Hollywood Ten

Hollywood Ten

Among the starting fourth dimension too virtually visible victims of the post–World War II moving ridge of anticommunist paranoia, the Hollywood Ten were a grouping of leftist filmmakers—producer Adrian Scott, directors Edward Dmytryk too Herbert Biberman, too screenwriters Alvah Bessie, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, too Dalton Trumbo—who were blacklisted past times the cinema manufacture too ultimately sentenced to a yr inwards federal prison theater for contempt of Congress afterwards refusing to cooperate amongst the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) inwards 1947.

For Hollywood conservatives, the postwar surge of social employment films, the presence of known Communists inwards the leadership of the Screen Writers Guild, too a serial of violent strikes inwards 1945 too 1946 past times the leftist Conference of Studio Unions, were all evidence of a vast Communist conspiracy to command the cinema manufacture too undermine U.S. democratic values.

Their greatest appal was directed at the pro-Soviet films produced during the war—Song of Russia, Mission to Moscow, The North Star—but they also detected Marxist propaganda inwards a broad variety of progressive films including Crossfire, The Farmer’s Daughter, too The Best Years of Our Lives.


In 1944, Hollywood reactionaries had formed the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA); early on inwards 1947, the MPA issued an opened upward invitation to the HUAC to investigate Communist influence inwards the cinema industry.

The HUAC eagerly accepted. Hollywood, amongst its twin threats of Jewish domination too Communist infiltration, had long been an irresistible target for conspiracy theorists, too the cinema manufacture had weathered innumerable attacks past times both federal too state investigating committees since the 1930s. In the postwar period, however, the political landscape had considerably altered equally the emerging mutual depression temperature state of war abroad profoundly raised the stakes inwards the anticommunist displace at home.

In the jump too summertime of 1947, FBI agents swarmed over the cinema colony spell HUAC chairman J. Parnell Thomas himself held a serial of closed-door interviews at the Biltmore Hotel amongst “friendly” witnesses. In September, the HUAC issued subpoenas to forty-three members of the cinema community, including xix who would larn known equally the “unfriendlies” for their song opposition to the HUAC.

The “unfriendlies” were a various grouping inwards damage of age, ethnicity, cast background, status, too sense inside the cinema industry, too fifty-fifty political commitment. Although all were linked amongst the Communist Party at some signal inwards their lives, their private commitments to the political party employment or to political activism diverged wildly.

Nonetheless, at that topographic point was mutual ground: all were tearing (even “premature”) antifascists, too all were committed to integrating their politics into their creative work. Rejecting the studio moguls’ argument that movies were but entertainment, they believed that movies could too should reverberate the multifariousness of the torso politic too stand upward for U.S. values of democracy, social justice, too tolerance.

Rallying roughly the slogan “freedom of the screen,” the Hollywood radicals too their supporters (which initially included an impressive coalition of leading liberals too the studio heads) clearly understood that the HUAC’s investigation was intended non but to smear private cinema radicals but to discredit the really values that underlay their cultural politics. For them, the HUAC investigation was the opening salvo inwards a reactionary conspiracy to destroy civil liberties, indeed, a harbinger of fascism inwards the United States.

To a for certain extent, both sides were right. Hollywood radicals did try, inside the confines of a profoundly conservative studio system, to create antifascist, antiracist, internationalist, progressive films. And the HUAC members, recognizing the ability of cinema to shape populace consciousness too to reverberate the state to the world, did desire to ensure that Hollywood films reflected their ain conservative version of Americanism.

At the hearings inwards Washington inwards piece of cake October, exclusively 11 of the xix unfriendlies were called to testify. One, Bertolt Brecht, fled for Europe equally shortly equally the hearings had ended. The remaining 10 were charged amongst contempt of Congress too fired from their positions at the studios. Blacklisted, they left Hollywood for New York, Europe, too fifty-fifty United Mexican States inwards search of work, spell their lawyers unsuccessfully appealed the contempt convictions.

The Hollywood Ten entered federal prison theater inwards 1950; when released the next year, the HUAC had returned to Hollywood amongst a vengeance, too hundreds of radicals joined the Ten on the blacklist spell dozens to a greater extent than named names to salve themselves too their careers. One of those was managing director Edward Dmytryk, the exclusively fellow member of the Ten to recant too provide to operate at the studios.

The balance of the Ten continued to operate haphazardly, writing behind fronts for both cinema too television. In the piece of cake 1950s, the starting fourth dimension chinks appeared inwards the blacklist when Dalton Trumbo, writing nether the pseudonym “Robert Rich,” won the screenwriting Oscar for The Brave One; inwards 1960, the blacklist was officially broken when Otto Preminger hired Trumbo to accommodate Exodus.

Ultimately, however, the blacklist affected non exclusively people but ideas. The climate of fright created past times the anticommunist displace stifled dissent too encouraged political too cultural conformity inwards ways that powerfully shaped the cinema manufacture too the larger civilization of postwar America.

Federal Reserve System

Federal Reserve System

It was a conspiracy theorists’ dream come upwards true: a grouping of wealthy bankers, supported past times academics as well as politicians, skulking off to a secluded isle to concoct a consummate transformation of the U.S. banking system. The coming together inwards Nov 1910 on Jekyll Island, Georgia, which established the pattern for the Federal Reserve System, played to long-held Populist fears of “Eastern Money Interests,” Jews, as well as large banks. When the programme was presented to Congress, it effectively increased the potency of the federal government—at least, indirectly—over the nation’s banking system.

Ever since concerns nigh “foreign interests” inwards the First as well as Second Banks of the United States, about Americans had viewed banks suspiciously. Writers such every bit William Gouge as well as politicians such every bit Thomas Hart “Old Bullion” Benton advocated a metallic element criterion of aureate as well as silvery money only. These “hard money” proponents supported Andrew Jackson’s “war” on the Bank of the US as well as distrusted all forms of newspaper money.

Although “hard money” advocates were inwards the minority inwards most states, they appealed to farmers as well as laborers who distrusted moneyed elites. After the Civil War, ironically, this same distrust evidenced itself inwards a demand for newspaper money (“Greenbackism”) and/or for coinage of silver, a seat best associated with William Jennings Bryan.


