Vluchtelingenstroom 95

Zeven maanden voor de presidentsverkiezingen is Donald Trump erin geslaagd de Amerikaanse politiek in een chaos te veranderen.

Ik ga me hier niet aan speculaties wagen. Maar het zou geen kwaad kunnen als onze instituten die zich met onze buitenlandse politiek bezighouden — politieke partijen, universiteiten, media — zich eens zouden verdiepen in een mogelijke toekomst van de wereldpolitiek met een Amerika van Trump. Dat zou twee voordelen hebben. Het zou de kans op verrassingen verminderen en we zouden zelf beter beseffen waar we staan, want ook daaraan ontbreekt het.

Henk Hofland. De Groene Amsterdammer. 30 maart 2016

Tegenover dit simplistische beeld van goed versus kwaad, orde versus ‘chaos’ wil ik een gecompliceerde analyse stellen.

1. The Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and that means, basically, that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take.

Alan Greenspan, de voormalige Federal Reserve Chairman. 2007

Incoming Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Republican Controlled Senate will have a chance to vote on a comprehensive audit of America’s super-secretive national bank.

Such an audit was proposed by Congressmen Ron Paul of Texas and Bernie Sanders of Vermont as a rider to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The very idea was anathema to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

‘If the GAO [Government Accountability Office] is auditing not only the operational aspects of our programs and the details of the programs, but is making judgments about our policy decisions, that would effectively be a takeover of monetary policy by the Congress,’ 

said Bernanke, viewing the move as 

‘a repudiation of the independence of the Federal Reserve, which would be highly destructive to the stability of the financial system, the dollar and our national economic situation.’

Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate scaled back the scope of that audit.

Stephen Z. Nemo. The time to audit the Federal Reserve has come. 2 januari 2015

Voor alle duidelijkheid: een ‘audit’ is

een onderzoek dat, met een systematische en gedisciplineerde aanpak, wordt uitgevoerd naar het goed en betrouwbaar functioneren van de interne organisatie door auditors die in dienst zijn van die organisatie.

2. Vrijdag 22 april 2016 berichtte The Huffington Post:

The VA (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. svh) estimates PTSD afflicts almost 31 percent of Vietnam veterans, 20 percent of Iraq war vets and 11 percent of those who fought in Afghanistan. Each day, 22 veterans commit suicide, a 2012 study found.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dea-approves-study-marijuana-ptsd_us_57196aa3e4b0d4d3f722e4c4 

3. The US empire strikes back with a permanent global military presence that enriches corporations while decimating lives…

From the propaganda of the US government -- and its echo chamber in the corporate media -- you would think that our nation is under a dire military threat, with Russia, China and other countries chomping at the bit to enter conflict with the self-proclaimed world superpower. However, just examine the chart above, provided by the National Priorities Project. Take the brightly colored bars representing the next seven highest national expenditures on armed forces and armament, pile them on top of one another, and you will still have a column that falls short of how much the US spends on our global military empire.

As Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project comments, much of the massive US ‘defense budget’ (a misnomer considering how much US armed forces activity is aimed at protecting economic and corporate interests, not defending people) is funneled to private contractors:

Pentagon spending is subject to the same rules of corporate greed that plague our entire economy. More than half of the Pentagon budget goes to for-profit contractors.

Let’s get the word out there. The less we spend on Pentagon contractors that profit from fear and conflict, the more we can spend on priorities like education, climate change and infrastructure to move our country forward into the 21st first century. It’s time we joined the rest of the world.

The National Priorities Project chart reveals not only a militaristic policing of the world at extraordinary expense -- using funds that could benefit the welfare of individuals in the US and the world as a whole -- but the inexorable expansion of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower so famously warned against.

The gluttonous need for armed intervention across the world is alarming enough, but the entangling of Pentagon and corporate interests also leads to tremendous ongoing wasteful expenditures.

