6-1-09

At the Bilderberg Meeting Its Announced Rothschilds and Rockefellers are Taking Over the Operations of the Securities and Exchange Commission

Bilderbergs plan to control the population: Israel nukes Iran; manipulated pandemics

The Federal Reserve is a private corporation owned primarily by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geinther worked for the Rothschilds and Rockefellers as their president of their New York Federal Reserve Bank before Obama named him US Treasury Secretary. Geinther is working on behalf of the Rothschilds and Rockefellers more as US Treasury Secretary than he was when they were directly paying his salary. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers created unregulated derivatives for the purpose of deliberately bankrupting banks and making trillions for themselves. Geinther's save the banks program directs the US taxpayer funded bailout money to keep banks afloat so they can pay the Rothschilds and Rockefellers their derivative profits and keep the banks playing the derivative game. Geinther could have allowed the banks go bankrupt, as he is General Motors. However if Geinther allowed the banks go bankrupt a bankruptcy judge would declare the Rothschilds and Rockefellers derivative contracts null, void and valueless. Geinther, directing the bailout money to keep banks afloat and paying off their derivative losses, is channeling US taxpayer money to the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers are using their derivative profits to buy bank stock cheap. Also, Geinther, keeping the banks afloat, keeps the Rothschild and Rockefeller bank derivative scam afloat, indefinitely. Well, not indefinitely, but until the value of the US dollar becomes zero. The US massive borrowings to pay off the Rothschilds and Rockefellers derivative profits has knocked the fool out of the value of the US dollar. But the US dollar is not completely dead, yet. Geinther keeping the derivative game going is part of the Rothschild/Rockefeller plan to completely destroy the US dollar. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers are manipulating oil prices up now to inflate bank and other share prices up. Logic dictates the Rothschilds and Rockefellers will pop their oil bubble to trigger another Wall Street sell off, as they did in 2008 to elect Obama. As the economy worsens after the bad guys pop their next oil bubble, Geinther will go back to Congress asking for more bailout money to keep banks afloat, asking for more taxpayer money to pay the Rothschilds and Rockefellers more derivative profits. Going back to the taxpayer for more money will destroy the US dollar more which is what the Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Geinther want. Their goal is to get the value of the dollar at zero. Americans who originally owned the banks will have sold their shares to the Rothschilds and Rockefellers and they will be totally and completely destitute. Most likely the Rothschilds and Rockefellers have a new world central bank in the works, which they own, the currency printed, and are ready to operate in their new banking system, which thanks to their derivative scam and Timothy Geinther, they will now own 100%. Of course what the Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Tim Geinther have done and are still doing is treason, for they are making war on the USA.

Get this. Another report from the Bildeberg meeting says Team Obama plans to strip the Security and Exchange Commission of its powers to regulate derivatives and give them to the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers Federal Reserve will be given authority to supervise financial firms deemed too big to fail. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geinther wants to give his bosses, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, the guys who invented and used derivatives to engineer the world's economic Holocaust, by way of their private company, the Federal Reserve, a central role in regulating derivatives. A participant at the Bilderberg meeting is said to have said, "It is understood the Fed would take on some of the work currently undertaken by the US Securities and Exchange Commission." Geinther, May 21, showing he has a massive sense of humor, is alleged to have told the Senate Banking Committee, "We must ensure that international rules for financial regulation are consistent with the high standards we will be implementing in the United States." The high standards Geinther is implementing consists of putting his bosses, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, the guys who created the derivatives which stole trillions from the people, in charge of regulating their tools of economic destruction, derivatives. Geinther, the guy who brags of our high financial standards, worked for the Rothschilds and Rockefellers as president of their Federal Reserve of New York, now works for the US taxpayer and is channeling trillions of bank bailout money to his old bosses, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, and is even setting them up to take over the Security and Exchange Commission. High standard? Whose high standards? Satan? The Rothschilds and Rockefellers supervising companies deemed to big to fail will consist of supervising the transfer of ownership to them.

The Rothschilds and Rockefellers plans for the world are becoming clearer. Basically the Rothschilds and Rockefellers are destroying the world's economic system, deliberately causing fear, panic and chaos and stealing what they can for themselves as it goes down. From disorder they intend to create order in the form of putting all six billion people on the planet in, except the 2 or 3 billion they intend to kill in their manipulated nuclear wars and pandemics, their totalitarian communi$$ police state. The theft of the world economy the Rothschilds and Rockefellers are directing incorporates putting Timothy Geinther in charge of doling out bailout money to them. Secondly Tim Geinther is putting the Rothschilds and Rockefellers in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission. This puts the bad guys in a position to steal the biggest and best businesses of the world. Congress is owned by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. Obama has basically no business experience. Obama spent so little time in the United States as a kid, his father was not an American, and Obama does not have a clue of the real meaning of the US Constitution. Obama said there were 57 states. It takes generations of a family living in the United States to understand the US Constitution. Obama either has no understanding as to what is happening, or he is a believer in the plan, or he is afraid to stand up to his handlers and do what is right. Little George was a third generation communi$t who made war on the US Constitution and the American people. Obama is following in Little Geoge's footsteps, but as unbelievable as it is, comrade Obama is shaping up as worse for America than comrade Little George. I do like Sonia Sotomayor, so far, but Obama sending Air Force One's back up on a mimic run of 911 was a major screw ball move. The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Team Obama come across to me as crazy people on steroids. It is as if they are in their own screwed up world, making war on the USA, and the other 6 billion people on this planet are not even in the game. Obama's inclusion amounts to the inclusion of fanatics dead set in putting the world in Zbigniew Brzezinski's totalitarian communi$t police state. China is freaked out and sees an economic and nuclear war ahead. Russia is freaked out and sees an economic and nuclear war ahead. comrade Brzezinski and his son Ian/Booz, Allen work hard to pit China against Russia to hold Russia in check as the zioni$t$, NATO, and the USA nuke the fool out of Russia. I get the feeling the leaders of the world see a massive train wreck ahead and have bent over and are in the process of kissing the _ss goodbye.

Population control was another Biderberg topic which obviously any speculation as to how the Rothschilds and Rockefellers plan to control the world's population is terrfying. If the Rothschilds and Rockefellers are concerned about controlling the world's population I am very concerned how they plan to go about it. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers deliberately infected the world with AIDS. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers are responsible for the Holocaust. We really don't have to ask how. It will be common as dog shit and Satan sent. Logic dictates the bad guys will use nukes and pandemics to reduce the world's population.

So what do we do when we see the world near implosion? Impeach. Impeach. Impeach. Impeach Obama and impeach members of Congress. They are not and have not done their jobs. They are not keeping their Oaths of Office to Protect and Defend the US Constitution. They are making war on the United States, which is treason punishable by death. Derivatives have got to go. Timothy Geinther must go. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers must go. Obama and the members of Congress who are implemently the Rothschilds and Rockefellers agenda to destroy the dollar and put the world at war and spread pandemics must go. The Brzeznskis must go.

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/the-bilderberg-plan-for-2009-remaking-the-global-political-economy-by-andrew-g-marshall/

The Bilderberg Plan for 2009: Remaking the Global Political Economy by Andrew G. Marshall
Posted on May 27, 2009 by dandelionsalad

by Andrew G. Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
May 27, 2009

From May 14-17, the global elite met in secret in Greece for the yearly Bilderberg conference, amid scattered and limited global media attention. Roughly 130 of the world’s most powerful individuals came together to discuss the pressing issues of today, and to chart a course for the next year. The main topic of discussion at this years meeting was the global financial crisis, which is no surprise, considering the list of conference attendees includes many of the primary architects of the crisis, as well as those poised to “solve” it.

The Agenda: The Restructuring of the Global Political Economy

Before the meeting began, Bilderberg investigative journalist Daniel Estulin reported on the main item of the agenda, which was leaked to him by his sources inside. Though such reports cannot be verified, his sources, along with those of veteran Bilderberg tracker, Jim Tucker, have proven to be shockingly accurate in the past. Apparently, the main topic of discussion at this years meeting was to address the economic crisis, in terms of undertaking, “Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty … or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.” Other items on the agenda included a plan to “continue to deceive millions of savers and investors who believe the hype about the supposed up-turn in the economy. They are about to be set up for massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead,” and “There will be a final push for the enactment of Lisbon Treaty, pending on Irish voting YES on the treaty in Sept or October,”[1] which would give the European Union massive powers over its member nations, essentially making it a supranational regional government, with each country relegated to more of a provincial status.

