Above the President

The relevance of much of what happens in the world today escapes public scrutiny, compliments of the corrupt corporate media. This site aims to help change that. Topics include the UN, oil pipelines, monetary policy and the fate of empires.

Thursday, June 30, 2005

War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds, first published in 1898, is arguably H. G. Wells' most well known work of literature. The story is told from the standpoint of an anonymous "philosophical writer" who tells about events that happened six years earlier. Martian cylinders land on planet Earth outside London and the Martians, who are described as having a "roundish bulk with tentacles," promptly begin vaporizing humans. The Martians build giant walking tripods, armed with heat rays, which ruin towns and cities. Yet just when all hope appears lost, the Martians are slain "by the humblest thing that God, in his wisdom, has put on this earth."

Specifically, bacteria.

Superficially, the story was shaped in response to a specific historical event of the period. In 1894, the planet Mars made an especially close passage to Earth, allowing astronomers to make especially detailed observations. The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli reported seeing "canali," meaning "channels," on the planet. Of course, the term was mistranslated into English as "canals," and speculation ran amok about the possibility of an advanced civilization on the Red Planet. Fuel was added to the fire by French astronomer M. Javelle of Nice, who reported seeing strange lights on Mars in the course of his 1894 observations.



Martian Tripod, with Heat Ray in Tow

But there was a darker motivation that drove Wells to compose War of the Worlds as well. As I discussed in a previous post, The Dystopia of H.G. Wells, Wells was a devout, lifelong socialist, and his thinking and writing had a profound impact on socialists and Communists of every stripe, from the British Fabians to Vladimir Lenin to Joseph Stalin to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1941, George Orwell went so far as to make the caustic remark that "much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany." Others have made the same observation. In the introduction to the 1999 edition of Wells' Anticipations, M. Gardner notes that "Wells' statements about inferior races, and the use of killing as a tool to weed out the unfit, come perilously close to Hitler's efforts to breed a superior Aryan race, and to 'solve the Jewish question' with the aid of gas chambers."

And what is War of the Worlds, if not a story about the technologically superior Martians coming to Earth to "solve" the "human question" viz indiscriminate killing and extermination?

Today Wells is often hailed as a scientific visionary, but truly, as Koheleth teaches in Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the Sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The "heat rays" wielded by the invading Martians are probably less an anticipation of lasers than they are a memory of Greek fire, a secret weapon used briefly by some of the Eastern Roman Emperors of Byzantium. It was a form of "liquid fire" that was hurled onto ships from long, brass canons and burst into flames on contact. It was reputed to be inextinguishable, even on water. The weapon was used so rarely and its formula kept so secret that about 50 years after its invention, no one could remember how to construct or use it anymore. Consequently, it (obviously) fell into disuse, although that did not stop the Arabs from reverse-engineering a similar, albeit much weaker, analog to Greek fire.


Greek fire is reputed to have been invented by a
Syrian
named Callinicus circa 673 AD

Greek fire may have been an effective way to destroy enemy troops and assets, but the most potent devastation it wrought was psychological. The memoirs of the Lord of Joinville, a thirteenth century French nobleman, include these observations of Greek Fire (or more likely, its lesser Arab analog) that were made during the Seventh Crusade:
“It happened one night, whilst we were keeping night-watch over the tortoise-towers, that they brought up against us an engine called a perronel, (which they had not done before) and filled the sling of the engine with Greek fire. When that good knight, Lord Walter of Cureil, who was with me, saw this, he spoke to us as follows: "Sirs, we are in the greatest peril that we have ever yet been in. For, if they set fire to our turrets and shelters, we are lost and burnt; and if, again, we desert our defences which have been entrusted to us, we are disgraced; so none can deliver us from this peril save God alone. My opinion and advice therefor is: that every time they hurl the fire at us, we go down on our elbows and knees, and beseech Our Lord to save us from this danger."


“So soon as they flung the first shot, we went down on our elbows and knees, as he had instructed us; and their first shot passed between the two turrets, and lodged just in front of us, where they had been raising the dam. Our firemen were all ready to put out the fire; and the Saracens, not being able to aim straight at them, on account of the two pent-house wings which the King had made, shot straight up into the clouds, so that the fire-darts fell right on top of them.”

“This was the fashion of the Greek fire: it came on as broad in front as a vinegar cask, and the tail of fire that trailed behind it was as big as a great spear; and it made such a noise as it came, that it sounded like the thunder of heaven. It looked like a dragon flying through the air. Such a bright light did it cast, that one could see all over the camp as though it were day, by reason of the great mass of fire, and the brilliance of the light that it shed.”

“Thrice that night they hurled the Greek fire at us, and four times shot it from the tourniquet cross-bow.”

The horrors of watching your fellow soldiers burn to death must have been a shattering blow to many soldiers. Men were known to simply flee their posts at the onset of Greek fire, rather than face the flames.



The Hive Mind in Action

Did Wells intend on striking a similar sense of psychological terror into the hearts and minds of his readers, when he penned War of the Worlds? To answer the question, let's examine some of the themes Wells drives home in this book:

You are (always) under surveillance: Wells wastes no time driving this important point home to his readers. The (infamous) opening words of War of the Worlds are reprinted here for reference: "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter."

Notice the not-so-subtle point that those who are watching you are much more "intelligent" than you. In other words, not only are you being watched, but you're also much more stupid than the people who are doing the watching.. So don't try anything funny like trying to outsmart them or anything(!)

You are weak and completely powerless: Wells depicts the Martian technology as being so far in advance of our own so as to be, for all intents and purpose, utterly invincible. What resistence the humans manage to put forward proves useless and futile, and ultimately it's not even the humans who manage to "save themselves." Rather, it's a common bacterium. If Wells' first point was that you are both stupid and you are being watched by those who are more intelligent than you, his closing point seems to be that you are more useless to the ecosystem than a bacterium is.

More encouraging, uplifting thoughts from the pen of H.G. Wells..

