The Reality Behind Conspiracy Theory

The Reality Behind Conspiracy Theories and Domestic Terrorism

Directed by Matthew Ehret (2022)

Film Review

The main premises Ehret presents in this short film are

1. The current oligarchy controlling the US government (and the world) came to power via a coup launched through a series of 1961-68  assassinations (Malcom X, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King among others).

2. All Western elected leaders support the current global oligarchy.

3. Throughout history, powerful rulers have acted to criminalize dissent. In the US, this includes individuals who disagree with the official version of the JFK assassination and 9-11, as well as the Covid narrative and the current war on the fascist leaders the CIA installed in Ukraine in 2014. In Ehret’s view, massive censorship (with government support) by Google, YouTube, Facebook and other big tech companies has essentially cancelled free speech guaranteed by the first amendment to the US Constitution.

Most of the film concerns two decades of efforts by the US oligarchy to suppress dissent by labeling it “conspiracy theory.”

It starts by exploring the work of legal scholars Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule. The pair predicted the blanket censorship of dissent that has occurred in 2022 in their 2008 working paper Conspiracy Theories.

It advocated for greater government control of human behavior via the following strategies:

1. Government “cognitive infiltration” of so-called “extremist groups.”

2. A government ban on “conspiracy theories.”

3. A government tax on people who disseminate “conspiracy theories.”

4. An organized government strategy to engage in “counter speech” (contradicting “conspiracy theories”) or to pay or “encourage” private parties to engage in “counter speech.”

In other writings and speeches, Sunstein promoted the view that unlike other animals, human beings are fundamentally irrational and must be controlled by “enlightened” elites maintaining the illusion of democracy. This was also the fundamental view of George Soros’s mentor Karl Popper.

Obama’s science czar John Holdren, who supported similar views, went so far as to propose a global regime supported by a scientific priesthood with ultimate control over all global populations, resources and environmental management.

According to Ehret, the fatal flaw in the work of Sunstein, Vermeule, Popper, Holdren (and Soros) is their view of human beings as machines under the total control of their genes All five men have totally rejected the notion that human beings can be motivated by metaphysical beliefs (such as conscience, truth, intention, soul, honor, God, justice, patriotism, dignity and inequality) independent of their genes and their bodily functions. Throughout history, many dissidents strongly identified with what they view as “inalienable rights” have been willing to sacrifice popularity, physical comfort and even their lives to defend them. (Ehret gives Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King as examples).

Such individuals have always been extremely sensitive to false narratives presented as truth, and the example they set is always extremely contagious.

According to Ehret, modern historians tell you that history is driven by purely random events. The historical record suggests otherwise, that it is shaped by the ideas and intentions (ie conspiracies both for good and for evil) of powerful elites and the truth seekers who oppose them.

2000 Mules: D’Souza’s Film About Ballot Harvesting in 2020 Election

2000 Mules

Directed by Dinesh D’Souza (2021)[1]

Film Review

This is a fascinating documentary. Unlike other documentaries about the 2020 election (focusing mainly on statistical irregularities), its main focus is an investigation into smartphone geotracking data identifying individuals who visited  multiple privately funded absentee ballot drop boxes prior to election day. True the Vote spent $2 million to buy this publicly available cellphone data.

According to True the Vote, 300,000 apps collect geotracking data on smartphone users and sell it to advertisers and intelligence and law enforcement agencies.[2] The voter intelligence specialist they hired found 242 so-called “mules” who (according to their cellphone GPS data) visited more than 10 drop boxes in a single day. True the Vote identified a total of 242 individuals who deposited ballots in an average of 24 drop boxes over two weeks.

True the Vote believes this behavior was part of a ballot harvesting scheme aimed at swinging the vote to Biden in important swing states. According to a second investigator specializing in ballot harvesting, a ballot harvester collects absentee ballots in a number of ways. These include visiting college dorms and nursing homes receiving large numbers of unclaimed ballots, targeting Hispanic communities where elderly voters are pressured to hand over their absentee ballots and researching voter rolls for dead voters or those who haven’t voted in 10 years.