Shortly after the meetings began, Bilderberg tracker Jim Tucker reported that his inside sources revealed that the group has on its agenda, “the plan for a global department of health, a global treasury and a shortened depression rather than a longer economic downturn.” Tucker reported that Swedish Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister, Carl Bildt, “Made a speech advocating turning the World Health Organization into a world department of health, advocating turning the IMF into a world department of treasury, both of course under the auspices of the United Nations.” Further, Tucker reported that, “Treasury Secretary Geithner and Carl Bildt touted a shorter recession not a 10-year recession … partly because a 10 year recession would damage Bilderberg industrialists themselves, as much as they want to have a global department of labor and a global department of treasury, they still like making money and such a long recession would cost them big bucks industrially because nobody is buying their toys…..the tilt is towards keeping it short.”[2]

After the meetings finished, Daniel Estulin reported that, “One of Bilderberg’s primary concerns according to Estulin is the danger that their zeal to reshape the world by engineering chaos in order to implement their long term agenda could cause the situation to spiral out of control and eventually lead to a scenario where Bilderberg and the global elite in general are overwhelmed by events and end up losing their control over the planet.”[3]

On May 21, the Macedonian International News Agency reported that, “A new Kremlin report on the shadowy Bilderberg Group, who this past week held their annual meeting in Greece, states that the West’s financial, political and corporate elite emerged from their conclave after coming to an agreement that in order to continue their drive towards a New World Order dominated by the Western Powers, the US Dollar has to be ‘totally’ destroyed.” Further, the same Kremlin report apparently stated that, “most of the West’s wealthiest elite convened at an unprecedented secret meeting in New York called for and led by” David Rockefeller, “to plot the demise of the US Dollar.”[4]

The Secret Meeting of Billionaires

The meeting being referred to was a secret meeting where, “A dozen of the richest people in the world met for an unprecedented private gathering at the invitation of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to talk about giving away money,” held at Rockefeller University, and included notable philanthropists such as Gates, Buffett, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Eli Broad, Oprah Winfrey, David Rockefeller Sr. and Ted Turner. One attendee stated that, “It wasn’t secret,” but that, “It was meant to be a gathering among friends and colleagues. It was something folks have been discussing for a long time. Bill and Warren hoped to do this occasionally. They sent out an invite and people came.” Chronicle of Philanthropy editor Stacy Palmer said, “Given how serious these economic times are, I don’t think it’s surprising these philanthropists came together,” and that, “They don’t typically get together and ask each other for advice.” The three hosts of the meeting were Buffet, Gates and David Rockefeller.[5] [See: Appendix 2: Bilderberg Connections to the Billionaire’s Meeting].

Bilderberg founding member David Rockefeller, Honourary Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Honourary Chairman and Founder of the Trilateral Commission, Chairman of the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society, former Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan.

At the meeting, “participants steadfastly refused to reveal the content of the discussion. Some cited an agreement to keep the meeting confidential. Spokesmen for Mr. Buffett, Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Gates, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Soros and Ms. Winfrey and others dutifully declined comment, though some confirmed attendance.”[6] Reports indicate that, “They discussed how to address the global slump and expand their charitable activities in the downturn.”[7]

The UK newspaper The Times reported that these “leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population,” and that they “discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.” Interestingly, “The informal afternoon session was so discreet that some of the billionaires’ aides were told they were at ‘security briefings’.” Further, “The billionaires were each given 15 minutes to present their favourite cause. Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an ‘umbrella cause’ that could harness their interests,” and what was decided upon was that, “they agreed that overpopulation was a priority.” Ultimately, “a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat,” and that, “They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.” One guest at the meeting said that, “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government.”[8]

The Leaked Report

Bilderberg investigative reporter Daniel Estulin reportedly received from his inside sources a 73-page Bilderberg Group meeting wrap-up for participants, which revealed that there were some serious disagreements among the participants. “The hardliners are for dramatic decline and a severe, short-term depression, but there are those who think that things have gone too far and that the fallout from the global economic cataclysm cannot be accurately calculated if Henry Kissinger’s model is chosen. Among them is Richard Holbrooke. What is unknown at this point: if Holbrooke’s point of view is, in fact, Obama’s.” The consensus view was that the recession would get worse, and that recovery would be “relatively slow and protracted,” and to look for these terms in the press over the next weeks and months.

Estulin reported, “that some leading European bankers faced with the specter of their own financial mortality are extremely concerned, calling this high wire act “unsustainable,” and saying that US budget and trade deficits could result in the demise of the dollar.” One Bilderberger said that, “the banks themselves don’t know the answer to when (the bottom will be hit).” Everyone appeared to agree, “that the level of capital needed for the American banks may be considerably higher than the US government suggested through their recent stress tests.” Further, “someone from the IMF pointed out that its own study on historical recessions suggests that the US is only a third of the way through this current one; therefore economies expecting to recover with resurgence in demand from the US will have a long wait.” One attendee stated that, “Equity losses in 2008 were worse than those of 1929,” and that, “The next phase of the economic decline will also be worse than the ’30s, mostly because the US economy carries about $20 trillion of excess debt. Until that debt is eliminated, the idea of a healthy boom is a mirage.”[9]

According to Jim Tucker, Bilderberg is working on setting up a summit in Israel from June 8-11, where “the world’s leading regulatory experts” can “address the current economic situation in one forum.” In regards to the proposals put forward by Carl Bildt to create a world treasury department and world department of health under the United Nations, the IMF is said to become the World Treasury, while the World Health Organization is to become the world department of health. Bildt also reaffirmed using “climate change” as a key challenge to pursue Bilderberg goals, referring to the economic crisis as a “once-in-a-generation crisis while global warming is a once-in-a-millennium challenge.” Bildt also advocated expanding NAFTA through the Western hemisphere to create an American Union, using the EU as a “model of integration.”

The IMF reportedly sent a report to Bilderberg advocating its rise to becoming the World Treasury Department, and “U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner enthusiastically endorsed the plan for a World Treasury Department, although he received no assurance that he would become its leader.” Geithner further said, “Our hope is that we can work with Europe on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight.”[10]

Bilderberg’s Plan in Action?

Reorganizing the Federal Reserve

Following the Bilderberg meeting, there were several interesting announcements made by key participants, specifically in regards to reorganizing the Federal Reserve. On May 21, it was reported that US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner “is believed to be leaning heavily towards giving the Federal Reserve a central role in future regulation,” and “it is understood that the Fed would take on some of the work currently undertaken by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.”[11]

On Wednesday, May 20, Geithner spoke before the Senate Banking Committee, at which he stated that, “there are important indications that our financial system is starting to heal.” In regards to regulating the financial system, Geithner stated that, “we must ensure that international rules for financial regulation are consistent with the high standards we will be implementing in the United States.”[12]

Bloomberg reported that, “The Obama administration may call for stripping the Securities and Exchange Commission of some of its powers under a regulatory reorganization,” and that, “The proposal, still being drafted, is likely to give the Federal Reserve more authority to supervise financial firms deemed too big to fail. The Fed may inherit some SEC functions, with others going to other agencies.” Interestingly, “SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro’s agency has been mostly absent from negotiations within the administration on the regulatory overhaul, and she has expressed frustration about not being consulted.”

It was reported that “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was set to discuss proposals to change financial regulations last night at a dinner with National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers [who was also present at Bilderberg], former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker [also at Bilderberg], ex-SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt and Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard University law professor who heads the congressional watchdog group for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.”[13] The Federal Reserve is a privately owned central bank, owned by its shareholders, consisting of the major banks the make up each regional Fed bank (the largest of which is JP Morgan Chase and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York). This plan would essentially give a privately owned bank, which has governmental authority, the ability to regulate the banks that own it. It’s the equivalent of getting a Colonel to guard a General to whom he is directly answerable. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house. It is literally granting ownership over the financial regulator to the banks being regulated.

As Market Watch, an online publication of the Wall Street Journal, reported, “The Federal Reserve, created nearly 100 years ago in the aftermath of a financial panic, could be transformed into a different agency as the Obama administration reinvents the way government interacts with the financial system.” Referring to Geithner’s Senate appearance, it was reported that, “Geithner was also grilled on the cozy relationships that exist between the big banks and the regional Federal Reserve banks. Before Geithner joined the administration, he was president of the New York Fed, which is a strange public-private hybrid institution that is actually owned and run by the banks.” In response, “Geithner insisted that the private banks have no say over the policies of the New York Fed, but he acknowledged that the banks do have a say in hiring the president, who does make policy. The chairman of the New York Fed, Stephen Friedman, was forced to resign earlier this month because of perceived conflicts of interest due to his large holdings in Goldman Sachs.”[14]

The IMF as a Global Treasury

The Bilderberg agenda of creating a global treasury has already been started prior to the Bilderberg meeting, with decisions made during the G20 financial summit in April. Although the G20 seemed to frame it more in context of being formed into a global central bank, although it is likely the IMF could fill both roles.

