quiet american: combine list (plfire)

____________________________________

u.s. foreign intervention + financial crisises and bubbles

a combine list

Precedents for the use of armed force in foreign land and places in service to u.s. national security interest:

Mexican war (1846 to 1848), American civil war, the overthrow of Hawaiian kingdom (January 17, the 1893), the overthrew of Iran prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (1953) (Aug. 19, 1953: Operation Ajax), the Guatelmalan coup d'état (1954)(Operation PBSuccess) (operation PBfortune) (Operation PBHistory), overthrowing Chile president Salvador Allende (September 11, 1973), Korean war (to which the China PRC fought with the U.S. Marine), Vietnam war (...), China PRC war with Vietnam (China invade Vietnam), Afghanistan war (...), Iraq war (...),

en.wikipedia.org

look up American Indian war

put it there

en.wikipedia.org

Afghanistan

Russia in Afghanistan

u.s. support mujahadeen (carter administration)

1636

•── The Dutch Tulip Bulb Bubble 1636 *$$

── big financial bubble

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

1637

•── 1637: Bursting of tulip mania in the Netherlands – while tulip mania is popularly reported as an example of a financial crisis, and was a speculative bubble, modern scholarship holds that its broader economic impact was limited to negligible, and that it did not precipitate a financial crisis.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis

1638

1639

1640

1641

1642

1643

1644

1645

1646

1647

1648

1649

1650

1651

1652

1653

1654

1655

1656

1657

1658

1659

1660

1670

1680

1690

1699

1700

1710

1720

•── The South Sea Bubble 1720 *$$

── big financial bubble

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company

•── The Mississippi Bubble 1720 *$$

── big financial bubble

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Company#Mississippi_Bubble

•── 1720: Bursting of South Sea Bubble (Great Britain) and Mississippi Bubble (France) – earliest of modern financial crises; in both cases the company assumed the national debt of the country (80–85% in Great Britain, 100% in France), and thereupon the bubble burst. The resulting crisis of confidence probably had a deep impact on the financial and political development of France.[47]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis

1730

1740

1750

1756–1763

•── the immense debt accrued through the French involvement in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763)

1760

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

1770

── American revolution 1775-1783 2,407 million (Constant FY2011 $)*††

1771

1772

1773

1774

1775

1776

•── War of American Independence Financing Crisis (1776) (United States) –

── The French monarchy went deeply into debt to finance its 1.4 billion livre support for the colonial rebels; Spain invested 700 million reales.[2]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises

1777

1778

1779

1780

1781

1782

1783–1788

•── France's Financial and Debt Crisis (1783–1788)- France severe financial crisis due to the immense debt accrued through the French involvement in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) and the American Revolution (1775–1783).

── this is important, because somehow the U.S. is able to engaged in high cost, expensive, long war, generating significant revenues and profits for the military industrial complex (who, list them for each war), accumulating public debt, and suffer no severe financial crisis; meaning what; who is paying for these war debt?; during world war two, they sold war bond; so why no war bond when the U.S. is in conflict?;

── u.s. interest rate, seven years tracking, pre-war, during war, post war

── somehow the war debt is being financed; ...

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis

1789

1790

1791

1792

1793

1794

1795

1796

1797

1798

1799

1800

1801

1802

1803

1804

1805

1806

1807

1808

1809

1810

1811

── war of 1812 1812-1815 1,553 million (Constant FY2011 $)*††

1816

1817

1818

1819

1820

1821

1822

1823

1824

1825

1826

1827

1828

1829

1830

1831

1832

1833

1834

1835

1836

1837

1838

1839

1840

1841

1842

1843

1844

1845

1846

── Mexican war 1846-1849 2,376 million (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── war with Mexico

── the Mexican war (1846 to 1848)

── economic interest: territory??

── an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory.

── additional defense spending for war with Mexico: ???

── James Polk administration

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Polk

── Polk sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico in an attempt to buy the disputed territory, together with California and everything in between for $25 million, an offer the Mexican government refused.[7][8] The U.S. sent troops to the disputed Rio Grande, ignoring Mexican demands to withdraw. Mexico subsequently attacked a group of 80 soldiers on April 25, 1846,[9][10][11] a move which Polk used to convince the Congress of the United States to declare war.[10]

── The Pacific Squadron of the U.S. Navy blockaded the Pacific coast in the lower Baja California Territory. The U.S. Army, under Major General Winfield Scott, invaded the Mexican heartland and captured the capital, Mexico City, in September 1847.

── Although Polk formally relieved his peace envoy, Nicholas Trist, of his post as negotiator, Trist ignored the order and successfully concluded the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It ended the war, and Mexico recognized the cession of present-day California, Nevada, and Utah as well as parts of present-day Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The U.S. agreed to pay $15 million for the physical damage of the war and assumed $3.25 million of debt already owed by the Mexican government to U.S. citizens. Mexico relinquished its claims on Texas and accepted the Rio Grande as its northern border with the United States.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican–American_War

──

── Some scholars see the Mexican–American War as leading to the American Civil War. Many officers who had trained at West Point gained experience in the war in Mexico and later played prominent leadership roles during the Civil War.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican–American_War

──

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican–American_War

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States

1850

1851

1852

• 1852–53—Argentina. Marines were landed and maintained in Buenos Aires

to protect American interests during a revolution.*†

• 1853—Nicaragua—to protect American lives and interests during political

disturbances.*†

• 1853–54—Japan—The “Opening of Japan” and the Perry Expedition. [The

State Department does not give more details, but this involved the use of

warships to force Japan to open its ports to the United States.]*†

• 1853–54—Ryukyu and Bonin Islands—Commodore Perry on three visits

before going to Japan and while waiting for a reply from Japan made a naval

demonstration, landing marines twice, and secured a coaling concession from

the ruler of Naha on Okinawa. He also demonstrated in the Bonin Islands. All

to secure facilities for commerce.*†

• 1854—Nicaragua—San Juan del Norte [Greytown was destroyed to avenge

an insult to the American Minister to Nicaragua.]*†

• 1855—Uruguay—U.S. and European naval forces landed to protect American

interests during an attempted revolution in Montevideo.*†

1856

1857 Nicaragua. April to May, November to December 1857. In May, Commander C.H. Davis, with some marines, received the surrender of William Walker, who had been attempting to gain control of the country and protected his men from the retaliation of local allies who had been fighting Walker. In November and December of the same year, United States vessels Saratoga, Wabash, and Fulton

opposed another attempt by William Walker to take control of Nicaragua. Commodore Hiram Paulding’s act of landing marines and compelling the removal of Walker to the United States was tacitly disavowed by Secretary of State Lewis Cass, and Paulding was forced into retirement.,

(page 8/58, pdf, Instances of use of United States armed forces abroad, 1798-2023, updated June 7, 2023, Congressional research service : informing the legislative debate since 1914,)

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf

1858

• 1859—China—For the protection of American interests in Shanghai.*†

1860

── Civil war: union 1861-1865 59,631 million (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── Civil war: confederacy 1861-1865 20,111 million (Constant FY2011 $)*††

• 1860—Angola, Portuguese West Africa—To protect American lives and

property at Kissembo when the natives became troublesome.*†

*† A State Department list, “Instances of the Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad 1798–1945” (presented by Secretary of State Dean Rusk to a Senate committee in 1962 to cite precedents for the use of armed force against Cuba), shows 103 interventions in the affairs of other countries between 1798 and 1895., p.???, A people's history of the United States, by Howard Zinn.

1866

1867

1868

1869

1870

── Otto von Bismarck

── „In 1870, however, Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck provoked France's Napoleon III to declare war. Bismarck used the conflict to unify Germany, defeating France, and creating the state that would loom so large over the first half of the 20th century.“, p.68,

Harry Henderson, The age of Napoleon, 1999

1871

1872

1873

1873–1896

•── Great Depression of British Agriculture

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_of_British_Agriculture

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises

1873–1896

•── long depression

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises

1874

1875

1876

1877

1878

1879

1880

•── Berlin, and German investors had been caught up in international railroad speculation mania in the 1880s., p.14, William Engdahl, A century of war: Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order, 1992, 2004.

1881

1882

1883

1884

1885

1886

1887

1888

1889

1890

•── huge losses in Argentine bond speculation and investment

── near failure of the prestigious London merchant bank, Baring Brothers

── ties of German banking to this Argentine speculation

── a Berlin bank panic ensured

── the dominoes of an international financial pyramid began to topple.

── the crash of the elite Baring Bros., with some $75,000,000 invested in various Argentine bonds

── p.14, William Engdahl, A century of war: Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order, 1992, 2004.

1891

•── In the wake of the financial collapse of Argentina, a large wheat exporter to Europe, Berlin grain traders Ritter & Blumenthal had foolishly attempted to ‘corner’ on the entire German wheat market, planning to capitalize on the consequences of the financial troubles in Argentina. This only aggravated the financial panic in Germany as their scheme collapsed, bankrupting in its wake the esteemed private banking house of Hirschfeld & Wolf, and causing huge losses at the Rheinisch-Westphaelische Bank, further triggering a general run on German banks and a collapse of the Berlin stock market, lasting into the autumn of 1891.

── pp.14-15, William Engdahl, A century of war: Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order, 1992, 2004.

1892

1893

• 1893—Hawaii—Ostensibly to protect American lives and property; actually

to promote a provisional government under Sanford B. Dole. This action was

disavowed by the United States.*†

── Hawaii

── January 17, 1893

── The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom was a coup d'état against Queen Liliʻuokalani on the island of Oahu and led by the Committee of Safety.

── economic interest: sugar (the economics of the sugar industry.)

── This was driven by missionary religion and the economics of the sugar industry.

──

── William Henry Harrison administration

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Harrison

── John Tyler administration

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyler

── Grover Cleveland administration

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland

── Blount concluded in his report on July 17, 1893, "United States diplomatic and military representatives had abused their authority and were responsible for the change in government."[73] Minister Stevens was recalled, and the military commander of forces in Hawaiʻi was forced to resign his commission.[73] President Cleveland stated, "Substantial wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the injured people requires we should endeavor to repair the monarchy."

──

── why the takeover?

── The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom was a coup d'état against Queen Liliʻuokalani, which took place on January 17, 1893, on the island of Oahu and led by the Committee of Safety, composed of seven foreign residents and six Hawaiian Kingdom subjects of American descent in Honolulu.[5][6] The Committee prevailed upon American minister John L. Stevens to call in the U.S. Marines to protect the national interest of the United States of America. The insurgents established the Republic of Hawaii, but their ultimate goal was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which occurred in 1898.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom

── The 1993 Apology Resolution by the U.S. Congress concedes that "the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and [...] the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum".

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom

1894

• 1894—Nicaragua—To protect American interests at Bluefields following a

revolution.*†

1895

1896

•── German exchange act of 1896 (germany)

── established definitively a different form of organization of finance and banking in Germany from that of Britain or America──Anglo-Saxon banking.

── Not only this, but many London financial houses reduced their activity in the restrictive German financial market after the 1890s as a result of these restrictions, lessening the influence of City of London finance over German economic policy.

── Significantly, to the present day, these fundamental differences between Anglo-Saxon banking and finance, and a ‘German model’ as largely practiced in Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Japan, are still somewhat visible.3

── p.15, William Engdahl, A century of war: Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order, 1992, 2004.

──

1897

1898

── Spanish american war 1898-1899 9,034 million (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── The Spanish-American War. On April 25, 1898, the United States declared war with Spain. The war followed a Cuban insurrection against Spanish rule and the sinking of the USS Maine in the harbor at Havana.

(page 10/58, pdf, Instances of use of United States armed forces abroad, 1798-2023, updated June 7, 2023, Congressional research service : informing the legislative debate since 1914,)

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf

── The war ended with the 1898 Treaty of Paris, negotiated on terms favorable to the United States. The treaty ceded ownership of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain to the United States and granted the United States temporary control of Cuba.

── The cession of the Philippines involved payment of $20 million ($650 million today) to Spain by the U.S. to cover infrastructure owned by Spain.[34]

── The Spanish–American War brought an end to almost four centuries of Spanish presence in the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific. The defeat and loss of the Spanish Empire's last remnants was a profound shock to Spain's national psyche and provoked a thorough philosophical and artistic reevaluation of Spanish society known as the Generation of '98.[33]

── The United States meanwhile not only became a major power, but also gained several island possessions spanning the globe, which provoked rancorous debate over the wisdom of expansionism.[35]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War

── Two major developments emerged from the Spanish–American War: one, it firmly established the United States' vision of itself as a "defender of democracy"

── As historian Louis Pérez argued in his book Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos, the Spanish–American War of 1898 "fixed permanently how Americans came to think of themselves: a righteous people given to the service of righteous purpose".[172]

── The U.S. annexed the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam.[184]

── To pay the costs of the war, Congress passed an excise tax on long-distance phone service.[188] At the time, it affected only wealthy Americans who owned telephones. However, the Congress neglected to repeal the tax after the war ended four months later.

── The tax remained in place for over 100 years until, on August 1, 2006, it was announced that the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the IRS would no longer collect it.[189]

── Being a "body of troops which can be quickly mobilized and sent on board transports, fully equipped for service ashore and afloat" became the Marine Corps' mission throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st century.[193]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War

1899

── Philippine

── 1899 to 1913: The Philippine–American War saw Filipino revolutionaries revolt against American rule following the Spanish-American War. The U.S. Army deployed 100,000 (mostly National Guard) troops under General Elwell Otis to the Philippines, resulting in the poorly armed and poorly trained rebels to break off into armed bands. The insurgency collapsed in March 1901 when the leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, was captured by General Frederick Funston and his Macabebe allies.[21] The concurrent Moro Rebellion resulted in the subsequent annexation of the Philippines by the United States.

