Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 6 Num. 72
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
THE UNITED STATES IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES
Thanks to a CN reader who sent me the above. Glancing through it, it looks like an excellent bibliography. I hope to post excerpts from it over the next few weeks.
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New Perspectives Quarterly, Vol. 4 Num. 3 (published by The Institute for National Strategy, 11500 West Olympic Blvd., Suite 302, Los Angeles, CA 90064).
(Note: this offering replaces The Overburdened Economy, by Lloyd Dumas, University of California Press, 1986, because it covers a bit more ground in a clear style, in just 56 pages. Obviously, Dr. Dumas' book goes into much greater detail.)
To pursue the arms race, the United States is allocating giant portions of available capital, scientific talent, and trade skills to the production of arms, thereby rendering itself non- competitive with Asian and European countries in the production of trade goods. This is highly profitable to the defense corporations but reduces the number of jobs available to the American people and is disastrous to the nation's long-term security. As a result, trade deficits have skyrocketed and the United States has become a debtor nation for the first time in seventy years, while social services are everywhere being slashed. More is at stake than merely a balanced checkbook. Through the blind pursuit of arms the qualities of life and education in the United States will suffer, presuming of course that the weapons produced in this macabre race do not eventually render our planet uninhabitable to warm blooded life.
Inventing Reality, by Michael Parenti, St. Martins, 1986.
The role of the media in forming our perceptions of the world, then fulfilling them with a flow of subtly tailored news is the glue in the web of the military-industrial complex that binds the people to the process and thereby perpetuates our socio-economic and political system. Any patriot will of course applaud -- until they understand the myths that result, the horror they spell for millions of people oversees and the threat they pose to our own freedoms, to our economy, and to the fate of the earth.
Trading With The Enemy, by Charles Higham, Dell, 1983.
A friend of mine, when he read Trading With The Enemy, went into a rage from which he may never completely recover. Severely wounded during the landing at Normandy during World War II, he has endured constant pain for forty years and still walks with great difficulty. Now he learns that there were rich and powerful Americans who were collaborating with British and German counterparts to trade with Nazi Germany throughout the war. Charles Higham calls those supernational elitists "The Fraternity." His book is based on United States government documents that were declassified under the Freedom of Information Act. The information contained in his book is overwhelming:
As the winds of WWII blew across the world in 1930, financial leaders got together and formed a bank in Switzerland that would be inviolate, whatever the outcome. Nazi leaders were permitted to invest $378 million they had looted from conquered Europe and gold they had stripped from the corpses of murdered Jews for use after the war. Standard Oil, owned by the Rockefeller family, sold oil to the Germans at better prices than to the United States. ITT, an American corporation with German subsidiaries, built the Focke-Wulfes that bombed British and United States forces. The vice chairman of the United States War Production Board colluded with Goring's cousin to ship ball bearings to German allies. Neither Hitler nor Roosevelt could intervene: Walter Schellenberg, the Gestapo head of counterintelligence was a prominent director and shareholder of ITT, and the transnational financial elite controlled the American industrial machine on which President Roosevelt depended to fight the war.
Shattered Peace, by Daniel Yergin, Houghton-Miflin, 1977.
In 1945-1947, when the Soviet threat was used to justify the creation of the CIA, the USSR was in fact on its knees from the destruction of World War II. The inference is that our system is dependent on the existence of enemies in order to flourish. If the Soviet Union collapsed today, we would quickly invent another enemy.
The Bound Volumes I And II of the Covert Action Information Bulletin, Issues 1-12, 1968-1981 & Issues 13-25, 1981-1986.
Without question these two volumes contain more information about the complete scope of the national security complex, its myths, rationales, secret wars, media manipulations and abuses, than any other work.
Among these subjects, it provides excellent articles on the CIA's MKULTRA and other mind-control, drugs, disease and chemical/biological weaponry experimentation programs.
The Psychology Of Military Incompetence, A.E. Dixon, Jonathan Cape, 1976 (London).
To understand how generals since the beginning of time have wasted the lives of millions of young men in pointless battles in mindless wars, while they nearly always lived and ate exceedingly well, and reaped rewards of surpassing glory and wealth, read this book.
Blessed Assurance, by A.G. Mojtabai, Harper & Row, 1986.
Mojtabai, an East Coast professor/author, travels to Amarillo, Texas, to examine the rationales of the people who live and work in the shadow of the final assembly plant of all U.S. nuclear weapons. Many, she found, subscribe to the Late Great Planet Earth scenario (Hal Lindsay) -- God is coming soon to take his chosen away and will use the BOMB to create "Hell's fires on earth" for the unchosen. Mojtabai has a keen eye for ambiguities: the dozens of fireworks ordinances in the city that hosts the final assembly plant for all United States BOMBS; 52 endangered species counted by environmentalists in the Panhandle, but Homo Sapiens ironically not included in their lists.
Nuclear Barons, by Peter Pringle & James Speigelman. Pocket, 1982.
At first we were in a desperate struggle to get the BOMB before Hitler did. Then, when we knew that neither Hitler nor imperial Japan nor Russia were developing the BOMB, we raced to finish ours before the war would end.
The Pentagon Catalogue, by Cerf, Workman, 1986.
Do you have money to burn? Want to spend $258 for a little screwdriver others buy for $2.98 in any hardware store, or $1100 for a little metal screw, or $2500 for plastic caps for the legs of your kitchen stool? This catalogue offers you these exclusive buys at the same outrageous cost the Pentagon pays for them (with your tax dollars).
Shootdown, by R.W. Johnson, Viking, 1986.
Bookstores in New York were said to guarantee this book with each sale: if the reader was not convinced KAL 007 [Korean Airline civilian passenger plane shot down by the Soviets on September 1, 1983] had been on some kind of spy mission, they would refund the purchase price. Johnson analyzes the details of the flight and the several theories of what happened.
The Iran/Contra Connection, by Jane Hunter, Jonathan Marshall and Peter Dale Scott, South End Press, 1987.
Remarkable in its timeliness, this book weaves the Iran/Contra scandal into the fabric of the Reagan Revolution.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
See also: ftp ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred