A Large Segment of the World almost broke Free

Suppression of the periphery of empire to protect wealth and power is as old as history. The managers-of-state of the entire Western World knew that the Russian Revolution was just such a break for freedom and, though this occurred two to three generations earlier, that huge country was treated no different than the destabilization of small countries we discussed in the previous chapter.

As soon as WWI ended, 14 countries sent in 300,000 troops to overthrow that revolution and place that nation back under elite control. Because it would be a beacon to the restless masses both on the periphery of empire and within the imperial-centers-of-capital, labor successfully governing a large nation, for that matter any nation, could not be permitted.[oo]

That intervention was partially successful. Finland , Latvia , Lithuania , Estonia (a part of the old Russian empire for over 100 years) Bessarabia , and the Eastern half of Poland were brought back within the fold of Western Europe .[107] The almost bloodless Russian Revolution turned into the deaths of possibly 15-million from hunger and disease because the Russians were unable to reorganize their economy during that invasion whose purpose was to suppress their break for freedom.[108] Slowing down the reorganization of the Russian economy bought time for the imperial-centers-of-capital. If that newly-free nation had been left alone, they would not have lost those provinces and their industrial development would have progressed to where it is likely Germany would not have dared attack in 1941. So the successes for the imperial centers were substantial.

We will not address the various crises in the Soviet Union point by point. But we will caution the reader that America's Mighty Wurlitzer controlling the beliefs of a citizenry during the Cold War is nothing new, America, Britain, and most of Europe were demonizing the Soviets ever since their successful revolution.

The problem of the Russian Revolution was not incompetence; it was that their system was super-competent. If it had been incompetent, there would have been no threat and nothing to worry about. Due to that intervention, it took Russia 12 years to rebuild to her pre-WWI industrial level (3% percent that of America ). But in the next 12 years Russian industrial capacity matched Britain, soared well past France, Japan, and Italy, and was then 25% that of the United States.[109]

We will leave it to the reader to muse on the fear created in Western capitals at the Soviet Union 's rapid industrialization and how much that had to do with the Second World War. Germany 's second in command, Rudolf Hess, flying to England 43 days before Germany attacked the Soviets can only have been to get plans for their containment and overthrow back on track. When sentenced to life in prison, Hess had a 24-hour-a-day guard and was not permitted to discuss anything beyond daily events of family life. The secrets of the planned coordinated overthrow of the Soviet Union were to die with him.[110]

The Soviet Union 's super competency is apparent from any honest study of WWII. Russia moved her industry ahead of the German army, held the Germans at the borders of Moscow for three years, and then attacked with 5-times the manpower, 5-times the heavy armor, 7-times the artillery, and 17-times the airpower as the Germans.[111] The Germans were cleared from half the occupied territory in six months. Obviously if the Soviets had had just five more years to develop industrially (and remember the Intervention and loss of prime industrial territory cost them possibly 10 years) they would have been too strong for Germany to dare attack.

After the allies landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944 , two German Soldiers out of every three were on the Eastern Front. The allies were in trouble during the Battle of the Bulge and, to take the pressure off, the Soviets launched an all-out attack. The Germans rushed troops from the Western Front to their Eastern Front to stem that offensive and there were now seven German soldiers facing the Soviets for every one facing the West.[112]

Had the Soviets collapsed, there was no foreseeable combination of forces that could have dislodged those Germans from control of Europe and control of Europe meant control of the world. They would have been masters of all of Europe , Eurasia , and-through the colonial connections and their immense military power-most of the world. From those commanding heights, German power would have influenced governments all over the world much as we have been describing America has done from her commanding heights of economic, financial, and military power. Instead of it being America who saved the world, the entire Western world and perhaps the entire world, owed the Soviet Union an enormous debt for saving them against Hitler's fascism.

The Soviet Union could not recover from the Disaster of World War II

We are told the Soviets lost 20-million citizens in WWII. That was soon upgraded by them to 27-million but the true figure, as noted by Stalin in his response to Churchill's 1946 Iron Curtain speech, was 7-million. (The Mighty Wurlitzers of all empires persistence in creating a false reality to gain the loyalty of the masses never ceases.) Scorched earth policies of the Russians destroyed infrastructure as they retreated and then the Germans destroyed even more as they were pushed back. Entire cities and villages were burned to the ground and the regions infrastructure (railroads, oil wells, coal mines, dams, et al.) was dynamited.

