“When, through the law's intervention, the common people shall have lost their homes...

[Fire Walk With Me]

“We must go forward cautiously and consolidate each acquired position, because already the inferior social stratum of society is giving unceasing signs of agitation.


“Therefore, prudence dictates to us a line of conduct that seems to give in to the will of the people, until the execution of our plans be well-enough established for us to be able to declare our intentions without having to fear any organized resistance.


“Our confidence men shall have to closely watch the Farmers Alliance and the Knights of Work, and take steps immediately, either to control both associations in accordance with our interests, or to break them.


“Our men will have to attend the Convention that will be held in Omaha on the 4th of July, and be in charge of all activities. Otherwise, this Convention could muster such an antagonism to our plans that we would have to resort to force to overcome it.


Now, at the present time, using violence would be premature. We are not yet ready to confront such an assault. Money must first of all seek maximum protection in schemes and in legislation.


“Let us make use of the courts. Let us go forward as fast as possible at perceiving debts, at foreclosing (depriving of recourse to justice when a certain time limit has been transgressed) on debentures and mortgages.


“When, through the law's intervention, the common people shall have lost their homes, they will be more easy to control and more easy to govern, and they shall not be able to resist the strong hand of the Government acting in accordance with the orders of the central power of imperial wealth, under the control of the leaders of finance.


“Our top leaders are perfectly aware of the truth. They are presently working at establishing an imperialism of the capital to rule the world. But while they are implementing this plan, they must keep the people busy with political antagonisms.


“We'll therefore speed up the question of reform in the custom rates by the political organization called the Democratic Party; and we'll put the spotlight on the question of protection and of the reciprocity by the Republican Party.


“By dividing the electorate this way, we'll be able to have them spend their energies at struggling amongst themselves on questions that, for us, have no importance whatsoever, and on which we only touch upon as instructors of the common flock.


“It is thus that, through discreet acts, we can maintain what was so generously projected and executed with such a remarkable success.”

-United States Bankers' Magazine 1892

[The Magistrate]

1. This Is Spurious, Sir: It Is Not Language Of The Period

Compare it to the actual platform of the Populist Party adopted at the Omaha convention:

Assembled upon the 116th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the People’s Party of America, in their first national convention, invoking upon their action the blessing of Almighty God, put forth in the name and on behalf of the people of this country, the following preamble and declaration of principles:

PREAMBLE

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of those, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.

The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bondholders; a vast public debt payable in legal tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people.

Silver, which has been accepted as coin since the dawn of history, has been demonetized to add to the purchasing power of gold by decreasing the value of all forms of property as well as human labor, and the supply of currency is purposely abridged to fatten usurers, bankrupt enterprise, and enslave industry. A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism.

We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of. They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand general and chief who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of “the plain people,” with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the National Constitution; to form a more perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

We declare that this Republic can only endure as a free government while built upon the love of the whole people for each other and for the nation; that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets; that the civil war is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew out of it must die with it, and that we must be in fact, as we are in name, one united brotherhood of free men.

Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedent in the history of the world; our annual agricultural productions amount to billions of dollars in value, which must, within a few weeks or months, be exchanged for billions of dollars' worth of commodities consumed in their production; the existing currency supply is wholly inadequate to make this exchange; the results are falling prices, the formation of combines and rings, the impoverishment of the producing class. We pledge ourselves that if given power we will labor to correct these evils by wise and reasonable legislation, in accordance with the terms of our platform.

We believe that the power of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land.

While our sympathies as a party of reform are naturally upon the side of every proposition which will tend to make men intelligent, virtuous, and temperate, we nevertheless regard these questions, important as they are, as secondary to the great issues now pressing for solution, and upon which not only our individual prosperity but the very existence of free institutions depend; and we ask all men to first help us to determine whether we are to have a republic to administer before we differ as to the conditions upon which it is to be administered, believing that the forces of reform this day organized will never cease to move forward until every wrong is remedied and equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country.

PLATFORM

We declare, therefore—

First.—That the union of the labor forces of the United States this day consummated shall be permanent and perpetual; may its spirit enter into all hearts for the salvation of the Republic and the uplifting of mankind.

Second.—Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is robbery. “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” The interests of rural and civic labor are the same; their enemies are identical.

Third.—We believe that the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads, and should the government enter upon the work of owning and managing all railroads, we should favor an amendment to the Constitution by which all persons engaged in the government service shall be placed under a civil-service regulation of the most rigid character, so as to prevent the increase of the power of the national administration by the use of such additional government employes.

FINANCE.—We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the general government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that without the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people, at a tax not to exceed 2 per cent. per annum, to be provided as set forth in the sub-treasury plan of the Farmers' Alliance, or a better system; also by payments in discharge of its obligations for public improvements.

1. We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of l6 to 1.

2. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not less than $50 per capita.

3. We demand a graduated income tax.

4. We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people, and hence we demand that all State and national revenues shall be limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically and honestly administered.

