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The nexus between terror propaganda and terrorism: Bremer and Jenkins
By Kevin Ryan
July 21, 2012
"Terrorism is theater." – Brian Michael Jenkins
For many years prior to 9/11, two Americans were in unique positions to originate and frame the national conversation about terrorism. Those same two people, Brian Michael Jenkins and L. Paul Bremer, played extraordinary roles related to aviation security and World Trade Center (WTC) security in the few years before the 9/11 attacks. Could Bremer and Jenkins have been front men for a program that hyped the threat of terrorism while at the same time manufacturing terrorist events for political purposes?
If so, it would not have been the first time that the American people were subject to the hard sell of a threat to national security only to discover that the threat was overblown or non-existent. The Soviet military threat to the U.S. after World War II is now widely known to have been a fabrication hyped for political and financial gains.[1]
The propaganda that drove the Cold War was effective in establishing government policy primarily because it was effective in framing the national conversation about what threats were important to consider, and in controlling the media. The same has been true for the propaganda driving the War on Terror. A short review of the people and reports that promoted the Soviet communist threat is helpful in understanding the "Islamic terrorist" threat that has evolved from it.
The communist threat and state-sponsored terrorism
One man, Paul Nitze, was behind the three most important reports that promoted the perception of a Soviet threat against the United States after World War II. The first of these reports, NSC68, was instrumental in changing the policy of the Truman Administration, which initially did not perceive the Soviets as a major threat. The second Nitze report was the Gaither Report that, in 1957, said the U.S. had fallen behind the Soviets in nuclear weaponry.
As an investment banker turned top government policy maker, Nitze was clearly a powerful man. Author Burton Hersh has said that Nitze was one of two people who met quarterly in Frank Wisner's office to select the missions that would be approved for The Office of Policy Coordination, the CIA's early covert operations group.[2]
Nitze was also the founder of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). This was a political action group that brought about the remilitarization of the U.S. in the 1950s by promoting the ideas in NSC68. CPD was resurrected in 1975 and 1976 by Cold War hawks, including Donald Rumsfeld, who wanted to eliminate the policy of détente and Soviet containment in favor of another military build-up. The group was resurrected yet again in 2004 to promote a more aggressive War on Terror.[3]
Author Peter Dale Scott noted a significant difference in process between the first incarnation of the CPD and the second. As Scott wrote, the first CPD was created by a consensus within the state to mobilize against a Soviet threat that was open to misunderstanding at the time. The second iteration, however, "was mounted in opposition to a government policy that threatened to establish a more peaceful and less militarized world. In short, the interests being defended were not those of the nation but of the military-industrial complex itself."[4]
Nitze became the Secretary of the Navy in 1963, serving until 1967, and therefore he was in that position at the time of the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident. The resulting Gulf of Tonkin Resolution brought the U.S. military into Vietnam based on claims about an attack on U.S. Navy vessels. Government records, produced as early as 1968, indicate that Nitze was responsible for suppressing documents that proved the Tonkin Gulf claims made by the U.S. Navy were false.[5] The U.S. ships were never attacked.
Despite these troubling facts, Nitze went on to serve as Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1967 to 1969. His boss, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, essentially left the management of the DOD to Nitze.[6] But it was Clifford who authored the official report on the 1967 U.S.S. Liberty attack. Clifford's report found that the Israeli military was negligent but that the aggression against the Liberty was not pre-meditated.[7] Many of the survivors maintain that it was deliberate.[8] Clifford went on to infamy as a leading figure in the terrorist-financing Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
In 1969, Nitze and his mentor, Dean Acheson, began to tutor aspiring politicos that had been recommended by their colleague Albert Wohlstetter of the University of Chicago and the RAND Corporation. Under Nitze's supervision, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz had their introduction to the workings and power structure of the U.S. government.[9]
The Tonkin Gulf non-event was undoubtedly an example of false flag manipulation for political purposes and the Liberty incident appears to have been a major cover-up of an attack upon U.S. servicemen. State-sponsored terrorism was already a well-established fact by then, however. For example, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a plan called Operation Northwoods in 1962.
Operation Northwoods called "for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. [This would provide] the public and international backing they needed to launch their war."[10] The signed documents are available today and because of this we know that high level U.S. government representatives conspire, on occasion, to commit crimes against the American people for the purpose of starting wars.[11]
Although Operations Northwoods was rejected by President Kennedy, the plan becomes more interesting historically when one considers the ensuing activities of the members of the JCS who approved that plan. For example, JCS chaiman Lyman Leminitzer went directly from approving Operation Northwoods in 1962 to become Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), from 1963 to 1969, putting him in charge of NATO forces. According to author Daniele Ganser, the SACEUR ran an agency called the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) that was responsible for coordinating Operation Gladio.[12]
Gladio was a well-coordinated covert campaign of terrorism directed by the U.S. and other Western governments against their own populations. Hundreds of innocent people were killed or maimed in terrorist attacks which were then blamed on leftist subversives or other political opponents. Italian General Paolo Inzerilli commanded the Italian forces of Gladio from 1974 to 1986 and he later said that "the omnipresent United States dominated the secret CPC that directed the secret war."[13]
From NATO and CPC headquarters in Paris, and later Brussels, the U.S. played a leading role in arming and coordinating the terrorist groups in various European countries from 1960 into the late 1980s. Run largely by the US, Britain and Belgium, other NATO countries involved included Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey, and Greece. The terrorist attacks of Gladio were coupled with terror propaganda in order to drive public and political will to fund and support ever-increasing military preparation and response to the perceived communist threat.
Incidentally, Donald Rumsfeld was the U.S. Ambassador to NATO in 1973 and 1974 and was living and working amidst the Gladio planners in Brussels during the height of that program's operations. Alexander Haig became SACEUR as Rumsfeld left Brussels, and he remained in that position until 1979. Haig was a Nixon White House colleague of Bremer, Jenkins and Rumsfeld before and after his time as SACEUR.
Paul Nitze got his chance to oversee the third major report that hyped the Soviet threat thanks to another Operations Northwoods signatory. The project known as Team B was initiated through the actions of President Ford's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, led by Operation Northwoods signatory George Anderson. Team B was a re-evaluation of existing CIA (or Team A) data, by a small group of "outside experts" led by Richard Pipes, that falsely portrayed the Soviet military threat as persistent and growing when all objective evidence said the opposite. The initiative was approved by CIA Director George H.W. Bush, and Nitze and Paul Wolfowitz were among the lead advisors.
While Rumsfeld was in Brussels, a European "network of private-sector spies" called Cercle Pinay decided to export its propaganda techniques to the United States. Cercle Pinay operated during the Cold War era to provide "covert funding, black propaganda, and …connections to planned coups de etat" for a private intelligence network that was composed of "rogue agents of the international Right."[14]
In 1974 the British part of the Cercle complex worked to create a transatlantic bridgehead of its propaganda front, the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC), called the Washington Institute for the Study of Conflict (WISC). In April 1975, WISC was formally founded. ISC, staffed by former MI6 agents, "put over the intelligence community's views to the press under the guise of a neutral academic research body." WISC followed suit in the States.
WISC joined forces with an existing propaganda machine based in New York, and founded by William Casey and CPD member Frank R. Barnett, called the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC). At the same time, the roles of NItze and the other Team B champions of the military-industrial complex grew under the Ford and Reagan administrations.
The last meeting of Cercle Pinay occurred in December 1979, and was attended by William Colby, Federal Reserve Bank chairman Paul Volcker, and Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner. The operations of the Cercle complex were redirected by the new head of the French SDECE, Alexandre de Marenches. It was de Marenches who then led the formation of the Safari Club. De Marenches also recommended William Casey as CIA director to Ronald Reagan, and became friends with the Belgian-American propagandist Arnaud de Borchgrave, who was later a shareholder in Stratesec.[15]
As with Nitze's leadership of the three primary reports on the Soviet threat, two men were primary leaders of the terrorism-related commissions in the years leading up to 9/11. These men were Brian Michael Jenkins and L. Paul Bremer. With the help of Nitze and others, Bremer and Jenkins transformed the Soviet threat into a threat of "international terrorism" in the 1970s and 1980s, and further transformed that threat into today's widely held belief in "Islamic terrorism." To better understand the roles that Bremer and Jenkins played related to 9/11, and as terror propagandists, we should examine their personal histories.
Brian Michael Jenkins
From 1989 to1998, Jenkins was the deputy chairman of Crisis Management for Kroll Associates. Kroll directed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) response to the 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) bombing in terms of security upgrades. As stated by the PANYNJ program manager for WTC security systems, Douglas G. Karpiloff — "After the bombing, we had the top security consultants in the nation, Kroll Associates, do a complete security analysis for us, and we followed their recommendations."[16]
During this time, Jenkins reviewed the possibility of airliners crashing into the Twin Towers.[17] As the leader of the WTC threat assessment, Jenkins was later questioned about plans that might have been made to avoid what happened on 9/11. Jenkins said –"We knew there was no realistic way to protect the skyscrapers from a suicide mission. We couldn't very well mount missile batteries above the Windows on the World restaurant."[18]
Jenkin's history as a special operations officer and long-time right-wing political advisor contributed to criticism of his role at the WTC. Not long after the 1993 bombing it was reported that Jenkins was "trotted out" to explain the threat we faced. Described as one of "the hoariest holdovers from the era of Reagan 'roll, back,' RAND's Brian Jenkins was both an apologist for and one of the architects of the contra war against Nicaragua–a terror war aimed primarily at the civilian population and infrastructure."[19]
Jenkins played a critical role in planning for future terrorist events at the WTC, including having reviewed the possibility of airliner crashes before they actually happened on 9/11. Coupled with the claims that he participated in planning and implementing a "terror war" in Central America during the 1980s, these facts should make him a subject of considerable examination with respect to 9/11.
