In early 2007, a group of Morgan Stanley bankers bundled a group of subprime mortgage instruments into a package they hoped to sell to investors. The only problem was, they couldn't come up with a name for the package of mortgage-backed derivatives, which they all knew were doomed.

The bankers decided to play around with potential names. In a series of emails back and forth, they suggested possibilities. "Jon is voting for 'Hitman,'" wrote one. "How about 'Nuclear Holocaust 2007-1?'" wrote another, adding a few more possible names: Shitbag, Mike Tyson's Punchout and Fludderfish.

Eventually they stopped with the comedy jokes, gave the pile of "nuclear" assets a more respectable name -"Stack" -and sold the $500 million Collateralized Debt Obligation with a straight face to the China Development Industrial Bank. Within three years, the bank was suing a series of parties, including Morgan Stanley, to recover losses from the toxic fund.

The name on the original registration document for Stack? Craig S. Phillips, then president of Morgan Stanley's ABS (Asset-Backed Securities) division. Phillips may not have written the emails in question, but he was the boss of this sordid episode, and it was his name on the comedy-free document that was presented to Chinese investors.

This is just another detail in the emerging absurd narrative that is Donald Trump naming Phillips, of all people, to head up the effort to reform the Government-Sponsored Entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

As ace investigative reporter Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times noted in a piece back on April 7th, Phillips headed a division that sold billions of dollars of mortgage-backed investments to Fannie and Freddie. Many of those investments were as bad as the ones his unit sold to the Chinese. In fact, as Morgenson noted, Phillips became a named defendant in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA), which essentially charged, as the Chinese did, that Morgan Stanley knowingly sold Fannie and Freddie a pile of crap.

Morgan Stanley ended up having to pay $625 million apiece to Fannie and Freddie to settle securities fraud charges in that case.

Phillips worked in an area of investment banking that was highly lucrative and highly predatory. The basic scam in the subprime world in particular was buying up mortgages from people who couldn't possibly afford them, making those bad mortgages into securities, and then turning around and hawking those same mortgages to unsuspecting institutional dopes like the Chinese and Fannie and Freddie.

Phillips had a critical role in this activity. As Morgan Stanley's ABS chief, he was among other things responsible for liaising with fly-by-night subprime mortgage lenders like New Century, who fanned into low-income neighborhoods and handed out subprime mortgages to anyone with a pulse.

In a 2012 suit, a group of Detroit-based borrowers accused Morgan Stanley of discriminatory practices, claiming the bank helped New Century target minority areas with predatory loans. One Morgan Stanley due diligence officer, Pamela Barrow, joked in an email about how to go after borrowers.

"We should call all their mommas," Barrow wrote. "Betcha that would get some of them good old boys to pay that house bill."

Phillips was named in the suit and quoted in the complaint. He said that New Century was "extremely open to our advice and involvement in all elements of their operation."

The worst actors in the financial crisis worked in this shady world involving the creation of subprime-backed securities.

Of those bad actors, there is a subset of still-worse actors, who not only sold these toxic investments to institutional investors like pension funds and Fannie and Freddie, but helped get a generation of home borrowers -often minorities and the poor -into deadly mortgages that ended up wiping out their equity.

Phillips, who helped Fannie and Freddie into substantial losses and worked with predatory firms like New Century, belongs in this second category. As Beavis and Butthead would put it, Phillips comes from the "ass of the ass." Donald Trump, then, has essentially picked one of the last people on earth who should be allowed to help reshape the mortgage markets. This is like putting a guy who sold thousand-dollar magazine subscriptions to your grandmother on the telephone in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or the A.A.R.P.

More foxes for more henhouses. Welcome to the Trump era.
(c) 2017 Matt Taibbi is Rolling Stone's chief political reporter, Matt Taibbi's predecessors include the likes of journalistic giants Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. His books include Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion, Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire.

A DEEP sigh of relief, coming straight from the heart.

When I was 10 years old, my family fled from Nazi Germany. We were fearful that the Gestapo was after us. When we approached the French border, our fear was acute. Then our train crossed the bridge that separated Germany from France, and we heaved a deep sigh of relief.

It was almost the same sigh. France has again sent a message of freedom.

Emmanuel Macron (Emmanuel is a Hebrew name, meaning "God is with us") has won the first round, and there is a strong possibility that he will win the second round, too.

This is not just a French affair. It concerns all mankind.

FIRST OF all, it has broken a spell.

