.

The book cites Talbott as an “example of how a skilled intelligence agency  could manipulate a situation and a diplomatic source to its advantage without  the target realizing he was being used for intelligence-gathering purposes.” It  says Mamedov was “instructed” by the SVR to ask specific questions to get  information about certain matters.

Tretyakov

“The point is that there are many ways to get intelligence,” Earley  explained. “And one of the best ways is not by stealing secrets but by becoming  friends, getting people to let their guard down, massaging egos, and getting  them to tell you helpful information.”

However, the book says that Talbott was so compromised by his relationship  with Mamedov that the FBI asked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright not to  share information with Talbott about an espionage investigation at the State  Department because Mamedov might learn about it and tip off Russian  intelligence.

Earley says he confirmed this account but that Albright has refused to  discuss the incident.

The book cites a House of Representatives report, released  in September 2000, which found that the Clinton Administration and Talbott in  particular had excused the actions of the Russian government and had failed to  promote democracy and free enterprise there.

Earley’s book itself discusses how, during the mid 1990s, Talbott, State  Department spokesman Mike McCurry, and President Clinton himself echoed Russian  propaganda that justified Russian attacks on Chechnya. This “delighted the  propagandists inside the SVR,” which “claimed credit” for what the U.S.  officials had said, the book says.

It seems that Talbott has a tendency, which continues to the present day, of  whitewashing the Russian regime.

In congressional testimony on U.S.-Russian relations, Talbott  attacked the Bush Administration for withdrawing from the ABM treaty, urged  Russian membership in the World Trade Organization, and advocated more  negotiations and agreements with Russia over nuclear arms. The U.S. has “set a  bad example” for the Russians in foreign affairs, Talbott said.

Talbott Promotes the U.N.

Ironically, Talbott has been about town promoting his own book, The  Great Experiment, about the need for “global governance” and expanding the  power of the U.N. in foreign affairs. His book ignores the role of Soviet spy  ALGER HISS IN FOUNDING THE U.N. but thanks George Soros and Walter Isaacson,  formerly of Time but now with the Aspen Institute, for their input on his  manuscript.

Talbott also gives thanks to convicted document thief Sandy Berger, Bill  Clinton’s national security adviser; Soros associate Morton Halperin, formerly  of the ACLU; Javier Solana of the European Union; and Bill Clinton, “for helping  me better to understand several aspects of his view of the world and America’s  role in it.”

With all of these high-powered connections, the story about Talbott being  used by the Russians seems to be a story worth reporting or commenting on.  However, if the media examine the charges against Talbott, they might have to  deal with other evidence and information in the book about how spies for the  Soviet intelligence service manipulated the U.S. media.

Talbott

The book, for instance, explains how the Soviet KGB peddled charges that  deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons to Europe in the 1980s might lead to their  use and a “nuclear winter” or climate crisis for the world. The book says the  story was cooked up by the KGB and fed to the Western world by anti-nuclear  activists such as Carl Sagan, who penned an article on the topic for the Council  on Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs. The book notes that Sagan later  appeared on the ABC television network to talk about the subject.

Tretyakov said he discovered “dozens of case studies” of the KGB using “propaganda and disinformation to influence public opinion” in the West.

His Time at Time

A prominent journalist himself at one time, Talbott achieved notoriety for  writing a July 20, 1992, Time column, “The Birth of the Global Nation,” saying  that in the next century “nationhood as we know it will be obsolete,” that we  will all some day become world citizens, and that wars and human rights  violations in the 20th century had clinched “the case for world government.” This reflects the views of the pro-world government World Federalist  movement.

Talbott was identified as a World Federalist when he took over the Brookings  Institution. He has acknowledged that his parents were members of the World  Federalist movement, which collaborated with Soviet front groups such as the  Soviet Peace Committee during the Cold War and tried to avoid scrutiny from  anti-communist congressional committees after World War II. Talbott even says he had a dog  growing up known as “Freddie,” which was short for World Federalists.

Other prominent World Federalists have been Senator Alan Cranston and Rep.  John B. Anderson.

World Federalism

Talbott’s global left-wing vision was endorsed personally by President  Clinton, who had sent a June 22, 1993, letter to the World Federalist  Association (WFA) when it gave Talbott its Norman Cousins Global Governance  Award. In the letter, Clinton noted that Cousins, the WFA founder, had “worked  for world peace and world government” and that Talbott was a “worthy recipient” of the award. Talbott and Bill Clinton became friends when they were both Rhodes  Scholars.

Hillary Clinton, who has been friends with Talbott since their days together  at Yale University, gave a videotaped address to the WFA in 1999 on the occasion  of the group giving former anchorman of the CBS Evening News Walter Cronkite its  global governance award. She praised Cronkite’s work. For his part, Cronkite  declared that “we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a  world government” and America must “yield up some of our sovereignty.”

The WFA, which renamed itself Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), lobbies  for more power and authority for the U.N., including passage of the Law of the  Sea Treaty. It pours money into Congressional races for the House and Senate and  receives funding from major liberal foundations. One of their favorite  politicians has been Senator Richard Lugar, perhaps the most prominent Senate  proponent of the Law of the Sea Treaty, who joined Talbott at the Brookings  Institution to discuss U.S.-Russian relations. Lugar has accepted campaign cash  from the CGS political action committee.

By Pam Martens: February 3, 2014

Senator Carl Levin’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Is Probing Global Banks’ Involvement in the U.S. Commodities Markets

In a span of four days last week, two current executives and one recently retired top ranking executive of major financial firms were found dead. Both media and police have been quick to label the deaths as likely suicides. Missing from the reports is the salient fact that all three of the financial firms the executives worked for are under investigation for potentially serious financial fraud.

The deaths began on Sunday, January 26. London police reported that William Broeksmit, a top executive at Deutsche Bank who had retired in 2013, had been found hanged in his home in the South Kensington section of London. The day after Broeksmit was pronounced dead, Eric Ben-Artzi, a former risk analyst turned whistleblower at Deutsche Bank, was scheduled to speak at Auburn University in Alabama on his allegations that Deutsche had hid $12 billion in losses during the financial crisis with the knowledge of senior executives. Two other whistleblowers have brought similar charges against Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank is also under investigation by global regulators for potentially rigging the foreign exchange markets – an action similar to the charges it settled in 2013 over its traders’ involvement in the rigging of the interest rate benchmark, Libor.

Just two days after Broeksmit’s death, on Tuesday, January 28, a 39-year old American, Gabriel Magee, a Vice President at JPMorgan in London, plunged to his death from the roof of the 33-story European headquarters of JPMorgan in Canary Wharf. According to Magee’s LinkedIn profile, he was involved in “Technical architecture oversight for planning, development, and operation of systems for fixed income securities and interest rate derivatives.”

Magee’s parents, Bill and Nell Magee, are not buying the official story according to press reports and are planning to travel from the United States to London to get at the truth. One of their key issues, which should also trouble the police, is how an employee obtains access to the rooftop of one of the mostly highly secure buildings in London.

Nell Magee was quoted in the London Evening Standard saying her son was “a happy person who was happy with his life.” His friends are equally mystified, stating he was in a happy, long-term relationship with a girlfriend.

JPMorgan is under the same global investigation for potential involvement in rigging foreign exchange rates as is Deutsche Bank. The firm is also said to be under an investigation by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for its involvement in potential misconduct in physical commodities markets in the U.S. and London.

One day after Magee’s death, on Wednesday, January 29, 2014, 50-year old Michael (Mike) Dueker, the Chief Economist at Russell Investments, is said to have died from a 50-foot fall from a highway ramp down an embankment in Washington state. Again, suicide is being presented by media as the likely cause. (Do people holding Ph.D.s really attempt suicide by jumping 50 feet?)

According to Dueker’s official bio, prior to joining Russell Investments, he was an assistant vice president and research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis from 1991 to 2008. His duties there included serving as an associate editor of the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. He also was editor of Monetary Trends, a monthly publication of the St. Louis Fed.

Bloomberg News quotes William Poole, former President of the St. Louis Fed from 1998 to 2008, saying “Everyone respected his professional skills and good sense.”

According to a report in the New York Times in November of last year, Russell Investments was one of a number of firms that received subpoenas from New York State regulators who are probing the potential for pay-to-play schemes involving pension funds based in New York. No allegations of wrongdoing have been made against Russell Investments in the matter.

The case of David Bird, the oil markets reporter who had worked at the Wall Street Journal for 20 years and vanished without a trace on the afternoon of January 11, has this in common with the other three tragedies: his work involves a commodities market – oil – which is under investigation by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for possible manipulation. The FBI is involved in the Bird investigation.

Bird left his Long Hill, New Jersey home on that Saturday, telling his wife he was going for a walk. An intentional disappearance is incompatible with the fact that he left the house wearing a bright red jacket and without his life-sustaining medicine he was required to take daily as a result of a liver transplant. Despite a continuous search since his disappearance by hundreds of volunteers, local law enforcement and the FBI, Bird has not been located.

When a series of tragic events involving one industry occur within an 18-day timeframe, the statistical probability of these events being random is remote. According to a number of media reports, JPMorgan is conducting an internal investigation of the death of Gabriel Magee. Given that JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Russell Investments are subjects themselves of investigations, a more serious, independent look at these deaths is called for.

http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/02/a-rash-of-deaths-and-a-missing-reporter-%e2%80%93-with-ties-to-wall-street-investigations/

Update: See related article: Suspicious Death of JPMorgan Vice President, Gabriel Magee, Under Investigation in London

Update 2: See related article: JPMorgan Vice President’s Death in London Shines a Light on the Bank’s Close Ties to the CIA

The takeover of power in Kiev by the mainstream opposition is a coup that has been executed by force, which overlooks the opinions of at least half of the Ukrainian population. Yet, you would not know this from listening to such media outlets and networks as CNN or Fox News or reading the headlines being produced by Reuters and the state-owned British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The events in Kiev are misleadingly being billed and framed by these media sources and the so-called “Western” governments they support, either directly or indirectly, as the triumph of people power and democracy in Ukraine.

Utter hypocrisy is at work. When similar protests and riots broke out in Britain and France, the positions taken and the tones used by the above actors was very different. These actors framed the protests and riots in Britain and France as issues of law and order, using language very favourable to the British and French governments. Where were the statements of concern about the rights and safety of protesters from the US government and the European Commission when force was used by the British and French governments or when protesters died?

While not overlooking, disregarding, or devaluing the loss of life in Kiev, the roots of the violence there need to be discussed honestly and traced back. On the same note, it has to be understood that members of the Ukrainian opposition and their supporters were agitating for a violent confrontation against the Ukrainian government. There is no argument here against the right of citizens to protest, but rioting or taking up arms with the intent to oust a democratically-elected government is a different matter that no government in the US or the EU would accept on their own territory.

When the laws that the US and EU countries have in place are quickly glimpsed at, gross double-standards are evident. Universally, the criminal codes of these governments forbid the assembly of their citizens for the purpose of discussing the overthrow of the government alone. Their criminal codes consider whoever advocates, aids, advises, or preaches for the overthrowing or the government by political subversion as a criminal and threat to the state. In the US “anyone  with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so” is considered a felon under the criminal code. If two or more persons even meet to talk about removing the government in most these countries, they can be imprisoned. In the case of the United States, as the US Criminal Code states, these individuals “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.”

Washington and the European Union have aided and encouraged the above acts by openly supporting the campaign of the Ukrainian opposition and even sending officials and politicians to encourage the anti-government forces in Ukraine. The irony is that this is the exact type of behaviour that the US and the European Union have outlawed on their own territories and would not tolerate against themselves whatsoever.

If it were merely a case of ethnocentrisim, this attitude could be called exceptionalism. It, however, is not exceptionalism. To be very candid, it is heartless regime change perpetrated by governments that have a record of insincerely hiding behind democracy and humanitarianism.

How the European Union Enabled the Coup

What has taken place in Kiev is a coup that has unfolded through the manipulation of the emotions and hopes of a significant segment of the Ukrainian population by opposition leaders.  It has to be emphasized that many opposition supporters are doing what they believe is right for their country and that they themselves are the victims of their own corrupt leaders. It must equally be emphasized, regardless of which side they support, that the Ukrainian people are all the victims of their corrupt politicians. Both the governing party and opposition parties have taken turns ruling the country and exploiting Ukraine for their personal gains.

The opposition leadership has basically usurped power while the European Union and the United States have given their full support to them. This has been done via EU and US attempts to legitimize the opposition power grab through the portrayal of the coup in Kiev as the climax of a popular revolution in Ukraine.

Albeit the mainstream opposition is not truly united, opposition leaders have grossly refused to fulfill any of their obligations after an agreement was brokered between them and the Ukrainian government by the European Union through mediation by the troika of France, Germany, and Poland. The Ukrainian government and Russia have rightly accused the European Union and the EU mediators of refusing to fulfill their obligations to make sure that the opposition respects the EU-brokered agreement.  Instead the European Union has allowed Ukrainian opposition leaders to ignore their commitments and to grossly violate the agreement.

While one faction of the opposition was negotiating another faction of the opposition continued the pressure from the streets, refusing to stop until the government was ousted. The agreement signed between the Ukrainian government and the mainstream opposition on February 21, 2014 had no clause or terms, however, that granted the opposition the rights or power to take over the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of Ukraine or to unilaterally create new legislation. Any information that implies that the agreement allows for this is false and misleading.

