The definition of tyranny is rule without consent. What can be more totalitarian than a few politicians deciding when to begin nuclear war, as almost happened? Is it like a video game or is planning to destroy whole nations the definition of genocide? Anyway, who gave business gamesters or sports permission to adapt national symbols? We share answers to such questions by referring to facts. It’s no coincidence that most people can’t recognize how fascism differs from corporatism, capitalism, or even Nazism. Despite the fortune spent on "education" and all the chatter about democracy, why do you suppose the 1789 Founders ratio for grassroots representation is a secret?

Opponents of tyranny need truth so let’s narrow issues to key parts. What part of fascism don’t we understand: 1. mass prisons, 2. corporatism, 3. thieving plutocracy, and 4. mechanized murder? A globally unmatched prison rate shows how our government treats its own people. Corporatism, as Mussolini called fascism, means outlaws mastering over the citizens. Most qualified voters (equivalent to 35 states) still don’t vote for plutocrats who steal public resources for corporate welfare. Plans for nuclear genocide remain from the Cold War. It’s not a secret "conspiracy," anymore than the cliché fraud of con artists selling the Brooklyn Bridge.

Those frustrated by such ideas often attack the messenger, so check my credentials on the author page. They include combat service, Top Secret clearance, a few languages, graduate degrees, and several books. One of them, The Moral Equivalent of War, outlined a solution. Lost Honor Found puts it into a "how to" format. It may help to add that I am under no public or private influence. Thanks to a perspective from Europe and New York City, I overcame "science" brainwashing at our U.S. Military Academy. It delayed my vocation to defend the Constitution more than a decade.

In 1984 when I was denied a day in court (up to U.S. Supreme Court) against a local corporation with issues that could have forewarned scandals like Enron, Global Crossing and current bankster pillage. This case led to criminal charges against prominent officials but that is not a focus here. Personal examples are not included so that anyone can trace facts that old boys keep secret, in the four parts above, If even one makes sense to you, then you can’t say that you weren’t told. For example, oil companies routinely do to America what Enron did to California or what BP did to the Gulf coast. At the least, those who read this will be able to distinguish between Nazis and fascists.

You’ll learn how the robber barons defeated democracy, as defined in Federalist 55 and 56. They turned the Constitution into a parchment memory. Getting traitors out of power starts with recognition so step one towards a solution is to know the enemy. The proof is as clear as the nuclear sun that burned Nagasaki. Step two is rebuilding informed democracy because now, it’s not who votes that counts but who counts the votes. We need to recall President Eisenhower’s warning of a "military-industrial complex" and what one brave general (S. Butler, USMC) described as "a racket."

This website is enough to expose the racket. After you study it, you can no longer use the "searching for truth" excuse for inaction. Once convinced, you should begin grassroots mobilizing to end the racket. Firefighters study fire, crime fighters study crime, environmentalists study pollution, so peacemakers must study war. Solutions require restoring justice, so that is examined here from four directions. At least one will reach you if you want reaching. Otherwise, be remembered for your whining. Why make the effort? Rome’s stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote:

Note: These pages are about process rather than people or conspiracy. There’s life-changing stuff here so, in a world crowded with diverting disinformation and media-made straw giants, this concentration of facts is untypical. The solution requires work but until you understand it there won’t be progress. Since part of the purpose is "deprogramming," read how we define brainwashing in the Q&A definitions and, at risk of a headache, don’t try to digest the brain food too fast.

Consciousness raising begins liberation. The tyrant’s most potent weapon is oppressed minds who lose power by thinking that they don’t have any. Exposing brainwashing weakens the overworld but also risks what scientists (Festinger, Parsons, etc.) call cognitive dissonance. It results from the stress of conflicting attitudes. So… Do you really want to leave the comfort of the bewildered herd? Those awakened usually agree that reaching a solution is worth the discomfort - it promotes survival - but many prefer to avoid reality. It’s not our intent to shock the weak into clarity. So please heed this warning. If you continue don’t later blame the messenger.

People can be divided between those who believe in justice and those who don’t. In America the Constitution represents justice. In the view taken here, those who come between the people and their federal and state constitutions are considered an obstruction of justice. But, if they shout about "rule of law," they often refer to local rules and statutes. Those who don’t obey the Constitution are ignorant, indifferent or seditious. This certainly includes rented politicians, but the main culprits are "persons" in business as thieving corporations or their similarly fictitious local governments.

With many recent scandals, it may be clear how pirates target pension funds, print money on Wall Street, or buy off potential opposition. They give banks or analysts a cut. Naturally the top gangsters want to keep both this plunder and power. In the accusatory scheme, ignorance and indifference might be tolerable but sedition is not. The guilty won’t enjoy reading this and most of them have rehearsed rationalization or projection, which you can reference in a basic psychology text.

Immigrants to this country – whether they came by Concorde jet, banana boat, or quietly cross the Rio Grande or Canadian wilderness – know that being U.S. citizens requires a sworn oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Home-born Americans often forget that simple definition of patriotism. Usually this is caused by defective education and a bred tolerance for political malfeasance. How do those who accept such abuse rationalize their indifference? Some use religion as a moral alternative in terms of divine providence, rather than discussing morality or the obvious commandment of the Golden Rule. They also approve Biblical references to kings, kingdoms, and genocide.

The reasons for sedition are more varied and involve preferred loyalty to corporate rulers, which translates to contempt for virtuous civil laws that they collectively denounce as "government." The reason that traitors avoid justice is that "laws" have been badly polluted by corporate and legal precedence. For example, when John Adams falsely defined a republic as "an empire of laws and not of men," Thomas Paine answered: "As laws may be bad as well as good, an empire of laws may be the best of all governments or the worst of all tyrannies." In fact, public officials of this republic swear allegiance to one specific law or charter: the U.S. Constitution. It was the unique innovation of the founders, including Thomas Paine. In Europe he is famous for Rights of Man (two parts). In this country he is better known for Common Sense. Which transformed a successful revolution into a War for Independence based on this central idea:

(Common Sense, Dec. 1775, is America’s political Genesis.)

Whatever their personal belief about plantations and property rights, the framers promoted neither corporation nor lawyers It will fortify our definition of liberty to recognize that the Revolution was mainly against the imposition of foreign charters. From the start the patriots fought mercenaries (Hessians, Hanoverians, etc.) and disapproved of royal magistrates. The Constitution states justice in about 8,000 words, which is far shorter than State laws that seek to replace it. The New York Constitution is about ten times longer (like this newsletter) and Alabama’s has over 180,000 words.

Article VI establishes the supreme Law of the Land: "…and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

Its key points were meant to be understood by a nation of farmers. A then agricultural nation was given a charter that was to be interpreted by juries, not black-robed lawyers. Thomas Jefferson’s 1824 letter to Henry Lee recalled the essential controversy that existed when he wrote:

His distinction barely applies to America because the country is no longer a republic and only one of the two parties that he describes now exist. As derived from Latin, res publica means "the public object." By 1890, and the Gilded Age, key national leaders pursued private gain and destroyed the middle class in the process. True representative democracy ended soon afterwards. After the southern racists joined with the northern robber barons, we may recall Dr. W.E.B. Dubois’ (1868-1963) concluded in assessing this cooperation against the Negro and how both parties:

As shown in the section on I. Unjust "Rule by Decree" over Democracy 3½ p. …there is really only one party. Short of violently policing these hired criminals, a logical path to justice requires restoring genuine representation. The structure required for this can be illustrated by Polish Solidarity, Czech Civic Forum, South African ANC, or the Orange Ukraine movement. The Founders left powerful weapons of logic in The 85 Federalist Papers. Whining for fairness won’t work because fascism is too strong.

This "F" (fascism) word, almost banned, is repeated to remind veterans of challenges confronted in World War 2. A sewer by another name would smell as bad. Terms such as robber baron confederacy, or polyarchy convey the same concept, which Mussolini implemented as corporatism (corp-federacy) Fortunately, despite constant media brainwashing, the issue of fascism is as clear as the sun and generally beyond legal mystification; so is the solution.

If we stir enough maybe the scum won’t stay on top. Sunshine also controls the germs of tyranny, which is no more than rule without consent. These are not new issues for America. It fought several wars for control by citizens and against the dominion imposed by corporate charters. The challenge now is that fascists dominate the media. Remember Mussolini’s slogans like "to believe, to obey, to fight"; Hitler’s Arbeit macht frei (Work will free you); and Vichy’s "Family, Fatherland, Work."

Contrast these to "No Taxation without representation," Franklin D. Roosevelt’s talk of "four freedoms," or Benjamin Franklin’s suggestion of "Liberty, equality, fraternity" (to a new French Republic). The conflict is now between a national "Union" that believes in a Constitution against corporatists fascists (etc.) who literally approve slavery through imposition of the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment and feudalistic forms of financial domination. To focus resistance, we suggest a modern variant from the 1776 Declaration of Independence preamble, which held it self-evident that…

This translates easily to "Liberty, equality, and humanity." We can quibble if "pursuit of happiness" really means humanity but it seems obvious that inhumane treatment deliberately frustrates any such pursuit. Using the word Liberty in connection with "unalienable Rights" is plain enough. The word "Creator" might confuse things unless we stress that the founders deliberately chose not to name Christ. The main difference between Franklin’s formulation and that of the Hanoverians is that he put "pursuit of happiness" in place of "property."

The debate about property is a primary area of contention and the founders were not after "levelling" in the original 1789 Constitution, which is why several of them strongly resisted a Bill of Rights. However, after successfully establishing a federal government, they specified proper levels of representation and ideally aimed to protect equal justice, which is why the Constitution remains an essential construct to remove current criminals. What alternative is there besides violence?

As a famous reformer noted, the "power of a lawyer is in the uncertainty in the law" so we can be sure that many lawyers, especially those in black robes, are hired to keep corporate versions alive. A solution to their effort is the original (1819) 13^th Amendment (see Q&A discussion).

Fortunately, it’s a plainly written document that can be fairly interpreted by honest juries. By the time of the second session of Congress (Jan.-Aug. 1790), it had 91 members (26 senators & 65 representatives). This rose to 95 (28 & 67) in the first session of the Second Congress (Oct. 1791-May 1792). If we recall a fair level of democracy in these founders’ context, as described in Madison’s explanation in Federalist 55 and 56, we can derive meanings for proper representation and slavery.

This issue of master and slave are actually sides of the same coin. Given the institutionalized process of modern slavery as defined in the lawyers’ 13^th Amendment (1865), we could make a case for prisoners keeping the right to vote at three-fifths level. This would at least remind us that they imposed a word into the Constitution that the Founders had scrupulously avoided.

The American Revolution had been against the specific institution of Hanoverian masters in Britain. Slavery in 1789 was then a sensitive term that applied to an economic institution of serfdom introduced by European royalty. Anyone who reads the Declaration of Independence quickly sees this. The "He," which appears eighteen times, refers to the Germanic master. In contrast, the specific attack on African slavery had been removed from original draft. It said:

The word slave, or serf as used in other countries, did not pollute the Constitution (it doesn’t appear until after the Civil War, per 13^th Amendment), but it could only be denounced at risk of southern acceptance of the 1787 Constitution. Although it was a royal instrument, the southern plantation owners had adapted the practice and separated it from indentured service by unique definitions of skin color. A capability to rule by royal charter was more hateful to most of the founders so, by extension, their 1776 Declaration tried to exclude slavery from the attack on a Hanoverian master.

This reaction went back eleven years from 1776, to reject a Stamp Act of March 1765 passed by the British Parliament. It had required that all legal instruments used in the American colonies should bear a government stamp to assure validity. Delegates from nine colonies met in a New York "Congress" (7 Oct.) to protest this with a Declaration of Rights [14 of them] against such encroachment. This forced Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766. After that, to April 1775, there were several more specific economic provocations that led to outright violence near Boston.

This "revolution" throughout the colonies opposed tyranny of the Parliament and ejected royal governors. The right to "charter" aristocrat plantations was a racket that the king allowed to royal governors, not possessed by colonial parliaments. Furthermore, it is often forgotten that such royal imposition was ejected by end of 1775. Anyone who studied the military campaigns knows that Common Sense, which also denounced mastery more than slavery, was written in late 1775.

The War of Independence [to preserve it] was in defense against a British invasion that started in July 1776. It could, and should have, thrown out slavery along with the enslavers. After all, in royal defiance, Rhode Island had specifically ended slavery in 1774. Unfortunately, the national disgrace took another 90 years to remove and even today the forms of economic bondage are fully equivalent to slavery (see below), especially in the prison venue. So why was slavery preserved?

The men who met at Philadelphia in June and July 1776 feared weakening their cause by losing the support of powerful southern leaders, many of whom owned plantations. The reason for a lie that the American "revolution" went from 1775 to 1783 is not the focus here except that the overall issue may be clearer if we remember the "Second War of Independence" in 1812, alongside U.S. co-belligerents, such as France and Poland. These near-allies were defeated by 1815 and the Congress of Vienna dissolved Poland and restored French monarchy. Aristocracy was restored. Our point has to do American reconquest by infiltrated European "masters" and a global aristocracy.

Since there was no intent for separately chartered States, the royal idea that politicians somehow could charter plutocrat corporations or even more powerful national corporations would certainly have been absurd to the founders. By indirect reference to property, they were prepared to tolerate an onerous tradition of slavery but the 1775 Revolution was against legislation without representation. It directly ejected the royal enforcers of similar charters. Unfortunately, the Constitution of 1789 shielded the crime of slavery under a royal tradition of protecting property. Even so, the word was excluded and "importation of such persons" was to be considered for termination in 1808.

Anyway, if states had no right to charter giant business, by what authority can they empower unequal political corporations? There are now about 85,000 of them (some 5000 in PA). Such delegated charters come between the people and the real Constitution using the fictitious and seditious device of "home rule" to delegate powers that they do not possess. Since corporation is not in the Constitution and even its capability is outlawed, what we document here a massive obstruction of justice by state politicians. They empowered themselves to charter piracy.

Our exposition will show how royalist sympathizers subvert justice. These fictitious local governments could not have done it by themselves. In fact, the Constitution was dealt a mortal blow when fourth Chief Justice Marshall invented Judicial Review. The backing of Southern aristocrats and Federalists (many of them known sympathizers of royal systems) gave legislative powers to a fraudulent Judicial branch. The original 13^th Amendment (1819) remedied this (see Q&A).

Unlike private enterprise, American corporations cannot exist without such blessing and they had no onerous privileges until the Civil War. Lincoln warned of what had happened in 1865:

By 1886, the high court formally started to promote corporate tyranny (per Santa Clara v. Southern RR). We the victims often internalized such oppressive values to confuse genuine "legislation" with such judicial decrees. Even on this score, however, there is no legitimacy for giant political corporations such as county governments and school boards. The Supreme Court, in the classic case Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), conceded its earlier "separate but equal" fraud. Here the governments involved are not even equal. They are also not real governments since the public does not control the money. The home rule game robs taxpayers by a mechanism of "divide and rule."

Actions speak louder than words but we should learn to recognize guiding ideas and their absence. For example, texts on American Independence that barely mention Thomas Paine should be distrusted as political fiction. The same goes for works on fascism that barely mention corporatism. We provide further definitions on the Q&A page, but it is common knowledge that aristocracy is an ancient enemy of democracy. The Hanoverians, who were expelled from America by a revolution in 1775 and three wars: 1776-81, 1812-1814, and 1861-1865 wanted to come back and reclaim their early conquest. That’s simple enough and well documented. Britain paid reparations for supporting the Confederacy and France had to be warned to abandon its invasion of Mexico. However, after the repeated defeats, we assert that to avert further violence, they reverted to a strategic infiltration.

Hanoverian methods had been developed in other colonies. Within a few decades, they managed to control key our politicians and the commanding heights of regional economies. The courts abetted this seditious infiltration since 1886 when, in effect, the southern racists joined with northern robber barons. The "divide and rule" trend should have become obvious in 1889-90, as six new states were added within eight months. Efforts towards restoring serfdom are confirmed by the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson decision.

How does the current corporate nomenclatura buy government? Political action committees (PACS) give almost equally to both parties, except that most union money goes to Democrats and about 60% of Big Business dollars go Republican. (See Charles Lewis’s The Buying of the President 2004 by Center of Public Integrity.) After bribing followers with public funds and other benefits, they buy future elections with patronage and unaccounted plunder from the public treasury. There is now vast literature on lobbying scandals (Abramoff, etc.) showing it to be institutionalized bribery.

To keep democratic appearances for purposes of willing compliance, the country is only about 75% fascist. The illegal behavior goes back beyond President Hoover and is falsely legislated by decree in A. Executive Orders and Emergency Powers per Nazi Model, 5 p. …. The elite also hires a cadre who spend half their working lives enforcing injustice and then take public pensions in the other half. They are much like the murdering patriot professionals who served Hitler and such pensions are an aristocratic concept. The Leader Principle of both moral mercenaries and immoral traitors undermines the Constitution with a premeditated contempt for republican values. What proves their presence?

The corrupt links in the chain-of-command routinely obstruct justice. It should be obvious that basic morality is undermined when uniformed war criminals walk free. Members of Congress sell-out "whistle-blowers" who might expose how they "go along, to get along." State-level politicians are particularly at fault for their history of chartering fraud through "home-rule." Can you imagine if the founders were dumb enough to believe that "all politics is local?" We would still be praying "God save the Queen." (We almost are, but not yet entirely.)

Imperial sedition can be traced back to Hamilton, Jay, Pickney, and Federalist friends who admired royal rule. They manipulated John Adams into a quasi-war with France and passage of an Alien and Sedition Act that, amazingly, punished people for ridiculing politicians. The outrage against this and the 1803 sedition by Chief Justice Marshall was discussed in a 1805 Letter to the Citizens of Pennsylvania by Thomas Paine. Essentially this was an effort to create aristocratic citizenship in the form of high politicians and judges. This faded away with the 13^th Amendment of 1810 (passed by 1819, as discussed in Q&A) that exposed royalist sympathy and punished it by revoking citizenship.

After a British invasion militarily failed in 1814 (despite burning Washington D.C.), domestic aristocrats still hated democracy and feared justice. As Europe was agains enslaved, they joined in an an economic policy of "divide and conquer" and infiltrated back in force by the Gilded Age. Today they operate a host of unconstitutional lobbies and "think-tanks" that make policy beyond government oversight. The CIA is just one. The most recent outlaw agency of unconstitutional form is a paramilitary Department of Homeland Security. It undermined competent federal agencies to create an expensive corporate morass that diverts funds from the border to places like Wyoming.

These leaders are more cunning than creative so they copy imagined successes like those used by the Nazis. For example, recall how Hitler was helped by aviation and police interests. After smashing the Weimar Constitution, the Nazis promptly created a separate Air Force and a militarized national police (SS) under Hitler’s top two lieutenants. Poland and France were ready to invade but Britain and America backed Hitler by tolerating his repudiation of the Versailles Treaty (1935). It was the real betrayal; more than one that sold out Czechoslovakia three years later (Munich, 1938).

Was it a coincidence that, by 1947, our command authority had also created a separate Air Force? The Marine Corps (exposed as a corporate police by General Smedly Butler) was also raised in status to an unofficial military branch. Is it accidental that our schools don’t teach the difference between Hitler’s nazism and Mussolini’s fascism? The Nazis pretended that Hitler’s power originated from the people based on loosely defined Emergency Powers in the Weimar Constitution.

Our own so-called leaders in makers of big bombs and million-dollar missiles also never got public approval to inflict their planned nuclear holocaust on innocent people. They also claim to act in our name so, like patriotic Germans, we will share in the corporate blame. The definition of fascism as corporatism rather than racism has an old tradition, going back to Lord Coke (1552-1634).

He was famous for the Petition of Right and a proponent of common law to oppose Francis Bacon and royal monopolies, and warned that corporations: …cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls. He resisted royal power with a form of judicial review based on legal precedent, published as Reports (1600-1615). Over the decades aristocrats installed their own judges who published more favorable precedents. In the next century Baron Edward Thurlow, as Lord High Chancellor (1778-83), promoted royal prerogatives, including corporate slave traders, by publicly admiring that they had: "…no soul to damn and no body to kick."

The same doesn’t apply to the lapdogs of European conservatives, often with royal titles and dual citizenship in America, whose power emanates from ancient plunder. In Nazi Germany the hierarchy adapted to a military industrial complex as defined by the leadership principle also used in the United States military. It acts much like the Italian "Chamber of Fasces and Corporations" in Mussolini’s Italy. The exclusionary principle is the same for aristocrats who derive power from green cash more than blue blood, except that it hides behind giant undemocratic corporations rather than royal tradition. Both use various Chambers of Commerce and courts to impose major national policy, sometimes enforced by global militarism and nuclear extortion.

The subtitle of the film Dr. Strangelove (1964) suggested that Americans learned "to love the bomb" Did we? When did we approve being part of its "collateral damage?" The simple truth is that such bombing was imposed as policy in 1943 with deliberate deception. (Consider that "holocaust" is more appropriate to burned cities than gassed civilians.) After joining with the British in burning cities, America also abandoned the Atlantic Charter’s "Freedom from Want" and accepted feudal Europe’s legacy of enforced starvation. Infiltration by a Hanoverian aristocracy thus invigorated B. Italian and American Fascism 5¼ p. …. From the time when we joined in brutal bombing (1943), we can trace a violent lineage to the kind of nuclear nazis who routinely plan global genocide. Despite this bombing, the Soviet Union won the war because it was able to mobilize more manpower. However, even though Stalin’s military corporation was less barbaric than its Nazi counterpart, he was no freedom lover.

When it became obvious that Stalin would win, the old boys prolonged the war to weaken him. They later enriched themselves by keeping war profits flowing in an undeclared Cold War that threatened to resume fighting that had started in 1918 when the western powers invaded Russia. Military madness is one of their instruments and in the free-market gospel of the rich (who rarely practice it themselves) people are led to believe that they can have guns and butter. Truth is the oxygen of democracy so, until we expose such lies, people won’t get organized to make honest decisions.

Money is the oxygen for their bureaucracy and that’s why plundering militarism is common to both fascism and Nazism. As the pirates try to dismantle benevolent government (starving the beast in their propaganda), an imploding domestic economy is the obvious side effect. As their lies make more enemies for America and create chaos, the global oilyarchy plans to get richer. Is our depiction of these killers alarmist? Don’t take our word for it. Here’s how President Eisenhower characterized such brutal bureaucracy as he began and ended his service as president. The first quote was in 1953 (16 April) and the second one is from his 1961 Farewell Address (see whole text below):

He further noted that militarism employed 3.5 million people and cost more than the net income of all US corporations. These were strong words from the hub of a military-industrial complex, whose fascistic political party had decades before vanquished "democratic processes." We should remember that this was not an old warning. As he left office (17 Sept. 1796), George Washington warned:

Also, James Madison said:

Based on experience with King George’s mercenaries, the founders had good reason to fear standing armies. General S. Butler also powerfully warned against it in War is a Racket (1939). Despite that, Eisenhower came to power with a thousand nuclear warheads but left office with 22,000. The rush to nuclear MAD-ness did not stop in 1961. The Democrats added another 10,000 atomic explosives by 1964. The Soviet Union promptly matched this destructive power. In 2007, despite significant reductions, tens of thousands of these devices remain and some are now in terrorist hands.

Ike’s warning of the iron triangle often overlooks the one about the scientific technological elite but social and economic mandarins have a sinister share in tyranny. For example, the Department of Defense (DOD) was already spending about $100 million annually to support "academic research" that increased by 150% by 1970. It is now out of control. Last year, Johns Hopkins University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2 schools!) got Pentagon contracts of $840 million. The DOD also maintains a system of some 150 post-graduate training organizations. Many of them dole out money to academic lapdogs in order to get them to endorse expanding military budgets.

Aided by U.S. Intelligence and its Nazi friends (like R. Gehlen, K. Barbie, etc.) the old boys planted a lying image of a hostile "East." By 1947, Churchill convinced America to join a global alliance of "English speaking peoples" that supported colonialism. France objected but we bribed it by support in Indochina, which later got us into war. Among more benign methods of thought-control, false political maps confused people. For example, see how a true map of "Europe" differs from a 1977 National Geographic version on the main Newsletter page.

Ultimately, Britain and America embraced former German and Austrian Nazis and expanded a pattern of war crimes. Paying compensation for Nazi war crimes could have bankrupted these new "friends" so the old boys instead chose to betray proven Slavic allies and other A. Political Friends 6 p. …. In the name of economic stability, even the mild punishment outlined by Treasury Secretary Morgenthau was rejected (Truman fired him) to protect former Nazi killers, our new allies. We agree with famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal’s assertion about how Nazism won its war.

The disinformation of daily media maintains a "necessary illusion" about corporate tyrants but most of the world recognizes war criminals and how corporations keep power. Now a few dozen families dominate America, those who corporatized this country—and hold financial control—want to keep mystifying the difference between A. Good and Evil in War (or Terrorism) 11¼ p. …. No matter how old or pervasive, they properly fear that past criminal acts are not protected by a statute of limitations. The old boy analogy fits theB. A Dynastic Coup by the Busheviks 11 p. … family. Follow the public and corporate money.

If Poland and Czechoslovakia could adopt such ideas to remove state capitalism, and Brazil and Venezuela could eject their feudalism, we can also overgrow corporate communism. Fortunately, this political manipulation is not complex. We can recognize fascism by its opposite in an entrenched ideal of justice. For example, the 1215 Magna Carta promised:

The opposite of total democracy is tyranny by a single person. On the scale of representative democracy, there is a point between these extremes where true representation ends and tyranny begins. Despite all the babble about democracy, it’s no coincidence that our schools can’t define a fair ratio for representation. This country has long ago passed that point. The system now works by presidential decrees that are rubber-stamped by a hired Congress.

The old boy vampire dominates both national political parties. Gore Vidal noted, in The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, how Henry Adams figured it out in the 1890s:

Both its wings depend on corporate plunder. Both have classes that rent politicians. Both see an advantage in centralized power by aryans (elites) in northern Virginia. Both teach that politicians are law makers rather than keepers of a Constitution. Although both steal, they both try to keep obvious crime beyond U.S. borders. They both embrace the agenda of corporate empire. Of course, both have contempt for real republics and democracy beyond a shining veneer of fictitious legitimacy.

As is common among thieves, who rationalize their crimes by saying "everybody does it," some of these veteran gangsters will scream about government corruption like a pickpocket shouts "thief" if someone sees him. Both wings ultimately try to blame the victim -- their fellow citizens – for the failure. Unfortunately, outlaw behavior in our name makes America a hated nation and a target for terrorism. Some are encouraged to accept government collapse as part of an apocalyptic vision based on the Old Testament (one of the most genocidal books ever written), which is why religious fundamentalists get so much free advertising. Others think that wealth will protect them.

Although both wings are usually indifferent towards progressive social movements and oppose strong business regulation, we must also note that there is a significant difference between them. The less evil wing accepts idealists who are generally interested in public service. Even if afraid to speak the truth, the 2004 presidential campaign turned them out in massive numbers against the greater evil. The election posed a dilemma because they had to pretend that the system worked and that real elections are still possible. What they forgot is that the pirate wing is willing to kill to get rich and is recognized by an enthusiasm for war, death penalties, and euthanasia.

Stealing elections is relative child’s play. The obvious crime was in allowing the six corporations that dominate the media to divert election information. The Hollywood cliché that "Once you’ve mastered sincerity, everything else is easy" explains how they impose the hired politicians, as with Ronald Reagan. When they can’t fool enough people by lies, there is ample evidence of more blatant fraud at the local level. Stalin aptly said that "It’s not who votes that counts but who counts the votes." In this country, county "governments" do most of the counting and over 70% of them are corporate controlled. It only takes a few to swing elections in key states.

The Republicans are the greater evil in this regard because they destroyed democracy to begin with. They are also on record in voting against reform measures, even after the 2000 Florida debacle. To buy votes, it was no coincidence that seven billion dollars of so-called disaster relief poured into Florida before 2004, as compared to the pittance spent on real disasters like the Rwandan genocide or the Christmas Tsunami. That kind of "walking around money" can buy lots of votes.

Originally, democratic juries supported by honest judges stopped aristocratic corruption. To regulate this process, the rich tried to took hold of legal machinery by inventing judicial review. It imposed a British system of law based on precedence rather than jury decisions. The Dred Scott decision was is part of its hateful legacy and it came to full flower in the 2000 presidential selection.

To fight judicial review, which undermined some legislation, presidents expanded unofficial power through forms of "executive privilege." They gradually began to issue decrees believing that most of them would not be challenged. The presidents also assumed that their military and cabinet officers, to whom similar power was delegated, would usually obey doubtful orders. Such presumption protected slavery and abuses of Native Americans; those who got in the way of westward expansion.

The implementation of this form of dictatorship requires some careful examination. President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in 1861 to defend the Constitution (per Article I. Sec. 9). It was an appropriate emergency but received wide criticism from outraged Confederate sympathizers. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) tried to declare another national emergency to deal with the Depression, the Supreme Court said that an "emergency does not create power" (Blaisdell case, 290 U.S. 398 in 1934). As FDR’s party rallied against this, Congress invoked elements of a 1917 War Powers Act to reduce further damage to the economy.

The Supreme Court finally did permit some emergency powers in connection with foreign affairs (229 U.S. 304, 1936) and when FDR sought endorsement of an "unlimited national emergency" as France fell to the Nazis (June 1940), he got it within a year. This was a real foreign threat but FDR promptly abused his powers with Executive Order 9060, which put US citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps (A public national apology was not issued until 1988.).

He later did something more sinister that criminalized the character of his administration. In January 1943 he decreed a policy of "Unconditional Surrender" to replace the previous public declaration of the Atlantic Charter that had been endorsed by the Allied Nations in January 1942. Lacking proper review, the policy mutated into unlimited war and a holocaust of bombing cities to kill civilians. Despite outcries when Nazis did it in 1939-41, such bombing was excluded from War Crime Tribunals, along with Italian fascism.

In any case, this sort of mechanized murder was unprecedented in our history; especially when it moved to a nuclear dimension. America thus crossed a line to fascism. It is hard to say if Roosevelt still controlled his mental faculties, or abdicated power to others, but there is no question that by 1944, southern racists had solidly rejoined with northern corporatists at the Democrat convention to select militarist Harry Truman over the progressive Henry Wallace. After 1945, Truman pushed through a National Security Act (based on NSC68) to decree a Joint Staff and separate Air Force. He then heated an undeclared Cold War by pushing the country into a Korean "conflict" without bothering to get a declaration of war by Congress, an unprecendented abuse of power.

Since his outlaw decree of 1947, the Marine Corps (formerly naval police/infantry) has become like a military branch with a four-star general on the Joint Staff that helps the Navy and unconstitutional Air Force dominate policy against that of a far larger Army. Almost half of the military budget is spent on the aviation needs of four branches even though the Constitution mentions only an Army and Navy. The munition-makers had found a "cash cow." By 1952, the US National Security Agency (NSA at Ft. Meade MD) was allowed to routinely violate the Fourth Amendment without any debate in Congress. Truman got away with such "inherent emergency power" until the Supreme Court ruled against him (343 U.S. 579, 1952) for trying to federalize steel plants.

More recently, Bush W has invented a war against terrorism and another national police branch called "Homeland Security" to consolidate 22 federal police/intelligence forces to further replace the Army. Terrorism is an instrument or tactic of applied violence. It makes no more sense to wage a war on terrorism than to wage a war on bullets or on amphibious assaults. One country’s terrorist is another’s foot soldier or freedom fighter.

Bush’s bureaucratic layer will allow national positions to be filled by State Rights patronage or corporate contracts, rather than by federal public servants. We have forgotten about the attempted coup of 1934, as documented in the House of Un-American Activities (HUAC) files of 1935, when members of the Liberty Lobby tried to create a new "General Office" on the cabinet with aims to replace democratic government (fortunately they picked the wrong man in Smedley Butler). Unelected local agencies will now interpret the latest Executive Orders as they pretend to protect the citizens and sell security.

As it spins beyond any constitutional mandate, Homeland Security is another new cash-cow for Bush’s Big Business backers. Former Secretary of the Navy and president of Lockheed Martin, Gordon R. England, became its Deputy Director. His minions will be allowed to hire cronies and give patronage outside the scope the Civil Service system.

Since the power to pass Executive Orders was provoked by an outlaw Judicial Review, both abuses should be repudiated. This royal idea should be reversed along with its bizarre notion that judges decide who gets granted certiorari or the benefit of a jury. A Supreme Court presidential selection 5 to 4 should leave no doubt. Neither federal nor state constitutions allow such rule by imperial methods that bypass popular consent. Once we define the proper level of representative democracy their racket would start to collapse.

What is the proper level? The 1790 census counted 3.9 million Americans and the number of Congressmen was derived from a ratio that was intended to stay below 1 for 50,000 as confirmed by a proposed First Amendment, of 12, to the Bill of Rights. You can still buy commemorative copies of the original as passed by Congress or states like New York. In those you’ll see that the first amendment said that after the first official census:

Isn’t it amazing that this Amendment has been kept secret for so long? It’s hard to get members of the so-called Democratic Party even to define ratios for representative democracy. As noted, both parties oppose the idea. On the other hand, many also opposed the original Second Amendment of September 1789, which was ratified in 1992. Alongside the original 13^th Amendment (1819), which was erased after being passed, the original First Amendment remains one of four others passed by Congress and rejected by the states. It is a useful rallying point. As shown in our book, passing this amendment would substantially reduce government bureaucracy.

This ratio was selected to allow direct, face-to-face, communication between the people and their hired representatives. One reason for this communication was to prevent representatives from claiming that they misunderstood what was expected, or to act as he thought best. He was a servant and not a master, so his opinion was not to dominate. Without this kind of direct exchange, the media (then mostly newspapers) could invent opinions, as they certainly tried. There was still recourse to personal letters and town hall meetings, now near meaningless with 600,000 people per representative. The idea that 435 people could represent America is as ridiculous as suggesting that six people should have represented America in 1790 (6 x 600,000 = US 1790 population)?

If you think yes, then consider who would really have been in charge. For similar reasons most Americans won’t even bother to meeting their Congressperson. They know they’ve been disenfranchised. It’s a shame because We the People almost settled two points about this democratic republic: (1) administering it for about 50 years and (2) successfully confirming "perpetual union" against overthrow by a slave aristocracy. If nothing else, the painful Civil War confirmed that states have no more power than what is reserved to them by the Constitution or the people, who hired politicians to provide representation at a specific ratio; not to lord over them or work for others.

If there is any doubt about institutionalized bribery of nepotism and cronyism, consider that since 1791 merely sixteen thousand people served in Congress, on the Supreme Court, or as top generals or admirals. Over a billion people have been US citizens since the first Constitutions (1776 & 1789) so, with a rough estimate of past generations, unless "democracy" has no meaning, sixteen thousand people cannot represent a billion.

Furthermore, few of this neo-aristocracy were Negro, Latin, or Slavic. In a nation that is almost one-third Catholic, the president was Catholic only 1% of the time. Two British religions, less than 5% of the population, have had the presidency for more than half of the country’s history. Only a tiny percentage have been women. Patriots should spread the word about true democracy.

We know that America is an empire because the presiding emperor rules by decrees with a Senate that mocks democracy. No president since Franklin Roosevelt has renounced the "emergency" powers that allowed such Executive Orders and more than 15,000 have been issued. The Corporate disinformation network that controls textbooks on government will rarely allow more than a few paragraphs about this sinister development. It passively describes them as documents through which a President manages Government.

Although most of them are approved in Congress, at least the Senate, some Orders include sub-designated letter items (9577-A, 9616-A, etc.) and, in practice, the Senate often does not vote on versions of an Order as published. Revoked Orders are also supposed to remain in the Federal Register but some vanish after their impact. That is because many entries are subject to be "revised or extended" by newer Executive Orders or other Presidential Proclamations and documents (rules & regulations, notices). For example, in March 2003 Jr. Bush extended secrecy laws by "amending" (in 30 pages) E.O. 12958.