After the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, there arose the myth that a dark, ultra right-wing, fascist or near-fascist wave is bound to submerge the democratic world. It's a decree of fate. Force majeure.

First Marine Le Pen. Then that obnoxious Dutchman. Then Eastern European rightists. They will crush democracy everywhere. Nothing to be done about it.

And here comes somebody that nobody has ever heard of, and breaks the spell. He has shown that decent people can come together and change the course of history.

That is a message significant not just for France, but for everybody. Even for us in Israel.

IT IS not yet finished. The second round is still before us.

Looking at the map of the first round, the picture is disturbing enough. Le Pen has conquered a large part of France, the north and almost all the east. The disaster may still be looming.

Facing this possibility, almost all the other candidates have thrown their weight behind Macron. It is the decent thing to do. Especially noble for competing candidates, who cannot be expected to like him.

The one exception is the far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, who was supported by the Communists. For him, Le Pen and Macron are the same. For people with a memory for history, this sounds ominous.

In 1933, the German Communists attacked the Socialists more than they attacked Hitler. In some large strikes, the communist "Red Front" even cooperated with Hitler's storm-troopers. Their theory was that both Hitler and the Socialists were capitalist stooges. Also, they were sure that the ridiculous Hitler would disappear after some months in power, freeing the way for the World Revolution.

They had ample time to repent their folly, when they sat together with the socialists in the Nazi concentration camps.

The French communists of that time learned the lesson. Three years later they formed a united front with the French socialists, and the Jewish socialist Leon Blum was elected Prime Minister.

By now, this lesson seems to have been forgotten.

However, at this moment, the victory of Macron seems fairly assured. Inshallah, as our Arab friends say.

THE MOST interesting aspect of the French election, like the American one and even the British referendum, is the end of the parties.

For centuries, political parties have dominated the public arena. The political party was the essential component of political life. Likeminded people set up a political association, published a program, elected a leader and took part in elections.

Alas, no more.

Television has changed all this.

TV is a very powerful, but also very limited, medium. It shows people. Actually, it shows mostly heads. It is most effective when it shows a head talking to the viewer.

TV does not show parties. It can talk about parties, but not really show them.

It is even worse at presenting party programs. Somebody can read them out on television, but that is boring. Few viewers really listen to them.

The practical upshot is that in modern politics, the leader becomes more and more important, and the party and its program less and less. I am not saying anything new, all this has been said many times before. But this year the process dominated the results.

The brexit result crossed party lines. The Labor party, a powerful presence for generations, seems to be breaking up.

Donald Trump officially represented the Republican Party, but did he? Seems the party loathes him, his hold on it is in practice a hostile takeover. It was Trump that was elected, not the party or a non-existent program.

These were extraordinary events. But the French elections took place in an ordinary, traditional framework. The result was that all traditional parties were destroyed, that all programs were blown away by the wind. What emerged was a person, practically without a party and without a program, with almost no political experience. He looks good on TV, he sounds good on TV, he was a good receptacle for votes that were primarily cast to stop the fascists.

That is a lesson not only for France, but for all democratic countries.

IT IS a lesson for Israel, too. A very important one.

We have already seen the beginning of this process. We now have a number of non-parties, with non-programs, which have gained a firm foothold in the Knesset.

For example, the party of the present Minister of Defense, Avigdor Lieberman. An immigrant from Moldova, he set up a "party" which appealed to immigrants from the Soviet Union. A party without internal elections, where all candidates are chosen by the leader and changed at (his) whim, without a real program, only a strong fascistic whiff. He is his sole spokesman on TV. He started with a strong anti-religious message, aimed at "Russian" voters, but is slowly turning around. No one among his people dares to raise questions.

Much the same situation prevails in the "party" of Ya'ir Lapid. The son of a TV personality with near-fascist views, he is a good-looking, smooth-talking fellow, totally devoid of ideas, who is now beating Netanyahu in the polls. No program, just a party that is his personal instrument. He alone appoints all candidates. He alone appears on TV. He, too, started as anti-religious and is turning around. (You cannot attain power in Israel without the religious parties, unless you are ready - God forbid - to cooperate with the Arab parties.)

Moshe Kahlon, a former Likudnik of North African descent, has lately set up a personal outfit, no real party, no real program. He, too, appoints all candidates on his list. He is now Minister of Finance.

