Mechanics of Power

[NeonLX]

I've never had enough faith in my self to think that I'm seeing things as they really are. I doubt my own perceptions, or think I'm somehow filtering or processing them wrong. Or sump'n'.

I sure as hell don't see sh!t as other people see it. And who am I to think I'm seeing it "correctly", when others obviously don't see it the same way?

I've got a crummy-@ssed self image, built up from years of being called stupid. That transfers over to a lot of stuff.

[Sounder]

Aw Neon, it's not as bad as you say.

The first step to curing some particular condition is to admit to it.

You are a few steps ahead of some seemingly very smart people.

So you got that going for you.

[brainpanhandler]

I don't think we are hardwired for much of anything at all. Maybe a fear of heights and snakes and how to suckle. Perhaps swimming. (I love the aquatic ape hypothesis). Within the context of the collapse of civilization and all the life sustaining aspects of it we are entirely dependent on our choices will be survival choices.

That's what we're hard-wired for, though. Like all living organisms, even microbiological ones.

I guess since a fear of snakes and heights and how to suckle and swim are all related to survival that's sorta what I was saying. But I think it's safe to say that humans with our big brains and extended childhoods are less driven by what we are hard wired for.

I think the baboons are just more evolved than us in some respects and we are just fatally flawed creatures. That's not resignation or apathy. It's a desire to see things as they are.

You probably can admit though that taking humans as being ‘fatally flawed creatures’ would tend to promote resignation.

Sure. That's why I felt to need to qualify my statement. I guess it's a matter of emphasis and my mood. Ask me tomorrow and I might say Bollocks to "fatally flawed creatures". But if we're not fatally flawed creatures then we got a lot of splainin' to do or at least maybe more than we would otherwise. Programming? original sin? What effect does the judeo/christian belief that we are all sinners have on culture and on the individual psyches of the adherents to that belief? How far back do the "cultural godfathers" go?

FWIW, due to the qualifications you put on it, I took "fatally" to mean something more or less like "fundamentally" or "inherently," in context.

Fair enough. The baboons were able to transform their social structures to something less hierarchical and more egalitarian by virtue of all the dominant, asshole males dying. Though I'd love to see Cheney choke on some tuberculosis tainted meat I don't expect that will happen any time soon. Our big brains, what separates us from the beasts and metaphorically discharged us from the garden, are what make it less likely we can undo the chinese finger puzzle we find ourselves as a species scratching our heads over.

Fundamentally, inherently, fatally... none of it means anything to any individual highly evolved enough to want to live in harmony with one's neighbors and surroundings and use their big brains to make choices accordingly.

[brainpanhandler]

The primary technique used and prime directive of power mongers is to keep the general population driven primarily by passive emotions. [/b]This ensures the bifurcation of the layers of psyche so that they interact in ways that are not up to their potential. Because it is a threat to the integrity of ones personal identity to accept that one is largely driven by programmed passive response triggers, it can be difficult to identify sources that impact ones own belief set.

Can you provide some concrcete examples?

I can.
1. advertising keeps people competing for goods rather than for their own goods and the good of the community.
2. the drug industry in collusion with the medical complex encourages people to consider themselves and their children to be "sick" if they are rebellious, short tempered, disagreeable, angry, easily bored, sad or defiant and then medicates those urges out of them.
3. social networking pretends to encourage individuality while simultaneously punishing it (if your opinions are uncomfortable for others, be prepared to pay for it or keep them quiet.)
4. the beauty and fashion industries are just about as out of control as they could ever be and people feel inferior if they don't spend the money and time to look like everyone else.
5. Debt. debt is a control mechanism that's been sold to the current generation of young people as never before - student loans, massive mortgages, credit cards.

All of the above are control mechanisms that ensure people remain passive - you cannot be a rebel when it comes to the above unless of course you don't want to identify with the 'majority' and you don't need the rewards that come from that identification.

If that is all that Sounder is saying then that is pretty uncontroversial around here. In fact, I'd say it was a given.

I'd suggest your reread the Spinoza quote he supplied as it decodes his use of the word "passive" in his phrase "passive response triggers". We haven't even got to the "programmed" part, which I will be curious to find out if it is a massive conspiracy by the dominant baboons or just a self perpetuating cycle of dominance or some combination.