Many are only loosely enforced or only partially implemented. They are thus withheld before removal from the register. Some of the most troubling directives remained unwritten. Also included with Executive Orders are Presidential Decision Directives, unpublished Declarations, and Treaties as the President implements them. An Order may lack authority because Public Laws affect it, but many in the Executive branch may blindly obey even when they are shown to be unconstitutional. Intelligence branches sometimes intentionally seek "plausible denial" (as with Oliver North’s gang). When that happens Congress could deny funding or investigate the president. More often they now stay behind the scenes for fear of corporate backlash. Some of the orders are criminal and it is an outlaw process.

The key point to remember is that politicians and judges have no authority to undermine the Constitution. This applies even more to the president, who was specifically denied such imperial powers as, for example, declaring war. As confirmed by their oath of office, these "leaders" were hired to defend the law. A formal process of amendment was required for changes of substance, such as the ending of democracy, as described below. Anyway, here is one list of Executive Orders.

As explained, these are only a part of the decrees implemented by presidents. Many of the Orders in this crazy quilt are simply updates that build on Truman’s flagrant imposition. Anyone who saw the motion picture Thirteen Days probably suspects the awesome power that could be invoked in war. For example, we can review the powers that JFK had in place fifteen years after Truman’s sedition. They included:

Kennedy’s Orders were amended but their essence remains. Nixon replaced most of them with E.O. 11490, which created a tool to institute martial law under a federal government. Jimmy Carter’s E.O. 12148 gave a tremendous amount of power to a provisional emergency management agency. Reagan’s E.O.’s 12656 & 12657 replaced the latter with a Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. (As a staff officer at JCS Operations, this writer witnessed how such power would be implemented.). Bush Sr. further extended the already awesome FEMA Powers to include all disaster and "emergency" functions.

With this cunning framework in place, along comes Bush W. who helps brother Jeb enthusiastically give out $7 billion FEMA assistance funds to rebuild property in Florida (the inflated appraisals are amazingly easy to purchase). Contrast that to the few hundred million used to help victims of real disasters like the Tsunami or Rwandan genocide. How much was "walking-around money" for the 2004 election. With "Homeland Security" laws the president has a staff to enforce national emergency for any reason he deems necessary, even if 99% of citizens disapprove. The impact of such a decree is similar if the threat confuses piracy or terror with a fictitious military assault.

Before anyone can react a corrupt leader can appoint mercenaries to key positions. Such are the powers of a dictator who intimidates people into obedience. In a true democratic society, such presumptive laws fit a legal definition of extortion. The founders would have investigated or rejected any such pretense but the machinery for such tyranny is already firmly in place. It just waited for a 9-11-type push. Federal officers are to refuse unconstitutional orders but, after massive personnel reductions removed genuine public servants, many of them no longer worry about their oath of service.

Who will stop a dictator? There are now armies of corporate contractors and security mercenaries. Many of them earn over $500 per day. Some 40,000 "green-card volunteers" serve the military in exchange for promised US citizenship. The CIA has even worked with the military to frock "dual-citizens" with officer commissions in our military so now even patriot-soldiers must follow orders from contracted mercenaries.

Since the related Executive Orders are unconstitutional, the problem of an "Imperial Presidency" includes that of an outlaw Congress that fails to secure borders. Aside from the usual bribes through lawyers (including a virtual sale of US visas and citizenship), the dereliction of duty was in the Immigration and Naturalization Service more than FBI, but both are under the Executive’s Justice Department. They often ignored hostile "tourists" and even allowed many to settle in this country with dual-citizenship. Both branches knew that the many foreign-based corporations also relied on mercenary migrants who often push past others patiently waiting—sometimes for years—to properly come to this country. Isn’t it obvious how losing control of the border facilitates financial plunder.

All this makes terrorism harder to control. But let’s be clear: illegal immigrants are not the cause of terrorism such as 9-11. They are a symptom of a border that is physically and morally out of control. The fact that corporations and people have been sneaking in to worship the almighty dollar means that they feel entitled to break our laws and trample honest domestic business. The ultimate cause of the terrorism is that those in power also trample people in other countries, after helping destroy their domestic laws.

If American values are based on an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, then importing workers with hostile values cheaply bypasses patriotic reluctance. Weak borders therefore protect domestic greed, which serves to strengthen corporate tyranny. A good study on destroying constitutions is in Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which includes the attempted coups of the early 1920’s against the Weimar republic. Two military coups were attempted while an Army agent, Gustav Stresemann, was Chancellor. General Ludendorff was implicated in both the Kapp coup in Berlin and the 1923 attempt in Munich.

He had been the virtual German dictator for the last two years of World War I and originated the "stab in back" myth in defeat. As leader of a Germanic Order (1913 Thule Society, reshaped in 1918 Munich by v. Sebottendorf), he was rabidly anti-Semitic. Stresemann admitted that these coups were premature but with some judges and lawyers hostile to the Weimar Constitution, the court pardoned Ludendorff after the Munich coup. Despite that, he was elected to the Reichstag (1924) and ran for president (1925). He managed to get his aged military henchman, Hindenburg, elected on a fusion ticket.

Hitler got 5 years in a castle-prison but served only 9 months and used the time to compose Mein Kampf and adapt symbols of the Thule Society, such as the broken cross (swastika) and dagger, for his Party. The legal imposition of Nazi insanity took under two years and started in May 1932 with a power struggle between Army chief Schleicher and von Papen, who raised Hitler to Chancellor with help from Ribbentrop and Hindenburg’s son. Aristocrats (through von Papen) and industrial leaders (led by Thyssen) supported it.

The wealthy nationalists did it on the theory that they would be able to control Nazis, who had won a third of the vote. They coordinated an appointment that began on 30 January 1933. Once in power Hitler promptly issued a "patriot act" on 4 February "For the Protection of the German People," which allowed suppression of both political meetings and publishing. He ordered German police to support the SS and SA (17-25 February), while Göring formed an auxiliary police of 50,000 that he authorized to freely use weapons.

In a raid on Berlin’s Communist Party headquarters they claimed to find proof of a plot to overthrow the government. A fire in Berlin’s Reichstag on 27 February was then used as a pretext for a massive SA "reaction." On the 28^th Hindenburg approved suspension of free speech and assembly. "Socialists" throughout Germany were arrested and caged in outdoor camps. On 4 March, Reichstag president Göring declared that bureaucracy, legal considerations and justice would not hinder such measures. The next day, a combination of Nazi and Nationalist candidates got a majority in an election wherein weakened Communists lost a million votes. Goebbels established a Propaganda Ministry (11 March).

Hitler assumed emergency power on 23 March. An Enabling Act trampled Social Democrat opposition (444 to 94) to confirm destruction of the Republic. The legal text of lawyer Carl Schmitt made the end of parliamentary democracy look legitimate, which was important to maintain prestige abroad and co-opt the Civil Service. The two-thirds majority needed for changes made Nazi removal almost impossible. Although the Reichstag stayed around until 1942, it was reduced to a sounding board for Nazi speeches. It passed only seven more laws and legislation took the form of Führer Orders (Erlasse) that increasingly lost pretense of connection to any constitution. For example, a decree on 7 April 1933 allowed expulsion of those deemed unreliable (like non-Aryans) from public service.

A violent purge on 30 June began a broader political "integration." State governments (Länder) reorganized into Nazified provincial structures. After President Hindenburg died (2 August 1934), Nazi lawyers staged a plebiscite (19 August) to also make Chancellor Hitler into the president-select. In exchange for promises to expand the military, the generals imposed an oath of personal allegiance to Hitler as national leader. By adding an Air Force (March 1935), the Army (OKH) and Navy (OKM) expanded to a Wehrmacht. Although the Air Force and Navy were relatively small, the Armed Forces joint staff (OKW) soon surpassed the Army (OKH) as the hub of military power. To balance the numbers, a militarized police (Waffen-SS) became a second unconstitutional military branch (Jan. 1937) and the Air Force created dozens of ground divisions.

The worrisome aspect of these proceedings is that they took place with democratic compliance of a majority of the German people. Allied intelligence confirmed that Hitler would have been reelected even as late as 1944. This presumed fair elections, but given the Nazi media control that was impossible. (Unfortunately "fair" elections did not preclude domination of information by corporate media, as in the United States.)

Did other countries see this blatant return to militarism or try to stop it? Poland and France venerated a tradition of written Constitutions and saw the link to the German General Staff (and Ludendorff). Poland’s Marshal Pilsudski proposed that France and Britain help him stop it. Unfortunately Britain refused, so he had to settle for a non-aggression pact. Apparently, the aristocratic Hanoverians condoned German rearmament and generally backed their Germanic cousins in supporting president-select Hitler.

The imposition of legalistic immorality opposed a Golden Rule and met some resistance from German churches but it was not enough. Obvious manipulation of symbols passed without opposition. In the case of adopting a new flag, the obscenity of a "broken cross" flag was plain enough. In contrast to the Weimar Republic flag of black, red, and gold (with a lineage to the 1848 revolution of liberal democracy), the new colors were those of an Imperial commercial flag. Capitalist domination, indicated by such changes, was central to Nazism. The 1933 Nazi priority was against socialists and class or "communist" targets, but the killing was already showing a racial direction. (This website mentions the role of racism in the definitions. God created man and woman but only one race.)

It was a symptom of the evil. We suggest that one of the "big lies" of history is that Nazis were evil because they murdered Jews. That suggests the converse, that if they had not been racist then they would not have been evil. More obviously, putting aside that the racism extended to both Slavs and Gypsies, the fact is that their evil could be traced to destroying the Weimar Constitution and launching aggressive wars. The practical reason to switch mass hatred from socialism to select races had to do with military recruiting.

How was the extreme racism, that led to mass murder and a psychotic disconnection from reality, imposed on a Christian country? The Nazis contrived a cunning science of pseudo-biology, eugenics, and cultural symbols to hide their biocractic brutality. By 1936, within a framework of Social Darwinism, there were five universities that gave doctoral degrees in racial hygiene. Almost half of all German medical doctors joined the SS. The idea of racial purity was promoted to the public as cleanliness and illustrated by false analogies to eliminating a spread of disease. A variety of propaganda built this image.

The artistic community put its weight behind it by stressing the pristine landscapes and healthy bodies proportioned to Greek and Roman antiquity. Warrior images of the past suggested that heroic violence was necessary to achieve both beauty and national health. The "body" of a German Volk served as an example to which all "cells" were subordinated. The "head" of the body was a Nazi Party deemed capable of choosing the portions that needed "cleansing." They emphasized an artificial process of selection that Darwin’s science had rejected. (His emphasis was on the biological struggle and cooperation for species survival.)

As the doctrine was applied, in 1933 the selection was against communists. In 1938 it was against the Czechs. It shifted to Poles in 1939. The mass murders actually began at the start of the war with a massive euthanasia program that included Germans. There was a milder promotion of Aryan supremacy in 1940 when Hitler tried to seek an alliance with England. The Jews were constantly (and often violently) discriminated against since 1933 but they did not become a priority for mass-murder until 1941. Even then far more Slavs were killed for various reasons, especially in the Soviet Union. In terms of Nazi power, other considerations applied as often as racism. The top leader’s real motivation was often greed and power lust.

Many of the top pirates knew that if you kill someone then you could steal their property. The creation of an "emergency" against socialists, Slavs, or Jews, thus provided a pretext for their arbitrary justice to facilitate plunder. Under this broader definition, the racial and class murders were closer to thirty million than six million. The lie of selecting "sub-humans" (untermensch) was behind most of these killings, including those in battle. (Those who separate genocide from other racial killing with a number as low as six million can even be called Holocaust deniers.) Propaganda molded public opinion but many "good Germans" went along with a clearly evil racial policy. Why did so many place a perverted sense of racial supremacy above morality? One reason was an approving lawyer industry that maintained the appearance of law and order.

Some claim that the Weimar Constitution was too young to ensure legitimacy for equal protection. Maybe. What’s our excuse when we witness similar impositions? Do we see how legalisms can impose injustice? The pretext of the 1933 "emergency" was only supposed to extend for four-years but it continued as late as 1945 to justify death sentences. Can we see how the Patriot Acts threaten our republican dream of 1791?

The Patriot Act emergency powers have a sinister history. The contempt of our leaders is obvious from their past war crimes. Inflicting fatal injury is hardly a moot minor matter of Party politics. For example, if you kill someone – even by accident – could you avoid getting indicted? Why should politicians, generals and admirals escape such blame? Do "good Americans" get it? The problem of public servants acting above the law has long been a crisis so one way of coping with the symptoms is to recognize the tyranny of Executive Orders. The pattern of murder being committed in Iraq and Afghanistan goes back to Vietnam. The officers got away with it then, so now they see it as business as usual.

After restoring representation, past Executive violations should go tribunals, at least for war crimes, that would be empowered to measure the current obstruction of justice. Perhaps some Executive Orders will be deemed necessary. Those can be presented as a new Bill and undergo proper constitutional ratification. Obviously, those in Congress who allowed past abuses of judicial and executive power most be exposed as unfit for office.

What do citizens pay soldiers to do? Historically the purpose of the military is to defend the borders. If it can’t do that then you might as well disband it. An equally important purpose, at least in this country, is to defend the Constitution. That is what military officers take an oath do upon being granted a commission. Tyrants undermine both goals. They use the military for imperial plunder, which gets patriots out of the country and weakens their own border. This allows confederates or mercenaries of the tyrant to rule.

In most fascist countries this transformation of power is done by an oath of allegiance to the nation wherein the ruling party is proclaimed to embody its values. The transfer of the oath from the nation to the tyrant is also a common ploy. In Germany it was a clear step, in 1935, to switch allegiance from the Weimar Constitution to Hitler. In countries like ours, where there is a long tradition of a written Constitution, great effort is made to show how leaders are duly elected and representative, especially if they aren’t. The common denominator is switching allegiance to a leader from a Constitution.

The success of this betrayal requires an officer corps consisting mostly of fools, mercenaries, or traitors. The soldiers have little to say about this because their oath of service is more narrowly defined. Since the military has a pyramid hierarchy, imposing sedition mainly requires buying the top officers and tricking junior officers into trust. The "leader principle" is foremost to such systems and this section describes how one of them worked.

The National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP), often shortened to Nazis, had a 500 page Handbook, Organisationsbuch der NSDAP, to describe their racket. This book specified the geography, command structure, uniforms, and racial policy. The Party was not nationalist because its victims included loyal Germans and not socialist because workers had little power. The main beneficiaries of its policies were giant corporations.

If we study the members of Himmler’s inner circle, who provided Hitler with most of his seed money, we cans see that keep members included corporate leaders from banking, weapons, aviation, automotive, energy, and communications production. In Der Führer (ch. XII), Heiden quoted Hitler saying in 1926:

This system allowed victory over the parliament (Reichstag) and morality in all spheres of life. The section here translates a relevant portion of that handbook that shows how a comprehensive hierarchy efficiently enmeshed the German nation from the bottom of a pyramid that rose from Blocks (50 households) -- through four levels—to Hitler. The Block Leaders - depicted as spiritual helpers - were Party spies. The system worked for consolidating political strength but was far from a monolith of totalitarian efficiency.

Most situations were left to local party bosses who had their own little power pyramids. Hitler’s office atop the pyramid, however, had several policies that required personal approval for exception. Economic gibberish of a corporate state cleverly wove feelings of racial fellowship with a military tradition that had distinguished Prussia for centuries before 1918. In many ways the handbook format is similar to other corporate standard operating procedure (SOP) documents. The overall structure is similar except that, unlike a standard business document, the obsession with race disguises the quest for plunder or profit.

Half of the Handbook consisted of illustrations, many of them based on Darwinist racism that was central to Nazi corporate policy. Unlike the science of species survival, it was based on selection of the fittest and an obsession with racial eugenics that had sometimes originated with similarly irrational, policies practiced in the United States (aimed at mental illness, low intelligence, or racial segregation). American corporations, such as Standard Oil, IBM and Ford were later implicated as profiting from Nazi control.

Even by then current standards, racism had no scientific basis. In order to mystify such nonsense, from 1934 the Handbook documented intricate organizations to include every racial German. Spiritual aspects were used to sell the politics. For example, the concept of Volksgenosse appears throughout the text. It has no English equivalent but comes close to fellow citizen (mitbürger) with an added supernatural dimension.

It is the first duty of a Political Leader, in his personal bearing, conception of duty, and in his private life, to be a shining example. Let him be conscious of the fact that more harm is done by the Political Leader’s bad example than can be made up for by a hundred and one admonitions. Invariably, Cells (Zelle), Blocks, Pillars (Stützpunkt), or Local Groups (Ortsgruppe) are the mirror image of their Leading Functionary. Whoever fails to do his duty in his hometown or place of residence, will fail elsewhere…. Every Political Leader must have a strong personality. Do your duty in the position that your Führer gave you… Take care of your job, and do not take on more tasks than you are able to perform; but carry those you have accepted to completion. If the Political Leader… he must not squander his power. That is why taking part in non-Party societies is undesirable….

Keep in mind that whoever cannot obey will never be fit to give orders. Never put your own personal standing first. There is only one standing, namely that of the Movement. Carefully cultivate comradely relations with all other sections of the Party.

The typical Political Leader: from the above emerges a picture of the typical Political Leader. He is not a civil servant but at all times the political representative of the Führer. He must see and think clearly. In times of national crisis, he must stand as a rock and obey implicitly orders. Through Political Leaders we are building up political management within the State….

Instinct and intelligence produce reason. It is not absolutely necessary for the Political Leader to possess detailed technical knowledge because he has competent officials for that; but his judgement must be superior. His office does not define a typical Political Leader. There is no Political Leader of any single Party organization, but only a Political Leader of the NSDAP…

The formula of the oath the Political Leader is as follows:

The Political Leader feels merged with the ideas and the organization of the NSDAP.

The Party was created by the Führer out of the realization that if our people were to live and advance towards an era of prosperity they had to be led according to an ideology suitable for our race…. The party will therefore always constitute a minority, [It] consists solely of fighters, ready to undertake anything and to risk their all for the realization of National Socialist ideology.

…The NSDAP, as vanguard of the German people, dominates public life, whatever its organization… Eventually, it will be impossible for leaders to remain in responsible position unless recognized by the Party. Eventually the Party will create a system for selecting leaders. The formation of a National Socialist structure expresses the following: (a) the Führer principle, (b) the coordinated integration of subordinate organizations, (c) regional unity, and (d) shaping the expression of community spirit.

[Here the pyramid relationship of sixteen Nazi organizations was named.]

Aside from the paramilitary material, the Handbook showed how the corporate net caught its civilian fish. Leadership was generally defined in terms of obedience, will, character, and instinct; rather than technical competence. Anyone who confided in Block leaders risked having the information filed in coded cards by the hierarchy. Such files were typically used to ensure loyalty. As IBM computers replaced the file cards, this command doctrine provided the generic model for modern corporate systems. The Nazis publicly opposed democracy and Hitler announced in 1932 how he would eliminate other parties.

Such ideas of hierarchy and loyalty are still alive because Europe was never properly de-Nazified, especially by the British. Even if unaware of its source, American officers undergo similar indoctrination in prominent military and corporate schools to learn that "the leader is responsible" for command decisions. Undermining democracy is part of the a sometimes boldly stated U.S. military tradition. Military democracy is for aristocracy. For example, consider Army Training Manual TM No. 2000-25 (dated 1928-1932), which derided Democracy as "government of the masses" with:

Such ideas were concealed after a military coup against Roosevelt was exposed (The "Liberty lobby" tried to recruit General S. Butler to emplace fascism, but he refused.) but remain part of officer indoctrination. Unlike more honorable Confederate officers, who left the Union in 1861, their modern counterparts can conceal contempt for the Constitution to use military service as a revolving door to corporate aristocracy or generous pensions.

The violent application of these techniques were spread throughout the hemisphere by institutions such as the World Bank and infamous School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning (Georgia) - renamed as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). Some of them returned to this country international gangs (such as M-13).

In either fascism or Nazism, the main blame falls on an officer corps. When exposed, they mostly claim to be "just following orders" of someone who seemed to be a legitimate leader. Some of them, of course, always had a genuine dislike for democracy. These are not just "a few rotten apples" as a mantra of excuses typically pleads. There is an entire cadre of criminals that knows exactly what they are doing.

Even though about 70% of senior military officers are republican, many twice betray the republic by working towards a corporate "revolving door" for private gain. Double-crossers is a more accurate term for them than "double-dippers." Regardless their self-inflated "patriotism" they know that the founders or fellow citizens would not vote for such inequity. Honorable officers and more honest politicians usually leave government service as they discover this lack of accountability and wall of silence.

Lest this be seen as a cheap shot at the brave, we should recall that only about a third of the military typically risks combat. Most of the Navy, Air Force, and various support units are as safe as local civilians. The Air Force, whose bomber command commits over 90% of US war crimes, operates in relative comfort. Anyway, occasional military courage is neither at issue or in doubt. The concern is that most officers have the same vested interest in war as munition-makers. Too many of them would be unsuited for civilian employment and those who help kill civilians are particularly aware how "war is a racket."

They know what kind of loyalty will get rewards and what will get removal from service. The "only following orders" theme—illustrated by chain of command posters in most headquarters—obviously exclude the Constitution. Inserting that document as the very first link in that chain would help restore the proper relationship but this would require the kind of political education that would be unthinkable in the current climate.

The line to fascism is crossed when killing is impersonally mechanized in the form of corporate machines. Killing civilians, in itself, is not fascist because that existed since ancient times (as with prominent examples under Genghis Khan.) When it crosses a racial line into deliberate mechanized murder then we have the characteristic component of fascism, if not Nazism. This country crossed that line in 1943. Arguably, the modern nuclear arsenals are designed for nothing less than the genocide of whole nations.

General Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket is a good place to start looking for a remedy to this Leadership Principle. The current concept of ethics centers on corporate loyalty in the fashion of aristocrat diversionist debates, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Perhaps the pervasive mendacity can be remedied by asking how many devils can dance on top of a political pyramid before it’s ground away. At least we should demand that military officers understand Butler’s concern and that their contract—with the people who hired them—is to defend that noble parchment against its enemies.

As a matter of honor in defending the Constitution and treaties like the Geneva Convention (per Article 6), they must not cheat, steal, kill civilians; or tolerate those who do. The obligation of noncommissioned officers is less complicated but they should also recognize corporate fraud. By definition, outlaw military branches or civilian contractors cannot give lawful orders. American officers are always expected to protect their soldiers from unnecessary danger and are paid to question unlawful orders. That’s what makes them American. It is unlike swearing allegiance to a monarch or other kind of führer.

This section is not against most U.S. military officers, especially the majority who serve in the Army. The murdering Nazi war criminal Field Marshal Kesserling, who wrote his memoirs after being released, also wrote of Germany’s largely republican army, aristocratic navy, and his own fascistic Luftwaffe branch (For political reasons he failed to mention the Waffen SS). By far, most of the war crimes of this nation have been committed by the unconstitutional US Air Force. The Central Intelligence Agency is a distant second.

There is really a character type, in and out of uniform, who believes that they can be loyal to the president rather than to the Constitution. Some are subtle and cunning but many will boldly admit their ideas and denounce those who disagree as being naïve, unrealistic, "boy scouts" or some other such statement. For example, in a recent documentary, Fog of War, Robert McNamara confessed that he and Air Force general Curtiss LeMay were war criminals and proclaimed that a degree of evil was needed to avoid greater evils.

He tried to make a case for "proportionality" that would curb excess evil. In a republic, especially one that claims democratic virtue, the real question is why citizens should tolerate this. That toleration, in turn, raises issues of corporate loyalty linked to domination of public information. When such gangsters are caught in the act, they typically try to blame someone above themselves. You cannot expect citizens to take the blame for crimes "in our name" if they did not have a role in learning the facts, much less approving them.

The "just following orders" alibi should be recognized for what it is. Many American officers are traitors for the same reason that Hitler’s military officers were. They decided to swear personal allegiance to a criminal in place of their oath to defend the Weimar Constitution. This treason should not be confused with the oath taken by the more fanatically criminal SS troops. We refer to typical Army and Navy officers.

Göring’s Air Force is discussed later but we note here that the destruction of military honor started with the creation of a separate Air Force under Hitler’s No. 2. He approved bombing civilians. To cover such sedition, there was the usual babble about professionalism and loyalty but, really, war was a German business and Hitler was good for business.

What can honorable American officers do? For a start, their code of ethics should not allow tolerance of those who kill civilians. Historically, aviation has inflicted over 90% of the war crimes and the combat troops of the Army and Navy endure over 90% of the revenge. Murderers should by shunned. To restore proper loyalty, army officers should also not allow themselves to placed under control of the Air Force or Marine Corps. It properly requires a constitutional amendment to create such expensive military branches. Why pay for four aviation branches, when two will suffice (as in World War 2)?

The Marine Corps makes perfect sense for raiding operations or as a naval police. Its status as military branch, with a four-star general, is simply against a constitution that defines an Army and Navy. General Smedley Butler presented such views better than we can but the crux of the issue (or Racket, in his words) is the direction of loyalty to corporations. Even with such seemingly legal methods, the redirection of power to an outlaw regime is a matter of sedition. Remember that even Nazi racial policy was "legal".

Why should Americans know the difference between nazis and fascists? Since both were hated enemies of the United States. if either sought control in America they would try and confuse us about their identity. It should be shocking if either operated freely after their proclaimed defeat in a world war, so you can bet that new "leaders" of this type would not come goose-stepping down the avenue with a bald head or ridiculous moustache. This section tries to demystify the confusion by tracing the lineage of both enemies.

Hyphenated terms such as "proto-", "neo-", "military", "social-", or "feudal-" fascism, are thrown around and become as useless as the hyphenated forms that precede socialism (national, anarcho-, or Soviet). As a generic term of abuse, fascist usually indiscriminately merges with National Socialism, wherein the name-caller mixes the extreme evil of genocide with individual racism, homophobia, vague anti-feminism, or even some minor issue of the day. Meanwhile an iron fist smashes in the faces of other countries without the benefit of our domestic velvet glove. The victims are meant to direct the blame towards all America because those who support fascism want this country to have more enemies.

It’s good for militarism and war profit. Generally, such rackets have little tolerance for parliamentary liberalism or real republics. Formal and opfascist parties began in Italy soon after World War I. While officers of the upper class stirred war-veterans against Soviet "barbarism," aristocrat-seasoned traditional religions also used threats of Bolshevik atheism to scare the masses. Such systems logically spiral back into monarchy or dictatorship. Throughout the continent such extremism soon broke Judeo-Christian morality.

In Spain, after civil war killed 3% of the nation, Franco’s Falange ruled with U.S. support until a more politically acceptable monarchy returned (1978). There were many similar movements. Most of them embraced forms of aristocracy or religious fanaticism. For example, Salazar’s Green Shirts replaced Portuguese monarchy and the Romanian Iron Guard tried to do the same there in 1940. Belgium’s Rexism stressed religious aspects of kingship (as in Christus Rex). The French Action Francaise and PPF promoted old aristocracy. Most of these parties were like the German brown-shirts or fascist puppet regimes and looked to the Italian form of fascism, which preceded the others. There was Mussert’s Dutch Weer Afdeling Party, Croatia’s Ustachi, and Hungary’s Arrow Cross. There were Irish Blue Shirts and English blackshirts.

British fascists, under King Edward’s friend Mosley, were relatively mild by comparison but there are photos of his group marching in 1933 Italy with a banner proclaiming "For King and Country." Similar movements in the United States were linked to an Anglo-German aristocracy through Hanoverian countries. Except for the Croats, they did not plumb the depth of the black-jacketed Nazi SS, which replaced the Brown-shirts or Sturmabteilung (SA), which continued to linger as a paramilitary training organization.

Their main influence in America before World War 2 was generally based on support from big money and racism. A Ford executive, Fritz Kuhn, formed a German-American Bund. Both it and Silver-shirts staged giant rallies. Some Nazis promoted US neutrality through an America First movement with roots in World War I. (For example, Congressman Charles Lindbergh Sr. had written Why Is Our Country At War in 1917 and it was forcefully suppressed by the Justice Department.) After Hitler declared war on 11 December 1941, the fascist sympathizers, including Lindbergh Jr., kept supporting corporations or aristocracy.

When the war ended these groups promoted soft treatment of war crimes and recruited former Nazis into US industry and intelligence. The rocket scientists are just one example. After the Italian king was voted out of power, many Italian aristocrats also immigrated to the Americas. In promoting a Cold War, American leaders adopted a "might makes right" approach and eventually exhibited a culture of death and violence.

As shown below, the Republicans (Congress & President) dismantled American democracy in 1891 and 1921. In 1923, while Italy’s Rocco praised virtues of "loyalty," the crest of the U.S. Military Academy was reversed. Its motto is now "Duty, Honor, Country" even though the opposite order (on the crest) more befits a republic. Partly from fear of democracy, in countries where they are a minority even some Jewish scholars promote fascism. For example, those associated with Commentary and Leo Strauss (U. of Chicago) are sometimes denounced for sinister connections to Heidegger and jurist Carl Schmitt.

The risk of having the Constitution swept away, as was done in 1922 Italy and 1933 Germany, should worry us. The Nazis used an apparent terrorist threat - the Reichstag fire - to grant Hitler the emergency power of dictatorship. Bush Jr. is more like Mussolini than Hitler in using thugs to frustrate vote recounts in Florida. The theft of the2004 election was less obvious but similarly illegal. Now his party keeps pushing dictatorial laws through Congress. It does not require deep study to compare this to Italian corporatism.

Not only did the founders refuse to empower corporate entities in the Constitution; even the capability of such abuse was widely feared. It took kilotons of foreign gold and millions of lawyers to undermine the fundamental protections of equal justice. Fragmenting citizen loyalty among corporate entities and local municipalities is an obvious form of "divide and rule." It was blatant in the 2004 election when selected counties (about 70% Republican) strategically implemented election fraud.

Confusing fascism for Nazism is one result of the mystification imposed by its practitioners and their fellow travelers. For those who are academically inclined towards precision, roots of an "Ethics of Power" can be traced back to ancient Greek Naturalism into a view of "nature’s law." The atheist Nietzsche (1844-1900) particularly advanced the idea of a master race. Sociologists such as Pareto and Gumplowicz twisted Darwin’s study of biology to propose pseudo-morality defined by the interest of the stronger.

Nazi philosopher Heidegger and the Nazi lawyer Carl Schmitt added rationalization regressing beyond Machiavelli. They asserted that the pursuit and accumulation of power for its own sake was in itself Good. This same idea rose from Prussian militarism that made people a state commodity. Unquestioning obedience of a Nazi leadership principle and SS motto Meine Ehre heisst Treue (My honor is loyalty) fits the pattern. This simplifies the link between Naturalism and the blind loyalty demanded by modern fascism.

Eugenics need not divert us here because Nazi racism made no biological sense and Darwin had denounced such logic (see Descent of Man). Many Germans were motivated by insane racial hatred but most top Nazis used it as a tool for manipulation. There were hundreds of partial Jews (mischlings) in the Nazi military, including Göring’s top deputy, Milch. Göring admitted: "I decide who is a Jew." The Nazis built outside threats to promote nationalism. This old game of tribal warfare was also obvious against the Slavs.

Nazis weren’t evil because they murdered Jews and Slavs; it was the most prominent symptom of their malevolence. The racial aspect is easily understood in terms of pirate greed because the murderer gets the victim’s property.

In terms of escaping punishment for the human losses that they inflicted, it’s hard to disagree with Simon Wiesenthal’s comment (in film Murderers Among Us by Gibson, 1989) that the Nazis won the Cold War. A "better dead than red" philosophy is typically Nazi. The British decision to bomb civilians can also be interpreted in terms of tribal brutality. The fact that America joined in that policy in 1943 is a concern here. Books on fascism often ignore the aristocratic tradition of treating commoners as being expendable.

Valor Publishing case studies on applied militarism reveal the tradition of corporatism and imperial judges (praetor) law going back to the Roman Empire. The idea of such judge-made law is contrary to written law. The ruling class keeps the distinctions vague with its own studies to divert from the "smiling fascism" in the United States. They know that if something can’t be defined then it can’t be measured. So; let’s define.

Examining corporate tyranny is productive to our analysis because giant corporations are traditionally fascist. It’s a specific greed. For example, when a mainstream writer, such as Skidelsky (biography of Keynes; see PBS special Commanding Heights), says that part of our economic system is modeled on fascism, he means a system in which the state integrates labor and capital under corporate controls. Specific methods of top-down control varied but that’s what economic fascism always meant. Essentially, the public follows orders. People miss this connection because of more totalitarian examples of World War 2.

In an American context, the record goes back to the Civil War, but the mechanism accelerated after World War II. Charles Wilson, CEO of GE and head of the WW2 War Production Board (not to be confused with Eisenhower’s similarly inclined Secretary of Defense) promoted a "permanent war economy" of the kind that proved profitable during the war. After the war he warned that the US avoid a civilian economy, but must keep a semi-command economy geared to military production and run mostly by corporate executives. Their high-tech racket could not survive competitive free enterprise.

This war economy has an economic function opposing moves towards independent citizen development. Real people care more about hospitals and schools than about the much inflated "free market." Corporate persons instead want cheap access to resources for the a state-supported business sector. The incomparable military force is needed to constrain rivals It is a crucial mechanism of foreign policy planning because most of the "new economy" hides behind military cover. The idea is to socialize cost and corporatize profit.

Electronics (generally telecommunications, computers, the Internet), controlled machine tools, aeronautics industry, containerization, medicine, and many more; all rely heavily on government research and development. Corporate economists like to boast of a great entrepreneurial spirit and consumer freedom to access markets but that is more true in late stages of the product cycle. Fascist systems, aside from aspects of Nazi genocide. have always existed alongside other political systems. Even communism contains obvious aspects of corporatism. Investors or owners, including banks or pension funds, may share power.

By looking at for-profit corporations, emotion diminishes and we can see how their totalitarian power flows, which is from top directors to managers to supervisors, to a production floor, mailroom, sales force, etc Employees can appeal to some limited government protection or try to disrupt this power but that was also true of slaves. As owners and investors, they can seek a role in the chain of command or gain some wealth in exchange for renting part of their labor to the corporation. As consumers, they can refuse a product or service. Citizens seek legal regulation or taxes but there’s no real control from the bottom up. For about 120 years, America has been subjugated by large corporations.

Most thinking citizens know it. Even external polls in the business press show that 74 to 82% of the people think that corporations are too powerful. Internally giant corporations are as authoritarian as the political institutions of that description. In this century, the proper issue for concern is corporatism more than globalism. To recognize key distinctions, we will look at Italian Fascism (imperial Japan’s the zaibatsu would have done as well). Weaker countries also participate in the system through existing corporations. For example, China uses the leverage of corporations that do business in Japan or America to bribe public officials in both countries to subvert their Constitutions.

European aristocrats invented corporatism mainly as a way to get money for their wars. It originated from the Guild system as a mechanism for selling monopolies. They originally measured and certified (or stamped) particular products with royally approved seals. In terms of corporate orientation, the first large international organization was a company of Merchant Adventurers, formed in 1505. There were about a dozen such British creations during America’s colonial formation ending with the South Seas Company (1711). Most of them failed but one was wildly successful and the East India Company became the pattern for what is now the joint-stock company. It controlled much of England in the nineteenth century. In contrast, at the time Germany had over 200 kingdoms.

They varied in size and often ran like family corporations. In this national context, the form came to England with the House of Hanover (alias Brunswick) after Queen Anne. It originated with Sophia, daughter of James I of England (Elizabeth) and a German elector (Frederick V). She married Ernst Augustus (1629-98) in 1658 and her son George-Louis (1660-1727) replaced Queen Anne (last of Stuarts) in 1714 as George I. The new aristocracy based exploitation on corporate strength and adapted international forms to serve its need. The Anglo-Hanoverian aristocracy soon tried to exploit America.

