וישב ממנו שבי – אינה אלא שפחה אחת

הרב אריה שטרן: שחרור פלסטיני כשחרור יהודי מהשבי

רבה של ירושלים הרה”ג אריה שטרן התייחס לפרשת הערבי שמכר קרקעות ליהודים ונעצר על ידי הרשות הפלסטינית ואמר כי יש מצווה לשחררו כשחרור יהודי משבי הגויים (יהדות, בארץ)

קובי רוזן|י’ בטבת תשעט 07:56 18.12.18

רבה של ירושלים הרה”ג אריה שטרן התייחס לפרשת הערבי עיסאם עקל שמכר קרקעות ליהודים ונעצר על ידי הרשות הפלסטינית, בפסק שכתב הכריע הרב כי יש מצווה לשחררו כשחרור יהודי משבי הגויים. המכתב פורסם לראשונה בעיתון ‘ישראל היום’.

את המכתב שלח הרב שטרן לסגן אלוף (מיל’) ברוך ידיד, ראש אגף בני המיעוטים ב’אם תרצו’, וציין כי מדובר במצווה לפעול לשחררו.

לדברי הרב שטרן: “בגמרא ובהלכה למדנו שמפרנסים עניי גויים ביחד עם עניי ישראל, וממילא יש לומר שהוא הדין שפודים את השבויים הגויים כמו שפודים את השבויים מישראל, וכבר ידוע שמצוות פדיון השבויים נחשבת למצווה חשובה ביותר.

“בנידון לפנינו יש וגם צריך לעשות מאמצים רבים לשחרר את החטוף בגלל שנחשד שמכר נכסים ליהודים, וכל העוסק בכך יש לו חלק במצוות יישוב הארץ, המאמצים לשחרורו מעודדים אחרים שלא להירתע ולא להימנע ממכירת הקרקעות, כי יודעים שיגנו עליהם מפני כל המבקשים את רעתם”…

מאתר כיכר השבת, כאן.

Math Is Hard, Interest Rates Harder

Nearly Two-Thirds of Americans Can’t Pass a Basic Test of Financial Literacy

Quick: If you take out a $1000 loan that has a 20% rate, how much will you owe a year in interest?

Answer: $200. But if you got that wrong, you’re not alone. Nearly two thirds of Americans can’t calculate interest payments correctly, according to a new study. About a third said they didn’t even know how.

One of the silver linings of the financial crisis was that it was supposed to have taught many Americans a lesson, albeit painful, about the dangers of debt, and financial issues in general. Apparently, the message, though, didn’t get across.

All told, a new study, which was released today, estimated that nearly two-thirds of Americans couldn’t pass a basic financial literacy test, meaning they got fewer than four answers correct on a five-question quiz. Worse, the percentage of those who can pass the test has fallen consistently since the financial crisis to 37% last year, from 42% in 2009.

Continue reading…

From Fortune, here.

The Anglo-American Establishment (or: Who Are the GOYISH Bad Guys?)

Fake History. How The Money Power Controls Our Future By Controlling Our Past

By Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty

The ‘Fake History’ and ‘Fake News’ pejoratives (like ‘Conspiracy Theory’ before them) have only recently entered common parlance, but the falsification of history and news reporting is as old as history itself. For many a long year television news channels and newspapers owned or controlled by the Money Power (including the British Broadcasting Corporation), have been feeding us a daily diet of fake information. But in a black is white Orwellian reversal of truth it is the very people spreading falsehood who hurl the ‘fake news’ and ‘fake history’ pejoratives at truth tellers. To maintain control and stem dissent, the ruling elites maliciously misrepresent and question the integrity of alternative media and non-corporate news sources which broadcast genuine news, and the honest revisionist historians who relate historical truths. George Orwell suggested in his ‘war is peace’, ‘freedom is slavery’, ‘ignorance is strength’ thesis that the masses fall for the ruling power’s lies because their critical thinking has been so repressed they will believe any absurdity in contradiction of the plain facts.

Orwell famously added: ‘Who controls the past controls the future.’ Fake history is a weapon wielded by ruling elites to exert control over us, for it is knowledge about the past that has the power to shape us as people and develop our comprehension of reality. True history reveals to those who care to learn that democracy is a sham; that we the people are akin to Orwellian proles in Oceania watched over by Big Brother and accepting of anything he cares to tell us or throw at us. Money Power control of the received history is crucially important (more so than control of fake news) because it enables them to keep us in the dark and ensure our ongoing subservience. After almost seventy years Orwell’s observation may appear somewhat clichéd, but it is now more relevant than ever. The highly perceptive author added: ‘The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.’

