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Reinforcing the World Government Ruse

In the January/February 2020 Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria, Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) heavyweight and former editor of its Foreign Affairs, argues against a policy of active confrontation with Communist China.   His lengthy article concludes with:

China presents a new and large challenge. But if Washington can keep its cool and patiently continue to pursue a policy of engagement plus deterrence, forcing China to adjust while itself adjusting to make space for it, some scholar decades from now might write about the United States’ not-so-secret plan to expand the zone of peace, prosperity, openness, and decent governance across the globe — a marathon strategy that worked. [Emphasis added.]

In support of his conclusion, Zakaria brazenly distorts history — largely through deceptive omission and by relying on Establishment sources pushing the same distortions.  As an aside, promoting “decent governance across the globe” has never been a CFR objective!

Since the CFR has achieved dominant influence over our government, it is worth examining what Foreign Affairs covers up in Zakaria’s “The New China Scare — Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger.”  Actually, America should panic about the influence of the CFR!

Cover-up #1:  How China Fell Under Communism

Zakaria’s analysis cleverly ignores the fact that U.S. policymakers, combined with CFR influence, enabled the Communists to take over China, turning China into an adversary.  Why did they do so?  Major reasons:  The CFR’s drive to establish world government needs conflict as a pretext for change, and a Communist government, already dominating its population, would, at some point, be easier to integrate.

We documented that history in Masters of Deception — The Rise of the Council on Foreign Relations. Here is an excerpt:

[I[n early 1946 the Nationalist forces [under U.S. ally Chiang Kai-shek] had Mao’s Reds on the run.  However, Truman had sent General George C. Marshall to China to mediate the fighting, and Marshall forced Chiang to accept a cease-fire (one of several). As recorded by Freda Utley:

“In the interval that followed, General Marshall and President Truman took steps to prevent the Nationalist forces from obtaining arms and ammunition. At the end of July 1946 General Marshall clamped an embargo on the sale of arms and ammunition to China….”

Marshall would boast: “As Chief of Staff I armed 39 anti-Communist divisions, now with a stroke of the pen I disarm them.” Stockpiles of arms on their way to Chiang were actually destroyed in India.  The Soviets, meanwhile, equipped Mao with vast stores of U.S. military supplies Truman had provided Stalin for the assault on Japan….

On January 25, 1949, John F. Kennedy, a young second-term congressman from Massachusetts, rose on the floor of the House of Representatives to protest the actions of his party’s president:

“Mr. Speaker, over this weekend we have learned the extent of the disaster that has befallen China and the United States. The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State. The continued insistence that aid would not be forthcoming, unless a coalition government with the Communists were formed, was a crippling blow to the National Government.”

A few days later, he would summarize his protest in words that could be applied to the future handling of Vietnam:  “What our young men had saved, our diplomats and our President have frittered away.”

But the policies that betrayed the Chinese people had a much more subversive intent  — world tyranny through world government.

In his opening sentence, Zakaria harkens back to 1947 and how President Truman would exaggerate a threat of Communist insurgency in Greece to sell what was to be called the Marshall Plan.  And he draws a parallel to stoking exaggerated fears of China today. However, the real deception in the Marshall Plan were its objects — socializing European governments and European unification.  As we recorded in Masters of Deception:

At the end of World War II, Congress approved the European Recovery Program (ERP) — a program of massive aid to Europe, popularly known as the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was actually developed by a CFR study group — headed by Charles M. Spofford with David Rockefeller as secretary.   Marshall’s name was used to elicit bipartisan support….

Recognizing American political sentiments, however, President Truman cleverly sold the foreign aid as a means to help stop the spread of Communism.

In general, American Insiders have used foreign aid to saddle recipient nations with socialist policies and governments. The ERP certainly followed that pattern. But in Europe the aid was also used to promote European unification.   [Regional governments were to be steppingstones to world government, accomplished by masquerading the early steps as mere trade agreements. NAFTA and the USMCA would follow the pattern in this hemisphere. See Chapter 7 Progressive Regionalization.]

Cover-up #2:  How Communist China Became a World Power

Zakaria: “Formulating an effective response requires starting with a clear understanding of the United States’ China strategy up to this point. What the new [ostensible, public] consensus misses is that in the almost five decades since U.S. President Richard Nixon’s opening to Beijing, U.S. policy toward China has never been purely one of engagement; it has been a combination of engagement and deterrence.

“In the late 1970s, U.S. policymakers concluded that integrating China into the global economic and political system was better than having it sit outside it, resentful and disruptive. But Washington coupled that effort with consistent support for other Asian powers—including, of course, continued arms sales to Taiwan. That approach, sometimes described as a “hedging strategy,” ensured that as China rose, its power was checked and its neighbors felt secure.”

Obviously, a much stronger check would have been not to have enabled the Communist takeover of China in the first place! But beyond that, Washington, in line with the policy of CFR elites, has enabled Communist China to become an economic powerhouse and a credible military threat.

Here are examples of that assistance, using excerpts from Masters of Deception:

  • In 1967, presidential candidate Richard Nixon wrote “Asia After Vietnam” for Foreign Affairs, in which he advocated opening diplomatic relations with Communist China. After his election victory the following year, Nixon tapped numerous CFR members to fill key positions in his administration — including Henry Kissinger, who would implement this next step in the continuing Insider betrayal of the Chinese people.
  • [Winston] Lord had accompanied Kissinger on his secret trip to Beijing in 1971. Lord would join the CFR in 1973 and serve as its president between 1977 and 1985.

Nixon thus began a U.S. policy spanning several administrations of building Red China into a modern world power.  Favored U.S. firms were encouraged to invest in China, even relocating operations to China where they could operate more profitably, with their investments protected by the U.S. government.

The Insider-created policy toward China contributed to the de-industrialization of this country, while also providing a “carrot” (reinforced by U.S. regulatory “sticks”) to encourage manufacturing flight.  The result has been a significant erosion of the American middle class.   Cheaper goods in the stores haven’t offset declining opportunities for quality jobs.

  • Ever since Nixon opened trade relations with China, the CFR has promoted massive transfers of capital and technology to the Red regime, helping it to become a new “superpower,” while decimating America’s industrial and manufacturing capacity.

On August 30, 1982, President Reagan signed a determination that “it is in the national interest for the Export-Import Bank of the United States to extend a credit and guarantee in the aggregate amount of $68,425,000 to the People’s Republic of China in connection with its purchase of steel making equipment and related services.”

  • For decades, the U.S. government under a watchful American public had refused Communist demands to recognize Red China as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.

However, the handwriting was on the wall.  The ascendancy of Communist power in China had been supported from the beginning by CFR elites.   In 1971, the ROC was forced out of the UN, and its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council was given to Communist China.

In December of 1978, President Carter announced on national television that the U.S. would be extending diplomatic recognition to the Communist Peking regime and withdrawing formal diplomatic recognition from our ally on Taiwan.  President Carter proceeded unilaterally to cancel our treaties with Taiwan, including the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty.

