One of the most important aspects of this whole FISA mess has been largely overlooked. That is that it is not just about privacy. Or principle.
It is about political power.
The power of the Executive to spy on Americans is an incredible political weapon. Our Founders understood this even back in the 18th Century - information is power.
And if one has any doubt about the dangers of such power, one has to look no further than the presidency of Richard Nixon. There's a great scene in the movie All the President's Men where Woodward finally gets Deepthroat to talk. It is not, as far as I know, taken from an exact quote. But it is an accurate depiction of what Woodward learned:
Woodward: I'm tired of your chickenshit games. I need to know what you know.
Deepthroat: ... Mitchell [Nixon's attorney general] started doing covert stuff before anyone else. The list is longer than anyone can imagine. It involves the entire US intelligence community. FBI, CIA, Justice. It's incredible.
The cover up had little to do with Watergate. It was mainly to protect the covert operations. It leads everywhere. Get out your notebook. There's more.
What Woodward and Bernstein discovered not that long ago was that the entire intelligence establishment was being used as a political weapon against Democrats, the Democratic party, whistleblowers like Danial Ellsberg, and anti-war activists. just the way we now know the Bush administration has used the Justice Department. (A study found that Bush's Justice Dept. investigated seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as Republican officials.)
For those who may not recall, the Watergate investigation began when some CIA men, working for the Nixon reelection campaign, were caught trying to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Do Democrats in Congress really have such short memories?
The system, for example, put in place in AT&T's secret Room 641A, where AT&T's internet traffic is vacuumed in for mass surveillance is a delightful playground for malicious, politically motivated spies.
And by giving the authority to the president's men, without serious oversight or accountability, we are guaranteeing a repeat of the Nixon years or, probably, much worse.
What can you do with your political enemies phone calls, private information, or emails? What did Nixon's men do? They used them for opposition research. And there are already strong indications that Bush's henchmen have done the same.
U.S. intelligence tapped the telephone calls of Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, starting in 2002.
This may well be news to many people, even though Wright revealed the taps himself in a sprawling, 15,000-word article on electronic surveillance in the Jan. 21 edition of The New Yorker magazine.
Perhaps because the article was not available online it lacked the link-juice to propel it into a frenzy over the "domestic spying" on the Web, the cable news shows and leading American newspapers.
As far as I can tell, only Pam Hess of the Associated Press picked up on Wright’s confrontation with spy chief Michael McConnell over the phone taps, and no major paper ran it.
You may not care much at the thought of your phone being tapped. Innocent people usually don't. But I can't imagine anyone passionate about politics who is okay with president Bush, or a president McCain, having the freedom to tap the phones of journalists, progressive activists, or even Democratic politicians, without detection or oversight.
This is what is at stake with this FISA bill. As has been pointed out repeatedly, even without the telecom immunity, this bill actually diminishes the judicial oversight that was put in place because of the abuses of the Nixon administration.
From the ACLU:
H.R. 6304, THE FISA AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2008 (6/19/2008)
The ACLU recommends a no vote on H.R. 6304, which grants sweeping wiretapping authority to the government with little court oversight and ensures the dismissal of all pending cases against the telecommunication companies. Most importantly:
• H.R. 6304 permits the government to conduct mass, untargeted surveillance of all communications coming into and out of the United States, without any individualized review, and without any finding of wrongdoing.
• H.R. 6304 permits only minimal court oversight. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what or where will actually be tapped.
• H.R. 6304 contains a general ban on reverse targeting. However, it lacks stronger language that was contained in prior House bills that included clear statutory directives about when the government should return to the FISA court and obtain an individualized order if it wants to continue listening to a US person’s communications.
• H.R.6304 contains an "exigent" circumstance loophole that thwarts the prior judicial review requirement. The bill permits the government to start a spying program and wait to go to court for up to 7 days every time "intelligence important to the national security of the US may be lost or not timely acquired." By definition, court applications take time and will delay the collection of information. It is highly unlikely there is a situation where this exception doesn’t swallow the rule.
• H.R. 6304 further trivializes court review by explicitly permitting the government to continue surveillance programs even if the application is denied by the court. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever it gathered in the meantime.
• H.R. 6304 ensures the dismissal of all cases pending against the telecommunication companies that facilitated the warrantless wiretapping programs over the last 7 years. The test in the bill is not whether the government certifications were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that they were, all the cases seeking to find out what these companies and the government did with our communications will be killed.
• Members of Congress not on Judiciary or Intelligence Committees are NOT guaranteed access to reports from the Attorney General, Director of National Intelligence, and Inspector General.
The vultures are circling in on Obama now. And the levers of power are all busy positioning themselves for the big seat at the new table. And more importantly, they are exerting their considerable influence to shape Obama's cabinet and his presidency.
I had always suspected that Obama received so much establishment support because they believed he would be their house negro - weak, pliable, and under control. I've never been more convinced of it than now. I think they might be surprised.
To understand what is happening with these appointments and the power plays going on, you have to understand the pluralist nature of American politics. Aside from the usual Washington cronies - Clinton people, Beltway Democrats etc.- who are all lining up for jobs, there are several pluralist blocks who are all moving fast to make sure they pull the levers of the new president-elect.
These include the gray eminences of Wall Street - investment bankers, financial titans etc. Then there are the pro Zionist Jews - the AIPAC crowd etc. Then there are the energy barons and oil tycoons. And there are the national security and foreign policy gurus."
Many of these groups intersect and to try to see them as simple teams of players is a mistake. They often play on multiple teams, switch sides on occasion, and will devour each other if they get the chance.
One thing they all have in common though is they are extremely invested in their opposition to any real change, and the one team they rarely, if ever, play on is our, the American people's team.
Obama has his work cut out for him. Navigating the labyrinth of interests, and chess like maneuvers that they will and are pulling will be harder than anything he's ever tried before. And all this talk about a new bipartisan spirit is for public posturing and consumption. The vultures are circling. That's what they know how to do. And there are literally trillions of dollars at stake.
People should try to keep all this in mind when judging Obama's moves - his cabinet appointments etc. We've heard in the idiot press a lot about Lincoln's bipartisan cabinet appointments. What they don't talk about is why he did this - not for some kumbaya spirit of cooperation. He did it to, as the old saying goes - keep his enemies closer.
FDR did the same thing. He scared the shit out of the progressives of his day palling around with the Astors and such. He was smarter then all of them.