Instead the agreement has been used as a disguise for the opposition’s takeover of the state. In truth, the European Union helped broker the agreement as a means of empowering the Ukrainian opposition. The leaked phone conversation between the US Department of State’s Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador in Kiev, even indicated that the US and EU were planning on creating a new government in Ukraine. The Nuland tape reveals that Washington was working to inaugurate a new opposition-led government in Ukraine with Ukrainian figures that would readily submit and acquiesce to US and EU demands.

What Nuland and Pyatt discussed is regime change in Ukraine, which has nothing to do with what the Ukrainian people want and everything to do with what the US government and its allies need from Ukraine. If the US government really believed that the Ukrainian people have the right to determine their future, it would not be busy working to appoint political figures in the Ukrainian government or trying to configure how the Ukrainian government would be constructed. Instead Washington would leave the creation of government in Kiev to the Ukrainian people.

Using Parliamentary Camouflage in the Rada to Disguise a Coup

The leaders of the opposition are trying to cosmetically deceive Ukrainians and the world by hijacking the legislative branch of their country’s government. There are strong chances that this is being done with the coordination and the encouragement of the US government and the European Union. To legitimize their takeover, the Ukrainian opposition is now using the Ukrainian Parliament or Verkhovna Rada. The Rada was already a heavily corrupt place with notoriously crooked and dishonest politicians dominating both the pro-government and opposition sides of the aisle, now it is functioning as a rubber stamp legislature. In other words, the Ukrainian opposition leadership is trying to legitimize its coup in Kiev by using the dysfunctional Ukrainian Rada.

The Rada has not been at full decorum for all the voting. The opposition initially used the instability and fleeing of the government to opportunistically declare its unchallenged Rada bills as legitimate. This happened while approximately half of Ukraine’s parliamentarians were either absent or in hiding due to the violence and riots in Kiev. In other words, opposition leaders used the absence of about half the parliamentarians in the Rada to falsely give a cover of legality to their coup by taking the opportunity to pass parliamentary legislation that would be defeated if all the Rada’s members were present and voting.

Albeit under the management of the opposition the Rada has retained a sufficient amount of parliamentarians or deputies to hold an emergency session, there are serious ethical, procedural, technical, legal, and constitutional questions about what is taking place. To hold an emergency session, the Rada needs at least two hundred and twenty-six of its parliamentarians to be present.  Under opposition management there were initially two hundred and thirty-nine deputies, but this did not entitle the opposition to pass any type of legislature that it pleased or to pretend that the Rada was operating under a regular constitutional session. Moreover, there were important and specific procedures that still needed to be followed that the opposition parties outright ignored and violated.

Ukraine’s biggest political party, the Party of Regions, and the other pro-government parties or independent parliamentarians have not been present for all the Rada votes taking place. Albeit an increasing number of pro-government deputies are now beginning to negotiate with the opposition and a faction of the deputies from the Party of Regions have returned to the Rada to protect themselves, the absence of many of the Rada’s deputies and the fact that all Ukrainian parliamentarians are not inside the Rada to challenge the opposition bills makes, at the very least, the legislation that has been passed questionable. Examining other factors, the laws being passed in the Rada become even more questionable.

The Rada’s chairman (speaker or president), Volodymyr Rybak, has not been present for the reading of Rada bills either. It has been reported that Rybak has resigned from his Rada post. Not only must the individual that has been elected as Rada chairperson by a full constitutional session of the Rada be present for the voting process to be legitimate, but the Rada chairperson must also approve the acts adopted by the Rada with their signature before they are sent to the executive branch of government for promulgation. Nor can Ukrainian bills be passed into law or promulgated after the Rada votes without a final presidential signature. The only way that a presidential veto can be overturned is if two-thirds of the Rada’s deputies or members support a bill after the presidential veto, in which case either the president must sign it or the Rada’s chairperson signs the bill into law.

The opposition has tried to circumvent the necessary presidential approval and the absence of a Rada chairperson. Instead opposition leaders got their parties to unilaterally select a new chairman, Oleksandr Turchynov, so that they can push their political agenda forward without getting challenged. Turchynov’s appointment as Rada chairman was meant to give the Ukrainian opposition’s parliamentary work the cover of legitimacy. The opposition appointed Turchynov to claim that constitutional procedures have been followed, because a Rada chairperson has been overseeing their partisan bills and approving them. Moreover, Oleksandr Turchynov is not only overseeing and approving the unilateral bills of the Ukrainian opposition, but has also signed them into law as the acting president of Ukraine too.

What the opposition has done with Turchynov, however, is illegal for a number of reasons. Firstly, most of the Rada, meaning all the deputies or members of the Ukrainian Parliament, must convene before a new Rada chairman or speaker is selected to oversee parliamentary voting on bills. This did not taken place, because many of the Rada’s members were missing when he was selected. Secondly, Turchynov cannot assume the role of Rada chairperson if there is already a chairperson with a first vice-chairperson (first deputy chairperson) or assume the role of acting president until President Viktor Yanukovych resigns or is impeached by the Rada, which did not take place when he was declared acting president.

Using divisions inside the bewildered Party of Regions hierarchy, the opposition has sought to cover its unconstitutional tracks. Days after Turchynov was appointed chairman of the Rada, the opposition got a faction of the Party of Regions deputies that returned to the Rada and a series of independent Rada deputies to impeach President Yanukovych. These Party of Regions and independent parliamentarians are working with the opposition in order to keep their places or to secure positions for themselves under the new political regime in Kiev.

The Rada is now a rubber stamp body controlled by the opposition. It has already acted illicitly. Although there is still uncertainty or arguments on whether the 2004 version or 2010 version of the Ukrainian Constitution is in operation, Article 82 of the Ukrainian Constitution (regardless of whichever version is in operation) stipulates that the Rada is only “competent on the condition that no less than two-thirds of its constitutional composition has been elected.”

Discussions have also taken place about new media regulations and expelling the Russian media from Ukraine. Exposing just how fake their democratic leanings are, the opposition leadership has threatened to use the Rada to additionally outlaw any of the political parties in Ukraine that have opposed them. This includes banning Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions

The Party of Regions is not only the most widely supported Ukrainian political party; it also holds nearly forty percent of the seats in the Rada. No other political party even comes close to holding this type of support in the Ukrainian political landscape or the Rada. Excluding the parliamentary seats of its political allies in the unicameral Rada, which houses four hundred and forty-two seats in total, the Party of Regions alone has one hundred and sixty-five seats. The opposition political parties and coalitions comprised of the All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland (Batkivshchyna), the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform, and Svoboda have a combined one hundred and sixty-seven seats. There is no question about which party the majority of Ukrainian voters support. Outlawing the Party of Regions essentially annuls the electoral choice of the most significant plurality of Ukrainians.

Opposition leaders also want to illicitly use the Rada to outlaw the Ukrainian Communist Party. The Ukrainian Communist Party has called the so-called EuroMaidan/Euromaidan protests a foreign-sponsored coup against Ukraine and its people. The opposition threats about banning the Ukrainian Communist Party, and even killing its members in the streets, is meant to punish it for the position it has taken and for the support it has given to the Ukrainian government against the anti-government protests in Kiev.

The Balkanization of Ukraine? Is Ukraine to follow Yugoslavia’s Path?

It seems that maybe the worst is yet to come. Is Ukraine destined to go the way of the former Yugoslavia? The question is being entertained more and more seriously. Andrei Vorobyov, a Russian diplomat in Kiev, even commented, much to the angst of the Ukrainian government, that federalization may be the best solution for Ukraine and that Ukraine was already in a de facto federal state. The reasons behind the angst about the federalization comments are the increasing anxieties of Ukrainian authorities and citizens about the possibility that their country could divide or fragment.

Before the opposition takeover of Kiev in February 2014, Ukraine was already a polarized country and society. The western portion of Ukraine has been under the influence and control of the mainstream opposition whereas the eastern and southern portions have been under the influence and control of the Party of Regions and its political allies. The opposition’s actions outside of the framework of democracy have opened the door for lawlessness and a devolution of governmental power.

Different areas of Ukraine have fallen into the hands of opposition militias. The militia of Aleksandr Muzychko (MC – link added by yours truly), one of the ultra-nationalist opposition leaders and a fervent opponent of Russia that fought alongside Chechen separatists in Grozny against the Russian military, now control different towns in the western portion of Ukraine. They have threatened to wage war against the Ukrainian government using tanks and heavy weaponry.

Political machinations from all sides are at work too. After the opposition takeover, officials from President Yanukovych’s own Party of Regions laid responsibility for the deaths in Kiev squarely on his shoulder and condemned him as a coward and traitor to Ukraine, virtually ignoring the role that opposition leaders played in igniting the political crisis and the loss of life. Fearing the violent segments of the opposition, the Party of Regions has additionally condemned the mainstream opposition’s intimidation campaign and threats of violence against the Party of Regions and its supporters.

There are Rada deputies or parliamentarians from the Party of Regions that are now in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine and afraid to return to Kiev due to the violent opposition militias that have taken over. There are reports that a parallel parliament may be established somewhere in eastern or southern Ukraine, which would effectively divide the country like Bosnia was divided when the Bosnian Serbs created their own parallel parliament after the Bosnian Parliament in Sarajevo ignored Bosnia’s communitarian formula that essentially guaranteed a veto to Bosnia’s Bosniak, Croat, and Serb communities as a means of maintaining co-existence.

The silent or unheard of half of Ukraine, which the mainstream media in the US and the EU refuse to acknowledge, is now bracing itself and preparing for an expansion of the violence in Kiev. It fears the spread of violence being perpetrated by the militant segment of the opposition. The violence has already begun to touch Kharkiv. There are now calls for secession from the predominately-Russophone Crimean Peninsula, which wants to annul the Soviet era decision of Joseph Stalin to detach the Crimean Peninsula from Soviet Russia as an award to Soviet Ukraine that symbolizes unity and kinship between Russia and Ukraine. There are fears that Russia will intervene military in the Crimean Peninsula, which have even been addressed with an indirect warning from Susan Rice to the Kremlin not to sent troops into Ukraine.

As a precautionary reaction to the violent and armed segments of the Ukrainian opposition that have destabilized Kiev, counter-militias are now being formed in places like the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea, which is the historical home of Ukraine’s Muslim minority, or the oblasts of Kharkiv and Donetsk in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine. Officials and Ukrainians from these eastern and southern parts of Ukraine have also said that they do not recognize the Rada in Kiev as legitimate any longer and that the legislation being passed by it is illegal and void.

The Blurred Lines that Exist between Ukrainians and Russians

Ukraine’s polarized politics also overlap with the contours of organized religion. While the majority of Ukrainians are Christians that belong to the Russian Orthodox Church of Ukraine (simply called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church), there is also a division among them that is linked to nationalist politics. About half the followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church look to Patriarch Kirill in Moscow as their patriarch and as the supreme primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but the other half belongs to the breakaway portion of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that follows Patriarch Filaret in Kiev. Ultra-nationalists and opposition supporters mostly follow the Kiev Patriarchate and those supporting the Party of Regions generally look to Moscow as their spiritual centre. These divisions have the potential of being manipulated in a Yugoslavia-style scenario.

The picture can get complicated by the minority faiths in Ukraine. Ukrainian Catholics, both the Unites of the Greek Catholic Church and the Roman Catholics, generally seem to favour the opposition and integration with the EU too. There has actually been growing resentment towards the Ukrainian Catholics who are viewed as Polish agents by members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.  Despite the well-known and advertised dislike of Jews by a segment of opposition supporters (similar negative views about Jews, which have historically existed in Ukraine, also exist among some government supporters), Ukrainian Jews are divided between the pro-government and anti-government camps. According to the Jerusalem Post and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ukrainian Jews have taken part in the anti-government protests alongside Ukrainian ultra-nationalists. Ukrainian Muslims, three-fifths of which are Crimean Tartars, on the other hand seem to generally support the pro-government side, albeit there is Muslim support for opposition parties.  Ukrainian Muslims, however, are cautious and do not support the dissolution of Ukraine or separatist feelings that exist among the Russian community.

The Eastern European country’s politics are even more complicated by the fact that the Russian language is prevalent in the eastern and southern sections of Ukraine. There is an ongoing dispute about the exact numbers. Due to the closeness of both the Russian and Ukrainian languages, in some parts of Ukraine it is hard to identify if the local population is actually speaking a dialect of the Ukrainian language or the Russian language. Even more confounding, the lines between Ukrainian and Russian identity and language are not clear cut.

Aside from the blurred language lines and the fact that both Ukrainian and Russian were once one language, there is a blurred line on who is ethnically Ukrainian and who is ethnically Russian. Approximately thirty percent of Ukrainians consider Russian as either their first or mother language and are Russophones according to the Ukrainian government, but only about half of these Russophone Ukrainian citizens are actually ethnically Russkiye (ethnic Russian). Sociological work conducted in 2004 asserts that the number of Russophones is actually much higher and that Russian and Ukrainian are actually used almost equally.

There is even a minority of ethnic Russians that speak Ukrainian as their firstly language and a much larger minority of ethnic Ukrainians that speak Russian as their first language. Many Ukrainian citizens are also bilingual and there is also a preference for using Russian as a daily language and business language in many parts of Ukraine. As part of a historical and sociological process, ethnic Ukrainians have adopted the identity of ethnic Russians or vice-versa, ethnic Russians have adopted identities as ethnic Ukrainians.