Born in 1942, and commissioned in the infantry at the age of 19, Jenkins was a Special Forces soldier who saw action in many covert operations of the 1960s. He was in Guatemala in 1965, the year that U.S. security adviser John P. Longan arrived and, "along with a Guatemalan Army élite, launched Operation Cleanup, a death squad operation that throughout 1966 effected kidnappings and assassinations that killed the leaders of Guatemala's labor unions and peasant federations."[20]
Jenkins was also part of the 7th Special Forces occupation of the Dominican Republic, in which only "around 75 members of E company of the 7th Special Forces Group were deployed."[21] Jenkins then went on to serve with the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam where he lived in the countryside among villagers, "trying to recruit as many as possible into a pro-U.S. counter-guerrilla force."[22]
During this time Jenkins signed on as a field consultant for the RAND Corporation. He became well known for a confidential 1968 paper he wrote for RAND entitled "The Unchangeable War."[23] Jenkins cited nine obstacles to a U.S. victory in Vietnam and suggested the war could be lost due these symptoms of the military's "institutional rigidity." He also pointed out that his boss, General Cleighton Abrams, was in charge of a pacification program run by Robert Komer, who was credited with managing the mass murder project known as the Phoenix Program and later became a WISC member.
In a 1971 paper that described the last ditch effort to "Vietnamize" the war, Jenkins thanked his RAND colleagues Romer and Fred Ikle.[24] As a pioneer in psychological operations, Ikle had written reports and memoranda for RAND through the 1960s. It seems reasonable to wonder if Jenkins was also a psychological operative and if he was part of the Phoenix Program, as is suspected of Richard Armitage.
In 1972, at the age of 30, Jenkins launched RAND's terrorism research program. He was "summoned to Washington by the Nixon administration and asked to help set up a Cabinet-level committee to deal with the terrorism threat."[25] Two years later, Jenkins wrote that terrorism sometimes works. He also made clear that the ability to engage in terrorism was not limited to foreigners, but that even U.S. soldiers could be seen as terrorists if they killed civilians. Jenkins wrote about "government terror" and how national governments would begin to employ terrorists as surrogates.[26]
Jenkins further explained that –"Terrorism is aimed at the people watching, not at the actual victims. Terrorism is theater."[27] He believed that one objective of terrorism was "to enforce obedience and cooperation. This is the normal objective of state or official terrorism" and that "success demands the creation of an atmosphere of fear and the seeming omnipresence of the internal security apparatus."[28]
Jenkins wrote papers with WISC member George K. Tanham and was published not only by RAND but also through Crane Russak Company, which published papers by WISC member James Theberge, NSIC propagandist Frank R. Barnett., and Paul Nitze.
A 1976 paper by Jenkins described a RAND summit meeting on terrorism that included such luminaries as Andrew Marshall. In this paper, Jenkins argued for the more flexible military that Rumsfeld later promoted, and he called for the creation of a new kind of special operations unit, just like the Joint Special Operations Command that succeeded the OPC a few years later, to collaborate with the CIA to address terrorism. It was also suggested that U.S. counterterrorism collaboration with the British, West Germans and Israelis should continue.[29]
In 1981, Donald Rumsfeld became Chairman of the Board for the RAND Corporation, a role he remained in until 1986 and filled again from 1995 to 1996. As Rumsfeld took over at RAND, Jenkins reviewed media exaggeration of terrorist events and the psychological impact of that coverage. He wrote – "The media exaggerate the strength of the terrorists, creating the illusion of their omnipresence." At the same time, he reviewed public support, via poll responses, for a "special world police force" to combat terrorism.[30]
Around this time, Jenkins began to advocate for using terrorism to psychologically manipulate civilian populations. As an advisor in the construction of a counterinsurgency program in El Salvador, Jenkins recommended that traditional methods be supplemented by the use of propaganda to discredit insurgents as "terrorists." In another 1984 paper, Jenkins recommended that the U.S. engage in low-intensity warfare against Nicaragua through a proxy army. Such actions fall within Jenkins' own definition of state sponsored terrorism.[31]
By 1986, Jenkins was among a small group that advised Secretary of State George Shultz on matters of terrorism. It was said that "his trips to Washington became more frequent. He also spent time with CIA Director William J. Casey, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and other administration advisors."[32] That same year Bremer became the new Ambassador at Large for Counter-terrorism and Richard Armitage was working as the lead counter-terrorism representative for the Department of Defense.
In 1988, it was beginning to become clear that the image of a Soviet threat could no longer be sustained. The Soviet empire was crumbling economically and that fact could not be glossed over. At the time, Jenkins began suggesting that long-proclaimed Soviet responsibility for terrorism was not based on evidence but was politically required in the Reagan era. Jenkins believed that blaming the Soviets going forward could only hurt the anti-terrorism efforts. A new enemy was needed.
The problem was that a new enemy of Soviet caliber was not evident at the time. Libya was again blamed for the December 1988 Lockerbie bombing, but the predecessors to al Qaeda, were still working for the CIA in Afghanistan. In fact, Richard Armitage was meeting and working with the Pakistani ISI and the Mujahideen, parts of which would later be known as al Qaeda.[33]
Between 1988 and 1998 the U.S. /al Qaeda connection grew, as evidenced by the recruiting done in U.S. centers like al-Kifah in New York, and by the revelations about al Qaeda's operative Ali Mohamed. Known as a key planner for the first WTC attack in 1993 and a trainer for the 9/11 plot, Mohamed was a U.S. Army drill sergeant and an informant for the FBI. He was allowed to move freely in and out of the U.S. for many years and when detained, he was allowed to plea-bargain.[34]
U.S. protection of operatives like Mohamed was one way to ensure an increase in terrorism. But to transform the primary threat from one of a monolithic Soviet or communist empire to a more flexible, non-state terrorist organization like al Qaeda, significant amounts of inter-government communication coupled with public propaganda was required. That is, we needed official commissions to assess and report on the new threat.
In 1996, Jenkins was appointed to the "White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security," joining Vice President Gore, Stratesec director James Abrahamson, former CIA director John Deutch, and FBI director Louis Freeh. One recommendation of the Commission urged all-civilian implementation of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices provided by the Defense department.[35] Other recommendations focused on the passenger profiling and technology related to hijacking prevention.
In 1999 Jenkins co-authored a book entitled Aviation Terrorism and Security with British professor Paul Wilkinson.[36] Wilkinson was a terrorism propagandist for the Cercle Pinay and ISC, the parent organization of WISC.[37] He often made public presentations with ISC leaders, including Brian Crozier, Robert Moss and Hans Josef Horchem, head of the German terror propaganda outlet.
As a primary terrorism advisor for Margaret Thatcher, Wilkinson was invited to speak at the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism (JCIT) in July 1979, along with Benjamin Netanyahu, Team B members Richard Pipes and George Keegan, Senator Henry (Scoop) Jackson, and George H.W. Bush.
As author Nafeez Ahmed wrote in The War on Truth,
"the JCIT established the ideological foundations for the 'War on Terror.' The JCIT's defining theme was that international terrorism constituted an organized political movement whose ultimate origin was the Soviet Union".[38]
Later, in 1999 and 2000, Jenkins served as an advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism, led by L. Paul Bremer, otherwise known as the "Bremer Commission." Details of that Commission's findings are related below.
Jenkins was also made a primary advisor to the Hart-Rudman Commission, another of the major terrorism related commissions chartered to evaluate the new threat. Members of the Hart-Rudman Commission included Lee Hamilton, who would later become vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, and Lynne Cheney, who would quit the commission apparently due to other members not agreeing with her claim that a war with China was the biggest threat to the U.S..[39]
The Hart-Rudman Commission reported in January 2001 that "America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland, and our military superiority will not help us." The Commission also predicted that — "Space will become a critical and competitive military environment" and called for "the creation of a new independent National Homeland Security Agency."[40]
After 9/11, in a 2002 pamphlet called "Countering al Qaeda," Jenkins wrote – "Al Qaeda constitutes the most serious immediate threat to the security of the United States." He thanked Bremer.
L. Paul Bremer
Bremer is most well known for being the Iraq Occupation governor after the 2003 U.S. invasion and for having made many of the decisions that drove Iraqi society into a spiraling downturn. But the man can easily be seen as the most important figure in the U.S. assessment of terrorism prior to 9/11.
Oddly enough, Bremer was at the WTC on 9/11. His employer at the time of the attacks, insurance giant Marsh & McLennan, occupied the exact eight floors of the north tower impact zone. In October 2000, Bremer took a job as the CEO of Marsh Political Risk Practice and he had an office in the south tower. Exactly what political risks he was assessing at the time are not known, but he was in precise position to help take advantage of the political win on 9/11.