One aspect that wasn’t totally clear was how the mules defeated the signature verification requirement in Arizona, which was one of the swing states investigated. Arizona is one of 27 states verifying the signature on the ballot envelop with drivers licenses and other state records. In these states, entering the bar code on the ballot envelope calls up the voter’s name, driver’s license and voter registration). See How States Verify Absentee Ballots

According to whistleblowers, various non-profit agencies paid mules $10 per ballot for each of the 3-10 ballots they delivered to each drop box. It’s illegal in 23 states to submit an absentee ballot for anyone other than a family member. According to D’Souza, it’s illegal in all 50 states to pay someone to submit an absentee ballot on behalf of a third person.

True the Vote also collected four million minutes of drop box video surveillance (through official information requests) to match their geotracking data with images of mules stuffing ballots into drop boxes.

For me the main weaknesses of the film were

1. failing to clarify how the mules circumvented the signature verification requirements in Arizona,
2. failing to highlight that vote fraud is a bipartisan problem, by referencing the extensive research into computer voting machine fraud during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections (see How Rigged Voting Machines are Stealing Our Elections),[3]
3. suggesting (without clear evidence) that numerous 501 (c) 3 organizations (funded by Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Warren Buffet and VISA) violated IRS regulations by providing funding to pay ballot mules (while it’s well-documented these groups funded drop boxes and voter registration campaigns, neither, in itself is illegal), and
4. failing to explore the likelihood of US intelligence involvement in this ballot harvesting scheme, especially given Zuckerberg’s and Soros’s longstanding links to the CIA, as well geotracking data identifying several of the ballot mules as engaging in criminal violence during ANTIFA and Black Lives Matters protests.[4]

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[1] In 2018, Trump pardoned D’Souza who had pleaded guilty to 2014 campaign finance law violations.

[2] I was astonished to learn that all the January 6 protestors the FBI arrested were already being geotracked, which was how the FBI identified them so quickly. The CDC also purchased this geotracking data to track millions of Americans during the pandemic (see Senators Johnson Demands CDC Explain Why It Tracked Movements of Americans During the Pandemic)

[3] By minimizing Republican vote rigging, D’Souza effectively pigeonholes this issue as a “conservative” issue, when it should be of major concern to all Americans across the political spectrum.

[4] Many of whom were later identified as government infiltrators and provocateurs.

Watch the film free at this link:

https://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2022/05/watch-2000-mules-right-now-for-free-compliments-of-dinesh-dsouza-3772487.html

 

The Role of Philanthropy and Foundations in Thwarting Black Liberation

The Race for the Bottom

Al Jazeera (2021)

Film Review

This is an excellent documentary about the role of wealthy philanthropists and their foundations in thwarting the battle end institutional racism. Filmmakers make the point that “insurrection” that stormed the Capitol on Jan 6 didn’t start with Trump: that it was decades in the making.

Narrated by prestigious African American historians and academic, the begins with efforts by Carnegie and John D Rockefeller to steer newly freed slave into manual labor training that would keep them in agriculture and in the South. In 1903, Congress authorized the Rockefeller foundation to create General the Education Board. The latter would set standards for rural public schools, as well as universities and medical schools for the next 50 years. In 1910, the Flexner report, funded by Carnegie Foundation, recommended the closure of five black medical schools. In severely restricting the supply of Black doctors, the move also reduced access to medical care for Black patients.

The rise of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s would lead to a new wave of philanthropic funding, aimed at preventing the Black “insurrection.” The Ford Foundation, the source of significant funding to Black Studies, Black Art and Black higher and post graduate education, used it to split the African American community by create a Black liberal elite. I was very surprised to learn the the Black Panther Party received Ford Foundation funding for their free school breakfasts, medical clinics, eye programs and sickle cell foundation.

The film also mentions the role of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation in funding Black Lives Matter.

The rise of the Black Power movement, as well as women’s and gay rights movements in the late sixties and seventies would also trigger a white backlash, giving rise to a host of conservative foundations and think tanks (eg Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, Walton Family Foundation, DeVos Family Foundation). The work of these foundations (along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) would lead to a sustained attack on public schools through the (publicly funded) charter school movement, as well the training and appointment of conservative judges and an electoral coalition that would elect Donald Trump in 2016.