  • When President Jimmy Carter severed all diplomatic ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan, Ronald Reagan correctly termed the action an “outright betrayal of a close friend and ally.” However, as president, Reagan made no effort to reverse the Carter betrayal, and U.S. trade with the Red regime continued to increase.

Moreover, in August 1982, Reagan issued a joint communiqué with Peking stating that the U.S. “does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan.”  Adding insult to injury, in 1986, the Reagan administration got Congress to approve the sale of $560 million in advanced electronics to Red China, giving its fighters an all-weather capability superior to Taiwan’s.

Cover-up #3:  Communist Genocide in China

Zakaria: “Let’s be clear: China is a repressive regime that engages in thoroughly illiberal policies, from banning free speech to interning religious minorities. Over the last five years, it has intensified its political control and economic statism at home. Abroad, it has become a competitor and in some places a rival of the United States. But the essential strategic question for Americans today is, Do these facts make China a vital threat, and to the extent that they do, how should that threat be addressed?”

Let’s really be clear.  Let’s not cover up mass murder and genocide with weak phrases such as “illiberal policies” and “intensified its political control and economic statism.”  The estimates of the death toll from Communist genocide in China in consolidating Communist control have varied widely.   But Professor R. J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii provided a conservative estimate — more than 35 million deaths — approximately one of every 20 Chinese!

Zakaria:  “As far as China’s political development is concerned, the verdict is unambiguous. China has not opened up its politics to the extent that many anticipated; it has in fact moved toward greater repression and control. Beijing’s gruesome treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, a region in northwestern China, has created a human rights crisis. The state has also begun to use new technologies, such as facial recognition software and artificial intelligence, to create an Orwellian system of social control. These realities are a tragedy for the Chinese people and an obstacle to the country’s participation in global leadership. It would be an exaggeration, however, to adduce them as proof of the failure of U.S. policy.”

But China fell under Communist dictatorship precisely because of U.S. policy!  Actually, that was not a “failure” of policy as the policy accomplished its subversive purpose.

Cover-up #4:  Creation of a Soviet Threat and Cold-War Management

Zakaria: “The consequences of exaggerating the Soviet threat were vast: gross domestic abuses during the McCarthy era; a dangerous nuclear arms race; a long, futile, and unsuccessful war in Vietnam; and countless other military interventions in various so-called Third World countries. The consequences of not getting the Chinese challenge right today will be vaster still. The United States risks squandering the hard-won gains [???] from four decades of engagement with China, encouraging Beijing to adopt confrontational policies of its own, and leading the world’s two largest economies into a treacherous conflict of unknown scale and scope that will inevitably cause decades of instability and insecurity. A cold war with China is likely to be much longer and more costly than the one with the Soviet Union, with an uncertain outcome.”

There are so many false claims in those statements that cry out to be challenged.  We will focus on one: “a long, futile, and unsuccessful war in Vietnam.”

In our war with North Vietnam, CFR elites ensured that victory was never the goal.  From Masters of Deception: “[McGeorge] Bundy’s older brother, William P. Bundy, also CFR, would serve in the Johnson administration as assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs (1964–1969), playing a major role in “mismanaging” the war in Vietnam. William would later become a director of the CFR and the editor of Foreign Affairs.”

Also from Masters:

Throughout the Vietnam War, [President] Johnson met periodically with an advisory group of 14 he himself called “the Wise Men.” Twelve of the fourteen were CFR members. Dean Acheson was perhaps most influential.  John J. McCloy, Robert Lovett, and Averell Harriman were also included.

•  No-Win War.  The War in Vietnam was not a project of anti-Communist “hawks,” but of CFR “wise men,” who had helped and would continue to help Communism….

In Vietnam, McNamara and company hobbled our Armed Forces with a defensive strategy that could not win, while preventing a strategy that could.   Americans have been repeatedly told that winning was not feasible.  Yet few are aware of counterclaims by America’s top military leaders….

In late 1966, former Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay, fed up with the Administration’s “nibbling around the edges” strategy, which was unnecessarily sacrificing thousands of lives and scores of billions of dollars, published an outspoken article in U.S. News & World Report, offering a blueprint of the Air Force-sea power strategy for victory….

But such an objective was contrary to the firm intentions of the Insiders running the war.   Even worse, the McNamara team invoked an insidious micromanagement of the war from Washington and imposed Rules of Engagement that ensured our forces could not have victory.  They would win every major battle, but were not allowed to win the war.

Cover-up #5:  The UN is a CFR Creation for World Domination

Zakaria:  “In the early 1970s, before Nixon’s opening to China, Beijing was the world’s greatest rogue regime….

“By comparison, today’s China is a remarkably responsible nation on the geopolitical and military front. It has not gone to war since 1979. It has not used lethal military force abroad since 1988. Nor has it funded or supported proxies or armed insurgents anywhere in the world since the early 1980s. That record of nonintervention is unique among the world’s great powers. All the other permanent members of the UN Security Council have used force many times in many places over the last few decades — a list led, of course, by the United States.

“China has also gone from seeking to undermine the international system to spending large sums to bolster it. Beijing is now the second-largest funder of the United Nations and the UN peacekeeping program. It has deployed 2,500 peacekeepers, more than all the other permanent members of the Security Council combined. Between 2000 and 2018, it supported 182 of 190 Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on nations deemed to have violated international rules or norms.” [Emphasis added.]

Here Zakaria esteems the decisions of the CFR’s emerging UN tyranny, a collection of largely despotic governments, as “international rules or norms.”

Zakaria also implies that a regime willing to use lethal force at home (e.g., the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre) may somehow be unwilling to use it abroad.  And he conveniently ignores the continued brutal occupation of Tibet.

In his newspaper column, CFR-heavyweight Henry Kissinger described the Tiananmen Square massacre as “inevitable,” insisting that “[n]o government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators….”

Within a few weeks of that massacre, U.S. officials Lawrence Eagleburger (formerly of Kissinger Associates) and Brent Scowcroft (former chairman of the CFR’s membership committee) would travel to China to reassure the Chinese leaders of continued U.S.-Chinese relations.

The fact that Red China has embraced the CFR’s international system and its plan for world subjugation is no joy, as the following excerpts from Masters of Deception illustrate:

  • The original proposal for a specific United Nations was developed under the leadership of Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In January 1943, Hull formed a “secret steering committee,” later known as the Informal Agenda Group, to come up with a specific proposal. In addition to Hull, the steering committee included Leo Pasvolsky, Isaiah Bowman, Sumner Welles, Norman Davis, and Myron Taylor — all but Hull CFR members.

The UN’s trappings of democracy are merely a sham to deceive the public. In reality, the UN is controlled by a hidden oligarchy relying heavily on the CFR.

  • The hierarchical structure of the UN facilitates that control.  The UN and its agencies are structured so that controlling a number of key spots at the top is sufficient to control the entire beast.  And the CFR and its Communist children have made sure that their agents occupy key posts in the apparatus.

In summary, Zakaria’s article gives support to liberal sophistry regarding the moral equivalence of governments.  More significantly, it helps justify relying on the UN’s handpicked tyrannies to police the world.  But his article, with our critique, can also be used by our readers to help others understand the ruthless masters of deception who would steal our freedom.

