The Bush Administration's
End-Run Around World Justice ~
or will they be tackled before they make a touchdown?
The world was fed up with imperial power at the end of WWII. Thus was established the United Nations. Supportive legislation quickly followed: the 1948 Convention on Genocide, the International Code of Human Rights, laws against weapons of mass destruction, and more. In 1998, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established to try persons charged with war crimes anywhere in the world, including officials of the US government. This act has kicked off a super bowl for world power.
The Bush administration is on one side, claiming that global war crimes shall be tried at the behest of their military-led tribunals. This one-group domination of world affairs is reflective of G.H.W. Bush’s pronouncement of a “new world order,” or world plutocracy. As minimum yet necessary context, European plutocracies like the 700-year-old Hapsburg dynasty of Austria and the 500 year-old German Hohenzollern royal family collapsed during WWI, allowing inchoate democracies to emerge. The struggle of elites to rule the world should never be under-estimated. Nor should we forget that the President’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, had his company assets seized by the US government in 1942 for trading with Hitler, who was attempting to establish a 1000-year Reich of subjugated masses. In a nutshell, Bush and company would rather try the world than have the world try them.
The other team is a unification of nations to be exercised through the ICC. A democracy of nations they envision to be the “new world order.” Here we stand today watching the two great titans of democracy and plutocracy go head to head in a contest for global control—populism or dominion, the people versus the elitists.
Let’s take a look at the scoreboard. Of the world’s 243 countries, 191 are member states of the United Nations. So far, 139 countries have signed on to the ICC, including Bill Clinton for the U.S., but in an unprecedented move George Bush Jr. “unsigned” the agreement. Many countries are in the process of ratifying the ICC. On October 28, Mexico became the 100th state to ratify. Does this mean that the global democracy is winning the game? — not exactly.
The Bush elites are not waiting for the day when arresting officers show up on their doorstep. They have launched an end-run around the ICC in hope of thwarting prosecution. The Bush-ites tithe military and economic aid to third world countries by way of Article 98 Agreements, also called Bilateral Immunity Agreements—BIA’s. These agreements exempt all US military personnel, U.S. Government officials, and their mercenaries from any and all crimes against humanity.
Moreover, the Bush-ites have fielded a good-sized team. On May 2, the US State Department announced that the 100th country, Angola, signed a BIA. Quarterbacking for the Bush team is John Bolton: "Our ultimate goal is to conclude Article 98 agreements with every country in the world, regardless of whether they have signed or ratified the ICC…" With the world public as referees, The Bush team could then argue that a legitimate standoff exists.
To take a quick lead, the Bush team has run a play that upstages the ICC. Before the ICC can really get on the field, Bush-ites have captured the world media with their military tribunals of Slobadan Milosovich and Saddam Hussein. Their plays are usually punitive. Last year the U.S. Congress passed the Nethercutt amendment, cutting off Economic Support Fund’s to any country that has ratified the ICC and refused to sign a BIA with the U.S. A couple dozen countries have already lost aid, money that is inevitably tied to the U.S. corporate agenda. Some potential tacklers are ready to go. In June, Ecuador's president, Alfredo Palacio, angrily declared that, "Absolutely no one is going to make me cower."
With only about 30 countries having ratified BIA’s, the ICC appears to be in the lead, but the Bush team retaliation could prove formidable. If they can intimidate and impose enough economic sanctions to force additional third world countries to sign the Article 98 Agreements, they might be able to force the vast majority of the worlds’ poor to accept the new Bush dynasty. Bush may go for a touch down. The question remains whether or not the will of the masses can provide enough collective power to tackle him before he crosses the goal line.
If the plutocrats lose, one outcome seems clear. The Bush-ites will not go home before attacking the ICC sideline. The elites’ campaign against the court also includes the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA), which authorizes the president to use military force and invade The Hague to free U.S. personnel detained by the ICC. This will not bode well in world opinion. The ICC is about a world volunteering for democracy, while the Bush players are conscripted, notwithstanding the corporate media parade of another “coalition of the willing.”
The stakes could not be higher. The Bush elites envision a final perpetual aristocracy, policed under a guise of perpetual terrorism. When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, the final domino fell. Nothing stood in their way, other than to condition the world to a new more terrible bogey-man, the omnipotent omnipresent terrorist. A “commie” under every rock has been replaced by a “terrorist” under every rock. For those of you who would like to check out of nightmare Hotel California, remember the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria will have no new world to escape to and hide. On the other hand, just maybe, the world might choose a nightmare for the elitists—perpetual democracy.
Critical Parallels Between JFK and 911
I’m surprised to find such scant mention of JFK Remembrance Day for 2005. Let’s not drop the ball. Remember the statute of limitation for murder does not and should not end, and some of the accomplices are still alive.
With forensic science being what it is today, all we need is the collective interest and will of the people to re-open the case. We, the people, must mandate an investigation beyond the reach of the federal government, and no more silly mock trials, with rules and evidence perimeters so tight, that truth inherently becomes the first victim. We have all the resources we need to evoke justice.
In fact, prima facie evidence has been sitting around all these years just begging us to act. Hidden for ten years from the public was the Abraham Zapruder video showing conclusively that shots were fired from the grassy knoll, one of which took off a large piece of Kennedy’s skull, which Jackie shortly thereafter was trying to retrieve from the trunk of the limousine.