If anything is to be remembered about the causes of the First World War and the Second World War, it should be that nationalism and feelings of exceptionalism were used like opiates to captivate and manipulate ordinary citizens into supporting war and the rise of opportunists. The Ukrainian opposition leadership has deliberately promoted and nurtured ultra-nationalist sentiments to blind and manipulate its followers. Ukrainian nationalism, specifically the Western-leaning pro-European Union type, has been formulated on the unhealthy basis of anti-Russian sentiments and a distorted notion of the cultural superiority of the European Union and the cultural inferiority of the Eastern Slavs (particularly Russians, but including Ukrainians and Belarusians).

It is the multiple convergences between Ukrainians and Russians and the complex relationship between the Ukrainian and Russian identities that make the decidedly anti-Russian attitudes of the mainstream opposition, some of which openly glorify Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich and its invasion of the Soviet Union, so dangerous for solidarity in Ukrainian society and Kiev’s future relations with Russia and the other countries ordering Ukraine.

Revolution for Democracy or Riots Promoting Subversion to the European Union?

The crisis in Ukraine did not take place, because the Ukrainian government was corrupt or used force against the protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square. It started, because the Ukrainian government refused to sign the European Union’s EU-Ukraine Association Agreement in November 2013. This is why the violence in Kiev has not only unreservedly been given political cover from the political establishment in the United States and the European Union to internationally give it public legitimacy, but has also received media support in the form of biased reporting that favours the opposition.

Social media has been saturated by advertisements and questionable grassroots videos and footage, like the professionally-produced Council for Foreign Relations-linked “I Am a Ukrainian” YouTube video, that paints a distorted narrative of the reasons behind the anti-government riots. Like the other propaganda ignoring the reasons behind the anti-government protests, the “I Am a Ukrainian” video totally ignores the fact that the protests in Kiev did not start on the basis of democratic demands, but started due to the Ukrainian government’s refusal to sign an agreement with the European Union.

Actually, the Ukrainian government and the Party of Regions were initially very supportive of the association agreement with the European Union, but backed out after the EU refused to renegotiate the agreement or to give financial guarantees and economic relief to Kiev for the trade losses and higher gas prices that Ukraine would face as a result of signing the agreement. Moreover, the Ukrainian oligarchs aligned to President Yanukovich and his Party of Regions realized that the agreement would allow corporations from the European Union to dismantle their own corporations and to replace their monopolies with EU corporate monopolies and control. The EU agreement would force Ukraine to change many of its trade laws and regulations that would disadvantage the Ukrainian oligarch’s corporations and, in economic terms, allow for Ukraine to be gutted and essentially reduced to an Eastern European colony.

The Ukrainian government did not sign the EU agreement, because it is pro-Russian. Albeit the Party of Regions politically caters to Ukrainians that view Russia favourable, anyone that says or thinks that the leadership in the Party of Regions is a pro-Russian political party is grossly misinformed or lying. The Ukrainian government did not sign the European Union’s EU-Ukraine Association Agreement  because of its own interests.

If the deal only targeted the Ukrainian economy without challenging the monopolies and privileges of the Ukrainian oligarchs, President Yanukovich and the Ukrainian government would have signed it without any hesitation. The EU deal, however, was simply unfeasible and suicidal for both the Ukrainian oligarchs and the economy. The agreement with the EU additionally would force Ukraine to cut its trade ties with its major economic partners, Russia and the other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), without providing any alternative. It would have politically hurt the Party of Regions in the future too.

The Euro-Atlantic Drive into Eurasia: Using Kiev to Target Russia and Beyond…

The US and EU support for the Ukrainian opposition, even if in part, is aimed at bringing Ukraine into their orbit and to encircle, isolate, and eventual subvert the Russian Federation. Resurgent Orangists and a new coalition of opposition figures have formed a new front, which can be called a neo-Orangist front, which is intensely intent on shifting Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic orbit of Washington and the European Commission through eventual membership in such institutions and supranational structures as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union.

These opposition politicians made a mess of things after the Orange Revolution when they ran Ukraine earlier. It remains to be seen if they can re-orient Ukraine in the Euro-Atlantic orbit (the word Euro-Atlantic camouflages the role that the US plays in Europe; more properly it should be called the Euro-American orbit). When they were ruling Ukraine they were too busy embezzling and fighting one another to further the goals of the US and the EU. Yulia Tymoshenko, when she was in the position of prime minister, and the Orangist President Viktor Yushchenko were even busy accusing one another of corruption and betrayal.

There is a simultaneous campaign to erase Ukraine’s history and its deep and historic ties to Russia from the Soviet and pre-Soviet eras. Not only has the Russian Federation been demonized and the Russian language discriminated against in Ukraine by the mainstream opposition and the ultra-nationalist elements inside its ranks, but Ukrainian citizens with ethnic Russian background or favourable views towards Russia and Eurasian integration have also been portrayed as traitors, foreigners, or the enemies of Ukraine. [MC - know how that feels since I'm a Tea Party supporter] Any reminders of a common history with Russia have been attacked, including monuments to the fallen soldiers that defended Ukraine and the Soviet Union from the Germans during the Second World War or, as it is called in Ukraine and Russia, the Great Patriot War.

Concerning Syria and Iran, it has been repeated stated many times that the road to Tehran goes through Damascus and that the US and its allies have targeted Syria as a means of going after Iran. In regards to Ukraine and Russia, a very similar axiom is also applicable. The road to Moscow goes through Kiev. The takeover of Ukraine is part and parcel of a geo-strategic campaign against the Russians, as is the regime change campaign against Damascus to a lesser degree.

Regime change in Ukraine is part of a covert and overt war against the Russian Federation. The installment of a puppet government in Ukraine will remove one of the most important partners that Moscow has. If Ukraine joins the EU and NATO, it will be a direct threat to the western borders of Russia and the security of one of the most important Russian naval bases, which is the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and located at Sevastopol in the Crimean Peninsula.

If they escalate, the events in Ukraine will disrupt the security and diplomatic ties between all the regional countries in Eastern Europe. Poland is already being watched with distrust from Belarus and Russia. The Polish government, in its interaction with Ukraine, has acted just like the Turkish government has acted towards Syria. With the backing of the governments of the US, Britain, Germany, and France, Warsaw has supported Ukrainian anti-government forces in multiple ways, just as Ankara has supported anti-government forces and regime change operations inside Syria in multiple ways.

Russia is not the only country concerned about what has happened in Ukraine. The estrangement of Ukraine from Russia additionally aims to isolate Russia from Europe and to reduce the Eurasian Union being formed by Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus into a predominately Asiatic project instead of a dually European and Asian project. Both the Belarusian and Kazakhstani government are worried too. Countries like Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, and China are watching the events in Kiev with concern as well. Ukraine has been a partner to these countries and they all view the conflict in Syria and the anti-government riots in Ukraine and Venezuela as part of a multi-front global war that the US has waged against them and their allies.

Just to give an idea on the importance of the value that these countries put on Ukraine, it should be noted that the Chinese signed a December 5, 2013 bilateral agreement announcing that Ukraine was Beijing’s strategic partner. Included in the agreement was a Chinese pledge to provide Kiev with the military protection of a Chinese nuclear umbrella.

The governments of Ukraine, China, and Russia had also discussed admitting Ukraine into the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement (SCO).

There is no question that the Ukrainian government is corrupt, but the opposition is no better and equally as corrupt. It cannot be denied, however, that when it comes to the question of popular backing by the Ukrainian people, the Party of Regions and its political allies have greater support from Ukrainians than the opposition parties that have taken over the country through the use of force and intimidation. Nor does the pandering of fearful Party of Regions officials towards the empowered opposition justify or hide the coup that has taken place in Kiev; these officials are now trying to either save their own skins or salvage the situation.

Even if it denied that the opposition originally planned a coup, only when democratic means are exhausted can such a use of force be legitimate. The mainstream opposition leadership in Ukraine galvanized all their supporters and mobilized them into pouring into Kiev and pushed for a violent escalation, while the pro-government half of the country remained mostly immobilized. As mentioned and alluded to earlier, the show of numbers in the streets of Kiev by the opposition also has an equally large or possibly even larger number of Ukrainians opposing it. What about their opinions about the future of Ukraine?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-road-to-moscow-goes-through-kiev-how-the-protests-in-ukraine-transformed-into-a-coup-that-could-target-russia/5370479

Excellent article!

Russia Sends Troops to Crimea

The situation in Ukraine is evolving by the hour.  Right wing ultranationalists and their “liberal” collaborators have taken control of the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) and deposed the democratically elected, though utterly corrupt and incompetent, President Yanukovich.

Former Prime Minister, and convicted criminal, Yulia Tymoshenko has been freed, and is now making common cause with Noe-Nazi Right Sector, Svoboda, and other fascist elements, while the opposition’s nominal leaders such as Arseny Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko begin to fade into the background.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin undoubtedly watches with anxiousness.  In Washington, Victoria Nuland and the Obama administration rejoice.  However, perhaps the most critical development of all is soon to emerge in Europe, as the forces of Western finance capital prepare to welcome Ukraine into the fold.  They will come bearing the usual neoliberal gifts: austerity and “economic liberalization.”

With the overthrow of the Yanukovich government, the $15 billion of promised Russian financial assistance to Ukraine is in doubt.  According to Moody’s rating agency, “Ukraine will require $24 billion to cover a budget deficit, debt repayments, natural gas bills and pension support just in 2014.”  Without Moscow’s continued bond purchasing and other forms of financial aid, and with pro-EU forces taking control of the country’s economic and foreign policy, the outcome is not hard to predict: a rescue package from Europe and the IMF with all the usual austerity conditions attached.

In exchange for European “aid”, Ukraine will be forced to accept the driving down of wages, significant cuts to the public sector and social services, in addition to a rise in taxes on the working class and slashing of pensions.  Moreover, the country will be compelled to accede to a liberalization program that will allow Europe to dump goods into the Ukrainian market, deregulation and the further opening up the country’s financial sector to predatory speculation and privatization.

It doesn’t take psychic powers to predict these developments.  One merely has to look at the wave of austerity in European countries such as Greece and Cyprus.  Furthermore, Eastern European countries with similar economic and historical conditions to Ukraine – Latvia and Slovenia specifically – provide a roadmap for what Ukraine should expect.

The Model of “Success”

As Ukraine’s pro-EU “leadership” under Tymoshenko & Co. (and the fascist Right) begins to eye the future, they will immediately look to Europe to address the most pressing economic concerns.  The Ukrainian people however would do well to examine the precedent of Latvia to understand what lies in store for them.  As renowned economists Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers wrote in 2012:

What enabled Latvia to survive the crisis were EU and IMF bailouts…Elites aside, many emigrated…Demographers estimate that 200,000 have departed the past decade – roughly 10 per cent of the population…Latvia experienced the full effects of austerity and neoliberalism. Birth rates fell during the crisis – as is the case almost everywhere austerity programs are imposed. It continues having among Europe’s highest rates of suicide and of road deaths caused by drunk driving. Violent crime is high, arguably, because of prolonged unemployment and police budget cuts. Moreover, a soaring brain drain moves in tandem with blue-collar emigration.

The myth of prosperity to follow EU integration and bailouts is just that, a myth.  The reality is pain and suffering on a scale far greater than the poverty and unemployment Ukraine, especially the western portion of the country, have already experienced.  The most highly educated, those most equipped to take up the mantle of leadership, will flee en masse.   Those leaders who remain will do so while lining their pockets and ingratiating themselves to the European and American financiers who will flock to Ukraine like vultures to carrion.  In short, the corruption and mismanagement of the Yanukovich government will seem like a pleasant memory.

The “liberalization” that Europe demands will create massive profits for speculators, but very few jobs for working people.  The best land will be sold to foreign corporations and land-grabbers, while the resources, including the highly regarded agricultural sector, will be stripped and sold on the world market, leaving farmers and city dwellers alike in grinding poverty, their children going to bed hungry.  This will be the “success” of Ukraine.  One shudders to think what failure would look like.

In Slovenia, another Eastern European country that has experienced the “success” Europe strives for, the economic dictates of Brussels have ravaged the country’s working people and its institutions.  The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued a 2013 report in which it recommended that, as a first step, Slovenia act to “help the banking sector stand on its feet again,” adding that, “additional and radical measures are necessary as soon as possible.”

Furthermore, the OECD recommended the full privatization of Slovenia’s banks and other major firms, despite predicting a more than 2% contraction of the economy.  In laymen’s terms, Europe recommends that Slovenia sacrifice itself and its people to the forces of international finance capital, nothing less.  Such is the cost of European “integration.”

Ukraine is undergoing a transformation of the worst kind.  Its political institutions have been trampled upon by a motley collection of delusional liberals, slick politicians in fancy suits, and Nazi extremists.  The social fabric is tearing apart at the seams, with each region searching for a local solution to the problems of what used to be their nation.  And, in the midst of it all, the specter of profit-seeking financiers with dollar signs in their eyes is all the Ukrainian people can expect. Source

The author of the article spells it out. One only has to look at history to see who suffers most and it’s usually the indigenous people.

This article was written in the last days of February 2004 in response to the barrage of disinformation in the mainstream media.

