Dan Kovalik - The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World

Copyright 2018 by Dan Kovalik

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Cover photo credit AP Images

ISBN: 978-1-5107-4500-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4501-8

Printed in the United States of America

AS I WRITE THIS BOOK, THERE continues to be a panic in the halls of Washington and in newsrooms across the country about alleged Russian interference in US elections. So far, the sum total of the allegations, which will most likely never be tried or tested in court, is that (1) agents on behalf of Russia used social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to sew discord about already highly charged social issuese.g., police violence, kneeling of NFL players during the playing of the National Anthem, and whether to continue publicly displaying confederate symbols and statues; and that (2) agents of Russia hacked into the computers of DNC officials and then proceeded to share correspondence through Wikileaks which revealed (quite truthfully) the DNC dirty dealings against Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential bid.

These allegations, and that is all they are at the present, have had a significant impact on free speech rights in the US. For example, President Trump has issued an Executive Order, quite broadly written, which would sanction foreign persons and entities, along with their US agents or investors, for engaging in a large spectrum of conduct, including what is determined to be the spreading of propaganda or disinformation, if it is undertaken with the purpose or effect of influencing, undermining confidence in, or altering the result or reported result of, the election, or undermining public confidence in election processes or institutions.

In addition, both Facebook and Twitter, in response to claims that they did not do enough to prevent the alleged Russian interference into the 2016 elections, have begun to ban the accounts of over nine hundred people and groups they believe are misleading the public. Such accounts that have been suspended, either temporarily or permanently, include those of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars show; the Venezuelan-funded news outlet, Telesur English; the American Herald Tribune; and a number of Iranian and Russian news outlets.

In the interest of full disclosure, I myself appeared on Infowars once, have written for and appeared on Telesur English, have written for the American Herald Tribune, and am often interviewed by Iranian and Russian news outlets, such as Press TV and RT. Quite possibly my Facebook and/or Twitter accounts will be banned, and quite possibly I, who am very critical of the US and its functioning as a democracy, will be sanctioned under the above-cited Executive Order as an alleged agent of some of these outlets for the purpose of purveying information which somehow undermin[es] public confidence... in election processes or institutions. Maybe this book will even be the catalyst for such charges.

In any case, another account banned by Facebook is that of Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based firm which has become notorious as of late for collecting behavior data on over two hundred million Americansdata which the Trump Campaign used to advance his 2016 presidential campaign.

A pertinent fact about Cambridge Analytica is that the US State Department also contracted with that firm after 2017 in order to to influence elections in dozens of countries around the world. But of course, this should not be surprising, for the US has been meddling and interfering in other countries elections and democratic processes for years. And it has done so in quite ruthless and brutal ways which make the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections look like mere childs play.

As the New York Times quite rightly explained in February of 2018:

Bags of cash delivered to a Rome hotel for favored Italian candidates. Scandalous stories leaked to foreign newspapers to swing an election in Nicaragua. Millions of pamphlets, posters and stickers printed to defeat an incumbent in Serbia.

The long arm of Vladimir Putin? No, just a small sample of the United States history of intervention in foreign elections....

Most Americans are understandably shocked by what they view as an unprecedented attack on our political system [by Russia]. But intelligence veterans, and scholars who have studied covert operations, have a different, and quite revealing, view.

If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all, said Steven L. Hall, who retired in 2015 after 30 years at the C.I.A., where he was the chief of Russian operations. The United States absolutely has carried out such election influence operations historically, he said, and I hope we keep doing it.

These interventions, the NYT explains, while spearheaded by the CIA for the first several decades, are now largely instigated by the US State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was founded by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

The NYT , citing an academic study published in Oxford Universitys International Studies Quarterly , relates that the US admittedly meddled in foreign elections on at least eighty-one occasions between 1946 and 2000.

This list of eighty-one cases of US election meddling per se is certainly not exhaustive, even up to the year 2000, and does not even purport to include the even more serious instances of US-backed coups and assassinations which actually destroyed democratic institutions in foreign lands. As historian and author William Blum summarizes:

The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world.... To express this striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since the end of World War Two the United States has:

Endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.

Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.

Waged war/military action, either directly or in conjunction with a proxy army, in some 30 countries.

Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

Dropped bombs on the people of some 30 countries.

Suppressed dozens of populist/nationalist movements in every corner of the world.