Nice try. Some cars are not the same. Details...liberals always miss details.....
THE BROTHERS
John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War
By Stephen Kinzer
Illustrated. 402 pp. Times Books/Henry Holt & Company. $30.
Muscatine
Rick Perry Indicted
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The psychology of conspiracy theorists! (Tommorrow: The psychology of anarchists,...then my theory re: mobman)Conspiracy Theorists Aren’t Really SkepticsThe fascinating psychology of people who know the real truth about JFK, UFOs, and 9/11.To believe that the U.S. government planned or deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks, you’d have to posit that President Bush intentionally sacrificed 3,000 Americans. To believe that explosives, not planes, brought down the buildings, you’d have to imagine an operation large enough to plant the devices without anyone getting caught. To insist that the truth remains hidden, you’d have to assume that everyone who has reviewed the attacks and the events leading up to them—the CIA, the Justice Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, scientific organizations, peer-reviewed journals, news organizations, the airlines, and local law enforcement agencies in three states—was incompetent, deceived, or part of the cover-up. And yet, as Slate’s Jeremy Stahl points out, millions of Americans hold these beliefs. In a Zogby poll taken six years ago, only 64 percent of U.S. adults agreed that the attacks “caught US intelligence and military forces off guard.” More than 30 percent chose a different conclusion: that “certain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military, and economic motives,” or that these government elements “actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks.” How can this be? How can so many people, in the name of skepticism, promote so many absurdities? The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren’t really skeptics. Like the rest of us, they’re selective doubters. They favor a worldview, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It’s about the omnipotence of elites. Conspiracy chatter was once dismissed as mental illness. But the prevalence of such belief, documented in surveys, has forced scholars to take it more seriously. Conspiracy theory psychology is becoming an empirical field with a broader mission: to understand why so many people embrace this way of interpreting history. As you’d expect, distrust turns out to be an important factor. But it’s not the kind of distrust that cultivates critical thinking. In 1999 a research team headed by Marina Abalakina-Paap, a psychologist at New Mexico State University, published a study of U.S. college students. The students were asked whether they agreed with statements such as “Underground movements threaten the stability of American society” and “People who see conspiracies behind everything are simply imagining things.” The strongest predictor of general belief in conspiracies, the authors found, was “lack of trust.” But the survey instrument that was used in the experiment to measure “trust” was more social than intellectual. It asked the students, in various ways, whether they believed that most human beings treat others generously, fairly, and sincerely. It measured faith in people, not in propositions. “People low in trust of others are likely to believe that others are colluding against them,” the authors proposed. This sort of distrust, in other words, favors a certain kind of belief. It makes you more susceptible, not less, to claims of conspiracy. Once you buy into the first conspiracy theory, the next one seems that much more plausible. A decade later, a study of British adults yielded similar results. Viren Swami of the University of Westminster, working with two colleagues, found that beliefs in a 9/11 conspiracy were associated with “political cynicism.” He and his collaborators concluded that “conspiracist ideas are predicted by an alienation from mainstream politics and a questioning of received truths.” But the cynicism scale used in the experiment, drawn from a 1975 survey instrument, featured propositions such as “Most politicians are really willing to be truthful to the voters,” and “Almost all politicians will sell out their ideals or break their promises if it will increase their power.” It didn’t measure general wariness. It measured negative beliefs about the establishment. The common thread between distrust and cynicism, as defined in these experiments, is a perception of bad character. More broadly, it’s a tendency to focus on intention and agency, rather than randomness or causal complexity. In extreme form, it can become paranoia. In mild form, it’s a common weakness known as the fundamental attribution error—ascribing others’ behavior to personality traits and objectives, forgetting the importance of situational factors and chance. Suspicion, imagination, and fantasy are closely related. The more you see the world this way—full of malice and planning instead of circumstance and coincidence—the more likely you are to accept conspiracy theories of all kinds. Once you buy into the first theory, with its premises of coordination, efficacy, and secrecy, the next seems that much more plausible. Many studies and surveys have documented this pattern. Several months ago, Public Policy Polling asked 1,200 registered U.S. voters about various popular theories. Fifty-one percent said a larger conspiracy was behind President Kennedy’s assassination; only 25 percent said Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Compared with respondents who said Oswald acted alone, those who believed in a larger conspiracy were more likely to embrace other conspiracy theories tested in the poll. They were twice as likely to say that a UFO had crashed in