By the tardily 1800s, however, although most Americans were satisfied with the nature of the banking system, they realized that of import weaknesses existed. The banking organization was non sufficiently “elastic,” pregnant that it could non expand or contract the money provide when economical weather condition changed.

Another occupation concern for those familiar with the financial sector was that inwards several panics—1873, 1893, as well as 1907—a unmarried banker, J. P. Morgan, had stepped inwards with a consortium of bankers to rescue the system. After the 1907 panic, fifty-fifty Morgan admitted that whatever hereafter banking concern runs mightiness live beyond his powerfulness to contain.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 serial of commissions as well as studies past times the American Bankers Association as well as the federal authorities produced a number of recommendations, most notably the demand for a fundamental banking concern as well as nationwide interstate branch banking. (Many states did non permit intrastate branch banking, as well as interstate branch banking was viewed every bit illegal, although no limited challenges to interstate banking had occurred.)

Virtually all of these studies concluded that whatever reforms inwards the banking organization would require a powerful national banking concern capable of acting every bit a “lender of final resort” as well as tasked with providing liquidity to the banking organization every bit a whole to permit for greater “elasticity.”

An unstated, but widely held, destination of many of the reformers was also to bound or bring down the powerfulness of the New York banks, such every bit National City Bank, J. P. Morgan, as well as Kuhn, Loeb, as well as Company. Despite the fact that Morgan himself as well as most of the officers of National City were Protestants, a widely held suspicion existed inwards the rural US that the New York banks were dominated past times Jews. (The presence of Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb with the Jekyll Island grouping of “conspirators” reinforced the fright of “powerful New York Jews.”)

Federal reserve building

Whether many Americans indeed feared a Jewish chemical factor inwards the “money power” or not, a pop innovation was that banks inwards New York wielded inordinate power. Thus, the reformers’ plans also involved dissimilar strategies for minimizing the influence of the New York banks.

By 1913, the US had what is termed a “dual banking” organization consisting of state-chartered banks (which could non number money), as well as national banks, chartered past times the federal government, which could number banknotes. The comptroller of the currency had potency over all national banks, piece nation authorities (bank examiners as well as such) supervised the nation banks. There was no fundamental banking concern or “lender of final resort,” or whatever national origin of credit expansion.

Following J. P. Morgan’s formation of a consortium of banks to bail out the banking organization during the panic of 1907, concerns arose over the “consolidation” of banking power, particularly inwards New York. Congressman Arsene Pujo’s House Banking as well as Currency Committee, which convened inwards 1911, investigated Morgan as well as First National’s George F. Baker, as well as concluded that New York banks controlled far to a greater extent than financial assets than they truly owned through diverse investments, interlocking directorates, as well as trust companies. New York, Pujo claimed, controlled 43 per centum of the money inwards the United States.

When the Jekyll Island coming together took place, all of these concerns played upon the reforms to which the participants agreed. The fundamental individuals who drafted the reason of the Federal Reserve Bank organization were Senator Nelson Aldrich (head of the National Monetary Commission); Henry P. Davison of J. P. Morgan; Charles D. Norton of First National Bank; Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb; as well as Colonel Edward House (one of President Woodrow Wilson’s closest advisors).

Not solely was this a little group, but conspiracy-minded people could betoken to the fact that Warburg was Jewish, or that House had connections to London banks as well as that he had written a futuristic novel Philip Dru, Administrator, a story inwards which Marxist socialism triumphed. Worse, the coming together took house inwards secret. Aldrich, especially, was concerned that if a programme was non drafted inwards secret, “special interest” lobbyists would nitpick it to death.

Aldrich’s presence convinced about that John D. Rockefeller was manipulating the meeting. Morgan, according to i conspiracy view, was a “Rockefeller stooge”—an astonishing claim nigh i of the richest men inwards the world. Morgan controlled the Fed nib through Aldrich, his “floor broker inwards the Senate”.

Rockefeller as well as so used the Fed, according to this view, to “bankroll” the Bolshevik Revolution inwards Russia, manipulate stock prices through inflation, as well as force the agenda of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as well as Trilateral Commission inwards afterwards years.

There is no query with historians that the Jekyll Island coming together resulted inwards the essence of the Federal Reserve Act, introduced past times Congressman Carter Glass of Virginia, chairman of the House Committee on Banking. Far from beingness drafted inwards secrecy, the Federal Reserve Act was debated extensively as well as was subjected to much compromise earlier beingness passed overwhelmingly past times the House (298 to 60) as well as the Senate (43 to 25).

Under the act, twelve Federal Reserve District Banks were established inwards dissimilar regions across the United States. Each of these banks was a corporation owned past times the fellow member banks inwards its district, as well as piece all national banks had to live members, nation banks were non required to bring together the Federal Reserve System.

Member banks had to house six per centum of their uppercase as well as surplus inwards the district bank. One of the important factors of the human activeness was the location of the district banks: New York, of course, had one, every bit did Philadelphia as well as Boston.

But Minneapolis, Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, as well as Richmond all had district banks, as well as the nation of Missouri—the pump of the Midwest—had ii (St. Louis as well as Kansas City). Clearly, Congress had gone out of its agency to dilute the “money power” of New York.

Any district banking concern could human activeness to halt runs past times providing emergency cash from its vaults, as well as inwards theory, if i entire district was inwards trouble, other districts would come upwards to its aid. The “elasticity” work was addressed through the Fed’s manipulation of discount rates to lend money to fellow member banks to either expand, or contract, credit.

In reality, though, New York retained its powerfulness through its overall influence, its dominant leadership, as well as its connections to corporate America. Congress intended that a Federal Reserve Board of Governors should live instituted, made upwards of v members appointed past times the president as well as confirmed past times the Senate, every bit good every bit the comptroller as well as the secretarial assistant of the Treasury.

The Banking Act of 1935 changed this past times moving key decisions to the Federal Open Market Committee, composed of 7 members of the Board of Governors as well as v of the twelve district banking concern presidents, including the New York president.