Following the G20 meeting at the beginning of April, 2009, it was reported that, “The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity,” as the Communiqué released by the G20 leaders stated that, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity,” and that, “SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.” Essentially, “they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body.”[15] [See Appendix 2: Creating a Central Bank of the World]

Following the Bilderberg meeting, “President Obama has asked Congress to authorize $100 billion in loans to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help create a $500 billion global bailout fund,” which would give the IMF the essential prerogative of a global treasury, providing bailouts for countries in need around the world. Further, “the bill would allow the IMF to borrow up to $100 billion from the U.S. and increase the U.S. fiscal contribution to the IMF by $8 billion.” Elaborating on the program, it was reported that, “World leaders began on the global bailout initiative, called the New Arrangement for Borrowing (NAB), at the G-20 summit in early April. The president agreed at that time to make the additional funds available.” Obama wrote that, “Treasury Secretary Geithner concluded that the size of the NAB is woefully inadequate to deal with the type of severe economic and financial crisis we are experiencing, and I agree with him.”[16]

With the G20 decision to increase the usage of IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), forming a de facto world currency, it was recently reported that, “Sub-Saharan Africa will receive around $10 billion from the IMF in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to help its economies weather the global financial crisis,” and that, “As part of a $1.1 trillion deal to combat the world economic downturn agreed at April’s G20 summit, the IMF will issue $250 billion worth of SDRs, which can be used to boost foreign currency reserves.”[17]

Recent reports have also indicated that the IMF’s role in issuing SDRs goes hand in hand with the Bilderberg discussion on the potential collapse of the US dollar, and, “Transforming the dollar standard into an SDR-based system would be a major break with a policy that has lasted more than 60 years.” It was reported that, “There are two ways in which the dollar’s role in the international monetary system can be reduced. One possibility is a gradual, market-determined erosion of the dollar as a reserve currency in favor of the euro. But, while the euro’s international role – especially its use in financial markets – has increased since its inception, it is hard to envisage it overtaking the dollar as the dominant reserve currency in the foreseeable future.” However, “With the dollar’s hegemony unlikely to be seriously undermined by market forces, at least in the short and medium-term, the only way to bring about a major reduction in its role as a reserve currency is by international agreement.” This is where the SDRs come into play, as “One way to make the SDR the major reserve currency relatively soon would be to create and allocate a massive amount of new SDRs to the IMF’s members.”[18] This is, interestingly, exactly what is happening with Africa and the IMF now.

Former IMF Managing Director Jacques de Larosière recently stated that the current financial crisis, “given its scope, presents a unique opening to improve institutions, and there is already a danger that the chance might be missed if the different actors cannot agree to changes by the time economic growth resumes.” He is now an adviser with BNP Paribas, a corporation highly represented at Bilderberg meetings, and he was head of the Treasury of France when Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was President of France, who is a regular of the Bilderberg Group.[19]

The Guardian Covers Bilderberg

The British paper, the Guardian, was the only major mainstream news publication to provide ongoing coverage of the Bilderberg meeting over the weekend. His first columns were satirical and slightly mocking, referring to it as, “A long weekend at a luxury hotel, where the world’s elite get to shake hands, clink glasses, fine-tune their global agenda and squabble over who gets the best sun loungers. I’m guessing that Henry Kissinger brings his own, has it helicoptered in and guarded 24/7 by a CIA special ops team.”[20] However, as the weekend dragged on, his reporting took a change of tone. He reported on the Saturday that, “I know that I’m being followed. I know because I’ve just been chatting to the plainclothes policemen I caught following me,” and he was arrested twice in the first day of the meetings for attempting to take photographs as the limousines entered the hotel.[21]

He later reported that he wasn’t sure what they were discussing inside the hotel, but that he has “a sense of something rotten in the state of Greece,” and he further stated, “Three days and I’ve been turned into a suspect, a troublemaker, unwanted, ill at ease, tired and a bit afraid.” He then went on to write that, “Bilderberg is all about control. It’s about “what shall we do next?” We run lots of stuff already, how about we run some more? How about we make it easier to run stuff? More efficient. Efficiency is good. It would be so much easier with a single bank, a single currency, a single market, a single government. How about a single army? That would be pretty cool. We wouldn’t have any wars then. This prawn cocktail is GOOD. How about a single way of thinking? How about a controlled internet?,” and then, “How about not.”

He makes a very astute point, countering the often postulated argument that Bilderberg is simply a forum where people can speak freely, writing: “I am so unbelievably backteeth sick of power being flexed by the few. I’ve had it flexed in my face for three days, and it’s up my nose like a wasp. I don’t care whether the Bilderberg Group is planning to save the world or shove it in a blender and drink the juice, I don’t think politics should be done like this,” and the author, Charlie Skelton, eloquently stated, “If they were trying to cure cancer they could do it with the lights on.” He further explained that, “Bilderberg is about positions of control. I get within half a mile of it, and suddenly I’m one of the controlled. I’m followed, watched, logged, detained, detained again. I’d been put in that position by the “power” that was up the road.”[22]

On Sunday, May 17, Skelton reported that when he asked the police chief why he was being followed, the chief responded asking, “Why you here?” to which Skelton said he was there to cover the Bilderberg conference, after which the chief stated, “Well, that is the reason! That is why! We are finished!”[23] Do reporters get followed around and stalked by police officers when they cover the World Economic Forum? No. So why does it happen with Bilderberg if all it is, is a conference to discuss ideas freely?

On the Monday following the conference, Skelton wrote that, “It isn’t just me who’s been hauled into police custody for daring to hang around half a mile from the hotel gates. The few journalists who’ve made the trip to Vouliagmeni this year have all been harassed and harried and felt the business end of a Greek walkie-talkie. Many have been arrested. Bernie, from the American Free Press, and Gerhard the documentarian (sounds like a Dungeons and Dragons character) chartered a boat from a nearby marina to try to get photos from the sea. They were stopped three miles from the resort. By the Greek navy.” As Skelton said himself, “My dispatches on the 2009 conference, if they mean anything at all, represent nothing more acutely than the absence of thorough mainstream reporting.”[24]

Skelton’s final report on Bilderberg from May 19, showed how far he had gone in his several days of reporting on the meeting. From writing jokingly about the meeting, to discovering that he was followed by the Greek State Security force. Skelton mused, “So who is the paranoid one? Me, hiding in stairwells, watching the pavement behind me in shop windows, staying in the open for safety? Or Bilderberg, with its two F-16s, circling helicopters, machine guns, navy commandos and policy of repeatedly detaining and harassing a handful of journalists? Who’s the nutter? Me or Baron Mandelson? Me or Paul Volker, the head of Obama’s economic advisory board? Me or the president of Coca-Cola?”

Skelton stated that, “Publicity is pure salt to the giant slug of Bilderberg. So I suggest next year we turn up with a few more tubs. If the mainstream press refuses to give proper coverage to this massive annual event, then interested citizens will have to: a people’s media.”

Amazingly, Skelton made the pronouncement that what he learned after the Bilderberg conference, was that, “we must fight, fight, fight, now – right now, this second, with every cubic inch of our souls – to stop identity cards,” as, “It’s all about the power to ask, the obligation to show, the justification of one’s existence, the power of the asker over the subservience of the asked.” He stated that he “learned this from the random searches, detentions, angry security goon proddings and thumped police desks without number that I’ve had to suffer on account of Bilderberg: I have spent the week living in a nightmare possible future and many different terrible pasts. I have had the very tiniest glimpse into a world of spot checks and unchecked security powers. And it has left me shaken. It has left me, literally, bruised.” Pointedly, he explains that, “The identity card turns you from a free citizen into a suspect.”[25]

Who was there?

Royalty

Among the members of the Bilderberg Group are various European monarchs. At this years meeting, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was present, who happens to be the largest single shareholder in Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world’s largest corporations. She was joined by one of her three sons, Prince Constantijn, who also attended the meeting. Prince Constantijn has worked with the Dutch European Commissioner for the EU, as well as having been a strategic policy consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton in London, a major strategy and technology consulting firm with expertise in Economic and Business Analysis, Intelligence and Operations Analysis and Information Technology, among many others. Prince Constantijn has also been a policy researcher for RAND Corporation in Europe. RAND was initially founded as a global policy think tank that was formed to offer research and analysis to the US Armed Forces, however, it now works with governments, foundations, international organizations and commercial organizations.[26] Also present among European Royalty was Prince Philippe of Belgium, and Queen Sofia of Spain.

Private Bankers

As usual, the list of attendees was also replete with names representing the largest banks in the world. Among them, David Rockefeller, former CEO and Chairman of Chase Manhattan, now JP Morgan Chase, of which he was, until recently, Chairman of the International Advisory Board; and still sits as Honourary Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Chairman of the Board of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, Honourary Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, which he founded alongside Zbigniew Brzezinski; also a founding member of the Bilderberg Group, prominent philanthropist and is the current patriarch of one of the world’s richest and most powerful banking dynasties.

Also present was Josef Ackermann, a Swiss banker who is CEO of Deutsche Bank, also a non-executive director of Royal Dutch Shell; Deputy Chairman of Siemens AG, Europe’s largest engineering corporation; he is also a member of the International Advisory Council of Zurich Financial Services Group; Chairman of the Board of the Institute International of Finance, the world’s only global association of financial institutions; and Vice Chairman of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum.[27]

Roger Altman was also present at the Bilderberg meeting, an investment banker, private equity investor and former Deputy Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration. Other bankers at this years meeting include Ana Patricia Botin, Chairman of the Spanish bank, Banco Español de Crédito, formerly having worked with JP Morgan; Frederic Oudea, CEO and newly appointed Chairman of the Board of French bank Societe Generale; Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, an Italian banker and economist, formerly Italy’s Minister of Economy and Finance; Jacob Wallenberg, Chairman of Investor AB; Marcus Wallenberg, CEO of Investor AB; and George David, CEO of United Technologies Corporation, who also sits on the board of Citigroup, member of the Business Council, the Business Roundtable, and is Vice Chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. [For more on the Peterson Institute, see: Appendix 1]

Canadian bankers include W. Edmund Clark, President and CEO of TD Bank Financial Group, also a member of the board of directors of the C.D. Howe Institute, a prominent Canadian think tank; Frank McKenna, Deputy Chairman of TD Bank Financial Group, former Canadian Ambassador to the United States, former Premier of New Brunswick; and Indira Samarasekera, President of the University of Alberta, who is also on the board of Scotiabank, one of Canada’s largest banks.