Roswell, N.M., in 1947 (32 to 16 percent) and that the CIA had deliberately spread crack cocaine in U.S. cities (22 to 9 percent). Conversely, compared with respondents who didn’t believe in the Roswell incident, those who did were far more likely to say that a conspiracy had killed JFK (74 to 41 percent), that the CIA had distributed crack (27 to 10 percent), that the government “knowingly allowed” the 9/11 attacks (23 to 7 percent), and that the government adds fluoride to our water for sinister reasons (23 to 2 percent). The appeal of these theories—the simplification of complex events to human agency and evil—overrides not just their cumulative implausibility (which, perversely, becomes cumulative plausibility as you buy into the premise) but also, in many cases, their incompatibility. Consider the 2003 survey in which Gallup asked 471 Americans about JFK’s death. Thirty-seven percent said the Mafia was involved, 34 percent said the CIA was involved, 18 percent blamed Vice President Johnson, 15 percent blamed the Soviets, and 15 percent blamed the Cubans. If you’re doing the math, you’ve figured out by now that many respondents named more than one culprit. In fact, 21 percent blamed two conspiring groups or individuals, and 12 percent blamed three. The CIA, the Mafia, the Cubans—somehow, they were all in on the plot. Two years ago, psychologists at the University of Kent led by Michael Wood (who blogs at a delightful website on conspiracy psychology), escalated the challenge. They offered U.K. college students five conspiracy theories about Princess Diana: four in which she was deliberately killed, and one in which she faked her death. In a second experiment, they brought up two more theories: that Osama Bin Laden was still alive (contrary to reports of his death in a U.S. raid earlier that year) and that, alternatively, he was already dead before the raid. Sure enough, “The more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered.” And “the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive.” Another research group, led by Swami, fabricated conspiracy theories about Red Bull, the energy drink, and showed them to 281 Austrian and German adults. One statement said that a 23-year-old man had died of cerebral hemorrhage caused by the product. Another said the drink’s inventor “pays 10 million Euros each year to keep food controllers quiet.” A third claimed, “The extract ‘testiculus taurus’ found in Red Bull has unknown side effects.” Participants were asked to quantify their level of agreement with each theory, ranging from 1 (completely false) to 9 (completely true). The average score across all the theories was 3.5 among men and 3.9 among women. According to the authors, “the strongest predictor of belief in the entirely fictitious conspiracy theory was belief in other real-world conspiracy theories.” Clearly, susceptibility to conspiracy theories isn’t a matter of objectively evaluating evidence. It’s more about alienation. People who fall for such theories don’t trust the government or the media. They aim their scrutiny at the official narrative, not at the alternative explanations. In this respect, they’re not so different from the rest of us. Psychologists and political scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that “when processing pro and con information on an issue, people actively denigrate the information with which they disagree while accepting compatible information almost at face value.” Scholars call this pervasive tendency “motivated skepticism.” Once again you resort to personal attacks, name calling and insulting instead of debating. still waiting for you to prove this is not fact. but you know you can't so your small brain can only resort to insults. So if insulting people makes you feel important , by all means continue, but I bet you can not disprove this.
The Fall of Iraq - What You're Not Being Told [UPDATED August 8th]In June of 2014 the world watched in shock as an Islamic militant group operating under the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or ISIS), took control of Mosul, Baiji and Tikrit and began pushing south to Baghdad. Fallujah has been under their control since January. [Note they are also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or ISIL] Iraqi military and police put up very little resistance in spite of the fact that they greatly outnumbered the militants. Most fled their posts and left their uniforms and weapons behind, those who didn't were killed. ISIS, whose stated goal is to erase the border between Syria and Iraq, to establish an Islamic Caliphate encompassing both countries, and to impose sharia law, already holds vast swaths of territory, and they are rapidly gaining ground. How did this happen? That's an extremely important question. How you answer it will determine what comes next, and not just in Iraq. That's why the media spin doctors and politicians are out in force attempting to rewrite history, and turning reality completely on its head in the process. For example we have people insisting this is happening because the U.S. and NATO failed to intervene in Syria. Well that's a convenient answer isn't it? The U.S. and NATO have been actively working to topple Assad by arming and funding the Syrian rebels since 2011. This has developed into a bloody civil war which has attracted Jihadists from all over the world. It has also created a vacuum of power which enabled groups like ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra to organize and establish physical strongholds. The U.S. claims to only be arming the "moderate" rebels, however, the leadership of the Free Syrian Army (aka the FSA) has stated that they regularly carry out joint operations with Al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Up until recently ISIS was a branch