Modern Apocalypse - Living with the Bomb | The View from Canada |Axisoflogic.com

Jim Miles is the man behind The View From Canada on Axis of Logic. He is a retired educator, a voracious reader, and a superb analyst of what he sees in the world around him. He has written many scholarly articles and book reviews and his work has been published widely. In addition to Axis of Logic, you can regularly find his work at The Palestine Chronicle where his understanding of the nuances and realities of the Middle East help to explain a troubled environment.

Jim has now written a book, entitled Modern Apocalypse. His original intent had been to seek out a conventional publisher but as he completed the work, he felt he wanted his book to stand on its own merit and not be subjected to the editorial fetishes of the conventional publishing world. Instead, he has posted the book to a web address where it is free to download.

It's my view that this is a work that needs to be distributed far and wide. Jim has agreed to let me serialize the book and it is my plan to publish a new section or chapter on variable dates, beginning June 5. For those of you who don't want to wait, the book is available for download right now at www.jim.secretcove.ca. Regardless of whether you will wait for each instalment or download the full package now, it is very much worth your while to review Jim's extensive Bibliographical References which is included at the end of the book. There is an extraordinary catalog of the sources and influences that helped shape this book.

Many thanks to Jim for making his work available to us - and for all his material that we've been pleased to publish.

- prh, ed.

Living with the bomb

The nuclear era had originated many decades before World War II as scientists had discovered the inner workings of the atom and discovered its significance for various purposes. The atom itself had been postulated since ancient Greek times (and probably well before if one stands outside Eurocentric history). It was not until the late 19th Century that the structure of the atom itself began to be understood. All fields of study became involved with the quest for information including biology and the study of Brownian motion, and obviously the scientific worlds of chemistry and physics as the two disciplines essentially become one once the observer moves inside the atomic structures.

Many names are associated with the research, too many to work through the various fields of study, experiments, and advancement of proposals concerning the structure and function of the atom. Many people played significant roles in the understanding of the atom, a combination of working to expand the understanding of those who went before them, and working cooperatively or competitively with their peers. Theories proposed became experiments tested, experiments became results to stand the next set of ideas and experiments on. Names such as Dalton, Thompson, Planck, Rutherford, Bohr, Pauli, Broglie, Schrodinger (of the dead and alive cat fame), Heisenberg (of uncertainty fame), Chadwick, Dirac, Curie, Yukawa, and many others less well known developed our current knowledge of the inner workings of the atom. Albert Einstein is arguably the best known, but far from universal considering the state of knowledge around the world.

Einstein is generally considered to be the link between atomic theory and the initial idea that a great amount of energy is stored within atoms which given the right conditions could be released for man’s use. After the processes within the atom were understood, the human mind naturally turned to ideas on how to utilize, to “harness”, the energy available inside the atom. The ideas and processes involved with fission and fusion developed through the first half of the
20th Century. All the industrial countries had scientists working on both the quest for understanding, the quest for usefulness, and finally, the quest for a weapon based on that knowledge.
Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard worked on determining the actual construction of a device that could create - and control - a chain reaction. At the University of Chicago in 1942 Fermi constructed the first working nuclear pile, a “critical” but controlled chain reaction. From that base the ultimate weapon of war, a nuclear weapon that released a mass of energy all at once, came into practical knowledge. By the advent of World War II the idea and the knowledge that a powerful new weapon could be made was widespread. German, British, French, Italian, and Soviet researchers worked towards weaponizing the knowledge. The great fear in the allied west was that Germany was probably working towards their own nuclear weapon. This prompted the U.S. program, the secretive Manhattan Project, where the first useful atomic weapon came into existence. Fermi, called the “architect of the atomic bomb”, worked with Robert Oppenheimer, labelled the “father of the atomic bomb”, for their role in developing the weapon at Los Alamos. The first weapon was tested in 1945 and then used shortly after towards the end of World War II. Both Fermi and Oppenheimer died from cancer.

The generation born after the war, the “boomer” generation and those beyond have lived with the threat of nuclear war all their lives. Much of that threat is used to direct and control people, while others profit immensely from the large part it plays in the economy different countries. As witnessed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and later at test sites, the power of nuclear weapons is awesomely destructive. As destructive as the first weapons were, the consequent production of thermonuclear bombs increased the destructive power significantly.
Not all of the destruction came through careful planning. The U.S. Bravo test on Bikini in 1954 at 15 megatons was three times more powerful than expected due to a lack of knowledge as to how reactive the lithium compound was. The atoll was destroyed, spreading radiation far and wide, leaving a radiated no go zone in the newly created crater where formerly an island had existed. The Soviet Union replied later with a 50 megaton device. All this destructive power was improved and increased over the following decades, a political and military threat encompassing the whole world.

The nuclear era coincided with the era of the CIA, the era of global “free” trade, the era of international financial hegemony by the corporate military empire, and the era of anthropogenic global warming. For almost four generations this has been the norm, the “new” normal for each succeeding generation born into an increasingly endangered planet. The U.S. empire and its demands has been the main progenitor of this global malaise.

There is no one moment when my conscience turned against war and empire. Not having any television until the ripe age of ten, I was not inundated with endless mind-numbing commercial advertising or glorious movies and games about some evil other that I should continuously fear. For whatever reason, the elementary school I attended did not practice the idiotic “duck and cover” drills, perhaps as the administration realized how ignorant they were, or simply because no one thought anyone would bother to bomb us at that time. The Korean War was history to me, but the supposed Soviet threat, the Berlin crisis, the Cuban missile crisis, and the assassination of John Kennedy were all part of my nascent global awareness. When our household did buy a television, the main thrust of movies/episodes at the time was towards the cowboy versus Indian theme, the replay of much of World War II in documentary form, and
news about the Soviet threat.

Even after plugging into the mainstream, I did not buy into the mainstream message, perhaps just not caring at the time, but also I had no reason to personally feel threatened by the Soviet Union. The Berlin airlift seemed strange when history said that the Soviet Union had been our allies against Germany. I was absorbing information, but held no conviction in any direction.

The Cuban missile crisis had a larger impact as it was splashed over all the media for several weeks. At the time of course, no one in the public sphere knew what transpired behind the scenes, but the impression came across that the Soviets were really and truly the bad guys, a sense I do not recall believing very much at the time - it always seemed it took two to create such a mess, the pot calling the kettle black as far as nuclear weapons were concerned.

Castro’s revolution appeared to have been somewhat heroic to me for kicking out the gangsters, banksters, and corporations that kept the wealth and the land from the people. All these thoughts and ideas developed through my exposure to the news broadcasts and the TIME and LIFE magazines delivered by subscription to our household. Either they were not as strictly controlled by the politicians and corporations of the day, or I simply chose my own perceptions towards what they presented, and my views were more of a consternation as to why the Soviet Union was considered such a bad entity. It was not until the assassination of President Kennedy when the deeper realization of state skullduggery started to settle in.