The film can be viewed free at https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-big-picture/2021/2/11/a-race-for-america

The Coming Financial Crash: Learning from History

Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity

Edited by Michael Lewis

WW Norton (2009)

Book Review

This book is a collection of essays about the four major Wall Street crashes of the last 30 years. The first was Black Monday, on October 19, 1987; the second the 1997 Asian financial crisis; the third the Dotcom crash of 2000-2002; and the fourth the global economic crash of 2007-2008.

Black Monday

At the time, Black Monday was the worst Wall Street crash in history – with a percentage decline in stock prices twice that of the 1929 crash. The various essays blame Black Monday on two main causes: an overvalued stock market (with too many shares bought with borrowed money) and new computerized trading programs that automatically sold larges volumes of institutional stocks (from pension plans, mutual funds, etc) once their price dropped below a designated price.

Asian Financial Crisis

The collapse of South East Asian currencies (South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia) in 1997 is blamed on a variety of factors. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad blamed Soros, but Lewis claims the latter had temporarily stopped currency trading in 1997. The Asian crisis was contagious, causing investors to also pull their funds out of Russia and Brazil, as well as the six Asian countries. Both the ruble and the Brazilian real collapsed in 1998.

China, India and Vietnam were virtually unaffected, as they defied the US and IMF by imposing capitol and currency controls (preventing foreign investors from withdrawing funds or exchanging large amounts of currency without government authorization).

All three countries continued to experience 9-11% growth during the next decade.

Dot Com Crash

The Dot Com boom was largely fueled by the advent of computerized day trading, allowing investors to purchase large volumes of stock directly without going through established brokers. It was also the first time in history that investors scurried to buy shares in companies that operated at a loss. The immediate cause of the Dot Com crash was a decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, bankrupting hundreds of Internet startups that could no longer afford to borrow money. Amazon, which also operated at a lost, was spared by the continued support of Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr.

The 2008 Global Economic Collapse

The most interesting essays in this section are by analysts who predicted the collapse. Hedge fund manager John Paulson made $3-4 billion in 2007-2008 by correctly predicting the timing of the crash and purchasing cheap credit default swaps.* As mortgage bonds started failing, demand for CDS’s skyrocketed as investors rushed to limit their losses.

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*A credit default swap is a financial swap agreement that the bank that issues the CDS will compensate the buyer in the event of a debt default or other credit event.

 

 

 

Hidden History: How Bush Sr and Clinton Sabotaged the Reagan-Gorbachev Nuclear Disarmament Treaty

Gorbachev and the Opportunity for Peace Wasted

DW (2018)

Film Review

This is a fascinating documentary featuring a rare appearance by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. It begins by examining a mutual disarmament treaty Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan negotiated in 1987. Reagan was clearly acting in opposition to the reigning military-industrial-complex, just as Trump is in his negotiations with North Korean president Kim Jong-un. This seems to be why Reagan waited to launch disarmament talks until he safely won re-election in 1984.

The arms reduction treaty had scarcely come into effect when Gorbachev’s Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring),, in concert with CIA meddling, triggered the rapid break-up of the Soviet block. By 1990, thanks to Gorbachev’s commitment to non-intervention in Soviet allies’ internal affairs, the Berlin wall had fallen and Communist governments had been overthrown in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

An August 1991 coup, led by (CIA-backed) hard line Communists, failed but significantly weakened the Soviet Union by strengthening the hand of CIA-backed (see US Agents Helped Yeltsin Break Coup) Russian president Boris Yeltsin.

Within months, Yeltsin conspired with the presidents of Kazakstan, Belarus and Ukraine to declare independence simultaneously with the Russian Federation. The move would lead to Gorbachev’s resignation in December 1991.

The EU, concerned about preserving the Reagan-Gorbachev arms reduction treaty, proposed a number of countermeasures to improve Russian economic stability. Among them were a proposal to integrate Russia into western Europe by admitting them to the G7 and the NATO missile defense strategy and granting them $30 billion in aid. All were vetoed by the Bush senior and his successor Bill Clinton in favor of NATO expansion.