On the day of the attacks, he was interviewed on NBC television and stated that Osama bin Laden was responsible and that possibly Iraq and Iran were involved too, and he called for the most severe military response possible. Google removed the interview video from its servers three times, and blocked it once.[41]
Bremer was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1941, making him just a year older than Jenkins. He was educated at Ivy League prep schools including Phillips Academy a few years before George W. Bush. Like Bush, Bremer also graduated from Yale University, in 1963. He went on to earn a Certificate of Political Studies in 1964 from the Institut D'Etudes Politiques of the University of Paris, and then went on to Harvard for an MBA.
In 1966 he joined the Foreign Service, which sent him first to Kabul, Afghanistan, as a general services officer. He was later assigned to Blantyre, Malawi, as economic and commercial officer, from 1968 to 1971.
At the time, the CIA was putting its agents in Foreign Service offices in order to ensure diplomatic immunity, and to provide security for the files and communications. History had led to the "establishment of small to very large contingents of American intelligence officers in most of our embassies and consulates throughout the world."[42]
Bremer was in Malawi when it was essentially a police state, and only a few years after Frank Carlucci was assigned to the same general area. Carlucci was urgently expelled from Tanzania by that country's president after the U.S. was accused of using white mercenaries to attack from neighboring regions.[43] Carlucci was formally referred to as a "Foreign Service" agent, yet was also expelled from both Congo and Zanzibar for subversive activities.
During the 1970s, Bremer held various domestic posts with the State Department, including as an assistant to Henry Kissinger from 1972 to 1976. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Oslo from 1976-79, during the time that Alexander Haig was SACEUR.
Bremer returned to the US to take a post of Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of State from 1979 to 1981. Interestingly, a 1979 letter to Bremer was seized in the US embassy in Tehran during the revolution. The letter, written two months before the U.S. hostages were taken, assured Bremer that "our interest in continued access to Iran's oil should be safeguarded by the new government's ability to maintain order in the oil fields and its need for earnings."[44]
In 1981 Bremer was made Executive Secretary and Special Assistant to Alexander Haig. Shortly after Haig's resignation in June 1982, senior officials in the State Department were told by Bremer, who "runs the nuts-and-bolts operations of the department," to prepare brief memos on key issues to bring Mr. Shultz up to date.[45] As Schultz settled in as the new Secretary of State, he specifically chose to retain Bremer and Lawrence Eagleburger among his top aides.
Ronald Reagan appointed Bremer as Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1983 and Bremer stayed in that position until 1986. The secret wars of Gladio proceeded in The Netherlands while Bremer was there, as they had in Norway when he was Deputy Chief of Mission in that country.[46]
In 1986, Reagan brought Bremer back to the U.S. by appointing him Ambassador-at-Large for Counterterrorism as well as Coordinator for Counterterrorism. William Casey and the others in the Reagan administration had been meeting with Brian Jenkins that year on the terrorist threat. At the time, Libya's leader Muammar Qaddafi was cited the greatest purveyor of terrorism. This might have had something to do with Qaddafi's attempts to convert his oil trade from U.S. dollars to a new African gold dinar. But the bombing of a Berlin discotheque was blamed on Libya and the U.S. bombed the country in response.
While Bremer was the Ambassador to the Netherlands and then the State Department's counterterrorism lead, Paul Nitze was Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control. Nitze went on to serve in a similar role for George H.W. Bush, but Bremer resigned to join Kissinger Associates as Managing Director.
As Bremer resigned, the New York Times reported that Reagan's Clint Eastwood-style talk about fighting terrorism had come to little or nothing in terms of justice. During Bremer's tenure only one terrorist was ever brought to the U.S. for trial, and he was small potatoes. Abu Nidal was cited as the "most notorious practitioner of terror in the Middle East" yet no indictment for Nidal was issued.[47]
Kissinger Associates had a number of meetings with BCCI representatives, perhaps while Bremer worked there. BCCI was involved in funding terrorists and was linked to the Pakistani intelligence network, from which several alleged 9/11 conspirators came, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In fact, Time magazine reported that — "You can't draw a line separating the bank's black operatives and Pakistan's intelligence services."[48] As the BCCI scandal came to a crescendo, Bremer and his colleagues at Kissinger Associates refused to provide documents requested by the Senate investigators.[49]
At the time of the February 1993 WTC bombing, Bremer made a remark similar to that Jenkins made, in terms of the difficulty in preventing terrorism at the WTC.
"There is just going to be less security at a place like the World Trade Center than at the Congress, the White House or the Supreme Court," said Bremer. "It is easier to move around in New York, and it is easier to create a great amount of terror there."[50]
Again, it seems odd that the American who knew the most about terrorism would remark about the danger to the WTC and then be located in exactly that dangerous spot on 9/11. It is also curious that his colleague Jenkins, who was perhaps the second most well-known U.S. terrorism expert and who designed the security system for the WTC complex, would make a similar statement about the inability to protect the WTC.
In 1996, while still working for Kissinger Associates, Bremer wrote a scathing article about Clinton's lack of focus on terrorism. In this article, Bremer called on Clinton to enforce a strong, ten step plan to address terrorism through uncompromising action. "These are not options" he wrote.[51] Apparently Bremer did not see the irony in his comment about options with respect to his own company's refusal to cooperate with the Senate investigation into the terrorist financing BCCI.
In 1996, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, located near the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, were bombed. Contrary to claims that al Qaeda was behind the bombing, the U.S. blamed Hezbollah al-Hejaz for the attack.
The U.S. government had attributed only four terrorist attacks to al Qaeda prior to 9/11, cited in a 2002 State Department list and re-published in 2004.[52] Those attacks were a series of bombings in Yemen in December 1992, the shooting down of U.S. helicopters in Somalia in 1993, the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, and the U.S.S. Cole incident in 2000.
In August 1998, two U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed and the attacks were attributed to Osama bin Laden (OBL) and the as-yet unreported group called al Qaeda. The US government responded with bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan and, with help from the New York Times, began to drum up an intense myth about OBL and al Qaeda.
"This is, unfortunately, the war of the future," Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said. "The Osama bin Laden organization has basically declared war on Americans and has made very clear that these are all Americans, anywhere."
NSA Samuel Berger: "This is an evil that is directed at the United States. It's going to persist."
Under Secretary of State Thomas R. Pickering: "We are in this for the long haul."[53]
State Department representative James Foley: "A new era, in effect, is upon us. It's imperative that the American people understand and prepare themselves for facing this kind of a threat into the 21st century for as long as it's necessary to face the threat."
In retrospect, it is surprising that this was the first ever reference to al Qaeda in the New York Times, only three years before 9/11. The first New York Times reference to "Ussama bin Laden" was In April 1994.
However, the first media reference to "al Qaida" was six months after the CIA's Alec Station started, in August 1996 by UPI. Alec Station, which focused n the pursuit of OBL, began operations in February 1996. But the 9/11 Commission suggested that the CIA had knowledge about al Qaeda four or five years before that. It is not clear why the New York Times did not pick up on al Qaeda as a threat until just a few years before 9/11, and a full ten years after the CIA had.
More surprising is that The Washington Post did not report on al Qaeda until June 1999, and the reporting was highly speculative about the power behind this new threat.
"The indictment describes bin Laden as the leader, or "emir," of al Qaeda, a "global terrorist organization" with tentacles that allegedly reach from his hideout in the mountains of Afghanistan to followers in Texas, Florida and New York.
…But for all its claims about a worldwide conspiracy to murder Americans, the government's case is, at present, largely circumstantial. The indictment never explains how bin Laden runs al Qaeda or how he may have masterminded the embassy bombings. Only eight of the 17 suspects are alleged to have been in Kenya and Tanzania around the time the embassies were bombed." [54]
These statements should be compared to those of Bremer made a year earlier. Bremer was completely confident where the Post was skeptical.
"This is a crusade he's on," said L. Paul Bremer
"There is a quantum difference in the way bin Laden looks at terror," he said. "What we are seeing is a shift to terrorism on a more theological basis, to groups that are not after precise political goals. When you start to embrace goals as broad as bin Laden's, you are no longer constrained by the number of casualties you incur. You are now in a different game."
"'There's no such thing as eliminating terror, any more than eliminating crime. What we're in for, if we're serious about it, is the kind of sustained effort it took during the cold war — not months, not years, but decades."[55]
As of that moment, the U.S. had found its new Soviet caliber threat on which to base a new militarization of the country. It is interesting, however, that Bremer made sensationalist claims of a "crusade" and a "quantum difference" yet a year later The Washington Post was reporting that the government's case against this new terror group was "largely circumstantial."
In any case, Bremer was selected for a leading role in several of the ensuing terrorism commissions. First, he was appointed to the Gilmore Commission, chaired by Virginia Governor James Gilmore. Donald Rumsfeld was originally a member of the Gilmore Commission as well.[56] The vice chairman was James R. Clapper, the current director of national intelligence. Coincidentally, James Abrahamson, director of WTC security company Stratesec, later hired Clapper as his fellow director at the satellite spy company Geo-Eye.