I was saddened by the news of Kennedy’s assassination as he presented such a hopeful image for peace. At the time I was unaware - as were most others - of his conflicts with the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the power of the crime bosses of the day. Lyndon B. Johnson has been implicated in some presentations about the assassination. Certainly in hindsight Kennedy had sufficient enemies internally without worrying about an external Soviet threat in the form of Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald worked in the Texas School Book depository from where he supposedly shot Kennedy, declaring to journalists at the time, “I work there….I’m just a patsy.”

At the time, watching events unfold and the explanations of what happened and how, it all seemed inconsistent and unclear.

When Jack Ruby murdered Oswald, and then Ruby’s back story came to light, my belief in the official narrative faltered considerably. The Warren Commission with all its attempts to explain how one bullet could do all the damage to Kennedy and Connally and how three bullets could be fired from an old Italian rifle in ten seconds seemed unrealistic and "conspiracy" doubters were already questioning official descriptions. I did not know what really happened, did not develop any ideas about the how, what, and why, but then as now the official story is simply not credible.

Following the Berlin crisis, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Kennedy assassination, the coverage of the Vietnam war ramped up. Walter Cronkite became an evening regular, unfortunately always at dinner time, reporting on the increasing involvement in Vietnam. Watching in black and white the war became more and more senseless as it became larger and larger, more troops, more planes, more napalm, more body counts. By this stage of my life I was already a self-defined pacifist and the war did not make sense, and juxtaposed with the news concerning race relations in the U.S. it became a violent absurdity. Several events during this era highlighted my transformation to a truly conscious anti-war, anti-empire person.

The first incident, quite minor in the overall presentation of the war and the rationales and violence that accompanied it, came on the very same evening news. Some U.S. military brass, all dressed up in uniform with shiny buttons and epaulets and a military cap to top off the costume explained what the U.S. was going to do as they moved into Cambodia to stop the nasty Viet Minh from infiltrating into South Vietnam. Standing before a state of the art magnetic board this military brass of long forgotten status moved a series of magnetic pucks around as he explained how U.S. forces were to enter Cambodia and attack the Viet Minh in their hideouts. Listening to his banal flat voiced presentation it suddenly struck me that this man had no compassion for human life, he had no personal concern for his own units and whether they lived or died. Rather than sacrificing their lives for their country, their lives were being sacrificed for some other purpose - military power and control. No emotional content entered the display, it was just another game of checkers as the pucks were slid around the board.

It all tied in to the anti-draft movement that protested against the war games played by those in power, those who would never see the war up close and personal. It tied together with the racial protests occurring throughout the U.S. at the time. I had my Smedley Butler moment - war was not just two countries being belligerent with each other for stupid reasons, unfathomable reasons, but was a means for those in power to reach for more power while sacrificing the lives of their fellow citizens conscripted into their war games. It was a grasp for imperial control of as many others as could be realized, no longer about freedom and democracy or this nebulous crazy thing called capitalism and its implied necessity for that freedom and democracy. At that beginning moment, I still had no true idea and did not grasp how truly deep and dark the motivations and actions were for the sake of corporate empire.

In the same era, in April 1967 I visited distant family members in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for three weeks. Raised in a calm mostly white neighbourhood in a city with a noticeable Chinese and East Indian population, I could not truly comprehend the depth and seriousness of U.S. racial attitudes. Along with the Vietnam war, Walter Cronkite also provided stories from the domestic front, the many racial protests and demonstrations taking place mostly in the Southern U.S. - I could see and hear it on television but it was not palpable, no visceral reaction even as I did hold the intellectual rejection of the racial ignorance presented. Two minor encounters changed that, or more correctly the avoidance of two minor encounters triggered the emotional response.

My visit to Philadelphia included several walks through the downtown part of the city. It may seem strange that such a minor encounter would trigger the knowledge through the feeling of the fear on the streets. However it was simply the hostility expressed by the police on the street, an attitude in my mind saying “don’t look me in the eyes”. They all wore wrap around sunglasses, they all had open carry guns unstrapped in holsters, and they all seemed to swagger, a warning to people to move out of the way. In my naivete and compared to the
peace officers of my hometown, these dudes did not appear at all approachable or friendly, all too ready to respond quickly and painfully. This of course was downtown Philadelphia a few months before the deadly race riots broke out across many major cities in the U.S.

Another day my cousin guided me through some of the tourist features - the Liberty Bell, the William Penn statue atop city hall - and then we were to go on to a particular church. As I stepped off the curb headed towards it, he indicated “No, we can’t go that way.” A bit confused as to why, he indicated that the intervening neighbourhood was black. I truly did not understand the depth, the profoundness of that simple statement even though it stuck with me as it seemed rather strange to not take a direct line to someplace because of certain people living there. So instead of walking three blocks, we walked nine blocks around the neighbourhood.

Both these moments now seem minor, but to my developing mind, they had a powerful impact. After the race riots, the whole agony of the Civil Rights movement, the memories of those incidents remained, reinforced. It did not make me think anything negative about black people, but made me wonder what kind of sick society was so afraid of one of its own racial components that one could not walk down a certain street. Slavery was over, but obviously racial hatred and denigration thrived in the supposedly “Just Society” to be, and fear of the ‘other’ was a significant component of western society. The news I had seen on television was real, and the attitudes and motives took on a whole new meaning - deeper and uglier.

Perhaps, more than likely, these experiences underlay a current events essay written in my Social Studies class. The actual topic concerned the economy or economic features of the black communities leading to the rioting. I went beyond the pure economics as the explanations I read all tied into a pattern of racial segregation enforced by combinations of work availability, Jim Crow laws, underlying attitudes supporting the racial hatred of this particular group - prejudice - and the cultural geographies of race established in the major U.S. cities. My main source of reference, beyond the above experiences, were many issues of TIME magazine reporting on the different factors involved with various protests. These days I avoid TIME as it is generally infotainment for the masses but then it carried longer more well constructed and more critical commentary on current events in the U.S.

To this day I often wonder about the experiences of the few black people I see in my mostly geriatric white small town community. What are their experiences? What are there feelings? What discomfort level are they - or not- living with in this community? On the other hand, walking the streets of downtown Vancouver, or its beaches - anywhere for that matter - there is such a mixture of races and ethnicities and languages and it all feels very comfortable and, yes, normal. It is the world as it should be, integrated yet diverse, without my being blind to the knowledge that racial problems do still exist. Incidentally, I received an “A” on the paper, probably the only one I had that year.

