Three-part series initiated Sept. 4th, 2005 by the âSunday Observer,â Colombo
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Freemason secret
and todayâs new finance den
By Wendell W. Solomons
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In Moscow, officials who served President Boris Yeltsin were falling under the spotlight. During this process, a parliamentarian claimed that a key Yeltsin had aide served “the capital of the worldâs freemasonry – London.”
The weekly âMoscow Newsâ of August 10-16, 2005 front-paged the claim. It came in the Russian parliament from deputy Alexander Khinshtein (âKhin-â isnât just an ordinary root word for Hebrew scholars but associates directly with a measure for liquids.)
About âfreemasonry;â in the historical Middle Ages, members of merchant guilds were often bound to secrecy for economic security.
The Freemasons, a widespread, secret society, originated as a guild of craftsmen in the 14th century. An Encarta encyclopaedia entry on Freemasonry suggests that global authority meandered to Britain during the succeeding three centuries. So the encyclopaedia supports Khinshteinâs claim of London as the centre of Freemasonry.
Taking the administration of President Boris Yeltsin, a Western cabal of monetarists carried out âreformsâ that precipitated the devaluation of Russiaâs currency more than 250 times. In the wake of monetarist sabotage, home budgets shrank and pensioners were reduced to living on bread and milk.
During the USAid-contracted monetarist reforms, 3 metric tons of gold, a reserve of the Central Bank meant to support the currency, were trucked out into the night. The reserves represented some part of seven decades of the labour of Soviet citizens.
Item 1 -The rise of these fortunes was prefaced by the release upon Moscow of a New York crime syndicate, the Brighton Beach mafia, nominally Jewish-led. The American VIP delegated Russian affairs in those years was Vice President Al Gore (or more fully – Albert Armand Gore; he was named for Armand Hammer, an operator in gold and diamonds born in Odessa.) Gore’s connection to New York and its Brighton Beach was illustrated to the world when his daughter married into the New York family of financier Jacob Schiff (a City of London mover-and-shaker with mention in the Encyclopaedia Judaica.)
Item 2 – In Vice President Al Gore’s time again, Henry Kissinger introduced the American beauty Lynn Forester to Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, head of the famous London banking dynasty. Later, the US President himself did his bit for the beauty by providing for her wedding night with the 71-year-old Rothschild on the silken sheets of the White House.Â
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Silk Road
 We can study the build up of power in the hands of global movers-and-shakers by looking at a few images in history.
The formal opening of the transcontinental Silk Road is associated in the Far East with the name of Zhang Qian who opened up trade and diplomacy with areas that include India, Iran and Syria. Zhang also made contact with the Greek world. His travels began in 138 BC and upon his return, China’s emperor made him Marquis of Bowang. Zhang next led another expedition with 300 men and gifts of gold and silk to dazzle rulers with China’s riches
The fabric that moved across the Silk Road wasnât only silk. We know that the caravans of Nabataean tribes (pre-Islamic Arabs hailing from the desert city of Petra,) carried Indian cotton textiles westwards circa 25 AD.
As traders moved these products along caravan routes, the rise of moneylenders extended.Â
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 Market Niche
 At a particular stage, Buddhism (represented in the Bamien statues of Afghanistan) and Christianity became the predominant faiths on the Silk Road. These two faiths contained biddings such as that expressed in a text of the Old Testament –
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DEU 4:19 When you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars – all the heavenly array – do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.
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The text above spurns the idolatry of the tribe itself as âChosenâ by a sky symbolism. Like Christianity, Buddhism was a cosmopolitan faith that differed from that of the tribe or clan.
Later, starting in the 7th Century, Islam had fanned out from the Middle East at a pace then unusual for history. Taking Spain on the one hand (in the West,) by 712 AD an Arab army crossed the Indus River and conquered the kingdom of Sind (in southern Pakistan).
In their early and respective phases of development, adherents of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam spurned money lending. The logic was: who would turn a quick penny on a neighbour? The spurning of usury contributed to the negative meaning attached to the English words ‘usurious interest’.