Your instincts and emotions are useless: Note also the importance that Wells places on cold, hard technology. There is no room for saving grace in War of the Worlds. There is no morality, no spirituality, no love that can save anyone in this story. Technology, that is to say, the manipulation of material resources to serve specific economic and political ends, is depicted as being all powerful, and he who has the most powerful technology is made to be King of the World. He who does not command the most advanced technology and the most lethal military will be (completely) exterminated by the one who does.

There are, of course, traces of Wells' appreciation of eugenics to be seen in this.


There's No Room for Love in War of the Worlds

What a stark contrast this is to the Wachowski Brother's 1999 film, The Matrix, where in the end it is the immortal, undying emotion of love that not only "saves" the humans but that delivers them victory over the tyranny of cold, lifeless technology(!) (For the moment, at any rate...)

You cannot communicate with those who are all-powerful: In War of the Worlds, the alien invaders simply land and begin vaporizing humans. These are not the highly intelligent, scientifically curious, benign "aliens" of Carl Sagan's dreams. Rather, these creatures cannot be reasoned with, their motives cannot be fathomed and they cannot be rationalized in any way other than as instruments of terror.

Moreover, communication with these omnipotent beings is depicted not only as being impractical, but as well near impossible. The message that Wells seems to be communicating here is that when faced with such unfathomable power and terror, your best (perhaps only?) option is to abandon your cerebrum, along with all its higher brain functions, and listen to what your reptilian brain is screaming at you: drop everything, panic senselessly and then run for your life(!)

In future posts, I'll explore why Wells might choose to advance such themes in his literature. How can such themes serve the Communist cause and mold what could be appropriately be called the "Hive Mind?" Do stories like this encourage xenophobia? How can xenophobia be used as a political tool by social elites? Why did Bilderberger Steven Spielberg and Scientologist Tom Cruise choose to remake this movie this summer? What possible agenda are they (whether consciously or not) putting forth into the collective American mind?

Stay tuned for more.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Plan Colombia

Today, the Honorable Ron Paul of Texas issued a press release concerning his recent unsuccessful effort to reduce the amount of money (currently $735 million annually) the U.S. sends down to Colombia. Paul cited the usual (and honorable) reasons: drug production continues to soar in Colombia, it's not the business of U.S. taxpayers to help police Columbia, and so forth.

You can read Ron Paul's press release here:

Yet perhaps the Beltway politicians who overruled Paul have more at stake than just fighting a "well-intentioned" (albeit highly misdirected) Drug War. Consider first that the U.S. imports far more oil from Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador than it does from the Middle East. In fact, U.S. financial interests in the Persian Gulf have more to do with exporting dollars than they do with importing oil (also known as "petrodollar recycling"), although that's a topic for another day.

U.S. oil interests in Colombia are spearheaded mostly by the Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, commonly known as OXY. OXY is a global behemoth, with operations in a number of countries around the world as its 2004 Annual Report to Shareholders incidates:


Occidental Petroleum's Global Operations (2004)

OXY's operations in Colombia are centered mostly around the Caño Limon oilfield, located in the northeastern part of the country, near the Venezuelan border. Its the country's second largest oilfield. Oil from this field is shipped directly to the Carribean port of Coveñas via the Caño Limon pipeline, which was completed in 1986. The pipeline is jointly owned by ECOPETROL and OXY. A Spanish company named Repsol also owns a stake in the Caño Limon oilfield. The crude oil transported through this pipeline represents about a third of Colombia's export income.


Caño Limon Pipeline

You can learn more on this Web site, operated by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization committed to nonviolence and justice:
Some factoids concerning Colombian oil production:
  • In the early 1980s, Colombia only produced about 100,000 barrels a day
  • This had rised to about 844,000 barrels a day by 1999
  • Colombia may have as much as 20 billion barrels of oil reserves
Another interesting factoid about Colombian oil production: since the Caño Limon pipeline was finished in 1986, it's been attacked by anti-government rebels at least 1,000 times, spilling at least 2.9 million barrels of crude oil into the forests and rivers(!) This is equivalent to 11 times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez. The Colombian Environmental Ministry estimates that nearly 1,625 miles of rivers have been polluted by these spills.

The most devastating attack came in 2001 at the hands of ELN, and managed to keep the pipeline closed for 266 days:


The Caño Limon pipeline was closed for
266 days in 2001, following an attack by ELN


Like all corporations, OXY writes off such losses by getting the U.S. taxpayer to underwrite its expenses. The company caused a bit of a stir in Washington in 2002 by asking the Bush administration for $98 million to help cover the cost of the damage done to the pipeline in 2001:
Yet there are even stranger links between American high finance and the Colombian drug lords. In June, 1999, Colombia's president Andres Pastrana arranged for Richard Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, to meet with Raul Reyes, the financial head of the FARC, in the cocaine-producing DMZ of Colombia. The two were caught on film in a warm embrace during an impromptu photo op:


NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso Warmly
Embraces FARC Thug Raul Reyes in 1999

Interestingly, Grasso isn't the only captain of American high finance to cozy up to Colombian drug lords. Several months after Grasso's visit, two members of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) flew to Colombia to meet with the founder of FARC, the 70-year-old Manuel Marulanda. After meeting with this drug terrorist, James Kimsey (co-founder and chairman emeritus of AOL) and Joseph Robert (head of the J.E. Robert Company, a global real estate company) flew to Bogota to consult with Colombia president Pastrana.


AOL Chief Kimsey Meets With
Colombian Drug Lord Marulanda

So what really is going on in Colombia?

The U.N. War Document

The United Nations has been based, from its very inception, upon lies, deception and half-truths. The first lie was the notion that the U.S. could legally accept membership into the United Nations viz the treaty making power of the U.S. Senate and the president. In fact, a treaty is a contract entered into by two or more sovereign states, and the United Nations has never been a sovereign state. The reason the agreement to join the United Nations is presented to the public as a "treaty" is because per U.S. law, treaties are on equal footing with the U.S. Constitution as establishing the governing "Law of the Land." Without setting itself on equal or higher footing, the U.N. Security Council would have no power or mandate to circumvent the Constitutional requirement that Congress, and only Congress, has the power to move the United States of America into war.



