By Stephen Gowans, What’s Left

Anyone who’s shocked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations that the US state is spying on its citizens shouldn’t be. Liberal democracies have routinely spied on their own citizens, long before Google, Microsoft, Verizon and the iPhone made the job easier. And they’ve done so while denouncing official enemies like the Soviet Union and East Germany—and today Cuba and North Korea—as police states. Indeed, what’s changed isn’t the fact of state surveillance, but its scope and reach.

Writing about Canada, political scientist Reg Whitaker and historians Gregory Kealey and Andrew Parnaby note that “the police showed quite remarkable energy and zeal in spying on large numbers of citizens. (An official) commission (of inquiry) discovered in 1977 that the RCMP security service maintained a name index with 1,300,000 entries, representing 800,000 files on individuals” [1] at a time the country had a population of only 24 million!

Interestingly, Whitaker et al don’t call the RCMP’s security service a “secret police,” or Canada a “police state,” though a secret police force that maintained dossiers on three percent of its country’s population might be termed such by someone not so concerned about stepping lightly around the myth that liberal democracies are bastions of political freedom. (They are bastions of political freedom, but of a certain type: that which leaves private ownership of the economy firmly in place and the owners firmly in charge.)

Among the Canadians that Canada’s police state spied on was Tommy Douglas, a leader of the mildly left-leaning New Democratic Party, who served as the premier of one of Canada’s provinces. Douglas, grandfather of TV spook Kiefer Sutherland, and who is credited with pioneering Canada’s state-run health insurance program, died almost 30 years ago. All the same, the Canadian government refuses to make public its file on the prairie preacher turned social democrat politician. Disclosure, the Canadian police state insists, may reveal the names of informants, some of whom may still be alive, while deterring others from working with the political police, for fear their names may come to light in the future as informants. [2] Stasi informers who spied on their neighbors, workmates and acquaintances are reviled, but enmity isn’t heaped upon your neighbors, co-workers and acquaintances who are informers for Western police states. At least Stasi informers were defending a more egalitarian and humane society than the one it replaced and that has taken its place. Western secret police informers defend states that preside over growing inequality, intolerably high unemployment, a war on unions and wages, and which pursue predatory wars on foreign countries that refuse to allow the rape of their natural resources, labor and markets by the Western states’ ruling classes.

Canada’s NSA equivalent, the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), has, like its better known counterpart south of the border, been scooping up “billions of bits of information transmitted around the world in cyberspace or on airwaves.” [3] Canada, along with the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, is part of a signals intelligence community, called the Five Eyes, which spies on the other partners’ citizens and then shares the data with them to circumvent laws prohibiting domestic spying. These laws allow the major English-speaking capitalist democracies to back up their rhetoric about political freedom, while the cozy sharing arrangement among their electronic surveillance agencies frees them from the inconvenience of actually having to live up to it. And like the NSA, CSEC collects ‘meta-data,’ information on the date, duration, location and recipients of phone calls, e-mails, and text messages transmitted in Canada. Today, rather than having files on only 800,000 of its citizens, the Canadian police state has the raw material to assemble files on the vast majority of them.

Whitaker et al call state surveillance of citizens in liberal democracies political policing, which seems far more legitimate (legitimizing) than the name used to describe (discredit) the same behaviour in communist countries. When Cuban or North Korean officials place their citizens under surveillance, they’re accused of totalitarianism and police state repression, though it seems very unlikely, in light of the Snowden and other revelations, that either state can match the scope of snooping that liberal democracies can use to police their own citizens’ political behaviour.

The term “political policing” in lieu of “police state repression” sanitizes the practice when it happens in liberal capitalist states, and is sanitized again when it is acknowledged that “policing politics….has been done and continues to be done” in every liberal democracy, but that it “is inherently anomalous in liberal democracies.” [4] This, of course, is an oxymoron. Spying on citizens and disrupting the activities of those who challenge the established order can’t be inherently anomalous in liberal democracies if it is done in every one of them. It must, instead, be an invariable trait of liberal democracies.

But then, so too is political policing an invariable trait of every other kind of state. Whether it’s North Korea or Cuba spying on its own citizens, or the United States, Britain and Canada doing the same, in all cases, political policing serves a conservative function of defending the established order against those who would challenge it. “[T]he political police,” argue Whitker et al, “are always on the side of the political/economic status quo…. [5]

The difference is that political policing in liberal democracies is “an activist conservatism on behalf of capital against its perceived enemies.” [6] Political policing in East Germany, the Soviet Union, or today in Cuba and North Korea, is likewise an active conservatism, though not on behalf of capital, but against it, and on behalf of capital’s enemies.