George Orwell was correct and if humankind is to stand any chance of determining a future without oligarchic totalitarian control, the lies and mythology of our past must be challenged by honest history, hard but necessary truths and historical revision. ‘Revisionism’, according to Joseph Stromberg in an article he wrote about Professor Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘refers to any efforts to revise a faulty exiting historical record or interpretation.’ [1] Professor Barnes, himself one of the greatest revisionists of the 20th century, wrote that revisionism has been most frequently and effectively applied to correcting the historical record relative to wars because ‘truth is always the first war casualty.’ [2] Hold that important statement close. The emotional abuses and distortions in historical writing are greatest in wartime. Consequently, both the need and the material for correcting historical myths are most evident and profuse in connection with wars.

The present authors’ years of research into the origins and conduct of the First World War of 1914-18 (though it continued until the signing of peace in 1919) demonstrates just how accurate Professor Barnes understanding was. Mainstream historians tell us that Germany was guilty of starting WW1 and committing the most barbarous crimes throughout. Proud, virtuous Britain, on the other hand, was forced to go to war against this German evil to fight ‘for freedom, civilization and the integrity of small helpless nations.’ It is all a deliberately concocted lie. Patriotic myths and the victors’ wartime lies and propaganda had been scripted into Britain’s ‘Official History.’ In truth, Britain – or to be more precise, immensely rich and powerful men in Britain – were directly responsible for the war that killed over 20 million people. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Germany did not start the war, did not want war and did what they could to avoid it.

But it is not just First World War history that is involved in the grand deception. Our contention that virtually the entire received history of the twentieth century has been faked and requires urgent and complete revision, will raise no eyebrows in enlightened circles. It will most definitely elicit howls of derision and cries of ‘impossible’ and ‘conspiracy theory’ from the vast majority. Self-interest or cognitive dissonance?

This essay cannot cover the many thousands of examples of historical falsehoods or omissions we found in our historical research – our books do that – but it explains in detail how the men behind the curtain actually create fake history. It is complex and the article is, by necessity, long because corners cannot be cut in relating this hugely important issue.

Who is responsible for faking history?

The elites multifaceted approach ranges from the straightforward destruction or concealment of documents and books, to the more subtle methods of employing Court Historians with their control systems such as ‘peer review’. Before we examine how history is actually faked we need to understand who fakes it. In this regard, the most important influences on our work were books by Professor Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope and The Anglo-American Establishment.

The astonishing 1,300 page tome Tragedy and Hope, published in 1966, revealed the existence of a secret society initially created by the gold and diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes in London in 1891. Its aim was to expand the British Empire to all habitable parts of the world. The enlarged empire would be run by wealthy upper class elites and based on English ruling class values as espoused by Professor John Ruskin at Oxford University. These rich and powerful individuals felt obliged to rule the entire world because they considered the vast majority of the human race too ignorant to do so themselves. In the decades following Cecil Rhodes death in 1902, the secret society evolved. It became transnational as the singularly English elite merged with the American money-power – Quigley’s Anglo-American Establishment – and the geographical axis moved from London to New York. The Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the United Nations in the U.S. were created as Money Power instruments towards their one world government, that is, the ‘New World Order’ which is openly discussed today.

Members of the secret society controlled the United States, the White House, the Federal Reserve System and Wall Street. They likewise controlled Britain, Downing Street, the Bank of England and the City – the financial district of London. They ruled from behind the scenes and were not necessarily the major political players known to everyone. They selected major political figures and funded and controlled them. They would not be the great teachers or historians, but they decided who would be elevated to the great chairs of learning and funded historians who wrote the fake histories. This secret group has been the world’s major historical force since before World War 1 and, according to Professor Quigley, every major event in history since then has been dominated by them. [3] The secret society was

…one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century. Indeed, the Group is of such significance that evidence of its existence is not hard to find, if one knows where to look. [4]

We looked, followed the clues, trails and names presented by Professor Quigley and were utterly astonished to find that a secret cabal actually existed with unfettered powers in Britain and the United States. Quigley called them the ‘Group’; we have termed them the Secret Elite, but they are also known as the Money Power, the Deep State, the Men behind the Curtain and so forth. The shocking evidence we have uncovered goes much deeper than that exposed by Quigley, and indicates beyond all doubt that the individuals involved in the cabal – in both London and New York – were responsible for starting, and unnecessarily prolonging, the First World War. Through enormous wealth, power and control of Oxford University, they were able to cover their tracks and fabricate a history which blamed Kaiser Wilhelm II and Germany. A century later, that fake history is still presented as truth by ‘eminent’ mainstream historians with links to Oxford.

