Scott Harrington Interviews Langbert and Marnell

Lincoln Eagle publisher Mike Marnell and I appeared on Scott Harrington's Speak Out show on WKNY in Kingston, NY.  It aired on March 29, 2014. The discussion concerned education and politics.  Scott's a great guy, and we had a ball.

Shining Light on the Shadows of Power: An Interview with James Perloff

I just submitted this piece to The Lincoln Eagle in Kingston, NY. 

Shining Light on the Shadows of Power: An Interview with James Perlofff

 Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

James Perloff has written four books on the elite governing America, on Darwinism, and on the relationships among institutions that dominate American politics from behind the scenes. In The Shadows of Power Perloff traces the history of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his most recent book, Truth Is a Lonely Warrior, Perloff analyzes how history and current events are leading us toward a world government dictatorship. Perloff’s website is http://jamesperloff.com/. The Lincoln Eagle (TLE) interviewed Perloff by email.

TLE: In your work you refer to the Establishment. What does that mean? Who controls America?

Perloff: In America’s Sixty Families Ferdinand Lundberg wrote: “The United States is owned and dominated by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families…” He was talking about names like the Rockefellers, Morgans, Mellons, Vanderbilts, Du Ponts, Astors and Warburgs, and he showed their control was such that they preselected the presidential candidates before the nominating conventions took place. Things haven’t changed today. Voting gives us the illusion that power belongs to the people, but it really belongs to the rich and the few.

TLE: The media contributes to that process. Whose views does the media reflect?
 
Perloff: That of the media’s ownership. Lundberg documented in 1937 that a plutocracy owned nearly all of the major media organs. We have diverse outlets but not diverse ownership. Today, Time Warner owns CNN, AOL, Time magazine, People, Money, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, New Line Cinema – the list goes on and on. Similar with News Corp. You have maybe a dozen giant multinationals owning all the major media.

TLE: How can Americans obtain information about current events given that their media, such as ABC, MSNBC, The New York Times, and Time are controlled by banking-and-corporate interests?

Perloff: People should investigate alternative media: magazines like The New American, radio shows like Deanna Spingola’s, websites like henrymakow.com, and books like my own Truth Is a Lonely Warrior, published in Kindle and paperbound last year.

TLE: What is the biggest problem facing Americans today?

Perloff: Of course the problems are innumerable: political, economic, and social. If they were boiled down to one, I would say it is a self-serving shadow government that runs the country from behind the scenes of our democratic trappings.

TLE: A related issue is that of education, which works in tandem with the media to indoctrinate rather than inform or educate. How can parents eliminate indoctrination from their children’s education?

Perloff: The best alternative is home schooling; if not home schooling, private religious schooling; where these alternatives are not possible, give them information resources as an antidote to media indoctrination. Truth is more powerful than lies.

TLE: Why is there a trend toward increasing centralization and government authority?

Perloff: That is a means of consolidating power. The Founding Fathers understood that centralized power leads to tyranny, which is why they gave us limited government with numerous checks and balances.

TLE: What is the link between the Federal Reserve Bank and the money center banking interests, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Warburgs, and more recently Henry Paulson, Goldman Sachs, George Soros, and other bailout beneficiaries?

Perloff: The Rockefeller, Morgan and Warburg interests were all represented at the secret 1910 meeting on Jekyll Island where the Fed was planned. Paul Warburg was the Fed’s first vice chairman. Henry Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs immediately before he became treasury secretary and then oversaw, with Bernanke, the 2008 $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, which included billions for Goldman Sachs. The Fed is a golden goose for the private banks.

TLE: What has been the role of the Council on Foreign Relations with respect to the relationships in the prior question?

Perloff: The role of the Council is to formulate foreign policy, but that policy is cohesive with the wishes of bankers and the Fed. The Council was founded by the very same people who founded the Fed; the Council’s first president was J. P. Morgan’s personal attorney; David Rockefeller was the Council’s chairman for many years.

TLE: What has been the link between the Council and the presidents?

Perloff: The Council dominates the cabinets of presidents whether Democratic or Republican. When my book went to press last year, the count was 21 Secretaries of Defense, 19 Treasury Secretaries, 18 Secretaries of State, and 16 CIA directors have been members of the Council. This is why foreign policy changes very little, if at all, from one president to the next. In the meantime, how many Americans have even heard of the Council?

