The Principle of the Commons: Was the Magna Carta the beginning of liberty or it's end?

Magna Carta as "Where Modern European Civilization went wrong?"

My friend shared a post in Facebook on the Magna Carta in which Fred Harrison maintains that "If we want to discover where modern European Civilization went wrong, one of the places to start to look for the clues is this field" in Runnymede. And surprisingly he maintains that:

"The liberties of the individual began to be eroded with Magna Carta. Far from celebrating it as a sacred document that protected people’s natural rights, the 1215 deal in Runnymede between king and aristocracy took the first fatal step in a centuries-long process of de-socialising the nation’s rental revenue, necessitating the imposition of taxes that damage the health and welfare of the nation." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwU2CvR3mm8]

Now I agree with Fred Harrison in the overall theme of his argument that it was the conversion of feudal rights and obligations to absolute property rights that undermined the wealth and comfort of the common people of England. But I disagree that it started with the Magna Carta. I think he's pointing to the wrong culprit, and that on the contrary the Magna Carta was even more important to the Future of human rights than is commonly acknowledged and the reason is that the King was also forced to uphold the rights of commoners, something that other Kings and nobility in Europe successfully denied. Had the aristocracy lost their battles with the King, then the King would have had the level of power and wealth he needed to enforce absolutist monarchy similar to what happened in France where there was no Magna Carta. Had the King lost completely to the Aristocracy the tyranny would have been local as happened in Poland.

When the magna carta was granted the Normans had just finished almost 100 years of trying to stamp out Liberty for commoners (sometimes more successfully than others).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwU2CvR3mm8

In his Youtube exposition he claims that the:

"ugly truth" of the Magna Carta is "terrible to behold" and that the "Magna Carta was the beginning of the end of the liberties of people born on the British Isles!" [Youtube]

When I heard that my jaw almost fell to the floor. On the contrary, in the context of it's times, it was huge progress for all involved. Without the Magna Carta, the Kings of England would have had an easier time asserting an absolute monarchy. And when the transition to a modern country occurred 300 years later the common folks of England would have had more trouble maintaining their rights than they had anyway.

The balance between the nobility and the King was important. The King provided an appellate outlet for local tyranny from nobles. The King in turn needed at least some check on his powers and the Magna Carta was that. It also was a reassertion of pre Norman Conquest Germanic beliefs over the Christo-Fascist notions brought in from France and the Frankish Empire. "Divine Right of Kings" made royalty totally subservient to the Crown. Magna Carta asserted that at least some of the people had rights too.

TO ALL FREE MEN OF OUR KINGDOM we have also granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out below - [Magna Carta]

If anything the Magna Carta was an acknowledgment that at least some people had rights. As my friend Robert Burns notes right off the bat the Magna Carta:

"did not de-socialize anything. It was understood that the nobility, the peers, were rulers over the commoners. They did not engage in the same deception today where the capitalist/rentier ignoble rulers pretend to be mere ‘private’ commoners (de-socializing the rents)." [https://www.facebook.com/groups/372946956055502/1110765355606988/?comment_id=1110801398936717¬if_t=group_comment_reply]

Rights to the Commons

Yes, the nobility and the King cut a deal that mostly ignored the concerns of the Peasantry. But not of all the peasantry. The thin middle class of English commoners was represented. Yeomen, who usually owed more than a few acres and farmed their own land in return for being England's famed and feared "longbowmen" were present at the table and their voice is heard indirectly along with other commoners. I like to think that the echoes of "Robin Hood are present in the treaty in the Magna Carta, in this passage:

"(47) All forests that have been created in our reign shall at once be disafforested. River-banks that have been enclosed in our reign shall be treated similarly." - [http://www.bl.uk/.../magna-carta-english-translation]

Yes the Magna Carta was imposed on King John and guaranteed the rights of nobles. But at least some of the better educated and armed lower classes were there too, and they forced their issue on King John as well. That includes the small farmers known as Yeomen who also were the backbone of the British Army with their archers. The magna Carta is where most Robin Hood stories are set for a reason.

Common Rights

In feudal times feudal obligations were law. They were governed by common law and the only real threat to common law was the various crowns, all of whom sought to establish absolute arbitrary rule. Where the nobility won too much power the crown became so weak it couldn't even defend the country -- as happened to Poland. But in England the feudal rights were affirmed without totally Défenestreing the crown. As Robert Burns notes:

"So Magna Carta instead decentralized the feudal State power. In contrast, the anointing of ignobles centralizes and de-socializes ruling power (Citigroup, for example, rules the entire World and calls its rule merely its own ‘private interest’ and none of our business)." [https://www.facebook.com/groups/372946956055502/1110765355606988/?comment_id=1110801398936717¬if_t=group_comment_reply]

But what documents like the Magna Carta did were to distribute powers and obligations and attempt to establish basic principles of rule of law. The principles may even have been conscious of the principles behind what they were doing, because much of what became common law is based on traditional principles. And you see these affirmed in passage after passage in the Charter. For example:

"(57) In cases where a Welshman was deprived or dispossessed of anything, without the lawful judgment of his equals, by our father King Henry or our brother King Richard, and it remains in our hands or is held by others under our warranty, we shall have respite for the period commonly allowed to Crusaders, unless a lawsuit had been begun, or an enquiry had been made at our order, before we took the Cross as a Crusader. But on our return from the Crusade, or if we abandon it, we will at once do full justice according to the laws of Wales and the said regions." -[Magna Carta]

Rule of Law:

The Magna Carta imposed principles of rule of law for commoners:

"(20) For a trivial offence, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood. In the same way, a merchant shall be spared his merchandise, and a villein the implements of his husbandry, if they fall upon the mercy of a royal court. None of these fines shall be imposed except by the assessment on oath of reputable men of the neighbourhood." [Magna Carta]

The principle of "trial by one's peers, was originally a principle of nobility, but it's still a principle of fairness:

"(21) Earls and barons shall be fined only by their equals, and in proportion to the gravity of their offence." [Magna Carta]

And also for the Church:

"(22) A fine imposed upon the lay property of a clerk in holy orders shall be assessed upon the same principles, without reference to the value of his ecclesiastical benefice." [Magna Carta]

So was the Magna Carta the "End of Liberty" or a victory in a long war?

So On the contrary the Magna Carta was not the "end of freedom" or "liberty" but a successful skirmish in a long war between conflicting interests. I agree with the theme expressed in the last 5 minutes, but his facts and justifications are poorly argued. The Magna Carta actually reflects the complexity of the struggles for common rights of commoners. At the table at Runnymede commoners weren't even directly represented but as shown in the above passages they were there.

Later in his exposition he claims that the expression "estate" or "land" was eliminated from the American founding documents because they wanted to deny the people a right to land property. But the problem with that argument is that the assertion of an absolute (or alloidal) right to land would have been the basis of the great landlords asserting the right to collect massive rents and evict people who couldn't pay them, not that people have an "equal right" to land. That is precisely the mistake that commoners made during the Enlightenment. It wasn't the Magna Carta that converted feudal rulers rights to simple property, it was the very sleight of hand in parliament of ending 'nobility' without redistributing the property that the nobles controlled that converted those rights to simple property and paved the way for fencing and highland clearances. On the Contrary the Magna Carta saw the Crown forced to concede people's right to access rivers or use the "Kings Forests." An equal right to use of land is asserted in the the passage the "Pursuit of happiness." Fred Harrison gets it exactly backwards.

The Magna Carta as a Battle in a Long war

The fact is that the magna carta was one battle of a long struggle between socially dominant nobles (and clergy), commoners and the Crown in which the sides constantly shifted. Commoners fought the crown and nobles by asserting Feudal obligations on the part of both, and by asserting "common rights". They usually had to fight and be crushed to get even minor concessions. And much of what is in "natural rights" discourse was under-ground and expressed in legend, lore (stories like Robin Hood), limericks ("When Adam spat and Eve Span, who was then the common man" dates back to the Normans). And local rebellion, even when it resulted in mass beheadings was often the only path to assert justice. A little more than 100 years later, Peasants would give their lives fighting the crowns on similar arguments to what Locke would argue 2 centuries after that. Rights are Bottom up. Social Domination is top down. It has to be resisted bottom up.

