tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post4168819056596615617..comments2023-09-06T01:53:41.634-07:00Comments on doug's Site: "Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage"" Doug's Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09219952832674415239noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-77561975429883749872012-04-07T14:59:46.000-07:002012-04-07T14:59:46.000-07:00Most of the elite of 2012 seem more elite (and re...Most of the elite of 2012 seem more elite (and remote) from the people they wish to lead or manipulate, that is certain, AA doug noakeshttp://dnoakes.multiply.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-70108505707271636872012-04-07T14:51:03.000-07:002012-04-07T14:51:03.000-07:00It's pretty clear that we need brave men and w...It's pretty clear that we need brave men and women to come to the fore in times of danger---but it is a greater good to head off the danger in the first place. That takes more than some aristocracy of business--it takes an educated populace who can smell a rat when it comes to a sales job for a war, or a candidate who is using code words to incite hatred. <br /><br />You bring up good points to be remembered, AA, on what for many millions is a time of rememberance for a man 2,000 years ago who showed the world another way, an inner revolution so to speak, one that has been often hijacked, as all good spiritual and economic ideas are, by confidence tricksters. <br /><br />Thanks for the links and bringing much to my capsule review.doug noakeshttp://dnoakes.multiply.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-72149073207050412432012-04-07T14:46:16.000-07:002012-04-07T14:46:16.000-07:00I cannot help but feel more and more that irrespon...I cannot help but feel more and more that irresponsible muilti-national corporate power is the engine behind a lot of tragic events in the 20th Century and beyond. <br /><br />Until we settle once and for all the idea that a corporation canot serve an immoral standard and its owners--some of which you mentioned-- will be brought to book if they try and push a selfish agenda that leads to war and desolation for too many, history will continue this endless and brutal loop of wars and synthetic disasters. <br /><br />What you say about "framing" is very important. Were I a teacher, I would strive, as so,me of past teachers and professors did, to get peole to look past the surface history and inot the biography of men like Rockefeller and DuPont and the I G Farben represetnitives. They don't elect the monsters who promse heaven and del;ibver hell; but they make their madest desires come true. Never was that so clear as in Germany in the 1930's and in places like Nigeria today. <br /><br />Thanks for the link. The final part of the article in Thistle makes a great deal of sense. <br /><br />"I do not want to give the impression that everyone who works for these companies is a monster. The people who run these corporations are all too human, and they have chosen to put the profits of their companies and their own wealth above even the simplest human considerations. If we are ever to turn back the tide of ecological disasters and human tragedies that have been synonymous with the advance of oil, we must first acknowledge the ruthless and amoral nature of these companies and take a stand against their further consolidation of power. Only then can we hope to take back our world and begin to write our own history." <br /><br />Or, as John Lennon put it, "Give me some truth!"doug noakeshttp://dnoakes.multiply.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-17435190158778676942012-04-07T03:18:13.000-07:002012-04-07T03:18:13.000-07:00Sir William is a prototypical Anglospherical chara...Sir William is a prototypical Anglospherical character who along with certain other key players are the semi-mythical founders of Greater Bilderbergia, the mostly privatised virtual empire that created and ran WWII and whose agents are now busily orchestrating WW III even as we type Doug.Aaran Aardvarkhttp://aaranaardvark.multiply.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-39001406735958001892012-04-07T02:56:17.000-07:002012-04-07T02:56:17.000-07:00I suppose in my sour-faced take on history Doug I ...I suppose in my sour-faced take on history Doug I would say that is 'cultural production' - the creation of a shared mythology that obscures the true reasons for this surfeit of profits, heroism, ingenuity and sheer bravado in times of war.<br /><br />Advertising and PR at its best, create an enemy and get everyone to pull together to use up resources at a massive rate, in order to stimulate production and therefore surplus value for the string-pulling elite's political power and personal luxury. Nice work if you can get it Doug.<br /><br />Royalty- Oligarchs they're all the same, no good. no bad - but all equally ugly..Aaran Aardvarkhttp://aaranaardvark.multiply.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-55215239531682944482012-04-07T00:10:25.000-07:002012-04-07T00:10:25.000-07:00It is as you relate quite a major part of the WWII...It is as you relate quite a major part of the WWII story, and one that has been left out of the more popular histories. <br /><br />One notable exception--the first time I recall coming across this subject other than Charles Higham's 1983 book "Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot" was in William Stevenson's book "A Man Called Intrepid", a 1976 book about Canadian-born Sir William Stephenson (no direct relation to the author) and the key role that he played heading up the BSC in Canada and the United States. "Intrepid" devotes three chapters to the same material Higham covers more thoroughly but it was clear that Stephenson and his BSC group had their work cut out for them in discrediting business and some labor leaders like coal boss John L Lewis in the USA and shutting down or at least exposing the ties that the companies with US and Nazi cooperation agreements had with one another. <br /><br />Ironically, the BSC main HQ in Nw York City was on two floors of Rockefeller Center which were leased to London as a nonrepayable loan. Nelson Rockefeller was involved in Stephenson's BSC and his own work at the Inter-American Relations project, but as your link points out he had other more private interests. He claimed to Stephenson and other he could not undo the Standard Oil--New Jersey contracts in Latin America and the pre-war ties to Farben. <br /><br /> "Playing both ends" can be possible, I suppose, if you're a multi-national with a vital resource both sides desperately need. <br /><br />A good deal of this lack of "corporation ethics" by Ford, ITT, Standard Oil of New Jersey, et al, were published and there was some investigations conducted by the Truman Committee