TLE: Do the Council and the Establishment favor one-world government? Why?

Perloff: The Council on Foreign Relations was founded in 1921 for the express purpose of creating a one-world government. In the immediate context, it was founded as a reaction to the U.S. Senate’s rejection of the 1919 Versailles Treaty, which would have entangled us with the League of Nations. The plans for the UN were drawn up by Council members. The EU and NAFTA are regional stepping stones. World government would be the consolidation of all power on the planet and thus invoke tyranny on a global scale. This is predicted in the Bible, by the way, in the book of Revelation.

TLE: What is the link, if any, among Agenda 21 and the trends that you describe in your books?

Perloff: Environmentalism, as expressed in Agenda 21 and other programs, is a pretext for controlling people. Up until the 1960s, war was considered the best means of controlling populations, but with the advent of nuclear weapons, the Establishment was concerned that war might no longer be a viable option, so the environment was chosen to succeed war as the new primary threat to survival. Global warming and other false scares have been dreamed up and promoted in order give government the excuse to micro-regulate our lives. Now they’re even talking about giving the government remote control of home thermostats. 

TLE: What has been the role of the US government in financing its own enemies, including Stalin, Mao, al Qaeda, and the Ayatollah Khomeini?

Perloff: It is well documented that Stalin’s predecessors, Lenin and Trotsky, were financed by the Rothschilds and US banking firms like Kuhn, Loeb. During World War II, When Stalin was threatened with destruction by the Axis powers, he was rescued with billions of dollars’ worth of American Lend-Lease. Mao would not have risen to power without the help of the U.S. State Department: Google my article “China Betrayed.” Regarding the Ayatollah, google my article “Iran and the Shah: What Really Happened.” Of course, there’s quite a bit on the Internet on al Qaeda being a creation of Western intelligence services.

TLE: Will the future bring a one-world government with a violent dictator at its head?

Perloff: From the Bible, from Orwell, from the trend of events and from the internal documents of the plutocracy we are talking about, that appears to be the case, but for the sake of righteousness, which is obedience to God, we should resolutely oppose it.

Thank you, Mr. Perloff. I hope that readers will buy your books and wean themselves from the mass media.

John McCain's War Powers Act of 2014

H/t Constitutional Clayton and Mike Marnell

Dear Senator McCain:

Although I don't live in Arizona, I contributed $500 to your 2008 presidential campaign. I was surprised to hear you propose a revision to the War Powers Resolution, the War Powers Act of 2014.

Giving the authority to declare war to the executive branch is unconstitutional; it is also a mistake from a political standpoint. Presidents have been  stupid about declaring unnecessary wars.  Some examples are the the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq. The errors have been declaring too many wars, not declaring an insufficient number of wars.

American foreign policy since 1918, when the Council on Foreign Relations began, has been badly conducted.  Quacks dominate foreign policy to an even greater degree than they dominate economics.  Experts who might counsel a president to conduct a  war are likely to be specialists in the arrogation of power; it is unlikely that they know more about foreign policy than the average American. Foreign affairs is a junk science, a field without findings, laws, general rules, or knowledge beyond the common sense accessible to anyone schooled in nations' cultures and political systems.

 I oppose the War Powers Act, and I can no longer support you or a Republican Party that produces a scam like this.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Canadian Radio Discusses Agenda 21

http://johnconner1984.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/city-planning-and-the-un/

Mike Marnell sent me the above-linked radio show concerning Agenda 

21. The hosts, Ron Stephens and John Conner, and their guest, 

Jessica Lauren Annis, are knowledgeable. Annis is a trained city 

planner who blanched at the indoctrination in her education in 

Canadian universites. She heads a group called Operation Pushback. 

Be patient with the tape's quality. I listened to the whole show. It is well 

worth your time. 

Mike Marnell, publisher of The Lincoln Eagle, asked me to listen to it. 

