"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!"

Imagine being on an extended unemployment stint and just after having spent another day writing fifty-plus resumes, wondering if you'll be in your house in six-months and then switching on the news and seeing this shit, REUTERS: "JP Morgan Investment Bankers See Record Payday."

Getting By With a Little Help From My Friends

It's one thing to hit the jackpot fair and square, but these investment bankers still have a source of obscene amounts of wealth due to the trillions of dollars handed over to them by the U.S. Congress, the political class complicit with the mega-banks in the destruction of the real US economy over the past decades. Think about it, huge lumps of cash in compensation for creating nothing of tangible value. Now perhaps the smug bankers, especially at the lower levels (the one's who only receive the paltry six-figure hush-money bonuses), haven't figured out that the financial economy cannot exist indefinitely without a real economy (mining, manufacturing and agriculture). Not unlike the US Dollar, their very existence is built/leveraged upon a fraction of perceived worth and as we have witnessed, the inflating and taxing power of the Federal Reserve (the real power) on declining main street revenues. Could Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan be the major shareholders of the Federal Reserve on this side of the Atlantic? Sure seems like it.

You also have to wonder how the asshole politicans gave the Big-Three automaker executives such a hard time for arriving in Washington D.C. in private jets in November 2008 to beg for less than one-thirtieth of what the Wall Street masters of the universe investment bankers received.

Automakers actually build tangible products which add value to the United States economy and yet they were practically told to get on their knees while at the same time the Wall Street bankers were figuratively (or not) offered a free blow-job by the Potomac dirt-bags while they handed over the nation's loot.

Who's running who? These bankers actually devised the financial vehicles which are responsible for the smackdown and are still receiving cash rewards for being so clever as to make money for producing nothing but the noise of computer keystrokes and paper shuffling. If anything, these boys are economic and market vampires using methods of profiting which includes skimming money from the markets using computer programs or "flash trading"

"Bloomberg reports in the SEC filings that Goldman only lost money on 2 days out the entire quarter. So they are now hitting something like .900 for 3 months in baseball terms. Folks, there are 13 weeks a quarter, with generally 5 weekdays. That is 65 days. They made money 63 days. That's a 97% win percentage."

Now..after having traded this market for the past 15 years and being able to call consistent gains a viable second monthly income, 97% winning trades is pretty fucking amazing.

"Doing God's Work" 0r Screwing Their Own Clients?

"A Congressional committee questioned Goldman's CEO, Lloyd Blankenfeld about packaging risky assets and then selling them to clients, even though Goldman was betting against those same assets. Thus, Goldman was making money even as their clients were getting killed. I quote Blankfein. 'I do think the behavior is improper. We regret the consequences that people have lost money in it.' (Source: Dow Theory Letters dated 14 January 2010).

The Reaping

Would it surprise you to hear that a bunch of these investment banker types are gunned downed someday by perhaps a once proud family man who thinks he's got nothing to lose after losing it all? A desperate and tragic criminal act perhaps a year or so after losing his job and having written his last check. Maybe he's been put through a divorce from the woman who not only promised "until death do us part," but had made sure that he signed that option-arm mortgage contract with her for that pretty $750,000 McMansion with a four car garage and walk-in closets bigger than the size of their former home's master bedroom. And you know what? When the public someday hears the news of this human tragedy, I'll bet more than a few will be discreetly sporting a small grin of glee on their faces.

It is said that there was a time when a famous monarch stated, "Let them eat cake!" The difference between those days and today, is that the guillotine has been replaced with 500 million firearms, more or less evenly distributed throughout the country. Come to think of it, maybe the boys at Goldman already know not to bring a knife to a gunfight:
Arming Goldman Sachs With Pistols

Of course I would never advocate any violence whatsoever.....but I would understand.

JPMorgan investment bankers to see record payday

REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton ...
By Steve Eder

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM - News) on Friday announced a record $9.3 billion payday for its investment-banking employees, setting the stage for competitors like Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS - News) to also make eye-popping payouts.

On a per employee basis, JPMorgan investment bankers, sales staff and traders, on average, are set to make about $379,000 for 2009, up more than $100,000 from 2008, when the broader financial sector was mired in crisis.

"People looking at it from the outside look at the dollars and say they are high," said Kenneth Raskin, the head of law firm White & Case's executive compensation practice. "There is no question the dollars are high. The question is whether they were deserving."

Median U.S. household income in 2008 was $50,303.

Michael Cavanagh, JPMorgan's chief financial officer, told reporters that even though pay is up overall, its investment bank still reduced the percentage of revenue that it set aside for pay, to 33 percent, from 62 percent for 2008 and historical averages of about 44 percent. Its investment bank had one of its strongest years.

Analysts also expect Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS - News) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS - News), which report their results next week, to show an upswing in pay. Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C - News), however, could pay commercial and investment banking bonuses for 2009 that are similar to 2008 levels, sources told Reuters.

