Tag Archives: Hidden History

Eugenics – Hidden History

Most Americans don’t know our country’s dark history and love affair with Eugenics – the forcible castration or sterilization of citizens deemed undesirable, made possible, of course, by the power of the state.

William Faulkner obliquely railed against these monstrous policies in many of his novels.

“Eugenics attracted the support of prominent Americans. Progressive Theodore Roosevelt summed up eugenicist theory: ‘Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce.’ Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the famous opinion upholding Virginia’s decision to sterilize a woman named Carrie Buck: ‘Three generations of imbeciles,’ he averred, ‘are enough.’

Other supporters were Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and in Britain, Winston Churchill and Major Leonard Darwin, son of Charles, postulator of evolution. Britain originated the idea of ‘lethal chambers’ for its ‘unfit.’ . . .

Thanks to the Nazis, highly praised by eugenicists here, the movement eventually collapsed. But not before nearly 50,000 Americans were sterilized. . . .

An irony of this book is that its publisher hails itself as ‘progressive.’ As the late economist and historian Murray Rothbard wrote, ‘Progressivism’ was a movement in New England born of Yankee Pietism in the early 19th century. By the early 20th, it had matured into a Messianic ideology of pervasive social controls to better the world: prohibition of alcohol, statist government regulation of business, even the ‘war to end all wars,’ World War I. And, of course, eugenics was there, too.” (Read more from waragainsttheweak.com)

I’m wary of the over-educated. They’re the ones, when they seize the reins of power, who think the rest of us need to be saved from ourselves, who think they can socially engineer a better world through the power of the state. Freedom works best.

I see eugenics in the same light as obsession with world over-population in the 80’s, or global warming today. Politicians lead very empty lives and need problems to solve, real or imagined. Pseudo science provides an endless source of pseudo crises for which politicians can take money and power and pretend to save the world.

The U.S. executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding

Sen. McCain was right and the National Review Online is wrong. Politifact, the St. Petersburg Times’ truth-testing project (which this week was awarded a Pulitzer Prize), scrutinized Sen. McCain’s statement and found it to be true. Here’s the money quote from Politifact:

“McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as ‘water cure,’ ‘water torture’ and ‘waterboarding,’ according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning.” Politifact went on to report, “A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps.”

This issue arose when warmonger, chicken-hawk, neo-con apologist Ari Fleischer was left momentarily dumbstruck in this debate with Paul Begala. It didn’t last long. He quickly filled the silence with boilerplate partisanship.

The Mises Institute’s DC Reality Tour

The following is excerpted from mises.org:

Lincoln Memorial – Erected during the Progressive Era, the idea here is to entrench the perception that the consolidated state is irreversible, not only in fact but also as a matter of faith. Note that this is the “temple of democracy,” but the man is featured with his hands on the fasces.

The Vietnam Memorial – It is a rare case of a monument that isn’t designed to extol the glories of the state. Quite the opposite in fact.

Federal Trade Commission Statues – Hear a private talk about the true story behind the remarkable statues of “Man Controlling Trade.” The horse, you see, represents trade. And who trades? Well, we trade. That’s what the whole of society does, every day. Trade means that people cooperate to their mutual benefit. But look what happens. Some guy comes along and wrecks everything, stagnating progress and bullying us into not trading with each other. And this is supposed to be a great thing? From the government’s point of view, yes. Note that this statue went up in 1942, when prices were fixed, rationing was in effect, and people were being drafted as fodder for the state’s war.

Ronald Reagan Building – Everyone thinks that Ronald Reagan cut the state’s size. He is known as a champion of minimal government. But, of course, they know otherwise in the Beltway. He zoomed up the welfare and warfare state as never before, bringing boom times to the state, and it was especially impressive that he did it even while claiming to do otherwise � and being denounced for doing otherwise. In this building, we have truth telling. It is the most gargantuan monstrosity to ever visit the vast real estate of the Imperial City.

