Abolish the Federal Reserve System – A Huge Impediment to Human Freedom, Dignity and Progress

This blog is full of odes to the dignity and greatness of humanity, and blessings for those who have labored in anonymity and persecution to bring about this potential in all beings for the benefit of mankind. As a result, it has been littered with the refuse of the bigoted and unintellectual comments of those who precisely have struggled to prevent mankind from developing freedom from servitude. True to their technique of dissimulation, that have set about accusing others of the very thing they seek, and, as George Orwell so delicately imaged it, continued to misuse language deliberately and frankly calling white “black” and day “night”, so as to keep the very systems in place which hold back human progress.

But something very important has happened this month in American history, perhaps as important as the Civil War if not more so, in that it involves the potential unraveling of the world slavery system –

The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 (H.R. 1207), a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives of the 111th United States Congress by Congressman Ron Paul (TX-14). The bill proposes a reformed audit of the Federal Reserve System (the “Fed”) before the end of 2010. I would encourage each and every American to support this bill and restore our free government.

The Federal Reserve Act (ch. 6, 38 Stat. 251, enacted December 23, 1913, 12 U.S.C. ch.3) is the act of Congress that created the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States of America, which was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. Before the 1913 establishment of the Federal Reserve, the banking system had dealt with periodic crises (such as in the Panic of 1907) by suspending the convertibility of deposits into currency. The system nearly collapsed in 1907 and there was an extraordinary intervention by an ad-hoc coalition assembled by J. P. Morgan. The bankers demanded in 1910-1913 a central bank to address this structural weakness. The supposed idea [as illustrated by the critical scene in the Jimmy Stewart Christmas movie It's a Wonderful Life (1946)] is to create a reserve of wealth to prevent bank runs. Let us say that Mr. Smith, a rich man, puts one million dollars into Bank XYZ. Now let us say the same Mr. Smith, now near death, has some sort of religious crisis and suddenly fears going to hell. He decides, therefore, to withdrawal his one million dollars all at once and give it away, so as to guarantee a trip to heaven. The problem is that Bank XYZ has actually loaned Mr. Smith’s money in the meantime to Ms. Hamptom’s flower business, the Gomez family’s mortgage, etc. So the bank doesn’t actually have the money at the bank to cover Mr. Smith’s sudden need for a withdrawal. If enough people does this at once, say because of a sudden fear about the future of the economy or whatever, that’s called a bank run. Similar situations in the past, such as in 1907, have caused severe economic crisis and a critical loss of confidence in the bank industry, currency as a means of trade, etc. In times of economic crisis, individuals often want to withdraw their money to put it into tangibles such as land or gold. This tendency has a way, from the bank industry’s point of view in particular, of magnifying sudden panics or losses of confidence in what is essentially a house of cards. The Federal Reserve was supposedly created to thereby serve as a pool of funds that Bank XYZ could call upon to honor Mr. Smith’s sudden withdrawal. In that way, it was supposed to stabilize the United States against economic crisis. Unfortunately, there were no crises to defend against except for a suspect and immoral usury system being shaken anyway, and all the Federal Reserve System really did was create a system of world-wide slavery and episodic economic crisis. By merely asking the Federal Reserve to have transparency, to show us, the American people what they really are and what they are really doing and for whom, Ron Paul has subtlety and cleverly forced the hand of a most corrupt and evil system of domination by an immoral few at a time when their machinations are most visible in their effect and most susceptible to destruction.

Federal Reserve System is “an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects”. In particular, neither the Federal Reserve System nor its component banks are overseen or controlled by the US Federal Government, but bluntly act as loan-sharks to banks across the US.
According to the Federal Reserve acts and amendments over the years, there are presently five different parts of the Federal Reserve System:
1.The presidentially appointed Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, a governmental agency in Washington, D.C.
2.The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which oversees Open Market Operations, the principal tool of national monetary policy.
3.Twelve regional privately-owned Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation, which divide the nation into 12 districts, each with its own nine-member board of directors.
4.Numerous other private U.S. member banks, which have required amounts of stock in their regional Federal Reserve Banks, which does pay dividends like any other stock, but cannot be bought or sold publicly on the stocks.
5.Various mysterious advisory councils which provide some sort of sinister coordination or planning to this multi-tentacled and unaudited process.

It is widely believed that Woodrow Wilson rushed the system into law after election largely for the economic benefit of financial entities that contributed heavily to his election campaign. Oddly enough, while he is often portrayed as being pushed into this by lust for power and with remorse, as being our only president with a PhD, he left behind political writings that reveal a distaste for freedom and a desire for a more tyrannical system which abolished the founding father’s system of branches of government with checks and balances long before he ever held office. Under the influence of Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution, Wilson saw the United States Constitution as pre-modern, cumbersome, and open to corruption. He wrote in the early 1880s:
“I ask you to put this question to yourselves, should we not draw the Executive and Legislature closer together? Should we not, on the one hand, give the individual leaders of opinion in Congress a better chance to have an intimate part in determining who should be president, and the president, on the other hand, a better chance to approve himself a statesman, and his advisers capable men of affairs, in the guidance of Congress?”

The first chairman of the Fed, McAdoo, was an entrepreneur. He was the president of the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad Company, which built the tubes connecting Manhattan and Hoboken and operated by PATH today. He worked on Wilson’s 1912 presidential campaign as noted earlier. Wilson named him Treasury Secretary in 1913. And in March 1914, he became engaged to Wilson’s daughter. So the president was also his soon-to-be father-in-law, quite the incestuous relationship with controlling monetary policy Wilson had hoped to have in the first place. In fact, in the picture beginning this article, McAdoo’s armband is worn to commemorate the death, four days earlier, of his mother-in-law, Ellen Axson Wilson, and some say the death of capitalism and human freedom in general. Interesting other facts about the above picture are that the standing gentleman is Paul Warburg of Hamburg, Germany, of a successful Jewish banking family. He is also of the family banking firm of M.M. Warburg & Company, still a member bank of the Fed, and chairman of Wells Fargo, still receiving Fed handouts to this day. He is also the founder of the Brookings Institute, still one of the aforementioned advisory councils of the Fed to this day!