── additional defense spending for war with Philippine: ???

──

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War

*†A State Department list, “Instances of the Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad 1798–1945” (presented by Secretary of State Dean Rusk to a Senate committee in 1962 to cite precedents for the use of armed force against Cuba), shows 103 interventions in the affairs of other countries between 1798 and 1895., p.???, A people's history of the United States, by Howard Zinn.

1900

1901

1902

1903

── 1903–1925: Honduras

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars

── U.S. staged invasions and incursions of US troops

── The United Fruit Company and Standard Fruit Company dominated Honduras' key banana export sector and associated land holdings and railways.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

1904

1905

1906

1907

1908

1909-1912

── Nicaragua

── international banking house of Brown Brothers

── en.wikipedia.org

── international banking

── look up Brown brothers, international banking

── I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

── Smedley Butler on Interventionism

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

── https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

── https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/15/war-is-still-a-racket/

1909-1933

── Nicaragua

── United States occupation (1909–1933)

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua

1910

1911

1912-1933

── Nicaragua

── U.S. Marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933,[29]: 111, 197 [59] except for a nine-month period beginning in 1925

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua

1913

1914

1914-1918 the Great war (later renamed to World war I)

── In fact, America prospered because of the war. American farmers sold wheat, cotton, and other crops to both the Allies and the Central Powers. American factories sold guns, ammunition, and other war supplies to both sides., p.45, Zachary Kent, World War I : the war to end wars, 1994. (World War I : the war to end wars / Zachary Kent., 1. world war, 1914-1918--juvenile literature., [1. world war, 1914-1918.], D521.K35 1994, 940.3--dc20, 1994, )

── Financial crisis of 1914

── The European liquidation of American securities in 1914 (also called the financial crisis of 1914) was the selloff of about $3 billion (equivalent to $81.16 billion in 2021) of foreign portfolio investments at the start of World War I, taking place at the same time as the broader July Crisis of 1914. Together with loans to finance the Allied war effort, made by J.P. Morgan and others, the liquidation of European-held securities transformed the United States from a debtor nation to a creditor nation for the first time in its history.[1]

── For ... months the stock market remained closed to prevent the sale of British-held American securities.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_1914

1914

── Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914

1914

── Mexico

── Tampico, American oil interests

── look up American oil interests in Tampico

── Smedley Butler on Interventionism

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

── https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

── https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/15/war-is-still-a-racket/

1915

── 1915─1934 U.S. occupied Haiti

── National City Bank

── look up National city bank

── The U.S. occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. U.S.-based banks had lent money to Haiti and the banks requested U.S. government intervention. In an example of "gunboat diplomacy," the U.S. sent its navy to intimidate to get its way.[28]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

── Smedley Butler on Interventionism

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Haiti

1916

── Dominican Republic

── American sugar interests

── en.wikipedia.org Dominican republic

── export, us sugar interests

── this gives credence to 1893 coup d'état against Queen Liliʻuokalani in Hawaiian Kingdom

── Hawaii was taken over by of American sugar interests

── Smedley Butler on Interventionism

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

── https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

── https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/15/war-is-still-a-racket/

1917

── World war I 1917-1921 334 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── known as the Great war at the time (v), mostly in European theater?

1917-1918

── World War I. On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war with Germany and on December 7, 1917, with Austria-Hungary. Entrance of the United States into the war was precipitated by Germany’s submarine warfare against neutral shipping

(page 12/58, pdf, Instances of use of United States armed forces abroad, 1798-2023, updated June 7, 2023, Congressional research service : informing the legislative debate since 1914,)

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf

divergent record in the beginning and the ending of the Great war:

1917-1918

1917-1921

1914-1918 the Great war (later renamed to World war I)

1917

── Costa Rica

── Costa Rica was the only country in Latin America that never had a long lasting authoritarian government in the 20th century. Its only dictatorship during the period was after the 1917 Costa Rican coup d'état led by Minister of War Federico Tinoco Granados[32] against President Alfredo González Flores after González attempted to increase tax on the wealthy, and it lasted only two years. The US government led by Democratic President Woodrow Wilson did not recognize Tinoco's rule and helped the opposition that quickly overthrew Tinoco after a few months of warfare.[32]

──

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

1918

1919

── The formal signing of the treaty took place in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on June 28, 1919., p.115, Zachary Kent, World War I : the war to end wars, 1994. (World War I : the war to end wars / Zachary Kent., 1. world war, 1914-1918--juvenile literature., [1. world war, 1914-1918.], D521.K35 1994, 940.3--dc20, 1994, )

1920

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

•── The late 1920s stock price bubble 1927–1929 *$$

── big financial bubble

── u.s. only?

1928

1929

•── Wall street crash of 1929

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929

──

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises

1929–1939

•── great depression

── the worst depression of modern history (developed countries?)

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

1938

1939

── In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, setting loose the Second World War twenty years after Germany's crushing defeat in the First., p.161, Russell Freedman, The war to end all wars: world war I, 2010 , (The war to end all wars: world war I / by Russell Freedman., 1. world war, 1914-1918--juvenile literature., D522.7.F74 2010, 940.3--dc22, )

──

1940

── World war II 1941-1945 4,104 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── Attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941)

── Japan's naval force launched a „secret“ attack against the U.S. navy

and the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; explicitly declaring war

on the United States; ...

──

── America had entered the war [December 8, 1941]

── additional defense spending for war in the European theatre

──

── additional defense spending for war in the Pacific theatre

──

── additional defense spending for war in the African theatre

── written by James Bamford (The puzzle palace), 1982

── pp.43-44

── In the land war, COMINT read Rommel's intentions in Africa so well that the Desert Fox, finding himself often outmaneuvered, guessed the truth. But when he confided his suspicions to Berlin, he was summarily informed by the German High Command that such things were not possible.

── And before D Day in France, COMINT told where Von Rundstedt assumed the main Allied attack would come, as well as some of Berlin's replies brushing off his good advice, presumably in favor of Hitler's intuition., pp.43-44, James Bamford, The puzzle place, 1982

── additional defense spending for Manhattan project

── at the time, this project was classified

── Manhattan Engineering District (MED)

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

── Venezuela declared war on Germany in February 1945, when the war was almost over.

── war bond (see Captain American the first avenger )

── https://www.globalresearch.ca/sleeping-with-the-third-reich-americas-unspoken-alliance-with-nazi-germany-against-the-soviet-union/5694820

── https://www.globalresearch.ca/sleeping-with-the-third-reich-americas-unspoken-alliance-with-nazi-germany-against-the-soviet-union/

1941-1945

── World War II. On December 8, 1941, the United States declared war with Japan, on December 11 with Germany and Italy, and on June 5, 1942, with Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.

The United States declared war against Japan after the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor, and against Germany and Italy after those nations, under the dictators Hitler and Mussolini, declared war against the United States.

The United States declared war against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania in response to the declarations of war by those nations against the United States.

(page 13/58, pdf, Instances of use of United States armed forces abroad, 1798-2023, updated June 7, 2023, Congressional research service : informing the legislative debate since 1914,)

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf

1944─1945 Bretton Wood Monetary Conferences

── July 1944

── Mount Washington Hotel, Carroll, New Hampshire

── representatives of 44 countries

── set the gold standard at $35 an ounce

── chose the American dollar as the backbone of international exchange.

── the Bretton Woods Conferences established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

── These two organizations were later instrumental in rebuilding both the European and Japanese infrastructures.

── World Bank

── the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development ── reflects its original mission: the last part, “development”, was added almost as an afterthought.

1945

── July 16, 1945: first atomic explosion, called the Trinity Test

── p.17

── the first atomic explosion, called the Trinity Test, was conducted in secrecy on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

── Sharon Weinberger, The imagineers of war : the untold history of DARPA, the pentagon agency that changed the world, 2017

1946

1947

1948–1960s Italy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy

1949 Syrian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1949_Syrian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1949–1953 Albania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Valuable

1950

── Egypt

── In the early 1950s, the CIA spearheaded Project FF, a clandestine effort to pressure Egyptian king Farouk I into embracing pro-American political reforms. After he resisted, the project shifted towards deposing him, and Farouk was subsequently overthrown in a military coup in 1952.[35]

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

1950

── Korea 1950-1953 341 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

June 25, 1950: North Korea invades South Korea (the forgotton war)

── additional defense spending for war in Korea

1951

1952

1953 Iranian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

── 1953, Great Britain and the United States overthrew the elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh.

── economic interest: oil

── Iran 1953 (Great Britain and the United States)

── Dwight Eisenhower administration

── The British long exercised colonial power in Iran through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In 1951, as British colonies began to wrest their freedom from the empire, Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the oil company in a similar act of anti-colonial defiance. In response, the British turned to the U.S., appealing to American fears of Soviet influence. So, in August 1953, in “Operation Ajax”, two intelligence agencies, MI6 and the CIA, overthrew the popular, democratically elected Persian government. The Shah became a U.S.-backed autocrat, who Iranians saw as a puppet using American arms and policing techniques to loot Persia’s oil wealth.

── https://history.stanford.edu/news/aug-19-1953-operation-ajax-priya-satia

── Britain and America had seemingly gotten what they wanted, including their cut of Iranian oil. But as "Coup 53" reminds us, history loves unintended consequences. Although the British ran the coup, the Americans immediately replaced them as the dominant foreign power in Iran. As for the shah, his harsh reign eventually spawned the Islamic Revolution, leading to more than 40 years of oppressive rule by mullahs who see the U.S., not Britain, as its prime enemy. Perhaps needless to say, they also took over Iran's oil industry - the reason for the coup in the first place.

── https://www.npr.org/transcripts/903505983

1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1954

Guatemalan coup

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

── Operation PBSuccess (Guatemalan government)

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBSuccess

── The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was the result of a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess. It deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954. It installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala.

── ([ if democratic, then craft and shape democratic system to favor control; if revolution, and the revolution is against your interest, then ...; if you do not have popular support, then installed military dictatorship ??? ])

── economic interest: United Fruit Company (UFC),

── United Fruit Company

── Journalist and writer William Blum describes UFC's role in Guatemala as a "state within a state".[17]

── Harry Truman administration

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Truman

── operation PBfortune

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBFortune

── Dwight Eisenhower administration

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954 Guatemalan_coup_d'état

── Operation PBHistory was a covert operation carried out in Guatemala by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It followed Operation PBSuccess, which led to the overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in June 1954 and ended the Guatemalan Revolution. PBHistory attempted to use documents left behind by Árbenz's government and by organizations related to the communist Guatemalan Party of Labor to demonstrate that the Guatemalan government had been under the influence of the Soviet Union, and to use those documents to obtain further intelligence that would be useful to US intelligence agencies. It was an effort to justify the overthrow of the elected Guatemalan government in response to the negative international reactions to PBSuccess.[1]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBHistory

── Tibet

── The CIA armed an indigenous insurgency in order to oppose the invasion and subsequent control of Tibet by China[40]

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

1955

1956–57 Syria crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria#Attempted_regime_change,_1956%E2%80%9357

Vietnam War: began November 1, 1955 ── ended April 30, 1975

Result: North Vietnamese victory

source: https://www.bing.com/search?q=vietnam+war

── additional defense spending for war in Vietnam

──

── Vietnam 1965-1975 739 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── during the American-Vietnam war, underlying U.S. economic condition + war debt put the value of u.s. dollar under pressure, the flight of foreign reserve to exchange the their dollar for gold, president Richard Nixon administration dropped the gold the standard before other countries, following France and England, exchanged their dollar reserve holding for gold, and adopted fiat monetary policy.

── August 15, 1971, the ability to exchange US dollar for gold suspended, p.108, George Soros, The new paradigm for financial markets, 2008

1957–58 Indonesian rebellion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia#CIA_Failed_Coup_Attempt_of_1958

1958–1960

. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960: Volume VI: Cuba.

http://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1958-60v06/ebook/frus1958-60v06.epub

1959

1959–2000 assassination attempts on Fidel Castro

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro

1959 Cambodia, Bangkok Plot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok_Plot

1959–1965

U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959–1965

Bohning, Don (2005). The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959–1965. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books. ISBN 978-1574886764.

https://archive.org/details/castroobsessionu0000bohn

1960

1960 Congo coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba#United_States_involvement

1961–1963

. Foreign Relations of the United States 1961–1963

http://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1961-63v10/ebook/frus1961-63v10.epub

1961

── Cuba

── 1961

── Covert operations continued under President John F. Kennedy and his successors. In 1961, the CIA attempted to depose Cuban president Fidel Castro through the Bay of Pigs Invasion, however the invasion was doomed to fail when the international community found out about the invasion, and President Kennedy withdrew further U.S. air support. During Operation Mongoose, the CIA aggressively pursued its efforts to overthrow Castro's regime by conducting various assassination attempts on Castro and facilitating U.S.-sponsored terrorist attacks in Cuba. American efforts to sabotage Cuba's national security played a significant role in the events leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which saw the U.S. blockade the island during a confrontation with the Soviet Union.