It was completed on February 29th, the day of President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s kidnapping and deportation by US Forces.  Minor editing in early March 2004.

Ten years later, the US-France-Canada Coup d’Etat against democracy and the people of Haiti is amply documented.

Michel Chossudovsky, February 22, 2014

Introduction

The armed insurrection which contributed to unseating President Aristide on February 29th 2004 was the result of a carefully staged military-intelligence operation.

The Rebel paramilitary army crossed the border from the Dominican Republic in early February. It constitutes a well armed, trained and equipped paramilitary unit integrated by former members of Le Front pour l’avancement et le progrès d’Haiti (FRAPH), the  “plain clothes” death squadrons, involved in mass killings of civilians and political assassinations during the CIA sponsored 1991 military coup, which led to the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide

The self-proclaimed Front pour la Libération et la reconstruction nationale (FLRN) (National Liberation and Reconstruction Front) is led by Guy Philippe, [image right] a former member of the Haitian Armed Forces and Police Chief. Philippe had been trained during the 1991 coup years by US Special Forces in Ecuador, together with a dozen other Haitian Army officers. (See Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, 24 February 2004).

The two other rebel commanders and associates of Guy Philippe, who led the attacks on Gonaives and Cap Haitien are Emmanuel Constant, nicknamed “Toto” and Jodel Chamblain, both of whom are former Tonton Macoute and leaders of FRAPH.

In 1994, Emmanuel Constant led the FRAPH assassination squadron into the village of Raboteau, in what was later identified as “The Raboteau massacre”:

“One of the last of the infamous massacres happened in April 1994 in Raboteau, a seaside slum about 100 miles north of the capital. Raboteau has about 6,000 residents, most fishermen and salt rakers, but it has a reputation as an opposition stronghold where political dissidents often went to hide… On April 18 [1994], 100 soldiers and about 30 paramilitaries arrived in Raboteau for what investigators would later call a “dress rehearsal.” They rousted people from their homes, demanding to know where Amiot “Cubain” Metayer, a well-known Aristide supporter, was hiding. They beat people, inducing a pregnant woman to miscarry, and forced others to drink from open sewers. Soldiers tortured a 65-year-old blind man until he vomited blood. He died the next day.

The soldiers returned before dawn on April 22. They ransacked homes and shot people in the streets, and when the residents fled for the water, other soldiers fired at them from boats they had commandeered. Bodies washed ashore for days; some were never found. The number of victims ranges from two dozen to 30. Hundreds more fled the town, fearing further reprisals.” (St Petersburg Times, Florida, 1 September 2002)

During the military government (1991-1994), FRAPH was (unofficially) under the jurisdiction of the Armed Forces, taking orders from Commander in Chief General Raoul Cedras. According to a 1996 UN Human Rights Commission report, FRAPH had been supported by the CIA.

Under the military dictatorship, the narcotics trade, was protected by the military Junta, which in turn was supported by the CIA. The 1991 coup leaders including the FRAPH paramilitary commanders were on the CIA payroll. (See Paul DeRienzo,   http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RIE402A.html , See also see Jim Lobe, IPS, 11 Oct 1996). Emmanuel Constant alias “Toto” confirmed, in this regard, in a CBS “60 Minutes” in 1995, that the CIA paid him about $700 a month and that he created FRAPH, while on the CIA payroll. (See Miami Herald, 1 August 2001). According to Constant, the FRAPH had been formed “with encouragement and financial backing from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA.” (Miami New Times, 26 February 2004)

The Civilian “Opposition”

The so-called “Democratic Convergence” (DC) is a group of some 200 political organizations, led by former Port-au-Prince mayor Evans Paul.  The “Democratic Convergence” (DC) together with “The Group of 184 Civil Society Organizations” (G-184) has formed a so-called “Democratic Platform of Civil Society Organizations and Opposition Political Parties”.

The Group of 184 (G-184), is headed by Andre (Andy) Apaid [image], a US citizen of Haitian parents, born in the US. (Haiti Progres,) Andy Apaid owns Alpha Industries, one of Haiti’s largest cheap labor export assembly lines established during the Duvalier era. His sweatshop factories produce textile products and assemble electronic products for a number of US firms including Sperry/Unisys, IBM, Remington and Honeywell. Apaid is the largest industrial employer in Haiti with a workforce of some 4000 workers. Wages paid in Andy Apaid’s factories are as low as 68 cents a day. (Miami Times, 26 Feb 2004). The current minimum wage is of the order of $1.50 a day:

“The U.S.-based National Labor Committee, which first revealed the Kathie Lee Gifford sweat shop scandal, reported several years ago that Apaid’s factories in Haiti’s free trade zone often pay below the minimum wage and that his employees are forced to work 78-hour weeks.” (Daily News, New York, 24 Feb 2004)

Apaid was a firm supporter of the 1991 military coup. Both the Convergence démocratique and the G-184 have links to the FLRN (former  FRAPH death squadrons) headed by Guy Philippe. The FLRN is also known to receive funding from the Haitian business community.

In other words, there is no watertight division between the civilian opposition, which claims to be non-violent and the FLRN paramilitary. The FLRN is collaborating with the so-called “Democratic Platform.”

US Funding: The Role of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)

In Haiti, this “civil society opposition” is bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy which works hand in glove with the CIA. The Democratic Platform is supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI) , which is an arm of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Senator John McCain is Chairman of IRI’s Board of Directors. (See Laura Flynn, Pierre Labossière and Robert Roth, Hidden from the Headlines: The U.S. War Against Haiti, California-based Haiti Action Committee (HAC), http://www.haitiprogres.com/eng11-12.html ).

G-184 leader Andy Apaid was in liaison with Secretary of State Colin Powell in the days prior to the kidnapping and deportation of President Aristide by US forces on February 29. His umbrella organization of elite business organizations and religious NGOs, which is also supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI), receives sizeable amounts of money from the European Union.(http://haitisupport.gn.apc.org/184%20EC.htm ).

It is worth recalling that the NED, (which oversees the IRI) although not formally part of the CIA, performs an important intelligence function within the arena of civilian political parties and NGOs. It was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for setting up the NED during the Reagan Administration: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (‘Washington Post’, Sept. 21, 1991).

The NED channels congressional funds to the four institutes: The International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). These organizations are said to be “uniquely qualified to provide technical assistance to aspiring democrats worldwide.” See IRI,  http://www.iri.org/history.asp )

In other words, there is a division of tasks between the CIA and the NED. While the CIA provides covert support to armed paramilitary rebel groups and death squadrons, the NED and its four constituent organizations finance “civilian”  political parties and non governmental organizations with a view to instating American “democracy” around the World.

The NED constitutes, so to speak, the CIA’s “civilian arm”. CIA-NED interventions in different part of the World are characterized by a consistent pattern, which is applied in numerous countries.

The NED provided funds to  the “civil society” organizations in Venezuela, which initiated an attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez. In Venezuela it was the “Democratic Coordination”, which was the recipient of NED support; in Haiti it is the “Democratic Convergence” and G-184.

Similarly, in former Yugoslavia, the CIA channeled support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) (since 1995), a paramilitary group involved in terrorist attacks on the Yugoslav police and military. Meanwhile, the NED through the  “Center for International Private Enterprise” (CIPE) was backing the DOS opposition coalition in Serbia and Montenegro. More specifically, NED was financing the G-17, an opposition group of  economists responsible for formulating (in liaison with the IMF) the DOS coalition’s  “free market” reform platform in the 2000 presidential election, which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.

The IMF’s Bitter “Economic Medicine”

The IMF and the World Bank are key players in the process of economic and political destabilization. While carried out under the auspices of an intergovernmental body, the IMF reforms tend to support US strategic and foreign policy objectives.

Based on the so-called “Washington consensus”, IMF austerity and restructuring measures through their devastating impacts, often contribute to triggering social and ethnic strife. IMF reforms have often precipitated the downfall of elected governments. In extreme cases of economic and social dislocation, the IMF’s bitter economic medicine has contributed to the destabilization of entire countries, as occurred in Somalia, Rwanda and Yugoslavia. (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, 2003.

The IMF program is a consistent instrument of economic dislocation. The IMF’s reforms contribute to reshaping and downsizing State institutions through drastic austerity measures. The latter are implemented alongside other forms of intervention and political interference, including CIA covert activities in support of rebel paramilitary groups and opposition political parties.

Moreover, so-called “Emergency Recovery” and “Post-conflict” reforms are often introduced under IMF guidance, in the wake of a civil war, a regime change or “a national emergency”.

In Haiti, the IMF sponsored  “free market” reforms have been carried out consistently since the Duvalier era. They have been applied in several stages since the first election of president Aristide in 1990.

The 1991 military coup, which took place 8 months following Jean Bertrand Aristide’s accession to the presidency, was in part intended to reverse the Aristide government’s progressive reforms and reinstate the neoliberal policy agenda of the Duvalier era.

A former World Bank official Mr. Marc Bazin was appointed Prime minister by the Military Junta in June 1992. In fact, it was the US State Department which sought his appointment.

Bazin had a track record of working for the “Washington consensus.”  In 1983, he had been appointed Finance Minister under the Duvalier regime, In fact he had been recommended to the Finance portfolio by the IMF: “President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier had agreed to the appointment of an IMF nominee, former World Bank official Marc Bazin, as Minister of Finance”. (Mining Annual Review, June, 1983). Bazin, who was considered Washington’s “favorite”, later ran against Aristide in the 1990 presidential elections.

Bazin, was called in by the Military Junta in 1992 to form a so-called  “consensus government”. It is worth noting that it was precisely during Bazin’s term in office as Prime Minister that the political massacres and extra judicial killings by the CIA supported FRAPH death squadrons were unleashed, leading to the killing of more than 4000 civilians. Some 300,000 people became internal refugees,  “thousands more fled across the border to the Dominican Republic, and more than 60,000 took to the high seas” (Statement of Dina Paul Parks, Executive Director, National Coalition for Haitian Rights, Committee on Senate Judiciary, US Senate, Washington DC, 1 October 2002). Meanwhile, the CIA had launched a smear campaign representing Aristide as “mentally unstable” (Boston Globe, 21 Sept 1994).

The 1994 US Military Intervention

Following three years of military rule, the US intervened in 1994, sending in 20,000 occupation troops and “peace-keepers” to Haiti. The US military intervention was not intended to restore democracy. Quite the contrary: it was carried out to prevent a popular insurrection against the military Junta and its neoliberal cohorts.

In other words, the US military occupation was implemented to ensure political continuity.

While the members of the military Junta were sent into exile, the return to constitutional government required compliance to IMF diktats, thereby foreclosing the possibility of a progressive “alternative” to the neoliberal agenda. Moreover, US troops remained in the country until 1999. The Haitian armed forces were disbanded and the US State Department hired a mercenary company DynCorp to provide “technical advice” in restructuring the Haitian National Police (HNP).

“DynCorp has always functioned as a cut-out for Pentagon and CIA covert operations.” (See Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch, February 27, 2002 ) Under DynCorp advice in Haiti, former Tonton Macoute and Haitian military officers involved in the 1991 Coup d’Etat were brought into the HNP. (See Ken Silverstein, Privatizing War, The Nation, July 28, 1997, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/silver.htm )

In October 1994, Aristide returned from exile and reintegrated the presidency until the end of his mandate in 1996. “Free market” reformers  were brought into his Cabinet. A new wave of deadly macro-economic policies was adopted under a so-called Emergency Economic Recovery Plan (EERP) “that sought to achieve rapid macroeconomic stabilization, restore public administration, and attend to the most pressing needs.” (See IMF Approves Three-Year ESAF Loan for Haiti, Washington, 1996, http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/1996/pr9653.htm ).

The restoration of Constitutional government had been negotiated behind closed doors with Haiti’s external creditors. Prior to Aristide’s reinstatement as the country’s president, the new government was obliged to clear the country’s debt arrears with its external creditors. In fact the new loans provided by the  World Bank, the  Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the IMF were used to meet Haiti’s obligations with international creditors. Fresh money was used to pay back old debt leading to a spiraling external debt.

Broadly coinciding with the military government, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined by 30 percent (1992-1994). With a per capita income of $250 per annum, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and among the poorest in the world. (see World Bank, Haiti: The Challenges of Poverty Reduction, Washington, August 1998).

The World Bank estimates unemployment to be of the order of 60 percent. (A 2000 US Congressional Report estimates it to be as high as 80 percent. See US House of Representatives, Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee, FDHC Transcripts, 12 April 2000).

In the wake of three years of military rule and economic decline, there was no “Economic Emergency Recovery” as envisaged under the IMF loan agreement. In fact quite the opposite: The IMF imposed  “stabilization” under the “Recovery” program required further budget cuts in  almost non-existent social sector programs.  A civil service reform program was launched, which consisted in reducing the size of the civil service and the firing of “surplus” State employees. The IMF-World Bank package was in part instrumental in the paralysis of public services, leading to the eventual demise of the entire State system. In a country where health and educational services were virtually nonexistent, the IMF had demanded the lay off of “surplus” teachers and health workers with a view to meeting its target for the budget deficit.

Washington’s foreign policy initiatives were coordinated with the application of the IMF’s deadly economic medicine. The country had been literally pushed to the brink of economic and social disaster.

