Laigle’s Forum

Ok, the American people showed we could march on Washington in dazzling numbers. We showed we could support a less-leftist candidate than Obama’s favorite.

But if you’re still feeling smug about RINO Scott Brown beating far-left Democrat Martha Coakly, it’s time to come back to earth. Fast.

I told you at that time there would be lots of work to do — and undo. Some got mad and said I was an alarmist. Some said my attitude was not Christian because we should try to convert Brown into a real conservative rather than criticize him. This is how we got to where we are today, incrementally, one RINO at a time, always believing we could make friends with them. Some people just don’t understand it doesn’t work that way and never will. The Left is a ratchet wheel. It only turns in one direction. Proof of that is where we are today, where the world is today, further and further from freedom and enlightenment, dropping year by year in our world ranking in education. Dumb, dumber, going, going, soon to be gone!

I warned you of excessive euphoria over Brown because it was clear this euphoria had shriveled up a lot of “conservative” brains to pea-size and had people actually believing Brown was a Divine Gift — one of the fatal flaws of the false Christianity that inundates our churches.

We had been warned by cooler heads that Brown had voted with the “liberals” in the Massachusetts Senate (need I remind you most are to the left of Hugo Chavez) 91% of the time and was openly pro-abortion — despite the totally unearned and disgraceful endorsement he got from MA Citizens for Life.

Ok, the “conservatives” have proven they can elect a left of center RINO to the Senate. But don’t forget that the Democrats were no doubt relieved to hear Brown say, shortly after his election, that he will not be voting with the Republicans on a routine basis.

Does Brown need to say more to convince his voters he despises them?

I am not saying there was an alternative. What I am saying is that his election can be expected to have a RINO-boosting effect, particularly for McCain, and the GOP are already trying to make hay of it. Brown is now busy campaigning for Mr. Amnesty-Open Borders John McCain. If McCain re-takes his Senate seat, that will spell a huge loss for the grassroots because it will mean that “conservatives” have fallen into the psychological trap set by the elitist GOP leadership. Here is the setup:

1–Convince the grassroots that “they” succeeded in electing Brown, and that

2–Brown is a conservative

3–Have this newly minted “conservative” Scott Brown support John McCain and other RINOs for high offices

Please bear in mind that the grassroots has yet to score a real victory in the tea party anti-Obama movement. The real winners so far are the GOP open-borders elite who despise America and couldn’t give a rap about you and your job security and personal secutiry. They have at least 2 things going for them:

1–The Brown win, which only seems like a victory for many of you, and

2–The phony news that joblessness has sunk to below 10%.

The Brown “victory” only serves to give you false hope that things will be different from now on, and the phony figures from the Obama administration are intended to make you forget that open borders and amnesty are deadly prospects that can take us further down the path to economic ruin (we have forgotten that millions of the subprime mortgages that poisoned the world economy went to illegal aliens). BTW, I call those figures phony because the rise corresponds mostly to government jobs, which are in fact a drag on the real economy and far from bringing in needed tax dollars, they cost the taxpayer more money. I also say they are phony because they do not include the workers who have given up on job hunting. Economist Jerome Corsi recently estimated the true unemployment rate at over 20%.

So if you think the war is over, it has only just begun. So be like Gideon’s soldiers and keep an eye on that weapon, Soldier! You will need it.

JD Hayworth may not be an exemplary candidate to unseat McCain, but he is anti-invasion. He does not want to outsource your job to an outlaw who sneaked into your country and wants to stay and eat your lunch. And the GOP elite is scared to death of him. That alone should tip you off.

As such, Hayworth, if he can be taken at his word, represents something infinitely more than just law and order. He represents American sovereignty in a further reaching sense. Our pastors and politicians have told us for almost 20 years that the immigrant is a gift of God and must be treated with the utmost respect. They didn’t tell  you that because they are devout. They told you that because they are far left.

That the immigrant is a person deserving respect is not necessarily untrue, but the devil is in the definition.