As the Soviets starved, the Germans hauled 7-million horses, 17-million cattle, 20-million hogs, 27- million sheep and goats and 110-million poultry away to feed Germany.[113] Twenty-five million Soviet citizens were eating sunflower seeds and living in holes in the ground and 7-million were dead while America had only 12.3-million men and women under arms, lost 405,399, its homeland was untouched, and its industrial capacity had increased 50%.[114]

Soviet industrial capacity was again less than 10% of America . But while Industrial capacity can be quickly built, it is the social infrastructure-homes and businesses-that are expensive and time consuming to replace.

U.S. Secretary of State General George C. Marshall made a trip across Western Europe , Eastern Europe , and The Soviet Union in 1947 all the way to Moscow . Eastern Europe and The Soviet Union, with 20% the war damage as laissez-faire Western Europe , was prostrate while the shattered communal Eastern Europeans and Soviets were rapidly rebuilding. A competing society succeeding strikes fear into the heart of every imperialist. Marshall rushed back to Washington to report that capitalism's security interests were seriously at risk:

"All the way back to Washington ," [fellow diplomat] Bohlen wrote, " Marshall talked of the importance of finding some initiative to prevent the complete breakdown of Western Europe .".... [In a speech to the nation, Marshall gave a bleak report.] We cannot ignore the factor of time. The recovery of Europe has been far slower than had been anticipated. Disintegrating forces are becoming evident. The patient is sinking while the doctors deliberate. So I believe that action cannot [a]wait compromise through exhaustion. New issues arise daily. Whatever action is possible to meet these pressing problems must be taken without delay.[115]

The managers-of-state in the West immediately abandoned Adam Smith philosophy and embraced Friedrich List's protection principles. The Marshall Plan for American industry to quickly rebuild Europe went into effect in 1948 and Europe was rebuilt in about five years.

With most of their natural resources under permafrost 3,000 miles away, commodity production costs for the Soviets were roughly 1.8 times those in America . Damaged far worse than Western Europe, forced to produce arms to protect against the ring of steel being built around them by the same countries that had attempted to overthrow their revolution, those same nations loudly proclaiming they still should overthrow them, and without a wealthy patron to rebuild their industry, it would take the Soviets and Eastern Europe two generations to rebuild and, of course, they could never equal the West with their highly-developed industry and cheap resources all over the world under the firm control of that allied imperial-center-of-capital.

The Cold War Warped the Soviet Economy

By 1980, only 35 years after the destruction of WWII, Soviet industrial production was nearly equal to America 's. By 1990 Soviet technology was only eight years behind the U.S.[116] But the Soviet economy was becoming distorted with technology reaching the military and basic infrastructure but not the civilian economy. Seventy-seven percent of their products were each produced in one giant factory and only 5% of this production was for consumer durables. The rest of the industry was building arms (51.4%) and their enormously expensive infrastructure (43%).[117]

The Soviets did not have the economic space to establish competing smaller factories. Where huge factories initially produce cheaper, retooling is expensive and, with no competition, managers simply will not quickly retool. With competition, a factory will develop new and better products, will retool to produce quality products, will establish distribution systems, and will train repair personnel. They will receive feedback from their customers, and that cycle will be continuous. Without that development cycle, the Soviet economy became moribund.

Errors aside, any serious study of economic growth rates will conclude that the Soviet socialist system accumulated capital and industrialized far faster than any capitalist country except those given capital and technology after WWII so as to contain fast expanding socialism (Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea). One can only wonder what the Soviets would have accomplished if they had not been shattered by WWII and even then if they had not had to arm to offset the ring of steel placed around them.