As well as being the year of racial violence, it was also the year of the “summer of love”, the blossoming of the hippie counter-culture. Racial issues accompanied it but also burgeoning at the time were actions and information concerning the environment, the Vietnam war, the nuclear tests, and the Cold War’s nuclear threats in general were all part of the anti-establishment culture. In hindsight the focus would have to be on the war, its mounting losses, mounting incredibility, and the inequalities of the draft system. It has been argued that if conscription had not existed then, and the military had been all voluntary, the cultural resistance may not have had nearly as much impetus and force. The sights of draft avoiders burning their draft cards publicly, the disturbing views of the maimed soldiers attempting, frequently unsuccessfully, to adapt to life back in the U.S. after the violence and mayhem of Vietnam all added to the extent of the protests. All these issues strengthened over the years, creating a
pop culture questioning the very foundations of contemporary society.

The memories are mixed but indelible. The Tet offensive in the later years of the war surprised the western powers, indicating that the Vietnamese were never going to give up, they had nowhere else to go, and they had already beaten back the French and the Japanese. The massive bombing campaigns illuminated the news screen almost every night either from some more or less local firefight - Khe Sanh comes to mind - or the insane Christmas bombing of Hanoi near the end of the war. Nightly body counts were announced and I remember one pundit remarking that more enemy were killed than there were enemy. Johnson and McNamara continued spouting their war dogma. Anti-war protests increased in size and violence and the notable memory from that is the Kent State murder of four protesters during a protest against the Cambodia bombings. During the 1968 Democratic National Convention - itself a minor battlefield between those wanting to continue the war and those wanting to end it - a protest was suppressed violently by some 27 000 state and federal officers. The Black Panther Party had its origins within the racial violence of the day. The assassination of Martin Luther King occurred within the racial context, but in truth may have been more for his strong
anti-establishment pro-socialist ideas rather than his calls for racial liberation - both being tied together for the realization of a truly peaceful world. All the violence, domestic and foreign, seemed endless.

It was the era of the folk song revival as many groups and individuals wrote about peace and war. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez appeared to be the ‘leaders’ of the movement if there were any leaders, as it was more of a pacifist form of protest by a group of like-minded individuals who independently formed similar ideas and expressions. Pete Seeger provided an eloquent folksy voice to the protests, banned by most mainstream programs. The Smothers Brothers regularly sponsored the folk culture on their own mainstream show by bringing in other anti-war musicians, leading eventually to the cancellation of their show. Protest music entered the mainstream as well with Country Joe and the Fish, Creedence Clearwater, and John Lennon among may who wrote against the war and its political-corporate sponsors.

Many things were kept from public view. The Phoenix program of torture and murder did not, for obvious reasons, appear on public news programs. The relocations of many of the peasant farmers, destroying villages and agricultural fields in order to “save” them did not become common public knowledge. The massive use of chemical warfare received no concern for its war crimes classification, nor for its environmental effects, nor for the effects on humans, the long term legacy of health problems, birth defects, and cancers for both the U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese society as a whole.

Napalm was one of those chemicals, still used extensively today, and its horrors came to light in one particularly significant photo. It was a small event in the larger course of the war, but it displayed the savagery of the U.S. campaign normally hidden from view. The photo of the “napalm girl” spanned the world, showing a naked Vietnamese girl, crying in pain and terror, blackened skin showing where the napalm - jellied gasoline made by Dow - had hit her and stuck, running away from a village bombed by the U.S. (in order to save it, probably).

A larger event, one that carried far more political weight but not necessarily the immediate impact was the My Lai massacre revealing the murderous war crimes actions of U.S. marines killing the majority of people in a Vietnamese hamlet. After the war, and more individual accounts and memoirs surfaced, My Lai was exposed as being a typical action, rather than the “few bad apples” explanation of the military brass and politicians.

While the My Lai massacre and the napalm girl incident were exposed to public view, another event connected to the war but not making a big splash in the newscasts was the breaking of the gold standard established at Bretton Woods. Wars cost money and have been one of the main underlying causes of internal collapse of empires throughout history. U.S. debts rose significantly because of the Vietnam War, and under the gold standard the trade balances were kept under control by the physical ownership of gold. Needing more money to pay for its wars, not wanting to lose its gold in payments to other countries creditors, the U.S. unilaterally left the standard in 1971, effectively killing it. Money could now be ‘printed’ as desired, unhindered by something physically limiting it. The war effort and its costs could go on, aided and abetted by private agreements with Saudi Arabia to price and sell oil using only U.S. dollars. Military power and oil were and still are the underlying fundamentals of the US$, of the U.S. economy in general.

The falling dominos rationale and the evils of communism provided the rationale for the war, both fallacies propagated by the political system and its supportive media. The media at the time was not quite as servile then as now, as the reporting on Pentagon Papers followed a year later with the Watergate scandal prompted much political commentary with both affecting the course of the war and the careers of politicians. The Cold war kept ramping up, with more propaganda continually thrown concerning the Soviet missile superiority.

Eventually, after the Christmas bombing of 1972 in the middle of the above scandals, the war would slowly wind down. The peace agreement signed in 1973 signalled the end of U.S. involvement with the last personnel being helicoptered out in 1975 leading to the unification of Vietnam as should have occurred after World War II. The costs of the war were massive. About 58 thousand U.S. military personnel lost their lives, over 100 thousand vets are recorded as having committed suicide, over 300 thousand were injured with over 70 thousand quadriplegics and multiple amputees, out of a total of about 3.5 million participants. Vietnamese losses were in the millions with many delayed effects from the chemical weapons spraying and unexploded ordinance of various types. Laos and Cambodia suffered similar losses and the savage reign of Pol Pot can be attributed both to the leftover political situation from the war and from covert U.S. assistance. Another domestic blowback was the financial results of leaving the gold standard and creating the petrodollar in alliance with the Saudi Arabian theocracy as discussed previously.

Enter Israel
Another seemingly unrelated event occurred during the “summer of love”, one with far reaching effects both geopolitically and temporally. The Six Day war between Israel and three Arab states - Jordan, Egypt, and Syria - took place June 5 to 10 in 1967. It received big time play in the media, presented without any context and without a true presentation of the facts, many of which were repressed and misrepresented by Israel and the U.S. media. I recall both TIME and LIFE, my family’s reliable weeklies, splashing huge coverage of the war in photos and reports across many pages, extolling the heroic resistance of the Israelis from the Arab attack, a view I had no reason to argue with at the time.

