Tag Archives: Activism

Birth-Control Fatwas & Oops Factors

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denver colorado skyline

Zahir Ebrahim, author of The Poor Man’s Guide to Modernity, brings up a problem in the comment section to my previous post.

I reproduce it here as a separate post, because it’s something that has stumped me, as well.

Briefly: How to get in front of false-flags, red herrings, and black ops before they unfold, or, at least, how to derail them after they’ve begun?

How indeed.

Bloggers and activists who write as things unfold are quietly censored through Internet filtering and monitoring, (eg. Google). and content manipulation (eg. Wikipedia).

Or, we are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists” by the mandarins of the mainstream media, because we cannot reach into our pockets and come up at once with documents in triplicate with signed confessions from the Mossad and CIA to prove our claims.

Of course, some forty years hence, some appointed mouthpiece will, at tax-payer expense,  force open the requisite dusty archive where half-redacted memos, still greasy with guilt, will give the game away.

Masks will briefly slip from Olympian profiles, but until then…..

….even if activists do get heard, the media prince-lings who deign to respond, choose their place and time in ways that leave us bloodied and the issues even more bedraggled.

During the ruckus that ensues, the false-flag or black operation unfolds with the panache of an Augustan comedy….except that to those of us in the peanut-gallery it is tragedy.

That is how, as Zahir Ebrahim writes, no less than the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran fell victim to the Malthusian disinformation of the banking cartel:

“Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini introduced Birth Control through a fatwa (I haven’t seen the fatwa myself, only read or heard about it), as the population of Iran had almost doubled from the time of the Shah by the time of this fatwa in the late 1980s.

Well in the 2000s (I do not recall the year), the successor Ayatollah had to issue a new Fatwa encouraging families to have more children and not less children.

According to the understanding given to me on this topic, the first fatwa on birth-control had been issued because of the fears of over-population and Iran not being able to feed itself under the Malthusian construct.

(Not obvious how this fear was implanted in Iran under the Ayatollah, for he was always most wary of the Western agenda. But then again, he also fell victim to it in uncontrollably waging the eight-year war against Iraq — a war that was foisted by the West upon both the peoples of Iran and Iraq equally, and not just Iran alone ,which the people of Iran always tend to forget.)

Anyway, After the birth rate among the Shia Muslims declined drastically, while the minority Sunni Muslims (aprox. 20% of Iranians) had ignored the fatwa and had concentrated on having more and more children (Sunni Muslims do not accept Fatwas from Shia theologians, and vice versa), the demographics of Iran suddenly started to change. T

The Sunni strategy, I imagine both intellectually and financially supported from somewhere, was to come to key positions of power in Iran through the change in demographic. All legal, nothing subversive about it. In fact, it is the method that Palestinians have been employing to overwhelm their Israeli conquerors these past six decades. A most effective strategy!

This strategy, and the declining birth-rate among the middle class in the Shia households, woke up the Iranian government to the folly of the previous “ill-conceived” and “flawed” fatwa.

Now the impetus in Iran is to encourage more children — but not unsurprisingly, the next generation of the middle class and upper middle class, those whose parents or themselves grew up under the directive of the first fatwa, don’t seem to be energetically inclined towards having more children. Career paths dominate in Iran as much as they do in the West. A more detailed study of this is of course necessary. This is just the anecdotal version.

What this shows me however, is that “oops” cannot always be avoided — we are all human. But surely, as you put it: “that the ultimate source of such laws is an ideology crafted with MALEVOLENT intent by the foundation-funded think-tanks and research institutes.” can always be recognized and interdicted. No?

Provided of course that the government machinery, its media, and its intellectuals, are not already co-opted into either silence, acquiescence, or actually putting down their signatures to their own enslavement.

This is the real problem facing both India, Pakistan, and South East Asia. How to overcome our “asininity” which continually leads us to “oops” ex post facto?

Indian Opposition Says No To Wal-Mart

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Bloomberg reports on Indian opposition to corporate giants forcing open the lucrative retail market:

“Opposition parties and government allies rounded on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s bid to open India’s retail sector to foreign companies like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), stalling parliament for a fifth day with their protests.

