The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

In his monumental study entitled The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, historian Edward Gibbon listed five reasons that the enormous empire collapsed:
1. The increase in divorce, undermining the institution of the family;
2. The imposition of higher taxes for bread and circuses;
3. The drive for pleasure, sports becoming more exciting and brutal;
4. The people lost their faith.
But the most important was the fifth reason:
5. The existence of an internal conspiracy, working to undermine the government from within, all the time that the government was proclaiming that Rome's enemy was external.
Gibbon reported that the conspiracy was building huge armaments for protection against both real and imaginary external enemies, all the while they were literally destroying the empire from within.
These causes have parallels in today's world as well.

The existence of an accepted external menace, then, is essential to social cohesiveness as well as to the acceptance of political authority. The menace must be believable, it must be of a magnitude consistent with the complexity of the society threatened, and it must appear, at least, to affect the inure society. 

The Unseen Hand

American Entry Into WW II

... But as the war in Europe continued, America's leaders were attempting to get America involved, even though the American people didn't want to become part of it. Roosevelt, the presidential candidate, was promising the American people that the Roosevelt administration would remain neutral should he be re-elected. Others knew better. One, for instance, was General Hugh Johnson, who said: "I know of no well informed Washington observer who isn't convinced that, if Mr. Roosevelt is elected (in 1940), he will drag us into war at the first opportunity, and that, if none presents itself, he will make one."
Roosevelt had two opportunities to involve America in World War II: Japan was at war with China, and Germany was at war with England, France and other countries. Both war zones presented plenty of opportunities to involve the American government in the war, and Roosevelt was quick to seize upon the opportunities presented.
Roosevelt's public efforts to involve America, while ostensibly remaining neutral, started in August, 1940, when the National Guard was voted into Federal service for one year. This was followed in September by the Selective Service Act, also for one year's duration.
But the key to America's early involvement occurred on September 28, 1940, when Japan, Germany and Italy signed the Tripartite Treaty. This treaty required that any of the three nations had to respond by declaring war should any one of the other three be attacked by any of the Allied nations.
This meant that should Japan attack the United States, and the United States responded by declaring war against Japan, it would automatically be at war with the other two nations, Germany and Italy.
Roosevelt now knew that war with Japan meant war with Germany.
His problem was solved. He had made secret commitments to Winston Churchill and the English government to become involved in the war against Germany and he knew "... that the only way he could fulfill his secret commitments to Churchill to get us into the war, without openly dishonoring his pledges to the American people to keep us out, was by provoking Germany or Japan to attack."
Roosevelt and Churchill had conspired together to incite an incident to allow America's entry into the war. According to Churchill:
The President had said that he would wage war but not declare it, and that he would become more and more provocative. If the Germans did not like it, they could attack American forces.
The United States Navy was taking over the convoy route to Iceland.
The President's orders to these escorts were to attack any U-boat which showed itself, even if it were two or three hundred miles away from the convoy...
Everything was to be done to force "an incident."
Hitler would be faced with the dilemma of either attacking the convoys and clashing with the United States Navy or holding off,thus "giving us victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. It might suit us in six or eight weeks to provoke Hitler by taunting him with this difficult choice."
Hitler was not as wise in other matters. He attacked his "ally" Russia on June 22, 1941, even though Germany and Russia had signed a treaty not to declare war on each other.
With this action, the pressure to get the United States involved in the war really accelerated. Roosevelt, on June 24, 1941, told the American people: "Of course we are going to give all the aid that we possibly can to Russia."
And an American program of Lend-Lease began, supplying Russia
enormous quantities of war materials, all on credit.
So with Hitler pre-occupied with the war against Russia and refusing to involve himself with the Americans on the open sea, Roosevelt had to turn his attentions back to Japan for the incident he needed.
The next step was to assist other countries, the English and the Dutch, to embargo oil shipments to Japan in an attempt to force them into an incident that would enable the United States to enter the war.
Japan, as a relatively small island, and with no oil industry to speak of, had to look elsewhere for its oil, and this was the reason for the proposed embargo. It was thought that this action would provoke Japan into an incident.
... President Roosevelt wasn't listening to the charges of Congress-roan Martin Dies, Chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. By August of 1941, "The Dies committee had assembled a large amount of evidence which more than confirmed the suspicions which we had entertained on the basis of surface appearances: It was clear that the Japanese were preparing to invade Pearl Harbor and that they were in Possession of vital military information."
Congressman Dies was told not to release the document to the public and the Roosevelt administration did nothing.
(In April, 1964, when Dies told the American public of these revelations he added this comment: "If anyone questions the veracity and accuracy of these statements, I will be glad to furnish him with conclusive proof.")
.. Henry Stimson, Roosevelt's Secretary of War , was to repeat this concern that faced the Roosevelt administration when he testified before one of the Committees investigating Pearl Harbor. There he was quoted as saying: "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."

