A Simple Thought With Complex Consequences

How about new ground rules for the selection of our House of Representatives ? No more special interests, no more big business determining our fate, no more PACS and all their money-with-strings-attached.

Section. 2. Clause 1, of the US Constitution states:

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature."

We the People, via state referendum, can agree to choose the 435 members of the House of Representatives as we damn well please. And, what is the way that would be absolutely non-partisan, and the way that cannot be readily compromised?!

We choose our Representative the same way that jurors are chosen for court duty -- by lottery. Becoming a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives becomes a civic DUTY, not an inroad to wealth and power. The benefits (i.e., great salary and perks) still remain. But, after tenure, there is a mandatory retirement, and a new member, unattached to ANY K Street group, agenda or preconceived ideology is chosen to represent his/her neighbors.

Simple and doable.

How Hitler Became a Dictator

by Jacob G. Hornberger, Posted June 28, 2004 [with permission]

Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.

But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is, very few. I’d also bet that more than a few people would be surprised at how he pulled it off, especially given that after World War I Germany had become a democratic republic.

The story of how Hitler became a dictator is set forth in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, on which this article is based.

In the presidential election held on March 13, 1932, there were four candidates: the incumbent, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler, and two minor candidates, Ernst Thaelmann and Theodore Duesterberg. The results were:

Hindenburg 49.6 percent
Hitler 30.1 percent
Thaelmann 13.2 percent
Duesterberg 6.8 percent

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, almost 70 percent of the German people voted against Hitler, causing his supporter Joseph Goebbels, who would later become Hitler’s minister of propaganda, to lament in his journal, “We’re beaten; terrible outlook. Party circles badly depressed and dejected.”

Since Hindenberg had not received a majority of the vote, however, a runoff election had to be held among the top three vote-getters. On April 19, 1932, the runoff results were:

Hindenburg 53.0 percent
Hitler 36.8 percent
Thaelmann 10.2 percent

Thus, even though Hitler’s vote total had risen, he still had been decisively rejected by the German people.

On June 1, 1932, Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor of Germany, whom Shirer described as an “unexpected and ludicrous figure.” Papen immediately dissolved the Reichstag (the national congress) and called for new elections, the third legislative election in five months.

Hitler and his fellow members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, who were determined to bring down the republic and establish dictatorial rule in Germany, did everything they could to create chaos in the streets, including initiating political violence and murder. The situation got so bad that martial law was proclaimed in Berlin.

Even though Hitler had badly lost the presidential election, he was drawing ever-larger crowds during the congressional election. As Shirer points out,

In one day, July 27, he spoke to 60,000 persons in Brandenburg, to nearly as many in Potsdam, and that evening to 120,000 massed in the giant Grunewald Stadium in Berlin while outside an additional 100,000 heard his voice by loudspeaker.


Hitler’s rise to power

The July 31, 1932, election produced a major victory for Hitler’s National Socialist Party. The party won 230 seats in the Reichstag, making it Germany’s largest political party, but it still fell short of a majority in the 608-member body.

On the basis of that victory, Hitler demanded that President Hindenburg appoint him chancellor and place him in complete control of the state. Otto von Meissner, who worked for Hindenburg, later testified at Nuremberg,

Hindenburg replied that because of the tense situation he could not in good conscience risk transferring the power of government to a new party such as the National Socialists, which did not command a majority and which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined.

Political deadlocks in the Reichstag soon brought a new election, this one in November 6, 1932. In that election, the Nazis lost two million votes and 34 seats. Thus, even though the National Socialist Party was still the largest political party, it had clearly lost ground among the voters.

Attempting to remedy the chaos and the deadlocks, Hindenburg fired Papen and appointed an army general named Kurt von Schleicher as the new German chancellor. Unable to secure a majority coalition in the Reichstag, however, Schleicher finally tendered his resignation to Hindenburg, 57 days after he had been appointed.

On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Although the National Socialists never captured more than 37 percent of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet posts and fewer than 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, Hitler and the Nazis set out to to consolidate their power. With Hitler as chancellor, that proved to be a fairly easy task.

The Reichstag fire

On February 27, Hitler was enjoying supper at the Goebbels home when the telephone rang with an emergency message: “The Reichstag is on fire!” Hitler and Goebbels rushed to the fire, where they encountered Hermann Goering, who would later become Hitler’s air minister. Goering was shouting at the top of his lungs,

This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up.

The day after the fire, the Prussian government announced that it had found communist publications stating,

Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down... . Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups.... The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war.... It has been ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.

So how was Goering so certain that the fire had been set by communist terrorists? Arrested on the spot was a Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe. Most historians now believe that van der Lubbe was actually duped by the Nazis into setting the fire and probably was even assisted by them, without his realizing it.