Banks across the industry have changed their compensation plans to give managers more of their pay in the form of stock that must be held for multiple years. This sort of deferred compensation is meant to curb traders and others from taking short-term risks that could harm the investment bank several years later.

Changes in compensation plans, however, have done little to bring down overall pay figures and quell public outrage over pay.

The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that the top 38 U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their people $145 billion, based the newspaper's analysis.

The public anger over banker pay led the New York Times to call on Congress to pass a one-off windfall tax on banker bonuses. Britain plans a one-time tax of half of banker bonuses above 25,000 pounds ($40,675).

Banks, which now face President Obama's bailout tax, have so far been successful in beating back other reforms, including plans for a consumer protection regulator.

The resistance of the banking industry to roll back pay is infuriating and short-sighted to some, especially with high unemployment and people losing homes to foreclosure.

"These people need some perspective on where we are and what they have done," said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University.
(Additional reporting by Elinor Comlay, Clare Baldwin, and Dan Wilchins; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Don't Just Blame the "Hired Help"

This is a three part video excerpt which summarizes the history behind the rise of the Khazars (ancestral source of the majority of European Jewry) or more exactly, those who would be the elite segment of this population and their involvement in international banking and politics. The information presented is a good start for those who believe that the buck stops with some Jewish dude, Mayer Amschel Bauer, who somehow crawled out of a medieval Jewish ghetto and started lending money that he made from coin collecting, to the ruling families of Europe. The rise of elite Jewish banking power is a VERY recent event indeed, when compared to the history of the ancient power brokers of western civilization.

For those would characterize this material as Zionist disinformation, please note that it is not intended to redirect all of your hatred. It is presented as a tool for redirecting only some of your hatred or however much of it you wish to allocate elsewhere, if you have extra to spare.

For those who merely desire to point out the suspects in order to disclose political manipulation, a good investigator might, in this case, recognize a red herring and desire to go to a level above the historically and relatively new accounting department or "the help." That bright and colorful piñata presented for the world to beat up on called Zionism or Judaism has served a purpose.

Research in the realm of parapolitics is not an easy exercise in being spoon fed as it is easy to be led down the path of least resistance by information gleaned from the mainstream and even many "supressed" or readily unavailable texts. The process also requires many mid-course corrections, so to speak.

Historically, pogroms against Jews were pogroms against the common classes of Jewry and not the Jewish "fund" managers who held positions below the levels of old-line political and spiritual movers and shakers. For example, the evidence is replete which indicates that certain elite Jewish organizations of the mid 20th century made deals with National Socialist Germany which were far from being in the best interests of the common European Jewish population of the time.


Personally, if forced to point fingers, I blame the child-like herd mentality of humanity for allowing itself to be in the predicament that it finds itself in today (if you are pointing fingers at elected or appointed officials, you should stop reading here because you just don't get it, only for now, hopefully). Nothing will change unless a sizable portion of humanity can one day rise above its own incapacity to be free (freedom includes the freedom to fail). To begin the process, humanity will have to rid itself of its own worst enemies, the engineered dependence upon messiahs (human authority figures or otherwise) and its persistent state of denial regarding the belief in the benevolence of the various authority figures and the political / legal establishment (a condition which might very well be related to a nasty case of Stockholm Syndrome disease).








Recommended reading.....

"How anyone can think that the Rothschilds are the pinnacle of power is beyond me. Very powerful? Yes. The mind behind the all-seeing eye? No way. We have to look much deeper beyond these Kabbalistically-minded businessmen. While not wishing to diminish the truth about their influence, we must keep things in perspective." (Link)

"US financial magnate JP Morgan (who escaped death by not going on the Titanic that he was booked to travel on) died appropriately enough in Rome & was a Knight of the Papal-loyal House of Savoys Order of Sts Maurice & Lazarus." (Link)

"The Jews have historically been used as a hidden order of the Catholic church. They do the things that the Catholic church does not like to be seen doing. Jews are perfect for this job as long as the people rail at the Jews and as long as they rail back at their attackers, no one will look beyond the Jews.." "In the beginning--The Story of the International Trade Cartel" (first chapter: LINK) by Richard Kelly Hoskins, also author of "War Cycles, Peace Cycles," (book review: LINK).

Video source and suggested reading: "The Brotherhood of Death" series on Red Ice Creations

The Abuse of Your Fictitious Wealth

There are peculiar goings on in the world of finance which are continuing to manifest themselves in painful ways directly for those who have stored much of their life-energy in paper investments. I have to ask whether the free reign given to investment banks to create the exotic Frankensteinian financial instruments which triggered the current cascade may have been intentional. Any idiot could have predicted that eventually this idea of highly leveraged derivatives would lead to a disastrous train wreck. This panic would not be the first orchestrated money panic in United States history. Something tells me that we are perhaps witnessing a harvest of sorts...a harvest of the working class' wealth. Most peculiar and less bizarre is how the UNITED STATES Inc., (see USC 28 § 3002 (15)(A)) , federal police agencies and Wall Street and their financial advisor foot soldiers are continuing to do their best to funnel your financial activity into asset classes which can be tapped by insiders when and if it is needed. This includes manipulating the stock market and supressing the gold price by way of the Exchange Stabilization Fund (USC 31) and other means, regulating and requiring sponsorship to operate as a financial advisor, as well as clamping down on certain money alternatives to paper, which might gain too much popularity (more on that below).