In a rare concerted attack on the ruling Congress party, Singh’s two largest parliamentary partners joined the opposition in criticizing the policy approved by the Cabinet last week, forcing both houses of parliament to adjourn. Overseas retailers stand to be barred from opening stores in at least 19 of India’s 45 largest cities with state assemblies set to veto their entry. “

I’m glad to hear this.   Even though it’s too little too late. The spineless Manmohan Singh has already opened up local mutual funds to foreign investment, with all the economic and other dangers of cross-border financial flows and hot money.

Of course, the globalist mouthpieces, (Time: Jyothi Thottam, “Why India Should Stop Fearing Walmart”), are anxious for it to happen.

The big media outlets like to put a local face on the policy (“India’s Wobbly Walmart Embrace’), but astute readers aren’t fooled.

One writes:

Let’s say our law says that Walmart will source 30% from small players. What about the rest, the 70%? Is it going to source 100% of it from India or is allowed to import the rest, i.e. 70%? According to the WTO you cannot stop them from importing.  The example the writer gave was from Bharti-Walmart which is a wholesale cash and carry store (like SAM’s) not Walmart – it is the consumer side which will kill the Kirana business and the Indian manufacturers. She talks about the food supply and global chains without even knowing what it means. …..

They are in the business of making money and lots of it for their US shareholders. They are not in the business of reducing cost for Indian consumers. If it happens that they buy in bulk in China and flood the Indian market with imports, so be it.  Today India is a net Export-Import deficit country with $85 Billion per year. This is the contribution of Dr. Singh…from a few billion a year trade deficit that we had before to having to borrow $85 Billion a year to pay our imports minus exports. So what do you think will happen when Walmart imports $100 Billion dollars worth of goods into India every year?

Now you have to somehow find current $85 Billion net deficit + $100 Billion = $185 Billion dollars PER YEAR.  In the case of the USA, it was simple. The USA borrowed $3 Trillion to pay the deficit. It has the luxury of printing dollars. So if China demands money, they can print it. They just recently printed $600 Billion. India can not do this and India will ultimately be screwed.  In the 17th Century, India was a net exporter. Then the Britishers came and India became a net importer and in turn a poor country. That will happen after a few years if our appetite for imports continues to grow and our exports dont keep up with the rise in imports as happened in the last many years. Today, we borrow soft money and hard money from the IMF, bonds, FDI in other sectors etc. to pay the difference of $85 Billion of dollars that we have to pay to import more than what we export. How long do you think this is sustainable? How long do you think we can continue to borrow either via the FDI route or via IMF loans to pay for our imports. India is one of the few countries where you can allow all these things, including changing our nuclear policy, allowing FDI, etc. without discussing this in Parliament first.

Remember also that Walmart started putting in RFID tags into their clothes from last year, August 1, 2010, making it possible at some point that you could be tracked anywhere you went, because of your clothes. This is incipiently fascistic.

India FDI Watch has a detailed report on what really happens when foreign lobbyists get big retail giants into the market, monopsony:

“Industrial licensing had brought monopolies to India but monopsony is a new phenomenon for India which has recently come to the forefront in the manufacturing goods sector due to the increased specialization in the global process of production. This has led to the concept of a single supplier to a large producer who obtains the goods at a ransom. The larger the amount of any commodity a large retailer can purchase, the greater the concession on price, delivery, it can extract. This is a demonstration of monopsonistic procurement and the awesome monopsonistic purchasing power which comes with it. This is unique to the modern world of digital instant communication (branding, streamlined logistics distribution can drive down prices still further) and hugely affects the agricultural commodities market also, as shown. The more of a commodity large retailers purchase in bulk, the lower the prices growers of agricultural commodities obtain!”

More in this report on how the globalists at WTO would like to destroy the decentralized production of food:

“The Bank has identified laws such as the Essential Commodities Act (1955) the Agricultural Produce and marketing Act (APMC 1972) and the Prevention of Black Marketing and Maintenance of Supplies of Essential Commodities Act (1980) which have defended the rights of farmers to a just price and the rights of the poor to a fair price for food, as having “prevented the free mobility of agricultural produce and thus segmented the Indian domestic market into many smaller markets.

