Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 12 Num. 09
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
Ill fares the land,
To hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates
And men decay.
-- Oliver Goldsmith
First there is money. Then someone gets the idea, "Why not turn the money itself into a commodity?" From its normal use as a medium of exchange, the very money becomes something to be trafficked in and profitable in itself.
Writes Aristotle in On Politics:
Money being naturally barren, to make it breed money is preposterous and a perversion from the end of its institution, which was only to serve the purpose of exchange and not of increase.
Usury is most reasonably detested as the increase arises from the money itself, and not by employing it to the purpose for which it was intended.
In Rome, in 48 B.C., the issuing of money was done privately by a few wealthy families. "Julius Caesar took this privilege from them and restored it to the government to whom it belonged." [1] For this, Julius Caesar was assassinated.
Jesus Christ dared to oppose the "money changers," and for that he was murdered. "As long as Christ confined his teachings to the realm of morality and righteousness, He was undisturbed; it was not until He assailed the established economic system and 'cast out' the profiteers and 'overthrew the tables of the money changers,' that He was doomed." [2] Jesus accused the "money changers" of turning the Temple into a "den of thieves." Subsequently, "the scribes and the chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him." [3] The day after Jesus challenged the money system, He was interrogated. The next day, He was betrayed. The following day, He was tried, and on the fourth day He was executed.
Private banks such as the "Bank of England," "The Bank of the United States," and the "Federal Reserve" are given misleading names, implying they are government banks. The First "Bank of the United States" was owned by private interests, most of them British, including Mayer Amschel Rothschild who said, "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its laws."
When the charter for the First "Bank of the United States" was not renewed in 1811, the bank's British owners were enraged. There followed the War of 1812, during which the British invaded the U.S. and burned Washington, D.C. to the ground. Shortly thereafter, in 1816, a charter for the Second "Bank of the United States" was approved by Congress. Vehemently opposed to the First "Bank of the United States" had been Thomas Jefferson, who warned, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."
When the time approached for renewal of the Second "Bank of the United States'" charter, our president was Andrew Jackson. President Jackson called the Second B.U.S. "that thing," and felt it was a menace. Said Jackson, "If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations." The big money interests fought Jackson through their newspapers and by withdrawing money from circulation. With less money in circulation, there was an economic depression and, of course, Jackson was blamed. Nonetheless, the People stood by Andrew Jackson and the Second B.U.S. was defeated.
In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln went to the New York bankers to obtain loans with which to fund the Union armed forces. The bankers told him, "Sure. We'll lend the money -- at 30 percent interest." Disgusted, Lincoln turned down their offer and devised a plan of his own. He persuaded Congress to pass a bill authorizing the issuance of legal tender treasury notes. The new money, called "greenbacks" because of the green ink used to print them, worked. They were taken "at par" and stayed "at par" until the Money Barons used the legislators they owned to hurry through a "refinement" on the greenback law. On Feb. 25, 1862, an "Exception Clause" Act was passed. Henceforth, the greenbacks would be "good for all debts both public and private" =except= duty on imports and interest on government debts. =Then=, the banksters had an excuse to discount the greenbacks by 30 percent; if you paid the banker a greenback dollar, he only allowed it to count for 70 cents.
During the Civil War, the Money Power bought up government bonds. They paid greenbacks for these bonds. When the Civil War ended, the government owed these ultra-rich a bonded debt worth billions of dollars. And these super-wealthy manipulators controlled things so that, instead of being repaid with the same greenbacks with which they had bought the bonds, they were repaid with gold. In April of 1866 "The Contraction Act" was passed. U.S. currency, including greenbacks, was to be burned. Between 1866 and 1879, the amount of money in circulation evaporated. In 1873, an "Act Revising and Amending the Laws Relative to the Mints, Assay Offices, and the Coinage of the United States" was passed. Hidden within the law was a clause which repealed the "unit clause," previously passed by Congress in 1792. Up until 1873, the monetary unit had been based on silver. Gold was also money, but its value was based =on silver=. We were =not= using a "bi-metallic" system. (The wisdom in having silver as the monetary unit was that silver was less easy to hoard by unscrupulous persons wishing to make money scarce.) Thus, gold became, for awhile, the only official money and the Money Barons who had bought government bonds for greenbacks were repaid with gold.