We could however alter our conceptual structures in a way that encourages development and practice with expressing active emotions. If we so chose, we could recognize that coercion bankrupts the human spirit. Then we might at least have a chance for finding our way to a horizontal authority distribution system.

I don't disagree with this in principle. But in practice I suspect the planet wil be a hollowed out cinder and we will be on the verge of extinction before that happens on a large enough scale to matter and by then it won't matter except as a foundation for whatever future those survivors might try to build.

You're an idealist. I think the baboons are just more evolved than us in some respects and we are just fatally flawed creatures. That's not resignation or apathy. It's a desire to see things as they are.

I think that those sentiments are the very definition of resignation.

I see things 'as they are' as well - but they aren't how you see them. isn't it weird?

Please see:

I think the baboons are just more evolved than us in some respects and we are just fatally flawed creatures. That's not resignation or apathy. It's a desire to see things as they are.

You probably can admit though that taking humans as being ‘fatally flawed creatures’ would tend to promote resignation.

Sure. That's why I felt to need to qualify my statement. I guess it's a matter of emphasis and my mood. Ask me tomorrow and I might say Bollocks to "fatally flawed creatures".

I vacillate between abject resignation and glimmering hope. I try not to spread the abject resignation. I fail sometimes.

Also, if we all saw the world the same it'd be sort of boring. No? I have a desire to see things as they are. That implies I don't always or even often do.

[compared2what?]

I've never had enough faith in my self to think that I'm seeing things as they really are. I doubt my own perceptions, or think I'm somehow filtering or processing them wrong. Or sump'n'.

I sure as hell don't see sh!t as other people see it. And who am I to think I'm seeing it "correctly", when others obviously don't see it the same way?

I've got a crummy-@ssed self image, built up from years of being called stupid. That transfers over to a lot of stuff.

I don't think I've ever seen you say a single thing that wasn't insightful, intelligent, well-considered, well-expressed and, in some sense, wise. So I'm sorry that you were made to feel that way. Also, I identify.

...

I guess I try to bear in mind that while humility is a virtue, feeling humiliated isn't it, fwiw. But that's "try" not "succeed." So I'm not sure what it's really worth. Sounds like it ought to be true, though.

[brainpanhandler]

BPH wrote...

What constitutes a "programmed passive response trigger”? How does that particular programmed passive response trigger restrict areas of potential inquiry and/or "ensure the bifurcation of the layers of psyche so that they interact in ways that are not up to their potential."?

On rereading the sentence, it seems that the word trigger is extra to that sentence.

Not really. If you answer the first question which derived from your use of that phrase here:

The primary technique used and prime directive of power mongers is to keep the general population driven primarily by passive emotions. [/b]This ensures the bifurcation of the layers of psyche so that they interact in ways that are not up to their potential. Because it is a threat to the integrity of ones personal identity to accept that one is largely driven by programmed passive response triggers, it can be difficult to identify sources that impact ones own belief set.

Then the second question I ask is a follow up to the answer to the first question.

That phrase referred to the first paragraph and to these next sentences from the second paragraph; Perhaps unintentionally, early rulers learned the value of imposing a double bind on their subjects. By making it very painful to create a conscious model that may be at odds with societal and unconscious programming, most people will instead find conscious ways of validating their underlying drivers or unconscious programming

Speaking that that paragraph:

By making it very painful to create a conscious model that may be at odds with societal and unconscious programming, most people will instead find conscious ways of validating their underlying drivers or unconscious programming.The happy consequence of this for the ruler is that the subjects will generally access their sub-conscious store of knowledge only to buttress their conscious modeling, in preference to tapping this store to challenge or redevelop our unconscious modeling.

Shouldn't the part I bolded above be conscious instead of unconscious?

(Our King has brought great prosperity to our lands, he must be God)

The trigger part only happens when the programmed response is challenged.

What exactly is that "trigger" part again? Are they words? Symbols? Incantations?

To cite a modern specific example, take The Rockefeller Trust spending 50 million dollars to establish the dominance of allopathic medicine. The result is a system where health innovations that do not include pharmaceutical inputs tend to not be supported. Excepting surgery where allopathic medicine does wonderful work. Bottom line common sense though, says that if the ‘empiricists’ were able to compete on a level playing field, both sides and medicine in general would be better off than they are now.