The Fear was losing Control of Resources and the Wealth-Producing-Process

Senior lecturer in European politics at the University of North London, Peter Gowan, Describes Early Plans to Destabilize The Soviet Bloc:

[I]n the closing decades of the Cold War, the Atlantic Alliance had combined a formidable economic blockade against Eastern Europe .... The West possessed two principal means of control. Through the IMF, it exerted political control over international finance and currency matters. Furthermore, it could restrict commercial access to Western markets through bilateral export policy, through the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (Cocom) on high technology, and through import duties-largely imposed by the European Community (EC)-on ECE goods.... It is scarcely an exaggeration, therefore, to say that following the upheaval of 1989 the West had the capacity to shape events in ECE to an extent comparable to that enjoyed by the Soviet government in the region after 1945. In field after field the ability of governments to deliver to their people depended on the intervening decisions of the G7 [the seven leading Western countries]. Employing this power, Western policy makers could shape the destiny of the region according to a very particular, and very political, agenda. The Western powers did not respond to the challenge of 1989 in a piecemeal fashion. Although the form and speed of the collapse took most policy makers by surprise, the G7 had, by the summer of 1989, established new machinery for handling the political transformation of Poland and Hungary and had worked out both the goals and the means of policy. Even before the region's first noncommunist government  ... took power in Poland in September 1989, the G7 framework was in place.... Coercive diplomacy, not persuasion, became the tool by which the West established market economies in the East.[118]

Where America granted Western Europe $500-billion (adjusted to year 2000 values) and access to U.S. markets under the Marshall Plan to rebuild from WWII, The Soviet Union was granted $3.5-billion, a small fraction of the wealth fleeing that region each year. To protect Western industries, access to Western markets was severely restricted both by negotiation and by arbitrary tariffs (no such protection of their industries and markets were permitted Russia and other impoverished and embattled nations). When the Soviets collapsed, Western products sold in the now unprotected former Soviet Union bled the entire region dry.

Where all countries required as allies after WWII to stop fast expanding socialism were permitted to use exchange controls to prevent capital flight as they industrialized, the shattered former Soviet Union was required to maintain completely open capital markets and finance capital fled Russia at an estimated $10-billion to $15-billion per year and Fidel Castro estimates it 2-to-4 times higher.[119] Eastern European countries closer to, and religiously and culturally tied to, Western Europe received both substantial government funds and private investments from the West. They were simultaneously given a roadmap of precise steps they must take to eventually become members of the European Union.[120] Peter Gowan explains further:

The EC, the G7, and the IMF treated each country separately according to its domestic program, setting off a race among the governments of the region to achieve the closest relations with, and best terms from, the West.... The economic "liberalization" measures urged upon the new governments of ECE by Western agencies were bound to push these economies into serious recession, a situation only made worse by the disruption of regional economic links and the collapse of the Soviet Union . The result has been less a move to the market than a large-scale market destruction.... G7 experts were well aware that the drive for social system change would thoroughly destabilize ECE economies.[121]

Russian people were not so foolish as to throw away their wealth. But Russian powerbrokers were given the opportunity to immediately own the vast natural and industrial wealth of that nation. Shock therapy in the former Soviet Union compressedthe 70 years of America's age of the robber barons into 10 years and 50% of Russia 's GDP came under the control of what became known as the "Russian Mafia."[122]

These thieves sent the money out of Russia as fast as it came into their hands. Thousands of homes were purchased with this money in Spain and thousands more in France , Cyprus , Austria , and many other countries. Purchasers of each of these homes had many times those values stashed in overseas bank accounts. Thus, by the estimates of Fidel Castro, 200-billion to $500-billion fled Russia in the decade of the 1990s (2-to-3 times other estimates).[123]

Subversive funds flowed in through the collapsed Russian borders (much of it came from the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] and George Soros' many destabilization charities. Those funds were to organize political parties and coordinate a media to promote Adam Smith "free trade."[124]) Heavily funded politicians won enough control to pass the necessary laws, corrupt oligarchs, and gain title to valuable properties. Massive amounts of consumer products produced in the West were sold to Soviet citizens to soak up and return to Western imperial-centers-of-capital even the small amount of money created within that defeated nation.