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*In his book Manifest Destiny, F William Engdahl talks about the Enterprise, a private intelligence/security network created by George H W Bush and run by Oliver North and Richard Secord. In addition to organizing illegal weapons sales to Iran (see Iran-Contra Affair), the Enterprise recruited corrupt KGB generals to help  bring down Gorbachev’s government. According to Engdahl, these generals and their young proteges would become Russia’s corrupt billionaire oligarchs. The Enterprise financed the KGB generals’ coup against Korbachev in 1991 and installed Boris Yeltsin as president. The latter allowed the oligarchs, with the help of George Soros, Jeffrey Sachs and other Harvard economists to loot Russia exactly as they had looted Poland. See Russia’s Criminal Oligarchy: The Role of Bush Senior and the CIA).

 

Russia’s Criminal Oligarchy: The Role of Bush Senior and the CIA

 

This Guns and Butter interview is full of astonishing information (that you will never find in the corporate media) about the role of Bush senior and CIA-funded foundations in the creation of Russia’s criminal oligarchy and the systematic dismantling of communist Poland and the Soviet Union. Bonnie Faulkner and F William Engdahl are discussing his new book Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance.

In the first 15 minutes of the interview, Engdahl describes Reagan’s creation of the CIA-funded National Endowment for Democracy and its sister groups National Democratic Institute (NDI), International Republican Institute (IRI) Freedom House, and Solidarity Center. The formation of the so-called independent foundations enabled the CIA to fund a full range of illegal covert activities without being subject to congressional scrutiny. All worked closely with various foundations funded by George Soros to deliberately destabilize the Warsaw Pact.

15.30 Engdahl discusses the CIA conspiracy to bring down Poland’s communist government, starting with the secret pact Reagan and Pope John Paul II (the first Polish pope) formed in 1982. In this clandestine campaign, NED invested tens of millions of dollar in fax, copy machines, etc, which they smuggled into Poland with the help of Polish priests. This equipment, in turn, was used to facilitate mass protests supposedly organized by Solidarnosc, the dockworkers union led by Lech Walesa.

20.19 Engdahl talks about the 300 CIA agents left over from George Herbert Walker Bush’s tenure as CIA director – and how Bush senior regrouped them into private entities to engage in covert activities in Poland and the USSR.

21.00 Engdahl covers the mass protests leading to the collapse of the communist government in 1989 and the election of Lech Walesa as president. Walesa, in turn, opened the door for George Soros and Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs to strip the Polish economy of all its assets and impose harsh austerity measures.

32.00 Engdahl discusses Executive Order 12333 (signed by Reagan), which put Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush in charge of all US foreign and national security policy after 1981 – and Executive Order 13233 signed by George W Bush, which severely limited public access to the records of prior presidents.

36.00 Engdahl talks about the Enterprise, a private intelligence/security network created by George Herbert Walker Bush that included teams run by Oliver North and Richard Secord. In addition to organizing illegal weapons sales to Iran (Iran Contra), The Enterprise recruited corrupt KGB generals to help  bring down Gorbachev’s government. According to Engdahl, these generals were the real origin (not the Russian mafia) of Russia’s corrupt billionaire oligarchs. The oligarchs were young proteges of these generals.

39.00 Engdahl explains Operation Hammer which financed the KGB generals’ coup against Korbachev in 1991 and installed Boris Yeltsin as president. The latter allowed the oligarchs, with the help of George Soros, Jeffrey Sachs and other Harvard economists to loot Russia exactly as they had looted Poland.

49.54 Engdahl describes how the Open Russia Foundation bribed corrupt legislators in the Duma to privatize all Russia’s natural resources and richest industries (minerals, oil, gas, the largest aluminum smelter in the world) and how Sachs, Soros and their cronies assisted the oligarchs in selling off all these industries for pennies on the dollar. When the giant Russian oil company Yukos was privatized, international banker Jacob Rothschild, George Soros and Henry Kissinger were appointed as Yukos board members.

52.00 Engdahl traces the downfall of Yeltsin starting in 1998 when the Duma refused to approve Chernomyrdin as prime minister. Yeltsin then appointed Yevgeny Primakov, who immediately filed criminal charges against oligarch Boris Berezovksy, who fled to London. When Clinton began bombing Serbia in March 1999, Primakov was en route to Washington DC and order his pilot to turn around and return to Moscow. When he demanded Yeltsin support the Serbs, Yeltsin sacked him.

