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FTR #334 Protocols of the Elders of Oil

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RealAu­dio

1. Set­ting forth aspects of the ter­ror­ist blitzkrieg of 9/11/2001 that per­tain to the petro­le­um indus­try, we begin with dis­cus­sion of Muslim/Jewish rela­tions in the Unit­ed States. The broad­cast high­lights the ten­sions wrought between these two reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties by the fall­out from the attacks of 9/11. (“Jew­ish-Mus­lim Dia­logue Fal­ters” by David Fire­stone [New York Times]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 10/22/2001; p. 4A.)

2. Ele­ments of the Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ty in this coun­try have echoed a line of dis­in­for­ma­tion wide­ly accept­ed out­side of the U.S. that the Mossad (Israeli intel­li­gence) was behind the attacks. (Idem.)

3. Inter­est­ing­ly (and, per­haps, sig­nif­i­cant­ly) the Saud­is have devot­ed a great deal of effort to pro­mot­ing Wah­habism among U.S. Mus­lim con­gre­ga­tions. (“Saud­is Seek to Add U.S. Mus­lims to Their Sect” by Blaine Hard­en; New York Times; 10/20/2001; p. A1.)

4. Next, the broad­cast touch­es on Hanan Ashrawi, a Pales­tin­ian spokes­woman who has been very vis­i­ble in the Unit­ed States, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor. (“Pales­tin­ian Law­mak­er Dis­cuss­es Peace in S.F.” by Thy­che Hen­dricks; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 11/4/2001; p. A14.)

5. A pro­tégé of for­mer Bush (Senior) Sec­re­tary of State James Bak­er, Ashrawi is one of a num­ber of appar­ent CIA Pales­tin­ian assets, dubbed by the Agency “Bak­er’s dozen.” (The Secret War Against the Jews: How West­ern Espi­onage Betrayed the Jew­ish Peo­ple; John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 [HC]; St. Mar­t­in’s Press; ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; p. 476.)

6. These “mod­er­ate” Pales­tini­ans com­prised the nego­ti­at­ing team for the PLO in their peace talks with the Israelis. (Idem.)

7. In that con­text, it is inter­est­ing to note that the day that petro­le­um indus­try pro­fes­sion­al Dick Cheney (anoth­er Bush Sr. cab­i­net offi­cer) was named as George W’s Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, Yass­er Arafat walked out of the Camp David peace talks that were being bro­kered by Pres­i­dent Clin­ton. (“Clin­ton Ends Dead­locked Peace Talks” by Jane Per­lez; New York Times; 7/26/2000; p. A1.; “Bush Names Cheney , Cit­ing ‘Integri­ty’ and ‘Expe­ri­ence’ ” by Frank Bruni; New York Times; 7/26/2000; p. A1.) The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Republican/petroleum industry/Saudi con­nec­tion may have played a backchan­nel role in inter­dict­ing the peace talks is not a pos­si­bil­i­ty to be too read­i­ly dis­card­ed. (It should be not­ed that, as not­ed in FTR#284, the elder George Bush was in touch with the Sau­di Roy­al fam­i­ly dur­ing the 2000 cam­paign through the Car­lyle group. The Bush/Saudi con­nec­tion appears to have helped to destroy Jim­my Carter’s elec­tion prospects in 1980. Had Pres­i­dent Clin­ton suc­cess­ful­ly bro­kered the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, it might have very well giv­en the 2000 elec­tion to Al Gore.)

8. The week before the attacks, the Saud­is changed intel­li­gence chiefs. (“Sta­tus Quo in the Per­sian Gulf” by Jim Hoagland; Wash­ing­ton Post; 9/9/2001; p. B7.)

9. In addi­tion, the Sau­di gov­ern­ment had mem­bers of the Bin Laden fam­i­ly flown out of the U.S. before the FBI. could ques­tion them about the 9/11 attacks! (“U.S. Is Real­ly Alone in this War” by Antho­ny Lewis [New York Times]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 10/29/2001; p. A17.)

10. Inter­est­ing­ly (and, per­haps, sig­nif­i­cant­ly) the Bin Laden fam­i­ly end­ed their finan­cial involve­ment with the above-men­tioned Car­lyle Group in the after­math of the 9/11 attacks. (“Bin Laden Fam­i­ly Liq­ui­dates Hold­ings with the Car­lyle Group” by Kurt Eichen­wald; New York Times; 10/26/2001; p. C6.) (See more about the busi­ness rela­tion­ships between both Georges Bush and the Bin Laden Fam­i­ly.) As not­ed, in addi­tion to both Georges Bush, the Car­lyle group also con­nects Hanan Ashrawi men­tor James Bak­er to both the Bin Laden fam­i­ly and the Sau­di roy­al fam­i­ly.) The Car­lyle Group spe­cial­izes in takeovers of com­pa­nies involved in mil­i­tary man­u­fac­tur­ing.