A moral crisis has hung over our country since then, and it has only deepened with the disappearance of so much evidence surrounding 911. There are so many parallels between the two events. We really need to integrate them into our thinking to help prepare ourselves for a major house cleaning we are about to embark on in Washington. We normally think this will be extremely difficult to accomplish, yet the answers can come right at home at your local voting poll. We have to get outside of the “insiders box” and vote third party, vote for proportional representation, vote for traceable votes, vote perpetual voting—a newly computerized system that allows us to vote on an ongoing basis, making politicians work for their food on a daily basis like the rest of us. As it stands now, politicians know that the public’s collective memory is short and that a lot a mischief can be had before the next round of re-election lies begin.
So let’s start to burn into memory some key parallels between the JFK assassination and 911. Parallels signify ongoing criminal activity, reflecting success and worth of repetition, according to the criteria for CIA “black operations.” Below are nineteen parallels, condensed to deepen our integration of overall understanding:
1. Warnings of the impending events are well documented. Calls started coming in months ahead of time, turning into a seeming avalanche of pleas just before they occurred, but nothing was done in response to them. In fact, some evidence was blatantly blocked from entering and circulating within the national security apparatus. Mike Vreeland, a former CIA agent, tried to deliver intelligence documents to the US government nine months before 911, only to find himself arrested and jailed in Canada at the request of US authorities.(1)
2. Normal protection was pulled off. Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was a very important man in 1963. He was chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and carried a similar role with the Office of Special Operations of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Prouty also headed the Special Operations Office for the US Air Force. Most importantly he was charged with protecting the president. Oddly, instead of protecting Kennedy in Dallas, Prouty was sent to the South Pole on a minor errand by General Lansdale, a saboteur for CIA crimes dating back to the early 1950’s in Viet Nam. The 316th Field Detachment of the army’s 112th Military Intelligence Group at Ft. Sam Houston was ordered to stand down during Kennedy’s trip to Dallas.(2) Military command headquarters on 911 failed to scramble air force jets in time to intercept airliners that had gone way off course.
3. The alleged culprits were identified almost immediately. Therefore, forensic science was not needed in either investigation. Scapegoats and patsies don’t require a valid line of evidence. Within hours Lee Harvey Oswald was declared the murderer of JFK. Osama Bin Laden was called the mastermind of 911.
4. The press convicts patsies, not juries. Neither Lee Harvey Oswald nor Osama Bin Laden was given a fair trial. Sound evidence in court proceedings has been replaced with the drone of corporate media inoculating us daily with only putative evidence of their misdeeds.
5. Preparing patsies for their role is called “sheepdipping” in the intelligence community. A trail of phony incriminating evidence is carefully laid down prior to an event, which inevitably leads to the scapegoat. Oswald was sent to Russia then Mexico and New Orleans where he was involved in the Fair Play for Cuba committee, all to dress him up as an evil communist. Bin Laden is portrayed over and over on the nightly “news” as a terrorist and a Muslim, who hates Christianity, freedom, and democracy. He allegedly takes credit for all the evil the government wants to heap on him, but television viewers have no idea what he is really saying in the video clips offered as ready hard evidence.
6. Both patsies worked for the CIA. You can’t make a scapegoat out of any passerby. Sheepdipping takes time and requires access to designated targets on a continuous basis, such as employees or contract agents. Bin Laden and his Taliban/Al Qaeda network were contracted to run the CIA war in Afghanistan against the USSR. CIA officials visited Bin Laden in a US hospital in Dubai a few months prior to 911. The fact that his family and relatives immediately after 911 were allowed safe passage out of the country when no Americans were allowed to fly was not considered newsworthy in the mainstream press.
7. The Bush family was linked to both events. Bin Laden was also invested in the Bush families’ Carlyle Group, a corporation heavily involved in the armament business. So the Bush family and Bin Laden are linked commercially as well as through illegal “covert” wars. The link to Oswald is more obscure. Patsy’s often have “baby sitters” (a CIA term) to see them through the sheepdipping process. This role fell to an elitist Russian oilman named George de Mohrenschildt, who was later murdered mafia-style just prior to testifying before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. His personal telephone book contained: “Bush, George H.W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland.” To Bush “Zapata” was a good luck charm, so good in fact that it was lent to “Operation Zapata,” the top secret code name given for the CIA plan to illegally invade Cuba in April of 1961. At the time, Colonel Prouty was instructed to find two US Navy vessels for the assault. Bush lived in Houston with his wife Barbara. Two ships were taken out of mothball and received newly painted names “Houston” and “Barbara.” Bush was appointed CIA director in 1976, but one might think that he was already near the top of the US pyramid of power by 1961. A researcher named Joseph McBride discovered that Bush started working for the CIA in 1960. Later, a memo from J Edgar Hoover dated the day after JFK was killed stated that the FBI had briefed “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency” about the reaction of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami. In 1988 Bush lied to Congress, stating that he never worked for the CIA until being appointed its director. We can see why. His first job was to recruit soldiers for the Bay of Pigs invasion first drafted by Vice-president Nixon in 1959. Nixon owed his political career to Prescott Bush, dating back to 1941. Two of Bush’s recruits were Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis. In a 1988 television special, columnist Jack Anderson provided shocking evidence that Hunt and Sturgis were behind the grassy knoll in Dallas. Nixon openly confessed hiring hunt to kill JFK on a Watergate tape, June 23, 1972. The Watergate “investigation” went into closed session. Only a few hours of 4000 hours of tapes have been released to the public. (3,4)
8. Lines of communication were disrupted or confused. Right after Kennedy was killed the telephone lines went dead in Washington for two hours, a trick Oswald could not have pulled off. During 911 Dick Cheney was running four separate war games. Some assimilated airliners crashing into New York skyscrapers, adding many confusing blips on the radar so the FAA could not figure out what was happening. Secretive CIA software companies like Ptec had the wherewithal to interface command headquarters with the FAA and over-ride existing operations.(5)
9. Cover stories immediately followed the events. Colonel Prouty picked up a special edition newspaper in New Zealand. Three-quarters of the front page was dedicated to Oswald as the assassin of JFK. Prouty noted the time. It was about the time Oswald was being picked up. The story had to be planted in advance. Oswald wasn’t charged with killing Kennedy until late that night, over twelve hours later.(6) Right after 911 television news barked how Bin Laden and Al Qaeda hated America, how the middle east is fraught with irrational enemy sentiment, and how hijackers prepared for their missions at US flight schools, yet no genuine connection was ever made between these claims and the actual event.