The Labor party, which was once an all-powerful force that dominated the political scene for 44 consecutive years - before the state was born and after - is now a pitiful ruin, much like its French counterpart. Its leader, Yitzhak Herzog, is interchangeable with Francois Hollande.

And then there is the supreme master of TV, Binyamin Netanyahu, intellectually hollow, with ever changing hair-color, for and against the two-state solution, for and against everything else.

WHAT CAN we learn from the French?

Not to despair, when it looks as though we are on the way to disaster. To escape from fatalism and into optimism. Optimism and action.

Out of nowhere a new person can appear. On the ruins of the established parties, a new political force can arise, discarding the old language of left and right, speaking a new language of peace and social justice.

The ruling class is seriously rattled over its loss of control over the national political narrative -- a consequence of capitalism's terminal decay and U.S. imperialism's slipping grip on global hegemony. When the Lords of Capital get rattled, their servants in the political class are tasked with rearranging the picture and reframing the national conversation. In other words, Papa Imperialism needs a new set of lies, or renewed respect for the old ones. Former president Barack Obama, the cool operator who put the U.S. back on the multiple wars track after a forced lull in the wake of George Bush's defeat in Iraq, has eagerly accepted his new assignment as Esteemed Guardian of Official Lies.

At this stage of his career, Obama must dedicate much of his time to the maintenance of Official Lies, since they are central to his own "legacy." With the frenzied assistance of his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, Obama launched a massive military offensive - a rush job to put the New American Century back on schedule. Pivoting to all corners of the planet, and with the general aim of isolating and intimidating Russia and China, the salient feature of Obama's offensive was the naked deployment of Islamic jihadists as foot soldiers of U.S. imperialism in Libya and Syria. It is a strategy that is morally and politically indefensible -- unspeakable! -- the truth of which would shatter the prevailing order in the imperial heartland, itself.

Thus, from 2011 to when he left the White House for a Tahiti yachting vacation with music mogul David Geffen and assorted movie and media celebrities, Obama orchestrated what the late Saddam Hussein would have called "The Mother of All Lies": that the U.S. was not locked in an alliance with al-Qaida and its terrorist offshoots in Syria, a relationship begun almost 40 years earlier in Afghanistan.

He had all the help he needed from a compliant corporate media, whose loyalty to U.S. foreign policy can always be counted on in times of war. Since the U.S. is constantly in a (self-proclaimed) state of war, corporate media collaboration is guaranteed. Outside the U.S. and European corporate media bubble, the whole world was aware that al Qaida and the U.S. were comrades in arms. (According to a 2015 poll, 82 percent of Syrians and 85 percent of Iraqis believe the U.S. created ISIS.) When Vladimir Putin told a session of the United Nations General Assembly that satellites showed lines of ISIS tankers stretching from captured Syrian oil fields "to the horizon," bound for U.S.-allied Turkey, yet untouched by American bombers, the Obama administration had no retort. Russian jets destroyed 1,000 of the tankers, forcing the Americans to mount their own, smaller raids. But, the moment soon passed into the corporate media's amnesia hole -- another fact that must be shed in order to avoid unspeakable conclusions.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump's flirtation with the idea of ending U.S. "regime change" policy in Syria -- and, thereby, scuttling the alliance with Islamic jihadists -- struck panic in ruling class and in the imperial political structures that are called the Deep State, which includes the corporate media. When Trump won the general election, the imperial political class went into meltdown, blaming "The Russians" -- first, for warlord Hillary Clinton's loss, and soon later for everything under the sun. The latest lie is that Moscow is sending weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the country where the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan spent billions of dollars to create the international jihadist network. Which shows that imperialists have no sense of irony, or shame. (See BAR: "The U.S., Not Russia, Arms Jihadists Worldwide.")

After the election, lame duck President Obama was so consumed by the need to expunge all narratives that ran counter to "The Russians Did It," he twice yammered about "fake news" at a press conference in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Obama was upset, he said, "Because in an age where there's so much active misinformation and its packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television. If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect."

Although now an ex-president, it is still Obama's job to protect the ruling class, and the Empire, and his role in maintaining the Empire: his legacy. To do that, one must control the narrative - the subject uppermost in his mind when he used Chicago area students as props, this week, for his first public speech since leaving the White House.

"It used to be that everybody kind of had the same information," said Obama, at the University of Chicago affair. "We had different opinions about it, but there was a common base line of facts. The internet has in some ways accelerated this sense of people having entirely separate conversations, and this generation is getting its information through its phones. That you really don't have to confront people who have different opinions or have a different experience or a different outlook."

