The Evil Millionaire Mullahs

- By Paul Klebnikov, July 21, 2003

A looming nuclear threat to the rest of the world, Iran is robbing its own people of prosperity. But the ruling mullahs at the top are getting extremely rich.

It's rumble time in Tehran. At dozens of intersections in the capital of Iran thousands of students are protesting on a recent Friday around midnight, as they do nearly every night, chanting pro-democracy slogans and lighting bonfires on street corners. Residents of the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods converge in their cars, honking their horns in raucous support.

Suddenly there's thunder in the air. A gang of over 30 motorcyclists, brandishing iron bars and clubs, roars through the stalled traffic. They glare at the drivers, yell threats, thump cars. Burly and bearded, the bikers yank two men from their auto and pummel them. Most protesters scatter. Uniformed policemen watch impassively as the thugs beat the last stragglers.

These bikers are part of the Hezbollah militia, recruited mostly from the countryside. Iran's ruling mullahs roll them out whenever they need to intimidate their opponents. The Islamic Republic is a strange dictatorship. As it moves to repress growing opposition to clerical rule, the regime relies not on soldiers or uniformed police (many of whom sympathize with the protesters) but on the bullies of Hezbollah and the equally thuggish Revolutionary Guards. The powers that be claim to derive legitimacy from Allah but remain on top with gangsterlike methods of intimidation, violence and murder.

Who controls today's Iran? Certainly not Mohammad Khatami, the twice-elected moderate president, or the reformist parliament. Not even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei--a stridently anti-American but unremarkable cleric plucked from the religious ranks 14 years ago to fill the shoes of his giant predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini--is fully in control. The real power is a handful of clerics and their associates who call the shots behind the curtain and have gotten very rich in the process.

The economy bears more than a little resemblance to the crony capitalism that sprouted from the wreck of the Soviet Union. The 1979 revolution expropriated the assets of foreign investors and the nation's wealthiest families; oil had long been nationalized, but the mullahs seized virtually everything else of value--banks, hotels, car and chemical companies, makers of drugs and consumer goods. What distinguishes Iran is that many of these assets were given to Islamic charitable foundations, controlled by the clerics. According to businessmen and former foundation executives, the charities now serve as slush funds for the mullahs and their supporters.

Iran has other lethal secrets besides its nuclear program, now the subject of prying international eyes. Dozens of interviews with businessmen, merchants, economists and former ministers and other top government officials reveal a picture of a dictatorship run by a shadow government that--the U.S. State Department suspects--finances terrorist groups abroad through a shadow foreign policy. Its economy is dominated by shadow business empires and its power is protected by a shadow army of enforcers.

Ironically, the man most adept at manipulating this hidden power structure is one of Iran's best-known characters--Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been named an ayatollah, or religious leader. He was the speaker of parliament and Khomeini's right-hand man in the 1980s, president of Iran from 1989 to 1997 and is now chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, which resolves disputes between the clerical establishment and parliament. Rafsanjani has more or less run the Islamic Republic for the past 24 years.

He played it smart, aligning himself in the 1960s with factions led by Ayatollah Khomeini, then becoming the go-to guy after the revolution. A hard-liner ideologically, Rafsanjani nonetheless has a pragmatic streak. He convinced Khomeini to end the Iran-Iraq war and broke Iran's international isolation by establishing trade relations with the Soviet Union, China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the 1990s he restarted Iran's nuclear program.

He is also the father of Iran's "privatization" program. During his presidency the stock market was revived, some government companies were sold to insiders, foreign trade was liberalized and the oil sector was opened up to private companies. Most of the good properties and contracts, say dissident members of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, ended up in the hands of mullahs, their associates and, not least, Rafsanjani's family, who rose from modest origins as pistachio farmers. "They were not rich people, so they worked hard and always tried to help their relatives get ahead," remembers Reza, a historian who declines to use his last name and who studied with one of Rafsanjani's brothers at Tehran University in the early 1970s. "When they were in university, two brothers earned money on the side tutoring theological students and preparing their exam papers."