54.00 After Yeltsin lost control of the Russian military, which dispatched troops to seize the airport in Kosovo, he appointed Putin as Prime Minister. Engdahl attributes this decision to KGB  deception operation that convinced Yeltsin and his oligarch buddies that Putin would play along. Instead Putin threatened Yeltsin with corruption charges unless he resigned. Putin would serve as acting president until he was elected in his own right in March 2000.

 

 

In No Way the Alt-Left: Dispelling Disinformation About Antifa

Antifa Handbook Author Discusses Rose of AntiFa Movement

C-SPAN Washington Journal (2017)

The following is an excellent C-SPAN presentation by Mark Bray, author of The AntiFa Handbook. Bray himself isn’t an Antifa member, but an historian and professor at Dartmouth. He’s a Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors and credits this for his interest in AntiFa.

He describes AntiFa as being a diverse network of groups dedicated to collective self-defense against neo-Nazi and fascist street violence.

He traces the movement back to the 1930s when Nazis were first coming to power in Germany and fascists in Italy. There was a resurgence in AntiFa organizing in the US and Europe in the 1980s, in response to Nazi skinhead attacks at punk concerts and gatherings.

He refutes the pervasive claim that Geroge Soros is financing AntiFa, based on the fact the name doesn’t refer to a single organization but a loose-knit network of many disparate groups with no central leadership.*

He also disputes the common assertion by the media and traditional “liberal” groups and spokespeople (eg Chris Hedges and the ACLU) that fighting hate speech and organized violence against vulnerable groups amounts to the suppression of free speech or left wing fascism.

He argues that traditional “liberal” methods of suppressing fascist violence have never worked. He also points to German and Italian history to make the point that organized neo-Nazi and fascist violence becomes extremely dangerous once a national leader like Trump begins to endorse it. This type of official advocacy can make it grow really quickly, which is why it’s especially important to stop it when it’s small.

The Q&As are the best part of the presentation, especially when Bray explains the concept of preemptive self-defense and the importance of protecting vulnerable immigrants and minorities when the police fail to do so.

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*I have traced the factual basis of this claim. It originates from the discovery that an NGO called Alliance for Justice – which chooses to self-identify with the Antifa movement – advertised for paid protestors for an antifascist protest against Alt-Right organizer Milo Yannopoulos in Berkeley. In 2016 the Soros-funded Tides Foundation donated $50,000 (out of their $2.2 million budget) to Alliance for Justice (AFJ). To stretch this into a claim that Soros is financing Antifa is ludicrous.

Anatomy of Modern Corruption: The Clinton Foundation and the Superdelegates

What Hillary Clinton Really Represents

Empire Files (2016)

Film Review

This early 2016 documentary is a virtual encyclopedia of Clinton family corruption. Based entirely on publicly verifiable information, it reveals how Hillary, especially, has based her political career on supporting legislation that specifically benefits her corporate and foreign donors. It also explores the identity of some of the 700 Democratic “superdelegates” who helped deny Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination – despite overwhelming support he received from voters.

The Clinton Foundation was founded in 1997 with the alleged purpose of providing humanitarian relief after international disasters. Its real purpose, however, was to engage in “crisis capitalism,” a term coined by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. Following a disasters, such as the 2001 earthquake in India, the Clinton Foundation would waltz in and create a variety of for-profit projects enabling further exploitation of third world resources and labor by Clinton Foundation donors.

Major donors to the Clinton foundation included Exxon, Walmart, Pfizer, Dow, Monsanto, General Electric (GE), Fox News, the Soros Foundation, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. As senator, Clinton rewarded the latter two donors by supporting deregulation that would lead to their bankruptcy in 2008 and a massive taxpayer bailout.

As Secretary of State, Clinton would grant similar favors to Boeing and GE by facilitating overseas sales of their military hardware and to Exxon by heavily promoting the spread of fracking throughout the world.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Republic and Qatar were also big donors to the Clinton Foundation. In all 181 Clinton Foundation donors lobbied Clinton as Secretary of State and most were successful in getting the policies they advocated enacted.