The paper representation of productivity used to stand for direct, unleveraged claims on assets in the tangible world. That all began to change beginning with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the subsequent consolidation of financial power with the orchestration of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Used to be that paper notes or money of the day were actually warehouse receipts representing claims upon physical assets, usually gold and silver coin, kept in custodial form at your local bank. This idea was slowly done away on a gradual, inter-generational timeframe as a result of the Great Depression. A convenient fix. The result of this as well as the Nixon Shock of 1971, created lasting shockwave which is being felt right now in the markets. More recently, we are discovering a similar type of fraud perpetuated to the extent that we could call it the theatre of the absurd. How absurd? So absurd that now even the idea that a security, a derivative of wealth representing a claim or interest in a corporate entity, is being done away with through deliberately unenforced criminal activity on the US exchanges. (more on that too, below).

Have a look at these and compare them to the paper in your purse or wallet. Read the print below the dead white guy (click on the image for a slightly larger view):

Notwithstanding the public firestorm that surrounded the $700 billion bailout bill, we can elaborate further on how the Nanny State is not looking out for your best interest.

First we take a look at how physical violence (or threat thereof) by the state operates to contain a political paradigm. Below is a two minute news report video which summarizes what happend in the fall of 2007 to the offices of the LIBERTY DOLLAR. While the alternative currency supplied by the LIBERTY DOLLAR is backed by gold and silver if not actual gold and silver coin minted by this organization, a requirement per the alleged Constitution, keep in mind that the Federal Reserve Note is also a private currency backed by nothing but faith and the horsepower of the federal government corporation. Being that the power of Washington is funded by at-will issuance of paper money or the much more prevalent electronic equivalent, it is obvious that the idea of people storing their energy in something other than the official unbacked paper currency might be seen as a threat. The erroneously monikered US Dollar, is the stock of the USA, Inc., and the board members do not want to see their stock tank, for the moment. The current monetary system is the desired conduit used to tap precious human energy that people willingly provide the leviathan to make endless war (wars and gold backed money cannot co-exist but for very short periods), beat up on free enterprise and threaten violence under an intrusive and oppressive system of taxation. Therefore, it may come as no surprise that this organization was a direct threat to the largest Ponzi scheme ever devised in recorded history. It is also interesting to note that the founder of the LIBERTY DOLLAR and monetary expert Bernard von NotHaus, has not been arrested yet. Imagine this individual, an expert in monetary history, cross examining the government and asking them how the Federal Reserve Note is not a counterfeit piece of paper and how gold and silver as currency, is. Von NotHaus also has in his possession, from the beginning, written replies by law makers and government attorneys, informing him that indeed, the currency he was planning to provide was not in violation of any law. What has changed since then? His organization got way too popular.

Andrew Williams, a spokesman for the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.:
"There is no law that says goods and services must be paid for with Federal Reserve notes. Parties entering into a transaction can establish any medium of exchange that is agreed upon."

Now we turn to the real fraud, the stealing of your hard earned wealth on the public exchanges. As this illegal activity is going on out in the open (including the SEC grandfathering previously counterfeited securities circulating on the exchanges!!), where's the FBI and Secret Service when you need'em? Oh, I almost forgot, they're busy raiding issuers of honest money. Please read on.

Is there any wonder how a provider of a stable alternative currency is raided by federal law enforcement and their assets seized when trillions are being illegally pilfered on Wall Street while enforcers of the Department of Justice and the more pathetic Securities and Exchange Commission look the other way? Besides the vaporization of assets with the collapse of exotic financial instruments and detonation of powerhouse banks, some of which had been in existence for over one hundred years, there is the very problematic issue of "naked short selling." This is larger than most people think. This is huge and it also extends to the commodities exchanges (one being the US based COMEX). Basically, investment banking houses and brokerage firms have been creating electronic shares and selling them on the exchanges. They have been selling assets with no title to them as they dilute existing share values. Stories of more shareholder votes cast than issued shares at annual shareholder meetings can only mean that many of the securities on your financial statement might very well be other than issued by the corporation in which you think you own. These perps have taken it upon themselves to act like mini-Federal Reserve Banks by creating assets without regard to the prohibition of this activity by Regulation SHO and other statutes. This regulation requires short sellers to locate the stock that they sold by a certain deadline, which must be accounted for to prevent this very activity. Legitimate short selling, per se, has never been the problem. For those unfamiliar with market trading, forget the term "short selling" and note that what is being addressed here is the counterfeiting of securities, selling them, and taking in a free lunch, courtesy of shareholders.