Of Treaties, Betrayals, and Trump

Over the past century, the right accused liberals and Democrats of excusing the crimes of Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro. Often, the criticism was well-founded.…​

All these charges have deafening echoes today. But this time, the credulous appeaser failing our allies is a Republican president. For communist dictators such as Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, Trump exudes admiration and amity. To the anti-Western Russian President Vladimir Putin, he offered congratulations for winning a rigged election.

When it comes to Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Germany’s Angela Merkel, by contrast, he seethes with resentment. With Trump, it’s better to be a long-standing American adversary than a faithful ally.

— Stephen Chapman, “How Trump’s Republican Party Went Soft on Communism,” Reason.com, June 18, 2018

“This is what North Korea has wanted from the beginning, and I cannot believe that our side allowed it,” said Joseph Y. Yun, a former State Department official who has negotiated with the North. “I am quite simply surprised that months of negotiations produced so little.”

“The Trump-Kim Summit Was Unprecedented, but the Statement Was Vague,” The New York Times, June 12, 2018

Trump and Kim appear to be bosom buddies now —​ after a few hours of tete-a-tete. However, even that astonishing result fails to account for the message Trump sent to the “citizen”-slaves of North Korea:

Trump went so far as to praise Kim in a message directed to the North Korean people, when Greta Van Susteren, who was conducting an interview for Voice of America that “will be heard in North Korea,” asked what he wanted the North Koreans to know.

“Well, I think you have somebody that has a great feeling for them. He wants to do right by them and we got along really well”, he replied. “We had a great chemistry — ​you understand how I feel about chemistry. It’s very important. I mean, I know people where there is no chemistry no matter what you do you just don’t have it. We had it right from the beginning, I talked about that and I think great things are going to happen for North Korea.”

— “Marco Rubio Sees Silver Lining in Trump’s Warmth towards Kim Jong Un,” The Washington Examiner, June 12, 2018

Apparently, Trump thinks he can enlighten the North Korean people — inform them, if you please — about what a swell guy their supreme leader is. Yes —​ here Trump is ostensibly selling, to the North Korean people, their own supreme leader.

“Great things are going to happen for North Korea.” He sounds like he’s in a political campaign, to elect Kim supreme leader! (But if Kim’s such a swell guy, why have no “great things” happened for them already?)

Why would Trump throw them this sales pitch? What U.S. interest could it possibly serve?

For that matter, why would Trump think it necessary for him to enlighten them? If Kim is truly “somebody that has a great feeling for them” and “wants to do right by them,” how could they fail to perceive that? Moreover, how could they not be in a much better position than Trump, to know whether it is true?

So, what Trump is ostensibly trying to do with his Voice of America message, makes no sense. But consider what his statement does indeed tell the North Koreans — ​albeit “between the lines”: It lets them know, for sure, that the United States Government is either on the friendliest of terms with Kim, or afraid of him, or else really on his side. No other interpretations of Trump’s behavior are plausible.

Is conveying that implicit message an aim that does make sense of Trump’s action here? Yes, but only if he or his administration are trying, ultimately, to shore up Kim’s dictatorship — which is, of course, not a U.S. national-security concern.

Two questions present themselves:

  1. How would his statement help do this? and,
  2. Is it even conceivable, that Trump or his administration would want to shore up Kim’s dictatorship?

Our answer to the first question: It gives such dictators a greater security from the occurrence they fear the most:

A very large part of the total effort of the Kremlin tyrants is spent in building up their bluff of unassailable power —​ as in constantly demonstrating and re-advertising to the world how completely the United States Government is on the friendliest of terms with them, or is afraid of them, or is really on their side. This is because they have only one great fear as to physical or military danger. But it is something they live with all their lives. And that is the fear of a simultaneous uprising of the subjugated peoples.

For if the East Germans should rise with the fervor they showed in 1953, and the Poles and Hungarians with the bravery they proved in 1956, and the Chinese with the suicidal determination so frequently demonstrated by millions of their compatriots ever since 1950, and the Indonesians with the courage of the “Colonels” in Sumatra only two or three years ago, and the Russians themselves with the daring that was exemplified at Vorkuta; if these and all of the other enslaved subjects of the Communist hierarchy should revolt and begin to fight all at the same time, and even if they had in the beginning only sticks and stones for weapons, the lords of the Kremlin could not last three months against such an uprising —​ and they know it! So they arrange to precipitate uprisings, one by one and here and there, in accordance with their own time table, to entice each separate underground opposition out into the open and destroy it.

But a clear-cut shooting war, between the Soviets and the United States, would be an automatic signal for simultaneous revolt. For war on any such scale simply could not be kept from the knowledge of even the most isolated and oppressed people. And hundreds of millions of desperate human slaves all over the world would immediately realize that it was now or never. It would produce that very coordination of resistance which the Kremlin seeks above all else to avoid….

It is … precisely because no earthly power could drag the Soviets into a real war or an honest war with the United States today that they beat their breasts so much and threaten war so loudly and so often.

— Robert Welch, The Blue Book, 1961, pp. 30, 31n.

OK; but how about the second question: Is it even conceivable that Trump or his administration would want to shore up Kim’s dictatorship? At the risk of appearing a bit cagey, we shall say simply that this has been an unfailing achievement of the foreign policy of each U.S. president since FDR. That Trump is continuing in this consistent pattern, should hardly be amazing.

Indeed, there is no lack of examples of such friend-betraying, Communist-dictator-helping behavior on the part of U.S. presidents —​ including Republican ones. For example, we shall quote Robert Welch once more, regarding one such Republican:

There have been few crimes in history more brutal and more extensive than [the “Operation Keelhaul”] forced repatriation of anti-Communists, to which Dwight Eisenhower committed the honor of the United States. Dragging the honor and reputation of our country through such pools of bloody betrayal, and thus convincing anti-Communists of either the stupidity or the pro-Communism of the United States, was of course one of the objectives.…​ You can find excuses and reasons for Eisenhower’s conduct, or for various separate parts of it, by the dozen, if your credulity can stand the burden. But there is one simple, plain, straightforward reason which completely solves the whole problem, without leaving a single loophole. And we do not need to spell it out any more.

— Robert Welch, The Politician, 1963, p. 46

The John Bolton Charade

“‘Maybe one of the worst mistakes that President Trump has made since he’s been in office is his employment of John Bolton, who has been advocating a war with North Korea for a long time and even an attack on Iran, and who has been one of the leading figures on orchestrating the decision to invade Iraq,” [former President Jimmy Carter, CFR, Trilateralist] said. He called the appointment, announced last week, ‘a disaster for our country.’” —, USA Today, 3-26-18

“To [J.P.] Morgan all political parties were simply organizations to be used, and the firm always was careful to keep a foot in all camps.” — Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time(New York: Macmillan, 1966), p, 950

Promotion 101 —  Hype Conflict

Establishment strategists have long hyped conflict in which they pick, control, or influence both sides.  In this, they follow the practice of the promoters of professional wrestling matches.  Several purposes are served.   Foremost is to direct conservative public attention into “safe” channels, thereby hampering the development of any serious opposition to the goal of an Insider Conspiracy — unaccountable world power.

