Our Invisible Revolution

Published on Monday, October 28, 2013 by TruthDig.com

Our Invisible Revolution

by Chris Hedges

 

 

 

 
(Image: Shutterstock)


“Did you ever ask yourself how it happens that government and capitalism continue to exist in spite of all the evil and trouble they are causing in the world?” the anarchist Alexander Berkman wrote in his essay “The Idea Is the Thing.” “If you did, then your answer must have been that it is because the people support those institutions, and that they support them because they believe in them.”

Berkman was right. As long as most citizens believe in the ideas that justify global capitalism, the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are unassailable. When these ideas are shattered, the institutions that buttress the ruling class deflate and collapse. The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface. It is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing. An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognize that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. Half the country lives in poverty. Many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is not overthrown, will join them. These truths are no longer hidden.

It appears that political ferment is dormant in the United States. This is incorrect. The ideas that sustain the corporate state are swiftly losing their efficacy across the political spectrum. The ideas that are rising to take their place, however, are inchoate. The right has retreated into Christian fascism and a celebration of the gun culture. The left, knocked off balance by decades of fierce state repression in the name of anti-communism, is struggling to rebuild and define itself. Popular revulsion for the ruling elite, however, is nearly universal. It is a question of which ideas will capture the public’s imagination.
"It is certain now that a popular revolt is coming."

Revolution usually erupts over events that would, in normal circumstances, be considered meaningless or minor acts of injustice by the state. But once the tinder of revolt has piled up, as it has in the United States, an insignificant spark easily ignites popular rebellion. No person or movement can ignite this tinder. No one knows where or when the eruption will take place. No one knows the form it will take. But it is certain now that a popular revolt is coming. The refusal by the corporate state to address even the minimal grievances of the citizenry, along with the abject failure to remedy the mounting state repression, the chronic unemployment and underemployment, the massive debt peonage that is crippling more than half of Americans, and the loss of hope and widespread despair, means that blowback is inevitable.

“Because revolution is evolution at its boiling point you cannot ‘make’ a real revolution any more than you can hasten the boiling of a tea kettle,” Berkman wrote. “It is the fire underneath that makes it boil: how quickly it will come to the boiling point will depend on how strong the fire is.”

Revolutions, when they erupt, appear to the elites and the establishment to be sudden and unexpected. This is because the real work of revolutionary ferment and consciousness is unseen by the mainstream society, noticed only after it has largely been completed. Throughout history, those who have sought radical change have always had to first discredit the ideas used to prop up ruling elites and construct alternative ideas for society, ideas often embodied in a utopian revolutionary myth. The articulation of a viable socialism as an alternative to corporate tyranny—as attempted by the book “Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA” and the website Popular Resistance—is, for me, paramount. Once ideas shift for a large portion of a population, once the vision of a new society grips the popular imagination, the old regime is finished.

An uprising that is devoid of ideas and vision is never a threat to ruling elites. Social upheaval without clear definition and direction, without ideas behind it, descends into nihilism, random violence and chaos. It consumes itself. This, at its core, is why I disagree with some elements of the Black Bloc anarchists. I believe in strategy. And so did many anarchists, including Berkman, Emma Goldman, Pyotr Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin.

By the time ruling elites are openly defied, there has already been a nearly total loss of faith in the ideas—in our case free market capitalism and globalization—that sustain the structures of the ruling elites. And once enough people get it, a process that can take years, “the slow, quiet, and peaceful social evolution becomes quick, militant, and violent,” as Berkman wrote. “Evolution becomes revolution.”

This is where we are headed. I do not say this because I am a supporter of revolution. I am not. I prefer the piecemeal and incremental reforms of a functioning democracy. I prefer a system in which our social institutions permit the citizenry to nonviolently dismiss those in authority. I prefer a system in which institutions are independent and not captive to corporate power. But we do not live in such a system. Revolt is the only option left. Ruling elites, once the ideas that justify their existence are dead, resort to force. It is their final clutch at power. If a nonviolent popular movement is able to ideologically disarm the bureaucrats, civil servants and police—to get them, in essence, to defect—nonviolent revolution is possible. But if the state can organize effective and prolonged violence against dissent, it spawns reactive revolutionary violence, or what the state calls terrorism. Violent revolutions usually give rise to revolutionaries as ruthless as their adversaries. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. “And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

Violent revolutions are always tragic. I, and many other activists, seek to keep our uprising nonviolent. We seek to spare the country the savagery of domestic violence by both the state and its opponents. There is no guarantee that we will succeed, especially with the corporate state controlling a vast internal security apparatus and militarized police forces. But we must try.

Corporations, freed from all laws, government regulations and internal constraints, are stealing as much as they can, as fast as they can, on the way down. The managers of corporations no longer care about the effects of their pillage. Many expect the systems they are looting to fall apart. They are blinded by personal greed and hubris. They believe their obscene wealth can buy them security and protection. They should have spent a little less time studying management in business school and a little more time studying human nature and human history. They are digging their own graves.

