There's a lot we can learn from the Greeks

 

Although most Americans and Europeans cannot fathom that they might someday become Greeks, the upside to the Greek tragedy is that the Greeks themselves are proving that folks can indeed survive tough economic times.

Greeks Adopt Alternative Currencies as Economy Implodes As Greece’s economy and the euro continue to struggle, regular Greeks are increasingly taking matters into their own hands, creating informal underground barter markets and even alternative currencies. And the government is actually encouraging it. Over a dozen non-euro trading networks are already believed to be operating in communities throughout the embattled nation, with more on the way. But one effort in particular — called Local Alternative Units, or “TEMs” in Greek — has attracted a great deal of international attention. In the port town of Volos — where unemployment is above 20 percent, the economy is struggling, and tax rates are rising — a group of locals decided it was time to take action. The population still had the same skills and resources as before the crisis, just not the euros needed for commerce. So, a handful of people got together and formed the alternative currency known as the TEM. It quickly took off. And major newspapers and media outlets around the world — from the United States to the United Kingdom — have taken notice as it continues to expand.  Read more here.

As government and social services break down, misery is acute but the human spirit to survive is also very much alive. John Henley, journalist for The Guardian, wrote "A determination to 'move beyond anger to creativity' is driving a strong barter economy in some places." Bartering, underground economies and the will to survive are leading the transition from dependency to self-sufficiency. The underground Greek economy is substantial and it's been estimated to be as high as 50% of all economic activity. Of course, American bureaucrats absolutely cringe at the notion of a strong underground economy and Paul Solman of PBS wrote "If you think there's been a tax revolt in the U.S. -- or even California -- consider Greece. The estimates we've heard, from the sources that seem the most reliable: 40-50 percent of the Greek economy is underground. i.e., untaxed." The Greek government isn't overtly interfering with underground economic activity because it's paralyzed and powerless.

The Greeks just didn't accidentally fall on hard times. They created the nightmare they are living by acquiring mountains of debt to fuel its socialist cradle to the grave paradise. Greece isn't anywhere near out of the woods and it's got hugely powerful public sector labor unions who are largely responsible for bankrupting the nation. Michael Lewis summed up Greece accurately in his book Boomerang.

As it turns out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past twelve years the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms – and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a years. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance….pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension…..and there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.”

What have the Greeks learned? More importantly, what can we learn from the Greeks?

America Morphing into a Nazified Police State

If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. - Dwight Eisenhower

The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form.  The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence."  -- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi

Liberals were right when they attacked Bush and the Republicans on egregious abuses of civil liberties. However, the very same liberals and Democrats who were so rightfully outraged over Bush and Republican assaults on civil liberties are now quiet. Actually, they are worse than quiet and have stood by silently while Obama and Gang vastly intensified draconian Bush era civil liberty abuses with NDAA (a piece of legislation signed by Obama that provides for the indefinite detention of American citizens without due process), Attorney General Eric Holders loudly proclaiming that the regime can murder American citizens anytime and anywhere without cause and numerous other pieces of legislation. However, even among liberals, Democrats and their traditional organizations, dissent is beginning to surface as they are forced to face the stone cold reality that Obama is worst than Bush on civil liberties and that his administration is just building on Bush era civil liberty infringements.

 The Patriot Act that was passed by Congress within weeks after 911 is a civil liberties slashing horror that effectively negated the 4th amendment by allowing warrantless searches. The government now has the right to invade our privacy, e-mails, telecommunications, financial records, phone conservations and much more – all without obtaining a valid warrant from a judge and showing probable cause. As far as the Constitution is concerned, knowledgeable observers understand full well that the Patriot Act violates the 1, 4th, 5th and 6th amendments known as the Bill of Rights.

While Democrats and civil libertarians objected to the Patriot Act along political lines because it was a perceived as a Republican initiative, few are even willing to admit that the roots of the Patriot Act go all the way back to Bill Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, another civil liberty slashing piece of legislation that followed the Oklahoma City bombing.

