OntheWilderSide

Hello!

I’m connecting with you once again from Haiti after spending an absolutely splendid day at a school of over 500 students that has been supported for the last seven years by members of a California local of one of our national unions.  The children greeted us in Kreyol, French, and English showing us the efficacy of people-to-people missions in instances where U.S. policy is absolutely abominable.

The Haitians rightly feel a sense of betrayal at the way their neighbor to the north has treated them because they know that they helped our country in the Revolutionary War in its Battle of Savannah and again they helped us against the Brits in the War of 1812.  Seven Haitians are counted among the Tuskegee Airmen.  Haitians know that they sent ships, soldiers, and ammunition to the liberators trying to free Latin America from Spanish colonialism and Hugo Chavez has embraced them and thanked them for their help.  But they also know that they are being punished because they defeated Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Empire, and symbolically, the white race.  In its policies, the United States seems to have chosen race over right.

Interestingly, throughout my education in International Relations, I was taught that the first defeat of a white country by a country of color came in the 1905-6 defeat of Russia by Japan.  Nowhere at the University of Southern California or The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy was there an acknowledgment that the textbooks were wrong and that the first defeat came one hundred years earlier at the hands of the Africans who defeated the leader of the French Empire.  It took my Haitian friends to school me on that.

But when the Haitians defeated Napoleon, they also defeated the backers of Napoleon.  And who were these people who were the financial backers of Napoleon?  Pierre Branda, an economist and author, has written several books and articles on Napoleon:  Le prix de la gloire:  Napoleon et l’argent (The Price of Glory: Napoleon and Money); “Les finances et le budget de la France napoléonienne” (Finance and the French Napoleonic Budget); and “Le testament de Napoléon: une affaire d’argent avant tout” (The Testament of Napoleon:  Above All, a Money Affair).  Branda writes that “[m]oney was one of Napoleon’s most important allies.  At several moments, he used it to forge his own destiny.”

From Branda we also learn that after France’s defeat in Haiti, finance became Napoleon’s all-consuming goal.  Eventually, finance turned against Napoleon and the international “merchants, industrialists . . . major banks (such as Barings) and speculators (such as the Rothschilds),” gave their support to Britain who defeated Napoleon in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo.  Branda concludes, “it is up to readers to judge whether this ‘hidden war’ which Napoleon waged either with or against money deserves to stand alongside the more famous military campaigns.”

**Important side note:  Louisiana at this time was a part of the French Empire, where commerce included the transfer of Haitian slaves onto the US mainland.  In fact, from the time of the first slave revolts in Haiti in the 1780s, many French slave owners took their Haitian slaves with them to Louisiana to escape the revolts.  And during our Power to the People campaign, as we drove over the southern bayous, this aspect of our intertwined history came alive for my friend, Daveed, in the names of the places from southern Alabama to New Orleans.  In this way, the Louisiana Purchase not only facilitated Napoleon’s military finances in advance of an invasion of Britain, but created the problem of “containment” of “Haitianism” for U.S. slaveholders, the origins of current US policy toward Haiti.  The Louisiana Purchase took place in 1803 and the slaves in Haiti defeated the French in 1804.**

Indeed, I have always said that the fundamental question we must ask is who is going to finance our revolution?  Certainly, you won’t see the scions of capital financing our side.  And if you do, then you have to wonder about the commitment to our values of those who take their money.  The key to understanding history is also to understand whose revolution was financed, and by whom.  We must be willing to finance our own revolution.

Napoleon had this to say about finance:

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that vies is above the hand that takes.  Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”  I found this quote in Matthias Chang’s book, “The Shadow Money Lenders,” which I highly recommend to you and will quote later.

Now, all of this is relevant because we find ourselves in the same situation as Napoleon after the loss of Haiti:  The scions of capital are making their move against us.  In fact, President Obama’s economic advisors are hastening our day of reckoning.

George Soros, who recently told “the Australian” that making $4 billion in the last two years, despite the financial crisis, was “in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work” characterizes Russia, Venezuela, and Iran as the “enemies of the prevailing world order.”  Soros asserts that he’s having “a very good crisis,” but interestingly projects a significantly less bright outlook for the United States.  In fact, he compares the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

In my last message, I likened President Obama to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last President of the Soviet Union.  A reader responded that President Obama might be more like Boris Yeltsin, the first President of Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  This certainly bears investigation.  But either way, the course is clear that big changes are underway.

