Tuesday, May 22, 2012

The Rothschild Conspiracy (Or Not)


Some believe that world governments and economies are secretly controlled by the Rothschild banking family.


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Mayer Amschel Rothschild
Mayer Amschel Rothschild
(Public domain image)
Today we're going to point our skeptical eye at the famous Rothschild banking family, and the multitudinous conspiracy theories surrounding them. Just about every conspiracy theory website that presumes the world's governments act in willing concert under the guidance of some secret council points the finger at the Rothschilds. We're going to take a modern-day look at this mysterious family, see who they really are and what they really do, and see exactly what evidence there is that shows that they are actually directing world affairs. Why would superpowers such as the United States, Russia, and China willing give up their sovereignty, conducting wars and exerting control over markets according to instructions from above? The answer, according to the believers, is money.
Driven by their quest for money, the Rothschilds have been said to assassinate US Presidents, and to create virtually every war since the 1800s in order to finance both sides. Some say the Rothschilds (who are Jewish) caused the Holocaust, while others say they were the true power behind the creation of Israel. They would, and continue, to do anything for money. In fact one of the earliest and most influential Rothschilds, Nathan, is claimed to have said:
I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.
The Rothschilds' whole story is one of money, and it began in the 18th century. Their history is perhaps largely responsible for the modern belief that Jews control the world's money supply, which is not entirely unrooted in fact. Throughout Christian Europe, it was common for institutionalized anti-Semitism to prohibit Jews from owning property; so Jewish businesspeople had no choice but to work in the fields of commerce and finance, where money could be kept liquid and easily transferred or hidden. By denying Jews the stability of property ownership, Christians unwittingly forced Jews of the day into great financial expertise.
The greatest of these financial adepts was Mayer Amschel Rothschild, born in 1744 in a Jewish slum of Frankfurt. Not much is known about his early life, as his was one of tens of thousands of marginalized, outcast families. But once he came of age he became an apprentice at a small bank in Hamburg, where he learned the trade. Returning to Frankfurt at the age of 19, he offered his own banking services in a modest way, beginning with trading of rare coins and related investments. He was energetic, clever, and most of all he was charismatic. And he was smart, seeking out wealthy clientele, and associating with nobility whenever he could. By the age of 40, he had consolidated his most important business contact: the Landgrave William, the Elector of Hesse, one of only a tiny number of nobles empowered to elect the Holy Roman Emperor. When William was younger, he had engaged in the trading of rare coins with Mayer's father, and so the two had always known one another. When William inherited his own father's massive fortune, his friendship with Mayer Rothschild gave Mayer the ability to begin conducting larger international transactions.
This was the point at which the Rothschild name became first involved with the manipulation of money behind the scenes of wars. Mayer was a firm believer in family business, and insisted on using his own sons — by then he had five — as his business partners. What he did next became the model for many powerful Jewish financiers who followed: He installed each of his five sons as his agents in the five major financial centers of Europe: the eldest Amschel Mayer Rothschild in Frankfurt, Salomon Mayer Rothschild in Vienna, Nathan Mayer Rothschild in London, Calmann Mayer Rothschild in Naples, and the youngest Jakob Mayer Rothschild in Vienna.




One of Mayer's earliest transactions was the start of the pseudohistory and hyperbole surrounding everything Rothschild. Napoleon was on the march through Europe, and the popular version of the story claims that William gave the entirety of his fortune to Mayer to protect it from being seized by Napoleon. Mayer was able to hide the money by sending it to his son Nathan in London. The London Rothschild office had to spend it somewhere, and loaned it to the British crown, in order to finance the British armies fighting Napoleon in Spain and Portugal in the Peninsular War. In fact, all William gave to Mayer were some important papers. Nathan had already long managed the bulk of William's money, and much of it was already invested with the British Crown. William was no stranger to such transactions; his father had gained much of that wealth in the first place through the financing of Britain's war on the American colonies, a few decades earlier.
Nevertheless, the Rothschilds' savvy investments of William's money paid off handsomely, netting sufficient interest that their own wealth eventually exceeded that of their original nest-egg client. This marked the birth of the Rothschild banking dynasty.