It’s naive, then, for anyone in a liberal democracy who poses a serious threat to the established order to believe the state is going to let them be, free to exercise political freedoms that exist largely as a rhetorical contrivance. Challenging the established order is like going to war, and anyone who goes to war and is shocked to discover that the enemy fights back is seriously deluded about war, the state, and the nature of the enemy. All states are police states, including those most attached to rhetoric about political freedom.

In contrast, people who present no serious challenge to the state are typically indifferent to the state panopticon. They reason correctly that since they have nothing to hide, and that they identify with the state and have no inclination to challenge the class that dominates it, that the political police won’t trouble them.

Alternatively, there are people who, while they are not against the state, are in favour of reforms which would restrain the class that dominates the state from pursuing its interests to the fullest. From the perspective of the political police, these people must sometimes be subjected to surveillance to discover whether their quest for reforms is in reality a veiled challenge to the established order, and if not, to provide early warning if it metamorphoses into one. It is these people who are typically the most agitated by political policing, for inasmuch as they conscientiously keep their opposition within legal bounds and are not actively hostile to the state, they believe their privacy should be inviolable. In their view, their activities are “legitimate” (within bounds that do not seriously challenge the established order) and therefore are not fair game for surveillance. Hence, those who seriously threaten the established order know the state will spy on them, and accept surveillance as a reality of war; the apolitical are indifferent, because they know the state has no reason to disrupt their activities; while the reformers are agitated, because they’ve discovered the state isn’t neutral and may indeed disrupt activities they believed to be legitimate and legal.

British Labour MP Chris Mullen’s thought experiment, the novel A Very British Coup, explores the question of whether the British state would allow a leftist government to pursue far-reaching socialist reforms even if the government played by the formal rules. His conclusion: no. The political police, working with the United States, would orchestrate the government’s overthrow. It has typically been the case that left-wing movements that have come to power in liberal democracies either quickly abandon their agenda or actively pursue it and are replaced, as a consequence, by a military dictatorship or fascist coup. Under threat, capital shares none of the reverence for liberal democracy that moderate socialists so ardently display and believe in, to their detriment. Even Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, whose challenge to the established order within his own country was partial at best, was briefly toppled in a coup, and remained menaced throughout his tenure as president by the efforts of the United States and owners of the country’s private productive assets to disrupt his government—a government that scrupulously operated within the boundaries of liberal democracy.

Likewise, it’s naive to think that the state in communist countries will not spy on, and try to disrupt, the activities of those who seriously threaten the established socialist order, and who seek to bring about a return to a society of exploitation, or subordination to foreign tyranny, or both. To object to this practice would be to elevate abstract ideas about political freedom above freedom from exploitation, oppression, hunger, and insecurity; to make the freedom to politically organize for the creation of conditions of exploitation senior to freedom from exploitation. Objecting to the Cuban state spying on citizens who want to return to the days of Batista and US domination is like objecting to the machine-gunning of an advancing Waffen SS column. It may not be pretty, but is necessary to defend something better than the alternative.

To sum up, police state measures—the stock in trade of all states, whether of exploiters or the previously exploited—are neither intrinsically objectionable nor inherently desirable, any more than nuclear technology is. So long as societies are divided by class, there will be states, and so long as there are states, there will be political police. Political policing, like nuclear technology, can be used for good or ill, to protect or destroy, to advance or hold back. We should be for it when it’s used for good and to advance; against it when it’s not. And we should be clear too that as much as the states they revile, liberal democracies are police states, and will always be, so long as the parasitism of capitalist society produces a determined opposition to the parasites.

1. Reg Whitaker, Gregory S. Kealey and Andrew Parnaby. Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada from the Fenians to Fortress America. University of Toronto Press. 2012. p. 9.
2. Colin Freeze, “CSIS fights to keep Tommy Douglas spying file under wraps,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), February 10, 2010.
3. Michelle Shephard, “Web snooping vital, spy agency boss says”, The Toronto Star, October 23, 2005.
4. Whitaker et al, p. 10.
5. Whitaker et al, p. 11.
6. Whitaker et al, p. 12.

By David Walsh, wsws.org

We have written extensively on the WSWS, as recently as one month ago, about Zero Dark Thirty and the politically depraved conduct of its creators, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal.

The pair collaborated with the CIA and the US military at various stages in the process of making their film—a potted version of the search for Osama bin Laden, which presents torture as an unfortunate but necessary element of the “war on terror.”

Boal and Bigelow, the former in particular, met with various officials in the CIA and Defense Department and, we learned in May, allowed their script to be vetted and changed by intelligence officials. Zero Dark Thirty was conceived of as a paean to the “hard work” of the US military and CIA, and treated as such by their respective officials.

The ludicrous claim by defenders of the indefensible film that, taken as a whole, Zero Dark Thirty is intended to be “anti-war” and “anti-torture” has been dealt another blow by the revelation that Boal attended a 2011 CIA awards ceremony!