According to the website historycommons.org on April 25, 1996 “President Clinton signs the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which the New York Times calls “broad legislation that provides new tools and penalties for federal law-enforcement officials to use in fighting terrorism.” The Clinton administration proposed the bill in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing…. In many ways, the original bill will be mirrored by the USA Patriot Act six years later…. Civil libertarians on both the left and right opposed the legislation. Political analyst Michael Freeman called the proposal one of the “worst assaults on civil liberties in decades,” and the Houston Chronicle called it a “frightening” and “grievous” assault on domestic freedoms…”. Read more here.

Civil libertarians of all political stripes were totally horrified when Obama and the Dems renewed the expiring Bush era Patriot Act without even attempting to cure some of its numerous flaws. Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional attorney who writes extensively about civil liberties and who is well respected by civil libertarians on the right and left, has been consistently critical of the Patriot Act as well as Obama. Greenwald said “Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism”.

But Glenn Greenwald is far from the only person to chirp in on the government’s civil liberties abuses and advocacy for murder of anybody the government deems a terrorist. The John Birch Society (JBS), a very conservative organization that advocates for constitutional rule, said “Surveillance, torture and detention without jury trials have long gone hand-in-hand throughout all of human history. The Soviet KGB reputedly had listening devices everywhere they could, brought people for beatings and torture to the infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow and then “disappeared” its prisoners to the gulag. The Nazi Gestapo also had an all-pervasive intelligence network, engaged in torture, and sent millions of detainees to concentration camps without trial. That's why constitutionalists have opposed the Patriot Act from the beginning. It is a stepping stone to a far more brutal form of government than Americans have historically known.”

The Washington Post is a notorious statist rag that is typically the cheerleader in chief for all the evil perpetrated by our government, Congress, the military industrial complex and the CIA. But shockingly, WP’s Dana Priest and William M. Arkin did an outstanding piece of journalism titled “Monitoring America” that exposes the expansive size and scope of our national security state. The piece states:

“the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators….The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington….This localized intelligence apparatus is part of a larger Top Secret America….Today's story, along with related material on The Post's Web site, examines how Top Secret America plays out at the local level. It describes a web of 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counterterrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions. At least 935 of these organizations have been created since the 2001 attacks or became involved in counterterrorism for the first time after 9/11.”  More here.  

4,058 federal, state and local organizations all creating a centralized command and control police state is very disturbing indeed. Even more surprising is that this stuff has been going on for years/decades and that only 935 of these organizations were created since 911.

Libertarian organizations like Reason, Cato, Lew Rockwell and anti-war.com have been exposing the assaults on civil liberties for years. But apparently, Obama and his Gestapo styled goon machine are attempting to out-Bush Bush on civil liberty assaults.

So many Fedzilla power grabs are in the process of being legislated and/or implemented by our increasingly Nazified Police State that it’s difficult for Americans to even grasp what is being done to them, their liberty and their privacy.

Another civil liberty slashing horror is the emergence of “Fusion Centers”, a Fedzilla initiative that merges local police departments with the military and the Feds, all in the name of national security of course. Civil libertarians have been all over the fusion center issue and grassroots groups have been formed to fight them. The fusion centers represent the emergence of a militarized police state.

Wendy McElroy explains the fusion centers, here, in an article titled An American Stasi?

What is a fusion center? The answer depends on your perspective...If you are privacy or civil-rights advocate, it is part of a powerful new domestic surveillance infrastructure that combines data from both the public and private sectors to track innocent people and so makes Americans less safe from their own government. In that respect, the fusion center is reminiscent of the East German stasi, which used tens of thousands of state police and hundreds of thousands of informers to monitor an estimated one-third of the population...

 Fusion centers began in 2003 under the administration of George W. Bush as a joint project between the departments of Justice and Homeland Security. The purpose is to coordinate federal and local law enforcement by using the "800,000 plus law enforcement officers across the country" whose intimate awareness of their own communities makes them "best placed to function as the 'eyes and ears' of an extended national security community." The fusion centers are hubs for the coordination. By April 2008 there were 58.