of Al-Qaeda. In February of this year Al-Qaeda's official leadership publicly disavowed ISIS due to their brutal tactics. That's why ISIS is referred to as a splinter group. Furthermore, we know for a fact that the majority of the weapons and funding from the U.S. and its allies are ending up in the hands of Jihadists, and U.S. officials have been aware of this since 2012. But don't take my word for it, go read this article from the New York Times yourself. Do the math folks. ISIS would have never gotten a foothold Syria if the U.S. hadn't weakened the Syrian government, and the weapons they are using right now... were most likely paid for with your tax dollars. But wait, this isn't just about Syria is it? It's also about Iraq. Which brings us to the other deranged narrative that is being promoted right now: that this chaos is unfolding because U.S. military withdrew prematurely in 2011. You see Iraq is in ruins and unable to defend itself, because the U.S. military left the party too early. It's not because the Bush administration and the mainstream media convinced the public that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was planning to use them. It's not because the U.S. invaded Iraq on these false pretenses, disbanding the Iraqi army and police, and reducing the country to rubble in an attempt to put down the resulting insurgency. No, it's because eight years of military occupation wasn't enough. To those who fought there, it's a punch in the gut to see your sacrifice was for nothing, but the occupation of Iraq was never going to end well, and the Bush administration knew that it wouldn't. But don't take my word for it. Let's take a look at this clip of Dick Cheney from 1994. That was very astute Dick. You accurately predicted the mess you were going to help create in 2003. I would even venture to say that your predictions were more accurate than those who warned against this adventure. I'm impressed. Now you'll notice that the talking heads of the left and the right are all trying to frame this crisis as the fault of the other side. They're both right. Both sides of the aisle have blood on their hands, and this goes way beyond Bush and Obama. The United States has been tinkering in Iraq for a long, long time. In fact it was the CIA that put Saddam Hussein in power in 1963. Don't take my word for it, go read this article from the New York Times. The U.S. government also backed Saddam in 1980 when he launched a war of aggression against Iran, even though they knew that he was using chemical weapons. But again don't take my word for it, go read this article by Foreign Policy magazine. Fast forward to 1990. Saddam Hussein was embroiled in a dispute with Kuwait over oil prices and borders and he was considering taking action. Given America's support in the war against Iran, Saddam had no reason to believe that Kuwait would be any different, but just to be sure, he decided to consult with Washington first. On July 25th of 1990 U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein. In the meeting Saddam described his case against Kuwait and told Glaspie that he viewed their activities as an act of military aggression. Glaspie responded by saying “We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait”, and she reinforced this by saying "this issue is not associated with America" Naturally Saddam interpreted this as a green light, and eight days later he invaded. Later, when questioned in hearings, Glaspie claimed that though this quote was accurate, she had followed it up by insisting that Iraq settle its dispute non-violently. However that's not what shows up in the transcripts of the conversation released by the New York Times. According to the transcript she said "All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly." But maybe this was just an innocent diplomatic blunder right? Well not quite. As soon as Saddam entered Kuwait the U.S. government launched a very interesting propaganda campaign to build up public support for a war. They claimed that Iraqi troops were slaughtering little babies by throwing them out of their incubators in hospitals, and they brought in teary eyed witnesses who testified to having seen the massacres. Just one problem… the entire event was fabricated. It never happened. This woman who presented herself as a witness was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States and her testimony was part of a public relations campaign organized by a company called Hill and Knowlton. Once public support for the war was strong, the incubators story was dropped, and never mentioned again. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 1991. During that war the U.S. military utilized approximately 640,000 pounds of Depleted Uranium ammunition. The Iraq was decimated, but the U.S. left Saddam in power. The war didn't ever really end though. The U.S. kept Iraq under a draconian sanctions regime that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. Clinton kept those sanctions in place for the entire duration of his presidency, and they knew what was happening. You know how they say "those who don't know history are destined to repeat it"? That's really not an exaggeration. Fast forward to 2003 and the Kuwaiti incubator story was swapped out for stories of mobile missile silos and yellow cake uranium. And when it turned out that those weapons of mass destruction didn't exist, they acted like it was no big deal. Then of course came Obama, riding in on promises of hope and change. But we saw how Obama toppled Libya in 2011, leaving that nation in utter chaos. Gaddafi was then killed in a rather gruesome fashion. Before NATO brought down Gaddafi Libya had the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Now it's a perpetual war-zone. And of course we've seen how Obama has funded