Random Congressional Subcommittee Meeting – Visitors have been known to experience severe bouts of boredom.

HUD and The Department of Labor – We visit the massive buildings that � unlike Congress, the capitol, and official seat of the government � house the institutions that are running the country on a daily basis.

Palaces of the World Bank and IMF – We visit the several palaces of the World Bank and IMF. We discuss the details of the employees’ very high and completely untaxed salaries.

Iwo Jima Memorial – Some are under the illusion that this memorial praising the United States’ offensive invasion force was a memorial for those defending the country. Fortunately the memorial brilliantly lists practically every country the US military has ever invaded, etched around the sides.

The Receptions – What never fails to make the biggest impression are the receptions. The lavish receptions are elaborate, decadent, and � most important �free to anyone with an attitude. One need never pay for a meal, and free scotch and shrimp are promptly available at 3:30 to anyone who knows where to go. This just doesn’t happen in the real world. For these events, tour members are encouraged to wear a jacket or suit and to exude the air of entitlement of a mid-level bureaucrat, party apparatchik, lobbyist, media member, think tank resident, or congressional staffer.

Hidden History: Post Office sues Cub Scouts to maintain monopoly

“The Postal Service has faced repeated challenges from more competent private companies and has responded with one legal counterattack after another.

In 1971, a federal district court prohibited a private firm from carrying Christmas cards in Oklahoma on the basis that the plaintiffs, a postal employees union, suffered ‘significant loss of work time, overtime, employment benefits. . and morale.’ The court concluded that private delivery of Christmas cards would be a ‘widespread public nuisance.’ The result was that the public suffered slower service and higher costs to support postal workers’ ‘morale.’

In 1976 in New York, a pack of Cub Scouts tried to raise money by delivering Christmas cards: Postal Service lawyers ordered them to stop, and threatened the ten-year-olds with a $76,500 fine. A New York Times editorial regretted that the Postal Service’s carriers were not as fast as its lawyers.

In 1978, the P.H. Brennan Hand Delivery Service offered same-day delivery of mail in Rochester, New York, for 10� a piece; the Postal Service could not guarantee overnight delivery even for 15�. The Brennan Service operated during snowstorms (when the Postal Service did not even try to deliver), never lost a letter, and never had a complaint. When U.S.P.S. attorneys closed in on the Brennans, Rochester lawyers provided them with a free legal defense. But the Postal Service persuaded a judge to issue a ‘cease and desist’ order on account of the ‘threat to postal revenues.’

For 200 years, the Postal Service has been playing a game of catch-up with its illegal competition. Throughout its history, U.S.P.S. has upgraded service or cut rates only after some private company came along and did a better job. Were it not for its competition, the Postal Service might still be charging by the page and requiring citizens to come to the post office to send and pick up mail.” (Read more from cato.org)

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Government is not our protector from monopolies, they are the creators and enforcers of monopolies. Businessmen, whom we so readily blame for all our problems, survive by providing goods and services we want at affordable prices.

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“The U.S. Post Office [1839-1851] returned almost no revenue to the general fund. It usually reported losses. Large profits were being earned, but they were distributed internally. Giving out the postage revenues to groups with political power became the Post Office’s second function. Measured monetarily, it was the Post Office’s primary function. Thomas Jefferson, suspicious of the Post Office, had written:

I view [the Post Office] as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress and their friends and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of the post-office revenues; but other revenues will soon be called in to their aid and it will be a source of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their states; and they will always get most who are meanest [Jefferson 1892-99: IX, 324-25].

”

“In the first half of the 19th century, the federal government’s legal monopoly over the mail was a monopoly over all intercity communication. Informal and illegal channels of communication had always existed, but their inconvenience and limited scope allowed the Post Office to earn huge monopoly profits. The government’s policy of running the Post Office on a ‘nonprofit’ basis simply channeled the rents (profits) to powerful political groups who were in a position to draw directly from the Post Office coffers. Those profits gathered from the U.S. Post Office were of the same magnitude as the profits earned more openly by the British postal service.