Our shift to corporate totalitarianism, like the shift to all forms of totalitarianism, is incremental. Totalitarian systems ebb and flow, sometimes taking one step back before taking two steps forward, as they erode democratic liberalism. This process is now complete. The “consent of the governed” is a cruel joke. Barack Obama cannot defy corporate power any more than George W. Bush or Bill Clinton could. Unlike his two immediate predecessors, Bush, who is intellectually and probably emotionally impaired, did not understand the totalitarian process abetted by the presidency. Because Clinton and Obama, and their Democratic Party, understand the destructive roles they played and are playing, they must be seen as far more cynical and far more complicit in the ruination of the country. Democratic politicians speak in the familiar “I-feel-your-pain” language of the liberal class while allowing corporations to strip us of personal wealth and power. They are effective masks for corporate power.

The corporate state seeks to maintain the fiction of our personal agency in the political and economic process. As long as we believe we are participants, a lie sustained through massive propaganda campaigns, endless and absurd election cycles and the pageantry of empty political theater, our corporate oligarchs rest easy in their private jets, boardrooms, penthouses and mansions. As the bankruptcy of corporate capitalism and globalization is exposed, the ruling elite are increasingly nervous. They know that if the ideas that justify their power die, they are finished. This is why voices of dissent—as well as spontaneous uprisings such as the Occupy movement—are ruthlessly crushed by the corporate state.

© 2013 TruthDig.com

 

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.  His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Fighting Back Against the Tyranny of the National Security State

           

  Activism  

AlterNet / By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

      

Fighting Back Against the Tyranny of the National Security State

Protests against the surveillance state continue to grow, including a mass protest planned for Oct. 26 in DC against the NSA.

 

 

 

 

October 18, 2013  |  

 

 

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This week may be seen as a turning point in the fight back against NSA spying by creating new systems to overcome the surveillance state.

There have been protests against the NSA’s spying program but they focus only on legislative solutions. While legislation is needed, many of the solutions lie within our own power and often merely require the government to get out of the way.  Technological solutions to government surveillance may be more important than legislation.

President Obama’s independent commission is anything but independent; it is filled with members of the surveillance state and organized under the auspices of the NSA.  We are not going to get a “Church Committee” in the current Congress.  The leadership of both parties and President Obama are too tied to the surveillance state – or, perhaps too afraid of it – to challenge it. The director of National Intelligence, James Clapper was not even reprimanded or forced to resign when he committed perjury before Congress about surveillance on Americans – something for which he should be criminally prosecuted.

Protests against the surveillance state continue to grow. There is a mass protest planned for October 26th in Washington, DC against NSA surveillance.  We encourage everyone reading this to participate if possible no matter whether you are an Occupier, Tea Partier, progressive or libertarian – the security state is something we all oppose.  Public opinion is on our side and the people need to show Washington, DC that there is growing anger about spying on Americans as well as abusive spying on countries and diplomats who are not threatening the United States.

Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation and long-time advocate, wrote an important article which asks the question:  “How much surveillance can democracy withstand?” He provides an analytical framework as well as some solutions to surveillance by security cameras, smart meters, corporations in commerce, travel on airplanes, trains and roadways, as well as in the major area of communication on telephone and the Internet.

He urges that we consider “surveillance [as] a kind of social pollution” and consistently seek to limit the “surveillance impact of each new digital system.” The key to solving the surveillance crisis is recognizing that once data is collected it will be misused, so we need to shut down data collection at the outset through a combination of law and technology.  Sometimes this requires designing a dispersed surveillance system, e.g. a security camera in a store should not be linked to the Internet where government or others can acquire it.  Other times, the system needs to be designed to keep key information secret, e.g. in commerce creating anonymous payment systems so the payer’s identity is kept secret.  He points out there is already technology available for digital cash.  When it comes to communications by phone and Internet, laws are needed to limit how long such information can be stored as well as prohibiting government acquisition without a warrant.

He begins his essay discussing an area where we saw a lot of progress this week:

“The current level of general surveillance in society is incompatible with human rights. To recover our freedom and restore democracy, we must reduce surveillance to the point where it is possible for whistleblowers of all kinds to talk with journalists without being spotted. To do this reliably, we must reduce the surveillance capacity of the systems we use.”

 

To start, a first-ever report on press freedom in the United States was issued last week by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which described the Obama administration’s attack on the Freedom of the Press and attacks on whistleblowers.  The report, authored by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr., found that government officials were afraid to talk to the media because of the aggressive felony prosecutions and the NSA spying program.  Downie interviewed 30 experienced investigative journalists and none could find any precedent for the attack on the media and whistleblowers that has been seen in recent years.

There is big news on two fronts regarding these issues this week.

