I’D MADE IT 375 pages into Niall Ferguson’s newish first volume of a planned two-volume life of Henry Kissinger before receiving in the mail a copy of Greg Grandin’s review of same, in which the author of last year’s excellent Kissinger’s Shadow sums up Ferguson’s tome as follows: “The irony is that it has been Kissinger’s sharpest critics who have most appreciated his acute sense of self, who have treated him, however disapprovingly, as a fully dimensional individual with a churning, complex psyche. In contrast, Ferguson, tone deaf to Kissinger’s darker notes, condemns him to a literary fate worse than anything that Hitchens could have meted out: Kissinger, in this book, is boring.”
This is about as true a thing as has ever been written about any other thing, so much so that I feel both morally and professionally justified in simply abandoning this charmless book unfinished despite having promised to review it at the end of my last column (I would have figured out some other convenient justification for this regardless, but it’s always good to be able to show your work). Nor am I being insulting to Ferguson simply because I disagree with the pro-Kissinger stance he’s taken as the fellow’s authorized biographer and ideological admirer; two years ago I reviewed Kissinger’s own 1,200-page memoir, White House Years, which, though likewise betraying something of a pro-Kissinger stance, was also undeniably compelling and well-written. And while Kissinger is clever enough that one often needs to sort through a great deal of raw material in order to do a proper job of making fun of him, with Ferguson the threshold is somewhat … lower. Here, then, is my review of Ferguson’s 33-page introduction to Kissinger 1923-1968: The Idealist.
“A plainly unhinged woman writing as ‘Brice Taylor’ insists that, when she was a child, Kissinger turned her into a ‘mind-controlled slave,’ repeatedly making her eat her alphabet cereal in reverse order and taking her on the ‘It’s a Small World’ ride at Disneyland,” writes Niall Ferguson, Harvard’s Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History and a Hoover Institution senior fellow, who also scrutinizes Lyndon LaRouche’s claim that Kissinger is a British agent and David Icke’s assertion that he’s a reptilian shape-changer from the lower fourth dimension before concluding, “No rational people take such nonsense seriously. But the same cannot be said for the allegations made by conspiracy theorists of the left, who are a great deal more influential.” The conspiracy theorists of the left, it seems, include not only Oliver Stone but also Howard Zinn and Hunter S. Thompson.
Before things get totally out of hand, as they’re clearly about to, keep in mind that Ferguson was chosen by Kissinger to do this biography 10 years ago, which is to say that Ferguson had a decade to come up with some way of depicting the great bulk of anti-Kissinger sentiment as not only misguided but also malicious and at any rate beyond the pale of American political discourse as usually conducted, and that what follows is nonetheless the best that he could do.
Back to the text:
In his People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn argues that Kissinger’s policies in Chile were intended at least in part to serve the economic interests of International Telephone and Telegraph. In place of evidence, such diatribes tend to offer gratuitous insult. According to Zinn, Kissinger “surrendered himself with ease to the princes of war and destruction.” In their Untold History of the United States, the film director Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick refer to Kissinger as a “psychopath” (admittedly quoting Nixon). The doyen of “gonzo” journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, called him a “slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure” — adding, for good measure, “pervert.”
So Ferguson promises us influential left-wing conspiracy theorists, which we’re to understand are inherently silly things to be, as if one is not forced into theorizing about conspiracies when one studies a man who conspired to secretly carpet bomb Cambodia, and who did so under the aegis of a presidential administration in which was discussed the viability of assassinating a troublesome newspaper columnist by having LSD applied to his steering wheel.
Still, every allegation must be considered on its merits — something we are unable to do in the case of the single conspiracy theory Ferguson attributes to anyone by name, an allegation supposedly made by Howard Zinn, as Ferguson does not see fit to actually quote it for us. But he does find the space to quote Zinn deploying a disapproving metaphor to describe Kissinger’s decision to go to work for a man he himself had declared not long before to be unfit for the presidency. This, in Ferguson’s accounting, constitutes a “gratuitous insult” on Zinn’s part, whereas referring to another historian’s words as a “diatribe” without having the decency to even reproduce them is presumably not gratuitous at all.
IF ONE BOTHERS to check Ferguson’s footnotes, one comes across the first of several ethical oddities with which his introduction is dotted — for one finds that the “princes of war and destruction” remark is actually from another book written years after People’s History, and thus can hardly be said to constitute an especially good example of an insult offered “in place of evidence,” the place for evidence generally being in the vicinity of the allegation (but we’ll look at the actual evidence in a bit). We are not treated to any better examples down paragraph, where Ferguson quotes Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznik quoting Nixon insulting Kissinger — out of bounds, gentlemen, out of bounds! — without this time deigning even to summarize what allegations the two of them may have leveled at Kissinger to get them thrown in with the likes of Crazy Old Howard Zinn. Hunter S. Thompson makes an appearance as well, unencumbered by anything approaching a reason for being included in what was originally billed as a paragraph detailing unfounded conspiracy theories directed against Kissinger by influential leftists; by now Ferguson seems to have resorted merely to trying to prove that some on the left have insulted Kissinger, or at least quoted Nixon insulting him. To Ferguson’s credit, he does indeed prove this.
