[Peace-discuss] Time magazine propaganda, by Richard Haas

Thu Feb 22 14:49:09 UTC 2018

I have not wasted my time on Haas either. But right now there is a propaganda push for war against Iran from the usual sources. I suspect Haas is part of it.

Fab

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
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217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
(personal comments only)

From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace-discuss
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 8:34 AM
To: David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
Cc: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Time magazine propaganda, by Richard Haas

The fact that Haas, and his cohorts are reaching mainstream Americans, those that read magazines like “Time” for news, because they aren’t online, is more disturbing to me than that awful VDO or book he has done.

Time is one of those publications available in doctor and dental offices.

On Feb 22, 2018, at 06:19, David Green via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:

Thanks. Ha-ass is particularly and seamlessly glib, well-facilitated by the film's narrator, Michael Moynihan. It's a remarkable deluge of propaganda with high production values, Riefenstahlian (sp) in its own way.

On ‎Wednesday‎, ‎February‎ ‎21‎, ‎2018‎ ‎09‎:‎17‎:‎08‎ ‎PM‎ ‎CST, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com<mailto:cgestabrook at gmail.com>> wrote:

[It’s ‘Haass,’ I think - HA-ASS…]

...Western Europe was part of the Grand Area [that the US planned at the outset of WWII to control after the war], but it was always understood that, sooner or later, Europe might pursue an independent path - perhaps following the Gaullist vision of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals - and something had to be done to prevent that. Well, a number of things were done. One of them was called NATO. One of its main purposes is to ensure that Europe will be contained within a US-run military alliance. That leads to consequences right up to the moment. This concern that Europe might become independent is sometimes tinged with a certain degree of contempt. Just a few days ago, in fact, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the main government foreign relations group, Richard Haass, wrote an article called, “Good-bye Europe.” Europe, he says, is no longer a high-ranking power in international affairs and the reason is it’s not violent enough. It’s refusing to provide troops to control the world at an adequate level so, “Good-bye Europe”. It can sink into oblivion. No one really believes that but that’s in the background. Well, throughout the sort of official version of this whole period is called the Cold War. So what was the Cold War?

You can look at ideology or you can look at facts, at events. The events of the Cold War are very clear. The primary events of the Cold War were regular intervention and subversion within the Grand Area, always with the justification that we were defending ourselves from what John F. Kennedy called the "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” to control the world, so that’s why we have to intervene. The Russians did the same thing in their smaller domains. In fact, the Cold War was pretty much a tacit compact between the big super power and the little super power in which each one was pretty much free to do what it wanted in its own domains, Russia in Eastern Europe, the US everywhere else, appealing to the threat of the enemy. Sometimes it got out of control and came very close to terminal nuclear war but, basically, that was the Cold War structure.

There’s another principle which ought to be borne in mind which is one of the major operative principles in world affairs right up to the present and that is what we might call the Mafia principle. International affairs are run very much like the Mafia. The Godfather does not permit disobedience. That’s actually fairly explicit in the Grand Area planning although not in exactly those words.

In the Grand Area, the US was to have “unquestioned power” with “military and economic supremacy” while ensuring “limitation of any exercise of sovereignty” by states that might interfere with its global designs. That’s the Mafia principle. Actually, that’s the Iranian threat. They’re trying to exercise sovereignty and that’s not permitted under the Mafia principle. You can’t permit independence. You must have obedience, and it’s understandable. If somebody is disobedient, maybe some small country or, in the Mafia, some small storekeeper, if they get away with it, others may get the idea that they can do it too and pretty soon you have what Henry Kissinger called a virus that spreads contagion. If a virus might spread contagion, you have to kill the virus and inoculate everyone else by imposing brutal dictatorships and so on. That’s a core part of Cold War history. If you look at it closely, you see that that’s what it amounted to.