To survive, whether they stay independent or reform as one nation, those former Soviet provinces will have to limit access to both their resources and their consumer markets. The wealth appropriation math addressed in Chapter 6 makes this clear:

The pay differential between the defeated Russia and the victorious America (23-cents an hour against $14 an hour), was a wealth accumulation potential in favor of America of 3,600-to-1 while Germany's higher wages ($23 per hour) gave her a wealth accumulation advantage of 10,000-to-1.... Obviously the Russian workers' factory is essentially shut down, they are still being paid their 23-cents an hour, nothing is produced, and, on that basis, the formula appears inaccurate. But it is the basis that is inaccurate, not the formula. Before their collapse, the Soviet Union was calculated to be within 8 years of equaling the West in technology. With its huge resources and its highly skilled workforce operating factories utilizing the latest technology, and assuming it had access to markets, Russia could theoretically produce just as efficiently as anyone else. But the billions of dollars poured into Russia since its collapse were not building any manufacturing industry at all, let alone modern industries. The problem is not the productivity of labor in the developing world per se. The problem is denial of technology and denial of access to markets. Immense sums flowing into a country or region are meaningless if there is no access to technology and markets.[125]

Simultaneously advocating opposite policies for the collapsed East as were used by the booming West to operate their own economies indicates the economic health of the Soviets was not the concern.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs of the Harvard Institute for International Development oversaw Russia's final destabilization.It is unknown if there is a connection to the CIA's hiring of economists during the middle and late 1980s, and it is unknown if Sach's institute was one of the many established by the CIA.[pp] But consider these points:

·         The wholesale shutdown of Soviet industry was done following the advice of that institute.

·         These same economists would surely not offer the same advice to an allied nation, as the comment on opening Japan 's markets demonstrates.

·         Any student of mercantilism would have recognized these suggestions would destroy Russia 's industry and commerce and create a dependency.

·         Any economist could analyze that there was virtually nothing anywhere to replace the industry that was being de -funded and shut down except imports from the West.

·         And we know that imposing belief systems to protect an imperial nation's "national interest" (the way Adam Smith free trade was imposed upon the world, as addressed above) is a highly-used tactic of managers-of-state of powerful nations.

So, how else can the guided collapse of the Soviet Union be interpreted? As would be expected, the Soviet collapse rapidly worsened as industries were shut down. The Russians figured that out after it was too late.Those advisors werethen expelled from Russia.[126]

After the Soviets collapsed in 1991, consumer imports quickly rose to an unsustainable 39% by 1996 and climbed to an official 50% (estimated 60%) by 1998 with no compensating manufactured exports.

Documentaries showing impoverished Russian soldiers begging for food and other soldiers unloading cases of food with American labels on them unwittingly exposed the cause of Russia 's impoverishment-importing, instead of producing, consumer needs. The second most powerful country in the world, formerly totally self sufficient-except for bananas, coffee and coconuts-was quickly impoverished through massive consumer imports. A country's economic multiplier is its economic health and Russia 's economic multiplier collapsed when its operating currency was spent importing 50% of its consumer needs. There simply was too little money left circulating in Russia to run their economy.

Meanwhile, America has large compensating exports to protect the 30% of consumer products that are imported and still many economists are concerned, including the "Harvard boys" mentioned above. Couple Russia's impoverishing import statistics with the fact that it had a $35-billion per year trade surplus even as its industrial production fell 80% and capital investment dropped nearly 90% and it is obvious the touted Russian trade surplus is really an enormous success for the West's Grand strategy for laying claim to others' wealth through inequalities of trade.[127] That trade surplus can only have come from massive natural resource exports paying for imported consumer products. This is a mirror image of centuries ago when raiders from the cities of Europe controlled the resources of the countryside to lay claim to their wealth.

Any discussion of the collapse of the Soviet economy is not complete without addressing the collapse of the Russian ruble. Before that collapse, one ruble equaled $1 in value and within the Soviet Union would buy more than the dollar. At that time, one ruble would buy breakfast, lunch, and dinner with change left over. After the collapse, 6,000 rubles equaled $1. The Russians traded those old rubles for new ones at the rate of 1,000-to-1, which brought the exchange rate down to six of the new rubles for $1. The value of that new ruble then fell by two-thirds (to 18-rubles to the dollar). Most Russian savings were wiped out in the first currency collapse and the second collapse took two-thirds of what was left.[128] One of the old Russian rubles now would not buy a cup of tea.

A healthy economy requires faith in a nation's currency. Without trust in a nation's banks, the money will flee which is exactly what it did in Russia . Worse yet, once a population has lost their money thought safely stored in the bank, trust in a nation's banks cannot be restored for at least 1-to-2 generations. Loss in faith in banks means efficient capitalism cannot be established in Russia for a very long time. This, of course, is the outline of a very successful periphery destabilization policy for imperial-centers-of-capital.