Many of the 700 superdelegates appointed by the Democratic National Committee (to help ensure their hand picked candidates won the Democratic primary) were also corporate lobbyists hoping to benefit financially from a Clinton presidency: among others, the corporate lobbies represented included the Excel pipeline, the private prison industry, Big Pharma and the four main Wall Street banks (City Group, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase).

How the US Uses War to Protect the Dollar

The Gods of Money

William Engdahl (2015)

The first video is a 2015 presentation by William Engdahl about his 2010 book The Gods of Money. It focuses on the use of US economic and military warfare to maintain the supremacy of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

As his point of departure, he begins with the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, in which the Allied powers agreed to use the gold-backed US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. In 1971 when Nixon was forced to end the gold standard,* the gold-backed US dollar was replaced by the “petrodollar.” According to Engdahl, it was so named because of a secret agreement the US made with Saudi Arabia – in return for a guarantee that OPEC would only trade oil in US dollars, the US guaranteed the Saudis unlimited military hardware.

In this way, oil importing nations (most of the world) were forced to retain substantial US dollar reserves. This was the only way they could provide their economies with a continuous supply of oil.

The petrodollar remained supreme until the mid-1980s, when the collapse of the US Savings and Loan industry (a pre-cursor of the 2007 banking collapse) raised concerns in Europe that the US was failing as a super power. Fearing the US economy was collapsing, they created the euro and the Eurozone, to prevent the Soviet Union or China from filling the power vacuum.

The financial warfare unit of the US treasury responded by feeding hedge fund manager and currency speculator George Soros secret information that enabled him to lead an attack on the British pound. This, in turn, destabilized the British economy to the point the UK no longer qualified to join the euro.

In 1997 the US Treasury and Soros made a a similar attack on economies of Southeast Asia (Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines) that attempted to use currencies other than the dollar as their reserve currencies.

In 2010, after the US government had run three years of $1 trillion deficits, China, Russia and Japan announced their intention of selling US Treasury bonds (which the US government sells to finance its debt) to increase their euro reserves. Concerned this placed the US dollar on the brink of catastrophic collapse, the US Treasury and Soros attacked the Euro directly by collapsing the Greek economy. The mechanism Soros used was to direct his hedge funds to dump the sovereign treasury bonds that financed Greek debt.** When the European Central Bank announced its commitment to a Greek bail-out, the US Treasury and Soros followed up with an attack on Irish, Spanish and Portuguese sovereign bonds.

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*A US economic crisis led to massive foreign demand for US dollar redemption that threatened to deplete US gold reserves.

** The immediate effect of bondholders dumping Greek bonds raised interest rates on Greek debt to a level that threatened to bankrupt their government.

 

 

The second clip is a Guns and Butter radio interview with Engdahl. It focuses on a second area the Gods of Money covers, namely the long US battle to abolish their private central bank (aka the Federal Reserve) and end the ability of private banks to create money out of thin air (see How Banks Create Money Out of Thin Air).

After a brief explanation of fractional reserve banking, whereby 97% of our money is created by private banks, Engdahl traces the history of the First Bank of the United States, created by Alexander Hamilton in 1791. The latter was the first US central bank, 80% owned by private (mostly Rothschild-controlled) banks in the City of London and 20% owned by the US government. President James Madison’s refusal to renew the bank’s charter in 1811 would result in Britain and the US going to war in 1812.

When the war ended in 1815, the American war debt was so substantial, the US had no choice but to charter the Second Bank of the United States, which once again was 80% controlled by London banks.

In 1832, Andrew Jackson refused to renew the bank’s charter, and the US had no central bank between 1832 and 1913. In 1913 when President Woodrow Wilson secretly colluded with the global banking establishment to create the Federal Reserve.

Both Lincoln and Kennedy challenged the exclusive role private banks play in creating the US money supply – Lincoln by issuing greenbacks (rather than borrowing money from private banks) to pay for the civil war and Kennedy by issuing silver certificates directly redeemable by the US Treasury. In both cases, Engdahl feels their defiance of the international banking establishment played a role in the decision to assassinate them.

