US CORPORATE DESTROYERS URGING NEXT FASCIST FAST TRACK ATTACK 0N AMERICA

Wall Street Titans Who Crashed Global Economy in 2008 Go Big for TPP

As billionaire class and financial elites push corporate-friendly pact, new data shows empty promises and 'job-killing' reality of previous agreements

by

Jon Queally, staff writer

Executives from the financial institutions who received TARP funds, (L-R) Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan Chase & Co Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, The Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robert P. Kelly, Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis and State Street Corporation CEO and Chairman Ronald Logue testify before the House Financial Services Committee February 11, 2009 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

1. [CV ...a trinational, Independent Task Force on the Future of North America has developed a roadmap to promote North American security and advance the well-being of citizens of all three countries. Read more] and more ...Ted Cruz: married to the establishment

1. [CV ... Rand Paul Supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Trade Deal. Read more

Even as millions and millions of Americans—represented by thousands of labor, environmental, family farm, consumer, faith, Internet freedom and other advocacy organizations—continue to stand firmly in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, those backing the TPP, including President Obama and a large majority of the Republican caucus, still have two dedicated demographic groups pledging their allegiance to the cause and arguing the so-called "free trade agreement (FTA)" would be good for average workers and the economy overall: billionaires and Wall Street titans.
As Zach Carter of the Huffington Post reports:

Last week, dozens of New York City's power elite signed a letter to the state's congressional delegation, urging lawmakers to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership now in negotiations. Democrats in Congress largely oppose the TPP, and Republican leaders have said they don't have the votes needed to pass it without Democratic support.
But while Obama has struggled to win over members of his own party -- he has been publicly feuding with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) -- wealthy CEOs probably aren't the ideal pitchmen to skeptical Democrats. Even if their letter hails the TPP as "a catalyst for creating new jobs in the United States" that will benefit "American workers in a broad range of industries."

Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch signed the letter. So did Steven Schwarzman, who once compared the prospect of raising taxes on private equity magnates like himself to Hitler's invasion of Poland. John Paulson, the Republican mega-donor who made a fortune betting against the housing market with Goldman Sachs, is also a signee. So is vulture investor Wilbur Ross, who spent six figures to support GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 and has backed such conservative hardliners as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.).

Other signatories include real estate billionaire Jerry Speyer, who recently attended a $100,000-per-person fundraiser to bolster former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's White House hopes. The host of that event, private equity kingpin Henry Kravis, also signed.

News of the letter, which can be read in full here, came on the same day as new trade data released by the U.S. Census Bureau, covering the full first three years of the bilateral trade deal between the U.S. and South Korea, revealed that the U.S. goods trade deficit with that country has more than doubled since the agreement, first signed in 2007 and amended in 2010, was implemented.

What the new data shows, according to the advocacy group Public Citizen, is economic outcomes that are the opposite of the Obama administration’s "more exports, more jobs" promise used to push through that deal, which are the same promises the administration and those supporting TPP are now using as they attempt to persuade Congress to approve Fast Track authority and ram it through Congress without debate or amendment.

The new economic statistics, explains Public Citizen, offer a damning indictment of the promises on which such deals are sold:

U.S. goods exports to Korea have dropped 6 percent, or $2.7 billion, under the Korea FTA’s first three years, while goods imports from Korea have surged 19 percent, or $11.3 billion (comparing the deal’s third year to the year before implementation). As a result, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has swelled 104 percent, or more than $14 billion. The trade deficit increase equates to the loss of more than 93,000 American jobs in the first three years of the Korea FTA, counting both exports and imports, according to the trade-jobs ratio that the Obama administration used to project gains from the deal." [...]
Record-breaking U.S. trade deficits with Korea have become the new normal under the FTA – in 35 of the 36 months since the Korea FTA took effect, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has exceeded the average monthly trade deficit seen in the three years before the deal. In January 2015, the monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea topped $3 billion – the highest level on record.

The administration has tried to deflect attention from the failure of its Korea FTA by claiming that its poor performance has been caused by economic stagnation in Korea. However, Korea’s economy has grown during each year of the Korea FTA, while U.S. exports to Korea have not.

Despite those figures and the collapse of the U.S. manufacturing sector in the age of neoliberal globalization, the repeated line from TPP supporters is that these deals are 'job creators.' As the letter from the billionaire elites to the New York Congressional Delegation stated, "TPP would be a catalyst for creating new  jobs in the United States, attracting more foreign investment to this country, and  benefitting American workers in a broad range  of industries."

But that's simply not what the evidence from past FTAs shows, said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, in a statement on Tuesday.

"Who’s going to buy the argument about Fast Track and the TPP creating 'more exports, more jobs' when Obama’s only major trade deal, used as the TPP template, was sold under that very slogan and yet has done the opposite?"