Is it the way the Rockefeller Trust established the dominance of allopathic medicine (That could not of course be the sole cause) with their 50m dollars that is the programmed passive response? ie, propaganda. Cause that's the part I'm interested in. The Rockefellers through all manner of machinations could create a system of medicine which benefitted their bottom line. That's a given. But how are they going about creating programmed passive responses?


The general populace tends to trust allopathic medicine more than alternative forms of medicine. Is this the passive programmed response? Is the trigger illness or fear of pain and death?

populace: I'm sick. I don't want to feel pain or die. Fear. Passive emotion.

Big Pharma/rockefeller medicine: We have the cure for what ails you son and here's a double blind study to prove it.

Populace: yay. (programmed response)

Bifurcation: programmed response supports acceptance of unquestioned conscious allopathic model (not just any port in a storm) vs open eyed inquiry into causes and unconventional cures... blindness to areas of inquiry like naturo/homeopathic medicine?

Cept now they create the sickness as well?

Problem, reaction, solution.

edited for more clarity. I didn't even understand what I said.

[Sounder]

Thanks for your well considered input BPH.

I think I see a way to answer your points but I will be busy for the day and could use the time to percolate anyway.

Small note; I did mean to write unconscious and will provide an explanation later.

[brainpanhandler]

I doubt my own perceptions

A necessary process for us humans. It's one of the ways we grow.

I'm somehow filtering (perceptions) wrong.

Wrong isn't the word I would use, although the more rigid our filtering is the smaller and consequently less interesting our universe will be. But I think how we filter our perception of reality (we evolved this as a necessary cognitive skill and survival strategy) is in fact foundational to the way we interact with the world and one another. We find it easier to be with those that filter reality in a similar way. We can find it either unsettling or exhilarating to encounter others that filter their perceptions of reality differently. We accept or reject others accordingly. A hungry man sees a different world than a man with a full belly. Literally.

I sure as hell don't see sh!t as other people see it.

Well. To some extent we all share some basic consensus reality. Are you really talking about opinions, analysis, beliefs... ?

And who am I to think I'm seeing it "correctly", when others obviously don't see it the same way?

There are famous psychology experiments which demonstrate the power of the group to control the literal perception of the individual. I'd like to think that wouldn't work on me. But maybe it does in all sorts of subtle ways all the time. We can't live or lives without taking a few shortcuts and mindfulness every waking moment is an exhausting proposition. It's better than ok to see the world as you see the world, but also question how well your internal model of the world fits or doesn't with what others perceive.

I've got a crummy-@ssed self image, built up from years of being called stupid. That transfers over to a lot of stuff.

You really don't strike me as stupid at all. But I'll say this... it's much better to admit your ignorance than to pretend to know something you don't, most especially to yourself. You're way further down the road toward knowing yourself relative to many people that never question themselves because they already have all the answers.

[brainpanhandler]

And C2w, yes you can too scratch your head with a couple of fingers in a chinese finger puzzle.

Our big brains, what separates us from the beasts and metaphorically discharged us from the garden, are what make it less likely we can undo the chinese finger puzzle we find ourselves as a species scratching our heads over.

I wouldn't be surprised if out of a misguided sense of compassion you chose not to grill me on this. I guess what I mean is that given our present dire circumstances (the dominant psychopathic males running the show and many calamitous vectors converging) it's the part of our brains that creates atomic bombs and GM foods.... that is gonna kill us. We already knew but forget how to live in harmony with the world and each other and the animals do that without the slightest angst or concern about good/bad, right/wrong. The noble savage myth is just that, a myth. But there's degrees of nobility.

[compared2what?]

And C2w, yes you can too scratch your head with a couple of fingers in a chinese finger puzzle.

Our big brains, what separates us from the beasts and metaphorically discharged us from the garden, are what make it less likely we can undo the chinese finger puzzle we find ourselves as a species scratching our heads over.

I wouldn't be surprised if out of a misguided sense of compassion you chose not to grill me on this.

Nope. I was going to respond to a different aspect of the big-brain part of the hypothesis, though. Or "am going to," I guess. I just haven't gotten my thoughts together yet.

Also: How did you know that? Quit it!