In addition to controlling the American economy, the Federal Reserve has the authority to act as “lender of last resort” by extending credit to depository institutions or to other entities in unusual circumstances involving a national or regional emergency, such as an economic crisis, where failure to obtain credit would have a severe adverse impact on the economy.

Through its discount and credit operations, Reserve Banks provide liquidity to banks to meet short-term needs stemming from seasonal fluctuations in deposits or unexpected withdrawals. Longer term liquidity may also be provided in exceptional circumstances. The Fed is able to make money through these loans by charging a rate, known as the discount rate (officially the primary credit rate).

By making these loans, the Fed serves as a buffer against unexpected day-to-day fluctuations in reserve demand and supply. This contributes to the effective functioning of the banking system, alleviates pressure in the reserves market and reduces the extent of unexpected movements in the interest rates. For example, on September 16, 2008, the Federal Reserve Board authorized an $85 billion loan to stave off the bankruptcy of international insurance giant American International Group (AIG). The Federal Reserve System’s role as lender of last resort is criticized for shifting risk and responsibility away from lenders and borrowers and placing them on others, namely us middle-class taxpayers, in the form of taxes and/or inflation. This enables the banks and companies that are bailed out to avoid responsible management at our expense, and enables the banks that are doing the rescuing to actually profit from these transactions at our expense, not through any penalty or consequence of the offending institution.

Interestingly, the Fed also has over $11 billion in gold, which is a holdover from the days the government used to back US Notes and Federal Reserve Notes with gold. This means that in times of economic crisis, when tangibles such as gold rise greatly in value, the Fed sees a profit in the rise of the value of its holdings. The Fed has approximately a tenth of the world’s gold, and the member banks are estimated to trade approximately 75% of the world’s foreign exchange trade, or Forex market, while at the same time being able to control the value of the dollar vis a vis other currencies at will. The value of gold held by the Fed at this time of high gold value is around $310 trillion, and represents almost 80% of the world’s gold supply, which can be bought or sold as needed.

So what we are talking about is a group of private banks and companies in the hands of a few families, a surprising number of which are not United States corporations or citizens, many of whom have a similar degree of control over their own countries economic policy and national banking, capable of profiting greatly by economic crisis which they are capable of manufacturing by means of their hold of the reins of economic policy. In fact, the periodic economic cycles we are experiencing over time are in fact a by-product of the policy of those capable of profiting from these crises.
The Federal Reserve’s control of interest rates is an unnecessary and counterproductive interference in the economy. Rates should be naturally low during times of excessive consumer saving (because lendable money is abundant) and naturally high when high net volumes of consumer credit are extended (because lendable money is scarce). These critics argue that setting a baseline lending rate amounts to centralized economic planning, and inflating the currency amounts to a regressive, incremental redistribution of wealth.

Austrian School economists focus on the amplifying, “wave-like” effects of the credit cycle as the primary cause of most business cycles. They assert that inherently damaging and ineffective central bank policies, like those of the Federal Reserve, are the predominant cause of most business cycles, because they tend to set interest rates unnaturally low for too long, resulting in excessive credit creation, speculative “bubbles” and unnaturally low savings. The business cycle unfolds in the following way. Low interest rates tend to stimulate borrowing from the banking system. This expansion of credit causes an expansion of the money supply, through the money creation process in a fractional reserve banking system. This in turn leads to an unsustainable “monetary boom” during which the “artificially stimulated” borrowing seeks out diminishing investment opportunities. This boom results in widespread failed investment, causing capital resources to be misallocated into areas which would not attract investment if the money supply remained stable. The global economic crisis of 2008 represents an example of the Austrian business cycle theory’s dependability.
It is also a widely-accepted criticism of the Fed, first proposed by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, that the Fed exacerbated the 1929 recession, sparking the Great Depression. After the stock market crashed in 1929, the Fed continued to contract the money supply and refused to save struggling banks threatened with runs from failure; this mistake, critics charge, allowed what might have been a relatively mild recession to explode into catastrophe, as discussed in their work A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. The Great Depression was caused by the fall of the money supply. Friedman & Schwartz note that “[f]rom the cyclical peak in August 1929 to a cyclical trough in March 1933, the stock of money fell by over a third.” The result was what Friedman calls the “Great Contraction” — a period of falling income, prices, and employment caused by the choking effects of a restricted money supply. The mechanism suggested by Friedman and Schwartz was that people wanted to hold more money than the Federal Reserve was supplying. People thus hoarded money by consuming less. This, in turn, caused a contraction in employment and production, since prices were not flexible enough to immediately fall.

The current Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, even acknowledged this in a 2002 speech:

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.

I think I would prefer to audit their actions in the future rather than take their “good word,” especially as it has occurred repeatedly since then, particularly when the next generation of beneficiaries of these few families needs to yet again harvest the work and ideas of the world for the continuation of their parasitic life-cycle.

In a 2002 interview with Peter Jaworski, Friedman said that ideally he would “prefer to abolish the federal reserve system altogether” rather than try to reform it, because it was a flawed system in the first place. He would prefer to replace the organization with a mechanical system that would increase the money supply at some fixed rate, and thought that “leaving monetary and banking arrangements to the market would have produced a more satisfactory outcome than was actually achieved through government involvement.” I would have to agree. But I must say that Ron Paul’s urgent plea that the American people at least be allowed to be informed as to the workings of the Federal Reserve is certainly logical and virtually unarguable, especially if the workings of the Fed involve the periodic construction of waves of starving families and ruined lives for the benefit of a few families around the world, as they appear to.