Four of Mayer's five sons had sons of their own, most of whom were sent to other financial centers to head new offices. By Mayer's edict, family members intermarried with first and second cousins, keeping the company sealed tight against outsiders. At their height, the Rothschilds' wealth, if it had been pooled, would have been the largest single fortune in world history. Europe was littered with dozens of staggering mansions owned by family members. Throughout the 19th century, N M Rothschild and Sons in London filled the role now held by the International Monetary Fund, stabilizing the currencies of major world governments. They profited heavily, but they also provided a crucial international service.
World Wars I and II, the costs of which exceeded the abilities of either the Rothschilds or any other banks to finance, and resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund, marked the end of this part of the Rothschilds' business. In addition, Nazi Germany devastated the Austrian Rothschilds and seized all of their assets. The family members escaped to the United States, but lost their entire fortunes to the Nazis, including a number of palaces and a huge amount of artwork. The banks' sizable assets became the property of Nazi Germany, and this is the only seed of truth to the claim that the Rothschilds "funded the Holocaust".
By the time of the state of Israel's creation in the late 1940s, there were hundreds of Rothschild descendants, many still in banking or asset management, many in philanthropy, and many in unrelated businesses. Some Rothschilds supported Israel; some were passionately opposed. The idea of a single unified Rothschild establishment was long gone. No doubt many financial institutions were involved in Israel's early days, some were Rothschild banks, many more were not. It is this twisting and spinning of ordinary events into dark powerful deeds that characterizes much of the Rothschild conspiracy claims.
Case in point: At the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, Rothschild couriers were able to deliver news of the British victory to Nathan a full day ahead of government messengers. Nathan bought bonds at a low price that was fluctuating with uncertainty, and did very well the next day when official news came and prices rose. The conspiracy theory version states that Nathan first dumped bonds on the market to fool other investors into thinking he had news that the battle was lost, and through this ruse, multiplied the family fortune. In fact there is no historical record of this prior to a 1940 German movie called Die Rothschilds Aktien auf Waterloo,described as "the Third Reich's first anti-Semitic manifesto on film." The truth is that the Rothschild bank was already heavily invested betting on a protracted war, and this short-term gain on bonds merely offset a long-term loss.




One of their most famous transactions came in 1825, when England's unregulated banks all went into crisis due to poor management of interest rates. Nathan Rothschild had earlier bought huge amounts of gold from the struggling Bank of England at a fire sale price and sold it to the French national bank. When the Bank of England suffered a liquidity crisis as depositors clamored for their funds, the bank was able to borrow that same money back from Nathan, and thus averted disaster. Virtually every conspiracy website claims that this is how the Rothschilds "took over the Bank of England". No. They gave them a loan, which was paid back. In later years one Rothschild descendant sat on the Bank of England's board for a time, but by no logic can it be defended that their 1825 transaction constituted "taking them over".