So, while these appeals to "trust" Obama and wait before criticizing reflect a conception of American democracy that our Founders would have found appaling and frightening, there is a defense of Obama's moves that don't invite, through blind devotion and loyalty, a totalitarian state.
And that is, stop thinking of checkers. We're in chess world now. And if you want to be a part of the political process that helps the situation and extends beyond tattooing an "O" on your forehead, at least try to figure out what the game is.
For example, Rahm Emanuel. This is a man I don't like. He represents the unprincipled demise of the Democratic party and everything it stands for. But he is a smart SOB and knows the ropes on the Hill. And, by choosing him, Obama went a long way towards neutralizing a potentially deadly opponent - the AIPAC crowd. Kind of like capturing the bishop.
Obama will almost certainly choose a free market ideologue, Wall Street insider, who's bloody, neoliberal fingerprints are all over, not only the current financial crisis, but the decline of the American middle class for the last decades, as treasury secretary.
This could be the perfect instrument to execute dramatic changes in economic policy - unless he changes Obama. This is the danger with surrounding your self with enemies. It's like playing with your queen out front. Effective, but dangerous.
But if you only take one thing from this diary, let it be this: Obama cannot pull the country to the left by tugging at the edges. As so many progressive activists have discovered, this usually leads to those edges just tearing off and becoming useless in our hands.
If you think of the political spectrum as the astroturf on a football field, the 50 yard line is now about where our 20 yard line used to be under Nixon. The way to pull that back our way is to yank the whole thing from the center.
This is how we change this country. But pulling it from the center takes far more strength than tugging at the edges. This is why Obama needs everyone, even some powerful Republicans.
So there will be a lot of people who don't understand what Obama's game is. He will be accused of being the house negro, as I witnessed only yesterday, or an Uncle Tom. Or, like after FISA, he will be accused of being a sellout.
So thicken up your skins people. Politics is war. It's going to get bloody. Criticize, debate, hold him accountable, that's our job. But try to do it with some understanding of what's going on. Because if you really knew, you might spend more time praying then you've ever done in your life.
Behold the power of The Lobby. They get to keep their Neocon Senator in place, firmly rooted in the US national security complex. Congratulations AIPAC.
To my timid friends who think this has nothing to do with Israel, or the fact that Lieberman is a Jew, you need to be deprogrammed.
There is a block of Jewish Americans, hard liners, right wing, and radically loyal to Israel, who have an incredible amount of power in this country. If it weren't for them, Lieberman would be out the door.
It is not anti-Semitic to acknowledge this. It has nothing to do with Jews as a race. In fact, the vast majority of Jewish Americans DO NOT support the militant, radical agenda of The Lobby.
That doesn't stop them from trying to play the race card every time someone criticizes their radical, militant agenda. According to them, Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is an anti-Semite.
But here in the real world we obviously have a problem. The right wing Jewish Lobby has way too much power over the American political system and specifically, the Democratic party.
If Joe Lieberman and the other Friends of Israel had their way, we would be at war with Iran right now, and possibly Syria too. In fact, the Middle East would probably be a burning cinder right now. And they will do everything in their power to ensure that Barack Obama's plans for withdrawal from Iraq are a complete failure. Fortunately, the power of The Lobby is not without limits and their grand plans for Iran have been put on hold. But not for long.
Remember, it is they who ushered the rise of the Neocons, many of which are dual American/Israeli citizens. I'm talking about the Richard Perles, Paul Wolfowitzes, and other Bush Neocons who are defacto agents of the Israeli foreign policy agenda. The power behind the Neocons has always been AIPAC and company. It is striking that so few on the left have actually acknowledged this fact. And it is The Lobby that is behind many of the caves on foreign policy by the Democrats.
Yet people on the Left always say the Dems are caving to Bush. No, they are caving to the Jewish Lobby.
The problem for the Left in discussing this is we really have two kinds of Jews here. We have the Jewish race, who are our brothers and sisters and, far more often than not, our political allies. And then we have the right wing, radically pro Israel Jewish political block. The latter is a completely different thing. And only when we separate the two, will we be able to even discuss it, much less defeat this political foe.
The Jewish political block hides behind their race for protection from criticism. They claim that criticism of their radical agenda is really an extension of the racial persecution they have endured for generations. And since this persecution is quite real, it is an extremely effective cover.
One of my best friends is a Jew. And he finds it incredibly offensive when the hardliners cry anti-Semitism every time someone challenges their agenda. He believes it is a dishonor to the real Jews who were persecuted for their race. I agree.
If anyone claims that Lieberman's retaining of his chairmanship is anything but a cave to the Israel lobby, you are either pathetically uninformed, or a liar. I have no doubt that some will pop up in the comments.
And for those who will inevitably cry anti-Semite at me, let me say in advance, I am the most anti-racist person you could meet. I love all peoples and I love the Jewish people. Most of my heros, Dylan, Einstein, the Gershwin brothers, many others, are Jews.
This is not about Jews the race. It is about the right wing Jewish political block. They are a threat to the political process, our national security, and world peace. They must be defeated. And allowing Joe Lieberman to stay is not the way to do it.
So what if I told you that the powers of financial capitalism (bankers etc.), had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands, able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.
This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations?
And what if I told you they had succeeded?
Wow! The most powerful bankers creating a world system of financial control, dominating the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole, with secret meetings. Surely you would think Tocque has fallen under the spell of a wild conspiracy theory.
But you can put away the cat in the tinfoil hat. Those are not my words. And it's not a theory. They are the words of one of the greatest, most eminent historians in modern times, the late Carroll Quigley - of Harvard, Princeton and the Georgetown Foreign School.
Here is bill Clinton referring to his former college professor Quigley at the 1992 Democratic convention:
"As a teenager, I heard John Kennedy’s summons to citizenship. And then, as a student at Georgetown I heard that call clarified by a professor named Carroll Quigley, who said to us that America was the greatest nation in history because our people had always believed in two things: that tomorrow can be better than today and that every one of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so."
Quigley could write credibly about the far reaching aims of these ruling elites because he himself was a member of the ruling class and, as such, he was given unprecedented access to their private files and records. When he published these words in his 1300 page tome, Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, not only was he adding to the historical record a previously untold story, he was making history himself in doing so.
The story I am about to share is critically important. One simply cannot understand politics without understanding the significant role the ruling class plays in it - behind the scenes, and beyond the grasp of democratic oversight. Quigley is an essential introduction to what I call the adult history of the world. And it is only with this historical understanding that we can understand the forces shaping our world, and possibly hope to affect them.