More duplicity is clearly evident by causually perusing the U.N. Charter. Article 2 of the Charter states that the United Nations "is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members." In the first place, the words "equality of all members" should raise Communist alarm bells among those who have ears to hear. Only in socialism and Communism does one strive towards "equality among all." The U.S. Constitution certainly does not recognize all (sovereign) States (of the Union) as being "equal," as California clearly sends more delegates to Congress every two years than Delaware does. Nor does the U.S. Constitution recognize "equality" among individual citizens either, as the political rights defined in the Constitution are very closely tied to an individual's property rights, and only under Communism do we all share "equal" property.

Even more obviously, though, by the time you get to Article 25, the U.N. Charter manages to contradict itself by stipulating that all member nations "agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council." How a nation manages to simultaneously (a) retain its sovereignty; and (b) accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council is not adequately explained anywhere in the document.


NATO Forces Answer to the UN Security Council

A more aggressive contradiction can be found by comparing Article 1 of the U.N. Charter, in which the words "peace" or "peaceful" appear six times in the first four paragraphs, with Articles 52 through 54, which grant member states permission to establish "regional arrangements" so as to counter any possible military aggression. In fact, both NATO and SEATO were created in this manner, and both were (ironically) sold to the American public as a bulwark against the very same Communist forces that were responsible for their creation in the first place.

President Truman cited NATO as his excuse for committing U.S. troops to Korea, and his successors cited SEATO as theirs for doing the same in Vietnam. In so doing, these chief executives treasonously betrayed U.S. military plans and strategies to the very countries against whom the U.S. was engaged in combat with, and who (like the U.S.) were member states of the United Nations.


UN "Peacekeepers" Enforce UN Security Council
Resolution 1441
in Baghdad, March 2003

The most appalling slip back down into barbarism can be found in the "Orwellian" U. N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Unlike the founding documents of our own nation, which take it as a "self-evident" truth that all humans are granted certain inalienable rights by their Creator, and that the reason we institute governments among men is to preserve and protect these rights and liberties, the U.N. Declaration decides instead to adopt the Soviet model, whereby all "rights" are granted by a "constitution or by law," and that these rights shall furthermore be subject to "such limitations as are determined by law."

Sounds like a recipe for tyranny to me. It also sounds like the lawyers who drafted these documents might have been struggling with basic English skills. Last time I checked, the "right" is by definition something which cannot (by definition) be granted by anyone or anything (including constitutions and laws). Rather, a right is that power which is vested in the sovereign to begin with. But then again, what more could we expect from a legacy that's left us with a couple of C-students from Yale running the country?

For more information, visit this Web site:

http://www.getusout.org/artman/publish/article_139.shtml

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

The Dystopia of H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells (1866-1946) was one of the 20th century's biggest proponents, if not architects, of the what today is commonly known as the "New World Order", or the drive to establish a Communist-style one-world goverment [1]. It's a theme he wrote about tirelessly over the course of his entire career, beginning with Anticipations (1901) and continuing on to the end of his life with works like Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945) and Marxism vs. Liberalism (published in 1945 and co-authored, perhaps alarmingly, with none other than Joseph Stalin himself).

Wells' most famous work in this non-fiction, pro-Communist genre was The Open Conspiracy: Blueprints for a World Revolution (1928), a self-described master plan for how to overthrow the United States government and inaugurate a One World "benevolent, utopian" dictatorship.



H.G. Wells discoursing in Moscow on the finer
points
of Communist tyranny with Vladimir Lenin.

The network of close relationships that H.G. Wells maintained with other prominent British "One Worlders" (or, in some cases, "would be One Worlders" who later defected from the cause) like T. H. Huxley, Aldous Huxley, Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, the Fabians, George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell is a subject deserving of its own investigation, although I will not address it further in this post today other than to post a few comments from these "great, wise" men that should give the reader some insight into the sanity with which they were possessed:
  • H.G. Wells writing in Anticipations: "The men of the New Republic (one world dictatorship) will not be squeamish either in facing or inflicting death ... They will have an ideal that will make killing worth the while; ... They will have the faith to kill ... If deterrent punishments are used at all in the code of the future the deterrent will (be) good scientifically caused pain."

  • Bertrand Russell writing in The Impact of Science on Society: "War has been throughout history, the chief source of social cohesion."

  • Bertrand Russell writing in The Impact of Science on Society: "I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing ... War ... has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate without making the world too full."

  • George Bernard Shaw, writing in The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism: "If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner."
It should also perhaps be mentioned that one of Wells' mistresses, Moura Budberg, was in fact a high-ranking Soviet spy. Whether Wells was aware of this fact, or whether Wells would even have been disturbed by this fact, had he known it, the fact remains that Wells was - throughout the entirety of his career - closely aligned with the Socialist Movement in Great Britain, the Communist Movement in Soviet Russia and with the global movement to "unite" the world under one supreme, unaccountable, tyrannical governing body.

For instance, it's widely believed that it was H.G. Wells who authored Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Point Plan", which Wilson presented to a joint session of Congress on January 18, 1918 [2]. Point Number 14 on Wilson's list was the creation of a "League of Nations" (forerunner to today's United Nations). As Richard Gamble puts it in Reassessing the Presidency, "the Fourteen Points were a direct effort to rearrange Europe, marking an unprecedented entry of the U.S. into European affairs and a further departure from America’s traditional foreign policy of nonentanglement and non-intervention." [3] Of course, uprooting America and destroying the vision that the Founders of this nation had is what Fabian Socailism and the New World Order is all about.

Stay tuned for more information about H.G. Wells and his world-famous novel, War of the Worlds, which has just been released this summer (2005) by Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise.

References

[1] In fact, Wells is the man who coined the term "New World Order," "War to End All Wars" and many other neologisms now part of our everday venecular.

[2] David C. Smith, H. G. Wells: Desparately Mortal, pp. 238 and 431.