The Unseen Hand by Ralph Epperson

Was Hitler of a Jewish descent ?

Walter Langer wrote in his book The Mind of Adolf Hitler that it was his theory that Hitler was himself one-quarter Jewish and the grandson of a Rothschild. He wrote: There is a great deal of confusion in studying Hitler's family tree.
Adolf's father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. It was generally supposed that the father of Alois Hitler was Johann Georg Hiedler...
Alois, however, was not legitimized, and he bore his mother's name until he was forty years of age when he changed it to Hitler.A peculiar series of events, prior to Hitler's birth, furnishes plenty of food for speculation.
There are some people who seriously doubt that Johann Georg Hiedler was the father of Alois. Thyssen and Koehler, for example, claim that Chancellor Dolfuss (the Chancellor of Austria) had ordered the Austrian police to conduct a thorough investigation into the Hitler family. As a result of this investigation a secret document was prepared that proved Maria Anna Shicklgruber was living in Vienna at the time she conceived.
At that time she was employed as a servant in the home of Baron Rothschild. As soon as the family discovered her pregnancy she was sent back to her home in Spital where Alois was born.
In a postscript in Langer's book, Robert G.L. Waite adds this comment.
But even when Langer is mistaken and his guesses prove incorrect, he is often on the right track.
Consider his hint that Hitler's grandfather might have been a Jew. There is no reason to believe the unlikely story told by Langer's informant that Hitler's grandmother Maria Anna Schickelgruber, a peasant woman in her forties from the Waldvietral of rural Austria, had had an intimate liaison with a Baron Rothschild in Vienna.
But Hitler had worried that he might be blackmailed over a Jewish grandfather and ordered his private lawyer, Hans Frank, to investigate his paternal lineage.
Frank did so and told the Fuehrer that his grandmother had become pregnant while working as a domestic servant in a Jewish household in Graz.
The facts of this matter are in dispute — and a very lengthy dispute it has been.
The point of overriding psychological and historical importance is not whether it is true that Hitler had a Jewish grandfather, but whether he believed that it might be true.
He did so believe and the fact shaped both his personality and his public policy.
It is possible that Hitler discovered his Jewish background and his relation to the Rothschilds, and aware of their enormous power to make or break European governments, re-established contact with the family. 
This would partially explain the enormous support he received from the international banking fraternity, closely entwined with the Rothschild family, as he rose to power.
One thing is certain, however. Hitler started World War II by moving into Austria first. It has been theorized that he moved into this country for two reasons. First, he wanted to silence Dolfuss who Hitler believed knew that he was a descendant of the Rothschilds, and secondly, he wished to remove all traces of his ancestry from the Austrian records.

