Okay, I agree about the role of the banks and globalised financial institutions but I took the time to read some of Mr Shaw's refs. I can maintain the rage over the Whitlam dismissal along with the best of them but the references cited were part of an extreme-left conspiracy theory, having little foundation in fact and esigned to get a KGB spy off the hook. When I publish my book you can all pay to read a refutation. I know - I was there! Anyone who approvingly quotes Joan Coxsedge et al is in serious need of psychiatric treatment. Even Gough no longer believes the CIA had any part in his removal by the drunk - ask him. I did and what is more he has written as much in print.

Have you ever wondered why Hitler lost when he had all that support? Money can but power and influence but only up to a point and some bloggers have been more eloquent than I on this issue.

Chris

This a really varied and thought provoking essay. The War on Terror which should have been directed at the sons of Saudi Arabia was strangely and almost instantly aimed at Iraq instead. Something to do with the vast oil interests of the Bush family, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice (for whom a Chevron oil tanker was named).

But you're very, very, naughty ;-) You've probably hurt the the CIA's feelings. I agree (from what I've read) that there has certainly been a blue blood, northeastern US, banker/lawyer, tradition in the CIA.

As with the Mossadeq covert action program, which was handled by a direct descendant of President "Teddy" Roosevelt, CIA officers often worked in areas that boosted their subsequent private financial interests. As they often worked in war zones from the Golden triangle to Afghanistan this probably lead to grief for many but wealth for a few.

Interesting your links to Christopher Boyce (of Falcon and the Snowman fame). He was obviously too bright for his job in connecction with Pine Gap. I'd just like to brazenly advertise the latest publicly available info on Pine Gap - made on the comments at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5053

Pet

To be sure right now, we should be more on to what the recent dramatic change in US politics will bring, the main causation in Iraq being regarded by the winning Democrats, simply US political incompetence leaving us wondering what the coming meet between Bush, Blair and Howard will bring.

Further, getting back to our main thesis which is about causation, we might say that because the US Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a report a month or so ago had too many US troops guarding the Iraqi oilfilds, economics could have been a major cause of the US blunders in Iraq.

Furthermore, a good volume on European colonialism, really gets going with not only the Portuguese and Spanish hunger for South American bullion, with well-gunned British ships
plundering them across the Atlantic, if that is what we call war, and later with the Brits fighting the French for the northern part of America, over both land and contraband, still a deadly sort of war. Then still forgetting about wars with the Indians and still with Stars and Stripes aloft, America beginning its little so-called freedom campaigns in greater Mexico as well as both sides of the Pacific.

So beginning with the gold and silver bullion wars, we could carry on with our Western graball ages with tobacco and spices, tea and coffee and on or into the black stuff, a record long distance historical oil economy which still dominates by turning most of the wheels of our world.

That is why Vice President plus oilman Dick Cheney is still so important to America's future.

“To be controlled in our economic pursuits is to be controlled in everything”

This line of your article is one truth that stands out to me Chris Shaw.

Look at the room you’re sitting in. The materials to make everything in that room were dug, leeched, chopped, mined, traded for from the rich land you live in.
Without money (access to the economy) , you cannot buy food, shelter and soon maybe, the water you need to survive. The Land and the resources it provides like oil etc, IS the economy.

When conquerors take control people are usually denied access to the wealth of the land,(the economy). In fact the first thing that happens to them is they are dispossed of any land they might have. It is the land mankind covets. (economic wealth). That’s what wars are about.

Global companies like all of mankind seek to gain as much access to territorial wealth as they can. And that includes the everyday man in the street who is always trying to figure out how to make his dollar(his share of the economy or territorial wealth) go further.

You can call it consumerism, well paying jobs, land on beachfronts etc. The term goodies and badies doesn’t really apply. All of mankind is guilty of it. Its just that the ones holding the superior weapons and armies at the time usually have the means to acquire and hold more resources.

Of course America is no angel but nor is the rest of the world who are trying to figure out how they can get what America has and like to play guilt and mind games with the West to further that aim. You can talk love and tolerance to these people all you like Chris but if the West falls you will fall right along with it and the people you have saught to appease wont spare you. They’ll be to busy moving into your house and taking your possessions which means more to them than your smiles and talk of tolerance.

As you say Chris, "perspective is all".
Hence, one or two bloggers have pointed out that not all is negative. After all, we wouldn't be sitting here with full stomachs tampering away on complicated electronic devices discussing complex issues and shades of interpretation.
To those sceptical of Chris, I would suggest that if all is not bad, than equally; all is definitely NOT good or at least as good as it could have been. The Iraq and Middle East in general escapades, over four generations, have been cumulatively tragic for millions of Middle Easteners. And what we have we could have had for a fraction of all the waste of resources, wealth and bloodshed, with the emnity now incurred, so that we now never sit back to digest our ill-incurred, even if only through lack of clear conscience.
We have failed to learn, remember or apply the lessons of sense of proportion against excess and we have lost the knack of living comfortably without excess.
Now we are told we have to give up the best of our lives to live in perpetual fear of an ever immanent "terrorism" boogey-man who actually the irresistably provoked individual seeking restitution for injustices done.
As for the nonsense proffered by some above that the Americans have never interfered in this nation's affairs, or those of most other nations on the face of this planet, The writer reels in astonishment!
What do you think the AUSFTA is REALLY about?
What do you think the ramping up of the destruction of public interest media is about?
Can't people still work out what an Anschluss treaty it is?
It is about as fair as the treaty foistered on the Czechoslovakian people in 1938. Howard has sold the Australian inheritence out for the aboriginal equivalent of beads, trinkets and mirrors; re-runs of the "Brady Bunch" on Foxtel

Quite so sharkfin.

In a nation that shrank from the prospect of a few thousand brown skinned refugees -

- how can the little town of Carisbrook refuse the influx of millions from Melbourne?

Would we even want to? It's a shared fate.