(White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs is more properly WAHs. The Saxon part of Germany had caused similar problems, but that was in Central Europe where Prussian and Saxon attitudes towards Poland compared to Anglo-Hanoverian attitudes towards Ireland. Aside from particular sects such Calvinism, protestants were not generally malevolent to democracy and most of them clearly prefer the New Testament over the Old.)

By 1765, American self-rule had outgrown such royal charters. Since most Americans were not British born, what loyalty they might have felt to royalty was traditional and a love for Hanoverians was even less likely. The rebellion, largely completed in 1775, was directed against an overbearing government that was intertwined with the East India Company. The economic interest of American merchants inspired the dumping of tons of East India tea (1773). More eloquent political aspects, which were true enough for common Americans, inspired the war for independence (achieved by 1781).

The revolution and war needed merchant support and France provided major financing. Later arrivals here had different views than those who fought for America before 1787. The rebuilt merchant class kept some reverence towards royal institutions because even those opposed to Hanoverians had to acknowledge its relative power at the time.

The lineage continued from George II to IV, through William IV (l830-37) and long-lived niece Victoria (1819-1901). It renamed itself as the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1901 and continued with Edward VII (1901-10), George V (1911-36), Edward VIII (abdicated), George VI (1937-52), and Elizabeth II (1952-present) who, if a man, could have been called King George VII. Queen Victoria was daughter to George III’s son (Edward).

Her mother was Victoria Maria-Louisa daughter to the Duke Saxe-Coburg. She married Albert, son of another Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Ernst I (1784-1844). That line went to Ernst II (1844-93), Alfred (1893-1900), and Charles Edward (abdicated 1918). The descent traces back to the older Germanic Wettin and Welf dynasties (with Guelphi in Italy).

To disguise its roots in England, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was changed to Windsor (1917) but the holdings in Hanover and Brunswick-Lueneberg kept them anchored to Germany. For example, the Treaty of Paris (1783), ending the Independence War, specifically recognized George III as a Duke of Brunswick. His relative, Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, grabbed Holland in 1787 but was repulsed from Paris (Valmy, 1792) and died at Auerstedt (1806).

The son Friedrich Wilhelm escaped Napoleonic Europe to England and died near Waterloo (1815). A cruel son, Karl II (1823-30) had to be forced into Swiss retirement by brother Wilhelm. Then the rule passed to the reactionary Duke of Cumberland, Ernst Augustus (brother of William IV). As George V (1851-66) he lost Hanover for siding with Austria in the Seven Weeks War but Prussia allowed his grandson to return. The grandson kept Brunswick (1913 to 1918 abdication). Ferdinand I, son of Prince August (of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) was also King of Bulgaria (1908-18) before abdicating to his son Boris. Ferdinand I retired to Coburg. The first north German Nazi Ortsgruppe "Hannover" was founded in 1921 and a "Coburg award" was given to prominent Nazis.

Do such connections explain why imperial Britain was especially forgiving to Nazi war criminals? Its efforts at the denazification promptly became a farce. Churchill reversed wartime promises to punish the Nazi crimes and proclaimed changes in October 1948:

Its understandable that pirates would want the past forgotten. In fact, Churchill’s ancestors had been closely associated with the Hanoverian tribe since it took over Great Britain but is not our interest here. Nazi amnesty may be studied in The Pledge Betrayed by Thomas M. Bower (originally Blind Eye-to Murder, 1981). Our concern is more with the reasons for Anglo-American collaboration in the context of plundering capitalism.

American robber barons did not use the formal titles of European aristocrats. This country’s imperial corporate system started in the Gilded Age and its fascism has softer financial links to enforced traditions (such as their weights & measures). The Hanoverian national interest to control parts of the United States was explained by Cecil J. Rhodes (1853-1902) as a "cherished" solution for the United Kingdom’s problem:

He consolidated the diamond mines around Kimberly into the De Beers corporation. Using a strategy of "home-rule" he aimed at imposing British imperial control over South African republics. Despite a short political exile into Rhodesia (1896-98), he eventually succeeded in this after a Boer War. He left £6,000,000 to endow 170 scholarships from the British Empire, Germany, and the United States.

Because royal corporate charters (Ltd., not Inc.) revert to the Crown, Hanoverians became prominent owners of American land. British money routinely influences US politicians. Since the Commonwealth has twice as much land as the US, it does not need new territory. These holdings instead protect ideals of home rule and property rights in States. In that way they maintain what Rhodes’s saw as new markets. Despite legal appearances, the two systems are incompatible because Britain lacks a written constitution.

Some Commonwealth citizens claim that constitutions exist but, on closer inspection, these are exposed as grants from the aristocracy such as the Magna Carta, or various Acts generated by a local Parliament. (Bet them to produce a document of the people. They can’t.) England had a chance to get one under Cromwell but instead descended into religious wars that led to a foreign dynasty and an empire that imposed economic dependence. (In this context, see Kevin Phillip’s American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.) Even when a potential colony did not want imperial goods, there were ways of breaking into a country by various economic crimes.

Their Opium War on China (1856-58) is one example. Laws to force the importation of drugs (including caffeine) were sought because these lead other goods in profit margin. A loose legal system eases such imposition. Part of the intent is to also to keep illicit substances in the hands of a ruling class to control others. A similar system was imposed on the United States by the Harrison Tax Act of 1914 that culminated 15 years of effort to ensure corporate control over similar drugs. It was partly aimed at Negroes who relied on cocaine as an inexpensive medicine. Many of the addicts soon went to prison.

The destruction of manufacturing in colonial India from 1750 to 1880 is well known. For a time the East India Company had the largest army in the world and the international manufacturing potential of England rose almost inversely to 1880 (from about 4% to over 20%) to that of India because of such plunder. The brutality of such free-market systems was well-known by target groups, as with the Irish potato famine. It continued into World War 2. The Bengal famine of autumn 1943 is another example of this "efficiency."

It deserves a few words. India’s food supply at that time was not unusually low but there was a regional rice crop failure. Fear about colonial insurrection (Free India joined Japan in Singapore, 21 Oct.) and manipulative speculation raised food prices. Churchill, immune to popular outrage, thus allowed "free market" murder of five million Indian civilians. (A good study on this is by Nobel prizewinner Amartya Sen in Poverty and Famine.)

Since they introduced slavery here, the British would have preferred Confederate victory but made do with the Union to infiltrate the first military-industrial complex to America during the Civil War. In World War 2, the Hanoverians bombed civilians as promptly as their German cousins. This country adopted the brutish British policy from 1943. As a more recent example of the unconstitutional (Art. I, Sec.8, last par.) "special relationship," we may recall that Queen Elizabeth II knighted Norman Schwarzkopf (Miami, 1991), son of a chief-of-police (consultant, 1948) to occupied Iran. She did the same for Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (Sept. 2002). Unfortunately, aristocracy leads to fascism.

Colonial brutality is close behind. This global elite controls the handful of major newspapers by hiring like-minded editors to orchestrate daily programs. They can inflate a war in the Middle East or elsewhere. By seizing most of the public airwaves, the corporate messages get wide and, perhaps more important, repetitive play. The media oligopoly can squash unwelcome books and promote those found useful. Fortunately publishers can penetrate this barrier and even out-of-print books can be located. A new war is developing throughout the Internet, wherein the global aristocracy is attempting to silence and discredit the many voices of truth. The National Defense University is already developing places to create a Department of Information Warfare, similar to an unconstitutional Air Force or National Security Agency, in order to dominate the global flow of truth.

Just as royal privateers were often more than mere pirates, modern piratezation is more than mere corporatization. The old boys will continue chasing oil in the footsteps of imperial Britain. Such connections won’t get emphasis in corporate media even when foreign vengeance forms against our country. In their "might makes right" game, they will plunder one country after another, even if it threatens survival of the species.

One difference between Nazism and Fascism is that Italy (Japan, Bulgaria, Romania, etc.) was a monarchy. The officer corps and police were sworn to a king who decided when to surrender. Such facts are kept quiet because of a special-relationship to Britain with its own emperor. All fascist regimes were militaristic but racism, much less genocide, was not essential to their imperial design Fascists approved social robbery but not the added brutality of planning racial murder in a psychotic struggle for genetically pure nationalism.

The Nazi elites who upheld bizarre racial ideas often calculated on diverting from their own blame for World War I defeat but this section is not about blaming Germans for this racism. We need to look at the fact that wars are started in the name of the people and racial killing was one category of murder among a broader fascist concept that people are and expendable commodity of the state. According to Mussolini, Fascism is the elder brother in this family of "corporatism" and should more "appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."

In his autobiography (p.280-281), he says:

This biased version of Mussolini’s life was promoted by US ambassador Richard Child. He wrote the foreword with "deep affection" for the tyrant who he applauds as "now the greatest figure of this sphere and time.". The book was not a racist document and, as late as 1938, there were 10,000 Jewish Fascist Party members in Italy. The remarkable speed with which Italy was accepted into the North Atlantic pact is a tribute to its ancient diplomatic skills and to the value placed on its geography and religious power. The philosophy of Mussolini logically extends back through Sorel to Machiavelli.

Its American connection is also understandable. Americans don’t automatically think of corporate tyranny when they see giant business because the managers of public chatter can keep words meaningless. For example, our tax code allows almost anyone to become a corporation and it can refer to partnerships, sole proprietorships, and near-socialist nonprofit institutions. In terms of its classic definition, fascism properly refers to national corporations and "governmented" ones such as the Federal Reserve. The big con comes because true "government" of the people has no right to inflict corporations on the people.

From the perspective below, corporatism also includes national associations that control more annual revenue than nations or a small U.S. state, like Wyoming, where votes now count three times as much as in real states. Smaller associations, like unions, can’t dominate and are therefore less sinister than interlocking boards of business directors. At the same time, under the illusion of democracy, unions are a necessary part of corporatism.

Giant pension funds from such unions use the stock market to seek profit so their money helps old boys stay really rich. Such associations are also unconstitutional because they exclude non-members from full citizenship and undermine annual election. It only takes compliance from a few key industries (lawyers, teachers, transportation, communications, medicine) to dominate the whole society. Once the greater evil is defeated, we can hope that members of these groups and their families will recognize this similarity to the more specific corporate form that was documented in Mussolini’s Italy.

Compared to 100 countries, some 400 corporations each gross over $13 billion income a year. Right now almost 40% of the top 200 corporations are American, which is more than in any other country but will drop as the dollar loses value. Most of them are not good citizens. They oppose fair trade and earn money the old fashioned way: they steal it outside a written law. The obvious solution—especially for a country that was built on fighting corporate charters—is to treat such stealing as a form of piracy. Countries like England and Prussia, however, have traditionally protected their privateers.

The classical roots of what Benito Mussolini called corporatism go to the Roman Republic (before 90 BC) where the fascio bundle symbolized state justice. Various community "groupings" adapted its benign form. At the end of World War I, a malevolent fascio di combattimento (literally, "combat group") mobilized cadres of war veterans to serve social elites to oppose threats of liberal revolution. The aim of these thugs was not justice but attacking so-called "subversives," mostly defined as socialists. In 1919 Mussolini formed a fascio in Milan (its 7^th member) and proved himself a loyal strikebreaker for the local aristocrats. After consulting senior industrialists, in 1922 King Victor Emmanuel III gave him control of the national government and Parliament was disbanded four years later.

Corporate plebiscites replaced contested elections. The regime shifted from conservative royalism to totalitarian militarism. As a former Socialist, Mussolini knew how to manipulate the working class. (He had been kicked out of the party for taking a $50,000 bribe in 1914.) Despite his own Marxist background, he saw that outspoken atheism and international class warfare did not fit Italian power realities so no later than 1928 (per autobiography), he adapted royal legal authority to capitalist ideology by shedding revolutionary appearance. Ultimately, he replaced the parliament with a corporate state.

The Fascist Party was purged immediately after the assumption of power and again in 1925-6. Its violence gradually meshed with traditional legal procedure. Sometimes the gangs that had attacked workers went on a government payroll or integrated into "militias" that became a Party army. The idea of a vanguard under the "sure and certain guidance" of a great leader had foundations in the sociological studies of bureaucracy by Weber and Pareto. The Bolshevik "vanguard of the proletariat" had a similar origin.

Various slogans shaped Mussolini’s charismatic image to answer post war despair. World War I had eliminated four of the major empires that dominated Europe in 1914. Italy, England, and some smaller kingdoms survived this sweep but there was pervasive confusion. Although a few monarchs preserved democracy, aristocrats feared international communism and often backed despotic nationalism. The fact that economically or politically humiliated people unite from fear of external aggression was not new. Mussolini, a proven loyal strikebreaker, was a natural royal choice among others (D’Annunzio, Balbo, Duke Grandi, etc.) to distract the national masses.

Mussolini’s cadre was similar to that of German Brown Shirts before the SS purged it in 1933 but, unlike the Nazis, Italian fascism did not go beyond hard-fisted colonialism until the war. Even then, it avoided racial brutality until after Nazi occupation in mid-1943. The Bolshevik form of dictatorship and its "shared poverty" was used as a threat but there was little danger of a widespread worker‘s revolution. Mussolini resisted class warfare by token steps to spread wealth and claims that class and religious collaboration had been historically profitable. Many fatherless families after World War I also welcomed his patriarchy. Traditions of Imperial Rome offered a unifying resonance among other Italian history, such as how the Red Shirts united Italy six decades earlier.

Although aristocrats had worked to help the Red Shirts, their cooperation with Black Shirts was different because global aristocracy cavorted with robber barons to promote a "modernist" identity. Its motivation was more reactive—in terms of preserving those in power—than assertively sharing national wealth. In practice, the exalted individualism was for an economic laissez-faire to benefit the rich. In their New World Order, the world was to be run by the rich and for the rich. The world system was already one of "corporate mercantilism" with governance by representatives of huge private institutions.

The utilitarian sense of community and ethic of self-sacrifice was disciplined towards the pinnacle of a social pyramid. The new fascist man would be more soldier than worker and more "individual" than proletarian but the prototype would "believe, obey, and struggle." Catholic institutions joined the new regime after the Lateran Accords, but atheist (before 1904) Mussolini restrained them. He called fascism: …a religion, tending to opportunistic aristocracy, that has nothing to do with Liberalism. More specific definition of Italian fascism is found in the writing of Corradini, Pareto, and Rocco (see definition section).

It did not pretend to democracy but that was historically weak in Italy as compared to militarism. Marching masses provided obvious social enforcement. Local capos and their militias beat the cadence of aristocratic tradition and marshaled people into syndicates or worker associations. The leaders sought their "place in the sun" and mobilized near-feudal servants from early childhood to struggle towards "national renovation." It idealized action, but kept the masses politically weak to serve the ruling class. The quotes that Mussolini placed into the 1932 edition of Encyclopedia Italiana denounced the possibility and utility of perpetual peace as a "harmful postulate" and said:

There was enthusiasm for cinema, sports, and other forms of circus to provide diversions from the growing state power. Before the war, parts of Italy were economically ahead of Depression America. By claiming traditions linked to ancient corporati, the new corporatism seemed to offer promise or, at least, an idea worthy of testing. Since key top officials were not fascists but businessmen and persons sworn to royal loyalty, the international community was not alarmed by a contempt for democracy. Fellow travelers, including Churchill and Hoover, complimented the accomplishment of rigid state control.

Although Mussolini tried to be a drum major more than a drummer, Italy was less disciplined than Germany. . By 1934, ceaseless propaganda and some police brutality made a positive impact on worker attitudes towards the new corporate image, even if not shown in daily practice. Strong family structures and non-rexist Catholicism dominated education. Even if upper classes didn’t want to share power with workers, global depression and growing state protectionism leveraged resistance against them. The king was voted out after the war but the election results were close. As a result the modern memory of the fascist era in Italy is more tolerant than democrats would hope.

Because the police and military were sworn to the emperor, Duce could not simply order them to his own whim. If there were a showdown even the local fascist militias would feel obligated to the king through local aristocrats, who often wore both hats. Whereas Germany and Austria went beyond fascism into malignant racism, Italian fascism began and ended by royal command. On the other hand, essential economic theories were shared among the Axis, including Japan. Thugs aren’t noted for creativity so all such systems view people as an expendable commodity. Similar attitudes existed in the United States.

This country constitutionally forbids a titled aristocracy and Americans never voted for corporatism. They would overwhelmingly reject the idea if it were fully explained. For that reason domestic fascists must disguise themselves. They quote Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations (1776), with its emphasis on the efficiency of the division of labor and "invisible hand." Serious study of such theories is rare. They advocate market capitalism but are restrained by a tradition of genuine greed. Smith’s analysis on the use of capital did not predict corporate ownership. If you simply read the text (we have), it is evident that he would have despised such capitalism. In fact, he had previously written The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) to oppose such exploitation.

Like the founders of the United States, Smith was a pre-capitalist Enlightenment figure and a friend of Benjamin Franklin. He opposed the aristocratic abuse that was routinely part of a system where power over production and commerce is monopolized by stockholders. It was legally exempt from influence by community stakeholders and manipulated by directors of other people’s money. The American roots of fascism in Hamilton’s wing of the original Federalist Party did resonate to old aristocracy.

Many royal agents had infiltrated back into the country and, as a lawyer, Hamilton was involved in helping them restore their system of paper wealth after 1783. He was outspoken on intending to imitate Britain’s political economy. In terms of foreign affairs, Hamilton had shared secret correspondence with the English ambassador, leading John Jay to negotiate a strongly pro-British treaty. It eventually led to a US Proclamation of U.S. Neutrality on 23 April 1793; two months after Britain had invaded France and a month before Poland had also been partitioned for seeking independence. Overturning the 1778 French alliance ignited anti-royalist sentiment throughout this country.

As many Americans mobilized in democratic clubs, George Washington continued to favor Federalists, which drove Jefferson to resign as Secretary of State. Under Adams, the Federalists tried leading America to war against France (1796-1799). The Sedition Act of 1798 gave aristocratic protections to politicians and tried to make it illegal to say anything scandalous against members of government; i.e., members of "either House of Congress or the President." The Democrat-Republicans rallied against this. Prominent Pennsylvanians such as Gallatin, McKean, and Muhlenberg, backed Virginia in domestic rebellions against the federalist impositions, including interpretation of the word sedition.

Under royalist influence, Adams blocked the appointment of Republican-Democrat officers to the new Army. When swept from office (1801), he tried to maintain Federalism by a mass of lame duck judicial appointments. Seeing that they would lose the Executive and Legislative branches, the Federalists cunningly created a judicial branch of government as equal to the other two. In particular, besides approving dozens of new federal judgeships, the Federalists made John Marshall a top judge. In turn, he invented Judicial Review, which gave unconstitutional legislative powers to a Supreme Court.

Also, in 1801, all six of its judges were Federalists. To stop Jefferson from changing the balance, they added a provision that the number of Supreme Court judges would drop to five in the next vacancy. Ultimately its agenda was exposed. Due to proven disloyalty in the War of 1812, the Federalist Party dissolved but its sinister legal structure remained.

Meanwhile, aristocrats continued to rule southern plantations and used Supreme Court leverage to protect slavery as in the Dred Scott decision. Things finally came to a head in 1861 when they were forced to choose between plantation and constitution. They chose the former and Lincoln called them to task. These slave owners left the Union to honestly support slavery under the cover of state’s rights. For those who still doubt that slavery was the main issue, contrast the current (original) Article VI of the US Constitution to these corresponding provisions of the 1861 Confederate Constitution:

It should be noted that, unlike the current warmonger in office, Lincoln bent over backward to avoid Civil War. As proven by his 1861 attempt at a Thirteenth Amendment that protected slavery to continue in the boundary of existing slave states, he was even willing to allow slavery. The 1865 version of the Amendment forbid slavery. The nation helped Lincoln stop dismemberment of the country but not the infiltration to follow.

Populist Huey Long warned that if fascism came to America it would be called Americanism. Unlike the fascists who dominated much of Europe before 1937, American economic royalists depend on a religious base of Calvinism (Puritan/Presbyterian) with help of an Anglican upper classes that conceal aristocratic connections. Claims of nationalism and racism generally cloak Big Business forms based on private ownership of the means of production. In theory, economic life in such systems goes on without overt governmental control through a process of economic competition and profit incentive.

As practiced, most capitalism since World War I has been international in orientation but depends on predatory government welfare that privatizes profit while socializing costs. This is obvious in the military sector but seemingly private corporations, such as Chrysler and airlines, don’t hesitate to seek taxpayer bailouts. "Work makes you free" (arbeit macht frei) expresses the attitude towards labor except that it is shown as happily sung (as when the dwarfs in Snow White march off to work) and not emblazoned on concentration camp gates. Because distressed capitalism seeks such welfare, it is easy to see why the rich would trick others to join in "self-defense" against the claims of poorer workers.

Most Socialist arguments came a century after Adam Smith and generally denied that owner-defined production appropriately measured economic merit if weighed against distributive fairness. They assigned work a high value and argued that production should be collectively owned or distributed according to vaguely defined needs of general utility through some sort of rationally planned distribution. They stress purchasing utility, which increases in the hands of the poor as compared to idle dollars in rich pockets.

Concentrated wealth is also attacked as inefficient because it gives priority to wasteful luxury over life-saving essentials. In Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867) Marx used definitions that have generally been accepted by the academic community even when they do not share a theory of class conflict. Marx saw capitalist growth as passing through successive stages. They begin when owners of large industry join those who dominate the processes of exchange. Control increasingly passes to commercial operators who extract profit without joining daily management.

The owners of large amounts of capital leave daily industry and commerce in the hands of lower managers, who Marx described in politicized terms, such as petty bourgeois. In practice, Lenin implemented later Marxism as collectivization, wherein the State took over the means of production. He saw communism as being based on dictatorship by a vanguard class. In contrast to Czarist disasters, the system worked efficiently enough to insure Soviet victory in World War 2.

Western analysts tend to ignore the fact that such "stages" are not mutually exclusive and rarely mention the fifth capitalist stage wherein a paternalistic welfare state smoothes the impact of business cycles by "make-work" employment programs and doled-out relief to diminish public outrage. This "trickle down" economy is based on corporate control of energy, communication, and transportation. It hides moral bankruptcy behind militarism.

Such capitalist forms did not exist when the Constitution was written, and even Marx could not define what such a future would look like. As admitted by Eisenhower in his Farewell Address, corporate welfare pervades the US economy. He originally planned to name it a Congressional military-industrial complex, but the last two words are sufficient. It exists alongside other systems because, unlike simple tyrannies in World War 2, a complex modern state encompasses distinct political groups. Since current Americanism tolerates global mass murder, we fear that it became a defining racket but that does not make it "military." People can be effectively killed when industry steals their resources.

American corporatism is certainly different from the version in Mussolini’s Italy and what existed here sixty years ago. Time makes a big difference but the issue of power still provides a measure. Do Americans pay more fees and "taxes" to Uncle Sam or to the new communications and oil cartels? Are creatures like Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom/MCI, and Time-Warner, just the tip of a money printing machine based on Wall Street? How about mutual fund thefts?

The powerful rich then pocket the misbegotten earnings in offshore accounts and make taxpayers suffer the inevitable losses of bankruptcy. Who is in control? Pirates have always wanted to be immune from prosecution and often seek to bribe the local police.

They want government to be a giant corporation that can hide their individual thievery as accounting errors. The bribes to politicians come from various sources. Even if they deny it, any substantial gift still adds up to a felony. Isn’t it time to recover the stolen money? Will our powerful Constitution remain a dead a letter, like that of the Weimar republic?

After the Civil War, the new aristocrats gradually seized the Republican Party. They found wage peonage more profitable than plantation slavery. Lacking the honor to publicly admit contempt for a federal Constitution, they sought and bought politicians to expand their profit. Initially black-robed lawyers helped them to secure power. Rail, steel, coal and oil barons soon worked to control state governments. The threat of these Corporate States is still less obvious than that of the Confederate Sates of America.

Now they simply rent legislators. Their tradition is based in the Hanoverian fringe of the British Commonwealth and it won’t launch overt attacks as long as this strategy keeps working. Unable to conquer (in four wars), they stooped to corrupt our politics by destroying representative democracy. Thanks to more than two hundred years of cunning infiltration (described below); their elite has imposed a central ethic that power should follow property. Excess lawyers manipulating false laws typically manage the process.

Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) was a key step in the overthrow of the America republic (Articles III: 2 & VI: 2). Federalist Supreme Court judges approved royal charters as "contracts" superior to State Law. It granted a legal status even exceeding that of British corporations (where charters remained subject to state revocation). Fortunately this awakened many states to add clauses to their charters to preserve a right of revocation. A greater travesty came in 1886, after a national lawyer association formed in 1878 to protect bad decisions. In some states, often in connection to state-rights movements, lawyers captured legislatures to emplace sovereign magistrates along a royal pattern.

The imposition pretended that judges had legal immunity beyond that of other citizens and goes back to an undemocratic aristocratic tradition. Such laws were originally required to protect judges from excess royal interference but that kind of protection is not appropriate to a democracy. Lawyers helped legislate unconstitutional laws and this country, with more than the rest of the world combined, faced a particular risk. Many are honorable, but with only enough honest work for a fourth of them, some seek money by this imposition. Others are instrumental in selling out the country to foreign lobbyists.

Most esquires violate the Constitution in 80,000 local "governments" or, more often, shield stolen property for corporations. They also like having "captive markets" offered by large prisons. Since they want to keep what they plunder, they guarantee private property, which is why they need someone like Mussolini or a National Socialist Hitler to protect it.

The Nazi term for "SS" also translates to police staff and most of the Gestapo officers were lawyers who thrived on corporate welfare by a slave state. Since the "power of a lawyer is in the uncertainty in the law" those who can use lawyers to sell their own version of the law can obviously earn great profit. For example, consider the brainwashing phrase "a person is innocent until proven guilty. Suppose you saw several known racists blatantly violating the Fourteenth Amendment by lynching a Negro. Would you presume them innocent? It was perfectly legal to treat "property" in such a brutal manner before the Civil War. The same concept is exactly what is behind the corporate obsession with private property.

The essence of the notion is that corporate rights are private and outweigh civil rights of equal access and equal protection. When corporations treat people as expendable commodities their action can be compared to lynching slaves. The example we use next section is when a corporate hospital engages in forms of euthanasia for monetary efficiency.

We can certainly presume innocence if there is reasonable doubt or no evidence but, if a crime is obvious to witnesses, then logic dictates an opposite presumption. On the other hand, we must also judge the validity of the law being violated. Can you imagine the founders passing laws to stop someone from smoking hemp? The 18^th Amendment was a similar imposition that had to be repealed by the 21^st. Making a medical problem, such as drug-use, into crime now destroys families as it enriches a paramilitary guards system.

The founders were aware of this threat and based the Constitution on juries. It specifically mentions "jury" five times and lawyers not once. The idea of esquire ("shield bearer") could also be banned as a royal title. The intent was to make the people guardians of justice, both through juries and fair representation. Now jury trials are the exception and black robed lawyers can cite for Contempt those who question their personal power. The self-serving lawyer laws and creed of greed has little to do with republican law.

Its dictatorship is closely allied to both fascism and communism. The local corporations that do business as local governments often must do the bidding of those who pay their salary, typically the local property owners. These corporate commissioners are often much like communist commissars because a few hundred giant corporations can dominate both the property and media for most of the country. Both kinds of centrally planned economies hate free markets and competition. In an 1888 address to Congress, President Cleveland warned that the "communism of combined wealth and capital:"

The American corporate welfare racket operates under various names, including Republican and Democrat. Its aryans consume an unconscionable surplus of wealth and clench the "invisible hand" of free markets into an oligarch fist to smash the national face! Nazified old boys still show gratitude to Hanoverian cousins, well aware that "Aryan" derives from the Sanskrit word for aristocrat. Since private ownership with rented labor is incompatible to freedom, it’s easy to see how robber barons won a class war.

Piracy, counterfeiting, and treason, the three crimes explicitly specified in the original Constitution are pervasive. Since corporate "privatization" usually involves piratezation (in royal privateer tradition), it fits the definition. As for counterfeiting, it is probably the most obvious because when Nixon took America off the gold standard, Wall Street and international stock markets started indirectly printing "bank-approved" currency in the form of watered stock certificates. Local authorities print various transportation passes and tokens. Banks issue credit cards. Congress has accepted these false instruments.

(See the film or book Barbarians at the Gates for how this crime was institutionalized.)

Treason is mentioned seven times but specifically limited to wartime (Art.3: 3). Al Qaeda‘s pirate attacks were an excuse for America to declare a global war and, by that standard, it is interesting that those officials who have themselves inflicted terrorism may now be accused of treason or planning sedition as defined in USC Title XVIII (@ 242 & 2385). There is a direct connection of similar treason to the rise of corporations as was noted by President Lincoln during the Civil War, which will be described in the next section.

Since the original Constitution and Bill of Rights were supplemented by seventeen amendments, a great many more crimes were added to the three that are explicitly defined. That is because added rights create reciprocal duties, which become enforceable by law. For example, many treaties were imposed onto the Constitution, which then also become law under Article VI. Those treaties dealing with the laws of war and various human rights conventions – often specify treating other humans as we wish to be treated – are now in jeopardy. Similar subversion was also part of the fall of Weimar Germany.

We can get a quick appraisal of our current danger by following the money. About 60% of total taxes are federal. State and false local governments almost equally split the rest, but this varies by person and community. For example, an aging retiree who owns a decent home, will usually pay much more in local taxes than in federal. As for expenditures, about eighteen functions consume most of the federal money and part of it returns to the State. If we exclude Social or Income Security and Medicare, however, most of the rest goes for National Defense (including 12% to Veterans) and the related Interest on the Public Debt created by excess spending. Most of that excess cash ultimately goes to corporations to enrich directors or major stockholders.

There is also the fact that these corporate institutions now pay under 7% of the total federal tax as opposed to three times as much in the 1970s. If those who have the money don’t pay the tax, then this gap must be filled by various schemes at the local level. Within the states, there are some 39,000 counties, municipalities, and townships. Besides those, there are various kinds of authorities, with 13,700 school districts being the most obvious. In theory, these regional monopolies are supposed to act within the limits of the federal and state constitution. In practice, they routinely violate both. The extortion of "taxation without representation" is the common criminal violation at all three levels.

But taxes are not a main issue here. There is little question that corporate thieves can be held accountable, just as local fellow travelers who use a corporate veil of government districts to hide banditry and bribery. The stealing at the federal level is greater but politicians are careful because, like all other citizens, they can be indicted for felonies (Art.1:6.i & 8.x) so most of the cash goes in salaries to local members of national associations and various political corporations. Such large gifts as a political contribution can still be considered bribery. The racketeering or fraud is recognized when we trace the money.

That, however, is not yet sedition. We refer to U.S. Code Title 18 sections that involve planning violent overthrow of the government. Once we accept that our system is meant to be "of the people" then the link between corporate greed and violence on citizens can be drawn in economic terms when the cold violence of mere thievery crosses to violence of inflicting physical pain. Since those in power are still too cowardly to directly engage in a mechanized killing of U.S. citizens, they instead plan to deny essential medical care at a local level, mainly by diverting a billion dollars a day to militarism on the national level.

Corporations have the capability to encourage euthanasia, which amounts to violence against citizens. Not only are one of six Americans without real health insurance but many senior citizens in HMO "Managed Medicare" plans are being denied service to bolster HMO profits. Essentially these put federal money in their pockets in exchange for "managing" - i.e., restricting - services and rewarding doctors who go-along with them. They appear generous as patients are young but tighten up as they go over 70. Patients die as health corporations show local care providers how economically more efficient it is not to prolong life. A patient’s "Bill of Rights" is a Civil Law smokescreen.

The issue here involves saving money on treating poor patients. In Nazi Germany it was a mostly a matter of eliminating politically defined inferiors. (It was no coincidence that in Nazi Germany half of the doctors were Nazi Party members or in the SS.) Under the euphemism of managed care, euthanasia is already practiced in many U.S. counties. The enforcement is typically in terms of "quality of life" wherein diagnosis is painted as "hopeless"—an opinion without therapeutic value that violates the Hippocratic oath.

Doctors often deny proper care to citizens in the last years of life but at least the elderly have some medical insurance. About one of six Americans—almost fifty million—have no coverage or can’t afford essential medicine. At least 19,000 Americans died last year because they could not afford treatment. In terms of state-inflicted terrorism, that is about six times the 9/11 attack. Unlike all other major countries, the United States still does not have universal health care and it’s not because of insufficient spending. We spend twice as much per capita on medicine as poorer nations that have national medical coverage.

Greed undermines healthcare because it’s an issue of allocating public funds and military security diverts money from medical security. How is denying one form of protection less subversive than denying another? For example, during World War I the military losses were minor compared to the 600,000 Americans who died from the flu epidemic. Now about 90,000 Americans die annually from influenza and pneumonia. If we assume that even a quarter of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and suicide are preventable with proper medical care then we could argue that more than 400,000 Americans died last year because the government failed to protect their health.

Although financial misallocation enriches weapons makers, perhaps a case could be made that military security tries to protect the entire nation. In fact, diversion to insurance or private medical providers similarly allocates more medical care to the rich. Such excess care is not always better and despite the money spent on medical care per capita, the US health system can be ranked as a failure. Of 13 countries in a 1998-1999 comparison, the US ranked an average of 2^nd from the bottom (12^th) for 16 available indicators.

The ranking was last for infant mortality and years of potential life lost (excluding external causes). It was 12^th for male life expectancy at 1^st & 15^th years (improving to 7^th for those reaching 65). This was in the Journal of the American Medical Association (26 July 2000) and later confirmed by a World Health Organization study from a broader database. The latter ranked the US 15^th among 25 industrialized countries after accounting for the violence, smoking, and drinking. (Scandinavian countries and New Zealand were considered more humane.) Given the high level and expenditure for technology (second only to Japan), what explains these low rankings?

The low US ranking is partly attributed to a quarter million deaths per year caused by complications from medical treatment! This includes physician’s activity or therapy (55%), hospital infections (30%), and various hospital errors or misallocation (15%), including 12,000 unnecessary operations. About half of the deaths were due to negative drug effects, unrelated to error. In other words, inappropriate medical care (usually in a hospital), is the third leading cause of death in the US after heart disease and cancer. The resulting iatrogenic physician-caused illness is like collateral damage by the military except that the blame is on a "medical industrial complex." It amounts to economic violence.

This form of sedition replaces "sickcare" for preventive healthcare and access to exercise facilities. Police oversight on such malpractice is a rare exception. Without justice, isn’t liberty and military security a devil’s bargain? Who needs protection and kindness more than medically helpless citizens? It’s not a case of too few medical workers but of financial misallocation. Since the number of employees per hospital bed was highest in the US, the improper care is partly attributed to a lack of necessary preventive health resources.

These operate outside of the hospital and include protection against bad prescriptions. The pharmaceutical companies are attempting to use the Federal Drug Administration to protect them against litigation and want to "socialize" the risk of their medicine, while they privatize the profits. In general corporate medicine seeks to impose a Patient Bill of Rights inferior to the actual Bill of Rights and Fourteenth Amendment. The doctors, in their powerful union (AMA) have largely gone along with this, although it is true that the power of the lawyer’s union (ABA) is a mitigating factor. The real issue should be safe care and not one of competing profit centers. Insurance companies also play a major role.

Although excessive or poorly supervised care is partially motivated by greed, let’s be clear: these are no more accidents than the collateral damage from military bombing. When the result is expected and calculated in its predicted impact, then we have a criminal intent; i.e., the risk of statistically predictable deaths has been deemed acceptable. In law, knowledge with intent is criminally culpable. This is not complicated.