[coffin_dodger]

As a method of thought alignment - and thus a cog in the wheel of the mechanics of power - Sport holds some fascination for me.

I can only speak of this, forming the views I own, from personal experience. I understand that people will disagree vehemently, but as I increasingly find myself at odds with 'reality', the search for a different way compels me to discuss certain pointers which I am beginning to perceive as pivotal in the changing of the current paradigm.

At school, from a very young age, I was just plain ol' disinterested in sport. The national obsession here in the UK is football. I was no good at it, not because of a lack of sporting prowess, nor lack of physical ability - I just couldn't be bothered with it. Any sport, in fact. The particularly sadistic physical education teacher that 'taught' me from the age of 4 1/2 years to 7 years old recognised this immediately - and during his lessons I was always put in goal (the goalkeeper), as this was supposedly the place I could do least damage to the team. This wise decision did neither him, the team or myself any favours. Basically, if one of the opposing team got a hint of a shot at goal, it was as good as in the back of the net with me defending it.

This gave the system great opportunity to label me as a 'loser'. The sadist nicknamed me 'Butterfingers' (as if my fingers were covered in butter and could hold on to nothing) and proceeded to use this term whenever I appeared in his sight (peripheral vision included), inside and outside of the lessons he taught. Other more impressionable sporting young minds began to emulate him. Of course, the inadequecies of our team's defensive play and the fear instilled by the sometimes brutal mocking of anything other than winning were glossed over as 'Butterfingers fault'.

This theme continued through my school years until at 14, my last Phys Ed teacher and I came to a tacit, unspoken agreement that I would not attend his lessons, but he would mark me on his register as attending. Good bloke

And it was this real, personal, systemic, sanctioned and pressurized bullying that lead me to question the nature of sport with regards to thought alignment of the current paradigm.

To beat the opponent?
To grind them down through attrition?
To impose your or your team's domination on another?
To exalt in victory?
To clearly delineate winners and losers?
To despair at losing?
To feel that one is a failure at not being a winner?
To feel superior to the loser?
To be more powerful than the losers?

I get it, I really do, that team sports are a means of building co-operation, comradeship and even staying fit, but it's the overiding premise of each and every member/team imposing their dominance on the losing individuals/teams that leads me to conclude that sport plays a role in the mechanics of power.

[brainpanhandler]

it's the overiding premise of each and every member/team imposing their dominance on the losing individuals/teams that leads me to conclude that sport plays a role in the mechanics of power.

That's what the losers say.

The Case Against Competition

By Alfie Kohn

When it comes to competition, we Americans typically recognize only two legitimate positions: enthusiastic support and qualified support.

The first view holds that the more we immerse our children (and ourselves) in rivalry, the better. Competition builds character and produces excellence. The second stance admits that our society has gotten carried away with the need to be Number One, that we push our kids too hard and too fast to become winners -- but insists that competition can be healthy and fun if we keep it in perspective.

I used to be in the second camp. But after investigating the topic for several years, looking at research from psychology, sociology, biology, education, and other fields, I'm now convinced that neither position is correct. Competition is bad news all right, but it's not just that we overdo it or misapply it. The trouble lies with competition itself. The best amount of competition for our children is none at all, and the very phrase "healthy competition" is actually a contradiction in terms.

...

http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/tcac.htm

No Contest
The Case Against Competition

[compared2what?]

To cite a modern specific example, take The Rockefeller Trust spending 50 million dollars to establish the dominance of allopathic medicine. The result is a system where health innovations that do not include pharmaceutical inputs tend to not be supported. Excepting surgery where allopathic medicine does wonderful work. Bottom line common sense though, says that if the ‘empiricists’ were able to compete on a level playing field, both sides and medicine in general would be better off than they are now.

Is it the way the Rockefeller Trust established the dominance of allopathic medicine (That could not of course be the sole cause) with their 50m dollars that is the programmed passive response? ie, propaganda. Cause that's the part I'm interested in. The Rockefellers through all manner of machinations could create a system of medicine which benefitted their bottom line.

I don't really see how allopathic medicine is inherently better suited to doing that than what's presently known as alternative/complementary medicine would have been had they invested $50 million dollars in it.

ON EDIT: Case in point: Osteopaths. They do all the same stuff for all the same fees.