As I noted in my blog on the Peasant Revolt of 1381, at the beginning of 2014:

"When Adam delved and Eve span,[a] Who was then the gentleman?[3] From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty" [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/01/rights-come-from-below-john-lockes.html] Src: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ball_(priest)]

Rights come from below. As I noted:

"the Peasants of Wycliff and Watt read the bible and were quietly the equals of anyone. They shared jokes about the wealthy and expressed them in short poems, which were basically the tweets of the day."

And many of the men and women of the time of King John were educated too. It's that quiet assertion of human dignity that continues to this day and that will prevail in the face of bullying, social dominance and the arrogance of the rich and powerful.

Further Reading:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/372946956055502/1110765355606988/?comment_id=1110801398936717¬if_t=group_comment_reply

http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1986-7/milone.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwU2CvR3mm8

[http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/magna-carta-english-translation]

Peasant Revolt: http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1986-7/milone.htm

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/01/rights-come-from-below-john-lockes.html

John Ball: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ball_(priest)

Plutocrats versus Democrats Bill Moyer's Article

Plutocracy is not new in the United States. Our Modern Cons (not conservatives they only conserve money), do inherit a legacy of anti-Democratic feeling and action that dates back to both the "Tories" who supported the British during the American Revolution and the "Whigs" who were often family members of the Tories, and made money off of the revolution. Self Aggrandizement is human nature, and I've talked about the Pirates of the American Revolution, but there were pirates and their Money Men Admirals in every subsequent war.

http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/0912nyj.jpg

As General Smedley Butler documented in his book "War is a Racket":

"The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is another matter -- twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent -- the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it." [http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html]

And war-profiting goes with industrialism. It's documented that much of our industry has been the product of the need to provide war-materials. The rest has been the product of the more prosaic and legitimate need to provide consumer goods, but the profits have been in the war and the profits from war were used to build plutocratic power and wealth. And these people came to define the 19th century:

"The first class of multimillionaires had made their fortunes in the Civil War, and during subsequent decades they began to consolidate holdings in a number of industries with national and international reach. Among the most famous were Carnegie Steel and John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company." [http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/trusts.html]

The first class of multimillionaires were people like the Goulds, Harry Payne Whitney, the Vanderbilts and the Astors. Technically the Rockefellers and Carnagies were second generation Millionaires. Carnagie made his millions building bridges for millionaires out of Steel using the Bessemer process he got from hiring Bessemer to work for him. And Rockefeller made his millions by refining oil into standard volume and quality Kerosene and then getting a monopoly over the distribution. The millionaires of the 1860's turned into industrialists and by the turn of the 20th century were an aristocracy. And some wealth does trickle down from the top .01% to the top .1% to the top 1%, in a hierarchy of diminishing returns. Bessemer may have invented the Bessemer process, but it was Carnagie who made the millions. Plutocracy forms pyramids. Eventually some "fearless leader" stands on top the pyramid, but the energy is in the social dominance of the wealthy.

Plutocrats hate Democracy:

“Awful Democracy”

Bill Moyers takes an excerpt from the book and writes:

"Wall Street Brahmin Henry Lee Higginson, fearing “Awful Democracy” — that whole menagerie of radicalisms — urgently appealed to his fellows to take up the task of mastery, “more wisely and more humanely than the kings and nobles have done. Our chance is now — before the country is full and the struggle for bread becomes intense. I would have the gentlemen of the country lead the new men who are trying to become gentlemen.” [http://billmoyers.com/2015/04/06/plutocracy-first-time-around/]

This was naked aristocracy, and the attitude is coming out of the closet again. Because these aristocrats don't have a sense of social contract to others. Many of them are heirs to the privateering, piracy approach to wealth. If you can't earn it steal it. If it's illegal to trade it smuggle it. It's the Ferenghi ethos, nothing can standing the way of profits and "gold pressed latinum". These people were and are:

"sea-dog capitalists, dynasty builders, for whom accumulation was a singular, all-consuming obsession. They reckoned with outside authority if they had to, manipulated it if they could, but just as often went about their business as if it didn’t exist. Bred to hold politics in contempt, one Social Register memoirist recalled growing up during the “great barbeque.” He was taught to think of politics as something “remote, disreputable, and infamous, like slave-trading or brothel-keeping.”" [http://billmoyers.com/2015/04/06/plutocracy-first-time-around/]

Then as now the goal was social and economic dominance not benevolence. A disdain for "politics" is usually a preference for brute force.

"Brute Force"

They may have eschewed "politics" but they had no trouble with buying politicians, hiring private police, or enforcing their power. Then and now their corporate libertarianism and rejection of "government" led to violence not paradise.

"The frequent resort to violence that so marked the period was thus the default position of a ruling elite not really prepared to rule. And of course it only aggravated the dilemma of consent. Those suffering from the callousness of the dominant classes were only too ready to treat them as they depicted themselves — that is, as aristocrats but usurping ones lacking even a scintilla of legitimate authority." [http://billmoyers.com/2015/04/06/plutocracy-first-time-around/]

Frazer explains:

"The American upper classes did not constitute a seasoned aristocracy, but could only mimic one. They lacked the former’s sense of social obligation, of noblesse oblige, of what in the Old World emerged as a politically coherent “Tory socialism” that worked to quiet class antagonisms. But neither did they absorb the democratic ethos that today allows the country’s gilded elite to act as if they were just plain folks: a credible enough charade of plutocratic populism. Instead, faced with mass social disaffection, they turned to the “tramp terror” and other innovations in machine-gun technology, to private corporate armies and government militias, to suffrage restrictions, judicial injunctions, and lynchings. Why behave otherwise in dealing with working-class “scum” a community of “mongrel firebugs”?" [http://billmoyers.com/2015/04/06/plutocracy-first-time-around/]

In the 19th century the wealthy could rely on a corrupt and aristocratic Courts. What the Right Wing called "judicial activism" in the 20th century was merely the result of years of efforts to clean up these very actively oppressive courts of the 19th century. Using absolute notions of property rights to justify repressing workers was standard practice until the New Deal. These "sea-dog capitalists" haven't changed. The only difference is that, Sadly their descendents have learned to play politics. They still see the rest of us as "scum" and "mongrels". Just ask John McCain about Code Pink or Romney about the "47 Percent".

International Sea Dogs

And that is not just true of the United States. It is true around the world. War attracts sociopathic and "Sea Dog" businessmen like flies. In the Iran Iraq war:

"According to "Crimes of the President" Markups of weapons during the period when it was enforced were more than "ten times more than ordinary sales prices." "During the time of the embargo the numbers of countries selling weapons to Iran boomed from 40 countries to 53 countries." An embargo raises the profits for illegal arms sales." [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/04/arms-lobbyists-and-war-mongering.html]

War mongering and war-profiteering aren't new. Many of our wanna-be plutocrats got their fortunes from it. And these people no longer just dominate the USA, they dominate the world.

Further Reading:

War is a Racket:

Plutocracy First time around: http://billmoyers.com/2015/04/06/plutocracy-first-time-around/

From the book The Age of Acquiescence by Steve Fraser. Copyright (c) 2015 by Steve Fraser: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316185434

Cartoon and some background from: [http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/trusts.html]

Arms Lobbyists and War-Mongering

Modern Pirates, Lobbyists and War-Mongers

In my post "Did Cotton and other GOP politicians take money from Israel? [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/03/did-cotton-and-other-gop-politicians.html] I dug up material about some major lobbyists for foreign countries and the disproportionate influence they are having on our politics and foreign policy. My anti-Israel friends may think I've gone over to their side, but the evidence I saw was of an mafioso-esoteric layer, not one where one side is saintly and the other nefarious and dirty. The people involved don't really care about either side. They'll sell weapons to both sides. I saw evidence of nefarious, dirty, sneaky types all over the place, but mostly connected with the Reagan Administration and it's program to win millions and defeat "Communism" if the Communists aren't buying. These are people who work together while plotting against each other. Just as scandals connected to the Reagan and Bush Administrations trace to Watergate related events, world events trace to the piracy and freebooting of our Arms Dealers, Secret Agents and "Cold Warriors."

