Category Archives: Empire

The Bankers And The American Revolution [Correction]

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Update: I didn’t make it clear that I do not subscribe to the theory given in this account of Lincoln as heroic defender of the the republic against the banking cartels. Gary North has written a piece refuting this theory.

I am however interested in the figure of Judah P. Benjamin and in his curious erasure from the history books, when, from many accounts, he was one of the most prominent men of his time. I know the name from a friend who is a Civil War aficionado. But this is the first I’ve read that he was connected in some way to the banking cartel.

ORIGINAL POST

An article at Global Research (“The Federal Reserve Cartel: Freemasons and the House of Rothschild,” Dean Henderson, July 30 2012) discusses the pervasive influence of the banking cartels on the major figures of the American Revolution, as well as on subsequent Presidents. It even suggests (at the end of this excerpt) that there was a  Rothschild connection to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The article points the finger at Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary of State.

Others rebut the theory as an anti-Semitic canard (“Banking and the Confederacy,” K. R. Bolton, Alternative Right, July 26, 2011). They point out that Benjamin, a Sephardic Jew married to a Catholic and originally from Haiti, had little to do with the European aristocratic circles in which the Rothschilds and their associates moved.

Here is an excerpt from the four-part Henderson piece:

“All US Masonic lodges are to this day warranted by the British Crown, whom they serve as a global intelligence and counterrevolutionary subversion network. Their most recent initiative is the Masonic Child Identification Program (CHIP). According to Wikipedia, the CHIP programs allow parents the opportunity to create a kit of identifying materials for their child, free of charge. The kit contains a fingerprint card, a physical description, a video, computer disk, or DVD of the child, a dental imprint, and a DNA sample.

The First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in 1774 under the Presidency of Peyton Randolph, who succeeded Washington as Grand Master of the Virginia Lodge.  The Second Continental Congress convened in 1775 under the Presidency of Freemason John Hancock.  Peyton’s brother William succeeded him as Virginia Lodge Grand Master and became the leading proponent of centralization and federalism at the First Constitutional Convention in 1787.  The federalism at the heart of the US Constitution is identical to the federalism laid out in the Freemason’s Anderson’s Constitutions of 1723. William Randolph became the nation’s first Attorney General and Secretary of State under George Washington. His family returned to England loyal to the Crown.  John Marshall, the nation’s first Supreme Court Justice, was also a Mason. [3]

When Benjamin Franklin journeyed to France to seek financial help for American revolutionaries, his meetings took place at Rothschild banks.  He brokered arms sales via German Mason Baron von Steuben.  His Committees of Correspondence operated through Freemason channels and paralleled a British spy network.  In 1776 Franklin became de facto Ambassador to France.  In 1779 he became Grand Master of the French Neuf Soeurs (Nine Sisters) Lodge, to which John Paul Jones and Voltaire belonged.  Franklin was also a member of the more secretive Royal Lodge of Commanders of the Temple West of Carcasonne, whose members included Frederick Prince of Whales. While Franklin preached temperance in the US, he cavorted wildly with his Lodge brothers in Europe.  Franklin served as Postmaster General from the 1750’s to 1775 – a role traditionally relegated to British spies. [4]

With Rothschild financing Alexander Hamilton founded two New York banks, including Bank of New York. [5]  He died in a gun battle with Aaron Burr, who founded Bank of Manhattan with Kuhn Loeb financing.  Hamilton exemplified the contempt which the Eight Families hold towards common people, once stating, “All communities divide themselves into the few and the many.  The first are the rich and the well born, the others the mass of the people…The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge and determine right.  Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share of government.  They will check the unsteadiness of the second.”[6]

Hamilton was only the first in a series of Eight Families cronies to hold the key position of Treasury Secretary.  In recent times Kennedy Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon came from Dillon Read (now part of UBS Warburg). Nixon Treasury Secretaries David Kennedy and William Simon came from Continental Illinois Bank (now part of Bank of America) and Salomon Brothers (now part of Citigroup), respectively. Carter Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal came from Goldman Sachs, Reagan Treasury Secretary Donald Regan came from Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America), Bush Sr. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady came from Dillon Read (UBS Warburg) and both Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Bush Jr. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came from Goldman Sachs. Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner worked at Kissinger Associates and the New York Fed.