5. We demand that postal savings banks be established by the government for the safe deposit of the earnings of the people and to facilitate exchange.

TRANSPORTATION—Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph, telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people.

LAND.—The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.

EXPRESSION OF SENTIMENTS

Your Committee on Platform and Resolutions beg leave unanimously to report the following:

Whereas, Other questions have been presented for our consideration, we hereby submit the following, not as a part of the Platform of the People’s Party, but as resolutions expressive of the sentiment of this Convention.

1. RESOLVED, That we demand a free ballot and a fair count in all elections and pledge ourselves to secure it to every legal voter without Federal Intervention, through the adoption by the States of the unperverted Australian or secret ballot system.

2. RESOLVED, That the revenue derived from a graduated income tax should be applied to the reduction of the burden of taxation now levied upon the domestic industries of this country.

3. RESOLVED, That we pledge our support to fair and liberal pensions to ex-Union soldiers and sailors.

4. RESOLVED, That we condemn the fallacy of protecting American labor under the present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal classes of the world and crowds out our wage-earners; and we denounce the present ineffective laws against contract labor, and demand the further restriction of undesirable emigration.

5. RESOLVED, That we cordially sympathize with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of labor, and demand a rigid enforcement of the existing eight-hour law on Government work, and ask that a penalty clause be added to the said law.

6. RESOLVED, That we regard the maintenance of a large standing army of mercenaries, known as the Pinkerton system, as a menace to our liberties, and we demand its abolition. . . .

7. RESOLVED, That we commend to the favorable consideration of the people and the reform press the legislative system known as the initiative and referendum.

8. RESOLVED, That we favor a constitutional provision limiting the office of President and Vice-President to one term, and providing for the election of Senators of the United States by a direct vote of the people.

9. RESOLVED, That we oppose any subsidy or national aid to any private corporation for any purpose.

10. RESOLVED, That this convention sympathizes with the Knights of Labor and their righteous contest with the tyrannical combine of clothing manufacturers of Rochester, and declare it to be a duty of all who hate tyranny and oppression to refuse to purchase the goods made by the said manufacturers, or to patronize any merchants who sell such goods.

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. It was written by predators and sadists. It will sound different from normal persons.

Googling this passage produces 472,000 results:

When, through the law's intervention, the common people shall have lost their homes, they will be more easy to control and more easy to govern, and they shall not be able to resist the strong hand of the Government acting in accordance with the orders of the central power of imperial wealth, under the control of the leaders of finance.

[The Magistrate]

3. None Of Them Goes To An Original Source, Sir

It is mostly a round-robin of wing-nuts citing fruit-cakes. Possible dates for first introduction of the piece into public circulation run from 1907 to 1924, the latter date being that of an article in the banker's magazine demonstrating no such thing was published by it in the 1890s.

The language question is not something you can dismiss in the manner you do. My interests lead me into reading a great deal of original writings from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The piece you present was not written by or for 'upper crust' types in the 1890s; it is something written by someone later who thinks this is what writing of that period would sound like....

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. If this is a shroud of Turin, I will admit it and unfortunately lose its power

toward our greater goal. I would love to see the/an original as well.

However, the concepts in the piece do not surprise me at all. What does surprise me is the open nature in which they are discussed.

[freshwest]

6. The stress on 'Government' said loudly in the video of this sounded like Libertarian/Ron Paulisms.

For some reason that one word was stressed above all others, but the only corporation the Paulies want to end is the Federal Reserve.

And whether we like it or not, was established by Congress. They tack the banks ala banksters onto that as the next evil. They stressed in the video both parties are a sham and a diversion.

They can used that way and their actions seen as a diversion by the bankers who wrote the piece being discussed; but they are not seen that way by the generations of people who worked through the Democratic Party to bring about all the reforms of FDR and onward. The GOP never did a thing for my family, but the Democratic Party has protected us all our lives against the GOP's backers.

If we want to go Esoteric Agenda or Kymatica here, sure, they're all the same and even we are at fault for resisting each other. But this is a political message board and not a conspiracy website. Which is where a lot of Paulies get the fire in their bellies to run out to save the world in Ron Paul's name. But they are regressives when you get right down to it. How can their ideas be trusted?

Anyway, I'm not saying this is or is not a deception. There have been a lot of bad actors from the monied classes. Will we decide that they are all the same, which leads to not voting?

Whoever it is, has rigged the game so that real lives are being lost in this, and that's no sham. This quote and video is being put out to demoralize Democrats.

It won't affect Republicans because they \vote GOP no matter who is on their ticket. They'd literally kill most of us, and Obama has been trying to and succeeded in saving lives. There is still a difference, and Democrats who buy these stories and not voting are essentially voting GOP. Because they alway show up consistently, we are the ones who give up.

Anyway, it is an example of a particularly vile mentality as far as American values have been.

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. I'm aware of only two Paulites in #Occupy LA and they weren't there that night.

(The night this was read, and was the first time I'd heard it.)