I might never have gotten at the material, completely or factually at all, except that it became a "who done it" of American Politics. If the Dems hadn't been the target of the 1980 "October Surprise" efforts of the wealthy backers and corporations behind the Reagan Counter-revolution the energy to dig into these criminal behaviors or to expose them would have been lacking. Indeed, it turns out Carter was trying to exchange arms for the Hostages, covertly, too, and the Reagan War-monger crowd outbid him. The "October Surprise" that sabotaged Carter's efforts to end the Hostage crisis with the Iranians back in 1980, was because Reagan's wealthy backers were running their own programs. These illegal, "extralegal" and subversive programs continued long after Reagan won election. They funded the dirty wars in Central and South America. And that is what attracted my interest. My wife was traumatized by what the Argentine military did during that period. I'm a little protective.

I'll present the timeline as best I can but the story is bigger and murkier than I can simplify it from. Rather than rehash the details I'm trying to focus on what I believe was the big picture. Starting with the:

The Cast of Characters

Adnan Khashoggi

For example while looking up the biography of Adnan Khashoggi the Wikipedia article notes "(Arabic: عدنان خاشقجي‎; born 25 July 1935) is a Saudi Arabian businessman. At a peak net worth of up to $4 billion USD in the early 1980s, he was considered one of the richest men in the world" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi]. At the height of his power he owned the Kingdom 5KR, which is now owned by Al-Waleed bin Talal.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Kingdom_5KR_-_005.JPG/250px-Kingdom_5KR_-_005.JPG

This ship was used as a setting for some scenes the Bond movie "Never Say Never Again" where Bond chases a character who could have been loosely based on Adnan Khashoggi (or any wealthy arms dealer) "Maximillian Largo" was being chased after stealing and dealing in Nuclear Warheads at the behest of the "Dr. Evil" Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The parallels were there. Khashoggi ran his business from his ship in a way that has been a pattern since before John Pierpont Morgan used to do his more shady dealing from his yacht the "SS Corsair". I read an article about JP Morgan flying a black pirate flag but have never been able to confirm it. He did fly his yacht colors and did claim descent from Henry Morgan. He is also famous for negotiating the "Corsair Compact" aboard one of his yachts [https://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/jpmorgan/about/history/month/jul] in which he got the major railroads to collude on prices.

Image from http://www.ssmaritime.com/Corsair-IV-1.jpg

Adnan Khashoggi:

"Khashoggi headed a company called Triad Holding Company, which among other things built the Triad Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, which later went bankrupt. He was famed as an arms dealer, brokering deals between US firms and the Saudi government, most actively in the 1960s and 1970s. In the documentary series The Mayfair Set, Saudi author Said Aburish states that one of Adnan's first weapons deals was providing David Stirling with weapons for a covert mission in Yemen during the Aden Emergency in 1963. Among his overseas clients were defense contractors Lockheed Corporation (now Lockheed Martin Corporation), Raytheon, Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation and Northrop Corporation (which have now merged into Northrop Grumman)." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi]

Adnan Khashoggi was never working alone, but at the height of his power and influence he was a major player in international dealings in oil, weapons, major weapons systems (aircraft, bombs, rockets, jets). But his dealings were as much outside "official channels and within them.

"He was implicated in the Iran–Contra affair as a key middleman in the arms-for-hostages exchange along with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and, in a complex series of events, was found to have borrowed money for these arms purchases from the now-bankrupt financial institution the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) with Saudi and US backing. In 1988, Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland, accused of concealing funds, held for three months and then extradited to the United States where he was released on bail and subsequently acquitted." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi]

In the Iran Contra case, Khashoggi was a bit player in a game of international intrigue and high level sedition and sabotage that makes organizations like Spectre seem like amateurs. Renegade elements of the USA government, led by Oliver North after the election and by William Casey before the election made deals with the Iranian Ayatollahs at the very same time period they were painting the Iranians as terrorists and members of the Axis of Evil. But he made billions, and if some of it later disappeared, he's not doing so bad. The official timeline was:

Background:

The 1953 Coup - the Brits and USA Secret Services conspired to overthrow the reformer Iranian leader "Mossadegh". This led to the "election by coup" of the son of the previous Shah who'd been ousted by popular revulsion.

Reza Shah Pahlavi

1953-1979 : Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (known as “the Shah") is secular and authoritarian ruler of Iran. Iran is one of the United States’ strongest allies in the Middle East.

The Shah ran a repressive government that was secular, corrupt and tried to modernize top down. The model for these regimes was Fascist even when they allied with communist countries. Top down rule, liberalization of education, coupled with a violent secret police, prison and execution system to keep people in order. He made many enemies, and the leaders of the expat community mostly moved to France and lived in Paris.

 

The Ayatollah Khomeini Revolution

 

1978 : Riots and demonstrations break out across Iran, largely in response to the Shah’s secularism and close relationship with the U.S.

The riots were actually in response to the Shah's repressive, corrupt government and use of Secret Police. The religious response was one of the tools of those revolting, and sadly the religious resistance was the largest faction resisting the Shah. Religious Iranians saw liberating women, friendships with Israel, and being "too secular" as evils along with the corruption that made the Shah and his relations incredibly wealthy while keeping the wealth for themselves. Sharp leaders formed temporary alliances between secular liberals like Bani Sadr and the Ayatollah, who was living in France at the time. The Ayatollah, by keeping quiet on controversial subjects and speaking in abstracts, seemed a progressive hero to many, until he returned to Iran.

1979 : Riots and demonstrations grow increasingly numerous, frequent, and violent, ultimately culminating in the Iranian Revolution.

January 1979 : The Shah leaves Iran, and the country is declared an Islamic Republic by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Ayatollah severs all ties with the U.S. and declares Israeli illegitimate.

November 4, 1979: Muslim Followers of the line of the Imam, a fundamentalist, anti-imperialist group made up predominately of young radical revolutionaries, seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. End of cordial diplomacy between the two nations

These people called themselves "students" but they hadn't been studying in 2 years and it later turned out that they were professional revolutionaries and the core of later religious militia/police/army cadres.

In 1980 Carter had his deputy Secretary of State Cyrus Vance lead "the official diplomatic effort, Hamilton Jordan spent thousands of hours working secret channels." But it appears that the Cons had their own side channels. [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-hostage-crisis/]

The public story of the Carter Administration includes large offers of carrots if the Ayatollahs would free the hostages. But the Ayatollahs wanted Reza Pahlavi's head more than they wanted material goods. And when the USA sent helicopters to try to rescue them they appear to have decided to stick their thumb in the face of the President. They might have done the same even without the advice and offers of the Presidents Industrialists and advisors. The New York Times article says:

"in March 1980, four months after followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had seized the United States Embassy in Teheran and taken the hostages, Casey approached two Iranian-born wheeler-dealers, the brothers Jamshid and Cyrus Hashemi, who had ties to the Khomeini regime. Casey asked them to set up a meeting with representatives of the Iranian Government. Thereafter, the Hashemis purportedly arranged for Casey to attend two meetings in Madrid in the summer of 1980 with Mehdi Karrubi, an Iranian cleric close to the Ayatollah. According to Mr. Sick, Casey subsequently had one last meeting in Paris about two weeks before the election to clinch the deal." [http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/22/books/the-case-for-a-conspiracy.html]

But that is not the only narrative. In other versions of the narrative the Reagan Operatives were

"Richard Allen, subsequently Reagan's first national security adviser, Allen aide Laurence Silberman, and Robert McFarlane, another future national security adviser who in 1980 was on the staff of Senator John Tower (R-TX)." [http://www.wrmea.org/1987-october/did-iran-delay-hostages-release-to-ensure-reagan-s-election.html]

"In any case there are a number of witnesses who say (despite the denials) that the meeting did occur and was a success. Robert Perry writes

"In 1994, I found a classified summary of the FBI bugging. According to that summary, the bugs revealed Cyrus Hashemi deeply enmeshed with Republicans on arms deals to Iran in fall 1980 as well as in financial schemes with Casey's close friend and business associate, John Shaheen." [https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080610.html]

Meanwhile the Carter Administration was working it's own deal without knowing what the Cons were doing:

"Bani Sadr, however, says the secret deal was made, even as the Iranians publicly reached an agreement with the Carter administration to release the hostages in return for the unfreezing of $4 billion. The Iranian who secretly met with the Reaganauts in Washington, Bani Sadr says, was either Parvis Sabati, Manucher Ghorbanifar, or both." [http://www.wrmea.org/1987-october/did-iran-delay-hostages-release-to-ensure-reagan-s-election.html]

 

Cyrus Hashemi: Arms for Hostages & Refugees

 

To the Republican Operatives around Reagan double and dirty business was old business. Casey had recruited one of the key Iranian players a year before the hostages were taken. Parry Reported:

"the Iranian banker was recorded [by the CIA/NSA] as boasting that he and Casey had been "close friends" for years. That claim was supported by a CIA memo which stated that Casey recruited Cyrus Hashemi into a sensitive business arrangement in 1979." [https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080610.html]

Casey was never at a lot of places during the time from when he was recruited by the OSS to his death. But he definitely was in Paris, despite the denials and bi-partisan cover-up that occurred later. In the book "The Secret Wars of the CIA" Casey comes across as someone for whom the boundaries between personal business, self enrichment and public service are non-existent. This seems to be a pattern among the sociopaths who dominate international business and politics.

