August 8, 2003
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
These are a few inspiring quotes from movies I've seen this week:
Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain. Excess is legitimate, even praise-worthy on the grounds that the private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation. It's long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principal will destroy itself in time. It will only persist with whatever injustice and suffering it entails as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited-that the world is an infinite resource and the world is an infinite garbage can.
At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of it's own destiny and will concern itself with community interests guided by values of solitary and sympathy and concern for others or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the communities as a whole, and by now that means the global communities.
The question is rather should privileged elite dominate mass communication and use this power as they tell us they must, mainly to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and to deceive the stupid majority, and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief is weather democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.
-Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and the Media
"Only brave warriors fall from their horses in battle. How can kneeling cowards know what a fall is? The main thing is… you need to fight the battle." -from Monsoon Wedding
"It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be beautiful. It just has to be true." - said by John Cusack's character, Max Rothman, to the struggling artist Adolf Hitler in the film MAX.
This journal is a mirror reflecting what is exposed to me, or that least that which I am bright enough to see. Information is accessible. It is a matter of finding sources and asking the right questions.
While visiting Meg's mother in Alton, her husband Shane loaned me a few books about global tyranny through New World Order institutions such as the UN, WTO, IMF and World Bank, and how they are run by plundering international bankers. I'm now half way through, The Shadows of POWER - The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline, by James Perloff, sharing the history of the United States government not taught in schools.
The following are a few pages from Chapter 10, Carter and Trilateralism-
The CFR's little brother is born:
With None Dare Call It Conspiracy putting the heat on the CFR, David Rockefeller moved to form a new internationalist organization - the Trilateral Commission. For some three decades, CFR members had pushed for "Atlantic Union," a bilateral federation of America and Eruope. The trilateral Commission broadened this objective to include an Asiatic leg.
How did the TC begin? "The Trilateral commission," wrote Christopher Lydon in the July 1977 Atlantic, "was David Rockefeller's brainchild." George Franklin, North American Secretary of the Trilateral Commission, stated that it "was entirely David Rockefeller's idea origionally." Helping the CFR Chairmen develop the concept was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who laid the first stone in Foreign Affairs in 1970:
A new and broader approach is needed - creation of a community of the developed nations which can effectively address itself to the larger concerns confronting mankind. In addition to the United States and Western Europe, Japan ought to be included…A council representing the United States, Western Europe and Japan, with regular meetings of the heads of government as well as some small standing machinery, would be a good start.
That same year, Brzezinski elaborated these thoughts in his book Between Two Ages. It showed Brzezinski to be a classic CFR man -a globalist more than lenient toward Communism. He declared that "National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept," and that "Marxism represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man's universal vision. Marxism is simultaneously is a victory of the external, active man over the inner, passive man and a victory of reason over belief…"
The Trilateral Commission was formally established in 1973 and consisted of leaders in business, banking, government, and mass media from North America, Western Europe and Japan. David Rockefeller was founding chairman and Brzezinski founding director of the North American Branch, most of whose members were also in the CFR.
In the Wall Street Journal, David Rockefeller explained that "the Trilateral Commission is, in reality, a group of concerned citizens interested in fostering greater understanding and cooperation among international allies."
But it was not so innocent according to Jeremiah Novak, who wrote in the Atlantic (July 1977):
The Trilateralists' emphasis on international economics is not entirely disinterested, for the oil crisis forced many developing nations, with doubtful repayment abilities, to borrow excessively. All told, private multinational banks, particularly Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan, have loaned nearly $52 billion to developing countries. An overhauled IMF would provide another source of credit for these nations, and would take the private banks off the hook. This proposal is the corner stone of the Trilateral plan."
Senator Barry Goldwater put it less mercifully. In his book With No Apologies, he terned the Commission "David Rockefeller's newest international cabal," and said "It is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States."
Zbigniew Brzezinski showed how serious TC ambitions were in the July 1973 Foreign Affairs, stating that "without closer American-European-Japanese cooperation the major problems of today cannot be effectively tackled, and ….the active promotion of such trilateral cooperation must now become the central priority of U.S. policy."
The best way to effect this would be for a Trilateral to soon become President. One did.
Jimmy Carter Goes to Washington
After Watergate tainted the Republican Party's image, it became probable that a Democrat would win the 1976 Presidential election. Canididate James Earl Carter was depicted by the press - and himself - as the consummate outsider to the Washington Establishment. He was, as the story went, a good ol' boy from Georgia, naďve to the ways of the cigar-puffing, city-slicker polititians. People magazine even showed him shoveling peanuts in demins.