The 1979 revolution transformed the Rafsanjani clan into commercial pashas. One brother headed the country's largest copper mine; another took control of the state-owned TV network; a brother-in-law became governor of Kerman province, while a cousin runs an outfit that dominates Iran's $400 million pistachio export business; a nephew and one of Rafsanjani's sons took key positions in the Ministry of Oil; another son heads the Tehran Metro construction project (an estimated $700 million spent so far). Today, operating through various foundations and front companies, the family is also believed to control one of Iran's biggest oil engineering companies, a plant assembling Daewoo automobiles, and Iran's best private airline (though the Rafsanjanis insist they do not own these assets).

None of this sits well with the populace, whose per capita income is $1,800 a year. The gossip on the street, going well beyond the observable facts, has the Rafsanjanis stashing billions of dollars in bank accounts in Switzerland and Luxembourg; controlling huge swaths of waterfront in Iran's free economic zones on the Persian Gulf; and owning whole vacation resorts on the idyllic beaches of Dubai, Goa and Thailand.

But not much of the criticism makes its way into print. One journalist who dared to investigate Rafsanjani's secret dealings and his alleged role in extrajudicial killings of dissidents is now languishing in jail. He's lucky. Iranian politics can be deadly. Five years ago Tehran was rocked by murders of journalists and anticorruption activists; some were beheaded, others mutilated.

Some of the family's wealth is out there for all to see. Rafsanjani's youngest son, Yaser, owns a 30-acre horse farm in the superfashionable Lavasan neighborhood of north Tehran, where land goes for over $4 million an acre. Just where did Yaser get his money? A Belgian-educated businessman, he runs a large export-import firm that includes baby food, bottled water and industrial machinery.

Until a few years ago the simplest way to get rich quick was through foreign-currency trades. Easy, if you could get greenbacks at the subsidized import rate of 1,750 rials to the dollar and resell them at the market rate of 8,000 to the dollar. You needed only the right connections for an import license. "I estimate that, over a period of ten years, Iran lost $3 billion to $5 billion annually from this kind of exchange-rate fraud," says Saeed Laylaz, an economist, now with Iran's biggest carmaker. "And the lion's share of that went to about 50 families."

One of the families benefiting from the foreign trade system was the Asgaroladis, an old Jewish clan of bazaar traders, who converted to Islam several generations ago. Asadollah Asgaroladi exports pistachios, cumin, dried fruit, shrimp and caviar, and imports sugar and home appliances; his fortune is estimated by Iranian bankers to be some $400 million. Asgaroladi had a little help from his older brother, Habibollah, who, as minister of commerce in the 1980s, was in charge of distributing lucrative foreign-trade licenses. (He was also a counterparty to commodities trader and then-fugitive Marc Rich, who helped Iran bypass U.S.-backed sanctions.)

The other side of Iran's economy belongs to the Islamic foundations, which account for 10% to 20% of the nation's GDP--$115 billion last year. Known as bonyads, the best-known of these outfits were established from seized property and enterprises by order of Ayatollah Khomeini in the first weeks of his regime. Their mission was to redistribute to the impoverished masses the "illegitimate" wealth accumulated before the revolution by "apostates" and "blood-sucking capitalists." And, for a decade or so, the foundations shelled out money to build low-income housing and health clinics. But since Khomeini's death in 1989 they have increasingly forsaken their social welfare functions for straightforward commercial activities.

Until recently they were exempt from taxes, import duties and most government regulation. They had access to subsidized foreign currency and low-interest loans from state-owned banks. And they were not accountable to the Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance or any other government institution. Formally, they are under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Leader; effectively, they operate without any oversight, answerable only to Allah.

According to Shiite Muslim tradition, devout businessmen are expected to donate 20% of profits to their local mosques, which use the money to help the poor. By contrast, many bonyads seem like rackets, extorting money from entrepreneurs. Besides the biggest national outfits, almost every Iranian town has its own bonyad, affiliated with local mullahs. "Many small businessmen complain that as soon as you start to make some money, the leading mullah will come to you and ask for a contribution to his local charity," says an opposition economist, who declines to give his name. "If you refuse, you will be accused of not being a good Muslim. Some witnesses will turn up to testify that they heard you insult the Prophet Mohammad, and you will be thrown in jail."