And, as the destruction of the ruble demonstrates, this has all the marks of a planned destabilization. Jeffrey Sachs knew that Russian citizens had massive savings in the bank. In any other society, a population with such huge savings would be considered a big plus. But Sachs referred to it as that "pesky overhang." A healthy economy must have both industries and buying power. Those private funds would have been a natural to purchase shares in Russian Industry and would be crucial for buying power to keep those industries operating. But the goal was to transfer that social wealth both to Russian oligarchs and to the West; the rights and well-being of the masses of Russia were of no concern.[129]

Sale of the Century by Chrystia Freeland is a highly recommended masterly study on the collapse of Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union .[130] However, as a correspondent for the Financial Times when doing her research, Freeland focuses only on finance and politics and ignores basic economics. She also ignores Russia's highly motivated labor ready to make the transition to capitalism (as addressed above by Fred Weir), the National Endowment for Democracy's funding and management of Yeltsin's election, the American election specialists orchestrating that election,[qq] the Harvard Institute for International Development's advising Russia's "young reformers" throughout that collapse, and she ignored how the massive imports of consumer products sucked the wealth out of Russia and collapsed the economic multiplier.

Without the economic multiplier as money from wages circulates, a country essentially has no economy. Yet, while intending to document the full history of the attempt to restructure the Russian economy, that author fails to notice that the "young reformers" paid no attention to primary production in Russia . These neophytes were so immersed in neoclassical Western philosophy that they thought all there was to establishing capitalism was to create rich capitalists by giving residual-feudal exclusive title to valuable resource, industries, and banks to a few "oligarchs" who pulled off one of the greatest thefts of social wealth in history.

In the West, preventing the rise to political power of labor is a primary consideration. Thus the highly motivated "golden children" who were ready to restructure Russia 's economy were never given the opportunity. Instead, the neophyte agents of capitalism (the "Young Reformers") were intent on the obviously impossible job of telescoping the 70 years of the age of American robber barons into less than 10 years.

The "golden children" (children of the latest generation of leaders) running Russia 's economy wanted to restructure to capitalism and would have understood how to do so successfully. But labor in charge of any part of an economy is anathema to theorists of Western philosophy. So the only people offered a serious opportunity to buy Russia 's productive industries for a fraction of its true value were the new "oligarchs" with no experience in running any part of the Russian economy. Without any background on running industries, or much of anything else, these oligarchs were expected to become the leading capitalists of Russia .

No country has ever developed under the principles imposed upon post Soviet Russia. In fact, economic protections for the developed world are all in place and functioning and no wealthy nation would consider subjecting their economies to such harsh economic medicine as was imposed on Russia . To double, triple, and quadruple prices while shutting down industry right and left and destroying consumer savings would be taught as a recipe for disaster in any economics class.

The Fiction of Western Efforts to rebuild Russia

The easiest way to understand the failure of the restructuring of the Russian economy is by outlining a sensible plan to restructure to efficient democratic-cooperative-(supercharged)-capitalism as opposed to Robber Baron capitalism:

·         Industry and media shares should have been distributed to those workers; after all it was industry already considered as collectively owned by them.[rr]

·         Wealth produced backs the money created. Modern industries should have been built with created money.

·         Until those efficient industries were established and the economy competitive, import restrictions should have stayed in force.

·         As fast as those modern industries came on stream, Russia 's obsolete huge factories would lower production and then shut down.

·         An inescapable landrent tax as per Chapter 1 should have been placed into law, especially royalties on natural resources such as oil, minerals, timber, and communications spectrums.

·         Citizens should have received title to their homes through paying the first year's landrent taxes in advance. Remember that "pesky overhang" of Russian savings. This would have been a simple, viable, and economically sound move. The landrent taxes each year would have operated the Russian government as opposed to that nation being essentially bankrupt.

·         Farmers, businesses and industry, should have been given title to their land with the understanding they pay an annual landrent tax. That annual landrent would be more money to operate the government.

·         Locally owned banks should have been put in place to fund consumers, farmers, and producers. An easily adjustable, inescapable, transaction tax on the circulation of money should have been put in place to cover all government expenses while reforming.[131] This tax would be only if unforeseen capital needs emerged. A landrent tax is the most efficient tax.