in the US Senate. Little was actually done however, as you know. A lot of the "dodgy" operations were in Latin America where there was covert efforts (some successful) by the British to pull governments like that of Brazil out of Axis cooperation. <br /> <br /> One of the BSC reports from Canada stated bluntly in April of 1941: "Standard Oil could be scarcely regarded as an American business machine. It is a hostile and dangerous agency of the enemy." They did publish a book called "Sequel to the Apocalypse: How Your Dimes Pay for Hitler's War" which included a chart listing all major American and German business links at the time. The book was distributed around America during its period of official neutrality, much to the displeasure of those embarrassed by the revelations. If nothing else, it made "playing both sides" more of a problem by sheer exposure. <br /><br /><br /> <br />Roosevelt gave the BSC leeway to distribute anti-fascist propaganda and in some cases "dispose" of Axis agents on American soil. Of course, the German agents in the "Abwehr" spy rings had their own friends, some in some high places, some small fry picked up by the FBI and some useful dupes like Charles Lindbergh and Senator Burton Wheeler in the America First Committee.<br /><br /> British support groups in America like Fight for Freedom and the pro-worker American Labor Committe For Aid to Britain also got BSC backing. <br /><br /> It's an often ugly, sometimes dispiriting, but always fascinating time in history to me. <br /><br />Interesting about William Burroughs' uncle. Not a very avuncular chap in my book. <br /><br />Thanks for the information ,as always.doug noakeshttp://dnoakes.multiply.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-56226981863178398602012-04-06T20:00:57.000-07:002012-04-06T20:00:57.000-07:00LOL...Yes I agree with you there, AA. "Wild...LOL...Yes I agree with you there, AA. "Wild" has a taste of the Old West about it, with all the problems associated at times in telling who was the "law and order" in a settlement and who were "the bad guys". <br /><br /> It should be noted that the phrase "Wild" was attached to William Donovan during his Army career training soldiers in New York State for rigorous service on the Western Front in WWI. <br /><br /> He later used his outstanding service record--and that questionable moniker---to cultivate a vivid reputation. He was also good at keeping the press informed about just what he wanted them to know and using them as anti-Nazi informants if they had experience in Germany. <br /><br />. One of the surprising things about Donovan for me was how well known he was in the media at the time. For instance Donovan was played by the actor George Brent in an all-star Hollywood film called "The Fighting 69th" with James Cagney. He also in the papers a lot, as alway noted, and even a comic illustrator in syndicated newpsapers printed his life story in serial form. He had his faults but he was not the usual type of shadowy spymaster. The idea of an intelligence man with such a high profile is intriguing to me. <br /><br /> The Nazi propaganda machine printed all kinds of ugly rumors about Donnovan n 1940 -41, for instance, when he was FDR's envoy to Yugoslavia and other places. His old foe J. Edgar Hoover later got a bogus rumor sent around Washington and New York that Donovan had died from a venereal disease(!), just out of spite and envy. ( It's a nice quality to me of Donovan that I might not have liked his domestic politics, but he damn sure made the right enemies. ) <br /><br />To your larger point I will return. Let me just say there are other books I have read that have done as better job detailing the nature of American industrial and banking involvement in the Third Reich. That of course is a fascinating chapter in itself, one I agree has been given short shrift in too many books like this. Another book I consulted recently does a better job at it, which I will refer to presently.doug noakeshttp://dnoakes.multiply.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2503771624520315711.post-89147152762205417042012-04-06T12:27:28.000-07:002012-04-06T12:27:28.000-07:00Well I'm interested in these things myself Dou...Well I'm interested in these things myself Doug, but what interests me most is what is not said, what is left out of the official story of WWII.<br /><br />What especially interests me about these heroes of the established history of the war and the sophisticated espionage game is that they never seemed to discover that Henry Ford and Edsel Ford respectively contributed money to Hitler and profited from German wartime production. <br /><br />Passed them by completely it seems.<br /><br />As did the fact that Standard Oil of New Jersey, General Electric, General Motors, and I.T.T. all made financial or technical contributions which comprise prima facie evidence of "participating in planning or carrying out Nazi enterprises." <br /><br />Not a word about this in the official account.<br /><br />While these heroes of the "special relationship" created these legends of post-colonial derring-do, but the super sleuths of the yesteryear seem to have completely missed the propaganda, intelligence, and espionage of fellows like American branch of I.G. Farben and the Rockefeller Foundation public-relations man - Ivy Lee....Amazing! <br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_11.htm#Were%20American%20Industrialists%20and%20Financiers%20Guilty%20of%20War%20Crimes?">http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_11.htm#Were%20American%20Industrialists%20and%20Financiers%20Guilty%20of%20War%20Crimes?</a><br /><br />Shortly before Ivy Lee's death in 1934, the US Congress had been investigating his work in Nazi Germany on behalf of the IG Farben but his close relationship with the Rockefeller family was never an issue for him or for them. <br /><br />On one of our previous recent subjects of 'dodgy uncles'..... it is interesting to me that Mr Lee was an uncle of William S Borroughs, perhaps then that dodgy uncles are fated to have dodgy nephews and nieces too?<br /><br />J. Edgar Hoover never apparently tumbled to the fact that the pillars of the military industrial complex had a relationship with these guys either, the other enemies like the European fascist leaders of the 30s and 40s for example, all in bed together with the American industrial elite.<br /><br />Can't help wondering if they were really so good how they missed all that going on right under their noses Doug?<br /><br /> Seems strange to me anyway. <br /><br />Anyone who comes with a 'Wild' sobriquet always gives me pause for reflection and risk analysis Doug...I'm not sure any good has ever come of it yet, but I may well be wrong I suppose?Aaran Aardvarkhttp://aaranaardvark.multiply.comnoreply@blogger.com