Money makes the world go around

In a week that Gordon Brown said that banks should be the “servants of the economy and society and never its master”, there is a growing sense that banking is the tail that wags the dog. A good friend of mine, who has a background in banking, is more specific about the current financial malaise & considers the US Federal Reserve System to be the invisible hand that manipulates the global economy. He told me to check out this melodramatic but intriguing article entitled The Shadow Money Lenders: The Real Significance of The Fed’s Zero-Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP).

My friend suspects that the Federal Reserve is behind every economic boom & bust since & including the Great Depression. Motive? Foreknowledge = massive profit. Conversely, economics can also serve as an efficient political weapon. “If the Federal Reserve is behind the Credit Crunch, what’s their aim?” I asked my friend. His response: “China is a slumbering giant; they wish to cripple the economy before it overtakes the West.”

Mistrust of the Federal Reserve is nothing new.  Ezra Pound (modernist poet,visionary, traitor, fascist & lunatic) believed that the bankers in charge of the Federal Reserve and their associates in the Bank of England were responsible for getting the USA into both World Wars, in an effort to drive up government debt beyond sustainable levels.  Pound commissioned his protege, Eustace Mullins, to write a book about the history of the Federal Reserve in the style of a detective story. The book, Secrets Of The Federal Reserve, charges that bankers hide behind the screen of the central banks and pull political strings to drive countries into the war, creating immense profits for themselves as the principal beneficiaries of wartime debt. [Wikipedia]

Another high-profile critic of the Federal Reserve was President John F. Kennedy who, on June 4, 1963, signed Executive Order No. 11110 returning to the U.S. government the power to issue currency without going through the Federal Reserve Bank (effectively stripping the Federal Reserve of its power to loan money to the government at interest).  The John F. Kennedy vs The Federal Reserve showdown didn’t last long however. JFK was assassinated 5 months later & Executive order 11110 became obsolete.

Propaganda

What’s the difference line between spin/PR & propaganda? Drop us a postcard if you know (or post a comment).

Yesterday, The Guardian ran a surprisingly high profile story yesterday about the activities of the Research, Information and Communication Unit (RICU): Revealed: Britain’s secret propaganda war against al-Qaida – BBC and website forums targeted by Home Office unit

Freedom of the press & authority don’t always mix. A media insider recently mentioned that all news items in the UK are routinely cleared by “spooks”. In the US, a common perception is that the end of the Vietnam War was accelerated due to extensive media exposure covering the Peace Movement. In November 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai Massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers in March 1968. The report prompted widespread condemnation around the world and reduced public support for the Vietnam War in the United States.

This type of ’subversive’ reporting has resulted in a determination in US right-wing thinking to muzzle the press, at least in wartime (this is, of course, only my opinion). The trouble comes when we consider ourselves to be in a state of perpetual war which, some might say, is a pretty accurate description of the Cold War.

It was Howard Hunt who broke the story that the CIA funded Animal Farm, the animated film version of George Orwell’s political allegory.

However, this was only one example of a worldwide policy unearthed by the Frank Church investigations (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) in 1975. Details of Operation Mockingbird were revealed as a result of  According to the Congress report published in 1976:

“The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.” Frank Church argued that misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.

Mockingbird’s “principal operative” was the enigmatic Cord Meyer. In February, 2001, the writer, C. David Heymann, asked Cord Meyer about the death of his wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer: “My father died of a heart attack the same year Mary was killed , ” he whispered. “It was a bad time.” And what could he say about Mary Meyer? Who had committed such a heinous crime? “The same sons of bitches,” he hissed, “that killed John F. Kennedy.”

From Dallas to Watergate…

From Dallas to Watergate, it’s all here…

• Dallas Police Interviews
  Various interviews of Chief Jesse Curry of the Dallas Police and Dallas DA Henry Wade. Included is the midnight interview of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shooting by Jack Ruby.
  
• Kennedy Assassination Thwarted Weeks Before His Death
  A former Secret Service agent says there was a plot to kill president John F. Kennedy in Chicago three weeks before he was assassinated in Dallas.
  
• David Atlee Philips AKA Maurice Bishop
  CIA operative Antonio Veciana testified regarding his case officer Maurice Bishop. The sketch of Bishop was based on Veciana’s recollections of the appearance of the man meeting with Oswald. He was shot in the head after testifying, but survived. Phillips was The Chief of Western Hemisphere Operations. He denied knewing Oswald, but the HSCA wanted him charged for perjury. He died of cancer in 1988.
  