With financing available and massive buying power in the hands of the people, retailers would spring up automatically and this would be the ideal moment to establish an efficient distribution system as per Chapter 5 and the conclusion. Certainly there are many other factors to consider but the above would have been the foundation of a workable restructure plan.

Monopolization of technology is the biggest barrier. Virtually any successful restructure plan must provide access to technology, resources and markets. That is what the struggles are all about. All Europe is almost devoid of most resources and a part of Russia 's massive natural resources could have been bartered for that technology. Also, patent licensing could have been imposed by law. This is accepted as legal in international law, was being tested in court with AIDS drugs in South Africa , and the major drug companies capitulated rather than go to trial.

The reason this sensible economic restructure plan was not a suggestion of Western advisors is obvious; labor would have ended up with enormous wealth and political power and Russia would have had a prosperous economy. If they had been given the chance, Russia 's egalitarian-trained and idealistic "golden children" could have established democratic-cooperative-(supercharged)-capitalism as opposed to becoming a dependency on the periphery of imperial-centers-of-capital. But if given the opportunity to become wealthy, the secret that no power-structure in the imperial centers had yet given their citizens full rights would have been exposed and the entire world would be demanding their full rights.

The Plan was to take the Soviet Union Out

When Russian President Boris Yeltsin met with President George Bush in 1992, he said, "We may have American Prisoners yet." This created momentary consternation. All was quiet on the subject for a while as reporters started digging and then came this headline: "Yeltsin: POWs 'Summarily Executed.'" But the last line of that front-page article depicting these execution horrors told the real story: "The largest group of Americans imprisoned in the Soviet Union included the survivors of more than 730 pilots and other airmen who either made forced landings on Soviet territory or were shot down on Cold War spy [and sabotage] flights." There were over 10,000, and possibly over 20,000 sabotage and mapping flights over Soviet territory and the surviving crashed and shot down American airmen finished out their lives in Soviet prisons while their families were given a cover story that they had died in another event somewhere else.[132]

The Soviets remembered that mapping overflights of their country preceded Germany 's invasion in 1941. They remembered the post WWI invasion by 14 Western nations attempting to overthrow their revolution (the same nations now overflying their territory). They heard the thunderous rhetoric from some of those same 14 countries calling them evil. They knew of the thousands of times that trained assassins and saboteurs were parachuted or smuggled into their country. And the ring of steel and alliances encircling them and targeting them with nuclear intercontinental bombers and missiles left no doubt that somewhere in the future an excuse for war would be created.

The Soviets were roughly 10 years behind the West developing and installing every new super weapon. But the Soviets built atomic bombs before America could build enough weapons to destroy that ideological menace. Analysts are right when they say the West would not attack the Soviet Union . But that is only because the Soviets developed the atomic bomb too quick. One hydrogen bomb on America would be one too many.

Study the history of suppressions worldwide we are addressing, study why tiny impoverished Vietnam faced such an assault, study why Cuba is under such an assault even though their revolutionary government provided Cubans with health care and education equal to America and eliminated hunger, study why every offer of the Soviets for mutual disarmament was ignored, and study today's policy of not permitting any unallied nation to obtain major weapons of war.

The policy is obvious: All nations must bend to the dictates of the imperial center. Certainly none of these nations dare use a weapon of mass destruction against the powerful developed world but simultaneously that imperial center dare not send in a military force to impose policy on a periphery nation armed with nuclear weapons. This accounts for the willingness to attack Iraq and unwillingness (so far) to attack North Korea. Iraq has no nuclear weapons and North Korea may.

No empire will stand if any nation on the periphery breaks free and immediately provides their citizens with a better standard of living. If that happens, the periphery of empire will melt away as all demand the same freedom. The names of the now declassified plans for war against the Soviet Union immediately after WWII (Bushwhacker, Broiler, Sizzle, Shakedown, Dropshot, Trojan, Pincher, and Frolic) graphically portray their offensive purpose. Some of those war plans addressed the actual occupation of the Soviet Union .[133] Papers in President Johnson's library testify to the intent for a nuclear first strike to destroy the rising economic and philosophical threat. The Soviets understood this and built a countering nuclear threat to deter those plans while at all times asking the old imperial centers to abandon the arms race.