The Gilmore Commission was a federally-sponsored effort with RAND oversight that was chartered to assess readiness, and evaluate the terrorism response programs and coordination between federal, state, and local governments. In total the Commission ultimately "made 164 recommendations regarding the domestic response to terrorism. Of those 164 recommendations, all have been adopted in whole or in part by the Congress and the Federal Government."[57]
Unfortunately, despite the Commission's 1999 claim that "All terrorist acts are crimes"[58] the greatest terrorist attack on American soil would happen two years later and would not be treated as a crime. This could be because the Gilmore Commission excluded "acts of violence committed by bona fide state agents" and therefore we were all free to assume what the 9/11 Commission eventually concluded – that no government supported the 9/11 conspirators.
The Gilmore Commission found no evidence of U.S. sponsored terrorism or state manipulation of policy through violence despite the 1990 revelations of Operation Gladio, the 1997 revelations about Operations Northwoods, and the Tonkin Gulf non-event, which was widely known to be false as of the mid-1990s.
Bremer was then appointed Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism by House Speaker Dennis Hastert in 1999. Other members of the Commission included Jenkins, Fred Ikle, James Woolsey, Maurice Sonnenberg, and Jane Harman. In July 1999, the sole Muslim nominee for Bremer's commission was removed after complaints from certain political action groups.[59] Apparently, the practical outcome of equating Islam with terrorism was already a foregone conclusion.
The "Bremer Commission" based its report on interviews with a number of people who were seen as experts on terrorism. This included Richard Armitage. Marion Bowman, Richard Clarke, Stephen Cambone, FBI director Louis Freeh, Robert Gates, Jenkins' RAND cohort Bruce Hoffman, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, soon-to-be acting FBI director Thomas Pickard, Michael Rolince, Michael Sheehan, CIA director George Tenet, and Jenkins' fellow propagandist and JCIT attendee, Paul Wilkinson.
To clarify how oddly coincidental this interview list was, one should remember that the number of U.S. intelligence failures to capture the alleged 9/11 hijackers was astounding.[60] And many of the people mentioned above, including Richard Clarke, George Tenet, Louis Freeh, Marion "Spike" Bowman, Michael Rolince and Thomas Pickard played critical roles in those astounding failures. Others on the list, like Armitage, Casey protégé Gates, Rumsfeld sidekick Cambone and Cheney assistant Libby, benefited from the 9/11 attacks through unprecedented political gain. Wilkinson's presence is simply evidence that the Bremer Commission was a propaganda operation from the start.
Surprisingly, according to the Commission's vice chairman, Maurice Sonnenberg, the Bremer Commission essentially wrote the USA Patriot Act. Sonnenberg boasted that 20 of the Commission's 25 recommendations made it into that controversial and poorly reviewed legislation.
A member of what has been referred to as the closest thing America has to a "formal aristocracy," Sonnenberg described the reasons for terrorism against the U.S. very simply. "And why do some people out there hate America? We're the top dog," he said. "Everybody hates the top dog."[61]
Sonneberg's company, Bear Stearns, went on to be at the center of the 2008 financial meltdown, requiring tens of billions in bailout money, and is currently facing a number of securities and investment fraud charges.[62] These irregularities point to what could be called financial terrorism, as well as the fact that, occasionally, the "top dog's" formal aristocracy needs to be bailed out by the little people.
The Bremer Commission recommendations included a plan to transfer power to the Department of Defense "during a catastrophic terrorist attack or prior to an imminent attack." Another recommendation was to prepare a manual on how to implement legal authority at the federal, state and local levels in case of a catastrophic terrorist attack. Yet another was to institute annual exercises under the direction of the national coordinator for terrorism (Richard Clarke) for counterterrorism and consequence management during such an event.
Journalist James Risen noted, just after the Bremer report was issued, that one of the recommendations called "on the Central Intelligence Agency to drop its human rights guidelines on the recruitment of terrorist informants."[63] That recommendation was clarified by a commission led by propagandist Arnaud de Borchgrave that same year — "It is clear also that FBI and CIA guidelines about recruiting terrorists as informants must be simplified to make it easier to recruit terrorists to provide information."[64]
As the Bremer Commission report was being issued, Bremer appeared on PBS' Frontline television program to discuss the report's claim that international terrorism was an increasingly lethal threat to the United States.[65] Joining Bremer was Larry Johnson, a former CIA covert operative and State Department expert on terrorism.
Johnson's remarks during this program were interesting:
"What has happened is once the threat of the Soviet Union disappeared, we've got a lot of national security bureaucracies and other bureaucracies that are looking for a way to justify their existence, and many are scrambling to get the counter terrorism bonanza."
On the same program the year before, Johnson was asked if the U.S. government was hyping the threat of terrorism. Johnson replied –
"They're grossly exaggerating the problem. They are hyping it. They shouldn't be talking about rising terrorism…. what they should be saying is, "There's one individual out there that really doesn't like us…" Johnson named OBL as that individual and clarified that "the problem is this: the Saudi Arabian government, not just Osama bin Laden but many people in Saudi Arabia, have been sending money to radical Islamic groups for years."[66]
Only two months before 9/11, Johnson was even clearer.
"Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism…. None of these beliefs are based in fact…."
Of course, the 9/11 Commission came to the opposite conclusions. And Johnson now works with Barry McDaniel, the former COO of Stratesec.[68]
In October 2000 Bremer took his new job as CEO of Marsh Political Risk. There are few coincidences more startling than this – the man most responsible for fomenting the fear of terrorism in the United States went directly to a job working in the WTC towers less than a year before 9/11. Bremer's office was in the South Tower. In an interview with CNN after the Sept 11 attacks, Bremer claimed that his office was located "above where the second aircraft hit."
Just days after the 9/11 attacks Bremer was chosen to co-chair the Heritage Foundation's Homeland Security Task Force, which created a blueprint for the White House's Department of Homeland Security. On this the task force was Edwin Meese and, again, Fred Ikle. The report called for considerable increases in military spending that were not related to terrorism, including much of which Cheney and Rumsfeld had desired before 9/11.
Bremer also started a new division of Marsh & McLennan, which went on to purchase Kroll Associates as well, called Marsh Crisis. At the same time, a company called Control Risks merged with Bremer's Marsh Crisis.[69] Based out of London, Control Risks had been one of the most prominent "terrorism research" outlets supported by Cercle Pinay and its propaganda branch, the ISC.[70]
In 2003, Bremer was selected by Donald Rumsfeld to become the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq (the Iraq Occupation Governor). His "mistakes" there were monumental.[71] Bremer's closest aides during his tenure in Iraq included Clayton McManaway, previously an operative within Robert Komer's Phoenix Program.
Bernard Kerik, who was New York City Police Commissioner on 9/11, was appointed by George W. Bush to be Minister of the Interior for Iraq and Senior Policy Advisor to Bremer. Assigned to train the new Iraqi police, Kerik's work in Iraq was widely recognized as a dismal failure. By the time his remarkably short assignment was over, he had offended the US. military and left the newly forming Iraqi police force in shambles.
Bremer was not without his small successes, however. At the time of the wildly sensationalized capture of Saddam Hussein from a "spider hole," Bremer proclaimed — "Ladies and gentlemen… we got him!"[72] Of course, the man Bremer had previously told us was behind the deadly terrorist network called al Qaeda, and the crimes of 9/11, was never captured. Instead, OBL was killed by the JSOC which quickly dumped his remains in the sea seven and a half years later.
Bremer and Jenkins have gone on to lend their voices in support of the never-ending War on Terror. In fact, Jenkins' assessment today is that — "We are not going to end terrorism, not in any future I see."[73] However, considering what we know about these men, their strong links to terror propagandists, and their extraordinary roles with respect to 9/11, it seems an end to terrorism might begin simply through a more close examination of L. Paul Bremer and Brian Michael Jenkins.
