See Part I for how RAND and its creed “systems analysis” was created and how Albert Wohlstetter would ultimately become the kingpin of RAND.

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: the Fabian Society

For us to understand what ultimately made Albert Wohlstetter the man he became we must first start with the story of Bertrand Russell. And for this, we must begin with the Fabian Society.

The Fabian Society was founded on January 4^th, 1884 in London as an offshoot of The Fellowship of the New Life, which in turn was founded just one year earlier by Scottish philosopher Thomas Davidson. The Fellowship advocated pacifism, vegetarianism and simple living, under the influence of Leo Tolstoy’s ideas. (1) Some of its members also wanted to become politically involved in transforming society which led to the formation of the Fabian Society.

One of the nine founding members of the Fabian Society was Frank Podmore, who was also an influential member of the Society for Psychical Research.

Alfred Russell Wallace, William Crookes, F.W.H. Myers and renown psychologist William James’ work on mediums, telepathy and materializations led to the founding of the Society of Psychical Research, the Theosophical Society and their American branches.

Alfred Russell Wallace was a close associate of T.H. Huxley (Darwin’s bulldog) and co-founded the theory of natural selection alongside Charles Darwin.

The Fabian Society was extremely influenced by the ideas of Darwinism. Much of what they supported in terms of ideologies and philosophies was for the purpose of advancing Darwinism and saw Karl Marx’s newly published system as the perfect vehicle to carry Darwin’s logic into a controlling ideology to organize the masses.

Karl Marx himself was very much drawn to the ideas of Darwin, including two explicit references to Darwin and evolution in the second edition of Das Kapital. (2)

Marx would write in a letter that:

“Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.”

In a book review of the first volume of Das Kapital, Engels wrote that Marx was “simply striving to establish the same gradual process of transformation demonstrated by Darwin in natural history as a law in the social field.” (3)

The Fabian Society would define itself as a socialist movement, influenced by Karl Marx and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation soon founding England’s Labour Party in 1900. The party’s constitution was written by Fabian Society leader Sidney Webb and borrowed heavily from the founding documents of the Fabian Society.

Immediately upon its inception, the society featured such prominent eugenicists such as George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Huxley’s protégé H.G. Wells, Arthur Balfour, founder of Geopolitics Halford Mackinder and Bertrand Russell.

Prominent Theosophist Annie Besant would also become a member of the Fabian Society upon its inception, and was the leading speaker for both the Fabian Society and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation.

At the core of the Fabian Society were Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who would also help co-found the London School of Economics (LSE), with Rothschild funding, to propagate the Fabian Society outlook in 1895.

Harold Laski, one of Britain’s most influential intellectual spokesmen for Marxism, would become a Fabian Society member, a professor at the LSE (1926-1950), and a chairman of the British Labour Party (1945-1946).

Bertrand Russell would teach social democracy at LSE from 1895-1896 and from 1937-1938 lectured on the science of power. On the official site of LSE, Russell is credited as “one of the spiritual and financial founders of LSE…[whose] involvement in the early life of the School helped to define its ethos.”

The Coefficients club was also set up by Sidney and Beatrice Webb and included among its membership H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell, as well as Leo Amery, Harold Laski, Halford Mackinder (who was Director of the LSE from 1903-1908), Alfred Milner and Clinton Edward Dawkins (the three times great uncle to the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins).

The name “Fabian” is derived from the Roman General Quintus Fabius, known as the Cunctator from his strategy of delaying his attacks against the invading Carthaginians until the right moment, and who’s fame is founded on having beaten Hannibal by never engaging in direct combat.

In the founding Fabian document it is written: “For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.”

Fabians would advocate the strategy of permeation, whereby you affect the change you want to see by slowly permeating all levels of society’s controlling structures. Once you have permeated sufficiently you can strike collectively and essentially take over from within. It would be a technique that the Trotskyists would become notorious for, such as with the French Turn.

As Matthew Ehret wrote in his “Origins of the Deep State”:

“The Fabian society program focused on broad social welfare programs such as universal health care, mass education, and better working conditions which were designed to attract the disenfranchised masses. Under the Fabian program, such programs held no substance in reality, as the true means to justify their creation was banned…[that is]…true scientific and technological progress…

This ruse was thus designed to merely bring the will of the lower classes under the deeper influence of a ruling oligarchy via the promise of ‘democratic socialism’ and a naïvely utopian ‘end of history’ ideal…The controllers of Fabian Socialism are not, nor have they ever been ‘democratic socialists’…”

At its heart, Fabianism was merely fascism with a “scientific” socialist face.

Matthew Ehret writes:

“The Round Table movement served as the intellectual center of the international operations to regain control of the British Empire and took on several incarnations over the 20th century. It worked in tandem with the Coefficients Club, the Fabian Society, and the Rhodes Trust, all of whom witnessed members moving in and out of each others ranks.”

Historian Carrol Quigley, wrote of this cabal in his posthumously published “Anglo-American Establishment”:

“This organization [the Round Table]…has been the most powerful single influence in All Souls, Balliol, and New Colleges at Oxford for more than a generation…it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it.”

H.G. Wells was chairman of the League of Free Nations Association and published his call for “world peace” in his book “The Idea of a League of Nations” published in 1919.

The purpose was again to lure people in with glorious promises of a “social democracy” while in fact weakening nation states such that they would be unable to resists the coming of a new world empire.

H.G. Wells would publish “The New World Order” in 1940, and was no doubt the guiding influence on Julian Huxley’s outlook when he wrote the manifesto for UNESCO.

Bertrand Russell’s “Proposed Roads to Freedom”

In 1918, Russell publishes “Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism”. Here are some relevant quotes:

“My own opinion – which I may as well indicate at the outset – is that pure Anarchism, though it should be the ultimate ideal, to which society should continually approximate, is for the present impossible…On the other hand, both Marxian Socialism and Syndicalism, in spite of many drawbacks, seem to me calculated to give rise to a happier and better world than that in which we live. I do not, however, regard either of them as the best practicable system…The best practicable system, to my mind, is that of Guild Socialism, which concedes what is valid both in the claims of the State Socialists and in the Syndicalist fear of the State by adopting a system of federalism among trades for reasons similar to those which have recommended federalism among nations.”

“The terrorist campaign in which such men as Ravachol were active practically came to an end in 1894. After that time, under the influence of Pelloutier, the better sort of Anarchists found a less harmful outlet by advocating Revolutionary Syndicalism in the Trade Unions and Bourse de Travail.”

“In England Marx has never had many followers. Socialism here has been inspired in the main by the Fabians…What remained was State Socialism and a doctrine of ‘permeation.’ Civil servants were to be permeated with the realization that Socialism would enormously increase their power. Trade Unions were to be permeated with the belief that the day for purely industrial action was pasts, and that they must look to Government (inspired secretly by sympathetic civil servants) to bring about, bit by bit, such parts of the Socialist programme as were not likely to rouse much hostility in the rich. The Independent Labour Party…was largely inspired at first by the ideas of the Fabians…It aimed always at cooperation with the industrial organizations of wage-earners, and chiefly through its efforts, the Labour Party was formed in 1900 out of a combination of the Trade Unions and the political Socialists. To this party, since 1909, all the important Unions have belonged, but in spite of the fact that its strength is derived from Trade Unions, it has stood always for political rather than industrial action.”

“Anarchism, which avoids the dangers of State Socialism, has dangers and difficulties of its own…Nevertheless it remains an ideal to which we should wish to approach as nearly as possible, and which, in some distant age, we hope may be reached completely…The system we have advocated is a form of Guild Socialism, leaning more, perhaps, towards Anarchism than the official Guildsman would wholly approve. It is in the matters that politicians usually ignore – science and art, human relations, and the joy of life – that Anarchism is strongest… ”

In his “Proposed Roads to Freedom” Russell makes it clear that he is most sympathetic to the philosophy of Mikhail Bakunin and Prince Kropotkin, who were both involved with the Mounte Verità society, a sister branch to the Theosophists (refer here for the relevance of this).

Interestingly, Russell’s proposed roads to freedom, that is, socialism, anarchism and syndicalism all lead to the same destination point…the League of Nations.

Russell writes:

“If the peace of the world is ever to become secure, I believe there will have to be, along with other changes, a development of the idea which inspires the project of a League of Nations.”

Thus, Russell is all for minimising the power of the State until we can reach the “ideal,” in the form of a world empire.

The Unity of Science: Radical Positivists, Eugenicists, and Anarchists Unite

The Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricism was a group of philosophers and scientists who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna. The Vienna Circle’s influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy, is immense up to the present day.