The time for the common man, or at the very least the educated political class like us, to be let in on the secret has long since passed. To take our country back, we must know who exactly we are taking it back from. And we must know what their real agenda is, and their methods for achieving it. It is simply unacceptable in this information age for so many to be oblivious to the real forces of political power, and to allow those forces to operate in secrecy.
These excerpts from Quigley are just the beginning. And while his revelations are about the financial powers of the early 20th Century, they are essential for understanding the power structures that exist today.
Perhaps most importantly, his revelations help us recognize that there is indeed a power class, working behind the scenes, acting upon our government, the mass media and education to bring about a world that is very much contrary to the interests and aims of the public.
The Historian Spills the Beans
Tragedy and Hope is not a book about the ruling class, and it is certainly not a "conspiracy" book. It is, as its title says, a history of the modern world. Quigley has merely reinserted the role of the ruling powers back into the narrative where they belong for any accurate account.
But in the process, Quigley drops a number of bombshells. And I don't mean two week press cycle bombshells. I mean rewrite history bombshells. Here is an incredibly brief synopsis of some of them, followed by the relevant excerptions. (I have linked to the excerpt that corresponds to each item. Just click the number to quickly scroll down.)
Cecil Rhodes, the founder of De Beers and creator of the Rhodes' Trust (of which the Rhodes' Scholarship is a part) formed a secret society with some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Britain and New York. The primary goal of this group was to federate the English speaking world and to expand the British empire. The structure of this society was an inner circle of "initiates" and outer circles of "helpers." The outer circles were called Round Table groups.
This was during the Gilded Age and it is difficult to even comprehend the wealth of these people (I posted a pic of one of their houses just to convey). And to truly understand their aims, you have to appreciate the reach of their industry. These were the first globalists of the modern era and their vision was breathtaking in scope. They sought to create a transnational trading system that would allow them unfettered access to markets and resources worldwide with minimal red tape. In essence, they were the pioneers of globalization and national sovereignty and colonial unrest was their primary impediment.
It appears the specific goals of this group evolved over the years, and their dream of a world federation gave way to a softer, more subtle alignment. But one can only describe their general aim of recalibrating the political environment, consisting of most major nations, into a global free trading system as being highly successful.
We are witnessing now the fruition of a plan set in motion over a century ago, conceived in secret, and implemented over multiple generations. And while the modern world certainly differs from that imagined by these founders, they are truly the architects of what we may call the Anglo-American empire that thrives today. They laid the foundation, both for the transnational banking and industrial system we have now, and for the methods of exerting the power to create that system.
Intermission
At this point, if this isn't blowing your mind a bit, it's because you already know all about Carroll Quigley and his revelations, you haven't been reading carefully, or you think I'm off my rocker. Let me assure you, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I have zero interest in secret societies. Skull and Bones bores me. My only interest in the ruling class is their subversion, for their own aims, of American democracy, and the many crimes against humanity and nature they commit daily around the world.
It is only to the extent that they are a force in politics that I have any interest at all. Through my involvement in the entertainment industry and academic associations I have known more than a few in the ruling class (mostly their offspring) and I can tell you unequivocally that they are not all evil, Bohemian Grove is not a cult but a fancy camping trip, and that almost all the conspiracy theories you will find on the interenet are wrong. There is, as far as I know, no Illuminati or any other such bullshit. And this is not the X-Files.
What we have is pluralism meets feudalism with a hefty amount of mafia thrown in. The ruling class in the early 20th Century, as it is now, was not monolithic. And in spite of their working together to bring about one globalized order, they often compete and work against each other, just like any other political bloc. It is imperative to understand, this is not a conspiracy. It was in its conception. And the powerful certainly conspire and collude daily. But "globalization" is a movement, not too unlike the progressive movement. The difference is the globalists have literally trillions of dollars, euros, and pounds to throw around on their campaign.
The Council on Foreign Relations was a front organization for this group. This shouldn't come as any surprise. The CFR is known well now as a trade lobby. And many also already have a pretty good idea of their role in empire maintenance. But to discover their secret origins was one of Quigley's greatest finds. And if one has any doubt about the power of the CFR, one merely has to read this bit of homespun wisdom spoken on the Senate floor from Senator Earnest Hollings (D) of South Carolina (Congressional Record, June 30, 1993, S8315):
If you ever run for President, you get very wonderful, embossed invitations from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, and you get the coffee and fine china, and, man, you are really a high muckety-muck.
And then what they do is get you to swear on the altar of free trade an undying loyalty and support---free trade, free trade. That is all they want. And they co-opt every one of these young Senators that want to run for President.
In England, the front is called the Royal Institute of International Affairs or Chatham House.
Here Quigley describes the methods the group uses to implement its far reaching aims. I'm going to revisit this part in my next post. But this should be of special interest to us all. In fact, I place this as the most important of all of Quigley's revelations.
"The methods can be summed up under three headings: (a) a triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism; (b) the recruitment of men of ability (chiefly from [certain universities) and the linking of these men to the [Group] by matrimonial alliances and by gratitude for titles and positions of power; and (c) the influencing of public policy by placing members of the [Group] in positions of power shielded as much as possible from public attention. (Carroll Quigley - The Anglo American Establishment
Thus the title of this diary - Three Easy Steps. This movement has penetrated every power structure civilized life - from politics of course, to journalism (See bombshell #4), and even down to our schools and universities, all with the goal of facilitating their control.
The group had significant control over the most powerful newspapers in the US and Britain, and infiltrated the Left-wing with such instruments as the New Republic:
The American branch of this "English Establishment" exerted much of its influence through five American newspapers (The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, and the lamented Boston Evening Transcript)
Here begins the excerpt section. It's a hard read with many unfamiliar names - and some you will know. But I highly recommend reading it. There is far more treasure in here than I outlined.
#1 The Plot
This association was formally established on February 5, 1891, when Rhodes and Stead organized a secret society of which Rhodes had been dreaming for sixteen years. In this secret society Rhodes was to be leader; Stead, Brett (Lord Esher), and Lord Milner were to form an executive committee; Arthur (Lord) Balfour, (Sir) Harry Johnston, Lord Rothschild, Albert (Lord) Grey, and others were listed as potential members of a "Circle of Initiates"; while there was to be an outer circle known as the "Association of Helpers" (later organized by Milner as the Round Table organization)....Thus the central part of the secret society was established by March 1891. It continued to function as a formal group, although the outer circle was, apparently, not organized until 1909-1913.