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

── en.wikipedia.org

── Bay of Pigs Invasion

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

1961 Cuba, Bay of Pigs Invasion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

1961 Cuba, Operation Mongoose

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose

1961 Dominican Republic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Trujillo#Assassination

1962

1963

October 2, 1963 (T-50: November 22, 1963)

── (1) On October 2, 1963, ... . The main recommendations, which appear in Section I(B) of the McNamara-Taylor report, were that a phased withdrawal be completed by the end of 1965 and that the “Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 out of 17,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Vietnam by the end of 1963.” At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal. *JFK22

1963 South Vietnamese coup d'état

November 1, 1963 (T-20: November 22, 1963)

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_South_Vietnamese_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

── (4) On November 1 there came the coup in Saigon and the assassination of Diem and Nhu. *JFK22

November 12, 1963 (T-10: November 22, 1963)

At a press conference on November 12, Kennedy publicly restated his Vietnam goals. They were “to intensify the struggle” and “to bring Americans out of there.” << skip last sentence >> *JFK22

1963

November 22, 1963 (united states coup d'état)

── president John F. Kennedy was assassinated (killed) in Dallas, Texas, u.s.a.

── vice-president Lyndon Baines Johnson was sweared in, and assumed the duty and responsibility as the president of the united states (POTUS) *JFK22

1964

August 2, 1964

North Vietnam attacks a U.S. warship ([ SIGINT/COMINT watercraft ]) in the Gulf of Tonkin. A second attack, conceived by the U.S., though not actually occurring, provides the impetus for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Congress overwhelmingly passes the resolution, giving the President broad powers to wage war.

1964-1973

── Vietnam War. U.S. military advisers had been in South Vietnam for a decade, and their numbers had been increased as the military position of the Saigon government became weaker. After citing what he termed were attacks on U.S. destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked in August 1964 for a resolution expressing U.S. determination to support freedom and protect peace in Southeast Asia. Congress responded with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, expressing support for “all necessary measures” the President might take to repel armed attack against U.S. forces and prevent further aggression. Following this resolution, and following a Communist attack on a U.S. installation in central Vietnam, the United States escalated its participation in the war to a peak of 543,000 military personnel by April 1969 further aggression.

── see Pentagon paper, also known as (( Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force ))

(page 14/58, pdf, Instances of use of United States armed forces abroad, 1798-2023, updated June 7, 2023, Congressional research service : informing the legislative debate since 1914,)

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf

── divergent record on the beginning and ending of the Vietnam-Amercan conflict

── 1955─1975

── began November 1, 1955 ── ended April 30, 1975

── 1955─1964 Vietnam-American advisors period

── (?) American public was kept in the dark about the u.s. involvement in Vietnam

── 1964-1973

── 1965─1975

── 1965─1975 Vietnam 739 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── budget estimates of war cost Vietnam-American war

── the last ten years of war, the spending (cost) escalated

1964 ─ 1973 (concurrent with the Vietnam War)

── Kingdom of Laos, between 14 December 1964 and 29 March 1973 concurrent with the Vietnam War.

── Operation Barrel Roll was a covert U.S. Air Force 2nd Air Division and U.S. Navy Task Force 77, interdiction and close air support campaign conducted in the Kingdom of Laos between 14 December 1964 and 29 March 1973 concurrent with the Vietnam War. The operation resulted in 260 million bombs being dropped on Laos, making Laos "the most heavily bombed nation in history".[1]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barrel_Roll

── Barrel Roll was one of the most closely held secrets and one of the most unknown components of the American military commitment in Southeast Asia. Due to the ostensible neutrality of Laos, guaranteed by the Geneva Conference of 1954 and 1962, both the U.S. and North Vietnam strove to maintain the secrecy of their operations and only slowly escalated military actions there. As much as both parties would have liked to have publicized their enemy's own alleged violation of the accords, both had more to gain by keeping their own roles quiet.[2] Regardless, by the end of the conflict in 1975, Laos emerged from nine years of war just as devastated as any of the other Asian participants in the Vietnam War.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barrel_Roll

── https://www.thecollector.com/war-in-laos-most-heavily-bombed-country-in-history/

── Air⭐️Conflicts: Vietnam [Operation Barrel Roll] Happy 75th Anniversary Air Force!

── Despite Laos' declared neutrality there are around 6000 Viet Cong troops positioned in Eastern Laos. The United States is covertly supporting the western part of the country in their fight against communism, but with North Vietnam expanding their logistic corridor, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, we are left with few options. We must intervene before the Viet Cong's control of the area becomes too dominant. However, given Laos' neutrality, this operation is in direct violation of the Geneva Convention - therefore it is classified and top secret! Revealing this operation would do major damage to the international reputation of the U.S. Thanks to your previous performance and reports from senior officers, you have been selected to be part of Operation Barrel Roll. Your primary goal is to eliminate ground targeted in the area and disrupt enemy supply routes.

── Operation Barrel Roll "Advisor Era"

── source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjZ_pFsWYAg

── Happy 75th Anniversary Air Force!

1964 Brazilian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1965

── Vietnam 1965─1975 739 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── August 15, 1971, the ability to exchange US dollar for gold suspended, p.108, George Soros, The new paradigm for financial markets, 2008

── Congo

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

── Dominican republic

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

1965–66 Indonesia, Transition to the New Order

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_to_the_New_Order

1966 Ghanaian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Council#1966_coup

1966 Japan, Asian Development Bank in 1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

•── The surge in bank loans to Mexico and other developing countries in the 1970s *$$

── big financial bubble

1970–1973 Chile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile#Allende_presidency

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1971

── Vietnam war

── August 15, 1971, the ability to exchange US dollar for gold suspended, p.108, George Soros, The new paradigm for financial markets, 2008

── this event is important

── as far as I can determine, this was one of the few times where a long, expensive, ball busting war budget, that was not paid for, by a proper war bond, passing new laws for a war tax and fees, put pressure on the u.s. financial system, by way of devaluation of the u.s. dollar; the war spending was good for some parts of the economy (the military-industrial complex with some spillover), but it was not paid for ...

── World war II 1941-1945 4,104 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── Korea 1950-1953 341 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── August 15, 1971 (u.s. dropping the gold standard)

(foreign reserve can no longer be exchanged for equivalent pegged valued in gold)

── Vietnam 1965-1975 739 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

1971 Bolivian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Banzer#Dictatorship_(1971%E2%80%931978)

1972

1973─1979

•── explosion of international credit between 1973 and 1979

first oil shock, recycling of petro-dollar,

Euro-dollar market, p.110, George Soros, The new paradigm for financial markets, 2008

── lead to big debt crisis

── this event is related to the Vietnam-American war

── the u.s. financial condition at the time before the Vietnam-American war + the accumulated debt from war spending on the Vietnam war + ... ==> US dollar permanent suspension of the gold standard ==> Saudi Arabia central bank (SAMA - saudi arabia monetary authority) to look for a new basket of currency to denominated their oil (Saudi arabia oil was denominated in U.S. dollar (USD)) ==> a secret meeting between the u.s. and saudi arabia (at the time, the meeting was secret, later the meeting was revealed) => led to a fourfold rise in the price of oil ==> explosion of international credit between 1973 and 1979

── In October 1973─January 1974 a fourfold rise in the price of oil

── Kissinger, Bennett, and Mulford helped orchestrate the secret financial arrangement with SAMA [Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority?] that creatively transformed the high oil prices of 1973-1974 to the direct benefit of the US Federal Reserve Banks and the Bank of England.

── David Mulford of the London-based Eurobond firm of White Weld & Co.

── the fourfold rise in the price of oil would led to excess dollar looking for places to go to?

── if you have lots of money or the problem of too much money like SAMA [Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority?], how do you recirculate the money back into the economy

── lead to the explosion of international credit between 1973 and 1979 (do you need a fourfold rise in the price of oil to have an explosion of international credit) (what other causes and condition that would create an explosion of international credit)

──

1973

── On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet rose to power, overthrowing the democratically elected president Salvador Allende.

── economic interest: ?? copper mining?

── why the coup?

── Chile 1973 (United States (CIA))

── Richard Nixon administration

── President Richard Nixon and the CIA had been involved in the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the elected leader of Chile. "Complementing the CIA effort, the US government exerted economic pressure on Chile, again to no avail. A second approach, entirely under CIA auspices, encouraged a military coup. President Richard Nixon directed that neither the Departments of State and Defense nor the US Ambassador to Chile be informed of this undertaking."

── https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKturnerStan.htm

── "Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973".[18]

── https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94chile.pdf

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

1973–1975 (??)

── 1999 Allegations of CIA involvement in Australia 1973–1975

── Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam

── speculation that the CIA and Nugan Hand had played some part in the dismissal of Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam.

── Revelations by the American defence industry employee, Christopher Boyce, initiated speculation that the CIA and Nugan Hand had also played some part in the dismissal of Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. For instance, William Blum (1999) states inter alia (among other things), that the bank allegedly transferred $2.4 million to the Liberal Party of Australia which contested two forced elections in 1974 and 1975 to oust Whitlam's Labor government. He also states that the Governor General, Sir John Kerr, who was instrumental to the dismissal, was referred to by the CIA as "our man".[36] The CIA responded to these allegations with an emphatic denial: "The CIA has not engaged in operations against the Australian Government, has no ties with Nugan Hand and does not involve itself in drug trafficking".[37]

(] there is overwhelming evidence that the CIA has strong and direct ties with the Nugan Hand bank. [);

36. Blum, W. 1999, 'Australia 1973–1975: Another free election bites the dust' in Killing Hope: US military and CIA interventions since World War II. Maine: Common Courage Press, p. 249.

37. Kwitney J. 1987, 354

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nugan_Hand_Bank

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the_Whitlam_dismissal

1974

•── In The Dollar Crisis, Richard Duncan attributed the 1974 petrodollar recycling mechanism to the “first boom-and-bust crisis of the post-Bretton Woods [Monetary Conference] era.”46, p.22 (pdf - page 43/289), Petrodollar warfare : oil, Iraq and the future of the dollar, William R. Clark, 2005.

── [these excess flow of USD would later result in unsustainable debt in banks, and international lending schemes ]

── en.wikipedia.org

── look up 1974 petrodollar recycling mechanism

── put it here

──

1975─1976

── Angola

1975–1992 Angola, UNITA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNITA

1976 Argentine coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Argentine_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1977

1978

1979 Salvadoran coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Salvadoran_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1979–1989 Afghanistan, Operation Cyclone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

1979

── July 1979

── The Sandinistas forcefully took power in July 1979, ousting Somoza, and prompting the exodus of the majority of Nicaragua's middle class, wealthy landowners, and professionals, many of whom settled in the United States.[83][84][85] The Carter administration decided to work with the new government, while attaching a provision for aid forfeiture if it was found to be assisting insurgencies in neighboring countries.[86] Somoza fled the country and eventually ended up in Paraguay, where he was assassinated in September 1980, allegedly by members of the Argentinian Revolutionary Workers' Party.[87]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua

── Nicaraguan Revolution (1960s–1990)

── internal conflict with little to no outside infiltration that we know of

── this led to Iran-Contra in the u.s.

1980

•── In 1982, Chile got into a major banking crisis, following the radical financial market liberalization in the mid-1970s under the Pinochet dictatorship *†††

•── The international lending spree of the 1970s

turned into the international banking crisis in 1982, p.116, George Soros, The new paradigm for financial markets, 2008

•── late 1980s, the Saving and Loans (S&L) companies in the US got into massive troubles, *†††

1980

1981–1990 Nicaragua, Contras

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras

── Nicaragua

── The U.S. also carried out a campaign of economic sabotage, and disrupted shipping by planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's port of Corinto,[93]

── The court also found that the U.S. encouraged acts contrary to humanitarian law by producing the manual Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare and disseminating it to the Contras.[95] The manual, among other things, advised on how to rationalize killings of civilians.[96]

── The U.S. also sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinistas, and the Reagan administration imposed a full trade embargo.[97]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua

Somoza Debayle, Anastasio and Jack Cox. 1980. Nicaragua Betrayed. Western Islands. pp. 169–180.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_Debayle

1982 Chad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiss%C3%A8ne_Habr%C3%A9#Support_of_the_U.S._and_France

1983

25 October 1983 under Operation Urgent Fury, the United States military invaded Grenada.

── Grenada

── 82nd Airborne soldiers during Operation Urgent Fury, the American invasion of Grenada in October 1983.

── Ronald Reagan administration

── economic interest: none

── American invasion of Grenada happened a few days after the attack on the U.S. Marine and French armed forces in the Beruit, Lebannon.

── During Reagan administration, the US sent troops to Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War as part of a peace-keeping mission. The U.S. withdrew after 241 servicemen were killed in the Beirut barracks bombing.

── On 23 October 1983, 241 American service men (military and civilian) died from a truck bomb.

── On that same day in a separate truck bomb, 58 French paratroopers were killed.

── Two days later on 25 October 1983 under Operation Urgent Fury, the United States military invaded Grenada.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut_barracks_bombing

── the lesson learned for the u.s. Marine from the Beirut barracks bombing is that the Marine shall be responsible for its own security (force protection); ...

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

── I went to Grenada and established a dialogue with Maurice Bishop and Bernard Cord and Phyllis Cord, to see - these were all educated people, and experienced people - and they had a theory, they had something they wanted to do, they had rationales and explanations - and I went repeatedly to hear them. And then of course I saw the U.S., the CIA mounting a covert action against them, I saw us orchestrating our plan to invade the country. 19 days before he was killed, I was in Grenada talking to Maurice Bishop about these things, these indicators, the statements in the press by Ronald Reagan, and he and I were both acknowledging that it was almost certain that the U.S. would invade Grenada in the near future.

── a lecture by John Stockwell given in October, 1987

── the secret wars of the cia - John Stockwell.pdf

1983

── Operation Staunch

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Staunch

── In the spring of 1983, the United States launched Operation Staunch, a wide-ranging diplomatic effort to persuade other nations all over the world not to sell arms or spare parts for weapons to Iran.[17] This was at least part of the reason the Iran–Contra affair proved so humiliating for the United States when the story first broke in November 1986 that the U.S. itself was selling arms to Iran.