A draft report by the US Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General, leaked to the media this week, reveals this along with other illuminating facts:

Bigelow and Boal got in touch with Defense Department officials the day after the execution of bin Laden to obtain information and solicit the assistance of the Pentagon in a film they were already making on the subject. They explained, according to the report, “that after the UBL [bin Laden] take-down, they decided to scrap their original project and create a more drawn-out script examining the hunt that lasted about a decade and ended with UBL’s killing. The Hollywood executives [sic] sought additional information from the Department about the UBL raid.”

In other words, from the outset of the newly planned film, Bigelow and Boal were firmly in the pocket of and dependent on the US military.

Throughout May, June, and July 2011 Boal (in particular) communicated with and met personally with various intelligence and military officials. On June 15, a member of the White House National Security Staff emailed Boal, “I want to take you to the White House” and “we’ll have to do this during the June 27 time slot, I’ll set it up.”

On June 22, 2011, the internal Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs communications disclosed a meeting between the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Douglas Wilson, and the White House Deputy Press Secretary. According to the Inspector General’s report, “The communications noted, ‘We’ve got the green light to proceed’ and ‘the White House does want to engage with Mark [Boal] but it probably won’t be for a few more weeks.” Wilson told the Inspector General’s office that “he communicated with the White House to request guidance on dealing with Mr. Boal and Ms. Bigelow.”

Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers, a former CIA operative who was heavily involved in the arming of Islamist forces in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s during the effort to destabilize the USSR, was one of those who met with Bigelow and Boal. On July 16, 2011, he emailed Wilson: “Had a very good meeting with Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow last night re: UB: movie. They came away very happy.”

The CIA award ceremony that Boal attended took place on June 24, 2011 at the agency’s headquarters to honor those who had taken part in the bin Laden raid. The Director of the CIA’s Chief of Staff told the Inspector General’s office that the event was attended by “a huge enormous crowd, I mean they built a tent and it was not a sensitive, I would say it was not a highly sensitive event. It was pretty much a cattle call for a lot of folks and for around the community [sic] and obviously not open to the public per se.”

During the ceremony, then CIA Director Leon Panetta recognized the unit that conducted the killing of bin Laden and identified the ground commander by name, a piece of classified information.

Certain Republicans in Congress are making a fuss about the fact that Boal was in attendance and thus became privy to the commander’s identity.

They have nothing to fear. Bigelow and Boal have proven themselves to be devoted servants of the American military-intelligence apparatus. The CIA’s secrets are safe with these wretched people, the inventors of a new genre, the pro-torture “art film.”

Boal fit right in at the CIA ceremony apparently, hobnobbing with assassins and torturers. How many crimes, how many deaths, how much popular misery would those in attendance have been responsible for? It’s very difficult to calculate. We are fairly certain that was not a question Boal asked himself.

 David Walsh is a leading non-establishment film and culture critic.

The author also recommends:

New revelations about filmmakers’ collaboration with CIA on Zero Dark Thirty
[10 May 2013]

Director Kathryn Bigelow defends her indefensible Zero Dark Thirty
[18 January 2013]

Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty: Hollywood embraces the “dark side”
[20 December 2012]

by Stephen Lendman

On June 5, the London Evening Standard headlined “No minutes, no press conferences – just the world’s power brokers chewing the fat on the issues of the day. It’s the Bilderberg conference – and it’s coming to a suburb near you.”

 

On June 6, it convened. It continues through June 9. It’s a rite of spring. A previous article said British political economist Will Hutton calls attendees the “high priests of globalization.”  Powerful movers and shakers have their own agenda. They’re up to no good. They meet annually face-to-face. They conspire, collude and collaborate against populist interests. Their’s alone matter.

According to Bilderberg Meetings.org:

“Founded in 1954, Bilderberg is an annual conference designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America.”

“Every year, between 120 -150 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media are invited to take part in the conference.”

“About two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; one third from politics and government and the rest from other fields.”

“The conference is a forum for informal, off-the-record discussions about megatrends and the major issues facing the world.”

“Thanks to the private nature of the conference, the participants are not bound by the conventions of office or by pre-agreed positions.”

“As such, they can take time to listen, reflect and gather insights. There is no detailed agenda, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued.”

“The 61st Bilderberg meeting will take place at the beginning of June 2013 in the UK.”

Earlier articles discussed their agenda. Their ideal world isn’t fit to live in. Democracy is verboten. They want one world government. They want unchallenged global dominance.  Their wish list includes universal rules they set, centralized global control, perpetual crises and wars, NATO operating worldwide, abolishing the middle class, establishing ruler-serf societies, and having unchallenged wealth and power in their hands.

They want what they say goes enforced as policy. Obedient serfs can expect subsistence crumbs at best. Non-believers will be eliminated. New world order priorities alone matter.