• House Select Committee on Assassinations – 1976
  Established in 1976 to investigate the John F. Kennedy assassination and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination. The Committee investigated until 1978, and in 1979 issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, probably as a result of a conspiracy.
  
• 1977 CBS report on Oltmans & De Mohrenschildt
  1977 CBS report on Williem Oltmans’ HSCA testimony concerning his interviews with Georege De Mohrenschildt.
  
• Bill Hicks on JFK
  Bill Hicks talking about JFK from Revelations.
  
• 40 years after RFK’s death, questions linger
  ‘Three major assassinations rocked America in the 1960s. Two of the assassins – Lee Harvey Oswald, the killer of John F. Kennedy, and James Earl Ray, who shot Martin Luther King Jr. – are dead. But Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of killing Robert F. Kennedy 40 years ago in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, is living out his days in the California state prison at Corcoran. He is 64 and has never fully explained what happened that night other than to say he can’t remember it….’
• Mad Money in High Places Citizen Hughes
  ‘Citizen Hughes is mostly about big money in high places, of cash siphoned from Hughes’ Nevada gambling casinos and piped to politicians. Wielding the only power he knew, the deranged industrialist reveals a crude cynicism. On Lyndon Johnson: “I have done this kind of business with him before. So, he wears no awe-inspiring robe of virtue with me.” On Hubert Humphrey: “A candidate who needs us and wants our help . . . somebody we control sufficiently.” On Richard Nixon: “My man. He I know for sure knows the facts of life.”‘
• Remarks By President Gerald Ford On Taking the Oath Of Office As President
  “The oath that I have taken is the same oath that was taken by George Washington and by every President under the Constitution. But I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.”

 

J’accuse / Bobby Baker Bombshells

Today’s blog examines the impact of the “greatest newspaper article in history” & takes a peek at the political dealings of LBJ.

Feel free to send in comments.

J’ACCUSE…

• J’ACCUSE …!
  Emile Zola, Alfred Dreyfus & the greatest newspaper article in history
  Read a translation of the famous article here.
• Dreyfus rehabilitated
  France & the Dreyfus Affair & the long road to justice.
• Zola, a moment of human conscience
  The end of the affair.
• GREGORI IS ACQUITTED
  Verdict, Greeted by Hoots and Cheers, Buries the Dreyfus Affair
• Zola’s Mysterious Death 
  Was it really a stovepipe accident? 

Bobby Baker Bombshells…

• An American shadow points to LBJ
  Blood, money, oil, power…
• Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade
  Discussion of Mutual political contempt.
• Suite 8F Group
  It’s never about oil.

JFK

This blog sifts through some interesting links concerning the assassination of JFK & takes a look at some unsual suspects.

The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, probably as a result of a conspiracy. The members of this probable conspiracy were not identified. The Committee further concluded that it was probable that: four shots were fired & the third shot came from a second assassin located on the grassy knoll, but missed.

Feel free to comment / send in your fave links.

• Motorcade Films
  A good place to start is with existing footage stored on this excellent research website. There’s still a shock value in watching these films.
• JFK – List of suspicious deaths
  Some writers who have investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy have claimed that a large number of witnesses to the event have died in mysterious circumstances. This is essentially a long list of people who, it is claimed, died in mysterious circumstances between 1963 and 1976.
• Deathbed Confession of E. Howard Hunt 
  Legendary CIA operative and central figure in the Watergate scandal speaks. 
• LBJ’s Mistress Blows Whistle On JFK Assassination
  The night before the Kennedy assassination, Lyndon Baines Johnson met with Dallas tycoons, FBI moguls and organized crime kingpins – emerging from the conference to tell his mistress Madeleine Duncan Brown that “those SOB’s” would never embarrass him again.
• Gene Wheaton:CIA and the Military Industrial Complex
  Gene Wheaton was one of the key figures in exposing the Iran Contra Scandal.
• Interview with James Files
  The ‘confessed assassin’ of JFK
• Charles Harrelson Comments on Conspiracy Theories
  The father of actor Woody Harrelson granted an exclusive jailhouse interview to Channel 4 in 1982. Charles Harrelson is a convicted hit man and a name linked by conspiracy theorists to the JFK assassination.  You can also read an article from the Times about Secrets of Woody’s hitman father. 
• Secret Service
  Examining the role of the secret service in the shooting.
• Holt on Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch
  Chauncey Holt spots Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch in Dallas.