The philosophical position of the Vienna Circle was called logical empiricism (aka: logical positivism). It was greatly influenced by such members as Ernst Mach, David Hilbert, and Bertrand Russell. The Vienna Circle was committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment and its aim was to make philosophy “scientific” with the help of modern logic.

This was very much along the line of what David Hilbert (member of the Vienna Circle) had called for at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900, whereby Hilbert put forth the thesis that all scientific knowledge should be reduced to the form of mathematical “logic.” Thus, all “scientific” knowledge would henceforth be solely deducible from mathematical models.

In 1900, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead (who taught Russell) set forth to achieve Hilbert’s challenge which resulted in the three volume “Principia Mathematica” published thirteen years later. The Principia would be the new Bible in many ways for generations of analytical philosophers and logical positivists.

Continuing along these lines, the Unity of Science Movement was organized in the late 1930s by former members of the Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricists, such as Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and new members such as Ernest Nagel. The greatest aim being to create an encyclopedia that would establish how the unity of sciences should proceed, bringing together intellectuals to establish a fortress against the chaotic terrain of politics, which was extremely adverse to the “ideals” of a scientific way of life. All contributors to this process agreed that the progress of science should eventually create a “scientific world-conception,” helping to build (or control) a big picture of what science means.

“Encyclopedia and Unified Science” would be published by the movement with this aim. The first edition came out in 1938 and was co-written by Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris, John Dewey, Niels Bohr and Bertrand Russell.

Interestingly, science fiction was considered just as important as the logic of science to this world-conception.

Though H.G. Wells was not an official member of this movement, we should keep in mind that he was always committed to the same goals as Russell. Wells was not only a world famous writer of science fiction, but was also working on his own new secular Bible series in three books designed to unite all forms of knowledge. (4)

Among this trilogy is “The Science of Life” co-written with Julian Huxley, and meant to give a popular account of all major aspects of biology as known in the 1920s. It is credited with introducing modern ecological concepts and emphasised the importance of behaviourism and Jungian psychology (Jung was a member of the Mounte Verità society).

It also promoted Eugenics.

Julian Huxley, Vice President (1937-1944) and President of the British Eugenics Society (1959-1962) was the one to coin the term “transhumanism.” Julian was also the first director-general of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1946, to which he wrote its mandate “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy.”

Norbert Wiener was taught by Bertrand Russell at Cambridge and by David Hilbert at the University of Göttingen. He would go on to found “cybernetics.”

John Dewey, a member of the Unity of Sciences movement, would greatly dictate and shape a global educational reform, which was promoted by UNESCO, and has immense influence to this day.

It was clear that along with a world government, you would need a world-conception of what is regarded or approved of as “scientific,” all else would be thrown into the dust bin and would be considered unfit to shape policy. This was enforced by the construct of a global education system to implement the “right” sort of ideas and forbid the “wrong” sort.

Russell would put it forth most succinctly in his “The Scientific Outlook” (1931):

“The scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researchers of psycho-analysis, behaviorism and biochemistry will be brought into play… all the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called “cooperative” i.e.: to do exactly what every body else is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished will be scientifically trained out of them.”

In 1953, Russell would update this creepy piece of work and make it even creepier, writing:

“It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment… This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

If you think that sounds awfully similar to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” it is because it is, in fact Russell was contemplating charging Aldous with plagiarism.

Albert’s Radical Days

Albert Wohlstetter started at City College of New York (CCNY) in 1931. It was here that he would be mentored by Morris Raphael Cohen, a professor of philosophy and mathematics and a Russian émigré with a nihilist background.

In the 1930s, City College had developed a reputation as the “proletarian Harvard,” and this was very much due to Cohen, who started a Marx Circle at CCNY. This Marx Circle met regularly at the Henry Street Settlement House, which had been established by followers of the Fabian Society.

The Henry Street Settlement House was purchased by Jacob Schiff in 1895, likely through Rothschild funding (recall Rothschild also funded the London School of Economics which was started by the leading Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb). By the 1930s the settlement house was being used for classrooms and residences. Schiff was a financier who went on to receive the Medal of the Rising Sun from Japan in exchange for providing $200 million for the Japan-Russo war and then went on to pour millions into the Bolsheviks that overturned Czarist Russia in 1917.

While a Professor of Philosophy at CCNY (1912-1938), Morris Raphael Cohen came under the influence of philosopher Thomas Davidson, founder of the Fellowship of the New Life from which the Fabian Society arose in 1884. Cohen’s “Marx Circle” continued within Davidson’s enterprise. Cohen also studied under William James, co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research (connections to the Theosophists), while at Harvard University.

Cohen was also strongly influenced by Bertrand Russell, who in turn held Cohen in high regard. Cohen would write in his autobiography “A Dreamer’s Journey”:

“It was the study of Russell’s Principia Mathematic which I began soon after I was appointed to teach mathematics at City College in 1902, that finally liberated me…Russell came closer to being my philosophical god than any one before or since…”

Cohen would also mentor Ernest Nagel and Sidney Hook at CCNY. All of these men were close mentors/friends to Albert Wohlstetter. Hook would become a leader of the Marxist faction at CCNY.

Nagel cowrote “An Introduction to Logic and the Scientific Method” with Morris Raphael Cohen, in 1934.

Ernest Nagel, one of the founders of the Unity of Science Movement, earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1931 and went on to spend his academic career there, becoming the first John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at the University in 1955.

Upon graduating from City College in 1934, at the age of twenty- one, Albert enrolled at Columbia Law School. Albert abandoned law school, after a year, for a graduate program in mathematics. He wrote his MA thesis under the supervision of Ernest Nagel and under the watchful eye of his friend, the philosopher and mathematical logician Willard Van Orman Quine. (5)

Alfred North Whitehead was Willard Van Orman Quine’s thesis supervisor for his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1932. It was Whitehead who introduced Quine to Bertrand Russell which began their correspondence.

Morton White was another one of Ernest Nagel’s doctoral students, and a close friend of Albert (6) who would join the Fieldites (a Trotskyist splinter group) along with Albert.

It should be clear thus far that, Albert was heavily under the influence of the Unity of Science movement thinkers, with Fabian Society overlap, since his days at City College New York.

During Albert’s time as a student at Columbia University (1934-1939), he would become very close friends with militant philosopher and Trotskyist Sidney Hook and found a mentor in Columbia’s highly respected Art Historian and Trotskyist intellectual Meyer Schapiro. (7)

The reader should be aware that Sidney Hook is credited as having converted James Burnham (who, like Hook, was also a professor in philosophy at the New York University) to Trotskyism, acknowledged by Burnham himself in his autobiography. In 1933, along with Sidney Hook, Burnham helped to organize the socialist organization, the American Workers Party (AWP).

In 1934, Trotskyists in the Communist League of America (CLA) did a French turn on the American Workers Party (AWP), in a move that elevated the AWP’s James Burnham into the role of a Trotsky lieutenant and chief adviser.

Sidney Hook earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, under the supervision of John Dewey. It was at Columbia that Hook began the project that was to occupy him throughout the 1930s, of seeking a synthesis between Karl Marx’s “dialectical materialism” and Dewey’s pragmatism.

In the late 1930s, Hook assisted Trotsky in his efforts to clear his name in a special Commission of Inquiry headed by John Dewey, otherwise known as the Dewey Commission.

The Dewey Commission was initiated on March 1937 by the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky. The commission proclaimed that it had cleared Trotsky of all charges made during the Moscow Trials (8) and made the claim that Stalin had framed Trotsky.

This Commission was a pseudo-judicial process set up by American Trotskyists and its sympathizers. It had no power of subpoena, nor official imprimatur from any government.

Thus, we find a very clear overlap between the Unity of Science Movement and the Trotskyists.

Albert would co-write at least one article with Morton White an article for the “Partisan Review” (9) which was a very influential Marxist magazine that had become more Trotskyist in its leaning. This was due to a new cast of editors, including Dwight Macdonald.

Dwight Macdonald is another close friend of Albert. (10)

Albert would actually join a communist group called the Fieldites, also known as the League for a Revolutionary Workers Party (LRWP), a splinter group from the “official” Trotskyists. In the case of the Fieldites, they had a reputation of having an even more aggressive stance against Stalin’s Soviet Union than the typical Trotskyists. So even more militant.

Interestingly, the founder of the Fieldites was Max Gould (his pseudonym was B.J. Field) a former Wall Street petroleum analyst and graduate from Columbia University. Field had been personally close to Trotsky (11) in the early 1930s and was one of the leaders of the CLA during the heated 1934 period before he was expelled. It was at this point that Field founded the LRWP in May 1934.