You see, there is no witchcraft. The controlling influences are a handful of WASP and Jewish families, about 50/50, who no doubt boringly and dutifully attend their weekly church or synagogue services. After all, what need is there for the drinking of goat’s blood or black masses when you can watch infants starve and grown men bleed tears for their dying wives while you dine on gold-leaf cake? The organization of Adam Weishaupt and it’s members such as Goethe and the founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson in their Joseph Campbellian embrace of humanism have little to do with these fascist machinations. Indeed the forces of the Enlightenment, the lovers of classical culture, and Jesuits and Catholic scholars such as myself and John Kennedy have always stood in stark battle against the forces of totalitarianism and degradors of human freedom. This is why John Kennedy was shot in the first place, for railing against the Fed and endorsing human freedom, potential and the brotherhood of man. Compare this to Woodrow Wilson, author of the Federal Reserve, abolisher of the design of our illuminated founding fathers, and acknowledged Klansman. Listening to the speech below, remember that Kennedy was killed for daring to cry out for change, and let his martyrdom not be in vain. Join Ron Paul and myself and call your representative today and insist on transparency for the Federal Reserve and begin the end of human slavery to a greedy and unintelligent few.

1.  “Obama Sells Out to the Neocons

Obama vows that he will “finish the job” in Afghanistan to the cheers of warmongering neoconservatives but the simple question is: at what cost, Mr. President? How many more billions will be spent? How many more U.S. service members will perish or suffer serious injuries? And how many more innocent civilians need to die or be maimed in this endless military occupation/nation-building project? The administration refuses to answer those tough questions but it appears they are already planning to increase troop levels well into 2011.”

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreign-policy/2405-obama-sells-out-to-the-neocons

2.  “UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files

Terror squad arrest over model rocket
The first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime has been identified by The Register as a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record.

His crime was a persistent refusal to give counter-terrorism police the keys to decrypt his computer files.

The 33-year-old man, originally from London, is currently held at a secure mental health unit after being sectioned while serving his sentence at Winchester Prison.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/24/ripa_jfl/

3.  “The Thanksgiving of the Fantasticals

A Day of Rule breaking, and Spontaneous Mirth

When we used to do Thanksgiving as cross-dressing and insulting authority:

Thanksgiving was a Northeastern regional commemoration until Abraham Lincoln promulgated it as a national holiday in 1863, and it was celebrated in lots of different ways. One of those ways was for young men to dress up as women or in fantastic costumes and promenade, and mug, and make fun of authority. It was a “masculine escape” from the family, an opportunity to break rules and be outlandish. In our increasingly regimented national security state, we could do with some of that old Thanksgiving cheekiness, though we need both sexes now.

Thanksgiving in the nineteenth century in some parts of the country was a combination of Eddie Izzard (cross-dressing), Lady Gaga (wild costumes and breaking conventions), and Jon Stewart (mirthful insults directed at high political authority). Some historians suggest that the homey, nuclear-family Thanksgiving meal was a reaction against all this public rowdiness. Alas, so successful a reaction that the carnivale side of the holiday has been erased from public memory
…
If only present-day Americans were not so apathetic and timid that they gave up the most basic rights enshrined in our Constitution almost without a fight just because Dick Cheney sneered at them and muttered something about national security — if only they showed some spunk and dared break social conventions and get uppity in the cause of personal liberty rather than that of corporate perquisites from time to time– now that would be something to be thankful for.”

http://www.juancole.com/

4.  “Tony Blair told ‘days before Iraq invasion’ WMD had been dismantled

Iraq inquiry: Tony Blair told ‘days before invasion’ WMD had been dismantled – Telegraph

What I remember is that knowledgeable inspectors and expatriate Iraq scientists were saying this all through 2002 and into early 2003.

Here is Imad Khadduri’s piece from that winter: “Iraq has no N-weapons, claims expatriate scientist 06/01/2003. (Via my posting, at the time at IC.

Bush, Cheney, Blair and the gang knew they were lying. They were just confident that they could run out the clock on the truth.”

http://www.juancole.com/

5.  “Everyone Knew that Iraq Didn’t Have WMDs

Everyone knew the WMD claims were fake.

For example, Tony Blair – the British Prime Minister – knew that Saddam possessed no WMDs. If America’s closest ally Britain knew, then the White House knew as well.

And the number 2 Democrat in the Senate -who was on the Senate intelligence committee – admitted that the Senate intelligence committee knew before the war started that Bush’s public statements about Iraqi WMDs were false. If the committee knew, then the White House knew as well.

But we don’t even have to use logic to be able to conclude that the White House knew.

Specifically, the former highest-ranking CIA officer in Europe says that Bush, Cheney and Rice were personally informed that Iraq had no WMDs in Fall 2002 (and see this).”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/11/everyone-knew-that-iraq-didnt-have-wmds.html

6. “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

It’s not often that the intersection of history and contemporary events pose such a startling and chilling lesson as does  the contemplation of the murder of JFK on November 22, 1963 juxtaposed with the situations  faced by President Obama today.   So far, at least, Obama’s behavior has mirrored Johnson’s, not Kennedy’s, as he has escalated the war in Afghanistan by 34,000. One can’t but help think that the thought of JFK’s fate might not be far from his mind as he contemplates his next move in Afghanistan.

Douglass presents a very compelling argument that Kennedy was killed by “unspeakable” (the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s term) forces within the U.S. national security state because of his conversion from a cold warrior into a man of peace.  He argues, using a wealth of newly uncovered information, that JFK had become a major threat to the burgeoning military-industrial complex and had to be eliminated through a conspiracy planned by the CIA – “the CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it” – not by a crazed individual, the Mafia, or disgruntled anti-Castro Cubans, though some of these may have been used in the execution of the plot.