After World War I, the British aided the colonial settler movement of mainly east European Jews to the Palestine Mandate, based on the policies stated in the Balfour Letter of 1917. It was not a law either for Britain or in the international sense but it committed the British to aiding the Jewish emigration to Palestine under the premise that the local Palestinian population was not to be harmed by this. The actions of the British occupying forces generally favored the Jewish settler, and as time passed the forces had to become more and more aggressive against both the Jews and the Palestinians, with the brunt of it directed at the Palestinians.

The Jewish population kept itself separate from the Palestinian centers, trading as necessity required but establishing their own independent units as much as they could. Militarily they formed armed militias, underground military units - the Haganah, the Irgun, and the more violent splinter group, the Stern gang. The British considered these groups terrorists as they fought against the occupation forces as well as being protection and enforcement units against the Palestinians. During pre World War II years they had already established underground supply routes and formed into coherent military groups, not without some internal squabbling.

During the war, they established much stronger units, receiving training and advice from their service with the British military. After the war, hostilities against the British continued, and as with India, the British government signalled its intention to quit the Mandate. The newly created United Nations devised the UN Partition Plan, allocating sixty per cent of the land to the Jews to Israel, including the best agricultural land, leaving Jerusalem to be a separate international entity. The plan was accepted by most of the Jewish leaders, operating on the idea that this concession, however one looked at it, was better than nothing. The Palestinians, noting that the minority population with an even smaller minority of landowners were to receive most of the land, rejected the plan. Although it was just a plan and not a legal document, not part of international law, it is still used by some today to justify the “legality” of the existence of the state of Israel.

There is little legality to the establishment of any state - in spite of treaties most are established by force, then followed by the legalities of treaties of surrender, peace, concessions, and the recognition by other powers, other states for the new state. Israel knows this well, as after the Partition Plan and the departure of the British military, the former terrorists morphed into the Israeli Defense Forces [IDF] and initiated the ethnic cleansing of over 500 Palestinian villages and cities. Designated the Allon Plan, it was well underway when Israel declared independence, with the following war of independence fought against outside Arab forces in May of 1948. With better trained military forces, with established supply lines and beginning industrial armaments industries, and only a few instances of fierce resistance, the IDF had little trouble with the less well trained and less well equipped Arab forces.

When the dust settled, Israel controlled all but the twenty-two percent of the land leaving two parts, Gaza and the West Bank, and all but east Jerusalem under their control. Jordan sort of held the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza. A state established by force of arms, initially recognized by the Soviet Union, followed by other UN members, Israel existed as a western ally, an outpost of civilization in a region rich in oil resources and a cross roads of international transportation.

The U.S. supported Israel but resisted some of the allure - or better the thrall - that holds it to Israel today. The Truman government supported the Zionist project partly from domestic worries about voters and partly recognizing its own interests in the Middle East against the Soviet Union and for the control of oil. After the Second World War, the U.S. as with other western countries helped the project by denying Jewish immigration to the U.S., where the majority wanted to settle. When France, Britain, and Israel conspired to take back control of the Suez Canal and to give Israel dominance in the Sinai, Eisenhower objected noting the need for a ‘just peace’ in the region for overall global stability. Israel withdrew but the rhetoric of just peace and negotiating peace has worked against Palestine ever since.

Up to the 1967 war, Israel simply existed as another small Middle east country in a region evoking little public/media attention especially with the problems concerning Vietnam and domestic racial relations in the U.S. The 1967 war became big news as it unfolded violently and quickly. As before, the news magazines of the day, along with the U.S. news channels, supplied a large visual/verbal wash of pro-Israeli news. The Arabs were the bad guys, having supposedly started the war. The Israelis were the heroes, the victims of a massed Arab attack, against their poor tiny country. The news essentially rejoiced at the swift victory over the combined Arab forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, rejoiced at the efficiency of mostly U.S. armaments over Soviet armaments. When it ended, after breaking an initial truce in order to secure Syria’s Golan Heights, Israel controlled the whole of Sinai up to the Suez Canal, all of Jerusalem, and the Syrian Golan Heights.

Personally I accepted the media line, having no other resources or knowledge about the situation at that time. It seemed remote from other current events, a small vicious war by the heroic Israelis against the sneaky Arab attack. Obviously much was hidden from view, and the larger global picture I later developed had not yet informed my analysis of events. Beyond that, the war established parameters for ongoing regional and global problems and the hidden truths were slow to be revealed and are still not fully within public cognizance due to a combination of media compliance/supplication, the general indifference of the public, plus the strengthening of the U.S. evangelical Christian Zionists awaiting their Armageddon.

The main item surfacing later was the revelation by historians, validated by anecdotal memoirs and IDF archives, that Israel began the war with a well timed pre-emptive attack against the Egyptian air force caught resting on the ground during a morning ‘shift change’. The impetus came from Israeli generals looking at a situation they knew they could win, supported by the Zionist ideals for the conquest of Eretz Israel. Egypt was involved in the Yemen civil war of that era, with as many as 60 thousand troops fighting, an engagement fully detrimental to their fighting effectiveness.

Within the overall conflict a smaller event occured that should have made the news but was effectively squelched. It occurred in international waters off the Egyptian coast, near Gaza - the attempted sinking of the USS Liberty. The Liberty was a lightly armed spy or surveillance ship sent to the eastern Mediterranean to monitor communications, probably all communications from all sides for a possible variety of reasons ranging from a simple need to know to concerns about possible Soviet intervention. After locating and checking out the ship which clearly flew the U.S. flag and communicated its status to the initial reconnaissance planes, the Israel’s attacked using a combination of jet fighters and smaller naval patrol boats. Unable to defend itself, the ship endured several hours of attack, yet in spite of hits by bombs and torpedoes, it did not sink.

Nearby U.S. forces initially responded to calls for assistance but were called back by their superiors. In the aftermath, the surviving members of Liberty crew refused assistance from an Israeli patrol boat and waited until U.S. assistance belatedly showed up. In all,
thirty-four personnel were killed and 171 wounded. The incident was glossed over in public and disappeared from history, more or less. After making cosmetic repairs overseas the Liberty sailed home and was soon decommissioned, the crew silenced. The official story of misidentification by the Israelis do not stand up to separate individual accounts, including those in the Israeli military acknowledging they recognized the ship as belonging to the U.S. Many questions are left about the intent of the Israelis, the intent of the U.S., in essence, the reason for the cover up. What it does signal is that as much as the U.S. had been aiding Israel before, they were now operating and
cooperating at a deeper geopolitical level, holding secrets that neither wanted the world to know about.