The LRWP soon found itself under investigation by the FBI for subversive activities.

Thus, one very big question that comes to mind is, if Wohlstetter was a card carrying member of the LRWP (12), how did he manage top security clearance as a leading nuclear strategist for the RAND Corporation during the McCarthyite era and to which the House Committee on Un-American Activities acted as a standing committee from 1945-1975?

Even Herman Kahn, another prominent RAND nuclear strategist had his security clearance temporarily removed due to his wife’s affiliation with a communist group. So why was Albert’s past never brought up?

Alex Abella offers a possible explanation for this in his “Soldiers of Reason,” where he writes:

“…the records of the group [LRWP] were lost when Field, moving files surreptitiously from an office in a horse-drawn lorry—this was 1934, after all—became involved in an accident at a busy intersection after his horse died. Afraid that he would be charged with the accident and that his radical activities would land him in an even greater jam. Field fled the scene, leaving all the files, publications, and membership rolls to be disposed of by New York City sanitation.”

It is this rather dubious story that is used to explain how all records of the LRWP were lost, never to be found again, and how Albert was very conveniently given a fresh start.

So yes, if we are going to be “fair” with Albert, he was never a faithful Trotskyist, but then again, who ever was? The entire group was notorious for infighting, factions, splintering and permeation tactics, with a long list of renunciations. The importance is rather on what were all these groupings, notably the Fabians, Unity of Science Movement and the Trotskyist all working towards, since it was no coincidence that they were always revolving in each other’s orbits.

Albert was steeped in Marxist doctrine in tandem with the ideologies from the Unity of Science Movement by a network of socialist philosophers that spans three generations, and thus it is absurd to claim that this was all just a coincidence or a “brief” phase of radical experimentation on Albert’s part.

Renunciations, switching titles and mock conversions were all part of the game.

A Road to Damascus? Trotskyists “Convert” to Radical Positivism

James Burnham would remain a “Trotskyist intellectual” from 1934 to 1940. Before this, James Burnham graduated from Princeton, followed by Balliol College, Oxford University (recall Carroll Quigley’s quote on Balliol’s connection to the Round Table and the Fabian Society) before becoming a professor in philosophy at the New York University where he met Sidney Hook and was converted to Trotskyism.

In February 1940, Burnham renounced both Trotsky and Marxism altogether, writing “Science and Style: A Reply to Comrade Trotsky,” explaining his reasons for this and why from now on he would be a follower of Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead and the new Encyclopedia of Unified Science:

“Do you wish me to prepare a reading list, Comrade Trotsky? It would be long, ranging from the work of the brilliant mathematicians and logicians of the middle of the last century to one climax in the monumental Principia Mathematica of Russell and Whitehead (the historic turning point in modern logic), and then spreading out in many directions – one of the most fruitful represented by the scientists, mathematicians and logicians now cooperating in the new Encyclopedia of Unified Science.”

In 1941, Burnham would publish “The Managerial Revolution” which was a sort of guidebook to Fabian Society thinking at the time of how the world was to be ruled. In fact, Burnham was of the viewpoint that this vision had already won (for more on this refer here).

In his “The Managerial Revolution,” Burnham echoes the Fabian Society methodology and Russell’s “The Scientific Outlook,” writing:

“Nevertheless, it may still turn out that the new form of economy will be called ‘socialist.’ In those nations – Russia and Germany – which have advanced furthest toward the new [managerial] economy, ‘socialism’ or ‘national socialism’ is the term ordinarily used. The motivation for this terminology is not, naturally, the wish for scientific clarity but just the opposite. The word ‘socialism’ is used for ideological purposes in order to manipulate the favourable mass emotions attached to the historic socialist ideal of a free, classless, and international society and to hide the fact that the managerial economy is in actuality the basis for a new kind of exploiting, class society.”

Although Albert would never make such a dramatic public declaration as did fellow technocrat Burnham, it is clear where he ultimately pledged his allegiance by his promotion of systems analysis (part of the trifecta of information theory and cybernetics) behind everything he did at the RAND corporation. (For more on this story refer to Part 1 of this series)

Burnham would go on to work for the OSS, followed by the CIA and would become “the real intellectual founder of the neoconservative movement and the originally proselytizer, in America, of the theory of totalitarianism.”

This helps us to understand why so many of Alfred Wohlstetter’s acolytes were prominent neoconservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.

RAND, under the guidance of Albert Wohlstetter, would gain the power to execute the mission of the Fabian Society. The Hannibal moment of victory had come with their entry into the JFK administration as McNamara’s Whiz Kids, who would not only “manage” the Vietnam War, but all wars that ensued under the American flag.

With entry into the government, they now had access to influencing all national policy including housing, healthcare, and education. Their permeation had become absolute.

Albert and Roberta would continue living in Laurel Canyon (a center of the counterculture movement), promoting an image of Albert as the ever-loving and patient teacher to an endless stream of doting students who would see him as a father figure, rather than for what he truly was, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Notes

(1) Colin Spencer (1996), The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism, Fourth Estate, pg. 283.
(2) I. Bernard Cohen (1985), Revolution in Science, Harvard University Press, p. 345.
(3) Ibid.
(4) The three books to H.G. Wells’ self-declared “new Bible” were: “The Outline of History” (1919), “The Science of Life” (1929), and “The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind” (1932)
(5) Ron Robin (2016), “The Cold War They Made: The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter,” Harvard University Press, p. 40.
(6) Ibid, p. 38.
(7) Ibid, p. 40.
(8) The Moscow Trials occurred between 1936-1938 and concluded that Trotskyist cells were at the heart of a fifth column operation within Russia which were committed to overthrowing Stalin and bringing Russia into a pro-Fascist program.
(9) Wohlstetter, Albert; White, Morton Gabriel (Fall 1939). “Who Are the Friends of Semantics?”. Partisan Review. 6 (5): 50–57.
(10) Wreszin, Michael (1994). A Rebel In Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight Macdonald. New York: HarperCollins. p. 113.
(11) Ron Robin (2016), “The Cold War They Made: The Strategic Legacy of Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter,” Harvard University Press, p. 45.
(12) Alex Abella (2008), “Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire,” Harcourt Books, p. 76.

[Part 3 will go over Albert’s role in shaping the RAND/Whiz Kids management of the Vietnam War, and his relationship to Team B, the false dichotomy of Kissinger vs Brzezinski, and the Trilateral Commission.]

The American deep state is playing upon the public’s distaste of China towards its own ends, and just as with the present global mystery illness, they will blame China for a social credit system which in reality was made in the USA. We can deconstruct the anatomy of this scam through the handling of Covid and biological warfare in general.

This same deep state is trying to springboard or otherwise utilize the incessantly bad behaviour of its own rapacious oligarchy, who it must serve, an oligarchy trapped in a system of capital accumulation at all and any costs, even collective suicide, into some sort of controlled paradigm collapse. The incentive to destroy society is just too great compared to the costs of keeping it together. The super elites themselves, like some super virus, can always just vacate the premises and find some other host to infect. This is a pandemic of speculation, usury, and greed.

An interesting twist which Senator Rand Paul exposed in public hearings on the senate floor, was that the novel Corona virus was produced at Dr. Anthony Fauci’s discretion. This was a project of the U.S. corporate state, of a corrupted U.S. intelligence agency, we conclude from Senator Paul’s findings.

This much is also so well known by now, that it’s reached the level of common knowledge. But we say it again now not to preach about it, but to connect it to a broader problem with social credit and China.

Digging further, we see it was all based upon long-standing plans to upwards distribute wealth and strip away constitutional rights from citizens, further concentrate socio-economic power, and destroy medium and small businesses. By any definition of the term, this is open class warfare being waged by the ruling class against all other classes.

And so this same ruling class has used the politics of normalized class war to divide and conquer the citizenry along race and gender lines, using new-left tropes, to shift focus away from real economic issues over to abstract identity issues. A portion of the intelligentsia and student/youth are weaponised into a faux ‘progressive’ militancy against ‘Trumpism’, Antifa and BLM and the non-profit industrial complex all connected to Democracy Action and Sorosian wonderworks.

The non-event which was January 6^th is used as some sort of newfangled Oklahoma City bombing which only emboldens the parasitic proclivities of the prosecution and investigation power fetishists, which American authoritarianism has allowed to fester in its crevices. Well, a non-event except for the unjustified killing of Ashli Babbitt by Capitol Police. Four officers who died, actually died ‘by suicide’ within a week of the event. What did they know? Why were they ‘suicided’?