The Rise of the Money Power

Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope revealed the ambitions of those whose wealth bought real power:

…The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.’ [5]

Free from any single political interference, this system was controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland; a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Quigley was adamant that ‘Each central bank … sought to dominate its government by its ability to control treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.’ The power of the central bank in each instance rested largely on its control of the credit and money supply. In the world as a whole the power of the central bankers rested very largely on their control of loans and gold flows.

Professor Quigley explained how, in 1924, Reginald McKenna, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer and at the time chairman of the board of the Midland Bank, told its stockholders:

I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create money … And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people. [6]

It was an extraordinarily frank statement from a man close to the inner circles of the British Establishment. The international bankers on Wall Street were intimately linked to the Rothschilds in London and Paris. They manipulated the political power of the state to create the corrupt Federal Reserve System to gain a monopoly over the money issue through it.

Another important contributor to the unmasking of the Money Power, Professor Antony Sutton revealed:

The Federal Reserve has the power to create money. This money is fiction, created out of nothing … In brief, this private group of bankers has a money machine monopoly. This monopoly is uncontrolled by anyone and is guaranteed profit. [7]

With a magic machine that created money from thin air, the international bankers were able to control not merely individual politicians, but entire governments. By comparison, controlling the writing and teaching of history was child’s play. Quigley revealed the names of the rich and powerful banks and bankers – the Gods of Money – who were intimately involved. They included N.M Rothschild, Barings, Hambros, Lazard Brothers and Morgan Grenfell in London. [8] On Wall Street were J.P. Morgan, Kuhn-Loeb & Co., J.D. Rockefeller and Brown Brothers and Harriman. [9] Members of these banks on both sides of the Atlantic ‘knew each other intimately.’ [10]

Carroll Quigley had been invited by the secret society to study its membership, aims and objectives, and states he was helped in this by the British historian Alfred Zimmern who was himself a member of the secret cabal. It appears that Professor Quigley was actually chosen by the secret society to be its official historian. [11] He was one of the brightest stars in the galaxy of American academics. As a student at Harvard, Quigley had gained two top degrees and a Ph.D. He taught history at Princeton University and Harvard before moving to the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown as professor of history. He was a distinguished member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association and the American Economic Association for many years. He was also a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy and the Smithsonian Institution. He sat on the Congressional Select Committee which set up the National Space Agency. This is an outstanding professional record. Most academics of ambition would have considered their careers to be crowned by any one of Quigley’s individual achievements. He had entry to the innermost workings of the powers which controlled the United States. It is vital that we appreciate that his voice comes from the inside looking out. He knew what was happening and how the system truly worked.

Yet Quigley’s personal position on these developments remains somewhat confused. He stated that he admired the society and many of its members and its goals, but not its methods. [12] He believed they should abandon secrecy and make their aims and objectives clear to all. This may have been his downfall. To us it remains an enigma that Quigley said he admired these individuals and their globalist aims of a one world government controlled by bankers, yet on the very same page stated that their tendency to place power in and influence into hands chosen by friendship rather than merit, their oblivion to the consequences of their actions, their ignorance of the point of view of persons in other countries or of persons of other classes in their own country … have brought many of the things which they and I hold dear, close to disaster.’ [13]

Did Professor Quigley decide in the end, like his fellow historian Professor Alfred Zimmern, that the secret society posed such a menace to the world that he chose to expose it? We shall never know. Unable to ridicule Tragedy and Hope as ‘conspiracy theory’ because of his exalted academic position and status, when it was published those he named decided to bury the book. Immediately on its release, unknown persons removed it from bookstore shelves in America – ‘faster than exploding Easter bunnies’ as one wit put it. It was withdrawn from sale without any justification and its original plates were destroyed by Quigley’s publisher, the Macmillan Company. The publishing company was owned by the family of the Earl of Stockton, Harold McMillan, who was British Prime Minister 1957-1963 and at the heart of the British Establishment. Years later, when a rare surviving copy of Tragedy and Hope was found and an unknown publisher decided to pirate it, copies began to sell.

Continue reading…

From Information Clearing House, here.

My Working Theory: More Pagan, More Poor

Economic Laws for the Real World

June 9, 2007

Why are Third-World countries poor, while those in the First World aren’t? (The phrase “third world” is a tad shaky, embracing as it seems to Taiwan, Thailand, and Mexico, and also Haiti and Zaire. We will use it for convenience.)

The standard explanation in the Third World is that the West, chiefly the United States, exploits them, buying their raw materials and selling them manufactured goods. Everything is someone else’s fault. The reasons I think are otherwise. The advanced nations will exploit anyone they can, but this hasn’t kept Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Argentina, and many other countries from prospering.

