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14 February 2005: Catherine Austin Fitts, libertarian
Thanks to several friendly readers who forwarded the new Catherine
Austin Fitts piece from FTW, whose introductory remarks I commented
upon in my previous entry. It is
also available online:
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15560.shtml
It confirmed my previous opinions. And more. So much more, that
I've been stymied for a couple days thinking about what to say.
I'm afraid that I will have to offer a somewhat rough and rambling
diatribe, which I hope will illustrate where I'm coming from. It's
not that I don't agree with Fitts' general premise that there are
limited hangouts in the air which are aimed at progressives and
are designed to lead them into supporting the very powers and entities
that they believe themselves to be opposing. But I couldn't be more
vehemently opposed to her on the specifics.
It's no surprise that Perkins' book, Economic Hit Men, falls short
of telling the whole story, and while I have not yet read it, I
had already noticed the "there is no higher conspiracy" line in
reviews and excerpts. However, while it is fair to dispute the idea
that everything going wrong in the world is generally systemic,
Fitts proceeds to swing the pendulum to the other extreme, and spends
the rest of the piece spelling out what is basically a very familiar
kind of apologism for neoliberal dogma that is frequently constructed
out of conspiracy theory ó that there's nothing wrong with "free
markets" and other received wisdoms on economics, and instead all
of our big problems and injustices are the result of discrete conspiracies
that bend the rules and "unfairly" manipulate the markets using
abusive "big government" powers. Fitts goes on to chide progressives
for falling into the supposed trap of questioning free market dogma
and fetishes of property and ownership. She uses the lowest and
most malevolent dirty trick in the current arsenal of neoliberals
and libertarians, the crass assertion that the centralizing police
state powers and runaway insider looting characterizing the government
since 9/11 are part and parcel of any activist / interventionist
government policy in general.
Fitts chooses to single out the ideas of Marjorie Kelly, who questions
current accepted wisdom about the economic power of corporate stockholders
and corporate 'personhood' in The Divine Right of Capital:
"Traditionally, the faith of the US working class in democracy has
been one
of the most powerful supports for democracy worldwide. It is not
enough to
bankrupt the American middle class and the American government.
The current
effort to move to more centrally controlled governance also requires
removing this faith that underpins support for global democracy.
Part and
parcel of doing so is establishing popular support for the notion
that the
economic supports for democracy - sound money, open and transparent
markets
and government, and access to equity - are somehow bad."
Fitts observes how Kelly moves in elite circles like Harvard, with
the insinuation that those who question neoliberal dogma are really
shills for the elite, and that radical free marketeers are actually
the rebels (ignoring the fact that Harvard itself has been one of
the main sewer pipes for neoliberal propaganda). A more accurate
assessment, I think, is that Kelly is accepted by the establishment
because her approach is so restrained and watered-down, only touching
on a few issues of economic ownership and control, and tending also
towards the red herring of "democratizing the corporation". And
the fact is that Kelly is actually quite obsequious towards "free
market" dogma. It is Fitts who instead seems to display some dogmatism.
Fitts then recommends an article by Anne Williamson, 'Shilling for
a New World Order': http://tinyurl.com/36cw2
This is revealing indeed. Williamson, a reporter who has worked
for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and WorldNet Daily
(doesn't that sound great already?), is a devotee of libertarian
Austrian School economics. This includes the likes of Ludwig von
Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, and others associated with the notorious
Mont Pelerin Society, such as monetarist Milton Friedman and his
"Chicago Boys" who designed the privatization and free market policies
of Chile's Pinochet dictatorship in the 70s and 80s, with legendary
results. As a matter of fact, Williamson has given guest lectures
at the libertarian Mises institute as a representative of Sanders
Research.
What is missing from Williamson's portrayal of things is that "laissez-faire"
and "free trade" nostrums of the sort promoted by the Austrian School
radicals have always historically been a hoax, and therefore it
is no surprise to find that the elites who promote free markets
engage in all sorts of manipulations of those markets behind the
scenes. This doesn't prove that "pure" free markets which "follow
the fules" are the answer to our troubles, unless one subscribes
to the base fallacy of using a negative to prove a postive, or follows
the demagogery established by the likes of von Hayek a half-century
ago, in which any form of dirigist policy or substantial economic
intervention or planning is presumptuously lumped together with
"fascism" or "totalitarianism". One need only remember that the
Austrians are really just a variant of the British "free trade"
school established by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Mill, et
al, who were all, paradoxically, nurtured to fame under the wing
of the British East India Company and it's circles of intellectual
whores. That's right, much of the basis of neoliberal laissez-faire
dogma ORIGINATED in the deepest historical pit of "Economic Hit
Men", and thus represents the farthest thing from their true enemy.