Central Bankers

Of course, among the notable members of the Bilderberg Group, are the world’s major central bankers. Among this years members are the Governor of the National Bank of Greece, Governor of the Bank of Italy, President of the European Investment Bank, James Wolfensohn, former President of the World Bank, and Nout Wellink, on the board of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).[28] Jean-Claude Trichet, the President of the European Central Bank was also present.[29] There is no indication that the Governor of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke was present, which would be an odd turn of events, considering that the Federal Reserve Governor is always present at Bilderberg meetings, alongside the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William C. Dudley. I have contacted the New York Fed inquiring if Dudley visited Greece or went to any meetings in Greece between May 14-17, or if another senior representative from the New York Fed went in his stead. I have yet to get a response.

The Obama Administration at Bilderberg

The Obama administration was heavily represented at this years Bilderberg meeting. Among the attendees were Keith B. Alexander, a Lieutenant General of U.S. Army and Director of the National Security Agency, the massive spying agency of the United States; Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary and former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan; General James Jones, United States National Security Advisor; Henry Kissinger, Obama’s special envoy to Russia, longtime Bilderberg member and former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor; Dennis Ross, special advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; David Patraeus, Commander of CENTCOM, (U.S. Central Command, in the Middle East), Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House’s National Economic Council, former Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, former President of Harvard University, former Chief Economist of the World Bank; Paul Volcker, former Governor of the Federal Reserve System and Chair of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board; Robert Zoellick, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs and current President of the World Bank;[30] and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.[31]

Other Notable Names

Among many others present at the meeting are Viscount Étienne Davignon, former Vice President of the European Commission, and Honourary Chairman of the Bilderberg Group; Francisco Pinto Balsemão, former Prime Minister of Portugal; Franco Bernabè, CEO of Telecom Italia and Vice Chairman of Rothschild Europe; Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister of Sweden; Kenneth Clarke, Shadow Business Secretary in the UK; Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Services (MI6); Donald Graham, CEO of the Washington Post Company; Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, Secretary-General of NATO; John Kerr, member of the British House of Lords and Deputy Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell; Jessica Matthews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute; Romano Prodi, former Italian Prime Minister; J. Robert S. Prichard, CEO of Torstar Corporation and President Emeritus of the University of Toronto; Peter Sutherland, former Director General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), first Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and is currently Chairman of British Petroleum (BP) and Goldman Sachs International as well as being a board member of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, Vice Chairman of the European Roundtable of Industrialists, and longtime Bilderberg member; Peter Thiel, on the board of directors of Facebook; Jeroen van der Veer, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell; Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator of the Financial Times newspaper; and Fareed Zakaria, US journalist and board member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[32] There were also some reports that this years meeting would include Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as Wall Street Journal Editor Paul Gigot,[33] both of whom attended last years meeting.[34]

Conclusion

Clearly, it was the prerogative of this year’s Bilderberg meeting to exploit the global financial crisis as much as possible to reach goals they have been striving toward for many years. These include the creation of a Global Treasury Department, likely in conjunction with or embodied in the same institution as a Global Central Bank, both of which seem to be in the process of being incorporated into the IMF.

Naturally, Bilderberg meetings serve the interests of the people and organizations that are represented there. Due to the large amount of representatives from the Obama administration that were present, US policies revolving around the financial crisis are likely to have emerged from and serve the interests of the Bilderberg Group. Given the heavy representation of Obama’s foreign policy establishment at the Bilderberg meeting, it seemed surprising to not have received any more information regarding US foreign policy from this year’s meeting, perhaps having to do with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

However, the US recently decided to fire the general who oversaw the Afghan war, being replaced with “Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a former Green Beret who recently commanded the military’s secretive special operations forces in Iraq.”[35] From 2003 to 2008, McChrystal “led the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees the military’s most sensitive forces, including the Army’s Delta Force,” and who Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh singled out as the head of VP Cheney’s “executive assassination wing.”[36]

So, given these recent changes, as well as the high degree of representation Obama’s foreign policy establishment held at Bildebrerg this year, there were likely to have been some decisions or at least discussion of the escalation of the Afghan war and expansion into Pakistan. However, it is not surprising that the main item on the agenda was the global financial crisis. Without a doubt, the next year will be an interesting one, and the elite are surely hoping to make it a productive one.

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APPENDIX 1: Bilderberg Connections to the Billionaire’s Meeting

Peter G. Peterson, one of the guests in attendance at the secret billionaires meeting, was the former United States Secretary of Commerce in the Nixon administration, Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc., from 1977 to 1984, he co-founded the prominent private equity and investment management firm, the Blackstone Group, of which he is currently Senior Chairman, and in 1985, he became Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, taking over when David Rockefeller stepped down from that position. He founded the Peterson Institute for International Economics and was Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 2000-2004. The Peterson Institute for International Economics is a major world economic think tank, which seeks to “inform and shape public debate,” from which, “Institute studies have helped provide the intellectual foundation for many of the major international financial initiatives of the past two decades: reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), adoption of international banking standards, exchange rate systems in the G-7 and emerging-market economies, policies toward the dollar, the euro, and other important currencies, and responses to debt and currency crises (including the current crisis of 2008–09).” It has also “made important contributions to key trade policy decisions” such as the development of the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, APEC, and East Asian regionalism.[37]

It has a prominent list of names on its board of directors. Peter G. Peterson is Chairman of the board; George David, Chairman of United Technologies is Vice Chairman, as well as being a board member of Citigroup, and was a guest at this year’s Bilderberg meeting; Chen Yuan, Governor of the China Development Bank and former Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China (China’s central bank); Jessica Einhorn, Dean of Washington’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University, former Visiting Fellow of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), former Managing Director of the World Bank, and currently on the board of Time Warner and the Council on Foreign Relations; Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Central Bank of Israel, former Vice President at the World Bank, former Managing Director at the IMF, former Vice Chairman of Citigroup, and has also been a regular participant in Bilderberg meetings; Carla A. Hills, former US Trade Representative, and was the prime negotiator of NAFTA, she sits on the International Advisory Boards of American International Group, the Coca-Cola Company, Gilead Sciences, J.P. Morgan Chase, member of the Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission, Co-Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations, and played a key part in the CFR document, “Building a North American Community,” which seeks to remodel North America following along the lines of the European Union, and she has also been a prominent Bilderberg member; David Rockefeller also sits on the Peterson Institute’s board, as well as Lynn Forester de Rothschild; Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, who is at every Bilderberg meeting; Paul A. Volcker, former Governor of the Federal Reserve System, regular participant of Bilderberg meetings, and current Chair of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Honourary Directors of the Peterson Institute include Bilderbergers Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, a prime architect of the current crisis; Frank E. Loy, former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, and is on the boards of Environmental Defense, the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, Resources for the Future, and Population Services International; George P. Shultz, former US Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, President and Director of Bechtel Group and former Secretary of the Treasury.[38]

APPENDIX 2: Creating a Central Bank of the World

Jeffrey Garten, Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, former Dean of the Yale School of Management, previously served on the White House Council on International Economic Policy under the Nixon administration and on the policy planning staffs of Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance of the Ford and Carter administrations. He also was a managing director of Lehman Brothers and the Blackstone Group, is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. As early as 1998, Garten wrote an article for the New York Times in which he advocated the creation of a global central bank.[39]

Amid the current financial crisis, Garten wrote an article for the Financial Times in which he advocated for “the establishment of a Global Monetary Authority to oversee markets that have become borderless,” acting as a global central bank.[40] In late October, Garten wrote an article for Newsweek in which he said that world “leaders should begin laying the groundwork for establishing a global central bank.”[41]

Three days after the publication of Garten’s Newsweek article, it was reported that, “The International Monetary Fund may soon lack the money to bail out an ever growing list of countries crumbling across Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, raising concerns that it will have to tap taxpayers in Western countries for a capital infusion or resort to the nuclear option of printing its own money.” Further, “The nuclear option is to print money by issuing Special Drawing Rights, in effect acting as if it were the world’s central bank.”[42]

[For a detailed look at the moves to create a global central bank, regional currencies, a global reserve currency and a world governing body, see: Andrew G. Marshall, The Financial New World Order: Towards a Global Currency and World Government: Global Research, April 6, 2009]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zbigniew Brzezinski

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10th United States National Security Advisor
In office
1977 – 1981
President Jimmy Carter
Deputy David L. Aaron
Preceded by Brent Scowcroft
Succeeded by Richard V. Allen

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Born March 28, 1928 (1928-03-28) (age 81)
Warsaw, Poland
Political party Democratic
Alma mater McGill University
Harvard University
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (Polish: Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, pronounced ['zbig?ef b??'?i?ski]) : (born March 28, 1928, Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish-born American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. Known for his hawkish foreign policy at a time when the Democratic Party was increasingly dovish, he is a foreign policy "realist" and considered by some to be the Democrats' response to Republican Henry Kissinger.[1]

Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China), the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), the brokering of the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran from an important US client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic, encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing certain human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union,[2] the arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan[3] to fight against the Soviet-allied Afghan government to increase the probability of Soviet invasion and later entanglement in a Vietnam-style war,[4] and later to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing overt US control of the Panama Canal after 1999.

