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Sunday Noteworthy Articles & Reports

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US Mega Corporations & Bilderberg, The Strange Silencing of Liberal America, The Eight Outrageous Costs of the War on Terror & More!

I have a few note-worthy articles and reports for this Sunday.

bilderbergSince we have been covering Mega Corporate-Foundations I am going to begin with a well-researched and nicely-written report on Bilderberg and US Corporations by Gavin Marshall at Center for Research on Globalization:

Bilderberg 2011: The Rockefeller World Order and the “High Priests of Globalization” 
By Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research.ca

The fact that the major American foundations – Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford – were so pivotal in the origins of the Bilderberg Group is not a mere coincidence. The foundations have, since their founding at the beginning of the 20th century, been the central institutions in constructing consensus among elites, and creating consent to power. They are, in short, the engines of social engineering: both for elite circles specifically, and society as a whole, more generally. As Professor of Education Robert F. Arnove wrote in his book Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism:

Foundations like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford have a corrosive influence on a democratic society; they represent relatively unregulated and unaccountable concentrations of power and wealth which buy talent, promote causes, and, in effect, establish an agenda of what merits society’s attention. They serve as “cooling-out” agencies, delaying and preventing more radical, structural change. They help maintain an economic and political order, international in scope, which benefits the ruling-class interests of philanthropists and philanthropoids – a system which… has worked against the interests of minorities, the working class, and Third World peoples.[8]

These foundations had been central in promoting the ideology of ‘globalism’ that laid the groundwork for organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group to exist. The Rockefeller Foundation, in particular, supported several organizations that promoted a ‘liberal internationalist’ philosophy, the aim of which:

was to support a foreign policy within a new world order that was to feature the United States as the leading power – a programme defined by the Rockefeller Foundation as ‘disinterested’, ‘objective’ and even ‘non-political’… The construction of a new internationalist consensus required the conscious, targeted funding of individuals and organizations who questioned and undermined the supporters of the ‘old order’ while simultaneously promoting the ‘new’.[9]

The major foundations funded and created not only policy-oriented institutes such as think tanks, but they were also pivotal in the organization and construction of universities and education itself, in particular, the study of ‘international relations.’[10] The influence of foundations over education and universities and thus, ‘knowledge’ itself, is unparalleled.

You can read the entire article here.

The New York Times published an appalling report on our war in Afghanistan. Before you read the article recall the following: the Afghanistan government happens to be our puppet government installed by us; the Taliban has no military headquarters like the Pentagon, no tanks, warplanes, no nuclear or modern bombs, no organized military…Think of caves, pitchforks or maybe a few old and outdated Kalashnikovs; think a third world country with a GDP of less than $15 billion. So we’ve been bombing the hell out of this third world country-their mud houses and caves, with our own government in charge there, and we keep bombing. We keep escalating our bombing. Those bomb inventories need to be reduced so that the megas can produce and sell more bombs (to our government in return for billions of our tax dollars). For every bomb dropped, for every piece of equipment deployed, a handful of megas make millions of dollars. OK?

nightraids300 Night Raids per Month in Afghanistan
Carlotta Gall, NY Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — United States Special Operations forces have carried out an extraordinary number of night raids over the past year, turning them into one of their most effective tools against the insurgents even as they stir accusations of abuse, resentment among Afghans and divisions with the government.

Last year’s influx of coalition forces brought with it the kind of intelligence and surveillance that have enhanced the military’s ability to conduct the night raids, which now average 300 a month, NATO and Afghan officials said. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands detained in the raids over the past 18 months, they said.

On that note (above) let’s read a little about the outrageous cost of our wars, and while reading please remember the handful who’ve been getting these trillions of dollars. Also, I find the title a bit misleading, ‘War on Terror;’ ten years of bombing and pounding;  targeting caves, civilians, cavemen and farmers clad in shalvars and declared all together as terrorists or Taliban. Anyhow, here is the article from 24/7 Wall St.:

The Eight Outrageous Costs of the War on Terror 
24/7 Wall St.