Thomas Jefferson argued that the United States needed a publicly-owned central bank so that European monarchs and aristocrats could not use the printing of money to control the affairs of the new nation.  Jefferson extolled, “A country which expects to remain ignorant and free…expects that which has never been and that which will never be.  There is scarcely a King in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh – get first all the people’s money, then all their lands and then make them and their children servants forever…banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.  Already they have raised up a money aristocracy.” Jefferson watched as the Euro-banking conspiracy to control the United States unfolded, weighing in, “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions begun at a distinguished period, unalterable through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery”. [7[

But the Rothschild-sponsored Hamilton’s arguments for a private US central bank carried the day.  In 1791 the Bank of the United States (BUS) was founded, with the Rothschilds as main owners.  The bank’s charter was to run out in 1811.  Public opinion ran in favor of revoking the charter and replacing it with a Jeffersonian public central bank.  The debate was postponed as the nation was plunged by the Euro-bankers into the War of 1812.  Amidst a climate of fear and economic hardship, Hamilton’s bank got its charter renewed in 1816.

Old Hickory, Honest Abe & Camelot

In 1828 Andrew Jackson took a run at the US Presidency.  Throughout his campaign he railed against the international bankers who controlled the BUS.  Jackson ranted, “You are a den of vipers.  I intend to expose you and by Eternal God I will rout you out.  If the people understood the rank injustices of our money and banking system there would be a revolution before morning.”

Jackson won the election and revoked the bank’s charter stating, “The Act seems to be predicated on an erroneous idea that the present shareholders have a prescriptive right to not only the favor, but the bounty of the government…for their benefit does this Act exclude the whole American people from competition in the purchase of this monopoly.  Present stockholders and those inheriting their rights as successors be established a privileged order, clothed both with great political power and enjoying immense pecuniary advantages from their connection with government.  Should its influence be concentrated under the operation of such an Act as this, in the hands of a self-elected directory whose interests are identified with those of the foreign stockholders, will there not be cause to tremble for the independence of our country in war…controlling our currency, receiving our public monies and holding thousands of our citizens independence, it would be more formidable and dangerous than the naval and military power of the enemy.  It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government for selfish purposes…to make the rich richer and more powerful.  Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by acts of Congress.  I have done my duty to this country.”[8]

Populism prevailed and Jackson was re-elected. In 1835 he was the target of an assassination attempt.  The gunman was Richard Lawrence, who confessed that he was, “in touch with the powers in Europe”. [9]

Still, in 1836 Jackson refused to renew the BUS charter.  Under his watch the US national debt went to zero for the first and last time in our nation’s history.  This angered the international bankers, whose primary income is derived from interest payments on debt.  BUS President Nicholas Biddle cut off funding to the US government in 1842, plunging the US into a depression.  Biddle was an agent for the Paris-based Jacob Rothschild. [10]

The Mexican War was simultaneously sprung on Jackson. A few years later the Civil War was unleashed, with London bankers backing the Union and French bankers backing the South. The Lehman family made a fortune smuggling arms to the south and cotton to the north.  By 1861 the US was $100 million in debt.  New President Abraham Lincoln snubbed the Euro-bankers again, issuing Lincoln Greenbacks to pay Union Army bills.

The Rothschild-controlled Times of London wrote, “If that mischievous policy, which had its origins in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.” [11]

The Euro-banker-written Hazard Circular was exposed and circulated throughout the country by angry populists.  It stated, “The great debt that capitalists will see is made out of the war and must be used to control the valve of money.  To accomplish this government bonds must be used as a banking basis.  We are now awaiting Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase to make that recommendation.  It will not allow Greenbacks to circulate as money as we cannot control that.  We control bonds and through them banking issues”.