Quigley describes the "outer", Round Table group's formation thusly:
The Round Table Groups have already been mentioned in this book several times, notably in connection with the formation of the British Commonwealth in chapter 4 and in the discussion of appeasement in chapter 12 ("the Cliveden Set"). At the risk of some repetition, the story will be summarized here, because the American branch of this organization (sometimes called the "Eastern Establishment' ) has played a very significant role in the history of the United States in the last generation.
The Round Table Groups were semi-secret discussion and lobbying groups organized by Lionel Curtis, Philip H. Kerr (Lord Lothian), and (Sir) William S. Marris in 1908- 1911. This was done on behalf of Lord Milner, the dominant Trustee of the Rhodes Trust in the two decades 1905-1925. The original purpose of these groups was to seek to federate the English-speaking world along lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) and William T. Stead (1849-1912), and the money for the organizational work came originally from the Rhodes Trust. By 1915 Round Table groups existed in seven countries, including England, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and a rather loosely organized group in the United States (George Louis Beer, Walter Lippmann, Frank Aydelotte, Whitney Shepardson, Thomas W. Lamont, Jerome D. Greene, Erwin D. Canham of the Christian Science Monitor, and others). The attitudes of the various groups were coordinated by frequent visits and discussions and by a well informed and totally anonymous quarterly magazine, The Round Table, whose first issue, largely written by Philip Kerr, appeared in November 1910.
...
Money for the widely ramified activities of this organization came originally from the associates and followers of Cecil Rhodes, chiefly from the Rhodes Trust itself, and from wealthy associates such as the Beit brothers, from Sir Abe Bailey, and (after 1915) from the Astor family. Since 1925 there have been substantial contributions from wealthy individuals and from foundations and firms associated with the international banking fraternity, especially the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and other organizations associated with J. P. Morgan, the Rockefeller and Whitney families, and the associates of Lazard Brothers and of Morgan, Grenfell, and Company.
The chief backbone of this organization grew up along the already existing financial cooperation running from the Morgan Bank in New York to a group of international financiers in London led by Lazard Brothers. Milner himself in 1901 had refused a fabulous offer, worth up to $100,000 a year, to become one of the three partners of the Morgan Bank in London, in succession to the younger J. P. Morgan who moved from London to join his father in New York (eventually the vacancy went to E. C. Grenfell, so that the London affiliate of Morgan became known as Morgan, Grenfell, and Company). Instead, Milner became director of a number of public banks, chiefly the London Joint Stock Bank, corporate precursor of the Midland Bank. He became one of the greatest political and financial powers in England, with his disciples strategically placed throughout England in significant places, such as the editorship of The Times, the editorship of The Observer, the managing directorship of Lazard Brothers, various administrative posts, and even Cabinet positions. Ramifications were established in politics, high finance, Oxford and London universities, periodicals, the civil service, and tax-exempt foundations.
#2 Expanding the Empire to the US - Council on Foreign Relations
At the end of the war of 1914, it became clear that the organization of this system had to be greatly extended. Once again the task was entrusted to Lionel Curtis who established, in England and each dominion, a front organization to the existing local Round Table Group. This front organization, called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, had as its nucleus in each area the existing submerged Round Table Group. In New York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a front for J. P. Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table Group. The American organizers were dominated by the large number of Morgan "experts," including Lamont and Beer, who had gone to the Paris Peace Conference and there became close friends with the similar group of English "experts" which had been recruited by the Milner group. In fact, the original plans for the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations were drawn up at Paris. The Council of the RIIA (which, by Curtis's energy came to be housed in Chatham House, across St. James's Square from the Astors, and was soon known by the name of this headquarters) and the board of the Council on Foreign Relations have carried ever since the marks of their origin. Until 1960 the council at Chatham House was dominated by the dwindling group of Milner's associates, while the paid staff members were largely the agents of Lionel Curtis. The Round Table for years (until 1961) was edited from the back door of Chatham House grounds in Ormond Yard, and its telephone came through the Chatham House switchboard.
The New York branch was dominated by the associates of the Morgan Bank. For example, in 1928 the Council on Foreign Relations had John W. Davis as president, Paul Cravath as vice-president, and a council of thirteen others, which included Owen D. Young, Russell C. Leffingwell, Norman Davis, Allen Dulles, George W. Wickersham, Frank L. Polk, Whitney Shepardson, Isaiah Bowman, Stephen P. Duggan, and Otto Kahn. Throughout its history the council has been associated with the American Round Tablers, such as Beer, Lippmann. Shepardson. and Jerome Greene.
...
The academic figures have been those linked to Morgan, such as James T. Shotwell, Charles Seymour, Joseph P. Chamberlain, Philip Jessup, Isaiah Bowman and, more recently, Philip Moseley, Grayson L. Kirk, and Henry M. Wriston. The Wall Street contacts with these were created originally from Morgan's influence in handling large academic endowments. In the case of the largest of these endowments, that at Harvard, the influence was usually exercised indirectly through "State Street," Boston, which, for much of the twentieth century, came through the Boston banker Thomas Nelson Perkins.
The American Group and the CIA
Closely allied with this Morgan influence were a small group of Wall Street law firms, whose chief figures were Elihu Root, John W. Davis, Paul D. Cravath, Russell Leffingwell, the Dulles brothers (Alan Dulles was head of CIA) and, more recently, Arthur H. Dean, Philip D. Reed, and John J. McCloy. Other nonlegal agents of Morgan included men like Owen D. Young and Norman H. Davis.