11. The pro­gram sets forth: con­nec­tions between the Bin Ladens and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State George Shultz; Bin Laden fam­i­ly hold­ings in biotech­nol­o­gy (anthrax?); Bin Laden con­nec­tions to Deutsche Bank and Cit­i­group; the Bin Laden fam­i­ly’s geo­graph­i­cal base in Boston (both planes that crashed into the World Trade Cen­ter took off from that city) and Bin Laden com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Osama while he was tak­ing refuge in Sudan. (“Bin Laden Fam­i­ly, with Deep West­ern Ties, Tries to Re-Estab­lish a Name” by Leigh Cow­an, Kurt Eichen­wald and Michael Moss; New York Times; 10/28/2001; p. B3.)

12. Although it has been com­mon­ly report­ed that Osama has been “cut out“of the enor­mous fam­i­ly for­tune, one of his sons appar­ent­ly helps run the fam­i­ly busi­ness. (“Roy­al Sup­port of Bin Ladens Appears to Slip” by Yaroslav Trofi­mov; Wall Street Jour­nal; pp. A15-A16.)

13. With 25% of the world’s proven oil reserves, Sau­di Ara­bia appears to help dic­tate, rather than help to pur­sue Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy. Impor­tant liai­son func­tions between the U.S. and the Saud­is were car­ried out by Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld, Pres­i­dent Rea­gan’s for­mer spe­cial envoy to the Mid­dle East. (“Nam­ing of Hijack­ers as Saud­is May Fur­ther Shake Ties to U.S.” by Elaine Sci­oli­no and Neil Mac­Far­quhar; New York Times; 10/28/2001; p. B4.) As not­ed, all of Rea­gan’s appoint­ments were select­ed from a list of indi­vid­u­als drawn up by Otto Von Bolschwing pro­tégé Helene Von Damm, adding pos­si­ble addi­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance to Rums­feld’s role in the Mid­dle East.

14. Bush recent­ly signed an exec­u­tive order empow­er­ing ex-Pres­i­dents to block the release of their papers. (“Pres­i­dents’ Papers to Be Kept Secret” by Mike Allen and George Lard­ner Jr. [Wash­ing­ton Post]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 11/2/2001; p. D3.)

15. Crit­ics have charged that this may have been done to pro­tect mem­bers of the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tions who hold office under George W. (Idem.)

16. It is inter­est­ing to note that the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion had warned the Saud­is (to no avail) about char­i­ties that have alleged­ly been involved in fund­ing ter­ror­ism. (“Clin­ton Told Saud­is of How Char­i­ties Fund­ed Al Qae­da” by Glenn R. Simp­son; Wall Street Jour­nal; p. A2.)

17. Despite this, the Saud­is have yet to freeze these alleged Bin Laden assets. (“Sau­di Ara­bia Has Yet to Join U.S. Dri­ve To Block Assets Tied to Ter­ror­ist Groups” by Glenn R. Simp­son; Wall Street Jour­nal; p. A28.)

18. Sup­ple­ment­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in FTRs 182 and 329, the pro­gram high­lights Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s offer of West­ern access to Russ­ian oil in exchange for U.S. accep­tance of Russ­ian mil­i­tary action in Chech­nya. (“Rus­sia and U.S. See a Break­through on Divi­sive Issues” by Patrick E. Tyler; New York Times; 10/19/2001; pp. A1-B4.) One can spec­u­late that Al Qae­da, con­trolled by the Under­ground Reich, may have ful­filled the goal of Friedrich von Paulus’ Sixth Army, the cap­ture of the Russ­ian oil fields of the Cau­ca­sus.

19. A pipeline across Afghanistan to car­ry oil from the Caspi­an Sea is being pushed by Unocal—in which the elder George Bush has a stake—British Petro­le­um and the Saud­is. (“The Blow­back Chron­i­cles” by Giles Foden; The Guardian; 9/15/2001.)

20. The cur­rent war in Afghanistan would appear to be fur­ther­ing the prospects for real­iza­tion of the Unocal/BP/Saudi project. (“It’s About Oil” by Ted Rall; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 11/2/2001; p. A25.)

21. It is worth not­ing that, even as Bush is call­ing for Amer­i­cans to unite, he is using the 9/11 attacks to push a right-wing, par­ti­san agen­da. One of the ele­ments of that agen­da is Bush’s advo­ca­cy of drilling for oil in the Alas­ka Wildlife Refuge. (“Bush Calls on Cal­i­for­nia to Sup­port Ener­gy Pack­age” by Paul Rogers; San Jose Mer­cury News; 10/18/2001; p.4A.)