Establishment strategists also use conflict and their dominance of the media of communications to promote “safe” leaders who will appeal to different public factions.  For the conservative faction, they provide phony “conservative” leaders.

Opposition to Bolton

A clever way to convince conservatives to adopt an Establishment figure as one of theirs is to have that figure attacked by the Left.  Leftist voices also need causes to maintain their loyal support.  Opposing political figures who have a conservative image, even if it’s a phony image, helps fill that need.

This played out recently with the extensive criticism from the Left of President Trump’s selection of former UN ambassador John Bolton as his National Security Advisor, effective April 9, 2018.

Liberal attacks on Bolton started as far back as 2005. When President George W. Bush nominated Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Senate liberals attacked Bolton for being too conservative and anti-UN.   In one Senate exchange, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told Bolton:  “You have nothing but disdain for the U.N.”

The attacks helped both Bush and Bolton shore up their images as conservatives.  Following repeated Senate stalling in processing the nomination, President Bush made a recess appointment of Bolton, who served as UN ambassador for a little more than a year (August 2, 2005 – December 31, 2006).

Following the announcement of President Trump’s appointment of Bolton, much of the previous criticism from the Left was recycled.

Newsweek, now managed by a former editor of the liberal Huffington Post, published an opinion piece, “John Bolton is a Threat at Home and Abroad,” by Patrick Eddington:

“In Bolton, Trump will have a kindred spirit who sees enemies everywhere and who does not hesitate to attack them, at home or abroad.” — Newsweek, 4-8-18

Much of the Establishment media also highlighted criticism of Bolton:

“Bolton, probably the most divisive foreign policy expert ever to serve as U.N. ambassador, has served as a hawkish voice in Republican foreign policy circles for decades.” — AP (3-22-18)

Bolton Endorsements

But the media reaction was not all negative. The Trump White House was able to trumpet a bunch of favorable headlines and reactions from the national press. Here are several: 

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL BOARD: John Bolton for National Security

“President Trump has said he is at last assembling a Cabinet team to his liking, and late Thursday he announced that John Bolton will replace General H.R. McMaster as his National Security Adviser. It is a solid and experienced choice….”

[FFS: but note that the Wall Street Journal is now owned by Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.]

FORMER SENATOR TOM COBURN (R-OK) IN USA TODAY: Bolton Right Choice on National Security  

“The president’s decision to appoint John Bolton as his national security adviser reflects an understanding of the critical lessons of history, and the Bolton designation will greatly reduce the grave risks now faced by America during today’s increasingly troubled times.”

[FFS:  We don’t trust Tom Coburn.  He has dedicated himself to the well financed effort to mislead state legislatures into calling for an uncontrollable constitutional convention.  In March of 2015, he appeared on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News promoting a Convention of the States to eliminate “waste, fraud, or duplication.” Coburn repeated a clever deception of proponents:  “It’s an Article V convention of states.  It’s not a constitutional convention.”   He also falsely claimed that the Founders wrote Article V so we could put limits on government.  No, they gave us the Constitution to do that.]

NATIONAL REVIEW’S DAVID FRENCH: John Bolton isn’t Dangerous. The World is.

“He’s a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He’s on the board of trustees of the National Review Institute. He’s a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He’s a conservative hawk, yes, but he’s squarely in the mainstream of conservative foreign-policy thought.”

[FFS:  What National Review would have us believe is “mainstream” is an outrageous audacity.  National Review has served as an Establishment tool to mislead and neutralize conservatives since the days of William F. Buckley, Jr.]

THE NEW YORK TIMES’ BRET STEPHENS: John Bolton is Right About the U.N.

“I agree with Bolton about some things and disagree about others. But on the U.N. he’s been right all along.  If his presence in the White House helps to scare the organization into real reform, so much the better.”

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE’S MICHAEL RUBIN IN THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:  Enough with the John Bolton Smears — He’ll be the Best National Security Adviser in a Generation

“But Bolton is a formidable intellect, a clear thinker, organized, and a team player. The purpose of the National Security Council is to coordinate the interagency process.”

HUGH HEWITT IN THE WASHINGTON POST: John Bolton is a Great Addition to the White House

“As the president’s top security aide, Bolton will be an honest broker and someone who can drive decisions through molasses-thick resistance. These qualities, plus his top-shelf intellect, make Bolton the best national security player to join Trump’s West Wing team so far.”

The Real John Bolton

John Bolton has solid Establishment credentials ignored by the media. Instead, media stories highlighted the fact that Trump was recruiting again from the “conservative” Fox News, where Bolton had most recently been serving as an analyst:

“President Donald Trump’s favorite TV network is increasingly serving as a West Wing casting call, as the president reshapes his administration with camera-ready personalities.

“Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, is a former U.N. ambassador, a White House veteran — and perhaps most importantly a Fox News channel talking head…. ‘He’s looking for people who are ready to be part of that television White House,’ said Kendall Phillips, a communication and rhetorical studies professor at Syracuse University. ‘This is the Fox television presidency all the way up and down.’” [Emphasis added.], AP, 3-25-18

The misleading superficial news reports did not mention Bolton’s Establishment credentials as a veteran member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) or those of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch (CFR).

Indeed, Bolton was invited to join the CFR has far back as 2000.  Bolton could even boast earlier articles in the Council’s magazine, Foreign Affairs.  For the January/February 1999 issue he wrote: “The Global Prosecutors: Hunting War Criminals in the Name of Utopia.” The article spelled out Bolton’s criticism of the UN’s International Criminal Court (ICC) and why he objected to U.S. membership.

In its 2000 Annual Report, the Council on Foreign Relations revealed an even closer relationship:

“Through the National Program, the Council sponsored debates in key cities nationwide on the Council Policy Initiative ‘Toward an International Criminal Court?’ CPI authors Ruth Wedgwood, John R. Bolton, Anne-Marie Slaughter [a Clinton appointee and former CFR Director], and Kenneth Roth [Executive Director of the left-wing Human Rights Watch] examined whether the United States should endorse, reject, or revise the proposal to create an international criminal court.”

Bolton’s opposition to the ICC, while serving in the Bush State Department, helped establish his “conservative” credentials. However, in a November 14, 2002 speech to the Federalist Society, he explained that the Bush administration only objected to the ICC in is present form, but would like to see “ad hoc tribunals … overseen by the UN Security Council [and] under a UN Charter to which virtually all nations have agreed.”

John Bolton has associated with many organizations, particularly those that have a conservative image and are dominated by the Establishment.  A noteworthy example is the CFR-dominated “Project for the New American Century” [PNAC]. PNAC was formed in 1997 by a team that included former CFR Director Dick Cheney and William Kristol, who became its chairman.  Kristol had vehemently opposed the nomination of Donald Trump, now enthusiastically embraced by Fox News.  Yet in 1995, Kristol had helped found and edit the neo-con Weekly Standard magazine financed by Rupert Murdoch (CFR), who would later found Fox News.  Establishment strategists undoubtedly regard apparent conflict as necessary to gain a following and therefore useful, if kept within bounds.