Why and by whom?  These are the key questions.  If it can be shown that Kennedy did, in fact, turn emphatically away from war as a solution to political conflict; did, in fact, as he was being urged by his military and intelligence advisers to up the ante and use violence, rejected such advice and turned toward peaceful solutions, then, a motive for his elimination is established.  If, furthermore, it can be clearly shown that Oswald was a dupe in a deadly game and that forces within the military/intelligence apparatus were involved with him from start to finish, then the crime is solved, not by fingering an individual who may have given the order for the murder or pulled the trigger, but by showing that the coordination of the assassination had to involve U.S. intelligence agencies, most notably the CIA . Douglass does both, providing highly detailed and intricately linked evidence based on his own research and a vast array of the best scholarship.

We are then faced with the contemporary relevance, and since we know that every president since JFK has refused to confront the growth of the national security state and its call for violence, one can logically assume a message was sent and heeded.  In this regard,  it is not incidental that former twenty-seven year CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, in a recent interview, warned of the “two CIAs,” one the analytic arm providing straight scoop to presidents, the other the covert action arm  which operates according to its own rules.  “Let me leave you with this thought,” he told his interviewer, “and that is that I think Panetta (current CIA Director), and to a degree Obama, are afraid – I never thought  I’d hear myself saying this – I think they are afraid of the CIA.”  He then recommended Douglass’ book, “It’s very well-researched and his conclusion is very alarming.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16273

7.  What a viciously stupid man:

“John Bolton is the prototypical right-wing pseudo-tough-guy:  cheering on every war he can find without ever getting near any of them.  And as usual for this strain of play-acting, chest-beating warrior, all of the belligerence and craving of vicarious power masks a deep and pitiful cowardice.  That is often the principal purpose of warmongering from a distance.  Yesterday, Bolton — on “Washington Times Radio” — revealed that he is so petrified of Terrorists that he would not feel safe in New York City during the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and would not even allow his family there
…

The cowardice on display here is difficult to overstate — and to behold without being ill.  I lived in Manhattan on 9/11 and for many years thereafter.  For weeks — even months and years after that attack — it was widely assumed that New York would be a likely target for another attack, but I never heard a single New Yorker — not one — talk about fleeing the city or hiding their family in some faraway place.  During the 2004 election, New Yorkers voted for the candidate who wanted to treat Terrorism like a law enforcement problem over the pseudo-tough-guy “war president” by a margin of 80-20.  The fears engulfing Bolton and which he’s attempting to infect the country with are found almost exclusively among this species of war-mongers obsessed with flamboyant — and very public — rituals where they proclaim their own “strength” and “courage.”

John Bolton and his comrades love to run around accusing anyone who doesn’t want to wage more wars of being an “appeaser“ and “surrendering“ to Terrorists, but Bolton’s cry here is the ultimate, definitive surrender:  I’m too scared of the Terrorists to go about my normal life. I’m too petrified even to have my family in the same city as a terrorist trial.  We can’t adhere to our normal political system because the Terrorists will kill us all.
…
All over the world, countries have put terrorists on trial in their largest and most important cities — London, Madrid, Mumbai, Denpasar (the capital of Bali).  That’s because their countries weren’t flooded by meek, frightened little men like John Bolton who want to send their fellow citizens to bomb and invade as many countries as they can find in order to conceal and compensate for the suffocating cowardice revealed by both his life and these comments.  It’s a natural human instinct to try to prove to the world that one possesses exactly those characteristics which one most lacks — which is why right-wing warriors of the type represented by John Bolton are so desperate to prove their Churchillian courage and resolve, always from the safest and most risk-free distances.

Quite related to all of this, Brad at Sadly, No examines what he calls American elites’ “nationalist narcissism. They believe not only that America has the right and the duty to be the ‘dominant’ country in the world, but that every other country in the world should be talking forever about how wonderful we are.”  It’s not hard to understand the source of their need to constantly have affirmed what Newsweek’s Howard Fineman this week calls “our special destiny” as he frets that Obama is failing to salvage it by not keeping the U.S. at the Center of the World.  It’s the same need that makes John Bolton and his comrades endlessly try to prove to the world how tough and brave they are even as they hide from and cower before Terrorists.  There are many reasons why America is a country perpetually at war, but this warped and broken psychological state — weak and frightened individuals cheering on faraway wars as a means of feeling tough and strong, all justified by our own Supreme Specialness — is one of the leading causes.”

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

8.  “Get Ready for the Obama/GOP Alliance
With President Obama pushing a huge troop escalation in Afghanistan, history may well repeat itself with a vengeance. And it’s not just the apt comparison to LBJ, who destroyed his presidency on the battlefields of Vietnam with an escalation that delivered power to Nixon and the GOP.

There’s another frightening parallel: Obama seems to be following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, who accomplished perhaps his single biggest legislative “triumph” — NAFTA — thanks to an alliance with Republicans that overcame strong Democratic and grassroots opposition.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24064.htm

9.  “Several months ago, CNN published the results of a couple of disturbing polls about Americans and their religious beliefs. The first found that more Americans are rejecting religion and thus, according to CNN, America is becoming “less Christian.” The second, a Pew survey of only 742 mostly white evangelical Protestants, revealed that more than six in 10 of them believe that torture is often or sometimes justified.

More than six in 10? What this says about those claiming to be God’s own is that perhaps they should use their Bibles for more than “thumping.” Because not one in 10 — not one in 10 thousand — not one in 10 million — Christians believes that torture can ever be justified. Ever.

Anyone who has paid attention to the growing number of evangelical zealots over the past couple of decades must be aware that there is a growing chasm between Religion and Christianity. Today, the term, “religious Christians” is nothing if not oxymoronic. It seems when folks become apocalyptic frothing-at-the-mouth religious, they ultimately stray from the light and life of Christianity, while descending deeper into the darkness and death of Religion.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24056.htm

10.  “Any would-be rogue, hawking vengeance towards her own campaign and grievance against the mass media, unified by absurd tall tales, invites parallels to like-minded rogues. Sarah Palin is indebted to Richard Nixon (for ruthless ambition, dishonesty), Joe McCarthy (moral crusades, dishonesty), Dubya (cheerleading, unfitness, dishonesty), and Dick Cheney (demagoguery, dishonesty). On the positive side, Palin parallels Oprah (celebrity, showmanship), Evita (melodrama, populism), Carrie Prejean (sexy rule breaking), and Annie Oakley (folksy spunkiness, defying critics).