The two necessities of life are food and shelter. According to the Third Amendment, the founders did not want soldiers to be quartered in a house (shelter) without the consent of the owner. There is therefore no reason to believe that any member of government - not limited to soldiers or police - should get preferential treatment over any scarce resource without consent of the owner (We the People). Healthcare is a scarce resource.

Even if medical care were less essential than food and shelter, there is no reason to believe that public servants should have better food, benefits, pensions (20-year), or healthcare access than the median amount for their employer. People are dying because scarce resources are being shifted from the need of the majority to greed of a minority. The mechanism rests on ancient and well known imperial forms of wealth transfer through printing of paper stocks and relates to forms of royal charter discussed previously.

Fortunately, except for a few limited public corporations and some colleges, such impositions remained unpopular in early America. Better than most others, Thomas Paine showed how such paper corporations (including national unions and associations), by definition, are instruments of exclusion to undermine election and government representation. The Federalist defense for their charters became increasingly convoluted and today nurtures fascism. For example, there is no measure for politician neglect that corresponds to the iatrogenic deaths caused by doctors.

We are taught to believe that simply imagining an evil foe or having good intentions is sufficient to excuse their incompetence. The myth originates with the elites who want to protect their control of power or money. The strategy is one of divide and rule based on the creation of thousands of corporations between the people and the law.

There is no punishment when the state imposes death penalties against those who are later proved innocent, or if a crazed president orders the nation’s soldiers to die in an unjust war. The aristocracy tries to stress a "voluntary" nature of property of capitalist stock ownership, which is the source of much of this power. Even if it were voluntary, this apparent freedom of its participants would not deflect from the underlying corruption of trying to impose an inferior status on their fellow citizens. In simple terms, the reason of excluding those who cannot afford property is no different than exclusion for skin color.

Even the "voluntary" nature of participating in such ownership does not translate in day-to-day control. For example, an army could enslave a nation even its recruits had "freely" volunteered. Similarly, just because local citizens can vote for or volunteer to serve on a county government or school board does not mean that these do not (essentially) steal resources from those in the community who disapproved of them. For example, the idea that a county government could maintain an economic dossier on local citizens should seem bizarre, a direct contravention of the Fourth Amendment.

Even if county governments were of equal size and tried to conform to the Fourteenth Amendment, such delegated taxation (below state level) would be problematic. As it stands these corporations are both separate and unequal. Some will try to distinguish modern corporate joint stock company from medieval forms based on royal whim. They claim it is more a creature of property than stock certificates based on royal "good will."

The difference is not significant. Old corporations also conferred unequal rights and used intangible instruments—like unreachable lands on the other side of the world—to create speculative bubbles. In either case, corporations seized the ability to print virtual money in the form of "watered" stock, unconnected to tangible assets or direct production. It also divorced the ownership of paper-holding stakeholders from the managers of tangible property. Either often voted themselves tremendous benefits as compared to fellow citizens, but at least the holders of real property were more obvious.

Theft must seem especially onerous when the item in contention is a public commodity such as mineral wealth or media bandwidth. The pirates want to treat the environment as something inherited from earlier generations, who they regard as gangsters of similar morality. In fact the earth and air are more properly viewed as having been borrowed from our children so it is not only a matter of current theft but perhaps involves future killing.

An important distinction is between private entrepreneurs and corporate forms intended to serve the citizens. Of the latter, public service corporations do have some legitimate American roots. The contrary royal form grants stockholders excess exclusive power over citizens. Fortunately, there is no constitutional provision for private corporations, which were of royal precedent. Occasionally private associations were granted a public charter by state governments for some strictly limited time and purpose. The idea of perpetual and national corporations is a highly corrupt idea that was legislated by the Supreme Court and passively accepted by Congress in exchange for bribes and forceful lobbying.

For a simple example consider the enormous wealth earned by someone like Bill Gates, He is now one of the wealthiest people in the world with more economic power than Central America. Did he earn his wealth? He would certainly have gained a great deal of money from his innovations in computer technology from the government-imposed patent system, which he had nothing to do with creating, More to our point, most of his money came the mechanism of stock manipulation and that is a corporate game unrelated to technical computer skills. He learned those gaming skills at a British chartered college that also endorses and greatly profits from such manipulation. The game allows foreign ownership and this makes the government a patron of fraud.

It has no genuine authority to issue such discriminatory charters. The crime is not only that wealth dominates the system, but also it allows such domination regardless if plunder, theft, or murder accumulated the money. Foreign exploitation was the basis of the British corporate system based on plundering colonies and, even though their empire has divested some of its less profitable holdings, their Commonwealth still depends on it.

Since fascism rests on a similar foundation, we can easily conclude that granting power by chartering corporations is a form of sedition intended to raise property above humanity. This ultimately reduces citizens to forms of an expendable commodity that can be bought and sold, even by foreign owners. Similarly, there is also no inherent public good about government corporations, even if those who created them claim otherwise.

To return to the analogy of military security, consider the very expensive and a very unconstitutional corporation now doing business as the US Air Force. As an example of wasted resources, aviation assets now consume about half the bloated military budget. It’s no coincidence that the percentage of military spending on this unconstitutional Luftwaffe now compares to Nazi levels. (Besides the Air Force, the Army, Navy, and Marines also maintain their own air forces.) We should recall that that the creation of a separate Luftwaffe under Hitler’s top lieutenant (Göring, was also former head of the Gestapo) led the Nazi slide from the Weimar Constitution. It also consumed about half the military budget.

This was a major change in previous German and American government structure. Even if a separate Air Force were needed, in contrast to the two legally defined branches (Army and Navy) in the US Constitution, the Air Force was created by Truman’s decree. There was no proven need for such a branch based on World War 2 experience when the Air Force was part of the Army. Just because corporate leaders admired the Royal Air Force (RAF), or its Italian or Nazi counterparts, did not permit Truman to create one.

(Besides an inherent popular hatred for Germany, one reason that Italy did so poorly was that creating its separate Air Force seriously weakened its Army and Navy’s direct access to expensive aviation assets. For example, it repeatedly lost entire convoys to Africa.)

A similar concern applies to a Marine Corps and its 4-star general. It was intended mainly as a police force for the Navy. What if John Adams (2^nd President) decided that he wanted an Imperial Guard branch like a Hanoverian or Prussian king. He could not have created such a branch by decree nor could Congress have given him such a right because it also lacks such authority under the Constitution. Either change, for cost reasons alone, warrant a formal amendment and demands annual approval. If the Marines had instead remained under a Navy Admiral, then their status on the Joint Staff (itself a problematic creature) would at least be legal and would not outweigh the numerically larger Army.

The CIA and several other agencies are also unconstitutional, as is part of the recent Patriot Act, including a Department of Homeland Security. Such paramilitary organizations evolve into a Ministry of the Interior essential to fascist countries. When added to the growing number of concentration camp guards (euphemistically called prison "correction officers"), it compares to the creation the Police Staff (SS) in Nazi Germany. Like the separate Air Force, the SS devastated the Weimar Constitution just as these developments violate ours. To the extent that so-called representatives use public money to fund these outlaw operations, they are stealing. ("So-called" because as noted above Republicans destroyed the true and reasonable representation in 1890 and 1921.)

After the war corporate directors controlled much of the global war economy and they knew where the easy-money was. During the early Cold War they kept militarism at about 10% of the National Product and built war planning into American national policy. They saw little need to enlist national support for their global plunder. Fortunately, the Cold War fraud was exposed when Central Europe and a Pope decided not to play. Now the old boys prefer to hide their violence in other countries. The actions of America in Vietnam, Panama, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, now deserve careful accountability.

The above paragraphs have partly clarified the cold violence caused by financial diversions against citizens and some specific war crime indictments are examined below. Once citizens learn of the problem and realize that governing is rightfully their job then they assume part of the blame. Silence can also be seditious.

In Rauschning’s The Voice of Destruction: Hitler Speaks, Hitler is said to proclaim a new order opposed to the Ten Commandments with a social structure based on a battle-tested master (Herren) class. It was to form a hierarchy of party members (politicians, diplomats, media, teachers, writers, actors, etc.) as a new middle class, above an eternally disenfranchised anonymous serving collective of about 80% to be based on "…the modern slave class [of subject alien races]. And over all these will stand a new high aristocracy…"

Seem familiar? Truman and Eisenhower formed a corporate party of similar social alignments. For example, one measure of this is in their failure to achieve the goals of American victory in World War II. Facing certain defeat, some Germans tried to depose Hitler on 20 July 1944 but American leaders refused to support such specific efforts, and this prolonged the war. After the war, there is ample evidence to show how our leaders joined with former criminals and endorsed some of their policies. The most obvious is in the murdering of civilians by bombing.

After a few years of hiding in other countries, both fascists and Nazis infiltrated the United States in large numbers to further undermine democracy. The original U.S. national aims were repeatedly announced in an Atlantic Charter but this was reversed in January 1943 by decree to "unconditional surrender," which was announced after German defeat was obvious. Both Eisenhower and Truman supported this arbitrary change.

After that, unconditional surrender led to unlimited war. Why isn’t that common knowledge that bombing and imposed starvation were part of a Nazi killing machine? Such a change in policy betrayed America because it contradicted the democratic "Four Freedoms" for which America had gone to war in 1941.

The arbitrary continuation of the conflict in an undeclared Cold War was calculated to further entrench the military industrial complex. This seditious act was loosely based on a "long telegram " (22 February 1946) by American diplomat George Kennan from his Moscow post to the Secretary of State. He compressed an intricate and delicate analysis of the international environment into a brief five-part examination (roughly: 1. Basic features of post-war Soviet outlook, 2. Its background, 3. Its projection in practical official policy, 4. Its unofficial projection, and 5. Practical deductions from US policy standpoint).

The old boys seized on this to promote a military confrontation rather than the economic and diplomatic Containment that Kennan advocated. These policies have now left the United States with a debt of seven trillion dollars. As the dollar plummets against the Euro, the world remains at a nuclear precipice. Militarists started looking for another "Long Telegram" and professors at the National Defense University suggest that their notion of Connectivity should replace Containment!

This would allow the corporate elite to spread its own unique version of the truth and more efficiently manipulate the resources of the Third World. This plan goes as far as suggesting a new military branch for Information Warfare that would stand alongside an equally unconstitutional Space Command. Marine Corps, and Air Force. Meanwhile, militarists seem content with a policy of perpetual war suggested by a global War on Terrorism. They know that this fiction can’t last because terrorism is a major charge against their corporate state with a trail of evidence that winds back to 1943.

Aristocrats have traditionally robbed the national treasury and they are just one component of a corporate state interested in diverting fraud investigations; like the one for the 2004 election. Some 1000 US corporations controlled half the American economy in 1943. It was the FORTUNE 500 in the 1950’s. By 2000, the top 150 controlled half the Gross National Product and now the top 50 earn twice as much as the 50 state governments. A dozen manipulate a third of the country. The current oligarchs will rationalize, demonize, victimize, and do almost anything as we let them to keep power. Some don’t even fear the Second Amendment, and its protection for automatic weapons.

Beyond sedition, the most obvious charge against politicians and lawyers who divert resources is piracy (Constitution, Art. I, sect. 8, para.10). Corporations, foreign in both form and substance, are weapons of plunder. It’s as if highwaymen demanded tribute from travelers using a public road. Maybe we can approach gangsters with candles and peace vigils, but wouldn’t it be wise to provide for enough violence to put on the handcuffs.

How about: "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal"? This phrase originated in the 1568 English translation of De Optimo Senatore by W. Goslicki, chancellor of a Polish realm that was then twice the size of England and Spain combined. In the next century a similar idea provoked Cromwell’s Civil War that temporarily checked royal growth. The words appeared again in our Declaration of Independence.

The US Civil War and 14^th Amendment finally made equal protection part of the Constitution. At that point the idea seriously threatened global aristocracy. So, having failed in three wars, aristocrats joined to increase infiltration of American institutions. By 1896 the northern fascists joined with the southern racists. Their various big lies are included below in a list of charges against the corporate state. Moneyed media, backed by a growing prison system and dead-end schools, manage to camouflage the betrayal of justice.

This situation is revealed by insights from the fall of German democracy. Pastor Martin Niemöller, ordained 1924, had irritated the Nazis with protests in the 1930’s. As a highly decorated World War I U-boat officer he had a chance to escape Hitler. Instead he stayed to be imprisoned. He is most famous for the following quote:

When asked about his decision at Dachau, he explained it by quoting from a German poem that said:

We suggest here that both Truman and Eisenhower forgot what is right and promoted corporate concentration to expand a tribal "special relationship" with the Hanoverians in a global legal system based on the Imperial (alias Commonwealth) pattern. Both of them diverted national outrage about the past scope of Nazi evil to deny proper investigation. Both either failed to expose or told big lies (see Hitler’s opinion, below). Such liars often claim that they are spreading "greater truths," even when they do it with public money. If we uncover specific lies it immediately implicates them in fraud for which they can be specifically charged and, hopefully, discredited. Each big lie deserves an indictment.

Is plunder or military greed a reason for such lies, as with the Nazis? Is the mass murder involved in planning the nuclear destruction of nations less evil than Nazi genocide? If innocent victims are murdered because of nationality, then how is it not genocide? Does the mechanism (gas chamber, starvation, bombing) make a real difference to the victims? Consider that even one Trident submarine carries destructive power equivalent to 300 Chernobyl’s and can destroy any nation on earth. Aren’t US politicians hired mainly to enact a Constitution? Who gave them "law-making" authority to approve genocide? We can probably trace the development to two "big deals" to landmark the new fascism.

One deal started as several "bad-behaved" judges legislated corporations into law (Santa Clara v. Southern RR, 1886) and gave them the protection of living persons. Rather than eliminating slavery, the 13^th Amendment has instead been use to create it within prison Gulags (The word slavery did not even appear in the Constitution before the Civil War because it was so shameful). Although meant for former slaves, Justice Hugo Black observed that in the fifty years after it was adopted the "equal protection" of the 14^th Amendment was used fifty times more often for corporations than for Negroes and half the time it was applied to causes of business and labor. Corporate personhood is a legal fiction that property is human just like slavery is a legal fiction that humans are property.

The second betrayal was Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) when the Supreme Court formally made Negroes inferior citizens. It could not reduce them back to property but it did allow white people, especially those with property, to rule over them. National policy thereafter encompassed three different classes of citizenship - corporate, white, and colored. In both deals, tyrannical justice can be traced to "judicial review" and Congressional indifference.

How many devils can dance on the point of the current political pyramid? A global nomenclatura of a few thousand corporatists control the shadow state. They are mostly male, rich, and often arrogantly aloof from moral restraint. Not more than 500 hundred families control half of the global wealth and the top three have more money than the 48 poorest countries combined. Besides the other wealth of the top 200 richest people, their income doubled (to over a trillion $s) in the four recent years of stock price inflation. It is now much more than the combined annual income of half the world’s population.

To rationalize their tight hold power in this country, large property holders assert that they can bypass democracy because "Those who own the country should run it." This arrogance can be traced to Blackstone’s (Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765) definition of property as:

The French Civil Code, following Roman law, expresses a caveat on the above view of property:

The royal "freedom to contract" ignores American tradition because one of the contracting parties is unlawful. In an American context "chartered" legitimacy is low because corporate forms, typified by royal charters, like that of Virginia, were swept out in two wars (1776 & 1812). For example, see the sixteen exceptions in Virginia Declaration of Rights (12 June 1776) to its original charter (of 10 April 1606). The first Virginia Company lost its charter (1624) for evidence of gross brutality. It was directly under the king.

Serious efforts to eject royal control by uniting the colonies can be traced to Benjamin Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union, which did not pass (1755). Full liberation began with the 1765 Declaration of Rights after imperial Britain tried to levy a Stamp Act tax. As now, taxation then was a major issue. In point 3, the assembled colonies declared:

There were a dozen similar points and item 7 referred to the right of a trial by jury. Rather than granting representation, the Parliament was cunning enough to repeal the Stamp Act in March of 1766. They kept chipping away at this proclamation of rights until things finally came to a head ten years later. The American Revolution started with a Declaration of the causes and necessity of taking up arms, (July 6, 1775), which a number of powerful points against the "legislature of Great-Britain," such as how it was:

Most Hanoverian troops were expelled from America within 6 months. Meanwhile Thomas Paine promoted Independence and it was formally approved on 2 July 1776 (declared 2 days later). A War of Independence almost secured freedom by the Treaty of Paris (1783), except that Britain would not leave the West. The country again faced imperial Britain in the War of 1812, with the Louisiana territory in the balance. Fortunately, we were still indirectly allied with France and Poland, who opposed the Hanoverians.

Since neither corporation nor lawyer is in the Constitution, their obvious impositions should be shocking. How did royalty sneak back in? In many cases they barely left. By 1785, Loyalist concentrations were rebuilt in New York City and southern plantations occupied during the War for Independence. Their editors actively supported Federalist allies. For example, a former British Army corporal operated The Porcupine in 1792, in Philadelphia. He boasted that he was pleased to perform his duty as an English citizen when his Federalist rag defamed prominent patriots such as Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Paine. Federalists lobbied to get America into a war against the French.

As former Tories infiltrated back to New York City (itself a product of royal charters) Hamilton helped promote paper wealth through the sale of stock. That mechanism was a viable option only for the male minority with extra wealth. Ultimately, Hamilton headed a "paper aristocracy" and managed to protect the corporate institution. Jefferson saw the threat of this moneyed interest, who: "…bid defiance to the laws of our nation."

His friend Thomas Paine, in writings such as Rights of Man and Dissertation on First Principles of Government, warned more powerfully against this obscene control of wealth. A private business requires a government charter to become a proper corporation and this power had been debated at the Constitutional convention and not entire rejected. As the 1787 Constitution took effect, however, there were fewer than ten significant corporations in the United States. Unlike the European exploiters, they were all economic structures such as banks with clearly delineated responsibilities. Not everything pro-royalist was inherently evil, but control of corporate structures by a social elite was comparable to the earlier tyranny and could not fit with the idea of a democratic republic.

Some southern states wanted a right to grant charters to chattel slave plantations, which mainly subsidized Britain’s textile industry. They continued to protect human bondage in direct contradiction to the Declaration of Independence. In general the corporate idea remained acceptable for narrow public purposes and not for abusing people. The model of the East India Company’s exploitation of India also caused great feat. Anyway, the national government was initially denied the power to issue such charters. The reversal of this policy can be directly traced to the destruction of democracy.

After the first apportionment in 1791 there were 95 Congressmen for 3.9 million people. If America had the overall rate of representation then as it does now, there would have been 7 Congressmen or, assuming the House/Senate division, then there would be 42 (about 92,000 to 1). The mathematical point at which democracy ends is uncertain, but there is no doubt that the founders considered 42 (or 7) too low. When Jefferson became president and with the Seventh Congress (first session, 7 December 1801 to 3 May 1802), there where 148 Congressmen (32 senators, 106 representatives) based on the second census in 1800 (5.3 million). The Democracy ratio was about 36,000 to 1.

Representation has been slashed by about 90% since 1791. From about 40,000 to 1, it collapsed to about 1 to 550,000 (535 per 294 million) and continues to fall daily. In addition to the established ratio of representation prior to 1800, the originally proposed First Amendment of a dozen in a Bill of Rights had documented this to confirm the representation ratios in the body of the Constitution (Article I). That First Amendment was defeated in a close vote by South Carolina. Since the other amendment that was not originally passed with the Bill of Rights recently became law (as the 27^th Amendment), there is still hope for this other to restore democracy. First the obstacles must be removed.

The greatest of them is corporate tyranny. The question should have been settled by the Civil War but foreign stock systems soon dwarfed the government institutions created to regulate them. It proved impossible to stop the peon-making corporations that eventually replaced the slave plantations. Their peonage, as in sharecropping or child labor, also outlined the form of early industrialism. One reason that this subversion succeeded is that the Constitution was written when communication was more circumspect and elected gentlemen were not considered capable of blatant evil. For example, when Jefferson named variants of political parties (see Overview), his "appellation of aristocrats and democrats" did not include tyrants as worthy of separate distinction as a political party.

There was certainly a "pirate" wing in the patrician class. It was well described by Thomas Paine even though the Declaration of Independence focused instead on a specific individual. Piracy was also one of three crimes specifically named by the 1787 Constitution. The term could easily have applied to individuals who had contempt for democracy and brutalized slaves and native Americans to the point of death. If either of these crimes had been given overemphasis in 1787, however, there would have been no Constitution.

The greed for land and rise of militarism during the Mexican-American War could probably mark the start of American fascism but until the Civil War the system of granting charters had been largely successful as a method for restricting corporate arrogance. The cartels that fed the Civil War made the base firmer. The business structures that followed thus grew from our first "military-industrial complex." President Lincoln warned of the danger in a letter to an Army officer (Col. Elkins on 21 Nov. 1864):

Popular sentiment was also against excesses such as those of British East India Company in South Asia, especially after chartered banks provoked the financial panics of 1837 and 1857. Before the Civil War, corporations had to limit operations to the business specified in the charter and annual reports were presented in a town-meeting atmosphere, especially in the case of land ownership. Those charters also insured public access to business records, which made creative accounting unlikely. Every few years (almost never more than twenty) the charter had to be renewed. The landmark event in reversing this history was creation of Western Union as the first national corporation.

It arose within a year after Lincoln died and democracy has been downhill ever since.

The machinations of Tom Scott, an executive of the Pennsylvania Railroad, laid the groundwork for his powerful position in northeast politics as a transportation officer during the Civil War. He used his credentials to forge nationwide communications and railroad networks. The massive administrative bureaucracy associated with both had developed in Europe during its contemporary wars (kartell is of Prussian origin) and Scott adapted as similar holding company as a device to overcome the limits of state control.

Scott essentially bribed the Pennsylvania legislature to ease such restrictions and was allowed to own stock in other companies and, with joint holdings of even less 51%, could select directors to control businesses around the country. During the Civil War, after imperial Britain infiltrated about 20,000 technical personnel to build rail and telegraph lines, the national monopoly followed in 1866. Even after explicit connections to a national military organization was discarded, many individual American corporations remained large enough to act as cartels in the specific markets of their choosing.

We can trace one reactionary seed to the four slave states that did not join the Confederacy (especially Delaware & Maryland). The instrument of a "Delaware corporation" is now commonly used to spread forms of corporate peonage. Johnson, Lincoln’s corrupt vice-president from a Confederate state, also helped the corpferate cause. After replacing Lincoln, President Johnson promptly restored power to former Confederate leaders.

This led to his impeachment, but not before the sinister seed had been replanted in areas where Reconstruction had not taken hold. European aristocracy, especially the Hanoverians, aided and abetted the South to pursue objectives from 1776 and 1812; unable to conquer they stooped to corrupt. Imperial Britain, rebuffed from aiding the Confederacy in the Civil War, continued to intervene in our politics with wealth plundered from Africa. It found sympathy for its colonial ways in the racist South and, in some ways, including easy re-supply from outside, Florida and Texas remained the last bastions of the Confederacy.

The Western Union model was obvious in the North. Charles F. Adams (1807-88, son of John Quincy) had been minister to England during the Civil War and afterwards. One of sons of the same name benefited from the railroad connections that this inspired and rose to be president of the Union Pacific Railroad (1884) until displaced by Jay Gould (1890). His other son Henry B. (1838-1918) was a Harvard professor who warned (1870):

In the 1876 election, Tom Scott was able to conspire with the electors from southern states and Supreme Court judges to emplace Rutherford Hayes over the popularly elected Tilden. As in Europe, telegraphy logically belonged under a postal system, so keeping it private took legal deals, which Hayes approved. The Hanoverian and Dutch cousins of Prussia, having quickly grasped the cartel concept, eagerly invested in similar creations.

This secondary form of colonialism soon appeared around the world and was the root of corporate globalism. The great Scott was a villain of American history because he released corporations and trusts from state supervision. Within a few years of his death (1881), trusts and holding companies often changed shape to avoid public scrutiny. Legalism distinguishes cartels, trusts, and business holding conglomerates from each other.

We need not closely examine those differences here except to note that, in practice, they are all hostile to democracy or liberalism. The words of a later American essayist (Broun) define a fascist government as one "run by a small group of large industrialists and financial lords." In theory, as a structure openly seeking to impose such a cruel control, cartels were made illegal in the United States from about 1890. In practice, they moved offshore and today many corporations have enough wealth to buy entire countries.

They act as agreements among independent business firms to exercise monopoly power in regards to mutually specified markets. Soon after the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court deviously empowered "corporate persons" under the 14^th and 15^th Amendments, the new "citizens" became as powerful as governments. For example, by 1891 the Pennsylvania Railroad rivaled British counterparts. It employed over 110,000 workers and was larger than the US military (40,000) or the patronage-based US postal system (96,000). Even at the time, the corruption of such trusts was well known. Nothing in the Constitution allowed them.

It was even more preposterous that one corporation could own others. In Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894) Henry Lloyd denounced both laissez-faire economics and Spencer’s Darwinism (c. 1890) as applied to such politics. He noted of Standard Oil that:

Many Americans resisted but lacked resources. A major railroad strike (1877) was violently quelled using federal troops; dozens were killed. National Guard armories were entrenched locally mainly to secure corporate assets. To quiet southern opposition, Scott gave members of the Ku Klux Klan positions on the railroad staff. This helped return former Confederates to government and they, in turn, forced the passage of the Supreme Court’s decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) that institutionalized racism.

Corporations became so powerful that the Sherman Antitrust Act was routinely being invoked against labor unions. The courts issued injunctions against unions thousands of times. Corporations liked it because it avoided messy trials with the risk of unfavorable jury decisions. At worst they would compromise with Union chiefs, who themselves were often less than paragons of democratic virtue. Judges could also exercise royal prerogatives such as issuing contempt decrees against labor, literally in aristocratic tradition.

Until the Civil War there were often stringent limits about how much investment one corporation could control. In Pennsylvania it was $500,000 until 1863. It was raised to $5,000,000 and soon other states reached the 5 million mark (Arizona 1864, New York 1881, Michigan 1885). Maine went to 10 million in 1891. By 1903, New Jersey became home to most (over 70%) large US corporations, those with assets over $25 million.

As New Jersey tried to impose control ten years later, power center shifted to Delaware. Lincoln Steffens called New Jersey a traitor state, an appellation that now also applies to Delaware, which has so few people that it doesn’t worry about imposing many taxes.

The tradition of corporate rule and its Silver Shirts can also be traced to the Gilded Age and the rapid rise of a New York police commissar named Theodore Roosevelt. His role in defining a corporatized state, imposition of imperial conquest, cooperation with royalty (one son was a British officer), and misdirected business regulation, all broke with traditional egalitarian values. He entrenched corporate power while keeping some democratic forms and later talked about restricting it. In the decade preceding 1903, the value of publicly traded firms increased about 200-fold, from fifty million to seven billion dollars.

His apparent pangs of conscience later led to a Progressive Party, which helped in Wilson’s Democratic victory by splitting opposition. Unfortunately the robber barons rallied after World War I and, unless the word has no meaning, democracy ended in America. People can disagree on the number of people needed to provide representative democracy, but it is far more than the 535 of Congress. We would argue that the Constitution’s promise of "equal suffrage" (Article V) and "equal protection" (Fourteenth Amendment) ended when Republican administrations criminally diluted representation in 1890 and 1920-21.

How was democracy dismantled? Fortunately this is no mystery. The process was obvious with the addition of more than a dozen sparsely populated states (six in 1890 alone). It devastated the ideal of "one person, one vote" and entrenched a reactionary aristocracy, worse than the British House of Lords. The 18 states admitted since 1859 (11% of the people) are mostly over-represented. For example, WY, ND, SD, AK, MT, & HI have 12 senators for 4.5 million people but more populated counties have none. At the very least, it proves that people in LA County or New York City (9 million each) lack equal protection of the law. The impact of such imbalance can be studied in the "rotten-borough" absentee ownership system of England.

Each day there are more people to the same number of members in Congress. That post-Civil War manipulation was just the beginning. When the robber barons decided that seizing the Senate was too slow, in 1920-21 they decided to arbitrarily cap the size of the House of Representatives at 435. In both cases (1890 & 1920-21) the destroyers of democracy were Republican in both the Congress and presidency. Their legal tradition that goes back to the Federalists. The leaders of the Democrat Party, now under control of a right-wing Democratic Leadership Council, have long since joined in the crimefest. The simple proof of this is their failure to denounce the destruction of democracy. Remember that this is a continuous process. As recently as Eisenhower’s presidency, sparsely populated Alaska and Hawaii were added as states.

State social engineering usually matches its domestic social culture but even the Soviet forms of fascism surface in the United States as corporations seek out giant federal subsidies in the form of free research, cash grants to industrial farms, and "fast-track" authority to bypass public oversight of international trade. Those of the intelligentsia who refuse to serve the ideological managers find themselves marginalized or unemployed. The fourth estate protects privilege because it is also based on corporate ownership. Measures of efficiency, sometimes crafted in patriotic language, usually aim to benefit the powerful few.

A more detailed analysis of old boy war crimes is enumerated in part IV. The two parties (actually wings of a fascist party) work together to kill poor people worldwide. By 1943 corporate old boys had begun a policy of mass murder through the instrument of bombing mostly by an unconstitutional Air Force. Except in the malignant imagination of crazed chicken hawks, this is a war crime and that has made the US a rogue state. Those who approve killing civilians also place our children in the same danger because an outlaw Congress that has gone along with the fictitious war is doing these crimes in our name. If we don’t stop the killers they will continue endanger the nation by inciting revenge from the victims of such bombing.

The killers will also feel emboldened to continue a host of lesser crimes to protect their ultimate tyranny, which recalls Churchill’s Missouri "iron curtain" speech. He proposed undermining global democracy by an alliance of "English-speaking peoples" who would defend Britain’s colonial interests as a way of securing its own imperial interests. America also agreed to help the French hold on to Indochina even though colonial exploitation was not really profitable (except for specific corporations). The promise to the French was exchanged for their help to build up the NATO military-industrial complex.

U.S. profits were less in colonialism than in militarism, which had grown to 36% of the National Product during World War 2. Chalmers Johnson provides an excellent analysis of this in The Sorrows of Empire. The sorrows include a pattern of endless war leading to inevitable bankruptcy. The fact that Congress no longer represents the people and has given the president the power to begin war is an obvious symptom. If we follow the money, we see how the old boys stole the 1989 peace dividend. If one adds the related spending on government pensions and the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons, then we can calculate that spending is still at Cold War levels, even though no major powers oppose us. All the interest on an eight trillion-dollar national debt can be attributed to past military spending, so we still have not paid for that war.

This protection racket is an old aristocratic game. The founders were aware of the dangers of militarism and it was amply described by Thomas Paine. The Nobel prize winner Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) warned:

To keep people in uniform, our prison situation also compares to that of Hitler or Stalin. This country can afford concrete buildings rather than outdoor concentration camps or Gulags but the idea is the same. The "correction officers" mirror units that started the Nazi police (SS). Brutal policies now disgrace the country because more than half of the 2 million imprisoned were non-violent or out of work. The Gulag can be traced to its cunning source of unconstitutional and racist laws. The chance that a Negro male will go to jail sometime in his life is about 30%, because many are denied civil rights after prison release, 14% of African-Americans can no longer vote. This is twice that for Hispanics and seven times greater that for whites. Since there are more Negroes in prison than in college, the discrimination is clear.

As examined in the previous section, proof of a breakdown in democracy, even euthanasia can be imposed when a medical industrial complex denies access to health care. It’s a logical decision if capital outranks justice; death is cheaper. Besides this gross example, the last words of the Pledge of Allegiance are routinely trampled by thousands of chartered monopolies doing business as local government. They obstruct justice by coming between real democracy and the Constitution. Corporate ownership of most major media and similar domination of "public" schools indoctrinates the young, and especially the poor.

The size of mergers also kept increasing and exploded under the regime of the hired actor. In 1986, there were almost three dozen billion-dollar mergers as opposed to only three in 1980. The total went over a trillion dollars in 1998 under the "new" Democrats, who were more like Reagan Republicans. The single acquisition of Time-Warner by America Online was almost as great as all US mergers and acquisitions in the decade of the 1970s. Most of these unconstitutional transfers are not even taxed. What’s the result?

In 1970, about 90% of capital was used for more or less productive trade or long-term investment—and 10% for speculation. Now those figures more than reversed. Over 90% now stalk the world for plunder and short-term speculation, unrestricted by national currency controls. As the lords who manipulate power scramble to divert us from the domestic corporate crises, their international "breaches of peace" (Article I, Sec. 6) are increasingly visible. As people can see the pirate nature of these cash flows they are likely to flock to more stable currencies. Maybe that will provoke average Americans.

As the Euro rises over the dollar, even the conservatives who supported giant corporations will realize that the "overworld" is a greater threat than any terrorist underworld. Based on annual revenues of governments and giant corporations, only a third of the top hundred economic powers are nations. Currently, although most of the largest firms are US based, the Japanese are already overtaking us in annual sales. If the dollar continues to decline in value then the ranking among the top 500 international firms is sure to shift against this country. Not that it matters much for average American workers, who have already been thrown into the global race to the bottom.

If you don’t deal with reality, then reality will deal with you. Look at morality if reality confuses you. The pirates who hired our politicians want us to believe that evil is a deep mystery that they should explain. We are told to trust them because they have either "born again" wisdom or access to secret intelligence reports within a complicated decision-making process. It’s time for demystification.

In fact, honesty makes up a simple universal morality established throughout mankind in all ages. As Voltaire once wrote:

Then we also have ancient religious morality. See the Bible in Mark XII: 31, Matthew VII: 12, Luke VI: 31, or John XV: 12. Then there are the Talmud Shabat 31a, Buddhist Udana-Varga V: 19, Hindu Mahabarata V: 1517, and the Muslim Hadith and Sunnah. All have similar quotes. The Master Kung (or Confucius from Latinized Chinese characters for K’ung Foo-tsze), made it equally plain in his Analects XII: 2 & XV: 23 in 500BC, when a student asked: "Can a word serve as a rule of practice for all life?" He said:

Those who say "Render unto Caesar" (Mark XII: 17, Matthew XXII: 21, Luke XX: 25) often forget that in America, the equivalent of Caesar is the Constitution. We should not bow to those who violate laws and wage unjust war. As for another old idea: Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote in Summa Theologica (1260) that at least three conditions are needed for a just war: public authority, just cause, right motive. (Many would add that it should also be a last resort, after all other options have been exhausted.) He noted that:

Most Americans would probably agree that World War 2 was a just war. This writer would (since he lost relatives to the Nazis). Pacifists who think that passive resistance would have slowed those killers simply don’t know the reality of the time. But who actually won World War 2? Mainly, it was Russia. Maybe they were less barbaric than Nazis, but hardly freedom lovers. American munition makers helped. Although worse names apply, we can refer to those who stole victory from the forces of democracy as "old boys." There are several significant points about how the overworld gathered its wealth.

First, war was very good for Big Business. The munition cash flow attracted robbers like blood attracts sharks. The old boys had found big bucks in building boats and planes. They restrained the mobilization of patriots, so even in 1944 America’s 60 brave divisions were not enough to stop a communist threat. They still do not want you to know how they sold the heart of Europe to "Uncle Joe" for Lend Lease profits.

To put it in perspective, some $10.5 billion (250 billion 2004 $’s) went to Russia and over twice as much went to Britain. The national wealth of Germany (76) and Italy (25) at the time was about 101 billion (1945 $). Soviet national wealth is hard to measure, but France (44) and Great Britain (88) together had 132 billion dollars. The estimated $40 billion of Lend lease made a big difference. This outward flow was small in comparison to money flowing within domestic U.S. war industries. That’s what made them rich.