The Federal Reserve Act was established on the supposition that the nation’s money provide would rest tied to gold, as well as so its open-market activities were e'er balanced with an oculus toward the aureate stockpiles. When the stock marketplace crashed inwards 1929, many contended that the Federal Reserve had encouraged the stock marketplace “boom” past times providing “easy credit.”

Subsequent inquiry has shown that if anything the Fed failed to expand the money provide inwards proportion to the rapid growth inwards the industrial sector, as well as that a irksome but destructive deflation had occurred. After 1930, the Federal Reserve engaged inwards a deliberate massive credit contraction that helped plunge the nation into the Great Depression, silent nether the supposition that the Great Bull Market had resulted from “loose money.”

The contraction also ensued, however, because every bit other nations left the aureate standard, as well as every bit the aureate backing of U.S. banks eroded, depositors withdrew funds at an alarming rate. President Franklin Roosevelt took the US off the aureate standard, stabilizing the banks. But his prohibition of private aureate ownership inwards 1934 was viewed every bit percentage of the conspiracy to house all financial powerfulness inwards the hands of the Federal Reserve System.

The entire aureate criterion disceptation pits a number of conspiracy theories against i another. For example, if the Bank of England sought command over the U.S. economy, it mightiness receive got attempted to weaken the economic scheme past times leaving the aureate standard. With the US left every bit the solely nation inwards the the world whose currency was silent tied to gold, U.S. aureate reserves would receive got flooded out, as well as U.S. banks would receive got collapsed—as nearly happened.

On the other hand, the solution, as well as the path taken past times Franklin Roosevelt, was to secure the banking system’s aureate asset base of operations past times prohibiting private aureate ownership, except for jewelers as well as dentists. Yet this is viewed past times other conspiracy theorists every bit bear witness of Roosevelt’s programme to centralize the economic scheme as well as brand citizens dependent on worthless newspaper money.

In fact, solely a perfectly coordinated international conspiracy, assisted past times the deliberate actions of totalitarian states that hated each other—Germany as well as the Soviet Union—could receive got mayhap manipulated such events. Not solely would the Bank of England as well as the Federal Reserve System receive got needed to operate inwards unison, but so would the Bank of France, the Reichsbank, as well as virtually every other fundamental banking concern inwards the world, all coordinating vastly dissimilar command-and-control structures, governance systems, as well as national goals.

Over these conspiracies, i tin give the sack stretch yet about other layer, namely that of “international Jewry,” which was manipulating economical developments to its ain ends, about inwards concert with, as well as about antithetical to scenarios involving the British or a Roosevelt dictatorship.

Since World War II, about receive got been convinced that the Federal Reserve’s open-market activities were designed to ensure that those presidents favored past times the Fed maintained their office, as well as those who displeased the Fed lost theirs. Despite the Fed’s supposed independent status, many struggle that it has conveniently lowered rates to back upwards the economic scheme of leaders to whom it was favorably disposed.

Yet i of the most despised presidents of modern times, Bill Clinton (whom conspiracists receive got defendant of beingness a “Trilateralist as well as Bilderberger”), witnessed multiple interest-rate hikes past times the Fed during his two-term presidency. Thus, either he had no command over the Fed, or the Fed was working inwards direct opposition to the ends of the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as the Bilderberger group.

In the post–World War II era, the Bretton Woods understanding pegged unusual currencies to the dollar, as well as although the dollar was legally required to live convertible into gold, it was nevertheless pegged to aureate inwards price. That organization collapsed inwards 1968 after consistent federal budget deficits made it impossible for the dollar to grip its value. After that, the world’s currencies entered a to a greater extent than competitive era inwards which they “floated,” or competed, against each other.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 to a greater extent than consistent criticism of the Federal Reserve is that it has virtually eliminated aureate as well as silvery coinage, supposedly inwards violation of the Constitution. With all newspaper money inwards the command of the federal government, the economic scheme would live at the mercy of either the White House or the Fed, as well as individuals would move slaves to “fiat money.” For to a greater extent than than ii decades after the Great Depression, the prohibition against asset aureate remained inwards place, but inwards the early on 1970s, the authorities in i lawsuit once again allowed individuals to purchase as well as sell aureate coins.

Although the value of Canadian Maple Leafs as well as other pop aureate coins fluctuated wildly with the cost hikes inwards stone oil emanating from OPEC, inwards the 1980s the Fed’s anti-inflation policies nearly eliminated whatever premium on gold. For the side past times side xx years, aureate hovered steadily at historically depression prices, causing consternation with those who pointed to aureate every bit a key indicator of government-generated inflation.

If anything, the Fed has consistently lost command of the banking organization as well as seen its influence over the economic scheme weakened. The appearance of electronic funds transfers as well as high-speed satellite transmissions made data on financial markets available anywhere inwards the world, instantaneously.

No authorities could shroud weaknesses inwards its monetary or financial policy for to a greater extent than than a few hours. Meanwhile, the speed of banking transactions brought the United States— as well as the world—increasingly closer to competitive money, if non inwards actual newspaper form, at to the lowest degree inwards electronic cast as well as inwards credit/debit bill of fare substitutes.

Federal Bureau Of Investigation

Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is largely synonymous with 2 things: its longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover, as well as the anticommunist feeling Hoover shared with the bulk of his countrymen during the early on mutual frigidity war. It would sure as shooting live on a error to assert that the FBI was exclusively concerned with questions of espionage as well as a self-professed finish of preventing Communist subversion; principal alongside FBI concerns were such activities equally depository fiscal establishment robberies, kidnapping, as well as postal service fraud.

Nevertheless, after World War II, the agency’s principal focus centered to a greater extent than or less its efforts to comprise the spread as well as influence of communism. Such action largely defined the organization, as well as sure as shooting accounts for much of its notoriety inwards conspiracy circles. Historians guide maintain argued that the FBI was “both motility as well as effect, equally good equally most obvious beneficiary” of U.S. anticommunism.

This, however, was non the intention of the FBI’s designers. The brainchild of Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, the means was born out of Progressive Era impulses toward centralization as well as efficiency.