The government has also imposed restrictions on foreign investment in the retail of agricultural commodities, and on both foreign and domestic private investment in wholesale. These restrictions have collectively discouraged and/or prevented the private sector from undertaking large-scale investment in agricultural storage, marketing, or processing activities – an example of horizontal fragmentation preventing desirable vertical integration. The result is that today there is no large, organized, efficient pan-Indian supply chain in the agricultural sector, including in horticulture. What the Bank defines as “fragmentation” is in fact self-organized local systems of production and trade which are not controlled by a centralized store or by centralized, monopolistic corporations. And the repeated attack on India’s “geography” shows how anti-nature World Bank’s basic economic thinking is. Not only the World Bank like to wish away India’s diversity and geography, it would like to destroy India’s food sovereignty.

Thus, the Bank takes apples grown in Himachal and says it would be cheaper to import them for Chennai. This was exactly the argument the trade liberalisers had used to justify wheat imports. However, the imported wheat turned out to be twice as costly as domestic wheat. Navdanya has filed a case in the Supreme Court against wheat imports.”

Note:

I’ve shopped at Walmart, and they have great prices, true. But in the US I don’t have that much of a choice of smaller shops.  In India, however, there are plenty of choices….and it should stay that way.  Anyway, I don’t think I should be shopping at Walmart, even if the prices are low.  It’s a question of choosing smart self-interest over self-defeating self-interest. I like cheap prices, but I also want to live in a country of small shops and farms, not one of huge commercial farms and supermarkets.

It’s time to buy from local retailers, wherever possible.

The American-made Retail E-guide features over 2500 American-made products from over a dozen popular retail stores like Dillard’s, Home Depot, TJ Maxx, and Costco.

How Americans Can Buy American
Post Office Box 780839, Orlando, Florida 32878-0839
Tel: 1-888-US OWNED (1-888-876-9633)
Emergency Backup: 407-234-4626
Email the Author: Roger Simmermaker
Web: http://www.howtobuyamerican.com

On this issue, I agree with OccupyWallStreet.

If we can’t lower taxes to bring companies back, we can boycott multinationals with predatory practices. Giant corporations of this kind have nothing to do with the free market.

From TowardFreedom:

“The shiny happy people featured in Wal-Mart advertisements, as well as the company’s continued PR claims of corporate responsibility (“We at Wal-Mart take an active interest in conserving the environment!”), simply doesn’t match the frustrating reality of their corporate behavior. Even the largely toothless Environmental Protection Agency, for example, a federal regulatory outfit that sometimes seems to exist simply to provide permits for giant corporate polluters, has managed to prosecute Wal-Mart for Clean Air Act violations in nine states, due to the company’s stubborn insistence on storing lawn fertilizer and other toxic chemicals in parking lots located near local watershed areas.

Greenwald even takes us to Wal-Mart’s global factories in where Wal-Mart workers put in 14 hour days 7 days a week and brush their teeth with fireplace ashes because their salaries don’t allow them to buy tooth paste. Implicitly in this global tour is the fact that, while wrapping itself in the American flag and a shallow sham version of patriotism, Wal-Mart cares very little for the health and well being of its workers, the environment, or the health of the U.S. economy as a whole, beyond the short-term dollar value it can extract to increase its profit margin.

While all of this is deeply sobering, Greenwald wisely chooses to end the film on a powerful high note, spotlighting and interviewing several citizen/activists – normal people just like you and me – who have chosen to organize their communities to oppose Wal-Mart’s predatory behavior and fight for more just and sustainable local economies.”

Honor

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Honor
by Ada Cambridge
(hat-tip to Ajit Vadakayil)

Me let the world disparage and despise —
As one unfettered with its gilded chains,
As one untempted by its sordid gains,
Its pleasant vice, its profitable lies;
Let Justice, blind and halt and maimed, chastise
The rebel spirit surging in my veins,
Let the law deal me penalties and pains
And make me hideous in my neighbours’ eyes.