10. The fox guards the chicken coup. All the president’s men in each case investigated themselves. President Johnson, a conservative, stacked the Warren Commission with conservative southern democrats with Nixon conservatives. Nixon’s close friend Chief Justice Earl Warren headed the commission named in his honor. He later told Nixon that he was willing to set up another commission to get him off the hook for Watergate. Likewise, Bush cronies gave themselves a clean slate of innocence in the 911 Kean Commission, focusing all the blame on Osama Bin Laden. Conflict of Interest by the Warren and Kean commissions put the government itself in the position of covering its own tracks. Commission members should be randomly picked from the voters list, then, trained in procedure by nonpartisan civil servants.
11. The commissions committed hundreds of omissions. Any evidence or testimony that contradicted or truncated the “government” position of blaming Oswald or Bin Laden received little or no attention. Dozens of witnesses in Dallas were ignored. Some were intimidated. Julia Ann Mercer’s signed affidavit was disregarded by the Warren Commission. A forged copy was submitted instead, effectively stating the opposite of what she had written.(7) At 911’s ground zero, people said they heard explosions from below and up in the buildings, only to be ignored by the Kean commission. In Washington people witnessed a missile striking the Pentagon and were denied a chance to testify. On 911, Tom Siebert of the Washington Post reported, “We heard something that made the sound of a missile...” Mike Walter from CNN questioned the idea of it being a plane from American Airlines, “…That’s not right. It’s really low. And I saw it. I mean, it was like a cruise missile…” Again, they were ignored. Such blanket omissions constitute obstruction of justice.
12. Valid evidence magically disappeared. Critical forensic evidence was deliberately hidden, destroyed, or manipulated to deceive the public. JFK’s brain, full of evidence was hidden in the National Archives. Several years later when a forensic doctor was finally permitted to examine it, the brain had disappeared, hardly the work of a lone, dead gunman. The President’s limousine was immediate scrubbed of evidence and refurbished. No investigators were allowed near the car. Archconservative Henry Luce, founder of Time-Life, managed to talk naïve Abraham Zapruder out of his video. That night, on the day of the assassination, television news broadcast just a few specific frames of the scene. They were juxtapositioned in reverse order, to give the illusion that JFK’s head had been hit from behind instead of the front right from the grassy knoll. Untrained FEMA personnel were the only ones allowed to inspect the rubble at the World Trade Center. Neighboring videos trained on the Pentagon were immediately confiscated. The FBI burst into a room at a nearby hotel where employees were watching in horror what struck the Pentagon and snatched the tape for the recorder, never to be seen again. Small sections of the aircraft were draped and carried off so no one could see if it was an airliner. If the aircraft was an airliner, then why was there all this secrecy? The fire chief and his men couldn’t figure out what had become of the aircraft.
13. Invalid evidence magically appeared. Out of seemingly nowhere, a bullet in perfect condition appeared on Kennedy’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital. This was later sold to the public as the magic bullet that zigzagged in space and made several entrance and exit wounds. Oswald was given credit with a shooting performance way beyond top marksmen’s skills. He was stigmatized as having “maggies drawers,” a Marine term for lousy shooter. On 911 the passport of the alleged kingpin, Mahamad Atta, magically floated down from the sky fully intact. Later, we were spun something that has never happened to any steal structure building: that the towers collapsed patty cake fashion. Structural engineers like Kevin Ryan from Underwriters Laboratories have confirmed that this was impossible. Instead all three buildings fell predictably as in a normal demolition. Hami Hanjour, the alleged pilot of Flight 77, would have needed to make magical zigzag maneuvers like the magic bullet. Like Oswald’s poor marksmanship, the FAA found that Hanjour had poor flying skills. None of the alleged hijackers were on the passenger manifest, yet suddenly the Bush team revealed their names and pictures, only to ignore later that six of the hijackers showed up back home, living with their families.
14. Critics of the plot are systematically demonized and censored from mainstream media: Jim Garrison, District Attorney of New Orleans, who brought the only court case against the JFK conspirators, was subjected to a cruel media blitz, hoping that the entire public would turn against him or ignore him. They chose the latter. Even the word “conspiracy” came under attack and anyone using it was considered unpatriotic or an idiot. Even today most people are unwilling to use the term for fear of being stigmatized. Meanwhile, jingoist hypocrisy during all this time has lent liberty to the conspiracy theory that a “commie” lives under every rock, morphed Orwellian immediately after the USSR collapsed to a “terrorist” living under every rock. George Junior’s pronouncement that “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” befits the classic attempted coup de grace of democracy. In military states the people have no need for thinking or being part of democratic discussion. You take orders from the boss. G.H.W. Bush said, “What we say, goes.” Authoritarian elitist rule is always looking for a place to resurrect itself.