── en.wikipedia.org Iran–Contra affair

1984

1985–1989

•── The bubble in real estate and stocks in Japan 1985–1989 *$$

── big financial bubble

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)

1985–1989

•── The 1985–1989 bubble in real estate and stocks in Finland, Norway and Sweden *$$

── big financial bubble

1985

── 20 August 1985 – 4 March 1987

── to fund the Contras, a right-wing rebel group, in Nicaragua.

── known as McFarlane affair (in Iran), Iran–Contra scandal, Iran–Contra, Irangate, Reagangate

── a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan administration.

── Between 1981 and 1986, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo.[2]

── The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, a right-wing rebel group, in Nicaragua.

── Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress.

── en.wikipedia.org Iran–Contra affair

── At the same time that the American government was considering its options on selling arms to Iran, Contra militants based in Honduras were waging a guerrilla war to topple the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) revolutionary government of Nicaragua. Almost from the time he took office in 1981, a major goal of the Reagan administration was the overthrow of the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua and to support the Contra rebels.[18] The Reagan administration's policy towards Nicaragua produced a major clash between the executive and legislative branches as Congress sought to limit, if not curb altogether, the ability of the White House to support the Contras.[18] Direct U.S. funding of the Contras insurgency was made illegal through the Boland Amendment, the name given to three U.S. legislative amendments between 1982 and 1984 aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to Contra militants. By 1984, funding for the Contras had run out; and, in October of that year, a total ban came into effect.

1986–1992

•── Japanese asset price bubble

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises

1986

── Libya

── In response to purported Libyan involvement in international terrorism, specifically the 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks, the Reagan administration launched Operation Attain Document[72] in early 1986, which saw operations in March 1986 that killed 72 Libyans and destroyed multiple boats and SAM sites. In April 1986, the U.S. bombed Libya again, killing over 40 Libyan soldiers and up to 30 civilians. The U.S. shot down two Libyan Air Force MiG-23 fighters 40 miles (64 km) north of Tobruk in 1989.[73][74]

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

1987

1988

1989

1990

── Persian gulf war 1990-1991 102 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

1990

•── The surge in foreign investment in Mexico 1990–1993 *$$

── big financial bubble

──

1990

•── The bubble in real estate and stocks in Finland, Norway and Sweden *$$

── 1985–1989 bubble in real estate and stocks

── big financial bubble

•── the 1990s started with banking crisis in Sweden, Finland and Norway, following their financial deregulation in the late 1980s, *†††

── financial deregulation in the last 1980s in Sweden, Finland and Norway

── 1985–1989 bubble in real estate and stocks in Sweden, Finland and Norway

── banking crisis in Sweden, Finland and Norway

── The Sweden financial crisis 1990–1994 was a housing bubble that took place in Sweden that deflated during 1991 and 1992, and resulted in a severe credit crunch and widespread bank insolvency. Similar crises took place in other countries around the same time, such as in Finland and the Savings and loan crisis in the United States. The causes of the crisis were similar to those of the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–2008. In response, the government took the following actions:[1]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_financial_crisis_1990%E2%80%931994

1991

1991 Germany, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1991

1992

•── The bubble in real estate and stocks in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia

and several other Asian countries 1992–1997 *$$

── big financial bubble

1993

•── the bond rally of 1993 had indeed been a bubble, p.444, Sebastian Mallaby., The Man Who Knew: the life and times of Alan Greenspan, 2016.

── u.s. bond market?

── bond market in other countries

1994 ??

•── Banker Trust scandal., Charles Sanford, p.469, Sebastian Mallaby., The Man Who Knew: the life and times of Alan Greenspan, 2016.

1994─1995

•── Then there was the ‘tequila’ crisis in Mexico in 1994 and 1995. *†††

1995–2000

•── The bubble in over-the-counter stocks in the United States 1995–2000 *$$

── big financial bubble

1995

── Bankers trust

── In 1995, litigation by two major corporate clients against Bankers Trust shed light on the market for over-the-counter derivatives. Bankers Trust employees were found to have repeatedly provided customers with incorrect valuations (lies - breach of trust) of their derivative exposures.[35]

──: "The only way the CFTC found out about the Bankers Trust fraud was because Procter & Gamble, and others, filed suit. There was no record keeping requirement imposed on participants in the market. There was no reporting. We had no information." -Brooksley Born, US CFTC Chair, 1996-'99.[36]

── Several Bankers Trust brokers were caught on tape remarking that their client [Gibson Greetings and P&G, respectively] would not be able to understand what they were doing in reference to derivatives contracts sold in 1993. As part of their legal case against Bankers Trust, Procter & Gamble (P&G) "discovered secret telephone recordings between brokers at Bankers Trust, where 'one employee described the business as 'a wet dream,' ... another Bankers Trust employee said, '...we set 'em up.'"[36]

── The bank's row with P&G made the front page of major US magazines during 1995.

── On October 16, 1995, the US magazine BusinessWeek published a cover story that P&G was pursuing racketeering charges against Bankers Trust: "The key evidence: some 6,500 tape recordings."[37]

── Both the magnitude of losses and the litigation by well-known companies caused market regulators to intervene.

── The thesis of an October 20, 2009, broadcast of the PBS television magazine Frontline, Early Warnings of the Economic Meltdown, was that the failure of Congress to allow CFTC a role in regulating derivatives was a key element eventually leading to the financial crisis of 2007–2010.

──

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankers_Trust#Controversies

1996

1996 Iraq coup attempt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Iraq#Iraq_1996

── The CIA was involved in the failed 1996 coup attempt against Saddam Hussein.

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Iraq

1997

── 1997 Asian financial crisis

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis

•── The bubble in real estate and stocks in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia

and several other Asian countries 1992–1997 *$$

── big financial bubble

•── This was followed by crisises in the ‘miracle’ economies of Asia ─ Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea ─ in 1997, which had resulted from their financial opening up and deregulation in the late 1980 and the early 1990s. *†††

1998

•── On the heels of the Asian crisis came the Russian crisis of 1998. *†††

•── 1998 Russian financial crisis

── The Russian financial crisis (also called the ruble crisis or the Russian flu) began in Russia on 17 August 1998. It resulted in the Russian government and the Russian Central Bank devaluing the ruble and defaulting on its debt. The crisis had severe impacts on the economies of many neighboring countries.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Russian_financial_crisis

•── Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM) was a highly leveraged hedge fund. In 1998, it received a $3.6 billion bailout from a group of 14 banks, in a deal brokered and put together by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.[1]

── The company consisted of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a company incorporated in Delaware but based in Greenwich, Connecticut. LTCM managed trades in Long-Term Capital Portfolio LP, a partnership registered in the Cayman Islands. The fund's operation was designed to have extremely low overhead; trades were conducted through a partnership with Bear Stearns and client relations were handled by Merrill Lynch.[11]

── Meriwether chose to start a hedge fund to avoid the financial regulation imposed on more traditional investment vehicles, such as mutual funds, as established by the Investment Company Act of 1940—funds which accepted stakes from 100 or fewer individuals each with more than $1 million in net worth were exempt from most of the regulations that bound other investment companies.[12] The bulk of the money raised, in late 1993, came from companies and individuals connected to the financial industry.[13] With the help of Merrill Lynch, LTCM also secured hundreds of millions of dollars from high-net-worth individual including business owners and celebrities, as well as private university endowments and later the Italian central bank. By 24 February 1994, the day LTCM began trading, the company had amassed just over $1.01 billion in capital.[14]

── John Quiggin's book Zombie Economics (2010) states, "These derivatives, such as interest rate swaps, were developed with the supposed goal of allowing firms to manage risk on exchange rates and interest rate movements. Instead, they allowed speculation on an unparalleled scale."[18]

── In 1998, the chairman of Union Bank of Switzerland resigned as a result of a $780 million loss incurred from the being short put options on LTCM, which had become significantly in-the-money due to LTCM's collapse.[3]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management

1999

•── The Brazilian crisis followed in 1999 *†††

1999

── Yugoslav war (1999)

── look up en.wikipedia.org Yugoslav war 1999

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

── The air strikes lasted from 24 March 1999 to 10 June 1999.

── the United States called it Operation Noble Anvil (Serbian: Племенити наковањ / Plemeniti nakovanj);[27]

── Yugoslavia's refusal to sign the Rambouillet Accords was initially offered as justification for NATO's use of force.[31] NATO countries attempted to gain authorisation from the UN Security Council for military action, but were opposed by China and Russia, who indicated that they would veto such a measure. As a result, NATO launched its campaign without the UN's approval, stating that it was a humanitarian intervention. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in the case of a decision by the Security Council under Chapter VII, or self-defence against an armed attack – neither of which were present in this case.[32]

── The NATO bombing killed about 1,000 members of the Yugoslav security forces in addition to between 489 and 528 civilians. It destroyed or damaged bridges, industrial plants, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments, private businesses as well as barracks and military installations.

── The bombing was NATO's second major combat operation, following the 1995 bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was the first time that NATO had used military force without the expressed endorsement of the UN Security Council and thus, international legal approval,[44] which triggered debates over the legitimacy of the intervention.

── Strategy

── Operation Allied Force predominantly used a large-scale air campaign to destroy Yugoslav military infrastructure from high altitudes. After the third day of aerial bombing, NATO had destroyed almost all of its strategic military targets in Yugoslavia. Despite this, the Yugoslav army continued to function and to attack Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) insurgents inside Kosovo, mostly in the regions of Northern and Southwest Kosovo. NATO bombed strategic economic and societal targets, such as bridges, military facilities, official government facilities, and factories, using long-range cruise missiles to hit heavily defended targets, such as strategic installations in Belgrade and Pristina. The NATO air forces also targeted infrastructure, such as power plants (using the BLU-114/B "Soft-Bomb"), water-processing plants and the state-owned broadcaster. The Dutch foreign minister Jozias van Aartsen said that the strikes on Yugoslavia should be such as to weaken their military capabilities and prevent further humanitarian atrocities.[49]

──

── According to British Lieutenant-General Mike Jackson, Russia's decision on 3 June 1999 to back the West and to urge Milošević to surrender was the single event that had "the greatest significance in ending the war". The Yugoslav capitulation came the same day.[54] Russia relied on Western economic aid at the time, which made it vulnerable to pressure from NATO to withdraw support for Milošević.[55]

──

── In addition to fixed-wing air power, one battalion of Apache helicopters from the US Army's 11th Aviation Regiment was deployed to help combat missions.[citation needed] The regiment was augmented by pilots from Fort Bragg's 82nd Airborne Attack Helicopter Battalion. The battalion secured AH-64 Apache attack helicopter refueling sites, and a small team forward deployed to the Albania – Kosovo border to identify targets for NATO air strikes.[citation needed]

──

── On 7 May, the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and injuring at least 20.[80] The US defence secretary explained the cause of the error as "because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map", but the Chinese government did not accept this explanation. The Chinese government issued a statement on the day of the bombing, stating that it was a "barbarian act".[81] The U.S. air force ran out of high valued target to bomb, they have plenty of bombs left to use up, and the pilot needed things to do; they asked the Central Intelligence Agency if they have anything in their intelligence that is worth bombing; the Central Intelligence Agency passed on some targets, and one of the coordinates - marked as a warehouse - turned out to be the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. (p.47, George Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the center of the storm : my years at the CIA, 2007) The US president Bill Clinton apologised for the bombing, saying it was an accident.[82][83][84] The US gave China financial compensation.[85][86] The bombing strained relations between the People's Republic of China and NATO, provoking angry demonstrations outside Western embassies in Beijing.[87] The victims were Xu Xinghu, his wife Zhu Ying, and Shao Yunhuan.

──

2000

•── Internet Bubble in late 2000.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000

2001

── September 11, 2001: Building 1, 2, 7 world trade center

Pentagon

Pennsyvania field

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_games_in_progress_on_September_11,_2001

── list of war games in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005

── Able danger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger

── Able Danger was a classified military planning effort led by the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It was created as a result of a directive from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in early October 1999 by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton, to develop an information operations campaign plan against transnational terrorism.

── The program used data mining techniques to associate open source information with classified information in an attempt to make connections among individual members of terrorist groups as part of its original "intelligence preparation of the battlespace". The objective of this particular project was to ascertain whether the data mining techniques and open source material were effective tools in determining terrorist activities, and if the resultant data could be used to create operational plans that could be executed in a timely fashion to interrupt, capture and/or destroy terrorists or their cells.[7][8]

── link analysis

── 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[9]

── Pentagon's Land Warfare Analysis Department

Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010

2003-2010 Iraq 784 billion *††

200x-2010 Afghanistan/other 321 billion *††

200y-2010 total post-9/11──Iraq, Afghanistan/other 1,147 billion *††

2001─2007 prelude to the 2008 Financial crisis

for the insider 2006 was the start of the financial crisis

2002

── and the Argentinian one in 2002, both in part the results of financial deregulation. *†††

2003

── Iraq 2003-2010 784 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── In 2003, the U.S. and a multi-national coalition invaded and occupied Iraq to depose President Saddam Hussein, whom the Bush administration accused of having links to al-Qaeda and possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) during the Iraq disarmament crisis. No stockpiles of WMDs were discovered besides about 500 degraded and abandoned chemical munitions leftover from the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s, which the Iraq Survey Group deemed not militarily significant.[126] The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found no substantial evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda[127] and President Bush later admitted that "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong".[128] Over 4,400 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died during the Iraq War, which officially ended on December 18, 2011.

── 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq happened about 18 months after September 11, 2001.