Responding to the inadequacy of local potency to address interstate crime, the FBI was originally charged with combating postal as well as antitrust violations, equally good equally other types of financially related fraud; exclusively subsequently did the agency’s mandate expand to include organized offense targets such equally the Mafia, Prohibition, as well as the Ku Klux Klan. Three things happened that were to greatly expand the mightiness of the FBI, as well as the maiden off was the ascent of J. Edgar Hoover to its directorship inwards 1924.

Hoover radically increased both the range as well as professionalism of the FBI—for example, he inherited an arrangement with nine plain offices; 6 years later, at that spot were thirty. He was caput of the FBI for the side past times side forty-eight years, as well as the organization’s subsequent history is inwards large component the biography of Hoover himself.

Second, the U.S.A. passed several pieces of legislation (including the Eighteenth Amendment, offset Prohibition) that created interstate crimes for the FBI to enforce. In especial the Isle of Man Act, which aimed to fighting interstate prostitution trade, as well as the Dyer Act, which aimed to curtail auto theft, provided arenas as well as potency for the FBI to act.

Third, during World War I, concerns over espionage justified the broadening of FBI action to unearthing spy networks. After it, the threat posed past times political radicalism ready the phase for the most prominent FBI function of the century: combating communism.

Americans guide maintain long viewed radicalism equally a potential threat to the stability as well as safety of their country; anticommunism was non born inwards 1945, but intensified. Accordingly, the FBI redoubled its efforts inwards this area, to fighting the threat—real as well as perceived—posed past times the Soviet Union.

The mutual frigidity state of war had military machine as well as political aspects; it likewise had domestic ones, as well as the FBI was at the forefront of these. It led the way alongside authorities agencies concerned most the influences that Communists within the U.S.A. as well as the U.S. authorities could have.

Fear of such insurgency was widespread alongside Americans, providing fertile basis for Joseph McCarthy. The era dubbed “McCarthyism” was characterized past times a widespread hysteria throughout U.S. society, wherein many suspected Communists were hounded from jobs, world life, as well as homes for the most tenuous of (purported) radical sympathies.

Behind McCarthy’s mightiness to brand accusations lay the FBI; he as well as like-minded politicians (many on HUAC, the House of Representatives’ Un-American Activities Committee) would hardly guide maintain been able to works life whatever credibility without data supplied past times the FBI, as well as McCarthy freely admitted that he got the volume of his data from the organization. The FBI may guide maintain been the soundless partner inwards McCarthyism, but it was inwards fact the dominant one.

After Hoover died, revelations most the nature as well as extent of the data gathered shocked the nation. In an essay entitled “Why I Got Out of It,” a old FBI agent details the myriad ways that the agents would infiltrate potentially subversive political groups to obtain data on the members (as component of COINTELPRO, the computer program of domestic surveillance as well as infiltration begun inwards the 1950s). He likewise discusses the pick of targets—a procedure done with almost reckless disregard for the probable marking of the threat.

Suspicion was oftentimes confined to “liberal” groups, as well as dark ones were especially suspect: “It seemed that every politically dissident dark human being was a candidate for investigation”. Under the guise of investigating potentially subversive groups for unsafe activity, the FBI acted equally a political organization, investigating liberal groups with far to a greater extent than abandon than conservative ones.

These “FBI files,” born out of describe of piece of work organisation for alleged conspiracy, guide maintain larn the centre of suspected conspiracies themselves—particularly alongside those on the Left who guide maintain felt most threatened past times the agency. Web searches tin terminate describe a raft of links detailing alleged FBI interest inwards conspiracies connected to the Kent State shootings, UFOs, the Kennedy assassination, the Mafia, as well as the Martin Luther King assassination alongside many others.

There is no mutual thread connecting these alleged conspiracies, but the mid-1970s revelations of the FBI’s wiretapping action has made the means a target of conspiracy thinking itself. These revelations coincided with a declining faith inwards the U.S. authorities after Watergate as well as the Vietnam War. Perhaps equally a result, the FBI is right away perceived equally a wellspring of conspiracies equally much equally a discoverer of them.

Yahya Khan

Yahya Khan

Yahya Khan was the president of Pakistan and chief of army staff from 1969 to 1971, following the resignation of Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.

Yahya Khan also dissolved the National Assembly and terminated the constitution. His two years as president were marked by strong tensions in East Pakistan, leading to the Bangladesh Liberation War and the eventual secession of Bangladesh in 1971.

Yahya was born in Chakwal on February 4, 1917, into a family of Persian origins, descended from the military elite. He attended Punjab University and graduated first in his class from the Indian Military Academy. Yahya joined the British army, and during World War II he served in Iraq, Italy, and North Africa.


After the partition of India, he became the youngest brigadier general in the Pakistani army, commander in chief of the army in 1966, and when President Ayub Khan resigned, he turned to his faithful aide Yahya Khan to maintain order in the country.

Yahya was resolute in his restoration of order in the country. To make this suspension of political and civil liberties more palatable, he also started a large-scale renovation of the country’s civil service personnel. He also announced restrictions on economic monopolies and a more equal distribution of wealth.

Yet Yahya’s reforms and his government were swept away by the conflict that erupted in 1971 between East and West Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, leader of the Awami League, launched a campaign for the creation of a federation in which East Pakistan would enjoy great autonomy.

Nixon meets Yahya Khan and his team

The League performed extremely well in the 1970 election, winning 160 out of 162 seats in East Pakistan. However the party did not get a single seat in western constituencies, which overwhelmingly went to Zulfikar Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.

Since neither Bhutto nor Mujibur would support the other as prime minister, Yahya decided to solve the political impasse by sending the army to East Pakistan to crush the Awami League. The acts of brutality committed by the army caused millions to flee to India for Indian intervention, forcing the West Pakistani army to surrender.

East Pakistan declared its independence, establishing the state of Bangladesh in 1972. Yahya Khan’s only option was to hand power to Zulfikar Bhutto, who put him under arrest. He spent his later years far from the political scene.

World Bank

Founded at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944 by representatives of 44 governments, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), commonly known as the World Bank, was conceived as a mechanism through which financial resources could be funneled to Europe to aid in the rebuilding effort in the aftermath of World War II.