Parry notes:

"The secret FBI summary showed Hashemi receiving a $3 million offshore deposit, arranged by a Houston lawyer who said he was a longtime associate of George H.W. Bush. The Houston lawyer, Harrel Tillman, told me in an interview that in 1980, he was doubling as a consultant to Iran's Islamic government." href="https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080610.html">[https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080610.html]

Lloyd Cutler writes:

"Hashemi tried to serve as an intermediary for the Carter White House because, at the request of his lawyer, several of us met with him in New York in the fall of 1980." "Hashemi claimed a family relationship with Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, then speaker of the Iranian parliament and now president of Iran." He was already involved in arms deals with Iran by then, and "A few weeks later U.S. Customs and Justice Department officials notified us of evidence that Cyrus Hashemi, along with his brothers Jamshid and Reza, were involved in illegal arms exports to Iran via Kennedy Airport; when confronted, they had said they had our permission." The State Department denied they had any permission to export weapons.

Which is consistent with what an Iranian expat/national would think if he was dealing with people running an extralegal operation. The deal with Hashemi fell through because "." He admits "It is plausible that the Hashemis also were in contact with Republicans, as Jamshid now claims." And if Casey had recruited him in 1979 it could be that Casey is the one who got him in trouble in the first place. He also concedes that "Rafsanjani and his Islamic Republican Party did not consolidate their internal power until the fall of 1980."

 

Genesis of the Israel connection.

 

If the United States couldn't officially support Iran's military, Israel could! And if, instead of giving Arms to the Iranians they sold them, this could be a profitable effort for all involved. The nice thing (for arms dealers) is that they could do this semi-legally. During the Shah years Israel had developed relationships with top Iranian officials, some of whom avoided being jailed or executed. As Khomeini started to take over in 1979, Israel used the chaos to try to rescue Jews from Iranian persecution. Their first project was known as Shulhan Arukh (שולחן ערוך) or laid table; and rescued 40,000 of Iran's 100,000 Jewish Community. The director of this operation was an operative left behind when most of the Israeli Government withdrew their Embassy. Khomeini had kept SAVAK and military Officers in place, despite the fact that a large amount of the reason for the revolution was SAVAK behavior. These became contacts for Israel, Arms dealers, and their CIA and GOP contacts. For the Israelis the motivation for dealing with iran included Israel's interest in protecting the nearly 200,000 Jews living in Iran. Iran had been a refuge and conduit for Iraqi Jews fleeing Iraqi (and other) persecutions before, during and after the 1947 war, now there had to be some way to withdraw the remaining Jewish population (those willing to leave) in the face of the vicious anti-semitism of the new Ayatollah regimes.

So Israel had a motivation to sell or broker Arms to the Iranians.

September 22 1980-90 : Iran-Iraq War.

According to Lloyd Cutler during the official negotiations with the Carter Administration the:

"Iranians asked us to release undelivered military spare parts bought by the shah's regime. We agreed in principle to do so upon return of the hostages and supplied a list of what was available. But the Iranians surprisingly dropped this request and it never became part of the January 1981 agreements. Was this because of some secret deal with the Reagan team to obtain a larger quantity of American arms from the incoming administration?" [Baltimore Sun Article]

So where would be the evidence that he kept his bargain? The Larouchis published an article by Robert Dreyfuss in 1980 titled "Iran's armed forces receive covert aid from Washington" [http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1980/eirv07n37-19800923/eirv07n37-19800923_042-irans_armed_forces_receive_cover.pdf] alleging that in September 1980:

"quietly begun a major military airlift to resupply the Iranian armed forces with spare parts, arms, and ammunition, including heavy weapons. American C-130 air transport planes are ferrying this equipment to at least three secret NATO bases, including a location in the Azores, where the cargo is then transferred to Iranian transports for the rest of the journey!" [LaRouche Article]

This may have been from La Rouche, but this was corroborated. But apparently what Carter offered was a drop in the bucket compared to what the Republicans offered. And, apparently Likud Operatives as well. Consortium News reports:

“But the evidence points in that direction, and there are some points that are not in dispute. For instance, there is no doubt that CIA Old Boys and Likudniks had strong motives for seeking President Jimmy Carter’s defeat in 1980.”062410.html

Betrayal of Carter

When Casey was appointed CIA director in early 1980 these "old hands" cheered:

“Inside the CIA, Carter and his CIA Director Stansfield Turner were blamed for firing many of the free-wheeling covert operatives from the Vietnam era, for ousting legendary spymaster Ted Shackley, and for failing to protect longtime U.S. allies (and friends of the CIA), such as Iran’s Shah and Nicaragua’s dictator Anastasio Somoza.”062410.html

Carter had tried to stop (or at least moderate) ongoing dirty wars in Central and South America and the operations of Secret police like SAVAK and the agents not only of the above list but also including the dictators in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Bolivia. To these CIA officers dirty wars and the utter defeat of Communism, socialism, and uppity or rebellious people world wide was the mission. Protecting "Democracy" was code for how to win people over, kill enemies and make fortunes. It looks like we now know these Cold Warriors were in covert rebellion against the President.

At least the current rebellion is open.

“As for Israel, Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin was furious over Carter’s high-handed actions at Camp David in 1978 forcing Israel to trade the occupied Sinai to Egypt for a peace deal. Begin feared that Carter would use his second term to bully Israel into accepting a Palestinian state on West Bank lands that Likud considered part of Israel’s divinely granted territory.”062410.html

Likud's goal was to gradually ethnically cleanse the West Bank as a threshold for regaining "Judea and Samaria" which were the Biblical Israel homeland.

“Former Mossad and Foreign Ministry official David Kimche described Begin’s attitude in his 1991 book, The Last Option, saying that Israeli officials had gotten wind of “collusion” between Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat “to force Israel to abandon her refusal to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, and to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state.”062410.html

Which of course was anathema to the Likud, even if the stated position of Israel was to trade land for peace.

Kimche claimed: “This plan – prepared behind Israel’s back and without her knowledge – must rank as a unique attempt in United States’s diplomatic history of short-changing a friend and ally by deceit and manipulation.”062410.html

I remember the goals of Jimmy Carter were all being stated out in the open. He wasn't doing any secret side deals. But believing that is typical paranoid behavior of people who have their own secret agenda. I followed the Camp David accords. But both were willing to agree to some general outlines. Carter was negotiating out of love for the people over love for governments. To this day I don't believe that Israel was going to negotiate seriously without someone pushing them. So while from the POV of Begin that might have seemed a betrayal, Begin's reaction was a betrayal of his promises at Camp David. And how did Israel come to know of Carter's discussions with Sadat?

“However, Begin recognized that the scheme required Carter winning a second term in 1980 when, Kimche wrote, “he would be free to compel Israel to accept a settlement of the Palestinian problem on his and Egyptian terms, without having to fear the backlash of the American Jewish lobby.”062410.html

So in the name of stopping a final peace plan, Begin helped the Republicans sabotage the peace process by sabotaging Carter's re-election.

“In his 1992 memoir, Profits of War, Ari Ben-Menashe, an Israeli military intelligence officer who worked with Likud, agreed that Begin and other Likud leaders held Carter in contempt.” [062410.html]

Which is something they had in common with the GOP Cons.