And I hear this message as a call to unify against a greater problem, of money and the monied corrupting politics. This is a large part of the message of #Occupy. There are good Dems and there are bad Dems. Let's get rid of the bad dems and hold the good dems to do the will of the people. I do not see this as demoralizing at all, I see it as insight and perspective, and we are ready now to say NO! to this sort of domination. We are resisting it now. Look at Wisconsin. Look at what #Occupy is doing.

I suppose there are those who may conclude that #Occupy is attempting to dissuade people from voting. I find that questionable. I have never heard that either stated or implied, even with the charge that everyone in DC should be fired. It all goes back to the will of the people, and are those in "representative" office actually doing the will of the people or are they simply sucking up PAC monies and looking for cushy private-sector careers after they leave office? This is about the will of the people re-establishing itself, and demanding that the country's systems respond to its citizenry. I see a great love of America, and a willingness to bring the corrupt system to its knees if need be.

That may frighten some. I say what is frightening, is to willfully continue on the course we saw pre-#Occupy. And these unconfirmed bankers' words are truths.

[freshwest]

8. Are you talking about the woman at the house? That's the vid I mean.

And there are now a slate of 400 progressive Democrats running but no one gives the time of day, they just want to focus on the failures out there. Not saying that about you, though.

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/press/2724-democracy-for-america-recruits-more-than-400-progressives-to-run-for-office-endorses-first-2-012-for-2012-candidates

From further on in that website, although it's hard to find things. Most of the people there aren't on the computer, they are out in their communities:

'...However, simply having a Democratic majority in Congress, or a Democrat in the White House, doesn’t ensure that the best interests of the people are always being represented...

DFA launched its “Primaries Matter” campaign, pushing to earn the nomination of grassroots, progressive Democrats over entrenched, conservative Democrats...'

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/issues/reform

'Tonight's message was brought to you by our sponsors.' Oops, I don't have one. Night!

[Fire Walk With Me]

9. By the way, although I am at best lukewarm about the majority of Dems

I would never knowingly post Paulian material here. I have understood the vile and selfish and bullying nature of the republicans since before I was old enough to vote, and they've only gotten worse. And will only get worse, mark my words.

[JDPriestly]

5. I agree with you about the writing style, Magistrate.

The use of the infinitives has a modern rhythm for example.

I could be very wrong about this.

[ciaoant1]

10. History lessons

The guillotine? French Directory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Directory):
***
Under the French Constitution of 1795, qualified property holders elected 750 legislators, who divided themselves into the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients. This bicameral legislature had a term of three years, with one-third of the members renewed every year. The Ancients held a suspensory veto, but possessed no initiative in legislation.
[...]
The system made provision for the stringent control of all local authorities by the central government. Since the new constitution sought to create a separation of powers, the directors had no voice in legislation or taxation, nor could directors or ministers sit in either house. The law guaranteed freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of labour, but forbade armed assemblies and even public meetings of political societies. Only individuals or public authorities could tender petitions…The finances had been so thoroughly ruined that the government could not have met its expenses without the plunder and the tribute of foreign countries. If peace were made, the armies would return home and the directors would have to face the exasperation of the rank-and-file who had lost their livelihood, as well as the ambition of generals who could, in a moment, brush them aside.
***


The end result was Napoleon. When the Weimar government floundered, the end result was Hitler when Germany finally went bankrupt. Since the military is sucking down a huge, huge hunk of our budget, if this is endangered and the wages of the military aren’t paid on time, they will take over the government just like we saw in Egypt. This will fix nothing since the military leaders want more wars which is what happened when Hitler and Napoleon took over bankrupt empires that still had strong military systems pretty much intact.
.
Both Hitler and Napoleon promised guns and butter and brought in lots of loot for a while until military defeats reversed this and the people let invaders (Russia in both cases!) overthrow their armies. In the US, we have a very dangerous military machine that is mainly overseas. If Congress doesn’t pay them or if the US debt is degraded and thus, less desirable, we will have a coup more likely than an election. The military will not tolerate civilian spending if they have to be cut, too. Ending the many wars goes against the grain for the military which wants more of these wars for it increases their power.

http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/no-more-zirp-for-us-government/

[Fire Walk With Me]

11. #Occupy the military/industrial complex!

[Magoo48]

12. Now you're talkin'

Sadly, when we march on the mic, that's when the big sticks and water cannons will come out. The mic is a cancerous bloom feeding on the very core of authoritarian, conservative fear. That bloated tumor is now rooted deep and is corrupting every good social program with voracious feeder tentacles that suck the financial life from all they touch. Sooooo,
where do we start? Sounds like fun; ya think we'll need help?

[Fire Walk With Me]

14. ...

[Doctor_J]

13. No, occupy the media

Last edited Sat Jan 7, 2012, 03:01 PM - Edit history (1)

when a few hundred hate radio stations are silenced, or a few hundred propagandists led to the guillotine, things will begin to change very quickly. Much easier and much more effective than fighting the MIC