Second, much of their wealth came from prolonging war. Germany had lost the oil blitz into Russia in 1941. It needed help so old boys in America sent oil through fascist Spain. To preclude Axis defections, "Unconditional Surrender" was proclaimed January 1943, just after six Axis armies were wiped out near Stalingrad (contrary to a 6^th Army myth). Was it coincidence that Roosevelt then changed American war aims by decree? Not likely, each added week brought about 25 billion (2004) dollars into corporate coffers. (The film Catch 22 has insights into the nature of the relationship among global corporations.)

No wonder that liberating Dachau took years. As an example of such delays, consider that in September 1943 the old boys decided to announce an imminent Italian armistice six days too soon. As a result of this betrayal the Nazis captured 80 Italian divisions—more than the U.S. sent to Europe by 1945). It profitably prolonged the war as Germany used seized equipment against the Allies. Senator Harry Truman paved his way into the vice-presidency by foretelling (5 July 1941) American policy:

He added words about Hitler being the immediate threat but his sentiments were not lost on the munitions makers who helped select him as a vice-president to replace the democratically chosen anti-corporate vice-president Henry Wallace.

Third, there was a racist element to the old boy agenda in prolonging the war. Whatever economics might have been served by weakening Russia, Truman’s proposal gave no consideration to the added racial killings. The immorality (exposed in 1942) was prolonged. A Nazi military-industrial complex killed half a million Gypsies (Roma & Sinti), 6 million Jews, and over 20 million Slavs. The policy added American military casualties and prolonged the Pacific war, which promptly ended when Truman applied nuclear genocide. We know that he had ties to the Missouri military-industrial complex and Pendergast machine. His colleague, Eisenhower, had a similar sympathy for Euro-fascism after 1950.

As they buy up real estate (even whole countries) around the world, the old boys continue to legitimize Stalin’s grab (with Hitler in 1939) of over 70,000 square miles in Poland in an area that remained geographically, culturally, and historically west European. The main point is that the Four Freedoms were not achieved. These aims, promised in the Atlantic Charter proclaimed in 1941, were changed in January 1943 at Casablanca by Roosevelt’s decree to "Unconditional Surrender." Who was pulling the strings?

A good way of finding out who lost a war and what a war was about is to ask who’s hurt after it’s over. If you ask that about the Second World War, you find out that the losers were Slavs and Jews who barely escaped mass murder. Anti-fascists were also weakened all over the West. Many of the latter were massacred in Spain, Greece or South Korea, or just crushed in concentration camps. Anti-Communists in China and Russia were treated with similar brutality. Those were the losers. The winners were the corporate commissars in the Soviet Union and the industrialists, including those who supported Hitler.

After running off to South America or Spain, even obvious Nazi criminals from Germany and Austria soon came back. Italian Fascists and their aristocratic friends avoided the war crime trials. After losing a close election, except for a few prominent exceptions, they didn’t even have to leave the country. They kept their money and continued business as usual. The current Italian regime even includes open fascists.

The Soviet communists were also pleased to see how promptly the people had rallied to national defense. The commissars were happy after the war because the military reinforced police dominance. They thought that this would be enough for them to insure continued control of a sixth of the world and its resources, including oil. There was no evidence that Stalin really wanted to expand beyond this or resume a Cold War evident since 1918. It restarted by late 1947 when Truman started helping former Nazis.

He gave West Europe massive military aid. Stalin made Russia paranoid about being invaded again and rushed to maintain its defenses. The commissars in the East and West bled their economies for next four decades. In the West, the investors in big corporations got the profits in a new Cold War that especially helped private oil producers, including the Middle East monarchs. The fact that many of these were repressive dictatorships and sheikdoms enhanced their close relationship to America’s oilyarchy.

Joining with the Nazis was not a moral or competent way to stop Stalin, nor did it. Eventually the influence of a Polish Pope and Gorbachev’s "openness" policy made the difference and forced Bush I to declare an end to the Cold War in December 1989. In the East, former Communist Party bureaucrats became the new Mafia of capitalist entrepreneurs. They won the Cold War and, thanks to links to Western cash, are often rich beyond their wildest dreams. The oilyarchy in America is also cheering, as it had since Rockefeller got away with plundering natural resources in the 1800s. The outcome remains mixed.

Eliminating overt communist tyranny offers some chance for resumption of popular control but it also created many losers. Most people of Central and Eastern Europe are now in miserable shape as they fell under control of new corporate tyrants—often former commissars and a KGB dressed in capitalist clothes. Life spans plummeted and outrage grew. So the end of one Cold War transforms into what the new aristocrats call a war on terrorism. The old North-South conflict goes on as before but international corporatism spreads a Third World poverty within their own industrial societies. The old boys conquer with dollars more than bullets and use the poverty of new nations to exploit the old.

The new channels of production offer the corporate tyrants other ways to increase domination and this works to widen global class divisions. Therefore the workers didn’t win the Cold War because now there’s another way to exploit them. They are suffering. It’s the same in the much of Europe, the Commonwealth and the US. Does greater global equality offer a solution? Fairly distributing wealth could be a benefit to politically balance of the world economy. In religious terms, fair treatment is the basis of all morality.

As far back as Aristotle, relative equality was regarded as essential for democracy. Equal access to life’s basic needs in turn offers other benefits: more creative work, enjoyment of arts, and shared decision-making. Even for industrial growth, the general finding is that higher equality also seems to yield higher productivity and economic growth. Compare World Bank statistical tables on East Asia’s economic "miracle" to the Latin American disasters. It’s not likely that the corporate commissars will permit a rush to equality but they may be unable to stop the rush to eliminate the grossest forms of unequal plunder.

On a positive note, post World War 2 transfers to corporate and royal control were reduced by the many independence movements that overthrew colonial rule. In the twisted Cold War ideology, these liberation movements were sometimes placed in the Soviet or Chinese camp and threatened the old boys in other ways. For example, based on declassified records from the Eisenhower regime (c. 1958), our leaders realized the extent of hatred that our pro-fascist policies had generated. The independent behavior of such countries also foreshadowed future disruptions. (It’s no coincidence that Libya was selected to head the U.N Human Rights Commission.)

The vast growth of such relatively independent nations is a threat to the corporate powers and, unable to use the label of communism, they seek to demonize them as terrorists. The boundary of this new corporate opposition is still taking shape. The Iraq invasion seems to be pushing most the Moslem world into an opposing camp. The question of corporate political control by "old boys" will become crucial if they resort to more violence.

If the preceding examples of corporate tyranny still seem vague, then war offers specific examples. Three considerations apply to war: (1) the right of declaring it; (2) the expense of supporting it; and (3) the mode of conducting it. In America, even after legal consignment to executive branches for conducting war, that branch has no right to break any law. Unlike Commonwealth countries, America has a written constitution. It places the right where the expense and blame falls, a burden that can only be on the people.

This is an old idea. Even the second written Constitution in Poland (3 May 1791) didn’t allow the king to declare war. Obviously, this incriminates members of Congress who continue to maintain travesties like the 1973 War Powers Act. They should have known that such a fundamental change required a constitutional convention. Their behavior underscores how an imperial presidency is imposed on the country, as described above (Part I.A). The world answers evil with evil so we must break the cycle. Justice can answer evil.

The US Constitution is one measure of justice owned by the people. It is a compact that includes everything relating to a complete organization of civil government, the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. Our constitution is to liberty what a grammar is to language: it defines its parts of speech, and constructs it into a practical syntax. The government was not militaristic when it was created and never intended as a private trade for old boys to exercise at their pleasure. It was altogether a trust in rights of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumeable.

That is all we need know to begin removing the rented politicians who are obstructing justice. Pirates have too long subverted this simple idea and removing them can restore justice, if not morality. In this context, Dr. Noam Chomsky (a top intellectual, according to the New York Times) noted that starting with Truman, all our presidents would deserve to be hanged if Americans took the Nuremburg Laws and Geneva Convention seriously. His book 9-11, published in dozens of languages in 22 countries, also shows why that attack was counter-terrorism. The resulting question was "Why do they hate us?"

You can be sure that corporate media will not give a true answer. Gore Vidal’s book of a similar title does. Specific indictments by Attorney General Clark on the 1991 Gulf War and on the Yugoslav bombing (19 indictments on each), are also described below. It’s no coincidence that this country was removed from the United Nation’s Human Rights Commission. Our nation also resists formation of an International Criminal Court because current leaders have good reason to fear such a court. The pattern of war crimes that began in 1943 extended through Vietnam, the Gulf War, Yugoslavia, the Iraq invasion, and a "war" on terrorism, being designed to include our own citizens. It’s no more constitutional than a "war on drugs," which has placed millions of non-violent Americans in jail.

As described above, in 1933 Germany used a similar process to trash their Constitution. We examine issues related to the Holocaust in books and papers beyond the scope of this newsletter but one related big lie deserves mention. The Nazis were not evil because the murdered Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies for racial reasons. This was the most prominent symptom of their evil, which began with destruction of the Weimar Constitution with almost full compliance of their military and legal institutions, as happened in the US. The reason this was a big lie is because it suggests the converse statement that those who do not engage in racial murder are not evil. For example, isn’t Holocaust, as used in English dictionaries, less appropriate for gaseous genocide than to burning cities?

(In this context, we recommend the Japanese anime video Grave of the Fireflies.)

There is no substitute for knowing the historical facts in order to understand the current sedition. On the whole, this country has a bloated military because of the Air Force and that branch also commits over 90% of the war crimes. The issue goes beyond inefficiency to basic patriotism. Even Department of Defense is a lie. Only about a tenth of the military budget goes to defend US borders. Most of the military budget (over two-thirds) provides foreign aid in manpower and weapons to support dubious allies or attack Third World countries. About a fifth of the military budget goes directly for offensive submarines, missiles, and bombers to carry nuclear weapons.

What good are soldiers sworn to obey lawful orders if the officers appointed over them have contempt for defending the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic? Americans may not yet realize that 9-11 was counter-terrorism but they increasingly learn about the Tonkin Gulf fraud and the plans for nuclear genocide. Even if its mass murders are unpunished, the influence of the old boy corpfederacy is becoming obvious.

Regardless of legalistic babble, there is no Statute of Limitations on bribery, much less war crimes. The obvious pattern goes back to "unconditional surrender" demands in January 1943. Besides prolonging the war, it led to almost unlimited warfare against civilians. By following brutish British precedent, Eisenhower cemented a seditious "special relationship" in blood. (How did someone without combat experience become a top U.S. general?)

Grassroots assemblies and a World Court could still indict such proven war crimes.

If nothing else, such a measure will provide accurate history to the next generation. The big crimes began for America when our planes helped Britain firestorm Hamburg (late July 1943), where incendiary bombs destroyed 300,000 dwellings, dozens of hospitals, over 50 churches, and 300 schools. Over 50,000 civilians died—more than Britain’s civilian dead in the whole war. Despite a relatively small US role in that attack, this atrocity established a new US policy, which inflicted millions of civilian losses before the war ended.

Dozens of German cities were destroyed by Allied air attacks. The following were over 50% demolished: Aachen, Bonn, Bremen, Coblenz, Cologne; Darmstadt, Dessau, Dortmund, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Emden, Essen, Frankfurt, Hannover, Harburg, Kiel, Mainz, Mainheim-Lud., Mulheim, München-Gladbach, Münster, Nürnberg, Obershausen, Plauen, Solingen, Stettin, Witten, Wuppertal-Barmen, Bochum, Bremerhaven, Friedrichshafen, Hagen, Hamburg, Hanau, Heilbronn, Hidelsheim, Kassel, Osnabruck, Remsheid, Wuppertal/Elberfeld, and Wurzburg (less than a third of each of the last named thirteen cities remained standing after May 1945).

The famous example of the beautiful baroque city of Dresden, unscathed in 1945, had no military target or war industries. Refugees, especially from Breslau, had concentrated there because they saw it as an "open city" under international law. The British and Americans attacked it as a "transportation center." The dead are still uncounted. Asked about balancing Auschwitz against such bombing, Kurt Vonnegut, who was there as a PoW during the fire-raid, noted:

Damage in Japan was far worse because the war in Asia lasted four months longer and saw the introduction of larger aircraft such as the B-29. In Germany the buildings were mostly brick and America restrained its area bombing. Japanese construction was mainly wood or paper that often burned with ease, especially with the use of incendiary bombs.

The following cities were over 50% destroyed: Kagoshima, Kobe, Kochi, Kumagaya, Maebashi, Tokyo, Wakayama, Yokohama, Aomori, Fukui, Fukuyama, Gifu, Hachioji, Hamatsu, Himeji, Hiroshima, Hitachi, Ichinomiya, Imabari, Kofu, Kuwana, Matsuyama, Mito, Nagaoka, Namazu, Nara, Okayama, Okazaki, Shizuoka, Takamatsu, Tokushima, Toyama, Toyohashi, Tsu, Tsuruga, Yokaichi. Less that a third of the last 28 cities remained standing. This does not indicate the human losses of cities that averaged well over 100 thousand in population. A single raid on Tokyo (9-10 March 1945) killed 85,000 people and 51% of the city, similar in size to New York, was eventually destroyed. Between March and June of 1945, 90 square miles Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya had been burned to the ground but most of the above the brutal damage was caused by fire-bombing between May and 14 September 1945. The atrocities culminated with atomic weapons.

Did any single act of Stalin or Hitler match the atrocity of Nagasaki in 1945? We must add that this is about defining war crimes, not sympathy. Germany had done worse to places like Stalingrad and Warsaw (my father’s home) and by the rate of murder inflicted on its neighbors; it suffered less than Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. In terms of institutional analysis, however, it is proper to ask: is "holocaust" is more appropriate to burning cities or to gassing civilians?

Such conscious, mechanized killing was unprecedented for America before 1943. The progeny of these gangsters are planning it again, with nuclear weapons. Both Truman and Eisenhower approved this, even though it was contrary to Article VI of our Constitution, because America had approved the Hague and Geneva Treaty Conventions. Thus America joined the other bandits. Neither Italian fascism nor the bombing of civilian targets confronted postwar tribunals. The two deserve common mention because much of the theory of civilian bombing had originated in colonial and fascist Italy.

The U.S started collaborating with Nazis before the war was even over, as in Operation Dick Tracy, which began intelligence to target Soviet cities about a week before the 8 May 1945 surrender. The Allies began fighting alongside Japanese troops against mostly nationalist (not communist) freedom fighters before the formal surrenders were even signed. An admiration for Nazi discipline by U.S. militarists was barely concealed. Patton was simply one of the most obvious in his praise (and was rotated, rather than relieved).

Before becoming president, Eisenhower helped create NATO and later worked with High Commissar McCloy to pardon former Nazis and even enlisted many of them into the US. The widely protested importation of 500-plus rocket scientists was just the tip of the iceberg. It added to a royalist infiltration for the century past. As for "Holocaust" (as in city-burning) Ike raised the nuclear arsenal from 1000 to 22,000 warheads and thus prepared to inflict mass murder on a scale beyond the wildest Nazi dreams. He actually threatened nuclear war (Korea 1953, Vietnam 1954, Formosa 1955 & 1958) and, after far more lethal hydrogen bombs, deployed 40% of them overseas to directly threaten more countries.

The US had over 33,000 warheads by 1964. They were testing 100 megaton warheads in the atmosphere! No one was punished.

Because the Army and Navy resisted such brutality, Ike expanded the Air Force (separated from the Army by decree in 1947) into a strategic bombing force. He heated up the Cold War by following Truman’s policies in Korea and Vietnam. For example, he funded (75%) of the French effort to re-colonize Indochina and avoided the election scheduled by the 1954 Geneva Agreement. This laid the foundation for the Vietnam invasion. President Johnson’s Tonkin Gulf pretext to begin that war was criminal. It compared to a border incident that Hitler staged (Gleiwitz) to invade Poland and a "Manchurian Incident" invented by Japanese militarists. It led to many more obvious crimes.

Bertrand Russell helped conduct an International War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam (Nov. 1967) but Americans are still ignorant of the recorded atrocities. Corporate media suppressed the proof. (It is natural that citizens of an imperial power are always among the last to know about such events.) Its implications were rarely reviewed in print but during the war, even if the criminal "news" was mentioned, it was ignored as an issue. In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg released 7,000 pages of top-secret documents to the press in what became known as the Pentagon Papers, which demonstrated that four American presidents had lied about U.S. involvement in Vietnam and that Richard Nixon was following in their footsteps. Ellsberg’s recent Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002) deserves careful reading because his action forever changed journalism. He introduced an era of general skepticism about government and forces the military to watch its language.

Before 1971 the Pentagon boasted how it dropped five million tons of bombs during the war. This is ten times the equivalent tonnage of bombing in the entire Pacific theatre of the Second World War (including the atom bombs) and 75 tons of bombs per square mile of Vietnam or about a ton for every family in that impoverished country (N & S). The criminality of stealing tax money of US citizens to squander it on such weapons bombs is minor compared to murderous bombardment of undefended Vietnamese villages. For example, the destruction of Song My Province ranks among the prominent war crimes of the last century, including the atrocity fire-bombing inflicted on Japan and Germany.

There were many other cremes. They include: (1) "naval shelling into undefended villages as "harassment and interdiction;" (2) "search-and-destroy" missions; (3) a Phoenix Program that killed 20-40,000 suspects; (4) forcible removal of civilian populations; (5) application of weapons prohibited by international treaty; (6) war on the environment by pesticide poisoning by Agent Orange to destroy crops or forests (i.e., chemical warfare); and (7) the creation of "free-fire zones" where civilians could be assumed to be enemy soldiers.

There is no question that each of these policies violated The Law of Land Warfare studied by our military leaders (See FM 27-10 for Army). A recent Newspaper article in a local paper (The Blade) about a "Tiger Force" platoon of the 101^st Airborne Division, which engaged in atrocities in 1968, was exposed on one of the networks and even received short comment in the National media. The current controversy is about who stopped the investigation, why the national media ignored it, and if should not now get a Pulitzer Prize. The real issue, that won’t likely be covered, is why hundreds of well-documented atrocities continue to be ignored. Most of them, by far, were committed by the outlaw Air Force.

There was a moral obligation for the Department of Defense to pursue these atrocities to their legal conclusion. Some senior officers have admitted that this obligation continues because time places no limit on war crimes. There is also no question that those who ordered the atrocities went unpunished. Even lowly Lt. Calley was soon released. There was no just cause in this country’s invasion of Indochina. Nine years ago, even Robert McNamara admitted the blunders In Retrospect. Also see Argument Without End, Wilson’s Ghost, and the documentary film Fog of War.

Sheehan’s Bright Shining Lie and MacMaster’s Dereliction of Duty (not to be confused with the Air Force diversion of the same title) further examine the background and general lack of accountability among our so-called "public servants." Unfortunately, with help of top generals, "whistle blowers" were more often the ones punished (after being removed) in a purge accomplished during the closing years of the Nixon administration. Those who approved Nazi-like loyalty mostly axed those who had questioned Nixon’s war crimes or otherwise doubted military morality. Efficiency reports, inflated beyond meaning, also led to assignments based mostly on cronyism. Those who impose these outlaw policies on the military were almost 80% Republican and can get key government positions for their relatives (How else does Colin Powell’s son get to be an FCC Chairman?)

The above books and films focus more on the failure rather the than criminality but the Tonkin Gulf Resolution continues to disgrace Congress. The facts are all useful in proving the criminal intent and behavior of those in power. It’s not necessary to build a more extensive dossier to recognize the criminality and begin removing the traitors. For example, it was not necessary to prove Al Capone was a killer in order to put him in jail. Our gangster leaders instead remain in power or draw generous pensions. Therefore, since outlaw behavior is rewarded, it’s no surprise that similar crimes continue into Chile, Guatemala, Panama, Granada, Nicaragua, Gulf War ‘91, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq 2003.

The Nuremberg Charter (Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, Principle VI) denounces "Crimes Against Peace," "War Crimes," and "Crimes Against Humanity." Aggressive war is the worst offense because it is the foundation for the others. It unleashes uncontrollable violence with unforeseeable consequences.

Corporate media did not tell the public how repeated polls showed that most Americans consistently opposed the immorality of the Vietnam conflict. Eventually the blame was heaped on a few individuals, mainly Nixon. His major war crimes were ignored and Watergate was used as a pretext for removal. Later, in a similar manner, notice how Admiral Poindexter and Lt.Col Oliver North were protected from their three crimes—including the Nicaragua invasion—for which the World Court denounced this country.

After Vietnam, we can consider that the Reagan gang (many of whom returned under Bush 2) was found guilty of war crimes by the United Nations; specifically for mining Nicaraguan harbors. Our rightwing support to Guatemala and El Salvador was more brutal because in Nicaragua the population at least had an army to defend itself. In El Salvador and Guatemala, the army and the other security terrorist forces joined in attacking the population. There was no one to bring a case to the World Court. That needs governments, like Nicaragua, not by peasants in the process of being slaughtered. From there we can go to the international War Crimes Tribunal and Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s indictments against Bush I.

Those crimes against peace are listed in the Bush Crime Family section below. At the time of Gulf War ‘91, Iraq was about 19^th largest military power (around Bulgaria and Portugal). Besides Bush I, the international commission found Dan Quayle, James Baker, Dick Cheney, William Webster, Colin Powell, Sir Norman Schwarzkopf and others, GUILTY. The old boys had conspired with foreign monarchs, especially in Kuwait, to launch this war. They bombed civilian infrastructures as routinely as in World War 2. An undeclared war continued after 1991 with over 10,000 sorties a year prior to the 2003 invasion. It inflicted a million deaths, mostly children! (See anti-war.com for details).

Meanwhile, the US and NATO also took a few months to assault on Bosnian Serb military facilities on 5 February 1994 with a massive 78-day aerial assault against defenseless civilians. The attacks on the Republic of Serbia and Serbs in Bosnia became a virtual celebration of air supremacy that killed thousands of innocent people and destroyed billions of dollars of vital buildings, civilian facilities, and other property. The worldwide media participated in the spectacle, which at least exposed some of the fatal NATO attacks.

Here is a short list. Persons all over the world watched as a train crossing a bridge over the Grodelica gorge was attacked by US aircraft on 12 April 1999. They struck a refugee convoy near Djakovisa on 15 April. Over 80 people in the village of Konsa died when it bombed on 14 May. Bridges across the Danube and elsewhere were destroyed. Cluster bombs fell among apartment houses in Novi Sad, in a regional hospital complex in Nis, in the suburbs of Belgrade and in many other locations. Radio and TV facilities were destroyed and dozens died when such a building in the heart of Belgrade was reduced to rubble by Cruise missiles. Refugee housing was struck. The central heating plant for New Belgrade and others were bombed into scrap, leaving a million people to face a heatless winter. The Greek Consulate was hit on 27 May and the Chinese Embassy was extensively damaged with three killed (lesser acts have caused wars.).

US acts defied various international laws including the Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg Charter, and Charter of the United Nations. The latter recognizes a "sovereign equality" of its members and prohibits "the threat or use of force" by one member against another. Under Chapter VII of the Charter (per Article 51), members cannot commit acts of war, or threaten, or use force without explicit authorization of the Security Council except "in self defense if an armed attack occurs against" it and even then only until the Security Council has exercised authority to restore peace and security. The Security Council may call on members to contribute military forces to confront aggression or threats to the peace. No such legal basis for US claims existed for NATO attacks in Bosnia and Serbia.

They were not in self-defense. No one attacked or threatened any NATO member and none of its members sought authority from the Security Council to attack Yugoslavia. In his book Waging Modern War (p. 418), former presidential candidate Wesley K. Clark, then Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, admitted:

The failure of the Security Council to act also weakened UN authority, and many in the international community suspect that this was an ulterior motive. Destroying the "sovereign equality" of a UN Member violates UN principles on which "The Organization is based" thus violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. By violating such international treaty obligations, US leaders also became domestic outlaws because the UN treaty is binding under the US Constitution (Article VI). The unlawful attacks also showed contempt for the NATO Charter.

The challenge to UN authority organized the richest countries and great arms industries, including stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. It includes most of the colonial powers of recent centuries, which are again abusing sophisticated technology. NATO was created to confront the Soviet Union and deal with other problems of the Continent. The need for it had happily expired so it should have been abolished without further disrupting the broader based European Community. Its use as an international military and police force in underdeveloped countries is the worst possible choice for a world seeking peace.

The attacks on Serbia set a precedent for NATO’s illegal involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Once again white Christians from rich nations attacked poor Muslims with deadly modern weapons. At least 30,000 lives were taken in these invasions. The civilian deaths are rarely noticed and almost never counted by western media. The daily terrorist bombing in retribution for war crimes in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, is warning signs of what may come. Once again the lack of media controversy is deafening.

Both the press and academic establishment more often engage in "manufacturing consent" to an international status quo. There is no doubt that criminal elements in Serbia engaged in mass murder bordering on genocide ("bordering" because it stopped short of killing women and children) but that does not give the United States a right to commit war crimes of a similar magnitude. In the Yugoslav Civil War, Croatia had committed similar acts and the Serbian murders were tiny in scope compared to the real genocide in Rwanda, as one example. Where was the US and UN in that conflict?

The crimes of all the presidents since Truman were substantial enough to, at least, qualify for impeachment. The outrage should be directed against an addiction to war and war criminals, regardless of their political party. The solution should aim on removing the entire criminal class from power. Whining for peace won’t work. The war on terrorism is simply a continuation of the same fascistic pattern that transfers wealth to killers.

That is not to say that all the thieves are killers but those who form a base for a power pyramid whose apex engages in outlaw killing are sure to condone a host of lesser crimes. They will not hand back their stolen wealth or concede power to outraged citizens, no matter how loud they shout or how enthusiastic their protests. As with Polish Solidarity, Czech Civic Forum, the ANC of South Africa, and the Orange movement in the Ukraine, this is a matter that requires physical displacement and organized resistance. Passive, nonviolent resistance is defense and will eventually succeed if it is pervasive and based on the realization that in earlier generations the situation would have required violence.

Terrorists will continue to serve as an excuse for military waste, but a war against them is unwinnable. On the contrary, to the extent that the blind flailing against suspected enemies creates innocent victims, we can expect increasingly savage vengeance from their relatives. The terrorists count on it. The economic segment that loved the Cold War also desires this insanity. Serious military people knew from the start that 9-11 was more a crime than a military act. It takes militarist chicken-hawks to inflate it as more. A similar bombing had been attempted before and terrorism is not new. The pattern of vengeance will not subside until those who incited the terrorism from our side are removed.

Most countries, especially those that had been on the receiving end of real bombing, were not about to be bewitched into global war to deal with a few brigades of fanatic pirates. By definition, chicken hawks, such as George W., are unfamiliar with real war. Men like Cheney dodged the draft-from the Vietnam era (5 deferments). They accept war but have not seen the horror of it. They think losing a few buildings qualifies. By that standard, China could have declared war after we destroyed their embassy in Yugoslavia.

Exaggerating the threat is a good way to extort money from taxpayers, and we won’t come to terms with the danger by inflating it. Scaring the people with new color-coded warnings over which they have no control allows the terrorists to set our priorities, which is what they want. "War" is a false metaphor for the real threat against which we must protect ourselves. Mixing that threat with an agenda for global supremacy is more likely to weaken security by diluting it; i.e., it won’t enhance homeland security. Treating 9-11 as a crime would have been more appropriate. That would have inspired police work rather than vengeance-breeding military violence on the other side of the world.

Even if some of the domestic measures are proper and may prevent future attacks, the Iraq invasion and Afghanistan occupation have little to do with ending terrorism. Besides the war deaths, our country will also be blamed for the unique cultural damage associated with the destruction of Baghdad’s archeological treasures and ancient books. For example, in a sixteen-item list of places to be guarded, the Iraqi provisional government had rated the National Museum as second. The US military instead rushed to protect the Oil Ministry building, which was number 16. (Maybe we believe that they write upside down.)

How many more examples are needed? Protection against terrorism demands language skills and intelligence gathering that requires supportive populations among which the terrorists operate. The precautionary measures that could develop from such awareness will not be inspired by our "men with guns" stalking Muslim slums and terrorizing women and children. Even if only part of such indictments is valid, it is more than enough to jail criminals. Our concern here is with justice, more than with peace. They did the crime so why shouldn’t they do the time? Isn’t it obvious that they will lie to avoid blame?

These killings were statistically predictable, so civilian deaths were intended and the cost was deemed acceptable. In Criminal Law both knowledge and intent are culpable. Even if accidental, the perpetrator is fully chargeable in terms of negligent homicide as, for example, if a drunk driver kills someone. Remember, except in the malignant imagination of our politicians, there is no question that such war crimes have a specific legal provenance that can be traced back to US involvement in bombing since 1943. Do these leaders recall that war crimes still qualify as a hanging offense? For example, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal hanged Baron Hirota Koki (1878-1948) for ignoring war crimes while Minister, not for personal atrocities (see Shiroyama’s War Criminal: The Life and Death of Hirota Koki; 1977). Surely, many top US leaders deserve similar treatment.

Others nation follow the US example and find little fish in a net meant for senior politicians. The spectacle of a superpower terrorizing nations that are no possible threat to it and are defenseless against its technology thus poses a great danger to global and personal peace. (For example, a missile destroyed President Milosevic’s home in a wooded residential area of Belgrade on 22 April 1999.) Other nations use such precedents and, almost daily, Israel cited US conduct to rationalize killing enemy leaders or bombing neighbors like Syria (4 Oct. 2003). It will get particularly worrisome if nuclear powers such as Pakistan or India begin attempting similar cross-border assassinations.

Our own nuclear arsenal and weapons of mass destruction can destroy the world’s population forty times over. What could be worse than planning nuclear genocide? Our so-called leaders attacked three sovereign countries in the last decade. None of these three had directly done anything to the United States, which certainly raises some questions.

Were such actions criminal? Just as Slobodan Milosevic is prosecuted, charges can certainly be brought against Bush and members of his administration for the commission of war crimes. The incident of Abu Ghraib alone might deserve application of the Milosevic standard. The more obvious indictment is mass murder. How many innocent people died because Bush lied? Is his an example for the world to imitate?

If we do it, why shouldn’t India, Pakistan, or North Korea? The 9-11 terrorists did not even use weapons of mass destruction. If we don’t want other nations to launch punitive strikes on our so-called leaders, then we should be willing to turn them over to a world court. Why not follow the Milosevic example with them? This threat is far more serious than the routine Congressional lying, cheating, or stealing, which has now broken the national budgets. For example, the Congressional thieves wanted nobody to know how repeated "emergency supplemental bills" to fund military and reconstruction costs in Iraq will be spent. Bush ordered the Inspector General in Iraq to

He hopes that claiming "national security" can cover his Baghdad blunders and corporate gifts. Keep in mind that $87,000,000,000 (allocated 2003) is seventeen times the UN Budget and more than all State budget deficits in the 50 States combined. Every hour, hundreds of women and children die from preventable disease often connected to poor diet and half this amount could pay for global access to essential social services. How many Americans will die because there won’t be enough money for medical care and homeless shelters?

The other unspoken question is how many elections can be bought with the profit of such a gift? Giving generous tax refunds to the rich was apparently not enough. How can those who condone such theft be trusted to protect our most "vital national interest," the Constitution’s promise of justice for all? As the world joins against us, the war makers arte also bound to get richer by pretending to defend us.

First they stir up a new enemy and then they supply the munitions and oil to fight it. Mere transportation to the other side of the world will eat about 20% of the total military cost, and each round-trip burns fuel to enrich the oilyarchy. As our bombs kill more civilians, vengeful hatred grows and further serves their purpose. Eventual defeat is likely but they will only shift their headquarters back to Europe, where oil thirst is even greater than here. Plans for an oil grab of the Middle East and Caspian Basin (Central Asia) are well documented, but even if that fails the profit is sure to be high. It’s a "heads I win, tails you lose" deal. When the last best hope of mankind is eliminated the old boys will be free to plunder what‘s left, as the world goes after us.

Those capable of wholesale murder easily stoop to such retail crime. They want the country to absorb their blame. We can ignore the indictments, but should have no doubt that the world holds Americans accountable. The crimes were done in our name. This country’s bombing is seen as aggression by most of the world so it will surely escalate terrorism. Silent citizens, who stay ignorant of the facts, or don’t yet believe that killing civilians is terrorism, will pretend shock when America children become "collateral damage."

You can be sure that "good Germans" and Japanese civilians were similarly shocked when they started getting bombed. Much of the world knows why our bombing violates international law. Excuses claiming "national interest" won’t shrink this high crime into a misdemeanor. Vengeance is inevitable. For those "good Americans" who go along with Air Force terrorism, it may be useful to recall that Osama bin Laden’s infamous videotape that referenced such US crimes against Iraqi civilians as a reason for 9-11 (besides denouncing U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian situation). We know that this crazed Saudi aristocrat had visions of restoring an ancient empire, but should we ignore facts?

There is now ample evidence of how the leaders tricked us about bombing since the Indochina invasion and applied similar deception to the first Gulf War, Balkans invasion, and Iraq. The notion of bombing Russia and China into a Stone Age (suggested by Cold War militarists) reveals the evil nature of these old ideas. Even in a global war on terrorism, the US bomb-masters are as guilty as Hirota Koki and could be hanged. Remember, neither Hitler or Stalin could ever threaten forty-fold global nuclear genocide.

Much of the problem is in how western media depicts the issue. For example, the United States has murdered hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq. A major news disseminator such as Reuters can assert that children become legitimate targets because, even if they don’t actually fight, they are sometimes "put in a situation" of serving as scouts or weapons. Alongside such nonsense, there is no suggestion that most of the victims were not doing anything remotely military or any reminder that the Americans had invaded the child’s homeland. The motivation is simply enough. Over 90% of Reuters profit comes from feeding several hundred thousand computer terminals with mostly financial information. Those who feed these machines know about the oil markets, cash flows, and the profit risk of exposing the military-industrial complex.

As you listen to corporate media, remember that over a billion Moslems in 50 countries listen to their own media. Even US media, like CNN, has a much different version of news for foreign consumption. What do you suppose they believe? Was 9-11 terrorism or counter-terrorism? There are over 100 million military-age Moslem males (19-25). Many of them cannot find work and therefore see no prospect for marriage. They see no future and are often willing to listen to prophets or fanaticism. What would you do in their place if you believed someone was attacking your culture or murdering fellow Moslems. What do so-called leaders want you to think? Who made the big profits from 9-11? Is there really any question that the 2003 Iraq invasion has outraged international public opinion?

What is true? Where are the facts?

Osama long ago had sought war on the United States so he was a good scapegoat for the Moslem monarchs. Most analysts fully realize that radical (Wahhabi) Islam fostered Al Qaeda. It originates in Saudi Arabia, as did 15 of the hijackers. Their identity is no secret: none were from Afghanistan. Most of those held at Guantanamo prison are also Saudis, with some Yemenis, Pakistanis, and Egyptians. Why do they want us to think the terror originated in Iraq or Afghanistan? How is giving aid or comfort to these royal despots not seditious? No matter who ran them, their countries would still be oil pipelines.

Bertrand Russell or Ramsey Clark’s specific indictments on past wars (below) may inspire those who value written law over imperial opinion. Presenting this evidence helps in demanding justice. Since national survival is at stake, maybe good Americans should not let so-called leaders to wrap flags over their naked evil or hide behind heroes of 9-11. United we stand is a good slogan but who is we? Shouldn’t you at least know exactly who hates us? Is "us" the United States or those in power on Wall Street or the Pentagon?

Isn’t 60 years of such terrorism enough? Even with the best spin, an "eye for eye" escalation must end in blind flailing or a victory for the tribe with more eyes. The obvious answer to evil is justice. If we don’t act then these militarist criminals will drag us down because ignoring them makes you an accomplice. Regardless of the love for Germanic tribes by Churchill, denazification is long overdue.

In Gulag Archipelago Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote:

If that foundation has already been ripped away by the Hanoverians, maybe it’s time to rebuild. It should come as no surprise that the oilyarchy and munitions makers want profit without the risk of punishment for their brutal military plunder - a classic method for robbing public treasuries. See the motion picture Wag the Dog for how militarism also works to distract the nation from other crimes. What better way to divert from the corporate implosion caused by past greed than for Shrub to invent new wars?