Typical of the press comment at the time were the words of columnist Joseph C. Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor, who asserted that Carter "Has that nomination without benefit of any single kingmaker, or of any power group or power lobby, or of any single segment of the American people. He truly is indebted to no one man and no group interest."
But Harsch belonged to the CFR, whose members are loath to disclose the power of the group, or of its kingmaker, David Rockefeller.
In 1973, Carter dined with the CFR chairman at the latter's Tarrytown, New York estate. Present was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was helping Rockefeller screen prospects for the Trileral Commission. Brzezinski later told Peter Pringle of the London Sunday Times that "we were impressed that Carter had opened up trade offices for the state of Georgia in Brussels and Tokyo. That seemed to fit perfectly into the concept of the Trilateral."Carter became a founding member of the Commission - and hid destiny became calculable.
Senator Goldwater wrote: David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski found Jimmy Carter to be their ideal canidate. They helped him win the nomination and the presidency. To accomplish this purpose, they mobilized the money power of the Wall Street Bankers, the intellectual influence of the academic community - which is subservient to the wealth of the great tax-free foundations - the media controllers represented in the membership of the CFR and the Trilateral.
Seven months before the Democratic nomination convention, the Gallup Poll found less than four percent of Democrats favoring Jimmy Carter for President. But almost overnight - like Willkie and Eisenhower before him - he became the candidate. By the time of the convention, his picture had appeared on Time's cover three times and Newsweek's twice. Time's cover artists were even instructed to make Carter resemble John F. Kennedy as much as possible.
Carter's Elitist Regime
The Trilateral Commission's predominance in the Carter administration has been pointed out by critics as disparate as Ronald Reagan and Penthouse Magazine. (The latter ran an article entitled "The Making of a President: How David Rockefeller Created Jimmy Carter.") During the campaign, however, only a few conservative sources seemed to spot the connection.
One hint that Carter was more than a peanut-chomping hayseed came in June of 1976, when the Los Angeles Times described a "task force" that helped the candidate prepare his first major foreign policy speech (which began: "The time h come for us to seek a partnership between North America, Western Europe, and Japan"). The Carter advisors enumerated by the Times were: Brzezinski, Richard Cooper, Richard Gardener, Henry Owen, Edwin O. Reischauer, Averell Harriman, Anthony Lake, Robert Bowie, Milton Katz, Abram Chayes, George Ball, and Cyrus Vance. There was one problem with the above list. Every man on it was a member of the CFR. We alluded earlier to Cooper's Forgeign Affiars article proposing an international currency, and Gardner's piece calling for "an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece."
In a speech in Boston, candidate Carter said: "The people of this country know from bitter experience that we are not going to get…. Changes merely by shifting around the same group of insiders… The insiders have had their chance and they have not delived." After the election, top Carteraide Hamilton Jordan remarked: "If, after the inauguration, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I'd quit. But that is not going to happen." But it did happen and Jordan did not quit. Carter simply shifted around "the same group of insiders" turning, like his predecessors, to the institutions built by Wall Street and the international banking establishment.
The new President appointed more than seventy men from the CFR, and over twenty members of the much smaller Trilateral Commission. Zbigniew Brzezinski acknowledges in his White hOuse memoirs: "Moreover, all the key foregeign policy decision makers of the cater administration had previously served in the Trilateral Commission…" (Carter is considerably less candid in his own memoirs: he does not even mention the Commission.)
Brzezinski, of course, became National Security Advisor, the same position Kissinger had held. Victor Lasky observed in Jimmy Carter: The Man and the Myth: "The Polish-born Brzezinski was to David Rockefeller what the German-born Kissinger was to Nelson Rockefeller."
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (CFR - Trilateral Commission) was the nephew of John W Davis (founding president of the CFR). Vance, who had served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, has been called "a product of the inner sanctums of Yale and Wall Street." Robert Moskin commented on the CFR makeup of his departmental staff: " When Cyrus Vance was called up to Washington to Secretary of State in 1977, he took along member of Council's staff as well as of a study group on nuclear weapons. He explains: "We work with people at the Council, and know they are good."
I'm grooving to Violent Femmes' American Music, looking like "The Dude" in my pajama pants, shirt off, beard and big knotty dread at the back of my head. What I can do about secret meetings where CFR members pull presidential strings and run the country behind a veil? ...just tell people.