An immigrant, traditionally, is a person who comes to our shores with a visa in hand stating he is approved by our government. He has the ability to earn his keep, is not likely to depend on welfare, will obey the law, will be a contributor, or in some cases, will return to his home country once his stint is done.

A person who breaks the law to enter here is not much more than a thief. Yet, our churches (many of which don’t deserve that name) are busy teaching us that there is no such thing as an illegal alien. Some even make sanctuaries out of their churches to hide lawbreakers.  Yet these same pastors would call the police if a stranger surreptitiously entered their homes late at night. To put it diplomatically, they are rank hypocrites.

But sovereignty is much more than just wanting to have protected borders. A politician today who cares about the sovereignty of our country is a rare jewel. A chilling number of high-placed politicians, like McCain, are members of the CFR, a group that is seriously intent upon not only erasing borders but also dragging you into supranational government intended to replace the national one. If you want to know why that is a problem, ask anyone in Europe, where national “governments” are reduced to mere rubber stamps of the European Union, which is nothing but a wealth redistribution enforcer. It practices a unique form of communism under color of law, keeps allowing a constant influx of Third World immigrants, many of them common criminals, writes and enforces increasingly anti-Christian and anti-freedom policy and is increasingly hated by ordinary people, who have absolutely no say in all of this.

Already the EU is talking about not only taxing the internet (Europe is now in control of the Net!) but also issuing licenses for internet use.

Now is the time to show grassroots muscle because tomorrow may be too late. We have not made a move yet that is outside the scope of the elitists’ plans. They think they have us just where they want us.  And if we can’t succeed in unseating McCain, then they are absolutely right!

BTW, a lot of you probably think I sit around most of the time scratching my head wondering what to write for Laigle’s Forum. That’s not quite how it works. My readers send me stuff that is important and I just say what I think about it, off the top of my head. I don’t have to sit around wondering what to write next. Quite to the contrary, I sit around and think “now, which of those ideas do I postpone to address this urgent issue.”  For instance, here is something that just came in as I was thinking about what a horrible bully McCain is. It is unbelievable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0b1TRt-Cn8

Ok, please read what Alex Isenstadt says in the article below about McCain and his bullying tactics to keep Hayworth from defeating him. If you are from Arizona, kindly forward a link to this article to all your friends and family. Tell em friends don’t let friends vote for bullies.

John McCain turns up heat on J.D. Hayworth

By ALEX ISENSTADT | 1/26/10 4:45 AM EST
Updated: 1/26/10 3:37 PM EST

One year after seeing his presidential ambitions extinguished in an overwhelming defeat, Arizona Sen. John McCain is launching a scorched-earth campaign aimed at incinerating a reelection challenge from J.D. Hayworth, the conservative former Arizona congressman and radio talk show host.

McCain is attempting, with a series of hardball tactics, to cut Hayworth down before his campaign even gets off the ground. He’s mounted a concerted effort during the past month to push Hayworth off the airwaves, run an ad targeting Hayworth on his own radio station and warned him through emissaries that going through with a bid to unseat McCain would be a serious mistake.

One source familiar with the McCain campaign said the offensive was only a preview of things to come, adding, “I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of this.”

The anti-Hayworth effort began in earnest Dec. 15, when Grant Woods, the former Arizona attorney general and onetime McCain chief of staff, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. Woods argued that Hayworth, who has used his KFYI drive-time program to blast away at McCain as a soft-on-immigration moderate, was essentially getting free airtime to wage a campaign as a de facto candidate.

Then, last week, McCain campaign attorneys Paul Charlton and Joseph Abate also wrote the FEC to complain that Hayworth was effectively using his radio show as a campaign platform, arguing that Hayworth’s radio parent company Clear Channel “has an obligation not to allow one specific candidate ­ regardless of that candidate’s occupation ­ unfettered daily use of its facilities to promote his candidacy for federal office.” 

Read more.

Major threat to world internet freedom

The Germans are the “free” world’s leaders in censorship. Some of my German contacts estimate that 200,000 Germans are in jail for saying and writing things that are legally considered offensive. Some of these contacts have been jailed for what they sent or posted on the internet!