Bilderberg’s Steering Committee includes a dozen prominent Americans. David Rockefeller’s called an Advisory Group member. It’s uncertain if he’s attending. A published list excludes his name. He’s called the master spider for good reason. He’s been dominant for decades. On June 12, he turns 98. He’s fading. Who’ll replace him isn’t clear.

In her book “Web of Debt,” Ellen Brown quoted economist/geopolitical analyst Hans Schicht saying:

“What has been good for Rockefeller, has been a curse for the United States. Its citizens, government and country indebted to the hilt, enslaved to his banks.”

“The country’s industrial force lost to overseas in consequence of strong dollar policies (pursued for bankers not the country.”

Rockefeller’s no longer the force he once was. “(S)ixty years of dollar imperialism (is ending). The day of financial reckoning is not far off any longer.”

“With Rockefeller’s strong hand losing its grip and the old established order fading, the world has entered a most dangerous transition period, where anything could happen.”

Bilderberg rogues plan a world unfit to live in. They may end up destroying it in the process. It’s hard imagining a more malevolent force. US members reflect the worst of what it stands for. More on some prominent ones attending below.

They’re meeting at Britain’s five-star Grove Hotel. It’s 18 miles from London. It’s ideal for secluded meetings. While ongoing, police state security’s enforced.  Operations go on round-the-clock. Area residents have to show police passports, drivers licenses, or other accepted photo IDs to go home, to work, or attend to other personal business.

Civil liberties are suspended. De facto martial law’s in force. What Bilderberg rogues want they get. They want the worst of all possible worlds spread globally.

Prominent American attendees in alphabetical order include:

Roger Altman:

He’s a former Lehman Brothers partner. He left before its dissolution. Perhaps he helped push it over the edge. He was Clinton’s Deputy Treasury Secretary. He’s a Bilderberg Steering Committee member.

He’s founder and executive chairman of Evercore Partners. It’s a prominent predatory investment banking advisory firm. It specializes in mergers, acquisition, divestitures, restructurings, financings and other strategic transactions.

It operates the old-fashioned way. It recommends leveraged buyouts, asset-stripping targeted companies, and leaving thousands of employees high and dry on their own.

Jeff Bezos:

He’s Amazon’s founder and CEO. It’s the world’s largest online retailer. Earlier he worked on Wall Street and for a New York-based hedge fund. In March 2013, Forbes estimated his net worth at $25.2 billion.

Martin Feldstein:

He’s Harvard University Professor of Economics. From 1982 – 1984, he was Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors chairman and chief economic advisor. He’s National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) president emeritus. It’s an elitist organization.

Many of its members have been conservative Nobel economics laureates. Others served as White House chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisors.  It’s well known for announcing when recessions begin and end. It does so inaccurately. It ignores an ongoing protracted Main Street Depression.

In 2006, Feldstein was on Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. In 2009, he served Obama in a likewise capacity.  His other affiliations include the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, and American Enterprise Group among others. He been a board member of several major corporations.

Timothy Geithner:

A previous article discussed his legacy of shame. His rap sheet includes various Treasury posts, IMF Policy Development and Review director, New York Fed president, vice chairman of the Fed’s Open Market Committee (FOMC), and Obama’s Treasury Secretary.

He partnered with former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. They planned the grandest of grand thefts. They implemented banker bailouts.

They looted the federal treasury. They stuck taxpayers with the bill. They debased the currency. They transformed America into an unprecedented money making racket.

He and other Bilderberg rogues want spread globally what they did to America. They conspired with their EU partners doing the same thing to Western Europe.

They bear full responsibility for today’s global economic crisis. They planned it for greater wealth and power control.

Donald Graham:

He’s Washington Post Company chairman and CEO. His holdings include TV stations, municipal cable systems, and Kaplan, Inc. It provides higher education testing, training, and professional courses. It’s ethically and legally challenged.

It specializes in ripping off students. It does so for profit. It features scams and other fraudulent schemes. It sacrifices education for bottom line priorities.

It’s faced numerous lawsuits. In 2007, a class-action one on overcharging was settled. It shows no signs of changing its ways. Doing business the old fashioned way matters most.

Robert D. Kaplan

His articles are featured in numerous scoundrel media publications. Defense Secretary Robert Gates appointed him to the Defense Policy Board. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush reportedly sought his counsel.

In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine called him one of the world’s “top global thinkers.” He’s Stratfor Global Intelligence chief geopolitical analyst. According to Professor Daniel Drezner:

“What Kaplan and George Friedman share is a sense of geographical determinism that allows them to claim predictive powers.”

They and likeminded ideologues advance amoral national interest priorities. Resource control weighs heavily.

Professor Robert Farley added:

“Kaplan’s talent is to tell the powerful what they want to hear with the veneer of both theoretical insight and empirical knowledge, while possessing neither.”

His book “Balkan Ghosts” allegedly influenced Clinton’s thinking on Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Its dark side analysis characterized Yugoslav people as primitive and violent.