Other charities resemble multinational conglomerates. The Mostazafan & Jambazan Foundation (Foundation for the Oppressed and War Invalids) is the second-largest commercial enterprise in the country, behind the state-owned National Iranian Oil Co. Until recently it was run by a man named Mohsen Rafiqdoost. The son of a vegetable-and-fruit merchant at the Tehran bazaar, Rafiqdoost got his big break in 1979, when he was chosen to drive Ayatollah Khomeini from the airport after his triumphal return from exile in Paris.

Khomeini made him Minister of the Revolutionary Guards to quash internal dissent and smuggle in weapons for the Iran-Iraq war. In 1989, when Rafsanjani became president, Rafiqdoost gained control of the Mostazafan Foundation, which employs up to 400,000 workers and has assets that in all probability exceed $10 billion.

Theoretically the Mostazafan Foundation is a social welfare organization. By 1996 it began taking government funds to cover welfare disbursements; soon it plans to spin off its social responsibilities altogether, leaving behind a purely commercial conglomerate owned by--whom? That is not clear. Why does this foundation exist? "I don't know--ask Mr. Rafiqdoost," says Abbas Maleki, a foreign policy adviser to Ayatollah Rafsanjani.

A picture emerges from one Iranian businessman who used to handle the foreign trade deals for one of the big foundations. Organizations like the Mostazafan serve as giant cash boxes, he says, to pay off supporters of the mullahs, whether they're thousands of peasants bused in to attend religious demonstrations in Tehran or Hezbollah thugs who beat up students. And, not least, the foundations serve as cash cows for their managers.

"It usually works like this," explains this businessman. "Some foreigner comes in, proposes a deal to the foundation head. The big boss says: ‘Fine. I agree. Work out the details with my administrator.' So the foreigner goes to see the administrator, who tells him: ‘You know that we have two economies here--official and unofficial. You have to be part of the unofficial economy if you want to be successful. So, you have to deposit the following amount into the following bank account abroad and then the deal will go forward.'"

Today Rafiqdoost heads up the Noor Foundation, which owns apartment blocks and makes an estimated $200 million importing pharmaceuticals, sugar and construction materials. He is quick to downplay his personal wealth. "I am just a normal person, with normal wealth," he says. Then, striking a Napoleonic pose, he adds: "But if Islam is threatened, I will become big again."

Implication: He has access to a secret reservoir of money that can be tapped when the need arises. That may have been what Ayatollah Rafsanjani had in mind when he declared recently that the Islamic Republic needed to keep large funds in reserve. But who is to determine when Islam is in danger?

As minister of the Revolutionary Guards in the 1980s, Rafiqdoost played a key role in sponsoring Hezbollah in Lebanon--which kidnapped foreigners, hijacked airplanes, set off car bombs, trafficked in heroin and pioneered the use of suicide bombers. According to Gregory Sullivan, spokesman for the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau at the U.S. State Department, the foundations are the perfect vehicles to carry out Iran's shadow foreign policy. Whenever suspicion of complicity in a terrorist incident turns to Iran, the Tehran government has denied involvement. State Department officials suspect that such operations may be sponsored by one of the foundations and semiautonomous units of the Revolutionary Guards.

Iran's foundations are a law unto themselves. The largest "charity" (at least in terms of real estate holdings) is the centuries-old Razavi Foundation, charged with caring for Iran's most revered shrine--the tomb of Reza, the Eighth Shiite Imam, in the northern city of Mashhad. It is run by one of Iran's leading hard-line mullahs, Ayatollah Vaez-Tabasi, who prefers to stay out of the public eye but emerges occasionally to urge death to apostates and other opponents of the clerical regime.