The transportation revolution lowered the cost of intercity transportation and communication in the 1830s and 1840s. Private companies met the change by offering low-cost transportation and communication. The Post Office, facing no formal competition, at first kept its prices fixed. As costs dropped, monopoly profits increased. The profits became large enough to draw competitors despite the legal risk. That competition, and pressure from consumer groups, caused the Post Office to lower its rates in 1845 and 1851 by 79 percent.

The effect of private competition went beyond the drop in postage rates. An equally important effect was the introduction of new techniques into the U.S. market. The most important innovations were prepayment with stamps and intracity pickup and delivery. The Post Office showed no sign of adopting such innovations until they were successfully used by private companies.” (Read more from cato.org)

The Rewriting, Un-rewriting and Re-rewriting of History

“In the ‘Rejectionism and Accommodation’ chapter of Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians, Noam Chomsky recounts how Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s 1971 peace initiative has been effaced from history. Sadat’s offer of ‘a full peace treaty on the pre-June 1967 borders, with security guarantees, recognized borders and so on’ was rejected by Israel with the backing of the U.S. Henry Kissinger ‘assumed that Israel’s power was unchallengeable’ and thus ignored Sadat’s warnings that ‘he would be forced to resort to war if his efforts at a peaceful settlement were rebuffed.'” (Read more from antiwar.com)

Book: Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance During the Great Depression

“Many taxpayers just couldn’t pay at the depth of the depression and others wouldn’t pay for ideological reasons, believing that government should suffer along with taxpayers. The tax revolt movement attracted 30,000 members in Chicago alone and the Windy City’s government was faced with financial collapse as property owners stopped paying.

The movement had such momentum that the federal government resorted to a national “pay your taxes campaign.” Chicago teachers were even enlisted to chant “Pay Your Taxes!” at rallies around the city. Municipal and government workers, along with academics tried to sell the virtues of a more active state on the radio in a nationwide series called “You and Your Government” that ran from 1932 to 1936.” (Read more from nalert.blogspot.com)

Government Regulation, Business and Public Perception

In high school, I remember learning about government’s heroic anti-trust break up Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Yay, government! That was long, long ago. I’ve since come to regard government not as the thin gray line between the public interest and corporate greed, but as the instrument of corporate greed. Here, I think, lies the difference between liberals and conservatives.

In debates with my liberal friends, their underlying assumption often seems to regard government as a benevolent force, which would cure our ills if only we surrendered more wealth, more liberty, and more power to it.

Here are several stories which, I hope, shatter the myth of government benevolence:

– Regulator Let IndyMac Bank Falsify Report. A senior federal banking regulator approved a plan by IndyMac Bank to exaggerate its financial health in a May federal filing, allowing the California company to avoid regulatory restrictions only two months before it collapsed, a federal inquiry has found. (Read more from washingtonpost.com)

– Press reports document criminality of US financial elite. Recent press reports make clear that the Madoff affair is not an aberration. It is indicative of pervasive fraud and criminality in the highest echelons of the financial establishment, aided and abetted by government regulatory agencies. (Read more from inteldaily.com)

– Antitrust’s Greatest Hits. The government’s victory against Standard Oil had a long-term effect on the oil industry that is seldom discussed by those who see parallels with the Microsoft case. Only six years after losing the antitrust case, Standard Oil dramatically changed its attitude toward Washington, moving from hostility or avoidance to a very warm embrace. Company chief A.C. Bedford served as chairman of the War Services Committee, an agency created to mobilize the nation’s supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel for military use during World War I. After the war, federal control never retreated, transforming what economist Dominick Armentano has called “a virtual textbook example of a free and competitive market” into “what had previously been unobtainable: a governmentally sanctioned cartel in oil.” The legacies of this transformation include higher prices for consumers and the “energy crisis” of the 1970s. Deregulation in the 1980s finally restored some measure of competition to the industry.