The Fate of Haitian Agriculture

More than 75 percent of the Haitian population is engaged in agriculture, producing both food crops for the domestic market as well a number of cash crops for export. Already during the Duvalier era, the peasant economy had been undermined. With the adoption of the IMF-World Bank sponsored trade reforms, the agricultural system, which previously produced food for the local market, had been destabilized. With the lifting of trade barriers, the local market was opened up to the dumping of US agricultural surpluses including rice, sugar and corn, leading to the destruction of the entire peasant economy. Gonaives, which used to be Haiti’s rice basket region, with extensive paddy fields had been precipitated into bankruptcy:

. “By the end of the 1990s Haiti’s local rice production had been reduced by half and rice imports from the US accounted for over half of local rice sales. The local farming population was devastated, and the price of rice rose drastically ” ( See Rob Lyon, Haiti-There is no solution under Capitalism! Socialist Appeal, 24 Feb. 2004, http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2004/02/9095.php ).

In matter of a few years, Haiti, a small impoverished country in the Caribbean, had become the World’s fourth largest importer of American rice after Japan, Mexico and Canada.

The Second Wave of IMF Reforms

The presidential elections were scheduled for November 23, 2000. The Clinton Administration had put an embargo on development aid to Haiti in 2000. Barely two weeks prior to the elections, the outgoing administration signed a Letter of Intent with the IMF. Perfect timing: the agreement with the IMF virtually foreclosed from the outset any departure from the neoliberal agenda.

The Minister of Finance had sent the amended budget to the Parliament on December 14th. Donor support was conditional upon its rubber stamp approval by the Legislature. While Aristide had promised to increase the minimum wage, embark on school construction and  literacy programs, the hands of the new government were tied. All major decisions regarding the State budget, the management of the public sector, public investment, privatization, trade and monetary policy had already been taken. They were part of the agreement reached with the IMF on November 6, 2000.

In 2003, the IMF imposed the application of a so-called “flexible price system in fuel”, which immediately triggered an inflationary spiral. The currency was devalued. Petroleum prices increased by about 130 percent in January-February 2003, which served to increase popular resentment against the Aristide government, which had supported the implementation of the IMF economic reforms.

The hike in fuel prices contributed to a 40 percent increase in consumer prices (CPI) in 2002-2003 (See Haiti—Letter of Intent, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, and Technical Memorandum of Understanding, Port-au-Prince, Haiti June 10, 2003, http://www.imf.org/external/np/loi/2003/hti/01/index.htm ).

In turn, the IMF had demanded, despite the dramatic increase in the cost of living, a freeze on wages as a means to “controlling inflationary pressures.” The IMF had in fact pressured the government to lower public sector salaries (including those paid to teachers and health workers).  The IMF had also demanded the phasing out of the statutory minimum wage of approximately 25 cents an hour. “Labour market flexibility”, meaning wages paid below the statutory minimum wage would, according to the IMF, contribute to attracting foreign investors. The daily minimum wage was $3.00 in 1994, declining to about $1.50- 1.75 (depending on the gourde-dollar exchange rate) in 2004.

In an utterly twisted logic, Haiti’s abysmally low wages, which have been part of the IMF-World Bank “cheap labor” policy framework since the 1980s, are viewed as a means to improving the standard of living. In other words, sweatshop conditions in the assembly industries (in a totally unregulated labor market) and forced labor conditions in Haiti’s agricultural plantations are considered by the IMF as a key to achieving economic prosperity, because they “attract foreign investment.”

The country was in the straightjacket of a spiraling external debt. In a bitter irony, the IMF-World Bank sponsored austerity measures in the social sectors were imposed in a country which has 1,2 medical doctors for 10,000 inhabitants and where the large majority of the population is illiterate. State social services, which were virtually nonexistent during the Duvalier period, have collapsed.

The result of IMF ministrations was a further collapse in purchasing power, which had also affected middle income groups. Meanwhile, interest rates had skyrocketed. In the Northern and Eastern parts of the country, the hikes in fuel prices had led to a virtual paralysis of transportation and public services including water and electricity.

While a humanitarian catastrophe is looming, the collapse of the economy spearheaded by the IMF, had served to boost the popularity of the Democratic Platform, which had accused  Aristide of “economic mismanagement.” Needless to say, the leaders of the Democratic Platform including Andy Apaid –who actually owns the sweatshops– are the main protagonists of the low wage economy.

Applying the Kosovo Model

In February 2003, Washington announced the appointment of James Foley as Ambassador to Haiti [image Foley and Aristide, 2003]. Foley had been a State Department spokesman under the Clinton administration during the war on Kosovo. He previously held a position at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Foley had been sent to Port au Prince in advance of the CIA sponsored operation. He was transferred to Port au Prince in September 2003, from a prestige diplomatic position in Geneva, where he was Deputy Head of Mission to the UN European office.

It is worth recalling Ambassador Foley’s involvement in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999.

Amply documented, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was financed by drug money and supported by the CIA. ( See Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo Freedom Fighters Financed by Organized Crime, Covert Action Quarterly, 1999, http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/2743/1.html )

The KLA had been involved in similar targeted political assassinations and killings of civilians, in the months leading up to the 1999 NATO invasion as well as in its aftermath.  Following the NATO led invasion and occupation of Kosovo, the KLA was transformed into the Kosovo Protection Force (KPF) under UN auspices. Rather than being disarmed to prevent the massacres of civilians, a terrorist organization with links to organized crime and the Balkans drug trade, was granted a legitimate political status.

At the time of the Kosovo war, the current ambassador to Haiti James Foley was in charge of State Department briefings, working closely with his NATO counterpart in Brussels, Jamie Shea. Barely two months before the onslaught of the NATO led war on 24 March 1999, James Foley had called for the “transformation” of the KLA into a respectable political organization:

“We want to develop a good relationship with them [the KLA] as they transform themselves into a politically-oriented organization,’ ..`[W]e believe that we have a lot of advice and a lot of help that we can provide to them if they become precisely the kind of political actor we would like to see them become… “If we can help them and they want us to help them in that effort of transformation, I think it’s nothing that anybody can argue with..’ (quoted in the New York Times, 2 February 1999)

In the wake of the invasion “a self-proclaimed Kosovar administration was set up composed of the KLA and the Democratic Union Movement (LBD), a coalition of five opposition parties opposed to Rugova’s Democratic League (LDK). In addition to the position of prime minister, the KLA controlled the ministries of finance, public order and defense.” (Michel Chossudovsky, NATO’s War of Aggression against Yugoslavia, 1999, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO309C.html )

The US State Department’s position as conveyed in Foley’s statement was that the KLA would “not be allowed to continue as a military force but would have the chance to move forward in their quest for self government under a ‘different context’” meaning the inauguration of a de facto “narco-democracy” under NATO protection. (Ibid).

With regard to the drug trade, Kosovo and Albania occupy a similar position to that of Haiti: they constitute “a hub” in the transit (transshipment) of narcotics from the Golden Crescent, through Iran and Turkey into Western Europe. While supported by the CIA, Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) and NATO, the KLA has links to the Albanian Mafia and criminal syndicates involved in the narcotics trade.( See Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo Freedom Fighters Financed by Organized Crime, Covert Action Quarterly, 1999, http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/2743/1.html )

Is this the model for Haiti, as formulated in 1999 by the current US Ambassador to Haiti James Foley?

For the CIA and the State Department, the FLRN and Guy Philippe are to Haiti what the KLA and Hashim Thaci are to Kosovo.

In other words, Washington’s design is “regime change”: topple the Lavalas administration and install a compliant US puppet regime, integrated by the Democratic Platform and the self-proclaimed Front pour la libération et la reconstruction nationale (FLRN), whose leaders are former FRAPH and Tonton Macoute terrorists. The latter are slated to integrate a “national unity government” alongside the leaders of the Democratic Convergence and The Group of 184 Civil Society Organizations led by Andy Apaid. More specifically, the FLRN led by Guy Philippe is slated to rebuild the Haitian Armed forces, which were disbanded in 1995.

What is at stake is an eventual power sharing arrangement between the various Opposition groups and the CIA supported Rebels, which have links to the cocaine transit trade from Colombia via Haiti to Florida. The protection of this trade has a bearing on the formation of a new “narco-government”, which will serve US interests.

A bogus (symbolic) disarmament of the Rebels may be contemplated under international supervision, as occurred with the KLA in Kosovo in 2000. The “former terrorists” could then be integrated into the civilian police as well as into the task of “rebuilding” the Haitian Armed forces under US supervision.

What this scenario suggests, is that the Duvalier-era terrorist structures have been restored. A program of civilian killings and political assassinations directed against Lavalas supporter is in fact already underway.

In other words, if Washington were really motivated by humanitarian considerations, why then is it supporting and financing the FRAPH death squadrons? Its objective is not to prevent the massacre of civilians. Modeled on previous CIA led operations (e.g. Guatemala, Indonesia, El Salvador), the FLRN death squadrons have been set loose and are involved in targeted political assassinations of Aristide supporters.

The Narcotics Transshipment Trade

While the real economy had been driven into bankruptcy under the brunt of the IMF reforms, the narcotics transshipment trade continues to flourish.  According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Haiti remains “the major drug trans-shipment country for the entire Caribbean region, funneling huge shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States.” (See US House of Representatives, Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee, FDHC Transcripts, 12 April 2000).

It is estimated that  Haiti is now responsible for 14 percent of all the cocaine entering the United States, representing billions of dollars of revenue for organized crime and US financial institutions, which launder vast amounts of dirty money. The global trade in narcotics is estimated to be of the order of 500 billion dollars.

Much of this transshipment trade goes directly to Miami, which also constitutes a haven for the recycling of dirty money into bona fide investments, e.g. in real estate and other related activities.

The evidence confirms that the CIA was protecting this trade during the Duvalier era as well as during the military dictatorship (1991-1994). In 1987, Senator John Kerry as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee was entrusted with a major investigation, which  focused  on the links between the CIA and the drug trade, including the laundering of drug money to finance armed insurgencies. “The  Kerry Report” published in 1989, while centering its attention on the financing of the Nicaraguan Contra, also included a section on Haiti:

“Kerry had developed detailed information on drug trafficking by Haiti’s military rulers that led to the indictment in Miami in 1988, of Lt. Col. Jean Paul. The indictment was a major embarrassment to the Haitian military, especially since Paul defiantly refused to surrender to U.S. authorities.. In November 1989, Col. Paul was found dead after he consumed a traditional Haitian good will gift—a bowl of pumpkin soup…

The U.S. senate also heard testimony in 1988 that then interior minister, Gen. Williams Regala, and his DEA liaison officer, protected and supervised cocaine shipments. The testimony also charged the then Haitian military commander Gen. Henry Namphy with accepting bribes from Colombian traffickers in return for landing rights in the mid 1980’s.

It was in 1989 that yet another military coup brought Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril to power… According to a witness before Senator John Kerry’s subcommittee, Avril is in fact a major player in Haiti’s role as a transit point in the cocaine trade.” ( Paul DeRienzo, Haiti’s Nightmare: The Cocaine Coup & The CIA Connection, Spring 1994, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RIE402A.html )

Jack Blum, who was John Kerry‘s Special Counsel, points to the complicity of US officials in a 1996 statement to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Drug Trafficking and the Contra War:

“…In Haiti …  intelligence “sources” of ours in the Haitian military had turned their facilities over to the drug cartels. Instead of putting pressure on the rotten leadership of the military, we defended them. We held our noses and looked the other way as they and their criminal friends in the United States distributed cocaine in Miami, Philadelphia and New, York.” (http://www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/ciacont2.html )

Haiti not only remains at the hub of the transshipment cocaine trade, the latter has grown markedly since the 1980s. The current crisis bears a relationship to Haiti’s role in the drug trade. Washington wants a compliant Haitian government which will protect the drug transshipment routes, out of Colombia through Haiti and into Florida.

The inflow of narco-dollars –which remains the major source of the country’s foreign exchange earnings– are used to service Haiti’s spiraling external debt, thereby also serving the interests of the external creditors.

In this regard, the liberalization of the foreign-exchange market imposed by the IMF has provided (despite the authorities pro forma commitment to combating the drug trade) a convenient avenue for the laundering of narco-dollars in the domestic banking system. The inflow of narco-dollars alongside bona fide “remittances” from Haitians living abroad, are deposited in the commercial banking system and exchanged into local currency. The foreign exchange proceeds of these inflows can then be recycled towards the Treasury where they are used to meet debt servicing obligations.

Haiti, however, reaps a very small percentage of the total foreign exchange proceeds of this lucrative contraband. Most of the revenue resulting from the cocaine transshipment trade accrues to criminal intermediaries in the wholesale and retail narcotics trade, to the intelligence agencies which protect the drug trade as well as to the financial and banking institutions where the proceeds of this criminal activity are laundered.

The narco-dollars are also channeled into “private banking” accounts in numerous offshore banking havens. (These havens are controlled by the large Western banks and financial institutions). Drug money is also invested in a number of financial instruments including hedge funds and stock market transactions. The major Wall Street and European banks and stock brokerage firms launder billions of dollars resulting from the trade in narcotics.