[1] John Glaser, CIA Documents: US Drastically Overestimated Soviet Capabilities, AntiWar.com, September 28, 2011, http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/28/cia-documents-us-drastically-overestimated-soviet-capabilities/
[2] Burton Hersh, The Old Boys, Tree Farm Books, 1992, p 271
[3] Right Web, Committee on the Present Danger, updated November 24, 2009, http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Committee_on_the_Present_Danger
[4] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, University of California Press, 2007, p 59
[5] Department of the Navy – Navy Historical Center, The Gulf of Tonkin, The 1964 Incidents, Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, February 20, 1968, http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/NHC/tonkin1.htm
[6] Douglas Frantz and David McKean, Friends in high places: the rise and fall of Clark Clifford, Little, Brown, 1995
[7] The Liberty Incident, The Clark Clifford Report, http://www.thelibertyincident.com/clifford.html
[8] John Crewdson, New revelations in attack on American spy ship, Chicago Tribune, October 2, 2007, http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/eedition/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,43090.story
[9] James Mann, Rise Of The Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet, Viking Press, 2004
[10] James Bamford, Body of secrets: anatomy of the ultra-secret National Security Agency. Random House. 2002
[11] U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)", U.S. Department of Defense, March 1962. For online pdf file, see the National Security Archive at the George Washington University Gelman Library, Washington, D.C., http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf
[12] Daniele Ganser, Nato's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Frank Cass, 2005
[13] Ibid, page 29
[14] David Teacher, Rogue Agents: Habsburg, Pinay and the Private Cold War 1951 – 1991
[15] Kevin R. Ryan, KuwAm and Stratesec: Directors and investors that link 9/11 to a private intelligence network, DigWithin.net, February 24, 2012, http://digwithin.net/2012/02/24/kuwam-and-stratesec-directors/
[16] Statement by Karpiloff, http://securitysolutions.com/mag/security_world_trade_center/
[17] History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline, Profile: New York Port Authority http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=new_york_port_authority
[18] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror's measure, Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/31/nation/na-jenkins31
[19] Gerry O'Sullivan, Boom! – World Trade Center bombing – Column, Humanist, May-June, 1993 issue, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_n3_v53/ai_13818521/
[20] Guatemalan Civil War, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War
[21] United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1965–1966), Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_the_Dominican_Republic_(1965%E2%80%931966)
[22] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror's measure
[23] Brian Michael Jenkins, The Unchangeable War, re-published November 1970 by the RAND Corporation for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/2006/RM6278-2.pdf
[24] Brian M. Jenkins, A People's Army for South Vietnam: A Vietnamese Solution, RAND Corporation, November 1971, http://www.prgs.edu/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2008/R897.pdf
[25] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror's measure
[26] Brian Michael Jenkins, Terrorism Works – Sometimes, RAND Corporation, April, 1974, http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2006/P5217.pdf
[27] Brian M. Jenkins, International Terrorism: A New Kind of Warfare, RAND Corporation, June 1974, http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2008/P5261.pdf
[28] Ibid
[29] Brian Jenkins, George Tanham, Eleanor Wainstein and Gerald Sullivan, Report of a Discussion, October 19-20, 1976 at the RAND Corporation, Washington, DC, July 1977, http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2008/P5830.pdf
[30] Brian Michael Jenkins. The Psychological Implications of Media-Covered Terrorism, RAND Corporation, June 1981, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P6627.pdf
[31] Powerbase page for Brian Jenkins, http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Brian_Jenkins
[32] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror's measure
[33] James Mann, Rise Of The Vulcans
[34] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11
[35] White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, Final Report To President Clinton, February 12, 1997, http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/212fin~1.html
[36] Paul Wilkinson and Brian Michael Jenkins, Aviation Terrorism and Security, Frank Cass, Mar 1, 1999
[37] David Teacher, Rogue Agents
[38] Nafeez Ahmed, The War on Truth (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005), p. 3
[39] James Fallows, Gary Hart, Lynne Cheney, and War with China, The Atlantic, July 5, 2007, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2007/07/gary-hart-lynne-cheney-and-war-with-china/7644/
[40] U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (Hart-Rudman), Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change, January 31, 2001, http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/nssg.pdf
[41] Lewis Paul Bremer III on Washington, DC, NBC4 TV, 11 September 2001, Vehmgericht http://vehme.blogspot.com/2007/08/lewis-paul-bremer-iii-on-washington-dc.html
[42] Craig Eisendrath and Tom Harkin, National Insecurity: U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War, Temple University Press, 2000
[43] Tanzania Expels 2 U.S. Diplomats. AP. New York Times, Jan 16, 1965
[44] Letter to Paul brmer from Victor Tomseth, September 2, 1979, accessed at Wikisource, http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=File:Documents_from_the_Den_of_Espionage.djvu&page=1
[45] Phil Gailey and Warren Weaver Jr. Briefing, New York Times, July 10, 1982
[46] Daniele Ganser, Nato's Secret Armies
[47] Stephen Engelberg, The World: Washington's War on Terrorism Captures Few Soldiers, The New York Times, March 5, 1989,
[48] Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, Scandals: Not Just a Bank, September 2, 1991, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,973732-4,00.html
[49] John Kerry and Hank Brown, The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate, December 1992, Senate Print 102-140, http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/
[50] Catherine S. Manegold, Explosion at the Twin Towers: The Precautions; With Talk of a Bomb, Security Tightens, The New York Times, February 28, 1993
[51] L. Paul Bremer, Terrorists' Friends Must Pay a Price, The Wall street Journal, August 5, 1996
[52] Congressional Research Service, Memorandum to House Government Reform Committee on Terrorist Attcks by al Qaeda, March 31, 2004, http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/033104.pdf
[53] Tim Weiner, After The Attacks: The Outlook; Raids Are Seen As One Battle In a Long Fight, The New York Times, August 23, 1998
[54] Colum Lynch; Vernon Loeb, Bin Laden's Network: Terror Conspiracy or Loose Alliance?, The Washington Post, August 1, 1999
[55] Tim Weiner, After The Attacks
[56] RAND National Security Research Division, Gilmore Commission – Panel Chair and Members, http://www.rand.org/nsrd/terrpanel/panel.html
[57] Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 161 (Tuesday, October 23, 2007), Statements by Representative Bennie Thompson (D, MS), http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2007-10-23/html/CREC-2007-10-23-pt1-PgH11854-3.htm
[58] First Annual Report to The President and The Congress of the Advisory Panel To Assess the Domestic Response Capabilities For Terrorism Involving Weapons Of Mass Destruction (Gilmore Commisison), RAND Corporation website, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/nsrd/terrpanel/terror.pdf
[59] Laurie Goodstein, Gephardt Bows To Jews' Anger Over a Nominee, The New York Times, July 09, 1999
[60] Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen, Trine Day, 2011
[61] Pranay Gupte, Maurice Sonnenberg: A Concerned Optimist, The New York Sun, March 23, 2005
[62] Sourcewatch page for Bear, stearns & Co, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bear,_Stearns_%26_Co.,_Inc.
[63] James Risen, Terrorism Panel Faults U.S. Effort on Iran and 1996 Bombing, The New York Times, June 4, 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/04/world/terrorism-panel-faults-us-effort-on-iran-and-1996-bombing.html
[64] Defending America in the 21st Centur: New Challenges, New Organizations, and New Policies, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2000, http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/defendamer21stexecsumm.pdf
[65] PBS Online Newshour, Global Threat, Jun e6, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june00/terror_6-6.html
[66] Wikipedia pager for Larry C. Johnson, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_C._Johnson
[67] Ibid
[68] Kevin R. Ryan, The small world of 9/11 players: LS2, Vidient and AMEC, DigWihtin.net, January 1, 2012, http://digwithin.net/2012/01/01/a-small-world/
[69] Sourcewatch, Crisis Consulting Practice of Marsh, Inc., http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Crisis_Consulting_Practice_of_Marsh,_Inc.
[70] David Teacher, Rogue Agents
[71] Sourcewatch, L. Paul Bremer III, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Paul_Bremer
[72] Max Brockbank, 'Ladies and Gentlemen — We Got Him!', Time Magazine, December 1r4, 2003, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,561438,00.html
[73] Greg Krikorian, Calmly taking terror's measure
- Orangutan.'s blog
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Bremer on 9/11
Thank you Kevin Ryan for every shred of research you have published.
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Terrorism Expert
As they say in Tennessee: "an expert is someone that is more than fifty miles from home with a suit on."
I posted this elsewhere by mistake. Meant to put it here.
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another great piece Kevin, thanks for sharing so much of your insight..
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Yes, Bravo!
What more is left to say on this? Yet another fantastic, exhaustively referenced piece from Kevin Ryan. To echo, Bravo.
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And a video of more culprits!
Great reporting as usual by Kevin Ryan. Well done sir.
Here's a great video I just watched that ties these guys above and more together. Let's not forget that John O'Neal, the FBI's front man on Osama Bin Laden, who quit the FBI is disgust because of stalling and interference, was killed in the Twin Towers after coming to work for Kroll.
It's painfully obvious that there will be no improvement in bringing these truths to light unless the people take back control of the media. Then the truth can be shown and heard, the govt reps will have to come in line then justice then democracy. Until then we will continue to slide rapidly into oligarchy and corporate fascism or is that redunant?
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Another culprit calls out for war even before Flight 93 crashes!
This video of Israel's Ehud Barak gives more evidence that 9/11 was set up to blame Osama Bin Laden in order to have an excuse to invade Afghanistan, to control the Taliban and continue the pipelines from the Caspian and to further the PNAC/Zionist ambitions to secure the Middle East for exploitation and militarization. Barak in the video is speaking of engaging Osama and engaging in a 10-year minimum campaign against "terrorist" even before Fight 93 crashed in Penn. He uses fear, "our way of life will be lost."
Below is a post of mine I copied from the Thom Hartmann website. It's important for you to find the connections to Azerbaijan and this country on the west coast of the oil and gas rich Caspian is set to be a staging area by Israel for an attack on Iran. The US Azerbaijan is stocked with PNAC and oil tycoon members. We are going to have another war that might draw in Russia and China unless we take control of the media and get the truth out to the highly distracted and confused masses.
Unless anybody here can explain why China and Russia are going to continue to sit idly by while American/Israeli military backed energy corporations swallow up Middle Eastern resources on China's and Russia's borders to sell on the world market then perhaps it time to get focused on what really matters right now, the World's Survival!
CNN reports Israel is forwarding air bases into Azerbaijan for imminent attack on Iran.
It may or may not be about paranoia of Iran's nuclear ambitions:
"Given the grim state of Arab-Israeli relations, where does Israel get its oil? From Russia and former Soviet republics. Israel produces only a couple thousand barrels of oil a day, which means it relies on the global market for more than 99 percent of its consumption. It's difficult to name all of the country's suppliers—in 2004, Israel's minister of national infrastructures admitted that "Israel's situation is complicated."
Have you ever heard of our news media mention Israel's oil problem? Hey Wolf Blitzer, I'm talking to you!