The 1863 National Banking Act reinstated a private US central bank and Chase’s war bonds were issued.  Lincoln was re-elected the next year, vowing to repeal the act after he took his January 1865 oaths of office.  Before he could act, he was assassinated at the Ford Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.  Booth had major connections to the international bankers.  His granddaughter wrote This One Mad Act, which details Booth’s contact with “mysterious Europeans” just before the Lincoln assassination.

Following the Lincoln hit, Booth was whisked away by members of a secret society known as Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC).  KGC had close ties to the French Society of Seasons, which produced Karl Marx.  KGC had fomented much of the tension that caused the Civil War and President Lincoln had specifically targeted the group.  Booth was a KGC member and was connected through Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin to the House of Rothschild.  Benjamin fled to England after the Civil War. [12]”

Mitt Romney: Jerusalem Is Zionist and Jewish, not Christian Or Muslim

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itt Romney lands in his favorite country and declares for it (“In Israel, Romney declares Jerusalem to be capital,” AP, July 29):

“On Israeli soil, U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday declared Jerusalem to be the capital of the Jewish state and said the United States has “a solemn duty and a moral imperative” to block Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability.

“Make no mistake, the ayatollahs in Iran are testing our moral defenses. They want to know who will object and who will look the other way,” he said. “We will not look away nor will our country ever look away from our passion and commitment to Israel.”

Comment:

“Since when do Presidential candidates stand on foreign soil and pledge to conduct U.S. foreign policy in accordance with the desires of the foreign government on whose soil they are standing?” asks the DailyKos correctly (https://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/29/1114809/-You-re-not-President-yet-Mitt).

You’ll notice this is the same position that Ron Paul has recently taken (“Ron Paul shocks campaign staff with new position on Israel,” Business, April 13, 2012).…. albeit for constitutional reasons.

Does that bother me? Yes, I admit it does, even though Dr. Paul’s reasoning is perfectly valid….if you use strictly ideological arguments and forget politics,  history, and prudence.

It’s one more piece of evidence that Dr. Paul’s non-interventionism is weighted in favor of  Zionism.

I blogged as much last year – Ron Paul’s Zionist non-interventionism.

The whole thing bothers me, even though the campaign manager quoted in the piece, Douglas Wead (here he is blogging on the subject) has a tendency, reportedly, to put his own spin on Paul’s statements or actions.

It also bothers me that Ron Paul’s chief legal advisor is Bruce Fein, who has an extensive background as a lobbyist for foreign governments ( “Def(e)ining choice: Bruce Fein, the Turkish Lobby, and the Ron Paul campaign,” Nanour Barsoumian, The Armenian Weekly,January 20, 2012) that is completely at odds with Paul’s rhetoric against special interests.

I’ve blogged about Bruce Fein before and commented about him at other sites.

It was Bruce Fein who lobbied in support of US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, instead of as an international city, belonging equally to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism — which has been the position taken by the US State Department these many years (http://jerusalem.usconsulate.gov/about_the_embassy.html).

Sure, the State Dept. is left-leaning. But the left gets many things right, and I’m neither ideologically rigid enough nor partisan enough not to recognize when they do..

Last year, there was a seminal case that centered on whether a young Israeli-American dual citizen born in Jerusalem should have Jerusalem listed as his place of birth on his passport, or Israel. (“Court may rule on US stand on Jerusalem,” Barbara Ferguson and Tim Kennedy, Arab News, May 12, 2011)

The State Department  resisted all appeals from the parents and the case went to the Supreme Court, which decided in favor of having Israel on his passport, thereby setting a precedent for any judge who wants to overthrow US foreign policy from the bench.

That’s how the New World Order Works. Through judicial fiat.

The red-herring that constitutionalists dangle before everyone is the overweening power of the President and the constitutional limits that need to be set on it. That’s all very well and perfectly true,  except, again, the devil is in the details.

Who sets limits on Congress and the judiciary, both bribed and bought by  Zionists?

The media?

Also owned by Zionists.

It’s Zionists all the way down.