Start with corruption. In many poor countries, virtually everything is for sale. You can bribe the cops to get out of a ticket or bribe them to beat up an enemy, bribe a general in the army to overlook illegal logging, bribe anybody to do anything. The result is that really the country barely has laws, which means that you can never be sure of your legal ground. Businesses need predictability.

Corruption exists in advanced countries, but there is less of it, and it tends to take organized form, as in campaign contributions, affirmative action, and seats of boards of directors after leaving office.

Suspected Economic Law: The easier it is to bribe a working-stiff cop, the poorer the country.

Sheer governmental inefficiency has much to do with it. When I was in Taiwan many years ago, when the country was first developing, I talked to an American businessman about Asia. Taiwan, he said, had Enterprise Zones, fenced regions with buildings and utilities in place. You signed one document, brought in your machinery, hired workers, and started production.

In Thailand, he said (it may no longer be true) you had to negotiate for months with the Interior Ministry to get land, then months with the Labor Ministry, then months, then months, meanwhile bribing everybody right and left. I’ve got the names of the ministries wrong, but you get the point.

Suspected Economic Law: Prosperity varies inversely with the time between beginning negotiations to open a factory and getting first product.

While inefficient government retards economic progress, it doesn’t follow that countries with inefficient governments will always be poor. Industry in the United States has been so productive that, although the government is worse than useless, the country can withstand it.

A serious obstacle to prosperity is Shanti-ness, a quality not widely recognized in econometrics but well known to experienced travelers. Shanti-ness is a curious mixture of just not giving a damn, lack of ambition, little interest in academics, and sometimes something that looks like lethargy.

You go into houses and never see books. A man will start a garage to repair cars for a living. He won’t think of expanding and owning a chain of garages. His family has enough to eat, so why do more? The young, though they could pursue school beyond some pre-high school level, don’t. They marry early instead of establishing themselves first. People can’t drive well. They live in the present, whereas people in rich countries have one foot in the future. An American thinks college, grad school, career. He is going somewhere, or trying to. He may not adhere to his plan, but he has one.

An element of Shanti-ness is a slack attitude toward maintenance. People who could easily afford nineteen cents for a brake-light bulb don’t. They throw trash in the streets. Potholes go unprepared for years.

Suspected Economic Law: National income is inversely proportional to the amount of trash in the streets.

Another aspect of Shanti-ness is an incapacity to attach importance to time. This comes in two flavors, wholesale and retail. At the wholesale level, an American thinks, “Oh my god, I’m thirty and haven’t made partner.” A Third-Worlder lacks any sense of urgency. He sees existence as a period through which one passes instead of an interval in which one does things.

At time’s retail level, Third-Worlder’s think that four o’clock means anywhere from five-thirty to not at all. It isn’t rudeness or inconsideration. If you do it to them, they won’t be offended. By contrast, an American reporter, say, knows that if his nine-o’clock interview happens at nine, the one at eleven will be possible, and the business lunch will come off on time, so that he can hit the computer by three and file at five. It works. Americans show up ten minutes early and wait. In the Third World, writing the same story would take three days instead of one.

Suspected Economic law: Per capita income correlates with the average number of minutes by which people miss appointments.

In the Third World there is a different attitude to commerce. An American businessman is likely to give a new client a good price, or at least the going price, in hopes of acquiring him as a regular customer. If in the Third World a European gets a haircut without asking the price, he will be charged eight dollars when the correct price is four dollars. He will never come back.

This is normal third-world economics—gouge the customer to the max without thought of the future. The practice is encouraged by the reliance on haggling in poor countries. I have sometimes wondered whether this doesn’t make tricking the customer more important than having a good product.

Suspected Economic Law: Countries that bargain have less money than those that don’t.

The what-me-care attitude can be, to an American, incomprehensible. You want a roof job that would cost several thousand dollars, a lot of money in many countries. The workmen promise to come the next day to give you an estimate. They don’t show. You call, and they say, well, my car broke. Next day, same thing. They got to your town but couldn’t find the house. And so on. So you go to Wal-Mart or Home Depot or some similar First-World enterprise and get the job done.

Another element of Shanti-ness is, depending on your politics, cultural or inherent, but unmistakable. Some populations just aren’t very bright, or at any rate don’t seem to be. Sub-Saharan Africa, though rich in resources, is pea-turkey poor and not improving. Arab countries, even when awash in oil money, do not establish First World societies that could survive without oil. In South America, the white countries, such as Chile and Argentina, could be in Europe. The highly Indian countries, as for example Bolivia and Peru, would be basket cases if they could afford the basket.

Suspected Economic Law: The more European or East Asian blood, the more money.

That’s Fred on economics. Lynch mobs may take a number.

From Fred Reed, here.