[3] Richard Gamble, Reassessing the Presidency

Saturday, June 25, 2005

British Imperialism at the United Nations

Those with power never give it up willingly.

It's therefore more than a little peculiar that the greatest empire in world history (the British one) would simply choose to "fade away" into the background of forgotten things, and quietly accede to those rebel Yanks dominance and control over the entire planet, its resources and its economy.

Or perhaps, "apparent control" would be a better way of describing it.

A few factoids about the British Commonwealth, as it exists today in 2005:

  • Its a voluntary association of 53 member countries (excluding the UK)
  • 1.8 billion people, or about 30% of the world's population, live in the Commonwealth
  • Commonwealth countries cover about 25% of the world's land mass
  • Member nations all recognize the British monarch Queen Elizabeth II as the Head of the Commonwealth
  • Countries that recognize the British monarch as their Head of State are called Commonwealth Realms
We know what happened economically in the United States after the Colonies won political independence from Great Britain in 1783 (and perhaps, even more poignantly, after the U.S. won some measure of economic independence from Great Britain in 1865). Why has something similar not occurred in Ghana, Guyana, Mauritania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia? Is it perhaps because these countries are not truly "independent", or at least not quite in the way that one ordinarily thinks about "independence"? Would it have anything to do with the vast mineral wealth and natural resources that can be found in this countries?

Ghana is rich in gold, bauxite, manganese and diamonds; Guyana has bauxite, manganese, gold and diamonds; Mauritania has iron and copper ore; Senegal has petroleum refining; Sierra Leone has diamonds, chrome and bauxite, Uganda is rich in copper and cobalt; Tanzania is rich in gold, diamonds and coal; and Zambia is rich in copper. Enough raw material to fill a king's ransom. You don't think the all-powerful British would just let all that wealth go to waste now, do you?


The British Empire Lives On In New York City's Turtle Bay

Imperialism, at least in its modern form, has always been about economic exploitation. The easiest way to exploit cheap labor is to import slaves.. Of course, once that reaches the point where it's no longer kosher, you can still export jobs and factories to distant corners of the world in the name of "globalization", while in reality all you're doing is exploiting (super) cheap labor and (super) loose environmental regulations. I hasten to add, of course, that in many parts of the world, chattel slavery is still quite kosher: just look at the Saudi royal family, which keeps over 100,000 Black chattel slaves in its possession, or the Kuwaiti royal family, which keeps about 50,000 Black chattel slaves.

Once a steady source of cheap labor has been secured, the budding imperialist can turn his attention to exploiting the mineral wealth and natural resources of distant lands as effectively as possible (which usually means, simply stealing it). This is where the United Nations comes in, and which we'll be discussing in the balance of this article. The third and final step to economic imperialism, selling manufactured goods back into those same markets that you've been busy raping and pillaging, is something I won't address here (at least, not today), although in many ways it's the most important aspect of imperialism.


Queen Elizabeth II: Britain's Ruling Monarch Since June 2, 1953

Back to the United Nations. The "de-colonization" of the British Empire that has occurred since the end of WWII has been made in the best interest of the poor countries that once made up the Empire, right? Think again..

In 1945, the "British Empire" only had three votes at the United Nations: those of Canada, New Zealand and of course, Great Britain. Between 1946 and 1959, the British de-colonized four countries; between 1960 and 1969, twenty former countries in the British Empire were de-colonized; between 1970 and 1979, an additional ten countries were de-colonized; and by the end of 1989, a total of 41 countries in the former British Empire had been de-colonized. Each time a country was de-colonized, it received a seat at the United Nations, as well as any other international body that it joined.

So who's keeping count?

While the United States has only one vote at the United Nations, the British Empire (viz the Commonwealth) has a total of 54. As far as other prominent UN agencies are concerned, the Commonwealth has 45 votes at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 44 votes at the World Bank, and 46 at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Two out of the Group of Eight heads of State are members of the Commonwealth, as are two out of the Group of Seven Finance Ministers.. and the Commonwealth is well represented at many other important international organizations too. For example, 28 votes at the International Organization for Security Commission, and 38 votes at the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland go to Commonwealth members. In addition, thirteen countries in the newly proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) Zone are members of the British Commonwealth.

Who says the British don't still rule the world?

For reference, this posting was inspired by this article: http://www.newswithviews.com/Veon/joan27.htm

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Lawmaking by Fiat

Author's Note: This article was first published on Jen's Patriot Act on August 24, 2004.

"The principles of a free Constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative power is dominated by the executive”

-- Edward Gibbon

Only Congress has the power to create legislation under the Constitution. Presidents may recommend legislation, and they have the power to veto any new laws that come out of Congress, but they do not have the power to create it directly. In this way, the Framers sought to enforce a doctrine of “separation of powers” upon the newly created federal government. Power that properly belongs to one department of government should not to be directly and completely administered by any of the other departments. The Framers did this because they believed that the accumulation of all powers (legislative, executive and judicial) into the same hands was a starting point for tyranny. One way in which they attempted to prevent any such accumulation and consolidation of lawmaking power, was to keep legislative power firmly out of the hands of the executive.

The Framers gave each branch of government “checks and balances” to limit the power of the other two branches. These “checks and balances” are an essential aspect of the doctrine of separation of powers. James Madison, the fourth president of the United States and one of the fathers of the Constitution, felt that simply delineating “on paper” the proper responsibilities of each branch of government, without providing each branch with real “checks and balances” against the power of the others, did not provide enough protection against the possibility of tyrannical accumulation of power in the hands of the few [1]. So although the Framers gave Congress the power to create new legislation, they also gave the president the power to veto any laws passed by Congress. If the president does decide to send a bill back to Capitol Hill, his veto will be overridden if two-thirds of both houses vote against his decision (within a reasonable timeframe, of course). If Congress successfully overrides the president’s veto, the bill will become law regardless of what the president may or may not want. Nevertheless, since getting two-thirds of both houses of Congress to agree on anything is quite a challenge, the presidential veto has become a very powerful “check and balance” indeed. Often, the mere threat of a veto by the president is enough to force Congress to reconsider its actions.