Meanwhile the real opponents of Trump are those behind the entire Great Reset and class war of ‘some against all’ underway right now in the U.S.

And that this is already a burgeoning civil war and inter-elite conflict is also openly known.

On December 20^th, CNN ran video under the heading, “How close is the U.S. to Civil War? Closer than you think, study says”.

The accuracy or motivations of the study itself are neither here nor there, we can develop a superior metric and method probably at random, because the situation is obvious. The real point of interest is that America’s flagship fake news outlet is openly pushing the story. What could the reason for it be?

What was said is of particular interest:

Host: “The rigid refusal of lawmakers of compromise underscore the disturbing findings of one study on democracy in the U.S. According to a Washington Post editorial, data from the Center for Systemic Peace finds that the U.S. no longer qualifies as a democracy. After the Trump administration years, it’s somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state.

Barbara Walter is a professor of International Relation at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California at San Diego, she joins me now, I’m delighted. When we look at the research it’s frankly frightening, and you conclude that the U.S. is closer to civil war than any of us would like to Believe. How close?”

Barbara Walter: “Well I’ve been studying civil wars for the last thirty years across the globe, and in fact the last four years I’ve been on a task force run by the CIA that tries to predict where outside the U.S. a civil war, political violence, and instability is likely to break out. And we actually know now that the two best predictors of whether violence is likely to happen are whether a country is an Anocracy, and that’s a fancy term for partial democracy, and whether ethnic entrepreneurs have emerged in a country that are using racial, religious, or ethnic divisions to try to gain political power. And the amazing thing about the United States is that both of these factors currently exist, and they have emerged at a surprisingly fast rate.”

Naturally CNN twists words and reason, and makes implications at odds with the real dynamic now working. The ‘Trump administration years’ is thrown in to make us think the erosion of constitutional rights was his doing. It was the opposite: it was those opposed to Trump that eroded the republic.

It was the collusion of the Great Reset technocracy, the collusion of the IMF, the WEF and domestic players in the Transition Integrity Project (which we have written so much about), big media, big tech, big pharma, the too big to fail, that subverted a populist movement and their rightful electoral outcome.

They openly bragged about it and showed the receipts. It is not a conspiracy theory, but something already openly confessed.

In truth, a better study from Princeton concluded in 2014 that the U.S. was no longer a Democracy.

“A new study from Princeton spells bad news for American democracy—namely, that it no longer exists.

Asking “[w]ho really rules?” researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argues that over the past few decades America’s political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power.

Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.”

Of course Barbara Walter is either a liar or an idiot, probably a bit of both, because there is no correlation between a democracy index and stability. Well, there is a connection: once the U.S. targets a country or region for destabilization, they begin to point out features of its society that are less than the progressive idealist dream of a utopian democracy. An easy task and a useful trick, given that we are in reality and not a dream. Then they go on to lay a trade embargo and other punitive measures, thereby exacerbating the tensions within that society, tensions which all societies in reality actually have.

The intelligence agencies foster ‘gangs’, counter-gangs, and political violence in the targeted states, to create failed states. They do this across Africa. They did it in Yugoslavia, in Ukraine, etc.

The idea that democracy and stability are directly related works against the truth exposed in the fact of the general tendency of elites in struggling countries to tilt towards dictatorship, in order to bring stability to the instabilities which democratic institutions are subject to, once broader economic issues come to bear. The optimal situation of course are strong democratic institutions which are both justified by, and in turn support, economic prosperity.

Likewise, the U.S. tilts towards dictatorship not as the result of ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’, whatever that means, nor should their appearance (just now?) give us any pause. Rather, the developing system of internal passports, digital ID’s, Covid pass, forced vaccination and imprisonment under the pretext of ‘pandemic’, these are what ought to, and do, give us cause for great concern.

Which brings us back to China.

The pretext of the virus was certainly used in China towards its own ‘national security’ ends in the digital age. Russia has done the same. Neither country, however, has promoted vaccines which are experimental, opting instead to use this U.S. manufactured crisis towards its own security advantage. All while not using it to experiment upon the population with untested gene therapies.

But China will do China, and a country so far away and so far out of reach of the will and moral authority of American citizens to be concerned about, is hardly the proper focus of American citizen concerns.

The biggest problem that Americans face is certainly its own deep state and super elite, who seem to have a penchant for bizarre rituals, child abuse, elective warfare, and the fetishization of power dynamics observed under late capitalism.

The focus on China’s social credit system has a positive effect on western movements against the system insofar as westerners view the developments in Chinese society as negative.

But the blame placed on Chinese society has worked against understanding social credit. While the Chinese social credit system may utilize some of the same technologies as in the U.S., it is different in context, history, and meaning. Most understandable is that China’s social credit system preferences traditional and socially conservative values, whereas the emergent one in the U.S. imposes bourgeois-libertine values.

While Americans transform their justified fears over social credit, alongside the decline of meaningful work and living standards, into anti-China rhetoric, the focus on China serves as a distraction from what is entirely a domestic and technology-driven phenomenon.

If the lesson drawn is that ‘we must not become like Chinese society’, it is missing the mark. China sits in a markedly different position, where its automated industrial production techniques surpass those of the U.S. in many cases, while its large rural population lives in pre-industrial conditions.

China’s social credit system was initially aimed at big firms: imagine something like a ‘better business bureau’ and consumer reporting that actually had teeth. China’s system did not place profitability as the only determining factor for credit worthiness, and given its scale and anonymity, required a numerated system. Imagine if Pfizer, for example, had reduced access to capital because of its criminal activity. That’s exactly the sort of thing that has come about in the Chinese system, one of the few countries that is prone to execute a billionaire oligarch on occasion.

Chinese billionaire businessman, Liu Han was executed after being found guilty of murder and running a mafia-style criminal gang. Credit BBC, February 10, 2015

When China’s system was moved forward, its aim was to develop a non-monetary credit system for rural inhabitants who are still living in pre-industrial conditions. It’s also a massive country, really a civilizational sphere in its own right, with many regions and varying, even conflicting, credit and legal policies.

It is very difficult to implement the modern system of monetary credit when people live on barter, and their psychological motivations relate to not just pre-industrial but pre-modern and onymous social standing.

Bear in mind that China moved through three industrial revolutions within the span of about eighty years, whereas the 1^st Industrial Revolution in the U.S. began around 1750.

Big tech mirrors aspects of China’s social credit system, and there is no doubt that social credit is ‘growing’ in the U.S. if we compare it to the Chinese system. But that’s precisely where we will get it wrong.

In our work on Oriental Despotism and Hydraulic societies, we demonstrated the present push by western elites is to prepare for a transition away from a money-regulated (i.e. labor driven) society. This leads to their need for a social credit system that matches the post-labor age of the 4^th Industrial Revolution.

There are certainly Chinese people unhappy with the Chinese social credit system. The broader point is that that is their issue to solve. It’s a pattern for other countries’ elites to blame its internal woes on the U.S. Whatever truth value those claims have are muddied with the convenience it gives, relieving those political elites of their own responsibilities to govern fairly and justly.

Likewise, the focus on the ‘China virus’ disguises the fact that it was probably created on Dr. Fauci’s watch, coordinating with Bill Gates and other oligarchs invested in the vaccine mandate scheme.

Social credit works the same. It’s far too convenient to misplace both blame and understanding of social credit onto China. Chinese elites, the CCP, the PLA, all have absolutely nothing to do with the growth of social credit on American soil.

Social credit in the U.S. has distinctly American characteristics, based in new-left tropes, backed by American companies and none of the Chinese.

In the U.S., social instability has come about through the logic and process of its own machinations, the socio-economic disparity. The growth of authoritarianism in the U.S. and the implementation of social credit is, if anything, a mitigating force meant to manage the other crises of its own making.

What elites do love to do, however, is blame other countries for their own-goals. When empires collapse, they often like to engage in ‘great resets’, often total wars. Today’s war is a class war of the super elites, and this can be fought and won by the great masses of people against their own oligarchs. Introducing China as a responsible party for either the mystery virus or social credit, however, will only serve to embolden our own oligarchy in a great distraction from their own crimes and programs.

The author can be reached at FindMeFlores@gmail.com

In case you were beginning to feel like your world was becoming a cliché dystopian movie script, don’t feel bad. It appears that at least some of the villains agree with you.

Not happy with unsatisfying stories, scripts and narratives that shape our disorganized zeitgeist, Klaus Schwab and other creepy dungeon masters trying to manage the post-covid world have called for a ‘New Narrative’ to shape our 21st century and beyond. Schwab described the World Economic Forum’s Great Narrative Initiative announced on November 11 as a “collaborative effort of the world’s leading thinkers to fashion longer-term perspectives and co-create a narrative that can help guide the creation of a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable vision for our collective future.”

