googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-5267640865741878159&ei=hy-_StOwIcKu-AaiuuzdBg&q=rob+newman&hl=en#

America’s Secret Recovery Of Yamashita’s Gold (Review By Phil Shannon, The Green Left Weekly)
http://www.rense.com/general49/sece.htm

The murder of Ben Barka (Time, 1975)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,945444-1,00.html

One of The Spectator’s most illustrious contributors, Graham Greene, becomes a “voyeur of violence” during the struggle for Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam, 1954
http://www.spectator.co.uk/180/684821/graham-greene-in-vietnam.thtml

nixontapes.org is the only website in the world that makes the complete collection of Nixon tapes available directly to the public in a user-friendly format, free of charge.
http://www.nixontapes.org/

On a different note, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia – CIA complicity in the global drug trade (1972) is a difficult-to-find but frequently referenced non-fiction book by Alfred W. McCoy, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The book exposes the systematic exploitation of the opium & heroin trades as a matter of policy by world powers.

However, for the first time in history, we have the technology to radically alter our working democratic model. Thanks to banks, we have secure 24 hour access to our money – either via cash machines (ATMs) or via the internet. In addition, it would be a simple matter to give each eligible citizen a voting account – we could even piggyback on the existing ATM infrastructure. Online referendums would be cost-effective whether they be on a monthly, a weekly or even a daily basis. In fact, a system of such direct democracy would render large sections of governmental bureaucracy redundant.  For example, we would surely no longer require parliamentary representatives since online referendums would act as our hotline into government. 

Of course, this system (call it “total democracy”) would have its fair share of critics who believe that the general public is simply too uninformed to run the government in such a direct fashion. Almost everyone I’ve spoken to about total democracy has suggested that the masses are not to be trusted to run the country & there’s a fair chance that this thought has crossed your mind also. The conclusion I’m obliged to reach is that this country is less than committed to the principle of democracy. Worryingly, I suspect that I am not part of the solution.

My friend suspects that the Federal Reserve is behind every economic boom & bust since & including the Great Depression. Motive? Foreknowledge = massive profit. Conversely, economics can also serve as an efficient political weapon. “If the Federal Reserve is behind the Credit Crunch, what’s their aim?” I asked my friend. His response: “China is a slumbering giant; they wish to cripple the economy before it overtakes the West.”

Mistrust of the Federal Reserve is nothing new.  Ezra Pound (modernist poet,visionary, traitor, fascist & lunatic) believed that the bankers in charge of the Federal Reserve and their associates in the Bank of England were responsible for getting the USA into both World Wars, in an effort to drive up government debt beyond sustainable levels.  Pound commissioned his protege, Eustace Mullins, to write a book about the history of the Federal Reserve in the style of a detective story. The book, Secrets Of The Federal Reserve, charges that bankers hide behind the screen of the central banks and pull political strings to drive countries into the war, creating immense profits for themselves as the principal beneficiaries of wartime debt. [Wikipedia]

Another high-profile critic of the Federal Reserve was President John F. Kennedy who, on June 4, 1963, signed Executive Order No. 11110 returning to the U.S. government the power to issue currency without going through the Federal Reserve Bank (effectively stripping the Federal Reserve of its power to loan money to the government at interest).  The John F. Kennedy vs The Federal Reserve showdown didn’t last long however. JFK was assassinated 5 months later & Executive order 11110 became obsolete.

A quick glance at the news will confirm that it’s the poor & the disenfranchised that are hit hardest in the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq. Even the US troops sent over to fight on the front line are largely recruited from the lower classes. Coverage of the recent Gaza crisis underlines the disparity between the invaders & the invaded: TV footage contrasts impoverished Palestinian victims with middle-class Israelis being interviewed in relatively affluent neighbourhoods. OK, so you have to allow for biased editing but the point is that conflict rarely has a negative impact on the rich & powerful. On the contrary, there are big profits to be made for the entrepreneurial in oil, defence contracts & even opium. Like Deep Throat said, you simply have to “follow the money”.

The fact is that, according to economic historians, global inequality has never been greater. So how much money is there in the world? Let’s assume that there’s a finite amount, that a limited amount of money is available to the 6 billion & more people who inhabit the earth. What then would be one person’s equal share?

According to an estimate in the essay How much money, Gold does the world hold?,  the global money supply exceeds $60.2 trillion. Divide that into the global population & you get $9393. The inevitable implication is that, when a person gets rich, people somewhere else become poorer as a consequence. This is the kind of unsettling logic that made Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth program so popular & so dangerous.

Long was an enourmously popular American politician who served as Governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a U.S. senator from 1932 to 1935 & was shaping up as a contender for the presidency when he was assassinated.

He was known as much for his political rhetoric & fiery style (in some ways not dissimilar to Mussolini’s – see old footage on Youtube) as for his radical radical policies that earned him a long list of powerful enemies.

Huey Long originally won fame at the expense of Standard Oil Company (founded by John D. Rockefeller), which he sued for unfair business practices, & which he continued to oppose throughout his career. Long also criticised the banking houses of Morgan and Rockefeller which owned stock in the Federal Reserve System. Long believed that the Federal Reserve Bank controlled the monetary system to their own benefit, instead of the general public’s, and that their policies were the true cause of the Great Depression.

During the Great Depression, Long began a radical reform movement: the Share Our Wealth Society. The movement was dedicated to the redistribution of wealth in the USA. Long claimed that 2% of the population owned 60% of the wealth but, it redistributed evenly, there would be enough wealth for everybody to enjoy a comfortable standard of living.