The CIA Role in the Arab Spring

(more from my research for A Rebel Comes of Age)

L’Arabesque Americaine (French edition – not available in English yet)

by Ahmed Bensaada (2011 Michel Brule)

Book Review

The current military junta in Egypt supports growing suspicions that the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 were simply “color revolutions” – like the so-called “color revolutions” George Soros and CIA-linked foundations orchestrated in eastern Europe a decade ago.

Despite a few autocratic dictators being deposed, in each country the rich keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer, and US corporate and foreign policy interests continue to take precedence over labor rights and public welfare.

In Arabesque Americaine , Ahmed Bensada assembles a wealth of data  suggesting that the “Arab Spring” was first and foremost a destabilization/regime change operation, funded and orchestrated by the CIA, State Department and historic CIA-funded foundations. His book is unique in that it provides a carefully researched and referenced account of each of the “democracy exporting” foundations, along with the totals it gave each country and group in 2009.

Bensaada, a French Canadian who was born and received his early education in Algeria, devotes special attention to the Egyptian revolution – and the role played by Google’s star employee Gael Ghonem.

A brief outline of the topics covered:

Chapter 1 — the secret American funding and orchestration of the so-called “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe , with particular focus on Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and Kyrghizistan (2005). In each case, pro-Soviet governments were overthrown by mobilizing disaffected, pro-Western young people — financed by the CIA, State Department, and Pentagon linked “democracy manipulating” foundations. The latter include National Endowment for Democracy (NED), National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the International Republic Institute (IRI),Freedom House (FH), the Albert Einstein Institution, the Center for Non Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — and George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI). Several “color revolution” veterans were used to help organize Arab Spring protests. The uncanny similarity in protest symbolism (see video below) was no coincidence.

Chapter 2 — detailed discussion of the above think tanks and foundations, which includes a description of the their government funding, as well as the subversive activities (espionage, election rigging, an popular destablization activities) they have promoted in countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and Iran that oppose America’s pro-corporate agenda.

Chapter 3 — the promotion, by the State Department and these think tanks and foundations, of new technologies in Middle East destabilization campaigns. The Tor Project, developed by Google, the US Naval Research Lab and State Department-linked Human Rights Watch, is an example. Tor supposedly permits anonymous navigation of the Internet in countries (with the exception of the US) with heavy Internet censorship. Bensaada also explores the role of Movements.org and the Alliance of Youth Movements in promoting social media to international youth activists. Movements.org is run by Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to both Condolizza Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Jason Libman, another Google employee formerly employed by both the State Department and the Pentagon. AYM executive director David Nassar was formerly employed by NDI, USAID and IRI. In 2008 the State Department brought future Arab Spring activists to the US to teach them to use Facebook and Twitter, with the assistance of Sherif Mansour from Freedom House, Larry Diamond from NED, and national security adviser Shaarik Zafar.

Chapter 4 — focuses on Egypt, with particular attention to the role played by Google employee Gael Ghonem. Ghonem, who was given paid leave from his job to participate in the Tahrir Square uprising, created the Facebook page “We are all Mohamed Bouazizi” after the Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire. In 2009, Ghonem also set up a Facebook page for Egyptian exile Mohammed El-Baradei. This was in advance of El-Baradei’s February 2010 Cairo visit to explore. The visit, according to Wikileaks cables, was organized through the US embassy. This was a full year before the Tahrir Square protests.

Chapter 5 — the pro-democracy organizations in other Arab countries (Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, Yemen, and Syria) financed by the State Department and specific “democracy manipulating” foundations.

Chapter 6 — summation and analysis that explores the ethical dilemma faced by many Egyptian activists on learning the non-violent manuals they were using were the creation of CIA and State Department Funded think tanks and Foundations.

Below a video illustration of the “color revolution” symbols that were incorporated into the Arab Spring revolutions.

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In A Rebel Comes of Age, seventeen-year-old Angela Jones and four other homeless teenagers occupy a vacant commercial building owned by Bank of America. The adventure turns deadly serious when the bank obtains a court order evicting them. Ange faces the most serious crisis of her life when the other residents decide to use firearms against the police SWAT team.

$3.99 ebook available (in all formats) from Smashwords:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/361351