The Unseen Hand

Seven deadly sins

Quran

Eid al Ad'ha

" It is not their flesh, nor their blood, that reaches Allah; it is your righteousness {piety } that reaches Him….Their flesh will never reach Allah, nor yet their blood, but your devotion will reach Him" (Qur'an 22:37).
The main purpose of allowing Muslims to continue with animal sacrifices was to turn this tradition into an institution of charity. All the verses of the Qur'an which deal with the subject wind up with the proviso that the meat be fed to the poor, the needy, those who are too modest to beg as well as the mendicants.
Sacrifice is meant to be an act of worship and thanksgiving, it is meant to be an act of benevolence (Ihsan) to fulfill a social obligation. Any sacrifice that is allowed to go to waste is a sinful as well as a criminal violation.

Beware of the Lyrics

Someone once wrote: "I know a very wise man who believes that, if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation."
A musician, Frank Zappa, the leader of the rock group called Mothers of Invention, added this incredible statement: "The loud sounds and bright lights of today are tremendous indoctrination tools. Is it possible to modify the human chemical structure with the right combination of frequencies? If the right kind of beat makes you tap your foot, what kind of beat makes you curl your fist and strike?"

The thought that music was created for the express purpose of controlling young people is an alien idea to the parents of those who listen to the music, so the message in the music had to be concealed in a special language so that only the young people would understand it. It takes very gifted musicians and song writers to write the music in such a way that the parents interpret it one way and the young people in another, but this has been the case in the modern music of today.

This concealed message was accomplished by many groups, but one of the most successful was a rock 'n roll group known as the Beatles. Their particular message was intended to teach young people the merits of drug use through such songs as:

"Yellow Submarine"  =  A "submarine" is a "downer" drug, one that slows the user down.
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"  =  The first initials of the main words in the  title, "L," "S" and "D" represent the drug LSD.
"Strawberry Fields"   =  Opium poppies are often planted in strawberry fields to avoid detection.
"Norwegian Wood"   =   A Britisher's term for marijuana .

The Unseen Hand .

The Grand Mechanism

Emanating from the features of individual kings and usurpers in Shakespeare's History plays, there gradually emerges the image of history itself. The image of the Grand Mechanism.
The flattering index of a direful pageant,
One heav'd a-high to be hurl'd down below . . . --- Richard III, 4.4.85-6

 The Grand Mechanism , a staircase by which tyrants rise to power. Each step up requires treachery and killing until they reach the top and achieve power only to fall victim to those climbing the stairs behind them. The actions that bring them to the top bring about their demise.

The Iron Mountain

...The report starts by defining the traditional view of the functions of war. It claims that there are three:

1. to defend a nation from military attack by another or to deter such an attack;
2. to defend or advance a national interest; and
3. to maintain or increase a nation's military power for its own sake.

It continues by stating that these are the "visible" functions, and that there are "invisible, or implied, functions" as well. These are spelled out in the report, but all functions have one common purpose: "War has provided both ancient and modern society with a debatable system for stabilizing and controlling national economies. No alternate method of control has yet been tested in a complex modern economy that has shown it is remotely comparable in scope or effectiveness. War fills certain functions essential to the stability of our society; until other ways of filling them are developed, the war system must be maintained — and improved in effectiveness."

The report then goes on to detail what the "invisible functions" of war are:

War... is the principal organizing force in most societies.
... The possibility of war provided the sense of external necessity without which no government can long remain in power.
The historical record reveals one instance after another where the failure... of a regime to maintain the credibility of a war threat led to its dissolution.
War... provides anti-social elements with an acceptable role in the social structure.
The younger, and more dangerous, of these hostile social groupings have been kept under control by the Selective Service System.
As a control device... the draft can again be defended...
The level of the draft calls tends to follow the major fluctuations in the unemployment rate...
Man destroys surplus members of his own species by organized warfare.
War is the principal motivational force for the development of science...
War is a... general social release... for the dissipation of general boredom.
War... enables the physically deteriorating older generation to maintain its control of the younger, destroying it if necessary.


The Unseen Hand by Ralph Epperson