Why would Hitler and his associates turn a blind eye to an impending terrorist attack on their national congressional building or actually assist with such a horrific deed? Because they knew what government officials have known throughout history — that during extreme national emergencies, people are most scared and thus much more willing to surrender their liberties in return for “security.” And that’s exactly what happened during the Reichstag terrorist crisis.

Suspending civil liberties

The day after the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to issue a decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Denouncing opponents to his request, Hitler shouted, “Germany will be free, but not through you!” When the vote was taken, the result was 441 for and 84 against, giving Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to suspend the German constitution. On March 23, 1933, what has gone down in German history as the “Enabling Act” made Hitler dictator of Germany, freed of all legislative and constitutional constraints.

The judiciary under Hitler

One of the most dramatic consequences was in the judicial arena. Shirer points out,

Under the Weimar Constitution judges were independent, subject only to the law, protected from arbitrary removal and bound at least in theory by Article 109 to safeguard equality before the law.

In fact, in the Reichstag terrorist case, while the court convicted van der Lubbe of the crime (who was executed), three other defendants, all communists, were acquitted, which infuriated Hitler and Goering. Within a month, the Nazis had transferred jurisdiction over treason cases from the Supreme Court to a new People’s Court, which, as Shirer points out,

soon became the most dreaded tribunal in the land. It consisted of two professional judges and five others chosen from among party officials, the S.S. and the armed forces, thus giving the latter a majority vote. There was no appeal from its decisions or sentences and usually its sessions were held in camera. Occasionally, however, for propaganda purposes when relatively light sentences were to be given, the foreign correspondents were invited to attend.

One of the Reichstag terrorist defendants, who had angered Goering during the trial with a severe cross-examination of Goering, did not benefit from his acquittal. Shirer explains:

The German communist leader was immediately taken into “protective custody,” where he remained until his death during the second war.

In addition to the People’s Court, which handled treason cases, the Nazis also set up the Special Court, which handled cases of political crimes or “insidious attacks against the government.” These courts

consisted of three judges, who invariably had to be trusted party members, without a jury. A Nazi prosecutor had the choice of bringing action in such cases before either an ordinary court or the Special Court, and invariably he chose the latter, for obvious reasons. Defense lawyers before this court, as before the Volksgerichtshof, had to be approved by Nazi officials. Sometimes even if they were approved they fared badly. Thus the lawyers who attempted to represent the widow of Dr. Klausener, the Catholic Action leader murdered in the Blood Purge, in her suit for damages against the State were whisked off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they were kept until they formally withdrew the action.

Even lenient treatment by the Special Court was no guarantee for the defendant, however, as Pastor Martin Niemoeller discovered when he was acquitted of major political charges and sentenced to time served for minor charges. Leaving the courtroom, Niemoeller was taken into custody by the Gestapo and taken to a concentration camp.

The Nazis also implemented a legal concept called Schutzhaft or “protective custody” which enabled them to arrest and incarcerate people without charging them with a crime. As Shirer put it,

Protective custody did not protect a man from possible harm, as it did in more civilized countries. It punished him by putting him behind barbed wire.

On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and the title of president was abolished. Hitler’s title became Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor. Not surprisingly, he used the initial four-year “temporary” grant of emergency powers that had been given to him by the Enabling Act to consolidate his omnipotent control over the entire country.

Accepting the new order

Oddly enough, even though his dictatorship very quickly became complete, Hitler returned to the Reichstag every four years to renew the “temporary” delegation of emergency powers that it had given him to deal with the Reichstag-arson crisis. Needless to say, the Reichstag rubber-stamped each of his requests.

For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things. Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was pretty much unaffected by the new laws and decrees. As long as a German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo was very unlikely.

Keep in mind also that, while the Nazis established concentration camps in the 1930s, the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wouldn’t be until the 1940s that the death camps and the gas chambers that killed millions would be implemented. Describing how the average German adapted to the new order, Shirer writes,

The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation.... The Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans and a newly arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country did not seem to feel that they were being cowed.... On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.


Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

This article originally appeared in the March 2004 edition of Freedom Daily.

Econ-Endgame

‘The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast,
The first one now
Will later be last…”
Bob Dylan

From my perspective, it appears as if we are hyper-driving into an inevitable econ-endgame, that will manifest as the greatest diminishment and exchange of wealth the world has ever seen . . . And, simultaneously witnessing a real-time unification of unlikely bedfellows who are thumbing their collective noses at the Powers-That-Be, the beloved Establishment that has had its way with us for centuries.

This economic end-game is all about the “control” of commodities, the corralling and distribution of the world‘s natural resources, all with the same branding. It is not geopolitical in the “ideological” sense, like freedom vs. despotism, or capitalism vs. some other ism. No, this is not about conflicting isms. This is about micromanaging the Sanctuary of what is most holy to our culture -- our consumptive way of life and the massive debt that maintains it. But, like Richard in the hands of Saladin, are we to be saved only by the graciousness of our enemy?

