Book Review: The Devil’s Chessboard by David Talbor

It’s common for people to scoff at the idea there’s a secret cabal within the government that’s actually running things. It’s also become accepted that the Warren Commission Report resolved all the questions surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and that all those who say otherwise are just crazy conspiracy nuts.

What if you found out you’re wrong on both counts? And that the former, while operating in a form of plain sight, may have been responsible for the latter?

John Foster Dulles and his younger brother, Allan, were fixtures in Washington DC for decades, and this compelling history of how they launched the Cold War and were barely restrained from bringing about the nuclear apocalypse may give you nightmares.

“In the view of the Dulles brothers, democracy was an enterprise that had to be carefully managed by the right men, not simply left to elected officials as a public trust…” (p. 3)

Now were they overly concerned about the people who had elected those officials.

“…their overriding commitment was always to the circle of accomplished, privileged men whom they saw as the true seat of power in America.” (ibid)

To embrace the idea that those same “accomplished, privileged men”—the 1% of the era—have any intention of forfeiting that seat of power voluntarily is naive, at best.

For certain, you’ll turn the last page of this excellent history of the period with more questions than when you started and, hopefully, a health amount of critical inquiry from this point on about just what’s going on in DC and elsewhere.

Be assured this is NOT a collection of wild speculation and paranoia. Mr. Talbot has done his research—exhaustively, considering the obstacles that still need to be overcome with regard to anything connected to the CIA—and his positions are carefully documented and reasoned out. Nor does he soothe the creeping sense of unease that arises as he reveals one cabal after another by suggesting the machinations he describes aren’t still going on.

A democracy such as ours is only strong when those to whom we give its charge operate in the full light of disclosure. That hasn’t happened in the past, and it’s unlikely it’s happening now, as the revelation of the full extent to which “terrorists” were tortured in the last decade shows. The real lesson Mr. Talbot leaves the reader with is simple: Anyone who believes they’re getting the truth about what’s going on in our government is living in a bubble of unreality.

Book Review: The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

If you’re part of the 1%, you’ll hate this book. If, on the other hand, you’re wondering how it is that the rich are getting richer while the middle class gets poorer, this is the place to start.

The Shock Doctrine is an historical review of how the brand of no-holds-barred free-market capitalism advocated by economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, with the able assistance of the CIA, the IMF and the World Bank, have systematically destroyed budding democracies worldwide, brutally murdering and torturing those who would challenge them, in the name of profit.

“Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by anti-democratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market reforms.” (Page 11)

From the 1950s, when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on false pretenses, the steady erosion of democracy both in the US and worldwide has brought us to the present situation where 1% of the world’s population controls half of its wealth. To aid in this imperialist campaign, the CIA has trained hundreds of well-paid “revolutionaries” in the methods of torture the world got a firsthand look at with the exposure of Abu Ghraib. The official story was this was a case of over-zealousness. It wasn’t. It’s standard procedure. It’s happening right now at Guantanamo and likely in any number of “black sites” in distant and not so distant places.

As we speak, a group of billionaires, including Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and the Waltons, are spending millions to destroy free public education. The GOP and neoliberal Democrats have been trying to privatize Social Security for decades. This isn’t just ideology. It’s a well-planned agenda for eliminating all government-supported programs.

“The ultimate goal for the corporations at the center of the complex is to bring the model of for-profit government, which advances so rapidly in extraordinary circumstances, into the ordinary and day-to-day functioning of the state – in effect, to privatize the government.” (Page 15)

That agenda is moving forward using “… The policy Trinity – the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending…” (Page 18)

With each incursion into eliminating the possibility that people who have suffered under one form of colonialism or another for centuries will manage to take ownership of their own countries, the Friedmanites who ousted the Keynesians responsible for the New Deal and the development of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have replaced popularly elected governments with well-financed thugs willing to sell their countries’ assets to the highest bidder. If a few thousand peasants die or are murdered in the process, that’s of no concern to anyone involved. As long as the corporate shills follow the rules, they can live in sybaritic luxury as long as there are wire transfers and suitcases full of cash to be had.

“First, governments must remove all rules and regulations standing in the way of the accumulation of profits. Second, they should sell off any assets they own the corporations could be running at a profit. And third, they should dramatically cut back funding of social programs…. Taxes when they must exist, should be low, and rich and poor should be taxed at the same flat rate. Corporation should be free to sell their products anywhere in the world, and government should make no effort to protect local industries or local ownership. All prices, including the price of labor, should be determined by the market. There should be no minimum wage. For privatization, Friedman offered up healthcare, the post office, education, retirement pensions, even national parks.” (Page 69)

This book came highly recommended by several people, and if the current disaster that US democracy is becoming matters, it’s essential one read this book to understand the mindset of those seeking to destroy it. Where the neoliberal agenda has been imposed, the only ones to benefit are the corporations, the wealthy, and the thugs they recruit to carry out their plans. Most frightening, much of the logistical functions of the US military have been handed over to private corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, which are training enough mercenaries to create private armies with the full cooperation of Congress and, apparently, the judicial and executive branches of the US government.

I never studied economics, and while I’ve broadened my knowledge base in that area a fair amount recently, I still appreciate when an author can present important and necessary information in a way that’s accessible to the amateur. Ms. Klein does that very well, and having finished her book, I can only hope it’s not too late to save ourselves from the plutocrats who want to turn the world into a corporate oligarchy.