The growth has continued under the Obama administration. Indeed, Obama has also continued Bush's concealment of domestic intelligence activity by threatening to veto legislation that authorizes broader congressional oversight or review of intelligence agencies by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). As a result of that threat, the GAO provision was removed from the Intelligence Authorization Act..”

The ACLU has expressed seriously valid concerns regarding the fusion centers, especially since they operate without any congressional oversight and/or accountability by an increasingly shadow government that operates in secret. The ACLU documents its fusion center concerns here.

On a more frightful level, local police departments are beginning to resemble paramilitary organization complete with military grade weapons and equipment. The use of heavily armed SWAT teams used to be very rare and were only utilized under extreme circumstances such as terrorism and hostage rescue. But these days, SWAT teams are used as Nazi styled storm troopers for all kinds of police activities and with such regularity that Americans are becoming desensitized to living in a police state. The federal government has been loading up local police departments with military grade weapons and equipment for decades.

A lot of civil liberty organizations on the left and the right have been documenting the growth and abuse of the emerging paramilitary state. Cato.org actually keeps a data base on botched police raids and the casualties resulting from such violent incursions into the homes of ordinary American citizens; the data base is available at http://www.cato.org/raidmap/. From 1985 to 2010, you can scroll through data state by state and year by year on: death of an innocent, raid on a non-violent offender, raid on an innocent suspect, other examples of paramilitary excess and even unnecessary raids on doctors and sick people. Radley Balko of Cato.org actually testified in 2007 before a House Subcommittee on Crime and his testimony was titled “Our Militarized Police Departments”. His testimony is here and includes:

Since the late 1980s, Mr. Chairman, thanks to acts passed by the U.S. Congress, millions of pieces of surplus military equipment have been given to local police departments across the country.

We’re not talking just about computers and office equipment. Military-grade semi-automatic weapons, armored personnel vehicles, tanks, helicopters, airplanes, and all manner of other equipment designed for use on the battlefield is now being used on American streets, against American citizens.

Academic criminologists credit these transfers with the dramatic rise in paramilitary SWAT teams over the last quarter century.

SWAT teams were originally designed to be used in violent, emergency situations like hostage takings, acts of terrorism, or bank robberies…. These violent raids on American homes, when coupled with the imperfect, often ugly methods used in drug policing, have set the stage for disturbingly frequent cases of police raiding the homes not only of recreational, nonviolent drug users, but the homes of people completely innocent of any crime at all….

800 times per week in this country, a SWAT team breaks open an American’s door, and invades his home. Few turn up any weapons at all, much less high-power weapons. Less than half end with felony charges for the suspects. And only a small percentage end up doing significant time in prison.

As if the fear of a Swat Team busting down your door in the middle of the night isn't bad enough, Americans are also dealing with the revoltingly intrusive TSA searches that frequently constitute outright sexual assaults.  TSA horror stories emerge almost daily as government goons humiliate and degrade human beings by probing their 'junk', body cavities and even subjecting folks with colostomy bags and various prothestics to embarrassing searches.

Finally, government is never about protecting us and is always all about forcing us to live in fear of the government.  That the US government has embarked on a plan to dramatically ratchet up the humiliation and degradation of citizens is a test of how much we are willing to tolerate in our emerging Nazified Police State. God help us if we fail to rise up against this evil.

The Ron Paul campaign NEVER Ends Because it's a REVOLUTION in Progress

As the primary season grinds along and folks are getting depressed because Ron Paul has yet to win one state, I have some advice:

The Ron Paul campaign NEVER ends because it's a REVOLUTION in progress

 It took us many decades (at least a century) to arrives at this miserably low point in our history. The situation isn't about to dramatically change for the better any time soon because the Sheeple People still believe that the government holds the power to just fix everything make it all better. Obviously, sane folks who have analysed the situation intuitively understand that things are really bad and there's absolutely nothing that the government can do to restore prosperity to the people. America desperately needs peace, liberty and prosperity but government is a pox upon those noble goals.

We need to stay focused and continue the Revolution for Liberty. It's growing, it's popular and it's necessary. More importantly, we need to remind ourselves of how much progress we've made since 2008. Just compare Ron Paul's 2008 results vs. 2012. We can honestly shout that 'we've come a long way baby'.