He calls Iran a potential regional hegemon. He says “Iranians do respond to pressure, but it has to be extreme.”

At an earlier Davos World Economic Forum meeting, Stratfor’s George Friedman addressed Iran saying, “There is a solution to (weapons) proliferation, and this is bombing them.” Perhaps Kaplan’s view is likeminded.

Henry Kissinger:

Previous articles discussed him. He was an early architect of new world order harshness.

He’s a notorious war criminal. His rap sheet includes three to four million Southeast Asian war deaths.

He was instrumental in overthrowing Chile’s democratic government. Augusto Pinochet replaced Salvador Allende. Reign of terror arrests, killings, torture and neoliberal harshness followed.

He backed Suharto’s brutal dictatorship. His Kopassus special forces terrorized Indonesians. Their record includes kidnappings, rape, torture, targeted killings, sweeping violence, mass murder, and other atrocities against anyone challenging his authority.

He supported his West Papua takeover. He OK’d his East Timor invasion. Over two hundred thousand East Timorese died. Around half a million more were displaced.

In two months, 10% of the population was annihilated. It was prelude for what followed.

Kissinger supported the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power and reign of terror. He encouraged a Kurdish revolt against Saddam Hussein. He then abandoned them. He advised Bush and Cheney on Iraq policy.

He backed a 1974 Cypriot fascist coup. He defended Turkey’s brutal invasion. He was complicit in Operation Condor. Pinochet and other Latin American despots reigned terror against alleged communists and political opponents. Tens of thousands perished.

He supported Pakistan’s “delicacy and tact” in overthrowing Bangladesh’s democratically elected government. Half a million deaths followed.

In 1974, his secret National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) called for drastic global depopulation. Developing nations are resource rich, he said. They’re vital to US growth. He wanted useless eaters eliminated. He said “Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World.”

He supported involuntary mass sterilizations. He wanted birth control made a prerequisite for US aid. He wanted hundreds of millions eliminated by 2000.

He endorsed the worst of Israeli crimes. He deplores peace. He supports war and state terror. He symbolizes the worst of imperial lawlessness.

Henry Kravis:

He’s co-chairman and co-CEO of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR). It calls itself  “a leading global investment firm with deep roots in private equity, diversified capabilities, decades of financial and operational experience, broad industry knowledge, and a powerful network of global relationships.”

It specializes in leveraged buyouts. It asset-strips companies for profit. It dumps thousands of employees doing so. It makes money the old fashioned way. Bottom line ones alone matter.

Forbes estimates his net worth at $4.5 billion. Balzac once said behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

Jessica T. Mathews:

She’s a Bilderberg Steering Committee member. She’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace president. From 1977 – 1979, she was National Security Council Office of Global Issues director. She held various other executive and legislative government posts. From 1980 – 1982, she was a Washington Post editorial board member.

Her husband is retired four-star Air Force General Charles G. Boyd. He’s a Council on Foreign Relations program director. He’s Business Executives for National Security president. He’s a prominent Project on National Security Reform member.

Richard Perle:

He’s a Bilderberg Steering Committee member. He’s known as “the prince of darkness.” He’s a prominent uberhawk. He favors conflict over diplomacy. He served as Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of Defense and Global Strategic Affairs. He was GW Bush’s Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee chairman.

He’s associated with the Project for the New American Century and American Enterprise Institute. Both organizations figured prominently in post-9/11 wars.

His other affiliations include the Hudson Institute, pro-Israeli front group Washington Institute for Near East Affairs (WINEP), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and Center for Security Policy among others.

David Petraeus

He gained prominence as US Central Command head, International Security Assistance Force commander, and CIA director. Defrocking followed Petraeusgate.  A previous article said forget resignation over extramarital sex. Lots of elected and appointed Washington officials had affairs. Many likely have current ones. Numerous former presidents had them. Defrocking never forced any from office.

Competence didn’t earn Petraeus four stars. Former peers accused him of brown-nosing his way to the top. It made him a brand as much as general.

Talk earlier surfaced about his presidential aspirations. In 2007, Time magazine made him runner-up Person of the Year.

White House and media spin praised his stellar performance. Before he fell from grace, he was called aggressive in nature, an innovative thinker on counterinsurgency warfare, a talisman, a white knight, a do-or-die competitive legend, and a man able to turn defeat into victory.

His former commander, Admiral William Fallon, called him “a piece of brown-nosing chicken shit.”

He’s more myth than man. His failures were called successes. His career advanced by being super-hawkish, brown-nosing the right superiors, lying to Congress, surviving the scorn of some peers, hiding his failures, hyping a fake Iranian threat, supporting Israel, unjustifiably claiming Iraq success, and boasting how he’d do it throughout the region.

He manufactured successes. He concealed failures. He’s out of the public spotlight but not gone.