By way of background, if they are correct, it was the allies, particularly the Americans, who started this trend with “denazification,” but the ideas behind that actually are said to have come from members of the Frankfurt School, a group of German Jewish intellectuals who sought refuge in the US just before WW II and showed their appreciation by spreading propaganda aimed at destroying our culture. They also were given a lot of elbow room in shaping our “denazification” policies.

Herbert Marcuse, a famous 60s radical, was a member of that school, who took it upon himself to help fixate our children on promiscuity and drugs — an important part of the Marxist agenda to weaken America.

Norbert Schneider, a German leftist heading an important European public office in charge of communications, is a Hitler wannabe who wants to require licenses for all internet transmissions of YouTube-like materials. The trouble is, if implemented in his part of the world, this licensing requirement would automatically be implemented here as well. Schneider has too much power, and we either take his away or he takes ours. I think you can understand he needs to go.

No sooner had I receive the article from Prison Planet (excerpted and linked below) than I found, through a search of the German internet, the following:

http://www.ejc.net/magazine/article/broadcasting_regulations_to_govern_online_video/

So, folks, it is happening. It is no longer in the talking stage. Neonazi Germany is taking the lead.

Oh, and just to cheer you up: Late in 2009, the US, which once ran the Internet, turned control over to Europe.

Need I tell you that global governance (European Union, UN, NAFTA, CFR policies, and the notion of nationalism, patriotism and even the idea of nations having boundaries at all as  “threats” to world peace) is a serious threat to freedom?

The truth that world government advocates don’t want you to know is that nationalism is not the threat to world peace today. The real threat is international tyranny, and the global elite are the tyrants who are likely to start the next war.

Don Hank

There is just so much happening it is explosive. Before you read the Prison Planet article, check this one out, which came in a few minutes ago:

World Economic Forum calls for licensing internet users

http://rawstory.com/2010/01/agency-calls-global-cyberwarfare-treaty-drivers-license-web-users/

Time Magazine Pushes Draconian Internet Licensing Plan

by DefendUSx February 03, 2010 13:34

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Time Magazine has enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.

As we reported earlier this week, during a recent conference at the Davos Economic Forum, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.

His proposal was almost instantly advocated by Time Magazine, who published an article by Barbara Kiviat - one of Mundie’s fellow attendees at the elitist confab. It’s sadistically ironic that Kiviat’s columns run under the moniker “The Curious Capitalist,” since the ideas expressed in her piece go further than even the free-speech hating Communist Chinese have dared venture in terms of Internet censorship.

“Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be reality,” writes Kiviat. “Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can hear the worldwide scream go up: “But we’re entitled to anonymity on the Internet!” Really? Are you? Why do you think that?”

Kiviat ludicrously compares the necessity to show identification when entering a bank vault to the apparent need for authorities to know who you are when you set up a website to take credit card payments.

Read more.

Action item: DOD awards homosexuals coveted “victim” status

Don Hank

A friend sent me this email this am, along with the link at the bottom:

“Go to the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s website and blast him as did I. Can’t let the homos and their apologists get ahead of us on the blog there. Encourage others on your list serve.”

There is a lot to tell here. First, I can’t get to the below-linked site or even to my own site Laigle’s Forum (http://laiglesforum.com) with my msn / Internet Explorer combo, and some of my friends can’t either with their servers. There is definitely some hanky-pank going on! (Anyone else notice this with your server?)  I finally got on by using Mozilla Firefox, which I strongly recommend using — especially if you can’t open the link below. My post at the DOD site (if it gets approved):

I have a military friend in the UK who knows what it is like to serve with openly homosexuals in the military. His experience is that the homosexuals are promoted ahead of heteros and then they in turn promote those who will go along with their proclivities and serve as playmates. Heteros not only take a back seat in promotions but, more importantly, are harassed.
The military is not supposed to be for sex games, but you are letting political correctness change that perspective.
Now that America has fallen into the moral irrelevance of Rome, there is no longer a major moral high ground in the world, no moral authority and leadership. Our “men in uniform” are by no means any longer defending a clear-cut moral example for the world to follow. Any nation with a smidgen of morality can defeat us in the propaganda arena and – I don’t say this lightly –  deserves to.