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/us-spends-more-on-military-than-total-of-next-seven-countries 

De drie feiten die ik aanvoer zijn onlosmakelijk met elkaar verbonden, en tonen aan dat Henk Hoflands bewering dat 

[z]even maanden voor de presidentsverkiezingen Donald Trump erin [is] geslaagd de Amerikaanse politiek in een chaos te veranderen,

kolder is, tenminste als het woord ‘chaos’ zijn oorspronkelijke betekenis nog bezit, te weten: een situatie waarin totale wanorde of verwarring heerst. De opiniemaker van de ‘politiek-literaire elite’ onderbouwt zijn bewering dan ook niet. Het enige dat hij doet is datgene beschrijven wat al geruime tijd bekend is, namelijk dat

[e]en aanzienlijk deel van het Amerikaanse electoraat wezenlijk is veranderd, zoals dat ook in West-Europa het geval is. De oude ideologieën hebben hun kracht verloren, ze dienen niet meer als grondslag voor de partijvorming. Daarna heeft de economische crisis aan het begin van deze eeuw het minder vermogende deel van de bevolking zwaar geraakt, terwijl de rijken aan de nieuwe armoede ontkwamen of zelfs hun welstand wisten te vergroten.

Langzamerhand is in de westerse wereld een nieuwe klassenmaatschappij gegroeid. Daarvan is de gevestigde politieke orde zich onvoldoende bewust geweest en ook de meeste traditionele media hebben zich nauwelijks aan een analyse gewaagd. Een van de uitzonderingen is de website truthout.org die dagelijks bloemlezingen uit de oppositionele pers geeft. En de massa geeft uiting aan haar ontevredenheid via de talrijke mogelijkheden op internet.

Hier geeft Hofland zichzelf en zijn spraakmakende gemeente een brevet van onvermogen door te stellen dat zij ‘zich onvoldoende bewust’ zijn ‘geweest’ van de neoliberale omslag in het Westen die er toe leidde dat ‘man siehet die im Lichte, Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht,’ om Bertolt Brecht te citeren. Niets nieuws onder de zon, want de intelligentsia wordt doorgaans pas in crisistijd wakker, de rest van de tijd probeert zij zoveel mogelijk de macht te behagen, zeker in Nederland. Vandaar ook dat de 88-jarige Henk pas nu ineens ontdekt dat de website truthout.org, die ‘dagelijks bloemlezingen uit de oppositionele pers geeft,’ wel ‘zich’ voldoende ‘bewust’ is ‘geweest’ van de chaos die in een, ik citeer opnieuw, ‘nieuwe klassenmaatschappij’ is ontaard. Beter laat dan nooit de werkelijkheid ontdekken, zou men kunnen zeggen, maar dat excuus gaat hier niet op aangezien Hofland al decennialang de meest gerespecteerde opiniemaker van Nederland is. In plaats van beschaamd te zwijgen dat hij veel te laat beseft dat het totalitaire systeem dat hij zijn hele werkzame leven lang als woordvoerder van de gevestigde orde heeft verdedigd in werkelijkheid tot op het bot misdadig is. Een jaar geleden nog, stelde de tot ‘beste journalist’ van de twintigste eeuw uitgeroepen H.J.A. Hofland dat het Westen ‘nog altijd bij voorkeur onder Amerikaanse leiding,’ de toekomst tegemoet moet treden, tenminste ‘als het een Democraat is,’ te weten Hillary Clinton die als senator voor de inval in Irak stemde, bekend staat als een havik, maar die door de bejaarde columnist van De Groene Amsterdammer onmiddellijk na haar kandidaatstelling werd uitgeroepen tot de ‘ideale kandidaat’ voor het Amerikaanse presidentschap. Het is nu onthullend te zien hoe de stem van het establishment in de polder op het laatste nippertje nog halfslachtig probeert aan te haken bij de fundamentele kritiek van de intelligentsia in grote cultuurlanden op de neoliberale ideologie. Ook dit weer gaat op zijn Nederlands, dat wil zeggen: zoals alles in het kikkerlandje gaat, dus geheel conform het corrupte poldermodel, waarbij iedereen te vriend wordt gehouden en de wijn zo waterig is geworden dat de bocht niet meer te drinken is. En dan krijgt men de volgende waanzin: niet Hoflands ‘ideale kandidaat’ is met haar steun aan de naar schatting ruim 1 biljoen dollar (1.000.000.000.000 of 10¹²⁾ kostende agressie-oorlog tegen Irak erin geslaagd ‘de Amerikaanse politiek in een chaos te veranderen,’ maar Donald Trump, die Hillary Clinton’s steun aan de illegale invasie heeft bekritiseerd, en die tot nu toe geen enkele politieke verantwoordelijkheid heeft gedragen. 