In March 2013, he became honorary Office of Strategic Services (OSS) chairman. It was the CIA’ s predecessor organization.

He’s also a City University of New York visiting professor. In May, UCLA named him Judge Widney Professor. He’s Currahee Board of Trustees president. KKR named him KKR Global Institute chairman.

Robert Rubin:

He formerly chaired Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. He served as Clinton’s Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, National Economic Council head and Treasury Secretary.  Time magazine once called him, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers “The Committee to Save the World.”

They did more wrecking than saving. They helped get Glass-Steagall repealed. They influenced Commodities Futures Modernization Act  (CFMA) passage.   It legitimized swap agreements and other hybrid instruments. They’re at the core of major financial problems. It prevented regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging. CFMA and Glass-Steagall’s repeal made Wall Street a casino operating on only the house wins rules.

CFMA legitimized derivatives scams. Enron took full advantage. It fleeced investors and energy purchasers with impunity. It did so until its house of cards collapsed.  At the time, Alan Greenspan endorsed derivatives. He lied calling them a way to share risks. They turned an economic downturn into a protracted Main Street Depression.

Clinton/Rubin/Summers/Greenspan/Bernanke/Paulson/Geithner, and other co-conspirators engineered it.

Eric Schmidt:

He’s Google executive chairman. Forbes estimates his net worth at $7.5 billion. He’s a regular Bilderberg attendee. A previous article discussed his close Bilderberg ties.

Infowars reporters Paul Joseph Watson and Jon Scobie said Google’s “merging” with Bilderberg.

It’s “being recast as ‘Google-Berg’ – partly because of efforts on behalf of activists to tear away the veil of Bilderberg’s much cherished secrecy, and partly as a means of re-branding authoritarian, undemocratic secret gatherings of elites as trendy, liberal, feel-good philanthropic-style forums like Google Zeitgeist and TED.”

Schmidt thinks “privacy is a relic of the past.” He “plans to turn Google into the ultimate Big Brother.”

He and Bilderberg members share common aims. In part, they reflect a “collectivist, permanently networked world (without) individuality and privacy.” They’re partnering for greater global control. Doing so makes Bilderberg’s ideal world unfit to live in.

James Wolfensohn:

He’s Australian born. He became a naturalized US citizen. From 1995 – 2005, he was World Bank president. Along with the IMF and other major international lending agencies, it debt entraps nations.

It wages financial war on humanity. It mandates structural adjustment harshness.

It prioritizes privatization of state enterprises, mass layoffs, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, wage freezes or cuts, corporate-friendly tax cuts, unrestricted Western corporate market access, trade unionism crushed or marginalized, and stiff repression targeting non-believers.

In 2005, Wolfsensohn founded Wolfensohn & Company. It’s a global emerging markets private equity firm. It advises governments and large corporations doing business in emerging market economies.

Since 2006, Wolfensohn’s also been Citigroup International Advisory Board chairman.  In 2009, he became a China Investment Corporation International Advisory Council member. In October 2010, he regained his Australian citizenship.

Robert Zoellick:

He’s a prominent neocon. He was a Project for a New American Century member. He advocated post-9/11 wars. Paul Wolfowitz succeeded Wolfensohn as World Bank president. Zoellick succeeded him. He served from 2007 to 2012.

He formerly was a Goldman Sachs managing director, as well as Deputy Secretary of State and US Trade Representative under GW Bush.

Under Reagan, he held various Treasury positions. He was Counselor to James Baker, Executive Secretary of the Department, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Policy.

He was GHW Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs. He also served as Department Counselor.

In 1991 and 1992, he was Bush’s G7 summit representative. He 1992, he served as White House deputy chief of staff.

From 1993 – 1997, he was Fannie Mae executive vice president. He bears much responsibility for helping to inflate the housing bubble. During George Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, he was one among other self-styled “vulcans.” Others included Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, Stephen Hadley, Scooter Libby, and Dov Zakheim.  The term alludes to the Roman god of fire and metalworking.

Zoellick’s other past and present affiliations include Enron’s advisory board, Alliance Capital, Said Holdings, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute’s Strategy Group, former Defense Secretary William Cohen’s Defense Policy Board, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies among others.

Other notable Bilderberg attendees include IMF head Christine Lagarde, European President Jose Manuel Barroso, former appointed Italian Prime Minister Mario (three-card) Monti, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, Goldman Sachs International chairman Peter Sutherland, as well as numerous other politicians, corporate bosses, investment firm heads, journalist insiders and others.