“Begin loathed Carter for the peace agreement forced upon him at Camp David,” Ben-Menashe wrote. “As Begin saw it, the agreement took away Sinai from Israel, did not create a comprehensive peace, and left the Palestinian issue hanging on Israel’s back.”062410.html

35 Years of Peace Undermined by the Likud

Begin was the one betraying Carter, and the attitude of the Likud was the usual projection of bad intentions that people with bad intentions regularly do.

We can thank Carter for nearly 35 years of relative peace between Israel and her neighbors. If Carter didn't succeed in getting peace between Israel and the Palestinians the blame for that falls on the Likud and the GOP. Neither Reagan nor the two Bushes did anything to advance peace and the result has been 35 years of apartheid, low level violence, terrorism and ethnic cleansings. This has contributed to undermining the peace of those countries that Israel made peace with and is now unravelling Israel's relationships with it's neighbors. If Begin hated and despised Carter, his hatred was like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. Israel was a heroic place before 1968. Since 1980 it has been involved in atrocities and dirty dealings. It took the election of Clinton to get talks started again, and by then the situation with the West Bank was even more intractible.

“So, in order to buy time for Israel to “change the facts on the ground” by moving Jewish settlers into the West Bank, Begin felt Carter’s reelection had to be prevented. A different president also presumably would give Israel a freer hand to deal with problems on its northern border with Lebanon.”062410.html

Begin's invasion of Lebanon resulted in the attrocities of the Sabra and the Shatila, destabilized Lebanon, and turned Israel's northern border into one even less secure than before. It may have undermined the PLO but it set loose Hezbollah to take their place.

Sound familiar? And the Inner Circle of CIA Agents and their friends outside the Government but still operating in Arms companies, Wall Street, and who knows where else felt:

"As for the CIA Old Boys, legendary CIA officer Miles Copeland told me that “the CIA within the CIA” – the inner-most circle of powerful intelligence figures who felt they understood best the strategic needs of the United States – believed Carter and his naïve faith in American democratic ideals represented a grave threat to the nation." [https://consortiumnews.com/2010/062410.html]

The cynical CIA operatives figured that "national security" = Wall Street, Main Street and personal profits, not naive democratic ideals.

The Iranians may well have decided to negotiate with both sides and "take advantage" of GOP and Israeli willingness to sell arms. This certainly would have taken the pressure off of them to deal with the Carter administration until their own power was consolidated, which was around the same time as the Reagan/Carter Election.

Free For all

Once the war broke out between Iran and Iraq Arms Dealers of all stripes found they had leverage with the Iranians again. The Iranians balanced that leverage by taking hostages. With the USA that was through Kidnappings. With Israel they had a two thousand + year old population of Iranian Jews. The USA "arms for hostages" of USA secret dealings were paralleled by an Israeli "arms for emigration" effort by Israeli leadership. Both dealings were secret. If aircraft carrying Jews, or hostages, were seen as flying for purely humanitarian reasons, then everyone would see it as pure patriotism and nobody would suspect any ulterior motive. The Iranians would be seen as generous humanitarians, and would get much needed arms for their war with Iraq. This also provided a get around because the Ayatollahs had restricted emigration to those rich enough to give up everything they had in order to leave. Selling Arms to a desperate Iranian military was one avenue to get around this. It would be a mix of bribery and extortion on both sides. For Israel rescuing oppressed Jews was part of their mission, and selling arms could more than finance that rescue. It would enrich everyone involved if they wanted to take the money.

 

Operation SeaShell

 

As Ronen Bergman wrote in “The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power,” pub. 2007, Israel made a fortune selling arms to Iran throughout that war. Bergman writes:

"First, Israel could not come to terms with the military, intelligence, and diplomatic losses that it had sustained with the disruption of relations with Iran after the revolution. Arms exports would at least give it a foothold in Tehran. In Israel’s defense establishment, the lesson had been learned from many cases over the years that swiftly supplying weaponry and military know-how to a totalitarian state will bring the supplier as close as possible to the rulers, because the weapons are their means of holding on to power."

“Second, it was hoped that the infusion of weaponry would intensify the Iran-Iraq war and lead to the mutual destruction or, at least weakening, of two enemies

"Third, Israeli officials feared a victorious Saddam" . . .

Fourth: “More than anything else, the weapons industry wanted to make money. As one Israeli Defense Ministry official, a key figure in Operation Seashell, recalls: “I do not remember even one discussion about the ethics of the matter. All that interested us was to sell, sell, sell more and more Israeli weapons, and let them kill each other with them.” p. 43

And there was a fifth reason. They used arms as a trading lever to help Iranian Jews leave Iran.

According to Ronen Bergman,

"Israel sold Iran US$75 million worth of arms from stocks of Israel Military Industries, Israel Aircraft Industries and Israel Defense Forces stockpiles, in their Operation Seashell in 1981.[1] Materiel included 150 M-40 antitank guns with 24,000 shells for each gun, spare parts for tank and aircraft engines, 106 mm, 130 mm, 203 mm and 175 mm shells and TOW missiles. This material was transported first by air by Argentine airline Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense and then (after the 1981 Armenia mid-air collision) by ship."

According to Trita Parsi, Israeli support for Iran consisted of several elements:

"Arms sales to Iran that totaled an estimated $500 million from 1981 to 1983 according to the Jafe Institute for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Most of it was paid for by Iranian oil delivered to Israel.[2]:107 "According to Ahmad Haidari, "an Iranian arms dealer working for the Khomeini regime, roughly 80% of the weaponry bought by Tehran" immediately after the onset of the war originated in Israel." [Trita Parsi]

"Arms shipments from the U.S. to Iran in the Iran-Contra Affair facilitated by Israel." [Trita Parsi]

"Israel's June 7, 1981 attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor which set back Iraq's nuclear program. In fact, Iran bombed them first, back in 1980, but they only damaged secondary buildings." [Trita Parsi]

"Israel is also reported to have supplied instructors and non-armaments help to Iran for the war effort. According to Mark Phythian, the fact "that the Iranian air force could function at all" after Iraq's initial attack and "was able to undertake a number of sorties over Baghdad and strike at strategic installations" was "at least partly due to the decision of the Reagan administration to allow Israel to channel arms of US origin to Iran to prevent an easy and early Iraqi victory." [Trita Parsi]

"Israeli arms dealer Yaacov Nimrodi apparently signed a deal with Iran's Ministry of National Defense to sell $135,842,000 worth of arms, including Lance missiles, Copperhead shells and Hawk missiles. In March 1982, The New York Times cited documents indicating that Israel had supplied half or more of all arms reaching Tehran in the previous 18 months, amounting to at least $100 million in sales. The Milan weekly Panorama reported that Israel had sold the Khomeini regime 45,000 Uzi submachine guns, anti-tank missile launchers, missiles, howitzers and aircraft replacement parts. "A large part of the booty from the PLO during the 1982 Lebanon campaign wound up in Tehran," the magazine claimed." [Trita Parsi]

Book with details of Mossad Operation:

"The Secret War with Iran" by Ronen Bergman[http://books.google.com/books?id=NkxZcHL1xdYC&lpg=PP1&ots=hkVy43U066&dq=Ronen%20Bergman%2C%20The%20Secret%20War%20with%20Iran&pg=PA36#v=onepage&q&f=true]

Also: Ronen Bergman, The Secret War with Iran, Free Press, 2008, p.40-48

Trita Parsi: Treacherous Alliance:

Cut-able reference: [http://mondoweiss.net/2012/01/nyt-gives-big-platform-to-israeli-journalist-to-espouse-fear-doctrine-for-israeli-attack-on-iran]

PDF: http://qawim.net/ar/files/Treacherous-Alliance-The-Secret-Dealings.pdf

 

Arms for Hostages Deals 1980-1983

 

Operation Demevand

 

In his book Crimes of a President, By Joel Bainerman:

"Although it never got into the mainstream press, the alternative press; The Nation, The Village Voice, The Progressive and In these times has given extensive coverage to operation Demevand. Named for a Mountain Range in Iran, this was a White House operation to sell massive amounts of arms to Iran Covertly and Illegally." [The Crimes of A President]

"Barbara Honneger, in her book October Surprise, gave one of the earliest reports on massive arms sales from the U.S. to Iran (pp. 179-183). Although many of the sources remained anonymous, she has to be given a lot of credit for investigating a secret agenda that up until then had gone virtually undetected. Her sources told her that arms shipments began in 1981, and by 1986 more than $15 billion worth of arms had been redirected to Iran. She quotes Richard Muller, a former colonel in the Marine reserves, as claiming that secret NATO military supplies stored in reforger stores throughout Europe." [Inside the Covert Operations of the CIA]

And this was all before the formal "Iran Contra" sales began.