Another matter where Williamson agrees with the Austrians and Adam
Smith is the oligarchal agenda of keeping the power of money and
credit policy out of the hands of politically accountable government.
The great libertarian fetish in this case is either the "gold standard"
or free-market banking:
"What you want is a private banking system. You don't really want
the government in it. The government should be responsible for fulfilling
the biblical edict of "ye shall have honest weights and measures."
Government should set the standards, and then let the private bankers
compete for market share within the confines of the gold standard.
We, the customers of those banks, should be responsible to being
attentive to our banks' business and bottom line. And as the banks
compete against one another, under the natural restrictions of the
gold standard, honesty and sound banking are rewarded by an increasing
market share." [http://www.freebooter.com/articles/other-article-1.asp]
With the biblical (mis-)reference in mind, let me digress for a
moment with some apt comments from a reviewer of Thomas Frank's
Whatís the Matter with Kansas?:
"Developing his argument in One Market Under God that free-market
ideology has morphed into theology, he argues that the new
rightís unappeasable hostility to liberalism can be put down to
a deeper opposition to artifice. According to this line of thinking,
distant experts, obscurantist artists, and self-important intellectuals
all interfere with the natural order of things that, like the invisible
hand of the market itself, is ordained by the Almighty.
And above all, anything that smacks of state intervention is a sure
sign of hubris, the handiwork of know-it-all liberal elites tampering
with the divine. ... To understand the great backlash of the American
culture war, critics would do better to probe the historical
fate of evangelicalism itself, whose blind optimism, free-market
utopianism, and obsession with "leadership" today verges on the
occult ó a magical quality it shares with much of the New Age left."
http://www.portlandphoenix.com/books/other_stories/documents/03997120.asp
Opposing the "satanic" influence of state intervention on behalf
of the General Welfare is exactly the intent of those who portray
the gold standard or "free market money" as a biblically-commanded
natural order, contrasted with the luciferian evil of "paper fiat
money". Libertarians of this type always present straw man arguments
and blur the distinction between debt-based fiat currency issued
by a privately controlled central bank (as with our present Federal
Reserve System), and debt-free fiat currency issued by the government
(such as Lincoln's Greenbacks); they also make the false claim that
any expansionist credit policy is necessarily inflationary. This
is of more than trivial significance as we head for an economic
crash and the attendant danger of oligarchal demands of brutal fiscal
austerity, of the same type which helped the Nazis come to power
in depression-ravaged Germany.
Fitts says we need to "find real solutions effective in decentralizing
our financial systems." If the neoliberal magic word "decentralizing"
is the one true path, then I suppose nationalizing the Federal Reserve,
a proposal advocated by a very wide array of monetary reform advocates,
might be a non-issue? Well, that just sounds way too socialist anyway,
doesn't it. What kind of mindset about monetary reform are Fitts
and FTW intending to encourage with their promotion of "precious
metals" fever and communitarian localism? Does Fitts' vision of
the usefulness of 9/11 Truth represent activism or non-activism?
We could use some more details.
"The illumination of the truth of 9/11, however, could change most
Americans'
paradigms and transactions in powerful ways. It could certainly
fuel an
increase in demand for precious metals, alternative energy and local
self-sufficiency."
More of the same communitarian snake oil. It is not hard to find
the institutions and agencies of the Economic Hit Men themselves
promoting this kind of thinking. Take for example the ideas of David
Korten, a member of Club of Rome and former Ford Foundation official.
Or the radical decentralization rhetoric of Edward Goldsmith, who
funds his International Forum on Globalization front-group with
the fortune of his late brother, the right-wing corporate raider
Sir James Goldsmith.
It should be hardly surprising that Williamson frantically demonizes
FDR, accusing his administration of launching a "socialist revolution"
against the US. Just the sort of rhetoric one might associate with
the Wall Street plotters of the failed 1934 anti-FDR, whose ideology
is carried on in the current, symbolically important effort to wreck
Social Security, being led by the libertarian Cato Institute and
Economic Hit Men like George Shultz. I have to say, the timing of
Fitts' latest uptempo rant for the miracles of free markets and
the joys of a nation of stock-jobbers and decentralized community
corporations is a bit strange, given current events.