First, a technological breakthrough: the Freedom of the Press Foundation announced that it is completing development of an open source software system that will allow whistleblowers to submit documents to the media securely and anonymously.  One of the beautiful ironies of the SecureDrop system is that it was originally developed by the late Aaron Swartz who committed suicide due to prosecutorial abuse against his transparency activism.  Swartz developed SecureDrop with Kevin Poulsen, an editor at Wired.  The Free Press Foundation will provide installation support and information on security best practices and long-term technical support.  The New Yorker is the first news organization to use the SecureDrop through its StrongBox project.
Second, the major leak about Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras teaming up with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to form a new media outlet.  The new outlet, which has not yet been clearly defined, will be a general audience media source funded with the $250 million Omidyar considered using to buy the Washington Post. Greenwald et al. will focus on the security state and investigative reporting built on the philosophy that journalism should expose the lying of the powerful rather than be subservient to it.  Indeed, a week before this story was leaked Greenwald and Scahill announced they were working together on a major investigation of the NSA.  As the Columbia Journalism Review points out, the combination of three established, dissident journalists joining with one of the first Internet-era billionaires is “the best news journalism has seen in a long, long time. Here’s hoping this remarkable pairing realizes its full potential.”

We agree, this project has truly amazing potential.  We can think of many important stories that the establishment, mass media does not cover (beyond the security state) and having an independent, well-funded media outlet that will cover these stories will be a very good thing for democracy.  We spend a lot of time on Popular Resistance reporting on news that is not covered in the establishment media, like protest movements throughout the nation, the crisis at Fukushima that is a grave risk to the world, the continued pollution from open pit uranium mines which are America’s secret Fukushima (these are few examples among many, you can sign up for our daily digests here, better than a daily newspaper!).

We believe that the first step to mobilizing people is making sure they get the information they need to understand what is going on around them.  The corporate, mass media does more to mislead and create myths than to actually report critical news. As we noted in one of our series of stories on Columbus Day, “The US is a myth filled country where citizens have to make a conscious effort to find the truth.”  This new venture is an opportunity for reporting reality, rather than creating myth.
The other part of the security state beyond surveillance is the use of police to attack protesters and suppress dissent, rather than to protect our freedoms of speech, assembly and our right to petition the government for redress of grievances.  Popular Resistance consistently reports on people exercising their Free Speech rights, working to expand them as well as government attacks on those rights. This week a new coalition, the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations, issued a report,  “Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World,” a collection of case studies showing patterns of police crackdown and abuse against peaceful assembly, accompanied by concrete recommendations to expand free speech.

In order to end the abuse of active citizens, government needs to change its philosophy on protests. The report begins its recommendations saying:

“Participation in protest and public assembly should be viewed not as a ‘necessary evil’ in democratic countries, but as a healthy democratic exercise that ensures good governance and accountability. It is a social good that is a vital part of a vibrant democracy. Unfortunately, however, the case studies profiled in this publication highlight that, whether through violence, criminalization or unnecessarily obstructionist laws, protest is being stifled rather than encouraged.”

 

When viewed as a social good the appropriate policies, laws and regulations become evident, i.e. government should be facilitating the right to protest rather than undermining it, they should recognize the human rights of people to protest their government with or without a permit and they should restrict the use of force by police including lethal and non-lethal force, e.g. tasers, tear gas, water hoses.

This abuse of police power was on display in Canada on Thursday, October 17, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police launched an attack on peaceful protesters of the  Elsipogtog First Nation who were blockading hydro-fracking on their tribal lands.  According to this insider’s report, the police sent in hundreds of troops, with camouflaged sharpshooters and lethal weapons to attack the indigenous people protecting their land from extreme energy extraction.  They used fire-hoses on the crowd and several dozen, including the chief and council were arrested.  Five police cars were set on fire in response to the attack. (Twitter reports indicate this was done by a police informant.) The next day solidarity actions were held in more than two dozen locations in North America.  Canada has indicated it intends to steal resources from native lands and destroy them with hydro-fracking.

The attack on the Elsipogtog protesters who were protecting their tribal land occurred two days after the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights left Canada.  After spending nine days in Canada he issued preliminary observations that said:  “From all I have learned, I can only conclude that Canada faces a crisis when it comes to the situation of indigenous peoples of the country.” He found Canada was taking insufficient steps to confront this crisis despite being aware of it and is failing to respect the treaty rights of First Nations peoples and gave as one example the rapid development of resources while negotiations with First Nations were ongoing.

The abuse of power in the United States has been evident against the occupy movement, climate justice, economic justice, antiwar, animal rights and so many others who are seeking to create a better world. Since the late 1990’s when Bill Clinton added 100,000 police and the military began to provide civilian police with equipment, gear and training, police abuse, a long-term problem, has become routine. It infects not just police but prosecutors who are using grand juries to intimidate protesters, a phony court proceeding for mass deportations of immigrants and the unjust treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.  When an officer who was arrested in a motorcycle gang attack was found to have been undercover in the Occupy Movement, it led the New York Times to write – undercover police are everywhere.   October 22^nd is a national day of protest against police abuse.