The Razavi Foundation owns vast tracts of urban real estate all across Iran, as well as hotels, factories, farms and quarries. Its assets are impossible to value with any precision, since the foundation has never released an inventory of its holdings, but Iranian economists speak of a net asset value of $15 billion or more. The foundation also receives generous contributions from the millions of pilgrims who visit the Mashhad shrine each year.

What happens to annual revenues estimated in the hundreds of millions--perhaps billions--of dollars? Not all of it goes to cover the maintenance costs of mosques, cemeteries, religious schools and libraries. Over the past decade the foundation has bought new businesses and properties, established investment banks (together with investors from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) and financed big foreign trade deals.

The driving force behind the commercialization of the Razavi Foundation is Ayatollah Tabasi's son, Naser, who was put in charge of the Sarakhs Free Trade Zone, on the border with the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan. In the 1990s the foundation poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this project, funding a rail link between Iran and Turkmenistan, new highways, an international airport, a hotel and office buildings.

Then it all went wrong. In July 2001 Naser Tabasi was dismissed as director of the Free Trade Zone. Two months later he was arrested and charged with fraud in connection with a Dubai-based company called Al-Makasib. The details remain murky, but four months ago the General Court of Tehran acquitted him.

Iran's most distinguished senior clerics are disgusted by the mullahcrats. Ayatollah Taheri, Friday prayer leader of the city of Isfahan, resigned in protest earlier this year. "When I hear that some of the privileged progeny and special people, some of whom even don cloaks and turbans, are competing amongst themselves to amass the most wealth," he said, "I am drenched with the sweat of shame."

Meanwhile the clerical elite has mismanaged the nation into senseless poverty. With 9% of the world's oil and 15% of its natural gas, Iran should be a very rich country. It has a young, educated population and a long tradition of international commerce. But per capita income today is 7% below what it was before the revolution. Iranian economists estimate capital flight (to Dubai and other safe havens) at up to $3 billion a year.

No wonder so many students turn to the streets in protest. The dictatorship has been robbing them of their future.

Discontent Unveiled
Disaffected, denied opportunity and just plain bored, Iran's youth have taken their frustrations with the clerics' regime to the streets.

Paul Klebnikov, The Author of - - Millionaire Mullahs - - Was Shot Dead - Late Friday, July 09, 2004

MOSCOW - - The American editor of Forbes Magazine's Russian edition and author of a book about tycoon Boris Berezovsky was shot to death late Friday, July 09, 2004, the magazine said.

Paul Klebnikov, 41 years old, was shot four times outside the magazine's office and died in a rescue-squad vehicle, Russian news reports said. The radio station Ekho Moskvy said shells of two different caliber were found at the scene, indicating at least two assailants.

Police could not be reached for comment, but the killing was confirmed in a statement by Forbes publisher Steve Forbes.

"Paul was a superb reporter -- courageous, dedicated, ever-curious" the statement said. "He knew Russia well. It was a country he deeply loved."

Alexander Gordeyev, editor of the Russian edition of Newsweek magazine, which has offices in the same building, said he came to Klebnikov's side as he lay outside the building.

He was still conscious and able to speak, "Klebnikov thought that the ruling mullahs in Iran could have been the cause of the attack." Gordeyev told The Associated Press.

The Interfax news agency quoted Leonid Bershidsky, the publisher of Russian Forbes and Newsweek, as saying that Klebnikov recently "had not dug up anything sensitive." Forbes started its Russian-language edition in April. Klebnikov, U.S.-born of Russian heritage, previously had been a senior editor with the U.S.-based Forbes.

In a statement late Friday, Klebnikov's family said it expected Russia to bring the assailants to justice, and urged "U.S. and international authorities" to make sure that happens.

"Paul was a fighter for the truth," the statement said. "Even more, he believed in being positive and looking for ways to make the future better. We mourn his death."

In May, Forbes attracted wide attention by publishing a list of Russia's wealthiest people, claiming that Moscow had more billionaires who worked there or amassed their fortunes there than any other city in the world.

"Here people fly and fall with staggering speed," Klebnikov said at a news conference when the list was released.

His 2000 book "Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia" described how Berezovsky, now living in exile in Britain, allegedly siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars out of Russia.