Under this president, and with this weak-kneed military “leadership,” we are  no longer by any means unambiguously the good guys.

We need no longer worry about losing wars. We need to worry about winning them.
http://www.dodlive.mil/index.php/2010/02/chairmans-corner-my-view-on-don’t-ask-don’t-tell/comment-page-1/#comment-1505

Dutch officials enraged at new blunder in climate report

By Don Hank

The global warming myth took another major hit recently.

Here is my partial translation of an article appearing in Volkskrant this morning:

According to the IPCC (International Climate Panel) report of 2007, Holland is 55% under sea level and 65% of the GDP is earned in that area.

The data are wrong, according to figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics [in Holland], which contacted the weekly periodical Vrij Nederland (Free Netherlands). According to the CBS, only one-fifth of the Netherlands lies under sea level and about 19% of GDP is earned there.

“I am very incensed,” says Environment Minister Cramer. “And I will not accept any more errors.” The sea level flap follows earlier revelations that figures on the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas are wrong and probably based on an informal estimate of the World Wildlife Fund.

The Volkskrant is a Dutch center-left mainstream newspaper. I was unable to find an English language source for this information:

http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/article1345331.ece/Politici_woedend_op_klimaatpanel

YouTube Obama interview highlights public ignorance

By Don Hank

An interview with Obama on YouTube shows that Americans are dissatisfied with his leadership. Sadly, it also shows that the public is ignorant of the real issues and the causes of their discontent.

WHAT’S HERE:

Note the question “how can we trust you when you hold meetings behind closed doors?”

Or the one about why banks can get bailed out but people who can’t afford to stay in their homes get nothing. (Obviously, this is just part of the socialist mind set. Instead of understanding that no one should get a handout from the tax payer, the knee jerk reaction to the bailouts is: Fine, bail out banks, but give me my bailout too).

On the other hand, this interview is surprisingly frank at places, and please note that this is the leftist mainstream media putting Obama in the hot seat. The Left is definitely not happy, and it is hard to imagine what Obama can come up with the satisfy them.

Net neutrality came up and Obama is for it. That means government involvement. No surprise.

Something positive here: Obama thinks colleges have to cut costs. That is a start. Professors and administrators are generally overpaid. Of course, that is probably just lip service but the issue is now on the table.

BIG SURPRISE: Obama at least pays lip service to nuclear power, pointing to Japan and France as countries that have led the way. Hmmm. Note that even GOP politicians don’t talk like that.

CONSPICUOUSLY MISSING:

Not surprisingly, there were no questions about the overarching issues:

– abortion: Obama and other Dems talk about “making abortion scarce.” Yet they are fighting to include free abortions in the healthcare bill and forcing the taxpayer to pay for abortions overseas. Then there is the issue of forced abortion in China. Even Dems can’t afford to be too callous on these issues. Where was the question: What have you done to make “abortions scarce” as promised, Mr. President?

– illegal immigration (possibly the no. 1 underlying economic problem)

– American sovereignty (powers turned over to the UN, EU, NAFTA, World Bank, IMF, WHO, etc; the internet, long controlled by the US, is now under European rule. Europeans generally believe censorship is a necessary part of life! It’s coming). Where was the question: Mr. President, should America continue to be a sovereign nation?

– the Fed, Fanny/Freddy and the CRA (illegal immigrants getting loans) and Barney Frank and Sen. Dodd’s involvement in them, all of which played a major role in the subprime crisis and in the bank crash and bailout scandals

– the Marxist government takeover of big businesses such as GM

– The record budget deficits and borrowing from China, the question as to where the money will come from once China cuts us off, etc, the issue of printing money and the question: how can America avoid the inflationary consequences of wanton money printing that were incurred in the Weimar Republic, where people had to take their salaries to the bank in wheelbarrows?