The spurning of usury left a window of opportunity for those ethnic and social groups that allowed money lending. The spurning created a position of privilege for the latter. Ready money being Aladdinâs lamp, traditional money lending clans gained the opportunity to finance the business of Tom while squeezing out a less pliant Dick or Harry.
Through selection of obedient traders, over years and centuries the money lending clans evolved a mercantile class in trading cities. This explains how in the 19th Century radical thinkers came to despise burghers (townsmen) and began to use âbourgeoisâ as a negative word. Websterâs dictionary helps says something about this transition-
Etymology
[Fr < OFr burgeis < ML burgensis < burgus, borgus, town < OFr borc or Frank *burg, bourg]
Adjective
of or characteristic of a bourgeois or the bourgeoisie; middle-class; also used variously to mean conventional, smug, materialistic, etc.
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To restate, the change along trade routes expanded the arena of moneylenders who came dominantly from clans that professed Hinduism and Judaism. A change in the ethical situation allowed them to grow into major financial entities. During the course of picking and choosing pliant merchants, the financial houses made goods trading a âstep-and-fetch-itâ department. The goods merchants fell into this subservient department because they were kept from accumulating finance capital independently by their faiths of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.
Clash of moneylenders
 After the 5th Century AD , the overland Silk Road that relied on bullocks, camels and horses for haulage, encountered trouble. Merchants began to find that using the Silk Road required overcoming difficult ethno-religious obstacles that included the sudden arrival of Islam.
As a result, the weight of merchandise trade gradually shifted to sea traffic where the Indian Ocean segment gained great importance. By then, technology development too had made ships (using trade winds) the more efficient means of hauling goods over long distances.
For contrasting the more southerly route that transited the Indian Ocean, we can call it the âSpice Routeâ.
If marked from China and Japan, the voyage under sail to Europe passed either-
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A. Through the Red Sea and Egypt/Levant;
B. Through the Persian Gulf and inland into Mesopotamia via ports on the river Euphrates.
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Both West Asian routes could carry tea, spices, silks and cottons to the Mediterranean and thus to Europe.
At this stage, moneylenders of West Asia, who professed Judaism mainly, had to face off a thrust of competition. Their competition in the Indian subcontinent included the forebears of Marathis, Marwaris and Chettiars.
Traditionally, fairs and markets had come to arise for safety close to temples. Particularly with the use of gold, silver and other metals for exchange, money dealers sought safe turf inside the temple to store their stock-in-trade that included noble metals in customersâ pawned belongings. As a service in return, money dealers would maintain the account books of the temple.
With a room allotted to them for meetings, we can in modern times still spot moneylenders such as the Chettiars controlling the revenue of Hindu temples and thereby controlling the income of Brahmin priests.
While taking on the appearance of philanthropy or cooperation, the influence of the Chettiars climbed upwards to South Indian rulers through the Brahmins who performed devotions for princes too. We must note in this connection that moneylending musnât be associated purely with men of piety such as Brahmins; it would be difficult for pawnbrokers to avoid contact with thieves and bandits wanting to sell stolen valuables.
Finally, men such as the Chettiars sometimes occupied a more important position in the royal Court than would be expected of money lenders: they led rites of coronation. They could aspire to be the real power behind the throne by adding intelligence on neighbouring kingdoms gained through inter-Chettiar ties. If a prince became balky or independent, the moneylenders could, utilising the same intelligence assets, oust the prince by embroiling him in wars.
As traffic on the northern, overland Silk Road dwindled, Hindu money lending clans were left crying over revenue lost in Central and North Asia. They could hardly have overlooked the shift to the Spice Route that used ports in southern India, Lanka and Malaya for instance.
It is in this structure of power that we can better understand what the record openly tell us: that the monarchs of Indiaâs south-east coast began to fight for control of seaports in the Indian Ocean area.