"The proceeds went to the Pentagon's "black budget" for covert activities. " [Inside the Covert Operations of the CIA]

Crimes of the President

Chapter 5 "How many Weapons did the Reagan-Bush Administration really sell?

October surprise Books:

By Barbara Honneger

By Gary Sick

During Thom Hartman's interview with Honneger:

"...the Iran arms sales that surfaced in the Iran side of the Iran-Contra scandal were indeed the tip of the iceberg of just a few hundreds of million dollars of illegal arms shipments to Iran. That was just the tip of the iceberg of literally billions that started flowing right after Reagan took the oath of office."

 

After 1983

1983 : U.S. actively engaged in arms embargo, Operation Staunch.

Operation Staunch was a public cover. It had the benefit of bidding up the price for black market and covert sales. According to "Crimes of the Presidnet" Markups of weapons during the period when it was enforced were more than "ten times more than ordinary sales prices." "During the time of the embargo the numbers of countries selling weapons to Iran boomed from 40 countries to 53 countries." An embargo raises the profits for illegal arms sales.

Perhaps that is why the same folks who backed arms sales to Iran in the 80's want to sabotage peace talks now. Maybe they want the covert channels to reopen.

1983 : Adnan Khashoggi first meets with Robert McFarlane, Theodore Shackley meets Iranians Manucher Hashemi, Manucher Ghorbanifar and Hassan Karoubi.

January 1984 : McFarlane formally requests the NSC to formally examine ways to influence Iran. Report conveys an impasse.

March 1984 : Religious fundamentalist group Islamic Holy War kidnaps William F. Buckley, the CIA chief in Beirut, Lebanon. More American hostages taken in the following years.

1985 : Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi meet in Hamburg and devise skeleton of plan that will become Iran arms deal.

Summer 1985 : Israeli representatives drawn into discussion

The Middleman of the deal, Roy M. Furmark, between Khashoggi and Ghorbanifar would later testify:

"Furmark said he was the one who first brought together the two key middlemen in the arms deal by introducing Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi to Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian businessman, at a Persian rug auction in Hamburg, Germany, in June, 1985. The two men have acknowledged arranging four arms sales to Iran." [http://articles.latimes.com/1986-12-17/news/mn-3247_1_arms-sales]

During that meeting:

"In my last meeting, (with Casey) I told him that Ghorbanifar thinks some of the money may have gone to the contras," Furmark said. He said he told Casey: "It looks like $15 million is missing." [http://articles.latimes.com/1986-12-17/news/mn-3247_1_arms-sales]

And note, all this is going on at the very moment that:

July 1, 1985 : President Reagan publicly denounces bartering with terrorists.

July 3, 1985 : McFarlane meets with Israeli David Kimche, who is in the U.S. on behalf of the Israelis who had met with Khashoggi and Ghorbanifar. The arms-for-hostages deal is first outlined, as is the prospect of improving the U.S.-Iran relationship.

July 16, 1985 : McFarlane meets with Reagan and his Chief of Staff Regan while Reagan is in the hospital recovering from surgery. They discuss the possibility of selling arms to Iran via Israeli in order to get the release of the hostages and to open communications with Iran. The details of this visit are hazy, but McFarlane came away from it with the idea that the President had encouraged him to go forward with discussions with the Iranians and Israelis.

August 1985 : Reagan approves the plan to allow Israeli to sell U.S.-made weapons to Iran.

August 20, 1985 : first load of missiles sent from Israeli to Iran.

September 15, 1985 : American hostage Benjamin Weir released. Colonel Oliver North brought in to deal with logistics

November 1985 : second load of missiles sold. Major General Richard Secord brought in to help replenish Israeli’s supply of weapons.

https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/timeline-iran.php

 

Adnan Khashoggi

 

Arms dealers like Khashoggi served as go-betweens and made millions:

"Furmark said he told Casey that Khashoggi had arranged the financing of two arms shipments from Israel to Iran in August and September of 1985 for $1 million and $4 million. He said Khashoggi had then arranged a third shipment in February, 1986, for $10 million."

And like all Criminals the deals get financed:

"He said it was a fourth transaction, involving $15 million in May, 1986, that led to problems. Furmark said two Canadian investors, Walter E. Miller and Donald Fraser, had provided $10 million in "bridge financing" to Khashoggi for the deal. The Canadians have had extensive business dealings with Khashoggi in Vancouver, Salt Lake City and the Cayman Islands."

And This financing introduces risk:

"Furmark said unidentified 'European and Middle East sources' had provided the money for the $4-million transaction, the $10-million transaction and $5 million of the $15-million transaction.

Iran Contra may have only involved a small cabal of GOP operatives running a renegade operation in the Federal Government, but it involved some big players in the arms industry:

"Mr. Khashoggi knows the true source of the money used here, and I think only he knows," Furmark said, and "that two "partial shipments" of arms were delivered in July and August, 1986, but the Iranians paid only $8 million of the $15-million deal. Adding $3 million for handling and shipping, that left Khashoggi, the Canadians and the other investors $10 million in debt" [http://articles.latimes.com/1986-12-17/news/mn-3247_1_arms-sales]

Khashoggi claims he got stiffed. Which might account for the beginnings of his financial troubles after Iran Contra. Or maybe the money was coming from other sources like the USA and Arabian Governments. Or maybe the "stiffed" tale is a cover story.

"In 1990, a United States federal jury in Manhattan acquitted Khashoggi and Imelda Marcos, widow of the exiled Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, of racketeering and fraud" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi]

That case fell through, but prosecutors have been after Adnan Khashoggi non stop since then, and he he's kept a low profile (selling his boat among other things).

"Mr Khashoggi’s fortunes declined in the late 1980s, thanks to overspending on festivities, ill-advised investments and his entwinement in scandals including the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the fall of Ferdinand Marcos and the Iran-Contra affair—though he was never convicted of criminal wrongdoing. He now claims to be broke. That hasn’t stopped a tenacious creditor and its lawyers hounding him for an 11-year-old debt of $21m to a securities-clearing firm. In a move that would break new legal ground if successful, they are trying to get the American judgment against Mr Khashoggi enforced in his native Saudi Arabia." [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21578447-intriguing-twists-and-discoveries-case-against-former-arms]

"It also emerged that someone with the same name as an official in the Saudi embassy in Washington, Hassan Yousef Mohammed Yassin, had paid at least one of Mr Khashoggi’s legal bills. When the diplomat was subpoenaed for information, he invoked immunity through the embassy’s Washington-based lawyers, who threatened to seek unspecified “sanctions” under the Vienna Convention unless the request was dropped. This fuelled suspicions that the Saudi state was throwing a protective arm round Mr Khashoggi for some reason, though there is no clear evidence of this, nor that the diplomat was the same Mr Yassin who paid the bill. Mr Khashoggi’s sister subsequently said that they had a cousin with that name." [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21578447-intriguing-twists-and-discoveries-case-against-former-arms]

Khashoggi's belt tightening:

Al Waleed Bin Talal

The man who bought Khashoggi's boat:

"Al-Waleed is the founder, the chief executive officer and 95 percent-owner[6] of the Kingdom Holding Company, a Forbes Global 2000 company with investments in companies within various sectors such as banking and financial services, hotels and hotel management companies, mass media, entertainment, retail, agriculture, petrochemicals, aviation, technology, and real estate" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Waleed_bin_Talal]

I doubt Saudi princes get directly involved in sordid details anymore. And even the front men have front men. So the days of a Khashoggi or a Hashemi getting caught with actual goods are probably over. They merely need to own shares in the companies doing the business.