In 1998, when this book was published, it said maybe only one in 500 Americans had heard of the Council on Foreign Relations. I've started my own little survey and have yet to find a single person who knows the name. The book says, "According to the CRF itself, as of June 1987, 318 of its members were current US government Officials. According to Admiral Ward, the CFR has as a goal "submergence of US sovereignty and national independence into a all-powerful one-world government."
I'd like to share the whole book with you, but I'm sure the publisher would rather you go buy it for yourself. Here is a little more to give a clearer picture:
An "international" banker is one who. Among other things, loans money to the governments of nations. Lending to governments can be particularly profitable for several reasons. First, a government borrows far more than an individual or business; second, a government has unique tools with which it can guarantee repayment - such as the levying of taxes; third, a government may requite its debt through a medium more desirable than cash-by granting the banker certain privileges, for example, or giving him a say in policy.
No turn of events is more lucrative for an international banker than war-because nothing generates more government borrowing faster.
International banking was probably best epitomized by the Rothschilds, Europe's most famous financial dynasty. Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812) retained one of his five sons at the home bank in Germany and dispatched the other four to run offices in England, France, Austria and Italy. The Rothschilds harvested great riches during the nineteenth century by loaning to these and other countries. Sometimes they, or their agents, financed both sides of armed conflicts -such as the Franco-Prussian War and the War between the States. As national creditors, they earned tremendous political influence.
The Rothschilds, as the foremost "power behind the throne" of Europe's central banks, savored the thought of a similar arrangement in the United States. According to Gustavus Myers in his History of the Great American Fortunes: "Under the surface, the Rothschilds long had a powerful influence in dictating American financial laws. The law records show that they were the power in the old Bank of the United States.
However, the Bank of the United States (1816-1836), an early attempt to saddle the nation with a privately controlled central bank, was abolished by President Andrew Jackson. He declared: "The bold effort the present bank had made to control the government, the distress it had wantonly produced .…are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it."
America heeded Jackson's warning for the remainder of the century. The tide began to turn, however, with the linking of European and US banking interests, and the growth in power of America's money barons, such as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Bernard Baruch.
After a commission spent almost two years studying central banking in Europe, Senator Aldrich met secretly with Paul Warburg (an associate of the Rothschilds) and top representatives of the Morgan and Rockefeller interests. This took place at Morgan's hunting club on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia. There the plan was formulated for America's central Bank: what would come to be known as the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve became law in December 1913. Ostensibly, the system was to act as a guardian of the reserves for banks; it was granted control over interest rates and the size of the national money supply. The public was induced to accept the Fed by claims that, given these powers, it would stabilize the economy, prevent further panics and bank runs. It did nothing of the kind. Not only has our country suffered through the Great Depression and numerous recessions, but inflation and federal debt-negligible problems before the fed came into existence - have plagued America ever since.
Later, Congressman Louis McFadden, who chaired the House committee on Banking and Currency from 1920 to 1931, would declare: "When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A sper-state controlled by international bankers and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its power but the truth is-the Fed has usurped the government."
The average American probably does not know - or even think - very much about the Federal Reserve System, but a few things should be noted about it:
Although it is called "Federal," it is privately owned.
It has never received a meaningful audit from an independent source.
It makes its own policies and is not subject to the President or the Congress. Private backs within the system select two-thirds of the directors of the twelve Federal Reserve banks; the Federal Reserve Board chooses the rest.
As to the Federal Reserve Board itself, its members are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate, but, once in office, they serve fourteen year terms. Fed chairmen have routinely come from the New York Banking community, on its recommendations, and the great majority have been members of the CFR.
How did the Federal Reserve benefit the financiers who secretly designed it? First in its capacity as overseer and supplier of reserves, it gave their banks access to public funds in the US Treasury, enhancing their capacity to lend and collect interest.
Furthermore, by staffing the Federal Reserve's management with themselves or their associates, the international bankers gained effective control over the nation's money supply and interest rates - and thus over its economic life. Indeed, the Fed is authorized to create money -and thus inflate -at will. According to the Constitution, only Congress may issue money or regulate its value. The Federal Reserve Act, however, placed these functions in the hands of private bankers - to their perpetual profit. Congressman Lindbergh explained: ""The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. It may not do so immediately, the trusts want a period of inflation, because all the stocks they hold have gone down… Now if the trusts can get another period of inflation, they figure they can unload the stocks on the people at high prices during the excitement and then bring on a panic and buy them back at low prices. The people may not know it immediately, but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed."