What is ironically intriguing about this entire scenario is that the real enemy of (all) the People, collectively known as the NWO, are being legitimately threatened by an atheistic plutocracy (China) in cahoots with Islamic theocracies and Russian Rascals, while almost all of Western Christendom is busily scurrying to fill the Temple with as many money-changers as can be mustered.

The recent bravado of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (resurrecting that ol’ Persian flair of empire) making anti-Zionist statements like shots across the bow of Israel and the West, signals the players to the field. Iran does this with all the support and reserves they could possibly need (from China, Russia, Islamic World, etc.). President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently expressed doubt that the Holocaust occurred and suggested that Israel should be moved to Europe. Wars are started with such comments, but Ahmadinejad knows full well the West will do nothing to overtly counter his salvo.

So, how can the likes of the Iranians (who somehow managed to wheedle their way into our lexicon with the biblical Zoroaster Magi business) , backed by the Oriental anathema of Episcopalianism (i.e., China), and loaded to the hilt with Russian super-weapons, make a twit of difference in the NWO plan for world hegemony and a planet-wide Empire?

As powerful and entrenched as they could be, there is a distinct vulnerability in the NWO/PTB DeathStar. With their flair for utter distain, the elite always underestimates the great unwashed. Their hubristic masters-of-the-universe persona shields them from any self-doubt, but it is double-edged, setting them up to be blind-sided.

If you were China, what would you do to insure your future? You know that your real "enemy" is the NWO and, regrettably by proxy, the US, as it has become synonymous with the NWO Agenda. How do you turn a world-power into a sub-power, and at the same time eliminate your true enemy, and roll-in a bit of revenge-resolve for the pangs of having your culture opiated?

The USA (and to a lesser degree the Brits) are the "mechanics" who do the bidding of the NWO Dons. China and the Islamic World want no part of the NWO. They are well aware of the necessity of preventing its degenerative philosophies into their cultures.

America's prosperity/economy is Debt (A = C)
Excluding the various FED flimflams, China and Japan (and to a lesser extent the oil providers) control our Debt (B = C)
Therefore, China and Japan control America's future economy (B = A).

To extract themselves from this equation, and to do so without losing their shirts internally, China and its allies (including Japan) are in the process of doing what the NWO crime families have always done. They don't need fleets of tankers and elaborate wars to initiate this. By putting-up their present and future requirements for crude, China has helped capitalize the "setting up" of the 1st successful Commodity Market (Bourse) outside of the dollar-based markets. This is a coup extraordinaire for these American Debt Holders. This plan places China and its allies outside the NWO sphere of influence, not to be burdened with the any threat of protection “vig” demanded by the PTB.

Through our massive debt and psychopathic consumption, America has directly funded this New World power. The major commodity that America has offered the world is debt -debt based upon its demographic ability to consume commodities. Americans are addicted to over-consumption, and hence actuarially guaranteeing the consumption of the world's premier commodity, crude oil. Movements in the price of crude always initiate the movement in all the other commodities, even the Derivative Markets make predictive assumptions based upon some underlying asset; and the king and queen of assets is crude, black gold.

China and Japan hold major positions in America's premier commodity, i.e., Federal Debt. For China and Japan to currently maintain their pro-forma, they will play along with the NWO / FED's game of hiding the money (as opposed to "... showing us the money...") UNTIL it no longer serves their purpose.

Our creditors, not OPEC, or some debtor nation (such as ourselves) will decide when the price of Crude will no longer be pegged to the dollar. At some point in the near future, Americans' ability to wantonly consume the basic underlying commodity (crude oil), will no longer have any strategic importance. The USD (and the consumptive economy we have all grown to love) will go the way of the Pound ... But this time there may will be a hell of a price to pay.

Americans, and most of the West are now being faced with new competitors for copious consumption. China, India, Brazil and South America (via Chavez) and the other pejorative third world countries are going to be driving, not walking or horse-carting their way into their futures. And, this process has already started. And short of annihilating billions of people via WWIII, this cannot be stopped.

In the Winter of 2006 -- barring an Israeli attacked -- the world will be able to purchase Crude Oil contracts in a currency other than the Dollar. We will get to witness an historical change, like the Continental Divide we will see the flow going down the other direction.

What will be the parity ratio with the Euro-based Iranian Bourse? Can I bring my USDs to Iran, and get a market exchange value on the Euro-reserved crude oil contracts? In my simplistic perspective, when China and Japan are legitimately exchanging their present and future USDs for crude oil without being penalized with devaluations, premiums, etc., we will have a new ball game. It is in fact this theocratic government in the Middle East that portends the success of the Chinese-Arab/Islamic global dominance.

Then, as all true believers do, they may well drive the USD out of business. Subsequently, with the objective of creating a gold backed Oil Currency (stuffed and folded neatly in China’s currency basket), we can then toss the Euro in the back seat as well . . .

Get your Dinars while they’re cheap …