Blackwater Firm Gets $120M U.S. Gov’t Contract

The State Department has awarded a part of what was formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide a contract worth more than $120 million for providing security services in Afghanistan. . . .

The Justice Department’s case or Blackwater’s expulsion from Iraq didn’t block U.S. Training Center from bidding on the multi-million dollar contract, the State Department spokeswoman said. (Read more from cbsnews.com)

Marc Faber: “I Buy Gold, I Don’t Know What Else To Buy”

People who tell me about the big deflation in Japan, why don’t they spend a day in Tokyo? It’s still the most expensive city in the world. At this level I’m not particularly interested in buying anything. I buy gold, I don’t know what else to buy.” Faber expects another worse crisis to happen in five to ten years, “when the whole financial system collapses” – the reason: the debt problem has been kicked down the road without actually being [solved]. (Read more from zerohedge.com)

Hazlitt’s Battle with Bretton Woods

From the moment Mises’s 1912 book, The Theory of Money and Credit, made its appearance, and warned about the grave danger to free enterprise represented by paper money and central banking, the Austrians have been right.

That’s 100 years of “we told you so.”

Right in the middle of these years, there is a forgotten episode in monetary history that teaches us lessons today. It concerns the controversial role that Henry Hazlitt played in battling the Bretton Woods monetary system enacted after the Second World War.

Under Mises’s influence, Hazlitt used his editorial position at the New York Times to warn against the plan, predicting correctly that it would lead to world inflation. For saying what he said, he was pushed out of his position at the Times.

. . . .

They met from July 1 to July 22, 1944, at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and drafted the Articles of Agreement. It was nearly a year and a half later, in December 1945, that the agreement was ratified. On March 1947, one of the monstrosities created during event, the International Monetary Fund, began operations.

What was the goal of the plan? It was the same goal as at the founding of the Federal Reserve and the same goal that has guided every monetary plan in modern history. The stated idea was to promote economic growth, encourage macroeconomic stability, and, most absurdly, tame inflation. Of course, it did none of these things.

There are other analogies to the Fed. In the same way that the Fed was to serve as a lender of last resort, a provider of liquidity in times of instability, so too the Bretton Woods Agreement obligated all member nations to make their currencies available to be loaned to other countries to prevent temporary balance of payment problems.

. . . .

Keynes’s message at Bretton Woods, in Mises’s summary, was that the world elites could turn stones into bread. And so under the influence of Keynes, the target at the Bretton Woods meeting was liberalism itself, which was widely assumed to have failed during the Great Depression. The elites also came out of World War II with a more profound appreciation for the role of central planning. They had reveled in it.

The Bretton Woods plan for monetary reconstruction did not go as far as Keynes would have liked. He proposed a full-scale world central bank and a single paper currency for all nations, which he wanted to be called the “bancor,” so there could be no escaping inflation. That plan is still awaiting implementation. As it was, the Bretton Woods conferees, under pressure from the United States — which wanted the dollar to be the bancor — took a compromise position.

. . . .

The Bretton Woods system established a gold dollar that was fixed at $35 per ounce. But it was the only currency so fixed. Every other currency could be a fiat currency based on the dollar.

. . . .

The breakdown really began soon after the plan was implemented. But most of the effects were disguised through currency controls. Once the 1960s came, and the expenses of LBJ’s welfare-warfare state mounted, the Fed played its traditional role as the financier of big government. Pressure on the dollar mounted, foreign governments became more interested in the gold than the paper, and the whole cockamamie scheme unraveled under Nixon’s welfare-warfare state. When the world entered the all-paper money regime, most economists said than the price of gold would fall from $35. The Austrians predicted the opposite.

. . . .

Hazlitt wrote, “it would be difficult to think of a more serious threat to world stability and full production than the continual prospect of a uniform world inflation to which the politicians of every country would be so easily tempted.”

. . . .