He is currently professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early years
1.2 Rising influence
1.3 Government
1.4 After power
1.5 Post 9/11
2 As National Security Advisor
3 Major policies
3.1 Afghanistan
3.2 Iran
3.3 China
3.4 Nuclear weapons
3.4.1 Nuclear strategy
3.5 Cambodia
3.5.1 Arms control
3.6 Arab-Israeli peace
3.7 Poland, the Pope, and Solidarity
3.8 Ending détente
4 Academia
4.1 Geostrategy
5 Public life
6 Film Appearances
7 Notes
8 In pop culture
9 Bibliography
9.1 Major works by Brzezinski
9.2 Other books and monographs
9.3 Selected essays and reports
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years
For historical background on these periods of history, see:
History of Poland (1918-1939), and
Second Polish Republic;
Weimar Republic, and
Nazi Germany;
History of the Soviet Union (1927-1953), and
Great Purge.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1928. His family, members of the lesser nobility (or "szlachta" in Polish), bore the Traby coat of arms and hailed from Brzezany in Galicia. This town is thought to be the source of the family name. Brzezinski's father was Tadeusz Brzezinski, a Polish diplomat who was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935; Zbigniew Brzezinski thus spent some of his earliest years witnessing the rise of the Nazis. From 1936 to 1938, Tadeusz Brzezinski was posted to the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge.

In 1938, Tadeusz Brzezinski was posted to Canada. In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was agreed to by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; subsequently the two powers invaded Poland. The 1945 Yalta Conference between the Allies allotted Poland to the Soviet sphere of influence, meaning Brzezinski's family could not safely return to their country.

[edit] Rising influence
After attending prep school in Montreal, [5] Brzezinski entered McGill University in 1945 to obtain both his BA and MA degrees (received in 1949 and 1950 respectively). His Master's thesis focused on the various nationalities within the Soviet Union.[6] Brzezinski's plan for doing further studies in Great Britain in preparation for a diplomatic career in Canada fell through, principally because he was ruled ineligible for a scholarship he had won that was only open to persons with British subject status. Brzezinski then went on to attend Harvard University to work on a PhD, focusing on the Soviet Union and the relationship between the October Revolution, Lenin's state, and the actions of Stalin. He received his doctorate in 1953; the same year, he traveled to Munich and met Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, head of the Polish desk of Radio Free Europe. He later collaborated with Carl J. Friedrich to develop the concept of totalitarianism and apply it to the Soviets in 1956.

For historical background on major events during this period, see:

History of Poland: The failure of reform Communism (1956-70), and
1956 Hungarian Revolution.
As a Harvard professor he argued against Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles's policy of rollback, saying that antagonism would push Eastern Europe further toward the Soviets. The Polish strike and Hungarian Revolution in 1956 lent some support to Brzezinski's idea that the Eastern Europeans could gradually counter Soviet domination. In 1957, he visited Poland for the first time since he left as a child, and it reaffirmed his judgment that splits within the Eastern bloc were profound.

In 1958 he became a United States citizen, although he probably also continues to be considered a Polish citizen under Polish law. Despite his years of residence in Canada and the presence of family members there, he never became a Canadian citizen.

In 1959 Brzezinski was not granted tenure at Harvard, and he moved to New York City to teach at Columbia University. Here he wrote Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, which focused on Eastern Europe since the beginning of the Cold War. He also became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and attended meetings of the Bilderberg Group.

During the 1960 US presidential elections, Brzezinski was an advisor to the John F. Kennedy campaign, urging a non-antagonistic policy toward Eastern European governments. Seeing the Soviet Union as having entered a period of stagnation, both economic and political, Brzezinski predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union along lines of nationality (expanding on his master's thesis).[6]

Brzezinski continued to argue for and support détente for the next few years, publishing "Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe" in Foreign Affairs,[7] and supporting non-antagonistic policies after the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the grounds that such policies might disabuse Eastern European nations of their fear of an aggressive Germany and pacify Western Europeans fearful of a superpower condominium along the lines of the Yalta Conference.

In 1964, Brzezinski supported Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign and the Great Society and civil rights policies, while on the other hand he saw Soviet leadership as having been purged of any creativity following the ousting of Khrushchev. Through Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, Brzezinski met with Adam Michnik, the future Polish Solidarity activist.

Brzezinski continued to support engagement with Eastern European governments, while warning against De Gaulle's vision of a "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals." He also supported the Vietnam War. From 1966 to 1968, Brzezinski served as a member of the Policy Planning Council of the US Department of State (President Johnson's 7 October 1966 "Bridge Building" speech was a product of Brzezinski's influence).

For historical background on events during this period, see:

Six-Day War;
Prague Spring, and
Socialism with a human face;
Tet offensive.
Events in Czechoslovakia further reinforced Brzezinski's criticisms of the right's aggressive stance toward Eastern European governments. His service to the Johnson administration, and his fact-finding trip to Vietnam made him an enemy of the New Left, despite his advocacy of de-escalation of the US' involvement in the war.

For the 1968 US presidential campaign, Brzezinski was chairman of the Hubert Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force. He advised Humphrey to break with several of President Johnson's policies, especially concerning Vietnam, the Middle East, and condominium with the USSR.

Brzezinski called for a pan-European conference, an idea that would eventually find fruition in 1973 as the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe.[8] Meanwhile he became a leading critic of both the Nixon-Kissinger détente condominium, as well as McGovern's pacifism.[9]

In his 1970 piece Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski argued that a coordinated policy among developed nations was necessary in order to counter global instability erupting from increasing economic inequality. Out of this thesis, Brzezinski co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, serving as director from 1973 to 1976. The Trilateral Commission is a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics primarily from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose was to strengthen relations among the three most industrially advanced regions of the capitalist world. Brzezinski selected Georgia governor Jimmy Carter as a member.

[edit] Government

Jimmy Carter standing with Zbigniew BrzezinskiJimmy Carter announced his candidacy for the 1976 presidential campaign to a skeptical media and proclaimed himself an "eager student" of Brzezinski. Brzezinski became Carter's principal foreign policy advisor by late 1975. He became an outspoken critic of the Nixon-Kissinger over-reliance on détente, a situation preferred by the USSR, favoring the Helsinki process instead, which focused on human rights, international law and peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe. Carter engaged Ford in foreign policy debates by contrasting the Trilateral vision with Ford's détente.

After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski National Security Advisor. Earlier that year, major labor riots broke out in Poland, laying the foundations for Solidarity. Brzezinski began by emphasizing the "Basket III" human rights in the Helsinki Final Act, which inspired Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia shortly thereafter.[10]

Brzezinski had a hand in writing parts of Carter's inaugural address, and this served his purpose of sending a positive message to Soviet dissidents.[11] The Soviet Union and Western European leaders both complained that this kind of rhetoric ran against the "code of détente" that Nixon and Kissinger had established.[12][13] Brzezinski ran up against members of his own Democratic Party who disagreed with this interpretation of détente, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Vance argued for less emphasis on human rights in order to gain Soviet agreement to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), whereas Brzezinski favored doing both at the same time. Brzezinski then ordered Radio Free Europe transmitters to increase the power and area of their broadcasts, a provocative reversal of Nixon-Kissinger policies.[14] West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt objected to Brzezinski's agenda, even calling for the removal of Radio Free Europe from German soil.[15]

The State Department was alarmed by Brzezinski's support for East German dissidents and objected to his suggestion that Carter's first overseas visit be to Poland. He visited Warsaw, met with Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (against the objection of the U.S. Ambassador to Poland), recognizing the Roman Catholic Church as the legitimate opposition to Communist rule in Poland.[16]

By 1978, Brzezinski and Vance were more and more at odds over the direction of Carter's foreign policy. Vance sought to continue the style of détente engineered by Nixon-Kissinger, with a focus on arms control. Brzezinski believed that détente emboldened the Soviets in Angola and the Middle East, and so he argued for increased military strength and an emphasis on human rights. Vance, the State Department, and the media criticized Brzezinski publicly as seeking to revive the Cold War.

Brzezinski advised Carter in 1978 to engage the People's Republic of China and traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for the normalization of relations between the two countries. This also resulted in the severing of ties with the United States' longtime anti-Communist ally the Republic of China. Also in 1978, Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II—an event which the Soviets believed Brzezinski orchestrated.

For historical background on this period of history, see:
Iranian Revolution;
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; and
Solidarity.
1979 saw two major strategically important events: the overthrow of US ally the Shah of Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Iranian Revolution precipitated the Iran hostage crisis, which would last for the rest of Carter's presidency. Brzezinski anticipated (some have claimed he even engineered[17]) the Soviet invasion, and, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the PRC, he created a strategy to undermine the Soviet presence. See below under "Major Policies - Afghanistan."