Roots of the Anglo-American alliance
On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy. In England the center was the Round Table Group, while in the United States it was J. P. Morgan and Company or its local branches in Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Some rather incidental examples of the operations of this structure are very revealing, just because they are incidental. For example, it set up in Princeton a reasonable copy of the Round Table Group's chief Oxford headquarters, All Souls College. This copy, called the Institute for Advanced Study, and best known, perhaps, as the refuge of Einstein, Oppenheimer, John von Neumann, and George F. Kennan, was organized by Abraham Flexner of the Carnegie Foundation and Rockefeller's General Education Board after he had experienced the delights of All Souls while serving as Rhodes Memorial Lecturer at Oxford. The plans were largely drawn by Tom Jones, one of the Round Table's most active intriguers and foundation administrators.(cont. below)
#3. The Triple Front
THE MILNER GROUP could never have been built up by Milner's own efforts. He had no political power or even influence. All that he had was ability and ideas. The same thing is true about many of the other members of the Milner Group, at least at the time that they joined the Group. The power that was utilized by Milner and his Group was really the power of the Cecil family and its allied families such as the Lyttelton (Viscounts Cobham), Wyndham (Barons Leconfield), Grosvenor (Dukes of Westminster), Balfour, Wemyss, Palmer (Earls of Selborne and Viscounts Wolmer), Cavendish (Dukes of Devonshire and Marquesses of Hartington), and Gathorne-Hardy (Earls of Cranbrook). The Milner Group was originally a major fief within the great nexus of power, influence, and privilege controlled by the Cecil family. It is not possible to describe here the ramifications of the Cecil influence. It has been all-pervasive in British life since 1886. This Cecil Bloc was built up by Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne and third Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903). The methods used by this man were merely copied by the Milner Group. These methods can be summed up under three headings: (a) a triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism; (b) the recruitment of men of ability (chiefly from All Souls) and the linking of these men to the Cecil Bloc by matrimonal alliances and by gratitude for titles and positions of power; and (c) the influencing of public policy by placing members of the Cecil Bloc in positions of power shielded as much as possible from public attention.
#4. Controlling the Media
The American branch of this "English Establishment" exerted much of its influence through five American newspapers (The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, and the lamented Boston Evening Transcript). In fact, the editor of the Christian Science Monitor was the chief American correspondent (anonymously) of The Round Table, and Lord Lothian, the original editor of The Round Table and later secretary of the Rhodes Trust (1925-1939) and ambassador to Washington, was a frequent writer in the Monitor. It might be mentioned that the existence of this Wall Street, Anglo-American axis is quite obvious once it is pointed out. It is reflected in the fact that such Wall Street luminaries as John W. Davis, Lewis Douglas, Jock Whitney, and Douglas Dillon were appointed to be American ambassadors in London.
...This group wielded great influence because it controlled the Rhodes Trust, the Beit Trust, The Times of London, The Observer, the influential and highly anonymous quarterly review known as The Round Table (founded in 1910 with money supplied by Sir Abe Bailey and the Rhodes Trust, and with Lothian as editor), and it dominated the Royal Institute of International Affairs, called "Chatham House" (of which Sir Abe Bailey and the Astors were the chief financial supporters, while Lionel Curtis was the actual founder), the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and All Souls College, Oxford...
Infiltrating the Left-wing and the New Republic
More than fifty years ago the Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the Left-wing political movements in the United States. This was relatively easy to do, since these groups were starved for funds and eager for a voice to reach the people. Wall Street supplied both. The purpose was not to destroy ... or take over but was really threefold: (1) to keep informed about the thinking of Left-wing or liberal groups; (2) to provide them with a mouthpiece so that they could "blow off steam," and (3) to have a final veto on their publicity and possibly on their actions, if they ever went "radical."
There was nothing really new about this decision, since other financiers had talked about it and even attempted it earlier. What made it decisively important this time was the combination of its adoption by the dominant Wall Street financier, at a time when tax policy was driving all financiers to seek tax-exempt refuges for their fortunes, and at a time when the ultimate in Left-wing radicalism was about to appear under the banner of the Third International.
The best example of this alliance of Wall Street and Left-wing publications was The New Republic, a magazine founded by Willard Straight, using Payne Whitney money, in 1914. Straight, who had been assistant to Sir Robert Hart (Director of the Chinese Imperial Customs Service and the head of the European imperialist penetration of China) and had remained in the Far East from 1901 to r9l:, became a Morgan partner and the firm's chief expert on the Far East. He married Dorothy Payne Whitney whose names indicate the family alliance of two of America's greatest fortunes. She was the daughter of William C. Whitney, New York utility millionaire and the sister and co-heiress of Oliver Payne, of the Standard Oil "trust." One of her brothers married Gertrude Vanderbilt, while the other, Payne Whitney, married the daughter of Secretary of State John Hay, who enunciated the American policy of the "Open Door" in China. In the next generation, three first cousins, John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, Cornelius Vanderbilt ("Sonny") Whitney, and Michael Whitney ("Mike") Straight, were allied in numerous public policy enterprises of a propagandist nature, and all three served in varied roles in the late New Deal and Truman administrations. In these they were closely allied with other "Wall Street liberals," such as Nelson Rockefeller.
The New Republic was founded by Willard and Dorothy Straight, using her money, in 1914, and continued to be supported by her financial contributions until March 23, 1953. The original purpose for establishing the paper was to provide an outlet for the progressive Left and to guide it quietly in an Anglophile direction. This latter task was entrusted to a young man, only four years out of Harvard, but already a member of the mysterious Round Table group, which has played a major role in directing England's foreign policy since its formal establishment in 1909. This new recruit, Walter Lippmann, has been, from 1914 to the present, the authentic spokesman in American journalism for the Establishments on both sides of the Atlantic in international affairs. His biweekly columns, which appear in hundreds of American papers, are copyrighted by the New York Herald Tribune which is now owned by J. H. Whitney. It was these connections, as a link between Wall Street and the Round Table Group, which gave Lippmann the opportunity in 1918, while still in his twenties, to be the official interpreter of the meaning of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points to the British government.
A final word
Please use caution when reading this. There is a broader context to this that I am unable to address in this space. Quigley's Tragedy and Hope is over 1300 pages and these citations are scattered seamlessly throughout.
The point is not to assert that there is a secret group who is pulling the strings of the modern world. It is far more complex. It is possible that there still exist the inner circle of "initiates." But I have no evidence for it. In fact, the evidence strongly suggest that after 1910 or so, the whole organization took on a new character. And it certainly got uglier.
The point is to draw light on this hidden part of our history and the inner workings of the one percent of one percent. They love the shadows and secrecy. They control the flow of information to a horrifying extent. They have untold influence over our government in ways most people can't imagine.
And they have a perilous vision for our world. Who has jurisdiction over a transnational economy. Who can regulate it? What democratic institution can even stand up to it?
This is the central downfall of the globalization idea. As David Rothkopf observes in this Newsweek column, having a global economy is great for the pirates, but is devasting for democracy, sovereignty, and justice.
The current financial crisis is another such example, producing serious questions about the influence of the superclass. Of the world's elites, none has strutted the world stage for the past decade like global investment bankers. Masters of money, they created something new: global markets and a constantly evolving array of securities that were both beyond the reach and the comprehension of regulators. Now, the value of some of the complex investment vehicles they created is proving to be illusory.