I can only guess what the endgame is.  But George Soros is one of President Obama’s advisors that we should be listening to.  He says  that he is hopeful that President Obama will propose increasing the capital of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to include the issue of Special Drawing Rights to facilitate the international creation of money by the IMF.  Under the proposed scheme as described by Soros, countries will get an allocation that they can draw at a very low interest rate.  International credit creation, he calls it, ostensibly for the benefit of the developing countries.  Hmm, isn’t this expanding to a global scale exactly what is wrong with the U.S. financial system?

According to Soros, under this scheme, the developed world would provide the money in order to stimulate domestic demand in poorer countries so that the poorer countries can buy products from the developed world.  According to Soros, the U.S. has the Federal Reserve and the credibility to print money, and this proposal is a kind of redistribution of resources that empowers the poorest.  (I’m transcribing directly from a Soros video posted on youtube.)  According to Soros, this is the moment that this instrument should be used.  If Obama makes this proposal, it will show that he has the leadership and the vision to restore confidence and protect the poorest and the richest countries and make everyone feel that they are better off.

On April 2, 2009, President Obama proposed just such a scheme as Congressman Gregory Meeks, head of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade seconded the idea.

Matthias Chang has some ideas about what that endgame might be.  I’ll conclude with some quotes from his book, “The Shadow Money Lenders:”

The Objective of the Shadow Money Lenders

“And while the Europeans are screaming that an over-valued Euro will hurt European exports, Britain is quite contented to having a strong currency.

“The reason is obvious.  The benefits of the pound taking over the dollar as the global reserve currency far outweighs the short and immediate dislocation in export earnings.

“Britain’s historical ties with the corrupt, fascist and retarded Muslim regimes in the Middle East were critical in this global financial strategy.  The ‘petro-dollars’ would be switched to ‘petro-pounds’ and once more Britania will rule the waves!

The Problem of the Shadow Money Lenders

“But the US and Britain did not foresee that Saddam in the 1990s and now Iran would dump the dollar in the oil trades and opt for Yen and Euros as the preferred alternative currency.  The pound was not even considered. . . . But when events turned out against their expectations, they joined hands to ravage Iraq and to threaten Syria and Iran as well as Lebanon.”

What the Shadow Money Lenders Will Do to Ensure Victory

“The policy of ‘controlled chaos’ will be implemented and we will witness in major cities of the USA, UK and Europe of street battles, orchestrated by the Intelligence Services, between the white folks and the immigrant population.  In the USA it will be against the Latinos and then the blacks . . . In the UK and Europe, it will be against mainly immigrants from Turkey, the Northern Mediterranean states and Pakistan and they are essentially Muslims.  There is therefore, the added fuel of Islamic radicalism, which in the first place, was the creation of the Western intelligence services.”

A Solution Antithetical to the Shadow Money Lenders’ Vision

“China’s economy is built on the sound principles of hard work and prudent financial management, the cornerstone being savings–on a massive scale. . . . China has recently launched a Sovereign Wealth Fund amounting to US$200 billion!  Just pause and think–in just under 30 years, China has been transformed from a rural agriculture-based economy to become the world’s factory.  The West took over 200 years to become an industrial power, and in the process plundered the world’s resources through wars of conquest.  The West’s economic and military power was built on the sweat and broken bones of the millions of slave labor from Asia and Africa.  China’s transformation is therefore unique, a change brought about without wars or colonial exploitation.  No wonder, the United States and Britain fear China’s rise.  The recent intense disinformation, that the global imbalances are the result of China’s growing surplus, is an attempt by the G-7 countries to white-wash their failed policies and to cover up their fraudulent global banking Ponzi schemes.”

On 60 Minutes, Alan Greenspan admits that he’s diversified his currency holdings.  That means he’s not holding only dollars the way most of us are.  He won’t be hurt by the endgame the way we will be.  Matthias writes, “Soros is Mary Poppins when compared to what Alan Greenspan has committed on behalf of his Masters.  He has destroyed the lives of millions.”

I’ll conclude with the 1992 quote Matthias uses from George Herbert Walker Bush:

“‘If the American people ever knew what we have done, we would be chased down the street and lynched.'”

And oh, that family-owned Barings Bank, chartered in 1762, that financed the Louisiana Purchase and Britain against Napoleon’s Waterloo?  It failed in 1995, and at the time, the failure was blamed on a single rogue trader with bad luck.

I think I need a drink now; I propose a toast to better luck and a people-powered, people-financed revolution!

Filed under: cynthia mckinney, international politics, News, politics