The truth is, however, that I am only feigning surprise. Fitts'
connection to Global Business Network, a driving force behind the
"New Economy" fad and the cyber-libertarian Wired Magazine. After
all, isn't it easy to smell a bit of "California Ideology" behind
some of Fitts' ideas, like finding the promised land in a free market
of digitally traded, Internet-based community currencies? That's
soooo Wired! Uh, I mean, tired. Hey, remember the "Long Boom"?
Time for a tangent. An interesting GBN connection shows up in an
article by Fitts from 2002, entitled, "What's Up Withe the Black
Budget?", where she describes her encounter with supposed inside
knowledge of aliens and UFOs:
"In 1998, I was approached by John Peterson, head of the Arlington
Institute, a small high quality military think tank in Washington,
DC. I had gotten to know John through Global Business Network and
had been impressed by his intelligence, effectiveness and compassion.
John asked me to help him with a high level strategic plan Arlington
was planning to undertake for the Undersecretary of the Navy.
"At the time I was the target of an intense smear campaign that
would lead the normal person to assume that I would be in jail shortly
or worse. John explained that the Navy understood that it was all
politics ---- they did not care.
"I met with a group of high level people in the military in the
process --- including the Undersecretary. According to John, the
purpose of the plan --- discussed in front of several military or
retired military officers and former government officials --- was
to help the Navy adjust their operations for a world in which it
was commonly known that aliens exist and live among us.
"When John explained this purpose to me, I explained that I did
not know that aliens existed and lived among us. John asked me if
I would like to meet some aliens. For the only time in my life,
I declined an opportunity to learn about something important. I
was concerned that my efforts with Arlington could boomerang and
be connected with the smear campaign and the effects that I was
managing. I regret that decision. At John's suggestion I started
to read books on the topic and read about 25 books over the next
year on the alien question, the black budget, and alien technology.
"I had to drop from the project due to the need to attend to litigation
and the physical harassment and surveillance of me and some of the
people helping me. This process ---which turned out to be incredibly
time consuming --- I now believe was connected with the black budget/slush
fund activitiesconnected with FHA and Ginnie Mae at HUD. (See, "The
Myth of the Rule of Law") John then asked me if I would join the
board of the Arlington Institute.
"When I attended one of my first meetings, I joined in discussion
with about 10 people which included James Woolsey, former head of
the CIA in the Clinton Administration, Napier Collyns, founder of
Global Business Network and former senior Shell executive, Joe Firmage,
John, and other members of the Arlington board. The main topic of
discussion was whether or not the major project for the coming year
should be a white paper on how to help the American people adjust
to aliens existing andliving among us. I said nothing -- just listened.
Not that long after, I dropped from the board due to the continued
demands related to litigation with the Department of Justice and
their informant."
[http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0209/S00126.htm]
I won't venture into questions about UFOs and aliens at the moment.
But my first observation is, how does one get invited to sit down
in such a sensitive meeting with James Woolsey while simultaneously
being a persecuted "enemy of the state"? At this time, Woolsey was
active with PNAC and the like -- he was no outsider or dark horse.
Second observation is that the Arlington Institute and James Woolsey
connect directly to a flurry of 'UFO' related activity in the 90s
that was orchestrated and funded by Laurance Rockefeller. If there
was untainted and non-agenda-driven information to be found on this
subject, this is the last place I'd look for it. A rather credulous
view can be found here:
http://www.paraview.com/huyghe/huyghe_excerpt.htm
Third observation: not only is Woolsey still on the board of Arlington,
but there is also an interesting Pentagon insider, Owen Wormser.
His bio states:
"In December 2003, Mr. Wormser left a political appointment position
in
the Department of Defense. In his appointment capacity his responsibilities
encompassed policy and program formulation, oversight, and implementation
actions effecting: DoD's use of the electromagnetic spectrum; space
control, space cooperation, and space-based operations to include
precision
navigation and timing matters; Special Access Program information
integration;
Unified Command Structure command & control, national security and
continuity of government command & control extending from the President
to appropriate command authorities; and finally, DoD's development,
exploitation, and deployment of wireless technologies as well as
the associated
security architectures."
http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/about_tai/bod_04.asp
Dear reader, did you catch the part about "Special Access Program
Information Integration"? If that doesn't ring a bell, a web search
for "special access program" and "black budget" would be worthwhile.