Regarding the COMEX, some experts estimate that today, 90% of all gold and silver contracts outstanding at anyone time, have no gold and silver backing them should investors demand physical delivery. Recently during the volatile movement of gold and silver prices, it is estimated that one or two of the US mega-investment banks sold enough non-existent paper silver and gold out to an equivalent of one year's future production. So contrived are the current spot prices of the white and yellow metals, that physical bullion has been getting very difficult to come by with physical silver deliveries estimated at six to eight weeks for delivery and gold premiums for bullion coins $80 or so above the 'official' spot price of gold. Even with the higher premiums, inventory has still been depleted almost down to nothing. I know of no bullion dealers from about a dozen, who have any supply on hand as of the day of this writing.

Below is a very impacting interview which explains in good detail the overt criminal activity on Wall Street and the COMEX and how regulators are non-responsive to complaints. The loss of confidence could have an impact lasting decades. Most people alive today don't realize that it took until the mid-1950s until the DOW achieved break even from the market top in 1929 and that's excluding the factor of survivorship bias. If you wish to listen to the unbelievable descriptions of the rampant fraud, play the interview below, or download and save the file (link provided) to listen later on:

File version of the interview. Bud Burrell of http://www.thesanitycheck.com/ is interviewed by Jim Puplava of http://www.financialsense.com/ .

Right click the link/save: Burell interview

So there you have it. Not only is the Federal Reserve and its largest and complicit debtor the United States Treasury throwing money around and diluting the value of the dollar, we now have registered firms diluting another form of holding wealth, equities for a double screw-job.

From a news report on the LIBERTY DOLLAR raid:
"We have no money. We have no products. We have no records to even know what was ordered or what you are owed," von NotHaus wrote in the e-mail, which was sent to Liberty Dollar customers. "We have nothing but the will to push forward and overcome this massive assault on our liberty and our right to have real money as defined by the US Constitution. We should not to be defrauded by the fake government money." Source: LIBERTY DOLLAR Offices Raided

Now, do you suppose that the federal agents who participated in the LIBERTY DOLLAR raid are seeing their retirement account values diminish during this current market chaos? Will their pensions still be available if the government is hit with insolvency? Maybe they should ask pre-USSR collapse KGB officers how it went? If so, they can pat themselves on the back for participating in taking down an organization which offered the American people the opportunity to engage in private agreements using gold and silver money per Article I Section X of the US Constitution. A take down of an organization by order of a government which, by its actions, would regard its subjects as batteries to be tapped or cows to be milked. Now, to which constitution did those participating federal law enforcement agents swear an oath to protect?? Good job guys! Great work in aiding and abetting the financial take down of yourselves, your friends and family, the entire country! Some day and not soon enough when their usefulness has run its course, the help's going to find out that the dude's at the top don't give a shit about them either.

Big changes are on the horizon. Are you ready for the shift?

For what its worth...if just to let them know that we know: SEC Center for Complaints

SEC Complaint Center 100 F Street NE, Washington, D.C. 20549-0213. You can also send a fax to 202-772-9295.

The Moral Hazard of Funny Money

Excerpts: How to be a Successful Tyrant

"How to be a Successful Tyrant"

The Megalomaniac Manifesto

by Larken Rose

Control the Choices
Rather than trying to squelch all disagreement (which you will find to be impossible), focus instead on controlling the "spectrum" of ideas discussed in public; define the limits of what kinds of beliefs are "civilized" and "reasonable." For example, a public debate on whether you should rule all the peasants is unacceptable, but a public debate on the particular manner or degree of your rule is not only allowable but desirable. If your subjects are arguing over whether you should take 60% of what they produce or 70% of what they produce, you have already won, since both "sides" are implicitly conceding that you should take at least 60% of what they produce.

The reason such a "debate" is desirable is that it keeps the peasants thinking they have some say, and that they are knowledgeable and "involved," without actually providing them with any means to achieve freedom. Without this type of outlet, they may end up openly resisting you. As another tactic, do not vary the amount of oppression, but vary its justification. For example, you can win followers by suggesting that the peasants should be extorted to "help the poor,"instead of being extorted to finance a war (or vice versa). Of course, ideas such as "Don't extort us at all" must be kept out ofthe public debate entirely. Let the peasants find release in arguing over what flavor of oppression they will have, but never over whether they will be oppressed at all.

Comparative Oppression
Remarkably, if you give the peasants a choice between your desired level of control and something even worse (if there is anything worse), they will see you as a pro-freedom hero. Peasants tend to be remarkably unobservant, forgetful, and not at all objective. If you offer only to punch them in the nose rather than shoot them,they will praise you for it. If you promise to kick them in the head twice a day rather than three times a day, they will vote foryou in droves.

A classic example of such "comparative oppression" can be seen inthe so-called "two party" political system now in place in the United States. The party which promises to cut the levels of federal extortion back to 50% of what an individual produced are praised as being for "limited government." Of course, by any objective measure, they are advocates of oppression. Only by comparing themselves to something worse can they dupe the peasants into believing they are in any way pro-freedom.