And Dave Johnson, from the Campaign for America's Future, explained in a Tuesday post how none of this "just happened" by accident, but that corporate-friendly trade policies have created these 'job-killing' conditions:

Globalization is not some kind of inevitable natural process of history that has caught up with us. This was and is the result of intentional policy choices, designed to force deindustrialization, break unions, drive down wages and benefits and increase inequality as that pay differential is pocketed by a few. This is the result of the “free market, free trade” ideology that rose up in the late 70s. Free trade policy was and is designed to give a few plutocrats and their giant corporations — “the 1 percent” — increased power over governments.

 Dean Baker, in “Globalization Was Policy, Not Something That Happened,” explained, “… inequality, like the path of globalization, is not something that happened. It was and is the result of conscious policy. We won’t be able to deal with it effectively until we acknowledge this simple fact.”

In his reporting for Huffington Post, Carter makes it clear that it wasn't only billionaires who signed the letter urging for Fast Track and TPP approval. Some, he told his readers, were "merely millionaire CEOs" like Goldman Sach's Lloyd Blankfein, Kenneth Chenault of American Express, and JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Business Chiefs that Abhor Private Property

CEOs Against Private Property

March 31, 2015Ryan McMaken

The governor of Indiana last week signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, modeled on similar federal legislation. The Indiana statute states that a person’s religious beliefs may not be “substantially burden[ed]” by anti-discrimination statutes. In other words, if anti-discrimination laws could be construed as forcing a person to violate his own religious conscience, then the law allows for an exemption in that case to anti-discrimination mandates.

The response from the left has been fierce, and multiple CEOs of major firms, including Apple and Salesforce, have come out against the legislation with Salesforce announcing that it will impose a partial boycott on Indiana.

The actual points of the bill are murkier, and Gov. Pence of Indiana is now claiming that the bill does not actually allow business owners to discriminate.

Rather than get mired in a discussion of the minutiae of the Indiana law and similar laws, let it just be said that if the law allows for greater discrimination — and thus, enhances private property rights and lessens the load of government regulations — then it is good. If the new law does not do this, then it’s difficult to see what the point of it is except as a scheme to gain favor with some right-wing religious groups.

Exclusion Is a Foundation of Private Property

Even if the bill does allow for greater control over private property on the part of the owners, the new government-allowed discretion would still be far too restrictive since it would apply only to religious objections. After all, religion is merely one criteria that a property owner might employ to determine how he or she wishes to use his or her property. If an owner wishes to dispense with religious motivation in favor of the pure avaricious pursuit of profit, or wishes to use the business to forward the goal of restoring the Russian monarchy, why should those motivations be any less respected than religion?

By framing the debate as a religious matter, the advocates of regulated discrimination are able to portray many of the advocates as zealots. Meanwhile, the supporters of religious freedom in this case have reduced their argument to a discussion about the motivations behind how one uses private property, when they should really be advocating for the unhampered exercise of full private property rights.

Indeed, the debate has much in common with the Obamacare debate in which Obamacare advocates and opponents sparred over whether or not a business should be mandated by law to provide certain types of health care coverage. At the time, I noted that the while the media attempted to portray the controversy as a religious matter, it was really a debate over wages and contracts. 

Similarly, once we strip away all the culture-war grandstanding and claims of supporting enlightened free thought over Dark-Age superstition, what we find is that the debate over the Indiana law is a debate over the nature of private property, pure and simple. One group in this case advocates for a (regrettably limited) expansion of private property rights, while the other side argues for increased government regulation of private businesses and enterprises. 

Tom Cook and Marc Benioff, CEOs of Apple and Salesforce, respectively, have come out in favor of government regulation because they fear the possibility that someone somewhere might use his property in a way that Cook and Benioff find offensive. But at the core of their position is that it is good and legitimate for government to regulate the use of private property so it can be used only in ways that reflect the values of Cook’s and Benioff’s favored religious or socio-economic groups.

In spite of the perception of Cook and Benioff as capitalists of some sort, their grasp of the nature of private property appears shaky at best. If the concept of private property is to have any meaning at all, then ownership must include the ability to exclude others from using that property. In other words, if an owner of a plot of land or a device cannot exclude others from using that land or that device, then the owner does not actually own it. 

Furthermore, without the right to exclude, the “owner” is reduced to little more than a regulated caretaker.