Ferguson himself may be aware that he’s promised more than he can deliver here; it may also have occurred to him that he’s just accused several people of failing to back up their allegations with evidence while he himself fails to back up this very allegation with evidence and that this sort of thing might be frowned upon in some circles, if not necessarily at the Hoover Institution. But rather than just deleting this paragraph due to one or more of these several distinct problems, which each on its own makes it worthy of deletion, Ferguson decides to just make it longer. “One left-of-center website recently accused Kissinger of having been somehow involved in the anthrax attacks of September 2001, when anthrax spores were mailed to various media and Senate offices, killing five people.”
Here we have finally been provided with something on the order of an implausible conspiracy theory emanating from the left. And we will be satisfied with this so long as we are willing to overlook the fact that Ferguson promised us that the bearers would be “influential” and yet here cannot bring himself to name the author or even the outlet, presumably in hopes that we won’t realize that both outlet and author are somewhat obscure and that this is merely the same manner of accusation that can be found on any number of minor websites about any number of powerful men.
If we check Ferguson’s endnotes again, we find that he’s referring to a piece by a certain Kevin Barrett titled “Arrest Kissinger for Both 9/11s.” If we check the URL he provides, which comes in the form of a blind bit.ly link-shortener, we find that it’s a dead link. Fair enough; perhaps it’s been taken down since then. If we simply Google the title and author (or have someone else do it for us because we’re in prison), we discover that the piece in question has appeared on a couple of sites, the most mainstream of which would seem to be presstv.ir, itself based on an Iranian host. If we go so far as to read the article, we find that the author does indeed accuse Kissinger of perpetrating the anthrax attacks. But he also accuses him of involvement in “the explosive demolition of the World Trade Center, and massacre of nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington in 2001,” going on to denounce “Kissinger’s complicity in the coup d’état of September 11, 2001” and noting in passing that the former secretary of state was involved in “helping design the 9/11 shock-and-awe psychological warfare operation.”
One might ask why it is that Ferguson neglected to mention that this “left-of-center” website that’s supposedly mainstream enough to be worthy of inclusion in a paragraph with Zinn and Thompson actually went so far as to accuse Kissinger of involvement in 9/11 itself. After all, that would seem to be the smoking-gun proof that Kissinger really is subject to unsubstantiated allegations from influential leftists, an argument that Ferguson is plainly desperate to make. If we’re feeling gentlemanly, we might allow for the possibility that Ferguson is incapable of understanding what he’s reading — but then that would be something of a knock at Harvard, would it not? So wouldn’t it be even more polite to conclude, as is obvious anyway, that he left this out lest we realize that whatever site he’s taken pains not to name for us isn’t at all “influential” or even mainstream? Because, after all, Harvard?
AS A SORT OF professional courtesy to himself, Ferguson pretends that his case has now been made. “All this vitriol is at first sight puzzling,” he writes presently. A page later, after listing Kissinger’s various awards won and offices held and treaties negotiated, he invites us to ponder with him: “How, then, are we to explain the visceral hostility that the name Henry Kissinger arouses?” That there is to the contrary nothing puzzling about anything Ferguson has shown us and no degree of hostility to be found in connection with the name of this particular American political figure that cannot be found associated with dozens of others of similar prominence becomes even more, rather than less, evident to the extent that one’s been paying attention to Ferguson’s own examples. Hunter S. Thompson famously used similar language about everyone from Hubert Humphrey to his personal acquaintances. Oliver Stone is probably not best known for his reluctance to accuse public officials of involvement in criminal conspiracies (not that we’ve even been told what, if anything, he’s claimed about Kissinger, but whatever). And Howard Zinn has of course been a consistent critic of the American government’s amoral conduct abroad. Indeed, until his death a few years ago, Zinn was probably one of the nation’s most effective mobilizers of popular opposition to the ends-justifies-the-means-and-oops-we-fucked-up-the-ends-too foreign policy establishment that’s so perfectly represented not only by Kissinger, but by such quasi-intellectuals as Ferguson as well. Perhaps this is why Ferguson felt the need to lie about him.
For Zinn did not, in fact, argue that “Kissinger’s policies in Chile were intended at least in part to serve the economic interests of International Telephone and Telegraph,” as Ferguson claims he did, nor does he even imply it. What he actually wrote in People’s History, a copy of which I had sent to the prison from which I now currently serve as an unpaid fact-checker for Penguin, apparently, was this: “And in 1970, an ITT director, John McCone, who also had been head of the CIA, told Henry Kissinger, secretary of state, and Richard Helms, CIA director, that ITT was willing to give $1 million to help the U.S. government in its plans to overthrow the Allende government in Chile.” Elsewhere: “It was also learned from the investigation that the CIA — with the collusion of a secret Committee of Forty headed by Henry Kissinger — had worked to ‘destabilize’ the Chilean government headed by Salvadore Allende, a Marxist who had been elected president in one of the rare free elections in Latin America. ITT, with large interests in Chile, played a part in this operation.”
As these are the book’s only two references to ITT’s involvement in the Chile coup, and as Zinn does not in any way “argue” that those plans were originally composed or thereafter modified with any view to ITT’s economic interests whatsoever, and also taking into account that Ferguson refrained from actually quoting Zinn on this matter while having earlier given David Icke and his friends plenty of space in which to accuse Kissinger of being a shape-shifting lizard mage from the lower fourth dimension who forces children to eat cereal in an incorrect fashion, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Ferguson has chosen to simply lie about another historian who, being dead, is not in a position to defend himself (not that I’m angry about it; on the contrary, this was my original excuse for not finishing the book).
The alternative explanation, again, is that Ferguson is incapable of understanding his sources. But, again, Harvard.