I had just written the following introduction to Agenda 21 for The Eagle: 

Introduction to Agenda 21

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Agenda 21 celebrated its 20th birthday this month.  It is an environmentalist plan of action that aims to reduce your standard of living.  It is not a fantasy or theory.  It was signed under the administration of a Republican president, George H.W. Bush.   According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Division for Sustainable Development's website (http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/):

Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment…

The United States has agreed to be subsumed under the "United Nations System" without public debate.  According to an informal straw poll that The Lincoln Eagle has conducted, no politician in Kingston has heard of Agenda 21; Mayor Gallo and his colleagues cannot assess the degree to which the proposed city plan reflects it. 

The text of UN Agenda 21 is posted on the aforementioned website.   It combines environmental extremism with economic illiteracy.  It advocates globalization and concentration of corporate economic power.  It claims that because Americans have a high standard of living other countries are poor.  This claim is incorrect. Human capital, entrepreneurship, and technological innovation create wealth.  In the 1940s Henry Hazlitt wrote an excellent book, Economics in One Lesson, which anticipated and refuted the fallacies that the UN now perpetuates through Agenda 21.  

UN Agenda 21 serves as a coordinating document for numerous initiatives, including town and city plans that have been proposed by politically connected consultants in Olive, Woodstock, and other towns in Ulster County and around the country.  The initiatives tend to reduce or attack small landholders' property rights while facilitating land grabs by banks and large developers.   Using terms like smart growth, cluster housing, and green development, the plans combine a pretense of environmentalism with intended subsidization of well-connected banks and developers.  The US Green Building Council's Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) is linked to Agenda 21.  I interviewed LEED's sponsors; they told me that they have designed a building code that they would like to see implemented everywhere in the country.  The code would coerce new building standards; some proponents advocate making it retroactive, which would force moderate-income homeowners who cannot afford tens of thousands of dollars in retrofitting costs into city projects.   President Obama's failed Cap and Trade bill would have enforced expensive regulations on individual homeowners and initially called for retrofitting.   The Olive Town Plan mentioned, but did not insist on, refitting.

Under Agenda 21, commercial banks benefit by lending for city projects; developers profit from sweetheart deals; politicians like Senator Bonacic and Congressman Hinchey benefit from campaign contributions; environmentalists empty the rural regions of human population;  special interests celebrate while the average homeowner's life is diminished.  

The Ulster County Republicans in a Can't-Do America

I just submitted this piece to The Lincoln Eagle. 

The Ulster County Republicans in a Can't-Do America

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.*

On May 13, Robin Yess resigned from her position of chair of the Ulster County Republican Committee.  In an e-mail that she sent to the county's executive committee, which is comprised of the chairs of the town Republican committees, she wrote that the good 'ol boys' network, the GOB, is the problem with the GOP.  In particular, Yess cited five unnamed GOP county legislators who intend to vote in favor of the $80 to $100 million Golden Hill Health Care facility that will provide senior care to only one percent of Ulster County's seniors, many of whom are related to political officials and the county's wealthiest segment. The facility will cost each Ulster County taxpaying household more than $1,000, not counting interest on the loan, which could cost you another $1,000.  Yess wrote that she believes in limited government and lower taxes.  In her view support for the facility among GOP legislators is inconsistent with the GOP's principles.

               
Yess's resignation was accompanied by the usual political infighting.  But the principle ought to be of interest to anyone concerned with America's future.   Both Democrats and Republicans in Ulster County are committed to spending $100 million (not counting interest on the loan, which could amount to another $100 million) after twenty years of Ulster County's growth being one third of the national average.  New York is experiencing an exodus of young and hardworking taxpayers because of liberal taxation, and neither party senses a problem. 

              
The Golden Hill facility is an example of the age-old American phenomenon of special interest politics.  Both parties have pet causes. The Democrats have George Soros, the Trial Lawyers Association, the National Lawyers' Guild, and NYSUT, while the Republicans have Halliburton.  So it is at the county level.  Both parties have friends in the construction industry, in labor unions, and in the grant seeking business.

Both the Ulster County Law Enforcement Center--the county jail--and the Golden Hill facility benefit special interests.  Making matters worse is the absence of a serious press or media (other than The Lincoln Eagle) that employ journalists who are capable of analysis without ideology or being embedded in the special interests concerning which they are supposed to be reporting. 