While the Paul/Rothbard anarcho-capitalist philosophy rails against secretive government and  executive over-reaching, you’ll notice that it also equates all commercial advertising and political donations with free speech.

Murray Rothbard, the principal intellect behind the hybrid movement,  also defended the decriminalization of bribery and blackmail. See M.N. Rothbard, Man, Economy and State, 443 n. 49, 1993, (http://mises.org/books/mespm.pdf).

Whom does that help? The Zionist financiers who buy  Congress and bribe and bully the Judiciary.

So, what the left hand (constitutionality) giveth, the right hand (anarcho-capitalism) taketh away.

Using the letter of the law to circumvent its spirit is legalism.

Depending on which sect of conspiracy theory you favor, you can blame this on Jesuitical or Talmudic casuistry… or on perfidious Albion.

I prefer more academic terminology. Like, phony-baloney.

You notice I didn’t use the politically correct terminology, which would be “pro-Israeli” Congress and “pro-Israeli” President.  Because Israel, the nation-state, is only one part of this and because nation-states seem to be slated for demolition in the near future.

Israel  is the cockpit, but not the whole plane.

If the Zionists want something, they can get it equally through extra-legal means or the most snow-white constitutionality. Paul’s constitutionalism, however well-meaning, has acted as nothing more than window-dressing.

I don’t think he can be blamed for it. It may not be something he or anyone can really help.

But it’s lesson should be clear.

Politics is not only not the answer. At this point, it is a diabolical diversion.

Ron Paul and Herman Cain Only Non-Deadbeats

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LRC blog comments on a Politico piece about presidential dead-beats (“Presidential also-rans stiff small businesses, ” David Leventhall and Robin Bravender, Politico, July 29, 2011):


Bachmann, other candidates stiff small businesses
Posted by Lew Rockwell on July 29, 2012 09:05 AM

Politico goes down the list of shame, but for some reason neglects to mention the one non-deadbeat, Ron Paul.

Comment:

Ron Paul wasn’t mentioned, true. But why did Lew Rockwell emphasize Bachmann? The Politico piece emphasized her too and buried the Democrat names at the back.

It also buried Herman Cain’s notable difference from the crowd. He paid his vendors personally and ended up being owed by his own campaign, as well as Gingrich’s.

Even Bachmann was actually less in debt to vendors than the other candidates (under a million compared to multiple millions for the others, all of whom are richer than she was).

So why would a former paleo-libertarian pick on Bachmann?

Pandering to the left?

Stupid Party Leader Tells Stupid Party To Keep Being Stupid

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H/T LRC blog:

“Former Texas Rep. and House Majority Leader Dick Armey said Thursday that while Mitt Romney will receive diligent support from tea party activists across the country, he’s not exactly everything they’re looking for.”

Sure. That’s why all those social- conservative activists went to bat yet again for the GOP. They get called everything from “bat-shit crazy” to American Taliban, only to have the party commissar tell them that crony-capitalist, socialistic fascist finance-capital in white-face is really, really different from crony-capitalist, fascistic-socialist finance-capital in black-face.

Dr. Paul, this is what you did by going light on Romney and hitting hard at everyone else.

Of a bad lot, Herman Cain was the best choice for the right….if you had to choose from the two parties. [Correction: I meant, to run along with Ron Paul. I think on his expressed positions, Paul was the best choice, but one the establishment would never have let win. Cain was the best among those it would have accepted and Paul could have hopped on to that ticket.]

Personally, much as I disagree with her methods and objectives, Lila Rose did more for social conservatives on her own than the whole party.

She actually almost got me rethinking my pro-choice stance.

Herman Cain would have trumped the race card. He came from outside politics and outside the financial sector.

He was smart and would have been teachable on economics. He and Paul would have been an unbeatable team, from a marketing perspective.

This year’s elections was the GOP’s to lose.

And, predictably, they’ve just about done that.

The End Of Chinese Manufacturing?

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Vivek Wadhwa at Forbes:

The End of Chinese manufacturing?