[Sounder]

:BPH wrote...

What constitutes a "programmed passive response trigger”? How does that particular programmed passive response trigger restrict areas of potential inquiry and/or "ensure the bifurcation of the layers of psyche so that they interact in ways that are not up to their potential."?

On rereading the sentence, it seems that the word trigger is extra to that sentence.

Not really. If you answer the first question which derived from your use of that phrase here:
Sounder » Sat Jun 29, 2013 7:54 am wrote:The primary technique used and prime directive of power mongers is to keep the general population driven primarily by passive emotions. [/b]This ensures the bifurcation of the layers of psyche so that they interact in ways that are not up to their potential. Because it is a threat to the integrity of ones personal identity to accept that one is largely driven by programmed passive response triggers, it can be difficult to identify sources that impact ones own belief set.

I was hoping to drop it from that also, but ok, we can work with it that way if you like.

1st question; What constitutes a "programmed passive response trigger”?

1st answer; A set of initial assumptions that define the limits and general content of social discourse can be said to program a passive response.

Let’s take for instance, ‘national security’ as an example.

The concept has been shown to have great power to induce conformity.

The requirements for effective engagement within that realm tilt towards expediency and away from conscience influenced decision making. Taking Edward Snowden as an example, some see a media sub-narrative suggesting that future whistleblowers should be treated harshly.

This in turn generates sets of passive emotional responses that further entrench and develop orthodox viewpoints as to what national security applies too.
The implied assumption that gives weight to ‘national security’ is that the government serves the state or the country. If in fact the agents of government come to feel that the country only serves their personal or associates goals, then national security becomes an empty and false form that requires more and more rationalizations to maintain legitimacy of the concept. Hysteria works pretty good here.

Then the second question I ask is a follow up to the answer to the first question.

Sounder wrote:That phrase referred to the first paragraph and to these next sentences from the second paragraph; Perhaps unintentionally, early rulers learned the value of imposing a double bind on their subjects. By making it very painful to create a conscious model that may be at odds with societal and unconscious programming, most people will instead find conscious ways of validating their underlying drivers or unconscious programming

Speaking of that paragraph:
Sounder » Fri Dec 21, 2012 6:19 am wrote:

By making it very painful to create a conscious model that may be at odds with societal and unconscious programming, most people will instead find conscious ways of validating their underlying drivers or unconscious programming. The happy consequence of this for the ruler is that the subjects will generally access their sub-conscious store of knowledge only to buttress their conscious modeling, in preference to tapping this store to challenge or redevelop our unconscious modeling.

Shouldn't the part I bolded above be conscious instead of unconscious?

I’m thinking of the unconscious here as being all the stuff that is taken for granted. It drives our conscious modeling in fundamental ways yet remains under examined. In my opinion this is so because the initial assumptions that still drive our ‘beliefs’ trace back to and derive from ideas designed by and in support of the pretences of an elite class with respect to their supposed greater connection to ‘divinity’.

Sounder wrote:(Our King has brought great prosperity to our lands, he must be God)

The trigger part only happens when the programmed response is challenged (added later: or alternatively reinforced by the presentation of absurdest interpretations of novel ideation.)

What exactly is that "trigger" part again? Are they words? Symbols? Incantations?

No, I’m thinking of triggers as those things that cause fight and flight reactions.

Expressed either by fighting to preserve the integrity of ones personal identity through defending the validity of an existing belief set and/or running into the arms of orthodoxy so as to remain in denial of the meaning content of disruptive facts.

Normative thinking itself is programmer and generator of passive emotional responses.

Commitment to belief reinforces the programming which in turn encourages bright people to create internal consistency inside the boundaries of a given belief set and hostility toward those that threaten those boundaries.

If the programming is set deeply enough then disruptive ideation must get past a high hurdle indeed.

Sounder wrote:To cite a modern specific example, take The Rockefeller Trust spending 50 million dollars to establish the dominance of allopathic medicine. The result is a system where health innovations that do not include pharmaceutical inputs tend to not be supported. Excepting surgery where allopathic medicine does wonderful work. Bottom line common sense though, says that if the ‘empiricists’ were able to compete on a level playing field, both sides and medicine in general would be better off than they are now.