Make no mistake about it, the intention was to both destroy the rising Soviet Union and suppress any other breaks for freedom worldwide and eventually both goals were reached. Those destabilizations cost trillions of dollars, 12-to-15-million lives, and hundreds of millions of deaths from disease and hunger as those nations' economies were destroyed. (Keep in mind, only $40-billion a year would provide basic education, clean water, and primary health care to all impoverished people. World development and elimination of poverty have not been the goals of the imperial-centers-of capital.)

A key part of Western propaganda was the lack of rights in the Soviet Union and that there were secret police everywhere. But America and most of Western Europe could give freedom and rights to their citizens because they were not subject to bombings, assassinations, and threats of invasion; the propaganda of the CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer notwithstanding.

But once America faced externally-organized terrorism, the 9/11/2001 World Trade Center/Pentagon bombings and the anthrax biological warfare scare, suddenly it appears the security practices of the former Soviet Union such as stalking foreigners, paying for neighbors to spy on each other (on Muslim neighbors that is), and prisoners in a gulag will became the norm in America. One major difference: saboteurs and assassins smuggled into the former Soviet Union were not as easily ethnically identifiable as those currently targeting America . The West's security, through denial of full rights for targeted people, will be much easier.

Afghanistan, the Final Straw that Collapsed the Soviet Union

The CIA's largest covert operation was the 1985 National Security Council Directive 166 ordering the destabilization of Afghanistan . However, that directive was only a massive expansion of what the CIA had already been doing since 1980 under a finding signed by President Carter on July 3, 1979 , five months before the Soviet forces were invited into Afghanistan to suppress that destabilization. The CIA, working behind the scenes through Pakistani intelligence, provided massive arms (eventually reaching 65,000 tons a year) and training to Afghanistan 's Mujahideen and 35,000 zealous Muslims recruited from over 40 countries. All support seemed to be coming from Pakistan and most Muslims would have been unaware that their terrorist operations against Afghanistan and the Soviet Union were a CIA designed, funded, and coordinated operation. America 's current leading terrorist enemy, Osama Bin Laden, worked with the CIA in establishing, financing, arming, and training the Mujahideen as well as with those who came from all over the world. Those returning to their homes after training became the cells of Al-Qaeda whose goal was the destruction of America .

Afghanistan was not their primary target. The goal was to destabilize the six Eastern Muslim provinces of the Soviet Union both by smuggling in subversive propaganda (books on Soviet atrocities against Muslim people) and sabotage teams (focused especially on assassinating Soviet officers and destroying factories and supply depots). The Mujahideen rebels were based safely in Pakistan from which as many as 11 teams at a time would infiltrate across the borders to attack airports, railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges and roads.

Satellite reconnaissance guided the Afghan resistance to Soviet targets and they were equipped with the latest missiles; including hand held stinger missiles, to shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships and other aircraft. A stinger missile electronic simulator was brought to Pakistan to train the Mujahideen. Soviet battle plans were intercepted by spy satellites and this information relayed to the resistance which were supplied with secure communications technology. Massive amounts of propaganda books were distributed to the population.

In the references below it is solidly recorded that CIA director William Colby laid this Soviet destabilization plan out to the Muslim terrorist forces being trained in Afghanistan . It worked. The progressive government of Afghanistan , and the Soviet forces supporting them at the request of the freely elected government, were defeated and those Muslim "freedom fighters" went on to destabilize those Eastern Soviet provinces and then they turned their training to terrorizing and destabilizing America . Today's civil war in Russia's Muslim Chechnya and Georgia where the U.S. is now training Russian soldiers in tactics to root out the Al-Qaeda, now called terrorists, is a residual of that CIA master plan.

The website www.emperors-clothes.com has chosen the destabilization of Yugoslavia and Afghanistan as the focus of their research and they cite solid sources describing the same Muslim terrorists Americans trained in Afghanistan as later destabilizing Kosovo and Macedonia under the funding and guidance of American and German intelligence services (BND). The numbers in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) eventually reached 30,000 as they destabilized Kosovo by assassinating policemen and Serb leaders.