Moreover, the expansion of the dollar denominated money supply by the Federal Reserve System , including the printing of billions of dollars of US dollar notes for the purposes of narco-transactions constitutes profit for the Federal Reserve and its constituent private banking institutions of which the most important is the New York Federal Reserve Bank. See (Jeffrey Steinberg, Dope, Inc. Is $600 Billion and Growing, Executive Intelligence Review, 14 Dec 2001,

In other words, the Wall Street financial establishment, which plays a behind the scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy, has a vested interest in retaining the Haiti transshipment trade, while installing a reliable “narco-democracy” in Port-au-Prince, which will effectively protect the transshipment routes.

It should be noted that since the advent of the Euro as a global currency, a significant share of the narcotics trade is now conducted in Euro rather than US dollars. In other words, the Euro and the dollar are competing narco-currencies.

The Latin American cocaine trade –including the transshipment trade through Haiti– is largely conducted in US dollars.  This shift out of dollar denominated narco-transactions, which undermines the hegemony of the US dollar as a global currency, largely pertains to the Middle East, Central Asian and the Southern European drug routes.

Media Manipulation

In the weeks leading up to the Coup d’Etat, the media has largely focused its attention on the pro-Aristide “armed gangs” and “thugs”,  without providing an understanding of the role of the FLRN Rebels.

Deafening silence: not a word was mentioned in official statements and UN resolutions regarding the nature of the FLRN.  This should come as no surprise: the US Ambassador to the UN  (the man who sits on the UN Security Council) John Negroponte.  played a key role in the CIA supported Honduran death squadrons in the 1980s when he was US ambassador to Honduras. (See San Francisco Examiner, 20 Oct 2001  http://www.flora.org/mai/forum/31397 )

The FLRN rebels are extremely well equipped and trained forces. The Haitian people know who they are. They are Tonton Macoute of the Duvalier era and former FRAPH assassins.

The Western media is mute on the issue, blaming the violence on President Aristide. When it acknowledges that the Liberation Army is composed of death squadrons, it fails to examine the broader implications of its statements and that these death squadrons are a creation of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The New York Times has acknowledged that the “non violent” civil society opposition is in fact collaborating with the death squadrons, “accused of killing thousands”, but all this is described as “accidental”. No historical understanding is provided. Who are these death squadron leaders?  All we are told is that they have established an “alliance” with the “non-violent” good guys who belong to the “political opposition”. And it is all for a good and worthy cause, which is to remove the elected president and “restore democracy”:

“As Haiti’s crisis lurches toward civil war, a tangled web of alliances, some of them accidental, has emerged. It has linked the interests of a political opposition movement that has embraced nonviolence to a group of insurgents that includes a former leader of death squads accused of killing thousands, a former police chief accused of plotting a coup and a ruthless gang once aligned with Mr. Aristide that has now turned against him. Given their varied origins, those arrayed against Mr. Aristide are hardly unified, though they all share an ardent wish to see him removed from power.” (New York Times,  26 Feb 2004)

There is nothing spontaneous or “accidental” in the rebel attacks or in the “alliance” between the leader of the death squadrons Guy Philippe and Andy Apaid, owner of the largest industrial sweatshop in Haiti and leader of the G-184.

The armed rebellion was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation. The Armed Forces of the Dominican Republic had detected guerilla training camps inside the Dominican Republic on the Northeast Haitian-Dominican border. ( El ejército dominicano informó a Aristide sobre los entrenamientos rebeldes en la frontera, El Caribe, 27 Feb. 2004,

Both the armed rebels and their civilian “non-violent” counterparts were involved in the plot to unseat the president. G-184 leader Andre Apaid was in touch with Colin Powell in the weeks leading up to the overthrow of Aristide;  Guy Philippe and “Toto” Emmanuel Constant have links to the CIA; there are indications that Rebel Commander Guy Philippe and the political leader of the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front Winter Etienne were in liaison with US officials. (See BBC, 27 Feb 2004, ).

While the US had repeatedly stated that it will uphold Constitutional government, the replacement of Aristide by a more compliant individual had always been part of the Bush Administration’s agenda.

On Feb 20, US Ambassador James Foley called in a team of four military experts from the U.S. Southern Command, based in Miami. Officially their mandate was “to assess threats to the embassy and its personnel.” (Seattle Times, 20 Feb 2004). US Special Forces are already in the country. Washington had announced that three US naval vessels “have been put on standby to go to Haiti as a precautionary measure”. The Saipan is equipped with Vertical takeoff Harrier fighters and attack helicopters. The other two vessels are the Oak Hill and Trenton.  Some 2,200 U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, at Camp Lejeune, N.C. could be deployed to Haiti at short notice, according to Washington.

With the departure of President Aristide, Washington, however, has no intention of disarming its proxy rebel paramilitary army, which is now slated to play a role in the “transition”. In other words, the Bush administration will not act to prevent the occurrence of killings and political assassinations of Lavalas and Aristide supporters in the wake of the president’s kidnapping and deportation.

Needless to say, the Western media has not in the least analyzed the historical background of the Haitian crisis. The role played by the CIA has not been mentioned. The so-called “international community”, which claims to be committed to governance and democracy, has turned a blind eye to the killings of civilians by a US sponsored paramilitary army. The “rebel leaders”, who were commanders in the FRAPH death squadrons in the 1990s, are now being upheld by the US media as bona fide opposition spokesmen. Meanwhile, the legitimacy of the former elected president is questioned because he is said to be responsible for “a worsening economic and social situation.”

The worsening economic and social situation is largely attributable to the devastating economic reforms imposed by the IMF since the  1980s. The restoration of Constitutional government in 1994 was conditional upon the acceptance of the IMF’s deadly economic therapy, which in turn foreclosed the possibility of a meaningful democracy. High ranking government officials respectively within the Andre Preval and Jean Bertrand Aristide governments were indeed compliant with IMF diktats. Despite this compliance, Aristide had been “blacklisted” and demonized by Washington.

The Militarization of the Caribbean Basin

Washington seeks to reinstate Haiti as a full-fledged US colony, with all the appearances of a functioning democracy. The objective is to impose a puppet regime in Port-au-Prince and establish a permanent US military presence in Haiti.

The US Administration ultimately seeks to militarize the Caribbean basin.

The island of Hispaniola is a gateway to the Caribbean basin, strategically located between Cuba to the North West and Venezuela to the South.  The militarization of the island, with the establishment of US military bases, is not only intended to put political pressure on Cuba and Venezuela, it is also geared towards the protection of the multibillion dollar narcotics transshipment trade through Haiti, from production sites in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

The militarisation of the Caribbean basin is, in some regards, similar to that imposed by Washington on the Andean Region of South America under “Plan Colombia’, renamed “The Andean Initiative”. The latter constitutes the basis for the militarisation of oil and gas wells, as well as pipeline routes and transportation corridors. It also protects the narcotics trade.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ten-years-ago-us-sponsored-coup-detat-the-destabilization-of-haiti/5368279

One could replace the names – Haiti w/ Ukraine and Aristide with Viktor Yanukovych – and get a clear picture of what’s happening today – or yesterday using the Balkans, Colored Revolutions, April Spring…or the day before using the Irish Famine, Armenian Genocide, Boer Wars, German South West Africa, WWI, WWII …or the day before even that using the French Revolution and so on, iow, one needs to go back in history and dig into the people behind the curtain in these socall “revolutions” which led into the death of millions of souls.

The leaders of Haiti or Ukraine…were compliant dictators working with a consensus government as desired by the global heisters, but when one takes a closer look at the people under the belly of these beasts, one sees real ugliness, pure unadultered evil.

Related:

The Biggest Lies of Our Time: Serbia versus The New World Order

Tearing down sovereign nations and replacing them with global system administrators.

NATO Using Al Qaeda Rat Lines to Flood Syria With Foreign Terrorists  (West Point report)

Soros Funded “Libyan Scenario” Now Unfolding in Ukraine

The Biggest Lies of Our Time: Serbia versus The New World Order

Balkan former guerrillas join Syria rebels

A Time-line and History of “Arab Spring”

Kenyan Bloodbath: Reaping the “Benefits” of US AFRICOM Collaboration (NATO)

Flashback: Elbaradei forms the “National Association for Change”

During the events themselves, I was able to document some of the propaganda abuses. They involved mainly the endless repetition of electoral fraud practised by the government; the constant cover-up of fraud practised by the opposition; the frenetic selling of Viktor Yushchenko, one of the most boring men in the world, as a charismatic politician; and the ridiculously unlikely story that he had been deliberately poisoned by his enemies. (No prosecutions have been brought to date on this.) The fullest account of the propaganda and fraud is given by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group’s report, “Ukraine’ Clockwork Orange Revolution.”

..

An interesting explanation of the role played by the secret services was also given in The New York Times by C. J. Chivers who explained that the Ukrainian KGB had been working for Yushchenko all along – in collaboration with the Americans of course. Other important articles on the same subject include Jonathan Mowat’s “The New Gladio in Action: Washington’s New World Order ‘Democratization’ Template,” which details how military doctrine has been adapted to effect political change, and how various instruments, from psychology to bogus opinion polls, are used in it. Mowat is particularly interesting on the theories of Dr. Peter Ackerman, the author of Strategic Non-Violent Conflict (Praeger, 1994) and of a speech entitled “Between Hard and Soft Power: the Rise of Civilian-Based Struggle and Democratic Change,” delivered at the State Department in June 2004. Mowat is also excellent on the psychology of crowds and its use in these putsches: he draws attention to the role of “swarming adolescents” and “rebellious hysteria” and traces the origins of the use of this for political purposes to the Tavistock Institute in the 1960s: that institute was created by the British Army as its psychological warfare arm after World War I and its illustrious alumni include Dr. David Owen, the former British Foreign Secretary and Dr. Radovan Karadžic, the former President of the Bosnian Serb Republic. Mowat recounts how the ideas formulated there by Fred Emery were taken up by one Dr. Howard Perlmutter, a professor of “Social Architecture’’ at the Wharton School, and a follower of Dr. Emery, (who) stressed that “rock video in Katmandu,” was an appropriate image of how states with traditional cultures could be destabilized, thereby creating the possibility of a “global civilization.” There are two requirements for such a transformation, he added, “building internationally committed networks of international and locally committed organizations,’’ and “creating global events” through “the transformation of a local event into one having virtually instantaneous international implications through mass-media.

..

Conclusion

..

None of this is conspiracy theory – it is conspiracy fact. The United States considers as a matter of official policy that the promotion of democracy is an important element of its overall national security strategy. Large sections of the State Department, the CIA, para-governmental agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy, and government-funded NGOs like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which publishes several works on “democracy promotion.” All these operations have one thing in common: they involve the interference, sometimes violent, of Western powers, especially the US, in the political processes of other states, and that interference is very often used to promote the quintessential revolutionary goal, regime change.

http://colorrevolutionsandgeopolitics.blogspot.com/2011/05/john-laughland-technique-of-coup-detat.html

..

Malaparte – The Technique of Revolution

http://www.scribd.com/doc/24859664/Malaparte-Coup-d-Etat-The-Technique-of-Revolution-2004

National Endowment for Democracy

“NED was created with a view to creating a broad base of political support for the organization. NED received funds from the U.S. government and distributes funds to four other organizations – one created by the Republican Party, another by the Democratic Party, one created by the business community and one by the “labor” movement (N.B.: the names of these organizations have changed over time):

• International Republican Institute (IRI)
• National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI)
• Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Private Enterprise (CIPE)
• AFL-CIO’s American Center for International Labor Solidarity

Although publicly funded, the activities of these four institutes are not reported to Congress. According to William Robinson, “NED employs a complex system of intermediaries in which operative aspects, control relationships, and funding trails are nearly impossible to follow and final recipients are difficult to identify.”

In a March 2005 interview, former CIA officer Philip Agee discussed the thinking behind NED’s establishment:

“Most of the NED, and its affiliated organizations, deals with influencing political processes abroad. The means employed range from influencing civil society, media, fostering business groups, lending support to preferred politicians/political parties, election monitoring, and fostering human rights groups.” [mediachecker->example...human rights groups, such as, the International Crisis Group, Crisis Watch, or Human Watch...all headed and supposedly funded by George Soros! IMO, Soros doesn't spend a penny of his own money on anyone other than himself]http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Endowment_for_Democracy

..

Veritas Capital Fund/DynCorp as mentioned in the article:

..

At first blush, a private equity fund (and not, say, Exxon-Mobil) being the number 2 profiteer in the Iraq war might sound strange. However, the cleverly run fund has raked in $1.44 billion through its DynCorp subsidiary. The primary service DynCorp has provided to the war efforts is the training of new Iraqi police forces. Often described as a ‘state within a state‘, the sizable company is headed by Dwight M. Williams, former Chief Security Officer of the upstart U.S. Department of Homeland Security. With this and other close ties to defense agencies, Veritas Capital Fund and DynCorp are well-positioned to capitalize on Iraq even more.

http://fedupusa.wordpress.com/the-25-most-vicious-iraq-war-profiteers/

http://www.thewebfairy.com/911/elitewatch/DynCorp.html

Image: The BBC’s Jonathan Head has been consistently and intentionally dishonest with his coverage of Thailand.

.
February 25, 2014 (ATN) – The BBC has once again attempted to manipulate public perception regarding world events, this time in Thailand where the Western-backed regime of Thaksin Shinawatra had announced, and is now in the process of carrying out, a deadly campaign of terrorism aimed at growing dissent sweeping the country.