Harvard!
But what about the two assertions that Zinn actually does make? Are they provided without evidence, as Ferguson would have us believe? Not at all. Both of Zinn’s brief references to ITT and Chile, including his single reference to ITT and Chile and Kissinger, are clearly indicated in the text as being drawn from the various post-Watergate congressional investigations into the CIA and the Nixon administration; indeed, both of these Zinn quotes appear in passages that discuss the results of those investigations. The reader may have noticed, for instance, that one of those selections that Ferguson refrains from quoting begins, “It was also learned from the investigation that …” Zinn, obviously, is not “arguing” anything at all, much less putting forth some novel and outlandish “conspiracy theory”; as with the rest of the book, he’s drawing upon the public record — everything Zinn discusses pertaining to the overthrow of Allende, along with much else, can now be found among various online government archives.
At any rate, the Senate’s findings that ITT offered through McCone to assist in the overthrow of Allende didn’t entail any accusation to the effect that the overthrow itself was actually intended even in part to assist ITT; regardless of the extent to which any such offers were motivated by the firm’s economic interests, or ideology, or just the pure joy of overthrowing a democratically elected government, no one involved accused anyone on the planning side, much less Kissinger in particular, of actually tailoring the plot to assist the firm’s bottom line. The only person to have brought this up is Ferguson, in order to portray it as something made up by Zinn; for everyone else, the truth is sufficient.
So Ferguson has falsely accused Zinn of having made a supposedly outlandish claim about Kissinger, whereas in fact, Zinn was closely paraphrasing a Church Committee report published by the U.S. Senate, and implies that Zinn insulted Kissinger rather than providing the necessary evidence for his claim, whereas the “insult” was actually delivered in an entirely different book, and whereas of course no evidence is necessary because Zinn is merely relating an account of events derived from an official inquiry.
EVEN ASIDE FROM this instance of outright libel, which has at least the pragmatic justification of being not easily detectable by the sort of toy fascist, National Review-subscribing scum who would presumably make up the central audience for an authorized biography of Henry Kissinger as written by a Hoover Institution scholar and who would be unlikely to have copies of Howard Zinn books lying around with which to check up on Ferguson’s claims, this whole haphazard bid to portray Kissinger as being subject to outsized criticism relative to his actual conduct is also remarkable for how it occasionally collapses even without any need for research or in fact any particular knowledge whatsoever beyond the understanding that if X applies to A, B, and C, then X is not particular to B, and does not tell us anything about B by which we might differentiate it from A and C.
Ferguson himself notes, for instance, that David Icke’s surreal allegations encompass pretty much everyone of socio-political prominence; Icke’s “List of Famous Satanists,” Ferguson writes, “includes not only Kissinger but also the Astors, Bushes, Clintons, DuPonts, Habsburgs, Kennedys, Rockefellers, Rothschilds, and the entire British royal family — not to mention Tony Blair, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Joseph Stalin. (The comedian Bob Hope also makes the list).” So why is it remarkable that Kissinger should be included? And what’s the point of bringing up Lyndon LaRouche’s allegation that Kissinger works for the British? Search LaRouche’s name on YouTube and you’ll find, among other things, a 1980s TV promo in which he denounces Walter Mondale as “not just a KGB agent in the ordinary sense” but also “wholly owned by the left wing of the Socialist International and the grain cartel interests.” If you’re wondering why I happen to have that memorized, the answer is that this was one of several amusing political clips I was in the habit of watching once a week or so prior to my arrest; the funny part is that if Mondale were indeed under someone’s control, the “grain cartel interests” is exactly the sort of lame-ass shit that he’d be fronting. Anyway, it’s none of your business.
Having finished doing whatever it is that he thinks he’s just done, Ferguson at last makes an effort to engage Kissinger’s critics on the complex issue of whether or not Kissinger bears any responsibility for his actions. He now lurches into an overview of Christopher Hitchens’s 2001 book The Trial of Henry Kissinger, in which Hitchens “went so far as to accuse Kissinger of ‘war crimes and crimes against humanity in Indochina, Chile, Argentina, Cyprus, East Timor, and several other places’ (in fact, the only other place discussed in his book is Bangladesh).” Apparently Hitchens didn’t think to just throw Hunter S. Thompson in there to round out his list, but then the old heretic apparently had worse problems than his well-known lack of imagination: “Hitchens was a gifted polemicist; his abilities as a historian are more open to question.” It’s the reverse with Ferguson, who’s undoubtedly an accomplished sorter-through of archives but who cannot seem to make even an exceedingly dishonest argument come out in his own favor.
But Ferguson isn’t done making dishonest arguments, and I’m not done making fun of them; we’ve really only covered three or four pages so far, after all. Next time we’ll take a look at how Ferguson handles Hitchens and certain other Kissinger critics. (SPOILER: He does it dishonestly.)
Harvard!
Awkward Questions of the Day, for the Hoover Institution and/or Harvard University to Ask Niall Ferguson About His Various False and Misleading Statements Taken From a Single Paragraph of His Introduction to His Mediocre Kissinger Biography:
- What was the website to which you linked in your bibliography that hosted the article “Arrest Kissinger for Both 9/11s”?
- Why did you describe the website in question specifically as “left-of-center”?
- Why did you refrain from quoting that article?
- Did you fail to notice that the article — which, again, was titled “Arrest Kissinger for Both 9/11s” — accused Kissinger of perpetrating 9/11?