Initially based solely in Washington, D.C. (where its world headquarters remains), and from its founding to the present day dominated by the United States, the World Bank played a key role in the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union: at first in western Europe, and then through its loans to nation-states in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (the so-called Third World), considered by the United States key sites in the struggle against international communism.

From the 1950s the World Bank broadened its mandate to encompass economic development and poverty issues in Third World countries through its International Finance Corporation (IFC), its International Development Association (ADA), its International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), and its Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), which together with the IBRD compose the World Bank Group.


In 2007 the World Bank Group had 185 member states, with close coordination between the activities of its five entities and some 40 percent of its staff based outside the United States. Its governing structure consists of a board of governors, with a representative from each member state; a board of executive directors; and a president.

In the decades following its foundation, the World Bank underwent a number of broad shifts, from funding postwar reconstruction to large development projects in Third World countries to its current focus on the alleviation of poverty and sustainable development. Scholarly interpretations of the World Bank’s role in world affairs vary widely.

Neoclassical and neoliberal economists and social scientists tend to interpret the World Bank in positive terms, as a force for progressive social change. In contrast, many left-leaning social scientists tend to view it as serving the interests of multinational corporations and facilitating the foreign policy goals of the world’s advanced industrial countries, particularly the United States.

The bank itself acknowledges many of its past mistakes, particularly its support for massive "white elephant" projects in Africa and Latin America that lined the pockets of corrupt politicians and business owners while doing little to alleviate poverty or advance genuine economic development.

Such projects included the Kariba Dam in Zambia and Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) in the 1950s, which displaced and impoverished thousands of Tonga people; the Singrauli thermal coal mining projects in India (financed from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s and accused of causing massive environmental damage and human misery); and the Yacyreta Dam in Paraguay and Argentina (financed in the 1980s and early 1990s and denounced as an environmental catastrophe and a "monument to corruption").

Despite divergent interpretations, all observers agree that the World Bank and the closely affiliated International Monetary Fund, also founded at Bretton Woods in 1944, have been among the most important international financial entities of the postwar era.

Western Saharan War

The Spanish withdrawal from the Saharan region

Spain ruled the western Saharan region known as Río de Oro as part of its colonial empire. The region was sparsely populated by mostly Sunni Muslim nomadic peoples of mixed Berber and Arab ancestry who were Arabic speaking.

The region contained some of the world’s richest phosphate mines but was otherwise desperately poor. In the early 1970s the Polisario Front (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al Hamra and Río de Oro) initiated an armed nationalist struggle for independence from Spain.

After the death of Francisco Franco, a committed imperialist, the new Spanish government granted the territory independence in 1975. Although the United Nations declared that the Sahrawi should have self-determination, Morocco and Mauritania both immediately claimed the territory. King Hassan II of Morocco launched the "Green March" of over 300,000 unarmed Moroccans to march into the territory and incorporate it into Morocco.


Because of its rivalry with Morocco as well as its desire for access to a port on the Atlantic Ocean, Algeria supported the Polisario, supplying it with arms and assistance. The Polisario proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in 1976. Recognized by some 70 nations, SADR became a full-fledged member of the African Union.

The war between the Polisario, Morocco, and Mauritania lasted from 1975 to 1984. The Polisario was able to defeat Mauritania, which withdrew its claims in 1979, but it was largely defeated by Morocco, which obtained arms from the United States.

Moroccan troops moved into the northern sector of the territory and occupied the huge phosphate mines at Bu Craa. The war and Moroccan occupation resulted in the displacement of over 200,000 Sahrawi, who continue to live in refugee camps in surrounding regions to the present day.

Polisaro front

By the early 1980s Morocco controlled the majority of the territory, and SADR administered the remainder as liberated territory. To protect its holdings, Morocco built a 380-mile earth wall studded with electronic sensors and antipersonnel radar provided by the United States. The wall effectively enclosed the Moroccan-held sections of Western Sahara.

The United Nations called for a referendum, for the people to vote for independence or for union with Morocco. The Polisario supported the referendum, but Morocco moved in settlers, who probably now outnumber the indigenous Sahrawis, to the territory it held.

Morocco argued that the settlers, presumably all in favor of union, should be allowed to vote in the proposed referendum. Not surprisingly, SADR and its supporters strongly rejected Morocco’s claim.

Saharan transportation

Both the United Nations and the United States attempted to mediate but failed to break the impasse. It appeared that Morocco would refuse any referendum until it could guarantee a victory in the election.

An estimated 160,000 Moroccan soldiers continued to occupy the territory, which had a population of some 267,000 Sahrawi people. In 1983 King Hassan II negotiated an agreement with Algeria, which then halted its support for the Polisario, although many Sahrawis remained refugees in Algeria and other neighboring countries.

After Hassan’s death in 1999 his son King Muhammad VI announced his desire for a resolution to the problem, but he also opposed holding a referendum on independence.

In 2005 riots by supporters of the referendum in Moroccan-held territory broke out; Moroccan forces quickly quelled the riots and repressed SADR supporters. Hence one of the longest liberation struggles in the contemporary kala continued to be unresolved.

Encryption

Encryption

Encryption, which derives from the Greek give-and-take “kriptos,” refers to the concealment of information through the conversion of obviously text into ciphered or encoded text. So pervasive is this ancient facial expression of secrecy that encryption powerfulness live read as the physical manifestation of conspiracy inwards language.

From the courtroom conspiracies of the Middle Ages to the footing of mutual depression temperature state of war espionage, countless conspiracies together with conspiracy theories convey been based on the encoding or decoding of encrypted messages. The earliest illustration of encryption tin live traced dorsum to 1,900 B.C. when unconventional hieroglyphics were found on the tomb of Khumhotop II inwards the house of to a greater extent than touchstone inscriptions.

While their intent was non to brand the message secret, precisely rather to obscure its pregnant together with therefore attract the attending of passersby, it all the same stands as i of the maiden of all known examples of codemaking.