On July 1, 1944, when the representatives [of an international monetary council] first gathered, he [Hazlitt] greeted them with a punch in the nose.

it would be impossible to imagine a more difficult time for individual nations to decide at what level they can fix and stabilize their national currency unit. How could the representatives of France, of Holland, of Greece, of China, make any but the wildest guess at this moment of the point at which they could hope to stabilize?

. . . .

The whole project, wrote Hazlitt, “rests on the assumption that nothing will be done right unless a grandiose formal intergovernmental institution is set up to do it. It assumes that nothing will be run well unless Governments run it.”

. . . .

In 1967, Hazliltt also had a last laugh, if it is a laughing matter to see your worst predictions come true. Hazlitt was now a syndicated columnist with the Los Angeles Times. He wrote about the unraveling of the system, which finally happened in 1969. By 1971, the entire world was on a fiat-money paper standard and the result has been nothing short of catastrophic for societies and economies, which have been thrown into unrelenting chaos.

To be sure, Hazlitt was not, as he said, the “seventh son of the seventh son.” He wasn’t born with some amazing prophetic power. What Hazlitt did was read Mises and come to understand monetary economics. It sounds easy until you realize just how rare these talents were in his day and in ours. (Read more from mises.org)

FCC Moves to Regulate the Internet

The Federal Communications Commission is set to begin a move to regulate the Internet.

According to CNSNews.com, by a “3-2 party-line vote on Thursday at the FCC,” the agency “began the formal process of reclassifying the Internet as a telecommunications service instead of an information service — it’s current classification.”

Currently, as an information service, the FCC can exercise only “ancillary” authority, which does not allow it to regulate the Internet directly. If the Internet is reclassified, the agency would gain greater regulatory control.
(Read more from thenewamerican.com)

Senate Bill Would Give Obama Internet ‘Kill Switch’

The introduction of a new Senate bill, S.3480, dubbed the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010,” is sparking concerns about a massive power grab over the Internet under the guise of “national security.”

The bill, proposed by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I – CT) claims the entire Internet, the whole global computer network and everything on it, as a “national asset” of the United States, and seeks to give President Obama the power to seize control over broad swaths of it with no oversight during a “National Cyber Emergency,” which would itself be something the president would be able to declare at any time. (Read more from news.antiwar.com)

Why is it that whenever a bill seems diabolically Orwellian, Joe Lieberman is either sponsor or co-sponsor?

Summary & Review of the Power of Nightmares Documentary

I’ve been reading alternative news sources for a few years now and feel like most of what I encounter are elaborations of what I already know. This wonder documentary, however, really covered a lot of new ground, mostly about the recent history of neo-conservatism and their ideological roots. I highly recommend it. I’ve bullet pointed the main/most interesting points from each of the three parts, stressing the history of neo-conservativism, as that was what interested me most.

* The cold war rise of neo-conservatives & radical islamists.

* Both philosophies preach that ends justify the means.

* Leo Strauss supports spreading myths that would fill Americans with identity and purpose. He seems disgusted by the American left because it’s liberalism ushers in what he perceives as moral depravity. America, he contends needs a great myth (manifested in defeating an evil enemy) to fill people with virtue and purpose. He supports lying to establish this myth because it’s done for the greater good. Many present-day neo-cons are his students.

* Neo-cons supported organization called Team B to spread myths about Soviet power, contradicting CIA findings (much like the administration contradicted CIA findings before the Iraq war).

* When William Casey became head of CIA, he began pressuring CIA to exaggerate Soviet Threat along the lines of Team B.

* Neo-cons supported rise of Christian politics.

* Both radical Islamists & neo-cons considered the fall of the Soviet Union (which was a house of cards all by itself), as an endorsement of their violent ideology.

* Radical Islamists pursue war against corrupt regimes in the Middle East, but fail to win popular support.

* Straussians compared to Marxists. Conceal their agenda. Lie to promote their vision of the world. They consider the Christian right’s emphasis on social issues combating the moral depravity they perceive. They consider themselves warriors against liberal social corruption.