Using this atmosphere of insecurity, Brzezinski led the US toward a new arms buildup and the development of the Rapid Deployment Forces—policies that are both more generally associated with Ronald Reagan now. In 1980, Brzezinski planned Operation Eagle Claw, which was meant to free the hostages in Iran using the newly created Delta Force and other Special Forces units. The mission was a failure and led to Secretary Vance's resignation.

Brzezinski was criticized widely in the press and became the least popular member of Carter's administration. Edward Kennedy challenged President Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, and at the convention Kennedy's delegates loudly booed Brzezinski. Hurt by internal divisions within his party and a stagnant domestic economy, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide.

Brzezinski, acting under a lame duck Carter presidency, but encouraged that Solidarity in Poland had vindicated his style of engagement with Eastern Europe, took a hard-line stance against what seemed like an imminent Soviet invasion of Poland. He even made a midnight phone call to Pope John Paul II—whose visit to Poland in 1979 had foreshadowed the emergence of Solidarity—warning him in advance. The US stance was a significant change from previous reactions to Soviet repression in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

[edit] After power
Brzezinski left office concerned about the internal division within the Democratic party, arguing that the dovish McGovernite wing would send the Democrats into permanent minority.

He had mixed relations with the Reagan administration. On the one hand, he supported it as an alternative to the Democrats' pacifism, but he also criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly black-and-white terms.

He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and more so of Western European acquiescence to its imposition in the name of stability. Brzezinski briefed US vice-president George H.W. Bush before his 1987 trip to Poland that aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement.

In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President's Chemical Warfare Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party. Brzezinski published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Gorbachev's reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades. He said there were five possibilities for the Soviet Union: successful pluralization, protracted crisis, renewed stagnation, coup (by the KGB or Soviet military), or the explicit collapse of the Communist regime. He called collapse "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than protracted crisis. He also predicted that the chance of some form of communism existing in the Soviet Union in 2017 was a little more than 50% and that when the end did come it would be "most likely turbulent". In the event, the Soviet system collapsed totally in 1991 following Moscow's crackdown on Lithuania's attempt to declare independence, the Nagorno-Karabakh War of the late 1980s, and scattered bloodshed in other republics. This was a less violent outcome than Brzezinski and other observers anticipated.

In 1989 the Communists failed to mobilize support in Poland, and Solidarity swept the general elections. Later the same year, Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the Katyn Massacre. This served as an opportunity for him to ask the Soviet government to acknowledge the truth about the event, for which he received a standing ovation in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Ten days later, the Berlin Wall fell, and Soviet-supported governments in Eastern Europe began to totter.

Strobe Talbott, one of Brzezinski's long-time critics, conducted an interview with him for TIME magazine entitled Vindication of a Hardliner.

In 1990 Brzezinski warned against post–Cold War euphoria. He publicly opposed the Gulf War, arguing that the US would squander the international goodwill it had accumulated by defeating the Soviet Union and that it could trigger wide resentment throughout the Arab world. He expanded upon these views in his 1992 work Out of Control.

However, in 1993 Brzezinski was prominently critical of the Clinton administration's hesitation to intervene against Serbia in the Yugoslavian civil war. He also began to speak out against Russia's First Chechen War, forming the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. Wary of a move toward the reinvigoration of Russian power, Brzezinski negatively viewed the succession of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin after Boris Yeltsin. In this vein, he became one of the foremost advocates of NATO expansion.

[edit] Post 9/11
After the September 11, 2001 attacks Brzezinski was criticized for his role in the formation of the Afghan mujaheddin network, some of which later formed the Taliban and al Qaeda. He asserted that blame ought to be laid at the feet of the Soviet Union's invasion which radicalized the relatively stable Muslim society. However, Brzezinski is also accused of having "knowingly increased the probability that they (the Soviet Union) would invade" by supporting Afghan rebels before the invasion and drawing the Soviets into an "Afghan trap".[18]

Brzezinski was a leading critic of the George W. Bush administration's "war on terror." Some painted him as a neoconservative because of his friendship with Paul Wolfowitz and his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. However in 2004, Brzezinski wrote The Choice, which expanded upon The Grand Chessboard but sharply criticized the George W. Bush's foreign policy. He defended the paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and was an outspoken critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Brzezinski currently lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. He is married to the sculptor Emilie Anna Benes, a grandniece of Czechoslovakia's former president Edvard Beneš, and has three children. Ian served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO and is now a Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton. Mark is a partner in McGuire Woods LLP. His daughter Mika is a reporter who is currently the co-host and news reader on Morning Joe on MSNBC.

In September 2007, Brzezinski endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, saying, "What makes Obama attractive to me is that he understands that we live in a very different world where we have to relate to a variety of cultures and people."

[edit] As National Security Advisor
Main article: History of the United States National Security Council 1977-1981
President Carter chose Zbigniew Brzezinski for the position of National Security Adviser (NSA) because he wanted an assertive intellectual at his side to provide him with day-to-day advice and guidance on foreign policy decisions. Brzezinski would preside over a reorganized National Security Council (NSC) structure, fashioned to ensure that the NSA would be only one of many players in the foreign policy process.

Brzezinski's task was complicated by his (hawkish) focus on East-West relations in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights.

Initially, Carter reduced the NSC staff by one-half and decreased the number of standing NSC committees from eight to two. All issues referred to the NSC were reviewed by one of the two new committees, either the Policy Review Committee (PRC) or the Special Coordinating Committee (SCC). The PRC focused on specific issues, and its chairmanship rotated. The SCC was always chaired by Brzezinski, a circumstance he had to negotiate with Carter to achieve. Carter believed that by making the NSA chairman of only one of the two committees, he would prevent the NSC from being the overwhelming influence on foreign policy decisions it was under Kissinger's chairmanship during the Nixon administration. The SCC was charged with considering issues that cut across several departments, including oversight of intelligence activities, arms control evaluation, and crisis management. Much of the SCC's time during the Carter years was spent on SALT issues.

The Council held few formal meetings, convening only 10 times, compared with 125 meetings during the 8 years of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Instead, Carter used frequent, informal meetings as a decision-making device, typically his Friday breakfasts, usually attended by the Vice President, the secretaries of State and Defense, Brzezinski, and the chief domestic adviser. No agendas were prepared and no formal records were kept of these meetings, sometimes resulting in differing interpretations of the decisions actually agreed upon. Brzezinski was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of notes. Brzezinski also sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action. President Carter enjoyed these reports and frequently annotated them with his own views. Brzezinski and the NSC used these Presidential notes (159 of them) as the basis for NSC actions.

From the beginning, Brzezinski made sure that the new NSC institutional relationships would assure him a major voice in the shaping of foreign policy. While he knew that Carter would not want him to be another Kissinger, Brzezinski also felt confident that the President did not want Secretary of State Vance to become another Dulles and would want his own input on key foreign policy decisions.

Brzezinski's power gradually expanded into the operational area during the Carter Presidency. He increasingly assumed the role of a Presidential emissary. In 1978, for example, Brzezinski traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for normalizing U.S.-PRC relations. Like Kissinger before him, Brzezinski maintained his own personal relationship with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin. Brzezinski had NSC staffers monitor State Department cable traffic through the Situation Room and call back to the State Department if the President preferred to revise or take issue with outgoing State Department instructions. He also appointed his own press spokesman, and his frequent press briefings and appearances on television interview shows made him a prominent public figure, although perhaps not nearly as much as Kissinger had been under Nixon.

The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 significantly damaged the already tenuous relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT to other Soviet activities and the MX, together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he advanced proposals to maintain Afghanistan's "independence" but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition. An NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Only then did he decide to abandon SALT II ratification and pursue the anti-Soviet policies that Brzezinski proposed.

The Iranian revolution was the last straw for the disintegrating relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. As the upheaval developed, the two advanced fundamentally different positions. Brzezinski wanted to control the revolution and increasingly suggested military action to prevent Khomeini from coming to power, while Vance wanted to come to terms with the new Khomeini regime. As a consequence, Carter failed to develop a coherent approach to the Iranian situation. In the growing crisis atmosphere of 1979 and 1980 due to the Iranian hostage situation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a deepening economic crisis, Brzezinski's anti-Soviet views gained influence but could not end the Carter administration's malaise. Vance's resignation following the unsuccessful mission to rescue the American hostages in March 1980, undertaken over his objections, was the final result of the deep disagreement between Brzezinski and Vance.

[edit] Major policies
During the 1960s Brzezinski articulated the strategy of peaceful engagement for undermining the Soviet bloc and persuaded President Johnson, while serving on the State Department Policy Planning Council, to adopt in October 1966 peaceful engagement as U.S. strategy, placing détente ahead of German reunification and thus reversing prior U.S. priorities.

During the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of his political involvement, Brzezinski participated in the formation of the Trilateral Commission in order to more closely cement U.S.-Japanese-European relations. As the three most economically advanced sectors of the world, the people of the three regions could be brought together in cooperation that would give them a more cohesive stance against the communist threat.

While serving in the White House, Brzezinski emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive. With Jimmy Carter in Camp David, he assisted in the attainment of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. He actively supported Polish Solidarity and the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion, and provided covert support for national independence movements in the Soviet Union. He played a leading role in normalizing U.S.-PRC relations and in the development of joint strategic cooperation, cultivating a relationship with Deng Xiaoping, for which he is thought very highly of in mainland China to this day.

