Remarkable, sir! I can tell you for free that you have made a sale for your book. I must have it. Several threads resonate very powerfully with me so I want to start with the end which is the most powerful. I lived in Tehran from early 1977 to early 1979, Feb 9th to be exact when I was flown out of Tehran on a USAF C-141. I had been working for, you'll never guess, Lockheed Aircraft Service Corporation who had an FMS contract with the IIAF for logistics support. The whole oil thing was very much buzzing around Tehran at the time I was there. Mossadegh had not been forgotten. I still have a number of Khayyans from when I was there. I may or may not have the one where the editorial cartoon showed somebody lifting up the beard of an imam so you could see the "CIA" written beneath it (obviously this was after Fred had fled the country). That was the one thing that united the country. They wanted the Shah out. I say that because the bus trip home (Lockheed had hired a bus company to provide their employees I suspect "secure" transport in Tehran) was interesting. Our driver had a poster of sorts with a picture of Fred on one side and Fuzz Face on the other (I should say that we were told before we went in country that we should never refer to the Shah-n-Shahi Mohammad Reza Pahlavi directly so those of us in the Lockheed group decided to use the name Fred. So when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came along, I dubbed him Fuzz Face) depending on where we were in town, Reza would flip that poster one way or the other. It mostly showed Fuzz Face.
The guy that supports your front end is a guy by the name of Smedley Butler. As he said:"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914." Yes, it has been going on for a long time. But I'm interested in another thing that Lt. Gen. Butler reported. Apparently there were a number of obviously patriotic American oligarchs who approached him to perpetrate a coup in the US and depose Roosevelt. Gen. Butler declined but nobody was ever persecuted for that either.
I have a bit more to write which I will do as a response to me, it's past bedtime.
Given your background, I believe that you would really appreciate the sections in the book on the end of Bretton Woods and the rise of the petrodollar--as well as the sections on Carter and the October Surprise.
Also, I don't put this in the book but I do wonder if the CIA or Safari Club basically acted to make sure that the Iranian revolution became a theocracy rather than a progressive nationalist regime a la Mossedegh. The Ayatollah was not a good puppet, but probably still would have been seen as preferable to a neutral and/or socialist government...
Well, I'm gonna find out since I just ordered your book. As to the second half of your comment, I can only tell you what I know. There was a huge jump in religious fervor when the Ayatollah arrived. To put this in perspective a bit, I met a couple of men who had no fingernails. The Shah was generally only liked in the big cities. I saw the ballot. It only had two choices - continue with the Shah or his son, or vote for an Islamic state. I kinda suspect that it really was as simple as the Ayatollah delivered us from the Shah, I'm going with the Islamic state. I asked my landlord's son, Mustafa, about it (we were both about 28) and he said, I don't know, Jeff, I think they are good choices. More might be better but I'll just be glad to be rid of the Shah.
If they did as you suggested, they were fools. To quote the late Barry Goldwater:
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Trust me. Muslims are no worse then evangelical Christians.
From what is presented here - which is profoundly interesting - I am confused on why Eisenhower would make his famous parting speech a warning about something his administration built and supported. Did he approve of it or not... perhaps it was a matter of more and then less?
I meant to send this to you months ago and I forgot, got distracted, etc. I finished it fairly quickly. Frankly, at times you come across as a conspiracy theorist except that at 73 I was around for a lot of what you describe and it's all real. It was a fascinating book and scared the shit out of me. I don't see a practical way out of the hole we've dug for ourselves.
I think the stuff about economic rents is a bit off. An economic rent is a payment to a factor of production that does not affect the allocation of resources. It is a fuzzy concept and if firms have fixed costs and rising marginal cost curves, then their economic profits can be zero only if economic rents are positive. In theory economic rents can be taxed without causing a misallocation of resources, but it is difficult to do this, since there are no economic rents earned on the last unit of output produced. Henry George thought he had a way around this by taxing land.
• This is a group that pretends to speak for Jews. In reality, it's just another banal, standard Dem Party/liberal activist group whose core function is to exploit these causes to agitate for censorship of anyone who questions liberal establishment orthodoxy.