It is no question that this new project is bone chilling, but can it work? Does it have any basis in reality or is the oligarchical high priesthood stage managing this shit show intoxicated by their own self-induced narratives and completely incapable of seeing the seeds of self-destruction they have created for themselves?

Let’s examine this question in a bit of detail.

As far back as we look, recorded history demonstrates myths and stories that shape each culture’s subjective experience trying to make sense of the objective world and the many tenuous challenges that are tossed into our path.

Deep Structure Narratives

An ice age comes to an end and sea levels rise hundreds of feet drowning millions while wiping out coastal cities. As a consequence, flood myths appear across various cultures of the world.

Fires from the sky reflect terrible asteroids striking the earth wrecking havoc on ecosystems and perhaps even inducing volcanism and vast weather anomalies. As a consequence, more myths are created featuring heroes, villains, angels and Gods punishing sinners and rewarding those with virtue.

Throughout history, countless stories have been created by shamans, priests, and poets which have attempted to infuse meaning onto traumatic events induced by either nature or geopolitical strategies. Some classical stories may have even exposed geopolitical evils under the safer terrain of fiction when literal truths were impossible. One instance of this latter case can be found in the Olympian Gods of Homer’s stories who were in all likelihood representative of actual oligarchical families who manipulated never ending wars and exploited the folly and corruption of their chosen chess pieces on the Great Game of ancient Greece.

These stories are a part of the human condition and for the most part, perfectly natural.

However, in our supposedly enlightened secular era, these forms of myths are discarded as the foolish practices of simpler unscientific times.

Science has taught us to believe in logic. Not faith in God or the health of our immaterial souls.

The medieval myths of sea monsters and flat earths beyond which unsuspecting voyagers would meet a terrible fate were superseded for a new set of narratives during the enlightenment period. During this period, pure logic and empiricism were placed upon the new altars where religion once stood and we were told to worship new godheads by the names such as Kant, Locke, Hegel, Bacon and Newton. When Nietzsche proclaimed God to be dead, this was the current of thinkers that supposedly killed him.

The Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore referred to those suffering from this disease of metastasized logic saying: “A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”

When the foundation of enlightenment logic began to break down under the pressure of reality over a century ago, new narratives taking the form of the Standard Model quantum mechanics began teaching modern man that what appears to be living is in truth, just made up of non living atoms and chemical interactions… and what appears to be ordered form operating with purpose is merely the stochastic motion of atoms devoid of purpose, beauty or even objective truth. We were told that all of this was held together only by a mix of luck (statistical probability) and four fundamental forces created 13.7 billion years ago. All behavior in human life or in nature thus explained away by Darwinian models of survival of the fittest and random mutations. The rise of modern monstrosities like eugenics, and neo-Malthusianism were the sick children of these ghoulish assumptions.

The more we probe behind the impressive veneer of these popular narratives, the more we discover that myths spun by modern day high priests on behalf of political interests has not only continued into our present age, but have continuously adopted new costumes to adapt to our changing world. Those brilliant minds whose discoveries actually overturned old narratives by leaping beyond the domains of inductive/deductive thinking are carefully obscured under mathematical formulas devoid of the spirit and personality of these exceptional individuals (1).

The Political Consequences of False Macro-Narratives

Some political expressions of today’s secular narratives were seen as neocons trotted out in front of cameras broadcasting the message that the two hijacked planes which destroyed three towers on 9/11 was orchestrated by angry Muslims in caves who hated our freedom.

We were told that covid-19 arose from a badly cooked mammal that kissed a bat requiring a total abolition of our constitutional freedoms.

We were told that the protests of January 6, 2021 in Washington D.C. was an insurrection worse than anything the U.S.A had seen since the Civil War when 500,000 Americans slaughtered each other for four years.

We are continuously told that Russia has ambitions to undermine democratic elections across the entire free world while China is aiming to subvert western values and impose a global communist government through its imperial New Silk Road.

I could obviously go on for quite some time here, but needless to say, political myth making is an ugly part of life. But while each lie certainly does grave damage, our susceptibility to falling for these falsities is in no way disconnected from our acceptance of those higher meta narratives embedded in those scientific myths that shape HOW our minds move. Every high priest knows that controlling HOW people think is always infinitely more powerful than controlling WHAT they think about any particular thing. This is how the neocon rot grew in the U.S.A over a few generations leading us to today’s multifaceted systemic breakdown crisis.

One of the fathers of the mutant that became neoconservatism was a narrative-building master named Leo Strauss.

Leo Strauss’ Neocon Monstrosity

Working closely with Fabian Society and Frankfurt School agents throughout his career as a teacher in Columbia, New School and the University of Chicago, Strauss preached a perverse interpretation of Plato’s Republic to tens of thousands of devoted students spread across several decades.

Among the highest lessons contained in Strauss’s teachings (at least for a select few among his students) was the idea of the Noble Lie developed by Plato in Book 3 of the Republic. Strauss taught his students that this Noble Lie was the greatest weapon and rightful tool of anyone who found themselves in a position of power to rule over the weak at any time in history.

In true Nietzschean fashion, the narrow definition of “power” as the subordination of the weak to the strong was the only definition permitted by Strauss who taught his students that while Plato preached love of wisdom to the masses, he secretly held a different teaching for those elite among his Academy who would control political power. To these elite few, he gave the name ‘gentlemen’ and ‘Guardians’.

Strauss taught that Plato’s Guardians would control the shadows cast on the cave wall which the plebs shackled to their senses, would believe were the only reality possible. The mandate of these perverse neo-Platonists was to live the ideal not of Socrates, but rather of Thrasymachus whose immoral doctrine Socrates annihilated in the first book of the Republic. Those young neocons learning from their master were taught that the true ‘secret Socrates’ believed, like Thrasymachus, or Callicles (student of Gorgias), was that the highest purpose in life is to attain power, satisfy our lusts and control the shadows in the cave.

As many of Strauss’ own students (like Shadia Drury) came to realize over the years, the old master was himself guilty of projecting his own perverse penchant for fascism onto Plato as he himself maintained secret teachings for his chosen elite students as all good oligarchical head-hunters must.

Cleansing Plato of Strauss

While I adore Plato, I would never deny that he was a myth maker.

The stories showcased in his dialogues from the Timaeus, Critias, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Meno, Laws, Phaedo, Apology, Gorgias, Republic etc… have shaped the minds of some of the greatest historic figures across 2400 years of world history. Renaissance figures like St. Augustine, Ibn Sina, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, Moses Mendelsohn, Pushkin, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless other brilliant souls had their wits sharpened on the stories and lessons contained in Plato’s writings.

But was Plato truly the tyrannical double-speaker portrayed by Strauss and his followers who preached morality for the weak and vice for those who would control the shadows?

To be a true Guardian in Plato’s world meant more than simply getting out of the cave to see with the light of the sun (symbolic for creative reason) and then lord over the masses.

While Nietzscheans like Strauss stop reading at this moment and choose to dominate the slaves using a higher power of thinking reserved only for a select few of the golden collar elite… Plato made it very clear in his Republic and other writings, that the TRUE philosopher (and implicitly true guardian) was obliged to return back into the cave at risk of his or her life in order to help liberate their fellow captives.

Narratives for Freedom or Slavery?

“Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice”

-Paul Robeson, 1937

The question can now be posed: how do we know which narratives are designed to enslave us, which empower us, and which are benign (like a child’s belief in the tooth fairy or the toy-bearing fat guy who trades gifts for good behavior)?

Since each person’s internal universe interfaces with the external reality through the filter of both logic, senses, imagination, and free will, is it possible that some narratives can uplift and inspire us to be more than we are in the face of impossible odds? Can certain stories sharpen our wisdom and free us from the shackles of sense perception as we are taught to see ever more through the eye of reason and a developed imagination?

When George Washington led a small force of farmers against the world’s largest mercenary force in 1776, was it purely logic that guided them in this statistically impossible fight, or were stories of Christ’s passion animating this seeming irrational drive for freedom? When Syria was beset with foreign sponsored Jihadists and teetered on the brink of the abyss, did stories of the Prophet Mohammed animate their hearts to do the impossible when an easier albeit more slavish road awaited their surrender?

Certainly, history has proven time and again, that a certain type of poetic story can empower us to leap beyond our limitations and gain insights into the deeper truths of the human condition and universal reality itself. Even Shakespeare’s “fictional” stories offer the sensitive soul great universal lessons into humanity and real politic which has served great statesmen for centuries.