Back in the day of the Second Bank of the United States, the precursor of today's Federal Reserve Bank, Whig politicians were on the Bank's payroll until Andrew Jackson, the equivalent of today's Ron Paul, abolished the bank and set the stage for the greatest economic expansion in world history.  After the Civil War, Standard Oil captured a number of state legislators, much as Bruce Ratner and The New York Times recently utilized New York State's Empire State Development Corporation to evict law-abiding property owners for Ratner's and The Times's benefit.

In the 19th century the nation's shared belief in limited government restrained lobbying.  Because Americans believed in limited government, corrupt city governments in places like New York and Minneapolis, and the corrupt federal government, could do limited damage. In those days the corruption in New York was due to the Democrats, but the corruption in the federal customs houses was due to Republicans.

The limits on corruption changed with Theodore Roosevelt's election in 1904.  TR, a Republican, strongly believed in expansion of government. Many of his ideas were copied during the 1930s and later.  TR was brighter than his more famous cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  By the 1930s both parties had adopted variants of the Progressivism that TR had adapted from Herbert Croly's Promise of American Life.  The GOP, inspired by President William Howard Taft, whom TR detested after Taft's first term, favored less regulation and opposed welfare; the Democrats, inspired by FDR, favored more regulation and a greater degree of help to the poor.  Both parties favored subsidies to the wealthy. On balance, the Democrats favored greater subsidies to both the very poor and the very rich than did Republicans, but it is difficult to generalize. Both parties changed from their Jacksonian origins to the Progressivism of Roosevelt, Taft and Woodrow Wilson.

Americans who still believe in the ideas that built America--limited government, hard work, innovation and individualism--have no representative in Ulster County, in New York State, or nationally.  The Republicans and Democrats are both Progressive.  That is, Yess is only half right about Republican principles.  The liberty Republicans, led by Ron Paul and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, are one remnant of the Jacksonian Democrats.  The rest of the GOP is comprised of Progressives and, perhaps more commonly, self-interested hacks.  There is a smaller remnant of Jacksonian Democrats within a Democratic Party which is dominated by left-wing Progressives and, just like the Republicans, self-interested hacks.

Until recently, Americans could afford to be complacent. Politicians are politicians, many have reasoned, and you can't fight city hall. But politics has become intrusive; government is ending the American way of life.  Unless the silent majority begins to take an interest, America as you once knew it will end.

The Constitution does not have a word to say about political parties, but most Americans feel that they need to vote for either Democrats or Republicans.  After all, a third party might be radical and do strange and unexpected, extremist things. For example a third party might:

-Start three wars at a time
-Quintuple the nation's money supply and hand the printed money to commercial banks and stock brokers
-Legalize unconstitutional searches and seizures
-Borrow nearly a trillion dollars and give it out to politically connected friends

-Replace the education system with an ideologically driven, politically correct indoctrination system that does not teach writing

-Propose a cap and trade law (and UN Agenda 21 under George H. Bush) that would force you to move out of your home
-Declare morality to be dead and then claim that on moral grounds they have the right to tell Americans what to eat.

Wait, that's what the Democrats and the Republicans have been doing, most of all Barack H. Obama but also George H. and George W. Bush.  So Yess is wrong. We cannot expect the Republicans to think or act like Americans. The GOP is a big government Progressive Party just like the Democrats.  Do Americans want more government and economic death, or to rise to Yess's call for integrity within both parties or a third party? So far, the results are bleak.  Unlike their ancestors, today's America has declined so much that it is now a can’t-do nation.  

*Mitchell Langbert teaches at Brooklyn College. He blogs at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com

The Lincoln Eagle to Go Online

I am delighted to announce that Mike Marnell, owner of The Lincoln Eagle, will take his Kingston, NY monthly paper online within the next few weeks. The Lincoln Eagle is written by its readers; he dispenses with America's failed journalism profession.  All a reader needs to do is submit a photo and write what he thinks. Who needs stuffed shirt elitists who know less than their readers?

The Lincoln Eagle is written by the people, of the people, and for the people. It is a credit to Marnell that he has made a success of a small scale print newspaper at a time when most newspapers are having problems at best. Mike's approach fits the Internet beautifully. His aim is have a Lincoln Eagle in every American city.

It is not a question whether The Lincoln Eagle will be a success. Rather, the question is how quickly Mike will succeed.