Influence, Not Censorship
In addition to controlling the "education" (indoctrination) system, one of the best ways to ensure that your subjects are getting a daily dose of your indoctrination is to control the "news" they are exposed to. Of course, just reporting significant facts and occurrences provides no opportunity for thought control, but deciding which facts to mention, which facts to ignore, which"facts" to make up, and how to spin the facts, while throwing in opinion-shaping messages disguised as "reporting," can give enormous control.

The skillful tyrant controls the message, not by blatant censorship and state-owned media, but by more subtle means of "influence." Otherwise, the peasants will openly resist the censorship, will not believe your message, and may even create their own "underground"media to combat it. But if the media appears to them to be a neutral and objective "free press," your ability to control their thoughts and beliefs will be enormous.

Like any other business, "the press" can be controlled and manipulated without the use of open force. If you can get people of like mind (i.e., elitists who think they have every right to rule the "unwashed masses") to hold the highest positions at the newspapers, TV stations, etc., they will push your agenda for you,without the need of a conscious conspiracy. In any hierarchical organization, all you need to do is have an ally at the top, and the underlings will naturally "evolve" to match your agenda. Think of it as "trickle-down tyranny," where those who see eye to eye with the top dog will get promoted, will have job security, etc., while those who see things differently will naturally want to leave, or will get fired, or will at least get muzzled. If the CEO or owner of the "Anytown Daily Newspaper"is an elitist buddy of yours, and supports all of your power-grab plans, it is only natural that his publication will reflect that mindset. The underlings will know that to write something the boss disagrees with is to write their own pink slip.

"If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. ... We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks; they pull the strings and we dance." [John Swinton (New York Times Chief of Staff)]

Infecting Existing Media
Making your own media from scratch is both difficult and unnecessary. Publications like Pravda, which are well known for being mouth pieces for governments, are not very effective because the people know not to trust them. It is far better to use your influence to take over (not openly, of course) already existing media outlets that already have many viewers, listeners or readers,and that have a certain level of credibility. With a little patience, it is not difficult to transform a relatively "objective"organization into a perpetual advertisement for your agenda. People in the media like attention and like to feel important. It is standard operating procedure for politicians to talk only to the reporters they like, meaning those who don't give them problems, contradict them, make fools of them, etc. Those who kiss up to politicians will hold their positions as "reporters" on government affairs. The others don't get interviews, have nothing to"report," and so have no jobs. Again, there is no need for a conspiracy; human nature will do the work for you.

Having "connections" with the management of media outlets is the best route, since you can easily have any reporter fired (or worse) if he writes something unfavorable about you. As with any industry, if you implement all manner of "regulation" of the media, then you always have some "legal" way to hurt an organization that spreads messages harmful to your agenda.

"The majority of Americans get their news and information about what is going on with their government from entities that are licensed by and subject to punishment at the hands of that very government." [Neal Boortz]

But aside from the occasional uppity reporter who needs to be put in his place (a coffin, perhaps), it is far more effective to avoid confrontation and simply use your ill-gotten wealth and influence to mold the media outlets into what you want them to be. Any company that achieves top status will be afraid of losing it, and so won't want to anger someone with as much power as you have at your disposal. People with something to lose tend to become docile and don't "make waves." (To wit, you can count on one finger all the strongly libertarian "reporters" who can still be seen on the mainstream American "news.")

Spectrum of Discussion
One effective method of propaganda does not deal with what is saidbut with what is not discussed. The range of opinions the peasants are exposed to has an enormous impact on what they will perceive as reasonable. Peasants have few ideas of their own, so if they are exposed to only two "different" views, both of which support your plans for control, they will almost certainly think only about which pro-tyranny viewpoint they like better, rather than being original enough to decide that neither of the presented viewpoints makes sense.

"In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own." [Alexis de Tocqueville]

The peasants must feel they have a choice of what to believe, so the message must look like a "debate" instead of a sermon. However, the "debate" should be so limited that anything even approaching an anti-tyranny opinion must be seen as outside the realm of rational debate.

"The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities." [Alan Bloom]

If the accepted public discourse about some government redistribution scheme is nothing more than petty bickering over details, then someone who comes out and suggests doing away with the scheme entirely can easily be painted as an extremist crackpot.

Source: http://www.tyrantbook.com/

Behind the Drug War--Scratching the Surface

Somehow, Nancy Reagan forgot this part when she got her "Just Say No," campaign underway.

A modern day run-down here: "The CIA, Contras, Gangs and Crack."