The war set the stage for most future events in the Middle East and beyond, events all inclusive of financial and geopolitical strategies. Before the war, Israel built its main nuclear reactor at Dimona with French, U.S., and Norwegian technical and materials assistance. By the 1967 war they had successfully made - and perhaps with South African assistance - tested a nuclear weapon. They have always maintained an official no comment policy on its nuclear endeavors, but the revelations of Mordechai Vanunu and subsequent slips of the tongue clearly indicate Israeli success at making deliverable nuclear weapons. As an increasingly significant U.S. ally and partner, no push by the U.S. has been made to make it official or to join the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty [NPT]. The “Samson option” has remained a ghostly backbone to Israeli military and geostrategic policy ever since.

1979
The year 1979 proved significant in a series of events seemingly unrelated at the time, or so the mainstream media made it seem so.
After the 1967 war Israel became in increasingly significant factor in my awareness of global affairs as it remained within the news cycle, lightly at first, and then with another significant event, the Yom Kippur war. On October 06, 1973, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat attacked Israeli forces in the Sinai, quickly overcoming the Bar Lev defensive line, moving it to re-occupy its Sinai territory. Israel successfully counter-attacked and after backroom manipulations the U.S. and Soviet Union managed to halt the fighting. An immediate result of the war was a Saudi led oil embargo against those countries supporting Israel, mainly the U.S. but essentially all western supporters of Israel. This obviously resulted in a large price increase in the price of consumer oil and industrial oil. The U.S. economy suffered from the oil shortage and the rising cost of everything dependent on it - most of the economy as it is an oil based economy from agriculture through to pharmaceuticals. The new price brought new wealth to the Arab states, who in turn recycled the dollars back through the U.S. economic system.

After a long process of negotiation, it all led to the 1979 peace agreement, the Camp David Accords. Part of the peace arrangement was Iran supplying oil to Israel in compensation for the loss of Sinai oil. From all the politicizing and media commentary Israel’s image became more prominent and its flaws more pronounced. I started to recognize that Israel was at least partly responsible for its own problems. The Shah of Iran led a U.S. supported regime, nominally democratic but controlled domestically by the SAVAK, Iran’s secret police service. Originally established after the coup that overthrew the democratic Mossadegh government (1953), the Shah led Iran in a U.S. military alignment friendly to Israel and incorporating much U.S. military and financial assistance, including development of a nuclear industry. It was hostile to the Soviet Union, a protection against propagandized Soviet expansion into the region. In 1979 rising domestic anger against the suppression by the regime, a poor economy, and the rise of religious fundamentalism fueled the events overthrowing the government.

A Shia theocracy was established, creating a strongly antagonistic position towards both the U.S. and Israeli governments. It was greatly exacerbated by the seizure of the U.S. embassy, the holding of embassy staff as hostages, and the revelations to the new Iranian government concerning U.S. influence within the Shah’s regime. The hostage taking made consistent headlines and played a large role in the defeat of Jimmy Carter and the election of Ronald Reagan. After a botched rescue attempt and many negative news headlines, Carter lost to Reagan. After Reagan’s election the hostages were released, with some sources suggesting - believably, knowing how the U.S. operates - that the release was negotiated by Reagan supporters to be timed for after his election.

Another major 1979 event occurred with the Soviet ‘invasion’ of Afghanistan. For many years an elected socialist government attempted to introduce more progressive ideas into a conservative Afghan society. To a degree they were successful, supporting women’s rights, education, and medical services, building civic infrastructure, but the ongoing domestic turmoil allowed the U.S. to subvert government operations and entice the Soviet military to come to the assistance of the beleaguered Afghan government. Afghanistan, part of the British imperial “Great Game” vis a vis India, China, and Russia, now suffered the imperial U.S. version, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Grand Chessboard”, supported by foreign policy advisor Henry Kissinger, and as always and everywhere, the covert operations of the CIA.
Leonid Brezhnev took the bait and sent the Soviet military into Afghanistan to support the government. In the background the U.S. manoevered to set up a Soviet ‘quagmire’ as the U.S. sought revenge for its defeat in Vietnam. Gathering and training fundamentalist Muslims, working through Pakistan’s military and ISIS, its secret service, the U.S. created the Afghan mujahideen, Reagan’s “freedom fighters”, today’s terrorists. This set the stage for not only the ten year long Soviet attempts at gaining control, but also the multi-decades long war on terror.

These three events of 1979 - the Egyptian-Israeli peace, the Iranian revolution, and the Soviet entrance into Afghanistan - established in my mind a much larger less discreet image of U.S. imperial adventures around the world. The events tied separate actions together under the panoply of U.S. military-industrial hegemony attempting to destroy, destabilize, and eventually control all of Eurasia.

As somewhat of a side issue, Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, another long exhausting fight between a secular Baathist government in Iraq and the fundamentalist Shias of Iran. Israel and the U.S. played each side against the other as the war essentially stalemated with massive casualties on both sides. The west hoped the two sides would both be so weakened that Iraq would no longer threaten Israel, and Iran could no longer sustain its anti U.S. theocracy. Tying the globe together, the Iran-Contra scandal drew connecting lines between Iran, the CIA, the U.S. government and the ongoing subversive war in Guatemala. The tentacles of the U.S. empire stretched, strengthened, and entangled large seemingly disparate events and characters into a view of the U.S. imperial grasp as a global phenomenon.

Domestically, secure at home in western Canada, the big issue after the Vietnam war ended was that of nuclear weapons. Canada had previously rejected the placement of nuclear weapons on its soil, then accepted them, and after years of protests, finally terminated their presence on Canadian soil in 1972. As usual, the protesters were labelled as ‘communist’ - a label not as sinister in Canada as in the U.S., but not without its political and security concerns.

In an action that had later widespread consequences around the world, Canadian political and environmental activists organized protests against the Amchitka Island nuclear test scheduled in 1971. As my small part, I participated in a UBC organized protest at the Peace Arch border crossing, stopping traffic for a short while. Border security at the time was minimal in comparison to what might come to pass if the same form of protest were to occur currently. The protests were organized in part by Bob Hunter, shortly after the leader of the Greenpeace organization, with the newly christened ship The Greenpeace heading towards Amchitka in protest. The test went ahead, but the foundations for Greenpeace activism globally had started.

During the 1960s, -70s, and -80s the stockpiles of nuclear weapons on both sides increased dramatically with combined totals from all countries reaching above 60 thousand warheads in 1985. No longer was war limited to a relatively small arsenal deliverable by long range bombers, nuclear war had become a hair-trigger reality of dozens of thousand of powerful warheads deliverable by intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from land and sea based platforms, while retaining the long range nuclear bombers - in U.S. parlance, the nuclear triad. The larger numbers created the scenario for the mutually assured destruction power of these otherwise useless weapons. The larger yields were and still are incomprehensible to most people. One of the leading anti-war, anti-nuclear proponents, Dr. Helen Caldicott, strived to bring awareness to the dangers of the blast itself, the lingering and ongoing long term effects of radiation, and the then dawning awareness of the possibility of a nuclear winter. Official government authorities could not deny the massive explosive firepower of nuclear weapons, they have tried and to a degree have succeeded to downplay the effects of both radiation and nuclear winter scenarios.