Het gebrek aan kennis en logica van 'onze' mainstream-opiniemaker blijkt tevens uit het feit dat Hofland kennelijk niet weet dat de Amerikaanse politiek al vanaf het moment dat zijn journalistieke carrière  op gang kwam ‘een chaos’ is geweest, zoals senator William Fulbright de ‘longest serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’ en 30 jaar lang lid van het Amerikaanse Congres al lang geleden duidelijk heeft gemaakt. Fulbright was niet de eerste de beste buitenstaander, maar één van de meest gerespecteerde senatoren was uit de Amerikaanse geschiedenis, zoals ook blijkt uit de opmerking van de bekende senator Frank Church, 'candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1976 presidential election, losing to Jimmy Carter. He is known for heading the Church Committee, which investigated abuses in the U.S. intelligence agencies.' Church verklaarde: 'When all of us are dead, the only one they'll remember is Bill Fulbright.' Om een waarheidsgetrouw beeld te krijgen van William Fulbright, naar wie het 'prestigieuze Amerikaanse uitwisselingsprogramma voor studenten in het Hoger Onderwijs, het zogenaamde Fulbright-programma, werd genoemd,' blijf ik wat langer bij hem stilstaan. Bovendien laat zijn loopbaan zo duidelijk het verzet zien tegen de 'chaos' van de Amerikaanse politiek. Eerst een fragment uit Fulbright's boek The Pentagon Propaganda Machine (1971):

Since the 1950s, as we have moved from crisis to crisis, the constitutional responsibilities of the Congress have been eroded in dangerous measure by the diversion of power to the President and the Joint Chiefs and the Department of State.

It seems to me we have grown distressingly used to war… War and the military have become a part of our environment, like pollution.

Violence is our most important product. We have been spending nearly $80 billion a year on the military, which is more than the profits of all American business, or, to make another comparison, is almost as much as the total spending of the federal, state, and local governments for health, education, old age and retirement benefits, housing, and agriculture. Until the past session of the Congress, these billions have been provided to the military with virtually no questions asked.

The military has been operating for years in that Elysium of the public relations man, a seller's market. Take the climate into which the Sentinel ABM program was introduced. Many people looked on it, as they now look on Safeguard, not as a weapon but as a means of prosperity. For the industrialist it meant profits; for the worker new jobs and the prospect of higher wages; for the politician a new installation or defense order with which to ingratiate himself with his constituents… There are 22,000 major corporate defense contractors and another 100,000 subcontractors. Defense plants or installations are located in 363 of the country's 435 congressional districts. Even before it turns its attention to the public-at-large, the military has a large and sympathetic audience for its message.

These millions of Americans who have a vested interest in the expensive weapons systems spawned by our global military involvements are as much a part of the military-industrial complex as the generals and the corporation heads. In turn they have become a powerful force for the perpetuation of those involvements, and have had an indirect influence on a weapons development policy that has driven the United States into a spiraling arms race with the Soviet Union and made us the world's major salesman of armaments…

Militarism has been creeping up on us during the past thirty years… Today we have more than 3.5 million men in uniform and nearly 28 million veterans of the armed forces in the civilian population… The American public has become so conditioned by crises, by warnings, by words that there are few, other than the young, who protest against what is happening.

The situation is such that last year Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana, hardly an apostle of the New Left, felt constrained to say:

‘For almost twenty years now, many of us in the Congress have more or less blindly followed our military spokesmen. Some have become captives of the military. We are on the verge of turning into a military nation.’