- If you didn’t notice this noteworthy thing, do you think it’s possible that you misread other sources as well in the course of researching this biography?
- If you did indeed notice this, why did you inform your readers that this article accused Kissinger of involvement in the anthrax attacks that killed five people, while refraining from informing them that it also accused him of involvement in the September 11 attacks that killed 3,000 people?
- Do you now agree that you made a “mistake” in accusing Zinn of accusing Kissinger of basing his Chile policies in part on ITT’s economic interests?
- If not, what particular passage in A People’s History of the United States would you cite that could most reasonably be interpreted as making that accusation?
- If you do agree that you were mistaken, are you concerned that your book might include other serious errors in which individuals are mistakenly accused of serious misconduct?
- Why did you refrain from quoting from the book in question?
- Do you realize how angry Henry Kissinger is going to be when he learns that you resorted to deception in the course of trying to achieve your objectives? (NOTE: THIS IS A JOKE QUESTION, DO NOT REALLY ASK IT.)
- (Make up your own question here! Maybe ask him about the time when he misrepresented some figures in a 2012 Newsweek article and he got called on it by a number of his colleagues but suffered zero consequences, and whether or not this emboldened him to make further misrepresentations, and whether maybe the fact that he’s nonetheless managed to maintain his position at the heights of establishment academia is perhaps indicative of a larger problem in American public life! Or whatever! Be creative!)
Drawing by Paul Davis. Fee donated to Barrett Brown’s legal defense fund.
Hello Barrett. Bryce Taylor is an mk-ultra survivor. Another is Cathy OBrien. They seem unhinged because they have split personalities, as designed by the programming, but they also have superior retention skills and are used as sexual spies. I suggest you become familiar with this reality. Perhaps the author did not present it well. If you are unaware that no part of the 9/11 official story holds water, and that Kissinger was to be the Commission’s lead, then you could miss that Kissinger was to be head of coverup. So , yes he was involved with 9/11. You seem to not be familiar with enough dots to connect what is going on with Kissinger. Did you know Kissinger did his PHD thesis on the Congress of Vienna. Do you understand who the Rothschilds are? Do not understand who Nelson Rockefeller was and how Kissinger was placed, and why he is still at Bilderberg and with Obama? Did you know he “dated” Gloria Steinem? He programmed Steinem, a known CIA agent. See book – Lipstick and War Crimes Vol. 1.
I can’t quite see why anyone would like to waste so much ink on Kissinger anymore, except in the event of a well-deserved eulogy.
I have not laughed so well since your last review, Brown, thanks, but why so short? Somebody get to hittin’ on yo beyotch while you was writing on it?
I have not laughed so well since your last review, Brown, thanks, but why so short? I know you can go on like this for days, and I know your capacity to feel sorry for ticks like Ferguson was burnt cinder-wise in the ‘way back timeframe, so…? Oh, I know. Yo beyotch got to actin’ up, and you had to take a hand. No problem. More soon, please?
Given Ferguson’s record of fuck-ups, including an attack on Keynes whom he accused of doing bad economics because homosexuals, I suspect the man is stupid.
Couple of things- first please improve your use of punctuation- some of that was really difficult to understand
second, isn’t the whole idea of “conspiracy theories” that, as one lumped together subject, its the ideal place to hide genuinely shocking conspiracies? if you can stick Kissinger’s bombing of Cambodia together with the rantings of a mentally ill ex Northampton Town FC goalie- its kind of like that idiot Alex Jones shouty quoting “The Times of London” without ever showing where exactly the quote came from and serially ignoring the fact that as a Murdoch owned rag, he may as well shout “…According to Fox News”. Where better to hide serious conspiracies than in with”Conspiracy Theories”?
Anyway that was an enjoyable,if difficult,read- but if it wasn’t for the good of ITT or even to affect their bottom line, why did they conspire to overthrow Allende?
Hm, review the spelling and punctuation in your own reply.
BB’s erudite style is obviously ‘way above your head. It was a pleasure reading something so elegant, for once in a long while.
I agree, unusually elegant. One could say suspiciously so.
But really, Mr Brown, what can one expect from the pen – or keyboard, as the case may be – of Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson ? If you were bored by the man’s egregious lack of anything approaching intellectual integrity, you have only yourself to blame. Presumably you’ve learned something from your experience and will not have to read the remaining 1½ volumes of Professor Ferguson’s tome….
Henri
Thanks, Barrett, for wading into this cesspool so I don’t have to.
But, really, what else did you expect from Ferguson and Kissinger, two of the most unattractive, ethically bankrupt individuals operating in the area of geopolitics and foreign policy? They deserve each other.
While I am saddened at Mr. Brown’s incarceration, it does present the small recompense for the public by giving him adequate time to thoroughly review Ferguson’s dreadful Kissinger biography.
Brown’s careful vetting results in few surprises, given that this book is the typical pseudo intellectual pot of greens which passes itself off as real food for thought. References and cites therein are usually avoided in such by those who actually are knowledgeable about the subject matter.
Instead, half baked opinions are merely painted up with dubious citations which are mere camouflage. No one is expected to actually look up the citations in such books! Only those with literally nothing else do so will even try.
This book is then both lazy and dishonest. The publishers were too cheap to hire real fact checkers, why bother? Like all too many “great person” biographies, this is instead merely a work of a Kissinger fan stirring up criticisms by others to look like worthless muck. Very few biographers spend years writing about someone they loathe or dislike. Not “official” ones anyway.