Our own Army and Navy have dismally failed to defend the Constitution against domestic evil. Their drumbeat excludes the real terrorism, as the FBI officially defines it. With little risk of being shelled or bombed, about 60% of them (mainly the rear echelon maintenance folks) feel relatively safe and ignore how militarism hurts civilians. Like the chicken hawks, many of them see war as job security and a chance to profit. Those who ignore the crimes that they commit in our name should feel especially guilty when this country gets treated like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.

General Butler showed how War is a Racket so we can see how the terror racket will work. Butler died in 1940 but his indictments extend through Eisenhower’s "military-industrial complex" to Bush. By invading Iraq, he has disgracefully trashed the international cooperation that was working against terrorist activity after 9-11. This phony war cannot protect us from terrorism by making Iraq some sort of magnet for global suicide bombers. To be sure, our troops will be under greater pressure ("bring ‘em on," said the jerk) but there will still be plenty of excess killers to roam around the world for blowing up trains and planes. Only international intelligence and police cooperation can really deter such fanaticism.

Will you ignore piracy and war crimes like the "good Germans" in Nazi Germany? Whatever misguided good Americans want to believe, they should know why much of the world regards George W. as a greater terrorist than Osama. If someone waved explosives near you to scare criminals, wouldn’t you also feel terrorized? How much combat power is needed beyond an insane level of destroying humanity 40-times?

The section is mainly about the Bush Crime Family and their fellow travelers. Although George Bush Jr. is probably going to be rated as the worst American president since Jefferson Davis, we should not compare him to Hitler. (Hitler was democratically elected but Bush has not yet killed as many people) Why does most of the world consider him a worse terrorist than Osama? Maybe because he is strong enough to threaten nuclear genocide.

Kevin Phillips excellently depicts the royalist pattern in American Dynasty. The family ancestry goes to before the Hanoverians, to colonial slaveholders on both sides, and includes a Nazi connection. The current process stealing the elections (2000, 2002 and 2004) is explained by factors of media control and corporate wealth. It’s mainly based on repetition of Big Lies. It is better covered by other writers and various websites (Start with the excellent Project Censored annuals by Sonoma State for a list of both). Who can forget his father’s Orwellian promise of "a kinder, gentler nation;" perhaps like the anti-bellum South? The structural analysis here offers an explanation that goes back to Machiavelli:

The ability of family Bush to steal the past few elections is based on a long history of outlaw behavior . Al Capone (1899-1947) boasted of a similar patriotism in a 1929 interview. He said of this "American system of ours:"

Al was only able to "seize" in a few Illinois counties but the international weapons sales and drug crimes of the Bush dynasty grossed billions. Even Mafia "crime families" have fewer bones in their closet than the House of Bush. There are clear links to drug dealing in the nineteenth century. Modern connections go back to George H. Walker from St. Louis, Missouri, one of the founders of the military-industrial complex, whose daughter married Prescott Bush in 1921. He and Prescott set up shop in New York and, with other old boys established a fortune by trading with Nazis and afterwards feeding a Cold War.

The historical facts show that, although the Bush law firm scrambled to avoid scandal, the government seized its assets, because several were declared as Nazi fronts, under provisions of a Trading With the Enemy Act (1942). Prescott Bush sat on the Union Bank board that was interlocked with a German Steel Trust that produced most of the Nazi pig iron, a third of its explosives, and related metal products. He and Herbert Walker were joined with powerful financial backers such as Rockefeller’s Standard oil and Averell Harriman. Their common legal representation was by Sullivan & Cromwell’s Wall Street firm with the Dulles brothers. They actively collaborated with Nazis, the worst enemy that America ever faced in war. Rather than being indicted, the gang was rewarded.

After trashing Morgenthau’s plan to pacify Germany, they pushed to enlist it in a Cold War. While US steelworkers lost their jobs, former Nazi industries recovered and the gang got more powerful. Allen Dulles became the longest-reigning CIA director (1953-61); John Foster rose to Secretary of State (1953-59), and sister Eleanor ran his German desk. Nelson Rockefeller became governor of New York and vice president. Harriman served as NY governor and in several ambassadorships, plus cabinet positions. Prescott promoted a considerable number of profitable directorships in Latin America including Cuban sugar. He became a Senator (of CT) and advisor to Eisenhower.

Meanwhile back in St. Louis, by 2000 William H. T. Bush (an uncle of George W.) joined the board of directors of Engineered Support Systems (EASI), which is a major military contractor. Uncle is also Bush "Pioneer" contributor who raised more than $100,000 for the 2000 and 2004 elections. Since 9-11, the company’s federal contracts from all branches of the armed forces increased and the Defense Department lists EASI in among its top 100 contractors, rising from $330 to over $380 million since 2001. Its product made a windfall in exploiting the false WMD scare and the stock price doubled (tripled in weeks after 9-11). Without dwelling on such sordid facts, those who cares can see that we do not use the term "crime family" lightly. They need only search the Web under "Bush family crimes" to collect thousands of documented details.

After Prescott’s son became CIA director and vice-president, there were various CIA transgressions, underhanded financial manipulation, and more weapons trading. His main war crimes, as President Bush I, at least deserve to be listed. An international War Crimes Tribunal and Attorney General Ramsey Clark tried to indict Bush Sr. in 1991 (16 May, as described in The Fire This Time, chap. 12, 1994). The tribunal culminated historic hearings in over twenty countries, with over fifty in the US. The foreign media, including some 80 foreign correspondents, heard a commission of 22 judges pronounce the verdict.

Meanwhile, our bombs continued to kill thousands of civilians. That, in turn, expanded the enemy threat by inspiring more hatred, which further profits the munition makers. Counter-terrorism czar Clarke’s in Against All Enemies shows the dereliction of duty in the Bush regime. Clarke, a 30-year government veteran, gives examples of how Bush II was obsessed with Iraq and chose to ignore other threats. Dr. Rosemary Ruether’s The New Pearl Harbor: Was the Bush Administration Complicit in 9/11? also offers well researched insights into related crimes. This culminates a pattern around Bust II’s morality that goes back to Texas.

He casually admitted Securities Law violations (insider sales of Harken Oil shares before the Gulf War) and Enron’s boss was a family friend. In his five-years as governor, he was responsible for executing innocent people. Shrub applied cowboy justice with more executions than any other governor in any state in the history of our nation. Two of those killed were women (of only four executed in the previous 30 years) and some of the victims were mentally impaired or underage. Despite dubious circumstances surrounding many of the 140 cases, Little George had no doubts. He only asked to review on one and pardoned none.

(His father was more forgiving. For example he gave a Presidential Pardon to Jeb’s friend Orlando Bosch, a terrorist who blew up an airplane killing 76 people.)

Beside Shrub’s previous drug use, such major revelations should have blown his 2000 candidacy and yet none of them got major media play. Brother Jeb said he would deliver Florida and that’s exactly what he did. That act extended the criminal circle to the Supreme Court, as documented in Bugliosi’s The Betrayal of America, 2000. Both Scalia and Rehnquist’s kids were given jobs in the Bush government. Despite high decibel corporate news chatter, the issue was not only counting votes. As is now fully documented, by naming the consultants who laid the groundwork, the number of denied voters was well over 50,000.

Since 9/11, corporate media focused even less on the family history. As for election 2002, 60% of eligible voters (equivalent to those of 40 states) stayed away, and isn’t it curious how some of the few exit polls taken contradicted the official vote? That pattern was repeated in 2004 and is still being investigated but there’s nothing mysterious about who counts the vote. It’s done by counties that are run like corporations, and 70% of them are Republican. There is also no question about who controls the corporate media that convey the political arguments in each election and selects those that it deems to be least newsworthy, like the Iraq war.

Thanks to approval by outlaw members of Congress in an October 2001 Patriot Act, Shrub is now the führer in a another kind of long-term war. Not a bad promotion for a chicken-hawk, who couldn’t even serve as an Air National Guard lieutenant without going AWOL. See Mother Jones for a time-line (Jan-Feb 2003 p. 16-17). To avoid the draft, he promised a few years of reserve duty but couldn’t fulfill that limited pledge.

Also remember that Bush’s CIA played a key role in creating the infrastructure for Osama bin Laden’s network in Afghanistan. His son’s White House also deliberately blocked an FBI investigation of the Bin Laden family in the United States until two days after "9/11." The Carlyle Group employs dad and the family bloodline also mixes with that of the British royalty, as discussed in American Dynasty.

A simple analogy will develop understanding of this issue. Suppose that the British discovered—as they in fact did—that some IRA bombers were in the United States demanded extradition of those people. When the US refused, did they then have the right to bomb the United States? For the same reason the U.S. had no right to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq. Without United Nations approval, America violated the borders of two impoverished countries whose citizens had done nothing to us on 9-11.

Even if there were a just cause to invade Afghanistan rather than Saudi Arabia (home to most of the terrorists), our troops often behaved like intoxicated vigilantes in their pursuit of the Moslem fanatics. We killed thousands of innocent people and created tens of thousands of refugees. Imagine if foreigners had bombed a wedding party in Texas (just one of many unpunished acts). From such inhumane behavior, other countries have concluded that American leaders are uncivilized. These actions were, of course, was excused by the 9-11 atrocity but there was no authoritative report on 9-11 and a simultaneous hijacking of four aircraft!

Meanwhile the families of the 9-11 victims also demanded an independent investigation and the Keenan Committee added details on these events but members stated that the Administration and Justice Department officials kept blocking vital evidence. For example, here are some paraphrased questions that the 9-11 Families Steering Committee wanted answered by the president in sworn testimony:

The victim families particularly wanted to know why President Bush delayed creating the 9-11 Commission and why he refused to testify under oath. Within three weeks of Pearl Harbor there was a major investigation of intelligence failures. People were fired! After years of political piddling with "questioning," no one was punished for obvious blunders, such as the failure to scramble air defense aircraft. The US Senate Investigative Commission held back crucial pages of its report dealing with "friendly " governments. Dozens of related facts from the motion picture Fahrenheit 911 are provided above (see blue in section III.A, above).

The tradition of such plunder can be traced back to ancient aristocracy and was often symbolized by the "skull and bones," a symbol of piracy back to ancient aristocracy. It was also an international symbol for English privateers. (See Secrets of the Tomb for connections to a Yale fraternity). Is it unreasonable to conclude that secret societies allows families to serve as stalking horses for infiltration and theft by foreign royalists? Who more wants to destroy the promise of liberty.

There is no doubt that the Middle East invasions has also brought great wealth to the Bush family but it is only one of the 500 families who manipulate half the global wealth. The "Downing Street memo" has eliminated doubt that there was collusion between British and American leaders in terms of cooking the intelligence for this invasion. Oil, construction, and weapons are all highly profitable. Like Bush’s Carlyle Group, Cheney’s Halliburton Corporation (Dresser Industries) has even armed and financed America’s enemies. This is the military-industrial complex in action.

Militarism is an old aristocratic game. It’s a "heads I win, tails you lose" deal. First they supply the enemy and then they supply troops sent to fight that enemy. Transportation to the other side of the world is about 20% of the total military cost, so each round-trip to Iraq burns fuel and also enriches the oilyarchy. Its plans for an economic grab of the oil-rich Middle East and Caspian basin of Central Asia have been documented. Bush rewarded incompetence by stealing more taxpayer money and adding new layers to a police state. He uses American troops to shield dictatorial regimes. Many of them are not much more giant corporate fuel depots (twenty of the fifty Moslem countries together are smaller than Poland) and Kuwait offers as an example of the kind of democracy that America restores. With all the money wasted on protecting these rackets it’s no wonder that the national budget is inadequate to guard against enemies "foreign and domestic."

Neither is it able to provide other forms of security, such as proper medical care. The newly invented global "war" aims to steal more resources for those who run the racket. It’s an old royal game. All the presidents since Truman have committed war crimes but, unlike them, on 20 September 2002 little George decreed a new "preemptive" imperial doctrine that violates the laws used to against the Nazis at Nuremberg. The doctrine originated in 1992 with Cheney and Wolfowitz, who crept back from the disgrace of dad’s administration. Under this policy, Bush II initiated an unjust war against a nation one-tenth our size. Preemptive war is what Japan launched on us at Pearl Harbor. You may recall how badly things ended for them.

If the issue were merely family-size political corruption then a few statutes against nepotism and cronyism might solve it. There are Democrat politicians fully as sinister as those of the Bush clan. Who else gets most of the credit for Vietnam and the Tonkin Gulf fraud? The problem here is one of a criminal oligopoly that has taken over government; an aristocratic overworld controlling the planet through corporations such as Carlyle Group, Boeing, Exxon, General Motors, General Electric, etc.. Militarism is part of their myth.

Even if the more amateur old boys were as personally religious as they claim, or many hope, who could avoid the unintended consequences? There are many symptoms that we could point to. Theft in the form of corporatism and war seem to be the most obvious so let’s start there. So-called "executive pay" is one example because often those who treat their communities most savagely - cutting jobs, importing cheap labor, moving overseas - claim the greatest compensation. As one measure of this theft, we could examine the ratio of CEO to average worker pay—now over 400 to 1. This rose over seven-fold since 1980. Those workers who still have jobs on the other end of the employment spectrum, get average pay (inflation-adjusted) that is now much less than in 1973.

These changes took place mainly under the looting administrations of the hired actor and Papa Bush, both endorsed by a greedy Congress. Legal challenges (such as my own) were either ignored or diverted by the outlaw justice system. The aspect of piracy connects to the foreign nature of this looting and has to do with the pretension of citizenship assumed by the robbers. The idea that a foreign robber baron, like Rupert Murdoch, could become an American citizen and then revert back to dual citizenship is relatively new. Foreign infiltration existed ever since the American Revolution but this blurring of national distinctions among illegal immigrants and outlaw corporate directors is recent. They both share an addiction to the pursuit of wealth rather than liberty and justice.

The militarism myth offers a powerful method to divert people from reality while their national wealth is stolen. For example, notice that when political debate turns to Bush’s economic performance, his spin doctors change the subject to a "war on terror" and terrorist threats. The topic then changes to various descriptions of his "leadership." Despite failures at home and abroad, this has kept his popularity near 50%. The method has to do with inducing a war psychosis in which the public accepts that accused "enemies" are purely evil and that those who don’t join us must also be an enemy or traitor. This psychosis is created to serve those in power by depicted them as national leaders.

Once the psychosis takes hold, the public is conditioned to assign heroic qualities to these undeserving national figures. This done from the same sort of desperation that gives authority to the captain of a sinking ship. If the propaganda drums can beat the rhythm of nationalism loudly enough, it makes the public want to march. The conditioning mechanism for this is subtle but pervasive. It ranges from playing of the national anthem at sports events and similar media music to the mixing mind-numbing and trivial information within the same news presentation. Why do you think they refer the preparation of radio and television shows as programming.

Even after humiliating military defeats, financial bankruptcy, and the exposition of despicable atrocities, those in power appear to be forgiven. This is from a nationalistic impulse to rally around the leaders. The exposition of such tendencies in the British system was ably traced by Thomas Paine. In the Falklands War, the Argentinian military junta under General Galtieri similarly diverted the nation until its military failures became an international embarrassment. Like the Argentine junta, the Bush administration followed its barely defensible counterstrike against Afghanistan, with an incoherent invasion of Iraq.

The attack on the Taliban was questionable because that structure was a product CIA and Pakistan Intelligence training, as financed by Saudi Arabia. The real fight against Al Qaeda became an international war on terrorism. The notion was Orwellian doublespeak. Two words, with distinct meanings, came to represent an apocalyptic confrontation against all evil everywhere. Where will it all end? Follow the money. The Bush-Cheney gang must be made accountable for dismal failures in health care, jobs, and environment.

Logic or truth might restore perception but it’s not easy (those singing hymns on the sinking Titanic did not scramble to create makeshift life-preservers). In a political confrontation true democrats must convince a majority of eligible voters that self-selected politicians pretending to be "war leaders" are only playing a role. It’s hard to find nonpartisan generals and international security analysts who will admit how they profit from the current foreign policy. It follows decades of empire building. At least Iraq, as it explodes into a disaster of epic incompetence, offers a chance to expose the failed Bush regime. His swaggering appearance in a flight-suit on the aircraft carrier, boasting the end of major combat, remains a powerful photo-op; now in the opposite direction.

Even after Kerry punctured the war leader myth, the indictment that government had to charter such a gangster war still remains. Besides exposing specific war crimes, a jury A jury could also decide if outlandish executive compensation is less than public theft. National myths are another story. They die hard and the combination of pirates and mercenaries wrapped in an American flag remain as the main obstacle. One immediate goal is to clear a path through corrupt legal machinery that floats on bribery. Even if local juries might sometimes exonerate the pervasive crime, the awareness created in the process could raise community consciousness. The obstacles may remain but the needed action would become more obvious as the fog lifts.

Fortunately American war myths extend to resisting oppression in a Revolution against aristocracy and a Civil War to free slaves. Master and slave are two sides of the same bad coin. Truth "fogging" is defined in Hitler’s view of propaganda as stated in Mein Kampf:

Elitist schemers, supported by public opinion research, found that change depended on the magnitude of the stimulus. Using sterile emotion in place of logic, they learned to fabricate attitude change. The publicist Edward Bernays (b. 1891) wrote manuals on this in Propaganda (1928) and The Engineering of Consent (1955). Advertising firms and the military use his methods all the time, except that as propaganda became too suggestive, terms like "advertising", "public relations", and "information operations" more commonly described the same process of manipulation. Bernays called public relations:

Consider how they tricked distracted citizens into plastering American flags all over their cars and clothes after 9-11. Back in 1968, when similar inspiration was in effect, Phil Ochs wrote a lyric about flagging:

They claim that they won the undeclared Cold War but a "better dead than red" philosophy is typically Nazi; right from Goebbels. The term "iron curtain" is from his February 1945 speech. Churchill adapted it for the Fulton, Missouri address of 1947. It became Americanized by a particular group of fanatics. The old boys, with values based on a robber confederacy, won World War 2 and We the People lost.

The rocket scientists were the tip of the iceberg. The Lodge Act opened the gates to former members of the SS. The infiltration of racist refugees was rationalized by the Cold War. For example the United States brought in many people who had Slavic names and sometimes claimed birth in regions that became Slavic countries, particularly Poland, which got part of Prussia. After they escaped to the West many former Nazis could hide within ethnic American organizations pretending to be good anti-Communists. For example, what do you think that the following list of names has in common?

These "Slavic" names belonged to German or Austrian World War 2 generals. There were even more with Anglo or Jewish sounding names. As admitted on the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, the Chairman of the JCS (Shalisgasvili’s) father was a colonel in the Waffen SS Georgian Legion, who later got a job in the U.S. Defense Department. Why did President Clinton introduce him as being Polish? How deep did this infiltration go? Sinilarly, how does a dual-citizen, accused gröppenführer, with a Nazi father become governor of California? Once such facts are known, our leaders are expected to acknowledge the scope of this immigration and warn of sinister ideas that it may bring.

The danger of misdirected oaths should be obvious from the 1935 German Army. To explode the myth that the US military is not an imperial police, we may recall that American leaders are expected to be faithful to a written Constitution. Too many of our leaders and military officers have forgotten exactly what it means. Robber corporations never cared to begin with. Even during a "Good War", about half of the medically discharged WW2 veterans were reported as psychiatric casualties. Did they suspect the scope of betrayal?

In simple terms, we accuse our political and military leaders of crossing a moral boundary. Until it is restored, it is impossible for physical ones to be defensible. It took a great deal of fogging to sell the Cold War to America. Lies changed former friends into enemies. An obvious example deals with falsified boundaries, as indicated by a map of "Europe" that appeared in the 1977 National Geographic. Its publishers simply left out half of East Europe by drawing the east edge near Moscow instead of at the Urals. (The true centerline runs along Helsinki to Crete.)

Our map shows that friendly countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia were never in "East" Europe. In reality they were geographically and culturally west European. Most war deaths (77%) and debts had originated in an area that politically vanished between East and West. Slavs were betrayed along with the Jews.

As media corporations hide most of the world from political perception, maps of overworld control will have not match national boundaries. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund use enforcement techniques different than blatant militarism. Cash rather than bombing is now the preferred way of property transfer. The spearheads are international treaties that give presidents "fast-track" authority to subvert Constitutions.

Militarism will remain as a major source of their profit. Much as liberated colonial states sometimes joined the list of communist enemies to justify greater military spending, now old boys want us to look under our beds for "terrorists." Their proclamation is one of perpetual war against new enemies. We should at least determine "who is supposed to be guarding the U.S. border?" Is it the Army and Navy, or an unconstitutional Air Force, naval police (USMC), or the new home guard? Should they also be defending European borders and foreign monarchies, like bin Laden’s homeland (Saudi Arabia)?

Can you imagine what the founders would have said about using American blood to guard foreign kings? Shouldn’t we have the courage to review World War 2 war aims and ask questions about fascism? Besides studying fascism, another way to examine the issue is to look at Bolshevik old boys. Lenin tried to describe fascism as "capitalism in decay," but he specifically promised a dictatorship of the vanguard of the proletariat so Communist militarism evolved into a fascist form.

The humanistic communism of Marx and Engels, found in some monastic orders, evolved into Bolshevism by whatever means seemed necessary to its leaders. Despite the rhetoric of equality, a communist corporation took charge. The Vanguard did not dispense vast sums of capital but instead allocated surplus production value by granting power through rank or privilege. At best, communists sought equality but those who want everything equal must fail because this goes against the both innate animal and human nature.

As most captive nations realized, power became highly unequal and the abuse of a Red "aristocracy" was as bad as that of the titled or moneyed aristocracy. Rolf Bahro, former East German Socialist and Green Party activist, tried to measured power among this Red elite and coined the term State Capitalism to link this common characteristic of both systems. Hitler and Stalin both promoted efficiency. Both strove for short-term productivity.

It was "inefficient" to run unpunctual railways with more workers than needed. It was more efficient to arrest those who delayed work with strikes or formed unions to complain. Stalin actively allied with Hitler in 1939 to achieve common corporate goals. Most socialists and many communists disagreed with him. In particular, Trotsky (no icon of democracy) recognized Nazism as a greater evil that required resistance, even if it meant forming an alliance with Social Democrats. Stalin had him assassinated in 1940.

Soviet corporate tyranny rarely matched the brutality of Nazism but both squandered workers and soldiers as an expendable commodity. As the Soviets absorbed 80% of Allied casualties, state capitalism finally beat the Nazi form. Russia had stopped Hitler before the United States even entered the war against Germany (11 December 1941).

After the Operations Barbarossa and Typhoon failed, and as winter killed off its horses, the freezing German armies were retreating from Tikhvin (below Leningrad), Moscow, and Rostov. For confirmation, see journalist Howard K. Smith’s Last Train from Berlin (where he was in 1941). More than merely stopping an invasion, the Soviet military machine launched a massive offensive that overturned future German plans. Consider the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, in April 1942:

Why did the Nazis lose? No matter how many tanks and planes it built, there was a lack of oil. After 1941, they also had a drastic shortage of trucks so they could not motorize more than 30% of their armed forces. In contrast, most of the U.S. Army was motorized. It simply arrived in Europe too late and with too little to decide the war in its decisive phase. Here is what General Douglas MacArthur said about the Soviet success.

(The last two quotes appeared in Part 5 of the Why We Fight series of films made by the U.S. War Department during World War 2 in describing Soviet successes before 1943. The battles are also detailed in Valor Books on the Eastern Front, particularly #27 and new #14. German casualty rates and timing are documented in Hitler’s Dying Ground with economic statistics on oil resources and armament production shown in the two volumes on the German War Machine. We mention them here to show why America did not win World War 2, which was meant to be a war for justice.)

American frustration with Soviet success soon led to unlimited war and mass bombing of cities. By a standard of prewar morality, America lost the war. Perhaps the old boys truly have religious visions that killing civilians is all right. There is also a Calvinist selectivity to fundamentalist rhetoric and Bush II did claim that his favorite philosopher was Jesus. Even Mafia leaders have a religious sense (think of the wreaths at the funerals) but it’s fair to ask whose Bible they use. Is it the Old Testament or New? More likely it is the one of Machiavelli, called The Prince. Either way, most of the world still distrusts those who claim that might makes right or try to impose freedom from a gun. What can be done?

A response requires a logical foundation like the Constitution. International approaches won’t work because most countries don’t have such a document, not even the British Commonwealth. Ours consists of only about 8,000 words. A nation of farmers understood its plain words and corporatism (alias capitalism) does not pollute its content. This federal document trumps the laws of the States (per Article VI) and the fiction of smaller "local government." Regressive taxes and such local frauds, based on special treatment of property beyond federal law, account for most of the extortion from poor people.

Ultimately, we must ask if any domestic reform will succeed if it does not remove killers and include a process like denazification. The answer requires preventive steps. One way to deal with diversionists is to focus on past war crimes and ask why they didn’t treat bombing civilians an act of terrorism (ask if their family was bombed). Fortunately, fact-based liberty and justice are not confusing for most Americans and it takes strong lying to cover the killing of civilians in our name. The announced book, A Moral Equivalent of War, proposes specific solutions to the occupation government.

The book uses the proven logic of Thomas Paine and William James without sinking into philosophy or mystification. Pragmatic ideas are easily understood except when taught alongside deviant dogmas. Some well-intentioned activists think that they can influence change by schlepping the streets with protest signs or merely going to jail for their beliefs. Can you imagine the founders trying that in 1775? In 1933 Hitler just grew a system of concentration camps. America now has four times as many in jail as in 1980 and a third of prisons are corporatized institutions that would welcome a growth opportunity.

Symptoms require attention but a cure must go to the source of injustice. The tables on the Grassroots page may better help depict the current tyranny and old crimes that have evolved to their full evil. Once we recognize that the transgressors are more like pirates than bloated pigs, it will allow us to employ old laws such as the Alien Tort Claims Act from George Washington’s day, which is solidly grounded in Article I of the Constitution and can give a reformed Congress the right (per section 8, para.10) to "…define and punish Piracies and Felonies… and Offences against the Laws of Nations"

Regardless of what lawyers want you to believe about "precedents" (stare decisis), the basis American justice is in written federal and state Constitutions as applied to community circumstances through properly selected and apportioned representatives. We have suggested that those who violate or obstruct justice can themselves be pursued as criminals. (Dereliction of duty or sedition is listed in the indictments above.)

The last six words of the Pledge of Allegiance explain a logical position. A coalition struggle against oppressive pillage of the global village is not new to America. The resurrected goal of Four Freedoms (1941) can bring foreign allies but coalitions of proven political friends will be needed to cross national boundaries. Therefore, paraphrasing Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Lincoln (in that order) seems like a good way to conclude.

Paine attacked tyranny with a pamphlet called "Common Sense," for which he is properly ranked alongside Washington, Jefferson, and these other two (Check his accomplishments on our Home page; since 1991 we circulated thousands of similar paper copies plus extracts of his works.) His thoughts here precede the more conservative views of James Madison, who is remembered as the "father of the Constitution" and who doubled the size of the country by completing the Louisiana Purchase as Secretary of State, which Paine had promoted in France. He then defended the republic in a second war for American independence. Finally there are few paragraphs based on the words of President Lincoln.

Why is there so little useful knowledge of the truths that these three wanted us to know? As President Madison warned: a popular government based on bad information would lead to a farce or tragedy. Political opponents want our true system to fail. It is understandable why corporations that control the press would undermine American ideas, but why do modern educators also diminish them? It is likely due to a climate of political extremism based on backing from royalists and gullible religionists. The former includes conservative lawyers whose politics echo the original pro-royal Federalist party.

The motivations are for money and power. If they can diminish the ideas of these three named heroes, the can hide a host of malignant policies? While people are distracted by powerful corporate propaganda, the pirates loot the national economy by diverting cash or printing inflated paper certificates through stock markets. Now for the good news.

With their overseers, the old boy corporate "overworld" numbers less than two tenths of one percent (.002) of our population and even less globally. The aristocrats are trying to link with like-minded colleagues in the former Soviet Union to tighten their grip on the world by programming attitudes. They came to power in America by deliberately destroying democracy, but the ideological base of the power pyramid remains. They lack legitimacy here and fascism is weak even in remnants of the British empire. One positive development since Reagan is that mainstream America has started to uncover the lying.

To expose how corporate propaganda works, read the classic work called Manufacturing Consent (also see video on authors Hermann and Chomsky). Dr. Chomsky’s 9-11 has been translated into dozens of languages. Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States passed the million mark. Other books soared in a New York Times bestseller list with authors such as Al Franken, David Corn, Molly Ivins, Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, Jim Hightower and Michael Moore. Michael also did several award-winning documentaries and programs available on DVD. They offer powerful exposures.

Millions of sleeping citizens are awakening to the truth as prominent whistle blowers are coming forth. Clare Short resigned from Tony Blair’s government and, as the former international development secretary, protested after the invasion to say she had seen transcripts of bugging of Kofi Annan’s office. Katharine Gun leaked an e-mail from U.S. intelligence services asking for help spying on U.N. ambassadors. This government linguist was charged under the British Official Secrets Act, which soon felt compelled to drop the charges. In British foreign minister, Robin Cook, also quit to write a book showing how the Iraq threat was overblown. Hans Blix had been saying the same thing in his capacity as the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) chief in Iraq.

Scott Ritter confirmed this from his experience as a lead UNSCOM inspector for the Concealment and Investigations team in Iraq. Former ambassador Joseph Wilson accused the White House of manipulating his findings that showed that there was no Iraqi uranium purchase from Niger. John Brady Kiesling resigned from his post as a career U.S. diplomat to protest the Bush policies on Iraq. Ray McGovern is now on the steering committee of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity after retiring as a CIA analyst. Rand Beers quit as President Bush’s antiterrorism adviser to help John Kerry formulate policy.

The retired U.S. Marine general who commanded the Middle East, General Zinni, has criticized the handling of postwar Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill used personal records of otherwise classified documents to reveal the economic incompetence of the Bush administration. Clarke’s book has taken the trend to a new level because he has stepped down as a national security adviser to blast a president who is still in office. The secret Downing Street Memo of July 2002 also confirms allegations by O’Neill and Clarke that the Bush Administration planted false evidence to invade Iraq.

In the past such revelations might have been spun into a category of whining by of disgruntled ex-employees, rather than whistle-blowing. Now the Internet makes that impossible. Remember the SS motto, "my honor is loyalty"? That has been the ideal imposed on presidential subordinates since Teddy Roosevelt’s Administration. They usually did not tell all until after a president died. Fortunately, as Clarke said on 60 Minutes:

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, began a heroic trend of such criticism in the U.S. (Katherine Gun matches his courage in Britain). However, since even unpunished lies reveals the nature of the tyranny, Robert McNamara’s scandalous revelations in the award winning Fog of War (and his 3 books) also offer hope by documenting past atrocities. It’s too late to have a war-crime trial for him, but the Vietnam War’s admirals, generals, and politicians are now discredited.

He blew the whistle four decades too late, but better late than never. We can no longer deny the criminality surrounding Vietnam and that those in power were generally rewarded with promotions or pensions. Some have since risen to high rank. The war protests failed, and we should also learn from that. The massive demonstrations of 15 February 2003 and 20 March 2004 on Iraq will also fail if they are misdirected from the root cause. What this newsletter shows is the problem originated no later than 1943.

There is no single model for global restoration. The solution will require solidarity towards the goal of justice, which was unlikely to come from a skull and bones Democrat (Kerry) who refused to publicly renounces that group. The extent of Kerry’s loyalty to its ideals was indicated by the extent to which he confronted them and was unable to renounce them. The statements and beliefs of such secret oaths can be excused by youth but when the contradiction to established American values is exposed, as with the oath to defend the Constitution, then there its time to expose "youthful indiscretion."

Not even credible candidates like Dean or Kucinich talked about restoring true representative democracy. Neither of them had a plan to dismantle global corporate power. What they had forgotten is that the American system was once successful, even if it was never universally approved. Most people want to live in a caring society that rejects lawless competition and selfishness. This favors cooperation, if not collectivism.

By reading this far you have shown a willingness to take the first step of looking into dark corners where the elites don’t want shining research. If we could restore democracy to at least insure informed votes on such issues, then maybe the system could work again. The first step of knowing the enemy means acknowledging the corruption of the system. We can refuse to swallow more lies and not compromise until the issue is fairly presented. Second, we need to turn our back on the rotten hierarchy of haves over have nots. Let’s tell the world what they are up to. By living off the labor of others, on resources that do not belong to them, they are taking us all for a ride. This is hard step for those who have ridden that horse, but its logic of perpetual war is well no secret (see 1984 for example).

Those on top of the pyramid have the most to lose. They’ll defend themselves with the "everybody does it" line used by criminals. Some will tell you why poverty has always been a natural part of life. Others will explain that you need losers to have winners. Unfortunately it’s the increase of losers over winners is expanding at a hellish rate.

Immorality of the powerful obstructs a common pursuit of happiness. Amid the centripetal influence of global capitalism, America’s unfulfilled tradition of equal justice and fair representation may seem a dim hope. An eventual international union might be able uphold justice against global crimes but for now we should mostly rely on American citizens. Particularly those who stopped merely whining for fairness and are demanding morality. Those who tread on justice dread its restoration and have opposed being exposed.

Since an imposed government without consent of the governed is the definition of slavery, the solution is no simpler than ending slavery or removing the masters. They are two sides of the same immoral coin. Once we recognize that reality, the next step is to spread the word and build our army. Long underground, the irresistible force of this unarmed truth is on the march!

Perhaps an instinct against guillotines motivates the old boys to keep the people ignorant and divided. Fortunately there are clear lessons in history and old allies that will help sustain the renewed struggle. Before we identify friends it is best to have an idea of who might be enemies. The United States fought three wars against a system of lawyers and corporations (1776, 1812, 1861). To the extent that the Confederacy was a colonial extension of the imperial textile industry, the Civil War pitted their feudal system against the North, so the British later had to pay reparations. America’s last world war was also against also against imperial royalism and fascism. Nazism is a racist variant of the latter.

In all these cases the enemy was generally opposed to American democracy. Since the Germanic royals of England developed an antipathy towards their Prussian cousin Kaiser William, their global dominance weakened to allow a resurgence of local populism. Despite repeated military defeats, the European aristocracy adopted a policy of infiltration into America based on buying political control and a network of trusted "dual-citizens" who retain a loyalty to royalty. Their return imposed a powerful executive branch that largely functions as a cabinet government. Its influence was powerful enough to pull us into the First World War on the British side on the pretext of responding to a minor atrocity (The Lusitania sinking was dwarfed by US atrocities in the next war).

Even the power to declare war is now stripped from American citizens. As a result Congress acts mainly as a debating body for a partly colonial government. National wealth is now plundered to benefit an international aristocracy operating through global corporations. The House of Representatives has some genuine democrats and can still be saved, but it is now incapable of fair representation. The Senate is an obvious millionaires’ club with some former robber barons. All of Congress therefore needs a thorough reform.

We certainly don’t have the representation our founders intended. How much is enough? If the current ratio of Congressional representation existed in 1791, then there would have been 42 people in Congress, not 95. There is no question that Republicans destroyed representation by 1921 and now get help from racist or corporate Democrats. In their view, apparently one person can represent a nation, like in Nazi Germany. The current outlaws resist such accusations (like the secessionists of 1861), which serves to polarize the issue. Our new book presents simple measures to accomplish reform. One method is mobilize against the pirates, which is what they are. They can be identified as such and charged on several counts.

War crimes, as have been listed above, are probably the most obvious indictment. War is also the ancient method of expanding other forms of aristocratic plunder. In the current example, the US has been pushed into outlaw aggression for the control of Middle East oil. The global aristocracy has extorted over $200 billion to pay for it, including an unaccountable $87 (now 140) billion. Much of it will circulate back home to buy their next round of elections. Not only is there taxation without representation, but most taxes even go directly to corporations and then into offshore accounts for use in further corruption.