Every Economic Act Involves Discrimination

In practice, the decision to exclude is always based on some type of discrimination. The type of discrimination can run the gamut from “you’re banned from my store because you groped customers” to “I don’t serve your (racial) kind.” In everyday life, the merchant, salesman, clerk, or owner of any kind must — because time is scarce — make constant discriminatory decisions as to whether or not he will do business with client A or client B. Indeed, every single economic act requires this sort of discrimination. A person may prefer to do business with more attractive people, or people who are friendlier. Or he may wish to work only with his co-religionists or citizens of his own nation-state. On a fundamental level, everyone knows this is the case, but many accept that it is the legitimate role of the state to decide which types of discrimination are acceptable and which are not. Hence, discrimination against unattractive people remains acceptable. Discrimination against certain racial groups is not.

Regardless of what groups end up being favored, the effect of any anti-discrimination law is to curtail the freedom of the owner and to increase the size and scope of government’s coercive power over the lives and livelihoods of property owners. Moreover, since anti-discrimination law is heavily dependent on proving intent and motivation, such regulation also puts the government in the position of investigating the thoughts and opinions of owners. Sometimes, owners make this easy for regulators by stating their motivations outright, but in other cases, private owners are investigated and inferences are made as to the feelings and views of owners. This is necessary because, since every business transaction requires some sort of discrimination, the mere act of not entering into a business transaction is not sufficient to prove not-government-approved discrimination.

The Effects of Discrimination Depend on Monopoly Power

 Finish reading

Americans Supported and Inspired the Nazis

 

The Nazis learned about Zyklon B from the US treatment of Mexicans

 Americans Supported and Inspired the Nazis

Posted on March 27, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog

Unless We Learn Our History, We’re Doomed to Repeat It

Preface:  I am a patriotic American who loves  my country. I was born here, and lived here my entire life.

So why do I frequently point out America’s warts?  Because – as the Founding Fathers and Supreme Court judges have explained – we can only make America better if we honestly examine her shortcomings.  After all:

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

Only when Americans can honestly look at our weaknesses can we become stronger. If we fail to do so, history will repeat …


While Americans rightly condemn the Nazis as monstrous people, we don’t know that America played both sides … both fighting and supporting the Nazis.

Americans also aren’t aware that the Nazis were – in part – inspired by anti-Semites in America.

Backing Nazis

Large American banks – and George W. Bush’s grandfather – financed the Nazis.

American manufacturing companies were big supporters of the Nazis.   here are 6 historical examples …
(1) IBM.  CNET reports:

IBM has responded to questions about its relationship with the Nazis largely by characterizing the information as old news.

“The fact that Hollerith equipment manufactured by (IBM’s German unit) Dehomag was used by the Nazi administration has long been known and is not new information,” IBM representative Carol Makovich wrote in an e-mail interview. “This information was published in 1997 in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing and in 1998 in Washington Jewish Week.”
***

IBM also defended Chairman Thomas Watson for his dealings with Hitler and his regime.
***

On September 13, 1939, The New York Times reports on

Page 1 that 3 million Jews are going to be “immediately removed” from Poland, and they appear to be candidates for “physical extermination.” On September 9, the German managers of IBM Berlin send a letter to Thomas Watson with copy to staff in Geneva via phone that, due to the “situation,” they need high-speed alphabetizing equipment. IBM wanted no paper trail, so an oral agreement was made, passed from New York to Geneva to Berlin, and those alphabetizers were approved by Watson, personally, before the end of the month.

That month he also approved the opening of a new Europe-wide school for Hollerith technicians in Berlin.

And at the same time he authorized a new German-based subsidiary in occupied Poland, with a printing plant across the street from the Warsaw Ghetto at 6 Rymarska Street. It produced some 15 million punch cards at that location, the major client of which was the railroad.

We have a similar example involving Romania in 1941, and The Sunday Times has actually placed the IBM documents up on their Web site…. When Nazi Germany went into France, IBM built two new factories to supply the Nazi war machine. This is the 1941-’42 era, in Vichy, France, which was technically neutral. When Germany invaded Holland in May 1940, IBM rushed a brand-new subsidiary into occupied Holland. And it even sent 132 million punch cards in 1941, mainly from New York, to support the Nazi activity there. Holland had the highest rate of Jewish extermination in all of Europe; 72 percent of Jews were killed in Holland, compared to 24 percent in France, where the machines did not operate successfully.
***

When Hitler came to power in 1933, his desire to destroy European Jewry was so ambitious an enterprise, it required the resources of a computer. But in 1933 no computer existed. What did exist was the Hollerith punch-card system. It was invented by a German-American in Buffalo, New York, for the Census Bureau. This punch-card system could store all the information about individuals, places, products, inventories, schedules, in the holes that were punched or not punched in columns and rows.

The Hollerith system reduced everything to number code.