In fact, that famous quote from Nathan Rothschild about "controlling the British money supply" turns out to be a fabrication. I found no original source for the quote at all, though it's repeated in dozens of conspiracy books and on tens of thousands of conspiracy websites. I did a thorough search of all available newspaper archives from Nathan's lifetime, and had some friends check various university library systems. No such quote appears in the academic literature. After such a thorough search, I feel confident stating that he never made such a statement.
But the quote doesn't appear to be completely made up by the conspiracy theorists. It's most likely a revised and restyled version of this quote attributed to Nathan's father, the original Mayer Rothschild:
Give me control of a Nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.
But like the longer, more specific quote from Nathan, even this one turns out to be apocryphal. Author G. Edward Griffin did manage to track it down, though. He found that this saying was:
Quoted by Senator Robert L. Owen, former Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency and one of the sponsors of the Federal Reserve Act, National Economy and the Banking System, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939), p. 99. This quotation could not be verified in a primary reference work. However, when one considers the life and accomplishments of the elder Rothschild, there can be little doubt that this sentiment was, in fact, his outlook and guiding principle.
   And this is certainly true. In Rothschild's day, before banking regulation and antitrust laws existed, it was indeed possible for small groups to gain controlling interests in enough financial institutions that it could be argued that they "controlled" a nation's money supply. Evidently the Senator made up the quote to support whatever speech he was making, and attributed it to a famous name to give it some clout.
Some claim the Rothschilds own half the world's wealth. If they do, it's only in the same way that you do. Anyone with an interest-bearing bank account owns shares in whatever funds their bank invests in. Those funds own shares in other funds and public companies, and so on. At some level, virtually every financial entity owns, and is owned by, any other entity, in every country. It's exactly like the degrees of Kevin Bacon. The notion that anyone could "control the world's finances" is ludicrous.
There is no longer any such thing as a monolithic House of Rothschild with connections to any significant number of all the scores of today's independent Rothschild business ventures. The closest thing is Rothschilds Continuation Holdings AG, a Swiss company that manages interests in many Rothschild-founded institutions. There are no longer any Rothschild family members on its board (the last having retired in 2011), though about eight Rothschilds are believed to own stakes in it (like many holding companies, it's privately held, so its records are not public). Its other owners include Rabobank and Hong Kong based Jardine Matheson Holdings. The Rothschild funds it manages now focus on mergers and acquisitions. Make no mistake, it's a large and successful company; but with billions in assets, it's a relatively small fish in the sea of world financial institutions with trillions in assets, including Deutsche Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, HSBC Holdings, BNP Paribas, Japan Post Bank, Crédit Agricole Group, Barclays PLC, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, JP Morgan Chase & Co., and many others. Anyone trying to point the finger at the scattered Rothschilds as "controlling" world banks has an awfully tall order. That little factoid is about 100 years out of date.

By my analysis, the Rothschilds are best thought of not as an evil shadow conspiracy, but as a great success story of rags to riches, Jewish slum to financing the defeat of Napoleon. The price of gold is fixed twice a day by five members of the London Bullion Association: Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank, Scotiabank, HSBC, and Societe Generale, and they conduct their twice-daily meeting over the telephone. Today this is mere financial necessity, but until 2004, it was also a century-old tradition as great as the ringing of the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The five distinguished representatives included a Rothschild, and they met in person in a paneled room at the London office of N M Rothschild & Sons. That ritual is now a thing of the past, as is the power of the world's greatest financial dynasty.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