It's the Jewish @HRC
ADL: “Today, we are joining dozens of other groups to ask advertisers to pause Twitter spending because we are profoundly concerned about antisemitism and hate on the platform. Here's why we're asking advertisers to #StopHateForProfit and #StopToxicTwitter -- https://stophateforprofit.org/statement-calling-on-advertisers”
• The scam is to scare corporations by knowing they'll be accused of anti-Semitism unless they bow to ADL's dictates about what ideas and people they can and can't associate with, just as @HRC exploits reckless homophobia accusations to coerce obedience. It's pro-DNC censorship.
• (re-tweet): AOC is a deeply unserious person
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Elon Musk is sabotaging her Twitter account
• Joy Reid's understanding of history really does begin in 2017. As sketchy as that understanding is, she has no idea that history existed before Trump. The ignorance is stunning. How can someone like this be on TV every night talking about politics, even to a tiny audience?
• In 1974, "President Ford plunged headfirst into the crisis. His first and most public move was to combat inflation. He declared inflation 'public enemy number one.'"
Ford's brand was "WIN: Whip Inflation Now."
How the fuck does Joy Reid know nothing about everything???
• This little dunce - who wouldn't sacrifice for a cause if he lived to be 1,000 - thinks the Kremlin told Snowden to re-tweet a WashPost reporter's mention of a George Will column lightly critiquing Kamala Harris.
• How do these people mock QAnon when they're as conspiratorial?
Aaron Rupar @atrupar: “it really isn't when you realize that Snowden's entire purpose right now is using his platform to advance the Russian government's interests -- hurting the Democratic Party and thereby helping Republicans win office, which ultimately will undermine the US's support for Ukraine twitter.com/_GreatDelusion…”
• But that tweet does express one of the core views of Democratic partisans in media. It's really how they think now.
If you criticize the Dem Party or its leaders then, by definition, you're doing the work of the Kremlin. All critics of Biden are, by definition, Putin stooges.
• Sometimes, parts of our politics become so insane and unhinged for so long that one forgets how demented they are. Starting in 2017, it became completely standard for Dem politicians and DNC media stars to accuse all critics of being Kremlin assets:
Michael Tracey @mtracey:
Congressman Can't Answer Simple Question About His Own Bill, So Accuses Me of Working for the Russian Government
• The primary tactic of American liberalism (Dem Party version) is to police and control the flow of information online by silencing, de-platforming, excluding and otherwise punishing anyone who questions of dissents from their pieties and decrees of Truth and Falsity.
Elon Musk @elonmusk: “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.
Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.
• The lesson Democrats (and their US Security State partners) derived from their humiliating 2016 loss was that the preservation and expansion of their power requires tight control over the internet.
Corporate power (through advertising pressure) is one of their primary tools.
• This is why *the overwhelming majority* of Democrats support **state control** of information online in the name of fighting "disinformation."
In other words, if Big Tech won't capitulate to their censorship demands, Dems want political leaders to mandate that censorship.
• I spoke last night on Fox about a woefully under-covered story: The EU made it *illegal* for any platform to air RT or other Russian media. Now France is demanding US platforms, such as Rumble, obey this and remove RT. Rumble refused, defending its right to air what it wants
This is part of a larger dynamic, that goes to the core of Western culture.
For one thing, the Federal debt has been growing for 90 years. It began with the New Deal. So not only was Roosevelt putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed capital, as well.
While our society assumes money to be some commodity to mine from the economy, the fact is it's a social contract and accounting device. People might see it as signal to extract and store, but markets need it to circulate, so the more that is extracted, the more has to be put back in and the more metastatic the methods of storing what have been extracted.
To store the asset side of the ledger, a debt has to be generated and whatever the flunkies, grifters, prostitutes and psychopaths allowed to fill the roles in government manage to do, the one thing they are really good at, is creating public debt. Which is the foundation of the financial system.
The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, but remember, blood is a medium, while fat is a store. Consider the consequences of mixing them up.
The irony of the current situation is the greatest threat to these elites are themselves. They have essentially built a financial nuclear weapon at the heart of their own edifice.
Debt doesn't matter, until it does. Their entire world is built on a debt bubble.
The deeper issue goes to the foundations of our worldview.