After Klebnikov wrote a profile of Berezovsky for Forbes in 1996, Berezovsky filed a libel suit against the magazine in Britain.

He withdrew the suit in 2003 after the publication acknowledged it was wrong to allege he was involved in the murder of a television personality.

Klebnikov in May said that he believed the chaotic post-Soviet years, when business disputes were often settled by gunfire and car bombs, were a thing of the past.

"The era of so called bandit-capitalism is already in the past. In the mid-90's it was a very, very dirty process ... I think the participants of our list themselves are pleased to leave this era behind," he said.

Klebnikov was a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the London School of Economics.

Communities Fight State Laws That Can Divide Broadband Access

- By EDWARD WYATT - The New York Times - NOV. 9, 2014

Small cities are asking the F.C.C. to use its power to override laws in 19 states that forbid municipalities (the people) to build or expand broadband networks..!

WILSON, N.C. — Jason Bissette could throw a sweet potato from his office here in eastern North Carolina, where he and his family oversee nearly 3,000 acres, to their newest barn.

But despite his wishes, Mr. Bissette cannot extend the high-speed broadband from the office to his barns, either by wire or Wi-Fi, an upgrade that would help him monitor his sweet potatoes and tobacco.

The problem is that his office sits in Wilson County, where a municipal power company has built a high-speed fiber-optic network. The barns, however, sit in Nash County. And a three-year-old state law prohibits the city of Wilson’s utility from expanding its broadband network outside its home territory.

“The technology is right there across the county line,” Mr. Bissette said on a recent afternoon, after plowing up a field of sweet potatoes for harvest. “If we could get the service, we could make sure the temperature is right, that air is circulating. It would make life a whole lot simpler.”

In North Carolina, as in 18 other states, state laws limit municipalities from building or expanding high-speed Internet service networks. The reason behind those laws, supporters say, is to limit taxpayer exposure to projects that at times fail and for which there may be little demand.

But Tom Wheeler, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, says providing access to broadband Internet is in the public interest. And for that reason, he says, the commission can override those state laws — setting off a heated debate about the federal commission’s authority over states and about whether local governments or private companies should provide the service.

Mark Cooper, research director of Consumer Federation of America, said he expected “a long and vicious fight. There is a felt need for a higher quality of service at a more reliable price. There’s a perception of market failure. If consumers were not upset, they wouldn’t be asking for it.”

At the center of the debate are Chattanooga, Tenn., and Wilson. The two cities have petitioned the commission to invalidate their state laws. A ruling from the F.C.C. is expected next year.

In Wilson, which had a population of just under 50,000 in 2013, the municipal power company also provides electricity for six surrounding eastern North Carolina counties. The city told the F.C.C. that numerous residents, government agencies, businesses and other organizations in those counties had requested its high-speed Internet service. But the state law, it said, had “the purpose and effect of prohibiting it” from offering broadband.

Will Aycock, the general manager of Greenlight, Wilson’s broadband service, said that drivers often stopped when they saw Greenlight trucks working outside the city to ask if and when the broadband service would be available in nearby areas.

Inside its current territory, about one-third of the 21,000 households subscribe to Greenlight’s broadband service. Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink also provide broadband to the county, but their services deliver slower speeds and are more expensive.

“We would probably be building tomorrow if the law changed today,” Mr. Aycock said. “We’re not saying that we’re going to build out all of eastern Carolina or even all of our service territory tomorrow. But there are areas where we’d like to go now.”

One of the potential places to expand is Pinetops, a town of 1,300 people about 20 miles northeast of Wilson. Pinetops had already been negotiating with Greenlight for broadband service when the North Carolina law went into effect in 2011.

Pinetops buys electric power from the City of Wilson, which also owns the fiber-optic network. But the main broadband option is through CenturyLink, the large telecommunications company, over the copper-wire phone network, whose speed does not match that of Wilson’s fiber-optic broadband.