The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana catalogs encryption (or, “secret writing” together with “secret talking”) as the forty-fourth together with forty-fifth of the sixty-four arts, along alongside others such as meditation, cooking, together with bookbinding. Other examples include cuneiform tablets inwards ancient Mesopotamia together with the atbash zilch of the Old Testament. Yet it was non until the mid-ninth century that cryptography developed into an actual science.

Arab scholars produced influential treatises together with studies of the subject, together with invented the as of import dependent area of cryptanalysis (the decipherment of encrypted messages) primarily through methods of frequency analysis. This legacy tin silent live identified inwards the give-and-take “cipher,” which originates from the Standard Arabic sifr, or “zero.”

One of the earliest together with simplest methods of encryption is the commutation cipher. This scheme is credited to Julius Caesar together with employs an alphabet inwards which plaintext letters are replaced past times the tertiary missive of the alphabet that follows inwards the alphabet; therefore Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 becomes D, B travel E, together with and then on.

The closely related transposition method involves the rearrangement of plaintext letters inwards a give-and-take or a sentence, creating a form of anagram. More often, the transposition method relies on a preestablished key possessed past times both the sender together with receiver of the message, such as a parallel listing of plaintext together with ciphertext alphabets.

Closely allied to encryption, together with oft used inwards conjunction alongside it, is the exercise of steganography (from the Greek give-and-take for “covered writing”). Steganography, which according to Herodotus is at to the lowest degree as one-time as 440 B.C., refers to the hush-hush transmission of a message.

In classical times this powerfulness hateful using invisible inks, such as milk or urine, or fifty-fifty going as far as tattooing a message on the caput of a slave together with allowing his or her pilus to grow back. In modern times, messages convey been photographed together with reduced to the size of microdots, electronically embedded inwards ikon files, together with placed inwards obviously stance on the Internet.

Since its beginnings, encryption has emerged as i of the key necessities of statecraft. Its utilization inwards political affairs became good established inwards the Western footing inwards the seventeenth century when dark chambers were established past times nations across Europe.

The dark chambers, such as France’s Cabinet Noir together with Vienna’s Geheime Kabinets-Kanzlei, operated as hush-hush rooms where messages betwixt diplomats together with other regime personnel were intercepted together with cryptanalyzed, earlier proceeding through the postal service to their addressees.

In France, Cardinal Richelieu recognized the value of decrypting the messages of unusual powers, together with alongside the assistance of Antoine Rossignol (and subsequently his son, Bonaventure), began developing novel methods of cryptanalysis, fifty-fifty inventing the Great Cipher (“le chiffre indéchiffrable”) of Louis XIV.

Encryption has proved no less of import inwards the twentieth century, having had far-reaching effects inwards both the Machiavellian intrigues of political life together with inwards wartime. One of the most famous episodes inwards the history of encryption together with cryptanalysis occurred during World War II, inwards which codebreakers at Bletchley Park, notably Alan Turing, cracked the German linguistic communication Enigma code past times developing on the operate of Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski.

The powerfulness of the Allied forces to decipher all German linguistic communication communications enabled them to protect transportation lanes, monitor troop movements, together with ameliorate coordinate attacks, ending the state of war far sooner than if they had been unable to scissure the code. The other famous codebreaking machine to emerge from the operate at Bletchley was Colussus, which was used to interruption the German linguistic communication Lorenz cipher, together with subsequently became the forebear of the modern computer.

In recent times, in that location has been no shortage of regime attempts to command the spread of rigid encryption, peculiarly after the conception of Public Key Encryption past times Whitfield Diffie. Of item depository fiscal establishment complaint is Phil Zimmerman’s populace key encryption programme PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) which was posted to a Usenet bulletin board as freeware inwards June 1991 together with has since spread across the globe.

Zimmerman wrote together with released PGP inwards 1991 inwards social club to preclude Senate Bill 266, an anticrime nib that would convey forced the manufacturers of communications devices using encryption to install dorsum doors through which the regime could easily read all correspondence. The distinction of PGP is that it allows individuals alongside conventional abode computers to transportation RSA-encrypted messages via e-mail that are effectively impossible for tidings organizations to decode.

By September 1993, Zimmerman was existence investigated past times the San José Office of U.S. customs for the illegal “export” of his program, a illustration that was finally dropped. Since the U.S. Department of State classified encryption technologies as “munitions,” to live regulated nether the Arms Export Control Tax, Zimmerman was considered an illegal arms exporter.

The eventual furor created past times the publish of PGP together with the investigation of Zimmerman brought the number into populace awareness similar never before. On i side, in that location existed an unlikely wedlock of civil libertarians, privacy advocates, together with large concern (concerned almost corporate safety together with the protection of Internet transactions).

On the other side, the regime together with safety agencies argued that they would live unable to read the communications of drug cartels together with terrorists, thereby hampering their investigation together with prosecution of criminals.

Various compromises convey been proposed past times the U.S. government, such as key escrow, inwards which all private encryption keys are held past times a neutral tertiary political party together with relinquished to constabulary enforcement bodies inwards criminal investigations, yet it has non had broad back upward together with the number of regime controls on encryption remains largely undecided.

Although rigid encryption has inwards recent years entered the populace domain, the National Security Agency (NSA) is silent largely responsible for its evolution together with control. The NSA has stood at the forefront of cryptanalytical scientific discipline for the lastly one-half century together with has played a purpose inwards almost every encryption-related number since its inception.

Established inwards 1952 past times the presidential directive of Harry S. Truman, the NSA began its life as the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), eventually expanding to travel larger than the CIA. For many years, its call did non look on whatever governmental documentation together with its budget remains a thing of peachy secrecy.

Though the NSA is inwards i feel a modern-day dark chamber, it is also the largest information gathering together with cryptanalytical trunk history has e'er seen, administering the ECHELON program, employing to a greater extent than mathematicians than whatever organisation inwards the world, together with cryptanalyzing both domestic together with international communications for utilization past times U.S. tidings together with constabulary enforcement agencies.

There is also around evidence that it has been involved inwards industrial espionage past times passing on information to U.S. companies inwards social club to win lucrative international contracts. Unsurprisingly, modern conspiracy theories, novels, together with films such as Sneakers (1992), Mercury Rising (1998), together with Enemy of the State (1998) convey cited it, rather than the CIA, as the newly definitive enemy of the people.