Although it must also be said, viz. Kissinger, that his cynical realpolitik views, when contrasted with today’s manic neocon calls to arms at every imagined excuse, or estrogen fueled advocacy for American regime change at the point of a cruise missile, seem quaintly rational and somewhat sane.
Kissinger was sneaky and ego driven, but he did recognize limits of American power, at least compared to today’s foreign policy gurus.
brother, the sense of dislocation in time and space will gradually diminish over the next few hours, and with it, sadly, that supreme and casual certainty. someone dropped a tab in your tang this morning, honey. it will pass. i for one will appreciate a rewrite when lucidity returns, as it seems at least feasible that you had something to say.
a
TLDR!!!!
Remarkable stream of thought exposition, bolstered by down to Earth fact checking and a hint of mutilating sarcasm. But Barrett, is the introduction of a two volume work the place for the author to justify the things he is introducing?
“…of a planned two-volume life of Henry Kissinger ”
I hope there will be a third volume:
“Kissinger, The Prison Years”
forward by Hillary Clinton, Inmate # 666-666-666
Can’t believe I just spent 30 minutes reading comments here and find so many references to ‘conspiracy theory(ies). For the record, that particular pejorative phrase was coined and promoted by the CIA in 1967 to smear any criticism of the government’s illegal war in Viet Nam. I suggest that you google Blacks Law Dictionary and search ‘conspiracy’…period! Secondly, when you are tempted to use that particular pejorative, maybe be wise and use words or descriptors like ‘supposition’, ‘allegation’, ‘surmise’, ‘guess’, or ‘hypothesis’. Finally, using the ‘c t pejorative makes the user look stupid. :)
Dear Barret,
I’d like you to know, should you ever get to read this, that your work for the Intercept, as well as the few pre-incarceration texts that still float out there, are by far my French-arses favourite Anglo-Saxon reads.
Many of my friends who have also been blessed with a good education and a relatively tolerable command of the English language are also fond readers. We always wait, patiently, for your ‘approximately regular’ letters to be released here. It offers us, all well in our 40’s and above, a fresh view of what the US and the rest of the world are made of today, even if only through your limited-view outpost, and helps explaining and underlining key elements in the appalling amount of bullshit that we have to put up with every day, every time we look at a screen or open a paper, especially in the past few years – France, is no longer a democracy, it has been a while, now they don’t even bother pretending any more, regardless of one’s political views.
I, We, want to thank you and continue to support you as much as we possibly can, through donations and through spreading your work as much as possible.
We’re with you in thoughts, please pardon my probably-pretty-bad-use of Hyphenation, and most importantly, hang in there!
“Harvard!”
Shoot, Obama graduated there, and people love to claim he’s naive. Yup, him and Rahm, a couple of dopey Chicago pols – yuk, yuk, yuk!
Let us dispel with this notion that Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing.. He knows exa…. never mind
Congratulations on the National Magazine Award Barrett, if you see this. I’m still rooting for you. In spite of your obnoxious fans.
The whole lizard thing is offensive… lizards rock.
I believe a more apt comparison would be a maggot or leech.
It would seem Harvard needs to hire better liars.
They are endangering the value and marketability of their students and alumni who are expected to be top notch liars.
Hillary’s embrace of her fellow war criminal should have been a wake-up call, but apparently Republicans are somehow worse, and a focus group decided that made for a winning campaign slogan.
When BB makes it out, he should really be leaving behind a library with better selections.
Is there a countdown clock running somewhere yet?
A graduation party in the works?
A
“When BB makes it out, he should really be leaving behind a library with better selections.”
He will be.
And that thought gives me great pleasure.
Brilliant!!! This guy is a true genius of a writer.
Barrett if you ever read this I purchased some books off your wish list and will be sending them out soon.
Keep your spirits up in there, brother. Life threw you a fucker of a curve ball but it’s nothing you can’t overcome. Stay strong and keep writing you bastard.
Did you know that Secretary Hillary Clinton bragged about an endorsement from uber fascist, Henry Kissinger, during one of her presidential debates?
Did you know that the top client of Henry Kissinger’s firm, Kissinger & Associates, has long been the head choppers of Saudi Arabia, who are also major donors to the Clinton Foundation?
So the number one fascist around, Henry Kissinger, with strong connections to those Saudi head choppers, endorses Hillary Clinton?
And HRC actually bragged to the American public about it?
To fully grasp the evil that Henry Kissinger was involved with, it is important to grasp that they were of the same Nazi or neo-Nazi beliefs as those monsters he and his family fled from during World War II: Augusto Pinochet, various and sundry bloody dictators, and those head choppers in Saudi Arabia.
And this is the character (HRC) you bimbos want in the White House?
Recommended Reading:
The Pinochet File by Peter Kornbluh
The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer
Story of A Death Foretold by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Condor Years by John Dinges
Devil’s Game by Robert Dreyfuss
Indonesia: Archipelago of Fear by Andre Vltchek
Kissenger played a part in the betrayal of American POWs. The deal was (apparantly) America would pay reparations and the Vietnamese would repatriate America’s POWs. For reasons that remain unclear, the deal never happened.
This was a Conspiracy Theory for some time. It eventually involved people like Ross Perot and John McCain. And made it into movies like Rambo and Missing in Action.
America’s corporate media and government generally deny the money for POWs issue.