15. Evidence was fixed. Faked photos of Oswald with a rifle were produced and used as prime evidence to condemn him in the eyes of the public. A legal autopsy of Kennedy was denied. A shoving match at Parkland hospital ended with federal authorities stealing his body to the naval base in Bethesda, Maryland. There they pronounced the findings inconclusive, all this done by the same military suspected of ambushing Kennedy. Ten years later, Luce released the Zapruder film to the public, only to have the CIA reversing the footage once again, spinning the illusion that Kennedy was shot only from behind. Immediately after 911, we were subjected to a televised barrage of Palestinian footage celebrating the attack on New York. What the media didn’t tell us is that the jubilance was from a 1991 Muslim celebration and was therefore used to deceive the public.
16. Critics and witnesses were killed. About 150 witnesses died mysteriously surrounding the JFK assassination. For a complete list of who, how, when, and where, read Jim Marrs’ book, Crossfire. Iraq weapons inspectors have also died under unusual circumstances. One supposedly committed suicide, but evidence revealed that he was dragged into some bushes, not too likely for a suicide victim. Another critic supposedly jumped off the top-secret floor of the State Department building in Washington. Curiously, his wife was waiting for him downstairs in a car. Senator Paul Wellstone was an astute critic of the Bush administration policies. His plane crashed near Eveleth, Minnesota on October 25, 2002, killing his family, three aides, and crew—eight in total. The on-scene reporter insisted that plane had been devastated, unlike any weather related crash. Still, the press was only willing to report that bad weather was the cause of the crash.
17. The CIA Bankrolled the Events. In an unrelated trial, Nixon Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt was identified as the bag man in Dallas on November 22, 1963, handing out money and guns to people going to assigned shooting stations(8). As bagman, shooter behind the grassy knoll, and burglar at Watergate,(9) one might think the government would be interested in arresting him. The week before 911 Pakistani General Mahmoud gave $100,000 to Mohamed Atta. Mahmoud was part of ISI, the CIA equivalent in Pakistan who fronted for the CIA war in Afghanistan. ISI gave money and direction to the Al Qaeda-Taliban network that ran the insurgency, ultimately answering to the CIA and the US President.
18. The events include several “smoking guns.” By definition only one prima facie event is enough to smoke out the culprits. The Zapruder film of Kennedy’s head being partially exploded by a bullet from the grassy knoll is prima facie proof of a government plot. Before the assassination, “lone-nut” Oswald could not have possibly changed the parade route to come directly before him. This was the work of Dallas Mayor Earl Cabell, brother to General Charles Cabell who failed at the Bay of Pigs and was fired by JFK. In New York, the demolition of WTC-7 is again proof enough of an insider job. Building six protected building seven and still did not collapse. Moreover, the alleged hijackers could not have flown such complex missions without having flown jets, which they had not.
19. Both events produced the big prize. Congress allotted record increases in military spending for the Viet Nam war and the Iraq invasion. Kennedy’s October 2, 1963 National Security Action Memorandum 263 laid the foundation for leaving Viet Nam and scaling back the military. He was heading for an era of peace. By signing NSAM 263 Kennedy signed “his own death warrant,” noted Colonel Prouty. Kennedy would have easily won re-election in 1964, so the CIA knew they had to move decisively. Shooter teams began following Kennedy from city to city. Everything fell in place in Dallas with Mayor Cabell. The real prize was not just money but the power to affect “peace” through war. Many villages in Viet Nam and Iraq have been destroyed in order to save them, as military double-speak explains.
Sorrow for the nation and the Kennedy family had just begun. Robert Kennedy had won the California primary and was well on his way to the White House, promising to reopen the case against his brother. Robert was shot dead within minutes—again an alleged lone assassin. Several independent researchers found the CIA responsible for Robert Kennedy’s death. Ted Kennedy was warned that he too would be killed if he ran for president. He declined.
Now we learn that JFK Jr. may not have died by accident in 1999. Eye witnesses claim to have seen a flash in the sky. Victor Pribanic, a skilled trial lawyer was out fishing that night and heard an explosion above him. He later led the Coast Guard search team to the correct vicinity, where, they did find the wreckage. Parts were scattered for miles, some of it washing ashore eight miles away. Media reports went from confusion to apparent cover-up. The “news” said the weather was bad. Meteorological records show that the night was clear with eight miles visibility. Like earlier radio calls, John signaled the tower that he was starting his runway approach. The “news” reported that he had become disorientated, that radar showed him wondering around the sky. No MAYDAY call was received. The original radar records of a perfectly normal flight mysteriously disappeared to the dismay of airport personnel. A satellite image revealed that the plane went straight down; just what planes do when they have blown up.
JFK Jr. was a danger to the establishment. He planned to announce his candidacy for either the senate against Hilary Clinton or for the presidency against George W. in 2000. They were relatively sure that he would win and so was John. Moreover, John was preparing to blow the cover off the assassination of his father. A new era of scrutiny threatened the continuity of power by the warlords.