The BBC’s article, “Thailand crisis: Deadly attacks on opposition rallies,” starts by claiming:

An explosion has killed two people and wounded more than 20 others near an anti-government protest rally in the Thai capital Bangkok.

A boy aged 12 and a 40-year-old woman died in the attack near the Central World shopping mall, officials said.

It came hours after gunmen opened fire on an anti-government rally in eastern Thailand, killing a five-year-old girl.

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra condemned the attacks, describing them as “terrorist acts for political gain”.

She said her government would not tolerate terrorism, and ordered a full investigation.

In reality, the regime itself, via its “red shirt” enforcers declared their intent to carry out just such a deadly campaign of armed terror against growing protests if elections on February 2, 2014, were disrupted.
.
TIME magazine on January 16 reported in their article, “”Bangkok Shutdown: Yingluck Supporters Prepare to Fight for Democracy,” that:

As Thailand’s anti-government protests enter their fourth day, observers say prospects for violent confrontation are increasing, with reports of government supporters stockpiling weapons in case of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s ouster.

According to the Bangkok Post, radical members of the Red Shirts — diehard champions of Yingluck and her notorious brother Thaksin Shinawatra — are readying a cache of arms in case the 46-year-old premier is forced from office by either military or judicial intervention.

The paper quoted a Red Shirt source as saying “There are strong anti-coup and anti-court sentiments among the red-shirt mavericks who are familiar and experienced with weapon use.”

The elections were not disrupted however, but rather saw massive nationwide boycotts leading to an unprecedented, astoundingly low 46% voter turnout. The regime is now without either a democratic mandate, or a cusus belli to use violence against protesters.
.
Still, the BBC is attempting to make a case for violence, citing “frustration.” The BBC would claim:

No group has so far said they carried out either attack.

But the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Bangkok says it appears to be the start of retaliation by the armed wing of the so-called “red-shirt” movement that backs the governing Pheu Thai party. For three months red-shirt activists have watched with growing frustration as the protesters – who enjoy the backing of the military and powerful royalists – have been allowed to obstruct the government and sabotage an election that would almost certainly have been won by Pheu Thai, he says.

Jonathan Head’s analysis is, however, wholly, consistently, and intentionally dishonest. His attempt to frame the opposition as backed by “the military and powerful royalists” excludes massive numbers of growing dissent among rural rice farmers cheated now for over half a year of promised crop subsidies. Head also claims that elections were “sabotaged,” again, omitting that even in regions of the country where polling stations were open, the majority chose not to vote in what they considered sham elections.
.
What the BBC is attempting to do, and as it has done elsewhere including in Syria, is justify terrorism in the name of Western-backed interests in Thailand – namely the regime of Thaksin Shinawatra. While the West and the regime itself is still attempting to sell the notion of a divided Thailand and the prospect of a civil war, it should be noted that the facts on the ground make both entirely impossible.

For over 14 years, Daniel Estulin has investigated and researched the Bilderberg Group’s far-reaching influence on business and finance, global politics, war and peace, and control of the world’s resources and its money.

His book, “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group,” was published in 2005 and is now updated in a new 2009 edition. He states that in 1954, “the most powerful men in the world met for the first time” in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, “debated the future of the world,” and decided to meet annually in secret.

They called themselves the Bilderberg Group with a membership representing a who’s who of world power elites, mostly from America, Canada, and Western Europe with familiar names like

David Rockefeller,

Henry Kissinger,

Bill Clinton,

Gordon Brown,

Angela Merkel,

Alan Greenspan,

Ben Bernanke,

Larry Summers,

Tim Geithner,

Lloyd Blankfein,

George Soros,

Donald Rumsfeld,

Rupert Murdoch,

other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others – some quietly by some accounts like Barack Obama and many of his top officials.

Always well represented are top figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the ECB’s Jean-Claude Trichet, and Bank of England’s Mervyn King.

For over half a century, no agenda or discussion topics became public nor is any press coverage allowed. The few invited fourth estate attendees and their bosses are sworn to secrecy. Nonetheless, Estulin undertook “an investigative journey” that became his life’s work. He states:

“Slowly, one by one, I have penetrated the layers of secrecy surrounding the Bilderberg Group, but I could not have done this withot help of ‘conscientious objectors’ from inside, as well as outside, the Group’s membership.” As a result, he keeps their names confidential.

Whatever its early mission, the Group is now “a shadow world government….threaten(ing) to take away our right to direct our own destinies (by creating) a disturbing reality” very much harming the public’s welfare. In short, Bilderbergers want to supplant individual nation-state sovereignty with an all-powerful global government, corporate controlled, and check-mated by militarized enforcement.

“Imagine a private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals rub shoulders, where gracious royal chaperones ensure everyone gets along, and where the people running the wars, markets, and Europe (and America) say what they never dare say in public.”

Early in its history, Bilderbergers decided “to create an ‘Aristocracy of purpose’ between Europe and the United States (to reach consensus to rule the world on matters of) policy, economics, and (overall) strategy.” NATO was essential for their plans – to ensure “perpetual war (and) nuclear blackmail” to be used as necessary. Then proceed to loot the planet, achieve fabulous wealth and power, and crush all challengers to keep it.

Along with military dominance, controlling the world’s money is crucial for with it comes absolute control as the powerful 19th century Rothschild family understood. As the patriarch Amschel Rothschild once said: “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.”

Bilderbergers comprise the world’s most exclusive club. No one buys their way in. Only the Group’s Steering Committee decides whom to invite, and in all cases participants are adherents to One World Order governance run by top power elites.

According to Steering Committee rules:

“the invited guests must come alone; no wives, girlfriends, husbands or boyfriends. Personal assistants (meaning security, bodyguards, CIA or other secret service protectors) cannot attend the conference and must eat in a separate hall. (Also) The guests are explicitly forbidden from giving interviews to journalists” or divulge anything that goes on in meetings.

Host governments provide overall security to keep away outsiders. One-third of attendees are political figures. The others are from industry, finance, academia, labor and communications.

Meeting procedure is by Chatham House Rules letting attendees freely express their views in a relaxed atmosphere knowing nothing said will be quoted or revealed to the public. Meetings “are always frank, but do not always conclude with consensus.”

Membership consists of annual attendees (around 80 of the world’s most powerful) and others only invited occasionally because of their knowledge or involvement in relevant topics. Those most valued are asked back, and some first-timers are chosen for their possible later usefulness.

Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, for example, who attended in 1991. “There, David Rockefeller told (him) why the North American Free Trade Agreement….was a Bilderberg priority and that the group needed him to support it. The next year, Clinton was elected president,” and on January 1, 1994 NAFTA took effect. Numerous other examples are similar, including who gets chosen for powerful government, military and other key positions.

Bilderberg Objectives

The Group’s grand design is for “a One World Government (World Company) with a single, global marketplace, policed by one world army, and financially regulated by one ‘World (Central) Bank’ using one global currency.” Their “wish list” includes:

– “one international identify (observing) one set of universal values;”

– centralized control of world populations by “mind control;” in other words, controlling world public opinion;

– a New World Order with no middle class, only “rulers and servants (serfs),” and, of course, no democracy;

– “a zero-growth society” without prosperity or progress, only greater wealth and power for the rulers;

– manufactured crises and perpetual wars;

– absolute control of education to program the public mind and train those chosen for various roles;

– “centralized control of all foreign and domestic policies;” one size fits all globally;

– using the UN as a de facto world government imposing a UN tax on “world citizens;”

– expanding NAFTA and WTO globally;

– making NATO a world military;

– imposing a universal legal system; and

– a global “welfare state where obedient slaves will be rewarded and non-conformists targeted for extermination.”

Secret Bilderberg Partners

In the US, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is dominant. One of its 1921 founders, Edward Mandell House, was Woodrow Wilson’s chief advisor and rumored at the time to be the nation’s real power from 1913 – 1921. On his watch, the Federal Reserve Act passed in December 1913 giving money creation power to bankers, and the 16th Amendment was ratified in February creating the federal income tax to provide a revenue stream to pay for government debt service.

From its beginnings, CFR was committed to “a one-world government based on a centralized global financing system….” Today, CFR has thousands of influential members (including important ones in the corporate media) but keeps a low public profile, especially regarding its real agenda.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called it a “front organization (for) the heart of the American Establishment.” It meets privately and only publishes what it wishes the public to know. Its members are only Americans.

The Trilateral Commission (discussed below) is a similar group that “brings together global power brokers.” Founded by David Rockefeller, he’s also a leading Bilderberger and CFR Chairman Emeritus, organizations he continues to finance and support.

Their past and current members reflect their power:

– nearly all presidential candidates of both parties;

– leading senators and congressmen;

– key members of the fourth estate and their bosses; and

– top officials of the FBI, CIA, NSA, defense establishment, and other leading government agencies, including state, commerce, the judiciary and treasury.

For its part, “CFR has served as a virtual employment agency for the federal government under both Democrats and Republicans.” Whoever occupies the White House, “CFR’s power and agenda” have been unchanged since its 1921 founding.

It advocates a global superstate with America and other nations sacrificing their sovereignty to a central power. CFR founder Paul Warburg was a member of Roosevelt’s “brain trust.” In 1950, his son, James, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “We shall have world government whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent.”

Later at the 1992 Bilderberg Group meeting, Henry Kissinger said:

“Today, Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil….individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by their world government.”

CFR planned a New World Order before 1942, and the “UN began with a group of CFR members called the Informal Agenda Group.” They drafted the original UN proposal, presented it to Franklin Roosevelt who announced it publicly the next day. At its 1945 founding, CFR members comprised over 40 of the US delegates.

According to Professor G. William Domhoff, author of Who Rules America, the CFR operates in “small groups of about twenty-five, who bring together leaders from the six conspirator categories (industrialists, financiers, ideologues, military, professional specialists – lawyers, medical doctors, etc. – and organized labor) for detailed discussions of specific topics in the area of foreign affairs.” Domhoff added:

“The Council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council action stimulated by government from autonomous actions. (Its) most important sources of income are leading corporations and major foundations.” The Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations to name three, and they’re directed by key corporate officials.

Dominant Media Partners

Former CBS News president Richard Salant (1961 – 64 and 1966 – 79) explained the major media’s role: “Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”

CBS and other media giants control everything we see, hear and read – through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, films, and large portions of the Internet. Their top officials and some journalists attend Bilderberg meetings – on condition they report nothing.

The Rockefeller family wields enormous power, even though its reigning patriarch, David, will be 94 on June 12 and surely near the end of his dominance. However, for years “the Rockefellers (led by David) gained great influence over the media. (With it) the family gained sway over public opinion. With the pulse of public opinion, they gained deep influence in politics. And with this politics of subtle corruption, they are taking control of the nation” and now aim for total world domination.

The Bilderberger-Rockefeller scheme is to make their views “so appealing (by camouflaging them) that they become public policy (and can) pressure world leaders into submitting to the ‘needs of the Masters of the Universe.’ ” The “free world press” is their instrument to disseminate “agreed-upon propaganda.”

CFR Cabinet Control

“The National Security Act of 1947 established the office of Secretary of Defense.” Since then, 14 DOD secretaries have been CFR members.

Since 1940, every Secretary of State, except James Byrnes, has been a CFR member and/or Trilateral Commission (TC) one.

For the past 80 years, “Virtually every key US National Security and Foreign Policy Advisor has been a CFR member.

Nearly all top generals and admirals have been CFR members.

Many presidential candidates were/are CFR members, including Herbert Hoover, Adlai Stevenson, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter (also a charter TC member), George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and John McCain.

Numerous CIA directors were/are CFR members, including Richard Helmes, James Schlesinger, William Casey, William Webster, Robert Gates, James Woolsey, John Deutsch, George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and Leon Panetta.

Many Treasury Secretaries were/are CFR members, including Douglas Dillon, George Schultz, William Simon, James Baker, Nicholas Brady, Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, and Tim Geithner.

When presidents nominate Supreme Court candidates, the CFR’s “Special Group, Secret Team” or advisors vet them for acceptability. Presidents, in fact, are told who to appoint, including designees to the High Court and most lower ones.

Programming the Public Mind

According to sociologist Hadley Cantril in his 1967 book, The Human Dimension – Experiences in Policy Research:

Government “Psycho-political operations are propaganda campaigns designed to create perpetual tension and to manipulate different groups of people to accept the particular climate of opinion the CFR seeks to achieve in the world.”

Canadian writer Ken Adachi (1929 – 1989) added:

“What most Americans believe to be ‘Public Opinion’ is in reality carefully crafted and scripted propaganda designed to elicit a desired behavioral response from the public.”

And noted Australian academic and activist Alex Carey (1922 – 1988) explained the three most important 20th century developments – “The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

Web of Control

Numerous think tanks, foundations, the major media, and other key organizations are staffed with CFR members. Most of its life-members also belong to the TC and Bilderberg Group, operate secretly, and wield enormous power over US and world affairs.

The Rockefeller-Founded Trilateral Commission (TC)

On page 405 of his Memoirs, David Rockfeller wrote:

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

In alliance with Bilderbergers, the TC also “plays a vital role in the New World Order’s scheme to use wealth, concentrated in the hands of the few, to exert world control.” TC members share common views and all relate to total unchallengeable global dominance.

Founded in 1973 and headquartered in Washington, its powerful US, EU and East Asian members seek its operative founding goal – a “New International Economic Order,” now simply a “New World Order” run by global elites from these three parts of the world with lesser members admitted from other countries.