In a private briefing in 1992, high-level CIA officials told me that as the years passed and the ransom never came, it became more and more difficult for either government to admit that it knew from the start about the unacknowledged prisoners
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/03/vietnam-powmias-deliberately-sacrificed-the-evidence-2910134.html
Kissinger, another US criminal who will never be prosecuted, Mr. Obama. The Dirty War of the seventies in South America destroyed millions of families, thanks to Kissinger.
Hi Barrett, always fun to read your scathing critiques. But – if you think this guy Ferguson is such an ass, why would you devote/waste another column on him? C’mon BB, I’m so much more interested in hearing about how you are doing, and what life in prison is like, and what the people you meet are like, and what you’ve learned being around them that you would never have learned on the outside. Don’t take this the wrong way. Plus, we only get a BB column once every two months, and that is a long time to wait. The outside is here, it’s not going anywhere and can’t you wait until you get out (not too long from now) to skewer a bunch of bad writers? Anyway, Santa Muerte is so much more interesting, to me at least.
I’ll try to find a copy of Mark Twain’s essay on Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses, and send it to you. It’s pretty funny. I’ll try to write a letter too. Take care Barrett!
Those wishing to learn more about Kissinger’s sordid role in the Indonesia’s illegal invasion and occupation of East Timor (Timor-Leste) should go to http://etan.org/issues/kissinger.htm . The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) also organizes demonstrations at many of Dr. K’s all too frequent public appearances.
Kissinger once said that “The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a bit longer,” as he bragged about continuing the flow of weapons to the invader in contravention of law and congressional intent.
Get Real Barrett Brown. *You* didn’t make it through the introductions and you’re in jail! … presumably with only Jerry Springer re-runs as an intellectual alternative.
No, presently I’m working on another Harvard Alum (so many Harvard Alums, so little time.), a three-tome posthumous study of Justice Antonin Scalia’s Brilliant Legal Mind. Justice Scalia may have been stark raving mad, but everybody agrees he had a Brilliant Legal Mind.
*catch you on the rebound, son-brother (an Appalachian term of endearment.)
…one cannot be ‘stark raving mad’ AND have ‘a Brilliant Legal Mind’ at the same time…unless, of course, the individual you have just described is a full-blown schizo!
And everyone agrees that everyone thought Saddam had WMD!
Does anyone really believe this Harvard mystique? I mean, I remember from high school days that there were a lot of colleges where you’d ask what grades and what SAT scores you needed to get in. Do well enough, and you could get into Caltech, the best university in the world. But with Harvard, it was ho hum, it’s not really the SAT scores or the grades, it’s more about who you know. So I mean, we always knew or should have known that it was a bit more of a sort of cult of people who think they’re of a high class, rather than a university. And it seems like such a joke when everything that makes class is so fragile, just waiting for a trillion dollar hack on the banks or a bad push upgrade to connected cars or the harmonic distortion virus or a terahertz-sat or even a plain old North Korean nuke to send it all crashing down.
If you are happy under the circumstances in which 4.5% of the worlds population eats up 50% of the worlds resources you must understand that someone has to do the dirty work. I’m not condoning the Kissingers of the world, just stating a simple fact.
Americans don’t like the unpleasant underside of empire but are quite pleased with ourselves in enjoying all the benefits.
12. If Kissinger is a shape shifting alien, why did he choose that shape?
Indeed ! +1….
Henri
H AHA AHA AHA AHA Ah ha ha ha
omg. knew there was a reason i was reading the comments. thanks–
Hey Barrett, I hope that you are faring well in that federal hell hole. As usual, no one can fault you for your literary skills – they are brilliant as usual; considering your circumstance they are commendable as well. Far be it for me to tell you that which I prefer to hear from someone in your circumstance… but a writer with you exceptional talent and wit could really provide the world with an insider’s view of federal prison life like no other; character portrayals of administrators, guards, and prisoners alone could provide your readers with a truly fascinating insight into a much misunderstood environment. You have been given a veritable acre of lemon tress and you are attempting to make and serve cappuccino with a twist.
Take care and stay clear brother,
Karl
I was kind of hoping he was saving up that stuff for a book!
Yes, I considered that. There is also the very real risk that he could put himself in harm’s way by being to honest and witty in his descriptions. Maybe a fictionalized account is the way to go for now…
I must say I’m a bit disappointed by the short and arcane nature of this review. I hope there is more to come as he does make some good points, particularly about Ferguson’s unscholarly approach to evidence, its interpretation and citation.
I’m half-way through Ferguson’s work and to call it a “whitewash” is to treat this book with kid-gloves. It is masterly piece of sycophantic hackery dressed up as a serious work. Ferguson’s attempt to redefine “idealism” to refute the notion Kissinger was an amoral “realist” is laughably inept and unconvincing. The book is atrocious but Kissinger should be pleased with this herculean effort by an insecure academic-for-hire who is willing to deny the reality of Kissinger’s obnoxious personality and his complicity with Nixon’s criminality on the international stage, just to ensure he stays on Kissinger’s dining list.
Greg Grandin’s book Kissinger’s Shadow is brief but packed with information. It is a necessary book for those interested in Kissinger and how the US government has gone so far wrong.
Jesus! Are you reading that thing for fun? I wouldn’t touch that thing with a latex glove unless I was getting at least $25 an hour, or at least my own column in The Intercept.
kissinger is not a person to be applauded, admired, revered, or anything except celebrated by dancing on his grave.