Later these same intelligence services were reported as organizing the Ethnic Albanian insurgency in Macedonia , utilizing some of these same Western trained Muslim zealots. (This would be MPRI and other supposed private armies under the supervision of the Pentagon's Special Operations Command (SOCOM). A computer search with those acronyms and various countries as keywords will provide a great education.) The escort to safety of surrounded and trapped Ethnic Albanian insurgents by American troops provides strong support for these reports. For those sources in the media of record the reader will have to check that website and future books by the authors cited.[134]

The Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the government was soon overthrown, and those progressive leaders attempting to build a modern Afghanistan were promptly hanged. All this was made palatable to the world by intelligence agency wordsmiths (that Mighty Wurlitzer again) use of terrorist adjectives (butchers) to describe the progressive leaders they had overthrown.

But the CIA and all managers-of-state knew better. CIA study-books available in most libraries described this government as freeing women and peasants, establishing clinics and schools with massive literacy programs, returning the land to those who farmed it, canceling mortgage debts of small farmers, and canceling usurious debts. Sales of brides were prohibited and women were able to choose their own husbands. In fact, Afghanistan was then one of the leading nations in the world for providing women's rights. More women were in universities than men.

Within that region, Afghanistan's new freedom was every bit as great a revolution as the French Revolution in 1789; arguably history's most important revolution in the world's slow escape from feudalism (we are still not fully free from it). But, just as the French Revolution was overthrown, by 1996 the Taliban was in power, feudal rule was reestablished, women could no longer hold jobs or go to school. Nor could they leave the home without being fully covered and accompanied by a male relative.

Afghanistan went from one of the fastest developing nations in the world with full rights extended to all citizens to one of the most repressive in the world where a woman did not dare show her uncovered face in public, could not go to school, and could not hold a job.

The one aspect of this history that stands out is how these were freedom fighters when terrorizing and destabilizing America's competition and terrorists when they turned on America. This is an enormously effective use of propaganda and control of the media.

The 'Official' Enemy is now Terrorism

"That secret operation was an excellent idea, the effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap" Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor, declared while discussing that the 1979 covert intervention was the reason the USSR sent in troops. Over 35,000 Muslims zealots from all over the world were directly influenced by their success in Afghanistan and, after terrorist training, they then scattered all over the world to utilize the knowledge on destabilization of countries taught to them by the CIA.[135]

Energized by the CIA designed Jihad to push Soviet influence out of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union's Eastern provinces, the "freedom fighters" restructured their newly gained knowledge into a Jihad to free all Muslim nations from Western domination. The bombs that fell on Afghanistan (October 2001) blew apart the terrorist training camps built by the CIA in the 1980s to train terrorists to destabilize the Soviet Union . These students of terrorism have turned their deadly skills towards destabilizing the nation who trained them and America is now searching out and killing the very terrorists they trained. Control of discourse and self-censorship by the media is so thorough that, even as their nation gears up for war against terrorism, the immorality, the injustice, and the lawlessness of the West's training of terrorists to destabilize fundamentally peaceful nations is not discussed.

It was the political and economic shattering of a country rapidly moving towards modernization that Brzezinski thought was such an "excellent idea," Two million Afghans (out of a population of 15-million) were killed, 5-million more are refugees, and, unless America is sincere in establishing a truly democratic government and providing funds to rebuild the country they destroyed under the orders of National Security Council Directive 166, there is no end in sight to the violence 22 years later. And two years after the overthrow of the Taliban there are no signs of the promised development funds. 

What would happen in America if outside forces supported African-Americans or any other political or religious grouping with immense funds, arms, training in sabotage, and the promise of continued support for them to gain more rights or become America 's leaders? What would happen in Europe if disaffected groups were funded and armed to sabotage and destabilize those countries? The 9/11/2001 terrorist attack on New York 's World Trade Center and the Pentagon provides the answer.

The Taliban of Afghanistan, once sheltering terrorists, are marginalized and many of their leaders killed or imprisoned. But there are tens of thousands of equally angry supporters and hundreds of thousands of unprotected Western personnel and property scattered all over the world. Even though economic violence, financial violence, and open violence has been practiced against others, this author believes Americans and their property will be in only slightly more danger than before the War on Terrorism. Few societies have the long history of violent destabilization of other societies as the West. It is not in their nature. However, if the poverty on the periphery deepens as the wealth in the imperial centers increases, their options for control of their own destiny will keep getting fewer, more of the dispossessed will get angry, and isolated foreigners will be vulnerable.

We now take a look at why the imperial nations decided Yugoslavia had to be destroyed.