This militarism that has crept up on us is bringing about profound changes in the character of our society and government-changes that are slowly undermining democratic procedure and values.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pentagon_military/Pentagon_Propaganda_JWF.html  

En: http://eca.state.gov/fulbright/about-fulbright/history/j-william-fulbright  

En: http://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-propaganda-machine-William-Fulbright/dp/0871405229 

Dat Fulbright een ware Democraat was blijkt uit zijn kritische opstelling tegenover iedereen die naar fanatisme neigde. Paul Findley, 22 jaar lang een vooraanstaand Congreslid en 'senior member of the House Middle East Committee,’ wees hierop in zijn boek They Dare To Speak Out. People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby (1985):

Fulbright first gained national attention by condemning the 'swinish blight' of McCarthyism. (de heksenjacht op progressieve Amerikanen. svh) In 1954 while many Americans cheered the crusade of the Wisconsin Senator's Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, Fulbright cast the lone vote against a measure to continue the subcommittees funding. Because of this vote he was accused of being 'a Communist, a fellow traveler, an atheist, [and] a man beneath contempt.'

Fulbright opposed U.S. intervention in Cuba in 1961 and in the Dominican Republic four years later, and was ahead of his time in calling for detente with the Soviet Union and a diplomatic opening with China. When he proposed a different system for selecting presidents, Harry Truman was offended and called him 'that over-educated Oxford son of a bitch.' Twenty-five years later, in 1974, the New York Times recognized him as 'the most outspoken critic of American foreign policy of his generation. 

His deepest and most abiding interest is the advancement of international understanding through education, and thousands of young people have broadened their vision through the scholarships that bear his name. But Fulbright became well known for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War as 'an endless, futile war, […] debilitating and indecent' — a stand which put him at odds with a former colleague and close friend, President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Fulbright geloofde niet in de zogeheten 'dominotheorie,' waarbij het communisme alle landen in het grondstoffenrijke Zuid-Oost Azië één voor één in handen zou krijgen, maar besefte al snel dat hier sprake was van wat hij de 'arrogance of power' noemde van de Amerikaanse politieke en economische elite. Even kritisch stond hij tegenover de verregaande zionistische invloed op de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek. Findley:

In 1963 Fulbright chaired an investigation that brought to public attention the exceptional tax treatment of contributions to Israel and aroused the ire of the Jewish community. The investigation was managed by Walter Pincus, a journalist Fulbright hired after reading a Pincus study of lobbying. Pincus recalls that Fulbright gave him a free hand, letting him choose the ten prime lobbying activities  to be examined and backing him throughout the controversial investigation. One of the groups chosen by Pincus, himself Jewish, was the Jewish Telegraph Agency — at that time a principal instrument of the Israeli lobby. Both Fulbright and Pincus were accused of trying to destroy the Jewish Telegraph Agency and of being anti-Semitic. 

Pincus remembers, 'Several Senators urged that the inquiry into the Jewish operation be dropped. Senators Hubert Humphrey and Bourke Hickenlooper (senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee) were among them. Fulbright refused.'

The Fulbright hearings also exposed the massive funding illegally channelled into the American Zionist Council by Israel. More than five million dollars had been secretly poured into the Council for spending on public relations firms and pro-Israel propaganda before Fulbright's committee closed down the operation. 

Despite his concern over the pro-Israel lobby, Fulbright took the exceptional step of recommending that the United States guarantee Israeli's borders. In a major address in 1970 he proposed an American-Israeli treaty under which the United States would commit itself to intervene militarily if necessary to 'guarantee the territory and independence of Israel' within the lands it held before the 1967 war.

Maar zoals vandaag de dag bekend is, willen de zionistische extremisten dit nu juist niet, omdat voor het chronisch met waterschaarste kampende Israel, de Westbank, met zijn omvangrijke aquifers, wordt gezien als onvervreemdbaar Joods. Vanuit die optiek moet het bericht worden geïnterpreteerd op de voorpagina van de International New York Times van dinsdag 17 maart 2015, dat 'Netanyahu says he won't back state for Palestinians.' Vandaar ook dat de grenzen van de meeste illegale Joodse nederzettingen parallel lopen met de ondergrondse watervoorraden. Findley schreef over Fulbright's voorstel voor een Amerikaans-Israelisch verdrag dat de 'Joodse staat' zou beschermen:

The treaty, he said, should be a supplement to a peace settlement arranged by the United Nations. The purpose of his proposal was to destroy the arguments of those who maintained that Israel needed the captured territory for its security.