Iowa (RP 2008 10%)
Santorum 25, Romney 25, Paul 21, Gingrich 13

New Hampshire (RP 2008 9%)
Romney 39, Paul 23, Huntsman 17, Gingrich & Santorum 9

South Carolina (RP 2008 4%)
Gingrich 40, Romney 28, Santorum 17, Paul 13

Florida (RP 2008 3%)
Romney 46, Gingrich 33, Santorum 13, Paul 7

Nevada (RP 2008 14%)
Romney 50, Gingrich 20, Paul 19, Santorum 10

Colorado (RP 2008 8%)
Santorum 40, Romney 35, Gingrich 13, Paul 12

Minnesota (RP 2008 16%)
Santorum 45, Paul 27, Romney 17, Gingrich 11

Missouri (RP 2008 5%)
Santorum 55, Romney 25, Paul 12

Maine (RP 2008 18%)
Romney 39, Paul 35, Santorum 18, Gingrich 7

Arizona (RP 2008 4%)
Romney 49, Santorum 26, Gingrich 16, Paul 9

Michigan (RP 2008 6%)
Romney 41, Santorum 37, Paul 12, Gingrich 7

Washington (RP 2008 22%)
 Romney 38, Paul 25, Santorum 24, Gingrich 10

Wyoming Straw Poll (2008 not found)
Romney 39, Santorum 32, Paul 21, Gingrich 8

Alaska (RP 2008 17%)
Romney 33, Santorum 29, Paul 24, Gingrich 14

Georgia (RP 2008 3%)
Gingrich 47, Romney 26, Santorun 20, Paul 7

Idaho (RP 2008 24%)
Romney 62, Santorum 18, Paul 18, Gingrich 2

Massachusetts (RP 2008 3%)
Romney 72, Santorum 12, Paul 10, Gingrich 5

North Dakota (RP 2008 21%)
Santorun 40, Paul 28, Romney 24, Gingrich 9

Ohio (RP 2008 5%)
Romney 38, Santorun 37, Gingrich 15, Paul 9

Oklahoma (RP 2008 3%)
Santorun 34, Romney 28, Gingrich 28, Paul 10

Tennessee RP 2008 6%)
Santorum 37, Romney 28, Gingrich 24, Paul 9

Vermont (RP 2008 7%)
Romney 40, Paul 26, Santorum 24, Gingrich 8

Virginia (RP 2008 5%)
Romney 60, Paul 40

These are not bad numbers, especially when one considers that the most Republican primary voters are mostly social conservatives, big government statists and foreign policy interventionist hawks.  Sadly, the GOP base is hostile to the principles of constitutional liberty as envisioned by our founders.  But the demographics of exit polls are full of hope.  Ron Paul cleaned up with the youth vote and we finally have a generation of folks who have not only rediscovered the principles but liberty but are willing to politically mobilize to fight for liberty.

As a Libertarian since the early 1970's, I've waited 40 freaking years for this Revolution.  It's finally happening, I'm enjoying it and I definitely refuse to get depressed because we haven't won it quickly.

Meanwhile, the Revolution continues and we work to educate folks on issue that are critically important for a free and voluntary society.

I"m full of hope and liberty activists should also be hopeful.  We are WINNING!  

The Horror! The Horror! Must-See War Films

The following article includes recommended war films that depict the horrors of war as complied by John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute.  War may be hell but it has the uncanny ability to whip folks into a nationalistic fervor that renounce their humanity, morality and ethics.

“You can’t show war as it really is on the screen, with all the blood and gore. Perhaps it would be better if you could fire real shots over the audience’s head every night, you know, and have actual casualties in the theater.”—Sam Fuller, film director and author

War is a grisly business, a horror of epic proportions. In terms of human carnage alone, war’s devastation is staggering. For example, it is estimated that approximately 231 million people died worldwide during the wars of the 20th century. However, this figure does not take into account the walking wounded—both physically and psychologically—who “survive” war.

Eventually, war will be our undoing.