Obama continued:

"If you're liberal, you're on MSNBC, or conservative, you're on Fox News. You're reading the Wall Street Journal or you're reading the New York Times, or whatever your choices are. Or, maybe you're just looking at cat videos [laughter].

"So, one question I have for all of you is, How do you guys get your information about the news and what's happening out there, and are there ways in which you think we could do a better job of creating a common conversation now that you've got 600 cable stations and you've got all these different news opinions -- and, if there are two sets of opinions, then they're just yelling at each other, so you don't get a sense that there's an actual conversation going on. And the internet is worse. It's become more polarized."

Obama's core concern is that there should be a "common base line of facts," which he claims used to exist "20 or 30 years ago." The internet, unregulated and cheaply accessed, is the villain, and the main source of "fake news" (from publications like BAR and the 12 other leftwing sites smeared by the Washington Post, back in November, not long after Obama complained to Merkel about "fake news."

However, Obama tries to dress up his anti-internet "fake news" whine with a phony pitch for diversity of opinions. Is he suggesting that MSNBC viewers also watch Fox News, and that New York Times readers also peruse the Wall Street Journal? Is he saying that most people read a variety of daily newspapers "back in the day"? It is true that, generations ago, there were far more newspapers available to read, reflecting a somewhat wider ideological range of views. But most people read the ones that were closest to their own politics, just as now. Obama is playing his usual game of diversion. Non-corporate news is his target: "...the internet is worse. It's become more and more polarized."

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC and Fox News all share the "common base line of facts" that Obama cherishes. By this, he means a common narrative, with American "exceptionalism" and intrinsic goodness at the center, capitalism and democracy as synonymous, and unity in opposition to the "common" enemy: Soviet Russians; then terrorists; now non-Soviet Russians, again.

Ayanna Watkins, a senior at Chicago's Kenwood Academy High School, clearly understood Obama's emphasis, and eagerly agreed with his thrust. "When it comes to getting information about what's going on in the world, it's way faster on social media than it is on newscasts," she said.

"But, on the other hand, it can be a downfall because, what if you're passing the wrong information, or the information isn't presented the way it should be? So, that causes a clash in our generation, and I think it should go back to the old school. I mean, phones, social media should be eliminated," Ms. Watkins blurted out, provoking laughter from the audience and causing the 18 year-old to "rephrase myself."

What she really meant, she said, was that politicians should "go out to the community" so that "the community will feel more welcome."

The looming threat of World War III, a potential extermination event for the human species, is made more likely because the world's public can't count on supposedly objective experts to ascertain and evaluate facts. Instead, careerism is the order of the day among journalists, intelligence analysts and international monitors - meaning that almost no one who might normally be relied on to tell the truth can be trusted.

Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on Feb. 5. 2003, citing satellite photos which
supposedly proved that Iraq had WMD, but the evidence proved bogus. CIA Director George Tenet is behind Powell to the left.

The dangerous reality is that this careerism, which often is expressed by a smug certainty about whatever the prevailing groupthink is, pervades not just the political world, where lies seem to be the common currency, but also the worlds of journalism, intelligence and international oversight, including United Nations agencies that are often granted greater credibility because they are perceived as less beholden to specific governments but in reality have become deeply corrupted, too.

In other words, many professionals who are counted on for digging out the facts and speaking truth to power have sold themselves to those same powerful interests in order to keep high-paying jobs and to not get tossed out onto the street. Many of these self-aggrandizing professionals - caught up in the many accouterments of success - don't even seem to recognize how far they've drifted from principled professionalism.

A good example was Saturday night's spectacle of national journalists preening in their tuxedos and gowns at the White House Correspondents Dinner, sporting First Amendment pins as if they were some brave victims of persecution. They seemed oblivious to how removed they are from Middle America and how unlikely any of them would risk their careers by challenging one of the Establishment's favored groupthinks. Instead, these national journalists take easy shots at President Trump's buffoonish behavior and his serial falsehoods - and count themselves as endangered heroes for the effort.

Foils for Trump

Ironically, though, these pompous journalists gave Trump what was arguably his best moment in his first 100 days by serving as foils for the President as he traveled to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Saturday and basked in the adulation of blue-collar Americans who view the mainstream media as just one more appendage of a corrupt ruling elite..