Is it the way the Rockefeller Trust established the dominance of allopathic medicine (That could not of course be the sole cause) with their 50m dollars that is the programmed passive response? ie, propaganda. Cause that's the part I'm interested in. The Rockefellers through all manner of machinations could create a system of medicine which benefitted their bottom line. That's a given. But how are they going about creating programmed passive responses?

By getting people committed to a particular belief set that by design excludes competing ideation.

The trust money trained the experts who in turn maintain internal consistency and conformity while they mock any disruptive ideation.

The general populace tends to trust allopathic medicine more than alternative forms of medicine.

The general population is fairly homogeneous on the broad scale, because we are social animals. Pretty much all folk fall for well crafted propaganda.

Still there are studies that correlate a rise in education and income with greater use of alternative medicine. Of course that makes sense in terms of the dictum; don’t put all your eggs in one basket and the fact that rich folk have this obscure thing they call ‘disposable income’.

Is this the passive programmed response?

Yes, it results from the propaganda that sets the belief.

Is the trigger illness or fear of pain and death?

I would suggest that is one among others. In my immediate experience it seems like most retreat to orthodoxy, despite alternative pretensions, when threatened by serious illness. It does seem natural for folk to turn to the more systematized belief set in times of emotional distress.

populace: I'm sick. I don't want to feel pain or die. Fear. Passive emotion.

Big Pharma/rockefeller medicine: We have the cure for what ails you son and here's a double blind study to prove it.

Populace: yay. (programmed response)

Bifurcation: programmed response supports acceptance of unquestioned conscious allopathic model (not just any port in a storm) vs open eyed inquiry into causes and unconventional cures... blindness to areas of inquiry like naturo/homeopathic medicine?

Cept now they create the sickness as well?

Problem, reaction, solution.

That correlates fairly close with how I am using the language, with some differences that I can't quite put my finger on at the moment.

I do think we are conditioned to put unnecessary constraints on the use and application of our consciousness.

[Sounder]

Thanks for your engagement brainpanhandler.

I very much appreciated your style this time.


There was a post on the latest intentionally incendiary thread where a fluff piece article was inserted as evidence of the modest influence of the Rothschild Group. I laughed at seeing such a clear example of where that posters head is at. The following picture is a bit more detailed and credible.

I would also assert that this angle and material is, oh about a gadzillion times more relevant than is ones viewpoint of Icke's beliefs about Reptile/human hybrids.

Just a guess.

http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/2013 ... othschild/

The House of Rothschild

July 9, 2013 — Dean Henderson

The Rothschild family combined with the Dutch House of Orange to found Bank of Amsterdam in the early 1600’s as the world’s first private central bank. Prince William of Orange married into the English House of Windsor, taking King James II’s daughter Mary as his bride. The Orange Order Brotherhood, which more recently fomented Northern Ireland Protestant violence, put William III on the English throne where he ruled both Holland and Britain. In 1694 William III teamed up with the Rothschilds to launch the Bank of England.

The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street- as the Bank of England is known- is surrounded by thirty foot walls. Three floors beneath it the third largest stock of gold bullion in the world is stored. The biggest hoard lies beneath the Rothschild-controlled Federal Reserve Bank of New York. According to the excellent movie The Money Masters, much of this gold was confiscated from now-empty vaults at Fort Knox as collateral on US debt obligations to the Eight Families Federal Reserve crowd.

This financial mafia further consolidated its control over the world’s gold stock when 200 million ounces of the stuff belonging to the Bank of Nova Scotia was recovered from beneath the carnage of the World Trade Center. One day after its November 1, 2001 recovery, New York Mayor Rudy Guliani laid off hundreds of rescue workers at Ground Zero. A short time later he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year”.

The daily London gold “fixing” occurs at the N. M. Rothschild Bank in the City of London. Here, five of the Eight Families-linked banks unilaterally decide what the price of gold will be each morning. Kleinwort Benson’s Sharps Pixley subsidiary is one of five firms. Another is Mocatta Metals. It is majority-owned by Standard Chartered- the Cecil Rhodes-founded bank whose Dubai branch wired Mohammed Atta the funds he needed to carry out the 911 operation.