The Standard Oil case teaches some important lessons about competition, innovation, and antitrust law. We see the difficulty antitrust has dealing with highly innovative companies. We witness the vagueness of antitrust law, which allows prosecution on the basis of alleged intent rather than specific actions. And we see how the Standard Oil case ultimately failed to benefit consumers or investors. Instead, it laid the groundwork for collusion between industry and government, bringing about many of the very ills the “progressive” proponents of antitrust said they were fighting. (Read more from Reason.com)

– Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley. From the beginning of this decade, the process of new company creation has been under assault by legislators and regulators. They treat it as if it is a natural phenomenon that can be manipulated and exploited, rather than the fragile creation of several generations of hard work, risk-taking and inventiveness. In the name of “fairness,” preventing future Enrons, and increased oversight, Congress, the SEC and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) have piled burdens onto the economy that put entrepreneurship at risk.

The new laws and regulations have neither prevented frauds nor instituted fairness. But they have managed to kill the creation of new public companies in the U.S., cripple the venture capital business, and damage entrepreneurship. According to the National Venture Capital Association, in all of 2008 there have been just six companies that have gone public. Compare that with 269 IPOs in 1999, 272 in 1996, and 365 in 1986.

Faced with crushing reporting costs if they go public, new companies are instead selling themselves to big, existing corporations. (Read more from wsj.com)

– Anti-trust, Anti-truth. In his masterpiece, Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure, Dominick Armentano carefully examined fifty-five of the most famous antitrust cases in U.S. history and concluded that in every single case, the accused firms were dropping prices, expanding production, innovating, and generally benefiting consumers. It was their less-efficient competitors who were “harmed,” as they should have been.

For example, the American Tobacco Company was found guilty of “monopolization” in 1911, even though the price of cigarettes (per thousand) had declined from $2.77 in 1895 to $2.20 in 1907, despite a 40 percent increase in raw material costs. (Read more from the Ludwig Von Mises Institute)

– Letter from an angry business owner. To All My Valued Employees, There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is the changing political landscape in this country. (Read more from fivemilliondots.com)

CIA helped shoot down 15 planes in ‘drug war,’ often without warning

With the help of CIA spotters, the Peruvian air force shot down 15 small civilian aircraft between 1995 and 2001, ostensibly as part of the US-abetted war on drugs, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee revealed Thursday. Many of the shoot-downs were made without warning within two to three minutes of the planes being detected.

Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who disclosed the program, was the first to confirm the number of planes shot down in the CIA led ‘Airbridge Denial Program,’ which sought to derail the narcotic trade but also claimed the life of an American missionary from Michigan and her daughter in 2001. . . .

Most of the 15 planes shot down with the help of the CIA crashed in the jungle, Hoekstra told AP, and ‘the wreckage has not been or could not be examined to ascertain whether narcotics were aboard the aircraft.’ . . .

A CIA inspector general’s report in November raised questions about planes being taken down ‘without being properly identified, without being given the required warnings to land, and without being given time to respond to such warnings as were given to land.’

It also said the CIA withheld information about multiple investigations that showed failures and violations of procedures from the National Security Council, Justice Department and Congress. The classified report was sent to Congress in October, AP said. . . .

The Peruvian “shoot down” program was shuttered after the death of Bowers and her child in 2001. ”

“[I will] smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.” -John F. Kennedy

Where does money come from?

UPDATE: This popular video is incorrect in several respects. Bankers do not end up owning everything. They certainly profit from the transactions, but they sell their debts. $1,111.11 simply does not create $100k of new money in the banking system. The proposals at the end are sorely misguided. For accurate criticism of the monetary system, go to mises.org.

I’ve watched this educational cartoon approximately five times since discovering it a few months ago. It presents the simple, tragic absurdity of our monetary system.