From here on out, keeping the cover-up of JFK Jr. alive will be just as important as keeping the cover-up of his fathers death alive. To this end, the public is subjected to periodic “reports” that serve as inoculation booster shots, reminding the public that “lone nuts” and “accidents” are responsible for the deaths of popular figures.
In the post World War II era, peacemaker JFK momentarily interrupted the presidential roller mill of Prescott Bush and his brand of Nazism, a man who laundered money for Adolf Hitler as a New York banker. Now look at the world. Grandson George W. Bush has declared a state of permanent war, emulating the vision of Hitler. This means a permanent state of war profiteering.
Shocking statistics and charts have been published by the Center for Defense Information in Washington. Since WWII the scorecard speaks for itself: military-industrial-complex $21 trillion in taxes, as opposed to $0 for a yet to be counter-poised peace-industrial-complex and the dream of feeding the world’s poor. Rocket science is not needed to recognize that a rogue organization has planted itself right in the middle of the US constitutional government. Still, remain doubtful. Don’t believe me. Do your own research, but keep in mind the following useful context.
The Frank Church senate committee findings of 1975 found that the CIA, by that time, had already conducted 13,000 covert operations, including assassination, kidnap, torture, election-rigging, and destabilization programs of any manner they saw fit. JFK tried to stop them by issuing top-secret National Security Action Memorandums 55-57. The Pentagon and CIA ignored all three and went ahead with their invasion plans for Cuba. Kennedy planned to smash the CIA right after his re-election.(10) Boy! Was he naïve.
All government personnel are required to swear allegiance to the US Constitution, but elements within the government and military have chosen treason. Now you know why the Constitution says there shall be no standing armies in times of peace. The founding fathers learned from history that once established, militaries become difficult to control. By the 1980’s President Reagan’s CIA director William Casey was walking around the White House bragging that the Constitution is just a piece of paper written by men and that other men can just as easily tear it up. Hitler too enjoyed destroying Germany’s fledgling democracy. He wanted a new world order, just as the Bush cabal has declared a “new world order.” A world military dictatorship is anathema to our US Constitutional democracy.
Hello America, our country has been overthrown. Do we have the guts to take it back? Benjamin Franklin predicted that the people would remain too politically illiterate and too intellectually weak to maintain the inchoate democracy he helped to forge. Let’s show the world he was wrong.
(1) Global Outlook magazine. www.globalresearch.ca. Issue Number Two—Summer 2002. pp.10-11.
(2) THE CIA, VIETNAM, AND THE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE JOHN F. KENNEDY. 1992. L. Fletcher Prouty. Chapter Nineteen: Visions of a Kennedy Dynasty. Carol Publishing Goup: New York
(3) Plausible Denial. 1991. Mark Lane. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York.
(4) The Realist # 117. Summer 1991. “The Role of Richard Nixon and George Bush in the Assassination of President Kennedy” by Paul Kangas.
(5) CROSSING THE RUBICON: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. 2004. Michael C. Ruppert. www.copvcia.com
(6) ibid Prouty. Chapter nineteen.
(7) ON THE TRAIL OF THE ASSASSINS. 1988. Jim Garrison. pp.216-218. Sheridan Square Press: New York.
(8) ibid Lane, pp.294-296.
(9) ibid Kangas.
(10) ibid. Lane, pp.99-100.
'The Cause of Wars & Aggression: Book 1'
by author, Bo Filter.
M.A., Psychology.
“Your book… is a truly remarkable accomplishment…a life work on an exceptionally important and controversial issue, written in low key though it deals with a subject that is truly a matter of life or death, not just for a few individuals, but for the entire human race… It is also written in a steady, logical, pleasant style… I agree with your thesis one hundred percent… I see this work as a textbook at the college level, and as such I think it could become a classic.”
— Harvey Mindess, Retired President and Psychology Professor,
Antioch University, Los Angeles
"I am very excited about your book, which promises to join Henry George's Progress and Poverty and the work of Noam Chomsky, Robert Theobald, Jim Rough, Tom Attlee and... Eknath Easwaren."
— Caspar Davis, LL.B. Family Law
"Your text is outstanding and I am sharing it with others in history, sociology and political science."
— Dr. Byron Plumley, Director of Peace & Justice, Regis University, Denver
"I'm very impressed with the scope of the book. I'll find it a very useful reference book—particularly on the psychological dynamics and aspects of violence. I think it is definitely graduate level—actually PhD level. I would highly recommend it for PhD programs in this field."
— Lisa Schirch, Ph.D., Conflict Transformation Program,
Eastern Mennonite University, Virginia
“I… am very impressed. The writing is clear, forceful, reasoned, and thoughtful.” You “appear to grasp the fundamental truths of war and aggression in an interesting and unique way.”
— Dr. Leo Sandy,
Professor of Peace and Justice Studies, Plymouth State University
" I have perused the book pretty carefully... It's strong and it's provocative."
— Gordon Fellman, Professor of Sociology and Chair, Peace, Conflict, and
Coexistence Studies, Brandeis University
I think [your book] is quite an impressive discussion of the psychological bases of war and aggression, an aspect of war that only a minority of scholars in my field of political science emphasize.
— Matthew Evangelista, Professor of Government and Director of Peace Studies, Cornell University, New York
"...very interesting..."
— Dr. Rachel Shigekane, Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley
"...well written with interesting examples..."