We can expect conflicts in the United States to continue as the government moves toward an austerity budget that is likely to cut basic social services like food stamps, healthcare and Social Security.  People know, as Joseph Stiglitz wrote this week, that inequality is a choice elected officials are making. While partisans cheer the Democrat’s victory over the abusive shut down of the government by the Republicans, the reality is this was no victory for the people.  Part of the agreement requires a new budget that begins with the austerity budgets of the House, based on Rep. Paul Ryan’s extreme plan, and the less extreme but still austere Senate budget.  This debate among two neoliberal budgets will result in more protest as the people lose but banks continue to be bailed out. At the local level people see examples like in Philadelphia where the city closed 23 schools and laid off thousands but is building a huge prison.

Cutbacks in government combined with corporations that do not even provide their employees a wage on which they can live – paying them so poorly that they require $7 billion annually in public assistance –  as well as unsafe working conditions will stoke unrest.  And, the continued privatization of government services which puts America’s poor and working class at risk, will fuel citizen anger.  The corruption of the economy and government by the rule of money is more evident to more Americans.  On November 2^nd there will be an international day of protest against corruption caused by money-dominated government and a corrupt economy.

Fred Branfman, who recently completed a five-part series on the abuses of executive power in the United States, wrote in concluding his series:

“For those alarmed by the steady growth of lawless, violent and authoritarian U.S. Executive power for the last 50 years, the events of the past few months have been exciting. The emergence of a de facto coalition of progressives and conservatives opposing the National Defense Authorization Act giving the Executive the right to unilaterally detain or execute American citizens without a trial, and NSA mass surveillance of phone and Internet data, has been unprecedented, and offers the first hope in 70 years that Executive power can be curbed.”

 

He writes that citizens must unite across the political spectrum in a “Coalition for Freedom” to make the United States a functioning democracy.   We need to demand transparency, real congressional and judicial oversight, protection for whistleblowers and journalists (including citizen and independent journalists) as well as create new technologies that protect our privacy.  The beast of the national security state can be controlled, but it will take millions of Americans demanding that our nation become a functioning democracy to end this tyranny.

This article is produced by PopularResistance.org in conjunction with AlterNet.  It is based on PopularResistance.org’s weekly newsletter reviewing the activities of the resistance movement.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are participants in PopularResistance.org. They also co-direct It’s Our Economy and are co-hosts of Clearing the FOG, shown on UStream TV and heard on radio. They tweet at @KBZeese and MFlowers8.

Radical Transparency

The Epic Human Journey: Part 4, Autumn

Radical Transparency

Why we need an amendment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

 

 

Adbusters, 11 October 2013

• transparency
• Snowden
• Julian Assange
• WikiLeaks
• Manning
• human rights
• United Nations
• freedoms
• Egypt
• Al Qaeda

They lied to us about Mossadegh in Iran. 

They lied to us about the premise for entering Vietnam.

They lied to us about the murder of Allende in Chile, the history of intervention in Haiti and Cuba, the back-room deals to buy and sell drugs, guns and dictators in Central America and beyond.

And of course they lied to us about Afghanistan, about Iraq, about Libya, about Syria. 

Chances are they’re lying to us about Egypt right now. 

The 21st century is barely a teen and already it is as obscene, violent and arrogant as its older brother 100 years before. Even in the past ten years, the same mistakes, the same carnage, the same lies, repeat like a flipping cathode ray television screen. Lie. Stall. Lie. Stall. Lie. Stall. And if that doesn’t work, lie and stall some more.

It was no small happening that on the same day that Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) was handed a 35-year sentence for exposing American war crimes in Iraq, former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak was freed from a Cairo prison and the democratically elected, now ousted, Mohamed Morsi was left in a secret cell.

This type of serendipity is indicative of the deep culture of secrecy pervading geopolitics today. Who benefits from this obsessive secrecy? Certainly not the half million dead civilians in Iraq. Nor the two million civilians killed in Vietnam during the Cold War. Nor the innumerable victims who have died in the blowback from the long list of covert actions conceived in secret and fought in darkness. Even the dead are told that it was for their own good, that somehow things could have been even worse. And, of course, we’ll never really know what could have happened, because we, the people, are always left in the dark.

How many ghostly and fake Al Qaeda threats and foiled terror attacks have we witnessed since the Snowden revelations alone? The recent American embassy closure panic was nothing more than a sad rehashing of the terror-temperature chart that was broadcast on American television in the early years after 9/11 (recall the "chances of a Bin Laden attack" craze). Looking back, it brings a smile. But don’t be too quick to laugh. It would be comical if there weren’t so many of us who are still duped by these very same tactics … who are actually swayed to hate the Mannings and the Snowdens out there … the very people trying to pull back the curtain of secrecy.

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.
— JFK, 1961

So why do we still believe our leaders when they say “trust us”? Why do we still wait in eager anticipation for them to read from carefully crafted scripts that they don't even write? The answer is simple: we don’t know any better. And why don’t we know any better? Why do we continue to live in the dark? Another simple answer: our governments are legally allowed to lie to us. Totalitarian or democratic, East or West, it’s written into every state constitution in the world. And each time a government is given a mandate, we participate in the farce … we reaffirm that, contrary to what we tell our children, lying isn’t so bad after all.