“There is great concern about China’s real-estate and infrastructure bubbles.  But these are just short-term challenges that China may be able to spend its way out of. The real threat to China’s economy is bigger and longer term: its manufacturing bubble.

By offering subsidies, cheap labor, and lax regulations and rigging its currency, China was able to seduce American companies to relocate their manufacturing operations there. Millions of American jobs moved to China, and manufacturing became the underpinning of China’s growth and prosperity. But rising labor costs, concerns over government-sponsored I.P. theft, and production time lags are already causing companies such as Dow Chemicals, Caterpillar, GE, and Ford to start moving some manufacturing back to the U.S. from China. Google recently announced that its Nexus Q streaming media player would be made in the U.S., and this put pressure on Apple to start following suit.

But rising costs and political pressure aren’t what’s going to rapidly change the equation. The disruption will come from a set of technologies that are advancing at exponential rates and converging.

These technologies include robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing, and nanotechnology. These have been moving slowly so far, but are now beginning to advance exponentially just as computing does.  Witness how computing has advanced to the point at which the smart phones we carry in our pockets have more processing power than the super computers of the ’60s—and how the Internet, which also has its origins in the ’60s, went on an exponential growth path about 15 years ago and rapidly changed the way we work, shop, and communicate.  That’s what lies ahead for these new technologies.

The robots of today aren’t the Androids or Cylons that we used to see in science-fiction movies, but specialized electro-mechanical devices that are controlled by software and remote controls. As computers become more powerful, so do the abilities of these devices. Robots are now capable of performing surgery, milking cows, doing military reconnaissance and combat, and flying fighter jets. And DIY’ers are lending a helping hand. There are dozens of startups, such as Willow Garage, iRobot, and 9th Sense, selling robot-development kits for university students and open-source communities. They are creating ever more-sophisticated robots and new applications for these. Watch this video of the autonomous flying robots that University of Pennsylvania professor Vijay Kumar created with his students, for example.

The factory assembly that the Chinese are performing is child’s play for the next generation of robots—which will soon become cheaper than human labor. Indeed, one of China’s largest manufacturers, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, announced last August that it plans to install one million robots within three years to do the work that its workers in China presently do. It found Chinese labor to be too expensive and demanding. The world’s most advanced car, the Tesla Model S, is also being manufactured in Silicon Valley, which is one of the most expensive places in the country. Tesla can afford this because it is using robots to do the assembly.

Then there is artificial intelligence (AI)—software that makes computers do things that, if humans did them, we would call intelligent. We left AI for dead after the hype it created in the ‘80s, but it is alive and kicking—and advancing rapidly. It is powering all sorts of technologies. This is the technology that IBM’s Deep Blue computer used in beating chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997and that enabled IBM’s Watson to beat TV-show Jeopardy champions in 2011. AI is making it possible to develop self-driving cars, voice-recognition systems such as Apple’s Siri, and the face-recognition software Facebook recently acquired. AI technologies are also finding their way into manufacturing and will allow us to design our own products at home with the aid of AI-powered design assistants.

How will we turn these designs into products? By “printing” them at home or at modern-day Kinko’s: shared public manufacturing facilities such as TechShop, a membership-based manufacturing workshop, using new manufacturing technologies that are now on the horizon.

A type of manufacturing called “additive manufacturing” is making it possible to cost-effectively “print” products.  In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material to obtain the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. In other words, the more complex the product you want to create, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.

In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on 3D models—adding materials rather than subtracting them. The “3D printers” that produce these use powered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials—much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers.  This allows the creation of objects without any sort of tools or fixtures. The process doesn’t produce any waste material, and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, in using laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn’t cost much more than one with text, in using a 3D printer, we can print sophisticated 3D structures for about the cost of a brick.

3D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that in the next decade we start 3D-printing buildings and electronics.”