Fulbright saw Israel's withdrawal from the Arab lands it occupied in the 1967 war as the key to peace: Israel could not occupy Arab territory and have peace too. He said that Israeli policy in establishing settlements on the territories 'has been characterized by lack of flexibility and foresight.' Discounting early threats by some Arab leaders to destroy the state of Israel, Fulbright noted that both President Nasser of the United Arab Republic and King Hussein of Jordan had in effect repudiated such Draconian threats, 'but the Israelis seem not to have noticed the disavowals.'

During the 1970s Fulbright repeatedly took exception to the contention that the Middle East crisis was a test of American resolve against Soviet interventionism. In 1971 he accused Israel of 'communist-baiting humbuggery' and argued that continuing Middle East tension, in fact, only benefited Soviet interests.

Appearing on CBS television's Face the Nation in 1973, Fulbright declared that the Senate was 'subservient' to Israeli policies that were inimical to American interests. He said that the United States bore 'a very great share of the responsibility' for the continuation of Middle East violence. 'It's quite obvious [that] without the all-out support by the United States in money and weapons and so on, the Israelis couldn't do what they've been doing.'

Fulbright said that the United States failed to pressure Israel for a negotiated settlement, because:

The great majority of the Senate of the United States-somewhere around 80 percent-are completely in support of Israel, anything Israel wants. This has been demonstrated time and time again, and this has made it difficult for our government.

The senator claimed that 'Israel controls the Senate' and warned, 'We should be more concerned about the United States' interests.' Six weeks after his 'Face the Nation' appearance, Fulbright again expressed alarm over Israeli occupation of Arab territories. He charged that the United States had given Israel 'unlimited support for unlimited expansion.'

His criticism of Israeli policy caused stirrings back home. 17 Jews who had supported him in the past became restless. After years of easy election victories, trouble loomed for Fulbright in 1974. Encouraged, in part, by the growing Jewish disenchantment with Fulbright, on the eve of the deadline for filing petitions of candidacy in the Democratic primary Governor Dale Bumpers surprised the political world by becoming a challenger for Fulbright's Senate seat.

Bumpers werd werd naar voren geschoven met steun van de zionistische lobby om de kritische stem van Fulbright in de Senaat tot zwijgen te brengen, zoals bleek uit de feiten. Findley:

Following the election, a national Jewish organization actually claimed credit for the young governor's stunning upset victory. Fulbright had a copy of a memorandum circulated in May 1974 to the national board of directors of B'nai B'rith. Marked 'confidential,' the memo from Secretary-General Herman Edelsberg, announced that 'all of the indications suggest that our actions in support of Governor Bumpers will result in the ousting of Mr. Fulbright from his key position in the Senate.' Edelsberg later rejected the memorandum as 'phony.'

Following his defeat, Fulbright continued to speak out, decrying Israeli stubbornness and warning of the Israeli lobby. In a speech just before the end of his Senate term, he warned, 'Endlessly pressing the United States for money and arms-and invariably getting all and more than she asks-Israel makes bad use of a good friend.' His central concern was that the Middle East conflict might flare into nuclear war. He warned somberly that 'Israel's supporters in the United States... by underwriting intransigence, are encouraging a course which must lead toward her destruction-and just possibly ours as well.'

Pondering the future from his office three blocks north of the White House on a bright winter day in 1983, Fulbright saw little hope that Capitol Hill would effectively challenge the Israeli lobby:

'It's suicide for politicians to oppose them. The only possibility would be someone like Eisenhower, who already feels secure. Eisenhower had already made his reputation. He was already a great man in the eyes of the country, and he wasn't afraid of anybody. He said what he believed.'

Then he added a somewhat more optimistic note: 'I believe a president could do this. He wouldn't have to be named Eisenhower.' Fulbright cited a missed opportunity:

'I went to Jerry Ford after he took office in 1975. I was out of office then. I had been to the Middle East and visited with some of the leading figures. I came back and told the president, 'Look, I think these [Arab] leaders are willing to accept Israel, but the Israelis have got to go back to the 1967 borders. The problem can be solved if you are willing to take a position on it.'