According to British MP Michael Meacher in an article for The Guardian, Omar Saeed Sheikh- the man who beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002- was a British MI-6 agent. He says it was Sheikh who- at the behest of Pakistani ISI General Mahmood Ahmed- wired the $100,000 to Mohammed Atta from Standard Chartered’s Dubai branch before 911. Meacher’s claim has been corroborated by Dennis Lomel- director of FBI’s financial crimes unit- and by an October 11, 2001 article in The Times of India. Mocatta Metals is also a favorite conduit for Israeli Mossad financing.

Midland Bank subsidiary Samuel Montagu is a third London gold “fixer”. In 1999 Midland, headquartered in cocaine-money infested Panama, was bought by the British oligarchy-controlled HSBC- the old Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation opium laundry and now the world’s second largest bank. Midland is partially owned by the Kuwaiti al-Sabah monarchy. The other two gold fixers are Johnson Matthey and N. M. Rothschild, both of which have interlocking boards with Anglo-American and HSBC.

Anglo-American is the world’s third largest mining company. It is controlled by the Rothschilds and South Africa’s Oppenheimer family. It owns both Engelhardt- which enjoys a near monopoly in global gold refining- and the DeBeers diamond monopoly. The current De Beers chairman is Nicky Oppenheimer. De Beers was indicted in 1994 for price-fixing by the US Justice Department. To this day company officials do not set foot on US soil for fear they may be nabbed by US authorities.

The Rothschilds also control BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, the two biggest global miners, as well as Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and Bank of America. As Bank of England Deputy Governor George Blunden put it, “Fear is what makes the bank’s powers so acceptable. The bank is able to exert its influence when people are dependent on us and fear losing their privileges or when they are frightened.”

Mayer Amschel Rothschild sold the British government German Hessian mercenaries to fight against American Revolutionaries, diverting the proceeds to his brother Nathan in London, where N.M. (Nathan and Mayer) Rothschild & Sons was established. Mayer was a serious student of Cabala and launched his fortune on money embezzled from William IX- royal administrator of the Hesse-Kassel region and a prominent Freemason.

Rothschild-controlled Barings bankrolled the Chinese opium and African slave trades. It financed the Louisiana Purchase. When several states defaulted on its loans, Barings bribed Daniel Webster to make speeches stressing the virtues of loan repayment. The states held their ground, so the House of Rothschild cut off the money spigot in 1842, plunging the US into a deep depression. It was often said that the wealth of the Rothschilds depended on the bankruptcy of nations. Mayer Amschel Rothschild once said, “I care not who controls a nation’s political affairs, so long as I control her currency”.

War also enhanced the family fortune. The House of Rothschild financed the Prussian War, the Crimean War and the British attempt to seize the Suez Canal from the French. Nathan Rothschild made a huge financial bet on Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, while also funding the Duke of Wellington’s peninsular campaign against Napoleon. Both the Mexican War and the Civil War were goldmines for the family.

A Rothschild family biography mentions a London meeting where an “international banking syndicate” decided to pit the American North against the South as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once stated, “The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War. These bankers were afraid that the United States…would upset their financial domination over the world. The voice of the Rothschilds prevailed.”

Rothschild biographer Derek Wilson says the family was the official European banker to the US government via the Federal Reserve-precursor Bank of the United States. Family biographer Niall Ferguson notes a “substantial and unexplained gap” in Rothschild correspondence from 1854-1860. He says all copies of outgoing letters written by the London Rothschilds during this Civil War period “were destroyed at the orders of successive partners”.

French and British troops had, at the height of the Civil War, encircled the US. The British sent 11,000 troops to Crown-controlled Canada, which gave safe harbor to Confederate agents. France’s Napoleon III installed Austrian Hapsburg family member Archduke Maximilian as his puppet emperor in Mexico, where French troops massed on the Texas border. Only an 11th-hour deployment of two Russian warship fleets by US ally Czar Alexander II in 1863 saved the United States from re-colonization. That same year the Chicago Tribune blasted, “Belmont (August Belmont was a US Rothschild agent and had a Triple Crown horse race named in his honor) and the Rothschilds…who have been buying up Confederate war bonds.”

President Abraham Lincoln- now aware of the Eight Families-controlled Bank of the United States plot- countered by issuing Greenbacks from the US Treasury. The London bankers were fuming. Salmon Rothschild stated derisively of President Lincoln, “He rejects all forms of compromise. He has the appearance of a peasant and can only tell barroom stories.”