One part of this struggle for revenue from trade led to a succession of South Indian Chola and Pandyan monarchs invading the island of Lanka. Taking the islandâs geography, the port of Hambantota gained its name because it received sampans (from the Cantonese for âboatâ) that were simply wafted in by winds. The islandâs own market place and hub status for goods, once led Chinese forces to occupy parts of the island in 1408 for 30 years.
Economic historian W I Siriweera writes, “the Cholas were aware of Arab competitors in the South-East Asian trade and tried to strike at the root of this competition by bringing the Malabar coast [south-west India] and Sri Lanka under their control. Rajaraja (985-1014), a Chola king, conquered Kerala and the Maldive islands, which got him involved in the lucrative trade with the Arabs on Indiaâs Western Malabar coast.”
King Rajaraja was among monarchs whose invasions in Sri Lanka destroyed the Anuradhapura kingdom. The ruin of reservoirs and canals (a strategic target of military sappers everywhere,) was one of the causes of the breakdown of the irrigated, rice-growing civilisation of Anuradhapura.
Merchants of the locality of Sri Vijaya in Malaya conducted an extensive trade with China and India. The Cholas led a great raid on them in 1025 and left the Sri Vijayan kingdom crippled.
Looked at through the perspective of power behind the throne, you might say that the attacks and devastation were caused by a clash over the Silk Route between Brahmin-allied Indian clans and West Asian finance capital clans.
With their hold on Europeâs trade as described in the next section, West Asian finance clans ended up controlling Arab merchants and Silk Route trade. Yet, here is a baseline quote brought up by history professor Lorna Dewaraja, (âHistory of Ceylonâ , Vol. I, Part I, page 706,) where Al-Idrisi, a famed 12th Century Arab geographer, deals with a royal court in the island of Lanka:
“?Idrisi mentions a council of sixteen at the royal court, consisting of four Buddhists, four Muslims, four Christians and four Jews.”
The Hindu Brahmins are the four priests missing from the above royal council. Their having gone missing suggests that Jewish clans could grasp the levers of trade finance to control Buddhist, Christian and Muslim traders in the Indian Ocean area
Finance Capital in the West
Due to the taboo of early Christianity on money lending, the West had entirely become the province of Jewish financial clans. In Europe, their money houses had coalesced and organised by the 13th Century.
No account of financial clan consolidation is complete without mentioning Venice. By 700 AD the city-state of Venice had developed into one of the worldâs great trading centres. In a move that reflected the increasing importance and growing independence of the population from its ostensible rulers in Christian Constantinople, Venetians elected in 696 AD their own head.
A unique city, set among coastal lagoons, Venice benefited from its links by sea to the Orient and by land and the river to northern Italy and beyond. Venice traded in exotic goods, notably spices and silks, imported from the East.
Our account can take note of what William Shakespeare associated with âThe Merchant of Venice.â Yet, the financial cables of cities such as Venice extended deeper through âcourt factorsâ (loan agents) who could (a) muster exotic gifts to enter royal courts and (b) provide intelligence gained from local and foreign commercial networks.
These court factors could (c) provide war mobilisation loans. Such loans represented an advantage to moneylenders because the general citizenry repaid them whether or not the monarch himself survived intrigue. So moneylenders such as those of Venice (or similar city-states such as Genoa) had made their way into a tempting insider position as court factors.
If they triggered discontent in neighbouring kingdoms in Europe, the two kingdoms would be forced into taking war loans from the court factors for mobilising their respective armies.
Collecting interest on state-guaranteed loans, finance capital grew richer by leaps and bounds. Popes were forced to think of doing something about the intrigue that was setting up fractions and seeding discord that hit European kingdoms and the Vatican itself.
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Glove Changes of Colonialism
You would scarcely have heard about Pope Alexander VI. A search for information on this Pope of 1492-1503 reveals his suppression by a bad press. Hereâs a quote from the Encarta Encyclopaedia -
“?the positive aspects of his reign remain overshadowed by corruption and ambition.”
Alexander VI was a Pope who aroused wrath among the moneylenders. He decided to reduce their influence by cordoning them off from the pliant Muslim, Christian and other merchants they hand-grew in the field.