and armed the Syrian rebels in an attempt to bring down Assad. Obama is operating from the same playbook, and yes there is a playbook. Fortunately the future is not set in stone. We can influence the outcome, and we already are. We proved that in 2013 when both the left and the right dropped their petty bickering and unified against Obama's proposal to use airstrikes against Assad. The pattern of deceit was the same, but this time the people didn't fall for it. The fact that we had the U.N. investigator Carla Del Ponte come out to say that the Syrian rebels were behind the sarin gas attacks helped, the fact that Putin short circuited the U.S. diplomatically helped, but the determining factor was the popular resistance, particularly the signs of discontent from within the military. You see, the ruling class is very hesitant to take a nation to war if the people and the military strongly oppose it. That's why the first casualty of war is always the truth. What's going on in Iraq right now is horrific. ISIS is already committing atrocities against civilians on a massive scale. Inexplicably the Obama administration did not provide the Iraqi military with immediate air support even after the fall of Mosul. I say inexplicably, not because I support airstrikes, but because on June 12th, the U.S. Military conducted its second drone strike this month in Pakistan. Why would Obama refuse to act in Iraq when civilians are being massacred, while employing drones in Pakistan without hesitation? I'll tell you why. Because the outrage over the atrocities that the ISIS is committing may be enough to provide the U.S. government with a backdoor into Syria. You see It turns out that Obama is considering airstrikes, but not just in Iraq. He wants to extend those strikes into Syria as well. Well, that's convenient isn't it? Once the U.S. military is able to freely conduct operations in Syrian territory getting the regime change that they will be much, much easier. [UPDATED August 8th]: On August 7th, 2014 Obama announced that airstrikes are imminent in Iraq, and as of August 8th we are hearing reports that the bombing has already begun in northern Iraq. Make no mistake, this will not end in Iraq. This is just the opening act. Remember ISIS holds territory in both Iraq and Syria. It's the classic formula Problem, Reaction, Solution. They created the problem, they are letting the public react and build up outrage, and then they are going to propose a "solution" that will sow the seeds for another generation of conflicts. To short circuit this pattern the public needs to come to terms with the cold hold hard truth. No matter what the U.S. does, and no matter how long they stay, there is no happy ending to this story. The chaos that we're seeing in this region is the direct result of half a century of U.S. military interventions and covert operations in the Middle East. It's time to acknowledge that bombing for peace doesn't work, regime change for stability doesn't work, and you can't fix a mistake by repeating it over and over. If the U.S. honestly wants to stop the spread of Islamic terrorism, then they should stop funding and arming Jihadists in Syria. That would be a good starting point don't you think? |
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Overt and Covert‘The Brothers,’ by Stephen KinzerAnyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book. “The Brothers” is a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of “inconvenient” regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world. John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen, were scions of the American establishment. Their grandfather John Watson Foster served as secretary of state, as had their uncle Robert Lansing. Both brothers were lawyers, partners in the immensely powerful firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, whose New York offices were for decades an important link between big business and American policy making. John Foster Dulles served as secretary of state from 1953 to 1959; his brother ran the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961. But their influence was felt long before these official appointments. In his detailed, well-constructed and highly readable book, Stephen Kinzer, formerly a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a columnist for The Guardian, shows how the brothers drove America’s interventionist foreign policy. Kinzer highlights John Foster Dulles’s central role in channeling funds from the United States to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Indeed, his friendship with Hjalmar Schacht, the Reichsbank president and Hitler’s minister of economics, was crucial to the rebuilding of the German economy. Sullivan & Cromwell floated bonds for Krupp A. G., the arms manufacturer, and also worked for I. G. Farben, the chemicals conglomerate that later manufactured Zyklon B, the gas used to murder millions of Jews. Of course, the Dulles brothers’ law firm was hardly alone in its eagerness to do business with the Nazis — many on Wall Street and numerous American corporations, including Standard Oil and General Electric, had “interests” in Berlin. And Allen Dulles at least had qualms about operating in Nazi Germany, pushing through the closure of the Sullivan & Cromwell office there in 1935, a move his brother opposed. Allen Dulles spent much of World War II working for the Office of Strategic Services, running the American intelligence operation out of the United States Embassy in Bern, Switzerland. His shadowy networks extended across Europe, and his assets included his old friend Thomas McKittrick, the American president of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, a key point in the transnational money network that helped keep Germany in business during the war. The