For the first time in U.S. history, America is fighting wars — in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan —  funded almost entirely by U.S. government borrowing. This is according to Catherine Lutz, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Brown University, and author of a new study on the $4 trillion cost of the war on terror.

While there were many other huge federal expenses – the largest of these probably the nearly $1 trillion Obama stimulus package — this massive borrowing is one of the main reasons for the tremendous budget gaps and the congressional battles over the federal debt cap and how America should close its annual deficits as the next decade passes. It is certain that if the military expenses accumulated since the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 had not cost America so much, deficits over the last decade would have been smaller. The present threats to federal government programs, including Medicare, can be partially blamed on the decision by the U.S. to react to terrorism primarily by sending hundreds of thousands of troops abroad.


1. Congressional War Appropriations to Pentagon
Conservative estimate: $1.31 trillion
Moderate estimate: $1.31 trillion
 Major costs: Military Equipment, Operation & Maintenance, Military Personnel

2. Additions to the Pentagon Base Budget
Conservative estimate: $326.2 billion
Moderate estimate: $652.4 billion
 Major costs: Research and development of weapons systems, maintenance of army

3. Interest on Pentagon War Appropriations
Conservative estimate: $185.4 billion
Moderate estimate: $185.4 billion
Major costs: Higher interest rates, higher national debt

 Okay, I suggest you read the entire outrageous report and get outraged; get livid: here.

While we are on this outrageous wars topic, let’s take a look at one of our latest murders committed in the name of war on terror:

Another NATO Strike Kills 14 Afghan Civilians
By Jason Ditz, AntiWar

NATO air strikes in the Khost Province district of Shamal this morning killed at least 14 civilians including eight children. It was the second strike in the province this week, with a Tuesday attack killing as many as 11 other civilians.

NATO admitted to the first strike, but termed the slain “associated family members” of the Taliban they were trying to kill, and insisted some Taliban were killed. They have yet to comment on the new strike, though they did say they were investigating a third incident of civilian killings.

Here is a powerful piece by John Pilger. As you will see this too is tied to our coverage of Mega Corporate-Foundations and their Lap-Dogs:

The Strange Silencing of Liberal America
By John Pilger, Global Research.ca

The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, believes in free speech. The foundation’s website says it is “dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity and creativity”. Authors, film-makers, poets make their way to a sanctum of liberalism bankrolled by the billionaire Patrick Lannan in the tradition of Rockefeller and Ford.

Lannan also awards “grants” to America’s liberal media, such as Free Speech TV, the Foundation for National Progress (publisher of the magazine Mother Jones), the Nation Institute and the TV and radio programme Democracy Now! In Britain, Lannan has been a supporter of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, of which I am one of the judges. In 2008, Patrick Lannan personally supported the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, he is “devoted” to Obama.

On 15 June, I was due in Santa Fe, having been invited to share a platform with the distinguished American journalist David Barsamian. The foundation was also to host the US premiere of my new film, The War You Don’t See, which investigates the false image-making of war-makers, especially Obama.

I was about to leave for Santa Fe when I received an email from the Lannan official organising my visit. The tone was incredulous. “Something has come up,” she wrote. Patrick Lannan had called her and ordered all my events to be cancelled. “I have no idea what this is all about,” she wrote.

Baffled, I asked that the premiere of my film be allowed to go ahead as the US distribution largely depended on it. She repeated that “all” my events were cancelled, “and this includes the screening of your film”. On the Lannan website “cancelled” appeared across a picture of me. There was no explanation. None of my phone calls was returned, nor subsequent emails answered. A Kafka world of not-knowing descended.

The silence lasted a week until, under pressure from local media, the foundation put out a brief statement that too few tickets had been sold to make my visit “viable” and that “the Foundation regrets that the reason for the cancellation was not explained to Mr. Pilger or to the public at the time the decision was made”. Doubts were cast by a robust editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican, The paper, which has long played a prominent role in promoting Lannan events, disclosed that my visit had been cancelled before the main advertising and previews were published. A full-page interview with me had to be hurriedly pulled. “Pilger and Barsamian could have expected closer to a packed 820-seat Lensic [arts centre].”

While powerful the piece is brief, so please click here and read the entire article by Pilger.


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