Heaven's Gate Options

[Sanders]

I just watched this torturously long 1980 film directed by Academy Award winner (for his direction of the Deer Hunter) Michael Cimino. The movie cost 40 million (about 150 million in today's devalued dollars) and it made about 3. The fiasco literally sank United Artists. The most humorous review of the movie I read was, "a forced four hour walk through one's own living room".

But the story it was loosely based on made me want to post something. I poked around and read up a little bit on the real Johnson County War that took place in the early 1890's in Wyoming and found it very interesting ... though I can see why Cimino couldn't very well stick to the historical narrative, for his two protagonists, James Averill and Ella Watson, are lynched at the beginning of the war, effectively killing any basis for a script.

The story is one about settlers trying to carve out a life for themselves in Wyoming pitted against big ranching interests backed by eastern (and British) speculators. Late in the movie, Frank Canton, an ex-sheriff who has been hired by the big ranchers (WSGA - Wyoming Stock Growers Association) to fight the homesteaders, is talking to Jim Averill. Surrounded by US Calvary he tells Averill, "it's not us, it's the rules you're up against" (I'm paraphrasing). Ironically, the real life Frank Canton had a history as a cattle rustler and bank robber before his days as a sheriff and finally a hired gun for the WSGA.

One of the "rules" in this case (I'm talking about the real-life Wyoming conflict) was one by which unbranded cattle found on the open range became the property of the WSGA and were auctioned off. Only ranchers with registered brands could bid on the stray cattle, and registering a brand was not only too expensive for the small rancher, a brand had to be approved by the WSGA. Originally these regulations had been put in place partially to control rustling, whereby yet unbranded calves were stolen from the herds before the yearly roundup, but the result was that small ranchers who couldn't get a registered brand continually lost cattle to the bigger ranchers. To add insult to injury, the WSGA and their goons often accused honest homesteaders of rustling and there were many unjust hangings ... the lynching of Jim Averill and Ella Watson ("Cattle Kate") was one of the events that set off open war between the moneyed WSGA ranchers and the homesteaders.

We all know that this is how it is done. A farmer in the US used to be able to sell produce directly to the community, it is very difficult now. The ongoing battle to illegalise the sale of raw milk is a microcosm of how rules and regulations are fashioned to squeeze the little guy. Anyone who has tried to run a small business of any kind knows exactly what I'm talking about. The giant banking bill that was just passed is another example - the bill is more significant for the powers it grants Hank Paulson and his friends than for the actual dollar amount of the bailout. Who thinks that the new "Financial Stability Board" created by the bill, headed by the Fed chairman, won't play favorites?

I found it very interesting in the news today that New York State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos just issued an order blocking the sale of Wachovia to Wells Fargo, Wachovia being a bank that Citigroup was bidding on just a week ago (Citigroup is, to whatever unknown degree, essentially a Rothschild entity, hence aligned with the Federal Reserve).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081005/ap_on_..._fargo_wachovia

Interestingly, law and regulation making designed to stifle honest competition and grant special favor to the bigger, better connected fish was picking up steam in the US around the time of the Johnson County War. Often laws and regulations favorable to the largest firms were passed under the auspices of uniform inter-state commerce, resulting in a laundry list of laws known collectively as the "Uniform Commercial Code", or, "Uniform Laws".

This link gives a list of some of these
http://truedemocracy.net/td-11/21.html

The first entry is dated, incredibly, 1890 ... 2 years before the Johnson County War broke out (and right about the time Jim Averill and Cattle Kate found themselves at the end of a rope):

(1890) - "New York state legislature passes first state act authorizing governor to appoint three commissioners. The American Bar Association (ABA)recommends that other states follow New York's lead."

I'm not suggesting there was any kind of causal relationship between the beginning of uniformity law passage in the US and the regulations passed in Wyoming (which had just become a state) to aid the big ranchers, but the time frame is the same. Notice the mention of the ABA (American Bar Association) in the first entry. The second entry does too ... "1891 - Connecticut's Lyman D. Brewster named to chair newly-created ABA committee on uniform law. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Delaware appoint commissioners."

Lately I've been interested in the figure of Elihu Root, the first chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations which was established in 1921. Back in the 1890's he had established himself as "a prominent lawyer specializing in corporate affairs ... acting as counsel to banks, railroads, and some of the great financiers of the day." (source). I don't know who exactly his "great financier" clients were, but I can guess, and I know that E. H. Harriman the railroad baron was one of them. The topic of railroads figures in nicely here, because it was the newly built railroad that made the Wyoming cattle industry so lucrative. Harriman's son, Averill Harriman, ran W. A. Harriman Co. where the current president's great-grandfather George Herbert (Bert) Walker was president, and Bert Walker's son in law Prescott Bush would go on to be a partner with Averill Harriman at Brown Brothers Harriman after the companies merged.

The connections are especially interesting when you figure out that Brown Brothers, a dry-goods/cotton & linen/slave trade outfit turned investment bank with an office in London (Brown-Shipley) with strong ties to the Rothschilds was, at the end of the 19th century, heavily involved in the financing of ... Railroads (!). This is how the Brown, Harriman and Rothschild families got cozy, and had Prescott Bush not married the daughter of east-coast investment banker Bert Walker and had not been a business partner of Averill Harriman, we would never have had two Bush's in the White House.