Drugs

Drugs

Apart from the possibility that the excessive utilisation of for sure drugs tin brand the user paranoid, illicit drugs conduct hold been at the pump of a number of conspiracy theories over the yesteryear century. One cluster of conspiracy theories surrounds the utilisation of opiates, together with some other focuses on marijuana.

Opiates

Opiates—opium, morphine, together with heroin—have figured largely inward drug conspiracies. One of the earliest conspiracy theories surrounding opiates inward the U.S. concerned Chinese immigrants on the West Coast. When Chinese immigrants began arriving inward the U.S. to a greater extent than or less 1870, their habit of smoking opium drew condemnation.

Chinese laborers, derogatorily called “coolies,” were essential to the completion of the showtime transcontinental railroad, but when economical depression beset the reason inward the belatedly nineteenth century, white fears of task competition, combined amongst Chinese opium smoking, led to repression of the Chinese population.


Nativism, xenophobia, together with the conviction that opium smoking posed a threat to U.S. club helped Pb to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigration to the United States. Other repression came inward the shape of local together with province laws that targeted Chinese Americans, equally good equally harassment yesteryear native-born whites, especially on the West Coast. In 1875 a San Francisco City ordinance banned opium smoking.

Stories of Chinese immigrants who lured white females into prostitution, along amongst media depictions of the Chinese equally depraved together with unclean, bolstered the enactment of anti-opium laws inward xi states betwixt 1877 together with 1900. On the federal level, inward 1909 President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Opium Exclusion Act, which forbade the importation of smoking opium.

Although no fully formed conspiracy theory emerged amidst anti-opium advocates, yesteryear the plow of the century the association betwixt Chinese immigrants, opium, together with societal decay illustrated the widespread belief that opium smoking (or the consumption of whatever psychoactive centre for nonmedical purposes) threatened to erode the Anglo-Saxon race’s might to propagate itself. Put some other way, during the Social Darwinist–infused days of the belatedly nineteenth together with early on twentieth centuries, drug addiction amidst white Americans was idea to termination inward racial suicide.

More delineated conspiracy theories concerning opiates materialized during together with afterward World War II. Propagating numerous drug conspiracies was Harry J. Anslinger, who served equally commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) from 1930 to 1962. Anslinger had an imposing physical appearance: somber-faced, bald, thick-chested, together with square-jawed, he resembled a cross betwixt Benito Mussolini together with the infamous British satanist Aleister Crowley (Sloman, xi).

As caput of the FBN, Anslinger dominated U.S. drug policy for 30 years, during which fourth dimension he maintained the link betwixt foreigners together with drugs, brought a high degree of bureaucratic monastic tell to federal drug policy, embarked upon a effort to demonize together with limit marijuana, melded antinarcotics policy amongst U.S. unusual policy together with safety issues, together with sought repressive measures to bargain amongst addicts together with dealers.

During World War II Anslinger charged the Japanese amongst conspiring to spread narcotics addiction throughout the West, remarking that a drugsodden patch could offering petty resistance to an invading Japanese military.

The Japanese were flooding Communist People's Republic of China amongst narcotics during the state of war but no prove corroborated their supposed programme to foment addiction inward the United States. Similarly, inward the early on mutual frigidness state of war years, Anslinger unrelentingly maintained that heroin addiction was role of Communist China’s programme for subversion inward the United States.

Lacking whatever proof of such a conspiracy, Anslinger withal fostered stories together with images of syringe-wielding Chinese soldiers poised to conduct hold over the gratis world together with outlined the details of the Chinese Communist Party’s heroin conspiracy inward his 1953 majority The Traffic inward Narcotics.

Anslinger’s conspiracy theories demonstrated the link betwixt federal drug policy together with national safety issues, which is to say that the FBN’s claims were inward line amongst America’s anticommunist mission inward Asia. The commissioner never recanted his accusations together with his claims persisted into the 1970s.

In a reversal of Anslinger’s claims, 2 other drug conspiracies emerged during the mutual frigidness war, which charged the U.S. government, non unusual nations, amongst spreading narcotics addiction together with using drugs for undemocratic purposes.

One conspiracy theory defendant the CIA, from the 1950s through the 1980s, of willingly allying itself amongst narcotics (opium, morphine, together with heroin) traffickers inward Burma, Thailand, Laos, Afghanistan, together with Islamic Republic of Pakistan equally role of the agency’s anticommunist crusade inward Asia.

By supplying these unsavory elements amongst funds, equipment, together with intelligence, the CIA provided a zone of protection to a greater extent than or less drug lords together with blocked investigations of their clients’ drug running. Ultimately, the CIA contributed to the global narcotics merchandise yesteryear sanctioning their allies’ involvement.

Researchers, such equally Alfred W. McCoy, conduct hold unearthed prove corroborating the link betwixt the CIA together with narcotics traffickers inward Asia but deny the existence of a full-blown conspiracy inward which the CIA intended to foster trafficking together with addiction internationally, including Europe together with the United States.

Rather, the CIA’s short-term destination of using narcotics traffickers equally self-sustaining paramilitary forces during the mutual frigidness state of war blinded the way from foreseeing the long-term increase inward the region’s drug merchandise afterward the U.S. authorities no longer needed its clients’ services. In essence, the CIA, narrowly focused on anticommunism, deemed its clients’ expanded drug trafficking abilities equally entirely “fallout” from overriding mutual frigidness state of war concerns.

For instance, when narcotics produced yesteryear CIA allies supplied U.S. addicts—as inward the instance of U.S. soldiers inward Vietnam using heroin trafficked yesteryear South Vietnamese, Laotian, together with Thai officials—the CIA, jump yesteryear law to provide intelligence on drug trafficking, illegally prevented investigations of Southeast Asian officials. Damning facts such equally these conduct hold lent the air of conspiracy to the CIA’s human relationship to the international drug trade.