"In 1999, The Economist expressed doubts about the source of income of Al-Waleed and whether he is a front man for other Saudi investors. "You could barely clothe a Saudi prince for such sums, let alone furnish him with a multi-billion-dollar empire. Nevertheless, by 1991 Prince Alwaleed had felt able to risk an investment of $797m in Citicorp", wrote the magazine." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Waleed_bin_Talal]

I could write more, but I wanted to focus on parallels between then and now. Then regressive and greedy forces who despised notions like "peace", "democracy" and human rights deliberately sabotaged a US President to prevent peace and undermine his foreign program. The spirit of piracy is alive and well. It may be dressed up with charters and legitimate trappings, but modern privateering isn't much different from it's 16th and 17th century predecessors. Anyway to make a buck, smuggling, slavery, piracy, freebooting, war; as long as there is profit in it you can find an investor, and if you can find an investor you can find canon fodder to deliver the product.

Further Reading:

Mondoweiss article claiming Israel having nefarious motives: [http://mondoweiss.net/2011/12/israels-myth-of-invincibility-drives-a-dangerous-idea-attacking-iran]

October Surprise, By Barbara Honneger: [http://www.amazon.com/October-Surprise-Barbara-Honegger/dp/0944276466]

Review by Thom Hartmann: [http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2006/04/transcript-barbara-honegger-october-surprise-apr-25-2006]

October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan, Gary Sick

Consortium news files on the subject:

https://consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html

https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080610.html

Lloyd Cutler notes that Hashemi throws out some interesting comments in a Baltimore Sun article:

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-05-22/news/1991142130_1_hashemi-rafsanjani-cyrus

The Security State Always comes home

From Blue Nation

When we humans are told to be afraid of terrorists. Usually the government is talking about violent individuals or groups, sometimes state sponsored from abroad, who are attacking our people. Sadly, officials often are working for people who see the potential "terrorists" as ordinary citizens. This is especially true when the system is already corrupt. What happens then is that often the violent terrorism is not only used to justify domestic terrorism and repression, but sometimes it is even covertly egged on and funded. When we use spies and spook agents overseas, almost inevitably those personnel and methods eventually come home.

It's well documented that we've had an actively repressive security state since 2001

Back in 2013 I did some investigating into what happened to the Occupy Movement. Their persons, efforts and camps had been systematically oppressed, attacked and wiped out by Police forces. I'd noticed that the most aggressive police in New York City had all been wearing white dress uniforms, while the "men in blue" had behaved a lot more normal. It turned out that even the "men in blue" had been egged on to attack demonstrators. Rather than the repression and violence being an over-reaction to protester misbehavior, many of the attacks had been on orders. This all came out in lawsuits and "Freedom of Information" responses. I blogged on this in several posts in 2013:

In a post written in August 2013 named Bush's Loogie I described the history, background and some of the hijinks and how Terrorism got used as a bait and switch ploy for officials to go after peaceful protesters against criminal Wall Street behavior. I also talked about how the "Fusion Centers" created to fight terrorism became an instrument of (often State Governor based) represssion:

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/08/bushs-loogie.html

In Bush's Loogie I also described the case of Brenda Dowhan, who is an example of hundreds (thousands) of persons hired to infiltrate peaceful movements to gain intelligence or provoke them to break the law so they can be arrested.

In September I followed it up with reference to what happened to Naomi Wolfe, Occupy, and how the crackdown was programmed from before Occupy was even started!

"Occupy Crackdown coordinated from before Occupy created" [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/09/occupy-crackdown-coordinated-from.html]

I also introduced us to the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) which is a partnership between "retired" FBI officials and representatives of the largest USA corporations. At the time they had a public website and weren't exactly hiding what they were doing. They were basically hijacking US security efforts for their own purpose, which was to manage protests against Wall Street's criminal behavior, and to use the FBI department charged with investigating that behavior to do so!

I followed that up with an article on Spetember 9 titled:

The Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) versus Democracy

In that article I went into detail from public information about what DSAC is about and why this is a repressive organization. Since then I've learned more of the history of USA Corporate Spying and Freebooting and that has led me to make Smedley Butler's 1930's book "War is a Racket" a reference book and almost a bible on what is wrong with our War-profiteering and War-mongering Security State. There is a Smedley Butler Society:

http://www.warisaracket.org/index.html

The book is online and can be read here:

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

Ultimately war-mongering and war-profiteering only benefit the lucky among the 1% and about .01% super wealthy who can afford the high stakes gambling involved in arms dealing and international intrigue. James Bond may be fantasy, but it turns out that organizations like "Spectre" are based on real mafioso behavior by arms dealers and renegade officials. That has to be investigated. Doing so can be fatal. Nothing has changed since Butler's time:

http://riseuptimes.org/2012/09/12/dick-cheneys-halliburton-sold-nuclear-technology-to-iran/

So I wanted to write a follow up to those posts from 2013 with an update that affirms what I learned then:

(Back in 2012) http://www.justiceonline.org/fbi_files_ows/

How Wall Street Used Government Forced to Crush Occupy (2015 Article)

This post is more a review post. Here is the article that inspired it:

How Wall Street Used Government Forces to Crush Occupy

In that article the author notes the definition of Terrorism used by the FBI:

“Domestic terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics:

- Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;

– Appear intended

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and -Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S."

Of course, the weasel words the FBI used was "potential for domestic terrorism", because everyone has the potential (maybe near zero) to do domestic terrorism so if the word "potential" is included in the meaning then they can watch folks with impunity. But the author notes that while the Occupy Wall Street protesters met none of the above definitions, except maybe that they were endangering themselves by taking on authority, the Police and authorities met all of them.

Essentially the report reaffirms what we found out in 2013 and 2014:

" FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests. These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

As I pointed out 2 years ago, DSAC was (and is) an arm of Wall Street and Corporate America. So why should anyone be surprised? The whole thing is a real turkey:

The Security State eventually eats It's own

What gets me is that we don't seem to be able to change anything.

Since I wrote this article a lot of information has come out, along with details of just how corrupt and repressive organizations like DSAC, State and Local Police Forces and renegade FBI and CIA agencies are. Nothing has really improved much. If anything the government seems to be out of the President's control in this area and I'm worried he'll be assassinated by these people if he tries to do anything about them. The Secret Service is regularly showing it's intoxicated incompetence, and his own agency heads (DEA) regularly insult him and ignore him and Eric Holder. I was afraid Obama's election was going to be a relatively mild people in our neo-Fascist storm, but it's been stormy with Congress and Officials alike in open sedition and subversion efforts. The Security State always comes home, and it eventually eats it's own. We become what we hate, and a lot of the people who have exaggerated fears of what the Soviets, Maoists or other tyrants did in the name of Communism seem poised to engage in mass repression at home.

Post Script

Lest anybody presume that the Security Police State is something new, it's not. Secret police and police treated as standing armies and occupying forces were a feature that began with the second phase of colonialism, when it came to be dominated by "monied wealth" and institutionalized corporations.

In the USA oppression was usually adhoc and local. My investigations started with historical crimes dating back to before the Wilson Administration. The problem is that we've had a police state for some communities for year. And we demanded it. "Stop and Frisk" targets "poor communities" which just happen to mean mostly minority communities. You can hear, from time to time, sweet ladies talk about how "stop and frisk" get's bad guys off the street. And sure enough it regularly puts poor black people in jail for having some pot in their pocket or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. To people living in such places these are occupation police state tactics. The statistics say that minorities get targeted by police, and this is just the dark side of human nature. People tend to go after the easy targets first. So instead of feeling sympathy for the poor and sick, they become marks.

Alan Grayson went to an interview today in which he said something so obvious it ought to be trite:

http://rt.com/shows/watching-the-hawks/243453-mainstream-media-distrust-factors/

"When you put people to work making bombs, you end up with bombs. When you put people to work making bridges, you end up with bridges."