── additional defense spending for war in Afghanistan and Iraq

──

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

2004

2005

2005─2007 peak period of market activities before the 2008 drop off the cliff

2006

2007

── 2007–2008 world food price crisis

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_price_crisis

2007─2008

── Financial crisis of 2007-2008

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–2008

United States of America (economic sector)

5 investment banks

- goldman sachs

- morgan stanley

- lehman brothers (RIP)

- merrill lynch (part of Bank of America)

- bear stearns (RIP)

2 financial conglomerates

- citigroup

- jp morgan

3 security insurance companies

- AIG

- MBIA

- AMBAC

3 rating agencies

- moody's

- standard & poor's

- fitch

40 trillion dollars in credit defalt swap (oh, there is going to be a crash)*$

2008

2008 September Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is placed into custodianship

September of 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were both placed into conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under direct government control. Today, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has not changed very much.

2009

── 2009 Honduran coup (us/cia involvement??)

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direcci%C3%B3n_de_Inteligencia_Nacional

──

2010

── Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 321 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

── total post-9/11──Iraq, Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 1,147 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

2010

── Stuxnet

── Stuxnet is a computer worm designed to target Iran's uranium enrichment infrastructure

── cyberattack

── Different variants of Stuxnet targeted five Iranian organizations,[22] with the target being uranium enrichment infrastructure in Iran;[21][23][24]

── Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm first uncovered in 2010 and thought to have been in development since at least 2005. Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and is believed to be responsible for causing substantial damage to the nuclear program of Iran.[2] Although neither country has openly admitted responsibility, the worm is widely understood to be a cyberweapon built jointly by the United States and Israel in a collaborative effort known as Operation Olympic Games.[3][4][5] The program, started during the Bush administration, was rapidly expanded within the first months of Barack Obama's presidency.[6]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015 China, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank [in 2015 - operational]

2019

── the assassination of prominent Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.[143]

── Donald Trump administration

── en.wikipedia.org

── Foreign interventions by the United States

2020

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_stock_market_crash

2021

2030

additional sources:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/06/13/cost-of-war-13-most-expensive-wars-in-us-history/39556983/

*†† ── Costs of Major U.S. Wars

── congressional research service

── June 29, 2010

── Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

*JFK22 ── Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam

── James K. Galbraith

── History, Politics, U.S.

── September 1, 2003

── https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/

*$ ── The Biggest Bank Heist Ever! | HD

── https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuyrBRUsu9A

── Uploaded on Feb 13, 2012

*$$ Charles Kindleberger's book with Robert Z. Aliber;

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises;

5th edition, 2005

1978, 1989, 1996, 2000;

p.9

The big ten financial bubbles

1. The Dutch Tulip Bulb Bubble 1636 *$$

2. The South Sea Bubble 1720 *$$

3. The Mississippi Bubble 1720 *$$

4. The late 1920s stock price bubble 1927–1929 *$$

5. The surge in bank loans to Mexico and other developing countries in the 1970s *$$

6. The bubble in real estate and stocks in Japan 1985–1989 *$$

7. The 1985–1989 bubble in real estate and stocks in Finland, Norway and Sweden *$$

8. The bubble in real estate and stocks in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia

and several other Asian countries 1992–1997 *$$

9. The surge in foreign investment in Mexico 1990–1993 *$$

10. The bubble in over-the-counter stocks in the United States 1995–2000 *$$

(Charles Kindleberger, Robert Z. Aliber, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, 5th edition, 2005, )

____________________________________

*JFK22

November 1, 1963 (T-10: November 22, 1963)

(4) On November 1 there came the coup in Saigon and the assassination of Diem and Nhu. At a press conference on November 12, Kennedy publicly restated his Vietnam goals. They were “to intensify the struggle” and “to bring Americans out of there.” << skip last sentence >> *JFK22

── 1992, John M. Newman (author), JFK and Vietnam (book titled), (out of print)

── check to see if John Newman, JFK and Vietnam, 1992 is available

source:

Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam

James K. Galbraith

History, Politics, U.S.

September 1, 2003

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/

(] source end [)

____________________________________

deaths, casualties, injuries for each war

go get the numbers

____________________________________

*†††

Ha-Joon Chang, Economics : the user's guide, 2014

pp.222-223

In 1982, Chile got into a major banking crisis, following the radical financial market liberalization in the mid-1970s under the Pinochet dictatorship *†††

late 1980s, the Saving and Loans (S&L) companies in the US got into massive troubles, *†††

the 1990s started with banking crisis in Sweden, Finland and Norway, following their financial deregulation in the late 1980s, *†††

Then there was the ‘tequila’ crisis in Mexico in 1994 and 1995. *†††

This was followed by crisises in the ‘miracle’ economies of Asia ─ Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea ─ in 1997, which had resulted from their financial opening up and deregulation in the late 1980 and the early 1990s. *†††

On the heels of the Asian crisis came the Russian crisis of 1998. *†††

The Brazilian crisis followed in 1999 *†††

and the Argentinian one in 2002, both in part the results of financial deregulation. *†††

first published 2014

this paperback edition published 2015

Ha-Joon Chang, Economics : the user's guide, 2014

____________________________________

u.s. involvement in regime change (20th century)

1948–1960s Italy

1949 Syrian coup d'état

1949–1953 Albania

1953 Iranian coup d'état

1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

1956–57 Syria crisis

1957–58 Indonesian rebellion

1959–2000 assassination attempts on Fidel Castro

1959 Cambodia, Bangkok Plot

1960 Congo coup d'état

1961 Cuba, Bay of Pigs Invasion

1961 Cuba, Operation Mongoose

1961 Dominican Republic

1963 South Vietnamese coup d'état

1964 Brazilian coup d'état

1965–66 Indonesia, Transition to the New Order

1966 Ghanaian coup d'état

1971 Bolivian coup d'état

1970–1973 Chile

1976 Argentine coup d'état

1979 Salvadoran coup d'état

1979–1989 Afghanistan, Operation Cyclone

1975–1992 Angola, UNITA

1981–1990 Nicaragua, Contras

1982 Chad

1996 Iraq coup attempt

1948–1960s Italy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy

1949 Syrian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1949_Syrian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1949–1953 Albania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Valuable

1953 Iranian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1956–57 Syria crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria#Attempted_regime_change,_1956%E2%80%9357

1957–58 Indonesian rebellion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia#CIA_Failed_Coup_Attempt_of_1958

1959–2000 assassination attempts on Fidel Castro

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro

1959 Cambodia, Bangkok Plot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok_Plot

1960 Congo coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba#United_States_involvement

1961 Cuba, Bay of Pigs Invasion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

1961 Cuba, Operation Mongoose

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose

1961 Dominican Republic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Trujillo#Assassination

1963 South Vietnamese coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_South_Vietnamese_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1964 Brazilian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1965–66 Indonesia, Transition to the New Order

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_to_the_New_Order

1966 Ghanaian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Council#1966_coup

1971 Bolivian coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Banzer#Dictatorship_(1971%E2%80%931978)

1970–1973 Chile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile#Allende_presidency

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1976 Argentine coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Argentine_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1979 Salvadoran coup d'état

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Salvadoran_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

1979–1989 Afghanistan, Operation Cyclone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

1975–1992 Angola, UNITA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNITA

1981–1990 Nicaragua, Contras

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras

1982 Chad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiss%C3%A8ne_Habr%C3%A9#Support_of_the_U.S._and_France

1996 Iraq coup attempt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Iraq#Iraq_1996

____________________________________

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars

____________________________________

*†† ── Costs of Major U.S. Wars

── congressional research service

── June 29, 2010

── Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010

(Constant FY2011 $)

American revolution 1775-1783 2,407 million

war of 1812 1812-1815 1,553 million

Mexican war 1846-1849 2,376 million

Civil war: union 1861-1865 59,631 million

Civil war: confederacy 1861-1865 20,111 million

Spanish american war 1898-1899 9,034 million

World war I 1917-1921 334 billion

World war II 1941-1945 4,104 billion

Korea 1950-1953 341 billion

Vietnam 1965-1975 739 billion *††

Persian gulf war 1990-1991 102 billion *††

Iraq 2003-2010 784 billion *††

Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 321 billion *††

total post-9/11──Iraq, Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 1,147 billion *††

──

Sources: All estimates are of the costs of military operations only and do not reflect costs of veterans’ benefits, interest on war-related debt, or assistance to allies. Except for costs of the American Revolution and the Civil

War costs of the Confederacy, all estimates are based on U.S. government budget data. Current year dollar estimates of the costs of the War of 1812 though World War II represent the increase in Army and Navy outlays during the period of each war compared to average military spending in the previous three years. For the Civil War costs of the Confederacy, the estimate is from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1994. For the American Revolution, the estimate is from an unofficial financial history of the United States published in 1895. For the Korean War, the estimate represents increased expenditures of the DOD during the period of the conflict compared to the projected trend from the average of three years before the war to three years after. For the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War, figures are DOD estimates of the incremental costs of operations, meaning the costs of war-related activities over and above the regular, non-wartime costs of defense. For operations since September 11, 2001, through FY2009, figures reflect CRS estimates of amounts appropriated to cover war-related costs. For FY2010, figures are DOD estimates of war-related appropriations. The current-year dollar estimates are converted to constant prices using estimates of changes in the consumer price index for years prior to 1940 and using Office of Management and Budget and DOD estimates of defense Costs of Major U.S. Wars Congressional Research Service 3 inflation for years thereafter. The CPI estimates used here are from a data base maintained at Oregon State University. The data base periodically updates figures for new official CPI estimates of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

*†† ── Costs of Major U.S. Wars

── congressional research service

── June 29, 2010

── Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

──

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

____________________________________

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf

Instances of Use of United States Armed

Forces Abroad, 1798-2023

Updated June 7, 2023

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf

____________________________________

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-america-addicted-foreign-interventions-23582

If we further refine the data to compare Cold War and post–Cold War intervention rates, something truly striking emerges: while the United States engaged in forty-six military interventions from 1948–1991, from 1992–2017 that number increased fourfold to 188.

These statistics introduce two important puzzles. First, why would military interventions rise at the same time success in military interventions has been declining? Second, why would military interventions increase after the Cold War, when both an ideological rationale for interventions (say, to rescue peoples in danger of falling into a Soviet, and by extension, authoritarian, orbit) and a material existential threat to U.S. national security (no more dominoes, a reduced threat of deliberate thermonuclear war) had declined? In other words, if the United States only intervenes with armed force when its vital interests are at stake, why intervene more often when there are arguably fewer vital interests at stake? The answer is that Washington too often intervenes militarily when it should not—and U.S. security and prosperity have both suffered as a result.

Our elites don’t pay the costs.

This process began in the 1940s with Mao Tse-Tung’s efforts to innovate a strategy capable of defeating a major advanced industrial state with only a peasant army. His “revolutionary guerrilla warfare” strategy turned out to have very little to do with Communism, and everything to do with nationalism; and it eventually succeeded in defeating the U.S.-supported Kuomintang with no outside material support. The core features of the People’s Liberation Army doctrine would be adapted by the Viet Minh against first France, and later the United States in Indochina and Vietnam (respectively).

Monica Duffy Toft is Professor of International Politics and Director, Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School of Government, Tufts University.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-america-addicted-foreign-interventions-23582

____________________________________

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

── 1903–1925: Honduras

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars

── The United Fruit Company and Standard Fruit Company dominated Honduras' key banana export sector and associated land holdings and railways.

── U.S. staged invasions and incursions of US troops

── 1903 (supporting a coup by Manuel Bonilla)

── 1907 (supporting Bonilla against a Nicaraguan-backed coup)

── 1911 and 1912 (defending the regime of Miguel R. Davila from an uprising)

── 1919 (peacekeeping during a civil war, and installing the caretaker government of Francisco Bográn)

── 1920 (defending the Bográn regime from a general strike)

── 1924 (defending the regime of Rafael López Gutiérrez from an uprising)

── 1925 (defending the elected government of Miguel Paz Barahona) to defend US interests.[17]

──

── en.wikipedia.org

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

____________________________________

known record of u.s. involvement in Nicaragua

• 1853—Nicaragua—to protect American lives and interests during political

disturbances.*†

(page 8/58, pdf, Instances of use of United States armed forces abroad, 1798-2023, updated June 7, 2023, Congressional research service : informing the legislative debate since 1914,)

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf

• 1894—Nicaragua—To protect American interests at Bluefields following a

revolution.*†

1909-1912

── Nicaragua

── international banking house of Brown Brothers

── en.wikipedia.org

── international banking

── look up Brown brothers, international banking

── Smedley Butler on Interventionism

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

── https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

── https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/15/war-is-still-a-racket/

1909-1933

── Nicaragua

── United States occupation (1909–1933)

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua

1910

1911

1912-1933

── Nicaragua

── U.S. Marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933,[29]: 111, 197 [59] except for a nine-month period beginning in 1925

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua

1979

── July 1979

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua

── Nicaraguan Revolution (1960s–1990)

── internal conflict with little to no outside infiltration that we know of

── this led to Iran-Contra in the u.s.

1980

1981–1990 Nicaragua, Contras

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras

── Nicaragua

── The U.S. also carried out a campaign of economic sabotage, and disrupted shipping by planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's port of Corinto,[93]

── The U.S. also sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinistas, and the Reagan administration imposed a full trade embargo.[97]

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua

Somoza Debayle, Anastasio and Jack Cox. 1980. Nicaragua Betrayed. Western Islands. pp. 169–180.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_Debayle

1983

── Operation Staunch

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Staunch

── en.wikipedia.org Iran–Contra affair

── the secret arms sales to Iran to fund the Contra in Nicargua

1984

1985

── 20 August 1985 – 4 March 1987

── to fund the Contras, a right-wing rebel group, in Nicaragua.