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #334 Protocols of the Elders of Oil”

  1. https://theconversation.com/why-the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-is-still-pushed-by-anti-semites-more-than-a-century-after-hoax-first-circulated-145220

    Why the ‘Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion’ is still pushed by anti-Semi­tes more than a cen­tu­ry after hoax first cir­cu­lat­ed
    Stephen Whit­field Sep­tem­ber 2, 2020 8.20am EDT
    An anti-Semit­ic hoax more than a cen­tu­ry old reared its ugly head again as the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion was under­way last week.

    Mary Ann Men­doza, a mem­ber of the advi­so­ry board of Pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion cam­paign, was due to speak on Aug. 25. But she was sud­den­ly pulled from the sched­ule after she had retweet­ed a link to a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry about Jew­ish elites plot­ting to take over the world.

    In her now-delet­ed tweet, Men­doza urged her rough­ly 40,000 fol­low­ers to read a lengthy thread that warned of a plan to enslave the “goy­im,” or non-Jews. It includ­ed fevered denun­ci­a­tions of the his­tor­i­cal­ly wealthy Jew­ish fam­i­ly, the Roth­schilds, as well as the top tar­get of right-wing extrem­ism today, the lib­er­al Jew­ish phil­an­thropist George Soros.

    The thread also made ref­er­ence to one of the most noto­ri­ous hoax­es in mod­ern his­to­ry: “The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion.” As a schol­ar of Amer­i­can Jew­ish his­to­ry, I know how durable this doc­u­ment has been as a source of the belief in Jew­ish con­spir­a­cies. The fact that it is still mak­ing the rounds with­in the fringe precincts of the polit­i­cal right today is tes­ta­ment to the longevi­ty of this fab­ri­ca­tion.

    Fake news

    Sure­ly no out­right forgery in mod­ern his­to­ry has ever proved itself more durable. In the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, the Pro­to­cols were con­coct­ed by Tsarist police known as the Okhrana, draw­ing upon an obscure 1868 Ger­man nov­el, “Biar­ritz,” in which mys­te­ri­ous Jew­ish lead­ers meet in a Prague ceme­tery.

    This fic­tion­al cabal aspires for pow­er over entire nations through cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion and seeks ide­o­log­i­cal dom­i­na­tion by dis­sem­i­nat­ing fake news. In the nov­el, the Dev­il lis­tens sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly to the reports that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the tribes of Israel present, describ­ing the hav­oc and sub­ver­sion that they have wrought, and the destruc­tion that is yet to come.

    The Okhrana – “pro­tec­tion” in Russ­ian – worked for what was then the most pow­er­ful anti-Semit­ic regime in Europe and want­ed to use the hoax to dis­cred­it rev­o­lu­tion­ary forces hos­tile to the reac­tionary poli­cies and reli­gious mys­ti­cism of Tsarist rule.

    The doc­u­ment became a glob­al phe­nom­e­non only about two decades after the Okhrana’s fab­ri­ca­tion. Wide­spread pub­li­ca­tion and repub­li­ca­tion coin­cid­ed with both the influen­za pan­dem­ic of 1918–20 and the after­math of the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion in 1917 – both of which stirred fears of obscure forces that men­aced social con­trol.

    Scape­goat­ing Jews for dis­ease and polit­i­cal unrest was noth­ing new. Medieval Jews had been mas­sa­cred in the wake of accu­sa­tions of hav­ing poi­soned wells and spread­ing plagues.

    But a cen­tu­ry ago, the cri­sis in pub­lic health prob­a­bly mat­tered less than the Com­mu­nists’ seizure of pow­er in Rus­sia, which, if unchecked, might over­whelm the polit­i­cal order that the Great War had desta­bi­lized. That some of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers were of Jew­ish birth seemed to rein­force the pre­dic­tions of the Pro­to­cols.

    Tsar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs, was known to have read the Pro­to­cols before being exe­cut­ed by the Bol­she­viks in 1918. In the fol­low­ing year, Hitler deliv­ered his first record­ed speech, in which he depict­ed an inter­na­tion­al con­spir­a­cy of Jews – of all Jews – to weak­en and poi­son the Aryan race and to extin­guish Ger­man cul­ture.

    Hitler him­self was unsure of the authen­tic­i­ty of the Pro­to­cols – a ques­tion of ver­i­fi­ca­tion that may not have mat­tered all that much to the Nazis. The Führer told one of his ear­ly asso­ciates that the Pro­to­cols were “immense­ly instruc­tive” in expos­ing what the Jews could accom­plish in terms of “polit­i­cal intrigue,” and in demon­strat­ing their skill at “decep­tion [and] orga­ni­za­tion.”

    ‘Amer­i­can­ized’ con­spir­a­cy

    In the U.S., the hoax was giv­en a wide dis­tri­b­u­tion by the most admired busi­ness­man of his time: Hen­ry Ford. By 1920, Ford had “Amer­i­can­ized” the forged doc­u­ment as “The Inter­na­tion­al Jew: The World’s Fore­most Prob­lem.” It ran as excerpts in his news­pa­per, the Dear­born Inde­pen­dent, for 91 straight weeks. “The Inter­na­tion­al Jew” was trans­lat­ed into 16 lan­guages.