But let me fall not in mine own esteem,
By poor deceit or selfish greed debased.
Let me be clean from secret stain and shame,
Know myself true, though false as hell I seem —
Know myself worthy, howsoe’er disgraced —
Know myself right, though every tongue should blame

OWS Unites Against Corporate Personhood

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Occupy Wall Street unites around abolition of corporate personhood (via Tikkun Daily):

“There is only one way to reclaim democracy and make our government one of, by and for the People. We must make support of a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood a campaign issue in 2012 and beyond. Candidates around the country are taking a pledge to amend. As they challenge incumbents and better-known challengers in the upcoming primaries, the issue will gain prominence in other races. Eventually it will become generally recognized that when faced with a choice between candidates willing to prove that they are seeking office in order to serve the interests of their constituents and not those of their corporate patrons and themselves, the choice will be obvious. As voters in more and more elections respond by electing candidates who have taken the pledge to amend it will become clear that the amendment will pass.”

Pick-Pockets On The Subway Train

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Phil Rockstroh:

“The corporate/national security state, by its very nature is anti-liberty and anti-freedom. Of course, its defenders give lip service to the concept of freedom…much in the manner a pick-pocket working a subway train is very much in favor of the virtues of public transportation.A heavy police presence has ringed Zuccotti Park from the get-go, and whose ranks have now staged a military style raid upon it, a defacto search and destroy mission–because the ruling elite want to suppress the very impulse of freedom. These authoritarian bullies don’t want the concept to escape the collective prison of the mind erected and maintained by the corrupt jailers comprising the 1% who claim they offer us protection as, all the while, they hold our chains…all for our own good, they insist…for our safety and the safety of others.

Although, from studying on these prison walls, the thought occurs to me…that what we might need is protection from all this safety.”

An Open Letter To The 9-11 Commission

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From: Ian Henshall and others
Hove BN3 7NQ

To Sir John Chilcot, The Iraq Inquiry,
35 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BG
Your ref Alastair Seaton, IE0054

27 September 2010

Dear Sir John Chilcot,

Thank you for your recent letter in which you state:

“Thank you for your further letter of 27 July, in which you urge the Committee to challenge the conclusion that the 911 bombings were perpetrated by Al Qaeda. The attribution of responsibility for the 9/11 bombings is out with the terms of reference for this Inquiry, except insofar as it impacts on the UK’s involvement in Iraq. We are nevertheless very grateful for the information and sources of further information provided in your letter and hope you will continue to follow the Inquiry’s progress on our website.”

We welcome your agreement that the attribution of responsibility for 9/11 is relevant insofar as it impacts the UK’s involvement in Iraq. Blair made clear that 9/11 was indeed a major factor in the invasion of Iraq while the official paper trail shows that the attribution of responsibility, which includes the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, is murkier than first appeared.

It is noteworthy that your terms of reference start in summer 2001 when, we now know, warnings of  the 9/11 attacks were flooding into Washington.

1. BLAIR’S EVIDENCE AND THE QUESTIONS IT RAISES

In case there can be any doubt as to the central role of the 9/11 attacks in the decision to invade Iraq, please recall that Blair made his “shoulder to shoulder” speech in the weeks after 9/11 and as we now know decided effectively to subordinate UK foreign policy to the Bush White House at that time. As he explained to you very clearly and repeatedly in his testimony, 9/11 was a major factor in the decision to invade Iraq because it changed the “calculus of risk”. This confirms what commentators across the political spectrum have been saying: that the invasion of Iraq was made politically possible by 9/11.

Assuming Al Qaeda carried out the attacks independently of any other organisation, an extremely important question remains: how were the attacks able to succeed and hence to change the “calculus of risk”?

2. DANGER OF PUBLIC DISSATISFACTION IF WASHINGTON’S EXPLANATION NOT EXAMINED

We accept it is not up to your Inquiry to determine what happened on 9/11, but we contend the public will not be satisfied unless you examine whether the explanation of the causes, offered to London by Washington, of this massive US defence failure was reliable. Given the anger that now exists in many quarters over the weapons of mass destruction allegations and the “dodgy dossiers” in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, we submit that the public will expect you to look into this with great concern and investigate whether the official 9/11 story is wrong, self-exculpatory, misleading, or simply not adequately substantiated.  If Washington’s explanation is unreliable we contend your report should state that further investigation is needed.

3. MISLEADING MEDIA REPORTS AND OFFICIAL STATEMENTS

A review of the media reports at the time confirms that the initial 9/11 account was indeed seriously wrong and that this is the version on which Tony Blair seems to have based his decision making. Politicians and commentators said that Al Qaeda succeeded in this unprecedented, audacious and well-planned attack because they had immense resources and, in the words of Condoleeza Rice, that in the US government “nobody could imagine” that such an attack might occur. Blair made similar comments.