Makes one wonder how or why Azerbaijan would let Israel in their country. Here's the answer:
The US Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Look at the "About US" tab; look at Leadership and then look at the Membership lists.
Take special note of Baker Botts. James Baker III is the Bush family lawyer who intervened in the Florida recount. He is the lawyer who defended the Saudis including Bin Ladens against lawsuits of the victims of 9-11. Also note Zbeigniew Brezinski and remember he and David Rockefeller founded the Trilateral Commission and Brezinski is a big backer of our current president. Of course the other members are big oil, military and the NeoCons, all big Republican backers. Of course both sides are controlled by the same corporate interests. And of course there's always Mr. Kissinger's bloody hands in everything except actual battles.
Look at Unocal VP John J. Maresca's plea to Congress in 1998 to remove the Taliban from power so the CENTGAS pipeline can be built. It is under construction now and our bases guard it. Maresca outlines the possible oil and gas routes from the Caspian and chooses the TAPI route now being built.
This is Maresca's closing plea to Congress to ask the US Taxpayers to pay for the infrastructure in Azerbaijan so the transnational oil companies like those listed above can get their stolen oil and gas out to world markets. Support the Troops! WTF?
"U.S. assistance in developing these new economies will be crucial to business' success. We encourage strong technical assistance programs throughout the region. We also urge repeal or removal of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. This section unfairly restricts U.S. government assistance to the government of Azerbaijan and limits U.S. influence in the region."
Section 907: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Section 907 of the United StatesFreedom Support Act bans any kind of direct United States aid to the Azerbaijani government. This ban makes Azerbaijan the only exception to the countries of the former Soviet Union, to receive direct aid from United States government under the Freedom Support Act to facilitate economic and political stability.
The Act was strongly lobbied for by the Armenian American community in the US[2], and was passed in response to Azerbaijan's blockade of Armenia. which was at full scale war with Azerbaijan over the predominantly Armenian populated Nagorno Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. Since 1994 cease-fire agreement Nagorno Karabakh has established a de-facto independent republic, which is not recognized by any country.
On October 24, 2001, the Senate adopted a waiver of section 907 that would provide the President with ability to waiver the Section 907[3]. He has done so since then."
The US installed puppet dictator Hamid Karzi who's brother was a CIA drug lord, but that's another story.
Zalmay Khalilzad and Hamid Karzai
"Jeremy R. Hammond
June 12, 2008
Amid a growing number of reports that the US is increasingly unhappy with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, the Independent reports that Zalmay Khalilzad is being considered as a replacement for the job.
Zalmay Khalilzad is, like Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun and native of Afghanistan. He is currently the US ambassador to the UN. Prior to that he was US Ambassador to Iraq, US Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Special Presidential Envoy Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban. His work in the private sector includes conducting a risk analysis for a proposed Trans-Afghanistan pipeline project for the oil company Unocal. He acted as Unocal's special liaison to the Taliban regime when the company was trying to woo the regime into agreeing to the project.
Hamid Karzai was a member of the mujahedeen during the Soviet-Afghan war and was reportedly a top contact for the CIA, which was financing, arming, and training them together with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). When the Taliban came to power, he supported them at first, but later campaigned against them. The Taliban assassinated his father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, and he has himself been the target of several assassination attempts. Karzai also reportedly worked for Unocal, although both Unocal and Karzai spokesmen have denied this."
Now look at the PNAC NeoCon members list and document:
Look at the document Rebuilding America's Defenses, published BEFORE 9-11. Go to page 50/51.
"A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies. Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
Zbigniew Brezenski said much the same thing in his book The Grand Chessboard in 1998. Here Michael Ruppert reads a few choice passages from his book.
Here's is the pdf version of Chessboard:
"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived directexternal threat. Such a consensus generally existed throughout World War II and even during the Cold War. Itwas rooted, however, not only in deeply shared democratic values, which the public sensed were beingThreatened . . . "
This TAPI pipeline is also slated to go into India, hence the I. It was destined to service Enron's power plant in Dabhol, India. Built by Bechtel and GE. GE owns MSNBC and NBC and creates nuclear waste that is difficult to dispose of. Their ingenious method of disposal was to tip their tank busting GE Gatling guns with depleted uranium now causing massive birth defects wherever the American war machine has paved the way with a blood/asphalt mix for big oil and their international Wall St. investors. Here is the consummate guide to pipeline politics.
Finally, I beg you all to watch this video below. It will all be very clear. Every point made in this documentary is sourced in the closing credits. Send this video and this document with the links to all your progressive and conservative friends. This is very important and the closing minutes will leave you sad and ashamed that we as a nation have failed each other in not providing oversight of our corporate government. Another failure to reign in our military/Wall St./big oil, Israel interest government could lead to WWIII. Russia and China have been quietly increasing their militaries with money from our trade deficits, China and other countries are beginning to reject the US dollar as the World's reserve currency so we will no longer be able to print our way out of crisis. So many people don't know the players, the real stories and how they interconnect. Read this, click the links and watch the video below for sure. And note, this material is the tip of the iceberg.
As our news media concentrates on cult personalities and issues that really don't affect us other than fomenting racism, distrust, division and continual fear, they overlook the malicious influences of people like this guy who is at the forefront of the push to invade Iran.


text:
"I would like to say 'This book is written to the glory of God', but nowadays this would be the trick of a cheat, i.e., it would not be correctly understood."--Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Talk to me about the truth of religion, and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolation of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."--C.S. Lewis
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
A Diagram Of 21st Century Pedagogy
by TeachThought Staff
The modern learner has to sift through a lot of information.
That means higher level thinking skills like analysis and evaluation are necessary just to reduce all the noise and establish the credibility of information.
There is also the matter of utility. Evaluating information depends as much on context and circumstance as it does the nature of the data itself. The essay full of fluff may distill quite nicely down to a 140 character tweet. A trivial fact about governments may appear useless in a research paper on the 3 branches of government but could find utility in a project-based learning artifact on the evolution of government systems worldwide.
Context matters, and the diagram from edorigami below captures this, though not from the perspective of the student and content knowledge, but the teacher and various pedagogical components themselves, including Higher-Order Thinking Skills, Peer Collaboration, and Media Fluency.
(See also our framework on the 6 channels of 21st century Learning.)
Overall the diagram offers a nice framework for the concept not of 21st century learning, but 21st century pedagogy by focusing on several core components of modern learning: metacognition (reflection), critical thinking, technology, and problem and project-based learning.


text:
Many of us check email way too obsessively. We've talked about how you should check your email at regular intervals, but if you're having trouble sticking to that, set your email program to check every hour instead of continuously.
This concept works on both smartphone and desktop clients. Every time we hear that ding, we tend to stop what we're doing and that leads to lost productivity. If you're using email on the web, just don't open that web site until the top of the hour. If something is absolutely urgent, they'll call you. Email can wait an hour and be processed all at once.
The Smarter Way to Check Your Email| Fast Company
Photo by Joel Kramer.


text:
Every year millions struggle with what to buy their significant other for Valentine's Day. Rather than give into the old clichés of chocolate and flowers, this year show you care by sharing healthy heart tips with the person who captured yours.
Dr. Peter Alagona Jr., a cardiovascular disease specialist at Penn State Hershey Heart and Vascular Institute, offers advice on how to embrace a heart healthy lifestyle that you can both benefit from.
Get moving
You do not have to run 5 miles a day; find what works for you. All it takes to start is getting off the couch.
"Any amount of activity you do is better than none," Alagona said.
He suggests aerobic activity, like walking, swimming, biking or anything that works the heart and lungs, which is better for long-term health.
Pay attention to what you're eating
Portion control, will power, making it a lifestyle and finding what works for you are key.
"Everything to moderation and nothing to excess," Alagona said.
He recommends the Mediterranean and the DASH (dietary approaches to stop hypertension) diets to his patients. The plans stress eating the appropriate amount of calories, eating more fresh fruit and vegetables, eating less red meat (and when you do, make sure it's lean), avoiding simple sugars and simple carbohydrates, and embracing good carbs, good fats and fiber.
Translation: Lose the white flour (typically found in candy, cake, etc.) and sugar-ladened soft drinks; increase fruits and vegetables at every meal and in between meals as snacks; and if you do indulge in a steak, make it the filet mignon and not the rib-eye.
But Alagona is realistic.
"No one can go their whole life without dessert," he said. He suggests people cut back and find substitutes for their favorite foods:
— Choose good carbs over bad by considering whole wheat replacements for breads and pastas.
— Find sources of good fat: the polyunsaturated fats found in fish (two servings a week) or walnuts, un-blanched almonds and other nuts make good replacements for your daily snacks.
— Increase fiber in your diet.
Watch your weight
Losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight go hand in hand with diet and exercise. Alagona reminds patients that they should adjust their calorie intake according to activity level and goals. You have to use more calories than you eat to lose weight.
"Everybody's looking for some mystical answer, and that's why diet crazes come and go over a few years — nothing stays," he said. "The bottom line: no matter what you do, you need to take in an appropriate amount of calories to maintain a reasonable weight."
Stop smoking
"If you're a smoker, every day away from smoking is better for you," he said. Even someone who has smoked for 35 years can stop and improve their health status every year after. "It's never too late," he said.
Educate yourself
See your doctor and have your blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar checked regularly. Alagona suggests not getting hung up on numbers and results but to focus on asking the right questions.