“If you want to have economic development in a town like this, you’ve got to have fiber,” said Gregory Bethea, the town administrator of Pinetops. He said that while it was doubtful that the small community would attract a 300-employee factory, it might be a prime location for a call center or other service business that relied on telecommunications.

But CenturyLink says that there is not enough demand in or around Wilson for fiber-to-home broadband.

“We build our network to meet customer expectations,” said Bill Hanchey, a CenturyLink regional vice president who oversees government affairs. But customers are not clamoring for the speed provided by fiber, he said. “It does us no good to go out and build networks that customers don’t need or aren’t requesting.”

Supporters of the North Carolina law say it promotes broadband expansion, as long as private companies are put on a level playing field with public entities — being allowed the same access to telephone poles, for example.

The law is also intended to keep taxpayers from being stuck with a bill for a failing network. In North Carolina, as in many other states, the law says a broadband system cannot be subsidized with revenue from other utilities. North Carolina also requires municipalities to hold a special election to approve such projects. Wilson’s system, which was built before the law, was simply approved by its City Council.

Such elections are not always a hindrance. In Colorado, which has similar requirements, two cities and six counties approved ballot measures this month allowing for local broadband.

Several municipal systems have failed, including those in Burlington, Vt.; Monticello, Minn.; and Dunnellon and Quincy, Fla., according to an extensive report on government-owned broadband by Charles M. Davidson and Michael J. Santorelli, directors of the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute at New York Law School. They found that in Provo, Utah, taxpayers were left with $40 million in debt from the construction of a system after it was sold to Google for $1.

In most cities, they say, other infrastructure needs like roads and bridges are more pressing. Broadband “is not where we have the most compelling need for investment,” Mr. Davidson said in an interview. “And when government networks fail, the failure is on the backs of the people.”

But those pushing for community broadband say the level of opposition the systems provoke from cable and phone companies is evidence that they work.

“If the people,” Mr. Wheeler wrote in June, “acting through their elected local governments, want to pursue competitive community broadband, they shouldn’t be stopped by state laws promoted by cable and telephone companies that don’t want that competition.”

That the fight has landed at the F.C.C. is the result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, in which Congress charged the commission and the states to encourage the deployment of advanced communications capabilities on a reasonable and timely basis. If deployment was found lacking, the commission was empowered to act immediately to remove barriers to infrastructure investment and to promote competition.

For the F.C.C. to invalidate the state law, it will have to overcome a United States Supreme Court precedent that seems to favor the states. In Nixon v. Missouri Municipal League, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that the Telecommunications Act allowed states to prevent municipalities from providing telecommunications services.

“I am pretty confident that if the F.C.C. pre-empts state laws, they ultimately will lose those cases,” said Randolph J. May, president of the Free State Foundation and a former associate general counsel for the F.C.C. “The Supreme Court jurisprudence is pretty clear.”

The Cities of Wilson and Chattanooga have argued that broadband service is classified as an “information service” and not a “telecommunications service.” That could mean that the Nixon ruling does not apply; instead, at issue is the section of the law that requires the commission to remove barriers to the expansion of broadband.

In the early 20th century, Wilson was the world’s largest bright-leaf tobacco market, and even now the Bissette family’s annual tobacco harvest fills 52 barns — all of them in Nash County, where the municipal broadband cannot go.

“When you’re putting the tobacco in, you need to keep the air circulating,” Mr. Bissette said. “If we could get the broadband over here, we could monitor the tobacco barns. We’d know at any point in the night if there was a problem.”

2020 Election Investigative Documentary Who’s Stealing America

Joshua Philipp, senior investigative reporter at Epoch Times, knew he had to look further into things after Election Night. There were simply too many anomalies to ignore. Bursts of votes coming in when the nation slept, all mostly for one candidate. Legacy media outlets rushing to proclaim victory for one side. Stories of alleged fraud stifled by social media censors. Follow Joshua and The Epoch Times’ investigative team as they go down the rabbit hole of allegations and evidence to reach the facts of the matter––and what these facts mean for America’s future as a country.

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The Globalists Prepare War on "Domestic Terrorism"

Published: Jan 28, 2021

Welcome to New World Next Week - the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news.