Over time, the IBM alphabetizers could convert this code to alphabetical information. IBM made constant improvements for their Nazi clients.
***

Our entry was of course precipitated by the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7. Shortly before that, with sudden new trading-with-the-enemy regulations in force–this is October 1941–Watson issued a cable to all IBM’s European subsidiaries, saying in effect: “Don’t tell us what you’re doing and don’t ask us any questions.” He didn’t say, “Don’t send machines into concentration camps.” He didn’t say, “Stop organizing the military forces of Nazi Germany.” He didn’t say, “Don’t undertake anything to harm innocent civilians.”
***

He then bifurcated the management of IBM Europe–one manager in Geneva, named Werner Lier, and the other one in New York, in his office, named J.L. Schotte. So all communications went from Switzerland to New York. Ultimately there was a Hollerith Department called Hollerith Abteilung–German for department–in almost every concentration camp. Remember, the original Auschwitz tattoo was an IBM number.
***

IBM put the blitz in blitzkrieg. The whole war effort was organized on Hollerith machines from 1933 to 1945. This is when information technology comes to warfare. At the same time, IBM was supporting the entire German war machine directly from New York until the fall of 1941 ….

***
IBM did more than just sell equipment. Watson and IBM controlled the unique technical magic of Hollerith machines. They controlled the monopoly on the cards and the technology. And they were the ones that had to custom-design even the paper forms and punch cards–they were custom-designed for each specific purpose. That included everything form counting Jews to confiscating bank accounts, to coordinating trains going into death camps, to the extermination by labor campaign.

That’s why even the paper forms in the prisoner camps had Hollerith notations and numbered fields checked. They were all punched in. For example, IBM had to agree with their Nazi counterparts that Code 6 in the concentration camps was extermination. Code 1 was released, Code 2 was transferred, Code 3 was natural death, Code 4 was formal execution, Code 5 was suicide. Code 7 was escape. Code 6 was extermination.

All of the money and all the machines from all these operations was claimed by IBM as legitimate business after the war. The company used its connections with the State Department and the Pentagon to recover all the machines and all the bank accounts. They never said, “We do not want this blood money.” They wanted it all.

(2) Standard Oil.   The Nazi air force – the Luftwaffe – needed tetraethyl lead gas in order to get their planes off the ground. Standard Oil sold tetraethyl to the Nazis.

After WWII began, the English became angry about U.S. shipments of strategic materials to Nazi Germany. So Standard changed the registration of their entire fleet to Panamanian to avoid British search or seizure. These ships continued to carry oil to the Nazis. Continued

VIDEO: The Dresden Inferno – An Allied War Crime

Posted on 02/13/2015

A mini-documentary which I put together about the fire bombing of Dresden on the night February 13th to 14th, 1945 with eye-witness testimony, describing a heinous, outrageous, Allied War Crime and a story of survival. The footage comes from various German sources which I have translated and narrated into English. I will try to expand this in the future with more eye-witness testimony footage,  but these clips will first need to be translated.  Hopefully, as we get TJGS established and more people join us, we will get volunteers for such projects.

The Dresden Inferno – An Allied War Crime

►

This video is also now available now on YouTube, however, as my videos sometimes get deleted there, or are they blocked in certain countries, I am hosting it myself to prevent censorship. Feel free to view it here and to share it:  http://youtu.be/d_O1xT38FSU

 Related article:

The War Crimes of Winston Churchill and the Mad Doctor Lindemann: A True Holocaust Story

via justiceforgermans

Why the NY State Police (and DC) Fear the Oathkeepers - *vid*

John Wallace, vice president of the New York Oath Keepers. (From Wallace’s Facebook)

Hatred and contempt for our Constitution from above is being frustrated from below. Ordinary rank 'n file Americans who love their country and their own individual liberties are flocking to the sanctuaries of lawful order. Oathkeepers is the leading non-violent sanctuary to restore and preserve those ends, and challenges those who seek to end it. NYC mayors of treason, DeBlasio and Bloomberg you're not wanted here.

---

 ▶ Oath Keepers Orders We Will NOT Obey - Full Length Video - YouTube

Uploaded on Apr 8, 2009

http://OathKeepers.org
Meet David Berry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyaxEw...
Meet Eddie & Ada Gilbert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49GPAK...
http://stewart-rhodes.blogspot.com/
"This is my old, private blog that is now sadly neglected since I have launched Oath Keepers, which has truly taken off like a rocket, leaving me no time for personal blogging - not that I'm complaining. the Oath Keepers mission is very important, and worth the time and effort.

Go here: www.oathkeepers.org

However, if you want to see what prompted me to finally launch Oath Keepers, there are several posts on this blog that show my thinking.

Back in 2006 I wrote several scathing criticisms of the Bush Administration's absurd and dangerous claims of nearly unlimited executive "war" powers. Those articles built on my research at Yale Law School (where I won the Miller Prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights).