A Last Look at Today’s Oligarchical Narrative Builders

Although we can affirm with certainty that narratives can be good and others evil, is it possible that the oligarchs managing today’s Great Narrative project wish humanity no harm?

Perhaps Lynn Forrester de Rothschild is completely genuine when she launched the Council for Inclusive Capitalism alongside Prince Charles, Mark Carney and a handful of Davos Billionaires representing tens of trillions of dollars of capital in 2014. Helping to transform capitalism into a green, eco friendly, more inclusive system that treats everyone equally is a good thing isn’t it?

When this Council merged with the Vatican in December 2020, Lynn de Rothschild described the event as “a historic new partnership between some of the world’s largest investment and business leaders and the Vatican… joining moral and market imperatives to reform capitalism into a powerful force for the good of humanity.”

This council is even led by “a core group of world leaders” who even call themselves “Guardians” following the title used by Plato 2400 years ago.

These guardians include the CEOs of powerful organizations as State Street, Bank of America, Johnson and Johnson, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Merck, British Petroleum, and the Rothschild banking houses. Not exactly the most morally advanced coterie of political heavy weights one could imagine, but still maybe the evil that they have been a part for decades has all been arranged for the sake of a higher good that only the elite may be permitted to know…

Unfortunately for the Davos Guardians, the reality of the New Great Narrative is a world devoid of those very principles that humanity requires to survive and thrive within our creative, reasonable universe. Wielding the power to control a shadow land of dumbed down slaves within a cave might seem impressive for some, but when juxtaposed with the active, creative multipolar paradigm now rising to become a global force for scientific and technological progress, controlling cave dwellers becomes little more than a bleak and pitiful ambition.

And like any parasite which can do naught but kill the very host it needs to suckle on for its very survival, those Davos guardians are likely to meet the same fate as that encountered by Edgar Poe’s impotent, nihilistic oligarch Roderick Usher as his castle crumbled into an abyss.

The author can be reached at matthewehret.substack.com

Note
(1) Some exemplary names of these exceptional individuals include Leonardo Da Vinci, Luca Pacioli, Pierre Fermat, Christian Huygens, Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibniz, Max Planck, and Dimitry Mendeleyev (to name but a few).

The “rare” visit to Moscow last week by CIA chief William Burns signaled a remarkable development. The U.S. political establishment seems to have had a wake-up call to hear directly from Russia’s leadership about its concerns for international peace.

On one hand that indicates how badly bilateral relations have deteriorated. On the other, however, a direct line of communication between Moscow and Washington could help clarify points of conflict and avoid escalation.

CIA director William Burns was sent last week to Moscow in a surprise visit. He was reportedly dispatched by President Joe Biden. During his two-day shuttle tour, Burns held separate talks with the head of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, and with Burns’ counterpart, Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR). Both men represent the highest level of Russian state security.

In addition, during his stay, the CIA chief also had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Such a call is thought to be extremely unusual. The normal protocol is for Putin to delegate Kremlin aides to conduct discussions with foreign dignitaries.

But Burns is no ordinary foreign dignitary. The 65-year-old is a seasoned diplomat having previously served as U.S. ambassador to Russia (2005-2008). His long career in the State Department combined with his latest posting as director of the Central Intelligence Agency make Burns the embodiment of Washington’s foreign policy establishment – the so-called Deep State.

Thus his visit to Moscow can be seen as a moment when the leadership of the two nuclear-armed states engaged in direct and robust talks. More so than when President Biden met Putin in Geneva earlier in June for only a few hours and a lot of accompanying media hype. Note, too, how, Biden sent Burns as his representative for this serious occasion, not Secretary of State Antony Blinken nor national security advisor Jake Sullivan.

U.S. media reports of Burns’ Moscow mission were no doubt pitched as a distraction from the real agenda. It was reported that Burns issued warnings about Russian military build-up on the border with Ukraine. The Kremlin dismissed those claims and the purported satellite images of military movements as groundless fabrications. Even the Ukrainian defense ministry – normally all too alarmist about imminent Russian “invasion” – said there was no Russian build-up as claimed by the U.S. media reports.

More plausibly, the Kremlin said the high-level conversations with Burns were about “bilateral relations” and “regional conflicts” without giving further details on the discussions. That suggests the Russian side was telling the United States in no uncertain terms of its vital national security concerns and, just as importantly, how it would respond kinetically if red lines were violated.

Only a few weeks ago, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Ukraine during which the Pentagon chief reiterated the possibility of future membership of the NATO alliance. The Kremlin has repeatedly warned that such a development would be a red line provoking a response. Austin’s insistence on Ukraine’s NATO membership must have rankled deeply in Moscow. How could these Americans be so crass?

Moscow has also recently highlighted the build-up of American and NATO forces in the Black Sea as being another red line. It seems no coincidence that President Putin announced that over the next few months Russian warships will be armed with new hypersonic missiles.

There are other important contextual factors. Last month, the Biden administration sent senior diplomat Victoria Nuland to Moscow for a three-day visit. Nuland embodies U.S. regime-change policy, most memorably for her role in orchestrating the 2014 coup d’état in Kiev. She was greeted in Moscow by deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. It was reported that the U.S. side was tone-deaf to Russia’s concerns about Ukraine, as well as NATO’s increasing offensiveness on Russia’s borders and the growing tensions in the bilateral relationship.

Then Moscow announced it was cutting off diplomatic channels with the NATO alliance. The move was prompted by the expulsion of Russian diplomats from Brussels who were alleged without substantiation to be working as spies. That move was seen by Moscow as the last straw in a series of provocations by NATO. The diplomatic channels had become redundant long before largely due to reluctance by NATO to engage in a mutual dialogue.

In any case, Moscow was letting it be known that it had had enough of dealing with ciphers and anti-Russia cacophony. By walking away from NATO, the Kremlin was telegramming that the United States better start taking its red lines seriously.

State Department deputies – even of the hawkish Nuland variety – are not sufficient for the serious purpose of grave communications. Neither are nominally senior diplomats like Blinken or apparatchiks like Sullivan who, for all their apparent seniority, operate on scripted talking points like message boys. Secretary of Defense Austin – the titular head of the Pentagon – also revealed himself as nothing more than a script-monger during his robotic tour of Ukraine and Georgia. Such people are not worth dealing with in terms of getting to the heart of conflict.

Sometimes the most effective way to make a point is to reduce communications to a bare minimum. And in that way, declutter the noise and echo by stripping out the channels that don’t have any real consequence.

Russia has made it clear that the U.S. and NATO are pushing a potential confrontation over Ukraine, the Black Sea, the Balkans and the wider region. Having done that, and having expressed red lines, it seems the U.S. Deep State decided it better start paying attention to what Russia was saying.

The urgent visit to Moscow by William Burns was the occasion for some serious talking about how to prevent tensions spiraling further into war. The U.S. Deep State got the message directly. Russia is not going to tolerate any further provocations to its national security. The question now is: can the United States power elite change its belligerent behavior?

Although predicting the exact future is impossible, we can certainly identify trends and try to make projections as to where they will lead. Going into the beginning of the Biden period after the most “unique” presidential elections in American history, the trends and signals seemed to be for a complete reversal or derailment of everything Trump attempted to do. It seemed evident that human-suit Biden’s job was to be an “anti-Trump”. But at this point we are sitting and looking at foreign policy actions from a Democrat White House that one would have expected from Trump. This is all rather strange.

One of the big issues of the Trump period was various witch-hunts for connections between himself and Russia. This was mostly a superficial tactic underlying a new core dynamic. During the period of 2016-2020 it became clear that the Democrats saw Russia as the great external enemy and the Republicans saw China as the real core threat. Trump himself never particularly expressed a passion for Russia, what he did express was a desire to work with them. Now when it comes to rhetoric, Trump has blasted and bluntly identified the Chinese as enemy #1 and he has not faltered in this position to this day. Russia’s religious conservative turn during the Putin era also bought some favour among Right-Wingers that can intellectually comprehend and emotionally accept that Communism ended, with Trump being one of them. As we all remember the Democrats whole-heartedly put Russia on their demonization pedestal for the entire Trump period. This all started mostly during Obama but it really took center stage during the Donald’s time in power.

This is what made the whole AUKUS move (or scandal from a French/NATO perspective) such a shock. One would have expected a Biden presidency (Democrat, Anti-Russian) to be somewhat lenient to the Red Dragon and yet this entire AUKUS concept looks right out of Trump’s playbook – putting more pressure on the Chinese using allies that actually do something rather than dead-weight NATO. In fact this unexpected decision may be yet another nail in the NATO coffin that Trump tried to cobble together.