John Bolton has attended the exclusive, invitation-only Bilderberg Conferences of high-level Insiders, such as Henry Kissinger and Richard Haass (the current President of the CFR).

On January 21, 2003, Bolton was invited to address the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, the British counterpart to the CFR.

The Real Bolton and the UN

At a presidential press conference held on April 28, 2005, a journalist asked President George W. Bush about the controversy surrounding his nomination of John Bolton as UN Ambassador. The president’s reply included this story:

“See, the U.N. needs reform. If you’re interested in reforming the U.N., like I’m interested in reforming the U.N., it makes sense to put somebody who’s skilled and who is not afraid to speak his mind at the United Nations.

“Now, I asked John during the interview process in the Oval Office, I said, before I send you up there to the Senate, let me ask you something: do you think the United Nations is important? See, I didn’t want to send somebody up there who said, it’s not — it’s not worth a darn; I don’t think I need to go. He said, no, it’s important. But it needs to be reformed.”

What a charade!  For many decades, calls to reform the UN have been used to shield the increasingly unpopular UN from demands to get the U.S. out!  and thereby abolish it altogether.  Indeed, U.S. withdrawal would be totally unacceptable to the Insiders at the CFR.

Recall that CFR Insiders saw World War II as an opportunity to overcome the U.S. Senate refusal to join the Internationalists’ League of Nations following World War I.  Within two weeks of the outbreak of new war in Europe, and a full two-years before Pearl Harbor, trusted CFR members were allowed to take over postwar planning for the U.S. State Department.  Absorbed into the State Department, they designed the UN and orchestrated the cry for U.S. membership in the UN as “mankind’s last best hope for peace.”

We don’t know what John Bolton might recommend re North Korea, but one thing we know for sure — he won’t push for the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations.   “Reform” sure.  Criticize yes.  But withdraw no.

Indeed, in hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations committee in April 2005, John Bolton stated:

“Walking away from the United Nations is not an option…. The United States is committed to the success of the United Nations, and we view the UN as an important component of our diplomacy…. Now more than ever the UN must play a critical role, as it strives to fulfill the aspirations of its original promise….”

The Insiders of the Internationalist Conspiracy have done a good job in misleading busy conservatives by creating phony “conservative” media that promote media personalities and political leaders who posture as conservative but cooperate with the subversive agenda of the Internationalists.

In an April 2005 interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Condoleezza Rice (CFR), President Bush’s Secretary of State, echoed John Bolton’s commitment to strengthening the United Nations:

“There’s no doubt that this is an organization that needs updating and reforming in order to be effective…. And, we’re a founding member of the United Nations. We shouldn’t abandon it. We should make it a stronger instrument.”

Deception abounds!  John Bolton has long played a part in advancing the CFR agenda.

North Korea — Internationalist Creation

“What is the central concern driving North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons? Pyongyang claims it is a well-founded fear that the United States and South Korea plan aggression to overthrow the Kim regime.” Alton Frye, Foreign Policy Magazine, 11-28-17

An incredible piece of subversive nonsense recently appeared in the Establishment’s Foreign Policy magazine. The above referenced article suggested that the way to persuade Kim Jong Un to halt the North Korean nuclear weapon’s program was to convince him that China was an adequate deterrent to a U.S. invasion. To do so, the article recommended the deployment of Chinese forces on North Korean territory:

“A symmetrical policy of reassurance could involve possibly 30,000 Chinese military personnel stationed there, a total comparable to U.S. forces south of the 38th parallel.

“Yes, it seems counterintuitive to encourage China to strengthen military capabilities in the north. Some may find the notion antithetical to American interests. Shoring up a state with such vicious human rights abuses is a high price to pay for security. Yet the net effect should be to reduce the actual likelihood of war.”

We would not give much attention to such immoral sophistry were it not for the status of the article’s author — Alton Frye.   Frye is not only a member of the Internationalists’ Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), since 1993 he has been a CFR director. He also served as a CFR vice president from 1987 to 1993 and then as a Senior VP until 1998.

UN Intervention

If one knows the history of how and why the UN was founded, it is a short step to realize that the Internationalist architects of a new world order run by them need crises to overcome normal public resistance to their intended radical realignment of power.

Recall the 1962 analysis, “A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations,” by State Department veteran and CFR member Lincoln P. Bloomfield. Bloomfield argued that accelerated world government “may be brought into existence as a result of a series of sudden, nasty, and traumatic shocks…. The transforming experience, whether evolutionary or revolutionary, must, to achieve the foundation of consensus requisite for community, be enough to reach and move great masses of people….”

Many of the problems around the world have been created or fomented by Internationalists for the primary purpose of gaining public acceptance for Internationalist institutions to address the problems.

So we find the following item buried in a December 7th (Pearl Harbor Day) Reuters news report re the North Korean missile tests significant:

“The rising tensions coincide with a rare visit to North Korea by United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman, the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012.

“Some analysts and diplomats hope his visit could spark a U.N.-led effort to defuse tensions.”

Feltman heads up the UN’s Department of Political Affairs (DPA). Established under a 1992 restructuring of the UN Secretariat, the DPA absorbed the earlier Department of Political and Security Council Affairs.

In 1954, a year after the Korean armistice was signed, our Defense Department let it be known that that high-ranking Soviet officers had been in North Korea directing that side of the war. At the same time, the UN’s Military Staff Committee overseeing our side of the war worked under the UN undersecretary-general for political and security council affairs. This post had always been held by a communist by secret agreement at the UN’s founding. In short, Communists were working both sides of the war. And Internationalist Insiders ensured that General MacArthur was prevented from winning it.

Excerpt from Masters of Deception:

[F]ollowing MacArthur’s brilliant Inchon landing, U.S. and South Korean forces held the upper hand. Faced with the threat of massive Red Chinese intervention, MacArthur ordered the destruction of the bridges across the Yalu River. Within hours, General Marshall countermanded MacArthur’s order. MacArthur would later state:

“I realized for the first time that I had actually been denied the use of my full military power to safeguard the lives of my soldiers and the safety of my army. To me, it clearly foreshadowed a future tragic situation in Korea, and left me with a sense of inexpressible shock.” 18

Foreshadowing the “rules of engagement” that strangled U.S. forces in the Viet Nam War, MacArthur was forbidden to attack Chinese supplies being amassed across the river or to follow Chinese MIGs retreating across the border into China. Although the reason given for such restrictions was ostensibly to avoid a wider war with China, the effect was just the opposite. General Lin Piao, commander of the Chinese forces, later said:

“I never would have made the attack and risked my men and my military reputation if I had not been assured that Washington would restrain General MacArthur from taking adequate retaliatory measures against my lines of supply and communication.” 19

General Mark Clark, who signed the Korean armistice agreement in July 1953,   would echo MacArthur’s criticism. In his memoirs, Clark declared it was: “beyond my comprehension that we would countenance a situation in which Chinese soldiers killed American youth in organized, formal warfare and yet we would fail to use all the power at our command to protect those Americans.” 20

While men were still dying in the UN “police action,” Adlai Stevenson (the soon-to-be Democratic nominee for president and the future U.S. ambassador to the UN under Kennedy) authored an article for the April 1952 Foreign Affairs, entitled “Korea in Perspective.” In summarizing, Stevenson stated:

“The burden of my argument, then, based on the meaning of our experience in Korea as I see it, is that we have made historic progress toward the establishment of a viable system of collective security.” 21

The cost of that “progress” was enormous in South Korean and American dead.