── known as McFarlane affair (in Iran), Iran–Contra scandal, Iran–Contra, Irangate, Reagangate

── a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan administration.

── Between 1981 and 1986, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo.[2]

── The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, a right-wing rebel group, in Nicaragua.

── Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress.

── en.wikipedia.org Iran–Contra affair

____________________________________

Chile (11th September 1973)

https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https://spartacus-educational.com/COLDallende.htm

([ this website has been marked for excesssive, intrusive, and ... advert ])

https://spartacus-educational.com/COLDallende.htm

Salvador Allende

Salvador Allende was born in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1903. As a medical student he became involved in radical politics and he was arrested several times while at university.

In 1933 Allende helped to found the Chilean Socialist Party, a Marxist organization that was opposed to the Soviet Union influenced Communist Party.

Allende was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1937 and served in the government of Pedro Aguirre Cerda as Minister of Health (1939-41). He was also senator between 1945 and 1970.

Allende was an unsuccessful candidate for president in 1952, 1958 and 1964. When he was elected as president in 1970 he became the first Marxist to gain power in a free democratic election. The new government faced serious economic problems. Inflation was running at 30 per cent and over 20 per cent of the male adult population were unemployed. It was estimated that half of the children under 15 suffered from malnutrition.

Allende's decide to take action to redistribute wealth and land in Chile. Wage increases of around 40 per cent were introduced. At the same time companies were not allowed to increase prices. The copper industry was nationalized. So also were the banks. Allende also restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, China and the German Democratic Republic.

The CIA arranged for Michael V. Townley to be sent to Chile under the alias of Kenneth W. Enyart. He was accompanied by Aldo Vera Serafin of the Secret Army Organization (SAO). Townley now came under the control of David Atlee Phillips who had been asked to lead a special task force assigned to remove Allende.

Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro

The CIA attempted to persuade Chile's Chief of Staff General Rene Schneider, to overthrow Allende. He refused and on 22nd October, 1970, his car was ambushed. Schneider drew a gun to defend himself, and was shot point-blank several times. He was rushed to hospital, but he died three days later. Military courts in Chile found that Schneider's death was caused by two military groups, one led by Roberto Viaux and the other by Camilo Valenzuela. It was claimed that the CIA was providing support for both groups.

Allende's attempts to build a socialist society was opposed by business interests. Later, Henry Kissinger admitted that in September 1970, President Richard Nixon ordered him to organize a coup against Allende's government. A CIA document written just after Allende was elected said: "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup" and "it is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG (United States government) and American hand be well hidden."

David Atlee Phillips set Michael V. Townley the task of organizing two paramilitary action groups Orden y Libertad (Order and Freedom) and Protecion Comunal y Soberania (Common Protection and Sovereignty). Townley also established an arson squad that started several fires in Santiago. Townley also mounted a smear campaign against General Carlos Prats, the head of the Chilean Army. Prats resigned on 21st August, 1973.

On 11th September, 1973, a military coup removed Allende's government from power. Salvador Allende died in the fighting in the presidential palace in Santiago. General Augusto Pinochet replaced Allende as president.

By John Simkin (john@spartacus-educational.com) © September 1997 (updated November 2021).

____________________________________

en.wikipedia.org

David Atlee Phillips (alias Kenneth W. Enyart)

Aldo Vera Serafin

Secret Army Organization (SAO)

Michael V. Townley

Rene Schneider

Roberto Viaux

Camilo Valenzuela

Orden y Libertad (Order and Freedom)

Protecion Comunal y Soberania (Common Protection and Sovereignty)

arson squad

Carlos Prats (general, head of the Chilean army)

Henry Kissinger

USG (United States government)

source:

https://spartacus-educational.com/COLDallende.htm

https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https://spartacus-educational.com/COLDallende.htm

____________________________________

Iraq

── Hostilities of the Gulf War were suspended on 28 February 1991, with a cease-fire negotiated between the UN Coalition and Iraq.[41] The U.S. and its allies tried to keep Saddam in check with military actions such as Operation Southern Watch, which was conducted by Joint Task Force Southwest Asia (JTF-SWA) with the mission of monitoring and controlling airspace south of the 32nd Parallel (extended to the 33rd Parallel in 1996) as well as using economic sanctions.

── look up incident where u.s. air force misidentify a u.n. transport helicopter for ... and then shot it down; ...

──

── It was revealed that a biological weapons (BW) program in Iraq had begun in the early 1980s with inadvertent[42][43] help from the U.S. and Europe in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972. Details of the BW program—along with a chemical weapons program—surfaced after the Gulf War (1990–91) following investigations conducted by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) which had been charged with the post-war disarmament of Saddam's Iraq. The investigation concluded that the program had not continued after the war.

── The U.S. and its allies then maintained a policy of "containment" towards Iraq. This policy involved numerous economic sanctions by the UN Security Council; the enforcement of Iraqi no-fly zones declared by the U.S. and the UK to protect the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan and Shias in the south from aerial attacks by the Iraqi government; and ongoing inspections. Iraqi military helicopters and planes regularly contested the no-fly zones.[44][45]

── In October 1998, removing the Iraqi government became official U.S. foreign policy with enactment of the Iraq Liberation Act. Enacted following the expulsion of UN weapons inspectors the preceding August (after some had been accused of spying for the U.S.), the act provided $97 million for Iraqi "democratic opposition organizations" to "establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq."[46]

── This legislation contrasted with the terms set out in United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which focused on weapons and weapons programs and made no mention of regime change.[47]

── Despite the Bush administration's stated interest in invading Iraq, little formal movement towards an invasion occurred until the 11 September attacks.

── Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed National Security Agency (NSA) intercept data available by midday of the 11th that pointed to al-Qaeda's culpability, and by mid-afternoon ordered the Pentagon to prepare plans for attacking Iraq.[51]

── In December 2002, a representative of the head of Iraqi Intelligence, the General Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, contacted former Central Intelligence Agency Counterterrorism Department head Vincent Cannistraro stating that Saddam "knew there was a campaign to link him to 11 September and prove he had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)." Cannistraro further added that "the Iraqis were prepared to satisfy these concerns. I reported the conversation to senior levels of the state department and I was told to stand aside and they would handle it."

──

── Iraq 2003-2010 784 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††

──

── en.wikipedia.org

── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq

*†† ── Costs of Major U.S. Wars

── congressional research service

── June 29, 2010

── Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

____________________________________

Angler: the Cheney vice presidency, Barton Gellman, 2008

pp.265-266 a piece of truth

War with Iraq would cost 1 to 2 percent of the gross domestic product.

[ the administration lowball the war cost to help for an easier sell ]

── Lawrence Lindsay

── 4 to 8 percent of GDP

As Bush and Cheney prepared to leave office, the war's financial toll quadrupled [Lawrence] Lidsay's worst-case estimate.

(Angler: the Cheney vice presidency, Barton Gellman, 2008, )

____________________________________

NOAM CHOMSKY:

“Strategic reasons. I mean, economic and strategic, which are impossible to distinguish. But since the Second World War, I'll quote the State Department, the Middle East oil producing regions have been regarded, I'll quote the words, "a stupendous source of strategic power." George Kennan, State Department, head of the planning section said control, not access, control over the Middle East oil gives us "veto power" over what our rivals might do, other industrial powers. You control the spigot, have your hand on the spigot, you have a lot of world control. It's not even access to oil. The first, roughly, 30 years after the Second World War, the U.S. was - North America was the major oil producer. It wasn't using Middle East oil, never the less we had to keep an iron hand of control on Middle East oil and if the U.S. were to go to solar energy, they'd still want to control Middle East oil because that's a lever of world control. Everyone understands it but we're not allowed to think about it.”

____________________________________

Robert M. Gates., A passion for leadership : lessons on change and reform from fifty years of public service, 2016

p.32

non-state enemies such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an other terrorist groups.

Those are the sort of adversaries we had actually fought over the previous 40 years

p.32

with the sole exception of the brief first Gulf War in 1991, when we expell the Iraqi army from Kuwait.

p.32

This mix of unconventional and irregular conflict ── with the lesser likelihood, but hugely consequential possibility, of a major military confrontation with Russia or China ── was the world the U.S. military was most likely to encounter in the future.

p.207

where we would use force next

Grenada, Haiti, the Balkans, Somalia, Panama, Iraq (three times ── 1991, 2003, and 2014), Libya, or Afghanistan.

p.207

Nigeria, Kenya, Mali, and elsewhere in Africa,

(A passion for leadership : lessons on change and reform from fifty years of public service / by Robert M. Gates., 1. Gates, Robert Michael, 1943-, 2. cabinet officers──united states──biography., 3. organizational change──united states., 4. leadership──united states., 5. public administration──united states──anecdotes., 6. administrative agencies──united states──reorganization., 7. united states. department of defense──officials and employees──biography., 8. united states. central intelligence agency──officials and employees──biography., 9. Texas A & M university system──biography., 10. united states──politics and government., E897.4.G37A3 2016, 352.2'93092──dc23, 2016, )

____________________________________

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

Seymour Hersh

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now

Seymour Hersh

Feb 8, 2023

The U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center can be found in a location as obscure as its name—down what was once a country lane in rural Panama City, a now-booming resort city in the southwestern panhandle of Florida, 70 miles south of the Alabama border. The center’s complex is as nondescript as its location—a drab concrete post-World War II structure that has the look of a vocational high school on the west side of Chicago. A coin-operated laundromat and a dance school are across what is now a four-lane road.

The center has been training highly skilled deep-water divers for decades who, once assigned to American military units worldwide, are capable of technical diving to do the good—using C4 explosives to clear harbors and beaches of debris and unexploded ordnance—as well as the bad, like blowing up foreign oil rigs, fouling intake valves for undersea power plants, destroying locks on crucial shipping canals. The Panama City center, which boasts the second largest indoor pool in America, was the perfect place to recruit the best, and most taciturn, graduates of the diving school who successfully did last summer what they had been authorized to do 260 feet under the surface of the Baltic Sea.

Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.

Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”

Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.

There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.

President Biden and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from two different ports in northeastern Russia near the Estonian border, passing close to the Danish island of Bornholm before ending in northern Germany.

The direct route, which bypassed any need to transit Ukraine, had been a boon for the German economy, which enjoyed an abundance of cheap Russian natural gas—enough to run its factories and heat its homes while enabling German distributors to sell excess gas, at a profit, throughout Western Europe. Action that could be traced to the administration would violate US promises to minimize direct conflict with Russia. Secrecy was essential.

From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance. The holding company behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incorporated in Switzerland in 2005 in partnership with Gazprom, a publicly traded Russian company producing enormous profits for shareholders which is dominated by oligarchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom controlled 51 percent of the company, with four European energy firms—one in France, one in the Netherlands and two in Germany—sharing the remaining 49 percent of stock, and having the right to control downstream sales of the inexpensive natural gas to local distributors in Germany and Western Europe. Gazprom’s profits were shared with the Russian government, and state gas and oil revenues were estimated in some years to amount to as much as 45 percent of Russia’s annual budget.

America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America. In fact, that’s exactly what happened. Many Germans saw Nord Stream 1 as part of the deliverance of former Chancellor Willy Brandt’s famed Ostpolitik theory, which would enable postwar Germany to rehabilitate itself and other European nations destroyed in World War II by, among other initiatives, utilizing cheap Russian gas to fuel a prosperous Western European market and trading economy.

Nord Stream 1 was dangerous enough, in the view of NATO and Washington, but Nord Stream 2, whose construction was completed in September of 2021, would, if approved by German regulators, double the amount of cheap gas that would be available to Germany and Western Europe. The second pipeline also would provide enough gas for more than 50 percent of Germany’s annual consumption. Tensions were constantly escalating between Russia and NATO, backed by the aggressive foreign policy of the Biden Administration.

Opposition to Nord Stream 2 flared on the eve of the Biden inauguration in January 2021, when Senate Republicans, led by Ted Cruz of Texas, repeatedly raised the political threat of cheap Russian natural gas during the confirmation hearing of Blinken as Secretary of State. By then a unified Senate had successfully passed a law that, as Cruz told Blinken, “halted [the pipeline] in its tracks.” There would be enormous political and economic pressure from the German government, then headed by Angela Merkel, to get the second pipeline online.

Would Biden stand up to the Germans? Blinken said yes, but added that he had not discussed the specifics of the incoming President’s views. “I know his strong conviction that this is a bad idea, the Nord Stream 2,” he said. “I know that he would have us use every persuasive tool that we have to convince our friends and partners, including Germany, not to move forward with it.”

A few months later, as the construction of the second pipeline neared completion, Biden blinked. That May, in a stunning turnaround, the administration waived sanctions against Nord Stream AG, with a State Department official conceding that trying to stop the pipeline through sanctions and diplomacy had “always been a long shot.” Behind the scenes, administration officials reportedly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, by then facing a threat of Russian invasion, not to criticize the move.

There were immediate consequences. Senate Republicans, led by Cruz, announced an immediate blockade of all of Biden’s foreign policy nominees and delayed passage of the annual defense bill for months, deep into the fall. Politico later depicted Biden’s turnabout on the second Russian pipeline as “the one decision, arguably more than the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan, that has imperiled Biden’s agenda.”

The administration was floundering, despite getting a reprieve on the crisis in mid-November, when Germany’s energy regulators suspended approval of the second Nord Stream pipeline. Natural gas prices surged 8% within days, amid growing fears in Germany and Europe that the pipeline suspension and the growing possibility of a war between Russia and Ukraine would lead to a very much unwanted cold winter. It was not clear to Washington just where Olaf Scholz, Germany’s newly appointed chancellor, stood. Months earlier, after the fall of Afghanistan, Scholtz had publicly endorsed French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for a more autonomous European foreign policy in a speech in Prague—clearly suggesting less reliance on Washington and its mercurial actions.