In the 1990s he formulated the strategic case for buttressing the independent statehood of Ukraine, partially as a means to ending a resurgence of the Russian Empire, and to drive Russia toward integration with the West, promoting instead "geopolitical pluralism" in the space of the former Soviet Union. He developed "a plan for Europe" urging the expansion of NATO, making the case for the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states. He also served as U.S. Presidential emissary to Azerbaijan in order to promote the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline. Further, he led, together with Lane Kirkland, the effort to increase the endowment for the U.S.–sponsored Polish-American Freedom Foundation from the proposed $112 million to an eventual total of well over $200 million.

He has consistently urged a U.S. leadership role in the world, based on established alliances, and warned against unilateralist policies that could destroy U.S. global credibility and precipitate U.S. global isolation.

[edit] Afghanistan
Main article: Operation Cyclone
Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the CIA and Britain's MI6. This policy had the explicit aim of promoting radical Islamist and anti-Communist forces to overthrow the secular communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan government in Afghanistan, which had been destabilized by coup attempts against Hafizullah Amin, the power struggle within the Soviet-supported parcham faction of the PDPA and a subsequent Soviet military intervention.

Years later, in a 1997 CNN/National Security Archive interview, Brzezinski detailed the strategy taken by the Carter administration against the Soviets in 1979:

We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again—for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt. [19]
Milt Bearden wrote in The Main Enemy that Brzezinski, in 1980, secured an agreement from the Saudi king to match American contributions to the Afghan effort dollar for dollar and that Bill Casey would keep that agreement going through the Reagan administration.[20]

In 1998, Brzezinski was interviewed by the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur on the topic of Afghanistan. He revealed that CIA support for the mujaheddin had started before the 1979 Soviet invasion, knowingly increasing the probability of a Soviet invasion. Brzezinski saw the invasion as an opportunity to embroil the Soviet Union in a bloody conflict comparable to America's experience in Vietnam. He referred to this as the "Afghan Trap" and viewed the end of the Soviet empire as worth the cost of strengthening militant Islamic groups.

He went on to say in that interview, "What is most important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" When the interviewer questioned him about Islamic fundamentalism representing a world menace, Brzezinski said, "Nonsense!" [21][22]

In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski says that assistance to the Afghan resistance was a tactic designed to bog down the Soviet army while the United States built up a deterrent military force in the Persian Gulf to prevent Soviet political or military penetration farther south (see: the Carter Doctrine).

In a footnote in his 2000 book The Geostrategic Triad, Brzezinski notes:

The full story of the productive U.S.-China cooperation directed against the Soviet Union (especially in regard to Afghanistan), initiated by the Carter Administration and continued under Reagan, still remains to be told.
A memo from Zbigniew Brzezinski to President Carter] on December 26, 1979, discusses the implications of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on U.S. foreign policy, especially regarding Iran.[23]

[edit] Iran

The Iranian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, meeting with Arthur Atherton, William H. Sullivan, Cyrus Vance, President Jimmy Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, in 1977Facing a revolution, the Shah of Iran sought help from the United States. Iran occupied a strategic place in U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, acting as an island of stability and a buffer against Soviet penetration into the region. The U.S. ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, recalls that Brzezinski "repeatedly assured Pahlavi that the U.S. backed him fully." These reassurances would not, however, amount to substantive action on the part of the United States. On November 4, 1978, Brzezinski called the Shah to tell him that the United States would "back him to the hilt." At the same time, certain high-level officials in the State Department decided that the Shah had to go, regardless of who replaced him. Brzezinski and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger (former Secretary of Defense under Ford) continued to advocate that the U.S. support the Shah militarily. Even in the final days of the revolution, when the Shah was considered doomed no matter what the outcome of the revolution, Brzezinski still advocated a U.S. invasion to stabilize Iran. President Carter could not decide how to appropriately use force and opposed a U.S. coup. He ordered the aircraft carrier Constellation to the Indian Ocean but ultimately supported a regime change. A deal was worked out with the Iranian generals to shift support to a moderate government, but this plan fell apart when Khomeini and his followers swept the country, taking power on February 12, 1979.

[edit] China

Deng Xiaoping and Zbigniew Brzezinski meeting in 1979Shortly after taking office in 1977, President Carter again reaffirmed the United States' position of upholding the Shanghai Communique. The United States and People's Republic of China announced on December 15, 1978, that the two governments would establish diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979. This required the severing of relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan. Consolidating U.S. gains in opening China was a major priority stressed by Brzezinski during his time as National Security Advisor.

The most important strategic aspect of the invigorated U.S.-Chinese relationship was in its effect on the Cold War. China was no longer considered part of a larger Sino-Soviet bloc but instead a third pole of power due to the Sino-Soviet Split, helping the United States to balance against Russia. A notable example, discussed above, is Chinese assistance in Brzezinski's efforts to draw Russia into a Vietnam-style conflict in Afghanistan. This strategy, initiated under Nixon and Kissinger, and consolidated under Carter and Brzezinski, is really the first instance of statesmen altering the world's polarity by design.[citation needed]

In the Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations dated January 1, 1979, the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The U.S. reiterated the Shanghai Communique's acknowledgment of the Chinese position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; Beijing acknowledged that the American people would continue to carry on commercial, cultural, and other unofficial contacts with the people of Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act made the necessary changes in U.S. domestic law to permit such unofficial relations with Taiwan to flourish.

In addition the severing relations with the ROC, the Carter administration also agreed to unilaterally pull out of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty (made with the Republic of China), pull out U.S. military personnel from Taiwan, and gradually reduce arms sales to the Republic of China. There was widespread opposition in Congress, notably from Republicans, due to the Republic of China's status as an anti-Communist ally in the Cold War. In Goldwater v. Carter, Barry Goldwater made a failed attempt to stop Carter from terminating the mutual defense treaty.

Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping's January 1979 visit to Washington, D.C., initiated a series of high-level exchanges, which continued until the spring of 1989. This resulted in many bilateral agreements, especially in the fields of scientific, technological, and cultural interchange and trade relations. Since early 1979, the United States and China have initiated hundreds of joint research projects and cooperative programs under the Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, the largest bilateral program.

On March 1, 1979, the United States and People's Republic of China formally established embassies in Beijing and Washington. During 1979, outstanding private claims were resolved, and a bilateral trade agreement was concluded. Vice President Walter Mondale reciprocated Vice Premier Deng's visit with an August 1979 trip to China. This visit led to agreements in September 1980 on maritime affairs, civil aviation links, and textile matters, as well as a bilateral consular convention.

As a consequence of high-level and working-level contacts initiated in 1980, U.S. dialogue with the PRC broadened to cover a wide range of issues, including global and regional strategic problems, political-military questions—including arms control—UN and other multilateral organization affairs, and international narcotics matters.

[edit] Nuclear weapons

[edit] Nuclear strategy
Presidential Directive 59, "Nuclear Employment Policy", dramatically changed U.S. targeting of nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union. Implemented with the aid of Defense Secretary Harold Brown, this directive officially set the U.S. on a countervailing strategy.[24]

[edit] Cambodia
In 1981 Brzezinski revealed that he encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. This was part of a wider policy of forcing the Vietnamese out of Cambodia by funding anti-Vietnamese guerrilla groups that the U.S. helped create.[25] Between 1979 and 1981, the World Food Program, which was under US influence, provided nearly $12 million in food aid to Thailand. Much of this aid made its way to the Khmer Rouge.[26] In January 1980 the US started funding Pol Pot while he was in exile. The extent of this support was $85 million from 1980 to 1986.[27] Brzezinski's support of the Khmer Rouge was a continuation of the friendly relations the US had with the Khmer Rouge during the presidency of Gerald Ford. Kissinger had already asked Thailand's foreign minister in 1975 to tell the Khmer Rouge that the US would be friends with them.[28] Brzezinski himself however denied that his administration helped China fund Pol Pot in a letter he sent to the New York Times in 1998.[29]

[edit] Arms control
See also: Arms Control

President Jimmy Carter and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, 16 June 1979, in Washington D.C. Zbigniew Brzezinski is directly behind President Carter and is the only person smiling in the picture.

[edit] Arab-Israeli peace
Main article: Camp David Accords (1978)
On October 10, 2007 Brzezinski along with other influential signatories sent a letter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice titled 'Failure Risks Devastating Consequences'. The letter was partly an advice and a warning of the failure of an upcoming [30] US sponsored Middle East conference scheduled for Nov 2007 between Israelis and Palestinians. The letter also suggested to engage in "a genuine dialogue with Hamas" than to isolate it further.[31]

President Jimmy Carter with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance at Camp David in 1977
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin engages Zbigniew Brzezinski in a game of chess at Camp David

[edit] Poland, the Pope, and Solidarity

[edit] Ending détente
This section requires expansion.