— What does the number mean?
— Is there a problem?
— Can you explain the problem/describe it to me?
— What are we going to do about it?
— How can we treat it?
— What is the prognosis for the future?
Most importantly, make sure you understand the information and follow your doctor's advice. Being educated is important. But in a world where the Internet offers more information than anyone can really digest, Alagona recommends seeking advice only from reputable online sources like the American College of Cardiology's patient site at Cardiosmart.org or the health library at PennStateHershey.org.
The Medical Minute is a weekly health news feature brought to you by Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Articles feature the expertise of Penn State Hershey faculty physicians and staff, and are designed to offer timely, relevant health information of interest to a broad audience.
Up next week: The health benefits of acupuncture.


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Sometimes They Ring a Bell
- John Mauldin
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- October 12, 2013
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Sometimes They Ring a Bell
Why Is Peak Oil Wrong?
Is US Economic Growth Over?
Code Red
Science Saves the Future
Home for a Few Days, then NYC
After last week's discussion of the Affordable Care Act, it would be easy to drift off into all of the negative consequences of the current problems in Washington DC. There's just so much negative energy every time you turn on the TV that it simply drains you. I am well aware of what's happening and why, and yet I still find myself weary simply from the process of trying to follow what's happening. If I feel that way, it's no wonder the polls show that the general public's attitude is "a plague on all your houses." Of course, the snafus always seem to get resolved, but you just wonder how worthwhile all the drama is.
In this week's letter, though, we are going to talk about a different type of energy and a story that I find enormously positive. Three items have come across my screen in the past month that, taken together, truly do signal a major turning point in how energy is discovered, transported, and transformed. And while we'll start with a story that most of us are somewhat aware of, there is an even larger transformation happening that I think argues against the negative research that has come out in the last few years about the reduced potential for growth in the world economy.
This week we learned that China has become the #1 oil importer in the world, surpassing the United States. A few weeks ago the Energy Information Agency (EIA) reported that the US is now the largest producer of oil in the world, surpassing Russia. And the port of Houston is now the biggest port in the United States, surpassing New York (think chemicals and energy-related materials). Those of us who pay attention to such things have known these events were going to happen for a long time, but even so, this is a big deal. Let's glance at a few charts to see if we can get a feel for the magnitude of the changes.
First let's look at total world energy consumption (charts from http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/world.cfm). Notice that the vast bulk of the growth is in the developing nations. More than 85% of the projected increase in global energy demand from 2010 to 2040 occurs among the nations outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), driven by strong economic growth and expanding populations. In contrast, OECD member countries are, for the most part, already more mature energy consumers, with slower anticipated economic growth and little or no anticipated population growth. Further, the developed nations are becoming much more energy-efficient, as we will see.
Some people see this huge demand for energy as a problem. The large oil fields of the world are clearly "peaking out," and the concern, sometimes quite shrill, is that we will run short of energy in a few years.
The biggest changes, of course, are happening in China and India. Since 1990, energy consumption in both countries as a share of total world energy use has increased significantly; together, they accounted for about 10% of total world energy consumption in 1990 and nearly 24% in 2010. From 2010 to 2040, their combined energy use more than doubles, and they account for 34% of projected total world energy consumption in 2040. I am not sure that China will continue to grow along the same trajectory that it has, but I also feel that it's likely India will grow even faster than projected, so the endpoint may be the same.
And while production from the old oil fields of the world is in fact beginning to slow, we are finding new oil and natural gas at an even more rapid pace than before. For instance, in my backyard, Texas crude oil production, at 2,525 thousand barrels per day (MBPD), was 31% higher year-over-year as of May. North Dakota crude oil production, at 810 MBPD, was 27% higher year-over-year. These two states are driving total US growth in oil production and have helped offset declining production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
This growth is simply astounding when we look back over similar periods in history. Understand, the oil fields we are talking about have been in production for over 60 years. These are not new discoveries in the strictest sense, but a manifestation of the transformation that is occurring in energy-production technology.
I've written several times about the amazing new production in the Bakken in North Dakota. That is being dwarfed by the potential of other fields. RBC offers the following notes (emphasis mine):
Eagleford Oil Volumes Nearing the Bakken
The Texas Railroad Commission released preliminary 2013 March and revised February Eagleford Shale oil production rates of 529.9 Mbbl/d and 511.4 Mbbl/d, respectively, representing a 77% increase from March 2012 production. February data was revised up from its prior report of 471.2 Mbbl/d. While the trend is correct, we believe actual production in the Eagleford is higher than what is being reported. Well-by-well production data obtained from our proprietary database has current oil production from February nearing 760 Mbbl/d, up 94% from year-over-year levels. Our preliminary March data is not fully updated, but recent month-over-month production has increased on average 5% a month.
The growth of the Eagleford has been impressive and we think it will likely pass aggregate Bakken oil production in the near term. The most recent statistics from the North Dakota Oil and Gas commission have North Dakota production at ~782 Mbbl/d in March, up 35% from March 2012 levels but lagging the growth of the Eagleford on a relative basis.
I've noted in previous letters that there may be as many as four distinct oil- and gas-producing zones layered on top of each other in North Dakota. So the Bakken could be four times as big as we think today. It now looks like similarly explosive growth is happening in the Permian Basin in Texas. In a large rather "new" field called the Spraberry/Wolfcamp, the potential for finding oil is simply astounding. In fact, Pioneer Natural Resources is suggesting that it is the second biggest oilfield in the world (see table below).
While we are finding more oil in the US, we are actually using less. US motor-vehicle gasoline consumption peaked at 142 billion gallons in 2007. In each year since, American drivers have used less gasoline. In 2012, gas use came in at 134 billion gallons, down 6% off the high mark. This trend results from a combination of two factors: new vehicles get better gas mileage, and we seem to be driving less.
This is not just a US story. Below is a map of potential shale petroleum fields in a number of countries around the world. The countries in gray were not surveyed, although many of them are known to have massive energy resources. Almost none of the Middle East or the "-stans" or Russia or Africa were included in the survey.
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The amount of oil and gas recoverable given new technology is staggering.
Let's quickly review the rationale of Peak Oil (source, Wikipedia). The Hubbert peak theory says that for any given geographical area, from an individual oil-producing region to the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell-shaped curve. This is one of the primary theories regarding Peak Oil. The theory is named after American geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who created a method of modeling the production curve given an assumed ultimate recovery volume.
Choosing a particular production curve determines the point of maximum production, based on discovery rates, production rates, and cumulative production. Early in the curve (pre-peak), the production rate increases because of the discovery rate and the addition of infrastructure. Late in the curve (post-peak), production declines because of resource depletion.
The Hubbert peak theory is based on the observation that the amount of oil under the ground in any region is finite; therefore the rate of discovery, which initially increases quickly, must reach a maximum and decline. In the US, oil extraction followed a Hubbert-like curve, with the peak in 1971 – until 2008, that is, when production began to increase sharply again.
We were told back in the early part of the last decade there were no more really large fields to be found. Just for fun, let's look at a chart from 2004 that projected world oil production in 2010. Notice how Texas production begins to seriously erode, as does that of the rest of the US.
Data like this was enough to convince investors to spend multiple billions of dollars building LNG terminals to bring natural gas into the United States. Now those same terminals are being repurposed to ship natural gas to the rest of the world. If you can pull it out of the ground for $3 and sell it for $16 – well, even I can do that arbitrage.
New fields? No, not really. We have known the oil and gas was there for decades; we just couldn't get it up at a reasonable price. Now human ingenuity and new technology have made increased production possible. And while the United States may be the source of that technology, as the map on the previous page indicates, there are massive potential unconventional oil fields all over the world.
Yes, these developments have significant geopolitical implications. And if the US generates a positive trade balance due to importing less oil and shipping more natural gas and refined oil products to the rest of the world, the US dollar could become remarkably strong and force all kinds of adjustments in global trade-settlement currencies. As I noted a few weeks ago, the Chinese renminbi could become a reserve trade currency not because the dollar becomes weak but because the dollar is so strong and additional trade currencies are needed.
The peak oil enthusiasts had their facts absolutely right. But they missed a couple of important pieces of the puzzle: human ingenuity and drive coupled with the accelerating nature of transformational technology. If we were stuck with 1990s oil-production technology, then we would indeed see oil production peaking. Thankfully, we are not. A thousand incremental changes in technology, and oil that was uneconomic to extract now appears to be abundantly available.
Ray Kurzweil told me a long time ago that when he was designing his cutting-edge technology products, he always had to assume that new chips and other components would be available in the future; and if he wanted to stay ahead, he had to design products to take advantage of the new chips. He was designing and creating products for which all the parts did not yet exist, but he simply had to assume they would be available in a few years.
In my simple analogy, if you go duck hunting, you don't shoot where the duck is, you shoot where it is going to be. The technology of drilling is changing so rapidly that we can no longer assume linear growth in production. Thinking about the future now requires us to factor in transformational technological changes. And that means today's technology will be out of date in ten years. We will be able to get more oil out of the ground and do it for less cost as we keep improving our designs.
Further, there is work going on all around us on developing entirely new sources of energy. The Japanese have been working for decades to unleash natural gas trapped in methane ice buried deep in the ocean. This is potentially more gas there than in the entirety of known reserves elsewhere in the world. A group in the US has figured out how turn carbon dioxide into methanol by a commercially reasonable process. Rather than burying all the excess carbon dioxide from energy plants in the ground, we will be able to turn it into a very useful fuel. There are dozens of such stories from all around the globe.