Pope Alexander VII chose the method of dividing the market into Portuguese and Spanish Catholic zones of influence as soon as he could. Just after a year after assuming office he issued an edict called the Bull[etin] of Demarcation.
In this edict, a line of demarcation ran due north and south about 483 km west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. Alexander VI placed all lands lying east of this line, including India, in the zone of influence of Catholic Portugal. Catholic Spain received all those to the west.
In consequence in Asia, following in the wake of Lorenzo de Almeida, Alfonso de Albuquerque could practice an ambitious scheme for the 16th Century. Aiming at complete control of all Indian Ocean traffic, he organised a chain of forts along coasts, the central ones being Goa in India (the viceroy capital), in Hormuz (at the entrance to the Persian Gulf), and in Malacca in Southeast Asia.
Between Indonesia and Africa, ships now carried silks, cottons and spices with Portuguese permission — or faced peril. In time, Portugal went on to establish formal colonies and thereby wall off the influence of Venetian and kindred finance capital.
That story led to the colonisation, for example, of the sea-coast provinces of Sri Lanka, begun in 1505. In sequestering the island, Portuguese conquistadores spared Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim places of worship. They selected for attack Jewish leaders and âhereticalâ Orthodox Christian leaders. As a result, the Portuguese erased these congregations in Sri Lanka but they remain in South India in Kerala. In the port city of Cochin, the Mattancheri synagogue sits next to the spice market (described on the Internet) and the South Indian Orthodox church is alive.
Counterattack
After money lending for East-West trade was dented by Pope Alexander VI, Mediterranean finance houses drifted outwards and reached northern and eastern Europe.
In the Netherlands, then a Spanish colony, Protestants had attacked hundreds of Catholic monasteries and churches during revolts. Circa 1590 Amsterdam began to figure as the refugee capital of Europe and in return for its generosity the city gained unrivalled access to the globeâs most profitable trading networks.
The wealth and the wide-ranging contacts of the Sephardic Jews from the Mediterranean made them welcome settlers. Their clans consolidated through the founding of the Bank of Amsterdam and then proceeded with plans to float a merchant company to hire sea navigators, sailors and troops to challenge the Portuguese in the Orient.
The year 1602 founded Dutch East India Company relieved Portugal of all its East Indian possessions. In most of present-day Indonesia and in the Malay Peninsula, Sri Lanka, the Malabar Coast of India and Japan, it eliminated the Portuguese.
The hands of the financiers remained hidden. In these far-reaching events of the 17th century the world at large was not privy to a return of finance houses into Oriental trade but just saw Dutch gloves replacing Portuguese ones in the colonies.
At the peak of its power in 1669, the Dutch East India Company had 150 merchant ships, 40 warships and 10,000 soldiers and its Batavia that resembled an individual republic was headquarted in Jakarta. However, increasing corruption and near bankruptcy led to the dissolution of the company in 1799. Its possessions and debts were taken over by the Dutch state.
The next horse deal for Oriental trade soon followed. The detachment of the finance houses based in Britain was to take over Oriental trade using the British East India Company. This company of dealers was originally provided with a charter for monopoly in trade in the East in 1600 by Queen Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII.
Jewish clans had been banished from England in 1292 by Edward I but we found dislodged Mediterranean finance clans settling in Britain through their using the wastrel Henry VIII as a conduit for their entry. Later we see the power of the British royal family shrunk by Oliver Cromwell who gained finance enough to hire troops and drive the monarchy into a corner.
In our times the UK âDaily Mirrorâ newspaper came out in October 2003 with a series of assertions by Paul Burrell who had served as Princess Dianaâs butler. The newspaper claimed that Diana wrote a letter 10 months before she died saying there was a plot to kill her by tampering with the brakes of her car.
Paul Burrell mentioned another singularity. When he went public with what he had observed with Princess Diana at first hand, the Queen stepped forward to caution him about forces that he did not dream of.