However we now know that the main features of the 9/11 attacks had all been built into various Pentagon war games in the months before 9/11, that Rice had ignored multiple warnings from top officials and foreign governments, and that the failure of the CIA to co-operate with FBI investigations into the presumed 9/11 hijackers was a major factor in the success of the attacks. The 9/11 Commission chair said at one point that the attacks “could and should” have been prevented. There is much further evidence to support this view. It may be noteworthy too that the CIA’s Inspector General later gave George Tenet, CIA director at the time, a severe reprimand over 9/11 on grounds that remain secret.

4. INADEQUACY OF INFORMATION SUPPLIED TO LONDON

If you agree with the consensus view now, that failings of the US authorities, glossed over at the time, were a significant factor in the success of  the 9/11 attacks, and if London was trusting information supplied by Washington rather than carrying out their own checks, this has a major bearing on the UK decision to invade Iraq.

It would mean that the alternative policy to war was not properly evaluated. This would have been to avoid launching the invasions, deal with terrorism in the ways that had always been followed up to then, and deal with the causes of the intelligence failings at home.

5. WAS 9/11 ADEQUATELY INVESTIGATED PRIOR TO WAR?

We are not asking you to mount an entirely new investigation into the 9/11 attacks, but we hope you will agree that judgment by media acclamation and White House press release is not a sufficient basis to launch two wars. Therefore we submit that you should note in your final report that the 9/11 attacks have never been fully investigated by a well resourced and independent body prepared to consider a range of ideas on what the full story might be. Many people in the US, including many of the bereaved and members of the 9/11 Commission itself, emphasize the lack of a thorough investigation. The 9/11 Commission was starved of funds, given a very tight timescale and was refused access to key evidence. See note below for some more failings of the 9/11 Commission. The promised trial of alleged ringleader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the only person ever indicted for a central role in the 9/11 attacks, seems to have been postponed indefinitely.

6. NEED FOR A NEW INVESTIGATION

A new 9/11 investigation, and particularly a sharing of the mountain of still secret evidence with the public, is all the more important in the light of the many details which still have not been satisfactorily explained. For instance there is so far no official explanation for the recent discovery by associate Professor Niels Harrit of uncombusted high energy artificial nanothermite particles in the dust at Ground Zero, which indicate the possibility that the collapse of the buildings was some sort of a controlled demolition which could explain the rapid and symmetrical downward collapse of the three (sic) multistorey WTC buildings. Official sources insist the collapses all happened spontaneously in a way unforeseen by any expert before the event, but independent experts have not been given access to the evidence or the computer models which government scientists rely on. Hundreds of architects, engineers and demolition experts have spoken out publicly calling for a new investigation.

Another reason for a further investigation is that the 9/11 Commission discovered the CIA had a top secret 80 strong Osama Bin Laden unit working on projects in the months before 9/11. This contrasts with the explanation proffered by many politicians and commentators that Washington had lost interest in Afghanistan. The CIA reportedly refused to talk to the 9/11 Commission about vast areas of what the OBL unit was up to.

Similarly no details have been given of the Pentagon’s anti-hijack exercise running, apparently by sheer coincidence, at the exact time of the 9/11 attacks and which we now know interfered with the response from air traffic control and the Pentagon. Even the flight manifests for the hijacked planes are still secret.

7. QUESTIONS THAT NEED TO BE ASKED

As well as the more general recommendations mentioned above concerning the preventabilty of the 9/11 attacks and the failure to investigate the whole affair in any depth, we submit that you should ask some specific questions to Tony Blair. Before he gave his almost unconditional support to the Bush White House, did he task MI6 or any other UK agency to make an independent assessment of the 9/11 attacks, of who was behind them, and of how they came to be carried out so successfully? Did anyone mention to him that the Oklahoma bomb was at first wrongly blamed by Washington on Islamic extremists? Did he and his advisors discuss the possibility the attacks were successful as a result of failings in the US? Did they inquire if 9/11 resulted, as now seems possible, from a CIA sting operation gone wrong?