Perhaps rather than lecture errant progressives with free market
nostrums, Fitts could be of more immediate help by ringing up her
pal John Petersen and get the latest inside scoop from Wormser.
After all, since she deigns to tell us all the great secrets of
the black budget, she must be very intrigued to have such in-the-know
types running in her immediate circles. And rather than use 9/11
"illumination" to herd activists into run-for-the-hills corporate
communitarian fantasies, we could get down to some more nitty-gritty
if Fitts could elicit some leads from 9/11 suspect extraordinaire,
Woolsey. I wonder, are they still on cordial terms?
Or, perhaps Woolsey is too busy these days. After all, he's running
the premier warhawk think-tank, Committee on the Present Danger
alongside Economic Hit Man George Shultz. Despite serving on the
Arlington Institute board together, I couldn't imagine that he's
on speaking terms with Petersen, since the latter is busy running
the Center for Human Emergence, a fluffy "new consciousness" type
of outfit whose vision is to become a "Turquoise collective intelligence
entity, with the capacity to affect significant transformation for
the enrichment and well-being of all" and "initiating action for
global transformation... to create indigenous ownership and commitment
in centers across the globe, and to integrate and align a coalition
of organizations, communities and thinkers. It will utilize a synthesis
of state-of-the art knowledge and technologies, to help enrich humanity
for all." The founder is Don Beck, a consultant to Tony Blair on
"Third Way" policy. Surely, assisting the evolution of humanity
to the next level of Beck's "spiral dynamics" is as far as one could
possibly get from the intellectual ground zero of "World War IV".
http://www.humanemergence.org/organization.html
But then, maybe it's not a great leap. Take Woolsey, speaking a
few years back:
"The United States cannot afford to wait for the next energy crisis
to marshal its intellectual and industrial resources.... Our growing
dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil is a fool's
gameóthere is no way for the rest of the world to win. Our losses
may come suddenly through war, steadily through price increases,
agonizingly through developing-nation poverty, relentlessly through
climate changeóor through all of the above."
Which is not such a different mood than new age fascist Barbara
Marx Hubbard, quoted on the CHE site:
ìIt's natural that an intelligent species would be successful enough
to hit the limits of its own growth without knowing it was going
to do so. It's natural that through our successes we have overindustrialized,
overpopulated, polluted and used up our environment. It may be that
this whole predicament is a natural phenomenon and that this intelligent
species is now getting a signal : evolve or die.î
Which is the same thing Mike Ruppert has to say: "I' m firmly convinced
that what we are now faced with is a choice offered to us by our
creator. Either evolve or perish."
I'm not grasping for connections here or fishing for conspiracies.
I started out talking about neoliberal market fundamentalism and
I wound up with "new age" greens. That may seem to be discontinuous,
but in fact the shared underlying philosophy at play is the notion
that the structure of society should be determined by an evolutionary
"emergence" of self-organization or spontaneous order. This is what
binds Adam Smith's pantheistic "hidden hand" that creates "publick
benefits" out of agglomerated "private vices", with the evolutionary
/ emergent "systems philosophy" that underlies the "new paradigm"
set.
Both GBN and Arlington Institute specialize in futurist forecasting.
GBN was co-founded by veterans of Royal Dutch Shell's 'scenario
planning' division, including former exec Napier Collyns who is
also with Arlington institute. GBN's roots also go back to the Club
of Rome's world models via member Donella Meadows, which in turn
were spawned in part by the famous Cybernetics project launched
back in 1946 by former OSS psychological warfare expert and later
new age pioneer Gregory Bateson, under the auspices of the MK-ULTRA
program. Bateson's influence found its way directly to GBN through
his close friend, GBN co-founder Stewart Brand. The Cybernetics
project, combined with 'General Evolution Theory', gave rise to
today's systems philosophy. Friedrich von Hayek, prophet of modern
free-trade globalization, is considered by many to be a proto-systems
theorist, along with other Austrian School economists, because of
his philosophy of "spontaneous order" and evolutionary epistemology.
Some feel the same way about Adam Smith being a precursor to "emergence"
theory. Does this make him a proto-new ager? That's David Korten's
line, more or less.