Fulbright predicted that the American people would back Ford if he demanded that Israel cooperate. He reminded him that Eisenhower was reelected by a large margin immediately after he forced Israel to withdraw after invading Egypt:

'Taking a stand against Israel didn't hurt Eisenhower. He carried New York with its big Jewish population. I told Ford I didn't think he would be defeated if he put it the right way. He should say Israel had to go back to the 1967 borders; if it didn't, no more arms or money. That's just the way Eisenhower did it. And Israel would have to cooperate. And politically, in the coming campaign, I told him he should say he was for Israel, but he was for America first.'

Ford, Fulbright recalled, listened courteously but was noncommittal. 'Of course he didn't take my advice,' said Fulbright. Yet his determination in the face of such disappointment echoes through one of his last statements as a U.S. senator:

'History casts no doubt at all on the ability of human beings to deal rationally with their problems, but the greatest doubt on their will to do so. The signals of the past are thus clouded and ambiguous, suggesting hope but not confidence in the triumph of reason. With nothing to lose in any event, it seems well worth a try.' 

Fulbright died on February 9, 1995, ending one of the most illustrious careers in American politics. Reared in the segregationist South, he left an imposing legacy as a fearless, scholarly, and determined champion of human rights at home and abroad.

 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Israel/TheyDareToSpeakOut.html 

In 2014 ging 54 procent van de toewijsbare federale begroting van de VS naar wat president Eisenhower het 'military-industrial complex' heeft genoemd. Al doende wordt de Derde Wereldoorlog voorbereid en uitgelokt. De mainstream-journalisten steunen deze doodsdrift, ondermeer door het veiligheid te betitelen. De veiligheid van massavernietigingswapens.  

Fulbright's voorspelling dat 'It's suicide for politicians to oppose' de joods-zionistische lobby is juist gebleken, zo juist dat zelfs een Amerikaanse president in het Congres bestraffend kan worden toegesproken door een extremistische zionist als premier Netanyahu en daarvoor beloond wordt met een — in Hoflands woorden — 'ovationele bijval.' De enige waarheidsgetrouwe conclusie moet zijn dat 'money talks' in een neoliberale 'democratie.' Maar juist deze waarheid wordt door een opiniemaker als Henk Hofland in De Groene Amsterdammer verzwegen en verkocht als 'vriendschap.' De ‘chaos’ van de Amerikaanse buitenlandse en binnenlandse politiek is al lange tijd zichtbaar voor een ieder die niet afhankelijk is van schouderklopjes en/of douceurtjes van de gevestigde orde. Men dient dan ook buitengewoon gehersenspoeld te zijn om te menen dat het Westen niet alleen ‘democratisch’ is, maar ook nog eens ‘vredestichtend.’ Hoe kan het neoliberale systeem beide zijn wanneer het tegelijkertijd 62 mensen zo rijk heeft gemaakt dat die nu evenveel bezitten als de helft van de hele mensheid tezamen? Het spreekt voor zich dat dit feit niet ‘democratisch’ tot stand is gekomen en al helemaal niet ‘vredestichtend’ kan zijn. Alleen nog de propagandisten van het establishment als Henk Hofland kunnen een dergelijke propaganda onbekommerd verspreiden. Daarentegen weet elke serieuze journalist dat de macht in het Westen in handen is gevallen van een kleine financiële en economische elite die tezamen achter de schermen met toonaangevende politici en de top van de bureaucratische technocratie in Washington en Brussel de toekomst van de mensheid uitstippelt. Dit is al meer sinds een eeuw het geval. Het westers monetair beleid dat de politiek  bepaalt viel stond 1910 in handen van enkele machtige bankiers. Eén van hen, Frank Arthur Vanderlip, die van 1897-1901 staatssecretaris van Financiën was, van 1902 tot 1909 vice-president van Rockefeller’s ‘National City Bank of New York,’ en vervolgens tien jaar lang de president van ‘the country's largest bank,’ was in 1910 één van de zeven schatrijke bankiers die de particuliere Federal Reserve Bank, de centrale bank van de VS, oprichtten. Dat ging het grootste geheim omdat men wist dat zowel een aanzienlijk deel van zowel de burgers als de politici hier tegen waren. Naderhand verklaarde Vanderlip: 

I was as secretive - indeed, as furtive - as any conspirator. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted. If it were to be exposed that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress.