Presidential Directive 18 on U.S. National Security, signed early in Carter's term, signalled a fundamental reassessment of the value of détente, and set the U.S. on a course to quietly end the stability and accommodation associated with Kissinger's strategy.[32]

[edit] Academia
Brzezinski was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1953 to 1960, and of Columbia University from 1960 to 1989 where he headed the Institute on Communist Affairs. He is currently a professor of foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

As a scholar he has developed his thoughts over the years, fashioning fundamental theories on international relations and geostrategy. During the 1950s he worked on the theory of totalitarianism. His thought in the 1960s focused on wider Western understanding of disunity in the Soviet Bloc, as well as developing the thesis of intensified degeneration of the Soviet Union. During the 1970s he propounded the proposition that the Soviet system was incapable of evolving beyond the industrial phase into the "technetronic" age.

By the 1980s, Brzezinski argued that the general crisis of the Soviet Union foreshadowed communism's end. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he spent the 1990s warning that global discord may get out of control and formulating a geostrategy for U.S. global preponderance.

[edit] Geostrategy
Brzezinski laid out his most significant contribution to post–Cold War geostrategy in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. He defined four regions of Eurasia and in which ways the United States ought to design its policy toward each region in order to maintain its global primacy. The four regions are:

Europe, the Democratic Bridgehead
Russia, the Black Hole
The Caucasuses and Central Asia, the Eurasian Balkans
East Asia, the Far Eastern Anchor
In his subsequent book, The Choice, Brzezinski updates his geostrategy in light of globalization, 9/11, and the intervening six years between the two books.

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Public life
Brzezinski is a past member of the board of directors of Amnesty International, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

He was formerly a director of the Trilateral Commission, now serving only on the executive committee, and was formerly a boardmember of Freedom House. He is currently a trustee and counselor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a board member for the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus[33], on the advisory board of America Abroad Media[34], and on the advisory board of Partnership for a Secure America.

He is married to Czech-American sculptor Emilie Benes (grand-niece of the second Czech president, Edvard Beneš), with whom he has three children. His son, Mark Brzezinski (b. 1965), is a lawyer who served on President Clinton's National Security Council as an expert on Russia and Southeastern Europe. His daughter, Mika Brzezinski (b. 1967), is a television news journalist and a regular anchor on MSNBC. Brzezinski's other son, Ian, was employed by the John McCain presidential campaign.

[edit] Film Appearances
Brzezinski appears as himself in the 2009 documentary "Back Door Channels: The Price of Peace"[35].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton

Booz Allen Hamilton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Booz Allen Hamilton (disambiguation).
Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.
Type Private
Founded 1914
Headquarters McLean, Virginia, USA[1]
Key people Ralph Shrader, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer[1]
Industry Consulting
Government contractor
Revenue ? US$4 billion (FY2006)[1]
Employees 20,000,[1]
Website www.boozallen.com
Booz Allen Hamilton, or more commonly Booz Allen, is a private consulting firm headquartered in McLean, Virginia, with 80 other offices throughout the nation. Ralph Shrader is its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer - the seventh since Edwin Booz founded the firm in Chicago circa 1914, making it one of the nation’s oldest consultancies.

Booz Allen's core business is contractual work completed on behalf of the US federal government, foremost on defense and homeland security matters, with limited engagements of foreign governments specific to U.S. military assistance programs. In this vein, Booz Allen’s services include strategy design, operations improvement, information technology work, systems engineering, organizational change efforts, modeling and simulation, program management, specialist staff augmentation, assurance and resilience, and economic and business analysis. Booz Allen is somewhat unique in that it competes for business with both pure systems integrators and defense contractors such as SAIC, BAE Systems, and Lockheed Martin, as well as with broader management consulting firms with a considerable stake in the public sector market such as Deloitte, BearingPoint, and Accenture. In 2008, Vault.com, an entity which provides survey based ‘prestige’ rankings of various professional industries, placed Booz Allen Hamilton second only to McKinsey & Company in the category of ‘Technology Consulting Firms’ (the sole grouping it was considered for), indicative of the fact technological issues in the broadest sense pervade a substantial portion of Booz Allen’s revenue stream.

As of July 31, 2008, what was formerly Booz Allen Hamilton’s parent company (which used the Booz Allen name itself) divided into two wholly separate entities, based on a vote by Booz Allen’s senior vice presidents and vice presidents, i.e. partners. As a result, the Booz Allen Hamilton moniker would be retained by the half focusing on U.S. governmental matters, with spinoff Booz & Company taking sole control of its commercial and international portfolio. As a consequence, Booz Allen Hamilton is now majority owned by private equity firm The Carlyle Group, while Booz & Company is owned and operated as a partnership. [2] The split was engendered by several endemic differences between the two business units, namely: profitability (i.e. government work was both more profitable than most of the commercial operations and exhibited less volatile earnings), internal culture (e.g. the government side frequently retained mid-level consultants for several years, whereas the commercial side had greater staff turnover due to an up-or-out policy), and recruiting philosophy for mid-to-senior level employees (Booz Allen recruited a relatively high proportion of bachelor's, non-business master’s, and doctoral degree holders from a wide array of schools compared to Booz & Co.'s primary focus on elite MBA graduates).

Contents [hide]
1 History
1.1 Formation
1.2 Early years
1.3 Public years
2 Organization
3 Recruiting
4 Prominent client initiatives
4.1 Internal Revenue Service
4.2 New South Wales, Australia
5 Notable colleagues and alumni
5.1 Business
5.2 Politics and public service
5.3 Other
6 Criticisms and controversies
6.1 SWIFT
6.2 Democracy Now
6.3 Homeland Security
7 References
8 See also
9 External links

[edit] History
"Booz Allen Hamilton traces its roots to Edwin G. Booz. A student at Chicago's Northwestern University in the early 1900s, Booz received a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in psychology, upon completion of his thesis 'Mental Tests for Vocational Fitness.' In 1914, Booz established a small consulting firm in Chicago, and, two years later, he and two partners formed the Business Research and Development Company, which conducted studies and performed investigational work for commercial and trade organizations. This service, which Booz labeled as the first of its kind in the Midwest, soon attracted such clients as Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Chicago's Union Stockyards and Transit Company, and the Canadian & Pacific Railroad."[3]

[edit] Formation
After graduating from Northwestern University in Illinois in 1914, Edwin G. Booz developed the business theory that companies would be more successful if they could call on someone outside their own organizations for expert, impartial advice.[4] This theory developed into a new profession — management consulting — and the firm that would bear his name.

[edit] Early years
"In 1940, the firm was hired to help the United States Secretary of the Navy with World War II preparations, a project that marked the start of a longstanding relationship with the United States Federal Government. Since then, Booz Allen has had a hand in several notable private and public engagements throughout its years, such as advising on the breakup of Ma Bell and helping organize the National Football League in the 1960s."[5]

[edit] Public years
In 1970, Booz Allen went public with an initial offering of 500,000 shares at $24 per share. Trading continued through 1976.[6]

[edit] Organization
"Booz Allen is privately held, which allows it to consider long-range investments that companies beholden to shareholders might not be able to make, Gerencser said. With private ownership, the company can make investment decisions that pay off farther down the road than some of its competitors. 'As a managing director, I can put investments in place that may provide a return in four or five or six years,' Gerencser said, adding that, 'we can often place long-term and even risky bets.'"[1]

The firm was once public in the 1970s.[7], but the partners took the firm private again through one of the first management buyouts (MBO) to allow the firm to consider long-range investments that companies beholden to shareholders might not be able to make.[8] Time magazine named it the most prestigious management firm in the world,[9] with longstanding relationships with federal intelligence agencies, with current and former employees including former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, former CIA employee Miles Copeland, Jr., and former NSA Director Mike McConnell, who was the second Director of National Intelligence.

[edit] Recruiting
In 2007, the firm had roughly 110,000 applicants and 1033 new jobs.[10]

[edit] Prominent client initiatives

[edit] Internal Revenue Service
Booz Allen was chosen in 1998 to help the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) modernize, and shed its dismal customer-service reputation. Booz Allen's team developed a strategy for the IRS to reshuffle its 100,000 employees into units focused on particular taxpayer categories: individuals, charities, businesses and so on. "We made some very dramatic changes in the way the IRS is organized", says Booz Allen Chief Executive Officer Dr. Ralph Shrader, an electrical engineering Ph.D. and 28-year company veteran.[11] Despite these confident words, number reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have pointed to mixed performance results at IRS, and notably, poor management of its IT portfolio and its contractors[citation needed].

[edit] New South Wales, Australia
In 1988, the newly elected Greiner State Government commissioned a report into the State Rail Authority (SRA) of New South Wales by American consultants Booz Allen Hamilton. The report, delivered in 1989 recommended widespread job losses, up to 8000, including the withdrawal of staff from 94 country railway stations, withdrawing services on the Nyngan- Bourke line, Queanbeyan - Cooma line and Glen Innes- Wallangarra line, the axing of several country passenger services (the Canberra XPT, the Silver City Comet to Broken Hill and various diesel locomotive hauled services) and the removal of sleeper trains from services to Brisbane and Melbourne. The report also recommended the removal of all country passenger services and small freight operations, but the government did not consider this to be politically feasible.[12] The SRA was divided into business units- CityRail, responsible for urban railways; CountryLink, responsible for country passenger services; FreightRail, responsible for freight services; and Rail Estate, responsible for rail property. Upon the formation of the business units in 1988, CityRail adopted a black and yellow 'L7' logo (later to become blue and yellow), and Countylink adopted its present blue and green 'Mountains' logo and livery.[13]