Throughout all of this, Russian troops had been steadily and ominously building up on the borders of Ukraine, and by the end of December more than 100,000 soldiers were in position to strike from Belarus and Crimea. Alarm was growing in Washington, including an assessment from Blinken that those troop numbers could be “doubled in short order.”

The administration’s attention once again was focused on Nord Stream. As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia.

It was at this unsettled moment that Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.

All options were to be on the table. But only one would emerge.

PLANNING

In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.

It would be the first of a series of top-secret meetings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). There was the usual back and forth chatter that eventually led to a crucial preliminary question: Would the recommendation forwarded by the group to the President be reversible—such as another layer of sanctions and currency restrictions—or irreversible—that is, kinetic actions, which could not be undone?

What became clear to participants, according to the source with direct knowledge of the process, is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines—and that he was delivering on the desires of the President.

THE PLAYERS Left to right: Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan.

Over the next several meetings, the participants debated options for an attack. The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly. The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”

At the time, the CIA was directed by William Burns, a mild-mannered former ambassador to Russia who had served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama Administration. Burns quickly authorized an Agency working group whose ad hoc members included—by chance—someone who was familiar with the capabilities of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Panama City. Over the next few weeks, members of the CIA’s working group began to craft a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger an explosion along the pipeline.

Something like this had been done before. In 1971, the American intelligence community learned from still undisclosed sources that two important units of the Russian Navy were communicating via an undersea cable buried in the Sea of Okhotsk, on Russia’s Far East Coast. The cable linked a regional Navy command to the mainland headquarters at Vladivostok.

A hand-picked team of Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency operatives was assembled somewhere in the Washington area, under deep cover, and worked out a plan, using Navy divers, modified submarines and a deep-submarine rescue vehicle, that succeeded, after much trial and error, in locating the Russian cable. The divers planted a sophisticated listening device on the cable that successfully intercepted the Russian traffic and recorded it on a taping system.

The NSA learned that senior Russian navy officers, convinced of the security of their communication link, chatted away with their peers without encryption. The recording device and its tape had to be replaced monthly and the project rolled on merrily for a decade until it was compromised by a forty-four-year-old civilian NSA technician named Ronald Pelton who was fluent in Russian. Pelton was betrayed by a Russian defector in 1985 and sentenced to prison. He was paid just $5,000 by the Russians for his revelations about the operation, along with $35,000 for other Russian operational data he provided that was never made public.

That underwater success, codenamed Ivy Bells, was innovative and risky, and produced invaluable intelligence about the Russian Navy's intentions and planning.

Still, the interagency group was initially skeptical of the CIA’s enthusiasm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unanswered questions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heavily patrolled by the Russian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cover for a diving operation. Would the divers have to go to Estonia, right across the border from Russia’s natural gas loading docks, to train for the mission? “It would be a goat fuck,” the Agency was told.

Throughout “all of this scheming,” the source said, “some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.’”

Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”

What came next was stunning. On February 7, less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

Several of those involved in planning the pipeline mission were dismayed by what they viewed as indirect references to the attack.

“It was like putting an atomic bomb on the ground in Tokyo and telling the Japanese that we are going to detonate it,” the source said. “The plan was for the options to be executed post invasion and not advertised publicly. Biden simply didn’t get it or ignored it.”

Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”

The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.”

The Agency working group members had no direct contact with the White House, and were eager to find out if the President meant what he’d said—that is, if the mission was now a go. The source recalled, “Bill Burns comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”

“The Norwegian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow water a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island . . .”

THE OPERATION

Norway was the perfect place to base the mission.

In the past few years of East-West crisis, the U.S. military has vastly expanded its presence inside Norway, whose western border runs 1,400 miles along the north Atlantic Ocean and merges above the Arctic Circle with Russia. The Pentagon has created high paying jobs and contracts, amid some local controversy, by investing hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and expand American Navy and Air Force facilities in Norway. The new works included, most importantly, an advanced synthetic aperture radar far up north that was capable of penetrating deep into Russia and came online just as the American intelligence community lost access to a series of long-range listening sites inside China.

A newly refurbished American submarine base, which had been under construction for years, had become operational and more American submarines were now able to work closely with their Norwegian colleagues to monitor and spy on a major Russian nuclear redoubt 250 miles to the east, on the Kola Peninsula. America also has vastly expanded a Norwegian air base in the north and delivered to the Norwegian air force a fleet of Boeing-built P8 Poseidon patrol planes to bolster its long-range spying on all things Russia.

In return, the Norwegian government angered liberals and some moderates in its parliament last November by passing the Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement (SDCA). Under the new deal, the U.S. legal system would have jurisdiction in certain “agreed areas” in the North over American soldiers accused of crimes off base, as well as over those Norwegian citizens accused or suspected of interfering with the work at the base.

Norway was one of the original signatories of the NATO Treaty in 1949, in the early days of the Cold War. Today, the secretary general of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, a committed anti-communist, who served as Norway’s prime minister for eight years before moving to his high NATO post, with American backing, in 2014. He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. He has been trusted completely since. “He is the glove that fits the American hand,” the source said.

Back in Washington, planners knew they had to go to Norway. “They hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration,” the source said. They also could be trusted to keep the mission secret. (The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream—if the Americans could pull it off—would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe.)

Sometime in March, a few members of the team flew to Norway to meet with the Norwegian Secret Service and Navy. One of the key questions was where exactly in the Baltic Sea was the best place to plant the explosives. Nord Stream 1 and 2, each with two sets of pipelines, were separated much of the way by little more than a mile as they made their run to the port of Greifswald in the far northeast of Germany.

The Norwegian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work, but the waters off Bornholm had another advantage: there were no major tidal currents, which would have made the task of diving much more difficult.

After a bit of research, the Americans were all in.

At this point, the Navy’s obscure deep-diving group in Panama City once again came into play. The deep-sea schools at Panama City, whose trainees participated in Ivy Bells, are seen as an unwanted backwater by the elite graduates of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, who typically seek the glory of being assigned as a Seal, fighter pilot, or submariner. If one must become a “Black Shoe”—that is, a member of the less desirable surface ship command—there is always at least duty on a destroyer, cruiser or amphibious ship. The least glamorous of all is mine warfare. Its divers never appear in Hollywood movies, or on the cover of popular magazines.

“The best divers with deep diving qualifications are a tight community, and only the very best are recruited for the operation and told to be prepared to be summoned to the CIA in Washington,” the source said.

The Norwegians and Americans had a location and the operatives, but there was another concern: any unusual underwater activity in the waters off Bornholm might draw the attention of the Swedish or Danish navies, which could report it.

Denmark had also been one of the original NATO signatories and was known in the intelligence community for its special ties to the United Kingdom. Sweden had applied for membership into NATO, and had demonstrated its great skill in managing its underwater sound and magnetic sensor systems that successfully tracked Russian submarines that would occasionally show up in remote waters of the Swedish archipelago and be forced to the surface.

The Norwegians joined the Americans in insisting that some senior officials in Denmark and Sweden had to be briefed in general terms about possible diving activity in the area. In that way, someone higher up could intervene and keep a report out of the chain of command, thus insulating the pipeline operation. “What they were told and what they knew were purposely different,” the source told me. (The Norwegian embassy, asked to comment on this story, did not respond.)

The Norwegians were key to solving other hurdles. The Russian navy was known to possess surveillance technology capable of spotting, and triggering, underwater mines. The American explosive devices needed to be camouflaged in a way that would make them appear to the Russian system as part of the natural background—something that required adapting to the specific salinity of the water. The Norwegians had a fix.

The Norwegians also had a solution to the crucial question of when the operation should take place. Every June, for the past 21 years, the American Sixth Fleet, whose flagship is based in Gaeta, Italy, south of Rome, has sponsored a major NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea involving scores of allied ships throughout the region. The current exercise, held in June, would be known as Baltic Operations 22, or BALTOPS 22. The Norwegians proposed this would be the ideal cover to plant the mines.

The Americans provided one vital element: they convinced the Sixth Fleet planners to add a research and development exercise to the program. The exercise, as made public by the Navy, involved the Sixth Fleet in collaboration with the Navy’s “research and warfare centers.” The at-sea event would be held off the coast of Bornholm Island and involve NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them.

It was both a useful exercise and ingenious cover. The Panama City boys would do their thing and the C4 explosives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22, with a 48-hour timer attached. All of the Americans and Norwegians would be long gone by the first explosion.

The days were counting down. “The clock was ticking, and we were nearing mission accomplished,” the source said.

And then: Washington had second thoughts. The bombs would still be planted during BALTOPS, but the White House worried that a two-day window for their detonation would be too close to the end of the exercise, and it would be obvious that America had been involved.

Instead, the White House had a new request: “Can the guys in the field come up with some way to blow the pipelines later on command?”

Some members of the planning team were angered and frustrated by the President’s seeming indecision. The Panama City divers had repeatedly practiced planting the C4 on pipelines, as they would during BALTOPS, but now the team in Norway had to come up with a way to give Biden what he wanted—the ability to issue a successful execution order at a time of his choosing.

Being tasked with an arbitrary, last-minute change was something the CIA was accustomed to managing. But it also renewed the concerns some shared over the necessity, and legality, of the entire operation.

The President’s secret orders also evoked the CIA’s dilemma in the Vietnam War days, when President Johnson, confronted by growing anti-Vietnam War sentiment, ordered the Agency to violate its charter—which specifically barred it from operating inside America—by spying on antiwar leaders to determine whether they were being controlled by Communist Russia.

The agency ultimately acquiesced, and throughout the 1970s it became clear just how far it had been willing to go. There were subsequent newspaper revelations in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals about the Agency’s spying on American citizens, its involvement in the assassination of foreign leaders and its undermining of the socialist government of Salvador Allende.

Those revelations led to a dramatic series of hearings in the mid-1970s in the Senate, led by Frank Church of Idaho, that made it clear that Richard Helms, the Agency director at the time, accepted that he had an obligation to do what the President wanted, even if it meant violating the law.

In unpublished, closed-door testimony, Helms ruefully explained that “you almost have an Immaculate Conception when you do something” under secret orders from a President. “Whether it’s right that you should have it, or wrong that you shall have it, [the CIA] works under different rules and ground rules than any other part of the government.” He was essentially telling the Senators that he, as head of the CIA, understood that he had been working for the Crown, and not the Constitution.

The Americans at work in Norway operated under the same dynamic, and dutifully began working on the new problem—how to remotely detonate the C4 explosives on Biden’s order. It was a much more demanding assignment than those in Washington understood. There was no way for the team in Norway to know when the President might push the button. Would it be in a few weeks, in many months or in half a year or longer?

The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the procedure involved the most advanced signal processing technology. Once in place, the delayed timing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be accidentally triggered by the complex mix of ocean background noises throughout the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea—from near and distant ships, underwater drilling, seismic events, waves and even sea creatures. To avoid this, the sonar buoy, once in place, would emit a sequence of unique low frequency tonal sounds—much like those emitted by a flute or a piano—that would be recognized by the timing device and, after a pre-set hours of delay, trigger the explosives. (“You want a signal that is robust enough so that no other signal could accidentally send a pulse that detonated the explosives,” I was told by Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and national security policy at MIT. Postol, who has served as the science adviser to the Pentagon’s Chief of Naval Operations, said the issue facing the group in Norway because of Biden’s delay was one of chance: “The longer the explosives are in the water the greater risk there would be of a random signal that would launch the bombs.”)

On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place.

FALLOUT

In the immediate aftermath of the pipeline bombing, the American media treated it like an unsolved mystery. Russia was repeatedly cited as a likely culprit, spurred on by calculated leaks from the White House—but without ever establishing a clear motive for such an act of self-sabotage, beyond simple retribution. A few months later, when it emerged that Russian authorities had been quietly getting estimates for the cost to repair the pipelines, the New York Times described the news as “complicating theories about who was behind” the attack. No major American newspaper dug into the earlier threats to the pipelines made by Biden and Undersecretary of State Nuland.

While it was never clear why Russia would seek to destroy its own lucrative pipeline, a more telling rationale for the President’s action came from Secretary of State Blinken.

Asked at a press conference last September about the consequences of the worsening energy crisis in Western Europe, Blinken described the moment as a potentially good one:

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs. That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come, but meanwhile we’re determined to do everything we possibly can to make sure the consequences of all of this are not borne by citizens in our countries or, for that matter, around the world.”

More recently, Victoria Nuland expressed satisfaction at the demise of the newest of the pipelines. Testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in late January she told Senator Ted Cruz, “Like you, I am, and I think the Administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

The source had a much more streetwise view of Biden’s decision to sabotage more than 1500 miles of Gazprom pipeline as winter approached. “Well,” he said, speaking of the President, “I gotta admit the guy has a pair of balls. He said he was going to do it, and he did.”

Asked why he thought the Russians failed to respond, he said cynically, “Maybe they want the capability to do the same things the U.S. did.

“It was a beautiful cover story,” he went on. “Behind it was a covert operation that placed experts in the field and equipment that operated on a covert signal.

“The only flaw was the decision to do it.”

____________________________________

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_chamber

____________________________________

another way to approach the Nord stream pipeline explosion is using thought experiment, what-if scenario, and (motive, means, opportunities).

Your basic detective work. Who are the likely and unlikely suspects?