If we are ever going to escape the 21st century with less bloodshed than the 20th century, we’re going to have to strip our governments of the right to lie to us citizens. In this information age, where gigatons of information zips around the globe each second, and where the geopolitical, financial and ecological stakes are so high, we need a new human right … one that is stamped into the first article of every state constitution, one that needs to become the centrepiece of the United Nations Charter.

The UN was created in the aftermath of the two most traumatic and disturbing wars of all time. Auschwitz. Dresden. Hiroshima. These atrocities made the battlefields and massacres of Gettysburg, Sevastopol and Waterloo a century earlier look like a track and field warm up. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was penned in 1948, it was based on the belief that without basic human rights, violence, war and genocide were sure to continue, if not flourish, into the future. The resounding and hopeful spirit of “Never Again” led the way. It was a groundbreaking moment for the human spirit. A moment that, unfortunately, never had a chance to fly.

So long as elites and powerful forces are able to concoct wars and geopolitics in secret, we, the people, will never see a day of peace on Earth. Not even a single minute in fact … likely not even a second. Aggression, hatred, greed, jealousy and fear may be the ingredients of war, but secrecy is the heat that it needs to rise … the fuel that turns the disapproving into blind followers. So long as secrecy prevails as a fundamental right of states, peace, unity and brotherhood will always remain dreams … increasingly jaded ones.

In the spirit of 1945 and 1948, we propose the following amendment to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to every constitution of every country in the world:

Exposing the Institute of International Finance

Global Power Project: Part 1

by Andrew Gavin Marshall / October 10th, 2013

This is the first of a series of exposés focusing on the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the very “visible hand” of financial markets. It is a continuation of the Global Power Project produced by Occupy.com. Part 1 examines the origins of the IIF.

Founded in 1983, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) describes itself as “the world’s only global association of financial institutions” with a membership that includes “most of the world’s largest commercial banks and investment banks,” along with sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, hedge funds, insurance companies, law firms, multinational corporations, development banks, multilateral agencies, credit ratings agencies and an assortment of other global financial and economic organizations. In short, the Institute of International Finance is the very visible hand of the global financial markets.

As the IIF notes on its website, its “main activities” include providing so-called “impartial analysis and research” to its members in order to “shape regulatory, financial, and economic policy issues….influence the public debate on particular policy proposals….[and work] with policymakers, regulators, and multilateral organizations… with an emphasis on voluntary market-based approaches to crisis prevention and management.”

It is also there to “provide a network for members to exchange views and offer opportunities for effective dialogue among policymakers, regulators, and private sector financial institutions.” The IIF proclaims it “is committed to being the most influential global association of financial institutions,” seeking to “sustain and enhance…. our extensive relationships with policymakers and regulators.”

The Institute of International Finance was formed at the beginning of the debt crisis of the 1980s, designed to establish a formal organization and representation for the interests of the world’s major banks and financial institutions. A meeting at Ditchley Park, England, was hosted by the National Planning Association (NPA) in May of 1982, which brought together senior representatives from major commercial banks in the industrialized Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries, as well as the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Jacques de Larosiere; other top IMF and World Bank officials; the Comptroller of the Currency of the U.S., C.T. Conover; and the Head of Banking Supervision at the Bank of England, Peter Cooke, among many others. ¹

The meeting was designed to discuss the general international financial situation at the time. One of the main conclusions of the meeting was that banks needed access to more up-to-date and accurate information regarding the financial standing of debtor nations, for which it was felt that “an institution within the banking community might be created.” The information would be provided by major banks along with multilateral agencies such as the IMF, World Bank, and the BIS, which all “exhibited a willingness to assist in the efforts of the commercial banks… and to make as much data as possible available to the new institution.” ²

The participants at the Ditchley meeting became known as the “Ditchley Group.” But their suggestions for a new banking institution did not stop at creating a mechanism for making better information available to banks. The group also envisaged a role for the new institution to undertake meetings directly between debtor nations and private banks, and to send teams of officials to nations to meet with senior government representatives to conduct economic and financial “reviews” of various countries around the world.
The Ditchley Group agreed to invite other banking institutions from the OECD countries to meet and discuss the possibility of creating such an organization, and a second meeting – “Ditchley II” – was held in New York in October of 1982, with the participation of 31 major banks from the U.S., Japan, UK, France, Canada, the Netherlands, West Germany and Switzerland, along with officials from the World Bank, IMF, Bank of England and the BIS. ³

The meeting resulted in an agreement to establish such an institution, termed a “nonprofit corporation,” to be based in Washington, D.C., which could “suggest independence” from the large Wall Street banks and also “because it would provide proximity to the headquarters of the IMF and the World Bank.”
The organization would have a small and expert staff, overseen by a board of directors made up of individuals from many of the banks with the largest exposure to international loans, and that membership would also be granted to other institutions with significant international exposure. On January 11, 1983, the Institute of International Finance was incorporated in Washington, D.C., with the participation of senior officers from 37 major banks from Europe, Japan, and North and South America. ⁴