After the British East India Company received Oriental trade, the finance clans went from strength to strength. They reinforced their position as the force (a) behind the British throne and (b) behind the commerce of the new and extensive British colonial system.
With that, at long last Pope Alexander VIâs edict of 1493 had been overturned and cosy times were assured for the clans behind the motto “Britannia rules the waves.” On January 13th, 1909 Winston Churchill, son of Rothschild-clan asset Randolph Churchill, could confidently boast of England as ‘the best country in the world for rich men.’
The man chosen for Africaâs gold and diamonds, Openheimer clan asset Cecil Rhodes, would also boast, “To be born British was to have drawn the winning ticket in the lottery of life.”
An ad copywriter was later found in Chicago, USA. Edgar Rice Burroughs was to puff up genetic or natural British overlordship through writings on Tarzan.
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President Roosevelt and decolonisation
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After Alexander VI, the dissenter who arrived on the scene was U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He might not have been a political successor to Alexander VI had he and wife Eleanor not noticed the inside story as members of the elite.
When elite British bragging was challenged by World War II and British PM Churchill appealed for US supplies and assistance, Roosevelt asked him in return for decolonisation.
The Rothschildâs dynastial Churchill did not relish signing away colonies in front of his constituency. So when Britainâs merry new battleship âPrince of Walesâ set sail it was a well-kept secret that Churchill was on board. When this leaked into the news, the purpose of Churchillâs voyage was cited as a fishing trip with Franklin D. Roosevelt who arrived aboard US cruiser `Augustaâ.
The outcome of the meeting at sea was the Atlantic Charter of August 14, 1941, which respected the rights of all peoples to self-determination.
World media was placated with the story that the two ships met in mid-Atlantic for wartime bravado but as soon as the war was over we know Britain was forced to adhere to the Charter and grant Independence to its colonies.
Anglo-American Neo-Commonwealth
Rooseveltâs elite dissidence confused finance capital no end. These consequences ensued.
(1) A post-Colonial strategy of protectionism attempted to block industrialisation in newly emergent nations. The strategy was applied through blinds such as the World Bank and IMF. The approach suffered obsolescence when manufacturing industry took off with a bang in several nations of Asia. Japan was followed by newly industrialised nations that were to include giant China and India.
(2) From 1976 finance capital embarked on another course to impoverish emergent nations by making them weak, dependent interest-payers. Monetarists economists were used to set in place a vanity trap through the World Bank and IMF that would cause a âwar of each against the other.â The social tension would block cooperation to-wards developing national resources.
Yet, that had the blowback effect of hitting synergy in the USA and UK. Key financier George Soros recorded his alarm on the drastic change in everyday US business ethics when news headlines exposed a spate of corporate crime. Corporate nihilism and sociopathy are also experienced in the UK, where the nationâs once proud auto-industry is being sold off, factory by factory, to foreign buyers. MG-Rover went in 2005, bought by Nanking Automobile, which flew in not only Chinese engineers but cooks too because it considered scrap meals unsuitable for the workforce.
Protectionist strategies (1) and (2) proved counterproductive and Anglo-American leaders rush from crisis to crisis today. A proto-fascism projected into the world, especially in the Asian theatre, has harmed whatever credibility that Anglo-American elites enjoyed in the world.
Left now to pursue Democrat Rooseveltâs 1941 classic dissent from the money aristocracy is a coalition being formed by Brazil, Canada, France, Germany and Russia. Russia expands the dissent through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation formed with China and four Central Asian nations with India, Iran and Pakistan as observers. A defence pact of record, historic size with three million plus servicemen, it forced the US to dismantle its airforce bases in Central Asiaâs Uzbekhistan.
China is in the process of converting its foreign currency reserves from US dollars into gold, which will form the base of account for petroleum and natural gas supplies from Russia. In year 2000 the European Union shifted to the euro as a currency to bypass the US dollar.
These events help reflect a picture of a coalition that could in time, check and bankrupt finance capital and its proto-fascism.
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