The photograph released by the White House of President Trump meeting with his advisers
at his estate in Mar-a-Lago on April 6, 2017, regarding his decision to launch missile strikes against Syria.

Breaking with tradition by snubbing the annual press gala, Trump delighted the Harrisburg crowd by saying: "A large group of Hollywood celebrities and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom" and adding: "I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from [the] Washington swamp ...with much, much better people." The crowd booed references to the elites and cheered Trump's choice to be with the common folk.

Trump's rejection of the dinner and his frequent criticism of the mainstream media brought a defensive response from Jeff Mason, president of the White House Correspondents' Association, who complained: "We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. And we are not the enemy of the American people." That brought the black-tie-and-gown gathering to its feet in a standing ovation.

Perhaps the assembled media elite had forgotten that it was the mainstream U.S. media - particularly The Washington Post and The New York Times - that popularized the phrase "fake news" and directed it blunderbuss-style not only at the few Web sites that intentionally invent stories to increase their clicks but at independent-minded journalism outlets that have dared question the elite's groupthinks on issues of war, peace and globalization.

The Black List

Professional journalistic skepticism toward official claims by the U.S. government - what you should expect from reporters - became conflated with "fake news." The Post even gave front-page attention to an anonymous group called PropOrNot that published a black list of 200 Internet sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other independent-minded journalism sites, to be shunned.

The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C.

But the mainstream media stars didn't like it when Trump began throwing the "fake news" slur back at them. Thus, the First Amendment lapel pins and the standing ovation for Jeff Mason's repudiation of the "fake news" label.

Yet, as the glitzy White House Correspondents Dinner demonstrated, mainstream journalists get the goodies of prestige and money while the real truth-tellers are almost always outspent, outgunned and cast out of the mainstream. Indeed, this dwindling band of honest people who are both knowledgeable and in position to expose unpleasant truths is often under mainstream attack, sometimes for unrelated personal failings and other times just for rubbing the powers-that-be the wrong way.

Perhaps, the clearest case study of this up-is-down rewards-and-punishments reality was the Iraq War's WMD rationale. Nearly across the board, the American political/media system - from U.S. intelligence analysts to the deliberative body of the U.S. Senate to the major U.S. news organizations - failed to ascertain the truth and indeed actively helped disseminate the falsehoods about Iraq hiding WMDs and even suggested nuclear weapons development. (Arguably, the "most trusted" U.S. government official at the time, Secretary of State Colin Powell, played a key role in selling the false allegations as "truth.")

Not only did the supposed American "gold standard" for assessing information - the U.S. political, media and intelligence structure - fail miserably in the face of fraudulent claims often from self-interested Iraqi opposition figures and their neoconservative American backers, but there was minimal accountability afterwards for the "professionals" who failed to protect the public from lies and deceptions.

Profiting from Failure

Indeed, many of the main culprits remain "respected" members of the journalistic establishment. For instance, The New York Times' Pentagon correspondent Michael R. Gordon, who was the lead writer on the infamous "aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges" story which got the ball rolling for the Bush administration's rollout of its invade-Iraq advertising campaign in September 2002, still covers national security for the Times - and still serves as a conveyor belt for U.S. government propaganda.

New York Times building in New York City.

The Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, who repeatedly informed the Post's readers that Iraq's secret possession of WMD was a "flat-fact," is still the Post's editorial page editor, one of the most influential positions in American journalism.

Hiatt's editorial page led a years-long assault on the character of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson for the offense of debunking one of President George W. Bush's claims about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger. Wilson had alerted the CIA to the bogus claim before the invasion of Iraq and went public with the news afterwards, but the Post treated Wilson as the real culprit, dismissing him as "a blowhard" and trivializing the Bush administration's destruction of his wife's CIA career by outing her (Valerie Plame) in order to discredit Wilson's Niger investigation.

At the end of the Post's savaging of Wilson's reputation and in the wake of the newspaper's accessory role in destroying Plame's career, Wilson and Plame decamped from Washington to New Mexico. Meanwhile, Hiatt never suffered a whit - and remains a "respected" Washington media figure to this day.

Careerist Lesson

The lesson that any careerist would draw from the Iraq case is that there is almost no downside risk in running with the pack on a national security issue. Even if you're horrifically wrong - even if you contribute to the deaths of some 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - your paycheck is almost surely safe.

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney receive an Oval Office
briefing from CIA Director George Tenet. Also present is Chief of Staff Andy Card (on right).