Among the original participating banks were: (from Canada) the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Royal Bank of Canada, and the Bank of Montreal; (from France) Banque Nationale de Paris and Credit Lyonnais; (from Germany) Dresdner Bank, Commerzbank and Westdeutsche Landesbank; (from Japan) Bank of Tokyo and Mitsubishi Bank; (from Switzerland) Credit Suisse and Union Bank; (from U.K.) Barclays, Lloyds and Midland Bank; (from the United States) Bank of America, Bankers Trust, Chemical Bank, Citibank, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Mellon Bank, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Chase Manhattan and the First National Bank of Chicago. ⁵

By the mid-1980s, the IIF had a membership of 189 banks from 39 countries, representing more than 80% of the total international bank exposure to the “Third World.” And all this following the Institute’s “ultimate aim” to “improve the process of international lending” in the midst of the 1980s debt crisis. ⁶

While commercial banks established the Institute in order to “coordinate their activities” in the international arena, the banks and the powerful industrial nations and international organizations had worked to prevent such coordination from taking place among debtor nations of the Third World. The Group of 77 – a counterpart to the G7 which represents the majority of the word’s population – held a summit in 1983, where the debt crisis was of major concern.

The Latin American debtor nations, in particular, “were under considerable pressure from the U.S., the European Economic Community (EEC) and the IMF/World Bank not to entertain any idea of a “‘debtor’s cartel,’ or even to exchange and coordinate information.” So while the world’s major banks established a formal organization which essentially functions as an institutional banking cartel, the world’s debtor nations were pressured to avoid even sharing information with one another regarding the debt crisis. ⁷

Thirty years after it was founded, the IIF today boasts a membership of more than 450 institutions in over 70 countries around the world. The IIF hosts a series of meetings every year, the most prominent being its semi-annual full membership meetings, taking place over the course of two days with presentations by private bankers and public officials and including roughly 800 members and guests.

The speakers at these events, according to the IIF report “The First 25 Years,” constitute “a Who’s Who of international financial policymakers and leaders of the global financial industry.” William R. Rhodes of Citigroup (and a former top IIF official) referred to the meetings as ensuring that the IIF became “the leadership organization of its kind.” ⁸

The Managing Director of the Institute of International Finance from 1993 until 2013 was Charles Dallara, who had previously served as a managing director at JPMorgan & Co. from 1991 until 1993. Prior to his banking career, Dallars was the U.S. Executive Director of the IMF from 1984 until 1989, and held senior positions in the U.S. Treasury Department between 1983 and 1989. Today, Dallara is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Partners Group, a member of the boards of the Bertelsmann Foundation and the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Vice Chair of the Board of Overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Instituto de Empresa.

The current president and CEO of the IIF is Timothy D. Adams, the former managing director of The Lindsey Group and former Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 2005 until 2007, prior to which he served as the Chief of Staff to the U.S. Treasury Secretary from 2001 to 2003. Adams is concurrently a member of the board of the Atlantic Council, a member of the Atlantic Council’s Business and Economics Advisors Group, a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a director of the Center for Global Development, a delegate at the China Development Forum, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Business 20 (B20), a counterpart conference to the G20 meetings designed to provide the input of the world’s business community to the leaders, finance ministers and central bank governors of the world’s leading twenty nations.

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) represents the very “visible hand” of financial markets, wielding immense influence and boasting unparalleled access to central bankers and top policymakers from around the world. Look for the next parts in this series on the IIF as part of Occupy.com’s Global Power Project.

•  This article was first published at Occupy.com

1. Walter Sterling Surrey and Peri N. Nash, Bankers Look Beyond the Debt Crisis: The Institute of International Finance, Inc., Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (Vol. 23, 1985-1985), pages 111-113. [↩]
2. Ibid. [↩]
3. Ibid, pages 113-114. [↩]
4. Ibid, pages 114-115. [↩]
5. Ibid, page 115. [↩]
6. Ibid, pages 117-118. [↩]
7. Robert E. Wood, “The Debt Crisis and North-South Relations,” Third World Quarterly (Vol. 6, No. 3, July 1984), page 714. [↩]
8. IIF, The First 25 Years: 1982-2007 (Institute of International Finance, 2007), page 26. [↩]

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is co-editor of the book, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century. Read other articles by Andrew Gavin, or visit Andrew Gavin's website.

This article was posted on Thursday, October 10th, 2013 at 10:52pm and is filed under Banks/Banking, Finance.

Snowden Accepts Whistleblower Award

Published on Thursday, October 10, 2013 by Common Dreams

Snowden Accepts Whistleblower Award

 

Though former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been indicted for leaking secrets about the U.S. government’s intrusive surveillance tactics, he was honored by a group of former U.S. intelligence officials as a courageous whistleblower during a Moscow ceremony, reports ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern who was there.

by Ray McGovern

 

 

 
From the left: Jesselyn Radack, Raymond McGovern, Coleen Rowley and Thomas Drake, talk to each other in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2013. 