De Amerikaanse auteur en filmmaker Edward Griffin beschreef in zijn boek The Creature from Jekyll Island : A Second Look at the Federal Reserve (1994) hoe de oprichting tot stand kwam. Slechts zeven witte mannen, ‘who represented an estimated one-forth of the total wealth of the entire world,’ formeerden ’s wereld’s machtigste instituut tijdens een 

secret meeting on Jekyll Island in Georgia at which the Federal Reserve was conceived; the birth of a banking cartel to protect its members from competition; the strategy of how to convince Congress and the public that this cartel was an agency of the United States government.

Die mannen waren:

1. Nelson W. Aldrich, Republican 'whip' in the Senate, Chairman of the National Monetary Commission, business associate of J.P. Morgan, father-in-law to John D. Rockefeller, Jr.;

2. Abraham Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury;

3. Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York, the most powerful of the banks at that time,representing William Rockefeller and the international investment banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company;

4. Henry P. Davison, senior partner of the J.P Morgan Company;

5. Charles D. Norton, president of J.P. Morgan's First National Bank of New York;

6. Benjamin Strong, head of J.P. Morgan's Bankers Trust Company;and

7. Paul M. Warburg, a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company, a representative of the Rothschild banking dynasty in England and France, and brother to Max Warburg who was head of the Warburg banking consortium in Germany and the Netherlands.

In 1913, the same year that the Federal Reserve Act was passed into law, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Currency and Banking, under the chairmanship of Arsene Pujo of Louisiana, completed its investigation into the concentration of financial power in the United States. Pujo was considered to be a spokesman for the oil interests, part of the very group under investigation, and did everything possible to sabotage the hearings. In spite of his efforts, however, the final report of the committee at large was devastating. It stated:

‘Your committee is satisfied from the proofs submitted, even in the absence of data from the banks, that there is an established and well defined identity and community of interest between a few leaders of finance… which has resulted in great and rapidly growing concentration of the control of money and credit in the hands of these few men…’

President Thomas Jefferson schreef in 1816:

I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

When we consider, also, in this connection that into these reservoirs of money and credit there flow a large part of the reserves of the banks of the country, that they are also the agents and correspondents of the out-of-town banks in the loaning of their surplus funds in the only public money market of the country, and that a small group of men and their partners and associates have now further strengthened their hold upon the resources of these institutions by acquiring large stock holdings therein, by representation on their boards and through valuable patronage, we begin to realize something of the extent to which this practical and effective domination and control over our greatest financial, railroad and industrial corporations has developed, largely within the past five years, and that it is fraught with peril to the welfare of the country.

The purpose of this meeting on Jekyll Island was… to come to an agreement on the structure and operation of a banking cartel. The goal of the cartel, as is true with all of them, was to maximize profits by minimizing competition between members, to make it difficult for new competitors to enter the field, and to utilize the police power of government to enforce the cartel agreement.

In more specific terms, the purpose and, indeed, the actual outcome of this meeting was to create the blueprint for the Federal Reserve System.

The first leak regarding this meeting found its way into print in 1916. It appeared in Leslie's Weekly and was written by a young financial reporter by the name of B.C. Forbes, who later founded Forbes Magazine. The article was primarily in praise of Paul Warburg, and it is likely that Warburg let the story out during conversations with the writer. At any rate, the opening paragraph contained a dramatic but highly accurate summary of both the nature and purpose of the meeting:

‘Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily hieing hundreds of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking on to an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance.

I am not romancing. I am giving to the world, for the first time, the real story of how the famous Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new currency system, was written.’

In 1930, Paul Warburg wrote a massive book — 1750 pages in all — entitled ‘The Federal Reserve System, Its Origin and Growth.’ In this tome, he described the meeting and its purpose but did not mention either its location or the names of those who attended. But he did say: ‘The results of the conference were entirely confidential. Even the fact there had been a meeting was not permitted to become public.’ Then in a footnote he added: ‘Though eighteen years have since gone by, I do not feel free to give a description of this most interesting conference concerning which Senator Aldrich pledged all participants to secrecy.’