— Dr. Loramy Gerstbauer, Director of Peace Studies, Gustavus Adolphus College
"I find you have undertaken a tremendous job, and made a significant effort in linking the psychological causes of aggression to their relationship with war. While our studies are linked to sociology, political sciences, and international relations, clearly the psychological aspects go a long way to explain motivations and behaviours that influence and color the picture of the causes of war. They all start with people after all! I realize as well that this is the beginning of a series of books expanding on these topics. We have a module in our program, that deals with Post Traumatic syndrome and another with the root causes of conflict, both could benefit tremendously from your work."
— Paz G. Buttedahl, Ph.D., Director, Human Security and Peacebuilding Programme, Royal Roads University, Victoria, Vancouver Island, B.C.
"...very interesting..."
— Ron Claassen, Director of Center for Peacemaking and Conflict Studies, Fresno Pacific University
" I ... was impressed with your effort to explain the causes of war in an effort to end them."
— Dr. JoAnn Aviel, Chair/Professor, International Relations,
San Francisco State University
"I appreciated the excellent coverage that you devote to many of the psychological approaches to war and aggression. "
— Professor Jean-Francois Rioux, Director, Conflict Studies, Saint Paul University, Ottawa
"...interesting, clearly written and quite informative..."
— Cynthia Mahmood, Ph.D,. Director of Graduate Studies, Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Notre Dame
"... cer tainly interesting..."
— Professor Janet Moen, Peace Studies, University of North Dakota
"...very interesting..."
— Professor David Smith, Justice and Peace Studies, University of Saint Thomas
"This insightful new book is a significant body of work and is about to become an eminent text and distinguished source book amongst intelligent and concerned individuals who care about the causes of war and where war is taking us all. Indeed, it contains rich material for both intellectuals and academicians while also being an exceedingly readable text for the common layman. A visit to Bo Filter's web site at globaljusticepublishing.com is a must. The author's views are meticulously researched and intelligently supported with examples and comparisons few will dispute to any effect. His observations are refreshing and earth-shattering in their implications. In my opinion, this book will quake the foundations of Political Science across the arc of the Globe. I believe strongly that all libraries, public and academic, should have a copy on their shelves. This is the first of 6 books in the series. I can hardly wait for Book number 2!"
— Skye Ryan-Evans (Poet\Author) Canada\Australia
"You are a gold mine for peace.”
— Joseph Roberts, Publisher and Senior editor of Common Ground Magazine
"With an advanced degree in psychology and experience in the armed services, including participation in a high-security war room during the Vietnam War, Bo Filter sifts through much historical, sociological, and psychological material to crystallize the primary source of war. Namely, this source is the distortion of truth into dogma, so that dogma supplants truth. When this happens, groups instilled with the dogma believe they must wage war to advance or preserve the dogma against threats from other groups, who may in effect believe in a contrary dogma.
Dogmas grow from a single belief into a psychological complex of core, secondary, and peripheral beliefs. Most of this first work in a planned series of six works analyzing the cause of wars and aggression at all levels, from individuals and small groups to nations and civilizations, is taken up with the formation and interaction of this psychological complex. In light of the seemingly endless deadly conflict within and between many countries, Filter's work is pertinent as well as illuminating and stimulating. It rewards readers with conceptual and analytic tools to make sense of much that is going on in today's world, even if individuals and leaders seem helpless to remedy the self-defeating denials of truth which are the cornerstones of the different dogmas. The author writes in such a way that readers not wishing to go into all of his extended, insightful analyzes of the historical, sociological, and psychological material can read through his summaries to pick up the book's main ideas for their value in understanding today's world and conflict in human affairs".
— Henry Berry, book reviewer
The Small Press Book Review
In 1978 Dr. Melanie Allen predicted that Bo would make a "real and original contribution to the field" of psychology. In his final Masters Degree papers, she made note of his "doctoral-level theory building and thinking." Bo "builds a solid meta-philosophical and philosophical base" under the "change necessary for the survival of our society."
— Dr. Melanie Allen, Professor of Psychology Antioch University, Los Angeles
"At last I've read your book - entirely. I found much in it of interest... I very much agree with your thinking about the importance of learning critical thinking, even applied to one's own culture, if we aspire to mitigate political violence."
— Professor Joanna Santa Barbara, Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University
Common Ground Magazine : September 2004
Why So Many Wars? by Bo Filter
To reaffirm hegemony is nothing new in history, but worse, a perpetual practice of entrenched aristocracies. In case anyone fails to understand which side of the fence Bush sits, Moore shows televised footage of Bush bragging amongst the elite that he is proud to be one of them. Throughout history, aristocracies have used all forms of guile to maintain their position of privilege.
Pretexts, by definition, galvanize public support, and they work specifically because the masses are unwilling to forego their blind faith in their leaders, rejecting the idea, as preposterous, that they, themselves, could be tricked into waging a war of aggression. To this day, most people do not believe that the sinking of the Lusitania in 1916 was used to galvanize US support to enter World War I. Nor do they believe that Pearl Harbor was put deliberately in danger by an act of war, the prior blockading of the Strait of Malacca, cutting off Japan from its crucial supply of oil. Hitler burned down the Reichstag in a move to declare Marshall law and close down democracy, what the new Patriot Act is positioned to do in the States.
People tragically forget that democracy is anathema to aristocracy. Rulers need followers and whipping the masses into war fever for imperial purposes is as old as Caesar: “Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.”