One of the most common refrains I get from Obama supporters is "where were you when Bush was violating the Constitution." Well, I was right here. Read this:"
http://stewart-rhodes.blogspot.com/

OATH KEEPERS is a non-partisan association of Military, Veterans, and peace officers who will honor their oaths to defend the Constitution, will NOT just follow orders, will stand for liberty, and will save the Republic, so help us God. Our motto is:

"Not on Our Watch!"

SUMMARY LIST OF ORDERS WE WILL NOT OBEY:

1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.

2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants or to subject them to military tribunal.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a state of emergency on a state.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to keep the peace or to maintain control.

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.

10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

Read the full declaration at http://oathkeepers.org

Death Penalty for Debasing Currency: US Coinage Act of 1792

Don't kid yourself that it couldn't happen again in this century. The serfs are waking up, and they're MAD as Hell and won't take it anymore. If bankers' heads and those of their government defenders begin appearing on the ends of pikes, you'll know why!

As most of you know much of our current law was based on English case law. Hence, this was the Royal Mint's disposition of counterfeiters and forgers. The methods employed for carrying out the death penalty are appropriate even today.:

SOLOMON IDSWELL, Deception > forgery, 20th May 1795.

Reference Number: t17950520-26
Offence: Deception & forgery
Verdict: Guilty
Punishment: Death

Related Material: Associated Records
Corrections: Add a correction


Are Counterfeiting and Treason any less painful a crime upon the people today? We vote "Nay!" Hasn't our central government stolen real money by bank note deception and broken sworn promises of redeemability from the American people and their foreign trading partners? And haven't our current leaders and appointees past and present lied knowingly to perpetuate these crimes ? To this, we vote "Yea!" on both charges.

Our preferred method of punishment would be by "dissected and anatomised". Rehabilitation is not up for reconsideration. That's already been shown to be a failed remedy.Plate IV: The Reward of Cruelty by William Hogarth

---

Section 19 of coinage act of 1792: death penalty for debasing currency

And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of the fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same out to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, and if any of the said officers or persons shall embezzle any of the metals which shall at any time be committed to their charge for the purpose of being coined, or any of the coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offenses, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death. section 19 of coinage act of 1792

The Federal Reserve debased our currency. Take a look at your coinage. See any gold or silver there?

The founders of this nation knew that banks left to themselves, would substitute cheap metal tokens for real money. They had seen it happen in England, and they saw the results; massive unemployment and poverty for the people.

So the Founders created a monetary system based on government-issued currency of fixed real value, for the use of the people without interest. And the United States flourished.

Then the bankers wormed their way back into the system, bought the Congress and a President, replaced the government issued public currency with currency borrowed from their banks at interest... and debased the gold and silver coinage.

By that last act, every member of the Federal Reserve system (and their enablers in Congress and the Treasury) is in violation of Section 19 of the coinage act of 1792.

Posted on Dec 08, 2009 at 07:56

Source:  section 19 of coinage act of 1792: death penalty for debasing currency

Congressional Fascism - Blackwater Lobbyist Will Manage the House Intelligence Committee

If you don't recognize the person scheming
with John Podesta then we can't help you.

We cannot fathom any degree of greater corruption and conflict of interest, not to exclude our own national security! You're all too familiar with the shameful record of Blackwater. This is truly a bi-partisanship conspiracy in our face. We’ve seen it before. The world knows it as Fascism.

There is a growing realization why "reforming" Oversight is not a focused objective of our congressmen.

There’re several descriptive sites on John Podesta and CAP:

• ALL IN THE FAMILY: NEW OBAMA ADVISER'S SHADY LOBBYIST TIES
  
  
• George Soros Funded: The Center for American Progress’ Jihad Against the Free World

• Not to be overlooked: Soros inroads to Trey Gowdy's Benghazi Committee 

 Glean some clarity from this truncated snapshot from our full graphic:

 Our full Rothschild governance chart can be viewed here

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jeff Shockey, a lobbyist for defense contractors and Academi. He will soon lead the day to day operations of the House Intelligence Committee.

Posted at 3:32 pm by Lee Fang

After lobbyist-run SuperPACs and big money efforts dominated the last election, legislators are now appointing lobbyists to literally manage the day-to-day affairs of Congress. For the House Intelligence Committee, which oversees government intelligence operations and agencies, the changing of the guard means a lobbyist for Academi, the defense contractor formerly known as Blackwater, is now in charge.

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA), the incoming chairman of the Intelligence Committee when the House reconvenes in January, announced that Jeff Shockey will be the new Staff Director of the committee. As a paid representative of Academi, Shockey and his firm have earned $80,000 this year peddling influence on behalf of Academi.