Totalitarian Games: The London Summer Olympics, Z0iZ

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Dahlia Lithwick at The National Post describes the militarization of the creepy, totalitarian London Summer Olympics (July 27, 2012 – August 12, 2012):

“At the London Olympics, we’re seeing unprecedented restrictions on speech having anything to do with, erm, the Olympics. There are creepy new restrictions on journalists, with even nonsportswriters being told they should sign up with authorities……….

…Spectators have been warned they may not “broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the Internet,” making uploading your video to your Facebook page a suspect activity. Be careful with your links to the official Olympic website as well.

..Know that wherever you go and whatever you do, you will enjoy, at the Olympics, “the biggest mobilization of military and security forces seen in the U.K. since the Second World War.” According to a report by Stephen Graham in the Guardian, “More troops — around 13,500 — will be deployed than are currently at war in Afghanistan. The growing security force is being estimated at anything between 24,000 and 49,000 in total.

Such is the secrecy that no one seems to know for sure.” There will be an aircraft carrier docked on the Thames, surface-to-air missile systems and a “thousand armed U.S. diplomatic and FBI agents and 55 dog teams will patrol an Olympic zone partitioned off from the wider city by an 11-mile, £80-million, 5,000-volt electric fence.”

Throw in the new scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate and facial-recognition CCTV systems, and disease-tracking systems that will long outlast the games, and you have a sense of what’s to come in terms of big public events.

Protesters, participants and citizens aren’t parasites or background noise. Addressing threats of terror or real violence is one thing. Treating all speech and protest and media as inherently dangerous and violent is something entirely different. Brandishing the wrong sign in the wrong place isn’t protest, and brandishing the wrong French fry in the right place isn’t dangerous. Corporate cleanliness is just a short hop from corporate godliness, and by then it’s much too late for speech.”

Two Years For Spying For Enemy, Possible Sixty Years For Hot Tip

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I blogged last year about Professor Angana Chatterji, of the California Institute of Integral Studies (founded by Hindus for the studies of the mind-body connection), who, with her husband Richard Shapiro, has been an ardent activist against human rights abuses in Kashmir.

Indian nationalists don’t see her actions in so benign a light, and last year,  she and her husband were fired from CIIS for misusing her academic post for political activism. There was more.

Apparently, she had been in touch with one Ghulam Nabi Fai,  a Kashmiri activist, alleged to be a Pakistani agent, who was arrested in July 2011.

Fai pleaded guilty in December 2011 to two counts of lying  to the government and defrauding the IRS.

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The Express Tribune (Pakistan) reports:

“”Arrested in July 2011, Dr Fai, director of the Kashmiri American Council, had been accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. He has been accused of, and later pleaded guilty to, taking money from the Inter-Services Intelligence to run his US-based NGO. In December 2011, Dr Fai had admitted that from 1990 to 2011, he had received money from Pakistani officials including the ISI and the Government of Pakistan through the Kashmiri American Council.

A Department of Justice press release at the time had stated that Dr Fai could face a maximum sentence of five years on the conspiracy count, and three years for tax violation. Dr Fai had also agreed to forfeit his interest in $142,851.32 seized by the government in July 2011.”

Pai ended up with a relatively light sentence of only two years on the conspiracy charge, against a possible five. The Times of India reports:

“Fai was sentenced to 24 months o byf imprisonment followed three years of supervised release against the maximum possible 5 years (for conspiracy) plus three years (for tax violation).”

So, do I understand that if are a foreign agent of a country the US government is bombing, and you are running a lobbying outfit on US soil to influence US foreign policy favorably toward your country,  and you are actively engaged in conspiracy directed against the US and its allies, and you lie about it to the government and you launder your illicit payments, you get two years…

On the other hand, if you are an American citizen originally from a country ostensibly allied with the US, a friend of prime-minister and presidents,  one of the most highly regarded  and competent senior consultants in the world, a man with many philanthropic accomplishments, and you are convicted on flimsy circumstantial grounds of having made some money on insider information at a board meeting of one of the most corrupt outfits that ever graced the planet, then you are liable to face sixty years?