In the recent past, leaders still bragged about the success of their manipulations. At the Nuremberg trials, Hermann Goering explained: “ … the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” Detractors want us to believe that such trickery is all in the past. Instead, stealth has gone underground. With today’s $1 billion a year media spin corporations, no one can admit to this, like the $10 million sell-job of the first Gulf war to the US public by faking the event of Iraqi soldiers taking children out of incubators and leaving them on the floor to die. This was spun so convincingly by the tearful daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador, and sponsored by the Republican Party which gave the public relations contract to Hill and Knowlton, headquartered in the same building in Washington. With 9/11, Bush could play a trump card, “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.” Quickly, the Patriot Act memorializes this affront on open democratic discussion. For follow-up, the corporate media spin constantly conditions the public to equate dissent with treason, creating two distinct camps of “good versus evil” in the US.
According to ancient class warfare, the elite must divide the people against each other, arming the right-wing supporters of monarchy to suppress the masses. The historical record of the US aristocracy is no different. In every US elite-sponsored totalitarian country, critics and protesters are massacred, but first a national emergency is customarily declared with a clause that elections be postponed indefinitely. This is why an alleged Bin Laden attack is imminent. A finely tuned pretext will see Bush in the White House come January. The one thing that could stop him is that the public somehow starts to draw the connections between Bush and the Saudi elite. Hats off to Michael Moore for doing his part.
Common Ground Magazine: Archive: October 2004
2004 US election - True Vote or Computer Fraud?
by Bo Filter
Tribute to Athan Lee Gibbs, Sr.
Athan Gibbs died under suspicious circumstances in a two-vehicle collision just north of Nashville on March 12. He had begun marketing the US-government-certified TruVote voter validation and verification system, a touch screen machine that gives voters a verifiable paper audit trail. The machine issues a number that the voter can verify through an election office printout, a toll free number or a secure site on the internet. The machine rectifies voting irregularities cited by a joint study conducted by the Carnegie Corporation, Cal Tech and MIT. The joint project found that between four and six million votes were lost in the 2000 election. The Tennessee General Assembly presented Gibbs with a joint resolution honouring his invention.
In Washington, Congress is deliberating bills that will mandate Gibbs’s voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT). Some States have moved ahead. Ohio, Nevada and California have executive orders directing county election officials to only buy electronic voting machines equipped with the VVPAT. Gibbs was driven by his experiences growing up in Memphis. During the 1950s and ‘60s, he watched minorities struggle to exercise their right to vote. He decided to act after reviewing a US study of the 2000 presidential election. The Commission on Civil Rights found that votes cast by African-Americans in the decisive state of Florida were 10 times more likely to be rejected.
Readers may recall the many media reports of complaints during that election about large numbers of missing votes from democratically controlled black counties. Just prior to the election, Jeb Bush, Florida’s governor and brother of the President, openly boasted on television that he would “deliver Florida” to the Republican ticket. On election day voter complaints forced a recount. Al Gore appeared to be winning. The count was stopped. Then, without a Constitutional mandate, a Republican-filled supreme court appointed George W. Bush to the presidency. To stop the vote and impose authority constitutes a coup d’etat, a denunciation of democratic process. Why Americans did not revolt is unclear. To put salve on the wound, the state of Florida declared that sweeping election reforms would be legislated.
Yet, the 2002 primary election proved to be no better. Electronic voting machines continued to make votes disappear. For instance, in Boca Raton, popular mayor Emil Danciu came in third, 8 percent under expectations. He suspected foul play when his stronghold home precinct reported low numbers. Electronic voting system expert Rebecca Mercuri reported during court proceedings that California-based Sequoia Voting Systems had sold its machines under trade secret protection, disallowing proper inspection. So what is Sequoia? According to researcher Steve Moore, Sequoia is one of three voting-system manufacturers, all Republican-led corporations actively trying to elect Bush. The other two are Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems and Omaha-based Election Systems and Software. Moore observes that by leaving “absolutely no verifiable paper trail,” the big three are helping to rig the November 2 election, instigating a “bloodless coup.” Moore backs up his claim by pointing to 2002 voting results. For example, in Georgia, incumbent Democratic Governor Ray Barnes was defeated, giving the Republicans their first victory there in 134 years. The poll results showed a miraculous 12-point shift in the last 48 hours. Right after the vote, Diebold erased all the ballots, leaving no record or paper trail.
In Minnesota and Colorado, Senate races produced the same surprise Republican victories, giving them control of the US Senate. Diebold’s CEO, Walden O’Dell is a major fundraiser for Bush, writing to contributors in 2003 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president next year.” With the big three’s machines in many other states, an election landslide seems eminent. So what might save the day in the last hour? A California voting systems panel has charged O’Dell with deceptive business practices, which may lead to criminal charges. For instance, Diebold installed uncertified software in its machines in 17 counties without notifying state officials. Worse, a manipulation mechanism was found hidden in the Diebold central tabulator. A two-digit code creates a second vote set, which in turn cues the voting system to read the totals from the bogus set of votes. The design took a dozen version adjustments to perfect, according to researcher Bev Harris. If a vote is not changed, it can go missing. Diebold spokesman David Bear told Vanity Fair that negative votes can be entered into its machines. Researcher Lynn Landes says that voting machines will produce all of the election results for the upcoming 2004 presidential election, while Newsweek reports that they will be used by about 28 percent of the country, quite a discrepancy but still enough to throw the election.