Well meanwhile, the Grand Area was becoming more diversified. In 1950, at the end of the Second World War, the United States literally had half the world’s wealth and unimaginable security and power. By 1970, that had reduced to about 25% of the world’s wealth, which is still colossal but far less than 50%. The industrial countries had reconstructed and decolonization had taken place. The world was becoming what was called tri-polar. The US-centered North American system, Europe based primarily on Germany and France, and the Japan-centered developing Northeast Asian economy. Today [2010] it’s gotten more diversified. The structure is becoming more complex and much harder to control. Latin America, for the first time in its history, is moving towards a degree of independence. There are south/south contacts developing. Thus China now is Brazil’s leading trading partner. Also, China is intruding into the crucial Middle East region and contracting and taking the oil.

There’s a lot of discussion these days in foreign policy circles about a shift in power in the global system with China and India becoming the new great powers. That’s not accurate. They are growing and developing but they’re very poor countries. They have enormous internal problems. There is, however, a global shift of power: it’s from the global workforce to private capital. There’s an Asian production center with China at the heart of it, largely an assembly plant for the surrounding more advanced Asian countries — Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea — which produce sophisticated technology, and parts and components, and send them to China where they’re assembled and sent out to the United States and Europe. US corporations are doing the same thing. They produce high technology exports to China where they are assembled and you buy them at home as an iPod or a computer, something like that. They’re called Chinese exports but that’s quite misleading. You can see it very clearly if you look at the actual statistics. So there’s a lot of concern about the US debt. Well actually, most of the US debt is held by Japan not by China. There’s concern about the trade deficit. We purchase so much more from China than we export to them. Meanwhile the trade deficit with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan is going down. The reason is that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan and so forth are providing materials to China for them to assemble. These are counted in the United States as imports from China, but that’s completely misleading. It’s the Asian production center which is developing and US corporations and regional advanced economies are deeply involved in it. Meanwhile the share of wealth of the workforce globally is declining. In fact, it is declining even faster in China, relative to the economy, than it is elsewhere. So when we look at the world realistically, there is a global shift of power but it’s not a shift to the Chinese/Indian power displacing the United States. It’s a shift from working people all over the world to transnational capital. They are enriching themselves. It’s essentially an old story but it’s taking new forms with the availability of the global workforce. Capital is mobile and labor is not. It has obvious consequences.

Now all of this is fine for financial institutions, and corporate managers, and CEOs. and retail chains, but it is very harmful to populations. That’s part of the reason for many significant social problems inside the United States. I don’t have time to go into them.

To get some real insight into global policy one place to look is at Grand Area planning during the Second World War and its implementation. Another place to look is at the end of the Cold War.

So what happened at the end of the Cold War? In 1989 when the wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no more Cold War. What happened? The president of the United States at the time was George Bush, the first George Bush. and the Bush Administration immediately produced new plans to deal with the post-Cold War system. The plans, in brief, were that everything would remain as it was before but with new pretexts. So there still has to be a huge military force but not to defend ourselves against the Russians, because they are gone. Rather now, it was to defend ourselves — I’m quoting — against the “technological sophistication” of third world powers. You’re not supposed to laugh. That’s what we need a huge military force for and, if you’re a well educated person, following Orwell’s principle, do not laugh. Say, “Yes, we need to defend ourselves from the technological sophistication of third world powers,” It was necessary to maintain what’s called the “defense industrial base.” That’s a euphemism for high tech industry. High tech industry does not develop simply by free market principles. The corporate system can provide for more consumer choice but high tech develops substantially in the state sector: computers, the Internet, and so on. It’s commonly been done under the pretext of defense. But with the Cold War over, we still have to maintain the “defense industrial base.” That is the state goal: is supporting high tech industry.

What about intervention forces? Well, the major intervention forces are in the Middle East where the energy resources are. The post-Cold War plans said that we must maintain these intervention forces directed at the Middle East, and then came an interesting phrase: where the serious problems “could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door.” The problems, in other words, were not caused by the Russians. So in other words, quietly, we have been lying to you for 50 years but now the clouds have lifted and we have to tell the truth, in part at least. The problem was not the Russians all along. It was what is called radical nationalism, independent nationalism, which is seeking to exercise sovereignty and control their own resources. Now, that’s intolerable all over the world because of the Mafia principle. You can’t allow that. That’s still there so we still need the intervention forces. Same in Latin America, same everywhere even though there are no Russians.