The four former U.S. government officials who met with former National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden said Thursday that he is adjusting to life in Russia and expresses no regrets about leaking highly classified information. They are the first Americans known to have met with Snowden since he was granted asylum in Russia in August. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)



MOSCOW - National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, from his asylum in Russia, accepted an award on Wednesday from a group of former U.S. intelligence officials expressing support for his decision to divulge secrets about the NSA’s electronic surveillance of Americans and people around the globe.

The award, named in honor of the late CIA analyst Sam Adams, was presented to Snowden at a ceremony in Moscow by previous recipients of the award bestowed by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII). The presenters included former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, former NSA official Thomas Drake, and former Justice Department official Jesselyn Radack, now with the Government Accountability Project. (Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern also took part.)

Snowden received the traditional Sam Adams Corner-Brighteneer Candlestick Holder, in symbolic recognition of his courage in shining light into dark places. Besides the presentation of the award, several hours were spent in informal conversation during which there was a wide consensus that, under present circumstances, Russia seemed the safest place for Snowden to be and that it was fortunate that Russia had rebuffed pressure to violate international law by turning him away.

Snowden showed himself not only to be in good health, but also in good spirits, and very much on top of world events, including the attacks on him personally. Shaking his head in disbelief, he acknowledged that he was aware that former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden, together with House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers, had hinted recently that he (Snowden) be put on the infamous “Kill List” for assassination.

In brief remarks from his visitors, Snowden was reassured — first and foremost — that he need no longer be worried that nothing significant would happen as a result of his decision to risk his future by revealing documentary proof that the U.S. government was playing fast and loose with the Constitutional rights of Americans.

Even amid the government shutdown, Establishment Washington and the normally docile “mainstream media” have not been able to deflect attention from the intrusive eavesdropping that makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment. Even Congress is showing signs of awaking from its torpor.

In the somnolent Senate, a few hardy souls have gone so far as to express displeasure at having been lied to by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander — Clapper having formally apologized for telling the Senate Intelligence Committee eavesdropping-related things that were, in his words, “clearly erroneous” and Alexander having told now-discredited whoppers about the effectiveness of NSA’s intrusive and unconstitutional methods in combating terrorism.

Coleen Rowley, the first winner of the Sam Adams Award (2002), cited some little-known history to remind Snowden that he is in good company as a whistleblower — and not only because of previous Sam Adams honorees. She noted that in 1773, Benjamin Franklin leaked confidential information by releasing letters written by then-Lt. Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson to Thomas Whatley, an assistant to the British Prime Minister.

The letters suggested that it was impossible for the colonists to enjoy the same rights as subjects living in England and that “an abridgement of what are called English liberties” might be necessary. The content of the letters was so damaging to the British government that Benjamin Franklin was dismissed as colonial Postmaster General and had to endure an hour-long censure from British Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn.

Who’s the Traitor?

Like Edward Snowden, Franklin was called a traitor for whistleblowing the truth about what the government was doing. As Franklin’s biographer H.W. Brands wrote: “For an hour and a half [Wedderburn] hurled invective at Franklin, branding him a liar, a thief, an outcast from the company of all honest men, an ingrate. … So slanderous was Wedderburn’s diatribe that no London paper would print it.”

Hat tip for this interesting bit of history to Tom Mullen and his Aug. 9 article in the Washington Times titled ”Obama says Snowden no patriot. How would Ben Franklin’s leak be treated today?” Ms. Rowley also drew from Mullen’s comment:

“Tyrants slandering patriots is nothing new. History decided that Franklin was a patriot. It was not so kind to the Hutchinsons and Wedderburns. History will decide who the patriots were in the 21st century as well. It will not be concerned with health care programs or unemployment rates. More likely, it will be concerned with who attacked the fundamental principles of freedom and who risked everything to defend them.”

The award citation to Snowden read, in part, “Sam Adams Associates are proud to honor Mr. Snowden’s decision to heed his conscience and give priority to the Common Good over concerns about his own personal future. We are confident that others with similar moral fiber will follow his example in illuminating dark corners and exposing crimes that put our civil rights as free citizens in jeopardy. …

“Heeding the dictates of conscience and patriotism, Mr. Snowden sacrificed his career and put his very life at risk, in order to expose what he called ‘turnkey tyranny.’ His whistleblowing has exposed a National Security Agency leadership captured by the intrusive capabilities offered by modern technology, with little if any thought to the strictures of law and Constitution. The documents he released show an NSA enabled, rather than restrained, by senior officials in all three branches of the U.S. government.

“Just as Private Manning and Julian Assange exposed criminality with documentary evidence, Mr. Snowden’s beacon of light has pierced a thick cloud of deception. And, again like them, he has been denied some of the freedoms that whistleblowers have every right to enjoy.