Read the rest here

The Rutherford Institute

JFK was NOT Murdered Because of Executive Order 11110.

Much has been written and circulated on Youtube that JFK was murdered by the Banksters because he issued Executive Order 11110 on 6/4/63. The conspiracy theorists theorize that JFK intended to reign in the powers of the Federal Reserve with the signing of EO 11110. This premise is absolutely not true. The real truth of EO 11110 is clearly documented by G. Edward Griffin in his extraordinary masterpiece on the Federal Reserve and central banks titled The Creature From Jekyll Island, a must read book for students of the Federal Reserve and central banking. Griffin writes:

“In 1981, a rumor was circulated that President Kennedy had been assassinated by agents of the hidden money power because he had signed Executive Order #11110 instructing the Treasury to print more than $4 billion in United States Notes…According to the rumor, the bankers were furious because they would lose interest payments on the money supply. When the Order was tracked down, however, it involved Silver certificates, not United States Notes…But there is no interest paid on Silver Certificates either, so the rumor held up on that point. There was a third point, however, which everyone seemed to overlook. The Executive Order did not instruct the Treasury to issue Silver Certificates. It merely authorized it to do so if the occasion should arise. The occasion never arose. The last issuance of Silver Certificates was in 1957, and that was six years before the Kennedy executive order. In 1987, the order was rescinded by Executive Order 12608 signed by President Reagan.

The government did print some U.S. Notes in 1963, but these were in response to an 1868 act of Congress which directed the Treasury to maintain the amount of U.S. Notes outstanding at a fixed level. That required worn or damaged specimens of older Notes to be replaced by new ones. Some of these new Notes did get into circulation but were quickly snapped up by private collectors. They never became a significant part of the money supply and were not intended to. This printing was not ordered by JFK and, in fact, there was no reason for him even to have had knowledge of it”.

Griffin goes on to document that JFK was a Fabian socialist educated at the London School of Economics who indeed advocated for socialism and the redistribution of weath. In an address at the annual meeting of the IMF/World Bank, JFK said:

“Twenty years ago, when the architects of these institutions met to design an international banking structure….Sixty per cent of the gold reserves of the world were here in the United States…There was a need for redistribution of the financial resources of the world…And there was an equal need to organize a flow of capital to the impoverished countries of the world. All this has come about. It did not come about by chance but by conscious and deliberate and responsible planning”. (Page 109 in The Creature).

What is crystal clear is that JFK absolute did endorse central banks and their sister organizations (IMF and World Bank) for the sole purpose of redistributing wealth. Wealth is never redistributed from the wealthy to the poor; it’s always redistributed from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. That’s the primary purpose of central banks – to make the rich ruling families richer and to concentrate all wealth and power at the expense of liberty and free markets for the masses. What meager distribution of wealth to the poor that does occur in the name of socialism is always a few crumbs that are tossed to the masses in a phony display of compassion. It’s more like a vision of feudal overlords feasting at the table and then tossing the bones and crumbs at the skeletal and impoverished serfs.

Personally, I greatly admire JFK on several issues, especially his abhorrence of war and the military industrial complex. Moreover, I highly recommend the book “JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He Died and Why it Matters” by James Douglass. Douglass does an outstanding job of meticulously documenting his murder and the deadly foreign policy of empire that is a disease eating away at American liberty and prosperity. What is true is that JFK was murdered in a coup d’etat and Douglass says “We have no evidence as to who in the military-industrial complex may have given the order to assassinate President Kennedy. That the order was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency is obvious. The CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it.”

Finally, any study of JFK’s presidency discloses that he was faced with one crisis after another – the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and domestic issues like civil rights. Monetary policy and the Federal Reserve were definitely not on the agenda or even an issue of concern except in the context of endorsing global governance institutions like the UN, IMF and World Bank and their totalitarian agendas.

Although the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 enabled wars and government power grabs, the fact that the dollar was pegged to gold functioned as a restraint on ‘Banksters and Government Gone Wild”. It took an Executive Order signed by Republican Richard Nixon in 1971 to de-tether the dollar from gold and permanently render it a worthless fiat paper currency 8 years after JFK’s murder.