As a consequence, the world economy was set for the crisis that is currently unfolding. There was no effective global regulator to keep the system in check, and there was no real voice for the average Joe. The Federal Reserve stepped in to stabilize the burnout of one of these major market makers—even though they have no jurisdiction over investment banks, even though many of those supporting the bailout/buyout were the same who have long clamored for "self-regulation," even though many were the ones who had cited the moral hazard of helping to bail out homeowners and encouraging their bad borrowing behavior. And so you have a financial leadership structure that bails out investment bankers worldwide, but not homeowners.
I'll leave you with this video clip I excerpted from the publisher of Harper's and Texaco heir Lewis Lapham's movie, The American Ruling CLass
"The ruling class is so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control democracy, I feel." - Walter Cronkite
In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
But wait. There's more...
Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.
The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.
"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.
What is it about the corporate business model that brings out such good in people? Is it that view of the Manhattan skyline that makes one look out over the masses and think, how can I serve humanity today? Is it that corporate charter that demands, Do the right thing? Or maybe it's just those multi-million dollar Christmas bonuses.
I have spent over 20 years trying to figure it out. Of course the corporation is merely a neutral organizational structure. It can't be blamed for what real people do within that structure any more than you can blame the road for bad drivers. Right?
Not exactly. In the San Fernando valley all the main roads were designed to run a pretty perfect north-south, east-west. The result is that twice a day, in the east-west direction, the sun setting or rising silhouettes the traffic lights making them practically invisible. This is an example of road design bringing out the worst in drivers. And incidentally, one that almost cost me my life.
The corporate model, as implemented under US law, has some design flaws of its own. And these design flaws go to the heart of why corporations tend to make people, far more often than not, behave in either unethical, immoral, or even abhorrent ways.
Here I will show that the widespread anti-corporate sentiment so many Americans feel, which may seem reactionary and undefined, is in fact quite rational and based on a real phenomenon. Countless accounts of corporate crime and malfeasance have been documented in film, books, and online. (None more succinct than the film 'The Corporation' where scores of top corporations were analyzed using standard behavioral models and found to be sociopaths. This wasn't just a clever trick. Modern corporate behavior met all the criteria for deviant, anti-social behavior without conscience.)
Personal experience too has shown people first hand that dealing with corporations, from credit card companies, insurance companies and telecommunications companies, to even their local drugstore chain, often leaves them victims.
But rarely is an attempt made to explain the phenomena. And as long as bad corporate behavior is attributed exclusively to people instead of the system itself, we will never be able to address the problem.
So here's what took me years to figure out. Not that it should have. It's extremely simple and part of it is right there in bold print: LLC. Limited liability corporation.
I have identified three fundamental components of the corporate model which contribute to sociopathic behavior. But none is more influential than limited liability. This is nothing short of an invitation to act without consequence. And when people are allowed to act without consequence or accountability, they will do bad things. We are an imperfect species, susceptible to temptation. Even decent people are capable of doing bad things without the threat of accountability. We've known this since the stone age. This is why we have laws.
But the corporate model protects people from the law. It allows people to act behind a shield of limited liability and as a result, corporations willingly break the law knowing that the increased profit gained will be less than the fines imposed for the illegal act. This shield also benefits the shareholders who get to participate and profit from a criminal operation from a nice, tidy distance.
There's another primary contributor to the sociopathic tendencies of corporate operators. And it is written into the law itself. As corporate attorney Robert Hinkley writes in his essay, "How Corporate Law Inhibits Social Responsibility:
The provision in the law I am talking about is the one that says the purpose of the corporation is simply to make money for shareholders. Every jurisdiction where corporations operate has its own law of corporate governance. But remarkably, the corporate design contained in hundreds of corporate laws throughout the world is nearly identical. That design creates a governing body to manage the corporation–usually a board of directors–and dictates the duties of those directors. In short, the law creates corporate purpose. That purpose is to operate in the interests of shareholders. In Maine, where I live, this duty of directors is in Section 716 of the business corporation act, which reads:
...the directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders....
Although the wording of this provision differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, its legal effect does not. This provision is the motive behind all corporate actions everywhere in the world. Distilled to its essence, it says that the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money. Failing this duty can leave directors and officers open to being sued by shareholders.
Think about this. What these laws, in every state of the Union, say is that corporations are required to place profit above every other consideration. What if you or I placed profit above every consideration? What would we be? Sociopaths.
Yet we have institutionalized this very standard into US law. A legal precept that not only allows, but requires that corporations place the profits of their stakeholders above the interests of society as a whole.
It is fun to watch the disciples of Ayn Rand and Milton Freidman jump through intellectual hoops to try to rationalize how corporations acting exclusively in their own self interests somehow benefit society. And many get paid big bucks to do this circus act.
But a circus act it is. Even wild dogs understand that acting in the interests of the pack is often necessary for survival. Perhaps the Rockefellers should have started with a kennel before attempting the University of Chicago.
Some will argue correctly that corporations are not all evil and many provide great benefits to society through the products and services they provide. This is true, but it is also a strawman argument. There is no requirement that, for a business to be profitable and provide a useful product, it must be limited of liability and possess the singular consideration of maximizing profit at the expense of all social responsibility.
To the contrary, our economy would be far more prosperous without these lawbreaking sociopaths devouring real innovation and competition. And as time has shown, the harm they do to society and the environment in their tunneled quest for profits costs our economy far more than it pays back.
As corporation buy up a greater and greater share of our economy, and permeate more and more of our lives with their sociopathic ways, they threaten far more than our economy. They are destroying good itself. I'm beginning to see the corporate ethos trickle down to ordinary people and small businesses. A new era of Darwinian animalism is taking hold in our society where the choice of doing right and wrong is made on a calculator.
I see more and more commercial advertisements where desire for a product is represented by greed and selfishness. One even depicted a father stealing his small child's waffle from the breakfast table - because it was just so delicious. This was supposed to be cute. But it was really just sick. A sick commercial for an increasingly corporate society.
There is one last point I want to make. While the corporate system of unaccountability and sociopathic profit seeking allows otherwise decent people to do bad things, it also attracts people who already have sociopathic tendencies. If you're a veritable scumbag who wasn't cuddled enough as a baby, you will thrive at Exxon, or CIGNA, or Citibank, or literally thousands of other top corporations. Someone did a study that showed just that (Link provided kindly by OHdog. Much gratitude.)