Separation of powers may slow down the process of lawmaking, but it helps preserve liberty. James Madison devotes most of Federalist No. 47 to the doctrine of separation of powers, wherein he quotes Montesquieu:

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body, there can be no liberty, because apprehension may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner.” [2]
The importance of separation of powers was also succinctly expressed by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandies in the 1926 Supreme Court decision of Myers v. U.S.:

““The doctrine of separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy. … Speed and efficiency, however, are not the proper ends of government. If they were, the framers would have created a dictatorship.”[3]
Only under the most extreme conditions of emergency should the president have the power to arbitrarily create new legislation on his own or without consulting Congress, and even here the justification for presidential edicts can be debated by people of good faith. One example of such a national emergency might be if Congress itself did not exist. In fact just such a situation did arise during the Civil War, as we shall shortly see. Nevertheless, allowing the president to bypass separation of powers and create new laws arbitrarily is tantamount to permitting a dictatorship to rule the nation. Understand also that if the president is allowed to exercise arbitrary law-making power while Congress is in session, the existence of such an Oval Office dictatorship might be largely unseen and “invisible” to the public masses, whose attention – in terms of lawmaking – is focused instead upon Congress.

In fact, U.S. presidents have been engaged in precisely this kind of extra-Constitutional lawmaking ever since the days of George Washington. Today, the mechanism through which presidents are able to wield such extraordinary power is known as the Executive Order (or simply EO for short), although that phrase did not come into common usage until the 20th century. There is no federal statute that explicitly permits the president to issue EOs, nor there is any Constitutional basis for such executive authority, other than the vague grant of “executive power” made in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, and the phrase “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” found in Article II, Section 3. Nevertheless, the Executive Order has evolved into one the most powerful, and most commonly used, legal procedures in Washington. As Tom Sargentich of American University’s Law School recently stated in testimony before the House Rules Committee, “There can be no doubt that presidential ‘lawmaking’ by executive order is a central phenomenon in modern governance.” [4]

Some form of Executive Order has been in use since the early days of the Republic. Many experts agree that the nation’s first Executive Order was issued by none other than George Washington himself on June 8, 1789. In it he required the various departments within the Executive Branch to give him a clear and precise accounting of affairs conducted within their departments [5]. Other historians argue that the nation’s first true Executive Order was issued by Abraham Lincoln at the start of the Civil War. On March 27, 1861, seven Southern states walked out of Congress, thereby ending the quorum needed for Congress to conduct business. Without a quorum, Congress adjourned sine die, or “without day,” and effectively ceased to exist. When the attack on Fort Sumter occurred several weeks later on April 12, 1861, Lincoln found that the only branch of government legally authorized to declare war no longer existed. In order to call Congress back into session (by force) and so as to mobilize Northern troops in the war effort (which would have otherwise required Congressional approval), Lincoln issued his “Proclamation Calling Militia and Convening Congress” on April 15, 1861. This edict called for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion the South, and ordered Congress to reconvene on July 4, 1861 [6]. Some historians still refer to this presidential edict as “Executive Order No. 1.”

The historical confusion over who issued which Executive Order when stems largely from the fact that until the 20th century, presidential edicts were not always publicly announced or documented, and were often only seen by the agencies to which they were directed. When they were publicly announced, they were not consistently termed “Executive Orders” and there was no numbering system in place as there is today. This changed in 1907 when the State Department instituted the numbering system we now use to keep track of EOs, starting with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (September 23, 1862) [7].

One very important thing to realize about Executive Orders is that presidents often justify their use through the declaration of a state of national emergency. This line of thinking owes much to the 17th century political philosopher John Locke. Locke argued that the threat of national emergencies and of sudden, unforeseen and potentially catastrophic crises required broad executive emergency powers to be exercised by the Chief Executive. In the 14th chapter of his Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke writes that emergency power

“.. should be left to the discretion of him that has the executive power .. since in some governments the lawmaking power is not always in being and is usually too numerous, and so too slow for the dispatch requisite to executions, and because, also it is impossible to foresee and so by laws to provide for all accidents and necessities that may concern the public, or make such laws as will do no harm, if they are executed with an inflexible rigour on all occasions and upon all persons that may come in their way, therefore there is a latitude left to the executive power to do many things of choice; which the laws do not prescribe.” [8]
To what extent the Framers of the Constitution actually agreed with Locke on this subject (among others) remains a hotly debated issue. Writing in 1952, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson rejected the appeal for inherent presidential powers arising out national emergencies. Instead, he noted that the Framers of the Constitution “knew what emergencies were, knew the pressures they engender for authoritative action, knew, too, how they afford a ready pretext for usurpation. We may also suspect that they suspected that emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies.” [9] Judge Jackson concluded his deliberations by writing that “with all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.” [9] The wisdom of the Founding Fathers notwithstanding, national emergencies have been routinely used throughout the 20th century to expand the power of the presidency through the use of Executive Order.

Up until the early 1900s (and even during the Civil War period), presidents used the power of Executive Order rarely, if at all. Prior to President Grant, no chief executive had ordered more than 80 EOs [5]. Some presidents, such as Rutherford B. Hayes, never even issued any EOs at all [10]. This attitude of self-imposed restraint all began to change dramatically in the 20th century, however. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to make extensive use of the power of Executive Order, issuing over 1,000 EOs during his two terms in office, as well as instituting the modern EO numbering system (as was mentioned above) [10]. Woodrow Wilson continued building upon Teddy’s legacy of executive excess by issuing well over 1,700 EOs during his administration, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt still holds the World EO Record with an astonishing 3,723 Executive Orders signed into law during his 12 years in office(!) [10]. More recent administrations, like those of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, have seen a fewer (though still alarming) number of roughly 300 or so EOs enacted while the president is in office.