O.S.S. was dissolved in 1945 by President Truman, but was soon reborn as the C.I.A. Kinzer notes that Truman did not support plots against foreign leaders but his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, had no such scruples. By 1953, with Allen Dulles running the C.I.A. and his brother in charge of the State Department, the interventionists’ dreams could come to fruition. Kinzer lists what he calls the “six monsters” that the Dulles brothers believed had to be brought down: Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Sukarno in Indonesia, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Only two of these, Ho Chi Minh and Castro, were hard-core Communists. The rest were nationalist leaders seeking independence for their countries and a measure of control over their natural resources. Ironically, Ho Chi Minh and Castro, strengthened perhaps by their Marxist faith, proved the most resilient. But the world still lives with the consequences of bringing down Mossadegh, who might have guided Iran, and thus world history, along a very different path. The 1953 C.I.A.-sponsored coup that brought Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power was seared into Iran’s national consciousness, fueling a reservoir of fury that was released with the Islamic revolution of 1979. The Iranian section of Kinzer’s book is especially strong. Here he calls attention to the cancellation by the Iranian Parliament of a contract for what was said to be “the largest overseas development project in modern history” with Overseas Consultants Inc., an American engineering conglomerate. But it seems likely that it was the Iranian Parliament’s vote to nationalize the oil industry that sealed Mossadegh’s fate. (Allen Dulles represented the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation, one of whose clients was the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.) The Dulles brothers’ defenders argue that they and their legacy must be evaluated in the context of their era — the height of the Cold War, a time when the Soviet threat was real and growing, when Eastern Europe languished under Communist dictatorships sponsored by Moscow, and China had been “lost” to the Reds (although that term itself implies a curious claim of prior ownership). Moscow’s proxies were advancing in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The brothers’ Manichaean worldview proved to be a poor tool for dealing with the complexities of the postcolonial era. Leaders like Lumumba and Mossadegh might well have been open to cooperation with the United States, seeing it as a natural ally for enemies of colonialism. However, for the Dulles brothers, and for much of the American government, threats to corporate interests were categorized as support for communism. “For us,” John Foster Dulles once explained, “there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who are Christians and support free enterprise, and there are the others.” Rejected by the United States, the new leaders turned to Moscow. The brothers’ accomplishments in the geopolitical arena were not mirrored in their personal lives. Although Allen Dulles was a flagrant womanizer and John Foster remained devoted to his wife, they were, Kinzer observes, “strikingly similar in their relationships with their children. Both were distant, uncomfortable fathers.” John Foster’s three children were raised by nannies “and discouraged from intruding on their parents’ world.” Allen’s only son joined the Marines in a vain effort to impress his father, who “never found him ‘tough’ enough.” He was sent to Korea and almost died when shrapnel tore out part of his skull. He spent years being treated for his wounds. Allen’s older daughter suffered from depression throughout her life. Neither John Foster nor Allen attended the wedding of their “independent-minded” sister, Eleanor, when she married a divorced older man who came from an Orthodox Jewish family. There are also reminders in Kinzer’s book of dark events in the history of American intelligence. Sixty years ago, Frank Olson, a C.I.A. officer, was reported to have jumped to his death during mind-control experiments “in which psychoactive drugs were administered to unknowing victims.” But last year, Kinzer reports, Olson’s family filed suit, claiming he had actually been murdered after visiting secret C.I.A. prisons in Europe. More detailed archival references here and elsewhere would have been useful. Although Kinzer provides a lengthy bibliography and extensive notes on books, articles and other materials available on the Internet, the references for the primary sources, which should detail archives, collections and precise file numbers, are meager. Eventually, the United States government tired of Allen Dulles’s schemes. President Johnson privately complained that the C.I.A. had been running “a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean,” an entirely accurate assessment — except the beneficiaries were American corporations rather than organized crime. Nowadays, the Dulles brothers have faded from America’s collective memory. The bust of John Foster, once on view at the airport west of Washington that bears his name, has been relocated to a private conference room. Outside the world of intelligence aficionados, Allen Dulles is little known. Yet both these men shaped our modern world and America’s sense of its “exceptionalism.” They should be remembered, Kinzer argues, precisely because of their failures: “They are us. We are them.”
Patrice Lumumba: the most important assassination of the 20th century |
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As Promised: The Psychology of Anarchists: (Tommorrow: My theory explaining mobman's postings and behavior)
The Anti-Reality |
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