How the Goldman Vampire Squid Just Captured Europe

Wednesday, 18 April 2012 08:01

By Ellen Brown, Truthout | News Analysis
The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe - a permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers.
In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress. But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time affair. Paulson's plea for a permanent bailout fund - the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP - was opposed by Congress and ultimately rejected.
By December 2011, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, former vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to approve a 500 billion euro bailout for European banks without asking anyone's permission. And in January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed in the dead of night with barely even a mention in the press. The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers on the hook for whatever the ESM's eurocrat overseers demand.
The bankers' coup has triumphed in Europe seemingly without a fight. The ESM is cheered by euro zone governments, their creditors and "the market" alike, because it means investors will keep buying sovereign debt. All is sacrificed to the demands of the creditors, because where else can the money be had to float the crippling debts of the euro zone governments?
There is another alternative to debt slavery to the banks. But first, a closer look at the nefarious underbelly of the ESM and Goldman's silent takeover of the ECB....
The Dark Side of the ESM
The ESM is a permanent rescue facility slated to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility and European Financial Stabilization Mechanism as soon as member states representing 90 percent of the capital commitments have ratified it, something that is expected to happen in July 2012. A December 2011 YouTube video titled "The shocking truth of the pending EU collapse!" originally posted in German, gives such a revealing look at the ESM that it is worth quoting here at length. It states:
The EU is planning a new treaty called the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM: a treaty of debt.... The authorized capital stock shall be 700 billion euros. Question: why 700 billion?... [Probable answer: it simply mimicked the $700 billion the US Congress bought into in 2008.][Article 9]: ",,, ESM Members hereby irrevocably and unconditionally undertake to pay on demand any capital call made on them ... within seven days of receipt of such demand." ... If the ESM needs money, we have seven days to pay.... But what does "irrevocably and unconditionally" mean? What if we have a new parliament, one that does not want to transfer money to the ESM?...
[Article 10]: "The Board of Governors may decide to change the authorized capital and amend Article 8 ... accordingly." Question: ... 700 billion is just the beginning? The ESM can stock up the fund as much as it wants to, any time it wants to? And we would then be required under Article 9 to irrevocably and unconditionally pay up?
[Article 27, lines 2-3]: "The ESM, its property, funding and assets ... shall enjoy immunity from every form of judicial process.... " Question: So the ESM program can sue us, but we can't challenge it in court?
[Article 27, line 4]: "The property, funding and assets of the ESM shall ... be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation, or any other form of seizure, taking or foreclosure by executive, judicial, administrative or legislative action." Question: ... [T]his means that neither our governments, nor our legislatures, nor any of our democratic laws have any effect on the ESM organization? That's a pretty powerful treaty!
[Article 30]: "Governors, alternate Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, the Managing Director and staff members shall be immune from legal process with respect to acts performed by them ... and shall enjoy inviolability in respect of their official papers and documents." Question: So anyone involved in the ESM is off the hook? They can't be held accountable for anything? ... The treaty establishes a new intergovernmental organization to which we are required to transfer unlimited assets within seven days if it so requests, an organization that can sue us but is immune from all forms of prosecution and whose managers enjoy the same immunity. There are no independent reviewers and no existing laws apply? Governments cannot take action against it? Europe's national budgets in the hands of one single unelected intergovernmental organization? Is that the future of Europe? Is that the new EU - a Europe devoid of sovereign democracies?
The Goldman Squid Captures the ECB
Last November, without fanfare and barely noticed in the press, former Goldman executive Mario Draghi replaced Jean-Claude Trichet as head of the ECB. Draghi wasted no time doing for the banks what the ECB has refused to do for its member governments - lavish money on them at very cheap rates. French blogger Simon Thorpe reports:
On the 21st of December, the ECB "lent" 489 billion euros to European Banks at the extremely generous rate of just 1% over 3 years. I say "lent," but in reality, they just ran the printing presses. The ECB doesn't have the money to lend. It's Quantitative Easing again.The money was gobbled up virtually instantaneously by a total of 523 banks. It's complete madness. The ECB hopes that the banks will do something useful with it - like lending the money to the Greeks, who are currently paying 18% to the bond markets to get money. But there are absolutely no strings attached. If the banks decide to pay bonuses with the money, that's fine. Or they might just shift all the money to tax havens.
At 18 percent interest, debt doublesin just four years. It is this onerous interest burden - not the debt itself - that is crippling Greece and other debtor nations. Thorpe proposes the obvious solution:
Why not lend the money to the Greek government directly? Or to the Portuguese government, currently having to borrow money at 11.9%? Or the Hungarian government, currently paying 8.53%. Or the Irish government, currently paying 8.51%? Or the Italian government, who are having to pay 7.06%?
The stock objection to that alternative is that Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty prevents the ECB from lending to governments. But Thorpe reasons:
My understanding is that Article 123 is there to prevent elected governments from abusing Central Banks by ordering them to print money to finance excessive spending. That, we are told, is why the ECB has to be independent from governments. OK. But what we have now is a million times worse. The ECB is now completely in the hands of the banking sector. "We want half a billion of really cheap money!!" they say. OK, no problem. Mario is here to fix that. And no need to consult anyone. By the time the ECB makes the announcement, the money has already disappeared.
At least if the ECB was working under the supervision of elected governments, we would have some influence when we elect those governments. But the bunch that now has their grubby hands on the instruments of power are now totally out of control.
Goldman Sachs and the financial technocrats have taken over the European ship. Democracy has gone out the window, all in the name of keeping the central bank independent from the "abuses" of government. Yet, the government is the people - or it should be. A democratically elected government represents the people. Europeans are being hoodwinked into relinquishing their cherished democracy to a rogue band of financial pirates, and the rest of the world is not far behind.
Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse Article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then, the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, euro zone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest free. This is not a new idea, but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada.
Today, the issuance of money and credit has become the private right of vampire rentiers, who are using it to squeeze the lifeblood out of economies. This right needs to be returned to sovereign governments. Credit should be a public utility, dispensed and managed for the benefit of the people.
To add your signature to a letter to parliamentarians blocking ratification of the ESM, clickhere.