They comprise a virtual rogues gallery of scoundrels. An official list excludes likely figures kept private. Rumor suggests Obama and Britain’s David Cameron may attend. Perhaps we’ll know more later on.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” 

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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How dandy that this type of patently unconstitutional law is trotted out at a time of rising discontent among the public here and abroad. The passing of this law —of all places in New York—proves again that liberals are less than worthless. [/pullquote]

“Our system of laws is established to protect the foundations of our society,” Senator Griffo said. “Police officers who risk their lives every day in our cities and on our highways deserve every possible protection, and those who treat them with disrespect, harass them and create situations that can lead to injuries deserve to pay a price for their actions.”

NOTE: According to the bill, the “annoying” behavior is defined by initiating any form of physical contact with the officer. It is my prediction that this will likely be the new catch-all charge against people, similar to how “resisting arrest” is (ab)used. If you flinch when you are being handcuffed, it could be a felony charge. Shrug your shoulders while being beaten by police, and it could be a 4 year sentence.

I would hope that most people could agree that everyone, police or not, should be held to the same standards and governed by the same laws. That is one of our founding principles. On that much alone, we should all oppose this bill which sets police into a special protected class of citizen.

http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/senate-passes-bill-making-harassment-police-officer-crime

By Paul Craig Roberts Paul Craig Roberts When Gerald Celente branded the American media “presstitutes,” he got it right. The US print and TV media (and NPR) whore for Washington and the corporations. Reporting the real news is their last concern. The presstitutes are a Ministry of Propaganda and Coverup. This is true of the entire Western media, a collection of bought-and-paid-for whores. It seems that every day I witness a dozen or more examples. Take May 31 for example.   The presstitutes report that US Secretary of State John Kerry and his German counterpart are working on Russia to convince that country to be a “party to peace” in Syria by not supplying the Syrian government, whose country has been invaded, with arms. Kerry and the Israelis especially do not want Russia to deliver the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Syria. [pullquote] It’s bittersweet for us to see that, at last, almost five decades after we started fingering the corporate media as the greatest obstacle to human progress, some heavyweights like Dr Roberts are zeroing in on the same issue. Except for the late Alex Cockburn, the great Michael Parenti, Chomsky and Herman, Alex Carey, and our own editor, Patrice Greanville, who founded Cyrano’s Journal in 1982, the problem of building a left-controlled machinery of mass communications was an orphan issue for most of the American left. The dreadful consequences of this strategic myopia are everywhere to be seen.  [/pullquote] This was the extent of the presstitutes’ report. The presstitutes made no mention of the fact that the invasion of Syria by al-Qaeda affiliated radical Muslims was organized and equipped by Washington via its proxies in the region, such as Saudia Arabia and the oil emirates. Americans sufficiently stupid to rely on the presstitute media do not know that it is not Syrians who want to overthrow their government, but Washington, Israel, and radical Islamists who object to Syria’s secular non-confrontational government. One might think that the US media would wonder why Washington prefers to have al-Qaeda governing Syria than a non-confrontational secular government. But such a question is off-limits for the US media. Israel, unlike Washington which so far hides behind proxies, has actually openly committed war crimes as defined by the Nuremberg trials of Nazis by initiating unprovoked aggression against Syria by militarily attacking the country. In reporting Kerry’s pressure on Putin, presstitutes made no mention that the Washington-backed attempted overthrow of the Syrian government has run into difficulty, causing president Obama to ask the Pentagon to come up with a no-fly plan, which means according to the Libya precedent NATO or US air attacks on Syrian government forces. As the S-300 missiles are a defensive weapon, Obama’s plan to send in Western or Israeli air forces to attack the Syrian army is why Kerry is pressuring Russia not to honor its contract to deliver to Syria the S-300 missiles, which can knock US, NATO, and Israeli aircraft out of the sky. Those who believed that Kerry could have made a difference as president must be disillusioned to see what a warmongering whore he is. In america marketing is everything; truth is nothing. The real news story is that Washington is trying to convince Putin to acquiesce to Washington’s overthrow of the Syrian government so that Russia can be evicted from its only naval base in the Mediterranean Sea, thus making it Washington’s sea, Washington’s Mare Nostrum. The american pressitutes put all the onus on the Russian government for not helping Washington to overthrow the Syrian government in order that Washington has another victory over Russia and can start next on Iran. William Hague, who serves, with Washington’s approval, as British foreign secretary to the shame of a once proud nation, made this clear when he declared: “We want a solution without Assad. We do not accept the stay of Assad.” This is amazing hypocrisy, because the Syrian government is more respectful of human rights than Washington and London. While Kerry was trying to con Putin, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that the Obama administration’s immediate priority was removing Assad from power.http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/302773-white-house-no-role-for-assad-in-transitional-government  So for the US and UK, “peace” means the overthrow of the Syrian government by force. Why isn’t the United Nations protesting? The answer is that the countries and their UN