According to TC’s web site, “each regional group has a chairman and deputy chairman, who all together constitute the leadership of the Committee. The Executive Committee draws together a further 36 individuals from the wider membership,” proportionately representing the US, EU, and East Asia in its early years, now enlarged to be broadly global.

Committee members meet several times annually to discuss and coordinate their work. The Executive Committee chooses members, and at any time around 350 belong for a three-year renewable period. Everyone is a consummate insider with expertise in business, finance, politics, the military, or the media, including past presidents, secretaries of state, international bankers, think tank and foundation executives, university presidents and selected academics, and former senators and congressmen, among others.

Although its annual reports are available for purchase, its inner workings, current goals, and operations are secret – with good reason. Its objectives harm the public so mustn’t be revealed. Trilaterals over Washington author Antony Sutton wrote:

“this group of private citizens is precisely organized in a manner that ensures its collective views have significant impact on public policy.”

In her book, Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, Holly Sklar wrote:

Powerful figures in America, Europe, and East Asia let “the rich….safeguard the interests of Western capitalism in an explosive world – probably by discouraging protectionism, nationalism, or any response that would pit the elites of one against the elites of another,” in their common quest for global dominance.

Trilateralist Zbigniew Brzezinski (TC’s co-founder) wrote in his Between Two Ages – America’s Role in the Technotronic Era:

“people, governments and economies of all nations must serve the needs of multinational banks and corporations. (The Constitution is) inadequate….the old framework of international politics, with their sphere of influence….the fiction of sovereignty….is clearly no longer compatible with reality….”

TC today is now global with members from countries as diverse as Argentina, Ukraine, Israel, Jordan, Brazil, Turkey, China and Russia. In his Trilaterals Over America, Antony Sutton believes that TC’s aim is to collaborate with Bilderbergers and CFR in “establishing public policy objectives to be implemented by governments worldwide.” He added that “Trilateralists have rejected the US Constitution and the democratic political process.” In fact, TC was established to counter a “crisis in democracy” – too much of it that had to be contained.

An official TC report was fearful about “the increased popular participation in and control over established social, political, and economic institutions and especially a reaction against the concentration of power of Congress and of state and local government.”

To address this, media control was essential to exert “restraint on what newspapers may publish (and TV and radio broadcast).” Then according to Richard Gardner in the July 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs (a CFR publication):

CFR’s leadership must make “an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece,” until the very notion disappears from public discourse.

Bilderberg/CFR/Trilateralist success depends on finding “a way to get us to surrender our liberties in the name of some common threat or crisis. The foundations, educational institutions, and research think tanks supported by (these organizations) oblige by financing so-called ‘studies’ which are then used to justify their every excess. The excuses vary, but the target is always individual liberty. Our liberty” and much more.

Bilderbergers, Trilateralists and CFR members want “an all-encompassing monopoly” – over government, money, industry, and property that’s “self-perpetuating and eternal.” In Confessions of a Monopolist (1906), Frederick C. Howe explained its workings in practice:

“The rules of big business: Get a monopoly; let Society work for you. So long as we see all international revolutionaries and all international capitalists as implacable enemies of one another, then we miss a crucial point….a partnership between international monopoly capitalism and international revolutionary socialism is for their mutual benefit.”

In the Rockefeller File, Gary Allen wrote:

“By the late nineteenth century, the inner sanctums of Wall Street understood that the most efficient way to gain a monopoly was to say it was for the ‘public good’ and ‘public interest.’ “

David Rockefeller learned the same thing from his father, John D., Jr. who learned it from his father, John D. Sr. They hated competition and relentlessly strove to eliminate it – for David on a global scale through a New World Order.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Trilateralists and CFR members collaborated on the latter’s “1980 Project,” the largest ever CFR initiative to steer world events “toward a particular desirable future outcome (involving) the utter disintegration of the economy.” Why so is the question?

Because by the 1950s and 1960s, worldwide industrial growth meant more competition. It was also a model to be followed, and “had to be strangled in the cradle” or at least greatly contained. In America as well beginning in the 1980s. The result has been a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, shrinkage of the middle class, and plan for its eventual demise.

The North American Union (NAU)

The idea emerged during the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. David Rockefeller, George Schultz and Paul Volker told the president that Canada and America could be politically and economically merged over the next 15 years except for one problem – French-speaking Quebec. Their solution – elect a Bilderberg-friendly prime minister, separate Quebec from the other provinces, then make Canada America’s 51st state. It almost worked, but not quite when a 1995 secession referendum was defeated – 50.56% to 49.44%, but not the idea of merger.

At a March 23, 2005 Waco, Texas meeting, attended by George Bush, Mexico’s Vincente Fox, and Canada’s Paul Martin, the Security and and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) was launched, also known as the North American Union (NAU). It was a secretive Independent Task Force of North America agreement – a group organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, and CFR with the following aims:

– circumventing the legislatures of three countries and their constitutions;

– suppressing public knowledge or consideration; and

– proposing greater US, Canadian and Mexican economic, political, social, and security integration with secretive working groups formed to devise non-debatable, not voted on agreements to be binding and unchangeable.

In short – a corporate coup d’etat against the sovereignty of three nations enforced by hard line militarization to suppress opposition.

If enacted, it will create a borderless North America, corporate controlled, without barriers to trade or capital flows for business giants, mainly US ones and much more – America’s access to vital resources, especially oil and Canada’s fresh water.

Secretly, over 300 SPP initiatives were crafted to harmonize the continent’s policies on energy, food, drugs, security, immigration, manufacturing, the environment, and public health along with militarizing three nations for enforcement.

SPP represents another step toward the Bilderberg/Trilateralist/CFR goal for World Government, taking it one step at a time. A “United Europe” was another, the result of various treaties and economic agreements:

– the December 1951 six-nation European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC);

– the March 1957 six-nation Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC);

also the European Atomic Energy Commission (EAEC) by a second Treaty of Rome;

– the October 1957 European Court of Justice to settle regional trade disputes;

– the May 1960 seven-nation European Free Trade Association (EFTA);

– the July 1967 European Economic Community (EEC) merging the ECSC, EAEC and EEC together in one organization;

– the 1968 European Customs Union to abolish duties and establish uniform imports taxing among EEC nations;

– the 1978 European Currency Unit (ECU);

– the February 1986 Single European Act revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome; it established the objective of forming a Common Market by December 31, 1992;

– the February 1992 Maastricht Treaty creating the EU on November 1, 1993; and

– the name euro was adopted in December 1995; it was introduced in January 1999 replacing the European Currency Unit (ECU); euros began circulating on January 2002; they’re now the official currency of 16 of the 27 EU states.

Over half a century, the above steps cost EU members their sovereignty “as some 70 to 80 per cent of the laws passed in Europe involve just rubber stamping of regulations already written by nameless bureaucrats in ‘working groups’ in Brussels or Luxembourg.”

The EU and NAU share common features:

– advocacy from a influential spokesperson;

– an economic and later political union;

– hard line security, and for Europe, ending wars on the continent between EU member states;

– establishment of a collective consciousness in place of nationalism;

– the blurring of borders and creation of a “supra-government,” a superstate;

– secretive arrangements to mask real objectives; and

– the creation of a common currency and eventual global one.

Steps Toward a North American Union

– the October 4, 1988 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the US and Canada, finalized the previous year;

– at the 1991 Bilderberg meeting, David Rockefeller got governor Bill Clinton’s support for NAFTA if he became president;

– on January 1, 1994, with no debate under “fast-track” rules, Congress approved WTO legislation;

– in December 1994 at the first Summit of the Americas, 34 Hemispheric leaders committed their nations to a Free Trade of the Americas agreement (FTAA) by 2005 – so far unachieved;

– on July 4, 2000, Mexican president Vincente Fox called for a North American common market in 20 years;

– on February 2001, the White House published a joint statement from George Bush and Vincente Fox called the “Guanajuato Proposal;” it was for a US-Canada-Mexico prosperity partnership (aka North American Union);

– in September 2001, Bush and Fox agreed to a “Partnership for Prosperity Initiative;”

– the September 11, 2001 attack gave cover to including “security” as part of a future partnership;

– on October 7, 2001, a CFA meeting highlighted “The Future of North American Integration in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks; for the first time, “security” became part of a future “partnership for prosperity;” also, Canada was to be included in a “North American” agreement;

– in 2002, the North American Forum on Integration (NAFI) was established in Montreal “to address the issues raised by North American integration as well as identify new ideas and strategies to reinforce the North American region;”

– in January 2003, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE – composed of 150 top CEOs) launched the “North American Security and Prosperity Initiative” calling for continental integration;

– in April 2004, Canadian prime minister Paul Martin announced the nation’s first ever national security policy called Securing an Open Society;

– on October 15, 2004, CFR established an Independent Task Force on the Future of North America – for a future continental union;

– in March 2005, a CFR report titled Creating a North American Community called for continental integration by 2010 “to enhance, prosperity, and opportunity for all North Americans;” and

– on March 23, 2005 in Waco, Texas, America, Canada and Mexico leaders launched the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) – aka North American Union (NAU).

Secretive negotiations continue. Legislative debate is excluded, and public inclusion and debate are off the table. In May 2005, the CFR Independent Task Force on the Future of North America published a follow-up report titled Building a North American Community – proposing a borderless three-nation union by 2010.

In June and July 2005, the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) passed the Senate and House establishing corporate-approved trade rules to further impoverish the region and move a step closer to continental integration.

In March 2006, the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was created at the second SPP summit in Cancun, Mexico. Composed of 30 top North American CEOs, it serves as an official trilateral SPP working group.

Secret business and government meetings continue so there’s no way to confirm SPP’s current status or if Barack Obama is seamlessly continuing George Bush’s agenda. In an earlier article, this writer said:

SPP efforts paused during the Bush to Obama transition, but “deep integration” plans remain. Canada’s Fraser Institute proposed renaming the initiative the North American Standards and Regulatory Area (NASRA) to disguise its real purpose. It said the “SPP brand” is tarnished so re-branding is essential – to fool the public until it’s too late to matter.

Bilderbergers, Trilaterists, and CFR leaders back it as another step toward global integration and won’t “stop until the entire world is unified under the auspices and the political umbrella of a One World Company, a nightmarish borderless world run by the world’s most powerful clique” – comprised of key elitist members of these dominant organizations.

In April 2007, the Transatlantic Economic Council was established between America and the EU to:

– create an “official international governmental body – by executive fiat;

– harmonize economic and regulatory objectives;

– move toward a Transatlantic Common Market; and

– a step closer to One World Government run by the world’s most powerful corporate interests.

Insights into the 2009 Bilderberg Group Meeting

From May 14 – 17, Bilderbergers held their annual meeting in Vouliagmeni, Greece, and according to Daniel Estulin have dire plans for global economies.

According to his pre-meeting sources, they’re divided on two alternatives:

“Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty (or) an intense but shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

Other agenda items included:

– “the future of the US dollar and US economy;”

– continued deception about green shoots signaling an end to recession and improving economy later in the year;

– suppressing the fact that bank stress tests were a sham and were designed for deception, not an accurate assessment of major banks’ health;

– projecting headlined US unemployment to hit 14% by year end – way above current forecasts and meaning the true number will be double, at minimum, with all uncounted categories included; and

– a final push to get the Lisbon Treaty passed for pan-European (EU) adoption of neoliberal rules, including greater privatizations, fewer worker rights and social benefits, open border trade favoring developed over emerging states, and greater militarization to suppress civil liberties and human rights.

After the meeting, Estulin got a 73-page report on what was discussed. He noted that “One of Bilderberg’s primary concerns….is the danger that their zeal to reshape the world by engineering chaos (toward) their long term agenda could cause the situation to spiral out of control and eventually lead to a scenario where Bilderberg and the global elite in general are overwhelmed by events and end up losing their control over the planet.”

Estulin also noted some considerable disagreement between “hardliners” wanting a “dramatic decline and a severe, short-term depression (versus others) who think that things have gone too far” so that “the fallout from the global economic cataclysm” can’t be known, may be greater than anticipated, and may harm Bilderberger interests. Also, “some European bankers (expressed great alarm over their own fate and called the current) high wire act ‘unsustainable.’ ”

There was a combination of agreement and fear that the situation remains dire and the worst of the crisis lies ahead, mainly because of America’s extreme debt level that must be resolved to produce a healthy, sustainable recovery.

Topics also included:

– establishing a Global Treasury Department and Global Central Bank, possibly partnered with or as part of the IMF;

– a global currency;

– destruction of the dollar through what longtime market analyst Bob Chapman calls “a stealth default on (US) debt by continuing to issue massive amounts of money and credit and in the process devaluing the dollar,” a process he calls “fraud;”

– a global legal system;

– exploiting the Swine Flu scare to create a WHO global department of health; and

– the overall goal of a global government and the end of national sovereignty.

In the past, Estulin’s sources proved accurate. Earlier, he predicted the housing crash and 2007 – 2008 financial market decline, preceded by the kind of financial crisis triggered by the Lehman Brothers collapse. Watch for further updates from him as new information leaks out on what the world’s power elites have planned going forward.

Estulin will be the featured guest on The Global Research News Hour Tuesday, June 2. He can be heard live or afterwards through the program archive.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre of Research for Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net
.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday – Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13720

~~~~

more later…