UNESCO “Withdrawal” — Mere Posturing!

“The State Department announced Oct. 12 that the U.S. plans to withdraw from UNESCO, alleging a ‘need for fundamental reform’ and ‘anti-Israel bias.’”  — The Washington Post, 10-12-17

In a follow-up Post report later that day, the State Department’s initially tough-sounding anti-UNESCO announcement quickly mellowed:

“In notifying UNESCO of the decision Thursday morning, the State Department said it would like to remain involved as a nonmember observer state. That will allow the United States to engage in debates and activities, though it will lose its right to vote on issues.

“The withdrawal follows long-standing issues the U.S. has had with UNESCO and does not necessarily foreshadow a further retrenchment of U.S. engagement with the United Nations, where the Trump administration has been pushing to bring about structural and financial reforms.”

This is not the first time that the U.S. has bowed out of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization, a specialized UN agency based in Paris. In 1984, the Reagan Administration temporarily withdrew the U.S.

Then, as now, the justifications for withdrawing from UNESCO should have applied to its parent organization, the United Nations, as well. But just to assure everyone that the move didn’t seriously threaten globalist plans, Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, Gregory Newell, stated:

“When UNESCO returns to its original purposes and principles, the United States would be in a position to return to UNESCO.” [Emphasis added.]

In 2002, President George W. Bush decided that the U.S. should rejoin UNESCO.

UNESCO’s “Original Purposes”

UNESCO’s first general conference was held at the end of 1946, a year after the UN began operations. The conference elected humanist leader Dr. Julian Huxley as UNESCO’s first Director-General. As one example of the revolutionary mindset permeating the UN and its agencies, in 1947 Dr. Huxley wrote in UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy:

“Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic [controlled human breeding] policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.” [Emphasis added]

Here is how the Washington Post report summarized UNESCO’s public purposes:

“UNESCO was established to help promote global cooperation around the flow of ideas, culture and information. UNESCO’s mission includes programs to improve access to education, preserve cultural heritage, improve gender equality and promote scientific advances and freedom of expression.” [Emphasis added.]

However, let’s look at UNESCO’s real purposes, beginning with the parent body, the United Nations.

In 1945, a war-weary world acquiesced to the Internationalists’ propaganda campaign that their proposed UN was mankind’s “last best hope for peace.”

In normal times, that claim would have rung on deaf ears. For the UN would be comprised to a great extent of corrupt and tyrannical regimes, unrepresentative of their peoples. How could these regimes be expected to satisfactorily police the world? The participation of the Soviet Union as a permanent member of the UN’s Security Council (followed decades later by Communist China) should have confirmed the subversive nonsense. In fact, within a few decades, knowledgeable observers would refer to the UN as “Terrorists ‘R US.”

In reality, the Internationalists conceived these institutions as a means of gaining unaccountable world authority over previously sovereign nations. But more strategy and pretexts would be needed to provide the UN or its offspring with the authority (e.g., taxation and a UN army) necessary to compel the full submission of independent nations.

Three decades later, Foreign Affairs (the magazine of the Internationalists’ Council on Foreign Relations — CFR) advocated a strategy of gradual international entanglements as a workable means for bringing nations to submit to a world authority. “The Hard Road to World Order,” authored by Columbia University professor and State Department veteran Richard N. Gardner, spelled out a multi-point strategy of deceptive encroachment. In that April 1974 article, Gardner blatantly insisted:

“In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”

The above Post story quotes Irina Bokova, UNESCO’s current and tenth director-general, a Bulgarian politician, in defense of UNESCO: “The American poet, diplomat and Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, penned the lines that open UNESCO’s 1945 Constitution: ‘Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.’ This vision has never been more relevant.”

Not mentioned by the Post: Archibald MacLeish was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (from 1946–1949).

Now what role would UNESCO actually play in the UN scheme? From the beginning UNESCO sought to become the world’s school board, promoting world government. Its revolutionary activism soon became apparent. In 1948, UNESCO published a ten-volume series of pamphlets entitled Toward World Understanding. The pamphlets were designed to prepare schoolchildren for world citizenship.

In 1952 The Saturday Review candidly conceded this purpose in a pro-UNESCO editorial:

“If UNESCO is attacked on the grounds that it is helping to prepare the world’s peoples for world government, then it is an error to burst forth with apologetic statements and denials. Let us face it: the job of UNESCO is to help create and promote the elements of world citizenship. When faced with such a ‘charge,’ let us by all means affirm it from the housetops.”

The editor-in-chief for Saturday Review was Norman Cousins, an open advocate for world government, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the United World Federalists.

 

Cuban-Americans vs. Obama re Cuba

If Obama’s intended reversal of our longstanding policy towards Cuba were an improvement, we would naturally expect Cuban-American politicians to be among the first to welcome it. By the same token, we would naturally expect the President to have listened closely to that group, in weighing potential changes to our Cuba policy: “They are the best interpreters of the opinion of the almost three million Cubans and descendants of Cubans living in the United States,” as Carlos Alberto Montaner, a Cuban-born author, journalist and syndicated columnist, points out.

Instead, we find a schism between these leaders and Obama. A few months prior to Obama’s December 2014 call for “normalization” of our relations with Cuba — which would naturally include removal of our trade embargo and sanctions against that country — one of these leaders, U.S. Representative Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Florida), noted that “there is not one Cuban-American elected official, state or local level or federal level, who does not support the sanctions, and does not support the embargo.” And six months after Obama’s announcement of his intended change, these politicians are still all opposed to normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations. Indeed, as Obama knows quite well, these leaders will likely be his policy’s staunchest opponents in Congress.

The incongruity of such a schism raises serious questions about Obama’s shift in U.S. policy towards Cuba: What do the Cuban-American leaders disagree with, in Obama’s radical policy change? Why do they find his argument for it unpersuasive? And — since, clearly, he is not catering to Cuban-Americans with this radical shift in policy — to what constituency (if any) is he catering? Let’s take these questions in turn.

  1. What do the Cuban-American leaders dislike about Obama’s policy change?

The main argument that Cuban-American leaders use to counter Obama’s proposal is that his plans to allow trade with and investment in Cuba will only enhance, not reduce, the Castro regime’s power. Far from easing or ending the oppression of the Cuban masses (as Obama suggests), the actual effect of his changes will be to make the Communist regime’s power more secure and unaccountable.