GBN clients have included Ford, Bechtel, Shell, Morgan Stanley,
Hewlett Packard, Swedbank, Dupont, Federal Express, along with government
clients such as DARPA. Shell's scenario planning, founded by Pierre
Wack, a disciple of the famous mystic Gurdjieff, first got on the
map when they made a remarkable prediction in 1972 that there would
soon be an energy crisis. Cynics would note that Shell executives
attended a secret Bilderberg meeting the following year which actually
planned that energy "crisis", according to a 1991 documented exposÈ
by German economist William Engdahl. Perhaps something about the
real tricks of the trade in mystical prognostication is revealed
in the title of one of Gurdjieff's books, Meetings with Remarkable
Men.
In any case, scenario planning and forecasting have since become
fixtures in modern management theory as well as postmodern notions
of social engineering. Another such group, which also includes John
Petersen as a director, is the World Future Society. Others on the
roster include Harlan Cleveland, Barbara Marx Hubbard, former World
Bank president and depopulation fanatic Robert S. McNamara, futurists
John Naisbitt and Alvin and Heidi Toffler (of Newt Gingrich fame),
Club of Rome global governance consultant Yehezkel Dror, and Rockfeller
crony Maurice Strong.
http://www.wfs.org/faq.htm
This is all I have time for at the moment. Suffice to say, I hope,
that I am less than convinced by Fitts' conviction that those who
are questioning received myths about neoliberalism, fundamentalist
"property rights", and the supposed evils of government intervention
and conscious planning of economic general welfare, are somehow
dupes of the establishment. Oh, quite the contrary, I think.....
Related links and random notes:
Friedrich von Hayek - Fascism didn't Die With Hitler by Jeffrey
Steinberg
http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/vonhayek.htm
"Sound money" gold advocates tend not to mention that the same elite
interests that were behind the Federal Reserve System were ALSO
the same ones who led the fight to kill the fiat Greenback and force
in the gold standard several decades earlier. A useful view of that
era from a spirited Greenback supporter, which shows the relationship
with the British "free trade" system:
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg11638.html
Some of my previous research notes on GBN, concerning their "global
warming" scenario planning for the Pentagon's Andrew "Yoda" Marshall:
http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/pentagon_gw.html
Interestingly, one GBN member is free-market fundamentalist Daniel
Yergin, who seems to be the designated 'bad guy' in a lot of 'peak
oil' writing. This might warrant a closer look:
http://www.gbn.com/PersonBioDisplayServlet.srv?pi=22060
Stewart Brand and Maurice Strong
http://www.mikaelnyberg.nu/english/greut_05.html
The Californian Ideology
http://www.dinicola.it/socinfo/california.htm
Wired and the English Ideology
http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/Archives/cw_recent/Wired.html
Adam Smith to Austrian Economics to complexity theory
http://www.fff.org/freedom/1199g.asp
Ervin Laszlo: New Concepts of Matter, Life and Mind
http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_laszlo.cfm
The Attempted Coup Against FDR, by Barbara LaMonica
http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr399-fdr.html
A longer treatment, a little more biased:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt vs. the Banks: Morgan's Fascist Plot,
and How It Was Defeated by L. Wolfe
http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/morgan1.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/morgan2.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/morgan3.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/morgan4.htm
FDR wasn't a saint or the end-all be-all... but
he did step on some toes and make some decisions that made him a
"traitor to his class". His expansionist, works-project recovery
strategies may have relevance in our current situation; of course
this is not an unusual viewpoint. But any such moves are obviously
not desired by the current elites. Kurt Nimmo recently wrote a critique
of Ruppert in which he noted his libertarian afflictions and
dousing of activism, but then went on to trash FDR following the
lead of New Left revisionist Howard Zinn. He didn't seem to notice
that FTW has often taken the same tack. And Zinn's lack of activist
ardor on 9/11 is an order of magnitude worse, and he is justly criticized
as a capitulator to neoliberal demonization of "big government".
He draws heavily upon the revisionist tradition of Charles Beard,
who portrayed the Federalist constitutional founders and orignators
of the lost US tradtion of protectionism and state-assisted development
as nothing but self-interested greedy plutocrats. This was substantially
challenged and debunked by later historians like Forrest McDonald
(which was a factor in giving credibility to the postwar "conservative
revolution" in laying claim to America's traditions and also the
portrayal of progressive historical critics as biased axe-grinders).
It just so happens that Charles Beard was a colleague of George
Shultz' father. Hmmm.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/site_packages/econ_hitmen/3148shultz1.html
citation for Beard & Birl Shultz book here:
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/dasmith/SmithIGs.htm
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