He was a monster like mccarthy, hitler, stalin, cruz. He was a warmonger willing to make wars for profit because he had no loyalty to the people of the United States except his pretense. He was a citizen of israel and a zionist. He treated America like a dog.
Now, now. Let’s not leave out other illustrious serpents, Cheney & NutBush Rumsfeld & the Koch Bros.
Anyone hear that conspiracy about Persona Management sock puppet software?
Not much makes me laugh out loud these days, especially when I’m alone, but I might need to save these Barrett Brown pieces for after 5pm, since I’m pretty sure people in the hallway of my office could hear me cackling. Thanks Barrett Brown.
David Icke is sort of my “hold fuchsia up to red to see if it’s really red” go-to
Harvard!
Barrett Brown: well done.
Kissinger should have been rotting in a Cambodian prison for the last 45 years.
Meanwhile, US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger said that the B-52 was chosen for Linebacker II due to its “ability to shake the mind and undermine the spirit.”
kissinger was a monster war profiteer who used and abused america for his zionistic agenda. 1,313,000 dead from the vietnam war. may he rot in hell.
Hahaha, a brilliant review. I certainly hope there will be more! Niall Ferguson is a pseudo historian and that Harvard keeps him on the payroll makes the university look really bad. It also makes him dangerous, because his fabrication of history makes receives an audience. This article was translated and published in Norway’s largest newspaper: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/paris-attacks-fall-of-rome-should-be-a-warning-to-the-west/news-story/88743f7af26bd063c6576859e3443636
Needless to say he is inventing his own version of historical events to fit his narrative. Some of the flaws in his reasoning is summed up here: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161236
most worthy references. Niall Ferguson is right. It is time for America to reclaim itself even if it takes total isolation. If THEN America is all that good, people will follow.
H is for hypocritical
A is for avaricious
R is for refractory
V is for venomous
A is for arrogance
R is for regental
D is for duplicitous
—————————-
Put them all together and they spell fascist.
Where do no-talent ass-clowns like Niall Ferguson get their support from?
“. . . [John M.] Olin embarked on a radical new course. He began to fund an ambitious offensive to reorient the political slant of American higher education to the right. His foundation aimed at the country’s most elite schools, the Ivy League and its peers, cognizant that these schools were the incubators of those who would hold future power. If these young cadres could be trained to think more like him, then he and other donors would help secure the country’s political future. It was an attempted takeover, but instead of waging it with bandoliers and rifles, he chose money as his weapon.” – Jane Mayer, Dark Money.
A legacy of such billionaire-run private foundations are all the right-wing think tanks inside U.S. academia, such as Harvard’s “John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies” run by neocon appartachik Samuel P. Huntingdon (of Clash of Civilizations fame). The Olin Foundation is also the #3 donor of Stanford’s Hoover Institute.
People like Ferguson only get their book deals and professorships because they do propaganda work for wealthy backers; if they were only judged by their peers, they’d be nobodies. They play the same role in American academia that people like Trofim Lysenko played in the Soviet Union.
Dang, I almost feel sorry for Niall Ferguson now (but not sorry enough not to hope he reads this). A+.
Ferguson, hahahahahaha! Did that puff piece on the Rothschilds, mentions Alfred Hartmann, but nothing about his nefarious bio and relation to dead bankers?
Ferguson, what a colossal joke and much thanks to BB on this!
Jessica Mathews did a piece on Kissinger’s book at the NY Review of Books awhile back, but neglected to mention that she has long sat on the board of American Friends of Bilderberg, Inc., alongside Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller and Richard Perle.
Aren’t they called Bilderbergers, per chance?
What a bunch of fascist pigs!
Shit, I almost feel sorry for Niall Ferguson now (but not so sorry that I don’t hope that someone sends him a copy of this).
Rather a long diatribe, and maybe the Kissinger story we’d enjoy reading would be the ICC bill of particulars if he ever came to trial. Some of the wilder conspiracy theories may derogate from the main charges of what he did, which were substantial enough. Just for starters, his cooperation with the Chilean and Argentine juntas; East Timor; East Pakistan have plenty enough in conspiracy and accessory to crimes against humanity without having to speculate about motives. A prosecutor can infer general intent well enough.
5: “and don’t you damn hack no more”
Thanks; don’t care to even start… Might it read like “Mein Kampf”…?
“Anything that flies against anything that moves ” H.K. . Lol what a nice guy eh?
“There’s an underside to every age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged”. H.Z.
Why does the Intercept spend so much time discrediting people who have already been thoroughly discredited?
When it’s this funny, let’s allow it.
Because those people are still walking around?
howling ridicule of bubble-biters like little Niall can never be overdone
Great article. That Newsweek cover linked to at the end has briefly frozen my brain so this generic praise is all I can come up with.
somebody at Newsweek thought of “Hit the Road Barack” ? as a good cover headline (somebody from HARVARD?)
I’m trying to fit the song lyrics to the off rhyme:
“Hit the road, Barack:”
1 “and don’t you come Bach no more”
2 “and don’t you drink bock no more”
3 “and don’t do ad hoc no more”
4 “and don’t you drone Pak no more”
5 “and don’t you deal crack no more”
In other related news:
Top German Journalist Admits Mainstream Media Is Completely Fake: “We All Lie For The CIA”
“I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.
But seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia — this is a point of no return and I’m going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over Europe.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journalist-admits-mainstream-media-completely-fake-we-all-lie-cia
DAMN!
zerohedge rules.