For example, most people believe that if individuals, companies, governments all saved and got out of debt, society would be prosperous, when the opposite is true. If everyone began saving and paying off their debts, there would be no money. Money is debt. Without debt, there is no money.

Watch at least the first three parts for an explanation of this. As an aid, I summarize each part and transcribe the many great quotes presented in the videos.

Part 1

-Early banking.
-The shift of currency from gold to paper.
-The shift of goldsmiths from artisans to bankers.
-The evolution of lending gold, to lending depositors gold, to lending non-existant gold.
-Runs on the bank.
-Government legalizes lending fictional money.
-The advent of the fractional reserve system.
-Central banks supporting local banks.

“Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
– Woodrow Wilson

“Each and every time a bank makes a loan, new bank credit is created – new deposits – brand new money.”
– Graham F. Towers Governor, Bank of Canada 1934-54

“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist

“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.”
– Mayer Anselm Rothschild, Banker

I’m certain this diverges with the Austrian Economic point of view. I’ve heard this video series called socialist because it proposes government control of the monetary supply. I think the first two and half parts are an effective expose on the banking system. The ending is suspect.

See the rest:

part2
part3
part4
part5

When the United States CONFISCATED GOLD FROM PRIVATE CITIZENS

“Executive Order 6102 was signed on April 5, 1933 by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to prohibit the “hoarding” of privately held gold coins and bullion in the United States, in an attempt to address the causes and effects of the Great Depression. This Order was given under the auspices of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917. The government required holders of significant quantities of gold to sell their gold at the prevailing price of $20.67 per ounce. Shortly after this forced sale, the price of gold from the treasury for international transactions was raised to $35 an ounce. The U.S. government thereby made nearly 15 dollars profit per ounce, and devalued the dollar by 69.3%. . . .

The limitation on private gold ownership in the U.S. was repealed by an act of Congress codified in Public Law 93-373 [1][2] which went into effect December 31, 1974. P.L. 93-373 does not repeal the Gold Clause Resolution of 1933 which makes unlawful any contracts which specify payment in a fixed amount of money or a fixed amount of gold. That is, contracts are unenforceable which use gold monetarily rather than as a commodity of trade.” (from NationMaster.com)

—

“Following the privately held Federal Reserve Bank causing the Great Depression, in 1933, astonishingly FDR literally stole gold from citizens, ordering them to hand their gold to the privately held Federal Reserve Bank in exchange for pieces of paper . In issuing this Executive Order, FDR exceeded jurisdiction and committed high treason by assuming law making power exclusively limited to the legislature and he committee treason by violating the core tenants of legal tender mandated by the U.S. Constitution. During this era the Banksters, whom FDR worked for, took control of the U.S.A., literally implementing Socialism (Social Security), assuming control of media (FCC), control of private corporations and their stock/notes (SEC) and he implemented unconstitutional socialistic taxation through a private mob called the IRS.” (from libertyforlife.com)

See Also:
–Executive Order 6102, full text
–Wikipedia: Executive Order 6102
–Marc Faber advises Americans to hold gold outside the U.S.

Scientists Slam FBI Anthrax Probe

“It was an open-and-shut case, the FBI said.

But three months after agents pinned the post-9/11 anthrax mailings on Army scientist Bruce Ivins – who committed suicide as the FBI closed in on him – his former colleagues have approached a lawyer to sue the feds for fingering the wrong man, The Post has learned.

They argue that the FBI abused its power and violated its own policies as they probed an innocent man for six months.

One of Ivins’ former colleagues was being aggressively pressured to confess to the crimes just two months before Ivins killed himself on July 29, he told The Post. And he identified at least one other employee who was under the same pressure.” (Read more from military.com)

Just like so many other great crimes (9/11) which once held the public attention, the official account of the Anthrax attacks has never made sense to the few people who pay attention. Fortunately for the FBI, Big Media does not.