– Of course, a question that so far no one dares ask is: where is your long-form birth certificate, Mr. “President”?

In summary, the interview highlights the un-constitutionality of these manifestations of big government control or lack of constitutional protections and the shallowness of this line of questioning means one, some or all of the following:

1-the US public has been brainwashed into accepting these things,

2-the YouTube presentation is self-censored, or

3-Obama and/or his handlers said “no questions on the following issues: …..”

Whatever the case may be, the media and the elite in general would not have asked these questions of a Republican either. They are taboo.

Yet these are the key questions that need to be asked, and the fact that they are taboo explains in large part why these issues are causing growing problems that threaten our very existence and that some day will cry out for answers regardless of media censorship. That will inevitably happen when the money runs out ad you and I hear the unfamiliar growl of real hunger in our gut — hunger. But we must try not to head off the insanity before that happens, and that means you and I have a big job to do, and we might have to do it all alone, just you and me.

You and I, my friend, must keep up the drumbeat and create such a stir over these issues that even the Dems, their friends the RINOs and the mainstream media can no longer ignore them, not in their daily reporting and certainly not in interviews with leading politicians.

Here is the interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pqzNJYzh7I&feature=youtube_gdata

I have found a new hero, historical author Jürgen Elsässer.

Quote:

“And this world supervision or world government requires the prior destruction of the nation states and the republics, of course.”

Please read this essay, all of it. If you’re short on time, print it up and read it over your lunch hour. Read it often. Every Westerner, American, Brit, Australian, German, everyone who still yearns to be free, MUST read his essay “Human or Slave, Republic or Empire.”

It’s that important.

I found the original German text on line at http://www.zeit-fragen.ch/index.php?id=3566 and cleaned up the translation a bit to make it easier and more enjoyable for you to read.

But when you’re done, please just hit on the link http://www.currentconcerns.ch/index.php?id=907 to give the site “Current Concerns” the much deserved credit for finding and posting this absolutely wonderful essay. (You can also tell them they are welcome to my edited version. It may not be perfect, but it is a step in the right direction).

Don Hank

Human or Slave, Republic or Empire?

From the Holy Roman Empire to the “Brave New World Order”

by Jürgen Elsässer

To paraphrase a familiar saying, the Swiss are from Venus, the rest of the Europeans are from Mars. Venus, the planet of love. And this takes me to the story of the Swiss jurist who said, “oh yes, we also have conflicts in Switzerland.” And then she spoke of the last big conflict, the Sonderbundskrieg, eighteen hundred something, with one hundred casualties. Well, says one from the rest of Europe, like me, what a wonderful world this Switzerland! A good planet to move to.