In the 1980s Ronald Reagan ramped up the rhetoric against the Soviet Union, the “evil empire”, continuing the decades long canard of Soviet missile supremacy - the invented missile gap that never existed. The Soviet Union eventually carried more warheads for a very brief tenure on top of the list, but that collapsed quite quickly with the fall of the Soviet Union and the various nuclear treaties accompanying that. The U.S. nuclear industry profited enormously from the increasing requirements for more and more sophisticated weapons and all the hype about the evil empire and the missile gap only served to enhance the profits of the industry and their supply lines scattered through a large number of states, corralling the constituents into the
profits of war mongering.

At this point in time the increasing government debts had not yet tied themselves together with all the war rhetoric, appearing as separate categories, to be dealt with as separate items. In hindsight they have always been linked as the military increasingly dominated most aspects of foreign affairs. And the wars continued. The Soviet Union had increasing difficulties in Afghanistan against the U.S. funded mujahideen, whose use of U.S. made Stinger missiles increased the level and lethality of the fighting. Israel increased pressure on occupied Palestine territories (really all of Israel) receiving substantial U.S. funding as part of the Egyptian peace deal (from which Egypt profited as well), much of the rewards funding the establishment of new settlements in the occupation zone. The majority of the money became outright grants used for military purchases from the U.S. Profits and wars walked hand in hand in the U.S. corporate world.
Other little wars kept popping up. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the “iron lady” of Britain, Reagan’s soulmate in the United Kingdom, fought a war of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic close to and claimed by Argentina. Reagan, not to be outdone, staged his own little war on Granada, theoretically in order to “rescue” some 600 U.S. medical students (receiving training from Cuban doctors?) but true to form in eradicating another socialist government that threatened the mighty U.S.

In Central America, Guatemala continued its ongoing ‘civil’ war, with the government side assisted with U.S. equipment and advisors, and the ongoing military training from the notorious School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) and still training Latin American military and paramilitary forces. Panama suffered ongoing treatment at the hands of the CIA and the U.S. drug wars culminating in another wonderful little war deposing Panamanian leader Noriega and installing a U.S. friendly regime.

On the global front, away from the influence of the Monroe Doctrine’s ongoing enforcement, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in order to chase the Palestine Liberation Army out of the region, previously chased out of Jordan. After devastating attacks on civilian and PLO targets, the PLO were given passage to Tunisia. The attacks included the massacre of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps, actuated by a Lebanese militia, the Christian Phalange, under the not so watchful eye of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli military commander in the region at the time with the IDF. The biggest headlines did not come from this massacre but from the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. This led to the withdrawal of U.S. ground forces but the U.S. navy, most famously the USS New Jersey, remained to shell forces hostile to Israeli involvement in the area. Increasingly, U.S. and Israeli actions were coordinated in the Middle East.

The invasion became an occupation when Israel pulled out of Beirut but settled into a ‘defensive’ zone in southern Lebanon. The rising power of Hezbollah, an indigenous religious group supporting the Muslim population, created rising costs in financial and material terms for the Israelis who pulled back to the official border line in May, 2000, eighteen years after the initial invasion.

Israel was in it for its own benefit, regardless of U.S. interests, in order to gain as much as it could from U.S. financial sources and military sources. Always pleading the victim, increasingly framing the attacks against its forces as Arab terrorists, the power of Israeli influence on U.S. politics became obvious. Ever since World War II, U.S. politicians feared the apparent power of the Jewish vote, the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the increasing political power of the fundamentalist evangelical Christian Zionists. By providing electoral support both financially and through propaganda supporting its own interests against politicians not supporting the Israeli cause, Israel controlled much of the foreign policy sector of the U.S. government.

For the U.S., beyond the Israeli political manipulations of AIPAC and the evangelical vote, two other factors maintained U.S. interest and involvement. Publicly stated at this time was the rhetoric concerning communism and the need to protect “our interests” - oil - in the Middle East. Somewhat hidden within that was theU.S. petrodollar, based on Saudi Arabia only using the US$ to sell its oil while circulating the money back through U.S. financial and military corporations as discussed previously. Israel served as the Western military outpost in the Middle East, maintaining western power in the region, and as is more obvious now, allied with Saudi Arabia, the latter officially mouthing off against Israel, but doing nothing to support its rhetoric.

Gorbachev/Yeltsin - Soviet Union down; Deng - China rising; Putin - Russia rising
Near the end of his term, Reagan made an honest attempt to negotiate a denuclearization treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader. They almost succeeded except for Reagan’s insistence on creating a “Star Wars” defense initiative. Entirely speculative, but maybe his growing dementia prohibited a truly critical analysis of the situation and the relative impossibility of establishing a Star Wars scenario, at least as envisioned at the time. Or maybe the influence of the rising neocon aggressive war posturing prevented his ideals to be realized. Whatever the case, the moment passed, a fading glimmer of what might have been, only to be revived in an idealized way forty years later.

Gorbachev’s “perestroika” and “glasnost” revealed the faults and impoverishment of the Soviet dictatorship, the words essentially signifying opening up the economy and liberalizing the citizen’s abilities for critical commentary. This began in 1985. Beset with problems in Poland and the rising power of its independent labour union Solidarity and its leader Lech Walesa, having withdrawn from the bloodletting in Afghanistan in early 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Soviet era in eastern Europe was coming to a close.

After the withdrawal of Soviet troops began, followed by the promises of the Clinton government to not move NATO “one inch closer” to Soviet territory, the Soviet era ended in eastern Europe, truly ended with the reunification of Germany in 1990. The Cold War was over.

For a brief while the perception was that the moment for global peace had arrived, and in a manner it had. The U.S. dominated the world militarily although the Russian state still maintained a large nuclear weapons stockpile. China had not yet risen enough to achieve the status of competitor, challenger, enemy from the U.S. establishment. Peace loomed large on the horizon.

The Soviet Union no longer existed. In 1991 under the weak leadership of Boris Yeltsin the Soviet Union disassembled into its constituent republics, large parts of its former territory becoming independent states. The new Russia, while still a nuclear power had been seriously weakened economically and militarily and it settled into a serious recession. Events were leading toward the democratization of Russia U.S. style.