Another drug conspiracy leveled at the U.S. authorities involved the Nixon administration’s drug policy together with the White House’s reorganization of federal drug enforcement agencies. In the early on 1970s President Nixon launched his “war on drugs” inward response to a burgeoning heroin epidemic inward the United States.

Like Harry J. Anslinger, Nixon cast blame on unusual nations for America’s addiction problem. Nixon favored the utilisation of federal drug command agencies equally the response to the country’s supposedly growing rates of drug abuse.

Part of Nixon’s solution entailed the creation of the Office of National Narcotics Intelligence (ONNI), Office for Drug Abuse together with Law Enforcement (ODALE), together with Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which replaced the Bureau of Narcotics together with Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), the FBN’s successor agency. The executive branch oversaw these agencies together with critics defendant the president of using them for purposes non related to drug control.

Specifically, skeptics argued that Nixon manufactured a drug scare that distracted the U.S. populace together with Congress together with allowed the direction to practise White House– controlled federal agencies that were used for surveillance together with harassment of political enemies, non apprehending drug dealers.

Critics charged ODALE together with ONNI equally beingness petty to a greater extent than than a White House soul constabulary force. ODALE, housed inward the Justice Department, was authorized to comport no-knock search warrants together with warrantless raids, equally good equally to utilisation court-ordered wiretaps. Such an way had the capacity to human activeness higher upwards the law together with did on occasions. Indeed, telephone substitution figures inward the Watergate scandal—G. Gordon Liddy, Egil Krogh, E. Howard Hunt, together with Lucein Conein— were all involved inward federal drug command agencies.

Liddy developed the creation of ODALE. Conein, a CIA agent, evidently developed a special assassination force—ostensibly aimed at major drug traffickers—within the DEA afterward that organization’s creation inward mid-1973. Krogh served equally deputy assistant for the president for law enforcement together with helped gear upwards the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP), which established federal methadone clinics.

Interestingly, the federal methadone clinics—aimed at helping heroin addicts— drew criticism from African Americans equally a ploy to maintain inner-city populations addicted to difficult drugs. In the end, the Plumbers, drawn from the Nixon administration’s drug command apparatus, together with the resulting Watergate scandal derailed Nixon’s cry for for unchecked executive power.

Marijuana

Like the opiates, conspiracy theories formed to a greater extent than or less marijuana, a drug outlawed inward 1937 yesteryear the Marijuana Tax Act. Similar to the Chinese immigrants’ negative association amongst opium smoking, marijuana was linked to some other stereotyped immigrant group, Mexicans.

During the showtime few decades of the 1900s local together with province restrictions on marijuana, especially inward the West together with Southwest, were established equally the drug was purported to get smokers to commit crimes. Tales of stoned Mexicans who craved violence together with were immune to hurting were common. Throughout the showtime one-half of the 1930s Anslinger resisted calls for federal legislation banning marijuana, believing that the states could best command the matter.

But yesteryear 1936 Anslinger reversed course of report together with embarked on a effort inward which he showtime stated that he had underestimated the marijuana threat together with and therefore proceeded to describe the weed equally worse than heroin, together with the harbinger of decease together with discord. Drug policy scholars conduct hold attributed Anslinger’s turnaround to his sharp concern for bureaucratic survival—he used the marijuana number to justify his together with the FBN’s existence.

According to this line of thinking, Anslinger did non practise a marijuana scare; he joined ane already inward progress together with bolstered it to best of his might amongst lurid testimony at congressional hearings together with inward paper together with magazine articles. Anslinger’s article “Marijuana: Assassin of Youth,” which appeared inward the July 1937 edition of American Magazine, was a prime number illustration of FBN antimarijuana propaganda.

The article, equally did well-nigh of Anslinger’s marijuana horror stories together with other sensationalized accounts similar the Hollywood celluloid Reefer Madness, involved American youths together with linked the drug amongst serious crimes (such equally murder, rape, together with mutilation), insanity, promiscuity, together with full general immorality.

For Anslinger, the consequences of inhaling the killer weed ranged from patricide together with fratricide—as the commissioner oftentimes recounted inward the instance of a Florida youth—to the possibility that a user would plow into a “philosopher, a joyous reveler inward a musical heaven,” a contestation that linked marijuana together with jazz music (Anslinger 1937, 150). The outcome of all the scare tactics together with misinformation was the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, which initially curtailed hemp production, but ultimately served equally the footing for criminalizing marijuana users.

Countering Anslinger’s persuasion of marijuana equally a generator of offense together with decease is the conspiracy theory best articulated yesteryear Jack Herer inward Hemp together with the Marijuana Conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes. According to Herer, bureaucratic survival was non at the pump of Anslinger’s antimarijuana campaign. Rather, Anslinger’s role inward demonizing marijuana stemmed from his participation inward a concerted essay yesteryear powerful economical interests to postage out contest from the hemp industry.

Specifically, Anslinger, the E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (DuPont), work organisation magnate Andrew Mellon, together with the media giant William Randolph Hearst worked paw inward paw to forestall a growing hemp manufacture from offering cellulosebased products, such equally paper (and potentially textiles together with plastics), from competing amongst DuPont’s products. By the 1930s DuPont had developed patents for producing paper from woods pulp together with likewise had plans to brand plastics from fossil oil products.

Andrew W. Mellon, secretarial assistant of the treasury together with possessor of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh, which was ane of entirely 2 banks DuPont dealt with, appointed his time to come son-in-law to caput upwards the newly created FBN inward Dec 1930. Anslinger’s solar daytime of the month to the FBN, housed inward the Treasury Department, tied him to Mellon’s together with DuPont’s fiscal interests, which included stunting a hemp manufacture that had grown over the 1920s together with 1930s.

The Hearst paper syndicate, the nation’s largest, was likewise tied economically to the woodpaper industry. Moreover, Hearst, known for his disdain of jazz music, Mexicans, together with African Americans, readily published antimarijuana tracts that seat his newspapers inward line amongst the federal government.

Ultimately, all of these actors constituted a conspiracy orchestrated to brand hemp illegal. According to this theory, the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, far from outlawing a supposedly murderous drug, was inward fact legislation designed to farther DuPont’s fiscal fortune.