Consider that both democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Basically the family as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. The Romans co-opted a monotheistic sect to be the state religion, as the Empire was solidifying out of the ashes of the Republic. Basically validating The Big Guy Rules.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be that essence of sentience, from which life rises, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through the film, than whatever the images on it purport to be doing.
Ideals are not absolutes. Yet it is the simple fact that our entire culture is premised on that presumption goes to many of our problems. Consider all the various ideologies to rise in the shadow of monotheism and they mostly feel compelled to assert their core beliefs to be universal and any others to be flawed, if not evil. Subjectivity is dismissed as relativism, but our reality is profoundly subjective. To culture, good and bad are some cosmic conflict between righteousness and evil, while in nature it's the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. This is because it is the function of culture to synchronize the community as one larger social organism.
Yet while synchronization is centripetal, harmonization is centrifugal. Thus nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems, particles and fields.
The fact is that reality is more dualist, than monist. Even the physical is more positive and negative charge, than any actual little thing, be it atoms, quanta, or strings.
I could go much deeper into some of the misconceptions built into our physical and social theories, but that would question the assumptions of our culture even more profoundly than issues directly relating to monotheism. My point is that when this global Tower of Babel does start to topple, it will do so in ways no one is going to foresee.
It is in those rare moments, when logic prevails over convention.
But I’m only giving it a B+ because I don’t get the shallow perspective on 1948 and 1950 in Berlin and Korea.
They are simply not mentioned though surely central to policy and military action in those years. Having been born in 1943 at the other end of the planet Berlin and Korea were viscerally part of my childhood and news. Their absence from this text may mean they are dealt with elsewhere in the book, they may be below the horizon for a younger man, or worst they might be inconvenient realities too awkward, too annoying to include.
Remarkable, sir! I can tell you for free that you have made a sale for your book. I must have it. Several threads resonate very powerfully with me so I want to start with the end which is the most powerful. I lived in Tehran from early 1977 to early 1979, Feb 9th to be exact when I was flown out of Tehran on a USAF C-141. I had been working for, you'll never guess, Lockheed Aircraft Service Corporation who had an FMS contract with the IIAF for logistics support. The whole oil thing was very much buzzing around Tehran at the time I was there. Mossadegh had not been forgotten. I still have a number of Khayyans from when I was there. I may or may not have the one where the editorial cartoon showed somebody lifting up the beard of an imam so you could see the "CIA" written beneath it (obviously this was after Fred had fled the country). That was the one thing that united the country. They wanted the Shah out. I say that because the bus trip home (Lockheed had hired a bus company to provide their employees I suspect "secure" transport in Tehran) was interesting. Our driver had a poster of sorts with a picture of Fred on one side and Fuzz Face on the other (I should say that we were told before we went in country that we should never refer to the Shah-n-Shahi Mohammad Reza Pahlavi directly so those of us in the Lockheed group decided to use the name Fred. So when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came along, I dubbed him Fuzz Face) depending on where we were in town, Reza would flip that poster one way or the other. It mostly showed Fuzz Face.
The guy that supports your front end is a guy by the name of Smedley Butler. As he said:"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914." Yes, it has been going on for a long time. But I'm interested in another thing that Lt. Gen. Butler reported. Apparently there were a number of obviously patriotic American oligarchs who approached him to perpetrate a coup in the US and depose Roosevelt. Gen. Butler declined but nobody was ever persecuted for that either.
I have a bit more to write which I will do as a response to me, it's past bedtime.
Given your background, I believe that you would really appreciate the sections in the book on the end of Bretton Woods and the rise of the petrodollar--as well as the sections on Carter and the October Surprise.
Also, I don't put this in the book but I do wonder if the CIA or Safari Club basically acted to make sure that the Iranian revolution became a theocracy rather than a progressive nationalist regime a la Mossedegh. The Ayatollah was not a good puppet, but probably still would have been seen as preferable to a neutral and/or socialist government...
Well, I'm gonna find out since I just ordered your book. As to the second half of your comment, I can only tell you what I know. There was a huge jump in religious fervor when the Ayatollah arrived. To put this in perspective a bit, I met a couple of men who had no fingernails. The Shah was generally only liked in the big cities. I saw the ballot. It only had two choices - continue with the Shah or his son, or vote for an Islamic state. I kinda suspect that it really was as simple as the Ayatollah delivered us from the Shah, I'm going with the Islamic state. I asked my landlord's son, Mustafa, about it (we were both about 28) and he said, I don't know, Jeff, I think they are good choices. More might be better but I'll just be glad to be rid of the Shah.