It was Nixon who delivered the death blow to the dollar. It’s probably true that JFK would have done the same thing.

World War I, the Banksters, the Lusitania and Bailing Out America’s Wealthiest Families

Few folks understand the link between Banksters and wars, largely because naïve Americans can’t bear the thought that they’ve been duped and lied to by the media and the government. Even worse, the thought that their loved ones died in foreign wars for nothing more than defense contractor and Bankster profits is a brutal truth that’s like a dagger straight through their souls – it’s so damn painful that they refuse to believe it. It’s an ongoing problem.

The primary information source for this post is Chapter 12 from The Creature From Jekyll Island (The Creature) by G. Edward Griffin titled “Sink the Lusitania”. It’s just another fascinating chapter in The Creature that documents the role of the Banksters and central banks in murderous wars and the events leading up to the wars. Griffin states “American schoolchildren are taught that Uncle Sam came into the war “to make the world safe for democracy”. Forget that democracy is unlimited majority mob rule where 51% of the people get to squash the rights of the other 49% at the ballot box. Our founders greatly feared democracy as a form of government and for obviously sane reasons. More to the point, it was no accident that WW I was started in 1914 following the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

England and France borrowed heavily from the Banksters to fund World War I. But the Bankster were involved in far more than the business of loaning money; they also had a cut of damn near everything associated with the war machine and the House of Morgan was the principle US banking player. War materials are a huge business and the House of Morgan seemed to procure monopolies as shipping agents and purchasing agents for just about every possible accoutrement of war. The House of Morgan had contracts with Great Britain that “would eventually climb to an astronomical $3 billion. The firm became the largest consumer on earth, spending up to $10 million per day….Each month, Morgan presided over purchases which were equal to the gross national product of the entire world just one generation before.” The House of Morgan was also heavily invested with funding the French government’s substantial role in WW I.

How big were Morgan’s WW I profits? The Creature goes on to state “It is estimated that in the course of the war some 2000 million [2 billion] dollars passed in this way through Morgan’s hands.” Being a direct lender and having subsidiaries to earn a cut of all things associated with war commerce is, by far, the most profitable venture in all of human history.

But where the story gets really interesting is when WW I was going badly for France and England because of the German U-boats that managed to sink between 1914 and 1918 over 5,700 ships loaded with critical food supplies and war materials. The situation became so desperate that England and France were seriously considering suing Germany for peace. Such a situation would have resulted in massive investor losses. The Creature states:

“The Morgan group had floated one-and-a-half billion dollars in loans to Britain and France. With the fortunes of war turning against them, investors were facing the threat of a total loss. As Ferdinand Lundberg observed: “The declaration of war by the United States, in addition to extricating the wealthiest American families from a dangerous situation, also opened new vistas of profits”.”

It couldn’t be more clear – war is always about money, bailing out the wealthy and the prospect of more profits from more and more war.

President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive Democrat who dreamed of one world socialist government, was also heavily connected to Wall Street. In fact, it can be stated that Wall Street owned Wilson. Wilson also claimed to be a pacifist and Griffin offers clarity on Wilson’s alleged pacifism “It is probably true that Wilson was a pacifist at heart, but it is equally certain that he was not entirely the master of his own destiny. He was a transplanted college professor from the ivy-covered walls of Princeton, an internationalist at heart who dreamed of helping to create a world government and to usher in a millennium of peace…he was all but powerless to act on his own..”

For all Wilson’s self-righteous claims as a pacifist and humanitarian, he had no problem whatsoever participating in the sinking of the Lusitania and sending 1,195 folks, including 195 Americans, to their ocean graves. Despite Wall Street buying up major newspapers and installing their own editorial staffs and journalists to promote America’s entry in WW I, the American people were still not buying into American involvement in WW I which they believed to be a European problem and certain not their problem.

The Lusitania was built to look like a passenger ship but it was also built to specifications of the British Admiralty as documented by Griffin “Everything from the horsepower of her engines and the shape of her hull to the placement of ammunition storage areas were, in fact, military designs. She was built specifically to carry twelve six-inch guns. The construction costs for these features were paid for by the British government”. The Lusitania was owned by the Cunard Company. Why the Lusitania? Cunard wasn’t owned by Morgan who failed in his attempt to buy it.