In previous years, the House Intelligence Committee has investigated Blackwater over secret contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. As Staff Director, the highest position on a committee for a staff member, Shockey will oversee the agencies that do business with his former employer.

Shockey also represents a number of other companies with business before defense agencies: General Dynamics, Koch Industries, Northrop Grumman, United Launch Alliance, 

Innovative Defense Technologies and Boeing.

The role reversal, for lobbyists to take brief stints in Congress after an election, has become a normalized. In a previous investigation for The Nation, we found that some corporate firms offer employment contracts with special bonuses for their staff to return to government jobs, ensuring the paycut the receive for passing through the revolving door to become public servants doesn’t have to alter their K Street lifestyle.

Other committees are also hiring lobbyists. Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) replacement as chair of the Oversight Committee, just hired Podesta Group lobbyist Sean McLaughlin as his new Staff Director. 

McLaughlin’s client list includes the Business Roundtable, a trade association for corporate CEOs of large firms. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) also hired a new chief of staff, Mark Isakowitz, who represents BP.

via republicreport

About Lincoln and His Republicans You Might Not Know

Little attention is given to the punishing protective tariffs imposed by the Republican congress on the South to eliminate the import of foreign manufactured goods. As industrial production of the ante-bellum period was largely in Pennsylvania and purchased by the southern agrarian states, the additional penalties were passed along to the South. Today, we call a government "law" such as this a "wealth transfer scheme", or more accurately Corporatism or Fascism.

As it is, reading the below certainly screams out to be identified as a repeat of Washington's policies to interfere in America's cultural, race, and economic mix. Even the coloreds of today now recognize it as a scheme to import foreigners to take their jobs. 

Union members can see it as a hammer to break unions, replacing any strikers with immigrant scabs (union leaderships cannot be counted on to 'interfere' to protect their current members).  Organized workers: Look to whom your union dues are politically supporting - Republican or Democrat is inconsequential. Tell us how tolerant communist governments are of labor unions - - only in the establishment of total government, then jettisoned and banished under death. While your union job may have been exported from the US, was it re-incarnated in Red China?

 

Corporatist dinner menu - we're still on it

Only communist or fascist you say? Bone-up on the Versailles Treaty after WWI prompting German workers in the Ruhr Valley to strike because Germany could not pay the horrendous reparations to the allied victors.

Indeed, we do not learn from history because human nature does not change.

---

The 'Great Emancipator' and the Issue of Race

Abraham Lincoln's Program of Black Resettlement

By Robert Morgan

Many Americans think of Abraham Lincoln, above all, as the president who freed the slaves. Immortalized as the "Great Emancipator," he is widely regarded as a champion of black freedom who supported social equality of the races, and who fought the American Civil War (1861-1865) to free the slaves.

While it is true that Lincoln regarded slavery as an evil and harmful institution, it is also true, as this paper will show, that he shared the conviction of most Americans of his time, and of many prominent statesmen before and after him, that blacks could not be assimilated into white society. He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad. As President, he supported projects to remove blacks from the United States.

Early Experiences

In 1837, at the age of 28, the self-educated Lincoln was admitted to practice law in Illinois. In at least one case, which received considerable attention at the time, he represented a slave-owner. Robert Matson, Lincoln's client, each year brought a crew of slaves from his plantation in Kentucky to a farm he owned in Illinois for seasonal work. State law permitted this, provided that the slaves did not remain in Illinois continuously for a year. In 1847, Matson brought to the farm his favorite mulatto slave, Jane Bryant (wife of his free, black overseer there), and her four children. A dispute developed between Jane Bryant and Matson's white housekeeper, who threatened to have Jane and her children returned to slavery in the South. With the help of local abolitionists, the Bryants fled. They were apprehended, and, in an affidavit sworn out before a justice of the peace, Matson claimed them as his property. Lacking the required certificates of freedom, Bryant and the children were confined to local county jail as the case was argued in court. Lincoln lost the case, and Bryant and her children were declared free. They were later resettled in Liberia.¹

In 1842 Lincoln married Mary Todd, who came from one of Kentucky's most prominent slave-holding families.² While serving as an elected representative in the Illinois legislature, he persuaded his fellow Whigs to support Zachary Taylor, a slave owner, in his successful 1848 bid for the Presidency.³ Lincoln was also a strong supporter of the Illinois law that forbid marriage between whites and blacks.⁴

"If all earthly power were given me," said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, "I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land." After acknowledging that this plan's "sudden execution is impossible," he asked whether freed blacks should be made "politically and socially our equals?" "My own feelings will not admit of this," he said, "and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not ... We can not, then, make them equals."⁵

One of Lincoln's most representative public statements on the question of racial relations was given in a speech at Springfield, Illinois, on June 26, 1857.⁶ In this address, he explained why he opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have admitted Kansas into the Union as a slave state:

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ...