If they did as you suggested, they were fools. To quote the late Barry Goldwater:
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Trust me. Muslims are no worse then evangelical Christians.
Ideals are not absolutes.
From what is presented here - which is profoundly interesting - I am confused on why Eisenhower would make his famous parting speech a warning about something his administration built and supported. Did he approve of it or not... perhaps it was a matter of more and then less?
I meant to send this to you months ago and I forgot, got distracted, etc. I finished it fairly quickly. Frankly, at times you come across as a conspiracy theorist except that at 73 I was around for a lot of what you describe and it's all real. It was a fascinating book and scared the shit out of me. I don't see a practical way out of the hole we've dug for ourselves.
I think the stuff about economic rents is a bit off. An economic rent is a payment to a factor of production that does not affect the allocation of resources. It is a fuzzy concept and if firms have fixed costs and rising marginal cost curves, then their economic profits can be zero only if economic rents are positive. In theory economic rents can be taxed without causing a misallocation of resources, but it is difficult to do this, since there are no economic rents earned on the last unit of output produced. Henry George thought he had a way around this by taxing land.
FBI demands 66 YEARS to release data on Seth Rich laptop – (his murder is still unresolved.)
https://vivabarneslaw.locals.com/post/2199282/hush-hush-ep-58
2020 elections were indeed STOLEN – by FBI !!
FYI (optional reading 😉 ) GG tweets – extracted ~Nov 7 period https://twitter.com/ggreenwald
• This is a group that pretends to speak for Jews. In reality, it's just another banal, standard Dem Party/liberal activist group whose core function is to exploit these causes to agitate for censorship of anyone who questions liberal establishment orthodoxy.
It's the Jewish @HRC
ADL: “Today, we are joining dozens of other groups to ask advertisers to pause Twitter spending because we are profoundly concerned about antisemitism and hate on the platform. Here's why we're asking advertisers to #StopHateForProfit and #StopToxicTwitter -- https://stophateforprofit.org/statement-calling-on-advertisers”
• The scam is to scare corporations by knowing they'll be accused of anti-Semitism unless they bow to ADL's dictates about what ideas and people they can and can't associate with, just as @HRC exploits reckless homophobia accusations to coerce obedience. It's pro-DNC censorship.
• (re-tweet): AOC is a deeply unserious person
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Elon Musk is sabotaging her Twitter account
• Joy Reid's understanding of history really does begin in 2017. As sketchy as that understanding is, she has no idea that history existed before Trump. The ignorance is stunning. How can someone like this be on TV every night talking about politics, even to a tiny audience?
• In 1974, "President Ford plunged headfirst into the crisis. His first and most public move was to combat inflation. He declared inflation 'public enemy number one.'"
Ford's brand was "WIN: Whip Inflation Now."
How the fuck does Joy Reid know nothing about everything???
• This little dunce - who wouldn't sacrifice for a cause if he lived to be 1,000 - thinks the Kremlin told Snowden to re-tweet a WashPost reporter's mention of a George Will column lightly critiquing Kamala Harris.
• How do these people mock QAnon when they're as conspiratorial?
Aaron Rupar @atrupar: “it really isn't when you realize that Snowden's entire purpose right now is using his platform to advance the Russian government's interests -- hurting the Democratic Party and thereby helping Republicans win office, which ultimately will undermine the US's support for Ukraine twitter.com/_GreatDelusion…”
• But that tweet does express one of the core views of Democratic partisans in media. It's really how they think now.
If you criticize the Dem Party or its leaders then, by definition, you're doing the work of the Kremlin. All critics of Biden are, by definition, Putin stooges.