In the February 9, 1935, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, an article appeared written by Frank Vanderlip. In it he said: 

‘Despite my views about the value to society of greater publicity for the affairs of corporations, there was an occasion, near the close of 1910, when I was as secretive — indeed, as furtive —  as any conspirator… I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System… We were told to leave our last names behind us. We were told, further, that we should avoid dining together on the night of our departure. We were instructed to come one at a time and as unobtrusively as possible to the railroad terminal on the New Jersey littoral of the Hudson, where Senator Aldrich's private car would be in readiness, attached to the rear end of a train for the South...

Once aboard the private car we began to observe the taboo that had been fixed on last names. We addressed one another as ‘Ben,’ ‘Paul,’ ‘Nelson,’ ‘Abe’ — it is Abraham Piatt Andrew. Davison and I adopted even deeper disguises, abandoning our first names. On the theory that we were always right, he became Wilbur and I became Orville, after those two aviation pioneers, the Wright brothers… The servants and train crew may have known the identities of one or two of us, but they did not know all, and it was the names of all printed together that would have made our mysterious journey significant in Washington, in Wall Street, even in London. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted.

If it were to be exposed publicly that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress.

As with all cartels, it had to be created by legislation and sustained by the power of government under the deception of protecting the consumer.’

Op zijn beurt schreef Anthony Sutton, voormalig ‘Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace,’ en hoogleraar Economie aan de ‘California State University, Los Angeles,’ het volgende over de ‘Fed,’ de centrale bank van de Verenigde Staten die beschikt over ‘the largest pool of money in the world’:

Warburg's revolutionary plan to get American Society to go to work for Wall Street was astonishingly simple. Even today… academic theoreticians cover their blackboards with meaningless equations, and the general public struggles in bewildered confusion with inflation and the coming credit collapse, while the quite simple explanation of the problem goes undiscussed and almost entirely uncomprehended. The Federal Reserve System is a legal private monopoly of the money supply operated for the benefit of the few under the guise of protecting and promoting the public interest.

Nogmaals Edward Griffin:

The real significance of the journey to Jekyll Island and the creature that was hatched there was inadvertantly summarized by the words of Paul Warburg's admiring biographer, Harold Kellock:

‘Paul M. Warburg is probably the mildest-mannered man that ever personally conducted a revolution. It was a bloodless revolution: he did not attempt to rouse the populace to arms. He stepped forth armed simply with an idea. And he conquered. That's the amazing thing. A shy, sensitive man, he imposed his idea on a nation of a hundred million people.’

http://radio.goldseek.com/edwardgriffingronvall.php 

Vaderlip tenslotte schreef in zijn autobiografie From Farmboy to Financier (1935):

I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyl Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System… If it were to be exposed publicly that our particular group had gotten together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Federal_Reserve_System

Alleen een dwaas of een oplichter dan wel een mainstream-journalist in de polder houdt vol dat ‘we’ in een ‘democratie’ leven die ook nog eens ‘vredestichtend’ is, en dat na alle bankcrashes, na alle oorlogen die de rijken nog rijker hebben gemaakt, na alle voorbereidingen voor de Derde Wereldoorlog, het nu Donald Trump is die in slechts ‘zeven maanden’ tijd,  ‘erin [is] geslaagd de Amerikaanse politiek in een chaos te veranderen.’ Het zijn de Henk Hoflanden van de westerse mainstream-pers die door hun corrupte voorstelling van zaken de mensheid naar de rand van de afgrond leiden.

Her (Hillary Clinton. svh) foreign policy, endorsed not just by Henry Kissinger and neoconservative Robert Kagan, is lauded by Dick Cheney. Remember him? The Dr. Strangelove of the Bush administration?
Of course he would admire her. As secretary of state, she rarely, if ever, saw a war she didn’t love. She was the primary cheerleader on the lethal attack on and destabilization of Libya. She also strongly supported attacks on Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Syria. She gave her blessing to the administration’s weekly drone and bomb attacks on all of these countries and who knows how many more.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_real_hillary_clinton_20160424