According to Francis Fukuyama, history was over, the neoliberal order as exemplified by the U.S. and its leaders was triumphant, being the natural order of the human world. Its rule of law had proven to be the highest endeavour of democratic freedoms and individual liberties. All alternatives had failed and a Pax Americana was to rule the world - a short sighted vision ignoring many cracks in the facade of imperial success. Russia politically and demographically continued its downward momentum, forgotten by most of the world as a threat, treated as a commercial resource prize by a few dominant corporate-political liaisons.

Several undercurrents would later become major tides in turning the world’s course of history away from anything remotely resembling peace. Russia’s neighbour China had begun a long continuous period of financial and industrial growth after the death of Mao tse-tung and the popularized slogan “to be rich is wonderful” made its way into the lexicon of understanding China. While still not a dominant financial and production center, its rapid growth was leading it towards larger global status. The war in Afghanistan had become a domestic fight when the Soviet forces extricated themselves soon leading to the success of the Pashtun based Pakistani supported taliban - students. Mullah Omar ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996, establishing a strict sharia governance over the area he ruled. About ten per cent fell under the control of several other war lords joined together as the Northern Alliance, a group that later provided the gateway for U.S. intervention several years later.

Saudi Arabia sponsored its brand of Wahhabi fundamentalism, a Sunni based Muslim sect, throughout the Middle East and beyond into other Muslim territories. Many madrassas or religious schools were established, the ones of note for the coming debacle in South Asia were the ones established throughout Pakistan. At the same time, the Saudi based millionaire, Osama bin Laden, established and funded al-Qaeda, the base, an organization dedicated to violent acts of terrorism against governments complying with western demands and western culture. The peaceful jihad of the Koran became the violent jihad of Osama bin Laden wanting to destroy the west, in particular the U.S., by drawing them into conflict in a series of debilitating conflicts throughout the Middle East and South Asia. After the U.S. had established its own form of jihad in Afghanistan by creating and aligning itself with and arming the mujahideen, the blowback from that had yet to be recognized.

Inside the U.S. itself a gradually developing group of neoconservatives gathered more and more power through the passage of different presidents. Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld. Douglas Feith, “Scooter” Libby, John Bolton, Richard Perle and others who later founded the Project For a New American Century - and its call for a “new Pearl Harbor” - held different and changing positions within the administrations and in various private organizations, corporations, and think tanks. This unelected group of “chicken hawks” determined the course of many governmental actions in support of Israel, and headed towards a global hegemony wanting to take down any and all those who opposed them. While the masses expected and were led to believe in a “peace dividend” from the perceived success in the Cold War over Russia, no domestic money flowed into infrastructure or socially progressive programs. The system increasingly ran on financialized wealth rather than the creation of goods and services. History was not over, but breathing deeply, gathering wind for the next set of events.

When Gorbachev resigned from his position Boris Yeltsin became president of the new much smaller Russia. U.S. advisors swarmed into the country, a country devoid of financial and commercial law, without a strong banking system, and no private corporations. The state/government repositioned under a new constitution, written by Russians under the advisement of U.S. academics, many from Harvard, the most notable being Jeffrey Sachs. The so called neo-liberals applied their “shock therapy” to an already declining economy, the idea being to break away from any remnants of previous Soviet governance - in short to open up all the state industries and resources for private enterprise capture and harvest.

A market economy burst forth out of thin air and millions of shares of former state run industries were distributed to the populace. As the economy crashed, people had little recourse but to sell their share to whoever would buy them. Unsurprisingly, many former Soviet officials quickly harvested the shares, creating the oligarchs that held sway over the Russian economy for many years. Much of the money travelled overseas, aided and abetted by western entrepreneurs taking advantage of the new financial wild frontier. The money bought assets and sought refuge in offshore accounts away from ruble depreciation and the reach of what little financial law there was. The oligarchs, corruption, and cronyism ruled Yeltsin’s Russia, eventually creating a backlash threatening the rule of the oligarchs and their western partners and co-profiteers.

Interfering in foreign countries for financial and political gains was nothing new for the U.S. In 1996 Yeltsin’s popularity had fallen to single digits inside Russia. The U.S. and its various government and NGO organizations mounted a campaign to have Yeltsin re-elected against the rising popularity of the old Communist party. Using a media blitz more common to U.S. elections - using mudslinging as opponents, creating a fear factor in the population - the U.S. succeeded in having Yeltsin elected again. It was a well documented, publicly known, foreign intervention in another country’s election, signalled proudly on the cover of TIME, accompanied by stories of fraud and ballot stuffing to ensure the victory.

In essence, the U.S. owned the Russian government, controlled indirectly much of its financial operations and the economic and demographic decline continued. When emerging markets in Asia suffered a meltdown, the ruble threatened to follow with a large depreciation. In order to protect western investors, the IMF arranged a $17 billion loan in 1998 essentially to cover earlier loans and help western financial dealers retrieve their money safely from the system. With falling commodity prices due to the Asian market decline, Russia’s economy continued to collapse. Not surprisingly as the economic situation worsened so did the demographic data: life expectancy dropped dramatically, births declined, infant mortality increased,the population as a whole declined. Russia rapidly became a nuclear armed third world country. Interfering in other countries and creating economic and political chaos appeared to be working for U.S. hegemony, and Russia became a side issue as the U.S. focussed on the Middle East.

With Russia sidelined China became more of an interest for its large potential markets, large resources (except oil and gas), and an abundance of cheap labour. The disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the cultural revolution had witnessed Deng Xiaoping as an opponent to some of Mao’s ideas while remaining loyal to the communist ethos that had rid China of foreign imperial interference. After the fall of Mao and then the “Gang of Four”, Deng became China’s leader in 1978. Known for his earlier comment “it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”, Deng opened China up to foreign investments, received recognition from the Jimmy Carter government in 1989 and later toured the U.S., visiting several large corporations including Boeing and Coca-Cola.

Remaining ideologically communist, Deng instituted the first reforms to the system, his first being the all important agricultural sector - rather than the state (local committees thereof) owning all the harvest, a quota was established beyond which the farmer was free to keep for their own needs or to sell or trade on an open market. The quota system was then applied to manufacturing and trades business allowing profits to be “harvested” or reinvested in other profitable ventures. This was old school capitalism in which the money saved was used to reinvest in productivity. It took some time before the financialized economy of rents and leverages was adopted from the U.S. Deng’s cat aphorism was accompanied by the apocryphal saying, “it is glorious to be rich.” Politically Deng’s rule was not easy and straightforward as party reactionaries had him ousted for a while until Deng’s own clever counter actions brought him back to power. China was beginning its not so long march to prosperity.