The story continues in that during the 1890's Elihu Root, the personal lawyer of Averill Harriman's father, E. H. Harriman, was working hard with the likes of Henry Cabot Lodge and Teddy Roosevelt to push the US into a war with Spain, which they would succesfully do. This signalled the start of American imperialism, Root would become Secretary of War and then of State, and after the Morgan engineered bank panic of 1907 Teddy Roosevelt would appoint Nelson Aldrich to head up the National Monetary Commission which would recommend the establishment of a central bank a-la the Fed ... and the rest is history. Root would go on to champion such causes as the 16th amendment (referred to as the "income tax amendment"), US entry into the First World War and the failed League of Nations, not to mention his chairmanship of the Council on Foreign Relations which I mentioned ... but Root's most lasting footprint might be that as a leader of the American Bar Association during this formative era.

The ABA is, as are all Bar Associations around the world, a franchise of the International Bar Association. This institution is located in the Crown Temple Church in the City of London, a few blocks away from the Bank of England. Most interestingly, this church was the London home of the Knights Templar, the first modern bankers of Europe, nearly a thousand years ago. This is no coincidence, lawyers and bankers have worked hand in hand throughout history, in fact the two industries evolved together ... no, not just together, but right down the street from one another! ...When you fail to meet your obligations to a bank, a goon doesn't come to your house and threaten to break your leg as might happen if you owed money to the local mob, no, you get a letter from a lawyer. The courts, as presided over by the bar association, aren't there to uphold the Constitution, at least not in practice. They are there in reality to uphold maritime law - the law of banking and commerce, and the rules and regulations devised by those with the power and the foresight to write them. (I'm by no means suggesting that anarchy would be preferable, but rather simply pointing out who runs the show.)

In posting in the "dragon blood line" thread I was startled to find a number of connections linking the early Templars, piracy, secret societies, banking, and the slave trade. The skull and bones symbol used by the Yale society Averill Harriman and three generations of Bush's share membership in is just one such indicator of these historical connections, and in that context it's not so surprising that the CFR/Fed created C.I.A. has gotten caught numerous times with their fingers in the drug trade. Even a cursory look into the B.C.C.I. affair and how and by whom the fallout from the criminal investigation into the bank's money laundering activities was contained is quite eye opening. I speak of people like Michael Cherkasky (a man who later became the CEO of Marsh & McLennan, a sister company of AIG) who ran the investigation, Khalid Marfouz, a Saudi who basically ran Delta Oil (partner with UNOCAL in the abandoned Afghan pipeline project) who was actually arrested once for funnelling money to Osama bin Laden and who was very likely a 10% investor in G. W. Bush's Arbusto Oil enterprise, and, the Bank of England, which helped contain the BCCI mess and probably had some things to hide as well. By the way, AIG isn't significant because they are now toast, AIG is significant because, when they were run by Maurice Greenberg who sits on the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics (click on the link, scroll down and look at the list of directors - this is who runs the world!), were the company that set up the financing and insuring of the World Trade Center (in the weeks before 9/11... they promptly resold the WTC insurance policy to unsuspecting insurers like Allianz btw).

I recently listened to a speech given by G. Edward Griffin, where he makes an anology between the current state of affairs and a ship that has been taken over by pirates ... (he even makes a quick wink-nudge aside comment about the irony of the comparison if you pay attention). He concludes by pointing out that there is realistically only one way to take the ship back. Complaining won't do anything, legal recourse is all but useless, for as I've indicated the legal sytem was hijacked a century ago and serves the "pirates". The only way to take the ship back is to do it in the same manner that they took it over in the first place.

And how did they do it? They formed a coalition of moneyed interests, they got ahold of the monetary system, they overtook the media, the legal system, the whole political system (at the top tier at least).

How do you fight something like that?

G. Edward Griffin attacks just that question in the speech I just mentioned. The margin notes may oversimplify, but I'll quote them anyway -

There is no point in worrying about the erosion of personal freedom that is the reality of our present era if we can do nothing about it. They say that knowledge is power, but that is one of the greatest myths of all history. Knowledge without action is useless and leads only to apathy and despair. So the question is: what type of action can reverse this trend? Writing letters and signing petitions to the same people who have created the problem is not going to do it. Voting for candidates selected by power brokers with hidden agendas will not do it either. There have been many proposals to reverse the tide of totalitarianism but, after decades of effort, none of them have worked. In this address, G. Edward Griffin, Founder of Freedom Force, tells us why; and the reason is so simple, it will astound you.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6015291679758430958

The real-life conclusion to the Johnson County War is inexplicable. The homesteaders basically won in the end and the Wyoming Stock Growers Association antagonists and their hired guns were all thrown in jail. But material witnesses disappeared, the local community couldn't afford to keep the WSGA ranchers in custody, and eventually the charges were dropped and they were set free. I think the real-life account would have made a much better movie. At least it wouldn't have bombed so spectacularly.

... although I like the title, 'Heaven's Gate'.



Hey, isn't Dick Cheney from Wyoming? (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Sanders]

Here's the Griffin video embedded ... worth a watch.