And the man who actually was guilty of insider-trading and was caught on tape doing it is gets off with no jail, because of his exemplary co-operation?

Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy Team

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Joseph Sarkissian analyzes the foreign policy team to which Rand Paul, heir-apparent to his father’s flock, delivered the libertarian faithful (they-who-do-not-question-but-yet-know-all-the-answers) when, this summer, he endorsed Mr. Wall Street Mitt Romney.

1. Eliot Cohen – Special adviser, author of Romney’s foreign policy white paper.

At least Eliot Cohen doesn’t pull any punches. He has overtly called for the removal of the Iranian regime by all means necessary, sans force. Good to know, but how do we pull that off? Cohen believes soft power would do the trick, but how long before that soft power necessitates hard power once the Iranian regime begins ramping up attacks against U.S. and Israeli assets? No regime like Iran’s will stand by idly as it is picked apart from the outside, and once the retaliatory bombings, assassination attempts, and other counter-intelligence measure are begun by Iran, the U.S. and Israel won’t be able to stand by either.

2. Dov Zakheim – Special adviser

Aside from also being hawkish on Iran and Iraq, Zakheim has a proven track record of sketchy behavior. Aside from the highly controversial disappearance of a massive amount of money while comptroller of the Pentagon, he runs Foreign Policy’s “Shadow Government” blog where he argues for even more aggressive drone strikes and rails against Obama’s foreign policy. Zakheim is a staunch supporter of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobbying group that pushes hard for intervention in Iran and was adamant about the push for war in Iraq.

3. John Bolton – Trusted personal policy adviser, potential cabinet appointee

Mitt Romney once said of John Bolton that, “John’s wisdom, clarity and courage are qualities that should typify our foreign policy.” If this is true, be very afraid. Bolton could be the most hawkish of Romney’s advisers. He is a signatory to numerous letters to presidents past and present, including one to Bill Clinton in 1998 from the defunct Neocon think tank, “Project for a New American Century (PNAC)” urging Clinton to get rid of Saddam. In a March letter to President Obama from Romney’s foreign policy team, Bolton signed off on statements saying the president is too soft on Iran, not supportive enough of Israel’s interests, should have left troops in Iraq, and has potentially crippled the U.S. military with budget cuts.

4. Robert Kagan, Special adviser

Who’s ready for some good old-fashioned regime change? If Robert Kagan gets his way, that’s what you can expect. Aside from wanting to oust Iranian leadership and cause massive conflict, Kagan is on the board of directors for the Foreign Policy Initiative, or as I like to call it, PNAC 2.0, where he served as a project director. A quintessential Neocon, Kagan has time and time again steadfastly supported the war in Iraq, saying that the war was a good idea, that Iraq was getting more secure in 2004, and that the Arab Spring can be attributed to U.S. efforts in Iraq. It’s hard to find someone more disillusioned in the policy community.

While some could chalk up all of Romney’s rhetoric to early election cycle hogwash, his advisers haven’t changed their tunes. Given that Mitt is about as informed as a table lamp on foreign policy, I shudder to think of the consequences of his team having carte blanche. Whether they suffer from groupthink – since many of them have worked and continue to work in the same place –or just a lack of ability to see the errors of their predictions, something has to balance them out. Hopefully that something is a loss at the polls in November.”

Yes, We Have A Banana Republic…

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Linh Dinh at Counterpunch describes the good part of the US descent into a banana-republic:

“It’s all going according to plan, this transformation of the US into a police state and Third-World nation, but what’s meant by “Third World,” exactly? A Third World country is one that is poor, with inadequate infrastructure, an obscene wealth gap and a corrupt government. America is by far the most-indebted nation on earth, with a record-setting trade deficit, so we are, in effect, much poorer than Greece, Zimbabwe, Somalia or any other basket case, but it hasn’t become manifest because we have guns, missiles and drones pointing in all directions. Using our gargantuan military to hold the world hostage, we receive more foreign aids, in the form of debts, than all the other nations combined. Riding a nuclear-armed mobility scooter, America is a gross welfare queen barging down the world’s sidewalk, but this is how an empire is supposed to work, many will smirk, and they are right, of course, until this extortion racket falls apart, and soon enough. Preparing for the inevitable, our ruling class is becoming more belligerent abroad, in a last ditch effort to prolong its advantages, and nastier at home, to slap down domestic rage at a sinking standard of living. Splurging beyond our means for decades, we will revert to the universal means, and not because we care about justice or equality, but because we don’t have a choice.