Holte's Law applied to Rothbard on LVT

I was looking to see what the Royalists (Von = Lord) such as Von Mises and Hayek had to say about Georgism. And I came to Rothbard's writings. Rothbard wrote about Henry George, but I also have to invoke "Holte's Law" in reading him, which is if an Austrian School propagandist likes it, be skeptical. And the Corollary, if an Austrian School propagandist hates it, it's probably spot on. Rothbard despised Henry George. And more importantly, if you want to find out the truth among a pack of liars read the enemies of your liar friends. They'll either tell you the truth, or give you diamonds mixed in with their dreck you can sort through. Thus when the Austrian folks invoke:

"Rothbard's Law: the tendency of people to specialize in what they are worst at." [http://mises.org/library/progress-and-poverty-how-book-came-be-written]

I invoke Holte's law. Rothbard attacks George with this strawman:

"George saw the credit-fueled land speculations of the 19th century and concluded that these unproductive activities were due to private ownership of land, which he proposed to end in the name of promoting prosperity. It was a mistake of cause and effect." http://mises.org/library/progress-and-poverty-how-book-came-be-written]

Rothbard and the Austrians feared George enough to try to both attack him and try to appropriate his name (damning with faint praise). That in itself recommends him to me. First Henry George was not advocating socializing ownership of land. He wanted to tax unearned land rents. That is not "ending private ownership" at all. Why would Rothbard make a false argument? I think it's because he spent his life specializing at teaching Austrian Economists, something he could never do that well because Austrian Economics is mostly dreck. Rothbard can't even describe Georgism accurately, writing:

"According to the single tax theory, individuals have the natural right to own themselves and the property they create. Hence they have the right to own the capital and consumer goods they produce. Land, however (meaning all original gifts of nature), is a different matter, they say. Land is God-given. Being God-given, none can justly belong to any individual; all land properly belongs to society as a whole."

Single taxers do not base their argument for Land Value Taxation on Land being "God-Given", nor on "none can justly belong to any individual", they simply don't say that. I've had long arguments with Georgists who will explain how that is just not an accurate statement of his ideas. On the contrary people have a "God-Given." Georgists explain that the right to "property in land" has to be a common right because it is a right that all deserve and not just an aristocracy, no matter how broad:

"If production gives to the producer the right to exclusive possession and enjoyment, there can rightfully be no exclusive possession and enjoyment of anything not the production of labor, and the recognition of private property in land is wrong. For the right to the produce of labor cannot be enjoyed without the right to the free use of the opportunities offered by nature, and to admit the right of property in these is to deny the right of property in the produce of labor. When non-producers can claim as rent a portion of the wealth created by producers, the right of the producers to the fruits of their labor is to that extent denied. There is no escape from this position." [http://www.henrygeorge.org/rightful.htm]

But if that were the only straw in Rothbard's argument it would be belied by his admission that Georgists don't believe in simply taking land and make the argument that unearned rent is a big portion of the problem. Rothbard then puts up more straw:

"The deficiency in that argument is the neglect of the time factor in production. Capital is the product of human energy and land . . . and time. The time-block is the reason that people must abstain from consumption, and save. Laboriously, these savings are invested in capital goods." [http://mises.org/sites/default/files/Single%20Tax%20Economic%20and%20Moral%20Implications_2.pdf]

This is straw because it a; is extrinsic to the argument he's "refuting", and b; Henry George doesn't neglect time factors in his argument because what is essential to his argument is the notion that there is a moral ownership to be gained from people's labor. Henry George acknowledges the importance of capital and specifically exempts it from Taxes for that reason. Not only is the time factor important in values, but the reality of depreciation means that most physical investment requires constant reinvestment to maintain value. Something Rothbard neglects.

His next caveat raises questions to me:

"The single tax theory is further defective in that it runs up against a grave practical problem. How will the annual tax on land be levied? In many cases, the same person owns both the site and the man-made improvement, and buys and sells both site and improvement together, in a single package. How, then, will the government be able to separate site value from improvement value? No doubt, the single taxers would hire an army of tax assessors. But assessment is purely an arbitrary act and cannot be anything else. And being under the control of politics, it becomes purely a political act as well. Value can only be determined in exchange on the market. It cannot be determined by outside observers." [Rothbard Critique]

I've raised this issue, and since it's coming from Rothbard, I'm sorry I did. The easiest way to get around this would be to levy the tax at point of sale. But LVT folks, in reality, usually don't lobby for a 100% tax but some version of a partial tax, and the issue of assessing land values can be based on the same kinds of data that come from current real estate taxes. He calls it defective because of this, but so is every other tax in some way. Those that are easy to calculate are usually regressive and fall mostly on workers and poor. Income taxes tend to fall on workers, or fail to account for capital investment. So on the one hand whenever Rothbard says anything red flags go up for me. But on the other hand, the best way to test an argument is to test the arguments of the critics.

Rothbard then claims that a Land Value Tax would be arbitrarily applied. His assumption is on the assumption of the natural right of ownership:

"In our world, the only naturally free goods are those that are superabundant—like air. Goods that are scarce, and therefore the object of human action, command a price on the market. These goods are the ones that come into individual ownership. Land generally is abundant in relation to labor, but lands, particularly the better lands, are scarce relative to their possible uses." [Moral Implications_2.pdf]

Rothbard's assumption is that any common property will be misallocated because:

"Compelling any economic goods to be free wreaks economic havoc."

But common ownership doesn't imply making it "free" to the user. It just means that the governance of that resource needs to be done in the interest of the common-wealth and not the private separate wealth. Private ownership is an avenue to inequality and there is no evidence to support the libertarian/Conservative contention that freedom = economic havoc. Though in the case of goods that are held for purely private use, when ownership is not connected to labor and the person who owns the good is not responsible for paying for external costs, downstream costs and other externalities -- the resource definitely gets misallocated.

And Rothbard's comment "a 100 percent tax means that land sites pass from individual ownership into a state of no-ownership as their price is forced to zero" belies that the tax is designed to fall on unearned rents and speculative appreciation and isn't designed to fall on capital goods or the housing/buildings on the land. On the contrary a high LVT rate will encourage owners to put money into increasing the value of the capital goods that use that land in order to avoid the tax on economic rent. As someone said the LVT tax is designed to make landlords efficient rent collectors for local government. It might make landlords actually work for a living. What it definitely wouldn't do would be to "no-ownership" as a properly designed LVT tax won't fall on home owners or production facilities. It's designed to make the land work. And that is if you buy his arguments that the LVT tax would actually be at 100% of the assessed value. It just doesn't follow (non sequitur) that:

"favoritism and “queuing up” will settle allocation, instead of economic efficiency. In short, there will be land waste on a huge scale. Not only will there be no incentive for those in power to allocate the sites efficiently; there will also be no market rents and therefore no way that anyone could find out how to allocate sites properly."

Which of course is balderdash. Even if there were the risk that a 100% tax on land rents would dissuade people from owning land for renting to others, it would not dissuade productive use or home use. But all Rothbard and the other Austrians were betraying was their craving for economic Royalism over any kind of commonwealth:

"For in any economy, a useful resource cannot go unowned without chaos setting in; somebody must manage and own—either private individuals or the government. "

The idea that people can be trusted to manage a common resource is foreign to them. Yet we know that private ownership is as chaotic and prone to mismanagement as pure anarchy. But the alternative according to the American Way of doing things is; commonwealth.

Now I tell a story. When this country was first settled, the first instincts of the Royalist Elite were the same as those of the Vons and Vans of the Austrian School, to replicate the aristocratic structure of Dark Ages Europe. My State of Maryland, was founded on this principle. It was to be the property of Vast Estates owned by foreign landlords. That didn't work. The folks brought in as slaves (on 7 year contracts if white, or permanently if black) ran away or otherwise rebelled. The authorities went to permitting property because aristocratic control equals slavery and stifles innovation, personal liberty and survival for the majority. Rothbard feared Henry George and that is why he misrepresents his teachings.

Further Reading:

http://mises.org/rothbard/georgism.pdf

http://www.henrygeorge.org/rightful.htm

Henry George as an Excellent Economics Teacher

Austrian Economics is but a handmaiden to aristocracy and privilege. George's arguments about Land value segue off off John Locke's arguments for the right of commoners to own property and his arguments against royalty. It is precisely because we all have an equal right in property that unearned values in land must be taxed. He gets attacked by both socialists and elitists because of this. But he's just right.

Further Readings:

http://mises.org/rothbard/georgism.pdf

http://www.henrygeorge.org/rightful.htm

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-target-of-progressive-taxation-and.html

http://mises.org/library/progress-and-poverty-how-book-came-be-written