ELLEN BROWN

Ellen is an attorney and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com andellenbrown.com.  She is also chairman of the Public Banking Institute.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

NASA scientist James Hanson says civilization will be at risk if Canada exploits oil sands


An aerial view of the Syncrude tar sands mine is seen, north of Fort McMurray, Alberta.A prominent NASA scientist penned a provocative column in the New York Times Thursday, suggesting the end of civilization could be nigh, thanks to Alberta's 'tar sands.'
"Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canadawould exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves 'regardless of what we do,'" climatologist James Hanson wrote.
"If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies...twenty to 50 percent of the planet's species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk."
Hansen, who has directed the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies for nearly three decades, has published numerous articles on the subject of climate change.
In recent year's he's become an activist, once getting arrested at a White House protest against mountaintop coal mining.
His solution to stop Canada's 'exploitation' of the oil sands is for the U.S. government to introduce a different kind of cap and trade system.
"We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny," he wrote.
"Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices.  Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the [Keystone] pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price."
This isn't the first time Hansen has weighed-in on the oil sands, but his musings comes on the heels of a parliamentary report suggesting Canada won't meet its emission targets - a report, which made it on to the New York Times website, on Tuesday.

Coal, Foreclosures and Bank of America


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Published: Thursday 10 May 2012
“Wednesday’s protest outside the Bank of America headquarters, with hundreds marching, was peaceful and spirited.”

Shareholder meetings can be routine, unless you are Bank of America, in which case it may be declared an “extraordinary event.” That is what the city of Charlotte, N.C., called the bank’s shareholder meeting this week. Bank of America is currently the second-largest bank in the U.S. (after JPMorgan Chase), claiming more than $2 trillion in assets. It also is the “too big to fail” poster child of Occupy Wall Street, a speculative banking monstrosity that profits from, among other things, the ongoing foreclosure crisis and the exploitation of dirty coal.
North Carolina, which went for Barack Obama in 2008, is a swing state in this year’s presidential election. Current polls indicate the Tar Heel State is a tossup. To boost its chances there, the Democratic Party has chosen Charlotte to host this summer’s Democratic National Convention. In preparation, the Charlotte City Council passed an amendment to the city code allowing the city manager to declare so-called extraordinary events. The ordinance is clearly structured to grant police extra powers to detain, search and arrest people who are within the arbitrarily defined “extraordinary event” zone. The ordinance reads, in part, “It shall be unlawful for any person ... to willfully or intentionally possess, carry, control, or have immediate access to any of the following” and then lists a page of items, including scarves, backpacks, duffel bags, satchels and coolers.
Wednesday’s protest outside the Bank of America headquarters, with hundreds marching, was peaceful and spirited. The colorful array of creative signs was complemented by activists inside the meeting, who, as shareholders, were entitled to address the meeting. George Goehl of National People’s Action, who was inside, told CNN about Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan’s reaction: “Dozens of us were able to speak, but Moynihan mostly dodged, deflected and denied. He looked visibly uncomfortable the entire time.”
Many activists expressed outrage at the bank’s role in the subprime mortgage industry and the foreclosure crisis it helped spawn. As part of a federal settlement over widespread mortgage fraud, Bank of America agreed to hand over $11.8 billion. Just two days before the protest, the bank announced it was contacting the first 5,000 of 200,000 mortgage customers who are eligible for a loan modification, with a potential decrease in their mortgage principal of up to 30 percent.
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Last week, activists with the Rainforest Action Network climbed 100 feet to suspend a banner on Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium, where President Obama is scheduled to make his nomination acceptance speech on Sept. 6. The banner read “Bank of America” with the word “America” crossed out and replaced with “Coal.” RAN is part of a broad coalition fighting the destructive practice of mountaintop removal. RAN Executive Director Rebecca Tarbotton told me: “Bank of America is the lead financier of mountaintop-removal mining, which is a practice of mining which is really the worst of the worst mining that we see anywhere, essentially blowing the tops off of mountains in Appalachia, destroying people’s homes, polluting their water supplies. And that’s even before it gets into the coal plants, where it’s burnt and creates air pollution in inner-city areas and all around our country ... [it’s] the canary in the coal mine for our reliance on fossil fuels.”
The broad coalition in and out of the shareholder meeting demonstrates a key development in Occupy Wall Street’s spring revival, and also foreshadows possible confrontations with the Obama re-election campaign this fall.
Obama responds to pressure. Look at the issue of marriage equality. In 1996, while campaigning for state senator in Illinois, Obama wrote he supported same-sex marriage. While campaigning in 2008, then-U.S. Sen. Obama stated, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.” This week, he told ABC News, “It is important for me to affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
Given the political climate, it certainly is brave for Obama to endorse marriage equality, especially just hours after the voters of North Carolina voted in favor of a state constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage. But he was once a community organizer, and no doubt recalls the words of Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.” The LGBT community was organized and vocal, and the president’s position moved.
Those gathered inside and outside the Bank of America shareholder meeting this week - homeowners fighting foreclosure, environmentalists, Occupy Wall Street activists - will take note of the president’s change. They are sure to continue their struggles, right through the Democratic National Convention, making it truly an “extraordinary event.” 
© 2011 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate