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Divide and Conquer: The Politics of Right or Left Fraud

- By James Corbett - January 28, 2014

From education to the environment, business to banking, housing to health care, it seems that there is no issue in the world that the industrialized western democracies cannot reduce to a simplistic paradigm of “liberal” vs “conservative.” In fact, this point has been so hardwired into the modern political system that it has been distilled into a childlike shorthand: political positions are “left” or “right,” “blue” or “red.” These convenient, color-coded political choices infantilize the political process, making the public little more than spectators at a sporting event, rooting for one team or another without even having to understand the issues being debated.

Nowhere has this process of simplification become so refined as it has in the United States of America, sometimes laughingly referred to as the “leaders of the free world.”

This inane lowest-common-denominator reduction of all political thought has taken its toll on the public. Many are now unable to conceive of what a political movement that is not attached to one or the other ends of this so-called “spectrum” would look like. Yet, interestingly, this is precisely what has emerged in the past several years, not once, but twice, and not on one side of this left/right divide or the other, but both.

In the past five years we have watched the rise of two distinct movements expressing popular outrage at the political status quo in the US. Both movements decried the nexus of power that has developed in the fascistic relationship of big banks and big government. Both movements believed that the bought-and-paid for politicians have robbed the people of their rights and even their ability to participate in the political process. Both movements believed in mass protest as a way of effecting change in the system. And yet, we are asked to believe that these movements are not only incompatible, but diametrically opposed.

According to the corporate press, the tea party is a fringe Republican movement that arose out of a desire to move the Republican party further toward the “hard right.” Never discussed in mainstream coverage of the group is its actual origins in disgust at the Bush Administration’s 9/11 cover-up. The first “tea party” event was held in Boston in 2006 and involved throwing copies of the whitewash 9/11 Commission Report into Boston Harbor. The movement took off in 2008 in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse and the announcement of trillions of dollars of stimulus being directed into the pockets of the Wall Street banksters and their political cronies.

Similarly, the Occupy Wall Street movement motivated scores of Americans to actively protest the financial oligarchy and their growing ensnarement of the political machinery of the US government for their own enrichment. People sick of being asked to “tighten their belts” while banks continued making record profits, backed up and bailed out by debt that the public is being asked to underwrite, drove people into the streets for mass protests and confrontations with the so-called authorities across the country.

At their core, these movements sprang from remarkably similar origins: increasing public frustration with the money power dominating the American political process, and the dwindling space for public engagement in that system. It did not take long at all, however, before both movements were spun into the left/right political process, with the Republicans effectively capturing the tea party movement and steering much of their base into an officially sanctioned Tea Party Inc. The Democrats, meanwhile, managed to ignore the Occupy Wall Street protests while the political provocateurs and change agents steered it toward cultural irrelevance.

Those who have studied history should perhaps not find it surprising that the political outrage that is felt so keenly by people on all sides of the political “spectrum” should be controlled by spinning them off into partisan politics. Nor should they be surprised to see how effective this technique is. After all, the strategy of keeping the people pitted against each other instead of against their oppressors is one of the oldest political strategems known to human civilization.

The phrase “divide and conquer” is attributed to Julius Caesar and has been used by emperors and would-be tyrants ever since. In the age of empires, divide and conquer was used to keep the empires’ subjects from rebelling against the emperor. The Romans used it to keep their conquered neighbours competing with each other rather than their foreign occupiers. The British used it to keep their colonies squabbling along religious, ethnic and sectarian grounds so that the Queen and the British East India Company could more effectively exploit them.

In the age of the nation state and with the advent of republican democracy, the strategy necessarily took on a different form. The idea of a “left” and “right” wing in politics stems from the earliest days of the French Revolution, when the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king on the President’s right and supporters of the revolution on his left. The notion of competing parties within the government was quickly transplanted to the American context, where supporters of Alexander Hamilton united under the Federalist Party, causing Thomas Jefferson to form the Democratic-Republican party.