Even beyond winning elections, Sarah Palin wants stardom; her book overtly embraces show personalities; and instinctively, she goes for glitz and duplicity (even lying, to believe McCain and staff).

But when did truth (or reality) impede show business, establishing Palin’s best spiritual mentor as no other than P.T. Barnum, the 19th Century circus barker and con man, whose outlandish publicity triumphs became the “Greatest Show on Earth,” aptly Barnum and Bailey Circus. Palin’s circus obeys Barnum’s model, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Plus adages, “If you hesitate, some bolder hand will stretch out before you and get the prize” and “Without promotion something terrible happens . . . Nothing!”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24062.htm

by Bret Burquest
The world is full of strange coincidences and possible conspiracies in high places.

A conspiracy is a secret agreement among a group of people attempting to conceal something. The two biggest conspiracies in our lifetimes, if true, are the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the cover-up of the presence of extraterrestrial beings on earth.

Kenn Thomas, author of a book titled Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy points out a remarkable string of coincidences that may actually tie the two conspiracies together. According to Thomas, a man named Fred Crisman played a central role in these seemingly unrelated events.

On June 21, 1947, an airplane pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted what he described as “flying saucers” over Mt. Rainier in the State of Washington, launching the modern UFO era. The term “flying saucer” soon became part of the UFO lexicon. There were many UFO sightings later in 1947, including the famous Roswell crash incident.

Four people, including Harold Dahl and his son, witnessed the event from a salvage boat in a nearby bay. They reported seeing six doughnut-shaped craft, approximately 20 feet in diameter, hovering high above. Five of the craft formed a circle surrounding a craft in the middle that was wobbling badly. The seemingly damaged craft suddenly dropped down about 700 feet, then spewed two substances—one was a paper-like metal that floated in the bay and the other was a hot, steaming, black sludge that rained down, striking Dahl’s son and killing his dog.

Dahl reported these events to Fred Crisman, a man he believed to have some connections in the intelligence community.

Crisman subsequently went to Maury Island to investigate the incident. He found a great deal of both materials on the shore and recovered some for himself.

Soon thereafter, Crisman shared his experience with Ray Palmer, a magazine publisher, who then hired Kenneth Arnold, the original pilot, to investigate further.

Three days later, Arnold had more sightings, culminating with a woman recovering some unusual material in the same vicinity, who then turned the material over to FBI agent Guy Banister.

Capt. Lee Davidson and Lt. Frank Brown, Air Force investigators under the command of Gen. Nathan Twining, soon joined Arnold in retrieving debris on Maury Island. Ultimately, Crisman was compelled to turn over his samples to the two Air Force investigators.

Classified documents, recently discovered under the freedom of information act, also indicate that Crisman turned additional samples he had held back over to CIA agent Clay Shaw.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Many people believe it was part of a larger conspiracy, far beyond a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald.

In his 1968 investigation of the assassination, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claimed that Guy Banister and Claw Shaw were involved in the plot to kill JFK, and that Fred Crisman may have been one of the gunmen.

Some interesting coincidences occurred between the JFK assassination and the 1947 UFO cover-up.

In 1943-1952, Guy Banister was FBI “Special Agent in Charge” in the Pacific Northwest, later transferred to Chicago. Upon retirement he opened a private investigative office in New Orleans where he occasionally hired Lee Harvey Oswald in a variety of capacities.

In 1963, former CIA agent Clay Shaw was the director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, a CIA front organization. He later went to trial as one of the co-conspirators in JFK’s death but was found not guilty by a jury. Key evidence linking Shaw to the assassination was not permitted by the trial judge.

According to many JFK assassination researchers, Fred Crisman was one of the three so-called “hobos” who were picked up in the railroad yard immediately following the JFK shooting, then released shortly thereafter.

The world is full of strange coincidences and possible conspiracies in high places.

In September of 1964, the Warren Commission Report declared that Kennedy was killed by a lone-gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald.

Fifteen years later, the House Selection Committee on Assassinations concluded that Kennedy “was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy” but “was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy.”

Based on the information detailed in Crossfire by Jim Marrs and First Hand Knowledge by Robert D. Morrow, it seems likely that the conspiracy involved organized crime.

Carlos Marcello was the mob boss of New Orleans. In the spring of 1961, the new U.S. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, had Marcello handcuffed and put onto a plane to Guatemala City with no luggage and very little cash.

Marcello was eventually flown back to the USA by his personal pilot David Ferrie, vowing to get even with the Kennedys.

Allegedly, Marcello and Ferrie devised a plan that included placing blame on a “nut” for the assassination of the President, Robert Kennedy’s brother. Ferrie had been Lee Harvey Oswald’s Civil Air Patrol leader.

The thrust of the plan was to make it look as though Fidel Castro was behind the killing of the American President, thereby inciting the U.S. government to attack Cuba, eliminating Castro who had forced the mob casinos in Havana to close.

Santos Trafficante, the south Florida mob boss, was a close associate of Marcello who had been in the casino business in Cuba and even jailed by Castro for a period of time.

Mobsters Johnny Roselli of Miami and Sam Giancana of Chicago were also involved.

Trafficante set up two men who thought they were working for the CIA to assassinate Castro and had them sent to Cuba. Through Roselli, Castro was tipped off that the CIA was sending these two men to kill him. The two men were then captured in Cuba and forced to reveal they were CIA operatives.

On September 7, 1963, Castro told associated press reporters he was being targeted for assassination by U.S. government leaders who “could find their own lives in jeopardy.”

During this entire period, Lee Harvey Oswald was being manipulated by associates of Ferrie in New Orleans to appear to be a pro-Castro wacko.