representatives have been purchased by Washington. Money talks. Integrity and justice don’t. Integrity and justice are poverty-inflicted. The UN belongs to the evil empire. Washington owns it. The american Empire has the money. It pays for the headlines and for the budget that lets the UN delegates enjoy New York City, In the world today, integrity is worthless, but money is valuable, and Washington has the money because, as the dollar is the world reserve currency, it can be printed in sufficient quantities to purchase every country’s government, including our own. One year out of office and Tony Blair was worth $35 million. Look at the amazing Clinton riches. According to news report, $3.2 million was spent on Chelsea’s wedding. http://www.goingwedding.com/news_detail.asp?newsid=67  Hague said that the UK and France “seek to end the ban on arming Syrian rebels.” Hague did not explain how the invasion force was armed if there is a ban against arming it. But Hague did tell us who the invading force is: “the Syrian National Coalition,” which consists of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt (still the American puppet), the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Germany and Italy. Obviously, the talk about a “Syrian rebellion” is pure BS. Syria is confronted with an attempted overthrow of its government by the US and its puppet states. Kerry is trying to convince Putin to let Washington overthrow Syria. As if this wasn’t enough, also on May 31, I listened to e.j. dionne and david brooks on National Public Radio discuss the state of the Obama presidency. Both were protective of “our president.” Neither would dare say: “the military-security complex’s president,” “Wall Street’s president,” “the Israel Lobby’s president,” “Monsanto’s president,” “the mining and fracking president.” Obama is “our president.” Both brooks and dionne agreed that the media had got rid of the Benghazi issue and that the IRS persecution of Tea Party members was under the media’s control and was not a threat to Obama. david brooks did acknowledge that there were economic problems ignored and no new ideas. However, the blatant fact that under Obama the US is in a constitutional crisis, well described by Dr. Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois,http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35134.htm was not mentioned by NPR’s pundits, who define correct thoughts for the NPR audience, people too busy to pay attention. In america today, the executive branch in explicit violation of the US Constitution detains indefinitely or murders any US citizen alleged without proof by an unaccountable member of the executive branch to be in any way associated with the broad but undefined term, “terrorism,” even innocently as a donor to hungry or ill Palestinian children. The executive branch clearly violates the US Constitution and US statutory laws against torture and spying on citizens without warrants. Congress does not impeach the president for his obvious crimes, and the Federal Judiciary enables them. President Nixon was driven from office because he lied about when he learned of a burglary for which he was not responsible. President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for lying about a sexual affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. President George w. Bush took america to wars based on obvious lies, and so did president Obama. Both administrations are guilty of war crimes and almost every possible infraction of constitutional and international law. Yet, no presstitute member of the media would dare mention impeachment, and the House would never bring the charge. There is no doubt whatsoever that in the 21st century presidents, their lawyers, Justice (sic) Department officials, and CIA and black-op operatives have broken law after law, and there is no accountability. For the presstitutes, this is a non-issue. “Rule of law, Constitution? We don’t need no stinking rule of law or Constitution.” For the presstitutes, the bought-and-paid for-whores for evil, the issues are Obama’s stable poll numbers; teenage girls arrested for fighting at a kindergarten graduation ceremony; ”Microsoft’s Bill Gates extended his lead over Mexico’s Carlos Slim as the world’s richest person,” “the $14 million-dollar girl: Beyonce rakes it in.” Constitutional crisis? What is that? I mean, really, look at Beyonce’s legs. Didn’t you hear, the dollar rose today? The presstitutes have not investigated any important issue. Not 9/11. Not the accumulation of unaccountable power in the executive branch. Not the demise of the Bill of Rights. Not the Boston Marathon bombing. Not the endless and unexplained wars against Muslims who have not attacked the US. The Boston Marathon saga reached new levels of absurdity with the FBI’s murder of Ibragim Todashev, who was being pressured to admit to various associated crimes. The presstitutes first reported that Todashev was armed. It was a gun, then a knife, then after the presstitutes duly reported the false information planted on them, which for the insouciant american public was sufficient to explain Toashev’s murder, the FBI admitted that the victim was unarmed. Nevertheless, he was shot seven times, one to the back of the head. His father wants to know why the FBI assassinated his son, but the presstitutes could not care less. Don’t expect any answer from the american press and TV media or from NPR, an organization that pretends to be a “listener station” but is financed by corporate contributions. How’s Todashev’s murder for Gestapo justice? Where is the difference? A bullet in the back of the head. And America is the shining light on the hill, the font of freedom and democracy brought to the world courtesy of the military/security complex out of the barrel of guns and hellfire missiles from drones. And relentless propaganda in the schools, universities, and media. Washington certainly learned [well] from [bloodthirsty tyrants]. You kill them into submission. But you will never hear about it from the presstitutes. ABOUT THE AUTHOR A protean intellect, Dr Roberts has served in many capacities from academia to presidential cabinets. A onetime full-fledged member of the privileged inner circles, he is today one of the most outspoken and eloquent critics of the American plutocracy and its shills.