Many notable events in U.S. history that have occurred as a consequence of presidential Executive Order. Some of these include:

-The formation of the FBI on July 26, 1908 by Theodore Roosevelt

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s declaration of a “Bank Holiday” on March 5, 1933, one day after being sworn into office

-The seizure of all privately owned gold in the United States, by Franklin Delano Roosevelt on April 5, 1933

-The forced internment of 110,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese descent, some of them 4th generation Americans, by Franklin Delano Roosevelt on February 19, 1942

-The creation of the Central Intelligence Group in January 1946 by Harry Truman. The Central Intelligence Group, successor to the OSS, would later become known as the CIA after Congress passes the National Security Act in 1947

-Nixon’s unilateral decision on August 15, 1971 to abandon the Bretton Woods agreement and the international gold standard.

-Clinton’s 1995 financial bailout package for Mexico.

-Clinton’s 1999 Kosovo War.

-The formation of the Department of Homeland Security on October 8, 2001 by George W. Bush.

Many citizens are concerned that Executive Orders are increasingly being used to secretly militarize the United States. For instance, during the Kennedy Administration a series of Executive Orders were issued that paved the way for the possible creation of a shadow, military government. Kennedy signed these EOs in early 1962, just several months before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Some of these EOs include the following:

EO 10995: allows the government to seize and control communications media.
-EO 10997: allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

-EO 10998: allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

-EO 10999: allows the government to take control of all transportation.

-EO 11000: allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision (i.e., slave labor.

-EO 11001: allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

-EO 11002: designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

-EO 11003: allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

-EO 11004: allows the government to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

-EO 11005: allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

These and other Executive Orders were consolidated into EO 11490 by President Carter in 1979. Carter also formalized the unconstitutional Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) by signing EO 12148 into law on July 20, 1979. Government officials had been planning the creation of FEMA since at least as far back as the Kennedy administration. EO 12148 reflects this long-range strategic thinking by consolidating a number of pre-existing EOs relating to federal emergency management, some of which include:

-EO 11051: grants FEMA the right to execute any and all other EOs relating to federal emergency management during times of increased international tension or economic crisis.

-EO 11310: requires the Justice Department to enforce any and all powers granted to FEMA during a crisis.

-EO 11921: prevents Congress from reviewing a presidential declaration of emergency for at least six months.
Other Executive Orders which have drawn the attention of concerned citizens include EO 12919 which gives the federal government vast powers to seize property and control the means of production and require all citizens to register with the U.S. Post Office. EO 13139 denies U.S. soldiers the right to refuse experimental vaccines. Interestingly this was signed into law by President Clinton one day after Congressional hearings into a controversial Pentagon decision to require U.S. military personnel to be inoculated with anthrax vaccine. The vaccine in question had not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Perhaps the most alarming thing about Executive Orders today is that they are largely issued in secret. In March, 1987, Representative Jack Brooks asked presidential aide Frank Carlucci to provide a list of all presidential edicts issued since 1981. Carlucci refused to comply. House Speaker Jim Wright weighed in on the matter by saying “Congress cannot react responsibly to new dictates for national policy set in operation by the executive branch behind closed doors.” [11] Today it’s not uncommon for EOs to be classified on grounds of “national security.”

We have now over 13,500 Executive Orders in effect in the United States. The sheer number of such arbitrary dictatorial decrees should give the average citizen a moment’s pause. Even worse, the other two branches of government have been negligent in their responsibility to curb the excesses of the Executive branch’s use of EOs. Out of the 13,500+ EOs that have been issued to date, only two have ever been successfully overturned by the judicial system. The first case occurred when President Truman issued Executive Order 10340 in April 1952, whereby he attempted to nationalize the U.S. steel industry so as to end a nation-wide strike. The steel mills, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, did not contest the claim that the government could take over their property in an emergency. Rather, they insisted that the wrong branch of government was taking action against them, and proceeded to sue the president on behalf of Congress on the basis that the presidential order had violated the Constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which noted that Congress had already considered and rejected legislation that would have legitimized a national takeover of the steel industry in times of national emergency, and promptly overturned Truman’s EO. Since then presidents have often been a little more careful about trying to cite the specific laws they are allegedly furthering when creating new Eos. More recently, President Clinton had an executive order (one that barred the federal government from contracting with companies that hire permanent strikebreakers) overturned by the D.C. Court of Appeals in 1996 on grounds that it was unconstitutional [12].

If the Supreme Court has simply been negligent in standing up to the president on the issue of Executive Orders, one could conclude that Congress has been downright subversive in terms of aiding and abetting presidential usurpation of its constitutional lawmaking powers. A 1973 Senate Report entitled “War and Emergency Powers Acts (Senate Report 93-549),” co-authored by Senators Frank Church and Charles Mathias, found that since 1933 Congress had passed or recodified at least 470 federal statutes that delegate to the President powers which, constitutionally, can only be executed by Congress. The senators described the this transfer of power to be nothing short of “awesome” in scale, and note these power transfers were often made in times of (real or imagined) national “crisis” - ostensibly to address the problems of governing more effectively in times of emergency [13].

Consider once again the wise words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandies regarding the importance of the doctrine of separation of powers:

“The doctrine of separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy. … Speed and efficiency, however, are not the proper ends of government. If they were, the framers would have created a dictatorship.”[3]
One may reasonably infer that separation of powers is effective only insofar as the branches of government are creating the friction of which Brandies speaks. If instead, the separate branches of government begin to “cooperate” with each other, working hand-in-hand to enlarge each other’s domain, the size of government will necessarily grow, and with it grows the risk of tyranny from within. This manner of cooperation and collusion between Congress and the president is precisely what Senate Report 93-549 indicates has been happening for most of the 20th century.