    Hen­ry Ford pub­lished anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cies. Library of Con­gress
    Though Jew­ish com­mu­nal lead­er­ship mount­ed a law­suit that forced the auto mag­nate to issue a retrac­tion in 1927, the malig­nant hatred behind the Pro­to­cols con­tin­ued to seep into the pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion.

    In the 1930s, the pop­u­lar anti-New Deal “radio priest” Charles E. Cough­lin excerpt­ed the Pro­to­cols in his news­pa­per, Social Jus­tice. But Father Cough­lin was wary about endors­ing its accu­ra­cy, and mere­ly stat­ed that it might be of “inter­est” to his read­ers.

    His­to­ry as con­spir­a­cy

    Why is it that this demon­stra­bly false doc­u­ment con­tin­ues to hold sway today?

    Per­haps the sim­plest expla­na­tion is human irra­tional­i­ty, which nei­ther edu­ca­tion nor enlight­en­ment has ever man­aged to defeat.

    The will­ing­ness to believe in the fan­ta­sy of a sur­rep­ti­tious Jew­ish stran­gle­hold on the inter­na­tion­al econ­o­my and on mass media also val­i­dates the insight of the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ri­an Richard Hof­s­tadter. He traced in polit­i­cal extrem­ism of both right and left an apoc­a­lyp­tic strain and a belief in an immi­nent con­fronta­tion between good and absolute evil.

    Hof­s­tadter was well aware that con­spir­a­cies punc­tu­ate the annals of the past. But espe­cial­ly for those Amer­i­cans who han­ker for the secu­ri­ty of a set­tled way of life, polit­i­cal para­noia is tempt­ing, such as the belief – as Hof­s­tadter wrote – that “his­to­ry is a con­spir­a­cy,” in which unseen forces are the shad­owy dri­ving mech­a­nisms of human des­tiny.

    Because anti-Semi­tism has sur­vived near­ly a cou­ple of mil­len­nia, no form of prej­u­dice has yet found a more vivid place in the imag­i­na­tion. And the fact that no inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish con­spir­a­cy was ever locat­ed has nev­er deplet­ed the pow­er of the Pro­to­cols to tap into sub­ter­ranean cur­rents of demo­niza­tion.

    From the Roth­schilds to Soros

    What sus­tains the influ­ence of the Pro­to­cols among cranks and extrem­ists is not the lan­guage of the text itself – which few of them are like­ly to have ful­ly read in its var­i­ous ver­sions – but what this forgery pur­ports to under­score, which is the aston­ish­ing­ly cun­ning influ­ence of Jews in mod­ern his­to­ry.

    The Pro­to­cols thus have no impor­tance in them­selves; they are spu­ri­ous. But they do bestow pre­ci­sion upon apoc­a­lyp­tic fears, which could not sur­vive with­out some ingre­di­ent of plau­si­bil­i­ty – how­ev­er wild­ly far-fetched.

    [Get our best sci­ence, health and tech­nol­o­gy sto­ries. Sign up for The Conversation’s sci­ence newslet­ter.]

    The Roth­schild fam­i­ly was piv­otal to the emer­gence of finance cap­i­tal­ism in 19th-cen­tu­ry Europe. The fam­i­ly firm had branch­es in Ger­many, France, Aus­tria, Italy and Eng­land, which lent cre­dence to the charge of “cos­mopoli­tanism” dur­ing an era of ris­ing nation­al­ism. The boom-and-bust oscil­la­tions of the econ­o­my gen­er­at­ed not only mis­ery but also griev­ances against financiers who seemed to ben­e­fit from such uncer­tain­ties.

    Today, Soros, a Hun­gar­i­an-born, British-edu­cat­ed Amer­i­can Jew, has become an espe­cial­ly hat­ed fig­ure for the far-right. Among the world’s can­ni­est investors, he has spent bil­lions of dol­lars pro­mot­ing pro­gres­sive caus­es. He seems to per­son­i­fy what Ford called “the inter­na­tion­al Jew.”

    Ven­om against minori­ties oth­er than Jews has not result­ed in any equiv­a­lent to the Pro­to­cols. Judeo­pho­bia pro­duced a spe­cious doc­u­men­ta­tion that big­otry against no oth­er minor­i­ty has ever elicit­ed. Per­haps the very explic­it­ness of the Pro­to­cols helps strength­en the sus­pi­cion that major­i­ty beliefs and inter­ests are under attack, and keeps this dan­ger­ous form of anti-Semi­tism alive.

    Posted by Mary Benton | September 7, 2020, 12:31 pm

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