Racial separation, Lincoln went on to say, "must be effected by colonization" of the country's blacks to a foreign land. "The enterprise is a difficult one," he acknowledged,

but "where there is a will there is a way," and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.

To affirm the humanity of blacks, Lincoln continued, was more likely to strengthen public sentiment on behalf of colonization than the Democrats' efforts to "crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him ..." Resettlement ("colonization") would not succeed, Lincoln seemed to argue, unless accompanied by humanitarian concern for blacks, and some respect for their rights and abilities. By apparently denying the black person's humanity, supporters of slavery were laying the groundwork for "the indefinite outspreading of his bondage." The Republican program of restricting slavery to where it presently existed, he said, had the long-range benefit of denying to slave holders an opportunity to sell their surplus bondsmen at high prices in new slave territories, and thus encouraged them to support a process of gradual emancipation involving resettlement of the excess outside of the country.

Earlier Resettlement Plans

The view that America's apparently intractable racial problem should be solved by removing blacks from this country and resettling them elsewhere -- "colonization" or "repatriation" -- was not a new one. As early as 1714 a New Jersey man proposed sending blacks to Africa. In 1777 a Virginia legislature committee, headed by future President Thomas Jefferson (himself a major slave owner), proposed a plan of gradual emancipation and resettlement of the state's slaves. In 1815, an enterprising free black from Massachusetts named Paul Cuffe transported, at his own expense, 38 free blacks to West Africa. His undertaking showed that at least some free blacks were eager to resettle in a country of their own, and suggested what might be possible with public and even government support.⁷

In December 1816, a group of distinguished Americans met in Washington, DC, to establish an organization to promote the cause of black resettlement. The "American Colonization Society" soon won backing from some of the young nation's most prominent citizens. Henry Clay, Francis Scott Key, John Randolph, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Charles Carroll, Millard Fillmore, John Marshall, Roger B. Taney, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, and Abraham Lincoln were members. Clay presided at the group's first meeting.⁸

Measures to resettle blacks in Africa were soon undertaken. Society member Charles Fenton Mercer played an important role in getting Congress to pass the Anti-Slave Trading Act of March 1819, which appropriated $100,000 to transport blacks to Africa. In enforcing the Act, Mercer suggested to President James Monroe that if blacks were simply returned to the coast of Africa and released, they would probably be re-enslaved, and possibly some returned to the United States. Accordingly, and in cooperation with the Society, Monroe sent agents to acquire territory on Africa's West coast -- a step that led to the founding of the country now known as Liberia. Its capital city was named Monrovia in honor of the American President.⁹

With crucial Society backing, black settlers began arriving from the United States in 1822. While only free blacks were at first brought over, after 1827, slaves were freed expressly for the purpose of transporting them to Liberia. In 1847, black settlers declared Liberia an independent republic, with an American-style flag and constitution.¹⁰

By 1832 the legislatures of more than a dozen states (at that time there were only 24), had given official approval to the Society, including at least three slave-holding states.¹¹ Indiana's legislature, for example, passed the following joint resolution on January 16, 1850:¹²

Be it resolved by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana: That our Senators and Representatives in Congress be, and they are hereby requested, in the name of the State of Indiana, to call for a change of national policy on the subject of the African Slave Trade, and that they require a settlement of the coast of Africa with colored men from the United States, and procure such changes in our relations with England as will permit us to transport colored men from this country to Africa, with whom to effect said settlement.

In January 1858, Missouri Congressman Francis P. Blair, Jr., introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to set up a committee

to inquire into the expediency of providing for the acquisition of territory either in the Central or South American states, to be colonized with colored persons from the United States who are now free, or who may hereafter become free, and who may be willing to settle in such territory as a dependency of the United States, with ample guarantees of their personal and political rights.

Blair, quoting Thomas Jefferson, stated that blacks could never be accepted as the equals of whites, and, consequently, urged support for a dual policy of emancipation and deportation, similar to Spain's expulsion of the Moors. Blair went on to argue that the territory acquired for the purpose would also serve as a bulwark against any further encroachment by England in the Central and South American regions.¹³

Lincoln's Support for Resettlement

Lincoln's ideological mentor was Henry Clay, the eminent American scholar, diplomat, and statesman. Because of his skill in the US Senate and House of Representatives, Clay won national acclaim as the "Great Compromiser" and the "Great Pacificator." A slave owner who had humane regard for blacks, he was prominent in the campaign to resettle free blacks outside of the United States, and served as president of the American Colonization Society. Lincoln joined Clay's embryonic Whig party during the 1830s. In an address given in 1858, Lincoln described Clay as "my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all of my humble life."¹⁴

The depth of Lincoln's devotion to Clay and his ideals was expressed in a moving eulogy delivered in July 1852 in Springfield, Illinois. After praising Clay's lifelong devotion to the cause of black resettlement, Lincoln quoted approvingly from a speech given by Clay in 1827: "There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children," adding that if Africa offered no refuge, blacks could be sent to another tropical land. Lincoln concluded:¹⁵

If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland, with bright prospects for the future, and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation.