Trump’s miraculous achievement of starting no new wars as POTUS could have only been topped by drawing down some bigger stagnant conflicts to a final conclusion. Warmongers scolded him for this, and the only Mainstream Media praise that Trump got en masse was when he sort of shot some ineffectual rockets at Syria. This makes it oh so surprising that Biden not only bailed from Afghanistan in a sloppied rush, but then gave his historic and surprising “MAGA” speech signaling the end of expensive and seemingly pointless “nation-building”. Again this type of action looks like something to be expected from a lame-duck Donald in the White House not a vengeance filled puppet Democrat.

Trump wanted to find a partner in now Christian and Conservative Russia, perhaps out of goodwill, but probably to fight the Chinese, or at least break up their growing economic and military symbiosis. So one would think that it would have been Trump to back off of Nord Stream-2 to give Russia a sign of hope and breathing room. But it was Biden who has granted leniency about this profitable energy export to Europe.

Furthermore, the drums of war were being ramped up in Kiev during the ugliness on Capitol Hill. Both Moscow and Kiev were sure that this new Democrat leadership would come in and fan the fires of a possibly apocalyptic conflict in Europe’s empty bread basket. And yet, after getting their preferred candidate in the Oval Office, Kiev is getting little more now than when Obama was in the big chair. The expected massive push in the Donbass never came to be. Zelensky has not been completely abandoned, but if Biden continues to mimic Trump then he may find himself living the rest of his life in a maximum security prison near Norilsk, with the Ukraine being partitioned and reformed into various chunks, most of which would go to Russia.

To be clear, Biden’s foreign policy is surprising, while his domestic policy, which is much easier to control, is completely in line with what we would expect. Millions of Americans are going to get the LGBTGreat Reset that they voted for.

The “America First” foreign policy that Trump was planning as a sort of restart for American greatness has strangely lined up with the sloppy international backpedaling under Biden. But the question is why is this happening? There are a few possible reasons.

1. Trump was extremely effective at pushing his agenda. The fear that spewed from the Mainstream Media at him was not irrational or paranoid but fully justified as he was a force to be reckoned with. Somehow in four years he changed the direction of things enough that it is impossible to follow the previous status quo. The avalanche is already falling and there is nothing that can be done.

2. Similar situations created similar reactions. Although clothing, language and religions may differ, all medieval societies have some overlapping tendencies. The system was the way it was based on the realities of that time, and if we found ourselves under those circumstances again we may be forced to embrace that lifestyle for a second time.

In this sense, it could be that ultimately, both Biden and Trump were tasked with managing a crumbling global empire, trying to keep the sinking ship afloat as long as possible waiting for something to change. Thus, their reactions to events and plans could look similar because of the similar causes that underlie them, even if the spirit behind the actions are radically different. Like it or not NATO may just be obsolete, Afghanistan may have just been too expensive, China may just be too powerful. The reactions to these situations could wind up being similar out of necessity or a lack of options. Both Trump and Biden faced these same realities.

3. The Democrats are petty enough to have fought Trump’s ideas/plans simply because they were his. Now they are free to copy and paste his Foreign Policy while continuing the Postmodern Push at home. This sounds insane but when we look at the sea of narcissism that we are drowning in, in the West it does not seem so far-fetched of a concept.

Henry Kissinger, 97, Henry the K. for those he keeps close, is either a Delphic oracle-style strategic thinker or a certified war criminal for those kept not so close.

He now seems to have been taking time off his usual Divide and Rule stock in trade – advising the combo behind POTUS, a.k.a. Crash Test Dummy – to emit some realpolitik pearls of wisdom.

At a recent forum in Arizona, referring to the festering, larger than life Sino-American clash, Henry the K. said, “It’s the biggest problem for America; it’s the biggest problem for the world. Because if we can’t solve that, then the risk is that all over the world a kind of cold war will develop between China and the United States.”

In realpolitik terms, this “kind of Cold War” is already on; across the Beltway, China is unanimously regarded as the premier U.S. national security threat.

Kissinger added U.S. policy toward China must be a mix of stressing U.S. “principles” to demand China’s respect and dialogue to find areas of cooperation: “I’m not saying that diplomacy will always lead to beneficial results…This is the complex task we have… Nobody has succeeded in doing it completely.”

Henry the K. actually must have lost the – diplomatic – plot. What Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are now involved in, full time, is to demonstrate – mostly to the Global South – how the American-enforced “rules-based international order” has absolutely nothing to do with international law and the respect of national sovereignty.

At first I had archived these Henry the K. platitudes out of sight. But then someone who used to hold a stellar position at the top of the U.S. Deep State showed he had been paying close attention.

This personality – let’s call him Mr. S. – has been one of my invaluable, trustworthy sources since the early 2000s. Mutual confidence was always key. I asked him if I could publish selected passages of his analysis, not naming names. Consent was given – ruefully. So fasten your seat belts.

Dancin’ with Mr. S.

Mr. S., in a quite intriguing fashion, seems to be expressing the collective views of a number of extremely qualified people. Right from the start, he points out how Henry the K.’s observations explain today’s Russia-China-Iran triangle.

The first point that we make is that it was not Kissinger who created policy for Nixon, but the Deep State. Kissinger was just a messenger boy.  In the 1972 situation the Deep State wanted to get out of Vietnam, which policy was put in place as containment of communist China and Russia.  We were there based on the domino theory.

He goes on:

The Deep State wanted to achieve a number of objectives in approaching Chairman Mao, who was antagonized by Russia. It wanted to ally in 1972 with China against Russia. That made Vietnam meaningless, for China would become the containing party of Russia and Vietnam no longer meant anything. We wanted to balance China against Russia.  Now, China was not a major power in 1972 but it could drain Russia, forcing it to place 400,000 troops on their border.  And our Deep State policy worked. We in the Deep State had thought it through, and not Kissinger. 400,000 troops on the Chinese border was a drain on their budget, as later Afghanistan became with over 100,000 troops, and the Warsaw Pact had another 600,000 troops.

And that brings us into Afghanistan:

The Deep State wanted to start a Vietnam for Russia in Afghanistan in 1979.  I was among those against it, as this would needlessly use the Afghani people as cannon fodder and that was unfair. I was overruled. Here Brzezinski was playing Kissinger; another overrated nothing who just carried messages.

The Deep State also decided to crash the oil price, as that would economically weaken Russia. And that worked in 1985, driving the price to eight dollars a barrel, which ate up half the Russian budget. Then, we basically gave permission for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait as a ploy to send in our advanced army to knock him out and demonstrate our superiority to the world in weaponry, which very much demoralized the Russians and put the fear of God into Islamic oil.  Then we created the Star Wars fiction.  Russia to our surprise lost their nerve and collapsed.

Mr. S. defines all of the above as “wonderful” in his opinion, as “communism went out and Christianity came in”:

We then wanted to welcome Russia into the community of Christian nations, but the Deep State wanted to dismember them. That was  stupid, as they would balance against China at least from their Mackinder point of view. It was naive on my part to hope to a return of Christianity, as the West was moving rapidly toward total moral disintegration.

In the meantime, our ally China continues to grow as we were not finished with the dismemberment of Russia and the advisors we sent to Russia destroyed the whole economy in the 1990s against my objections. The 78-day Belgrade bombing finally woke Russia up and they started a massive re-militarization as it was obvious that the intention was in the end to bomb Moscow into the ground. So defensive missiles became essential. Thus, the S-300, S-400, S-500 and soon S-600s.

The Deep State had been warned by me at our meetings on how bombing Belgrade in 1999 would cause Russia to remilitarize and I lost the argument. Belgrade was bombed for 78 days versus the vengeance bombing of Hitler for two days.  And China continues to grow.

Why balance of power doesn’t work

And that bring us to a new era – that started in practice with the Chinese announcement of the New Silk Roads in 2013 and Maidan in Kiev in 2014:

China wakes up to all of this in that they begin to realize that they have been just used, and that the U.S. fleet controls their trade routes, and decides to approach Russia in 2014 just about the time of their witnessing the Maidan overthrow of Ukraine.  This overthrow was organized by the Deep State when they started to understand that they had lost the arms race, and did not even know what was happening. 

The Deep State wanted to draw Russia into a Vietnam again in the Ukraine to drain them and crash the oil price again, which they did.  Beijing studied this and saw the light. If Russia is overthrown, the West will control all their natural resources, which they see themselves needing as they grew into a giant economy larger than the U.S.  And Beijing starts to open up a warm relationship with Moscow seeking to obtain land based natural resources as oil and natural gas from Russia to avoid the seas for natural resources as much as they can. In the meantime, Beijing massively accelerates its building of submarines carrying missiles capable of destroying the U.S. fleets.