The same holds true if you work for an international agency that is responsible for monitoring issues like chemical weapons. Again, the Iraq example offers a good case study. In April 2002, as President Bush was clearing away the few obstacles to his Iraq invasion plans, Jose Mauricio Bustani, the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW], sought to persuade Iraq to join the Chemical Weapons Convention so inspectors could verify Iraq's claims that it had destroyed its stockpiles.

The Bush administration called that idea an "ill-considered initiative" - after all, it could have stripped away the preferred propaganda rationale for the invasion if the OPCW verified that Iraq had destroyed its chemical weapons. So, Bush's Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton, a neocon advocate for the invasion of Iraq, pushed to have Bustani deposed. The Bush administration threatened to withhold dues to the OPCW if Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat, remained.

It now appears obvious that Bush and Bolton viewed Bustani's real offense as interfering with their invasion scheme, but Bustani was ultimately taken down over accusations of mismanagement, although he was only a year into a new five-year term after having been reelected unanimously. The OPCW member states chose to sacrifice Bustani to save the organization from the loss of U.S. funds, but - in so doing - they compromised its integrity, making it just another agency that would bend to big-power pressure.

"By dismissing me," Bustani said, "an international precedent will have been established whereby any duly elected head of any international organization would at any point during his or her tenure remain vulnerable to the whims of one or a few major contributors." He added that if the United States succeeded in removing him, "genuine multilateralism" would succumb to "unilateralism in a multilateral disguise."

The Iran Nuclear Scam

Something similar happened regarding the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2009 when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the neocons were lusting for another confrontation with Iran over its alleged plans to build a nuclear bomb.

Yukiya Amano, a Japanese diplomat and
director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

According to U.S. embassy cables from Vienna, Austria, the site of IAEA's headquarters, American diplomats in 2009 were cheering the prospect that Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano would advance U.S. interests in ways that outgoing IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei wouldn't; Amano credited his election to U.S. government support; Amano signaled he would side with the United States in its confrontation with Iran; and he stuck out his hand for more U.S. money.

In a July 9, 2009, cable, American charge Geoffrey Pyatt said Amano was thankful for U.S. support of his election. "Amano attributed his election to support from the U.S., Australia and France, and cited U.S. intervention with Argentina as particularly decisive," the cable said.

The appreciative Amano informed Pyatt that as IAEA director-general, he would take a different "approach on Iran from that of ElBaradei" and he "saw his primary role as implementing safeguards and UNSC [United Nations Security Council] Board resolutions," i.e. U.S.-driven sanctions and demands against Iran.

Amano also discussed how to restructure the senior ranks of the IAEA, including elimination of one top official and the retention of another. "We wholly agree with Amano's assessment of these two advisors and see these decisions as positive first signs," Pyatt commented.

In return, Pyatt made clear that Amano could expect strong U.S. financial assistance, stating that "the United States would do everything possible to support his successful tenure as Director General and, to that end, anticipated that continued U.S. voluntary contributions to the IAEA would be forthcoming. Amano offered that a 'reasonable increase' in the regular budget would be helpful."

What Pyatt made clear in his cable was that one IAEA official who was not onboard with U.S. demands had been fired while another who was onboard kept his job.

Pandering to Israel

Pyatt learned, too, that Amano had consulted with Israeli Ambassador Israel Michaeli "immediately after his appointment" and that Michaeli "was fully confident of the priority Amano accords verification issues." Michaeli added that he discounted some of Amano's public remarks about there being "no evidence of Iran pursuing a nuclear weapons capability" as just words that Amano felt he had to say "to persuade those who did not support him about his 'impartiality.'"

U.S. Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

In private, Amano agreed to "consultations" with the head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, Pyatt reported. (It is ironic indeed that Amano would have secret contacts with Israeli officials about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, which never yielded a single bomb, when Israel possesses a large and undeclared nuclear arsenal.)

In a subsequent cable dated Oct. 16, 2009, the U.S. mission in Vienna said Amano "took pains to emphasize his support for U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded ambassador [Glyn Davies] on several occasions that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.

"More candidly, Amano noted the importance of maintaining a certain 'constructive ambiguity' about his plans, at least until he took over for DG ElBaradei in December" 2009.

In other words, Amano was a bureaucrat eager to bend in directions favored by the United States and Israel regarding Iran's nuclear program. Amano's behavior surely contrasted with how the more independent-minded ElBaradei resisted some of Bush's key claims about Iraq's supposed nuclear weapons program, correctly denouncing some documents as forgeries.