No shock doctrine accompanied China’s changing system. It carefully controlled entrance to the country, established rules on how to operate within the country, subjected foreign companies to comply with sharing some of the “intellectual property” secrets and information. Large corporations were eager to locate into the market, avoiding U.S. taxes and high labour wages, so much so that intellectual proprietary rights were handed over while the domestic U.S. manufacturing base went on an equally paced decline (not all due to China - the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 saw many manufacturing plants head to Mexico for cheap labour).

China however was not an equal player in the market as the US$ still reigned supreme. An essential difference in the markets is that the Chinese are capable of long term planning, a legacy of five thousand years of history and a generally centralized system of governance. Five-year plans seem long by western standards used to quarterly profit seeking and reports on profits and losses, but the five years are only segments of a much broader temporal and spatial world view. China’s rise to global multipolarity power status was not a short game, but one based on long term planning.

Several long term goals and interlocking strategies combined within the overall plan to move China into the global power sphere. These included accession to the WTO, inclusion into the basket of currencies making up the “special drawing rights” or SDR ‘money of the IMF, an expanding financial/commercial sector, and a rapid and significant growth in domestic technology to aid in gaining independence against ongoing U.S. military threats. In 2001 China finally achieved its goal of accession to the WTO. This signalled to the world that China’s economy and trade would be more open to the world, more liberal, with the yuan or renminbi now on the international markets. China did allow more investment, but also gained a larger manufacturing base; exports increased enormously as those same companies exported many different products ranging from cheap plastic trinkets to more sophisticated electronics. A majority of this travelled to the U.S. creating a large U.S. trade deficit and a surplus of US$ in Chinese coffers. Shopping at the nearest Walmart was shopping at the nearest Chinese manufacturers outlet store.

In 2016 having demonstrated a more liberal economic policy, China succeeded in placing the yuan into the IMF SDR basket of currencies. This is largely a symbolic move moving the yuan into the realm of currencies operating globally. Other factors affected the value of the yuan and its place in international economies. The ongoing belligerence of the U.S. in spite of the trade dependency - or because of it from other perspectives - and remembering the U.S. goal of global hegemony - forced the Chinese to work on other financial systems and arrangements.

China worked increasingly and openly, having stated its desire officially even if unacknowledged by the U.S. mainstream media, to reduce the role of the US$ as sole reserve currency, aiming to join or to replace it. To this end, and with increasing assistance from a rising Russia (more in a moment), the BRICS nations established their own independent global bank and China initiated and many other countries joined in a new Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB). In spite of U.S. pressure to not do so, such stalwart allies as Canada and Britain have signed on as members of the AIIB.

China has negotiated international trade deals in local currencies, avoiding use of the US$, avoiding the SWIFT payment system, and along with Russia developed their own internal banking exchange system in case of sanctions imposed through the SWIFT system that might block foreign trade. Other initiatives include the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, now expanding throughout central Asia and on into Iran. More ambitiously, China’s long term planning includes a New Silk Road or the Belt and Road Initiative with the physical infrastructure already in progress: high speed railways, ports, communication systems, manufacturing and civic structures are all spreading out from China’s center, creating trade lines and alliances throughout Asia and into Europe. Beyond Asia, China is investing in many other countries in Africa and Latin America, avoiding the U.S. debt trap as used by the IMF and their structural adjustment programs.

Finally, indicating even more its long term financial planning, China has bought many thousands of tons of gold over the last two decades, mining its own deposits, and accumulating an estimated minimum of twenty thousand tons. Some of this has been put to use recently in a gold backed yuan based oil bourse signalling perhaps a future move to peg the yuan to gold or to make it fully convertible. Sooner or later, the US$, as a pure fiat currency, will print itself out of existence and China will be able to step into the breach.

But that is moving into speculative territory, a place I generally fear to tread (as similarly I fear to tread into historical “what if “ scenarios) and it is time to return to the late Twentieth Century and Yeltsin’s successor in Russia.

Russia had bottomed out. Declining demographics, a weak and oligarch controlled economy, an outdated and ineffective military, and an essentially dazed and confused political system rendered the country on the fringes of international interest, at least in the news of the mainstream media. The breakaway republic of Chechnya, almost independent after the 1996 peace, continued its export of terror into the Russian heartland. Yeltsin more or less served at the will of the oligarchs and the Clinton government.

Serving in the Yeltsin government was a then little known bureaucrat, Vladimir Putin. Putin had worked in politics in St. Petersburg, served with the Soviet KGB in East Germany, held tenure as head of the Russian FSB, the KGB’s successor. He worked quietly and effectively in all positions, someone who acted rather than talking dogma. He proved loyal to those working beneath him, beside him, or those who had appointed him to these positions. For whatever reason, Yeltsin elevated Putin to the position of Prime Minister, more than likely based on the political virtues of loyalty seconded by efficiency. It was not smooth sailing in the newly reconstructed Russia as domestic struggles combined with foreign influences greatly weakened the state in all areas. The slow dissembling of Yugoslavia revealed the weakness of the Russian position as it could offer no resistance from NATO aggravations nor offer any assistance to the region.

In failing health and with little political capital left, Yeltsin, in spite of all his faults, made a move proving critical to the survival of an independent Russia. With elections looming, he stepped aside and appointed Putin as temporary President of Russia in 1999. Yeltsin then managed the election process, for which Putin showed disdain - not for its democratic aspects but for the showmanship and rhetoric involved - and Putin was elected, officially becoming president three months later on January 01, 2000. Yeltsin in resigning acknowledged the failures of his government, but wanted to have a peaceful succession, a peaceful transfer of power so uncommon in Russian history. Putin’s appointment and election highlighted the loyalty and effectiveness demonstrated as he worked in previous positions supporting the Yeltsin government.

The decision appeared to have been accepted by the west, the U.S. government, the CIA, with equanimity. No great announcements of angst, or threats or challenges came from the direction of western governments. Perhaps, then viewed as a weak and declining state, embroiled in terrorist actions from Chechnya signalling the possible breakup of Russia itself, no reason presented itself to think the status quo would change. Putin made no great waves, perceived perhaps to be simply another leader to be readily controlled and manipulated by the oligarchs and U.S. advisors. Yeltsin’s parting words to Putin on the changeover were “Take care of Russia.” [The New Tsar. Steven Lee Myers, Simon & Schuster, 2016]. It was a quiet peaceful transition, under rated by the media at the time as the popular bureaucrat stepped into the top spot with huge repercussions to global geopolitics yet to be seen.

Putin had significant problems during his first year, with the ongoing severity of the second Chechen war and the continued poor economic situation. The sinking of the nuclear powered submarine Kursk played out in public light revealing some of the stagnation of procedures both diplomatically and militarily in the new Russia. Those news items were overshadowed, pretty much eliminated by a spectacular event enabling and creating immediate and lasting transitions to global geopolitics.