Party capital Berlin

I cannot report from Switzerland now, but I will report from the empire. Maybe not directly from the heart of the beast, as Che Guevara said, but rather from the rectum of the empire, Berlin, the party capital of Europe, as our mayor put it, who likes to tout the city with the slogan “poor but sexy.” This Berlin is indeed one of the big laboratories of the new world order where they are about to produce what one might be tempted to call the “new man”. What we can watch developing in Berlin full-size is the collapse of a society and the loss of humanity in society.
By contrast, Switzerland is a functioning society with mutual respect and feelings where people meet at eye level. But Berlin is a quagmire for humanity. There are also historic reasons for this development. As a city, Berlin has grown much too fast. Other capitals in Europe took centuries to grow. Berlin has been thrown into the imperialist era since the time of Bismarck and then became the capital of the Nazi horror in a very short time. And all this, of course, created a certain mentality, long before the New World Order. Maybe you know this joke, from the olden days: A Berliner is in Vienna. He is looking for the Prater Ferris wheel and he asks a local harshly, without greeting: “Hey, where is the Prater?” And the Viennese answers: “Come on, can’t you be a bit more polite?” Snaps the Berliner: “I’d rather get lost!”
So this has been Berlin mentality for a long time. The most friendly people in Berlin are the Turks, maybe not all of them, but at least if you visit Turkish shops. But the standard Berliners, they simply shoot down everything; their tongue is a machine-gun. And this rough mentality that was already in place now gets sucked up into the crowd psychology maelstrom of the new world order. This maelstrom is hyper-individualism. Party capital of the continent. People no longer work in Berlin. There is no industry left. Berlin’s main income is the party industry. That is, via Easy Jet and similar companies, hedonistic youths from Spain or maybe Greece fly to Berlin for a night or a weekend club hopping and leave behind a trail of destruction in town. This is one of the main sources of income for Berlin.
The ideology that shapes the city is worship of the unbridled individual. In contrast, any form of collectivity or humanity is held to contempt. Take the family: Family is considered an institution of coercion, family is out. Family is the nucleus of fascism. Then there are associations: the shooting associations breed the killing frenzy. Men meeting regularly over a beer are fascist groups. The church and religion: really bad, just think of the witch burnings, inquisition and all that. And nations or ethnicities? Here we have the equation: Nation = nationalism = fascism; they are all the same. Any Berlin college student can recite this in one breath.
All these forms of collectivity are disparaged or generally suspected of fascism. Against this dark backdrop we have the shining individual who must realize his full potential in every way. The perspective of this trend is an individual as an atom, surrounded by the total market. Isolated, because all forms of community and social coherence will have been destroyed. And the isolated individual’s only remaining partner will be the computer via the internet. This is where you get entertainment, this is where you get sex, this is where you get information. And on the other side of the screen there is Big Brother supplying all your needs.

Huxley’s “Brave New World”

It was seventy or eighty years ago, I think, that Aldous Huxley described this development very well in his book “Brave New World”. And I have drawn from it, integrating it into my book “Nationalstaat und Globalisierung” (The Nation State and Globalization). There I wrote about Huxley’s “Brave New World”:
“The new order brought peace. Abolishment of parliamentarianism and democracy, introduction of genetic breeding of humans, impulse standardization through sleep hypnosis, luxury and affluence for the alphas and betas in charge, full employment and contentedness for the hard-working deltas and epsilons, free sex, movies with real feelings and comforting soma-ecstasy for all. Those who grow old die the gentle death of euthanasia.
In Huxley’s words: “The world is in equilibrium now. People are happy. They get what they want and they desire nothing they cannot get. They are well. They are secure, always healthy, have no fear of death. Passion and age are unknown to these happy people. They are no longer attached to mothers and fathers, have neither wife nor child nor lover for which they might have strong feelings. Their very standardization is so that they can hardly behave other than they should behave.”
So much for “Brave New World” in Aldous Huxley’s prophecy. How did we get to this point then, this “Brave New World”? The world had been shaken by a huge economic crisis, by terror attacks through anthrax and a Nine-Years’ War afterwards. Huxley writes: “The Nine-Years’ War, the great economic collapse, there was only a choice between world supervision and destruction. Liberalism was killed by anthrax.” In Huxley’s utopia this world supervision, world government, is the preliminary stage to this general standardization of man. And this world supervision or world government requires the prior destruction of the nation states and the republics, of course. This is a very important point when talking about destruction of humanity and other forms of community or social life: For the protagonists of the new world order, the main target is the nation state, because the nation state provides an institutional framework for the minor forms of humanity. The nation state protects the family and fosters marriage and family. The nation state looks to an education of the people, provides for children from all classes to be educated together, at least for a few years, secures that the language is cherished, that a certain form of sexuality is cultivated. Thus, the nation state fosters a development where human beings are not alone, but where we can develop in mutual exchange – and this is how human abilities and human emotions can grow.
But this nation state is in danger all around the world, especially since September 11, 2001 when a terror attack like that in Huxley’s book shook the world – not with anthrax but by other terroristic means. And now we have the economic crisis and we have this discussion about whether to abolish all these little republics with all their nationalisms and atavisms and replace them with supervision by the “Greats” through “good governance”, instead of by us citizens.