“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” Thomas Paine

The creation of political parties was greeted with uneasiness by many, including George Washington himself, who warned of the potential for despotism under such a system in his Farewell Address:

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.”

Whatever the intentions of the original creators of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties, by the 20th Century the American system, supposedly the beacon of democracy for the world, had become hardwired into a two-party duopoly: the Republicans and the Democrats. This was not the result of mere happenstance, but a concerted plan to effect a divide and conquer strategy on the population by the money interests that benefit from having the public pitted against each other.

The thinking behind this two-party system that was engineered by the banking and financial interests was documented by famed Georgetown historian Carroll Quigley in his landmark work, Tragedy and Hope, published in 1966:

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.”

Late last March I had the chance to talk to independent news commentator Charlie McGrath of Wide Awake News about this strategy of divide and conquer and how it functions to keep like-minded people apart on so many issues.

The situation would almost be laughable if it were not so tragic. Having been immersed in the left/right facade their entire lives, many have begun to see the world and those around them through that prism. Either someone is on the same “side” as they are, or they are the enemy. There is no room for nuance, no subtle distinctions to be made, no room for alliance or cooperation on matters of great import. Perhaps most devastatingly, there is now little room for any analysis of the powers behind the political throne, the oligarchical financial interests that could care less whether this or that President has a “D” or an “R” next to their name, whether a Prime Minister is “Labour” or “Conservative,” whether an MEP identifies with the “left” or the “right.” Deprived of this understanding of the real nature of political power, the public is truly powerless to identify the real problem at the root of today’s political crisis, let alone even begin to address it.

It is perhaps ironic, then, that at the end of the day the supposedly serious commentators, analysts and talking heads that are paraded in front of the public to comment on this system are little more than buffoons and court jesters, keeping the public entertained and distracted, while some of the most insightful political commentators of our day have been the comedians who have been bold enough to expose this system for what it really is.

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Exclusive Sidney Powell on 2020 Election Lawsuits, Supreme Court Decision

Joining us today is attorney Sidney Powell, who has been leading election lawsuits in multiple states. On Friday, she filed emergency requests to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to order officials in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona to de-certify their 2020 election results.

We discuss the current status of the legal challenges she’s involved in and her thoughts on the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Texas lawsuit as well as the conclusion of the Flynn case.

This is American Thought Leaders 🇺🇸, and I’m Jan Jekielek.

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Public Data Shows 432,000 Trump Votes Removed in Pennsylvania Election: Data Scientists

The Data Integrity Group, a group of data scientists, has been dissecting publicly available data on the presidential election in multiple states. Most recently, in Pennsylvania, they found over 432,000 votes were removed from President Donald Trump in at least 15 counties.

Time-series election data shows Trump’s votes decreasing in various counties at many time points, instead of increasing. In an election, as you count votes, you typically only see vote increments, not decrements—unless some error occurred that needs to be assessed.

The group also testified before the Georgia Senate that more than 30,000 votes were removed from President Trump in Georgia.

This is American Thought Leaders 🇺🇸, and I’m Jan Jekielek.

Richard Barron (404) 612-7030 - Fulton County, Georgia Elections Director said on C-SPAN: "We scanned 113,130 ballots a moment ago, we adjudicate 106,000 of those."

This is what is wrong with Richard Barron's stupefying fraudulent statement: ballots can be viewed only one at a time on the voting computer screen, to adjudicate a ballot requires at least two people to look it over form top to bottom and if both of them agree, they decide which candidate will get that vote. The best and fastest possible time to adequately adjudicate a ballot is 60 seconds. Lets say Richard Barron's staff were super efficient and extremely fast and did it in 30 seconds. 113,130 x 30 = 3,393,900 seconds it would take to do the job. 3,393,900 seconds divided by 3,600 number of seconds in one hour equals 942.75 total hours to do the job. 942.75 divided by 24 hours in a day equals 39.28 days, which means if Richard Barron and his Fulton County election staff were to work none stop, 24/7, no sleep, no lunch and no dinner around the clock, it would have taken over 39 days to count and or adjudicate 113,130 ballots.