The trap had been set. A patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been created to shift the blame to Castro. Plus, Castro had recently made statements to the press that he was being targeted by the Kennedy Administration, further fanning the flames. Thus, when JFK was killed, Castro, through Oswald, would be targeted for invasion by the USA whereupon the mob would get their Cuban casinos back and get the Justice Department, headed by Robert Kennedy, off their backs.

When JFK was assassinated in Dallas several things went awry.

Oswald was to have been killed in the confusion but managed to escape. He was later killed by Jack Ruby to silence him and close the case.

The FBI and the CIA both wanted the case closed as quickly as possible to avoid embarrassing entanglements.

The new President, Lyndon Johnson, wanted it closed quickly to avoid a possible catastrophic confrontation with Cuba and their cold war ally, the USSR.

Thus, the lone gunman nutcase became the quick official remedy.

Jack Ruby, the Dallas mob connection, was the key lynchpin to the conspiracy. He made more long distance phone calls to known mobsters (Trafficante, Marcello, etc.) during the two months prior to the assassination than he had made the entire previous year.

Roselli met with Ruby twice just prior to the assassination.

When the Dallas police chief was answering questions at a press conference shortly after Oswald was arrested, Ruby (from the back of the room) loudly corrected him (captured on audio and video) as to which Cuba freedom organization Oswald had belonged. It was imperative that Oswald be portrayed as Pro-Castro, thereby placing ultimate blame on Castro as being behind the assassination.

Ruby then killed Oswald to end any further investigation.

Scheduled to testify before Congress, Roselli was found dead in an oil drum floating in Biscayne Bay.

Giancana had helped JFK get elected President, later to be subjected to Robert Kennedy’s organized crime taskforce. The evening before Giancana was to testify before a senate committee on CIA-mob assassination plots, he was shot in the back of the head.

A few days before David Ferrie was scheduled to meet with the New Orleans district attorney to discuss the JFK assassination, he was found dead (unsolved murder) in his apartment.

Less than 12 hours later, Eladio del Valle, a known Ferrie collaborator, was brutally murdered in Miami.

Dead men tell no tales.

A coincidence is the occurrence of supposedly unrelated events that seem to have a connection. When you have dozens of coincidences all relating to the same event, the concept of everything being unrelated no longer passes the smell test.

Dead skunk in the middle of the road.

And it stinks to high heaven.

. . .

Bret Burquest is a former award-winning columnist for The Salem, Arkansas News (2001-2007) and author of four novels. He has lived in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, Kansas City, Memphis and the middle of the Arizona desert. After a life of blood, sweat and tears in big cities, he has finally found peace in northern Arkansas where he grows tomatoes, watches sunsets and occasionally shares the Secrets of the Universe (and beyond) with the rest of the world.

. . .

http://www.areawidenews.com/ 

Amazon UFO, Conspiracy, & Beyond

More strange, unusual, and helpful knowledge

The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney and Ewan McGreggor.

McGreggor plays Bob Wilton, a midwestern American journalist compelled to travel to Iraq and write a life-changing story after his wife leaves him for his editor. In Iran while waiting to cross the boarder, he meets Lyn Cassady (Clooney), a man Wilton discovers is a former member of the First Earth Battalion, a group of psychic spies trained secretly by the government.

Cassady is the most powerful government trained psychic spy, who once killed a goat just by staring at it. Turns out, Cassady is wrecked with grief about killing an innocent animal and is crossing into Iran seeking redemption by freeing a group of goats being held in captivity by the government for psychic testing. Wilton joins Cassady to complete his mission in the hopes of finding a story.

Now, I had no idea what the hell this movie was about when I went to go see it. I only knew I’m always up for McGreggor and Clooney for two hours. I asked my date if he knew. “It’s about goats,” he replied, “some guy can kill ‘em with his mind”. I had heard it received mixed reviews.

Using goats as mind murder test subjects was a real experiment used by the paranormal military program. It is used as an example in The Men Who Stare At Goats by Ron Johnson, a book that examines connections between paranormal military programs and psychological techniques being used for interrogation in the War on Terror (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats).

So what happened here was a writer read this book and decided to turn one tiny example into a feature film. Remember in English class when you were told to write an original short story based on a recent news article? It’s a really good exercise. What I like about this scenario is that the writer chose to evolve complete fiction from a single fleeting fact, instead of writing a movie based wholly on facts.

I love bio pics and movies inspired by true events. JFK, Blow, Good Morning Vietnam, Selena, Catch Me If You Can, and The Way We Were are all great movies based on history. But as we learned from Citizen Kane in Film 101, the way people are perceived from memory is rarely who they truly were. Sometimes a true story feature can become hard to follow or feel rushed because there are so many facts that piece the puzzle together. A two-hour movie cannot possibly show the full picture. Bad acting, direction, or writing could also muddle a movie’s depiction of events. Changeling starring Angelina Jolie is an example of this type of bad true-life movie (If you enjoy watching Jolie sob uncontrollably and look helpless for almost three hours while maintaining zero to little sympathy for her character, Changeling is for you). What’s fun about The Men Who Stare At Goats is that it was based on only one fact, with a ton of fictional characters and obstacles created around it.

It’s a fun movie, definitely unique. I prefer when McGreggor uses his native accent rather than Americanizing his speech, but George Clooney was most energetic and fit for a man pushing fifty. I’d recommend seeing The Men Who Stare At Goats over The Twilight Saga: New Moon or Old Dogs, but I’d sooner recommend Fantastic Mr. Fox or Ninja Assassin over Goats if you were looking to attend the cinema this week.

JFK had an awful back condition that would have been enough to keep anyone down, including himself. But he wanted to be exceptional, so he enlisted the help of an MD to make him sufficiently mobile to do the great job that he did. Presumably there no adverse effects from this extreme supplementation because he had a pro to watch over him

The intent here is to use an extreme example of what people do to  enhance their performance. Of course, we all of how athletes use steroids in spite of them being illegal and dangerous. Consequently, there is an initial aversion to anything even remotely similar.