The epidemic disease of corporatism has spread so much that I'm not sure how it can be stopped. But however we stop it, I am sure it will involve clearly defining its root causes.
The shield from accountability and the singular goal of profit at the exclusion of all other considerations is a bad system. It's bad for the planet, bad for society, and even bad for the economy.
Social Capitalism
Muhammad Yunus, who won the Noble Prize in Economics last year, proposed an interesting idea at his acceptance speech. Here's a brief excerpt:
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
...
Let us suppose an entrepreneur, instead of having a single source of motivation (such as, maximizing profit), now has two sources of motivation, which are mutually exclusive, but equally compelling a) maximization of profit and b) doing good to people and the world.
Each type of motivation will lead to a separate kind of business. Let us call the first type of business a profit-maximizing business, and the second type of business as social business.
Social business will be a new kind of business introduced in the market place with the objective of making a difference in the world. Investors in the social business could get back their investment, but will not take any dividend from the company. Profit would be ploughed back into the company to expand its outreach and improve the quality of its product or service. A social business will be a non-loss, non-dividend company.
Once social business is recognized in law, many existing companies will come forward to create social businesses in addition to their foundation activities. Many activists from the non-profit sector will also find this an attractive option. Unlike the non-profit sector where one needs to collect donations to keep activities going, a social business will be self-sustaining and create surplus for expansion since it is a non-loss enterprise. Social business will go into a new type of capital market of its own, to raise capital.
Young people all around the world, particularly in rich countries, will find the concept of social business very appealing since it will give them a challenge to make a difference by using their creative talent. Many young people today feel frustrated because they cannot see any worthy challenge, which excites them, within the present capitalist world. Socialism gave them a dream to fight for. Young people dream about creating a perfect world of their own.
Almost all social and economic problems of the world will be addressed through social businesses. The challenge is to innovate business models and apply them to produce desired social results cost-effectively and efficiently. Healthcare for the poor, financial services for the poor, information technology for the poor, education and training for the poor, marketing for the poor, renewable energy - these are all exciting areas for social businesses.
I don't fully subscribe to Yunus' idea as presented because I believe it underplays the role of democratic government, which I still very much believe in. But what an incredible thought. Social businesses. Owned by everyone. With two simultaneous goals - success and social benefit.
I included his opening salutations to give you the idea of who he was addressing that night. I would love to know how badly his speech horrified his audience.
I have a confession to make. I've been lying about global warming for years. You see, I have known for over a decade that we were long past the "tipping point" for preventing catastrophic climate change. But I also believed, and still do, that it is a moral imperative to act as though we have a chance, just in case the data is wrong. And so when people asked if there was anything we could do to prevent global warming, I would lie.
Because of my involvement with certain environmental organizations, I was exposed to the science of climate change pretty early. We didn't call it global warming back then. We called it the greenhouse effect. But the truth is, all the way back in the late 70s and early 80s, the facts about global warming were very well established (a very important point I'll get to in my next diary). And way back then, scientists, like modern day prophets, were already predicting what we're witnessing right now - extreme weather events, melting at the poles, droughts, fires and floods. It's almost spooky now, to remember back when these predictions were only abstract notions of a seemingly uncertain future. But facts they were then, just as they are now.
There is one fact that I've never written about or even discussed with close friends until recently. It's the kind of fact that makes people want to give up (We can never give up). But I now believe that circumstances require us to confront the truth of our situation, no matter how painful or scary it may be.
Residence Time
Let me tell you a secret. Or at least it might as well be a secret because hardly anyone talks about it. It's called residence time. This is the measure of how long a gas stays in the atmosphere before being reabsorbed. And the residence time for CO2 has grave consequences for our planet and our future - which is why I suspect no one wants to talk about it. It wasn't in Al Gore's movie. But if you're one of the overwhelming majority of people who has never even heard of this term, let that be an indication of just how far we are from having even a remotely serious discussion about global warming.
This figure shows the degree to which carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions persist in the atmosphere over time. The lifetime of a gas in the atmosphere is generally known as its "residence time", but unlike other greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide does not undergo a simple decline over a single predictable timescale. Instead, the excess carbon is first diluted by the carbon cycle as it mixes into the oceans and biosphere (e.g. plants) over a period of a few hundred years, and then it is slowly removed over hundreds of thousands of years as it is gradually incorporated into carbonate rocks.
The dilution of carbon is such that only 15-30% is expected to remain in the atmosphere after 200 years, with most of the rest being either incorporated into plants or dissolved into the oceans. This leads to a new equilibrium being established; however, the total amount of carbon in the ocean-atmosphere-biosphere system remains elevated. To restore the system to a normal level, the excess carbon must be incorporated into carbonate rocks through geologic processes that progress exceedingly slowly. As a result, it is estimated that between 3 and 7% of carbon added to the atmosphere today will still be in the atmosphere after 100,000 years (Archer 2005, Lenton & Britton 2006). This is supported by studies of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a large naturally occurring release of carbon 55 million years ago that apparently took ~200,000 years to fully return to pre-event conditions (Zachos et al. 2001). (Source)
What this means is, if humans stopped the engine of the entire world today, shut down every coal fired power plant from here to China, turned off every single automobile, stopped burning any carbon based substances from natural gas to firewood, and miraculously reduced global greenhouse emissions to exactly zero, we could not stop what is happening, and about to happen to our planet.
And because we have entered what I call runaway climate change, with numerous feedback loops kicking in, even if we stopped the engine of the world, not only will global warming continue, but it will continue to get worse.
The global warming we're seeing now is not the result of decades of CO2 emissions. It is the accumulative result of centuries of emissions. All that CO2 that went up George Washington's chimney, and all that CO2 that came out of Henry Ford's Model-T is still up there, suffocating our planet. And all the CO2 that we have been emitting over the last 50 years, billions of tons, will still be suffocating our planet in the year 2200. Some of it will even be around in the year 202,000 A.D.
We have permanently altered our atmosphere, and our climate.
Our New Moral Imperative
It's time to face reality. We can't "fix" global warming. And we can't prevent it. We don't have seven years. We don't have five.
Al Gore and Richard Branson have offered a reward if someone can figure out a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. I pray some one wins that prize. But when you really think about what that will take, it seems unlikely it can happen in time to reverse what has already begun.