That day of reckoning, of course, came in 1929, and the Federal Reserve has since created an endless series of booms and busts by the strategic tightening and relaxation of money and credit.
Finally, the Fed was empowered to buy and sell government securities, and to loan to member banks so that they might themselves purchase such securities, they greatly multiplying the potential for government indebtedness to the banking community.
However, if Washington was to incur debts, it had to have some means of paying them off. The solution was income tax. Prior to 1913, there was no income tax in America (except during the war between the States and early Reconstruction period). The US government survived on other sources, such as terriffs and excise taxes. As a result, it could neither spend nor borrow heavily.
Because income tax had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1895, it had to be instituted by constitutional amendment. The man who brought forward the amendment in congress was the same senator who proposed the plan for the Federal Reserve - Nelson Aldrich.
One of the leading devices by which the wealthy dodge taxes is the channeling of their fortunes into tax-free foundations. The major foundations, though commonly regarded as charitable institutions, often use their grant-making powers to advance the interests of their founders. The Rockefeller foundation, for example, has poured millions into the CFR, which in turn serves as the Establishment's main bridge of influence to the US government. By the time the income tax became law in 1913, the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations were already operating.
Income tax didn't soak the rich, it soaked the middle class. Because it was a graduated tax, it tended to prevent anyone from raising into affluence. Thus it acted to consolidate the wealth of the entrenched interest, and protect them from new competition.
The year 1913 was an ominous one-there now existed the means to loan the government colossal sums (the Fed) and the means to exact repayment (income tax). All that was needed now was a good reason for Washington to borrow.
In 1914, World War I erupted on the European continent. America eventually participated, and as a result her national debt soared from $1 billion to $25 billion. Many historians would have us believe that this tro of events-the income tax, the Fed, and the war-was a coincidence. But too often history has been written by authors financed by foundations, in books manufactured by Establishment publishing houses. Many more "coincidences" were yet to trouble the American people in this century.
To help pay off the harsh reparations forced on it by the Versailles Treaty, Germany printed outrageous quanties of paper money, leading to one of the most disastrous inflations in history. It was so severe that 100 million marks could not buy a box of matches. The Dawes Plan (1924) and the abortive Young Plan (1930) were international measures adopted to solve Germany's payment troubles. J.P. Morgan had a heavy hand in both. The plans were named after the two American bankers who headed the committees that originated them. How much the CFR contributed to the plans conceptually is arguable, but it should be noted that both Charles Dawes and Owen Young were Council members. Not surprisingly, the Dawes Plan called for massive loans to Germany. Dr. Carroll Quigley said of the undertaking: "It is worthy to note that this system was set up by the international bankers and that the subsequent leading of other peoples money to Germany was very profitable to these bankers."
David Lloyd George, who had been British Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922, stated: "The international bankers dictated the Dawes reparation settlement… they swept statesmen, politicians and journalists to one side and issued their orders with the imperviousness of absolute monarchs who know that there was no appeal from their ruthless decrees.'
Profit and arrogance, however, were overshadowed by a far more sinister aspect to the new reparations program. Three German cartels in particular were beneficiaries of credit under the Dawes Plan. This trio became the industrial backbone of the Nazi war machine, and the financial backbone of Adolph Hitler's rise to power in Germany.
Of the three cartels, the chemical enterprise I.G. Farben stands out. The Farben company received significant assistance under the Dawes Plan, including a flotation of $30 million from the Rockefellers' National City Bank. I.G. Farben grew to be the largest chemical concern in the world.
After World War II, an investigation by the US War Department noted: "Without I.G.'s immense productive facilities, its intense research and vast international affiliations, Germany's prosecution of the war would have been unthinkable and impossible…"
View a CFR membership list and the CFR web site. Shadows of Power also brought to my attention The John Birch Society, and then I began noticing JBS sponsored highway signs stating "Get US out of the United Nations".
We live in interesting times. The struggle for freedom and power is as old as civilization, but today there are many more people living on mother earth, she is becoming unhealthy, and her resources are decreasing. Common folk can't find land to grow a family and instead trade their lives for dimes. "You want freedom...? You can't afford freedom!"
There's a lot of information to sift through and a lot of people to hear from, so go explore. When you find something good, share it, get organized, and build something new. You can fight the system, or leave the rumble of Babylon behind, but be sure to find a community and get involved.