More: Media Censor CIA Ties With Medellin Drug Cartel
Why? See: OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD

CRACK THE CIA video:
















See also: "The Oliver North File"

Drug War: Covert Money, Power & Policy: Propaganda

Prohibition is about economic and military power, not health. It was the geopolitical utility of medical monopoly that saw it come to pass. The Harrison Act was conceived in China, at the 1909 Shanghai Opium Commission, the idea being that America should pass a model "no license" law it could then ask other nations to adopt. President Roosevelt had arbitrated the end of the Russo-Japanese War only to observe Russia and Japan dividing Manchuria, Mongolia and Korea between them. With China beginning to industrialize on a massive scale, all the imperial powers were delighted to have a "pro-Chinese" issue they could sell while competing for China. America, with never more than 2500 troops in China, had the weakest military position, and so led the fight for an "open door" and an end to the opium trade. The Chinese leadership had grown to hate opium because the British controlled the nationwide trade, and had used it as a lever to control China. Industrialization, however, with its mills, mines and railroads, had created different stakes. For America, Chinese cooperation in the industrial competition was essential. The weaker the British position, the stronger the U.S. The Chinese government encouraged groups like the Foochow Anti-opium Society, below, to express their politically correct feelings for the foreign press.

Current History, October, 1924

Wright criminalized "nonmedical" use of "opium or coca leaves or any compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, or preparation thereof." Wiley's unempirical equation of herbs and alkaloids had already achieved the status of legal precedent. Lobbying Congress in 1910 for his new bill, Wright fretted about cocaine's "encouragement among the humbler ranks of the Negro population in the South....it has been authoritatively stated that cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes of the South and other sections of the country." Here you have the geopolitical, the economic utility of racism. Wright wrote the editor of the Louisville Journal Courier that "a strong editorial from you on the abuse of cocaine in the South would do a great deal of good - do not quote me or the Department of State."

The 1912 Hague Opium Convention, which grew out of the Shanghai Commission, committed the U.S. by treaty to Wright’s law, the 1914 Harrison Act, a domestic law controlling opium and coca products. Below, Hearst’s Magazine revivifies the 1880’s pulp legend of the roué Clendenin, in time to support Harrison. Domestic drug propaganda is still the tool of imperial foreign policy. Today the operative treaties, also engineered by the U.S., are the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 Vienna Antitrafficking Convention.

Hearst’s Magazine, 1/1913

Wright wrote Bishop Brent, his fellow delegate to the Shanghai Opium Commission, that the new Secretary of State Knox was "only now grasping the fact that in this opium business he has the oil to smooth any troubled waters he may meet with at Peking in his aggressive business enterprises there." The other delegate, future President William Howard Taft, the inventor of "dollar diplomacy," likewise worried about "one of the greatest commercial prizes in the world....the trade with the 400,000,000 Chinese."

America's "aggressive business enterprises" were challenged head-on by anti-prohibitionist Eugene Debs, leader of the powerful American Railway Union. Debs' moderate, libertarian Socialist Party was the electoral umbrella for scores of left-wing groups, including the industrial workers in the Northeast; German and Scandinavian enclaves in the upper Midwest; the radical populists of the Great Plains; Big Bill Haywood's tough miners and lumberjacks in the Western Federation of Miners - core group of the IWW; Margaret D. Robins' National Women's Trade Union League, and Alice Paul's direct action National Woman's Party - the radical spearhead that actually forced through woman suffrage.

It was their ideas of the minimum wage, social security and unemployment insurance that helped stabilize capitalism during the Great Depression. And it was Lippmann who warned that "the manufacture of consent" by the corporate owners of the media was a deadly threat to real democracy. As corporate hit-man Edward Bernays, "the father of public relations" put it, in 1928, in Propaganda: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systemically."

Propaganda during these years meant William Randolph Hearst, who owned the most powerful chain of yellow journals in the country. Hearst built its core circulation, the Chicago Examiner, using Moe Annenberg's gunsels to hijack delivery trucks, bomb newsstands and attack newsboys. Hearst literally fought for circulation city by city.

In 1910 Annenberg branched out for himself in Milwaukee, although the connection to Hearst remained. By the mid-twenties Annenberg owned Racing Form and American Racing Record, the basic betting sheets, and the General News Bureau, the wire service that provided up-to-the-minute race results. Without Annenberg's wire, bookies were an easy target for those who did have the latest results. Annenberg's full partner was Al Capone, who had worked with Luciano in New York before going to Chicago.

As the official mob wire, Annenberg's Nationwide News Service, by the mid-30's, enrolled more than 15,000 clients in 223 cities in 39 states. Hearst tagged along, always able to count on mob goons for "circulation." Hearst, in turn, always peddled the mob's "anti-communist" political line.

Hearst also owned Kimberly Clark-St.Regis, the paper and lumber conglomerate that is still busy gobbling up the competition. A major Kimberly Clark-St. Regis customer was DuPont, which converted Kimberly's wood pulp into explosives and synthetic fiber. Dupont's major competition was the enormopus hemp industry.

Marijuana was one of America's most valuable crops in 1900. Much of the country's textiles, canvas, sails, rope, paper, paints, industrial solvents, lighting oil, machine oil, food oil and medicine was made from it. Marijuana was the raw material for fire hoses, ships rigging, fine linen, work clothes, good paper, candy, bread, bird seed and cheap energy.