One of the most revered men in western history, Winston Churchill, also happens to be one of the most evil. He was aware that the Lusitania had been selected to sail into U-boat infested waters without escorts for the sole purpose of being sunk. Churchill even “issued orders that British merchant ships must no longer obey a U-boat order to halt and be searched. If they had armament, they were to engage the enemy. If they did not, they were to attempt to ram the sub. The immediate result of this change was to force German U-boats to remain submerged for protection and to simply sink the ships without warning”.

Shockingly, the Germans knew that the Lusitania was loaded with war materials and that the US and Britain were setting up a passenger ship to be sunk. The German Embassy in Washington protested to the US State Department who not only ignored the German communication but the State Department refused to issue warning to passengers despite knowing that they would be die. The German Embassy went even further and attempted to takeout full page ads in major newspapers warning Americans that the Lusitania was in grave danger of being sunk. The State Department intervened and blocked newspapers from running the ads.

Needless to say there was much silent celebration in the US, Britain and on Wall Street when the Lusitania was sunk by a U-boat on 5/7/1915. War fever finally gripped Americans and their outrage was expected. The propaganda coup and the Lusitania cover-up paid off splendidly for the US government, Britain and the Banksters. Griffin writes “The purpose…would have been better served had an American ship been sunk by the Germans but a British ship with 195 Americans downed was sufficient to do the job. The players wasted no time in whipping up public sentiment.”

Nearly 1200 drowned folks were inconsequential casualties for the war profiteering Banksters and the US government. WW I raged between 1914 and 1918 and resulted in 10-12 million deaths, the low end of the estimate. Wikipedia estimates 15 million deaths and 20 million wounded. However, the most interesting aspect of all this murderous carnage is that the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 specifically to facilitate perpetual wars, starting with WW I, and to create the biggest wealth transfer in human history – from the poor and middle class to the rich, and all in a very deadly and bloody fashion.

The real purpose of WW I, the Federal Reserve and America’s entry into WW I? Griffin nails it “Congress dutifully passed the War Loan Act which extended $1 billion in credit to the Allies. The first advance of $200 million went to the British the next day and was immediately applied as payment on the debt to Morgan….Within three months the British had run up their overdraft with Morgan to $400 million dollars, and the firm presented it to the government for payment…. “The Wilson Administration found itself in an extremely awkward position, having to bail out J.P. Morgan” wrote Ferrell, but Benjamin Strong “offered to help…” “…in 1917-18, the Treasury quietly paid Morgan piecemeal for the overdraft”. By the time the war was over, the Treasury had lent a total of $9,466,000 including $2,170,000 given after the Armistice. That was the cash flow they had long awaited. In addition to saving the Morgan loans, even larger profits were to be made from war production. The government had been secretly preparing for war for six months prior to the actual declaration”.

Griffin’s 26 page chapter is meticulously documented with a whole lot more of the gory details surrounding J.P. Morgan, the US government and WW I but the bottom line is perfectly clear – WW I was a Bankster initiative. The Lusitania tragedy is a classic example of what is called a false flag attack or how a government engineers an event specifically designed to garner populist outrage and the beating of the war drums by the people. False flag attacks are very common and very effective propaganda coups.

Peace activists of all political stripes should be asking themselves this: without central banks how could governments wage horrific warfare? The answer is they can’t and without war debt bailouts from government central banks the Banksters would never assume such risks. In the case of WW I, the Banksters never would have risked their own money but the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 guaranteed that the Banksters would be paid out of the public treasury regardless of the outcome of Bankster war gambling. Bankster don’t care who wins the war, they only care about getting paid and making themselves richer.

The Romney/Paul Buzz – What’s it all about?

There is definitely a ton of buzz on the Romney/Paul relationship and it’s unnerving some folks. Romney and Ron Paul go back to 2008 when they met on the campaign trail. Their wives became friends. When Ron Paul’s plane broke down, the Romney’s offered Ron Paul their plane and their home (Ron Paul thanked the Romney’s but refused the offer).