8. WHAT WE CAN OFFER

Finally we submit that you should take adequate evidence from us and make appropriate recommendations in your report, not only because the decision to invade Iraq is at the heart of your inquiry but also out of respect for the rights of the bereaved and other victims of many nationalities in both the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Please take public testimony from Paul Warburton on the general legal issues, Niels Harrit on the nanothermite at the World Trade Centre, and Ian Henshall for an overview on how the official 9/11 story has changed and whether it is reliable. Other experts could probably be made available including retired FBI and CIA officers.

Ian Henshall (co-ordinator Reinvestigate 911, author 911 The New Evidence)
Paul Warburton (barrister)
Niels Harrit (associate professor of Chemistry University of Copenhagen, nanotechnology specialist)
Noel Glynn (Convenor Quakers for Truth on Terrorism)

NOTE

The only official attempts to investigate 9/11 were the FBI probe that was ended prematurely and run by Bush appointee Michael Chertoff (later Homeland security chief in charge of the Hurricane Katrina disaster), and the 9/11 Commission. The latter was severely underfunded, short of time, and stuffed with Washington insiders. It never considered any scenario other than the official story. Its executive Director Phillip Zelikow was caught reporting regularly in secret to the White House, while Senator Max Cleland resigned angrily denouncing the process as a whitewash. Later the chief investigator John Farmer wrote that there was an agreement in the White House or the Pentagon to lie to investigators. The Commission failed to clarify the role of the CIA’s top secret Osama Bin Laden unit and its refusal to pass on important information to the FBI prior to the attacks. It failed to investigate the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings one of which was not struck by a plane and which we now know fell at free fall speed. For the chaos and manipulation of the 911 Commission by Zelikow and the Bush White House, see the book The Commission by Phil Shenon the New York Times specialist on the subject.

————————————————————————————————–
“9/11 THE NEW EVIDENCE”
pub Sept 2007 Constable (UK) ISBN 978-1-84529-514-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/11-New-Evidence-Ian-Henshall/dp/1845295145/

“9/11 Revealed: The New Evidence”
pub Oct 2007 Carroll & Graf (US) ISBN-10: 0786720417
http://www.amazon.com/9-11-Revealed-New-Evidence/dp/0786720417/

Ian Henshall is also proprietor of Coffee Plant ( www.coffee.uk.com)
and chair of INK, trade organisation for UK alternative print media (www.ink.uk.com)
Ian Henshall’s email is crisisnewsletter@pro-net.co.uk

Follow The Money…

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Thanks to libertarian activist, financial consultant, and author of an early expose of the big banks,  “Pirates of Manhattan,”(2007), Barry James Dyke, for pointing out GuideStar.org. This is a website that lets you look up financial records of registered non-profits, a handy way to see what activists and advocates of all stripes are making, what their revenues and expenditures are, and whom they employ. Continue reading →

Are You A Member Of The Libertarian Mob?

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In a piece called “Tea-Party Jacobins,” NY Times, May 27, 2010, (hat-tip to LRC blog), Mark Lilla calls Tea Party activists a “libertarian mob,” since they proclaim the belief “that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone” and they have only one “Garbo-like thing to say, they want to be left alone.”

Hmmmm. Couldn’t have said it better m’self. Consider me now a card-carrying member of the libertarian mob. Continue reading →

Steve Cohen To Leave Trading, Says Vanity Fair

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Well, well, well. It looks like Patrick Byrne, Judd Bagley, Mark Mitchell and the rest of the estimable team at Deep Capture are having more than some effect.

Not only have the Germans and Austrians banned naked short- selling, Vanity Fair, our least favorite low-class, high-gloss magazine of the DC twitterati, tells us that Steve Cohen is closing up shop as a trader. Sith Lord Cohen doesn’t like the spotlight, it seems.  Maybe he remembers all too well what he was up to in the 1980s……even if Reuters wants to keep it buried.

Vanity Fair:

In the July issue of Vanity Fair, legendary hedge-fund billionaire Steve Cohen tells special correspondent Bryan Burrough that he might be ready to walk away from active trading. How big would that be? Well, says Burrough, it’s “a little like saying that God is ready to walk away from Earth.” In this video, Burrough takes the measure of Cohen’s controversial careeer—and offers his theory on why the reclusive banker granted the second in-depth interview of his 30-year career to Vanity Fair.