Fugger, Death and Devil

This development is driven by international financial capital. When I speak with people today and say that the development of the EU might result in a “Fourth Reich,” and when people shake their heads in disbelief and say: “You don’t really mean that there will be something like the ‘Third Reich’ again, do you?”, I reply: “When I speak of a ‘Fourth Reich’, I am not thinking of the ‘Third Reich’, but of the first one, the medieval German Reich.
What we currently see is a regression into the Middle Ages. The original German Reich, the so-called “Holy Roman Empire”, was not a centralized power, brought into line like the Nazi state where the SS was in charge from the Atlantic Ocean to the Urals. That’s how it was in the “Third Reich.” In contrast to this, the First Reich, the “Holy Roman Empire” was a completely amorphous entity reaching from the Baltic Sea to Sicily, at least in the best of times, but it was in no way unified, even lacking a capital. You cannot even call it an Empire of the “German Nation” because it was actually a multiethnic state, torn between the various ethnic groups speaking different languages, in various dynasties, with constantly fluctuating power structures and frontlines inside it.
The First Reich did not work too badly at first. There was some progress in the 10th, 11th, 12th, maybe also in the 13th century, and some even speak of the Golden Middle Ages. But this structure entered into a crisis about the 15th and 16th century with the rising of financial capital. This is where things got out of control.
The financial capital in the “Holy Roman Empire” was centered around the Fugger Trust: the Fuggers, originally from Augsburg, originally textile manufacturers, textile merchants, textile producers, succeeded in rising to the level of a financial trust by virtue of the merchant superpower Venice and their good relations with the Vatican. The first step was the colonization of Tyrol, the occupation of Tyrolean natural resources and precious metals, and then they were off to Hungary. And these natural resources are used by the Fuggers to erect a minting monopoly and to deal in monetary policy and use this base to finance the German emperors. The emperors of the time, especially Maximilian I and Karl V, came to power exclusively through the billions in support from the house of Fugger. The Fuggers bought the emperors. And then we have the expansion of the German Empire, ruled by Habsburg at the time, towards Spain. And matrimonial politics created the Habsburg-Spain axis. And the need for more credits or to pay back loans to the Fuggers forced the emperor to go to the other continent, South America. This is the moment when the German Kaiser says: “The sun will never set on my empire”. This leads to one of the worst chapters of humanity, the looting of Latin America. We are told that the Spanish are responsible for this blood bath. But the Fuggers participate behind the scenes. The Spanish had to raise the money for the Habsburg Emperors, so that they could pay off the Fuggers. Thus, the driving force of this expansion is the seizure of power with financial capital in the Roman Empire of that time.

Pirates and Confederates

Finally, even the Reformation and the wars associated with it can be seen as a consequence of this development. What forces actually drove Luther to start the Reformation? There were reformers before who were less successful. But what increased the number of Luther’s followers enormously was the grassroots outrage regarding the practice of indulgences: a monk, Tetzel, sent by the pope to preach in towns and sell indulgences allowing people to buy forgiveness from sins, even those not yet committed, by giving money to the Pope. But who organized this? It was the Fugger investment bank. It was an ingenious business idea of the Fuggers. And this business idea threw the whole Reich into turmoil. And it contributed to the wars associated with the Reformation.
Getting back to the exploitation of Latin America, the slaughter of the Incas and Aztecs: The captured gold was brought to Spain. Then a new rival enters the game: the rising sea power England starts raiding the Spanish corvettes full of gold. Today we see movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean” with Johnny Depp and we think these were adventure stories with wild swashbucklers. These pirates, however, were no small criminals but rather instruments of the English striving for global power. Sir Francis Drake, Her Majesty’s pirate, raided Spanish ships in royal missions, without Parliament’s knowledge. The gold meant for the Fuggers thus ended up in London. In this process, the Spanish empire and the Fugger empire collapse and the rise of the new global power England, later Great Britain, begins. The first thing this power uses its money, its capital, its raided gold for is to expand the scope of business: More ships are outfitted and business is shifted to a new footing, less primitive than with the Spanish, with the entry into slave trading. Slaves in great numbers are bought in Africa, dragged onto ships and taken to South America, to the colonies – for the benefit of England and with huge profits.