The Share of Wealth plan involved taxing all incomes over a million dollars. On the second million the capital levy tax would be one per cent. On the third, two per cent, on the fourth, four per cent; and so on. Once a personal fortune exceeded $8 million, the tax would become 100 per cent. Under his plan, the government would confiscate all inheritances of more than one million dollars.

Every family would have a basic household grant of $5,000 and a minimum annual income of $2,000-3,000 (or one-third the average family income). Long supplemented his plan with proposals for free primary and college education, old-age pensions, veterans’ benefits, federal assistance to farmers, public works projects, and limiting thework week to thirty hours.

By 1935, the society had over 7.5 million members in 27,000 clubs across the country & there were indications that Long was considering exploiting this support to break from the Democrats and form a third party.

In May 1935 Long entered discussions about a joint campaign to take on President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential elections. In July, Long announced that his police had discovered a plot to kill him & surrounded himself with armed bodyguards at all times.

On 8 September 1935, Huey Long was apparently shot at the Capitol in Baton Rouge by Carl Weiss, a Louisiana physician. The details of the shooting are hazy & there is disagreement as to whether Weiss, who was gunned down immediately in a hail of bullets, actually had a gun when he confronted Long. Furthermore, one of the bullets removed from Long’s body came from the gun of a bodyguard (claimed to be a ricochet).

Long died 2 days later at the age of 42. His last words were reportedly, “God, don’t let me die. I have so much left to do.”

Huey long’s ideas have been alternately described as facist or radically socialistic. Critics called his governership of Louisiana dictatorial & yet his slogan was: “Every Man a King but no man wears a crown”. It’s intriguing to wonder how his political career might have developed had he lived. However, his untimely death ensured that Huey Long & his ideas were relegated to the footnotes of history.

The media focused on the scandalous fact that several teachers & police were included on the membership list incidentally reinforcing the general perception of the BNP as an “immoral” organisation (which I happen to agree with but that’s beside the point). Furthermore, a few days later, with the BNP story still fresh on everybody’s minds, Shane Meadow’s This is England aired on terrestrial TV. The film, which is a masterpiece in its own right, has been perceived as a shocking & powerful indictment of racism & the National Front.

The leaking of the list & the (coincidental?) timing of the film airing amount to a terrible PR week for the BNP. If you were trying to destroy the credibility of the BNP, could you devise a better way of going about it? Which brings me to the real interest of the story i.e.: who leaked the list? Was it merely a disgruntled former party member or was a secret player involved? After all, it’s long been suspected that Combat 18 was an operation to ambush neo-nazis. Is this a subtler type of operation?

Yesterday, The Guardian ran a surprisingly high profile story yesterday about the activities of the Research, Information and Communication Unit (RICU): Revealed: Britain’s secret propaganda war against al-Qaida – BBC and website forums targeted by Home Office unit

Freedom of the press & authority don’t always mix. A media insider recently mentioned that all news items in the UK are routinely cleared by “spooks”. In the US, a common perception is that the end of the Vietnam War was accelerated due to extensive media exposure covering the Peace Movement. In November 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai Massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers in March 1968. The report prompted widespread condemnation around the world and reduced public support for the Vietnam War in the United States.

This type of ‘subversive’ reporting has resulted in a determination in US right-wing thinking to muzzle the press, at least in wartime (this is, of course, only my opinion). The trouble comes when we consider ourselves to be in a state of perpetual war which, some might say, is a pretty accurate description of the Cold War.

It was Howard Hunt who broke the story that the CIA funded Animal Farm, the animated film version of George Orwell’s political allegory.

However, this was only one example of a worldwide policy unearthed by the Frank Church investigations (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) in 1975. Details of Operation Mockingbird were revealed as a result of  According to the Congress report published in 1976:

“The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.” Frank Church argued that misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.

Mockingbird’s “principal operative” was the enigmatic Cord Meyer. In February, 2001, the writer, C. David Heymann, asked Cord Meyer about the death of his wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer: “My father died of a heart attack the same year Mary was killed , ” he whispered. “It was a bad time.” And what could he say about Mary Meyer? Who had committed such a heinous crime? “The same sons of bitches,” he hissed, “that killed John F. Kennedy.”

“Big crime in Nice is practically nonexistent” once said Nice Mayor Jacques Médecin, conveniently overlooking the career of Albert Spaggiari who, as well as occasionlly acting as photographer for the mayor, had a starring role in the “Bank Heist of the Century” & other things.

“Without Weapons, Neither Hatred Nor Violence” is the phrase that Albert Spaggiari wrote on the walls of a Nice bank vault after he’d tunnelled into it via the sewers & the inspiration for the title of a new film about the high-profile criminal.

Tower 7
9/11 Truthers seem to be focusing on the fate of Tower 7, the “first and only tall skyscraper in the world to have collapsed because of fire”. BBC article: The evolution of a conspiracy theory

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a group consisting of hundreds of building professionals, want Congress to open up a new investigation of 9/11. Founder, Richard Gage, believes that the Twin Towers and Building 7 collapsed as a result of explosives.  A letter from Gage to Congressman Robert Wexler has been posted on the group’s website, asking the congressman to investigate a number of inconsistencies. 

The Good Shepherd: CIA Secrets or Hollywood Sizzle?
Cloak-and-dagger movie, The Good Shepherd, tells the story of the CIA’s early days through the eyes of Edward Wilson, the movie’s main character. Wilson is patterned after the legendary spy-catcher, James Jesus Angleton but how much of the movie is true and how much is Hollywood sizzle?