The products of a Michigan hemp mill; Scientific American, 6/4/1921

DuPont's major banker, Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, engineered the legal destruction of the hemp industry. The first DEA, the Narcotics Division of the Prohibition Unit of the Treasury Department, was founded and funded by the Volstead Act of 1919, the ennabling act of the 18th Amendment, Prohibition. The charter of the Narcotics Division, of course, was the State Department's Harrison Act of 1914, an original part of Prohibition's political package. The Harrison Anti-Narcotics Act was originally the responsibility of Treasury's Alcohol Tax Division, but went largely unenforced until the Volstead Act of 1919 funded the Prohibition Unit and its subdivision, the Narcotics Division.

“The Transfer”; Ireland in Columbus Dispatch

The first chief of the Narcotics Division, Levi Nutt, held that job for ten years. But in 1930, Treasury Secretary Mellon appointed an Assistant Commissioner of Prohibition specializing in diplomacy, Harry Anslinger, to head Treasury's reorganized Bureau of Narcotics. Treasury's hopelessly corrupt Prohibition Unit was transferred to Justice. One of the straws that forced this reorganization reveals the actual dynamics of the situation: the indictment of Narcotics Chief Levi Nutt and most of his New York division by a New York Grand Jury, for being on the Rothstein/Lansky/Luciano payroll. Nutt took over the Narcotics Division in 1920 under exactly the same circumstances.

When the legendary gambler Arnold Rothstein was murdered by one of Dutch Schultz' hitters in 1928, his dying body was found with a small fortune in opium, morphine, heroin and cocaine - and all his carefully kept legal books, including the history of his relationship with Nutt. The rabid prohibitionist Nutt started his tenure as head of the Narcotics Division in 1920 with his son listed as Rothstein's attorney of record for tax matters with the Treasury Department, and his son-in-law operating as Rothstein's New York accountant and attorney.

The criminal-governmental symbiosis is a two-way street, of course. If gambling were legal, who'd need Annenberg's gambling wire? If marijuana were legalized, the hood monopoly would be broken and marijuana would lose 95% of its value. The great hoods, geniuses at organizing street muscle, were for Prohibition, and Assistant Commissioner of Prohibition Anslinger was one of their major allies, operating the side of the street they couldn't independently run.

Alcohol and Drug Prohibitionist Anslinger, like his soul-mate J. Edgar Hoover, was in bed with the Mellon-Hearst-Annenberg-Syndicate hoods from the beginning. Anslinger always regarded Drug Prohibition as a tool for "social reorganization," fearing "communist" unions far more than Syndicate heroin gangs, who were, after all, Mellon's, DuPont's, Hearst's and Annenberg's patriotic strike breakers. They were also J. Edgar Hoover's most dangerous COINTELPRO operatives - right from the murderous Palmer raids of 1919, which Hoover organized.

A major target of those raids was Eugene V. Debs. The popular Debs stumped the country in opposition to the war, insisting that if industry supported the war it was only because it was to its tactical advantage to do so. This happens to have been the case. Corporate profits shot up 300% between 1914 and 1919, and leveled off at a spectacular 30% after the war. Inflation, on the other hand, doubled between 1913 and 1920, completely wiping out the modest wartime wage increases. In 1919 a bushel of corn bought five gallons of gas; two years later it bought a half gallon. Family farms went up for sale all across the country, gobbled up by gas companies. Eugene Debs, a farm boy, understood this.

The wartime head of the Committee on Public Information, America's first official Propaganda Minister, was Harper's answer to Good Housekeeping's Harvey Wiley, George Creel, just before the war the most famous anti-patent medicine screamer in the country. Creel's 1915-16 series in Harper's is full of dragons, snakes and dead babies boiled in soothing syrup.


LHJ, 4/1908

Incredibly, on Germany's surrender in 1918, Wilson and the Allies immediately rushed massive amounts of armaments to the Prussian militarists they had just defeated. The Spartacists had risen in Germany, taking Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Essen, Bremen and Dusseldorf, and the Allies knew they couldn't negotiate a reliable contract of reparations with them, so they backed the Prussians.

The revolt took the Prussians months to crush, and it is open to question whether they could have done it without Allied arms. Margaret Sanger's inspiration, Rosa Luxemberg, the birth strike advocate, died leading this revolt. Had we heeded the socialists and taken the opportunity to crush the Prussians once and for all, we would have saved ourselves the last great battle of World War I, World War II, as predicted in writing by Rosa Luxemberg on the eve of her execution by firing squad.

Chortled The New York Times, á la George Creel, December 12, 1918: "...in a few years more Germany would have been irresistable in war, for she would have made drug fiends of all the other nations of the world. Into well-known German brands of tooth paste and patent medicines - naturally for export only - habit-forming drugs were to be introduced; at first a little, then more, as the habit grew on the non-German victim and his system craved ever greater quantities."