Forceful nonviolence can succeed in avoiding a renewed Civil War, but only if enough patriots mobilize. A burden of proof rests on those advocating force but strong measures were appropriate against Hitler. Pacifism, misguided "tolerance," and whining for fairness won’t work. Weakness will further encourage evil. Crimes must be restrained by force. Tell passive diversionists that they’ll have time enough to "rest in peace" later.

Even Gandhi said that passive resistance (much less peace songs and vigil candles) would not likely have stopped Nazism in 1933. Maybe words like "evil" or "crimes" are too strong to describe the malevolence of the global robber barons but some members of the Bush gang are that low. What is the character of their evil? Here are six of what Gandhi called "deadly social sins":

Justice is the proper response to evil but there will be little of that as long as murderers are protected. Thanks to confessions by former participants (like McNamara), there’s no longer a question of guilt. Unfortunately, corrupt lawyers have imposed royal law on America. It is based on adversarial confrontation and "precedents" (no matter how bogus) rather than a search for justice. Lawyers - not juries - are making the key decisions about who goes to trial and who walks free, sometimes with a generous pension.

A state of war exists between foreign aristocrats, partly Hanoverian, and the American people. Their invasion and strategy of infiltration started over 100 years ago. Thomas Paine anticipated this imperial fraud in an 1805 Compass to a "Letter to the Citizens of Pennsylvania," which simply warned as follows:

It’s no wonder that America’s top political writer was virtually banned when the occupation began. Since most corporate charters violate civil or criminal law, the People may revoke them for any reason. If issues are in doubt they can demand jury trials under the sixth or seventh amendment. Whatever flaws may exist in the Constitution, it can still serve to expose sedition on the way to amendment. Even if you accept only part of the above indictments - perhaps those on war crimes - the corruption exceeds a legal standard for malfeasance. It reveals enemies both "foreign and domestic." What is to be done?

The clear solution requires the nonviolent moral equivalent of war to remove obstructing politicians. Passive knowledge is not enough. We not only have to do the right thing; we must also do things right. Spread the alarm against diversion and distortion. It’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel to focus members of existing coalitions (details for specific structures are explained in the book). Neutrality is collaboration. Protest helps defense.

"All politics are local" reflects how local corporations can destroy people and we know change won’t be painless. As they break free from media "programming" activists will avoid aristocratic diversion or distraction. People can relearn to live morally, think globally, coalition locally, and act nationally. If tyranny is local and these local giants are wealthier than nations, how will less than national force be enough? Can you imagine if the founders had been dumb enough to believe that "all politics is local." In fact only a national structure will provide citizens the necessary arsenal of Constitutional weapons.

In a globalized world, maybe the United States is local on some issues but if communities mobilize against local piracy, their structure must obviously reach for help to a national level. The real question is "why not further?" Mainly because internationalism loses local supporters. It even sounds illogical to say that solving foreign problems will solve domestic ones. Will fighting injustice in Afghanistan, Iraq, or India be helpful in freeing America, or does it mainly divert essential resources and national attention? On the other hand, America has many foreign friends. France and Poland are among the best.

As an ally since 1777, France obviously deserves a few words. Their royalist streak is sometimes annoying, but America wouldn’t be a country if not for their help in a War of Independence. American thinkers such as Ben Franklin, Jefferson, and Thomas Paine, spent years in Paris to sharpen their ideas. Later, the virtual gift of the Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the nation’s original size. They gave us a Statue of Liberty to show respect. Now, as friends, they told us the truth about dangerous steps taken in Iraq. Poland is important to America because there are so many Americans of Polish descent.

While Columbus was "discovering" America, the Polish realm stretched from the Baltic to Black Seas with twice the people of Spain and England combined. After defeating the Teutonic knights and their blue blood allies at Grünwald (1410), it had developed a constitutional form of royal government that promoted human rights. Poland resisted religious bigotry and banned uncivilized practices such as witch burning. Since it offered a haven to runaway slaves (serfs) and others, Polin came to mean sanctuary in Hebrew. Such traditions get no emphasis in our Hanoverian history. Grünwald would recall the fierce feudalism of an Aryan brotherhood, which is not what aristocrats want remembered.

After a series of wars against Moslem invasions, a spectacular charge by the "winged hussars" broke the siege of Vienna (1683) and sent the Sultan’s armies limping away from the Danube. These battles weakened Poland, so the Russians, Swedes, and Germans combined to dismember it by 1772. Since Hanoverians and Hessians were soon fighting America, it was a logical place for diplomats like Ben Franklin to rally volunteers.

Polish veterans and specialists had a decisive impact on our War for Independence. For example, in the turning point of September 1777, Kosciuszko’s engineered fortification at Bemis Heights decided Saratoga and Pulaski’s reconnaissance skills saved Washington’s army from encirclement at Brandywine. When asked why Poles were fighting in America, Pulaski, father of American Cavalry, replied:

General Pulaski died at Savannah in 1778 and Henry W. Longfellow wrote a poem about him entitled "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem at the Concentration of Pulaski’s Banner" to commemorate presentation of his unit banner. This is depicted at bottom of Newsletter page (The "sisters" were actually part of a women’s community in Bethlehem, PA.). Kosciuszko had similar sentiments and helped implement the world’s second written constitution (even before France). He defended it in 1792. On 26 August 1792, the French Assembly made Kosciuszko an honorary French citizen, along with George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and 7 others. One reason that the French repulsed the Duke of Brunswick’s 20 September invasion on Paris is that his Prussian ally headed east.

He withdrew to invade Poland. There is no doubt that this diversion allowed time to form a French Republic. Did we support Poland or France? No. American Federalists declared neutrality on 23 April 1793. Kosciuszko returned to Poland in 1794 and, after a declaration of independence at Krakow, led a brilliant 200-day insurrection. He was wounded and exiled to France on an oath to remain inactive. Although sworn not to fight, he still loved liberty. For example, look at his request to Jefferson, presented in April 1798:

This was grammatically rewritten and confirmed by Jefferson’s affiliate John Dawson in June 1798. Eventually the money endowed a Negro school in Newark (NJ). Those who understand that serf is Latin for "slave" share such sentiments. Despite owning slaves, Jefferson repeatedly argued for a policy to free them, as in his Virginia Notes. Such endowments to purchase freedom were the most obvious economic solution.

Poland’s widespread adoption of republican values was a specific pretext for the black eagles of Prussia, Austria, and Russia – unable to beat Napoleon – to tear apart Poland’s white eagle (the 1795 brutalization of Warsaw continues in modern memory). As a result, many units from the insurrection joined Napoleon to create republics in north Italy and the Polish National Anthem (Poland is Not Yet Lost) originated from these exile legions. With Napoleon’s help the country was partly restored with a new constitution on 22 July 1807. Like the previous one of 3 May 1791, it made citizens equal before the law.

It is no coincidence that most Americans don’t know that France and Poland were American allies (co-belligerents) during the War of 1812. How many British divisions would have gone to America if Napoleon’s Polish allies had not kept fighting until 1814? Joel Barlow – U.S. Army chaplain for three years in the Revolutionary War, founder of American Mercury, author of the epic Columbiad—negotiated this informal alliance as US plenipotentiary to France in 1811. Like Thomas Paine, he had accepted honorary French citizenship and died in Poland (1812) during Napoleon’s retreat from Russia.

Polish immigration data is clouded by a long national dismemberment. Repeated pogroms against Jews and repressed uprisings against Germany (1839), Austria-Hungary (1846 & 48), and Russia (1831, 1883), drove Poles here. Because Poland was off the map (1815-1918) these arrivals were mostly listed as being German, Austrian or Russian based on their point of departure. If we assume that Poland produced immigrants at the same rate as tiny Ireland, then it ranks among the top three ancestral countries of the United States.

When Poland finally regained its freedom after World War I, it promptly led a heroic defense against the Bolsheviks. Its spirited counteroffensive destroyed three Soviet armies and saved western Europe from invasion. After the "miracle on the Vistula" Lenin recoiled to consolidate a new Soviet empire. How was Poland repaid? World War 2 started in Poland (1939) with attacks by both Germany and Russia. When the shooting ended (1945) the old boys allowed the country to remain dismembered and enslaved.

The betrayal of central Europe was a calculated move at Teheran (a Conference in Nov. 1943) after the Allies failed to liberate Italian zones in Greece and Yugoslavia. The militarily inept American chiefs, mostly from the racist States of the old Confederacy, had contempt for a Europe First policy and instead wasted resources (landing craft in the SE Pacific). Thanks to hero-worship for the aristocrat loving General MacArthur, that is expunged from the history books, along with its impact on occupied Europe. Similarly, consider how Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe ignores the Eastern front.

The Allied betrayal was a disgrace because Poland was a loyal ally. where Thanks to mobilization among pre-1939 Polish emigrants in the United Kingdom (almost half a million) a well trained Polish army of almost 100,000 was ready for battle by May 1940. On average, from December 1941 to May 1945, America had only about fifteen divisions per month in Europe, so two Polish corps were a big help. Their II Corps fought on our flank at Monte Cassino. The I Corps provided an armored division to encircle the Fifth Nazi Army at Normandy and a Light Brigade was parachuted into the breach at Arnhem between the British and Americans. How did we repay Poland?

The old boys ignored Hitler’s brutality in the Warsaw ghetto (May 1943) and condoned Soviet murders of Polish captives, including 14,000 officers in places like Katyn. When the top Polish general protested, his plane mysteriously crashed off Gibraltar. After failing to liberate the Balkans, in August 1944 the western Allies pointlessly invaded the French Riviera while wasting an airborne army on "a bridge too far" in the wrong direction. The uprising of the Polish Underground Army, the best organized in any of the occupied countries, was thereby left unsupported. Polish (and Czech) freedom uprisings failed.

Nazi revenge left Warsaw as the most devastated capital city of the war (see The Pianist for a depiction). After seeing the futility of expecting Western help in similar uprisings, it was no coincidence that five countries gave up to Stalin in September 1944. After the war the Americans and British gave Russia half the prewar Polish land and moved its boundaries. This legitimized the Soviet invasion of 1939 and trashed the stated Allied war mission in the Atlantic Charter, formally endorsed by the Allied nations in January 1942.

Naturally, Russia soon dominated Poland. The Hanoverian betrayal was probably predictable. For example. even though Polish Navy units participated in most of the major sea actions after August 1939; even though Polish fighters shot down almost 800 German planes after June 1940; even though they had fought along British flanks (at Tobruk, Falaise, Arnhem); and even though the II Corps lost 4200 men on Monte Cassino (legend is that the red poppies still grow from their blood); the Polish Army and Navy who fought under British command were not invited to take march in a Victory parade (8 June 1945).

This was meant to discredit the exile Polish government and appease Stalin. Mexicans and Ethiopians were there. Even Seychelles’ Pioneers and Fiji Medical Corps proudly paraded. The Poles were not there. That’s the loyalty of royalty. On your flank one day, a stab in the back the next. Ask the Belgians about how they were abandoned on 16 May or why Lord Gort couldn’t delay his headlong rush to Dunkirk to coordinate with Weygand’s counterattacks of 21-24 May 1940. Then ask the French about Mers el Kebir.

On 3 July 1940 the British killed hundreds of their former Allies. It still lives in infamy. That act of perfidy nearly motivated the colonial empire of Vichy France to join the Axis (as over 100,000 of their soldiers did). How many more Allies would have died then? American betrayal was less predictable but many of our old boys were closely tied to the Hanoverians. Even before Pearl Harbor, they made sure that Britain got its Lend-Lease.

After the war, rather than help Poland, they plainly preferred to lavish Marshall Plan aid on former enemies, like Germany and Austria. Rearming them appears to have been a calculated move to provoke a Cold War and keep war profits flowing. The Russians kept the land that they had seized in 1939, mainly along the boundaries that Stalin had chosen with Hitler; but this was conceded at Teheran. Poland was given former German territory in the west but, on balance, it had lost more land than in all of England.

The winners were more Hanoverian than Prussian, but still fascist in disposition. In other words, their disease that infected the world in 1922 kept spreading in America. This infection was already obvious in 1943, when America began bombing civilians. That was exactly the policy we had denounced when the Nazis did it in places like Guernica (Spain) or Warsaw (1939) and when Japan ordered the start of similar bombing in China (1937, by the emperor’s uncle, Prince Higashikuni). By now most of the world sees how Hitler’s racism is mild compared to the global genocide advocated by the current "nuclear nazis."

Besides promoting racism, besides selling out the Atlantic Charter, besides falsifying history, besides enriching the old boys: subversion of the U.S. Constitution is now a reality. Maintaining legitimacy requires a great deal of diversion. We can reveal one of them.

To divide Slavic countries from an international community, the old boys invented a myth of a 6-million Holocaust. Jewish and Slavic losses from the genocide, prolonged by Allied betrayals, were closer to 30 million. (The statistics on this were documented in Valor book #36 in table X-2, which lists losses by country.) Old tactics of divide and rule gradually split Poles and Jews, who had been natural historic and geographic allies. The mechanics of this separation are beyond this website but raises natural questions. Why does Israel, a country without a Constitution and relatively few people, get so much world attention?

Reckless, idealistic courage is a Polish stereotype. Tony in West Side Story illustrates this image in New York slum but it is an old story. Consider how Kopernik (1473-1543, Latinized as Copernicus) invented astronomy in 1504. As published in 1510, it defied was eventually condemned by Luther, Calvin, and even the Catholic Church (1616-1828). Recall how Polish cavalry broke Teutonic aristocracy at Grünwald/Tannenburg (1410), ejected the Turks from Vienna (1683), and wrecked three Bolshevik armies at Warsaw (1920). It even attacking Nazi tanks (1939). Ultimately, it was Polish labor unions, backed by the unequalled image of its Pope, who decisively ended the old boys’ Cold War.

The historic mission of Polish politics is in defending democracy and written constitutions against often hopeless odds. This remains a noble challenge for Polish-Americans in a world under corporate tyranny. Even if it finds its voice, a single ethnic group can make little difference, but there are strong echoes around the world. After all, we risk common extinction from a nuclear disaster or more gradual global warming.

Having said this, we might also say a few words about false friends. The obvious ones are the foreign dictators or monarchs who exploit their people by denying democracy and stealing national resources for themselves. The despotic oil states are a prominent example. Protecting their unconstitutional rackets and resources is not in US national interest. That is what is what corporations want but the ultimate blowback will be devastating.

Truth won’t make you free but raising consciousness and exposing false friends might lead to effective organizing. It also helps to separate genuine activists from diversionists planted in both the legal and teaching establishment. Generally, diversionists want their audience to ignore past war crimes and offer a "don’t worry, be happy" message. For credibility, they concentrate vaguely defined future threats or issues in distant lands. Aiming at future crimes tends to detract effort from known thefts and murders.

Their current "activism" against real and current issues often devolves into passively venting frustration in protest marches. Such gatherings offer a chance to send a message or provide a forum for friendly socializing, but complaining about symptoms won’t restore justice. Constructive mobilization is essential. Promoting endless searches for more proof when existing evidence is overwhelming is simply unproductive.

Naturally enough, false friends with real power also encourage the myth that knowledge somehow equals to power. So the criminals remain in office or walk away with generous pensions. The design for "public" education originated in Prussia and aims at instilling discipline and obedience to their authority. We could ask if either the public or the students control their money. Such discussion here is inappropriate but we should not let misinformation divert a true coalition against militarism and for values such as justice.

A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief, and in proportion as anything is divided it is weakened. The above principles may at first appear strange or difficult but they support one central idea that should be familiar and agreeable. Until restoration begins, the country will feel itself like a person who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done. While they hate to set about it or merely wish it over, they remain continually haunted with thoughts of its necessity.

However strange it may appear to some, or however unwilling they may be to think so, many strong and striking reasons exist to show that nothing can restore things so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration of non-violent war against the robber-baron corpfederacy. By doing so, other nations, not yet engaged in the quarrel, might eventually step in as allies and mediators. It is unreasonable to hope that free people in other countries will give us sympathy if we only mean to rebuild a corporate state or otherwise repair breaches among "select" leaders of various global aristocracies.

They won’t help because they would suffer the consequence of regenerated royalism. Clinging to imperial privileges while demanding real reform requires too much distortion for common understanding. Also, while the problem may seem to be a domestic one, our militarists have grossly violated other nations. If these renegades can hide behind the American flag, we will also share their blame. To foreign peacemakers, if we tolerate corrupt leaders then we will be considered as whining collaborators. If, instead, we act to overgrow corporate tyranny in a spirit of the Four Freedoms, what people won’t join us?

Were a proclamation to be published and dispatched to foreign political parties, setting forth the frauds we have endured and how fallacious legal methods worsen the problem, it would gain more response than begging corrupt politicians. By contrast, as merely another American political "party" we would appear to play the game of loyal subjects who accept the legitimacy of the two undemocratic parties. Their politics—based on State’s-rights and corporate contracts—will inevitably lead to internal disintegration.

In their trashing of first principles, the Republicans and Democrats have looked to party and, instead of principle governing party, their parties govern principle. By declaring ourselves independent of the divisive and colonizing party system, we could renounce war guilt and set America on the path to rejoining other peaceful nations. The political constituency goes back to all those recognized the colonial tyranny of England in our unpopular invasion of Vietnam and yet also supports the many loyal veterans who, for diverse reasons, may have misunderstood their oath to defend the Constitution.

Outrage against dictatorial corporations does not attack free enterprise. Foreign enterprise benefits from the commerce with America and that would largely continue. This would be exercised by companies and individuals, rather than by corporate titans. Countries as distant as France and Japan will still come to our market for many articles. Independence from plundering oligopoly is an object worthy of contention. Like other truths discovered by necessity, this will appear clearer and stronger every day. Delaying a peaceful restoration must, sooner or later, lead to revolution and the longer it is prolonged the harder will be the healing to follow. It is easy to merely talk of reconciliation.

As people seriously consider how difficult the task is, they’ll see that reconciliation is no longer an option. Whoever takes nature for a guide is not easily beaten out of this argument. We should generally see that attempted reconciliation could allow a treacherous, capricious court system to interfere. Distinguishing wage or rental slavery from corporate serfdom is philosophically incoherent. What about millions of non-violent Americans now in jail or various parole? How are they not enslaved by the pretexts of a 13^th Amendment?

Should we again divide on issues that caused Civil War? First principles give the answer without doubt. Any person capable of reflection will see the alarming situation. Without justice, without popular government, without any other mode of power than what is granted by corporate courtesy, arbitration won’t work. Our present condition is legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; and taxation without authority. There is no enforcement against sedition. Civil laws arbitrarily replace criminal ones, so robbers think themselves free to act as they wish because they can afford the fine. Who can foretell the result? The property of no person is secure in this system of legalized courthouse plunder.

A mass mind, seeing no fixed object before it, wanders at random. Ignoring first principles it contends to continue dependence on robber barons. While strangely enchanting, their nobility holds together by such concurring consent for greed. Corporate directors secretly seek to profit by suddenly imposed instability in the stock market or by commodity speculation. They pursue goals that their rage, greed or pleasure directs.

Wouldn’t corporations, especially those that are foreign based, be less bold if they knew that their freedom could be forfeit to American laws? For such reasons, a distinction may be drawn between foreign robbers taken in their thievery and corrupt dual-citizens. The first are invaders who may be returned to their origin after reclaiming stolen goods. The latter, taken while serving foreign pirates, are traitors. The first forfeit stolen treasure, the second risk losing their second American citizenship and criminal prosecution.

Those who contemplate reconciliation should consider others whose situation and circumstances may foretell their own. Let them put themselves in place of the farmers whose all is already gone; or of soldiers who quit all for serving the country and were then thrown into destitution for refusing the greed creed? The foreign civilians murdered by American bombs need also be considered because violating Laws of War also outrages our Constitution (Article VI). If we condone killing German, Japanese, Iraqi, Serb, and Afghan civilians: will vengeful killings add to our misfortune of living under increasing dictatorship?

We should fight neither for revenge nor conquest; neither from pride nor passion; we should not insult the globe with our fleets and armies, nor ravage it to plunder oil. New laws have been invented to attack us beneath the shade of our own vines and our fellow citizens have been raided in their homes and lands for something as simple as inhaling a product of the vines. Violence has been committed against the citizens and many of the millions on parole or imprisoned are there for no more than political whims to "war on drugs."

Some say that corporations can be put back on their footing of 1865 when there were no national oligarchs. Such a request, had it been complied with a hundred years ago, might have won the heart of the country. Now it is too late. The power of robber barons will not comply with this; neither will they propose it. If it were granted, the reasonable question is by what means could a corrupt and faithless racket be kept to its promise? Another Congress could reverse the obligation on a pretense of it being too strident or unwise.

To be on the footing of 1865, it is not sufficient only that the Constitution be restored, but that the citizens’ circumstances, likewise, be put in the former state. Their destroyed assets must be repaired. Both their private losses must be made good and public debts discharged. Otherwise, the people shall be trillions worse off than they were in the equivalent period after the Civil War. Representation must be restored. The environment must be repaired. The judiciary must be rebuilt. Without that, no redress is possible.

There will be no truth or reconciliation if we rely on mere civil law when dealing with global killing. Violence was done or threatened to our persons by vengeful terrorists. Our property was destroyed or seized by black robed lawyers. Armed mercenaries invade our communities dressed as police. All this conscientiously qualifies for outrage and, the instant in which defense became necessary, all subjection to corporations ought to have ceased. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present has not happened since the days of our first wars. It is mainly a matter of restoring a representation that existed at the founding of the country and then uniting with other nations in a common cause.

From this viewpoint, when weighed against real needs of global restoration, the paltry greed of a few thousand running dogs of global wealth must seem trifling and ridiculous. Every day convinces us of its necessity. Even Hanoverians or similarly disposed creatures should solicit it. Just as the appointment of committees in the original Revolution protected Tories from popular rage, so well established governments would be the only sure way of their continuing securely among us. Even if they don’t have virtue enough to care for first principles, they might have enough prudence to support secure interdependence.

When we understand the goal, our ears will close to intriguing schemes of cruel and cunning pirates. We shall then be on a proper footing to treat with other peoples. Even aristocratic rulers are more likely to negotiate for global stability with a rebuilt America than with those they dismiss as inferior servants to a class of unkempt looters. Delay only encourages these to hope for ultimate conquest or escape (with the plundered loot). The reasonable part of the globe will also be with us because peace with trade is preferable to conflict without it. Ultimately, they know that nothing prevents trade within our own borders.

There are religious fanatics who preach peace at any cost and claim that unelected leaders deserve trust. We never dishonor religion by ridiculing any denomination whatsoever. To God, and not to man, are they accountable on the score of religion. Therefore, this next epistle is properly addressed only to the few pretenders of a political body, dabbling in matters which the professed quietude of their principles instructs them not to meddle in. As they have, without a proper authority for so doing, put themselves in the place of a whole body of Christians and keepers of morality so, in order to be on an equal footing, we put ourselves in the place of all those who approve the principle against which their testimony is directed. We announce this representation in order that they might discover in it that presumption of character that they cannot see in themselves. In fact, neither they nor we can claim political representation.

When people depart from the right path, it is no wonder that they stumble and fall. And it is evident from the manner in which the pretenders manage testimony that politics - for a religious body - is not their proper path. However well adapted it may first appear, it soon becomes a jumble of good and bad. The conclusions drawn will be unjust when they attempt to demean fellow citizens on religious ground.

We should view protectors of profit-imposed misery in the character of highwaymen and housebreakers. Having no adequate defense in the civil law, we should seek criminal punishment. Cases less grievous than now face indifference deserved military retribution in 1776. 1812, and 1861. When fanatic religious testimony promotes such theft, in whatever light such outrage is viewed, it serves only to dishonor the preacher’s judgment and (for many other reasons) had better been left alone than published to support the miscreant behavior of the corporate state. This support for the fascists can be denounced on three counts:

1. Because claiming to know God’s mind tends to decrease and reproach all religion whatever, and is of the utmost danger to society to make it a party in political disputes;

2. Because it exhibits a body of men, numbers of whom disavow the publishing of political testimonies, as being concerned therein and approvers thereof;

3. Because it has a tendency to undo that continental harmony and friendship which they, by late liberal and charitable donations, have lent a hand to establish. The preservation of such broadly based charity is important to us all and can only diminish if it is undermined by politics.

Religion has its place, but the two principal enemies of its morality are fanaticism and infidelity. The first can be fought by reason, the other by natural philosophy. A citizen prayer that avoids reference to specific religions could remind us of the national duties of citizen representatives. Consider the following:

It is undeniable truth that religion - or the duty owed to our Creator - and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason or conviction, not by force or violence, and it is the right of every person to exercise it as these dictate. Experience witnessed that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, often upheld thrones of political tyranny. In some instances they erected spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty have often found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries to disarm the liberties of the people.

A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need established religions. Who does not see that the same authority that can promote Christianity over all other religions may establish, with similar ease, a particular Christian sect above all other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute two cents to support any one establishment may force him to conform to any other in all cases whatsoever? I sincerely wish that true citizens might always fully and without interruption enjoy every religious right. In turn they should also wish the means of securing it to others. Therefore, the unwise example of mingling religion with politics should be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America. And from here, without anger or resentment, let’s bid the religious topic farewell.

Knowledge will usually conquer ignorance so a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. Despite its abuses, the world is indebted to publishers for all the triumphs that have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression. A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is usually a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Their study should especially increase the knowledge of liberty.

There are more instances of abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden seizures. It is therefore proper to take alarm at the first infringement of our liberties. Such prudent jealousy is the first duty of citizens and was one of the noblest characteristics of our Revolution. The freedom of America did not wait until usurped power had strengthened itself and entangled politics in precedents. The founders foresaw the consequences in the false principle, and they avoided them by denying the principle. The real threat, however, should not be with the simple frictions that exist in modern society. Its most common and durable source is between various factions.

The various and unequal distribution of property creates such factions. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. The possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results in protection of different—often-unequal—faculties of acquiring it. The influence of these factions causes a division of the society into different interests and parties based on the sentiments of the respective proprietors. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a money interest, and many lesser ones necessarily arise in civilized nations and divide them into different classes actuated by different views. The increased variety of parties comprised within a nation can generally increase security. A candid examination of history also shows that abuse of power by the majority faction results in commotion that produces despotism in republics more frequently than any other cause.

Regulation to protect these various interests therefore forms a principal task of modern legislation. Apportioning taxes on the various property requires particular impartiality, since there is no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation is given to a predominant party to trample justice. A pure democracy, a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who personally assemble to administer the government, risks such mischief. A small republic will have enough representatives to guard against the cabals of a few and a large one will restrain representation from the risk of confusing the multitude. The levels of appropriate representation were adopted and demonstrated in the first decades of the country but obviously, an American Republic now seems impossible.

Wealth is now concentrated in the hands of a few who decided to end representation. These few, sometimes as dual citizens, do not answer their own mail, much less know their electors. Confusion is widespread. The time to replace the Congress and its magistrates is past. It is necessary to rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to restore the laws of the nation away from corrupt conditions. In that reliance we must never forget that justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It has ever been and ever will be pursued until it is obtained, or until liberty is lost in the pursuit.

The Confederacy presented the challenge of discontented individuals; too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law, could arbitrarily break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forced Lincoln to ask if a republic must, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence? The patriotic instinct of plain people comprehended that destruction of Constitutional government - of, by and for "We the People" - meant them no good. The present corporate confederacy has adapted an idea of independence, which is unlike the old one penned by Jefferson.

Its perversion of international treaties gives directors of secret tribunals the right to govern daily affairs of the American people. The idea that markets are more equal than people relies on hired deputies within 80,000 fictitious governments of fifty apparently "sovereign" states. Naturally the chieftains do not allow such freedom to their employees. Plainly, as the sheep and the wolf cannot agree upon a definition of the word "liberty," precisely the same difference prevails by relying on the current human predators.

How "free" would it be for the workers to settle their debts by reaching into an employer’s treasury, or perform similar selfish, unjust acts? The principle of plunder is itself one of disintegration, which no government can possibly endure. Despite Federalist "devolution" of power to the States, there is no majority of voters of any state who has chosen corporation. None of them voted for an invisible hand in preference to federal law. The people have never approved robber regimes through the Ninth or Tenth Amendments, so States have neither more nor less power than what the Constitution reserves for them. None of them were ever States out of the Union unless at war with the rest.

The original ones passed into federal Union in 1774 before they cast off their colonial dependence. They legalized the action three years later by Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. All but two of the later ones came into the Union directly from a condition of dependence. The old ones passed into the Union before they left colonial status and declared to be free and independent only in a context of "United Colonies" pledged to mutual action. Five colonies did not choose to join this Union (Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland) and grew into Canada as the southern two rejoined Spain for decades after 1783). The new ones only took the designation of States on coming into the Union. There was never intent to allow them to declare independence of each other or their "perpetual" Union, which is older than any of the States and, in fact, created them.

Not one of them ever had a State constitution independent of the Union. The relative matter of national power and State rights, as a principle, is no other than one of generality and locality as confided to the whole, and limited by the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment. Whatever concerns the whole is decided by the whole. Despite later lip service, the word sovereignty was not even to be found in the national Constitution nor, as is believed, in any of the original State constitutions. Only Texas and Hawaii were ever sovereign, but even these two were not "States" during their temporary independence and both gave up that character by joining the Union. The States have no other legal status except within the Union. If they break away, they can only do so against law, by revolution or sedition. As the righteous forces of democracy exhausted themselves in dismantling plantation aristocracy, corporation plutocracy made underhanded structural changes to destroy the republic. Although the imperial "corporations" are unconstitutional, they insist on their independence. It is now up to us, eight generations after those who proclaimed "that all men are created equal", to overcome their seditious occupation.

The nation purchased with blood or money the land from which the States were formed. Is it just that they could create corporations to sell off portions of their trust without leave or refunding? If one State can do this, so may another, and when all have sold off or chartered out the public treasury, no one is left to pay the debts. Is this fair to the creditors (the people)? Such piracy has been going on since the Civil War and the question is not only if the plunder should stop, but also how the stolen resources can be recovered.

It defies logic to assume that States, themselves constitutionally lacking such power, can incorporate some entity with this prerogative. The presumption also defies true election within unequal corporate governments. The issue embraces more than the fate of any one region, a few States, or even of the United States. It presents to a global human family the question whether constitutional republics or democracy—a government of the people by the same people—can maintain its integrity against its own internal foe. Individuals who knowingly violate an oath to defend the Constitution or have placed themselves outside equal justice can hardly be treated as less than outlaws.

Either such first principles cannot be refuted or the coalitions in their favor are too numerous to be opposed. Instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let us rest on this sentiment. Let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hand of friendship and unite in drawing a line against tyranny. This will reduce dissension among factions. With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work started by the founders.

Let us afterwards bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for those who shall have borne the battle and do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations. Let the names of Republican and Democrat be extinguished, and let none other be heard among us than those of good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of Rights of Mankind in the Free and United States of America.

Human beings should be ready to act single-handed, without support, but individual actions are only the beginning of change. As you get frustrated, remember that you are not alone. That is the big secret that the power-mongers want to keep from us. They want us to forget that this country was founded by radicals who were against royalty. That gang has always been against us. Their tradition imagines that a nation can impose loyalty to its royalty, even to the point of slavery. Tyranny is little more than rule without consent.

There is also a whole class of people shouting for "freedom," but who is really obsessed with property rights. They usually rally around an antitax flag. Obviously those without the income to pay much tax or lacking property aren’t thus obsessed. The slave-trade manager (Locke), who wrote the colonial charters for the Carolinas, allowed property in the form of human slaves and embedded such traditions in the old Confederacy. Those impressed by plantation and corporation slavery will encourage unequal property rights.

They fear government because it can recover property after fair compensation. If it was misappropriated to begin with then that compensation, after reparations, might be very small indeed. Those who steal public property, a favorite corporate game, might even be jailed. A strongly progressive tax structure offers one timid strategy in this direction.

Reminding citizens about piracy suggests stronger solutions. We are lucky to live in a heroic time. We can’t all storm the beach at Normandy or scare Hitler into suicide, but we can all help to finish the work of World War 2 by defeating fascism and sharing the Four Freedoms. How? First, join with at least a dozen activists in your Congressional District. They need to act weekly, which means more than passively gathering information to expose the crimes we already know. A solution requires awakening the general population.

…on the Proposal for Calling a Convention

As I resided in the capital of your State, Philadelphia, in the time that tried men’s souls, and my political writings, during the Revolutionary War, were written in that city, it seems natural for me to look back to the place of my political and literary birth, and feel an interest for its happiness. Removed as I am now am from the place, and detached from everything personal, I address this token to you on the ground of principle, and in remembrance of former times and friendships.

The subject now before you, is the call of a Convention to examine and, if necessary, to reform the Constitution of the State; or to speak in the correct language of constitutional order, to propose written articles of reform to be accepted or rejected by the people by vote in place of those now existing, that shall be judged improper or defective.

There cannot be, on the ground of reason, any objection to this; because if no reform or alteration is necessary, the sense of the country will permit none to be made; and, if necessary, it will be made because it ought to be made. Until, therefore, the sense of the country can be collected, and made known for that purpose, all opposition to the call of a convention not only passes for nothing, but serves to create a suspicion that the Constitution will not bear an examination.

The Constitution formed by the 1776 Convention, of which Benjamin Franklin (the greatest and most useful man America has yet produced) was president, had many good points which were overthrown by the 1790 Convention under the pretense of making the Constitution conformable to that of the United States; as if the forms and periods of election for a territory extensive as the United States could become a rule for a single state. The principle defect in the 1776 Constitution was that it was subject, in practice, to too much precipitancy.

The foundation of the 1776 Constitution was good. The 1790 Constitution appears to be clogged with inconsistencies of hazardous tendency, as a supposed remedy against a precipitancy that might not happen.

Investing any individual, by whatever name or official title he may be called, with a veto over the formation of the laws, is copied from the English Government, without ever perceiving the inconsistency and absurdity of it when applied to the representative system, or understanding the origin of it in the present form of English government.

The things called prerogatives of the Crown - of which veto power is one - were established by conquest, not by compact. Their origin was the 1066 Norman conquest of England by William of Normandy, surnamed the Conqueror, and the genealogy of its kings takes its date from him. He is the first of the list.

There is no historical certainty of the time when parliaments began; but be the time when it may, they began by what are called grants or charters from the Norman Conqueror, or his successors, to certain towns, and to counties, to elect members to meet and serve in Parliament, [* a French word, brought by the Normans; from the verb parler - to speak] subject to his control. The custom still continues with the King of England calling the Parliament my Parliament; that is, a Parliament originating from his authority, and over which he holds himself, derived from that conquest. It is from this assumed right, derived from conquest, and not from any constitutional right by compact, that kings of England hold a veto over the formation of the laws; and they hold this for the purpose of preventing any being enacted that might abridge, invade, or in any way affect or diminish what they claim to be their hereditary or family rights and prerogatives derived originally from the conquest of the country.[1]

This origin of the King of England’s veto makes it a badge of disgrace which his Parliaments are obliged to wear, and to which they are abject enough to submit. But what has this case to do with a legislature chosen by freemen, on their own authority, in right of themselves?

Or in what manner does a person styled Governor or Chief Magistrate resemble a subjugating conqueror, as William of Normandy subjugated England, and saying to it, you may have no laws but what I please?

The veto power in a country like America, is of that kind, that a wise man would not choose to be embarrassed with it, and a man fond of using it will be overthrown by it. {For example} It is not difficult to see that when M’Kean vetoed the Arbitration Act he was induced to it as a lawyer, for the benefit of the profession, and not as a magistrate for the benefit of the people.