In January 1855, Lincoln addressed a meeting of the Illinois branch of the Colonization Society. The surviving outline of his speech suggests that it consisted largely of a well-informed and sympathetic account of the history of the resettlement campaign.¹⁶

In supporting "colonization" of the blacks, a plan that might be regarded as a "final solution" to the nation's race question, Lincoln was upholding the views of some of America's most respected figures.

​FINISH READING​

US Neo-Cons and Corporate Fascists for Hong Kong Democracy?

Many "Occupy Central" supporters now admit the US National Endowment for Democracy's (NED) role in ongoing chaos in Hong Kong and simply say, "so what?" Here's what... 

November 4, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - James T. Griffiths of the South China Morning Post was preparing a hit piece on analysts exposing the US role behind Hong Kong's ongoing street protests organized by "Occupy Central." Through a series of various logical fallacies, Griffiths was attempting to undermine and discredit these alternative news sources that have filled in the missing pieces intentionally left out by larger, subjectively pro-Western media monopolies and reporters like Griffiths himself. 

In a conversation with Griffiths, after discussing the unscrupulous nature of his tactics, he finally conceded that indeed, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was providing cash for certain political groups to carry out their activities in Hong Kong. Griffiths would claim in response to the suggestion that "Occupy Central" taking US cash constituted sedition that: 

If you think a pro-democracy NGO handing out money to pro-democracy organisations is creepy, then sure.

Only NED is not a "pro-democracy NGO." It is a functionary of the United States government and more specifically the US State Department whose very existence is to serve US interests, not those of the many nations its various funding arms, including USAID and NED, meddle in.

Neo-Cons and Corporate Fascists for Democracy? 

Griffiths' backpedaling is typical. First denying "Occupy Central" was funded from abroad, but since forced to concede otherwise, he is now claiming that such foreign funding constitutes no conflict of interest and is merely the promotion of "democracy."  It appears, however, that Griffiths either is being dishonest, or is uninformed about the true nature of the National Endowment for Democracy. He refused to comment when presented with a full list of NED's board of directors.

NED and its subsidiaries, Freedom House, the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), despite the lofty mission statement articulated on their websites, are little more than fronts for executing American foreign policy. Just as the US military is used under the cover of lies regarding WMD's and "terrorism," NED is employed under the cover of bringing "democracy" to "oppressed" people. However, a thorough look at NED's board of directors, as well as the board of trustees of its subsidiaries definitively lays to rest any doubts that may be lingering over the true nature of these organizations and the causes they support.
 
More importantly, for the many well-meaning left-leaning liberals intrigued by, and tempted to support "Occupy Central," revelations that "Occupy Central" is in fact a far-right Neo-Con corporate-fascist scheme to expand a confrontation with China and extort from Beijing geopolitical and economic concessions should at the very least give pause for thought.

The Neo-Cons  

Upon NED's board of directors are Neo-Conservatives including Elliot Abrams, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate Neo-Con Project for a New American Century. Within the pages of documents produced by this "think tank" are pleas to various US presidents to pursue war against sovereign nations, the increase of troops in nations already occupied by US forces, and what equates to a call for American global hegemony in a Hitlerian 90 page document titled "Rebuilding Americas Defenses."

The "Statement of Principles," signed off by NED chairmen Elliot Abrams, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Vin Weber, states, "we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles." Of course this "international order," is merely a poorly disguised euphemism for global neo-imperialism. Other Neo-Con that signed their name to this statement include Freedom House's Paula Dobriansky, Dan Quayle (formerly), and Donald Rumsfeld(formerly). Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Eliot Cohen also signed their names to this document.

A PNAC "Statment on Post-War Iraq" regarding a wholehearted endorsement of nation-building and continued occupation features the signatures of NED chairman Will Marshall, Freedom House's Frank Carlucci (2002), and James Woolsey (formerly), along with Martin Indyk (Lowy Institute board member, co-author of the conspiring "Which Path to Persia?" report), and William Kristol and Robert Kagan both of the warmongering Foreign Policy Initiative. It should be noted that the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is, for all intents and purposes, PNAC's latest reincarnation and in 2011 featured an open letter to House Republicans calling on them to disregard the will of the American people and continue pursuing the war in Libya. 
READ MORE