The world's public got its insight into the Amano scam only because the U.S. embassy cables were among those given to WikiLeaks by Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, for which Manning received a 35-year prison sentence (which was finally commuted by President Obama before leaving office, with Manning now scheduled to be released in May - having served nearly seven years in prison).

It also is significant that Geoffrey Pyatt was rewarded for his work lining up the IAEA behind the anti-Iranian propaganda campaign by being made U.S. ambassador to Ukraine where he helped engineer the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Pyatt was on the infamous "fuck the E.U." call with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland weeks before the coup as Nuland handpicked Ukraine's new leaders and Pyatt pondered how "to midwife this thing."

Rewards and Punishments

The existing rewards-and-punishments system, which punishes truth-tellers and rewards those who deceive the public, has left behind a thoroughly corrupted information structure in the United States and in the West, in general.

Colliers Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko shakes hands with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt as U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin in Kiev, Ukraine, on July 7, 2016.

Across the mainstream of politics and media, there are no longer the checks and balances that have protected democracy for generations. Those safeguards have been washed away by the flood of careerism.

The situation is made even more dangerous because there also exists a rapidly expanding cadre of skilled propagandists and psychological operations practitioners, sometimes operating under the umbrella of "strategic communications." Under trendy theories of "smart power," information has become simply another weapon in the geopolitical arsenal, with "strategic communications" sometimes praised as the preferable option to "hard power," i.e. military force.

The thinking goes that if the United States can overthrow a troublesome government by exploiting media/propaganda assets, deploying trained activists and spreading selective stories about "corruption" or other misconduct, isn't that better than sending in the Marines?

While that argument has the superficial appeal of humanitarianism - i.e., the avoidance of armed conflict - it ignores the corrosiveness of lies and smears, hollowing out the foundations of democracy, a structure that rests ultimately on an informed electorate. Plus, the clever use of propaganda to oust disfavored governments often leads to violence and war, as we have seen in targeted countries, such as Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.

Wider War

Regional conflicts also carry the risk of wider war, a danger compounded by the fact that the American public is fed a steady diet of dubious narratives designed to rile up the population and to give politicians an incentive to "do something." Since these American narratives often deviate far from a reality that is well known to the people in the targeted countries, the contrasting storylines make the finding of common ground almost impossible.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

If, for instance, you buy into the Western narrative that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gleefully gases "beautiful babies," you would tend to support the "regime change" plans of the neoconservatives and liberal interventionists. If, however, you reject that mainstream narrative - and believe that Al Qaeda and its friendly regional powers may be staging chemical attacks to bring the U.S. military in on their "regime change" project - you might favor a political settlement that leaves Assad's fate to the later judgment of the Syrian people.

Similarly, if you accept the West's storyline about Russia invading Ukraine and subjugating the people of Crimea by force - while also shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 for no particular reason - you might support aggressive countermoves against "Russian aggression," even if that means risking nuclear war.

If, on the other hand, you know about the Nuland-Pyatt scheme for ousting Ukraine's elected president in 2014 and realize that much of the other anti-Russian narrative is propaganda or disinformation - and that MH-17 might well have been shot down by some element of Ukrainian government forces and then blamed on the Russians [see here and here] - you might look for ways to avoid a new and dangerous Cold War.

Who to Trust?

But the question is: whom to trust? And this is no longer some rhetorical or philosophical point about whether one can ever know the complete truth. It is now a very practical question of life or death, not just for us as individuals but as a species and as a planet.

Illustration by Chesley Bonestell of nuclear bombs detonating
over New York City, entitled "Hiroshima U.S.A." Colliers, Aug. 5, 1950.

The existential issue before us is whether - blinded by propaganda and disinformation - we will stumble into a nuclear conflict between superpowers that could exterminate all life on earth or perhaps leave behind a radiated hulk of a planet suitable only for cockroaches and other hardy life forms.

You might think that with the stakes so high, the people in positions to head off such a catastrophe would behave more responsibly and professionally. But then there are events like Saturday night's White House Correspondents Dinner with self-important media stars puffing about with their First Amendment pins. And there's President Trump's realization that by launching missiles and talking tough he can buy himself some political space from the Establishment (even as he sells out average Americans and kills some innocent foreigners). Those realities show that seriousness is the farthest thing from the minds of Washington's insiders.