How do you know that this “top journalist” is not lying when he claims this? After all, he has been betraying the public trust for25 years…
A biography of Henry Kissinger written by a senior fellow of Stanford’s Hoover Institution? Useless except as an exercise in propaganda analysis.
Hoover is a neocon academic think tank closely tied to BS outfits like the “Committee on the Present Danger” and the “Project for a New American Century,” one of the “think tanks funded by the Kochs and their allied network of donors, such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University – where six attendees at the Koch annual seminars served in official capacities. . . ” (- Jane Mayer, Dark Money)
You want a good book detailing some of Henry Kissinger’s shadier activities, see Andrew Scott Cooper’s “Oil Kings: How the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East.”
Kissinger hates this book, probably more than any other, because the author gained access to unflattering recorded transcripts and documents that reveal much about the nature of his relationships with Nixon, Ford, Israel and the Shah of Iran. Here’s a short introductory excerpt:
“Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once famously described the Shah of Iran as “that rarest of leaders, an unconditional ally, and one who understanding of the world enhanced our own.” For thirty years, we have had to take Kissinger’s word for it. In the 1970s he concluded an array of highly secret deals with the Shah worth billions of dollars involving the transfer of men, money and machinery on a scale that even today is almost unimaginable. Where exactly did all that national treasure go? How was it expended? In three volumes of memoirs totaling 3,955 pages and including 193 photographs of the former secretary of state with every world leader, foreign minister, and ambassador of not *except* the Shah of Iran in the 1970s, one wonders why Kissinger was photographed with a flock of geese in China but not pictured in the company of the man he claimed to so admire?”
Here’s one reason for Kissinger not wanting to talk about the Shah:
“A nuclear deal consummated between the United States and Iran would be the crowning achievement in Kissinger’s ambitious plan to recycle Iranian petrodollars and integrate the two countries economies.”
Yes, the nucleus of the Iranian nuclear program was provided to Iran by Kissinger & Co. He also thought that the Shah’s secret police, with their ugly torture record, were necessary to prevent a ‘left wing secular coup’ in Iran.
That’s Kissinger – not just a venial slob and a war criminal, but also really stupid. So when you see him and Hillary Clinton embracing . . .
https://www.democracynow.org/images/story/80/29880/full_hd/Clinton-Kissinger.jpg
And see this from Hillary Clinton’s email server archive on the current nuclear situation regarding Israel & Iran, c. 2012:
“For Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked Iranian nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly. An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well.”
“The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today.”
That’s an email to Hillary Clinton from James P. Rubin, Asst Sec State in the Clinton Administration, a draft of a article promoting a U.S. military intervention in Syria, that was ultimately published here:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/06/04/the-real-reason-to-intervene-in-syria/
BUT, with the second paragraph (about Israeli attacking Lebanon and Syria) removed before publication.
Can someone please boil this down for those of us too lazy to read it all?
It seems to be something about an obscure war criminal and somebody’s ill advised decision to write a book about him.
I believe at one time, war criminals were relatively rare, and therefore considered noteworthy.
Should just man up ap and let it be done
So which side of this moral argument does Barrett Brown reside? He seems to be castigating the author for going after Kissinger, but why?
This article is Mr Brown’s reasonable takedown of a conservative “academic’s” fawning ‘biography’ of American war criminal and noted coup enthusiast Henry Kissenger. It’s posted here mostly because Barrett’s a generally amusing and affable writer, and war crims are generally what The Intercept does. I like these posts, personally. Seems like a nice chap, for a convicted felon.
The book is pro kissinger , that’s why he’s criticizing the author . Read the article you lazi dumb ass.
Because Niall Ferguson has done sloppy research wherein he most notably castigates Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”, as well as David Icke(who is sketchy on his good days) with attacks on Oliver Stone and Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson being the easiest to use as an example of bad behavior among leftist(?!) journalism, aka gonzo journalism, with his many behaviors that pushed the acceptable limits of what is considered professional. If this post doesn’t work, then you may need someone to interpret it line by line.
You’re kidding, right?
They were more numerous in 1945-1950, or at least kept international military courts in Nuremberg, Tokyo, Manila, and Singapore busy for a while. Now they’re hard to find and rarely on trial. The ones we see in a glass box now look lonely, like some rare reptile in a zoo display.
Why would you deny yourself the pleasure? Barret Brown is a fantastic and hilarious writer with this article standing as testament.
Just this once, Ming Ling:
1. Barrett Brown is in the pokey and, therefore, has the necessary time to wade through and refute Ferguson’s devilishly obfuscating cover-up of Kissingers crimes against humanity. *see, there’s a silver lining in everything … but he’ll be out on the loose soon!
2. Harvard! This big-time lying liar works for Harvard … they only hire the best. Fucking Harvard Dumbasses!
3. Where there’s a will, there’s a way …
If you’re too lazy to read the damn article, then GTFO.
It looks like it’s about Harvard (a place of higher learning).
Extra points to anyone who recalls Brown’s “She was never a word-for-word reader” comment.
Warning: you are reading doubleplus ungood versificator output by a Goldstein-type unperson. Further reading will result in crimethink and you will then be assigned unperson status and transferred to a joycamp.
This has been an IngSoc Thinkpol alert.
Hahaha. This sub-thread in response to Ling (or is it Min?) is evidence that feeding a troll can be fun.
Depends what you feed it.