If Republicans stole Senate power in the 2002 election, what can we expect for 2004? The number of states requiring VVPAT machines appears too small to hold off a massive voting sham. Landes warns her fellow Americans that they are “missing the boat on the biggest crisis facing our democracy … Americans aren’t really voting. Machines are. Call it faking democracy.” Their government will not be coming to the rescue. Hilary Clinton has co-sponsored a bill to require a paper trail, but it has been stalled in Congress. Only seven of 229 Republicans have signed on to the bill, prompting Steve Moore to wonder if “they’ve got Georgia on their minds.” Athan Gibbs’s dream will have to wait a little longer, providing that the individual states can wake up in time to do the job of Congress.
Bo Filter is author of the newly released book: The Cause of Wars and Aggression. www.globaljusticepublishing.com. See also www.globalresearch.ca and www.blackboxvoting.org
Common Ground : Archive : January 2005
Missile Defence Sovereignty Meltdown
by Bo Filter
Remember Ronald Reagan’s mad scientist program commonly called Star Wars? Well it’s back, morphed and repackaged from the strategic defence initiative, now sold as ballistic missile defence. Like Star Wars, this prodigy is a violation of international law, particularly the clauses that prohibit the manufacture, transport, deployment, or use of weapons of mass destruction. So why does Canada, a nation that supposedly supports international law, want to violate those same laws? Is the friendship between Canadian militarists and US military manufacturers more important? Let’s not let that become the case.
More likely, Canadians have become used to being bullied by a superpower. But, oh, how proud we were when Prime Minister Diefenbaker said No to the US request to send troops to Vietnam and when Jean Chrétien refused to participate in the assault on Iraq. Signing on to missile defence is not a simple act of being corralled one more time into going along with the bully. Canadian sovereignty will very likely go into meltdown. It’s one thing to be occasionally forced into a “coalition of the willing,” but quite another when our defence becomes infused with the history of a country that has on questionable grounds, invaded 130 other nations.
Too many Canadians know too little about the history of US aggression. Nor do many of us know that the US has invaded Canada four times. Learn for yourself by reading David Orchard’s book, The Fight for Canada. The selling of Star Wars and kind is not helping us one bit. The protagonists for missile defence shield want us to believe that insignificant differences exist between the twin towers of New York and downtown Toronto. Granted, each time we are bludgeoned by the military and the corporate media to join another US-led “humanitarian cause,” we become ever more tarnished by the blood we shed, moving Wall Street and Bay Street closer together ideologically. Fortunately for us, the world does not see Canada as a predator nation with colonies and victims too numerous to count. Some of you might remember the Frank Church Senate committee hearings of 1975. The committee found that the CIA had conducted worldwide, over 13,000 illegal operations. When a deputy director was asked how many of a certain violation regarding election rigging had occurred, the chairman was told that there were so many that they had lost count and had no record for many of them.
Of the 13,000 plus operations cited in the Church Committee report, the largest, most expensive and most deadly was the sponsorship of the Afghani war against the USSR. This was a proxy war waged by al Qaeda, created by the CIA and directed through the intelligence services of Pakistan. Having two intermediaries provided considerable cushioning between the killing fields and the US taxpayers, who knew little if anything about the crime. Two decades later, the “war on terror” is chasing a CIA-bred hero named Osama bin Laden, who was credited with helping to destroy the evil Soviet empire but cannot be found. He was supposedly on the most wanted list before 9/11, while at the same time bin Laden was receiving medical treatment at a US-friendly hospital. Guests to his room included staff from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Do we dare ask the obvious question? If the CIA sponsored bin Laden in Afghanistan, did it work with him with equal fervor on 9/11? Many of the pieces of the 9/11 puzzle fit together this way. So if the war on terror is a hoax and 9/11 was a pretext for it, all in a struggle by US oilmen to control Middle East and Caspian Sea region oil, then the attack on Iraq must have been planned well in advance. Guess what? It was and the CIA certainly knew that no one important would pay for these crimes. Going back to 1975, only a few underlings went to jail for the 13,000 crimes up to that time.
The message was clear to the CIA. Having weathered the storm, nothing stood in its way. Covert operations would continue unabated, financed with billions of tax dollars, augmented by untold billions more acquired illegally, all actions face-lifted under the rubric of national security or the opportunistic rhetoric of freedom and democracy. Living in the eye of this global hurricane of aggression, we North Americans are mostly numb to the effects. What we collectively don’t seem to realize is that the victims of these thousands of crimes know who is behind them. So the question for Canadians today is, are we going to accept Star Wars and marry our destiny to rogue nation behaviour? Bully nations have always sought coalitions to lend an illusion of legitimacy. If 130 wounded nations seek retribution on the US, are Canadians going to stand in their way and say something foolish like, “You must have had it coming to you!” I don’t think so.
We can address international crime through education and spreading the word on breaches of law. Knowledge comes to us bitter sweet; the bitter being painful truths we must face, but the sweet is often received without notice. Bells don’t ring and bad news is no cause for celebration. Yet, silently and subtly you are ever so slightly more aware now than you were say, a month ago of critical factors concerning the world around you. You read. You learn. You are aware. This is power – power that promises freedom from tyranny and the certainty of an enlightened, peaceful future.
Bo Filter is author of a newly released book: The Cause of Wars and Aggression www.globaljusticepublishing.com
COMMON GROUND Magazine is located online at: http://www.commonground.ca