It is the office of a chief magistrate to compose differences and prevent lawsuits so if the people choose to have arbitrations instead of lawsuits, why should they not have them? It is a matter that concerns them as individuals and not as a state or community. It is not proper for a governor to interfere for it is not a state or government concern: nor does it concern the peace thereof, other than to make it more peaceful by making it less contentious.

This veto power in the hands of an individual ought to be constitutionally abolished. It is a dangerous power. There is no prescribing rules for the use of it discretionary and arbitrary. The will and temper of the person possessing it is its only rule. There must have been great want of reflection in the Convention that admitted it into the Constitution. Would that Convention have put the Constitution it had formed (whether good or bad) in the power of any individual to veto?

It would not. It would have treated such a proposal with disdain. Why then did it put the legislatures thereafter to be chosen, and all the laws, in that predicament?

Had that Convention, or the law members thereof, known the origin of the veto power used by kings of England, from whence they copied it, they must have seen the inconsistency of introducing it to an American Constitution. They are a conquered people but we know no conqueror; and the veto power used by English kings is for the defense of the personal and family prerogatives of the successors of the conqueror against the Parliament and the people. What is all this to us?

We know no prerogatives but what belong to the sovereignty of ourselves.

At the time the 1790 Constitution was formed, there was a great departure from the principles of the Revolution among those who assumed the lead. The country was grossly imposed upon and this accounts for some inconsistencies that are to be found in the present Constitution, among which is the inconsistently copied veto power. While the exercise of the power over the state remained dormant, it remained unnoticed; but the instant it began to be active it began to alarm; and the exercise of it against the rights of the people to settle their private pecuniary differences by peaceable arbitration, without the interference of lawyers, and the expense and tedium of courts of law, has brought about a crisis.

Arbitration is of more importance to society than courts of law, and ought to have precedence over them in all cases of pecuniary concerns between parties or individuals. Who are better qualified than merchants to settle disputes between merchants, or who better than farmers to settle disputes between farmers? And the same for every other description of men.

What do lawyers or courts of law know of these matters? They devote themselves to forms rather than to principles. The merits of a case become obscure and lost in a labyrinth of verbal perplexities. We do not hear of lawyers going to law with each other, though they could do it cheaper than other people. This shows the opinion they have of it for themselves.

The principle and rule of arbitration ought to be constitutionally established. The honest sense of a country collected in convention will find out how to do this without the interference of lawyers, who may be hired to advocate any side of any cause. The practice of the bar has become a species of prostitution that ought to be controlled.

It lives by encouraging the injustice it pretends to redress.

Courts in which law is practiced are of two kinds. One for criminal cases, the other for civil cases, or cases between individuals respecting property of any kind or the value thereof. I do not know the numerical proportion of these two classes of cases to each other; but there is no doubt that civil cases are far more numerous than criminal cases.

Whether they be ten, twenty, thirty, or forty to one, or more, I leave to those who live in the state, or its counties, to determine. But be the proportion what it may, the expense to the public of supporting a judiciary for both will be, in some relative degree, according to the total number of cases; yet it is only one of them that the public, as a public, have any concern with. The criminal cases being breaches of the peace are consequently under the cognizance of the state government, and the expense of supporting the courts thereof belongs to the public, because the preservation of the peace is a public concern.

But civil cases, that is, cases of private property between individuals, belong wholly to the individuals themselves; and all that government has consistently to do in the matter is to establish a process by which the parties concerned shall proceed to bring the matter to decision themselves, referring it to impartial and judicious men of their chosen neighborhood.

This is by far the most convenient, as to time and place and the cheapest method to them; for it is bringing justice home to their own doors, without the chicanery of law and lawyers. / Every case ought to be determined on its own merits, without the farce of what are called precedents, or reports of cases; because in the first place, it often happens that the decision upon the case brought as a precedent is bad, and ought to be shunned instead of imitated; and, in the second place, because no two cases are perfectly alike in all their circumstances, one therefore cannot become a rule for deciding another. It is Justice and good judgement that preside by in a court of arbitration. It is forms, quoted precedents, and contrivances for delay and expense to the parties, that govern the proceedings of a court of law.

By establishing arbitration rooms in courts of law for the adjustment of private cases, the public will be eased of a great part of the expense of the present judiciary establishment; for certainly such a host of judges, associate judges, presidents of circuits, clerks, and criers of courts, as are at present supported at the public expense, will not then be necessary. There are, perhaps, more of them than there are criminals to try in the space of a year.

Arbitration will lessen the sphere of patronage. It is probable that this was one of the private reasons for vetoing the arbitration act; but public economy, and the convenience and ease of individuals, ought to have outweighed all such considerations. The present federal Administration has struck off a long list of useless officers, and economized the public expenditure, and it is better to make a precedent of this, than to imitate its forms and long periods of election, which require reform themselves.

A great part of the people of Pennsylvania make a principle of not going to law, and others avoid it from prudential reasons; yet all those people are taxed to support a judiciary to which they never resort. It is as unjust as it is in England to make the Quakers pay tithes to support the Episcopal Church. Arbitration will put an end to this imposition.

Another complaint against the Constitution of Pennsylvania, is the great quantity of patronage annexed to the office of governor. Patronage has a natural tendency to increase the public expense, by the temptation it leads (unless in the hands of a wise man like Franklin) to multiply offices within the gift or appointment of that patronage. John Adams, when increasing offices and officers, forgot that where there was one man to be benefited by an appointment, all the rest had to pay the cost of it; and that by attaching the one to him by patronage, he ran the risk of losing the many by disgust.[2]

And such was the consequence; and such will ever be the consequence in a free country, where men reason for themselves and from themselves, and not from the dictates of others. / The less patronage a man is encumbered with the safer he stands. He cannot please everybody by using it; and he will refuse, and consequently displease, a greater number than he can please.

The Constitution of New York, though like all the rest it has its defects, arising from want of experience in the representative system of government at the time it was formed, has provided much better, in this case, than the Constitution of Pennsylvania has done.[3] The Pennsylvania Constitution is a miniature copy of the English Government, established at the conquest of that country by William of Normandy. I have shown this in part in the case of the king’s veto, and I shall show it more fully as I go on.

The complaint respecting the Senate is the length of its duration, being four years. The sage Franklin said, "Where annual election ends, tyranny begins" (and no man was a better judge of human nature, nor has any man in our time exceeded him in honor and honesty).

When a man ceases to be accountable to those who elected him, and with whose public affairs he is entrusted, he ceases to be their representative, and is put in a condition of being their despot. He becomes the representative of nobody but himself:

I am elected, says he, for four years; you cannot turn me out, neither am I responsible to you in the meantime. All you have to do with me is pay me.

The manner of choosing electors ought to be fixed in the Constitution, and not be left to the caprice of contention. It is a matter equally as important, and concerns the rights and interest of the people as much - and sometimes more - than the election of members of State Legislature.[4] The Senate is an imitation of what is called the House of Lords in England, and which Chesterfield, who was a member of it, and therefore knew it, calls "the Hospital of Incurables"

The Senate in Pennsylvania is not quite a hospital of incurables, but it took almost four years to bring about its convalescence. Before we imitate anything, we ought to examine whether it be worth imitating, and had this been done by the Convention at that time, they would have seen that the model for their mimic imitation was no better than unprofitable and disgraceful lumber.

This disgraceful House of Lords in England, and it still retains some tokens of the plundering baseness of its origin. One swindler named Dundas was made a lord, and even called noble lord!

Why did they not give him proper title, and call him noble swindler, for he swindled by wholesale. Will he will escape punishment? Blackstone, in his commentary on law, recited an act of Parliament, passed in 1550, and not since repealed, that extends what is called the benefits of clergy, that is, exemption from punishment for all clerical offenses, to all lords and peers of the realm who could not read, as well as those who could, and also for "the crimes of housebreaking, highway-robbing, horse-stealing, and robbing of churches."

Consistent with the original establishment of the House of Lords, it was originally composed of robbers. This is aristocracy, one of the pillars of John Adams’ "stupendous fabric of human invention."

A privilege for housebreaking, highway-robbing, horse-stealing, and robbing of churches! John Adams knew little of the origin and practise of English Government.

As to constitution, it has none. The 1776 Pennsylvania Convention copied nothing from the English Government. It formed a Constitution on the basis of honesty. The defect as I have already said, of that Constitution was the precipitancy to which the legislatures might be subject in enacting laws. All the members of the Legislature then sat in one chamber, and debated in one body. This precipitancy was not effectually provided against; and laws could not be properly published to allow for public consideration.

The practical means of public affirmation were not yet up to the need, however, but the foundation of that Constitution was good and deserves to be resorted to. Everything that Franklin was concerned in producing merits attention. He was the wise and benevolent friend of man. Riches and honors made no alternation in his principles or his manners.

The 1776 Constitution conformed to the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Rights. The 1790 Constitution does not. It makes artificial distinctions among men in the right of suffrage and against the principles of equity. Neither is it consistent with sound policy. We every day see the rich becoming poor and those who were poor before, becoming rich.

Because riches have no stability they cannot and ought not to be made a criterion of right. Man is man in every condition of life, and the varieties of fortune and misfortune are open to all.

Had the number of representatives in the Congress established by the 1790 Constitution been increased, and instead of their sitting together in one chamber – and debating and voting at one time - been divided by lot into two equal parts and sat in separate chambers, the advantage would have been, that one-half by not being entangled in the first debate, nor having committed itself by voting, would be silently possessed of the arguments, of the former part and be in a calm condition to review the whole. And instead of one house (or by whatever name they may be called) vetoing the vote of the other, which is now the case (and results on inconsistencies and even absurdities), to have added the votes of both chambers together, and the majority of the whole to be the final decision - there would be reason in this, but there is none in the present mode.

To know if any theory or position be true or rational, in practice, the method is, to carry it to its greatest extent; if it be not true upon the whole, or be absurd, it is so in all its parts, however small.

For instance, if one house consists of 200 members and the other 50, which is about the proportion they are in some of the states, and if a proposed law be carried on the affirmative in the larger house with only one dissenting vote, and be vetoed in the smaller house by a majority of 1, the event will be that 27 control and govern 223.

This is too absurd for argument and totally inconsistent with the principle of representative government, which knows no difference in the value and importance of its members but what arises from their virtues and talents. Not from the name of the house or chamber they sit in.

As the practice of a smaller number vetoing a greater is not founded in reason, we must look for its origin in some other cause. The Americans copied it from England, and it was brought into England by the Norman Conqueror, and is derived from the ancient French practice of voting by ORDERS, of which they counted three; the Clergy (i.e., Roman Catholic clergy), the Noblesse (who had titles), and the Tiers Etat, or Third Estate, which included all who were not of the two former orders, and which in England are called the Commons or common people, so the house in which they are represented is called the House of Commons.

With the Conqueror, in order to complete and secure the conquest he had made and hold the country in subjection, he cantoned it out among the chiefs of his army. He gave them castles, and he dubbed them with the title of lords, as is before shown. These being dependent on the Conqueror, and having a united interest with him, became the defenders of his measures, and the guardians of his assumed prerogative against the people; and when the house called the Common House of Parliament began by grants and charters from the Conqueror and his successors, these lords, claiming to be a distinct ORDER from the Commons, though smaller in number, held a controlling or veto vote over them, and from this arose the irrational practice of a smaller number vetoing a greater.

But what are these things to us, or why should we imitate them? We have but one ORDER in America, and that of the highest degree, the ORDER OF SOVEREIGNTY, and of this ORDER every citizen is a member by personal right. Why descend to a base imitation of inferior things? By the event of the Revolution we were put in a condition of thinking originally. The history of past ages shows scarcely anything but instances of tyranny and antiquated absurdity. We have copied and experience the folly of some of them.

Another subject of complaint in Pennsylvania is the judiciary, and this appears to require a thorough reform. Arbitration will of itself reform a great part, but much will remain to require amendment. The courts of law still continue to practice in the same manner as when the State was a British colony. They have not yet arrived at the dignity of independence. They hobble along by the stilts and crutches of English and antiquated precedents. Their pleadings are made up of cases and reports from English law books; many of which are tyrannical, and all of them are now foreign to us.

Our courts require to be domesticated, As they are at present conducted, they dishonor the national sovereignty. Every case in America ought to be determined on its own merits, according to American laws, and all reference to foreign adjudications prohibited. The introduction of them into American courts serves only to waste time, embarrass causes, and perplex juries. Such reform will reduce cases to a narrow compass easily understood.

For example, the terms used in courts of law, in sheriffs’ sales, and on several other occasions, in writs, and other legal proceedings, require reform. Many of those terms are Latin, and others French.

The Latin terms were brought into Britain by the Romans, who spoke Latin, and who continued in Britain between 400 and 500 years, from the first invasion of it by Julius Caesar (in 52 B.C.). The French terms were brought by the Normans when they conquered England in 1066, as I have before shown, and whose language was French.

These terms being still used in English law courts, show the origin of those courts, and are evidence of the country having been under foreign jurisdiction. But by not being generally understood they serve to mystify.

Therefore they serve the purpose of what is called law, whose business is to perplex; and the courts in England put up with the disgrace of recording foreign jurisdiction and foreign conquest, by using terms which the clients and public do not understand.

From thence the courts create the false belief that law is a learned science, and lawyers are learned men. The English pleaders, in order to keep up the farce of the profession, though in contradiction, always compliment each other with the title of my learned brother.

Two farmers or two merchants will settle cases by arbitration which lawyers cannot settle by law. Where then is the learning of the law, or what is it good for?

It is necessary to distinguish between a lawyer’s law, and legislative law. Legislative law is the law of the land, enacted by our own legislators, chosen by the people for that purpose. Lawyer’s law is a mass of opinions and decisions, many of them contradictory to each other, which courts and lawyers have instituted themselves, and is chiefly made up of law-reports of cases taken from English law books. The case of every man ought to be tried by the laws of his own country, which he knows, and not by opinions and authorities from other countries, of which he may know nothing. A lawyer, in pleading, will talk several hours about law, but it is lawyer’s law, and not legislative law, that he means.

The whole of the judiciary needs reform. It is very loosely appointed in most of the states, and also in the general government. The case, I suppose, has been that the Judiciary department in [the] constitution has been left to the lawyers who might be [at the] convention to form, and they have taken care to leave it loose. For example, to say that a judge shall hold his office during good behavior, is saying nothing; for the term good behavior has neither a legal nor moral definition. In the common acceptance of the term, it refers more to a style of manners than to principles, and may be applied to signify different and contradictory things. A child of good behavior, a judge of good behavior, a soldier of good behavior in the field, and a dancing-master of good behavior in his school, cannot be of the same good behavior.

What then is the good behavior of a judge? Many circumstances in the conduct and character of a man may render him unfit to hold the office of a judge yet not amount to cause of impeachment, which always supposes commission of some known crime. Judges ought to be held to their duty by continual responsibility, instead the Constitution releases them from all responsibility, except by impeachment, from which by the loose, undefined establishment of the judiciary, there is always a hole to creep out.

In annual elections for legislators, every legislator is responsible every year. No good reason can be given by those entrusted with the execution of the laws should not be as responsible, at stated periods, as those entrusted with the power of enacting them.

Releasing the Judges from responsibility is an imitation of an act of the English Parliament, for rendering the judges so far independent of what is called the Crown, as not to be removable by it. The case is that judges in England are appointed by the Crown, and are paid out of the King’s civil list, as being his representatives when sitting in court; and in all prosecutions for treason and criminal offenses, the King is the prosecutor. It was therefore reasonable that the judge, before whom a man was to be tried, should not be dependent for the tenure of his office on the will of the prosecutor.

But this is no reason that in a representative government a judge should not be responsible - and also removable - by some constitutional mode, without the tedious and expensive formality of impeachment.

We remove or turn out presidents, governors, senators, and representatives, without this formality. Why are judges, who are generally lawyers, so privileged? I suppose it is because lawyers formed the Judiciary part of the Constitution.

The term "contempt of court," which has caused some agitation in Pennsylvania, is also copied from England where it means contempt for the King’s authority or prerogative in court. Judges there appear as his representatives, and are styled in their commissions, when they open a court, "His Majesty the King’s Justices."

This now undefined thing is derived from the Norman Conquest of England, as is shown by the French words used in England, with which proclamation for silence, "on pain of imprisonment," begins, "Oyez, Oyez, Oyez".* [* Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye.]

This shows its Norman origin. It is, however, a species of despotism; for contempt of court is now anything a court imperiously pleases to call so, and then it inflicts punishment as by prerogative without trial. This practice requires to be constitutionally regulated, but not by lawyers.

There have been many and great objections and complaints against the 1790 Constitution and the practice upon it, arising from the improper and unequal distribution it makes of power. Franklin’s opinion respecting the propriety of two houses vetoing each other, which he gave by request of the 1776 Convention (of which he was president), was demonstrated by events in the 1800 Pennsylvania Senate. "It appears to me," said he, "like putting one horse before a cart and the other behind it, and whipping them both. If the horses are of equal strength, the wheels of the cart, like the wheels of government, will stand still; and if the horses are strong enough, the cart will be torn to pieces."

Inequality of rights has been the cause of all the disturbances, insurrections, and civil wars, that ever happened in any country, in any age of mankind.

It was the cause of the American Revolution, when the English Parliament sat itself up to bind America in all cases whatsoever, and to reduce her to unconditional submission. It was the cause of the French Revolution; and also in the civil wars in England, in the time of Charles and Cromwell, when the House of Commons voted the House of Lords useless.

The fundamental principle in representative government is that the majority governs, and as it will be always happening that a man may be in the minority on one question, and in the majority on another, he obeys by the same principle that he rules. But when there are two houses of unequal numbers, and the smaller number vetoes the greater, it is the minority that governs, which is contrary to the principle (The case in 1800 Pennsylvania.).

America has the high honor and happiness of being the first nation that gave to the world the example of forming written constitutions by conventions elected expressly for the purpose, and of improving them by the same procedure, as time and experience show necessary.

Government in other nations, vainly calling themselves civilized, has been established by bloodshed. Not a drop of blood has been shed in the United Sates to establish constitutions and governments by this peaceful system. The silent vote, or the simple yea or nay, is more powerful than the bayonet, and decides the strength of numbers without a blow.

I have now, citizens of Pennsylvania, presented you, in good will, with a collection of thoughts and historical references, condensed into a small compass, that they may circulate the more conveniently.

They are applicable to the subject before you, that of calling a convention, in the progress and completion of which I wish you success and happiness, and the honor of showing profitable example to the states around you, and to the world.

Yours, in friendship,

[1] When a king of England (for they are not an English race of kings) vetoes an act passed by the Parliament, he does it in the Norman language, which was the language of conquest, the literal translation of which is, the king will advise himself of it. It is the only instance of an English king speaking French in Parliaments; and shows the origin of the veto.

[2] Thomas Paine notes that John Adams, in his Administration, planned to increase offices and officers. He expected by thus increasing his patronage, and making numerous appointments, that he could attach a numerous train of adherents to him who would support his measures and his future election. He copied this from the corrupt system of England; and he closed his midnight labor by appointing sixteen new unnecessary judges, at an expense to the public of $32,000 annually. John counted only on one side of the case. "Mr. Jefferson gained more friends by dismissing a great many officers, than John Adams did by appointing them. Like a wise man, Mr. Jefferson dismantled himself of patronage."

[3] The appointments in New York were then made by a Council of Appointment, composed of the Governor and a certain number of Senators, taken from different parts of the State. By this means they had among them a personal knowledge of whomsoever appointed. The Governor has a vote, but no veto. Few complained of the abuse of this kind of patronage. Pennsylvania instead departed from the principles of representative government. This example led Paine to discuss the Senate.

[4] Here Paine cited the conduct of the Pennsylvania Senate in 1800, respecting the choice of electors for the U.S. Presidency, showing the danger of such establishment. By conduct of the Senate, the people were deprived of their suffrage, so the State lost its consequence in the Union. It had but one vote. The other fourteen were paired off by compromise - seven and seven. If the people chose the electors, which they had a right to do, for the electors were to represent them, the State would have had fifteen votes which would have counted.

[6] Here Paine described how consensus was attempted: "The Constitution ordered that the laws, before being finally enacted, should be published for public consideration. But as no given time was fixed for that consideration, nor any means for collecting its effects, nor were there then any public newspapers in the State but what were printed in Philadelphia, the provision did not reach the intention of it, and thus a good and wise intention sank into mere form, which is generally the case when the means are not adequate to the end."

[7] To show the absurdity of such a division of legislative power, Paine cites the instance that occurred in the Pennsylvania Senate in 1800, on the bill for choosing electors, where a small majority in that House controlled and vetoed a large majority in the other House.

[8] * The practice of voting by orders in France, whenever the States-General met, continued until the [French] Revolution. It was the then Abbe Sieyes who made the motion, in what was afterward called the National Assembly, for abolishing the vote by orders, and established the rational practice of deciding by a majority of numbers.

[9] Here Paine cited the Passmore case, which agitated the public mind at the time.

The people of Pennsylvania are at this time earnestly occupied on the subject of calling a convention to revise their State Constitution, and there can be but little doubt that a revision is necessary. It is a Constitution, they say, for the emolument of lawyers.

It has happened that the constitutions of all the states were formed before there was any experience with a representative system of government; and it would be a miracle in human affairs that mere theory without experience should start in perfection at once.

The Constitution of New York was formed as early as 1777.

The subject that occupied and engrossed the public mind at that time was the Revolutionary War and the establishment of independence. In order to give effect to the Declaration of Independence by Congress it was necessary that the states should make a practical beginning by establishing state constitutions, and trust to time and experience for improvement. The general defect in these constitutions is that they were modeled on the system, if it can be called a system, of the English Government, which in practice is the most corrupt system in existence, for it is corruption systematized.[1]

An idea also generally prevailed at that time of keeping what were called the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers distinct and separated from each other. But this idea whether correct or not, is always contradicted in practice; for where the consent of a governor or executive is required to an act before it can become a law, or where he can veto an act of the legislature, he is effectually a part of the legislature, and possesses fully half of the powers of a whole legislature.[2]

When we see maxims that fail in practice, we ought to go to the root, and see if the maxim be true. Now it does not signify how many nominal divisions, and subdivisions, and classifications we make, for the fact is, there are but two powers in any government, the power of willing or enacting the laws, and the power of executing them; for what is called the judiciary is a branch of executive power; it executes the laws; and what is called the executive is a superintending power to see that the laws are executed.

Errors in theory are, sooner or later, accompanied with errors in practice; and this leads me to another part of the subject, that of considering a constitution and a government relative to each other. A constitution is the act of the people in their original character of sovereignty. A government is a creature of the constitution; it is produced and brought into existence by it. A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical result, that the governmental exercise of any power not authorized by the constitution is an assumed power, and therefore illegal.

There is no article in the Constitution of this State, nor of any of the states, that invests the Government in whole or in part with the power of granting charters or monopolies of any kind; the spirit of the times was then against all such speculation; and therefore the assuming to grant them is unconstitutional, and when obtained by bribery and corruption is criminal. It is also contrary to the intention and principle of annual elections.

Legislatures are elected annually, not only for the purpose of giving the people, in their elective character, the opportunity of showing their approbation of those who have acted right, by reelecting them, and rejecting those who have acted wrong; but also for the purpose of correcting the wrong (where any wrong has been done) of a former legislature. But the very intention, essence, and principle of annual election would be destroyed, if any one legislature during the year of its authority had the power to place any of its acts beyond the reach of succeeding legislatures; yet this is always attempted to be done in those acts of a legislature called charters. Of what use is it to dismiss legislators for having done wrong, if the wrong is to continue on the authority of those who did it?

So much for things that are wrong. I now speak of things that are right, and may be necessary. Experience shows that matters will occasionally arise, especially in a new country, that will require the exercise of a power differently constituted to that of ordinary legislation; and therefore in a constitution there ought to be an article defining how that power shall be constituted and exercised. Perhaps the simplest method, which I am going to mention, is best; because it is still keeping strictly within the limits of annual elections, makes no new appointments necessary and creates no additional expense.

For example: that all matters of a different quality to matters of ordinary legislation, such, for instance, as sales or grants of public lands, acts of incorporation, public contracts with individuals or companies beyond a certain amount; shall be proposed in one legislature, and published in the form of a bill, with the yeas and nays, after the second reading, and in that state shall lie over to be taken up by the succeeding legislature; that is, there shall always be, on all such matters, one annual election [which] takes place between the time of bringing in the bill and the time of enacting it into a permanent law.

It is the rapidity with which a self-interested speculation, or a fraud on the public property, can be carried through within the short space of one session - and before the people can be apprised of it - that renders it necessary that a precaution of this kind (or a better one) should be made an article of the Constitution.[3] The experiment of the Merchants’ Bank showed it was possible to bribe a small body of men, but it is always impossible to bribe a whole nation. It had already passed its veto on the Merchants’ Bank bill, notwithstanding that the minor Council of Revision approved it.

This method also appears to double the value and importance of annual elections. It is only by means of elections that the mind of the public can be collected to a point on any important subject; and as it is always the interest of a much greater number of people in a country, to have a thing right than to have it wrong, the public sentiment is always worth attending to. It may sometimes err, but never intentionally, and never long.

In all legislative matters that by requiring permanency differ from ordinary legislation - which are alterable or repealable - it is safest that they pass through two legislatures, and a general election intervene between. The elections will always bring up the mind of the country on any important proposed bill; and thus the whole state will be its own Council of Revision.

[1] Jefferson noted that some Federalists, such as John Adams, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton had outspoken admiration for Britain's aristocratic system; and the latter even condoned corruption as natural to the process.

[2] Paine cites that in the State of New York this power is vested in a select body of men, composed of the executive, by which is to be understood the governor, the chancellor, and the Judges, and called the Council of Revision. He notes that this was certainly better than vesting that power in an individual, if it were necessary to invest it anywhere; but is a direct contradiction to the maxim set up, that those powers ought to be kept separate; because here the executive and the Judiciary (united into one power) were acting legislatively.

It might seem, at first thought, to be of little difference whether the present movement at the South be called "secession" or "rebellion." The movers, however, well understand the difference. At the beginning, they knew they could never raise their treason to any respectable magnitude, by any name which implies violation of law. They knew their people possessed as much of moral sense, as much of devotion to law and order, and as much pride in, and reverence for, the history, and government, of their common country, as any other civilized, and patriotic people. They knew they could make no advancement directly in the teeth of these strong and noble sentiments. Accordingly they commenced by an insidious debauching of the public mind. They invented an ingenious sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is, that any state of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully, and peacefully, withdraw from the Union, without the consent of the Union, or of any other state. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for just cause, themselves to be the sole judge of its justice, is too thin to merit any notice.

With rebellion thus sugar-coated, they have been drugging the public mind of their section for more than thirty years; until, at length, they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government the day after some assemblage of men have enacted the farcical pretence of taking their State out of the Union, who could have been brought to no such thing the day before.

This sophism derives much---perhaps the whole---of its currency, from the assumption, that there is some omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a State--to each State of our Federal Union. Our States have neither more, nor less power, than that reserved to them, in the Union, by the Constitution---no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union. The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial dependence; and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of dependence, excepting Texas; and even Texas, in its temporary independence, was never designated a State. The new ones only took the designation of States on coming into the Union, while that name was first adopted for the old ones, in, and by, the Declaration of Independence. Therein the "United Colonies" were declared to be "Free and Independent States"; but, even then, the object plainly was not to declare their independence of one another or of the Union; but directly the contrary, as their mutual pledge, and their mutual action, before, at the time, and afterwards, abundantly show. The express plighting of faith, by each and all of the original thirteen, in the Articles of Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual, is most conclusive. Having never been States, either in substance, or in name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "State rights," asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the "sovereignty" of the States; but the word, even, is not in the national Constitution; nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions. What is a "sovereignty," in the political sense of the term? Would it be far wrong to define it "a political community, without a political superior?" Tested by this, no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty. And even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union; by which act, she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States, and the laws and treaties of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution, to be, for her, the supreme law of the land. The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status . If they break from this, they can only do so against law, and by revolution.

The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence, and their liberty. By conquest, or purchase, the Union gave each of them, whatever of independence, and liberty, it has. The Union is older than any of the States; and, in fact, it created them as States. Originally, some dependent colonies made the Union; and, in turn, the Union threw off their old dependence, for them, and made them States, such as they are. Not one of them ever had a State constitution, independent of the Union. Of course, it is not forgotten that all the new States framed their constitutions, before they entered the Union; nevertheless, dependent upon, and preparatory to, coming into the Union.

Unquestionably the States have the powers, and rights, reserved to them in, and by the National Constitution; but among these, surely, are not included all conceivable powers, however mischievous, or destructive; but, at most, such only, as were known in the world, at the time, as governmental powers; and certainly, a power to destroy the government itself, had never been known as a governmental---as a merely administrative power. This relative matter of National power, and State rights, as a principle, is no other than the principle of generality and locality. Whatever concerns the whole should be confided to the whole---to the general government; while, whatever concerns only the State, should be left exclusively, to the State. This is all there is of original principle about it. Whether the National Constitution, in defining boundaries between the two, has applied the principle with exact accuracy, is not to be questioned. We are all bound by that defining, without question.

What is now combated, is the position that secession is consistent with the Constitution---is lawful, and peaceful. It is not contended that there is any express law for it; and nothing should ever be implied as law, which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. The nation purchased, with money, the countries out of which several of these States were formed. Is it just that they shall go off without leave, and without refunding? The nation paid very large sums, (in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to relieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes. Is it just that she shall now be off without consent, or without making any return? The nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of these so-called seceding States, in common with the rest. Is it just, either that creditors shall go unpaid, or the remaining States pay the whole? A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave, and pay no part of this herself?

Again, if one State may secede, so may another; and when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours, when we borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine, by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do, if others choose to go, or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.

The seceders insist that our Constitution admits of secession. They have assumed to make a national Constitution of their own, in which, of necessity, they have either discarded or retained the right of secession, as they insist, it exists in ours. If they have discarded it, they thereby admit that, on principle, it ought not to be in ours. If they have retained it, by their own construction of ours they show that to be consistent they must secede from one another, whenever they shall find it the easiest way of settling their debts or effecting any other selfish or unjust object. The principle itself is one of disintegration, and upon which no government can possibly endure.

If all the States, save one, should assert the power to drive that one out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians would at once deny the power, and denounce the act as the greatest outrage upon State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being called "driving the one out," should be called "the seceding of the others from that one," it would be exactly what the seceders claim to do; unless, indeed, they make the point, that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do, what the others, because they are a majority, may not rightfully do. These politicians are subtle, and profound, on the rights of minorities. They are not partial to that power which made the Constitution, and speaks from the preamble, calling itself "We, the People."

It may well be questioned whether there is, today, a majority of the legally qualified voters of any State, except perhaps South Carolina, in favor of disunion. There is much reason to believe that the Union men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called seceded States. The contrary has not been demonstrated in any one of them. It is ventured to affirm this, even of Virginia and Tennessee; for the result of an election, held in military camps, where the bayonets are all on one side of the question voted upon, can scarcely be considered as demonstrating popular sentiment. At such an election, all that large class who are, at once, for the Union, and against coercion, would be coerced to vote against the Union.

It may be affirmed, without extravagance, that the free institutions we enjoy, have developed the powers, and improved the condition, of our whole people, beyond any example in the world. Of this we now have a striking, and an impressive illustration. So large an army as the government has now on foot, was never before known, without a soldier in it, but who had taken his place there of his own free choice. But more than this: there are many single regiments whose members, one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, professions, and whatever else, whether useful or elegant, is known in the world; and there is scarcely one, from which there could not be selected, a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a Court, abundantly competent to administer the government itself. Nor do I say this is not true, also, in the army of our late friends, now adversaries, in this contest; but if it is, so much better the reason why the government, which has conferred such benefits on both them and us, should not be broken up. Whoever, in any section, proposes to abandon such a government, would do well to consider, in deference to what principle it is, that he does it---what better he is likely to get in its stead---whether the substitute will give, or be intended to give, so much of good to the people. There are some foreshadowings on this subject. Our adversaries have adopted some Declarations of Independence; in which, unlike the good old one, penned by Jefferson, they omit the words "all men are created equal." Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one, signed by Washington, they omit "We, the People," and substitute "We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States." Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view, the rights of men, and the authority of the people?

This is essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men---to lift artificial weights from all shoulders---to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all---to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life. Yielding to partial, and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend.

I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this. It is worthy of note, that while in this, the government's hour of trial, large numbers of those in the Army and Navy, who have been favored with the offices, have resigned, and proved false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have deserted his flag.

Great honor is due to those officers who remain true, despite the example of their treacherous associates; but the greatest honor, and most important fact of all, is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers, and common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands, but an hour before, they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of the plain people. They understand, without an argument, that destroying the government, which was made by Washington, means no good to them.

Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled--the successful establishing , and the successful administering of it. One still remains--its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world, that those who can fairly carry an election, can also suppress a rebellion--that ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war---teaching all, the folly of being the beginners of a war.

Lest there might be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is to be the course of the government towards the Southern States, after the rebellion shall have been suppressed: the Executive deems it proper to say it will be his purpose then, as ever, to be guided by the Constitution and the laws; and that he probably will have no different understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal government, relatively to the rights of the States and the people, under the Constitution, than that expressed in the inaugural address.

He desires to preserve the government, that it may be administered for all, as it was administered by the men who made it. Loyal citizens everywhere have the right to claim this of their government and the government has no right to withhold or neglect it. It is not perceived that, in giving it, there is any coercion, any conquest, or any subjugation, in any just sense of those terms.

The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted, the provision, that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government." But, if a State may lawfully go out of the Union, having done so, it may also discard the republican form of government; so that to prevent its going out, is an indispensable means to the end of maintaining the guaranty mentioned; and when an end is lawful and obligatory, the indispensable means to it, are also lawful, and obligatory.

It was with the deepest regret that the Executive found the duty of employing the war-power, in defence of the government, forced upon him. He could but perform this duty, or surrender the existence of the government. No compromise, by public servants, could, in this case, be a cure; not that compromises are not often proper, but that no popular government can long survive a marked precedent, that those who carry an election, can only save the government from immediate destruction, by giving up the main point, upon which the people gave the election. The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

As a private citizen, the Executive could not have consented that these institutions shall perish; much less could he, in betrayal of so vast, and so sacred a trust, as these free people had confided to him. He felt that he had no moral right to shrink; nor even to count the chances of his own life, in what might follow. In full view of his great responsibility, he has, so far, done what he has deemed his duty. You will now, according to your own judgment, perform yours. He sincerely hopes that your views, and your action, may so accord with his, as to assure all faithful citizens who have been disturbed in their rights, of a certain, and speedy restoration to them, under the Constitution, and the laws.

And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.

My fellow Americans:

…Three days from now, after a half century of service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.

My own relations with Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation well rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

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We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us a grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in the newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs – balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages – balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.

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A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

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Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

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So – in this my last good night to you as your President – I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I – my fellow citizens – need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.

Those who need "scientific" terminology will find it is safer to retrofit truth onto a firm foundation than to balance it on scholarly spin; especially if it sounds too academic. For that reason we provide definitions in an htm to the Grassroots Rising page. There are about fifty pages of them in alphabetical order. If nothing else, that list reveals some political dimensions for a meaningful discussion, which requires consensus on such definitions. In friendly discussions on related issues, first try to restate an opposing position in your own words to be sure that you do not misunderstand. There is also a Q&A htm file, which will remain a work in progress until we are satisfied with all the answers.

The goals of the master manipulators center on domination of money and political power. Most of them view power as money and often link it to some religious belief, like predestination or millennealism. Issues are often "framed" to assure acceptance. For example, people can still see that slavery is not freedom but quite willingly accept that invisible handlers of some imagined "free market" should keep economic control. They will not consider Ignorance is Strength but waste time watching serious-sounding sports and a host of other mindless diversions away from citizen responsibilities.