Fossil fuel funded group subverting Renewables

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“The Guardian revealed the network of fossil-funded groups coordinating the ongoing onslaught of attacks on renewable energy, particularly wind power.”
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Ever wonder why a blooming green energy industry has faced such harsh opposition? Now, as the old adage goes, "the cat's out of the bag."
The Guardian today revealed the network of fossil-funded groups coordinating the ongoing onslaught of attacks on renewable energy, particularly wind power. A memorandum passed to The Guardian from the Checks and Balances Project details the organizations and personnel acting as ringleaders to build an astroturf echo chamber of clean energy critics.Guardian reporter Suzanne Goldenberg writes in "Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy," 
"A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy."
A confidential memo seen by The Guardian and obtained by DeSmogBlog "advises using 'subversion' to build a national movement of wind farm protesters," explained Goldenberg.
That memo was crafted by the American Tradition Institute (ATI). ATI was the right-wing think-tank behind the lawsuit to obtain University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann's "ClimateGate" emails.
DeSmogBlog has covered ALEC's assault on renewable energy previously.
Other gold in the memo, as relayed by Goldenberg:
  • "[A] national PR campaign aimed at causing 'subversion in message of industry so that it effectively because so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it.'"
  • "[S]etting up 'dummy businesses' to buy anti-wind billboards, and creating a 'counter-intelligence branch' to track the wind energy industry.  
  • "[C]alls for spending $750,000 to create an organisation with paid staff and tax-exempt status dedicated to building public opposition to state and federal government policies encouraging the wind energy industry."
The memo was authored by John Droz Jr., an ATI Senior Felllow. Droz runs the website "Wind Power Facts" and is a climate change denier, on the record saying,
Is Global Warming a scientifically resolved matter? No. There is some very convincing evidence (and scientists) that indicate that there is such a thing as Global Warming. But there are some very qualified scientists (with good evidence) that suggest just the opposite. More importantly, statements often appearing in the media like 'the majority of scientists' believe in Global Warming, are meaningless. First of all, no legitimate survey has ever been done, and secondly, science is not about the number of people who advocate a position.
Furthermore, Droz is registered as a speaker at this year's Heartland Institute (of DeSmogBlog's "Heartland Exposed" fame) "Denial-a-Palooza" event.
"These documents show for the first time that local Nimby anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry," Gabe Elsner, Checks and Balances co-director told The Guardian.