The question is are all of them as bad as steroids? It is reasonable to assume that if you are reading  these articles you are in fact intelligently looking for ways to maximize your healthiness. That’s why this post in here. Its to encourage you to take a risk on something as innocuous as green tea capsules if you have been reluctant to do so in the past.

There are other enhancers as well. They are of the over the counter variety. Any health food store on the internet can give you a list.  You don’t need an MDs prescription to use them. You simply buy them, read the directions and go from there. Generally this means doubling the recommended dose as the manufacturers are all concerned over negative reactions, but it some cases that’s not true. You have to determine what is right for you. And, that may take a bit of experimenting.

Asking your MD if this is an acceptable pursuit is probably not going to be helpful. MDs are all mostly against anything except  what is considered to be OK by the majority which pass them on the street. The question is what’s that. Does this mean three square meals with possibly a cupor two of coffee or no coffee at all or what? Surely the use of vitamins ought to be included, but it never is.

For all practical purposes, if you have a JFK mentality, you will want a Dr Feelgood to help you push beyond your limitations. We all know that we are using a small fraction of what we have inside. What we all need is something to push us a little beyond without hurting us in the process.  It would be wonderful if more MDs would acknowledge this and be more supportive things other than the now acceptable one, maybe two cup of java. There really are some less expensive substances that do a better job, without the side effects. Being “on them”, as its said will help you stay on course with your daily workouts.

From Facebook:

Subroto Roy thinks the zenith of US-India relations (besides FDR pressing Churchill on Indian independence) was the landing of US military transports in Ladakh during the Communist Chinese aggression of 1962 thanks to JK Galbraith & JFK.  (The nadir was the Nixon-Kissinger support for Pakistani tyranny against Bangladesh in 1971.)

JFK was shot on the 22nd November 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) on the 24th.

After President Kennedy was fatally shot,  Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder. The official idea was that he’d been acting alone, and since they’d got the guilty man, people should forget about it. But there were many inconsistencies, and huge numbers of Americans smelt a rat.

On the 24th the murderer became the murderee. The shooter in these incredible photos is Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, high on phenmatrazine at the time. He left his dog Sheba in his car on the morning, casually walked to the police station, and achieved what he set out to do. The avenging of  JFK, with a single bullet to Oswald’s chest. He thought he was helping Jackie Kennedy, he said after being immediately arrested. He talked of redemption for the city of Dallas.

Ruby himself died a few years later. His last words were “there was nothing to hide…there was no-one else“. This hasn’t stopped the conspiracy theories on these few days of November 1963. Was LHO part of a great conspiracy to get rid of JFK? Was Ruby part of it too, to get rid of the living evidence? And was he got rid of too, for the same reason?

See John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, and JFK Conspiracy? for more on all this. Are we all bored of conspiracy theories yet? In its defence, this one is a bit more believable than 2012. And with Oliver Stone’s JFK, its got much better movie back-up.

Ted Sorenson appeared on CBC The Hour (November 2, 2009) (sorry, no direct link, you have to look for the specific date for the video)

Ted Sorenson, former adviser to JFK and other major politicians, shares some of the stories from his recently published memoir.

I love Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History by Sorensen. Go check out the book or the audio book read by Sorensen himself. Highly recommended.

On the eve of the anniversary of JFK’s assassination, Mark Warren considers “the paranoid strain in the American polity [that] has reasserted itself — that strain which ascribes the worst possible motives to one’s political opponents, and where lies abound and violence becomes possible”.

On the Anniversary of Kennedy’s Death, Extremism Lives On [Esquire]

The article’s poignance is found in the words of a Texan woman who, following Kennedy’s assassination, wrote a letter to President Lyndon B. Johnson about the pervasive racism and necrotizing hate of the people in her district of Texas.

An excerpt:

Mr. President, the easy thing and what is desperately trying to be done [is] to convince a stunned nation and world that Mr. Kennedy’s murder was the work of some deranged crackpot, and while the trigger was pulled by such a one, perhaps the atmosphere that made it inevitable was the hatred of the people (I don’t mean every one of them but a big majority) who wanted Mr. Kennedy and any one connected with him out of the White House. A week ago this might have sounded ridiculous but subsequent events lend it credence, I believe. There is a virus of disrespect and hate spreading here very rapidly. And unless one lives right here with it, day in and day out, it is unbelievable how quickly and subtly it infects reasonably intelligent persons. This is not too hard to understand only if one recognizes the unremitting, deep, bitter religious and racial prejudice existing today in this section of our land — I don’t know if any of them are similarly infected in other sections, but I know personally of what I speak as regards East Texas.

I find it equal parts depressing and confounding that just when many in the world have come to like America again for love of Obama, many in our country have come to fear for America in their hatred of him.

That hate is threatening to paralyze Congress and emasculate the President. And it is now so admixed with legitimate grievances about the economy and unemployment, that the hateful feel justified in their rabid obstructionism, paranoid propaganda, and vengeful campaigns to delegitimize the President in a time of national crisis.

We’ve had a dot com bubble and a housing bubble. Well now we’ve got a hate bubble. And if we don’t deflate this bubble fast, we’ll be begging for the good ol’ days of ‘63.

“OK, OK, so you had problems as a teenager and left home like about eleventy billion other kids do, so what”, you say with voice steadily rising…

Well, it’s called “Honor your Father and Mother”.

I know that ultimately we aren’t supposed to take sin all that seriously, everyone does it and the all loving fluffy easter bunny of a God doesn’t really care and we all grow up and then we have our own kids and now we’re on the parent side and that of course equals repentance, right?

Maybe, but maybe not…

What Satan figured out in his Rock and Roll laboratory, is that he could get kids to rebel against authority through pop culture and rock and roll.

Cool, you say, but so what. Then those kids grow up, they have kids, then they are parents and are forgiven for what they did when they were young.