Not everyone in Congress is negligent, however. One Congressman, Republican Representative Ron Paul of Texas, has had the courage to speak out and take action against the abuses of Executive Orders and other presidential edicts. Paul and Jack Metcalf (R-WA) introduced . H.R. 2655 (also known as the Separation of Powers Restoration Act) in 1999. The congressmen drafted this legislation in part as a response to Presidential Decision Directive-25 (PDDs are a new form of Executive Order), signed into law by President Clinton on May 3, 1994 [14]. PDD-25, like so many other modern presidential edicts, remains classified on grounds of “national security,” although the Clinton administration published a 15-page “unclassified summary” of PDD-25 shortly after approving it. Among other things, PDD-25 allows the U.S. military to be mobilized under U.N. command without congressional approval [15]. The Separation of Powers Act would have prohibited a presidential edict from having the effect of law. It would have suspended ongoing states of national emergency (there are currently at least 13 national emergencies in effect right now, some of them dating at least as far back as 1933), and it would have granted individuals the right to challenge of constitutionality of Executive Orders.

The bill was rejected by Congress.

REFERENCES

[1] James Madison, Federalist No. 48, “These Departments Should Not Be So Far Separated as to Have No Constitutional Control Over Each Other.”

[2] James Madison, Federalist No. 47, “The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts.”

[3] U.S. Supreme Court, Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), Section 85.

[4] U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Rules, Hearing of the Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Processes. “Impact of Executive Orders on the Legislative Process: Executive Lawmaking?” October 27, 1999, Witness Tom Sargentich (online reference:

[5] U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Rules, Hearing of the Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Processes. “Impact of Executive Orders on the Legislative Process: Executive Lawmaking?” October 27, 1999, Background

[6] “Proclamation Calling Militia and Convening Congress”, Abraham Lincoln, April 15, 1861

[7] Definition of Executive Order

[8] John Locke, “Second Treatise of Civil Government”, published 1690; Chapter 14 (“Of Perogative”), Section 159

[9] Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, Decided: June 2, 1952.

[10] Cato Institute, Policy Analysis, No. 358, “Executive Orders and National Emergencies: How Presidents Have Come to ‘Run the Country’ by Usurping Legislative Power”, by William J. Olson and Alan Woll, October 28, 1999,

[11] Treason: The New World Order, by Guduras, 1996, Cassandra Press, p. 49.

[12] Forbes Magazine, “Executive Disorders”, Dan Seligman, July 3, 2000

[13] “Senate Report 93-549: War and Emergency Powers Acts”, November 19, 1973, Frank Church and Charles Mathias.

[14] “’Command’ versus ‘Operational Control’A Critical Review of PDD-25”:, by J. William Snyder, Jr.

[15] “Battle for War Powers”, The New American, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 6, 1996

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Fascism In Our Midst

Fascism -- that corporate-sponsored, totalitarian scourge of the 20th century -- derives its name from fasces lictoriae, Latin for "bundles of lictors." In ancient Rome, these fasces lictoriae were a symbol of power and authority (imperium) and were carried by guardians called lictors before a magistrate (in a number and size corresponding to his rank) in any one of a range of different of public ceremonies and inspections.

Below is a picture of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who served as Roman consul once in 460 BC and then "served" twice as dictator of Rome (in 458 BC and again in 439 BC). We named the city of Cincinnati, Ohio after this guy:


Cincinnatus, bearing
Roman fasces

The fasces are made of wooden rods tied together as a cylinder around an axe. The symbolism of the fasces is that of strength through unity. The rods symbolize the power of the state to punish, and the axes represent the power to decapitate.

OK. Interesting history lesson, you might say. What's the point?

The point is that Roman fasces, and the thirst for totalitarian rule, hardly died out when Rome fell 1,500 years ago. The Roman fasces continue -- even today -- to pop up in some of the most unexpected places. Consider, for example, the logo of the Knights of Columbus:


Knights of Columbus: Power to One, Fascism for All

Of course, astute observers will hardly be surprised by this, as the Knights of Columbus operates out of that bastion of American patriotism, New Haven, CT (home to such pro-American institutions like Skull&Bones and Yale University).

Another interesting place we can find the Roman fasces is on the French Passport:


France adopted the Roman fasces as a national
symbol during the Fourth Republic (1946-1958)

That wannabe Masons and/or the French use the fasces as a symbol is perhaps interesting, but for our purposes it's also somewhat trite. What's more important for us is to explore where and how the Roman fasces are used here in our own American Republic.

First let's have a close look at the lowly U.S. dime:


Roman fasces on U.S. "Mercury" dime

OK.. "E Pluribus Num" I can understand and appreciate.. "out of many, one." When managed sanely, the benefits of Union are legion. But remember the fasces too are meant to symbolize "strength through unity."

It's important to note that the fasces only appears on the backs of so-called "Mercury" dimes, issued between 1916 and 1945. If you look for them on today's dime, you'll probably be disappointed. Today's modern "Roosevelt" dimes bear an image of a torch, an olive branch and an oak branch on the reverse. Nevertheless, the prescence of the Roman fasces on any U.S. dime is (perhaps) somewhat disconcerting.

Next, let's take a stroll down into the U.S. Capitol Building, and visit the House of Representatives chamber:


Whoa! Now if you're like me, you need to see that at least one more time!


U.S. Flag flanked by Roman fasces in the House of Reps

We'll return to the significance of fasces hanging in the U.S. Capitol Building in just a moment, but first let's continue our tour through D.C. and stop next at the imposing Lincoln Memorial:


Roman fasces on the front of Lincoln's chair

Look carefully at the arms of the chair that Lincoln's sitting in.. Those aren't library books he's got in there(!) They're (once again) Roman fasces. Seems that even ol' Honest Abe couldn't escape being remembered by history as a fascist tyrant.

Now, granted, John Wilkes Booth is reported to have shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" ("Thus always to tyrants!".. with a - perhaps ironic? - Latin twist) as he shot Lincoln, but let's be reasonable. Lincoln ruled the United States during the most serious state of national emergency (the Civil War) this country has ever known -- when at times the U.S. Congress didn't even exist -- and yet in spite of all these challenges, Lincoln found it necessary to issue only three (count 'em, three!) Executive Orders during his entire administration. Compare this to the 3,500+ EOs issued by the Communist Franklin D. Roosevelt, or even to the 1,000+ EOs issued by his Communist cousin Teddy Roosevelt.. Now who's calling who a fascist dictator?