Well, what about NATO? That’s an interesting case. If you believed anything you read during the Cold War years, you would have concluded that NATO should have disappeared. NATO was supposed to be there to protect Europe from the Russian hordes. OK? No more Russian hordes. What happens to NATO? Well, what happened to NATO was that it expanded. It’s expanding more right now. The details are fairly well known. They’re well studied by good scholarship. Gorbachev, the Russian Premier, made a remarkable concession. He agreed to let a unified Germany join NATO, a hostile military alliance. It’s quite remarkable. Germany alone had virtually destroyed Russia twice in a century. Now, he was allowing it to rearm in a military alliance with the United States. Of course there was a quid pro quo. He thought that there was an agreement that NATO would become a more political organization. In fact, he was promised that by the Bush administration. NATO would be more of a political organization and it would not expand “one inch to the East.” That was the phrase that was used. It would not expand into East Germany or certainly not beyond. Well, Gorbachev was na•ve. He accepted that agreement. He didn’t realize that the Bush administration had not put it into writing. It was just a verbal agreement, a gentleman’s agreement, and, if you have any sense, you don’t make gentlemen’s agreements with violent super powers. Gorbachev was quite upset when he discovered that the agreement was worthless. When NATO began immediately to expand into the East, he brought up the agreement and Washington pointed out that there’s nothing on paper, which is true. There was nothing on paper. It was a gentleman’s agreement. NATO expanded to the East. It expanded into East Germany very quickly and, in the Clinton years, it expanded even further into Eastern Europe … later much more. By now, the secretary general of NATO explains that NATO must expand further still. NATO must take responsibility for controlling the entire global energy system, that means pipelines, sea lanes, and sources. Just a few weeks ago, there was an international meeting headed by Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State under Clinton. They issued plans called NATO 2020 and they said NATO must be prepared to operate far beyond its borders without limit, meaning it must become a worldwide US military intervention force. So that’s NATO, no longer there to defend ourselves from the Russians but their real purpose is to control the whole world… [https://chomsky.info/20100525/<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchomsky.info%2F20100525%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C68b0b8e5a2d04e89a11408d579ff5e4b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636549060056353553&sdata=i16yWMckPlXcIO73LxA8iyLrvRCcaNPB9G5n1FkOVHI%3D&reserved=0>]

> On Feb 21, 2018, at 8:44 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>
> The "documentary" A World in Disarray is a product of Hass's book, produced by Vice and available on YouTube; Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, and Robbie Martin recently discussed the neocon coming out of Vice in relation to the film.
>
> On ‎Wednesday‎, ‎February‎ ‎21‎, ‎2018‎ ‎07‎:‎21‎:‎41‎ ‎PM‎ ‎CST, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>
>
> Haas was at Harvard the same time I was there. He was not going to go anywhere in the academic world. So he took a job with Bush Sr advising him on  how to inflict his genocidal war against Iraq. Another Failed Academic. Fab.
>
>
>
> Francis A. Boyle
>
> Law Building
>
> 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
>
> Champaign IL 61820 USA
>
> 217-333-7954 (phone)
>
> 217-244-1478 (fax)
>
> (personal comments only)
>
>
>
> From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net>] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace-discuss
> Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 6:18 PM
> To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net<mailto:peace-discuss at anti-war.net>>
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Time magazine propaganda, by Richard Haas
>
>
>
> Another article in Time magazine, was written by Richard Haas, the President of the “Council on Foreign Relations." For anyone not familiar with the CFR, they are "Wall Streets Think Tank," and there is a book by that name, written by Lawrence Shoup. I highly recommend it, for insight into who and what is behind US foreign policy.
>
>
>
>
> I wondered why this person in charge of the most powerful advisory to the White House, would be writing for Time. His article deals with the global elite, Davos and Trump, as if he is not one of the most powerful of the global elite. My eyes glazed over when reading it, until I reached one paragraph in which he recommends the EU and nations within, “moving away from Brussels to govern and control their own borders, etc.” "to meet the existing North Korean nuclear threat and the potential one from Iran."
>
>
>
>
> Such chilling propaganda is promoted by all main stream media, which leads me to believe unless one has access to technology, and even then, its difficult wading through the garbage, to seek truth, there is little hope for real understanding of that which is taking place.
>
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