And at this time when we have the contrast between Habsburg plus the Spanish plus the Vatican, the Catholic powers on the one hand and the new rising power of England on the other hand, we have the worst wars in Europe, the religious wars. The Thirty Years’ War in Germany, which killed off one third of the population; the wars in England, Anglican kings against the Catholic Scots and Irish; all the campaigns in France. All these were religious wars only on the surface. In the background we find the rival forces of financial capital.

In these bloody times, when the Golden Middle Ages were giving way to the Dark Middle Ages, Switzerland fights for its independence and founds a democratic republic. This is a historic landmark. And what we see at that moment is an attempt to roll this back. A regression to the Middle Ages subjecting the whole continent again to the power of the financial capital. What was special at the time was that the German Empire was disintegrating as a whole, because not only Switzerland was seceding, but the Netherlands were also becoming independent of Spanish-Habsburg rule. But the latter became independent only to plunge into imperialism themselves. Only Switzerland succeeded in shaking off feudalism without becoming imperialistic. This development is so unique it deserves much more attention.

The Monster Banks

The upshot of all this history – Fugger, Karl V, Latin America’s gold, Sir Francis Drake – is: The gold of the Incas and Aztecs is in London and the Bank of England is based on this foundation. This is the prototype of a very dangerous type of bank which still exists today: a national bank owned by private individuals, but functioning as a state bank which lends money to the state. This means that the state always has to approach this Bank of England, this private bank, to borrow money and that it is a perpetual debtor to these private owners of the bank bearing the respectable name Bank of England.
Exactly in this style – nominally a national bank, de facto a private bank – the US Federal Reserve Bank was founded on the eve of World War I. And to this date, both the Bank of England and the Fed are the institutions that have taken possession of an entire monetary system which gives them the power to create and lend money without public control.
I could go on forever about the development of financial capital. But this is why people write books. [2] So I will only tell you the end of the story. We see the end of the story after September 11, 2001, when the US Federal Reserve proceeded to prodigiously inflate the money supply. Between September 11, 2001 and 2005 it issued more additional dollars than in the previous 200 years of American economic history. That was only until 2005 – at this point the publication of the money supply trend was discontinued by the Bush administration.
According to unofficial estimates, debts of private households, companies, private banks and the State – that is the total debt of all branches of the economy – grew from US$ 50 trillion to 60 trillion. So we have a total US debt of US$ 60 trillion of which 10 trillion was added during the last 15 months. US$ 60 trillion are 60,000 billion. These debts were paid by paper money or electronic money without any real backing, created by these private bank monsters. Actually, this increase in the money supply is so inflationary it is surprising that this currency, the dollar, is still accepted for payment any­where.
It seems crazy, but there is a plausible reason: The US government can, unlike the government of any other debtor state, promise the dollar investors to use military force against anyone at any time at any place to press him to accept the worthless paper snippets with “Dollar” printed on them as payment for goods. Their credit ratings on the international capital market increased when they managed to get a country like Iraq, which probably owns the second larges oil reserves in the world, under their control. On the other hand, the more unstable the situation in Iraq, the more nervous the reaction of the dollar creditors is. A US sinking deeper and deeper in debt with the paper money hoax becoming more and more obvious will cause them to compensate even more desperately for their economic problems through military successes. And the more we will see a tendency to break up the still existing and intact nation states like Switzerland to suck out the last resources and to throw them into the debt cycle to close gaps. In other words, the greater the deficit in this cycle becomes, the greater the tendency for war and the risk of a regression into the Middle Ages.

1 Speech held at the conference “Mut zur Ethik” on the topic “Sovereignty of the people or imperialism – what is true democracy?”, 4 to 6 September 2009 in Feldkirch/Austria
2 The speech has been inspired by the speaker’s latest books:  J. Elsässer (editor), “Gegen Finanzdiktatur. Die Volksinitiative – Grundsätze, Konzepte, Ziele” (Kai Homilius, July 2009),
J. Elsässer, “Nationalstaat und Globalisierung” (Manuscript, April 2009)

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