* Algerian generals infiltrate and radicalize radical Islam to use them as enemy.

* Radical Islamist ideology fails because there is no end to the list of enemies. One group concludes that the whole world (except for their group) is unfaithful and must be killed.

* Rise of Christian right causes many defectors who elect Clinton. Neo-cons begin propaganda against Clinton including this story and this one, which I posted here on lost republic. Was I overzealous? Paranoid?

* One neo-con writes a book entitled “The Death of Outrage” blames America’s moral corruption for failing to impeach Clinton.

* Radical Islamists failed to gain popular support in the years which followed the victory in Afghanistan. They attempted to regain support by striking at the West.

* This fit the neo-con plan of replacing the Soviet enemy with the Islamic one.

* Bin Laden began calling his organization Al Quaeda AFTER he realized that was how American’s referred to him.

* Neo-conservatives return to power under Bush W. They exaggerate Islamic radial threat similar to how they exaggerated the Soviet threat. They work from the Straussian philosophy that America’s purpose is to fight evil. I think they are like adolescent boys who find meaning in their lives and feel manly when they send better men off to war.

* So much of the sleeper cell hype is complete nonsense. The government “experts” who interpret much of the evidence in the legal cases against sleeper cells are extraordinarily creative nonsense, in which every gesture, scribble, and photo is an elaborate secretly coded message.

* Both the radical Islamists and neo-cons continue to benefit from the Straussian idea of creating a false mythology.

* All studies show dirty bomb (radiation bomb) would do zero damage. Despite this, its mythology grows.

* Politics of fear, ie. insisting on preparing for the worst-possible case scenario, began with ecology movement. (I can understand why they saved this controversial statement for the end of the three-hour documentary.) Ecology movement considered it government’s duty to prepare for the worst, regardless of evidence. This is the same principle which shaped the war on terror, the “preventive paradigm.”

Wikileaks

A couple months ago this viral video showing some very trigger happy helicopter pilots in Iraq caused quite a stir. It was released through Wikileaks.

The army has since detained the soldier who leaked the video.

Wikileaks has made more headlines recently:

Wikileaks founder in hiding, fearful of arrest
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has gone into hiding, fearful of arrest by U.S. authorities, an Icelandic parliamentarian confirmed Friday. . . .

Authorities are interested in locating Assange following reports that an Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, recently transferred a huge volume of classified files to Wikileaks. Manning is now in military custody. . . .

Jonsdottir also added to widespread speculation in recent days that Wikileaks was about to release a new video, this once showing an alleged “massacre” of Afghan civilians in a U.S. airstrike.

She called it “worse than the Iraqi one,” referencing the video Wikileaks previously released showing a U.S. helicopter attack on Iraqi citizens that caused an international uproar. . . .
(Read more from blog.washingtonpost.com)

***

The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks
Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he “boasted” in an Internet chat — with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo — of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and “hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records.” . . .

This is a very comprehensive article about Wikileaks’ recent controversies. The Government attitude toward Wikileaks caught my eye:

In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a classified report (ironically leaked to and published by WikiLeaks) which — as the NYT put it — placed WikiLeaks on “the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States.” That Report discussed ways to destroy WikiLeaks’ reputation and efficacy, and emphasized creating the impression that leaking to it is unsafe.

In other words, exactly what the U.S. Government wanted to happen in order to destroy WikiLeaks has happened here: news reports that a key WikiLeaks source has been identified and arrested, followed by announcements from anonymous government officials that there is now a worldwide “manhunt” for its Editor-in-Chief.
(Read more from salon.com)

***

Iceland Passes WikiLeaks Law
The Icelandic parliament has approved a package of broad protections for journalists, making the island nation perhaps the safest place in the world to afflict the comfortable and speak truth to power.

Icelandic leaders wanted to create a haven for journalists and whistle-blowers and sought assistance from WikiLeaks, the website that recently released video of U.S. forces gunning down civilians and journalists in Iraq.
(Read more from truthdig.com)