The basic reason for this is that, under Obama’s new policy, no change of ideology or practice is required of the Communist — and thus, socialist — government of Cuba. And, in any socialist country, the government owns the means of production, i.e., the “businesses” producing everything people buy. Thus, doing business with Cuba is, really, doing business with the Communist regime. And that will not free the Cuban people; on the contrary, it will help their oppressors — as Rep. Díaz-Balart points out (in an interview by a New York Times reporter):

There are around 200 plus countries in the world, I believe but two or three have relations with the Castro regime, I believe most of them do business with the Castro regime, Canada, being one of them, Mexico … they do business there, tourism and everything else. Has that, has doing business with the vast majority of the countries of the world, has that freed the Cuban people? Has that done something to free the Cuban people? … No, what it has done is just the opposite. It has allowed the revenue for the regime in order to continue to oppress its people.

It is true that in recent years the Cuban government has, after the fashion of the Chinese government, seemed to “loosen” its grip on the economy a bit, allowing a few ostensibly private businesses to be created. But by the most generous estimates, the Cuban government owns outright, still, more than 80% of the economy.

But the crucial point economically is not who owns the businesses in name, but rather whether the government controls these assets. That is exactly why fascism — in which non-governmental parties “own” the businesses, nominally, but all the decisions are made by government — has the same economic features as socialism.

It is obvious that Cuba’s “loosening” of its grip on the economy amounts to nothing more than a tactical, meaningless substitution of fascism for a fragment of its socialist economy. Taking a position contrary to his employer’s, Jorge Benitez, director of NATOSource and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, has argued strongly against lifting the embargo, partly for this reason:

The most overlooked fact in this debate is that every euro, ruble, peso or Canadian dollar invested in Cuba goes directly to Castro and his cronies. Foreign businesses are not allowed to pay wages to their Cuban employees. Instead, they are required to turn the money over to the state. The Castro government keeps most of the foreign money and hands out only pennies to the Cuban people. Lifting U.S. sanctions would only add our dollars to this corrupt trade.

Rep. Díaz-Balart also argues adamantly against the use of American dollars to increase the fascist segment of Cuba’s economy and he further insists that lifting sanctions unilaterally is against the wishes of the majority of the internal Cuban opposition, who want a path to be free.

He reminds us that, given their de facto control of the entire economy — whether in socialist or fascist style — the Cuban regime can easily ensure that only companies that endorse it will be able to carry on operations there:

[Y]ou can’t take away the fact that the regime has been there for 55 years, controls the entire financial structure in Cuba, decides who can open a private restaurant in Cuba or not, and if … you are someone unfavorable of the regime it would be very difficult to do that, that is just the reality of life there.

So here is the question, do we then, unilaterally lift sanctions not asking for something in return. And if we are going to ask for something in return, what should that be? I think there are some basic freedoms that have to be demanded in return for lifting the sanctions: freedom of press, otherwise you have no freedom, whether we like it or not …; independent labor unions …; political parties, freeing the political prisoners. Or do we go there and invest and go there with our flipflops to the beaches while Cubans are being held in prisons just for their beliefs?

  1. Why do Cuban-American leaders find Obama’s argument for his change unpersuasive?

The main argument of Obama, and of other partisans of his changes, goes basically like this: “We have been following the old policy for half a century now, and what has it achieved? The Castro regime is still in power, still oppressing the Cuban people. It’s time to try something new.”

On the surface, this argument seems powerful. But lying beneath the surface, it contains a couple of unstated assumptions, which — as relevant premises of the argument — need scrutiny.

First, the argument assumes that the only way we can know whether a policy will work is to try it out for a reasonable length of time and see what it produces. But what if we made this claim in regard to economic policies? It would amount to claiming that we can’t know what a particular policy will produce, from an economic standpoint, until we put it in place for a few decades and check the result. Most economists, I think, would be quite surprised to hear this. So, the argument’s first hidden premise claims too much.

The second is no less doubtful: It holds that the goal of the policy was — or at least, should have been — the removal of the tyrannical, Communist regime from power. Now, the founders of our country would never have conceded the idea that any part of our foreign policy (i.e., outside of our own self-defense) should have as its ultimate goal to remove a foreign tyranny from power. Before he became our sixth President (in 1825), John Quincy Adams was already distinguished as a diplomat and a brilliant crafter of foreign policy: In 1823, while serving as Secretary of State, he authored what became known as the Monroe Doctrine, one of the longest-standing tenets of U.S. foreign policy. On July 4, 1821, in a historic address on U.S. foreign policy, Adams made this clear-sighted statement:

America … has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings…. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

Nor for Cuban-American leaders, such as Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, was regime-change ever the foreign-policy goal. He affirms repeatedly that his goal for, and the purpose of, the longtime policy is to refrain from helping the Communist regime; and, in this and other, limited, targeted ways to “help the Cuban people free themselves from this regime.” And certainly, the embargo and sanctions have presumably a goal of keeping Americans from unwittingly undermining their own security interests. All of this falls well short of the intent to undertake regime-change ourselves.

Nor was there a hint in Rep. Díaz-Balart’s discussion of the old policy that he considered this policy a failure: it has obviously blocked (some) help to the tyrannical regime, and also helped the Cuban people to be in a better position to free themselves from the rule of the Castros. And that is all that it was intended to do — at least, from Rep. Díaz-Balart’s perspective.

So the two assumptions implicit in the above argument would, to Cuban-American leaders, be doubtful at best. The argument dependent on them would, therefore, naturally seem unsound to these leaders.

But another argument appears sometimes. U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) has over the last decade been perhaps the strongest proponent in Congress for normalization of our Cuban relations. He offers the argument that “engagement” of Americans with the Cuban people will increase the latter group’s taste for liberty; and that this, in itself, will put more pressure on the Castro regime. Sen. Flake offered this argument as early as 2003:

A genuine get-tough policy with Cuba would export something Americans know a little about: freedom. Let’s get rid of travel license applications altogether…. All Americans should be free to go to Cuba without government interference…. Cuba would be flooded with American visitors — and American ideas. For Fidel Castro, that would be the toughest policy of all.

Recently Flake used it again, asserting that “When people get more freedom, they want even more of it.” Now, the unstated assumption here is the outlandish proposition that people who are isolated from the rest of the world, with no freedom of speech and under a repressive dictatorship, will have rather less of an appreciation for liberty. In fact, it is precisely (and fairly obviously) those who have the least liberty, who will appreciate it and “want more of it” the most. We may safely assume that the Cubans living under this oppressive, Communist dictatorship have — already, and without our intervention — at least as much appreciation for the value of liberty as do Americans today in general. Sen. Flake’s proposition is an outrageous insult to the good sense, and even to the humanity, of the Cubans living under this oppression.