So where does Kissinger in Arizona fit in?

Now, Kissinger reflects the Deep State angst on the Russia-Chinese relationship and wants this split up for dear life. This is interestingly covered here by Kissinger. He does not want to tell the truth about balance of power realities. He describes them as “our values”, when the U.S. has no values left but anarchy, looting, and burning down hundreds of cities. Biden hopes to buy all these disenfranchised masses as money printing goes wild.

So we are back to Kissinger shocked at the new Russian-Chinese alliance. They must be separated.

Now, I do not agree with the balance of power intriguers in that morality or noble values should govern international relations, and not power. The U.S. has been following balance of power dreams since 1900 and now it faces economic ruin. These ideas do not work.  There is no reason the U.S. cannot be a friend of Russia and China and the differences can be worked out. But you cannot get to first base as balance of power considerations dominate everything. That is the tragedy of our time.

The US intelligence community published a report on 10 March, widely reported in the US free speech news media, on foreign interference in the US election (how many oxymorons so far?). The report establishes a new level of idiocy on the long-running “Russiagate” nonsense.

The idiocy began when Trump, campaigning, remarked that it would be better to get along with Russia than not. A sentiment that would not have surprised Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan or any of the others who recognised that, like it or not, Moscow was a fact. A fact that had to be dealt with, talked to, negotiated with so as to produce the best possible result. Why? Well, apart from the diplomatic reality that it is better to get on with your neighbours, the fact that the USSR/Russia was a nuclear power that could obliterate the USA was adequate reason to keep communications alive. If relations could be improved, all earlier US Presidents would agree, so much the better. But for Trump – the outsider – to dare to say so was an outrage. Or more accurately, a hook on which to hang enough simulated outrage to cost him the election. Then, upsetting all expectations, he won. Immediately pussy hat protests, blather about tax returns, Electoral College speculations, 25^th Amendment, psychiatrists opining unfitness (COVFEFE: Bizarre Trump Behavior Raises More Mental Health Questions): an entire industry was created to get Trump out, or, if he couldn’t be got out, then at least prevented from doing any of the things he campaigned on. All the swamp creatures were mobilised. The most enduring of these efforts was the Russia allegation. A Special Counsel was created to investigate Russia, Trump and the election. Leaks from this and other investigations fuelled outrage and talk shows.

One of the indications that the story was actually an information operation and not based on fact was its imprecision. Was Trump merely too friendly with Putin, or was he his puppet? Was Trump just a fool to think that relations with Russia could be improved, or was he following instructions? In short, was he a dupe or a traitor? How exactly had Russia interfered in the election and to what effect? Had a few voters been influenced or had the result been completely determined by Moscow? In short was Moscow running the USA or just trying to? Proponents of these crackpot theories never quite specified what they were talking about – it was all suggestion, innuendo, rumours and promises of future devastating revelations. Some of the highlights of the campaign: Keith Olberman shouting Russian scum! Morgan Freeman solemnly intoning that we were at war, and, night after night, Rachel Maddow spewing conspiracies. Some media headlines: Opinion: Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset. Trump is ‘owned by Putin’ and has been ‘laundering money’ for Russians, claims MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch. Mueller’s Report Shows All The Ways Russia Interfered In 2016 Presidential Election. A media firestorm as Trump seems to side with Putin over US intelligence. Trump and Putin, closer than ever. All signs point the same way: Vladimir Putin has compromising information on Donald Trump. And so on. Four years of non-stop nonsense promising, tomorrow, or the next day, the final revelation that would disgrace Trump and rid the country of him forever: my personal favourite is this mashup of TV hairstyles telling us that the walls were closing in. Information war. Propaganda. Fake news.

All this despite the fact that the story as presented simply made no sense at all. As I pointed out in December 2017, if Moscow had wanted to nobble Clinton, it had far more potent weapons at its disposal than a too-late revelation of finagling inside the DNC.

And it wasn’t just TV talking heads; the US intelligence community participated. There were two laughable “intelligence assessments”. The DHS/FBI report of 29 December 2016 carried this stunning disclaimer:

This report is provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.

The DNI report of 6 January 2017 devoted nearly half its space to a four-year-old rant about RT and admitted that the one Agency that would really know had only “moderate confidence”. In short: ignore the first report, and don’t take the second one seriously. Were people inside these organisations trying to tell us it was all phoney? No matter, the anti-Trump conspiracy shrieked out the reports immediately.

One by one, it fell apart. Mueller, despite the prayer candles, came up with nothing. The “Dirty Dossier” was a fraud. The impeachment for something that Biden actually did failed. These dates should be remembered – Crowdstrike CEO Shawn Henry told the House committee that he had no evidence on 5 December 2017; this classified testimony was not made public until 7 May 2020. Simply put: the key allegation, the trigger for all the excitement and investigations that followed, was a lie, many people knew it was a lie, the lie was kept secret for 884 days. But the lie served its purpose.

There were no investigations of this fraud, only pseudo investigations that went nowhere. When the Republicans had a majority on the House of Representatives there were serious investigations but the testimonies – like Henry’s – were kept secret because they were “classified”. When the Democrats gained control, there were continual boasts that the evidence of collusion was overwhelming, but nothing happened either. Trump’s first Attorney General recused himself and the investigation was conducted by the conspirators. His second Attorney General promised much, set up a Special Counsel, but nothing happened. Well, not quite nothing: a junior conspirator had his knuckles rapped for faking a FISA warrant. In short, the Deep State ran the clock out: the swamp drained Trump.

Ran it out quite successfully too: relations with Russia got worse and Trump himself was hamstrung. His orders were ignored everywhere: on investigating the conspiracy and on removing troops; here’s an insider telling us that the Pentagon ignored his orders on Afghanistan. He was stonewalled on Syria: “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there.” The “most powerful man in the world” was blocked on almost every initiative and the long false Russia connection story was a powerful weapon in the conspiracy to impede his attempts to change course.

In 2021 Trump left office and there was no need to mention any of it again. But here’s where it gets really stupid. In December 2020, the NYT solemnly told us: Russian Hackers Broke Into Federal Agencies, U.S. Officials Suspect: In one of the most sophisticated and perhaps largest hacks in more than five years, email systems were breached at the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Other breaches are under investigation. At the same time we were equally solemnly told by US officials “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history”.

In short, we are supposed to believe that

in 2016 the Russian hacked nothing but the election

and in 2020 they hacked everything but the election.

How stupid do they think we are? Even stupider evidently. Instead of retiring the Trump/Russia/collusion/interference nonsense when it had achieved its purpose, the Intelligence Community Assessment on Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections takes us right back down the rabbit hole. I haven’t read it and certainly don’t intend to (see oxymoron above), but Matt Taibbi has and eviscerates it here; he’s read far enough to have mined this gem “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact”. (Is this a hint from insiders that it’s all fake?) The report claims that Putin authorised, and various Russian government entities conducted, a campaign to denigrate Biden. Specifically by using Ukrainian sources to talk about corruption of Biden and his son Hunter; despite the video of Biden boasting about firing the investigator, we’re assured that this is all disinformation. And the consumers of the NYT and CNN will believe what they were told. Or, actually, will believe what they weren’t told: the media kept quiet. (Now that’s interference and interference that actually might have changed votes.) The report goes on to say that China did something or other and Iran, Hezbollah, Cuba and Venezuela also chipped in. But fortunately no foreign actor did anything to affect the technical part of the election.

The US security organs expect us to believe,

giving no proof,

that there was lots of malign activity

which had no effect on the election whatsoever.

Which is telling us they think we’re even stupider. Russia swung the election four years ago but forgot how to this time? Putin’s attempt to keep Trump in was blocked by security measures adopted when his tool was President? This time Putin wanted Biden in? Russia’s efforts on behalf of Trump were countered by China’s on behalf of Biden and Iran’s interference broke the tie? But then, information operations don’t have to make sense, they just have to create an impression: Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela do bad things to good people.

Oh, and the latest is that Moscow cultivated Trump for over 40 years, Imagine that: in 1980 they were so perceptive as to see the future importance of a property developer; who’ve they got lined up in the wings now? And Rachel Maddow is back at the old stand pushing some conspiracy theory about Trump, Putin and COVID. I guess it’s not yet time to put away the tinfoil hats.

As I have said before, English needs a whole new set of words for the concept “stupid”: the old ones just don’t have the power any more.