Lincoln was soon assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who was whisked away from Ford Theatre by members of a secret society known as Knights of the Golden Circle. Booth’s granddaughter later wrote This One Mad Act, in which she details Booth’s contacts with “mysterious Europeans” just before the Lincoln assassination.
Baron Jacob Rothschild was equally flattering towards the US citizenry. He once commented to US Minister to Belgium Henry Sanford on the over half a million Americans who died during the Civil War, “When your patient is desperately sick, you try desperate measures, even to bloodletting.”

Salmon and Jacob were merely carrying forth a family tradition. A few generations earlier Mayer Amschel Rothschild bragged of his investment strategy, “When the streets of Paris are running in blood, I buy”.

Mayer Rothschild’s sons were known as the Frankfurt Five. Amschel ran the family’s Frankfurt bank with his father, while Nathan ran London operations. Youngest son Jacob set up shop in Paris, while Salomon ran the Vienna branch and Karl the branch in Naples. Author Frederick Morton estimates that by 1850 the Rothschilds were worth over $10 billion. The old axiom “money begets more money” certainly holds true. Researchers believe that the Rothschild fortune today exceeds $100 trillion.

The Warburgs, Kuhn Loebs, Goldman Sachs, Schiffs and Rothschilds have intermarried into one big happy banking family. The Warburg family- which controls Deutsche Bank and Banque Paribas- tied up with the Rothschilds in 1814 in Hamburg, while Kuhn Loeb powerhouse Jacob Schiff shared quarters with Rothschilds in 1785. Schiff immigrated to America in 1865. He joined forces with Abraham Kuhn and married Solomon Loeb’s daughter. Loeb and Kuhn married each others sisters and the Kuhn Loeb dynasty was consummated. Felix Warburg married Jacob Schiff’s daughter. Two Goldman daughters married two sons of the Sachs family, creating Goldman Sachs. In 1806 Nathan Rothschild married the oldest daughter of Levi Barent Cohen, a leading financier in London. The Cohen family was now part of the club.

Today the Rothschild’s control a far-flung financial empire, which includes majority stakes in nearly all the world’s central banks. The Edmond de Rothschild clan owns the Banque Privee SA in Lugano, Switzerland and the Rothschild Bank AG of Zurich. The family of Jacob Lord Rothschild owns the powerful Rothschild Italia in Milan. They are members of the exclusive Club of the Isles, which provides capital for George Soros’ Quantum Fund NV. Quantum made a killing in 1998-1999 destroying the currencies of Thailand, Indonesia and Russia. Soros was a major shareholder in George W. Bush’s Harken Energy.

Quantum NV handles $11-14 billion in assets and operates from the Dutch island of Curacao, in the shadow of massive Royal Dutch/Shell and Exxon Mobil refineries. Curacao was recently cited by an OECD Task Force on Money Laundering as a major drug money laundering nation. The Club of Isles group which funds Quantum is led by the Rothschilds and includes Queen Elizabeth II and other wealthy European aristocrats and Black Nobility. Fugitive Swiss financier and Mossad cutout Marc Rich, whose business interests were recently taken over by the Russian mafia Alfa Group, is also part of the Soros network. Rich was pardoned by President Clinton as he exited the White House.

Ties to drug money are nothing new to the Rothschilds. N. M. Rothschild & Sons was at the epicenter of the BCCI scandal, but escaped the limelight when a warehouse full of documents conveniently burned to the ground around the time the Rothschild-controlled Bank of England shut BCCI down. The Rothschild’s Bank of America provided the seed money to launch BCCI.

Perhaps the largest repository for Rothschild wealth today is Rothschilds Continuation Holdings AG- a secretive Swiss bank holding company. By the late 1990s scions of the Rothschild global empire were Barons Guy and Elie de Rothschild in France and Lord Jacob and Sir Evelyn Rothschild in Britain. Evelyn is chairman of the Economist.

If we wish we make the world a better place and to usher in a new consciousness; we must study, discuss and expose the source of global warfare, depopulation schemes, oil-addiction, drug addiction, poverty and environmental degradation. The head of the serpent is the House of Rothschild.

Dean Henderson is the author of four books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve & Stickin’ it to the Matrix.