“Mr. Snowden was also aware of the cruel indignities to which other courageous officials had been subjected — whistleblowers like Sam Adams Award honorees (ex aequo in 2011) Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack — when they tried to go through government channels to report abuses. Mr. Snowden was able to outmaneuver those who, as events have shown, are willing to go to ridiculous lengths to curtail his freedom and quarrel with his revelations. We are gratified that he has found a place of sanctuary where his rights under international law are respected.

“Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a Sam Adams ‘Awardee Emeritus,’ has asserted that Mr. Snowden’s whistleblowing has given U.S. citizens the possibility to roll back an ‘executive coup against the Constitution.’ This is a mark of the seriousness and importance of what Mr. Snowden has done.
“Like other truth-tellers before him, Edward Snowden took seriously his solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. He was thus legally and morally obliged to let his fellow Americans know that their Fourth Amendment rights were being violated.

“The past few years have shown that courage is contagious. Thus, we expect that still others will now be emboldened to follow their consciences in blowing the whistle on other abuses of our liberties and in this way help stave off ‘turnkey tyranny.’

“Presented this 9th day of October 2013 by admirers of the example set by the late CIA analyst, Sam Adams.”

The Sam Adams associates also expressed gratitude for those who made this unusual gathering possible: Anatoly Kucherena, a lawyer for Snowden and founder and head of The Institute for Democracy and Cooperation in Moscow; WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange (SAAII award winner in 2010); Sarah Harrison, also of WikiLeaks, who facilitated Mr. Snowden’s extrication from Hong Kong and has been a constant presence with him since; other Internet transparency and privacy activists rendering encouragement and support, and, of course, Mr. Snowden himself for agreeing to host the first such visit to express solidarity with him in Russia.

The Sam Adams Award, named in honor of the late CIA analyst Sam Adams, has been given in previous years to truth-tellers Coleen Rowley of the FBI; Katharine Gun of British Intelligence; Sibel Edmonds of the FBI; Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan; Sam Provance; former U.S. Army Sergeant at Abu Ghraib; Maj. Frank Grevil of Danish Army Intelligence; Larry Wilkerson, Colonel, U.S. Army (ret.), former chief of staff to Colin Powell at State; Julian Assange of WikiLeaks; Thomas Drake, former senior NSA official; Jesselyn Radack, Director of National Security and Human Rights, Government Accountability Project; and Thomas Fingar, former Assistant Secretary of State and Director, National Intelligence Council.

Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence was established in 2002 by colleagues and admirers of the late CIA intelligence analyst Sam Adams to recognize those who uphold his example as a model for those in intelligence who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power. In honoring Adams’s memory, SAAII confers an award each year to someone in intelligence or related work who exemplifies Sam Adam’s courage, persistence, and devotion to truth — no matter the consequences.

It was Adams who discovered in 1967 that there were more than a half-million Vietnamese Communists under arms. This was roughly twice the number that the U.S. command in Saigon would admit to, lest Americans learn that claims of “progress” were bogus.

An earlier version of this article first appeared at Consortiumnews.com

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

US Whistleblowers Converge in Moscow to Honor Snowden as Truth-Teller

Published on Thursday, October 10, 2013 by Common Dreams

 

US Whistleblowers Converge in Moscow to Honor Snowden as Truth-Teller

 

Snowden tells them 'he knows what he did was right.'

 

 

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer 

 

 

 

 
(Photo: campact / creative commons / flickr)




A group of whistleblowers who stood up to U.S. power from within traveled to Moscow to tell Edward Snowden they honor what he did.

Snowden, accompanied by Sarah Harrison of Wikileaks, met with four U.S. intelligence and security officials-turned-whistleblowers in the Russian capital on Wednesday. The former NSA operative personally received an award for ‘Integrity in Intelligence,' granted by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence—an organization of U.S. whistleblowers. This award has been given each year since 2002 to intelligence officials who 'speak truth to power,' Consortium News reports.

The delegates who delivered the award—Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Andrews Drake, Ray McGovern and Coleen Rowley—say they met with a man who demonstrated striking confidence in the decision he made to expose dragnet surveillance on the part of the NSA and governments around the world, despite the personal hardship and global manhunt he has faced since taking this action.
“He’s convinced that what he did was right," former CIA analyst turned whistleblower McGovern said of the meeting, RT reports. "He has no regrets. And he’s willing to face whatever the future holds for him."

Raddack, former Department of Justice official who accused the FBI of ethics violations, declared on Twitter she is "[h]onored to be among 1st Americans to meet w/ #Snowden since Hong Kong" and published the following tweet with a link to a photograph of the meeting:

FBI whistleblower Rowley told RT that Snowden seemed "remarkably centered," with Raddack adding, "He looked great."

Snowden has been nominated for several awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize. When he accepted the prestigious German whistleblower prize in early September, he declared in a public statement, "[This] belongs to the individuals and organizations in countless countries around the world who shattered boundaries of language and geography to stand together in defense of the public right to know and the value of our privacy."

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