But this contest at least confirms to me that Mr. Gore is familiar with the residence time of CO2 – not that I had any doubt. I suspect he has been operating under the same moral imperative I have – pretend we can fix this just in case, by some fluke, we can.
But we now have a new moral imperative - we must prepare the people of the world for catastrophic global climate change, and take measures to minimize the inevitable suffering that will result.
Mr. Gore has called for a Global Marshall Plan, based on the initiative after WWII to rebuild Europe, to move the world toward environmental sustainability. I strongly support that effort. But our Global Marshall Plan must also include mobilizing our resources to deal with global water shortages, mass migrations, the crashing global economy, and the threat of numerous wars.
We cannot continue to walk blindly into this future hoping that some miracle will rescue us from peril. Our moral imperative now is to survive that peril.
Both reports address the implications of global warming from a national security perspective. And both reports read like a geopolitical horror story.
It's almost funny. We've gotten to see a little microcosm of the kind of world conflict envisioned in both reports play out right here in the US. Georgia, Alabama and Florida are in a spat over water rights as the long drought diminishes supplies. Lawsuits have been threatened.
Now imagine if Georgia, Alabama, and Florida all had their own armies, even nuclear weapons. This is what we're looking at. Water wars, mass migrations, famine and severe political turmoil.
We can take steps now to help mitigate the social and geopolitical disaster that is every bit the threat posed by the climate disaster. But we have to acknowledge it first.
A Civilization Policy
I want us to work to fix global warming. But we haven't even begun to think seriously about what is involved. Our entire civilization has been designed around fossil fuels. Cheap oil is written into the blueprints of modern civilization in ways we don't even realize, from suburban sprawl, to global trade. Five years? Try two hundred. We're talking about reinventing our entire society, infrastructure, economy.
For over a century we've been designing our civilization around cheap fossil energy. Where once communities sprung up in walking distance, now you most likely have to drive miles just to get a loaf of bread.
And let's not even mention business and trade. It takes a lot of oil to get all that wheat gluten from China. And yet the oligarchs are dead set on fulfilling David Rockefeller's dream of a one world economy.
Then we have Ted Steven's bridge to nowhere. I really wish we would let him build it. What a fine monument to a failed idea. A failed civilization.
We can change civilization. But let's not delude ourselves that this is merely an energy problem. We have to restructure our entire way of life, from the way we trade and distribute goods, to where we work and live. I believe what we lack in a replacement for cheap energy, we can make up for in efficiency and restructuring. Did you know we waste as much as 80% of the energy we use? And yet almost every estimate on how much solar energy we would need to replace fossil fuels uses current consumption levels. If we even approach 50% efficiency, solar energy becomes much more feasible.
But we have to get serious. Our energy policy needs to become a home and office insulation policy. A civil engineering policy. A trade policy. An electric car policy. It needs to be a restructuring of Western civilization policy.
There is hope
Having the residence time of CO2 out in the open is not just to plan for the worst. It also informs our strategies for planning a solution.
The Gore/Branson initiative for example. I think we should put everything we have into carbon sequestration technology - which is what their contest is going for. It may not bear fruit for decades. But it does offer the promise of correcting our mistake.
Massive reforestation is a potent form of carbon sequestration. But we also must develop technology to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
Granted, it's a long shot. But it is by no means impossible. And until the carbon cycle becomes a serious part of the debate, not only will we not prepare for the worst, we will greatly diminish our chances for a possible solution. We must change the nature of the discussion.
But our political leaders, the media, and even our fellow citizens are living in a fantasy world. I won't even honor the proposals by the Democratic candidates for president by mentioning them. And the Republicans. Well, they'll be one of the first extinct species. They're almost there now.
Runaway Global Warming Has Begun
Meanwhile, back in reality land, something is occurring that I've been fearing for a long time. That something is runaway climate change.
A dramatic decline in the ability of the Earth to soak up man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, and a corresponding acceleration in the rate of increase of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, have been detected for the first time by scientists.
This little news item effectively says that that chart above is wrong. Turns out the residence time for CO2 just got an extended stay.
We've known all along that when global warming really kicked in, it would snowball. This is because the atmosphere is a nonlinear thermodynamic system. The slightest, even linear change in input will most probably result in a dramatic, exponential change in output. And when you factor in that the input, CO2 emission rates, is also nonlinear, and the many feedback loops at play - deforestation, co2 sink rates, arctic reflectivity, and melting permafrost, just to name a few - you see what I believe we are clearly seeing now - not just a change in global weather patterns, but an exponential change.
The thing to understand about science is it often lags behind knowledge. For example, it was over a decade after Einstein first conceived of his General Principle of Relativity before he was able to publish on it. While he had firmly formulated the concept, incontrovertibly so in my opinion, he didn't know of a mathematical formalism to represent it. He had to consult a mathematician friend who suggested Reiman's work in non-euclidean geometry.
Climate science is similar in that you can see patterns clearly, know they're occurring, and yet spend years putting together the necessary data to actually prove what you already know. Of course, this is the way it should be. And the measured, conservative projections of climate models are the only way to ensure accuracy.
But because of the exponential, extraordinary rate of change we're seeing in global climate patterns, and the extreme complexity of the data, the science just can't keep up. This is why of late, we are also seeing an exponential increase in the number of studies claiming 'We were wrong, it's much worse than we thought.'
Again, our problem is not just energy or greenhouse gas emissions. It is our entire global way of life. Feedback loops are a consequence of warming, feeding back to create even more warming. But other severe contributors, like wiping out half of the South American rainforest, are not. And this double whammy has yet to be fully included in climate models. So over the next decade, we are going to see a switch from scientists trying to predict what is going to happen to scientists trying to explain what is already happening.
OK, I'm Depressed
You may be reading this and thinking, OK, even if I buy all this residence time crap, and accept that the world is going to tank, what can I do about it. This is just to big for little old me.
Well, you would be right. It's too big for any individual. But the amazing thing about this internet thing is it allows individuals to become groups. And as a group, we can do what we do best, raise awareness.
I have a one year old daughter. I know she's not going to grow up in the world that I did. But I believe that she can grow up in a world that is sustainable, peaceful, and happy.
Just as we have a model for how to proceed with Mr. Gore's Marshall Plan, we also have a model for how not to proceed. We can call it the Katrina plan. Katrina was a disaster. But it didn't compare to the man made disaster that followed.
So it is with global warming. If we don't plan for the worst, the greatest disaster will not be climate change itself, it will be our response.