Who is Mitt Romney? I believe that Romney is a closeted Paulite of sorts who has far more in common with Ron Paul than he does with either Sanitorium and Gingrich. As late as 6/11, Romney was testing the campaign trail waters by saying that maybe we shouldn't be the policeman of the world. He immediately got pummeled by Fox and the neocons. They don't trust Romney. Then Romney started ratcheting up the neocon rhetoric to strengthen his weak neocon credentials. They still didn’t believe him and are convinced that he's a Paulite in an elephant suit. Romney was never a classic DC insider like Gingrich and Sanitorium - he's just a guy who spent most of his life as a businessman and had one term as governor of Mass. In a political arena dominated by vetted insiders, guys like Romney and Ron Paul are not trusted because aren’t players or even party loyalists.

What are Romney’s strengths? Romney is a very smart man and an extraordinarily competent problem solver. He took over failed companies headed into bankruptcy and saved them. When the Olympics were in deep trouble, it was Romney who cleaned up the mess and restored credibility to the Olympics. As governor of Massachusetts, he walked into the mess known as The Big Dig, a Ted Kennedy ‘underground tunnel through downtown Boston’ project that was supposed to cost $2 billion but ended bilking state and federal taxpayers out of at least $15 billion. The Big Dig leaked like sieve and a woman was killed driving to work when a huge chunk of concrete fell and crushed her to death in her vehicle. Romney rolled up his sleeves and stepped into engineering mode, he fired people and he solved The Big Dig structural problems at minimal taxpayer costs.

Among other Romney attributes is his ability to make a decisive decision. After getting pummeled by Gingrich in the SC debate and losing badly, Romney immediately recognized that he was failing in the debates. That night he researched debate coaches and rang up Michelle Bachmann’s debate coach who is considered one of the best debate coaches in the country. The next morning the guy was in Florida as Romney’s new debate coach. Again, this is classic Romney recognizing a problem and solving the problem.

That’s really what Romney does best – he solves big problems. On the negative side, it’s true that some of the companies Romney saved ended with government subsidies and bailouts. It’s also true that Romney is heavily funded by Wall Street which of course raises the issue of whether or not Romney would ever support Audit the Fed or the restoration of sound money. The monetary system is a hugely critical issue for Paulites and liberty activists. Romney has failed to earn the trust of the Paulites.

The Evangelical GOP base is very hostile to Romney because he's a Mormon. Rick Perry publicly said that Mormonism is a cult. But the Evangelicals who diss the Pope as the whore of Babylon and the anti-Christ are now stuck with two Papists - Santorum and Gingrich. They aren’t happy about it but the theocons and neocons will take a statist militaristic Papist any day over a Mormon they neither like nor trust.

The Romney campaign wisely made the decision early on not to make enemies with the Paulites because they were smart enough to figure out that Ron Paul will own a bag of delegates and that Ron Paul owns the youth vote. Ron Paul also polls very well with the Independent voters.

I believe that Romney genuinely admires and respects Ron Paul on many levels which is why Romney never attacks Ron Paul. Of course, I do believe that Ron Paul also admires and respects Romney on some level. For intellectual candidates like Romney and Ron Paul it’s all about knocking out the flame throwers Gingrich and Santorum who they both perceive as very dangerous. Gingrich and Santorum manage to capitalize on driving the raw emotions of the Republican base. While such tactics are routine in politics, Romney and Ron Paul are very uncomfortable with whipping folks into an emotional frenzy. Romney and Ron Paul are more like mild mannered college professors while Gingrich and Santorum are more like panting preachers raging from the pulpit.

Would I vote for Romney in a general election? Not unless a Ron Paul approved running mate or somebody with the name of Paul was on the ticket. A Romney nomination and the potential for a Paulite on the ticket is what is really terrorizing the neocons and the GOP elites. Also, Romney knows that he can't win without the Independent vote, the youth vote and the Paulite/Libertarian vote. Romney didn’t come this far in his relentless pursuit to become president to lose in a general election.