NYT, 2/22/1919 and 2/27/1921

"But although the tale of this Teuton-all-too-Teuton scheme is probably a mere invention, Germany did concoct and spread through the world a habit-forming drug, and her leaders in this war have made good use of its ravages in other countries. More than half a century ago socialism was invented in Germany; and the rulers of the empire, forseeing its vast possiblities in breaking down national morale, fostered its propagation abroad while they did their best to stamp out the habit at home....Just as workmen in the tooth paste factories might have surreptitiously sampled the brands made for export only and found attractions not present in the products for the home market, so the Germans took to socialism and neosocialism. It is a rare poison that will not act on the system of its own inventor."

That is almost exactly what Harry Anslinger told a Senate committee and the United Nations Narcotics Commission in 1951 about the Chinese Reds, holding up a bag of "Lions Globe" heroin he said they were shipping to our boys in Korea. This assertion was the basis of a major propaganda campaign that lasted for years. Anslinger handled the press with the finesse of Creel himself. Lions Globe was actually the brand manufactured by our own Kuomintang allies, Chiang's boys, and the more entrepreneurial of the natives, also our allies, in the Golden Triangle, as our boys in Nam discovered, and as our own Bureau of Narcotics confirmed in 1972.

NYT, 7/18/1954

In a famous 1959 case, Anslinger's top international agent, George White, an OSS/CIA operative, made a major heroin bust. It was Burmese Kuomintang heroin funnelled through Hong Kong, bound for distribution by the American Syndicate. But by allowing the ringleader, a well-known member of San Francisco's KMT-organized Chinese Anti-Communist League to escape, White was enabled to claim that it was Red Chinese dope, "most of it from a vast poppy field near Chungking." The Kuomintang is for Prohibition. Today we still arm the KMT, Burmese, Thai and Indonesian warlords, the Sicilian and Chinese gangs still own the docks, and the Lions Globe just keeps on comin', like toothpaste out of a tube.

The War on Pain Doctors

In recent decades, researchers have recognized the inadequacy of this definition. On the one hand, some drugs that don't cause physical withdrawal symptoms (for example, cocaine) clearly can produce a potentially self-destructive desire for more. On the other hand, the vast majority of those who try even the most addictive substances don't develop lasting habits. Researchers therefore redefined addiction to emphasize craving and negative consequences rather than withdrawal symptoms. The diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association now recognizes that physical dependence is neither necessary nor sufficient for addiction, which is characterized by continued use of a substance despite ongoing drug-related problems. For pain patients, of course, the drug produces fewer problems and greater functioning, rather than the reverse.

Some patient advocates say drug warriors can't accept this reality because it undermines the logic of prohibition: If most people don't get hooked when exposed to the "hardest" of all categories of drugs, if patients' lives get dramatically better and they function perfectly well on doses that are supposed to incapacitate, stupefy, and derange, why is it so important for the government to protect us from these substances? From this point of view, the DEA must fight pain control because functional patients on high doses of opioids threaten its authority.

"It completely puts the lie to the whole criminal approach because it shows that these molecules are not evil, that people can and do function well on them," says the Pain Relief Network's Siobhan Reynolds. "It undermines the whole basis for the war on drugs and makes it a strictly scientific/medical issue."

More....

CNBC's Jim Cramer on the Hedge Fund Manager's "How To" of Market Manipulation; You won't hear this on CNBC

From Jim Cramer's own experience as a hedge fund manager, this is a must watch video on how investors are taken to the cleaners by market manipulation. Things are said here that he admits would not be said on the network. Listen closely...this borders on the criminal.

Note: You may experience problems viewing the following video if you are using Firefox as your browser. Embedded videos work best with IE.



CRAMER REVEALS A BIT TOO MUCH
NEW YORK POST
By RODDY BOYD
March 20, 2007 -- Flamboyant Wall Street trader turned TV host Jim Cramer, not known for being the shy, retiring type, might have said too much in a video interview he did for a financial Web site.

The host of CNBC's daily program "Mad Money" had hedge fund-trading desks buzzing yesterday after he bragged about manipulating stock prices during his days as a trader.

In the video from TheStreet.com's "Wall Street Confidential" Webcast, Cramer boasts about manipulating the price of a high-flying stock down, and even acknowledges that doing so might have been illegal. The video is making the rounds on YouTube.

"A lot of times when I was short, I would create a level of activity beforehand that would drive the futures. . . . It's a fun game," Cramer said in the Webcast, which was moderated by TheStreet.com Executive Editor Aaron Task.

Cramer later said that "no one else in the world would ever admit that, but I don't care."

However, seconds later, he acknowledged, "I'm not going to say that on TV," referring to his show on CNBC.

A remarkably successful money manager when he ran the $450 million Cramer Berkowitz hedge fund, Cramer in the Webcast shared his "tips" on how to drive a stock price down so that a short-position - a bet that a stock price would drop - remains profitable.

He added that the strategy - while illegal - was safe enough because, "the Securities and Exchange Commission never understands this."

A call to Cramer was not returned.