• Sometimes, parts of our politics become so insane and unhinged for so long that one forgets how demented they are. Starting in 2017, it became completely standard for Dem politicians and DNC media stars to accuse all critics of being Kremlin assets:
Michael Tracey @mtracey:
Congressman Can't Answer Simple Question About His Own Bill, So Accuses Me of Working for the Russian Government
https://mtracey.substack.com/p/congressman-cant-answer-simple-question
• The primary tactic of American liberalism (Dem Party version) is to police and control the flow of information online by silencing, de-platforming, excluding and otherwise punishing anyone who questions of dissents from their pieties and decrees of Truth and Falsity.
Elon Musk @elonmusk: “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.
Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.
• The lesson Democrats (and their US Security State partners) derived from their humiliating 2016 loss was that the preservation and expansion of their power requires tight control over the internet.
Corporate power (through advertising pressure) is one of their primary tools.
• This is why *the overwhelming majority* of Democrats support **state control** of information online in the name of fighting "disinformation."
In other words, if Big Tech won't capitulate to their censorship demands, Dems want political leaders to mandate that censorship.
• I spoke last night on Fox about a woefully under-covered story: The EU made it *illegal* for any platform to air RT or other Russian media. Now France is demanding US platforms, such as Rumble, obey this and remove RT. Rumble refused, defending its right to air what it wants
FYI -- NBC reported new details re: Paul Pelosi attack:
- Pelosi answered door, didn't "declare an emergency or try to leave his home," instead walked toward the assailant
- Pelosi & DePape were in house for 30 minutes before police arrived
Then -- NBC deleted this video from all platforms.
https://youtu.be/hHz83GX1H0Q
Tucker Carlson: This is laughably absurd
This is part of a larger dynamic, that goes to the core of Western culture.
For one thing, the Federal debt has been growing for 90 years. It began with the New Deal. So not only was Roosevelt putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed capital, as well.
While our society assumes money to be some commodity to mine from the economy, the fact is it's a social contract and accounting device. People might see it as signal to extract and store, but markets need it to circulate, so the more that is extracted, the more has to be put back in and the more metastatic the methods of storing what have been extracted.
To store the asset side of the ledger, a debt has to be generated and whatever the flunkies, grifters, prostitutes and psychopaths allowed to fill the roles in government manage to do, the one thing they are really good at, is creating public debt. Which is the foundation of the financial system.
The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, but remember, blood is a medium, while fat is a store. Consider the consequences of mixing them up.
The irony of the current situation is the greatest threat to these elites are themselves. They have essentially built a financial nuclear weapon at the heart of their own edifice.
Debt doesn't matter, until it does. Their entire world is built on a debt bubble.
The deeper issue goes to the foundations of our worldview.
Consider that both democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Basically the family as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. The Romans co-opted a monotheistic sect to be the state religion, as the Empire was solidifying out of the ashes of the Republic. Basically validating The Big Guy Rules.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be that essence of sentience, from which life rises, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through the film, than whatever the images on it purport to be doing.
Ideals are not absolutes. Yet it is the simple fact that our entire culture is premised on that presumption goes to many of our problems. Consider all the various ideologies to rise in the shadow of monotheism and they mostly feel compelled to assert their core beliefs to be universal and any others to be flawed, if not evil. Subjectivity is dismissed as relativism, but our reality is profoundly subjective. To culture, good and bad are some cosmic conflict between righteousness and evil, while in nature it's the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. This is because it is the function of culture to synchronize the community as one larger social organism.
Yet while synchronization is centripetal, harmonization is centrifugal. Thus nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems, particles and fields.
The fact is that reality is more dualist, than monist. Even the physical is more positive and negative charge, than any actual little thing, be it atoms, quanta, or strings.
I could go much deeper into some of the misconceptions built into our physical and social theories, but that would question the assumptions of our culture even more profoundly than issues directly relating to monotheism. My point is that when this global Tower of Babel does start to topple, it will do so in ways no one is going to foresee.
It is in those rare moments, when logic prevails over convention.
Life is a dance, not a race.
This is a valuable essay.
But I’m only giving it a B+ because I don’t get the shallow perspective on 1948 and 1950 in Berlin and Korea.
They are simply not mentioned though surely central to policy and military action in those years. Having been born in 1943 at the other end of the planet Berlin and Korea were viscerally part of my childhood and news. Their absence from this text may mean they are dealt with elsewhere in the book, they may be below the horizon for a younger man, or worst they might be inconvenient realities too awkward, too annoying to include.