Let's us say that the Nord stream pipeline attack was a state-sponsored operation. We can start with G5 (group of 5 nations), G7 (group of 7 nations), and finally, G20 (group of 20 nations). So let's suppose China, Russia, U.S., U.K., Japan, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands , a country that could supply gas to Western Europe should Nord stream pipeline be cut off. We could also start eliminating the countries that are unlikely to blow up the Nord stream pipeline. Russia, or Germany is unlikely to blow up the pipeline, because the pipeline is transporting the gas from Russia to Germany. Netherlands or France is unlikely because both of these two countries has companies that financed the Nord stream pipeline. Ukraine is a possible candidate, ... . ... ... ...

Supposed the pipeline attack was a private-sponsored operation. We can look at any of the investment banks that trade in future gas contracts and would benefit from a sharp rise in gas price, spot pricing, and future contracts. We can look at any unusal trading pattern 72 hours before public reporting of the pipeline attack.

James Rickards, The death of money, 2014 [ ]

p.32

My first contribution was to point out that the CIA's objective was already being pursued every day by hedge funds, but for a different reason. The CIA was trying to spot terrorist traders, while hedge funds were trying to spot unannounced takeovers. But the big-data techniques applied to trading patterns were the same.

Spotting suspicious trading is a three-step process. Step one is to establish a baseline for normal trading, using metrics like volatility, average daily volume, put-call ratios, short interest, and momentum. Step two is to monitor trading and spot anomalies relative to the baseline. Step three is to see if there is any public information to explain the move. If a stock spikes because Warren Buffett bought a large position, that's not an anomaly; it is to be expected. The intriguing case is when a stock spikes on no news. The logical inference is that someone knows something you don't. A hedge fund might not care about the origin of the hidden information--it can just piggyback on the trade.

p.32

John Mulheren,

Steve Levitt, Freakonomics;

Dave “Davos” Nolan,

p.33

John Mulheren

He said he would not trade before the attack but would wait until the moment of the attack and begin his insider trading after. He knew markets can be slow to react and that breaking news is often misreported or sketchy. This produces a window of 30 minutes or so after the attack when the terrorist could engage in insider trading while markets struggled to comprehend events taking place around them. The beauty of trading after the attack was there would be no telltale tape. Authorities might not even investigate that part of the time line. This approach closely mirrored what Mulheren had actually done on 9/11, as he later told us.

pp.33-34

We also concluded the insider trade was likely to be executed in the options market less than 72 hours before the attack to minimize risk of detection.

p.34

We created an automated threat board interface that broke the markets into sectors and displayed tickers with red, amber, and green lights, indicating the probability of insider trading.

p.35

We routinely picked up signals that indicated insider trading. These signals were from regular market players; there was nothing yet to indicate that the insider trading was terror related. Our project had no legal enforcement powers, so we simply referred these cases to the SEC and otherwise ignored them.

(The death of money : the coming collapse of the international monetary system, James Rickards, 2014, )

Next, we look to who would have the skillset needed to execute a pipeline explosion successfully. The training would very likely come from someone with military training or ex-military, underwater demolition experts. You would look to see if each of the countries on the list have enough people with this kind of training. We look for countries that have underwater demolition school and facilities. Underwater demolition is a very specific skillset. We look for island nations, a country with a long coast line. Look for a country that have submarine fleet. We look for a country that have a history of underwater operation. It is unclear why having a history of doing an underwater operation would make a country more likely to attack a Nord stream pipeline. However, inside the decision room, when a country have done a similar operation, it seems to give assurance to the decision-maker that the country have done some thing like it before. A country that is known publicly and privately that would be against or would be disadvantaged from Russia providing cheap energy to Germany and Europe. A country that can stand up and is not afraid of Russia counter strike, because Russia is likely to remember this attack. Germany would also remembered this attack, unless somehow Germany is in on the attack. If this was a state-sponsored operation, then we can look for any and all naval operations in the past 6 months from the date of the explosion and near the underwater explosion area.

A country that is land locked, has no lake, or a large body of water would be an unlikely candidate. We would not expect a desert dweller to attack an underwater gas pipeline.

Who would have access to the map of the pipeline.

Who would have the technical capability to trace the route of the pipeline.

Satellite photographic archive for the area, look for large ship and boat

We do a reverse timeline. How long would it take to plant the bomb. How long would it take to swim to the site. How long would it take to decompress if the pipeline is very deep.

We can create a list, ranking of countries, that is most likely to benefit from the pipeline explosion. Develope a sort of a point system.

____________________________________

cui bono (for whose benefit, who will benefit, ... )

cui bono (in criminal law context: the person who commit the act gain ... benefit; therefore, the focus of the investigation is not on the act of commission, but on the benefit and beneficiary from the criminal enterprise.)

the Nord stream pipeline was attacked

do you look for the perp or do you ask a more interesting question, who would benefit from the attack,

____________________________________

https://www.globalresearch.ca/financial-heist-of-the-century-confiscating-libya-s-sovereign-wealth-funds-swf/24479

Financial Heist of the Century: Confiscating Libya’s Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF)

By Manlio Dinucci

Global Research, April 24, 2011

Il Manifesto (translated from Italian) 22 April 2011

Theme: Global Economy, US NATO War Agenda

In-depth Report: NATO'S WAR ON LIBYA

The objective of the war against Libya is not just its oil reserves (now estimated at 60 billion barrels), which are the greatest in Africa and whose extraction costs are among the lowest in the world, nor the natural gas reserves of which are estimated at about 1,500 billion cubic meters. In the crosshairs of “willing” of the operation “Unified Protector” there are sovereign wealth funds, capital that the Libyan state has invested abroad.

The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) manages sovereign wealth funds estimated at about $70 billion U.S., rising to more than $150 billion if you include foreign investments of the Central Bank and other bodies. But it might be more. Even if they are lower than those of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, Libyan sovereign wealth funds have been characterized by their rapid growth. When LIA was established in 2006, it had $40 billion at its disposal. In just five years, LIA has invested over one hundred companies in North Africa, Asia, Europe, the U.S. and South America: holding, banking, real estate, industries, oil companies and others.

In Italy, the main Libyan investments are those in UniCredit Bank (of which LIA and the Libyan Central Bank hold 7.5 percent), Finmeccanica (2 percent) and ENI (1 percent), these and other investments (including 7.5 percent of the Juventus Football Club) have a significance not as much economically (they amount to some $5.4 billion) as politically.

Libya, after Washington removed it from the blacklist of “rogue states,” has sought to carve out a space at the international level focusing on “diplomacy of sovereign wealth funds.” Once the U.S. and the EU lifted the embargo in 2004 and the big oil companies returned to the country, Tripoli was able to maintain a trade surplus of about $30 billion per year which was used largely to make foreign investments. The management of sovereign funds has however created a new mechanism of power and corruption in the hands of ministers and senior officials, which probably in part escaped the control of the Gadhafi himself: This is confirmed by the fact that, in 2009, he proposed that the 30 billion in oil revenues go “directly to the Libyan people.” This aggravated the fractures within the Libyan government.

U.S. and European ruling circles focused on these funds, so that before carrying out a military attack on Libya to get their hands on its energy wealth, they took over the Libyan sovereign wealth funds. Facilitating this operation is the representative of the Libyan Investment Authority, Mohamed Layas himself: as revealed in a cable published by WikiLeaks. On January 20 Layas informed the U.S. ambassador in Tripoli that LIA had deposited $32 billion in U.S. banks. Five weeks later, on February 28, the U.S. Treasury “froze” these accounts. According to official statements, this is “the largest sum ever blocked in the United States,” which Washington held “in trust for the future of Libya.” It will in fact serve as an injection of capital into the U.S. economy, which is more and more in debt. A few days later, the EU “froze” around 45 billion Euros of Libyan funds.

The assault on the Libyan sovereign wealth funds will have a particularly strong impact in Africa. There, the Libyan Arab African Investment Company had invested in over 25 countries, 22 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, and was planning to increase the investments over the next five years, especially in mining, manufacturing, tourism and telecommunications. The Libyan investments have been crucial in the implementation of the first telecommunications satellite Rascom (Regional African Satellite Communications Organization), which entered into orbit in August 2010, allowing African countries to begin to become independent from the U.S. and European satellite networks, with an annual savings of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Even more important were the Libyan investment in the implementation of three financial institutions launched by the African Union: the African Investment Bank, based in Tripoli, the African Monetary Fund, based in Yaoundé (Cameroon), the African Central Bank, with Based in Abuja (Nigeria). The development of these bodies would enable African countries to escape the control of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, tools of neo-colonial domination, and would mark the end of the CFA franc, the currency that 14 former French colonies are forced to use. Freezing Libyan funds deals a strong blow to the entire project. The weapons used by “the willing” are not only those in the military action called “Unified Protector.”

Il Manifesto, April 22, 2011

Translated from Italian by John Catalinotto

____________________________________

([ a graphic version of this table ])

Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010

(Constant FY2011 $)

American revolution 1775-1783 2,407 million

war of 1812 1812-1815 1,553 million

Mexican war 1846-1849 2,376 million

Civil war: union 1861-1865 59,631 million

Civil war: confederacy 1861-1865 20,111 million

Spanish american war 1898-1899 9,034 million

World war I 1917-1921 334 billion

World war II 1941-1945 4,104 billion

Korea 1950-1953 341 billion

Vietnam 1965-1975 739 billion *††

Persian gulf war 1990-1991 102 billion *††

Iraq 2003-2010 784 billion *††

Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 321 billion *††

total post-9/11──Iraq, Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 1,147 billion *††

──

*†† ── Costs of Major U.S. Wars

── congressional research service

── June 29, 2010

── Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010

── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

──

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf

____________________________________

defense spending graph

heritage foundation

heritage institute

en.wikipedia.org

https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/images/reports/2010/b2418_chart1_1/b2418_chart1_2.jpg

____________________________________

google spreadsheet, graphic

Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010

(Constant FY2011 $)

American revolution 1775-1783 2,407 million

war of 1812 1812-1815 1,553 million

Mexican war 1846-1849 2,376 million

Civil war: union 1861-1865 59,631 million

Civil war: confederacy 1861-1865 20,111 million

Spanish american war 1898-1899 9,034 million

World war I 1917-1921 334,000 million

World war II 1941-1945 4,104,000 million

Korea 1950-1953 341,000 million

Vietnam 1965-1975 739,000 million *††

Persian gulf war 1990-1991 102,000 million *††

Iraq 2003-2010 784,000 million *††

Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 321,000 million *††

total post-9/11──Iraq, Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 1,147,000 million *††

____________________________________

Anne M. Jacobsen, The pentagon's brain : an uncensored history of DARPA, America's top secret military research agency, 2015

p.229

Pentagon Papers

([ look up the official name of this RAND report ])

a secret history of the war in Vietnam

three thousand narrative pages of war secrets accompanied by four thousand pages of classified memos and supporting documents, organized into 47 volumes

Robert McNamara had commissioned the RAND Corporation to write a classified “encyclopedic history of the Vietnamese War”

Revealed in the papers were specifics on how every president from Truman to Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon had misled the public about what was really going on in Vietnam.

Anne M. Jacobsen, The pentagon's brain : an uncensored history of DARPA, America's top secret military research agency, 2015

____________________________________

November 22, 1963

[Robert] McNamara’s book (Robert McNamara, SecDef, u.s. secretary of defense)

In view of these criticisms, readers who actually pick up McNamara’s book may experience a shock when they scan the table of contents and sees this summary of Chapter 3, titled “The Fateful Fall of 1963: August 24–November 22, 1963”:

A pivotal period of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, punctuated by three important events:

the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem;

President Kennedy’s decision on October 2 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces;

and his assassination fifty days later. (Emphasis added.)

source:

Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam

In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam.

James K. Galbraith

History, Politics, U.S.

September 1, 2003

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/

(] source end [)

____________________________________

•••• ••• ••••

Arthur M. Schlesinger’s Robert Kennedy and His Times tells in a few tantalizing pages of the “first application” in October 1963 “of Kennedy’s phased withdrawal plan.”

in 1992, with the publication of John M. Newman’s JFK and Vietnam.1 Until his retirement in 1994 Newman was a major in the U.S. Army, an intelligence officer last stationed at Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency. As an historian, his specialty is deciphering declassified records— ... .

1992, John M. Newman (author), JFK and Vietnam (book titled), (out of print)

[(this could be one of the cases, in which the book has been quietly put out of print)]

•••• ••• ••••

source:

Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam

In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam.

James K. Galbraith

History, Politics, U.S.

September 1, 2003

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/

(] source end [)

____________________________________

([ ... the list is getting too long; also I've included other events in the list not related to u.s. activities in foreign places; u.s. also engages in war (conflicts), which is a form of foreign activities, and I don't mean being a tourist visiting, or a business person engaging in trade; I mean the kind of things that would be embarassing if we were to issue a press release on the activities. The list also completely ignore the early American immigrants (European and others) and the u.s. army engagement and genocidal killing of native Americans in North America as the early settler expanded from the east coast to the great plain to the west coast. ])

____________________________________

Howard W. French., Everything under the heavens : how the past help shape China's push for global power, 2017.

p.279

to create a new global or regional economic and political institutional arrangements

United States, World Bank in 1944;

Japan, Asian Development Bank in 1966;

Germany, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1991;

China, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

(Everything under the heavens : how the past help shape China's push for global power / Howard W. French., first edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2017] | China──foreign relations──21st century.| China──foreign relations──Asia.|Asia──foreign relations──China.|strategic culture──China.|geopolitics──Asia., LCC JZ1734.F74 2017| DDC 327.51──dc23, https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021957, 2017, )

____________________________________

quiet american

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

combine list (plfire)

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