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Carlyle continues to invest in defence contractors and is moving into the homeland security industry.” GDG advocacy continues into the present. Tom Donnelly—a PNAC participant, an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar and a former director of communications for Lockheed Martin—published a book in May 2005 advocating increasing the DoD budget by a third to $600 billion and adding 150,000 active-duty military personnel. Donnelly calls for the continuation of today's Pax Americana, a GDG euphemism for US global military domination of the world.” Public-Private Partnerships While it is important not to underestimate the profit motive within the top military-defence contractors, the promotion of a global dominance agenda includes both neo-conservative ideological beliefs and the formation of extremely powerful permanent public-private partnerships at the highest levels of government to create interlocking networks of global control. The continuing privatisation of military services is but one example of this trend.* Another example is the recent appointment of Paul Wolfowitz, formerly Deputy Secretary of Defense, to head the World Bank. His appointment gives the GDG strong control of another major institutional asset in the drive for full global dominance. A global dominance agenda also includes penetration into the boardrooms of the corporate media in the US. A research team at Sonoma State University recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the 10 big media organisations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of the 10 big media giants. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. Four of the top 10 media corporations in the US have GDG-DoD contractors on their boards of directors, including: William Kennard—New York Times, The Carlyle Group; Douglas Warner III—GE (NBC), Bechtel; John Bryson—Disney (ABC), “7 : > "This is one of the worst sticky-note storms I've ever been caught in." 30 + NEXUS Boeing; Alwyn Lewis—Disney (ABC), Halliburton; Douglas McCorkindale—Gannett, Lockheed Martin.* Given an interlocked media network, it is safe to say that big media in the United States effectively represent the interests of corporate America. The media elite, a key component of the HCPE in the US, are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, the controllers of news and information content, and the decision-makers regarding media resources. Corporate media elites are subject to the same pressures as the higher circle policy makers in the US and therefore are equally susceptible to reactionary response to our most recent Pearl Harbor. An important case of Pentagon influence over the corporate media is CNN's retraction of the story about US military use of sarin (a nerve gas) in 1970 in Laos during the Vietnam War. CNN producers April Oliver and Jack Smith, after an eight- month investigation, reported on CNN on June 7, 1998, and later in Time magazine that sarin gas was used in Operation Tailwind in Laos and that American defectors were targeted. The story was based on eyewitness accounts and high military command collaboration. Under tremendous pressure from the Pentagon, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Richard Helms, CNN and Time retracted the story by saying, "The allegations about the use of nerve gas and the killing of defectors are not supported by the evidence". Oliver and Smith were both fired by CNN later that summer. They have steadfastly stood by their original story as accurate and substantiated. CNN and Time, under intense Pentagon pressure, quickly reversed their position after having fully approved the release of the story only weeks earlier. April Oliver feels that CNN and Time capitulated to the Pentagon's threat to lock them out of future military stories.** Public Relations Companies and the GDG A popular and arguably effective means of controlling public support for global dominance initiatives exists in the use of public relations firms. In recent years, PR corporations have increased their profits through US and foreign contracts. While direct propaganda campaigns are generally illegal in the United States, governments and PR firms creatively shape public opinion domestically by planting news in foreign papers that will instantly reach American readers.*? While the government relies on these firms to generate a specific ideological es, the PR firms focus on profits. The concentration of power and capital at the top is not unique to the military defence contractors or to the government. It is also evident in the power that PR and crisis management agencies hold over public opinion. The images that have shaped support for a permanent war on terror include the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein, the heroic rescue of Private Jessica Lynch and dramatic tales of weapons of mass destruction. During the first Gulf War, the world witnessed testimony to Congress about babies taken from incubators and left on cold hospital floors and the heartfelt plea by the Kuwaitis to help liberate them from a ruthless Iraqi dictator. In truth the CIA, using taxpayer money, funded these images, which were fabricated and disseminated by The Rendon Group, Hill and Knowlton and other private public relations and crisis management companies.” The corporations responsible for disseminating and www.nexusmagazine.com OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2006