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The well-respected economics professor Robert J. Gordon recently published a paper called "Is US Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds." He outlines how the first three industrial revolutions created significant growth in GDP and advances in human lifestyles. He argues that no such revolution is on the horizon and that US growth in this century will be less than 1%. And while I agree that growth the rest of this decade in the US may be much less robust than normal, the main reason for the drop-off is poor governance, not a lack of technological progress.
Gordon quite correctly documents the amazing impact that the steam engine, electricity, the automobile, running water, and computers had on our world. "Where are the next lifestyle changes that will boost GDP?" he ponders. And I agree that these were enormous changes, and perhaps we will not see another technology with the impact of electricity, although I am not completely convinced of that. But I think Gordon is missing the point of accelerating transformational change.
We now have not just one or two industries that can make a huge impact but a hundred. Each one of those industries is undergoing rapid change. The change is mostly incremental, to be sure, but the direction is clear. And while none of the individual changes will have the impact electricity or the internal combustion engine had, the cumulative impact has the potential to be far greater.
Gordon is measuring the wrong data. He is looking for the big change, the overwhelming technology, and he is simultaneously overlooking the accelerating and mutually reinforcing incremental change that is happening all around us.
There were maybe a dozen scientists who understood the steam engine at the beginning of that revolution. Today, we routinely throw a thousand engineers at relatively trivial problems. Adding another few billion people into the midst of world commerce exponentially multiplies the potential for new innovation and incremental change.
It is very likely that we will see a revolution in biotechnology in the next 10-15-20 years that will dramatically increase our healthspans, which is to say not just the age to which we live but the time during which we can enjoy those extra years in good health. Where does that improving healthspan show up in GDP statistics? That seems to me to be a major lifestyle improvement, and we will need new tools to analyze the effects. No one in 2034 will want to come back to the good old days of 2014, when today's healthcare will seem somewhat barbaric and outrageously expensive.
Further, production of all types will become more efficient, requiring less labor to produce more goods and services. Many things will cost less but do more. To an economist this might look like a drop in the bucket of GDP, when it is actually a major societal good. Abundance at cheaper prices? Increased lifespans? What's not to like?
Yes, this transformation has all sorts of implications for how we organize our lives. Accelerating change will mean constant adjustments. Some of us old dogs are going to have to be learning new tricks at an ever-increasing rate. I for one find that exhilarating.
And yes, before we get to that Brave New World we have to get past a few things like budget deficits, unrealistic entitlement spending, massive quantitative easing, and Code Red central bank policies.
I was riding around in a golf cart this week at the Barefoot Ranch with a young hedge fund manager. He runs a value fund and could wax enthusiastic about his investment ideas. But then he would ask me about my macroeconomic views, and I could see the frustration cloud his face. "I know this is bad, but I just wish we could get it all over with so I could just do my work without having to worry about what the government is going to do to me." He just wants to find great companies with solid business models that are priced attractively. And not have to worry whether the governments of the world are going to create another big crisis. He was wistful about the "good old days" where we had a normal business cycle with a recession every now and then.
And speaking of a coming crisis, I along with my co-author Jonathan Tepper (who wrote Endgame with me) have a new book called Code Red coming out in about three weeks. The initial reviews have been very gratifying and complimentary. I think this is my best book yet. We describe the current policies of central banks around the world and what their likely effects will be – and what we think will be the resultant major currency war. The situation is of course compounded by huge future deficits created by entitlement spending and out-of-control debt. But to our young hedge fund manager I will hereby state that these problems, large though they are, will all be resolved by the end of the decade – at least that is my personal opinion today. In the meantime, Jonathan and I look for opportunities in the investment world – and there are many of them – and then try to figure out how to protect ourselves from governments. We have created a website at http://www.thecoderedbook.com/ where you can learn more. Wait a week or so before you buy the book online. (My publisher wants to see the book move up in the rankings, and that is helped by a lot of buying all at once. I'll let you know.)
Perhaps I'm in such a positive mood today because I recently finished taping a video webinar with my good friends Patrick Cox and George Gilder and a few leading scientists, about some of the changes we can see coming in the near term. You can register to watch the video right here.
Like my young hedge fund manager friend, I would so rather focus on the exciting transformations that are happening in our world, with all their positive implications. It is good to remind ourselves that there is life outside of government-created problems.
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The last three days at the Barefoot Ranch with Kyle Bass and his guests has been an amazing time. There were nonstop economic and investment discussions in a very relaxed setting with some of the sharpest minds gathered from around the world. Kyle and his team created a venue that is one-of-a-kind, in my experience. I'm still trying to digest what I learned. I had intended to write about it this week, but there was just simply too much, and I need to think about it all first.
In 10 days I fly back to New York City, where I will join my co-author, Jonathan Tepper. We'll have various media engagements to help promote the new book. Strangely, my schedule after that allows me to be home for a few weeks, and hopefully I will be able to move into my new apartment during that time. Construction seems to be going painfully slowly, but I'm sure things will speed up towards the end of next week, after the flooring is in. I sure hope so. Living in my office or hotel rooms for the last eight months has been an experience that has helped me learn strategies for minimalist living, but I am ready for a little bit more living space.
I drove back from Barefoot Ranch on Thursday afternoon, taking two good friends – my business partner Jon Sundt of Altegris Investments and Mark Yusko of Morgan Creek – to the airport to catch their flights home. Great conversation makes the drive go faster. After dropping them off, I went by to see my mother, who lives near the airport. She is 96 years old and bedridden, but up to this point has been mentally very sharp. "She's a little confused today," said my sister-in-law, who is taking care of her. And she was confused, with her dreams and memories impinging on her reality. From time to time she would be cognizant of the difference between the real and the unreal and try to think about that. This was the first time I had seen her like that, and it was a little difficult. I recalled my father's getting to that same place for the first time, slipping back and forth between the world that was and the world that is.
I left in a contemplative mode, and upon arriving at my apartment realized I had left my briefcase back at the ranch. There was nothing to do but get in the car and drive there and back again. Left alone with my thoughts, with the car on cruise control, my own mind wandered back and forth between memories, the present, and thoughts about the future, coupled with competing emotions that came out of all that has transpired over the past week.
Have a great week and spend more time with friends and family. And thanks for letting me into your own life with my weekly writings. I am grateful and humbled for the time you give me in a world where time seems to go ever faster.
Your thinking I may like dreams better than reality analyst,
John Mauldin
P.S. If you like my letters, you'll love reading Over My Shoulder with serious economic analysis from my global network, at a surprisingly affordable price. Click here to learn more.
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The prosecution of pregnant women for drug use represents the unhappy convergence of the war on drugs and the war on reproductive rights.
Like other failed policies of the war on drugs, the prosecution of pregnant women ignores science, evidence, and health in favor of stigmatization and punishment. And it comes at a huge cost, paid primarily by women of color, poor women, and the children of these women who will be cut off from prenatal care and perhaps removed from their families in the state's zeal to punish their mothers.
Unfortunately, just this week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that women can be charged under the state's chemical endangerment law if they become pregnant and use a controlled substance. The Drug Policy Alliance joined with National Advocates for Pregnant Women and the Southern Poverty Law Center to file amicus briefs in a number of cases of pregnant women wrongly prosecuted in Alabama on behalf of 49 medical, public health, and health advocacy groups and experts opposing the judicial expansion of the chemical endangerment law to pregnant women and mothers.
While some states, like Alabama, prosecute pregnant women under the criminal laws or child neglect and endangerment laws of the state, Tennessee is, unfortunately, on the verge of enacting the first law in the country that would authorize the arrest, prosecution and incarceration of drug-using pregnant women rather than providing them with what they most need—health care. Gov. Bill Haslam has until Monday to veto the bill. A petition is being circulated to urge the governor to veto the bill.
In most cases, women are not being prosecuted for using drugs while pregnant but for being poor and of color while pregnant. The reality is that many women use alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs while pregnant. But only a few are prosecuted and only for using certain drugs—not those drugs shown to pose greater possible risk to fetal health, such as alcohol, but those we have decided to criminalize largely because of the populations of people who use them.
States that prosecute pregnant women undermine the very goals they purport to protect: Three things are evident from this failed approach:
- Drug use is not as important an indicator in the outcome of a pregnancy as is adequate prenatal care and other environmental factors;
- Threat of prosecution does not deter drug use;
- Prosecution of pregnant women prevents them from obtaining the prenatal care necessary for having a safe and healthy pregnancy.
Criminalizing pregnant women is a horrible public policy. Drug dependency is a medical condition – not a crime. Pregnant women who struggle with alcoholism and other drug dependencies do not do so because they want to harm their fetuses or their children. Like other chronic medical conditions, drug dependency can be controlled and overcome through medical treatment. Deterring pregnant and parenting women from seeking prenatal care and drug and alcohol treatment will not help these women to stop using drugs.
Maternal and fetal health is better served by making medical treatment for drug dependency and prenatal care available and welcoming to pregnant women.
Converting the physician's exam room into an interrogation chamber and turning health care professionals into agents of law enforcement, destroys trust and deters the most vulnerable women from prenatal care.