Just as there are pockets of First World opulence and luxury in even the most dismal Third World countries, rich nations also have stretches of Third World squalidness and destitution, but Third World isn’t all bad. Not by far. To survive on little requires enterprise, resourcefulness and cooperation, virtues that will emerge and even blossom as we slide downward. Ubiquitous in most Third World countries, peddlers will make a comeback here, and the black market will thrive. As globalism recedes, the local will rise. Instead of being slaves to huge corporations, we will become tiny businessmen, as long as we’re not hunted down, then fined or locked up…..

Back to the positive aspect. Each home can become a store or a restaurant. Each car is a gypsy cab. In totalitarian Vietnam, the government actually gives its people much more leeway to conduct petty business than is allowed in America. A private home can display a table with, say, five cans of soda, two brands of cigarettes and some candies, and that’s a store, though nobody is manning it most of the time. To get service, you might have to shout. It’s not their only source of income, but this pee wee initiative does bring in a buck or two a day, so it’s better than nothing. ….. There is no welfare, food stamps or Social Security in a Third World country, no safety net outside of your extended family……

One can say that the United States is becoming a police state because it is turning into a Third World country. Already, choppers snake through skyscraper canyons and tanks roll down main streets. The police state protects and advances the interests of the ruling class, which in our case is the military banking complex, and since an informal market nibbles at the profits of banks and corporations, you can expect their henchmen, cops and regulators, to stomp hard on us smallest fries. (Underpaid in a collapsed economy, cops will also use these opportunities to shake us down, so that’s a kind of tax we’ll have to pay.) In any case, it appears that as we become poorer and thinner, not to mention more enterprising or devious, and more colorful too, since everyday will be casual Friday, we will have to fend off our bullying state, if not the gangs that rise up in its place.”

Obamacare: Bad From Every Angle

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David Lindorff at Oped News points out that people on the left should also  be upset by the Supreme Court ruling on Obama care, equating a penalty with a tax. I guess if  the government decides to make  people tattoo 666 on their foreheads, as some maybe not-so-batty-after-all people fear it might, that could be constitutional too.

Not since the commerce clause has there been a  semantic theory so convenient for overreaching executives.

“On the downside for Obama, he goes into the final four months of the election campaign saddled with a decision that says he has raised taxes on some of the nation’s poorest people –– for that is what the court said will be happening, 18 months from now, when the health insurance mandate part of the new Act takes effect, and people who have no employer-provided health plan, and no other kind of coverage, fail to buy a policy for themselves and their families.  They will be socked with a bill by the IRS, and while the Obama administration and supporters of the act in Congress were at pains to say that the payment such people would be hit with would be a fine, the Justices in the majority were adamant that it would be a tax………

..The real losers in the latest Supreme Court decision, however, are the people of the United States. Not those who will be required to go out and buy some over-priced, minimal coverage, rip-off insurance plan offered by the private insurance industry, or to pay a “tax” to the IRS for not doing so, but everyone…”

Comment:

This is just a gift to the insurance industry, probably the industry most responsible for soaring costs in every field.

And it’s a blow to young people, who can often get by with just catastrophic coverage. It also hits people who are fine with self-medicating or using cheaper alternative resources.

Finally, it’s a huge blow to small businesses, the engine of job-growth.

With the economy struggling, you’d think that would be a consideration. But it wasn’t.

People are going to think twice about hiring now.

That means fewer young people are going to find jobs…..

If I were young,  this has  to be the point where I pack my bags, get my passport stamped, and hop onto the first cheap flight out of the country.