Hmmm, what to do, what to do…

Here’s an idea, get those kids to rebel against their parents and against authority, use innocence and hurt and a dead president and puppy dog Beatlemania to get the whole thing going, then send those same kids off to a war that they don’t want to fight in so that their rebellion has a “nobel” cause…then let them die on a battlefield that way.

Satan + JFK + Beatlemania + Vietnam + “Peace” = Souls in Satan’s pocket.

See, here’s the thing. You can talk all you want about the CIA, or FBI, or Secret Service; Texas Oil or Cubans or the Mob, or even Oswald acting alone and a lot of the theories have bits and pieces that make sense. I do know a bit about the JFK assassination in reality and there’s still plenty of questions that lead to a potential conspiracy, and a definite cover up of relevant information relating to the assassination.

But whether it’s a seedy group in a mahogony shaded room making “power” deals that somehow caused this, or just one guy who was unstable, there was someone behind the scenes that definitely stood to profit from this.

Satan had a legitimate motive to kill JFK…

It’s a plot that didn’t start with JFK, it’s an evolution of one. The same way he used racism to kill off so many on battlefields in the Civil War, and then that president happened to get assassinated afterwards too.

Whenever Satan can cause a conflict that will cost the lives of those that verifiably are separated from God on just one key point, he wins souls.

I will be the first to point the finger at myself and say “well he’s insane”, but I’m telling you beyond a shadow of a doubt in my mind that I know Satan operates at this level.

Satan killed JFK…to win souls.

Jim Sibert has answered the questions for 46 years, ever since the night he observed the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy. Over the years, the former FBI special agent has been interviewed for books and calls and questions keep coming from teachers, authors and historians. Now, as another anniversary of the assassination arrives, Sibert, 91, was asked again about that historic day, Nov. 22, 1963.

“It started out like a normal day,” Sibert said.

At the time, Sibert was a 45-year-old FBI special agent stationed in Maryland and only a year younger than Kennedy. Late in the day, the president of the United States lay dead in front of him with a hole in his head.

“It was a piece blown out of the skull,” Sibert said.

Read More

http://www.connectingdirectors.com

Sunday was the 46th anniversary of President John Kennedy’s assassination. Two hours and 8 minutes after Kennedy was shot, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn aboard Air Force 1. The hastily arranged swearing-in ceremony marked a number of firsts in American history.

• The ceremony was conducted by Federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes, making Johnson the first — and thus far only — U.S. president sworn in by a woman.
• Air Force 1 was still on the ground at Love Field Airport in Dallas when the ceremony was conducted, giving Johnson — a proud Texan — the distinction of being the only U.S. president sworn in on Texas soil.
• Johnson, who was not Catholic, is the only U.S. president to take the oath of office using a Catholic Missal. The Catholic prayer book was used because aides could not find a Bible aboard Air Force 1. Johnson was not the first president sworn in without a Bible. Shortly after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt took the oath without using a Bible or any other book. Franklin Pierce affirmed the oath of office in 1853 using a law book, as did, John Quincy Adams in 1825. Adams used a law book that contained a copy of the U.S. Constitution.

Sunday was the anniversary of the JFK assassination. Check out Walter Cronkite’s live report. (I’m putting this up an hour early, so it’s still the anniversary.)

A John Birch Society flyer, early 1960s.

JFK 46TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH TODAY NOV22ND
DID YOU REMEMBER THIS DAY??
DO YOU STILL WONDER ABOUT HIS DEATH??
SOME RATE HIM AS ONE OF THE BEST PRESIDENTS EVER..
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUR JFK DEATH IN DALLAS ON NOV22ND??

This book covers the FBI exploits of the crack team investigating the assassination of one of the most important political leaders of the 20th century – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Boys of Birmingham caught James Earl Ray in just two months after Dr. King’s brutal shooting at the Lorraine Motel, and this book tells the story for the first time ever of how exactly the killer was located and arrested. Taught, gripping, humorous at times and sad at others, this book also details new stories and info concerning FBI Lifetime Director J. Edgar Hoover, President Kennedy’s assassination and the infamous “Blond Man” of Dealey Plaza. A page turner, a “must read,” this book adds the latest news to the growing body of literature about Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, as well as telling scintillating FBI stories full of Deep South local color and flavor. You can buy this book in soft cover at Amazon or Barnes & Noble online, and in eBook form at Amazon Kindle, MobiPocket or SmashWords!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3350/?ref=karenperalta

I’ve posted a blog at TulareCountyAtheists.com about Rhode Island’s Bishop Thomas Tobin and his recent order to deny communion to Representative Patrick Kennedy.  Kennedy recently voted against the Stupak amendment to the health care bill currently before Congress, and the Bishop decided that this meant Kennedy was supporting abortion in violation of the Church’s orders to Catholic politicians.  Read my blog here.

Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin has instructed priests under his control to refuse communion to Representative Patrick Kennedy, on the same day as the 46th anniversary of the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.  Since 2004, Roman Catholic Bishops have threatened to withhold communion from politicians who vote in favor of issues the Catholic Church has decided they should be against.

With this action, Bishop Tobin continues the Church’s march away from fighting poverty and oppression,  and towards shrill demagoguery over social issues like stem cell research, abortion, and same sex marriage.

Catholic services in Washington D.C. have threatened to pull out of the city, abandoning the poor, after the District approved legislation recognizing same sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.    Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington D.C. wrote an article in today’s (Nov 22, 2009) Washington Post that essentially says they will halt many of their projects if the law comes into effect (Congress must approve first).  Read the Bishop’s article here.

So now it appears that in the name of “religious freedom”, that no Catholic can have a political position that conflicts with the Church’s beliefs, and political jurisdictions that recognize or allow same sex marriage will be without the Church’s programs.  Essentially, if you won’t play by their rules, they’ll take their toys and leave.

I wonder what Jesus would think about that.  If he existed.

Communion article here.