Christopher Sabatini — who is the senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas and founder and editor in chief of their hemispheric policy magazine Americas Quarterly — and also chairs the AS/COA’s “Cuba Working Group” — stated the argument, in October 2014, with even more audacity:

Human rights abuses continue in Cuba and U.S.A.I.D. contractor Alan Gross remains in prison. But it is precisely for that reason that President Obama needs to continue to lift the veil of isolation the U.S. has placed over Cuba — doing so will promote a greater flow of information and independent activity that has led to political opening across the world. It’s no coincidence that there’s never been democratic change in a country under as tight as an embargo as the one the U.S. has had on Cuba for 53 years; and it’s no coincidence that it has failed. [Emphasis is ours.]

Now, as indicated above, Cuba has been trading freely with almost the whole rest of the world for quite a while. So Sabatini’s suggestion that our own embargo may have placed such a “veil of isolation” upon Cuba as actually to prevent democratic change there, falls to the ground. But notice the extreme boldness of the statement which we have emphasized (in bold, appropriately) that the continuing repression is — not a sign that we have a brutal, tyrannical regime (90 miles from our shore) that is the enemy of liberty as conceived of in America, and therefore we should avoid helping this anti-democratic, despotic regime — no, rather it’s a sign that we need to lift the embargo, the travel restrictions, the sanctions — in short, normalize our relations with the admittedly brutal dictators. How can you get any bolder than that? But Cuban-American leaders repudiate this astonishing line of reasoning.

  1. To what constituency, then, IS Obama catering, with this radical shift in our Cuba policy?

Very few Americans have even heard of, much less are familiar with, the groups (and their publication) that Mr. Sabatini helps lead. But those groups are a prime example of the very small but very powerful foreign-policy lobby that has apparently been driving Obama’s Cuban-policy shift. Here are links to an open letter they wrote to President Obama in May 2014, detailing changes they want to our Cuba policy, and a follow-up open letter to him they published in January.

This lobby includes not only the Americas Society and the Council of The Americas, but also the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD) and the Forum of the Americas. These groups all have at least two things in common: they have been pushing for decades, the changes that Obama is now promoting; and, they were founded by David Rockefeller.

In fact, David Rockefeller has been by far the biggest driving force in Western Hemisphere foreign policy over the last several decades. For example, he has been almost the whole driving force behind the Summits of the Americas, which are intermittent gatherings of heads or representatives of many nations of the Western Hemisphere. President Obama attended the seventh, most recent such Summit, held in Panama City, Panama on April 10-11, 2015; and there he met with Cuba’s President Raul Castro.

Dr. Rockefeller’s deep foreign-policy interests and experience range far wider than the Western Hemisphere. It would take a while to detail a reasonable sample of his prominent involvements in foreign policy, starting as far back as World War II. (In June 2015, he had the good fortune to celebrate his 100th birthday). Significantly, he was for 15 years the Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and is currently an Honorary Chairman of that group. One good place to go for helpful background on this little-known, relatively small yet super-powerful group — which has virtually controlled U.S. foreign policy since before World War II — is the recent book by Don Fotheringham, The President-Makers. Members of that hugely influential group also include the President and CEO of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, Susan Segal; and Obama’s Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roberta S. Jacobson. (A recent interview of Ms. Jacobson by Ms. Segal is posted here.)

Now, let us consider: Would anyone with the foreign-policy experience — probably unsurpassed — and expertise of David Rockefeller think, seriously, that normalization of our relations with Cuba would be in the interests of American-style liberty in the Western Hemisphere? Would he not see quite clearly that it can only help to prop up the reigning Communist regime?

Well, note that the CFR’s “Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies” and Director for Latin America Studies, Julia E. Sweig, has been outed as a long-standing friend and supporter of some of the most extreme elements in Cuba’s Communist regime — including two indicted (and then deported) terrorists. Reportedly, “Sweig’s promotional services for the Castro regime reached a level where the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency top Cuba spycatcher, Chris Simmons (now retired), named her a Cuban ‘Agent of Influence.’” So, based on his CFR chairmanship alone, we may reasonably doubt that American-style liberty could possibly be Rockefeller’s paramount goal.

In fact, he has made clear that his real goal is something else entirely: According to his own admission, published in his own autobiography, his aim has been the convergence of all nations into a one-world economic and political order:

For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. [From his 2002 autobiography, Memoirs, p. 405.]

That’s a startling admission — of which most Americans will not have been informed by their news media. But what could bring a supposed capitalist like David Rockefeller to “conspire” with Communists and socialists to build a one-world political and economic order? A long-time Brazilian political observer and writer, Olavo de Carvalho, explains:

I believe that this absurd surrender of the winners [of the Cold War] was also stimulated by powerful globalist circles, whose interest in establishing worldwide bureaucratic controls converges with the objectives of the communists. The number of billionaire companies which came to openly contribute to leftist parties is enormous. I call “meta-capitalists” the individuals and groups which grew so wealthy with the market economy that they can’t stand anymore being at the mercy of the free market and seek, instead, to control everything, supporting bureaucracy instead of capitalism. Meta-capitalists are natural allies of the communists…. The “ideological” contrast serves only as propaganda. What we have is a gigantic symbiosis of all globalist and statist forces around the world.

 

Export-Import Bank Renewed

The House voted Wednesday [May 9, 2012] to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank [H.R. 2072] for another three years, permitting the agency to continue providing hundreds of millions of dollars in trade assistance to U.S. firms….

“All 183 Democrats voted for the bill, along with 147 Republicans, but 93 GOP lawmakers voted against it.”
 — “Export-Import Bank reauthorized by House; Senate expected to act soon,” Washington Post (online) 5-9-2012

FFS: Similarly, on May 15th the Senate voted overwhelmingly (78 to 20) to send the House bill as passed to the president. No Democrats opposed the reauthorization. Republicans were split: 27 to 19 in favor.

The charter for the internationalists’ creation, the Export-Import Bank, was set to expire on May 31st. The Bank was also pushing against its authorized lending limit of $100 billion. In the past, the periodic renewal of the Bank has encountered little opposition, but this time considerable principled opposition arose.   Nevertheless, given the Insider influence on Congress, the outcome should not have been in doubt.

Congressional Quarterly Today’s description of the battle should have raised questions (such as why any Republicans would support a top priority of the Obama administration at this time):

“A top priority of the Obama administration, renewing the [Export-Import] bank’s charter divided Republicans who have been caught between their allies in the business community — who desire passage — and free market advocacy groups that oppose government-backed export financing as a form of corporate welfare.” — “Deal Sets Up Passage of Ex-Im Bill,” CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS, 5-14-2012

FFS: The above report and others referred to the pressure from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, which were supporting this federal intervention in the free market. But no mention was made of the fact that the Bank supports the internationalist agenda of boosting socialism abroad and has operated in the past to aid America’s enemies.

A prime example were the loans in the 1970s to the Soviet Union to finance the building of the world’s largest truck factory on the Kama River. At that time the Export-Import Bank joined with Chase Manhattan in an even split to finance 90 percent of the project, which subsequently produced trucks supporting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Neither was any mention made in much of the media coverage of the fact that the powers of the Ex-Im Bank are not authorized by the Constitution.

Although the dollar amount (the lending limit is scheduled to increase from $100 billion to $140 billion in stages), the votes are nevertheless revealing of the internationalist grip on Washington, which transcends party.

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