As always happens, the shrinking of available money brought on a severe economic depression. In 1873 alone, 500,000 men lost their jobs. For those lucky breadwinners who still had work, their wages were drastically reduced. But the hard times led many to a political awakening. "A large number of people in the United States discovered that the economic premises of their society were working against them." [4] In the South and the West, the Farmers Alliance was born. More than a political and economic movement, the Farmers Alliance was "a new way of looking at society, a way of thinking that represented a shaking off of inherited forms of deference." [4] With their political awakening came self-respect and self-education. The Alliance "pioneered a new political language to describe the 'money trust,' the gold standard, and the private national banking system that underlay all of their troubles." [4]
In August of 1886, the allied farmers issued what became known as
The Cleburne Demands
(Excerpts)
1. All land held for speculative purposes (much of it held by
foreign syndicates and domestic railroad syndicates) should be
taxed.
2. Laws to prevent foreigners from speculating in American land.
3. Certain railroad lands to revert to the government (which had, through bribed legislators, originally given away the lands to the railroads) and be declared open to purchase by actual settlers.
4. A halt to "the dealing in futures of all agricultural products."
5. "A federally administered national banking system embracing a flexible currency, to be achieved through the substitution of legal tender treasury notes."
In the latter 19th century, besides the money monopoly, a new power group emerged: The Associated Press. "In an era of trusts, it was one of the nation's most effective monopolies." [5] Most Americans were "aghast," writes J. Anthony Lukas in his magnificent book, Big Trouble, "that a 'great octopus' like the AP could embrace eight hundred member papers." Wrote one independent newspaper editor of the time, "Here is the most tremendous engine for Power that ever existed in this world. If you can conceive all that Power ever wielded by the great autocrats of history... to be massed together into one vast unit of Power, even this would be less than the power now wielded by the Associated Press." [5] And controlling the Associated Press was, of course, the Money Monopoly.
The Oliver Stone movie, "JFK," reportedly financed by Rothschild family funds, focused on the Vietnam angle as the motivation behind President Kennedy's murder. Not well known is that, shortly before he died, John F. Kennedy had quietly overseen the issuance of interest-free notes (some of which are still in circulation). [6] And Oliver Stone, although a talented film-maker, portrayed Henry Kissinger as if he was the icon for elder statesmen in his movie, "Nixon." Why would "rebel" Stone show Kissinger in such a good light? And why is it that the high-power public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton, which coordinated propaganda favoring U.S. entry into the Persian Gulf War, handled the publicity for Stone's film, "JFK"? [6] Could it be that, on the road to success, Oliver Stone has had to make little "compromises"? To paraphrase Mayer Amschel Rothschild: "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its movies."
When the late J. Anthony Lukas decided to call his book "Big Trouble," was he thinking, "Big Trouble THEN; Big Trouble NOW"? The Money Power has gone hog wild lately. Citicorp illegally merges with Travelers Group and takes it for granted that the Executive branch will not enforce the law and that Congress will even =re-write= the law and get the newly-formed Citigroup off the hook. And get ready now for "SuperMarket Banks" allowed to handle all financial transactions under one roof, including the buying and selling of stocks. Meanwhile, the average American worker begs for decent employment, competes with imported foreign labor for survival wages, has little job security -- AND turns on his TV to hear that "the economy is good."
Ill fares the land.
---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
[1] Lincoln: Money Martyred by Dr. R.E. Search. Omni
Publications, PO Box 900566, Palmdale, CA 93590
[2] Money and Its True Function by F.R. Burch. qtd. in
Lincoln: Money Martyred.
[3] Mark 11: 18.
[4] The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwyn. London: Oxford
University Press, 1978. ISBN: 0-19-502417-6.
[5] Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1997. ISBN: 0-684-80858-7.
[6] ...And The Truth Shall Set You Free by David Icke. ISBN:
0-952-6147-1-5.
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