.. imho, Lincoln is being framed by his less-than-honest successors as being something that he wasn't, but now I'm sliding off topic (for now) ..

Let's return now to the U.S. Capitol Building. Scroll back up to the first photo I posted from the U.S. House of Representatives, the one that's in black-and-white. Notice the big staff that's just to the left of the fasces? The one with the big soaring eagle on the top? It's called The Mace, and it's the symbol of the U.S. Congress' Office of the Sergeant at Arms. The Sergeant at Arms places the Mace on a pedastal at the Speaker's right each time the House convenes.

The Mace is used by the British and Australian partliaments in a similar fashion.

Now, have a look at this popular stamp issued by the Third Reich:


Deutschland (und Italien) ueber alles!

Front and center, we see our two favorite fascist politicians, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. To the left we see (once again!) the now-so-familiar Roman fasces. But wait! What's that on the right? Could it be... why, yes! it is! It's the same Mace that's used by the Sergeant of Arms in the U.S. Congress(!), capped off with an eagle and everything!

Who says we don't have Nazis running our government?

Some homework questions for the advanced student:

  • When did the fasces first appear on the U.S. dime?
  • When did the fasces first start hanging in the U.S. Congress?
  • Who built the Lincoln Memorial?

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Wall Street's Utopian Hoax

I read Bella Dodd's 1954 exposure of Communism, "School of Darkness," for the first time several months ago. Her book exposes the fact that Communism was (and in a very real sense, still is) nothing more than a system of financial control designed by wealthy bankers for the purpose of enslaving humanity. She destroys the commonly held misconception that Communists "steal from the rich and give to the poor," and shows instead that the flow of money in fact proceeds precisely in the opposite direction: that Communists will steal a thousand beggars' change and give it to the rich.


Investment Bankers of the World, Unite!

You can read her book online here:

You can read Henry Makow's review of her book here:

Her words speak for themselves:

Communist Nature of Bretton Woods, and Communists in the U.S. Government:

... Today it is obvious that after Stalin had gained diplomatic concessions at Yalta, and after the Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks conferences had placed concealed American Communists in positions of power, world communism did not want the patriotic efforts of Earl Browder and his band of open Communists who longed for participation in American affairs. Only later did I learn that Foster’s belated, polite, and restrained opposition to the Teheran line the year before had been suggested through private channels from abroad, as preparation for the upheaval of 1945 ...

Communism as a Plaything for the Rich:

... I had regarded the Communist Party as a poor man’s party, and thought the presence of certain men of wealth within it accidental. I now saw this was no accident. I regarded the Party as a monolithic organization with the leadership in the National Committee and the National Board. Now I saw this was only a facade placed there by the movement to create the illusion of the poor man’s party; it was in reality a device to control the “common man” they so raucously championed ...

... What now became clear to me was the collusion of these two forces: the Communists with their timetable for world control, and certain mercenary forces in the free world bent on making profit from blood...

... Today I marvel that the world communist movement was able to beat the drums against Germany and never once betray what the inner group knew well: that some of the same forces which gave Hitler his start had also started Lenin and his staff of revolutionists from Switzerland to St. Petersburg to begin the revolution which was to result in the Soviet totalitarian state...

Communist Policy on "Free" Trade:

... The export-import group was especially interesting. I recall one group of communist operators who brought watch parts from Switzerland, assembled them here, and sent the finished product to Argentina. I met one man who was making regular flying trips to Czechoslovakia, engaged in the deadly business of selling arms and ammunition, for today the communist agent engaged in international trade is far more effective than the old-type political agitator...

Communism and the Hegelian Dialectic:

... In the days that have gone since we enunciated these statements so confidently I have had many occasions to see that this cataloging of people as either “right” or “left” has led to more confusion in American life than perhaps any other false concept. It sounds so simple and so right. By using this schematic device one puts the communists on the left and then one regards them as advanced liberals -after which it is easy to regard them as the enzyme necessary for progress...

...Communists usurp the position of the left, but when one examines them in the light of what they really stand for, one sees them as the rankest kind of reactionaries and communism as the most reactionary backward leap in the long history of social movements. It is one which seeks to obliterate in one revolutionary wave two thousand years of man’s progress...

The fact that Wall Street deliberately created and nurtered Communism throughout the 20th century is still an extremely difficult one for most Americans to grasp, but it's made somewhat easier when one realizes that Communism is not properly juxtaposed against "capitalism".. Rather, capitalism is simply the practice of lending capital at interest, and therefore creates a network of debtors and creditors. More often than not, capitalism works hand-in-hand with Communism by accelerating the rate at which private property is confiscated by the State, as this 1911 cartoon from Robert Minor might suggest:



Teddy Roosevelt Welcomes Karl Marx to Wall Street

For more on the role that the U.S. played in building up the Soviet Union, read the following by Mary J. Ruwart:

Some quotes from prominent historical figures highlight the duplicity that U.S. industrialists played in creating and sustaining Communism during the 20th century:

"...for the period 1917 to 1930 Western assistance in various forms was the single most important factor, first in the sheer survival of the Soviet regime and secondly in industrial progress to prerevolutionary (pre-1917) levels."
-- Antony Sutton

"The Soviet government has been given United States Treasury funds by the Federal Reserve Board and the Fed Reserve Banks acting through the Chase Bank and the Guaranty Trust Company and other banks in New York City."
-- Louis McFadden, Chairman, U.S. House of Representatives, Banking Committee

"Our whole (Soviet) slave system depends on your (Western) economic assistance. When they bury us alive, please do not send them shovels and the most up-to-date earth-moving equipment."
-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I could go on about how U.S. Treasury officials in the FDR administration, including Henry Morgenthau and Harry Dexter White, arranged to have U.S. Treasury plates shipped to Russia so that the Soviets could counterfeit their own U.S. currency, but that by itself is probably worth its own blog posting (or book, for that matter).