Major U.S. Think Tanks: Brookings Institute The Brookings Institute, based in Washington DC traces its beginnings to 1916 with the founding of the Institute for Government Research, the first private organization devoted to public policy issues at a national level. In 1922 and 1924 , the Institute was joined by the Institute of Economics and the Robert Brookings Graduate School. In 1927 these three groups were consolidated into one institution, named after the businessman Robert Somers Brookings. After World War II, the Brookings Institute fostered Republican support for the Marshall Plan, which the Institute helped to develop. By the 1960s, Brookings was linked to the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, backing Keynesian economics. The Institutes influence on the operations of the federal government, at times, has been substantial. In the 1920s, Brookings was largely responsible for the creation of the federal budget. In the 1970s the Brookings Institute pushed for the creation of the Congressional Budget Office, and then provided its first head, former senior fellow Alice Rivlin. Official Organizational Status: Private, independent, non-profit Research Institute Political Orientation: U.S. Centrist Scope/Research Areas: The Brookings Institute seeks to "improve the performance of American institutions, the effectiveness of government programs, and the quality of U.S. public policies". Its research areas include political economy of market transitions, antitrust, banking, government reform, social norms and economic behavior, national security, budget politics and public administration. Some recent titles include: Eisinger, Peter: Toward an End to Hunger in America. (1998). Hess, Stephen: The Little Book of Campaign Etiquette. (1998). Jencks, C. and M. Phillips (eds.): The Black-White Test Score Gap. (1998). Douglas, A. R. et.al.: Framing the Social Security Debate. Values, Politics, and Economics. (1998). Funding Sources: 1998 Budget: US$ 23 million. Assets: US$ 192 million. Corporate and private donations (38 %), endowment (30 %), revenue from conferences and seminars (18 %), sales of publications (9 %), government support (2 %).

TEXTBLOCK 1/2 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611704/100438659152

The Secret Behind The secret behind all this is the conception that nothing bad could ever be referred to the own nation. All the bad words belong to the enemy, whereas the "we" is the good one, the one who never is the aggressor but always defender, the savior - not only for ones own sake but also for the others, even if they never asked for it, like the German population during World War I and II. The spiritualization of such thinking leads to the point that it gets nearly impossible to believe that this could be un-true, a fake. To imagine injustice committed by the own nation gets more and more difficult, the longer the tactic of this kind of propaganda goes on. U.S.-Americans voluntarily believe in its politics, believing also the USA works as the police of the world, defending the morally good against those who just do not have reached the same level of civilization until today. To keep up this image, the enemy must be portrayed ugly and bad, like in fairy-tales, black-and-white-pictures. Any connection between oneself and the enemy must be erased and made impossible. In the case of Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein this meant to delete the positive contact of the last years from the consciousness of the population. Both had received a high amount of money and material help as long as they kept to the rules of the Western game. Later, when the image of the friend/confederate was destroyed, the contact had to be denied. The media, who had reported that help, no longer seemed to remember and did not write anything about that strange change of mind. And if any did, they were not really listened to, because people tend to hear what they want to hear. And who would want to hear that high amounts of his taxes had formerly gone to "a man" (this personification of the war to one single man is the next disinformation) who now is the demon in one's mind. All of this is no invention of several politicians. Huge think tanks and different governmental organizations are standing behind that. Part of their work is to hide their own work, or to deny it.

TEXTBLOCK 2/2 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658637